6th Battalion South Lancashire Regiment August 1915

When you read through the entries for August you will see that the 6^th Battalion (6^th Btn) was broken in with a relatively easy July compared with what was to come. August was a different matter and saw the battalion locked in several engagements with heavy fighting and increased loss of life, the 10^th August in particular saw 94 men killed in action on a single day.

August 1915

1^st – 4^th August – the battalion were bivouacked in Mudros. On the 4^th August they boarded onto the HMT Osmanieah and sailed at 9.30am arriving at Anzac Cove at 11pm. Once the men had disembarked the battalion marched south eastwards through the night to Victoria Gully.

The HMT Osmanieah was a passenger liner requisitioned as a troop ship in 1914. A mine just outside the harbor at Alexandria sank the ship on 31^st December 1917 with the loss of 28 lives.

Figs 1 & 2 - Anzac Cove above and HMT Osmanieah below.

5^th August – the men of the battalion were tasked with improving the terraces on the slopes of the gully.

6^th August – there was heavy Turkish shelling of the gully. The battalion left bivouac at 10.45pm and marched to Chailik Dere arriving at 4.30am on the morning of the 7^th.

7^th August – the men marched up the Chailik Dere and were ordered to join the 39^th Infantry Brigade arriving with them at 2.30am on the 8^th.

8^th August – the men were ordered to follow the Royal Warwick Regiment and at 9.30am, advanced up Ashyl Dere to join in with the ongoing attack there. However when they arrived the attack had ceased in the night. This is just one instance of lack of communication that is seeded throughout the Gallipoli campaign. Bearing in mind the amount of marching the men had done and the lack of sleep they would have had they could have rested before advancing up the Ashyl Dere if it was relayed that fighting had ceased.

Once there the various companies of the battalion were deployed to take up positions. The entrenchment of the men was delayed and the process interfered with for over three hours due to naval searchlights from allied ships lighting up the area.

9^th August – At 1.30am orders were given to creep up the hill and attack the Turkish encampments. The battalion joined forces with the Gurkas and also the Royal Warwick Regiment. Initially the various detachments were able to take ground away from the Turks but due to the delayed arrival of support troops were unable to hold onto the gained ground and were pushed back.

The 6^th Btn South Lancs lost 34 men in that one encounter.

10^th August – the battalion, along with the Ghurkas and the Royal Warwick Regiment came under sustained heavy bombardment and then heavy rifle fire from the Turks. At 4.45am the Turkish army doubled their attack and regained a large part of, what had become known as, Ghurka Hill. The cause became lost and eventually the 6^th Btn, Ghurkas and R. Warwick Regt. all retreated (or ‘retired’ as the war diary calls it) back to the second line.

The battalion suffered very heavy casualties on this day losing 94 men from the rank of Captain down through to Private.

11^th August – the regiment received a new commanding officer in Major G. Mott and relieved one of the lines held by the 14^th Sikhs.

12^th August – the battalion consolidated their position. Water had by this time become very scarce and had to be rationed. The men also had to contend with a serious outbreak of fever amongst the ranks.

13^th – 15^th August – the battalion held their position in the trenches. On the 15^th they came under heavy Turkish machine gun fire resulting in more casualties.

17^th August – the battalion received its first set of reinforcements of 450 men, some from Mudros and some directly from England. In the evening of the 17^th with reinforcements in place the 6^th Btn were sent back for a very well earned and no doubt much needed, albeit brief, rest period. Rest Gully as it had been christened was an area where a temporary field hospital had been established and where several field ambulances were stationed. No doubt wounds were treated and the men tried to relax as much as possible from those incredible nighttime marches and the fighting they had endured in the preceding days.

19^th August – the battalion was back out again to relive the King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment in trenches on the Argyl Dere.

20^th – 23^rd August – rejoining forces that had been deployed elsewhere in the preceding few days swelled the regiment.

24^th August – the regiment was relieved by the Royal Warwick Regiment and the 6^th Battalion went into Brigade Reserve allowing the men time away from the front lines.

25^th – 31^st August – the battalion remained in Brigade Reserve and received a new commander, Major Fairlie, the previous commander having been removed from position due to injury. Also over these few days the battalion was consolidated (merged) with the 6^th Loyal North Lancs Regiment in order to increase its strength.

The battalion lost men almost every day during the month of August. At the end of the month’s diary the recording officer stated that, out of the 700 men in the battalion on the 1^st August, nearly 500 men were either killed, missing or wounded by the end of the month.

Acknowledgements – all credit goes to Stephen Nulty who transcribed the battalion’s war diary and www.prescott-rollofhonour.info where the transcription is lodged.

6th Battalion South Lancashire Regiment July 1915

The official war diary for the 6^th Battalion South Lancashire Regiment is held at the National Archive in Kew, UK. It is available for public viewing as are many other regimental war diaries. If you have a relative you would like to know more about and you know their battalion or regiment it would be worth you checking the National Archive catalogue to see if that regiment’s war diary exists. War diaries list the day to day happenings in the regiment – where they were deployed, the skirmishes and battles they were involved in, weather conditions, day to day problems like interruptions in the supply chain and also the casualties the battalion suffered each day.

As you will know by now the above named battalion is Basil’s battalion and I thought it would be interesting to let you know the sorts of conditions and events he would have borne witness to between July 1915 and his death in April 1916.

July 1915

After basic training, the Prince of Wales volunteers had sailed on the 13^th June from Avonmouth on the HMT Ausonia (a Cunard ship that had been commandeered as a troop ship, it would later be sunk by a German U-boat in May 1918). The battalion landed at Mudros on the Isle of Lemnos (a Greek island in the northern Aegean sea) on the 2^nd July. The men were involved in the unloading of the ship before going into bivouacs on the slopes of a hill overlooking Mudros. They killed time here for a few days and were charged with getting ready to move out a.s.a.p. during the night of the 5^th July. However, at the 11^th hour the order was cancelled and the men did not move out until the following evening.

7^th July – the battalion arrived at West Beach on the Gallipoli peninsula at 2.00am. The Gallipoli campaign had been underway since April 1915 so Basil would have been landing in a region where battles had already been undertaken.

8-10^th July – the battalion men were involved in marches to various trenches where they received instruction and were employed in fatigues to the various regiments already based there.

11^th – 17^th July – the battalion moved up to the front trenches taking over from the 1^st Lancashire Fusilliers who had already been engaged there for some time. The front line trenches were subjected to heavy bombardment by the Turkish troops, but the 6^th battalion was not sent into any engagements during this time. The war diary lists that the battalion suffered six casualties. On the 17^th the men were stood down and transferred out of the trenches west to Gully Beach where they rested.

19^th July – the battalion was moved up the Gallipoli peninsula towards the front line trenches and relieved the 126^th Brigade, 42^nd Division at Krithia Gully ravine. There were no specific engagements made by the battalion while it occupied Krithia Gully although the men were subject to enemy fire and suffered the loss of two men.

28^th July – the battalion was relieved by the Lancashire Fusilliers and moved back to rest lines. Whilst in the rest lines they were subject to “…a good deal of annoying shelling.”

31^st July – the battalion was gathered at Y Beach on the Gallipoli peninsula and moved back to Mudros in two groups.

Map source - Wikipedia 'Landing at Cape Helles'

Moving up from beach positions the terrain changes a lot to rock strewn, dusty scrubland with a lot of ravines and gullies. Digging trenches to augment some of the natural cover was difficult and arduous. Equipment and supplies all had to be moved by men and donkeys. The postmortem of the aftermath of the entire Gallipoli and Mesopotamia campaign flagged up that the various army divisions were ill equipped for the entire engagement. It’s no wonder that it culminated in defeat and abandonment.

From Basil’s perspective I would love to know what a naïve 17 year old who had never left Salford would have made of such a dramatic change in his circumstances. Sadly we’ll never know what his first impressions were.

Acknowledgements – all credit goes to Stephen Nulty who transcribed the battalion’s war diary and www.prescott-rollofhonour.info where the transcription is lodged.

Basil’s Medals

There were five campaign medals issued during the Great War and with some minor exceptions these were issued to all of the men, and some women, who served between 1914-1918.

The three medals awarded posthumously to Basil were: the 1914-15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal. As these were awarded after his death they were sent on to his father.

The 1914-15 Star (Pip)

This medal was issued to all of those who served in any theatre of war from 1914 to the end of 1915. The exceptions were those who were awarded the 1914 Star and those awarded the Africa General Service Medal or the Sudan 1910 Medal.

The medal is bronze with a red, white and blue ribbon. The reverse was left plain and had the recipient’s name, rank, number and service unit impressed on it.

The British War Medal (Squeak)

This is a silver medal with a blue, black and white ribbon that has a wider central orange band. It bears George V’s head on the obverse side and a naked St George figure riding a horse on the reverse. The horse is trampling on a shield that bears the Prussian eagle. It was issued to all those who served in the First World War. The recipient’s name, rank, number and service unit were inscribed along the rim of the medal.

The Victory Medal (Wilfred)

Each of the allies on the wining side awarded their own victory medal with a similar design. The British version is cast in bronze with a winged figure on the obverse representing Victory. On the reverse it has the inscription ‘The Great War for Civilisation 1914-1919’. It has a rainbow coloured ribbon with a wide, vertical, red line in the middle. It was awarded to most of, but not all, those who served in the 1914-18 war. The recipient’s name, rank, number and service unit were inscribed along the rim of the medal.

Pip, Squeak and Wilfred

As these three medals were awarded to so many and often in the trio they became familiarly known as Pip, Squeak and Wilfred after a popular strip cartoon that featured in the Daily Mirror from 1919. In the cartoon strip Pip was a dog, Squeak a penguin and Wilfred a rabbit.

If you have being doing any family history research you should check out the British Army medal index records at the National Archives www.nationalarchives.gov.uk . They hold the original records. Similarly if you belong to the www.ancestry.co.uk site or corresponding www.ancestry.com site you should be able to see the relevant scan of the index card for your family member online. This will give you information on the medals they were awarded and if given posthumously, who received the medals on behalf of the deceased.

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.