(Author: Irina Shub, Vol. 64, #3, Chanukah 2009)
One day, a print-out from a local newspaper appeared on my desk. One of the articles was entitled ‘Lieut. Albert Isaacs’ and reported on the funeral of that individual, describing him as a “victim of the Old Brompton tragedy”. The funeral had taken place at the cemetery of the “Jewish Synagogue, High Street, Rochester”. The article had neither a date nor the name of the newspaper in which it had appeared. My professional curiosity was aroused – I was at the time collecting material on the Jewish community in Medway, which includes Rochester. Thus began the unravelling of this intriguing story.
One clue to the period when the article was published was the name of the Rabbi officiating at the funeral, Rev. Fenton. He was the resident rabbi in the area in the years 1903-1919. Further, the presence of the Middlesex Regiment at the funeral pointed to the 1914-1918 period, when the Medway Towns served as a base for various regiments during the Great War. However, Lieutenant Isaacs wasn’t mentioned in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database for casualties, nor did he have a Medal Index card (National Archives website); he was not commemorated in the Roll of Honour in the British Jewry Book of Honour,1 nor was he mentioned in the list of officers who died in the Great War (HMSO 1917). Indeed, his name seemed to have been obliterated from most of the primary sources of the Great War, and my visit to the National Archives likewise produced a negative result – there seems to be no information on Isaacs’ war records.
Notwithstanding this I was, in conjunction with Martin Sugarman, Harold Pollins and Saul Issroff,2 able to piece the story, a sad one of an intelligent man who was eager to help the country yet ultimately felt only a deep sense of hurt and rejection. This feeling played so much on his mind that the only way he saw of redeeming himself was to sacrifice his life, ending it with his own hands by shooting himself. The purpose of this article is to commemorate Lt. Albert Isaacs, whose name and life have been forgotten for 90 years despite his having served in several British military campaigns and becoming, in a very real sense, a victim of the Great War.
The death certificate disclosed that Albert Isaacs, 37 years old, from the 5th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment, died on 2 September 1917. A burial register for the Jewish cemetery states that his burial, attended by his relatives, members of the Middlesex
Regiment and several South African officers, took place on 6 September. There is no extant headstone on Isaacs’ grave in the synagogue cemetery.
I checked the local newspapers, and found that the Chatham Observer and Chatham News featured a full report, both dated 8 September, of the inquest into the death of the Lieutenant.
Albert Isaacs was born in 1880 to Pauline, 27, a German national, and Samuel Isaacs. The family lived in the agricultural town of Vryburg, situated in the North West Province of South Africa halfway between Kimberley (now capital of the Northern Province) and Mafikeng (capital of the North West Province). There was no Jewish community in Vryburg at the time, so in order to perform a circumcision according to Jewish custom, the family would either have travelled to Kimberley or brought out a mohel to Vryburg. Unfortunately, Pauline died the following year when Albert was just a year old. His father soon remarried, and the boy was brought up in the Jewish tradition by his father and stepmother. Later, Albert became a member of the Johannesburg Stock exchange, and went on to become their chief book-keeper. As a young man, he took part in the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902).
At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, both the South African and British governments were aware of the importance of South Africa’s border with adjoining German South West Africa, and accordingly decided to invade that territory. The invasion was delayed, however, as there was a considerable degree of sympathy for the German cause among the Afrikaner population due to German support for their national independence during the 1899-1902 war. Lieutenant-Colonel Manie Maritz, together with several other high ranking officers, rapidly raised about 12000 rebels ready to fight for a “Free and Independent South Africa, free from British control”. The government, under the command of Generals Louis Botha and Jan Smuts, declared martial law in October 1914 and the rebellion was successfully suppressed by early 1915.
In January 1915, several forces were raised and made ready to attack German South-West Africa. The Eastern Force, under the command of Col. Berrange, was concentrated in Vryburg. Isaacs joined one of its units, Cullinan’s Horse.3 It is unclear whether he joined as a lieutenant, or subsequently gained promotion to that rank. He participated in the invasion of South West Africa. It was intended that Cullinan’s Horse surprise the Germans by advancing from the east, setting out from Vryburg, crossing the Kalahari Desert and advancing through Rietfontein on the way up through Keetmanshoop and Windhuk to Luderitz.
According to the memoirs of one of the soldiers who took part in this operation, the physical conditions of the troops were challenging. The heat during most hours of the day was well nigh unbearable, while water supplies were scarce:
“….a wash is a luxury, and washing clothes an impossibility. . . Another trying thing is fine sand and dust. The hot wind that blows from about noon till 7 or 8 sends it in clouds so thick that tents only 20 or 30 yards away are blotted out of sight. This sand gets into the tents and smothers everything, including the food and water. . . During the afternoon winds the dirt gets caked thick on you, and anyone with an ounce or two of water left for a wash is considered a lucky dog. We’re quite in a desert, and as far as one can see right to the distant hills, there is nothing but sand and stones.”
The South West Africa operation ended on 9 July 1915 with the capitulation of the last commander of the Schutztruppe, Lieutenant-Colonel Erich Franke. It was the only campaign in the First World War that which was entirely planned, executed and successfully completed by a British dominion.
During the action, Isaacs established himself as a translator, having cooperated with the Intelligence Staff, and rendered most valuable assistance, using his first language to translate captured German papers into English. In 1917, he applied to the War Office for a position as an interpreter, and was commissioned to join the army with the rank of Lieutenant.
According to the Supplement to the London Gazette for 27 August 1917 and the Army List for September 1917, Lt. Albert Isaacs, together with a group of another six officers from the South African Defence Force, joined the 12th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment on 24 June 1917.4 Isaacs arrived to England on 27 July, and was drafted into the regiment on 23 August. On a temporary basis, he was attached to the 5th Reserve Battalion of the same regiment, which was stationed in Gillingham, one of the Medway Towns in Kent.
At the beginning of the war, the Middlesex Regiment was stationed in the Barnsole Road School, but very soon compulsory billeting was introduced, and the men were distributed among the local population. Members of the regiment were billeted in the same neighbourhood, so that each morning after breakfast they could assemble for drills in the nearby streets.
During those last days of August Isaacs took drills, which he found awful. He attended two or three interviews in London, but was turned down due (in his own mind at least, and perhaps in fact) to his family origins. The war created many local spy scares, and Medway was known for its important naval and military bases. Quite frequently, those scares involved innocent people, whose foreignsounding names or known foreign descent put them under suspicion. Isaacs clearly fell within the second category: his mother was German, and he spoke German better than he did English.
Isaacs brooded over his rejections. He tried to resolve the situation by speaking to one of the training instructors of the officer’s class, stating that he felt himself to be in a false position since, despite being an interpreter and knowing German so well, he was repeatedly being turned down because of his German mother. He further pointed out that he knew nothing about infantry work, feeling himself to be more inefficient in this area than even the rawest recruit.
Isaacs was then offered a job as a miner, listening out for German miners and tunnellers in the trenches, but that position did not attract him since he wanted to be an interpreter. The instructor suggested persevering, which did not ease the situation. Every day, Isaacs became more and more agitated and complained frequently about not being able to get away from infantry life. The army clearly wasn’t interested in utilising his best skills. On 1 September he wrote several letters, which he stamped but did not post. In one, addressed to his father, he wrote that things “turned out so differently to my expectations”.
At 13h45 on Sunday, 2 September, Isaacs arrived at the Queen’s Head Hotel for his lunch. It was his third visit to the hotel – their cooking was definitely better than in many other places. He quickly had his meal and left before 14h30. At 18h30, he returned for his dinner. In the bar, he had half a bitter and dry ginger and then proceeded to a private room, where he ate his meal in solitude while reading. At five minutes to nine Isaacs asked the manageress of the Hotel whether he could have a wash and was shown to the bathroom on the first floor.
To everyone who saw Isaacs that evening, he seemed normal, though rather quiet. It was not evident that under this pretended calmness he was suffering deeply from immense stress and a combination of turbulent emotions: frustration at being rejected and wasted in the army, a sense of hurt at the perception that he was under suspicion on account of his German background and language skills, his detestation of infantry work and a general sense of total helplessness in the situation in which he found himself. Unable to find a solution to his predicament, Isaacs fired three shots into his chest through an opening in the front of his tunic. The time was 21h30. He was found, still conscious, by an officer from a neighbouring regiment. As the latter rushed out to call for a doctor, yet another black thought might have descended upon Isaacs – that he was a failure, incapable even of killing himself. The officer had not seen the revolver, and Isaacs fired two more shots through the same wound. The death certificate states the cause of death as “shooting himself during temporary insanity”; the inquest verdict was “suicide during temporary insanity”.
I was unable to find any statistical data on cases like this among soldiers in general and among Jewish soldiers in particular. The reason is that according to the Army Act 1881, s38, an attempt to commit suicide was regarded as a criminal act. As a result, suicides were covered up by the officials – the deceased were declared “temporarily insane”, thus automatically excluded them from official, mainstream statistics. An interesting fact is that records of this and similar cases did not survive. Were they destroyed deliberately or did it just happen that way? Whatever the reason, these cases need special attention – people do not take their lives on a casual whim.
From my research into two such stories, the people concerned endured intense stress and personal trauma, to the extent that suicide appeared to be the only way out. We celebrate heroes and remember them, but forget those unusual victims whom circumstances drove to take their own lives and who hence were also casualties of the war. They, too, should be remembered.
I am very pleased that we can claim to have at last obtained closure in one more case – that of Lt. Albert Isaacs. 2008 saw the commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the Armistice that ended the Great War, and on 19 May that year, I received an e-mail from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission advising that Isaacs had been added to the list of Great War casualties. In the cemetery of the Chatham Memorial Synagogue, Rochester, Kent, a new headstone will be erected over his grave.
Irina Shub is Local Studies Librarian at the Medway Archives and Local Studies Centre, England.
Bibliography
- In the British Jewry Book of Honour list of those who served in the Middlesex Regiment is a mention of Lt. A. Isaacs, as a survivor. It is impossible to establish conclusively whether this is the same person.
- This article would have not been written without the indispensable help of Martin Sugarman, Archivist of Jewish Military Museum of AJEX; Dr Saul Issroff, Hon. Vice President of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Great Britain, and Harold Pollins, retired Senior Tutor of Ruskin College, Oxford.
- This unit was originally raised on 8 January 1901 during the Anglo-Boer War, with the authority of the military Governor Lord Methuen. It was employed in the Warrenton-VryburgKuruman district and in the south-western Transvaal during the last 16 months of the war. The unit saw much hard work and a lot of fighting. It is quite possible that Isaacs served with this unit during his service in the Boer War as well, as it was active in the area of his native town of Vryburg.
- 12th (Service) Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment was formed in Mill Hill, London in August 1914 as part of the Second Kitchener’s army. In September 1914 it was attached to the 54th Brigade of the 18th Eastern Division, which served on the Western Front from spring 1915, taking part in most of the significant actions in France. In total, the Division suffered more than 46,500 casualties during the Great War, of whom 13,727 died. The 12th Battalion was disbanded in France on 13 February 1918.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row] Brompton street scene, circa. 1900
