Major George R. Fielding, 9th (Service) Battalion, The Sherwood Foresters.

1881-1915

George Fielding was born in Midhurst in 1881, the son of the Rev. George Fielding who shortly after became vicar of Knill, Herefordshire and his much younger Austrian wife, Minna who came from Klagenfurt on the Wörtersee. We can only speculate as to the reaction of that small 19th Century rural congregation to their vicar who was by then in his early fifties arriving with an Austrian wife twenty years his younger who gave birth to her second child shortly afterwards!

George attended Shrewsbury School at what must have been an unhappy time in his life as his ten year old sister, Mary, died in 1893 which event must have coincided with him entering the school and then his father died in 1898.

George served in the and was commissioned into The Sherwood Foresters (2nd Battalion) on 17th May 1902. The reason for his choice of is not apparent as the family had no known connections with either Nottinghamshire or Derbyshire. The South Wales Borderers would have been an obvious choice or perhaps the Welsh Regiment. George’s great great great grandfather (he incidentally died arrested for debt and living within the rules i.e. one mile of the Fleet Prison) had raised the 41st Foot, an Invalids’ Battalion which later became part of The Welsh Regiment. The most plausible theory is that, as the family of Lt. Col. L.A. Bosanquet who was later killed whilst in command of the 9th (Service) Battalion at Gallipoli lived nearby in Monmouthshire, the two families knew each other. Probably it was he who encouraged George to join the Sherwood Foresters.

George was gazetted Lieutenant on 12th December 1906 and it was probably after this that he served as ADC to General Hubert Plumer.

On 16th August 1911 George is listed as serving with the West African Regiment. Whilst there he shot buck, leopard and elephant as young officers did in those days and a letter from Henry Thoresby, a kinsman, tells how later his own mother was fascinated by George’s stories of his time in the Gold Coast as it was then. George was reportedly a great raconteur a gift that he perhaps inherited from his great great grandfather, Henry Fielding, best known as the author of ‘Tom Jones’. Indeed the Thoresby family was convinced when they read ‘Sanders of the River’ that Edgar Wallace had used George’s stories of his Gold Coast experiences in that book.

George was gazetted Captain on 21st January 1913 and he married Evelyn (“Charlotte”) Jewell on 30th September 1914. Francis (“Frank”) Lloyd who was the 9th Battalion Adjutant at Gallipoli and wounded there was his best man.

On 29th October 1914 George is shown as a Temporary Major Commanding ‘C’ Company, The 9th (Service) Battalion of The Sherwood Foresters. After initial training close to , the battalion moved as part of the 11th Division to Belton Park, Grantham. On 5th April 1915 the 11th Division marched some 49 miles to Lutterworth bivouacking en route overnight first at Melton Mowbray and then at Birstall. At Lutterworth it embarked by train to Witley, Hampshire with the 9th Battalion, The Sherwood Foresters based for final training nearby at Frensham Camp.

The battalion left Frensham by train on 30th June for Liverpool from which they sailed for Alexandria via on H.M. Transport ‘Empress of Britain’ the next day, two days incidentally before George’s only son, also ‘George’ was born. On 16th July, four days after leaving Alexandria where the battalion had been allowed to disembark and march around the town, they reached Lemnos and arrived on Mudros on 18th July. Here the battalion was transhipped onto a smaller vessel, the ‘El Kahirah’ and thence into lighters.

On 20th July the battalion having been re-embarked onto the ‘El Kahirah’ departed for Cape Helles at the tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula where it arrived at 8 p.m. and was then transferred to trawlers.

These were initially forced by Turkish shelling to stand off before disembarking the battalion onto to the S.S. ’River Clyde’ which was being used now as a landing stage. After two days in a rest camp the battalion moved into reserve trenches in the Eski Line and two days later on 23rd July they took over from the Drake and Hawke Battalions of the Royal Naval Division in the firing line at Gully Ravine. There was a good deal of work to be carried out reinforcing trenches and burying dead bodies and this was the mens’ first experience of trench warfare.

George had warned his men to beware of Turkish snipers the accuracy of whose rifle fire was well known but during the early hours of the next morning, 24th July he was shot in the head by a sniper whilst moving along a communications trench thus becoming the battalion’s first casualty. George lies in Plot II, Grave D 3 in Skew Bridge Cemetery. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact site of his death but research suggests that it was in the firing line between The Vineyard and Krithia Nullah. George’s death was shortly to be followed that day by that of Private Daniel Barfield who is buried in the nearby Redoubt Cemetery. This would further suggest that they were both killed in that same area North West of The Vineyard. Perhaps George’s body was taken to the rear and may even have been one of those later exhumed before being reburied at Cape Helles in Skew Bridge Cemetery.

On 1st August the 9th Battalion was relieved by the French and marched back to Helles where they were embarked on S.S. ‘Osmanieh’ for Imbros prior to landing again at Suvla Bay.