Corporal Henry Howell who lost his life at Gallipoli 1915

In

Loving memory

Of

Henry E Howell

Beloved Husband of

Emma Howell

Died July 24th 1912

Aged 54 years

 

Also of their son

No.1898 Cpl. Henry W C Howell

1/5th Norfolk Regt.

Who lost his life at Gallipoli

August 28th 1915

Aged 32 years.

 

Till the day break

 

Also

Emma Howell

Died Sept.10th 1938

Aged 76 years

At rest

 

Dates and middle initals don’t tie up, but this seems to be the most obvious candidate based on the serial number.

 

HOWELL, HENRY WILLIAM GEORGE

Rank:………………………………………………..Corporal

Service No:……………………………………….1898

Date of Death:………………………………….12/08/1915

Age:………………………………………………….32

Regiment:………………………………………..Norfolk Regiment, 1st/5th Bn.

Panel Reference:……………………………..Panel 42 to 44.

Memorial:………………………………………..HELLES MEMORIAL

Additional Information:

Son of Henry Edwin and Emma Howell, of 7, Beresford Rd., Lowestoft.

CWGC: www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/692070/HOWELL,%20HENR...

 

SDGW records Acting Corporal 1898 Henry Howell as Died on the 28th August 1915 whilst serving with the 1/5th Battalion, Norfolk Regiment. He was born East Dereham and while no place of residence is shown, he did enlist in East Dereham.

 

The Medal Index Card for Private \ Acting Corporal 1898 Henry Howell, Norfolk Regiment, is held at the National Archive under reference WO 372/10/69630

discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/D2977206

 

No match on Picture Norfolk

 

Census

 

The 1911 census has a 28 year old Henry Edwin George Howell, born Pulham St Mary, Orfolk. That first middle initial would tie in with the headstone. Henry lived at 39, Theatre Street, East Dereham, was single and working as a General Labourer. This was the household of his parents, Henry Edwin, (aged 52 and a Railway Porter from Moulton, Norfolk) and his wife of 29 years, the 48 year old Emma from Pulham St Mary. The couple have had 6 children, of which 4 were then still alive. Other children still at home are:-

James Benjamin………….aged 25……born Burnham Market, Norfolk……..Porter & Signalman with a Railway Company

There is also a Grandson, Gordon Oxboro Howell, aged 4 and from East Dereham.

 

Going back to the 1901 census, the same individual appears to be listed as Henry G W Howell, aged 18, and was working then as a Railway Porter. He was living with his parents, Henry and Emma, in East Dereham. The first address on the page is on Theatre Street, (number 6) and the next address is the Howells - however the census takers handwriting is very unclear – Theatre Street could just as easily be Theabie Street, while the Howells could be at 39a Thistle Fen DW – the next dwelling is a residential school listed as Fair Field House School.

 

On the 1891 census the address becomes a little clearer, however, according to the census enumerator, the house numbering leaves a lot to be desired. The location is Thistle Terrace, Theatre Street, East Dereham. The page starts with 31 and 33 Theatre Street, then 35 Thistle Terrace, two 39 Thistle Terraces, (one unoccupied) and then we get to the Howells which as the census taker notes is “No.4 so should be No.41”. The next dwelling is also unoccupied – “St Nicholas Hall sometimes called Theatre Royal”.

 

Whatever address it is, it’s the household of the 32 year old Railway Porter Henry Howell, and the 28 year old Emma.As well as Henry,aged 8, children living with them are:-

Emily…………aged 7………….born Burnham, Norfolk

James…………aged 5………….born Burnham, Norfolk

Mary………….aged 1………….born Oulton Broad, Suffolk

 

On the day

 

The dates of the 12th August and the 28th August are unfortunately familiar ones as far as the 1/5th is concerned. To date I’ve not been able to account for any activity on the 28th by the battalion, so I think somewhere along the lines an official report was issued showing the wrong date and this was the information used to inform next of kin. They all tend to have an unknown grave, although their mass burial site and evidence of the war crime was uncovered post-war. But I’m running ahead of myself.

 

The1/4th and the 1/5th served alongside each other through the war.

 

From May 21st both battalions became part of the 54th infantry division, and with the 1/5th Suffolk and 1/8th Hampshire constituted the 163rd infantry brigade. On the previous day the 1/4th Battalion had been sent to Watford, which it left by special train on July 29, 1915, for Liverpool, where it embarked on the S.S. " Aquitania " en route for the Dardanelles. It was commanded by the adjutant, Captain E.W. Montgomerie, owing to the illness of Colonel Harvey. On the same day the 1/5th Battalion embarked, also on the " Aquitania." It had been doing further training at Watford since early in May.

 

The " Aquitania " reached Mudros without adventure on August 5th, and the troops on board her were taken in smaller vessels, on the 9th, to Imbros, whence they proceeded, on the 10th, to the landing-place of the 54th division in SuvIa Bay and bivouacked on the beach. The country about the landing-place, as seen from the sea, is described by Colonel Harvey thus:

"On the left SuvIa Point with Nebrunessi Point to the right formed a small bay, known as SuvIa Bay, some mile and a half across. To the right of Nebrunessi. Point a long, gently curving sandy beach, some four or five miles in extent, terminated where the Australian position at Anzac rose steeply to the Sari Bair range.

Inside and immediately in front was a large, flat, sandy plain covered with scrub, while the dry salt lake showed dazzlingly white in the hot morning sun. Immediately beyond was Chocolate Hill, and behind this lay the village of Anafarta some four miles from the shore. As a background the Anafarta ridge ran from the village practically parallel with the sea, where it gradually sloped down to the coast.

 

Beyond the plain a number of stunted oaks, gradually becoming more dense farther inland, formed excellent cover for the enemy's snipers, a mode of warfare at which the Turk was very adept. Officers and men were continually shot down, not only by rifle fire from advanced posts of the enemy, but by men, and even women, behind our own firing line, especially in the previous attacks. The particular kind of tree in this part, a stunted oak, lends itself to concealment, being short with dense foliage. Here the sniper would lurk, with face painted green, and so well hidden as to defy detection. Others would crouch in the dense brushwood, where anyone passing could be shot with ease. When discovered, these snipers had in their possession enough food and water for a considerable period, as well as an ample supply of ammunition."

 

Want of water was one of the great difficulties of the British. They had suffered severely from it in the actions after the landing at SuvIa on August 7th which had failed to gain possession of the Anafarta ridge. The commander-in-chief, Sir Ian Hamilton, had now decided on another attempt to take that ridge with the aid of the 54th division, which was the last of his reinforcements landed.

 

Between the landing place and the Kuchak Anafarta Ova (Ova = plain) lay a very difficult and intricate country in which it would be almost impossible to avoid intermixture of units and confusion before the final attack on the morning of the 13th. Accordingly, it was decided to send the 163rd brigade forward on the afternoon of the 12th to clear this area of any enemy detachments in it, and to establish itself about the Kuchak Anafarta Ova, thus enabling the main attacking force next morning to get so far on its way to the ridge without the confusion which must result from having to fight its way through a country of small fields surrounded by deep ditches and high hedges, with forest in the background

To add to the difficulties of the 163rd brigade, its orders were generally to clear the country, and no definite objective was assigned to each unit. The orders were to clear snipers out of the scrub, advance to the alignment of the 53rd division, and fill up the gap between it on the right and the 10th division on the left, and dig in for the night. Picks and shovels were issued before moving off.

 

Colonel Sir H. Beauchamp, commanding the 1/5th. Norfolk, had been placed in local command of the brigade in the trenches occupied on the 11th and the early part of the 12th. The 1/4th Norfolk, who had been left on the beach to unload stores after the landing on the 10th, were presently moved up into the support trenches of the brigade, the front line of which, counting from right to left, consisted of the 5th Norfolk, 8th Hants, and 1/5th Suffolk Regiments. On the left of the 54th division was the 10th, the orders of the former being to link the latter up with the 53rd division, whose right flank rested on the Salt Lake and Azmak River. For this purpose the troops available were insufficient, with a front of only three battalions, and the same number in second line.

 

The advance on August 12th did not commence till 4.45 p.m., the naval bombardment covering it having started at 4 p.m. The order of the three leading battalions was as given above, the 4th Norfolk following in support behind the 5th Suffolk on the left. Directly the advance began the 1/5th. Norfolk received an order to change direction half right, which they did. This order did not reach the 1/8th Hants, and consequently a gap was formed between the battalions, which continually increased as the advance proceeded.

 

As the brigade advanced it at once encountered serious resistance, and came under heavy machine-gun fire enfilading it from the left, and shrapnel on the right. The machine-gun fire was the more effective in stopping the British advance, and the 5th Norfolk battalion on the right began to get forward quicker than the left. Touch had been partially lost in the close country, and companies and battalions were much mixed up.

 

What happened with the 5th Norfolk battalion is thus described in Sir Ian Hamilton's despatch of December 11, 1915 describing what he calls " a very mysterious thing."

" The 1/5th. Norfolk were on the right of the line and found themselves for a moment less strongly opposed than the rest of the brigade. Against the yielding forces of the enemy Colonel Sir H. Beauchamp, a bold, self-confident officer, eagerly pressed forward, followed by the best part of the battalion. The fighting grew hotter, and the ground became more wooded and broken. At this stage many men were wounded, or grew exhausted with thirst. These found their way back to camp during the night. But the Colonel, with sixteen officers and 250 men, still kept pushing on, driving the enemy before them. ... Nothing more was ever seen or heard of any of them. They charged into the forest and were lost to sight or sound. Not one of them ever came back." (Sir Horace Beauchamp, Bart., C.B., had served in the Sudan, Suakim, and South African Campaigns, retired in 1904, and returned to serve in the war in 1914.)

It was not till four years later that any trace was discovered of the fate of this body. Writing on September 23, 1919 the officer commanding the Graves Registration Unit in Gallipoli says:

" We have found the 5th Norfolks - there were 180 in all; 122 Norfolk and a few Hants and Suffolks with 2/4th Cheshires. We could only identify two - Privates Barnaby and Cotter. They were scattered over an area of about one square mile, at a distance of at least 800 yards behind the Turkish front line. Many of them had evidently been killed in a farm, as a local Turk, who owns the place, told us that when he came back he found the farm covered with the decomposing bodies of British soldiers which he threw into a small ravine. The whole thing quite bears out the original theory that they did not go very far on, but got mopped up one by one, all except the ones who got into the farm."

The total casualties of the 5th Norfolk battalion are stated in their War Diary to have been twenty-two officers and about 350 men. The officers missing were - Colonel Sir Horace Proctor Beauchamp, C.B. ; Captain and Adjutant A. E. Ward; Captains E. R. Cubitt, F. R. Beck (the King's estate agent commanding the Sandringham company), Pattrick, Mason, A. C. Coxon, Woodwark; Lieutenants E. A. Beck, Gay, V. M. Cubitt, T. Oliphant ; 2nd Lieutenants Burroughs, Proctor, Beauchamp, Adams, Fawkes. (Captain Coxon and 2nd Lieutenant Fawkes were both wounded and taken prisoners by the Turks. They were in captivity in Asia Minor till after the Armistice. The rest of the missing were all apparently killed.) Major Purdy and 2nd Lieutenants M. Oliphant and A. R. Pelly were wounded but not missing.

The brigade had made some advance in face of very strong opposition, but was far from complete success. During the night the position gained was held in an irregular line, with three and a half battalions and two companies of the 1/4th Norfolk on a spur.

 

This account of the action of August 12th, taken from the naturally rather meagre entry in the War Diary, may be supplemented by the following rough pencil notes kept by Captain Montgomerie, who was commanding the 1 /4th Battalion in the absence of Colonel Harvey :

" 12th August. - Had, to meet guides from 5th Norfolk at 6 a.m. We started off at 5.40 for the mile walk, arrived at rendezvous, but no guide. Waited with battalion quarter of an hour, and then I left with adjutant to find 5th Norfolk. Eventually found them, only to find Sir H. Beauchamp had just left. Learned where I was expected to be, so sent for the battalion. Busy digging all morning. We were about to complete trenches when we were ordered to move and go in reserve to the brigade in an advance. The advance started 4 p.m. My orders were to follow on the left flank, as that one was unprotected. The three battalions advanced rapidly and all seemed well until I came to the top of a hill which overlooked the valley on the other side of which were Turkish trenches. I could see that they (" They " evidently means the British.) were under shrapnel fire and seemed to be in trouble. I saw Captain Fisher just behind and sent him forward with "B" company. "A" company on left had already gone forward, and half "D" company also on extreme left; half "C" company on my right had wandered off to right and had gone to support of the Hampshires. Seeing that it was useless to send more troops into the valley, with no other troops coming up in rear, I halted there and prepared for all eventualities. It soon became apparent that the brigade was in difficulties. An officer of the 5th Suffolks came rushing back, asking for support and saying the enemy were surrounding him. He could not tell me anything definite. After he had cooled down a bit, he said that the enemy were getting round their right flank. It then appeared to me that the enemy must be retreating across the front of the Hampshires and 5th Norfolk. I sent him back with a few men and told him to let everyone know I was ready to help them from my hill. It was very difficult to absolutely locate their position. I sent a message telling the brigade head-quarters that I was going to hold the ridge overlooking the valley, but it was a long time before I could find them. I, later, saw the brigade major, who told me they were having an awful time in front, and would probably have to retire, and that I must be prepared to help them back. All through the night men were coming in who had lost their units, and I think I had 200 men with me next morning. I gave them water, of which they were in great need."

user.online.be/~snelders/sand.htm

 

A legend begam to emerge that the battalion had disaapeared into a cloud, which morphed in later years into Alien abduction.

 

In December 1915, as the Allies prepared to abandon the campaign, the Commander in Chief of the British forces, Sir Ian Hamilton, sent his "final dispatch from the Dardanelles" to the Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener. In it, he accounted for the loss of the Norfolks in the following way. I have underlined the words that seem to emphasize the inexplicable nature of the incident:

"in the course of the fight, there happened a very mysterious thing. Against the yielding forces of the enemy Colonel Sir H. Beauchamp, a bold, self-confident officer, eagerly pressed forward, followed by the best part of the battalion. The fighting grew hotter [and] at this stage many men were wounded or grew exhausted but the Colonel, with 16 officers and 250 men kept pushing forward, driving the enemy before him, nothing more was seen or heard of any of them. They charged into the forest and were lost to sight or sound. Not one of them ever came back"

Hamilton's account must have been based upon reports from British officers who had watched from a distance as the disaster unfolded. One of these was a brigade major, Lt-Col Villiers Stuart, who watched the Norfolk's attack through field glasses. He wrote

"On the evening of 12 August 1915 I was observing the low ground in the neighbourhood of Anafarta Ova, [at] a distance of about 2000 to 2500 yards, when, to my surprise I saw what appeared to be about a battalion of our troops advancing rapidly, and apparently unsupported towards the enemy positions on Kvak Tepe. Knowing that there was a considerable concentration of Turks in a gully, on the left flank of the advance, I anticipated trouble and got the two mountain guns, ready for action to try to protect the left flank of the advancing troops. Almost immediately the Turks debouched from their cover and attacked our men in the flank and rear. It was soon too dark to see the issue of the fight, but at the time I was afraid they would be destroyed."

The actual fate of the battalion was discovered in 1919 at the end of the war when the Commonwealth War Graves Commission began searching the battlefields at Gallipoli for the remains of soldiers. There an investigator discovered a cap badge belonging to a soldier of the Norfolk regiment hidden in sand 800 yards behind the Turkish lines at Suvla Bay. This led the commanding officer to write home triumphantly: "We have found the 5th Norfolks." When this news reached the War Office they sent a chaplain who had served during the campaign back to Gallipoli to investigate. The Rev Charles Pierrepoint Edwards examined the area where the cap badge had been uncovered and found a mass grave containing 180 bodies, from which the remains of 122 were identified as members of the "Vanished Battalion." The remains included those of their commanding officer, Lt-Col Beuchamp, who was identified by the distinctive shoulder flashes on his uniform. Of the 266 officers and men reported as missing, 144 remained unaccounted for, but a number of these had been captured and some had subsequently died in the notorious Turkish prison camps. A few had survived captivity to describe what had really happened, but their stories did not emerge until half a century later.

In his book The Vanished Battalion (1991) McCrery revealed new evidence that explained why the full facts discovered by the clergyman who visited the mass grave were not revealed in 1919. He found there was evidence of an official cover-up but this was not to hide evidence of an extraterrestrial kidnapping. In this case it was to conceal evidence of both a military blunder and a war crime. For it emerged that of the bodies discovered that many had been shot through the head as the Turkish soldiers did not like to take prisoners of war. His evidence was backed up by the story of a British survivor of the massacre, who testified before his death in 1969 that he had seen Turkish soldiers bayoneting wounded and helpless prisoners and shooting others in the wood where the battalion disappeared. The survivor escaped only because of the intervention of a German officer who saved his life and he spent the remainder of the war in a prison camp.

 

It appears that the Rev Charles Pierrepoint Edwards concealed this disturbing evidence in his report to the War Office so as to spare the feelings of the families and the King, who continued to believe their loved ones died gallantly in battle with the enemy. Furthermore, McCrery points out that Sir Ian Hamilton - the Allied commander responsible for the campaign - had an personal interest in making the disappearance of the battalion appear more mysterious than it actually was. His dispatch to Kitchener suggested the disappearance of the battalion was inexplicable. During the campaign the King personally telegraphed Hamilton asking about the fate of Captain Beck and his Sandringham company. McCrery asks:

"What was he to say? 'Sorry, but I've just sacrificed them all quite needlessly in yet another botched attack?' His best course of action, I believe, was to create an air of mystery and thereby stop any form of enquiry into their loss or his leadership."

Shortly after the disaster at Gallipoli Hamilton was relieved of his command and never offered another. In the years that followed, the story he had set loose would become transformed into a fully-fledged legend of the war and a UFO mystery that simply would not die.

user.online.be/~snelders/sand.htm

 

Done