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Lieutenant Colonel William Henry BINGHAM OBE
69th Punjabi Regiment Date of birth: 19th March 1877 Date of death: 18th March 1920 Died aged 42 Buried at Novorossiysk New Cemetery
William Henry Bingham was born at Bengal in India on the 19th March 1877 the son of Colonel Edward Henry Bingham, 13th Bengal Infantry, Indian Staff Corps of High Street, Minster, Kent and Elizabeth Frances Bingham (later Marshall), of 10, Lawrence Road, Hove in Sussex. He was christened at Bareilly, Bengal in India on the 28th of December 1881. He was educated at Lancing College from May 1888 to July 1890 where he was in School House. He went on to the Royal Military College Sandhurst and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant on the 22nd of January 1896 with a view to his appointment to the Indian Staff Corps. On the 29th of March 1897 he was appointed to the Indian Staff Corps as a 2nd Lieutenant to rank from the 22nd of January 1896. He was promoted to Lieutenant on the 22nd of April 1898 and to Captain on the 22nd of January 1905. He was a Wing Officer and Quartermaster in the 8th Bengal Infantry and saw service in China. He was a Freemason and was accepted as a member of the Kitchener Lodge at Simla in the Punjab on the 14th of August 1906. He was promoted to Major on the 22nd of January 1914. On the 2nd of November 1914 he sailed with his regiment from Karachi to Egypt where the regiment was involved in the defence of the Suez Canal. On the 1st of May 1915 he landed with his regiment at on the Gallipoli Peninsular at V Beach near Helles and moved into the line on the 9th of May. They were not involved in a major action during this time but did come under shell fire and were withdrawn from the line on the 14th of May when they embarked for Egypt. Casualties suffered by the regiment during their short time on Gallipoli were 10 men killed with 23 wounded. The regiment sailed from Egypt and landed at Marseilles on the 30th of May 1915. On the 25th September 1915 the 69th Punjabi Regiment were on the right of the Highland Division at Loos for the opening of the British offensive there. At 5.50am the British began their gas attack and at 6am No. I Double Company, under William Bingham and 2nd Lieutenant Geary, and No. 4 Double Company under, Lieutenants Moberley and Gray who were in the first wave of the attack, left their trenches and began moving across no man’s land towards the enemy line. The second wave, consisting of No. 2 Double Company, and No. 3 Double Company, followed closely behind them. Bingham’s No. I Company came under machine gun fire from their right, but continued to advance and broke through the enemy first line, capturing a machine gun and linking up with the 2nd Battalion Black Watch. No. 4 Company was temporarily held up at the first line but carried it at the point of the bayonet, and they too moved on although without their British officers who had all become casualties. Shortly after crossing the enemy front line only four British officers remained unwounded from those who had started the attack a few minutes before. The battalion dug in at Moulin du Pietre but at 11.30am the enemy commenced a major counterattack which exposed the regiment’s flanks and by noon they were forced to retire or be surrounded and cut off. Lieutenant Gulland, the regimental machine gun officer, had been wounded earlier in the day, refused to join the retreat, instead he and his orderly, Sepoy Kirpa, along with others, fought to their last bullet before being forced to surrender. The retirement of the regiment was organised by Major Bingham, who had led the attack throughout with “great gallantry”. For his actions that day William Bingham was mentioned in despatches. Casualties among the regiment for the attack were 7 officers and 36 men killed with 9 officers and 261 other ranks wounded and 1 officer and 34 other ranks missing out of a strength of 633 men of all ranks who went into the attack. From the 29th of April to the 7th of August 1916 he was Senior Officer/Assistant Resident of the garrison of some 200 men on the Island of Perim, an island 90 miles to the west of Aden and 11 miles off the African Coast. He served at Gaza in 1917. By the summer of 1918 he was serving in Turkestan where Britain had sent a small force to assist anti Bolshevik and anti German forces there. On the 17th of July 1918 the India Office send instructions to dispatch British officers and a number of troops across the frontier into Transcapia. On the 19th of July a force of some 200 men left Meshed and reached Muhmmabad on the 2nd of August. On the 11th of August Bingham accompanied two machine guns of the 19th Punjabis when they left Muhmmabad and crossed the border to Artik where they entrained at Bairam Ali in order to assist the Transcapian forces in their fight against the advancing Bolsheviks. Bingham was to report back on the military situation. The following day the Transcapians were sounded beaten during a battle in which they were outnumbered by some three to one. He was wounded at Tegend and was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. He was an interpreter in eleven languages. Later in 1918 he was posted to the British Mission to General Deniken in South Russia where British forces were assisting the White Russians in their conflict with the advancing Bolsheviks. On the 25th of April 1919 he was appointed as a General Staff Officer Grade 2 and was awarded the Order of the British Empire in the King's Birthday Honours List of the 3rd of June 1919. By March 1920 the British Mission had been forced to retreat as Deniken's forces were forced back towards the sea. They fell back to the city of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea coast where Bingham was in command of transport for the city and was faced with thousands of refugees who were desperate to escape with little or no means to do so as most of the transport had been allocated to the military. On the 11th of March 1920 the 2nd Battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers came ashore to guard the dock area while the British Mission and their families were evacuated. One evening he attended a dinner with a number of Royal Air Force officers. They related how strained he looked and noted that he appeared to be drinking heavily. During their conversation he related how his office had been besieged by refugees, most of who would fall into the hands of the advancing Reds with dire consequences if they failed to find a way out. He was clearly deeply troubled at the number of women and children who would not escape and concerned about their fate when the Reds arrived. The following morning he received the news that no further civilians were to be evacuated and that all available transport would be used by the military and their families alone. In spite of this he managed to arrange the escape of a number of civilians but as time went on the strain became too much and he shot himself through the head at his billets. On the 26th of March, with the Bolsheviks already in the town, the last of the British Mission was successfully evacuated. He is commemorated on the Haidar Pasha Memorial in Turkey and on the war memorial at the Royal Military College Sandhurst.

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