1915: The Death of Innocence
Page 74
2. As the orders appear to have been verbal, some corroboration of the orders is desirable.
3. It is not necessary to hold a Court of Inquiry, but merely to obtain statements from officers who can throw light on these points.
4. The matter is urgent.
Headquarters,
First Army.
(Signed) A. M. Henderson Scoles.
Captain.
D.A.A.G., 1st Army.
The Christmas truce initiated by the Guards was hushed up. No reports of it appeared in the newspapers and they would hardly have been appreciated in the present mood. The comical Germans of the year before were now the hated Boche, progenitors of all the horrors and misery that had dashed the hopes and expectations of a long and harrowing year.
It was the pantomime season again and, like last year, the traditional fairy-tales, the corny jokes and japes, had a topical wartime slant. At Christmas 1914 the crowds had left the theatres happily humming ‘Sister Susie’s Sewing Shirts for Soldiers…’
Sister Susie’s sewing shirts for soldiers
Such skill at sewing shirts our shy young sister Susie shows
Some soldiers send epistles,
say they’d rather sleep on thistles
Than the saucy, soft, short shirts for soldiers sister Susie sews.
They were already familiar with the words, for they had appeared on a screen lowered from the flies and the pantomime dame had led a dozen jolly choruses in traditional style, dividing the theatre into sections, setting stalls against circle, pit against gallery, ladies against gentlemen, children against adults, and urging each to outdo another, first in volume then in speed. It was great fun, children took special delight in mastering the tongue-twister, and long after the pantomimes ended the sale of sheet music and gramophone records was still earning a fortune for the publishers and the composer.
This Christmas, the pantomime song of the year did not lend itself to jolly entertainment – but it struck home and went straight to the heart:
Keep the Home Fires burning
While your hearts are yearning,
Though your lads are far away
They dream of Home
There’s a silver lining
Through the dark clouds shining
Turn the dark clouds inside out
Till the Boys come Home.
It reflected the sombre undercurrent beneath the determined gaiety of the second Christmas of the war. Last year there had been hope – and there still was, but it was no longer the hope of innocent optimism. If the agony of loss and the pain of disappointment had caused iron to enter the soul of the nation they had also put steel into its backbone. No one doubted that the war would be won. But no one now doubted that it would be a long hard haul – that it was up to the Boys – and that it might be a long, long time before they did come home.
Marching to Newtonards station, 2 July 1915, 13th Battalion Royal Irish Rifles en route to France
On 18 June, Waterloo Day, Sir Evelyn Wood VC inspected the Inns of Court Battalion on Kitchener’s Field at Berkhamsted to mark the fact that 2,000 of its members had been commissioned since the outbreak of war (Imperial War Museum)
The 7th Battalion Royal Scots at their last pre-war camp – many were to lose their lives in the troop train disaster of May 1915
The 6th South Staffordshires solved the bath shortage by lining a farm cart with a tarpaulin and filling it with water from the farmyard pump (Imperial War Museum)
‘Training, training, training, always bally-well training…’ Kitchener’s army were of the opinion that they had dug more trenches at home than there were in France. The hill behind the bridge is covered in them (Imperial War Museum)
‘They took us through Ypres to Vlamertinghe and when we got there, the whole street as far as your eye could see was nothing but stretchers and blankets and walking wounded with blankets over their shoulders and half a dozen doctors working flat out.’ Private J. Vaughan, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (Imperial War Museum)
Sun-dappled trenches at Sanctuary Wood, much visited by tourists – but, according to veterans, approximating the front line of 1915
Memorial on the Bellewaerde Ridge and behind it the ground on which Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry made their stand
Three types of early machine-gun photographed before the war. Left Gardner, centre Maxim and on the right the Nordenfeldt, which so captivated the Kaiser (Imperial War Museum)
Spring 1915. Well-constructed front line dug-outs in the ‘quiet’ sector near Tlugstreet’ Wood (Imperial War Museum)
Winter in Flanders. Men of the London Rifle Brigade behind the breastworks at Tlugstreet’ Wood (Imperial War Museum)
Neuve Chapelle. Front line trench at Mauquissart looking towards Aubers Ridge (Imperial War Museum)
Neuve Chapelle. ‘I can’t tell you what it’s like to have these shells whistling over one’s head and bursting nearer and nearer. The noise is terrific and the shock of the explosions is terrible.’ Captain George Hawes, 3rd (City of London) Bttn. German bombardment falling behind British line (Imperial War Museum)
The pre-war 5 inch breech-loading gun the 11th Howitzer Battery took to France. On left Major ‘Steinthal’ who was suspended from command while his German antecedents were investigated and who returned as Major Petrie.
Artist Norman Tennant’s drawing of the episode when the ‘nasty little short-arsed’ Major who took Steinthal’s place put him on a charge for ‘cruelty to a horse’
An artist’s impression of the battlefield of Neuve Chapelle
Neuve Chapelle. For want of anything better haystacks were burrowed out to serve as makeshift observation posts and also, as in the photo, Divisional or Brigade headquarters (Imperial War Museum)
Memorial to Arthur Agius’s friend Cyril Crichton erected on the spot where he was killed at Port Arthur, Neuve Chapelle
Neuve Chapelle. The German machine-gun post that decimated the Scottish Rifles, photographed after its capture… (Imperial War Museum)
… and the bodies of the men mown down by its lethal fire (Imperial War Museum)
Site of the once-infamous Layes Bridge redoubt
This was the shell-scarred crucifix from Neuve Chapelle churchyard, now inside the church
A German dug-out later erected on the site of the strongpoint that thwarted the troops at Neuve Chapelle. The village is in the background
German ‘stinkpioneren’ experimenting with gas before the attack at Ypres on 23 April (Imperial War Museum)
British gas equipment similar to that used at Loos, ready for discharge in 1916 (Imperial War Museum)
The Regular Army. Troops of the 2nd Lancashires in a mine crater blown during the battle for Aubers Ridge (Imperial War Museum)
Kitchener’s Army. Officers in the making (Imperial War Museum)
Panorama of Ypres from the German lines, marked with artillery ranges (Imperial War Museum)
Ypres, April 1915. ‘There were empty spaces in the streets, and heaps of rubble where a house once stood. The central tower of the great Cloth Hall blackened by fire, lacked two of its four spires…’(Imperial War Museum)
Ypres, July 1915. The safest billets for miles. The soldiers live like troglodytes in the casemates and passages in the old ramparts (Imperial War Museum)
Ypres, 1915. ‘All of us are deeply dispirited. After battling for six months against all these adversities, we must now resign ourselves to abandoning all our belongings. What will be left when we return?’ Aimé van Nieuwenhove (Imperial War Museum)
Ypres, 1915. Dead horses in the Cloth Hall Square. ‘I have got permission to stay with ten men burying the dead, interring horses. We are virtually alone.’ Father Camille Dalaere (Imperial War Museum)
Ypres, April 1915. The rue de Lille, The gable of Aimé van Nieuwenhove’s house is on the right. The photograph is taken from the Post Office (Imperial War Museum)
Ypres, rue de Lille. ‘It was a dreadful sorrow to f
ind nothing but burnt-out shells and charred walls. The gable end of our house was still standing, as well as some of the inner walls.’ Aimé van Nieuwenhove, July 1915. The ruins of his house are on the right of the photograph (Imperial War Museum)
Ypres. In the shadow of the new Cathedral the remnants of statuary from the old church still stand in the cloister garden
Ypres, 1915. The altar still stands inside the ruined cathedral (Imperial War Museum)
April 1915. The bombarded cathedral (Imperial War Museum)
Seventy years on, Ralph Langley at the grave of his brother Charlie, Lovencourt Military Cemetery France
Ralph Langley: ‘I joined up when I was seventeen. Everyone thought we were great lads, but when my brother was killed a few months later, my Mother fetched me out…’
2nd Lieutenant Jock Macleod on the eve of leaving for France
‘Being Orderly Corporal I was carrying dispatches with these four armed men round me. One old girl shouted out, “Yon little lad’s off to prison!’” Corporal A. Wilson, 1/5th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment
Ed’s brother, Sergeant Harry Hall, who served with the Canadians at Ypres
Lance-Corporal Ed Hall who served as a British stretcher bearer at Neuve Chapelle
Norman Tennant. Off to battle, 1915
Norman Tennant. On the old battlefront seventy years on
Douglas Pankhurst RFA. ‘My Father said, “I know you’ll do your duty, but don’t forget Mother will be worrying about You”. So I had to do my duty, if only for him – and my Mother’
2nd Lieutenant Bryden McKinnell, Liverpool Scottish, killed at Bellewaerde Ridge, 16 June 1915
The troop train disaster. ‘We were eight to a compartment and the doors locked. Suddenly there was a terrific crash. The carriage rose up and sank down again listing dangerously. The cries and screams and hiss of steam escaping was deafening.’ Private A. Thomson, l/7th Royal Scots
The troop train disaster. ‘The shrieks and moans of the men as they were being slowly roasted to death was terrible to hear.’ Sergeant J. Combe, l/7th Royal Scots
The troop train disaster. It was afternoon before we’d rescued everyone we could. Fifty-seven of us answered our names out of nearly five hundred who left Larbert that morning.’ Private A. Thomson, l/7th Royal Scots
The troop train crashed into a local train; two express crashed into them both minutes later the London express crashed into them both
The plaque on the memorial to the Royal Scots on their mass grave (W. Paterson)
Private Duff’s 25-year-old widow was photographed with her two children a month after the disaster. The photographer framed the sitters carefully, leaving a gap in which to insert the photograph of the dead father of the family
Frank Quiller, one of the few men of the signal section who survived badly wounded
Gallipoli. The landing from the River Clyde at V Beach. Painting by Charles Dixon RI
‘Lighters blocked with dead and dying… fire immediately concentrates any attempt to land.’ Lieutenant-Colonel Williams GHQ (Imperial War Museum)
Gallipoli. The Anzac HO dug-outs beneath Plugges Plateau (Imperial War Museum)
‘Dick got a bullet through his head and fell at our feet. We think an enemy sniper must have been just out in front. I made sure I got that sniper later on.’ Corporal G. Gilbert, A. Squadron, 13 Australian Light Horse (Imperial War Museum)
Walking wounded at Gully Beach. ‘The MO said to the orderly, “This man’s dressing seems to be OK, so if he thinks he can hop, he can do so.’” Private William Begbie, 7th Battalion Royal Scots (Imperial War Museum)
The ruins of Hooge Chateau in the early stages of the Second Battle of Ypres (Imperial War Museum)
Seventy years on. The modest modern chateau rebuilt on the margin of the mine crater, scene of bitter fighting, now landscaped as a sunken lawn and lake
The flammenwerfer. German experiment with liquid fire which later decimated the troops at Hooge (Imperial War Museum)
A ration dump in Sanctuary Wood. The notice board reads, ‘No road by daylight’ (Imperial War Museum)
Part of the line in Sanctuary Wood, known as the appendix, where it jutted towards the German line (Imperial War Museum)
Alex Rule of U Company, 4th Gordon Highlanders, lay wounded in a dug-out much like this one after the fight for the crater at Hooge
Captain Agius’s reconnaissance report and sketch of the infamous ‘Duck’s Bill’ prior to the subsidiary attack on 25 September
Loos. British bombardment on the German line beyond the newly dug assembly trenches. The long lines of glistening white chalk gave the enemy ample warning of the attack (Imperial War Museum)
The Loos battlefield from the British front line (Imperial War Museum)
Loos. Looking across from the British line the most prominent landmark on the front was the pithead at Loos. The troops nicknamed it Tower Bridge (seen here before the battle with the Loos Crassier in front and the village below) (Imperial War Museum)
Loos. During the battle. ‘Tower Bridge had caught it badly: loose iron girders creaked and clanked above the heads of the Northumberland Fusiliers shivering in a field not far away’ (Imperial War Museum)
Carnage on the Loos road. ‘I can’t describe it! It was just a mass of holes, and debris and dead men and horses lying everywhere. Our transport had been shelled – knocked out!’ Harry Fellowes, 12th Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers (Imperial War Museum)
An appeal to laggards
Bibliography
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