Secret Warriors
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Sir Grafton Elliot Smith (1871–1937) Anatomist and doctor
Born: Grafton, New South Wales, Australia.
Educ: Sydney Boys High School; University of Sydney; to Cambridge 1896.
1909: appointed Prof of Anatomy at Manchester University; extensively studied the anatomy of the brain believing that humankind originated in Europe and not Africa or Asia; did much work on early magic and religion. 1912: involved in the ‘discovery’ of the Piltdown skull (later established to be a forgery).
1916: worked on shell shock at Maghull Hospital; became friend of Dr William Halse Rivers [q.v.].
Post-war: Prof of Anatomy at University College, London. 1924–7: Pres of the Anatomical Society; carried out much work in Egypt; first to X-ray a mummy; reported the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb (1922). Wrote extensively about human evolution.
FRS 1907. Knighted 1934.
Sir Wilfred Stokes (1860–1927) Civil engineer and inventor of the Stokes mortar
Born: Liverpool, son of school inspector.
Educ: St Francis Xavier’s College, Liverpool; Catholic University College, London.
Pre-war: apprentice with Great Western Railway; bridge designer for Hull and Barnsley Railway; Chairman and Managing Dir of Ransomes & Rapier, engineering company and producer of agricultural machinery, Ipswich.
1915–18: Inventions Branch, Min of Munitions; designed what became known as the Stokes mortar, after modifications a very popular trench weapon.
Knighted 1917.
Sir Ernest Swinton (1868–1951) Engineer, army officer, writer and inventor
Born: Bangalore, India, son of a judge in Indian civil service.
Educ: various schools in England (moved for reasons of economy); Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, commissioned in Royal Engineers 1888.
1890s: military engineer in India and South Africa during Boer War (1899–1902).
1906: instructor at Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. 1910: wrote official history of Russo-Japanese war and became aware of power of modern weaponry. 1913: assistant secretary to the Committee of Imperial Defence.
1914: appointed official war correspondent by Kitchener, known as Eye Witness, and observed stalemate of Western Front. 1915: involved with the development of the tank. 1916: helped train volunteers for the new Tank Corps.
1917: assistant secretary to War Cabinet.
1919: left army and worked in Air Ministry.
1925: elected Prof of Military History, Oxford. 1934–8: Col commandant of Royal Tank Corps. 1940: broadcast on BBC a series of War Commentaries.
Knighted 1923.
Sir Henry Tizard (1885–1959) Scientific administrator
Born: Gillingham, Kent, son of a naval officer.
Educ: Westminster School; Magdalen College, Oxford; Berlin (1908–9).
1909: researcher at Faraday Laboratory of Royal Institution. 1911: tutor in chemistry at Oriel College, Oxford.
1914: joined Royal Garrison Artillery, Portsmouth. 1915–17: experimental officer for RFC at Upavon and then Martlesham Heath, developing bomb-sights, accurately measuring aircraft performance. 1918: scientist at Air Ministry.
Post-war: 1919: briefly returned to Oxford; then worked on petrol content at Shoreham Laboratory. 1920: assistant secretary to Dept of Scientific and Industrial Research. 1927: head of DSIR. 1929: Rector of Imperial College, London. 1933: chair of Aeronautical Research Committee. 1934: Tizard Committee on aerial defence and was closely involved with the development of radar by Robert Watson-Watt [q.v.] and his team; Frederick Lindemann [q.v.] fell out with him badly over this. 1937–8: led Biggin Hill trials to create system for the integration of radar into the operation of RAF Fighter Command.
WW2:1940: dispute with Lindemann reached a peak and Churchill sided with Lindemann; appointed to lead a delegation to share British military secrets with Americans, including the revolutionary cavity magnetron. 1943–7: Pres of Magdalen College, Oxford.
Post-WW2: 1947: returned to Whitehall as chair of defence research policy committee; helped appoint a chief government scientist and argued for recruitment of scientists into government. 1952: retired.
FRS 1926. Knighted 1937. Pres British Association 1948.
Henry Tonks (1862–1937) Anatomist, artist and teacher
Born: Solihull.
Educ: Clifton College, Bristol; Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton.
1886: house surgeon at the London Hospital. 1888: Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons; taught anatomy at the London Hospital.
1892: tutor at Slade School of Fine Art, becoming one of the most renowned art teachers of his generation; greatly influenced by the French impressionists.
1915: served as a medical orderly in France. 1916: Lieutenant in the RAMC; joined Harold Gillies [q.v.] at Aldershot and Sidcup recording pastel drawings of facial reconstruction cases.
1918: official war artist on the Western Front.
1918–30: Professor of Fine Art at the Slade. 1930: retired. 1936: an exhibition of his work held at the Tate Gallery, a rare honour for a living artist.
Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975) Historian
Born: London into a well-known academic and reforming family.
Educ: Winchester College; Balliol College, Oxford (1907–11).
1912: Fellow of Balliol College and historian of ancient Greece and Rome; talented linguist.
1915: joined Wellington House and wrote about Turkish atrocities against Armenians. 1917–18: Foreign Office intelligence dept.
1919: attended Versailles Peace Conference.
Post-war: 1920–4: Koraes Prof of Greek at King’s College, London. 1925–38: Dir of Royal Inst for International Affairs (Chatham House) and editor of Survey of International Affairs, annual survey of key contemporary events; author A Study of History (6 vols, 1934–9), a huge encyclopaedic survey of rise and fall of world civilisations.
1939–46: Dir of foreign research and press, Foreign Office (similar to WW1 role).
Post-WW2: famous in America but severely mauled by historians in Europe for his broad brush-stroke approach to history.
FBA1937.
Charles Urban (1867–1942) Cinema producer and pioneer of factual films
Born: Cincinatti, Ohio, son of Austrian and Prussian immigrants.
Educ: locally.
1889: opened a stationery store in Detroit specialising in new technology like the typewriter and then Edison’s Kinetoscope. 1897: to Britain to sort out Maguire and Baucus (M&B) London office. 1899: started Warwick Trading Company as film distribution company, part of M&B. 1903: left M&B and formed his own film production and distribution company, Charles Urban Trading Company; developed all forms of factual production. 1911: filmed Delhi Durbar in Kinemacolor.
1915: member of Wellington House Cinema Committee; filmed and helped edit Britain Prepared propaganda film. 1916–17: struggled to distribute Britain Prepared and The Battle of the Somme in US.
Post-war: founded Kineto Company in US and tried to develop Kinekrom, new colour system. 1924: business bankrupt. 1929: retired to Britain and lived last years in Brighton.
Sir Robert Watson-Watt (1892–1973) Inventor of radar
Born: Brechin, Forfarshire, Scotland, the son of a carpenter.
Educ: Brechin High School; University College, Dundee.
1912: on graduation appointed assistant lecturer and developed an interest in radio waves.
1915: meteorologist at Royal Aircraft Factory, Farnborough; tried to develop system of using radio waves to predict the approach of thunderstorms.
Post-war: 1923: started using cathode ray oscilloscopes for work on the detection of radio waves. 1926: began to investigate the ionosphere. 1933: superintendent of Radio Research Station, Slough, part of the National Physical Laboratory. 1935: approached by the Tizard [q.v] Committee looking for ways to detect the approach of enemy aircraft, wrote report The Detection of Aircraft by Radio Methods laying down the theoretical basis of radar; his team undertook preliminary work at Orford
Ness.
1936: in charge of research station at Bawdsey Manor, Suffolk, where a practical radar system (the Chain Home system) was developed and built by 1940. Known as the ‘father of radar’.
1940: scientific adviser on telecommunications.
1946: Royal Commission on Awards gave him £52,000 for his work on radar.
Post-WW2: attended many international conferences on radio aids to shipping and civil aviation. Lectured around the world. Spent many years living in Canada. 1966: returned to Scotland.
FRS 1941. Knighted 1942
Chaim Weizmann (1874–1952) Chemist and Zionist
Born: Pinsk, Belorussia, third of fifteen children.
Educ: Gymnasium, Pinsk; Polytechnic, Berlin; University of Fribourg.
1904: invited by William Perkin to come to England to work at Manchester University on synthetic dyes; became successful biochemical researcher; spent much of spare time devoted to Zionist cause of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. 1911: elected Vice-Pres of English Zionist Federation.
1915–18: discovered and managed a fermentation process to produce acetone, an essential ingredient in the manufacture of high explosives; recognised as making vital contribution to Britain’s war effort.
1917: helped persuade British government to issue Balfour Declaration recognising Zionist claims on Palestine on eve of Gen Allenby’s conquest of the region.
1918: part of Zionist Commission to Palestine; began work on establishing a Hebrew University in Jerusalem (inaugurated 1925).
Post-war: 1920: elected Pres of World Zionist Organisation; became full time leader of Zionist movement based in London. 1934: founded Sieff (later Weizmann) Inst of Science in Rehovot, Palestine.
1948: appointed first Pres of the newly declared state of Israel.
Acknowledgements
There are many people to thank for their help in the writing of this book. Prof. Gary Sheffield provided invaluable advice in the early stages. Clive Coultass gave help on naval matters. Kevin Brownlow offered access to his unique papers on the silent cinema. Alan Russell advised on mathematics. Andrew Johnston provided inspiration on the life of an Edwardian. Roger Smither and Sarah Henning offered much information on the early history of the Imperial War Museum. Jane Fish provided help with the films at the Imperial War Museum. I am grateful to many librarians and archivists including those at the National Archives, Kew; the Imperial War Museum, London; the Churchill Archive Centre at Churchill College, Cambridge; the Royal Society Archives, London; the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives at King’s College, London; the Wellcome Institute, London; the Institute of Historical Research and the London Library. It is archivists and librarians who keep the wheels of history rolling and all historians know how much we owe to them.
There is of course an abundance of excellent material on the First World War with a stream of new books coming out in the centenary year. I have drawn upon the work of many scholars who are credited in the endnotes and I am grateful to them all. Where possible I have tried to draw upon the material written soon after the war, in the 1920s and 1930s. In this period there was a publishing boom in books about all aspects of the war as people sought to understand and explain the enormity of what had happened in the war years. Of course, there can be several motives for writing up memoirs and autobiographies or publishing diaries, some not always worthy or benign. But a critical reading of this material written while memories were fresh and scars still deep is I think very helpful in a book like this. I have listed this material as Primary Sources in the Bibliography in that it is material written by those who had taken part or led the events described in the central narrative of the book. I have found these accounts, from soldiers, politicians, aviators, doctors, surgeons, psychiatrists, propagandists and scientists particularly helpful in writing this book. As someone who has spent many years interviewing participants in events, this published material from soon after the war offers the nearest experience to hearing the genuine voices of the Great War, now that sadly there is no one left alive from that conflict.
At Little, Brown I have had the great good fortune to work with a splendid team again. I should very much like to thank Iain Hunt for his help and support on the editorial side, Linda Silverman for tracking down the photographs and Steve Gove for his meticulous work on the manuscript. Once again, Tim Whiting has overseen the whole project and brought great encouragement and clear direction from start to finish.
Anne has helped and advised in so many ways. As always, my final thanks are to her.
Taylor Downing
Notes
Abbreviations
CAC
Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge
IWM
Central Archive, Imperial War Museum, London
IWM ART
Art Department, Imperial War Museum
IWM DOCS
Documents Department, Imperial War Museum
IWM FILM
Film Archive, Imperial War Museum
NA
National Archives, Kew
NAM
National Army Museum, London
RS
The Archives of the Royal Society, London
WELLCOME
The Archive of the Wellcome Institute, London
Prologue
1 Jonathan Winkler, Nexus: Strategic Communications and American Security in World War I, pp. 5–7. In Barbara Tuchman, The Zimmerman Telegram, pp. 10–11, and David Kahn, The Code Breakers, p. 266, it is said that the CS Teleconia destroyed these cables. A study of the GPO records has now revealed that this is incorrect and that it was the CS Alert that did the job.
2 Sir Philip Joubert de la Ferté, The Fated Sky, pp. 30–43; Maurice Baring, Flying Corps Headquarters 1914r-1918, pp. 14–18; Ralph Barker, The Royal Flying Corps in France, pp. 22–7.
3 RS: CMB/36: Minutes of the War Committee of the Royal Society, 12 November 1914.
4 Hew Strachan’s mammoth three-volume global history of the war, The First World War, will do much to correct this obsession with the Western Front by devoting a great deal of its space to the war in the Pacific, Asia, the Middle East, the Balkans and Africa.
5 Patricia Fara, Science, p. 309
6 See for instance the Guardian leader, 4 October 2013, in a debate about the links between GCHQ and the US National Security Agency.
7 J.A. Fleming, ‘Science in the War and After the War’, a public lecture at University College, London, 10 October 1915, reported in Nature, 14 October 1915, p. 184.
1 New Century, New World
1 Examples are Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War 1890–1914; George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England. In economic history Eric Hobsbawm wrote of the ‘long’ nineteenth century from 1789 to 1914 and the ‘short’ twentieth century from 1914 to 1989; see Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes, pp. 3ff.
2 Lord Brabazon, The Brabazon Story, p. 48.
3 Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire, p. 243.
4 Winkler, Nexus, pp. 6ff.
5 Michael Freemantle, Gas! Gas! Quick, Boys!, p. 22.
6 J. Lee Thompson, Northcliffe, p. 206.
7 Trevor Williams, A Short History of Twentieth Century Technology, p. 5.
8 The Neglect of Science, report of proceedings of a conference held in the rooms of the Linnean Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly, 3 May 1916, presided over by Lord Rayleigh. The ‘two cultures debate’ was still raging in the 1960s with the dispute between C.P. Snow and F.R. Leavis.
9 H.G. Wells, Mr Britling Sees It Through, p. 237, cited in Michael Howard, Lessons of War, pp. 78–9.
10 John Terraine, White Heat, p. 11.
2 The Pioneers
1 Brabazon, The Brabazon Story, pp. 58–9. The first ever powered flight in Britain had been by an American, Samuel Cody, six months earlier on 16 October 1908.
2 Ibid., p. 55.
3 Ibid., p. 3.
4 Ibid., p. 40.
5 Alli
ott Verdon Roe, The World of Wings and Things, p. 23.
6 Ibid., pp. 36–7.
7 See Hugh Driver, The Birth of Military Aviation, Appendix I, The “first British flight” controversy’, pp. 275–8.
8 Ibid., p. 40.
9 Brabazon, The Brabazon Story, pp. 60–2.
10 Daily Express, 27 July 1909; Daily Mail, 26 July 1909; H.G. Wells, Of a cross-channel passage’ in the Daily Mail, 27 July 1909.
11 David Edgerton, England and the Aeroplane, pp. 2–3.
12 For instance, in Basil Liddell Hart, History of the First World War, p. 355, and Terraine, White Heat, pp. 30ff.
13 NAM: Manual of Military Ballooning, School of Ballooning, Aldershot, 1896, p. 14.
14 Driver, The Birth of Military Aviation, p. 182.
15 Edward Spiers, Haldane: an Army Reformer, pp. llff.
16 Peter Reese, The Flying Cowboy, pp. 110ff.
17 Driver, The Birth of Military Aviation, p. 192.
18 Thompson, Northcliffe, p. 168.
19 NA: CAB 16/7 quoted in Driver, The Birth of Military Aviation, p. 209.
20 NA: Cd 5282: The First Report of the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, p. 4.
21 The Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1919 changed its name to the Aeronautical Research Committee and later still to the Aeronautical Research Council. Its members continued to advise the British government on aviation policy for much of the century until the body was finally dissolved in the Thatcher defence cuts in 1980.
3 The New Science
1 NA: Cd 5282: The First Report of the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, pp. 5–13.
2 Edgerton, England and the Aeroplane, p. 6.