VCs of the First World War 1914

by Gerald Gliddon

  Rendle was eventually invalided home as his sight had been badly affected by high explosives. He was promoted to lance-corporal and was first sent to recuperate at No. 1 Temporary Hospital in Exeter. His family stayed in the town in order to be near him. His VC was gazetted on 11 January 1915.

  Rendle was invited along with Drummers Bent and Kenny to a reception at the Mansion House, London, in March 1915 but he was still recuperating from his wounds and was unable to attend. He did manage to attend a civic welcome at Launceston in Cornwall and he went to Buckingham Palace on 12 July 1915. Being a modest man Rendle did not particularly welcome the publicity that went with winning the VC and he, together with some other award winning soldiers, turned up at the Palace in taxis which were ordered to drive into the inner courtyard in order to avoid the crowds.

  Rendle left the hospital in Exeter for Bristol, his home town, and on arriving at Temple Meads railway station he was not recognized as he stepped off the express from Plymouth. A local newspaper even went as far as reporting Rendle’s homecoming in his own city as ‘furtive’.

  Thomas Edward Rendle was the son of James and Charlotte Rendle. He was born at No. 4 Mead Street, Bedminster, Bristol, on 14 December 1884. His father was a painter and decorator and his mother, who gave birth to three sons and four daughters, died on 4 October 1898. All three boys were to serve in the First World War.

  Rendle was educated at St Luke’s School, New Cut, Bedminster and then went to Kingswood Reformatory. After leaving school he wanted to join the Gloucestershire Regiment but there were no suitable vacancies. In due course, he joined the army at Bristol on 5 September 1902 at the age of seventeen. His number was 7079. He then joined the DCLI at Bodmin on 8 September. On 3 January 1903 he was sent with a draft to join the 1st DCLI at Stellenbosch, Cape Colony. The battalion moved from there to Middleburg and in July 1904 they went to Wynberg, Cape Colony, where they remained until 12 March 1906. They then left for England, arriving at Plymouth on 5 April 1906 and travelled to Crowshill.

  Shortly before Rendle left South Africa he married Lillian Crowe, the daughter of a bandsman, on 7 February 1906. They had two children, a daughter Ruby, born on 23 May 1907, and a son Edward, born on 10 October 1909. During his service in the Army Rendle had always been a bandsman.

  He served in various parts of the British Isles and in March 1914 he went with his battalion to Newry in Northern Ireland. Four months later at the end of July they returned to The Curragh in Ireland before leaving for France on 13 August 1914. After he gained his VC on 20 November 1914 Rendle took some time to recover in hospital. His was the only VC to be awarded to a member of the DCLI in the First World War. When he was decorated by the King he was also awarded the Order of St George, 4th Class (Russia).

  In the meantime he was promoted to the rank of corporal and sergeant on 24 March 1915. When he was well enough he was employed in a recruiting campaign and also visited his old school at St Luke’s, Bedminster, much to the delight of the teachers and children. During the rest of the war Rendle was employed as a musketry instructor.

  In 1919 he returned to Northern Ireland and the following year he went back to South Africa, having been invalided from the army on 12 November 1920. He was for many years a part-time bandmaster with the Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Rifles, Cape of Good Hope. He also worked at the Standard Bank as caretaker and stationery controller in their branch at Strand Street. In 1927 a South African Veterans’ organization was founded under the name of The Memorable Order of Tin Hats, or ‘Moths’ for short. Their headquarters was in Durban and their motto was ‘Mutual Help, Sound Memory, and True Comradeship’. Rendle had the name of ‘Provincial Old Bill’ within the organization. He used to attend its various meetings.

  Between the two world wars he carried out a great deal of work on behalf of the local ex-service organizations and was a ‘fine and popular character’. He used also to arrange an annual dinner to commemorate the Battle of Mons on 23 August in Cape Town. In 1939, Cape Town celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of Rendle’s historic deed.

  In the late 1930s while Rendle was in South Africa a man called Joseph Rendle began to impersonate him in England and Scotland. He wore a VC which he had purchased for fifteen shillings and he styled himself corporal and attended various functions. He was eventually caught and fined.

  In the Imperial War Museum file on Rendle, there is a note about a conversation Rendle had with the then Prince of Wales. He was asked why he had not attended the last VC dinner. Rendle replied that he could not afford the fare. The Prince then said, ‘No, I suppose you couldn’t. Anyway we had a jolly good evening.’

  Rendle died from a coronary thrombosis at the Groote Shuur Hospital, Cape Town, on 1 June 1946 after a short illness. The streets of Cape Town were crowded for his funeral on 3 June. The arrangements were made by his regiment, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Own Rifles, and he was buried at Maitland Number 1 Cemetery, Cape District, family plot 24598. His VC and medals are in the DCLI Regimental Collection at Bodmin, Cornwall.

  DARWAN SING NEGI

  Festubert, France, 23/24 November

  Naik Darwan Sing Negi of the 1/39th Garhwal Rifles was the second Indian to win the Victoria Cross in the First World War, the first being Sepoy Khudadad Khan, who had gained the medal on 31 October in Belgium (see earlier chapter). Darwan Sing, whose rank was the equivalent of a corporal, did, however, receive his decoration before Khan who was still in hospital.

  When war broke out in Europe orders were received for mobilization on 9 August 1914. The battalion was detailed with the 2nd/39th to the 20th Brigade of the 7th Division. Later it became known as the Garhwal Brigade, of the Meerut Division, Indian Expeditionary Force. The other units in the brigade were the 2nd Leicestershire Regiment and the 2/3rd Queen Alexandra’s Own Gurkha Rifles. The 1st Garhwalis left their headquarters at Lansdown, a hill station, on 20 August and after a delay at a railway terminus they departed from Karachi on 3 September. They did not sail until the 21st and disembarked at Marseilles on 14 October. They were issued with equipment and arrived at Orleans on the 21st, eventually reaching Lillers six days later. They then proceeded to march to the Rue de l’Epinette where arrangements were made for them to take over trenches occupied by units from British II Corps.

  It has been said that the Indian Army could not have arrived at a better time as the BEF was suffering badly and fast becoming exhausted from continuous fighting against a larger army. The German attack against Lille had ended and the enemy was now attacking along the line from La Bassée to Messines.

  The Indian Corps arrived on the Western Front at the end of October 1914. They took over a line that ran for about eight miles from north of Givenchy to the south, east of Richebourg l’Avoue to the back of Neuve Chapelle and then beyond Capigny to Fauquissart before turning in an easterly direction to Rouges Bancs, north of Fromelles. The Indian units were ill used by the British High Command and were fed piecemeal into the fighting and attached to British formations. They were often broken down into half battalions.

  Conditions in the area were deplorable, the whole region was little more than a sea of mud, with fetid pools and ditches. Communication trenches were little more than streams. The environment could not have been more alien than this for these men from the Indian sub-continent. The brigade order from right to left was Bareilly, Garhwal, Dehra Dun, all of the Meerut Division, then four British battalions on attachment from II Corps and lastly the Jullundur Brigade of the Lahore Division. The 1/39th Garhwalis relieved the East Surrey Regiment in the period 29/30 October and were involved in the Battle of La Bassée until 2 November. During the next three weeks they were in and out of the trenches on this part of the Front.

  At Festubert on the morning of 23 November part of the section of trenches occupied by the Ferozepore Brigade had been lost. In spite of numerous attempts to recapture the lost positions the Germans were still in occupation of a 300 yard portion of them at dusk. Allied troops were on both of the two flanks and in ef
fect were sharing the same trench as the enemy. The 1/39th Garhwalis under its commander, Lt. Col. E.R.R. Swiney, was instructed to recapture this portion and to restore the broken line at 19.30 hours. There was confusion over the line that the Germans were occupying and Swiney was not at all keen to make a frontal attack on the positions. He therefore obtained permission to change the plan of attack and gave orders to advance through the trenches occupied by the 57th Wilde’s Rifles and to attack the enemy from the British left flank. This attack began at 03.00 hours.

  Several traverses were captured with the use of bomb and bayonet and about thirty prisoners were also captured. When the supply of bombs ran out the Garhwalis were ordered to charge. After very hard fighting in which the bayonet predominated as the main weapon, the lost portion of trenches was recaptured at about 06.00 hours on the 24th. The BEF was able to join hands once more. This was achieved by men jumping on the parapet at each traverse while the party in the trench charged round the traverse and quickly took the position. At the time it was considered a novel fighting approach, for trench warfare was still in its infancy.

  The regimental history writes about the role of Darwan Sing Negi in this action as follows:

  This non-commissioned officer, from the beginning to the end, was either the first, or among the first, to push around each successive traverse, facing a hail of bombs and grenades. Although twice wounded in the head and once in the arm, he refused to give in, and continued fighting without even reporting that he was wounded. When the struggle was over and the company fell in, his company commander saw that he was streaming with blood from head to foot …

  The attack was well planned by Lt. Col. Swiney and skilfully carried out by the Indian and British troops. The battalion losses were comparatively small and the achievement was considerable. The 1st Garhwalis continued to occupy the positions until the night of the 25th when they were relieved by the 2nd Garhwalis, of the same brigade. The trenches were by this time in a terrible condition and the putrefying bodies of both Germans and Indians had to be removed, under the fire of the enemy who was only a short distance away.

  Darwan Sing Negi’s well-deserved VC was gazetted on 7 December 1914 but presented to him two days earlier by the King at General Headquarters in St Omer when he was visiting his Armies. Darwan Sing Negi was escorted to St Omer from Locon by car. St Omer was within sight and sound of operations. The presentation ceremony took place in front of Indian troops. It was the first time that a VC had been awarded to a native Indian and the event was received with great enthusiasm in India. At the pre-war Durbar at Delhi King George V had made a promise that native Indian troops would be eligible for the award.

  On 23 November, the day that Darwan Sing Negi had won his award, he was commissioned as Jemadar. He returned to India for recruiting purposes in January 1915. After the fighting at Festubert the Garhwalis were again in action, this time at Neuve Chapelle, in March 1915, when they charged a line of trenches where the wire was still uncut. Most of the British and Indian officers involved in the attack were killed but the men managed to bayonet the German garrison and remained all day with no officer in command.

  Darwan Sing Negi was the son of Kalam Sing Negi, a landowner and cultivator. He was born in the village of Kabartir, Karakot, Garhwal, north of the Pindar river in India, in November 1881. He was brought up in the Hindu faith and during boyhood he used to help look after his father’s herds of goats and sheep in the glacier valleys. He was often alone for weeks at a time and became hardy to extremes of weather. He was educated at the Regimental School and at the age of eighteen he married Chandpur Garhwal, the daughter of another cultivator and landowner.

  On 4 March 1902 Darwan Sing Negi enlisted as a Rifleman in the 1st Battalion, Garhwal Rifles. They recruited mainly from the Himalayan foothills that lay within the British territory called Garhwal, to the west of Nepal. The men were often short of stature but became active and sturdy mountaineers. The Garhwalis had a kinship with the more famous Gurkhas and wore the same slouch hats and used similar equipment. The regiment was first raised in Almora in 1887 as the 2nd Battalion of the 3rd Gurkha Regiment and became the 39th Bengal Infantry in 1890. In 1892 they added the title of The Garhwal Rifles. A second battalion was raised in 1901.

  In August 1915, almost nine months after his VC and promotion to Jemadar, Darwan Sing Negi was made a Subadar.

  Five years later on 1 February 1920 Darwan Sing Negi retired from the army with a pension and returned to his home. On 11 November 1923 he attended the unveiling of the Royal Garhwal Rifles War Memorial at Lansdowne, the Regimental Headquarters. The unveiling was carried out by Lord Rawlinson to whom Darwan Sing Negi was introduced. The memorial, which was designed in England, showed a Garhwal Rifleman in the act of fixing a bayonet, and was set on a marble plinth.

  Another better-known memorial exists at Neuve Chapelle in France, which is dedicated to the 5,000 missing Indians from the First World War. It was erected in an area that had become particularly associated with the Indian Army Corps.

  Darwan Sing Negi died on 24 June 1950 aged sixty-seven in his home village of Kafarteer, and he was cremated locally. His VC is in the officers’ mess of 39th Garhwal Rifles in Lansdowne, near Nagina, Bharat, northern India.

  F.A. DE PASS

  Near Festubert, France, 24 November

  The Indian Corps did not take part in the First Battle of Ypres but was based in the region of La Bassée-Armentières. The town of Estaires was the centre of the Indian Corps positions which stretched from Armentières in the north to Givenchy in the south-west. The Ferozepore Brigade of the Lahore Division, however, did take part in the Battle of Messines, in early November when the Indian Corps was sent to the north-west of Givenchy.

  It was on 23 November 1914 that a detachment of the 34th Poona Horse of the Secunderabad Cavalry Brigade of the 2nd Indian Cavalry Division, under the command of Capt. Roly Grimshaw, took over part of the trenches of the Ferozepore Brigade of the Lahore Division. They arrived in the line at 04.00 hours on the 24th only to find that the Germans had driven a sap right up to the parapet which had been destroyed. This made a gap of 8 feet wide and exposed the Allied trench to enemy fire from the sap, which was about 21⁄2 feet broad and about 6 feet deep. A party under Lt. F.A. de Pass guarded the breach, at his own request, and the position was inspected by Grimshaw as soon as it was daylight. Grimshaw asked for a volunteer to reconnoitre along the line of the sap to the German lines. Sowar Khan volunteered and crawled out, and on his return reported that the Germans had erected a sandbag traverse about 10 yards from their trench, at the first bend in the sap. Khan discovered that the traverse was loopholed when a German guarding it fired at him but missed.

  At 08.00 hours the Germans began to throw bombs from their side of the traverse; they continued doing so throughout the day causing several casualties. At the same time the following morning, de Pass asked Grimshaw to allow him to put an end to the continuous bombing. Grimshaw was not very keen on the idea as it would risk the lives of others should de Pass and his party need rescuing. However, he relented, and de Pass, with two Indians, Sowars Fateh Khan and Firman Shah, entered the sap and crawled along it until they reached the German traverse. With great coolness, de Pass then proceeded to place a charge of gun cotton at the loophole. He subsequently fired it and completely destroyed the traverse. The Germans quickly retaliated with a bomb which landed just behind de Pass but fortunately failed to explode. The detachment was not troubled anymore that day by the enemy bombers.

  Later, when de Pass was visiting the neighbouring positions occupied by the 7th Dragoon Guards, who were also members of the Secunderabad Brigade, he spotted a wounded sepoy from the 58th Rifles (Bareilly Brigade) lying outside the Indian trench. Several bodies were showing signs of life.

  Accompanied by Pte. Cook of the 7th Dragoon Guards, he went out in broad daylight to bring the Indian back to safety. He was exposed to enemy fire for about 200 yards. Capt. Grimshaw was not pleased about this action an
d was to write in his diary: ‘A British Officer is worth more than a wounded Sepoy, I know these things cannot be measured in that way …’

  During the cover of darkness the enemy had managed to repair their traverse and de Pass again volunteered to repeat his exploits of the night before. Grimshaw felt this would lead to de Pass’ certain death and permission was refused.

  On the 25th the Germans returned and began to bomb with increasing violence. Lt. de Pass made an attempt to repair the sap head and to supervise the mending of the parapet which had again been badly damaged. He spotted a sniper at work behind the traverse and tried to shoot him but the sniper was too fast and blew half of de Pass’s head away with a bullet at close range.

  A grieving Grimshaw reported the incident in his diary when he was exhausted and was trying to snatch some sleep:

  I was dozing off when an orderly hurriedly came up with the news that de Pass was very badly wounded. Alderson (a brother officer) and myself both jumped up and the former ran along the trench to try and help. I picked up my flask and followed. I just caught Alderson up and could see de Pass lying on the ground with half his head gone when I felt a blinding crash and fell forward on Alderson who had also fallen. [They had both been stunned by the explosion.]