213744 Cpl John Charles Atkins British Army 5th Divisional Signals Company Royal Engineers from:London My grandfather, 2nd Corporal Jack Atkins, was a Londoner, a career soldier and an "Old Contemptible"; he was born in the City of London although his family subsequently moved to Lambeth. He served for seven years in the infantry before transferring to 5 Signals Company in 1913. The Company provided communications for 5 Divisional HQ and for each of the three infantry brigades of the division.
In August 1914 the Division left Carlow in Ireland to join the BEF in France, and Jack experienced the rigours of the Retreat from Mons. Next came the hard-fought Battle of Le Cateau on 26th August, the engagement which famously saved the BEF and fatally slowed the German advance into France.
Jack is believed to have been part of the HQ Section Signallers based at the village of Reumont, and during the morning was sent to lay a cable between 5 Div HQ and the 19th Brigade to their north. The unit War Diary says "Sgt Holmes and his cable det. were detailed to lay a cable line to the 19th Brigade, but were evidently captured by the Germans for his party (men, horses and wagon) has not been heard of since. The cable line was last seen running through a line of German infantry."
He spent the rest of the war as a POW in Germany and then, in 1918, Holland to which neutral country he was repatriated as suffering from "barbed-wire fever". On his return to Britain at the end of the war he learned that two of his three younger brothers had been killed in May 1915 (coincidentally both on the same day - 26th - although one, Herbert, was at Gallipoli with 2nd Royal Fusiliers and the other, William, in France with 1/23rd London Regiment).
Jack reenlisted and served with the Royal Signals as it became until the end of his enlistment in 1927 by which time he was a Quartermaster Sergeant. He settled in Brighton with his wife and young family, returning briefly to the Colours in the next war as a Company Sergeant Major.
A quiet man, he never spoke of his brothers or of the Great War except to say that they'd been kept very hungry in captivity. He died in Brighton in 1955, just two weeks after the death of his wife.
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