Remembering the fallen of Hill 60

Private Alexander William ‘Will’ Sanders of the Dorsetshire Regiment, who came from Shipton Gorge near Bridport, was one who lost his life on the Western Front at the infamous Hill 60 near Ypres in Flanders, Belgium.

He died on May 2, 1915, along with around 150 of his comrades, as a result of the second ever gas attack mounted by the Germans.

The memory of Will Sanders and the other Dorsetshire soldiers who perished at Hill 60 was commemorated recently when his great-niece Barbara Montgomery, from Rutherglen near Glasgow, accompanied by a group of members of the local branch of the Western Front Association, laid a wreath at Hill 60.

Earlier this year, Barbara travelled to the Keep Military Museum in Dorchester to find out more about her great-uncle Will. The visit led to her trip to Hill 60 – the place where he lost his life, aged just 21.

The story of the gas attack starts on May 1, 1915, at which time the First Battalion of the Dorsetshire Regiment was holding part of the front line at Hill 60, a large spoil heap from the construction of the nearby cutting for the Ypres-Comines railway line that derived its name from the 60 metre contour line that ran through it.

The Regimental History records that May 1, 1915 was a fine sunny day with a very slight south-easterly breeze. The enemy was unusually quiet until around 7.15pm, when they opened a severe bombardment of the hill and the trenches to the right and left, also of the railway cutting in rear.

And then, before the sentries could give the alarm, thick white and yellow clouds of gas were shot out of cylinder nozzles from the German trenches opposite.

CSM Ernest Shephard said in his diary entry for May 1: ‘The scene that followed was heartbreaking. Men were caught by fumes and in dreadful agony, coughing and vomiting and rolling on the ground.

‘I ran round at intervals and tied up lots of men’s mouths, placed them in sitting positions and organised parties to assist them to the support dugouts’.

What followed is described in this graphic extract from John Keegan’s The First World War (1998): ‘Today the pockmarks and tumuli of this tiny battle zone still exude an atmosphere of morbidity sinister even among the relics of the Western Front.

‘On May 1, when the soldiers of the First Battalion of the Dorset Regiment clung to the firestep of their trenches as gas seized their throats and the German infantry pounded towards them across no man’s land, the scene must have been as near to hell as this earth can show.

‘The situation was saved by a young officer, Second Lieutenant Kestell-Cornish, who seized a rifle and, with the four men remaining from his platoon of 40, fired into the gas cloud to hold the Germans at bay. The line was held by the Dorsets’ almost inhuman devotion to duty and the Ypres Salient, though pushed back to within two miles of the city, was thereafter never dented’.

Robin Kestell-Cornish, an old boy of Sherborne School, was awarded the Military Cross for his gallantry but many believed that he should have been awarded a Victoria Cross for his extraordinary courage in this action.

In 1917, then serving as a temporary captain, he was awarded a bar to his MC for marked courage and ability in charge of a working party under heavy fire.

His close friend, Lieutenant Charles Douie of the Dorsets, records how, at Houthulst Forest on March 8, 1918, ‘in the desolate wastes of the Ypres salient, he fell wounded by the side of his general, and died in June 1918 at Wimereux (Northern France)’.

The names of three of the four riflemen who held off the German attack at Hill 60 are known.

They were 4346 Private Mullins, 8432 Lance Corporal Sunderland and 8701 Corporal Webb.

The identity of the fourth Dorset man will never be known, but it is not beyond the realms of possibility that it might have been Will Sanders.

Captain Colin Parr MBE, who has been the curator of the Keep Military Museum in Dorchester and a member of the Dorset & South Wiltshire Branch of the Western Front Association for some years, takes up the story of the visit to Hill 60: “Sadly, Will Sanders was never recovered from this small but very significant hill and so his name is engraved as one of the missing of the Great War on the magnificent but extremely emotionally inspiring monument, The Menin Gate.

“This memorial, designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield and constructed in the late 1920s, marks the historic entrance into the City of Ypres (known to the Tommies as ‘Wipers’) from the Menin Road, a Roman road which intersects the Salient on its way to the town of Menin and which was the scene of bitter fighting for much of the war. During the commemoration ceremony at the main German bunker on Hill 60, which marks the limit of exploitation by Allied Troops in the Great War, Barbara Montgomery not only laid her wreath but also planted a poppy cross with her great-uncle’s name written upon it.

“This act was followed by three other wreath and poppy cross bearers carrying out the same act of commemoration, this time remembering three other Dorsets, firstly Corporal Christopher Thomas King from Wimborne who also succumbed to the gas attack and who had two weeks earlier gone into no man’s land under intense enemy fire to retrieve the body of his Platoon Commander, Second Lieutenant Theodore Wood.

“Christopher King was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for this brave act. Another wreath and cross was laid to Tom (Theodore) Wood and finally a wreath and cross was laid in memory of Private Harry Woods, a young man who had only been with the Battalion for three weeks and was killed on July 5, 1915, along with fifteen of his chums, all of whom had come from the Depot at Dorchester and were manning Trench 38 on Hill 60 when this was hit by an artillery bombardment, killing them all.

“Such was the shock amongst those who survived this attack that Harry Woods’ remains were gathered in and later that evening interred at Larch Wood Cemetery, a short distance from Hill 60, where a number of Dorsetshire men are buried.”

Later that day the group visited Tyne Cot Cemetery, the largest Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in the world, where another of Barbara’s great-uncles, Private John Johnston of the Border Regiment, is remembered as one of the missing with no known grave, along with 32,000 others.

A third of of Barbara’s great-uncles, William Morrison, was killed in the failed British attack at Gallipoli.

She has a heart-rending letter that William wrote to her great-grandfather – he wanted to get married before he left for the Dardanelles but couldn't get the half- day’s leave and then never came back.

Barbara said: “I visited Hill 60 a few hours after I visited the Menin Gate Memorial for the first time and saw my great-uncle’s name on the Dorsetshire Regiment’s panel there.

“It was a privilege to be the first family member to visit Hill 60 in the 98 years since Will died there, to be able to take part in that act of remembrance, and to reflect on how such a peaceful wooded hillside could have been the scene of such horror.

“I heard Colin say that several thousand men still lie beneath the hill and wondered if Will might be one of them, though I understand that the reality was that any grave might later have been shelled and destroyed.”

She added: “I also saw the site of Trench 38 at the foot of Hill 60, where Will would have spent his last days.

“It is strange to think that today that site is just a grass verge on the side of the road.

“To have been able to be in the places where Will spent his last days and near the spot where he was killed brings me a little closer to someone I never knew, but would have liked to have known.

“For me this visit felt like a kind of culmination to several years of family tree research and also to the research of Will’s time in the Dorsets that I have been able to do with help from Ernie Thomas and The Keep Military Museum.”

Ernie Thomas, a volunteer researcher at The Keep, who led the act of remembrance at Hill 60, said: “The moving story of Will Sanders and the way that the Great War touched members of his family is just one of countless tales of heroism and loss that are typical of the experiences of so many other families in Dorset and further afield.”

n If you have any First World War documents and photographs you would like to share, please contact Ruth Meech on 01305 830973 or email ruth.meech@dorsetecho.co.uk.