The Luck to Survive

Following an exchange of comments with Jonathan on his Palouse Wargaming Journal blog about my great uncles who served in Palestine in the Great War I have done some digging around in what records I have of their service. The primary source for this search is a book titled “The Luck to Survive” privately published in 2004 by Brian Edwards, who married my great-uncle’s step daughter, and drew heavily on the war time diaries and letters of my great uncles. Much of what appears here is paraphrased from that work.

My maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Caroline Blundell, the second of five children, three boys and two girls, of Charles and Ann Blundell of Halstead, Kent. Various other members of the family have traced the Blundell line a considerable way back - the first positive date being 1259, but with three possible generations before that leading back to William Blundell, Lord of Ynes, co Lancaster. Whether all that is correct I don’t know (although it is certificated), but what I do know is that Charles Blundell was a fruit grower, specialising in strawberries and raspberries, in Kent with holdings of several hundred acres on a farm known as Mapledene in Halstead. The family was well known in the area and a hunting event was held annually that was well attended.

A photograph taken at the 1900 hunt with the two Blundell brothers, Edmund (Eddie) third from the right and Douglas to his right. The large bearded man is Dr W.G. Grace, the famous cricket player.

When war came in 1914 Eddie joined “A” battery, of the Honourable Artillery Company in September. Aged 39 Eddie was small man of five feet, three inches, but was a skilled horseman (I still have a silver cup won by him at a ‘pony race’ in 1912) and he became a driver in the battery. After seven months of training and coast watching the battery sailed from Bristol to destinations unknown. After two days of rough weather they entered the Mediterranean then re-coaled in Malta before landing at Alexandria. The battery marched east and went into camp at Kantara on the east bank of Suez Canal where the Royal Horse Artillery maintained a rest camp. While other units were sent to Gallipoli, Eddie’s battery sweltered in the heat and endured the monotony of camp life. During his stay here he participated in horse races and spent his leave days in Alexandria and Port Said.

Driver Eddie Blundell flanked by the battery farriers

In December the battery was entrained for Cairo and went into camp beside the Pyramids where there was a standing bet for anyone game to try to climb to the top of the Great Pyramid in ten minutes, but they did not remain there for long before they were sent back to Alexandria to face a threat in the Western Desert where the local Senuissi people had taken up arms. The battery went into action for the first time on 23 January 1916 in support of the Australian Light Horse. Eddie wrote that the action felt like like five minutes, but it was five hours during which they fired some 400 rounds and lost one man and three horses wounded.

While Eddie was in his first action in Egypt, his younger brother Douglas was joining up. In September 1915 the 29 year old Douglas joined the Artist’s Rifles (28th London Regiment). The Artist’s was effectively an officers training unit and included in its ranks the war poet Wilfred Owen, although there is no evidence that he and Douglas were ever friends. Basic training was undertaken at Hare Hall Camp in Essex. In April 1916 Douglas commenced his officer’s training and was commissioned on 14 June. He arrived in France after the Battle of the Somme and was was assigned to Company B, 2/20th London Regiment on 11 September.

Private Douglas Blundell, Hare Hall Camp

He joined his battalion on the 13th opposite Vimy Ridge a few miles north of Arras. Immediately on arrival he was assigned to repair a break in the wire caused by German shelling, a mission he and two volunteers undertook after nightfall. Douglas was described as a “…gentle man and never came to terms with his own authority,” and when the team set out one of the soldiers told the sergeant “we’ll look after him.” On return they paid him a high complement, “we got an ‘officer’ this time.” 

2nd Lieutenant Douglas Blundell, 1916

After several rotations to the trenches, the battalion was withdrawn from the line for a move that was rumoured to be towards the Somme. However, it was not east they went, but south…to Marseilles. Then on 19 November, after some additional training, they boarded the Cunard liner Ivernia bound for Salonica, Greece. Here the six British divisions of the Salonica Expeditionary Force joined French, Greeks and Serbians on the Macedonian Front to defend against the Bulgarians in the mountains to the north. For five months activity on Douglas’ front was light and the routine appears to have revolved around wire repair and night time scouting, but in April a more significant action took place.

This was a diversion for the main British attack to the west and the battalion was ordered to destroy the trenches in front of them. The action was preceded by a bombardment intended to cut the wire, but when the infantry advanced they found the wire had been repaired and they had to cut through it, which they did with the aid of a Bangalore torpedo, in the face of machine gun fire. The battalion took the enemy trenches, which had been abandoned, and although under constant fire they fulfilled their task of destroying the enemy position. After half an hour they were given the order to fall back on their own trenches. Douglas recounted “it was a terrible business getting back over a mile of “No man’s Land” - it being shelled all the time and their searchlights playing on us as we withdrew.” The loss of the operation was 18 killed, 70 wounded and 3 taken prisoner.

Shortly after this Douglas was made transport officer and spent less time in the trenches, rotating between headquarters and the line, something he didn’t like “…I would rather it be one thing or the other…” Then on 19 May the battalion was pulled out of the line, relieved by the Black Watch, and marched back to Salonica. On 15 June they boarded the ship Kashmir and sailed on the 16th to an unknown destination.

That unknown destination was Alexandria. Douglas continued with his duties as transport officer busily sorting out camels at Ismailia while his fellow transport officer went off on leave to the fleshpots of Cairo. Douglas got leave a few days later and took the train into Cairo where he visited the Pyramids and the Mohammed Ali Mosque before shopping in the bazaar - to this day I have a number of items that he purchased in that bazaar. 

On 7 July the battalion commenced its movement east, out of Egypt. They marched first to Kantara and then onto the railhead at El Belah, near the coast. There they camped in the open desert. Water was limited to one gallon per man per day and the mules had to be taken two miles every day, further after the pump broke down. Despite the relative proximity to Eddie’s unit, the brothers never met in Egypt and at the end of the month Douglas heard of Eddie’s impending discharge due to a medical condition and that he would be home for Christmas. Meanwhile Douglas remained in his desert camp, but was far from impressed of the camp location “I’m hanged if I can see where the land of milk and honey comes in…”, he wrote.

Douglas Blundell in Egypt 1917

In September things began to heat up. Douglas’ division (60th London) was facing the Turkish line between Gaza and Beersheba with a no man’s land of perhaps ten miles. When the attack on Beersheba commenced Douglas was kept busy ferrying ammunition and other supplies on his camel train. As soon as Gaza fell to the British, the line of advance moved near to the coast where the water supply was more certain. The advance north continued.

“What do you think of the address?” he asked his sister in a letter home post marked Jerusalem. When the city surrendered Douglas went shopping and bought a bible and book of common prayer encased in a cover made of olive wood. He visited the Al-Aqsa Mosque and other sites in the Holy City. Christmas Day was spent in Jerusalem in the pouring rain. The next day the battalion was on the move again, towards Jericho and the River Jordan. 

In February 1918 he became a 1st lieutenant and the battalion took Jericho. A period of leave followed and he was lucky enough to get transport to Egypt where he sailed down the Nile from Aswan to Kom Ombo, Edfu and then Luxor where he toured the Valley of the Kings and Karnak, returning to Cairo by train. He was back on the front in early April where the battalion was supporting the operations of the Australian Light Horse in action across the Jordan, but when the Turks counter-attacked the battalion had to rapidly retreat and Douglas struggled to  get his transport limbers back. No sooner had they made it back to their camps than they were ordered back to Jerusalem and on 22 May they were told that the 60th Division was to be broken up and the 2/20th was to return to France. Douglas was to go ahead with the transport sections. In early June he left Palestine.

By the middle of August the battalion was back in France and in position between Bapaume and Arras. On the 29th they were involved in a heavy action near Vraucourt in which they captured 5 German officers and 255 men, 18 machine guns, 7 trench mortars, 2 anti-tank rifles, two big ammunition dumps and 600 tons of coal, but it had come at a cost to the battalion of 33 killed and 139 wounded. Two days later the battalion was rotated out of the line and Douglas, after two years abroad, was granted a fortnight’s leave and he travelled home to Kent to visit family. 

He was back with his battalion in early October just after after the Hindenburg Line was breached and the British were driving on Cambrai.  Douglas’s battalion pressed forward and on 2 November, while on reconnaissance, there was a sharp exchange of artillery fire in which his captain was hit. Douglas searched for stretcher bearers, making sure that his officer was evacuated despite being wounded himself. He then returned to the battalion and remained with it until the reconnaissance was ended before being filtered back through the casualty network to the 24th General Hospital at Etaples, where he remained until after the Armistice. 

Douglas’ war was over. His wounds healed and he returned to civilian life although he continued in the Territorials until 1923. When his father died in 1929 he inherited the family business and became a leader in the community, serving as a local councillor and as a magistrate. He married Eileen and lived until 1974, passing away a few days before his 89th birthday. 

Eddie married Flora and continued to work in the business. He died in 1958, the year I was born. There was a photograph of Eddie in full dress of a Royal Horse Artillery driver in my mothers possessions, but it has been lost.

I never met Great Uncle Eddie, but did meet Douglas - although I was only two years old and with no actually recollection of the occasion the only evidence I have of that meeting is a family photograph taken on a visit to England in 1960.

As I was writing this I was struck by a common theme between my mother’s and father’s families - fruit. While the Blundells were fruit farmers and were responsible for developing new varieties of raspberrys, my paternal grandfather was an orchardist and in the late 1890’s and early 20th Century layed out many of the orchards in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. So while one side specialised in berry fruit the other specialised in apples and stone fruit, but on different continents,