Remembering Lt. Hon. Simon Fraser: Gordon Highlanders: Killed in Action 29 October 1914

 

                        

                              Hon. Simon Fraser (1888-1914)

                                 KILLED IN ACTION TODAY  29 OCTOBER 1914

                          A WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

The photograph of Simon, above, is from Charterhouse School. [1]  The only surviving photograph of  Simon otherwise is as a young boy. [2]   Alas, no photograph survives of him  in the Gordon Highlanders Museum Collection.

Hon. Simon Fraser, 2nd Lieutenant 3rd Battalion (attached to 2^nd Battalion) Gordon Highlanders was  killed in action on  29 October 1914. [3]  He is remembered on Panel 38 Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial.  Son of 18th Baron Saltoun and Lady Saltoun, of Philorth, Fraserburgh, Aberdeen. Several of  the sons of the Saltouns served in the Great War.  [4]

Simon was born on 7 September 1888, educated at Winton House, Winchester (prep school) and Charterhouse School, Godalming. He took up a business career in the City of London with Greenwell & Co, and in 1912 became a member of the Stock Exchange.  He was gazetted a 2^nd Lieut. 3^rd Gordon Highlanders 7 September 1914.  Served with the Expeditionary Force in France and Flanders. Later attached to the 2^nd Battalion of the Gordons.

Simon had everything to live for, handsome, sporty, a talented young man, like so many that were killed in battle in the Great War.  A what might have been, had he been spared. In the last year of his life he was often seen in the company of Hon. Gwyneth Ericka Morgan, ( 1895-1924), a childhood and family friend, they enjoyed each other's company at dances, balls and weekend jaunts to house parties.

Lieut. Col. H P Uniacke, commanding the 2^nd Battalion Gordon Highlanders, wrote on 3 November 1914: “It is with the deepest regret that I write to tell you that poor Simon was killed .... when fighting a difficult rear guard action. Willie [5] (Simon’s younger brother) buried him in the morning of the 29 October in the grounds of an old chateau.”

  

A fellow officer, 2nd Lieut. Peter Duguid, adds: “Simon and I were with our platoons in a trench on the left of the Gordons’ position. The Germans came up on our left and drove back the troops there, and we had to take up new positions as we were enfiladed by a machine gun. In doing this I got a bullet through the flesh of my right arm. When we had time, Simon put on a field dressing for me, and also attended to two of his own men who were hit. We had to fall back to the village of Zandvoorde, where we helped to organise the men. About noon Simon very gallantly carried a box of ammunition to a machine gun over an open field under fire. I  rejoined him later and we took cover in a ditch during some very heavy shelling about 2pm. He had offered me a drink of water and had changed his position to further down the ditch when a shell burst near him and though I ran to him at once there was nothing I could do. I am sure he did not suffer.  I shall always think of his cheerfulness and fortitude whatever had to be done, He had an extraordinary aptitude for the work, and all his men liked him.” [6]

Ypres -Menin Gate Memorial

EXTRACTED FROM "THE MORGANS OF TREDEGAR HOUSE GREAT WAR ROLL OF HONOUR": BY WILLIAM CROSS, FSA SCOT

CONTACT THE AUTHOR  FOR FURTHER DETAILS

williecross@aol.com

---

[1] Provided by Mrs A C Wheeler of Charterhouse School in 2008.

[2]  Enquiries were made in 2008 to establish whether a photograph of  Simon Fraser  survived in his family.  His niece [ the late]  Lady Saltoun was  approached by e-mail.  This is her reply of 6 January 2008. “Dear Mr. Cross  I should love to help you but I think you know more than I do about Uncle Simon's life.  The only photos of him extant in the family are photos of all four brothers aged from c.9 down to 5,  playing at Philorth, which are in the family album,  and I am not quite sure which is Simon and which is my father! They were very close in age. The family album is at Cairnbulg Castle,  Fraserburgh,  AB43 8TN,  which now belongs to my eldest daughter, the Hon. Mrs. Nicolson.  I don't for a moment suppose that a possible photo of him as a small boy is quite what you had in mind!    In the unlikely event that it is,  I am sure my daughter would let you send someone to photocopy the photos,  in that case you should write to her direct,  at the address I have given you. Yours sincerely, Saltoun”

[3] Simon Fraser was killed on 28 October 1914 and buried by his brother Hon. William Fraser (serving also in the Gordon Highlanders, 6^th Battalion) on 29 October 1914.

[4] Lord Saltoun’s eldest son, Alexander, The Master of Saltoun (1886-1979) (from 1933 20^th Lord Saltoun)  was also a Lieutenant in the Gordon Highlanders and was taken prisoner after the Battle of Mons. The 2nd son, the Hon. George Fraser (1887-1970)  (later a Rear Admiral)  was a Lieutenant  in the Royal Navy in the Great War.  The 4^th Son, William Fraser (1890-1964), also in the Gordons.

[5] William Fraser ( 1890-1964). A British army officer in both world wars. Reached the rank of Brigadier.

[6] Extracted from the book “  Menin Gate South: In Memory and In Mourning” By Paul Chapman, Pen and Sword (2016).

REGINALD WYNDHAM :1876-1914 : THE POBBLE

REMEMBERING DEAR REGY

LIEUTENANT THE HON. WILLIAM REGINALD WYNDHAM

Regiment: 1st Life Guards

Service No: Officer

Date & place of birth: 16 March 1876, Petworth, Sussex

Date & place of death: 6 November 1914, Belgium

With much thanks to June Clark ( of Swansea) for taking a photograph of Regy's grave, a few years ago, at Zillebeke Cemetery.

 

Always Known as ‘Regy’ or ‘ Reggie’ he fought in the Boer War as well as the First World War.

 

He was born in Petworth House the son of the 2nd Lord and Lady Leconfield. He was the third youngest of seven children. He was in the 17th Lancers and in the Boer War from 1899 to 1902 he was given the Queen’s Medal with three clasps.

 

He left the army after a riding accident in 1903. He farmed in East Africa, then moved to the Rockies, USA where he went hunting and suffered severe frostbite, requiring the amputation of several toes and gaining the nickname of “Pobble”.

 

He eventually returning to England, spending his winters in Grantham where he still hunted with the Belvoir hounds. When war broke out he was gazetted as a Captain in the Lincolnshire Yeomanry and later attached to the Household Cavalry First Life Guards. He was sent to France on 8 October 1914.

 

Regy never married, although he was deemed a possible husband for the Honourable Gwyneth Ericka Morgan, ( 1895-1924),  Lord Tredegar's wayward daughter, they were linked not so much in romance but a family arrangement that would have given Gwyneth a life of dignified obscurity.

 

In his Will Regy left £3000 to the officers of the 17th Lancers for the promotion of sport in the regiment, and his collection of stuffed hunting trophies to the Borough of Grantham. There was a rumoured romantic link between Regy and an American woman Phyllis Langhorne, one of the five daughters of C D Langhorne of Greenwoods, VA. She had married a New York millionaire Reginald Brooke, but also “captured the heart” of Regy Wyndham and also Captain the Hon. George Douglas Pennant. It was claimed that both these men, killed in action left a fortune in their Wills to Phyllis, who later remarried a Captain Robert Brand.  There is a Wyndham Memorial Park in Grantham which was opened in 1924, after Lady Leconfield donated £1000 towards it as a memorial to her son.

“The war is sad….So many nice men gone! “

Letter of Charles Whibley, Scholar and Critic referring to Regy Wyndham.(2018)

“Poor Reggie Wyndham fell by my side shot through the heart.“

George Fisher Baker, a biography. ( 1938)

Bless him.

 

GRAVE OF REGY WYNDHAM IN BELGIUM

AT ZILLEBEKE CEMETERY

 

DEAR  REGY

FOR MORE INFORMATION EMAIL WILL CROSS

williecross@aol.com

BECAUSE OF THE LINK WITH GWYNETH MORGAN REGY FEATURES IN WILL'S BOOK OF THE TREDEGAR WAR DEAD OF THE GREAT WAR

Remembering the Morgans of Tredegar House Killed in the Great War

Morgans of Tredegar House, Newport

INFORMATION RELEASE

A NEW BOOK ON THE MORGANS OF TREDEGAR HOUSE

FROM NEWPORT HISTORIAN WILLIAM CROSS

The Morgans of Tredegar House:

Great War Roll of Honour : The Hoare, Lindsay and Mundy great- grandsons of the first Lord and Lady Tredegar who died during the 1914-1918 War

A new book about the Morgans of Tredegar House was  published on 11 November 2018.

The book outlines  the story of the five  great grandsons of the first Lord & Lady Tredegar of Tredegar who were killed in the Great War. 

The compiler is  Newport  writer and historian  William Cross,  the author of eight other books featuring the  Morgan dynasty.

The  book is a tribute to the five men, who  spent periods of  childhood and early adulthood in the company of  their Morgan relations at estate events and family gatherings at Tredegar House and the adjoining Tredegar Park and Ruperra Castle.

The book also touches on a nephew of Katharine, Lady Tredegar and three  other men killed  in the Great War who had overlaps to the Morgan family as they were socially linked in her debutante year of 1914 with the doomed  Gwyneth  Erika  Morgan, daughter of the 3rd Lord and Lady Tredegar whose body was fished out of the River Thames in 1925.

Essential reading for those interested  in the Morgan family of Tredegar House  and their collaterals and those who wish  to remember the selfless contribution one of Wales’s great families made in the war to end wars.

Compiler  William Cross comments :

• “Surprisingly with all the commemorations for the Great War no mention is made  at the Morgan seat of Tredegar House of the five brave Morgan  men who gave their lives for their country. 

Cross adds:

• “ Sadly on  11 November 2018 Tredegar House was dark and closed  whilst  the whole country observed two minutes silence for the dead from the Great War, and for  the  Armistice  commemorations 100 years on from the special day  that established  an important  line for peace and remembrance  after  four years of slaughter between 1914 and 1918. ”

  

The book is 100 pages long, with over 100 End Notes and contains

Over 80 images, with unique pictures of members of the Morgan clan that are not in the public domain. Many images are in colour.

*  Further Enquiries about the book  etc  please contact:

William Cross

58 Sutton Newport, Newport, NP 19 7JF

e-mail

williecross@aol.com

LEST WE FORGET

Those  to remember  with  honour are  Lt. Charles Morgan Hoare, 15^th Kings Hussars, Capt. George Walter Thomas Lindsay, Royal Engineers, Lt. Frederic Charles Mundy, RNVR,  Lt. Archibald Thurston Thomas Lindsay, Royal Engineers and Major Claud Frederick Thomas Lindsay, Royal Field Artillery.

Also to recall are Capt. Raymond Rodakowski, Irish Guards, nephew of Katharine, Lady Tredegar, Hon. Simon Fraser, Hon. Charles Mills, MP,  and Hon. Reginald Wyndham who  all  died between 1914 and 1918. 

The book is dedicated to the Hon. Gerard Sturt, brother of Lois Sturt ( Viscountess Tredegar 1934-1937).  By a singular coincidence Gerard Sturt died at Crichel House  (the country residence  of his parents, Lord and Lady Alington) about 8:30am on Monday 11 November
1918.  This was just after the re-taking of Mons ( where Gerard was  horrifically wounded in  1914) and the signing of the Armistice.