by Neal Bascomb
Tullis, John K. (courtesy of Keil Tullis and Brian Tullis)
INTERVIEWS
Jane Gray
Laurie Vaughan
Diana Gillyatt
Hugh Lowe
BOOKS AND ARTICLES
Ackerley, J. R., Escapers All: Being the Personal Narrative of Fifteen Escapers from War-Time Prison Camps, 1914–1918 (London: The Bodley Head, 1932)
Adam-Smith, Patsy, Prisoners of War: From Gallipoli to Korea (New York: Viking, 1997)
Afferbach, Holger and Strachan, Hew, How Fighting Ends: A History of Surrender (London: Oxford University Press, 2012)
Antrobus, H. A., A History of the Jorehaut Tea Company Ltd.: 1859–1946 (London: Tea and Rubber Mail, 1948)
Barker, A. J., The Bastard War: The Mesopotamian Campaign of 1914–18 (New York: Dial Press, 1967)
Barker, Ralph, A Brief History of the Royal Flying Corps in World War I (London: Constable & Robinson, 1995)
Barnes, A. F., The Story of the 2/5th Battalion Gloucestershire Regiment, 1914–18 (Gloucester: Crypt House Press, 1930)
Bean, C. E. W., Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1941)
Bills, Leslie Wm., A Medal For Life: Biography of Captain Wm. Leefe Robinson (Kent: Spellmount Limited, 1990)
Boden, Anthony, F.W. Harvey: Soldier, Poet (Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 1988)
Bott, Alan, An Airman’s Outings (London: Blackwood and Sons, 1917)
Bradbeer, Thomas, Battle for Air Supremacy over the Somme (Fort Leavenworth, KS: US Army Command and General Staff College, dissertation, 2004)
Bridges, Robert Seymour, The Spirit of Man: An Anthology (London: Longman, 1927)
Bryan, Tim, The Great Western War 1939–1945 (London: Patrick Stephens, 1995)
Caunter, John Alan Lyde, 13 Days: The Chronicle of an Escape from a German Prison (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1918)
Connes, George, A POW’s Memoir of the First World War: The Other Ordeal (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2004)
Cook, Jacqueline, The Real Great Escape: The Story of the First World War’s Most Daring Mass Breakout (Sydney: Vintage Books, 2013)
Coombes, David, Crossing the Wire: The Untold Stories of POWs in Battle and Captivity During WWI (Wavell Heights Queensland: Big Sky Publishing, 2016)
Curtis, James, James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998)
David, Saul, 100 Days to Victory: How the Great War Was Fought and Won 1914–1918 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2013)
Doegen, Wilhelm, Kriegsgefangene Völker, Bd.: Der Kriegsgefangenen Haltung und Schicksal in Deutschland (Berlin: Tafel, 1921)
Douglas, Sholto, Years of Combat (London: Collins, 1963)
Durnford, H. G., The Tunnellers of Holzminden (Cambridge University Press, 1920)
Ellis, John, Eye-Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976)
Evans, A. J., The Escaping Club (London: Penguin Books, 1921)
Foot, M. R. D., Langley, James, MI9: Escape and Evasion (London: Bodley Head, 1979)
Fussell, Paul, The Great War and Modern Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)
Garrett, Richard, P.O.W.: The Uncivil Face of War (New York: David & Charles Publisher, 1981)
Gerard, James W., My Four Years in Germany (New York: Doran and Company, 1917)
Gilliland, Horace, My German Prisons (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1919)
Grider, John MacGavock, War Birds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1988)
Grinnell-Milne, An Escaper’s Log (London: Bodley Head, 1926)
Guggisberg, F. G, The Shop: The Story of the Royal Military Academy (London: Cassell & Company, 1900)
Hanson, Neil, Escape from Germany: The Greatest POW Break-Out of the First World War (London: Corgi Books, 2011)
Harding, Geoffrey, Escape Fever (London: John Hamilton, 1935)
Hardy, J. L., I Escape! (London: Pen & Sword Military, 2014)
Hare, Paul R., Fokker Fodder: The Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2c (Gloucestershire: Fonthill Media, 2014)
Hargreaves, Aura Kate, ed., My Dearest, My Dearest: A War Story, a Love Story, a True Story of WWI by Those Who Lived It (UK: Property People, 2014)
Harrison, M. C. C. & Cartwright, H. A., Within Four Walls: A Classic of Escape (London: Penguin Books, 1930)
Hart, Peter, Somme Success: The Royal Flying Corps and the Battle of the Somme 1916 (London: Pen & Sword Books, 2001)
Harvey, F. W., Comrades in Captivity: A Record of Life in Seven German Prison Camps (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1920)
Hattersley, Roy, The Edwardians (London: Little Brown, 2004)
Hennebois, Charles, In German Hands: The Diary of a Severely Wounded Prisoner (London: William Heinemann, 1916)
Hervey, H. E., Cage-Birds (London: Penguin Books, 1940)
Herwig, Holger, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914–1918 (London: Bloomsbury, 2014)
Hoffman, Conrad, In the Prison Camps of Germany: A Narrative of “Y” Service among Prisoners of War (New York: Association Press, 1920)
Horrocks, Brian, Escape to Action (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1960)
Hynes, Samuel, The Edwardian Turn of Mind (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968)
Jackson, Robert, The Prisoners: 1914–18 (London: Routledge, 1989)
Jerrold, Douglas, The Royal Naval Division (London: Hutchinson & Company, 1923)
Jones, H. A., The War in the Air: Being the Story of the part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force, Volume II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928)
Jones, Heather, Violence Against Prisoners of War in the First World War: Britain, France, and Germany, 1914–1920 (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
Keegan, John, The First World War (New York: Vintage Books, 2000)
Kieran, R. H., Captain Albert Ball (London: Aviation Book Club, 1939)
Knight, Gerald Featherstone, ‘Brother Bosch’, An Airman’s Escape from Germany (London: William Heinemann, 1919)
Krammer, Arnold, Prisoners of War: A Reference Handbook (London: Praeger Security International, 2008)
Lambert, Peter, The Forgotten Airwar: Airpower in the Mesopotamian Campaign (Fort Leavenworth, KS: Master’s Thesis for US Army Command and General Staff College, 2012)
Lee, Arthur Gould, Open Cockpit: A Pilot of the Royal Flying Corps (London: Jarrolds, 1969)
Lewis-Stempel, John, The War Behind the Wire: The Life, Death and Glory of British Prisoners of War, 1914–18 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014)
Lewis, Cecil, Sagittarius Rising (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936)
Lewis, G. H., Wings over the Somme, 1916–18 (Wrexham: Bridge Books, 1994)
Liddle, Peter, The Airman’s War: 1914–18 (London: Blanford Press, 1987)
Ludendorff, Erich, My War Memories, 1914–1918, Volume 1 (London: Hutchinson & Company, 1919)
MacDonald, Frank C., The Kaiser’s Guest (Garden City, NY: Country Life Press, 1918)
McCarthy, Daniel J., The Prisoner of War in Germany (New York: Moffat, Yard, and Company, 1918)
Mitzkat, Jörg, Stadt Holzminden und Umgebung Mitten im Weserbergland (Holzminden: Jörg Mitzkat, 2016)
Money, R. R, Flying and Soldiering (London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1936)
Morgan, J. H., translator, The War Book of the German General Staff (New York: McBride, Nast & Company, 1915)
Morton, Desmond, Silent Battle: Canadian Prisoners of War in Germany: 1914–1919 (Toronto: Lester Publishing, 1992)
Moynihan, Michael, editor, Black Bread and Barbed Wire (London: Leo Cooper, 1978)
Neave, Airey, Saturday at M.I.9: A History of Underground Escape Lines in North-West Europe in 1940–5 by a Leading Organiser at M.I. 9 (London: Leo Cooper, 1969)
Panayi, Panikos, The Enemy in Our Midst: Germans in Britain during the First World War (New York: Bloomsbury 1991)
Panayi, Panikos, Prisoners of Britain: German Civilian and Comba
tant Internees during the First World War (New York: Manchester University Press, 2012)
Peschardt, Lily, The Letters of Jim Bennett: An Escapee of a WW1 German Prisoner of War Camp (Unpublished Manuscript, Bennett Family Archives, 2015)
Phillimore, Godfrey, Recollections of a Prisoner of War (London: Edward Arnold & Co, 1930)
Repshire, J. Grant, “The Well-Loved Fields of Old”: F. W. Harvey and Ivor Gurney’s friendship and creative partnership during the First World War as seen through study of the F. W. Harvey Collection (The Ivor Gurney Society Journal, Vol. 20, 2014, pp. 7–30)
Schmitt, Margaret, “John Richard Cash: A Prisoner of War” (Unpublished manuscript, Imperial War Museum)
Sharma, Jayeeta, Empire’s Garden: Assam and the Making of India (London: Duke University Press, 2011)
Shephard, Ben, A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001)
Speed, Richard, Prisoners, Diplomats, and the Great War: A Study in the Diplomacy of Captivity (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990)
Spoerer, Mark, “The Mortality of Allied Prisoners of War and Belgian Civilian Deportees in German Custody during the First World War” (Population Studies, Vol. 60, 2006, pp. 121–36)
Thorn, J. C., Three Years a Prisoner in Germany, (Vancouver: Cowan and Brookhouse, 1919)
Thornton, R. K. R, ed., Ivor Gurney War Letters (Manchester: Carcanet New Press, 1983)
Tuchman, Barbara W., The Guns of August: The Outbreak of World War I (New York: Random House, 2014)
Vance, Jonathan F., Objects of Concern: Canadian Prisoners of War through the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994)
Vischer, A. L., Barbed Wire Disease: A Psychological Study of the Prisoner of War (London: John Bale and Sons, 1919)
von Richthofen, Manfred, The Red Air Fighter (London: The Aeroplane & General Publishing Company, 1917)
Warburton, Ernest, Behind Boche Bars (London: John Lane, 1920)
Waugh, Alec, The Prisoners of Mainz (New York: George Doran Company, 1918)
Weatherstone, John, The Pioneers, 1825–1900, The Early British Tea and Coffee Planters and their Way of Life (UK: Quiller, 1986)
Werner, Johannes, Knight of Germany: Oswald Boelcke German Ace (London: Casemate, 1991)
Whitehouse, Arch, The Years of the Sky Kings (New York: Curtis Books, 1959)
Winchester, Barry, Beyond the Tumult (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971)
Winter, Denis, The First of the Few: Fighter Pilots of the First World War (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1982)
Wise, S. F., Canadian Airmen and the First World War: The Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force, Volume I (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980)
Wyrall, Everard, The Gloucestershire Regiment in the War 1914–1918 (London: Methuen & Co, 1931)
Yarnall, John, Barbed Wire Disease: British & German Prisoners of War, 1914–19 (Gloucestershire: History Press, 2011)
ABBREVIATIONS
AC—Family Papers of Andrew Clouston
AWM—Australian War Memorial, Australia
BA—Archives, British Library, UK
BARCH—Bundesarchiv, Germany
CHALK—Chalk Collection, Tasmanian State Archives, Australia
CK—Family Papers of Caspar Kennard
CWB—Family Papers of Cecil W. Blain
DBG—Family Papers of David B. Gray
GA—F. W. Harvey Collection, Gloucestershire Archives, UK
HFD—Family Papers of Hector F. Dougall
HPA—Colquohoun Family, Archives and Special Collections, Hamilton Public Library, Canada
ICRC—Prisoners of the First World War, ICRC Historical Archives, Switzerland
IWM—Imperial War Museum, UK
JDM—Family Papers of John D. Morrogh
JKT—Family Papers of John K. Tullis
LIDD—Liddle Collection, University of Leeds Special Collections, UK
LJB—Family Papers of Leonard J. Bennett
PM—Family Papers of Patrick Mallahan
RAF—Archival Collection, Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon, UK
SCHA—Private Papers of William Hugh Chance, Sandwell Community History and Archives, UK
TNA—National Archives, Kew, UK
“Stone walls do”: Unpublished memoir. Papers of N. Birks. IWM.
A BIT OF HISTORY
Swept into this: Boden, p. 73.
“honor” and “glory”: Tuchman, p. 113.
Although the murder: Keegan, pp. 16–87.
“world power or downfall”: Tuchman, p. 14.
Many believed it: Horrocks, p. 15.
But by winter: Keegan, pp. 71–87; Tuchman, pp. 133, 185–09.
“Those vanquished in” Krammer, p. 3.
With the rise: Speed, p. 2.
“Like your own”: Garrett, p. 28.
“sinkholes of filth”: Krammer, p. 19.
“humanely treated” on: Report on Certain Violations of the Hague and Geneva Conventions. TNA: HO 45/10763/270829.
“a halcyon time” on: Speed, p. 5.
In the first six: Doegen, pp. 21–29; Jackson, p. 54.
Early in the: Panayi, Prisoners of Britain, p. 90; Speed, pp. 102–05.
In the act: Lewis-Stempel, p. xix.
The moans of: Gilliland, p. 9.
Those who reached: Lewis-Stempel, pp. 1–20. For a full account of the vagaries suffered by the British, John Lewis-Stempel’s The War Behind the Wire is a wonderful study.
Roughly 80 percent: Lewis-Stempel, pp. 68–111; Spoerer, pp. 6–9.
According to one: Jones, p. 21.
“in case of overwhelming”: Morgan, p. 97.
CHAPTER 1
The sky lightened: Unpublished memoir. Papers of Cecil Blain. IWM; Papers of W. Chance. IWM; Tullis Flight Log, 8/7/16. JKT.
“Contact!”: Winter, pp. 91–92.
He sported a thick: Ibid, p. 87.
After his squadron: Winchester, pp. 1–2; Bott, p. 239.
For a moment: Lewis, Cecil, pp. 47–48.
“Open for us”: Lee, pp. 5–6.
On July 1, 1916: Keegan, pp. 292–4.
As the five: Bott, p. 161; LIDD, p. 28; Money, p. 21.
A shell rocked: Winchester, p. 1.
The ancient city: Afferbach & Strachan, p. 294.
The planes broke: Blain, unpublished memoir. IWM; Statement Regarding Circumstances of Capture, David Griffiths. TNA: AIR 1/1207/204/5/2619; Winchester, pp. 4–5; 70th Squadron Report. TNA: AIR 1/2395/258/1.
“the introduction into”: pamphlet: The Diamond Jubilee, SCHA: FP-CH 15/7/10.
“skill, energy and perseverance”: Ibid.
“High spirits and resilience”: Ibid, pp. 213–14.
The eldest son: Baptism Papers. CWB; Author interview with Hugh Lowe.
The outbreak of: Blain Service Records. TNA: AIR 76/41.
He did his flight: unpublished memoir. Papers of C. Roberts. LIDD: AIR-264; unpublished memoir. Papers of C. Illingworth. LIDD: AIR-170; Barker, A Brief History of the RFC, pp. 210–13; Winter, pp. 27–33.
On a typical: Skeet, Michael, “RFC Pilot Training,” December 1998 (www.theaerodrome.com).
Of the roughly: Exact figures on training deaths within the RFC remain difficult to determine. In Denis Winter’s book, The First of the Few, he accounted that half of the “14,166 dead pilots” were killed in training (p. 36).
Blain survived: Blain Service Record. CWB.
That June: ibid; Blain Service Records. TNA: AIR 76/41.
He left for: Letter from Winchester to Miss Blain, March 3, 1969. CWB.
There was nothing: Blain, unpublished memoir. IWM; Winchester, pp. 4–6; 70th Squadron Report. TNA: AIR 1/2395/258/1; Bott, p. 254.
The Germans brought: Blain, unpublished memoir. IWM; Winchester, pp. 17–22.
CHAPTER 2
“There is to”: Unpublished memoir. SCHA: FP-CH 15/7/8; Bott, pp. 32–33. The speech presented here is an amalgama
tion of these two versions, though primarily leaning on Bott’s.
At Le Hameau: History of No. 11 Squadron. TNA: AIR 1/688/21/20/11.
“solid grey wool”: Hart, pp. 169, 172.
“absolute master”: Unpublished memoir. Papers of V. Coombs. LIDD: POW-016.
Air crews were: Barker, A Brief History of the RFC, p. 171.
What the crews: Werner, pp. 1–7, 148–52, 199–201, 230–34.
At their aerodromes: Unpublished memoirs. Papers of F. Morris, RAF; Hart, pp. 152–53.
Gray reviewed his: Report from Captain Gray, August 21, 1918. TNA: AIR 1/501/15/333/1.
Gray had spent: Family Records. DBG; Antrobus, pp. 145–53.
He settled early: Family Records. DBG; Guggisberg, pp. 237–50.
Upon graduation: Service Record of D. B. Gray, British Indian Army Records, BA.
“A capable and efficient”: Ibid.
Gray also sank: Interview with Jane Gray. For reference, “Munshi” is originally a Persian word for secretary or writer, but in India, it was used to identify language teachers who taught the British.
In spring 1915: Lambert, pp. 45–60.
Later that year: Author interview with Jane Gray; Kieran, pp. 60–91.
After earning his: Family Records. DBG; Service Record of D. B. Gray, British Indian Army Records, BA; TNA: AIR 76/192.
After a dismal: Unpublished memoir. SCHA: FP-CH 15/7/8; Money, pp. 100–04; Winchester, pp. 6–11.
Before crossing the: The Destonian, June 1918.
Suddenly, the sky: Letter from David Gray to Mrs. Morris, November 25, 1916. Papers of F. Morris, RAF; Report from Captain Gray, August 21, 1918. TNA: AIR 1/501/15/333/1; Werner, pp. 240–242; von Richthofen, pp. 74–78; Report on Capture of Leonard Helder. TNA: WO 339/11209.
“You are my”: Winchester, p. 11.
Gray was quiet: Ibid., p. 28.
“The war is over”: Unpublished memoir. SCHA: FP-CH 15/7/8; Money, p. 106.
The following morning: Money, pp. 105–110; Tullis, unpublished memoir. JKT; letter from David Gray to Mrs. Morris, November 25, 1916.
CHAPTER 3
Caspar Kennard’s first: Letter from Caspar Kennard to Chris Kennard, October 13, 1916. CK; letter from C. Kennard to his parents. October 12, 1916. Papers of C. Kennard. IWM; “Shot Down Behind Enemy Lines,” news clipping, undated. Papers of C. Kennard. IWM.
He had only: Pilot logbook. Papers of C. Kennard. IWM.
