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The Army on Perim in WW1
At the beginning of August 1914 the strength of the
military detachment guarding Perim was only one Indian
officer and 25 men. On 5 August an advance party of two
men from the Royal Irish Fusiliers arrived on the
island. A further 123 All Ranks arrived on 18 August,
together with 10 men from 70th Company Royal Garrison
Artillery under the command of a ‘specially selected
sergeant’. The latter were to prepare gun positions for
two 15-pounder guns which were landed on 25 August from
HMS Black Prince, together with 250 rounds of ammunition
per gun and a further eight men from the Indian Coast
Artillery. Measures were taken to try to conceal this
deployment from the Turks.
On the arrival of the company of
Royal Irish Fusiliers the existing small garrison of the
108th Infantry remained on Perim in the small barracks
in the fort. The Fusiliers put up a tented camp on
Company Side (‘Old Camp’). In due course a new hutted
camp would be built about 1,000 yards West of the
Residency (‘New Camp’). On 29 September the troop
transport Dilwara called at Perim to disembark a 91-man
company of Lancashire Fusiliers under the command of
Lieutenant Cuncliff and to embark the company of Royal
Irish Rifles. The remainder of the Lancashire Fusiliers
were at Aden. Throughout these first few months of the
war Captain Bannatyne of the 108th Infantry retained the
appointment of Assistant Resident Perim, he being senior
to the company commanders of the British sub-units who
were there with him. On 12 October Major Bradshaw, GSO
Aden Brigade, visited Perim, The Political Resident and
GOC, Major General Shaw, who had arrived in Aden at the
end of November, visited Perim on 14 December and again
on 21 May the following year.
When the operation against Fort
Turba was completed on 11 November the 1/23rd Sikh
Pioneers went to reinforce the Aden garrison. On 29
November No.2 Company, under the command of Major Ottley,
was sent to Perim to take over the defence of the island
from the company of Lancashire Fusiliers, which left
Perim on 9 December together with the detachment of the
108th Infantry. On the departure of Captain Bannatyne on
16 December Major Ottley, as the senior military officer
on the island, was appointed Assistant Resident, as were
his many successors during the war.
From their arrival in November the
Pioneers were kept very busy improving the defences and
the road network as well as infantry training. In
December some were put on an artillery gun-numbers
cadre, due to a shortage of artillery personnel. This
they continued to 10 February 1915, a few days after the
artillery detachment was brought up to strength. On 9
February there was a night firing exercise, including
the firing of star shell, something that none of the
artillery personnel had ever seen or used. Improvement
of sangars and trenches and the preparation of
alternative defensive positions were to continue well
into 1916.
In the middle of March 1915 No.1
Company, commanded by Captain Hutchinson, had relieved
No.2 Company at Perim. Captain Hutchinson brought his
family with him (wife, nurse and child). On 21 March
some three inches of rain fell, the first proper rain
for two years. On 29 May there was a very unfortunate
and serious incident when the subadar major and a
subadar, the two most senior Indian officers in the
Company, were shot and killed in their beds by a sepoy,
Sapper Basakha Singh. An Indian NCO managed to disarm
him and he was taken under escort to Aden on 30 May. He
was tried by Special General Court Martial at Aden on 2
June, found guilty and was hanged at Aden Special Prison
on the 7th.
Captain Hutchinson had a number of
spies operating on the mainland and these reported that
the Turks were assembling a force at Sheikh Syed with a
view to first bombarding and then attacking Perim. This
information was accurate as on 13 June the Turks opened
fire with a mixed assortment of guns, estimated at the
time to be one 4.7 or 4.1 inch naval gun with a range of
10,000 yards, one 12-pounder with a range of 7,000 yards
and one 3.5 inch howitzer. These soon found the range
and a good many direct hits were made on the lighthouse
and barracks. A total of 211 shells were fired but
damage was slight, although the lighthouse was put out
of action for one night. A direct hit had broken 10 of
the lantern’s glasses, cracked one of the full diamond
glasses and had twisted the rib frame.
After temporary repairs by the
Perim Coal Company the lighthouse was back in working
order for the night of the 14/15 June. During that night
a Turkish force in dhows attempted to land and some
troops actually got ashore despite being fired on by a
piquet. One of the increased alert measures had been to
move one of the two 15-pounders to its position on Gun
Hill and it was able to react quickly on the alarm being
raised. A star shell was fired and, seeing that all hope
of surprise was lost, those ashore re-embarked and the
whole force withdrew. It was estimated that 12 dhows
were involved, each capable of carrying 20 men. The
Empress of Japan, the Perim guardship, sailed round from
the harbour and set off in pursuit of the dhows but
failed to catch them. She had, however, some success the
day after the bombardment of the lighthouse when she
sank two dhows at Khor Gorrera. As a result of this
Turkish activity on 27 June the Perim garrison was
reinforced by the 3rd Double Company of Sikh Pioneers
and as Captain Nicholas, the company commander, was
senior to Captain Hutchinson he took over as Assistant
Resident. This extra company was sent on the
understanding that it could be recalled to Aden at short
notice in the event that Aden itself was threatened.
Subsequent to the fiasco of the
Aden Moveable Column which resulted in the Turks
advancing to just North of Khormaksar, there was an
urgent requirement for the Pioneers to return to Aden in
their primary role as light engineers. Therefore on 27
July the two companies of the 1/23rd, in all some 202
men, were recalled to Aden and immediately deployed with
the remainder of the battalion on field defence works.
The Pioneers were relieved by the wing (half battalion)
of the 108th Infantry which had been sent from India as
an urgent reinforcement to the Aden garrison. In August
the infantry strength was eight British officers,
including a surgeon, six Indian officers and 333 Indian
other ranks. This was the maximum military strength ever
to be stationed on Perim during the period of British
occupation. Wing Headquarters and a machine gun section
of two Maxims were at the Residency; one Indian officer
and 50 men were at the fort, occupying the accommodation
built for that number over 50 years previously; the
balance of that company was in hutted accommodation in
‘New Camp’, about 1,000 yards West of the Residency,
together with the balance of the other company for whom
there was insufficient accommodation in the tented ‘Old
Camp’, situated near the Lloyds signal station.
When not deployed to ‘Gun Hill’ the
artillery section was also billeted in Old Camp. On 7
September exactly half the infantry were transferred to
Kamaran. Lieutenant Colonel Baldock, the CO of the
108th, was one of those who moved to Kamaran, where he
died of dysentery less than six weeks later. His name is
one of those recorded on Maala Memorial no.2. Lieutenant
Colonel Elderton commanded those remaining on Perim;
soon after he took over he organised a field firing
exercise for the Maxim section, with targets at 600, 800
and 1,200 yards. A month after Baldock’s death Elderton
was sent to Kamaran to assume command of the garrison
there, swapping places with Captain Miller who then
became OC Perim. During the ten days between Elderton
leaving and Captain Miller’s arrival the Perim garrison
was commanded by 2nd Lieutenant Elphick, by far the most
junior officer to have been Assistant Resident.
The infantry strength there
remained at about 200 all ranks until 1919. As had been
the practice during the previous century the infantry
element of the garrison was changed over every 2-3
months; the personnel of the two small artillery
detachments being changed at the same time. Infantry
battalions of the Indian Army providing the garrison on
Perim after the 108th (who left Perim towards the end of
January 1916) were:
Following the Turkish attempt to make a landing on Perim
in June 1915 it was decided to send another small but
more powerful artillery detachment to the island. On 1
July two 5-inch breech-loading guns were loaded onto the
SS Malda at Bombay, together with 200 rounds of lyddite
and 100 rounds of shrapnel. Personnel consisted of 2nd
Lieutenant Steirn and 25 other Ranks. By the time the
Malda arrived in Aden waters the Turks had advanced
towards Aden so the detachment was landed there in case
it was needed for the defence of Aden itself. It was not
until 9 December the same year that Steirn with 12 of
his troop and one of the two guns were landed at Perim.
The ship arrived after dark so that the gun could be
unloaded under cover of darkness and concealed in a
previously prepared gun position before first light.
Steirn also took over command of the small 15-pdr
detachment that had arrived the previous year and the
unit was henceforth referred to as the “5-in and 15-pdr
detachment, Royal Garrison Artillery.” At about this
time the defences were strengthened by the laying of a
number of barbed wire entanglements.
On 13 March 1916 very heavy rains
caused the accommodation huts to be temporarily vacated;
there were more heavy rains two days later, with over 18
inches of water in the lines. Most of the road network
was washed away. From the rainfall statistics gathered
over the period of about 20 years when there was a rain
gauge on Perim, March was the month with the highest
probability of rainfall. But rainfall as heavy as that
that had fallen in mid-March in both 1915 and 1916 was
anything but an annual occurrence.
On 1 May 1916 the detachment started building a new
emplacement for the 5-in gun close to and to the North
of the fort. At that time Steirn was alternating with
his troop sergeant in command at Perim, with the latter
spending rather more time in Aden with the remainder of
the troop. In February 1919 one officer and 25 men from
the Royal Garrison Artillery are recorded as having left
the island, together with nine men from the Indian Coast
Artillery. |
