Lt. Col. F.W. Luard, CO of the Portsmouth Battalion, cited Parker’s heroism in his report of the fighting. A recommendation for the Victoria Cross was immediately made by Maj. C.F. Jerram, staff captain of the RM Brigade. But the dispatches were lost. In September, Lt. Alcock was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for his gallant leadership. But for Parker, who had survived near-disaster when the hospital ship in which he was being evacuated collided with another vessel in thick fog, there was only a certificate from the GOC to mark his ‘gallant and courageous conduct’. His actions, however, had not been forgotten. Writing to Parker later, Maj. Jerram stated: ‘When I was on leave, after the evacuation, I met Doctor Playne, who spoke to me very strongly about you; so we collected all the evidence we could and the General put you in again… .’
Fortunately, many of the leading participants in the action had survived the campaign, and each one testified to Parker’s gallantry. In a letter dated 8 April 1916, Lt. Alcock, DSC wrote: ‘The extreme courage with which he carried out his work was excellent and he remained calm and collected under very trying circumstances’. Later that year, Alcock confirmed that Parker was the only member of the relief party to reach his outpost. He added: ‘There is no doubt whatsoever that Lance-Cpl Parker knew, as soon as he started, that he was taking the greatest risks possible and that his one idea was to succour the wounded in the isolated trench.’
The campaign to honour Parker found a powerful ally in Brig. Gen. Trotman, who had commanded the RM Brigade at Anzac. On the basis of the new evidence gathered, he considered ‘that a Victoria Cross should be awarded’. After a detailed inquiry, the adjutant general of the Royal Marines, David Mercer, agreed. But before it could go forward, the recommendation had one more hurdle to clear. The Marines, concerned with maintaining the high standards of the VC, submitted the papers to the Army Council at the War Office in order that Parker’s action could be compared with similar deeds performed during the war. This resulted in a further delay, and it was not until 22 June 1917, more than two years after the action, that the London Gazette announced the award of the Victoria Cross to L/Cpl. Walter Richard Parker, RMLI, Royal Naval Division. It was the last VC to be announced for the Gallipoli Campaign. The citation read:
On the night of 30th April–1st May, 1915, a message asking for ammunition, water, and medical stores was received from an isolated fire trench at Gaba Tepe [sic].
A party of non-commissioned officers and men were detailed to carry water and ammunition, and, in response to a call for a volunteer from among the stretcher-bearers, Parker at once came forward; he had during the previous three days displayed conspicuous bravery and energy under fire whilst in charge of the battalion stretcher-bearers.
Several men had already been killed in a previous attempt to bring assistance to the men holding the fire trench. To reach this trench it was necessary to traverse an area at least four hundred yards wide, which was completely exposed and swept by rifle fire. It was already daylight when the party emerged from shelter and at once one of the men was wounded; Parker organised a stretcher party, and then going on alone succeeded in reaching the fire trench, all the water and ammunition carriers being either killed or wounded.
After his arrival he rendered assistance to the wounded in the trench, displaying extreme courage and remaining cool and collected in very trying circumstances. The trench had finally to be evacuated, and Parker helped to remove and attend the wounded, although he himself was seriously wounded during this operation.
By the time of the award, Parker was no longer serving in the Marines. Having made a slow recovery from his painful wounds, he returned to duty on 26 April 1916, serving at Command HQ, Ireland. His posting, however, was cut short by sickness. Within weeks, he was being treated for ‘brain fever which left his sight badly affected’. He returned to England on 14 May and was invalided out of the services a month later with a war gratuity of £10. Parker found work in a munitions factory, and it was as a civilian that he received his Victoria Cross at an investiture held on the forecourt of Buckingham Palace on 21 July 1917. To mark the award, his former comrades in the Portsmouth Division of the Royal Marines presented him with a marble and gilt clock at a special parade. His wife received a gold regimental brooch. But the signs of his failing health were already apparent. Parker was not well enough to speak, and Brig. Gen. Trotman expressed thanks on his behalf.
Walter Richard Parker was born on 20 September 1881, at 5 Agnes Street, Grantham, the eldest of eight children to Richard and Kate Parker.
Educated at Grantham elementary school, he was later employed as a coremaker at Stanton Ironworks Foundry. In 1902 he married Olive (née Orchard), the daughter of Stapleford’s station-master. They had three sons, all of whom died young, and three daughters.
After the war, Parker struggled bravely to overcome his injuries. He was elected to the local pensions tribunal and became president of the Stapleford branch of the Royal British Legion. His later years, however, were characterised by his declining health. His daughter, Vera Constance, who was born in 1919 and christened in honour of his VC, remembered:
He was a very sick man for a lot of years … When he knew he was dying, he set out to try and get my mother a pension. But the authorities said he had survived too long for his death to have been caused by his war wounds. When his doctor heard, he hit the roof. He said that he had treated him and that he was a complete wreck. He said it was a miracle that he had lived so long.
Walter Parker died at his home in Derby Street, Stapleford, on 28 November 1936, aged fifty-five. His coffin, draped with a Union Jack, was carried to its last resting place in Stapleford Cemetery by eight Royal Marine NCOs from Eastney Barracks, Portsmouth. The first VC hero of Anzac beach had never courted publicity during his lifetime, but crowds lined the streets of Stapleford to pay their last respects to an unassuming man who had borne his suffering with the same degree of fortitude and courage he had once displayed on the Gallipoli Peninsula.
His Victoria Cross, together with his other decorations, were presented by his family to the Royal Marines Museum, where they now feature in a display honouring the ten Marine recipients of the nation’s highest award for valour.
E.C. BOYLE
Sea of Marmora, 27 April–18 May 1915
Lt. Cdr. E. Boyle
The sea was calm and the night dark as HM Submarine E14 twisted between the myriad craft anchored off Cape Helles on her passage up the Dardanelles. It was around 3.00 a.m. on 27 April. Barely an hour and a half had passed since Lt. Cdr. Courtney Boyle had slipped out of Tenedos at the start of his mission to break through the Narrows into the Sea of Marmora, for so long regarded by the Turks as their own private lake.
As the E14 passed the ruined fortress of Sedd el Bahr, the sounds of conflict drifted eerily across the water; the rattle of rifle fire mingling with the cries of men, fighting on the bitterly contested beachhead. Boyle, standing alone and exposed on the open conning-tower, could hear it all. The canvas bridge screen had been removed and all the steel stanchions taken down save one, to give him something to hold on to while navigating a course along the surface.
Occasionally, the night sky was lit by red flashes as the heavy guns from the French battleships thundered across the anchorage. Dead ahead, some eight miles distant, lay the Narrows, bathed in brilliant white light, like a vast stage, while still closer, at the mouth of the Suan Dere river, a single powerful searchlight swept across the water. There was a strange air of unreality. To Boyle’s first lieutenant, Edward Stanley, ‘it all looked very weird and threatening’. Positioned just below the open conning-tower hatch, Stanley passed Boyle’s orders on to the coxswain at the foot of the ladder. He was also in charge of the submarine’s gyro compass, a new and important navigational aid considered to require such careful handling that no one else, not even the captain, was allowed to touch it.
Such rules were typical of the meticulous planning which had gone into Boyle’s preparation for the hazardous ventur
e into one of the world’s most heavily defended stretches of water. Since December 1914, when the small submarine B11, commanded by Lt. Norman Holbrook, ventured half-way up the Narrows to sink an old Turkish battleship below Chanak, three submarines had dared to reach the Sea of Marmora. Two had been sunk and only one, the AE2, an Australian submarine commanded by an Irishman, had successfully negotiated the Dardanelles. Lt. Cdr. Hew Stoker’s foray on 25 April signalled the start of one of the most daring and successful submarine campaigns ever to be waged. But her entry into the Sea of Marmora was of little practical assistance to Boyle, who knew nothing of her experiences. The success or failure of the E14’s passage, therefore, would rest wholly on his own plan, based on personal experience and reconnaissances of the approaches to the Dardanelles. Lt. Stanley later noted:
There was very little guessing … as far as possible everything which could ensure success was thought of in advance. The battery was brought up to 100% condition and an hour before starting off was ‘fizzing’, then ventilated, left topped until within half an hour of diving. Every tank, blow and motor had been examined – all was in tip top condition.
The route through the Narrows
Even with such a high degree of planning, however, there was much that was not known about the obstacles confronting them. As well as at least five rows of mines and numerous vessels patrolling the Narrows, there were reports of shore-sited torpedo tubes, a sunken bridge off Nagara Point and anti-submarine nets. These posed formidable enough problems, but when combined with the natural elements they appeared almost insurmountable. Although the E-class boats were designed to stay submerged for 50 miles, the power of the current, running at 3–5 knots through the narrow bottle-neck linking the Sea of Marmora to the Mediterranean, made it unlikely they would be able to complete the tortuous passage of the 35-mile-long Straits underwater. Nor could they be sure of avoiding all of the moored mines by diving deep. To safely navigate, it was vital to take frequent observations of landmarks which necessarily entailed operating at periscope depth. Even had they been able to remain submerged, the navigation of such a confined waterway dominated by strong-running currents represented one of the most dangerous challenges then known to submariners. In addition, they faced the hazards posed by the change of water density as the saltwater of the Mediterranean met the freshwater of the Marmora, which could make submarines almost uncontrollable.
It was scarcely surprising, therefore, that when originally asked whether an E-boat could make it through to the Marmora, Boyle had sided with the majority of senior naval officers in delivering a firm ‘No’. Only the commander of the E15 had thought it possible, and his attempt resulted in the second submarine loss of the campaign. Since then the AE2 had shown the way, and now it was E14’s turn. As the submarine entered the Straits, Lt. Stanley noted ‘the crew were extremely calm’. There was no sign of excitement. ‘I think really that we were all resigned for the worst and hoped for the best’, he added.
At about 4.00 a.m. the E14 was caught in the glare of the searchlight at Suan Dere and almost immediately shells splashed into the sea ahead. Boyle took this as his cue to submerge. In his official report he recorded:
Dived to 90 feet under the minefield. Rose to 22 feet 1 mile south of Killid Bahr and at 5.15 a.m. passed Chanak, all the forts firing at me. There were a lot of small ships and steamboats patrolling, and I saw one torpedo gunboat, ‘Berki-Satvet’ class, which I fired at, range about 1,600 yards. I just had time to see a large column of water as high as her mast rise from her quarter where she was presumably hit, when I had to dip again as the men in a small steam boat were leaning over trying to catch hold of the top of my periscope.
It was an extraordinary encounter. Boyle had, in fact, sunk the Turkish gunboat with his second torpedo, but he was fortunate to have escaped without damage from his brush with the steamboat crew. Rounding Nagara Point at 6.30 a.m., he passed beneath a succession of small craft apparently searching for him. At 9.00 a.m., while coming up to periscope depth to get a navigational fix, he spotted a Turkish battleship less than a mile astern, but decided to ignore her and press on towards the Sea of Marmora, which he entered at 10.15 a.m. Boyle was able to observe Turkish efforts to locate him, but not wishing to give his position away, he spent much of his first day submerged. The next day proved a frustrating one with a succession of Turkish patrol craft forcing the E14 to dive whenever the submarine came to the surface to charge her over-worked batteries. Boyle decided to seek out a safer hunting ground, and later that evening moved along the surface to the north-east of Marmora Island.
The next day, 29 April, he spotted a convoy of two troopships escorted by three destroyers. Conditions for attack, however, were far from ideal. He reported:
Unfortunately, it was a glassy calm and the TBDs [destroyers] sighted my periscope and came for me and opened fire while I was a good way off. I fired at one transport, range about 1,500 yards, but had to dip before I could see the effect of the shot. (One periscope had had the upper window pane broken by a shot the day before and was useless, and so I could not afford to risk my remaining one being bent).
According to Turkish records, one of the escorting destroyers, probably the Muavent-I Milliye, made a vain attempt to ram E14. Half an hour later, when Boyle felt it safe enough to come to periscope depth, he observed that the destroyers were escorting only one troopship and the other, later identified as the 921-ton steamer Ittihat, was ‘making for the shore at Sar Kioi with dense columns of yellow smoke pouring from her’.
Later that afternoon the E14 made an unscheduled meeting with AE2, and plans were made for another rendezvous the next day. But Stoker’s submarine was sunk the following morning, before she could keep her appointment. The next day the Turks celebrated another success, the destruction of the French submarine Joule while attempting to break through the Straits. The crew of E14 would have to continue their efforts alone.
Boyle, meanwhile, was determined to adopt a more aggressive approach towards his most persistent adversaries. As he said in his report: ‘I decided to sink a patrol ship as they were always firing at me.’ He found his victim at 10.45 a.m. on 1 May, and made short work of it. One torpedo was enough to send the Turkish minelayer Nour-el-Bahr to the bottom. Leading Stoker John Haskins wrote in his diary:
The Captain saw two men aboard the mine-layer, cleaning a gun abaft; they saw the torpedo coming straight at them, and they started to run to tell the officer on the bridge. But they were too late. The torpedo hit her and she blew up. By the explosion she made, she must have been full of mines. There was nothing left of her in three minutes. The blast gave us a good shaking up, but nobody minded, as it meant another enemy ship less.
Boyle’s reputation was growing rapidly, both among his own crew and the Turks, who attempted to counter the submarine menace by establishing a primitive coast-watching network. Bonfires were lit along the shore as warnings to shipping whenever sightings were made. However, it was bad luck and not smoke signals which denied Boyle of further success on 5 May. On that date, he carried out a textbook attack on a Turkish transport, but his torpedo, which was seen to strike the target, failed to explode. The Turks were becoming increasingly wary. The next day a destroyer and transport turned and fled back towards Constantinople at the sight of E14. Boyle added to their timidity on 8 May when, having stopped and searched two vessels crowded with refugees, he followed a third steamer into the Turkish harbour at Rodosto. He reported: ‘She anchored close in shore and was also full of refugees. Approached within 1,200 yards of the shore. I could not see any troops, but they opened a heavy rifle fire on us, hitting the boat several times, so I went away.’
Two days later the E14 surfaced near Kalolimno Island. The sea was clear and Boyle decided to allow the crew some relaxation. But while they were taking a swim, a destroyer hove into view. Leading Stoker Haskins noted: ‘There was a hell of a splash as the lads climbed aboard and stood by their diving stations.’
Boyle took E14 down a
nd the destroyer passed directly above. Half an hour later, Boyle sighted two transports being escorted by a single destroyer. In what would prove to be his greatest success of a profitable first patrol in the Marmora, he immediately attacked:
The torpedo fired at the leading transport did not run straight and missed astern. The second torpedo hit the second transport, and there was a terrific explosion. Debris and men were seen falling into the water … Unfortunately it was 7.35 p.m. when I fired, and in ten minutes it was quite dark, so I did not see her actually sink. However, she was very much down by the stern when I last saw her, and must have sunk in a very short time.
The crew of the E14 were jubilant. Haskins wrote: ‘The lads gave a cheer as the troops aboard the transport jumped overboard in their hundreds.’
What Boyle, in his report, described as a three-masted and two-funnelled ship ‘twice as large as any other ship I saw there’, was, in fact, the 5,017-ton former White Star liner Germanic, rechristened Guj Djemal. And, contrary to his supposition as to the vessel’s fate, she appears to have survived the encounter, though her bows had been broken. According to Turkish records, the Guj Djemal, which was carrying 1,600 troops (British accounts speak of 6,000 men and an artillery battery), was able to limp into Constantinople with the assistance of two Bosphorus ferries.
The torpedo attack, on the thirteenth day of the E14’s patrol, was to be her last. Boyle had expended nine of his ten torpedoes; the remaining one was found to be faulty. Of the nine, four had resulted in the destruction of a gunboat, minelayer and transport and the almost certain loss of a second transport. Three had either not run true or failed to explode and only two had missed their targets. It was an impressive success rate. Boyle’s achievements, however, went far beyond material destruction. Turkish shipping movements were severely disrupted, seriously hampering the transport of men and material to the peninsula. But the impact on civilian morale was even greater. Such was the extent of the hysteria gripping Constantinople, it was considered that the continued presence of the E14 in the Sea of Marmora, even without offensive armament, would contribute significantly to the weakening of Turkish resolve. It appeared to be an accurate assumption. On 13 May the unarmed E14 chased a small steamer with such determination that she ran herself aground. A brief rifle skirmish followed before Boyle left her and headed for Erekli Bay.
VCs of the First World War Gallipoli Page 13
