Saturday, 11 December
Great rush to enlist.
Monday, 13 December
Went out and saw Sam at the shop to see if he had ‘attested’. He had. Rule Britannia. Spring cleaning in our wigwam. Helped Agnes to wash the dinner set at night. Agnes washed the paintwork.
Wednesday, 15 December
Duncan has also ‘attested’.
Saturday, 18 December
Bright clear day, but cold. We went to town in afternoon and admired the shops. I have now got my khaki armlet to let folk know I have attested and await the call. First four groups called up for 20 January 1916. I’m in group 39.
Monday, 20 December
Rained all day. Wore my armlet today. Suvla Bay and Anzac (Gallipoli) evacuated by the British. German attack on British at Ypres by poison gas etc. beaten back.
Wednesday, 22 December
Agnes went to town at night and did some Christmas shopping, and then did a big ironing and then collapsed.
Friday, 24 December
British losses in all theatres of war to 9 December: 528,227. Killed 119,923, wounded 338,758, missing 69,546.
Saturday, 25 December
Pouring wet morning, wet dirty day and wishing you a Merry Xmas. Tommy got a motor car and a big book and an orange in his stocking, and a wee basket. At 8 p.m. Mr and Mrs Gordon gave us a visit, with Nannie and Ella. They gave Tommy a box of soldiers.
Sunday, 26 December
Dirty day and some rain. We all went to town in the afternoon. Walked up as far as Sauchiehall Street through the Arcade and car home from the Cowcaddens. No war news today. No papers published.
Monday, 27 December
Stormy wet day. Duncan here at night with his girl’s autograph album. He wants me to put some masterpieces in it.
Thursday, 30 December
Went over by myself to Greenlodge at night with the album belonging to the girl belonging to Duncan. Got home at 11.45 p.m. with a bottle of ‘ginger’.102
Friday, 31 December
Extra special wet day. Got away at 4 p.m. Bought myself a new hat. We went out for a little at night. British cruiser Natal blown up by internal explosion in harbour.103
* * *
1 Port wine, which is red wine fortified with spirits, was thought to be a tonic for the afflicted.
2 French forces captured Burnhaupt-le-Haut in Alsace. On 6 January the French had occupied the area north of Altkirch in the same province.
3 By January 1915, one million men had enlisted. The vast majority of the British army was fighting on the Western Front.
4 The government offered these guns to local authorities, who were required to pay the cost of transport from London.
5 Perthes-les-Hurles, in the Champagne region, was captured by the French Fourth Army.
6 Agnes was obviously in charge of the domestic finances.
7 An ‘eight day’ is a clock that will run for eight days after being wound.
8 Romania in fact declared war on Germany and Austria on 19 August 1916.
9 The Glasgow Territorials were volunteer battalions. Thomas saw the 5th Battalion of the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) and the 9th (Glasgow Highlanders) Battalion of the Highland Light Infantry.
10 The earthquake, on 13 January, shook southern Italy and completely destroyed the town of Avezzano. The final death toll was at least 30,000.
11 This draper’s had its premises on the north side of Trongate, close to Glasgow Cross.
12 Donald was epileptic.
13 This family gathering seems to be an annual event.
14 Isa has found a job.
15 The censor was careful not to give the Germans precise feedback about their raids so newspaper reports were always vague about locations. This incident was the first Zeppelin raid on a British town, and involved two aircraft, L-2 and L-3, which bombed Yarmouth and King’s Lynn in Norfolk, killing two people and injuring 16.
16 This was the Battle of Dogger Bank, which involved squadrons of the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet. The total of deaths on the Blücher was 792.
17 The kitchen pulley.
18 La Bassée, a small mining town north of the Vimy Ridge on the Western Front was the site of fierce fighting in early 1915.
19 Four British merchant vessels off the Lancashire coast, rather close to home for Thomas.
20 The Glasgow Art Galleries and Museum at Kelvingrove, in the west end of the city.
21 ‘The day’ when John and Thomas would see active service.
22 On the Eastern Front that day, the Germans captured Eydtkuhnen (now Chernyshevskoye, Russia) and Wirballen (Lithuania), but were repulsed at Kosziowa (Kozowa, Ukraine).
23 The phone message was presumably received at Thomas’ workplace, and passed on to him.
24 Some 34 British aeroplanes raided Ostend, Zeebrugge and other Belgian towns on 12 February.
25 On 4 February, Kaiser Wilhelm II had declared that Germany would, from 18 February, treat the seas around the British Isles as a war zone, and threatened that all Allied vessels in the area would be sunk without warning.
26 On 16 February, a Franco-British force renewed the aerial attacks on Ostend, Zeebrugge and other towns in Belgium.
27 The Zeppelin L-4 crash-landed in the North Sea after becoming damaged by a severe snow storm.
28 Seven British merchant ships were sunk by submarines in first week of the blockade.
29 In the west of Scotland, around 10,000 engineering workers took unofficial strike action to demand higher wages to match the increase in prices in which the war had resulted. The dispute lasted three weeks, and did not result in an increase in wages.
30 On 1 March, Britain and France imposed a blockade on all shipping heading to enemy ports.
31 The local gas works were in Pollokshields, about half a mile away.
32 While coke was less than half the price of coal, it gave only a small fraction of the heat.
33 The German submarine U8 was sunk by British destroyers in the English Channel on 4 March, and its crew taken prisoner.
34 Thomas has been collecting coke before work, which he starts at 8 a.m.
35 The Siege of Przemysl, which ended on 22 March 1915, was a crushing defeat for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The town is now in Poland.
36 The manpower shortage led to women working in munitions factories and on the trams.
37 David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was greatly concerned about the effects of alcohol on the war effort. In January 1915, he stated that Britain was ‘fighting Germans, Austrians and drink, and as far as I can see the greatest of these foes is drink’.
38 The Flaminian, owned by the Ellerman and Papayanni Line, was shelled and sunk by submarine U28 about 50 miles off the Scilly Isles.
39 Lloyd George’s campaign against alcohol included persuading national figures to pledge that they would not drink alcohol until the war was over. King George V supported the campaign by promising that no alcohol would drunk in the Royal household while Britain was at war.
40 A folk belief.
41 Breeks is a lowland Scots term for trousers, derived from Scots Gaelic.
42 This setback for the Germans occurred during the Second Battle of the Yser, part of the fight to extend the Western Front to the North Sea.
43 An operator likely took all phone calls to Thomas’ place of work and passed on the messages to various people, rather than allowing individual phone conversations. There may have been just one phone.
44 ‘All by himself’.
45 On 12 April there was an explosion in a former fishing net store in Lerwick, which was being used to store naval munitions. Five people were killed, and 22 injured. The store was destroyed, and the quay beneath it was greatly damaged.
46 The ‘pirates’ are the German U-boats and other vessels that target civilian ships.
47 William Glynne Charles Gladstone, the grandson of the Liberal Prime Minister, was Liberal MP for the Kilmarnock Bu
rghs (which included Rutherglen) from 1911 until he was killed in action on 12 April 1915. He was a lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers.
48 This is Thomas’ first visit to church in 1915. The Lord’s Supper or Communion (Eucharist) is usually celebrated four times a year in Scottish churches.
49 Eddie Campbell was highly likely to have been Agnes’ cousin Edward.
50 This was the first time that the German army used chlorine gas. It was deployed against the French army at Ypres.
51 The ‘busy’ one was presumably Daniel McCort, who had previously whitewashed the house.
52 Thomas’ Rutherglen relatives appear to have had a bathroom with a fixed bath, rather than the tin bath that the Livingstones had at home.
53 Hill 60 was a ridge near Ypres that was keenly fought for at various points.
54 The Lusitania, the largest passenger vessel on transatlantic service, left New York Harbor for Liverpool on 1 May 1915. On 7 May, the submarine U20 the torpedoed the liner, which rolled over and sank in 18 minutes. A total of 785 passengers and 413 crew died, including 128 American citizens.
55 ‘Au secours!’ is French for ‘Help!’
56 The great victory was part of the Battle of Festubert, on the Western Front.
57 Lord Kitchener, almost alone among his Cabinet colleagues, saw the war lasting years rather than months, and was determined to enlist a large army.
58 Malt extract was regarded as a nutritious food supplement.
59 Daisy was one of the Crozier girls, possibly Margaret Crozier, the daughter of Robert and Agnes.
60 Evidently there was a painting worth seeing on auction that week.
61 This is possibly Andrew Hamilton, whom Thomas keeps in touch with after he leaves his position as office boy.
62 The Broomielaw is a street in central Glasgow running along the north bank of the Clyde.
63 The Meadows, a large public park, is to the landward side of the town.
64 Ettrick Bay, a popular tourist spot, is on the other side of Bute from Rothesay.
65 Two German submarines destroyed practically all the Lerwick fishing fleet.
66 A ‘cuddy’ is a Scots term for a horse or donkey. The ‘pictures’ was the cinema.
67 The Lightning struck a mine in the southern North Sea, off the Thames Estuary. The minefield had been laid by a German U-boat.
68 ‘Let on’ means pretended.
69 Presumably for the second quarterly communion service.
70 Possible relatives of Agnes who lived in Girvan, Ayrshire.
71 Louis Botha, Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, took the side of the British during the First World War, which was not universally welcomed by his countrymen.
72 Italian phrase meaning ‘dear wife’ is also the title of a choral work by George Frideric Handel.
73 The annual Glasgow Fair holidays.
74 Polmadie is a district of Glasgow south of the River Clyde, adjacent to the Gorbals.
75 The British first used poison gas at the Battle of Loos on 25 September 1915.
76 The miners demanded better wages. The government made striking a criminal offence, but the strike went ahead, from 15 July. Lloyd George visited the coalfields on 19 July and, after concessions were made by the government, the strikers returned to work on 21 July.
77 ‘What times! What customs!’ Coined by the orator Cicero.
78 The flags represent – from left to right – the British Empire, France, Belgium, Russia, Italy, Montenegro, Serbia and Japan.
79 Ira David Sankey (1840-1908) was an American Evangelical hymn writer and Gospel singer.
80 The National Registration system centrally recorded all civilians and issued them with Certificates of Registration, their ‘papers’.
81 The Defence of the Realm Act 1914 restricted pub opening times in Scotland to 11 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., Monday to Saturday only. These hours were not repealed until 1976.
82 To put something past is, in Scottish idiom, to put it to one side.
83 The French phrase ‘nous verrons’ means ‘we will see’. Thomas is not prepared to entirely discount the possibility of another child.
84 Presumably Victoria Primary School in Batson Street, Govanhill, which Tommy attended.
85 The Hesperian, which was built on the Clyde in 1907 for the Allan Line, was torpedoed off Fastnet by the German submarine U20, which sank the Lusitania. There were 32 deaths.
86 McGavigan’s was a firm of printers and stationers. Duncan, Thomas’ brother, was a signwriter/printer.
87 No bloody good.
88 This may have been one of the Cooper and Co. grocery stores, established by Thomas Bishop (1845-1923) in 1871 and named for his mother-in-law.
89 The choice of fish is obviously being curtailed by German naval activity. The literary reference is to Edgar Allan Poe’s poem ‘The Raven’, published in 1845.
90 A crack (or ‘craic’) is a conversation. This is one of the few times that Thomas uses an Irish rather than a Scottish colloquialism.
91 St George’s Cross is to the north-east of the town centre, Great Western Road is the grand boulevard of the wealthy West End of the city.
92 At the beginning of the Battle of Loos, the British attacked to the south of La Bassée Canal and captured 5 miles of enemy trenches.
93 Killermont is on the River Kelvin, at the north-west of the city. Anniesland lies to the south of Killermont.
94 The Allies were fighting both at Loos and in Champagne on the Western Front.
95 Another landmark in Tommy’s development, evidently.
96 Lord Derby, formerly Edward George Villiers Stanley, was Director-General of Recruitment. His ‘Derby Scheme’ was a recruitment policy under which men could volunteer to be called up if necessary.
97 Vibrona was a tonic wine. It was 20 per cent alcohol and contained ‘alkaloids’ that promised to boost the drinker’s constitution.
98 The government promised that married men who volunteered under the Derby Scheme would be the last to be called up.
99 The British hospital ship Anglia was sunk by a German mine in the English Channel. Eighty-five lives were lost.
100 Greece refused to enter the war on the side of the Allies, probably because of the German sympathies of King Constantine, who was married to the Kaiser’s sister.
101 Captured guns were often displayed in the main squares or parks of British cities.
102 While ‘ginger’ is a general Glaswegian term for any soft drink, this is probably a bottle of ginger wine, a wine fortified with spirits and ginger, with advertised health-giving qualities.
103 A fire on board the armoured cruiser HMS Natal, which was lying in the Cromarty Firth in the north west of Scotland, led to the explosion of the ship’s magazine. The ship sank quickly, killing more than 400 of her 815 officers and men.
1916
Despite the best efforts of the state, the voluntary system used to sign up recruits in 1914 and 1915 was not producing the results the government needed, so it passed a Military Service Act in January 1916 conscripting all unmarried men between the ages of 18 and 41. A second Act, passed in May, called up married men. The acts also set up a system of hearings to allow people to make claims for exemption, for example on grounds of religion or conscience. Poor health was still a great problem, though, and only 36% of the men examined in 1917 were suitable for full military duties, while 40 per cent were classified as incapable of physical exertion.
At the beginning of 1916, the German blockade of supplies for Britain was reducing not only the amount of food available. On 9 February The Glasgow Herald, one of the two newspapers that Thomas read to follow the progress of the war, told its readers: ‘As the imports of paper and papermaking materials will be much restricted by the government, we shall not be able to place The Glasgow Herald so freely on sale as has been the custom in the past. Newsagents’ supplies will be restricted to those copies actually ordered by customers, so that readers shoul
d in all cases place orders for a regular daily service.’
The Germans began an escalating series of air-raids on the east coast of Britain, especially targeting London, which was first hit by a Zeppelin on 31 May 1915. In 1916, the government responded with a total black-out in areas thought to be at risk of air-raids. This extinguished all but the most essential outside lighting, and ordered householders and businesses to place heavy curtains on all windows and doors so that no light escaped. Thomas notes that all of Glasgow was darkened by the end of February 1916.
Saturday, 1 January
New year opens with wind and rain. We went to the Cinerama after dinner. P&O liner Persia sunk near Crete by U-boat.1
About 335 lives lost.
Monday, 3 January
Brothers, who have the harder fate –
The men who fall or the women who wait?
Tuesday, 4 January
Albania joins the Allies. War declared against Austria.
Wednesday, 5 January
Bill introduced to compel unmarried men to enlist. Derby groups 6, 7, 8 and 9 called up for 8 February.
Friday, 7 January
Agnes baking at night. Getting ready for tomorrow.
A school is used as an army recruitment office.
Saturday, 8 January
Fine day. Mr and Mrs Gordon and family here about 5.15 p.m. We had a night of song and dance. Carriages at 11 p.m.
Sunday, 9 January
Showery day and very stormy. As we were expecting Hetty Cook at night I did not go to church. Hetty arrived about 5.30. She went away about 10.30. The last car had gone, so I walked home with her, which was ‘the goods’. The walk back was not ‘the goods’.2 I arrived home at 12.05 a.m. to my anxious wife.
Tommy's War: A First World War Diary 1913-1918 Page 11