Despite severe losses Roupell’s band of A Coy men held on against several enemy attacks which all developed in the same way: a shower of grenades hurled from the two old communication trenches, followed by an infantry charge across the open. Each attack was stopped by rapid rifle fire from Lt Roupell’s dwindling number of survivors. Though wounded eight times during the intensive bombardment which preceded the final German attack, Roupell remained at his post, leading his men in repelling the enemy.
As darkness fell, a little after 19.00 hours, Lt Roupell, realizing the untenability of his position without reinforcements, decided to make his way back to HQ to explain the situation. The German bombardment had been maintained, with varying intensity, all day, but Roupell, despite feeling faint from blood-loss, made his way across the shell-swept open to the reserve trenches. He reported to the sector commander, Lt-Col. Griffiths of the Bedford Regt, at sector headquarters at about 19.30 hours, outlined the situation and was promised reinforcements for the front line. After having his wounds properly dressed, he returned to the advanced lines to resume command of his men, despite the surgeon’s advice that he should report to a casualty clearing station.
By this time (about 20.00 hours) A Coy’s position was delicate. Some Germans had managed to crawl along the left communication trench, penetrating the extreme left of A Coy’s trench. 2/Lt Davis’s platoon opened fire along this virtually straight trench, thus preventing a lodgement by the Germans, but in turn A Coy was held back by enemy bombers, thereby making this section untenable to both sides. Soon after 23.00 hours Roupell again went back to collect reinforcements and brought a party of 1/Bedfords forward. The 1/East Surreys were relieved by the Devons at 02.00 hours on the 21st.
Roupell was awarded the VC for ‘most conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty’ which was gazetted on 23 June 1915; he received the award from the King himself, being decorated at Buckingham Palace on 12 July the same year.
George Rowland Patrick Roupell was born in Tipperary on 7 April 1892, the son of Col. F.F. Roupell, CO of the 1/East Surrey Regiment and Mrs E.M. Roupell (née Bryden). He was educated at Rosall and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, before being gazetted to the East Surrey Regt as 2/Lt on 2 March 1912, becoming a lieutenant on 29 April 1914. He went to France with the BEF and saw action at Mons, Le Cateau, The Retreat, the Marne, the Aisne, and the First Battle of Ypres. He commanded a platoon until the fighting on the Aisne, where he gained command of a company, which he kept until his VC action on 20 April 1915 when he was wounded. He was also awarded the Russian Order of St George 4th Class for this same action. After recovering from the wounds he suffered at Hill 60, he was promoted to captain on 21 April 1916 and was appointed Adjutant of the 1/East Surreys; later he was General Staff Officer Grade 3 to the 17th Army Corps, becoming GSO 3 to 3rd Army in September 1916. He was awarded the French Croix de Guerre and was Mentioned in Despatches three times and wounded twice during the war. Following the Armistice he served as A/Lt-Col. from 13 December 1918 in the North Russia campaign against the Bolshevists during 1919. He was captured in that year and in an undated newspaper article made it clear that the treatment of British officers who fell into Bolshevist hands was grim:
Capt. G. Roupell VC of the East Surrey Regt, states that at Plesetskaya on the Archangel front and again at Moscow all the British officers were informed that they would be regarded as brigands. At both places their treatment was of the most brutal nature.
Roupell relinquished his A/Lt-Col. rank in 1920 after repatriation from Russia. He attended the garden party given for VCs at Buckingham Palace on 26 June 1920. In 1921 he married Miss Doris Phoebe Sant, twin daughter of Capt. Mowbray Sant, Chief Constable of Surrey, at Christ Church, Lancastergate; the same year he entered the Staff College, Camberley. They were later to have two children, a son and a daughter. He was restored to the establishment of officers on 21 January 1923 as a captain in the East Surrey Regiment. From May 1924 until 1928 he served as a staff captain in Northern Command, being promoted to major on 18 November that year and becoming GSO 2, Royal Military College, Kingston, Canada, from 16 March 1929 to April 1931; in July he assumed command of the East Surrey Regimental Depot, Kingston-on-Thames. In 1934/5 he was GSO 2 China Command, and from 1935 to 1939 commanded the 1/East Surrey Regt as a lieutenant-colonel. He served in the Second World War as a brigadier, commanding the 36th and 105th Infantry Brigades. On 19/20 May 1940 Brigadier Roupell’s 36th Bde was severely attacked by German armoured columns supported by Stukas. At 04.00 hours on the 21st, with German units all around him, he ordered his men to split into small parties and make their escape independently. This was duly done and many were successful, though Roupell’s three commanding officers were captured, a fate Roupell did not share, hiding himself in a farm where he stayed for two years before making his escape through Spain. He later took command of 105th Infantry Brigade.
He attended the victory parade in Whitehall on 8 June 1946 and the dinner at the Dorchester Hotel given afterwards. He was made Deputy Lieutenant of Surrey in 1953 and from August 1955 to April 1956 made a ‘good-will’ tour with his wife, visiting several military bases in Canada, Hong Kong and Australia that had links with the Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment. While in Canada he stayed for a fortnight with Maj. Handley Geary, an old friend who had also won a VC with the 1/East Surreys on Hill 60 on the same day as Roupell. Upon his return he attended the parade at the VC Centenary Review in Hyde Park, London, on 26 June 1956, the same year that he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath. His wife Doris died in 1958; a year later he married again, this time to Mrs Rachel Kennedy, daughter of the late R.A. Bruce of Yeovil, Somerset; the same year he was given a full colonelcy, making him the last Colonel of The East Surrey Regiment, holding office in 1959 when amalgamation with The Queen’s Royal Regiment took place to form The Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment. He continued to take an interest in the Surrey Regt and the VC Association, attending the majority of VC celebrations up till 1973.
In 1973 Brig. C.R.P. Roupell became President of the Old Contemptibles’ Association. A year later, on 4 March 1974, he died peacefully at his home at Little Chartham, Shalford, Surrey, aged 81 years and 11 months. A private cremation was held at Guildford Crematorium, followed on Friday 15 March by a Thanksgiving Service at the Church of St Mary the Virgin at Shalford, presided over by the Revd K.J. Morgan.
B.H. GEARY
Hill 60, Belgium, 20/21 April
While Lt Roupell’s men held the advanced line on Hill 60, 2/Lt Geary and his platoon of C Coy men were engaged throughout 19 April in extending their trench in the advanced line up the slope to the right crater. On Tuesday 20 April the German bombardment found the range and battered the East Surreys’ trenches, blowing in a parapet over 2/Lt Geary and some of his men. He managed to get free fairly easily but his men required help to get out; incredibly, only one man was wounded. Geary and his men then began trying to fill in the gaps blown by enemy shellfire, despite being shot at from the front through the gaps, and from the rear on the left, where the German trenches curved round behind them. Geary went to reconnoitre the best way up to A Coy in the advanced line and discuss with the officers what action to take in an emergency. Having returned to his section of line just before the intensification of the enemy bombardment, 2/Lt Geary then received news from a messenger (sent by Roupell) that reinforcements were urgently needed on the Hill. He quickly gathered his platoon together and led them forward, but because of the battered condition of the right communication trench, was unable to reach the advanced line by this route. Looking through a gap he saw several men of the Bedfords holding the left crater, although no trench was dug there. He rushed across the open, his men following, to join the Bedfords, who greeted their arrival with loud cheers. Geary placed his men around the inside of the rim of the crater and they held on grimly for several hours. The left crater was evidently one of the Germans’ objectives, for intensive shelling around the crater began, though it seems no shells fell direct
ly into the crater itself. The enemy’s trenches were not far away and a steady fusilade of grenades was kept up against the British in the crater; the Germans also had a machine-gun trained on the only approach British reinforcements could use. The crater fast filled with dead and wounded and officers bringing up new men from both the Bedfords and the Surreys were becoming casualties at an alarming rate. The middle crater was held by neither side and had been subjected to steady shelling and bombing throughout the day. Geary himself recounted: ‘I discovered I was the only officer untouched on that part of the Hill, and was the only one who lasted the whole time from 5 p.m. till nearly dawn.’ It seemed to Geary that they must eventually be completely cut off.
In the meantime the Germans had begun moving up their old communication trenches, one of which led up to the left crater. Geary took a number of rifles, and with the assistance of Pte White of C Coy, who reloaded the rifles as fast as he could, fired into the enemy who were barely 10 yards away and could only advance up the communication trench in single file. Eventually, the Germans abandoned this attempt, though others had approached along another communication trench which led to the right of the middle crater, thus enabling the enemy to fire into the backs of some of Geary’s men on the left. 2/Lt Geary organized his men to counter this attack, shooting the Germans down at close range and causing them to retire back to the point where the communication trench joined the advanced line. Having repelled this attack, Geary was anxious to know the situation on his flanks. He sent a corporal and two men to Lt Clarke, commanding D Coy, and he himself made his way across the summit to the advanced line. His messengers never reached D Coy, though Geary was relieved to find 2/Lt Davis of the 1st East Surreys and an officer of the Bedford Regiment with men of both regiments in A Coy’s trench. The three officers conferred and decided that they could not sacrifice the Hill until they were sure there was no one behind to support them. Geary set off to make further investigation of the situation and on his way met Maj. P.T. Lees, who was bringing forward his battalion of the Queen Victoria’s Rifles (QVR) with orders to recapture the portion of the advanced line reportedly occupied by the Germans. Geary gave a full report of the situation as he saw it and Maj. Lees arranged for a joint attack by Geary’s men and the QVR to drive the enemy from the left of the forward line. On the signal of two or three flare lights, Geary’s group was to rush across the middle crater while the QVR charged on the right. Geary then returned to his men and directed them to dig a trench to the rear of, and commanding, the middle crater. This work was in progress, despite their exposed position, when a German flare light went up, revealing the Germans at the left extremity of the advanced line. As before, Geary ordered a private to load for him while he fired on them, forcing them well back into their old communication trench, from which they continued to hurl grenades into the left of the British advanced line. Having left men to cover the position, 2/Lt Geary made his way back to the left crater, encountering on the way a party of QVR with ammunition, which he directed to the men in the crater, who were in sore need of it, their bandoliers being almost empty. He had been expecting the signal from Maj. Lee and as this had not been forthcoming set off to find him. Maj. Lee explained that an attack was now unnecessary because at about midnight the Germans had evacuated the advanced trench they had previously occupied, but they were still close to it in their communication trench and were keeping up a furious hail of grenades, making it difficult for the British to hold the areas of trench so recently regained. Geary again returned to his men in the left crater, but felt that without strong and swift reinforcement they would be compelled to retreat and dig themselves in at the rear of the left crater, as he had done with other men behind the middle crater. He set off once again to find Maj. Lee and inform him of the situation as dawn was beginning to break; however, he never reached him for he was severely wounded in the head by a bullet which cost him the sight of one eye. He recalls: ‘at one time stopping for a moment and literally nearly weeping with pride to watch how these Englishmen were behaving. They were all simply grand.’ He was awarded the VC, which was gazetted on 15 October 1915, for ‘the splendid personal gallantry and example’ he had shown. He was decorated by King George V at Buckingham Palace on 9 December 1915.
Benjamin Handley Geary was born on 29 June 1891 in Surrey, the son of the Revd Henry and Mrs Geary (née Alport). He was educated at Dulwich College Preparatory School, St Edmund’s School, Canterbury, and entered Keble College, Oxford, in 1910, graduating with a BA just as war broke out. He was in the Officer Training Corps at Oxford and was commissioned as 2/Lt at the outbreak of war, being sent to 4th Battalion East Surrey Regiment on 15 August 1914. He went to France in September and was attached to the 1st East Surreys in October. He won the VC some six months later on 20/21 April 1915 and was severely injured, losing the sight of one eye. He was invalided home where he did ground work for the Royal Flying Corps in England. He was made a lieutenant on 1 September 1915 and returned to France in 1916. After a spell engaged in instruction work he rejoined his battalion in 1917 and after three months’ active service in Italy again returned to France. He was promoted to captain on 29 April 1918, a rank he held until 28 May 1919. During the opening days of the advance to victory, on 21 August 1918 the 1st East Surreys were in action near the Arras–Albert railway north of Irles, with Capt. B.H. Geary commanding D Coy. It was here that Geary was wounded; a letter from his elder brother, Mr H.M. Geary, written on 18 January 1956, relates his VC brother’s return to action after the head wound received on Hill 60: ‘ … after his recovery [he] wormed his way back into his regiment and received his Captaincy, and received a triple wound when leading his men on the Somme under General Byng. He was carried back by German prisoners and a transfusion of blood saved his life.’
Capt. Geary was just recovering when the Armistice was signed. He received an MA from Oxford the same year, and studied at Wycliffe Hall which specialized in theological training; shortly after Geary entered the Church. He attended the garden party at Buckingham Palace on 26 June 1920 and later that year was present at the Cenotaph on 11 November. In 1921 he became curate of West Ham and on 10 June 1922, at Holy Trinity Church, Marylebone, London, he married Ruth Christiana Woakes, who later bore him two sons. In April 1923 he attended with other members of the British Legion the unveiling by HRH the Prince of Wales of the tomb of the Belgian Unknown Warrior at Brussels. On 5 October 1923 Geary was appointed Temporary Chaplain to the Forces, serving first at Portsmouth then at Aldershot, having become Chaplain to the Forces in 1926, a post which he held until 1927. On 23 August that year the Revd B.H. Geary VC, Church of England Chaplain to the troops at Ewshott Camp, Aldershot Command, was bound over at Odiham Police Court on a serious charge. The London Gazette stated on 30 September 1927 that Geary resigned his commission. He was granted the rank of captain and in May 1928 he left for Canada, settling in Toronto. At this time Geary became a Travelling Secretary for a peace mission, the World Alliance for International Friendship. He returned to England to attend the British Legion VCs dinner at the House of Lords on 9 November 1929, sailing back on the Duchess of Atholl on 22 November. In 1930 Geary began working for the Continental Life Assurance Company. His wife suddenly left him in December 1930, and he learnt in 1933 that she was living with Mr James Courtenay Sherren at Palmer’s Green. By 1 August 1934 a decree nisi was granted in the divorce court. His wife did not defend the suit and costs were awarded against Mr Sherren; in 1935 the couple married.
The year 1935 was an eventful one for Geary; in January he was one of two VC holders in line for the position of Sergeant-at-Arms in the Ontario Legislature. He was given the post, becoming Sergeant-at-Arms and Historian of the Canadian Legislature. He also married again, to Constance Joan Henderson-Cleland.
The Toronto Globe reported on 19 April 1935 that Geary was on the staff of the Ontario Securities Commission and had been appointed to assist in the organization of the Toronto Better Business Bureau Incorporated. From 1937 he was on the
staff of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind.
On Monday 22 May 1939 he was one of eight VCs presented to their Majesties King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at Queen’s Park, Toronto.
He joined the Legion of Frontiersmen, Toronto, in 1939 and in 1940 was appointed major, second in command of Newmarket military training camp, Ontario, serving with the Canadian Army until 1945. In Toronto he was again presented to visiting royalty in October 1951, this time to the future Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. His address at this time was The Cottage, Woodbridge, Ontario.
VCs of the First World War 1915 The Western Front Page 7
