Norman Douglas Holbrook was one of six sons and four daughters of Lt. Col. A.R. Holbrook, DL, JP, and Amelia Mary, daughter of Alexander Parks. He was born in Southsea on 9 July 1888. He went to a private school first but later attended Portsmouth Grammar School. He became a cadet in HMS Britannia in 1903 and a midshipman on 9 January 1905. He was gazetted as sub-lieutenant three years later. On 30 September 1909 he was made a full lieutenant and was subsequently trained in submarine work. He joined Bonaventure, the submarine depot ship, in the Home Fleet on 4 April 1911 and two and a half years later was appointed to Egmont in Malta in command of B-11 on 30 December 1913.
His father, Col. Holbrook, was a newspaper proprietor and at the outbreak of the war he was appointed by the War Office to be in charge of the Supplies and Transports, Salisbury Plain Division. At one point in the war all six sons were serving and they became known as ‘the fighting Holbrooks’. He was to receive a knighthood for his services, becoming Col. Sir Arthur Richard Holbrook.
Norman Holbrook was to be the first member of the Royal Navy to be gazetted with the VC in the First World War and he was the first submariner to win the award. By the end of the Second World War, there were to be another thirteen. In August 1918 Holbrook left the submarine service and went to Russia as lieutenant commander in the Russian cruiser Askold.
After the war he married a widow, Viva Dixon, at Holy Trinity, Kensington Gore in London on 21 June 1919. They had one son who was killed in action in the Second World War in 1945.
In September 1919 at Portsmouth, the Lower Deck invited Earl Beatty and forty-two other admirals to a special dinner to mark the end of the war. During the evening all the toasts were made by members of the Lower Deck; Holbrook was one of the responders.
When he left the Royal Navy in 1920 he was promoted to commander on the retired list published on 9 July 1928. He was then forty years old and took up farming in Midhurst, West Sussex, where he kept a pedigree herd of Guernsey cattle. At home in Midhurst he also cultivated a very fine garden and continued to fish with great enjoyment, a pastime that he had followed all his life. He was recalled for service by the Admiralty in the Second World War.
Viva Holbrook died in 1952 and in the following year Holbrook married an Austrian, Gundula Feldner, daughter of Dr A. Feldner of Innsbruck.
In 1915 the local council of the Australian town of Germanton, wanting to change its name to something less associated with Germany, drew up a list of alternative names for consideration. Martin was the favoured choice for a while but suddenly the newspapers were full of Lt. Holbrook’s daring exploits in the Dardanelles and the town council decided to choose Holbrook for its new name. Holbrook himself was delighted and honoured to have a town named after him and this remote place, in far away Australia, made much more fuss of him and his heroic deeds than did his home town of Southsea.
The Holbrooks first visited the Australian town on 9 March 1956, when the people turned out in force to meet them. A special reception was held in the local park and a luncheon was provided at the Returned Servicemen’s Club. The Holbrooks visited the town again in 1969 and as a couple for the last time in February 1975, not long before Norman Holbrook died. During this final visit they inspected a replica of the B-11 submarine which had been placed in Holbrook Memorial Park.
On each visit they were treated as honoured guests. Holbrook’s widow returned alone once or twice more and not only presented the town with many of her husband’s papers but also with his VC and other war medals, including the French Legion of Honour, on 11 May 1982. Mrs Holbrook said that it had always been her husband’s wish that the town should own the medals, and he had wanted them presented as an acknowledgement of all Holbrook had done to commemorate his name. The medals were handed over at a ceremony in front of a large crowd of local residents. Three duplicate sets of the medals were made for display purposes. These were exhibited at the Woolpack Inn Museum, the Returned Servicemen’s Club, and in the council’s own offices. A statue of Holbrook was also erected and unveiled in the town. Holbrook has also given his name to a road in Fareham, Hampshire.
Holbrook died six days short of his eightieth birthday on 3 July 1976 at his home at Stedham Mill, Midhurst. He is buried in St James’s churchyard, the local cemetery, and in his will he left £81,445 (£81,708 gross).
In 1993 Mrs Holbrook was still living in Midhurst and the family firm of Holbrooks Printers was still operating in the Portsmouth/Southsea area.
Listening to him talking to Peter Liddle, he comes over as a self-assured and modest man, and his final verdict on the B-11 incident was that they were ‘very very lucky’. The extract comes from a tape recorded interview of personal recollections, part of a series entitled For Valour, The Liddle Collection, University of Leeds. At the present time his VC and medals are on loan to the Australian War Museum at Canberra.
H.H. ROBSON
Near Kemmel, France, 14 December
In August 1914 Private Henry Robson was stationed in Plymouth waiting to be drafted to India when instead his battalion was called up to join the BEF in France. The 2nd Royal Scots (Lothian Regiment) were sent to France in August 1914 as part of the 8th Brigade of the 3rd Division. They fought in the Battle of Mons where they inflicted heavy losses on the enemy in the afternoon of 23 August, while suffering only light casualties themselves. The battalion also took part in the Battle of Le Cateau three days later. In September they fought on the Aisne and then went north with the rest of the BEF to take up positions in the Ypres Salient. When the First Battle of Ypres began in October the battalion took part in the heavy fighting at La Bassée, to the south-west of the industrial city of Lille.
Pte. Robson won his Victoria Cross in the attack against Petit Bois to the north of Kemmel, on 14 December 1914 where the British trenches were just in front of Irish Farm. A heavy bombardment by British and French batteries began at 07.00 hours. At 08.00 hours the 8th Brigade with the 1st Gordons on the right and the 2nd Royal Scots on the left, attacked the German trenches situated on the high ground to the south of Petit Bois and also Petit Bois itself. On the left, the Royal Scots were partly successful in capturing two lines of enemy trenches but elsewhere the attack failed. In the afternoon the 2nd Suffolk Regiment moved up from reserve to relieve the 2nd Royal Scots. During the fighting considerable gallantry took place and the battalion history records ‘men facing death over and over again in noble efforts to succour wounded comrades …’. Robson particularly distinguished himself by crawling through mud during heavy fire and rescuing a wounded non-commissioned officer (NCO). In an attempt to save another man Robson was hit by a bullet as he left the trench. He continued to crawl forwards, however, until a second bullet incapacitated him. Later in the day he was rescued. The remaining men of the 2nd Royal Scots marched back in companies to Kemmel where they stayed in reserve during the night. The wounded Robson was sent back to hospital in England and was taken to Cambridge, where he recuperated from bullet wounds. His battalion remained in the Kemmel area for the rest of the year.
Robson’s name was gazetted for a VC on 18 February 1915. After recovering from his wounds in a Cambridge hospital, he returned to South Shields in mid-July. On the 12th he went to Buckingham Palace in order to receive his VC.
Henry Howey Robson, always known as Harry, was the son of Mr and Mrs Edward Robson. He was born at No. 40 Hampden Street, South Shields, Durham, on 27 May 1894. At one time the family lived in Garrick Street, and Robson was educated at the Mortimer Road Council School. His father worked at St Hilda’s Colliery in South Shields. Later the family resided at Shotton Bridge, a district in Shotton Colliery, a mining village to the west of the City of Durham.
Robson joined the 2nd Royal Scots (Lothian Regiment), in Edinburgh in 1912, when he was not yet eighteen. He decided on a life in the army rather than one in the coal mines, where he had already worked for a short time.
On his return to South Shields, Robson was given a very warm welcome and cheered as he arrived at the station. He was
limping and could only walk with the aid of a stick. He was met by the mayor and other local dignitaries. He was only able to use his left hand for shaking hands as the right one had been injured. He was ushered into an open carriage which was preceded by a band from the Durham Light Infantry. The carriage was driven through the streets to the Municipal Buildings. Robson received a formal address of welcome from the mayor and replied with a brief speech of thanks. He also used the occasion to promote recruitment, saying that ‘We want more men, and still more men.’ The National Anthem was then played and three cheers were called for. In October he was given the Freedom of the Borough.
On 24 May 1916 Robson was invited to return to his old school at Mortimer Road and later a presentation took place in the spacious yard of Stanhope Road School where the Mortimer Road pupils were billeted. The school children were present in large numbers and the general public were also invited. The school was celebrating Empire Day and wished to honour one of its most famous scholars. Robson was presented with a gold watch which had been subscribed by pupils of Mortimer Road.
Empire Day was celebrated all over the country and parades took place in schools throughout the British Isles. These generally took the same form with pupils parading in their playgrounds singing patriotic songs and saluting the Union Jack. At Mortimer Road during his address, the mayor, Alderman Taylor, told the audience that observing Empire Day was ‘The emblem of everything that went to make a good citizen and a good nation.’
Robson eventually went back to the front, but only for a brief period. The regimental history mentions him in the following extract about the Battle of the Ancre:
The 2nd Royal Scots had better fortune on the night of 3 November. A small group of volunteers, including Private Robson, VC, under command of 2nd Lt. Callender, reached the enemy’s first line and drove back a hostile listening-post. The party then proceeded to the next line which was found to be strongly manned. Callender and his men, having taken careful stock of the Boche position, then commenced to withdraw, and though the foe kept up a heavy rifle fire and threw numerous grenades, they arrived back at our lines without a casualty.
Ten days later Robson was seriously wounded at Serre. He took no further active part in the war after this incident.
After the war Robson worked in the local shipyards and then with the Corporation Highways Department. He then went to sea and became a steward on board oil tankers on the run between England and South America for two and a half years. It was after this job that he decided to sell his medals for £90 to help pay for his passage to Canada where he proposed to make a new life. There is a certain amount of confusion about the medals at this period and he may have acquired a duplicate set.
His first job was that of a streetcar conductor, and in 1934, he got a job as a civil servant working in the Parliament buildings in Ontario. He was sergeant-at-arms to the Ontario Legislature for six years and then became an information clerk. This job meant that he was meeting the public all the time which he did with relish, and besporting his medals he acted as guide to the thousands of people visiting the buildings. He must have dealt with about 100,000 visitors a year. Showing a party around the buildings took him about 45 minutes and many visitors were especially curious about Robson’s display of medals. In 1930 Robson came over to Britain from Canada for the Prince of Wales’ banquet in London for holders of the VC. In his own words ‘the trip was splendidly arranged’ and he was able to stay very briefly in North and South Shields. Robson wrote to Mr George McVay, the mayor’s secretary, to thank him for his kindness during his brief visit. Mr McVay became a sort of keeper of the local archives and local historian and noted down many of the events which occurred in South Shields and district. In 1939 Robson was presented to the King and Queen at Queen’s Park, Ontario during their Canadian visit on the eve of the Second World War. In 1953 he returned to England for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation with a number of VCs from Canada, and once more he paid a brief visit to South Shields where he was given a civic reception. He also visited Mortimer Road School. In Edinburgh he visited the Royal Scots Monument before returning to London.
His wife, who came from Edinburgh, was not with him on the trip as she was frightened of flying. Asked if he would like to settle in South Shields again he replied, ‘I guess my heart and soul are still right here in South Shields.’
A year later he retired from his job in the Parliament buildings, and devoted his energies to the welfare of ex-servicemen and women. In 1956 he paid what was to be his last visit to England when he attended the Centenary celebrations of the VC. He also visited South Shields for what was to be the last time.
In recent years Hampden Street, the street in South Shields where Robson was born, has almost been demolished and the land used for a new tax office and car park. Shotton Colliery has long gone and Mortimer School has also been demolished but it has been replaced by a new school.
Robson died of cancer on 4 March 1964 at the age of sixty-nine in Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto after a long illness. He was buried in the military section of the York Memorial Cemetery in Toronto, plot B, grave 302. His headstone gives his date of death incorrectly as 1897. At his death he left a widow, five children and fourteen grandchildren. His wife Alice died nine months after her husband.
There seems to be some confusion about the ownership of Robson’s medals. After he had sold them he spent thirty-five years tracing their whereabouts. In 1951 they were bought by a Dunfermline solicitor, who lent them to Robson to wear for the 1956 Review. It was understood that they would then be returned but Robson seems to have refused to do this and made out that he had purchased them. Maybe in time he did buy them as his family presented them to the Royal Scots after his death. The handing-over ceremony took place in Toronto where one of Robson’s daughters, Mrs Bruce Gaskin, gave them to an ex-officer of the regiment who passed them on to their headquarters in Edinburgh.
W.A. MCCRAE BRUCE
Near Givenchy, 19 December
On 19 December Lt. W.A. McCrae Bruce 59th Scinde Rifles (Frontier Force) won the Victoria Cross for the Indian Army in the fighting near the town of Givenchy west of La Bassée. He was in charge of a small party during a night attack on an enemy trench. The enemy had made signs of surrender and had held up their rifles, but as soon as Bruce’s party put their heads over the parapet they were shot at. During the fighting Bruce was wounded in the neck but remained at his post walking up and down the trench giving words of encouragement to his men. The Germans fired all day and also used bombs as they continuously counter-attacked the Indian Corps’ positions. Eventually Bruce was killed, but by his heroic example the little group, by now under the command of Havildar (Sgt.) Dost Mahomed, kept the Germans at bay. An ever-growing pile of German corpses in front of their trench was evidence of their determination. They held out until dusk when the trench was finally taken by the desperate foe who had brought up a trench mortar. This forced Dost Mahomed to order his men to retire. They refused to obey, however, stating that they had been ordered by Lt. Bruce Sahib to hold on to the end. Finally only two survivors crawled out.
It was not until 4 September 1919, ten months after the war had ended, that Bruce’s VC was gazetted. The reason for this delay is that the deed was not known about until repatriated troops told the full story of his bravery and surviving fellow officers made their recommendations. Bruce’s father, Col. Bruce, was not well enough to go to Buckingham Palace for the presentation of the posthumous decoration, so instead it was given to William Bruce’s mother by the lieutenant-governor of Jersey, Maj. Gen. Sir Alexander Wilson, KCB, at a private ceremony. Bruce’s other medals were the 1914 Star with clasp, BWM and VM.
William Arthur McCrae Bruce was the only son of Col. and Mrs Andrew M. Bruce whose family home was at La Fontaine, Pontao, Channel Islands. William was, however, born in Edinburgh, on 15 June 1890. He was educated between the ages of fourteen and eighteen at Victoria College, Jersey and was a member of the cricket eleven in 1907 and 1908.
He left the college in 1908 and entered the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. The following year he was commissioned and attached to the Northumberland Fusiliers. In 1910 he was transferred to the 59th Scinde Rifles (Frontier Force) in India.
When war began in August 1914 Bruce was home on leave and he left immediately to rejoin his regiment in India but was ordered to meet up with them in Cairo. He joined his regiment with three officers (who were all to be killed in the war). The battalion had embarked in Karachi on 29 August 1914, in HMT Takada which disembarked en route at Port Tewfik before proceeding to Cairo where they stayed for two days. They then re-embarked at Alexandria, once more on HMT Takada and finally arrived in France at Marseilles on 26 September.
The 59th Scinde Rifles were part of the Jullundur Brigade, one of three Indian Brigades of the Lahore Division which formed part of the Indian Corps. It was involved in the La Bassée fighting at the end of October, and later at Givenchy in December.
Bruce has no known grave; his name is listed on the Neuve Chapelle Indian Memorial, north-west of La Bassée, in France. A memorial to the officers of the 59th Scinde Rifles is dedicated in the garrison church at Kohat church, on the north-west frontier of India, which is now in Pakistan. In the chancel of St Clement’s church, Jersey, there is a brass plaque to Bruce’s memory along with that of his wife Margaret. It is also dedicated to the memory of the brave men of his regiment, who refusing to leave him, were killed alongside him. Bruce’s name was also commemorated when Victoria College, his former school, named a house after him in 1919 and his name is included on the college war memorial. One hundred and twenty-six college members died in the war out of 631 who took part, including another holder of the VC, Arthur McReady Diarmid.
VCs of the First World War 1914 Page 23