VC Action: William Robert Fountains
Addison VC, Order of St. George (Russia) (18 September 1883—7
January 1962) was 32 years old, and a Chaplain in the Army
Chaplain's Department, British Army, T/Chaplain of the Forces,
4th Class during the First World War.
He was ordained in 1913 and became curate
of St Edmunds in Salisbury. The onset of war saw his offer
for service taken up by the chaplains department and through
this he came to be posted to Mesopotamia (now Iraq) with the
13th division in February of 1916. The division was sent to
this area to provide reinforcements for the force at the time
attempting to relieve the troops besieged and cut off at Kut-al-Amara.
To achieve this relief, strong Turkish positions
along the eastern bank of the river Tigris would need to be
overcome.
So it was as part of these larger operations
that the 13th division found themselves facing three well
equipped Turkish trench lines in the blackness of the early
hours of April 9th 1916. Suddenly the troops found themselves
illuminated by the light of Turkish flares but it was too
late now and the attack went ahead. Rifle and machine gun
fire ploughed into the attacking waves and very few men reached
the Turkish lines. The 13th division lost nearly five hundred
men killed and close on one thousand wounded in this action.
It was all over very quickly and as the troops had advanced
to their fate the Reverend Addison had been following up encouraging
and assisting the medical teams and stretcher bearers.
Addison's VC was awarded when the following
deed took place:
On 9 April 1916 at Sanna-i-Yat, Mesopotamia,
the Reverend William Addison carried a wounded man to the
cover of a trench and helped several others to the same cover
after binding up their wounds under heavy rifle and machine-gun
fire. In addition to these unaided efforts, his splendid example
and utter disregard of personal danger, encouraged the stretcher-bearers
to go forward under heavy fire and collect the wounded.
Addison was the second “padre” to be awarded
a V.C. in World War I. After the war he remained an Army Chaplain,
serving as Deputy Assistant Chaplain during World War II.
He retired to St. Leonards-on-Sea on the south coast of East
Sussex, where he passed away at the age of eighty. |
