Blood and Thunder

by Alexandra J Churchill

  As well as being mauled by three batteries of German artillery, the 119th and their cavalry helpers were also under a sustained and intense tirade from machine guns and rifles, and Francis’ first task, having volunteered to help, was to find a suitable place for them to extricate their guns to. Leaving everybody else under the embankment he mounted his borrowed horse and got on his way, riding out through the silent British guns alone, as the German’s continued to shell with enthusiasm. He made it to safety, found a safe place to aim for and then had to ride back. It might have been the brandy talking but he was determined to retain his dignity in front of the troops. ‘It was necessary to go back through the inferno as slowly as possible, so as to pretend to the men that there was no danger and that the shells were more noisy than effective.’

  Having informed Major Alexander that he had found a way out, Francis was told that the draught horses were gone. The only way to save the guns was to drag them out of the way by hand. Minus a decent amount of blood, ever so slightly influenced by alcohol and having just survived a game of chicken with the German artillery, Francis was full of confidence. Ordering his crowd to dismount in front of their horses he gave a rehashed version of the colonel’s speech at Tidworth and asked for volunteers to help manoeuvre the guns to safety. Hands shot up, including Bunny, Lennie and Douglas. In all eleven officers and a host of men offered their hands. Francis glowed with pride. ‘Every single man and officer declared they were ready to go to what looked like certain destruction.’

  Then they got to work. One by one they ran out into the storm of metal and started attempting to drag tons of heavy machinery out of enemy range. Slowly the guns had to be turned in the right direction and then the hauling began. In direct enemy range, one gun had to be dragged over the body of its fallen gunners. In all, Francis thought that they had managed to accomplish the task with the loss of only three or four men, although they had to return more than once and the enemy reached within 500 yards before the last gun was dragged to safety. He reflected on the actions of his men proudly. ‘It is on occasions like this that good discipline tells. The men were so wonderful and steady that words fail me.’

  Francis held on, light headed until Lucas arrived and assumed command, and then he began to collapse. His friend was kind yet firm in talking him into the idea of getting into an ambulance. Francis’ fingers were badly cut up and a piece of shrapnel had torn a lump out of his thigh. He had a bullet hole in his boot from the morning, another through his sleeve, he had been knocked over by a shell and his horse had been shot; ‘so no-one can say I had an idle day’, he said drily. A French staff officer took pity on him and drove him to Bavay, where, as luck would have it, his good friend the Duke of Westminster was there to mollycoddle him. Rivy, having been ordered to rally what troops he could on the way south, soon arrived too. Dejectedly wondering what he could do to find news of his twin, he found that he was already in the town. Francis thought much more of his brother’s exploits on that first day of the retreat than he did of his own. He told their friend John Buchan, author of The 39 Steps, that his twin’s ‘solitary act of reconnaissance, all alone, was braver than anything he did; a raw civilian riding for hours under heavy fire on a tired horse on missions of vital importance’.

  The nation disagreed. In August 1914, specialist publications about the war sprang up. One in particular took its coverage of the supposed exploits carried out by mounted troops to obsessive proportions. The charge led by the 9th Lancers, with all its romanticism and connotations of the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, was irresistible. With truth not getting in the way of a good story, artist’s impressions of Francis, leading his men with resolve on his face, in point-blank range of a gun emblazoned the pictorial press. The Germans cower in the foreground, a trooper who had lost his horse charges the enemy on foot, sword in hand. As far as the British public were told, the enemy had captured the British guns and were hell bent on turning them on their owner’s troops. Francis and his men stormed to the rescue. Starved of information about the chaotic retreat, John Buchan remembered (and not without irony) how in the confusion of those first weeks of war ‘the exploits of the Ninth emerged as a clear achievement on which the mind of the nation could seize and so comfort itself’.

  For Francis, convalescing at his uncle’s house in the knowledge that not only had none of those guns fallen into German hands but that he himself had not been within a few hundred yards of any concentration of enemy troops, it was embarrassing. Despite his arguable display of bravery, his only concern was his squadron and how they were faring in France. ‘I have never felt such a fool in my life,’ he declared, by now aware that he had been nominated for a Victoria Cross, which baffled him. ‘After all, I only did what every other man and officer did who was with me.’ Thanks to a ‘lot of rot’ penned by ‘infernal correspondents’ he was receiving fan mail and all kinds of exalted visitors. The king himself had stopped by, as had Mrs Asquith, who was thoughtful enough to ask after Rivy. There were fellow OEs: Prince Arthur of Connaught who sat with him for an hour and the legendary Field Marshal Lord Roberts, who had begun his own cavalry career lifetimes ago, a full decade before the Indian Mutiny. He badgered him for every last detail: who did they charge, how and with what aim? In his weakened state, all Francis could do was watch the clock, entertain well-wishers and take every ‘wild story’ as it came. In France though, just as he feared, the war continued without him and the Ninth would suffer many more hardships before he managed to find his way back.

  On 24 August, as darkness descended and rain began to fall, Lucas took charge of the tattered remains of the regiment. He fell back, taking a third of the Ninth’s strength, including the Harvey brothers and Bunny Taylor-Whitehead, over the border into France and on to the town of Ruesnes. Other straggling collections of men were arriving in other little towns along the frontier, like Wargnies-le-Petit, where Colonel Campbell had found 100 more cavalrymen. The BEF had evaded von Kluck again, but to the survivors of the charge it seemed like a catastrophe. That evening, with the men scattered, it seemed as if two regiments had simply disintegrated. The 4th Dragoon Guards could only find seven of its officers and only eighty men had answered one roll call. Not until the end of the week, when the various contingents began collecting at St-Quentin, did it transpire that things were not at all as bad as they had seemed.

  As it turned out, one single officer of the 9th Lancers had been killed that day, and it was Charlie Garstin. One late summer morning his mother was cutting out garments for soldiers at her dining-room table, surrounded by pins, patterns and fabric. The door opened and her friend George, ‘with The Times in his hand and his face working awkwardly’, called her out of the room. ‘Mary,’ he stammered, ‘Mary darling.’ But he could not say it. He could only point to the obituary column with a trembling hand. Sir William made no contact with her and she died believing he had failed to tell her of Charlie’s fate out of spite. In actual fact there had been some confusion as to what had happened to Charlie and the answers lay with a prisoner, which disrupted the flow of information.

  Another officer of the 4th Dragoon Guards had crawled into a cowshed with a broken leg and found several other wounded men. Shortly afterwards a German officer appeared ‘with a tiny popgun of a pistol’ which he kept trained on them as he inspected his new prisoners. More men were marched in whilst, as darkness set in, the Germans set fire to two haystacks and began throwing rifles and saddles into the blaze. ‘The merry popping of small-arm ammunition commenced’, bullets whizzing in their direction. Their captors brought wine for them and danced about the burning haystacks like demented shadows to the sound of two accordions, ‘a weird sight in the fitful light’.

  The wounded British men were ushered and carried to a convent in Audregnies. One officer was lying there several days later with some 200 other men when the local priest arrived at the window with an exhumed body. The villagers had buried a British officer in some haste and the father had decided that he
ought to be properly identified. It was Charlie. The identification process was repeated for two Cheshire officers and then all three of them were conveyed to Audregnies churchyard.1

  Charlie Garstin was 20 years old when he charged at Audregnies. Rivy Grenfell had run into Colonel Campbell as he searched vainly that afternoon for Beau de Lisle. On the same fruitless mission they sat together. ‘He had been ordered to charge towards Quievrain,’ Rivy recalled. ‘Why, he did not know, as there was an open space for about a mile and he had lost nearly all his regiment.’ ‘Balaclava like,’ the newspapers called it. If a futile action, with a ludicrous and unrealistic objective that the man who ordered it would try and wash his hands of responsibility for was what was meant by that, then it can be said to be true. That night the commanders of the Ninth and the 4th Dragoon Guards were seething with rage at the man who had issued the order that had seemingly cost them so many soldiers. When someone sought to cheer up Campbell by telling him that he had been nominated for a Victoria Cross he snapped. ‘I want my squadrons back,’ he retorted, ‘not VCs or medals.’ In his official write up, Beau de Lisle held firm to the view that he had merely told his regimental commanders that it ‘might be necessary’ to charge. All of the evidence to the contrary, though, placed the responsibility for this botched footnote in the Great War in his hands; and with it too the death of Charles William North Garstin, his former sweetheart’s only son.

  Notes

  1 The body of Charles William North Garstin was relocated to Cement House Cemetery in the 1950s.

  Diagram showing the charge of the 9th Lancers at Audregnies

  4

  ‘Our Little Band of Brothers’

  As autumn began, large numers of OEs were engaged in a type of conflict that is unfamiliar to many envisioning the Great War. The timeless image of the war is that of the trenches: stagnant warfare, andarmies scrapping over slithers of mud in Flanders and on the Somme. But this was not the war that governments, generals or the troops involved had anticipated. Combatants across Europe were trained to fight on the move and were conducting the opening throes of the conflict as such: seizing positions, defending them briefly and then moving on. It was a fluid, mobile type of warfare similar to the experience of their ancestors on the battlefields of Europe in the nineteenth century.

  Nearly one third of the Old Etonians who fell during the Great War have no known grave. Prior to the BEF’s descent into Picardy and the environs of the River Aisne in September 1914 only three of the school’s casualties were missing and presumed dead, as opposed to actually having a marked burial site. For Eton the retreat changed this, followed by the re-crossing of the river in pursuit of the enemy two weeks later and the Battle of the Aisne. At the time the reaction of the families of these missing men was not one of muted acceptance. The world had not yet seen the opening day of the Somme, or the vile mud of Passchendaele. The idea of young officers having vanished into oblivion in the opening months of the war was shocking, unacceptable even, and the families of some went to extraordinary lengths to obtain answers that they were convinced had to be waiting for them on the battlefields and from the mouths of those that had survived.

  As yet, the Guards Regiments had barely fired a shot in anger. When the 4th (Guards) Brigade arrived in France it comprised the 2nd Battalion of the Grenadier Guards, the 1st Irish Guards and both the 2nd and 3rd Coldstream Guards. For many Etonians these regiments were a family tradition. The Coldstream had been formed by General Monck in 1650 and on embarking for the Great War an OE with the same name boarded the transport; whilst another Etonian travelling to France claimed to be a sixth-generation Grenadier. Between them the four Battalions took 125 officers to war and nearly 60 per cent of them had been educated at Eton College. The presence of such high numbers of Etonians in certain units meant that when they were decimated in combat, large numbers of OEs would likely fall together. On 14 September this trend began, twenty of Eton’s old boys fell in one day and of them eleven belonged to one of the four Guards regiments.

  Amongst their number was a 22-year-old Old Etonian who had barely been with the Grenadiers for a year when war was declared. Mild-mannered, perhaps a little too laid-back and cheerful by nature, John Manners had it all: intellect, looks and athletic ability in just about every sport he tried. His Eton fame had been secured by the Lord’s match in 1910. Partly a brainchild of Lord Byron, it had become tradition that the boys of Eton would take on the boys of Harrow School every summer at the Marylebone Cricket Club’s famous ground in St John’s Wood. At the time it was a social event to rival Ascot or the Grand National and attracted crowds in the tens of thousands.

  The match in 1910 ended in a breathtaking manner. Eton was languishing after the first innings, being all out for a pathetic 67. John himself was ninth in the batting order and had been caught out for 4, the future Field Marshal Alexander of Tunis bowling the offending ball. Harrow had been unbeaten all year but the star of the day was Robert Fowler, the Eton captain. Apart from his 64, the second innings was nothing to shout about either. John made 40 not out, the second highest total, and in desperation Boswell KS, the wicket keeper, had racked up 32 as the last man before Harrow went in to bat needing a mere 55 runs to win.

  What followed was nothing short of incredible. The Eton captain led a charge that brought the Harrovian batting line up to its knees. Within half an hour Fowler had taken 8 wickets, 5 clean bowled and Harrow were all but obliterated at 32 for 9. Such was their confidence that Harrow’s tenth man, Alexander, was stuffing his face with a cream bun when someone burst into a tent at the nursery end and informed him ‘that the Harrow wickets were falling like ninepins and that he might be needed at any moment’. He was still trying to swallow his cake in the pavilion and barely had time to get his pads on and to the crease. Alexander managed just 8 runs before the innings was over and Harrow were all out for 45. Eton had won by 9 Fowler became a national celebrity in an instant. Such was the acclaim that one fan letter, simply addressed to ‘Fowler’s mother, London’ actually found the lady at her hotel.

  John Manners had a mischievous sense of humour. He once received a scathing reprimand from Shepherd’s Bush Stadium for messing about where he shouldn’t have been and went as far as to register his telegraphic address as ‘Brainfeg, Oxford’. His father was a sportsman too, but was wary of his temperament and had instilled in John the belief that sporting greatness was not enough in itself. He had won the Grand National on his own horse but he hoped that John ‘unlike himself would be remembered for something more’ than his achievements on a playing field or a tennis court.

  On the outbreak of war John was most amused when arriving in France that he was not supposed to tell his mother anything at all. ‘We are not even allowed to say what country we’re in which makes letter writing rather difficult!’ he joked. ‘But I don’t think you would be greatly surprised if you knew.’ Disembarking at the end of their voyage had been difficult but he was just thankful that the journey was over. He continued to mock the seriousness of his new adventure. ‘All the glamour of war was knocked out of me by that beastly departure from London. Bands oughtn’t be allowed to play ‘Auld Lang Syne’!’

  The 2nd Grenadiers first retired across the River Aisne on 31 August just after dawn in sweltering heat. They had marched on for nearly 15 miles, struggling to keep men in the ranks, until reaching the town of Soucy. Major George Darell, or ‘Ma’ Jeffreys, had left Eton in 1895. There were ‘three pillars’ to Ma’s loyalty: Eton, the Guards and the Conservative Party. The battalion’s second in command, having walked over a hundred miles in a little under a week with his Guardsmen, Ma had had just about enough of wandering through the French countryside with an undetermined number of Germans in pursuit. Sleep that night was curtailed after two hours when shortly after midnight came orders to fall back and take up a position at the edge of the forest of Retz, just to the south. At dawn the guards stopped in the shadow of its dense, towering beech trees, which were draped with a thick m
ist. In a thin, miserable shower of rain the Grenadier and the Irish Guards drank hot chocolate that tasted faintly of paraffin whilst they looked out on dripping lucerne and damp cornfields. Piles of corn lay about, providing potential cover for the Germans. Here they were to stay until mid afternoon, next to Villers-Cotterêts, waiting for the enemy to arrive and hoping that they could keep from being overrun.

  This plan fell apart almost immediately. Rumours arrived of German cavalry approaching, and then little pockets of grey-clad men appeared, running between the piles of wet corn and filtering into the forest on either side of them. The Grenadiers opened fire immediately and the Guards prepared to retire into the forest, falling back on the main road and a junction at a clearing in the trees. Into the undergrowth they slipped, amidst a shower of shells from a German artillery battery. The scene was surreal, looking ‘for all the world like … the New Forest on a Spring Day’. In one direction, the enemy fire continued and in the other, deer eyed the khaki intruders. Ma Jeffreys’ morning was about to get even more surreal. To his astonishment he was ordered to stand his ground for a few hours in order to give the rest of the nearby troops assembling in and about Villers-Cotterêts time to sit down and eat.

  With the Irish Guards, Aubrey Herbert was just as bewildered. ‘It was evident if [they] took long … we should be wiped out.’ Everyone was on edge. There was an eerie lull and Aubrey, ever the optimist, sat down to write two goodbye letters, including a eulogy to his horse Moonshine. Having done so he wandered off to find the Adjutant, 25-year-old Lord Desmond FitzGerald, another Etonian, to have them posted. ‘I have the picture in my mind of Desmond constantly sitting in very tidy breeches, writing and calling for sergeants,’ Aubrey recalled. ‘He never seemed to sleep at all. He was woken all the time and was always cheerful.’ On this occasion though Desmond was indignant. ‘You seem to think that Adjutants can work miracles,’ he snapped at the MP several years his senior. ‘You want to post them on the battlefield. It is quite useless to write letters now.’ Then he promptly borrowed some of Aubrey’s paper and wrote a letter himself, whilst Aubrey passed the time irritating those within earshot with Shakespearean quotes pertaining to cemeteries.