Captain
LESLIE JACK NEWBERY CHANNING
(formerly 1869416 Lance Sergeant)[1]
Royal Engineers
by
Lieutenant
Colonel Edward De Santis, MSCE, P.E., MInstRE
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
(May 2022)
Figure 1.
Leslie Jack Newbery Channing.
(Photograph courtesy of Mrs. Barbara Channing)
Captain Channing’s military service is typical of many men who joined the Royal Engineers in the 1920s and who rose through the enlisted ranks to be commissioned as officers at the beginning of, or during, World War 2. I purchased his medals in 1998 knowing at that time that he had served in the ranks and had risen to the rank of Captain. In 2018 I wrote the story of Channing’s life and military service using the information that was then available. In 2022 Royal Engineers Tracer Cards became available on the Internet from findmypast.com. These cards provided additional information regarding Channing’s military service and therefore this narrative of his story has been written to replace the previous one completed in 2018. Detailed information regarding his promotions and postings has been obtained from these tracer cards and from numerous issues of The Sapper magazine. All other sources of information are indicated in the ENDNOTES and in the REFERENCE sections of this work.
Early Life (1911-1929)
Leslie Jack Newbery Channing was born on 21 September 1911 at Castle Hill in Axminster in the County of Devonshire. He was the son of John Samuel Channing (1887-1918) a nail brush finisher, and Elizabeth Channing (née Heydon).[2] No information could be uncovered regarding L.J.N. Channing’s early life. Unfortunately there is only one family tree on Ancestry.com that includes him and it is a private tree; that is, it is not available to the public without the permission of the creator of the tree. The family tree is listed as the “Rowlands Family Tree” (Private) and attempts to contact the creator of the tree have been unsuccessful to date.
As a point of interest, Channing’s birthplace, Axminster is a market town and civil parish on the eastern border of the county of Devon in England, some 28 miles from the county town of Exeter. The town is built on a hill overlooking the River Axe which heads towards the English Channel at Axmouth, and is in the East Devon local government district. Axminster gave its name to a type of carpet. An Axminster-type power loom is capable of weaving high quality carpets with many varying colours and patterns. While Axminster carpets still are made in the town by Axminster Carpets Ltd, this type of carpet is now manufactured all over the world.
Family
Information
As with his early life, the lack of a family tree precludes the inclusion of detailed family information in this research. Since Channing was born in September of 1911 and the 1911 Census of England and Wales was completed in April of that year, no information regarding his family members could be obtained from that document.
Findmypast.com indicates that Leslie’s father also had been born in Axminster, Devonshire in 1884 and his mother Elizabeth had been born on 30 July 1887.[3] His father is also noted to have served as a Lance Corporal, Regimental Number 1416, in the 4th Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment (see Figure 2 below). On Leslie’s birth certificate his father is listed as a “Nail Brush Finisher” in 1911. The exact nature of this occupation or its modern day equivalent is unknown. He appears to have joined the Devonshire Regiment for service prior to the Great War of 1914-1918 and is listed in the Commonwealth War Graves Memorial as having died on 29 December 1918 at the age of 34 as a Lance Corporal. His age at the time of his death agrees with his years of birth and death. This information is in conflict, however, with the document authorizing the Silver War Badge to one John Samuel Channing, 1416 Private, 4th Devonshire Regiment, who enlisted on 1 April 1908 and was discharged on 1 April 1915 due to sickness. It is difficult to reconcile the differences found in these two references. Further confusion is added by findmypast when they list information from the WWI Pension Ledgers and Index Cards, 1914-1923, that shows that 1416 Lance Corporal John Samuel Channing had served in the 3/7th Devonshire Regiment. The 3/7th was a cyclist battalion formed in late 1915, possibly only as a depot rather than a fully-fledged training battalion. It was disbanded March 1916.[4]
One might conjecture that John Samuel Channing had enlisted in the 4th
Battalion of the Devonshire Regiment in 1908 and then fell ill and was
discharged in 1915. He then
recovered from his illness and re-enlisted or was reinstated in the regiment
with the same Regimental Number.
3. PHYSICAL
DESCRIPTION
Since
Channing’s military records were not obtained for this study, no detailed
physical description of him was available. However,
his service papers may be available from the Army Personnel Centre in Glasgow,
and attempts to retrieve those papers may be made in the future.
Photographs and descriptions of him provided by his wife, Mrs. Barbara
Channing, indicate that he was a big man, both in stature and in build.
4. ENLISTMENT AND
TRAINING
Enlistment
Leslie Jack
Newbery Channing enlisted in the Royal Engineers on 11 December 1929.[5]
His enlistment was for a period of six years with the Colours and six
years in the Army Reserve. He
enlisted as a Sapper and was issued Army Number 1868416.
His Corps Trade was shown as “Normal rates” indicating that he would
receive the pay of a Sapper without any additional pay as a result of any
technical skills that he may have had when he entered the Army.
On 12 December 1929, once his attestation papers were finalized, he was
sent to the School of Military Engineering at Chatham where he was posted to
“B” Company of the Royal Engineers Training Battalion (R.E.T.B.).
When
Channing arrived at Chatham the training battalion was commanded by Lieutenant
Colonel O.H.B. Trenchard, R.E.[6]
Second-In-Command of the battalion was Major R. Hamilton, MC, R.E.
His company commander was Captain W.E.A. Masters, MC, R.E.[7]
Other officers in “B” Company included Lieutenants W.H. Waring, R.E.,
H.H.C. Withers, R.E.,[8]
H.C.W. Eking, R.E.[9]
and E.L. Kellett, R.E.[10]
Training
Channing’s training began with the basics that were required for each man to learn to be a soldier. This involved military customs, the wearing of his uniform and insignia, military discipline and the use, care and maintenance of his weapon, the short, magazine Lee-Enfield rifle (SMLE). Following a period of basic training, Channing then received the training necessary to make him an engineer soldier. This involved such field engineering subjects as tunnelling, trench-building, camouflaging techniques, barbed-wire entanglements, construction and clearing of obstacles, bridging, explosives and demolitions and other skills necessary to support the infantry and artillery in the field.
Before Sapper Channing completed his recruit training in “B” Company, a number of changes in the officers’ ranks had been made. Lieutenant Colonel G.G. Waterhouse, MC, R.E.[11] assumed command of the training battalion and Major Ǣ.F.Q. Perkins, R.E.[12] took over as 2IC of the battalion. Lieutenants Waring and Kellett had left and Lieutenants S.St.D Skinner, R.E. and J.E.C. McCandlish, R.E. reported into “B” Company as replacements.
Channing completed his recruit training and it appears that he received some specialized training in railway construction, maintenance and operations, as his next posting was to the Railway Training Centre at Longmoor. Many subsequent postings during his military career also would be to railway units.
Longmoor
(1930-1934)
Sapper Channing was posted to the Railway Training Centre (R.T.C.) at
Longmoor Camp in Hampshire on 14 October 1930.
The units stationed at the Railway Training Centre at that time were the
8th and 10th Railway Companies of the Royal Engineers.
Upon reporting to Longmoor, Channing was assigned to the 10th
Railway Company. He was further
assigned to the Blockman, Shunters and Signalling Section within the company.[13]
At the time that Channing was posted to the R.T.C. the centre was commanded by Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Lionel Manton, DSO, OBE, R.E. The Officer Commanding 10th Railway Company was Captain J.C.B. Wakeford, R.E.[14] and other company officers were Lieutenant L. Waasbrough-Jones, R.E. and R.E. Bagnald-Wild, R.E.[15]
Lieutenant Colonel Lionel Manton became the new Commandant at Longmoor
during the same year that Channing arrived at the camp.
Manton was an officer of immense ability and drive.
In addition to his technical skill, he was the outstanding advocate of
the day of Movement Control of all forms of transport.
Manton served as Commandant of Longmoor from 1930 to 1935[16]
and later as the Director of Transport in India.
While at Longmoor Channing’s duties involved participating in training exercises for the Railway Supplementary Reserve Operating Units of the Royal Engineers. One such exercise took place in June of 1931. The performance of Channing’s company on this exercise was so outstanding that it received special praise from Lieutenant Colonel Manton. In a Special Order dated 25 June 1931, Lieutenant Colonel Manton had this to say:[17]
“I
wish to express my warm appreciation of the work done by all ranks in arranging
for and carrying out the Operating Exercise for the Supplementary Reserve
Operating Units. The work was done
well and in good spirit, long hours were worked and the result is a credit to
the Railway Training Centre, R.E.”
“Every man has, by
willing co-operation, earned his share of the credit, and ‘done his bit’
towards upholding the high reputation of the Corps of Royal Engineers in general
and of the Railway Training Centre in particular.”
Training for the men of the 10th Company was undertaken on a continual basis in order for the men to maintain their proficiency in their railway duties and their skill as soldiers. While serving at the R.T.C. Sapper Channing was awarded a 2nd Class Certificate of Education in January of 1932.[18] In March of that same year his company fired the annual musketry courses and in July the units of the Railway Training Centre participated in an annual training exercise at Gatton Park in Reigate, Surrey. In March of 1933 the 10th Railway Company began the annual training cycle again with the men of the company involved with trade training. The annual training cycles for the individual companies and the men were usually completed by June of each year. Following the completion of the annual training, the 8th and 10th Railway Companies again became involved with the training of the Supplementary Reserve units.
In November of 1933, a friend of the author’s, the late Warrant Officer Class I Jack Firth was assigned to the 10th Railway Company.[19] Firth was assigned to No. 5 Section of the company that consisted of the Fitters, Turners, Welders, Blacksmiths, Iron and Brass Moulders. Jack Firth remembers Channing as “a well set bloke.”
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Figure 2. Jack Firth as a Staff Sergeant, c. 1930s. (Photograph from the author’s collection) |
Singapore
(1934-1937)
On 24 February 1934
Channing was posted to the 41st (Fortress) Company, Royal Engineers
at Pulau Brani and on1 January 1935 he was promoted to the rank of Lance
Corporal. At the time that Channing
joined the 41st (Fortress) Company the unit was commanded by Captain
T.G.R. Makeig-Jones, MC, R.E. Other
officers in the company included Lieutenant H.C.W. Eking, with whom Channing had
previously served at Chatham during his recruit training, and Lieutenant I.L.H.
Mackillop, R.E.[20]
As with his service in the 10th Railway Company, service in
Singapore involved a routine annual training cycle for the men and the units.
In August of 1935 the 41st Company was involved with
fieldworks followed by musketry training. In
September, following the completion of the training cycle, the company moved
from Pulau Brani to Changi. Before
the end of 1935, Lance Corporal Channing received orders to return to England,
having completed about two years of service in Singapore.
Channing was much more fortunate than Jack Firth with his transfer back to England. Jack Firth subsequently was transferred to Singapore where he was posted to the 30th (Fortress) Company, R.E. Jack was captured by the Japanese after the fall of Singapore and remained a prisoner for the remainder of the war working on the dreaded Siam to Burma Death Railway – and the “bridge over the River Kwai.”
Channing had served at Longmoor from 1930 to 1934 and again from 1935 to 1938. The years between 1930 and 1939 were the years of the greatest growth of the Longmoor Military Railway and Camp; hence, Channing served there during the most interesting periods of Longmoor’s history. During the 10-year period of growth at Longmoor much work was done on building both the railway and the camp. A program was instituted during this period to reconstruct Longmoor Camp as a permanent establishment. The artillery stables were converted to tractor and gun sheds during the mechanization of the Army and the Boer War vintage living huts were replaced by two-story brick barrack blocks. In addition to the normal buildings associated with a military camp, construction also included two officers’ messes, St. Martin’s Garrison Church, the headquarters block and the signals school. As a member of one of the two companies of Royal Engineers at Longmoor, Channing certainly was involved with many of these projects.
Channing arrived at Haifa in Palestine on 12 April 1939 where detachments of both the 8th and 10th Railway Companies were operating railway installations for the British forces there. Known as the Railway Detachments Palestine, these detachments had been in Palestine since the 19th of April 1936 and would remain there until 3 September 1939.
British involvement in Palestine began in 1936 as a result of efforts on the part of the Arabs to counter Jewish infiltration into the area. Arab leaders organized a general strike designed to paralyze the civil government, while militant Arab bands attacked Jewish settlements, disrupted all forms of communications and damaged the pipeline to the Haifa oil refinery. Roads became impassable except by escorted columns and the railways were liable to interruption by sabotage.
Corporal Channing served with the 8th Railway Company, Royal Engineers in Palestine in 1938 and 1939. In 1936–39 Palestinian Arabs opposed to Jewish mass immigration revolted against British rule. Railways were a particular target for sabotage. The British built blockhouses to protect bridges and regular military patrols of railway lines. Patrols were initially on foot, then in armoured freight vans propelled by locomotives with armoured cabs, and finally with dozens of rail-mounted armoured cars built at Qishon works. After one was blown up by a mine, killing a soldier, the front of each armoured car was fitted with a long bar propelling a pony truck intended to detonate any mine safely without injuring any of the armoured car's occupants. British soldiers made Arab hostages ride on the pony truck to attempt to prevent attacks, as shown below. The use of hostages for this purpose certainly would not be condoned today, but in the late 1930s it appears that there was little criticism of this practice.
Figure 3.
Arab Hostages in Front of a British Armoured Train.
(Photograph courtesy of Wikipedia)
Security measures failed to stop attacks on the railway. One attack damaged a Sentinel railcar. In October 1937 a more serious attack damaged a passenger train and prompted a further decline in passenger numbers. In 1938 sabotage derailed 44 trains, damaged 33 rail-mounted armoured cars, destroyed 27 stations and other buildings, damaged 21 bridges and culverts and destroyed telephone and signalling equipment and water supplies. A member of the Survey of Palestine recalled that "nearly all the stations on the railway had been burnt". For more than one period night running became so dangerous that it was suspended. In September 1938 first the Jerusalem line and then El Kantara line were closed by extensive sabotage. After the latter was reopened in October, Haifa – El Kantara trains were run only three days per week compared with the previous daily service. The worst year was 1938, in which 13 railway workers were killed and 123 injured. Channing had been there during some of the worst times.
Figure 4.
L.J.N. Channing in Palestine, c. 1939.
(Photograph courtesy of Mary Matthews via Ancestry.com)
The engineer problems resulting from the action of the militant Arab bands fell into three categories, as follows:
· Work required to keep open the railway and roads that were constantly mined and ambushed;
· Providing immediate accommodation for the large number of troops being assigned to the area; and,
· The longer-term problem of building hutted camps before the winter for those troops who could not be billeted in permanent quarters.
The work of the railway companies was not only to repair and to keep open the railway lines, but for a time they were responsible, with the help of naval personnel, to man trains and the pilot trolleys that preceded them. Once the country had been partially pacified and the hostile Arabs driven into the hills, the railway units undertook the reopening of the meter-gauge railway from Haifa to Jenin, Massoudieh, Nablus and Tulkarm[22]. This then, was the work undertaken by Corporal Channing and the men of his company during his tour of duty in Palestine.
Channing earned his first medal at this time. He was awarded the General Service Medal 1918-1964 with clasp [PALESTINE], as were all men who served in Palestine during the period of time mentioned above.[23] On 4 July 1939 he was promoted to the rank of Lance Sergeant.
Egypt and Ethiopia (1940-1942)
In October 1935 Italian troops invaded Ethiopia – then also known as Abyssinia – forcing the country's Emperor, Haile Selassie, into exile. Ignoring protests from the League of Nations, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini proclaimed a new Italian empire in East Africa, comprising Ethiopia and the pre-existing territories of Italian Somaliland and Eritrea. It was this action on the part of Italy that ultimately resulted in British involvement in the war and in Channing’s posting to Ethiopia on railway work at the conclusion of the war.
Figure
5. The Franco-Ethiopian Railway.
(Map courtesy of The Franco-Ethiopian Railway Web Site)
Following early successes by Italy's ally, Germany, in the Second World War, Mussolini declared war on Britain in June 1940. This meant that British possessions in East Africa, as well as British-controlled Egypt and the vital supply route of the Suez Canal, were now threatened.
The Italians attacked border posts in Kenya and Sudan, and captured British Somaliland in August. The Italian Viceroy, the Duke of Aosta, then ordered his troops to halt, allowing the initiative to pass to the British.
General Archibald Wavell, British Commander-in-Chief Middle East, planned a three-pronged counter-offensive to dismantle Italy's East African Empire. His force was outnumbered, but he had air support from the Royal Air Force.
In January 1941 Lieutenant General William Platt led forces from Sudan into Eritrea. The Italians quickly retreated and, in March, Indian and British troops won an important victory at Keren. Meanwhile, Lieutenant General Alan Cunningham advanced north from Kenya into Italian Somaliland, while a third force crossed from Aden to retake British Somaliland by amphibious assault. These then linked up and pushed deep into Ethiopia. In April British troops entered the capital Addis Ababa, and Haile Selassie returned in triumph on 5 May. The Duke of Aosta chose to fight on, and led his men to the mountain stronghold of Amba Alagi, near the Eritrean border. Here they held out for a further two weeks before surrendering.[24]
Probably because of his proximity to North Africa while serving in Palestine, Lance Sergeant Channing appears to have been assigned to serve in Egypt during the early years of the war. He served in the ranks during the war from 1940 through 1942. Since he had gained considerable experience with railway work he was posted to work on the Abyssinian Railways on 1 September 1941 following the end of hostilities in the area. Specifically he was assigned to work on the Franco-Ethiopian Railway, probably to repair damage caused by the war.
Figure 6.
The Franco - Ethiopian Railway.
(Image courtesy of Wikipedia)
Commissioned
War Service (1942-1945)
On 5 December 1942 Channing was selected to attend an Officer Candidate Training Unit (O.C.T.U) to prepare him for an Emergency Commission. On 13 January 1943 he was made an Emergency Commissioned Officer with the rank of Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, Army Number 287643, and on 2 September 1945 he was promoted to the rank of Captain. For his service during the Second World War Captain Channing was awarded the 1939-45 Star, Africa Star, Defence Medal and War Medal.
The highest rank shown on Channing’s Royal Engineers Tracer Card is
Lance Sergeant; however, the photograph below, believed to have been taken in
late 1942, shows him wearing the slip-on wrist rank insignia of a Warrant
Officer Class II. He probably had
been promoted to the rank of Sergeant and then Staff Sergeant before being
promoted to W.O. Class II, although it is possible that he had been given an
accelerated promotion to Warrant Officer without passing through the lower
ranks. In the photograph he is
wearing an insignia much like the one shown below.
The dates of his promotions to the senior non-commissioned officers’
ranks were not determined during this research project.
If he had been promoted to these ranks, then it is strange that the
promotions are not shown on his tracer card.
His service papers, if available at the Army Personnel Centre in Glasgow,
could solve this problem.
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Figure 7.
Leslie Jack Newbery Channing as a Warrant Officer Class II. (Photograph courtesy of Mary Matthews via Ancestry.com) |
(Photograph courtesy of British Military Badges web site)
6. RELEASE FROM SERVICE
Channing’s total service with the Royal Engineers was reckoned as shown in the tables below.
Location |
Period
of Service |
|
Chatham |
11 December 1929 – 13 October 1930 |
|
Longmoor |
14 October 1930 – 23 February 1934 |
|
Malaya |
24 February 1934 – 8 April 1937 |
|
Longmoor |
9 April 1937 – 11 April 1939 |
|
Palestine |
12 April 1939 – 31 August 1941 |
|
Abyssinia/Ethiopia |
1 September 1941 – 4 December 1942 |
|
O.C.T.U.
(24 E.A.C.O.)(3) |
5 December 1942 – 12 January 1943 |
|
Egypt/East
Africa(2) |
13 January
1943 – 15 April 1947(1) |
|
Reserve of Officers |
16
April 1947 - 1 October 1956(1) |
Location |
Period
of Service |
|
Home |
15 years, 8 months and 2 days |
|
Abroad |
11 years 1 month and 19 days |
|
Total Service |
26 years, 9 months and 21 days |
