2nd Battalion, Grenadier Guards
Valentine Arthur Bayliss Carter was born in Painswick, Gloucestershire in June 1886, to Ashton John Carter, a stone mason, and his wife Elizabeth. By his early teens he had ceased use of the name Valentine and was known by his second name, Arthur.
After working for a period as a gardener, at eighteen he enlisted into the Grenadier Guards as a regular soldier for the minimum term of three years, leaving in 1906 to serve in Gloucestershire Constabulary, stationed at Cirencester, Winchcombe and Cheltenham. In 1912 Arthur married Annie Hagell of Middlesex and they had two children, Edwin and Kitchener.
Arthur was still on the Army Reserve and on the outbreak of war was recalled to the 3rd Battalion of the Grenadier Guards, landing in France in November 1914 with a reinforcement draft for the 2nd Battalion. In 1915 the battalion was in action during the Battle of Aubers and then in August 1915 it transferred to the newly formed 1st Guards Brigade with which it took part in the Battle of Loos.
On 3 October the battalion moved forward in support of the Coldstream Guards, taking over a section of the old British front line just south of the Hohenzollern Redoubt. Five days later the battalion captured a section of enemy trench in front of the redoubt, which was then subjected to repeated counter-attacks as the Germans tried to regain it. On 12 October, following a morning of intense shelling, what is described in the War Diary as ‘a severe bombing attack’ was launched on the trenches held by No 4 Company, of which Arthur was a member. Their main concern was whether their supply of Mills bombs would hold out, but they did and two enemy bomb stores were hit causing large explosions. The battalion threw nearly two thousand grenades during the battle and the Germans a similar number. The battalion War Diary records, ‘No 4 Company bombers did very good work, their Mills bombs outranging those of the enemy’ and by nightfall the German attacks faded away.
Arthur was killed by a German hand grenade during the repulse of the main German attack, being one of seventeen killed and sixty-one wounded. Another Gloucestershire police officer, Private Albert Hull, was serving alongside Arthur and was wounded at the same time he was killed. Arthur is commemorated on Loos Memorial to the Missing.
