Secret Warriors
Page 42
3 NA: Cd 5282: The First Report of the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, p. 5.
4 Edgerton, England and the Aeroplane, p. 13.
5 Driver, The Birth of Military Aviation, p. 227.
6 Brabazon, The Brabazon Story, p. 66.
7 Geoffrey de Havilland, Sky Fever, p. 47.
8 Gary Sheffield, The Chief, p. 62; Joubert, The Fated Sky, p. 32.
9 Driver, The Birth of Military Aviation, p. 263.
10 Ibid., p. 71.
11 Winston Churchill, The World Crisis Vol 1, p. 49.
12 See Taylor Downing, Churchill’s War Lab, pp. 25ff for a summary of these changes.
13 Randolph Churchill, Winston S. Churchill Vol II: Young Statesman 1901–1914, p. 694.
14 Reese, The Flying Cowboy, p. 203.
15 Peter Mead, The Eye in the Air, p. 46.
16 Gary Sheffield argues that far from being opposed to the use of aircraft for reconnaissance, Haig was keen on it and his failure in the 1912 exercises was down to the fact that he put too much reliance on his aviators, who failed to spot the ‘Blue’ army approaching. See Sheffield, The Chief, pp. 61–2.
17 Churchill, Winston S. Churchill Vol II: Young Statesman 1901–1914, pp. 690–1.
18 See for instance Driver, The Birth of Military Aviation, pp. 241ff; Edgerton, England and the Aeroplane, pp. 4ff.
4 Observing the War
1 Hew Strachan, The First World War: Vol 1, pp. 104, 137. Strachan also points out that enthusiasm for the war was much stronger in the cities of Europe than in the countryside; see Strachan, The First World War: Vol 1, pp. 142ff.
2 The great exponent of the notion of ‘war by railway timetable’ in August 1914 was A.J.P. Taylor; see Taylor, The First World War, pp. 16ff, War By Timetable: How the First World War Began, pp. 25ff. A more recent account talks of European diplomats and leaders ‘sleep walking to war’ in the summer of 1914; see Christopher Clark, The Sleep Walkers, passim.
3 Holger Afflerbach and David Stevenson (eds), An Improbable War?, pp. 1–17.
4 Norman Macmillan, Sir Sefton Brancker, p. 61.
5 Churchill, Winston S. Churchill Vol II: Young Statesman 1901–1914, p. 697.
6 Baring, Royal Flying Corps Headquarters 1914–1918, pp. 49–50.
7 Joubert de la Ferté, The Fated Sky, pp. 43–4.
8 Terence Finnegan, Shooting the Front, p. 32.
9 Joubert de la Ferté, The Fated Sky, p. 44.
10 Mead, The Eye in the Air, p. 57; Sir Walter Raleigh, The War in the Air Vol 1, p. 329.
11 Brabazon, The Brabazon Story, p. 87.
12 Ibid., pp. 92–3.
13 RS: CMB/36 War Committee of the Royal Society, p. 11; Letter War Office to War Committee, 6 Jan 1915.
14 John Charteris, At G.H.Q., p. 77.
15 Raleigh, War in the Air Vol 1, p. 9.
16 Finnegan, Shooting the Front, p. 45.
17 Driver, The Birth of Military Aviation, pp. 24–44; Edgerton, England and the Aeroplane, pp. 15–16.
18 Pemberton Billing also founded an aircraft design and manufacturing company in Southampton specifically to produce seaplanes for the navy, calling them ‘supermarines’. This company went on in the mid-1930s, long after Pemberton Billing had lost control of it, to design and build the Spitfire.
19 Col. Roy Stanley, World War II Photo Intelligence, p. 26.
20 Roy Conyers Nesbit, Eyes of the RAF, p. 37.
21 For an analysis of the techniques of photo interpretation in the Second World War, many of which had been developed in the First, see Downing, Spies in the Sky, pp. 82–97,112–30.
22 Finnegan, Shooting the Front, p. 75.
23 Denis Winter, The First of the Few, p. 154.
24 Ibid, p. 139; Cecil Lewis, Sagittarius Rising, pp. 169ff.
25 Peter Hart, Bloody April, p. 249.
26 Winter, The First of the Few, p. 153.
27 Finnegan, Shooting the Front, pp. 97–8.
28 A.J.P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945, p. 102.
29 Douglas Haig, War Diaries and Letters 1914–1918, edited by Gary Sheffield and John Bourne, p. 403.
30 Nesbit, Eyes of the RAF, pp. 43–4.
31 H.A. Jones, War in the Air Vol V, p. 228.
5 Room 40
1 David Kahn, The Code Breakers, p. 266.
2 The description of his appearance is by his son in A.W. Ewing, The Man of Room 40 – The Life of Sir Alfred Ewing, p. 178.
3 CAC: MISC 20, The Papers of Walter Horace Bruford: A short account entitled ‘Room 40’.
4 Churchill, The World Crisis Vol I, p. 194.
5 CAC: GBR/0014/DENN/1, The Papers of Alexander Guthrie Denniston: 1/2 A short history of the setting up of Room 40, p. 4.
6 William James, The Eyes of the Navy, p. 18.
7 CAC: MISC 20, The Bruford Papers: A short account entitled ‘Room 40’.
8 Patrick Beesly, Room 40, p. 19.
9 Churchill, The World Crisis Vol I, p. 417.
10 Ibid., p. 419.
11 Ibid., p. 429.
12 Ibid., p. 562.
13 Robert Massie, Castles of Steel, pp. 375ff.
14 CAC: GBR/0014/HALL/3/1–6, The Papers of Admiral Sir William Reginald Hall: Chapter 6 of a draft memoir written by Hall c. 1932.
15 Downing, Churchill’s War Lab, pp. 43ff.
16 CAC: GBR/0014/CLKE/3, The Papers of William Francis Clarke: Draft of an unpublished history of Room 40 written by Clarke in 1948/9.
17 Andrew Gordon, The Rules of the Game, pp. 441ff.
18 Beesly, Room 40, p. 162.
19 CAC: GBR/0014/CLKE/3, The Clarke Papers: Draft of an unpublished history of Room 40 written by Clarke in 1948/9.
6 The Great Game
1 See Christopher Sykes, Wassmuss ‘The German Lawrence’, passim.
2 There are several different versions of this strange story. Some say that it was not in the bags of the vice consul that the code book was discovered but in those of the consul himself, Dr Helmuth Listemann. Another version had Wassmuss giving the code book to a Persian to pass on to Listermann who then betrayed him, while yet another claimed that the mission was not against Persia but against the British in Afghanistan. Whatever actually happened, the code book ended up in the India Office in London where Hall’s representative found it. See Beesly, Room 40, pp. 130–2; Strachan, The First World War: Vol 1, pp. 770–81.
3 Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm pp. 3–4 & 21–28
4 CAC: MISC 20, The Bruford Papers: A short account entitled ‘Room 40’.
5 CAC: GBR/0014/HALL/3/1–6, The Papers of Admiral Sir William Reginald Hall: Chapter 1 of a draft memoir written by Hall c. 1932.
6 James, The Eyes of the Navy, pp. 44–53.
7 Ibid., pp. 112–14.
8 CAC: GBR/0014/HALL/3/1–6, The Hall Papers: Chapter 3 of draft memoir by Hall.
9 James, The Eyes of the Navy, pp. 76–8.
10 CAC: GBR/0014/HALL/3/1–6, The Hall Papers: Chapter 6 of draft memoir by Hall.
11 James, The Eyes of the Navy, p. 136.
12 Beesly, Room 40, p. 206.
13 CAC: GBR/0014/HALL/3/1–6, The Hall Papers: Chapter 6 of draft memoir by Hall.
14 Beesly, Room 40, p. 218.
15 James, The Eyes of the Navy, p. 154.
16 Beesly, Room 40, p. 221.
17 Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram, p. 199; Beesly, Room 40, p. 224.
18 Beesly, Room 40, p. 37.
19 James, The Eyes of the Navy, p. 34.
7 The Gunners’ War
1 William Van der Kloot, ‘Lawrence Bragg’s role in the development of sound ranging in World War One’ in Notes and Records of the Royal Society, Vol. 59 No. 3, September 2005, p. 276.
2 Bertrand Russell, Autobiography Vol 2, p. 15.
3 David Phillips, ‘William Lawrence Bragg’ in Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Vol. 25,1979, p. 93.
4 In the spring of 1916 GHQ moved further west to Montreuil where Haig lived in a chateau about two miles
from the town.
5 Guy Hartcup, The War of Invention, p. 71.
6 The French and the Germans largely described an artillery piece by the diameter of the shell it fired, the calibre, while the British often used the weight of the shell. A German 150mm howitzer fired a shell of about 120 lb. A British 601b shell was fired by a 5in or 127mm calibre gun.
7 Terraine, White Heat, pp. 51–2,68, 79.
8 Strachan, The First World War Vol 1, p. 160.
9 Hartcup, The War of Invention, p. 24.
10 Ibid., p. 24.
11 Max Egremont, Siegfried Sassoon, p. 103.
12 Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, pp. 90–2. In the account of this action by Robert Graves (who was in the same battalion as Sassoon), having occupied the German trench Sassoon is supposed to have pulled out a book of poetry and quietly read it before returning to his own lines: ‘It was a pointless feat; instead of reporting or signalling for reinforcements he sat down in the German trench and began dozing over a book of poems which he had brought with him.’ Robert Graves, Goodbye To All That, p. 262. But there is no mention of the book of poems in Sassoon’s own account. However, Sassoon was reprimanded by Colonel Clifton Stockwell, the battalion commander, that evening for not having reported the capture of the trench so it could have been consolidated.
13 Hew Strachan, ‘Command, Strategy and Tactics 1914–18’ in John Home (éd.), A Companion to World War I, p. 43.
14 See Alan Clark, The Donkeys, although the origin of the phrase is unclear. There was a book published in 1927 by Capt. RA. Thompson with the title Lions Led by Donkeys.
15 Michael Freemantle, Gas! Gas! Quick, Boys!, p. 118; Hartcup, The War of Invention, p. 44.
16 Freemantle, Gas! Gas! Quick, Boys!, p. 31.
17 The Lochnagar Crater near la Boiselle; it is now privately owned and run as a memorial to all those who fell in the Great War.
18 Freemantle, Gas! Gas! Quick, Boys!, p. 14.
19 Williams, A Short History of Twentieth Century Technology, p. 135.
20 Hartcup, The War of Invention, p. 45.
21 RS: CMB/36 Meeting of War Committee, 9 Dec 1915.
22 RS: CMB/36 Letter of Royal Society to universities, 10 Jan 1916; Meeting of War Committee, 30 March 1916.
23 Arthur Marwick, Women at War, p. 57.
24 Strachan, The First World War Vol 1, p. 167.
25 Freemantle, Gas! Gas! Quick, Boys!, pp. 61–3.
26 Sandra Gilbert, ‘Soldier’s Heart: Literary Men, Literary Women and the Great War’ in Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (eds), No Man’s Land, p. 204.
27 Taylor, English History 1914–1945, p. 35.
8 The Yellow-Green Cloud
1 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/dec99–02.asp
2 Robert Foley, German Strategy and the Path to Verdun, pp. 156ff.
3 Simon Jones, World War I Gas Warfare, p. 6.
4 The Times, 29 April 1915.
5 Ben Shephard, A War of Nerves, p. 63.
6 Charteris, At G.H.Q., p. 89.
7 Hartcup, The War of Invention, p. 99.
8 RS: CMB/36 Meeting of War Committee, 15 July 1915.
9 Sheffield, The Chief, p. 127.
10 Jones, World War I Gas Warfare, p. 14.
11 Hartcup, The War of Invention, p. 108.
12 RS: CMB/36 Letter from War Office to RS, 3 July 1915.
13 Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth, p. 395.
14 Freemantle, Gas! Gas! Quick, Boys!, pp. 135–6. Despite the horror of mustard gas, the total number of British deaths from it was relatively low at 1,859 or 1.5 per cent of those infected.
15 Freemantle, Gas! Gas! Quick, Boys!, pp. 43–4.
16 Ibid., pp. 118–21. Some historians argue that these figures are too low and underestimate an even larger number of gas deaths in the Russian army.
17 Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 Germany was not allowed to use or develop poison gas. The 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibited the use of chemical weapons by any power. During the Second World War chemical weapons were not used on the battlefield. However, the Germans did use the chemical Zyklon B to murder millions of innocent civilians in their extermination camps at Auschwitz, Treblinka and elsewhere. Zyklon B came out of work done by Fritz Haber after the war and disguised as pest control. See Jones, World War I Gas Warfare, p. 59.
9 Breaking the Stalemate
1 Liddell Hart, History of the First World War, pp. 254–5.
2 Foley, German Strategy and the Path to Verdun, p. 103.
3 Brigadier-General Sir James E. Edmonds, British Official History of the Great War, Military Operations France and Belgium 1915 Vol 1, p. 51.
4 H.G. Wells, The Land Ironclads’, originally published in the Strand Magazine, December 1903. The short story is available in many editions of the writings of Wells.
5 David Fletcher, The British Tanks, p. 14.
6 Churchill, The World Crisis Vol II, p. 512.
7 Fletcher, The British Tanks, pp. 42–3.
8 Ibid., p. 45.
9 Sheffield, The Chief, p. 189.
10 Liddell Hart, History of the First World War, p. 251.
11 Churchill for instance was very critical and wrote, ‘The immense advantage of novelty and surprise was thus squandered while the number of tanks was small, while their condition was experimental and their crews almost untrained.’ The World Crisis Vol 11, Ch. IV, p. 525. A.J.P. Taylor wrote, The surprise of a really heavy attack by tanks was lost’ The First World War, p. 140.
12 Captain Wilfrid Miles, British Official History of the Great War, Military Operations France and Belgium 1916 Vol 2, p. 367.
13 Bryn Hammond, Cambrai 1917. The subtitle of this book is The Myth of the First Great Tank Battle.
14 Sheffield, The Chief, pp. 272ff; Taylor, English History 1914–1945, p. 102.
15 NA:MUN 5/210/1940.
16 Terraine, White Heat, p. 246.
17 Liddell Hart, History of the First World War, p. 262.
10 The Body
1 Philip Gibbs, Realities of War, p. 304.
2 Mark Harrison, The Medical War, p. 71.
3 Guy Chapman (ed.), Vain Glory, pp. 324–5; R.H. Tawney’s account is of being wounded on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
4 Geoffrey Noon, ‘The Treatment of Casualties in the Great War’ in Paddy Griffith (ed.), British Fighting Methods in the Great War, p. 87.
5 Quoted in Harrison, The Medical War, p. 125.
6 Hartcup, The War of Invention, p. 171.
7 Harrison, The Medical War, p. 23.
8 Charteris, At G.H.Q., p. 129.
9 Harrison, The Medical War, p. 37.
10 RS: CMB/36 Meetings of the Chemical Committee on 26 Nov. and 16 Dec. 1914.
11 Noon, The Treatment of Casualties’ in Griffith (ed.), British Fighting Methods in the Great War, p. 91.
12 Hartcup, The War of Invention, p. 166.
13 Ian Whitehead, Doctors in the Great War, p. 182.
14 Brittain, Testament of Youth, pp. 152,213–14,215.
15 Harrison, The Medical War, p. 96.
16 Ibid., p. 97.
17 Sheffield, The Chief, p. 143; Harrison, The Medical War, pp. 34–5.
18 Harrison, The Medical War, p. 73.
19 Martin Middlebrook, The First Day on the Somme, pp. 246–7.
20 T. Howard Somervell, After Everest, pp. 25–7.
21 Harrison, The Medical War, p. 75.
22 Ibid., p. 90.
23 The short film can be seen online at: www.britishpathe.com/video/amputees-learn-to-use-artificial-limbs/query.
24 Help for Wounded Heroes was the title of a book by H.H. Thomas published in 1920.
25 Harold Gillies and Ralph Millard, The Principles and Art of Plastic Surgery, p. 7.
26 Reginald Pound, Gillies, p. 24.
27 Gillies and Millard, The Principles and Art of Plastic Surgery, pp. 8–9.
28 Ibid., p. 10.
29 Harold Gillies, Plastic Surgery of the F
ace, pp. 24ff.
30 Tonks’s before-and-after drawings can be seen at: http://www.gillies archives.org.uk/Tonks%20pastels/index.html. The association between Tonks and Gillies provides the backdrop to Pat Barker’s novels Life Class (2008) and Toby’s Room (2012).
31 Gillies and Millard, The Principles and Art of Plastic Surgery, p. 31.
32 Pound, Gillies, p. 42.
33 Ibid., p. 44. The sailor was Able Seaman Vicarage from HMS Malaya. See also Gillies, Plastic Surgery of the Face, pp. 356–8; Gillies and Millard, The Principles and Art of Plastic Surgery, pp. 33–4. The last operation on the poor man’s face took place on 6 March 1919.
34 Pound, Gillies, p. 52.
35 In January 1918 there were 12,720 medical practitioners in the armed services for 6 million servicemen and 11,482 for the rest of the population of around 46 million at home, that is approximately 1 per 480 in the military and 1 per 4000 at home; see Noon, ‘The Treatment of Casualties’ in Griffith (ed.), British Fighting Methods in the Great War, p. 89.
36 The precise numbers were: 1,988,669 admissions to hospital as battle casualties, of whom 151,356 died, 584,959 returned to duty and 1,245,535 were evacuated home. See Mitchell and Smith, History of the Great War: Medical Services, p. 110.
37 The Commonwealth War Graves Commission currently lists the number of deaths as 886,939 including the dead from the then colonies of Ireland and Newfoundland. In 1922 the War Office listed a smaller total number of ‘killed in action’, died as prisoners, died of wounds and ‘missing’ as 702,410, including the Royal Navy and the RAF but not including the merchant navy or civilian and military deaths from enemy bombardment or bombing of the UK mainland; see The War Office, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire During the Great War 1914r-1920, London: HMSO, 1922.
11 The Mind
1 Shephard, A War of Nerves, pp. 1,21.
2 C.S. Myers, Shell Shock in France, pp. 13–14.
3 The Lancet, 13 February 1915, pp. 316–20.
4 Fiona Reid, Broken Men, p. 11.
5 Myers, Shell Shock in France, pp. 95–6; Shephard, A War of Nerves, p. 29.
6 Peter Leese, Shell Shock, pp. 38–9.