Meeting the Enemy
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The Liddle Archive: By kind permission of the Liddle Collection, Leeds University Library, www.leeds.ac.uk., with thanks to Richard Davies: Private Charles Eshborn GS 0526; Reverend Henry Williams GE 37; C. A. M. Dunlop GS 0480; Lieutenant J. A. Brewster GS0196; Private Percy Ogley GS1200
The National Archives: Kew, www.nationalarchives.gov.uk. In the 1920s the following officers corresponded with the Great War’s official historian, Brigadier General Sir James E. Edmonds (Cab45), and extracts from their letters have been used in the book.
Cab45 (Cabinet Papers): unknown officer quoting Lieutenant George Edwards 1/6th Seaforth Highlanders; Lieutenant Bradford Gordon 9th Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry; Lieutenant Colonel John Hall, 16th Middlesex Regiment; Lieutenant Aubrey Herbert, 1st Irish Guards; Captain William Carden-Roe, 1st Royal Irish Fusiliers; Captain J. G. Smyth-Osbourne, 1st Royal Welsh Fusiliers; Colonel Roger Tempest, 2nd Scots Guards
FO (Foreign Office files): FO383/17 Annie Reiser; FO383 23/81/169/207/315/521 Carl Fuchs; FO383/48/182/294 Henry Hadley; FO383/53 Hermann Waetjen; FO383/55 C. F. Just; FO383/60 Albert Cresswell/Edgar Gillon/David Russell; FO383/80 Mrs W. D. Burnyeat; FO383/80 Wilford Wells; FO383/80/151 Julia Jacobitz; FO383/80/149 Corporal Alfred Felton; FO383/81 Julius Ring, /197 William Kunz, /197 Wilhelm Roderwald, /194 Bartholomus Eid, /192 Carl Martini, /193 Henry Steinke, /442 Hubert Biskeborn; FO383/180 Lt Col. Godfrey Goodman, Captains Hans Roser/Reinhardt/Maffett; FO383/202 Mary Harthaus; FO383/203 Captain Robert Campbell; FO383/289 Captain Bushby Erskine; FO383/203/289 Peter Gastreich; FO383/292 Adam Ultsch; FO383/522 Lilian Stephan; FO383/522 Malvina Mendelssohn
MEPO (Metropolitan Police Office): MEPO 2/10662: attempts by Casement to form an Irish Brigade; MEPO 3/1166 German War Criminals: police enquiries and action on behalf of H. M. Procurator General for Leipzig Trials
WO (War Office files): WO32/5783: interviews with Field Marshal von Ludendorff and General Hoffman by Lieut. Col. W. Stewart Roddie on Bolshevik menace; WO95 (War Diaries): WO95/2215/1 – 9th East Surrey Regiment; WO95/2695/1 – 1/5th Sherwood Foresters; W095/1971/2 – 8th Royal Munster Fusiliers; WO95/1371/1 – 1st Royal Berkshire Regiment; WO95/1972/2 – 8th Royal Dublin Fusiliers; WO95/1972/2 – 7th Royal Irish Rifles; WO95/1972 – 48 Brigade; WO95/1975/5 – 9th Royal Munster Fusiliers; WO95/1535/2 – Diary of Lieutenant James Pennycuik, held within war diary of 59th Field Company Royal Engineers; WO141/9: Formation of the Irish Brigade; WO141/36: Trial of members of German Irish Brigade; WO141/67: German Irish Brigade; WO161 Prisoner of War Interview Reports 1914-1918, interviews with the following POWs: Private John Harrison, 1st Cheshire Regiment; Private John Cooper, 1st Coldstream Guards; Captain Thomas Sotherton-Estcourt; Captain R. F. Peskett, 2nd Dragoon Guards, Lincolnshire Regiment; Private George Winkworth, Rifle Brigade; Private Charles Duder, 4th Royal Fusiliers; Captain Arthur Hargreaves, 1st Somerset Light Infantry; Private James Harrold, 2nd East Kent Regiment; Lance Corporal Herbert Lewin, 1st Royal Berkshire Regiment; Private James McDaid, 1/10th Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders; Private Thomas Dickinson, 8th Durham Light Infantry; Private George Kitson, 12th Royal Scots Fusiliers; Private Patrick Leavy, 14th Highland Light Infantry; Private Alfred Hoare, 1st Hampshire Regiment; Private James Harlock, 17th Royal Fusiliers; Private Ernest Barton, 2nd Manchester Regiment; Crewman Alfred Amey, HMS Nomad; Private Ernest Brown, 20th Machine Gun Corps; Private Andrew Duffy, RAMC; Private Tim Macarthy, RAMC; Private Daniel Merry, 7th Battalion Canadian Infantry; Private Patrick Cullen, 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers; Sergeant James Morrison, Royal Marine Light Infantry; CSM Alexander Gibb, 2nd Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders; Corporal Robert Steele, 5th Signal Troop Royal Engineers; Private Arthur Soder, 1st Dorset Regiment; Lance Corporal Harold Sugden, Army Service Corps attd 6th Field Ambulance; Corporal Charles Wright, 5th Lancers; Private Charles Brown, 1st West Yorks; Private Frank Barlow, 1st West Yorks; Lieutenant Patrick (Pat) O’Brien, Royal Flying Corps; Lieutenant John Howey, Royal Flying Corps; Captain Francis Don, Royal Flying Corps; Private George Wash, 8th Durham Light Infantry; Private Henry Webb, RAMC; Private James Whiteside, 36th Machine Gun Corps; Private Ernest Hart, 2nd East Kent Regiment; Captain Harold Rushworth, Royal Flying Corps; Lieutenant Harvey Frost, Royal Flying Corps; Lieutenant Geoffrey Parker, Royal Flying Corps; Private George Allen, 1st Rifle Brigade; WO339 & WO374 Officers’ Files concerning: WO339/16499 – Captain William Renwick; WO339/60685 – 2nd Lt Frederick Ruscoe; WO339/26578 – Captain David Burles; WO339/17037 – 2nd Lt John Brewster; WO374/77437 – Major Charles Yate
The National Army Museum: NAM 1999-11-216-1 – War Diary, 1 Infantry Labour Company, Middlesex Regiment, 5 March 1917–30 January 1918; NAM 1999-11-216-2 – War Diary, 2 Infantry Labour Company, Middlesex Regiment, 2 April 1917–30 November 1917
Regimental Museum of the Royal Welsh: Private Charles Heare, 1/2nd Monmouthshire Regiment
Society of Friends: Annual reports of the Friends Emergency Committee
Surrey History Centre: By kind permission of Surrey History Centre: Captain Wilfred Birt – ESR/25/Birt/4; Captain William Morritt, 1st East Surrey Regiment – ESR/25/Morrwg
The Tank Museum, Bovington: Driver Ernest Reader – WW1/Readerer
Trustees of the Army Medical Services Museum: Diary of Capt. Henry Wynyard Kaye, MD, RAMC – RAMC/739
Interviews conducted by the author
Soldiers and Seamen: Able Seaman Alfred Bastin, Royal Naval Division; Lance Corporal Andrew Bowie, 1st Cameron Highlanders; Lance Corporal Vic Cole, 7th Royal West Kent Regiment; Private Bill Easton, 77th Field Ambulance RAMC; Private George Gadsby, 1/18th London Regiment; Lieutenant Richard Hawkins, 11th Royal Fusiliers; Private Walter Humphreys, 1/15th London Regiment; Private Jack Rogers, 1/7th Sherwood Foresters; Private Ernest Stevens, 20th Middlesex Regiment; Private Frank Sumpter, 1st Rifle Brigade
Civilians: Percy Johnson; Elfreda Druhm
A Note on the Author
Richard van Emden has interviewed more than 270 veterans of the Great War and has written fourteen books on the subject including The Trench and The Last Fighting Tommy, both of which were Top Ten bestsellers. He has also worked on more than a dozen television programmes on the First World War, including Prisoners of the Kaiser, Veterans, Britain’s Last Tommies, the award-winning Roses of No Man’s Land, Britain’s Boy Soldiers, A Poem for Harry and, most recently, War Horse: The Real Story. He lives in West London.
By the Same Author
Tickled to Death to Go
Veterans: The Last Survivors of the Great War
Prisoners of the Kaiser
The Trench
Last Man Standing
All Quiet on the Home Front
Boy Soldiers of the Great War
Britain’s Last Tommies
The Last Fighting Tommy (with Harry Patch)
Famous 1914–1918
The Soldier’s War
Sapper Martin
Tommy’s Ark
The Quick and the Dead
First published in Great Britain 2013
This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © 2013 by Richard van Emden
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
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may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced
in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be
glad to hear from them. For legal purposes the acknowledgements and
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All images are taken from the author’s private collection, except where credited otherwise
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Also available by Richard van Emden
Boy Soldiers of the Great War
The youngest soldier who fought in the First World War is believed to have been just twelve years old. Caught up in the wave of patriotism, many thousands of other boys are known to have lied about their age, inflated their chests and stood on tiptoes to bluff their way into a war of unforeseen horror. How and why so many under-aged boys were able to get to the Western Front remained unexplained and, until Richard van Emden’s classic account, largely unexplored. Boy Soldiers of the Great War tells the incredible stories of the young boys who went to fight for their country.
‘Should this have been allowed to happen? Richard van Emden's fascinating and distressing account ... shows how difficult it is to provide a simple answer.’ Sunday Times
‘Engaging, well-written and balanced.’ The Times
‘Excellent and even-handed.’ Daily Telegraph
The Last Fighting Tommy
.(Written with Harry Patch)
Harry Patch was the last British soldier alive to have fought in the trenches of the First World War. From his vivid memories of an Edwardian childhood, the horror of the Great War and fighting in the mud during the Battle of Passchendaele, working on the home front in the Second World War and fame in later life as a veteran, The Last Fighting Tommy is the story of an ordinary man’s extraordinary life.
‘An extraordinary biography by the very last witness of a devastating
four years in British history’
Daily Mail
‘Patch was not unique among millions of his comrades who endured that prolonged and supreme test of nerve and courage.
But, uniquely, as the last survivor, he embodies them all’
Sunday Express
‘This articulate, modest and outspoken man not only remains one of the last living links with a traumatic event that has become part of the national consciousness, but is an unassailable witness of what the war was like for’
Daily Telegraph
The Soldier’s War
.
The Great War ended more than ninety years ago yet still haunts and fascinates us today. In The Soldier’s War, Richard van Emden traces a history of the fighting month by month and year by year, using original diaries, letters and as-yet-unseen photographs taken by the soldiers themselves. We follow the British Tommy through devastating battles and trench warfare from the outbreak of war in 1914 to the armistice four years later, guided by Richard van Emden’s sure explanations. This is a history of the war as seen from the trenches that is shockingly intimate, sometimes heartbreaking, often wryly amusing, but always compelling.
‘Thousands of books have been written about the Great War, but perhaps none so vividly evocative as The Soldier’s War … an extraordinary homage to a lost generation’
Daily Mail
‘In The Soldier’s War, Richard van Emden has toiled in archives and hunted down caches of letters to tell the story of the war chronologically through the eyes of the Tommies who fought it’
The Times
‘Van Emden manages to establish in an immediate empathy with these ordinary men of Britain, thrown into such horrendous conditions. They hope, moan, laugh, grieve, despair and pray their way through the four years of the “war to end all wars”’
Time Out
Edited by Richard van Emden
Sapper Martin
.
Jack Martin was a thirty-two-year-old clerk at the Admiralty when he was called up to serve in the army in September 1916. These diaries, written in secret, hidden from his colleagues and only discovered by his family after his return home, present the Great War with heartbreaking clarity, written in a voice as compelling and distinctive as Wilfred Owen or Siegfried Sassoon and all the more extraordinary given that it is not an officer’s but that of a private. From his arrival in France and his participation in the Somme, through offensives at Ypres and eventual demobilisation after the Armistice, we see wartime life as it really was for the ordinary Tommy.
‘Honest, insightful and full of humour … Richard Van Emden’s editing of the diaries is sensibly unobtrusive and self-effacing, largely allowing
Martin’s words to speak for themselves’
Sunday Times
‘Extraordinary. Beautifully written, it reveals a cheerful man with a sharp eye and a gift for description that’s unforgettable.
Through his eyes we see wartime life as it really was for the ordinary Tommy’
Choice
Tommy’s Ark
Soldiers and their Animals in the Great War
For soldiers in the Great War, life was bleak. Going over the top was a comparatively rare event, and much more frequently they were bored and missing their families at home. Seeking comfort and entertainment in their isolation, many soldiers found both in the animal kingdom. From the lion that was allowed to patrol the front-line trenches and the monkey that guided a lost officer back to his battalion, Richard van Emden, one of our leading Great War historians, has assembled a whole series of extraordinary stories about this little-known aspect of the war, to throw new light on the lives of the men who fought on the Western Front.
‘If ever you are in doubt about the devastation and universal suffering that war brings to us, and to all creatures, great and small, then read Tommy’s Ark’
Michael Morpurgo, author of War Horse
‘Powerful descriptions by all ranks about their feelings for wildlife and the natural world’ Financial Times
‘For those who are interested both in animals and war, there is much to satisfy in Tommy’s Ark’
Daily Mail
The Quick and the Dead
At the end of the First World War more than 192,000 wives had lost their husbands, and nearly 400,000 children had lost their fathers. Few people remained unscathed. The Quick and the Dead pays tribute to the families who were left behind while their husbands, fathers and sons went off to fight, and to the generations that followed. Through a unique collection of more than fifty interviews, private diaries and a remarkable collection of unpublished letters written by the soldiers to their families back home, The Quick and the Dead is a history of those who are commonly forgotten and neglected when the fallen are remembered on Armistice Day.
‘A moving account of the emotional, physical and financial hardships suffered by the families of the fallen. It provides a poignant memorial to what one relative called the “heart hunger” caused by the loss of a loved one in battle’
Sunday Times
‘Superb … Shattering for its wealth of tiny heartbreaking truths’ *****
Daily Telegraph
‘Incredibly moving … Remarkable’
Daily Express
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