Chapter 6
A Very Gallant Officer
In March 1914, on the anniversary of the regiment’s action at Alexandria in 1801, Captain Robert Rising assembled with the officers of 1/Gloucesters for an official photograph to be taken with Brigadier General Herman Landon, GOC 3 Infantry Brigade, and the Mayor of Gloucester.1 Absent from the line-up at Bordon was Rising’s great friend and colleague, Captain Harold Richmond, who was completing his secondment at the Camberley Staff College.2 A little over seven months later both officers would find themselves at Ypres in October 1914 but serving in different capacities; Harold Richmond as a Staff Captain at Sir John French’s GHQ, and Robert Rising as a company commander. Their friendship, which began when Harold Richmond joined the regiment in 1900 from the Militia, had developed during the battalion’s service in India and Robert had been Harold’s best man in December 1909 when he married Mabel Cadell at the church of St John the Evangelist in the Bombay cantonment of Colaba.
Born on 23 May 1871 at Reading, Robert was the son of Thomas and Kate Rising, who, in 1914 were living at the Manor House at Great Ormesby in Norfolk. Robert was the eldest of four children who were brought up in comfortable surroundings with all the privileges of wealth and status. After leaving Charterhouse he entered Sandhurst in September 1891, where his exemplary performance resulted in promotion to Under Officer. In November 1892 he was commissioned into the Gloucestershire Regiment. He was 25-years-old when he married his first wife Amy Worship, the daughter of one of his father’s business partners, and tragically less than a year after the couple arrived in India with the 1st Battalion, she succumbed to peritonitis at Pachmirbi and died.
Sickness and even death was not uncommon amongst the European white families in India. During the two months of July and August 1897 for example, there were eighteen European deaths recorded at Pachmirbi from dysentery, enteric fever, (typhoid as it is known today) diarrhoea and peritonitis. Sadly six of these were children of serving soldiers’ families. Worse still, although confined to the poorer parts of the city, 1897 also saw an outbreak of Bubonic plague in Bombay; the severity of which even prompted questions being asked at Westminster by the Hackney MP, Sir Andrew Scoble.
Shortly before the British Empire went to war against the Boers in October 1899, four infantry battalions including the Gloucesters were mobilized in India and despatched to South Africa. Within weeks of the outbreak of hostilities the British Army found itself besieged in the townships of Kimberley, Mafeking and Ladysmith by a Boer force that was better armed in terms of artillery and far more tactically adept. On receiving the news at home of this embarrassing turn for the worse, the seriousness of the situation in South Africa was finally realized and Lord Roberts was sent out from England with a large force to recover the credibility of the army. Caught up in the initial blundering by British Army commanders was 1/Gloucesters which had arrived two days after war was declared at Durban on 13 October. They were immediately marched up to Ladysmith and were soon in action at Rietfontein on 24 October as part of Sir George White’s column.
Coming under hostile rifle fire from a range of hills skirting the road the Gloucesters were ordered to advance towards the Boer positions. The British column had been successfully ambushed by their shrewd adversaries and despite their gallantry in advancing over the veld in the face of the all too accurate Mauser fire the British soldiers found themselves pinned down and unable to move without attracting a further hail of fire. When the order finally did come to retire, Colonel Wilford, the Gloucester’s commanding officer, was killed directing the battalion’s withdrawal. For Robert Rising and the majority of the officers and men of the battalion it had not only been their first taste of action but the first occasion the battalion had been under hostile fire for fifty years; one which left five men dead and fifty-eight wounded. This sobering experience had been a severe and sharp baptism of fire but worse was to befall the battalion in their next clash with the Boers.
On 29 October 1899, Lieutenant Robert Rising was on outpost duty and consequently was one of the five battalion officers who remained behind at Ladysmith, while four companies of the Gloucesters with six companies of the 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers were sent out from Ladysmith under the cover of darkness to take control of a ridge known as Nicholson’s Nek. Commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Carleton of the Fusiliers, the ill-fated expedition was a catalogue of disasters and poor command decisions which served to further highlight inept leadership. Taking full advantage of British misfortune, which included the pack mules stampeding with most of the ammunition, guns and water, the Boer forces won a splendid victory which resulted in the humiliating surrender of the surviving British infantrymen. Nearly 400 of the Gloucesters, including eighteen officers, were marched off into an eight month long captivity at Pretoria. The battalion’s casualties were seventy-five men wounded, most of whom went into captivity, and thirty-three men dead who were later buried on the battlefield.3 It had been an unmitigated debacle.
Although he had volunteered to march with the column, when news of the outcome of the fight at Nicholson’s Nek reached Ladysmith, Robert Rising was probably thankful he had been left behind. Those of the battalion who had not been with Carleton fought on and suffered in Ladysmith until the siege was raised in February 1900. Casualties from long range shell fire continued to deplete the battalion. On 22 December, at the Gloucesters’ outpost positions at Railway Cutting, they had the misfortune to lose eight killed and nine wounded to a single 6-inch shell. After the relief of Ladysmith the battalion took little active part in the campaign. In June 1900 they were reunited with the officers and men who had been held captive at Pretoria and on 21 August 1900 they embarked for Ceylon to guard Boer prisoners.
In early 1901 Robert married again; this time to Constance Elizabeth Edis, the 23-year-old daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Robert William Edis. Having taken his accumulated leave after the battalion returned to India, he returned home to England where he and Constance were married in London. Robert Edis was a well known Victorian architect and writer whose designs included, amongst others, the Marylebone and Liverpool Street Station hotels and the ballroom at Sandringham Park. The Edis family, apart from their London residence, had a family home at Great Ormsby and were neighbours of Thomas and Kate Rising. The recently widowed Robert would have had little difficulty in finding his second wife from the five Edis daughters; no doubt encouraged by Robert Edis who would have approved of a military son-in-law. Edis was commanding officer of the Artist’s Rifles at the time of Robert and Constance’s marriage and was knighted in 1919. He died in 1927 at the family home in Norfolk.
Although 1/Gloucesters returned to England in 1910 after seventeen years foreign service, Robert came home with a pregnant Constance in late 1905 having been appointed Adjutant to the 3rd Territorial Battalion based at Horfield Barracks, Bristol. During this period Constance gave birth to two children, Robert Edis, who was born shortly after they arrived home, and Elsie Mary Elizabeth, born in September 1909. It must have been with some relief that Constance was able to give birth to both her children at home in England and once the battalion arrived back in England, the family moved from Bristol and were able to settle down to the comfortable existence of home service at Bordon. August 1914 brought an end to any plans the Rising family may have made for themselves or their children when the battalion was ordered to mobilize. 1/Gloucesters were one of the four infantry battalions that formed 3 Infantry Brigade along with the 1st Battalion South Wales Borderers (1/South Wales Borderers), 2nd Battalion Welch Regiment (2/Welch) and the 1st Battalion Queen’s (Royal West Surrey) Regiment (1/Queen’s). Eight days later they landed at Le Havre.
The events in France and Flanders were closely followed by Robert’s parents at their home in Norfolk. Thomas Rising was a self-made man who had begun his legal career as a solicitor’s clerk in Reading. Through hard work and diligence he eventually qualified as a solicitor and became a senior partner in the local Yarmouth firm of Messrs Worship,
Rising and Frederick. In 1914 the firm also employed Robert’s younger brother Arthur, who had graduated from Trinity College Cambridge in 1891. Constance and the children moved back to her father’s home at Ormesby St Margaret soon after Robert had embarked with his battalion on the SS Gloucester Castle, but the family was not unduly concerned, after all, with any luck Robert would be back in time to see the children opening their Christmas presents.
Until their arrival at Poperinghe on Tuesday 20 October 1914, the Gloucesters’ battlefield casualties had been relatively small in number but their entrance into the ancient city of Ypres marked the beginning of a period of intense and desperate fighting that would leave a permanent mark on the officers and men of the battalion. Of the 26 officers and 970 other ranks that marched past the cheering crowds which lined the Grote Markt and the Meensestraat the next morning, only 2 officers and some 100 men returned through the Menin Gate four weeks later.
What the Gloucesters were not aware of, as they marched out of Ypres, was that their Commander-in-Chief, Sir John French, had still not fully appreciated the full extent of the huge German troop concentrations that were now moving from Antwerp towards the BEF. His optimistic orders for a general advance, which he stubbornly clung to for several days, were never going to be realized. It was to be only a matter of hours before the military strategy that would determine the nature of the fighting over the next few weeks would begin to unravel as the Allies were forced into a series of defensive actions by a numerically superior opposition.
To be fair, when Sir Douglas Haig and I Corps arrived at St Omer from the Aisne on 17 October, Sir John French could easily have taken the most obvious course of action and deployed Haig to bolster the numerical weakness of the cavalry corps holding the Wytschate-Messines line. Instead, recognizing the danger to the Allied left flank by the sudden arrival of fresh German troops, he sent Haig’s army corps to the northeast of Ypres. Although he was then unaware of the build up of German forces in the area, his instinct was fortunately well timed. Just after midday on Wednesday, 21 October the Gloucesters, along with the rest of I Corps, collided head on with the German Fourth Army.
That all was not going to plan must have become apparent as the Gloucesters arrived on the outskirts of Langemarck. Almost immediately they ran into heavy shellfire and the forward units of the Fourth Army cavalry screen. Behind them German infantry of the 51st Reserve Division were moving enmasse from the north and, as the French on the British left retreated, the 3 Brigade battalions were becoming increasingly exposed. Advancing on the extreme left of the British line, Lieutenant Colonel Lovett, mindful of the danger of an exposed flank, deployed B Company to Langemarck railway station to provide an emergency flank guard while C and D Company pressed on through the town towards Koekuit. Wary of committing all his available forces at once, Lovett held A Company, which was under the command of Robert Rising, in reserve just south of Langemarck. Sometime after 10.00 am C and D Companies occupied Koekuit village and dug in.
German cavalry patrols had been apparent all morning and one or two had even been shot down as they galloped across the Gloucesters’ field of fire; but it was not long before the main German thrust came from the direction of Mangalaere.
Around 100 German infantry attacked in short rushes but were quickly repulsed by Lieutenant Wetherall’s platoon before they could close on the Gloucesters who were using a drainage ditch as their fire base. Clearly this was no skirmish as there was now sustained enemy shell fire from the direction of Poelcapelle registering along the whole 3 Brigade frontage; 1/Queen’s in particular were taking numerous casualties in their hastily prepared scrape holes. Another attack at 2.00 pm by 200 grey clad infantry advancing four abreast was again brought to a standstill by the disciplined C Company rifle fire. Two hours later the final half-hearted attack was broken up very quickly with three bursts of rapid fire.
Despite this very effective defensive fire, the situation was becoming a little tense with enemy formations now threatening both flanks of the Gloucesters’ positions, which had taken the shape of a pronounced salient around Koekuit. However, there they remained in their rather precarious positions until after dark when they were relieved and sent back to a farm east of Langemarck. The Gloucesters dubbed it Varna Farm, after the camp of the same name the old 28th of Foot had shared with the French in the Crimea sixty years previously. Shortly after they arrived at their new billet, the awkward defensive position at Koekuit was abandoned and the line pulled back to a new line north of Langemarck.
It was at Langemarck, where the German Reserve Corps died in such large numbers, that the legend of ‘the massacre of the innocents’ was born. German casualties on the British I Corps front were enormous, with some units losing up to seventy per cent of their effective fighting strength. There are numerous British accounts of German units marching into battle singing their battle anthem ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’. One of these accounts was written in 1922 by Robert Grazebrook who was a lieutenant with the Gloucesters in 1914. He recalled Germans of the 46th Reserve Division singing patriotic songs as they attacked the Gloucesters’ positions around Koekuit on 21 October. The vast majority of these reserve troops were young inexperienced men; many of them students flushed with patriotism who hurled themselves against the British and French positions and died in their thousands. The sombre German military cemetery at Langemarck serves as a dreadful testament to their sacrifice. Strictly speaking the Langemarck cemetery contains more than just the 1914 dead; but what immediately strikes the visitor are the bronze panels in the gatehouse commemorating the thousands of young students who died during the First Battle of Ypres.
Regardless of the losses, the seemingly endless numbers of German infantry and the intensive artillery barrages had brought an end to any hopes that Sir John French might have had of continuing his advance in the northeast. By and large the I Corps attack on Poelcapelle and Passchendaele had lost its impetus but the news was not all bad. Some progress had been made, Langemarck was still firmly in British hands and the 2nd Division had secured Zonnebeke. However, the fight for Langemarck was not over yet. German forces were consolidating for another attack and it would be Robert Rising’s men that would take the brunt of the German infantry attack along the Koekuit Road.
A little before dawn on 23 October Rising was directed to take two platoons of A Company to the northern outskirts of Langemarck to fill a gap that had developed between 2/Welch and 1/Coldstream Guards. Langemarck was now almost unrecognisable; in just a few days the German artillery had reduced much of the small town to ruins with 8-inch howitzers and as Rising’s men picked their way through the debris and the flickering fires that still burned amongst the rubble, the occasional high explosive shell was still targeting what was left of the church and the chateâu. It took the Gloucesters some forty minutes to march from Varna Farm to the railway line that marked the northern limit of the chateâu grounds. It was at first light when they made contact with the Royal Engineers of 26th Field Company who were in position on the Koekuit Road. Major H L Prichard, who was commanding the small detachment of sappers, quickly appraised Rising of the situation before they set about preparing their defensive positions.
The Gloucesters were in fact digging in along a vital section of the front line that had been left undefended, and only the urgent message sent back to 3 Brigade headquarters by Major Prichard had alerted anyone to the situation. The break in the line was the result of the capture of the Kortekeer Cabaret salient by the Germans the day before which resulted in 1/Coldstream Guards drawing in its companies and creating a 400 yards wide gap between them and 2/Welch. Rising’s men, assisted by Major Pritchard’s sappers, dug-in some 500 yards north of the village on the Langemarck to Koekuit Road. On the right was 5 Platoon dug-in across the road itself.4 In discussion with Major Pritchard, Rising agreed that their positions were probably going to take the full force of the enemy attack from Koekuit and diverted 15 Platoon and Lieutenant Yalland from D Company to dig-in on the le
ft of the road.
25-year-old William Yalland was an accomplished rugby player and regularly featured in the battalion XV. He was also well known in cricketing circles having made an appearance for Gloucestershire in 1910. In 1910 the battalion won the hotly contested Army Rugby Football Cup and in 1913 Yalland scored in the semi-final of the cup, playing again two weeks later in the battalion side that lost 9–3 to 2/Welch at Twickenham. Any friendly rivalry that still existed between the two battalions had been put aside that morning as the men of both regiments strained their eyes in the early morning mist for signs of movement that would signal the approaching enemy.
In common with the other company commanders in his battalion, Robert Rising knew his NCOs well and despite the fact that a large proportion of his company was made up of reservists, many of his NCOs had been with the battalion for a number of years. Individuals such as Lance Sergeant Thomas Knight, who would be awarded the DCM for his bravery later that day, were the backbone of the company and had been instrumental in shaping up the reservists since the battalion landed in France.5 Good NCOs provided a depth of experience that would be essential in the coming weeks if the company’s discipline under fire was to be maintained. The famed discipline under fire, that would forever be associated with the men of the BEF, created soldiers who could maintain a rate of fire of between fifteen and twenty aimed rounds per minute with the Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifle. The effect of such firepower could be devastating against closely packed advancing infantry. Good shooting was not just the preserve of the men. Rising himself held the extra certificate in musketry and was acknowledged in the battalion as an accomplished shot. They did not have to wait long to demonstrate their skills. Private J S Barton was fighting with 4 Platoon:
Aristocrats Go to War: Uncovering the Zillebeke Cemetery Page 13