The Work of the Chaplain.

This article for the excellent 'The Great War in a Different Light.' Is about the work of the Pardre.

Originally from ‘the Great War’ edited by H.W. Wilson, 'The "Padre" in the Fighting-Line' by F. A. McKenzie is a unique view of the role of the ‘Good Samaritan’ in the front line.

"Early in the Great War even the newest and youngest British soldier learned to call the chaplains by a special name, padre— father. It was a significant title, sure proof that the chaplains had won the affection and confidence of the men. What the chaplains how worthily they carried out their high task, can be judged to some extent from the official honours' lists. One chaplain-—a South London curate—won the Victoria Cross, while many were given the Military Cross and other decorations for gallantry in the field. The long list of clergy killed and wounded in the war tells its own tale—the naval chaplains who sank with their ships; the workers with the Army wounded in the trenches of Flanders, torn asunder by shells in the advance on the Somme, or cut down while comforting the dying in the Dardanelles. But the crowning testimony to their work came from the men among whom they laboured. It is not-too much to say that thousands of our men had their whole purpose of life turned by the lessons learned from the simple services in the gullies of Gallipoli, in barns and dug- outs in Flanders, or in open-air gatherings, where the ceremonies of faith were ever liable to interruption from chance shell or gas attack.

The work of the Churches in the British Army is controlled by the Chaplain-General's Department at the War Office. At the beginning of the war one chaplain was allowed to each brigade; but this number was found inadequate, and was later on considerably increased. In addition to the regular chaplain of the brigade— Anglican for English regiments, Presbyterian for Scottish, etc.— other Churches could obtain the right of appointing chaplains under certain conditions. The British chaplains were drawn from the Anglicans,' Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Wesleyans, a Nonconformist Board, and Jews. With the Dominion forces the field of selection was even wider. Thus the Australian Government appointed thirteen Salvation Army officers as military chaplains The Chaplain-General to the Forces, Bishop Taylor Smith, had, before joining the Services, done distinguished service in West Africa, first as Canon Missioner in Sierra Leone, and subsequently as bishop of that diocese. He acted for a time as chaplain to the Ashanti Expedition, when his work brought him in touch with Prince Henry of Battenberg during his last illness. He brought back Prince Henry's last messages to his wife and to Queen Victoria. He was appointed one of the honorary chaplains to the Queen, and when the bishop retired from his see in Africa, he was appointed to control the religious work of the Army. Next to him were the Rev. Dr. Simms, a Presbyterian minister, principal chaplain on the western front, and Bishop Gwynne of Khartoum, appointed to control the Church of England clergy at the front. Both of these held the rank of major- general in the Army. At home there was at first some difficulty about selecting the chaplains so as to give proper representation to the different Churches and in adjusting their ranks. At the front there was little or none of this. Every Church worked together in almost complete harmony. Men sank for the time their differences. Catholic helped Congregationalist in works of mercy; Methodist and Jew cooperated; the Presbyterian assisted the Catholic priest in some of his duties, and the priest reciprocated by visiting and taking comforts to the Presbyterian's flock. A religious journal in England became alarmed over this, and complained that the distinct lines of denominational positions were being wiped out by the men in the trenches.

One chaplain admitted that this was true. "We have all seen a regiment come out from England, every man decked out like a Christmas-tree, with writing-cases, Thermos flasks, and all kinds of fallals pressed on them by friends at home," he said. "Meet that same regiment a week or two after, when it has been in action. All the Christmas decorations have gone. The boys have learned that they have quite enough to carry without them, and have got down to bare essentials. So it is with us chaplains. We find in the stress of war that all we carry are the essentials of our faith."

One of the warmest eulogies of the work of the Y.M.C.A. was passed by the head of the British Jewish Church; and the senior chaplain at the front, a Presbyterian, asked the Bishop of London for his blessing when the bishop was leaving after a service in the fighting-lines.
When war broke out, ministers of every Church volunteered to serve as chaplains. Comparatively few could be accepted. Others determined not to be denied. Scores of Presbyterian ministers enlisted in the ranks or obtained commissions, since there was no other way. One of these resigned his charge to take a commission, because he said that he could not look the lads of his congregation in the face if he did otherwise. He died soon afterwards, leading his men at Loos. Many Church of England curates were anxious to enlist as private soldiers. Here, however, their bishops intervened, and forbade them. It was not the work of a Christian minister, they declared, to fight. He must continue his work at home, or at the most, he must go as an ambulance worker with the Red Cross. Most of the clergy unwillingly submitted; some put on khaki and could be found in the months that followed driving motor-ambulances, organising ambulance squads, or serving in other ways behind the lines.

The Rev. R. J. Campbell told how, on one of his visits to the front, "one West of England vicar introduced himself to me and laughed at my bewilderment when I looked at his grey hairs and then at his private's uniform. 'Oh, yes,' he remarked, 'I am over age right enough, but not for my particular job. I drive an ambulance out here; at home I am a parish priest, but in both places I have the cure of souls.' "

A few Anglican clergymen, who deemed themselves fortunate indeed, enlisted at the very beginning, before the bishops' prohibition was known. One of these, the Rev. Lionel Studd, was the first English clergyman to be killed in the war.

The Studds are a famous English family of country gentlemen and cricketers. In the days when Moody and Sankey first visited England, Mr. Studd, the grandfather of Captain Studd, came under their influence. Up to this time he had been distinguished as a leader in every kind of sport; now he won fame of another kind. He joined with Quintin Hogg at the Polytechnic in Regent Street, London, the most successful religious institute for young men in Europe. Mr. Studd's sons followed in his footsteps. The Studd brothers were among the finest cricketers of their day. One of them went as a missionary to China; the other took the leadership of the Polytechnic when Quintin Hogg died. The grandson, young Lionel Studd, maintained the family tradition. He was keen on games; he was an active Territorial, and he was also strongly religious. On Trinity Sunday, 1914, he was ordained as a clergyman by the Bishop of London. That summer he worked as a curate in the parish of Holloway. Then came the call of war. He had not yet resigned his place in his old corps, the 12th Battalion of the London Regiment. For a moment he hesitated as to what was his duty. But not for long. His curacy was given up, and he joined his regiment.

Early in 1915 he and his battalion were in the trenches outside Ypres. Their position was being heavily bombarded, and he had some narrow escapes. " The thing that strikes me most is that it seems the most natural thing in the world to be here," he wrote. " It doesn't seem either heroic or terrifying. In fact, we were shelled last night again, and I slept peacefully through the whole shelling. After all, what is there to be afraid of? If one is killed it is merely the beginning of a life far fuller than the present one.

On the next day he was again in the. trenches, when he was hit on the head by a shrapnel bullet, and died a few hours later. He never recovered consciousness. He had given a fine example of the parson as the fighting man in the trenches. If he was the first English clergyman to die in this way, there were soon many to follow him, and his little grave outside Ypres, with a simple wooden cross over it, recalls a young life well spent and bravely ended.

The work of the Army chaplains in the early days around Mons is a romance of itself. One of the most vivid accounts of their experiences was given by the senior Wesleyan chaplain, the Rev. Owen Spencer Watkins. Mr. Watkins was first attached to the 14th Field Ambulance. He arrived at the front just as the retreat from Mons had begun. The ambulance, after forming a dressing-station, was ordered to retire, with the rest of the army. "In haste the Red Cross flag was hauled down, the waggons packed, and even as we moved out of the yard round the buildings we had occupied as a temporary hospital the shells began falling, and in half an hour the place was a smoking ruin."

For three days he retreated with his comrades to Le Cateau, three days in which they had only six hours' sleep and two real meals. During the day the heat was almost tropical; at night it was fiercely cold. Rain came on— freezing rain. Men dozed as they stumbled along; some fell and had to be left where they lay; padre and private were happy when they could pause for a brief spell and rest on a pile of corn sheaves in the open field in the rain and cold. At Le Cateau our army turned on the enemy, and the immortal battle followed. After a time the approaching German batteries made it necessary for the ambulance to move still farther back. To the chaplain was given the work of shepherding the wounded who could walk, and seeing them safe to Busigny railway-station. "I never want such a task again," he wrote. "Up and down that road I galloped, urging one poor fellow to hop faster, expostulating with another who, seated by the roadside, declared he could go no farther, and that to fall into the hands of the Germans would be no worse than the agony he endured as he walked. At last I came across a farmer's cart, and taking the law into my own hands, commandeered it, and made the man come back with me and pick up all who could walk no more. Time and again there would be a burst of shrapnel in the road, but as far as I could see nobody was injured. Just off the road the cavalry were at work, doing their best to guard our flank as we retreated, for now I learned we were in full retreat. Amongst the cavalry the casualties were heavy. Such as we could reach we carried with us. At last, to my infinite relief, Busigny was reached, and I was relieved of my charge."

The retreat went on. At Roumont Mr. Watkins found not only the church but also a neighbouring school packed with wounded. "The scene presented was such that I will not harrow your feelings in attempting to describe it. I passed down the lines of broken men, saying such words as God gave to me, but not daring to tell them that we should have to leave them where they were." Still on! The dreadful night that followed left its mark on all who passed through it. Aching in every nerve and in every bone, thirsty beyond words, so long without food that they had forgotten to be hungry, they pressed on. At one point the padre paused and dismounted, feeling that he could go no farther.

In four days he had only had ten hours' sleep and three proper meals. He sat by the roadside holding his horse, and once went off to sleep. He reached soon after sunrise an ambulance-waggon, with a water-cart. The water was wanted for the wounded. Just then a battalion of exhausted infantry came up, saw the cart, and made a dash for it. Thirst had now reached a point where it was torture. Mr. Watkins spoke to the men and explained that there was very little water left in the cart, and that it was wanted for the wounded. "I'm thirsty myself," he said, "and I'm awfully sorry for you chaps, but you see how it is; the wounded must come first." "Quite right, sir," the men replied at once. "Didn't know it was a hospital water-cart." And parched as they were, they moved on.

The retreat continued until September 6th, when the troops paused at Touman, south of Paris. Then they turned on the enemy. "At dawn on Sunday, September 6th," wrote the chaplain, simply and nobly, "we turned our faces north once more, and thanked God that we were able to do so. It was another Sunday without public services, but it was rich in private communion on the march, in bivouac, and ambulance-waggon, and as at the close of the day I wrapped myself in my greatcoat to sleep in the long grass by the roadside, I thanked God that He had honoured me by calling me to such high service."

There were many chaplain heroes in the great retreat. Here is the story of another. A party of British wounded were hidden in a cave. Word was brought to a brigade, and a chaplain headed a rescue-party. The party found that the only road which approached the cave was being heavily shelled by the Germans. The chaplain ordered his companions to halt. He was on horseback, they were on foot. "You stay where you are," he said. "I will ride through. Wait ninety minutes, and if I don't return, report to headquarters." He started off before they could stop him, right through the death-laden zone. Time after time it seemed as though a shell had got him. Time after time he escaped as it were by a miracle. Then they lost sight of him.
The ninety minutes passed, and the padre had not returned. The stretcher-bearers went back and reported. They were ordered to return and wait for half an hour more, and then, if the chaplain had not arrived, to go into the cave. At the end of twenty-five minutes the chaplain appeared riding as coolly as though out for an afternoon trot, taking no notice of the shells whistling all round. He had found that the wounded there had already been attended to by a retreating company. He had remained on to minister to them. The chaplain was given the Distinguished Service Order; the soldiers who had witnessed his bravery declared that he ought to have had the Victoria Cross.

The Gallipoli campaign illustrated another side of the life of the chaplains.

Here was an army called upon to endure the worst that war can give. Day and night, in the trenches or behind the lines, the men were never out of reach of the enemy fire. Weakened by disease, working perpetually at the highest strain, crowded together in a small space for months amid fierce tropical heat, with little shelter and no comfort, they were constantly called upon to undertake the most desperate ventures. How they fought and how they died the world knows.
Attached to this army were a number of chaplains, Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and Salvation Army. If ever men were called upon to prove their faith by works, these were. Their parishes were the trenches; their church services had to be held Under the shrapnel fire of the enemy; their very Communion gatherings were frequently broken into by enemy snipers or spattered by enemy shells. It was their daily task to be among the reeking dead, to rescue the wounded under fire, to endure to the full the dangers and discomforts of the men. They more than rose to the occasion. Catholic priest and Salvation Army brigadier, Methodist padre and Presbyterian minister alike, showed as splendid examples of supreme courage as any recorded in the history of the Christian Church. The experiences of the Rev. J. A. Luxford, senior chaplain with the New Zealand contingent, were typical. He was at the great landing of the Australian and New Zealand troops at Anzac on the morning of April 25th, 1915, going ashore with a field-ambulance. There was already plenty to do. While the fighting was continuing a little way ahead, men were bringing the wounded in. The doctors had everything ready, and there on the beach, amid the crack of bullets and the din of shell fire, they hastily rendered first-aid. As the Anzacs pressed farther on, they brought their wounded back by every possible means—on donkeys, on the backs of their fellows, on improvised stretchers, bearing the mangled men through the gullies and down the cliffs as best they could. The sea around was literally red with the blood of the wounded men— blood from the bandages, the stretchers, and the dressings rinsed in it.

Picture the chaplains busy at first-aid; busy, too, administering the last consolations of their faith to dying men. A few hours later another duty called them. There were many to be buried. Dead bodies cannot be kept for long in this climate. The ministers wanted to give them Christian burial, but how could it be done? Everywhere they were exposed to snipers from the hills around.

For a few men to gather together even for a funeral would mean that they would be picked off, one by one, by Turkish riflemen with telescopic sights, concealed in sheltered positions behind.
It was resolved to wait till midnight. Graves were dug, and the little party moved out quietly to perform the last rites. There were two chaplains, a Catholic priest and Mr. Luxford. Bodies were gently lifted in and the service had begun, when suddenly a Turkish machine-gun opened out on the position. There was no time to discuss what should be done. The burial-party took cover. The two clergymen jumped into the grave and, lying low, finished their service while the bullets swept overhead. Some of the soldiers had gone on to the hills that evening and had gathered a number of wild flowers, and when the Turkish machine-gun fire ceased they came back again and scattered flowers over their comrades' graves.

It was a grim introduction to a grimmer time. The little foothold won by the Anzacs at tremendous cost consisted in the main of one valley: Shrapnel Gully with lines of posts and ridges on either side of it—Steele Post, Courtney Post, Quinn's Post, Pope's Hill with the direful Deadman's Land around, and Walker's Ridge. The Australians and New Zealanders here were never out of reach of the enemy's fire. In most campaigns the man who leaves the trenches can obtain some rest behind the lines. At Anzac there was no rest. "Snipers were a special plague. When the Turks retired they left behind them picked marksmen hidden among trees and behind rocks, covered with branches or bushes or in other ways, so as to be invisible, and provided with a stock of ammunition and some provisions. These marksmen would lie still and wait, and, unseen themselves, would pick out and shoot down man after man. The only way to locate them—save when someone saw the flash or the slight haze from the fire of their rifles—was to note the direction of the bullets and to follow them up, a. very difficult work. Death was always in the midst of the Anzacs. It was a pilgrimage of death and pain.

One of the most frequent tasks of the chaplains was to give Christian burial to the bodies of men who were killed. In the European field of war some endeavour was made to keep trace of the graves of the soldiers. In Gallipoli it was practically impossible, save in exceptional cases. The strain was so great, the work so tremendous, and the danger so constant that all that could be done was to try by some means and in some way to inter near where the brave had fallen, and to hold an abbreviated service over the remains of all that could be reached. Hundreds lay beyond the lines, whom even the boldest could not get at .

The British and the Turkish lines almost touched one another at some points. There were places where the British held the first part of a trench and the Turks held the end, a barricade separating them. It was here that one chaplain, the Rev. William Grant, a Presbyterian minister from New Zealand, died. He was up in the front trenches, and had reached a barricade across them when he heard moaning on the other side. He looked across the barricade; a wounded Turk was lying there in agony. By some oversight the chaplain had not been warned that the Turkish troops were on the other side. He walked round the barrier, raised the Turk and started tending his wounds. Two Turkish soldiers peeping round the corner saw a man in a British officer's uniform. They did not take time to observe what he was doing, but shot him dead on the spot.

Religious services were held wherever possible, now among a company just going out into battle, now under the shelter of a small hill, now with the aeroplanes buzzing aloft and the bombs dropping near by. On one occasion a battalion at Walker's Ridge Gully was going out on a desperate endeavour, and before it started Mr. Luxford came up to it The chaplain suggested that they should have a prayer together. The major in charge eagerly assented. Picture the scene! The men amid the fierce heat wore a very minimum of clothing. They were in their shirt-sleeves. Athletes' "shorts" left their legs bare. As. they stood up under the evening sun the chaplain started the hymn, "Abide with me," in which all joined, and then he read from the Prayer Book the beautiful prayer to be used before a fight at sea.

O most powerful and glorious Lord. God, the Lord of Hosts, that rulest and commandest all things; Thou sittest on the throne judging right, and therefore we make our address to Thy Divine Majesty in this our necessity, that Thou wouldest take the cause into Thine own hand, and judge between us and our enemies. Stir up Thy strength, O Lord, and come and help us; for Thou givest not alway the battle to the strong, but canst save by many or by few. O let not our sins now cry against us for vengeance; but hear us thy poor servants begging mercy, and imploring Thy help, and that thou wouldest be a defence unto us against the face of the enemy. Make it appear that Thou art our Saviour and Mighty Deliverer, through Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.

Then they sang " Rock of Ages," and moved out to battle, fighting none the worse for their prayer. Out of a thousand men who went out, only one hundred and fifty answered the roll-call a few hours, later; most of the remainder lay wounded, dying, or dead on the rocky front. The major was one of those who did not return.

Then came armistice day, a day as dreadful as any. Large numbers of dead were lying between the lines of the Turks and the British. Their bodies in the tropical climate were decomposed, spreading disease around. Both sides agreed on a truce to bury the dead. A line was drawn along the centre. The Turks were not to go beyond this on one side or the British beyond it on the other. The Turks were-to hand all the British dead to their comrades and the-British to do the same with the Turkish fallen. The British parties came in their shirt-sleeves, stained and wearied with much fight ing. The Turks sent their companies up clad in fresh uniforms of clean khaki. The contrast between the two was very striking. The officers on either side talked together. The British had a very genuine respect for the Turks, who they felt fought bravely and fought cleanly, and the Turks reciprocated the feeling. It was soon seen that all hopes of sorting out the dead were impossible. They could not be moved, for often they fell to pieces when touched. Hour after hour during that long day the chaplains, amid the reek of indescribable corruption, performed the last rites over hundreds of graves. At times the decomposition was almost too much to be endured, and then it was the business of the chaplain with a word of encouragement to nerve the burial-parties to go through with their direful task.

One group of three dead figures was found, a major in the centre, a sergeant and a corporal supporting him. It was easy from the positions to reconstruct what had taken place. The major had fallen, shot in the leg; his sergeant and corporal had picked him up, and were bearing him back through the zone of fire when all three were shot down and died where they lay.
It was one work of the chaplains to take the identification discs from the dead soldiers and to preserve and gather up any little things, like letters or photos, likely to prove of interest to friends. In one man's pay-book, still clutched in his dead hand, they read the beginning of a letter which he had written as he lay dying. It was to his mother. "Dear Mother, I am hard hit. I shall never see you again. God------" And then the letter ceased.

Summer was coming on. The great heat was growing more and more unendurable, yet it had to be endured. The flies were an indescribable plague. Every man— chaplain, officer, private alike—had to do everything he could for the wounded and the sick. Disease, due to the closely packed positions of the men and to the insanitary surroundings, eventually carried off even more than the enemy's bullets and shells. The New Zealanders showed in many a way their appreciation of their padre. He had a dugout on the hillside. Some of them, passing, noticed it. "That's not far enough in, padre," they said. "A fragment of shell might get you there." And so they set to work and dug it farther in, to be safe from shrapnel bullets. Then, while the padre was away on one of his tasks, they gathered sprigs, branches of trees, and green leaves to make it cool, soft, and attractive. At another time Mr. Luxford was carrying a wounded man on his back from the trenches. "I won't have that!" said one burly soldier, coming up and endeavouring to relieve him of his burden. But the chaplain who would not carry a wounded man on his back, go into the front lines with words of consolation, or advance if needs be with charging men, would have been little use at Gallipoli.

Then came the final crowning experience at Suvla Bay. A great blow was being struck that would, it was hoped, end the campaign and give Britain the Dardanelles. The Anzacs started from Suvla Bay, attacking with the utmost gallantry the Turks on Sari Bair and Chunuk Bair. The ground was one vast labyrinth of trenches, saps, and traverses. Barbed-wire entanglements were erected at every spot, shells were bursting, bombs exploding, and innumerable machine-guns were planted where they would do most damage to the attacking troops. How the Anzacs landed, how they cleared point after point, and then how victory was at the last moment taken from them by the failure of some other groups to advance from Suvla Bay, has already been told in this history. Their failure was one of the most glorious failures this world has known.
Three of the chaplains accompanied the New Zealand troops who took part in the first landing. Others came later. They all endured to the full the danger, the thirst, and the misery from heat and flies, of their comrades. They went out into the gullies, seeking their wounded and helping them when found. Mr. Luxford was one of the three. Hour after hour he kept on. After one specially trying experience he sat down for a moment on a stone, tired out. Ashe paused there a Turkish bullet struck his leg severing the femoral artery, deflected, and travelled around the leg, inflicting a terrible wound—a wound which, in spite of every endeavour, made it necessary to amputate the limb.

The Dean of Sydney accompanied the Australian troops to Gallipoli. At the commencement, the soldiers were not quite sure whether they liked the Dean or not. He was a Talbot, a member of one of the great territorial families of England, and possibly they thought him a little stiff. What first won them to him was his absolute coolness during times of peril. For example, on one occasion he was holding a Communion Service on the side of a hill. For a Communion cloth he had a Red Cross flag. There was nothing else to be had. A little congregation gathered around him. The service had barely begun before the Turks opened out with their heavy guns on that part of the line. Shells were bursting all around. The soldiers, accustomed as they were to shell fire, looked nervously up, and would not altogether have objected to an announcement that the celebration was postponed. The Dean took no notice. He did not show by so much as the flicker of his eyes that he heard or saw the shells or was conscious of the danger. The ceremony proceeded steadily, solemnly, without abbreviation, to its close. And no one was injured.

"There's a man!" said the Australians. When, a little later, the Dean was caught by a bullet as he was carrying up surgical supplies for the wounded at the front and was nearly killed, the men's confidence in him was confirmed. In his dug-out on the torrid hill-sides of Gallipoli he organised his little church. By a hard squeeze half a dozen men could get in his bomb-proof apartment at once. It was vestry, choir room, oratory, and a spot where many an anxious soul found comfort. The soldiers organised a choir for him. They dug a trench near to his abode— "Ambulance Trench," it was called. The choristers even ambitiously trained themselves in the intervals of fighting in anthems and part-singing. When at the end the Dean left them, no one held more firmly the affection and confidence of the men. The Dean's Communion Service under shell fire did not stand alone. The Army chaplain had to hold services wherever he could and however he could. In Flanders the chaplains sometimes gathered the men in shell-holes. "I had a very interesting service with the men of one battery," wrote a chaplain with the North Midland Division. "The only secluded spot we could find was a large 'Jack Johnson' shell-hole. Fourteen of us gathered in it, and we had a good time there, conversing of things concerning the Kingdom. Firing was going on all round us, but it only served to intensify our assurance of the promise, 'I am with you—even to the end.' '

Another noted Gallipoli chaplain of a very different type was Brigadier—afterwards Colonel—McKenzie, of the Salvation Army, who won a high reputation among the Anzacs for absolute fearlessness. On more than one occasion he led the charges of the troops against the Turks, himself unarmed. He declared to the soldiers that he had prayed with them and preached to them, and he would be ashamed not to share their danger with them when they were in a tight corner. His distinguished bravery was recognised by the Government by the bestowal of the Military Medal.

McKenzie reached the front with the 1st Brigade of the Australians at the end of the first week of May. At the spot where he landed the Turkish trenches were within fifty yards. There had not been as yet any chaplains there, but there was abundant need for them. The troops had been paying very dearly for their boldness. Attacking the Turks without guns, armed only with rifles and bayonets, and facing a deadly hail of shrapnel and machine-gun fire, they had carried trench after trench, at a cost of over 5,000 casualties.

McKenzie's first work was to conduct the funeral service of the colonel of the 4th Battalion.
We found our colonel's body, he said, lying in an exposed position. We buried him at 9 p.m., and had to lie crouching to read the service, the bullets meanwhile whistling over my head by the hundred. I thought I was nearly "outed" on four separate occasions, twice with shells and twice with bullets. The first shell fell three feet behind me, and I threw myself flat on the road. I got covered with oil thrown up by the shell. The second shell fell the next day while I was conducting a funeral service. There were twenty of us, and the shrapnel fell all around and even into the grave, although by a miracle none of us were hit. One bullet grazed the top of my head and the other my right ear.

In ten days he had to read the Burial Service over one hundred and seventy men. Then came armistice day. Even he described it as "the most trying experience I have ever had. Many bodies had been robbed by the Turks and their identification discs taken off, and quite a number had to be buried 'unknown,' or 'unidentified'." Even here his faculty for making friends stood him to good purpose. He established cordial relations even with some of the Turks on that day. One Turkish doctor gave him his visiting-card and told him if ever he was taken a prisoner to show it and he would come to him. He invited him to afternoon tea in Constantinople when he was taken there. The Turks thought they were sure to get him and all the other British troops at Gallipoli. "What a pity," said the Turkish doctor, "that so many fine young men should come from Australia just to be killed!" The thing which the chaplain particularly missed was water— water to drink and water to wash with. He and his comrades dreamed of a bath, and dreamed of the luxury of being able to take their verminous clothes off and change them, as other men dream of great bliss.

September found him with the rest of the Australians at Suvla Bay, and here he had some of his hottest experiences. In one of the biggest charges, where he advanced with the troops, his cap-cover was pierced in three places, his hand was hit, and a spent bullet penetrated his right side. But wounds in hand and spent bullet in side did not stop him. He reached the Turkish trenches with the rest of his brigade. Here he found a veritable shambles, with dead Turks piled up in places four and five deep. For twenty-four hours together he searched through these trenches, piled with dead and dying and badly wounded, to find his own Australian comrades. Some of them had lain wounded there amid the terrible heat and torturing thirst for twenty hours and more. Wounded men were weighted down with the bodies of the dead, and from among these tangled masses came the groans and cries of the smothering broken men.

For forty-eight hours he and his fellow-chaplains worked without any cessation—the most awful forty-eight hours they had ever lived. For five days he kept going with brief snatches of rest. Besides helping with the wounded, he had to conduct Burial Services over hundreds of men during these days, parties of men being buried in great groups While conducting a burial of fifteen, a bullet whizzed by within half an inch of his right ear while he was praying, and killed a man standing by his side.

He had been with his regiment for twenty weeks in the trenches without a break, and the great fight had come immediately on top of that. The regiment itself had been reduced to one hundred and eighty effective men. Even his iron frame almost broke down under the strain, the want of sleep, the want of food—still worse, the want of water and the sight of the agony which he could do so little to alleviate.

Among the chaplains who did noted service at Gallipoli, the Rev. A. G. Parham, precentor of Christ Church, Oxford, received a Military Cross for heroism. He was attached to a brigade that was in the attack at Suvla Bay on August 21st. The shrubs on the Anafarta Plain caught fire. Helped by his servant, he carried a number of the wounded men to safety. On the following day he obtained a number of volunteers as stretcher-bearers and carried out the wounded from Chocolate Hill. After the battle he remained with the brigade in the trenches for ten weeks under shell fire.

When the rival armies settled down in the autumn of 1914 to the long trench warfare in France and in Flanders there was not for some time much opportunity for chaplains to distinguish themselves by special gallantry. One young clergyman, Mr. Guinness, the first to win a military decoration in the war, gained his reward by courage and initiative under very dangerous circumstances. But the ordinary life of the padres in Flanders during these months was full of danger. They had long lines to serve, and, in the course of duty they were constantly under shell fire. They had to make their homes mostly in broken-down houses, probably partly wrecked and torn by enemy fire. The noise of the aeroplanes overhead, the whistle of the approaching enemy shells, the sounds of battle, going on unintermittently, day and night, told of the reality of danger.

One young Canadian clergyman did a deed of courage in the No Man's Land between the British and the German lines which well deserves to be recalled. No Man's Land was blocked with dense masses of tangled, barbed-wire fronting either side. It was swept day and night, particularly at night-time, by the fire of machine- guns and by individual marksmen. Every night British and German scouting parties crept forth from the shelter of their parapets, repairing torn wires, seeking for enemy scouts, or raiding the opposite trenches. Frequently big attempts were made to rush the enemy's front, and although careful preparation before the advance was made many fell. Every effort was made to get the wounded back into shelter again, but it was not always possible to carry out the dead. In many points in this No Man's Land one could see black forms lying amid the wires—the unburied bodies.

A Canadian battalion had fought fiercely over one section and had lost a number of men in No Man's Land. Every attempt to get in their bodies failed. A young chaplain often visited the front lines and often looked at these black figures. Some of them had been his old comrades. There was one group which specially affected him. Little but the skeletons were left now. These at least he determined should not be left to the sport of the winds.

Choosing a specially dark and wet night he crept out from under our own trenches towards the listening-post. Then lying low and going carefully he crawled from shelter. Every now and then the Germans sent up flares into the sky, flares which lit the whole heavens around. As soon as he heard the preliminary hiss of the flare he would drop and lie low, rigidly still. Every now and then there came the crack of a rifle overhead, or the clatter of a machine-gun opened out by the Germans at any point where they thought the British might be.

Crouching, making no sound, he stealthily dug into the damp earth. With infinite pains he scooped out a shallow grave. At any second the enemy might discover him. If they did so, that second would be his last. He knew it, but still he kept on. Then reverently he lifted up the remains of his old friends, placed them in their last resting- place, read the form of Christian burial over them, covered them up, and still in the utmost silence crept back to the shelter of the front-line trenches again.

It was on the western front that a clergyman gained the Victoria Cross, the second time since that great Order was instituted that it was bestowed upon an Army chaplain. The Rev. Edward Noel Mellish, curate of St. Paul's, Deptford, had the Cross bestowed upon him on April 20th, 1916, for most conspicuous bravery. The official account thus described his deed:
During heavy fighting on three consecutive days he repeatedly went backwards and forwards, under continuous and heavy shell and machine-gun fire, between our original trenches and those captured from the enemy, in order to tend and rescue wounded men. He brought in ten badly wounded men on the first day from ground swept by machine-gun fire, and three were actually killed while he was dressing their wounds. The battalion to which he was attached was relieved on the second day, but he went back and brought in twelve more wounded men. On the night of the third day he took charge of a party of volunteers and once more returned to the trenches to rescue the remaining wounded. This splendid work was voluntary on his part and outside the scope of his ordinary duties.

Mr. Mellish had already proved his courage. At the time the Boer War broke out he was only seventeen years old. Yet he went out with Baden-Powell's Police and did good work in the later guerilla stages of the war. He then settled at Jagersfontein, where his qualities as a leader of men were noted He was induced to enter the Church and became a curate at Deptford, where he remained until the call of the war took him away. His old friends at Deptford were the least surprised of any at his decoration. They knew him, and knowing him were prepared to expect the best from him. At the Battle of Loos he was able to help with the wounded under fire.
This battle gave many of the padres the opportunity to prove their qualities. The Gordon Highlanders, who took a prominent part in this fight, were given the order to charge with the Staffordshires straight at the German lines. As they dashed from their shelter the German artillery opened on them with high explosives and shrapnel, the German machine-guns blazed out, and the German infantry kept up a tremendous fire. The men fell almost in lines, but for every one who fell another dashed up behind, despite the fire. One company and part of another reached the German trenches. Unfortunately for them, the other half of their regiment and the Staffordshire Regiment accompanying them found, when they moved forward, that the heavy British artillery fire had not succeeded in destroying the German barbed- wire entanglements. They cut and hacked and fought to get through, but the thing could not be done.

The soldiers afterwards told how, in these heroic and desperate hours, when their regiment was largely wiped out, the chaplains showed their mettle. One chaplain, famous among the men for his cheerfulness and activity, crept out in the darkness beyond the trenches amid the heaps of dead. He was searching for the body of the colonel of the Staffordshires. Then, despite the fact that the machine-guns were firing constantly over him, he glided from spot to spot, securing identification discs of soldiers who were dead, and seeing if he could do anything to help those in whom a spark of life remained. One Gordon officer writing home at the time told how, "This young chaplain, an Anglican, had endeared himself to these Highlanders, how he crawled out into the danger zone collecting identification discs from the many gallant fellows who had been lying dead there, and how whatever was going on there (and there was usually something), he made a point of going round the firing-trench every day, doing much appreciated work among the men." "The padre," said another in writing of him, "is a jolly good fellow. We have just returned from a three days' trek. I saw no other chaplain marching with our brigade, but this one did the whole march with us; he walked every step of the way, carrying a pack like the rest of us, and also lending a hand with a rifle or two towards the end of the day. And he is entitled to a horse, too. He would not even take a turn on mine, which was otherwise most useful for the cripples."
Four Scottish chaplains attached to the Highland Brigade also had moving experiences. On the night before the attack they held special services both with the Royal Scots and the Gordon Highlanders. That night in their tents the chaplains waited while one by one officers and men came shyly in with letters and keepsakes to be sent home if they themselves fell. A little time later they listened while the colonel of the Gordons, in brief, stirring words, told his men what they had to do, and bade them "remember the name of the regiment." They cheered him to the echo. Then the chaplains waited at the advanced dressing-station—the dressing-station for the wounded immediately behind the front line. It was here the wounded passed through their hands; here the dead that could be recovered were brought in; and here all the agony and torment that followed the great glory of the battle was witnessed. The scene was thus described by one of the chaplains:

All that day I was engaged in burying the dead. Through the following night the wounded came streaming in faster than they could be evacuated. Their condition was pitiable, for a cold, clammy rain had fallen persistently all day. Yet I never heard a murmur. Yes, I heard one. A young Aberdeen student, with a finely-chiselled face, lay on the table while the surgeon tried to give him unavailing relief, and as I held his hand he moaned out his sorrow over the failure of his battalion to hold the trenches they had won. I saw a Scot lying on the ground, plastered from head to foot with mud as with a trowel. I thought I recognised the yellow stripe in the tartan, and stepping gently over an unconscious form between, I touched him and said: "Are you a 1st Gordon, my lad!" His arm was crushed, his leg was twisted, but the white of his eye gleamed through the mud that caked his face as he answered with an unmistakable grin, "A wis this mornin', and A think A'm a half yin yet." And then in a moment he knew me, and reaching out his only hand he gripped me tight, and said, "Oh! minister, it's you. Ye might write to my wife, and dinna frighten her. A'll be a' richt yet." What a superb spirit! A jest for his own misery and the tenderest consideration for those at home. Such are the men who are bearing all for you on those grim fields in Flanders.

A cheerless dawn was breaking as I left that dreadful place. I noticed the stains upon my boots, and thought of Barbour's terrible phrase—''reed wat shod." And I went to meet the Gordons returning. Grim and stern and silent they marched in, but still they held their heads high, as well became the " Gay Gordons." At the head of the column strode a young captain with the purple and white ribbon of the Military Cross gleaming on his breast (a year ago he was a divinity student of the Church of Scotland), and as I listened to him speaking a last word to the men as gently as a mother putting her children to bed, there was revealed to me something more of the nobility of the men with whom I had to do.

Private Ernest King, of the Northumberland Fusiliers, told in a letter home another story of an Army chaplain at Loos. King was a transport driver, and halted close to the range of rifle fire.
While standing there (he writes) I was patted on the shoulder by my chaplain, a big, fine, resolute man. After the exchange of a few words we parted, I to the left, where a heap of dead lay, and he to the right to the trenches. Early next morning we had run short of ammunition, and if it had not been for the tremendous energy put forth by the chaplain more men would have gone under.

With resolute courage he did the work of a dozen men, carrying close on fifty boxes of ammunition, one box in each hand, each box weighing six stone. In journeying to the trenches he had to go through a murderous rifle and shell fire. Then we saw him carrying the wounded and dead as fast as he could, and then burying the dead. For hours he worked at it incessantly, and was still hard at it when I was relieved. Afterwards I learned that he had worked incessantly all through that night, burying the dead and tending the wounded.
I have thought, in looking over the events of that horrible battle, it might have been a whole battalion wiped out had not our chaplain worked so nobly.

Many are the stories the chaplains told of the interesting conditions under which they held their services, sometimes in tunnels, sometimes in dugouts, sometimes in the open, sometimes amid the tottering walls of broken buildings in ruined cities such as Ypres.

What more impressive setting could there have been for a religious service than amidst the ruins of Ypres? Here was a city in ruins, a city where every house was a wreck, where every wreck bore witness to the prosperity of yesterday and the destruction of to-day. One chaplain, visiting Ypres, found his passage through the streets and through the great squares disturbed by the sustained ] shell fire of the enemy. A 42 cm. shell — the biggest shell then known — burst so near to him that it cast up the soil two yards from his feet. He joined a company in some cellars, and found they belonged to his old battalion. The dark, smoky cellar rang with song until midnight, when the soldiers moved out to their work. " Next morning," he Wrote at the time, "at 11.45 I had one of the finest services of my life with this company in a tunnel-shaped cellar, fifty feet by twenty feet, three lines of men sitting along each side, leaving a narrow aisle down the centre. As deeply reverent as any service ever held in a cathedral it was also hearty, homely, happy. I found it was easy to speak 'home to the heart.' We sang 'Lead, kindly Light,' 'Peace, perfect peace,' 'Through the night of doubt and sorrow,' in that order. Every word of each hymn had in it a living message, and was sung with solemn meaning in the very words:

Yea, though I walk in death's dark vale, Yet will I fear none ill, when I heard the whistle of a shell behind me. It grew louder and louder, rushing like a railway train overhead, and burst with a crashing roar half a mile away, near where the 4th Gordons were bivouacked. It was an occasional visitor from a naval gun which Tommy had christened with characteristic felicity the 'Ypres Express.' But I remember thinking at the moment that the most gifted organist could not have achieved with all the resources of his art such a solemnising accompaniment as it provided for the words we were singing. But not a man in the ranks before me moved a muscle, and I hope the padre kept his countenance, too."

The Roman Catholic priests earned the confidence and respect of the whole army by their great devotion and self-sacrifice. One in particular must be mentioned, Father William Finn, who met his death at Seddul Bahr, in Gallipoli, in the great landing there. When the ship in which he arrived with the troops approached the shore he was urged not to attempt to land with the men under the shell fire of the enemy. "A priest's place is beside the dying soldier," he replied. As he stepped on to the gangway he received a bullet through the chest. He kept on, notwithstanding, across the lighters, when two more bullets struck him, one in the thigh and another in the leg. To quote the description of a special correspondent who was present: "By the time he reached the beach he was literally riddled with bullets, but in spite of the great pain he must have been suffering he heroically went about his duties, giving consolation to the dying troops. It was while, he was in the act of attending to the spiritual requirements of one of his men that the priest's head was shattered by shrapnel."

Working under war conditions, the list of deaths of chaplains at the front was naturally a long one. In July, 1916, the Bishop of London said that sixteen chaplains had been killed, and that between five hundred and fifty and six hundred of the best of the younger clergy of the Church of England were then serving at the front. This list was soon augmented, one of the later victims being famous as a leader of the Y.M.C. A. movement in England, the Rev.. E. J. Kennedy; he endured such hardships during his year as chaplain that a few weeks after he returned home he passed away. "

4th August 1914 - The End of a World.

On the 95th Anniversary of the outbreak of war between Great Britain and Germany, I thought I would post this amazing account by Esme Wingfield-Stratford from his excellent book “Before the lamps went out.”

In all the accounts of the beginning of the war, this account is one of the best. It captures that free pre-war spirit, everything right in England as the inhabitants of a Kent village, play a cricket match on the eve of war.

There is something naive yet unnerving about this account and the chapter is entitled “The end of a world.”

I love the last few lines as Wingfield-Stratford tells his father of the mobilization orders and the notices put up in shop windows:

"Those fellows," I said, "don't realize what's coming to them.
And in a few days they'll be thinking it's the end of the world."
My Father did not answer for a moment. Then he said in a voice quite different from his ordinary one:
"For many of them it will mean the end of the world;"
A burst of applause; a one-handed catch on the boundary.
Another wicket.
My Father glanced at the score board:
"Time for you," he said, “to put on your pads."

For many all over Great Britain it would time “to put on their pads.” To play the greatest game of their life.

“Appropriately for Kent, we are on the edge of a cricket ground, which was the open pasturage in the eighteen-eighties to which it will revert, alas, in the nineteen-forties. But where we are in 1914, though small, it has been pronounced, by competent judges, to offer as good a pitch as you might get on a county ground. That is the fruit of many seasons' co-operative labour, pushing the heavy farm roller every evening after practice, under the expert advice of Mr. Hickmott, formerly ground man at Mote Park, and, even now, though well past the allotted span, capable of opening the innings with his twin brother, and driving the first three balls, one after the other, smack against the garden. railings, in the forthright Victorian style of 'W. G'. or 'Hammond.'

For sheer, undiluted enjoyment, on which, looking back, one does not grudge a moment of time spent, give me those Saturday afternoons with the Fartherwell Hall cricket team; that band of brothers recruited, in those pre-war days, mainly from about the house and farm, and the neighbouring village of Offham though with the occasional reinforcement of outsiders of county and even of test match standing; for our distinguished neighbour, Ted Humphries of East Malling, was not too grand, on days when Kent had finished with its opponents before lunch, to take a hand in our more light-hearted contests. I can only say, for my own part, that however worried or anxious I might ever have been feeling about anything, I could always reckon with certainty on throwing it off my mind from the first ball bowled until fall of the last wicket. At least, up to this particular afternoon. For though this match was always the most keenly contested of the season, i found myself, for the first time, utterly unable to concentrate my thoughts on the business in hand. For there was one supreme question that kept turning itself over and over in my mind, though I was well aware that the answer would only too soon be forthcoming.

For this Saturday was the first day of the month of August, in the year 1914. The scene was so peaceful and carefree what with the limes and wych elms that cramped the dimensions of our little ground and' made such easy fours when you were lucky enough to hit a branch, the benches and seats, filled by spectators wholly absorbed in the game, and my oId home smiling as serenely in the background as it had for these past thirty years-that it was almost impossible to imagine the boom of guns reverberating far away over the Blue Danube that had lately been linked with such different associations; to think of grey clad armies mobilizing all over the vast spaces of Southern - but as yet, by the Grace of God, no more than Southern Russia; of the 'Grand Fleet that His Majesty had lately. been reviewing, stripped for action, and heading under sealed orders for its unknown battle station- not to speak of a certain other fleet of whose whereabouts and proceedings there was as yet no hint, but which might at any' moment now .... what was it one half expected to hear out there, beyond Chatham and the Nore? Whatever it was, 'was no excuse for letting one's •attention wander at second slip!

It had all come so suddenly! Only just over a week ago it had been that I had gone down to King's - my Fellowship having expired a year before and the vacant place been filled by Rupert Brooke - to play against the Trinity dons, and I had read in the Common Room the incredible ultimatum that Austria had presented to what was then called Servia. The whole thing had seemed too fantastic to be taken seriously! One could understand the feelings of the poor, bereaved old Emperor; but this was going to 'be very awkward, another of those crises of which one had hoped to have seen the last. No doubt it would be settled somehow like all the others. But would it? During the next few days things had seemed to be taking a more and more ominous turn. Russia had begun to loom up in arms on the Austrian flank, and that meant what, unless Europe had gone mad, was so plainly absurd that. . .
.
But it had only been on the evening of Thursday - the day before yesterday - that the report of the sudden, unprecedented decision, in Parliament, to sink all differences on the home and even the Irish front, had made it plain that this was no ordinary crisis, but that in all human probability, the European avalanche had acquired too great a momentum to be stopped short of - dared one even say the Channel?

And yet for the last two days life had gone on just as usual, to the accompaniment of wild rumours, started nobody knew how: the British and French Mediterranean fleets had met somewhere off Malta, dipped flags, and joined company, sounds of distant firing having been subsequently reported; one of those who did know such things, knew for a fact that three German Zeppelins had been discovered in the sky over Essex, and that our aviators had been under orders not to fire on them; somebody who had just come from Folkestone professed to have seen the whole French fleet steaming eastward through the Straits-for what purpose one could only guess.

One must keep one's head and try to see things in proportion. There were two anchors of hope; two things that had not happened - and so long as these did not, nothing could! Mobilizing the fleet was an obvious precaution - a firebrand like Churchill, with all his faults, could be trusted for that; but the real test was still to come. No Government, not even this Government, that believed war to be imminent, would neglect to mobilize the army. And there were no signs as yet of that happening. And what was even more important, Germany, without whom no quarrel in the Balkans could become European, had given no sign except - which did give one a certain qualm - to turn down Grey's suggestion of a Four Power Conference.

But Germany had so far given no positive sign. Even the Kaiser, for once in his life, was quiet. And the Kaiser might prefer to handle things in his own way. He was said to be in touch with the Tsar. And no doubt he felt that he could soothe down poor old Francis Joseph more easily without the aid of potential enemies.

No-so long as the army remained unmobilized, and Germany did not move, nothing could happen. The crisis was just a crisis; and the fact that nothing had happened might mean that the worst was already over: every hour now that the collapse was postponed increased the hope of recovery.

But another sort of crisis was beginning to develop. I hope it was not due to my slack handling of the team; but when it got to the stage of my putting myself on to bowl, it meant that the time had come for desperate remedies. Perhaps I may have been a little influenced by the fact that my Father, who had been standing umpire, and had a theory, that he seldom neglected to expound with some candour in case of an appeal, that I was physically incapable of getting anybody leg before, had been forced to go off on one of the many local activities that had absorbed his energies since the expiry, three years ago, of his last command.

The batsman was just taking his guard for left-hand round, and I was marking with my heel the start of my run, when:

"Please, sir, Major G-- says he wants to see you at once."
Major G--! Who on earth was Major G--? The name conveyed nothing to me. Nor was I much enlightened by the sight of a stocky gentleman, with a preoccupied expression, who was standing by the lawn gate. I tossed the ball to another bowler, and hurried in the direction indicated.
I started to say something by way of greeting, but he cut me short:
"Know where I can get into touch with the General?"
I said I didn't know where he had gone, but that I knew he would not stay away from this game longer than he could help.
"Well, can you give him this message from me the moment he arrives? We're mobilizing."
God! One anchor gone already!
"And we want to know if he'll undertake the remounts for Kent."

It may have been owing to the fact that my intended change of bowling had not materialized, that the innings came to an end before my Father had returned. I took care to put myself low enough in the batting order to enable me, with a clear conscience, to dash off on my bicycle into the neighbouring town of Malling.
When I returned I found my Father standing where the Major had been.
"Hullo," he said, "what's the latest?"
"The papers haven't arrived," I said, "but there's a notice just posted up in the window of Oliver's shop, that the Kaiser has declared Germany to be in a state of siege - whatever precisely that may mean."
"It means that the Germans have started to mobilize." "But that needn't imply .... "
"Mobilization means war. Not that, Lloyd George and Winston mayn't try to stop us yet from coming in with the French;"
I then delivered Major G---'s message.
"Not a bit of it!" he said, "once get Stellenbosched into that, and I shan't see a shot fired. I mean to stand out for a command in the field."
A well-dinted trench helmet, an honoured family relic, testifies to the measure of his success in that endeavour.

For some time we both remained silent, he, I think, genuinely absorbed in the game, I trying to convince myself that all this was really happening. Everybody present, except myself, seemed blissfully unconscious of anything taking place outside their own little world. Perhaps they were not quite so ignorant as I thought. Thirty years later, almost to the day, I was standing on - or perhaps I should say proceeding quite briskly across - this same field, with the whole sky bursting into bouquets of smoke to the accompaniment of the most infernal pandemonium from every point of the compass, with the ripping and coughing solo of two successive buzz-bombs in a bee-line overhead. To me it was an interesting speculation which side was going to bag me first, with the betting heavily on the defence. But just by, on a newly ploughed turnip patch, were a couple of Kentish farm hands, placidly plodding away with their hoes, without even condescending to look up.

However in. those days, I had never thought of anything worse than Zeppelins, and I was perhaps more prone to judge by appearances than I have become since.
"Those fellows," I said, "don't realize what's coming to them.
And in a few days they'll be thinking it's the end of the world."
My Father did not answer for a moment. Then he said in a voice quite different from his ordinary one:
"For many of them it will mean the end of the world;"
A burst of applause; a one-handed catch on the boundary.
Another wicket.
My Father glanced at the score board:
"Time for you," he said, “to put on your pads."

Prayer.

Prayer – not a thing you associate immediately with the First World War. But the Rev Neville Stuart Talbot Assistant Chaplain-General to the Fifth Army gave it consideration for the soldiers with his book “Thoughts on religion at the front.”

He even set out a model payer based on the Hymn “Jesu, Lover of my Soul.” That in his own words “suggest the right association of ideas in which our Lord should live in the mind of a young man.”

It is an interesting article and raises the question on the balance between religion and trench life?

"There is also the objection that too hard things have been said here about the turning to God under pressure of anxiety, and the expression in prayer of the natural desire for safety. After all, as a Jesuit fellow-padre reminded me at the front, Our Lord at His hour of trial, when "exceeding sorrowful even unto death," prayed in agony. And further it is plain that prayer to Him, and as He would have it be to others, was far more than a trustful harmony of self with the will of the Father. He urged men to take their requests to God. "Ask and ye shall receive." I can imagine that the conception of prayer at times of emergency, as suggested in earlier pages, might be so full of resignation as to be reduced to the fatalism extraordinarily prevalent at the front—"If it 'its yer, it 'its yer," as the men say. Are we not to ask not to be hit?

It is nearly enough to recall the Lord's Prayer in regard to this objection. As I have said, men on service widely associate prayer with the expression of need or anxiety. To restrict prayer thus is to begin the Lord's Prayer half-way through, at "Give us this day our daily bread." It is a question of order and emphasis. Christian prayer begins with God. It turns away from self to the glory of God. It begins with praise and acclamation—the glad acknowledgment of what God is and is doing. It is only in the second place and because of what God is—because He is our Father and is at work to bring in His kingdom and has a will for us and for all—that the prayer which expresses our need comes in aright.

Therefore I would say to a man going into battle—"Pray now if never before. Set God before you as you see Him, as you can clearly apprehend Him, in Christ. He is your Father, you are His son, however unworthy. Lift up your heart to Him Who, in and through all the turmoil around you, presses onward with the business of His kingdom and the fulfilment of His heart's desire. And commit all to Him. In trustful intimacy give utterance to your longing to be brought through the perilous hour for service in His kingdom to the glory of His Name. Commit all to Him, asking forgiveness. He knows what you have need of in life or in death—and let the rest go!"
For such prayer in the Name of Christ—that is, prayer in accordance with His mind and founded on the character of God as made known in Him—there awaits undiscovered and unexhausted resources of power. So Jesus told men. So Christian experience testifies. We have to pray truly Christ-wise, not asking for stones to be made bread, not seeking to be hidden from life's storms, but to be brought through them in faithful endurance.

Prayer after the mind of our Lord depends greatly on how we think of Him. The following lines, written by a barrister, are, I think, a wholesome corrective of that which is too soft in our conventional thoughtabout our Saviour. Despite a false or partial note here and there, they are nearer to Him than the thought underlying the first verse of the hymn--a great favourite among the men owing to its tune--"Jesu, Lover of my Soul." At any rate they suggest the right association of ideas in which our Lord should live in the mind of a young man:

Jesus, Whose lot with us was cast,
Who saw it out, from first to last:
Patient and fearless, tender, true,
Carpenter, vagabond, felon, Jew:
Whose humorous eye took in each phase
Of full rich life this world displays,
Yet evermore kept fast in view
The far-off goal it leads us to:

Who, as your hour neared, did not fail--
The world's fate trembling in the scale--
With your half-hearted band to dine,
And chat across the bread and wine:
Then went out firm to face the end,
Alone, without a single friend:
Who felt, as your last words confessed,
Wrung from a proud unflinching breast
By hours of dull ignoble pain,
Your whole life's fight was fought in vain:
Would I could win and keep and feel
That heart of love, that spirit of steel.

I would not to Thy bosom fly
To slink off till the storms go by.
If you are like the man you were
You'ld turn with scorn from such a prayer,
Unless from some poor workhouse crone,
Too toil-worn to do aught but moan.
Flog me and spur me, set me straight
At some vile job I fear and hate:
Some sickening round of long endeavour,
No light, no rest, no outlet ever:
All at a pace that must not slack,
Tho' heart would burst and sinews crack:
Fog in one's eyes, the brain a-swim,
A weight like lead in every limb,
And a raw pit that hurts like hell
Where once the light breath rose and fell:
Do you but keep me, hope or none,
Cheery and staunch till all is done,
And, at the last gasp, quick to lend
One effort more to serve a friend.

And when--for so I sometimes dream--
I've swum the dark, the silent stream,
So cold, it takes the breath away,
That parts the dead world from the day,
And see upon the further strand
The lazy, listless angels stand,
And with their frank and fearless eyes
The comrades whom I most did prize:
Then, clean, unburdened, careless, cool,
I'll saunter up from that grim pool,
And join my friends: then you'll come by,
The Captain of our Company:
Call me out, look me up and down,
And pass me through without a frown,
With half a smile, but never a word--
And so I shall have met my Lord.

We have to pray as Christ prayed in Gethsemane in fellowship with His sufferings. But we have also to pray as knowing the power of His Resurrection. We have to rise in faith to claim the supernatural power which neither He used nor we may use merely for self-preservation, which yet is to be set free in the service of the kingdom.
Prayer in the Name of Christ is not only the prayer of resignation, based on the self-committal of Jesus our Brother into the hands of th Father. Such would ever tend, as uttered by our trembling faith, towards fatalism. But it is also prayer in the Name of Him "Who was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection of the dead, even Jesus Christ our Lord." It is the prayer of power—that power which was at Jesus' command, and was therefore the subject of His temptation, and was drawn upon by the faith of sufferers and yet was unused by Jesus to save Himself. This power is the power of God. It is "the exceeding greatness of His power, according to that working of the strength of His might which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places."

Here are heights where the air is charged with potentiality of new life, hardly dreamt of by our faith on its low stagnant levels. Here are heights to be stormed by faithful unself-seeking love. This way lies deliverance and new creation, and the breaking of prison bars and the turning of our captivity such as shall fill all our mouths with laughter.

A few know that these words are not rhetorical. They know, with St. Paul, the riches of the glory of Christ's inheritance in the saints. Such was Mary Slessor, pioneer missionary in West Africa, the leaves of whose biography I happened to turn over as I was writing these pages. She had frequently to take journeys through forests with leopards swarming around her. She wrote: "I did not use to believe the story of Daniel in the lions' den until I had to take some of these awful marches, and then I knew it was true and that it was written for my comfort. Many a time I walked along praying 'O God of Daniel, shut their mouths,' and He did."

This is the prayer of faith. It is the prayer which asks "not to be hit." It is more than resignation, it is the prayer of power. It believes that there are hardly-tapped powers and possibilities in God for those who seek first His kingdom and righteousness. We do not know much about such prayer in our present spiritual sickness. But it is there, a weapon to be wielded by dauntless, simple faith. There is an inheritance to be claimed by little-loving sons, who yet are sons—"heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with Him."


For more information on Re. Neville Stuart Talbot. Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neville_Stuart_Talbot

Drenching Trenches with Inflammatory Liquid.

This chilling account of the use of flame throwers comes from the book “The Soul of the War' by Phillip Gibbs.

The soldiers of France have learned the full range of human suffering, so that one cannot grudge them their hours of laughter, however coarse their mirth. There were many armies of men from Ypres to St. Mihiel who were put to greater tasks of courage than were demanded of the human soul in medieval torture chambers, and they passed through the ordeal with a heroism which belongs to the splendid things of history. As yet the history has been written only in brief bulletins stating facts baldly, as when on a Saturday in March of 1915 it was stated that : “In Malancourt Wood, between the Argonne and the Meuse, the enemy sprayed one of our trenches with burning liquid so that it had to be abandoned. The occupants were badly burned." That official account does not convey in any way the horror which overwhelmed the witnesses of the new German method of attacking trenches by drenching them with inflammatory liquid.

A more detailed narrative of this first attack by liquid fire was given by one of the soldiers :
"It was yesterday evening, just as night fell, that it happened. The day had been fairly calm, with the usual quantity of bursting shells overhead, and nothing forewarned us of a German attack. Suddenly one of my comrades shouted, 'Hallo! what is this coming down on us? Any one would think it was petroleum.' At that time we could not believe the truth, but the liquid which began to spray on us was certainly some kind of petroleum. The Germans were pumping it from hoses.

Our sub-lieutenant made us put out our pipes. But it was a useless precaution. A few seconds later incendiary bombs began to rain down on us and the whole trench burst into flame. It was like being in hell. Some of the men began to scream terribly, tearing off their clothes, trying to beat out the flames. Others were cursing and choking in the hot vapour which stifled us. 'Oh, my Christ!' cried a comrade of mine. 'They've blinded me !’

In order to complete their work those German bandits took advantage of our disturbance by advancing on the trench and throwing burning torches into it. None of us escaped that torrent of fire. We had our eyebrows and eyelashes burned off, and clothes were burned in great patches and our flesh was sizzling like roasting meat. But some of us shot through the greasy vapour which made a cloud about us and some of those devils had to pay for their game."

Although some of them had become harmless torches and others lay charred to death, the trench was not abandoned until the second line was ready to make a counter-attack, which they did with fixed bayonets, frenzied by the shrieks which still came from the burning pit where those comrades lay, and flinging themselves with the ferocity of wild beasts upon the enemy, who fled after leaving three hundred dead and wounded on the ground. Along five hundred miles of front such scenes took place week after week, month after month, from Artois to the Argonne, not always with inflammatory liquid, but with hand grenades, bombs, stink-shells, fire balls, smoke balls, and a storm of shrapnel.

(Philip Gibbs was already a well-known British journalist and author upon outbreak of the war in August 1914. He was immediately sent to the continent to cover the hostilities. Arrested upon personal orders of Lord Kitchener at least 4 times, he somehow managed to return time and again, either as a volunteer stretcher-bearer, hospital orderly or as an accredited correspondent with the French armies. He was finally officially accredited as one of 5 British war journalists in uniform by intercession of prime minister Lloyd George. Philip Gibbs spent almost the whole of the war at the front, from where he sent his daily dispatches. While detesting the horrors of modern war, he was a staunch admirer and defender of the common soldier and wrote of their tribulations at the front with heart-felt passion and conviction. After the war he was knighted and continued an acclaimed career as journalist and novelist. He died in 1960.)

Lowther of the "Lamb." - His Play Reviewed.

The New York Times carried a review of Claude Lowther’s famous play. It was not a glowing report, unfortunately.



Play By An M.P.

“The Gordian Knot,” by Claude Lowther, Produced in London – Is Not a Success.

London Times – New York Times.
Special Cablegram.

London, May 21 – The Times, in criticising “The Gordian Knot,” produced at His Majesty’s Theatre last evening, says the author, Claude Lowther, M.P. is too evidently a diligent student of the younger Dumas.

The young Vicomte de Selignac is being ruined by Garielle Belleville, whereupon his old friend Roger Martens conceives the idea of killing her. Gabrielle gives him a chance to effect his purpose through he vain determination to rehearse a sham strangling scene. She lets down her golden hair, intending to mock at Martens, but he plays the scene in real earnest, strangling her with her own hair.

Miss Olga Nethersole played the heroine in wonderful costumes and languorous poses. No English actress would make more the part. Beerbohn Tree played Martens with a never-failing sense of picturesque character.

Harry Patch

I read last week of the sad news that Harry Patch the last survivor of the First World War passed away, just a week after Henry Allingham.

With Harry’s death the generation that fought through the horror of the trenches has finally faded into the history books.

On June 3rd this year Jack Ross the last ANZAC passed away.

There has been much written about both, but I thought a paragraph in Harry Patch’s own words summed up the war for the “Last Tommy.”

“I don’t think it is possible to truly explain the bond that is forged between a soldier in the trenches and his fellow soldiers. There you all are, no matter what your life in civvy street, covered in lice, desperately hungry, eking out the small treats – the ounce of tobacco, the biscuit. You relied in him and he on you, never really thinking that it was just the same for the enemy. But it was. It was every bit as bad.”

Let us hope and pray that we never experience the horror they went through.

Jam-tin Artillery Party.

This article from “A Soldier’s Sketches under Fire" by Harold Harvey describes the bombing of a tower near Armentieres by a party of Royal Fusiliers armed with Jam-tin Artillery.

“The volunteers were known as the "Jam-tin Artillery Party," from the fact that their bombs were made of jam-tins filled with gun-cotton, cordite, etc. The party had to do all the "sticky work," and this was a very sticky job.”

(On the outbreak of the war I joined the Royal Fusiliers, uninfluenced by the appeal of wall-posters or the blandishments of a recruiting sergeant. My former experience as a trooper in the Hertfordshire Yeomanry being accounted unto me for military righteousness, I sailed with my regiment from Southampton on September 3rd, 1914.).



The taking of a distillery (on the outskirts of Armentieres) of which the Germans had been in possession for about three weeks, and within the boundaries of which they set a big trap that didn't catch us. The air was poisoned with the stench of dead animals as we arrived within smell of the block of buildings I show first—and, with thoughts in the minds of some of us of what we had read of the ill-savour of the Black Hole of Calcutta, "the Black Hole" was an ejaculation before it was a designation. The enemy occupied the portion of yard shown in the foreground and used the front of the buildings and the gateway for cover. The British advanced to a position within twenty yards of the gateway in front of it, and, after several nights' work, erected a barricade of twigs, grass, and earth, rapidly collected and thrown into place. By one of their clever tricks the Germans had made the buildings look as though entirely deserted. They had been careful not to shell them when they took them from the French, and it was their intention to draw us on into the yard unsuspectingly and so get us at their mercy. For the surrounding buildings contained machine guns, though we did not then know the fact, and so quiet was everything that I was able to make my sketches undisturbed. The yard could have accommodated quite 3,000 of our men, who, if the enemy had had their way, would have been riddled with shot. However, we naturally proceeded with military caution. Scouts advanced first, and were somewhat deceived because the Germans had artfully left a caretaker and his wife in the building seen adjoining the central arch. These people, doubtless under orders, passed out milk through the window to the scouts at night to give the idea that the buildings were still peacefully occupied, though, as a matter of fact, they contained, not only the enemy soldiers, but their machine guns as well. Really we might have been drawn into the trap but for one lucky incident. The enemy were foolish enough to do some secret signalling with a light at night from the tower above the gateway. This was immediately observed by the scouts, and the game was up.

Jam-tin Artillery Party."

When the scouts gave the warning that the enemy were in the buildings, volunteers were called for to make up a bombing party to blow up the tower where the signalling had been observed. We had no idea how many Germans the tower contained, but later found traces of only one. There were evidences that he had been there for some time, and he had stores of milk and food for a longer stay; they were not wasted, but he had no part in their consumption. The volunteers were known as the "Jam-tin Artillery Party," from the fact that their bombs were made of jam-tins filled with gun-cotton, cordite, etc. The party had to do all the "sticky work," and this was a very sticky job. The plan was to lay a trail with a fuse to bombs, which we placed under the floor at the top of the stairs leading to the upper storey of this old and disused gateway. We crept up these stairs silently for three nights running before we were successful. One hitch and the whole show would have been given away. However, we managed to place the bombs, light the fuse, blow up the floor, and blow off the top of the tower as well, the German signaller being blown up with it. Then we waited. Still the enemy showed no sign of moving, and word was sent back to our artillery to shell the building, which it did to great effect. We were then ordered to advance with fixed bayonets, in platoons, to take various buildings. The place when we captured it was found to be fitted up like a fortress inside, with machine guns trained on the yard to mow our men down as they came through the gate, if the enemy's plan had succeeded; but it entirely failed. We found but little resistance. Inside were a number of dead Germans killed by our artillery fire, a very scientific signalling apparatus, and a complete telephone system to the army corps which was intended to have wiped us out. It was solely due to our scouts and the "Jam-tin Artillery Party" that we were not all killed.

Over the Parapet by Robert W. Service.

This is an excellent poem by Robert W. Service.

I first came across Robert W. Service's poetry in the book "Over There" with the Australians by R. Hugh Knyvett, where he quoted his poetry. During the War Service worked as an ambulance driver with the Canadian Red Cross.


"All day long when the shells sail over
I stand at the sandbags and take my chance;
But at night, at night I'm a reckless rover,
And over the parapet gleams Romance.
Romance! Romance! How I've dreamed it, writing
Dreary old records of money and mart,
Me with my head chuckful of fighting
And the blood of vikings to thrill my heart.

But little I thought that my time was coming,
Sudden and splendid, supreme and soon;
And here I am with the bullets humming
As I crawl and I curse the light of the moon.
Out alone, for adventure thirsting,
Out in mysterious No Man's Land;
Prone with the dead when a star-shell, bursting,
Flares on the horrors on every hand.

There are ruby stars and they drip and wiggle;
And the grasses gleam in a light blood-red;
There are emerald stars, and their tails they wriggle,
And ghastly they glare on the face of the dead.
But the worst of all are the stars of whiteness,
That spill in a pool of pearly flame,
Pretty as gems in their silver brightness,
And etching a man for a bullet's aim.

Yet oh, it's great to be here with danger,
Here in the weird, death-pregnant dark,
In the devil's pasture a stealthy ranger,
When the moon is decently hiding. Hark!
What was that? Was it just the shiver
Of an eerie wind or a clammy hand?
The rustle of grass, or the passing quiver
Of one of the ghosts of No Man's Land?

It's only at night when the ghosts awaken,
And gibber and whisper horrible things;
For to every foot of this God-forsaken
Zone of jeopard some horror clings.
Ugh! What was that? It felt like a jelly,
That flattish mound in the noisome grass;
You three big rats running free of its belly,
Out of my way and let me pass!

But if there's horror, there's beauty, wonder;
The trench lights gleam and the rockets play.
That flood of magnificent orange yonder
Is a battery blazing miles away.
With a rush and a singing a great shell passes;
The rifles resentfully bicker and brawl,
And here I crouch in the dew-drenched grasses,
And look and listen and love it all.

God! What a life! But I must make haste now,
Before the shadow of night be spent.
It's little the time there is to waste now,
If I'd do the job for which I was sent.
My bombs are right and my clippers ready,
And I wriggle out to the chosen place,
When I hear a rustle . . . Steady! . . . Steady!
Who am I staring slap in the face?

There in the dark I can hear him breathing,
A foot away, and as still as death;
And my heart beats hard, and my brain is seething,
And I know he's a Hun by the smell of his breath.
Then: "Will you surrender?" I whisper hoarsely,
For it's death, swift death to utter a cry.
"English schwein-hund!" he murmurs coarsely.
"Then we'll fight it out in the dark," say I.

So we grip and we slip and we trip and wrestle
There in the gutter of No Man's Land;
And I feel my nails in his wind-pipe nestle,
And he tries to gouge, but I bite his hand.
And he tries to squeal, but I squeeze him tighter:
"Now," I say, "I can kill you fine;
But tell me first, you Teutonic blighter!
Have you any children?" He answers: "Nein."

Nine! Well, I cannot kill such a father,
So I tie his hands and I leave him there.
Do I finish my little job? Well, rather;
And I get home safe with some light to spare.
Heigh-ho! by day it's just prosy duty,
Doing the same old song and dance;
But oh! with the night -- joy, glory, beauty:
Over the parapet -- Life, Romance! "

Liquid Fire.

This excellent article from the “Great War in a Different Light” and is on the German use of the Fame Thrower.

Originally published in ‘the War Budget’ January 27th, l916 as 'Liquid Fire as a German Arm' 'Terrors of the ‘Flame Projector’' by Ignatius Phayre.

It is a brilliant article of its time; I especially like the paragraph on the wild bees of Tanga used a German secret weapon. Wonderful evocative writing worthy of a Victorian melodrama.


"It would be folly to deny military genius to the Germans. No nation since the world began was so formidably equipped for offence nor so entirely given to Odinism and aggressive intent. Luckily the cure of it inheres in its own violence. Never again will Prussia prance over all the German States, with her mad Hohenzollem tocsin of "Weltmacht oder Neidergang" — Dominion or Downfall! Reviewing the whole colossal clash we see surprise after surprise sprung upon the unready Allies. Automatic rifles and monstrous guns; aerial mines, suffocating clouds, and whole corps of professional incendiaries, armed with bags of nitro-cellulose "confetti" for blazing the trail of "Frightfulness" through terrified civilian populations. On land, at sea, and in the air, the German was full of wicked wiles. In the East African bush he stretched ropes- across the sand and brushwood tracks. Trodden on by our troops these ropes brought down flags hoisted in the trees. These flags marked the range to a yard; the whole field of fire being commanded by machine-guns in other trees farther back. No wonder the East African campaign called for a General of Smith-Dorrien's calibre.

The Flammenwerfer

It is a fact that the Germans enlisted hives of wild bees against us in these jungle wastes. As with the range-finding flags, wires or cords lifted lids from the hives, whereupon infuriated swarms assailed our advancing men. Partly smoked into stupor at first, but now thoroughly roused, the winged Huns made fierce practice, quite spoiling that of our men and bringing their gallant attack to nought. Of the Loyal North Lancashires many were horribly stung by this unexpected foe. Some were blinded for a time, or rendered incapable of holding weapons. From one of our lads a R.A.M.C. captain extracted over a hundred stings. Such tricks and guiles as these are not to be despised. I could fill a column with them, ranging as they do from wireless mendacity to the now famous "Flammenwerfer." This is a truly devilish engine for spraying liquid fire in vast sheets and jets, accompanied by palls of smoke that screen the supporting infantry. I often wonder where Germany tried the awful tools she was preparing for. Certainly not at the great "Kaisermanoevers" — those pompous reviews of all arms led by the Emperor himself and watched by all the foreign attaches. No fire-squirts were seen there, but decorous academic drill, with a cavalry charge to wind up the day — an affair magnificent indeed, but not war at all.

Flames at Hooge

Where did the Prussian General Staff experiment with Satan's own gear like the flame-projector, before whose coal-tar sheets of fire our men recoiled at Hooge? We lost 500 yards of trenches that day — a position we had held in the face of all other attacks by mortar and battery and bomb. But the aerial-blaze was too much for flesh and blood to bear; this inextinguishable Greek fire from the sky, with its withering heat and hideous slithering roar. Another surprise — each cloud of fire covering an area of 110 feet, beneath which no living thing could survive. The Flammenwerfer, a thing like a portable fire-extinguisher and made by the Fiedler Company of Berlin, was one of the Krupp secrets for blasting a road to. Calais through the best armies of the Allied Powers. So long ago as October 16th, 1914, Note 32 of the 2nd German Army fell into our hands, and gave all instructions about "Arms at the Disposal of Pioneers for Fighting at Close Quarters.

Trained Incendiaries.

The flre-squirts, troops were told, were to be in charge of specially-trained men; and the nozzle threw a liquid that flamed spontaneously as it met the air. The jet had a range of 100 ft. "The effect is immediate and deadly" the novice was assured." And the enormous heat developed forces the enemy a long way back. As jets burn from one and a-half to two minutes, and can be stopped at will, short isolated spurts of flame are advisable, so that one charge may spray several objectives. The Flammenwerfer will therefore be mainly employed in street and house to house fighting."

Beyond all doubt this instrument of Kultur was used to destroy whole towns in the early German line of march. In a reservoir cylinder is stored the nitrogen which gives the necessary pressure that forces out the oil fuel from the main body of this new arm. This cylinder, about 3ft. 6in. high, holds 14 quarts of benzine, and strapped on a man's back it supplies four or five lengths of hose and nozzles, each directed by a pioneer well trained in the devil's own war. .

Fire Among the Snows

Even the Italian Bersaglieri were sprayed with flame on dizzy rock walls South of Plezzo. Like hounds scenting their prey the famous Alpini tracked the Austrians into snowy caves, which, without a moment's warning, spouted vast sheets of fire, generating intolerable heat. Yet the Alpini prevailed. The first ranks emptied their magazines in a last agony, burning alive before their comrades' eyes. But meanwhile the great Italian howitzers plastered the caves with monstrous shell. till the foe was buried by the very rocks he'd rolled up to hide his treacherous lair. Here vast hoards of munitions were found, among them flre-squirts of German make, each weighing 2701b. when fully charged. Under a pressure of 125 atmopheres, a highly inflammable mixture of tar and benzine was forced into an ignition-tube and then expelled in hissing tongues of flame 200ft. long. A murderous arm, indeed, at the short ranges of trench warfare. As the mixture issues from the nozzle in fine diffusive sprays it takes fire with extraordinary effect, blighting all below it.

Fighting the Flames

On the French front entire trenches .were set ablaze — especially those floored with boards and "wattled” at the sides with pit-props and hurdles to hold up the oozy winter clay. There was no arguing with the Flammenwerfer — at first. Men simply melted before its blazing blast; their clothes alight, the very stocks of their rifles charred with the killing heat that came pouring out of the very sky.

"I was on patrol one morning," a badly-burned victim told me in a Boulogne hospital, "when I heard a new sort of explosion on my right. I thought the world was coming to an end when I beheld an enormous aerial fire-sheet, 20ft. long and 100ft. high. I was gaping at this when the flames swooped down. I don't think seas of water would have put out that conflagration. The whole earth appeared in flames. I screamed aloud, as a man might who fell into an ocean of vitriol. Then I ran for it with tunic and trousers uncannily ablaze. But no man has any idea what it's like to face these new blowpipes of Kultur. It's not war, sir. It's scientific flaying and withering — as one day the Germans themselves will admit, and condemn such murder as our own Field Marshal condemned it in his Hooge dispatch."

Eastbourne Recruiting - September 1914.

The Eastbourne Gazette reported on Wednesday September 2nd 1914 a current update of the recruiting in the town and district.

Lowther’s Lambs would come from these recruiting efforts. The work was well organised with every effort made to spur men on to join the colours.

As was pointed out no uniforms were available to new recruits and most were left to find their own entertainment in the evening.


ACTIVE RECRUITERS

Work in the Eastbourne District

CAPTAIN ARGALL AND HIS HELPERS PATROITIC FERVOUR ON THE SEAFRONT

In describing the onrush of the Germans in a recent engagement a British officer remarked that they came “like peas poured out of a sack.” While the influx of recruits in Eastbourne and the surrounding district does not justify the use of such expressive language, it showed a marked improvement at a time when rumours of disaster (happily unfounded) had gained general currency and this may surely be taken as an encouraging indication of the spirit of the nation.

Owing to the pressure of other work Surgeon-Colonel G. Somerville Robinson asked to be relieved of his duties as recruiting officer at Eastbourne and he was succeeded on Friday last by Captain P.B. Argall (National Reserve) who formally served under Colonel Keyser and has lately been assisting at the Depot at Chichester. The captain has thrown himself very zealously into his work and by reason of his attendance at Royal and patriotic gatherings he is already known to a large number of people.

VILLAGERS DOING BETTER THAN THE TOWNSMEN.

The medical examination of men who wish to enlist is conducted by Surgeon-Colonel Robinson and assistance is being rendered by Surgeon-Major Brannigan (late of the R.A.M.C.) and Colonel Hawkins (late of the Indian Medical Service).

The experienced recruiting sergeant at the Ordinance Yard is Sergeant Thomas Hayward, and on Monday afternoon it was stated that the number of men enrolled from Eastbourne and the district was increasing; that 56 had enlisted since Friday and that 76 had joined previously, making a total of 132.

Up to Monday afternoon, we believe the villagers had joined in larger numbers than the townsmen. We mention the fact not by way of reproach but in order to arouse a spirit of emulation. The physique of Eastbourne men is above, rather than below, the average and they are capable of doing their country good service. Those who know them best consider that they will yield to persuasion rather than to dictation. Nearly a score of young men assembled near the office in the Ordnance Fields about five o’clock on Monday. They had, it appeared, already enlisted; and were told that they could sleep in one of the barrack room at night. During the evening they were free to do as they pleased and we noticed some of them on the Sea Front during the band performance in the evening. Most of them looked under 25 years of age and were dark haired and rather slim. There was, however, nothing approaching any uniform type of appearance or physique.

SUPPLY OF FORMS EXHAUSTED

The work which is being carried on at the Ordinance Yard is far more intricate than might be supposed. In the case of each recruit an elaborate form has to be filled in; and then a duplicate copy has to be made. By Monday Afternoon the supply of forms had run out, so that application had to be made for authority to employ a local printer to produce additional copies. The War Office seems to share the fondness of other Government departments for minute details. One might have imagined that at a time like the present all red tape methods would go by the board; but such is not the case.

CENTRAL OFFICE IN TERMINUS ROAD – MOTOR SERVICE.

By the kindness of Mr. Beardall, the gratuitous use of the central premises at the corner of Terminus Road and Gildredge road has been granted. Mr. Mullaly and Mr. Beatty are in charge. In the window there are pictures of various types of the British Army and any needful information can be supplied.

Colonel Stainforth, Colonel Broome, Colonel Moody, the Mayor (Councillor C.W. Bolton, C.S.L.), the deputy Mayor ( Councillor R.T. Thornton) and others are rendering help. Councillor O. Darell and Mr. Plummer have organised a motor service the object kept steamily in view being to have cars constantly available without over taxing willing owners.

ANOTHER BATTALION OF THE ROYAL SUSSEX REGIMENT

In compliance with the desire of the authorities a special effort is being made to raise a service battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment and it is this battalion which men of the Eastbourne and district recruits will join.

The pay is 1s a day clear. The men are well fed; the war ration includes 1lb of meat a day and plenty of bread, jam and bacon. In the case of a married man the wife receives 1s a day (7s a week) and 2d a day (1s 2d per week) for each child. Any soldier disabled whilst on active service will enjoy a liberal pension for the rest of his days.

Men between 19 and 35 years of age may join. The standard height is 5ft 9ins and 6ft 3ins; while the chest measurement is 34ins.

LOCAL CENTRES OF INFORMATION

The Eastbourne district has now been divided into four parts (Hailsham, Herstmonceux, Mayfield and Willingdon) and any information may be obtained of the following local representatives:-

Hailsham – Mr. A.K. Burtenshaw.
Hellingly- Mr. J. Grant Duff Ainalie.
Arlington- Mr. Hobden.
Upper Dicker- Mr. S. Russell.
Chiddingly- Mr. Muddle.
Pevenset and Westham – Mr. C. Allen.
Herstmonceux- Mr. Barchard.
Windmill Hill- Mr. Nash.
Rushlake Green – Mr. Sidell.
Willingdon – Mr. H.R. Bean.
Polegate – The curate.
Jevington – The Rev. E.E. Clarke.
Alfriston – The village constable.
Wilmington – The landlord of the Black Horse Inn.
Mayfield – Mr. Usborne and Mr. Farrer.
Heathfield – Mr. Stone.
Fives Ashes – Mr. R.A. Bangham.

The Rev. F.S. Williams (headmaster of Eastbourne College) and the Rev. W.N. Willis ( Ascham – St. Vincent’s School) were among the helpers at the recruiting office at the Ordnance Yard on Monday.

RECRUITING MEETING AT HAILSHAM.

On Saturday evening a largely attended meeting was held in the Market Square, Hailsham, when an appeal for recruits for the Army was made.

Mr. A. F. Smith acted as chairman and the speakers included Dr. A.P. Sherwood (Eastbourne), Mr. Davall amd Mr. A.K. Burtenshaw. The last named gentleman, who is acting as recruiting officer, has already sent the following recruits who volunteered to Eastbourne: Messers N.E. Mansfield, J. Shirley, E. Bragg, Percy Noakes, James Harmer, Joseph Clapham, Walter Elphick, Ernest Mathews, H. Moon, Arthur Walker and Joseph Matthews.

Lowther of the "Lambs" - Part 2.

In the second and final part of the Eastbourne Gazette article published in 1914 on Mr. Claude Lowther, it goes into his military career, political life and some “amusing” stories of his wicked sense of humour.

It all paints an elaborate picture of the new Colonel of the South Downs battalions.


MILITARY EXPERIENCE

The Southdown Battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment have as their colonel no tyro in the art of war. The command has been given to a man who served with more than ordinary distinction in the South African War. He was A.D.C to Sir Charles Warren and for one act of valour was recommended for the Victoria Cross. From South Africa he went straight into politics.

The constituency he had to woo (this was in 1900) was an old Liberal stronghold and I have wondered how a man of his disposition and temperament managed to gain the affections of the aloof, unimaginative, dour Northern farmers. Yet I am told he carried them by storm. His success in the House of Commons was just as surprising. Beyond his brief electoral campaign he had no oratorical experience before he took his seat; and yet upon his maiden speech Sir William Harcourt congratulated him and he quickly caught the eye of Mr. Chamberlain. He had become an adherent of the latter immediately upon entering into politics and he remained his staunch follower.

Politicians say that one important way to gain the attention of the House is to be yourself as a critic upon some prominent member of the other side. Mr. Claude Lowther fastened himself on to Mr. Winston Churchill. Upon Mr. Churchill’s vitriolic attacks on Mr. Balfour or Mr. Chamberlain he would follow with equally sarcastic comments. At a time when discussion ranged round the “beri-beri” disease one of the symptoms of which was said to be a swelled head. Mr. Lowther accused Mr. Churchill of being a victim of the complaint. The two are personal friends and when they met at a dinner party a night or two after, the First Lord remarked, “You are wrong Claude, about beri-beri. It doesn’t cause a swelled head but swelled feet.” “Oh,” came the apt retort, “then I should have said, ‘you were too big for your boots!’”

AN ANTI-SOCALIST

Undoubtedly, had his own health and his party’s fortunes gone differently, M. Lowther might by now be a widely known politician. Had he kept his seat in 1906 (he lost it by a small majority) he would have had a splendid chance among the little ban of Unionists in the 1906-1910 Parliament; for he has the real Parliamentary manner and that saving grace of humour which the House loves. A Tariff Reform Government would certainly have seen him in some post (he was one of the select few permitted to visit Mr. Chamberlain after his breakdown compelled the retirement to Highbury) and when the Unionists expected to win in 1910 he was “tipped” as a possible Under Secretary for the Colonies. His health, however, has sadly interfered with his political activities of late years; he regained his seat in December, 1910 but has rarely sat in the present House, although he has concentrated a good deal of interest upon the anti-Socialist movement.

His antipathy to Socialists once took an amusing turn. He was watching a mob orator in Hyde Park and had with him, Norman Forbes, the actor. Now Norman Forbes was abnormally thin; so thin that when his brother, Sir J. Forbes Robertson, was producing “Hamlet” and wanted a role for Norman, somebody suggested that he should be cast for the part of the skull in the graveyard scene. To divert the attention of the crowd, Claude Lowther began to refer to the man beside him as the celebrated fasting man. “Saccho” or “Zaccho” who was then startling London. Before long the whole crowd were staring at the man and the orator was wasting his eloquence on the park trees.

A PRACTICAL JOKE

I have reason to know that M. Lowther dearly loves a joke – even a practical joke. The editor of a certain newspaper tells a story to this effect. He once applied to Mr. Lowther for a portrait of himself which was to be given to the editor’s newspaper. As he knew that Mr. Lowther had an objection to have his portrait in the public press, he had little hope of his request being granted. However, to the editor’s surprise, a portrait was sent and was published in due course. Only then did the editor (who had never seen Mr. Lowther) find that the photograph that had been sent to him and inserted in his paper was that of quite another man.

Claude Lowther once wrote a play. It was called “The Gordian Knot.” And his friend, Sir H. Beerbohm, produced it. Tree engaged Olga Nethersole, then a big London star, at a handsome salary, to play the chief role. All the M.P.’s came down from Westminster to His Majesty’s for the first night and most I am told dozed in the stalls long before it was over. Anyhow, the play ran only about six nights. The smartest thing said about it was that its title should have been “The Claudian Rot.” The author, I believe, came to the conclusion that the British public did not want serious drama. I fancy he has never though much of the dramatic critics from that day to this. As for Mr. Beerbohm Tree, he went back to Shakespeare.

SOME LOWTHER STORIES

Although he failed as a dramatist there can be no doubt that Mr. Claude Lowther would have found an excellent career, had he needed it, as an actor. He has the very style for drawing-room comedy. I can imagine his treading the stage of the St. James quite attractively as Sir George Alexander. His sister, Miss Aimee Lowther, is, of course, well known in society as an amateur actress and has even essayed the role of Romeo. Nearly all the Lowthers, indeed, have a penchant for theatricals. Once the subject of this sketch played the part of a curate. But that was at a country house and for a joke. The deception was carried out most successfully.

For, as I have said, he is an enormous practical joker. The Drury Lane conductor, Mr. Jimmy Glover, known to us in Sussex, for his association with the public life of Bexhill, narrates one of his most daring exploits in his pleasant book of theatrical gossip. “Claude Lowther,” he writes, “once got himself into trouble for an innocent piece of carnavalian humour at Covent Garden. He dressed up a dummy of poor Gus Harris (Sir Augustus Harris, the famous impresario) Inverness cape and all, and worked it in an imitation of making a speech from a private box, to all but an unsympathetic and humourless officer in blue, who promptly carted the offending one off to Bow Street.”

Jimmy Glover’s book also contains the following – “Few people who know that charming lady, delightful sportswomen and excellent actress, Lady de Bathe, will appreciate what a good-natured humanist she is in the cause of charity, She once, with Claude Lowther, M.P. disguised herself as a flower girl and sold flowers in Haymarket outside the clubs to such a state of realism that Lord Brabazon did not recognise her and made an appointment with her the next day to further patronise her floral wares.”

I am sure that “Lowthers Lambs” will all become as much attached to their colonel as his men were in South Africa and his political supporters were in Cumberland. And I am sure that their colonel will find fighting this war an even more congenial task that fighting the Boers. For he will know that while fighting for the British, whose possessions have always made him the most intense of Imperialists, for whose sturdiness and love of fair play he has so much admiration, he is also fighting for “La Belle France,” whose spirit he understands and enters into as can few Englishmen. And he will be fighting the Germans. I can imagine few things about the Germans which would not strike him with a cold shudder.

Wickham War Memorial, Hampshire.

Wickham, Hampshire War memorial is located in the grounds of St. Nicolas Parish Church. The names of the fallen are recorded on the plinth, above which is an ornate carved cross.

There are 49 names of those from World War 1 and 12 from World War 2.

For a full description and details of those recorded go the excellent web site Roll of Honour.

Lowther of the "Lambs" - Part 1.

Claude Lowther, MP for Eskdale Cumberland who lived at Herstmonceux Castle was a local land owned who formed the 1st Southdowns Battalion. He later went on to appeal for a second and third battalion.

The new recruits were trained at Cooden Camp, near Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, where conditions were basic; bell tents for accommodation, the mess halls were marquees and for washing they used wooden troughs and standpipes.

The Eastbourne Gazette published the following article in 1914 on Mr. Claude Lowther to give the public a character study of the battalion’s new colonel.


LOWTHER OF THE “LAMBS”

A Character Sketch: By Sussexian

The career of Mr. Claude Lowther, M.P.., follows the traditions of the great English territorial house of which he is an offshoot. He has been concerned with diplomacy, with the Army, and with politics; and always the Lowthers have had representatives in one or other of these branches of the country’s affairs.

Yet his personality is not that of the typical Lowther. Mr. A G. Gardiner, while regarding, Mr. J.W. Lowther as the greatest speaker of our time, insists that his success is that of “a plain man without a touch of genius, almost without a touch of brilliancy, but with all the qualities of the average man in perfect equilibrium.” Now, Mr. Claude Lowther has more a touch of brilliance and he would be the first to admit that he does not possess, “all the qualities of the average man in perfect equilibrium.” The Lowthers embody to a remarkable degree the love of the open air of the old British Aristocracy; the Earl of Lonsdale is the finest sportsman in England; and the speaker brings to Westminster the freshness of the Cumberland fells on which he loves to hunt. Mr. Claude Lowther, on the other hand, excellent soldier though he makes, belongs, rather to the drawing-room – polished, courtly, a man of exquisite taste, fond of the arts.

He has lived much in Paris; indeed Max Beerbohm once drew him in a cartoon labelled “Mr. Claude Lowther dominating Paris.” It represented the subject with longs legs towering over the roofs of the French capital. He was so popular in Paris that if the English colony there could have obtained a representative in the House of Commons he would never have needed to go to Cumberland for a seat. It is his passion for the picturesque which set him upon buying Herstmonceux just as it had made him select as his home in his constituency a ruined old Border castle long uninhabited and almost uninhabitable until he had adapted it.

THE RESTORATION OF HERSTMONCEUX CASTLE

When it was made known in East Sussex that a gentleman from the north had purchased Herstmonceux Castle with the intention of restoring that historical pile and using it as a dwelling house many men regarded the event with foreboding. They feared that “restoration” in this instance was but another spelling of the word “vandalism,” and it was with very real regret that they gazed upon an army of builders who, as they believed, had come to shear the old castle of those picturesque features with which it had been caparisoned by Father Time. But those who shook their heads did not know Mr. Lowther.

He took the restoration in hand with perfect good taste and a sense of veneration, restoring only as much of the front of the building as would serve him for a dwelling and leaving the remainder of the castle pretty much in the condition in which he found it. The critics were silenced; as a matter of fact they were delighted and the only grumble one now hears in connection with Herstmonceux Castle is on account of the disappearance of the magnificent old tythe barn that once stood near by. The reason for its demolition, I believe, Mr. Lowther has yet to explain.

HIS PATRIOTISM

I think that Mr. Lowther is genuinely proud of his successful “restoration” of Herstmonceux. I judge largely from the fact that many people who have expressed an interest in it have asked by the owner to call and see for themselves what has been done. It sometimes happens that Mr. Lowther gives an invitation of this kind, and then forgets all about it. There are those thus invited who line in the hope that the invitation will, some day, materialise.

If I were to name the most prominent feature of Mr. Lowther’s character I should instantly cry “Patriotism.” With him patriotism is no mere word for love of one’s country; it is almost a fetish. Duty to one’s country should compel a man to give of his best - or a little more than his best – whether he be well or ill. That is how Claude Lowther regards patriotism; and it was this spirit that urged him, soon after the declaration of the present war, promptly to form a Home Defence Company of the men of Herstmonceux and district. Having organised his company for home defence he was yet unsatisfied; his ardent patriotism urged him to do something more and better; to wait for the enemy’s coming into his own country was not, after all, altogether in accordance with his view of a man’s duty in a great war; he must meet the enemy before he arrived.

Therefore Mr. Lowther formed a battalion for service abroad and under his leadership the 1,150 men, now popularly known as “Lowther’s Lambs” will, I do not doubt, bring laurels to the county in which they have been raised.

APPEAL FOR A SECOND BATTALION

The completion of the first battalion, its popularity and the country’s cry “More men” seem to have stimulated Colonel Lowther to further efforts. Read his appeal for a second battalion:

“I call upon every man, with red blood in his veins, to join the second Southdown Battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment.”

“You will not be separated!”

“Together (in your own county) you will train.”

“Together you will fight.”

“Together you will die if need be, but together, pray God, you may return.”

That is the Lowther patriotism! It is a patriot appealing to all men wh0 are patriots – men with “red blood in their veins.”

That is why Colonel Lowther has secured his second battalion so quickly and why he will succeed in raising the third he is now asking for.

Herstmonceux Castle today - 2009