by John Fairley
‘Soldiers were attacking women all over the town. I saw them – and some of the women were not so young – trying to climb over high garden walls to get away from the men. But one girl, a fisherman’s daughter, did not get away. She was raped by one soldier on the pavement near my house while other soldiers looked on. The attack took place near her home, and her father rushed out with a harpoon and plunged it into the soldier’s back.
‘Eventually an officer on horseback came into the square to address the mobs. He backed his horse on to the Town Hall steps and started talking to them from there, but he was wasting his time. Those mutineers who were not drunk did not bother to listen to him. The more he shouted the more they screamed. One drunken man staggered into the side of the officer’s horse, and the officer leaned down to hear what the drunk was saying. As he did so, the soldier pulled out a knife with a curved blade and slit the officer’s throat open from ear to ear. When he fell from the horse there was terrible pandemonium and I ran away to avoid being crushed.
‘Throughout the night there were lorries rattling through the town with machine-guns mounted on the back, hunting for officers and police.’
Some mutineers, deprived of the company of women for months, sometimes years, at a time, and denied the use of brothels, seized the opportunity the rebellion offered. Members of the WAACs were subjected to multiple rape, as were some nurses, before loyalist guards could be found to form a cordon round the women’s quarters.
Fifteen rebels made their way to Paris Plage in a stolen lorry, having captured two young WAACs en route. The attempts of the girls to scream for help were stifled when the underwear, of which they had been stripped, was stuffed into their mouths. The lorry halted for two hours in the woodlands of Le Touquet where the girls were carried out, forced to the ground and systematically ravaged by men behaving like sexually starved animals.
The girls were left half-naked by the roadside when the mutineers resumed their ride into Paris Plage, yelling that they would be back for more after they had had a drink. But, before that threat could be carried out, a bunch of rebels on foot caught up with the two women who were again forced to submit to a similar ordeal. Bruised, battered and beaten, as well as repeatedly raped, they were rescued early the following morning by Pte Harry Redgrave of the King’s Liverpool Rifles Regiment, who spotted them staggering back to Étaples. When they saw him approach, at the wheel of a hospital supply wagon, they scrambled into a ditch where they cowered in fear of yet another attack.
Redgrave said: ‘They were whimpering like half-demented children, alternating between sobbing for mercy and offering me intercourse if only I would please not beat them again. They were like crazed beings who kept crying continuously, mostly for their mothers. It was a terrible experience to see and hear, and although I sympathized with the cause of the mutineers in general, that awful business turned me completely against them.’
The attacks on women were deplored by the great mass of the mutineers, some of whom even formed their own night guard patrols to protect the female staff in the hospitals and the occupants of the WAAC barracks.
But not all the attacks on women had sex as their motive. Madeleine Williams, Leylands Road, Burgess Hill, Sussex, whose mother owned an Étaples café recalls: ‘I remember all the soldiers pouring into the town. Two Australians and two New Zealanders tried to strangle my mother to get money off her. But she fought back and they disappeared when a Frenchman arrived to help her.’
Madame Dissous says:
‘A senior officer – we thought it was their commander, but we might have been mistaken – was forced by the rebels to get on his horse and come to the square. Other officers were obliged to walk behind him, and when they all got to the square the officer on the horse made a speech in which he promised better conditions for the men. But I know that before this happened some officers were killed at the bridge in the town.’
On the morning of Tuesday the 11th, the British Army was having to face up to the disaster which threatened it. Brigadier-General Horwood, Chief Provost Marshal of the Armies, was sent post-haste to Étaples. By now Thomson felt that the only way out was to bring in outside troops. Horwood had already been told he could have 700 crack troops from the 1st Honourable Artillery Company. But for Thomson that was not enough. He wanted the Cavalry. Horwood agreed. But the Cavalry were not so keen to come and polish the sabres, which had rusted in their scabbards throughout the war, on the necks of their comrades-in-arms. There ensued a classic sequence of army diversionary tactics, recorded in Thomson’s diary:
At 1.30 pm. 9th Cavalry Brigade were rung, but owing to a mistake by telephone operator, call was put through to Cavalry Corps. 2 squadrons, 15th Hussars from Frencq were asked to be held in readiness to move. No answer could be given by Cavalry Corps Headquarters as the Corps Commander was out.
At 2.00 p.m. Staff Captain Wells motored over to Frencq and told the OC 15th Hussars what duties would be required from them in the event of authority being given for their use.
At 2.30 pm. Cavalry Corps rang up. They required GHQ authority for the use of Cavalry. Line of Communications communicated with GHQ and about 4.00 pm. a message, telephone, was received to say GHQ would NOT authorise use of Cavalry.
By now a despairing note is entering Thomson’s record of events:
About 4.00 p.m. men again broke through the picquets on the bridge, went through Étaples, broke through the picquet on the River Canche bridge, and went towards Paris Plage. None of the picquets made any determined effort to prevent these men.
And the Cavalry were still not on their way. Thomson made some half-hearted attempts to appease the mutineers.
‘We were told that all parades had been suspended,’ recalls Private Joe Perks. ‘We were even more amazed when we were told that we could draw more than our shilling a day. We were told we could draw as many francs as we liked – within reason.’
Wednesday, 12 September, was to be crisis day for Thomson, Toplis and the British Army. Three days of determined rebellion had made it impossible to dismiss the uprising as a mere explosion of anger, or the effects of drink, or the New Zealanders giving vent to frustration – all explanations which Thomson had come up with. It was impossible for Haig to countenance an impasse across his main route for reinforcements to the front. The battle for Passchendaele was due to start in eight days. There had to be a showdown.
Inside the camp all authority had by now been abdicated. Confused attempts had been made to ship the unaffected troops out to the front by train, but now, as Joe Perks and David Paton remember, the Scots just loafed about. There were no signs of officers or senior NCOs, no attempts to impose any duties – simply extra pay and extra food.
Commandant Thomson had an uncomfortable morning. The French Chef de Gendarmerie for the whole northern district arrived. There was a noisy Gallic scene ending only when Thomson assured him that the British police chief, Captain Strachan, had been fired and that loyal troops were on the way. The gendarme chief and his military colleague, Colonel Vallée, departed with assurances that the riotous assaults on French civilians would stop.
Thomson was in turn assured by the local French authority that no public record of the affair would be retained. But, if the French did keep faith with Thomson by issuing an edict to this effect, then it was an order ignored by the museum keeper at Étaples because in the archives there is a one-sentence entry. It reads: ‘A serious mutiny began in the English Camp.’
The present museum keeper, Fernand Holuigue, was 13 at the time. He says: ‘I well remember mobs of rioting soldiers in the streets. One of them had impaled a cat on a long lance and he was waving it in the air.’
Meanwhile Toplis and the rebel Scots leaders were not having it all their own way. Toplis’s demands of the Monday afternoon had still not been conceded. Sooner rather than later the authorities would bring in the machine-guns. Even if they gave way, there was no possible warranty against the sanctions of the firing squad.
The first fury of the mutiny had lapsed. There were anxious, unending meetings all over the camp – even talk of Soviets. Some were for quitting while they were ahead. One Cameron Highlander, Ivan Lyon, now of Old Greenock Road, Bishopton, Renfrewshire, stood on a table at a meeting in a camp canteen, pleading with his fellow Scots to stop the revolt. He argued, wrongly as it transpired, that nothing would be achieved. But the men were not to be swayed. Lyon went out and buried the 150 rounds of ammunition he had in his possession in the sands on the beach.
At three o’clock Thomson, in despair, saw a thousand men brush contemptuously past the pickets and march off to the pleasures of Paris Plage. He decided to make a last personal attempt to turn the tide. Once again he called round his open staff car and drove slowly up towards the mutiny headquarters in the Scots IBD. A meeting was still in progress, but the news of Thomson’s arrival ended it abruptly.
‘All the Scots crowded round,’ says Jack Musgrove. ‘In fact they were going to pull him out of the car. They wanted guarantees before they would settle the rebellion. They had to keep all the police away, close the Bull Ring, open up the town of Étaples. The general just stood there. And suddenly it was all granted. Just like that.’
Faced with the bitterness and determination of the mutineers, Thomson collapsed.
Written Orders were posted round the camp saying that Étaples would be open until 10.00 p.m. All troops would henceforth go straight through to the front without any training at the Bull Ring. The police would not return.
Ironically, Thomson got back to his office to find the message he had hoped for waiting for him – but too late. The 19th Cavalry Hussars were ready to move with machine-guns at an hour’s notice. And the 1st Honourable Artillery Company, with 360 men under Lieutenant-Colonel Cooper, would be arriving at 6.30 p.m.
William Breffet of Victoria, British Columbia, who remembers Toplis being at Étaples, witnessed the arrival of the HAC.
He says, ‘As I recollect the scene the soldiers sent back from the Front to restore order refused to fire on the mutineers, but they did agree to take over guard duty from those who had volunteered to protect the women.’
Royal Scots Private Fred Emery of Gallowtree Common, Reading, Berkshire, also remembers the female units being put under guard by the HAC.
That night, Colonel Cooper took over all the security duties at Étaples from Thomson’s staff. He acted with decision. First Thomson’s concessions were confirmed. Then, hemmed in by his column of troopers, carrying loaded rifles with fixed bayonets, Cooper set out on a horseback patrol of the entire base. Wherever more than fifty mutineers were gathered, he stopped and again read out the Riot Act and the Army Act.
When he withdrew for the night to a compound on the other side of Étaples, Cooper was not reassured by what he had seen. There was no attempt to corral the troops that night. But on Thursday morning the High Command finally determined on a show of strength. The 2nd Army was ordered to send two tough battalions, the 1st Royal Welsh Fusiliers and the 22nd Manchesters.
Private W. Harrop, who now lives at 102 Houghton Lane, Swinton, Manchester, was with the Manchesters:
‘We had moved from Bullicourt in the Hindenberg Line in August and arrived in the Ypres area prepared to go into action. Then we were suddenly moved to the nearest railhead in secret and entrained for Étaples. None of us knew where we were going until we arrived there. We were then informed why we were there. As we marched along the road to a site prepared for us it must have created a great impression to see a full battalion arriving direct from the front, because all was quiet for the three days we had there on stand to orders.’
At last, on Thursday night, Thomson was able to record a minor victory.
Some 200 men broke out of camp this evening, but were most of them back in camp by 10 p.m. Two of the ringleaders were injured by entrenching tool handles whilst trying, unsuccessfully, to force the picquet of the 1st HAC at Three Arch Bridge. All ammunition was today collected and sent to Ordnance, and is only issued in future daily as required for reinforcements proceeding up the line.
On Friday, the 14th, Thomson wrote:
Police were re-instated, but with an entirely fresh body of police, and took over in place of guards and picquets previously detailed. The situation is well in hand …
One company of the HAC were held in readiness in the town with the remainder in reserve. One company, Royal Welsh Fusiliers, mounted a guard over the Detention Compound. The remainder of the two Infantry Battalions were held in readiness to act as required. Fifty to sixty men broke out of camp but were arrested in Étaples.
One hundred foot police and fifty camp police of the Étaples Police left today for other stations. This completed the transfer of the original Étaples police.
Friday night was a joyous night for the mutineers. The hated police had been sent packing. Saturday morning brought rapture. Thomson capitulated further. The town of Étaples was thrown open without reservation – a fact the general grudgingly recorded in a sentence sandwiched between records of heavy gun replacements for the front.
By Saturday afternoon and evening, the rioting in the streets had given way to singing and dancing. The victorious rebels stood shoulder to shoulder, as they had done throughout, in Étaples square and sang ‘Keep the Home Fires Burning’.
The two main brothels, fetchingly named Le Jardin d’Eden and 290, whose customers until then had been exclusively officers, reduced their prices for the new clients. La Comtesse, dressed all in black, put on a show of private enterprise by driving into the middle of the throng in her horse-drawn landau, cracking a long whip as she announced where she could be contacted.
The estaminets had recovered quickly from the pounding received the previous Sunday and throughout the week. They threw open their doors, or what was left of their doors, like the town itself, to the ecstatic but now orderly, well-conducted hordes.
On 20 September, the battle for Passchendaele began, claiming the lives of many of the erstwhile mutineers. On 22 October, after a decent interval, Brigadier-General Andrew Thomson was sacked. But, in between, the army determined that there would be a reckoning with the ringleaders of the rebellion.
Aubrey Aaransan, of the Border Regiment was a witness of the grim aftermath. Now 82 and a retired jeweller of 6 Penrhyn Drive, Heywood Road, Prestwich, near Manchester, he had taken part in the mutiny.
Any heavy object we could get our hands on, gun carriages included, was thrown across the railway line to stop trains going to the front. And for good measure some of us ripped up sections of the track. We were in the act of doing this when Commandant Thomson arrived in his car and pleaded with us to stop. We laughed in his face and carried on.
It was one hell of a riot that went on for nights and days. Some nights drunken soldiers broke into the WAAC billets and chased the girls through the streets. Later the word came down from Toplis, ‘Stop chasing the girls, get the Military Police instead.’ His order was obeyed. I remember six military policemen, shot during the riots, being buried in one grave just outside Étaples. Mutineers flocked to the graveside to sing bawdy, comical songs. They roared down a padre’s attempts to put up a prayer for the dead policemen.
In the end we got what he wanted, the end of the Bull Ring, freedom of the town and so on.
But Aaransan was to bear witness to the price paid. Two weeks after the mutiny ended he inherited the same messenger job that Victor Silvester had held in the CO’s office. On the same notice board that had horrified Silvester, Aaransan had time to scan the roll of dishonour. ‘By that time some of the ringleaders of the mutiny – I guess about ten – had already been shot.’
Another man who saw the start of the days of reckoning was Lieutenant Charles Miller of the Inniskilling Fusiliers, who became first a businessman and then a politician in India after the war. In 1938 he sent from India an account of the mutiny to his two daughters in London in the form of a letter which finished: That is the story of the Étaples mutiny, and from begi
nning to end my sympathy was with the rebels, some of whom I believe were shot after court martial. The man who wanted shooting was the Commandant. What, however, did intrigue me about the mutiny was the way it was hushed up. I have never seen a whisper of it in any book about the war.’
Miller’s letter revealed how on three nights running he was in command of a picket of fifty men intended to stop the mutineers storming one of the bridges into the town. Evidently they did not try very hard because the mutineers got through each time. According to Miller the first military policeman to die was pulled out of a house in Étaples by a mob who then killed him with their bare hands in the street.
In his letter he described Étaples as:
‘A vast prison camp, with Tommy Atkins, the man who was offering his life for his country, starring the part of prisoner, with back-breaking work, no relaxation, disgraceful food and miserable quarters. A quarter of a million British troops were subjected to constant nagging, petty irritation combined with rotten rations and wretched organization. The Camp Commandant was quite devoid of merit, but with considerable family influence.’
Miller’s daughter, Mrs Jane Bradby, of Walthamstow, London, says that a feature of her father’s letter which strikes her most is the degree of anger he felt with authority even twenty years after the event. Miller’s 1938 communication – he died in 1970, aged 82 – confirms that courts martial were set up within days of the cease-fire and that he refused to take any part in them.
I was told I must remain at Étaples as a witness. In the last two fights on the bridge some prisoners had been taken, and it was thought I might be able to identify them. I suggested it would be better for me to have a look at the men under lock and key as it would be useless to detain me if I was unable to identify anyone. Amongst others I inspected a little man with a lump on his head about the size of a turkey’s egg caused by a blow with my pick handle, as both he and I knew, but I gave him a surreptitious wink as I passed and before the prisoners had been dismissed, I informed the officer in charge that I could not identify any of them.
