90 years ago tonight, the 5th Bedfords raided Umbrella Hill

[steve fuller]

Remembering ....

Umbrella Hill was a prominent feature 2,500 yards south west of Gaza itself that jutted out from the Turkish lines and commanded the ground in front of the Turkish trenches running both south east and north west. The position was heavily prepared and fortified with an intricate system of mutually supporting trenches that formed a formidable salient. When bolstered by the sturdy defensive qualities of the Turkish Infantry, the position presented the Allied Army with a considerable problem. Early in July 1917, the battalion were issued orders that they were to raid the position later that month and to start training in preparation for the event.

The raids would be that successful that all future raids in the theatre were prepared and executed in precisely the same way that the Bedfords conducted them on those two nights. In addition and perhaps more importantly, the 54th Divisional symbol would become an Umbrella blown inside out “because of the success of these two operations and the credit they reflected upon the Division as a whole”.

The Umbrella Hill position was a 500 yard long trench system, around 500 yards away from the Bedfords in their trenches. The wire that protected the trenches was four feet high and four yards deep, with additional knife rests protecting the western side. The front firing trench followed the line of the crest and was supported by a support trench at the base of the reverse slope, littered with dug-outs and being connected by communications trenches.



Training and preparation for the raid took over two weeks but nothing was known about the dispositions of the Turks before the raid, or the strength of the garrison holding the small hill in front of them.

Captain H.S. Armstrong led the party with Lieutenants H. Wilkin, B.W. Smythe, W.A. Shaw, Second Lieutenant R.H. Smith and 231 Other Ranks making the raiding party. By 8.15pm on the 20th July, the raiding party was assembled and in place, ready for “Zero Hour”, which was set at 9.00pm.

At 8.55pm “two flashes in the distance were seen & after what seemed a long time two dull roars & a heavy droning noise growing louder & louder were heard, then two vivid flashes on UMBRELLA HILL followed almost at once - the tremendous crash of two 8" shells exploding shook the night”. Every two minutes, this repeated until 9pm, when “a veritable inferno started”. Flashes constantly lit the sky from both behind them and on Umbrella Hill as the barrage rained down on the Turkish in their trenches. The Machine Gun barrage that joined the cacophony at 9.05pm could hardly be heard, such was the din.

At 9pm, the raiders scrambled from their trenches and disappeared through the gaps in their own wire into the pitch black that was no mans land. The advance was so quick that they had to halt for one minute to avoid running into their own barrage at Beanfield, and they laid down 150 yards in front of Turkish positions. At 9.06pm the advanced screen under Lt B.W. Smythe dashed forward - despite shrapnel bursting over their heads - found the gaps in the Turkish wire and shouted the positions back to their comrades over the din of whining shells and horrendous explosions. A minute later the Bedfords fell on Front Trench, furiously bayoneting the defenders they found there before moving on to clear their assigned positions of the enemy. Captain Armstrong fixed his HQ position there as the teams loaded their rifles and went about their dreadful business of locating and eliminating the enemy.

Lt Smythe dashed across the open to Cross Cut and cleared a position of enemy machine gun teams so they could not lay an enfilading fire onto the Bedfords as they went about their work, and held the position throughout the raid.

The left section under Lt W.A. Shaw bombed their way along Side Trench into Silk Alley and finally made contact with the Right Section at Tassel Corner. Bombing sections were quickly pushed along Cover Alley and Side Trench. The Turks were noted as being that demoralised that in most cases they had to be bombed in their dugouts. Each dugout had between three and six men that “refused to come out or indeed to do anything except cower down on the ground”. Some Turkish soldiers made a stand in Cover Alley but they were “speedily overcome”.

The Right Section of the raiders under 2nd Lt R.H. Smith entered the Turkish trenches at Stay Alley, swept through Echelon Trench at the point of the bayonet and made their way to Tassel Corner but were stopped from further progress by the “congestion of troops”. They climbed from the bottlenecked trench, sprinted across the open ground, and fell on Dug-Out Alley killing “a large number of Turks”. As the evacuation signal went they had reached the bottom of Dugout Alley.

Meanwhile a bombing section had been working its way along Echelon Trench, where they killed over ten Turks in hand to hand combat, had taken several prisoners and put a large Minenwerfer out of action “very ingeniously”.

While these four sections had been “at work killing or capturing the garrison”, a party of Royal Engineer’s under Lt Mendham of the 484th Field Company of the Royal Engineers had been systematically destroying the enemy sangars and wrecking the trenches. They left several heavy charges of explosives in the main Turkish dug-outs which were exploded after the evacuation by time fuses.

At 9.35pm, the raiders evacuated the trench system and sprinted back across no-mans land, leaving carnage, destruction and an extremely confused enemy firing in all directions.

On their return to the British lines, and by “sheer bad luck”, the Turks put an “intense bombardment” down almost on top of the assembly area and caused almost all of the casualties, except “probably two or three killed…& perhaps 8 or 10 [of the] wounded”. This caused “considerable confusion” and much of the raiding party and supporting units ran forwards to their own front lines to take cover, unwittingly running straight into the enemy barrage. Realising what was happening, Captain Christopher Miskin sprinted out through the flying shrapnel and hastily reorganised their return route into the relatively safe front trench. The several hundred men crammed into the trench to watch the barrage that covered an area between fifty and on hundred and fifty yards behind them, over a front of two hundred yards. Following some quick reconnaissance, they were moved to the flanks around Samson’s Ridge and Sniper Spur, taking them away from the barrage areas. By 1.30am on the 21st, all bar the wounded had been evacuated. It is incredible that the wounded were not in the hundreds, considering that around 500 Turkish shells fell into the HQ and assembly areas that were packed with returning raiders.

During the confusion, Sergeant Sharpe won a coveted D.C.M. His initiative and fearlessness had led the way into the Turkish positions and, despite being wounded in the opening brawls, he helped his Officer to organise and direct the attack amongst the confusion in the Turkish trenches. On their return to the British lines he helped the men caught in the Turkish barrage by returning many times to get the wounded back into the British trenches. On one of his returning runs, he noticed the badly wounded Captain Miskin who had been hit when a 5.9 shell exploded outside the HQ dugout as he returned to report on the raid. Sergeant Sharpe saw what had happened and remained with the Captain to tend his wounds. Soon afterwards another shell landed within feet of him, finishing the dugout off and badly wounding Sharpe in the process. A shell fragment wounded him in the jaw and knocked out several of his front teeth, leaving him bleeding badly from yet another point in his body. Quite unperturbed, he mumbled to himself “that will save a dentist” and continued dressing the Captain’s wounds. As all of the stretcher bearers were already casualties themselves Sergeant Sharpe got the Captain back to an Aid Post on a stretcher, having commandeered help from a fellow Bedford before turning his attention to his own wounds.

The large number of wounded were finally evacuated by 2.30am and an hour later a six strong patrol went out into no mans land, towards Beanfield (about 150 yards short of Umbrella Hill) looking for the missing men but found nothing. A month later, it was discovered that five Bedfords posted as missing were actually Prisoners of War:

200497 Sgt Cleaver
200573 Pte Cook A.G. (Died 4/11/1918 in captivity)
201316 Pte Miles H.A.
201326 Pte Patterson W. (Died 30/10/1917 in captivity)
200696 Pte Smith F.D.

Two days later, Major General S.W. Hare, commander of the 54th Division presented 19 Military Medals in connection with the raid on the 20th. 16 of the 19 were awarded to the Bedfords alone. Five Military Crosses were later awarded to the officers involved in the raid as well as 2 D.C.M.’s for Sergeant Sharpe and the incredible RSM Milton.

Following the essentially failed Gallipoli campaign, a year of rebuilding their shattered battalion and staring with intense boredom into the Sinai deserts on the eastern side of the Suez Canal, as well as the first two failed attacks on Gaza, the raid was the first real taste of undisputed success enjoyed by the British & Commonwealth forces camped outside Gaza and was celebrated as such. In honour of the raid, the 54th Divisional symbol was born, being an Umbrella blown inside out.

The Roll of Honour of those men who lost their lives during the raid can be seen here

Gentlemen, your efforts are not forgotten, even 90 years on. I salute you

[Charles Fair]

Steve, thanks for this. As a former Bedford territorial myself I salute my predecessors.

Charles

(late of B (Bedfordshire) Company, 6 R ANGLIAN)

[steve fuller]

Steve, thanks for this. As a former Bedford territorial myself I salute my predecessors.

Charles

(late of B (Bedfordshire) Company, 6 R ANGLIAN)

All credit to you Charles. Thanks for keeping alive the traditions that several of my family helped (in some small way) to develop during the Great War.