It is the morning of 9th May, 1915, on the Rue du Bois, Aubers Ridge in Northern France. Under heavy fire, 27 year old Jimmy Sinclair, a Sapper in 23 Field Company, Royal Engineers, climbs out of the trenches with his party of infantry. With shells exploding everywhere and bullets flying all around him, what he does next will be announced, in front of all the officers and men on parade in Newark a few weeks later, as “remarkable”.
On that May morning, in spite of receiving injuries so severe that they require an immediate return to Blighty for the rest of the war, Sapper Jimmy Sinclair stays on in the attack, at great personal risk, to protect his fellow comrades, and continues with the work of clearing wire in No Man’s Land. For this action, he is recommended for the Distinguished Conduct Medal. His Field Company have been fighting in France since the first week of the war, and two of Jimmy’s fellow Sappers, McClean and Stander, are killed that day during the attack in which he displays such heroism.
Lest We Forget.
Published to coincide with Remembrance Weekend 2023, this tells the story of my great grandfather Jimmy Sinclair’s military service, with a particular focus on his time in France with the British Expeditionary Force at the start of World War One. For background information on Jimmy’s early years in Caithness and his adult life in Edinburgh please click the following link to read a blog summary published simultaneously with this piece: Jimmy Sinclair 1887-1964.
After leaving Caithness as a teenager, touring around the country as a painter and decorator, and starting to settle in Edinburgh, Jimmy enlisted in the Royal Engineers, at the age of 21, on 1st March 1909. After six months initial training in the skills of being a Sapper, his first posting was in September 1909 to 30 Company. They were based in Plymouth, and specialised in submarine mining and maintaining searchlights in ports. He spent a year with them before receiving the first of three overseas postings that he would have in his military career. Allocated to 43 Company, he set sail for the other side of the world – Mauritius, a small island in the southern Indian Ocean, off Madagascar and the East African coast.
