2nd Lieutenant EDWARD JOSEPH AUSTIN TUNKS

Rippledene, Sussex Street, Winchester (No. 98 today)
Service numbers 3806 and 5447. Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders
and 4th Battalion, The Hampshire Regiment (attached to 2nd Battalion)
Killed in action, Belgium, 13 April 1918

Life Summary

Edward Joseph Austin Tunks, known as Jack to his family and friends, was born in Winchester in the first quarter of 1898. The elder son of Joseph and Alice Tunks, Jack came from a comfortable family background – his father was a master tailor. In the Great War he served as a Private with both the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and the Hampshire Regiment before being commissioned into the latter as a 2nd Lieutenant. He was killed in Belgium in 1918 during the German Spring Offensive.

Family Background

Joseph Tunks, Jack’s father, was born on 27 July 1872 in Willisborough, Kent, and was one of 13 children. His father, Joseph Snr, had been born in September 1851 in Ashford, Kent, and worked variously as a coal merchant’s clerk, a tobacconist and a commercial traveller. Joseph Jnr’s mother, Sarah, was born in Stepney, east London, in 1843. By 1891 the family had moved to 48, High Street, Lewes, Sussex, with 19-year-old Joseph Jnr already working as a tailor.

Jack’s mother was born Alice Piper in Winchester in 1874. Alice’s father, Edward (1842-1909), was a draper by trade (although, somewhat incongruously, he also appears as a butcher in the 1881 Census) who had been born in Lewes, Sussex. Alice’s mother was born Eliza Corps (1846-1923) in Winchester. One of nine children, Eliza married Edward Piper in Winchester in 1868 and they also went on to have nine children. In 1891, the family were living at 12, Great Minster Street, Winchester, with Alice employed as an apprentice milliner.

Alice and Joseph Tunks married in 1897 and Jack was born the following year. In 1899 Alice gave birth to a second son, Arthur Cyril, who was known as Cyril. By 1901 the family were living at 25, Southgate Street, Winchester, with Joseph running his own tailoring business from the property. The 1911 Census records the family at 45, Southgate Street, with Joseph described as a master tailor. His business was prosperous enough for the family to employ a domestic servant. By 1914 Joseph and Alice had moved to a nine-room house in Sussex Street, Winchester, which they had named Rippledene by 1918. The property, which is 98, Sussex Street today, stands opposite the Hampshire Record Office.

No record of Jack Tunks’s education can be found. He was 16 years old when the Great War began in August 1914 and therefore too young to enlist. However, his father did volunteer for the Hampshire Regiment and was posted to India. The Winchester War Service Register (WWSR) states that Joseph Tunks reached the rank of Sergeant and was wounded once.

Great War Record

According to the WWSR, Jack Tunks enlisted with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in 1915. That would have meant he was under-age, but of course many young men did lie about their age in order to join the Army. It is possible that in late 1915, shortly before his 18th birthday, Jack enlisted under the Derby Scheme under which men ‘attested’ their willingness to serve in the forces and were then called up later. Jack may have attested at that stage, with the military authorities aware that he would be the correct age to serve in 1916. Surprisingly perhaps, Jack opted to join the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (service number 3806) rather than the Hampshire Regiment in which his father was serving.

However, Jack did subsequently transfer to the 4th Battalion, The Hampshire Regiment (service number 5447). It is not known whether he pressed the authorities for a switch, but it does seem more than coincidence that he was moved to what was effectively his ‘home’ battalion. Here, he impressed sufficiently to win a commission and become a 2nd Lieutenant. This promotion would have been followed by a period of officer training.

The official records state that Jack served only with the 4th Hampshires after he transferred from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. However, this was clearly not the case because at the time that Jack was killed on the Western Front in 1918 both 4th Hampshire battalions – the 1/4th and 2/4th – were serving elsewhere in different theatres of war (the 1/4th in Persia, the 2/4th in Palestine). This confusion was created by the failure of the official records to indicate that Jack had was attached to the 2nd Battalion, The Hampshire Regiment after completing his officer training.

In the spring of 1917, the 2nd Hampshires were serving with 88th Brigade, part of 29th Division, on the Western Front. Jack’s Medal Index Card shows him first entering a theatre of war (France) on 8 May 1917. On 6 June 1917 the 2nd Hampshires’ war diary recorded that ‘2Lts DL Whitmarsh & EJA Tunks joined Battn’ at Fieffes, about three miles south of the town of Candas, where the battalion was resting after fighting at the Battle of Arras two months earlier.

The Royal Hampshire Regiment’s historian, C.T. Atkinson, described the period:

The 2nd had spent most of June near Candas, resting and reorganising. Nearly 200 reinforcements joined them soon after arriving there, but many of them were only ‘C.2’ [men were graded according to their physical fitness – C2 were deemed able to walk five miles and see and hear for ordinary purposes], mainly under-sized Londoners, and their musketry was little better than their physique; other drafts and returns from hospital brought the total reinforcements to 350 … other ranks were up to 960 by July 1st.

Initially, Jack was appointed battalion transport officer. During the Great War this appears to have been a means for some new officers to cut their teeth. By July 1917, Jack had joined the 2nd Hampshires’ X Company where he would have been put in charge of a platoon (about 50 men). He did serve another spell as transport officer in October, but by December was back with X Company.

Jack first saw action on 16 August 1917 during the Battle of Langemarck, some two weeks after the start of the Third Ypres or Passchendaele campaign (31 July-15 November 1917) in Flanders. Attacking German positions to the north-west of the village of Langemarck, the 2nd Hampshires captured both of their objectives, despite having to cross waterlogged ground – several men fell into shell holes or got stuck in the bog and had to be hauled out with ropes. Soldiers of X Company armed with Mills bombs and hand grenades distinguished themselves by clearing several German blockhouses along a railway line, so it is likely that Jack was in the thick of the action. The battalion lost three officers and 43 men killed and missing in the engagement and a further 150 wounded, but received warm congratulations from 29th Division commander, Major-General Henry de Beauvoir de Lisle for their achievements.

On 9 October, in heavy rain, the 2nd Hampshires were in action again during another successful attack by 88th Brigade, this time along the Roulers railway line near the village of Les Cinq Chemins. C.T. Atkinson’s account of the assault illustrates just how much British infantry tactics had improved by this stage of the war. One attack went in behind a ‘creeping’ artillery barrage:

Advancing with two platoons in a front wave and one supporting, the company, well led and skilfully directed by Captain Cuddon, who was well backed up by Sergeants Trethewy and Parker, mastered its objective, despite stubborn opposition. Many Germans were accounted for, a Lewis gunner, Private Gosling, dispersing one party of 30 single-handed …

The following month saw the 2nd Hampshires in action at the Battle of Cambrai, the battalion’s stiffest fighting in the whole of 1917. The battle, which began on 20 November, saw the first massed use of tanks in the war (a total of 476 were thrown into the attack) as the British Third Army broke into the formidable German defensive system known as the Hindenburg Line. The attack achieved complete surprise and at first went well, with the Hampshires involved around the villages of Masnieres and Les Rues Vertes. However, the advance eventually stalled and on 30 November the Germans launched their biggest counter-attack against the British since 1914.

In the desperate fighting that followed, the Hampshires played a major part in blunting the Germans around Marcoing and enabling the British to conduct a comparatively orderly retreat where at one stage it appeared they would be routed. According to C.T. Atkinson, ‘the fruits of General de Lisle’s training were now reaped; platoons combined “fire and movement” as instructed and helped each other, carrying out the attack as if at practice …’ When the battle ended on 7 December the British had retreated almost to the positions they had started from on 15 November.

After Cambrai, the 2nd Hampshires spent a month out of the line. In January 1918 they returned to the trenches near Passchendaele. The ground here, according to Atkinson, was ‘mainly morass, pitted with shell holes full of stinking liquid mud and water … Of all the sectors any Hampshire battalion held this was perhaps the foulest’. Unsurprisingly, given these conditions, Jack Tunks fell sick and on 5 February 1918 he was admitted to hospital. He did not return to duty until 28 March. A week earlier, the Germans had launched their Spring Offensive aimed at shattering Allied forces on the Western Front. When the first attack, on the centre and south of the British line, petered out on 5 April, they tried again further north. This second assault targeted British forces on the River Lys in Flanders and lasted from 7 to 29 April. It again proved unsuccessful, but it was to be Jack Tunks’s final battle.

The 2nd Hampshires moved to the Lys sector along with the remainder of 88th Brigade on 10 April. They arrived by bus in the town of Bailleul to find it under artillery fire from the advancing Germans and crowded with refugees. Near the village of Steenwerck the battalion dug in along the railway to Armentieres, with Jack’s company holding an outpost line. The following day the Hampshires beat off several German attacks, but at a cost of 40 killed and missing. On 13 April, the day of Jack’s death, the British position on the Lys around Bailleul began to deteriorate. The 2nd Hampshires’ war diary entry for that day states:

Today a warning was issued that a further withdrawal would be carried out owing to the capture of Neuve Eglise by the enemy. During the evening the enemy developed strong attacks against the Regiment on our left and ground was given to the enemy. The position held by the 88th Brigade was therefore becoming very precarious. Orders for withdrawal came through at 8pm by which time the enemy were making progress along the Nieppe-Bailleul road throwing up his white lights to guide the Infantry and nosing forward with light machine guns. At 10pm Companies withdrew in the order Y, Z, W & X, each Company covering its withdrawal by a Lewis Gun. The withdrawal of the Brigade was covered by the Royal Newfoundland and Monmouth Regiments. The Battalion was clear of the position slightly before 2am.

Casualties:
Other Ranks
I Killed
11 Wounded
5 Missing
1 Died of wounds
2Lt EJA Tunks Killed.

Jack Tunks was just 20 years old when he died. He had served on the Western Front for 11 months and been involved in some of the fiercest fighting of the war. On 11 December 1918 probate on his estate was granted to his mother Alice. Jack left effects valued at £132 11s 10d.

Family after the Great War

Alice Tunks died in Winchester in 1922, aged 48. Joseph Tunks, Jack’s father, returned to civilian life in Winchester after the war and remarried in Kensington, west London in 1924. His new wife, Florence Hudson, had been born in 1888. She gave birth to a son, John, on 14 September 1924 by which time she and Joseph were living at 2, Jewry Street, Winchester. A daughter, named Florence after her mother, was born in 1926. The following year the Tunks family moved to 6, St Swithun’s Villas, Canon Street, Winchester. Joseph Tunks died in Winchester in 1951, aged 78 and Florence Snr in Wiltshire in 1960 at the age of 60.

Jack Tunks’s brother Cyril worked as a chemist’s clerk before the war. He joined the Royal Navy in 1916 (service number F37258) and served on the home front until 5 September 1917 when he joined the Royal Flying Corps, which became the Royal Air Force in 1918. Cyril survived the war and in 1926 he married Lillian Hibberd in Winchester. The couple had two children – Michael, born in Winchester in 1928 and David, born in 1932 in Middlesex. Cyril died in Middlesex in 1955, aged 56.

Jack Tunks, his brother and father are all listed in the Winchester War Service Register.

Medals and Memorials for Edward Joseph Tunks

2nd Lieutenant Edward Joseph Austin Tunks was entitled to the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. He is buried at Cabaret-Rouge British Cemetery (above), Souchez, Pas de Calais, France (GR. XX. D. 24). He is mentioned on the war memorials at four churches in Winchester - St Matthew’s, St Paul’s, St Thomas’s and St Maurice’s.

Researchers - DEREK WHITFIELD and CHERYL DAVIS