At the outbreak of war in 1914 Egypt, was ruled by the British, who had taken charge in 1882, but it was officially part of the Ottoman Empire. Free and secure access to the Suez Canal was vital to the British Empire. The most valuable parts of the Empire were east of Suez, as were the dominions of Australia and New Zealand and their invaluable volunteers. At the start of 1915 crucial reinforcements were travelling through the canal on their way to the Western Front, where the Australian and New Zealand divisions would soon be considered to be amongst the best troops available to Britain.
General Sir John Maxwell, the British commander in Egypt, had 70,000 troops at his disposal at the start of 1915, although many of them were either in training or transit. On the canal Major-General A. Wilson had 30,000 men, most from the Indian Army but with some Egyptian artillery, spread out along the length of the canal. Wilson also had access to a number of French and British airplanes, and a small naval squadron. It had been decided to conduct an essentially passive defense of the canal. The main British defenses were on the western bank, with a few fortified posts on the eastern bank.
At the start of 1915 the Turks decided to launch an expedition towards the Suez Canal. It would be commanded by Djemal Pasha, the Minister of Marine and one of the triumvirate that ruled the Ottoman Empire. He was also governor of Syria and Palestine and commander of the Ottoman Fourth Army. He was ably supported by his German chief of staff, Baron Kress von Kressenstein.
Djemal Pasha was faced with a formidable set of problems. His army was only 20,000 strong, so he would be outnumbered at the canal. To get to the canal zone his army would have to cross the Sinai desert, a potentially difficult journey. There were only three possible routes across the desert, of which the northern coastal route and the central route were the most favourable. Most dangerously for the Turks, the purpose of the expedition was unclear. At the time Djemal Pasha seems to have been hoping for a revolt to break out in Egypt at the approach of his army, and despite being outnumbered by more than three to one was planning an invasion. In the aftermath of the campaign, he consistently claimed that he had never intended to invade Egypt, only to make a reconnaissance in force and to damage to canal.
The expedition was well planned. The main force, 15,000 strong, took the central route across the desert. The remaining 5,000 troops were sent along the northern and southern coastal routes. Pontoons had been built in German and smuggled through Bulgaria to Turkey. The main force took ten days to march across the desert, moving at night in an attempt to hide their movements. By 1 February the main force of 15,000 men was close to the canal.
By then any hope of surprise was gone. The two flanking forces had launched feint attacks at Kantara to the north and Kubri to the south on 26-27 January. Warned by this that a Turkish army was in the area, British and French aircraft had then located the main force. The attack was to be made towards Ismailia in the middle of the canal.
The attack was made at 3 a.m. on 3 February. The Turkish troops came under heavy fire as they attempted to cross over the canal, and only three pontoons and their crews reached the west bank, where they were quickly killed or captured. A series of attacks followed during the day, but were no more successful. On the next day Djemal Pasha ordered a retreat back to his base at Beersheba.
The British had seen off the attack on the canal, but they would now pay for their passive defence. Two companies of Ghurkhas attempted a counterattack on 3 February, but otherwise the Turks were allowed to escape. Even so, Djemal Pasha’s men had suffered around 1,400 casualties (according to his own figures). British losses were only 150, but the policy of defending the western bank of the canal came under attack.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
V.A.D.
This great poem appeared in the ‘Punch’ on August 15th 1917.
Entitled the V.A.D., it’s amusing, funny and captures the ‘Florence Nightingale’ effect of the common girl now turned angel.
I’ve no idea who wrote it!
V.A.D.
There's an angel in our ward as keeps a-flittin' to and fro
With fifty eyes upon 'er wherever she may go;
She's as pretty as a picture and as bright as mercury,
And she wears the cap and apron of a V.A.D.
The Matron she is gracious and the Sister she is kind,
But they wasn't born just yesterday and lets you know their mind;
The M.O. and the Padre is as thoughtful as can be,
But they ain't so good to look at as our V.A.D.
She's a honourable miss because 'er father is a dook,
But, Lord, you'd never guess it and it ain't no good to look
For 'er portrait in the illustrated papers, for you see
She ain't an advertiser, not our V.A.D.
Not like them that wash a tea-cup in an officer’s canteen
And then "Engaged in War Work" in the weekly Press is seen;
She's on the trot from morn to night and busy as a bee,
And there's 'eaps of wounded Tommies bless that V.A.D.
She's the lightest 'and at dressin's and she polishes the floor,
She feeds Bill Smith who'll never never use 'is 'ands no more;
And we're all of us supporters of the harristocracy
'Cos our weary days are lightened by that V.A.D.
And when the War is over, some knight or belted earl,
What's survived from killin' Germans, will take 'er for 'is girl;
They'll go and see the pictures and then 'ave shrimps and tea;
'E's a lucky man as gets 'er—and don't I wish 'twas me!
Entitled the V.A.D., it’s amusing, funny and captures the ‘Florence Nightingale’ effect of the common girl now turned angel.
I’ve no idea who wrote it!
V.A.D.
There's an angel in our ward as keeps a-flittin' to and fro
With fifty eyes upon 'er wherever she may go;
She's as pretty as a picture and as bright as mercury,
And she wears the cap and apron of a V.A.D.
The Matron she is gracious and the Sister she is kind,
But they wasn't born just yesterday and lets you know their mind;
The M.O. and the Padre is as thoughtful as can be,
But they ain't so good to look at as our V.A.D.
She's a honourable miss because 'er father is a dook,
But, Lord, you'd never guess it and it ain't no good to look
For 'er portrait in the illustrated papers, for you see
She ain't an advertiser, not our V.A.D.
Not like them that wash a tea-cup in an officer’s canteen
And then "Engaged in War Work" in the weekly Press is seen;
She's on the trot from morn to night and busy as a bee,
And there's 'eaps of wounded Tommies bless that V.A.D.
She's the lightest 'and at dressin's and she polishes the floor,
She feeds Bill Smith who'll never never use 'is 'ands no more;
And we're all of us supporters of the harristocracy
'Cos our weary days are lightened by that V.A.D.
And when the War is over, some knight or belted earl,
What's survived from killin' Germans, will take 'er for 'is girl;
They'll go and see the pictures and then 'ave shrimps and tea;
'E's a lucky man as gets 'er—and don't I wish 'twas me!
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Not to shoot at the airship.
The ‘New York Times’ carried an amusing article from London on September 10th 1914.
The day before the Admiralty tried to stop over enthusiastic citizens from getting their guns and shooting at a naval airship.
AIRSHIP GOING OVER LONDON
Admiralty Warms People Not to Shoot at the Friendly Visitor.
London. Sept 9. - The Admiralty announced tonight that one of the British naval airships would make short cruises over London over the next few days and night.
The public is warned not to shoot at the airship.
The day before the Admiralty tried to stop over enthusiastic citizens from getting their guns and shooting at a naval airship.
AIRSHIP GOING OVER LONDON
Admiralty Warms People Not to Shoot at the Friendly Visitor.
London. Sept 9. - The Admiralty announced tonight that one of the British naval airships would make short cruises over London over the next few days and night.
The public is warned not to shoot at the airship.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Aarsen Grenade-Gun.
This interesting article and pictures comes from “The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914.”
I not sure how sucessful the Aarsen Grenade-gun was, but it looks a pretty terrifying weapon from the pictures.
One of the features of the present war which have been drawn attention to by "Eye-Witness" in his letters from the Front, is the resuscitation of fighting with hand-grenades on both sides. Particularly has this been the case during the battles in Northern France and Flanders, wherever the trenches approached one another within flinging distance. There also, on occasion, where the troops facing one another were further apart, and beyond reach of a throw by hand, an improvised catapult of the classic type has been devised by our men for slinging hand-bombs; utilising a metal spring bent back and held fast in a notch, to be released on the lighting of the fuse.
HAND-GRENADES SHOT FROM A GUN!—AARSEN GRENADES BURSTING IN THE OPEN.
In the photograph above the shells are seen bursting at a certain distance from the firing-point. Our soldiers in the trenches in Flanders, according to "Eye-Witness," have made improvised hand-grenades for themselves, utilising empty jam-tins. These are charged with gun-cotton and fused, and on being lighted are flung across among the Germans in their trenches.
I not sure how sucessful the Aarsen Grenade-gun was, but it looks a pretty terrifying weapon from the pictures.
HAND-GRENADES SHOT FROM A GUN!—THE AARSEN GRENADE-GUN BEING LOADED.
One of the features of the present war which have been drawn attention to by "Eye-Witness" in his letters from the Front, is the resuscitation of fighting with hand-grenades on both sides. Particularly has this been the case during the battles in Northern France and Flanders, wherever the trenches approached one another within flinging distance. There also, on occasion, where the troops facing one another were further apart, and beyond reach of a throw by hand, an improvised catapult of the classic type has been devised by our men for slinging hand-bombs; utilising a metal spring bent back and held fast in a notch, to be released on the lighting of the fuse.
"Above is" a photograph of a Danish experimental gun, designed at Copenhagen, for firing Aarsen hand-grenades. The grenades are shown in the act of being introduced into the breech of the weapons, and the apparatus for holding each grenade in the hand is clearly shown.
HAND-GRENADES SHOT FROM A GUN!—AARSEN GRENADES BURSTING IN THE OPEN.In the photograph above the shells are seen bursting at a certain distance from the firing-point. Our soldiers in the trenches in Flanders, according to "Eye-Witness," have made improvised hand-grenades for themselves, utilising empty jam-tins. These are charged with gun-cotton and fused, and on being lighted are flung across among the Germans in their trenches.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Dangerous Sandbag.
This amusing little extract comes from the Punch in January 1916.
I’m never sure with the ‘Punch’ what is real and what is fiction. But I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt as it is quite amusing. Anyway -
An extract from a letter written to a loved one from the Front:—
"I received your dear little note in a sandbag. You say that you hope the sandbag stops a bullet. Well, to tell the truth, I hope it don't, as I have been patching my trousers with it."
I’m never sure with the ‘Punch’ what is real and what is fiction. But I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt as it is quite amusing. Anyway -
An extract from a letter written to a loved one from the Front:—
"I received your dear little note in a sandbag. You say that you hope the sandbag stops a bullet. Well, to tell the truth, I hope it don't, as I have been patching my trousers with it."
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The Soldiers Epitaph - He Died for England.
For Armistice Day I have chosen this poem by an unknown author.
It was published in the New York Times – June 1915 and captures the spirit and feelings of the time.
Under the Heading “The Soldiers Epitaph’ the poem was entitled “HE DIED FOR ENGLAND”.
It was an inscription on the tombstone of a private soldier killed in action.
"HE DIED FOR ENGLAND."
These four short words his epitaph,
Sublimely simple, nobly plain;
Who adds to them but addeth chaff,
Obscures with husks the golden grain.
Not all the bards of other days,
Not Homer in his loftiest vein,
Not Milton's most majestic strain,
Not the whole wealth of Pindar's lays,
Could bring to that one simple phrase
What were not rather loss than gain;
That elegy so briefly fine,
That epic writ in half a line,
That little which so much conveys,
Whose silence is a hymn of praise
And throbs with harmonies divine.
It was published in the New York Times – June 1915 and captures the spirit and feelings of the time.
Under the Heading “The Soldiers Epitaph’ the poem was entitled “HE DIED FOR ENGLAND”.
It was an inscription on the tombstone of a private soldier killed in action.
"HE DIED FOR ENGLAND."
These four short words his epitaph,
Sublimely simple, nobly plain;
Who adds to them but addeth chaff,
Obscures with husks the golden grain.
Not all the bards of other days,
Not Homer in his loftiest vein,
Not Milton's most majestic strain,
Not the whole wealth of Pindar's lays,
Could bring to that one simple phrase
What were not rather loss than gain;
That elegy so briefly fine,
That epic writ in half a line,
That little which so much conveys,
Whose silence is a hymn of praise
And throbs with harmonies divine.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
How to treat a Wife.
I love this quote taken from ‘The Punch’ in March 1916.
How to treat a Wife.
An extract from lecture by N.C.O.:—
"Your rifle is your best friend, take every care of it; treat it as you would your wife, rub it all over with an oily rag every day."
How to treat a Wife.
An extract from lecture by N.C.O.:—
"Your rifle is your best friend, take every care of it; treat it as you would your wife, rub it all over with an oily rag every day."
Monday, November 09, 2009
The Passing of a Zeppelin.
This ia an excellent article from 'The Great War in a Different Light'.
Originally from the book 'Many Fronts' edited by Lewis R. Freeman 1918.
This provocative piece captures the wonder, awe and terror of a night raid over London.
"In the year that had gone by since the first great air-raid on London we knew that much had been done in the way of strengthening the defences. Just what had been done we did not, of course, and do not, know. We knew that there were more and better guns and searchlights, and probably greatly improved means of anticipating the coming of the raiders and of following and reporting their movements after they did come. At the same time we also knew that the latest Zeppelin had been greatly improved; that it was larger, faster, capable of ascending to a greater altitude, and probably able to stand more and heavier gun-fire than its prototype of a year ago. It seemed to be a question, therefore, of whether or not the guns could range the raiders, and, if so, do them any vital damage when they did hit them. The aeroplane was an unknown quantity, and, in the popular mind at least, not seriously reckoned with. London knew that the crucial test would not come until an airship tried again to penetrate to the heart of the metropolitan area, and awaited the result calmly if not quite indifferently.
The Zeppelin raids of the spring and early summer, numerous as they had been, had done a negligible amount of military damage and scarcely more to civil property. The death list, too, had, mercifully, been very low. It seemed significant, however, that the main London defences had been avoided during all of this time, indicating, apparently, that the raiders were reluctant to lift the lid of the Pandora's box that was laid out so temptingly before them for fear of the possible consequences. Twice or thrice, watching with my glasses after I had been awakened by distant bomb explosions or gunfire, I had seen a shell-pocketed airship draw back, as a yellow dog refuses the challenge that his intrusion has provoked, and glide off into the darkness of some safer area. "Would they try it again?” was the question Londoners asked themselves as the dark of the moon came round each month, and, except for the comparatively few who had had personal experience of the terror and death that follow the swath of an air-raider, most of them seemed rather anxious to have the matter put to the test.
Last night—just twelve "darks-of-the-moon" after the first great raid of 1915—the test came. It was hardly a conclusive one, perhaps (though that may well have come before these lines find their way into print), but it was certainly highly illuminative. I write this on my return to London from viewing—twenty miles away—a tangled mass of wreckage and a heap of charred trunks that are all that remain of a Zeppelin and its crew which—whether by accident, intent, or the force of circumstances will probably never be known—rushed in where two others of its aerial sisters feared to fly, and paid the cost.
There was nothing of the surprise (to London, at least; as regards the ill-starred Zeppelin crew none can say) in last night's raid. The night grew more heavily overcast as the darkness deepened, and towards midnight stealthy little beams of hooded searchlights pirouetting on the eastern clouds told the home-wending Saturday night theatre crowd that, with the imminent approach of the raiders, London was lifting a corner of its mask of blackness and throwing out an open challenge to the enemy. This was the first time I had known the lights to precede the actual explosion of bombs, and the cool confidence of the thing suggested (as I heard one policeman tell another) that the defence had something "up their sleeves."
It was towards one in the morning when I finished my supper at a West End restaurant and started walking through the almost deserted streets to my hotel. London is anything but a bedlam after midnight, but the silence in the early hours of this morning was positively uncanny. Now, with the last of the 'buses gone and all trains stopped, only the muffled buzz of an occasional belated taxi—pushing on cautiously with hooded lights—broke the stillness.
Reaching my room I pulled on a sweater, ran up the curtain, laid my glass ready and seated myself at the window, the same window from which, a year ago, I had watched those two insolently contemptuous raiders sail across overhead and leave a blazing wake of death and destruction behind them. On that night, I reflected, I had felt the rush of air from the bombs, and—later—had watched the firemen extinguishing the flames and the ambulances carrying the wounded to the hospitals. Would it be like that to-night? I wondered (there was now no doubt that the raiders were near, for the searchlights had multiplied, and far to the south-east, though no detonations were audible, quick flashes told of scattering gun-fire), or would the defence have more of a word to say for itself this time f I looked to the eastern heavens where the shifting clouds were now "polka-dotted" with the fluttering golden motes of a score of searchlights, and thought I had found my answer.
There was no wheeling and reeling of the lights in wide circles, as a year ago, but rather a steady persistent stabbing at the clouds, each one appearing to keep to an allotted area of its own. "Stabbing" expresses the action exactly, and it recalled to me an occasion, a month ago, when a " Tommy," who was showing me through some captured dug-outs on the Somme, illustrated, with bayonet thrusts, the manner in which they had originally searched for Germans hiding under the straw mattresses. There was nothing "panicky" in the work of the lights this time, but only the suggestion of methodical, ordered, relentless vigilance.
"Encouraging as a preliminary," I said to myself; "now" (for the night was electric with import) "for the main event!"
There was not long to wait. To the south-east the gun-flashes had increased in frequency, followed by mist-dulled blurs of brightness in the clouds that told of bursting shells. Suddenly, through a rift in the clouds, I saw a new kind of glare—the earthward-launched beam of an airship's searchlight groping for its target—but the shifting mist-curtain intervened again even as one of the defending lights took up the challenge and flashed its own rapier ray in quick reply. Presently the muffled boom of bombs fleeted to my ears, and then the sharper rattle of a sudden gust of gun-fire. This was quickly followed by a confused roar of sound, evidently from many bombs dropped simultaneously or in quick succession, and I knew that one of two things had happened—either the raider had found its mark and was delivering "rapid fire," or the guns were making it so hot for the visitor that it had been compelled to dump its explosives and seek safety in flight. When a minute or more had gone by I felt sure that the latter had been scuttled, and that it was now only a question of which direction the flight was going to take.
Again the eastward searchlights gave me the answer. By twos and threes—I could not follow the order of the thing—the lights that had been "patrolling" the eastern sky moved over and took their station around a certain low-hanging cloud to the south. The murky sheet of cumulonimbus seemed to pale and dissolve in the concentrated rays, and then, right into the focus of golden glow formed by the dancing light motes running wild and blind as a bull charges the red mantle masking the matador, darted a huge Zeppelin.
Perhaps never before in all time has a single object been the centre of so blinding a glare. It seemed that the optic nerve must wither in so fierce a light, and certainly no unprotected eye could have opened to it. Dark glasses might have made it bearable, but could not possibly have resolved the earthward prospect into anything less than the heart of a fiery furnace. Indeed, it is very doubtful if the bewildered fugitive knew, in more than the most general way, where it was. Cut off by the guns to the south- east from retreat in that direction, but knowing that the North Sea and safety could be reached by driving to the north-east, it is more than probable that the harried raider found itself over the "Lion's Den" rather because it could not help it than by deliberate intent.
What a contrast was this blinded, reeling thing to those arrogantly purposeful raiders of a year ago! Supremely disdainful of gun and searchlight, these had prowled over London till the last of their bombs had been planted, and one of them had even circled back the better to see the ruin its passing had wrought. But this raider—far larger than its predecessors and flying at over twice as great a height though it was—dashed on its erratic course as though pursued by the vengeful spirits of those its harpy sisters had bombed to death in their beds. If it still had bombs to drop its commander either had no time or no heart for the job. Never have I seen an inanimate thing typify terror—the terror that must have gripped the hearts of its palpably flustered (to judge by the airship's movements) crew—like that staggering helpless maverick of a Zeppelin, when it finally found itself clutched in the tentacles of the searchlights of the aerial defences of London.
All this time the weird, uncanny silence that brooded over the streets before I had come indoors held the city in its spell. The watching thousands—nay, millions—kept their excitement in leash, and the propeller of the raider—muffled by the mists intervening between the earth and the 12000 feet at which it whirred—dulled to a drowsy drone. Into this tense silence the sudden fire of a hundred anti-aircraft guns— opening in unison as though at the pull of a single lanyard—cut in a blended roar like the Crack o' Doom; indeed, though few among those hushed watching millions realised it, it was literally the Crack o' Doom that was sounding. For perhaps a minute or a minute and a half the air was vibrant with the roar of hard-pumped guns and the shriek of speeding shell, the great sound from below drowning the sharper cracks from the steel-cold flashes in the upper air.
It was guns that were built for the job—not the hastily gathered and wholly inadequate artillery of a year ago—that were speaking now, and the voice was one of ordered, imperious authority. Range-finders had the marauder's altitude, and the information was being put at the disposal of guns that had the power to " deliver the goods" at that level. What a contrast the sequel was to that pitiful firing of the other raid! Only the opening shots were "shorts" or "wides" now, and ten seconds after the first gun a diamond-clear burst blinking out through a rift in the upper clouds told that the raider—to use a naval term—was "straddled," had shells exploding both above and below it. From that instant till the guns ceased to roar, seventy or eighty seconds later, the shells burst, lacing the air with golden glimmers, and meshed the flying raider in a fiery net.
For a few seconds it seemed to me that, close-woven as was the net of shell-bursts, the flashes came hardly as fast as the roar of the guns would seem to warrant, and I swept the heavens with my glasses in a search for other possible targets. But no other raider was in sight; there was no other "nodal centre" of gun-fire and searchlights. Suddenly the reason for the apparent discrepancy was clear to me. The flashes I saw (except for a few of the shrapnel bullets they were releasing) were only the misses; the hits I could not see. The long-awaited test was at its crucial stage. Empty of bombs and with half of its fuel consumed, the raider was at the zenith of its flight, and yet the guns were ranging it with ease. It was now a question of how much shell-fire the Zeppelin could stand.
In spite of the fact that the airship—so far as I could see through my glasses—did not appear to slow down or to be perceptibly racked by the gun-fire, I have no doubt what the end would have been if the test could have been pressed to its conclusion in an open country. But bringing a burning Zeppelin down across three or four blocks of thickly settled London was hardly a thing the Air Defence desired to do if it could possibly be avoided. The plan was carried to its conclusion with the almost mathematical precision that marked the preliminary searchlight work and gunnery.
From the moment that it had burst into sight the raider had been emitting clouds of white gas to hide itself from the searchlights and guns, while the plainly visible movements of its lateral planes seemed to indicate that it was making desperate efforts to climb still higher into the thinning upper air. Neither expedient was of much use. The swirling gas clouds might well have obscured a hovering airship, but never one that was rushing through the air at seventy miles an hour, while, far from increasing its altitude, there seemed to be a slight but steady loss from the moment the guns ceased until, two or three miles further along, it was hidden from sight for a minute by a low-hanging cloud. Undoubtedly the aim of the gunners had been to "hole," not to fire the marauder, and it must have been losing gas very rapidly even— as the climacteric moment of the attack approached— at the time increased buoyancy was most desirable.
The massed searchlights of London let go shortly after the gun-fire ceased, and now, as the raider came within their field, the more scattered lights of the northern suburbs wheeled up and fastened on. The fugitive changed its course from north to north-easterly about this time, and the swelling clouds of vapour left behind presently cut off its foreshortened length entirely from my view. A heavy ground mist appeared to prevail beyond the heights to the north, and in the diffused glow of the searchlights that strove to pierce this mask my glasses showed the ghostly shadows of flitting aeroplanes—manoeuvring for the death-thrust.
The ground mist (which did not, however, cover London proper) kept the full strength of the searchlights from the upper air, and it was in a sky of almost Stygian blackness that the final blow was sent home. The farmers of Hertfordshire tell weird stories of the detonations of bursting bombs striking their fields, but all these sounds were absorbed in the twenty-mile air-cushion that was now interposed between my vantage point and the final scene of action.
Not a sound, not a shadow, heralded the flare of yellow light which suddenly flashed out in the north-eastern heavens and spread latitudinally until the whole body of a Zeppelin—no small object even at twenty miles—stood out in glowing incandescence. Then a great sheet of pink-white flame shot up, and in the ripples . of rosy light which suffused the earth for scores of miles I could read the gilded lettering on my binoculars. This was undoubtedly the explosion of the ignited hydrogen of the main gas-bags, and immediately following it the great frame collapsed in the middle and began falling slowly toward the earth, burning now with a bright yellow flame, above which the curl of black smoke was distinctly visible. A lurid burst of light—doubtless from the exploding petrol tanks —flared up as the flaming mass struck the earth, and half a minute later the night, save for the questing searchlights to east and south, was as black as ever again.
Then perhaps the strangest thing of all occurred. London began to cheer. I should have been prepared for it in Paris, or Rome, or Berlin, or even New York, but that the Briton— who of all men in the world most fears the sound of his own voice lifted in unrestrained jubilation —was really cheering, and in millions, was almost too much. I pinched my arm to be sure that I had not dozed away, and, lost in wonder, forgot for a minute or two the great drama just enacted.
Under my window half a dozen Australian "Tommies" were rending the air with "coo- ees" and dancing around a lamp-post, while all along the street, from doorways and windows, exultant shouting could be heard. For several blocks in all directions the cheers rang out loud and clear, distinctly recognisable as such; the sound of the millions of throats farther afield came only as a heavy rumbling hum. Perhaps since the dawn of creation the air has not trembled with so strange a sound—a sound which, though entirely human in its origin, was still unhuman, unearthly, fantastic. Certainly never before in history—not even during the great volcanic eruptions—has so huge a number of people (the fall of the Zeppelin had been visible through a fifty- to seventy-five-mile radius in all directions, a region with probably from 10,000,000 to 15,000,000 inhabitants) been suddenly and intensely stirred by a single event.
It was undoubtedly the spectacularity of the unexpected coup that had made these normally repressed millions so suddenly and so violently vocal. Many—perhaps most—stopped cheering when they had had time to realise that a score of human beings were being burned to cinders in the heart of that flaming comet in the northeastern heavens; others—I knew the only recently restored tenements where some of them were—must have shouted in all the grimmer exultation for that very realisation. I can hardly say yet which stirred me more deeply, the fall of the Zeppelin itself or that stupendous burst of feeling aroused by its fall.
By taxi, milk-cart, tram, and any other conveyance that offered, but mostly on foot, I threaded highway and byway for the next four hours, and shortly after daybreak scrambled through the last of a dozen thorny hedgerows and found myself beside the still smouldering wreckage of the fallen raider. An orderly cordon of soldiers surrounding an acre of blackened and twisted metal, miles and miles of tangled wire, and a score or so of Flying Corps men already busily engaged loading the wreckage into waiting motor-lorries—that was about all there was to see. A ten-foot-square green tarpaulin covered all that could be gathered together of the airship's crew. Some of the fragments were readily recognisable as having once been the arms and legs and trunks of men; others were not. A man at my elbow stood gazing at the pitiful heap for a space, his brow puckered in thought. Presently he turned to me, a grim light in his eye, and spoke.
"Do you know," he said, "that these" (indicating the charred stumps under the square of canvas) "have just recalled to me the words Count Zeppelin is reported to have used at a great mass meeting called in Berlin to press for a more rigorous prosecution of the war against England by air, for a further increase of frightfulness? Leading two airship pilots to the front of the platform, he shouted to the crowd, 'Here are two men who were over London last night!' And the assembled thousands, so the despatch said, roared their applause and clamoured that the Zeppelins be sent again and again until the arrogant Englanders were brought to their knees. Well"— he paused and drew a deep breath as his eyes returned to the heap of blackened fragments—"it appears that they did send the Zeppelins again—more than ever were sent before—and now it is our turn to be presented to 'the men who were over London last night.' I wonder if the flare that consumed these poor devils was bright enough to pierce the black night that has settled over Germany?”
The tenseness passed out of the night, and— the raid was over. Who knows but what, so far as the threat to England is concerned, the passing of a Zeppelin marked also the passing of the Zeppelin? "
Originally from the book 'Many Fronts' edited by Lewis R. Freeman 1918.
This provocative piece captures the wonder, awe and terror of a night raid over London.
"In the year that had gone by since the first great air-raid on London we knew that much had been done in the way of strengthening the defences. Just what had been done we did not, of course, and do not, know. We knew that there were more and better guns and searchlights, and probably greatly improved means of anticipating the coming of the raiders and of following and reporting their movements after they did come. At the same time we also knew that the latest Zeppelin had been greatly improved; that it was larger, faster, capable of ascending to a greater altitude, and probably able to stand more and heavier gun-fire than its prototype of a year ago. It seemed to be a question, therefore, of whether or not the guns could range the raiders, and, if so, do them any vital damage when they did hit them. The aeroplane was an unknown quantity, and, in the popular mind at least, not seriously reckoned with. London knew that the crucial test would not come until an airship tried again to penetrate to the heart of the metropolitan area, and awaited the result calmly if not quite indifferently.
The Zeppelin raids of the spring and early summer, numerous as they had been, had done a negligible amount of military damage and scarcely more to civil property. The death list, too, had, mercifully, been very low. It seemed significant, however, that the main London defences had been avoided during all of this time, indicating, apparently, that the raiders were reluctant to lift the lid of the Pandora's box that was laid out so temptingly before them for fear of the possible consequences. Twice or thrice, watching with my glasses after I had been awakened by distant bomb explosions or gunfire, I had seen a shell-pocketed airship draw back, as a yellow dog refuses the challenge that his intrusion has provoked, and glide off into the darkness of some safer area. "Would they try it again?” was the question Londoners asked themselves as the dark of the moon came round each month, and, except for the comparatively few who had had personal experience of the terror and death that follow the swath of an air-raider, most of them seemed rather anxious to have the matter put to the test.
Last night—just twelve "darks-of-the-moon" after the first great raid of 1915—the test came. It was hardly a conclusive one, perhaps (though that may well have come before these lines find their way into print), but it was certainly highly illuminative. I write this on my return to London from viewing—twenty miles away—a tangled mass of wreckage and a heap of charred trunks that are all that remain of a Zeppelin and its crew which—whether by accident, intent, or the force of circumstances will probably never be known—rushed in where two others of its aerial sisters feared to fly, and paid the cost.
There was nothing of the surprise (to London, at least; as regards the ill-starred Zeppelin crew none can say) in last night's raid. The night grew more heavily overcast as the darkness deepened, and towards midnight stealthy little beams of hooded searchlights pirouetting on the eastern clouds told the home-wending Saturday night theatre crowd that, with the imminent approach of the raiders, London was lifting a corner of its mask of blackness and throwing out an open challenge to the enemy. This was the first time I had known the lights to precede the actual explosion of bombs, and the cool confidence of the thing suggested (as I heard one policeman tell another) that the defence had something "up their sleeves."
It was towards one in the morning when I finished my supper at a West End restaurant and started walking through the almost deserted streets to my hotel. London is anything but a bedlam after midnight, but the silence in the early hours of this morning was positively uncanny. Now, with the last of the 'buses gone and all trains stopped, only the muffled buzz of an occasional belated taxi—pushing on cautiously with hooded lights—broke the stillness.
Reaching my room I pulled on a sweater, ran up the curtain, laid my glass ready and seated myself at the window, the same window from which, a year ago, I had watched those two insolently contemptuous raiders sail across overhead and leave a blazing wake of death and destruction behind them. On that night, I reflected, I had felt the rush of air from the bombs, and—later—had watched the firemen extinguishing the flames and the ambulances carrying the wounded to the hospitals. Would it be like that to-night? I wondered (there was now no doubt that the raiders were near, for the searchlights had multiplied, and far to the south-east, though no detonations were audible, quick flashes told of scattering gun-fire), or would the defence have more of a word to say for itself this time f I looked to the eastern heavens where the shifting clouds were now "polka-dotted" with the fluttering golden motes of a score of searchlights, and thought I had found my answer.
There was no wheeling and reeling of the lights in wide circles, as a year ago, but rather a steady persistent stabbing at the clouds, each one appearing to keep to an allotted area of its own. "Stabbing" expresses the action exactly, and it recalled to me an occasion, a month ago, when a " Tommy," who was showing me through some captured dug-outs on the Somme, illustrated, with bayonet thrusts, the manner in which they had originally searched for Germans hiding under the straw mattresses. There was nothing "panicky" in the work of the lights this time, but only the suggestion of methodical, ordered, relentless vigilance.
"Encouraging as a preliminary," I said to myself; "now" (for the night was electric with import) "for the main event!"
There was not long to wait. To the south-east the gun-flashes had increased in frequency, followed by mist-dulled blurs of brightness in the clouds that told of bursting shells. Suddenly, through a rift in the clouds, I saw a new kind of glare—the earthward-launched beam of an airship's searchlight groping for its target—but the shifting mist-curtain intervened again even as one of the defending lights took up the challenge and flashed its own rapier ray in quick reply. Presently the muffled boom of bombs fleeted to my ears, and then the sharper rattle of a sudden gust of gun-fire. This was quickly followed by a confused roar of sound, evidently from many bombs dropped simultaneously or in quick succession, and I knew that one of two things had happened—either the raider had found its mark and was delivering "rapid fire," or the guns were making it so hot for the visitor that it had been compelled to dump its explosives and seek safety in flight. When a minute or more had gone by I felt sure that the latter had been scuttled, and that it was now only a question of which direction the flight was going to take.
Again the eastward searchlights gave me the answer. By twos and threes—I could not follow the order of the thing—the lights that had been "patrolling" the eastern sky moved over and took their station around a certain low-hanging cloud to the south. The murky sheet of cumulonimbus seemed to pale and dissolve in the concentrated rays, and then, right into the focus of golden glow formed by the dancing light motes running wild and blind as a bull charges the red mantle masking the matador, darted a huge Zeppelin.
Perhaps never before in all time has a single object been the centre of so blinding a glare. It seemed that the optic nerve must wither in so fierce a light, and certainly no unprotected eye could have opened to it. Dark glasses might have made it bearable, but could not possibly have resolved the earthward prospect into anything less than the heart of a fiery furnace. Indeed, it is very doubtful if the bewildered fugitive knew, in more than the most general way, where it was. Cut off by the guns to the south- east from retreat in that direction, but knowing that the North Sea and safety could be reached by driving to the north-east, it is more than probable that the harried raider found itself over the "Lion's Den" rather because it could not help it than by deliberate intent.
What a contrast was this blinded, reeling thing to those arrogantly purposeful raiders of a year ago! Supremely disdainful of gun and searchlight, these had prowled over London till the last of their bombs had been planted, and one of them had even circled back the better to see the ruin its passing had wrought. But this raider—far larger than its predecessors and flying at over twice as great a height though it was—dashed on its erratic course as though pursued by the vengeful spirits of those its harpy sisters had bombed to death in their beds. If it still had bombs to drop its commander either had no time or no heart for the job. Never have I seen an inanimate thing typify terror—the terror that must have gripped the hearts of its palpably flustered (to judge by the airship's movements) crew—like that staggering helpless maverick of a Zeppelin, when it finally found itself clutched in the tentacles of the searchlights of the aerial defences of London.
All this time the weird, uncanny silence that brooded over the streets before I had come indoors held the city in its spell. The watching thousands—nay, millions—kept their excitement in leash, and the propeller of the raider—muffled by the mists intervening between the earth and the 12000 feet at which it whirred—dulled to a drowsy drone. Into this tense silence the sudden fire of a hundred anti-aircraft guns— opening in unison as though at the pull of a single lanyard—cut in a blended roar like the Crack o' Doom; indeed, though few among those hushed watching millions realised it, it was literally the Crack o' Doom that was sounding. For perhaps a minute or a minute and a half the air was vibrant with the roar of hard-pumped guns and the shriek of speeding shell, the great sound from below drowning the sharper cracks from the steel-cold flashes in the upper air.
It was guns that were built for the job—not the hastily gathered and wholly inadequate artillery of a year ago—that were speaking now, and the voice was one of ordered, imperious authority. Range-finders had the marauder's altitude, and the information was being put at the disposal of guns that had the power to " deliver the goods" at that level. What a contrast the sequel was to that pitiful firing of the other raid! Only the opening shots were "shorts" or "wides" now, and ten seconds after the first gun a diamond-clear burst blinking out through a rift in the upper clouds told that the raider—to use a naval term—was "straddled," had shells exploding both above and below it. From that instant till the guns ceased to roar, seventy or eighty seconds later, the shells burst, lacing the air with golden glimmers, and meshed the flying raider in a fiery net.
For a few seconds it seemed to me that, close-woven as was the net of shell-bursts, the flashes came hardly as fast as the roar of the guns would seem to warrant, and I swept the heavens with my glasses in a search for other possible targets. But no other raider was in sight; there was no other "nodal centre" of gun-fire and searchlights. Suddenly the reason for the apparent discrepancy was clear to me. The flashes I saw (except for a few of the shrapnel bullets they were releasing) were only the misses; the hits I could not see. The long-awaited test was at its crucial stage. Empty of bombs and with half of its fuel consumed, the raider was at the zenith of its flight, and yet the guns were ranging it with ease. It was now a question of how much shell-fire the Zeppelin could stand.
In spite of the fact that the airship—so far as I could see through my glasses—did not appear to slow down or to be perceptibly racked by the gun-fire, I have no doubt what the end would have been if the test could have been pressed to its conclusion in an open country. But bringing a burning Zeppelin down across three or four blocks of thickly settled London was hardly a thing the Air Defence desired to do if it could possibly be avoided. The plan was carried to its conclusion with the almost mathematical precision that marked the preliminary searchlight work and gunnery.
From the moment that it had burst into sight the raider had been emitting clouds of white gas to hide itself from the searchlights and guns, while the plainly visible movements of its lateral planes seemed to indicate that it was making desperate efforts to climb still higher into the thinning upper air. Neither expedient was of much use. The swirling gas clouds might well have obscured a hovering airship, but never one that was rushing through the air at seventy miles an hour, while, far from increasing its altitude, there seemed to be a slight but steady loss from the moment the guns ceased until, two or three miles further along, it was hidden from sight for a minute by a low-hanging cloud. Undoubtedly the aim of the gunners had been to "hole," not to fire the marauder, and it must have been losing gas very rapidly even— as the climacteric moment of the attack approached— at the time increased buoyancy was most desirable.
The massed searchlights of London let go shortly after the gun-fire ceased, and now, as the raider came within their field, the more scattered lights of the northern suburbs wheeled up and fastened on. The fugitive changed its course from north to north-easterly about this time, and the swelling clouds of vapour left behind presently cut off its foreshortened length entirely from my view. A heavy ground mist appeared to prevail beyond the heights to the north, and in the diffused glow of the searchlights that strove to pierce this mask my glasses showed the ghostly shadows of flitting aeroplanes—manoeuvring for the death-thrust.
The ground mist (which did not, however, cover London proper) kept the full strength of the searchlights from the upper air, and it was in a sky of almost Stygian blackness that the final blow was sent home. The farmers of Hertfordshire tell weird stories of the detonations of bursting bombs striking their fields, but all these sounds were absorbed in the twenty-mile air-cushion that was now interposed between my vantage point and the final scene of action.
Not a sound, not a shadow, heralded the flare of yellow light which suddenly flashed out in the north-eastern heavens and spread latitudinally until the whole body of a Zeppelin—no small object even at twenty miles—stood out in glowing incandescence. Then a great sheet of pink-white flame shot up, and in the ripples . of rosy light which suffused the earth for scores of miles I could read the gilded lettering on my binoculars. This was undoubtedly the explosion of the ignited hydrogen of the main gas-bags, and immediately following it the great frame collapsed in the middle and began falling slowly toward the earth, burning now with a bright yellow flame, above which the curl of black smoke was distinctly visible. A lurid burst of light—doubtless from the exploding petrol tanks —flared up as the flaming mass struck the earth, and half a minute later the night, save for the questing searchlights to east and south, was as black as ever again.
Then perhaps the strangest thing of all occurred. London began to cheer. I should have been prepared for it in Paris, or Rome, or Berlin, or even New York, but that the Briton— who of all men in the world most fears the sound of his own voice lifted in unrestrained jubilation —was really cheering, and in millions, was almost too much. I pinched my arm to be sure that I had not dozed away, and, lost in wonder, forgot for a minute or two the great drama just enacted.
Under my window half a dozen Australian "Tommies" were rending the air with "coo- ees" and dancing around a lamp-post, while all along the street, from doorways and windows, exultant shouting could be heard. For several blocks in all directions the cheers rang out loud and clear, distinctly recognisable as such; the sound of the millions of throats farther afield came only as a heavy rumbling hum. Perhaps since the dawn of creation the air has not trembled with so strange a sound—a sound which, though entirely human in its origin, was still unhuman, unearthly, fantastic. Certainly never before in history—not even during the great volcanic eruptions—has so huge a number of people (the fall of the Zeppelin had been visible through a fifty- to seventy-five-mile radius in all directions, a region with probably from 10,000,000 to 15,000,000 inhabitants) been suddenly and intensely stirred by a single event.
It was undoubtedly the spectacularity of the unexpected coup that had made these normally repressed millions so suddenly and so violently vocal. Many—perhaps most—stopped cheering when they had had time to realise that a score of human beings were being burned to cinders in the heart of that flaming comet in the northeastern heavens; others—I knew the only recently restored tenements where some of them were—must have shouted in all the grimmer exultation for that very realisation. I can hardly say yet which stirred me more deeply, the fall of the Zeppelin itself or that stupendous burst of feeling aroused by its fall.
By taxi, milk-cart, tram, and any other conveyance that offered, but mostly on foot, I threaded highway and byway for the next four hours, and shortly after daybreak scrambled through the last of a dozen thorny hedgerows and found myself beside the still smouldering wreckage of the fallen raider. An orderly cordon of soldiers surrounding an acre of blackened and twisted metal, miles and miles of tangled wire, and a score or so of Flying Corps men already busily engaged loading the wreckage into waiting motor-lorries—that was about all there was to see. A ten-foot-square green tarpaulin covered all that could be gathered together of the airship's crew. Some of the fragments were readily recognisable as having once been the arms and legs and trunks of men; others were not. A man at my elbow stood gazing at the pitiful heap for a space, his brow puckered in thought. Presently he turned to me, a grim light in his eye, and spoke.
"Do you know," he said, "that these" (indicating the charred stumps under the square of canvas) "have just recalled to me the words Count Zeppelin is reported to have used at a great mass meeting called in Berlin to press for a more rigorous prosecution of the war against England by air, for a further increase of frightfulness? Leading two airship pilots to the front of the platform, he shouted to the crowd, 'Here are two men who were over London last night!' And the assembled thousands, so the despatch said, roared their applause and clamoured that the Zeppelins be sent again and again until the arrogant Englanders were brought to their knees. Well"— he paused and drew a deep breath as his eyes returned to the heap of blackened fragments—"it appears that they did send the Zeppelins again—more than ever were sent before—and now it is our turn to be presented to 'the men who were over London last night.' I wonder if the flare that consumed these poor devils was bright enough to pierce the black night that has settled over Germany?”
The tenseness passed out of the night, and— the raid was over. Who knows but what, so far as the threat to England is concerned, the passing of a Zeppelin marked also the passing of the Zeppelin? "
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Zeppelin Raids on London
This fascinating article appered in the London Times on 22 January 1915. It informed the public of the range Zeppelin’s had to fly to reach England, their ammunition and what the conditions a Zeppelin will fly in. It was all very reassuring.
In today’s world this all seems a ‘bit over the top’, but Zeppelin raids were a real and frightening threat during the war.
Zeppelin Raids on London
By the Naval Correspondent of The London Times.
Some doubt has been thrown by correspondents upon the ability of the Zeppelins to reach London from Cuxhaven, the place from which the raiders of Tuesday night appear to have started. The distance which the airships traveled, including their manoeuvres over the land, must have been quite 650 miles. This is not nearly as far as similar airships have traveled in the past. One of the Zeppelins flew from Friedrichshafen, on Lake Constance, to Berlin, a continuous flight of about 1,000 miles, in thirty-one hours. Our naval officers will also recall the occasion of the visit of the First Cruiser Squadron to Copenhagen in September, 1912, when the German passenger airship Hansa was present. The Hansa made the run from Hamburg to Copenhagen, a distance of 198 miles, in seven hours, and Count Zeppelin was on board her. Supposing an airship left Cuxhaven at noon on some day when the conditions were favorable and traveled to London, she could not get back again by noon next day if she traveled at the half-power speed which the vessels on Tuesday appear to have used. But if she did the run at full speed—that is to say, at about fifty miles an hour—she could reach London by 9 o'clock the same evening, have an hour to manoeuvre over the capital, and return by 7 o'clock next morning. With a favorable wind for her return journey, she might make an even longer stay. Given suitable conditions, therefore, as on Tuesday, there appears to be no reason why, as far as speed and fuel endurance are concerned, these vessels should not reach London from Cuxhaven.
With regard also to the amount of ammunition a Zeppelin can carry, this depends, of course, on the lifting power of the airship and the way in which it is distributed. The later Zeppelins are said to be able to carry a load of about 15,000 pounds, which is available for the crew, fuel for the engines, ballast, provisions, and spare stores, a wireless installation, and armament or ammunition. With engines of 500 horse power, something like 360 pounds of fuel is used per hour to drive them at full speed. Thus for a journey of twenty hours the vessel would need at least 7200 pounds of fuel. The necessary crew would absorb 2000 pounds more, and probably another 1500 pounds would be taken up for ballast and stores. Allowing a weight of 250 pounds for the wireless equipment, there would remain about 4000 pounds for bombs, or something less than two tons of explosives, for use against a target 458 miles from the base. This amount of ammunition could be increased proportionately as the conditions were altered by using a nearer base, or by proceeding at a slower and therefore more economical speed, etc.
It is noteworthy that although the German airships were expected to act as scouts in the North Sea they do not appear to have accomplished anything in this direction. Possibly this has been due to the fear of attack by our men-of-war or aircraft if the movements were made in daytime, when alone they would be useful for this purpose. What happened during the Christmas Day affair, when, as the official report said, "a novel combat" ensued between the most modern cruisers on the one hand and the enemy's aircraft and submarines on the other, would not tend to lessen this apprehension. On the other hand, the greater stability of the atmosphere at night makes navigation after dark easier, and I believe that it has been usual in all countries for airships to make their trial trips at night.
The above outline map, which we reproduce from "The Naval Annual," shows in the dotted circle the comparative radius of action of a modern Zeppelin at half-power—about 36 knots speed—with other types of air machines, assuming her to be based on Cologne. It is estimated that aircraft of this type, with a displacement of about 22 tons, could run for 60 hours at half-speed, and cover a distance equivalent to about 2160 sea miles. This would represent the double voyage, out and home, from Cologne well to the north of the British Isles, to Petrograd, to Athens, or to Lisbon. (The inner circle shows the radius of action of a Parseval airship at half-power—about 30 knots—based on Farnborough, and the small inner circle represents the radius of action of a hydro-aeroplane based on the Medway.)
It is customary also for the airships to carry, in addition to explosive and incendiary bombs, others which on being dropped throw out a light and thereby help to indicate to the vessel above the object which it is desired to aim at. Probably some of the bombs which were thrown in Norfolk were of this character. It is understood that all idea of carrying an armament on top of the Zeppelins has now been abandoned, and it is obvious that if searchlight equipment or guns of any sort were carried the useful weight for bombs would have to be reduced unless the range of action was diminished. It will have been noticed that the Zeppelins which came on Tuesday appear to have been anxious to get back before daylight, which looks as if they expected to be attacked if they were seen, as it is fairly certain they would have been.
Assuming the raid of Tuesday to have been in the nature of a trial trip, it is rather curious that it was not made before. Apparently the Zeppelins can only trust themselves to make a raid of this description in very favorable circumstances. Strong winds, heavy rain, or even a damp atmosphere are all hindrances to be considered. That there will be more raids is fairly certain, but there cannot be many nights when the Germans can hope to have a repetition of the conditions of weather and darkness which prevailed this week. It should be possible, more or less, to ascertain the nights in every month in which, given other suitable circumstances, raids are likely to be made. In view of the probability that the attacks made by British aviators on the Zeppelin bases at Düsseldorf and Friedrichshafen caused a delay in the German plans for making this week's attack, it would appear that the most effective antidote would be a repetition of such legitimate operations.
In today’s world this all seems a ‘bit over the top’, but Zeppelin raids were a real and frightening threat during the war.
Zeppelin Raids on London
By the Naval Correspondent of The London Times.
Some doubt has been thrown by correspondents upon the ability of the Zeppelins to reach London from Cuxhaven, the place from which the raiders of Tuesday night appear to have started. The distance which the airships traveled, including their manoeuvres over the land, must have been quite 650 miles. This is not nearly as far as similar airships have traveled in the past. One of the Zeppelins flew from Friedrichshafen, on Lake Constance, to Berlin, a continuous flight of about 1,000 miles, in thirty-one hours. Our naval officers will also recall the occasion of the visit of the First Cruiser Squadron to Copenhagen in September, 1912, when the German passenger airship Hansa was present. The Hansa made the run from Hamburg to Copenhagen, a distance of 198 miles, in seven hours, and Count Zeppelin was on board her. Supposing an airship left Cuxhaven at noon on some day when the conditions were favorable and traveled to London, she could not get back again by noon next day if she traveled at the half-power speed which the vessels on Tuesday appear to have used. But if she did the run at full speed—that is to say, at about fifty miles an hour—she could reach London by 9 o'clock the same evening, have an hour to manoeuvre over the capital, and return by 7 o'clock next morning. With a favorable wind for her return journey, she might make an even longer stay. Given suitable conditions, therefore, as on Tuesday, there appears to be no reason why, as far as speed and fuel endurance are concerned, these vessels should not reach London from Cuxhaven.
With regard also to the amount of ammunition a Zeppelin can carry, this depends, of course, on the lifting power of the airship and the way in which it is distributed. The later Zeppelins are said to be able to carry a load of about 15,000 pounds, which is available for the crew, fuel for the engines, ballast, provisions, and spare stores, a wireless installation, and armament or ammunition. With engines of 500 horse power, something like 360 pounds of fuel is used per hour to drive them at full speed. Thus for a journey of twenty hours the vessel would need at least 7200 pounds of fuel. The necessary crew would absorb 2000 pounds more, and probably another 1500 pounds would be taken up for ballast and stores. Allowing a weight of 250 pounds for the wireless equipment, there would remain about 4000 pounds for bombs, or something less than two tons of explosives, for use against a target 458 miles from the base. This amount of ammunition could be increased proportionately as the conditions were altered by using a nearer base, or by proceeding at a slower and therefore more economical speed, etc.
It is noteworthy that although the German airships were expected to act as scouts in the North Sea they do not appear to have accomplished anything in this direction. Possibly this has been due to the fear of attack by our men-of-war or aircraft if the movements were made in daytime, when alone they would be useful for this purpose. What happened during the Christmas Day affair, when, as the official report said, "a novel combat" ensued between the most modern cruisers on the one hand and the enemy's aircraft and submarines on the other, would not tend to lessen this apprehension. On the other hand, the greater stability of the atmosphere at night makes navigation after dark easier, and I believe that it has been usual in all countries for airships to make their trial trips at night.
The above outline map, which we reproduce from "The Naval Annual," shows in the dotted circle the comparative radius of action of a modern Zeppelin at half-power—about 36 knots speed—with other types of air machines, assuming her to be based on Cologne. It is estimated that aircraft of this type, with a displacement of about 22 tons, could run for 60 hours at half-speed, and cover a distance equivalent to about 2160 sea miles. This would represent the double voyage, out and home, from Cologne well to the north of the British Isles, to Petrograd, to Athens, or to Lisbon. (The inner circle shows the radius of action of a Parseval airship at half-power—about 30 knots—based on Farnborough, and the small inner circle represents the radius of action of a hydro-aeroplane based on the Medway.)
It is customary also for the airships to carry, in addition to explosive and incendiary bombs, others which on being dropped throw out a light and thereby help to indicate to the vessel above the object which it is desired to aim at. Probably some of the bombs which were thrown in Norfolk were of this character. It is understood that all idea of carrying an armament on top of the Zeppelins has now been abandoned, and it is obvious that if searchlight equipment or guns of any sort were carried the useful weight for bombs would have to be reduced unless the range of action was diminished. It will have been noticed that the Zeppelins which came on Tuesday appear to have been anxious to get back before daylight, which looks as if they expected to be attacked if they were seen, as it is fairly certain they would have been.
Assuming the raid of Tuesday to have been in the nature of a trial trip, it is rather curious that it was not made before. Apparently the Zeppelins can only trust themselves to make a raid of this description in very favorable circumstances. Strong winds, heavy rain, or even a damp atmosphere are all hindrances to be considered. That there will be more raids is fairly certain, but there cannot be many nights when the Germans can hope to have a repetition of the conditions of weather and darkness which prevailed this week. It should be possible, more or less, to ascertain the nights in every month in which, given other suitable circumstances, raids are likely to be made. In view of the probability that the attacks made by British aviators on the Zeppelin bases at Düsseldorf and Friedrichshafen caused a delay in the German plans for making this week's attack, it would appear that the most effective antidote would be a repetition of such legitimate operations.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Oulton and Woodlesford War Memorial, Yorkshire.
Pictures of Oulton and Woodlesford War Memorial in Yorkshire. Kindly taken by Malcolm Saunders.
For more information on the Memorial go to : Wakefield Genealogy
For more information on the Memorial go to : Wakefield GenealogyThursday, October 22, 2009
Lord Kitchener Advertises for Recruits
This recruitment advertisement appeared in The London Times, March 17, 1915
Entitled Lord Kitchener Advertises for Recruits
Entitled Lord Kitchener Advertises for Recruits
If the German Army were in Manchester.
If the German Army were in Manchester, every fit man in the country would enlist without a moment's delay.
Do you realise that the German Army is now at Ostend, only 125 miles away—or 40 miles nearer to London than is Manchester?
How much nearer must the Germans come before you do something to stop them?
The German Army must be beaten in Belgium. The time to do it is now.
Will you help? Yes? Then enlist TODAY.
God Save the King.
Monday, October 19, 2009
The Things the Wounded Talk About
This excellent article comes from the New York Times magazine ‘The European War’.
Originally published in the London Times by an anonymous British Surgeon on December 22nd 1914.
The Things the Wounded Talk About
If you would realize fully what the war, as an event in the procession of events, means you must come to France and visit a military hospital. You must make this visit not as a sightseer, nor yet in the spirit of a philanthropist, but only as a friend. You must come prepared to listen to stories that have no relation to war and the affairs of war—most soldiers, I think, are reluctant to speak of the things they have seen—to stories that concern home ties and the doings, real and conjectured, of children—queer, sentimental stories woven around old ideas like the Christmas idea and the idea of home.
They will fill you with wonder at first, those unwarlike tales, because they belong to the truly unexpected, against which it is impossible to be prepared. It would not be an exaggeration to describe the first effect of them as startling. They kill so many illusions and they discredit so many beliefs. War, rendered thus the background of life, assumes a new proportion and a new meaning. Or, rather, it becomes vague and meaningless, like a darkness.
A few days ago I sat by the bedside of a wounded sapper—a reservist—and heard the story of life in a signal-box on a branch line in the North of England. The man was dying.
I think he knew it. But the zest of his everyday life was still strong in him. He described the manner in which, on leaving the army originally, he had obtained his post on the railway. He told me that there were three trains each way in the day, and mentioned that on Winter nights the last train was frequently very late. This meant a late supper, but his wife saw to it that everything was kept hot. Sometimes his wife came to the box to meet him if it was a dry night.
In the next bed there was a young Scotsman from a Highland district which I know very well. We were friends so soon as he learned that I knew his home. He was a roadman, and we talked of his roads and the changes which had been wrought in them of late years by motor traffic. He recalled a great storm, during which the sea wall around a certain harbor was washed away and the highway rendered impassable. Then, rather diffidently, he confessed that he had lost a foot and would be handicapped in his work—"at Ypres."
At the far end of the ward there was a German who spoke a little English. He was a married man and came from Saxony. His wife and children, he said, would miss him at Christmas. We spoke a long time on the subject of Christmas. I suppose by all the orthodox canons that this German should have told me that he was glad to be a prisoner or else should have declared his conviction that the German Army would speedily carry everything before it to victory. But somehow he forgot to say these things and I forgot to ask him about them. These things seemed far away in the quiet ward, even—and for this I beg forgiveness—grotesque and uninteresting.
I had the curiosity to return to the young Scot and to ask him if he regretted the decision which had led to his being maimed for life. He shook his head. "No, because I've had a good home. A man with a good home should fight for it." He added that his father had advised him very strongly to enlist.
By the touchstone of the men it has broken this war is judged, and the makers of this war. And more than ruined villages and desecrated churches these soldiers pronounce condemnation. They, who have given so much, are, in a sense, without joy and without enthusiasm; rather they shun recollection. There is no zest in the killing of men. Their thoughts, especially at this season, are directed away from the dull, mechanic force which labors against its bonds across Europe, and dwell in the homes it has threatened. The war is revealed as a thing gross and dull-witted, a crime even against the ancient, chivalrous spirit of war.
Originally published in the London Times by an anonymous British Surgeon on December 22nd 1914.
The Things the Wounded Talk About
If you would realize fully what the war, as an event in the procession of events, means you must come to France and visit a military hospital. You must make this visit not as a sightseer, nor yet in the spirit of a philanthropist, but only as a friend. You must come prepared to listen to stories that have no relation to war and the affairs of war—most soldiers, I think, are reluctant to speak of the things they have seen—to stories that concern home ties and the doings, real and conjectured, of children—queer, sentimental stories woven around old ideas like the Christmas idea and the idea of home.
They will fill you with wonder at first, those unwarlike tales, because they belong to the truly unexpected, against which it is impossible to be prepared. It would not be an exaggeration to describe the first effect of them as startling. They kill so many illusions and they discredit so many beliefs. War, rendered thus the background of life, assumes a new proportion and a new meaning. Or, rather, it becomes vague and meaningless, like a darkness.
A few days ago I sat by the bedside of a wounded sapper—a reservist—and heard the story of life in a signal-box on a branch line in the North of England. The man was dying.
I think he knew it. But the zest of his everyday life was still strong in him. He described the manner in which, on leaving the army originally, he had obtained his post on the railway. He told me that there were three trains each way in the day, and mentioned that on Winter nights the last train was frequently very late. This meant a late supper, but his wife saw to it that everything was kept hot. Sometimes his wife came to the box to meet him if it was a dry night.
In the next bed there was a young Scotsman from a Highland district which I know very well. We were friends so soon as he learned that I knew his home. He was a roadman, and we talked of his roads and the changes which had been wrought in them of late years by motor traffic. He recalled a great storm, during which the sea wall around a certain harbor was washed away and the highway rendered impassable. Then, rather diffidently, he confessed that he had lost a foot and would be handicapped in his work—"at Ypres."
At the far end of the ward there was a German who spoke a little English. He was a married man and came from Saxony. His wife and children, he said, would miss him at Christmas. We spoke a long time on the subject of Christmas. I suppose by all the orthodox canons that this German should have told me that he was glad to be a prisoner or else should have declared his conviction that the German Army would speedily carry everything before it to victory. But somehow he forgot to say these things and I forgot to ask him about them. These things seemed far away in the quiet ward, even—and for this I beg forgiveness—grotesque and uninteresting.
I had the curiosity to return to the young Scot and to ask him if he regretted the decision which had led to his being maimed for life. He shook his head. "No, because I've had a good home. A man with a good home should fight for it." He added that his father had advised him very strongly to enlist.
By the touchstone of the men it has broken this war is judged, and the makers of this war. And more than ruined villages and desecrated churches these soldiers pronounce condemnation. They, who have given so much, are, in a sense, without joy and without enthusiasm; rather they shun recollection. There is no zest in the killing of men. Their thoughts, especially at this season, are directed away from the dull, mechanic force which labors against its bonds across Europe, and dwell in the homes it has threatened. The war is revealed as a thing gross and dull-witted, a crime even against the ancient, chivalrous spirit of war.
Friday, October 09, 2009
Stranded - In Berlin.
This article comes from “The Great War in a Different Light’ and describes the Daily News correspondent’s escape from Berlin at the start of the war.
Mr H W. Nevinson was a hardened professional who had reported on the 1897 war between Greece and Turkey and also the Boer War. He became one of the most notable journalists of his time.
My Way Of Escape
Before dawn on August 6 a string of motors was waiting outside the Embassy, sent by the Kaiser's orders to convey the Ambassador and his staff to a local station, a few miles away from Berlin. Again by the courtesy of Sir Edward Goschen, a few of us correspondents were invited to join the staff, and I hardly realized at the time from what a hideous destiny that invitation preserved me. I suppose I should have been kept shut up in Ruhleben or some similar camp for four and a half years ; I should have seen nothing of the war in Belgium and France at its beginning ; I should not have shared the splendour and the tragedy of the Dardanelles campaign ; I should not have known the intrigues in Athens, or the disastrous uselessness of the early attempt at Salonika, or the meaning of the advance from Egypt upon Palestine ; nor should I have been present at the final advance of the Allied Armies on the Western Front in August, 1918, or have heard the trumpet sound for the armistice in the market-square of Mons, or have accompanied our vanguard in the march up to the Rhine at Cologne. Of all those historic scenes I should have remained ignorant.
But from such loss our Ambassador saved me, and for twenty-four hours his train carried us all slowly lumbering through North Germany to the Dutch frontier.
On our way we passed or were impeded by uncounted vans decorated with boughs of trees and crammed with reservists going to the Belgian front. The men had now chalked "Nach Bruxelles" or "Nach London" as well as " Nach Paris " on the vans, and at every station they were met by bands of Red Cross girls bringing coffee, wine, and food.
At all the larger stations, too, the news of our train's approach had been signalled, and to cheer us on our way all the old men, boys and women of the place had flocked down with any musical instruments they could collect, and, standing thick on the platform, they played for us the German national tunes, "Deutschland, Deutschland" predominating. They played with the persistence of the " German bands" known to me in childhood. Sometimes, to impress their patriotism more distinctly upon us, they brought their instruments close up to the carriage windows, and the shitting tubes of the trombones came right into the carriage. Silent and unmoved, as an Englishman should, sat Sir Edward Goschen, looking steadily in front of him, with hands on his knees, making as though no sight or sound had reached his senses.
Mr H W. Nevinson was a hardened professional who had reported on the 1897 war between Greece and Turkey and also the Boer War. He became one of the most notable journalists of his time.
My Way Of Escape
Before dawn on August 6 a string of motors was waiting outside the Embassy, sent by the Kaiser's orders to convey the Ambassador and his staff to a local station, a few miles away from Berlin. Again by the courtesy of Sir Edward Goschen, a few of us correspondents were invited to join the staff, and I hardly realized at the time from what a hideous destiny that invitation preserved me. I suppose I should have been kept shut up in Ruhleben or some similar camp for four and a half years ; I should have seen nothing of the war in Belgium and France at its beginning ; I should not have shared the splendour and the tragedy of the Dardanelles campaign ; I should not have known the intrigues in Athens, or the disastrous uselessness of the early attempt at Salonika, or the meaning of the advance from Egypt upon Palestine ; nor should I have been present at the final advance of the Allied Armies on the Western Front in August, 1918, or have heard the trumpet sound for the armistice in the market-square of Mons, or have accompanied our vanguard in the march up to the Rhine at Cologne. Of all those historic scenes I should have remained ignorant.
But from such loss our Ambassador saved me, and for twenty-four hours his train carried us all slowly lumbering through North Germany to the Dutch frontier.
On our way we passed or were impeded by uncounted vans decorated with boughs of trees and crammed with reservists going to the Belgian front. The men had now chalked "Nach Bruxelles" or "Nach London" as well as " Nach Paris " on the vans, and at every station they were met by bands of Red Cross girls bringing coffee, wine, and food.
At all the larger stations, too, the news of our train's approach had been signalled, and to cheer us on our way all the old men, boys and women of the place had flocked down with any musical instruments they could collect, and, standing thick on the platform, they played for us the German national tunes, "Deutschland, Deutschland" predominating. They played with the persistence of the " German bands" known to me in childhood. Sometimes, to impress their patriotism more distinctly upon us, they brought their instruments close up to the carriage windows, and the shitting tubes of the trombones came right into the carriage. Silent and unmoved, as an Englishman should, sat Sir Edward Goschen, looking steadily in front of him, with hands on his knees, making as though no sight or sound had reached his senses.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Stranded - Mr and Mrs Franklin from Eastbourne.
Following on from yesterday’s post on the work of the British Consul in Berne, concerned with bringing home stranded British tourists at the outbreak of war.
This article published in the Eastbourne Gazette gives an interesting (if flowery and perhaps over patriotic) personal account of how a couple from Eastbourne made their way home from Switzerland in late August 1914.
On a side note I loved the expression – “In times of difficulty everyone can find opportunities of usefulness.” Perhaps a little nudge to prick the conscience of many a reader!
Back From Champery.
Mr and Mrs A.L. Franklin’s Return.
No modern Xenophon will be needed to tell the story of the return, not of 10,000 Greeks, but of a like number of English tourists, who found themselves in Switzerland at the beginning of August, when their means of returning was for a time more or less completely cut off. Some who hastened homewards with the utmost precipitation have already narrated their experiences. Others, whose engagements admitted of their prolonging their stay, were sagacious enough to accept the advice of the English Consuls and thereby avoided many risks and hardships.
Instead of spending three weeks abroad as they intended, Mr. and Mrs. A.L. Franklin (Miller Down, 54, Upperton Road) were away from Eastbourne five weeks. It was on the 26th July that they arrived at Champery, a place in Switzerland close to the French frontier and within three hours of Cal-de-conx, where the Swiss soldiers were guarding the frontier and could be seen coming down with their mules in order to convey provisions to military posts high up on the mountains.
Mr and Mrs Franklin journeyed to Switzerland to see their son Leslie (aged sixteen) who is staying in the house of a major in the Swiss army. In times of difficulty everyone can find opportunities of usefulness. Mr L. Franklin it seems has been busily engaged in cycling backwards and forwards to the post office, where he has been of service to tourists who required assistance in sending telegrams all of which have to written in French.
Hotelkeepers Reduce Their Tariffs
Mr A.L Franklin (who is a member of the firm of Miller and Franklin, Terminus Road) and Mrs Franklin returned to Eastbourne on Thursday Evening and on the following day the former gave a representative of this journal a very concise account of his homeward journey with his wife. Their son remained in Switzerland.
“After the declaration of war,” said Mr Franklin, “We sent a notification to the British Consul at Berne to the effect that we should like to return to England as soon as travelling was safe. We were advised to be as patient as possible, to wait as long as we could and to send particulars as to the destination, age and birthplace. In return we had passports forwarded to us and we were requested to form a committee and range ourselves in groups of five, if possible. A solicitor from Salisbury, who went to see the Consul, exchanged the whole of our return tickets for through tickets. Finally, it was arranged that we should leave Champery by early train, where a special trains would be awaiting us.”
“The additional time we spent in Switzerland was not disturbed by any alarming incidents, Provisions were plentiful and fruit was cheap. The only food that went up in price – as far as I could see – was potatoes. The hotel-keepers were anxious for us to stay in Switzerland and voluntarily reduced their charges by two francs per day.
900 Passengers from Montreux.
“We left Montreux at 9.30am on Tuesday morning, August 25th. All the passengers- over 900 in number - were counselled to take provisions for three days and this was a necessary precaution as all, we could get on the journey was coffee. Before we left Montreuz water was being sold at the rate of three bottles for a franc. After that supply was exhausted there was a rush to fill the bottles at the taps, the journey to Paris which occupied 31 hours instead of 11 or 12 hours.”
“On reaching Geneva we changed onto another train. An English gentleman with a megaphone instructed us to walk two abreast to the other station, the approach to which was lined by soldiers with fixed bayonets. We found place in a special train with numbered carriages and we were informed that a number of gentlemen would accompany us (by arrangement with the Consul) as far as Dieppe.
Enthusiasm at Lyons.
“At last the train was in motion and the first large town at which we halted was Lyons, where we had a splendid reception from the French troops, who cheered heartily. In response, we sang the Marseilles and the French people sang the National Anthem. When the train left there was renewed cheering and the French officers and men waved their caps to bid us farewell.
“Owing to the congestion of traffic on the main line we had to make a detour of about 200 miles. The next stopping place was Montargis, where we saw a number of French wounded from Mulhausen, including one poor man who was stated to have had both his hands cut off by the Germans after he was wounded. We also saw a German lady who had been arrested as a spy.
A German Spy Shot.
“A few miles south of Paris we ran into a station where there was great excitement; and on enquiry we found that a German spy, who had been loitering about for days had attempted to blow up a bridge. He was pursued by French soldiers, plunged into the Seine and was shot by a soldier.”
“On our arrival at Paris, we halted an hour, and were taken from one platform to the other. We saw a large number of French troops, including some from Savoy. The ladies gave the troops chocolates and the gentlemen gave them cigars, cigarettes and money.”
“It was remarkable to see the way in which the soldiers divided the gifts. The recipients instead of putting as many as they could into their won pockets distributed them among their own comrades.”
“There were thousands of people, including French troops, to see our train start. The National Anthem was sung and for a good mile out of Paris people were seen at the windows waving their hands and in some cases, the Union Jack. The passengers in their turn displayed the French and Belgian flags.
From Dieppe to Folkstone.
“The train did not pass through Rouen but proceeded to Dieppe by another route.”
“Leaving the train at Dieppe, we went to the quay and spent the night on the ‘Paris’ one of the fastest channel boats.”
“We reached Folkstone at 1pm on Thursday and proceeded to Charing Cross. Fortunately Mrs. Franklin and I caught a train to Eastbourne via Tunbridge Wells and 6pm.
“I should like to express the warmest thanks to the British Consul at Montreux and Berne, for their excellent arrangements for the return journey.”
This article published in the Eastbourne Gazette gives an interesting (if flowery and perhaps over patriotic) personal account of how a couple from Eastbourne made their way home from Switzerland in late August 1914.
On a side note I loved the expression – “In times of difficulty everyone can find opportunities of usefulness.” Perhaps a little nudge to prick the conscience of many a reader!
Back From Champery.
Mr and Mrs A.L. Franklin’s Return.
No modern Xenophon will be needed to tell the story of the return, not of 10,000 Greeks, but of a like number of English tourists, who found themselves in Switzerland at the beginning of August, when their means of returning was for a time more or less completely cut off. Some who hastened homewards with the utmost precipitation have already narrated their experiences. Others, whose engagements admitted of their prolonging their stay, were sagacious enough to accept the advice of the English Consuls and thereby avoided many risks and hardships.
Instead of spending three weeks abroad as they intended, Mr. and Mrs. A.L. Franklin (Miller Down, 54, Upperton Road) were away from Eastbourne five weeks. It was on the 26th July that they arrived at Champery, a place in Switzerland close to the French frontier and within three hours of Cal-de-conx, where the Swiss soldiers were guarding the frontier and could be seen coming down with their mules in order to convey provisions to military posts high up on the mountains.
Mr and Mrs Franklin journeyed to Switzerland to see their son Leslie (aged sixteen) who is staying in the house of a major in the Swiss army. In times of difficulty everyone can find opportunities of usefulness. Mr L. Franklin it seems has been busily engaged in cycling backwards and forwards to the post office, where he has been of service to tourists who required assistance in sending telegrams all of which have to written in French.
Hotelkeepers Reduce Their Tariffs
Mr A.L Franklin (who is a member of the firm of Miller and Franklin, Terminus Road) and Mrs Franklin returned to Eastbourne on Thursday Evening and on the following day the former gave a representative of this journal a very concise account of his homeward journey with his wife. Their son remained in Switzerland.
“After the declaration of war,” said Mr Franklin, “We sent a notification to the British Consul at Berne to the effect that we should like to return to England as soon as travelling was safe. We were advised to be as patient as possible, to wait as long as we could and to send particulars as to the destination, age and birthplace. In return we had passports forwarded to us and we were requested to form a committee and range ourselves in groups of five, if possible. A solicitor from Salisbury, who went to see the Consul, exchanged the whole of our return tickets for through tickets. Finally, it was arranged that we should leave Champery by early train, where a special trains would be awaiting us.”
“The additional time we spent in Switzerland was not disturbed by any alarming incidents, Provisions were plentiful and fruit was cheap. The only food that went up in price – as far as I could see – was potatoes. The hotel-keepers were anxious for us to stay in Switzerland and voluntarily reduced their charges by two francs per day.
900 Passengers from Montreux.
“We left Montreux at 9.30am on Tuesday morning, August 25th. All the passengers- over 900 in number - were counselled to take provisions for three days and this was a necessary precaution as all, we could get on the journey was coffee. Before we left Montreuz water was being sold at the rate of three bottles for a franc. After that supply was exhausted there was a rush to fill the bottles at the taps, the journey to Paris which occupied 31 hours instead of 11 or 12 hours.”
“On reaching Geneva we changed onto another train. An English gentleman with a megaphone instructed us to walk two abreast to the other station, the approach to which was lined by soldiers with fixed bayonets. We found place in a special train with numbered carriages and we were informed that a number of gentlemen would accompany us (by arrangement with the Consul) as far as Dieppe.
Enthusiasm at Lyons.
“At last the train was in motion and the first large town at which we halted was Lyons, where we had a splendid reception from the French troops, who cheered heartily. In response, we sang the Marseilles and the French people sang the National Anthem. When the train left there was renewed cheering and the French officers and men waved their caps to bid us farewell.
“Owing to the congestion of traffic on the main line we had to make a detour of about 200 miles. The next stopping place was Montargis, where we saw a number of French wounded from Mulhausen, including one poor man who was stated to have had both his hands cut off by the Germans after he was wounded. We also saw a German lady who had been arrested as a spy.
A German Spy Shot.
“A few miles south of Paris we ran into a station where there was great excitement; and on enquiry we found that a German spy, who had been loitering about for days had attempted to blow up a bridge. He was pursued by French soldiers, plunged into the Seine and was shot by a soldier.”
“On our arrival at Paris, we halted an hour, and were taken from one platform to the other. We saw a large number of French troops, including some from Savoy. The ladies gave the troops chocolates and the gentlemen gave them cigars, cigarettes and money.”
“It was remarkable to see the way in which the soldiers divided the gifts. The recipients instead of putting as many as they could into their won pockets distributed them among their own comrades.”
“There were thousands of people, including French troops, to see our train start. The National Anthem was sung and for a good mile out of Paris people were seen at the windows waving their hands and in some cases, the Union Jack. The passengers in their turn displayed the French and Belgian flags.
From Dieppe to Folkstone.
“The train did not pass through Rouen but proceeded to Dieppe by another route.”
“Leaving the train at Dieppe, we went to the quay and spent the night on the ‘Paris’ one of the fastest channel boats.”
“We reached Folkstone at 1pm on Thursday and proceeded to Charing Cross. Fortunately Mrs. Franklin and I caught a train to Eastbourne via Tunbridge Wells and 6pm.
“I should like to express the warmest thanks to the British Consul at Montreux and Berne, for their excellent arrangements for the return journey.”
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