Edward Denis Festus Kelly

• Matriculated: 1900

• Born: 3 January 1881

• Died : 30 October 1914

• Regiment: 1st Life Guards

• Grave/Memorial: Ypres Menin Gate Memorial: Panel 3

Family background

b. 3 January 1881 at 203, Goldhawk Rd, Hammersmith, White City, London W12, as the only son of Edward Festus Kelly, JP (1854–1939) and Constance Kelly (née Edenborough) (1857–1938) (m. 1879). At the time of the 1881 Census, the Hammersmith address was that of Edward Festus’s father and the family employed a wet nurse and two servants; at the time of the 1891 Census the family was living at Connaught House, off Seymour St, Paddington, London W1, just north of Hyde Park (two servants); and in 1897 it was living at 15, Palace Court, Kensington Gardens, Bayswater, London SW2, once the gardens of Kensington Palace. But by the time of the 1901 Census Edward Festus had become so rich that he could give up work and move out of London to Northerwood House, Emery Down, Lyndhurst, Hampshire (eight servants), an imposing Georgian mansion to the west of Lyndhurst which is visible for miles around and enjoys views across the New Forest to the Isle of Wight. In 1908 the family was living at 49, Charles Street, Westminster, W1, and by 1921 it had moved to 47, Prince’s Garden, Kensington, London SW, just south-west of the Royal Albert Hall and a hundred yards or so from the Imperial College of Science. In 1924 Edward Festus bought Donnington Castle House, Newbury, Berkshire, together with its estate, which passed out of the family’s ownership in 1950.

 

 

 

Parents and antecedents

The family’s history of increasing wealth goes back to Kelly’s great-grandfather, Captain Festus Kelly (c.1759–1839, born in Rathbone, near Dublin, Ireland), who had served in the 96^th Regiment of the British Army. This unit was founded in 1798 and was originally called The Minorca Regiment, since it consisted to a great extent of German-speaking prisoners of war who had been captured on that island by the British in 1783 when they took it from Spain – only to have to give it back to Spain in 1802 under the Treaty of Amiens. But by that time the Regiment had fought against Napoleon during his campaign in Egypt and Syria (1798–1801) and played a particularly significant part in the battles that ended the war in 1801. The Regiment then garrisoned various places in Britain’s expanding empire, fought in Upper Canada during the Anglo-American War of 1812, participated in the Peninsular War against Napoleon (1807–14), and became the 96^th (Queen’s Own Germans) Regiment of Foot in 1816. It was disbanded in Ireland in 1818, reconstituted as the 96^th Regiment in 1824, and survived under this name until it became the 2^nd Battalion of the Manchester Regiment in 1881.

Although we know very little about Captain Kelly’s life or family, we do know that even though he was described as a bachelor when he married Harriet Norris (c.1783–1861) on 12 May 1813 in the Parish of St Marylebone, London, he already had one son (see below) and one daughter – Frances Harriett Kelly (1806–87), whom the 1851 Census would refer to as “Harriet’s daughter.” In c.1823, presumably in Ireland, Frances Harriett married one Malachi Fallon (1806–41), the Assistant Barrister of Limerick, and after she was widowed in 1841, she and her two daughters almost certainly came back to England to live with her father’s widow, i.e. her putative mother, Harriet Norris, who was described in the 1851 Census as “Mrs (Captn) widow of an officer formerly in the 96^th Foot”. By 1851 the Kelly family was beginning to prosper, and according to the same Census the four women lived at 35, Trevor Square, a “private garden square” in Knightsbridge, London SW7, which is situated just south of Hyde Park and Harrods, and about halfway between the Royal Albert Hall and the southern end of Hyde Park Lane. Although Captain Kelly did not leave a will in England, he may have left one in Ireland, where he died.

But in addition to Frances Harriet, Festus Kelly had four sons: Frederic Festus [I] (1804–83); Henry Lindsay (1810–55); William [I] (1814–52); and Edward Robert (1817–96). It is not clear whether they all had the same mother since only William and Edward Robert were born after Festus Kelly married Harriet Norris. Whatever the truth of the situation, Frederic Festus [I] would play the pivotal role in the family’s history. He began working for the Post Office in 1819, when he was about 14 or 15, and rose to the position of Chief Inspector of Letter Carriers for London 2nd Class Deliveries in c.1835, when he was about 29–31. On 5 August 1837, i.e. after his promotion, he married Harriet Richards (1810–86) in the Parish of St Marylebone and this date accords with the date of birth in the following year of their eldest son, Frederic Festus Kelly [II] (1838–1918), whom his parents were rich enough to send to Eton in c.1851 and then to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he matriculated as a Commoner in 1855. But in January 1857 he was able to transfer as a Scholar to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he was awarded the degree of LLB (2^nd Class) in 1860. Although Frederic Festus [II] had been admitted to the Inner Temple on 5 November 1859, i.e. while he was still a student at Cambridge, and went on to be awarded the degree of LLM in 1863, he chose to become a clergyman in the Anglo-Catholic tradition rather than a lawyer and was ordained deacon in 1861 and priest in 1862 (see below). The second son of Frederic Festus [I], John Richards Kelly (1844–1922), was also educated at Eton (c.1857–62) and Trinity Hall, Cambridge (1862–c.1865; BA 1870), was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1871, called to the Bar in May 1878 and practised as a barrister on the South-Eastern circuit. He reported on the High Court of Justice for the Law Times, and sat as Conservative MP for North Camberwell from 1886 to 1892 but was not re-elected, and for the rest of his life worked mainly for Kelly & Co. Ltd (see below).

In 1855, Frederic Festus [I]’s remit was extended to cover all inland mail, but the post of Chief Inspector was abolished in 1860, when he and his family were living at 32, Bedford Square, Chessington, Kingston-on-Thames, Surrey. Nevertheless, he was awarded an annual sum of compensation that was generous enough to enable him to pursue a business interest that he had been developing throughout his time as a civil servant. Right from the outset, Frederic Festus’s Civil Service post had involved supervising the production of the Post Office London Directory, a reference work which had been founded in 1799 by two inspectors called Sparke and Ferguson; it listed all London’s businesses and tradespersons, and provided other useful information. Although the new Chief Inspector had to purchase the Directory’s copyright from his predecessor or his widow, he was then allowed to use Post Office employees to help with the gathering of data; and when, in 1837, Frederic Festus [I] obtained the right to publish the Directory (and similar additions such as Slater’s Directories [est.1795], White’s Sheffield Directory [est. 1822], the Royal Blue Book [est. 1822], and other books “of a similar character”), he made full use of this privilege both before and after he established Kelly & Co. in 1840. But the practice did not enjoy general approval and in 1844 legal considerations and pressures caused Frederic Festus [I] to cease making use of it and begin using employees of his own. These included his (half-?)brothers Henry Lindsay Kelly, and Edward Robert Kelly. Frederic Festus [I] left £21,698 (c.£1.3m in 2005).

Henry Lindsay, a bachelor, played a minor role in the family business, but in 1852 he was committed to Brooke House, Clapton, a lunatic asylum, under the care of Dr Henry Monro (1817–91). Unlike the patients in the notorious Bethlem, the patients in Brooke House came from the middle and upper classes. Henry Lindsay died there in 1855.

William Kelly [I] became a surgeon and an MRCS. But by 1851 he had ceased to practice and according to the Census was the “editor, printer and publisher of the Post Office London Directory”. William Kelly [II] (1841–1915) was his son by his wife Catherine (1816–d. by 1851), and he became a solicitor who represented his uncle Edward Robert in various court cases. In 1852, Frederick Festus Kelly [I] appointed his brother William [I] as the sole executor of his will, which was witnessed by his two other brothers Henry Lindsay and Edward Robert.

Edward Robert, the grandfather of Edward Denis Festus Kelly, was baptized at St James’s Piccadilly on 13 July 1817 with his parents registered as Festus and Harriet Kelly. He was the first member of his immediate family to go to university and matriculated in 1834 at St John’s College, Cambridge, as a Sizar – a poorer student with academic potential who supplemented what his parents could afford to pay for the costs of his study by waiting in Hall on his richer contemporaries. Edward Robert took his BA in 1839 and his MA in 1842, the year in which he was admitted as solicitor, and he practised thereafter in London until 1883. But he also worked for Kelly and Co., and together with William [I], he helped the firm to produce Directories for towns and cities outside London after it had started to do so in 1845.

In 1853 Edward Robert married Harriott Radford (1821–73), the only child of Anderson Radford (1796–1869), who worked in a livery stable in Cambridge, and Frances Shadwell (1801–60), who was employed by one of the Cambridge colleges as a bed-maker. After their marriage, Edward Robert and Harriott lived at Cressy House, Goldhawk Rd, Shepherd’s Bush, London W6, and had four children:

(1) Edward Festus, the father of Edward Denis Festus Kelly;

(2) Robert Henry (1855–75), who attended Westminster School but was accidentally drowned in the River Logan, New South Wales, Australia;

(3) Fanny Lydia (c.1856–1949), who married (1879) her cousin John Richards Kelly (the second son of Frederic Festus [I] – see above);

(4) Anderson Lindsay (1859–1920), who became a professional soldier and an officer in the 24^th Regiment of Foot (South Wales Borderers), and fought in the Second Boer War.

In 1861 the family was living at “Cedars”, 145, Chiswick Square, Chiswick, London W4, just near what is now the M4, and in 1867 Edward Robert became a partner of [William] Kelly & Co., printer, of 29, Old Boswell Court, Temple Bar, and continued in this role from 1869 to 1883, after the firm moved to 51, Great Queen’s St, London WC2. In 1891 the firm was incorporated as a Private Joint Stock Company under the name of Kelly & Co. Ltd. When Edward Robert died at 25, Upper Phillimore Gardens, Kensington, London W8 – about two hundred yards north of Kensington High Street – he left £164,509 7s. 11d. (c.£10 million in 2005).

Kelly & Co. had kept careful records of its profits since 1855 at the latest, and in June 1897, when the Company’s average annual profits amounted to £26,990, one of London’s most respected firms of accountants – Whinney, Smith and Whinney of 3, Old Jewry, London EC (see J.A.P. Whinney) – were able to attest to this in the very impressive Prospectus which they prepared when Kelly & Co. Ltd went public and issued 40,000 shares worth £400,000. According to the Prospectus, the firm’s profits between 1 April 1885 and 31 March 1896 amounted to £269,899 0s. 5d., and by June 1897 it was producing over one hundred directories over and above the Post Office London Directory, of which 50–60 were published annually. The Company had its registered offices in newly built premises at 182, 183 and 184 High Holborn, London WC, and owned a freehold printing works at Kingston-on-Thames built some time after 1877. The Company Secretary was C[onstance] Edenborough – i.e. Edward Denis Festus’s mother, the daughter of a squire who was also a retired Major, and its Managing Directors until 1902 at least were Edward Festus Kelly, who now described himself as a Master Printer and Publisher, and John Richards Kelly, his cousin and brother-in-law. Edward Festus Kelly became so wealthy that he was able to retire from the publishing business when he was about 46, move out of London, and lead the life of a country gentleman and landowner near Newbury. He was an enthusiastic sportsman, owned a stud (which Edward Denis Festus helped to run), became Master of the New Forest Deerhounds, and was an early advocate of the cultivation of sugar beet in England. On his death he left £467,211 gross (c.£18,700,000 in 2005).

Frederic Festus Kelly [II] was not connected with Kelly and Co. and spent the first 20 years of his ordained life in four curacies: at Hilton, Cambridgeshire (1861–64), at Stockport, Cheshire (1864–70), at St Mark’s Kensington (now a Coptic Church) (1870–71), and at St Michael’s and All Angels, Paddington (1871–80). But from 1880 to 1915 he served as the Vicar of Camberwell, Surrey, a parish with a gross income of £1,985 and a population of 19,787 people. In 1873 he married Blanche Bradford and they had three children:

(1) Rose Edith (1874–1932), who between 1903 and 1909 was the second wife of the occultist, artist and author Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), once dubbed “the wickedest man in the world”;

(2) Eleanor Constance Mary (1877–1957);

(3) Gerald (later Sir, RA) Festus Kelly (1879–1972), the distinguished portrait painter who was President of the Royal Academy from 1949 to 1954.

Frederic Festus [II] died at 65, Gloucester Place, Portman Square, London W1. On his death he left £6,125 9s. 6d. (c.£129,000 in 2005).

 

Detail from a group photograph of the Rupert Society, probably named after the colourful and impetuous Prince Rupert of the Rhine (1619–82, the Commander of the Royalist Cavalry during the Civil War of 1642–46). The Society existed from 1897 to c.1910 and seems to have been a combination of debating society and dining club.

 

Education

Kelly attended Warren Hill Preparatory School, Meads, near Eastbourne, Sussex (defunct; cf. E.L. Gibbs, E.R. Donner), from 1888 to 1894 and then Eton College from 1894 to 1899. He matriculated at Magdalen as a Commoner in January 1900, having passed Responsions in Trinity Term 1899. He took his First Public Examination in Trinity Term 1900 and began to read Classics, but he seems to have devoted most of his time at Oxford to rowing and playing golf, and in 1901, i.e. about the time his family moved to Berkshire, he left without taking a degree. He later became a keen polo-player and show-jumper. When making his will, he gave his address as Hollington House, Newbury, Berkshire.

 

Military and war service

Kelly initially held a Militia Commission in the 1^st Volunteer Battalion of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry (Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry from 1908). He was given a Regular Commission as a Second Lieutenant in the 7^th (Queen’s Own) Hussars (“The Lily-white Seventh”, “The Saucy Seventh”), on 11 May 1901 and promoted Lieutenant on 4 March 1903. As such, he served in the Second Boer War from 1902 to 1905, then in India from 1905 to 1911, and was promoted Captain on 22 February 1911.

 

 

After retiring from the Regular Army on 11 May 1912, Kelly became a member of the Special Reserve on retired pay and so was recalled to the colours in August 1914. But as the 7^th Hussars were stationed in Bangalore (Bangaluru, Southern India), Kelly retained his rank as Captain and on 18 September 1914 was attached to ‘C’ Squadron of the 1^st Life Guards, the senior regiment in the British Army, with Captain Lord Hugh Grosvenor (1884–1914), the son of the 1^st Duke of Westminster, as his Squadron Commander. By early September 1914, in common with the other two Regiments of the Household Cavalry (the 2^nd Life Guards and the Royal Horse Guards – more usually known as The Blues, in which P.V. Heath was serving as a Regular officer), the 1^st Life Guards was badly in need of officers, non-commissioned officers and troopers. This was because a large number of its regular establishment – including Heath – had been requisitioned during the first half of August 1914 for a new Composite Regiment of Household Cavalry. Commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Edwin Berkeley Cook (1869–1914; d. in hospital on 4 November 1914 of wounds received in action at Zandvoorde on 22 October 1914), it comprised three service Squadrons, one of which was ‘B’ Squadron of the 1^st Life Guards, each composed of four 16-file troops, plus a Headquarters Company whose staff had also been transferred from the 1^st Life Guards. The Composite Regiment left Hyde Park Barracks for Southampton on 15 August 1914 and disembarked at Le Havre on the following day as part of the 4^th Cavalry Brigade in the [1^st] Cavalry Division, commanded by Major-General (later Field-Marshal) Edmund Henry Allenby (later the 1^st Viscount of Megiddo and Felixstowe) (1861–1936).

Consequently, one of the major and most pressing tasks of the three Household Cavalry Regiments that remained in London was to make good the manpower deficit, a process that operated in three ways. First, to quote the autobiography of R.A. Lloyd, who served with the 1^st Life Guards (see Bibliography): “Officers [like Kelly] came from many sources and were, like the men, good, bad, and indifferent.” Then there were the regimental reserves – men who had served 12 years with the colours or men who had served eight years with the colours and four years on the reserve list. This avenue supplied the 1^st Life Guards with some 60 men, “a mere drop in the sea” according to Lloyd. Finally there were the “line-cavalry reservists”, with Dragoons and Dragoon Guards going to the 1^st Life Guards, Lancers going to the 2^nd Life Guards, and Hussars going to the Royal Horse Guards. Large batches of the latter began arriving almost at once and within a week or so the 1^st Life Guards had reached its full complement of 600 men. But most of the draftees had served for eight or more years – mainly on garrison duty abroad; most of them had a very high opinion of their old Regiment; and all were difficult to assimilate, especially the Irish cavalrymen, who, according to Lloyd, were totally uninterested “in all our attempts to make them comfortable and promote their welfare” and “were always obsessed with a burning desire to get drunk and sing”. Forming a disciplined fighting unit from this motley crowd was all but impossible amid the distractions and flesh-pots of London, and the situation improved only when the reconstituted 1^st Life Guards was assigned to the 7^th Cavalry Brigade. Until April 1915 the Brigade was commanded by Brigadier-General (later Lieutenant-General Sir) Charles Toler MacMorrough Kavanah (1864–1950), and formed part of the 3^rd Cavalry Division that was commanded until March 1915 by Major-General (later Field-Marshal) the Honourable Julian Byng (1862–1935), one of the most successful British General Officers of World War One, who served as Canada’s twelfth Governor-General (1921–26) and was ennobled in January 1928 as the 1^st Viscount Byng of Vimy. At the end of August 1914 the Brigade was sent to train at Windmill Hill Camp, just outside Ludgershall, a small town in Wiltshire on the edge of Salisbury Plain and 16 miles north-east of Salisbury, where it officially came into being on 19 September 1914. Although a cavalry division normally comprised three Brigades, the 3^rd Cavalry Division consisted at first of only two – the 6^th and 7^th Cavalry Brigades. The third Brigade arrived on 20 November 1914 to make good the losses caused by the battles to the south-east of Ypres in October and November (see below). As the two Brigades remained at Ludgershall until 5 October 1914, they took no part in the First Battle of the Marne (7–12 September), the First Battle of the Aisne (13–28 September), or the first half of the subsequent “Race to the Sea”, during which the Allies and the Germans chased each other north-westwards in order to take the pivotal crossroad town of Ypres, Belgium, and thereby gain easy access to and control of the all-important Channel ports.

Lloyd records that the field training in Wiltshire was continuous, disciplined and intense – with the result that “in an incredibly short time men and horses were all in good condition”. Even so, after everything had gone “as smoothly and efficiently as could be desired” during the day-time training, disorder set in once more in the evenings and had to be dealt with by measures that proved effective but would now be a court-martial offence. So it was something of a relief for the officers and non-commissioned officers when, at 06.00 hours on the morning of 5 October, the 7^th Cavalry Brigade entrained at Ludgershall for Southampton, where, on the afternoon of 6 October, Kelly’s ‘C’ Squadron embarked on the SS Algerian (1896–1916; badly damaged by a German mine on 12 January 1916 two-and-a-half miles from the Needles while en route from the Solent to Avonmouth; she finally sank off Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, but with no loss of life). On the evening of the same day the transports set off eastwards down the English Channel, keeping close to the English coastline for fear of submarines, and at dusk on 7 October the Algerian joined a huge convoy in the Downs – the stretch of water off the east Kent coast between the North and South Foreland – that was taking the 3^rd Cavalry Division and the 7^th Division to the Continent. After a cold and uncomfortable crossing the convoy reached Ostend at about 23.00 hours, where it had to wait for several hours outside the crowded Belgian port, and Kelly’s ‘C’ Squadron finally disembarked in glorious weather at about 11.00 hours on 8 October to an enthusiastic welcome by the local populace.

 

 

Then, together with ‘A’ Squadron, it marched 14 miles up the Belgian coast to the port of Zeebrugge, where it waited until late afternoon before linking up with ‘D’ Squadron and then spending the night in bivouacs behind the dunes at Blankenberghe, just south of the town. On 9 October Antwerp (Anvers) fell to the Germans despite the arrival of British reinforcements in the shape of two naval Brigades and a marine Battalion, and the 1^st Life Guards marched c.13 miles south-south-eastwards via the old town of Bruges to Lophem (Loppem), about three miles to the south, where they bivouacked in the grounds of a large château. At about midday on 10 October the Life Guards began to march towards billets at Ruddervoorde, about seven miles further south. But because of the cobbled roads and the large number of Belgian refugees, they had once again to bivouac in the open and they reached their goal only on 11 October. On 12 October the Brigade looped south-eastwards to Roeselare (Roulers) and spent the night of 12/13 October in bivouacs at Rumbeke racecourse, in a south-eastern suburb of Roeselare. On 13 October the Brigade marched about three miles south-eastwards to the town of Iseghem, and after getting up at 05.00 hours on 14 October, the day when the “Race to the Sea” officially came to an end, it set off towards Ypres itself, c.16 miles to the south-west and as yet undamaged, where once again it was welcomed enthusiastically by the townspeople and tasked with reconnoitring the area to the east of Ypres, looking for German advance patrols. So at noon on 14 October various elements of the 7^th Cavalry Brigade set off into the surrounding countryside: ‘D’ Squadron of the Life Guards and the Regimental Headquarters “headed off down the road towards the village of Wytschaete”, about five miles south of Ypres, where it linked up with elements of Lieutenant-General Allenby’s [1^st] Cavalry Division. They then spent 48 hours in the nearby village of Groote Vierstraat before marching to Ypres on the morning of 16 October and thence to the village of Poelcapelle, six miles to the north-east of Ypres and c.11 miles to the north of Groote Vierstraat. A small patrol consisting of Kelly’s ‘C’ Squadron was involved in several minor clashes with the enemy, during one of which they surprised about 30 Uhlans in the village of Gheluwelt (Gheluwe), about five miles north of Menin. They killed two or three of the enemy, wounded several more, took at least one prisoner, and suffered the Regiment’s first fatality – a trooper – in the process. Elements of the 2^nd Life Guards reached the outskirts of Menin, nearly 15 miles to the south-south-east of Ypres, where they encountered units of the advancing German Army. So as it was now becoming clear that the Germans were advancing towards Ypres in force, all the scattered units of the 7^th Cavalry Brigade returned to Ypres, where the entire 3^rd Cavalry Division was tasked with plugging a huge gap in the front line between the village of Zandvoorde, about four miles south-east of Ypres, where the southernmost section of the 7^th Division’s trench line came to end, and the French Cavalry, who were positioned near Houthulst Forest, c.16 miles to the north and two miles north of Poelcapelle.

 

 

On 16 October 1914, a patrol from Kelly’s ‘C’ Squadron was on the outskirts of the large village of Staden, just to the east of the Houthulst Forest, when it was surprised by a well concealed machine gun that killed a second trooper and a horse. R.A. Lloyd also drily remarked that on that evening at 21.30 hours “our little game of hide-and-seek with the enemy came to an end” when the Brigade was relieved by French troops and returned to comfortable billets in Passchendaele. The following day saw no fighting, but outposts were posted to the east of Passchendaele and protective patrols went out, one of which discovered that a château a mile to the east had been occupied by German Uhlans. So the 1^st Life Guards’ ‘A’ Squadron was sent to raid it at dawn on 18 October, but that was almost too late and all the British could do was “shoot a few Uhlans and capture half a dozen horses”. Once ‘A’ Squadron had returned to Passchendaele, the entire Regiment moved back to Staden, about eight miles to the north-east, and on the same day the Germans began to shell Ypres in preparation for what would become known as the First Battle of Ypres (19 October–30 November 1914). When, on 19 October 1914, the Allied front line around the Ypres Salient was attacked by two German Armies – the Fourth Army from the north-east and the Sixth Army from the south-east – the 7^th Cavalry Brigade was heavily engaged in screening duties near the northern half of the major road that runs between Roeslaere in the north and Menin in the south. According to the military historian Jerry Murland’s account, the Brigade had left its billets at about 06.00 hours and was approaching the Hooglede–Staden–Roeselare crossroads, some three miles to the north-east, when it unexpectedly encountered a large force of German infantry and cyclists from the 52^nd German Reserve Division that was supported by artillery. The ensuing action lasted from about 09.00 hours to 15.30 hours, with the 1^st Life Guards on the left flank, the 2^nd Life Guards in the centre, and the Royal Horse Guards on the right flank, and when it was over the Brigade was compelled, like all of General Byng’s 3^rd Cavalry Division, to withdraw about four miles south-south-eastwards to the small town of Moorslede.

 By 06.00 hours on 20 October the 7^th Cavalry Brigade was near Zonnebeke and digging a line of defensive trenches on the left of the 7^th Division. So although the Brigade had originally been ordered to defend the road from Westroosebeke to Passchendaele, the increasing pressure of the German advance, the ferocity of the fighting, and the sudden withdrawal of the French 79^th Regiment on the left of the line compelled the 7^th Division, including Kelly’s Regiment, to retire another two miles south-westwards and spend the night of 20/21 October in Zonnebeke. Here the 7^th Cavalry Brigade was detailed to act as the Reserve for the left flank of the 7^th Division – which meant, according to Lloyd, that “whenever any part of the line within a few miles was hard pressed or in danger of being broken, or whenever the French ran away and left a gap, the reserve brigade was called upon”. This happened so frequently, Lloyd added, that the 7^th Cavalry Brigade became known as “Kavanagh’s Fire Brigade”. On the morning of 21 October, the 7^th Cavalry Brigade formed a flank guard for General Haig’s Army, which had finally arrived on the previous day, and accompanied it northwards to Staden. The Brigade then went into the front line to the west of Zonnebeke in order to reinforce the 22^nd Infantry Brigade when it was in danger of succumbing to the pressure of a divisional attack by the Germans. But after staying there until 16.00 hours, the Brigade moved back into Reserve at St Eloi (Sint Elooi), seven miles to the south-east and three miles south of Ypres itself.

At dawn on 22 October, the 7^th Cavalry Brigade was ordered to move a few miles north to the village of Hooge (see B. Pawle), where it linked up with the 6^th Cavalry Brigade but remained in Reserve all day. And after spending the night of 22/23 October in the nearby village of Klein Zillebeke, at 08.30 hours the Brigade set off south-eastwards for three miles to the hilltop village of Zandvoorde, about six-and-a-half miles south-east of Ypres, in order to take over in the trenches there from the 6^th Cavalry Brigade. But on reaching Zandvoorde Ridge, it was ranged by German artillery, and once it had been decided that a daylight relief was impossible, the Brigade withdrew to Klein Zillebeke. But it returned after dark to take over the defensive positions that the 10^th (Prince of Wales’s Own Royal) Hussars had hastily constructed on the forward slopes of the low, broad ridge to the south-south-east of the village. Here, from 22 to 25 October, the 6^th and 7^th Cavalry Brigades alternated daily in the broken line of shallow and primitive defensive positions which were, in the words of one account, “for all the world like long graves”, and in the words of another account, “little more than a string of unconnected holes”. These makeshift, cramped and crowded trenches, in which “it was impossible to stretch oneself either standing up or lying down”, crossed the road linking Zandvoorde with the village of Ten-Brielen, just to the north-north-west; and because they also followed the contours of Zandvoorde Ridge, they formed a promontory that jutted out into the countryside to the south-east and so could be observed very easily by the Germans. All of which meant that the defensive positions were extremely vulnerable since they were open to attack on three sides, and the situation caused Lord Ernest William Hamilton (1858–1939), a professional soldier who later became a Conservative politician, to call the whole position a “death-trap”, as did many soldiers who fought there.

 

 

On 23 October the Germans started to shell the British positions at Zandvoorde heavily, systematically and accurately, paying particular attention to the church to prevent it from being used as an observation post. But finally, at just after 18.00 hours on 25 October, the three Regiments of the 7^th Cavalry Brigade were relieved by the 10^th Hussars in pouring rain and marched back to their bivouacs in Klein Zillebeke. But the relief parties missed Kelly’s ‘C’ Squadron, which therefore had to stay on Zandvoorde Ridge for another monotonous and uncomfortable 24 hours. Moreover, when the 1^st Life Guards got back to Klein Zillebeke, one of its Squadrons was immediately sent to the nearby village of Kruiseke in order to reinforce the badly depleted 2^nd (Regular) Battalion of the Border Regiment, part of 20^th Infantry Brigade in the 7^th Division, which had been in the trenches there since early October. The infantrymen of the 1^st (Regular) Battalion, the Royal Welch Fusiliers, part of 22^nd Brigade, fared no better on 25 October, for although they were guarding the northern flank of the British defensive line where it circled round the eastern side of Zandvoorde and crossed the roads that led to Kruiseke and Gheluvelt, they could not be relieved either. The weather cleared up on 26 October and at c.14.00 hours, all the available units of the 7^th Cavalry Brigade were despatched to Kruiseke to cover the withdrawal of the beleaguered 20^th Brigade, which was coming under increasing pressure from the advancing Germans. The Royal Horse Guards led the subsequent attack as dismounted infantry, followed by the 1^st Life Guards, with the 2^nd Life Guards in Reserve. The Horse Guards charged through the British line and, catching the Germans by surprise, captured their original line, which the 1^st Life Guards then occupied and handed over to the infantry, putting down defilading fire at remarkably little cost to themselves. In the evening, Kelly’s ‘C’ Squadron was able to return to Klein Zillebeke – cold, hungry and in very wet clothes.

By 27 October, German pressure on the British front line was increasing, especially in its south-east sector, as General Max von Fabeck (1854–1916), the former General Officer Commanding XIII Corps who was now in command of the much larger Army Group Fabeck (five Divisions), had decided to break through between Messines and Zandvoorde in order to take the high ground at Kemmel, about five miles south-west of Ypres. From here, he hoped, his Army Group would be able to take Ypres rapidly and then advance to the coast with equal dispatch in order to deprive the Allies of their all-important supply ports. So at 17.00 hours, despite the continuing German bombardment, the 7^th Cavalry Brigade marched on foot to relieve the 6^th Cavalry Brigade in the front line at Zandvoorde, where, in largely foul weather conditions, they were compelled to remain until 30 October, as it turned out that the 6^th Cavalry Brigade, which had been sent to support the infantry elsewhere, were unable to reciprocate on the evening of 28 October. During this stint in the front line, the men of the 7^th Cavalry Brigade learnt that at 05.30 hours on 29 October the Germans had broken through the British front line at Gheluvelt, a mere two miles to the north-east and one of the few observation points on the ridge line east of Ypres that was still in British hands, but that they had been driven back at bayonet point by the 2^nd (Regular) Battalion of the Worcestershire Regiment, part of the 5^th Brigade in the 2^nd Division.

The morning of 30 October 1914 was “frosty and raw”, and at 06.00 hours (+/–) – the time given in the various accounts of the battle is by no means consistent, partly because of the hour’s difference between German and British time – von Fabeck suddenly began what he hoped would be his decisive move. He ordered a massive bombardment of Gheluvelt between 06.45 and 08.00 hours by his 266 heavy howitzers and mortars, and a similar bombardment of the badly protected British positions on Zandvoorde Ridge. Despite the poor visibility, the bombardment did very great damage to the latter positions and caused many casualties among the c.600 British troops who were entrenched there – though fewer than the high percentage (80%) claimed by Farrar-Hockley (1924–2006). At 08.00 hours, once the shelling had ceased, the 39^th German Infantry Division supported by three line Battalions of light infantry – c.13,000 men altogether – attacked Zandvoorde from the south-east. Although the men of the 7^th Cavalry Brigade managed at first to hold on to their positions, these became untenable after about an hour and the order to retire was given at about 10.00 hours, enabling the Germans to overwhelm the entire Ridge.

But for reasons that are not clear, the order did not reach all the units that were defending the Ridge and three that were occupying particularly exposed positions suffered very badly as a result, not least because some chose to fight to the last man and the last round. In consequence, Kelly’s and Grosvenor’s ‘C’ Squadron, which was positioned just to the right of the road to Ten-Brielen that left Zandvoorde in a south-eastwardly direction, was reduced to around ten survivors; on their left, on the opposite side of the road, ‘C’ Squadron (less one troop) of the 2^nd Life Guards (commanded by Captain Alexander Moore Vandeleur [1883–1914]) was wiped out except for one man; and the same fate overtook the Machine-Gun Section of the Royal Horse Guards that was positioned just to the north of Kelly’s Squadron and commanded by Charles Sackville Pelham, Lord Worsley (1887–1914), the son of the 4^th Earl of Yarborough. According to both Murland and Mike McBride (see Bibliography), the above three units refused to surrender, fought until their ammunition was exhausted, then resorted to hand-to-hand fighting, and were either bayoneted or shot at close quarters whether wounded or not. So although quite a few units of the 7^th Cavalry Brigade did manage to retire “in good order”, it lost nine officers and 96 Other Ranks killed in action (plus an unknown number of wounded), with most of those fatalities being the 70 men comprising Vandeleur’s Squadron who vanished without trace. The 1^st Battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers suffered even more badly since all its officers were killed or wounded, 54 men were taken prisoner by the Germans, and out of a Battalion that originally numbered around 1,100 officers and Other Ranks, only 86 were present at roll-call on the evening of 30 October. Sir Morgan Crofton, the author of The Crofton Diaries, who joined the 2^nd Life Guards as a replacement officer on 14 November 1914, described the battle at Zandvoorde as “a bloody and gruesome engagement” which “effectively [punctured] the myth that the Cavalry were spared the realities of serving in the front line”. Nevertheless, the action at Zandvoorde was given very little coverage by the British press – partly because it was one of many that were taking place around the Ypres Salient at the time, partly because, by the end of 30 October, the British had been pushed back to a line running from Gheluvelt to the corner of the Ypres–Comines Canal at Hollebeke, a distance of just over two miles, and partly because, by the evening of 31 October, the British line had been pushed back almost everywhere except at Zonnebeke and Klein Zillebeke. Although the First Battle of Ypres had just over another four weeks to run, the German advance on Ypres in this sector of the front came to an end on 17 November 1914, when the German High Command made its last attempt to break through the Allied line of defence.

 Kelly, aged 33, was one of the Brigade’s men killed in action; and, partly because he has no known grave, nothing was known about the circumstances of his death for nearly six years. But in 1920, a letter from a German source came into the possession of Kelly’s family, who sent the following translated extract to Magdalen: “It appears that as the Germans approached the trench [on 30 October 1914] there was only one officer left who refused to surrender & continued firing till the Germans shot him – you will be glad to know poor Denis Kelly died like a hero.” It appears, too, that one of the German officers removed a diary and some personal belongings from Kelly’s body and promised to forward them to his family: they duly arrived early in 1915. Coincidentally, an artillery battery in Army Group Fabeck was almost certainly commanded by Leutnant der Reserve Ernst Stadler, who had been a German Rhodes Scholar at Magdalen (1906–08; 1910) five years after Kelly had left without taking a degree, and who fell at Zandvoorde on the same day as Kelly after being hit by a British shell. A huge monument outside Zandvoorde commemorates the 7^th Cavalry Brigade’s costly part in the action there, and Kelly is commemorated on Panel 3 of the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial, on a plaque in St Andrew’s Church, Sonning-on-Thames, Berkshire, and on the War Memorial on Woolton Hill, Hampshire. He left £7,242 8s 2d.

 

 

 

Bibliography

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

  

Special acknowledgements:

 The editors wish to acknowledge their debt to Mike McBride’s moving, carefully researched and detailed book of 2016 which, while focusing on the last two months of the life of Captain Lord Hugh Grosvenor, also provides much valuable information and many graphic accounts of the history of the 1^st Life Guards between mid-August and late October 2014. On p. 77, McBride suggests that “our” Kelly was “probably” the same Kelly who died alongside Lord Grosvenor on 30 October 1914. Our researches confirm this supposition.

Their grateful thanks also go to Jerry Murland, the prolific military historian, for generously allowing us to make use of his equally magisterial book of 2010, which, by focusing on the histories of the Household Regiments during the first three months of World War One, provided us with much valuable background and collateral material on the fighting that led up to Kelly’s death in the Battle of Zandvoorde.

The above two modern sources have been bolstered by first-hand material from R.A. Lloyd’s beautifully written and humane autobiography A Trooper in the ‘Tins’, which first appeared in print in 1938 and recounts his experiences with the 1^st Life Guards in admirable detail.

 

Printed sources:

[Anon.], ‘Kelly, J.R. (Camberwell North), The Times, no. 31,799 (30 June 1886), p. 5.

[Anon.], ‘Mr E.F. Kelly’ [obituary], The Times, no. 48,340 (24 June 1939), p. 17.

[Anon.], ‘Tattersale’s Sale’, The Times, no. 38,944 (27 April 1909), p. 16.

Hamilton (1916), pp. 237–8, 259–66.

Bell (1922), pp. 64–7.

Lloyd (1938), pp. 68–127.

Farrar-Hockley (1970), pp. 76–176.

Leinster-Mackay (1984), pp. 330, 335.

Gardner (2003), pp. 212–27.

Roynon (2005), p. 80.

Beckett (2006), pp. 42, 74, 90, 123, 154–7, 166.

Jerry Murland, Aristocrats Go to War: Uncovering the Zillebeke Churchyard Cemetery (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2010), pp. 12, 36, 87, 89–91, 105, 116, 121–39.

McBride (2016), pp. 46–52, 72–9, 83–92, 100–85 (passim).

 

Archival sources:

MCA: 025/P1/1 (Detail from a group photograph of the Rupert Society).

MCA: Ms. 876 (III), vol. 2.

OUA: UR 2/1/39.

WO95/589.

WO95/1135 (2^nd LG).

WO95/1155 (2^nd LG).

WO95/1155/1.

WO95/1655/1 (2^nd Border Regiment).

 

On-line sources:

 ‘Kelly’s Directory’, Wikipedia article on-line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly%27s_Directory (accessed 15 November 2017).

‘Frederic Festus Kelly’, Wikipedia article on-line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Festus_Kelly (accessed 15 November 2017).