Category Archives: The Fallen

Douglas Charles Hamilton-Johnston

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Badge of the Black Watch

Douglas was the eldest son of Augustus and Bessie Hamilton-Johnston, who lived in Chelsea. He was born on 20th May 1889 and attended Charterhouse before arriving up Grant’s in 1904. After he left the school in 1906, Douglas matriculated at London University, and later spent some time in Frankfurt.

On his return to Britain, Douglas enrolled at RMC Sandhurst, perhaps inspired by his mother’s father who was a Major-General. After completing his training in February 1909, he joined The Black Watch (Royal Highlanders) as 2nd Lieutenant in the 2nd Battalion and became Lieutenant three years later. The Bareilly Brigade was formed in 1914 as part of the Meerut division of the British Indian Army, and Douglas’s battalion became part of this new brigade.

In October 1914, Douglas arrived at the western front with his battalion and served as Transport Officer of No. 1 Company. He was wounded slightly in December by a shell at Centre Section, Festubert, but recovered and was promoted to Captain in February 1915. He was wounded a second time on the 3rd March while preparing for the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, and this time was invalided home.

Whilst back in Britain, Douglas helped to train volunteers at the training camp at Bordon, Hampshire. One of the volunteers, David Elder Robertson, wrote to his parents on 26th September 1915, following a three-week brigade exercise: “ÔǪ Well I was glad when it was over for I was a tired one without sleep. If I had not had a stripe I would have got a sleep all right but I had to look after a section. Well I told them I was handing in my stripe and I was paraded in front of the Captain [D.C. Hamilton-Johnston], and I was fairly put through the mill and asked my reason for it I made the excuse I had no notion of it and he told me I was foolish. He said I was picked out as qualified for the job and that if I changed my mind I would not be long in getting another but I stuck to my decision so he said he would see about it. I am still wearing the stripe till I am told to hand it in but I have heard no more about itÔǪ”

Douglas returned to the western front in November 1915, and went with his battalion to Mesopotamia, where he was mentioned in despatches. In January 1916, he became a temporary Major, taking over from Colonel Wauchope, who had been severely wounded at the Battle of Sheikh Sa’ad. On the 21st January 1916, Douglas lead the 2nd Black Watch in an attack on Hanna, but by the end of the day he was reported as “wounded and missing (presumed killed)”. His former commanding officer, Wauchope, wrote:

“And right well did he respond to the call of duty. Both as Adjutant, under Colonel Wauchope, and as Commanding Officer, he had complete faith in the Battalion as had the Battalion in him. He was first wounded and then killed in this assault, but he died with the knowledge that he had kept its fighting spirit unbroken to the end.”

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Percival Ernest Knapp

Percival Ernest Knapp attended Westminster school for over four years. He was admitted as a Queen’s Scholar and, whilst academically very able, came from a military family as was destined for a career in the army. During his time at school he was a keen debater and The Elizabethan records him speaking ‘in a very concise form’ against a motion to uphold the powers of the House of Lords. He also excelled at football as he was ‘very fast’ and ‘had a wonderful knack of getting round the backs’.

He left school in December 1892 and entered military training at Sandhurst. He served the army in India, seeing action in the Tirah campaign in 1897-8 and at the Battle of Peking in 1900 which followed the Boxer rebellion. He received medals from both conflicts. By 1912 he had been promoted to the rank of Major.

On the outbreak of war, Knapp served in Egypt but moved to fight in the Mesopotamia campaign in November 1915. He was killed in action at the Battle of Sheikh Sa’ad in an attack on the Ottoman Army.

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Indian soldiers at the Battle of Sheikh Sa’ad
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Wyndham John Coventry

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Wyndham was at the school for barely two years, joining Ashburnham House in April 1902 and leaving in July 1904 at the age of 17.

He represented Ashburnham in the Senior House Match against Grant’s in 1904. The match was not going well for Ashburnham, when: ‘About this time Aglionby unfortunately put his finger out and was compelled to leave the field. Coventry took his place behind the wickets, and the change was not forhe better.’ But he had more success when the game resumed on Friday: ‘Coventry, the only batsman to offer any resistance, was last out for a plucky 23, after batting nearly an hour and a half.’ Wyndham was rewarded with House Colours at the end of the Season.

He came from a military family. His maternal grandfather, John Joseph Grinlinton had served in the Crimean campaign and was knighted in 1894. Therefore it is not surprising that Wyndham joined the army after leaving school. After passing out from Sandhurst in 1907 he joined the Indian Army. Here he excelled in horse riding and held the unique distinction of having won both Indian Cavalry Steeplechases (for horses and ponies) on the same day in 1914.

On the outbreak of war he left India with drafts for the Western front and worked as an observer in the Royal Flying Corps until June 1915. He was then recalled to his regiment in India and joined the expeditionary force to Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) in July 1915. He took part in the battles of Kut and Ctesiphon and was mentioned in despatches by General Townshend for gallant and distinguished service in the field. He died on 1st January 1916 from wounds received in action at Ali Gharbi the previous day. His colonel wrote: ‘He is indeed a great loss to the regiment, and the Indian officers and men feel it as much as we do; we shall miss him very much’.

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A memorial to Wyndham in Hampshire
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Alfred Tomlin East

Alfred Tomlin East was the only son of the late Sir Alfred East, R.A., President of the Royal Society of British Artists. One of his father’s paintings is owned by the school and hangs in Weston’s.

East was in Ashburnham House from September 1891 to April 1895. He became an engineer and worked as a special assistant during the construction of the Bombay Municipality Waterworks. He enlisted in the Indian Marines at Bombay at the outbreak war and was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant in the Indian Army in 1915; in July he was attached 17th Company 3rd Sappers and Miners and left Bombay with the Expeditionary Force to Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) in the following month.

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The role of British and Indian troops in Mesopotamia was originally envisaged in limited terms — securing the oil pipeline at Abadan. The success the forces met with in late 1914 and early 1915 led the Viceroy and Indian government at Simla to reconsider and they decided to order further advances with a view to securing the Shatt al Hai, a canal connecting the Tigris and Euphrates river and potentially capturing Baghdad. The British government disagreed and wished to conserve forces for the Western front. The Viceroy was given permission to act as it wished, but told in no uncertain terms that no reinforcements should be expected.

The initial success experienced by the British and Indian forces quickly disintegrated in the face of Ottoman opposition. The Siege of Kut Al Amara began on 7th December with the besieging of an 8,000 strong British-Indian garrison in the town of Kut, 100 miles south of Baghdad, by the Ottoman Army. Alfred Tomlin East died on Christmas Day, 1915 of wounds he received in action during the siege a week earlier.

Memorial to Alfred Tomlin East in Mumbai Cathedral.  Many thanks to Geoff Brown, who commented below, for supplying this image.
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Frank Besson

Frank Besson attended Westminster Schoolfrom May 1910 to Christmas 1914 in Rigaud’s House. He was successful at school, taking part in cricket, football, gymnastics – where he made up ‘in strength and energy for what he lacks in style’,and athletics, excelling particularly in the latter. His performances, particularly as a short-distance runner, helped Rigaud’s to win Athletic Sports two years running.

His obituary in The Elizabethan noted that ‘he possessed boundless energy and the divine gift of enthusiasm. His tastes were all for mechanical science and adventure, and before the war he had already designed to join the Air Service.’

Indeed just before leaving the school, on 12th December 1914, Frank addressed the school’s Scientific Society on ‘Theories of Aviation’. A review of his talk noted that ‘he explained the various laws which govern the science of Flight, illustrating his points with experiments on the bench. He thus demonstrated very clearly a thing which many of his hearers perhaps did not know before, namely, why and how a heavier than-air body like an aeroplane will support itself in a less dense medium.’

After training as a pilot Frank served at Dunkirk in August 1915 before going out to the Dardanelles. Hedrowned off the Gallipoli Peninsula whilst on reconnaissancepatrol when his aircraft was brought down into the sea by the enemy. His death was not confirmed until April, when his observer, who had been captured by the enemy forces, was able to get word back to his family.

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A Wight seaplane used in the Gallipoli Campaign, 1915
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James Pitcairn Blane

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James Pitcairn Blane was in Ashburnham House from May 1895 until July 1901. He was a keen cricketer and played in the school’s XI with the highest batting average in the team of 24.0. When he left the school he became a mining engineer, spending four years in Western Australia and travelling to West Africa on several occasions. On the outbreak of war he was the manager of a mine in Cornwall. He joined in the 8th Battalion of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps in October 1914 and went out to the western front in May 1915.

Blane was seriously wounded at 5pm on 19th November whilst to the left of the B16 trench to the north-east of Ypres. He was hit by a ‘whizzbang’ the nick name given to German field artillery shells. The name derived from the fact that the shells fired from German 77mm field guns travelled faster that the speed of sound and therefore soldiers heard the ‘whizz’ of the shell travelling through the air towards them before the ‘bang’ issued by the gun itself upon firing. The result of this high velocity was that defending soldiers had very little notice of the incoming shell. Blane was taken to the nearby military hospital in Poperinghe but died in the early hours of the morning of 23rd November.

His younger brother, Hugh, died in active service in 1914 and his elder brother, Cmdr Sir Charles Rodney Blane killed in action at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

Blane had played cricket for MCC and is also commemorated on the club’s roll of honour.

 

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Kenneth Theodore Dunbar Wilcox

19151108_Wilcox,KTDKenneth Wilcox was the only son of Rev. G.A. Wilcox, who was the vicar of St George’s Battersea Park and who had previously been temporary chaplain to the forces. Kenneth was admitted into Homeboarders’ in May 1905 for a year.

He sat the Challenge over the 23rd, 24th and 25th June 1909 and was elected a resident King’s Scholar. He was a strong member of the Junior College Football team in 1911. The house notes recall that “KTD Wilcox led our Juniors to victory over Rigaud’s, and at present looks like repeating the performance at the expense of Homeboarders”.

In July 1913, he was elected to an exhibition at Christ Church, Oxford, and matriculated the following Michaelmas term. He did not finish his degree, however, because in less than a year he had enlisted in the Public Schools Battalion, Middlesex Regiment. The Public Schools Battalions were set up for former public schoolboys who wanted to fight as soldiers beside their friends, rather than serving as officers. In October 1914, he became 2nd Lieutenant in the 8th Battalion Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment and went out to the western front on the 8th October 1915.

Exactly a month later, Kenneth Wilcox was fighting just south of Ypres at Lankhof Farm — sometimes also known as Lankhof Battery —a cluster of bunkers, which can still be seen today. He was killed there at the age of 20 and is commemorated at Chocques Military Cemetery. His obituary in the Elizabethan tells us that he “died of wounds on the Western front, and was laid to rest by his father”.

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Hugh Barby Crowe

19151028_Crowe,HBHugh Barby Crowe was born in 1894 to Percy and Annie Crowe and was sent to Westminster in 1907. Unlike his Rigaudite uncles George and Harold Allen, who were at the school before him, Hugh was up Grant’s.

He quickly established himself a reputation as a talented singer and gave a solo performance of Stevens’s setting of ‘Sigh no more, Ladies’ at the Election Term Concert up School in May 1908, which “showed the audience what a great variety of beautiful boys’ voices there is at Westminster”.

When he left school to go to Cambridge, he joined a thriving and close-knit community of Old Westminsters at Trinity College. They would contribute a termly letter for the House magazine the Grantite Review, and in Play 1912 the author wrote that “Mr H. B. Crowe has already shed glory upon the revival of “Water” at Westminster by having been tried for the Trial VIII’s; he is about to wrestle with his “Little-Go” [The Little-Go was a nickname for the exams that new students would sit shortly after matriculating].

In Election 1914, the editor of the Grantite Review noted that “owing to the absence of our Oxford and Cambridge Grantite correspondents on military duties, it has been impossible to receive any correspondence from them whatsoever”. Crowe had left university in May 1912 to join the 1st Battalion City of London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers) as 2nd Lieutenant.

He rose to Lieutenant on 1st January 1914, and later became A.D.C. to Lord Lucan commanding the 1st London Infantry Brigade. On the 16th of September, Hugh became 2nd Lieutenant 4th Battalion Royal Fusiliers, but was attached to the 5th Battalion at Dover until he joined his own Battalion on the Western Front in November 1914. He was promoted to Lieutenant the following February.

It was only two months before he was invalided home from Ypres with concussion, and the Grantite Review recalls that he “came to see us when he was convalescent, like the good Grantite he was”. On his recovery, he was transferred to the 2nd Battalion and went out to join the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on August 14th 1915.

Hugh was acting as Military Conducting Officer on HMS Hythe, when she was involved in a collision with HMS Sarnia. They had been sailing off the coast of Gallipoli without lights to avoid attracting attention. The ship sank in ten minutes and 154 men — including Hugh Barby Crowe — were drowned.

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Charles Thomas Bruce

Charles Thomas Bruce was the eldest son of the late Hon. Thomas Charles Bruce, M.P. attended the School as a member of Homeboarders House from June 1876 to March 1880. He was a nephew of Lady Augusta Stanley, and lived at the Deanery. He was attached to Sir Henry Drummond Wolff’s mission to Constantinople and Egypt, 1885-6. On his return he married Edith Mary Parker in 1897 and they had a child together around 10 months after their wedding. Sadly Edith died in 1912 and Bruce married for a second time in 1914 to Gwendolen Mary Speir. In the war he commanded a field hospital in Flanders, where he contracted the enteric fever which killed him.

Enteric fever is now more commonly known as typhoid and still kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide each year. Work began to develop a vaccine against the disease in the 19th Century. A British bacteriologist Almroth Edward Wright created an effective vaccine which was first used successfully in the Boer War in the 1890s. On the outbreak of the First World War, Wright convinced the army to produce 10 million vaccines for troops sent to the Western Front, undoubtedly saving hundreds of thousands of lives. The British Army was the only combatant at the outbreak of the war to have its troops fully immunized against the bacterium. For the first time, their casualties due to combat exceeded those from disease. Unfortunately Bruce, as the commander of field hospital rather than a soldier, must have not received the vaccine.

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A Doctor operates in a Field Hospital in the First World War
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John Wyndham Hamilton McCulloch

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John was the only son of John Exley McCulloch of Paddington. He was born in December 1894,and arrived up Ashburnham in 1909.

He took part in the debating society. A report in The Elizabethan, notes that “On Thursday, October 19, the House met to discuss the following motion, ‘That in the opinion of this House the advantages of a boarding school are exaggerated.’ÔǪ The Seconder (Mr J.W. McCulloch), dwelt upon the splendid discipline of home life; in a moment of confidence, he gave the Society a glimpse of himself seated over his books in a lonely attic, from which the ‘injusta noverca’ forbade him to stir”.

However, his primary interest at school was sports and his contemporaries said he was a “useful” player. He earned a pink in both Cricket and Football and, in 1913, he played cricket for Middlesex.

On the 4th November 1914, he enlisted as 2nd Lieutenant for the 8th (Service) Battalion Border Regiment, and became Lieutenant the following February. He was serving as a temporary Captain when he was wounded in Flanders on the 20th October 1915.

He died of his injuries at Bailleul the following day.

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