Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Doughty-Wylie, Charles Hotham Montagu
DOUGHTY-WYLIE, CHARLES HOTHAM MONTAGU (1868-1915), soldier and consul, was born at Theberton Hall, Leiston, Suffolk, 28 July 1868, the son of Henry Montagu Doughty, of Theberton, by his wife, Edith, only daughter of David Cameron, chief justice of Vancouver, British Columbia. He won a scholarship at Winchester College, passed high into Sandhurst, and was gazetted in 1889 to the Royal Welch Fusiliers. He saw active service in India, on the Black Mountain or Hazara expedition of 1891, being severely wounded, and in 1895 he went through the Chitral campaign as transport officer on the staff of Sir William Forbes Gatacre [q.v.]. After garrison service in Malta and Crete he was seconded to the Egyptian army in May 1898, being attracted by the prospect of a Nile campaign, and, as brigade-major, he took part in the battle and capture of Khartoum, and in the subsequent operations against the Khalifa. In the Boer War he was again severely wounded while commanding a battalion of mounted infantry in the Wittebergen district. Going next with, his regiment to Tientsin, he raised and commanded a corps of mounted infantry in the China field force (1901), and subsequently he served for two years in Somaliland as special service officer.
Doughty married in 1904 Lilian Oimara, widow of Lieutenant Adams, Indian medical service, and daughter of John Wylie, of Westcliff Hall, Hampshire, whose surname he added to his own. He now sought political employment, and in September 1906 was appointed military consul for the Konia province of Asia Minor. Here again he proved his worth as a soldier. In 1909, after Cilicia had been added to his area, a revival of the Armenian pogroms, due to the general upheaval in the provinces which followed the first successes of the Committee of Union and Progress, caused an attempted massacre at Adana, where Doughty-Wylie was stationed. Donning his military uniform, he collected a half-company of Turkish regulars, and riding at their head through the town, beat back the infuriated mob from the Christian quarters. A stray bullet broke his right arm, but undeterred he again faced the mob when it returned to the attack, and taking virtual command of the town, saved its Christian communities. He is still, and long will be, gratefully remembered in Adana by Moslems and Christians alike. He received the C.M.G. and was promoted the same year (1909) to be consul-general at Adis Ababa in Abyssinia.
The Balkan War lured Doughty-Wylie back to Turkey in 1912. He became chief director of the Red Cross units on the Turkish side, and, with his wife to superintend the nursing staffs, organized two emergency hospitals in Constantinople. On the conclusion of the war he did not return at once to Adis Ababa, but served as British representative on the commission appointed to delimit the Greek and Albanian frontier, and became its chairman. For these services he received the C.B. In 1913 Doughty-Wylie returned to his consulate, but not for long. On the entry of Turkey into the European War (October 1914) he came back to England, and in February 1915 was attached, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, to Sir Ian Hamilton’s staff for the Gallipoli expedition. On the strength of his knowledge of Turkish, he begged leave to be among the first to land on the Gallipoli Peninsula, and embarked on the collier River Clyde which, on 25 April, was beached and landed half her troops with terrible loss. He remained on the bridge under fire during the day, and volunteered at nightfall to go ashore and explore the ground. At midnight he returned with valuable information and advice, and on the morning of the 26th went back to the shore with a fellow staff-officer, Captain Walford, and, on orders from General Hunter-Weston, took command of ‘V’ beach and of the attack on the village of Sedd-el-Bahr. Collecting remnants of the Munsters, Dublins, and Hampshires, he led a charge on the Old Castle, and captured it by 8 a.m. The village could only be approached through the castle, and here hand-to-hand fighting went on till noon, Doughty-Wylie, armed only with a cane, leading the rushes after Walford had been killed. Behind, on the left, lay the final objective, ‘Hill 141’, which commanded the beach. He went back to the shore to arrange for a preliminary bombardment of the hill by the ships. As soon as it ended he formed up his men, without waiting for reinforcements, and led them up in one rush through wire entanglements to the summit which was surrounded by a deep moat and crowned with a redoubt. The Turks fell back before his charge, and the hill, and with it the whole beach, were already won, when a bullet struck Doughty-Wylie in the head. He was buried where he fell, and to the end of the War at least the Turks respected his grave. Doughty-Wylie’s achievement in thus redressing a desperate situation at ‘V’ beach with previously shaken and dispirited troops almost deprived of officers, and the gallantry of his leadership and death were recognized by the posthumous award of the Victoria cross.
Tall, and slightly though vigorously built, Doughty-Wylie, with his fair complexion and keen blue eyes, was a typical officer of the old army, which had always held him in high esteem. He was an ardent sportsman, good rider, and good shot, who hunted big game as well as small, but he always retained the literary interests of a Winchester scholar. Simple, tenacious, chivalrous, and humorous, he quickly won sympathy and obedience, and was a born leader of fighting men.
A window and a tablet commemorate him in Theberton church, but no painted portrait is known to exist.
[The Times, 4 May 1915; The Bond of Sacrifice, vol. ii, n.d.; information from the Historical Section, Committee of Imperial Defence; private information.]