by E. W. Hermon
Dear Mrs Hermon,
You will know that you have the very deepest sympathy from all ranks in the Brigade concerning the death of your husband. He had established himself as a very able & gallant commander in the Field & was recommended for promotion to command a Brigade.
On the morning of 9th inst. about 5.30 a.m. an attack on a very large scale was launched on the German lines from 7 miles south of Arras to north of Thebes (Vimy Ridge) by the army to which we belong. The 24th Bn North. Fus. was one of the leading Battalions of this Brigade. The attack succeeded & about 6 a.m. your husband decided to move his Hd Qrs from our own trenches to one in the German line & follow up his Battn. This is the usual procedure with Battn H.Q. in an attack nowadays.
The enemy were not shelling us very badly & we hadn’t suffered many casualties at the time your husband crossed no man’s land with his Adjutant. An enemy shrapnel bullet caught him as he was walking forward. It appears to have gone through the papers in his left top jacket pocket & killed him instantaneously. I am sending you the papers in a small parcel. His medical officer took charge of the body & brought me the papers a few minutes afterwards. He was buried at ROCLINCOURT as shown on attached map this afternoon about 3 p.m. I’ve seen his servant and he is looking after your husband’s kit. I also saw General Nicholson, the Div. Commander, this afternoon & gave him details.
We are fighting a big battle which is going successfully for us but it is impossible to say who will come out alive. None of us have had sleep for 3 nights as there is so much work that I feel I cannot do justice or express to you all I feel concerning your very gallant husband.
I know that nothing I say can be of any use to you but I should like to say that I had the very highest respect & admiration for him. He never spared himself & knew no fear. His ability was considerable & it is cruel that he should have been cut off from a great career. Beyond all this personally, I had a real affection for him which was shared by many of the officers in his Battn & the Brigade.
I hope you may be given strength to bear your sorrow which I feel acutely (as I once told you) because I am responsible for his becoming an infantry C.O. I hope to write to you again later & you will of course let me know whether I can do anything for you. With deepest sympathy,
Yours very sincerely,
H. E. Trevor.
The last words your husband said (as stated by his adjutant who was behind him) was ‘Go on’ to his Battalion.
A second letter from Brigadier-General Trevor was dated 17 April 1917:
Dear Mrs Hermon,
I’m sending this note by Buxton who goes on leave today to report to you. He will bring the papers etc. found on your husband & handed me by the medical officer of his Battn.
Allison, the adjt of the 24th Bn N.F., tells me that when the Colonel and he went forward the enemy’s artillery barrage had considerably slackened. Apparently a tank was caught up on the German front line (I saw it myself – The CAREFUL) by running into a concrete m.g. emplacement & the Boches were firing at it. Allison says that three bullets came over from the direction of their left. The Colonel was just in front of him & there seems little doubt one of these rifle bullets hit your husband just below the heart or in that region, penetrating the papers in his left hand top pocket (as you will see). He went down on his hands & knees & told the adjt to ‘Go on’ but almost immediately sank. The medical officer tells me he thinks a big blood vessel below the heart was severed & that death was almost instantaneous.
Your husband’s horses are being sent to Div. Hd Qrs with the groom. General Nicholson has promised to look after them & they will be better cared for than with an Inf. Bn Hd Qrs. I can only repeat how much I feel for you in your irreparable loss.
Yours very sincerely,
H. E. Trevor.
Your husband’s kit & valise are being sent home to you through Cox & Co., 1 Charing Cross. There is a 100 franc note in the pocket book found which Buxton is bringing. Allison is writing you concerning some money (about 50 francs) advanced by your husband to the Battalion which he is to settle. Among the papers in Colonel Hermon’s pocket was one from General Trevor himself, who had sent him a note before the battle:
Dear Hermon,
Just a line to reiterate my best wishes to you & your Battn. I know you will get your fellows as far forward as possible in the assembly trenches.
No good altering anything now that the men have been taught & trained. Apparently there may be some dugouts found to be intact. I think the best way to deal with them is to shoot down at any men in the trench before getting down into the trench & doing any bombing.
The last wire forwarded you on this subject was a copy of a 34th Div. wire. You had better not bother to alter anything you’ve already taught your fellows.
Yours ever, H. E. Trevor.
1.20 a.m. 9/4/17
One of Robert’s fellow officers from King Edward’s Horse, Lieutenant (later Captain) Donald MacKinnon, wrote a letter of sympathy to Ethel Hermon from Dublin, where he was with the Reserve Regiment. ‘Mac’ had served with him when he was commanding ‘C’ Squadron and still referred to him as ‘the Major’. His words might well serve as an epitaph for Colonel Hermon. He wrote:
The Major was right about those below knowing best. The men just adored him: nobody outside the regiment can imagine what absolute faith they had in him. He had an extraordinary moral influence over them which I have never seen another instance of. You get it among boys, & you find a kind of blind devotion among the Regular Tommy class, but with the Squadron it was more than that because the majority were well-educated folk & mostly above the average age. He was so absolutely above everything that was mean & crooked, in fact he could hardly believe it to exist in others.
You may say this is a commonplace virtue, but in the Army you see it is not. Most of us every now & again do show a little spite or meanness especially in soldiering, but he never could, he was too generous & too sympathetic with everyone.
And then the greatest of all he helped everyone he had under him to avoid spiteful things & mean things. And in this his spirit will never leave me I know, nor the rest of us.
1 Stanford, headmaster of St Aubyn’s prep school.
2 Captain the Rev. E. F. Duncan MC had gone to the assistance of some men wounded by shelling whilst taking a service in Arras near 27th Battalion HQ, but was killed as he ran across open ground.
3 The War Diary records briefly: ‘8th–14th March, Trenches. Shelling normal on both sides. We had 18 casualties, 6 O.R. Killed, 12 O.R. Wounded.’
4 The ‘gallant fellow’ was Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the ‘Red Baron’, credited with shooting down eighty Allied planes. When finally shot down himself in April 1918, he was accorded a full military funeral by the British out of respect for his gallantry.
5 Hodgson.
6 Of communion.
7 The War Diary records that the ‘enemy shelled Town’, and on 1 April one officer and four other ranks were killed and ten wounded on a working party in the line.
8 The former Sergeant Heath who had been commissioned by this time.
9 Assistant Provost Marshal.
AFTERWORD
The First World War would continue, with its appalling human toll, for another eighteen months before the Armistice was declared on 11 November 1918, finally bringing the terrible slaughter to an end.
Initially the attack at Arras had been successful, in part due to the rolling artillery barrage, as on this first day of the battle the German trenches were overrun and over 5,000 prisoners taken, but it later developed into a stalemate although the Canadian Corps, at terrible cost, achieved their objective by capturing Vimy Ridge. Once again the losses to both sides were unacceptably high: the 24th Battalion alone lost four officers killed and nine wounded with scores of soldiers killed, wounded or missing.
When Ethel Hermon received the telegram from the War Office on 13 April telling her that her husband had been killed in action, the news affected her deeply and h
er diary entries end abruptly after this date. She kept his dressing-room at Cowfold untouched, just as he had left it on his final leave. Despite her grief, she continued to be a dedicated mother to their five children. Robert’s father, Sidney Hermon, undertook the cost of educating them and the two boys followed in their father’s footsteps to Eton whilst the three girls were educated at Abbot’s Hill, Hemel Hempstead. Brook Hill remained the family home until after Ethel’s death in 1930.
During the last years of her life Ethel suffered from a heart condition described as a ‘tired heart’. She died at the early age of fifty, when Ken was just fifteen years old. Her daughter Mary was with her at the end and firmly believed that her parents were reunited in death: in her final moments, her mother had opened her eyes, smiled, and murmured her husband’s name, as if she could see him standing beside her. Ethel’s obituary in the Cowfold Parish Magazine described her as having ‘a real enthusiasm for anything that aimed at a high ideal’; however, ‘the trait by which she would be most remembered was her most splendid capacity for motherhood: she gave her whole forceful character to this as a vocation’. Her coffin was borne from the house on a wagon covered with evergreens and at every house in the village the blinds were drawn.
After Robert Hermon’s death, Buxton and Harry Parsons returned to the old regiment where they continued to serve until the end of the war, when Mrs Hermon wrote to the authorities stating that Buxton had previously been in her employment and that she was happy to offer him work ‘as a motor driver immediately on his return to civil life’. Buxton did go back to Roclincourt, to care for Colonel Hermon’s grave, just as he had pledged. In 1917 Ethel Hermon wrote to him, expressing her thanks: ‘It is the greatest comfort to know that you were able to do so much. I am so grateful Buxton, for all your trouble. I know you spared no pains. I do so hope the little box shrubs will live & that some day I shall see it for myself. I am so intensely glad that the primroses, the one little bit of home, are there as it were to keep him company.’
Buxton remained with the family at Brook Hill until after Mrs Hermon’s death. He and his wife Marie had six sons and when at last a daughter, Jessica, was born to them, the church bells in Cowfold were rung in celebration. Nigel, the sixth and last son, obtained a bursary through his father’s old regiment, King Edward’s Horse, to attend the Imperial Service College, Windsor. He obtained a commission in the Royal Artillery and was Mentioned in Dispatches for his bravery in Normandy soon after the D-Day invasion.
Colonel Hermon would have been proud that his sons, like him, fought for ‘King and Country’, in the Second World War, though he would doubtless have been deeply saddened at the onset of another world war – a conflict that he had predicted if the German war machine had not been totally annihilated by the end of the ‘war to end all wars’. His elder son, Bob, was commissioned from Sandhurst into the Royal Dragoons in 1926 and in July 1942 took command of the King’s Dragoon Guards and fought with them in North Africa. In March 1943 he was wounded during the attack on the Mareth Line in Tunisia, and, like his father before him, awarded the DSO. Promoted to full colonel in April 1944 he became deputy-commander of 23 Armoured Brigade. By the end of the war he had been awarded the OBE, and received a Mention in Dispatches.
Of the three girls, Mary was the only one to have children. Betty married Luke Leslie Smith and lived at Nuthurst in Sussex, where Buxton worked for them after the death of Mrs Hermon, until well after the Second World War. Betty died in Yorkshire in 1975. In 1929 Mary married John McKergow, who had spent five years in India with the Royal Scots Greys. They lived at Shermanbury in Sussex until going to New Zealand to farm in 1935 with their eldest son and daughter. A second son was born in 1938. With the advent of the Second World War, Mary’s husband, John, joined the New Zealand army as a captain, and was badly wounded in Italy in late 1943, whilst commanding the 20th Armoured Regiment. Mary ran the farm in Canterbury, New Zealand, with great determination and success for the four years John was away and after the war they had two more children, a daughter and a son. John died suddenly in 1961 whilst the two post-war children were still teenagers, and Mary, like her mother before her, was left to bring up children on her own. However, she lived for another thirty years, to enjoy her eighteen grandchildren and even some of her thirty-two great-grandchildren, before she died in 1991 at the age of eighty-three – the matriarch of a large dynasty spread over five continents.
Meg, the youngest daughter, became engaged in the early 1930s to Anthony Gilliat, a brother officer of Bob’s in the Royal Dragoons, who died in India a few months later after being attacked by a tiger. Meg travelled to New Zealand with Mary and her family in 1935 to recover from this tragedy, and on the voyage home the following year she met and subsequently married an Indian Army officer, Thomas Atherton, of the Deccan Horse. She died in London at the age of fifty-one. Meg is buried in a grave beside her mother’s in the churchyard at Cowfold. On the night of her funeral her husband, then in his sixties and in poor health, returned to the Cavalry Club in London and took an overdose, as he could no longer face life without her.
Ken, the younger son, joined the Durham Light Infantry after Eton and Sandhurst. During the Second World War he volunteered to serve with the Commandos, and was captured in Crete in 1941. Having escaped from Eichstadt POW camp, he was recaptured and sent to Oflag IVC – the infamous Colditz Castle – from where he corresponded with Buxton. After the war he married and had two sons. He died in Cumbria in 1978.
Ken once wrote that Buxton had been ‘an example to us all from our youth upwards’, and on his death, Mary wrote to his widow Marie that he had always been ‘a very great friend & counsellor to me all my life. His passing seems to have severed the last link with my old home, my parents and all my childhood.’ For the Hermon children, ‘Buckin’ – or ‘Buccy’ as they called him – had proved to be an unbreakable and enduring link with the father they had known so very briefly.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
ARCHIVES
The National Archives, Kew: War Diaries of King Edward’s Horse
Imperial War Museum, London: Photograph Archive
Northumberland Fusilier Museum, Alnwick Castle: War Diaries of 27th and 24th Battalions, Northumberland Fusiliers
Queen’s Own Hussars Regimental Museum, Warwick: papers
BOOKS
Gilbert, Martin, The First World War (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994)
Holmes, Richard, Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (HarperCollins, 2004)
James, Lionel, DSO, History of King Edward’s Horse (Sifton, Praed & Co., 1921)
Keegan, John, The First World War (Hutchinson, 1998)
McCorquodale, Colonel D., OBE, History of the King’s Dragoon Guards, 1938–1945 (Caxton Works, c. 1946)
Sheen, John, The Tyneside Irish (Pen & Sword Books, 1998)
INTERNET
firstworldwar.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In preparing this collection of my grandfather’s letters, I am greatly indebted to Gordon Buxton’s only daughter, Jessica Hawes (Members Secretary to the Montgomeryshire Genealogical Society), who has provided me with invaluable material relating to the Hermon family, including photographs, letters from members of the family to her father, extracts from his diaries and newspaper cuttings. She has cheerfully responded to numerous emails, and answered endless queries. Amongst the items are postcards from Colditz from Ken Hermon, wartime letters from the Middle East from Bob Hermon and news of life on the farm in New Zealand from Mary McKergow.
Michael Meredith, the Eton College librarian, initially suggested the transcription of the letters so that they could reach a wider audience, and it was thanks to him that the whole project began. The collection will eventually be donated to the Eton Library for safe keeping. I am indebted also to our friend and neighbour, James Holland, the military historian and novelist, for introducing me to Trevor Dolby of Preface Publishing; between them they have given me the encouragement to publish the
letters.
My thanks are also due to Kate Johnson, the publisher’s editor, for her endless patience in receiving and attending to frequent emails during the final cutting of the text. Mel Haselden too, of the Loman Street Studios, has been a pleasure to work with whilst choosing the illustrations. I would also like to thank the archivists of the museums of both the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers at Alnwick Castle and the Queen’s Own Hussars in Warwick, who have been most co-operative in my quest for information. Finally, I would like to thank my husband Ian for his help and support, particularly on military matters, and for putting up with his wife spending endless hours at the computer.
Anne Nason
EWH as a young man; possibly an engagement photograph.
EWH aged thirteen (front row, second left), Impey’s House, Eton, 1892. His cousin Victor Hermon (Ethel’s brother) is third row, second left.
‘The Cliffe’, Ethel’s home in Cheshire.
Ethel aged sixteen riding side-saddle.
Ethel (standing, right) with her sister Vio and her brothers Vincent and Victor (seated). Vincent was killed motor racing at Brooklands in 1907.
EWH and Ethel in South Africa circa 1905, when EWH was serving with the 7th Queen’s Own Hussars.
EWH, Ethel and a cousin (right) in South Africa, circa 1905, with their staff.
EWH and Ethel with her sister-in-law May Hermon (Victor’s wife) and their children at Inverlodden, Wargrave on Thames, 1911. Left to right: May, EWH, Ethel; the children: Betty, their cousin John, Bob and Mary.
Ethel with Meg at Inverlodden in 1911, taken on the same day.
EWH, with the ‘Chugs’ and two of the family dogs, on home leave at Brook Hill, 1915. Left to right: Mary, Bob, Meg and Betty.