Frank Crowther Roberts

Few British officers of his generation combined front-line gallantry and senior command as dramatically as Major-General Frank Crowther Roberts, VC, DSO, OBE, MC. Born on 2 June 1891 in Highbury, London, he was the son of the Reverend Frank Roberts, Vicar of St John’s Church, Southall, and Sarah Ann Mary Roberts, née Barnes. Educated at St Lawrence College, Ramsgate, and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, Roberts was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Worcestershire Regiment on 4 March 1911. He joined the 1st Battalion and served with it in Egypt, where the battalion was stationed when the First World War began. His promotion to lieutenant took effect on 3 September 1914, a date explicitly recorded in the London Gazette.

The 1st Worcesters returned to Britain and then went to France in November 1914 as part of the 24th Brigade, 8th Division. Roberts quickly distinguished himself. On 3 January 1915 near Neuve Chapelle, he led twenty-five men in an attack on a German sap-head about sixty yards in front of the British line. The position was taken by surprise, and the action became one of the notable early trench raids of the war. Roberts received the Distinguished Service Order, gazetted on 18 February 1915. The official citation recorded that he and his men had attacked and captured the German position “by surprise, with complete success.”

Roberts subsequently became adjutant of the 1st Battalion and was promoted captain on 6 August 1915. By October 1916 he was serving as Brigade Major of the 23rd Infantry Brigade. During the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917 he repeatedly went forward under heavy fire to obtain information for brigade headquarters. His Military Cross citation credited his staff work with helping the brigade retain its objectives against heavy counter-attacks and specifically praised his personal reconnaissances under fire. The award was announced in 1917 and its citation published in the London Gazette on 9 January 1918.

On 24 October 1917 Roberts returned to the 1st Battalion, Worcestershire Regiment as its acting lieutenant-colonel and commanding officer. At only twenty-six, the regimental museum describes him as the youngest officer then to have commanded a battalion of the regiment. Five months later he faced the German Spring Offensive. On the night of 22 March 1918 the battalion took up an extended defensive line along the Somme. By the following evening German troops had crossed the river near Pargny, threatening the battalion’s right flank. With very few troops available, Roberts assembled a force of 45 men and led a counter-attack that drove the Germans back across the river. The Victoria Cross and George Cross Association further records that the surviving Germans were driven across Pargny bridge. These details are supportable; the more elaborate descriptions sometimes given of clerks and orderlies, sunken lanes, screaming troops and demolished bridges have therefore been omitted.

Roberts’s Victoria Cross recognised not only the Pargny counter-attack but his conduct during twelve days of continuous operations between 22 March and 2 April 1918. The official citation praised his conspicuous bravery, military skill, endurance and ability to inspire the men under his command during the retirement. It particularly noted that his counter-attack enabled threatened troops on the flanks to withdraw rather than be cut off. The award was gazetted on 8 May 1918, and King George V presented Roberts with the Victoria Cross at Buckingham Palace on 1 June. He was wounded during the fighting, returned to his battalion in June and resumed command. By the end of the First World War he had been wounded three times and mentioned in despatches six times.

Roberts remained in the Regular Army after the Armistice. From 1919 he served with the Egyptian Army in the Sudan and took part in the operations against the Aliab Dinka. His service there is reflected in the Khedive’s Sudan Medal 1910–22 with the clasp “Aliab Dinka”, and he was also mentioned in despatches in connection with the Sudan operations. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1921. Roberts later attended the Staff College, Camberley, and went on to a series of staff appointments in Egypt, with the British Army of the Rhine and in the Far East.

In July 1927 Roberts transferred to the Royal Warwickshire Regiment on accelerated promotion to major. He subsequently served in India and the Middle East and was attached to the Iraqi Army during the early 1930s. Because surviving secondary sources disagree over the precise grade of his Iraqi staff appointment, describing him variously as GSO1 and GSO3, it is safer to state simply that he served on the staff of the Iraqi Army until a primary appointment notice is located. What is well supported is his participation in operations in Southern Kurdistan from October 1930 to May 1931, followed by advancement in brevet rank.

His interwar medal group records the breadth of this service. In addition to his British decorations and campaign medals, Roberts received the Gold Medal of the Order of Mohamed Ali from Egypt, the Khedive’s Sudan Medal with Aliab Dinka clasp, the Iraqi Order of Al Rafidain, 4th Class, Military Division, and the Iraqi Active Service Medal. The latter is also widely known in British medal literature as the King Faisal War Medal, so that catalogue identification is sound. The Iraqi Active Service Medal was instituted under King Faisal I in 1926 for specified operations in Iraq and was later issued with campaign clasps, including South Kurdistan 1930–31. Roberts’s published medal inventories confirm his entitlement to the medal, although a Roberts-specific clasp for his example has not yet been independently documented.

Roberts married Winifred Margaret Wragg in Derbyshire in 1932. He continued to rise through the Army, becoming a substantive lieutenant-colonel on 24 November 1936 and commanding the 1st Battalion, Royal Warwickshire Regiment before going on to brigade command in India. The London Gazette records his promotion to major-general on 1 June 1939, with seniority from 13 June 1938. He was then appointed General Officer Commanding the 48th (South Midland) Infantry Division, a first-line Territorial Army formation.

Roberts left command of the 48th Division on 18 October 1939, a date later confirmed in the House of Commons by the Secretary of State for War, and retired from the Army in December. He and Winifred lived at Stanhope Bretby near Burton-on-Trent. They had no children. Winifred died in 1980, and Frank Crowther Roberts died at his home on 12 January 1982, aged ninety. His ashes were interred with his wife’s family at St Wystan’s Churchyard, Bretby. Roberts had served for twenty-eight years, rising from a young subaltern in Egypt to a major-general, with a career marked by the Victoria Cross, Distinguished Service Order, Officer of the Order of the British Empire, Military Cross and a notably varied group of British, Egyptian, Sudanese and Iraqi honours.