Aristocrats Go to War: Uncovering the Zillebeke Cemetery

by Jerry Murland

  4/Hussars had missed the Prussian Guard attack of 11 November, having been further south in the Messines area since their relief from the Hollebeke trenches. The regiment returned to the Ypres sector on 19 November to relieve 9/Lancers in the now shell-torn Hooge Chateâu on the Menin Road. It was bitterly cold and owing to the close proximity of the German trenches no fires were allowed; wet clothing soon became as stiff as board and to make matters worse, the Germans opposite were a particularly aggressive bunch. Mortar fire and regular sniping kept the Hussars pinned down in what must have been some of the most miserable conditions they had yet faced. When dawn appeared on 20 November the shelling began and a small trench running from the stable buildings to the chateâu was badly damaged along with the stable buildings. It was in this trench that Alfred Schuster and his troop were deployed and in the ensuing mêlée to escape the shellfire, Alfred fell victim to a German sniper and it was not until it became dark that Captain H Scott, his squadron commander, was able to retrieve his body. Alfred Schuster’s death marked the last of the men commemorated in Zillebeke churchyard to be killed in action in 1914 and, like those who had fallen before him, his passing touched the lives of many,

  ‘But, perhaps to those who were lucky enough to know, it was his domestic qualities, which to observant eyes, shone with the most steady brilliance, his unselfishness and companionability whether as son, grandson, brother or friend, the mixture in him of thorough education with natural taste, quick wit with the kindliest sympathy, physical courage with the gentleness of a woman, and a modesty of mind such as it rarely met with. He was one of the few who made nearly as many friends as acquaintances.’6

  On 22 November GHQ issued a special order of the day from Sir John French to be read out to all ranks of the BEF:

  ‘I have made many calls upon you, and the answers you have made to them have covered you, your regiments, and the army to which you belong, with honour and glory. Your fighting qualities, courage and endurance, have been subjected to the most trying and severe tests, and you have proved yourselves worthy descendants of the British soldiers of the past, who have built up the magnificent traditions of the regiments to which you belong. You have not only maintained those traditions, but you have materially added to their lustre. It is impossible for me to find words in which to express my appreciation of the splendid services you have performed.’

  Although written for the living, his words were a fitting epitaph for the dead who now rested in the Zillebeke churchyard.

  Chapter 11

  After the Battle

  How wealthy families chose to commemorate their loved ones killed in the Great War is worthy of a book in itself. The profusion of stained glass windows and memorial tablets which appeared in churches across the land is, even to this day, not fully documented. Memorials came in all shapes and sizes at home and, once the war had been concluded, soon spilled over to the abandoned and shattered battlefields of France and Flanders. The notion of permanent memorials to the fallen became so deeply embedded in the post-war psyche that Winston Churchill seriously advocated that the piles of rubble that had once been the splendour of Ypres should not be rebuilt but remain as a memorial to the hundreds of thousands of British, Empire and Dominions soldiers who had died in defending the Salient. Fortunately good sense prevailed and Ypres was almost rebuilt when the German Army entered the city in May 1940; a feat that had eluded them during the four years of the Great War.

  The research into the whereabouts of memorials in the United Kingdom commemorating the men of the Zillebeke churchyard developed into a fascinating and intricate piece of detective work. Apart from the more obvious national memorials, I expected there would be inscriptions on local war memorials and occasional tablets in local churches; but rather naively perhaps, I did not fully appreciate the extent of the national outpouring of grief that accompanied the casualty lists and how that manifested itself into remembrance in the post-war years.

  The news of Robert Rising’s death in action reached Norfolk via the usual telegram expressing the sorrow and sympathy felt by the King and Queen in ‘the loss you and the army have sustained by the death of your husband in the service of his country.’ Constance had expected him home for Christmas, but being a realist, Robert would have recognized by late October 1914 that the likelihood of the war being over for Christmas was remote. His last hours before he died on 7 November were spent in the battalion dressing station which had initially taken over a cottage in Zwarteleen. The battalion had sustained another ninety casualties during the day and at roll call on the evening of 7 November only 213 men and four officers were present. The story of the Gloucesters at Ypres did not end there, they were fighting again on 11 November alongside 2/Grenadier Guards when the Prussian Guard attacked either side of the Menin Road and it was only six days later, on 17 November, that they were finally taken out of the front line.

  Captain Harold Richmond’s tour of duty in 1914 as a staff captain with GHQ ended abruptly in late November when Lieutenant Colonel Lovett asked that he rejoin the depleted ranks of the 1st Battalion. Most of the battalion’s veteran officers had been either killed or wounded and Richmond’s experience was badly needed to assist in rebuilding the battalion. Ten days after Robert Rising’s death he took over command of D Company and was killed less than a month later at La Bassée. Colonel Lovett did not remain in command of 3 Brigade for long; in December 1914 he was back in command of the 1st Battalion but in February 1915 he was sent home ill. Appointed to the Home Command as GOC Yorkshire Coast Defences, Brigadier General Lovett died on 27 May 1919. Brigadier General Landon after taking over temporary command of the 1st Division was appointed to command the 9th (Scottish) Division in 1915 and despite Haig writing in his diary in August 1915 that, ‘he daily goes down in [General Gough’s] estimation as a commander, on account of his indecision and lack of thoroughness,’ he later commanded both the 33rd and 35th Divisions.

  Robert’s promotion to Major was announced in the London Gazette on 18 January 1915 and a month later his name was mentioned in despatches for his leadership and gallantry at Gheluvelt. Constance Rising became a wealthy woman when her father died but never remarried; eventually settling in the Somerset village of Winscombe with the children. Passenger records tell us that she travelled widely between the wars with her daughter Elsie to destinations in Europe and others such as Egypt, South Africa and Madeira. Little more is known of the children. Robert Edis Rising married in 1931 and again in 1947; he died in 1970 aged 65. Constance lived at Bridge House in Winscombe until April 1961 when she died aged 84. She now rests in the churchyard of St James the Great. Elsie remains a mystery, although there is some evidence to suggest she died before her mother and both mother and daughter are in the same grave at Winscombe. In Norfolk, Robert’s brother, Arthur, continued in the family business and does not appear to have fought in the Great War. He died in December 1955 aged 83 and is buried in the churchyard at Ormsby St Margaret with his wife Ellen and his parents. Robert Rising’s name is commemorated on the Ormsby War Memorial and on the Charterhouse Roll of Honour.

  The London Gazette of 17 February 1915 also carried the names of Gordon Wilson, Richard Dawson, Harry Parnell and Charles FitzClarence, all of whom had been mentioned in Sir John French’s sixth despatch of the war for ‘gallantry and meritorious conduct in the field.’ After Gordon Wilson’s death Lord Tweedmouth took over command of the Blues and one of his first duties was to write to Lady Sarah. Sarah was still in France running her hospital at Bolougne which complicated matters a little in that the regiment was unsure how to get in touch with her:

  ‘I sent you a telegram yesterday but did not know your address in France so thought it would be forwarded to you [from London]. I cannot express my sympathy sufficiently with you over poor Gordon’s loss, and it was a great disaster to us as a regiment: he was so active and keen, brave as a lion and full of sympathy for the men and officers. I feel his loss tremendously, as we had been so much together during the last
month, and he has been very kind to me … I wish I could offer you more comfort: but you can think that he died like a brave man and that his loss is impressed most deeply on us all.’

  There is an interesting letter dated 30 November 1914 written by Surgeon Major Basil Pares to Lady Sarah that provides a hint of the precarious state of the British line on the night of 6 November:

  ‘I can’t tell you how we miss our Colonel; but I’m glad we were able to take him to Zillebeke the same night. I doubt if we could have done so afterwards.’

  The fact that Pares felt recovering Gordon Wilson’s body would have been difficult, if not impossible, underlines the closeness of the German lines. A detail which makes the midnight dash by two Life Guard troopers to recover Regy Wyndham’s body all the more courageous an act.

  Wilson’s effects were gathered together by his brother Bertie and sent back to England with an officer who was returning home on leave. When they were finally unpacked by Lady Sarah a small newspaper clipping was discovered in his writing case containing two lines of the James Handley epitaph: ‘Life is a city of crooked streets.’ After the war when she was contacted by the CWGC and asked for a suitable epitaph for Gordon’s headstone at Zillebeke she used James Handley’s words:

  ‘Life is a city of crooked streets

  Death the market place where all men meet.’

  Gordon Wilson had in effect written his own epitaph. His brother Bertie was killed during the battle of Arras on 11 April 1917 when the regiment was fighting at Monchyle-Preux. He is buried at the Faubourg D’Amiens Cemetery near the Citadel at Arras.1 In 1925 the surviving Wilson family members paid for a stained glass window to be erected in the Commonwealth Church at Great Audley Street in Mayfair. The window was dedicated to Jean Wilson and her three soldier sons who had given their lives.

  Sadly for Lady Sarah her husband was not the only member of her family to give his life during the battle for Ypres. Brigadier General Charles FitzClarence, the VC winner she knew during the siege of Mafeking in 1899 and had earlier introduced to her cousin Violet, was one of the few British senior officers to be killed in the Great War. In the four years of fighting almost eighty officers holding the rank of brigadier general and above were killed in action or died of wounds. Charles FitzClarence was 49-years-old when he died and is the highest ranking officer inscribed on the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres. He is also remembered with a tablet in the Guards Chapel in London. As for Lady Sarah Wilson, she remained a widow and died in October 1929.

  The Guards Chapel on Birdcage Walk is also where the Tufnell family chose to remember their dead. A brass plaque commemorates three members of the family: Carleton Wyndham Tufnell, his nephew, Hugh John Tufnell, who was killed in North Africa in 1944 serving with the Grenadier Guards, and his eldest brother, Neville Charsley Tufnell, who died in 1951. Neville was commissioned into the 1st Volunteer Battalion (later 4th Battalion), Queen’s (Royal West Surrey) Regiment in 1908, transferring to the Grenadier Guards Special Reserve shortly after war was declared. He joined the 3rd Battalion at Simencourt in December 1917 and commanded Number 3 Company for the remainder of the conflict. In 1939 he was appointed lieutenant colonel and transferred to the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. He perpetuated the family sporting ability and played for Cambridge University and the Marylebone Cricket Club. He also played one Test Match for England at Cape Town against South Africa in 1909.

  Richard Dawson had no other immediate family except for his mother Jane and only surviving sister, Norah. His uncle, Vesey Dawson, the 2nd Earl of Dartrey, had married in 1882 and had two daughters. He was succeeded in the Earldom by the Hon Anthony Lucius Dawson, youngest and only surviving son of Richard’s grandfather, the first Earl of Dartrey. The 3rd Earl died without issue in 1933, after which all the family honours became extinct. Had Richard survived the Great War he may well have become the 4th Earl of Dartrey. His name is commemorated along with thirteen others on the Holne War Memorial, as is young Arthur Pearce, the Hall Boy from Holne House who was killed on 27 May 1918 in the fighting around Marfaux. After the war Richard’s mother had a stained glass window put in the south-eastern corner of the church of St Mary the Virgin at Holne, together with a marble tablet in memory of her son. By 1984 the window was in a poor state of repair and the Coldstream Guards regimental fund contributed £100 for its maintenance.

  Harry Parnell was mentioned in despatches for his part in holding the line at Zwarteleen on 6 and 7 November 1914. He was highly regarded by his commanding officer and since joining the battalion in September 1914 had shown on a number of occasions his potential for battlefield leadership. Had he lived, promotion to captain and the command of a company would not have been long in coming. Writing to Lady Congleton in 1915, William Spooner remembers his former student at New College as, ‘an honourable and kindly man, very loyal to his friends and with a fine courage.’ It was to the family’s Mayfair address in London that the telegram carrying the news of Harry’s death was sent and it was from there that the official announcement was made that the heir presumptive to the title, John Brooke Molesworth Parnell, had succeeded him as the 6th Baron Congleton. Educated at the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, John was a serving naval officer during the Great War and had followed in the footsteps of his grandfather who fought in the Battle of Navarino in 1827 as a midshipman aboard HMS Glasgow.

  But the indelible mark of the Great War had not finished with the Parnell family. Harry’s youngest brother, William Alastair Damer Parnell, joined his brother’s old battalion on 21 August 1915, just in time to take part in the battle of Loos.2 Like his brother he was quickly recognized as a brave and resourceful officer and in December 1915 was awarded the Military Cross for his leadership and gallantry during a fighting patrol into enemy trenches. Tragically he was killed nine months later on 25 September 1916 during the Somme offensive; he was 22-years-old. The Somme also claimed the life of one of Harry’s cousins, Major Geoffrey Brooke Parnell, who died fighting with the 1st Battalion of the Queen’s (Royal West Surrey)Regiment on 15 July 1916.3 Poor Lady Congleton never really recovered from losing two of her sons and a nephew and she died fifteen years later in 1931. Both Harry and his brother William are commemorated on one of the panels in the Royal Gallery of the House of Lords.

  The death of Bernard Gordon Lennox was widely reported in the home and international press. He was mentioned in despatches in the London Gazette of 7 April 1915 and the New York Times of 13 November 1914 carried an article entitled ‘Duke’s Son Killed in Battle in France,’ but erroneously reported his elder brother, Charles Henry, the Earl of March, was serving at the front as a major in the Sussex Yeomanry. In November 1914 the Sussex Yeomanry were still in Sussex and would not see action until they arrived on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915. Charles Henry sadly became ill on the eve of departure and was never to command his regiment in action.

  Esme Gordon Lennox recovered from his wounds received at Zandvoorde and after the battle of Loos in 1915 took over command of the 1st Battalion Scots Guards. Shortly before the Somme offensive began in July 1916, he was seconded to Fourth Army Headquarters and soon after was given command of 95 Infantry Brigade. He was wounded on a second occasion in April 1918 but survived the war having been mentioned in despatches twice and decorated with the DSO. He died in 1949. Bernard’s nephew Charles Henry Gordon Lennox, Lord Settrington, joined 2/Irish Guards in July 1916 as a Second Lieutenant. In March 1918 he was taken prisoner when fighting with the 3rd Battalion at Vieux-Berquin and only returned to England in December 1918. However, his war was not over. Attached to the Fusiliers as a signals officer he was dispatched to Russia with the North Russian Relief Force in May 1919. This disastrous foray into Russia was prompted by the fear of Bolshevism spreading across Europe in the wake of the 1917 Russian Revolution. Allied forces openly intervened in the Russian Civil War by giving support to the pro-Tsarist, anti-Bolshevik White forces. Charles died of wounds in August 1919 and was buried at the Archangel Allied Cemetery. He was only 20-years-
old.

  Both Charles and Bernard are commemorated with a plaque on the Waterbeach Lodge gate to Goodwood Park. In addition to being present in the Royal Gallery of the House of Lords, Bernard’s name is also on the Boxgrove Priory War Memorial in the northwest corner of the priory church of St Mary and Blaise. Charles has a separate memorial on the west wall. The final memorial to Bernard is located in the small Gordon Chapel, tucked away behind the High Street at Fochabers in northeast Scotland. Here there is a stained glass window dedicated to Bernard depicting St George killing the dragon which was probably made by William Morris & Company. Bernard’s wife, Lady Evelyn, did not remarry and continued to live at the family home at the nearby Halnaker House until her death in 1944 when she tragically fell victim to a German air raid.