BOULTON, Louis G. PM. WW2. CWGC.

Died 17/08/1942 Age 21. Corporal, Sherwood Foresters (Notts and Derby Regiment), 2/5th Bn. Service Number 4976383. Son of Benjamin and Millicent Boulton, of Derby.

The training of soldiers in Britain during the Second World War is sometimes criticised as lacking in realism. For the men of the 2/5th Foresters it became all too real on 17 August 1942.

The occasion was a simulated attack exercise outside Lewes in Sussex. It may have been the first time the battalion carried out such an exercise using live ammunition, though it was not uncommon in the area. The scheme called for men to advance across a valley under cover of the unit’s own mortars. For some reason the advancing company failed to stop, and ran into their own barrage. The mortar platoon immediately ceased fire, and jumped into their carriers to cross the valley and give help. They found four men dead and at least four others seriously wounded. The reason for the accident was unclear, as the casualties were not all raw recruits. The dead included Lance-Sergeant Ernest Harris and two corporals, of which Louis Boulton, was one of the instructors and Thomas Barradell a veteran of Dunkirk. The fourth casualty was perhaps the most poignant: Private John Walker, a 21-year-old plumber and decorator from Brailsford had been married less than four months earlier, and had lost a brother at Dunkirk.

The men usually returned from these exercises in high spirits, but that night there was no singing on the way back to barracks.

Baradell and Walker are both buried in Lewes Cemetery. Boulton’s grave is in Nottingham Road Cemetery, Derby, and Harris is buried in Nottingham Northern Cemetery.