Tommy

by Richard Holmes

  CRE commander Royal Engineers (engineer commander in a division)

  Crump German heavy shell

  CSM company sergeant major (ranking as warrant officer class 2)

  DAA & QMG deputy assistant adjutant and quartermaster general (subordinate administrative staff officer)

  DAD MS deputy assistant director of Medical Services (subordinate medical staff officer)

  DADOS deputy assistant director of Ordnance Services (the senior ordnance officer in a division)

  DAQMG deputy assistant quartermaster general (subordinate administrative staff officer)

  DCM Distinguished Conduct Medal

  DSO Distinguished Service Order

  FGCM Field General Court Martial

  Flying pig type of trench mortar bomb

  FOO forward observation officer

  GHQ general headquarters (headquarters of the BEF, established at St-Omer in the autumn of 1914, moving to Montreuilsur-Mer in 1916)

  GOC general officer commanding (the commander of a brigade, division, corps or army)

  GS General Service, as in GS wagon

  GSO general staff officer

  GSOl general staff officer 1st grade (Lt. Col.). In a division, its chief of staff

  GSO2 general staff officer 2nd grade (Maj.)

  GSO3 general staff officer 3rd Grade (Capt.)

  Jack Johnson German heavy shell (named after the famous black heavyweight boxer, 1878–1946). See Coal Box.

  KCB Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath

  L of C lines of communication

  MC Military Cross

  MG machine gun

  MGGS major general General Staff (chief of staff of an army)

  MGRA major general Royal Artillery (senior artillery officer in an army)

  Minnie from Minenwerfer, German trench mortar

  MM Military Medal

  MO medical officer

  MS military secretary

  NCO non-commissioned officer

  OC officer commanding (properly used for officers commanding companies and platoons or their equivalents in other arms, though sometimes blurred with CO [qv])

  OR other ranks: private soldiers and NCOs, as distinct from officers

  Pipsqueak small-calibre German shell (see whiz-bang)

  QM quartermaster (the administrative staff officer to a battalion or equivalent: in the British army always an officer promoted from the ranks)

  QMG quartermaster general

  RAMC Royal Army Medical Corps

  RAP regimental aid post (the first link in the chain of medical evacuation)

  RE Royal Engineers

  register to adjust artillery fire onto a target

  RFA Royal Field Artillery

  RFC Royal Flying Corps (became RAF on 1 April 1918)

  RGA Royal Garrison Artillery

  RHA Royal Horse Artillery

  RMO regimental medical officer (generally a lieutenant or captain RAMC). Often simply MO

  RQMS regimental quartermaster sergeant (ranking as warrantofficer class 2 in a battalion or equivalent, the quartermaster’s principal assistant)

  RSM regimental sergeant major (ranking as warrant officer class 1)

  RTO railway transport officer

  SAA small-arms ammunition

  SB stretcher-bearer

  SIW self-inflicted wound

  SOS Save Our Souls: the close protective target on which field artillery was laid when not otherwise engaged

  stand to from ‘stand to your arms’. The period at dusk and dawn when troops were required to man their battle positions to repel an attack

  TM trench mortar

  TMB trench mortar battery

  Toffee Apple type of trench mortar bomb

  VC Victoria Cross

  Whiz-bang small-calibre German shell (see ‘Pipsqueak’)

  WO warrant officer

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  So many individuals have helped me during the research for this book that it is impossible to thank them all by name. However, I owe a particular debt to Major General Jonathan Bailey, Hugh Bicheno, Dr John Bourne, Clive Priestley and Lieutenant Colonel Les Wilson for their advice and assistance. My PhD student David Kenyon unearthed valuable information on the actions of the cavalry around High Wood on 14 July 1916; Alexander Caldin carried out useful research on trench newspapers and the backgrounds of senior officers, and Corinna Holmes and Frank Turner collated quotations for copyright clearance, which may not have been the most exciting of tasks.

  As ever, I am grateful to Rod Suddaby and his team at the Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum; the staff of the Liddle Collection at the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds; the librarians of the Joint Service Command and Staff College, the Royal Military College of Science and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. This book could scarcely have been written at all without the kindness of the librarian and staff of the Prince Consort Library at Aldershot, and the forebearance of their dogs.

  Arabella Pike of HarperCollins gave wise strategic direction, and Kate Johnson dealt efficiently and sensitively with a myriad of tactical details all too easily overlooked in large, complex engagements. Amanda Russell tracked down the photographs. Last, but emphatically by no means least, my wife Lizzie worked tirelessly gleaning information from books and archives. She also helped me through those impossibly bleak moments, more frequent in this than in any other book I have written, when the nature of the subject matter had me staring across my Hampshire garden through a mist of tears.

  For permission to quote from material to which they control the copyright I am grateful to the following. Sheila Barnett for the papers of A. J. Arnold, David S. Chambers for the papers of Guy O. Chambers, Betty Morris for the papers of A. V. Bullock, Alan Debes and the grandchildren of the Reverend T. H. Davies for the war diary of the Reverend T. H. Davies, Jon Wickett for the diaries of Stapleton Tench Eachus, Eric Foakes, John Foakes and Amanda Foakes for the papers of H. Foakes, George Fortune and Kathleane Peake for the account of George Fortune, the Trustees of the Imperial War Museum for the correspondence of Field Marshal Sir John French, A. Gaskell for the diary of C. H. Gaskell, Elizabeth Robinson for the diaries of Ron Ginns, Dr Patrick Ottaway for the papers of Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Hutton, Margaret Cruft for the papers of the Reverend Pat Mc Cormick, Andrew Paton for the Scott Macfie Papers, Daphne Crabtree for the diary of Cyril Thomas Mason, Paul P. H. Jones for the memoirs of Percy Hughes Jones, Anne Stobbs for the diaries of Roland Brice Miller, Diana Sellors for the diaries of the Reverend John Sellors, Auriol Ingram and Jackie Ingram for the letters of Arthur Smith, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Stanford for the letters of H. M. Stanford, Colonel Richard Brook and the Board of Trustees of the Chevening Estate for the papers of the Earl Stanhope, Dorothy Shotter and Nick Shotter for the diaries of William Shotter, Phil Morgan for the letters of Percy Smith, Pamela McCleary for the letters of Bill Sugden, Lieutenant General Sir Hew Pike for the diaries of R. H. D. Tompson, and Colonel Jolyon Jackson for a letter of W. C. C. Weetman.

  I acknowledge the permission of the following publishers to quote from works whose rights they control. Pen and Sword Books Ltd for the Marquess of Anglesey The History of the British Cavalry, Brewin Books Ltd for Charles Arnold From Mons to Messines and Beyond, Armand Colin for Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau 14–18: Les Combattants des Tranchées, Sir John Baynes and the late Hugh Maclean for A Tale of Two Captains, Pen and Sword Books Ltd for John Bickersteth (ed.) The Bickersteth Diaries 1914–18, Pen and Sword Books Ltd for C. P. Blacker Have You Forgotten Yet?, Penguin Books for P. J. Campell In the Cannon’s Mouth, Robert Hale for William Carr A Time to Leave the Ploughshores, The Naval and Military Press for Peter Chasseaud Topography of Armageddon, The Irish Academic Press for Terence Denman Ireland’s Unknown Soldiers, Jonathan Horne for his edition of the Reverend Charles Doudeney’s papers, The Best of Good Fellows, The Naval and Military Press for Charles Douie The Weary Road, The Colonel of the Royal Welch Fusiliers for James Churchill Dunn The W
ar the Infantry Knew, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office for Sir James Edmonds Military Operations…, Lionel Leventhal Ltd for Cyril Falls War Books, the family of William Fisher for Requiem for Will (ISBN 09531061 01, published at Boughspring, Wyesham Road, Wyesham, Monmouth, Gwent, NP5 3JU), Pen and Sword Books Ltd for Brian Bond (ed.) Staff Officer: The Diaries of Lord Moyne (then Walter Guinness), The Naval and Military Press for Rowland Feilding War Letters to a Wife, The University of Indiana Press for A. Lytton Sells (trans, and ed.) The Memoirs of fames II: His Campaigns as Duke of York 1652–1660, Pan Macmillan for J. M. Craster (ed.) Fifteen Rounds a Minute … Edited from the diaries of Major ‘Ma’ Jeffreys and others, Gill & Macmillan Ltd, Dublin for Tom Johnstone Orange, Green and Khaki, Tom Burke (Chairman, Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association) for his article on Lieutenant Tom Kettle in The Blue Cap Vol. 9 Sept 2002, H. H. Sales for Bernard Livermore Long ’Un – A Damn Bad Soldier, The Naval and Military Press for John Lucy There’s a Devil in the Drum, John H. F. Mackie for Answering the Call: Letters from the Somerset Light Infantry 1914–19, Mainstream Publishing for In Flanders Fields (poem In Memoriam, Private D. Sutherland by Ewart Alan Mackintosh), Pan Macmillan Ltd for Harold Macmillan Winds of Change, Serpent’s Tail for Frederic Manning Her Privates We, The Society of Authors as literary executors of John Masefield for The Battle of the Somme, Pen and Sword Books Ltd for John Masefield The Old Front Line, A. P. Watt Ltd on behalf of Mrs A. S. Hankinson for R. H. Mottram The Twentieth Century: A Personal Record, Pen and Sword Books for Captain Harry Ogle The Fateful Battle Line, The Random House Group Ltd for Ian Ousby The Road to Verdun published by Jonathan Cape, Oxford University Press for John Bell and H. Owen (eds) Wilfred Owen: Selected Letters, Pen and Sword Books for Ernest Parker Into Battle, PFD on behalf of the Estate of J. B. Priestley for Margin Released: A Writer’s Reminiscences and Reflections (Copyright the Estate of J. B. Priestley 1962), Christopher Reith for John Reith Wearing Spurs, Pen and Sword Books for Donald Richter Chemical Soldiers, Colonel John Sainsbury for The Hertfordshire Yeomanry, Faber and Faber for Siegfried Sassoon Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, HarperCollins Publishers, Australia, for May Tilton The Grey Battalion, Pen and Sword Books Ltd for William Turner The Accrington Pals, Eland Books, 61 Exmouth Market, London EC1R 4QL, for the 2000 edition of William Woodruff The Road to Nab End, The London Stamp Exchange for Edward Underhill A Year on the Western Front, Chrysalis Book Group for Aubrey Wade The War of the Guns, Naval and Military Press for C. Dudley Ward History of the Welsh Guards.

  Despite my best endeavours I have failed to track down all copyright holders. I apologise to those concerned, but if they contact me through HarperCollins Publishers I will make appropriate recompense and ensure that an acknowledgement is inserted in any future edition of this book.

  INDEX

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

  Ranks shown are generally the highest attained.

  Abbot, Pte S. B. 572

  Abraham, Pte A. J. 339–40

  Accrington, Lancashire 82, 137

  mayor of 82, 83

  Adams, Pte Bernard 293–4, 312 323, 360, 460–61, 462, 543–4

  Adams, George 543, 594

  Addison, Lt Col A. J. B. 582

  aerial warfare

  aircraft 371–5, 481

  German air force 374

  RFC volunteers 374–5

  see also Royal Flying Corps (RFC)

  Africa 14

  Agate, Lt James 360

  Agincourt 22

  Ahrendfeldt, R. H. 484

  Ailey, Private 292

  Aisne, first Battle of the (1914) 32, 366, 379

  Aisne River 17, 32, 141, 254, 264, 365, 438, 590, 629

  Al Kantara 560

  Alanbrooke, Field Marshal Lord (Alan Brooke) 120, 122

  Alberich Operation 50

  Albert 40, 242, 494, 545

  Albert-Bapaume road 40, 227

  Albery, Pte William 557

  alcohol 328–34, 406

  Alde[burgh] River 23

  Aldermaston marches xxi

  Aldershot 112, 113, 117, 124, 143, 147, 75, 377, 25

  Alderson, Lt Gen. Sir Edwin: Pink and Scarlet, or Hunting as a School for Soldiering 216

  Ale Alley 240

  All Quiet on the Western Front (film) xix

  Allason, Maj. Gen. Bannatyne 229

  Allenby, Field Marshal Sir Edmund 40, 52, 64, 209, 210, 214, 231–2, 496

  Allenby, Lt Michael 214

  Allied Supreme War Council 215

  Allies

  air superiority on Germany’s ‘black day’ 69–70

  attack strategy 34

  casualties at the Somme 47

  plan for 1917 48

  May 1917 conference 54

  successful blockade 69

  Alsace 25, 27

  Alsatians 271, 542

  American Civil War (1861–5) 266, 483

  Amiens 26, 67, 68, 194, 433, 592, 593

  battle of (1918) 221, 372, 431

  ‘Amiens dispatch’ (1914) 139

  Ancre region 526

  Ancre River 23

  Andrew, L/Cpl I. G. xxvi, 147, 148, 349, 628

  Anglesey, Marquess of 440, 447, 626

  anniversaries 601–2

  Anslow, Lord 626

  Anzacs 13, 14, 43, 59, 60, 70, 174, 180, 183, 184, 198, 210–11, 213, 347, 348, 458, 459, 460, 483, 560, 624

  Australian: 174, 180, 213, 459, 483, 624

  casualties in France 13

  friction with British contingent 14

  capture of Pozieres 43, 180

  third Ypres 59

  loss of morale 60

  in Allied counteroffensive (8 August 1918) 70

  and Birdwood 210–11

  mutiny (1918) 347

  involvement in Etaples mutiny 348

  and British field punishments 560

  Australian Corps 69, 180

  3rd Australian Division 383

  4th Australian Division 6

  Australian Field Artillery 196

  New Zealand Defence Force 195

  New Zealand Division 174, 180, 571

  Apennines 14

  Appleford, Sgt 286

  Arakan, Burma 14

  Archard, Gunner Victor 433, 559

  Archbold, Pte 494

  Ardennes 14

  Argonne forest 18

  aristocracy 626

  Armenian massacres 511

  Armenderes 275, 361, 596

  Armentieres road 295, 591

  armistice xxiv, 72, 274, 613–18

  Army, Second Lieutenant 269

  Army Act (annual) 555, 561

  Army and Religion, The (1919 report) 522

  Army Board 200

  Army Council 106–7, 130

  Army in India Efficiency Prize 114

  Army List 89, 131

  Army of Occupation 617–18

  Army Order 340 (3) 368

  Army Temperance Society 115

  Arnold, Pte Alf 479, 523

  Arnold, Lt C. B. 70, 375, 433–4

  Arnold, Sgt Charles xvi, 423–4, 541, 556

  Arnold-Forster, Mark 106

  Arras 3, 16, 19, 21, 39, 349, 550

  battle of (1917) 52–3, 148, 198, 209, 210, 274, 409, 428

  Artois 16, 18, 19, 39, 52, 228, 249

  Ash Ranges, Surrey 4

  Ashby, Kathleen 162

  Ashcombe, Henry Cubitt, 2nd Baron 626

  Ashcombe, Lady Maud 626

  Ashford, Pte Roy 298, 523–4

  Ashurst, Sgt George xxv, 129, 336–7, 357’ 378, 388–9, 458, 590, 595

  Asquith, Herbert 577

  Asquith, Herbert Henry 28, 35, 45, 49, 78, 107, 225, 577, 607

  Asquith, Lt Raymond 45, 78, 629

  Atkinson, G. C. L. 356

  Attlee, Clement 356

  Au Bon Gite 57

  Aubers Ridge 23, 35, 36, 519

 
Aubrey Camp 349

  Auchonvillers 494

  Australian Imperial Force Burial Ground (Flers) 627

  Australian Official History xxi, 59–60

  Austria-Hungary, Austro-Hungarians 28, 44

  Aveluy Wood 226

  Avesnes 21

  Maj. Gen. Babington, J. M. 195

  Badrick, Pte Jack 543

  Badsey, Stephen 435

  Bailleul 494

  Bainbridge, Maj. Gen. 221

  Bairnsfather, Capt. Bruce 17, 48, 319, 544

  Baker, 2nd Lt 9

  Balaklava, battle of (1854) 109

  Bangors Park, Buckinghamshire 626

  Bannerman, 2nd Lt R. R. B. 199

  Bannick, Gunner Robert 196

  Bapaume 3, 47, 200, 452

  Bapaume road 40, 44, 154, 188

  barbed wire 266–72

  Barber, Corporal 539

  Barbusse, Henri 102–3, 493

  Baring, Lt Col the Hon. Guy 46

  Barker, Pat xvii Barnard, Tom 355, 356

  Barnett, Correlli xvii

  Barrie, Alexander 311

  Barrow, Lt George 115

  Barry, Revd F. R. 510

  Barter, Maj. Gen. Sir Charles 216–17

  Bartov, Omer xviii

  Battles Nomenclature Committee 44

  Bavaria, Bavarians 542, 543

  Bayencourt 315

  Baynes, Capt. Rory 123, 159, 492

  bayonet men 8–9

  bayonet-fighting 345, 380, 381–5, 436, 536, 547, 551

  Bazentin le Petit Wood (Somme) 219, 600

  Beadle, 2nd Lt F. W. 440, 441

  Bean, Dr Charles 60, 180, 195

  Beanell, Nurse 481

  Beatty, Admiral Lord 620

  Beaumont 24

  Beaumont Hamel 40, 181, 290, 458, 513

  Becordel 219

  Bedford, Earl of 22

  Bedson, Sapper 464–5

  BEF see British Expeditionary Force

  BEF Times, The 607, 608

  Behrend, Lt Arthur 373, 405, 414–15, 417, 448, 538–9, 588

  Bell, Private 471

  Belleau Wood (Chateau-Thierry) 68

  Bellevue 268

  Bennett, Winifred 200

  Bergson, Henri 27

  Bermondsey, London 98, 133

  Bcrnafay Wood 28 1

  Bcrrington Park, Herefordshire 626

  Berry, Private 295

  Bertrancourt 305