Tommy

by Richard Holmes

  188 Sidney Rogerson Twelve Days (London 1933) p. 141.

  Brain and Nerves

  1 Gerald Achilles Burgoyne The Burgoyne Diaries (London 1985) p. 51.

  2 Burgoyne Diaries pp. 217–18.

  3 Lancelot Dykes Spicer Letters from France (London 1979) p. 5.

  4 Lord Stanhope Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  5 Frank Crozier The Men I Killed (London 1937). It is instructive to compare its tone with the same author’s rather more positive A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land, published in 1930. Crozier is not always a reliable witness, nor did his literary approach bring him many friends. My copy of Brass Hat has an alternative title scrawled in: A Fat Arse in No Man’s Land.

  6 Eric Hiscock The Bells of Hell go ting-a-ling-a-ling (London 1976) pp. 81–2. The Haig quote is wrong both in substance and in date.

  7 Frank Hawkings From Ypres to Cambrai (London 1974) p. 49.

  8 Roe Accidental Soldier p. 181.

  9 Ernst Parker Into Battle 1914–18 (London 1994) p. 35.

  10 Martin Poor Bloody Infantry pp. 95–6.

  11 John Bickersteth (ed.) The Bickersteth Diaries (London 1995) p. 274.

  12 Jack Diary p. 250.

  13 H. E. L. Mellersh Schoolboy into War (London 1978) p. 16.

  14 Order of battle in Statistics pp. 13–15.

  15 These orders of battle are from the 1916 edition of the 1914 Field Service Pocket Book (HMSO 1916). Variations in unit establishment (crucial documents, for they provided entitlement to promotion, rank and pay) were issued by the Staff Duties (2) branch at the War Office and promulgated through GHQ in France.

  16 In another version we have ‘the old Dun Cow’ catching fire, more probably a reference to an alehouse conflagration than arson in the byre, and a further version becomes more colourful still.

  17 Sir James Edmonds History of the Great War: Military Operations, France and Belgium 1915 (2 vols, London 1992) II pp. 283–4.

  18 Dunn The War p. 440.

  19 Frank Hawkings From Ypres to Cambrai (London 1974) p. 83.

  20 Richards Old Soldiers p. 88.

  21 Gordon Unreturning Army p. 52.

  22 Paddy Griffith (ed.) British Fighting Methods in the Great War (London 1996) p. 6.

  23 Ian Hay (pseud. Ian Hay Beith) The First Hundred Thousand (Edinburgh 1916) p. 68.

  24 Robert Graves Goodbye to All That (London 1969) p. 131.

  25 Graves Goodbye p. 138.

  26 Robert Graves But it Still Goes On (London 1930) pp. 24–5.

  27 Ernest Parker Into Battle (London 1994) p. 13.

  28 Moynihan Armageddon p. 127.

  29 Denis Winter Haig’s Command (London 1992) p. 144.

  30 G. D. Sheffield ‘The Australians at Pozières: Command and Control on the Somme, 1916’ in David French and Brian Holden Reid The British General Staff: Reform Innovations c. 1890–1939 (London 2002).

  31 Peter Simkins ‘Co-Stars or Supporting Cast? British Divisions in the “Hundred Days", 1918’ in Griffith British Fighting Methods p. 57.

  32 Griffith British Fighting Methods p. 59.

  33 See John Lee ‘The SHLM Project: Assessing the performance of British Divisions’ in Griffith British Fighting Methods. In the Second World War the same patch was believed to stand for Highway Decorators.

  34 Graves Goodbye p. 152.

  35 Edmonds Military Operations 1914 I pp. 7–8.

  36 Paddy Griffith Battle Tactics of the Western Front (London 1994) pp. 152–3.

  37 Feilding War Letters pp. 15–17.

  38 ‘Revised Army Form B 213 (G[eneral] R[outine] 0[rder] 1175)’ in SS 309 Extracts from General Routine Orders Part I Adjutant General’s Department, 1 January 1917.

  39 ‘Nominal Rolls, Returns etc (GRO 147)’ in SS 309.

  40 Nicholson Behind the Lines pp. 215–16.

  41 Nicholson Behind the Lines p. 166.

  42 Quoted in Prior and Wilson Command p. 269.

  43 Quoted in Prior and Wilson Command p. 272.

  44 Shelford Bidwell and Dominick Graham Fire Power (London 1982) p. 100.

  45 The chief of the general staff began as head of the General Staff Branch and as such first among equals in a headquarters. By 1916, however, the organisational table in the Field Service Pocket Book shows him as separate and superior.

  46 Edward Spears Liaison 1914 (London 1999) p. 72.

  47 Stanhope Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  48 See the entry in J. M. Bourne Who’s Who in World War One (London 2001) pp. 167–8. The quote from Haig’s dispatch is in Haig Despatches p. 350. But we should not read too much into the latter: from personal correspondence after the war it is evident that Haig and Lawrence were chalk and cheese.

  49 Statistics p. 65.

  50 Ian Malcolm Brown British Logistics on the Western Front 1914–1918 (London 1998) p. 238.

  51 Reginald Tompson Diary, private collection.

  52 Hutton Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  53 Terraine Haig p. 170. In the event Churchill commanded a Royal Scots Fusilier battalion.

  54 Quoted in Moyne Staff Officer p. 144.

  55 Penney Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  56 Quoted in Peter Charlton Australians on the Somme: Pozières 1916 (North Ryde 1986) p. 171.

  57 Quoted in Simkins New Armies p. 216.

  58 Simkins New Armies p. 217.

  59 Graves Goodbye p. 125. Some caution is required, as is so often the case with Gravesian anecdotes, but the story has the ring of truth.

  60 Osburn Unwilling Passenger p. 117. See also Edmonds 1914 I pp. 277–8.

  61 Bourne Who’s Who pp. 49–50.

  62 John Charteris GHQ (London 1931) p. 209.

  63 Army Book 129, 3/3rd Queen’s, Queen’s Royal Surrey Regiment Museum, Clandon Park.

  64 See King’s Regulations and Orders for the Army 1912 Revised 1914, especially paras 758–882.

  65 Statistics p. 554.

  66 Graves Goodbye p. 142.

  67 Graves Goodbye p. 172.

  68 Dunn The War pp. 413–14, 497, 502.

  69 Dunn The War pp. 236–42.

  70 Crozier Brass Hat pp. 206–7.

  71 Stanhope Papers.

  72 Crozier Brass Hat pp. 144–5.

  73 F. P. Crozier Impressions and Reflections (London 1930) p. 202.

  74 Gumming Brigadier p. 96.

  75 John Terraine The Smoke and the Fire: Myths and Anti-Myths of War (London 1992) p. 162.

  76 Andrew Simpson The Operational Role of British Corps Command on the Western Front 1914–18 (PhD Thesis, University College London 1999).

  77 Terraine Smoke p. 163.

  78 Terraine Smoke p. 162.

  79 Adrian Carton de Wiart Happy Odyssey (London 1950) p. 90.

  80 Feilding War Letters p. 313.

  81 Siegfried Sassoon Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (London 1977) p. 75.

  82 Quoted in Davies and Maddocks Bloody Red Tabs (London 1995) p. 1.

  83 Tompson Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  84 Quoted in Davies and Maddocks Bloody Red Tabs p. 6.

  85 Quoted in Davies and Maddocks Bloody Red Tabs p. 93.

  86 Charteris GHQ p. 118.

  87 Quoted in Holmes Little Field Marshal p. 284.

  88 Quoted in Holmes Little Field Marshal p. 333.

  89 Terraine Haig p. 427.

  90 Bourne Who’s Who pp. 238-9.

  91 Griffith Mametz pp. 206, 216, 221.

  92 Quoted in Malcolm Brown The Imperial War Museum Book of the Western Front (London 1993) pp. 136–44.

  93 Nigel Cave Vimy Ridge (Pen and Sword Battleground Europe Series, London 1996) p. 75.

  94 Nicholson Behind the Lines p. 161.

  95 Quoted in Prior and Wilson Command p. 354.

  96 Feilding War Letters p. 226.

  97 Stanhope Papers.

  98 Quoted in Holmes Little Field Marshal p. 136.

  99
Details of armbands, etc., derived from Extracts from General Routine Orders … Part II, Quartermaster General’s Branch, SS 340, 1 January

  100 A. F. Smith Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  101 Lord Hankey The Supreme Command 1914–19 (2 vols, London 1961) I p. 167.

  102 A senior general staff officer worked directly for a commander at any level of command: he was styled general staff officer grade I (GSO1) at division, brigadier general, general staff (BGGS) at corps and major general, general staff (MGGS) at army. General staff officers (GSOs) were graded 1 (lieutenant colonels), 2 (majors) and 3 (captains), and abbreviated as GSO1 and so on. Other staff officers took their titles from the tripartite division of staff functions. Thus a division had, in addition to its three GSOs on the general staff branch, an assistant adjutant and quartermaster general (AA&QMG), a deputy assistant adjutant and quartermaster general (DAA&QMG), both with responsibilities for A and Q branches, and a deputy assistant quartermaster general (DAQMG) responsible for Q matters alone.

  103 Martin van Creveld Command in War (London 1985) p. 166.

  104 Nicholson Behind the Lines p. 65.

  105 Nicholson Behind the Lines p. 70.

  106 Nicholson Behind the Lines pp. 77–8. 100

  107 Cumming Brigadier p. 92.

  108 Nicholson Behind the Lines pp. 107–8.

  109 Nicholson Behind the Lines p. 121.

  110 Brigadier General Sir Archibald Home The Diary of a World War I Cavalry Officer (London 1985) pp. 103–5.

  111 See Ben Fenton ‘Shamed general’s battle of the Somme’ in Daily Telegraph, 16 August 1998.

  112 Home Diary p. 113.

  113 Stanhope Papers.

  114 Nicholson Behind the Lines p. 151.

  115 Nicholson Behind the Lines P. 179.

  116 Stanhope Papers.

  117 Bond (ed.) Staff Officer p. 162.

  118 Simpson Corps p. 224.

  119 Charles Carrington Soldier From the War Returning (London 1965) p. 104.

  120 Carrington Soldier p. 195.

  121 Crozier Brass Hat p. 132.

  122 Bond (ed.) Staff Officer p. 198.

  123 Bond (ed.) Staff Officer p. 131.

  124 Bond (ed.) Staff Officer p. 165.

  125 Cumming Brigadier p. 97.

  126 Cumming Brigadier p. 116.

  127 Cumming Brigadier p. 163.

  128 Bullock Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  129 Crozier Brass Hat p. 182.

  130 Priestley Margin Released p. 135.

  131 Mottram Personal Record pp. 103–4.

  132 Osburn Unwilling Passenger p. 255.

  133 Jack Diary p. 248.

  134 Charteris GHQ p. 185.

  135 Philip Gibbs The Realities of War (London 1920) p. 208.

  136 Charteris GHQ pp. 241, 243, 259.

  137 Tompson Papers.

  138 A. F. Smith Papers.

  139 Stanhope Papers.

  140 Davies Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  Earth and Wire

  1 Field Service Regulations 1909: Part I pp. 152–3.

  2 Infantry Training 1914 (HMSO 1914) p. 12.

  3 ’My Experiences in World War 1 by W. G. Birley’, private collection.

  4 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 42.

  5 Edward Underhill A Year on the Western Front (London 1988) p. 18.

  6 Captain John Aidan Liddell Diary, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  7 George Coppard With a Machine Gun to Cambrai (London 1988) p. 57.

  8 Coppard Machine Gun p. 61.

  9 Burgoyne Diaries p. 48.

  10 Hawkings From Ypres p. 79.

  11 Hawkings From Ypres p. 79.

  12 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 91.

  13 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 90.

  14 Jones In Parenthesis p. 198.

  15 Jones In Parenthesis p. 198.

  16 Captain B.C. Lake Knowledge for War (London 1915) p. 50.

  17 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 97.

  18 Charles Douie The Weary Road (London 1929) p. 170.

  19 Captain Henry Ogle The Fateful Battle Line (London 1993) pp. 53–4.

  20 Hawkings From Ypres p. 89.

  21 Sidney Rogerson Last of the Ebb (London 1937) p. 17.

  22 Frank Dunham The Long Carry (London 1970) p. 38.

  23 Ruth Elwin Harris Billie: The Neville Letters, 1914–16 (London 199O p. 58.

  24 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 159.

  25 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 165.

  26 Williamson Wet Flanders Plain p. 138.

  27 Dunham Long Carry p. 35.

  28 Feilding War Letters p. 206.

  29 Burgoyne Diaries p. 161.

  30 Reith Wearing Spurs (London 1966) p. 64.

  31 Harris Billie pp. 63–4.

  32 Underhill A Year p. 51.

  33 Ernest Shephard A Sergeant Major’s War (Ramsbury 1987) pp. 88–9.

  34 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 91.

  35 Underhill A Year p. 106.

  36 Gordon Unreturning Army p. 90.

  37 Jones In Parenthesis p. 207.

  38 Major G. O. Chambers Field Message Book ‘Battle of Arras, Battle of Cambrai’, Chambers Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  39 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 90.

  40 Tyndale-Biscoe Gunner Subaltern p. 83.

  41 Bryan Latham A Territorial Soldier’s War (Aldershot 1967) p. 49.

  42 Quoted in Dunn The War pp. 209, 213.

  43 Quoted in Daphne Jones (ed.) Bullets and Bandsmen: The story of a Bandsman on the Western Front, written by his daughter (Salisbury 1992) pp. 29–30.

  44 Reith Wearing Spurs p. 199.

  45 Jones In Parenthesis p. 203.

  46 Quoted in Holmes Little Field Marshal p. 304.

  47 Ogle Fateful Battle Line pp. 103–4.

  48 John Glubb Into Battle: A Soldier’s Diary of the Great War (London 1978) p. 54

  49 Jack Diary p. 84.

  50 Hiscock Bells of Hell p. 30.

  51 Quoted in I. M. Parsons (ed.) Men Who March Away (London 1969) p. 60.

  52 Crozier Brass Hat pp. 136–7.

  53 Crozier Brass Hat p. 125.

  54 Neville Billie p. 109.

  55 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 100.

  56 Ogle Fateful Battle Line p. 42.

  57 Hawkings Ypres to Cambrai p. 82.

  58 Underhill A Year p. 56.

  59 Gordon Unreturning Army p. 42.

  60 Reginald Farrer The Void of War (London 1918) p. 113.

  61 Campbell Cannon’s Mouth pp. 218–19.

  62 Carrington Soldier p. 87.

  63 Statistics pp. 64–5. Combat arms constituted: headquarters, cavalry, artillery, engineers, Royal Flying Corps, infantry, Army Cyclist Corps, Machine Gun Corps and Tank Corps. Non-combatant services constituted the Army Service Corps, Royal Army Medical Corps, Army Veterinary Corps, Army Pay Corps, Labour Corps and miscellaneous units.

  64 Shephard Sergeant Major’s War p. 80.

  65 Carrington Soldier from the Wars p. 87.

  66 Rogerson Twelve Days pp. xv, 5.

  67 Jones In Parenthesis p. 200.

  68 Rogerson Twelve Days p. 58.

  69 Feilding War Letters p. 285.

  70 Liddell Diary, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  71 Arthur Smith Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  72 Carrington Soldier p. 87.

  73 Rogerson Twelve Days p. 9.

  74 Rogerson Twelve Days p. 26.

  75 Jones In Parenthesis p. 202.

  76 Blacker Have You Forgotten p. 237.

  77 Lucy Devil p. 242.

  78 Dunn The War p. 252.

  79 Carrington Soldier from the Wars p. 127.

  80 Hawkings From Ypres p. 22.

  81 Carton de Wiart Happy Odyssey p. 91.

  82 Hiscock Bells of Hell p. 27.

  83 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 87.

  84 Dolden Cannon Fodder p. 110
.

  85 Talbot Kelly Subaltern’s Odyssey p. 108.

  86 Rogerson Twelve Days p. 49.

  87 Rogerson Twelve Days p. 52.

  88 Richards Old Soldiers pp. 90–91.

  89 Dunn The War p. 253.

  90 Rogerson Twelve Days p. 58.

  91 Rogerson Twelve Days p. 82.

  92 Siegfried Sassoon Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (London 1977) p. 87.

  93 Rogerson Twelve Days p. 96.

  94 Baynes and Maclean Tale of Two Captains p. 119.

  95 Alan Hanbury Sparrow The Land-Locked Lake (London 1932) p. 257.

  96 Blacker Have You Forgotten p. 237.

  97 Graves Goodbye p. 86.

  98 Bernard Adams Nothing of Importance (London 1988) pp. 107–9.

  99 Percy Jones ‘The Story of the Nine Day Trench’, unpublished typescript, P. H. Jones Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  100 Richards Old Soldiers p. 77.

  101 Williamson Wet Flanders Plain p. 169.

  102 Graves Goodbye p. 98.

  103 Roland Miller.

  104 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 56.

  105 Ogle Fateful Battle Line p. 96.

  106 Dunham Long Carry p. 38. Private Bloomfield was tried for negligence. He was acquitted, and returned to his battalion in time to be crippled for life in the next attack.

  107 Livermore Long ’Un p. 52.

  108 Burgoyne Diaries p. 14. Private Benjamin West’s temporary grave was not found after the war, and he is commemorated on Panel 21 of the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing at Ypres.

  109 Burgoyne Diaries p. 118.

  110 Dolden Cannon Fodder pp. 30, 34.

  111 R. G. Ashford Papers.

  112 Quoted in Holmes Firing Line p. 201.

  113 Dunham Long Carry p. 21.

  114 Terry Norman (ed.) Armageddon Road: A VC’s Diary 1914–18 (London 1982) p. 47.

  115 Daphne Jones (ed.) Bullets and Bandsmen (Salisbury 1992) p. 72. The Canadian Medical Officer Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae was inspired to write the poem ‘In Flanders Fields’ by his experiences in the field hospital at Essex Farm. The concrete bunkers which housed it have been sensitively restored.

  116 Dunham Long Carry p. 30.

  117 Williamson Wet Flanders Plain p. 134.

  118 T. H. Davies Papers.

  119 Gordon Unreturning Army p. 71.

  120 Graves Goodbye p. 114.

  121 Harry Ogle Fateful Battle Line p. 56.

  122 Cathryn Corns and John Hughes-Wilson Blindfold and Alone (London 2001) p. 135.

  123 Blacker Have You Forgotten p. 237.

  124 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 109.