Ptes Harry and John Brown

Denbighshire (Hussars) Imperial Yeomanry

& 24th Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers

When World War I broke out in August 1914, Harry and John Brown were twenty and eighteen years old respectively. They quickly enlisted in the Denbighshire (Hussars) Yeomanry, a part-time mounted regiment in the United Kingdom's Territorial Force (the equivalent of today's Territorial Army, or the US National Guard). The Denbighshire Yeomanry were a strong presence in Wrexham, which was the Headquarters and a Troop Station of the regiment. Other Troops (ie Battalions) existed at drill stations elsewhere within the county of Denbighshire, as well as in Flintshire and Caernarfonshire. The various Troops came together as a regiment for 14 to 28 days every year, for military and horsemanship training. When War broke out, the Regiment was brought up to full manning in preparation for full-time wartime service and, as the following photograph shows, many of Harry and John's friends joined them in filling the ranks.

The Denbighshire Yeomen in 1914: This photograph was taken in 1914, at the Old Swan Inn in Abbot Street, Wrexham. It shows the regulars from that pub who were serving in Wrexham's Territorial Army Regiment, The Denbighshire (Hussars) Yeomanry, shortly before the Regiment was posted to East Anglia.

At the time of this photograph my Great-Grandmother, Jane Elizabeth Brown was landlady of The Old Swan. Her sixth son, Harry Brown, is the soldier standing in the middle of the back row (shorter than the soldiers at either side). His younger brother, John, can be seen in the row in front of Harry, one place to the right of Harry as we look at it. (Only John's head is visible). The man just visible wearing civilian clothes at top left of picture is their older brother, Seth.

Jane Brown inscribed this photo "Some of the boys from the Old Swan" (hence the name of this project), and kept it between the pages of her Welsh Bible, as if this might keep her sons safe. In the event, Harry and John Brown would both survive the War. Ironically, Seth would die at home in Wrexham in 1918, as a result of the 'Spanish flu' epidemic.

By the end of August 1914, Britain had had to send all of its "contemptibly small", volunteer army to northern France, to try to stop the rapid advance on Paris which the Germans hoped - and the Schlieffen Plan predicted - would win the War in the West before it ever really began. With all its regular soldiers overseas, the British Government was concerned that Germany might exploit the situation by trying to land an invasion force on the east coast. They therefore mobilised the various regiments of reservists to patrol the vulnerable coasts of eastern England. The Yeomen of Denbighshire, Caernarfon and Anglesey were combined into the North Wales Mounted Brigade, and in this way John and Harry Brown were posted to East Anglia, in anticipation of invasion by a German Armada.

The threat of German invasion receded after a naval skirmish on 28th August, when the Royal Navy intercepted and destroyed a formation of the German Imperial Navy in the Heligoland Bight (off the Northwestern coast of Germany). Following this experience, the German surface fleet did not leave home port in significant numbers until the battle of Jutland in 1916. The Yeomanry Brigades therefore found themselves guarding against a seaborne invasion which no-one now thought likely to happen.

The Denbighshire Yeomen were soon assigned new duties when, on February 3rd, 1915, German-led Turkish troops crossed over the Suez Canal from the then-Turkish province of Palestine, into British Egypt. (The Turkish Empire had entered the War on the side of the Central Powers in November 1914). They hoped to incite the Egyptian population to rebel against British rule, and to deny use of the Suez Canal to the British who relied upon it for the transportation of Commonwealth and Imperial reinforcements from India, Australia and New Zealand.

Although the existing British garrison in Egypt succeeded in repelling the Turkish assault, the incident brought home to the British government how vulnerable the Suez Canal was to attack, now that Turkey had entered the War. It therefore organised some units of the under-used Yeomanry into two Divisions, which it designated "The Suez Canal Defence Force". The Denbighshire (Hussars) Yeomanry was one of the regiments assigned to this new formation, and by October 1915, Harry and John Brown were two of 100,000 British and Dominion troops stationed in the Canal Zone, awaiting further Turkish attacks on the Suez Canal.

The Turkish Empire in 1914 (Simplified): The Turkish Empire in 1914 comprised all of the present-day states of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine/Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. In continental Europe, it also included small parts of modern-day Bulgaria and Greece.

Key:

1. Cairo; 2. Jerusalem; 3. Beirut; 4. Damascus; 5. Constantinople; 6. Baghdad; 7. Ankara; 8. Medina; 9. Mecca.

The next Turkish attack on British Egypt did not come from Palestine to the east, however, but arose unexpectedly in the far western reaches of the country on the Egyptian/Libyan border. On November 14th, 1915, Arabs of the powerful Senussi tribe opened fire at a British-Egyptian border post at As-Sallum, then advanced east to attack Sidi Barrani. The Arab revolt was instigated by the Turkish government, who hoped that it would tie down British and Italian troops in North Africa, and who supplied enough arms and manpower to equip 7,000 men.

The Commander of British Forces in Egypt, General Sir John Maxwell, was forced to divert troops from the Suez Canal Defence Force (now renamed the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force) to defend the Nile Delta from possible attack. Maxwell created a mobile formation, called the Western Desert Task Force, to halt the Senussi. It comprised an armoured car detachment, a small number of camel-mounted units and several mounted Yeomanry Regiments, among them John and Harry Brown's Denbighshire Yeomen. The new outfit was headquartered in Alexandria, but quickly marched west to track down the rebellious tribesmen.

Familiar as they were with the desert terrain and conditions, the Senussi were able to cause the new Task Force considerable problems. In a series of running battles, including that at Wadi Majid on Christmas Day 1915 and at Halazin on January 23 1916, they inflicted hundreds of casualties on the British Task Force before melting away into the desert. One of the Task Force's officers, a Captain Jarvis, later wrote: "In some respects this revolt was the most successful strategic move made by our enemies of the whole war, for these odd thousand...Arabs tied up on the western frontier for over a year some 30,000 troops badly required elsewhere and caused us to expend on desert railways, desert cars, transport etc, sufficient to add 2d to the income tax for the lifetime of the present generation".

On 26 February 1916, however, the Task Force captured the Turkish commander of the Senussi Division, Jafar Pasha, at the Battle of Agagiya. Without his leadership, the revolt quickly declined to almost nothing. The new commander of British forces in Egypt, General Murray, was confident that Egypt was now safe from attack from the west. He disbanded the Western Desert Task Force, and consolidated all his forces into a single formation, the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. Harry and John Brown and their regiment were re-deployed to the Suez Canal; this time, however, they did not dig in to await a Turkish attack, but prepared instead to take the offensive with an advance through the Sinai Desert to attack the Turkish province of Palestine.

Harry Brown (left) in Egypt, 1915. I don't know the names of his two colleagues, but they were both locals at the Old Swan, and are included in the 1914 photograph of the Denbighshire Yeomanry, reproduced earlier in this article.

The British advance from Suez across the Sinai would occupy the whole of 1916. The military advance was extremely slow and deliberate, as it was accompanied by thousands of manual labourers, who were building a railway and pipeline along the whole northern coast of the Sinai, in order to keep the advancing armies supplied with water. The army could advance only as quickly as the railway and pipeline could be built.

The job of the Yeomanry Regiments during the advance across the Sinai was to guard the completed sections of the railway line, and to fan out ahead of the main force, protecting the infantry troops and Egyptian workmen from surprise attack. However, unknown to the British, a joint German-Turkish force was progressing west across the Sinai to attack the Suez Canal at the same time that the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) was heading east. The first inkling that anything was wrong came at the beginning of April when the Yeomen, garrisoned at the oases of Oghratina and Qatia, well ahead of the main British force, were routed by a surprise attack by 3,500 advancing Turks. When aerial reconnaissance revealed that this formation was merely the advance guard, and an additional 26,000 Germans and Turks were on the move a little way behind, the Yeomanry retreated hurriedly to the main British force at El Rumana.

The battle for El Rumana began early on the morning of August 4, and lasted for the whole day. The town itself was defended by an infantry brigade and Australian cavalry, while the Yeomanry Regiments were kept out of sight and secretly outflanked the Turks. Once the attacking forces had committed themselves to attacking the units defending the town, the Yeomanry charged them from behind. It took until daylight on August 5 until the Turks finally surrendered. British casualties totalled 1,130, while the Turks lost 6,000 men. The remainder of the Turkish column began the desperate journey back across the desert to Palestine.

The Battle of El Rumana was the largest conflict of the Sinai campaign. The British resumed the slow advance east, and by December 1916 had reached the neighbourhood of El Arish, without encountering further serious opposition. El Arish was only 27 miles from the frontier of Palestine, and Prime Minister David Lloyd George urged the EEF to invade Palestine as soon as possible. General Murray, commander of the EEF doubted that he had enough troops to invade Palestine, but continued his creeping advance to the border. After occupying El Arish on December 21, British forces cleared out the two remaining Turkish outposts south of the frontier - Magdhaba, which fell on December 23; and Rafah, which was captured on January 9, 1917, by a combined force of light cavalry, yeomanry and camelry, at a cost of 500 British dead. The fall of Rafah left the EEF on the very frontier of Turkish Palestine, poised to strike for the first time at the Turkish Empire itself.

The Denbighshire (Hussars) Yeomanry, 1915-16 :

Campaigns in the Western Desert and the Sinai Peninsula

Key: 1. As-Sallum; 2. Sidi Barrani; 3. Alexandria; 4. Suez Canal; 5. El Rumana;

6. Qatia; 7. Oghratina; 8. El Arish; 9. Magdhaba; 10. Rafah

The southern border of the Turkish Province of Palestine was defended in 1917 by Turkish garrisons in the towns of Beersheba in the east and Gaza on the Mediterranean coast. General Murray, although convinced that he needed more troops to invade Palestine, was nevertheless ordered by London to advance on Gaza. His first attack on that town came on March 26: while the yeomanry surrounded the town to prevent Turkish reinforcements arriving, the infantry charged the town head-on. Unfortunately, poor communications between the front line troops and Divisional Headquarters meant that HQ ordered the battle called off, at the very moment that the British cavalry and infantry had already captured their most difficult objectives. The town was re-occupied by the Turks, who prepared for a second attack by building heavy fortifications along the whole length of the Gaza-Beersheba road.

The second British attack on Gaza (April 17-19) was the kind of battle usually associated with the Western Front: a head-on infantry attack against fortified trenches, supported by gas shells and eight tanks. (This was the only time in the War that tanks were used anywhere other than France and Flanders). Unfortunately, the result was much the same as traditional battles on the Western Front: heavy losses among the attacking forces (6,000 British casualties) for no gain whatsoever. The British government reacted to the defeat by sending a new commander to the EEF, General Edmund Allenby, who brought with him a relatively successful reputation from the campaigns he had managed in France. Lloyd George's only instruction to Allenby was: "Jerusalem by Christmas".

Allenby's first action in Palestine was to demand reinforcements, and to radically reorganise the troops already under his command. To reduce the heavy demand for water, Allenby dispensed with many of his horses and converted large numbers of his yeomen into infantrymen. This action radically changed Harry and John Brown's war, as the Denbighshire Yeomanry was one of the regiments affected. The regiment ceased to exist independently, and became instead the 24th (Denbighshire Yeomanry) Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers. The battalions of newly-dismounted yeomen together formed a new division: the 74th (Dismounted Yeomanry) Division.

General Allenby's offensive against Gaza was to be completely different from what had gone before, and initially was not even directed against Gaza at all. To all appearances, the EEF continued to prepare for a third direct assault on Gaza, but when the new British offensive began on October 31, it actually targetted the more easterly Turkish border outpost, at Beersheba. The Turkish garrison there, not expecting an attack, was overwhelmed by an assault by Allenby's 40,000 cavalrymen.

From Beersheba, the cavalry wheeled north to attack Gaza from the east, while the infantry - including two of its newest members - Uncles John and Harry - attacked from the south. The land offensive was supported by a massive bombardment from ten British and French warships stationed just off the coast. The Turkish fortification system around Gaza was overrun witihin half an hour, leaving the Turkish Eighth Army barely enough time to loot the town before hurriedly evacuating, and withdrawing all the way along the coast to Jaffa. Gaza was finally in British hands, though the three battles for Gaza/Beersheba had cost a total of 8,000 British lives.

The 24th Royal Welch Fusiliers in Palestine, 1917-1918 : The Fall of Jerusalem and the Collapse of the Turkish Empire.

Key:

1. Beersheba, captured 31 Oct 1917;

2. Gaza, 7 Nov;

3. Ramleh, 15 Nov;

4. Lydda, 15 Nov;

5. Jaffa, 16 Nov;

6. Jerusalem, 9 Dec;

7. Jericho, 21 Feb 1918;

8. Megiddo, 19 Sep;

9. Nazareth, 21 Sep;

10. Amman, 25 Sep;

11. Damascus, 1 Oct;

12. Homs, 16 Oct;

13. Aleppo, 26 Oct. Turkey requests armistice.

Allenby's army headed rapidly north, in pursuit of the retreating Turks. On November 15, Australian and New Zealand mounted troops occupied the towns of Ramleh and Lydda, and the following day they took Jaffa. The next obvious objective was Jerusalem itself: Allenby's dilemma was how to take the Holy City with the least possible damage. His problem was solved unexpectedly on December 9, 1917, when the Turks evacuated the city under cover of darkness and withdrew north to Nablus and Jericho. The city surrendered to a somewhat surprised advance element of the EEF, which formally entered the famous city two days later - much to the delight of an Allied world that had been starved of good news from any War Front for much of 1917.

Harry and John Brown celebrated Christmas Day 1917 in Jerusalem. The excitement they must have felt at reaching their long-time goal must have lessened somewhat on Boxing Day, when the Turks mounted an assault to retake the city, which was not repelled until December 28. This was the last serious threat against British Jerusalem, however. That same day, British forces began an uninterrupted advance north, supported by massed armoured cars and aircraft, which culminated in the capture of Jericho on February 21.

After three years of desert warfare, during which they had fought their way from the Libyan Desert to the northern tip of the Dead Sea, Harry and John Brown discovered that the assault on Jericho would be their last involvement in the Middle East campaign. In March 1918, the Germans had launched a make-or-break offensive, intended to finally win the war on the Western Front, which was meeting success at every turn. The War Cabinet decided that it could no longer leave experienced British troops in what was essentially a secondary, albeit very successful, War Front. Over 60,000 men (almost half of Allenby's army) were hurriedly shipped to France, including Harry and John Brown, who set sail for Marseilles in early April 1918.

With such adepletion in its ranks, the EEF was forced to call a temporary halt to its northward advance. For the next six months, its activities were limited to sabotage and disruption of the railway system that kept the provinces of the Turkish Empire connected and its armies supplied. (While the EEF was keeping the Palestine section of the railway out of operation, to the south T E Lawrence - "Lawrence of Arabia" - was organising bands of Arabs who had rebelled against Turkish rule in the same kind of activity on the Arabian section of the line).

Allenby resumed offensive operations in September 1918, when the tide of the War in Europe had clearly turned, and signs of demoralisation had begun to appear in the Turkish ranks. On September 19th, he massed his three Cavalry Divisions, and routed the Turks at the Battle of Megiddo. From there, the advance of Allenby's Cavalry - supported by overwhelming air power, which caused huge casualties among the massed columns of retreating Turks - proved unstoppable. In the first 34 hours of the offensive, Allenby advanced 70 miles. Within a month his armies had captured 75,000 prisoners and moved the front line 550 miles north to Aleppo, on the border of Turkey itself. At this point, Turkey appealed for an Armistice, which was granted on 26 October.

Meanwhile, Harry and John Brown had reached the South of France on May 7, and headed north immediately by train to Le Cauroy, just behind the Front Line. Here, three Battalions - the 12th Royal Scots Fusiliers (Ayr and Lanark Yeomanry), 12th Norfolk (Norfolk Yeomanry), and their 24th Royal Welch Fusiliers (Denbighshire Yeomanry) - were split off from the 74th (Dismounted Yeomanry) Division and became the 94th Brigade of the 31st Division, which had suffered such heavy losses that it could no longer replenish its ranks from its own training battalions. (The 31st Division originally included the Accrington Pals Battalion and two Battalions each of the Sheffield Pals and Barnsley Pals, all of which had been effectively wiped out on the first morning of the Battle of the Somme. The survivors had been sent in the interim to Gallipoli, where they had been decimated by malaria).

The 24th RWF officially transferred to the 31st Division on 21 June, and headed to Lynde to be billeted with the rest of their new Division. By the time they arrived, the rest of the Division had already moved out to begin a local offensive in the Nieppe area, the official purpose of the offensive being "to get a bit more elbow-room east of the Foret de Nieppe, by advancing the line to the banks of the River Becque". The 24th RWF hurried to join the offensive, which began on 28th June.

Having just arrived from Palestine, and having had no time to undertake training in the methods of "Western Front" warfare, the 24th RWF was assigned only a supporting role in the attack, intended to carry wire and supplies, and to go forward only if the first three waves of attackers were turned back. As it turned out, a fourth attack was needed, and the Brigade War Diary for the day notes that "carrying parties of the 24th Royal Welch Fusiliers, starting behind the fourth wave, were first to reach the objective of the River Becque." The attack was considered a great success as, in addition to achieving its territorial objectives, it resulted in the capture of some 250 prisoners, together with 3 field guns and 32 machine guns.

The 24th Royal Welch Fusiliers on the Western Front, June - November 1918.

KEY:

1. Le Cauroy;

2. Lynde;

3. Nieppe;

4. Bailleul;

5. Messines.

The Battle for the Nieppe Forest was the only battle that the 24th RWF was called upon to fight in France. For the rest of June and July, military activity was limited to aggressive patrolling aimed at identifying the units stationed opposite, and small-scale infiltration of the enemy front-line, to capture individual German soldiers for intelligence purposes.

At the Battle of Amiens (8-10 August), the tide of the War finally turned decisively in the Allies' favour, and the final (ultimately successful) westward offensive began. All this was happening, however, far south of the 24th RWF, who were limited to much smaller-scale, local offensives during August. In fact, the northern part of the British lines was so quiet at this time that, at the end of the month, the Battalion was relieved from the Front, and spent some days repairing the roads at Bailleul.

The 24th Royal Welch Fusiliers returned to front-line duty for the last time on 1 September 1918, when the battalion was sent to relieve the 1st Leinster Regiment, stationed on Hill 63 overlooking Messines. Hill 63 had for three years lain in the Ypres Salient, possibly the most dangerous place on the British frontline. By late 1918, however, the Ypres area had become a comparitive backwater on the Western Front and it was in defensive operations here that Harry and John Brown concluded their long and eventful War.

Postscript: Harry Brown

When the War was over, Uncle Harry emigrated to Canada, in the footsteps of his older brother Bill, who had moved to Alberta in 1904. The two brothers settled in Vancouver, British Columbia, and remained close companions during the early 1920's. Harry earned his living as a Merchant Seaman, sailing the North Atlantic passenger route between British Columbia and the Far East, aboard probably the Canadian Pacific steamship "The Empress of Japan". In the best traditions of his publican family, he was responsible for tending the liner's public bar.

Left to right: Harry with girlfriend, Miss Gallant. In Vancouver, abt 1925;

Harry in Skagway, Alaska, while on a cruise of the British Columbia Inner Passage with his brother, Bill. June 1925;

Harry aboard The Empress of Japan, abt 1927.

Harry was injured at work during an outward voyage from Vancouver in December 1927: his wound failed to heal, and it became apparent that he had developed blood-poisoning. He was hospitalised as soon as his ship reached landfall, in Yokohama, Japan, but he died of acute septicaemia in that city's General Hospital on December 29, 1927, at the age of 33. Harry Brown was buried two days later in plot #2646 of the Foreigners' Cemetery in Yokohama. In view of the fact that Uncle Harry came from a large and close family, it is sad that when he was buried there was no-one present who could provide his home address, next-of-kin or even correct age to the cemetery authorities.

Harry's younger sister, May, was twenty-five at the time of his death, and recalled how unprepared everyone was for the news of the sudden death of the family's favourite big brother. She remembered how her mother, Jane, had had to travel to the Liver Building in Liverpool to reclaim Harry's sailor's trunk, which had been shipped back from Japan, and how the whole family had gathered round in the front room and watched in amazement as the trunk's contents were revealed. They had never before appreciated just how different Harry's life on an ocean liner was, compared to his life back home in the small terraced house he had shared with his parents and twelve siblings. May said that when her mother reached into the trunk and pulled out Harry's TUXEDO, everyone in the room had just looked on in stunned silence: none of them had ever seen a tuxedo before, except in the movies.

May Brown's fondest memory of Harry came from the War years, when he would always come home on leave armed with a large barrel of sweets for the family. She remembered that she would line up with her brothers and sisters, waiting her turn to thrust her hand in the jar and grab as many sweets as she could. The rule was that everyone was allowed one handful each, but whenever May or one of the other youngest siblings got to the front of the line, they would look up expectantly, knowing that they could rely on Harry to say, "You have such small hands - maybe you should use both of them". May remembered him as a lovely older brother and, even 40 years after his death, could not tell the story of "Harry and his jars of sweets" without crying.

Postscript: John Brown

After his discharge from the Royal Welch Fusiliers, Uncle John briefly followed his brother Harry into the British Merchant Navy. He soon opted for a more settled life though, and returned to Wrexham in the mid-1920's to marry and start a family.

Uncle John married Violet Mead of Wrexham (pictured lower left with John’s younger sister, May, abt 1927), and settled into a job as a mechanic at nearby Bersham Colliery. Sadly, he would not long enjoy a stable family life with his wife and seven children. His oldest child, Dennis, was tragically killed at the age of fourteen in an accident on Wrexham High Street, and John and Violet's youngest child, Mabel, died in infancy. Shortly after Mabel's death, Violet also died, following a short illness.

Left – John Brown, abt 1913;

Right – John’s wife Violet Mead, with his younger sister, May, abt 1927.

Faced with bringing up their five surviving children on his own, John was forced to relinquish them to the care of the State. His son and four daughters were sent to live in Holm Oak Children's Home in Rhosddu, Wrexham; although they retained contact with their father, they would not live together as a family again.

Upon retirement from Bersham Colliery in 1959, Uncle John opened a sweet shop in Trevor Street, Wrexham, where he worked in semi-retirement until his death in 1970. His five children and numerous grandchildren still live today in the Acton Park area of Wrexham.