A ‘wonderful, yet so quiet and modest’ Officer

Second Lieutenant Edgar Marsden Kermode DSO, MC and Bar, DCM, 1/6^th & 2/5^th Battalions

Edgar Marsden Kermode is remembered as one of the most highly decorated officers in the West Yorkshire Regiment, indeed, the combination of awards for gallantry he received is unique. Although it is true that other men in the regiment were awarded Victoria Crosses for their acts of valour and daring, as were other men of different regiments in both of the divisions he served with, no other soldier or officer can claim to have been recognised as many times as Edgar Kermode was. He joined the Territorial Force as a private soldier in August 1914 and died of wounds as a Second Lieutenant in 1918, having been awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, two Military Crosses, and a Distinguished Service Order, as well as being Mentioned in Despatches.

Edgar Marsden Kermode was born in Bradford on 20^th June 1896. His father, William Marsden Bowers Kermode, a finance director with an engineering company had strong family ties to both his birthplace in Liverpool and the Isle of Man, where he was descended from a prominent family based in Rushen. It was at St Columba’s Church in the Mount Pleasant area of Liverpool, that Edgar was baptised two months after he was born. Edgar was the eldest of three children born to the marriage of William, and his wife, Annie, who was originally from Altrincham, in Cheshire. Marjorie was born in 1898, and William in 1907. The family lived at 246 Killinghall Road, in Fagley, Bradford, which looks out across Bradford Moor. The family later moved to Shipley, and in 1911, their census return showed an address at Sleningford Road, in Shipley, where the houses are more substantial, which probably reflects the progress William Kermode was making in his career as a company director. A later move took the family home to an even more grand a setting at The Elms, on Moorhead Lane, also in Shipley.

Second Lieutenant Edgar Marsden Kermoode DSO, MC*, DCM, 1/6th and 2/5th Battalions

When Edgar was young, he attended the Salt’s School, in the Saltaire area of Shipley, which had been built by Sir Titus Salt, the mill owner who had created the village of Saltaire to house his mill workers. The village was served by a church, a school, and had shops in which the mill workers could spend the tokens which Salt issued as part of the pay of his staff. Although it is right that Salt is now remembered as a philanthropic employer who was concerned for the welfare, physical, mental and spiritual of those who worked for him, the issuing of tokens as part of his workers’ wages dictated that they had no option but to spend them in shops he owned and helped to ensure that the circulation of wealth still included him, even when his workers were not toiling in his mill. That said, his workers enjoyed a higher standard of living, education and had better opportunities available to them in their leisure time than many of their contemporaries working in mills that were not owned by textile magnates as benevolent as Sir Titus Salt.

At the age of twelve, Edgar Kermode was sent to the Isle of Man to attend King William’s College, a grand independent school a short distance from Castletown, a place with many links to his Rushen antecedents. The college is still operating as a school; however, it is now nestled between the two main arms of the runways at Ronaldsway Airport that serves the Isle of Man. He was a student at the school from 1908 to 1912, when he left to return to Shipley to begin learning the craft of woollen mill management at Daniel Illingworth & Sons’ mill on Thornton Road in Bradford. Illingworth’s was the oldest established woollen mill in Bradford. It is also recorded that Edgar Kermode later worked for Swire Smith, a philanthropic Mill owner who was later knighted and served both as a Justice of the Peace, and as a Member of Parliament. The woollen trade was the largest industry in Bradford on the eve of the Great War, and in 1914 more than 70,000 Bradford people were directly employed in its many mills, and those thousands of people turned out the finest quality of yarns and worsted cloths in the world.

King William's College, Castletown on the Isle of Man

When war came, in August 1914, the decision was taken, as it was in many other cities and towns in the United Kingdom, to raise a local battalion of men to bolster the British Army in response to the call for volunteers put out by the Secretary of Sate for War, Field Marshal Earl Kitchener of Khartoum. Many of the men prominent in organising and offering a battalion to the War Office were also prominent in the wool yarn and worsted industries, and they would use the influence they had over their workers to encourage them to volunteer for the ‘New Army’. Recruiting got underway in September, with a second battalion of Bradford men being recruited from January 1915.

Many men, for many reasons, decided to enlist in their local Territorial Force battalions, rather than the battalions now being created from scratch. The Territorial Force had been created in 1908 to create a Home Army of Reservists, which would be mobilised in war time in order to free up the Regular Army to go overseas to wherever that war might take them. The Territorial Force was never intended to function outside of the UK. Some men who enlisted in the Territorial force undoubtedly did this in order to be seen to be ‘doing their bit’, while at the same time potentially securing their safety through the knowledge that the Territorial Force was not going to be sent overseas.  Other men thought differently, and those who didn’t subscribe to the idea that the war would be a mere summer storm to clear the air realised that the vast continental armies would need to be met in the field by equally enormous armies, and they reckoned on the role of the Territorial Force changing to  being called upon to join the fighting in Europe. They had seen the Territorials drilling at weekends, and they had seen the ‘Military Sunday’ parades through their towns and cities. They saw the men smartly turned out and fully equipped. They remembered this when they learned of the newly raised Bradford battalions, and other New Army battalions struggling to find all manner of equipment and weapons. At the beginning of their service, most of the ‘Pals’ battalions, as they were beginning to be known as, drilled and trained their men in civilian clothes as army uniforms were not available in the numbers required, many battalions issued their men surplus Post Office blue uniforms. Nor were weapons available, and many New Army soldiers carried dummy rifles, drill purpose rifles, or even their own shot guns until their battalions were equipped properly. Looking the part was an important factor in many men choosing to join the fully equipped Territorial Force unit around the corner from where they lived.

This course of action was taken by Edgar Kermode when he presented himself for enlistment into the 6^th Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment which was based at Belle Vue Barracks on Manningham Lane in Bradford across town from where his house was, but relatively close to where he worked. He joined on 24^th August 1914, as a private soldier, was allocated 2190 as his service number and posted to A Company. His name appears in the first list of those who were serving in the Army that was published in the Shipley Times and Express. The list was compiled by local clergyman, Reverend F B Hope. It was published in the newspaper on 23^rd October 1914. It shows Edgar Kermode as belonging to the Parish of St Peter at Shipley.

The 6^th Battalion had left Belle Vue Barracks on 11^th August and marched to the Midland Railway Station before travelling by train to Selby to concentrate with the remainder of the 1^st West Riding Infantry Brigade. Towards the end of the month, the battalion moved into camp on the Knavesmire, York's Racecourse and then a week later moved to Strensall Camp. Further movements involving Redcar and Gainsborough took place before the 49^th (West Riding) Division received orders to move by train to the south coast port of Folkestone and a crossing to France, completed by 15^th April 1915.

Following their landing at Boulogne, the battalion, now titled the 1/6^th Battalion after a second line battalion, the 2/6^th, was formed to take care of the recruiting and training of soldiers who would be needed to replace any losses the fighting battalion incurred, steadily moved across Artois into Flanders, gaining experience of trench warfare as it went. Eventually the Battalion, with the rest of the Division came to a stop in the area north of the Flemish city of Ypres, and took its place in the line along the Yperlee Canal, with divisional troops and facilities such as camps and medical units stretching rearward to, and beyond, Elverdinge.

The Yperlee Canal Area held by 49th (West Riding) Division in 1915

Although the 49^th (West Riding) Division had seen action on it’s way across France, and had played a supporting role in the Battle of Aubers Ridge, it is generally accepted that it was in the area north of Ypres, close to the village of Boezinge, where they really learnt the art of soldiering in the Great War.

Although there was no single large-scale offensive infantry operation in this area in the second half of 1915, the men holding the lines here were very active in patrolling and raiding to gather intelligence on the enemy units facing them. Artillery fire on both sides of the lines ware concentrated, accurate and frequently heavy. It caused trenches, dug outs and shelters to be blown in and the men sheltering in them to be buried. Officers and soldiers across the Division distinguished themselves on many occasions by digging out and rescuing those who had been buried.

In mid-December 1915, the German Army facing the men of the 49^th (West Riding) Division dramatically increased their artillery fire on the division’s positions, smashing many of the trench lines to little more than interconnected shell holes. So frequent were the periods of shelling that no consolidation of the positions was possible, and the men had to inhabit appalling, stinking holes in the ground. While the ground that men were forced to work on was devastated, the mechanisms that kept the battalion functioning as a viable fighting unit were fully intact. Captured German prisoners had told of an impending gas attack, and immediately, the ‘OC Gas Masks’ in the 1/6^th Battalion, Major C E Scott, insisted on the close examination of every gas helmet in the battalion. The slightest defect was cause for it to be replaced with a new one. His insistence that this work was a priority over all others made him unpopular in the battalion at the time, but that was soon to change.

On the morning of 19^th December 1915, the warned of attack came. The men were ready and were stood to, with gas helmets ready. Then the shelling began and, in the words of Captain Tempest, the author of the battalion’s history, ‘everything was pandemonium’. In the melee and confusion, some men were unable to don their gas helmets, and what Edgar Kermode did in response to this was reported on in the Shipley Times and Express in the following terms, ‘a gas shell fell near Private Kermode, killing one and wounding three of his comrades. Private Kermode at once went to their assistance, and finding his effort to render first aid was hampered by his gas helmet, he flung this aside, and without any protective apparatus, he stuck to his task until he had bandaged and removed the three wounded men to a place of safety, thus saving them from almost certain death. As a result, Private Kermode was himself badly ‘gassed’ and was kept in hospital for some weeks. We are glad to be able to state, however, that this gallant lad has made a good recovery, and is now serving again with his battalion, and we trust that he may long be spared to wear the badge of honour which he so bravely won’. 

The Distinguished Conduct Medal

The ‘badge of honour’, to which the newspaper referred, was the Distinguished Conduct Medal, which was announced in the London Gazette on 14^th March 1916. It was to be the first of the five times Edgar Kermode’s bravery was recognised with an award.

The efforts of Major Scott, which had made him so unpopular in previous days, had gone a long way to ensuring that 1/6^th Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment suffered comparatively light casualties; fewer than 100 of all ranks, when the rest of the division holding the line reported an average of one man in four becoming a casualty.

Edgar Kermode lost his sight for two weeks due to his gassing, and his lungs took a little longer to recover, but when he was able to he wrote home to give his parents an account of what happened and a description of the hospital in which he was staying – a former casino. He was particularly impressed that the place was clean, that he had hot water with which to wash, and that he did not have to work. Promotion came, and by the time he left the hospital, he was a sergeant. Once well enough he had been transferred to hospital in England, and on his release, he was employed as an instructor at Otley.

Having applied for a commission, Sergeant Edgar Kermode DCM was sent off to an officer cadet training unit, his commission being gazetted in April 1917.

Instead of returning to his original battalion, the 1/6^th, he was posted to 2/5^th West Yorkshire Regiment, which had been on the Western Front for only four months by the time he joined them in May 1917, but had already been badly mauled at the two battles at Bullecourt the previous month. Casualties had been heavy, and the battalion would have been pleased to have an officer who was experienced and decorated taken onto its strength. He was given command of a platoon in C Company. He immediately established himself as an aggressive and tenacious patrols officer, gathering valuable information on the enemy facing them. Possibly because his patrolling activities gave him an intimate working knowledge of the Mills Bomb, 2Lt Kermode was re-assigned to be bombing officer for the battalion. 

The Military Cross

He was awarded his first Military Cross for his efforts on a midnight patrol in September 1917 west of Noreuil when he had crawled forward from the main body of his small patrol to more closely observe a couple of enemy posts. He was within fifteen yards of them when a relief of enemy soldiers approached. Before the enemy soldiers could make their relief, Kermode ordered his men, some forty yards away to open rapid fire on them, while he bombed the post they had been making for. The whole patrol rushed the enemy posts with fixed bayonets, but the enemy had either fled or died on the position. The men returned to their own lines, taking with them an assortment of German equipment, and weapons, and they were able to identify the German unit from a field service cap picked up in the enemy post. None of the West Yorkshire men were wounded. The Military Cross was gazetted on 3^rd March 1918.

Only weeks after 2Lt Kermode learned that he had been awarded the MC, his battalion was in desperate action once again, at Bucquoy. The German Army was advancing during its massive 1918 Spring Offensive, which had begun with it sweeping all before it. Many units of the British Army had seen the Germans emerge from the mist too late to be able to put up a coherent defence and many suffered casualties to levels which virtually wiped them out as formed fighting units.

On 26^th March 1918, the 2/5^th Battalion was holding the line at Bucquoy, much of it on a reverse slope, which made far ranging observation of the ground in front of them impossible. 2Lt Kermode took it upon himself to take up a position on a ridge which provided him with a view denied to the men on the slope. Once the enemy showed itself, he remained on the ridge, sniping at the enemy until the Germans got too close. He then returned to battalion headquarters to warn of the coming attack. Later in the action, he also left his position to go forward to encourage his men, while also finding time to engage in the fighting, accounting for five of the enemy and bringing back to his commanders valuable information on the enemy’s dispositions and strengths. This action brought him a recommendation for a Distinguished Service Order, however, it was subsequently downgraded so that he received a bar to his MC, although it was not published in the London Gazette until after his death from wounds in July 1918.

The Military Cross and Bar

Following the March 1918 offensive by the Germans, the battalion was pulled out of the line to take some urgently needed rest, and for a few days, the men were engaged in cleaning and repairing kit. At the end of the first week of April, the rest period ended, and the battalion paraded to go into the line at Essart. Although the battalion was relieved from front line duties, moving into the reserve line, it stayed within the main trench system for two weeks before moving out of the line into rest at Louvencourt. As with most rest periods the battalion provided working parties to dig and improve the trench systems.

The Distinguished Service Order

On 18^th May, the battalion moved to an area near Bucquoy named Biez Wood. Much of the work over the next week focused on improving the trench system, but it was also important to keep up intelligence gathering activities, and to this end, Edgar Kermode asked to take out a small raiding party out to the German positions in front of their own. They made their way into the German trench by knocking out the sentries with grenades. The men the sentries were guarding, were below ground in a dug out, but had left their weapons in the trench. Kermode’s party threw the weapons over the parapet, while Kermode himself drew his revolver and crept down into the dugout. Unarmed, the fourteen German occupants of the dug out had no other option but to surrender and allow themselves to be captured. Once they had emerged above ground and were adequately guarded, some of the raiding party went into the dug out to fetch up the German machine guns. As the raiding party withdrew, Kermode destroyed the German position by detonating boxes of German grenades.

For this very successful trench raid, 2Lt Kermode was awarded a Distinguished Service Order. The raid was such a success that it prompted General Byng, the Commander of IV Corps to write a note of praise, to be given to 2Lt Kermode. It reads; ‘I consider this raid to be one of the most successful that has been accomplished. It reflects the greatest credit on 2Lt Kermode. His initiative and leadership are most commendable.

The note of congratulation from General Byng

Confirmation of the DSO for Edgar Kermode reached the battalion on 11^th June 1918. He was, soon afterwards, sent home for two weeks’ leave, during which time, on 18^th June, he attended Buckingham Palace to be invested with his Military Crosses and the Distinguished Service Order from the hands of King George V, who complimented him on gaining three such coveted awards in under a year.

When his leave was over, on 24^th June, Edgar Kermode did not return to the 2/5^th Battalion. Instead, he went to Brigade Headquarters to take up an appointment as Brigade Intelligence Officer. A month later, he was in his room at Brigade Headquarters when a barrage hit, and he was struck by a lump of shell which exploded nearby. Before he could be removed to an ambulance, he died. His parents received a letter from a chaplain who knew him and subsequently conducted his funeral service, in which he described the tragic event of their son’s death. Turning his attention to Edgar Kermode, he described the young officer as ‘wonderful, yet so quiet and modest’ He continued to say that Kermode was the best known man in the Division, and that the whole division was shocked to have heard of his death. The chaplain wrote how the divisional commander had hoped to attend the funeral, but because the battle that was ongoing had taken an unexpected turn, he had instead been forced to send a representative. 2Lt Kermode’s battalion was in the line at the time of his burial, but so high was the regard the battalion had for him, that two officers and two buglers were released to represent it. 

The Churchyard at St Imoges

2Lt Edgar Kermode DSO, MC and Bar, DCM now lies buried in the churchyard in the centre of the beautiful village of St Imoges which lies in the middle of a forest, mid-way between Rhiems and Epernay. His grave is one of 76 British soldiers and officers buried in the churchyard.

Shortly after the war ended, on 24th December 1918, 2Lt Kermode received his final honour when his name was published among those Mentioned in Despatches.

2Lt Kermode's headstone showing his unique combination of awards for gallantry

In the years following the war, his parents paid for a memorial window to be installed at St Paul’s Church in Shipley. They also presented the officers mess of the 5^th Battalion with a table piece in the form of a silver machine gun mounted on a wooden base with an engraved silver label. A memorial chair was also dedicated to his memory Regimental Chapel in York Minster.

Edgar Kermode’s parents are buried in Hirst Wood Church Burial Ground, which belongs to St Paul’s Church, and there is also a memorial inscription to their son on their gravestone.
Second Lieutenant Edgar Kermode is also remembered on in the chapel at King William's College, his former school.