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World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great 1914 1918 first battalion regiment
Driver Maurice Greaves
Army 1st West Riding Field Company Royal Engineers
from:Sheffield
(d.9th Dec 1915)
Maurice Greaves enlisted in Sheffield in the 1st West Riding Div. Field Company of the Royal Engineers. Although he enlisted as a driver, he was involved fully in active service in the first major assault of the Gallipoli campaign, and he is buried in Cairo War Memorial Cemetery. His name is on the roll of honour of Cammell Laird and Co of Sheffield, where he had been employed. In early 1915, his company of the Ist West Riding Div. Field Company Royal Engineers became one of the units in the newly constituted 29th British Army Division. As usual for a “Divisionâ€, this consisted of units of all ground forces: infantry, artillery, engineers, transport, signals, medical, training units, etc. The 29th Division included troops from Ireland, Scotland and the north and south of England. Maurice Greaves’s West Riding company of Royal Engineers was the only company of engineers in the overall force of the Division, which contained about 17,000 men. The Division was initially earmarked for the Western Front, but was then selected for the campaign in the Dardanelles which included the Gallipoli campaign. In due course, eleven British and Commonwealth Divisions were involved in that campaign over eight months, but this Division was the only one assigned for the initial major assault. Training and mobilisation took place in the Midlands (in the area Warwick-Leamington-Nuneaton-Rugby) between January and March 1915.
A History of the Gallipoli Campaign says: “The 29th Division was probably the best British division that served at Gallipoli, and one of the best of any nation in the campaign. Although brand new as a division it had the advantage of containing a large number of professional soldiers who had not yet been worn out on the battlefields of the Western Front. The 29th can thus be considered as a crack division of well-disciplined and well-trained men. The Division’s historical performance in the campaign also bears witness to the division’s resilience, as the 29th was to attack again and again on the Helles Front, losing heavily in the process, but nevertheless always seemed to be able to spearhead one more push. When the 29th Division first set out for Gallipoli they were 17,000 strong. Over the next 9 months they suffered 34,000 casualties. So in other words they were effectively wiped out twice in nine months. The casualties of this one British Division were more than the total casualties of the whole Australian and New Zealand forces.†The Gallipoli campaign eventually involved a total of 468,000 British, Commonwealth troops and French troops, and there were a further three Australian/New Zealand (ANZAC) divisions. The British and Commonwealth casualties (dead, missing and wounded) totalled 119,400. The ANZAC casualties were 26,000. The Campaign The eight month campaign in Gallipoli was fought by British, Commonwealth and French forces in an attempt to force Turkey out of the war, to relieve the deadlock of the Western Front in France and Belgium, and to open a supply route to Russia through the Dardanelles and the Black Sea. The Dardanelles were a fifty-mile long strait separating the Aegean Sea from the Sea of Marmara and on to the Black Sea. Turkey controlled both sides of the Dardanelles at that time. Gallipoli was the name of a Turkish town (Gelibolu) near to where the main attack took place, and its name became later adopted by the British and their allies for the whole campaign. The intention was that a series of major naval attacks on the fortifications in the Dardanelles from 19 February onwards would soften up the defences and make it relatively easy to invade with land forces. However, this was abandoned as the major strategy in late March after some ships were lost to mines. The commanders shifted the emphasis of the operations from a mostly naval to a military orientation. The naval attacks had forewarned the Turks who were able to fortify and strengthen their defences for two months before the assault by military forces. Of the British troops, only one army division – the 29th Division – was available for a difficult and dangerous assault on well-defended terrain, together with a naval division, a French division and the ANZAC contribution. The original intention had been that this relatively small force (with other allied troops) would be sufficient to attack and hold an area already defeated by naval battering. This proved to be significantly over-optimistic. The 29th Division and its part at Gallipoli Setting off on their journey from Britain, on 16 March 1915, the 29th Division sailed from the port of Avonmouth, landing in Alexandria in Egypt two weeks later. On the medal card of Maurice Greaves (obtained from the National Archives), the date of his entry into “theatre of war (3)†is given as 30 March 1915.
The “theatre of war (3)†was Egypt, a British protectorate which was the base for all British military operations in the Near East and Middle East at that time. A contemporary account from a soldier stated: “We arrived in Alexandria and boarded trains bound for Abbassia Barracks just outside of Cairo. These barracks were nothing more than four walls with a roof. Here we stayed for 4 days. Next, we were on to Polygon Camp. This camp consisted of tents that the Regiment set up themselves. The tents were designed for the desert heat, having a double roof that provided some insulation from the scorching sun. But nothing could relieve us from the flies that came by the thousands and tormented the men constantly during the day. The men switched from their "heavy" uniforms to the "desert" shorts and sun helmets. We trained daily and paraded often.†Early in April, the 29th Division set off on their route towards the place of battle, starting with a train journey to the port of Alexandria. The troops then embarked onto ships, and headed for the main transit base of Mudros on the Greek island of Lemnos. The sea trip took nearly four days. Here they waited for the invasion force to be assembled, and did more training, including training in disembarking from ships for military assault on land.
The force now gathered was called the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. It consisted of 77,000 Allied troops. They were, principally, the British 29th Division, the 1st Royal Naval Division, the Indian Division, the 1st French Division and ANZAC troops.
On 23 April at 5 pm, the transport ship Caledonia left Lemnos with the troops, and on 24 April had reached the Greek island of Tenedos where the troops transferred to the assault ships.
The 29th Division had been allocated five main assault beaches on the peninsula: Beaches S, V, W, X and Y. These were all around Cape Helles. Two other assault beaches were allocated to the ANZAC troops and one to the French. The 1st West Riding Company (Royal Engineers) were among the 2,000 troops allocated to “V†Beach which proved to be one of the most difficult beaches for assault. (The area was named Sedd-el-Bahr by the Turks) The ship which carried most of the troops for “V†Beach was the SS River Clyde, an old 4,000 ton converted coal freighter. The troops were mainly carried in the coal holds, and some openings had been cut in the upper hull to allow the men to embark via gangways. SS River Clyde The troops on board SS River Clyde for the invasion were recorded as: No. 1 Hold (upper deck). 'X', 'Y' and 'Z' companies, Royal Munster Fusiliers. No. 1 Hold (lower deck). 'W' company, Royal Munster Fusiliers. One company Royal Dublin Fusiliers No. 2 Hold. 1st West Riding Company Field Engineers. Two companies Hampshire Regiment. Nos. 3 and 4 Holds. Two sub-divisions Field Ambulance. One platoon 'Anson' Battalion Royal Naval Division. One signal section The assault took place on the morning of Sunday 25 April. (A soldier on board reported that they had been provided with iron rations to cover three days - biscuits, canned bully beef and half a pint of water per day - and that all men had been issued with cocoa the previous evening.) V Beach was about 300m (330yds) long at the base of a steep incline. The beach had been sealed off at both ends by fortifications and cliffs. The beach was combed with trenches and barbed wire entanglements and strongly defended. As the first wave of troops made their way to the beach, for a considerable distance the bottom had been strewn with barbed wire and as the soldiers leapt into the water they found themselves entangled in the wire and were shot down where they stood. Turkish fire ravaged their numbers and caused severe casualties. Six Victoria Crosses were awarded on the first morning.
Those troops reaching the shore alive took shelter beneath the sandhill at the water's edge and could not move. Turkish fire prevented any movement inland as well as any attempt to reinforce the survivors on the beach. The British forces held until nightfall when firing died down and the rest of the troops on board (including the West Riding Company in this second wave) could make it ashore. Fighting resumed the next day again with severe casualties, but 29th Division troops were able to seize their first-day objectives and establish a continuous line between the separate landing beaches. A further three Victoria Crosses were earned. V Beach was handed over to the French eventually, in whose hands it remained for the remainder of the campaign. One of the French troops who joined the assault left this account: “On April 28th, 1915, we landed on Gallipoli. We were the first French troops to do so. We went ashore on V beach just beside the River Clyde, the ship from which the British had landed a few days before. The sea was full of dead bodies.
The English had cleared the way and our landing was without incident, That day we started marching and in the afternoon (the 29th) the real fighting began. We were holding the right of the line farthest from the sea with the British on our left. It was chiefly hand-to-hand bayonet fighting and we were up against what seemed to be an inexhaustible force of Turks. It was terrible to see the way our men were slaughtered. We lost about half the battalion and three-quarters of our officers were killed.†The battles throughout the peninsula dragged on for eight months with much loss of life.
Essentially, the two sides - Allied and Turkish - were left in a state of deadlock. It was reported that they faced each other, sometimes only metres apart, in a state of increasing discomfort. Searing heat and the swarming flies (made worse by unburied corpses in no man's land) tormented the men. The conditions were exacerbated by water shortages. In October and December 1915, winter storms caused much damage and human hardship. Disease flourished in the insanitary conditions. Of the British casualties on Gallipoli in the trench warfare conditions, over half were due to diseases. Chief causes were dysentery, diarrhoea, and enteric fever. Total Allied withdrawal of its troops and abandonment of the entire campaign – after so many deaths and casualties - took place by January 1916.
Maurice Greaves did not survive the war; he died of dysentery. He was not buried in the military cemeteries on the Gallipoli peninsula itself, which suggests that he was transported by ship in his illness to hospital and died there. The bodies of those who died on the hospital ships on the way to Egypt were consigned overboard for reasons of health for the remaining patients. The Cairo War Memorial Cemetery was the main cemetery used for those who died in the military hospital in Cairo. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission record is: Name: GREAVES Initials: M Nationality: United Kingdom Rank: Driver Regiment: Royal Engineers Unit Text: 1st West Riding Div. Field Coy. Date of Death: 09/12/1915 Service No: 936 Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead Grave/Memorial Reference: D. 212. Cemetery: CAIRO WAR MEMORIAL CEMETERY There is another source of information about the service record of Maurice Greaves. The National Archives hold the First World War Campaign Medal Cards of many service men and women. Following the First World War, campaign medals were awarded to those who had served in the War. Maurice Greaves was awarded posthumously the Victory Medal, the British War Medal and the 1914/15 Star. 1914/15 Star Authorised in 1918, the 1914/15 Star was awarded to those individuals who saw service in France and Flanders from 23 November 1914 to 31 December 1915, and to those individuals who saw service in any other operational theatre from 5 August 1914 to 31 December 1915. British War Medal The British War Medal 1914-1920, authorised in 1919, was awarded to eligible service personnel and civilians alike. Qualification for the award varied slightly according to service. The basic requirement for army personnel and civilians was that they either entered a theatre of war, or rendered approved service overseas between 5 August 1914 and 11 November 1918. Service in Russia in 1919 and 1920 also qualified for the award. Victory Medal The Victory Medal 1914-1919 was also authorised in 1919 and was awarded to all eligible personnel who served on the establishment of a unit in an operational theatre. Medal Card of Maurice Greaves, obtained from the National Archives.
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