Family War Heroes - Walter Henry Albert Sillence (353671)

Southampton on 26 August 1917, and a city bustling with the movement of troops.  Amongst those leaving home for a new and unfamiliar territory is 33-year-old Walter Henry Albert Sillence, who has been posted as a gunner to the Royal Garrison Artillery.  They are en route to a gruelling campaign that has been raging in Mesopotamia.  It’s a campaign that has gone on since the early days of the war, but at the time of Walter’s embarkation, the tide has been firmly turning in favour of the Allies – Baghdad, the Ottoman Empire’s southern capital, has fallen just a few weeks before, and this fresh wave of troops sets off with new-found optimism, to finish the job.

Walter received his notice and signed the attestation forms back on 29 November 1915.  The next day, he was posted to the Army Reserve - the forces in the UK who were going through basic training and awaiting posting overseas.  More than a year passed, during which time Walter was fully vaccinated, and assigned the regimental number 353671.  Walter is not a particularly young man for the military, nor is he particularly tall, measuring only five foot five, and perhaps this is why he has been posted to the RGA instead of the infantry.  As the HMAT A74 "Marathon" (A transport ship borrowed by the Australians, and recalled by Britain in April 1917) leaves Southampton Docks that morning, Walter watches his home city disappear into the distance.  He leaves behind everything familiar; his parents, one brother (the other having already been enlisted in the RGA), and a wife from whom he has already separated.

HMAT A74 Marathon

The Marathon and its cargo of troops has negotiated the Mediterranean, made it through the Suez Canal, and rounded the entire Arabian Peninsula.  Walter disembarks on 19 October 1917, probably setting foot on a foreign land for the first time.  There is little fighting to be done over the winter, and political disarray ensues almost immediately, as General Maude, who has been commanding the British troops in Mesopotamia, dies of cholera.  He is replaced by General William Marshall, who halts operations for the winter, meaning that Walter's introduction to Arabia is a relatively quiet affair.

Walter's role in the Royal Garrison Artillery is as a gunner, firing the “big guns”.  Consequentially – and very fortunately – this means he sees limited, if any, frontline combat.  Positioned far behind the fighting, the artillery is responsible for softening-up enemy defences, by shelling targets according to map coordinates and information wired to them by pilots from the Royal Flying Corps.  Being a gunner is not without its hazards, however – Walter suffers a partial loss of hearing from which he will never recover, and has even managed to receive a sting from a scorpion during his posting.

Winter gives way to spring 1918, and Walter is posted to 394th siege battery, joining them on 2 March.  Walter and his battery sees action at Hīt, Khan al Baghdadi and Kifri.  Hīt is a bloodless battle, the Ottomans evacuating before a shot is fired, whilst at Khan al Baghdadi, the artillery battery supports an offensive that sees Allied troops dig in behind Ottoman lines.  When the city is attacked, the Ottoman troops evacuate, falling straight into Allied hands, with 5,000 prisoners taken.  Kifri barely gets a mention in the history books, but is reported in the New Zealand Herald on 6 May 1918:

Following Kifri, Walter embarks at Maqal (now a suburb of Basrah) for another trip around the Arabian Peninsula, as the battery moves to Egypt, arriving at Suez on 17 May 1918.  Then it's onwards to Tul Karen in Palestine, then Haifa, Surafend (now Tzrifin), then back to Kantara as the war draws to a close.  As fate has it, Walter misses the Armistice, suffering a bout of influenza that means he is absent from 28 October to 30 November 1918.  Returning to fitness, he rejoins his battery in Kantara, and moves with them to Ismailia, Egypt, where he remains through the start of 1919, as monthly demobilisation slowly reduces the numbers.  We have no date for when Walter actually returns home, but presumably it is by May 1919, when the 394th siege battery is disbanded.  At this time, Walter is transferred to class “Z” Army Reserve, his demobilisation papers instructing him, in the event of re-ignition of the war, to report immediately to Plymouth.

Walter Henry Albert Sillence was my great grandfather.  On return to civilian life, he recommenced his work as a warehouse foreman, supplying meats to the ocean liners of Southampton.  He went on to marry his second wife, Dorothea, and to have one child, my grandma Stella.  Walter and Dorothea lived the rest of their lives in or around the Southampton area.  He died in 1962, decades after a war that had claimed so many lives.  What remains of Walter's army record can be viewed here.