The Shadow of War

by Stewart Binns

  Petrograd

  During the Great War, the Imperial government renamed St Petersburg ‘Petrograd’, meaning ‘Peter’s City’, to remove the German words Sankt and Burg. (In 1924, after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the city was renamed Leningrad; the city became St Petersburg again in 1991, following the end of communist rule.)

  Pol Roger

  Champagne Pol Roger, founded in 1849, is a notable producer of champagne. The brand is still owned and run by the descendants of Pol Roger. Based around the town of Épernay in the Champagne region, Pol Roger was the favourite champagne of Winston Churchill. After Churchill’s death in 1965, Pol Roger placed a black border around the labels of Brut NV shipped to the United Kingdom.

  Pompadour

  A hairstyle named after Madame de Pompadour (1721–1764), mistress of King Louis XV. Although there are numerous variations of the style for both women and men, the basic concept is hair swept upwards from the face and worn high over the forehead (and sometimes upswept around the sides and back as well). After its initial popularity among fashionable women in the eighteenth century, the style was revived as part of the Gibson Girl look in the 1890s and continued to be in vogue until the Great War.

  Primitive Methodists

  Primitive Methodism was a major movement in English Methodism from about 1810 until the Methodist Union in 1932. The Primitive Methodists were a major offshoot of the principal stream of Methodism – the Wesleyan Methodists – founded by a Methodist preacher called Hugh Bourne. ‘Primitive’ was used to clarify their belief that they were the true guardians of the original, or primitive, form of Methodism preached by John Wesley.

  Puttees

  A puttee (also spelled ‘puttie’, adapted from the Hindi patti) is a bandage for covering the lower part of the leg from the ankle to the knee. It consists of a long narrow piece of cloth wound tightly and spirally around the leg, and serving to provide both support and protection. It was worn by both mounted and dismounted soldiers, generally taking the place of the leather or cloth gaiter. The puttee was first adopted as part of the service uniform of foot and mounted soldiers serving in British India during the second half of the nineteenth century. In its original form, the puttee comprised long strips of cloth worn as a tribal legging in the Himalayas. Puttees were in general use by the British Army as part of the khaki service uniform worn during the Great War.

  Race to the Sea

  The race began in late September 1914, after the end of the Battle of the Aisne, the unsuccessful Allied counter-offensive against the German forces (halted during the preceding First Battle of the Marne). The route of the race was largely governed by the north–south railways available to each side – the French through Amiens and the Germans through Lille.

  In a series of attempts to outflank one another, the race involved a number of battles, from the First Battle of the Aisne (13 to 28 September) to the end of November.

  Rittmeister

  Rittmeister is German for ‘riding master’ or ‘cavalry master’, the military rank of a commissioned cavalry officer in the armies of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Scandinavia and some other countries. He was typically in charge of a squadron or troop, and the equivalent of a captain.

  Robert Blatchford and the Clarion

  Robert Blatchford, the son of an actor, was born in Maidstone in 1851. His father died when he was two, and at the age of fourteen he was apprenticed as a brushmaker. He disliked the work and ran away to join the army, reaching the rank of serjeant major before leaving the service in 1878. After trying a variety of different jobs he became a freelance journalist and worked for several newspapers before becoming leader writer for the Sunday Chronicle in Manchester. It was his journalistic experience of working-class life that turned Blatchford into a socialist.

  In 1890, he founded the Manchester Fabian Society. The following year, Blatchford and four fellow members launched a socialist newspaper, the Clarion. Blatchford upset many of his socialist supporters by his nationalistic views on foreign policy; he supported the government during the Boer War and warned against what he regarded as the German menace.

  Royal Army Medical Corps

  The Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) is a specialist corps in the British Army which provides medical services to all British Army personnel and their families in war and in peace. Because it is not a fighting arm (non-combatant), under the Geneva Conventions members of the RAMC may only use their weapons for self-defence. For this reason, there are two traditions that the RAMC perform when on parade: officers do not draw their swords (instead, they hold their scabbard with their left hand while saluting with their right); other ranks do not fix bayonets. During the Great War, the RAMC lost 743 officers and 6,130 soldiers were killed.

  Royal Navy

  In 1914 the Royal Navy was by far the most powerful navy in the world. The Royal Navy’s basic responsibilities included policing colonies and trade routes, defending coastlines and imposing blockades on hostile powers. The British government took the view that the Royal Navy needed to possess a battlefleet that was larger than the world’s two next largest navies put together. By early 1914 the Royal Navy had 18 modern dreadnoughts (6 more under construction), 10 battlecruisers, 35 cruisers, 200 destroyers, 29 battleships (pre-dreadnought design) and 150 cruisers built before 1907. The total manpower of the Royal Navy in 1914 was over 250,000 men.

  After the outbreak of the Great War, most of the Royal Navy’s large ships were stationed at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys or Rosyth in Scotland, in readiness to stop any large-scale breakout attempt by the Germans. Britain’s cruisers, destroyers, submarines and light forces were clustered around the British coast. The Mediterranean fleet (two battlecruisers and eight cruisers) was based in Gibraltar, Malta and Alexandria. These were used during the operations to protect Suez and the landings at Gallipoli. There were also naval forces scattered around the Empire.

  The ‘dreadnought’ was the predominant type of battleship in the early twentieth century. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy’s Dreadnought made such a strong impression on people’s minds when it was launched in 1906 that similar battleships built subsequently were referred to generically as ‘dreadnoughts’, and earlier battleships became known as ‘pre-dreadnoughts’. The dreadnought design had two revolutionary features: an ‘all-big-gun’ armament scheme, with an unprecedented number of heavy-calibre guns; and steam turbine propulsion.

  The ‘battlecruiser’ was a large capital ship built in the first half of the twentieth century. Similar in size and cost to a battleship, and typically carrying the same kind of heavy guns, battlecruisers generally carried less armour and were faster. The first battlecruisers were designed in Britain in the first decade of the century, as a development of the armoured cruiser, at the same time as the dreadnought succeeded the pre-dreadnought battleship.

  From the middle of the nineteenth century, ‘cruiser’ came to mean a classification for ships intended for scouting, raiding or the protection of merchantmen. Cruisers came in a wide variety of sizes, from the small protected cruiser to armoured cruisers which were as large (though not as powerful) as a battleship.

  The ‘destroyer’ was a fast and manoeuvrable yet long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller, powerful, short-range attackers.

  Royal Small Arms Factory

  The Royal Small Arms Factory was a government-owned rifle factory in the London Borough of Enfield, in an area generally known as the Lea Valley. The factory produced British military rifles, muskets and swords from 1816. The factory was located at Enfield Lock on a marshy island bordered by the River Lea and the River Lee Navigation. (It closed in 1988, but some of its work was transferred to other sites.)

  Serjeant

  ‘Serjeant’ with a ‘j’ was the official spelling of ‘sergeant’ before and during the Great War and appeared in King’s Regulations and the Pay Warrant, which defined the various ranks. Even today, Serjea
nt-at-Arms is a title still held by members of the security staff in the Houses of Parliament. Also, in the newly amalgamated infantry regiment the Rifles (as successor to the Light Infantry, which also used it), the spelling of serjeant is held with the ‘j’ in place of the ‘g’.

  Shell shock

  See ‘Executions’ above.

  Sobranie

  The Sobranie cigarette brand is one of the oldest tobacco brands in the world. Sobranie of London was established in 1879 by the Redstone family, when cigarettes had just become fashionable in Europe. Several generations of the Redstone family blended this tobacco from a secret formula. The original cigarettes were handmade in the Russian tradition. Sobranie was the supplier to the royal courts of Great Britain, Germany, Spain, Romania and Greece.

  Spike

  An old English slang word for the workhouse, or a dosshouse for vagrants.

  Stew an’ ’ard

  A traditional dish of North-East Lancashire, especially in Burnley, Nelson, Colne and Barnoldswick (‘Barlick’). ‘Hard’ is the staple of the dish, which are oatcakes made from oatmeal, yeast, sugar, salt and water, made into a pancake batter, then cooked each side on a ‘girdle’ (griddle) pan, cooled and either used, soft, immediately, or dried to preserve them, leading them to be called ‘hard’. The ‘stew’ would usually be mutton, occasionally chicken and, rarely, beef. The stew would either be poured on to the ‘hard’ cakes, or they would be used to dunk into the stew.

  Stop-tap

  An archaic expression for pub closing time.

  Subaltern

  A primarily British military term for a junior officer. Literally meaning ‘subordinate’, subaltern is used to describe commissioned officers below the rank of captain and generally comprises the various grades of lieutenant.

  Sweet Caporals

  Although British soldiers in the Great War thought that Sweet Caporals were French cigarettes, they were in fact produced by the American Tobacco Company, which also produced the Pall Mall and Mecca brands. Caporals were issued to French soldiers and were made from dark tobacco and had a particularly pungent flavour and smell.

  Tackler

  A tackler was a Lancashire name for a supervisor in a textile factory. He was responsible for the working of a number of power looms and the weavers who operated them. The name derived from the main part of his job, which was to ‘tackle’ – repair – any mechanical problems encountered with the looms.

  Telescopic sight

  The first experiments designed to give shooters optical aiming aids date back to the early seventeenth century. The first documented telescopic rifle sight was invented between 1835 and 1840. The Improved American Rifle, written in 1844, documented the first telescopic sights made by Morgan James of Utica, New York, based on designs by civil engineer John R. Chapman (the Chapman-James sight). An early telescopic sight was built in 1880 by August Fiedler, forestry commissioner of Austrian Prince Heinrich Reuss. Telescopic sights with extra-long eye relief pieces then became available for handgun and scout rifle use and began to be used by the Austrian and German armies.

  Tilley lamp

  The tilley lamp derives from John Tilley’s invention of the hydro-pneumatic blowpipe, in 1813. In England, W. H. Tilley were manufacturing pressure lamps at their works in Stoke Newington (in 1818) and at Shoreditch (in the 1830s). The company moved to Brent Street in Hendon in 1915 during the Great War and started work with paraffin as a fuel for the lamps.

  Tombac

  Tombac is a brass alloy with high copper content and between 5 and 20 per cent zinc content. Tin, lead or arsenic may be added for colouration. It is a malleable alloy mainly used for medals, ornaments and decoration. The term ‘tombac’ is derived from tembaga, an Indonesian/Malay word of Javanese origin, meaning ‘copper’.

  Tournaphone

  The Tournaphone was a design of gramophone developed by Pathe in 1906; it played flat records at 90 rpm, starting from the inside and moving to the outside. It was easily changed to play ordinary 78 rpm records (by turning the sound box, and replacing the jewelled stylus with a needle). 78 rpm records continued in use until the 1950s. Tournaphones used a jewelled stylus, not a needle, to play music and audio. The word ‘gramophone’ was first used by Alexander Graham Bell when he developed a machine using flat records instead of cylinders. Emile Berliner, a German American, first produced flat records that vibrated the stylus from side to side (the opposite of Bell’s design).

  Uhlans

  Uhlans were originally Polish light cavalry armed with lances, sabres and pistols. The title was later used by lancer regiments in the Russian, Prussian and Austrian armies. In 1914, the German Army included twenty-six Uhlan regiments. Because German hussar, dragoon and cuirassier regiments also carried lances in 1914, there was a tendency among their French and British opponents to describe all German cavalry as ‘Uhlans’. After seeing mounted action during the early weeks of the Great War, the Uhlan regiments were either dismounted to serve as ‘cavalry rifles’ in the trenches of the Western Front or transferred to the Eastern Front, where more primitive conditions made it possible for horse cavalry to still play a useful role. All twenty-six German Uhlan regiments were disbanded in 1918–1919.

  Under-fettler

  An under-fettler is a junior ‘fettler’ or cleaner. It is a Lancashire name, used in a number of contexts and trades. The verb to ‘fettle’ variously means to fix, sort or clean; it is also used in the sense of ‘sorting someone out’.

  Vickers gun

  In 1912 the British Army adopted the Vickers as its standard machine gun. Produced by the Vickers Company, it was a modified version of the Maxim machine gun. The Vickers used a 250-round fabric-belt magazine and was regarded as a highly reliable weapon. It could fire over 600 rounds per minute and had a range of 4,500 yards. Being water-cooled, it could fire continuously for long periods.

  Voluntary Aid Detachment

  The Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) was a voluntary organization providing field nursing services, mainly in hospitals, in the United Kingdom and various other countries in the British Empire. It was founded in 1909 with the help of the Red Cross and Order of St John. By the summer of 1914 there were over 2,500 Voluntary Aid Detachments in Britain. Each individual volunteer was called simply ‘a VAD’. Of the 74,000 VADs in 1914, two-thirds were women and girls.

  At the outbreak of the Great War, VADs eagerly offered their services to the war effort. The British Red Cross was reluctant to allow civilian women a role in overseas hospitals: most VADs were of the middle and upper classes and unaccustomed to hardship and traditional hospital discipline. Military authorities would not accept VADs at the front line.

  Katharine Furse took two VADs to France in October 1914, restricting them to serve as canteen workers and cooks. Caught under fire in a sudden battle, the VADs were pressed into emergency hospital service and acquitted themselves well. The growing shortage of trained nurses opened the door for VADs in overseas military hospitals. Furse was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the VADs and restrictions were removed.

  Female volunteers over the age of twenty-three and with more than three months’ hospital experience were accepted for overseas service. During four years of war, 38,000 VADs worked in hospitals and served as ambulance drivers and cooks. VADs served near the Western Front and in Mesopotamia and Gallipoli. VAD hospitals were also opened in most large towns in Britain. Many were decorated for distinguished service and included well-known women such as Enid Bagnold, Mary Borden, Vera Britten, Agatha Christie and Violet Jessop.

  Webley revolver

  The standard-issue Webley revolver at the outbreak of the Great War was the Webley Mk V, but there were many more Mk IV revolvers in service in 1914, as the initial order for 20,000 Mk V revolvers had not been completed when hostilities began.

  In May 1915, the Webley Mk VI would be adopted as the standard sidearm for British and Commonwealth troops and remained so for the duration of the war, being issued to officers, airmen, naval c
rews, boarding parties, machine-gun teams and tank crews. The Mk VI proved to be a very reliable and hardy weapon, well suited to the mud and adverse conditions of trench warfare, and several accessories were developed for the Mk VI, including a bayonet and a stock, allowing the revolver to be converted into a carbine (short-barrelled rifle).

  ‘Welch’ (spelling)

  The spelling of ‘Welsh’ as ‘Welch’ is a much-cherished historical peculiarity in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. When the regiment was given its Welsh designation in 1702, the spelling ‘Welch’ was in common use, and it became a regimental tradition. That is, until 2006, when the Royal Welch Fusiliers merged with other Welsh regiments to form the ‘Welsh Regiment’.