Chapter 1 - Some background to this article
I have no family connections to the person who’s the subject of this piece but I’ve been prompted to write this after unearthing some interesting facts about a forgotten soldier who died in the Medway Towns in 1917. I think this might be of interest to several members of our Branch who’ve served with the South African Defence Force (SADF) and the armed services of Rhodesia before that country’s independence in 1980 when it became Zimbabwe.
My interest in Lt Albert Isaacs began a couple of years ago when I first visited the Chatham Memorial Synagogue on the border between Rochester and Chatham. By way of background, this synagogue is most unusual in that it is immediately adjacent to a Jewish Cemetery, the only example of this arrangement amongst the 409 synagogues in England and Wales. The Jewish faith doesn’t allow a cemetery to be within 100 paces of a Jewish place of worship, but because of this particular burial place being encroached upon when the synagogue was extended from its original timber structure this principle was overlooked. When walking through the cemetery, I noticed two Commonwealth War Graves headstones, one of which was obviously a much more recent memorial than the other. The inscription on this headstone showed that it was the grave of a Lieutenant A Isaacs of the Middlesex Regiment who died on 2nd September 1917.
It is well known that during the First World War there was a huge transient military population in the Medway Towns, with thousands of sailors and soldiers in barracks and billets across the Towns, and, of course, the Royal Naval Dockyard at Chatham. Having established that the Middlesex regiment was in the area at the time of Lt Isaacs’ death, I was curious to find out the circumstances of his passing, and this led me through a series of enquiries that revealed some interesting facts, some of which highlighted the darker aspects of life in wartime Britain between 1914 and 1918.
A local newspaper of the time reported that Lieutenant Albert Isaacs died on 2nd September 1917, describing him as a “victim of the Old Brompton” tragedy. This rather led me to believe, quite incorrectly, that Albert Isaacs had somehow been killed in the German bombing of the Drill Hall in Chatham Dockyard in which 161 men lost their lives while sleeping in the hall when it was used as a temporary billet for many sailors. Although this tragic bombing took place on the night of 3rd/4th September 1917, I wondered whether the date of Lt Isaacs’ death had been incorrectly reported, particularly as it seems that elements of the 5th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment had been billeted in the vicinity of the dockyard. I’ve since abandoned this idea and can’t explain the newspaper reference to Lt Isaacs having been a “victim of the Old Brompton tragedy”! His name doesn’t appear on the list of deaths from the Drill Hall bombing and all the evidence points to the date of his death being definitely on the 2nd September.(The only reference I can find to “the Old Brompton tragedy” concerns a murder some 10 years earlier!)
I’ve since been pointed in the direction of some research carried out by Irina Shrub, a former Local Studies librarian at the Medway Archives, and this has helped considerably in piecing together some facts about Lt Isaacs, his early years, military career and his tragic death.
Chapter 2 - Albert Isaacs before the First World War
Albert Isaacs was born in 1880 at Vryburg in the North West Province of South Africa, halfway between Kimberley and Mafeking, an area well known for its rich diamond mines. His mother, Pauline, was a German national and his father was Jewish. Pauline died a year after Albert’s death at the age of 28, and his father soon remarried and he was brought up in the Jewish faith by his father and step-mother. His home language was German, as was that of many people in the North West Cape area that adjoined German South West Africa. Albert was a rather studious young man and went on to become a member of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, eventually becoming the chief bookkeeper of the Exchange at a relatively young age.
In 1899, the Second Boer War took place between Britain and the Boers, Afrikaans-speaking South Africans who had long disputed the right of the British to occupy and govern certain territories in South Africa. Isaacs fought in this war on the British side but, unfortunately, no records can be located to identify exactly what his military career and roles were during this conflict.
At the outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914, both the South African and British governments were acutely aware of South Africa’s border with the adjoining German-controlled territory, known then as German South West Africa (GSWA). This territory is now known as Namibia. However, military action against GSWA was delayed, as there was a considerable degree of sympathy for the German cause among the Boer population as a result of German support for their national independence during the Second Boer War some 12 years earlier. Lt Col Maritz, the head of Boer commando forces, and several high ranking officers raised a force of about 12,000 rebels to fight for a “Free and independent South Africa, free from British control”. This became known as the Maritz or Boer Revolt. To counter the threat from this force, Generals Louis Botha and Jan Smuts declared martial law in October 1914 and the rebellion was suppressed by early 1915.
In January 1915, South African forces were assembled and made ready to attack German South West Africa. This was known as the Easter Force and it was originally mustered in the Vryburg area under the command of Col Berange. An accomplished horseman, Albert Isaacs joined one of the Eastern Force’s units, Cullinan’s Horse Brigade, some 60 plus mounted troops who knew the terrain. Cullinan’s Horse were meant to surprise the Germans from the east, across the Kalahari Desert from Vryburg through Rietfontein, up through Kietmanshoop and Windhoek to Luderitz. The force endured searing heat, violent sandstorms, scarce water supplies and conditions that were hardly conducive to effective attack, but the members of Cullinan’s Horse were hardy men who knew and respected the desert and how to survive in it.
The invasion culminated in German capitulation on 9th July 1915 and became the only military campaign in the First World War that was planned, executed and successfully completed by a British dominion.
It was during this action that Albert Isaacs distinguished himself as a translator, having been assigned to work with the Intelligence Staff to translate captured German documents and interrogate German officers. It was this experience that led to Isaacs coming to Britain, and the reason for him ending up in the Medway Towns.
Chapter 3 – Isaacs’ army service based in Chatham
According to the Supplement to the London Gazette for 27th August 1917 and the Army List for September 1917, Lieut. 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 24th June 1917. He arrived in England on 27th July, and was drafted to the regiment on 23rd August 1917, initially attached to the 5th Reserve Battalion of the same regiment, which was stationed in Barnsole Road School in Gillingham. Very soon after, compulsory billeting was introduced and the men were distributed among the local population. Members of the regiment were billeted in the same neighbourhood, so each morning after breakfast they could assemble for drills in the nearby streets.
During those last days of August 1917 Isaacs was unable to avoid expected to attend drills, which he didn’t enjoy. Getting ever more frustrated because he felt his talents and usefulness were being ignored, he attended several interviews in London, but was repeatedly rejected due (in his own mind at least, and perhaps in fact) to his family origins. The war created many local spy scares and as Medway was known for its naval and military bases, so anyone with suspected or real German links was treated with great suspicion. Isaacs clearly felt he was being victimised: his mother was German, and he spoke German better than English and his accent stood out in the Chatham area. He tried to resolve the situation by speaking to one of the training instructors of the officers’ class, and explaining that he felt he was in a menial position, and although he was an interpreter and knew German better than English, he was being ignored because of his circumstances and origins.
But still the drills and mundaneness of his situation continued. He’d been a cavalry soldier in Cullinan’s Horse but knew nothing about infantry work and felt that he was more inefficient in it than even the rawest recruit. He was offered a job as a miner, listening out for German miners constructing tunnels between the trenches, but that position did not attract him. Isaacs was insistent that 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 a lot 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 a letter to his father Albert wrote that things "turned out so differently to my expectations".
On Sunday 2 September Isaacs arrived to the Queen's Head Hotel in Gillingham (now a Harvester Restaurant) at 1:45pm for his lunch. It was his third visit to the Hotel, and their cooking was definitely better than in many other places. He quickly had his meal and left the place in the early afternoon. At about 6:30pm 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 him that evening he looked normal though rather quiet. It was not obvious that under this pretended quietness and calmness Isaacs was suffering from immense stress from a combination of emotions - being rejected and wasted in the army, hurt, feeling under suspicion on account of his excellent knowledge of German, his dislike of infantry work and a sense of total helplessness in the situation. Unable to find a satisfying solution, at 9:30pm Isaacs took his revolver and fired three shots into his chest through an opening in the front of his tunic. He was found still conscious by an officer from a neighbouring regiment. As the latter rushed out to call for a doctor, Isaacs then fired two more shots through the same wound. The death certificate states the cause of death as "shooting himself during temporary insanity" and an inquest reached a verdict of "suicide during temporary insanity".
Today, the sort of stress (and distress!) that Isaacs was under would probably be recognised and treated, but his story highlights just how suspicion, fear and prejudice must have made Britain less than hospitable to the thousands of ethnic minorities and foreign nationals who volunteered to fight on our behalf in the Great War of 1914-1918.
Article written by Mike Smith
May 2015
