The 42nd Division went to
Gallipoli in 1915. During September the Turks exploded a series of
mines in front of the British trench known as the 'Gridiron' and damaging its defences. Repairs after one mine on 22 September were covered by a
bombing party of
1/6th Battalion Manchester Regiment who held the lip of the crater. The same day the
Royal Engineers exploded a counter-mine and the Manchesters rushed the crater and built a barrier across it. Captain Cawley, serving with 1/6th Bn, was killed that night by a Turkish sniper, and the crater became known as 'Cawley's Crater'. Before his death, he sent a letter to his father, at that time representative of
Prestwich in the
Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was in memory of Harold and two other sons – Oswald and John – who died in the war that their father endowed a ward at
Ancoats Hospital, Manchester, in 1919 at a cost of £10,000. All three brothers are commemorated on the
Parliamentary War Memorial in Westminster Hall. Harold and Oswald, on Panel 8, are among the 22 MPs that died during World War I to be named on that memorial. John, included on the memorial as the son of an MP, appears on Panel 2 of the memorial. Harold Cawley is one of 19 MPs who fell in the war who are commemorated by heraldic shields in the Commons Chamber. A further act of commemoration came with the unveiling in 1932 of a manuscript-style
illuminated book of remembrance for the House of Commons, which includes short biographical accounts of the life and death of the Cawley brothers. ==References==