1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [360]
*From the Regimental History.
*‘Woolly Bears’ were shrapnel shells which burst in a cloudlike explosion. ‘Jack Johnsons’, nicknamed after a famous Negro boxer of the time, were high explosive shells which burst with a thick black cloud.
*Lt. Tennant’s body was never identified and he is commemorated on the le Touret Memorial to the Missing.
*Walter Malthouse’s grave is in Fauquissart Military Cemetery.
*In view of the fluid situation in the Balkans, with Bulgaria, Greece and Italy uncommitted and Russia cut off from the allies, the idea was visionary and had it been adopted when Churchill first mooted it in September 1914, when it would have met little opposition, it might well have shifted the focus of the war and possibly changed its course.
*The story of Bentham’s experiences and capture at Antwerp is related in 1914 by the same author.
*The two railwaymen, Tinsley and Meakin, were tried on charges of culpable homicide and found guilty. Meakin was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment and Tinsley to three years with hard labour.
*It is ironic to reflect that Clement Attlee, future leader of the Labour Party, was slogging as an infantryman in Gallipoli as a result of Winston Churchill’s imaginative scheme to capture the Dardanelles. Twenty-five years later as Prime Minister in another war, with his verve and imagination undiminished by the years, Churchill led the nation to victory and was crowned with well-deserved laurels, while Attlee, working conscientiously in his shadow as Deputy Prime Minister in the Coalition Government, got little credit for the actual running of the country.
*The 7th Indian Mountain Artillery Brigade comprised the 21st (Kohat) Battery with one 4.7-inch gun and the 26th (Jacob’s) Battery with three 6-inch Howitzers. They were the first guns ashore at Galiipoli and were the only guns of the Indian Artillery to serve in Europe during the war.
*Both Commander Unwin and Able Seaman W. C. Williams were awarded the Victoria Cross. Williams, unfortunately, was one of the many casualties, killed by a shell fired from the Asiatic shore. His VC, the first to be awarded to a naval rating for over fifty years, was awarded posthumously.
*The Official Historian later wrote: ‘Thus died the very man who by his rank, his nerve, and his knowledge, would have been of priceless value to the troops in the southern area during that vital day.’ It was a telling point. In a conventional battle, Brigade and Divisional Commanders would properly have conducted it some distance behind the fighting line with the advantage of an overall view. At the Gallipoli landings, where there was no hinterland but the sea, so many senior officers were obliged to be at the front and so many were killed that the loss of the very people who would have been in a position to take decisions according to circumstances on the spot contributed decisively to the failure of leaderless troops to progress in the first vital hours in places where they could easily have done so and, as a result, had a significant effect on the long-term outcome of the campaign.
*Roulers is the modern Belgian town of Roeselaere.
*Lance-Corporal Sandy Gunn was killed in action on the Somme on 1 July 1916 and is buried in Serre Road, No. 2 Cemetery.
*They were Lieutenant-Colonel B. F. B. Stuart of the 3rd Worcesters, Lieutenant-Colonel E. Treffry of the Honourable Artillery Company, Lieutenant-Colonel R. G. Hely Hutchinson of the 4th Royal Fusiliers, Lieutenant-Colonel C. Yatman of the 1st Northumberland Fusiliers and Major H. E. R. Boxer, commanding the 1st Lincolnshire Battalion, who was killed.
*The 9th (Scottish) Division left for the front on 9 May, the 14th (Light) Division on 19 May, and the 12th (Eastern) Division on the 29th of the same month.
*After the war Douglas Jones became a well-known actor under the