Family :

Service Life:

Campaigns:

• The First World War 1914-1918, World-wide.

The Gallipoli Campaign was fought on the Gallipoli peninsula 25th April 1915 to 9th January 1916. in a failed attempt to defeat Turkey by seizing the Dardanelles and capturing Istanbul. Ill-conceived and planned, the initial effort by the Royal Navy failed to force passage through the Dardanelles by sea power alone. It was then realised that a land force was needed to support the project by suppressing the Turkish mobile artillery batteries. By the time all was ready the Turks were well aware and well prepared. Despite amazing heroics on the day of the landings only minor beachheads were achieved and over the succeeding 8 months little progress was made. Eventually the beachheads were evacuated in a series of successful ruses.

Despite Gallipoli rightly becoming a national source of pride to Australians and New Zealanders, far more British casualties were sustained, and these days the substantial French contribution is almost forgotten.

Detail :

General Staff: Commanding 127th (Manchester T.F.) Brigade, 42nd Division.

I Shall not find his equal Niall Cherry The life of Brigadier-General Noel Lee, The Manchester Regiment Biography of Brigadier Noel Lee, 6th Manchesters. Illustrated with previously unpublished photographs of the Gallipoli campaign from the Manchester Regiment archives. This covers the mobilisation of the Manchester Territorials, camp at Rochdale, on to Egypt in late September 1914 and on to the battlefields of Gallipoli. A4 Hardback. 54 pages, 29 black & white photographs, 2 maps, appendix and index. 3rd Battle of Krythia On the 29th Division's right, the 42nd Division attacked with the four Manchester Regiment battalions of the 127th Brigade in the first wave with two battalions of the Lancashire Fusiliers following the attacking waves. Here the attack opened well and within five minutes the Turkish first line had been captured. The whole of the division's objective was soon taken, except on the extreme left (next to the 29th Division) where the wire in front was uncut. For the first hour everything went well. The 127th Brigade advanced about 1000 yards and over 200 prisoners were taken. The Official History states that: "the Turks were on the run". Hunter-Weston now issued orders to consolidate the ground gained. The 42nd Division as far as was known was still in a good position, although the 127th Brigade commander, Brigadier-General Lee, had by now been mortally wounded in the throat by a shell and his successor, Lt.-Col. Heys (SEE LODGE NO 2322) had been killed outright. It was unfortunate that at about 16.00 the Turkish reserves had came into action and soon after Hunter-Weston's order to consolidate, word reached corps HQ that the 127th Brigade was now being hard-pressed. From this point on the situation grew steadily worse. At 18.00 the Brigade was being attacked from three sides and the leading troops? withdrawal was eventually approved by Hunter-Weston. A company of the 1/6 Manchesters however was unable to comply and was practically wiped out. By nightfall the greater part of the ground captured during the attack had been given up. Of 16,000 officers and men engaged, the British had lost 4,500. Br.-Gen. Lee was subsequently evacuated to Malta where he died from hemorrhage due to the reopening of his wounds. He is buried in Pieta Military Cemetery.

See Frank Davies & Graham Maddocks, Bloody Red Tabs: General Officer Casualties of the Great War, 1914- 1918, (Leo Cooper, London, 1995) pp81-2.

"Over the next 10 days there was continuous fighting. On 3rd June at dawn the Battalions took up positions for attack on the main Turkish trench. Orders for attack were received. Artillery bombardment opened at 8.00am 4th June. This bombardment was heavier and longer than anything previously fired and the damage to Turkish trenches was negligible.

Promptly at 12,00 noon the leading wave of ‘Manchester’s’ went over the top for the first time and advanced steadily across No-Man’s Land. Within 5 minutes the ‘Manchester’s’ captured the Turkish front line. For the first hour or so things went well then without any warning disaster struck. Firstly, Noel Lee was wounded in the throat and jaw and secondly the Battalions failed to stop a spirited Turkish counterattack and fell back. By 1.30 the situation was one of failure. Around 6.30pm the order was given to withdraw.

Noel Lee bravely took himself to the First Aid post where he had to be persuaded to lie on a stretcher. There he underwent an operation and then underwent a 4 day trip to the Blue Sisters hospital. On the 21st June he suffered a setback and died that morning.

As Noel Lee must have been the highest ranking Officer to die in Malta for a very long time he was given an impressive funeral. He is buried in the Pieta Military Cemetery. He was posthumously awarded a mention in Dispatches dated 22/9/1915."

See also: St Mary's Alderley Roll of Honour where portions of this legend are extracted.

Masonic :

At the time of his initiation, Noel was listed as a 31 year old Merchant from Chelford, Cheshire. His war service is recorded in the contribution record of the Lodge, with a final annotation that he was "Killed in action 22nd June 1915."

He was also a joining member of East Lancashire Centurion Lodge No. 2322 on February 4th, 1907. At the time he was resident at Heawood Hall, Adderley. He is noted to have resigned from this lodge in October 1909.

Past Master & Past Provincial Senior Grand Warden

Source :

The project globally acknowledges the following as sources of information for research across the whole database:

• The Commonwealth War Graves Commission
• The (UK) National Archives
• Ancestry.co.uk - Genealogy, Family Trees & Family History online
• ugle.org.uk - The records of the United Grand Lodge of England including the Library and Museum of Freemasonry

Additional Source:

• Founder Researchers : Paul Masters & Mike McCarthy
• Researcher : Bruce Littley