Secret Warriors

by Taylor Downing

  7 Shephard, A War of Nerves, p. 2.

  8 Myers, Shell Shock in France, pp. 97–8.

  9 Ibid., p. 39.

  10 Ibid., p. 90; Shephard, A War of Nerves, p. 27.

  11 Frederick W. Mott, War Neuroses and Shell Shock, pp. 1–5,130ff.

  12 Myers, Shell Shock in France, p. 26.

  13 Shephard, A War of Nerves, p. 41.

  14 WELLCOME: RAMC/446/18.

  15 Middlebrook, The First Day on the Somme, Appendix 5, p. 330.

  16 WELLCOME: RAMC/446/18; Leese, Shell Shock, pp. 41–2; Shephard, A War of Nerves, pp. 42–3.

  17 Shephard, A War of Nerves, p. 49.

  18 IWM DOC 42/TIS for Claire Tisdall’s unpublished memoir; Leese, Shell Shock, p. 37

  19 Harrison, The Medical War, p. 117.

  20 The films are available to view on: www.britishpathe.com/workspaces/BritishPathe/shell-shock. Sadly, being silent films, it is impossible to hear Hurst’s voice as he persuades, cajoles and instructs his patients.

  21 Holden, Shell Shock, p. 55, based on an interview with Pear’s daughter.

  22 Siegfried Sassoon, Sherston’s Progress, pp. 13–89; Pat Barker’s trilogy Regeneration (1992), The Eye in the Door (1994) and The Ghost Road (1996). The film Regeneration (1997), directed by Gillies MacKinnon, starred Jonathan Pryce as William Rivers, James Wilby as Siegfried Sassoon and Stuart Bunce as Wilfred Owen.

  23 The full text of Sassoon’s declaration is to be found in Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, p. 218.

  24 Winter, The First of the Few, p. 146,191.

  25 Lewis Yealland, Hysterical Disorders of Warfare, pp. 3–4.

  26 Ibid., pp. 7–15.

  27 Shephard, A War of Nerves, p. 97.

  28 Sophie Delaporte, ‘Military Medicine’ in Home (ed.), A Companion to World War I, p. 303.

  29 Sheffield, The Chief, p. 145.

  30 Haig, War Diaries and Letters, p. 259, entry for 6 December 1916.

  31 There are several websites devoted to the cases of those ‘shot at dawn’, for instance: www.wwlcemeteries.com/othercemeteries/shotatdawnlist.htm.

  32 Shepard, A War of Nerves, p. 70.

  12 The War of Words

  1 IWM ART: PST 2734.

  2 Douglas Sutherland, Tried and Valiant, p. 130.

  3 Michael Sanders and Philip Taylor, British Propaganda during the First World War, p. 104.

  4 In a letter to Venetia Stanley dated 5 September 1914, cited in Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill Vol III, p. 71.

  5 Cate Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning, p. 33.

  6 Sanders and Taylor, British Propaganda during the First World War, p. 9.

  7 The Times, 30 August 1914 (in a special Sunday edition).

  8 Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill Vol III, p. 70.

  9 Thompson, Northcliffe, p. 227.

  10 Hansard, House of Commons, 6 August 1914.

  11 Daily Telegraph, 4 September 1914, cited in Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning, p. 57.

  12 Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning, p. 83.

  13 In May 1915 the British government issued the Bryce Report, an investigation into the evidence on which the atrocity stories were based. It was a complete whitewash. None of the witnesses were identified and much of their evidence was second hand. Not surprisingly the report concluded that there was evidence for many of the stories that had been reported.

  14 Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning, p. 122.

  15 Spiers, Haldane: an Army Reformer, pp. llff.

  16 Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning, p. 81.

  17 Christophe Prochasson, ‘Intellectuals and Writers’ in Home (ed.), A Companion to World War I, pp. 326–33.

  18 Sanders and Taylor, British Propaganda during the First World War, p. 3.

  19 Ibid., p. 40.

  20 A.J.P. Taylor, Beaverbrook, p. 125.

  21 Ibid., p. 127.

  22 Lucy Masterman, C.F.G. Masterman, p. 274.

  23 Ibid., pp. 281–2, quoting from the first official report of Wellington House, published in June 1915.

  24 In 1916 Reuters went through a complete share restructuring, financially supported by the British government, in order to make it less reliant upon potentially troublesome overseas shareholders. See Donald Read, The Power of News, pp. 122ff.

  25 Read, The Power of News, pp. 127–8.

  26 Graham Storey, Reuters’ Century 1851–1951, pp. 148ff; Read, The Power of News, pp. 127ff.

  27 The Thirty Nine Steps was turned into a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935, starring Robert Donat as Richard Hannay and Madeleine Carroll as the woman he meets on the train. Hitchcock made various changes to the storyline to make it work as a film and it rapidly became a classic. Later film versions, with Kenneth More as Hannay (1959) and Robert Powell as Hannay (1978), were truer to the original storyline but less successful on the screen.

  28 Andrew Lownie, John Buchan, p. 123.

  29 Thompson, Northcliffe, pp. 244,240.

  30 Sanders and Taylor, British Propaganda during the First World War, p. 30.

  31 Lownie, John Buchan, p. 124.

  32 Ibid., p. 125.

  13 The War in Pictures

  1 Rachael Low, The History of British Film 1914–1918, pp. 16–23,49–55; some of these figures come from ‘Enquiry into the Cinema’ by the National Council of Public Morals in 1917.

  2 See for instance BFI Screenonline on the Topical Budget: http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/583128/index.html.

  3 Low, The History of British Film, p. 32.

  4 Nicholas Reeves, Official British Film Propaganda During the First World War, p. 46.

  5 Masterman, C.F.G. Masterman, pp. 282–3.

  6 Reeves, Official British Film Propaganda During the First World War, p. 54.

  7 Luke McKernan, Charles Urban, pp. 31ff.

  8 Kevin Brownlow, The War, The West and the Wilderness, p. 51.

  9 McKernan, Charles Urban, p. 140.

  10 A later version of the film is held by the Imperial War Museum Film Archive, ref: IWM 580, but in this version the colour scenes have only survived in black and white.

  11 Brownlow, The War, The West and the Wilderness, p. 52.

  12 Masterman, C.F.G. Masterman, pp. 284–5.

  13 Brownlow, The War, the West and the Wilderness, p. 52.

  14 McKernan, Charles Urban, p. 145.

  15 Jane Carmichael, First World War Photographers, pp. 46ff.

  16 When sound film was introduced, in the late 1920s, the speed at which film was pulled through the camera needed to be increased from 16 to 24 frames per second (fps) to ensure the audio signal played smoothly. By this time both cameras and projectors were motorised and set at precisely 24 fps. As a consequence much film from the silent era looks speeded up and comic when played at modern film or television speeds. This can easily be corrected using variable speed playback devices, but it is still far too common in television documentaries to see footage from the silent era run at the incorrect speed, giving a totally false impression of how it would have looked at the time.

  17 Geoffrey Malins, How I Filmed the War, passim; Brownlow Papers: Interview with Bertram Brookes-Carrington, the last surviving First World War cameraman on 15 and 20 October 1972 (Brookes-Carrington filmed the battle of Arras in 1917). See also Brownlow, The War, the West and the Wilderness, pp. 66–8.

  18 Nick Hiley, Introduction to 1993 edition of Malins, How I Filmed the War, pp. xv-xxi.

  19 Malins, How I Filmed the War, pp. 162–3.

  20 John Buchan, Nelson’s History of the War Vol XVI: The Battle of the Somme, p. 32.

  21 Malins, How I Filmed the War, p. 197. In all wars, those far away from the combat request cameramen to get ever more dramatic action on film. In the Second World War, for instance, combat cameraman Peter Hopkinson was constantly being asked to shoot more action when he found himself covering events at the Battle of El Alamein, in which most of the action happened at night when he could not film or at such a great distance that he could not see what was going on.
So, once again, he had to resort to staging sequences to create the required effect. See Peter Hopkinson, Split Focus, pp. 37ff.

  22 Brownlow Papers: Interview with Brookes-Carrington, 15 Oct 1972. See also Brownlow, The War, the West and the Wilderness pp. 65ff.

  23 Roger Smither, “‘A Wonderful Idea of the Fighting”: the question of fakes in the Battle of the Somme’ in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 13 No. 2,1993, pp. 149ff.

  24 J. Morton Hutcheson, ‘Music in the Cinema’ in The Bioscope, 17 August 1916.

  25 Lloyd George’s full address was as follows:

  You are invited here to witness by far the most important and imposing picture of the war that our staff has yet procured. The Battle of the Somme, furious and desperate as it has been, is a first and most important phase in what is an historical struggle, unique in its scope and world-wide significance. I am convinced that when you have seen this wonderful picture, every heart will beat in sympathy with its purpose, which is no other than that every one of us at home and abroad shall see what our men at the Front are doing and suffering for us, and how their achievements have been made possible by the sacrifices made at home. Now gentlemen, be up and doing also! See that this picture which is an epic of self-sacrifice and gallantry, reaches everyone. Herald the deeds of our brave men to the ends of the earth. This is your duty. Ladies, I feel that no word is necessary to urge upon you the importance of throwing in the whole ardour and strength of your invaluable aid. Mothers, wives, sisters and affianced ones, your hearts will beat, your voices speak in honour and glory of the living and the dead. You are great and powerful. This is your mission.

  26 The film (ref: IWM 191) is the jewel in the crown of the Imperial War Museum Film Archive’s First World War collection. In 2005 The Battle of the Somme was recognised internationally and became the first ever documentary film to be recorded in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. In the same year the film was given a complete digital restoration by the Imperial War Museum. This new version with background features about the making of the film is available on DVD, published by the IWM.

  27 Evening News, 11 August 1916, cited in Hiley, Introduction to 1993 edition of Malins, How I Filmed the War, p. xxvii.

  28 The Star, 25 August 1916, cited in Brownlow, The War, the West and the Wilderness, p. 61.

  29 Manchester Guardian, 11 August 1916; Kine Weekly, 10 August 1916; The Cinema, 10 August 1916. Cited in Reeves, Official British Film Propaganda During the First World War, p. 238.

  30 Stephen Badsey, ‘Battle of the Somme: British war propaganda’ in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 3 No. 2, October 1983, p. 110.

  31 From Frances Stevenson, Lloyd George: A Diary by Frances Stevenson, p. 112, cited in Smither, “‘A Wonderful Idea of the Fighting”: the question of fakes in the Battle of the Somme’ in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television Vol 13 No. 2, 1993, p. 149.

  32 Letters to the Editor, The Times, 5 September 1916.

  33 ‘The Film Coming Into Its Own’, The Times, 6 September 1916.

  34 Low, The History of the British Film, p. 29.

  35 Pierre Sorlin, ‘Film and the War’ in Home (ed.), A Companion to World War I, p. 358.

  36 Reeves, Official British Film Propaganda During the First World War, p. 239.

  37 McKernan, Charles Urban, pp. 147ff; Brownlow, The War, the West and the Wilderness, p. 54.

  38 Masterman, C.F.G. Masterman, p. 285; M.L. Sanders, ‘British Film Propaganda in Russia, 1916–1918’ in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol. 3 No. 2, October 1983, pp. 119–24.

  39 The film is also held at IWM FILM, ref: MGH 3556.

  40 Daily Mail, 23 December 1916, and the Evening News, 9 June 1917, cited in Reeves, Official British Film Propaganda During the First World War, p. 239.

  41 All these films are preserved at IWM FILM: A Day in the Life of a Munitions Worker, ref: IWM 510; Mrs John Bull Prepared, ref: IWM 521.

  42 Masterman, C.F.G. Masterman, p. 287.

  43 Most of these works are now held at IWM ART, for instance C.R.W. Nevinson, Paths of Glory, ref: IWM ART 518; Paul Nash, The Ypres Salient at Night, ref: IWM ART 1145 and The Menin Road, ref: IWM ART 2242; John Sargent, Gassed, ref: IWM ART 1460.

  44 William Philpott, Bloody Victory, p. 291.

  14 Masters of Information

  1 NA: CAB 23/1/1, Minutes of the War Cabinet, 9 December 1916.

  2 Sanders and Taylor, British Propaganda During the First World War, p. 61.

  3 Roderick Jones was knighted for his efforts in 1918; see Read, The Power of News, pp. 129–30.

  4 Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning, p. 41.

  5 Sanders and Taylor, British Propaganda During the First World War, pp. 74–5.

  6 Ibid., p. 75.

  7 The appointment was initially held up by the King, who did not like Beaverbrook’s brashness and refused to approve the choice. After Beaverbrook threatened to turn the offer down unless he was given Cabinet rank, Lloyd George overruled the King’s objections and the appointment was confirmed.

  8 Taylor, Beaverbrook, pp. 190–2.

  9 Stephen Roskill, Hankey: Man of Secrets Vol 1, pp. 502–3.

  10 Taylor, Beaverbrook, p. 204.

  11 During the Second World War Churchill called Beaverbrook into government as Minister of Aircraft Production in the crucial period of the ‘Spitfire Summer’ of 1940. He made a brilliant success of this and increased aircraft output considerably, introducing round-the-clock shifts and a far more efficient supply chain to the war factories. The key difference between 1918 and 1940 was that Beaverbrook had the total backing of Churchill in the Second World War to do things his way, which he did not have from Lloyd George in the First.

  12 Taylor, Beaverbrook, p. 210.

  13 Sir Campbell Stuart, Secrets of Crewe House, p. 49. Stuart is not a totally independent witness as he went on to work for Northcliffe after the end of the war and in 1920 was appointed managing director of The Times, then still owned by Northcliffe.

  14 Sanders and Taylor, British Propaganda During the First World War, p. 226.

  15 Stuart, Secrets of Crewe House, p. 47.

  16 Ibid., p. 62.

  17 Sanders and Taylor, British Propaganda During the First World War, p. 237.

  18 Stuart, Secrets of Crewe House, p. 93.

  19 Ibid., pp. 94,107–8.

  20 Sanders and Taylor, British Propaganda During the First World War, p. 211.

  21 The calendar included four crimes against Belgium and five U-boat crimes in which innocent civilians had died; the remaining three crimes were the bombardment of Scarborough, the Zeppelin raids and the Turkish massacre of Armenians. See Sanders and Taylor, British Propaganda During the First World War, pp. 141–2.

  22 Masterman, C.F.G. Masterman, p. 306.

  23 Lownie, John Buchan, p. 135.

  24 The other novel was Mr Standfast, written between July 1917 and July 1918 and published in 1919. Again it features Richard Hannay and includes several tricks of the trade Buchan picked up in the propaganda department.

  25 Charles Ffoulkes, Arms and the Tower, p. 110; Brownlow Papers: Interview with Brookes-Carrington, 20 October 1972.

  26 IWM: Second Annual Report of the Committee of the Imperial War Museum 1918–1919 (Cmd 138).

  27 Ffoulkes, Arms and the Tower, p. 116.

  28 ‘The Greatest War Memorial’ in The Times, 10 June 1920.

  29 Ffoulkes, Arms and the Tower, p. 142.

  30 IWM: Third Annual Report of the Imperial War Museum 1920–1921 (Cmd 1353).

  31 A good example of this was Charles Edward Montague in Disenchantment.

  32 Stuart, Secrets of Crewe House, p. 120,130–1; Ludendorff’s memoirs were published in Germany in 1919.

  Epilogue: The First Boffins

  1 Cited in John Stevenson, British Society, 1914–1945, p. 90.

  2 Pound, Gillies: Surgeon Extraordinary, pp. 71,86,122ff.

  3 NA: FD2/4, Annual Report of t
he Medical Research Committee 1917–18, Cd8825.

  4 Lord Birkenhead, The Prof in Two Worlds, p. 66.

  5 Adrian Fort, Prof, pp. 47–51.

  6 Birkenhead, The Prof in Two Worlds, pp. 70–8; Birkenhead notes there was later some dispute about the date and the nature of these legendary test flights but concludes they did take place in June-July 1917.

  7 Downing, Churchill’s War Lab, pp. 153ff.

  8 Birkenhead, The Prof in Two Worlds, p. 211.

  9 Ronald Clark, Tizard, p. 33.

  10 IWM DOCS: Tizard Papers; HTT 713; unpublished autobiography, p. 103.

  11 Ibid., p. 113.

  12 Ibid., p. 124.

  13 Robert Watson-Watt, Three Steps to Victory, p. 43.

  14 J.A. Ratcliffe, ‘Robert Alexander Watson-Watt’ in Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 1975, pp. 549–68.

  15 For a fuller account of the development of radar see Downing, Night Raid, pp. 7–34; Robert Buderi, The Invention that Changed the World, pp. 52–76.

  16 Downing, Churchill’s War Lab, pp. 173ff; Ronald Clark, The Rise of the Boffins, pp. 209–24. The author’s father, Peter Downing, a mathematics graduate in 1942, was recruited straight from university into operational research and served in the RAF in Egypt and the Mediterranean throughout the war. The various projects he worked on included assessing the strike rate of bombs versus torpedoes at ships at sea (torpedoes had a higher success rate), the best way to spot U-boats, and the ideal colour for life vests and rafts to be spotted at sea (orange rather than yellow, the colour used before the war).

  17 Michael M. Postan, British War Production, p. 5; other examples of this ‘declinist’ view include Taylor, English History 1914–1945 and Barnett, The Collapse of British Power.

  18 David Edgerton, Warfare State Britain 1920–1970, pp. 15–58. Edgerton shows that the Royal Navy in 1935 still had 15 battleships (cf. America 15; Japan 10; Germany 0); that the army did much to develop new and modern tanks; that the RAF had by comparison to France and Germany a modern air force until overtaken by Germany in the late 1930s; and that 80,000 people worked in the British armaments industry, which was sustained by a powerful export market particularly of military aircraft.