7 minute read
NOT SO ‘ORRIBLE ‘ISTORIES: The Vanishing Battalion
The 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 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.
This may have been an oversight as Reichardt’s admits he was giving these details from memory, but they still point to perhaps inaccuracies in his entire recollection.
But why would someone observing something get it so wrong? Perhaps the conditions being faced at the Gallipoli offensive can take some of the responsibility for that. A very famous name from twenty-five years or so later was responsible for this campaign, Winston Churchill. The Government needed to clear the Dardanelles Strait to enable the various Navies to get through and capture Constantinople (modern day Istanbul), and Churchill – who was the First Lord of the Admiralty at this point – reasoned that as the Central Powers were fighting on two fronts already, those being the Eastern and Western, by opening up another field of battle would weaken them and there was no way the small Turkish fighting force would match up to the might of the Allies who were being bolstered by the Anzacs, part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force.
He was misled, one of the Ottoman military leaders was a man by the name of Colonel Mustafa Kemal, who was later to become Kemal Ataturk and he was a pivotal figure in the history and progression of Turkey (not to mention the reason Turkey is called just that!).
So here we have men who are not used to battle, being thrown into something with harsh conditions – steep terrain, over powering heat, lack of food and clean water – dealing with the incessant sounds of war on a daily basis, and not only that, poor planning on the part of the Government had caused a lack of sanitation and with no- where to bathe or proper toilet facilities, disease was rife. A man was as likely to die from tetanus, septic wounds or even dysentery as they were being shot by the enemy, and this was highly likely and perhaps unsurprisingly, to influence the soldiers’ mental state. Regardless of this, the boys from Norfolk walked on bravely under their Officer in charge, Lieutenant Colonel Sir Horace Proctor Beauchamp, but a slight deviation from their plan led to them being separated from their flanking battalions and they are reported to have disappeared from sight. The current school of thought is that they charged towards a Turkish held ridge and were mown down by snipers, machine guns and other types of artillery fire, it could be said a total decimation of the battalion from Norfolk. We know that Frank Beck – a Captain due to his social standing and fifty-three years old, so a man who did not have to be there – was wounded early on before the rest of his men strode on. We also have records of one of their number, a fourteen-year-old Private by the name of George Carr who had been rescued by stretcher beforehand.
As was many of the so called strategies of World War I, especially the early years and this was in 1915, the defence was well dug in and prepared, but the attack was poorly led, without clear objective and the groundwork had not been done to reconnoitre the target prior to the charge.
So why did such a legend arise about these poor men from East Anglia? Could it have been the mystique with which the British Commander in Chief, Sir Ian Hamilton painted the incident in his dispatch to the then Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener
In the course of the fight there happened a very mysterious thing….The Colonel, with 16 officers and 250 men, still kept pushing on, driving the enemy before him….Nothing more was ever seen or heard of any of them. They charged into the forest and were lost to sight or sound. Not one of them every came back.
Not all of them died and disappeared however, a newspaper article in the Diss Express on Friday 10th September 1915 simply stated that Mrs Coxon of Kings Lynn had received a postcard from her son; Captain Coxon dated 19th August 1915 advising that he had been wounded but was being treated in Constantinople. Her son was one of the missing battalion and his correspondence perhaps proved that all was not as it seemed.
In 1919, the battalion’s Chaplain, the Reverend Pierrepoint Edwards was reported to have found the bodies of one hundred and eighty soldiers of which over one hundred wore the Norfolk badge, although as policy after the Great War was not for repatriation of soldiers – regardless of rank – many do not have a specific gravestone for grieving families to visit and their name is on a memorial stone near where they perished.
So, why with all this information, did Sapper Reichardt describe clouds engulfing the troops and carrying them off into some unknown abyss, a story which gathered speed and notoriety as the 1960’s progressed amongst fans of the unexplained and ufologists – did I forget to mention that? Yes, some believed they were abducted by aliens, that a spacecraft was using the cloud as camouflage before taking the unsuspecting Tommies. Could the clouds have been extra terrestrials attracted to the melee and wanting a piece of the action, it has definitely been reported before with many of those who study the sightings of UFOs stating that more are seen in times of global conflict.
Simply put, I feel Reichardt did recount a story he believed to be true, he was not trying to mislead anyone and that the conditions and mental torture of Gallipoli caused his wires to become crossed, nothing more nothing less.
But what actually caused the deaths – and disappearance - of these brave men, that’s up to you to decide. Penny x
