Name
Arthur Edwin Pye Skett
4 Jul 1897
Conflict
First World War
Date of Death / Age
10/11/1916
19
Rank, Service Number & Service Details
Second Lieutenant
-
West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales' Own)
2nd Bn.
'A' Coy.
Awards: Service Medals/Honour Awards
British War and Victory medals
Cemetery/Memorial: Name/Reference/Country
A.I.F. BURIAL GROUND, FLERS
V. B. 28
France
Headstone Inscription
No Record
UK & Other Memorials
St Albans Citizens Memorial, Town Hall (old) Memorial, St Albans, St Albans School Memorial, St Albans School Roll of Honour 1914-16, Berkhamsted Collegiate School. Berkhamsted, Not on the Harpenden Memorials
Pre War
Arthur Edwin Pye was born on 4th July 1897 in Harpenden Hertfordshire, to Edwin Skett, a company secretary (insurance), and Annie (nee Pye).
On the 1901 Census the family were living at ‘Seftonville’. Milton Road, Harpenden.
Arthur attended St Albans School for the spring term in 1905, then attended Berkhamsted School until autumn 1911, when he re-entered St Albans School. Arthur had joined the Officer Training Corps at school as soon as it was allowed and was a very good shot. Arthur’s mother died in 1905. Arthur’s Father married again in 1907 to Ada Shakspear Lowis and Arthur gained a stepsister Audrey in 1910.
Wartime Service
Arthur enlisted in the Army in August 1914, obtaining a commission with the West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales’ Own) 4th Battalion. Being too young to serve overseas, he went to Sandhurst and later transferred to the Royal Flying Corp. He passed his Flying Certificate at the Military School, Farnborough, on 16th August 1915.
Arthur arrived in France on 11th May 1916, and rejoined the 2nd Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment, whose ranks had been depleted in the early days of the Somme offensives. By November, despite his youth and inexperience, he was put in command of 'A' Company, with 2nd Lt Victor Pimm and another junior officer.
The battalion was sent to the front line just West of the village of Lesbouefs, the relatively short march from the camp at Fricourt taking seven hours because of the difficult conditions. Skett's company immediately set to work improving their trenches. Pimm went into no-man's land with a covering party but they came under fire so he ordered them back. Pimm, however, failed to return. Arthur sent out patrols three times to search for Pimm but they could not find him. The West Yorks had a strong tradition of leaving no man behind. Usually a patrol searching for an officer should be led by an officer. As company commander, his orders were to stay in position to direct operations, but he had no other officer to send. He decided to lead the next search party himself, but as he climbed out of the trench he was hit in the head by a bullet and killed. Matthew McConville MC DFC, a brother officer in the West Yorks, wrote to Arthur's family; "A lonely outpost on the farthest edge of desolation threatened by an invisible and unknown, and therefore, more formidable danger. In command and an officer who was yet a boy in years, and who, in spite of the exhausting ordeal of the relief which had barely ended, in spite of the nerve wracking uncertainty, in spite even of direct orders, walked out into No Man's Land to show that he would send no man where he would not go himself, to show that no man whom he did send out should be lightly abandoned." Sidney Rogerson wrote ‘Him we buried before daylight as reverently as we could in the circumstances, digging a grave between bursts of machine-gun fire in the parados of Fall Trench.’
Victor Pimm was posted missing, presumed killed. His body was never found and he is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme.
Additional Information
War Gratuity of £46 and arrears of £9 0s 6d paid to his father. Details of Arthur Skett's life and time on the Somme may be found in two books; The Life and Death of Arthur Skett - John Insomuch - ISBN-10: 0993360718 Twelve Days on the Somme: A Memoir of the Trenches, 1916 - Sidney Rogerson - ISBN-10: 1853676802
Acknowledgments
Gareth Hughes, Neil Cooper
Gareth Hughes, Jonty Wild
