134 AWARDED FOR VALOUR
The citations neglected to mention that the entanglement in question was
the British barbed wire directly in front of their own trenches. D Company
of the 2nd Battalion, Rifle Brigade had been ordered over the top into the
teeth of concentrated enemy fire and their own entanglements. Noble and
Daniels were not cutting their way through German field fortifications, but
rather through the sheer bloody-mindedness of their company commander,
Lieutenant Mansel.^5
One event of 1915 had quite far-reaching Victoria Cross consequences,
the ‘Six VCs Before Breakfast’ awarded to the 1st Battalion of the Lancashire
Fusiliers for the Gallipoli landing on 25 April 1915.
The landings at Gallipoli have been almost universally condemned as one
of the most poorly executed operations of the war.^6 The spearhead of the
landing was the 29th Division, commanded by Major General Sir Aylmer
Hunter-Weston. Along with virtually every other unit taking part in the
landing at W Beach, the Lancashires took heavy losses (some 50 percent
of the battalion were killed or wounded) wading ashore and consolidating
a beachhead.^7 At about 1400 hours they were joined by Colonel O. C.
Wolley-Dod, a Lancashire officer currently serving as Hunter-Weston’s chief
of staff. Perhaps at Wolley-Dod’s suggestion, a few days later Hunter-Weston
directed the 1st Battalion’s commanding officer to submit six names for the
VC. After consulting with ‘the officers who happened to be with him,’ Major
H. O. Bishop submitted Captains Richard Raymond Willis and Cuthbert
Bromley, Sergeants Alfred Joseph Richards and Frank Edward Stubbs, Lance
Corporal John Elisha Grimshaw, and Private William S. Keneally.^8
Hunter-Weston forwarded the recommendations to the theatre
commander, General Sir Ian Hamilton, who passed them on to the War
Office with his own endorsement.^9 Hamilton was quite taken with the 29th
Division, on several occasions remarking his admiration for their exploits
and general heroism, going as far as writing up the entire division in
dispatches on 12 May 1915.^10
There were some immediate problems with Hunter-Weston’s recom-
mendation. It read as if he himself had accompanied the Fusiliers:
Their deeds of heroism took place under my own eyes. As we approached
the beach in the first light of morning the lines of high barbed wire
entanglements could be seen stretched across the beach. From the beach
the ground sloped up gradually to the North, very steeply to the right
(East) and precipitously to the left (West).
Where all did so marvelously it is difficult to discriminate, but the
opinion of the Battalion is that Captain Bromley and Captain Willis are
lily
(lily)
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