Victoria Cross winner was black sheep of the family
This unassuming gravestone marks the last resting place of one of the heroes of the First World War.
Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Drummond Borton, known as Bosky, grew up at Cheveney in Yalding, though it is possible he was actually born in Malta as his grandfather General Sir Arthur Borton was Governor of the island and Arthur’s father acted as the General’s aide-decamp.
The Lieutenant Colonel’s grave is in St Mary’s Churchyard in Hunton.
He fought with the London Regiment and was awarded the Victoria Cross for most conspicuous bravery and leadership at Tel Esh Sheria, during the 3rd Battle of Gaza, on the November 7, 1917.
His citation reads: “Under most difficult circumstances, in darkness and in unknown country, he deployed his battalion for attack, and at dawn led his attacking companies against a strongly held position.
“When the leading waves were checked by withering machine-gun fire, Lieutenant Colonel Borton showed an utter contempt for danger and moved freely up and down his lines under heavy fire.
“Reorganising his command, he led his men forward and captured the position.
“At a later stage of the fight, he led a party of volunteers against a battery of field guns in action at point blank range, capturing the guns and the detachments. His fearless leadership was an inspiring example to the whole brigade.”
In his own account of the incident in a letter to his father, he suggested he had little choice but to attack.
He said: “We were in a devilish awkward fix. It was impossible to stay where we were and hopeless to go back and so to go forward was the only thing to do.”
Arthur Borton was one of few men who could claim to have served in all three branches of the Armed Services
Born in 1883, his family employed a governess for him and his brother Amyas and sister Dorothea, as well as seven servants and a batman.
Despite his privileged background, which included Eton and Sandhurst, he became something of the black sheep of the family. Initially commissioned into the Kings Royal Rifle Corps in 1902, he saw service in the Second Boer War in South Africa and in India before he left in 1908 having been classed as “unfit for general service”. He then travelled to America to make his fortune.
Unfortunately, all his enterprises, which included fruit farming, marketing a new kind of bottle-stopper and selling ice, failed, and it is said he was reduced to sleeping on a park bench once his father tired of supporting him.
With the outbreak of the war in 1914, he returned to England, aged 31, and rejoined his old regiment.
Shortly after, however, he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, flying in France as an observer. In 1915, his plane crashed and he was seriously injured and invalided out of the service.
After convalescing at Cheveney, he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, serving in Gallipoli at the Sulva Bay landings, where he was in charge of two motor machine gun armoured car companies.
When the attack failed, it was his guns that provided the covering fire during the retreat, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order.
In June 1916, he rejoined the Army, fighting in France, Greece and Palestine before joining the battle at Gaza.
He survived the war and stayed in the Army to take part in the North Russian Intervention against the Bolsheviks in 1919.
He was one of the pall-bearers at the burial of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey.
Civilian life did not seem to agree with him. He was unable to settle in any job, and became a heavy drinker, causing his father to disinherit him in favour of his younger brother Amyas, who had also had an illustrious war career.
Arthur Borton died from a stroke in 1933, aged 49. He left his estate worth £2,960.10s.6d to his wife Lorna (nee Lockhart).
His brother survived until 1969.