The Welsh at Gallipoli: BBC Radio Wales - on I-player

[Moriaty]

Quarry Boys: the Welsh at Gallipoli
30 minutes
BBC Radio Wales, first broadcast April 2015
Available to listen on BBC I-Player until 26 May 2015

The Welsh soldiers who fought at Gallipoli have been written out of history, until now. This is the story of a forgotten army of men, who served and died together on a dusty hillside thousands of miles from home.

[clive_hughes]

Thanks very much Moriaty, I'll make space to listen to this over the weekend!

Clive

[Guest]

The Welsh soldiers who fought at Gallipoli have been written out of history, until now.

They haven't been written out of history or forgotten, not by any stretch of the imagination.. They have a number of published histories at Regimental level - the SWB, Welsh Regt and RWF cover the Dardanelles in detail -all still in print - devoting chapters and in the case of the RWF a whole volume to service in the near East. There is a dedicated history to the 53rd Welsh Division by Dudley Ward MC. By the standards of the day they did pretty well in recorded history. There are scores of battalions and a handful of Regiments and a handful of Divisions that have no published history covering the Great War.

The 53rd Welsh Div are also covered in the OH (also still in print). I am curious why you think they have been 'written out of history until now' . How do you qualify this?

The 53rd Div did not do particularly well at Gallipoli for reasons that probably start with Lloyd George denuding them of their best trained men and units in his drive to create a Welsh Corps. The residual members of the partially trained 53rd Div were not regarded by the General Staff at Gallipoli as "Troops d'assault". Not their fault, but something that was understood at the time and rather glossed over by the contemporary historians. The evidence for this is deeply embedded in the Gallipoli unit war diaries, which have apparently been privatised, no longer freely available online to joe public. MG

Edit. Arguably the only Welsh troops who served at Gallipoli who have been forgotten are the Welsh Horse. Did the BBC manage to remember them? MG

[clive_hughes]

Martin,

I agree that the 53rd Div has reasonable coverage in regimental/divisional histories, as well as individual published accounts. Even the Welsh Horse had a chronicler in the late Bryn Owen. Modern public perception of the Welsh role in the war however focusses (as it does for the other British nations) on the Western Front - Mametz Wood and all that. John Davies' otherwise magisterial A History of Wales (Allen Lane 1993) does have a First World War chapter : tellingly headed "Somme", it says not a word about the thousands of Welsh who served in Gallipoli, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Salonika. Perhaps in that sense they have been overlooked?

The 53rd Div. didn't get a good start, but I don't think Lloyd George had much to do with that. It was the War Office who collared the most-ready units out of the Welsh Division (TF), sending them to France in November 1914 and replacing them with mainly raw second-line Home Counties battalions. Despite LG's and the Welsh National Executive Committee's wish that earlier K units and the TF be absorbed into the "Welsh Army", none were. Indeed it caused the Committee much grief that the original WO authority to raise a Welsh Army Corps on 10 October 1914 obliged them to help to fill all existing vacancies in the Welsh Special Reserves, New Army, and TF before they were allowed to begin recruiting for themselves. Only the part-formed 13th RWF "Pals" and likewise two Rhondda Battalions of the Welsh Regt. were allowed to be incorporated and to continue their recruiting meantime. The Welsh Army didn't get going till November in consequence. Once they did, however, there was real competition between them, the SR/K reserves, and the TF.

Clive

[Guest]

Clive, I will bow to your greater knowledge. My understanding is that once a Welsh Corps was an option, this became a magnet and made recruiting for the TF far more difficult. The TF and the New Armies were in competition in the early part of the war with the Govt prioritising the New Armies. Either way, the 53rd Div were poorly trained if contemporary witnesses are to be believed. The idea that the Welsh contribution to the war has been 'written out of history' is It is nationalistic nonsense not supported in fact. The Welsh were well served by historians.

Here is a regular Officer's view of the TF at Gallipoli, His criticism was not confined to the Welsh TF Division. The interesting point is that he had a low opinion of this formation in 1915 and states that they were still in need of training two years later in 1917. The following is the sort of thing one generally doesn't find in the published histories, or I suspect in BBC documentaries.

Dear Sir, I enclose the narrative of the operations of the night of landings 6^th Aug 1915, Suvla Bay. The matter contained was official but abridged naturally in my report when I commanded the 6^th Bn of the YORKSHIRE Regt (Green Howards). Brig Gen HAGGARD 32^nd Bde 11^th Div being severely wounded the following day, seems to have resulted in the information not being dealt with at the time.

It is in my opinion, of some historical interest as it was the first occasion in which a unit of the New Regular Army was employed in an offensive operation. From my own knowledge it does not seem to be sufficiently put forward that the difficulties met with were owing to the very heavy loss in Officers, especially senior Officers in the initial fighting who could not be replaced. The 11^th Div and the two Brigades of the 10^th Div at Suvla were available for attack and took positions with heavy loss in Officers and NCOs. The two Territorial Divs 53^rd and 54^th were not as Divs “Troupes d’assault”. This meant in the first few days, original troops landed 11^th & 10^th Divs doing double duty. I know a number of Officers were sick [with] Gallipoli dysentery or fever and went on duty of themselves to land for attack.

More than two years later I acted as Officer in charge of training KANTARA Egypt. I found the Territorial Divs (from Gallipoli) still hopelessly untrained and reported this officially to GHQ/EE Forces. The must have greatly effected (sic) offensive operations in Egypt. The New regular Divs were effectively retrained six months after leaving Gallipoli. The 13^th showed it in Mespot [Mesopotamia] , The 11^th on the Somme in France.

Had the 53^rd and 54^th been of equal fighting value at Suvla it would have had a tremendous effect on that operation. There is another point that has always struck me: There were senior wounded Officers in Hospital Ships in KEPHALOS BAY, MUDROS who could have given information to the staff there had they been interrogated almost immediately after landing. The absence of information which seems to have hampered operations at Suvla was largely owing to casualties amongst senior Officers.

The final attack in that action the 20^th Aug failed owing to loss of direction. The 6^th Bn YORKS was the directing unit. They lost direction thro’ all the Officers becoming casualties in the first few hundred yards. The ground to be covered was some 1,000 yards. Only one was heard of again. Capt A C T WHITE who was wounded (VC at operations in Somme 1916) As the senior Officer of my battalion I went to a lot of trouble in obtaining all information from survivors, the Officers killed or died of wounds in my unit were a score. The attack here was a justification of Lord Kitchener’s policy in forming a New Regular Army. It was superior to the Territorial in general as shock troops.

There is a further point – we were on duty at 5:45 a.m. the day of the landing. The troops worked hard all that day on various duties. We landed seventeen hours later roughly. This accounts for some of the fatigue later noted. As is [was] very hot weather the water difficulty has been noted. The scrub bush country made contact very difficult in advancing and would have made it so even in a peace operation, for practice. I hope this information may be of some value. The constant change in Battalion command thro’ casualties also created difficulty.

To contain commissioned losses before the final attack my battalion had Officers lent from each unit in Brigad and three or four NZ Officers who joined at night and had to lead without seeing their men in daylight. The battalion continued to advance after all Officers were casualties. This should merit commendation they had not sufficiently received.

W Boyd Shannon. Major, late 6^th Bn Green Howards

Naval and Military Club, Picadilly.

[Steven Broomfield]

One might suspect that the epithet "forgotten" is a touch of journalistic hyperbole: I mean, who'd listen to a programme titled "The oft-repeated and you can read about it in a lot of places story of the Welsh at Gallipoli"?

Plus, of course, as any fule kno,, in the words of Sellars and Yeatman, the Great War was won by 51 Highlanders and some Aztecs - not the Welsh!

[Guest]

Having listened to the programme, there are a few quite large inaccuracies. Female snipers make the customary appearance.

One of the experts describes the scene: 'What happens next is that Gen Stopford [iX Corps Commander] who is languishing on his yacht the Jonquil, orders the bayonet charge at 5:30'. Things didn't quite happen that way.. When the Welsh Div's 158th Inf Bde was attacking Scimitar Hill on 10th August he was in fact observing the action from Lala Baba. There was no order from Stopford to 'bayonet charge', he being three levels of command higher than the CO of the 1/6th Bn RWF TF. The idea that a Corps Commander was getting bogged down in the minute detail of how a battalion would attack a hill is a flight of fancy in this case.

The narrative gives the impression of some great distaster that befell the Welsh Div. On the day of the action (10th Aug) the whole Div lost 240 men killed - equivalent to 20 men per battalion - or roughly 2% of its force. The 1/6th RWF TF (the focus of the programme) lost 12 men that day and 56 men during the whole of August 1915. In the context of Gallipoli the Division was very lightly engaged and the 1/6th Bn had the fifth lowest casualty rates of any of the 122 British battalions on the ground during the bloodiest month of August 1915. The programme is very misleading. Only five of the 12 battalions of the 53rd Welsh Div were in fact from Welsh regiments; the other seven battalions were in English.

The OH footnote 3 on page 286 of Gallipoli Vol II:

"Before going to Gallipoli the 53rd (Welsh) Division had undergone a considerable change in the composition of its infantry brigades as the result of its best trained battalions being sent as reinforcements to the Western Front. Thus the 158th Inf Bde had lost the 1/4th Bn RWF TF replaced by the 1/1st Bn Herefordshire Regt TF, the only battalion of the Welsh Border Brigade left at Home by Feb 1915. The 159th Brigade had lost two battalions, receiving in their place the 1/4th and 1/5th Welch...the re-organistation had been completed less than three months before the Division left England."

A rather sorry chapter in the history of these battalions. Another poorly researched BBC programme that tries to re-write history. In a year when we might hope that we become more enlightened on the events 100 years ago, the BBC seems determined to taking our knowledge and understanding backwards. MG

Edit. According to one of the experts "..... the 10th August 1915 throughout the whole war was the blackest day for North Wales. More men were killed on that day than killed on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, .... than were killed at Passchendaele..."

The CWGC data shows 102 RWF men killed that day at Gallipoli, spread between 4 battalions: 1/5th Bn, 1/6th Bn. 1/7th Bn and 8th (Service) Bn. I don't believe these units were engaged on the 1st Day of the Some, so it is rather a hollow statement.

[Steven Broomfield]

Having listened to the programme, there are a few quite large inaccuracies. Female snipers make the customary appearance.

Nothing on the machine guns at Anzac?

[Scalyback]

The 53rd are more "forgotten" by the Welsh due to them being in the east rather than the 38th being on the western front. Even the official Wales remembers website on being launched had no mention of them!

It was the Welsh TF unit but had the English regiments as Martin mentions. It's support units being TF Welsh, my unit marched from park street in Cardiff(the history of that Tf/ta centre is an odd one itself thanks to empire games/Welsh rugby union).

They did serve but I suspect it was just the poor cousin off the 38th in media influence then and now.

Martin G they had English units I accept that not a problem but in name and essence it was still a Welsh division. 160 brigade is still the Welsh TA(army reserve) formation not that it has much Welsh infantry

[geraint]

I didn't hear the programme. How did the 5th Flintshire TF come out in the general gist of things? Was the myth of a shambolic windiness perpetrated or not on the death of their CO?