WW2 100 - 1 November 1944 - A brave Royal Marine, wounded at Salerno: Lieutenant Harry Royston Bartlett, Royal Marines (1924-44)
Harry Bartlett's grave in Budleigh Salterton
Image credit: https://images.findagrave.com
Harry Bartlett, usually known as Roy to his family, died of illness as a result of wounds received in Italy more than a year earlier. You might think, on seeing his grave at St Peter’s Burial Ground, with its reference to Harry as the treasured younger son of Brigadier H. Bartlett CBE, that this was a typical military officer-class Budleigh background, including, of course, a public school education.
In fact, although his name appears on Budleigh Salterton’s war memorial, his only connection with the town – apart from a training stint with the Royal Marines at their Dalditch camp - was that his wife Joan was apparently a Saltertonian.
Harry’s father, the Brigadier, also named Harry (1895-1964), had had a distinguished military career, starting in WW1 where he saw action in France and Belgium with the Army Signal Service and was Mentioned in Despatches. During WW2 he would be promoted to Chief Signal Officer, XXX (30) Corps in NW Europe, and be appointed CBE in 1946. He married Hilda Mary Hodder (1895-1964) in 1919, and their two sons, William James Osborne Bartlett (1921-2015) and Harry Royston Bartlett were both born at Andover where their father was serving with the Royal Corps of Signals.
Postcard of the Imperial Service College, Windsor - OTC (Officer
Training Corps)
Image credit: http://www.thamesweb.co.uk
Harry Royston was educated at the Imperial Service College, Windsor, from 1937 to 1940, boarding at Lawrence House in Alma Road. The College would move two years later from Windsor to Hertfordshire, merging with the independent school Haileybury, but during Harry’s time as a pupil it is certain that he would have been aware of its military tradition. He would also have known of its reputation as the alma mater of Rudyard Kipling, whose funeral had been celebrated in the year before he entered the College.
As tensions grew in Britain’s relationship with
Nazi Germany, the College prepared for wartime conditions. Harry would have taken part in the ARP Drill
of July 1938, during which it was reported that an incendiary bomb had landed
on the roof of his boarding house.
A website which records the history of the Imperial Service College stresses the ISC’s close ties with the British Armed Forces, stating that the school certainly lost in action a much higher percentage of their Old Boys than other schools. It notes that in April 1940, the year of Harry’s departure, the ISC Old Boys’ Journal published this commentary on the war’s progress:
‘Time moves against Germany in all
spheres and the past six months have been of immense value to the Allies in strengthening
their positions. But they cannot win the war without first destroying the
enemy's power and will to fight and we should be foolish to underrate his
strength. The overthrow of the enemy can be achieved only by the supreme effort
on the part of every individual directed into the right channel and this will
inevitably entail great sacrifice.’
Images of wartime life for Royal Marine
recruits at Dalditch Camp: rope climbing, meal times, training with Sten guns
and dealing with booby traps and concealed mines. Images courtesy of Simon Fogg
By April 1943 Harry was part of the 23rd Royal Marines (Training) Battalion which had been formed that month as part of 104 RM Training Brigade. Two months of gruelling preparation for battle followed, spent at the Royal Marines Training Camp at Dalditch, a few miles north-west of Budleigh Salterton, on Woodbury Common.
Thanks to local historian Simon Fogg and his two books about the Camp we have a vivid record of what life was like for these WW2 recruits.
In June 1943, Harry had become a member of 41 Commando. The unit had originated on 7 October 1942 under the command of Lieutenant Colonel P W O'H Phibbs, from the men of the 8th Royal Marine Battalion. It was the second Royal Marine commando battalion formed after its sister 'A' (RM) Commando. Both commandos were based on the Isle of Wight and soon after the commando was renamed No. 41 (Royal Marine) Commando.
The Allied invasion of Sicily should rank with the D-Day landings of June 1944 as a bold and successful but bloody assault on Hitler’s ‘Fortress Europe’, and its planning had been long and detailed. A high degree of subterfuge had been involved, one of the most celebrated episodes being Operation Mincemeat, implemented in April 1943. This was the scheme whereby Hitler and the Nazi High Command were deceived into thinking that the invasion of Southern Europe would be launched in Greece rather than Sicily. A corpse and fake documents were deliberately placed by a British submarine HMS Seraph near the coast of Spain, so that false information would be relayed to the enemy by the Spanish authorities.
Some years ago, I interviewed the submarine captain, Norman Jewell, which was a fascinating experience. Seraph, under Norman’s command, was also involved in a secret mission to land General Mark Clark – pictured at Salerno on 15 September 1943 in one of the photos below – on the North African coast.
Operation Avalanche maps Image credit: Wikipedia
Salerno, 9 September 1943 (Operation Avalanche): A landing craft ablaze offshore after receiving a direct hit. In the foreground on the beach are troops and casualties from the boat. © IWM NA 6588
Operation Avalanche was the codename for the Allied landings near Salerno, executed on 9 September 1943. The landings were carried out without previous naval or aerial bombardment in order to achieve surprise, but the plan was flawed. As the first wave approached the shore at Paestum, 30 kilometers south of Salerno, a loudspeaker from the landing area apparently proclaimed in English, ‘Come on in and give up. We have you covered.’ The troops attacked nonetheless.
Capturing Salerno: The Deputy Commander-in-Chief and Ground Forces Commander, General the Hon Sir Harold Alexander with the Commander of the 5th Army, Lieutenant-General Mark W Clark and the Commander of the British 10th Corps, Lieutenant-General Sir Richard McCreery during Alexander's flying visit to the Salerno beaches on 15 September 1943. His visit finally stopped plans to evacuate the beachhead. Image credit: Imperial War Museum
Harry and his companions in 41 Commando landed further along the coast, a few kilometers south-west of Salerno at the town of Vietri sul Mare. Royal Marine NCO James Kelly, from the same unit, in an interview recorded for the Imperial War Museum in April 1990, recalled the unopposed landing near the town’s jetty in the semi-darkness of early morning on 9 September 1943.
Budleigh beach
looking west
The climb up from
the beach was steeper than any that he had encountered during training, and it
struck me that surely an ascent of the Budleigh cliffs to the west of our town
would have provided an ideal experience for Royal Marines from Dalditch Camp
like James Kelly and Harry Bartlett. Maybe the cliffs were indeed used for
training.
At the top of the climb above Vietri were terraces of vineyards and stone walls. It was here that the Germans were dug in, with snipers effectively camouflaged among the vines and manning defensive pill-boxes. James Kelly remembered a momentary silence as both sides assessed the situation - and then the sudden and deadly hail of small arms and mortar fire, with grenades thrown chaotically, sometimes hitting an enemy target, sometimes endangering his own side. The turmoil of war. During the Marines’ assault on the enemy positions Harry is recorded as bravely running up to a pill-box to place a pole charge – literally an explosive device attached to a pole – against the building. While running back to his position he received what was described as ‘a massive wound’ in the back from a German machine gun.
Harry’s bravery, incidentally, was matched
by that of his elder brother William James Osborne Bartlett (1921-2015), a
Captain in the Royal Tank Regiment who had also been a pupil at the Imperial
Service College. Osborne, or ‘Bon’, as he was known, was awarded the Military Cross
during the Battle of the Scheldt for his actions on 24 March 1945 in using
grenades to silence enemy machine gun posts, charging over distances of more
than 50 yards, showing, in the words of his MC citation ‘complete disregard for
his own safety’.
Harry was not so lucky. His wound was so severe that he was invalided out of 41 Commando and presumably spent time recuperating in hospital. He is recorded as serving from 12 March 1944 until the date of his death with HMS Copra, a shore-based establishment which processed the pay and allowances of Royal Navy personnel serving in Combined Operations. It was originally commissioned on 30 August 1943 at Chelsea Court, London as Combined Operations pay and drafting office, but part of it would move to Largs in Scotland a year later.
St Mary’s Church, Hayling Island, Hampshire
Image credit: Paweł 'pbm' Szubert
Records also show that Harry married Joan
Cook, or Cooke, described as of Budleigh Salterton, in the ancient St Mary’s
Church on Hayling Island, near Portsmouth, on 14 April 1944. How had they met? How was his health at that
point? It would be a tragically short-lived marriage. At some point the couple
would have moved to Budleigh, perhaps to stay with Joan’s family. Towards the
end of that year, the effects of the wound that he had received during Operation
Avalanche led to a stay in the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, but doctors
were unable to save him. He died on 1 November 1944, aged only 20, and was
buried in Budleigh.
Budleigh Salterton War Memorial, with Harry's name: second on the list of 1939-45 casualties
I have so many questions:
Who rescued him at Vietri? When and where did he meet Joan? Could
it have been during his training at Dalditch? Perhaps they had met while she
was working in a hospital? Was it Joan Cook or Cooke? Did she
really come from a Budleigh family?
Why were they married in Hampshire?
Where was his work at HMS Copra?
Why and how was
he treated at the RD&E? Did Joan remarry?
Do his nephews and nieces have any info about him? His brother, William James Osborne Bartlett MC died peacefully from pneumonia on 11 June 2015. The funeral took place on Monday 29 June at the Church of the Sacred Heart and Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Worcester Road, Droitwich.
And finally, would it be too much to imagine that Captain William James Osborne Bartlett, in March 1945 during the Battle of the Scheldt, was still hurting from the news of the death of his ‘beloved brother’ Roy, just four months earlier. That the madness of such bravery which would win him a Military Cross was in fact the madness of grief?
The next post is for FLIGHT SERGEANT RENNIE ARTHUR LOADER (1915-45) RAFVR who was killed on 21 January 1945 while serving with 518 Squadron. You can read about him at
https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2021/04/ww2-75-21-january-1945-forecasting-for.html
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