Who was the real Basil? Part 2

Basil joined the 6^th Battalion South Lancashire Regiment Prince of Wales volunteers and after basic training was sent to Gallipoli. When the Gallipoli campaign failed and the men were evacuated the battalion was redeployed to Mesopotamia (latter day Iraq).

One assumes that Basil communicated with his family back in Salford but sadly none of these letters have survived. Thus we can only speculate as to how he might have felt as the campaign in Mesopotamia progressed. Thankfully the battalion’s detailed war diary does exist and is available to view at the National Archive in Kew, London. Various officers who were tasked with the job completed the diary on a more or less day-by-day basis and it is this document that gives us a real feel for the conditions that men were fighting in. Bearing in mind the location you wouldn’t think that the weather conditions ranged from stifling heat to below freezing, in fact in the winter of 1915/16 many men from the various regiments were hospitalized for hypothermia. Anyone with any interest in the First World War will be all too familiar with the dreadful conditions in the trenches in France and Flanders, the pictures of flooded trenches and deep mud are all too common, but did you know that the trenches and fox holes in Mesopotamia were also repeatedly flooded during the 1915/16 winter?

Gallipoli and the Mesopotamia Campaign had a high mortality rate, men died from the obvious – gunfire, shells, mortar attacks, shrapnel wounds etc., but did you know that a large number of men died from disease – typhoid and various diarrhoeal diseases were rife and many men were malnourished and dehydrated. There was also a continual problem with flies. The inside canvas of bivouac tents, mess tents, hospital tents etc. were all covered in flies taking advantage of the slight shade offered. The war diary gives us casualty lists and at times mentions how the men died.

That conditions were terrible is plain to see and another photo of Basil shows that he has now lost his puppy fat from the photo in part 1. Here he is battle hardened and lean, the stub of a cigarette between his fingers. He’s still managing to raise a smile for the camera though.

After travelling up through the marshlands and the flood plains of the Tigris river Basil died, along with 42 of his peers, on 5^th April 1916 during a particularly hard push to gain ground at Falahiyen and take the position. The war diary lists that many of the men had died from gunfire just in front of the Turkish trenches; perhaps he was one of these. He was just 5 months passed his 18^th birthday.

Basil’s body was never recovered so he does not have a war grave anywhere. Instead he is commemorated on the Basra memorial, his name appearing with the many thousands of other men who died in that campaign.

Records show that he was posthumously awarded three campaign medals – the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. These were sent back to his parents, but unfortunately they have been lost with the passage of time. I will write another post about these medals in due course.

Fanny and Clem would have received news of their son’s death via a telegram and received a letter from George V acknowledging Basil’s sacrifice (see below). They would also probably have received a ‘death penny’ inscribed with Basil’s name, but like the medals this has also disappeared over the years.

I have always had a keen interest in history, but having photos of an ordinary private soldier and knowing a little more about his personal story, plus the fact that he was one of my grandparents siblings, adds a whole new dimension for me when reading about this particular part of history as I hope it does for you.