Fact file:

  • Matriculated: 1910

  • Born: 17 June 1891

  • Died: 13 October 1915

  • Regiment: Gloucestershire Regiment

  • Grave/Memorial: Loos Memorial: Panels 60 to 64

Family background

b. 17 June 1891 at 40, Clifton Park Rd, Bristol, as the only son of Cecil Henry St Leger Russell (1862–1938) and Blanche Welsted Russell (née Wansey) (1867–1934) (m. 1890). At the time of the 1901 Census the family (two servants) was living at the above address and later moved to 34, College Rd, Bristol, and then 5, Norland Rd, Clifton, Bristol.

 

Parents and antecedents

Russell’s father was born in Trinidad and from 1881 to 1885 studied Classics at Trinity College, Oxford, where he was awarded a 2nd in Classical Moderations in 1883 and a 2nd in Greats in 1885. He won the Gaisford Prize in Greek verse in 1883 and the Gaisford Prize in Greek prose in 1884. From 1887 to 1928 he was an assistant master in Classics at Clifton College, Bristol, President Warren’s old school, and from 1907 to 1918 he was the Housemaster of Brown’s House.

Russell’s mother was the daughter of a country lawyer.

 

Siblings and their families

Russell had a sister, Gwendoline Cecil St Leger (b. 1897, probably in Los Angeles, d. 1958), later Trew after her marriage (1918) to Dr Archibald Neil Charles Trew (b. 1872 in Toronto, d. 1929 in Los Angeles); one son, two daughters. Her later name was Ehrenborg after her marriage (1933) to Rolf Killigrew Ehrenborg (1893–1961), but the marriage was dissolved in 1953, after which he married (1955) Maud Isabel Monk (d. after 1961; née Coleman, a widow).

Dr Trew, whose father was a clergyman, was an assistant surgeon in the US Army and stationed on the Philippines for two years until he returned home in March 1902 to be the health inspector of a large district in the centre of Los Angeles. His son Archibald Harley Niel Trew became a ship’s master.

Ehrenborg was an officer in the 2nd Battalion, the Border Regiment, during World War One, landed in France on 30 January 1915, and rose to the rank of Captain. He left £10, 271 19s.

 

Education

Russell attended Clifton Preparatory School (also known as A.C. Rowley’s School) from January to December 1901 (cf. C. Edwards) before moving to Packwood Haugh Preparatory School, Hockley Heath, Warwickshire, from 1902 to 1905 (founded 1892, moved in 1940 to Ruyton XI Towns, Shropshire, and in 1941 to Park Bank, Shrewsbury, Shrophire) (cf. C.H. Davies). From 1905 to 1910 he returned as an Entrance Scholar to Clifton College, Bristol, where he made rapid academic progress and, according to his school reports, acquired “independence of mind”. When he first became Head of School House, his performance was described as “not good”, but after a while he was rated as “excellent” but lacking in self-confidence. He matriculated as an Exhibitioner in Classics at Magdalen on 18 October 1910, having passed Responsions (Greek and Latin and unprepared Algebra) in September 1910. He took the First Public Examination in the Hilary Terms of 1911 and 1912, when he was awarded a 3rd in Classical Moderations.  From Trinity Term 1912 to Trinity Term 1914 he read for a Pass Degree (Groups C1 [Geometry], Trinity Term 1912, and B1 [English History] and B2 [French Language] in Trinity Term 1914), BA 1914.

 

War service

Russell was in the Clifton College Engineer Corps and then the Oxford University Officers’ Training Corps from 1910 to 1914. So on 10 May 1914 he applied for a Commission and in June of that year he joined the 3rd (Reserve) Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment. He was promoted Second Lieutenant on probation on 29 June and in this capacity instructed recruits in musketry at Gravesend until December 1914.  His Company Commander, Captain [later General DSO] Alexander William Pagan (1878–1949), who had an exceptionally high opinion of Russell and would call him “the best officer, I think, who has ever been in the Regiment”, later commended the “exceptional work” that he had done for the Battalion before embarking for France.  But the Regiment’s 1st (Regular) Battalion had been in France since the outbreak of war as part of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, and by early January 1915 only four of its original complement of officers were still serving with it. So Russell was detached from the 3rd Battalion, arrived in France on 3 January 1915, and reported for duty with the 1st Battalion on 17 February 1915, while it was resting at Marles-les-Mines, about eight miles south-west of Béthune, as one of the replacements for the officers who had been lost during the Retreat from Mons, the Battle of the Aisne, and the First Battle of Ypres.

Harley Raymond Russell
(Photo courtesy of Magdalen College, Oxford)

“He was the best officer, I think, who has ever been in the Regiment.”

On 24 February, the Battalion went into the line and formed part of the Festubert defences to the east of Le Plantin on a line running north–south.  On 7 March it went into Brigade Reserve and thence, on 14 March, into Divisional Reserve at Les Hinges, a village just north of Béthune, so took no active part in the Battle of Neuve Chapelle (10–13 March 1915), the first major offensive by the British Army. On 22 March it returned to the line, just east of Neuve Chapelle, before it was realized that there were well-positioned enemy snipers in the houses at the north-west corner As a result, the Battalion took several casualties, one of whom was Russell, who, while standing outside his shelter, sustained “three lacerated wounds from a rifle bullet which entered the left side of the back close to the spine”. He was sent first to a Casualty Clearing Station and then hospitalized in Boulogne, where fragments of metal were removed from his back. On 30 March he was evacuated to England on the HMHS St David (1906–32; renamed SS Rosslare in 1932; scrapped 1933) where a Medical Board at Caxton Hall, Westminster, London SW1, awarded him two months’ sick leave. But on 4 June 1915 a second Medical Board at the 2nd Southern General Hospital in Bristol passed him fit for General Service, and from 3 June to 25 August 1915 he was stationed with the 3rd Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment at Milton Barracks, Gravesend, where he was promoted Lieutenant on 26 July. From 25 August to 1 October 1915 he was in France with the 2nd Entrenching Battalion, but his Regiment objected to this transfer and on 1 October he joined ‘C’ Company in the Regiment’s 10th (Service) Battalion – which had been in France since 9 August – as a replacement for officers who were killed, wounded and missing in the Battle of Loos during the assault on Hulluch on 25 September (see F.M. Carver, H.H. Smith, C.T. Mills and G.B. Gilroy).

HMHS St David (1906–33)

 

From 1 to 5 October the Battalion rested at Noeux-les-Mines, just to the south-south-east of Béthune, before being sent to the old German front-line trench near Hulluch that had been captured on 25 September, and here it stayed until 13 October 1915, when it was ordered to attack the German lines to the east of Chalk Pit and the west of the Lens–Hulluch–La Bassée road at 14.00 hours. Although the Battalion reached its first objective, the first German trench, it failed to reach the second German trench and was forced to fall back in the dark to its original line after losing five officers and 50 Other Ranks killed, wounded and missing. These included Russell, in ‘C’ Company, who was shot through the heart halfway between the first and second objectives, aged 24. Russell has no known grave and was classed as missing in action until at least 1917, and Pagan, who had an excellent opinion of Russell, later described him as “a good example of an old head on young shoulders; in addition to which his exceptional personal bravery and his care for his men made him a good officer”. Russell is commemorated on Panels 60–64 of the Loos Memorial. The Magdalen Fello and diarist C.C.J. Webb heard of Russell’s death on 21/22 October 1915 and described him as “one of our best”. J.A. Parnell Parnell, who had overlapped with Russell at Magdalen by a year, joined the 10th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment as a replacement subaltern on 27 October 1915, and like Russell before him was assigned to ‘C’ Company.

 

Bibliography

For the books and archives referred to here in short form, refer to the Slow Dusk Bibliography and Archival Sources.

 

Printed sources:

 [Thomas Herbert Warren], ‘Oxford’s Sacrifice’ [obituary], The Oxford Magazine, 34, extra number (5 November 1915), p. 18.

 [Anon.], ‘Lieutenant H.R. Russell’ [obituary], The Cliftonian, 25 (December 1915), pp. 116–18.

 Pagan (1951), pp. 1–9.

Leinster-Mackay (1984), p. 108.

 

Archival sources:

The Archive, Clifton College.

MCA: Ms. 876 (III), vol. 3.

OUA: UR 2/1/73.

OUA (DWM): C.C.J. Webb, Diaries, MS. Eng. misc. d. 1160.

WO95/1265.

WO95/127.

WO339/56991.