The Search for Arthur

The official record disposes of Arthur Hartley Sneyd in one line: killed in action, 20 August 1916, in the field, France. Underneath that line is a file nobody in this family appears to have read, and it does not agree with itself. Six men were asked what happened to him. They gave six different answers, and the last one — arriving thirteen months late — is the only one that explains why he has no grave.

He was 5050 Private Arthur Hartley Sneyd, 9th Battalion — a typist from Wooloowin, Ivy Sneyd's younger brother, and so Cristina's great-great-uncle. He had joined the battalion in the line on 29 July 1916, giving up his sergeant's rank to do it. His service →

First: killed by a shell

His initials are A.H., and his number — 5050. He belonged to B.Co. I knew him personally. As I was coming out of the trenches, wounded, at Pozières, Pte. R. Kent, B.Co. told me he had seen Sneyd killed by a shell. Kent is still with the batt., I think.

Then: lifted out and put over the parapet

I saw Sneyd and two others struck, and as I considered, killed, by the same shell. We were in a communication trench on the Somme, and the bodies of the three were lifted out and placed over the parapet. I afterwards heard a rumour that Sneyd proved not to be dead, and was seen to get up. He was certainly never reported at D/S or hospital, and I have no doubt whatever that he was dead when lifted over the parapet.

He reports the rumour and then, in the same breath, refuses it. That sentence is the file in miniature.

"His death is mysterious"

Sneyd was of my Co. — A. He held the position of Sgt. in Australia before he came out. His death is mysterious. He was found for dead on the parapet but apparently he was only suffering from shell shock. He was taken down the line and I heard that he died in hospital. The best man to refer to about him is Cpl. Walsh, his great chum. Walsh is now in training for an officer at the Cadet School, Cambridge, and he knows all particulars of Sneyd. Sneyd's pay-book, disc, etc. are at our Bn. H.Q. out here.

A stranger to this family, in a convalescent depot in France, independently confirms the thing the Statement of Service records in a clerk's shorthand: he had been a sergeant and gave it up. And he names the man who will spend the next year looking.

And then the account that changes everything

I knew Sneyd, his No. was 5050. On the 20th August, I was one of the working party with Sneyd in the trenches just in front of Pozières. A shell burst over us and killed two or three men. Sneyd was one of those to fall. It was at first thought that he was dead, and he was picked up and rolled over on the parados. The next morning he had recovered, and I spoke to him. He had a bandage round his head and he was carrying a white flag behind some stretcher bearers who were getting in the wounded from No Man's Land. I have neither seen nor heard of him since. If he has been killed it must have been on the way back to the dressing station as we were being very heavily shelled by the Germans at the time.

A man counted among the dead, rolled onto the back wall of the trench and left. And in the morning he was up, with his head bandaged, walking out into No Man's Land behind stretcher bearers, carrying a white flag, to help bring in other people's wounded.

A second man tells the same story from the other side of it:

In August he was blown up by a shell in the trench; the pioneers thought him dead and put him over the parapet. Next morning he crawled in to the trench. Cpl. Kendrick told me this after we came out of Pozières in August.

Walsh

Holloway had named him: Cpl. Walsh, his great chum. The Bureau wrote to him. By the time the letter found him he was out of the line and in training for a commission at Oxford, and this is what he sent back.

I am sorry to say that I can give no absolutely definite word of his death. On the afternoon of Sunday Aug. 20th about 6 p.m. was the last time I saw him, as he was going up to the front line on fatigue duty. About 1 a.m. Monday when I was going up the communication I was told he was killed. Next morning I heard that he was seen walking along with stretcher-bearers with his head bandaged. On coming out of the trenches I at once made exhaustive inquiries from stretcher bearers, medical officers etc, but all to no avail. The only answer I got was that he was reported killed and that his private belongings were handed in to the 9th battalion Orderly room. It appears that he was killed in the communication trench by the concussion of a shell and he was left on the side of the trench for dead.

A. H. Sneyd was a lad of 23 years, about 5ft 6ins in height, thin features and fair hair.

The description is a friend's memory, not a medical officer's tape: the attestation paper measured him at 5 ft 7½ in with dark brown hair, and he was 22, not 23. Walsh had not seen him for five months and was writing from a lecture room in Oxford. It is the closest thing to a portrait of him that exists.

Thirteen months later, Walsh finds the answer

He did not let it go. By September 1917 he was a lieutenant, and he had tracked down a sergeant of a different battalion who had been there.

Re Pte. H.A. Sneyd, 5050. He was killed at Mouquet Farm on the 22.8.16 and was buried in a shell hole in No Man's Land just out of the old German Trench, near where 10th Battalion Headquarters is. A rough cross (wooden) was placed on his grave.

Please find enclosed report by Sgt. Morton of 10th Battn re death of 5050 A.H. Sneyd. It seems to clear up all the mystery about it. If I ever get another chance I shall certainly endeavour to locate the grave.

What the file settles, and what it unsettles

1. He was not killed instantly. Two independent witnesses — Lee, who spoke to him, and Kendrick, who was told at the time — have him surviving the shell that was thought to have killed him and being up the following morning with his head bandaged.
2. The last thing anyone saw him doing was helping. Walking behind stretcher bearers, carrying a white flag, going out for the wounded, under heavy shelling.
3. He had been a sergeant and gave it up — confirmed here by a man in a convalescent depot who had no reason to invent it, and again by the family's own Roll of Honour particulars, which say he "gave up this rank in Egypt in order to get across to France".
4. The date may be wrong. Every official record says 20 August 1916. Sgt. Morton, the only witness who says he saw the burial, says 22 August — and names Mouquet Farm, not Pozières. Both are consistent with Lee's account of a man who survived the 20th. The archive keeps 20 August, because that is what the army certified and what is carved at Villers-Bretonneux, and records Morton's 22nd beside it. unresolved
5. His company is unresolved. Rhead says B Company; Holloway and Lee say A.
6. He was buried, once. In a shell hole in No Man's Land, just outside the old German trench, under a wooden cross. Somebody took the trouble.

What the family called him

On the third anniversary the family put notices in both Brisbane papers. They are short, and the first two words of each are the whole point.

SNEYD.—In loving remembrance of Q.M.S. Arthur Sneyd, killed in action at Pozières, August 20th, 1916. Inserted by his loving father, sisters, and brother.

Directly beneath it in the Courier, a second notice, signed with one name and no relationship:

SNEYD.—In loving memory of Q.M.S. Arthur Sneyd, killed in action at Pozières, August 20, 1916. Death divides, but memory clings. Ruby.

There is no Ruby in this family tree. A memorial notice signed with a first name alone, placed separately from the family's, three years after the death, is the form a sweetheart takes — but the archive cannot show that, and says so. unidentified She is the only person connected to Arthur Hartley Sneyd whose surname nobody now knows.

The other brother

Reading this file turned up something the archive had entirely missed. Arthur was not the only Sneyd brother in France. Vivian Claude Sneyd (1895–1949), the next boy down, served with the 3rd Field Ambulance and came home with the Military Medal and Bar — decorated twice for bravery, as a stretcher-bearer.

This archive had him down as a salesman, on the strength of a death notice. Nothing on this site said he had been in the war at all.

The two D'Arcy men of 1916 → · The Sneyds → · Where this comes from →