~ Chapter Thirteen ~
“The Arsehole of the Empire”

Steve had barely turned twenty when in November 1914 his Battalion, the 1/4th of the East Kent Regiment, was sent to India.  It remained there for the duration of the War, except for a six-month tour in Aden between August 1915 and February 1916.  It was in Aden, promoted to the rank of Lance-Corporal, that we believe Steve saw action.

            Now forming part of the Republic of Yemen in Southern Arabia, Aden was a British protectorate in 1914.  Because of its geographical position at the junction of the Red Sea and the Aden Gulf, allowing access to the African and Arabian coasts and into the Indian Ocean, it was of vital strategic importance to the British Empire.  Its geography and climate were far from welcoming to Europeans, however, and few British soldiers enjoyed their service in “the arsehole of the Empire”, so-called because everything passed through it.

            It was into this barren and hostile theatre of war that the 1/4th Buffs landed to help defend Aden from the Turks, who had amassed just over the border in the Yemen.  This account of the subsequent engagements with the Turks has been extracted from the paper, The British Campaign in Aden 1914-1918, by Dr Mark Connelly of the School of History, University of Kent:
In September 1915 the 62/Punjabis and 4/Buffs advanced from Sheikh Othman and engaged the Turks at Assela and Waht. A short, sharp action followed in which an early British advantage was reversed when the Turks brought down shrapnel fire. The column retreated to Sheikh Othman and successfully beat off the pursuers. The flying column went out again in January 1916 meeting the Turks at Hatum. Again early British successes were not sustained and the Turks successfully counter attacked. However, the column clearly acted with discipline and efficiency as the Turks sustained some 200 casualties whereas British losses were under fifty.
            It is highly likely that Steve took part in the first action at What, where he received shrapnel injuries to a leg.  The injuries, which were hastily treated in a field hospital, were never to heal fully.  Perhaps that’s not surprising, given the following description, extracted from the same paper, of the prevailing conditions:
Maintaining a force capable of diverting the Turks between 1915 and 1918 was a demanding task due to the enervating climate and nature of Aden. Sickness and the heat were responsible for a higher attrition rate than the Turks. After the engagement at Waht in September 1915 the 4/Buffs suffered eight fatalities six of which were due to heat exhaustion. The battalion war diary remarked: ‘The whole battalion suffered greatly from the heat of the sun and sand… The distance covered was between 20 and 23 miles.’Between the battalion’s arrival on 4 August 1915 and its departure on 30 January 1916 it incurred six casualties due to enemy action, but over 200 from sickness including nearly 100 men invalided home to Britain.
            We don’t know if Steve was one of the men “invalided home to Britain”.  We do know that as a result of his injuries he was discharged from the Army in April 1918, his rank having been reduced to Private by then.

            Like George, Steve received the 1915 Star, the Victory Medal and the British War Medal.  In addition to the full “Pip, Squeak and Wilfred” set, he received the Silver War Badge.  The latter was often wrongly referred to as the Silver Wound Badge.  It was awarded to all those military personnel who had served at home or overseas during the War and who had been discharged under King's Regulations 392.  The particular regulation that had applied in Steve’s case was 392 (xvi), meaning that he had been “no longer physically fit for war service”.

            So the twenty-three year-old Steve returned home from the War in 1918; he was safe, but far from sound.