Genealogical war memorials for Bournemouth’s fallen
Battle of Sahil: November 17th, 1914
Introduction
Tales from the Front (22) tells the story of Alfred Davis, a native of Victorian Bournemouth, who fought in the Great War. Davis belonged to the 2nd Battalion, Dorsetshire Regiment, a unit stationed in India, which joined the British expedition sent to secure government-controlled oil interests in the Persian Gulf in late 1914. Davis had come to Mesopotamia, now Iraq, a landscape long marked by conflict and empire. His journey ended at Sahil on November 17th, 1914, during the first phase of Britain’s campaign in the region.
Tales from the Front (22): Part 1
The Great Game
The Mesopotamian campaign extended the Great Game played by Russia and Britain during the previous century. The commercialisation of oil, a propellant for warships, added a facet to this diplomatic sparring. In 1914, to protect the region’s oil supplies, the British government acquired 51% of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. An important refinery lay near Basra. In August 1914, 2,000 Turkish troops occupied this town. A British and Indian expeditionary force left Bombay for the Persian Gulf to protect the oil. The 2nd Battalion, Dorsetshire Regiment, took part in this event. In early November, the expeditionary force captured Fao, a strategic settlement near the mouth of the Shatt-al-Arab. The British headed up the river towards Basra. The Dorsets ‘gallantly rushed’ a Turkish position during the advance to Saniyeh. On November 17th, after this success, a bloody encounter ensued at Sahil. Here, Davis would fall, a casualty of the British Great Game.
Tales from the Front (22): Part 2
Police trouble
One day in 1871, far from Mesopotamia, a fight occurred. It happened in Milborne St Andrew, population 300, lying between Dorchester and Blandford. Davis’s uncle Elisha got into a fight. A police sergeant tried to stop it. Elisha turned on him, joined by Davis’s father, Arthur, and a third brother, William. The latter, grabbing the sergeant round the throat, ‘nearly strangled him’. Further violence occurred in The Royal Oak. The Davis brothers received short prison sentences, while others involved received fines. The prison register records the brothers as ‘swarthy’, Arthur the shortest at 5 feet 2 inches. It also lists the conviction as their first. Some economic opportunity existed in the village, which had several businesses and three pubs, but perhaps not enough to prevent frustrations arising and rending the social fabric. A few years later, Arthur and his family took the well-worn employment trail to the Bournemouth area.
Professional soldier
Davis’s parents combined the country with the town. His father, a field labourer, married a coach painter’s daughter who grew up in Dorchester and, perhaps, Salisbury. The couple settled in Red Hill, just north of Moordown, then a wild and unruly area. Davis came into a family that would increase at regular intervals. In 1901, he still lived with his parents but did not appear in the next census. In that year, the 2nd Dorsets occupied the barracks in Poona, India, having arrived in 1906. His name did not appear in their listings. Thus, he will have joined the battalion before it departed from Bombay in October. At first, things went well. The British and Indian forces overcame local opposition and pushed up the Shatt-al-Arab. To the troops, the invasion may have seemed easy, but by the time they reached Sahil, they found that the Turks had determined to fight.
Tales from the Front (22): Part 3
The sad day
The British decided to take an old mud fort at Sahil. That morning, heavy rain fell. The ground became a quagmire, but the attack persisted, led by the Dorsets. More rain fell. ‘The ground was now ankle-deep in slippery, clinging mud …’ At 1000 yards, heavy rifle fire halted the Dorsets. This soon became a crossfire. By 1500, however, the British had taken the fort. Now, attention turned to ‘a considerable number of wounded scattered over a large area’. The Dorsets lost over twenty killed in the action. 149 suffered wounds. ‘These heavy casualties were caused partially by the fact that the attack was made over ground as flat as a billiard table, partially by the crossfire and partially by the entire absence of artillery support.’ That evening, a ‘blinding sandstorm’ hindered their return to base. Davis appears to have died of his wounds the next day.
Aftermath
By 1911, Davis’s father had become an employee of Bournemouth Corporation. A decade later, he had retired on the new state pension, his wife still too young. Some of their many children still lived with them in Winton. One son enlisted and survived the war. Another, too young, worked as a golf caddy before also becoming a corporation employee.
After Davis fell at Sahil, matters became quiet. The force headed north. ‘After a long and tiring march, they reached the outskirts of Basra.’ Squalid conditions awaited them in town. The official account noted an absence of a sanitary system and ‘the presence of numerous disease-ridden brothels’. The area seemed peaceful for most of the month, but on December 30th, the men had to sleep in their boots. Concerns had arisen about possible attacks made by Arabs. Plans included advancing on Kurna, according to some, the Garden of Eden.
Takeaway
Tales from the Front (22) has traced the life and service of Alfred Davis (1881–1914), a Bournemouth man whose military career carried him from Dorset’s rural margins to the opening phase of Britain’s campaign in Mesopotamia. His death at Sahil illustrates how the Great War drew ordinary soldiers into distant theatres shaped by imperial strategy and the new importance of oil.
‘Tales from the Front’
A collection of personal stories honouring Bournemouth’s natives who lost their lives on the battlefield and the regiments with which they served. Combining social and military history with genealogical insights, it examines their roots, families, occupations, and the sacrifices they made for their country. Set against the backdrop of regimental war diaries and enriched by contemporary media accounts, the series provides a compelling and intimate portrait of Bournemouth’s wartime heroes — a mosaic of personal bravery within the broader scope of history. Serving as a companion and continuation to Victorian Bournemouth, ‘Tales from the Front’ is part of News from the Past: History for the Rest of Us.
References
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