Second Lieutenant Frank William George, 5th Battalion, Dorsetshire Regiment

2nd Lieutenant F. W. George, from The Sphere, 1915

Second Lieutenant Frank William George of the 5th (Service) Battalion, Dorsetshire Regiment was killed in action on the 21st/22nd August 1915, aged 35, during the Battle of Scimitar Hill, part of the final major offensive of the Gallipoli campaign.

Second Lieutenant George is perhaps most well-known to posterity as the second cousin of the novelist and poet Thomas Hardy. This post is an attempt to compile some of the information available on Frank George’s life and family, and on his military service.

Helpfully, a short obituary of Second Lieutenant Frank William George appeared in the “Fallen Officers” column of The Times on the 3rd September 1915 [1]. We know, from his own surviving correspondence, that this obituary was written by Thomas Hardy himself:

SECOND LIEUTENANT FRANK WILLIAM GEORGE, 5th Dorset Regiment, barrister, who was killed in Gallipoli on August 22, was the eldest son of the late Mr. William George, of Southbrook, Bere Regis, Dorset, and through his mother, nee Hardy, was a cousin of Mr. Thomas Hardy, O.M., of Max Gate, Dorchester. Mr. George entered the service of the old Dorsetshire Bank (afterwards the Wilts and Dorset, and now Lloyds), where he became assistant manager at the Bristol branch. He was called to the Bar by Gray’s Inn two or three years ago. On the outbreak of the present war he enlisted in the 6th Gloucestershire Infantry. In the winter he volunteered for and was for a while attached to a division of the Midland Cyclist Company, till he applied for a transfer to the Inns of Court O.T.C., but being offered a commission in the Gloucesters, and also in the Dorset Regiment, he accepted the latter and was posted to the 5th Battalion, which he accompanied to the Dardanelles at the beginning of July last. He was unmarried.

According to probate records (England & Wales Government Probate Death Index 1858-2019, via Findmypast), Frank William George’s final residence in Bristol was Oldbury House, St Michael’s Park, which adjoins St Michael’s Hill, and would have been fairly close to the Depot of the 6th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment.

This post will cover three main topics: 1) the relationship between Thomas Hardy and his cousin Frank; 2) the family of Frank George, as  traced through genealogical records; and 3) an outline of the campaign at Suvla, highlighting where 2nd Lieutenant George was mentioned in the regimental history.

1. Frank George, the cousin of Thomas Hardy:

Frank George was not a particularly close relative of the novelist. The extremely useful family tree included in Michael Millgate’s Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited (2004) reveals that their common ancestors were the John and Jane Hardy who were Thomas Hardy’s great-grandparents and Frank George’s great-great-grandparents [2]. The tree shows that Frank George’s great-grandfather was John Hardy, the younger brother of the novelist’s eponymous grandfather.

Despite this, the Georges lived relatively locally to Dorchester and Hardy had evidently taken an interest in his cousin’s developing legal career. On the 19th March 1915, Hardy wrote to Sir Evelyn Wood, supporting Frank’s application for a commission in the Dorsetshire Regiment [3].

A young barrister in whom I am interested, Mr F. W. George, enlisted at the beginning of the war from a sense of duty, and is now applying for a commission in the Dorset Regiment. I can say from personal knowledge that he is a most deserving man, who worked his way into the law by his own exertions; cool in judgement; while abandoning a promising position to defend his country shows his character. I think he would make a good officer.
He is I may add a distant cousin of mine.
His nomination paper is just being forwarded to Colonel Hannay, Dorset Regiment. Knowing your willingness to do anything for those who are worth it it has occurred to me to ask if you could support his application by a line to Colonel Hannay on the strength of my information, if the request be [not] regular, not trespassing on your kindness, and if you think it would be of service. If you do not think so, please disregard this letter.

The editorial apparatus in the Collected Letters notes that Sir Evelyn responded by sending Hardy a letter that could be forwarded to Colonel Hannay, as he didn’t know exactly where the battalion was stationed.

Poster for the South Midland Divisional Cyclist Company. Source: Imperial War Museums © IWM (Art.IWM PST 4893): https://www.iwm.org.uk/ collections/item/object/28301

Hardy’s letter gave Frank George’s address as: “No 56, Private F. W. George, “C” Platoon, South Midland Div; Cyclist’s Corp.” with a parenthetical note stating that George had temporarily volunteered from the Gloucestershires, into the Cyclist’s. In the British Army, volunteer cyclist units began to emerge in the decades leading up to the First World War. For overseas service, cyclist companies were initially established at divisional level, although these were later grouped into battalions at corps level.  Their main intended role was reconnaissance, although they were also often involved in traffic control or signals work [4].

The obituary noted that Frank George had originally enlisted in the “6th Gloucestershire Infantry” after the outbreak of war, probably at Bristol (where he would then have been working). This presumably means that he had joined the 1/6th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment, a Territorial Force unit that eventually was to become part of the 48th (South Midland) Division.

Frank George’s application for a commission in the Dorsetshire Regiment was evidently successful. A visit to Max Gate in April 1915 was recorded in the Life, which would have been shortly after Frank would have obtained his commission [5]:

In April a distant cousin, of promising ability — a lieutenant in the 5th Batt. Dorset Regiment — came to see him before going abroad, never to be seen by him again;

The stark details about Frank’s death were recorded a few paragraphs later on [6]:

In August he learnt of the loss of his second cousin’s son Lieutenant George, who had been killed that month in Gallipoli during a brave advance. Hardy makes this note of him:
“Frank George, though so remotely related, is the first one of my family to be killed in battle for the last hundred years. so far as I know. He might say Militavi non sine gloria, — short as his career has been.”

The Latin phrase is derived from an ode by Horace, which has been translated, “I served not without renown” [7]:

Vixi Puellis nuper idoneus
et militavi non sine gloria

Till recently I lived fit for Love’s battles and I served not without renown.

The fate of 2nd Lieutenant George features several times in Hardy’s correspondence. For example, on the 1st September 1915, Hardy wrote to Sydney Cockerell [8]:

We were much distressed two days ago by a telegram which had come through from the War Office, telling us that the most promising relative I had in the world had been killed in action on Aug 22, in Gallipoli. His mother is a widow, & how she is going to bear it Iv don’t know. She has two other sons, but they are both in the trenches in France, & may, of course, not get through safely. However, it is not such absolute massacre there, as far as I can judge, as it is in the Dardanelles. He was 2d Lieut. F.W. George, Dorset Regt & you may see perhaps a biographical note about him in the Times. Heaven only knows where & how his body lies, & the particulars of his death.

Frank’s brothers were Charles Hardy George and Cecil Bowen George, whose service careers will be summarised later on in this post. The “paragraph” in The Times refers to the obituary published on the 3rd September [9].

Also on the 1st September, Hardy responded to a letter of condolence from his sister-in-law Constance Dugdale [10]:

It is so kind of you to write me a line about my cousin Frank George. It was a very great pity that he was doomed to mere brutal fighting, when he was, as you know, capable of so much better things. We have heard from his sister this morning, who says that her mother is bearing up as well as she can, but as she had two more sons, now in the ranks in Flanders, where soon there is to be very hot work we are told, we dread lest anything should happen to them too, or either of them; I fear such and event would kill her.

Hardy also mentioned the loss, and the effects upon him and Florence, in a letter written to Florence Henniker on the 2nd September [11]:

We were much distressed on Monday morning by this brief telegram: —
“Frank was killed on the 22nd.”
This referred to a very dear cousin of mine, Frank George, 2d Lieut. In the 5th Dorsets, who as fallen in action in the Gallipoli peninsula – almost the only, if not the only, blood relative of the next generation in whom I have taken any interest. The death of a “cousin” does not seem a very harrowing matter as a rule, but he was such an intimate friend here, & Florence & I both were so attached to him, that his loss will affect our lives largely. His mother (who was a Hardy) us a widow, & we don’t know how she is going to get over it.

A few more letters were to follow, short ones to Eden Phillpotts and Clement Shorter, as well as an update sent to Sir Evelyn Wood.

The letters to Phillpotts and Shorter both expressed Hardy’s opinion that the Gallipoli campaign was a “shambles” [12]:

I wish he were not lying mangled in that shambles of the Gallipoli Peninsula, where we ought never to have gone.

Shorter was editor of The Sphere, and it seems that it was Hardy that sent him the photograph of 2/Lieut George that was eventually published on the 25th September [13].

The letter to Sir Evelyn Wood contains some information on how 2/Lieut. George died, based on information provided by Lieutenant-Colonel Hannay [14]:

You may be interested in hearing of the end of my cousin young Frank George, whom you so kindly recommended for a commission in the 5th Dorsets. He was in that frightful night attack in Suvla Bay Aug 21-22, & was killed just as his company was leaving the trenches.
His colonel – (now Brig. General Hannay) tells me that he had done splendidly since they started fighting out there on the 7th August. On the 17th he distinguished himself particularly, & brought great credit to the 5th by rushing a Turkish trench with his platoon, for which his name was sent forward for a reward. He bayonetted some 8 or 10 Turks & brought back 14 prisoners.

In the meantime, on the 3rd September, James P. Grieves of Portishead, a personal friend of Frank George’s, had written to Hardy asking whether he had any information on the manner in which 2/Lieut. George met his death. The letter is included in those made available via the University of Exeter’s Hardy’s Correspondents website [15]:

He was the dearest friend I had in the world, and I would give a everything I have to think that there was a shadow of a doubt about his having been killed. I have heard nothing except the bare fact of his death, in a telegram sent me by Miss George, whom I do not want to bother just now.
[…]
We had a postcard from him, dated August 13, in which he said that their casualties had been heartrending, and that they were just going into action again. We hope that there is a chance that we may still get another letter from him, written between Aug 13th and Aug. 22nd

Source: Dorset County Museum, H.2574; Transcript from Hardy’s Correspondence, University of Exeter and Dorset Museum (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License): http://hardycorrespondents.exeter.ac.uk/text.html?id=dhe-hl-h.2574

Without Hardy’s reply, it is difficult to say whether he passed on any of the information that had been sent by Lieutenant-Colonel Hannay.

Hardy corresponded again with Cockerell on the 17th September, this time showing extreme pessimism about the war and its outcome [16]:

We went two days ago to see & bid goodbye to a brother of the boy who was killed at the Dardanelles last month. He had only 3 days leave after 11 months in France & Flanders. The third brother of the family is in the front line of trenches. All the soldiers one meets have a pathetic hope that “the war will soon be over”: fortunately they do not realise the imbecility of our Ministers or the treachery of sections of the press which try to make political capital out of the country’s needs.
I hope I am wrong, but at present it looks to me as if everything were tending to an indecisive issue of the war, Germany preponderating, & a huge indemnity to be paid by England to be let go in peace & quietness, as long as Germany chooses. The attitude of Labour is a very ugly one.

It is clear that the death of Frank George affected the Hardys very deeply. Michael Millgate explains that this was partly connected with their search for someone to inherit Max Gate. Millgate’s Thomas Hardy: A biography revisited explains that in May 1915, while Florence was away in London recovering from an operation, Hardy’s sisters tried to persuade him that he ought to make his will in favour of someone that had been “born a Hardy.” While the sisters’ own candidate, Basil Augustus Hardy, a grandson of his cousin Augustus, was apparently not to Hardy’s taste, his thoughts began to settle on another one of his cousins. Millgate writes [17]:

But the discussion did prompt him to think seriously about a possible inheritor of Max Gate. He finally fixed upon Frank George, the son of a Bere Regis publican and Charles Meech Hardy’s sister Angelina, hence technically his own first cousin once removed. After some years of working in banks in Dorchester and Bristol, Frank George was called to the bar at Gray’s Inn and – with occasional assistance from Hardy himself – seemed headed for a respectable legal career.
[…]
A recent visit by Frank George to Max Gate had confirmed Hardy’s liking and respect for a young man who had worked his way determinedly upwards and was one of the very few Hardys who had shown any interest in, or aptitude for, education and the life of the mind.

Millgate suggests that this helps to explain why Hardy was shocked at the loss of his distant cousin [18]:

Hardy was much shocked, and while there may seem a touch of extravagance and even of factitiousness about his grief for someone he did not in fact know especially well, he was certainly moved, both personally and, as it were, dynastically, by the loss of the young man he had thought of as the probable inheritor of Max Gate and who was, as he told Mrs Henniker, ‘about the only, if not the only, blood relative of the next generation in whom I have taken any interest.’

In his biography, Ralph Pite goes even further, quoting a letter from Florence to the effect that Hardy considered Frank to be “our one.” Pite then directs our attention to the Hardys’ childlessness, which is after all why the inheritance had become a matter of discussion [19]:

In the absence of children of their own, Frank was seen as their chosen successor and adopted child. Florence makes it sound as if he was the only one who could fill that empty place in their lives.

Whether that was true or not, Hardy certainly did go out of his way to offer his support to the grieving family. F. B. Pinion notes that he and Florence, “visited his widowed mother and sisters at Bere Regis, offered financial assistance, and bade farewell to a brother who had been given only three days’ leave after serving eleven months in Flanders and France” [20]. Millgate adds that Hardy “continued in subsequent years to make himself accessible to any members of the family who came to call at Max Gate” [20]. Hardy also published a poem in Frank George’s memory [21].

The Life also records that Hardy was thinking of Frank George on the final Armistice Day of his life [22]:

“November 11. Armistice Day [1927]. T. came downstairs from his study and listened to the broadcasting of a service at Canterbury Cathedral. We stood there for the two minutes’ silence. He said afterwards that he had been thinking of Frank George, his cousin, who was killed at Gallipoli.”

2. Frank George, his life and family:

Frank William George was born at Bere Regis in the fourth quarter of 1880, the son of William George and Angelina George (née Hardy). It is possible to discover some aspects of his life and ancestry from the genealogical records available via the Findmypast service [23].

Angelina Hardy (Lina) had been born at Puddletown in 1851, the daughter of William Jenkins Hardy and Ann Hardy (née Meech). According to Millgate’s family tree, Angelina was the fifth eldest of nine children. At the time of the 1861 Census, the Hardy family were living at Kings Arms Street, Puddletown. Angelina was ten years old, while her father was a forty-one-year-old bricklayer employing two men.

William George was born at Bitterley (near Ludlow, Shropshire) in 1846, the son of James George and Sarah George (née Bowen). He was baptised when 45 days old at a Wesleyan-Methodist chapel in the Ludlow Circuit on the 10th April 1846 (NM2612/1, Shropshire Baptisms). The location of the chapel is not recorded, but it may possibly have been Titterstone Methodist Chapel. The 1851 Census describes William’s father as a farmer of 54 acres. At the time the census was taken, William George was five years old, the second eldest of four sons. The family were living at Bedlam, a small village east of Bitterley on the slopes of Titterstone Clee Hill. At the time of the 1861 Census, William George was fifteen years old, working as a servant (page), and resident at Milcraft, Lowbridge, Bitterley, which was the household of Sarah Price, a widow who was farming 60 acres.

I could not find William George in the 1871 Census, but he married Angelina Hardy at Puddletown on the 31st July 1878.

Their first child, Bertha Frances, was born at Sevenoaks (registration district) in the third quarter of 1879. Curiously, her baptism on the 27 July 1879 is recorded in two baptismal registers, those of the parishes of Sevenoaks and St Mary’s, Kippington (from looking at surrounding entries, this duplication seems to have been the practice in the parish at the time). At the time of the baptism, William George was working as a servant and the family’s abode was recorded as: Tubbs Hill, Kippington. The celebrant was the Rt. Rev. Charles Richard Alford, D.D., a former Bishop of Victoria, Hong Kong, but at the time the incumbent of St Mary’s, Kippington.

The family must have moved to Bere Regis shortly afterwards, as Frank William was born there in the fourth quarter of 1880.

The 1881 Census records the family living at Royal Oak Inn in West Street, Bere Regis, where the thirty-five-year-old William George was innkeeper. Angelina George was twenty-eight years old. Of their two children, Bertha was aged one, and Frank three months old. The household was quite a large one, also including: Angelina’s younger sister, Annie Meech Hardy (aged twenty-five, a draper’s assistant); three servants: James Thomas (aged twenty-eight, a ostler and inn servant), Mary Jane House (aged fifteen, a kitchen maid) and Alice Jane Laws (also fifteen, a nurse). There were also two lodgers, Thomas and Sarah Satchell, who had been born at Winterborne Kingston.

Three more children would be born to the Georges before the census a decade afterwards, all in the Wareham registration district (presumably Bere Regis):

• Charles Hardy George, born in the fourth quarter of 1882 (1939 Register: 10th October 1882)
• Kathleen Annie George, born in the third quarter of 1885 (1939 Register: 26 June 1885); baptised at Puddletown, 2nd August 1885
• Cecil Bowen George, born in the fourth quarter of 1889 (1939 Register: 27 August 1889); baptised at Puddletown, 1st December 1889

The family were still living at the Royal Oak at the time of the 1891 Census. The four youngest children were all still resident, with Frank (aged ten) the eldest, and then Charles (aged 8), Kathleen (5), and Cecil (1). The eldest three were all still at school.  Rather than the plethora of servants that were resident in 1881, there was just one: Elizabeth Boyte, a seventeen-year-old general servant domestic. The 1891 Census recorded the eleven-year-old Bertha living elsewhere, at Church Street, Puddletown with her grandparents William J. and Annie M. Hardy (Thomas Hardy’s great uncle and aunt).

The 1901 Census recorded the George family still living at the Royal Oak in Bere Regis. William George, aged fifty-five, was still the innkeeper, while Lena (Lina) was fifty. Only two of their children were resident in the household at this time: Frank, now twenty years old and working as a bank clerk, and Cecil, who was ten. The household was completed by a couple of servants: William Butler (aged 23, an ostler/groom), and Annie Williams (19, a general domestic). I have been unable to find Bertha in the 1901 Census, but Kathleen A. George (aged fifteen) was one of four children boarding at Grove Avenue, Preston Plucknett (Yeovil), the household of Henry Cobb, a stamp distributor. Also resident was Henry and Anna Cobb’s daughter Fanny, who was headmistress of a high school, and three other teachers, suggesting that Grove Avenue was probably a residential school.

William George, victualler (retired), died on the 23rd March 1910, aged 64, probate being granted in May to his widow Angelina George.

At the time of the 1911 Census, Angelina and three of her children were living at Southbrook, Bere Regis. Angelina was fifty-nine and described as being of independent means. Bertha was thirty and Kathleen twenty-five, both single and working as drapers’ assistants. The twenty-one-year-old Cecil was working as an assistant on farm. The census recorded Frank George elsewhere, a visitor at “Speranza,” Winn Road, Portswood, Southampton, the household of Walter and Helen Playfair and their family. Frank W. George was thirty-one years old and working as a banker. In 1911, the remaining son, Charles Hardy George, was twenty-eight years old and working as a bank clerk, resident at “Somersby,” Lynton Road, Acton (London), part of the household of his cousin Ernest Cheesewright.

It is possible that Cecil George travelled to the USA and Canada in 1911. Records of New York Passenger Lists and Arrivals (from the National Archives and Records Administration) records a twenty-one-year-old Cecil B. George from Wareham passing through immigration at New York in 1911, having sailed on the RMS “Teutonic” (White Star Line) from Southampton. In addition, the Canada Census 1911 (from Library and Archives Canada) includes an English-born Cecil B. George, born August 1889, aged 21, a labourer living at the household of James L. Archer at Macdonald, Manitoba. If this was Frank’s younger brother, however, he had returned to the UK by the start of the First World War.

As Thomas Hardy’s letters show, both of Frank George’s brothers served in the Army on the Western Front. Both of their service records survive in mutilated form as part of the WO 363 “burnt records” series.

Charles Hardy George enlisted at Dukes Road, Euston Road, London on the 31st August 1914, joining the 28th Battalion, County of London Regiment, the Artists Rifles OTC. His attestation form states that he was aged 31, resident at Hammersmith, and working as a bank clerk for the London City and Midland Bank Ltd. (if I have deciphered the handwriting correctly). 760168 (previously 1763) Sergeant Charles Hardy George served with the 1/28th Battalion, London Regiment, the Artists Rifles. He embarked at Southampton for the front on the 6th December 1914 and joined his battalion on the 11th. The service papers are difficult to decipher, but they suggest that he was promoted Lance Corporal in July 1916, Corporal in August 1917, and then Sergeant in November 1917, before reverting to Corporal again in January 1918. Sergeant George was discharged at Fovant on the 28th January 1919.

Artists’ Rifles memorial, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London

The 1/28th Battalion of the London Regiment (Artists’ Rifles) were an unusual formation. The 38th Middlesex (Artists’) Rifle Volunteer Corps had been formed in 1860 and became part of the Territorial Force in 1908 as the 28th (County of London) Battalion of the London Regiment. The popularity of the regiment meant that recruitment was restricted by recommendation; one result being that the Artists became a popular unit for recruits from public schools and universities. Their base was at Dukes Road, just of the Euston Roadin London. After the outbreak of war, they were at first attached as divisional troops to the 2nd London Division (later the 47th (2nd London) Division). The battalion travelled to France in October 1914, but almost immediately found itself attached to General Headquarters as an Officers Training Corps, first at Bailleul, then at Saint-Omer. That status changed in the summer of 1917, when all of the Cadet Schools in France were closed, and it was determined that future candidates for commissions would be sent back to the UK for training there [25]. The Artists were then allotted to 190th Brigade in the 63rd (Royal Naval) Division. Between July and September 1917, the 63rd Division was based in the Arras sector (near Oppy and Gavrelle), before moving in October to the Ypres Salient, where they would take part in the second phase of the Second Battle of Passchendaele — which was the 1/28th London Regiment’s first major offensive. In December, the battalion took part in the action of Welsh Ridge, following on from the Battle of Cambrai. In 1918, the 63rd Division were based in the Somme sector. The Artists took a full part in the Hundred Days Offensive, e.g. supporting an attack at Niergnies on the 8th October, reaching Valenciennes and Mons  by the time of the Armistice.

Cecil Bowen George of Southbrook, Bere Regis attested at Dorchester on the 29th August 1914, aged 25. He afterwards joined the Royal Engineers at Chatham. His attestation form states that he was working as an architect, although other forms suggest that he was primarily a draughtsman. The papers certainly note that he was a proficient draughtsman, which would have been very useful in the RE. He embarked to join the Expeditionary Force in France on the 14th July 1915, the same month that his older brother had sailed from Liverpool to the Aegean. 43083 Sapper Cecil George served with 78th Field Company, Royal Engineers, who were attached to the 17th (Northern) Division (which also contained the 6th (Service) Battalion, the Dorsetshire Regiment). Sapper George was discharged on the 7th February 1919. His papers list various relatives as his next-of-kin: his mother, and his siblings Frank Wm. and Bertha, all living at Southbrook.

Both Bertha and Kathleen George volunteered to work as VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) nurses during the war, joining the Dorset branch of VAD through the British Red Cross. Some VAD records are available online [26]. Bertha George of Southbrook, Bere Regis, was engaged between September 1914 and the Armistice, working at the emergency hospital at Wareham, the County Hospital at Dorchester, and the Supply Depot. Kathleen George, also of Southbrook, was engaged between September 1914 and February 1919, working at the emergency hospital at Wareham, but also at the Supply Depot and the Dorchester Guild of Workers.

Angelina George died in the second quarter of 1918, aged 66, and was buried at Bere Regis on the 3rd May 1918.

The electoral register for 1920 recorded Cecil George still living at Southbrook. Most of the siblings, however, would soon move to London. The electoral register for Autumn 1925 shows three of the siblings, Charles, Kathleen, and Cecil George, all living at 19, Hillcrest Road, Acton. In 1928 and 1929, Bertha Frances George had also joined them.

The siblings are slightly more difficult to trace beyond that. Charles Hardy George married Esme Lily Bryson at St. James’s Church, Piccadilly in 1932, when they were respectively aged 49 and 33. The 1939 Register records them (and a domestic servant) living at 28 River Mount, Walton-on-Thames, while Charles was working as a bank manager.

Cecil B. George married Lena R. Day at Uxbridge (registration district) in the second quarter of 1933. The 1939 Register shows three of the siblings living at Ash Cottage, Shurton, Stogursey (Somerset), namely: Bertha F. George; Kathleen A. George; Cecil Bowen George (a mushroom grower) and his wife Lena Rose George. Also living with them was Susan Lydia Loader, a seventy-five-year-old widow. Ash Cottage is now a Grade II Listed Building.

Bertha F. George died at Exmoor (registration district) on the 6th November 1939, aged 60. Cecil B. George died at Exmoor (registration district) in the first quarter of 1963, aged 73. Kathleen Annie George died on the 9th February 1966, aged around 81. Cecil’s widow, Lena Rose George of Rhode Lane, Bridgwater, died at Sedgemoor (registration district) in the fourth quarter of 1987.

3. The 5th Battalion, Dorsetshire Regiment in the Dardanelles:

The 5th (Service) Battalion, Dorsetshire Regiment was a New Army unit that had been established shortly after the outbreak of war. Its first detachments moved to Belton Park, near Grantham (Lincolnshire) for training on the 28th August 1914. From January 1915, the 5th Dorsets formed part of 34th Infantry Brigade in the 11th (Northern) Division, a New Army (K1) formation. At the time they joined the 11th Division, the other infantry units in the 34th Brigade were the 8th Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers, the 9th Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers, and the 11th Battalion, Manchester Regiment.

The following account of the 5th Dorsets in the Dardanelles is mainly based on T.  C. Atkinson’s history of the battalion, which was published in the History of the Dorsetshire Regiment, 1914-1919 (1932), supplemented with information from other sources.

After several months training in Lincolnshire, the 5th Dorsets moved in early April 1915 to Witley Camp (Surrey). The regimental history records that when the battalion left the camp in July 1915, Second Lieutenant George was one of two subalterns of that rank in “A” Company, which was commanded by Captain A. L. Gregory. The commanding officer of the battalion was Lieutenant-Colonel Cathcart Christian Hannay (1872-1942).

The 11th Division was one of three New Army (K1) Divisions sent to the Mediterranean in the Summer of 1915. Together with the 10th (Irish) Division and the 13th (Western) Division, the 11th formed part of a new IX Corps that would be used to reinforce the Gallipoli campaign, which had been largely at stalemate since the initial landings at Cape Helles and Anzac Cove on the 25th April.

On the 3rd July 1915, therefore, the 5th Dorsets embarked at Liverpool on the Cunard liner RMS “Aquitania” for their journey to the Mediterranean. They arrived at Lemnos (Greece) in the Aegean Sea on the 10th July, but moved on the 19th to Imbros, where the 11th Division was beginning to concentrate [28]. Sickness was a constant problem on Imbros, but on the 6th August, the battalion embarked for Suvla. “A,” “B,” and “C” Companies (presumably including 2/Lieut. George) travelled to the landing zone on the HM TBD (Torpedo Boat Destroyer) “Beagle” [29].

3.1 The landings at Suvla:

As part of the August Offensive at Gallipoli, the 11th Division was to lead an amphibious landing at Suvla. The landings were to be undertaken in concert with an attempt further south to break out of the Anzac perimeter and capture the high ground of the Sari Bair ridge.

Suvla Bay, Turkey. 1915. Suvla Bay on the left and a white area to the right known as Salt Lake. The photograph was taken by Signaller J. Campbell, 8th Australian Light Horse Regiment, from his dugout on Gallipoli. Source: Australian War Memorial H03167: https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C302423

The original plans for the amphibious landings have been outlined by Peter Hart, and they depended on speed [3]:

The original concept was for a coup de main whereby the covering force of the 11th Division would land on the night of the 6 August on the beaches to the south of Nibrunesi Point and overwhelm the Turkish outposts on the Lala Baba hills and Hill 10 before moving swiftly inland to seize the Kiretch Tepe and Tekke Tepe ranges that dominated the whole Suvla Bay area.
[…]
One thing was certain: the high ground must be seized as soon as possible, thus allowing the 10th Division to come ashore and then co-operate, if necessary, in the ANZAC Corps’ advance on Hill 971 and the Sari Bair range. But the main intention was to establish a secure supply base for the future push forward across the Peninsula after the success of the Anzac breakout.

The plan was then adjusted by IX Corps headquarters, during which process the urgent need to seize the high ground became obscured. A decision was also taken to land some of the force in Suvla Bay itself, which would have negative consequences later on.

During the landings itself, complacency seemed to be rife at the highest level. The IX Corps commander, Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick William Stopford, remained for much of the time out at sea on HMS “Jonquil,” thus out of touch with both the Commander-in-Chief and his assault brigades.

Suvla Bay. From: Henry W. Nevinson, The Dardanelles campaign, 3rd ed. (1920), Chapter XII. Source: Internet Archive, via University of California Libraries.

The plan for 11th Division on the the 6th/7th August was for 34th Brigade (including the 5th Dorsets) to land in Suvla Bay, capture Hill 10, and then secure the Kiretch Tepe ridge further north. In the meantime, the other divisional brigades were detailed to land south of Nibrunesi Point, with the 32nd Brigade then moving north via Lala Baba hill to join the 34th, before both would swing around to attack Chocolate Hill.

The reality was somewhat different. The assault battalions of the 34th Brigade, the 9th Lancashire Fusiliers and the 11th Manchester Regiment, were landed too far south and also struggled to get ashore when the landing vessels, motor-lighters known as “beetles,” beached some way offshore. In the confusion, the 9th Lancashire Fusiliers failed to capture Hill 10. In the meantime, the 5th Dorsets were still waiting in the bay on the TBDs “Beagle” and “Bulldog.” The first of the lighters carrying the Dorsets from the “Bulldog” set off at around 01:30, but beached around sixty-yards away from the shore. Rowing-boats then had to be deployed to get the men ashore, which took time. There were then further delays before all of the men from the “Beagle” could be landed. The situation on the ground was absolutely chaotic.

Hill 10 was finally captured just after 06:00 on the morning of the 7th August. Atkinson explains that the position was heavily defended [31]:

Eventually, about 6 a.m., the 5th started the attack, “A” Company on the right giving covering fire while the others advanced against the trenches west and north of the hill. The move was a complete success. Covered by “A’s” fire the other companies pushed rapidly forward over the scrub-covered dunes, making ground by short rushes. The Turks kept up a hot fire, but the Dorsets’ steady advance was too much for them, and when the leading line was still about 200 yards off the Turks started to go. The Northumberland Fusiliers and some of the 32nd Brigade had meanwhile renewed the advance from the south, and less than twenty minutes after the Dorsets started their advance Hill 10 was in British hands and the surviving defenders were decamping N.E. with the Dorsets in pursuit.

Progress beyond Hill 10 was slow due to the ground conditions and the difficulty of keeping the battalion together.

2/Lieut. George is mentioned in the fighting that followed the capture of Hill 10 [32]:

This stage of the advance lay across a cultivated plain, to the north of which lay the Karakol Dagh ridge. Along this, on the Battalion’s left, the Manchesters could be seen advancing, the sun catching the “tinklers” (bits of tin) they carried on their backs to indicate their position to the supporting guns. The [Dorset] Battalion’s advance took its left about to the foot of the ridge, but on its right it had no formed support, though mixed parties of the 32nd and 34th Brigades were working forward more or less to its right rear. There was some shrapnel fire and a little rifle fire, but the Dorsets had few targets in this advance, for the retiring Turkish infantry gave way continually as the Battalion pressed on. Just north of Hill 10 and about 100 yards from the beach a gun emplacement surrounded by empty shell-cases told its own tale, and among the spurs of the Karakol Dagh beyond the cultivated ground two more field guns were in action behind a ridge. There seemed to be a fair chance of capturing them, and while Lieut. Bowler took a party of “B” Company forward on the left to try and rush them, Captain Gregory and Major [Richard Fitzgerald William Ferris] Leslie organized an attempt to intercept them should they retire down the gully from which they were firing. Accordingly a party, mainly of “A” Company, under Captain Gregory and 2/Lieut. George, pushed forward on the right, came over the crest, but only to see the guns disappearing about 180 yards ahead — they had moved just in time. In the excitement of the moment the men dashed forward with shouts and cheers, not realising that the guns were out of reach of a rush, though within easy range of rifle fire.

The upshot of the 7th August was that Chocolate Hill was not captured. Atkinson is withering in his conclusions on the landings [33]:

Thus ended the 5th Dorsets’ first day under fire. It had been an unsatisfactory and disappointing day, not so much for the Battalion, which had done all that was asked of it, as for the Division. From the first things had gone wrong, the misfortunes that had attended the landing of the leading battalions and had led to the 32nd being mixed up with it had thrown everything out of gear; where resolute handling and vigour were urgently needed, resolution and initiative had been conspicuously lacking. The situation at Hill 10 had not been handled, and even after that position was eventually taken, when energy and determination might still have retrieved the situation; inactivity and depression had prevailed at Brigade headquarters.

Hart is also scathing about the landings at Sulva [34]:

The IX Corps was thrown into battle long before it was ready with incompetent commanders and preposterously optimistic plans which, despite the experience of the last four months, seemed to ignore the possibility a potent Turkish resistance.

Suvla Bay and its hinterland. From: C. E. Caldwell, The Dardanelles (1919), p. 168. Source: Internet Archive, via University of California Libraries.

The confusion persisted on the days following the landing, Atkinson suggesting that the “the exact situation was not known by the higher authorities, much less appreciated.” In the meantime, the Dorsets consolidated and prepared to renew the offensive on the 9th August.

The plan for the 9th August was for the 11th Division and part of the 53rd (Welsh) Division to capture Scimitar Hill and Ismail Oglu Tepe (W Hill), while the 10th (Irish) Division advanced on their left flank along the Kiretch Tepe Sirt, covered by the 5th Dorsets and the 9th Lancashire Fusiliers. The Dorsets received their orders to move early in the morning, meaning that many of the men started out without supplies of food and water. After reaching the start point, “D” Company of the Dorsets was to lead the attack [35]:

“D” Company, which was the freshest, not having been on out-post, formed the leading line. At first the advance went well enough, though the ground was broken and very difficult. The Battalion had to cross a series of ridges, separated by deep gullies and covered with thick scrub, which tended to break up formations by making touch and direction hard to keep, while the crests apparently served as aiming points, for on reaching one the Battalion usually met heavy fire, and the men had to double over them into the dips beyond.

With the help of naval gunnery, the Dorsets progressed to a ridge running south-east from Kiretch Tepe Sirt near a place later known as Jephson’s Post. There, they waited for units of 10th Division to catch up. Facing them on a ridge around 900 yards ahead were large numbers of Ottoman troops. With the Munster Fusiliers from 10th Division pinned down on their left, the Dorsets could not press forward. They were, therefore, forced to withdraw in order to conform with the 10th Division on their left and the 9th Lancashire Fusiliers on their right. Eventually, the battalion was ordered to fall back to trenches on Karakol Dagh for the night. Atkinson comments that casualties had been fairly heavy [36]:

Besides the officers already mentioned [Captain Henry Neville Le Marchant, killed; Major Weldon, Lieuts. Horton and Clayton, wounded] about twenty men had been killed, over sixty were wounded and a dozen missing.

Other men were still out in front, but some were able to re-join the battalion later. Atkinson’s regimental history reflected on another failure [37]:

August 9th had been another disappointing day, though once again the 5th Dorsets had given a good account of themselves and only retired in conformity with the Brigade with which they were acting. But the failure to clear Kiretch Tepe Sirt was far from the worst feature of the day. The attack on Scimitar Hill and Ismail Oglu Tepe had been repulsed, the 53rd Division’s advance had failed completely, Turkish reinforcements had come up, and only with difficulty had their vigorous counter-attacks been checked.

After their exertions on the 9th August, the 5th Dorsets spent a brief time resting behind the lines at Lala Baba.

General Stopford was removed as IX Corps commander on the 15th August 1915, with Lieutenant-General Sir Julian Byng appointed as his replacement [38]. While Byng was on his way from the Western Front,  the command of IX Corps was temporarily transferred to Major-General Henry de Beauvoir de Lisle, the commanding officer of the 29th Division.

Chocolate Hill and Green Hill. From: Stair Gillon, The story of the 29th Division (1925).

On the night of the 16th/17th August, “A” Company, with 2/Lieut. George, were to take part in a small-scale attack [39]:

August 16th passed quietly and about 10 p.m. the digging was renewed, but only three hours’ work could be put in as “A” Company had to carry out a small enterprise and were to go out soon after 3 a.m. However, this sufficed to link up the new trench with Green Hill, thus completing a very satisfactory piece of work.

“A” Company’s objective was some substantial looking building 300 yards to the eastward and just in front of the Turkish line. Lieut. George, “A.’s” only remaining subaltern, was to take out one platoon as a covering party, and Captain Gregory was to follow with another and some Royal Engineers, who were to render the house defensible. This done, sixteen men under a sergeant were to garrison it and to hold on for twenty-four hours, when another party would relieve them. It was felt to be no easy task, for the men were still rather tired and very little was known about the exact position of the Turks or of their strength, though two machine-guns had been located on either side of the house. At 3.25 a.m. on August 17th, however, Lieut. George started off with his platoon, Captain Gregory following with the consolidating party and a field telephone, while “B” Company got ready to dig an communication trench to the house.

Unluckily, in the darkness and the enclosed country the covering party lost direction and went off to the right. It had covered nearly 300 yards when heavy fire was opened, first from the left and then from a trench close ahead. This trench Lieut. George promptly charged and, being well supported by his men, carried it in fine style, capturing fourteen Turks and bayoneting several others, after which the party started to construct barricades at either end of the captured trench. Meanwhile, Captain Gregory, realising that the leading platoon had wandered off to the right, sent off one of his orderlies, Pte. Harris, to locate it, while he himself got the second platoon going in the right direction. This platoon, pushing ahead, soon reached the house from which it drove out some Turks, and pressed on to a sunken road just short of the main trench. Captain Gregory meanwhile had followed up with his company headquarters, of which the chief item was a telephonist and a wire, and sent back a report of what had happened to Lt.-Col. Hannay, who promptly sent 2/Lieut. Montgomery forward with a platoon of “B” Company to replace the strayed platoon. However most of the Royal Engineers had gone astray, taking the tools with them, and when Captain Gregory’s party tried to start consolidating it was discovered that the artful Turk had removed the back wall, so that there was next to nothing to put into a state of defence, while machine-guns were so posted as to enfilade the front wall from both flanks. This rather knocked the bottom out of the operation, especially as the Turks were thoroughly alarmed now and their whole line was blazing away, though luckily their fire was very wild and went high.

Lieut. Montgomery by this time had brought his platoon up and Pte. Harris had obtained touch with Lieut. George’s party, but the position was clearly untenable and it was essential to get the troops back before daylight exposed them to the Turks. Fortunately the telephone was working, so Captain Gregory got through to Lt.-Col. Hannay and reported how things stood, whereupon the Commanding Officer, realising that the Turkish cunning had ruined the plan, ordered him to withdraw.
[…]
Pte. Harris had meanwhile once more gone forward to take Lieut. George the order to withdraw, and thanks to his courage and devotion that officer was able to being his whole party back without mishap into the Lancashire Fusiliers lines, five hundred yards south of his starting point.

This seems to have been the trench-storming episode that Lieutenant-Colonel Hannay mentioned in his communication with Thomas Hardy after the death of 2/Lieut. George.

The battalion were in front-line trenches at Dead Man’s House on the 18th and 19th August. There were still many dead and wounded in no man’s land, and on the 20th there was a temporary truce, in which 2/Lieut. George played a significant role [40]:

Many wounded were still out in No Man’s Land, and on the 19th the Battalion’s Medical Officer, Lieut. [T. A.] Peel [of the RAMC], who had gallantly gone out to their help, was mortally wounded by a sniper. His death, next day, was much regretted by the Dorsets, for whom he had done splendid work. On the 20th, however, the Turks changed their practice; instead of shooting down those who were trying to help the wounded they put up white flags and and officer came forward as for a parley. Accordingly Lieut. George went out to discover what was wanted, and, after a conversation in the best French the two plenipotentiaries could muster, an informal armistice was arranged and the Battalion’s stretcher-bearers were soon busy, bringing in our wounded, most of whom proved to have been bandaged during the night by the Turks.

Chocolate Hill, Green Hill, and Hetman Chair. From: Henry W. Nevinson, The Dardanelles campaign, 3rd ed. (1920), Chapter XIII. Source: Internet Archive, via University of California Libraries.

Captain Gregory also provided an account of what happened on that occasion [41]:

Two Red Crescent men came out, Second Lieutenant George went and met them half-way between the trenches, George saluted them and they saluted, placed their hand to their forehead and heart and bowed very profoundly. George offered his hand, at which they were delighted; a limited conversation then took place in French. They offered to carry all our wounded in, but on refusing that they stood while our own stretcher-bearers went out and fetched them in; when they arrived in the trenches all of them had received first aid at Turkish hands, so the firing we had experienced the previous night had evidently been used to cover the work of their medical men. This episode was carried on in full view of both sides, and the greatest friendliness was show by the Turks to Lieutenant George and to the stretcher-bearers that went out.

3.2 The Battle of Scimitar Hill:

On the 21st/22nd August, the 5th Dorsets were to be involved in their second (and final) attempt to capture Scimitar Hill and Ismail Oglu Tepe. By this point in time, the August Offensive had failed, so the point of the attack was simply to make the Suvla position secure and link it up, if possible, with the Anzac perimeter. C. E. Callwell has summarised the Commander-in-Chief’s objectives [42]:

He, however, resolved upon making a fresh effort  to improve the Suvla position and to secure its junction with the Anzac area, hoping at the same time to gain possession of Ismail Oglu Tepe, as capture of this hill would constitute an important step towards securing both Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove from artillery fire.

Scimitar Hill. From: Stair Gillon, The story of the 29th Division (1925).

Callwell also provided an outline of the main plan of attack at Suvla [43]:

The special objective of this offensive operation was the capture of Ismail Oglu Tepe. This task was assigned to the 29th and 11th Divisions, the 29th Division advancing on the left from about Chocolate Hill and the ground immediately on either side of it, while the 11th Division on the right was to advance in the low ground on the north of the Azmak Dere, storming the line of trenches which the enemy had constructed across this about Hetman Chair. The 10th Division and the Mounted Division were retained as corps reserve. To the 53rd and 54th Division was assigned the duty of holding the front from Sulajik to Kiritch Tepe Sirt. The Anzac force was to co-operate by swinging forward its left from Demajalik Bair towards the Azmak Dere.

Two of these Divisions were new to Suvla. The 29th Division was a Regular Army unit which had considerable experience of the peninsula from their time at Helles since the initial landings on the 25th April. By contrast, the 2nd Mounted Division had only very recently arrived from Egypt, and were mainly made up of (dismounted) Yeomanry regiments, including the 1/1st Dorsetshire Yeomanry (Queen’s Own). Stephen Chambers has made the important point that neither of these divisions were at full-strength: “the 29th Division had been badly mauled since the April landings and could only send two brigades whilst the Mounted Division was really only brigade strength, with about 5,000 men” [44]. On the 11th’s right, units in the Anzac area were to attack Hill 60 in an attempt to link-up with the forces at Suvla, following their failure to capture the Sari Bair ridge.

By this point in time, Lieutenant-Colonel Hannay had left to take over 34th Brigade, replacing Brigadier-General William Henry Sitwell. This left Major Leslie in command of the 5th Dorsets.

Scimitar Hill. Detail from: Map of Suvla, compiled by the Map and Survey Section, Mediterranean Expeditionary Force GHQ. Source: A collection of military maps of the Gallipoli Peninsula, G.H.Q. M.E.F, 1915; British Library, Digital Store Maps 43336.(21.); Crown Copyright, contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

The plan was for the 29th Division to attack Scimitar Hill and Hill 112 from Chocolate Hill, with the 11th Division covering them on their right. In the 29th Division sector, the 87th Brigade aimed to capture Scimitar Hill, while on their right the 86th Brigade would attack Hill 112 [45]. To their south, the 11th Division’s first objective was to capture trenches running south from a feature known as Hetman Chair. The plan was then to press on towards Ismail Oglu Tepe, while the Mounted Division were to remain available to exploit any success [46]:

In preparation for the attack, the trenches held by the 5th Dorsets were taken over by the 32nd Brigade, while the Dorsets and the 9th Lancashire Fusiliers side-stepped and took over positions to the south, aiming to link up with the ANZAC left at Susak Kuyu. Their role was to protect the 32nd’s right flank during the attack, while the 33rd Brigade remained in divisional reserve.

The attack was to be preceded by an artillery bombardment. More artillery was available than had been possible in the first days of the Suvla battles, but the bombardment was still totally inadequate [47]:

By August 21st rather more artillery had been landed, but not enough to balance the improvements the Turks had meanwhile effected in their defences. Ammunition was none too plentiful, the afternoon sun behind the attackers’ batteries did not make their targets any easier to locate, and it must be admitted that the preliminary bombardment on August 21st was most disappointing. It only lasted half-an-hour, and to judge by the state of the Turkish trenches and the stout resistance the Turks put up it results were almost negligible.

Scimitar Hill. Detail from: Map of Suvla, compiled by the Map and Survey Section, Mediterranean Expeditionary Force GHQ. Source: A collection of military maps of the Gallipoli Peninsula, G.H.Q. M.E.F, 1915; British Library, Digital Store Maps 43336.(21.); Crown Copyright, contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

The attack itself commenced at 3.00 pm on the 21st August. The regimental history records that 2nd Lieutenant George was one of the first to fall, killed by shrapnel [48]:

However, at 3 p.m. the first line of the 34th Brigade, Dorsets on the left [“B” and “C” Companies led, “A” and “D” followed fifty yards behind], Lancashire Fusiliers on the right, went briskly forward, undeterred by the Turkish shrapnel which had already opened on them during the final re-adjustments of the line, and had inflicted several casualties, Lieut. George being killed.

Despite this, the attack was to continue [49]:

The Turkish fire was heavy, but the Dorsets pushed on well across five hundred yards of No Man’s Land and carried the Turkish front trench with the bayonet, only to find another and even stronger one about forty yards further on. This they promptly attacked and might have carried it also had they not come under heavy fire from the left flank.

To the north of the Dorsets, the 32nd Brigade attack had inadvertently shifted to the left. In the confusion that followed, the 33rd Brigade, coming up from divisional reserve, collided with Yeomanry units from 2nd Mounted Division advancing towards Scimitar Hill. Some of the 6th Lincolnshire Regiment and the 7th South Staffordshire Regiment (33rd Brigade) managed to reinforce the 34th Brigade, but Atkinson notes that “too few reached the Dorsets and Lancashire Fusiliers to achieve much” [50].

As was often the case at Gallipoli, officer casualties were very heavy [50]:

Of the details of the fight for the Turkish trenches between Hetman Chair and Susak Kuya, little accurate information is available. Of the officers who reached the Turkish lines, none returned. Captain Gregory had been hit as he crossed our parapet, Captain Vincent and Lieuts. Bowler and Higgins were wounded in No Man’s Land and brought back, but of Major Leslie, Captain Moody and Lieut. Montgomery no more was ever heard.
[…]
As far as a story can be pieced together from the accounts of the few N.C.O.’s and men who came back, the Dorsets found themselves under enfilade fire from both flanks, a gap having opened between them and the Lancashire Fusiliers, and it was all they could do to cling to the trenches they had taken and beat of counter-attacks. Small parties held on in to the darkness and through the night […]

The attack of the 21st/22nd August was a costly failure [51]:

When the survivors of the Dorsets were collected they numbered rather over two hundred and fifty.
[…]
The casualties were over three hundred: about twenty-five men had been killed in or about our trenches, so that their fate was known, nearly two hundred were missing, while some ninety wounded were got in.

Initially, only three officers of the 5th Dorsets remained: Lieutenant V. T. A. Hayden (the quartermaster), and Second Lieutenants C. J. Richards and G. W. Smith (the machine gun officer). The battalion was afterwards temporarily combined with the 11th Manchesters to become “No 2 Battalion” in the 34th Brigade [52].

On the 21st, the attack by the 29th Division further north also failed. Both of its Brigades had to assemble on the reverse slopes of Chocolate Hill, which provided the only cover in the whole area, but which soon became a place of chaos [53]. The assault battalion of the 87th Brigade, the 1st Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, succeeded in getting to the top of Scimitar Hill, but were unable to hold it for very long. Follow-up attacks by the 1st Border Regiment and the 2nd South Wales Borderers also failed [54]. The 86th Brigade found their way to Hill 112 blocked by burning scrub, and in the ensuing chaos got inadvertently mixed up with the 32nd Brigade on their right and the attack petered out [55].

It was a positive inferno: a blazing hot day, a scorching forest fire, and an invisible foe raining death upon them.

The arrival of the yeomanry was not able to change anything either [56]

In the meantime, however, the 2nd Mounted Division was advancing right across the plain from Lala Baba in support, suffering considerably from artillery fire during the movement. On arrival about Chocolate Hill the yeomanry pressed forward eagerly into the fight and they appear to have become a good deal intermingled with the 29th Division.

The whole attack was a disaster. By the end of the day, there had been no progress at all at Suvla.

The Battle of Scimitar Hill was the final attempt to break the deadlock on the Gallipoli peninsula. The 5th Dorsets would remain at Suvla until the evacuations from the peninsula in December. The evacuations were the only parts of the Gallipoli campaign that seemed to be entirely successful in achieving their objectives.

3.3 Aftermath:

The family of Second Lieutenant Frank William George would have learned of his death towards the end of August. Thomas Hardy’s own surviving correspondence on Frank mostly dates from early September 1915. 2/Lieut. George’s name was published in official casualty lists in October 1915 [57].

Extract from casualty list published in the Army and Navy Gazette, 30th October 1915, p. 938.

2/Lieut. George was also one of six Dorsetshire Regiment officers whose names were mentioned in the third Despatch of General Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, which was published in the London Gazette on the 26 January 1916 (others included Lieutenant-Colonel Hannay and Major Leslie) [58].

Extract from Despatch by General Sir Ian Hamilton, Supplement to the London Gazette, 28 January 1916, p. 1202. Source: The Gazette.

3.4 Memorials:

Second Lieutenant Frank William George has no known grave and is commemorated on the Helles Memorial in Turkey. In the United Kingdom, his name also features on the war memorial at Bere Regis and on the memorial in Gray’s Inn Chapel, London [59].

Bere Regis: War Memorial (Dorset)

4. The wider impact on Dorset:

The August Offensive at Suvla would have a profound effect on Dorset more generally. The 5th Dorsets would have been mostly made up of local men that had volunteered for service just after the outbreak of war.

Consequently, many war memorials in Dorset contain the names of those that were killed serving with the 5th Dorsets at Suvla. For example, the memorial cemetery gateway at Corfe Castle includes the name of a distant cousin of mine: Private Alfred Harry Day, who was killed in action on the 9th August.

Two men named on the war memorial at Wool, my home village, were killed-in-action in the same attack as 2/Lieut. George: Privates Victor Churchill and Charles Tom Davis.

Two brothers from Chilfrome, Privates Bertram and Cyril Legge, were both killed in action on the 21st/22nd August (a third brother, Lance Corporal George Legge, MM, survived Suvla, but was killed in action in October 1918, while posted to the 6th Battalion).

Dorchester: SDGR Dorchester Branch War Memorial in St Peter’s Church (Dorset)

At least seven Dorset-based bellringers were killed in action while serving with the 5th Dorsets at Suvla, six of them during the August Offensive [60]. This included three members of the Dorchester Branch of the Salisbury Diocesan Guild of Ringers: Lance Corporal Edwin Henry Foot (Buckland Newton) on the 9th August; Private William Benjamin Drake (Hilton) and Sergeant Harry Wilson (Milton Abbey) on the 21st August. The others were: Corporal George Samuel Batten (Leigh), Lance Corporal Victor George Merrifield (Fontmell Magna), Private Stephen John Samways (Chideock), and (in November 1915) Private George Henry John Hoare (Rampisham). A Wiltshire member of the Salisbury Guild, Private Arthur James Merritt of the 5th Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment, would be killed in action on the 10th August in the fighting at Chunuk Bair, in the Anzac sector south of Suvla.

Some of the wounded would survive, only to die later. For example, Private Sidney James White, a bellringer from Sturminster Marshall, suffered a gunshot wound in his left leg on the 21st August, which fractured the bone. His leg was amputated through the thigh and he was eventually discharged at Dorchester on the 2nd June 1916. He died on the 25th October 1918, aged 30, and was buried at Sturminster Marshall.

Bere Regis: War Memorial (Dorset)

5. Before Marching and After:

Thomas Hardy wrote a poem in memory of his second cousin. “Before Marching and After” was first published in the Fortnightly Review of the 1st October 1915 [61]:

Before Marching and After
(in Memoriam F. W. G.)

Orion swung southward aslant
Where the starved Egdon pine-trees had thinned,
The Pleiads aloft seemed to pant
With the heather that twitched in the wind;
But he looked on indifferent to sights such as these,
Unswayed by love, friendship, home joy or home sorrow,
And wondered to what he would march on the morrow.

The crazed household-clock with its whirr
Rang midnight within as he stood,
He heard the low sighing of her
Who had striven from his birth for his good;
But he still only asked the spring starlight, the breeze,
What great thing or small thing his history would borrow
From that Game with Death he would play on the morrow.

When the heath wore the robe of late summer,
And the fuchsia-bells, hot in the sun,
Hung red by the door, a quick comer
Brought tidings that marching was done
For him who had joined in that game overseas
Where Death stood to win, though his name was to borrow
A brightness therefrom not to fade on the morrow.

References:

[1] The Times, 3 September 1915, p. 6; via the Times Digital Archive (£).

[2] Michael Millgate, Thomas Hardy: a biography revisited (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 10-11.

[3] Thomas Hardy, letter to Sir Evelyn Wood, 19 March 1915; transcript in Dorset County Museum; also in: The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy, ed. Richard Little Purdy and Michael Millgate, Vol. 5 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 85.

[4] Alexander Charles Stewart, classicist and army cyclist, British Library Untold Lives blog, 12 April 2018:
https://blogs.bl.uk/untoldlives/2018/04/alexander-charles-stewart-classicist-and-army-cyclist.html

[5] Thomas Hardy, The Life and Work of Thomas Hardy, ed. Michael Millgate (Basingstoke: Macmillan 1984), p. 400.

[6] Ibid., p. 401.

[7] Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Odes Book III, Ode XXVI, in: Horace, The Odes and Epodes, tr. C. E. Bennett, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1912), pp 261-262
Available from the Internet Archive, via Digital Library of India: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.98705/page/n287/

[8] Thomas Hardy, letter to Sydney Cockerell, 1 September 1915; MS Adams; in: Collected Letters, Vol. 5, p. 120.

[9] The Times, 3 September 1915, p. 6.

[10] Thomas Hardy, letter to Constance Dugdale, 1 September 1915; MS Texas; in: Collected Letters, Vol. 5, pp. 120-121.

[11] Thomas Hardy, letter to Florence Henniker, 2 September 1915; MS Dorset County Museum; in: Collected Letters, Vol. 5, pp. 121-122.

[12] Thomas Hardy, letter to Eden Phillpotts, 4 September 1915; MS New York University; in: Collected Letters, Vol. 5, p. 122.

[13] The Sphere, 25 September 1915; via British Newspaper Archive (£).

[14] Thomas Hardy, letter to Sir Evelyn Wood, 12 September 1915; MS Adams; in: Collected Letters, Vol. 5, pp. 122-123.

[15] James P. Grieves, letter to Thomas Hardy, 3 September 1915; MS Dorset County Museum, H.2574; in: Hardy’s Correspondents website, University of Exeter:
http://hardycorrespondents.exeter.ac.uk/text.html?id=dhe-hl-h.2574

[16] Thomas Hardy, letter to Sydney Cockerell, 17 September 1915; MS Adams; in: Collected Letters, Vol. 5, p. 123.

[17] Millgate, Thomas Hardy: a biography revisited, p. 464.

[18] Ibid., p. 465.

[19] Ralph Pite, Thomas Hardy: the guarded life (London: Picador, 2006), p. 431; “our one” — here Pite is citing Florence Emily Hardy, letter to Lady Hoare, 30 August 1915; in: Letters of Emma and Florence Hardy, ed. Michael Millgate (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 109.

[20] F.B. Pinion, Thomas Hardy: his life and friends (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), p. 329.

[21] Thomas Hardy, “Before marching and after,” in Collected Poems (London: Macmillan, 1923), pp 512-513; via Internet Archive (Brigham Young University):
https://archive.org/details/collectedpoemsof00hard/page/512/

[22] Millgate, Thomas Hardy: a biography revisited, p. 465.

[23] Life, p. 477.

[24] Record series used include: Birth, Marriage and Death (BMD) records, including probate indexes and baptismal registers; the England and Wales Census, 1851-1911; the 1939 Register; electoral registers, service records (including WO 363, War Office: Soldiers’ Documents, First World War ‘Burnt Documents’); all via Findmypast (£):
https://www.findmypast.com/

[25] The Regimental Roll of Honour and War Record of the Artists’ Rifles (1/28th, 2/28th and 3/28th Battalions The London Regiment T.F.), 3rd ed. (London: Howlett & Son, 1922), p. xiii; via Internet Archive (University of California Libraries):
https://archive.org/details/regimentalrollof00highiala/page/xii/

[26] British Red Cross, Volunteers during the First World War:
https://vad.redcross.org.uk/Volunteers-during-WW1

[27] T. C. Atkinson, “History of the 5th Battalion, The Dorset Regiment, 1914-1919,” in: History of the Dorsetshire Regiment, 1914-1919, Part III, The Service Battalions (Dorchester: Henry Ling; London: Simpkin Marshall, 1932), pp. 1-93.

[28] Atkinson, p. 12.

[29] Atkinson, p. 15.

[30] Peter Hart, Gallipoli (London: Profile Books, 2011), pp. 279-280.

[31] Atkinson, p. 17

[32] Atkinson, pp. 17-18.

[33] Atkinson, p. 20.

[34] Hart, p. 367.

[35] Atkinson, pp. 21-22.

[36] Atkinson, p. 23.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Stephen Chambers, Gallipoli: Suvla, August Offensive, Battleground Europe (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2011), pp. 141-146.

[39] Atkinson, pp. 26-27.

[40] Atkinson, pp. 28-29.

[41] National Army Museum, G. W. Gregory, 34th Brigade Collection, p. 12; cited in Chambers, Gallipoli: Suvla, August Offensive, p. 152.

[42] C. E. Callwell, The Dardanelles, Campaigns and their lessons (London: Constable, 1919), p. 246; via Internet Archive (University of Toronto):
https://archive.org/details/dardanelleswithm00calluoft/page/246/

[43] Callwell, pp. 246-247

[44] Chambers, Gallipoli: Suvla, August Offensive, pp. 145-146.

[45] Stair Gillon, The story of the 29th Division: a record of gallant deeds (London: Thomas Nelson, 1925), p. 58; also available from the British Library (Digital Store 09084.cc.37.):
http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100002339298.0x000002

[46] Atkinson, p. 30.

[47] Ibid.

[48] Atkinson, pp. 30-31.

[49] Atkinson, p. 31.

[50] Ibid.

[51] Atkinson, p. 32.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Gillon, p. 58.

[54] Gillon, p. 59.

[55] Ibid.

[56] Callwell, p. 248:
https://archive.org/details/dardanelleswithm00calluoft/page/248/

[57] Army and Navy Gazette, 30th October 1915, p. 938; via British Newspaper Archive (£).

[58] Despatch from General Sir Ian Hamilton,  Supplement to the London Gazette, No. 29455, 28 January 1916, p. 1195:
https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/29455/supplement/1195

[59] Grays Inn War Memorial:
https://www.graysinn.org.uk/the-inn/history/members/war-memorial/world-war-i

[60] Robert Wellen, Salisbury Diocesan Guild of Ringers: Great War Memorial Booklet (2019); information available at:
https://sdgr.org.uk/great-war-memorial-booklet/

[61] Thomas Hardy, “Before marching and after,” in Collected Poems (London: Macmillan, 1923), pp 512-513.

Note: One of the pieces of evidence that I have not been able to consult while compiling this post has been Second Lieutenant George’s service records, which are part of the WO 339 series (War Office: Officers’ Services, First World War) now held at The National Archives (WO 339/32082). I hope to be able to call these up on my next visit to Kew, although I cannot predict when that will be:
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1085984

[All links were working as of the 22nd August 2020]

Update October 31, 2021:

The Bere Regis Village Website has made available PDF copies of the vast majority of its parish magazine archive. The wartime issues make for fascinating reading, especially as the vicar ….

I recently found an interesting piece on Lieutenant Frank George in the Bere Regis & Winterborne Kingston Parish Magazine for October 1915. It mentions Frank’s brothers as well as the Times obituary written by Thomas Hardy. The piece also mentions Private Charles Bright of the 5th Dorsets, who was killed in action on the same day as Lieutenant George.

In an adjacent column is a list of villagers that had been wounded while serving with the 5th Dorsets, presumably in the August Offensive at Suvla: Sergeant W. Lush, Privates B. Diffy, W. Cox, W. Rawles (missing), W. Ames, E. Legg, F. Stickley, and T. Russell. It was eventually accepted that Private Walter Edward Rawles (Service No. 10583) had also been killed in action on the 21st August 1915. Lieutenant George and Privates Bright and Rawles are all commemorated on the Helles Memorial. The W. Ames in the list of wounded is probably Private William James Ames (Service No. 10873), who survived Gallipoli to die of wounds in France on the 4th October 1916, aged 21, and is buried in Contay British Cemetery (Somme).

Extract from the Bere Regis & Winterborne Kingston Parish Magazine, October 1915, announcing the death of Lieutenant Frank George. Source: Bere Regis Village Website: https://www.bereregis.org/parishmagazines.htm