Cyril Martin died on 14 August 1980, aged 88, at the Royal Herbert Hospital, Woolwich, and was cremated at Eltham Crematorium. In 1980 Brigadier Martin was the second oldest holder of the VC as well as being the first individual to win both the DSO and VC in the war, and on 2 December that year his son and daughter, Sqn Ldr R.F.H. Martin and Miss M. Martin, presented their father’s medals to Maj.-Gen. G.S. Sinclair, Engineer in Chief, for the RE Museum. Cyril Martin was one of five Old Cliftonians to win the VC in the First World War. Martin’s VC and other medals are on display at the museum, as is the torn, muddy and bloodstained tunic worn by Lt Martin on the day he won his VC; his son had found the tunic stored with the medals in the bank.
R. MORROW
Near Messines, Belgium, 12 April
In early April the 1st Bn, Royal Irish Fusiliers (RIF) known as the Faugh-a-Ballaghs (which is Gaelic for ‘Clear the Way’), part of the 10th Bde, 4th Division, was in the River Douvre sector near Messines. The ground there was waterlogged, making it virtually impassable, and the German artillery dominated the area owing to the excellent observation afforded them from Messines. The battalion had moved back to the sector on 17 March, relieving the 1st Suffolks (84th Bde, 28th Div.) who were in support, and on 25 March it took over from the Seaforth Highlanders 200 yards of front-line trench north of the River Douvre. Communication was established by a temporary bridge. On 11 April orders arrived for the relief of the whole brigade, and on the following day, advance parties of the 5th Bn Royal Warwickshire Regt (143rd Bde, 48th Div.), joined the 1/RIF in the trenches to familiarize themselves with the area. The enemy artillery was very active, shelling the area during the day.
The 1/RIF’s last day in the Douvre area was eventful. The enemy artillery remained very active, bombarding the area, and at about 1700 hours, the German gunners began using heavier guns than had yet been used on this sector. They proceeded to shell the area north-west of Dead Cow Farm, a well-known target, then shortened the range until the shells reached the trench immediately south of the Douvre; this trench was systematically destroyed, and some men were simply blown to pieces while others were buried alive by falling debris. Survivors of D Coy 1/RIF took shelter in the support trench to the rear and it was from here that No. 10531 Pte Robert Morrow went forward to the fire-trench, and regardless of the shells still falling around, dug out one of his comrades and dragged him back to the relative safety of the support trench.
Morrow returned several times to the shattered front line, each time rescuing a man. Incredibly, he survived unwounded and the citation for the VC which was gazetted on 22 May ended: ‘Private Morrow carried out this gallant work on his own initiative, and under very heavy fire from the enemy.’ Sadly, he did not live to receive his award, being badly wounded on 25 April, when again carrying wounded soldiers to safety while under heavy fire, during the battalion’s attack on St Julien during the Second Battle of Ypres. He died of his wounds the next day at St Jean, near Ypres. His company officer, Capt. Jeudwine, recommended that Pte Morrow be awarded a clasp to the VC, but this was rejected. Morrow’s was the regiment’s first VC of the war.
Robert Morrow was born at Sessia, New Mills, near Dungannon, County Tyrone, Ireland, on 7 September 1891, the son of Hugh and Margaret Jane Morrow. When his father died, he was taken into the care of the Presbyterian Orphan Society. His widowed mother lived on a small farm at this time. Morrow was educated at the Carland and the Gortnaglush Nationalist Schools. He was of a quiet disposition, and after leaving school he helped to run the family farm until 1912, when he enlisted in the British Army, joining the 1st Bn Royal Irish Fusiliers as a private. Morrow went overseas on the outbreak of war and was involved in many of the early battles. After his death his VC was sent to his mother, together with a letter from the King which read:
It is a matter of sincere regret to me that the death of Private Robert Morrow deprived me of the pride of personally conferring upon him the Victoria Cross, the greatest of all distinctions.
Morrow’s CO, Lt-Col. D.W. Churcher, also wrote a letter of sympathy to his mother in which he described Robert as ‘a man absolutely devoid of fear’. In recognition of his courage, Morrow was also awarded the Russian Order of St George 3rd Class on 25 August 1915.
Mrs Morrow travelled to London where King George V re-presented the medal to her at an Investiture at Buckingham Palace on 29 November 1916. Although quite poor, Mrs Morrow refused an offer for her son’s decoration, declaring that only the Royal Irish Fusiliers should have it, and offering it to the regiment in 1919. A subscription was initiated among the regimental officers, and in August 1919 a ceremonial parade was held at the Depot in Armagh, at which Mrs Morrow formally donated the Victoria Cross to the regiment; in turn, she was presented with the title deeds of a piece of land she was anxious to add to her farm. Her elder son Richard served in the 12th Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and survived the war.
Robert Morrow’s citation is on display in Carland Presbyterian Church, County Tyrone, Ireland. The Ulster Courier and News of 9 November 1988 reported that the prominent obelisk memorial erected by subscription by the villagers of New Mills to the memory of Ulster’s first VC, Pte Robert Morrow, was accidentally smashed by a petrol tanker trying to negotiate a bend in the centre of the village. The Burmah Oil Company who owned the oil tanker undertook to restore what was known locally as the ‘VC Memorial’. It was the third time the memorial had been knocked down. In 1921 a mural tablet inscribed with the names of sixteen men from the parish of Newmills, including that of Private Robert Morrow VC, who made the supreme sacrifice in the Great War was unveiled in Newmills Parish Church. The tablet also records the names of a further 64 men of the parish who served. The public house in Newmills, the V.C. Inn, is named in memory of Robert Morrow.
Morrow is also included in a large commemorative painting which was commissioned for the French Government by M. Cairier-Bellew. Pte Morrow is buried in White House Cemetery, Plot IV, Row A, Grave 44; the cemetery is near St Jean, north of Ypres, Belgium.
HILL 60, BELGIUM
East of Verbranden Molen, the railway line between Ypres and Comines was set in a deep cutting, which crossed the ridge of high ground that runs in a south-westerly direction from Mount Sorrel to the Bluff. On the northern edge of this railway cutting stood Hill 60, described in the History of East Surrey Regiment as: ‘a pimple near the western crest of the ridge’. The 60 metre hill was a fine artillery observation post for the Germans, who were entrenched on the summit and upper slopes. From here they overlooked the lower ground to the west and north-west of Ypres, some two miles distant from the German positions and about 120 feet below them. Before any British advance could be made this ‘pimple’ would have to be captured. The action at Hill 60 became a prelude to the Second Battle of Ypres.
Unbeknown to the Germans, RE sappers had driven mines under their fire-trenches. In April the British front followed the line of the road from Zwarteleen, ran around the northern base of Hill 60, and then crossed the railway by means of the road bridge. Hill 60 was, in fact, the largest of three man-made ‘spoil’ heaps from the railway cutting, the others being the ‘Caterpillar’ and the ‘Dump’. At 19.05 hours on 17 April the Royal Engineers blew the mines, creating five huge craters that occupied virtually the whole area. The mine explosions signalled an Allied artillery bombardment on all the German approaches to the hill. As the last mine exploded, C Coy Royal West Kents and sappers of the 1/2nd Home Counties Field Company RE (13th Bde) left their trenches and stormed the German positions. They reached the top of the slope in two minutes and occupied the craters and the shattered remnants of the German trenches to the south-east. The survivors of the luckless German garrison, a company of the 172nd Regiment (XV Corps) were overwhelmed. British casualties were a mere seven men, one of whom was a victim of falling debris from the last mine explosion. Within fifteen minutes of the initial storming party reaching the crest, the supporting company of the Royal West Kents and two companies of the King’s Own Scottis
h Borderers, together with the machine-gun section of the Queen Victoria’s Rifles, were consolidating their position.
The left hand or easternmost crater formed a figure of eight because it overlapped with the middle crater. This first crater was approximately 30 yards in diameter and about 20 feet deep. The adjoining crater was slightly larger. The crater on the right was much smaller and was separated by a few yards from the middle one. Two other, smaller, craters lay to the rear, near the northern crest-line.
Two lines of trenches started from a point near the railway bridge. The forward line of trenches ran from the bridge up the slope of the hill towards the right-hand crater. At this point there was a gap, beyond which were old German support trenches, now manned as part of the British front line, which extended to the forward lip of the left crater (see map on page 64). Two German communication trenches, which crossed no-man’s-land from the German front line, led into these old German support trenches; one continued through the extreme left of the British front line past the left crater and into the middle one. A spur ran from this trench straight to the left-hand crater. Both these old German communication trenches were blocked out in no-man’s-land, at some distance from the British front line. The two branches of the continuation of the left-hand trench mentioned above were blocked again between the craters and the advance line. This meant that the left flank of the British advanced line was left ‘in the air’, the danger being increased by the German sap XZ. Such were the defences after the initial attack and consolidation. The troops on the hill had three hours to consolidate and prepare their position.
Defence of Hill 60, 19–21 April 1915
After the storming of Hill 60, German artillery fire was rather wild initially and there were reports that the Germans were using lachrymatory shells. In fact the gas that the British could smell was escaping from ruptured cylinders that the Germans had dug in on the hill ready for attack. In the early hours of 18 April desperate German attacks were launched against the troops on the hill, and heavy shelling and fighting continued throughout the day. The German troops made some progress, but at 18.00 hours the Duke of Wellington’s, supported by the KOYLI as second wave, counter-attacked, regaining possession of the whole hill again for 13th Brigade.
There was a lull in the fighting during the night of 18/19 April, and during the next day the enemy contented themselves with shelling the hill. Furious fighting was renewed by the Germans on the 20th, which mainly consisted of bombing attacks, and the brutal struggle for the hill continued through the night and into the next morning. Any semblance of trench lines had been obliterated by this time. The Official History states:
The surface of Hill 60 was a medley of confluent mine and shell craters, strewn with broken timber and wire: and in this rubbish heap it was impossible to dig without disturbing the body of some British or German soldier.
Operations continued on the 21st, following two night attacks, but on 22 April attention was diverted from the hill by the German gas attack near Ypres, which heralded the Second Battle of Ypres. Hill 60 was finally lost by the British on 5 May, partly as a result of repeated gas attacks.
If you walk the ground in the sunlight today, the hill does not appear particularly high or steep. Trees on the lower slopes shade the uneven ground, and worn pathways take the visitor past small sections of damaged pill-boxes that peep out of the surrounding ground, to the Queen Victoria’s Rifles Memorial on the summit. Despite the grassy surface, it is clear that the ground is heavily cratered; some of the craters are surprisingly deep, even eighty years on. Nature has softened the contours but it is still obvious that this was a place of terrible violence. The struggle for the hill cost the British over 100 officers and 3,000 men. The area of Hill 60 is not extensive; you can walk across it in just a few minutes; the intensity of the fighting is all too clearly illustrated by the fact that so small an area still contains the remains of several thousand unaccounted-for soldiers from both sides. It was perhaps this, together with its role in the defence of Ypres, that caused such outcry in October 1920 when it was announced that Hill 60 had been sold to the brewers Messrs Samuel Allsop Ltd from Burton-on-Trent. The company issued a vigorous denial that they were considering building an hotel on the site. They declared their purchase was necessary in order ‘to secure it for a war memorial to regiments which suffered there’. It seems unlikely that the cratered area could revert to its pre-war popularity as a place for lovers to meet (in those days it was known as ‘Côte des Amants’ – Lovers’ Hill). A small museum relating to the bloody action here stood on the opposite side of the road until its closure in 2006.
G.R.P. ROUPELL
Hill 60, Belgium, 20 April
The 14th Bde was ordered to send a battalion to reinforce 13th Bde at Hill 60. Two companies (A and B) and Battalion HQ of the 1/East Surreys (14th Bde, 5th Div.) moved off at 16.00 hours on 18 April to a position one mile short of the hill. Two hours later the remainder of the battalion joined them and awaited orders. During this time they suffered their first experience of gas, which was drifting across from the cylinders buried in the German lines in preparation for the attack which was launched on 22 April, which became known as the Second Battle of Ypres. The desperate ferocity of the German efforts to regain control of the heights may perhaps be explained by a desire to keep the existence of these cylinders a secret; they also faced the prospect of losing an excellent observation platform.
The battalion took over a portion of the front line on Hill 60 at 05.00 hours on 19 April. Initially Lt G.R.P. Roupell, commanding A Coy, relieved the right hand trenches as far as the communication trench which ran up to the left hand crater. Deep shell holes pitted the area near the base of Hill 60 where D and B Coys met. A mere 20 yards from B Coy’s right was a German strongpoint (marked Z on the map on page 40). Further to the left, and at right angles to the original British line, was a short trench (marked BC) that projected out into no-man’s-land and was also under B Coy’s control. Two ruined houses stood alongside this short ‘extension’ and obscured the view towards the shell-holed area at the north-north-east base of the hill. Lt Darwell’s machine-gun section, comprising five guns, was divided up; four machine-guns were allocated to B and D Coys, to sweep the eastern slopes of the hill, and the other went to C Coy, near the bridge. The Bedfordshire Regt was in support, some 500 yards behind the hill, based in trenches with dug-outs around Larch Wood. The troops spent 19 April clearing the dead and wounded out of the front line and improving the defences despite continuous shelling by the Germans which was directed primarily on the support and communication trenches at the rear of the hill. The enemy bombardment increased at 17.00 hours, with all trenches being pounded by trench mortars and heavy howitzers. The British batteries replied and the German shelling stopped after half an hour, but damage to the trenches was extensive and when the enemy bombardment lifted the battalion immediately began to repair the smashed defences.
At 22.00 hours half of A Coy under Lt Roupell relieved the two C Coy platoons which had originally held the old German support trenches on the forward slope of the hill. Repair work continued through the night despite enemy shelling and bombing. Dawn on 20 April heralded a hot, fine day and the day was relatively quiet for those in the advanced line, although at about 15.00 hours B Coy successfully defended trench BC from enemy bombers. A heavy bombardment opened up on the British positions about 11.00 hours, lasting until midday when shelling became sporadic, allowing some repair work to be done on the defences. Shortly after 16.00 hours the Germans began a concerted effort to retake their lost positions, beginning with an intense bombardment of all British-held areas on and around Hill 60. Roupell’s half of A Coy in the advanced line was accurately shelled by field batteries near Zwarteleen and the Caterpillar, choking the trenches with dead, wounded and debris. All telephone lines were cut by shellfire, stopping all communications, not only between units, but also with sector headquarters and the artillery batteries. In Roupell’s section of the line, 2/Lt
Davis was in command of the platoon on the left, in front of the left crater, while Lt G.L. Watson’s platoon was holding the right trench, which bent back to join C Coy’s trench. Lt Watson’s platoon was badly hit by German field batteries, and Watson and twenty men were soon killed. Lt Roupell sent back orders to Lt Abercrombie to bring up his platoon as reinforcements. When they arrived they found all of Lt Watson’s platoon buried by explosions but struggled to hold the trench, despite mounting losses; their efforts offered an escape route for Lt Davis’s platoon on the left, who had no other exit from their trench. As the History of the East Surrey Regiment notes of this bombardment: ‘The little hill was covered with flame, smoke and dust, and it was impossible to see more than ten yards in any direction’. Shortly after 17.00 hours the enemy bombardment lifted from the front line trenches, instead concentrating on the support and communication trenches to prevent reinforcements moving up to the front. Soon after the ‘lift’, a large party of German infantry advanced across the open towards the right-hand crater, having deployed from the railway cutting near the Caterpillar. This attack was quickly stopped by concentrated fire from British artillery supported by the machine-guns of the 1/Norfolks, who were positioned on the right of the 1/East Surreys on the far side of the railway cutting, and the single machine-gun manned by Cpl F.W. Adams in the advanced trench held by C Coy 1/East Surreys.
Two other German attacks developed simultaneously with this one. One was launched against Roupell’s A Coy in the advanced line and the other against B and C Coys on the left of the hill. Roupell’s half company was attacked by groups of enemy bombers who crawled along the old German communication trench, supported by parties of infantry who every so often attempted short rushes forward across the open ground. A Coy, though suffering heavy losses from grenade and rifle fire, fought on, picking up German grenades and hurling them back before they exploded, and stopping infantry rushes with rapid rifle fire. The East Surrey men found their own long-handled bombs impossible to use in the narrow confines of their trench. Lt Roupell, under severe pressure owing to heavy casualties, called for reinforcements for A Coy in the advanced line. Maj. W. Allason of the 1/Bedfords had received pleas for men from sector HQ, where Lt Darwell of the 1/East Surreys had got a message through appealing for desperately needed replacements. Maj. Allason sent a party of 1/Bedfords forward and somehow they found their way to the left-hand crater which they occupied. Roupell’s message for help had also reached Lt Geary, then attached to C Coy 1/East Surreys, who collected his platoon and led them forward. Lt Geary was unable to reach the advanced line through the right communication trench, but spying the Bedford men made a rush across the open to join them in the left crater.
VCs of the First World War 1915 The Western Front Page 6
