Sunday 26 April 2015

On this day in RWF history 26th April 1915

Lt-Col Charles Hotham Montagu Doughty-Wylie 
Attached to HQ MEF.

Doughty-Wylie was 46 years old, and a lieutenant colonel in The Royal Welch Fusiliers, British Army when, "owing to his great knowledge of things Turkish" according to Bell-Davies, he was attached to General Sir Ian Hamilton's headquarters staff of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force during the Battle of Gallipoli.
On 26 April 1915, following the landing at Cape Helles on the Gallipoli peninsula of the SS River Clyde, Lieutenant Colonel Doughty-Wylie and another officer (Garth Neville Walford) organized and made an attack through and on both sides of the village of Sedd-el-Bahr on the Old Fort at the top of the hill. The enemy's position was very strongly entrenched and defended, but mainly due to the initiative, skill and great gallantry of the two officers the attack was a complete success. However, both Doughty-Wylie and Walford were killed in the moment of victory. Doughty-Wylie being shot in the face by sniper and died instantly.
Doughty-Wylie is buried close to where he was killed, immediately north of Sedd-el-Bahr, opposite the point at which the 'SS River Clyde' came ashore. His grave is the only solitary British or Commonwealth war grave on the Gallipoli peninsula: The Turkish authorities moved the graves of all other foreign soldiers to the "V Beach" graves except for his.
His Victoria Cross, posthumously awarded for gallantry during a beach landing at Gallipoli in April 1915[8] is displayed at the Royal Welch Fusiliers Museum in Caernarfon Castle, Gwynedd, Wales. Damaged plating from the “River Clyde” can be seen in the Hampshire Regimental Museum in Winchester, England.

A Turkish officer stands by the grave in 1921.

Newspaper cutting of the original grave.

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