300004 Lt Col Herbert Francis George Carter MID.British Army 18th Btn Durham Light Infantry, Yorkshire Light Infantry from:Huddersfield "Lt.-Col. Herbert Francis George Carter was the son of General Francis Carter. He married Hermione Grace Guinness, daughter of Gerald Seymour Guinness and Eleanor Grace de Capell Brooke, on 26 June 1918. He died on 28 February 1919, while on active service. He gained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the service of the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. He was decorated with the award of the Military Cross (M.C.)" [http://www.thepeerage.com/p30152.htm]
"Herbert Carter came from a military family (his brother was Brigadier General F.C Carter) and was educated a Wellington and Sandhurst. He had strong West Yorkshire connections through his mother, a Thornhill of Fixby Hall, Huddersfield. The Thornhills were Yorkshire gentry back to the middle ages. Their wealth grew in the industrial revolution when coal was found on their land.
Carter joined the local Regiment, the Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, in 1904 when he was eighteen. He served for time in Crete and was clearly an able and intelligent young officer. He achieved rapid promotion to full lieutenant and was made assistant adjutant of 2nd KOYLI shortly after his twentieth birthday. His time in Crete gave him the taste for foreign travel and he pursued an unusual career leaving the Battalion to enlist on a language course. He served in Russia and Japan as an attache at the British Embassies having become one of the Armies few first class interpreters in Russian and Japanese. There may have been connections with the Intelligence Service, and his post war service in Vladivostok, where he helped to train the White Russian forces may have had more to it than linguistic fluency. He was also a gifted musician and artist, and it may be that his foreign travels devolved his cosmopolitan taste for Turkish cigars and Astrakhan Collared Overcoats.
Carter, too, was well connected. His wife, Grace, was a Guinness and Carter was sufficiently well known to the royal family for the Kings personal security to write enquiring after his health when he was taken seriously ill in Russia in 1919. Sadly, Carter died of pneumonia in Russia in 1919 shortly after his daughter was born. Grace eventually re-married to Air Marshal John Cotesworth Slessor, one of the architects if British air strategy during and after WWII.
When war came in 1914, Captain Carter returned to join the 2nd Battalion KOYLI in Belgium, arriving at the front 25th October. Like Maurice Kennard, he took part in thedesperate defence of the Messines Rige. Casualties were heavy and within six days he was the only surviving officer in his battalion. He was mentioned in despatches and became the first KOYLI officer to be awarded the Military Cross 31 October.
Carter was critical lack of firepower on the British side (at that time there were only two machine guns per battalion, often obsolete Maxims) compared to the better equipped Germans. In November 114 he wrote to a friend in Regimental H.Q. in Pontefract.
'It is damnably frightening, but the excitement and comradeship is wonderful… My salaams too all and DO TRAIN SOME MORE MACHINE GUNNERS.'
Carter was wounded at Hooge 17 November, 114. His subsequent career reflects again the networking of the pre-war regular army. He spent time in Gallipoli as A.D.C to General Hunter-Weston with 2th Division but returned to England when Hunter-Weston was evacuated out of Cape Helles with sunstroke and exhaustion in July, 1915. He joined the newly formed 31st Division at Ripon as a staff officer under the new command of General Robert Wanless-O’Gowan who had been his Brigadier in Flanders. When the Pals arrived in France he had the advantage of being on the staff of his Divisional Commander and Corps Commander." - Bradford Pals by David Raw
"He won the first Regimental KOYLI Military Cross and was given the task of commanding the 18th (2nd Bradford Pals) Bn West Yorkshire Regiment on the afternoon of the 1st July 1918 after their disastrous attack on the Somme, leaving only 60 men available at his first Roll Call and also had the black task of signing the death Warrant of Privates Crimmins and Wild who were Shot at Dawn.
He entered Sandhurst in 1903 and was commissioned into the KOYLI a speaker of Russian, he was also proficient in Japanese. At the outbreak of the Great War, he proceeded to France with his Regiment and was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry on the Ypres Messines Road on the 31st October 1914. By 1916 he was serving as a Staff Officer at GHQ and on the afternoon of the 1st July 1916 following the disastrous attack on the Somme was given command of the 18th Bn West Yorkshire Regiment, the 2nd Bradford Pals. Following a search for survivors of the attack a Roll call could only muster 60 men and with this number he followed orders and continued the attack. He had the privilege of leading his Pals until their disbandment during February 1918, when he was given command of the 18th Bn Durham Light Infantry. A dark moment in his military career was in September 1916 when two men under his command deserted Private H. Crimmins and Private A. Wild. Recapture these men were tried by Court Marshal and Lt Col Carter signed their death warrant, the men were shot on the dawn of the 5th September 1916." - http://www.the-saleroom.com/en-us/auction-catalogues/bosleys-military-auctioneers/catalogue-id-srbos10005/lot-024bb3c3-f00d-4772-852a-a444003ed3cc
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