Tommy

by Richard Holmes

  113 Stephen Graham A Private in the Guards (London 1919) p. 242.

  114 Statistics pp. 263–4. This includes battle casualties and under 2,000 deaths from illness (mostly influenza), but it does not include a large number of non-battle sick, a reflection of the influenza epidemic which was sweeping Europe.

  Flesh and Blood

  1 Alan Hanbury Sparrow questionnaire, compiled during research for Keith Simpson The Old Contemptibles (London 1981).

  2 Alyn Tanner ‘Sergeant Sidney Farmer MM – Seventeen Times Wounded!’ in Journal of the Orders and Medals Research Society, vol 41 no. 4 (December 2002).

  3 J. M. Craster Fifteen Rounds a Minute: The Grenadiers at War 1914 (London 1976) pp. 2–3.

  4 Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Hamilton Origins and History of the First Grenadier Guards (London 1874) p. 3.

  5 Craster Fifteen Rounds p. 5.

  6 Feilding War Letters p. 4.

  7 Graham A Private p. 115.

  8 Graham A Private p. 266. ‘Little Sparta’ is Graham’s nickname for the guards depot at Caterham, where recruits of all foot guards battalions were trained.

  9 Papers of Lt Col. K. A. Oswald, Commanding Officer, 3/4th Queen’s, Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment Museum, Clandon Park, Guildford.

  10 Papers of Lt Col. K. A. Oswald.

  11 ‘History of 1/4th Battalion the Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment’, Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment Museum, Clandon Park, Guildford.

  12 Unpublished company history quoted in William Turner Accrington Pals (London 1992) p. 29.

  13 A. S. Durrant Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

  14 Lancelot Dykes Spicer Letters From France 1914–1918 (London 1979) p. xiii.

  15 Quoted in Turner Accrington Pals pp. 67–8.

  16 Quoted in Turner Accrington Pals p. 68.

  17 Quoted in Turner Accrington Pals p. 145

  18 Edmonds Military Operations, 1916 (2 vols 19) I p.

  19 Turner Accrington Pals p. 210.

  20 P. J. Campbell In The Cannon’s Mouth (London 1986) p. 127.

  21 Quoted in Michael Moynihan (ed.) Greater Love (London 1980) p. 115.

  22 R. B. Miller account, private collection.

  23 Quoted in Turner Accrington Pals p. 141.

  24 Quoted in Turner Accrington Pals p. 116.

  25 Quoted in Howard Pease The History of the Northumberland (Hussars) Yeomanry (London 1924) p. 116.

  26 Dunn War p. 185.

  27 Dunn War p. 484.

  28 Dunn War p. 356.

  29 Lieutenant Colonel Peter Crocker ‘Some thoughts on the Royal Welch Fusiliers in the Great War’, unpublished.

  30 David Thompson ‘The 2nd Battalion Durham Light Infantry in the Great War’ in Stand To, The Journal of the Western Front Association (no. 65, Sept. 2002).

  31 John S. Sly ‘The men of 1914’, Stand To (no. 34, Summer 1992).

  32 R. H. Mottram ‘Ten Years Ago: Armistice and other memories, forming a pendant to The Spanish Farm Trilogy (London 1928) p. 113.

  33 Lord Moran The Anatomy of Courage (London 1945) p. 64.

  34 Moran Anatomy p. 134.

  35 Though there are lies, damned lies and statistics: it was more dangerous to be a flying member of the Royal Flying Corps (which had a total strength of only 121, 518 in January 1918) than to be in the infantry, 1,750,729 strong on the same date. Statistics p. 230.

  36 Peter Simkins ‘The Four Armies 1914–18’ in D. G. Chandler (ed.) The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Army (Oxford 1994) p. 259.

  37 Ernest Shephard A Sergeant Major’s War (Ramsbury, Wilts, 1987) p. 124.

  38 Dunn War p. 245.

  39 Quoted in Judith Fay and Richard Martin (eds.) The Jubilee Boy (London 1987) pp. 89–90.

  40 Norman Gladden Ypres 1917 (London 1967) pp. 16, 40.

  41 Feilding War Letters pp. 290–1.

  42 De Boltz Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

  43 P. Smith Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  44 Frederick James Hodges Men of 18 in 1918 (Ilfracombe 1988) p. 17.

  45 Hodges Men of 18 p. 216.

  46 William Fisher Requiem for Will (privately printed, Monmouth 2002) pp. 4–5.

  47 J. B. Priestley Margin Released (London 1962) p. 32.

  48 Fisher Requiem p. 62.

  49 Quoted in Les Carlyon Gallipoli (Sydney 2001) p. 270.

  50 John Cusack and Ivor Herbert Scarlet Fever: A Lifetime with Horses (London 1972) pp. 8, 13.

  51 Arthur Osburn Unwilling Passenger (London 1932) p. 263. But J. C. Dunn, for much of the war RMO of 2/Royal Welch Fusiliers, had also served in the ranks in the Boer War and saw the First World War in a less gloomy light.

  52 William Woodruff The Road to Nab End (London 2002) p. 12.

  53 Joseph Garvey ‘Memoirs of a Nonentity’, unpublished typescript, private collection, pp. 2–3.

  54 Unpublished account by George Fortune, private collection.

  55 Sleeve notes to Mike Nicholson Stone by Stone, Cilletune Music, West Chitlington, West Sussex, 2001–2.

  56 Quoted in Flora Thompson Lark Rise to Candleford (London 1979) p. 10.

  57 Thompson Lark Rise pp. 47–9, 54, 241. Private Edwin Timms, Canadian Infantry, was killed near Ypres on 26 April 1916 at the age of thirty-six.

  58 John Baynes Morale (London 1967) pp. 212–13.

  59 J. M. Winter The Great War and the British People (London 1985) pp. 50–3.

  60 Jay Winter ‘Army and Society: The Demographic Context’ in Ian F. W. Beckett and Keith Simpson (eds) A Nation in Arms (Manchester 1985) p. 200.

  61 Standish Meacham A Life Apart: The English Working Class 1890–1914 (London 1977) p. 58.

  62 Henri Barbusse Le Feu (Paris 1917) p. 23. Author’s translation.

  63 Stephen Westmann Surgeon with the Kaiser’s Army (London 1968) p. 24.

  64 Statistics p. 30.

  65 Osbert Sitwell Great Morning (London 1948) p. 259.

  66 Frank Richards Old Soldier Sahib (London 1936) p. 23.

  67 For the structure of the general staff see King’s Regulations and Orders for the Army 1912, Revised August 1914 (London 1914).

  68 Cusack and Herbert Scarlet Fever p. 16.

  69 Herbert Wootton questionnaire compiled during my research for Firing Line (London 1985).

  70 R. A. Lloyd questionnaire compiled during research for Firing Line.

  71 Richards Old Soldier Sahib pp. 21–2.

  72 R. G. Garrod Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotheron Library, University of Leeds.

  73 W. J. Nicholson Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

  74 Lucy Devil p. 15.

  75 Garvey ‘Memoirs’, pp. 2–3.

  76 Lucy Devil pp. 37–8.

  77Garvey ‘Memoirs’ p. 14.

  78 Garrod Papers, Liddle Archive.

  79 R. Chant Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

  80 Chant Papers.

  81 ‘Traditions, Treasures and Personalities of the Regiment’, Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment Museum, Clandon Park, 2001.

  82 Wootton questionnaire.

  83 Hanbury Sparrow questionnaire.

  84 Quoted in Sir George Barrow The Fire of Life. (London 1941) p. 14.

  85 Richards Old Soldier Sahib p. 25. The magazine was where the battalion’s ammunition was stored, and forming fours was a drill movement. Soldiers of a later generation added a 17-pounder gun to the collection.

  86 A wad was certainly a sandwich in 1914, though in my own time in NAAFI queues in the 1960s it had been transformed into a piece of cake.

  87 Lucy Devil p. 59.

  88 Percy Croney Soldier’s Luck (Exeter 1965) p. 137.

  89 Richards Old Soldier Sahib pp. 39–40

  90 Richards Old Soldier Sahib p. 32.

  91 Con Costello A Most Delightful Station: The British Army and the Curragh of Kildare, Ireland 1855–1922 (Cork 1999) pp. 149–74.

&nbs
p; 92 Richards Old Soldier Sahib pp. 109–10.

  93 Private information from an RSM of The Queen’s Regiment. Thank you, Jack, for this and for so much else.

  94 Costello Curragh p. 261.

  95 Lucy Devil p. 63.

  96 Hodges Men of 18 p. 50.

  97 Ian F. W. Beckett and Keith Simpson (eds) A Nation in Arms (Manchester 1985) p. 39.

  98 Beckett and Simpson (eds) Nation in Arms (p. 91).

  99 Quoted in John Connell Wavell: Soldier and Scholar (London 1964) p. 34.

  100 Major General M. F. Rimington Our Cavalry (London 1912) p. 18

  101 Quoted in Beckett and Simpson (eds) Nation in Arms p. 67.

  102 Order of Merit in the Papers of Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Hutton, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  103 John Baynes and Hugh Maclean A Tale of Two Captains (Edinburgh 1990) pp. 9, 22.

  104 Sitwell Great Morning pp. 118–19.

  105 Sitwell Great Morning pp. 183–4, 258.

  106 Punch 11 October 1899. Tompkins might have considered turning the battalion about, so that it would still be in quarter column, but now facing north. He would bear in mind, though, that it was now inverted, with H, its most junior company, at the head of the column and thus breaking the laws of seniority. Ordering the battalion to deploy from column into line to the right would have produced the gratifying result of markers scampering forward from the right front of each company to mark out the new line under the direction of the mounted adjutant, a regular to whom this was food and drink: companies would then take post on the markers. Deployment to the right meant that A Company would now be on the right of the line, as 102 was its due. The line could now be moved forward with a gentle ‘right incline’, and the problem would be solved. I suspect that the general might not have liked the temporary inversion, but this is the quickest practical solution. None of this would have mattered much under Boer fire a year later.

  107 Quoted in J. D. Sainsbury The Hertfordshire Yeomanry (Welwyn 1994) pp. 118–19.

  108 S. F. Hatton Yarns of a Yeoman (London ND) p. 22.

  109 Pease Northumberland Hussars p. viii.

  110 Brian Bond (ed.) Staff Officer: The Diary of Lord Moyne (London 1987) p. 23.

  111 George Ashurst My Bit (Ramsbury 1986) p. 15.

  112 Ashurst My Bit p. 25.

  113 For detailed establishments see The Territorial Year Book 1909 (London 1909) pp. 29–34.

  114 Beckett and Simpson (eds) Nation in Arms p. 129.

  115 Latin for ‘Everywhere’, and granted instead of the specific battle honours worn by regiments of infantry and cavalry. It is shared by the Royal Engineers, and cynics maintained that while it did indeed mean ‘Everywhere’ where engineers were concerned, for the artillery it meant, all too literally, ‘All over the place’.

  116 John Reith Wearing Spurs (London 1966) p. 17.

  117 Personal information from Field Marshal Lord Harding, 1986. Although he was generally known as John, Harding was actually christened Alan Francis.

  118 Bryan Latham A Territorial Soldier’s War (Aldershot 1967) p. 1.

  119 Latham Territorial p. 3.

  120 Norman Tennant A Saturday Night Soldier’s War 1913–1918 (Waddesdon, Bucks 1983) pp. 2, 4, 6, 10.

  121 Beckett and Simpson (eds) Nation in Arms p. 72.

  122 Quoted in Beckett and Simpson (eds) Nation in Arms p. 131.

  123 Hatton Yeoman p. 27.

  124 Territorial divisions originally had regional tides and were not numbered until May 1915. By then regular and New Army divisions had extended divisional numbering as far as forty-one, and first-line territorial divisions were numbered in the order they went abroad as formed bodies. First was 42nd (East Lancashire) Division, and then 43rd Wessex, 44th (Home Counties), 46th (North Midland), 47th (2nd London), 48th (South Midland), 49th (West Riding), 50th (Northumbrian), 51st (Highland), 52nd (Lowland), 53rd (Welsh), 54th (East Anglian), 55th (West Lancashire) and 56th (1st London) Divisions. Second-line territorial divisions were formed from units like 2/4th Queen’s, the nucleus of its soldiers left behind when 1/4th Queen’s left for India. These comprised 45th (2nd Wessex), 57th (2nd West Lancashire), 58th (2/1st London), 59th (2nd North Midland), 60th (2/2nd London), 61st (2nd South Midland), 62nd (2nd West Riding), 63rd (2nd Northumbrian), 64th (2nd Highland), 65th (2nd Lowland), 66th (2nd East Lancashire), 67th (2nd Home Counties), 68th (2nd Welsh) and 69th (2nd East Anglian) Divisions.

  125 Colonel W. N. Nicholson Behind the Lines (London 1939) pp. 15, 19–20.

  126 Nicholson Behind the Lines p. 46.

  127 Nicholson Behind the Lines p. 49.

  128 For the effect of the political pull exercised by territorials see Kevin W. Mitchinson ‘The Transfer Controversy: Parliament and the London Regiment’, Stand To (no. 33, Winter 1991).

  129 Although there were circumstances when County Associations were involved in recruiting the New Armies, general arrangements were kept ‘separate and distinct’, Beckett and Simpson (eds) Nation in Arms p. 139.

  130 Peter Simkins Kitchener’s Army (Manchester 1988) p. xiv.

  131 9th (Scottish), 10th (Irish), 11th (Northern), 12th (Eastern), 13th (Western) and 14th (Light) Divisions.

  132 15th (Scottish), 16th (Irish), 17th (Northern), 18th (Eastern), 19th (Western) and 20th (Light) Divisions.

  133 3rd New Army: 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th and 26th Divisions. 4th New Army, its divisions largely made up of Pals’ battalions: 30th Division (battalions from Manchester and Liverpool); 31st Division (initially numbered 38th, with battalions from Yorkshire, Lancashire and Durham); 32nd Division (battalions from Glasgow, Birmingham, Salford, Newcastle and Westmorland and Cumberland); 32nd Division (initially numbered 40th, all its battalions from London); 34th Division (battalions from Tyneside, Edinburgh, Cambridge and Grimsby); 35th (Bantam) Division (initially formed as the 42nd, and allowed to recruit infantry below the normal acceptable height.

  134 The 5th New Army included 36th (Ulster) Division; 37th Division; 38th (Welsh) Division; 39th Division, 40th Division and 41st Division. In all there were seventy-one infantry divisions, regular, territorial and New Army, of which sixty-three served abroad.

  135 Brigadier F. P. Roe Accidental Soldiers (London 1981) p. 22.

  136 C. H. Gaskell Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  137 Graham H. Greenwell An Infant in Arms (London 1972).

  138 N. Whitehead Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

  139 Julian Tyndale-Biscoe Gunner Subaltern (London 1971) pp. 3–4.

  140 Tyndale-Biscoe Gunner Subaltern pp. 5, 11.

  141 John H. F. Mackie (ed.) Answering the Call: Letters from the Somerset Light Infantry 1914–19 (Eggleston, County Durham, 2002) p. 17. This is a wonderful account of one family’s service to the county regiment.

  142 Harold Macmillan The Winds of Change (London 1966) I pp. 62–3.

  143 Bernard Martin Poor Bloody Infantry p. 7. The 64th had been amalgamated with the 98th to form the North Staffordshire Regiment in 1881, but old habits died hard.

  144 Stand To (no. 5, Jan. 1998) p. 48.

  145 Quoted in Tonie and Valmai Holt Poets of the Great War (London 1999) p. 128.

  146 Martin Middlebrook Your Country Needs You (Barnsley 2000) p. 73.

  147 Quoted in Simkins Kitchener’s Army p. 92.

  148 Anthony French Gone For a Soldier (Kineton 1972) p. 21.

  149 R. B. Talbot Kelly Subaltern’s Odyssey (London 1980) p. 50.

  150 I. G. Andrew Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

  151 Jack Horsfall and Nigel Cave Somme: Serre (London 1996) p. 54.

  152 Winter Great War p. 35.

  153 Quoted in Simkins New Armies p. 96.

  154 Clive Hughes ‘The Welsh Army Corps 1914–15’ in Imperial War Museum Review (no. 1, 1986).

  155 Llewelyn Wyn Griffith Up to Mametz (London 1931) pp. 210–11.

  156 Griffith Mametz p. 225.

&
nbsp; 157 The best short history of this division is in Ray Westlake Kitchener’s Army (Staplehurst, Kent, 1998) pp. 148–54.

  158 Quoted in Terence Denman Ireland’s Unknown Soldiers (Blackrock, Co. Dublin, 1992) p. 26.

  159 F. P. Crozier A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land (London 1930) p. 24.

  160 Tom Johnstone Orange Green and Khaki (Dublin 1992) p. 256.

  161 Quoted in Johnstone Orange p. 278.

  162 Quoted in Johnstone Orange pp. 290–1.

  163 Percy Croney Soldier’s Luck (Devon 1965) pp. 10–11.

  164 G. and S. Rain Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

  165 Harry Ogle The Fateful Battle Line (London 1993) p. 10.

  166 De Boltz Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

  167 Pamela McCleary (ed.) Dear Amy unpublished typescript of the letters of Alan (’Bill’) Sugden RFA p. 4.

  168 McCleary (ed.) Dear Amy pp. 5–6.

  169 McCleary (ed.) Dear Amy p. 11.

  170 McCleary (ed.) Dear Amy p. 16.

  171 McCleary (ed.) Dear Amy p. 25.

  172 McCleary (ed.) Dear Amy p. 28.

  173 McCleary (ed.) Dear Amy p. 171.

  174 Baynes and Maclean Two Captains pp. 68-9.

  175 Priestley Margin Released p. 81.

  176 Priestley Margin Released p. 90.

  177 Priestley Margin Released p. 93.

  178 Types of Horses Suitable for Army Remounts (Board of Trade, London 1909).

  179 B. E. Todhunter Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

  180 Pamela Horn Rural Life in England in the First World War (New York 1984) p. 89.

  181 John Pollock Kitchener (London 1998) p. 405.

  182 J. A. C. Pennycuik Papers, private collection.

  183 H. B. Owens Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  184 Tom Bridges Alarms and Excursions (London 1938) p. 15.

  185 Happily, Lieutenant Maudslay, who had returned from Argentina in 1914 to join up, was captured. See the Edith F. Maudslay Papers in the Liddle Collection, Brotheron Library, University of Leeds.

  186 Duff Hart-Davis (ed.) End of an Era: Letters and Journals of Sir Alan Lascelles, from 1887 to 1920 (London 1986) p. 210.

  187 Jonathan Home (ed.) The Best of Good Fellows: The Diaries and Memoirs of the Reverend Charles Edmund Doudeney (London 1995) pp. 113, 115.