His career apparently becalmed, promotion came slowly during the 1930s. At the outbreak of the Second World War he was a commander serving at Devonport. In 1941 he joined the Retired List. However, his career was not quite over. Brought out of retirement, he was appointed assistant captain of Malta Dockyard and at the end of the war he was joined on the island by his wife and daughter. Promoted captain of the dockyard and later King’s Harbour Master, he continued to serve on Malta until his second and final retirement from the Navy in 1948, with the rank of captain. Malleson was not yet fifty, and the next twelve years were spent in a nomadic existence as he attempted to launch a second career on dry land. Settling first at Lifton, in Devon, the Mallesons moved to Washaway, near Bodmin, in Cornwall, before relocating to Galloway, where they ran a hotel. Eventually they returned to Cornwall, where, between 1950 and 1960, the retired naval captain and his wife ran Pentewan Sands caravan and camping site near St Austell.
They retired and moved, in the early 1960s, to St Clement, a small village near Truro. They bought a plot of land, with an adjoining orchard, and had a bungalow built. Pendrae was the first home they had owned and it was to be Malleson’s home for the last twelve years of his life.
He had taken to wearing a monocle and became a noted village character, although few residents knew anything of his distinguished war record. His daughter, Mrs Jane McWilliam, recalled that a family friend had done a painting of his VC exploit and presented it to him. ‘I think my father found it a slight embarrassment as it was always hung well tucked away from the gaze of visitors.’ He held a number of posts in the local community, serving as chairman of the parish hall committee and chairman of the sea cadets unit. He refused, however, to take part in any reunions of VC holders and declined to join the Victoria Cross and George Cross Association.
Captain Malleson VC, the last-surviving member of the V Beach heroes, died on 21 July 1975. His body was cremated and, in keeping with his wishes, his ashes were scattered at sea off Falmouth by his old colleague from China days, Cdr. Macintyre. His Victoria Cross, together with his other medals, were for a time held by his old school, Edgeborough, but in 1993 were acquired by Lord Ashcroft and now form part of the Imperial War Museum display.
During his lifetime, Malleson had rarely spoken of his part in the landings. His report, on which a large part of this chapter is based, is believed to be the only full account he ever wrote and has never been published before. It was given to his daughter by a relative ‘for safe-keeping with the injunction not to let my father know we had it or he would be sure to want his account destroyed!’ In a letter to the author, Malleson’s brother Hugh (a retired commander) stated:
The modesty was very real. He reckoned that he and his companions trying to replace the landing barges at V Beach … were available for any odd jobs, and this was an emergency. Of course, he was frightened, as were the others, but like truly modest men, he seemed to prefer keeping his reflections on the action to himself.
The hours spent in the water trying to get lighters back into position, under heavy fire was one thing, but the visible execution of hundreds of our soldiers before slipping into the water might well have un-nerved others. On this subject, therefore, Wilfrid’s reluctance to talk or join in celebrations about VCs was initiated by his illness at Bighi Hospital and prolonged by the curious.
The award of the Victoria Cross to Sub-Lt. Tisdall, the first to a member of the Royal Naval Division, came only after an exhaustive investigation. The delay was chiefly caused by the absence of any senior officer witnesses from Tisdall’s own battalion. Lt. Cdr. Wedgewood, who had observed his gallant conduct, had restricted his recommendations to men from his own unit, and while other officers aboard the River Clyde certainly knew of Tisdall’s actions, they did not know his identity.
Following the landings, Tisdall’s unit supplied beach parties for work in clearing up the shoreline. Two days after the landing, he wrote to his family: ‘Have been under fire and are now ashore; all day spent in burying soldiers. Some of my men are killed. We are all happy and fit. Plenty of hard work and enemy shells, and a smell of dead men …’. On that day Tisdall made his first visit to the firing line, in charge of a volunteer party carrying ammunition. His calm authority and cool courage were evident once more on 28 April, when a shell burst near a French gun team, wounding a horse and sending the gunners scurrying for cover. Tisdall went out, got the horse back on its feet, removed its harness and made the gunners return. When he went back a doctor called out in warning: ‘We can get more horses, but we can’t get another Tisdall.’
On 30 April the Anson Battalion joined its sister unit, the Howe Battalion, in bolstering the French sector of the Helles front. Tisdall and his platoon remained in their forward positions for five days while preparations were made for the advance on Achi Baba. On 6 May the Second Battle of Krithia, as it was officially called, began with the Anson Battalion, part of the 2nd Royal Naval Brigade, in reserve to the French. At about midday, the Anson and Hood Battalions, with a portion of the Howe Battalion, were ordered to plug a gap between the French and the British near the Kanli Dere. Tisdall led his platoon into an abandoned Turkish trench on the extreme right of his battalion. They sheltered from the heavy fire being directed at them and it was while looking over the parapet, at approximately 3.00 p.m., that Tisdall was mortally wounded by a bullet in the chest. He died a few minutes later without regaining consciousness. A member of Tisdall’s platoon later wrote: ‘He was one of England’s bravest men. All his men cried when he went because all the boys thought the world of him.’
Tisdall died without knowing that his courageous exploits at V Beach would be recognised. Indeed, had it not been for the persistence of his father, it is highly probable that his gallantry would have gone unrewarded. Fortunately, however, he found a strong ally in Lt. Cdr. Wedgewood, who had commanded the machine-gun battery on the River Clyde. On 21 December 1915 Wedgewood wrote to Maj.-Gen. A. Paris (GOC RN Division), concerning Tisdall’s gallant conduct. He stated:
Commander Moorhouse [CO of the Anson Battalion] recommended him for some distinction which his death prevented. But he did not see his heroism. I did. Owing to his anomalous position, I believe he missed the VC, and now however later I should like to bear my testimony …
Paris agreed, and an official inquiry into the case was set up with evidence being collected from all the surviving participants. The result was a recommendation for the Victoria Cross supported by Paris, Rear Admiral Wemyss and Lt. Cdr. Wedgewood. Eleven months after the landings, on 31 March 1916, the London Gazette carried the announcement of Tisdall’s posthumous VC. The citation read:
During the landing from the SS River Clyde at V Beach, in the Gallipoli Peninsula on the 25th April, 1915, Sub-Lieutenant Tisdall, hearing wounded men on the beach calling for assistance jumped into the water and, pushing a boat in front of him, went to their rescue. He was, however, obliged to obtain help, and took with him on two trips Leading Seaman Malia and on other trips Chief Petty Officer Perring and Leading Seaman Curtis and Parkinson. In all, Sub-Lieutenant Tisdall made four or five trips between the ship and the shore, and was thus responsible for rescuing several wounded men under heavy and accurate fire.
Owing to the fact that Sub-Lieutenant Tisdall and the platoon under his orders were on detached service at the time, and that this officer was killed in action on the 6th May, it has only now been possible to obtain complete information as to the individuals who took part in this gallant act. Of these, Leading Seaman Fred Curtis, ON Dev 1899, has been missing since 4th June, 1915.
Later, it was confirmed that Curtiss had been killed in action during the Third Battle of Krithia. Perring, Malia and Parkinson were all wounded during the campaign. Their brave work at V Beach was recognised by the award of Conspicuous Gallantry Medals to each of them. Russell and Rumming, from Wedgewood’s RNAS unit, had already received the same decoration.
Arthur Walderne St Clair Tisdall was born in Bombay on 21 July 18
90, the second son of the Revd Dr William St Clair Tisdall and his wife Marian (née Gray). His father, an acknowledged expert on comparative Eastern religions, was in charge of the Church Missionary Society’s Mahommedan Mission.
In 1892, after a short stay in England, the Tisdall family embarked for Ispahan, in Persia, where Dr Tisdall was to head the CMS Persia–Baghdad Mission. For the next eight years of Arthur Tisdall’s life, this was to be his home. ‘Pog’, as he was nicknamed by the rest of his family, was educated by an English governess and his father, who taught him to speak conversational Latin by the age of ten.
The family returned to England, via the Dardanelles, in 1900. Arthur Tisdall enrolled as a pupil at Bedford School, where he acquired a new nickname, ‘Pussy’, because of his time spent in Persia, and a reputation for high academic ability. His scholarly progress towards Trinity College, Cambridge, was paved with prizes. By the time he embarked on his university education in 1909, ‘Wally’ Tisdall, as he was known, was already a highly popular and impressive personality. To his academic achievement, he added sporting prowess and an infectious sense of humour. He also displayed some mildly eccentric behaviour, such as walking at night from Bedford to Cambridge. One contemporary described him as being ‘over six feet high, broad-chested, strong-limbed, a broad forehead crowned with dark brown wavy hair, deep grey eyes faintly flecked with brown, a finely poised head – one felt there were such enormous possibilities in him’.
At Cambridge, Tisdall rowed for his college and amassed a plethora of academic prizes, culminating in a Double First BA Honours degree and the Chancellor’s Gold Medal for Classics. Among his great enthusiasms were the growth of socialism, women’s suffrage, economics, to which he devoted his final two years at Cambridge, and literature. He had started writing verse before entering Trinity and his love of poetry grew throughout his days at university. He was noted by fellow students for his comic verses; nonsense rhymes which reflected both his intellect and his sense of humour. There is little doubt, however, that he took his writing extremely seriously. His poems which have survived from this period point to the first stirrings of a talent that would go tragically unrealised. At one time he contemplated trying to make his living as a writer, but in the end opted to pursue a more orthodox career as a civil servant. In 1913, his final year at Cambridge, he passed the combined Indian and Home Civil Service examination and took up an appointment in London. The highest echelons of the Civil Service beckoned. Then war broke out.
In May 1914 Tisdall, whose only previous military experience consisted of serving in the ranks of the OTC at Bedford and Cambridge, had joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. When the RNVR was mobilised in August 1914, Tisdall cut short a camping holiday in Sussex to join his unit as an able seaman. After undergoing training at Walmer Camp, Tisdall found himself two months later in Belgium as part of the Royal Naval Division hastily despatched to help defend Antwerp from the advancing German Army. Although still a humble naval rating, he was appointed interpreter to the local Belgian commandant. On 7 October he wrote home, describing his first experience of war:
The singing of shells is indescribably weird when first you hear it. All our kits lost by fire. The burning city of Antwerp is a terrible but magnificent sight against the blackness of the night, and lights up the whole country round. The sight of the poor women and children driven from their homes makes one’s blood boil. It’s horrid to feel so useless.
When the Germans broke through, the Royal Naval Division were compelled to beat a hasty retreat along the rapidly narrowing coastal corridor. More than 1000 men were forced to seek internment in Holland to avoid capture. Tisdall was among those fortunate enough to escape to England, where he was promptly commissioned into the Anson Battalion, his rank of sub-lieutenant being backdated eleven days to 1 October.
After a few weeks spent at Crystal Palace, Sheerness and Chatham, Tisdall was posted to Blandford Camp, in Dorset, where the Royal Naval Division exchanged their naval blue uniforms for khaki. A winter of discontent followed with the depression lifted only by the news, in February 1915, of impending action. Tisdall cheerily noted: ‘We have been promised a six-week or two-month campaign, probably fairly exciting.’ Following an inspection by Winston Churchill, the division left Blandford for Bristol on 27 February. A few days later their destination was confirmed as the Dardanelles. During a short stay on the island of Lemnos, Tisdall busied himself drawing maps, touring villages and attempting to learn the local Greek dialect. In common with many of his fellow officers, he was filled with optimism for the coming campaign. On 9 March he wrote:
Life is so pleasant here and there’s something to look forward to; to turn the Turks out of Constantinople, etc, would be a thing well worth doing, and give me a feeling that I had really done one satisfactory piece of work. Here one really feels that we are fighting on the side of civilization.
The Royal Naval Division was shipped to Egypt while final preparations for the landings were made. They then returned to Lemnos, where Tisdall learned of his platoon’s detached role aboard the River Clyde. Of the landings, and his heroic part in it, he left no record. His diaries were never found and his last postcard home, undated but sent the day after his death, stated:
We are in the firing line now, and spend the night being sniped at and missed. For nearly a week we had to unload barges for other people under heavy fire, which made a lot of dirt, and frightened our Allies and mules … When not working we sleep and eat …
On 7 May Tisdall was buried just a few yards from where he died. Three days later news of his death reached his father, who was then serving as vicar of St George’s Church, Deal. A memorial service was held on 13 May, and later an engraved tablet was placed in the church. Fifty-five years afterwards, on 28 April 1970, Tisdall’s brother and sister, F.R. St Clair Tisdall and Mrs A. Alcock, attended a ceremony at HMS President, where they presented his Victoria Cross and other medals to the headquarters of the London Division, RNVR.
Like his famous comrade-in-arms, Rupert Brooke, Tisdall was cut down in the prime of a life which promised greatness. Nearly eighty years after his death, he still appears to embody that intoxicating brand of romantic idealism which carried so many of his generation’s best and brightest to destruction on the shores of Gallipoli.
C.H.M. DOUGHTY-WYLIE AND G.N. WALFORD
Sedd el Bahr, 26 April 1915
Lt. Col. C. Doughty-Wylie
Capt. G. Walford
By mid-afternoon on 25 April the main landing at V Beach had been brought to a bloody standstill. Three companies of Turks, in well-sited positions overlooking the shore, had reduced the invasion to a shambles. Groups of survivors from the spearhead units of the 86th Brigade sheltered beneath a sandy ledge only a few feet from the gently lapping sea. From the ruins of Fort No. 1 on the left, across the rising ground to Hill 141 and down through the narrow streets of Sedd el Bahr to the battered Old Fort on the right, the Turks commanded every avenue of advance. To move forward towards the thick belts of barbed wire was to court almost certain death. To retreat through waters swept by machine-gun fire involved nearly as great a risk. And so they stayed where they were, a bewildered confusion of Dublins, Munsters and Hampshires, clinging to their precarious toehold, scarcely daring to move.
In the face of the rapidly disintegrating landing plan, their commanders aboard the beached River Clyde reached the same conclusion. As hope of an out-flanking movement from W Beach faded, Lt. Col. H.E. Tizard, CO of the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers and senior surviving officer, ordered a halt to further landings until after nightfall. Then, with the sky lit by the flames from the burning village of Sedd el Bahr, the troops, who had been crowded aboard the River Clyde all day, were eventually led ashore. By 12.30 a.m. they were on the peninsula. The problem of breaking out of the tiny beachhead, however, remained unresolved. V Beach, in the early hours of 26 April, was the scene of considerable confusion. Units were hopelessly mixed. Many were officerless and badly shaken by the slaughter
of the first day.
Frustrated by the chaos and loss of momentum, two of the expeditionary force’s most senior staff officers went ashore on their own initiative. Lt. Col. Charles Doughty-Wylie, more familiarly known as ‘Dick’ Doughty-Wylie, and Lt. Col. Weir de Lancy Williams were both members of Sir Ian Hamilton’s Staff. They had been aboard the River Clyde, together with an interpreter, as liaison officers for GHQ. Now under Tizard’s command, they resolved to make a reconnaissance of the beach with a view to the speediest possible resumption of the advance.
For Doughty-Wylie in particular, the short walk from the River Clyde to the Turkish shore represented a moment heavy with irony. Two years before, the Sultan of Turkey had bestowed upon him the Imperial Ottoman Order of Medjidieh, 2nd Class, for his work in command of the Red Cross units serving with the Turks during the Balkan Wars of 1912–13. Earlier still, he had been fêted by the Turkish authorities, the British Government and the international community for his courageous efforts to halt the massacre of Armenian Christians in the Turkish town of Adana in April 1909. More than 2,000 people were killed in an outbreak of fratricidal violence which shocked western Europe, and there was little doubt the death toll would have been higher but for the intervention of Doughty-Wylie, then serving as military vice-consul in the Turkish province of Konia. Donning army uniform, he rode at the head of fifty Turkish soldiers through the Christian quarter, restoring order. Shot in the right arm by an Armenian who mistook him for a Turkish officer, Doughty-Wylie returned to face the mobs. By virtually taking command of the town, he succeeded in quelling the marauding gangs and spared Adana’s Christian population further bloodshed. He was made a CMG for his bravery and cool leadership.
VCs of the First World War Gallipoli Page 9