Captain John Henry Brennan, 1st Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers

[LDT006]

A report has been submitted to CWGC regarding the burial location of this officer.

https://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/929011/brennan,-john-henry/ 

 

Brief summary of the report and some documents:

 

The war diary of the 1st Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers lists Capt. Brennan killed at the hamlet of Kleythoek (north of Menin) during the "attack on Menin" on 19 October 1914.

His body and those of his comrades who died that day were buried by the Germans in field graves scattered around the hamlet. There is no German information for this but we have found reports from civilians, who witnessed the battle, confirming that the bodies were buried there including the number of casualties buried at certain locations.

Those remains were later concentrated by the Germans from those field graves to the German cemetery at Geluwe during December 1915 or January 1916.

An undated copy of the original German grave list for Gheluwe G.MC. is available in the archives of the Royal Army Museum in Brussels, the Germans were obliged to provide these lists after the war to enable the identification of Commonwealth, French and Belgian soldiers buried there. These lists only show "unknown British soldiers" buried in three trench graves, this and the lack of German information at ICRC, indicates that no attempt was made to identify those British casualties.

After the war, several remains were identified when the remains were exhumed for identification by the British in January 1921. At this time the remains of an unknown Captain were found in grave 7.E.9 and identified as "Believed to be Lloyd Capt. M.E", research from a British historian shows that IWGC was under pressure from the family to find the grave of Captain Meyricke Entwisle Lloyd.

A special exhumation report was made on 21 July 1924 when the remains were moved to Harlebeke, the height of the remains was more than 3 inches different from that of Capt. Lloyd and his family did not accept the IWGC identification.

The particulars for this grave were changed several times and details were lost in the process.

 

There was a lot of confusion during the early days of first Ypres, dates and locations of death were incorrectly recorded but the war diary has the correct details for officers.

 

Conclusion in the report:

Both positive and negative evidence supports the conclusion that the remains in grave 14.B.17 at Harlebeke New British Cemetery are those of Captain John Henry Brennan. 
He is the only Captain from the Royal Welsh Fusiliers who died on 19 October 1914 and that is the only day when any battalion of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers was in this area, all other fighting where Royal Welsh Fusiliers were involved took place more than 10 Km's away.
All other prisoners of war who died and were buried at Gheluwe G.M.C. had an individual grave, Captain Brennan was buried in a trench grave together with other casualties from the fighting on 19 October 1914. A prisoner of war who was buried there during the war can be excluded.

 

 

 

 

[laughton]

Well done Luc!

 

Strange that they did not mark the initial grave stone as "An Officer of the Great War" as that was not changed on the documents.

[LDT006]

@laughton

 

That is strange indeed, something went very wrong there.

I didn't post all documents, the headstone schedule also has "An Officer of the Great War" with regiment and date crossed out but the actual headstone is completely different from that schedule. It seems that not all documents are on-line or the schedule was misinterpreted.

There is another case, in these trench graves, that I am working on with strange german information that was misinterpreted by the British and also results in a lot of changes in the CWGC documents and loss of details.

 

I forgot to mention that I have the officer file of Captain Brennan but there are no details on his burial location, his height or color of hair that could be matched with the exhumation report.

 

 

[laughton]

I did not see the link to his father in Montreal, Canada when I first looked at this topic! I often just GOOGLE the name to see if there are photos of the man and this one appeared. Nothing in the newspaper article to suggest any other link to Canada.

 

I did not know hair would survive after 10 years in the ground - says he had fair hair?

 

https://www.pagesofthesea.org.uk/soldier/john-henry-brennan/