VCs of the First World War 1914

by Gerald Gliddon

  Grimshaw was far from well and scribbled a note to de Pass in case he became conscious explaining why he had not come sooner. But de Pass was certainly dead and a message from Headquarters said that the Germans were massing in their trenches for an attack. Grimshaw observed some time later that de Pass’s defence works had once more been destroyed by the enemy, allowing them to snipe at will at the Indian unit’s positions along with those of the 7th Dragoon Guards.

  Thus ended the short life of a very brave soldier. In the book The Indian Corps in France, J.W.B. Merewether describes de Pass as ‘the very perfect type of British officer. He united to singular personal beauty, a charm of manner and a degree of valour which made him the idol of his men …’

  Although Grimshaw does not exactly say it in his diary, he appears to have been a little annoyed that de Pass took matters into his own hands. It was as if he was determined to make a mark in the shortest possible time. He was surely successful and was awarded the VC for his action. Sowars Abdullah and Fateh Khan and Firman Shah, who had supported their officer so well, received the Indian Distinguished Service Medal and Pte. Cook was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM).

  In his report, dated 27 November, Grimshaw wrote: ‘I consider that Lieutenant de Pass’s conduct throughout was most intrepid, and that this action was a magnificent example to the men of the Detachment.’ Another officer, Lt. Elphinstone of the same regiment, in writing to de Pass’s parents said of him: ‘He was quite the most gallant fellow it had ever been my good fortune to meet.’

  A few days later, Grimshaw who was far from recovered, had to inspect de Pass’s body at a local mortuary at Béthune where it had been taken by the 7th Dragoon Guards. He was required to search the young man’s pockets for his personal effects and described the scene in the following way: ‘I felt an unpleasant pang when I stood beside poor Bumpty’s body. That lifeless clay was all that was left of his brilliant accomplishments. It was only with an effort I could bring myself to search his pockets. It was soon over and, giving his hand one last press, I left the room feeling very wretched …’ On the 28th Grimshaw had to write to de Pass’s father and his fiancée, ‘a very sad business’.

  On 7 December Lt. de Pass was buried at Béthune Town Cemetery at 16.00 hours. Grimshaw wrote: ‘We held over the burial to get a reply from de Pass’s people as to their wishes as to the disposal of their son. Just as he was lowered into the grave our guns thundered out their wicked-sounding salvos …’ The grave number is I, A, 24.

  When Grimshaw was next on leave he visited de Pass’s family. The lieutenant’s posthumous VC was announced in The London Gazette on 18 February 1915. He was the first Jew and also the first of the Indian Army to win the award in the First World War. Grimshaw described the award as satisfactory. Sadly, de Pass’s father was not fit enough to receive his dead son’s medal and it was, therefore, posted to him.

  Frank Alexander de Pass came from a Jewish family of Spanish/Portuguese extraction and was the son of Sir Eliot Arthur and Beatrice de Pass. He was born at No. 2 Lancaster Gate Terrace, London W8 on 26 April 1887.

  He went to school at the Abbey School in Beckenham, Kent, and then moved on to Rugby School in 1901. From there he went to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich and in 1904 was third on the list of successful candidates. In January 1906, at the age of eighteen, he was commissioned in the RFA and three years later on 20 March 1909 he was promoted to full lieutenant. His battery was then stationed in India and de Pass applied for a commission in the 34th Prince Albert Victor’s Own Poona Horse, Indian Army, and was successful. He was a natural linguist and quickly learnt the necessary standard of Hindustani which was necessary when dealing with native Indian troops. He also studied Persian and was an accomplished rider, both on the flat and across country. He played a great deal of polo and was also a fine shot. In November 1913 he was appointed orderly officer, with the local rank of captain, to Sir Percy Lake, Chief of General Staff in India.

  After the war broke out in August 1914, de Pass rejoined his regiment in September and travelled with it to France. It was part of the Secunderabad Cavalry Brigade and belonged to the 2nd Indian Cavalry Division. The regiment arrived in France on 12 October 1914 docking at Marseilles, and became the first Indian cavalry regiment to serve in the war. They first saw action at Neuve Chapelle on 2 November, where they assisted in repelling a German attack. The Battle of Ypres was still being fought and the enemy withdrew from most of the left bank of the Yser in order to concentrate on the capture of Ypres.

  During the next three weeks the 34th Poona Horse continued to serve dismounted, and was mainly involved in providing working parties in the day while acting as a mobile reserve by night. Many units from the Indian Army Corps were badly used. They were totally unused to the wintry weather and the shell-torn and flooded landscape. Their brigades were broken up into separate battalions and even on occasions into companies. This was very disheartening practice for the native Indian troops who had come to expect a fairer deal from the British High Command. Later in November they were involved in the fighting near Festubert where de Pass won his VC.

  His dress uniform is part of the collection displayed at the Jewish Military Museum and Memorial Room in Stamford Hill, London. His medals are in the collection of the National Army Museum.

  H.P. RITCHIE

  Dar-es-Salaam, East Africa, 28 November

  At the beginning of the First World War in August 1914 the Germans held various parts of the African Continent. These included the Cameroons, German South-West Africa and German East Africa. The British attacks so far in East Africa had been unsatisfactory and an ill-judged action at Tanga in November ended with a reverse. Land operations as a result of these reversals were suspended and responsibility for them was transferred from the control of the India Office to the War Office.

  Gen. Wapshare took over command of the operation against the Germans in East Africa in December 1914 a few days after an audacious raid by Commander Ritchie. He was to confine himself to mainly defensive operations. One Victoria Cross had already been earned in Africa, by Capt. J.F.P. Butler of the Gold Coast Regiment, and Commander Ritchie was to gain the second in a very dramatic action at Dar-es-Salaam on 28 November 1914.

  Dar-es-Salaam was in the hands of the Germans. A powerful wireless telegraph station was situated in the port which was capable of communication with the Cameroons and German West Africa. The Allies thought that a floating dock which had been sunk in the harbour no longer closed off the exit and that subsequently the ships inside the harbour would be able to move out and in their turn block the British Allied harbours at Killindini and Mombassa. The port, therefore, constituted a source of danger to the British, and it was decided to destroy all craft that might be used to operate in support of the Königsberg, a German raiding cruiser, which was barricaded down the coast in the reaches of the Rufiji.

  Dar-es-Salaam, 28 November

  Soon after hostilities began, Ritchie, who was second in command of the battleship HMS Goliath, was employed on the East African coast giving support to those cruisers which were trying to keep the Königsberg bottled up. The plan was for Goliath, along with the cruiser Fox, to sail as far as the harbour at Dar-es-Salaam. Ritchie was to then sail in the Duplex, a former German cable-laying ship which had been converted to an armed auxiliary vessel, and to destroy as many enemy boats as he could find. But Ritchie realized that the Duplex would be too large to enter the harbour and decided to arm another, much smaller steam boat, and to man it with a Maxim gun. He also protected the sides of the boat with such material as he could find. He set sail accompanied by two small support boats, and entered the harbour unchallenged.

  In the harbour white flags were flying on the flagstaff as a token of truce. Although the enemy was clearly watching they allowed Ritchie to continue. He then proceeded to create havoc and to sink or damage every craft which was afloat in the harbour. Ritchie expected a trap and after thoroughly searching the main creek, which fl
owed into the harbour, he took over two steel lighters and leashed them to each side of his small boat. The enemy could wait no longer and began to fire from all directions. Field guns were used, as well as machine guns and rifle fire. Goliath and the Fox opened fire and the Governor’s house was burnt to the ground and many other buildings destroyed. Many of the crew were severely wounded and Ritchie himself was wounded at the outset. Petty Officer Clark and A.B. Seaman were both so badly injured they could not carry on with their duties at the wheel. Ritchie was wounded eight times before becoming unconscious at about the same time as his boat sailed back through the harbour mouth. PO Clark who had his wounds bound up, now took over the steering and pointed the craft out to the open sea.

  Ritchie subsequently spent six weeks in the Zanzibar Hospital and regained his fitness. He was awarded the VC for his audacious raid while PO Clark was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal and Upton won the Distinguished Service Medal.

  Ritchie’s VC was gazetted on 10 April 1915 shortly before he returned to naval duties. He did not receive it from the King until 25 November 1916. He was the first naval officer to win the VC in the First World War.

  On 13 May 1915 the battleship Goliath (12,950 tons) under Capt. T.L. Shelford was torpedoed by the Turkish destroyer Muavenet-Millieh, commanded by a German officer, off the Eski Hissarlik Point, just inside the Dardanelles Straits. Some 570 men were lost including the captain and Upton out of a complement of 750.

  The Germans, however, lost all their African possessions after the war.

  Henry Peel Ritchie was born at No. 1 Melville Gardens, Edinburgh on 29 January 1876, the eldest son of Dr and Mrs R. Peel Ritchie MD. He attended the George Watson’s Boy’s College, Edinburgh, 1883–6, when he left to continue his studies at Blair Lodge, and joined the navy as a cadet in HMS Britannia on 15 January 1890, when he was almost fourteen. He qualified as a Gunnery Officer and was made a full lieutenant on 30 June 1898. In the following year he was acting Junior Staff Officer at the Sheerness Gunnery School. In 1900 he became army and navy lightweight boxing champion, and runner up in 1901.

  Ritchie was married to Christiana Lilian Jardine, only daughter of James Aikman, a wine merchant, on 31 March 1902 at St Cuthbert’s church in Edinburgh. They had two daughters.

  In 1911 his shore service finally ended when he was posted to HMS Goliath as a senior lieutenant and later became a commander. He retired on 29 January 1924.

  The Ritchies lived at Craigroyston House, Davidson’s Mains, Edinburgh. This is now part of the Scottish Gas Offices. In 1957 his wife died, and the following year on 9 December 1958 he himself died at the age of eighty-two and was cremated at Warriston in Edinburgh. He had attended the Buckingham Palace gathering on 26 June 1920.

  N.D. HOLBROOK

  HM Submarine B-11, Dardanelles, 13 December

  In August 1914 Lt. N.D. Holbrook was twenty-six years old and after being trained to be a submarine officer he found himself based at Malta in command of the British submarine B-11. The ‘B’ Class to which the submarine belonged was built in 1905/6 by Vickers, and was of a fairly primitive design – the boat performed poorly on the surface and was not at all easy to manage when submerged. Its overall length was 143 feet with a displacement when on the surface of 285 tons. In all it was about a third of the size of the submarines used in the Second World War. It possessed a single petrol engine which only gave it a surface speed of 12 knots. In addition a storage battery fed an electric motor which could only produce 61⁄2 knots when the boat was submerged. When the submarine dived for long periods the speed of the craft was considerably reduced. It is difficult to stress just how primitive these early submarines were in their design; there was no sort of consideration given to the comfort of the crew, and there was no room for extra crew space. These factors underline the considerable bravery and forbearance of the crews who manned them. It took a special sort of temperament for a man to work in these conditions.

  Originally the submarines had been designed for coastal defence. After a long sea journey of 2,000 miles to Malta in the Mediterranean, Holbrook was ordered to take the craft a further 1,000 miles to the Dardanelles Straits between Asia Minor and the Gallipoli Peninsula. The Allied powers, from early in December 1914, kept up a dawn to dusk patrol at the entrance to the Dardanelles. Here they were able to look down the Straits and observe the many ships and smaller craft belonging to the Turkish Navy, which were often manned by German crews. Turkey had come down on the side of the Central Powers against the Allies soon after the outbreak of war.

  Lt. Commander Pownall was in command of the mixed fleet of French and British shipping outside the Straits at this time and decided to send a submarine to attack Messudieh, a Turkish battleship, in Dardan Bay to the north of Chanak. The battleship was being used as headquarters for the German Naval Staff and was virtually ‘bottled up’ in the Straits. Holbrook’s submarine, the B-11, manned by his first lieutenant, Lt. Winn, in the Control Room, and a crew of fifteen ratings, was detailed for the job, mainly because the boat possessed a new and reliable battery. Holbrook’s task was not an easy one and it would have to be carried out with the boat submerged for as long as possible and often only a few feet off the bottom of the channel.

  The danger of the proposed voyage encouraged each of the crew to write a final letter to their families and friends in case they did not return. The difficulties of navigation alone made the trip a hazardous one and the current in the Sea of Marmara could run as fast as 5 knots while the submerged B-11 could only travel at 6 knots. Any return journey, however, would be a speedy one with the current then assisting the passage.

  The enemy searchlights which were in position on both sides of the Straits were usually switched off at dawn, one by one. It was also known that there would be a minefield to negotiate and Holbrook had special shields placed on his submarine to fend off mines and other obstructions.

  At 03.00 hours on 13 December the B-11 cast off from its supply ship the Hindu Kush on its way to attack the battleship at Chanak. The strong searchlights continuously swept the waters to the south of Kephez Point and Lt. Holbrook decided to wait for nearly an hour, knowing that the lights would go out at dawn, when it was still fairly dark. Soon, however, the submarine was experiencing an unexplained vibration and on breaking surface Holbrook saw that one of his shields on the port side had been damaged. He decided to jettison it and to continue without it. It took two men half an hour to complete the job, adding considerably to the tension on board.

  After rounding the point at Sedduel Bahr, Holbrook then proceeded to treat the narrow Straits as a wide river with a strong current and to navigate accordingly. As daylight grew he hugged the European shore, where there was still a strong current. Holbrook had intended to sail the first 7 miles at 50 feet below the surface until he had reached the first minefield at Kephez but having come from fresh water, when it submerged B-11 found itself in very much muddier salt water. This affected her trim and forced her upwards nearer the surface. The submarine continued at this level for two and a half hours, surfacing every three-quarters of an hour in order to check its position in the Straits.

  At 08.30 hours Holbrook identified the mouth of the Saundere river on the port side close to the five lines of mines across the Straits which formed the Kephez minefield. Now the B-11 had to descend 80 feet and slowly move forward ‘blind’ for the next hour. At 09.40 Holbrook surfaced again to check his position and found himself further on than he had expected. Already he could see a Turkish battleship a mile away, but it was too early to fire a torpedo. B-11 moved across the mouth of the bay close to Kephez Point, dived again, came up less than a mile away from the Turkish battleship, identified as the Messudieh, in the Sea of Marmara.

  Holbrook gave the order to fire, targeting the ship’s bow, and the subsequent explosion violently shook the small boat. Immediately the submarine surfaced and the guns from the battleship began to fire almost at once. Holbrook could see the ship beginning to settle by the stern and v
ery soon her guns ceased firing. She didn’t actually sink but rolled over, with considerable loss of life. He dived again and made for the waters in mid-channel because the current had carried the B-11 too far inshore. A torpedo boat and other vessels appeared and Holbrook kept to 50 feet below the surface. During the return journey the craft often touched bottom and once more had to go under the five lines of mines. After about eight or nine hours submerged, the B-11 made it back to safety and her supply ship outside the Dardanelles entrance.

  Holbrook had grown a beard during the Dardanelles campaign and there is a picture in the archives at the Imperial War Museum of him in front of his crew wearing a large cardboard Iron Cross which had been presented to him by his fellow officers. The B-11 became the first ever submarine to sink a battleship. Nine days later Holbrook’s name was gazetted on 22 December 1914 for the VC which he well deserved. Each one of his crew received the Distinguished Service Medal (DSM), and his First Officer the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). Holbrook, accompanied by his parents, received his decoration from the King at Buckingham Palace on 5 October 1915.

  In addition to their medals the Prize Court awarded Holbrook and his crew £3,500 for destroying what amounted to almost one-third of the Turkish Navy’s strength. The prize was calculated as £5 per man in the Turkish crew. The sinking was written up as a major triumph by the British Press and a Canon H.D. Rawnsley even responded to the event by publishing a special commemorative poem on the theme of the action.

  After August 1915 Holbrook was mainly involved in patrolling duties, and served in F-3, V-4 and E-41. At one point he was wounded by fire from a ship which was displaying the white flag. Later in the war he was involved in mine-laying duties and was mentioned in despatches in July 1917. He retired from the Royal Navy in 1920.