by Simonne Waud, Willie's granddaughter
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William Bradshaw Moorhead
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William Bradshaw Moorhead, known by family and
friends as ‘Willie’, was born in north-east
China on 11th December 1893.
His parents were living in Chinkiang (now called Zhenjiang), a British concession city and natural inland river
port on the southern bank of the famous Yangtze River about 175 miles upstream
from the city of Shanghai. Willie was
the eldest child of Irish born John Hercules
Murray Moorhead and Lily (née Forbes) of Scots descent. Only
five of their children lived beyond infancy.
Willie’s father was known as ‘Jack’ and he was stationed in
China as an employee of the Chinese Customs Service. Originally
from the north of Ireland, two generations of the Moorhead family were
employed by the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service, which was run on
behalf of the Chinese by fellow Irishman and childhood friend Robert Hart,
later Sir Robert Hart.
Willie’s mother, Lily, was eleven years younger than
Jack. She was born in 1870 in the
British Consulate in Tientsin, in northern China, to a Scottish merchant called
William Forbes and his wife Martha (née Lockhart). Lily was diminutive in
stature but had a personality to more than compensate - she liked to rule the
roost! Jack and Lily were married in
London in 1892.
Jack and Lily Moorhead returned to China and
Willie was born the following year. His
siblings followed at regular intervals - Amy Matilda Jane, known as Cissy
(b.1895, Chefoo, China); John Robert (b. 1897, d. 1899 Chinkiang, China); Hercules Bradshaw Forbes, known as ‘Herrie’ (b. 1901, Cheltenham, England); Lily Forbes, known as ‘Pussy’ (b.1908, Folkestone, England); Eileen Bradshaw (b. 1912, Chinkiang, China)
and her twin Robert Bradshaw (b.1912, d. 1912).
When the boys were considered old enough
(probably aged about seven or eight, and very young by today’s standards) they
were sent off to prep school in England while other members of their family
returned to China. An English education
for the children, particularly the boys, was considered a greater priority than
family unity. After prep school Willie
was educated at Marlborough College, a private boarding school for boys in
Wiltshire.
The 1911 census shows Lily Moorhead, with her
children Willie, Cissy, Herrie and Pussy, plus two household staff, living in
England at a house in Edensor Road in the Meads area of Eastbourne in
Sussex. Willie was 17 and still a
student. His youngest siblings, a pair
of twins, Eileen and Robert, were not yet born.
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Sandhurst Cadet uniform 1914
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After school Willie attended the Royal
Military College in Sandhurst as a Gentleman Cadet for officer training,
probably for about 18 months. Upon
graduation, on 15th August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I,
Willie was commissioned, aged 20, as a 2nd Lieutenant into the highly regarded
King's (Liverpool) Regiment, an infantry regiment of the British Regular Army,
but he was not immediately sent to the war arena. It is quite possible that he was held in
Regimental Reserve, and it may have been felt that he would benefit from
additional training before being given a field command, and at that time, only
two weeks into the war, the Regimental roster of officers was likely fully
manned. The 1st Battalion of the King’s Regiment, which Willie eventually joined, disembarked in France on 13th August 1914, two
days before his commissioning. Prior to Willie’s arrival in France, the
Battalion fought in a number of significant battles, including the Battle of
Mons (Belgium), the Battle of the Marne, the Battle of the Aisne and the first
Battle of Ypres (Belgium).
Like all
soldiers who travelled to Europe to fight in WWI, Willie witnessed unimaginable
horrors in the trenches of the Somme, memories of which he never discussed
openly. Willie saw active service with
the 1st Battalion from 22nd November 1914 as a member of the
British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front in France and Belgium. He joined the Battalion at Caëstre in northern France shortly after it
had played an active role in the First Battle of Ypres. The timing of his
arrival at the beginning of the winter meant his first taste of life at the
Front was characterized more by survival of the elements than facing the enemy
in battle. The men were faced with
constant rain, cold weather, mud, rats and vermin. One of the men from his Battalion died and
disappeared five or six feet into the mud at the bottom of the trench. Part of the 1st Battalion participated in an
assault against German positions on 10th
March 1915 at Givenchy-lès-la-Bassée, about two km SE of Festubert, and
suffered over 200 casualties, but it is not known whether Willie participated
in this action. This would likely have
been the earliest large action in which the 1st Battalion fought after Willie’s
arrival.
Willie was promoted to Lieutenant on 27 April
1915. His first major battle appears to
have been the Battle of Festubert, in which the Battalion most actively fought
from 17th -19th May 1915.
Although the attack was considered successful, the 1st Battalion
suffered over 600 casualties (killed, missing or wounded), according to the
battalion War Diary. The Battalion also
participated in the even larger Battle of Loos in September 1915. This battle marked the first time in the war
when the British used chlorine gas against the Germans.
On 18th January 1916 Willie was attached to 11 Squadron, the
very first dedicated fighter and reconnaissance unit of the Royal Flying Corps
(RFC), at that time in its infancy and formed at Netheravon in Wiltshire. Willie was trained as a Lewis gun operator,
an early machine gun used on a two-seater Vickers F.B. 5 ‘Gunbus” plane, and as the Observer he sat in front of the
pilot manning a Lewis gun. The squadron
was posted to northern France and on 7th February, Willie, along
with a pilot named Lieutenant Geoffrey H. Norman, were sent on patrol. They were flying a Gunbus when “two cylinders
blew off” the aircraft’s engine and they had to force land the plane east of
the village of Allonville, near Amiens.
Both men were unhurt and returned safely to their unit. In March that year Willie was appointed to
the position of Observer on probationary status, but his stint with the RFC was
short-lived – which was fortunate given that the average life expectancy of
airmen at the time was just eight missions!
His short stay with the RFC may have been intended as a means to give
him more experience in the operation of the Lewis gun. After returning to his Battalion he was given
the responsibility of being its Lewis Gun Officer.
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| Vickers F.B. 5 ‘Gunbus” plane |
The number of Lewis guns assigned to a
battalion in the British army increased from four in 1915 to 16 by July
1916. The Lewis gun weighed between
26-30 lbs. Each gun had a primary and
secondary gunner and a crew of three to six whose primary responsibility was to
carry ammunition and provide it to the gunner as required. Willie’s experience in the RFC made him well
qualified to handle the duties of Lewis Gun Officer with the Battalion.
By the summer of 1916 Willie had returned to
The 1st Battalion of The King’s Regiment. It is not known whether
he was with the 1st Battalion during the month of June, most of which was spent
manning the trenches at Vimy Ridge.
Casualties were experienced, but there were no major battles during this
period. Willie was likely back with the
Battalion in time for its participation in the first Battle of the Somme at the
beginning of July. The Battalion fought
in Battle of Delville Wood, located about 3 km NNW of the small village of
Guillemont, a German stronghold in the Somme Valley, in Northern France. Conditions were dire, with soldiers living
and dying in the trenches, but in spite of these terrible conditions the
British Army somehow retained a sense of humour. An old field map shows how they named the
local roads after some well-known streets in London - Brompton Road, High
Holborn, Fleet Street, Haymarket, Pall Mall, Cheapside, Rotton Row, etc.
On 8th August Willie’s Battalion was engaged in
a battle with the Germans to capture Guillemont Station, on the NW edge of the
village of Guillemont. This was part of
a significant effort that day, by several British battalions, to once again
attempt to capture the village and surrounding areas. The attack was unsuccessful. It was a brutal combat which resulted in
heavy losses. From the 1st Battalion
alone there were approx. 250 casualties (killed, wounded or missing) that day,
including 15 officers and 235 other ranks.
During the fracas on the 8th August Willie’s
Company became isolated and he was put out of action by a sniper hiding up a
tree, who shot him in his upper left arm.
Efforts to rescue the surrounded men were unsuccessful, despite intense
artillery bombardment and attempts by other Battalions to break through to
them. Captain Ernest Murphy and 2nd
Lieutenant Reginald Burrow, two officers of the 8th (Irish) Battalion of The
King’s (Liverpool) Regiment, were among the other
officers taken prisoner that day not far from where Willie was captured. They were to spend the rest of their
captivity with Willie Moorhead at various prisoner of war camps.
Willie was singled out by his Brigadier
General following the battle as one of several “valuable officers” of the Battalion
who were missing. His name appeared on
the Casualty List issued by the War Office on 17th August, but not
until 28th October did word get home that he was alive, wounded and
captured. He was sent to St. Quentin for
treatment by German medics in an enemy field hospital about 40 km south-east of
Guillemont. Here they administered to
some 350 wounded soldiers. Willie was then transported by train, with other
British captives to a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp deep behind the German border.
The POWs were sent to the north-east of
Germany and interned in early October 1916
at Hann Münden Officer’s Camp in
Lower Saxony. Here Willie and his
comrades endured the long cold winter months.
Living conditions in officers’ camps were
grim, but much less harsh than those endured by the lower ranks in other camps.
Conditions in the POW camps were described in a previous blog.
Willie and a group of 166 army, navy and
flying officers, including eight of the future Schweidnitz tunnellers, were moved from
various camps to Augustabad at Neubrandenburg in early April 1917.
This POW camp was set in a former hotel
on the edge of the Tollensee Lake. The
camp was situated on the slope just above the lake enclosed by a wall and
25-foot high ramparts, with guards on constant watch. Fishing and bathing were permitted, but life
was no holiday and they endured endless periods of monotony, boredom and
intense frustration with their captivity.
POWs were moved around from
one camp to another and by the end of the war there were over 70 officers’ camps
scattered around Germany. After eight
months at Augustabad 72 prisoners, including Willie and nine other future
tunnellers, were transported to Schweidnitz (now within Poland and known as Świdnica)
in Silesia in the east of Germany, near the old Polish and Czech borders. They arrived around the middle of December
1917. A description of the camp
and life at Schweidnitz can be found in previous blogs on this site.
In March 1918 Willie
and 23 other officers attempted to escape from Schweidnitz through a
tunnel. Most of the 24 escapees
travelled in pairs. We don’t
know Willie’s escape partner, but his regimental colleagues Capt. Ernest Murphy
and Lieutenant Reginald Burrow were two of those who broke free and it is
possible one of them may have been his escape buddy.
Willie was recaptured and
sent back to Schweidnitz briefly before being transported by train with the
rest of the recaptured tunnellers to the large officers’ camp at Holzminden, arriving there on 16th April. The camp, nicknamed ‘Hellminden’, had a
notorious reputation, as did its Commandant, Karl Niemeyer, a German
national who had lived in the Midwest of America for 17 years. It was in Lower Saxony, in north-west Germany, and
occupied a former cavalry barracks. In
addition to several hundred officers, the camp, like many others, also held a
number of “other ranks”, who acted as orderlies for the officers. It was a high security prison which was
opened in September 1917 for British POWs, and many of the men sent there had
been involved in earlier escape plots.
In June 1918, having spent almost two years in
captivity, Willie was identified as eligible to transfer to a camp in neutral
Holland as part of an English/German officer exchange. However, his transfer was delayed by the
German authorities until October. Fellow
Schweidnitz escapees, Asquith, Burrow, Bush, Fryar, Murphy and Patten were also
transferred to Holland before the end of the war.
Planning for the largest and most celebrated escape of WWI was already well underway
prior to the arrival of Willie and his cohorts at Holzminden. The tunnel escape took place on the night of
23rd/24th July, 1918.
Some of the Schweidnitz tunnellers were known to have assisted behind
the scenes with the Holzminden escape.
The story has been told by several different authors, including Hugh
Durnford, Neil Hanson, Neal Bascomb and Jacqueline Cook. In addition to the escape, these books also
describe conditions at the camp and the oppressive regime of Commandant
Niemeyer.
Meanwhile Willie remained at Holzminden
awaiting trial by a German court for his break out from Schweidnitz. He lived through the Spanish ‘flu epidemic
which swept across Europe for twenty-six months, including Holzminden,
infecting over 90% of the prisoners during the months of July and August. Many people in the town died, but in the camp
somehow the prisoners survived - probably due to the Red Cross supplies and
parcels from home which offered a better diet to prisoners than the townspeople
received.
On 27th September 1918, six months after their break
for freedom from Schweidnitz, Willie and 18 fellow officers were tried by a
German court martial at the Holzminden camp.
They were sentenced to a further six months imprisonment with solitary
confinement. The sentences were exceptionally
harsh, but as the war ended shortly after they were never carried through. Despite this sentence, and perhaps as a
result of remonstrations from
British authorities in London on the grounds that his continued incarceration
in Germany was in breach of the Hague Convention, German authorities finally
allowed his exchange to Holland.
On 12th October
1918 Willie was transferred to an internment camp in Holland. The arrangement sent English and German
officers to Holland, but they were not permitted to return to service. Though still technically incarcerated,
ex-POWs at the Dutch camp enjoyed considerably improved freedom and living
conditions. The two fellow Schweidnitz
escapees, whom Willie was incarcerated ever since his capture in Guillemont,
Burrow and Murphy, both arrived in Holland the same day as Willie, coming from
Holzminden via Stralsund POW Camp.
After more than four long years the war
finally came to an end on 11th November 1918, and Willie was quickly
repatriated to England, arriving at Riverside Quay in Hull on the S.S. Porto on
22nd November.
Following the Armistice Germany was very unstable due to protests,
riots, and paralyzed transportation systems. He was lucky to get home
relatively quickly, since most of his fellow prisoners didn’t arrive home until
late in December.
Willie was awarded campaign medals including
the 1914-15 Star, British War Medal (B.W.M) and The Victory Medal (V.M) for his
active service. Aged almost 25, he had
spent 27 months in captivity, something that caused him great anxiety and
frustration. After the war he remained
in the British Army and was promoted to Captain on 25th March
1920.
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"Willie" after WWI
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The King’s (Liverpool) Regiment, was posted to
Khartoum, Sudan in the early 1920’s and during this time Willie met his future
wife, Zillah Ellise Maloney. A nurse
since 1917, she was working with the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military
Nursing Service (QAIMNS) in Cairo, Egypt.
Willie returned from Egypt in August 1921. Zillah was demobbed as a Staff Nurse on in
May 1922.
Willie and Zillah were married on 18th
August 1923 at St Mary’s Church in Gillingham, and their honeymoon was spent in
Devon and Cornwall. Willie remained with
The King’s Regiment while Zillah bore two
children. Their son, Lindsey Murray
Moorhead followed his father’s military footsteps, becoming an officer in the
Grenadier Guards Regiment.
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St Mary's Church Gillingham
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Willie was promoted to Major in the King’s
Regiment (Liverpool) in 1933, and was then stationed in India at Multan,
followed by Peshawar, at the North West Frontier – now known as Pakistan. Willie and Zillah returned to England on
leave after four years and then went back to India for another tour of
duty. The family often spent time in
Kashmir in the summer months to escape the heat.
In July 1940, at the beginning of WWII, Willie was promoted to Lieutenant
Colonel of the King’s Regiment (Liverpool), but whilst still in India, he was diagnosed
with cancer. He underwent successful
treatment but was forced to return to England.
Following his recovery, Willie
was sent on light army duties to Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. Having spent more than half of WWI
incarcerated, and despite having experienced almost two years in the trenches
of France, he was still very frustrated to find himself again kept out of
frontline action, and away from his army comrades who were engaged in the
action.
Willie returned home from the West Indies and
was stationed at Tidworth in south-east Wiltshire on the eastern edge of
Salisbury Plain. After Tidworth Willie
retired from the King’s Liverpool Regiment on 7th March 1944 and the
family moved to the village of Crowthorne, Berkshire, where they lived in a
large ground floor flat in a large house called ‘Edgecumbe’.
Zillah died on 13th August 1959,
aged 64, and was buried in a single grave at St. Peter’s Church, Frimley near
Camberley in Surrey. Within less than a
year Willie remarried and moved to Godalming.
He was a keen gardener and spent much time pottering in the garden.
Willie’s mother Lily and sisters all had
strong personalities, and Willie was the quiet one of the family. As an adult he was of smallish stature with
blue eyes, brown hair and a neat moustache.
He was an unassuming man, though prone to the occasional bouts of
grumpiness with his grandchildren at the lunch table. He spoke very little about his life
experiences and achievements. He liked routine
and order; and he often left little instruction notes around the house, such as
“Do not touch” or, on the central heating boiler, the message was
something akin to “Do not meddle with this contraption!”.
Willie died on 28th May 1970, aged
76. He came in from the large garden,
having mown the grass, and had a major stroke from which he never
recovered. He was buried on 2nd
June in the Moorhead family grave at St Peter’s Church, Frimley near
Camberley.
o-O-o
