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World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great 1914 1918 first battalion regiment
Cpl. Ralph William Williams
British Army 3rd Battalion Rifle Brigade
from:Islington, London
My great uncle Ralph Williams was born on 7th of Novemeber 1874 at 87 Queen's Head Street, Hoxton, Middlesex, England. Ralph began his working career as a book binder in Canonbury, but switched to selling fruit on market stalls. We know more about his life than most members of our London Williams ancestors because in February 1896, he joined the volunteer militia of the 7th Battalion the Rifle Brigade - one of the Brigade’s four reserve battalions. From his attestation we learn that he was of slight build: 5’ 4†His chest girth was 36â€and he weighed 9½ stone. He had a medium complexion. His eyes were blue and his hair brown. And he was C of E. We discover that he had also been busy in his youth, having himself tattooed. On his chest were cross flags; there were a heart and dots tattoos on his right forearm and a flag, and “R.W†on his left plus a further flag on his right calf and a flag on his left. One cannot help but wonder whether he went to the same tattooist as his 'painted' show-lady cousin, Alice Eleanor Williams. Ralph mustered for training and manoeuvres over the following two years. The militia’s parade ground was in Victoria Park opposite the Mitford Arms Tavern. Ralph spent also spent weekends there practising marching and musketry.
He was nearly 24 years-old when the Boer War came. The 7th Battalion provided volunteers to the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. Ralph received a notice of mobilisation for the 1st Battalion Rifle Brigade. He elected to enlist as a regular, signing up on 30th September, 1898. He was allocated to a Regimental number – 6225 - and by the end of his service in 1919 he had been involved in most of the more dramatic episodes of the British Imperial Army.
On 1st October, 1898 he was at Gosport New Barracks situated astride the Mumby Road. These were still the temporary barracks of the Rifle Brigade while its permanent home, the Peninsula Barracks, in Winchester were rebuilt following a fire in 1894. He was stationed in England until 27th October, 1898 when his company was readied embarkation for South Africa. On 22nd October 1899, code named as HMT 26, the SS German joined the first convoy of six troopships that carried troops to South Africa. He landed in Natal in November 1899 and, together with part of the West Yorkshire Regiment, was among the first to go into action. Ralph saw fighting almost immediately, in which the Rifle Brigade showed itself a match for the Boers at fire and movement. On 11th December 1899, the Rifle Brigade captured Surprise Hill, blowing up a Boer howitzer in the process. The commanding general, Redvers Buller, then moved west to assault across the Tugela River opposite the Rangeworthy Hills, of which Spion Kop was one. Major General Lyttelton’s Fourth Brigade (including the 1st Battalion Rifle Brigade) crossed the river at Potgeiter’s Drift to the East of the main attack, at a point where the river bending in a loop to the South protected the crossing from enfilade fire. On 23rd January, 1900 Buller ordered the attack on the Rangeworthy Hills. The plan was to climb and capture the hill of Spion Kop, which was considered the key to the Rangeworthy position. Ralph was involved in the ensuing British disaster. He took part in the diversionary attack in which the 2nd Scottish Rifles climbed Spion Kop to join the already decimated troops there. Meanwhile, Ralph’s 1st Battalion Rifle Brigade attacked straight up the Twin Peaks to the East of Spion Kop. The Boers on the Twin Peaks panicked at the assault on their position and fled, leaving the Rifles to take the summit of the ridge. This diversionary attack dislodged the Boers as well as those on Spion Kop, who left its commanding summit. Unfortunately, Thorneycroft, the commander on Spion Kop, did not realise that the battle was won. Instead of moving forward after the retreating Boers, he decided to withdraw from the hill. So at dawn the next day, the Boers re-occupied Spion Kop and as a consequence the relief of Ladysmith failed. Ralph’s battalion was next committed to an assault on Val Krantz, a hill in the bend in the Tugela River. The battalions of the Fourth Brigade, comprising 1st Durham Light Infantry, 3rd King’s Royal Rifles, Ralph’s 1st Battalion RB and 2nd Scottish Rifle, with the 2nd Devons from another brigade, scaled Val Krantz and drove the Boers from its lower slopes. They came under heavy Boer fire from the surrounding higher positions. At this point, Redvers Buller lost his nerve cancelled the full crossing of the river, leaving the Fourth Brigade to make the assault alone. He ordered Lyttelton to abandon the attack and retreat, but Lyttelton ignored the order and called for reinforcements. However, Buller convinced himself the Boer positions were too strong to be forced and despite Lyttelton and other generals urging him to commit more troops, he would not take the risk and the operation was abandoned and the British troops withdrew across the Tugela River.
Eventually, on 27th February, 1900 the British put a pontoon bridge across the Tugela further east and Buller launched an attack on the hills leading to Ladysmith. Ralph’s battalion took part in the heavy fighting between 13th and 27th February, and won the commendation of General Buller. On 18th February, it fell to the Durham Light Infantry and 1st RB to attack the nek between Greenhill and Monte Christo. On the 23rd February, the two battalions crossed the Tugela River were ordered to support British troops beleaguered on Inniskilling Hill. Over the next four days, Ralph’s battalion was constantly fighting. His was the lead battalion on the left of the line in the final assault toward Ladysmith on the 27th February. In the fourteen days’ fighting, the 1st Battalion RB’s losses were 14 men killed, 8 officers and 117 men wounded. The 1st Battalion RB was again part of the assault group that advanced out of Ladysmith toward Dundee in the small hours of 15th May, 1900. From there, they pursued the Boers to Mount Prospect and along the Pretoria Railway. On 28th July occupied Heidelberg where they were to remain for a long period during which time the battalion turned to guarding and garrison duties. On 26th December 1900 a part of the battalion had very severe fighting near the Oceana Mine, the company guarding the baggage being attacked while the others were out clearing farms. Throughout 1901 the battalion was generally in the neighbourhood of the Transvaal - Natal Railway, involved in taking convoys to Ermelo and other places for other columns. After February they were chiefly engaged in watching the railway for much of the next, guerrilla phase of the war. This second phase of the war would last even longer than the first. Peace would only be declared at the end of May 1902. The following year, Ralph was to receive the Queen’s South African Medal, with 5 clasps, each to denote his participation in active duty in the battles of Cape Colony, Tugela Heights [Spion Kop], the Relief of Ladysmith, Laings Nek and the Transvaal. He also received the King’s South African Medal with two clasps to mark his service during 1901 and 1902. But long before then, in March 1902, Ralph had already transferred to the 3rd Battalion RB, at that time seeing in service on India’s infamous North-West Frontier. For the next two years, his time was divided between duties at barracks in Meerut [Utter Pradesh] and the 7,000 ft garrison fort at Kailana [Garhwal, Himalaya]. There is no indication, from the known documentary evidence, why Ralph transferred to the 3rd Battalion RB. His own 1st Battalion was to return home after May 1902. However, General Kitchener was made Commander-in-Chief in India later that same year and began a root and branch re-organisation of the Indian Army, a new division of which, the 7th, was raised at Meerut. So it is possible that Ralph either volunteered, or was drafted in, to act as experienced cadre for the Indian unit.
While in India, Ralph spent time on self-improvement. On 26th March, 1904 he was awarded the third-class certificate of education. This was a required standard for promotion to the rank of corporal: the successful candidate had to be able to read aloud and to write from dictation passages from an easy narrative, and to work examples in the four compound rules of arithmetic and the reduction of money. While First-class certificates were awarded on the results of periodic examinations held by the Council of Military Education, second and third-class certificates were presented on the recommendations of the Army schoolmaster. He joined his battalion’s Gymnasium Team, for which the Rifle Brigade was famous. He was thirty and judging by the only photograph of him, as fit and robust as he had ever been in his life.
Although the 3rd Battalion RB was involved in the shameful invasion of Tibet in 1903, there is no direct evidence available to signify whether Ralph actually took part in this action. It is, however, certain that Ralph saw active service in Aden during 1905. This came about as a result of a Boundary Commission, set up by the British Government in 1901, to establish the border between the British Protectorate of Aden and the Turkish-held Yemen. This body’s work was completed by the end of 1904, but its decisions were contested by the Yemeni tribes in the area. The RB’s 3rd Battalion, including Ralph’s company – and its attachment of 2,000 Indian troops of the 7th Meerut Division - deployed from Meerut via Bombay to Aden with less than a week’s notice. While Battalion Headquarters and several companies dispersed to Steamer Point and Crater in Aden, Ralph’s company was one of four that route marched up to Dthalla by 3rd December, 1904. Dthalla was situated 80 miles inland, high in the hinterlands of Aden and the disputed territory along the border with Turkish-held Yemen. The situation seemed to take a more serious turn when, on 15th March, 1905 Yemeni tribesmen, reported to number up to 30,000, were reported to have captured four artillery guns, 2,000 rifles and over 1,000 cases of ammunition from the Turkish garrison just across the border. This prompted the laying of wire entanglements in front of the garrison’s defensive perimeter. But the threat of trouble spilling over into the British Protectorate proved little more than mountain hearsay. Consequently, Ralph was to spend much of the next eight months at the camp, involved in all manner of pastimes as diverse as Gymnastics, camel racing and cricket. At the end of August, Ralph’s company transferred to Steamer Point, Aden. Here, at the age of 33, Ralph’s first seven years before the colours was coming to an end. Once more, he indicated an appetite for staying with the Regular Army (and therefore not returning home to serve 5 years in the Reserve) by applying to extend his regular service to 12 years. He applied to be re-examined for an extension of service before returning to Dthalla for 14th October, 1905.
Ralph could not have enjoyed service in a place dubbed by every Imperial soldier - then and since - as the ‘arsehole of the empire’ - because everything went through it. However, after a year of heat, dust, and a handful of fatalities – including a near miss when one all-starred rifleman got his head stuck in a tub during an Egg-Diving Competition and could not get it out again, narrowly escaping drowning amid the applause of his comrades who thought he was still trying to get an egg - Ralph’s company finally marched back down to Crater, arriving at Sapper’s Bay in Aden on 10th December 1905. On 16th December, all the Rifle Companies embarked aboard the Hired Transport Ship Assaye. The ship reached Port Said by the 21st December, at which point Ralph and his comrades changed their uniforms to Khaki drill. They stood off Malta on Christmas Eve night, passed Gibraltar on the evening of the 27th and dropped anchor inside the breakwater of Plymouth Sound on the afternoon of New Years Eve. On New Years’ Day, 1906 the HTS Assaye was towed to No 1 Jetty at Devonport Dockyard where the companies disembarked to the strains of ‘After many a roving years’ and ‘Home sweet home’ played onshore by the band of the Somerset Regiment. Between 1906 and 1910 Ralph was garrisoned at Devonport. In 1908, it seems possible that the 3rd Battalion RB was garrisoned at Bordon in Hampshire. In 1910, the 3rd Battalion RB came under the Irish Command based at Cork. On 25th July, 1910 Ralph reapplied to extend his service in the Army by re-engaging for another seven-year term. Ralph was present in the ranks at the Tipperary Barracks on 3rd April 1911. For the sake of security no doubt, many British soldiers had recorded only their initials in this Census – Ralph among them. But his thirty-six years really stand out as an island of experience amongst the vast majority of other enlisted men – mostly teenagers or barely in their early 20s. The Battalion was to be stationed at the Tipperary Barracks until the outbreak of the Great War.
In 1914, Tipperary Military Barracks was the Head-Quarters (H.Q.) for the 3rd Battalion RB, 16th Infantry Brigade, Sixth Infantry Division. The Rifle Brigade’s H.Q. was located in Fermoy and the Divisional H.Q. in Victoria Barracks, Cork. Ralph was now 40, but his service record clearly documents his 3rd Battalion’s presence, first of all with the Sixth Division. The Sixth Division mobilised with its Headquarters in Cork. The Division received its mobilisation order at 10 p.m. on the 4th August 1914. On the 18th August, Ralph embarked with his battalion on the SS Patriotic at Queenstown, Cork bound for Holyhead and mainland UK. From Holyhead, he entrained for Cambridge, arriving there on 19th August. The battalion encamped on Midsummer Common. The whole Division was concentrated in camps in and around Cambridge and Newmarket by the 21st August.
Ralph’s battalion record shows that the period from the 18th August to the 7th September, 1914 was one of hard training. On the 7th September, the battalion entrained at Newmarket for Southampton, and on the 9th September the first troops of his Division disembarked at St. Nazaire. From St. Nazaire a long train journey took the Division a short distance east of Paris, where it was concentrated in billets by the 12th September. Over the 13th to 19th September, the battalion marched to the Aisne where they went into General Reserve. On the 30th September, he came under the command of Brigadier-General W. R. B. Doran.
His battalion took up a position along the Fort de Metz-La Cour de Soupir portion of the front, which it held without much incident till 2nd October, when it was withdrawn into Corps Reserve near Compiegne. Ralph’s Sixth Division then spent time at St. Omer before marching to Hazebrouck on the 12th October. Here, the Division covered the detrainment of the Fourth Division and made its first full contact with the enemy on 13th October along the line of the Meteren Brook. Ralph’s Brigade captured Meteren and Bailleul incurring some 400 casualties in the process. Pushing forward, the 17th Infantry Brigade crossed the River Lys at Bac-St-Maur. The Germans brought up reinforcements on the 20th October, at which date the Battle of Armentieres, otherwise known as the First Battle of Ypres, began. As far as Ralph Division was concerned, this action took place on the western portion of the ridge between Armentieres and Lille. His Division was forced back to the low ground around Rue du Bois-La Boutillerie after very fierce and continuous fighting between the 13th and 23rd October. At this point, Ralph’s Brigade was relieved by Fourth Division and became Divisional Reserve until December. Mp> It is a fact that Ralph’s 3rd Battalion RB was present at the unofficial ceasefire along 17th Brigade’s Sixth Division front between Frelinghien and Houplines in the Christmas of 1914. For the 25th December, 1914 the War Record for the 3rd Battalion Rifle wrote the following: ‘Christmas in the trenches will always be remembered by the Battalion as a day of perfect peace, during which both sides declared a truce by mutual consent. Not the least interesting feature was a German juggler, who drew a large crowd of Riflemen and Germans in the middle of No Mans Land.’
On the 5th June, 1915, the 17th Infantry Brigade went into the line on what had become known as the Ypres Salient. Ralph's Rifle Brigade faced some of the Germans' earliest gas attacks on this front during the summer. The 3rd Battalion, RB’s War Diary for September 1915 makes grim reading. In woods north east of Ypres, the Battalion relieved the 1st Battalion of The Buffs in trenches about 400 yards north of St. Jean. By the end of the month a daily tally of casualties saw 17 dead and 32 wounded.
On 14th October, 1915 the 17th Brigade came under the command of the Twenty-fourth Division. On 20th January, 1916 Ralph gained a field promotion as “unpaid†acting Corporal. This was changed on 13th July to ‘paid status’ although it took until the 19th August for the Army’s bureaucratic process to confirm this. On the 15th September, presumably the time it took for the changes to move between London and the front, Ralph was granted Class I ‘Proficiency Pay’ of an extra 6d a day. During this time, the 3rd Battalion RB was involved in actions at Flers-Courcelette, Morval and of Le Transloy. These are actions mark phases in what is widely known as the Battle of the Somme.
It was not until the 31st July, 1917, nearly three years after his move to the front, that Ralph was allowed his first home leave – a whole ten days. At the same time he was promoted to full corporal. He rejoined his battalion on 18th August. During this period the 3rd Battalion RB was involved in the Battle of Hill 70, action during the Battles of Arras and Cambrai.
On 16th March, 1918 Ralph was granted another home furlough, but it seems likely that he was not able to take it in England as the record shows that he proceeded on leave “in the fieldâ€. He does not seem to have rejoined his Battalion until 13th April. This may have been due to the turmoil and panic caused by the major German spring offensive which took the British and French Armies by storm and drove them back almost as far as they had been in the early August days of 1914.
On 12th July, 1918 Ralph received notice that he had been selected to receive an award from the King of the Belgians. It was a fitting honour for a man that had survived the fields of the Transvaal as well as of mud of Flanders. He could add this to his South African Medals and as well as 1914 Star, Allied Victory and British War Medal [1914-18] Medals to wear on Remembrance Sundays in later years.
In the closing months of the Great War, the 3rd Battalion RB was involved in the counter offensive that eventually led to the collapse of the German front. The Battle of St. Quentin marked the First Battles of the Somme during 1918. These were followed by actions at Bailleul and Kemmel Ridge and the subsequent advance in Flanders. The Battalion saw action at Epehy, the St. Quentin Canal and Beaurevoir and Cambrai.
The 11th November, 1918 found Ralph’s Twenty Fourth Division billeted around Bohain. The 3rd Battalion RB was one selected to march into Germany as part of the occupation force. It began to move 14-18th November to Solre-le-Chateau to assemble. The Division crossed the German border on 13th December and reached its destination at Bruhl south of Cologne on 23rd December, 1918.
By 5th January 1919, Ralph’s war was finally over. He got his orders to report to 70 Eastern Transfer Command in Watford and embarked for England on 8th January. From Watford he was transferred on 14th March to No2 Dispersal Unit at Chiseldon, just outside Swindon, then onward to No 1 Dispersal Unit at Fovant on the Wiltshire Dorset border. Fovant had become the site for a very large military camp. Built at the foot of our Downs, an endless array of huts housed large numbers of soldiers. He was finally de-mobbed on 6th November, 1919, at the age of 45 - having served a total of 21 Years and 38 days in the Army.
Ralph came back to his home town of Islington, to settle down in Pickering Street Dwellings. There is yet no indication of the occupation he took up on ‘civvy street’ for the next two decades. However, we do know that he married a girl, Minnie Rose Coulman, more than half his age sometime between Jan-Mar 1921 in Islington. He fathered a daughter, Minnie Florence Williams. Ralph William Williams, an ‘Old Contemptible’, passed away at 42z Pickering Street Dwellings, Islington, London, England in November 1939, just as yet another war was beginning He was buried at Islington Cemetery on 9 November of that year.
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