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WW1: Kiwi Part Of 'Hush-Hush Brigade'

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  • WW1: Kiwi Part Of 'Hush-Hush Brigade'

    WW1: KIWI PART OF 'HUSH-HUSH BRIGADE'

    New Zealand Herald
    Jan 21 2015

    By Andrew Stone

    Lower Hutt painter awarded Military Cross for bravery in counter-attack
    went on to join crack British unit

    Today we might call them special forces. When Robert Kenneth Nicol
    joined a top secret British Army unit in 1918, it was known as the
    "hush-hush brigade".

    A painter by trade, the stocky Nicol, from Lower Hutt, enlisted for
    service soon after war broke out.

    He served in Gallipoli with the Wellington Battalion, before moving
    on to France and the Western Front.

    In late 1917, Second Lieutenant Nicol was awarded the Military Cross
    for bravery, after he led a party against an enemy counter-attack in
    a captured village. The citation, in the London Gazette, reported
    that in fierce hand-to-hand fighting, Nicol accounted for "six of
    the enemy himself".

    Not one to blow his trumpet, the New Zealander told his parents after
    the investiture by King George V that "I've been up to the Palace to
    meet George, and he shook my dook".

    Nicol, assigned the rank of temporary captain, had a solid reputation
    as a capable officer, handy with the Lewis gun and Stokes mortar and
    a skilled bomb instructor. It made him a perfect candidate, with 23
    other New Zealanders, for special service with the British Army.

    With volunteers from Australia, Canada and South Africa, the small band
    of brothers - the War Office had in mind a secret force of 100 officers
    and 200 NCOs - had a mission to block the Bolsheviks from the Caucasus.

    It was a perilous and risky initiative - the NZ Rifle Brigade History
    notes the men were told when they assembled that few could hope to
    come through alive.

    After two weeks being billeted in the Tower of London, where the
    soldiers were kitted out with fur-lined coats, caps and gloves,
    the unit learned the expedition would be known as Dunsterforce after
    Major-General Lionel Dunsterville, an Indian Army officer. The arrival
    of two Tsarist officers gave the Commonwealth force a clue to its
    destination, which was confirmed as the unit set out from Waterloo
    Station on January 29, 1918.

    After crossing Europe as far as Italy, the soldiers boarded a ship
    for the Suez Canal and round to Basra before heading up the River
    Tigris to Baghdad in what was then Mesopotamia. The task set for
    Dunsterforce was ambitious: to blunt Turkish and German expansion
    reaching the rich Baku oil fields on the Caspian Sea.

    The strategy involved the small Allied unit persuading Georgian,
    Armenian and Assyrian forces to hold the line against the rampant
    Turkish armies.

    In early August, Nicol and a small team led by an Australian, Captain
    Stanley Savige, were sent to provide rearguard protection for a column
    of 50,000 fleeing Armenian and Assyrian Christians. The refugees had
    already retreated hundreds of miles to escape their ruthless pursuers.

    Savige recorded the terror in his diary: "Turkish troops and Kurdish
    irregulars were raiding the column, murdering the people and carrying
    off girls to their harems, together with whatever loot they could
    lay their hands on."

    Near a village called Sain Kaleh, Savige and Nicol kept up a stream
    of fire from their Lewis machine guns while the demoralised refugees
    streamed towards safety.

    Nicol bravely kept up covering fire for the soldiers trying to save
    pack animals carrying ammunition and other supplies. A Court of
    Inquiry after the incident found that he was shot during this action,
    and "fell to the ground motionless".

    Sadly, news of his fate was not conveyed to his parents, who died
    thinking their 24-year-old son was "missing in action, believed
    killed".

    Nicol's name is inscribed on the Commonwealth War Graves Tehran
    memorial.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11389837



    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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