My Bellew grandfather told me he served in both the North Irish Horse and South Irish Horse in the Great War.
These two yeomanry regiments had their origins in the war in South Africa at the end of the nineteenth century. The First Boer War in 1880 – 1881 lasted less than three months; there were heavy British losses and Britain suffered its first defeat since the American War of Independence (1775 -1783). The Boers unconventional tactics, marksmanship and mobility contributed to the defeat but the lesson taught to me recently by General Petraeus and Lord Roberts applied too. Major-General Sir George Pomeroy Colley, commander of British forces, did not have the right “big idea”; the right strategy to defeat the Boers.
The peace held until 1899 when the Second Boer War broke out. There was a pressing need for trained, mounted infantry soldiers and such men volunteered to serve in Yeomanry regiments – recruited in England, Wales and Scotland. Ireland did not have such Yeomanry regiments. In 1899 the Imperial Yeomanry was formed consisting of Irish civilians and former soldiers. In 1902, by which time the war had this time been won but again with heavy casualties, two new Irish Yeomanry regiments were formed: the North and South Imperial Yeomanries. Their first Commanding officers were the Earl of Shaftesbury and the Marquess of Waterford.
At the outbreak of the First World War on 28th July 1914 both regiments were fully prepared and were in France by 22nd August; they were the first non-regular regiments to go to France and a day after arriving the North Irish Horse was in the thick of the action, fighting alongside the 2nd Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.
My grandfather did not tell me that he served in the Royal Irish Rifles, a regiment formed in 1758. This explains how he came to serve as a soldier in the infantry until 1916 – the North and South Irish Horse were mounted regiments. He commanded a mortar platoon – a hazardous job as he operated his mortars in the front line lobbing shells the length of a cricket pitch into the German front line trenches. This activity attracted enemy fire. The upshot was that on 3rd June 1916 he was awarded a Military Cross while serving with them as a Lieutenant. I sought the citation at the Public Records Office in Kew but about half these citations have been lost, possibly destroyed in the Blitz, including his. He was reticent about why he got an MC when asked by me as a child.
The Battle of the Somme followed almost immediately (1st July – 18th November 1916) in which he was severely wounded. He told me it was a Sunday morning and he was shaving. He propped a mirror on top of the trench and his head and shoulders were exposed as he shaved. A sniper shot away the back of his neck and he bled profusely. He was evacuated to a dressing station in an orchard where he heard his brother officers talking about him, saying his wound was fatal. He should have been moved further back from the front line but he was lucid enough to demand he was left in the orchard until his wound had to some extent healed. Had he been moved the wound would have opened and he would have bled to death.
The scar was still visible when I was growing up. The uniform he wore that Sunday in 1916 was in the bottom drawer of the chest of drawers in his Dressing Room at Barmeath. The blood stains were very evident – they had turned brown.
He was unfit to return to the trenches and served in Palestine in the North and South Irish Horse. His encounter in the Sinai Desert with TE Lawrence has already been recounted here. He also took part in General Allenby’s entry into Jerusalem on 11th December 1917, telling me Allenby meekly and symbolically entered the holy city riding a donkey. As so often my grandfather’s sense of what might have happened superseded the actual events of that day.
(to be continued)