Remembering a Veteran: Sir Arthur Dean, CIE, MC with Bar, ED, late 252 Tunnelling Company, Royal Engineers

Royal Engineers Badge, World War I

Contributed by Adrian Roberts

My great-uncle, Sir Arthur Dean, was one of the few Great War veterans with whom I talked about his experiences. Not that he talked about the war very much; he was as modest as most true veterans are, but he did tell me that he was in a tunnelling company, as he had gained a degree in mining engineering at Imperial College, London, and when the war started, he was working at a gold mine in Russia. He said that although he was a sapper, he had once been asked to lead his men over the top in an infantry attack. I remember him saying, “I wasn’t keen—but I went!” with the massive understatement typical of his generation.

It wasn’t until his funeral in 1976, when I was 17 and he would have been 84, that I learned that he had been awarded the Military Cross, and it was not until I went on the internet nearly 30 years later that I found that he had a bar to his MC. I corresponded in 2005 with a researcher online who said that Arthur Dean had been in 252 Tunnelling Company and was possibly the officer who had detonated the Hawthorn mine at the start of the First Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916. He sent  me the attached photo that he believed was of Arthur Dean. 

Arthur Dean, Possibly in a Mine Tunnel

Unfortunately, the rest of the correspondence is in a format which I cannot now open. (I wonder how many historical records will be lost due to only being stored digitally). However, around the same time my uncle gave me the address of Arthur’s son by his first wife, who very kindly sent me a handwritten letter and other documents, which I still have, including a CV written by Sir Arthur himself, and copies of the London Gazette with his Military Cross citations.

The son said that he thought it very likely that the photo is of his father. The first MC citation is dated 15 March 1916 (meaning the incident was several months earlier).  Apart from confirming that he was with 252 Tunnelling Company, it says that he “rescued at great personal risk from a wrecked mine an NCO and a man who had been entombed, went further and found another man dead, and within five minutes of his return the whole gallery collapsed.” The bar was gazetted on 10 January 1917 and says “For conspicuous gallantry in action. He blew a mine under the hostile front line, which killed 280 of the enemy, and went at once over to the enemy front line with one servant, bombed a dug-out, and took three officers and forty-six men prisoner.” (Men have been awarded VCs for such single-handed attacks on dugouts).

Hawthorn Mine Explosion, 1 July 1916

This latter citation almost certainly refers to the blowing of the Hawthorn mine at the start of the Battle of the Somme (and was possibly the incident that he told me about). His son included a copy of a letter that he had written the previous year (2004) to the curator of the Territorial Army Museum. He states that he had been in the TA (the UK equivalent of the National Guard) for 23 years, and states with certainly that it was his father who had detonated the mine (confirmed in the Gazette). He mentions the controversy around the fact that the mine was detonated several minutes before the British troops went over the top: this was to avoid them being caught in the explosion, but the delay enabled the enemy to re-group and man the machine guns that caused so many British casualties. He says that his father told him that:

…he was the most junior officer present in the Divisional HQ. The General said that the first requirement was to withdraw all units to the third-line trenches before the mine was blown. My father interrupted and said ‘why are we going to do that Sir?’. The reply was to ensure that none of the men were injured in the explosion. My father said ‘Sir, there are detailed calculations that no soldier would suffer more than minor injuries provided he was wearing a steel helmet. You should therefore keep them in the front-line trenches’. The General’s reply was: ‘Dean, you are a Temporary Captain with little military experience. My advice comes from the Colonel Royal Engineers so we will do what he says’.

The general was presumably Hunter-Weston, which would tie in with his poor reputation. The son points out that no other CRE gave the same advice regarding the other mines. Arthur finished the war as an acting major. His son said that when working in the mines he was only able to wash in cold water, and he only washed in cold water for rest of his life!

Sir Arthur's Trench Art Souvenirs from the War

After the war, he worked for the Indian Public Works Department, eventually becoming chief engineer. He was also commissioned into the Indian Auxiliary Force, eventually commanding the Delhi Contingent as a lt-colonel. He resigned his commission in 1939, presumably as his engineering skills were more important to the war effort, and during WWII, according to his CV, he supervised the design and construction of 78 airfields throughout India, as well as road and drainage works. I assume this was why he was knighted. He returned to his work in Delhi after the war, but in 1948 his “services were dispensed with prematurely due to constitutional changes” (his words!) and he returned to the UK. His first wife died around this time, and he married Marjorie, my great-aunt in 1951. During the 1950s, they were in Libya, where he worked on the postwar reconstruction of that country, before he retired to Worcester Park, Surrey.

Sir Arthur Dean, 1952 (National Portrait Gallery)

Finally, I should say that he was a committed Christian, a member of the Plymouth Brethren, and in the 1960s was on the committee of the British and Foreign Bible Society.

Adrian Roberts, August 2024