The fearless heroism of George Osborne, MC ... by George Osborne, MP
In a deeply personal tribute to the courage of our troops from WWI to Afghanistan, the Chancellor reveals gallantry of his grandfather and great uncle in key ‘Kaiser’ battle of 1918
AS DUSK fell at 6pm on March 21, 1918, Derrick Osborne, a 20-year-old Lieutenant in the Durham Light Infantry, was killed. He was shot running across the Morchies Road, in Northern France, in a last-ditch attempt to reinforce his battalion’s right flank and stop it being surrounded by advancing German soldiers. Or so we think.
It was certainly the last time he was seen alive. My great-uncle’s body was never found. He was billed as ‘missing’, and it was not until a full year later, in March 1919, that his distraught family put a notice in their local newspaper, the Sussex Express, accepting he had died and would never return.
Derrick Osborne was killed after almost two years on the Western Front, and at the end of a long, desperate day of fighting that had started with gas shells raining down on his trenches at 5am.
All day the fighting had raged, as wave upon wave of enemy troops pushed the Durham Light Infantry further and further back. It was the first day of the great German Spring Offensive of 1918 known as the Kaiserschlacht, or Kaiser Battle, that was designed to deliver the decisive blow that would end the war in the crucial months between the exit of the now-revolutionary Russians and the arrival in strength of the Americans.
After the initial breakthrough, the German advance continued for a further seven days and 16 miles until, having over-run the town of Albert, they reached the River Ancre.
There, the Royal Sussex Regiment were the latest group of exhausted British soldiers who had been ordered to try to stop them, and had hastily dug some trenches in Aveluy Wood, on the other side of the river, from which to mount their defence.
There was bitter fighting, and the Royal Sussex were pushed back towards the back of the wood – but they managed to hold on.
The German advance ground to a halt – and it was the furthest point that the spring offensive reached.
The man who helped to command those troops in that final defensive was Derrick’s brother, Major George Osborne – my grandfather.
Sadly, I never met my grandfather. Born in 1894, he was a quiet professional soldier from East Sussex who, before Aveluy Wood, had already been wounded twice in action and mentioned in despatches.
That day, in 1918, he was to win the Military Cross for his bravery. During
George’s MC stared down at me... beside Derrick’s ‘Dead Man’s Penny’
my childhood, his silver MC with its white and purple ribbon and ‘Aveluy Wood, 1918’ engraved on the back, stared down at me from a display case in my home.
Alongside it sat the large bronze memorial plaque that commemorated the sacrifice of his younger brother. It was one of 1,335,000 such plaques, or a Dead Man’s Penny as they were called, that were issued.
I have always looked at the two sets of medals and wondered at the fate of war. One brother lives, is decorated for his bravery; goes on to have four children and dies many decades later. The other is killed as a youth and the only trace he leaves behind is a bronze medallion, a longfaded memory and a name, engraved among countless others on a memorial in the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in Arras.
If the trajectories of the enemy bullets had been ever-so slightly different, then my great-uncle would have lived and my grandfather would have died – and my father, my brothers and I and my children would never have lived.
For me, like so many other families, there is nothing abstract about the First World War. It is deeply personal. And it is not just the scale of the slaughter that has struck me. It is the sheer randomness of who lived and who died.
A few weeks ago, I went again to visit the battlefields of Northern France with my children. I defy anyone who stares at row upon row, column upon column, arch after arch of the names of the dead on the Thiepval memorial, or the Menin Gate in Ypres, not to at least ask again the question: What could possibly justify all this? What did my great-uncle and the other 32 young men from his small village in East Sussex die for? Derrick was killed trying to prevent the final German effort to win the war – an effort that failed thanks to his sacrifice and courage, the courage of my grandfather and of many, many others.
It is difficult to appreciate now – because we know the outcome of the war and all that followed – that those fighting it did not know that Britain and its Allies would win, even by 1918. Indeed, faced with the relentless German onslaught that Spring, Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig issued a plea to all troops that said simply: ‘With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the bitter end.’
So these battles mattered in a war where the outcome mattered.
WHENthecommemorations for the centenary of the First World War were first being discussed, there was a risk that the reason we fought the war would be forgotten. There is always the temptation to present it as nothing more than a bloody struggle between rival empires ruled by rival royal cousins.
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sted that simplistic interpretation. ain was, for all its imperfections, a mocracy seeking to preserve the e of international law on the tinent and resist German militam. We know the far-reaching sequences of victory for Britain, the transformation it brought to rything from our attitude to war lf to the role of women. We also w the peace didn’t last. But that s not make it a conflict without any pose. hat is unknowable are the even re far-reaching consequences Britain had we lost. We do not know t our country would look like today t it is difficult to believe it would a better place; in all likelihood it ld be very much worse. So I do not ept that Derrick Osborne and all comrades died in vain. d then there is the impact on the ng. Some years ago, with my father his brother, I went to explore Ave-Wood and to see where their father won the Military Cross. There is ign or memorial to the struggle re. This was not Vimy Ridge or es Salient; just another forgotten mish among thousands of others. e parked the car by the side of the d, walked into a little copse by the
of the ploughed fields, and it was f we had been transported back e decades. There, in the wood, arently undisturbed except by the passage of time, were remnants of the barbed wire, the shallow trenches and the shell holes where my grandfather fought and survived.
There, by the side of the fields, was a row of unexploded German shells, exposed by the latest ploughing, that had been fired to kill him.
And there too was the companionship of the Osborne family, almost 100
We find the very trenches where my grandfather fought, and unexploded shells that were fired to kill him
years later, brought together in remembrance of part of our own personal history.
Last month I took my own children to visit the same area.
I doubt my relatives who fought in Northern France would have imagined it possible that a century later their offspring, and offspring’s offspring, would be marching through those woods and honouring their memory. I doubt ten years ago that we would have thought it likely that thousands of our schools, our newspapers and broadcasters, and the public at large would take such a close interest in the centenary of the First World War.
I’m sure that the courage of British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have reminded us all of the sacrifice those in uniform make to keep us safe.
In an age when we worry about the fragmentation of our national identity, this centenary has reminded us not just of our shared past – but of the ties that bind us still. It was that nation, and those ties, that Derrick and George fought for.
I already knew the story of my decorated grandfather. But the story of my great-uncle’s last day on earth is only known to me because of the work of people living in the village of Framfield, in East Sussex, where Derrick and George Osborne grew up.
There, a group of fellow citizens have devoted a huge amount of effort to researching the stories of the 33 men from the small parish killed in that war. They wrote to me earlier this year, enclosing the research they had done on Derrick.
I am hugely grateful to them, not just because they honour his memory and sacrifice, but also because they have enriched my life, filled in for me part of my family history and connected me with the sacrifice of men who gave everything so that we could enjoy our freedom today.
May the courage of Major George Osborne never be forgotten. May Lieutenant Derrick Osborne rest in peace. And may all who fought and died for our freedom in that almighty struggle be honoured again this year.