On This Day ... in 1914 & 1918
His platoon officer and sergeant having been among several casualties suffered by his platoon, Drummer 'Joe' Bent of the East Lancashire Regiment assumed command of the survivors and organised a successful defence against heavy attack at Le Gheer in Belgium. He had already been marked for his gallantry in earlier engagements, and his personal courage was confirmed once again on 3 November, when he braved enemy fire to recover several wounded colleagues from the open. He was awarded the Victoria Cross.
The following extract is taken from Deeds That Thrill The Empire and provides a more graphic account of the several acts of bravery which led to the award of the Victoria Cross:
On the night of 1-2 November 1914, a platoon of the 1st East Lancashires, one of the battalions of the 11th Brigade, posted on the left of our 3rd Corps, was holding one of the first-line trenches near Le Gheir, which on the previous day the 4th Division had taken over from the right flank of the 1st Cavalry Division. Drummer Spencer John Bent, who had been having a particularly strenuous time of it of late, had gone to a dug-out to get some sleep.
Scarcely, however, had he dozed off, than he was awakened by the sound of men hurrying up and down the trench, and, starting up, discovered that his comrades were abandoning it. There was no officer in the trench, and the platoon sergeant having gone to visit an advance post, someone had passed the word down the line that the battalion was to retire, and the men were obeying what they believed to be their orders. Bent started to follow them, but remembering that he had left behind him a French trumpet, which he had picked up and carried about with him for some time, he decided to risk the chance of a bullet rather than lose it, and went back to fetch it.
When he got into the trench, he caught sight of a man crawling towards him round the corner of a traverse. Thinking that he was a German, he waited until he had come close to him, and then, holding his rifle to his head, demanded who he was. He found that he was his platoon sergeant, who told him that no orders to retire had been given. Bent at once jumped out of the trench, and ran after his comrades to call them back.
While thus engaged, an officer came up, and, on learning what had happened, told him to fetch some of the men back while he went after the others. Eventually they brought them all back and awaited developments.
In the early morning the German artillery shelled them for a few minutes, after which the infantry, evidently under the pleasing illusion that the trench had been abandoned and that they had only to walk in and take possession, advanced in mass formation, doing the goose-step. Our men reserved their fire, and meantime a machine-gun was brought up and placed in position. When the unsuspecting Huns were about four hundred yards off, machine-gun and rifle fire was poured into them, mowing them down in heaps and speedily changing their stately goose-step into an undignified scramble for cover.
But very soon afterwards the East Lancashires found themselves exposed to a heavy and continuous bombardment from every description of gun, and the officer, platoon sergeant and a number of men were struck down. Drummer Bent then took command of the platoon, and with great courage, coolness and presence of mind, succeeded in holding the position, and in repelling more than one attack by the enemy, until he was relieved later in the day. Bent’s gallant conduct on this occasion was preceded and followed by several other acts of conspicuous bravery.
On 22 October he carried ammunition to a patrol who had been cut off by the enemy. Two days later he brought up food and ammunition to a first-line trench under a very heavy shell and rifle fire; while on 3 November he brought in several wounded men who were lying exposed in the open. One of these men, Private McNulty, he rescued in a singular manner, though it would appear to have been one which this resourceful young hero had employed with success on other occasions.
McNulty had fallen some thirty yards from the British trench, and in attempting to lift the wounded man on to his back, Bent slipped and fell. While lying on the ground, several bullets whistling just over him warned him that to rise again would be to court almost certain death. And so, instead of getting up, he adroitly hooked his feet under McNulty’s arm-pits, and, working his way backward with his hands, dragged him to our trench, where he left the wounded man in charge of a comrade and went off to fetch a surgeon to attend to him.
During the first battle of Ypres where Bent won his Victoria Cross, he was severely wounded by a gunshot in the leg, received shrapnel injuries to both arms and hands, and was slightly wounded in the head. He was sent back to England, and spent several months under close medical care.
Having been promoted to Corporal, Bent assisted in the national recruitment programme for six months, following which, in the Summer of 1915, he was promoted to Sergeant. In 1916, he returned to France and joined up once more with his old battalion on the Somme where he remained until November, 1916, when the privations of trench warfare again took their toll and he again returned to England for a period of convalescence.
He was back in France in January 1917, this time with the 7th battalion of his regiment, and took part in the battles of Messines Ridge and Passchendaele. He rejoined the 1st battalion in time for the German spring offensive of 1918, and the subsequent battles of the summer and autumn.
In the fighting around the village of Sepmeries, east of Cambrai, Company Sergeant Major Bent won the Military Medal, particularly for leading two patrols which were sent out in an advance to contact with the enemy on the afternoon of the 29th October.
The 1st Battalion was withdrawn from active operations on the 2nd November, and Bent finally returned to England in May 1919. He finally left the Army in 1926 & died peacefully on 3rd May 1977, at 86 years of age.
In the Pacific, off Chile, the first major naval engagement of the First World War was fought at Coronel. Vice-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock commanded a squadron of largely elderly Royal Navy ships, the most modern vessels being concentrated in the North Sea and Mediterranean. His opponent was Vice-Admiral Graf von Spee, commanding the German East Asiatic Squadron, which was attempting to return to Germany. Cradock had left his most powerful but slowest ship, the old battleship HMS Canopus, guarding the Falkland Islands. In appalling weather, his two armoured cruisers, HMS Good Hope (flagship) and HMS Monmouth, fought gallantly but with little effect against the far more modern German cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and went down with all hands, including Cradock.
The light cruiser HMS Glasgow, and an armed merchant cruiser, Otranto, managed to escape. The Admiralty immediately dispatched a powerful battle-cruiser squadron to the South Atlantic. Spee's squadron was destroyed at the Falklands on 8 December, both Canopus and Glasgow playing a key part in the action.
Also on this day in 1914, the first Australian and New Zealand contingent sailed from Albany, Western Australia, bound for Egypt. Only one in four of those who sailed in the first convoy would return un-wounded at the end of the First World War.
1918: At Valenciennes in France, Sergeant Cairns of the South Saskatchewan Regiment single-handedly charged directly into the fire of a machine-gun post, wiping out its five crew. He then attacked a pair of guns, killing or capturing some 30 men. Although wounded, he led forward a small party and successfully overran another battery position. Finally he took command of a patrol which secured another sixty prisoners, but was fatally wounded. He died the following day. He was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.
Comments
Do you know where South Saskatchewan is? It's still a cold, hot, windy, dry, tough-ass place. Full of emptiness, game and tough farmers. I go there to hunt what we call Elk, kind of an 800 pound deer.
I doubt us Canuckis will bail the Brits out again, so be polite to the Krauts.
Posted by: BlacquesJacquesShellacques | November 1, 2006 4:07 AM
In those days all of canada including where my family lived was so tough the trenches must have seemd reasonable accomodation!
Posted by: Tim C | November 1, 2006 5:16 PM
HMS Canopus is still out there I believe.
Craddock didn't exactly leave her behind on guard, Canopus had beached herself some time previously to act as a fort.
Something I'd like to see brought back and restored as a museum.
Posted by: Robert the Biker | November 1, 2007 1:29 PM