UFOs and WWI

[Daoloth]

Recently while browsing for WWII statistics I ended up on a UFO fan webpage- and being bored, checked out their little “UFO Timeline”. Let’s ignore that it was out of chronological order. Let’s ignore that it had bad grammar and spelling. Let’s ignore it took Pliny the Elder’s quote about a burning shield greatly out of context. Okay, let’s not ignore those, it shows they’re pretty naive. But one incident fascinated me, the alleged disappearnence of the 1st 4th Norfolk Regiment into a cloud of dust in 1915 on a place marked as “Hill 60” during the Gallipoli campaign- somewhere near Turkey. The one website claimed that 800 men were in the regiment. I did a hasty websearch and only found other UFO sites that mentioned it- nothing academic. One UFO site said 1000 men were in the regiment (so there’s already inconsistencies). This lurid tale has naturally fascinated me, but it sounds so poorly documented and made up: does anyone have the straight dope on it? If so, please cite sources. Thanks.

[DrFidelius]

I don’t have a specific cite available, but I believe that Mustafa Kemal’s artillery could have kicked up quite a cloud of dust. The Gallipoli campaign was a nightmare for the British.

[DrFidelius]

… from what I can tell, the 4th Norfolk was not in Turkey in 1915. It seems to have been stationed in France. Give me some time to find something more solid.

[Ringo]

Suvla: Hill 60

That website contains interviews with Second Lieutenant Malcolm Hancock, 1/4th Battalion, Northamptonshire Regt. I didn’t see any mention of UFOs.

The following sites mention Hill 60:

Plans for Evacuation

The Anzac landing

A Concise Timeline of the Gallipoli Campaign

Apparently a heck of a fight, but no mentions of casualties resulting from anything but good old early 20th century warfare.

[DrFidelius]

Correction.

The 1/4th became 163rd Brigade, 54th Division in May 1915, and landed on Gallipoli in August 1915.

Sorry for the misinformation. Still a nasty campaign.

[paperbackwriter]

I think there may be some conflation of the fates of the 4th Norfolk and the 5th, particularly the Sandringham Company. The 5th Norfolk is the one that disappeared into the smoke, and inspired later legends about being “carried away” There was even a recent British TV movie about it, complete with an accompanying historical accuracy controversy. The Gallipoli Association has a good summary of the events, and the film. Even mentions the UFO speculation.

[Colibri]

The “disappearance” of 267 men of “The Norfolk Regiment” (the First-Fifth Norfolk) during the Gallipoli campaign has entered the annals of UFOlogy because of the allegation that they were spirited away in mysterious clouds. Actually, there is good evidence that they were simply captured by the Turks, summarily executed, and then secretly buried to cover up the atrocity. There is nothing really mysterious about it.

The account I refer to is in The People’s Almanac presents the 20th Century (1999, David Wallechinsky). The article itself is attributed to Thomas A. Waters.

From pp. 867-868:

**On the eveninig of August 12th, Britain’s 163rd Brigade - consisting of regiments of the First-Eight Hampshires, First-Fifth Suffolks, and First-Fifth Norfolks - was ordered to advance on Turkish positions. Most of the allied force was pinned down and unable to move forward; the Fifth Norfolks, however, were able to advance into a wooded area. According to Sir Ian Hamilton’s later report to Lord Kitchener: “Nothing more was seen or heard of any of them. They charged into the forest and were lost to sight and sound. None of them ever came back.”

. . . Investigations after the war seemed to go nowhere, the Turks denying any knowledge of what had happened to the Norfolks.

The mystery deepened fully fifty years later, when three New Zealand soldiers, survivors of the battle, produced a signed statement of what they and their fellows had seen that afternoon: they described odd, dense clouds, shaped like loaves of bread, that had hovered close to the ground on an otherwise clear day. The Norfolk soldiers had marched directly into one of these clouds, said the witnesses, and as soon as the last had disappeared the cloud rose up and moved away - against the wind.

The statement has been attacked by skeptics on the grounds that (a) there was indeed low-lying mist on the ground that day, but no clouds reported, and (b) in the statement the regiment is misidentified as the First-Fourth rather than the Fifth. It was also averred that, from their position, the New Zealanders could not possibly have seen what they claimed.

There was, howerver, another report, possibly commisioned in secret by the royal family [because many of the Norfolks were drawn from King George V’s estate at Sandringham]. The report was made by Reverend Charles Pierrepoint Edwards, a chaplain to the allied troops at Gallipoli . . .

His report was not published for more than half a century; when it finally came out, it revealed that 180 bodies had been found in a mass grave, and that some of these had been identified as members of the vanished Norfolk regiment.

. . .In a suppressed version of the report, Edwards is said to have stated that all the bodies found had died as the result of execution-style shooting in the head; this suggests that the full Norfolk regiment surrendered without a fight to the Turks, who were well known to shoot captured prisoners rather than take them prisoner. . .

In his “Notes on the Graves at Gallipoli,” at the end of the report, Edwards tells us that (a) the graves had been desecrated and all identifying marks removed; (b) the bodies were only bones, and in many cases badges and crests were absent; and © the bodies had been stripped of anything of valuem including identification disks . . .**

I have edited out some comments by Waters that imply that the event was more mysterious than it actually was, and suggest that somehow the UFO theory is of the same degree of plausibility as the atrocity theory. The People’s Almanac, while an interesting source, tends to be very credulous about “unsolved mysteries.”

Apparently the only remaining question is what happened to the other 87 members of the regiment. It must be assumed they are buried in another grave that has never been found.