VCs of the First World War Gallipoli

by Stephen Snelling

  There would be no posthumous honours for Grimshaw or Addison. Beckwith, of the Hampshires, received a DSO, as did Stoney, although this was connected with operations later in the campaign. Only the actions of Garth Walford were deemed to have rivalled those of Doughty-Wylie, and their names were linked together in a joint citation for the award of their posthumous VCs which was published in the London Gazette on 23 June 1915. They were the first Victoria Crosses of the campaign to be announced. The citation read:

  On the morning of the 26th April, 1915, subsequent to a landing having been effected on the beach at a point on the Gallipoli Peninsula, during which both Brigadier-General and Brigade-Major had been killed, Lieutenant Colonel Doughty-Wylie and Captain Walford organised and led an attack through and on both sides of the village of Sedd el Bahr on the Old Castle at the top of the hill inland. The enemy’s position was very strongly held and entrenched, and defended with concealed machine guns and pom-poms. It was mainly due to the initiative, skill and great gallantry of these two officers that the attack was a complete success. Both were killed in the moment of victory.

  Five months after the awards were made, on 17 November, a small boat came alongside the rusting hulk of the River Clyde. In it was a single woman. Using the old ‘wreck ship’ as a pier, she went ashore, walked through the village of Sedd el Bahr and on up to the crest of Hill 141, where she placed a large wreath on the white cross standing at the head of the lone grave overlooking the bay.

  Lilian Doughty-Wylie had come to pay her last respects to her husband. She was the only woman to set foot on the peninsula during the eight-month long campaign.

  Charles Hotham Montagu Doughty-Wylie, the highest ranking officer to win the Victoria Cross during the Gallipoli Campaign, was born at Theberton Hall, Suffolk, on 23 July 1868, the eldest son of Henry Montagu Doughty, JP, and Edith Rebecca (née Cameron). His father, a retired naval officer, was a barrister and lord of the manor of Theberton. Among his more celebrated relatives were his grandfather on his mother’s side who was Chief Justice of Vancouver Island, and his uncle, the Arabian explorer Charles Doughty.

  Educated at Winchester and Sandhurst, the young Charles Doughty was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers on 21 September 1889. Promoted lieutenant the following year, he first saw action in the Hazara Expedition of 1891, in which he also received his first wound. His next fifteen years of military service reads like a roll call of the British Empire’s colonial conflicts; Chitral on the North-west Frontier of India (1895), Crete (1896), the Sudan (1898–9), South Africa (1900), Tientsin, China (1900) and Somaliland (1903–4). Along the way, he collected a cluster of campaign medals, a second wound and promotion to the rank of captain in the 2nd Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers.

  His military career to this point was nothing if not varied. He served as transport officer during the relief of Chitral, was a brigade-major with the Egyptian Army during Kitchener’s reconquest of the Sudan, for which he received the Order of the Medjidie, 4th Class, led a mounted infantry unit in the Boer War, where he was wounded during an engagement near Vredefort, and raised and commanded a corps of mounted infantry as part of the China Field Force in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion. In 1903 he found himself in the Horn of Africa, commanding a Somali Camel Corps detachment in operations against the so-called Mad Mullah. The fighting in Somaliland was to be his last experience of warfare as a combatant before the Gallipoli Campaign.

  In May 1904 he travelled to India on leave where in Bombay, the following month, he married Lilian Oimara Adams Wylie, widow of Lt. Henry Adams, Indian Medical Service. After a holiday spent on the North-west Frontier, Doughty returned to his regiment in Agra. In December he changed his name by deed poll to Doughty-Wylie, and in the following March, the couple returned to England, by way of Baghdad, taking in the archaeological sites in Babylon and Constantinople. Perhaps it was this journey, combined with the experiences of his famous uncle, which gave him a taste for exploring the Near East. Once home, he sought a change from traditional soldiering and his request for political employment was granted. In September 1906 he was appointed British military vice-consul in Konia, a Turkish province in Asia Minor. Shortly after taking up his new post, he was notified of his promotion to major. Later Cilicia was added to his area of jurisdiction, and it was there, during the Armenian massacres of 1909, that he came to the public’s notice. It was there also that he was introduced to the woman who would feature prominently in the last years of his life. Doughty-Wylie first met Gertrude Bell in 1907 while she was engaged in an archaeological dig. They continued to correspond and it is probable that they met again in London five years later, but their relationship did not blossom until August 1913 when he visited her family home at Rounton Grange, near Northallerton.

  Promoted consul-general as a reward for his services in Adana, Doughty-Wylie was posted to Addis Ababa, where he served until 1912. On the outbreak of the Balkan War he and his wife went to Constantinople where he worked as Director of the Red Cross units and she served as Superintendent of Nursing Staff. As a result of his experience during the conflict, he was appointed British representative on the commission appointed to delimit the Greek and Albanian frontier. He became the commission’s chairman and his services were recognised by his being appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (Civil Division).

  In 1913 Doughty-Wylie returned to his consulate in Addis Ababa where he became engaged in treaty negotiations with the Ethiopian Government. Before leaving England, he wrote to Gertrude Bell: ‘Go I must … There’s anarchy out there, complete and beastly.’ His diplomatic service was brought to a premature end by the outbreak of war and Turkey’s entry into the conflict. February 1915 found him in Cairo, en route to England where he hoped to gain active service employment. Gen. Sir John Maxwell, C.-in-C. Egypt, sought permission to make use of the soldier-diplomat, but that same month the former consul-general was ordered to join Sir Ian Hamilton’s Staff with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

  Doughty-Wylie proceeded to London where he met Gertrude again before taking up his new appointment. He joined Hamilton’s GHQ on 18 March, the day of the Navy’s attempt to force a way through the Narrows. Four weeks later, on 21 April, the GHQ Staff were temporarily split up, with Doughty-Wylie and Williams taking their places on board the River Clyde. Doughty-Wylie was under no illusions about the hazardous nature of the enterprise. ‘This is a very interesting show from every point of view’, he wrote to his wife’s mother, ‘but it runs a great many chances however one looks at it’.

  News of his death reached Lilian Doughty-Wylie in St Valery-sur-Somme, where she was in charge of a hospital. She confided in her diary: ‘The shock was terrible. I don’t know quite what I did for the first sixty seconds. Something seemed to tear at the region of my heart. All my life was so much of his life, all his life mine …’.

  Five months later she received his Victoria Cross, which was sent to her with a letter from King George V, regretting that his death had deprived him of the pride of personally conferring the distinction upon him.

  Gertrude did not carry out her threats of suicide. Instead, she threw herself into a new career with the Arab Bureau of the British Intelligence Department. Later, she was to play a key role in the installation of Faisal ibn Hussain as king of Iraq. After the war she became director of antiquities, responsible for the archaeological treasures of Babylon and Assyria. She died in 1926, her affair with Doughty-Wylie still a secret outside her family. Access to her correspondence with him was granted only after Lilian’s death in 1960.

  Dick Doughty-Wylie’s VC, together with his many honours and decorations, are now displayed by his former regiment at the Royal Welch Fusiliers’ museum in Caernarfon Castle. Alongside them is a miniature portrait of him painted by his sister Gerty. His last gallant action is recalled today in his home village of Theberton, where his name is recorded on the war memorial outside St Peter’s Church. For many years a machine-gun stood guard at the foot of the whi
te cross, but the ravages of time led to its removal and it now figures in a display at the Suffolk Regiment museum in Bury St Edmunds. Inside the church a beautiful stained-glass window depicts the village’s heroic son as St George. Of a less decorous nature is the small road, not far from the church, which bears his name.

  But it is, most fittingly, on the peninsula itself that his deeds are best recalled by the presence of his solitary grave on the crest of the hill briefly known as Fort Doughty-Wylie in his honour. Of the many individual graves which were scattered across the Gallipoli battlefields, his alone remains on its original site. Flanked by two trees, the grave is a focal point for the legions of visitors who struggle up the slopes of Hill 141 to gaze out across the bay of Sedd el Bahr and to marvel at the gallantry of a man whose inspiring leadership helped turned defeat into victory all those years ago.

  Garth Neville Walford, who played such an important role in the battle for Sedd el Bahr, was born on 27 May 1882, at Frimley, Surrey, the only son of Col. Neville Lloyd Walford, RA.

  He attended the prep school run by A.H. Evans at Newbury before entering Harrow, his father’s old school, in the autumn of 1895. Walford joined the large boarding house known as The Grove. An entrance scholar, he was invariably near the top of his class except for a period in late 1896 and throughout 1897 when he appears to have been dogged by ill health. He was repeatedly absent from the terminal examinations and remained in the Second Remove of the fifth form throughout this period. Walford’s work was regularly commended to the headmaster, and led to his winning a prize while in the First Remove of the fifth. Although he did not obtain one of the major school prizes, in 1900 he did win the Sayer Scholarship, originally established to fund one place at Caius College, Cambridge, and went to Balliol, Oxford. Unlike so many future VCs, he showed little aptitude for sport beyond playing Harrow football for his house.

  Walford joined the Royal Artillery in 1902, where his abilities were quickly recognised when he topped the list of university candidates. His first appointment was in the militia, in December of that same year. He was appointed second lieutenant in December 1905, and two years later was married to Betty Trefusis, the daughter of an army officer. The couple had two daughters.

  When war broke out Walford was at the Staff College and he went out to France in the middle of August, where he served with the 27th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery. During the retreat from Mons, he was twice fortunate to escape shell bursts close by him. One caused superficial wounds to both arms, and another blew off his cap without harming him. He saw action at the battle of the Aisne in September, and was evacuated sick later that month. Promoted to captain on 30 October 1914, he returned to his brigade at Ypres, where he held a number of temporary staff appointments. In January 1915 he was summoned home to take up a new appointment, as brigade-major RA, with the newly constituted 29th Division destined for the Dardanelles. After a brief spell at Leamington Spa, where the Divisional Artillery was formed, Walford sailed for Egypt in March 1915. He arrived in Lemnos, with the artillery headquarters staff, on 12 April and in the period immediately prior to the landings Walford joined a party of senior officers to observe a naval bombardment of their objectives. It was during this operation that Walford had his first experience of Turkish gunnery. He noted: ‘I saw one shell fall about a thousand yards away and I don’t think anything else was much nearer. One felt pretty safe, as we were loaded up with generals and admirals, and they wouldn’t risk the Turks making a bag like that.’

  Like so many of his colleagues among the expeditionary force, Walford was filled with romantic zeal for the venture which lay ahead of them. Inspired by the epic nature of the enterprise and the grandeur of its classical setting, he was moved to write a verse entitled ‘The Last Crusade’. It began:

  Once more revives the never-dying war

  Of East and West: through this one entry gate

  Between two worlds have armies alternate

  Swept forth to conquest an alien shore …

  By 21 April, his mind clearly focused on that ‘alien shore’, Walford was ready for the ‘great adventure’. Once again, the past collided with the present, as he wrote in his last letter home: ‘Well we are off in a day or two if the weather stays fine; just like the Greek fleet going to Troy, people collected from all over the known world; we have even got our wooden horse, which I will explain later on. As far as the intelligence reports tell us, however, there seems to be no Helen.’ Five days later, he was dead.

  Walford was buried close to where he fell, just outside the walls of the Old Fort in Sedd el Bahr. A large cross beside a ruined house marked his grave during the campaign, but later his remains were reinterred in a Commonwealth war cemetery on the peninsula. Today Walford is also remembered on a brass plaque in Chagford Church, Devon, and at the Regent Hotel, Royal Leamington Spa, where he was based in early 1915.

  In a letter written the day after the success at V Beach, largely inspired by Doughty-Wylie and Walford, Gen. Hunter-Weston (GOC 29th Division) insisted that ‘no honour could be too high for them’. Referring to his avowed intention to recommend them for a ‘suitable posthumous reward’, he added: ‘They achieved the impossible. They showed themselves Englishmen in the old mould. I esteem it an honour and a privilege to have known such gallant men.’

  W. COSGROVE

  Near Sedd el Bahr, 26 April 1915

  Cpl. W. Cosgrove

  Historians have tended to dwell on the contributions made by Doughty-Wylie and Walford to the success at V Beach, ignoring the influential part played by a 26-year-old junior NCO in the forefront of the assault. Yet it was the gallantry displayed by Cpl. William Cosgrove that undoubtedly helped turn the tide in favour of the assaulting force, faced with the desperate mission of clearing the Turks out of their positions commanding the beach.

  At 6ft 6in Cosgrove was a giant of a man. His unit, the 1st Royal Munster Fusiliers, had been in the van of the assault from the River Clyde. On the first day no unit had performed more bravely or suffered more grievously. Of the three companies who charged out from the sallyports cut in the side of the River Clyde, 70 per cent were killed or wounded. Those who succeeded in making it ashore could advance no further than the 8-ft-high sandy bank, some 10 yds from the shoreline, which afforded a measure of cover from the raking machine-gun fire. About 25 yds on, up a slight rise, belts of barbed wire entanglements barred the way. Between bank and wire the bodies of five men of the Munsters bore mute testimony to the accuracy of the Turkish fire and the apparent futility of further advance.

  The dazed survivors, huddled below the bank, held their position throughout the rest of the day and night. Most were exhausted; their endurance tested beyond the limit by a day of slaughter and intolerable strain. Capt. G.B. Stoney, the military landing officer who went ashore with Lt. Col. Doughty-Wylie on the morning of 26 April, found the few remaining officers reluctant to move forward.

  Although by late morning the village of Sedd el Bahr had been largely cleared, the centre of V Beach was still covered by Turkish machine-guns and riflemen to the front and along both flanks. There also remained the seemingly impossible task of forcing a path through the barbed wire barrier strung across the slope above them. According to Cosgrove, who was among those sheltering beneath the sandy ledge on the foreshore, the wire entanglements ‘ran in every direction, and were fixed to stout posts that were more than my own height’.

  Stoney, however, was determined to carry out his orders to advance in conjunction with Doughty-Wylie’s planned assault on the right. He walked along the beach, collecting officerless parties. All fit men were to advance along the left of the village, past houses which still hid snipers, to link up with Doughty-Wylie’s men who were preparing to attack Hill 141 from the edge of the village. It was no easy task organizing the scattered groups. Any movement along the foreshore invited instant Turkish retaliation, and it was not until nearly 1.30 p.m. that Stoney was ready. Leading the assault were a party of Munster Fusiliers with or
ders to cut a way through the wire. They included Cpl. Cosgrove, who was well aware of his poor chances of survival. He later stated:

  I thought, when I heard the work I was detailed for, that I would never again have the opportunity of a day’s fighting. However, the work was there; it had to be done, for on its success rested the safety of many men, as well as the opportunity it would afford them of helping to throw back the Turks.

  Our job was to dash ahead, face the trenches bristling with rifles and machine guns, and destroy the wire entanglements – that is, to cut them here and there with our pliers. Fifty men were detailed for the work; poor Sergeant Major Bennett led us, but just as we made the dash – oh, such a storm of lead was concentrated on us, for the Turks knew of our intention.

  Our Sergeant Major was killed – a bullet through the brain. I then took charge; shouted to the boys to come on. From the village near at hand there came a terrible fire to swell the murderous hail of bullets from the trenches. In the village they fired from doors and windows, and from that advantage they could comfortably take aim.

  The dash was quite 100 yards, and I don’t know whether I ran or prayed the faster – I wanted to try and succeed in my work, and I also wanted to have the benefit of dying with a prayer in my mind. I can tell you it is not fortunately given to everyone to note the incidents that seem to be the last in your life, and you never feeling better or stronger.