Tommy

by Richard Holmes

  143 K. B. Godsell Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

  144 M. von Posek The German Cavalry in 1914 in Belgium and France (Berlin 1932) p. 14.

  145 Quoted in David Ascoli Mons Star (London 1981) pp. 52–53.

  146 Richard Holmes Riding the Retreat: Mons to the Marne 1914 Revisited (London 1995) pp. 213–18.

  147 Home Diary p. 118.

  148 Lyn Macdonald Somme (London 1983) pp. 137–8.

  149 This analysis draws heavily on David Kenyon’s unpublished work.

  150 Nicholson Behind the Lines p. 218.

  151 Quoted in The Marquess of Anglesey A History of the British Cavalry 1816–1919, Vol 8: The Western Front (Barnsley 1997) pp. 131–7.

  152 Quoted in Cusack and Herbert Scarlet Fever pp. 73–4.

  153 Quoted in Anglesey History of the British Cavalry VIII p. 263.

  154 Nicholson Behind the Lines p. 215.

  155 Bickersteth (ed.) Bickersteth Diaries pp. 280, 289.

  156 Quoted in Anglesey History of the British Cavalry VIII p. 260

  157 For a well-researched rendition of this tragic tale see Roy F. Ramsbottom, Marching as to War (Tarporley, Cheshire, 2000). Also killed was Captain Philip Egerton, whose brother Rowland had been killed as a subaltern in the Royal Welch Fusiliers at First Ypres. They were the sons of Sir Philip Grey-Egerton and his American-born wife, Mae. She had earlier been courted by the novelist Anthony Hope, and is probably the model for the beautiful Princess Flavia in The Prisoner of Zenda. With Philip’s death there was no heir to the baronetcy, and the Egertons’ ancestral home, Oulton Park in Cheshire, burned down in February 1926.

  158 Harry Easton Papers, Liddle Collection, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

  159 Richard van Emden (ed.) Tickled to Death to Go (Staplehurst 1996) p. 52.

  160 R. G. Garrod Papers, Liddle Collection, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

  161 Van Emden (ed.) Tickled to Death p. 126.

  162 Anglesey History of the British Cavalry VIII p. 18.

  163 Edmonds Military Operations 1914 I p. 353.

  164 Glubb Into Battle p. 48.

  165 Fisher Requiem for Will (privately printed 2002) p. 66.

  166 No serious student of the war should be without Peter Chasseaud Topography of Armageddon: A British Trench Map Atlas of the First World War (London 1991). My own account of the growth of military survey on the Western Front is a highly abbreviated precis of the author’s introduction.

  167 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 34.

  168 Martin Poor Bloody Infantry p. 145.

  169 I am indebted to Dr Steve Badsey for this information.

  170 Captain Robert V. Dolby A Regimental Surgeon in War and Prison (Edinburgh 1917) p. 111.

  171 Alexander Barrie War Underground (Staplehurst 2000) p. 26.

  172 Ashurst My Bit p. 99.

  173 Ogle Fateful Battle Line p. 46.

  174 Dunham The Long Carry p. 17.

  175 Quoted in Ian Passingham Pillars of Fire: The Battle of Messines Ridge June 1917 (Stroud, Gloucs., 1998) pp. 63–4.

  176 Parker Into Battle p. 74.

  177 Adams Nothing of Importance p. 222.

  178 Adams Nothing of Importance pp. 218–19.

  179 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 98.

  180 Hawkings From Ypres p. 67.

  181 Dunn The War p. 193.

  182 Dunn The War pp. 209–17; Richards Old Soldiers pp. 168–70.

  183 Barrie War Underground p. 218.

  184 The best modern research now identifies twenty-four mines. Nineteen were fired, and of the remainder two survived the war. One exploded during a thunderstorm in July 1955. De-mining work recently carried out on the Western Front by the Durand Group suggests that the detonators and fuses have long since lost their efficacy, but the ammonal will still explode, though perhaps with only one-third of its former vigour.

  185 Philip Gibbs.

  186 Statistics p. 185.

  187 H. B. Owens Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  188 Dolby Regimental Surgeon p. 5.

  189 Chapman Passionate Prodigality p. 211.

  190 Dunham The Long Carry p. 185.

  191 David Rorie A Medico‘s Luck in the War (Aberdeen 1929) p. 82.

  192 Quoted in Joanna Bourke An Intimate History of Killing (Cambridge 1999) p. 263.

  193 Dolden Cannon Fodder p. 29.

  194 Burgoyne Diaries p. 61.

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

  196 Gladden Ypres 1917 p. 72.

  197 Dunham The Long Carry p. 13.

  198 Stormont Gibbs From the Somme to the Armistice (London 1986) p. 66.

  199 Bullock Papers. And it would be wrong not to praise the courage of German stretcher-bearers who worked so well for their captors: in April 1917 Julian Bickersteth took charge of a party of 200, and wrote appreciatively that they ‘worked well’.

  200 French Gone for a Soldier pp. 85–6.

  201 Parker Into Battle p. 31.

  202 Harold Dearden Medicine and Duty (London 1928) p. 190.

  203 Blacker Have You Forgotten pp. 129–30.

  204 Osburn Unwilling Passenger pp. 134–5.

  205 Rogerson Last of the Ebb p. 74.

  206 Helm Papers, Light Infantry Office (Yorkshire).

  207 Dunham Long Carry p. 140.

  208 M. W. Littlewood Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  209 Bickersteth (ed.) Bickersteth Diaries pp. 106–7, 111.

  210 Hawkings From Ypres p. 99.

  211 Rorie Medico’s Luck p. 7.

  212 Dolby Regimental Surgeon p. 18.

  213 A.J. Arnold Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  214 Martin Poor Bloody Infantry p. 163.

  215 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 192.

  216 Ogle Fateful Battle Line p. 63.

  217 Bullock Papers.

  218 May Tilton The Grey Battalion (Sydney 1934) pp. 203, 185, 263.

  219 Mellersh Schoolboy Into War pp. 95–6.

  220 Spicer Letters from France p. 75.

  221 Ogle Fateful Battle Line p. 61.

  222 Bullock Papers.

  223 Much of this reflects the excellent article by Geoffrey Noon, ‘The Treatment of Casualties in the Great War’ in Griffith British Fighting Methods.

  224 Sir W. G. Macpherson Medical Services: General History Vol I (London 1921) p. 201.

  225 G. O. Chambers Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  226 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 122.

  227 Carr Ploughshares p. 54.

  228 Peter Leese Shell Shock (London 2002) p. 176.

  Heart and Soul

  1 Jones In Parenthesis p. 201.

  2 Manning Her Privates We p. 147.

  3 Quoted in Lyn Macdonald They Called it Passchendaele (London 1978) p. 74.

  4 Hiscock Bells of Hell p. 86.

  5 Baynes and Maclean Tale of Two Captains p. 5.

  6 Dunham The Long Carry p. 198.

  7 Fussell The Ordeal p. 43.

  8 Fussell The Ordeal p. 100.

  9 Graham Private in the Guards p. 78.

  10 Barbusse Le Feu pp. 23–4. Author’s translation.

  11 Chant Papers.

  12 Rogerson Twelve Days p. 107.

  13 Chapman Passionate Prodigality p. 45.

  14 Jones In Parenthesis p. 219.

  15 Richards Old Soldiers p. 12.

  16 John Brophy and Eric Partridge The Long Trail: What the British Soldier Sang and Said in the Great War of 1914–18 (London 1965) pp. 85–6.

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

  18 Brophy and Partridge Long Trail p. 208.

  19 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 29.

  20 A company quartermaster sergeant in the infantry, with his three stripes topped by a crown, held the rank of colour sergeant but the appointment of CQMS. His rank equated to that of staff sergeant elsewhere
.

  21 Dunn The War p. 427.

  22 J. Gibbons Roll on the Next War (London 1935) p. 32.

  23 Dolby Regimental Surgeon p. 206.

  24 Coppard With a Machine Gun p. 52.

  25 Hodges Men of 18 p. 108.

  26 Dudley Ward Welsh Guards p. 24.

  27 Bickersteth (ed.) Bickersteth Diaries p. 175.

  28 Dudley Ward Welsh Guards p. 393.

  29 T. H. Davies Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  30 Alan Wilkinson The Church of England and the First World War (London 1978) p. 7.

  31 Quoted in Wilkinson Church of England p. 149.

  32 Bickersteth (ed.) Bickersteth Diaries pp. 193–4.

  33 Wilkinson Church of England p. 5.

  34 Bickersteth (ed.) Bickersteth Diaries p. 138.

  35 Quoted in Wilkinson Church of England p. 44.

  36 Graham Private in the Guards p. 253–5.

  37 Richards Old Soldiers.

  38 Martin Poor Bloody Infantry p. 18.

  39 Dolden Cannon Fodder p. 12.

  40 Montague Disenchantment (London 1922) p. 80.

  41 Siegfried Sassoon Memoirs of a Fascinating Man (London 1971) p. 247.

  42 Quoted in Wilkinson Church of England p. 39.

  43 Louden Chaplains in Conflict p. 27.

  44 Statistics p. 190.

  45 Louden Chaplains caption to illustration, page unnumbered.

  46 Quoted in Wilkinson Church of England p. 127.

  47 Bickersteth (ed.) Bickersteth Diaries p. 67.

  48 H. C. Jackson Pastor on the Nile (London 1960) p. 161.

  49 Michael Moynihan With God on Our Side (London 1983) pp. 15–16.

  50 Quoted in Louden Chaplains p. 60.

  51 Bickersteth (ed.) Bickersteth Diaries p. 138.

  52 Quoted in Wilkinson Churchp. 43.

  53 Jonathan Horne (ed.) The Best of Good Fellows: The Diaries and Memoirs of the Rev Charles Edmund Doudeney (London 1995) p. 137.

  54 T. H. Davies Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  55 Hanbury Sparrow Land-Locked Lake p. 160.

  56 T. H. Davies Papers.

  57 Canon F. H. Drinkwater Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  58 Bickersteth (ed.) Bickersteth Diaries p. 153.

  59 Bickersteth (ed.) Bickersteth Diaries p. 257.

  60 Graves Goodbye p. 158.

  61 Chapman Passionate Prodigality p. 117.

  62 Bickersteth (ed.) Bickersteth Diaries p. 181.

  63 French Gone for a Soldier pp. 80–81.

  64 Drinkwater Papers.

  65 Crozier The Men I Killed pp. 76–7.

  66 Quoted in Wilkinson Church of England p. 140.

  67 Dunn The War p. 556.

  68 Reverend Pat Mc Cormick My Diary of the Great War to Nov 1916, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  69 Reverend John Sellors Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  70 Quoted in Louden Chaplains p. 49.

  71 Quoted in Louden Chaplains p. 49.

  72 G. A. Studdert Kennedy The Unutterable Beauty (Oxford 1983) p. 11.

  73 Louden Chaplains in Conflict (London 1996) p. 51.

  74 Feilding War Letters pp. 136, 138.

  75 Blacker Have You Forgotten Yet? p. 114.

  76 Moynihan God on Our Side p. 160.

  77 Horne (ed.) The Best of Good Fellows p. 185.

  78 Reith Wearing Spurs p. 158.

  79 Douie Weary Road p. 47.

  80 Nicholson Behind the Lines pp. 155–6.

  81 Graves Goodbye p. 157.

  82 Gordon Unreturning Army p. 81.

  83 A. J. Arnold papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  84 Mc Cormick Diary, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  85 George Taylor Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

  86 R. G. Ashford Papers, Liddle Collection, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

  87 L. A. Doust Papers, Liddle Collection, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

  88 Quoted in Moynihan God on Our Side p. 7.

  89 Bickersteth (ed.) Bickersteth Diaries p. 105.

  90 Groom Poor Bloody Infantry p. 122.

  91 Ashford Papers.

  92 Talbot Kelly Subaltern’s Odyssey p. 45.

  93 Blacker Have You Forgotten? pp. 158–64.

  94 Doiue Weary Road p. 153.

  95 Groom Poor Bloody Infantry p. 118.

  96 Hodges Men of ’18 p. 84.

  97 Campbell Cannon’s Mouth p. 44.

  98 Rogerson Twelve Days p. 88.

  99 Vaughan Some Desperate Glory p. 107.

  100 Dunn The War p. 183.

  101 Graves Goodbye p. 157.

  102 Quoted in J. G. Fuller Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies 1914–18 (London 1990) p. 27.

  103 Gibbs Realities of War p. 57.

  104 Quoted in Moynihan Armageddon p. 42.

  105 Edward Samuel Underhill A Year on the Western Front (London 1988) pp. 6–7.

  106 Quoted in Fuller Troop Morale p. 128.

  107 Montague Disenchantment p. 101.

  108 Mottram Spanish Farm.

  109 Reith Wearing Spurs p. 205.

  110 Martin Poor Bloody Infantry pp. 136–7.

  111 Mellersh Schoolboy into War pp. 100–01.

  112 Hiscock Bells of Hell p. 31.

  113 Sydney Giffard Guns, Kites and Horses (London 2003) p. 221.

  114 Graham Private in the Guards p. 341.

  115 Tony Ashworth Trench Warfare: The Live and Let Live System (London 1980) p. 154.

  116 Carrington, Soldier From the Wars p. 98.

  117 Montague Disenchantment p. 40.

  118 Gale Call to Arms pp. 29–30.

  119 Montague Disenchantment p. 40.

  120 Siegfried Sassoon Collected Poems (London 1947).

  121 H. Carpenter J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography (London 1978) p. 89.

  122 Quoted in G. D. Sheffield Leadership in the Trenches (London 2000) p. 181.

  123 Quoted in Liddle Passchendaele in Perspective p. 360.

  124 Montague Disenchantment pp. 33, 59.

  125 Frederic Coleman With the Cavalry in 1914 (London 1916) p. 122.

  126 French Gone for a Soldier pp. 68–9.

  127 Montague Disenchantment p. 108.

  128 Graham Private in the Guards p. 328.

  129 Jones In Parenthesis p. 204.

  130 Rogerson Twelve Days p. 124.

  131 Congreve Armageddon Road P. 57.

  132 Graves Goodbye p. 157.

  133 Hanbury Sparrow Land-Locked Lake pp. 222, 212.

  134 Non-commissioned personnel in the German army fell into three categories, very much simplified here. There were the men, from the private soldat (with regimental and arm of service variations like grenadier, reiter or kanonier) to the gefreiter, effectively a senior private. Then came the junior NCOs – Unteroffiziere ohne Portepee – Unteroffizier and, in some arms, sergeant. Lastly came the senior NCOs – Unteroffiziere mit Portepee – including vizefeldwebel and feldwebel (vizewachtmeister and Wachtmeister in some arms) to two grades that were effectively officer-substitutes, Offizierstellvertreter and feldwebelleutnant. Potential officers could rank with the junior NCOs as a fahnrich or with the senior NCOs as a portepeefahrich, and had executive authority.

  135 Dunn The War p. 243.

  136 Dunn The War p. 244.

  137 Stormont Gibbs From the Somme to the Armistice (London 1986) p. 69.

  138 Dunn The War p. 353.

  139 Dunn The War p. 214.

  140 Hodges Men of ’18 p. 156.

  141 Rogerson Twelve Days p. 118.

  142 Edmund Blunden Undertones of War (London 1965) p. 108. 133

  143 Sassoon Infantry Officer p. 159.

  144 Behrend Kemmel Hill pp. 96, 89.

  145 Talbot Kelly Subaltern’s Odyssey p. 123.

  146 Gladden Ypres 1917 p. 66.

  147 William Car
r A Time to Leave the Ploughshares (London 1985) pp. 163–4.

  148 Dolby Regimental Surgeon pp. 113–14.

  149 Charles Arnold From Mons to Messines and Beyond (London 1985) p. 24.

  150 Bynes and Maclean Tale of Two Captains p. 106.

  151 Priestley Margin Released p. 130.

  152 Bickersteth (ed.) Bickersteth Diaries p. 267.

  153 Congreve Armageddon Road p. 57.

  154 Underhill A Year p. 56.

  155 Martin Poor Bloody Infantry pp. 117–18.

  156 George Adams Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

  157 Greenwell Infant in Arms p. 21.

  158 Adams Nothing of Importance pp. 31–2.

  159 See Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton Christmas Truce (London 1984).

  160 Griffith Mametz pp. 32, 34.

  161 Chapman Passionate Prodigality p. 66.

  162 Quoted in Ashworth Trench Warfare p. 139.

  163 Harris Billie p. l09. Bull’s eyes, inners and magpies were the rings on the targets used on the rifle range, and during range practice the butt-markers, in the cover of the butts below the targets, used a marker (or, in the case of misses, a flag disrespectfully known as Maggie’s drawers) to signal the result of the shot.

  164 Percy Croney Soldier’s Luck (London 1965) p. 86.

  165 Eberle My Sapper Venture p. 23.

  166 Major General Lord Edward Gleichen The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade (Edinburgh 1917) p. 81.

  167 Dunham Long Carry p. 52.

  168 Burgoyne Diaries p. 76.

  169 Hawkings From Ypres p. 82.

  170 Coppard Machine Gun pp. 86, 90.

  171 Feilding War Letters pp. 156, 159.

  172 Carrington Soldier p. 183.

  173 T. P. Marks The Laughter Goes From Life (London 1977) p. 124.

  174 Junger Storm of Steel pp. 277–8.

  175 Graham Private in the Guards p. 219.

  176 Coppard Machine Gun p. 95.

  177 Chapman Passionate Prodigality pp. 99–100.

  178 Hodges Men of 18 p. 94.

  179 G. and S. Rain Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

  180 Hanbury Sparrow Land-Locked Lake p. 114.

  181 Ward Welsh Guards p. 127.

  182 Arthur Smith Papers.

  183 Stanhope Papers.

  184 Greenwell Infant in Arms p. 119.

  185 Chapman Passionate Prodigality p. 272.

  186 Crozier Brass Hat p. 43.

  187 Richards Old Soldiers p. 254.

  188 Gladden Ypres 1917 p. 63.

  189 Graham Private in the Guards p. 218.

  190 Quoted in Bourke Killing p. 183.

  191 Arthur Hubbard Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.