T
he group of brave young men in question were known quite commonly as the “Sandringhams”, as with many battalions especially in the early days of the Great War, groups of friends and work colleagues were selected to fight shoulder to shoulder. History tells us that back in 1908, the then King, Edward VII had requested that the land agent at Sandringham Palace, Frank Beck, put together a group of part time soldiers. This was quite successful and within a short time, the Sandringhams had over one hundred men. These were people who were friends with each other, who worked side by side, who drank together, who possibly flirted with the local women together, they had a sense of comradery that is hard to explain to someone who has never been part of a close knit team. Although the story that I am telling you talks about the vanished Sandringhams, these men only made up a portion of the tale. The Sandringham volunteers had been attached to the 3rd Volunteer Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment, after the King had taken great interest in following the formation of them some years previously. Following the Territorial Scheme, the 3rd Volunteers were amalgamated into the 5th Battalion Norfolk which included men from all over the region. Nevertheless, whichever part of Norfolk these brave boys came from, what happened would become infamous to those looking at the unexplained occurrences that came about from the First World War. We have very little true information regarding the events in August 1915, and many historians have focused
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on the eyewitness accounts of an Antipodean soldier who gave a description some time later. This former New Zealand Sapper, Frederick Reichardt, described the events with quite surprising supernatural bias. He claimed that on the 21st August 1915, as the 5th Norfolk ran off to engage the enemy at Hill 60, there were six to eight low lying clouds hovering above them, engrossed in what he was seeing, Reichardt claimed that one section of this mist descended to obscure the vision of those watching the Battalion go into the woods and then rose again, a few minutes later, in a most inconspicuous way and the men were never seen again. What other reason could there be for the disappearance of nearly three hundred grown men? This story was shared far and wide, and despite there being no substantiation, these killer clouds were lauded as an explanation for the men’s disappearance as were monsters and also blood thirsty Turks who had rounded them up – apparently – and summarily executed them.
BUT HOW CLOSE IS ANY OF THAT TO THE TRUTH? I have already mentioned that whilst they were known as the Sandringhams, the Norfolks would possibly have been more correct. The second glaring mistake in Sapper Reichardt’s account was the date and place, the battle which the 5th were involved in (he also called them the 4th in his entry) took place on 12th August and not the 21st, and was on the Anafarta Plain and not the infamous Hill 60.
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