vi A reference to the Uncle Remus books, in which the stories are based around characters such as Brer Rabbit, ‘Br’er’ being a syncope for Brother.
vii These officers carried with them a variety of artwork. Captain Bruce Bairnsfather was a cartoonist, whose ‘Fragments from France’ was published in the Bystander magazine, popular reading among soldiers on the front. Ernest Ludwig Kirchner was an artist who was a founder of German expressionism. La Vie Parisienne was a French weekly magazine which combined a mix of writing and art, some of which was mildly risqué. Clarence Lawson Wood was a painter whose work featured animals, including a chimpanzee he called ‘Gran pop’.
viii Located on a railway line, the village of Heilly was also a casualty station. The horse ride was in a westerly direction, along the picturesque valley of the Ancre.
ix ‘I came in these trenches with seven NCOs and one shell during the strafe … has taken five of them away, and I have to borrow two from another platoon to carry on, for the time being. Towards the end of the strafe I had been talking to them, cracking jokes and generally making light of the whole thing in front of the men, although I felt much different really, myself. I then had occasion to leave them, and during the few moments I was away, one ripping fellow, a Lance-Corporal, passed me and went to them, and picking up a chunk of shell, quite hot, which had just dropped beside him, said – “Nearly got a ‘blighty’ that time, Sergeant,” and then burst into laughter at his escape. At the same time another Sergeant, a public school boy, also joined the three, accompanied by a Private, and then right bang among them burst a high explosive shell. I returned a few minutes later to find my Platoon Sergeant, Sergt [George Kinsey] Gresty, killed outright, two Corporals, [John Edmund] Helliwell and [Alfred] Heathcote also killed, Corporal [Thomas Moreton] Gandy and the Private wounded, and my other Sergeant, Sergt [George] Benson, an absolute nervous breakdown, suffering from the terrific shock’ (Gomersall, 6.4.16).
x Tawney’s poem ‘To G’, published in The Nation publication, appears to have been inspired by Gresty’s death: ‘At noon he chattered frank and gay,/At one I saw him borne away,/One hideous formless wound./A sandbag held his shattered face,/Feet, hands & chest at every pace/Slipped crimson on the ground./He has left this world of beautiful things,/The hawk that hovers, the lark that sings,/In the smoke of the bursting shell./When he fell its sweet song did not cease./He has left all these; he has left me peace./Once more – Pass, friend all’s well.’ In a letter to his wife, Tawney added: ‘It is not a poetic fancy about the hawk and the lark. I have watched the former hover for rats and mice when shells must have been passing within 50 yds of them, and larks sing continually when it is fine’ (22.4.16).
xi Sgt W. Henry Whitehead.
xii There is possibly confusion here between Thornton and Thornycroft. (See diary for 12 April and Index of Names.)
xiii Werfer is translated from the German as ‘thrower’ or ‘pitcher’. A Minenwerfer was a ‘mine thrower’, or mortar. It was primarily intended to deliver poison gas and smoke, although a high explosive shell alternative was also developed.
xiv Lt Edward Charles Thornycroft.
xv Padre Clifford Wood.
Chapter 9: ‘God bless the fool who made that shell’
i 2nd Bn, Border Regt.
ii Capt. Richard Francis Newdigate.
iii Lt Reginald Walter Bowly was transferred to the 20th Manchesters.
iv ‘I played Outside Left in the great final match of the Battalion Cup Tie!! This afternoon!! – the first time since I was 10 that I have ventured on Association Footer except to play once in goal in Salisbury’ (Bland, 26.4.16).
v Grovetown Camp, Bray.
vi The short story, Beyond the Line: A Tale of ‘No Man’s Land’, would be published in the Weekly Telegraph, coincidentally on the day that May was killed.
vii Maj. Frank Merriman.
viii ‘A day or two ago, I walked down to the river with Lloyd, who is also out of the trenches, and had a chat with him. He is not at all reconciled to the army. The unanimity with which absolutely everyone simply loathes military life is almost comic. We never speak of the war, except to say, “When will it be over?” Everyone, except myself (and Lloyd) seems to bet on August or September, but of course none of us know anything’ (Tawney, 2.5.16).
ix 2nd Lt Herbert Grimwood had left to join the Brigade Headquarters on 26.11.15.
x It seems that at this date, officers on the Western Front in France were not aware of the true events in Mesopotamia. When Turkey entered the war on the side of Germany, a new front was opened in Mesopotamia in the Ottoman Empire. An early engagement was the siege, from December 1915 to April 1916, of the Allied garrison at Kut Al Amara, 100 miles south of Baghdad, which was commanded by Maj. Gen. Sir Charles Townshend. Despite efforts to relieve the town, the besieged British and Indian troops finally surrendered. Captured soldiers were brutally treated on their forced march to a POW camp at Aleppo. By contrast, Townshend’s luxurious surroundings on an island on the Sea of Marmara was regarded in London as notorious. Sir Percival Lake, who replaced the sick Sir John Nixon as CinC, British forces, was immediately ordered to break the Siege at Kut. After two failed attempts, he was summoned to London to testify before the newly established Mesopotamia Commission which was investigating the military setbacks in the region.
xi 2nd Lts Joseph Nanson and Henry Rodham Cook.
xii Sgt Herbert Hadfield.
xiii Pte Henry Dooley. ‘Paradise’ was slang for latrine.
xiv Capt. Gordon Ramsbottom, OC, C Coy, was on leave.
xv ‘I have managed to borrow various novels in different quarters & with a bit of their aid have spent a time in complete idleness. It is lovely spring weather. From the little window in the slanting roof of the loft where I sleep I can look down on the valley of the [Somme], a wonderful confusion of greens & pinks & browns, all the trees rushing out in the last few days of sunshine’ (Tawney, 5.5.16).
xvi The Stokes trench mortar was a 3-inch, smooth bore, muzzle-loading weapon designed for high angles of fire.
xvii ‘The Battalion, which comes out of the trenches tomorrow, will have been in for 10 days, and I have had a complete rest and feel much stronger. I have done nothing but sitting still & read, except for some long talks with Bland and Lloyd. The latter, by the way, has been wounded, at least it counts as a wound, though it was the merest scratch on his leg and hardly drew blood, caused by a small piece of canister. He has not gone to bed and can walk quite well … Lloyd, like me, is fed up with the war and the army. Bland, to me, maintains an heroic equanimity, which makes me feel a miserable grumbler, but Lloyd tells me he is a creature of mood & and on occasion is as bored as we are. I don’t think Lloyd altogether likes him … But he, Bland – is a good soul’ (Tawney, 7.5.16).
xviii After a period during which all leave had been stopped because of enemy submarine action in the English Channel, Gomersall wrote, ‘Leave has started again, but I cannot say for how long, as it may be stopped at any moment. Another thing from my point of view is that all leave to Manchester and District is stopped, owing to an outbreak of small-pox’ (5.5.16).
xix Pte James Fortune.
xx Pte John Albert Clarke.
xxi 1st Bn, South Staffordshire Regt.
xxii ‘I have not been in the trenches for nearly a month, and the battalion, which came out last night, will not be in again for a week. Moreover when we came in, though of course accidents do occur, the danger is not great. My company has not a single man dead, and only 5 or 6 slight wounds, during a period of nearly 4 months that we have been in & out of the trenches. So you see – on a cold view – the danger is not great. Don’t be misled by casualty lists. I have read Victory again. The power of Conrad is a perpetual amazement. He has the gift of creating an enchanted world in which emotions & thoughts seem to revolve within a vast and mysterious yet harmless universe, and in which whispers of encouragement and despair seem to come from inanimate things. I have lent him to our Qu
arter-Master Sgt [Garside]. He is in private life a Manchester cotton broker, a keen and extremely acute businessman, and with humanity, which endears him to me in the rather arid relationships of our little world. But the army discourages reflection, and he may find Conrad’s sombre imagination too great a strain. You would be amused to hear men here talk of the war. How shocked our patriots would be. “Never again” is the usual sentiment – and I believe most of them mean it. The few who read the journalists’ account of K[itchener]’s army – “with the glint of battle in their eyes” – as one put it – explode with laughter. Their feelings don’t make any difference to their conduct here, but I think and hope they may provide a rude shock for militant politicians, when all is over’ (Tawney, 9.5.16).
xxiii Ernest W. Hamilton, The First Seven Divisions, being an Account of the Fighting from Mons to Ypres (Hurst Blackett, 1916).
xxiv The East Kent Regiment. This battle was part of the campaign for the ‘race to the sea’. During this battle the BEF successfully held the line in its sector against repeated German assaults.
Chapter 10: ‘The flickering, angry light of a burning village’
i 2nd Lt Edmund Alger Street joined the battalion on 19.2.16. 2nd Lt Joshua Hain Cansino did so on 19.4.16.
ii While on leave, Tawney and Jeanette had visited Maude. During 1916, Tawney’s wife Jeanette had been unwell and, with his absence, their relationship was strained, but when he had returned to France, May must have heard via Maude some happier news and compared him to Benedick, Shakespeare’s mischievous knave in Much Ado About Nothing.
iii ‘We wish a thousand times a day that the peevish folk who grouse and quarrel and wash dirty linen across the water could be flung into the front line and just behind it for a week, and see what war really is, what it means to the nation whose soil it is fought on, how marvellously they bear themselves, with what quiet optimism and cheerful patience; if they could but see a battalion returning to billets – and such billets – after 4 days struggle with slush and cold – singing, by God, singing; if they could see the enormous machinery working in such ways that every man in and out of the trenches gets bread and butter and jam and hot tea and hot bacon every morning of his life, if they could see the equanimity with which the normal risks are faced, the jest when a shell drops at your feet and fails to burst, the quip at the perpetual bullet which snaps near the entrance to every officer’s dug-out day and night, and the genial profanity of everybody, oh! I would love to put the whole damned lot of them in the line and push ’em over the parapet, and have done with ’em’ (Bland, 13.3.16).
iv An accurate account of the Siege of Kut had presumably now reached May.
v Hooks, possibly slang for ‘hangers on’ (to power). Lt Col. William Wilding Norman of 21 Manchesters; Lt Col. F. C. Longbourne, of 2nd Queen’s Royal West Surreys; Lt Col. Paul W. Whetham of 22nd Manchesters; Capt. J. P. Duke; Maj. Robert John Morris of 1st South Staffordshires.
vi Harris was also nicknamed ‘Bottom’ (see fn 30.3.16).
vii ‘More excitement yesterday, I’m sorry to say. As a result I lost another NCO (a Corporal of mine and also 5 men) … They sent a huge number of rifle grenades over, and I had some very exciting experiences at times. I was 10 yards from one man who was wounded, and my servant had two very near escapes, being behind a traverse only a yard away. We are having a very unfortunate time, and my Platoon has caught it more than any other Platoon in the Battalion, as out of 62 men I have lost 13 including 8 NCOs’ (Gomersall, 19.5.16).
viii The Alhambra Theatre on Leicester Square (on the site now occupied by the Odeon Cinema).
ix Certain cabman’s shelters were, in fact, notorious for selling liquor after hours.
x Almost all of the military hospitals at Rouen remained operational throughout the war. They included eight general, five stationary, one British Red Cross, one labour hospital and two convalescent depots.
xi 2nd Lt George Frederick Wilson.
xii Cpl William Gee.
xiii 6th Bn, Royal Berkshire Regt.
xiv The 20th Deccan Horse of the British India Army participated in the last cavalry charge of the war at High Wood.
xv Lt Edward Randall Chetham-Strode; Capt. Thomas Pownall Brocklehurst.
xvi The Battle of Festubert, in the Pas de Calais, took place in May 1915. By its end, one kilometre of territory had been gained with 16,000 casualties on both sides. The divisional generals included Maj. Gen. Sir Hubert de la Poer Gough of 7th Div, within which served the 2nd Queen’s.
xvii Devised in 1912 by Capt. McClintock of the Bengal, Bombay and Madras Sappers and Miners of the British Indian Army, the ‘Bangalore torpedo’ was a series of pipes screwed together to form a longer pipe, at one end of which lay the explosive charge. This extended barrel was then inserted through a hole in the parapet before firing. Originally designed to clear booby-traps and mines, it was very inaccurate, and so was usually used to clear barbed wire defences before an attack.
xviii ‘Merriman is on his way to a cushy job. His name has gone forward to [the] 4th Army Judge Advocate. I hope he will get it because he will fit the part so wonderfully well – “Lord Paramount of Court Martial”’ (Bland, 4.6.16).
xix Verdun is some 150 miles south-east of the Somme region.
xx Brig. Gen. Sir John Randle Minshull-Ford had been appointed CO 91st Bde, 1916. (One of the forenames he gave his daughter was Mametz.)
xxi Maj. Charles Allfrey.
xxii This is a raid on Bulgar Point, an enemy listening post, at 11 p.m., with Lt Eric Oldham and forty other ranks, with cover from a unit led by 2nd Lt Joshua Cansino. Rehearsals at a facsimile of the German trench had taken place in fields south of Bronfay Farm.
xxiii Gunfire, often sweeping, directed along the length of a target.
xxiv The raiding party of Lts Eric Oldham and Edmund Street and forty other ranks assembled at Minden Post, where the men were split into five sections and directed to various points, while the covering party, led by Lt Joshua Cansino and twenty men spread out in no-man’s land to prevent flanking attacks. A preliminary bombardment of about forty minutes was laid down by artillery, but when the raiding party reached the enemy wire it was found to be insufficiently destroyed. In spite of this, a point of entry was made and five enemy dug-outs bombed with about fifteen Germans killed. Four prisoners of the 2nd Silesian Regt were taken, but only two survived the journey back after the others had been shot when offering resistance. The despatch was in error: it was Lt (not Sgt) Vivian Burchill who was killed. 2nd Lt Street and Lt Cansino also died.
xxv Sgt J. Bradley.
xxvi Pte Allen Dransfield.
xxvii ‘It’s extraordinary. All the original A Coy officers are gone, and I alone am left. Yes, at one blow we have lost 4 officers, three killed and Oldham wounded. Street, Burchill and Cansino are dead. Oldham, Street and Cansino with 60 NCOs and men raided the German trenches opposite on Friday last night. They had been practising the show for three weeks and all was arranged, every man to his task, perfect in every detail. As a show it was a success. They did considerable damage, secured two prisoners and dealt destruction to a great many more. The only hitch was the enemy wire, which had not been cut by the Artillery preparation. Street, as last to leave the Bosche trench, ran greatest risks, and got fast in the wire. Burchill went across to help him and received a fatal stomach wound, and Cansino did likewise and, so far as we know, was killed in attempting to save Street. The latter two have not been recovered. Oldham is all right, with a “blighty” in the shoulder. 6 men are missing. The Officer losses are appallingly heavy, but the task attempted was magnificently accomplished. We mourn our three beyond speech’ (Bland, 14.6.16).
xxviii May copied the full text of this order into his diary. The CO later said that Cansino ‘died in the act of performing a splendid deed in the face of almost certain death’. Lt Eric Oldham was wounded, as were twenty-two other ranks and six missing. Oldham was awarded the Military Cross and Sgt Frederick Kewley the Distingu
ished Conduct Medal. Oldham was also later awarded the Military Medal, as were Ptes Allen Dransfield and H. Edward Wolstencroft.
Chapter 11: ‘The greatest battle in the world is on the eve of breaking’
i Capt. Dr James Campbell Greenlees.
ii Captured on 20.5.16.
iii This is a joke, suggesting that five rounds in a clip is all they had in reserve.
iv The Battle of Jutland was fought off the coast of Denmark between 31.5.16 and 1.6.16. It was the largest naval battle of the war, with a full-scale clash of battleships. Both sides claimed victory, but for the Allies it resulted in an effective blockade of the German ports, which could only be breached by submarines.
v Lord Herbert Kitchener was killed when HMS Hampshire, the armoured cruiser taking him to negotiations in Russia, was sunk by a German mine on 5.6.1916.
vi Following this raid, with such loss of life, the 7th Division staff tried to shift blame from the inability of the artillery to destroy the German fortifications and the Corps Commander tried to identify an ‘R.S.’ trench as the main cause of the problems. The air recce did not show an enemy trench, but in the report a staff officer identified the trench as ‘Reserve Supply’. The soldiers who survived might have, on their return, described it as a German Reserve Supply trench.
vii It was unusual for an OC to take leave at the same time as his two majors. This is the second time that May has been given temporary Powers of Command, for disciplinary purposes, with possibly a small addition to his pay.
viii Meaning that May had higher status, though one slang meaning of this word is ‘extortioner’.
ix Maj. Charles Allfrey was court-martialled. During the remainder of June, twelve officers and fifty-three other ranks were added to the battalion’s strength.
x ‘I have just returned after being out working for 10 hours with a 100 men and 50 Royal Engineers making a railway & it has been some job’ (Gomersall, 10.6.16).
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