Now! Then! Joseph Colgrave of Sheffield and the 5th Royal Irish Lancers wins a DCM rallying leaderless Punjabi Muslims at Hollebeke (Ypres)

Excerpt

At length the grey line surged from the edge of a wood where the enemy had been massing. In close formation, and advancing with the most unflinching determination and contempt for the gaps torn in their lines, the Germans pressed forward and reached the first line held by the 5th Lancers. The remnant of the defenders was unable to withstand the shock of the assault, being at once overwhelmed by mere numbers, but the second line, some distance behind, held firm, awaiting their turn. At this critical juncture a battalion of Indian infantry was sent up in support. These gallant troops had only been in France a few weeks; they were strange to the land, the trying climate, and the novel conditions of warfare. Now, in their first taste of an actual battle, they were subjected to a fire so galling that the most seasoned troops would have experienced the greatest difficulty in maintaining their cohesion. As it was, the terrible casualties among the officers of the Indian battalion led to instant confusion. The men were willing to go anywhere, but did not know where to go. As they met the Lancers retiring to trenches further back, they were smitten with uncertainty, and for a moment panic threatened and they broke. Colgrave, retiring with his regiment, which had scattered into groups, saw the Indians passing him in utter disorder. Without a moment’s hesitation he ran in among them, striving by word and action to calm them, restore confidence, and give them their directions. Finding themselves under a leader, the Indians recovered their nerve, formed up and followed him. Despite a withering fire the band maintained their order and discipline and reached the appointed place. Colgrave then went back and rallied other bodies with similar success. The Indians responded immediately to his orders, the German attack was eventually beaten off, and a critical situation was restored by his prompt action. Only once was his good work interrupted – when he saw an Indian officer, severely wounded, lying helpless on the ground. Despite the infernal hail of bullets and high explosives, he carried the wounded man to the shelter of a trench. This fine feat inspired the Indians as much as Colgrave’s personal example.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.
Abbreviations:

ER: East Riding
GM: Greater Manchester
NR: North Riding
NY: North Yorkshire
SY: South Yorkshire
WR: West Riding
WY: West Yorkshire

Comment

Via Chris Hobbs, who has traced some of Colgrave’s life and death, but doesn’t seem to have met with the following sensational account by Tim Carew of the events of 30 October 1914:

This preamble leads up to one story of what happened during the fighting round Messines.
A certain sector of the line became untenable, and the order came from the 3rd Cavalry Brigade for a general retirement. The orders did not reach Captain Forbes, commanding the Punjabi Mussulman Company of the 57th Rifles, and they were attacked frontally, from both flanks and surrounded. They fought back valiantly with bayonets, rifle butts, boots and fists, but Captain Forbes received severe wounds from which he subsequently died and Lieutenant Clarke was killed. A bare half company – some forty men in all – managed to escape.
All the Indian officers had become casualties, and there was no one above the rank of naik left alive in the company: the bugbear of jimmiwari was ruthlessly exposed.
Obeying some herd instinct the survivors sought the temporary shelter of a shell-torn barn, where they huddled together in miserable groups, awaiting what fate had in store for them.
It may seem that the conduct of these men was not entirely creditable. They had no British officers and no orders; they did not know where they were. But one and all had fought with the greatest gallantry against an enemy who had outnumbered them by something like ten to one; they were not afraid, they simply did not know what to do. They needed a leader, and they needed him quickly.
They were soon to get one, in the improbable shape of Corporal Colgrave of the 5th Lancers.
Colgrave was a Kiplingesque character. Once, a long time ago, he had been a Squadron Quartermaster-Sergeant. But a fondness for liquor, first in a trickle, and then in a rush, had brought him down. He claimed intimate acquaintance with General Allenby, which was true in a way because Allenby, when Commanding Officer of the 5th Lancers, had ‘busted’ Colgrave to the ranks.
Now Corporal Colgrave was climbing the weary promotion ladder once more. His officers had looked for qualities of leadership in him and looked in vain; it seemed almost certain that the two stripes he wore, precarious at that, represented the peak of his promotion prospects.
Colgrave and a squad of a dozen men had been looking after horses about a mile in rear of Messines, when an urgent order summoned them forward to a point in the line where the addition of thirteen more rifles would be of incalculable value. The barn on which they happened looked tempting, and Corporal Colgrave ordered five minutes’ halt for a smoke.
‘Got a fag, Corp?’ asked a trooper hopefully outside the barn. ‘Only got one,’ said Colgrave.
‘I only want one.’
‘Less of your lip. Get inside.’
Corporal Colgrave had done many years’ service in India, and regaled newly-joined young soldiers with largely untrue stories of gory encounters on the North-West Frontier against the wily ‘Paythan’, massive commercial deals in bazaars and gargantuan copulation in native brothels. Like many another vintage British soldier, he was firmly convinced that he was a fluent speaker of Hindustani.
The Lancers entered the barn and gazed upon forty miserable Indian faces; when he is really downcast, no race of man can wear a darker mask of woe than an Indian.
‘Blimey, what a bunch,’ said the corporal; then loudly, ‘Sab thik hai idher?’
Clearly, everything was very far from being ‘thik‘. The Indians eyed him warily and without enthusiasm. On the other hand, although he was not a Sahib he had a white face and wore the two stripes of a naik and might take on the jimmiwari.
‘Kis waste this ‘ere? asked Colgrave. ‘Sahib kidher hai?’
‘Sahib margya,’ said a dozen sad voices.
‘Well, blimey,’ said Colgrave, in trouble with the language already, ‘you want to marrow the fuckin’ Germans, don’t you, malum?’
The idea was beginning to catch on. ‘Jee-han!’ said a dozen voices.
Corporal Colgrave winked at the other Lancers, one of whom was heard to say ‘old Charlie fancies ‘isself as a fuckin’ general’.
Smiles were beginning to appear on downcast brown faces; there was something about the gamey, ribald approach of Corporal Colgrave which seemed to be a positive denial of defeat. Murderous shelling, which had blown men to pieces and buried men alive, had taken some of the heart out of the Punjabi Mussulmans, but Colgrave was putting it back.
‘Right, then, you miserable-looking lot of buggers,’ said Corporal Colgrave with affection, ‘idher ao: Abhi wapas, got it? Marrow all the German soors. Abhi thik hai?’
‘Thik hai!’ said forty voices in unison.
‘Achi bat. Now, then, who’s going to win the bleedin’ V.C.? Chalo!’
And so thirteen Lancers went into the line, with the priceless addition of forty by now one-hundred-per-cent belligerent Indians, and that particular sector of line was held for the next twenty-four hours.
(Carew 1974)

Carew’s footnote:

Some sort of glossary of this strange conversation is required. Sab thik hai idher is ‘everything all right here?’ (clearly it was not); margya is dead; malum, literally translated, means ‘know’; jee-han is ‘yes’; idher ao is ‘come here’; abhi wapas roughly means ‘we are going back now’; achi bat, in the language of a British N.C.O., can be construed as ‘right, then’; chalo, literally translated means ‘dive’, but in this context can be taken as meaning ‘let’s go’; ‘kis waste this ‘ere’ almost explains itself – it is ‘what’s going on here, then?’, the rhetorical question asked by English policemen in almost any circumstance.

Who was his source? Not everybody trusts him!

Ciarán Byrne says that Colgrave’s band were also from the 129th Baluchis, but I trust Carew more. I think that, in General Willcocks’s discussion of the 57th at Hollebeke, Colgrave is the officer referred to here:

It is instructive to read in the reports that some of the men in Messines “had the good fortune” to come across an officer who spoke Hindustani, and was thus able to direct them to rejoin their Headquarters (Willcocks 1920).

Khudadad Khan of the 129th Baluchis won a VC on the following day:

In October 1914, when the Germans launched the First Battle of Ypres, the newly arrived 129th Baluchis were rushed to the frontline to support the hard-pressed British troops. On 31 October, two companies of the Baluchis bore the brunt of the main German attack near the village of Gheluvelt in Hollebeke Sector. The out-numbered Baluchis fought gallantly but were overwhelmed after suffering heavy casualties. Sepoy Khudadad Khan’s machine-gun team, along with one other, kept their guns in action throughout the day, preventing the Germans from making the final breakthrough. The other gun was disabled by a shell and eventually, Khudadad Khan’s own team was overrun. All the men were killed by bullets or bayonets except Khudadad Khan who, despite being badly wounded, had continued working his gun. He was left for dead by the enemy but managed to crawl back to his regiment during the night. Thanks to his bravery, and that of his fellow Baluchis, the Germans were held up just long enough for Indian and British reinforcements to arrive. They strengthened the line, and prevented the German Army from reaching the vital ports; Khan was awarded the Victoria Cross.

Khan also figures in Carew.

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Original

How Lance Corporal Colgreve Won The D.C.M. Near Hollebeke For Rallying Indian Troops

In no respect has the Great War changed established ideas more than in the uses of cavalry. In the opening rounds of the great contest, the retreat from Mons, the advance from the Marne, and the battle on the Aisne, both the British and German cavalry played their time-honoured role of reconnoitring, skirmishing, preceding an advance or covering a retirement. But when the great German “hack through” to Calais began with the onslaught on the British Army in front of Ypres. Imperious necessity dictated a new employment for the British cavalry. The comparatively small infantry force was insufficient to hold the great length of line and cavalry had to be used to fill up the gaps. By the last week of October cavalry held a critical part of the British position southeast of Ypres. But if it was an innovation for a cavalryman to discard his mount and man a trench like a “foot slogger,” what is to be said of a cavalryman who in an emergency turned himself into the leader of an Indian infantry regiment and extricated his charges from a highly critical situation? It was Lance Corporal Colgrave, of the 5th Lancers, who performed this feat, and in case the authorities answered the question with the award of the Distinguished Conduct Medal. On October 30th 1914, the Germans were preparing their terrific onslaught of the next day by a heavy attack on the trenches held by the cavalry near Hollebeke. According to the reports of prisoners, at least forty thousand men were massed on a narrow front, and the artillery concentration was such as no troops had yet faced in warfare. An incessant rain of high explosive shells deluged the British trenches, which were not the elaborate and intricate under ground warrens they became at a later stage. They were little more than rough ditches, which were quickly blotted out, burying their defenders in their debris. The 5th Lancers suffered peculiarly heavily. Without being able to reply in kind they had to hold on while suffering continual casualties, and wondering (at least the survivors) whether they would be able to back the inevitable attack when it came.

At length the grey line surged from the edge of a wood where the enemy had been massing. In close formation, and advancing with the most unflinching determination and contempt for the gaps torn in their lines, the Germans pressed forward and reached the first line held by the 5th Lancers. The remnant of the defenders was unable to withstand the shock of the assault, being at once overwhelmed by mere numbers, but the second line, some distance behind, held firm, awaiting their turn. At this critical juncture a battalion of Indian infantry was sent up in support. These gallant troops had only been in France a few weeks; they were strange to the land, the trying climate, and the novel conditions of warfare. Now, in their first taste of an actual battle, they were subjected to a fire so galling, that the most seasoned troops would have experienced the greatest difficulty in maintaining their cohesion. As it was, the terrible casualties among the officers of the Indian battalion led to instant confusion. The men were willing to go anywhere, but did not know where to go. As they met the Lancers retiring to trenches further back, they were smitten with uncertainty, and for a moment panic threatened and they broke. Colgrave, retiring with his regiment, which had scattered into groups, saw the Indians passing him in utter disorder. Without a moment’s hesitation he ran in among them, striving by word and action to calm them, restore confidence, and give them their directions. Finding themselves under a leader, the Indians recovered their nerve, formed up and followed him. Despite a withering fire the band maintained their order and discipline and reached the appointed place. Colgrave then went back and rallied other bodies with similar success. The Indians responded immediately to his orders, the German attack was eventually beaten off, and a critical situation was restored by his prompt action. Only once was his good work interrupted-when he saw an Indian officer, severely wounded, lying helpless on the ground. Despite the infernal hail of bullets and high explosives, he carried the wounded man to the shelter of a trench. This fine feat inspired the Indians as much as Colgrave’s personal example. No man ever deserved his honour more than that which Lance Corporal Colgrave brought to the 5th Lancers that day.

772 words.

Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

30 October 1914: Joseph Colgrave of Sheffield and the 5th Royal Irish Lancers wins a DCM rallying leaderless Punjabi Muslims at Hollebeke (Ypres)

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