East Sussex village salutes long lost hero who perished in World War One

Private Jesse Levett, shot in the chest on the eve of the Battle of the Somme on, June 30, 1916, miraculously recovered from his wounds and returned to France three months later. He was to die, in battle, two years later aged 20.

At eleven o’clock, on the eleventh day of the month and on the eleventh month of the year, he will be honoured at a special memorial service in Arlington.

It was on this day, Armistice Day in 1918, that the guns finally fell silent on the Western Front.

Jesse’s war medals, stolen from the local church, have been faithfully recreated and were presented to his family at Arlington Village Hall, before a wreath is laid at the Levett gravestone in the nearby St Pancras’ church yard.

“This was a very poignant and moving occasion for us all,” said Sarah Pursey from Hereford. Sarah’s mother Meg, was Jessie’s sister and the youngest of 16 children.

“All these years later, I like to think it reflects the never ending national quest to tell the stories of those brave lads who epitomise that famous rejoinder - ‘ For your tomorrow,

we gave our today’.

At the service, there was five of Jesse’s relatives present from Hereford; four from Carmarthen in Wales; three from Wellingborough; three from Chichester; and three more from Steyning.

Wendy Holmes, long-time resident of Arlington and founder of the Arlington Museum, came up with the idea of a service to commemorate young Jesse.

She said: “Only now, are we beginning to unravel the story behind Jessie’s death and what happened on that fatal day, two years earlier, when he was seriously wounded.

“That day became known as ‘The Day Sussex Died’, because three Battalions of the Sussex Regiment had over 1,300 county men killed, wounded or captured. Its 13th Battalion was all but wiped out. Somehow, against all the odds, young Jesse survived that brutal five-hour battle.”

“Last year, when I attended a service for the fallen at the Hailsham War Memorial, it struck me that, in Jesse Levett, we have our very own war hero right here in Arlington, and how fitting it would be to hold a memorial service at our Village Hall, which is dedicated to his memory.

“The hunt was then on for his relatives. For months, three local volunteers have scoured the country, working tirelessly to trace Jesse’s descendants”.

Eighteen year old Private Jesse Levett, and 4,500 men of the Royal Sussex Regiment, took part in the ill-fated and now largely forgotten, Battle of The Boar’s Head at Richebourg, France on 30 June 1916.

Almost three quarters of those who died that day came from Sussex, including it is said, up to twelve sets of brothers. They were sacrificed in a diversionary raid on the Boar’s Head salient, an attempt to draw German attention away from the main Somme battlefield, to the South.

On April 1918, after two more years of fierce fighting on the Western Front, Jesse was reported missing, presumed dead, when the Germans launched a massive attack on the

British line and the Sussex Battalions.