BACK TO NEWSLETTER 2000 CONTENTS
Hugh Thompson takes a closer look at Clayesmore's Victoria
Cross,
Geoffrey Heneage Drummond.
Do you find it difficult to pass
exams, finish courses, get qualifications, hold down a job, even get one, make
ends meet. Well so did Drummond. He won his VC in the almost suicidal raid on
Ostend in May 1918. A battle that was as pointless as it was glorious.
Although most recognise that date as near the end of the First World War it
didn't feel like that at the time. Luddendorf's last great offensive was pushing
towards Paris and Britain was suffering daily losses from all out Uboat attacks.
One solution was to attack and disarm the linked U-boat ports of Zeebrugge and
Ostend thereby reliev' ing our supply chain, tying down German forces and
generally lifting the morale of a war weary public. This was to be done by
driving old cruisers full of concrete into the mouth of the canals and sinking
them in such a way that U boats and their
attending destroyers could no longer
get in or out. This meant attacking heavily defended positions. All the naval
officers and men were volunteers who well knew what they were in for. The main
attacks were on Zeebrugge and were largely successful. However in the first
attack on Ostend the Germans removed all the navigation buoys and combined with
bad weather it meant that all the block ships ran aground way off target. In
that first attack on the 23 April Drummond, skippering a Motor Launch, was
commended for his 'skill and judgement' in helping create the smoke screen. He
was promoted to Lieutenant Commander.
It was decided to go back on the 9th of May to finish the job. This time, while one of the two block ship cruisers Saphho broke down en route the other, Vindictive, got right inside the harbour wall. There it was pinned down by murderous fire from above however, it was sunk partly blocking the harbour and the next even more dangerous part of the operation started. Getting the crew off.
Drummond's ML254 was hit on numerous times as it made its manoeuvre to the side of Vindictive. His second in command and a sailor were killed. Drummond was hit three or four times and lost 'a gallon and half of blood'. However he stayed on position long enough to get two officers and 38 men off the Vindictive and then back his boat out into the open sea. There, weakened by his wound, he passed out.
But the adventures didn't end there. The wounded motor launch was eventually picked up just before it sank by the fleet's flagship. This in turn hit a mine and was holed and had to be towed into Dover.
Drummond later described the night-time battle scene, "The firing seemed
to grow in intensity, machine guns' rattle piercing the deeper roar of the
batteries. Star shells, searchlights, the glare of bombardment gave us plenty of
light. One could see the figures on the piers, and even the hotel buildings
along the shore. But sea mist had fallen, and actually visibility was so bad
that I had to rip open the canvass roof of the bridge and stand on the shelf
with my head and shoulders out and work the telegraphs with my feet. By this
time I was getting rather numb with loss of blood. A machine gun twenty yards
away on the other pier was doing its level best. It gave me two bullets in the
right forearm, but they dropped out on the way home, having penetrated only half
and inch ;my theory is that, fired point blank, they had not picked up their
spin, and so were held up by my duffel coat."
His main wounds were '2.5 inches of copper band in the back of my left thigh and a piece of shrapnel which lodged behind my collar bone within a fraction of my lungs." He fainted with his loss of blood and only a tourniquet applied by fellow VC winner Victor Crutchley (from the Vindictive) saved his life. Fort the rest of his life he walked with a severe limp.
In commending Drummond for his VC the dispatch noted, 'It was due to the indomitable courage of this very gallant officer that the majority of the crew of the Vindictive were rescued". But his gallantry was twice over. For Drummond was no hearty in fact the very opposite. He had broken his neck in a fall aged nine and been taken out of Eton after only a term and a bit in 1900. (His father was the author of the Eton Boating Song) No doubt a muscular intolerance of 'slackers' had something to do with his removal. Clayesmore was founded largely for rejects from the major public schools such as Eton. After four years at Clayesmore he tried Oxford Christchurch and then there was a stint at the South East Agricultural College, neither of which ended in glory or qualifications.
He was one of seven, having four brothers, his father (Captain A.W.) was an officer in a fashionable regiment. His family were wealthy enough from their banking connections to have homes in St James, SWl and Gerrards Cross. Footloose if not fancy free, he somehow got his own doctor to certify to his good (enough) health so he could join up in 1915.
After the war he married Maude Bosenquet the daughter of the original owner of Clayesmore at Enfield. They had a son and two daughters. The son also served in the Navy.
At one point his nickname in the Navy was 'Headache' Drummond on account of him stating at one point that he hadn't joined up in 1914 because he thought the sound of gunfire would give him headaches. When he received his VC in September 1918 in Buckingham Palace when George V asked what his peace time work was he said, 'he was a professional invalid". Although that was true it tickled His Highness so much that to the embarrassment of the courtiers the king laughed out loud.
After the war in 1928 he complained to his actor manager uncle Sir Frank Benson, "Having a VC does not make any difference in helping me get a job and living on a pension £200 (today's money £10,000) a year. When I was nine I had a fall and dislocated my neck. For years I suffered from headaches and I was not able to work until I was twenty on account of my health. Now I am quite well - but out of work. I am on my way to Chester to try and pull off a job with a chemical company. With another man I have a builders merchants business, but it will not stand two salaries." In order to help make ends meet he and his family lived with his mother in Winchester.
Eventually he got a job with ICI. At the outbreak of the Second World War he once again volunteered now aged 53 and still limping badly from his wound of 1918. He was given a job as a rating on a Thames River patrol boat. He was still hoping for a commission when in 1941 he slipped and fell badly. He never recovered consciousness and died in Rotherhithe. He is buried in Chalfont St Peter under his least glorious rank "Second Hand".
Historians today are rather cruel about the Zeebrugge and Ostend raids claiming they were expensive failures rather as Dieppe was in the WW2. Also there were an abnormally large number of VCs awarded.. One historian states, "More awards were given for the gallantry in the Zeebrugge and Ostend raids (eleven VCs) than some army divisions had received in four years; no doubt it reflects the basic unfairness in giving awards."
It was probably felt that for propaganda purposes a glory-starved, war-weary people needed heroes to keep them going and the events of April and May 1918 off the Belgian coast gave them what they wanted. And as for the heroics at Ostend that night which ended with our hero losing half his blood and Clayesmore winning its VC one commentator writes, 'There was no need to block Ostend as the canal was too shallow for the larger and most deadly German U boats and destroyers. They had already been contained by the blocking of Zeebrugge."
So an unemployable Clayesmorian committed acts of bravery to achieve an unnecessary military target. And then his rather sordid death. If it wasn't so glorious you would have to laugh. All in all a very Clayesmorian VC.
The school records state that when Drummond joined in November 1900 he was on
Book III of Euclid, he
could do cube roots in Algebra, he could translate a
selection of Livy, Ovid and Caesar in Latin, could do geometry drawing and had
some French. As is often at Iwerne, the remark against science was short and to
the point-no. He also knew his catechism but had not been confirmed.
Footnote-In all the records on GH Drummond at the Imperial War Museum there was no record of Clayesmore. This has now been rectified with the relevant pieces of Spinney's Clayesmore School History and his page from the school roll now being included in the file. It was also rather a Clayesmorian touch that the school had been air brushed out.
Amanda Mason, Archivist at the Imperial War Museum, wrote "Dear Mr Thompson, I was interested to see the extract from the school register and also the section on Drummond from the school history and these have now been added to the Drummond file. Future researchers will now not only be able to acknowledge Clayesmore as Drummond's former school, but I am sure will find the personal details contained in these extracts to be of interest as well."
Link to Drummond data @ "Victoria Cross Reference"