Tag Archives: Third Battle of Krithia

20 June 1915

Today at Hoe Benham Kittie received George’s last two letters (1 and 3 June 1915 — see my posts of those dates 2015), redirected from Hampstead at 5.45 p.m. yesterday. The Field Post marks are clearly 1 and 3 June … Continue reading

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Fast developments

Yesterday and the day before I did some entirely new research on correlating what documents we have about these few days of Kittie’s life. The result is, of course, still only an hypothesis, but I think it is a plausible … Continue reading

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16 June 1915

Unless you are from a military background, you might not realise that soldiers on active service strive to report back to Battalion HQ at home, or how much other regiments exchange information from the battlefield with each other at home, … Continue reading

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11 June 1915

Sometime today, which was a Friday, Kittie received the following telegram: O.H.M.S. I certify that this telegram is sent on the service of the WAR OFFICE [Signature] 2nd Lieut. Calderon Oxford Light Infantry attached K.O.S. Borderers was wounded June 4th. … Continue reading

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4/5 June 1915

The first wave of the KOSB attack at noon on 4 June was, as the Official History put it, ‘practically blotted out’. The carnage was so terrible that on his own initiative their commander delayed the second wave. At 12.35, however, … Continue reading

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4 June 1915: The Third Battle of Krithia

At nine o’clock last night the 1st Battalion King’s Own Scottish Borderers paraded near W Beach, received a benediction from their padre, and were addressed by their commanding officer. They had been taken from the 87th Brigade and attached to … Continue reading

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‘We’re the Jims’

Hunter-Weston’s VIII Corps (in effect, all the British forces on the Helles front) issued its orders today, Thursday 3 June 1915. They were meticulous and ‘for the first time accompanied by a trench diagram, showing the various objectives to be … Continue reading

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Commemoration

In two days time the following ‘In Memoriam’ will appear in The Times: CALDERON George Leslie, Russianist, journalist, dramatist, anthropologist, adventurer, killed at Gallipoli 4 June 1915. ‘What he believed, he did’ (Laurence Binyon). Since George wrote more for The Times than any … Continue reading

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31 May 1915

Today the fate of George Calderon and several thousand other British soldiers at Gallipoli was sealed. Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, decided to fight a general action on the Helles front without waiting for the extra … Continue reading

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‘Hunter-Bunter’s’ plan

As an essentially literary chap, I do not propose to embroil myself in controversy about the Commander of the 29th Division at Helles, Sir Aylmer Gould Hunter-Weston (1864-1940), popularly known as ‘Hunter-Bunter’. He has been described as ‘one of the … Continue reading

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Two separate biographies

As I have explained on several occasions, apart from his machine gun course on Hayling Island we know nothing specific about George’s training as a lieutenant with the 9th Battalion Ox and Bucks at Fort Brockhurst from the middle of … Continue reading

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The Scott syndrome

Two days ago, I happened to hear on Radio 3 Sarah Walker’s introduction to her ‘Choice’ on Essential Classics, which was Vaughan Williams’s Sinfonia Antartica (sic). As I recall it now, she said that the composer was commissioned to write the … Continue reading

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