Lives of the First World War

26th May 1918

Lionel was the son of Rev Henry and Mrs Blanche Carver. He grew up in Melbury Abbas near Shaftesbury. His mother came from a military family. She was the daughter of Lieutenant General John Liptrap of the Bengal Army. Lionel had one brother and six sisters. He went to St. John's School in Leatherhead and Jesus College, Cambridge. He worked for the Bombay Burmah Trading Company and worked in Burma. He joined the Moulmein Volunteer Rifles on 29th July 1915. He returned to England in March 1917 and in October became a 2nd Lieutenant in The Irish Guards. From 17th December he served in France and Flanders and was killed in action on 26th May 1918 at Arras. He is buried at Ayette British Cemetery. The circumstances of his death are recorded by Rudyard Kipling in his book about The Irish Guards. The dawn began with another sharp barrage on the front line and the dinner-hour was a continuous barrage of 5.9’s and 4.2’s directed at Battalion Headquarters. They were missed, but a direct hit was made on an aid-post of the 2nd Grenadiers less than a hundred yards off on our left. As a distraction, orders came in from Brigade Headquarters the same morning that the Battalion would carry out a raid on one of the enemy’s posts in front of the Right Company. They were given their choice, it would seem, of two—one without artillery-help and by day; the other with an artillery-backing and by night. The Second in Command, Major R. Baggallay, elected for works of darkness—or as near as might be in spite of a disgustingly bright moon. Lieutenant C. S. O’Brien was detailed to command, with Sergeant Regan, a forceful man, as sergeant. Only twenty-nine hands were required, and therefore sixty volunteered, moved to this, not by particular thirst for glory, of which the trenches soon cure men, as by human desire to escape monotony punctuated with shells. Extra rum-rations, too, attach to extra duties. As a raid it was a small affair, but as a work of art, historically worth recording in some detail. F Battery R.H.A. and 400 Battery R. F. A. supplied the lifting barrages which duly cut the post off from succour, while standing-barrages of 18-pounders, a barrage of 4.5’s hows. and groups, firing concentrations at left and right enemy trenches, completed the boxed trap. In the few minutes the affair lasted, it is not extravagant to estimate that more stuff was expended than the whole of our front in 1914 was allowed to send over in two days. The post had been reconnoitred earlier in the evening and was known not to be wired. All the raiders, with blackened faces and bayonets and stripped uniforms that betrayed nothing, were in position on the forming-up tape five minutes before zero. The moon forced them to crawl undignifiedly out in twos and threes, but they lined up with the precision of a football line, at one-yard intervals and, a minute before zero, wriggled to within seventy yards of their quarry. At zero the barrage came down bursting beautifully, just beyond the enemy post, and about two seconds ere it lifted the raiders charged in. No one had time to leave or even to make a show of resistance, and they were back with their five prisoners, all alive and quite identifiable, in ten minutes. The waiting stretcher-parties were not needed and—best of all—“retaliation was slight and entirely on Ayette.” (One is not told what Ayette thought of it.) The motive of the raid was “to secure identity alive or dead.” But when all was over without hurt, one single shell at morning “stand-to” killed 2nd Lieutenant L. H. L. Carver in a frontline trench. Extract from 'The Irish Guards in The Great War Volume 1' by Rudyard Kipling His commanding officer wrote, "He was quite my best junior officer - he never failed me in anything I asked him to do. He was keen, thorough and energetic in all his work and he was rapidly acquiring the knowledge that would have made him a first class leader." Lionel is remembered on several war memorials including that of the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation in the Anglican cathedral in Yangon (formerly Rangoon) in Myanmar (Burma). A stained glass window was installed in St. Thomas's Church in Melbuey Abbas to remember him and his parents.

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