A Murder in Rapldorf

Pte. Levi Ripley, 1^st/5^th Battalion The Loyal North Lancashire Regiment-241788 (formerly 3992) attached 8^th Battalion.

Died a prisoner of war 1/2/1917 (murdered by a German civilian), aged 25

British War and Victory Medals

Levi Ripley married in his hometown of Bolton, Lancashire on the inauspicious date of 1^st July 1916, the opening day of the battle of the Somme. His wife would have seen little of her new husband, who embarked from Folkestone sailing for Boulogne fourteen days later. He was sent first to the ‘Bull Ring’, the 25^th Infantry Brigade Base Depot at Etaples and from there to 8^th Loyals who he joined on 4^th August1916. Twenty-six days later he was reported missing in action.

St Peter’s Church Halliwell where Levi Ripley was married in 1916

Elizabeth Ripley (nee Thomasson) had to wait over three months before news was received through official channels that he had been taken prisoner, whilst suffering from shrapnel wounds to the nape of his neck and left hand. He remained a prisoner of war for the rest of his life and in the winter of 1917, on 1^st December was working on Auger’s farm at Rapldorf in the district of Straubing in Bavaria. It was there that, as an official of the German government later explained, Levi Ripley ‘was killed in a fight’ with ‘Farmer Auger’.

When subsequently asked for details after the war, more information was forthcoming. Under the terms of the Geneva Convention, non-officer POWs could be compelled to perform labour by their captors. In Levi Ripley’s case, that had led to him working on the farm in Rapldorf, where he was murdered. The German government explained that criminal proceedings had been instigated against Auger, but he had been acquitted of murder on the grounds of self-defence as ‘Ripley had forced himself in upon him with an axe’.

No other information on the events of 1^st December 1917 is contained in Ripley’s service record. The facts that is was the middle of winter when he was working on the farm and that he had access to an axe may indicate he was engaged in forestry work. What led him to snap and go for Auger with an axe, if that is what happened, is unknown. Ripley had been assigned to the farm where he died from the POW camp at Nuremberg, Bavaria, which was run by the Royal Bavarian Army Corps and some 35 miles or so distant from Rapldorf. Ripley had been living at, and working on, Auger’s farm before he was murdered.

News of his death first reached the UK through an unusual source. The POW camp at Nuremberg was for Other Ranks and not for officers. The senior Other Rank there was Regimental Sargeant Major Tate of the Scots Guards, who although a Warrant Officer Class 1 was still an ‘other rank’. Tate wrote to the Loyal North Lancashire POW Help Committee at their Preston base informing them that Ripley had died at the end of November 1917. The letter was received on 25^th January 1917 and forwarded to the authorities.

No action was taken at that point, nor was his death officially recorded, as at least two positive reports of a prisoner’s death were required before ‘evidence of death’ was accepted. Corroboration finally arrived in a communication from neutral Denmark on February 18^th 1918 and it was only then that his wife was officially informed of her husband’s death. She was awarded a war widow’s pension of 13s 9d with effect from 14^th March 1918 at which point her separation allowance was stopped.

The British government did not forget about Ripley’s death and further investigations were undertaken after the Armistice had been signed. A death certificate was obtained from a Protestant Pastor, one Huber, who certified that the body had been given a Protestant funeral and buried on 4^th December 1917 in the cemetery at Perkam, Bavaria, adding that the grave was easy to identify as Ripley’s fellow POWs had provided a ‘simple wooden cross’ for the grave and also a ‘more beautiful crucifix’ inscribed ‘In loving memory of Pte Levi Ripley, 5^th N.L. Regt.’. The government paid for photographs of the grave to be taken and sent to Ripley’s widow in March 1919. In response to her request for a copy of his ‘soldiers’ will, the document was finally found and sent to her in November 1920, two years after the Armistice had been signed.

Elizabeth Ripley was 26 when she received her husband’s will in November 1920, three years after his death. She remarried the following December, to Andrew Ingram a coal miner, at St. Thomas’ Halliwell, the same church she had married Levi Ripley in four years earlier. Her first husband Levi had been a weaver before the war broke out and all of his family had also worked in the textile mills. He was one of the sons of James and Amelia Ripley, who lived in Deane on Gilnow Lane. The couple had nine children, seven of who lived to adulthood, the youngest of who was Levi, born in 1892.

Levi Ripley attested on 5^th March 1915 and, according to his service record, was stationed in Bolton until 15^th July 1916. He cannot have served in the 1^st/5^th battalion because that formation was in action in France before he even attested, although it was formed in Bolton in August 1914. Ripley may then have first served in 4/5^th Battalion, which was formed in Bolton in 1915 and was still there in September 1915, as the Manchester Evening News reported on 8^th September 1915,

An interesting in incident marked the morning parade of the 4/5th L.N.L Regiment at Fletcher Street Barracks, Bolton this morning. The Officer Commanding, Lieutenant-Colonel Lang Simms, called out one of the men, Private F. H. Hurst, and congratulated him on saving the life from drowning of a young girl of about twelve years of age in the Barrow Bridge Lake.

The 4^th/5^th Loyals had moved from Bolton to Ashford, Kent at some point before July 1916 when they moved to Aldershot. Ripley, if his service record is correct, did not travel south with them. He could have been retained at Fletcher Street, he may have ended up an officer’s soldier servant, for example, and his officer may have remained at Fletcher Street Barracks on official duties.

Fletcher Street Barracks, Bolton

An examination of Ripley’s service record does show that the officer who signed Ripley’s Certificate of Primary Military Examination considered him ‘fit for service in the 1^st/ 5^th Battalion and that officer described himself as ‘Capt. Commanding Depot 1^st/5^th Loyal North Lancashire’. 1^st/5^th Battalion also appears on Ripley’s attestation for 4 years service in the Territorial Force. Ripley is also referred to as being a soldier of the 5^th Battalion in other official documents (a formation which had ceased to exist in 1914). The possibility exists therefor that Ripley was a soldier of the 1^st/5^th (who never served in the battalion) who trained as a soldier with the 4^th/5^th in Bolton and who remained at Fletcher Street Barracks after that battalion left for Kent in late 1915 or early 1916. The war was at first kind to Private Ripley, but the kindness vanished fourteen days after his marriage when he sailed for France.

A troopship departs from Fokestone heading to Bolougne

He arrived at the 8^th Loyals on 4^th August 1916, a month after they had been first committed at the battle of the Somme as part of 25^th Division. When Ripley joined his battalion they were holding a stretch of the front line north of the River Ancre, before being relieved and concentrating in Bus les Artois for rest and training by 14^th August. It was a short respite as by the 19^th August they were back in the trenches opposite the German held Leipzig Redoubt during the phase of the Somme known as the battle of Pozieres. Elements of the Division gained a foothold in the German defensive position on 21^st August and two companies of 8^th Loyals were employed to garrison the section of German trenches taken.

The location of the Wunderwerk in 1916

The Thiepval Memorial to the missing: the Wunderwerk was a quarter of a mile south of the memorial

On 26^th August the 8^th Loyals took part in an attack on a portion of the Leipzig Redoubt still in German hands known as the Wunderwerk. The assault was made by “D” Company at 6pm in the evening and was initially successful and reserves, a second and third wave of the battalion, joined their comrades in the Wunderwerk to exploit “D” Company’s success. The Germans, however, counterattacked in force over the following 48 hours, whilst their artillery fire pulverized the area held by 8^th Loyals, who were finally driven out of the Wunderwerk on the 27^th and moved out of the line to regroup. The 8^th Loyals losses in the engagement included four officers and eighty-five other ranks killed, one of who, Private Levi Ripley, was finally recorded as missing on 30^th August 1916.

            The Commonwealth War Graves records show that the remains of Levi Ripley were re-interred in Niederzwehren Cemetery at Hessen, Germany at some point after 1919.

Niederzwehren: Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery

Loyal North Lancashire Regiment: Other Ranks cap badge 1914-1918