Hugh Burden was killed at the age of 20 around 11am on June 28 1915. His death was unpleasant in both the way and why it happened. Despite this I had the privilege of visiting the site of his death at Gallipoli almost exactly 100 years after the event.I had always been told that Hugh was “killed in the first world war in Germany”. The unlikelieness of this was lost on me (soldiers didn’t generally get to Germany itself) until someone doing some research on Hugh’s father’s Ragged School in Falkirk recently told me that he had been killed at Gallipoli. Hugh’s father (John) had 6 children with Hugh’s mother, Margaret, including my maternal gran. He then married again (to a woman also with 6 kids) and left for the US where they had a daughter. When John returned to Falkirk he was sentenced to prison for bigamy - one of a few family secrets that were never talked about. In fact, my gran never told my gran-pa about it.
Hugh was a volunteer in the 8th Cameronians Battalion, 156th (Scottish Rifles) Brigade (part of the 52nd (Lowland) Division. They did some basic training in Grangemouth, travelled to Liverpool and then set sail from there to Egypt via Devonport (Plymouth) to join the Mediterranean Expedition Force.
On the 10th of June 1915 he wrote his last letter home to his mum whilst on the SS Ballarat ship either travelling from Egypt to Gallipoli or moored there. Luckily we still have it. He tells her not to believe all the media reports of death and destruction - little did he know what awaited him and his fellow Cameronians. He also asks her repeatedly to send fags and cigarette papers!
They landed on Y or W beaches in Gallipoli on 14 June on loan to the 29th Division having had very little training and inadequately equipped with poor information and planning available. Unfortunately they then became part of a campaign that was fundamentally flawed in origin (per Winston Churchill at the Admiralty) and execution in Gully Ravine (per senior officers Hamilton, Hunter-Weston, Simpson-Baikie and Beauvior de Lisle).
On Monday 28th June the Cameronians were part of an attack around Gully Ravine (“Sigindere“ to the Turks). They were on the right-most flank on Fir Tree Spur east of the Ravine. There was virtually no artillery cover from either land or sea for the part of the Ottoman lines they were attacking so Hugh and 472 of his 8th Cameronians colleagues were casualties (with over 300 dead) in 5 minutes in one of 3 ways:
- bombed in the trench before the attack
- machine gunned as they went over the top towards Turkish trenches at 11am totally unaffected by artillery fire
- left injured in no man’s land where the scrub eventually caught fire under Turkish bombing and so were burned to death.
This was a war where the military were the really serious causalities unlike the second world war where civilians were major casualties (through bombing raids of cities and the holocaust). It was a time when people were treated as weapons to be used, killed and injured in massive numbers with no regard to the inhumanity of this. As an example Hunter-Weston said that he “cared nothing for casualties” and commented that the massacre at gully Ravine had “blooded the pups” when the shocking casualties became known including Hugh. Such abuse caused the commander, Granville-Egerton, of the Cameronians when he arrived at Gallipoli to protest so much that he was eventually disciplined.
Almost exactly 100 years after this catastrophe, my wife and I visited Gallipoli to see the locations related to Hugh and the Cameronians. It was an extremely poignant occasion even more so because of the beauty of the peninsular these days and the fact that Hugh’s great nephew was visiting as the first family member since his death and with a Turkish born wife. In addition, nature has reclaimed the area as if to say “I’ll take over again now you ridiculous humans have stopped killing each other and destroying my work”.
We visited the Helles monument where Hugh’s name appears as his body was never found or was unidentified. Through the excellent work of Stephen Chambers in his Gully Ravine book and Battlefield Guide Andy Crooks (who produces www.gullyravine.org.uk) we were also able to find the area where the trenches had been that Hugh died in or near. It is cultivated fields now and the sight of sunflower, melon, tomato and berry crops in an area where such carnage took place in 1915 just shows how insignificant we really are. Some trenches west of where Hugh died still exist and we were able to sit in them. There seemed to be only one appropriate way to commemorate Hugh’s short life - we read his last letter home to his mum and smoked a big Cuban cigar on his behalf. A delivery of nicotine 100 years too late that he couldn’t enjoy himself but the sentiment seemed right.
It was an extremely poignant trip to commemorate Hugh’s life and early death amongst a Gallpoli casualty list of 36,000 Commonwealth, 10,000 French and 86,000 Ottoman troops.
RIP great uncle Hugh.
Update as we reach 100 year anniversary of armistice day.
ReplyDeleteRightly people are remembering all who lost their lives in war zones. Righly this tends to focus on those lucky enough to be remembered as individuals by their colleagues or families or the media.
Sadly this tends to focus on officers and those awarded medals etc.
People like Hugh are largely forgotten. This was brought home to me by 3 discoveries this week:
1. No family member apart from those I’ve bored with it know his story.
2. The Falkirk war memorial in Dollar Park only lists the names of those it commemorates online. No names are on the actual monument.
3. His 2 brothers who luckily returned from WW1 are listed on a memorial at their old Laurieston Primary school. The poor lad who died presumably didn’t go there so isn’t mentioned.
Lads like Hugh were thrown to the slaughter and we are kidding ourselves if we think they are properly remembered for the individuals they were and could have been.
And another 2 things. Firstly, we have photos of some from his era but none at all of Hugh. Sums up level to which he is forgotten.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, I discovered he was tested as he tried to get a cleaning job as a teenager. The manager of a shop put a half crown on the display cabinet he was asked to clean as a test of both his honesty and cleaning. He passed both.