Remembrance Day 2010 Bravery in the Field
Geoff Botting writes about his unique SE9 grandparents, who both won military honours in WW1
In
August 1951 a short man with a slight limp wheeled his bicycle
out of number 42 Purneys Road and began his daily ride over Shooters Hill to work.
But as he pedalled along Woolwich New Road towards Crossness sewage works, where he was Chief Foreman, George Botting collapsed. He died shortly afterwards in St Nicholas Hospital. Cancer has ended my grandfather’s life at the relatively young age of 57.
Canal. Such was the accuracy and speed of the Kent’s rifle fire that the German commander thought he was being machine gunned.
Eight months later, in April 1915, he took part in the attack and defence of Hill 60; an event described as “one of the most desperate and sanguinary encounters of the War”.
The Hill, just outside Ypres, was held by the enemy but following the detonation of over 10,000 lbs of explosives placed in tunnels under the Hill the German defenders were overwhelmed by the Kents.
In the subsequent fierce German
counter attacks most of the British officers were killed and the defence was led by the NCOs with Sergeant George Botting prominent among these.
A history of the Battalion notes that ‘Sergts. Weston, Botting and Rabbit were all conspicuous for their gallantry and good leading’.
George was subsequently awarded the Military Medal. A week later, on the 5th May, and only after the first use of chlorine gas in the war, the Germans retook the Hill with 2,000 British dead lying in an area about the size of a ‘large backyard garden’.
However cancer was not the cause of the limp and, at times, George must have reflected that he was fortunate to have passed 25.
In August 1912 he had joined the 1st Battalion of the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent regiment which, two years later, was in Dublin from whence, 10 days after the Britain declared war on Germany, he arrived in France.
George first saw action nine days later when he and his comrades inflicted a severe
defeat on the attacking Brandenburg Grenadiers at the Conde 6
A year and a half later a gunshot wound in the thigh while George was in action on the Somme saw him repatriated and after six months in hospital back to south east London with a limp and a clerk’s position at the Royal Arsenal. His war was over.
Also working at the Arsenal was Jesse Dobbs, a crane driver with five daughters. The eldest of these, Daisy Dobbs, was a nurse recently returned from service overseas.
Rarely for a woman at the time, she was also the holder of the Military Medal. Perhaps it was this that drew them
t ogether
and in the autumn of 1919? subsequently moving to Purneys Road where they spent the rest of their marr ied life together.
Daisy Ellen Caroline Ansell D obbs had trained as a nurse before the War. She joined the Territorial Force Nursing Service in February 1915 and, following a period working at the 4th Northern General Hospital, Lincoln, was sent on Active Service to Salonika in Greece on the 20th October 1916, where she remained for the following two years. On the night of 27th February 1917
SEnine
she was wounded during an enemy air raid while working at No.29 General Hospital, receiving wounds to her face and chest as she used her own body to cover her patient. Her actions that night were recognised by the award of the Military Medal for, as the citation reads: “conspicuous bravery, calmness and special devotion to duty in looking after the safety of patients under her charge even after she was wounded by a piece of a bomb and bleeding profusely,
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