The most mysterious mass disappearance in history: the mystery of the Norfolk Regiment

The most mysterious mass disappearance in history: the mystery of the Norfolk Regiment

On August 12, 1915, during an attack on Turkish positions during the Dardanelles operation, one of the units of the Norfolk Regiment of the British Army disappeared without a trace. Until now, various versions of this event have been put forward – from the most fantastic to completely rational.

What happened to the Sandringham Company?

The Royal Norfolk Regiment was formed in 1881 from the 9th Regiment of Foot. It consisted mainly of members of the local militia and volunteers. At the outbreak of the First World War, the regiment consisted of two regular, one reserve and three territorial battalions. The two Territorial battalions were assigned to the 163rd Brigade, 54th Division, part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force under the command of Lieutenant General Sir Ian Hamilton. It was they who had to participate in the Dardanelles operation on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

According to various sources, on August 7 (or 10), 1915, a landing party consisting of battalions under the command of Captain Montgomery (1/4) and under the command of Colonel Sir Horace Beecham (1/5) landed in Suvla Bay and began an attack on the village of Anafarta. They were opposed by units of the 36th Turkish Division under the command of Major Munib Bey.

Intense fighting raged for several days. On August 12, by order of Lieutenant General Hamilton, the Sandringham Volunteer Company of the 1/5th Battalion, led by Captain Frank Reginald Beck, was to occupy the so-called Hill 60. Subsequently, eyewitnesses claimed that they saw a company of 267 people, moving along the ravine, enter the cloud of fog. No one ever saw them again.

Hamilton reported this incident to the Secretary of War, Lord Kitchener: “The battle intensified, and the terrain became more wooded and broken. By this stage of the battle, many fighters were wounded or driven to exhaustion by thirst. These returned to camp during the night. But the colonel with sixteen officers and 250 soldiers continued the pursuit, pushing back the enemy… They went deeper into the forest and were no longer visible or heard. None of them returned.”

Overall, the battalion suffered significant losses. Only two companies remained of the personnel. Until November 1915, they were on the front line in the Agil Dere area, north of the Sari Beir hill. The site is now the site of burials known as “Azmak Cemetery”, where there are also 114 graves of the “5th Norfolk”.

It was not until 1918 that the bodies of British soldiers were discovered scattered over an area of ​​about one square mile. The remains of 122 people were believed to belong to soldiers of the 1/5th battalion, but only two of them could be identified. Apparently they were all killed by the Turks.

However, the Sandringham Company is considered missing. A special commission conducted an investigation into this case.

Mysterious cloud

In 1967, materials related to the Dardanelles operation were declassified. And the report, by the way, mentioned the strange fog that shrouded Suvla Bay and Plain bays on August 21, 1915 and which prevented artillery observers from monitoring the Turkish trenches.

At the same time, testimonies from veterans from the New Zealand unit that fought on the front line in the area of ​​Hill 60 were published. They spoke of the following event on August 12, 1915:

“6 or 8 clouds in the shape of “round loaves of bread” hung in the air. All these identically shaped clouds were located directly above height 60. It was noticed that, despite a light wind blowing from the south at a speed of 5-6 miles per hour, neither the location of the clouds nor their shape changed. On the ground, directly below this group of clouds, there was another motionless cloud of the same shape. It was located at a distance of 14 to 18 chains (280-360 meters) from the battle site, in territory occupied by the British… Then we saw a British regiment… of several hundred people, which came out onto this dry riverbed or washed out road and headed towards height 60… They approached where the cloud was and walked straight into it without hesitation, but none of them at Hill 60 appeared or fought. About an hour after the last groups of soldiers disappeared into the cloud, it easily left the ground and, as any fog or cloud does, slowly rose and collected the rest of the similar clouds mentioned at the beginning of the story… Throughout all this, the clouds hung in the same place, but as soon as the “earthly” cloud rose to their level, they all set off together in a northern direction, towards Bulgaria, and after three quarters of an hour they were lost from sight.”

British authorities initially assumed that the missing Norfolk men had been captured by the Turks. However, the Turks denied this and also stated that they did not engage in battle with this unit and did not even suspect its existence.

What hypotheses were put forward?

Since there was no information about the missing, a variety of versions of the reasons for the “disappearance of the Norfolk Regiment” (as this phenomenon was dubbed) began to appear. Thus, ufologists claimed that British soldiers were abducted by aliens. They say that the cloud in question was actually an alien ship that took away some of the British. The aliens destroyed the rest. A Turkish peasant who found the bodies of the Norfolk in his field said that they were mutilated as if they had been thrown from a great height, and not killed in battle.

Another common hypothesis was the movement of the company in time and space. This was associated with the experiments of the famous inventor Nikola Tesla. It was rumored that while working on his Wardenclyffe project, he learned to open space-time portals.

There is also a guess that explains everything in the most prosaic way: the British were nevertheless captured by the Turks and were brutally killed. But, as we have already said, Türkiye stubbornly denies the fact of reprisals against them. To date, the mystery of the disappearance of the Norfolk Regiment is considered still unsolved.

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