How
Company Sergeant Major Joseph Barwick, OF The 1st Battalion
Scots Guards, Won The Military Cross At The First Battle Of Ypres
A striking illustration of the
almost incalculable debt, which the British Army owes to the courage,
ability and devotion to duty of its veteran non-commissioned officers, is
furnished by the series of valuable services which gained Company Sergeant
Major Joseph Barwick, of the 1st Scots Guards, the Military
Cross during the First Battle of Ypres. On
October 26th 1914, the 1st Scots Guards were
stationed, with the rest of the 1st Brigade, a little to the
north of Gheluvelt, and sergeant Major Barwick, who is a crack shot, was
engaged in sniping from the upper portion of a damaged cottage some
distance in advance of our first line trenches.
While thus employed, he noticed that the Germans had broken through
on the right of the position occupied by his battalion, which could
necessitate an immediate change of front, and at once resolved to run back
and warn his company commander. He
had to traverse a distance of some three hundred yards, over perfectly
open ground, in full view of the enemy.
But, though bullets were whistling past his head all the time, he
reached the trenches without mishap, and having made his report,
volunteered to go back to the battalion headquarters, eight hundred yards
distant, for reinforcements. The
ground over which he had to pass was being very heavily shelled, but he
accomplished the double journey in safety, and, on his return to the
firing line, found that, thanks to the warning which he had brought, our
position had been changed in time, and that all the Germans who had broken
through on our right flank-some four hundred in number-had been either
killed or made prisoner. During the
next few days the 1st Brigade was very heavily engaged and
suffered terrible losses, particularly on October 31st, when
the Germans made a furious attack in great force upon Gheluvelt, and the
whole of the 1st Division was obliged to fall back to a line
resting on the junction of the Frezenberg road with the Ypres Menin
highway. The 1st
Coldstreams were practically wiped out as a fighting unit, and every
single officer of Sergeant Major Barwick?s company of the 1st
Scots guards either killed or severely wounded as to be unfit for duty.
Barwick had therefore to take command of the remnant of his
company, a position that he held from November 2nd to November
10th. During this
period, he, at great personal risk, acted as observer for the artillery
supporting his brigade, and every morning sent sketches of any new
positions and saps made by the Germans during the night.
The information he furnished proved of the highest value, and
enabled the artillery to render the successive positions occupied by the
enemy untenable, and prevented them from massing for an attack on this
portion of our front. This brave
non-commissioned officer?s services were lost to his country for a time
on November 10th on which day he was wounded by shrapnel in no
less than thirteen places-viz, seven in the left leg, one in the right
leg, and five in the left arm! Happily
none of his wounds was of a very serious nature, and he recovered.
Sergeant
Major Barwick, who is thirty-three years of age, is a Yorkshire man, and
was born at Burley in Wharfedale, near LeedsExtracted
from 'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'
How
Sergeant S. Lemon Of The 2nd Battalion Scots Guards, Won
The D.C.M. At Neuve Chapelle
The
Battle of Neuve Chapelle, which began in the early morning of March 10th
1915, and lasted three days, will be long remembered as the first occasion
in the Great War on which we successfully turned the enemy?s plan of
massed artillery attacks against himself.
Four shells to the yard was the British fire, and in this action
alone there was use of artillery than in a year and a half of the South
African War. Every variety of
gun was employed-field gun, field howitzer, sixty-pounder, coast defence
gun-and so terrific was the bombardment that in a little over half an hour
the trenches along nearly three miles of the German front, trenches upon
which months of labour had been expended, were reduced to a welter of
earth, dust and horribly mutilated bodies.
Neuve Chapelle was a decisive victory-though,
owing to a variety of unforeseen circumstances, not nearly so decisive as
had been generally hoped for-but it was a terribly costly one.
Over 2,500 of our gallant fellows lay dead upon the field; more
than three times that number were wounded.
The resources of the R.A.M.C. were, in consequence, severely taxed,
for there were thousands of stricken Germans as well as British in need of
Succour, and accordingly men were detailed from various regiments to
assist the field ambulances in the task of collecting the wounded.
Among them was Lance-corporal-now sergeant Lemon, of the 2nd
Scots Guards. Lemon
was a veteran of the Boer War, and wore on his breast the South African
medals conferred by Queen Victoria and King Edward, and also the Long
Service Medal, for he had served his country for twenty-one years. He was now close upon forty, having been born a Headgrove,
Dorsetshire,in November 1875; but he did not spare himself, and laboured
at his work of mercy with the untiring energy of a man in the prime of
youth. Every day from March
10th to March 14th, with his hospital box slung over
his right shoulder and his capacious hospital water bottle over his left,
he went out to direct the stretcher-bearers and render first aid to the
wounded.
It was dangerous as well as arduous work, for during the greater
part of the time he was under fire, and sometimes, as he knelt to bind the
wounds or moisten the lips of some poor sufferer, a bullet would hum past
his head, or a sell so close as to cause him to hold his breath.
But for four days he met with no mishap. Then on fifth, just as he had picked up and attached to his
belt a German helmet, with the intention of keeping it as a souvenir of
the Great Battle, he felt a burning pain in his right thigh, and knew that
hr had received a souvenir of a different kind.
Most men would have promptly made their way
to the nearest field ambulance to have the wound attended to, but Lennon
happened to be of the stuff whereof heroes are formed.
He did not think f himself; he though only of the helpless men,
friend and foe, lying all around him, who so urgently needed his help, and
so long as he could crawl and see he was resolved to do his best for them.
And so, setting his teeth, he limped on, but had gone but a few
paces when he stumbled and fell into a huge hole made by a high explosive
shell, and when he tried to rise, the effort was vain.
Happily, he was soon found and carried to an
ambulance and thence to hospital, and when the awards to the heroes of
Neuve Chapelle were distributed, Lace-Corporal Lemon was not forgotten,
the D.C.M. being conferred upon him, ?for good conduct and devotion.?
Extracted from
'Deeds That Thrill The Empire'
WILLIAM
REYNOLDS (Private) Scots
(Fusilier) Guards
Decorated for his gallant behaviours on September 20th
1854, at the battle of Alma, Crimea, when the formation of the line being
thrown into disorder, Reynolds rallied the men round the Colours.
JAMES
CRAIG (Ensign and Adjutant) 3rd
Battalion Military Train Formerly Sergeant,
Scots Fusiliers Guards
On the night of September 6th 1855, when in the right
advanced sap, in front of the Redan, Craig volunteered and collected other
volunteers to go out under a heavy fire of grape and small arms to look
for Captain Buckley, Scots Fusilier Guards, supposed at the time to be
only wounded. With the
assistance of a drummer, he brought in the body of that officer-whom he
found dead and while occupied in this action was him badly wounded. |