Remembering a Veteran: Capt. Leonard Berthon, Royal Warwickshire Regiment

A British Officer in a Cradle of 

Western Civilization

By Paul Albright

Captain and Mrs. Berthon, Before His Departure for the Dardanelles

British Captain Leonard Tinné Berthon was 41 years old when he died on 25 January 1917 while leading a charge against Turkish forces south of Kut in the eastern part of Mesopotamia, now a part of Iraq. The first word of his death came via telegram to his wife in Folkestone, England. Mrs. Ethel Berthon then wrote a short note to their daughter, Anna: 

My dearest Anna: I have just had a wire. Dear Daddy was killed on the 25th in action. Keep up your heart. Always remember he has died for his country as he would wish to do. With much love…Mummy.

Military mail supplied more detail to the family. “He was killed in the open during a counterattack about 10 a.m., death instantaneous,” one Army official wrote. Included was a hand-drawn map showing approximately where Berthon had perished and where he was buried along with other fallen soldiers in the 9th Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.

A division general mailed more information: “We had taken the front line but our men were driven out again by a Turk counter attack. The Warwick’s [sic] who were in reserve advanced across the open under a very heavy fire and re-captured the trench. Your husband fell as he reached the enemy’s parapet at the head of his company. By their dash and determination inspired as it was by the grand example set by your husband (and) the other officers, the Warwicks saved a most critical situation.”

Unidentified British Soldiers at Kut, 1917

“He was killed gallantly leading his men in our attack against the Turkish trenches, which he and his men captured,” wrote one of Berthon’s fellow captains. “The Warwicks were ordered over the top to meet a strong Turkish counter attack and they went to a man, your husband and Col. Henderson leading them. Col. Henderson was killed before he got to the trenches, but your husband took the remainder right into and took the trenches. He was killed in the trench & was buried by his own men. Death must have been instantaneous & he was spared a good deal of pain and suffering, which I hope will be of some comfort to you… The Padre has held a Service on the battlefield for all of the fallen & every regiment was represented to honour those who have given all for their country.” 

Following a family request, the War Office at Whitehall mailed information to the family two years later: “(The battalion) was in line at Kala Haji Fahan (4,000 yards S.W. of Kut). ‘Turks’ attacked and Brits responded taking back one trench. Turks counterattacked and forced the BN (battalion) to withdraw. The BN received the following message from the corps commander: Bravo the Warwick.”

Another officer who was wounded in the same fight wrote to Berthon’s brother in 1919: “The place he was killed was about 900 yards north of the right bank from Kut town. He actually died on the parapet of the Turk trench. Since Warwicks dropped back, assumption was Turks buried his body.” 

Berthon had had a previous brush with death at Gallipoli some 17 months earlier, that time escaping with only a minor wound from a sniper’s bullet during the final phase of the devastating Battle of Sari Bair. He wrote lightheartedly to his family in England that on 10 August 1915 he had been “pipped through the collar bone, carrying a Turkish bullet as overweight.”

Following his hospitalization, Berthon eventually rejoined his regular unit and was with the Warwicks when they engaged the enemy in the second battle of Kut in Mesopotamia (present day Iraq) in January and February of 1917.  In a letter to a cousin written 12 January 12 1917―two weeks before he died and arriving in England one month after his death―Berthon remained uniformly positive and upbeat about success by the Allied forces. At the same time, it was evident in this final letter that Berthon was fatigued by war. “I confess to feeling a little weary,” and added, “I am not now as full of the spirit of adventure as I was in my first campaign twenty years ago.” Recognizing that this letter was not as positive as usual, Berthon ended with a postscript: “The last part of my letter may sound grumblesome. It is not meant to be.” 

      A photo of the Amarah (Amara) War Cemetery in Iraq, taken in about 2003.             The names of the more than 4,500 war dead buried there are on a wall which can be seen in the background of the photo.

At his death, Captain Berthon was buried on the battlefield, but in September 1922, British authorities informed his widow that the grave had been moved “carefully and reverently” to Amarah War Cemetery in southeast Iraq. That military cemetery contains 4,621 burials from World War I, more than 3,000 of which were brought into the cemetery after the Armistice. All of the headstones were removed in 1933 by the British Commonwealth War Graves Commission when it was discovered that salts in the soil were causing them to deteriorate. Instead a wall was erected with the names of those buried in the cemetery engraved on it. 

Upkeep of the military cemetery at Amarah (also spelled Amara) became difficult during the Iran-Iraq war (1980–1988), but the war graves commission had to abandon the cemetery when the Iraqi war erupted in 2003. On its website, the Commission states that it “continues to monitor the situation in Iraq and once the political climate has improved to an acceptable level the Commission will commence a major rehabilitation project for its cemeteries and commemorations.” 

Sources: 

This article is adapted from the Military Postal History Society Bulletin, Vol. 55, #3, July-September, 2016. 

The primary resource for this article, including correspondence and photographs, was the Leonard Tinné Berthon Collection (MS424), University of Colorado, Boulder, University Libraries, Special Collections Department.

Additional resources included: 

British Commonwealth War Graves Commission and ww1cemeteries.com

www.FirstWorldWar.com/battles