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Charles Edwin Laurence Harris 1896 - 1996

The Reverend Charles Edwin Laurence Harris, 1965

The Reverend Harris was vicar of Burbage for 15 years from 1950 until his retirement in 1965. He was a man who left a very positive impression on the villagers. Being somewhat of a national figure, I will start with a merger of the obituaries published in the Times & Telegraph

Obituary, Saturday May 18, 1996

Brigadier the Rev Charles Harris, one of the last surviving Indian Army cavalry commanders, died on May 4 aged 99. He was born on May 10, 1896.

Charles Edwin Laurence Harris, then known as "Laurie", was born and brought up in London. He saw little of his father, who worked on the stock exchange in South Africa, and spent happy holidays with his grandparents at their home in a country vicarage near Hereford. He was a descendant of Sir Lachlan Maclean of Douart and nephew of Major-General James Harris - "China Jim" of Indian Mutiny fame.

On leaving St Paul's School he went to work for the Anglo-Mexican oil company at Tampico, Mexico, and returned in an oil tanker to join the Artists' Rifles on the outbreak of the First World War.

In May 1915 he went to France, where he was employed on guard duties at St. Omer before being posted back to England prior to being sent to India for officer training at Wellington in the Hilgiri Hills. After being commissioned he spent several months with the 113 Infantry at Dargai Fort on the North-West Frontier. Harris (who, for an unexplained reason was rechristened "John" by the Army) returned to Athies on the Somme in France to join the 2nd Lancers once known as that famous Indian Army regiment of irregulars, Gardner's Horse. The 2nd Lancers had been raised by a former Highland officer in 1809 as an Irregular regiment and was originally paid by Gardner strictly according to merit. It attracted first-class recruits. They were dressed in silver embroidered emerald green coats and red pyjamas (breeches) and carried curved sabres, long matchlocks, shields and lances. The colour of the breeches was later changed to yellow. The regiment fought with tremendous success in the Burma Campaign of 1824 to 1826, marching 2,000 miles without losing a man. Gardner married a 13-year-old Princess of Cambay who bore him a son in a long and happy marriage. When the regiment arrived in France in 1916, they still carried sabres and lances, in addition to more modern weapons. Dressed in cotton drill they camped in the snow at Orleans. Later one of them won a Victoria Cross.

In 1917 Harris's regiment charged as part of the cavalry at Cambrai, through a hail of machine gun bullets and across the barbed wire.

Initially the British achieved a breakthrough with tanks at the start of the battle, but the Germans successfully counter-attacked and drove them back.

However Haig had kept a large force of cavalry in reserve to exploit the expected success of the tanks; and even though the initial advantage was lost, Harris's regiment of the 2nd Lancers was ordered to charge the German position. As the Lancers advanced on a shallow valley, they came under German machine-gun fire from right and left. They suffered 100 casualties, including their Colonel who was killed early in the battle, and came to a halt after 3,000 yards, in a wired sunken road.

Harris's initial duties in this battle were to clear a road through three German trenches and ten belts of wire. This task was completed just in time for the attack on Nov 20 when the tanks and infantry went through first and the cavalry followed. Harris remembered especially the Scots Greys whose horses were dyed a reddish brown colour with potassium permanganate for camouflage purposes. Harris's own regiment had charged after a German counter attack which had shelled them with high explosives and gas. Subsequently they were ordered to withdraw under cover of darkness.

After its mauling at Cambrai, the regiment was converted briefly to an infantry role in the trenches and then reformed and later sent to serve under Allenby in Syria and Palestine until the end of the war.

He then returned to India and completed a nine-month course at the Cavalry School, Saugor, India; he then returned to his residence to be Adjutant at Poona. This last appointment gave him opportunities for polo and the highly dangerous sport of pig-sticking. He also shot a tiger and a bear in the jungle of the Central Provinces. At Gujerat, Harris won the Salmon Cup for pig-sticking and was in the final of the Gujerat Cup. The regimental polo team, of which he was a member, won the Open and Junior tournaments in Bombay. He spent two years as an instructor at Sandhurst before he himself became a student at Staff College, Quetta, where the future Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck was Chief Instructor. Harris then returned to his regiment at Meerut and Ferozopore. He captained the polo team which won the Meerut Polo tournament and the Indian Cavalry Polo tournament at Lahore. His next two postings were as GSO2 at HQ Meerut District for a year and HQ Simla and Delhi for a second year. Here he served under Brigadier Lord Gort, who would be Commander-in-Chief in France at the beginning of the Second World War. This was followed by three years as a Cavalry Instructor at Staff College, Quetta, where he served under the future Field Marshal Lord Montgomery. When war broke out in 1939, Harris was on leave in Devon, but promptly returned to India by troopship, completing his journey with a nine-day march to Sialkot.

He was then posted for a three-month course in mechanised training at Ahmedmagar and returned to Sialkot to start the mechanisation of his regiment. In June he became a GSO2 (Operations), at Simla in the summer and Delhi in the winter. In June 1941 he took command of the 2nd Lancers with orders to reconstitute it as an Indian Armoured Car Regiment and take it to Mena camp in Egypt. In September 1941 Harris led the regiment up to Deir-Ez-Zor on the Euphrates, where its role was to maintain internal security and defend Syria. Six months later they returned to Egypt where he was appointed commander of the Desert Brigade (called for deception purposes 8th Division, which would have been at least three times as large). The brigade then moved up the Gazala line but was very badly cut up at Bir Hacheim when the British armour proved no match for the Germans - though Harris was mentioned in despatches. The 2nd Lancers were then withdrawn and sent to north Syria to combat any possible thrust by the German Army towards the oil fields of the Middle East. When that danger receded, Harris was successively commander of 23rd Lorried Infantry Brigade of Gurkhas and then Deputy Director of Military Training at Delhi, which at the time was concentrating on training for jungle warfare. A year later he joined General Slim's 14th Army HQ in Western Bengal, but after contracting pneumonia and malaria simultaneously, he was evacuated to England on a cargo ship carrying onions.

On retiring from the Army in 1946 he went to Ridley Hall, the Anglican theological college at Cambridge and, on being ordained, began work as a curate in Dorchester also serving as chaplain to the local prison.

From there he was given the living of Burbage, Wiltshire, where he firmly resisted a proposed merger with a neighbouring parish. In 1965 he retired for the second time, moving to a village near Dover, Kent. He was for 16 years chairman of the local Conservative Association and continued to take local services, his last one aged 98 by which time he had endured two hip replacements. An avowed traditionalist, he insisted on using the Book of Common Prayer.

In 1993 he was invited by the British Legion to play a prominent role in the Westminster Abbey service, attended by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of the First World War. He stood, as straight as a gun barrel before the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior to recite in ringing tones Laurence Binyon's famous lines from For the Fallen.

A spirited, outgoing person who loved company, he declared his intention of being photographed on a horse on his 100th birthday in a last act of defiance against old age. Steps had already been taken to procure an appropriately docile mount. But it was not to be. Harris died, following a fall, six days before his centenary.

His first wife Audrey, whom he married in 1928, died in 1961. He is survived by his second wife Margaret and by three daughters two from his first marriage and one from his second.

The reference to his refusal to take over another parish concerns events in late 1952 when he was asked to "merge" Burbage with St. Katharine's. He publicly announced his refusal in February 1953, saying that as Burbage was a physically large parish, he did not feel he could do justice to both sets of parishioners. As can be seen, his first wife Audrey died in December 1961 whilst they were living at Burbage and it was a terrible blow to him. The official obituaries above concentrate on his very long and interesting military career but skimps over his later life. The following words, written by him following his wife's death, provides a insight into a different man.

A Full Life

Sorrowfully I now have to write what is far and away the most difficult thing I have ever had to write in my life. I refer, of course, to my wife's illness which started as far as I know last summer and ended with her death in hospital at Oxford on 26th December.

I would be easy simply to mention her death and to thank you all most awfully for your kindness during the last few months and also during the twelve years we have been in the village. Then, however, I should only be telling you the end of a story which would for you have no real beginning, no proper development, nor any relevance to the future. That seems to me to be not good enough. There must obviously be a longer story that can be related to events in everyone's life so that all of us can derive some help and comfort from it.

The longer story I have to tell is a story of love and affection which started in India 37 years ago. I was at the Western India Turf Club and was on the lawn talking to the mother of an army friend of mine. We were looking towards a couple dancing in the ball-room and she asked me if there were any girl I would like to be introduced to. "Yes," I said, "there is one dancing now. I will point her out to you when she passes." "Oh!" she said, "that is Audrey White. I know her well. I will introduce you to her after this dance."

That was how it started, and that was in 1924 in Poona! I knew her as "The beautiful lady," and used to think to myself, "in whom there is no guile." There was an air of gentleness and peace about her, and it was always a pleasure to be near her.

The following year she went home to England and we did not meet again until 1926 when I went home on leave. In the summer of 1928 we were married at Paddington in Holy Trinity Church.

"Where do you want to go to, Sir?" said a London taxi driver when we got in his cab to go to supper on our wedding day. "Go, my dear chap, , " I said, "go wherever you like. It doesn't matter where you go as long as it is nice. We want to have some supper." At that moment it seemed so strange that it should matter to anyone where we went! And where he took us, I do not know, nor what we had to eat; I have often wondered! It was our wedding day, and the world was alive and singing with joy and gladness. After we went to a musical at the Hippodrome and I sat, I believe, in the Royal Box. It was the year of popular songs, I remember, "Old Man River" and "Can't help loving that man of mine."

We went for our honeymoon to the coast of Norfolk and stayed where I have always longed to stay in a tower in a room with many windows. They looked across the golden cornfield of August and beyond them out to sea. They recall the words of the fine old Harvest Psalm "the Valleys shall stand so thick with corn, that they shall laugh and sing."

Our daughter Philippa was born in 1929 at Aldershot and was Christened in the Chapel of the Royal Military College which for me is one of the really inspiring places in England. After only a few more months we went to Quetta in Baluchistan.

There followed a period of many years when the pattern was something like this: I would go to some place in India and prepare a home for my wife to come to when it was ready. After a while, a year or two, she would go back to England and prepare a home for me. I would then join her there. In 1933 our second daughter, Una, was born at a beautiful place in the mountains, called Ranikhet, and was Christened there. We were then a family of four and seemed always to be preparing new homes for ourselves, either in England or India.

For a while we got very split up in the War and were all in separate places but my wife always managed to keep a home somehow and rallied us round her again. At first she did a lot of Red Cross work and then was given a Commission in the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps. Twice she travelled for many weeks in troopships under war conditions of black-out, once round the Cape to India with Una, and once via Suez to England with a young nephew and niece in addition. Once she flew to see me in hospital in Eastern Bengal. For a long time she was Assistant Matron at a boys school in Surrey. She was then faced with the problem of making a home in the top of a house in Cambridge. There were two bedrooms and a sitting-room with a kitchen and bathroom combined! That was followed by making a home in Dorchester at the top of a house, where again there were the same number of rooms but the kitchen and lavatory were combined! She joined the Territorial Army as a private and, in addition, worked many days a week in an Old People's Home for Incurables. For several months she made a home for us in a little side street in the town, and didn't mind too much even when I brought home from the County Prison a man whom we nick-named "The Badger!"

Now we come to the part of the story that you know something about. We came to Burbage and my wife bravely took on without hesitation the largest house in the village together with a huge garden. She tackled the problems of the house, and she helped with the garden. She nursed and comforted several of the old and sick, and for three years looked after her mother. She polished the Church and levelled and tidied much of the churchyard. One year she worked like a slave to level and mow the Church Green. She ran the Sunday School, and the Sunday School Party, and took the children to Church every week. She took over the Mothers' Union and the Christmas Bazaar, and did a vast amount of work for the Red Cross, the Church Fete and the Churchyard Annual Collections. For some years she continued in the Territorial Army and was promoted Corporal and went on annual camps, till eventually in the Honours List she was awarded the British Empire Medal. Her comment when the letter came, telling her of this award, was "Look! Someone has made a mistake. This can't be for me."

At last came the illness in the summer. The doctors who examined her spoke to me kindly and gravely, and with the deepest compassion. What they told me was confidential and was said with such distress, that I felt that the news was for me alone, and I could not pass it on.

So all was done that could be done. Everyone was kind, everyone was helpful, everyone was wonderful, both in and out of Hospital, but at Christmas time the valiant soul departed with her life's work done. Where do you think she has gone to now? Surely she has gone to prepare a place for us in Heaven. "I go," said Christ, "to prepare a place for you. Where I am there ye may be also."

Now what can you and I do about this, and how can it comfort us? I believe the answer lies in the following words which I would ask you to think about:-

"Go forth into the world in peace; be of good courage; hold fast that which is good; strengthen the faint-hearted; support the weak; help the afflicted; honour all men; love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit."

If we can only do that, and it can be done, I believe that the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, will be amongst us and remain with us always.

I have no photographs of Audrey Harris BEM and would welcome a copy if anyone has one.

His second wife, Margaret, was at that time the secretary at Hawtreys School which since 1946 had been based at Tottenham House. She was a regular worshipper at All Saints and this is probably how the relationship developed. After a whirlwind romance they married at her home town of Epsom on September 11th 1962 and on February 3rd 1964 she blessed him with the birth of his third daughter, Elizabeth Anne. He was aged 67. It says much for the man that the nanny he hired was a villager from Seymour, Pamela Gordon, who was a staunch Methodist. In fact he had close links with the village's chapel, gave them a slot in the parish magazine, held a joint Sunday School, occasionally held joint services and openly preferred people to worship there rather than worship nowhere. A man before his time.

Probably no incumbent since Richard de Crespigny Thelwall (resigned 1913) had involved himself more with the secular life of the village. Harris was frequently seen around the village, drank in the local pubs, was a supporter of the local branch of the Royal British Legion and was an active member of the Parish Council for many years.

If you have any memories of this remarkable man then please let me know.

Amongst those I have so far includes those of Susan Perry who recalls him riding around the village on a white horse and giving children rides; Alex McGahey remembers the tiger skin in the vicarage and hadn't, until now, known that Harris had actually been the one who shot it! Susan Winder remembers how he reacted when encountering mis-behaving children - firmly but with a reasoned approach; also, when he resigned, he visited the homes of many villagers to say goodbye, including her mothers at which he received his usual glass of whisky.

Hopefully many more stories and memories will be added.

Mrs. Margaret Harris & Elizabeth in 1965, shortly before leaving the parish.

Elizabeth & Pamela Gordon in 1965.

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