Clarence Walter H. Jarman 1896-1996

Brief outline:

Clarence, of Clarrie as he liked to be known, was the second son of Alfred and Annie Jarman. He was born in Stoke Newington in 1896. By 1901 his family had moved to Portugal Road, Woking, where his father was a grocer’s assistant.

In August 1914 on the outbreak of war he enlisted in the Queen’s (Royal West Surrey) Regiment, being given the battalion number, G/1644. On 27^th July 1915 after completing his training he was sent to France. After a heavy bombardment for a week in the Somme area, on 1^st July 1916 his battalion was ordered to go over the top. It was on this day that Clarrie was wounded in the leg by shrapnel. Unfortunately his wound became gangrenous and he had to have his leg amputated.

He was transported back to Britain, and was sent to several hospitals including Beechcroft hospital off Heathside Road in Woking, where he remained throughout the war. He was discharged from the army on 27^th February 1918.

After the war he became a school attendance officer and the worked for Local Government until his retirement at age 65. He used to travel between local schools on a specially modified bicycle. In 1962 he met and married Adella after a whirlwind romance.

Despite his disability he was a keen sportsman, playing cricket, swimming and was one of the founding members of Woking Football Team’s Supporter’s Club. In 1972 aged 75 he retired from the Supporter’s Club committee after 44 years.

When he was 85 he decided to write his memoirs of his life during the First World War, and it was published in the Western Front Association’s newsletter Stand To!

Clarrie died at Woking Community Hospital on 9^th November 1996 aged 100. A funeral service was held at Trinity Methodist Church and he was then cremated.

Article that appeared in the Woking News and Mail 2^nd January 1975

“From the Somme to Wembley”

There was peace on earth and goodwill to men on Christmas Day 1914. But a peace which made the bitter fighting in the months before and the months to follow seems hardly credible.

The soldiers from both sides of the front line scrambled out of the trenches, through the barbed wire into no man’s land, where they exchanged gifts and greetings.

But this was a one-day truce to be remembered.

And the memories are still there for those who fought in the First World War, Mr. Clarence Jarman, of Old Malt Way, Woking, is no exception.

He has been asked by the Imperial War Museum to recount his civilian and Army experiences, to be added to its archives.

The Salvation Army band was playing in Woking park on a warm Sunday afternoon in August 1914, when war was declared.

Ages forged

Immediately men and boys flocked to the recruiting office in the town to enlist to volunteer for duty to their King and country.

Boys under the minimum age of 19, forged their ages in patriote fervour to join the war effort.

The names of the recruits were written on board outside the office…

Pte. Clarrie Jarman headed the list.

He had been among those in the park, dressed in his Sunday suite, when the news broke.

“Age?” asked the sergeant at the recruiting officer. “Eighteen”, replied Clarrie Jarman. “You just walk around the office and come back and tell me you are 19.”

Clarrie Jarman took the King’s shilling and was signed on as a private in Kitchener’s Army.

A fleet of taxis ferried the recruits to Stoughton barracks at Guildford, the Queen’s Depot.

This war was something new, because the South African Boer War involved comparatively few men. In 1914 no one knew what to expect, but it was an unquestionable duty to fight for one’s country.

It never occurred to the young and enthusiastic that they had signed away their lives.

That they had signed up to kill and to be killed was not even considered.

”It really didn’t sink in for a few days”, said Mr. Jarman. “War was something new, nobody really realised what it was”.

“Although many men had never been away from home, the other lads were going and you wanted to be with them”.

Comrades

Many of the Woking recruits went through the entire war together in the 7^th battalion The Queen’s Regiment, separated only by death or injury.

Of those who enlisted at the Drill Hall (now James Walkers, the jewellers, Chertsey Street, Woking) many would be amongst the ¼ million who were to die. Only two of the six Woking boys in Clarrie Jarman’s section came back.

In no way were the Woking volunteers broken gently into Army life. Their first night was spent sleeping rough, with only the clothes they signed up in to their name.

They were given Army boots, but still wore their civilian clothes for several months before they were issued with the famed Kitchener’s Blue, a uniform so recognisable by its cut and colour that it gave its wearers the nickname Fred Karno’s Army.

Clarrie Jarman’s mother burst into tears – when he returned home on his first weekend leave at the shock of seeing him standing in the same Sunday clothes he had signed up in two weeks previously, his hair shorn Army-style.

But he was in good hands. “My first Regimental Sergeant major was a Woking man, Jack Childs”, he recalled.

Orders is Orders

After 11 months of gruelling training, the 18^th Division, which included Clarrie Jarman's Regiment, the 7^th Battalion Queen’s, landed at Boulogne, having received their marching orders on the night before.

“Orders is orders as they used to say”, said Mr. Jarman. “We just took it as a matter of course”.

Within two days they had marched to the village Dornacourt, just behind the British front line. This was to be their base for some time.

But life behind the front has its moment of light relief as Mr. Jarman recollects. “Plenty of ladies of easy virtue invaded the camp, so life up to then wasn’t too bad”.

Here they stayed through the winter of 1915. Their first winter was grim foretaste. Life was miserable in the trenches, thick with mud and often knee deep in water.

“It was so cold I often woke with my coat wrapped around me frozen solid”, said Mr. Jarman.

Christmas 1915. A bitter cold day, the ground frozen, covered with a sheet of snow. The conditions were impossible for any form of fighting. For days each side remained static in a stalemate.

Carollers shot

As in the previous Christmas the sound of carols could be heard from the German trenches. But his time the British and allied solders did not respond.

Mr. Jarman, now aged 78, remembers the uneasiness, as the troops listened to the orders passed along the line: “Any man caught fraternising with the enemy will be severely dealt with”.

“Some Germans started singing carols and came over the trenches. We fired on them,” he said.

“But Jesus felt no mercy after that. We came out of the trenches on Boxing Day”, said Mr. Jarman, “and Jerry gave us a pretty time”.

Meanwhile the Germans were established in concrete dug-outs furnished with adequate living facilities, including electric lighting.

Towards the end of June 1916, preparation for the Somme battles were being completed. It was top secret, not even the soldiers realised the extent of the plans – the British solders that is, for the German intelligence had already got wind of the attack.

The officer who led the 7^th Queens into battle was Lt. Haggard, son of Rider Haggard author of “Kings Solomon’s Mines” who went to school in Pyrford.

“Moved us down”

The zero hour finally came. On Saturday 1^st July 1916 at 8 am all men were finally armed and equipped for what they were assured would be a “walk-over”.

The objectives were Montauban – very few if any reached this.

“The Germans had been sheltering in concrete dugouts, 60 feet down and as our attack started they came at us and just mowed us down.”

“The idea was to go out in extended order, but it was just disorder. It was good on paper, but it didn’t work in practice.”

The chaos, adding to the complete failure of the battle tactics, resulted in 56,000 men killed or wounded in the one day’s fighting. Artillery fire and field guns aimed at the Germans fell short on British troops, with more slaughter.

Anyone who lived through that day was immediately promoted to sergeant.

Shell-hole cover

“I had a bad gunshot wound in my right leg and was lucky enough to fall in a deep shell hole”.

“In the few minutes in which I remained conscious I had a look round and the ground was just covered with lads in khaki, dead, wounded and dying.

“The ground was being spattered with shrapnel, high explosives and bullets – it was almost impossible not to get hit and the noise of it all was deafening.

“It was like being in a daze – the last thing I remember is seeing a Woking lad, Tommy Lomax, blown to nothing”.

Fourteen hours later, by pure chance, a soldier on a search party heard Pte. Jarman’s faint cries. “I didn’t think anybody was alive”, was the man’s only comment.

Back – minus a leg

Pte. Jarman, along with so many others, was now out of the war. Six months later, back on British soil, his leg was amputated cutting short ambitions for an Army career, or life in the police force.

But he has no regrets either of joining the Army, or of his subsequent retirement from active service after the battle of the Somme.

“I cannot say I was sorry to be out of it. I had had a pretty good ‘do’, and I didn’t want to be in another Battle of the Somme. You felt as though you hadn’t done anything, yet such a fine Army was wiped out.”

His convalescence brought him back finally to Woking – to Beechcroft, which was then the V.A.D. hospital.

But male Wokingites were few and far between. Mr. Jarman remembers the town populated by many war-wounded, mostly South Africans, New Zealanders and Australians.

Service ignored

But a civilian, once more, and unrecognised for his services to king and county, he tasted the bitter fruits of many ex-servicemen and war wounded.

November 11^th 1918, the war was over. But while troops celebrated, Mr. Clarrie Jarman was on the side lines, a feeling which was reinforced when he was refused service in a café on the grounds of being a mere civilian.

The promise of “a land fit for heroes” did not hold true, especially during the depression years.

But in 1925, unhampered by his false leg, Clarrie Jarman set off for the Council offices on his pedal cycle and applied for the job as school attendance officer, a job he was to keep until his retirement in 1961.

Sport his life

Sporting activities still took up much of his spare time.

Although his footballing and running days were over, Mr. Jarman took a keen interest in cricket, playing for Woking and Horsell Clubs now amalgamated – often with and against the Bedser Twins before they played for Surrey.

Woking football club remember Clarrie Jarman as the first team honorary Secretary of the club in 1941 a position he held for 23 years.

In the Second World War, the club closed down the Army took over the ground.

Back in Action

The Second World War saw Clarrie Jarman in active service once more , but his time on home ground as one of the five Woking wardens (Fred Hedgecock, Mr. Warsingham, William Brooks and Albert Penticost),

Although the town missed many of the 20^th Century war innovations it had its fair share of catastrophes as stray bombs landed on unsuspecting buildings.

The wardens had their hands full, in one action a land mine exploded over the town shattering every window in the area.

Another night, Mr. Jarman remembers a bomb hit a shop in Chertsey Road, which collapsed in pieces across the road.

Cup triumph

But with the war years behind, life continued as near normal.

The spirit of Woking Football Club members was revitalised. Twice they won the Surrey Senior Cup and going from strength to strength, April 12^th 1958, marked an historic day for the club.

In front of 70,000 spectators at Wembley, the Woking Football Club won the Amateur Cup- the only time in more than 80 years.

Apart from his interest in many local activities he found time to form the Woking Baptist Cricket Club, and was one of the founder members of the Woking Senior Club.

Not only will Mr. Clarrie Jarman’s name go down in the records of the Imperial War Museum but also in the history of Woking.

Clarrie Jarman’s Bicycle

The following photographs were taken of Clarrie Jarman’s specially modified bicycle which is an exhibit on display at “The Lightbox” in Woking.