Bob Pinnell – WW1 Combatant

My father, Bob Pinnell, was born on 8th August 1896. Like the maternal uncle after whom he was named he was actually christened Bob, rather than Robert. His birthplace was Catesby in Northamptonshire, where his father was working at the time as a railway-tunnelling contractor. Not long afterwards my grandfather won a tunnelling contract for part of the extension of the Underground into South London and my father was brought up close to Wandsworth Common.

His best friend at what was then called Upper Tooting High School was a boy named Fred Smith, whose father, a city merchant, gave Bob his first job at the firm’s office in Mark Lane, where Fred also worked. As they were both already 18 when war broke out they walked down to Clapham Junction in September 1914 and volunteered for the 1st Battalion of the 23rd London Regiment. Sadly Fred would later be killed in action.

Amongst my father’s belongings were 3 photographs taken during his army service and of which I had enlargements made: -

This is an official photograph; the original is in the form of a post card that he sent to his parents on 12 October 1914. He has put an X above his head in the line being inspected by Field-Marshall Earl Roberts of Kandahar while the 1st Battalion were under training at St Albans before going to France.

This too is an official photograph and shows my father’s platoon in Southern Belgium in 1917. He was by then a Lance-Sergeant and is the NCO lying in the foreground at the right of the picture. Although, as the photo shows, he was entitled to wear three stripes, this was only a “field” rank and his service medals designate him by his substantive rank of corporal.

This is obviously an amateur photograph, probably taken by a nurse, and shows my father (second from the right in the front row) and some of his fellow-patients in their “hospital blues” at Sherbourne in Dorset, where the public school had been converted into a military hospital. He was there because, during the mêlée of the Battle of Messines (south of Ypres) in June 1917, he lost half his right elbow to what is now called “friendly fire”. I’m quite sure he didn’t find it very friendly at the time, but in retrospect the word might not have been entirely inappropriate, given that Dad survived to celebrate his 90th birthday.

I can’t claim that during his war service, my father ever did anything conspicuously heroic, but I suppose the incident for which I am proudest of him was one that occurred during a battle in Northern France in 1916. As a corporal he was leading a small squad of infantrymen after going “over the top” and rather unusually they had been able to advance to a point where they had the chance to “take out” a German pillbox that was evidently still occupied. Some of the squad wanted to chuck in a hand-grenade to “finish them off”, but my father said “No. Don’t do that. The poor blighters in there are probably half scared to death already. Lob the grenade so that it explodes just outside the entrance.” This had the desired effect and the four occupants filed out with their hands up. And as the German soldiers emerged my father gave each of them a reassuring handshake.

William Pinnell

August 2014