Friends Newsletter June 2017
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The Newsletter of the Friends of Cumbria’s Museum of Military Life June 2017 THE LION & THE DRAGON Bn (Lonsdales) Border Regiment during the final days of the In honoured memory of Lt Tom Story and his Somme offensive. Although the Battle of the Somme was comrades of 11th Bn Border Regiment (Lonsdales). considered to have reached its bloody conclusion by 17th November the dying continued. On the morning of 18th Thomas Story, known to his friends as Tom, was born on 16th November Lieutenant Tom Story led his platoon once more into June 1890, into a well-off farming family in the village of that cauldron of death. Thomas Story, the Bank Clerk and Botcherby, a small agricultural community near Carlisle. It was farmer’s son, of Botcherby, Carlisle, would not return. the home village of several families involved in agriculture and However his body was recovered and Tom was eventually laid ancillary trades. to rest in Waggon Road Cemetery, Beaumont Hamel. His Thomas had an above average mother would receive formal notice in due course, and as a education for the period and had beneficiary of his will, the sum of 71 pounds, 14 shillings, and decided to pursue a career in 5 pence. His medals were sent to his brother Robert. On 1st Banking. By the time he was 24 he April 1919 Mrs Margaret Story made a formal application for a was employed as a Bank Clerk in pension for the loss of her son. Hull. He would expect to remain in On 9th Dec 1916 the Cumberland News published a very this field of endeavour, perhaps detailed obituary. It included a letter to his mother from a moving up through the ranks to a fellow-officer, Lt W. R. Gillespie; reasonably comfortable retirement in his later years. “Dear Mrs Story, it is my painful duty to inform you that your In Sept 1914, just four months after son, Lt Tom Story, was killed in action. Probably by now you his 24th birthday, war intervened. will have had War Office intimation of the fact, but it does not He volunteered for active service. make this letter any easier to write. The battalion, after lying Lieut Thomas Story out all night during the dark on snowy ground, went forward at Attested at Carlisle on 6th Sept he was posted to 9th Bn Border dawn with the other battalions of the brigade to attack the Regiment as 15259 Pte Thomas Story. enemy’s trenches. The fire of the enemy artillery was intense, He is described in his documents as 5 feet 8 and three-quarter and heavy machine-gun fire was opened as soon as the enemy inches tall, weighing 144 lbs, with 38” chest, and in good realised that the battalion was “pushing”. Your son’s platoon physical condition. He was unmarried. His father had died some had just reached the enemy barbed wire, Tom at its head, when years earlier so his mother was named his Next of Kin a bullet brought him down. I am glad to be able to tell you that His talents were recognised very quickly. He was appointed his death was painless”. Orderly Room Sgt on 14th Sept, eight days after enlisting! “He died as I have often heard him say However this was not what he had joined for. A month later, he would have wished to die, leading and at his own request, Tom reverted to the rank of Private. his men into action. That wintry It would be another seven months before he again received morning lost us many officers and promotion. Following a few days in hospital for treatment for many men, but no braver heart than Scabies he became, on 27 May 1915, a Lance Corporal. you son’s. His platoon, to which he Thomas must have quickly shown leadership qualities as less was greatly attached, idolised him for than three months later we find that he has been recommended his strength, his courage, and his for a commission. On 25th August 1915 he was appointed a good-nature. We, the remaining Temporary Second Lieutenant in 10th (2nd Res) Bn Border members of his company mess, miss Regiment. After a short course at an Officer School of him no less. Let me assure you of my Instruction at Cambridge he joined his battalion. deepest sympathy, and that of the two He wrote a new Will on 10th July 1915 appointing his brother other remaining members of our Robert as his Executor and his mother as his main beneficiary. company mess, as well as that of all His pay as an officer then was seven and sixpence per day The family tribute, in the officers in the battalion”. (37.5p). Carlisle Cemetery, to By the autumn of 1916 and following until then an injury-free Lieutenant Tom Story By James Henderson period of action, we find Tom Story leading a platoon of 11th The Newsletter of the Friends of Cumbria’s Museum of Military Life June 2017 The War under the Western Front Captain Brisco had a reputation as an efficient and fearless The RE Tunnelling Companies. leader. He was awarded the Military Cross for an action on 10th Richard Brown Brisco was born in Carlisle in 1878, the son of Oct 1915 when he and another officer went to investigate a Richard and Jane Brisco of Ghyll House, Wreay, near Carlisle German counter-tunnel which his miners had broken into. and the grandson of Richard and Ruth Brown, of Hayton, near About 80 yards into the tunnel they encountered a German Carlisle. He attended the local village school. He served in the working party. Captain Brisco engaged them with revolver fire Boer War as a 20 year old trooper in the Duke of Cambridge’s while the other officer prepared an explosive charge. They Own and subsequently trained as a solicitor. retired to the entrance, blew the charge, and efficiently fore- However he never practiced; instead he sought adventure stalled a German follow-up. around the world taking part in several exploratory expeditions, notably in the upper regions of the Amazon. Richard became a The regimental diary of 172 Company describes the events of successful big game hunter in British East Africa and was in San the morning of 9th April 1917, the day Richard died. Francisco during the great earthquake. He came to be known as “The Ubiquitous Richard Brisco.” “Casualties, Temp Captain R B Brisco KIA” (Killed in Action), nd Richard re-enlisted, in 1914, into 2 King Edward’s Horse. Pte Walker E and Pte Tandy N, both attached from 15th Commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1915 he was Sherwood Foresters. (both wounded). assigned to 172nd Tunnelling Company. In February 1916 he was wounded in the arm but in 3 months was back in action. 05.30hrs. Two C mines blown in connection with the attack on 172nd Tunnelling Company’s main task was to undermine Vimy Ridge. German positions along the Messines Salient, constructing deep 1. From the east end of Goodman Subway into German front tunnels packed with explosives in preparation for a major line forming trench across No-Man’s-Land, 150ft long x 35 ft assault. The explosive capacity of these mines was huge. Indeed wide and 15ft deep. when 19 mines with a combined capacity of 800 tonnes of The following operations were also carried out in connection Ammonal were detonated simultaneously at 3.10 am on 7th June with the attack. 1917, the sound of the explosion was so great it was heard in (i). Three mobile charges exploded in lip of Longfellow Crater London, and even, it was reported, in Dublin. It is estimated that in order to make passages for assaulting infantry into the over 10,000 German soldiers were killed in an instant by that crater. blast. The British troops advanced across the resultant empty (ii). Two forward units from Goodman Subway opened up into terrain over a greater distance than in the previous three years NMLand and saps driven into CT formed by buried mines. combined. (iii). Forward unit from Lichfield Subway opened up for taking Enemy tunnellers often met each other in the darkness and signal cables forward into captured trenches. fierce battles ensued with frantic hand to hand combat, often (iv). Assault party went over under Captain Brisco, located using sharpened spades and other unorthodox weapons. Fire- Prinz Arnulf Tunnel, investigated for mines, and reopened en- arms, particularly rifles with bayonet, were rarely used, being trances. unwieldy and impractical in a narrow space. (v). Similar party located Volker Tunnel, killing or taking Richard Brown Brisco MC, was killed by shellfire at Vimy prisoner those inside, cutting the leads of charges, and reopen- Ridge on 9th April 1917 at the age of 39 and is interred in ing entrances. Ecoivres Military Cemetery in France. He did not live to see the (vi). All enemy mine shafts investigated and cleared, all enemy success, two months later, of his specialised skill. mines neutralised”. The grave of Captain Richard Brown Brisco in Ecoivres Military Cemetery. An eye-witness describes that morning in June 1917. “Suddenly at dawn, as a signal for all of our guns to open fire, there rose out of the dark ridge of Messines and ‘Whitesheet’ and that ill-famed Hill 60, enormous volumes of scarlet flame throwing up high towers of earth and smoke all lighted by the Richard’s mother Jane died when he was six years old. This flame, spilling over into fountains of tribute in Hayton churchyard suggests a dearly loved fierce colour, so that many of our soldiers waiting for the assault grandson who would have had considerable contact with his were thrown to the ground.