Have You a Tiger In Your Family?

Rank : Private

Army Number : 10514 / 36327

Unit : 6th and 7th Bns

Biography :

Home address given as Market Harborough, Leicestershire. Enlisted at Leicester. Served with the 7th Battalion during World War One. Killed in action France and Flanders campaign 22.3.1918, aged 22. Previous Army number given as 10514. He is on the Pozieres Memorial, Somme, France.

Extra information by Denis Kenyon

Arthur was born on 27th October 1895, the youngest in a large family of eight children. His father, Hallaton born Charles Plowright, a grocer and grazier and his mother Winifred (sometimes spelt Winnifred) Smart, who was born in 1853 in Strixton, Northamptonshire but had moved to Hallaton in the late 1860s or early 1870s, to help her uncle William Packwood and his wife Mary in the draper’s and grocer’s shop on the High Street.

In 1878 she had married Charles who was five years younger than she was but who had taken over the grocer’s shop, which also had the distinction of being the local agent for W & A Gilbey Ltd the well leading wine merchants of the period. Tragedy struck when young Arthur was only three years old - Winifred died in the summer of 1898, her funeral taking place in St Michael and All Angels on the 15th August. This left Charles with at least four dependent children. He needed a good woman to look after his family and his unmarried sister-in-law, Ellen Smart came to live with the family as housekeeper. In 1909 she married Charles just as Arthur was starting work on the land.

In August 1914 on the declaration of war, in a burst of patriotic fervour, Arthur along with Fred Neale, Vic Cotton and Jack Cowan signed on with the Leicestershire Regiment. So swift were they to join that his
service number, 10514 was part of the series for regulars joining the 1st and 2nd Battalions. Like many of the other Hallaton lads who joined The Tigers, he would have carried out his basic training at Glen Parva Barracks in Wigston.

At some stage he was transferred with the new number 36327 to the 7th Battalion, part of 110th Brigade 37th Division, one of Kitchener’s New Army divisions but because of the destruction of 60% of the records by bombing of Somerset House in World War II, we do not possess his service record. The only thing we know for sure from his medal card, is that he went to France on 29th July 1915. .In April 1915, by which time Arthur had completed his basic training, the Brigade was concentrated at Cholderton on Salisbury Plain and on 25th June was inspected by H.M. King George V.

The divisional emblem of 37th Division was a horseshoe but on 7th July1917, 110th Brigade was transferred along with the 6th, 8th and 9th battalions to 21st Division . We do not know if and when he came back on leave, nor whether he suffered any injury. Rather than speculate, a brief list of the main battles in which he might have been engaged will be given.

All four battalions remained together for the duration of the war and earned a formidable reputation as the “Fighting Tigers”. The first really major battle for the Brigade was the Battle of the Ancre 11th – 21st November 1916, which was the last major British attack of the Battle of the Somme. This was fought in terrible conditions and although moderate gains were made, both armies settled into the stalemate of trench warfare for the rest of the winter.

Thereafter in 1917, the Brigade was heavily involved in further desperate battles with names still well known today – Polygon Wood; Passchendaele; Cambrai; Ypres and in 1918 the battle of St Quentin Canal of March 21st / 22nd
.
At some stage, Arthur had been joined in the Battalion by William Charles Fox and tragically both Hallaton lads were killed on the same day – 22nd March 1918 in that same action. Arthur along with William Charles Fox is also remembered on Pozières Memorial and Hallaton WarMemorial.

Denis Kenyon September 2014.

Date of Birth : 4.10.1895

Place of Birth : Hallaton, Leicestershire

Date of Death : 22.3.1918

Place of Death : France

Period of Service : 29.8.1914 - 22.3.1918

Conflicts : WW1

Places Served : France and Flanders