LIEUTENANT JASPER WHITFIELD SNOWDON, 9TH BATTALION WORCESTERSHIRE REGIMENT.

LIEUTENANT JASPER WHITFIELD SNOWDON, 9TH BATTALION WORCESTERSHIRE REGIMENT.KILLED IN ACTION 25TH FEBRUARY 1917 AGED 20

Several thousands of miles from the bitterly cold winter weather on the Western Front, another type of war was being fought in the hot deserts of Mesopotamia in what is now Iraq. This was not siege warfare conducted from lines of trenches, but a war of large scale sweeping movements and fast advances. Here, cavalry was in it element as armies attacked across open ground against an enemy unable to seek refuge underground.
The war in Mesopotamia had initially gone badly for the British Army and had culminated in the great disaster at Kut in early 1916, when a British Army was surrounded and forced to surrender, ignominiously, to the Turks. Over 30.000 British soldiers were killed and over 10,000 taken into captivity.

However, toward the end of 1916 a new British Army had been formed, the majority of whom where soldiers from the Indian Sub-Continent, determined to retake Mesopotamia. The town of Kut was captured in February 1917 the British began their advance towards the Turkish held city of Baghdad. Moving along the broad valley of the River Tigris, on the 25th February they came up against a Turkish defence line at at Aziziyeh 60 miles north of Kut.
The attack on the Turkish position was spearheaded by the 9th Battalion Worcestershire Regiment, who succeeded in achieving their objective with only a handful of casualties, one of whom was Lieutenant Jasper Whitfield Snowdon.

Jasper Snowdon was born into a relatively comfortably off family in Bradford. His father Edward was the manager of a silk works and with his wife, Ellen brought up their son and three daughters at 6 Park Drive in the Heaton area of the city. Jasper, however, was baptised in All Saints Parish Church in Ilkley in 1897, where his father had been born and where his grandfather John Snowdon had been vicar for 30 years between 1842 and 1872. John Snowdon had been responsible for the creation of the Ilkley Bath Charity which in turn had financed the building of Ilkley Convalescent Hospital on Ridings Road. Jasper himself was named after a paternal uncle who was an internationally recognised expert in church bell ringing.

Initially sent as pupil to Bradford Grammar School, at the age of 12 he went to Rossall School, Fleetwood, a public school popular with the sons of Church of England clergymen. Here he excelled at sport and was a member of the OTC. Jasper was also an accomplished photographer who won awards from the RSPB for his pictures of wildlife.

At the outbreak of war in 1914 Jasper was still a school and at an OTC camp at Tidworth. As soon as he was able, he enlisted in the army and in February 1915 was gazetted as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion Worcestershire Regiment. Sent to France he was shot by a German sniper near to St Eloi in the Ypres Sector in May of that year. With wounds to his head and neck he was treated at the 1st London General Hospital in Camberwell, London. 
Jasper returned to active service late in 1916 and posted to the 9th Battalion and served in Gallipoli in the final stages of that disastrous campaign. There he contracted dysentery and was sent to recuperate in Egypt. Later in 1916 he re-joined his battalion in Mesopotamia but was again wounded, sufficiently seriously to be evacuated to India for treatment.

Jasper was killed leading his platoon against the Turkish positions and it seems likely that his body was recovered and buried near to where he fell. In a fast moving war his grave was probably lost and today he is commemorated on the Memorial to the Missing in Bassra. He is also remembered on the memorial at Rossall School and the war memorial in Embsey, near Skipton. In All Saints Church Ilkley Jaspers grieving parents placed a plaque upon the wall of the nave in honour of their only son.

                                                    Plaque in All Saints Church, Ilkley