A multi cache to highlight a hero from Walton on the Naze. The coordinates will bring you to a statue of a soldier overlooking the pier and sea, but you won't find the cache hidden here.
"SAVE YOURSELVES, I'LL CARRY ON".
Pte Herbert George Columbine (known as Bertie to his mother) was born in London in 1893. His father joined the army to fight the Boers in 1899 but was unfortunately killed in South Africa in 1900. Six year old Bert remembered the letters his father wrote home, firstly of the excitement of going to war, but then the hardships of the war in a distant place. As he grew up, Bert yearned to join the Army and follow in his father's footsteps.
Bert left school when he was 12, and at that point he and his mother Emma moved to Walton, selling the family furniture business. Emma recalled her family holidays at Walton, and wanted to live by the seaside and give her son a taste of the sea. Bert worked on the electric railway that used to run down the pier, and had friends in the town. They lived in Crescent Road, just behind the Round Gardens.
However, Bert's ambition to join the army had not waned over the years, and when he was 17, in 1910, he travelled to Colchester to join the 19th Hussars. He undertook training in Aldershot and London, specialising in the use of the machine gun, paticularly the Maxim. As a regular soldier, he took part in many exercises as well as ceremonial duties.
When war was declared in August 1914, Bert travelled to France later that month, as part of the British Expeditionary Force, one of the first waves of soldiers to go to war. As a regular soldier, Bert had been well trained, and as a gunner took part in the battles of Mons, Ypres and Cambrai amongst others. He wrote regular letters home, but as a private was unlikely to have gone on home leave more than two or three times over the years he was in France.
The German's spring offensive of 1918 saw Bert in action with the 9th Squadron Machine Gun Corps near St Quentin. By the 21st March, the Germans had 76 divisions along a fifty mile front, compared to only 28 Allied divisions. At dawn, the offensive began, with over a million shells fired and mustard gas being used. The Allied lines, with inadequate, hurriedly-built trenches, collapsed. 21,000 British prisoners were taken, and half a million German troops advanced to within 74 miles of Paris, which was now within range of their Krupps cannons. Bert's squadron moved to Montigny Farm, 7 miles north west of St Quentin and half a mile south of the village of Hervilly. The machine gun posts were set slightly in front of the main trench, although at first Bert waited in the main trench ready to act if the machine gunners were injured. Almost immediately, German infantry attacked, advancing towards their trenches.
Realising that their gunner had been killed, Bert rushed forward and took charge of the gun. Without any protection, Bert kept the machine gun going for over four hours. Now cut off from the main trench apart from a narrow piece of land across which he went to fetch ammunition, and surrounded by the enemy, he kept them at bay despite being wounded. When he realised that the position was hopeless, he told his only two unwounded comrades to "Save yourselves, I'll carry on".
Eye witness accounts describe how, despite being on his own and surrounded by Germans, Bert kept firing and holding them back, allowing his comrades in the main trench to regroup. Many unsuccessful efforts were made to eliminate him; however after about six hours an aircraft was brought in to drop a bomb on his post, at which time Bert was killed outright. He was buried in a mass grave, and still has no known grave, although his name is inscribed on the Pozieres memorial.
He was shortly afterwards nominated for a posthumous Victoria Cross, and his mother travelled to Buckingham Palace to receive it in June 1918 from King George V. The medal is now on display in the Essex Regiment Museum in Chelmsford.
In 1920, a bust of Herbert Columbine VC was unveiled, at a ceremony attended by his mother, which now stands in the memorial gardens near the war memorial, adjacent to the church. The statue on the seafront where you are now was unveiled in 2014 by Field Marshal Lord Guthrie, after a fundraising campaign by the people of Walton.
To commemorate Herbert Columbine I have left a geocoin in the cache for onward travel. It is a 2014 Great War coin from my collection that I would like to travel to appropriate destinations, eg war memorials.
To find this cache, find the answers to the questions by looking at the statue and reading the plaque on the plinth behind it.
Find the cache at N 51 50.ABC E 01 16.DEF
A = Number of people on the committee responsible PLUS Which line of text says "Pte Herbert Columbine VC"?
B = How many revolvers in holsters on the statue?
C = In which month did Herbert die?
D = How many cross symbols are on Herbert's collar?
E = How many helmets on Herbert's head?
F = The number of buttons down the centre front of Herbert's tunic x 2