Monday, 24 August was to be the first day of the retreat from Mons which was to last until early September. Capt. Francis Grenfell who was in charge of B Squadron was reconnoitring when his horse was shot from under him. The enemy was massing close to a rail station. The Squadron ‘fell back through the regiment’ and went into reserve. They were then ordered to support the 18th Hussars to the north of the village of Audregnies. The 5th Division then called on the cavalry to assist as they were in considerable danger of being encircled by the enemy.
The commander of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade, Brig. Gen. de Lisle sent the 9th Lancers and the 4th Dragoon Guards to charge the German gun positions. Beyond a sugar factory were nine German batteries positioned on the south side of the Valenciennes-Mons railway line. The German gunners were protected by many defensive obstacles including fences, hedges and a semi-industrial landscape of slag heaps, railway lines and sunken roads.
The Lancers, with two troops of the Dragoon Guards to their left rear set off down a Roman road which still exists towards the sugar factory. They charged full tilt into the flanks of the advancing German masses, and were met by a hail of machine-gun fire, shelling and rifle fire. Many of the galloping horses fell over the low signal-wires or pitched headlong, breaking their riders’ necks. Grenfell later wrote: ‘We had simply galloped about like rabbits in front of a line of guns,’ and ‘men and horses falling in all directions.’ Much of their time was spent in dodging the horses. It is interesting to note that local farmers in the area informed Maj. A.H. Burne, RA, when he visited the area the following day, that there had never been a wire fence (WO 95/1113 9/ Lancers).
At the sugar factory the Lancers dismounted and along with some men from the Dragoon Guards under Grenfell and their Commanding Officer Lucas-Tooth, they held on tenaciously. The remainder galloped off to the right and where possible used the protection of various slag heaps. They reassembled with a squadron of the 11th Hussars on the outskirts of Elouges. The small group’s position at the sugar factory became untenable and they therefore rode off in a south-easterly direction and fell back on the lee side of a mineral works’ railway embankment. There were more than eighty casualties including those wounded or missing. The rail line connected a mineral works to a spoil dump a few hundred yards away to the north-west. A bridge took the line over the road and the remains of the bridge and mineral works line still exist in the 1990s.
Many commentators muddle this former industrial line with a second line which went from Elouges to Quievrain. But it is this one that helped to give vital shelter to the cavalrymen as they swung round to the right after being ‘brushed aside’ at the sugar factory. Disastrous though the cavalry action may have been in terms of casualties it did give the necessary breathing space to the 5th Division who were able to get away in the retreat from Mons.
The 9th Lancers’ second gallant action of the day took place at an embankment to the south-west of Elouges. Here were positioned some detached guns that belonged to the 119 Field Battery (xxvii Brig., 5th Div.) which were in danger of falling into enemy hands. The battery, under the command of Maj. G.H. Alexander, was being attacked by three German batteries and was becoming very short of personnel having lost thirty men and thirty-six horses. Francis Grenfell, who himself had been wounded in the hand by shrapnel, offered his squadron’s assistance and called for volunteers among his officers and men. Grenfell had his damaged hand bound up in a scarf, and looked for an exit point for the guns. The dismounted Lancers proceeded to help the battery to manhandle the guns out of trouble despite being under very heavy fire. They had to run the guns by hand as there were no available horses and no rope either. A Squadron under Capt. Lucas-Tooth arrived and he took over command from a dazed Grenfell, suffering from wounds and exhaustion, who was wandering around the battlefield hoping for fresh orders. He was subsequently given a lift by the Duke of Westminster whose Rolls Royce was in the vicinity looking for stragglers. The Duke was a friend of the Grenfell twins and also one of the richest men in England. He and Powell his chauffeur took Grenfell to the nearby town of Bavai where his wounds were attended to by French nuns in a convent hospital.
Overnight Grenfell rested up in the Duke’s bed at Le Cateau and felt ‘rather done’. Rivy (Riversdale) who was galloper to Gen. De Lisle was with his brother and it was to be the last time that the twins were to see each other. Francis was transferred to Amiens and then to Rouen before being shipped back to England.
Francis, for his prompt action in organizing the saving of the guns and for the earlier dash against the German ‘hordes’, was recommended for the Victoria Cross along with Maj. Alexander. His was one of the earliest VCs to be won in the First World War and was much written about in the English press with a deal of exaggeration. Furthermore, most paintings that were commissioned to commemorate the deed were not very accurate.
The Grenfell twins were born on 4 September 1880 at Hatchlands near Guildford, Surrey. The family was of Cornish extraction and their parents were Pascoe Du Pré Grenfell and Sofia, who were also cousins. The twins were the last of a family of thirteen children and were doted on by their sisters. They grew up with few cares and learnt to ride almost as soon as they could walk. When they were seven years old the family moved to Wilton Park near Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire where their father had spent his childhood. At the same time they began their education at a private school at East Sheen. When they were fourteen they followed the family tradition and went to Eton. They became popular and dominant figures at Eton where Francis ran the College Hounds with Rivy’s help as Whip. In the summer of 1899 Francis scored a vital and unbeaten eighty runs at Lords against the old adversary Harrow School.
Although the boys enjoyed Eton immensely they clearly did not spend enough time on their studies, something they were to regret in later years. Their father died in 1896 and their mother in 1898, and subsequently they left Eton and the family home at Wilton Park. Their uncle, Lord Grenfell, became their guardian; he was Francis’ godfather. Lord Grenfell was himself a distinguished soldier and was to lose some of his own sons in the First World War.
The twins both dearly wanted to join the army but the money was not available. It was decided, however, that Lord Grenfell would pay for Francis to enter the army, while Rivy would pursue a business career. Francis began his service career with the Seaforth Militia in December 1899 but caught typhoid at around the same time and went on a sea voyage to recuperate. He did not fully recover for a year. In Egypt, with the Seaforth Highlanders, he began to study for his army examinations. He then left for Malta where he was commissioned in May in the 60th Battalion (The King’s Royal Rifle Corps). While there Rivy paid him a visit.
In the autumn of 1901 Francis sailed from Cork to South Africa to take part in the latter stages of the Boer War but he saw little of the fighting. He did, however, make a little money in diamond speculation which went towards his considerable expenses as an army officer. At the time Rivy was not doing very well with his financial affairs. It seems that there was an understanding that he should try and make enough to keep them both. This included the buying and selling of horses for racing and of polo ponies. They had both taken to polo with considerable success.
In 1903 Francis was back from South Africa and the twins spent the summer attending society balls and playing polo. Later Rivy went to America on a business trip, while Francis left to join the army in India. He was desperately keen to get into the Cavalry. He enlisted the help of Douglas Haig and Lord Kitchener who both said that he would have to study hard and that he would then eventually achieve his ambition. The Cavalry was the top branch of the army ‘tree’ at that time and much sought after by men of means who were well connected. Francis particularly wanted to join the 9th Lancers because it was a unit containing many old friends.
Polo had become a passion with the twins and in 1904 Rivy was able to visit his brother in India where they were much taken up with sport. Rivy won the Kadir Cup, a famous Indian pig-sticking event. Fra
ncis had been promoted to lieutenant and in May 1905 realized his great ambition of joining the 9th Lancers. He had studied hard and had done well at languages.
The year 1907 was spent back in England with more polo playing. In April 1908 Francis sailed for South Africa to rejoin his regiment. He was studying for his Staff College exams. Rivy was badly injured in a riding accident and Francis, back from South Africa, was also injured before going on to Germany to study the language. While there he observed German military manoeuvres.
Of this time, a friend of the twins, John Buchan, wrote of them in a memoir as being ‘the most conspicuous figures in English society. They knew everyone and went everywhere.’
Rivy’s business career seems to have been a precarious affair and one feels that he would have much preferred the life of a soldier. He had joined his brother Arthur’s firm. Arthur had recently lost his wife and took a long time to recover. He was unable to keep a tight hold on the business which subsequently collapsed in May 1914. Both the twins had invested heavily in the firm and the polo ponies had to be sold off. The coming of war was to solve their financial problems and also to give them both a purpose in life enabling Rivy to ‘redeem private failure in public service’.
Rivy had annually trained with the Bucks Hussars and on the outbreak of war quickly obtained a transfer to his brother’s regiment, the 9th Lancers, as a reserve officer. He ‘sat at his brother’s feet’ in order to learn the ropes in the shortest possible time, which included the buying of equipment that would be needed. The twins decided to take six horses with them and they borrowed an additional groom from their friend the Duke of Westminster.
After Francis won his VC he left Rivy behind in France while he recuperated in a hospital at No. 17 Belgrave Square, London. He received visits from Lord Grey, Lord Grenfell and Lord Roberts who wanted to know all about his exploits. From there he went to his uncle’s home at Overstone Park in Northamptonshire and it was there that he received the tragic news of his brother’s death.
Rivy was killed on 14 September to the north of the River Aisne, near the road between Troyon and the Chemin des Dames when directing the firing onto a German piquet. On stepping out from behind a haystack in order to observe the situation he was shot in the mouth and died soon afterwards. His body was left behind as the Lancers had to retire but it was recovered a short time after in a subsequent advance. He is buried close to where he fell, in the civilian cemetery at Vendresse. He had been ‘in the field’ for just twenty-five days.
It was Lord Grenfell who had the task of breaking the news of his brother’s death to Francis and his uncle later wrote: ‘From that moment he was a changed man in everything but his enthusiasm for his regiment and his desire to get back to the fighting line.’ In a personal note dated 12 March 1915 Francis wrote to a Mr N.S. Pollard in a letter of sympathy saying, ‘I have lost my twin brother, from who I was never separated until the day I last saw your son, so I can appreciate the great sorrow that has fallen on you and Mrs Pollard in the loss of a son who has done what we would all like to do – DIE FOR ENGLAND. . .’.
In October 1914 Francis was sufficiently recovered from his wounds to be able to return to France, and to resume as B Squadron commander of the 9th Lancers. The position of the British Army was now on the left of the Allied line and Francis re-joined his unit at Strazeele. They were about to go into action. It was ‘a day of heavy rain and thick steamy fog’, and Francis noted in his diary that: ‘I could not help observing on my return that the war was affecting the spirits of all a little: there was much more seriousness than when I left.’
Francis assumed his squadron command on 15 October and the unit marched through rain to Locre and through Ploegsteert Wood. He wrote in his diary: ‘We have had five of the hardest days of the war in trenches repelling German attacks … I am afraid all the cavalry traditions are for ever ended, and we have become mounted infantry pure and simple, with very little of the mounted about it …’
The Lancers were involved in trying to force a crossing of the River Lys. On 22 October they moved further north to the Wytschaete area where the 5th Cavalry Brigade of the 2nd Cavalry Division needed support. They were in a support line close to the town of Messines, which was fought for between 12 October and 2 November, and eventually captured by the Germans.
At the end of October the Lancers were still being used for such tasks as digging trenches but by now they had moved to the east of Kemmel. The enemy had made his main assault thrust for the winter and had not cracked the Allied defence line. It was at this time that a shell fell into the middle of B Squadron, causing several casualties. Francis himself was wounded again and this time he had a serious injury in the thigh. He was taken in an ambulance to Bailleul and was shipped to Dublin.
He read of the confirmation of his VC in the gazette of 16 November and in a letter to his uncle he wrote: ‘I also feel very strongly that any honour belongs to my regiment and not to me …’
Francis was a very changed man and possibly had a premonition that his own death was not very far away. He was very miserable at being absent from his regiment and frustrated that his latest wounds were taking a long time to heal. He was not able to come to terms with the death of so many of his friends, let alone the death of his twin brother. He made a new will with his friends John Buchan and Lord Grey as executors.
Slowly he made a physical recovery and took up hunting and shooting once again. On 7 April he gave what was to be a farewell dinner at Claridges, guests included his brother Arthur, Lord Grenfell, Winston Churchill and John Buchan. A fortnight later he rejoined his regiment in billets at Meteren where they had been training for several months. The regiment’s role was to support the French to the north-east of Ypres in the Second Battle of Ypres, where gas was used for the first time on the Western Front. According to the Lancers’ regimental history, on the morning of 24 May the gas ‘drifted into trenches and hung about in full density for over an hour’.
Despite the British respirators becoming saturated with the gas the dismounted cavalrymen were still able to resist the strong German divisional attack. It was the last phase of this particular German assault but as the regimental history noted, ‘the regiment underwent its greatest day of glory and sorrow of the whole war.’
In the early hours of the 25th a small party stumbled in the half light along the Menin road. John Buchan wrote: ‘Those who passed them saw figures like spectres, clothes caked with dirt, faces yellow from the poison gas. They were all that remained of the 9th Lancers. Their brigadier general, Mullens, met them on the road, but dared not trust himself to speak to them. “Tell them,” he told the Colonel, “that no words of mine can express my reverence for the 9th.”’
The party continued through Ypres and out towards Vlamertinghe, and they brought with them the body of Francis Grenfell. At Hooge, south of the Ypres–Menin road, he had been shot in the back at about 10.30 hours and his wounds were bandaged up by a corporal. But Francis ripped the bandages off as he knew the bullet had entered his heart. He died after half an hour and his last words were said to have been, ‘I die happy. Tell the men I love my squadron.’
In his notebook Francis had written of ‘the bad situation of the trenches and emphasized the necessity of a relief arriving’. A colleague wrote: ‘We carried him back the five miles; he looked so calm and peaceful in the moonlight. I shall never forget that walk back – everybody done to a turn.’ Another man wrote: ‘Francis Grenfell has left a memory which will never fade, a braver soul never stepped …’
He was buried at Vlamertinghe alongside Capt. Algy Court, a brother officer. His grave reference was II, B, grave 14. On 24 May the 9th Lancers had suffered 208 casualties out of 350 men who had gone into the line that day.
The American journalist Frederic Coleman had become a friend of the Grenfells during the war and wrote the following in his book With Cavalry in 1915:
As the sun went down that evening their comrades of the 9th Lancers buried the bodies of Fr
ancis Grenfell and Algy Court. Court’s face wore a smile, as though he was quietly sleeping. Grenfell, shot through the heart at the height of the battle, bore, too, a look of deep peace, as if at last he had cheerfully gone to a better country, to join his beloved brother ‘Rivy’, from the shock of whose death, on the Aisne, Francis had never recovered.
The Grenfell twins were much written about after Francis’ death in the English newspapers in 1915. A memorial service took place in Eaton Square, London, on 2 June and Lord Grenfell received telegrams from the King and Sir John French. Lord Grenfell himself was able to visit Francis’ grave in the early 1920s.
In his will Francis left an estate worth £40,569 gross. His medals he left to his regiment and various bequests were left to former friends and servants. He paid the following tribute to his uncle: ‘I should like to express my deep gratitude for his kindness to me during my lifetime, ever since the day when he decided I should go into the army at his expense. I have endeavoured to base my career on his example. He has, since the death of my father done everything that a father could do for me.’
He also thanked the Duke of Westminster for his ‘great generosity and kindness to me on many occasions – no man ever had a better friend.’
In 1926 The Hon. Ivo Grenfell was killed at Hawkhurst, Kent in a car accident. He was the son of Lord Desborough and brother of Gerald and Julian who had both been killed in the war. They were cousins of the Grenfell twins.
Francis is commemorated at St George’s memorial church, Ypres, and the twins are remembered at Canterbury Cathedral on the 9th Lancers Memorial, Beaconsfield Parish church, which has a stained glass window in the north wall of the nave where they are portrayed as Saul and Jonathan. They are also commemorated at All Saints’ church, Kilvey, Swansea, as the Welsh town had business links with the Grenfell family, and on the MCC Roll of Honour at Lord’s Cricket Ground in St John’s Wood.
VCs of the First World War 1914 Page 5