The Great War ‘Western Front’ M.C. group of five awarded to Captain F. W. M. Cornwallis, 17th Lancers, attached Machine Gun Corps (Cavalry), who, having rejoined his cavalry regiment in Ireland in 1920, was gunned down during the Irish War of Independence by a gang of I.R.A. volunteers in the bloody Ballyturin Ambush near Gort, Co. Galway, on 15 May 1921

Military Cross, G.V.R., the reverse privately engraved ‘F. W. M. Cornwallis. 17th Lancers.’; 1914 Star, with copy clasp (2. Lieut: F. W. M. Cornwallis. 17/Lrs.); British War and Victory Medals (Major F. W. M. Cornwallis.); France, Third Republic, Croix de Guerre, reverse dated 1914-1917, with silver star on riband, mounted together with related miniature medals, riband bar and 17th Lancers and Machine Gun Corps lapel badges, in a felt lined wooden frame with ivorine label, inscribed ‘Captain Fiennes Wykeham Mann Cornwallis., M.C., Croix de Guerre. 17th Lancers. Killed in the service of his country whilst with his regiment at Gort. Co. Galway. Ireland. On May 15th 1921.’, extremely fine (5) £3,000-£4,000

M.C. London Gazette 3 June 1919:
‘For distinguished service in connection with Military Operations in France and Flanders’

French Croix de Guerre London Gazette 10 October 1918:
‘For distinguished services rendered during the course of the campaign’

Fiennes Wykham Mann Cornwallis was born on 21 August 1890, the eldest son of Colonel Fiennes Stanley Wykeham Cornwallis, later 1st Baron Cornwallis, of Linton Park, Kent, who was Conservative M.P. for Maidstone and Chairman of the Kent County Council. His grandfather, Major Fiennes Cornwallis (Wykeham Martin), of the 4th Light Dragoons, took part in the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, as a University Candidate he was commissioned Second Lieutenant from the West Kent Yeomanry into the 17th (Duke of Cambridge’s Own) Lancers on 20 August 1913, and was stationed with them at Sialkot, India at the outbreak of the Great War. In October 1914 his regiment was deployed to France as part of the 2nd (Sialkot) Cavalry Brigade in the 1st Indian Cavalry Division (later renamed 4th Division), Cornwallis serving with them on the Western Front from mid-November (ineligible for 1914 Star clasp).

Cornwallis was advanced Lieutenant on 27 February 1915 and was seconded for service with a Brigade Machine Gun Squadron on 2 February 1916. Advanced acting Captain whilst Second in Command of a Machine-Gun Squadron on 10 July 1917, he was made temporary Captain in November and acting Major while commanding a Squadron on 5 June 1918. For his services with the 3rd Squadron Machine Gun Corps (Cavalry) he was awarded both the Military Cross and the French Croix de Guerre.

Cornwallis was initiated into the Douglas Lodge No. 1725 of the Freemasons in Kent in 1919 and the following March was restored to the establishment of the 17th Lancers who at this time were in County Cork, Ireland, aiding the Civil Power against Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army during the War of Independence.

Ballyturin Ambush, Galway, 15 May 1921
On 15 May 1921 Cornwallis was driven to a party at Ballyturin House near Gort, Galway by District Inspector Cecil Blake of the Royal Irish Constabulary. They were accompanied by Blake’s pregnant wife Lily, Lieutenant McCreery of the 17th Lancers and Margaret Gregory, the widowed daughter in law of Lady Gregory of Coole Park. The group spent the afternoon visiting the Bagot family at the house and playing tennis. Leaving in the early evening, they found the gate shut at the end of the drive and Cornwallis went to open it. Suddenly there was a shout of ‘hands up’, shots were fired and the car’s windscreen was shattered by bullets.

Cornwallis tried to take cover behind the wall near the gate and the occupants of the vehicle tried to jump out and shield themselves to the left of the car as intense firing opened up. After 3 or 4 minutes the shooting ceased with one heavy volley at close range. Mrs Gregory, who had been allowed to survive, then saw her companions’ bodies huddled together on the ground, shot to death. Captain Cornwallis was later found dead on the outside of the wall on the right of the gate.

The ambushers, a gang of around twenty I.R.A. volunteers in civilian clothing, a few masked but most with blackened faces, then came up to the car and searched the bodies and the car and retrieved any weapons. Eventually Mrs Gregory was allowed to go and she walked back up towards the house. At the same time, the Bagots, having heard the shooting, were running down the long drive to the gate. Mrs Gregory was handed over to Miss Molly Bagot and John Bagot was held at gunpoint and handed a note which apparently read: 'Volunteer HQ. Sir, if there is any reprisals after this ambush, your house will be set on fire as a return. By Order IRA.’

Constable Graham Poole, an ex-Tan, was present at Ballyturin immediately after the murders and described the brutal carnage the killers had left in their wake:
‘One man [Cornwallis] was by the gate slumped against a wall, he had been shot in several places and was quite dead. Inside the gate was a motor car containing the body of one of our men, an auxiliary named Blake, he was totally peppered with shot and the car was full of blood. On the path behind the car was a woman whose head was literally hanging off, she was covered in blood and peppered beyond recognition, she had been placed upon another dead man in a sexually explicit position, the woman was later reported to be Mrs Blake. The two dead men were army officers.’ (The Black and Tans in Galway during the Irish Troubles by Constable Graham Poole refers).

During these investigations by Crown Forces near the scene following the ambush a Constable named John Kearney was also shot dead, raising the body count to five. The British said he was killed by the I.R.A. who were still at the scene but his death may have been an accident. It is even thought by some that he was shot by the police as an informer, for passing information to local republicans. A witness statement from an I.R.A. man who took part in the ambush gives some background to the motive for the attack, describing District Inspector Blake in the following terms:
‘The man had built up a very bad reputation for himself in the district. Threatening women with his revolver in the homes of wanted men. And going into the shops in the town and throwing his revolver on the counter with a demand to be served at once. His wife also carried a revolver and when shopping threatened those serving her at the counter that if anything happened to her husband she would shoot and burn the town.’

Going further, in his 1943 book ‘The House of Gregory’, Vere R. T. Gregory claims that the Ballyturin ambush was retaliation for an incident in which soldiers or police had tortured three local men for information, by forcing them to dig their own graves and then threatening to bury them alive. Gregory also mentions being told by his stepsister that it was rumoured in the vicinity that Lady Gregory had conspired with the I.R.A. in planning the ambush, and this was why her daughter had survived - unsubstantiated gossip that is unlikely to be true.

In a broader context, the events of the 13 to 15 May 1921, which coincided with elections to the Home Rule Parliament in which Sinn Fein swept the board, saw 15 soldiers and policemen slaughtered in a two day killing spree across Ireland ranging from Dublin, Tipperary and Castletownbere to these events at Ballyturin, Galway and are now seen as instrumental in bringing the British government towards signing the truce two months later.

Cornwallis was buried in Linton (St. Nicholas) Churchyard, Kent, the grave being marked by a large stone cross, and he is commemorated on a marble tablet placed inside the church by his brothers and sisters.