Tales from the Front (38)

Genealogical war memorials of Bournemouth’s fallen

Hill 60: May 2nd, 1915

Introduction

Tales from the Front (38) tells the story of Albert Applin, a native of Victorian Bournemouth, who fought in the Great War. Private Applin may have served for a brief period with the Grenadier Guards but took the medical to join the First Dorsets on August 11th, 1914, a few days after the declaration of war. He inhaled poisoned gas at Hill 60 on May 1st, 1915, and made it to the hospital, but did not survive.

Tales from the Front (38): Background

Journeys, poverty, grief

Applin descended from Dorset labouring families. His paternal grandfather and grandmother both came from Cranborne. They married in Bere Regis in November 1832. The harvest may have attracted his grandfather, an agricultural labourer, to travel the 22 miles from home. Later, they returned to Cranborne. They had several children and might have experienced poverty. A son, George, Applin’s father, appears to have served time in Dorchester prison for poaching, a second offence (1870). He migrated to Bournemouth to work as a bricklayer’s labourer and for a new life. Here, he married a widow, ten years his senior, a labourer’s daughter from Winfrith Newburgh, near Lulworth Cove. She had travelled far. Her first husband, a Dorset man, had taken her to East Anglia to get farm work, but had died young. Somehow, Applin’s mother found her way to Bournemouth, where she accepted a man a decade younger and restarted her life.

‘True Love’

His service record shows that Albert Applin served in the Grenadier Guards. This may have occurred around 1901, for he did not appear in that census. As two Grenadier battalions served in South Africa during the Boer War, he may have gone there. He returned by 1903, the year when he married Alice Kingsbury, another Springbourne child, in their local church. Her father could not sign his name, but this did not prevent his working for Bournemouth Corporation. He and his wife had lived in different parts of Springbourne, but settled in Charminster, working as a hodder. The couple had several children. Applin’s service record shows him as taller than average, a quality valued by the Guards, and as having tattoos on both forearms. Another, on his hand, read ‘True Love’. Almost thirty at recruitment, he may have had difficulty with authority, as he went AWOL several times in France.  

Tales from the Front (38): Hill 60

Battlefield layout

The compact killing ground known as Hill 60 lay four kilometres south of Ypres and beside Zwarteleen, a village that disappeared in the contest. On its north side, the British had excavated a series of trenches for defence and communication. Surviving maps show the trenches and their numbers. They support replays of how the fighting ebbed and flowed on and around Hill 60. War diaries kept by the units involved and Ernest Shephard’s personal account contain this information. On maps, the trenches run in straight lines, arranged in a grid. The Zwarteleen Salient, which encompassed the settlement, projected forward from the British line, a dangerous position open on three sides. The Caterpillar, a thin, raised feature, like Hill 60, created by spoil dug from the railway, posed another threat to the British. It enabled enfilading fire on the western (right) side of the British lines.

May 2nd, 1915

The first gas attack on Hill 60, May 1st, killed 53 men over three hours. It also disabled over 200 other men and officers. Many of these received medical attention. Sergeant Shephard mentions that men died in his arms after the encounters. He covered the area on the morning of May 2nd. ‘A lot of men are missing, having crawled over the back of the trench when gassed and the enemy shelled them as they crawled away. We spent a morning looking for these; a few were just living, the majority dead.’ The gas left a long trail of death. Many of the 200 gassed survivors died not long after the action. Private Albert Applin did reach the hospital. Despite the sudden influx of patients, a doctor had time to diagnose his condition. He found that, in addition to asphyxiation from gas, Applin had gone into shock.

Aftermath

Applin’s widow remained in this condition until 1926. That year, she married a brickmaker some years her senior. He died eight years later. Before her first marriage, she had worked in a laundry. This connection persevered as the 1921 census listed her two elder daughters as laundrymaids. Two of Applin’s brothers appear to have served with the RASC and survived the war. His father, widowed in 1923, lived until 1939.

Sergeant Shephard or another survivor may have helped Applin reach the Casualty Clearing Station. During May 2nd and on subsequent days, Shephard made his way around the site, looking for dead and dying Dorset infantrymen. Over this period, the Dorsets did their best to recover, but many of those who had inhaled gas succumbed. Other Bournemouth natives would do the same. No relief came. On May 5th, the Germans took Hill 60, assisted by more gas. 

Takeaway

Tales from the Front (38) has explored the background, life, and military career of Albert Ernest Applin (1879?-1915). In his thirties, Private Applin enlisted with the Dorsets at the war’s beginning. He came to France in the autumn of 1914 and reached Hill 60, near Ypres, the next year. The first gas attack on the Hill asphyxiated him, although he survived until the day after. He left behind a widow and several children.

‘Tales from the Front’

A collection of personal stories honouring the natives of Victorian Bournemouth who gave their lives on the battlefield and the regiments with which they served. Blending social and military history with genealogical insight, it explores their roots, families, occupations, and the ultimate sacrifices they made for their country.

The posts weave genealogical data together with eyewitness accounts found in war diaries, contemporary press coverage, and official military histories. The series offers a powerful and intimate portrait of Bournemouth’s wartime heroes offset with live accounts of battlefield action. 

Serving as a companion and continuation of Victorian Bournemouth, Tales from the Front forms part of News from the Past: History for the Rest of Us.

References

For references and engagement, please get in touch. Main primary sources: here and here (subscriptions needed). For War Diaries, go here. See also here. The featured picture shows an imagined scene—genealogical information based on available sources.