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The CRYPT Mag

Gallipoli- The Vanished Battalion




This unit,  'The Sandringham Pals'  is perhaps better known as  'The Vanished Battalion',  as most of them perished in an ill-conceived attack on 12th August 1915 at Suvla.



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That they became so famous, was due to three factors :  first of all, most of them were employed by the English Royal Family at the Sandringham Estate.  A second strange fact was that - officially at least - their bodies were not found.  And last but not least, long after the war, a strange story popped up, when two Gallipoli veterans declared they had seen the Norfolks march into a strange cloud, that engulfed them, then lifted and drifted away, leaving nobody behind.  Clearly the work of an early UFO and a legend was born.



How did this happen?



Colonel Sir H. Beauchamp, commanding the 1/5th. Norfolk, had been placed in local command of the brigade in the trenches occupied on the 11th and the early part of the 12th. The 1/4th Norfolk, who had been left on the beach to unload stores after the landing on the 10th, were presently moved up into the support trenches of the brigade, the front line of which, counting from right to left, consisted of the 5th Norfolk, 8th Hants, and 1/5th Suffolk Regiments.  On the left of the 54th division was the 10th, the orders of the former being to link the latter up with the 53rd division, whose right flank rested on the Salt Lake and Azmak River.  For this purpose the troops available were insufficient, with a front of only three battalions, and the same number in second line.

The advance on August 12th did not commence till 4.45 p.m., the naval bombardment covering it having started at 4 p.m.  The order of the three leading battalions was as given above, the 4th Norfolk following in support behind the 5th Suffolk on the left.  Directly the advance began the 1/5th.  Norfolk received an order to change direction half right, which they did.  This order did not reach the 1/8th Hants, and consequently a gap was formed between the battalions, which continually increased as the advance proceeded.

As the brigade advanced it at once encountered serious resistance, and came under heavy machine-gun fire enfilading it from the left, and shrapnel on the right.  The machine-gun fire was the more effective in stopping the British advance, and the 5th Norfolk battalion on the right began to get forward quicker than the left.  Touch had been partially lost in the close country, and companies and battalions were much mixed up.



What happened with the 5th Norfolk battalion is thus described in Sir Ian Hamilton's despatch of December 11, 1915 describing what he calls  " a very mysterious thing."

" The 1/5th. Norfolk were on the right of the line and found themselves for a moment less strongly opposed than the rest of the brigade.  Against the yielding forces of the enemy Colonel Sir H. Beauchamp, a bold, self-confident officer, eagerly pressed forward, followed by the best part of the battalion.  The fighting grew hotter, and the ground became more wooded and broken.  At this stage many men were wounded, or grew exhausted with thirst. These found their way back to camp during the night.  But the Colonel, with sixteen officers and 250 men, still kept pushing on, driving the enemy before them. ... 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 ever came back." 




The Truth?


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It was not till four years later that any trace was discovered of the fate of this body.  Writing on September 23, 1919 the officer commanding the Graves Registration Unit in Gallipoli says:

" We have found the 5th Norfolks - there were 180 in all;  122 Norfolk and a few Hants and Suffolks with 2/4th Cheshires.  We could only identify two - Privates Barnaby and Cotter.  They were scattered over an area of about one square mile, at a distance of at least 800 yards behind the Turkish front line.  Many of them had evidently been killed in a farm, as a local Turk, who owns the place, told us that when he came back he found the farm covered with the decomposing bodies of British soldiers which he threw into a small ravine.  The whole thing quite bears out the original theory that they did not go very far on, but got mopped up one by one, all except the ones who got into the farm."



For reasons unbeknown to the rest of the world, officially  (According to the War office)  their bodies have never been found.  So these 180 brave men who gave their lives for their country, remain in shallow graves in a far away country.



They remain "Forever" The Vanished Battalion

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