Mud, Blood and Poppycock: Britain and the Great War (Cassel Military)

by Gordon Corrigan

  Preserved meat and fresh or frozen were alternatives, as were bread and biscuit, and fresh and dried vegetables. Even if the item of lower calorific valued was issued, the daily intake was still 4,111 calories. It was a balanced and healthy diet. Soldiers rarely went hungry except in the most extreme circumstances, such as the chaos of First Ypres or the withdrawal of spring 1918. Soldiers did not complain about lack of food, although they did complain about its monotony. Where possible fresh meat and bread were issued, even in the firing line when a hot meal might be brought up at night, but there were many occasions when the exigencies of the fighting meant that men subsisted perforce on corned beef and biscuits. Nevertheless, while hardly haute cuisine, this was a far better diet than many had been accustomed to at home, where in poorer households meat was eaten but once or twice a week, and it was healthy and filling. The tea issued was enough to provide each man with six pints of army tea a day, and British soldiers have always loved their tea. An item missing from the ration was eggs. There were difficulties in supplying an army of several million men with eggs that would keep fresh long enough to reach the forward lines, but men in billets behind the lines would find eggs on the ration, bought from funds raised by selling swill, and many men bought eggs out of their own pockets.

  In 1915 the meat ration was reduced slightly, without detriment to the calorific value, by issuing less bone. On occasions rabbit was issued as the meat ration, and an Army Rabbit Skin Clearing Committee was duly set up to market the skins, an enterprise which brought £123,000, from six million skins, to the welfare funds. Being appointed Chairman of the Committee for Purchase of Army Camp Refuse can hardly have been greeted with delight, but this organisation was responsible for selling fat and bones to contractors. These in turn extracted the glycerine from the fat, and supplied it to munitions factories where it was turned into propellant for shells. In the year 1917 alone, sufficient glycerine to propel fifteen million eighteen-pounder shells was produced by this means.

  Great efforts were made to provide something special for Christmas dinner, and if a battalion was in the line for Christmas then it was granted an ‘official Christmas’ once it was relieved and in billets. The 1st Battalion King’s Royal Rifle Corps spent 25 December 1915 in billets, and all companies and messes held parties. The war diary reported that all detachments were visited by the commanding officer and adjutant, who by the time they had completed their rounds, had each drunk twelve glasses of port. The war diary for that day is signed by the assistant adjutant!

  It has generally been considered that one indicator of morale and discipline in a unit is its sick rate: that is, the percentage of men reporting sick with ailments due to causes other than enemy action. Before the war it was considered that 0.3 percent daily, or about three men a day in an infantry battalion (750 at peace establishment, but usually below that) was a reasonable sick rate for an army that was in the field, but where there was no epidemic or serious fighting. The rate for 1913 was in fact 0.12 per cent, and the rate after the war, 1920 to 1928, was 0.17 declining to 0.12 per cent, indicating that the army was made of fit, healthy young men. On the Western Front, with total war in full swing, the sick rate for August to December 1914 was 0.26 per cent, declining to 0.24 per cent in 1915 and 0.13 per cent in 1916. It rose slightly to 0.15 per cent in 1917 and 0.16 per cent in 1918, but throughout the war on the Western Front the sick rate was well below acceptable peacetime rates, and not much higher than actual pre-war rates.8 The conclusion must be that not only did the Army Medical Services have preventative measures well established, with the treatment of sickness well managed, but that, saving shot and shell, the Western Front was a remarkably healthy place to be throughout the war.

  While service in the trenches was by no means a sinecure, the welfare of the troops was always a foremost consideration in the mind of commanders. The British army had long taught the maxim of horses first, soldiers second and officers last when it came to comfort and feeding. Tobacco had not acquired the negative cachet that it has now, and most officers and soldiers smoked. In 1914 only one-fifth of the tobacco sold in the UK was in the form of cigarettes, most of the rest being for pipes. By 1918 the proportions had reversed, presumably because cigarettes were easier to issue to soldiers, and were less difficult to light and maintain in operational conditions. Tobacco was widely available and there were frequent issues of free cigarettes and pipe tobacco. Rum was a ration item; that is, there was an entitlement of one modest tot of rum per man per day, provided that the commanding officer considered the weather to be ‘inclement’ – which he usually did, regardless of the temperature. Officers tended to drink whisky rather than rum, and there was no shortage of either, although drunkenness in the trenches was very rare and severely punished if it occurred.

  One very useful provider of welfare was the chaplain, or padre. Each major unit, whether infantry battalion or cavalry regiment, had one; his denomination depended upon the majority religion of the men. In English battalions this was generally Church of England, in Southern Irish regiments Roman Catholic and in Scottish regiments Church of Scotland (Presbyterian). For free-church Christians and Jews, chaplains of their denominations were attached to divisions or corps and acted in a roving capacity. Until the early years of the Napoleonic Wars the British army had paid little attention to the spiritual welfare of its men, largely because it was blindingly obvious that most had little interest in formal religion. This changed during the Peninsular War, when Wellington considered that chaplains of the right calibre could be a steadying influence on his ragamuffin army, and could act as a counter to the spread of Methodism, then regarded as politically dubious. During the Victorian age the growth of the cult of Muscular Christianity increased religious observance in the army, at least on the surface, and by 1914 it was normal for there to be a church parade every Sunday, when the battalion was formed up, inspected and marched to church. In English regiments at least, most regimental or garrison churches were Church of England, so on arrival at the church those not of the established faith were fallen out. Little changes, and this author recalls a massive conversion to various Nonconformist affiliations at Sandhurst in the early 1960s, many officer cadets seeing a return to bed as preferable to sitting through a church service.

  As the basic business of an army is killing people, not usually a pleasant affair and with the risk of being killed oneself, all armies dress up the essential nastiness of their trade with bands, medals, colours, gaudy dress uniforms and appeals to patriotism. If the approval of God can be added, then so much the better. It is difficult to quantify the religious feelings of individual soldiers. Church parades were compulsory, and danger tends to concentrate the mind on human mortality. Most people welcome a visit from the priest on their deathbed, in war or in peace, even if they have not set foot inside a church or said a prayer since they left school. As a generality, the soldiers of the regular army had no great depths of belief and tended to pay lip-service to religion because they had to, while the Territorial Force and men of the New Armies took it more seriously. Many officers were genuine believers, including Field Marshal Haig, and a conviction that God was on your side and willed you to win the war must indeed have been a comfort and a solace to the loneliness of command. Most padres not only officiated at formal religious services but acted as welfare officers too, distributing cigarettes, sweets and cups of tea, while providing the soldier with a sympathetic ear to a problem that he might not want to discuss with a regimental officer. Many were popular with the men, probably because they did not stand on ceremony. As the chaplain was not involved in the day-to-day running of the unit or in the decision-making process, and had no real military responsibility, he could afford a familiarity that the regimental officer could not. Many padres were brave men and stretched their non-combatant role to the limit. In all, 163 chaplains were killed, including the Reverend Theodore Bayley Hardy, VC, DSO, MC, padre of the 8th Lincolns, who died of wounds just three weeks before the end of the war.
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  Hardy was aged fifty-one when war broke out, and was priest-in-charge at the parish of Hutton Roof in the Lake District. He at once volunteered for the Army Chaplains’ Department but was rejected as being too old. He continued to badger the authorities and eventually, in August 1916, he was accepted and posted to France, initially to the 8th Lincolns, later taking on the 8th Somersets as well.9 Hardy’s first decoration was the Distinguished Service Order (DSO), by now being awarded as an acknowledgement of leadership rather than, as earlier, for gallantry on the part of junior officers.10 The chaplain had accompanied a party of men who had gone out into no man’s land to rescue soldiers stuck fast in the mud. He helped with the rescue operation and, despite having a broken arm himself, tended the wounded, under fire the while. Only a few days later further acts of personal bravery in tending wounded men attracted the Military Cross. Between 5 and 27 April 1918, when the Allies were under extreme pressure during the Kaiser’s Offensive, Hardy continually accompanied patrols and raids against German positions, tending wounded men and assisting in extricating those caught by German shelling. These aggregated acts of bravery by Hardy led to the supreme accolade for gallantry: the award of the Victoria Cross. King George V personally pinned the medal to Hardy’s chest, and the occasion is commemorated in a painting by Terence Cuneo, now in the Headquarters Mess of the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department.11 Despite the pleas of his military and religious superiors, and an offer of a post in England from the King himself, Hardy refused to leave the front. His luck ran out and he died of wounds received on the night of 10 October 1918, during the victorious British advance that was to end the war just a month later.

  Precisely because they were clerks in holy orders, whose presence was felt by some to be incongruous, what chaplains did and how they behaved was looked at in a different light from the actions of combatant officers and soldiers. Chaplain Evers, padre of the 9th Loyals, a New Army battalion, was reported on favourably as having helped to carry forward a machine gun, ‘although he did not fire it’.12 As every soldier might be required to do exactly that, and fire it, there was nothing very courageous about it, but it was considered by the men to be good form.

  A quite remarkable man of the cloth was Chaplain Willie Doyle, padre to the 8th Battalion the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, a New Army battalion and part of the 16th (Irish) Division formed from Redmond’s Irish Volunteers. Doyle, a Jesuit, was aged 42 when he became an army chaplain in 1915. Like so many Jesuits, Doyle was a charismatic leader and would probably have been as much at home commanding the battalion as being its spiritual mentor. He was known for being constantly in the firing line, encouraging the men, ministering to the sick and dying, and on many an occasion bringing up ammunition as well as the Host. He was awarded the Military Cross for bravery on the Somme in 1916, and was highly respected and admired by all, whether of his faith or otherwise. He was killed on 17 or 18 August 1917 during the fighting for Zonnebeke as part of the British offensive known as Third Ypres. Under heavy German shelling the battalion had been forced to withdraw from the Frezenberg Ridge and, according to the battalion war diary, on the way back the dead bodies of Father Doyle and Second Lieutenants Green and Marlow were seen in a dugout near the railway line. None of the bodies were ever recovered, or if they were recovered were not identified, and the men’s names are engraved on the Tyne Cot Memorial near Ypres in Belgium. After his death, Father Doyle was the subject of much speculation and rumour. A biography of him, published in 1920 by Professor Alfred O’Rahilly, alleged that Doyle was recommended for the Victoria Cross but that this was turned down because the British would not award their highest gallantry decoration to an Irish nationalist who was a Jesuit to boot.13 The year of publication of Professor O’Rahilly’s book was one when Irish passions were running high. Anti-British sentiment, fanned by the execution of the ringleaders of the ‘rising’ of Easter 1916 and the deployment of the ‘Black and Tans’, or auxiliary constabulary, by the British to keep order, was intense. Professor O’Rahilly may not have been altogether detached in his opinions. In fact, Doyle’s religious affiliations and political views seem unlikely reasons for the withholding of a decoration. Major-General W. B. Hickie, the commander of the 16th (Irish) Division, and the man who would have rejected or supported a citation for gallantry, was himself a Southern Irish Catholic with nationalist sympathies, (he became a senator in the Irish Free State government after retirement from the army), and decorations had already been awarded to all manner of persons not otherwise noted for their love of the British.14 Another theory, which has been advanced by the Revd Nigel Cave, not only a Roman Catholic priest but a respected author and historian of the Great War, is that it was Doyle’s ecclesiastical superiors who blocked the recommendation, on the grounds that nothing could be above and beyond the call of duty for a Catholic priest. This too cannot hold water. As Father O’Donoghe, the present archivist of the Irish Jesuit Provinciate has been kind enough to point out to this author, the church authorities had always regarded the award of decorations as a matter for the military alone; they would not have interfered with any recommendations put forward through the chain of command. In any case, Father Doyle had already been awarded the MC, and gallantry decorations had been awarded to, and accepted by, other Jesuit priests.15

  Although we may never know for sure, it seems that Father Doyle was never recommended for the Victoria Cross; not as any criticism of the man or of his actions, but simply because the criteria for an award were incredibly high. It is unfortunate that Father Doyle’s personal file is missing (or as the Public Record Office engagingly puts it, ‘search frustrated’ – meaning that it cannot be found but is still being looked for). This fact should not encourage conspiracy theorists: among the millions of documents held in the PRO it is hardly remarkable that not all can be found, or that some are irretrievably lost, particularly those gathered in the aftermath of a major war. The war diaries of neither the 8th Royal Dublin Fusiliers, nor 48 Brigade nor the 16th Division make any mention of a recommendation, although this is not conclusive.16 All we can say is that Father Doyle had a considerable influence on all who knew him, and that he would hardly have approved of the manipulation of his memory for the scoring of political points. Whatever the truth about a recommendation or otherwise for the VC, Father Doyle was an outstanding representative of his church and his order.17

  After the war there was much discussion as to whether there had been a religious revival in Britain after 1914, emanating from the trenches. This tended to be the view of the theological establishment. The counterargument was put by those such as Robert Graves, who considered that religion had contributed nothing. Religion is only of use in an army if it enhances morale and thus contributes to operational effectiveness. Looked at in this light, religion certainly helped those who believed. The church supported the official line (as, of course, it had to) and preached that the war was a just cause and worth fighting for. Those who believed drew comfort from the chaplain’s presence, and those who did not at least got the occasional packet of cigarettes. Some New Army battalions formed branches of the Christian Union, and the influence of chaplains was probably greatest in Scottish and Irish battalions, where the church had a stronger hold on civilian society than was the case in England. Conversely, German soldiers had the words Gott mit Uns engraved on their belt buckles.

  As for blood, there was much less of it about than is portrayed. Stories of men wading though blood, rivers running red with blood and the ground being red with blood are, sadly for Hollywood film-makers, just that: stories. Men stop bleeding once they are dead; a little bit of blood goes a long way, as anyone who has ever washed the blood from a small cut will know, and blood turns black fairly quickly once it has been expelled from the body. Men were wounded in the front line not only during Allied or German offensives, but in the steady daily attrition of shelling, sniping, trench raids or patrols in no man’s land. When they were wounded the Royal Army Medical Corps came into its own. Each infantry b
attalion and cavalry regiment had one Regimental Medical Officer (RMO), a qualified doctor of medicine, with a team of medical orderlies and stretcher-bearers. When in the line the RMO set up a Regimental Aid Post, or RAP, which was the first port of call for the sick or wounded. The RAP was usually in the reserve line, but was often much closer – somewhere just behind the support line, or, when it was the British who were doing the attacking, in the firing line itself. The function of the RAP was first aid and diagnostic. A lightly wounded man could be treated and returned to his company or squadron, while more serious cases received sufficient attention to keep them alive until they could be evacuated back to the next line of treatment, the Advanced Dressing Station. These were mobile treatment centres, usually two per brigade, set up by the divisional field ambulance unit and far enough back to be out of the line of fire. At the ADS further treatment was given and weapons were removed, after which the man was moved farther back to the Casualty Clearing Station, normally one per division, and thence to a field, base or UK hospital. The rule was that recovery was always from the rear. That is, it was not for the wounded man’s comrades to take him back for treatment – they had their own jobs to do – but for dedicated medical orderlies to come forward and evacuate him. At one stage an instruction was issued that men other than those of the medical staff were not to be recommended for the Victoria Cross for rescuing wounded. The very sound reason for this was that a man who stops to tend a wounded soldier is no longer getting on with what he is supposed to be doing – closing with and killing the enemy. There were occasions when soldiers who took wounded men back for treatment were suspected of using this humanitarian mission as an excuse to avoid combat, and in a few cases this was probably true.