Disappearance of Norfolk Regiment Battalion

The case, now known as the "Disappearance of the Norfolk Regiment Battalion," occurred on 12 August 1915 on the Gallipoli Peninsula( Turkey). We are talking about the death of the combat detachment 1/5 ("first fraction of the fifth") battalion of the Norfolk Regiment of the British Army during an attack on Turkish positions during the Dardanelles operation.

The Royal Norfolk Regiment was formed in Norfolk in 1881 during the reform of the British Army on the basis of the Ninth Infantry Regiment and consisted mainly of local militia and volunteers. During World War I, the regiment took part in the Dardanelles operation on the Gallipoli peninsula.

The detachment in the attack on the village of Anafarta came under heavy fire of Turkish machine guns and snipers, and as the fire of British and Turkish artillery was set on fire nearby forest, the detachment and did cut off from the rest of the forces, losing orientation in space. Two hundred and sixty-seven men, who were led into battle by Colonel Beacham and Captain Beck, according to eyewitnesses, continued the attack on the village of Anafarta and as they advanced through the valley entered a cloud of fog or thick smoke that rose from the fire. However, when the fog dissipated, neither the living Norfolks nor their bodies were found on the ground.

Initially, Norfolk newspapers reported only the death of the officers. Shortly thereafter, the Yarmouth Mercury and Lynn News published testimonies of people who were present at the scene. One article dated August 27, 1915 stated:

It is with deep regret that we publish a list of missing officers of the 5th (territorial) battalion of the Norfolk Regiment. At the time of publication, there was no further information in the press except the fact that they had disappeared.

On January 7, 1916, the Eastern Daily Press published an article with the headline "Sandringham Men Disappear." The article said that 16 officers and 250 men broke deep into the enemy line and "... disappeared from the realm of vision and sound. None of them came back."

On 15 February 1916, Lynn News reported that one of the missing officers was currently recovering in hospital after being wounded as a Prisoner of Turks in Constantinople:

The news of Captain Coxon will bring relief not only to his friends, but also to those who are still waiting for news about other officers and privates of the 5th Regiment of Norfolk. It is obvious that the officer in the hospital had more opportunities to write home to his friends than those who were held captive.

They also published a story told by a surviving officer:

I didn't see any of the missing officers after I got lost. I heard the Colonel's cry as we approached the huts I was talking about, but I didn't see him myself. I never heard him again.

I didn't see Captain Patrick at the time of the attack. I have not seen a single tree behind which officers and soldiers could disappear, and I certainly have not seen them enter the forest.

I know absolutely nothing about how the officers and soldiers disappeared. At first, like the others, I thought they were back in other trenches, but later I discovered that this was not the case.

I asked a lot about them, but all I could learn was that they disappeared. We came to the conclusion that they had advanced too far into enemy positions and had been captured. We knew that some of the attackers were killed, others were wounded, so it is possible that many were captured by the enemy.

I didn't hear that the 5th Norfolk Battalion entered the woods until it came home.

The bodies of British soldiers were discovered after the end of the war, in 1918. On September 23, 1919, an officer who was in the history of burials said:

We found the Norfolk Battalion "one fraction of five" - a total of 180 bodies: 122 Norfolkians, several Ghentians and Suffolk with Cheshire (from the battalion) "two fractions four." We were only able to identify the bodies of Private Barnaby and Cotter.

The bodies were scattered in an area of about a square mile, at least 800 yards behind the Turkish front line. Many of them were undoubtedly killed on the farm, as the local Turk, the owner of the site, told us that when he returned, the farm was littered (literally "covered") by the decomposing bodies of British soldiers, which he dumped in a small ravine.

That is, the initial assumption is confirmed that they did not go far deep into the enemy's defense, but were destroyed one by one, except for those who made it to the farm.

Thus, from 1915 to 1918, a unit of the Norfolk Regiment was reported missing. Disappearance gradually grew strange details, because of which the story got a mystical hue.

One of the veterans of the New zealand unit, which was on the front line in the area of height 60 (Kayajik Agala (tour. Kaiajik Aghala) during the attack on August 12, 1915, reported an inexplicable connection of the disappearance of the Norfolkians with a strange cloud, which they included:

The day was rising, clear, cloudless - in general, a beautiful Mediterranean day, as you would expect. However, there was one exception: six or eight clouds in the form of "round loaves of bread" hung in the air. All of these identical-shaped clouds were directly above the 60th high.

It was observed that, despite the light wind blowing from the south at 5-6 miles per hour, neither the location of the clouds nor their shape changed.

From our observation post, located 500 feet away, we saw them hang on a 60-degree elevation angle. On the ground, right under this group of clouds, there was another still cloud of the same shape. Its size was about 800 feet long, 200 in height and 200 in width. This cloud was quite dense and seemed almost solid structure. It was located between 14 and 18 chains (28 to 360 meters) from the site of the battle, in the territory occupied by the British.

Twenty-two people from the 3rd Division of the 1st Field Company of N.E.J. watched all this from the trenches at a distance of 2,500 yards (2,286 meters) southwest of the cloud closest to the ground. Our observation point towered over "60" somewhere at 300 feet; later we remembered that this cloud stretched over a parched river or a blurred road, and we could see its sides and edges perfectly. She was, like all other clouds, light gray.

Then we saw the British regiment (the first fraction of the fourth battalion of the Norfolk Regiment) in a few hundred men, who came out on this dried-up channel or a blurred road and headed to "height 60" to strengthen the detachment at this height. They approached the place where the cloud was, and without hesitation entered directly into it, but none of them at the "height of 60" did not appear and fight.

About an hour after the last groups of soldiers disappeared into the cloud, she easily left the earth and, as any fog or cloud does, slowly rose and collected the other clouds that looked like it at the beginning of the story.

After looking at them carefully again, we realized that they look like "peas in a pod." During all the events the clouds hung on the same place, but as soon as the "earthly" cloud rose to their level, they all went in a northerly direction, to Bulgaria, and three-quarters of an hour later lost sight of them.

The regiment mentioned here was declared "missing" or "destroyed" and when Turkey surrendered in 1918, the first thing Britain called for was the return of its regiment. Turkey replied that it had never captured the regiment, had not fought with it, and had no idea of its existence.

The British Regiment between 1914 and 1918 numbered between 800 and 4,000. Those who observed what happened testify that the Turks did not take the regiment captive or contact it.

We, the undersigned, although we make this statement late, because 50 years have passed since that event, we declare that the above-mentioned incident is credible.

Signed by witnesses:
4/165 Sapper F. Reichart Matata Bay of Plenty
13/426 Sapper R. Newnes 157 King Street, Cambridge
J. L. Newman 73 Freyberg St. Otumoctai, Tauranga

The stories of a Turkish peasant who found the bodies of the Norfolk people poured oil into the fire. He described them as badly disfigured:

"... broken, as if dropped from a great height..."

All this gave rise to several versions of what happened.

The ufological version that gave rise to the testimony of the Turkish peasant who found the body is that the soldiers were kidnapped by an alien ship. They were later dropped to the same location from the spacecraft.

There are also versions of moving battalion officers and soldiers into parallel world, in space or in time. Sometimes in these versions such movements are associated with the experiments of Nikola Tesla.

Among historians and skeptics there is a simpler and more obvious version, according to which all the missing soldiers of the battalion of the Norfolk Regiment died at the hands of soldiers of the Ottoman Army, and Turkey's official responses to The British requests are false and unreliable.

The soldiers either died in bayonet combat, or were taken prisoner and tortured to death by the Turks, or were destroyed by their own artillery. The artillery was able to open fire on its own not only because of the poor visibility in the fog, but also because of the numerous strategic errors of the command in coordination, which were not uncommon in the Gallipoli campaign. Historians confirm the fact that the British had incorrectly drawn up maps of the area on the entire Gallipoli front.

Historians consider the testimony of the New zealanders to be unreliable, as the affidavits of the persons who gave the testimony spoke about the disappearance of the 1/4th Battalion, not the 1/5th, and confused in the dates, calling August 21 instead of the 12th. In fact, on August 21, 1915, there was a battle for the hill of Smisitar, the assault of which turned into a disaster for the British - killed 5,000 people during the assault of one height. Now in the area of Agil Dere there are graves known as the cemetery "Commonwealth War Graves Commission" or "Cemetery of Heights 60", where there is a monument with the names of the dead.

It is worth noting that the clouds of strange shape described by the veteran are very similar to ordinary lens-shaped clouds.

Despite the details revealed to date, the disappearance of The Norfolk Regiment fighters is still one of the most notorious mystical cases. This incident is widely reflected in the popular culture of the 20th century, its mentions are found in songs, books, films and television series.