Aristocrats Go to War: Uncovering the Zillebeke Cemetery

by Jerry Murland

  The Hon Arthur Edward Bruce O’Neill was the second son of Baron O’Neill and was the first MP to be killed in the Great War. After Arthur’s elder brother William died in 1882, he became heir presumptive to the title while he was still a schoolboy at Eton. Attending Eton from 1890 until 1895 he shared his school career with Bernard Gordon Lennox and Richard Dawson. He was commissioned in 1897 into 2/Life Guards and six years later married Lady Annabel Crewe-Milnes. His entry into Irish politics as the Unionist MP for Mid-Antrim in 1910 saw him leaving the army to pursue his new career, a career that was cut short by the outbreak of war in 1914. Arthur O’Neill and Annabel had five children together, one of whom, Terence Marne O’Neill, became Prime Minister of Northern Ireland in 1963. Rejoining his old regiment in August 1914 Arthur was now in command of a squadron.

  By 19 October 1914 the advanced units of 3 Cavalry Division, unlike their commander-in-chief, had no illusions as to the strength of the German forces confronting them. Leaving their overnight billets near Passchendaele at 6.00 am 7 Cavalry Brigade ran into a strong force of German infantry and cyclists as they approached the Hooglede-Staden-Roulers cross roads. Two squadrons of 2/Life Guards were ordered to advance towards the railway line and immediately drew heavy fire from the direction of the level crossing, forcing the startled troopers to find cover and wait for support. Colonel Ferguson recorded the action in the regiment’s war diary:

  ‘In the retirement Captain F Pemberton was killed. Lieutenant Anstruthers tried to get him along but finally had to leave him in a ditch. In the meantime I held the village facing E. with my other two squadrons and endeavoured to cover the retirement by rifle and maxim fire. The latter was very effective and the hostile infantry could be seen scattering. Very soon the enemy brought up some guns and placed their first shot on the precise spot my two maxims had just left. Their fire set some houses on fire and under the cover of the smoke my regiment withdrew.’

  With 1/Life Guards on Colonel Ferguson’s left flank, the two regiments withdrew from the village under the cover of the burning buildings. It wasn’t long before the advancing German infantry occupied the village and despite being shelled by K Battery, Royal Horse Artillery, held onto their new positions. The British counterattack was never going to succeed in the face of such superior numbers but it went ahead regardless. On the right flank Colonel Gordon Wilson commanding the Blues managed to establish a squadron on the outskirts of the village. They occupied a house initially, killing a German officer and ten other ranks which they found inside but were eventually forced to retire in the face of increasing numbers of German infantry. At the same time as the Blues were moving forward 2/Life Guards carried out a mounted attack with two squadrons covered by rifle fire from a dismounted line. The war diary again:

  ‘A tremendous fire opened from the village, and my advanced squadron which had got near enough to hear the German words of command, had to retire. My advance became impossible, and instead I took Belper’s squadron up to cover Ashton’s [Captain Sam Ashton] retirement … we had held up a strong force, probably the flank guard of an army corps from 9am until 3.30pm, and I was glad to give the men General Byng’s message that they had done exceedingly well.’

  Colonel Ferguson’s assessment of the engagement was quite correct; they had run into the flank guard of an army corps, in fact six divisions were advancing across the Menin-Thourout Road towards the British and French. 7 Cavalry Brigade had unfortunately come into contact with a battalion of the 52nd Reserve Division at the crossroads, an event they did not expect, as a reconnaissance the previous day had found the area completely clear of German troops. Under heavy shell fire from German batteries the brigade retired to the cover of a small wood on the right of their line in order to reassemble before galloping out of range. The day had not been a complete disaster, however, they had held up a very much larger force of enemy infantry and cyclists for nearly seven hours but the cost had been high. Regy Wyndham’s diary gives little away about the events of 19 October but does draw attention to the plight of the Belgian civilian population:

  ‘Moved out and met a large force of enemy on Menin-Roulers road. Had a very stiff fight against 10,000 Germans. Pte [Private] Stone of 2nd Troop was killed. Capt. Pemberton of the 2nd [Life Guards] killed, Roxburgh [RHG] wounded. We retired to Zonnebeke where we passed a wet night. It was a pitiable sight to see all the Belgian people flying from the villages with all their children carts and goods. Brocklehurst [Lieutenant Sir Phillip Brocklehurst] was hit today.’

  On the other hand, Gordon Wilson’s letter to Lady Sarah, written two days after the skirmish, provides us with more of a flavour of the conditions in which the brigade was operating. His estimation of the number of enemy troops is probably referring to the number engaged along the whole of the IV Corps front:

  ‘Poor Bumble [Brocklehurst] was wounded two days ago in another fight we had, when our Division took on 15,000 Germans and held our own all day. The 2nd [Life Guards] lost heavily and 3 officers. Our casualties have been very reasonable so far, and I hope they may continue to be so. A shrapnel has just burst 100 yds, from where I write. I luckily keep fit and well. Our days are long, and our sleep, as a rule, very short. We get into billets or bivouacs after dark and leave in the morning at 5.00 am. The country we have been passing through the last week has been a most difficult one for cavalry to work in, as it is quite flat and intersected with hedges and small woods and twisting roads dotted with innumerable farm buildings, from which we are perpetually sniped … Our horses poor things, are beginning to show signs of exhaustion. Long hours under the saddle and irregular and insufficient feeds. The musketry has just opened near here and I must close as we may be wanted.’

  By dawn on 20 October, 3 Cavalry Division was up and on the move with orders to entrench and defend the Westroosebeke – Passchendaele Road. The cavalry’s ability to move swiftly to support the infantry was of immense value during the battle for Ypres in 1914. However, the number of men actually available for action in the trenches with a rifle and bayonet was limited. Not only were the individual regiments often below strength due to increasing numbers of casualties but one man was required as a horse-holder for every four horses. Consequently a cavalry brigade such as 7 Brigade could possibly only muster 600 men in the firing line at any one time and as the battle for Ypres progressed, this number would fall significantly.

  On this particular morning the horses and their holders had been concealed in a wood behind the trench line but as the German shell fire increased the horses were moved further back. The first German infantry appeared just before noon and were soon in evidence in greater numbers advancing towards the road. On the 7 Cavalry Brigade frontage any attempt to cross the road was checked by rifle fire and for a while the enemy advance was halted. As with any wide frontage held by defending troops, however, each unit must hold its sector without retiring if the line is to remain intact. As soon as any one unit retreats the line is compromised, leaving a gap which an attacking force can exploit.

  This is precisely what happened around 2.00 pm on the Passchendaele road. Without warning, the French 79th Territorial Regiment on the extreme left of 6 Brigade began leaving their trenches and retiring, giving the British cavalrymen and the units of the 7th Division on their right no option but to follow suit. Casualties were relatively light but ‘Cecil’ Rhodes, a 28-year-old Corporal in Regy Wyndham’s troop, had to be left behind:

  ‘When Corp. Rhodes was hit, Mclean, who was next to him, said “Are you hit Cecil?” Rhodes took his pipe out of his mouth, and laid it on the trench, said “yes”, and fell down dead on top of Corporal Dawes.’3

  Falling back to a new line running from Zonnebeke to St Julien the brigade finally linked up that evening with Sir Douglas Haig’s I Corps which had left Ypres on the previous day.

  There was one other casualty on 20 October that impacted across all three regiments of 7 Cavalry Brigade. Captain Norman Neill, the Brigade Major, was wounded by shellfire and evacuated, even
tually being admitted to British General Hospital No.13 which had taken over the Casino at Bolougne. A building designed for the more frivolous activity of gambling, it offered its patients rather splendid accommodation in its brilliantly illuminated gaming halls, cafes and ballrooms, the like of which many of the hospital’s patients had, in all probability, never experienced before. Norman Neill’s wounds were not severe and within two weeks he was back with his brigade. The brigade major was the principle staff officer at brigade headquarters, answerable to the brigade commander and ensuring his orders were clearly interpreted and sent out to all units. He would also accompany his brigadier in the field and as General ‘Black Jack’ Kavanagh was an individual who liked to direct operations himself, the risk this entailed would, by necessity, be shared by the brigade major. Kavanagh was very popular with the officers and men of his brigade and very much championed the notion of the cavalry corps as an effective fighting arm of the BEF. Standing 6 feet, 4 inches inches tall he is reputed to have once accused a fellow officer, who in 1916 had suggested the abolition of the cavalry corps, of being a traitor to the cavalry. Lloyd met him briefly when brigade headquarters were at Voormezele in October 1914:

  ‘The general was actually shaving. He was in his shirt sleeves, and performed before a small hand mirror stuck on the fall. The other occupants of the billet were the Brigade Major (Captain Kearsey) and Private Tichener … I was struck by the absence of all the pomp and eyewash one is apt to associate with a general and his suite. Here was one of the finest generals the army had produced up to now, actually sharing quarters, rations and shaving water with a private. What a contrast to many of our junior officers who kept two men eternally running about after them with hot water and other luxuries morning and night.’

  The morning of 21 October saw the infantry battalions of I Corps now advancing to the northeast of Ypres, with the 3rd Cavalry Division adopting a protective role in guarding the flanks of I Corps. This soon changed, however, following an urgent call for help received from the 7th Division. At Zonnebeke the advancing 52nd German Reserve Division was putting Brigadier General Lawford’s 22 Infantry Brigade under severe pressure and by mid-morning had developed into a serious threat. 7 Cavalry Brigade was quickly despatched to provide much needed support until units of General Cavan’s 4 Brigade arrived at 4.00 pm to relieve them. The arrival of the cavalry injected a much needed boost to the flagging infantry and afterwards earned the brigade the personal thanks of General Lawford. Gordon Wilson described the episode in a letter to Lady Sarah:

  ‘We are nowjoined up with Haig’s army [sic] … Yesterday the infantry had been almost annihilated in some trenches in a position at Zonnebeke … and our brigade were told off to fill them, which we did and held them till 4.00 pm, with splendid results. Casualties in my regiment, 3, in the other two, considerably higher, especially in the 2nd. [Life Guards] We were thanked especially in an order from the GOC of that particular force [22 Brigade] for not only having saved but turned the situation into a good one. This was most satisfactory to me and my officers.’

  Regy Wyndham’s recollections of the day were a little different from that of Gordon Wilson. His description of the experience of D Squadron on that afternoon provides a greater insight into the lot of the soldier on the front line:

  ‘Sitting in a wet ditch, unable to see anything, with bullets whizzing over us. Once we retired by mistake, but returned at once. Corporal Tatchell got badly hit by one of our own shells, fired too low over the hill [where] we were sitting.’

  However, their appearance had stabilized a critical situation and it was after the events of 21 October that 7 Cavalry Brigade began to be referred to by the infantry as ‘Kavanagh’s Fire Brigade’. Lloyd, who was also serving in D Squadron, later wrote of the 7 Cavalry Brigade’s role at Ypres:

  ‘Whenever any part of the line within a few miles was hard-pressed or in danger of being broken, or whenever the French ran away and left a gap, the reserve brigade was called upon. It straightway galloped to the danger point, dismounted, and going in with the bayonet, put things in order.’

  Very often such a call was received on the most inconvenient of occasions; the Wyndham diary has us almost salivating at the prospect of that glorious beefsteak which had to be despatched with some alacrity:

  ‘Spent the morning shaving and changing my clothes. Then, while enjoying the glorious spectacle of a beefsteak being cooked for lunch, came the order to march out … Bolted the steak and started.’

  After Norman Neill had been injured the post of brigade major passed to Captain Alexander Kearsey. He had been awarded the DSO in 1901 and, like Norman Neill, had graduated from the Camberley Staff College in 1914. One of the first operational orders he wrote was to direct the brigade to march to Hooge on 22 October. The move south reunited 7 Cavalry Brigade with 6 Cavalry Brigade which had taken over the Scots Guards’ positions at Zandvoorde. Three squadrons of 10/Hussars were in the shallow trenches that had been dug on the forward slope of the Zandvoorde Ridge and serving with that regiment was a member of my own family, Second Lieutenant William Sydney Murland, who was still finding it difficult adapting to the wet and cold conditions of Flanders after the heat of South Africa. Late on 23 October 1/ and 2/Life Guards attempted to relieve them:

  ‘Today we were sent to relieve the 10th Hussars in some trenches, but the shell fire was so heavy they decided not to change the garrison of the trench till the evening. While the colonels and squadron leaders were talking it over, two [shrapnel] shells burst over them. Brassey. Tweedale, Colonel Ferguson, two of the 10th were all hit, but none of them badly hurt … In the evening we relieved the 10th. We had great trouble opening the gate out of the village into the field where the trenches were.’

  A master of understatement, Regy Wyndham had not realized that Colonel Ferguson had actually been hit in four places. Ferguson signed off the regimental war diary before he left with the words ‘lost a piece out of my leg’ and ‘had to retire to hospital.’ Command of 2/Life Guards thus fell to Major Hugh Dawnay.

  Inevitably casualties began to increase now the brigade was in the front line trenches. What we need to appreciate about the 1914 trenches is that they were nothing like the elaborate trench systems that came to dominate the Western Front. These trenches were little more than a series of unconnected holes and their rather exposed positions at Zandvoorde were heavily shelled both night and day, punctuated only by bursts of heavy rifle and machine-gun fire. Familiar faces were being lost in all three regiments as the intensity of German artillery and infantry attacks began to increase:

  ‘We were shelled for two hours this morning, besides the occasional shells all day. No one was hit in my trench, though bits of shell fell into it. In Stanley’s trenches Levinge [Sir Richard Levinge] and two men were killed, and in the evening Dick Sutton was hit … The Germans delivered a night attack in a somewhat half hearted way. After a lot of firing they gave up. Later in the night they made another, but did not press it home. On the whole we have had a hard time, but the men in Stanley’s [Captain Algernon Stanley] trench said it was worse there, as one could not put one’s head over the parapet at all.’4

  Behind them the village of Zandvoorde was practically destroyed by German high explosive shell fire. The church where Bernard Gordon Lennox’s brother Esme had been wounded the day before had been particularly targeted to prevent the tower being used by the British as an observation point. Regy Wyndham still managed to complete his diary despite the appalling conditions in their waterlogged holes. Sunday 25 October began with sunshine:

  ‘A lovely sunny morning, the day went well until the afternoon. Suddenly they began shelling us with big shells shewing [sic] a greenish smoke. They hit our emplacements time after time. Then they shouted to me two men were hit at the other end of the trench. Both men were named Smith. One was hit through both thighs, and the skin of his testicle bag was carried away. His pants and drawers were soaked with blood. The wound in his left thigh, the wound left b
y the fragment of shell that had been through him, was 5 inches x 3 inches. It was an awful wound to manage, but neither leg was broken … Went to Dawes’ trenches and found Lawson was hit through the head. Dawes said the body was warm, but we could see he was dead as his jaw had dropped … While I was bandaging … Smith a big shell fell just where I had been sitting, and one [piece] of it smashed through Groves’ water bottle … and fragments fell on Groves.’5

  At 6.00 pm in pouring rain the 7th Brigade was relieved by 10/Hussars; the dead were hurriedly buried while spent bullets from the German lines dropped all around them. It was later discovered that Lieutenant Sir Richard Levinge had been buried with the squadron’s pay still in his jacket and the next evening after dark a party was sent to retrieve it.

  Two days later on 26 October the 7th Division was again under severe pressure at Kruiseke; on this occasion it was the embattled battalions of 20 Brigade. At 2.00 pm an urgent request for help was received at brigade headquarters for assistance in covering the retirement of the remaining 300 men of the 2nd Battalion of the Border Regiment (2/Border Regiment). The battalion had been holding their trenches resolutely since early October with orders to hold their positions until relieved. At the time the only available reserve to answer the call was Gordon Wilson’s Royal Horse Guards which were at Klein Zillebeke. They were immediately ordered to make a ‘mounted demonstration’ towards Kruiseke, in effect a show of force to distract attention away from the embattled Border Regiment.