Private Lauder threw a bomb, which failed to clear the parapet and fell amongst the bombing party. There was no time to smother the bomb, and Private Lauder at once put his foot on it, thereby localising the explosion. His foot was blown off, but the remainder of the party through this act of sacrifice escaped unhurt.
In keeping with VC citations from this period, the date and location of the action were withheld. No reason was given, either at the time or subsequently, for the delay in recognizing his undoubted bravery. Later the same year, David Lauder travelled to London to receive his VC from George V at Buckingham Palace. Dressed in civilian clothes, he was stopped by a policeman on duty outside the palace gates. Years later Lauder delighted in recalling their conversation: ‘Now then, don’t tell me you’re a VC’, said the incredulous constable, to which Lauder replied by showing him his official invitation from the War Office. ‘Who would have thought it’, said the policeman. ‘A little chap like you; but you must have a big heart, my lad.’
David Ross Lauder, the first member of the Royal Scots Fusiliers to win the VC in the First World War, was born in East Glentire, Airdrie, on 21 January 1894. His early years were spent in Dalry. He worked as a carter in the town and, in his spare time, trained with the local Territorials as a member of the 1/4th Royal Scots Fusiliers. In February 1913 he married Dorina Cavanagh McGuigan, and that same year they celebrated the birth of their first son, Angus.
Shortly after his call-up at the outbreak of war, Lauder’s wife left Dalry and settled in Glasgow, near to her sisters.
After a period of training in Britain, the 52nd Division was sent to Gallipoli in the spring of 1915, arriving on the peninsula during the first week of June. The division’s passage to Gallipoli had been fraught with difficulty and misfortune. En route to the embarkation port, a troop train carrying members of the division had crashed, killing 210 men and injuring a further 224. The 1/4th Royal Scots Fusiliers escaped another near catastrophe by the narrowest of margins when the SS Reindeer, in which they were being transported from Mudros to Helles, collided with the SS Immingham. The Immingham, which was returning empty, sank immediately, but the Reindeer, although badly holed, limped back to Mudros. In the face of this potentially harrowing experience, the Scots had behaved remarkably well. According to the Official Historian, ‘the troops upheld the best traditions of the Service and no loss of life was incurred’.
The 1/4th Royal Scots Fusiliers were not involved in the division’s first major operation, the ill-fated action of 28 June. But they were given a fearful mauling in the operations around Achi Baba Nullah on 12 July. In less than an hour on that scorching morning the battalion lost all but one of their officers and nearly half their rank and file were killed or wounded. The charge, in which the Fusiliers carried three lines of Turkish trenches, was said to have made a deep impression on David Lauder, who lost so many of his friends from pre-war days.
After being discharged from the Army, Lauder settled down to civilian life in Glasgow with his growing family. Between 1916 and 1924 the Lauders had four more children, two sons and two daughters. He joined the GPO as a telephone operator, rising to become supervisor at the Pitt Street Exchange.
Lauder divorced his first wife and was remarried in 1925 to Rachel Bates. They had five children, although two were to die in infancy.
Throughout his life, he continued to suffer from the effects of his terrible injury. His daughter, Violet Lauder, told the author: ‘He still had pieces of shrapnel in his leg and in one of his hands right until he died.’ His war wounds did not, however, prevent Lauder from performing a peacetime act of gallantry in April 1937 when he was a passenger aboard a tramcar which jumped the rails and collided with a bus in Glasgow’s Hope Street. Despite being dazed and cut, Lauder helped the more seriously injured out of the wreckage before reporting for work!
When the Second World War broke out, Lauder spent his nights working as a telephone switchboard operator and his days as a part-time air raid warden in Dalmarnock Ward. It is believed he also served for a time in the Home Guard.
He retired from his job with the GPO in 1960, but continued to work part-time as a nightwatchman for a local bakery. ‘He was always very active’, his daughter Violet recalled. Throughout those years he kept in close contact with his former regiment and fellow holders of the Victoria Cross in Glasgow.
David Ross Lauder died at his home, 39 Corran Street, Cranhill, Glasgow, on 4 June 1972. Four days later, a piper from the Royal Highland Fusiliers, successors to the Royal Scots Fusiliers, played a lament at his funeral. Included among a large turnout were a number of senior army officers, old comrades, friends and relatives. In 1979 David Lauder’s medals, including his VC and Serbian Medal for Bravery, were sold for £10,000. They appeared again at auction in 1994, where they fetched £17,000.
As one of fourteen Lanarkshire recipients of the Victoria Cross, Scotland’s sole army VC winner of the Gallipoli campaign is commemorated on a specially commissioned memorial arch unveiled in Hamilton town square in 2002.
F.W.O. POTTS
Hill 70 (Scimitar Hill), Sulva Bay, 21–3 August 1915
Tpr. F. Potts
In the early evening of 21 August, as night began to creep across the glowering hills of Suvla, Sir Ian Hamilton turned his back on the pall of confusion enveloping the battlefield. ‘By 6.30 p.m.’, he wrote, ‘it had become too dark to see anything. The dust mingling with the strange mist, and also with the smoke of shrapnel and of the hugest and most awful blazing bush fire formed an impenetrable curtain’. Although he could not have known it, the flames lighting up the darkening sky represented the dying embers of a campaign and a career in which hope had once burned so bright. Amid the choking smoke, the closing act in a tragedy of immense proportions was being played out with grim relentlessness.
The best-laid plans of General de Lisle and his staff had gone hopelessly awry. By nightfall it was over. The greatest battle fought on the peninsula in terms of numbers of men engaged had become the most costly and least successful. Intended as an attempt to capture the W Hills, Scimitar Hill and 112 Metre Hill, objectives which should have been attainable within the first twenty-four hours of the Suvla Bay operations, the battle of 21 August involved three British divisions, the 11th, the veteran 29th and the newly arrived 2nd Mounted Division. The latter consisted of Yeomanry units regarded by some as the cream of the nation’s rural volunteers.
The operation had been carefully timed to begin at 3.00 p.m. to take advantage of the setting sun. By that hour it would be at the backs of the advancing British, lighting up the Turkish positions and shining directly in the eyes of the defenders. But a quirk of nature intervened to derail de Lisle’s plans. ‘Soon after midday’, the Official Historian wrote, ‘the sun disappeared into banks of unseasonable cloud, and a veil of haze rose up from the Suvla plain to hide the Turkish positions’.
By the time the dismounted Yeomanry arrived on the scene, after a march of parade ground precision across the dry Salt Lake, the haze had thickened to a smog. Assigned the task of exploiting the success of the 29th Division, the inexperienced commanders of the 2nd Mounted Division faced the daunting task of capturing positions they could scarcely see against an enemy already buoyed by their success. The depressing scene was described by the Official Historian: ‘The mist was growing thicker, scrub fires were raging, and pillars of smoke were blotting out the view. Streams of wounded were struggling back to cover. The din of battle was deafening; and daylight would only last another hour.’
Despite the confusion, the 2nd (South Midland) Yeomanry Brigade launched its attack on Scimitar Hill shortly after 6.00 p.m. Briefly, it seemed as if their elan combined with their good fortune in approaching the hill up the less heavily defended northern and central slopes would be crowned by success. They stormed the crest, but were beaten back by enfilading fire. In the chaos of the abandonment of the summit, many seriously wounded men were left on the hill; trapped in no-man’s-land by a furious cross-fire and bu
rning scrub.
Among those consigned to what seemed a gruesome death on the slopes of Scimitar Hill was Tpr. Fred Potts, a 22-year-old member of the 1/1st Berkshire Yeomanry which, together with the Bucks Hussars and the Dorset Yeomanry, formed the 2nd Brigade.
The Berkshires had been on the peninsula only three days, and the attack was their first operation. A more testing baptism of fire seems hard to imagine. Led by Maj. E.S. Gooch, the unit had gone into action with 9 officers and 314 men. By nightfall, only four officers and 150 men remained. Potts, a member of B Squadron, came through the march across the Salt Lake unscathed to reach the foot of Scimitar Hill, officially styled Hill 70 but more familiarly known to the troops as Burnt Hill. Advancing in short spurts, their presence partially masked by the tall scrub, the Berkshires made good progress at first. Pausing beneath the summit, Potts and his comrades were ordered to ‘fix bayonets’, and then an officer led them in the final rush, shouting: ‘Come on, lads! Give ’em beans!’
In a letter written to his sister from a hospital ship shortly after the battle, Potts recounted his experiences:
We had already captured a Turkish trench, and when the order was given to charge over we went.
About 20 yards from the other side I received a wound in the thigh. It completely knocked me off my feet and I had to lie there. Presently, another of our chaps crawled to where I was. He was shot in the groin. There we lay all that night suffering from thirst, but it was much worse the next day. It seemed [as] though we should go mad for want of a drink.
When the second night came we decided to move if possible. This was no light job, as firing had been going on all round us – one bullet actually grazed my ear. However, we managed it somehow.
Then we were able to get some water from the water bottles of the men who had been killed. Rather a painful job taking it, but one of necessity.
Soon after we moved away the Turks visited the place, and by the terrible screams and groans we judged that they were killing off the poor chaps who still had a spark of life in them. We found a hiding place for the remainder of the night and next day. We dared not show ourselves during the day for fear of snipers, and oh, the thirst! I crawled from one body to another getting water. It was like wine, although it was nearly boiling.
At nightfall we decided that anything was better than to die of thirst, so we endeavoured to crawl to where we could find the British lines.
The other chap could hardly move and after a few yards had to give up, so I laid him on a shovel and dragged him down the hill bit by bit for about three-quarters of a mile.
Before we started I prayed as I have never prayed before for strength, help and guidance. I felt confident we should win through.
On reaching the bottom of the hill we came to a wood. Here I left the other chap to find a way through. I had not gone more than 20 yards when I received the command to halt. By good luck I had struck a British trench.
I soon told my tale, and it was not long before they found stretchers for both of us and took us into their trenches, where we were treated with every kindness.
From here we were conveyed to a Field Ambulance dressing station and had some hot tea. Oh it was grand! We were then put on an ambulance cart and sent to the Welsh casualty clearing station and thence on board this boat.
The man who Potts had saved was Tpr. Arthur Wilfred Andrews, a fellow Reading volunteer from the 1/1st Berkshire Yeomanry. Andrews was badly wounded and in terrible pain. What Potts failed to mention in his letter was that a third wounded man had been killed by their side. Nor did he tell of how during their final descent, Andrews, realizing the strain on his comrade, had urged Potts to leave him and seek safety alone. Only later did Potts recount the full story of the final drama, in an account first published in the London Magazine of 1916. In it, Potts related:
He [Andrews] sat on the shovel as best he could – he was not fastened to it – with his legs crossed, the wounded leg over the sound one, and he put his hands back and clasped my wrists as I sat on the ground behind and hauled away at the handle.
Several times he came off, or the shovel fetched away, and I soon saw that it would be impossible to get him away in this fashion.
When we began to move, the Turks opened fire on us; but I hardly cared now about the risk of being shot, and for the first time since I had been wounded I stood up and dragged desperately at the shovel, with Andrews on it. I managed to get over half a dozen yards, then I was forced to lie down and rest. Andrews needed a rest just as badly as I did, for he was utterly shaken and suffered greatly …
Potts, his face smeared with blood from his wounded ear and his leg roughly bandaged, presented a remarkable sight to the men of the 6th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. Andrews was brought in, and when the full story emerged the officers of the Inniskillings were determined Potts’ unselfish courage should be recognised. On 28 August Maj. W.P.B. Fraser wrote:
I have pleasure in bringing to notice an act of conspicuous bravery and devotion by Pte W. Potts [sic] of the Berks Yeomanry, Mounted Division, who, though himself severely wounded in the thigh and buttocks in the attack on Hill 70 on the 21st August, 1915, after lying out over 48 hours under the Turkish trenches, succeeded in fixing a shovel to the equipment of his comrade Pte Arthur Andrews of the same Corps, who was severely wounded in the groin, and dragging him back across 600 yards of ground to within a short distance of our line at about 9.30 p.m. on the 23rd inst. Pte Potts remained beside his comrade during the 48 hours, though he could himself have reached our trenches during that period. Witnesses:– Captain R.H. Scott. No. 11290, Sgt W. Brown, No. 12854 L/Cpl E. Crawley. All 6th R Innis. Fus, 31 Inf Brig.
Maj.-Gen. W.E. Peyton (GOC, 2nd Mounted Division) was in no doubt that Potts’ ‘exceptionally gallant conduct and devotion’ qualified him for the highest award. He wrote: ‘I consider that this is a case in which this man should be awarded the Victoria Cross, and strongly recommend that his case be forwarded to GHQ for favourable consideration’.
On 1 October the London Gazette announced the award of the VC to No. 1300 Pte. Frederick Potts, although the Gazette erroneously christened him Alfred. The citation read:
For most conspicuous bravery and devotion to a wounded comrade in the Gallipoli Peninsula. Although himself severely wounded in the thigh in the attack on Hill 70, on the 21st August, 1915, he remained out over forty-eight hours under the Turkish trenches with a private of his regiment who was severely wounded and unable to move, although he could himself have returned to safety. Finally, he fixed a shovel to the equipment of his wounded comrade, and using this as a sledge, he dragged him back over 600 yards to our line, though fired at by the Turks on the way. He reached our trenches at about 9.30 p.m. on the 23rd August.
News of the award reached Potts while he was recovering from his wounds at the Orchard Convalescent Hospital in Dartford. At his home in Reading, his sister told a journalist: ‘You know Fred will simply hate seeing all this in the papers. I feel awfully sorry for him to go through it all. As for a public demonstration, I am sure he would sooner charge up Hill 70, with all its terrors!’
On 9 October the young hero, fêted as the first Yeoman to win the VC in the war, was discharged from hospital and arrived unexpectedly at his parents’ home, 54 Edgehill Street, Reading. It was the signal for the celebrations to begin, and events to mark his award were still going on two months later when he was summoned to Buckingham Palace to receive his Cross from George V.
His selfless gallantry had captured the imagination of the public. ‘The hero with the shovel’, as the Press dubbed him, was given a great reception by his home town. The mayor of Reading presented him with an illuminated address, offering civic congratulations set in a silver casket decorated with golden shovels. Among the many gifts showered upon him were a desk from the Berkshire Territorial Force Association, a gold watch and chain from his employers at the Pulsometer Engineering Company, a tea service from his workmates, a clock from the University College, Reading
, and £25 of War Bonds from a prominent local citizen, who had promised it as a reward to the first Berkshire Yeoman to win the VC.
Frederick William Owen Potts was born on 18 December 1892, the son of Mr and Mrs Thomas Potts. Educated at the Central School and Wokingham Road Higher Elementary School, he was a regular church-goer and later became a member of the St Giles’ Branch of the Church of England Men’s Society. After leaving school, he spent three years as an evening student at the University College, Reading, studying machine construction, mathematics and mechanics. He worked as a fitter at the Pulsometer Engineering Company in the town, and lived with his parents.
In 1912 Potts, then aged nineteen, joined the Berkshire Yeomanry. The unit was mobilised on 5 August 1914 and spent the first eight months of the war training in Berkshire and Norfolk before embarking for Egypt in April 1915. During August the 2nd Mounted Brigade was ordered to Gallipoli to serve as infantry. On the 14th the 1/1st Berkshire Yeomanry, having been ordered to leave behind their swords, bandoliers and spurs, embarked at Alexandria, aboard the SS Michegan. At Mudros the unit transferred to the SS Hythe and landed at Suvla on 18 August. Three days later, in the attack on Scimitar Hill, the Berkshires suffered almost 50 per cent casualties.
So severe was Potts’ thigh wound that he did not return to active service with his unit. Promoted lance-corporal, he was released from the Army on ‘compassionate grounds’ before the end of the war.
On 15 December 1915, six days after receiving his VC and at the height of his fame, he married Ruth Wellstead, at St Giles’ Church, Reading. The couple were to have two daughters. At first they lived at his parents’ home, where Potts launched his own credit drapery venture. He eventually became a master tailor and later ran a business from Alpine Street, Reading.
VCs of the First World War Gallipoli Page 28
