The Wolds Waggoners - page 4
Image details
| Corps | RPC |
|---|---|
| Material type | Books |
| Book page | |
| Chapter head | |
| Chapter key | |
| Chapter number | |
| Full title | The Wolds Waggoners |
| Page number | |
| Publication date | 1988 |
| Real page | |
| Colour | Yes |
| Grey | No |
| Early date | 1908 |
| Late date | 1983 |
| Transcription |
SIR MARK SYKES (1879-1919) Sir Mark Sykes, the man responsible for the creation of the Wolds Wagoners, was born on 6th March 1879, the son of Sir Tatton Sykes, the 5th Baronet, and his wife Jessica Cavendish-Bentinck. The family home was Sledmere House, situated in the village of Sledmere, near Maiton, in the northern part of the East Riding of Yorkshire, but, after bis marriage in 1903 to Edith Gorst, Mark set up home in a house at nearby Eddlethorpe on the family estates. After an education which was a mix of private tutors and public school (in his case, Beaumont College in Windsor), he applied for a commission in the militia in 1897, reluctant, in the words of his biographer, to socialize with the cavalry, or talk agriculture with the yeomen'. He received his commission as a Second Lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion, Princess of Wales's Own (Yorkshire Regiment), better known as the Green Howards, on 9th June 1897. He was not the first in his family to take up part- time soldiering. One of his ancestors, Sir Christopher Sykes, had formed the Yorkshire Wolds Yeomanry in 1794, when Britain was threatened by invasion from France; at the same time, another forebear, Sir Mark Masterman Sykes, was serving as a lieutenant colonel in the 2nd East Riding Local Militia. Mark did not, however, devote much time to militia duties until 1899, when a series of disasters in South Africa at the hands of the Boers forced the emergency call up of a number of militia battalions, the 3rd Yorkshires amongst them, for service at the Cape. The role of these militia battalions was to garrison railway stations and protect bridges along the Army's lines of communications, keeping them safe from Boer attack, a duty which alternately appalled and enthused Mark. His energetic nature was unsuited to the static hfe of a garrison, so he was forever bombarding his superior of&cers with ideas for improving the fortifications around his post - ideas which were usually ignored. Returning to England at the end of the war in 1902, he rejected the idea of a career in the peacetime Army. Nevertheless, he threw himself into a number of projects connected with the volunteers, and later, the Territorial Army. He served with the militia until 1907, rising to the rank of captain. On his further promotion to the rank of major later in the year, he found that there was no vacancy within his own battalion, and so transferred to the 2nd Volunteer Battalion of the East Yorkshire Regiment, which recruited in the northern part of the county. Hardly was his own transfer complete, however, when a reorganisation within the Army meant that his battalion ceased to be part of the East Yorkshire Regiment, and instead became the 5th (Territorial) Battalion of the Green Howards. Once more back in the Green Howards fold, Mark took an immediate and active part in the training of his men; in January 1911, he was promoted once more, to lieutenant colonel, taking command of the battalion. |
| Book number | R0398 |