Liverpool & South West Lancashire FHS - Forum

Hi
This is my first time on this forum, so apologies in advance for any faux pas.
I am trying to fill in some detail on my Great-Uncle, Charles Hemmings. I know he was born in Derby in 1887. At aged 8 he was sent away to Industrial School in Bristol for stealing. In 1912 he was a regular soldier and was living in Preston where he married a girl and they lived on Brownlow Street.
But it his military career that fascinates. From his medal index card it shows a "6" and also the Balkans, now my feeble studies so far have shown that the 6th Batt of the East Lancs were the only Battn to go that way. Does anybody have any info of what they did out there?
I know he survived, because he died in 1925 still a soldier
Any info gratefully appreciated. Many thanks

Hi and welcome to the forum. We do indeed have a few forum members who are extremely knowledgeable and helpful on military matters and I hope they spot your post and be able to assist.

Have you also looked at the Great War Forumwhose members have helped many of us in the past.

Ziggy
Welcome to the forum
The medal index card may show the date on which your man arrived in the war zone. If you can quote more details such as his regimental number it may throw some light on his movements. Some other battalions of East Lancs Regiment, including territorials, served in the Middle East. The figure 6 may define the war zone rather than the battalion, depending where it was written on the card and on the date of his arrival.
Have you tried the Long, long trail website? It has lots of useful information including the codes for theatres of war.
http://www.1914-1918.net/grandad/theatres.htm

D

The 6 indicates that he served with the 6th Battalion.

His date of entry to theatre shows arrival in the Balkans on 1st August 1915.

I have the War Diary for the Battalion and will try to summarise it for you in a few days time.

Thank-you kindly for the warm welcomes and the suggestions

And also many many thanks for the offer of summarising the War Diary. That will be so incredibly useful I am having trouble coming up with the words of gratitude that do it justice

The 6th (Service) Bn, East Lancs Regiment was formed in Preston in August 1914. They trained at Tidworth, Winchester and Aldershot before leaving the UK on 16th June 1915 bound for Gallipoli.

They will probably have sailed firstly to Alexandria in Egypt and then on to Mudros, the base for launching operations into the Gallipoli Peninsula.

I was going to just summarise the movements but I thought that I would transcribe the full diary entries for the first week so that you can see what they went through in a very short period of time.

1st August 1915, Mudros

The battalion arrived at MUDROS and stayed until 4th August

4th August 1915, ANZAC
Embarked 1400 hours and landed at ANZAC during early hours of the morning of the 5th.

5th August
Bivouacked in VICTORIA GULLY, ANZAC

6th August
Enemy shelled bivouac with high explosive during the hours 9am to 11am and 5.30 pm til 8pm. Suffered heavy casualties.

7th August
Marched to reserve gully and thence to a quiet spot beyond No 3 post and bivouacked for the night.

8th August 1915, CHAILAK DERE
Left bivouacs at 5.30 am and advanced about half a mile to CHAILAK DERE. Halted til 8pm. At 8pm marched with the brigade first up the CHAILAK DERE then back across another gully into the AGHYL DERE, up to a place known as “The Farm”; the head of the battalion arrived at 5.15 am, 9th August.

9th August 1015
The battalion advanced to an attack across the open – two cornfields – the object of this attack being to take a position up the SARI BAIR ridge. As the battalion advanced over the cornfields it came under heavy oblique machine gun and rifle fire and suffered very heavy casualties indeed. However, the battalion pushed onto the slopes of the hill and worked its way up, A, B and C Companies, only to find that the portion of the ridge at which they had been launched consisted of a small hillock in front of the main ridge (which was imperceptible when the attack was launched) and were unable to continue down the reverse slopes owing to the exceptionally heavy fire- shrapnel, machine gun and rifle. D Company which was on the extreme right flank of the battalion, was more fortunate and was able to work its way almost to the top of the ridge, but progress was eventually stopped by a sheer cliff. The advance throughout had been made under heavy fire and the casualties in consequence were very large. Reinforcements were asked for, but could not be sent up as the surprise element of the attack had spent itself, and any movement of troops behind was immediately spotted and shelled.

The remnants of the battalion therefore had to lie out where they were the rest of the day, where they suffered still further casualties from the enemy’s fire. They were eventually withdrawn on the night of the 9th-10th August to a spot down the AGHYL DERE with orders to reform and await further instructions.



All that within a week of arriving at Anzac !! From what I can figure out, they had 4 fatalities on the 6th, 1 on the 8th, 109 on the 9th, and 8 on the 10th. It’s impossible to tell how many were wounded.

The diary goes on to record their actions until the evacuation of the peninsula in January 1915. Rather than summarise it, which might lose some of the impact, if you drop me an email via my website at

http://www.prescot-rollofhonour.info

I will extract the relevant pages and send them over to you.

I read a fair bit of military history and my interest in the tactics of a particular battle or the evolution of different methods tend to make one objective.
However, when one reads about WWI it is all so much greater, the numbers so much bigger. But at at the same time, because there are so many records and photos left, so much more personal.
Just reading about that week in August 1915 one can't help but get all emotional and that is without dwelling on the fact that Grandma's brother was one of those poor souls.
Thank-you Mr. Nulty for sharing this with me.