The Gentleman Rifleman
54593 Rifleman Charles William Dixon-Johnson, 12 Platoon, C Company, 1/7th Battalion
The Territorial Force, though a relatively new organisation
at the outbreak of the Great War, had already learned to take pride in the
semi-separateness it enjoyed from the Regular Army. Most territorial units
recruited men who lived locally to where the unit had its drill halls or
barracks, and strong bonds developed between the territorials and the local
civilian population from which the men were drawn. Often, units grew up to
recruit a certain type of soldier, so the London Regiment, a wholly territorial
regiment, recruited men for a Scottish battalion, and an Irish battalion. It
recruited a Rifles battalion predominantly from men who worked for the Post
Office. Liverpool also recruited a Scottish and an Irish battalion, it too
supported a Rifles battalion.
In Leeds, the story was a little different. Although the
city supported two battalions of Riflemen, there were also Royal Engineers,
Royal Artillery, Army Service Corps and Royal Army Medical Corps units to
accommodate. Chapeltown Barracks was home to Regular Army cavalry regiments for
the entirety of the nineteenth century, and their guards mounted wearing full
dress of knee-high jack boots, white buck skin trousers, regimental tunics, and
glittering plumed helmets. The soldiers on duty were armed either with the
cavalry carbine rifles, or their swords.
What does appear to be a common theme among territorial
units is the pride each had in its own identity, and many took positive steps
to promote the idea that they provided a military home for a certain kind of
recruit. Some units, as we’ve seen above, would only recruit from groups, based
on where they hailed from, or where they worked. Some, with, perhaps, an
inflated sense of self-importance, insisted that recruits pay both a joining
fee, and an annual subscription to promote their ‘exclusivity’.
In the Leeds Rifles, recruiting was divided mostly along
geographical lines. The 7th Battalion tended to recruit soldiers
from south Leeds and the city centre, whereas the 8th Battalion
looked for men in north Leeds and the outlying areas. Both battalions looked
for educated men who held good employment; postmen and police officers were
particularly favoured. Clerical workers were sought after by both battalions.
As with many other territorial units, those employers who were also Leeds
Rifles officers often made it clear that an employee who was also a part time
soldier would find his life at work more rewarding than his wholly civilian
workmates when it came to opportunity and promotion.
The result of this official and unofficial selectivity was a
battalion that was held together as much by a sense of friendship and
belonging, as it was by purely military discipline. This sense of mutual trust
and understanding paid dividends when the Leeds Rifles went to war and the
early lessons of soldiering were being learnt by all ranks.
As the war progressed and casualties needed to be replaced
by new soldiers, the structures in place within the Territorial Force, such as
the creation of second and third line battalions supported territorial values
by replacing incapacitated and dead territorial soldiers with soldiers out of
the same mould. When wounded and sick soldiers recovered and were fit for duty,
they returned to Territorial force units. This system was preserved for as long
as was possible, but by the middle of the war when battles were causing
enormous casualties, and their replacement put enormous strain on the Army,
these differences between types of soldier had to give way to military needs.
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| Title Sheet of the Military Service Act 1916 - The Act of Parliament through which Conscription began |
The Military Service Act of 1916 served a variety of
functions. Perhaps the most important of these was that it was designed to
regulate the flow of recruits into the Army. Under its conditions, men between
the ages of 19 and 41 were deemed to be enlisted into the Army, unless they
fitted a criterion for exemption, or could convince a tribunal that they should
not be called up for service. A revised Act, later in 1916 extended
conscription to married men who were previously exempt, and a further Act in
1918 extended the upper age limit to 51 years old. It ended the Army’s previous
reliance on voluntary enlistment.
Men brought into service under conscription conditions had
little or no choice as to which unit they would serve in, and likewise, Army
units lost the ability to pick and choose their men. Crucially, many of the
county regiments, Regular, Territorial and New, or Kitchener’s Army, began to
lose their local identities through the influx of men from different parts of the
country.
What follows is an account of the service of one man who
served as a Leeds Rifleman with 1/7th (Leeds Rifles) Battalion after
being conscripted into the Army in the third quarter of 1916. He was not, by
any means a typical Leeds Rifleman.
Charles William Dixon-Johnson was born in 1875 at his family
home, at Oakwood, in the village of Croft-on-Tees, which is bisected by the
River Tees, along which the border between Yorkshire and County Durham runs. He
was the youngest of three children of Cuthbert Greenwood Johnson, who described himself, at the age of
39, as a retired Iron Merchant, and his wife, Maria Grey. An older sister, Anna, and a brother Cuthbert Francis, completed the family. The Dixon-Johnson family was a wealthy one and was
very well connected. Charles’s brother, Cuthbert, educated at Haileybury
School, and the Royal Military College, served as a captain with the 6th
Inniskilling Dragoon Guards, being wounded at Paardeberg and Klipdrift during
the war against the Boers in 1899 – 1902. He was also present at the Relief of
Ladysmith. He retired from the Army in 1902. After his army career, he embarked
on a career of adventurous travel to South America and North Africa, and in the
process became a representative of numerous companies seeking to exploit the
natural resources of both regions. Cuthbert later wrote a book called ‘The
Armenians’, which was controversial when it was published in 1916, as it was at
odds with British propaganda against the Turks, at the time an enemy of the
British in the Great War.
In the Victorian and Edwardian eras, the life of an Army
officer was an expensive one, the costs of which could rarely be met on the pay
of a junior officer. The costs involved in the life of a cavalry officer could
be considerable, and it was necessary for the officer to have substantial
personal wealth with which to supplement his pay in order to keep up with the
costs of stabling additional hunting chargers and polo ponies, his numerous
fine uniforms and the busy social life an officer could expect to lead.
As with every British Army that has gone into the field,
some items of use were in short supply, and in The Times of 22nd
February 1900, Charles, or Charlie Dixon-Johnson wrote asking that anyone who
was able to should send field glasses out to the troops.
Charlie Dixon-Johnson lived the life of a country gentleman.
He was a prominent member of the Hurworth Place Hunt, and of the College Valley
Hunt in north Northumberland. He was also a keen otter hunter. A keen horseman
and equine breeder, he travelled with his mother and father to New Zealand, leaving London on 6th January 1898,
First Class aboard the ‘Ruahine’ to purchase horses. His brother, then still a
Lieutenant, travelled as far as Tenerife with them.
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| Charlie's brother, Lieutenant Cuthbert Francis Dixon-Johnson |
In 1907, Charlie Dixon-Johnson married Christian Elfreda
‘Freddy’ Grey of Milfield, near Kirknewton, roughly ten miles from the Scottish
Border. Freddie Grey’s family was an ancient Northumberland family, very
distantly related to Charlie’s mother’s ancestors, and Grey family was
extremely well connected and very influential, not only in the life of
Northumberland, but in Newcastle upon Tyne, and further afield. She was related
to the Earl Grey of tea fame, and to Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary on the
outbreak of the Great War.
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| The church of St Gregory the Great at Kirknewton, where Charlie and Freddy were married in 1907 |
Their marriage at the beautiful Church of St Gregory the
Great in the equally beautiful village of Kirknewton was the social highlight
of the season in Northumberland, and the glittering guest list is worth
considering. Those invited included, The Governor-General of Canada, and Lady
Grey, Lord and Lady Howick, Mr and Mrs Selby-Bigge, Mr Carr, Gosforth; Mr and
Mrs Trevelyan, Netherwitton; Mr and Mrs Riddell, Felton Park; Mr Dowson,
Scrainwood: Mr and Mrs Denton, Newcastle; Mr G. P. Denton, Newcastle; Dr and
Misses Page, Newcastle; Mr Hoyle, Ovingham; Mrs Shield, Newcastle; Captain and
Mrs Coke, Newcastle; Captain and Mrs Keys, Newcastle; Miss Grey, London;
Colonel and Mrs Aitchison, Whitwell Hall; Mr L. Wilkinson and Mrs Wilkinson,
Neasham Abbey; Mr and Mrs Scurfield, Hurworth Hall; Mr and Mrs Cresswell-Ward,
Neasham Hall; Mr and Mrs and Miss Thorburn, Glenormiston, N. B.; Captain and Mrs
Thorburn, Stirling; Sir Walter and Lady Thorburn, Miss Thorburn; Mr and Mrs
Ramsay Smith and Miss Smith; Professor and Mrs Butler, St Andrews; Mr and Mrs
Grey and Miss Grey, Dublin; Mrs Tweddell, Meopham Court; Mr and Mrs Arnold,
Meopham Court; Mr and Mrs Leopold, Genoa; Mr and Mrs Conrad Leopold; Mr and Mrs
Geoffrey Grey, Vancouver; Major Baldwin, Lorenso Marques; Mrs and Miss Carr,
Formby; Mr Sanderson, Berwick-on-Tweed; Mr Boyd, Bretton; Mr and Mrs
Scott-Moncrieff, Chillingham; Rev F. R. Wilson, London; Mr H. T. Ward, Basford
Hall; Miss Calvert, Hull; Rev H. Piddocke, Mrs Piddocke and Miss Piddocke; Rev
J. and Mrs Cuthbertson, Mr W. Finch, Mr W. Dashwood, Mrs and Misses Simpson, Mr
G. P. Hughes, Mr and Mrs Rea, Mr J. G. G. Rea; Mr and Mrs Collingwood, Cornhill;
Rev H. Lunn, Mrs Lunn and Miss Lunn; Mr and Mrs Noel Villiers; Hon F. W.
Lambton, Mrs Lambton and Miss Lambton, Fenton; Vicountess Brackley, Wersle Old
Hall; Lord and Lady Dunglass, Springhill; Miss Deedes, Harlow; Colonel, Mrs and
Misses Anderson, Thirlings; Mr and Mrs and Miss Bell Simpson, Coupland Castle;
Mr Butler and Miss Irene Butler, Ewart Park; Miss Baynes Ewart Park, Mr and Mrs
Rand, Westnewton; Earl and Countess of Tankerville; Mr and Misses Waterston,
Flodden; Mr and Mrs Mossop, Ford Castle; Rev H. M. and Mrs Neville, Ford; Mr
Melrose, Linthaugh; Lady Laing and Miss L. Laing, Etal Manor; Miss Laing and
Misses Paget, Etal Manor; Mr Hugh Laing, Newcastle; Mrs and Misses Greet,
Norham; Sir Francis and Lady Blake and Miss Blake, Tillmouth Park; Mr and Mrs
Clay, Tillmouth; Mr and Mrs Collingwood, Lilburn Tower; Hon. Mrs
Askew-Robertson, Ladykirk; Mr and Mrs Green, Hexham; Canon and Mrs Holland; Mr
B. P. Selby, Pawston; Miss Cowx, Manchester; Mr and Mrs Carr and Miss Carr,
Malvern; Dr. and Mrs Shand, Flodden Lodge; Dr. and Mrs Henderson, Coldstream;
Marquess and Marchioness of Waterford; Miss Scurfield, Hurworth; Mr Robertson,
Brettonby; Sir Thomas and Lady Wrightson; Mrs Sitwell, Barmoor; Mr and Mrs
Chartres, Akeld; Mr and Mrs Fenwick, Berryhill; Mr and Mrs Roddam, Roddam; Mr
and Mrs Stawart, Kimmerston; Mr and Mrs Black, Ford West Field; Mr and Mrs
Rand, Ford Hill; Mrs Dixon-Johnson, Oakwood; Mr and Mrs Williamson, Sockburn
Hall; Captain Dixon-Johnson, Oakwood; Mr and Mrs Brown, West Learmouth.
Contemporary newspaper reports tell of the church being
absolutely ‘filled to overflowing’, so it appears that many of those invited
travelled from far and wide to witness the marriage, and be present at the
subsequent celebrations held at the Grey’s home, Milfieldhill House.
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| Map segment showing the grandeur of the house at Milfieldhill and it's gardens |
Charlie fitted into the Milfield environment very well and began
working with the Grey family’s tenant farmers in how best to manage the land
and improve animal welfare, especially through his work on winter feeding and
the production of sileage. He was credited with the construction of the first
brick built sileage silo, near his Croft on Tees home, and no doubt these would
have been replicated at farms that he had responsibility over.
It seems very likely that Charlie would have been happy to continue
his work, probably best described as ‘Estate Management’ in modern terms, unhindered by what was to come. He
and Freddy had a son in 1908, whom they named Cuthbert John, and John, as he was known, was
joined in 1912 by twin girls, Elfreda Hope, and Christian Mary Faith. Together the girls were known as Hope and Faith.
When war came in 1914, Charlie didn’t join in the rush to
volunteer for the Army. His social status and position in society would have
been sure to have guaranteed a commission into the Territorials, or the New
Army, if this had been his choice. His reasons for not volunteering are unknown
and speculation about them is pointless.
Under the terms of the Military service Act 1916, Charlie
was exempt from the first tranche of those being called up because he was
married, and quite soon, if the law hadn’t been amended to include married men,
he would have reached the upper age limit as well, remaining exempt from service until the 1918 extension of age liability. When the Act was extended to
married men, Charlie was automatically deemed to have enlisted, and he was then
placed in the Reserve until he was mobilised in the 3rd Quarter of
1916 and ordered to report at Newcastle upon Tyne. It is difficult to be any
more specific about his joining date, as the required records which held that
information have not survived, but a brief study of the records of the men with
service numbers close to Charlie Dixon-Johnson’s, show that he was numbered
from a block issued for allocation to men from the northeast of England at around that
time in 1916.
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| Sir Edward Grey - Foreign Secretary, later Lord Grey of Falodden, a relative of Freddy Grey's family |
After training, and on arrival in France, Charlie
Dixon-Johnson joined the 1/7th (Leeds Rifles) Battalion, the West
Yorkshire Regiment, and a place was found for him in 12 Platoon of the
battalion’s C Company.
The War Diary of the 1/7th Leeds Rifles is
demonstrably poor as a document of reference, and records only the very minimum
of basic information. Of the receipt of reinforcements through drafts of new men,
there is nothing written in the diary, but given the progress of soldiers whose
journey through their training and their movement through the Infantry Base
Depots in France to their battalions is known, it seems likely that Charlie
Dixon-Johnson joined his battalion in early 1917, just as the worst of the
winter was lifting and as the battalion was preparing to move from its
position a short distance north of the battlefields of 1916 on the Somme. In
March 1917, 1/7th Leeds Rifles settled for a while in the area where
they had first served in the trenches in the spring of 1915, and so the names
familiar to the old soldiers of two years before, of Laventie, Fauquissart, and
La Gorgue, begin to appear once more in the diary. They remained in this sector
while the Battles of Arras raged from 9th April, and when they did
move north, it wasn’t to the battle zone, but to training facilities on the
coast in an area that straddled the border between France and Belgium.
The relative peace and ease of life continued for the 1/7th
Leeds Rifles until 146th Infantry Brigade was called upon to make an
attack as part of the Battle of Poelcapelle on 9th October. An
account of the battalion’s march from La Brique, a short distance from Ieper,
tells of a miserable march in the rain, over difficult terrain, hampered by
near impassable tracks and intermittent shelling. The entire battalion completed the march without a single casualty. The very first elements of
the battalion to reach the forming up position near Calgary Grange had taken
seven hours to cover six miles, arriving at midnight, with the last group joining the battalion at
3:00 am, less than two and a half hours before the attack was due to begin. The
men were exhausted and soaked as they settled to an uncomfortable wait for the
barrage which they would follow up the slope towards the German positions. The
men were still exhausted when the barrage fell, yet with enormous effort they
lifted themselves to their feet and tried as best they could to keep close
touch with it as it advanced. The heavy going made progress difficult and the spongy,
sodden ground sapped their energy and slowed their pace, making them lose the
barrage and their direction temporarily.
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| Map sheet found in the battalion War Diary, showing the objectives of 9th October 1917 in the area of Yetta Houses and Peter Pan |
As the platoon and company officers attempted to steady
their men and regain their formation, they suffered many casualties, until,
after under two hours of the advance, only two officers remained at duty. The
battalion commander, Lt Colonel Tetley moved his headquarters forward to
Calgary Grange, the position of the start line. He immediately gave orders for
one of his companies to retire in order to thin out his bunched men and lessen
the chances of a disaster if the Germans shelled the positions.
The progress of the battalion stalled in front of Yetta
Houses as more and more men fell victim to the cleverly sited German snipers and
enfilading machine guns. Away to the right, the same was true for A Company,
and their casualties were mounting too. One man (Rfn CA Capp, A Coy), armed
only with his rifle and bayonet rose to his feet and charged a German machine
gun position. Such was the manner of his advance towards them that the German
crew took fright and ran back towards the main German line, leaving Rifleman
Capp to capture their gun, and although he tried to turn the gun on the fleeing Germans, because he couldn’t
operate it, he decided to destroy it. Despite his best efforts to restore some
momentum, the capture of the machine gun position was the high point of the day
for the entire 1/7th Leeds Rifles. Rifleman Capp was decorated with a DCM for his stunning feat of bravery. The attack had bogged down in the
mud under accurate and heavy rifle and machine gun fire from German troops seemingly
oblivious to the British barrage falling around them. The Leeds Rifles held
their positions as best they could until reinforcements, in the shape of 1/4th
Duke of Wellington’s Regiment reported to Lt Colonel Tetley, who gratefully
used them to plug gaps left in the line by the depletion of his own companies.
The attack was all but over by the end of the morning, and
the Leeds Riflemen watched and waited to see what would happen next. Several
small-scale counter-attacks on their positions were beaten down by the Leeds
men, but not without casualties to already reduced numbers, but they held out
until a relief came at 10:00 pm 10th October and the New Zealanders
took their places in the filth and slime of the Peter Pan to Yetta Houses line.
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| Tyne Cot Cemetery, with the arc of the Memorial to the Missing at its top end |
The above narrative describes desperate and disjointed
fighting by the Leeds Rifles against a clever, brave and prepared enemy. The other
battalions in the brigade suffered similar fates, too. Because there was no
appreciable advance, and because the exhausted and shattered battalions were
withdrawn from the line, the survivors were unable to recover their dead, and
they were left to lie on the ground over which they had fought and died. The
bodies of some, will have inevitably been destroyed by subsequent shell fire,
while others sank deep into the mud of the pulverised ground, too deep even for
modern ploughing to disturb. As a result, of the casualties from this attack by
the 1/7th Leeds Rifles, only 10 from a total of 109 dead from 9th
and 10th October 1917 are now buried in an identified grave, and two
of those are at cemeteries used by medical units some distance behind the line, indicating that they were wounded and alive long enough to be evacuated.
The remainder, Charlie Dixon-Johnson included, were either never recovered for
burial, or could not be identified if their remains were found, and their names
are recorded, with 34000 others on the Tyne Cot Memorial, within sight of where
they fell.
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| The British War Medal and Victory Medal awarded to 54593 Rifleman Charles William Dixon-Johnson, 1/7th (Leeds Rifles) Battalion, the West Yorkshire Regiment |
The news that Charlie Dixon-Johnson had been
killed reached Freddy on 24th October and was reported in regional
press the following day. In many ways, she was more fortunate than many of his
contemporaries in that she was surrounded by a large family who had the freedom
and seclusion at home to help her grieve, and her financial future was secure,
but that in no way would have lessened the burden of grief that she and her
children would have had to deal with. Mourning in the Kirknewton area was widely
reported. Despite the seeming finality of the reporting surrounding her son’s
fate, it appears that Maria Dixon-Johnson clung to the fact that at present, he
was reported only as ‘Missing’. It isn’t known how long she kept the hope that
he might return alive, but a little over a year after he was killed, she made
an enquiry to the International Committee of the Red Cross to see if his name
could be traced on any German Prisoner of War Reports. ‘Negatif Envoi’,
signifying an unsuccessful search of the records was the response, and this could only have added to her
grief.
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| Charlie's name engraved, with many others, on the Tyne Cot Memorial |
As his daughters grew, they developed a passion for showing Pekinese dogs, and they were successful on numerous occasions at shows across the
country, including at Crufts.
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| Kirknewton War Memorial |
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| Charlie Dixon-Johnson's name on Kirknewton War Memorial |
Freddy Dixon-Johnson lived the rest of her life as a widow,
and when she died in Edinburgh in 1955, she was brought back to Milfield and is buried in the private family burial ground at Fireburn, an enclosure of land
within the Milfield Estate, a short distance from the, now, heavily remodelled house.
In his retirement, John Dixon-Johnson lived at Middle Ord, his sometime childhood home. He died in 1976, followed the year later by his sister, Hope. Faith had married a man named Goodall, and she died in 1963, being buried close to her mother at Fireburn.
In his retirement, John Dixon-Johnson lived at Middle Ord, his sometime childhood home. He died in 1976, followed the year later by his sister, Hope. Faith had married a man named Goodall, and she died in 1963, being buried close to her mother at Fireburn.
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