Born on 4th May 1895 and christened on the 10th August, Bertram, or Kingie as he was sometimes known, was the seventh of the eight children of William Ellis Coe and Elizabeth Coe (nee King). The baptismal records from St Edmunds show the family as living in Horn Lane, Shipston.  William Coe worked as a solicitor’s clerk and the 1901 census shows that the family had moved to Sheep Street, Shipston-on-Stour, Worcs.  On 16th April 1902 Bertram joined the Boys School, having previously been privately educated. He left school on the 8th April 1909 when he was nearly 14 and was apprenticed to a Draper in Oxford, but this was cancelled, apparently due to his colour-blindness.

Enlisting on 4th August 1914, the day that war was declared, Bertram joined the Warwickshire Yeomanry and was in ‘D’ Squadron. The Warwickshire’s were part of the 1st South Midland Mounted Brigade within the 2nd Mounted Division.

In March 1915 orders were received sending the Division overseas and by 29th April 1915 all units were in Egypt.  Bertram arrived on the 20th April, landing at Alexandria. It was an eventful trip on the Wayfarer which, when 100 miles off the Scilly Islands on the 11th April, was seriously damaged by an explosion which stopped the engines and smashed the wireless installation. It was naturally thought that she had been torpedoed but no sign of a submarine could be seen.

The ship made her way to Queenstown (called Cobh since 1922) in Cork harbour, where a diver found a hole 40ft long and several feet wide in her port side. Luckily only five men of the Yeomanry and two of the crew were killed and all 769 horses were landed safely.

On the 10th August 1915, orders were received to prepare for a move to Gallipoli. They sailed on the 14th and arrived in Suvla Bay on the night of the 17th/18th August 1915.

The plan for the 21st August was to attack Scimitar Hill with the 29th Division and the W Hills with the 11th Division, the 2nd Mounted Division were initially held in reserve near Suvla beach. The British artillery had no sight of their targets which were obscured by mist and smoke, unlike the Turkish artillery who had a clear view of the entire Suvla battlefield and ample opportunity to register their targets.

The attack on the W Hills collapsed in confusion as a result of the heavy Turkish machine gun and artillery fire. The Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, however, were more successful, and captured the summit of Scimitar Hill but the failure of the attack on the W Hills left them exposed to fire from the Turks still in control of the hills.  As the Irish retreated the undergrowth around them was set ablaze by the shellfire, many of the wounded being burned to death.  Around 5pm the troops of the 2nd Mounted Division were called forward from their reserve position near Suvla Beach. They advanced in formation across the bed of a dry salt lake with the air full of mist and smoke. This caused confusion about their direction and they suffered heavily from the shrapnel of the Turkish artillery. Several men were wounded and had to be rescued from burning scrub.  Under this intense fire most of the Brigades sheltered in the lea of Green Hill, west of Scimitar Hill.

After half an hour’s rest the Brigade charged over Green Hill and up to the summit of Scimitar Hill, where they took the enemy trenches. Darkness had set in by this time and as holding the captured ground was considered impossible during daylight, the Brigade were ordered to retire from the hill. In one day of fighting the British suffered 5,300 casualties, over a third of the soldiers involved. The Warwickshire Yeomanry lost 73 men, mostly wounded. Six men were killed, Bertram Coe aged just 20, among them. The Evesham Journal reported :

Mr W E Coe, Sheep-street, Shipston, has received official information that his youngest son, Trooper Kingston Coe, of the Warwickshire Yeomanry, has been wounded in the fighting on August 21st at the Dardanelles. Trooper Coe joined the Warwickshire Yeomanry on the same night as the orders for mobilisation came to hand at Shipston. After a period of training he proceeded with his troop to Egypt and thence to the Dardanelles. We understand that Troopers Canning of Cherington and Tibbets, of Evesham, belonging to the same troop, have also been wounded.

Later the Journal reported again:

Trooper B C K Coe, Warwickshire Yeomanry, youngest son of Mr and Mrs W E Coe. Sheep-street, Shipston-on-Stour, was officially notified on September 3 as having being wounded at the Dardanelles on the Yeomanry charge on August 21. He was last heard from on August 13, and since he was wounded no trace of him has been found, his friends having made enquiries by telegram and other means. The War office has also made enquiries, and the official notification that he was wounded and missing was received on October 26 last.

Later still on the 5th February 1916 the Journal reported:

Mr and Mrs Coe of Shipston-on-Stour, have received a letter from Corpl Burgess, a wounded comrade still in hospital, stating that their son, Trooper B.C.K. Coe of the Warwickshire Yeomanry, who has been reported as missing since August 21st last, was killed on that day at Suvla Bay. Corpl Burgess writes: - “I need hardly say how sorry I am that the contents of this letter will only confirm your worst fears, for I have to state that I saw your son lying dead on the plain between Lala Baba and Chocolate Hill, where so many of our brave fellows fell under the accurate and deadly fire of the enemy’s artillery. Perhaps I cannot do better than relate the incidents leading up to my coming across his body after I myself was wounded by shrapnel fire. On the afternoon of the 21st August we paraded under the shelter of Lala Baba Hill, and commenced our advance on the Turkish positions on Chocolate Hill.  Soon after emerging into the open we came under enemy artillery fire, and having once found the correct range their shells soon played havoc in our ranks, a seemingly continuous stream of shrapnel taking full toll of our poor fellows. I was hit in the jaw when about half way across the plain, and whilst engaged in bandaging up my wounds received a further bullet in the left thigh, which fortunately did not touch the bone, and after a while I endeavoured to render assistance to those of my comrades less fortunately situated.  While engaged in this duty I came to where your son lay and stopped over him to see if I could be of any assistance to him, but found that he was already past all help, for his features had already blackened.  I do not think that there can be much doubt that he must have met an instantaneous death, but I regret I an unable to say what nature of wound he had sustained as having ascertained he was beyond help I passed on to the assistance of others in the vicinity.

However, I may say that your son’s head was bare, his helmet having fallen off, probably as he dropped, and lay a few feet away, and I distinctly saw his name written inside. Meanwhile the scrub in the immediate vicinity had taken fire, and I was for a time occupied in getting those of the wounded who lay in its course away from the reach of the flames, and, in fact, was engaged at this until the arrival of the R.A.M.C. men with stretchers for the purpose of conveying the wounded back to the dressing station. I don’t for a moment suppose your son’s body was consumed by the flames, as he lay some yards from the nearest plot of scrub, and the only conclusion I can come to was that his body was buried without identification.

I did not know your son intimately, as he was in the 3rd Troop of the Regiment, whilst I was in the 2nd, but I am sure it must be of some comfort to you all to know that he gave his life for his King and country, and I am sure he could die no nobler death. I can only close by offering you my deep sympathy in your sad loss and to express the hope that such sacrifices as that of your son will in due course bear fruit, and that the near future will bring us that peace and happiness that has been denied us in the past.”

In the same edition, under the title Popular Lad, the Journal reported:

“King” or “Kingie” Coe, who was only twenty years of age, was a boy with a happy disposition, was a favourite among his companions, and was liked by all who knew him. Another wounded comrade writes: - “I was a big friend of his. In Egypt we were sharing the same tent and had many a good time. I always found him one of the best in anything that came his way.” Another wounded comrade writes:- Kingston was a Yeoman well liked and appreciated by his comrades.” Deep sympathy is felt for Mr. and Mrs. Coe and the members of their family.

Kingie Coe’s body was never found and he is commemorated on the Helles Memorial at Gallipoli along with the other soldiers who have no known grave. Sadly reports that he was ‘missing’ continued to appear in the local papers for almost two years after he died. He is remembered on the Town Memorial, the County School Memorial and the Warwickshire Yeomanry War Memorial, Warwick.

Mike Wells