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Remembered Today:

Geoffrey Caiger-Watson MC OBE


Tony Ferguson

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Around six million men served in the British Army during the First World War. Over 800,000 lost their lives. The wounded, blinded, crippled and insane numbered over two million. Geoffrey Caiger-Watson, my daughter-in-law’s grandfather, was a twenty-year-old second lieutenant when he transferred to the First Battalion of the Royal Irish Fusiliers on 25th October 1916. Andy Symington, my grandfather, was a twenty-four-year-old private who had survived four months on the Somme and had effectively seen it through to its stalemate conclusion. That they served in the same battalion defies probability. They fought together for two months until Geoffrey returned to England at the end of that year on sick leave. During these closing weeks of 1916, the First Battalion headcount was so depleted, they must have known each other. From then, the fates of these two warriors overlapped and intertwined. Geoffrey returned to the First Battalion on May 17th, 1917, too late to re-unite him with Andy who was on the Casualty List at the end of March, prior to his discharge in August. It is unlikely they ever met after that. Yet, over a century later, their lineages would converge in a miracle called Findlay.   

Andy’s great grandson, Ronan James Ferguson, had married Geoffrey’s granddaughter, Stephanie, on Friday 13th July 2018, the Cupidian destination of a chance meeting on a train. Their first born, Findlay, was not a man to be rushed and duly entered the world on March 7th, 2022. In some celestial Elysium, a dashing lieutenant and a seasoned fighter would have been high fiveing! Wait, no…I see it clearer now…they are charging their glasses! They are toasting the Miracle of Life, uniquely dependent on them BOTH surviving the trenches. Had either of them succumbed, Findlay would not be. No matter how challenged your beliefs, there are occasions in life when one can sense the Hand of God.

For now, let us turn our attention to Findlay’s maternal great grandfather. Geoffrey Caiger- Watson was a remarkable man. Absolutely remarkable. He was born in Brighton on May 13, 1896. After studying art and figure drawing at the Brighton School of Arts in 1912-13, he joined the Inland Revenue as a clerk. At the outbreak of war, he enrolled in the Sussex Yeomanry (a territorial unit) but was quickly identified and sent to the Inns of Court OTC (Officer Training Corps) for officer training. Hardly surprising, as Geoffrey had come from a family with a military tradition. His older brother, Aubrey, was a lieutenant (and eventually captain) in Russell’s Infantry, an Indian regiment where he spent six years before demobilisation in 1920. His grandfather, James Caiger- Watson, was born in 1828 in Athlone. As Athlone was a garrison town for the British army since its construction in 1691, it is highly likely that his father (Geoffrey’s great grandfather) was stationed there in the same Custume Barracks where almost one hundred years later, Captain Andy Symington would march into in 1922 on the creation of the Irish Free State.

 Geoffrey’s officer training saw him spend two months in Berkhamsted in Hertfordshire with other potential officers where they would dig trenches on the Common (some of which are still visible to this day.) Geoffrey was one of the first of almost 12,000 recruits to pass through the Berkhamsted process: by 1918, over 2,000 were dead and almost half suffered serious wounds. Confirmed as a second lieutenant in late September 1915, which earned him a posting to France in early July 1916, he transferred to my grandfather’s First Battalion in late October. He joined a threadbare battalion, which had incurred brutal losses earlier that month.

On the 12th, High Command ordered them over the top in a typically ill-considered assault on enemy strongholds between Le Transloy and Les Boeufs. Lacking any coherent planning, the operation was a monument to incompetence and cover up. Brigadier General A R Burrowes, who gave the order to attack, noted in his diary that there had been “considerable work in removing the wounded left from previous fighting”. He confirmed the arrangements were finally in place at 4am on the morning of the attack. No consideration was given to whether the men were ready for battle. The Regimental Diary also reveals that the attack order was only issued at 9.30pm. After a fine dinner, a good claret and a few whiskies, perchance? One can only conclude, in the light of what followed, that this was a rushed and reckless operation. At 2.05pm, the Faughs left the trenches simultaneously as the artillery launched a creeping barrage, both following the plan of High Command. The undisputed fact is that the infantrymen were decimated by their own shells. Added to that, the machine guns in the German front lines, which were supposed to have been taken out by an earlier bombardment, remained unscathed and ruthlessly operational.

The results were devastating. One week earlier, battalion strength was recorded at 24 officers and 825 other ranks. On October 13th, only 5 officers and 209 other ranks remained. Of the four companies, “A” company had no officers and only 39 other ranks. That was all that was left. Yet Andy Symington still stood! Somehow, he had survived. This was the beleaguered crew that Geoffrey joined as they billeted in Corbie in the pouring rain of a miserable late October day. The mood will have been indescribably heavy, like the bedraggled in a waiting room for Hell.

The cover up in the Battalion’s diary defies belief. The official line blamed the men! At 2.5pm, they had left the trenches “in great style”. Such was their enthusiasm to engage that they caught up with the creeping barrage, which inflicted losses!! This forced them to pause, and, in that delay, the Germans returned to their trenches with their machine guns. Three hundred and eighty-five casualties, but no fault of the generals.

Fortunately for Geoffrey and Andy, November was a quiet month, spent mainly in training. It teemed with rain and turned cold towards the end of the month, a harbinger of the hard winter that followed. The Battle of the Somme was over. News coverage had moved on to the death of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary. Sept 25,1915

We have referred elsewhere to the story of Andy lying injured in No-Mans-Land and owing his life to the order of a wounded officer that his stretcher bearers also pick up Symington–“he’s a good ‘un.” There is material to suggest that the officer was none other than Second Lieutenant Geoffrey Caiger- Watson!    

Consider the evidence:

1.     Both were in that wretched half mile of trench at the time in question;

2.     Geoffrey suffered gunshot wounds around Dec 12th, which resulted in him being invalided to England for almost three months- confirmed by hospital records;

3.        Battalion records show a total presence of six officers and 243 other ranks;

4.     Geoffrey was one of six officers, but the fact that he was wounded (not killed or unharmed) reduces the subset further …to a subset of one??

While it may not pass the legal test of reasonable doubt, I find it incredulous that what started out as a relationship between two men in an army of 6 million, has boiled down to two men in less than one handful. I again sense the Hand of God and return my thoughts to the miracle that is Findlay.

Geoffrey returned to the Faughs on May 17, 1917, remaining with the battalion until the 9th of June 1918 when he took a post in the nascent Royal Air Force. Before he left, however, he won the Military Cross for gallantry in February 1918. Employed as an intelligence officer, his job was to report to High Command on the state and deployment of our troops. In the chaos of battle with communication lines destroyed, the only way to understand what was going on was to visit the remote trenches and look for yourself! This “intelligence gathering” was a highly precarious occupation. One could easily be shot by your own side or leap into a trench that had fallen to the Germans. As customary, the London Gazette published his citation for the Military Cross. It read:
“2nd Lieut Geoffrey Caiger-Watson, R.Ir.Fus
For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty as an intelligence officer during operations. He carried out his duties with great success under the most difficult conditions. On one occasion, he went over the top under heavy machine gun fire to get into touch with isolated positions. His accurate reports and untiring energy were of the greatest value to the battalion.”

On joining the Royal Air Force, Geoffrey undertook a series of training courses over a three-month period. He studied Aeronautics at Reading; Aerial Gunnery at Hythe and New Romney before graduating from Wireless and Observation school in Uxbridge and Winchester. Qualified as a RAF Observer (for the uninitiated, the observer is the guy in the back seat behind the pilot), his new role returned him to France in late September 1918, in the dying embers of the war. Seeing things out quietly was never in his script and at the very end of the war, he was involved in an incident caused by an error of judgement borne of inexperience. The incident almost cost him his life and killed his 18-year-old pilot.

I am indebted to Monsieur Jacques de Ceuninck, a Belgian national, for providing me with the details and materials on the case we are about to relate. Mr de Ceuninck’s father-in-law was a seven-year-old boy who had a ringside seat as the action unfolded. It was about 10.30am on November 9th, 1918. World War One would end within two days.

Geoffrey was flying in an RE8, a single-engine, two-seater plane with a top speed of 150 kmh. Developed for the Royal Flying Corps in 1916, this represented cutting-edge technology and offered considerable versatility: if the rear machine gun was removed, two 50kg bombs could be loaded in its place! His pilot was John George Leckenby, by all accounts a highly talented 18-year-old who had just come through aeronautic school “with flying colours”. Born in Hull but resident in Norwich, he was tipped to have a very bright future. The duties of an observer doubled up to include rear machine gunner and so it was that our crew decided to engage with a party of six German hussars on horseback, near the village of Escanaffles, northeast of Celles. Leckenby flew low over the farm of the Depoorter family to commence the engagement, allowing Geoffrey to fire a noisy opening salvo, etched forever in the memory of the seven-year-old witness. As they wheeled to re-engage, a wing clipped a tree, causing the plane to crash and burst into flames in a field across the road from the farmhouse. John Leckenby was killed instantly. A bright future snuffed like a candle. Geoffrey suffered a fractured skull, broken leg and was badly burned. He owed his life to a local couple, Michel and Lequenne Tonneau who bravely pulled him from the burning wreckage, despite the flames and the roar of exploding machine gun cartridges. Fortunately, the Hussars continued on their way without a backward glance. Sadly, they would all die the following day in another machine gun attack. The RE8 was completely destroyed in the inferno.

There were no hospitals, doctors, nor medicine, so the Depoorter family could only take Geoffrey in and make him as comfortable as possible. Marie Depoorter, the 16-year-old daughter, gave a statement in which she recalled how handsome the injured airman was, with shining dark hair and white teeth. They found his wallet amid the strewn debris, which showed that he was due to be married. (In fact, Geoffrey had married Phyllis Rebecca Peters earlier that year while recuperating in Brighton). The Depoorter family gave Leckenby as decent a burial as they could, using a plank and draping the body in a tarpaulin. The family then cared for Geoffrey for two days until the British army came and picked him up, taking him back to their field hospital for much needed medication and treatment. John Leckenby’s body was exhumed the following year and re-buried in a Commonwealth War Grave in the cemetery at Escanaffles. By the thinnest of margins, Caiger-Watson lived, and Leckenby died, thanks to the bravery of the Tonneaux.

Geoffrey was repatriated to England on December 7th, where he spent eighteen months recovering from his injuries. His spirit was indomitable and after a brief period in the Records Office at York (long enough to learn that such work was not for him), this adrenaline junkie joined the West African Frontier Force and so began a lifelong love affair with Africa. That period of his life is outside our scope, though worthy of a book and indeed a film on its own merits. Highlights include becoming fluent in Hausa (one of the major Nigerian languages) and several other African languages; marrying a Nigerian princess and receiving the OBE for services to Anglo- Nigerian relations in the New Years Honours List of 1978. At the outbreak of World War 2, aged forty-three, he signed up again and was posted as adjutant to the infantry training centre of the Royal Irish Fusiliers. The training role was too sedentary for his metabolism and before the end of 1940, he had returned to Africa where he served as a captain in the Nigeria regiment. By any standards, in any era of history, Geoffrey Caiger- Watson was a remarkable human being, a force of nature. He died in Australia in 1983.

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tankengine888

Posted

Thanks for sharing this story!
An interesting man by any measure; he survives his battalion being wiped down to less than half strength, survives an aircraft crash in the RFC and is decorated! 
I usually thought that the order was 'OBE, MC' not 'MC, OBE'.

To be fair, this was more interesting than my classes!

Zidane.

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