Charles Doughty-Wylie

Charles Hotham Montagu Doughty-Wylie VC CB CMG (born July 23, 1868 in Theberton Hall, Suffolk , † April 26, 1915 in Gallipoli ) was a British professional officer and diplomat.

Military career

Charles "Dick" Doughty was born in Theberton Hall, in Leiston , Suffolk in 1868 , the son of a lawyer and retired naval officer. He was a nephew of the well-known Arabia traveler Charles Doughty (1843-1926). Charles graduated from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1889 , received his officer's license and went through the usual colonial assignments in the following years: India, Crete (1896), Sudan (1898–99), Boer War (1900), Boxer Rebellion (1900) and Somaliland (1903– 04), where he led a unit of the Somali Camel Corps . In 1904 he married Lilian Wylie in India, took the surname of his wife and called himself Doughty-Wylie from then on.

British Consul in Turkey

In 1906 he was appointed British Vice Consul in Vilayet Konya and later also received the area of Vilayet Adana ( Cilicia ). During the Young Turkish Revolution he was consul in Mersin , where he played an important role in the resistance against the Turkish massacre of the Armenians in the Adana region in April 1909. Richard Bell-Davies , who later became a naval aviator and admiral, remembers in his autobiography ( lit .: Sailor in the Air , 1967) that it was largely Dougthy-Wylie's credit that the massacres of the Armenians in Mersin were stopped. Doughty-Wylie then went to Adana and convinced the local Wali (governor) to provide him with a small escort of Turkish soldiers and a trumpeter, with which he restored public order. Mrs. Doughty-Wylie had set up a hospital for wounded Armenians. Bell-Davies further reports that Doughty-Wylie succeeded with his energetic intervention in bringing the attacks on the Armenians in his area to a standstill almost on his own.

Georg V made him Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George . In the Balkan Wars of 1912/13 he led Red Cross units attached to the Turkish army and received the Medjidie Order 2nd class from the Sultan .

First World War / Gallipoli

Doughty-Wylie was 46 years old and a Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Welch Fusiliers when he was seconded to Sir Ian Hamilton's staff , Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force during the 1915 Dardanelles Expedition, "because of his good knowledge of Turkish conditions" .

When on the first day of the landing at Cape Helles , April 25, 1915, the attacks and landings stalled due to the bitter Turkish resistance, Doughty-Wylie and another staff officer went to the beach on their own initiative to investigate the situation. They found that because of the death of their officers, many units were without command and did not know how to proceed. The 88th Brigade commander, Brigadier General Henry Edward Napier, and his brigade major had died. So a plan was devised to take the Turkish positions in the old Byzantine fortress Sedd el-Bahr , today Seddülbahir , above the shore.

On the morning of April 26, 1915, Doughty-Wylie and Captain Garth Neville Walford organized an attack on the old fort. The opposing positions were very well developed and defended, but could ultimately be taken through the determined leadership of the two officers. Doughty-Wylie and Walford were killed. Both were posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest British honor for bravery. It is said that Doughty-Wylie led the attack unarmed, only with his officer's baton.

Both officers were buried on the spot. As Walford was later reburied in a cemetery, Doughty-Wylie's grave is now the only single grave of a Commonwealth soldier on Gallipoli. His Victoria Cross is on display today at the Royal Welch Fusiliers Museum at Caernarfon Castle , Gwynedd , Wales .

Gertrude Bell

Although married, Doughty-Wylie had a relationship with the famous explorer and adventurer Gertrude Bell , whom he had met in Konia in 1906 and met again in London in 1913. On her later trips she kept a second diary in addition to her normal diary in the form of very personal letters to him. These letters have been preserved and published ( lit .: The Arabian Diaries, 1913-1914 , 2000).

On November 17, 1915 - while the campaign was still in progress - an unknown woman visited Doughty-Wylie's grave without speaking to anyone. The mystery of this unknown woman occupied the soldiers for a long time afterwards. It is not clear whether this woman was Gertrude Bell or Lilian Wylie, the wife who served as a nurse on the Western Front during the war.

literature

• Richard Bell-Davies : Sailor in the Air: The Memoirs of Vice Admiral Richard Bell Davies, VC RN . - 1967
• Gertrude Bell : The Arabian Diaries, 1913-1914 . - by Rosemary O'Brien; Syracuse University Press, 2000