The Rev. Rupert Edward Inglis
ARMY CHAPLAINS’ DEPARTMENT
THE REVEREND RUPERT INGLIS, AGED 53, lived in East Grinstead, West Sussex, with his wife of sixteen years and their children. His father, who died when his mother was barely pregnant, had commanded the British garrison at the Siege of Lucknow. Educated at Rugby and University College, Oxford, where he got his blue for rugby, Rupert was also an England international, having made three appearances in 1886 against Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Ordained in 1889, Rupert had held curacies at Helmsley in North Yorkshire and at Basingstoke before marrying and taking an appointment as rector of Frittenden in Kent. Since the outbreak of war he had been encouraging men from his village to go and felt that he could not very well ignore his own advice. Consequently Rupert had indicated that he would be willing to go to the front. In July 1915, having volunteered as an army chaplain, he was ordered to report for service with the BEF.
The Reverend Rupert Inglis (Authors’ collection)
Thousands of religious men such as Rupert would journey to the front throughout the Great War, representing about a dozen Christian denominations. Officially there to hold services, in fact it was a flexible role, with men turning their hand to anything that might make life more bearable for their fighting congregations, whether it be burials, helping at field ambulances and dressing stations, visiting hospitals or helping supply men with gifts from home.
Since arriving on the Western Front, Rupert had served at a hospital at Étaples, in the Ypres sector and at a casualty clearing station at Corbie. During the Battle of the Somme he was with 16th Brigade, which comprised men of Kent, Bedford, Shropshire and a battalion of the York & Lancasters. When not conducting funerals or services, or ministering to the men’s spiritual needs, he was organising a canteen to keep them supplied with goods. The infantry under the reverend’s spiritual care had had a disastrous day on 15th September. On the 17th Rupert wrote home and described for his family his work with stretcher-bearers, helping to get them to dressing stations. Orders were issued to complete the capture of the original objectives, but the attack was put off until the 21st, so the brigade was now biding its time until the main offensive resumed.
On 18th September, the infantry made a small bombing attack to try to set right one of their failures from the 15th. It had been a wet night and the downpour continued as they slipped about on the muddy surface. Their success that day in seizing their objective was a limited one as water swept Rawlinson’s front. Rupert was helping a party of stretcher-bearers in no-man’s-land as they attempted to round up wounded men when he was hit by a shell fragment. As men of the Royal Army Medical Corps tried to tend to him, dressing his wound, he was hit by a second shell and killed instantly.
‘I cannot overstate the sorrow there is today in his brigade. They simply loved him,’ wrote a close friend. He was buried near where he died on the battlefield, but the grave was subsequently lost, a cruel irony for the family of a man who had overseen the internment of so many of his charges. Some 179 chaplains died during the war. In recognition of their devoted work since 1914, King George V later conferred the prefix ‘Royal’ on the Army Chaplains’ Department. Rupert Inglis, aged 53 when he died, left behind his wife Mary and their three children Joan, 15, John, 10, and 5-year-old Margaret. His body, if recovered, was never identified and he is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, Pier & Face 4c.