Richard Sully Ponting

Memorial: Rockhampton - St Oswald's Churchyard

Regiment: Gloucestershire Regiment

Medals: British War Medal, Next of Kin Memorial Plaque 1914 - 1921, Victory Medal

Rank and number: Private 266985

Parents: William Harris and Jemima Ponting (nee Spiller)

Marital status: Married

Home address: Newton, Rockhampton, Thornbury, Bristol - Parents Oakdene, Albany Road, Cheltenham - Ada

Pre-war occupation: Post in the silk department of John Lance & Co. High Street, Cheltenham

Date of birth: 1883

Place of birth: Thornbury, Bristol

Date of death: 02/12/1917

Buried/Commemorated at: Cambrai Memorial (Panel 6.), Louverval, France, Rockhampton War Memorial, Cheltenham Borough War Memorial, St Stephen's Church, Cheltenham 

Age: 34

Further information:

Wooden Memorial Board.

Richard Sully Ponting was born in 1883 and baptised on 17th October in St Mary’s Church, the son of William Harris Ponting, a draper and shopkeeper in Thornbury High Street. He had a younger brother and sister. In 1901 Richard was living in Teignmouth, apprenticed to a draper. At the time of the 1911 census he was living with his brother, Herbert, who was a farmer at Newton near Rockhampton. Richard was working as a draper’s assistant. His parents also lived at the farm. Richard moved to Cheltenham where, according to a newspaper report he had a post in the silk department of John Lance and Co., a prestigious shop in the High Street, which sold fabrics and hats.

Richard enlisted in Cheltenham, joining the 2nd/6th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment (Glosters) and was sent to France in August 1916.

At St Stephen’s Church in Cheltenham, on 24th October 1917, he married Ada Eleanor Trotman of Oakdene, Albany Road, Cheltenham (her uncle Charles Nicholas’ house). Ada appears to have continued living there, with her uncle and her widowed mother.

Richard was reported as ‘missing on 2nd December, when engaged in the Battle at Cambrai’. The operations against the Hindenburg Line were fought between 20th November and 4th December 1917.

On the evening of 1st December the 2nd/6th Glosters were moved up to the front line at La Vaquerie, a village almost totally destroyed by shelling. A report by the Battalion’s Company Sergeant Major Lockwood said, ‘ It was difficult to move about in places. The whole place was a scene of complete and utter disaster. Nobody knew what part of the trenches we were supposed to take over or exactly where the Germans were. We did finally “take over” from a small group of Grenadier Guards headed by a corporal. When our Commanding Officer asked him where his officers were he replied very quietly "they are all dead sir.... We are all that is left". He looked very young and very weary. I think his little band of survivors numbered less than a dozen men.’

On 2nd December at 5.30 a.m. another very heavy German bombardment commenced, causing many casualties. When relieved on 3rd December the 2nd/6th, Glosters had suffered 2 officers and 18 other ranks killed, including their Commanding Officer Major William Logan Ruthven, 12 officers and 140 other ranks wounded, 3 officers and 150 other ranks missing.

Nothing more was heard about Richard until the 5th April 1918 when his wife received a letter from the British Section of the Red Cross Agency at Geneva ‘stating that in all probability he had fallen killed in action or died of wounds in hospital, as on the lists despatched from Berlin by the German Central Effects Bureau his name disc had been sent in’.

Richard's date of death was accepted as being 2nd December 1917. Richard has no known grave and is remembered on the Cambrai Memorial to the missing in France.

By kind permission, this information is based on the following source(s):

Thornbury Roots Website and Thornbury and District Museum Research Group
Forces War Records and CWGC