by Gary Mead
40.Lord Sydenham chaired the Central Appeal Tribunal, which administered conscription. In his later years he subscribed to the idea that there was an international Jewish conspiracy, and espoused fascism – the descent into madness probably completely unrelated to his chairing a royal commission on venereal disease from 1913 to 1916.
41.Hansard, 8 March 1916, vol. 21, cc 304–12.
42.NAWO 32/7452. Recommended by the GOC (General Officer Commanding), 2nd Corps, on 26 September 1914; Elliott did not get the VC.
43.Frank Richards [real name Francis Philip Woodruff], Old Soldiers Never Die (Faber & Faber, 1933), pp. 53–5.
44.Field Punishment Number One: a humiliating and sometimes painful ordeal in which a soldier was fixed to an upright post or gun wheel for two hours a day for a maximum of twenty-one days.
45.‘Mark VII’ [pseudonym of Max Plowman], A Subaltern on the Somme in 1916 (Dutton, 1928), p. 90.
46.Douglas Haig, War Diaries & Letters, 1914–1918, ed. Gary Sheffield and John Bourne (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), p. 84.
47.NA WO 32/7463. Letter from Kitchener, 26 June 1901.
48.Gary Mead, The Good Soldier (Atlantic Books, 2008), p. 109.
49.In the Battle of Atbara on 8 April 1898, a decisive defeat of the Dervishes in the Second Sudan War, Acting Major Haig had galloped to rescue a fallen Egyptian army soldier from possible capture – the kind of spirited effort that had gained the VC on other occasions. When the subject cropped up in later life, his wife Doris would insist that he should have got the VC for risking his life at Atbara. Haig maintained a dignified silence about the incident. (Mead, op. cit., p. 94.)
50.It was not gazetted until 8 September 1916, the two-month interlude implying some deliberation back at the War Office; www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/29740/supplements/8869.
51.Cather was not the only VC awarded on the first day of the Somme for rescuing wounded. Captain John Leslie Green, of the 1/5 Sherwood Foresters, who attacked near Gommecourt, went to the assistance of Captain Frank Robinson, a fellow Sherwood Foresters officer, who was wounded and entangled in barbed wire. Green was shot in the head and died; Robinson died two days later.
52.London Gazette, 13 September 1918; www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/30901/supplements/10877.
53.The combined British and Dominions forces totalled 8.7 million by November 1918. The approximate chance of gaining a military gallantry decoration – excluding the VC but including the MC, MM and DCM – was thus one in fifty. By the same crude calculation the chance of winning a VC was about one in 13,765.
54.Ponsonby,, op. cit., p. 311.
55.Invented in 1901, the DSC was originally called the Conspicuous Service Cross and was for warrant and junior officers. It was renamed in October 1914 and eligibility then extended to all naval officers below the rank of lieutenant commander.
56.Ponsonby, op. cit., p. 311
57.Ponsonby, Recollections of Three Reigns, op. cit., p. 312.
58.Ibid., pp. 312–3.
59.Ibid. The other ranks who became eligible for the Military Medal did not much like it because it carried no gratuity – unlike the £20 annual gratuity that went with the Distinguished Conduct medal. Little wonder perhaps that the numbers of DCMs handed out slowly fell, while those of the MM rose strongly.
60.Gerald Gliddon, VCs of the Somme: A Biographical Portrait (Gliddon Books, 1991), p. vii.
61.www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/29740/supplements/8871. Immediately prior to McFadzean’s entry in the London Gazette was another, that of Private William Jackson of the Australian Infantry, who also would have been ruled out by Haig’s thumbs-down for the rescue of fallen comrades. Jackson was part of a group returning from a raid when several of the group were injured by shellfire. Jackson got back safely and handed over a prisoner and then returned to retrieve one of the injured. He returned once more, with a sergeant, and his arm was blown off. He returned, got assistance, and then went out once more, looking for two wounded comrades. Jackson may have been rewarded for bravery on more than this occasion. The citation concludes: ‘He set a splendid example of pluck and determination. His work has always been marked by the greatest coolness and bravery.’
62.Illustrated London News, 25 November 1916, p. 621.
63.H. Montgomery Hyde and G. R. Falkiner Nuttall, Air Defence and the Civil Population (Cresset Press, 1937), pp. 44–5.
64.The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire was from the start distributed with indiscriminate haste and in such vast quantities that it was instantly mocked. The first list of names for the new order (24 August 1917) occupied four densely packed small-print pages of the London Gazette (www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/30250/supplements/8791). In the first list, dignitaries such as Edmund Sebag Montefiore (Secretary of the Civilian Internment Camps Committee at the Home Office, created CBE) could be found alongside Lady Sophie Beatrix Mary Scott (Head of Gifts Department Stores, British Red Cross Society, also CBE). E. S. Turner wrote in Dear Old Blighty (Michael Joseph, 1980), p. 223:
While men won medals for working on at the bench with broken thumbs, soldiers with legs and arms blown off were forced to recognise that valour is its own reward. To stay at one’s post in the Ypres Salient was the least that could be expected of a man; to stay at a switchboard during a Zeppelin raid on London merited a decoration.
65.The Medal of the Order of the British Empire was invented at the same time. In 1922 it was split into two: the Medal of the Order of the British Empire for Gallantry, usually known as the Empire Gallantry Medal (EGM); and the Medal of the Order of the British Empire for Meritorious Service, usually called the British Empire Medal. The EGM was awarded for acts of gallantry that failed to reach the standard required for the Albert and Edward Medals. In 1940 it was replaced by the George Cross.
66.NA WO 32/3443. The merchant navy’s case for being eligible for the VC focused on the merchant ship SS Otaki, a ‘Q’ ship, a disguised, heavily armed merchant vessel designed to lure submarines to the surface and then attack them. Lieutenant Archibald Bisset Smith of the Royal Naval Reserve was in command of the Otaki on 10 March 1917 when he sighted a German raider, the Moewe. The Moewe called on Otaki to stop, which Smith refused to do. There then ensued a duel at 2,000 yards, lasting for about twenty minutes. The Otaki scored several hits, but she was no match for the superior firepower of the German vessel and soon was ablaze and sinking. Lieutenant Smith ordered the lifeboats to be lowered but went down with the Otaki when she sank. Smith was not eligible for the VC at the time of his death, although, according to Admiral Everett at the 8 August 1918 meeting,
everybody agreed at the Admiralty that it was a case for the V.C. but at that particular time one hesitated about taking any action in view of what the Germans might do by regarding everybody as combatants and shooting them at sight. However, as you will see by these papers next you, Sir, that situation now is quite clear and the Germans do regard everybody as a foe, however they are dressed or whatever they are doing.
Everett pointed out to Ponsonby that the king had not yet approved the VC for the merchant navy. Ponsonby replied: ‘the King said he approved of all decorations which could be given by the Navy, that is the V.C, the C.B, the D.S.O, in fact all of them being given to the Mercantile Marine. This debate on the merchant navy narrowly avoided a blunder that would have had future consequences: Ponsonby had proposed that the revised warrant should read ‘it is Our will and pleasure that the officers and men of Our mercantile Marine shall during the present war be eligible’ for the VC, but fortunately Everett suggested leaving out ‘“during the present war” because we may have a future one’. Smith’s gallant action took place on 10 March 1917; he was finally gazetted VC more than two years later, on 24 April 1919.
67.The discussion that follows is based on National Archives file WO 32/3443.
68.Everett was subsequently appointed commander-in-chief, China Station, in November 1924, but he suffered a breakdown in April 1925 and was relieved of his command.
70.Melvin Charles Smith, Awarded for Valour (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 138, 160–1.
71.Lord Southborough, The Living Age, 14 October 1922. The two-year-long inquiry cost the grand total of £1,113 17s 1d. The committee’s full report is available in an edition from the Imperial War Museum, 2004.
72.Daily Telegraph, Monday, 28 June 1920.
73.Daily Telegraph, ibid.
74.Probyn’s VC was bought at auction in 2005 by an anonymous bidder for £160,000. Myth has it that Probyn’s long white beard hid the VC on his left breast, but contemporary cinema footage shows this to be untrue.
75.www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/30400/supplements/12329.
CHAPTER 5 Go Home and Sit Still
1.Hew Strachan, The Politics of the British Army (Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 1.
2.Anthony Eden, Another World, 1897–1917 (Allen Lane, 1976), pp. 131–2.
3.Lucy Noakes, Women in the British Army (Routledge, 2006), p. 81. One Englishwoman did officially serve in uniform in a combat role during the 1914–18 war, with a rank equivalent to sergeant major, but in the Serbian, not the British, army. Flora Sandes, who died in 1956, was born in Yorkshire. When the war started she joined a St John Ambulance unit that travelled to Serbia, where she joined up, and was wounded by a grenade in close combat. She received Serbia’s highest military decoration, the Order of the Star of Karaƌorƌe.
4.The Times, 4 May 1891, p. 5.
5.The Times, 15 April 1891, p. 5.
6.The Times, 8 June 1891, p. 9.
7.Queen Victoria had instituted the Royal Red Cross in 1883, the first British military order solely for women. Ethel was also awarded a life pension of £140 by the government, with an additional £1,000 for ‘exceptional services’ – this on top of her regular Bengal civil service pension and compensation for the property she had lost in the destruction of the residency. She later remarried unhappily and died, insolvent, in an American sanatorium, from ‘toxic psychosis’.
8.The Times, 12 June 1891, p. 10.
9.The Times, 29 April 1891, p. 10.
10.As late as 1894 Ethel was still fighting to quash these rumours. In The Graphic on 10 February 1894 she promised a reward for information enabling her to take proceedings against the originators of ‘certain false and slanderous reports’.
11.On 31 March, Grant captured Thobal, about fifteen miles from Manipur, where he dug in. Next day, around 1,000 Manipuri troops attacked Thobal; for the next nine days Grant’s tiny force repulsed repeated attacks. On 9 April he received orders to withdraw towards a British force, then advancing towards Manipur. Twice wounded, Lieutenant Grant joined the large British force which entered Manipur on 26 April and put down the rebellion. All seventy-nine survivors of Grant’s force received the Indian Order of Merit, then the highest possible decoration for native members of the British Indian Army. There is no question that Grant deserved his VC.
12.In Manipur, the anniversary of the execution of Tikendrajit and his general Thangal, 13 August, is celebrated as Patriots’ Day.
13.Ethel Grimwood (1867–1928) published in November 1891 My Three Years in Manipur (Richard Bentley & Son, 1891); it became an immediate bestseller. In its review, The Times (16 November 1891) called it a ‘melancholy tale [which] notwithstanding the heroism incidentally displayed, notably by Mrs Grimwood herself, reflects but little credit on those who were responsible for the policy pursued . . . her husband and the other victims of the disaster were sacrificed to a series of blunders’. A day before the mutiny, Ethel had been in despair over the death of a goat she had been fattening up; cattle were sacred and the Grimwoods grew weary of ducks and other game:
There on the ground lay the goat, breathing his last, and with his departing spirit went all my dreams of legs of mutton, chops and cutlets. I sent to the house for bottles of hot beer and quarts of brandy, and I poured gallons of liquid down the creature’s throat; but all to no purpose, and after giving one last heartrending groan, he expired at my feet. I could have wept. The pains that had been taken with that goat to make it fat and well-favoured . . . we could not help seeing the funny side of the affair, and ended by laughing very heartily over the sad end to my mutton scheme.
14.Noakes, op. cit., p. 62.
15.Leah Leneman, ‘Medical Women in the First World War: Ranking Nowhere’, British Medical Journal, vol. 307, no. 6,919, (18–25 December 1993), pp. 1592–4. Inglis did not sit still but formed the Scottish Women’s Suffrage Societies, which sent all-women medical units to various fronts.
16.Noakes, op. cit., p. 5.
17.Janet S. K. Watson, Fighting Different Wars (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 56.
18.Leneman, op. cit. Churchill wrote: ‘the grant of Commissions to medical Women cannot be entertained nor can they be demobilised with commissioned Rank in order to provide a precedent should any future emergency necessitate their employment.’
19.www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/29535/supplements/3647 and www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/29641/pages/6343.
20.The Times, 28 June 1916.
21.The supplementary warrant granting women eligibility for the MM was not signed by Lloyd George, who was a long-standing supporter of women’s suffrage and took over as Secretary of State for War on Kitchener’s death, but by Andrew Bonar Law, former Conservative prime minister and then serving as Secretary to the Colonies in the coalition government under Asquith, who, although a Liberal, opposed female suffrage.
22.The first five women to receive the MM were Dorothie Feilding, Mabel Mary Tunley, Ethel Hutchinson, Jean Strachan Whyte, Nora Easeby and Beatrice Alice Allsop.
23.Irene Ward, DBE, MP, F.A.N.Y. Invicta (Hutchinson, 1995), p. 69.
24.Since it was created, the George Cross has been awarded 153 times (as of August 2013), often in circumstances that would have merited a VC in the First War. The George Medal has been awarded on more than 2,000 occasions. The GC is replete with its own peculiarities, being awarded to everything from a nation (Malta), female operatives in Special Operations Executive (SOE), a police force (the Royal Ulster Constabulary), and bomb-disposal experts – who, it might justifiably be thought, are ‘in the presence of the enemy’ more directly than most. At one point the GC was even considered for Stalingrad, but the king turned that suggestion down flat – thus avoiding future embarrassment.
25.Robert Rhodes James, biographer of King George VI, asserted that ‘not only were [the GC and GM] the King’s idea, he also designed them himself’ (A Spirit Undaunted, Little, Brown & Co., 1998, p. 216). George VI was in fact as little artistically inclined as his predecessors; the design for both was by Percy Metcalfe.
26.The Times, 24 September 1940.
27.See Debrett’s, www.debretts.com/people/honours/crown-honours-.aspx.
28.The Times, 26 September 1940.
29.Clement Attlee, deputy prime minister, was asked in September 1940 who served on this committee. He replied that it was chaired by the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, Sir Horace Wilson. The other members were the Permanent Heads of the Admiralty, Air Ministry, Colonial Office, Dominions Office, Foreign Office, India Office and War Office, together with the Private Secretary to the King, the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary, the Secretary of the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood, the Naval Secretary to the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Military Secretary to the Secretary of State for War, the Member of the Air Council for Personnel, and the Secretary, Military Department, India Office. The Secretary to the Committee was an Officer of the
Treasury. http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1940/sep/18/war-honours-decorations-and-medals. A. N. Wilson in his Hitler reported a snippet of a 1968 interview of Sir Horace Wilson, then in his 80s, by the journalist Colin Cross. Sir Horace, who had been an appeaser of Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, purportedly said he understood Hitler’s feelings about the Jews and asked Cross: ‘Have you ever met a Jew you liked?’
30.Rhodes James, op. cit., p. 216.
31.In 1949 the QAIMNS became a corps in the British army and was renamed Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps.
32.Obituary in The Independent, 21 October 1993. Her biography, The Will to Live (Cassell, 1970) was written by John Smyth.
33.Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years: Memoirs, 1931–1945 (Frederick Muller, 1957), p. 366.
34.M. R. D. Foot, SOE in France (HMSO, 1966), p. 47.
35.Germany signed the Geneva Conventions in 1929 and ratified them in 1934.
36.Foot, op. cit., p. 47.
37.Noakes, op. cit., pp. 119–20.
38.Noakes, op. cit., p. 131.
39.‘Incessantly during these courses agents had it dinned into them that their task was aggressive, that they must make aggression part of their characters, eat with it, sleep with it, live with it, absorb it into themselves entirely.’ Foot, op. cit., p. 58.
40.How To Be A Spy: The World War II SOE Training Manual, introduction by Denis Rigden (Dundurn Group, Toronto, 2001), p. 2. Available online at http://ironwolf008.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/the-wwii-soe-training-manual-rigden.pdf.
