Last Man Standing

by Richard van Emden

  [late April] Eastbourne

  Dear Bolton

  Many thanks for the cigs. How are you off for ‘gaspers’ up North? It is almost impossible for civilians to get them here but we can get plenty in the army canteens. If you are short let me know. The weather is awfully cold today.

  The adjutant of the 4th at Ripon was killed about a fortnight ago, CM Cameron. I’m afraid old Henderson of the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders is nah-pooh. Pitcairn and one other were the only officers left in the battalion as I knew it last April, out of 40.

  Chief of the Imperial General Staff (inset).

  The Grand Hotel at Eastbourne where Norman met General, later Field Marshal Robertson (1860-1933)..

  The raid on the port of Zebrugge with British ships sunk in the harbour mouth.

  I expect we will lose Ypres (temporary).

  Cheerio, Norman

  PS The army is awfully ratty about the song made over the raid by the navy. One paper was talking about a special medal similar to Mons. One chap got a knighthood through it! Every battalion in the army does more in every show.

  Editor: On the night of 22/23 April the Navy launched a raid on the ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend in an attempt to block the harbour exits and thereby halt further U Boat attacks that were crippling British shipping. During the raid, old British ships filled with concrete were scuttled at the mouth of each port. However, the ships were sunk in the wrong place leaving the hulks to cause only minor disruption to harbour traffic. The raids were nevertheless hailed as a victory in the British Press and Commander Keyes who had planned the raid was indeed ennobled. The British suffered 500 casualties.

  BACK WITH THE REGIMENT IN SCOTLAND

  Editor: Norman was finally discharged from hospital on 6th June 1918, almost eleven months after being wounded. On leaving, he was sent straight back to the 4th Reserve Training Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders which, after May 1918, had relocated from Ripon to Glencorse near Edinburgh. The Training Battalion continued to prepare large numbers of new recruits for the front as well providing short courses of instruction for wounded or invalided men sent home from overseas.

  4th (R) Seaforth Highlanders

  Glencorse Camp, Milton Bridge

  Sunday June 9th

  Dear all

  I arrived here about 9.30 last night. My luggage is still at the station about two miles away. The only conveyance was by bus.

  I know very few of the officers here. I have been detailed to attend a course of instruction on Gas or Stokes guns or something. The course is at Edinburgh and I get 8/- a day extra while I am there which will only be for a few days.

  The Seaforths have sent over 100 officers away to France in a month. Thank goodness I’m for service in the East. The only recruits we are getting are the boys of 18 years of age.

  Best love,

  Norman

  Editor: It is not clear when, but by the time Norman arrived at Glencorse he had already applied to join the Indian Army. ‘I had seen a piece in a paper stating that two regular commissions in the Indian Army were being offered and I thought that instead of going back to France, I would like a change and I applied.’After two tours of duty in France, and over a year in various hospitals, Norman was keen to avoid another spell on the Western Front. In contrast to his apparent optimism in the previous note home that he was for ‘service in the east’, Norman was in fact unsure that officer casualties in France would not necessitate his own return to the fighting. In a note written home, his concern is clear, ‘If I don’t get my papers in I can be sent to France any day, so I wish they would hurry up’, he wrote. While he waited for an interview board, Norman was sent to several refresher classes.

  Marine Hotel

  Troon

  Wednesday

  12.6.18

  Dear all

  I am getting quite used to work again…This is a fine course. It is partly lectures and partly practical work. We have been firing nearly all day. Each gun has a crew of five. No1 gives the orders. No2 sights and fires the gun. No3 helps to fix it up and 4 and 5 fix up the shells for firing.

  I am No2. The shells are quite big affairs over a foot long and weigh about 12 lbs. The range is 800 yards. The fire is so rapid that one gun can get eight shells in the air at once, before the first hits the ground.

  I drop the shells in the muzzle and they slide down the gun and hit a striker at the bottom which explodes the propelling cartridge at the bottom of the shell, which then flies out. About six shells will blow a house to bits.

  The only thing to be careful about is to get your hands away from the muzzle as soon as you drop the shell in, otherwise they will go with the shell.

  I have heard unofficially that Henderson was a prisoner in Germany. He will probably write if that is so. Norman

  A Stokes mortar in action.

  Norman

  I went through any number of courses to get me ready for a possible trip back to France. I went to Penicuik and had a course there on the .45 revolver. I had carried a .45 when I had gone abroad in 1916 but it was so heavy it was impossible to hit a barn door at 10 yards. At Penicuik we were taught how to use it properly. For the first five or six days, the instructor did not allow us to do anything more than point the revolver with a straight wrist at the target, using both hands. We were kept hard at it with one revolver unloaded, doing nothing else but lifting it hundreds of times and keeping the forefinger straight. And then we did the same thing with two .45s until our forearms were like rods of iron.

  The instructor then showed us what could be done. He could take a penny and he could hit this with his .45 revolver every time; he was a remarkable man. We then were allowed to fire live ammunition, which we did day after day until the end of the course. In the final test, we had to fit a gas mask on, jump into a trench with two revolvers, and cardboard figures appeared and we had to fire at both. The trick for this, we were told, was to look at the two figures with peripheral vision, to look straight ahead and bisect the distance between the two, look at that, raise the revolvers with rigid forearms and fire, and in many cases we managed to hit both at the same time.

  As a finale, the instructor demonstrated another trick that seems almost impossible. He took a number of empty cartridge cases and put them in holes in a plank of wood, so that they had support, and whilst he couldn’t fit the bullet back into the case on every occasion, I saw him do it on more than one occasion, and in any case he buckled the case up every time. To make a fit of the bullet back into the case seems impossible but it actually happened, and I saw it happen.

  Long afterwards, I met this instructor in West Hartlepool, where he was an opera singer taking the part of Faust, and he gave me a few tickets to watch him; it takes all sorts to make a world.

  Having completed this course, which lasted about a fortnight, I suppose, not knowing what to do with me, the regiment sent me off to Troon again, on the west coast of Scotland where I was billeted at the Troon Hotel. We practised near the golf course there, courses that consisted of the bomb and the bayonet. We were taught how to handle Mills bombs by an instructor who seemed to have no fear whatever of them. First of all, he showed us the fuse that could be cut in various lengths, the normal length being one which lasted five seconds. Another fuse was instantaneous, which was a red fuse. And we were taught how to throw these bombs at given targets from the trench. We were always in the trench when we threw them, but there was also a wall to one side which we could duck behind if anything went wrong. He demonstrated how safe they were by throwing a Mills bomb, after withdrawing the pin, to an assistant instructor who caught it and threw it. This said, if the assistant missed it, he had to be very quick to pick it up and throw it over the top of the trench. It wasn’t a trick that I would have liked to have done myself, but we certainly learnt to be familiar with them and we learned to handle them with great respect, because a Mills bomb can cause a lot of damage.

  We had a musketry course there, when we fired over various ranges up
to 800 yards, and I enjoyed this. We were taken out on night operations too, after they had buried explosive flashes in the earth during the day. We would perform various operations, patrolling at night, and occasionally a flash would go off quite close, and this of course was to simulate shellfire, but, to those who had seen something of the real thing, they didn’t seem to be performing much service except for beginners who had never heard an explosion before.

  We were taught gas mask drill, how to smell gas faintly; phosgene was the chief one. I had not come into first hand contact with gas at the front, although when I was in hospital, wounded, mustard gas casualties had come in and they were a terrible sight. They were walking along with their hands on the shoulders of the ones in front, and they were obviously in great pain. I had worn a gas mask when alerted to the threat of gas, but the closest I had actually been to a gas shell drop was perhaps a hundred yards or more away from me when I was at Arras. Then, I had seen some Portuguese troops, they were quite innocent, for they saw this shell drop and realised it wasn’t going to go off because only a little puff of smoke had come from it. There were only half a dozen of them and they approached the shell out of curiosity. They were taken away as casualties.

  Officers Concentration Camp

  Dreghorn

  Edinburgh

  Dear Bolton and all

  …I am at present on a Lewis Gun Course lasting three weeks.

  Altogether since I reported for duty I have had a Trench Mortar Course, two Gas Courses, Revolver and now a Lewis Gun Course.

  I haven’t taken any photos since I left home as I cannot get film.

  My Indian papers are at present before the Brigadier Gen. The CO recommended me. I shouldn’t think I will leave before October.

  …Of all the officers who were out with me last year there is only one left in France. I spoke to an Argyle who was with Henderson at the time of the German attack in March. He did very well in the first three days of the attack. On 23 March the Division was retiring according to orders and he missed Henderson and on looking round saw him lying down in the middle of a field with the Boche only a few yards away. He thinks he was dead or badly wounded. His relatives and fiancée have heard nothing. Exit a damned fine boy.

  Norman’s notes made during his gas course at Edinburgh and an example of a PH Helmet worn by all ranks until late 1916 and thereafter carried as an emergency reserve to the more efficient Box Respirator.

  Cheerio, Norman.

  Sunday (August 4th 1918)

  Dear Bolton

  ….Last week I was before the GOC about India. He signed my transfer papers and sent them to the War Office. I expect to get word to report at the India Office for medical exam within the next few weeks.

  The Highland Division has been mentioned in the papers lately. It marched 50 miles in two days and then attacked the same day advancing near Reims. (If I hadn’t been going to India I would be in France).

  Best love, Norman

  Editor: Norman was invited to London to go before a Selection Board where ‘One general and a couple of other senior officers questioned me very closely as to my background and my general ability as an officer, liking for sport and so on’, recalled Norman. ‘Then, shortly afterwards, I received a notice saying that I had been accepted.’ After 4 August there are few letters of any interest, other than general comments about the advances the allies were now making on the Western Front. The war was drawing to a close, although even then, Norman was to lose yet another friend, 27 year old Lieutenant Philip Ballantyne, who was killed in the last attack the Battalion was to make in the war, Monday 28 October 1918. Ballantyne had gone overseas with Norman in April 1917 and was probably the ‘last’ officer in France to whom Norman alluded to in his letter, see page 188. Two weeks later, the Armistice was signed. During the war both battalions in which Norman had served, the 4th and the 6th Seaforth Highlanders, had each lost well over 1,000 officers and men killed in action.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Armistice and the Aftermath

  On the day of the Armistice I was on leave and staying with an aunt and uncle of mine in Sheffield. I was up a bit late that morning and was shaving when the sirens and hooters sounded across the city. Incredibly the war was over, but my one thought was ‘It’s too late – all my friends are gone – it’s too late. It’s no good having an Armistice now.’

  I had a vision, and I was standing in a trench. I could not put my head up because I was under fire, but above me, at eye level, walking past were hundreds and hundreds of boots and puttees. I thought of all those I had known; it was like a panorama of passing people, people from the cadet battalion, through the various training courses and out in France. They went on and on for hours, and I realised it was the dead all walking away and leaving me behind. I felt worried and frightened that they were leaving me by myself; that I had been left behind. They were marching away into the distance, where I would never follow. All the people I knew had gone, except me. That was a vivid dream and I dreamt it on many occasions, although I never told anyone until I was a very old man, because I felt it was a private matter between my old comrades and myself. It was a most intense feeling and it remained so. I was very sad but I got over it; I must have been very resilient. From that time onwards I can only recall two people that I ever met in my life that I served with in France, and neither was a very close associate of mine.

  Jubilant crowds celebrate the Armistice. IWM Q80175

  Whilst I was glad the war was over, I was not excited about it; I did not throw my hat up or anything like that, or feel like going out and rejoicing with champagne. I felt sad. The war should have been stopped earlier: it went on far too long. I don’t think anybody won, everybody lost.

  The years of war seemed to last longer than all of the rest of my life put together. I remember looking at my father and thinking he had never seen a dead man, and I’d seen scores and scores of dead men. He had never seen a shot, never seen a man die. Or if he had, it would have been in family circumstances. I really felt much older than my parents, and I think that feeling continued for the rest of my life.

  Shortly after the Armistice, I received word that I had to proceed to London, get some Indian Army uniform, some khaki drill. I was told to report to the Transport Office, where I received my instructions (which I still have) to get on to a ship lying off Tilbury, called the Themistocles, which was a ship that was used on the New Zealand route as a liner before the war. Several hundreds of officers were on board the ship when it left in December, and it was in the Mediterranean on Christmas Day. I remember the minefields were still there; we had to zig-zag in between the mines, and we arrived at Port Said, the entrance to the Suez Canal. As we anchored there, a troop ship came out of the canal with troops lining it, all looking very sunburnt, still with pith helmets on, and they all shouted ‘You are all going the wrong way’, which perhaps we were.

  FRANCE 1989

  Editor: Norman returned to France for the one and only time 14 April 1989, two days before his 92nd birthday. He was unconcerned about such a visit even given his great age; on the contrary, he noted in his taped diary that ‘I would consider it amusing, if I were able to, if I passed out 73 years after the battle on the same spot where I should have passed on at 19 years of age. I’m sure I would be greeted by cries of ‘Late on parade, Sir?’

  Top, in 1989, Norman surveys Y Ravine at Beaumont Hamel. Below, standing behind the graves of his friends Smith and Mclean.

  Now and then: Norman walks next to the River Scarpe where (below) he took a picture of the collapsed railway bridge which once spanned the river.

  Norman

  When I went to France 73 years ago, there was nothing but brick dust blown into the soil. I am going to see the real France; the villages of which, when I was out there before, there was nothing left. Then, I could only see them from the trenches with a periscope, but now I will be able to walk about freely on the battlefield and it will be an amazing sensation. Before I only had a
rat’s view, a worm’s view of the French countryside.’

  Editor: With his son, Norman visited many places familiar to all those tourists who visit the battlefields today, including the La Boisselle mine crater, blown under the German line on July 1st 1916, and the Welsh Division memorial at Mametz Wood. He also saw the South African memorial and museum at Delville Wood, and the Thiepval memorial to the missing of the Somme. However, most importantly, Norman visited the sites where he had stood in his youth. He walked in the trenches in Newfoundland Park, orientating himself as he walked. He located the Beaumont Hamel mine crater on the horizon by the position of Y Ravine, then he walked among the grassed-over shell holes where he had buried so many Newfoundlanders in November 1916. And he visited, too, the cemetery at Maillet Wood, where so many of his friends, including Lieutenants Smith and Mclean, still lie side by side, just as he buried them. Later, Norman visited the trenches at Vimy Ridge, the Menin Gate memorial to the missing at Ypres and the battlefield around Arras. He saw the graves of many of the friends he knew, including Otto Murray Dixon and John Meikle, buried in a cemetery at Marfaux, near Reims.

  Norman

  ‘My son asked me to return to France. We went to see Smith and Mclean and I found them still buried side by side, and I have a photograph taken of me standing between them. The grass has grown over the trenches, which have been preserved. I saw the trench from which the Newfoundlanders had taken off on July 1st and I also covered the same ground that I had been over, with the German trenches on the other side of the field, where the sheep were grazing; overhead the larks were singing. And there was a complete metamorphosis of what I had seen at the time in November 1916. I looked over the ground where I had buried all those dead, and my memory was as clear as it was over eighty years ago. I was glad to be alive, even though I was beginning to become very inactive and suffering quite a bit of pain from the old wounds. But I wondered whether they had missed much. Their mothers must have suffered horribly, and not only that, but the million young girls in England with no one for a husband, a million ‘surplus’ women, many alive today aged 100 years or more. What must their memories be like? I hope they got some pleasure out of life.