Too brave to live, too young to die : teenage heroes from World War I

251 Pages·2015·1.04 MB·English

by  Cawthorne

TOO BRAVE
TO LIVE,
TOO YOUNG
TO DIE
TEENAGE HEROES FROM
WORLD WAR I
NIGEL CAWTHORNE
Contents
TITLE PAGE
ROLL OF HONOUR
INTRODUCTION
DRIVER JOB DRAIN, 18, AND DRIVER FREDERICK LUKE,
18
GOBAR SING NEGI, 19
PRIVATE EDWARD DWYER, 19
MIDSHIPMAN WILFRED MALLESON, 18
SECOND LIEUTENANT GEORGE MOOR, 18
SECOND LIEUTENANT SIDNEY WOODROFFE, 19
PRIVATE JOHN HAMILTON, 19
PRIVATE GEORGE PEACHMENT, 18
TEMPORARY LIEUTENANT RICHARD JONES, 19
FIRST CLASS BOY JOHN ‘JACK’ CORNWELL, 16
PRIVATE WILLIAM (BORN JOHN) JACKSON, 18
PRIVATE JOHN CUNNINGHAM, 19
SECOND LIEUTENANT THOMAS MAUFE, 19
SECOND LIEUTENANT DENNIS HEWITT, 19
PRIVATE HARRY BROWN, 19
CORPORAL ERNEST EGERTON, 19
PRIVATE THOMAS HOLMES, 19
LANCE-CORPORAL ROBERT MCBEATH, 19
SECOND LIEUTENANT ALAN ‘BABE’ MCLEOD, 18
RIFLEMAN KARANBAHADUR RANA, 19
PRIVATE JACK THOMAS COUNTER, 19
ABLE SEAMAN ALBERT MCKENZIE, 19
SERGEANT JOHN MEIKLE, 19
LANCE-SERGEANT EDWARD SMITH, 19
PRIVATE THOMAS RICKETTS, 17
ACTING CORPORAL ROLAND ELCOCK, 19
PRIVATE NORMAN HARVEY, 19
COPYRIGHT
ROLL OF HONOUR
1. Driver Job Drain VC, 18, Royal Field Artillery, Le Cateau,
France, 26 August 1914
2. Driver Frederick Luke VC, 18, Royal Field Artillery, Le
Cateau, France, 26 August 1914
3. Gobar Sing Negi VC, 19, 39th Garhwal Rifles, Neuve
Chapelle, France, 10 March 1915*
4. Private Edward Dwyer VC, 19, East Surrey Regiment, Hill
60, Zwarteleen, Belgium, 20 April 1915
5. Midshipman Wilfred Malleson VC, 18, HMS River Clyde,
Gallipoli, Turkey, 25 April 1915
6. Second Lieutenant George Moor VC, 18, Hampshire
Regiment, Krithia, Gallipoli, Turkey, 5 June 1915*
7. Second Lieutenant Sidney Woodroffe VC, 19, Prince
Consort’s Own (Rifle Brigade), Hooge, Belgium, 30 July
1915*
8. Private John Hamilton VC, 19, 3rd Battalion, Australian
Imperial Force, ‘Lone Pine’, Gallipoli, Turkey, 9 August 1915
9. Private George Peachment VC, 18, King’s Royal Rifle Corps,
Loos, France, 25 September 1915*
10. Temporary Lieutenant Richard Jones VC, 19, Loyal North
Lancashire Regiment, ‘Broadmarsh Crater’, Vimy, France,
21 May 1916*
11. First Class Boy John ‘Jack’ Cornwell VC, 16, HMS Chester,
Jutland, Denmark, 31 May 1916*
12. Private William (born John) Jackson VC, 18, 17th Battalion,
Australian Imperial Force, Armentières, France, 25 June
1916
13. Private John Cunningham VC, 19, East Yorkshire Regiment,
Ancre, Hebuterne Sector, France, 13 November 1916
14. Second Lieutenant Thomas Maufe VC, 19, Royal Garrison
14. Second Lieutenant Thomas Maufe VC, 19, Royal Garrison
Artillery, Feuchy, France, 4 June 1917
15. Second Lieutenant Dennis Hewitt VC, 19, Hampshire
Regiment, Ypres, Belgium, 31 July 1917*
16. Private Harry Brown VC, 19, 10th Battalion, Canadian
Expeditionary Force, Hill 70, Loos, France, 16 August 1917*
17. Corporal Ernest Egerton VC, 19, Sherwood Foresters,
Bulgar Wood, Ypres, Belgium, 20 September 1917
18. Private Thomas Holmes VC, 19, 2nd Battalion, Canadian
Expeditionary Force, Passchendaele, Belgium, 26 October
1917
19. Lance Corporal Robert McBeath VC, 19, Seaforth
Highlanders, Ribecourt, near Cambrai, France, 20 November
1917
20. Second Lieutenant Alan ‘Babe’ McLeod VC, 18, No. 2
Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, Arras, France, 27 March
1918
21. Rifleman Karanbahadur Rana VC, 19, 3rd Queen
Alexandra’s Own Gurkha Rifles, El Kefir, Egypt, 10 April
1918
22. Private Jack Thomas Counter VC, 19, King’s Regiment
(Liverpool), Boisleux St Marc, France, 16 April 1918
23. Able Seaman Albert McKenzie VC, 19, HMS Vindictive,
Zeebrugge, Belgium, 22–23 April 1918
24. Sergeant John Meikle VC, 19, Seaforth Highlanders,
Marfaux, France, 20 July 1918*
25. Lance Sergeant Edward Smith VC, 19, Lancashire Fusiliers,
Serre, France, 21–23 August 1918
26. Private Thomas Ricketts VC, 17, Royal Newfoundland
Regiment, Ledegem, Belgium, 14 October 1918
27. Acting Corporal Roland Elcock VC, 19, Royal Scots (Lothian
Regiment), Capelle St Catherine, France, 15 October 1918
28. Private Norman Harvey VC, 19, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers,
Ingoyghem, Belgium, 25 October 1918
* Awarded posthumously
INTRODUCTION
The river of poppies outside the Tower of London was a vivid
reminder of those who had sacrificed their lives in the
British armed forces during the First World War. Most of those
who lost their lives were very young – by and large it is young
men who go, or are sent, to fight. All of them were very brave,
simply to have gone into the hell of combat. Some of them were
braver still because they were so young that their lives had
barely begun.
Private Sidney Lewis was only twelve years and five months
when he enlisted in the East Surrey Regiment in August 1915.
At thirteen, he fought for six weeks in the First Battle of the
Somme as a machine-gunner, only to be sent home and
discharged in August 1916 when his mother sent his birth
certificate to the War Office. Undaunted, he returned to service
before the end of the war and worked in bomb disposal in
World War II.
Thousands of boys, like Lewis, lied about their age to sign up
– and not just at the beginning of the war when it was still
thought to be a big adventure. Brave youngsters were still
enlisting when it was plain that the fighting was purely
mechanised slaughter and no one could figure out what they
were dying for.
Some of these young men won medals for gallantry for deeds
so daring that they scarcely seem credible. All the teenage
heroes in this book won the highest decoration for valour – the
Victoria Cross.
Instituted at the end of the Crimean War in 1956, the
Victoria Cross was awarded for conspicuous courage in the
face of the enemy. During World War I, it was conferred 628
times on 627 recipients. Captain Noel Chavasse won it twice,
one of only three people to do so.
He was a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps and won
his first VC for his actions on 9 August 1916 during the First
Battle of the Somme. The citation appeared in The London
Gazette on 24 October 1916 and read:
Captain Noel Godfrey Chavasse, M.C., M.B., Royal Army
Medical Corps.
For most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty.

During an attack he tended the wounded in the open all
day, under heavy fire, frequently in view of the enemy.
During the ensuing night he searched for wounded on the
ground in front of the enemy’s lines for four hours.
Next day he took one stretcher-bearer to the advanced
trenches, and under heavy shell fire carried an urgent
case for 500 yards into safety, being wounded in the side
by a shell splinter during the journey. The same night he
took up a party of twenty volunteers, rescued three
wounded men from a shell hole twenty-five yards from the
enemy’s trench, buried the bodies of two Officers, and
collected many identity discs, although fired on by bombs
and machine guns.
Altogether he saved the lives of some twenty badly
wounded men, besides the ordinary cases which passed
through his hands. His courage and self-sacrifice were
beyond praise.
His second VC was won at the Battle of Passchendaele, also
known as the Third Battle of Ypres, for his actions between 31
July and 2 August 1917. The citation published in The London
Gazette of 14 September 1917 read:
War Office, September, 1917.
His Majesty the KING has been graciously pleased to
approve of the award of a Bar to the Victoria Cross to
Capt. Noel Godfrey Chavasse, V.C., M.C., late K.A.M.C.,
attd. L’pool R.
For most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty
when in action.
Though severely wounded early in the action while
carrying a wounded soldier to the Dressing Station, Capt.
Chavasse refused to leave his post, and for two days not
only continued to perform his duties, but in addition went
out repeatedly under heavy fire to search for and attend
to the wounded who were lying out.
During these searches, although practically without
food during this period, worn with fatigue and faint with
his wound, he assisted to carry in a number of badly
wounded men, over heavy and difficult ground.
By his extraordinary energy and inspiring example he
was instrumental in rescuing many wounded who would
have otherwise undoubtedly succumbed under the bad
weather conditions.
This devoted and gallant officer subsequently died of
his wounds.
Captain Chavasse was buried in the war cemetery at the small
village of Brandhoek in Belgium. He was just thirty-two.
However, the men remembered in this book were much
younger. They all won the Victoria Cross before the age of
twenty. The youngest was sixteen-year-old First Class Boy John
‘Jack’ Cornwell of HMS Chester, who did not survive his first
action.
He was not the youngest ever to have won the VC. That
honour is shared by Andrew Fitzgibbon and Thomas Flinn, who
were both just fifteen years and three months old when they
showed great bravery respectively in the Third China War in
1860 and the Indian Mutiny – also known as the Sepoy Mutiny
or the Indian Rebellion – in 1857. The exact day on which Flinn
was born is not known, only the month, so it cannot be
determined whether he was a few days older or younger than
Fitzgibbon.
Their citations were brief. Fitzgibbon’s appeared in The
London Gazette of 13 August 1861 and read:
Hospital Apprentice Arthur Fitzgibbon
For having behaved with great coolness and courage at
the capture of the North Taku Fort, on the 21st of August,
1860. On the morning of that day he accompanied a wing
of the 67th Regiment, when it took up a position within
500 yards of the Fort. Having quitted cover, he
proceeded, under a very heavy fire, to attend to a Dhoolie-
bearer, whose wound he had been directed to bind up;
and, while the Regiment was advancing under the
Enemy’s fire, he ran across the open to attend to another
wounded man, in doing which he was himself severely
wounded.
Fitzgibbon was with the Indian Medical Establishment and it is
thought that he had the VC with him when he was buried in
1883, having died at the age of thirty-eight.
Drummer Thomas Flinn was with the 64th Regiment.
Gazetted on 12 April 1859, his citation read:
Drummer Thomas Flinn
Date of Act of Bravery,
28th November, 1857
For conspicuous gallantry, in the charge on the Enemy’s
guns on the 28th November, 1857, when, being himself
wounded, he engaged in a hand to hand encounter two of
the Rebel Artillerymen.
He, too, survived the action and lived to the relatively ripe old
age of fifty.
None of the VC winners in this book are quite that young.
They were teenagers. Some died during the action they were
decorated for. Others died later in the slaughter of World War I
or, weakened by their injuries, in a pandemic of Spanish flu
that followed it. Some died seeing action again in World War II,
still comparatively young then. A few even died of old age in
the comfort of their own bed.