Colonel Neville Manders FES FZS zoologist killed Gallipoli August 1915

One of the Gallipoli casualties was Colonel Neville Manders DPMS, FZS, FES killed in the Dardanelles on 9 August 1915.

Neville Manders (image source from the RAMC WW1 website)

An entomologist and expert on butterflies, he was on the Headquarters staff of the ANZAC Army Medical Services as Deputy Director of Medical Services DDMS.

Colonel Neville Manders died 9th August 1915, aged 55 serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps D.D.M.S.(Anzac) Army Medical Staff. He is remembered on a Special Memorial  20, New Zealand  No. 2 Outpost Cemetery, Gallipoli, Turkey.

No 2 Outpost Cemetery, Dardanelles – Neville Manders special memorial 20 is just to the front right of the cross (image : CWGC)

CWGC lists him as the Son of Maj. T. Manders, late 6th Dragoon Guards (Carabineers) and  husband of Mrs. M. B. Knapp (formerly Manders), of 77, Fellows Rd., Hampstead, London.

On his death he left a widow and daughter.

http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/606131/MANDERS,%20NEVILLE

http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/35845#page/217/mode/1up article: Entomologists Record XXVII, 1915: A Day in The –

and his obituary p239.  http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/35845#page/323/mode/1up

 

IN MEMORIAM – THE DEATH OF A BUTTERFLY COLLECTOR IN THE TRENCHES OF GALLIPOLI – Obituary of Colonel Neville Manders from Entomology Monthly, Nov 1915
Colonel Neville Manders, A. M.S., F.Z.S., F.E.S. Born 1859. Died gloriously, 1915.

The death roll of British officers who have fallen in the Gallipoli Peninsula is long, and it contains the names of many friends who have given up their lives for King and country in a cause which we believe, and they believed, to be good and noble. Among them no name is better known to, or has been more highly esteemed by entomologists than that of Neville Manders, long time a Fellow of the Entomological Society of London, and recognised also as an expert in our Science as well as the best of good comrades.

He fell at the beginning of August, and although the official notification of his death, and the telegram from the General Officer commanding the Division with which he was serving at the time, does not inform us of the way in which he met his death, we have no difficulty in supposing that it was in the trenches where the wounded Australians and New Zealanders were his first and constant care. It is pleasant at least to reflect that he retained his interest in the wild life of that blood-stained field of many battles to the last, and that in his letters to his friends, down to within a few days of the end, he found time to observe the butterflies and birds haunting the limestone hills of the Peninsula, and to send home notes upon them. Undiminished, gay in life, even while the great guns were booming, and the air thick with the smoke of conflict.
Born at Marlborough fifty-six years ago, the youngest son of Major Thomas Manders, 6th Dragoon Guards (Carabineers), he was educated at the College which has given us at least another entomologist of the first scientific rank. I do not possess the Transactions of the School Natural History Society, but Colonel Manders often talked with me of his early love for the Lepidoptera of the neighbourhood, and how his first inclinations to entomology were fostered under the beech trees of Savernake. From Marlborough he proceeded to walk the London Hospitals, eventually qualifying as F.E.C.P. and M.E.C.S., preparatory to entering the Army Medical Service, being almost immediately ordered to the Soudan, where he served in the Suakin campaign, and was awarded the Khedive’s Star, with medal and clasp.

Thence he proceeded to Burma where he was severely wounded, and at the close of the war which added Thebaw’s country to the British Empire, received a second medal with two clasps. At the time of — and after — the South African War, he was in Ceylon and Mauritius, whence he began to write the series of interesting papers relative to insect migration and mimicry, published froom time to time in the Transactions of the Entomological Society of London, his latest contribution appearing in the ” Proceedings ” of March 3rd, 1915.
His catalogue of the butterflies of Mauritius and Bourbon (1907) considerably enhances his entomological reputation, and our knowledge of the islands’ fauna, and actually added a species, Nacaduba mandersi Druce ; and a new sub-species, Antanartia mauritiana Manders, to the list.

He was also a frequent contributor to the entomological magazines, even finding time for communications despite his multifarious duties in Egypt, where he was stationed when hostilities began, with the rank of Deputy-Director of the Medical Service.

Here he was joined later, and after the declaration of war with Turkey, by Mr. P. P. Graves, and at the beginning of the present year published ” The Butterflies of Lower Egypt” (Ent. Record, XXVII, pp. 60-65).
Colonel Manders was married. He leaves a widow and a daughter, to whom we offer our sincerest sympathy.

Some idea of the reputation he held in his profession, and the respect with which he was held by the entire Command at the Dardanelles front may be gathered from the following telegram receivedby Mrs. Manders from the G. O. C. the New Zealand and Australian Division — units of the immortal Anzac brigade: “On behalf of both myself and the New Zealand and Australian Division, I send our sincerest condolences. Your husband’s work here and devotion to duty make his loss irreparable both to me and to the Division.”
For him, as for the many thousand heroes who have perished in the great enterprise of freedom, may surely be reserved the glorious epitaph of Simonides upon the dead at Plataea :— ” These men, having set a crown of imperishable glory on their own land were folded in the dark cloud of death ; yet being dead
they have not died, since from on high their excellence raises them gloriously out of the house of Hades.” — H. Rowland-Brown.

 

Neville Manders, entomologist, remembered.

Tags: Butterflies, Butterflies of Gallipoli, entomology, FES entomological Society, FZS, Gallipoli, Gallipoli100, Neville Manders, RAMC WW1, WW1 centenary