On this day

On the 6th November 1914 Gordon Wilson died in battle

He led an incredible life. He stopped an assassination attempt on Queen Victoria married Winston Churchill’s aunt fought at Mafeking commanded the Blues went on the Parker expedition to find the Ark and died leading at Klein Zillebeke.

He was born in Wimmera in Australia but educated in England. At Eton he stopped Roderick Maclean shooting Queen Victoria in Windsor by beating him with his umbrella.

He married Lady Sarah Spencer-Churchill who was Winston Churchill’s aunt. He served at the siege of Mafeking with Baden-Powell during the Second Boer War and Lady Sarah acted as a war reporter there for the Daily Mail.

Lady Sarah Wilson (nee Spencer-Churchill)

Gordon joined his brother Clarence on the Parker expedition to Jerusalem to find the Ark of the Covenant and was there when they secretly dug in the Dome of the Rock and caused riots. The Wilson family were the largest funders of the expedition.

Gordon rose to command the Royal Horse Guards and commanded them in 1914. He died at Klein Zillebeke leading his men in battle. Wilson’s men galloped to the engagement dismounted and fixed bayonets. He then led the charge of his troopers at the Germans and was shot dead.

Lady Sarah chose the inscription “Life is a city of crooked streets Death the market place where all men meet” for his CWGC headstone. She read it on a clipping she found that Gordon had kept with him.

On 24th September 1909

The Hon. Montagu Parker and Robin Duff returned to Jerusalem accompanied by Cyril Ward. They were excited to hear about how Clarence Wilson and Cyril Foley had climbed the Dragon Shaft and rushed off to try it themselves. They returned in shock. Ward had been violently sick when he reached the top and said that he would rather suffer H.M.S. Victoria’s sinking again than repeat the climb. Ward had nearly drowned in one of the worst self inflicted disasters of the Royal Navy. At one point the climbing, Duff thought the rope was slipping and he was falling to his death. Thoughts of his wife flashed through his head. For sporty young men, who had fought in the military, these adventures were part of the expedition’s attraction.

Five years later on the 24th September 1914 Robin Duff’s father died and he became the 2nd Baronet of Vaynol. He attended his father’s funeral in uniform having rejoined the Life Guards at the outbreak of war. Sadly he was not to enjoy the title for long.

On 30th August 1909

After about a month’s work, Montagu Parker and Robin Duff returned to England for a few weeks. Of the English contingent Clarence Wilson, Cyril Foley and the Pearsons engineer Mr Walsh, remained in Jerusalem. On the 30th August, Foley and Walsh explored the Dragon’s Shaft, which connects to Warren’s Shaft. They believed this might well be the perpendicular passage to which the cyphers referred so frequently. As it was some distance into the tunnel, they could only bring short ladders to the bottom of the shaft. There they lashed seven six-feet ladders together. They did this by candlelight, standing in water. Then they tossed a coin to see who would have the dubious privilege of ascending first and the engineer Walsh lost, so he climbed the ladders. Foley watched Walsh disappear into the dark and stepped back so that anything or anyone falling would not hit him. Twenty minutes later, Walsh descended and informed Foley:

“I’ve had rather an exciting time. There’s a slope of rock at the top of the shaft, and I got onto it, but it was so slippery I slid back, and if I had not luckily struck the top of the ladder you would have seen me sooner.”

Foley decided to look for himself and he climbed up. At the top, the ladder was not resting on anything as the shaft sloped away at a forty-five degree angle. He could see a large domed roof above him. To his right was a steep passageway filled with boulders approached by a slope ‘as slippery as ice’. He was contemplating that only he, Walsh, Charles Warren and Sergeant Birtles had seen this spot in 1,800 years when:

“I heard a movement away up the passage and, to my intense horror, something came rushing down it with a speed of thought. Before I could move a dreadful shape hit me full on the shoulder knocking the candle out of my hand and leaving me in opaque darkness. Being deprived of all volition through sheer terror, I mechanically beat all records down the ladder”

Once he had composed himself, he realised a bat had flown into him, drawn by the light from his candle. After seven hours in the tunnel, Foley and Walsh decided they had earned dinner.

On 22nd August 1909

The Parker expedition did not work like other archaeologists in their search for the Ark. On 22 Aug 1909, Parker bet one team they could not shift 150 buckets of earth from the tunnels in 1 hr. The shift won the bet by hitting the target in 51 minutes.

 

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On 16th August 1909

Shmuel Salant the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem died. Cyril Foley who was on the Parker expedition looking for the Ark said that the wailing by Jewish women was ‘so impressive as to be unforgettable’. The death did not interrupt the expedition work. Two days before on the 14th the shaft they had dug allowed them to break into the Siloam tunnel in their search for the Ark of the Covenant.

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On 14th August 1909

Shmuel Salant the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem died. Cyril Foley who was on the Parker expedition looking for the Ark said that the wailing by Jewish women was ‘so impressive as to be unforgettable’. The death did not interrupt the expedition work. Two days before on the 14th the shaft they had dug allowed them to break into the Siloam tunnel in their search for the Ark of the Covenant

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Captain Montagu Parker talks to The Times

Capt. Parker told The Times that his dig in Jerusalem would resume on this day 110 years ago. They were secretly searching for the Ark of the Covenant and had sparked riots in April 1911 when they dug in the Dome of the Rock.  They had bribed the guardian of the Haram al-Sharif to be allowed to dig in the Dome of the Rock. In the end they only set sail for Jaffa in September.