Archie Forrest - by Bernice Chitris

My uncle Archie Forrest was born in Blackburn on December 17^th 1896, the eldest son and second of the seven children of Isaac and Harriet Forrest.  a weaver and a dressmaker.  Life was hard and as the family increased in size they moved often within Blackburn, arriving at the spacious Knuzden old vicarage around 1912.  My mother  would describe the bedroom the sisters shared as being “as big as a ballroom” and the surrounding land accommodated a menagerie of pets, including a donkey!  Archie, more than ten years her senior,  was very much a part of the adult community.  Having succeeded at the textiles course at Blackburn Technical College he worked as a weaver at Knuzden Brook Mill and was a parishioner of St Oswald's Parish Church. 

The outbreak of the Great War changed lives; in Manchester in March 1915 he enlisted in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, transferring a few months later to the Royal Engineers and taking part in the Somme 'push', Arras, Vimy Ridge and Messines.   His father Isaac had enlisted in the Royal Field Artillery, tending the horses which pulled the gun carriages. There had been some tensions  between them back at home but when their units met in the country roads around Vimy the men were allowed to fraternize, long enough to smoke a cigarette.  The story of this rare moment of relaxation and reconciliation was to be an immense consolation to the family later.

 In the rainy midsummer of 1917 Archie, by now a lance-corporal, was toiling with Special “P” company  on the dirty and dangerous work of moving gas cylinders up to the front for the battle to be known as Passchendaele. For six weeks he found himself in the area around Poperinge where in 1915 the Reverend Philip (Tubby) Clayton had established Talbot House – Toc H in signallers' parlance – as a recreational centre for troops of all ranks with a library, concert hall, garden and a chapel in the loft – the Upper Room.  Archie began to frequent the services and Tubby Clayton was to  remember forever the impression made on him by “Archie ... from Blackburn ”, “lean, quick,and curly-haired, with an element of fierceness in doing what [he does] with all  [his] might”.  Archie “summed up Christianity and found it greatly to his liking”; after a week he presented himself for baptism, a month later he was confirmed and made his first communion.  He must already have been familiar with the Christian message but no doubt he heard it differently in the theatre of war and it produced a real conversion experience. The following week, on August 25^th on the road  back to camp his glowing cigarette made him the target of a sniper's bullet.  That night back in Knuzden, so the story went,  my grandmother awoke and circled the beds of her sleeping family asking “Which of you called me?”  Archie died of his terrible wound the following day.  

In the depths of the tragedy it became clear that Archie had been very special.  In the last few weeks of his life, wrote Tubby Clayton,  he  had “irradiated the horizon of his friends,” men and officers alike. Others followed Archie's lead to the chapel and there were more conversions. Then the company set about finding a gift in his memory to place in perpetuity in the Upper Room.  A chair with a folding back which could serve as a table was procured and an inscription engraved on a shell case.  The font where he was baptised and that chair remain in place to this day.   After the war ended and Toc H branches began to be established all over Britain an Archie Forrest Room was dedicated at Mark 1, the main West London branch, by a wealthier family grateful that their own son had been spared, and Archie's example and inspiration thus reached people he could never have met in life.  Archie's sister Elizabeth, his 'best mate' in childhood, became a leading force in setting up the Blackburn group, determined that the spirit of service, fair-mindedness and friendship which had gripped Archie should be spread.  

With his body laid to rest at Wieltje Farm Cemetery and his name inscribed on the Blackburn Roll of Honour and on the Knuzden war memorial, one could easily have imagined the story to have ended. Then in 2007 theatre director Peter Gill, captivated by the story of Talbot House, discovered Archie's story among his researches and made him a character in his play Talbot House which has received rave reviews and regularly tours the country, giving Archie an undreamed-of posterity.  I'm   “tickled pink” - as the Forrests used to say – to know that thus his inspiring example lives on.