British WW1 1897 Pattern Infantry Officer’s Sword of Captain William Henry German, 6th Devonshire Regiment, KIA Battle of Dujailah, Iraq 1916

Straight single-fullered spear-pointed blade. Steel hilt with pierced decoration including the crown and cypher of Edward VII, and sword knot slit. Steel ferrule, fully chequered steel backstrap, integral oval pommel with tang button. Wire-bound black shagreen grip, brown leather washer. Brown leather field scabbard with frog strap and nonferrous throat piece, probably nickel-plated brass. Blade 32½ inches in length, 1.04 inches wide at the shoulder, the sword 38¾ inches overall.

The blade is etched at the ricasso on one side with the retailer’s mark ‘HOBSON & SONS 1-3 & 5 LEXINGTON S^T LONDON W’. At the ricasso on the other side is an etched six-pointed star within which is a brass proof slug stamped with ‘PROVED P’. The blade is further etched on one side with the royal coat of arms, the crown and cypher of Edward VII and foliate motifs, and on the other side with the royal crown above the text ‘6^th Devonshire Regt’, a cartouche for the optional etching of the owner’s name, filled with the ornately monogrammed initials ‘W H G’, and foliate motifs.

William Henry German was born in December 1886 in Okehampton, Devon, the son of William Bird German and Clara Sherwood German (née Trigg). The elder William was a long-standing alderman of the town and was Mayor of Okehampton three times: in 1891, from 1904-06 and finally in 1919.

William was commissioned into the 6^th Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment in June 1910. This would be the most likely purchase date for this sword, bought along with his new officer’s uniform. The 6^th Battalion was a Territorial Force (TF) unit of part-time volunteers, at that time numbering 27 officers and 853 men. Having been formed on 1 April 1908 from the former 4th Volunteer Battalion, it was in its second full year of existence under this designation. Headquartered in Barnstaple it had eight companies based across North Devon: B Company was based in Okehampton itself and would have made sense for him to join, although I do not know which William was actually assigned to. He was promoted to Lieutenant in October 1912.

On the outbreak of the First World War the 6^th Battalion was mobilized at Barnstaple. William was promoted to Captain in September 1914. The 6^th sailed for India in October 1914. They and other volunteer units were stationed at Lahore for over a year as ‘Internal Security’ troops, replacing garrison units of the regular army who were needed on the Western Front. They were underequipped and considered ‘semi-trained’ but adequate for garrison duties at short notice, and occupied themselves while in India with intensive training.

However, they would soon find themselves on an active front as the British campaign to the northwest in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) took a turn for the worse. In late 1915, British and Indian forces of the 6^th (Poona) Division under General Townshend, making a highly unwise and strategically unnecessary grab for Baghdad, were unable to conclusively defeat Ottoman forces at the Battle of Ctesiphon. Exhausted and overextended, Townshend retreated his forces to the town of Kut-al-Amara (often rendered simply as ‘Kut’), where they were then besieged by pursuing Ottomans. The campaign had been hitherto managed by the Indian General Staff, who had badly failed in logistics and medical capacity, so the War Office in London took direct control of the campaign.

They could see that Kut was an impending disaster, with more than 13,000 troops at risk should the town fall. The British urgently needed reinforcements to break the siege before the garrison starved, which was predicted to be in mid-April, leading them to call upon the Territorial units already stationed nearby in India. The 6^th Battalion was accordingly redeployed, landing at Basra on 5 January 1916 as part of the 36th Indian Brigade.

Two British attacks by other units in January to relieve the siege (the Battle of Wadi and Battle of Hanna) both failed with heavy losses. The Ottomans had built very strong defensive positions and were now under the able command of the German general, Colmar von der Goltz. The British had to be aggressive however as the weather would soon turn against them, the spring thaw and oncoming rainy season turning the area near the Tigris into a quagmire.

The British and Ottomans both realized that attack along the right bank of the Tigris River was the most promising angle of attack remaining. The Ottomans had begun constructing a redoubt there at Dujailah (also written Dujaila) soon after the Battle of Hanna – by the time the British were ready to attack it, its glacis was estimated to be 25 feet high in places.

The British crossed the river at night on the 7^th March, with 6^th Battalion forming part of the force which would assault the redoubt under the command of Major-General Kemball. As planned they reached assault positions just before dawn on the 8^th. Some men of the 26th Punjabis pushed up early and found that the formidable redoubt was barely occupied, with the Ottomans taken totally by surprise. Kemball, however, ordered them to withdraw, insisting on waiting for the preliminary artillery bombardment and getting all troops lined up for the prearranged assault time.

This was a terrible tactical error. Rather than seize the moment and occupy the poorly defended redoubt the British held back, lost the element of surprise and allowed the Ottomans three hours to bring reserves over the river and man their defenses. When it finally occurred (late, in fact) the infantry assault suffered heavy casualties to machine gun and artillery fire, ultimately capturing only part of the redoubt’s trench system before an Ottoman counterattack forced them back again. The attack was a total failure with more than 4,000 British casualties – William among them. He was wounded in the assault and ultimately died of those wounds on the 16th March 1916, aged 29.

The British sustained between 23,000 and 30,000 casualties in their attempts to save the men at Kut, but with no relief the garrison surrendered on April 29, 1916. British officers, especially higher ranks, were mostly separated and treated relatively well in accordance with the Hague Convention but their men, already suffering from starvation, were abused by the Ottomans. 70% of the British and 50% of the Indian soldiers who surrendered at Kut are estimated to have died on the 1,200-mile desert death march that followed or during internment in Ottoman prison camps in Anatolia.

The 6th Battalion remained in Mesopotamia, and in 1917 joined a much stronger offensive under General Maude which recaptured Kut in February, and participated in the pursuit of Ottoman forces toward Baghdad. In April, the battalion moved to Shaiba, west of Basra. For the remainder of the war, their role shifted to protecting the Tigris Line of Communication (a light railway line between Sheikh Sa'ad and the Shatt al-Hai), collecting battlefield salvage, and occasional skirmishes with local bandits.

William is buried at the Amara War Cemetery in what is now southern Iraq. This cemetery has been inaccessible to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission since 1991 and is now in dilapidated condition. He was survived only by his father William, who had no other children.

The sword is solid in the hand with no movement. The blade has previously been sharpened in its tip section including a little of the false edge, with sharpening and grinding marks and small scattered spots of cleaned pitting. The edge has dulled somewhat but has no nicks, the tip is rounded by ~1mm. The blade has a slightly matt finish but its etching is clear with only light rubbing beyond the end of the fuller. There is a patch of heavy cleaned pitting on both sides of the blade at the base of the fuller, the depressed areas darkly patinated, which does impact the etching in those areas but does not obscure any significant information.

The hilt, backstrap, pommel and scabbard throat have a bright steel finish, some small lighter spots that may be remnants of plating. The shagreen of the grip is all intact with light handling wear, the wire binding is also all present with slight movement to a couple of the loops. The throat piece of the scabbard is clean and bright, the leather scabbard body has some small dents and scuffs to its surface, a couple of longer scratches near the midsection. Its chape end aside from the edges of the chape piece is covered over with pressed leather, similar in tone but not identical, which has less surface wear and an undulating surface in places – this is probably a repair or reinforcement, age uncertain. The stitching of the scabbard where visible is all intact, the pressed section has a glued butt seam.