Merstham Cricket Club have been invited by Banstead CC to play a commemoration T20 match on Friday 3rd August, at 6pm. This is in memory of the Banstead players who played their final match before going to war in 1914, some never to return. They played against Redhill at The Ring, which is now used by Merstham 3rd and 4th team and for junior matches. Here, Banstead historian James Crouch tells the tale. 

On Bank Holiday Monday, 3rd August, 1914, Banstead’s 2nd XI played what was to be the club’s last fixture for nearly five years, when they faced Redhill ‘A’ at The Ring, on Earlswood Common.

Banstead won the toss and batted first. Despite the best efforts of their opening batsman, Roland Bentley, who carried his bat, the team were all out before lunch with a total of just 96 runs, Redhill’s F. Brown being the pick of the bowlers, taking 3 wickets for 13 runs.

Banstead dismissed Redhill’s top three cheaply but then E.H.L. Nice dug in and gave “a fine display of clean hitting”, making a century and giving Redhill a lead after the first innings.

Redhill’s Brown took a hat-trick in the second innings, ending the match with 6 wickets for 23 runs, and Banstead could not do enough to save the match, losing a “splendid” game by 70 runs.

At 11pm the following day, Britain’s ultimatum to Germany expired and we were at war. At least seven of the Banstead players went on to serve overseas; four were killed, one was captured and the other two were wounded. Twelve members of the club lost their lives in the war and they are commemorated on a roll of honour board that hangs in the clubhouse.

Fred Davis played in that last peacetime match, batting at 8 and making just 1 run. He was Banstead born and bred, growing up in Park Road before later living in Ferndale and Lyme Regis Roads. As a boy, he sang in the choir at All Saints and won a scholarship to Sutton County School (now Sutton Grammar), getting his tuition fees, books, train fare and lunch paid for.

He had left school before the war, aged 16, hoping to become a teacher, but like many young men of his generation, his plans for the future had to be put on hold. He was 20 years old when war broke out and joined up at the end of August 1914, when patriotic fervour was at its peak and the news from Belgium was bad, the British Expeditionary Force having begun its long retreat from Mons.

He joined the 15th County of London Battalion, the Prince of Wales’ Own Civil Service Rifles. The Civil Service Rifles were one of the London’s many Territorial battalions and were born out of a tradition of voluntary militias raised from the men of financial and governmental institutions. The Civil Service Rifles was a good “club” for networking in peacetime, with the men drawn from the clerical classes and the Battalion officered by senior Civil Servants and City men. Uniforms were usually worn at the least excuse, Civil Service bigwigs received private coaching in advance so as to not embarrass themselves in the drill hall and private soldiers, indignant at not being able to wear swords like the officers, eventually won the right to wear them – although only while off-duty.

Banstead's ground in 1914

When war was declared, one battalion became three as their ranks swelled with volunteers. The existing soldiers of the 15th became the 1/15th and Fred was allotted to newly-formed 2/15th. They were based locally during the first weeks of 1915, billeted in Dorking to train, tramping up and down Leith Hill to improve their fitness, patrolling the countryside and digging entrenchments at Reigate.

Fred was probably one of those who got up at 4a.m. and marched the 10 miles without breakfast to Epsom Downs for the review of 20,000 troops of the 2/2nd London Division by Lord Kitchener, who was keen to show off his new army of volunteers to French dignitaries. The soldiers waited in the freezing snow for hours but the inspection itself lasted just a few minutes, long enough to impress the French and short enough that they wouldn’t notice that few of the men actually had rifles.

Drafts were periodically sent to join the 1/15th Battalion at Watford and Fred was with them when they let for France. They disembarked at Le Havre on 18th March 1915 and were disappointed to see no sign of the war and no welcoming crowds of pretty French girls. The front line was not what was expected, as one of the officers later wrote:

“War had, till then, been regarded as a glorious thing, a thing of bugles and flashing bayonets, of courage in hand-to-hand encounters, and above all, of excitement. But this first experience showed it to be a thing of drab monotony, of dull routine, of the avoidance of being killed, of an invisible enemy.”

They first saw action at Festubert, in May, on the fringes of the battle in marshy trenches, holding the line, scouting and patrolling, fetching and carrying supplies and burying bodies, some in such bad condition that they necessitated wearing gas masks, and all the while losing men to enemy shellfire. The dead were stacked up to form barricades and the men crawled over bodies in the dark. They were relieved to leave the “land of mud, blood and stench” at the end of “the merry month of May” and move to quieter climes.

Fred became a batman to one of the officers and would have been responsible for his officer’s clothing, kit and weapons, preparing and serving his meals and acting as a bodyguard.

Fred Davis was killed in action aged 21.

In August, the Germans unleashed a new weapon, a mortar-fired aerial torpedo with a range long enough to reach battalion headquarters and powerful enough to cause considerable damage. On the morning of 2nd September 1915, the Germans fired aerial torpedoes and heavy artillery in reply to British shellfire. Fred Davis was killed. He was 21. He is buried in Maroc cemetery and his headstone inscription, chosen by his father, reads: “He Did His Duty”.

Redhill Cricket Club are sadly no longer with us but Merstham C.C. now play at The Ring and so the two clubs will be honouring their fallen players and members with a Twenty20 match to be played at Banstead’s Avenue Road ground on Friday 3rd August at 6pm. All are very welcome to attend and enjoy the evening’s game, buy a burger at the barbecue and raise a glass in the bar.

If you have any information or photographs of Banstead, Redhill or Merstham’s fallen cricket players then we would love to meet you at the game or hear from you at banstead100@btconnect.com.