Letters from the Front: From the First World War to the Present Day

by Roberts, Andrew

  The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) wrote a vast number of letters home during the conflict, with some estimates reaching up to 9 million letters and postcards sent per week during 1917. The officers who had to censor their men’s mail quickly perfected the ability to, in the words of one of them, ‘Glance over the page spotting censorable matter without reading line by line.’ Another officer, who dismissed his troops’ letters as ‘mostly rot’, nevertheless understood how important writing them was for morale, concluding, ‘It certainly makes them happy, and that is the great thing.’ In his excellent book Six Weeks: The Short and Gallant Life of the British Officer in the First World War, the historian John Lewis-Stempel points out how officers’ censorship of the soldiers’ letters ‘gave a secret, God-like look into a man’s soul; out of the resulting glimpse came a better understanding of the men.’ He quotes Second Lieutenant Robert McConnell writing on a boat bound for Gallipoli: ‘I have just censored the letters of my men. By Jove! If you could read some of those letters, they would do you good. The tenderness of those great, rough men is wonderful. I love them all for it.’

  Certainly there is little in these letters of the fury against the officers, and especially the senior field commanders such as General Sir Douglas Haig, that was to be directed against them in the 1920s and 1930s, especially after Haig’s Western Front strategy was criticized in print by both the former prime minister David Lloyd George and by Winston Churchill. Indeed, of one 1916 enemy offensive, a soldier is quoted writing about ‘the Hun’, saying, ‘Haig seems to have found the way to deal with him.’

  These pages also confirm something I’ve long suspected, which is that the Second World War army poets were just as good as those of the First World War. There are also some unsung philosophers here, too; look at the thoughts on life and death of Captain Charles McKerrow, for example, who writes of how ‘death becomes a very unimportant incident’. I think you will feel, as I did, a keen hope that the author of each letter survived the war, and a pang when, as happens all too often, one learn that he did not.

  ‘It is unbearable to describe our feelings’, writes Lieutenant Woodroffe before the Great War had been going a month. ‘I will give a full account later.’ To write any such thing in 1914 was tempting Providence, and, sure enough, he never did give that full account, not living to see the year’s end, let alone the war’s. But with the compelling honesty of men who face death, he and his comrades have left us, in this volume, an inspiring set of living documents. Since history is nothing more than the collective experience of millions of ordinary people, these letters, written directly from the soul, help us to understand what made those ordinary people extraordinary.

  Andrew Roberts

  April 2012

  www.andrew-roberts.net

  THE FIRST WORLD WAR

  The immediate casus belli for the First World War was Germany’s aggressive support for Austria-Hungary, which wanted to punish Serbia for its alleged complicity in the assassination of the Emperor of Austria’s nephew, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. However, the long-term causes predate that, and can be found in Germany’s lust for European hegemony. Fighting between Austria-Hungary and Serbia broke out on 29 July and Tsarist Russia’s mobilization in support of Serbia on 30 July led to an ultimatum from Germany on the 31st and a declaration of war on 1 August. Fighting in the West broke out on the 4th when Imperial Germany invaded Belgium in accordance with its General Staff’s Schlieffen Plan, under the terms of which France was to be invaded via its northern neighbour. On the same day, Great Britain declared war against Germany for violating Belgian neutrality, which she had guaranteed when Belgium was created in 1839, and also because she had a de facto alliance with France, known as the Entente Cordiale. After a general European peace lasting over four decades, the Great Powers were all at war within four days of Germany’s intentionally provocative ultimatum to Russia.

  Between 7 and 17 August 1914, a British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was despatched to the Continent, but it could not arrive in time to prevent the opening stages of the Schlieffen Plan from being put into operation, as German forces marched through Belgium and occupied Brussels on 20 August. France’s subsequent attempt to invade Germany in ‘the battle of the Frontiers’ fizzled out by the 25th and over the following days the retreating BEF fought a delaying action at Le Cateau. Yet nothing could prevent the Germans crossing the River Marne to the east of Paris on 3 September. The original Schlieffen Plan, conceived in 1905, which called for a powerful right flanking movement through Belgium and northern France in order to capture Paris, now seemed on the verge of success. Crucially, however, subsequent German chiefs of staff had watered down the plan, weakening the right flank, and so between 15 September and 24 November the French and British armies managed to stabilize the situation in front of the French capital.

  Due to the advances in firepower – with the advent of the machine gun and heavy artillery – the fairly evenly-matched size of the armies facing each other and logistical problems in moving the soldiers rapidly, the autumn and early winter of 1914 saw a relatively static line of trenches spread across north-west Europe from the North Sea through Belgium and France all the way to the Swiss border. These trenches were to form the front lines for the next three and a half years. On the Eastern Front, the German General Paul von Hindenburg defeated the Russian Army at the battle of Tannenberg in late August 1914, inflicting 125,000 casualties for the loss of 15,000, but there, too, the front later stabilized. On 28 October Turkey joined the Central Powers, bombarding Russia’s Black Sea ports; the sides were drawn.

  On 19 January 1915 the first Zeppelin raids were unleashed against Britain, first against East Anglian ports, and then from 1 June against London, culminating in the largest raid of the war on 13 October which caused over 200 casualties. Another sinister new invention of war, poison gas, was also introduced by the Germans in Poland in January 1915. On 4 February 1915 Germany declared Britain to be under blockade from its U-boat submarine fleet, a stranglehold the Royal Navy struggled to break throughout the war.

  On 10 March 1915, British and Indian forces managed to break through the German lines and capture the northern French village of Neuve Chapelle, but as was to happen all too often over the coming years, they were unable to exploit their temporary victory. Such was the military technology, especially with regard to machine guns and heavy artillery, that the defensive proved superior to offensive, time after time. With poison gas being used by the Germans on the Western Front against the British-held Ypres salient after 22 May, the war entered a truly hellish new phase, from which it did not fully emerge until the summer of 1918.

  In an attempt to turn the flank of the Axis powers, and hopefully knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war, thus relieving pressure on Russia’s southern front and allow her to concentrate on Austria and Germany, the Allies attacked in the Dardanelles. British and French forces landed at Cape Helles and Australian and New Zealand (ANZAC) forces landed at Anzac Cove on the Turkish-held Gallipoli peninsula on 25 April 1915. Both the difficult terrain and stout Turkish resistance led by Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal Atatürk) denied the Allies the quick victory they needed, and instead led to a long and costly campaign, which only ended with evacuation in December 1915 and January 1916. (One of the letters in this volume refers to the ‘Morning Hate’; the nickname given to the three-quarters of an hour of shelling that the Turks always began at 7.45am.)

  On 7 May 1915 a U-boat torpedoed the British liner Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland, drowning 1,198 passengers, 114 of whom were American. Widely considered a war crime, it turned American public opinion decisively against Germany and is widely considered to be a factor in America’s entry into the war two years later.

  On 25 September British forces used gas for the first time, at the battle of Loos, but, as so often on the Western Front, the small gains in territory were outweighed by the large loss of men. This was particularly seen in the battle of Verd
un, which lasted from 21 February to 18 December 1916. There, the attritional tactics used between France and Germany led to the loss of 400,000 men on each side.

  In late May 1916 the German High Seas Fleet left its harbours to contest maritime superiority with the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet in the North Sea. Although Admiral Sir John Jellicoe lost more ships than the Germans at the battle of Jutland on 1 June, he avoided defeat, which was all that was needed to ensure that the Germans remained in their harbours for the rest of the war. The Royal Navy was thereafter able to impose a gruelling blockade on Germany, many of whose citizens succumbed to malnourishment and starvation.

  Britain and France were to undergo an even greater slaughter than they had experienced at Verdun during the battle of the Somme, fought between 1 July and 18 November 1916. The BEF suffered no fewer than 60,000 casualties (including 20,000 killed) on the first day of the Somme Offensive alone, as troops attacked across shell-pitted landscapes of death and destruction known as no-man’s-land, against machine guns protected by barbed wire. The battle, which only succeeded in taking 5 miles of territory, resulted in 620,000 British and French and 450,000 German casualties.

  An attempt to break the incredibly costly stalemate was made by Britain on 15 September 1916 with the introduction of the tank to the battlefield, which was a considerable advance in technology. However, the tank was not the breakthrough weapon that the Allies had hoped it might be. A genuine breakthrough was achieved on 6 April 1917, however, when, enraged by the sinking of American shipping and by the publication of the Zimmermann telegram,* the United States entered the war against Germany.

  At the battle of Arras in April 1917, the British Third Army managed to advance a grand total of only 4 miles, yet on the Western Front this constituted a significant victory. That same month some of the French Army mutinied, destroying its ability to mount further offensives. Instead it was the BEF that mounted the Third Battle of Ypres (also known as Passchendaele) between 31 July and 6 November, another hugely costly operation in which only 8 miles were taken. During the latter stages of the battle, thousands of miles to the east, the Bolshevik Revolution broke out in Russia, ensuring that after the new Communist regime took over and made peace with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk in December 1917, the whole weight of the German Army would fall upon the Allies on the Western Front.

  Sure enough, between 21 March and late May 1918, the Germans launched their massive Spring Offensives, winning the Second Battle of the Somme and advancing 40 miles, allowing them to shell Paris itself. Yet it turned out to be Germany’s final ‘big push’ of the war, for on 18 July the Allies began their counter-offensive, which left the German Army reeling. Between 8 and 11 August the concentrated forces of the British Commonwealth, including Australian and Canadian divisions as well as 400 British tanks, broke the German lines in front of Amiens, advancing more than 12 miles and capturing 30,000 prisoners. General Ludendorff referred to 8 August as ‘the black day of the German Army’.

  With 1.2 million fresh American troops plunging into the battle of the Meuse-Argonne in September, Lille falling to the British in October and the Allies cutting the German supply lines in early November, it was only a matter of time before Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated and an armistice was announced. This finally came about at 11am on 11 November 1918.

  In the first year of the war much of the fighting was conducted by the ‘Old Contemptibles’ of the British Regular Army. This included Second Lieutenant Neville Leslie Woodroffe, an Anglo-Boer War veteran who joined the Irish Guards in 1913 and was sent to France with the 1st Battalion in 1914. He survived the retreat from Mons and the battle of Landrecies, details of which are described in the letters below.

  3 September 1914

  My dear mother,

  I got your letter and father’s the day before yesterday. They had obviously been round several places before they arrived where we were as I have had letters dated later than [them] which I received before…

  Mons was an awful time and we had a terrible week of retirement as fast as we could go covering sometimes 30 miles per day, starting while it was dark and not stopping until it was again dark. Our men stuck it extremely well and we were complimented on our marching by the general. We had very little sleep as the time we ought to have slept was devoted to making trenches and barricades.

  We have finished this continual trekking for a while and have up till now been in different engagements [and] we have lost considerably. In the first wood fight we had after Landrecies which I described to you in my last letter, but can with safety now mention the name, we lost nine officers. Landrecies was a terrible massacre! We lost few but the Germans many…

  The day after Landrecies our brigade acted rearguard for the Division and our battalion was last of our brigade… We were however badly attacked and had to hold on till the main force had got away. We were all caught in the wood and bullets whizzed as close as anything to one through the trees. The Coldstreams and us were together but the wood was so thick that I fear many shot one’s own men…

  I can’t explain to you every engagement as it is unbearable to describe our feelings and experiences which one has been through. Some are awful and when I return I shall have a great deal to tell you. We have been on the move incessantly and attacking and reforming and advancing for the whole time.

  The 1st Brigade of Guards have lost heavily in regards officers, and besides that the very best of fellows many of whom ranked as one’s very best friends… Lockwood was shot yesterday whilst he was standing up telling some wounded Germans to convey in their language to another party of Germans that if they held the white flag up they were to throw down their arms. John Mannen, who you know by name, shot himself, when he saw that the alternative was to surrender to superior numbers of Germans… The other day a large force of Germans showed the white flag and our men went out to take them prisoner, when they immediately fired on us and killed several.

  The Germans are very fond of wood fighting and detail snipers to get up trees where they are not seen and pick off the officers, others lie on the ground and if caught pretend they are dead…

  Love to all,

  Neville

  October 18th

  My dear Vera,

  Many thanks for your parcel and letter I received about ten days ago. The former was much appreciated by Borgin who was duly given all which he was entitled to, though it needed great self-control on my part! I expect you have heard of some of my doings, experiences and adventures from letters to mother. Really this war is terrible, quite a picnic South Africa is considered compared to this. I am afraid it will not be over by Christmas, as once thought at the commencement of the campaign, though the actual German prisoner one meets, both officer, non-commissioned and private all seem really very much against the war and at the same time most heartily fed up with it. They say they get very little food and [fine] men five francs for a tin of bully and a franc for one cigarette! The day before yesterday we completed our five weeks of entrenchment along the line, the position which we held ever since the last fight we had in a wood which I described before and of which you have probably heard of. We have now, I am glad to say, left and have moved off to —— where I expect we will be engaged in a day or so. Our trenches were taken over by the French. When we handed them over a captain of ours took the French captain and showed him an advance post, which we had cut out at night in front of our trenches and not far from those of our German friends and told him to relieve us with some of his men, so he accordingly got some out from the trenches and our men came in, but before they had got back hardly, the French post was found in the trenches again, [whenever] our fellow told them that they had to remain out there ‘oh no we don’t’ they said! They obviously thought better of it…

  Love from Neville

  His final letter home was brief and simply sent on the back of a postcard. He was killed in action during the First Battle of Ypres, on 6 November 1914, just three days after writing this note.


  Nov 3rd 1914

  I am afraid I have not time to write a letter though I have heaps to tell you. The last two days have been ghastly. The Germans broke through the line. We have lost ten officers in the last two days and yesterday the battalion was less than 200 though I expect some stragglers will turn up. All the officers in my company were lost except myself. All in No 3 Coy and all bar one in No 4. We have had no rest at all. Everyone is very shaken. I do hope we are put in reserve to reform for a few days. I will give a full account later. The whole Brigade has suffered heavily. Thanks for letter…

  Love to all,

  Neville

  Many of the soldiers serving on the front lines on the Western Front were incredibly young, and a number were ‘underage’ when they joined up. One such soldier, George Danzig, volunteered as a private aged just 16 and served in the 2nd Battalion, Leicestershire Regiment, which formed part of the Indian Expeditionary Force in France.