Charles Blackader

Charles Blackader 1916

Charles Guinand Blackader CB, DSO, (born September 20, 1869 in Richmond , † April 2, 1921 in London ) was a British major general who commanded the 38th (Welsh) Division in the First World War .

Life

Origin and youth

Charles Blackader was born in Richmond in south-west London ( Surrey ) in 1869 . His father, Charles George Blackader, chose an academic career. He came from a family of officers and taught at Cheltenham College and Clifton College in Bristol . Around 1865 he married Charlotte Elizabeth Dorothea Guinand, who was born in Alsace. The son Charles, who came from this connection, considered himself half French throughout his life, a fact that manifested itself in his middle name Guinand.

Charles Blackader was first trained by the Reverend Mr. Hastings at the Aldin House School of Slough . During his childhood the family moved from Richmond to Southampton , where his father headed the education department of the Hartley Institute, and then to Boulogne , France, where Charles was also taught at the Beaurepaire School. After his return from France in 1887 Blackader studied at the Royal Military College Sandhurst , where he was considered a promising student, he left Sandhurst in August 1888. Charles married Marian Ethel, née Melbourne, the daughter of an East India trader on Batavia in the same year was born. The first child from his marriage was the daughter Dorothy Marion, a second daughter Joan de Corlies was born in 1892.

Early military career

Charles Blackader joined the 1st Battalion of the Leicestershire Regiment on August 22, 1888 . His marriage, which was hastily concluded during this period, took place because on April 23, 1889 he had to follow his regiment, which had been transferred to Bermuda . After two years in Bermuda, the 1st Leicesters moved to Halifax . There in the Musketry Camp, Blackader was appointed first lieutenant on March 21, 1890 . He was promoted to captain on December 6, 1895 . In 1895 he served with his battalion in South Africa and in 1897 he was selected in Lagos for service on Niger , where he was involved in building the Western African Frontier Force against the French until 1899 . From 1899 to 1902 he served in the 1./Leicesters in the Boer War , including the siege of Ladysmith . He was mentioned twice in dispatches (February 8 and September 10, 1901) and received the Distinguished Service Order on September 27, 1901 .

From 1902 to 1904 he was an adjutant in the 1st Volunteer Battalion of the Leicestershires and on November 18, 1904 he was promoted to major . From 1904 to 1912 he continued to serve with the 1st Battalion in India, Shorncliffe and most recently in Fermoy, Ireland. In between, he won an Army Tennis Cup with Captain Challenor in 1908 . On September 10, 1912 Blackader received his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel and command of the 2nd Battalion of the Leicestershire Regiment. After Blackader first went to Bombay with the liner “Rewa” , he reached his new Indian garrison in Madras on December 16 by train .

In the world war

In October 1914, his battalion was transferred to northern France as part of the Garhwal Brigade in the 7th (Meerut) Division for use on the Western Front. In November he led an attack on the German trenches at Festubert as part of the Indian Corps (under General James Willcocks ) . He was promoted to brigadier general in the spring of 1915 and took command of the Indian Garhwal Brigade, which he led in the battle of Neuve-Chapelle and at Loos . After the Indian Corps withdrew from Europe, he took command of the 177th Brigade, which was sent in the wake of the Easter Rising . Blackader, known to his regiment as "Old Black", commanded the 177th Infantry Brigade of the 59th Division (Major General Sandbach ) in Dublin until the end of June 1916. After the uprising, many of the ringleaders considered responsible by the British authorities were tried in military courts; 90 were sentenced to death, of which 15 were ultimately executed. Blackader has served as a senior officer in a number of courts-martial including those of Éamonn Ceannt , Thomas Clarke, Thomas MacDonagh, Patrick Pearse, and Joseph Plunkett, five of the seven signatories to the Irish Republic's proclamation. For Blackader this period of his career was particularly difficult, a conflict between military law and his conscience broke out. He was promoted to major general while still in Ireland and returned to the Western Front in June 1916 to take command of the 38th (Welsh) Division. The following missions in the Battle of the Somme (Mametz, Fricourt) and in the summer and autumn of 1917 with the XIV Corps under General Earl of Cavan at the Battle of Passchendaele gave little cause for profile. He was appointed commander of the Belgian Order of Leopold and received both the Belgian and French Croix de Guerre. On December 31, 1917, he was awarded the Order of the Bath for valuable military service by King George V. In May 1918 he left his command because he had been infected with rabies after being bitten by a dog and went to the Pasteur Institute in Paris for treatment . Not yet fully recovered, he received command as Commander of Southern District in Ireland in November 1918 and in mid-1919 he received command in Portsmouth District. He last lived on Half Moon Street, Piccadilly in Middlesex. In the autumn of 1920 his health deteriorated and at the end of February 1921 he complained of a general feeling of illness. Blackader died on April 2, 1921 of complications from liver cancer in Queen Alexandra's Military Hospital, Millbank, London. He was buried in Putney Vale Cemetery near Richmond.

literature

• Robin Jenkins: Old Black - The Life of Major General CG Blackader, 1869-1921 , Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society. (2006), pp. 101-121

Web links

• Robert D Marshall: Essay in Irish News The Rising Explained, December 29, 2018