HRH Prince Edward, Prince of Wales, wearing civilian clothes, inspects 4th Battalion The Norfolk Regiment during a visit to Norwich on 30 May 1928.
One of the most mysterious incidents in the history of the British Army occurred on the late afternoon of 12 August 1915 when 1/5th Norfolk Regiment went into the attack against Turkish positions on the Gallipoli peninsula near Suvla Bay. In their ranks was C Company, the so-called ‘Sandringham Company’, which was composed of men who worked on the royal estate at Sandringham House and were part-time volunteers of the Territorial Force. Their company commander was Captain Francis Beck, land agent to the estate; the estate’s foremen, butlers, head gamekeepers and head gardeners were the NCOs; the farm labourers, grooms and household servants made up the rank and file. The Norfolks were on the right of the British line and seem to have advanced quickly and confidently towards the enemy positions. At the end of the attack, which failed to take its objectives, most of the survivors made it back to their own lines but sixteen officers and 250 other ranks from the 1/5th Battalion disappeared and, according to the official despatch, ‘Nothing more was ever seen or heard of any of them. They charged into the forest and were lost to sight or sound. Not one of them ever came back.’ It was not until four years later that the remains were found scattered over a wide area near the original Turkish lines, but even then doubts remained as to the fate of the Sandringham Company. Rumours abounded that survivors of the attack had been summarily executed by the Turks and an even stranger story emerged when two New Zealand veterans claimed that they had seen the Norfolks march into a mysterious cloud that first engulfed them then lifted and drifted away, leaving nobody behind. After the war George V unveiled a memorial within the grounds of Sandringham church dedicated to the seventy-seven local dead of the First World War; there is also a memorial plaque on the right of the lych-gate of the church of St Peter & St Paul in West Newton. In 1999 the BBC screened a drama based on the Sandringham Company. Entitled All the King’s Men; it starred David Jason as Captain Frank Beck.
Although the losses at Suvla Bay were relatively small compared to the regiment’s overall wartime casualty list of 5,576, and while it was only a small part of the Norfolks’ war history, the incident typified the regiment’s sense of itself. It emphasised its connection to the Royal Family – long after the war Queen Alexandra continued to take a special interest in the fate of the Sandringham Company – and it underlined the close association that existed between the regiment and the county of Norfolk, one that went back to 1782 when the 9th Foot was designated the East Norfolk Regiment. Between 1885 and 1887 Britannia Barracks in Norwich was constructed as the regiment’s depot, taking its name from the figure of Britannia on the regiment’s cap badge, an honour awarded by Queen Anne in recognition of the regiment’s gallantry during the Battle of Almansa in 1707. Britannia also provided the Norfolks with their nickname ‘The Holy Boys’ after Spanish soldiers mistook it for a representation of the Virgin Mary during the Peninsular War. It also gave rise to a well-worn army joke that the Norfolks were the only regiment allowed to have a woman in barracks. Britannia Barracks was later incorporated into the modern buildings of HM Prison Norwich and the regimental museum was transferred to the Shire Hall, also in Norwich.
HRH Prince Edward, Prince of Wales, wearing civilian clothes, inspects 4th Battalion The Norfolk Regiment during a visit to Norwich on 30 May 1928.
In 1940, during the Second World War, the regiment was the victim of a war crime perpetrated by a Waffen SS unit. It took place on 27 May in the village of Le Paradis, close to the La Bassée canal, where a force comprising 2nd Royal Norfolk Regiment and 1st Royal Scots was attempting to slow down the German advance as the British Expeditionary Force retreated towards the beaches at Dunkirk. A party of ninety-nine men of the Norfolks became isolated in the farmhouse at Le Paradis and when their ammunition ran out their commander, Major Lisle Ryder, ordered them to surrender to 4th Company, SS Division Totenkopf, under the command of Hauptsturmführer Fritz Knöchlein. The captured men were marched to a nearby barn where they were executed by two German machine-gunners. Survivors were then bayoneted but amidst the carnage two men managed to escape death. One of them was Private William O’Callaghan and the other Private Albert Pooley, who later described what had happened to him: ‘Men fell like grass before a scythe … I felt a searing pain and pitched forward … my scream of pain mingled with the cries of my mates, but even before I fell into the heap of dying men, the thought stabbed my brain “If I ever get out of here, the swine that did this will pay for it.”’ After the war Knöchlein was arrested for his role in the war crime and was executed in Hamburg in January 1949.
During the Second World War five members of the Royal Norfolk Regiment received the Victoria Cross for conspicuous gallantry. Two were awarded as a result of action in Burma – Captain John Niel Randle at the Battle of Kohima in April 1944 and Lieutenant George Arthur Knowland at Kangaw in January 1945. The other three were awarded in France – to Company Sergeant Major George Gristock on the River Escaut during the retreat to Dunkirk; Corporal Sidney Bates, who died of his wounds while manning a machine-gun position in Normandy in August 1944; and Major David Jamieson, a company commander in the 7th Battalion, who held a bridgehead over the River Orne under heavy fire during fighting in Normandy. The son of the then chairman of Vickers Armstrong, Jamieson had joined up as a private soldier in the Territorial Army and chose the Norfolks because his family had a holiday home in the county. Standing six feet five inches, he was one of the tallest men in the regiment and later in life was designated ceremonial ‘umbrella man’ to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, holding an umbrella over Her Majesty at social functions when it was raining.
After the end of the Second World War the Norfolks were one of sixteen British infantry regiments that saw action in the Korean War (1950-53). It was a hard and bitter conflict with much of the fighting taking place in conditions not so very different from the Western Front forty years earlier. Many of the soldiers in 1st Royal Norfolks were National Servicemen often bewildered at finding themselves fighting so far from home in a remote part of the world of which they had very little knowledge. One of them was Bob Walding, who later recorded his memories for the Norfolks’ regimental museum: ‘Nobody told us what the war was about. We just picked it up as we went along. To be honest, when I went out there I didn’t know if I was fighting for the North or South; it was as bad as that …’
Men of the 1st Battalion Royal Norfolk Regiment leave for service in Korea on 30 August 1951. It spent 10 months on the front line, improving line defences with barbed wire and trench systems and sending out patrols. During the tour the battalion lost 33 officers and men killed in action and 108 injured.
Earlier, in 1935, the regiment had received a royal title, becoming The Royal Norfolk Regiment, but it was a comparatively short-lived honour. Twenty-four years later The Royal Norfolk Regiment joined forces with its close neighbours, The Suffolk Regiment, to become 1st East Anglian Regiment; this in turn became part of The Royal Anglian Regiment in 1964. A link with the past was maintained when A Company of the new regiment’s 1st Battalion was designated the Royal Norfolk Company.
Carried on the Regimental Colour
Belleisle, Havannah, Martinque 1794, Rolica, Vimiera, Corunna, Busaco, Salamanca, Vittoria, San Sebastián, Nive, Peninsula, Cabool 1842, Moodkee, Ferozeshah, Sobraon, Sevastopol, Kabul 1879, Afghanistan 1879–80, Paardeberg, South Africa 1900–02
Mons, Le Cateau, Retreat from Mons, Marne 1914, Aisne 1914, La Bassée 1914, Ypres 1914, 15, 17, 18, Gravenstafel, St. Julien, Frezenberg, Bellewaarde, Loos, Somme 1916, 18, Albert 1916, 18, Delville Wood, Pozières, Guillemont, Flers-Courcelette, Morval, Thiepval, Le Transloy, Ancre Heights, Ancre 1916, 18, Arras 1917, Vimy 1917, Scarpe 1917, Arleux, Oppy, Pilckem, Langemarck 1917, Polygon Wood, Broodseinde, Poelcappelle, Passchendaele, Cambrai 1917, 18, St. Quentin, Bapaume 1918, Lys, Bailleul, Kemmel, Scherpenberg, Amiens, Hindenburg Line, Èpéhy, Canal du Nord, St. Quentin Canal, Beaurevoir, Selle, Sambre, France and Flanders 1914–18, Italy 1917–18, Suvla, Landing at Suvla, Scimitar Hill, Gallipoli 1915, Egypt 1915–17, Gaza, El Mughar, Nebi Samwil, Jerusalem, Jaffa, Tell ‘Asur, Megiddo, Sharon, Palestine 1917–18, Shaiba, Kut al Amara 1915, 17, Ctesiphon, Defence of Kut al Amara, Mesopotamia 1914–18
Those in bold carried on the Queen’s Colour
Defence of Escaut, St Omer-La bassee, St Valery-en-Caux, Normandy Landing, Caen, Le Perier Ridge, Brieux Bridgehead, Venraij, Rhineland, Hochwld, Lingen, Brinkum, North-West Europe 1940, 44–45, Johore, Muar, Batu Pahat, Singapore Island, Malaya 1942, Kohima, Aradura, Mandalay, Burma 1944–45
Carried on the Regimental Colour
Korea 1951–52
Acting Lieutenant Colonel John Sherwood-Kelly, The Norfolk Regiment commanding 1st Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, First World War, 1917
Company Sergeant Major George Gristock, 2nd Battalion, Second World War, 1940
Captain John Niel Randle, 2nd Battalion, Second World War, 1944
Corporal Sidney Bates, 1st Battalion, Second World War, 1944
Captain David Auldjo Jamieson, 5th Battalion, Second World War, 1944
Lieutenant George Arthur Knowland, The Royal Norfolk Regiment attached No. 1 Commando, Second World War, 1945
