Cecil Luff
1893-1916
Cecil Luff was born at the beginning of 1893 in Kirdford in
Sussex. His parents, Edward Luff and Elizabeth Childs, married in the Petworth
registration district in the summer of 1877 and their first child, Lilian, was
born at the beginning of 1878 in Fernhurst. The family were still in Fernhurst
for the arrival of Horace in 1879 but soon afterwards moved to Kirdford where
May was born in 1882, then Archibald in 1887, Annie in 1889 and Cecil in 1893.
Two years later they were at Fittleworth for the birth of Nellie and by 1899 in
Lyminster where Ernest was born.
In 1901 the family were at Priory Farm in Tortington near
Arundel in Sussex. Edward and his son Archibald were both cowmen as was their
lodger. Lilian was a cook, the younger children Cecil and Nellie were scholars
and Ernest was just 2. The last of the couple’s nine children, Olive was born
in Slinfold in 1902.
In 1911 the family were living at Baldhorns Farm Cottage
south of the village of Rusper. The farm was a beef farm and very remote although
just a few miles west of Crawley. Both Cecil and his father Edward were cowmen
on the farm and were living there were his mother Elizabeth, twelve year old
brother Ernest and younger sister Olive aged 9.
In June 1915, Cecil joined the 4th battalion
Royal Sussex Regiment which had been formed from a pre-war territorial
battalion. A few weeks later, the battalion sailed from Devonport on HMT
Ulysses and arrived on 29th July in Alexandra as part of the Mediterranean
Expeditionary Force. From Alexandria, the troops moved on via Port Said to Gallipoli,
arriving there on August 4th.
They fought at Gallipoli throughout the autumn and were part
of the evacuation of the peninsula in December 1915, returning to Egypt. By this
time the battalion had lost most of its members and over the next few months
new recruits were drafted in. They spent all of January training and it was
noted that all ranks showed improvement in smartness and drill and that the health
of all ranks was satisfactory. Also that all clothing and blankets had been
through the steam disinfector and fresh clothing handed out to clear the lice.
Most of February was spent training again but they had moved to a camp with
better roads so most of the training was marching. March and April saw more
training this time in bayonet fighting, grenade throwing and machine gun
operation as well as night time practice.
During May the training was concluded and the battalion
moved to Katoomba where they manned the trenches and observation posts. They
were engaged in maintaining defences for the next few weeks as more recruits
joined the battalion. However, there appears to have been an outbreak of
diphtheria in the ranks at this time, probably brought from home by one of the
new recruits. Deaths are recorded on 24th, 25th and 28th
June from diphtheria. The 28th of June case was Cecil Luff.
He died in No 17 General Hospital in Alexandria which was
located in a school called Victoria College. There were several military
hospitals in Alexandria which took in wounded men from theatres of war in the
region. They would be brought in by hospital train or ship. A new cemetery to
serve these hospitals was opened in April 1916 and it is there that Cecil Luff
is buried. It is very sad that Cecil went through all the training in a
comparatively quiet theatre of war and survived the infamous Gallipoli campaign
only to be killed by a simple but deadly infection.
Back home, Cecil’s parents moved to Worthing where they both
died in the 1930s. They had plenty of grandchildren from their surviving seven
children. Cecil’s brother Ernest died in October 1918 in France.
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ALEXANDRIA (HADRA) WAR MEMORIAL CEMETERY |
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