This passage comes from the book “Over the Top with the Third Australian Division” by G.P Cuttriss.
Under the title ‘Soldiers Superstitions’ it gives an interesting account of the festive activities out of the front line. The final tragic story of the Lieutenant who was concerned by the old ‘unlucky thirteen at a table’ superstition is perhaps even more poignant given the time of year.
SOLDIERS' SUPERSTITIONS
With the advent of Christmas, arrangements were effected by which officers whose work necessitated their being temporarily separated from the unit could come together for the purpose of observing the special season in the established epicurean style. Every effort was made to make the day as distinct from other days as circumstances would allow. Donations from the officers and small contributions from the men enabled those who had the matter in hand to provide the customary Christmas dinner. Though it was not served up on tables, spread with linen, and the usual impedimenta of the banqueting-table, it was greatly appreciated, and afforded a rare opportunity for reunion. Fresh friendships were formed, acquaintances renewed, brothers and relatives met after months of separation. Toasts were honoured and carols or hymns appropriate to the season were sung. A great deal had been heard or read about our troops fraternizing with the enemy during the Christmas seasons of the previous years of the war, but there was none of that during the Christmas of 1916. There was no cessation of hostilities. The lines were held with the same keenness, and there was considerable aerial and artillery activity throughout the day and night. In fact, Christmas 'Somewhere in France' was born to the accompaniment of the boom of guns and the whirr of aeroplanes. The weather conditions were decidedly inclement, and, despite the good wishes from friends in the Homeland, it was difficult to keep warm.
At the back of the lines, in a certain battalion's H.Q. billets, a number of officers had assembled. They had come together by invitation to participate in a reunion dinner. Everything had been done to make it a meal worthy of the occasion. Great taste had been displayed in decorating the table, and the cooks excelled themselves in the quality of the food served. We seated ourselves immediately 'Grace' was said, when somebody remarked that there were thirteen only, and suggested that another be asked in to make fourteen. Little notice was taken of the remark until the same officer ventured to predict that one of them would 'go out' before the year ended. He was teased with being unduly superstitious and attaching too much significance to the supposed unluckiness of the number thirteen. His mind was evidently depressed with the impression which he had gathered, and there was not lacking evidence that the gathering ceased to interest him further.
Exactly a week passed, and another such reunion had been arranged for the purpose of celebrating the passing of the old year and the ushering in of the new. Several jocularly remarked that for G——'s sake we should arrange to have more or less than thirteen present. Late on the afternoon of the last day of the year, advice was received at B.Q.H. that Lieut. G—— had been killed. He had gone down to the trenches to inspect some work which was being done by his platoon, and was on the point of returning when an enemy shell burst and a shrapnel bullet went through his heart. This sad event recalled to us his words at the gathering on Christmas night. His prediction that one would be missing ere the year ended was fulfilled, and he was the one called hence. Arrangements for the evening function were cancelled, and the next day his remains were interred in the military cemetery, and the grave is now marked by a beautiful cross made by a member of his platoon and inscribed by his O.C. He was a fine fellow, full of fun and life, a true comrade, an ideal officer, beloved by all who knew him.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Christmas 1916 - Westminster Abbey.
This evocative report was published in “The Times” on 27th December 1916.
It describes the Boxing Day carol service held at Westminster Abbey. I like the way the fog descends upon the Abbey during the service and gives it a almost ‘holy’ atmosphere. It must have been a very unique experience.
CAROLS IN THE ABBEY
CHILD SINGERS AND SOLDIER LISTENERS
In the fog yesterday the towers of Westminster Abbey stood out dimly against a smoky sky. The great doors at the west end were open and the light streamed out in long yellow shafts as the congregation went in for the Christmas Carol Service.
The worshippers were for the most part children, but there were others there as well. There were many soldiers back from the front. There were many who were about to leave again for the trenches, and all listened attentively to the singing of the carols and all will carry back with them to Flanders and the firing line the sound of those children’s voices. The Abbey was filled. The fog had invaded the nave and transepts and the clusters of hanging lights showed as little discs high up in the air. The great pillars were lost in the mists above and the voices of the choristers also found their way up to the great stone roof and echoed down again.
“En natus est Emanuel, Dominus,
Quem praedixit Gabriel, Dominus,
Salvator noster est.”
The chant, with children’s voices predominating, was very beautiful, especially to the men who had who had seen the stress and strife of war. Many of the carols were the old ones, but they were the songs sung hundreds of years ago in the same choir by similar childish voices. One there was, “Babe ys borne, I wys,” that has been in the Abbey library for 500 years.
The service lasted for almost two hours. The collection was for the prisoners of war in Germany.
It describes the Boxing Day carol service held at Westminster Abbey. I like the way the fog descends upon the Abbey during the service and gives it a almost ‘holy’ atmosphere. It must have been a very unique experience.
CAROLS IN THE ABBEY
CHILD SINGERS AND SOLDIER LISTENERS
In the fog yesterday the towers of Westminster Abbey stood out dimly against a smoky sky. The great doors at the west end were open and the light streamed out in long yellow shafts as the congregation went in for the Christmas Carol Service.
The worshippers were for the most part children, but there were others there as well. There were many soldiers back from the front. There were many who were about to leave again for the trenches, and all listened attentively to the singing of the carols and all will carry back with them to Flanders and the firing line the sound of those children’s voices. The Abbey was filled. The fog had invaded the nave and transepts and the clusters of hanging lights showed as little discs high up in the air. The great pillars were lost in the mists above and the voices of the choristers also found their way up to the great stone roof and echoed down again.
“En natus est Emanuel, Dominus,
Quem praedixit Gabriel, Dominus,
Salvator noster est.”
The chant, with children’s voices predominating, was very beautiful, especially to the men who had who had seen the stress and strife of war. Many of the carols were the old ones, but they were the songs sung hundreds of years ago in the same choir by similar childish voices. One there was, “Babe ys borne, I wys,” that has been in the Abbey library for 500 years.
The service lasted for almost two hours. The collection was for the prisoners of war in Germany.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Christmas 1916 - At the Suez Canal.
This account of Christmas 1916 centers on the Middle East.
The author Antony Bluett served with with A" BATTERY, H.A.C., AND EGYPTIAN CAMEL TRANSPORT CORPS and recorded his war in the book “ Our Army in Palestine”.
Christmas 1916 found him at El Kubri, a post on the Suez Canal.
Christmas came and was made endurable and even enjoyable by the kindness of the Y.M.C.A., who lent us tables, yea and cloths, in addition to other things.
But the outstanding event of this period of waiting was the visit of one of Miss Lena Ashwell's concert parties to El Kubri. It will ever remain a fragrant memory, for it was the first time we had seen English ladies for nearly a year and it brought home very near to hear them sing.
They gave their concert in a specially constructed "hall" in the desert. Sandbags were the mainstay of the platform and a large tarpaulin, G.S., formed the drop-scene. The walls were of rough canvas, upon which it was inadvisable to lean, lest the whole structure collapsed. Primitive, no doubt, but it suited the environment; and I have never seen in the most elaborate West-end theatre anything like the enthusiasm here.
You called for a popular song or recitation and you got it, and as many more as you liked to ask for. One of these talented ladies used to give a recitation which became a permanent feature of her programme in Egypt. She would come to the front of the stage and say confidentially to the audience, "Do you know Lizzie 'Arris?" And back would come a mighty bellow, "Aiwa!" This rite was always insisted upon before the artiste could proceed, though she obviously enjoyed it almost as much as we did. She might probably be amused to know that—such is fame!—amongst the thousands of troops who heard her recite she was always known as "Lizzie 'Arris."
Early in the New Year the Mecca myth was finally dissipated, for we moved—no, the train never arrived—to the big concentration camp at Suez, and there started preparations in real earnest. It was strange to be amongst people again after so many months of comparative solitude, and stranger still to see houses and streets and civilians. Not that we had much time to look around, for with the coming of the cool weather the hours of work became appreciably longer.
The author Antony Bluett served with with A" BATTERY, H.A.C., AND EGYPTIAN CAMEL TRANSPORT CORPS and recorded his war in the book “ Our Army in Palestine”.
Christmas 1916 found him at El Kubri, a post on the Suez Canal.
Christmas came and was made endurable and even enjoyable by the kindness of the Y.M.C.A., who lent us tables, yea and cloths, in addition to other things.
But the outstanding event of this period of waiting was the visit of one of Miss Lena Ashwell's concert parties to El Kubri. It will ever remain a fragrant memory, for it was the first time we had seen English ladies for nearly a year and it brought home very near to hear them sing.
They gave their concert in a specially constructed "hall" in the desert. Sandbags were the mainstay of the platform and a large tarpaulin, G.S., formed the drop-scene. The walls were of rough canvas, upon which it was inadvisable to lean, lest the whole structure collapsed. Primitive, no doubt, but it suited the environment; and I have never seen in the most elaborate West-end theatre anything like the enthusiasm here.
You called for a popular song or recitation and you got it, and as many more as you liked to ask for. One of these talented ladies used to give a recitation which became a permanent feature of her programme in Egypt. She would come to the front of the stage and say confidentially to the audience, "Do you know Lizzie 'Arris?" And back would come a mighty bellow, "Aiwa!" This rite was always insisted upon before the artiste could proceed, though she obviously enjoyed it almost as much as we did. She might probably be amused to know that—such is fame!—amongst the thousands of troops who heard her recite she was always known as "Lizzie 'Arris."
Early in the New Year the Mecca myth was finally dissipated, for we moved—no, the train never arrived—to the big concentration camp at Suez, and there started preparations in real earnest. It was strange to be amongst people again after so many months of comparative solitude, and stranger still to see houses and streets and civilians. Not that we had much time to look around, for with the coming of the cool weather the hours of work became appreciably longer.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Christmas 1916 - With The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry.
This account of Christmas 1916 comes from the book “Fanny Goes to War” by Pat Beauchamp.
Pat Beauchamp was a member of “The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry” and this wonderful account at a station in northern France really paints a vidid picture of the time.
CHRISTMAS, 1916
Christmas came round before we knew where we were, and Boss gave the order it was to be celebrated in our own mess. Work was slack just then and Mrs. Williams gave a tea and dance in the afternoon at her canteen up at Fontinettes. It was a picturesque-looking place with red brick floor, artistic-looking tables with rough logs for legs and a large open fireplace, typically English, which must have rejoiced the hearts of men so far from Blighty.
It was a very jolly show, in spite of my partner bumping his head against the beam every time we went round, and people came from far and near. It was over about five, and we hastened back to prepare for our Christmas dinner in Mess.
Fancy dress had been decided on, and as it was to be only among ourselves we were given carte blanche as to ideas. They were of course all kept secret until the last moment. Baby went as a Magpie and looked very striking, the black and white effect being obtained by draping a white towel straight down one side over the black nether garments belonging to our concert party kit.
I decided to go as a Vie Parisienne cover. A study in black and daffodil—a ravishing confection—and also used part of our "FANTASTIK" kit, but made the bodice out of crinkly yellow paper. A chrysanthemum of the same shade in my hair, which was skinned back in the latest door-knob fashion, completed the get-up.
Baby and I met on our way across the camp and drifted into mess together, and as we slowly divested ourselves of our grey wolf-coats we were hailed with yells of delight.
Dicky went as Charlie's Aunt, and Winnie as the irresistible nephew. Eva was an art student from the Quartier Latin, and Bridget a charming two-year old. The others came in many and various disguises.
We all helped to clear away in order to dance afterwards, and as I ran into the cook-house with some plates I met the mechanic laden with the tray from his hut.
The momentary glimpse of the Vie Parisienne was almost too much for the good Brown.
I heard a startled "Gor blimee! Miss" and saw his eyes popping out of his head as he just prevented the tray from eluding his grasp!
Soon after Christmas a grain-ship, while entering Boulogne harbour in a storm, got blown across and firmly fixed between the two jetties, which are not very wide apart. To make matters worse its back broke and so formed an effectual barrier to the harbour and took from a fortnight to three weeks to clear away.
Traffic was diverted to the other ports, and for the time being Boulogne became almost like a city of the dead.
One port had been used solely for hospital ships up till then, and the scenes of bustle and confusion that replaced the comparative calm were almost indescribable. We saw many friends returning from Christmas leave, who for the most part had not the faintest idea where they had arrived. There were not enough military cars to transport the men to Fontinettes, so besides our barge and hospital work we were temporarily commissioned by the Local Transport Office.
I was detailed to take two officers inspecting the Archic stations north of St. Omer one wet snowy afternoon, and many were the adventures we had. It was a great thing to get up right behind our lines to places where we had never been before, and Susan ploughed through the mud like a two-year old, and never even so much as punctured. We were on our way back at a little place called Pont l'Abbesse, about 6.30, when the snow came down in blinding gusts. With only two side lamps, and a pitch dark night, the prospect of ever finding our way home seemed nil, and every road we took was bordered by a deep canal, with nothing in the way of a fence as protection. It was bitterly cold, and once we got completely lost; three-quarters of an hour later finding ourselves at the same cottage where we had previously asked the way!
At last we found a staff car that promised to give us a lead, and in time we reached the main St. Omer road, finally getting back to Pont-le-Beurre about 10 p.m. I 'phoned up to the Convoy to tell them I was still in the land of the living, and after a bowl of hot soup sped back to camp.
My hands were so cold I had to sit on them in turns, and as for feet, I didn't seem to have any. Still it was "some run," and the next day I spent a long time hosing off the thick clay which almost completely hid the good Susan from sight.
Another temporary job we had was to drive an army sister (a sort of female Military Landing Officer) to the boat every day, where she met the sisters coming back from leave and directed them to the different units and hospitals.
One of the results of the closing of Boulogne harbour was that instead of the patients being evacuated straight to England we had to drive them into Boulogne, where they were entrained for Havre! A terrible journey, poor things. Twenty to twenty-four ambulances would set off to do the thirty kilometres in convoy, led at a steady pace by the Section Leader. These journeys took place three times a week, and often the men would get bitterly cold inside the cars. If there was one puncture in the Convoy we all had to stop till a spare wheel was put on. We eagerly took the opportunity to get down and do stamping exercises and "cabby" arms to try and get warm. To my utmost surprise, on one of these occasions my four stretcher patients got up and danced in the road with me. Why they were "liers" instead of "sitters" I can't think, as there was not much wrong with them. À propos I remember asking one night when an ambulance train came in in the dark, "Are you liers or sitters in here?" and one humorist scratched his head and replied, "I don't rightly know, Sister, I've told a few in my time!" To return to our long convoy journeys: once we had deposited our patients it was not unnaturally the desire of this "dismounted cavalry" unit to try the speed of its respective 'buses one against the other on the return journey; to our immense disappointment this idea was completely nipped in the bud, for Boss rode on the first car.
Permission however was given to pass on hills, as it was considered a pity to overheat a car going down to second gear when it could easily have done the hill on third! That Boulogne road is one of the hilliest in France, and Susan was a nailer on hills. I remember arriving in camp second one day. "How have you got here?" asked Boss in surprise, "I purposely put you nineteenth!"
Heasy, Betty, and I in celebration of two years' active service had permission to give a small dance in the mess at the beginning of the new year. We trembled lest at the last moment an ambulance train might arrive, but there was nothing worse than an early evacuation next morning and all went off excellently. I was entrusted to make the "cup," and bought the ingredients in the town (some cup), and gravely assured everyone there was absolutely "nothing in it." The boracic powder was lifted in my absence from the Pharmacie to try and get the first glimmerings of a slide on that sticky creosoted floor. The ambulances, fitted with paper Chinese lanterns, were temporarily converted into sitting out places. It was a great show.
Pat Beauchamp was a member of “The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry” and this wonderful account at a station in northern France really paints a vidid picture of the time.
CHRISTMAS, 1916
Christmas came round before we knew where we were, and Boss gave the order it was to be celebrated in our own mess. Work was slack just then and Mrs. Williams gave a tea and dance in the afternoon at her canteen up at Fontinettes. It was a picturesque-looking place with red brick floor, artistic-looking tables with rough logs for legs and a large open fireplace, typically English, which must have rejoiced the hearts of men so far from Blighty.
It was a very jolly show, in spite of my partner bumping his head against the beam every time we went round, and people came from far and near. It was over about five, and we hastened back to prepare for our Christmas dinner in Mess.
Fancy dress had been decided on, and as it was to be only among ourselves we were given carte blanche as to ideas. They were of course all kept secret until the last moment. Baby went as a Magpie and looked very striking, the black and white effect being obtained by draping a white towel straight down one side over the black nether garments belonging to our concert party kit.
I decided to go as a Vie Parisienne cover. A study in black and daffodil—a ravishing confection—and also used part of our "FANTASTIK" kit, but made the bodice out of crinkly yellow paper. A chrysanthemum of the same shade in my hair, which was skinned back in the latest door-knob fashion, completed the get-up.
Baby and I met on our way across the camp and drifted into mess together, and as we slowly divested ourselves of our grey wolf-coats we were hailed with yells of delight.
Dicky went as Charlie's Aunt, and Winnie as the irresistible nephew. Eva was an art student from the Quartier Latin, and Bridget a charming two-year old. The others came in many and various disguises.
We all helped to clear away in order to dance afterwards, and as I ran into the cook-house with some plates I met the mechanic laden with the tray from his hut.
The momentary glimpse of the Vie Parisienne was almost too much for the good Brown.
I heard a startled "Gor blimee! Miss" and saw his eyes popping out of his head as he just prevented the tray from eluding his grasp!
Soon after Christmas a grain-ship, while entering Boulogne harbour in a storm, got blown across and firmly fixed between the two jetties, which are not very wide apart. To make matters worse its back broke and so formed an effectual barrier to the harbour and took from a fortnight to three weeks to clear away.
Traffic was diverted to the other ports, and for the time being Boulogne became almost like a city of the dead.
One port had been used solely for hospital ships up till then, and the scenes of bustle and confusion that replaced the comparative calm were almost indescribable. We saw many friends returning from Christmas leave, who for the most part had not the faintest idea where they had arrived. There were not enough military cars to transport the men to Fontinettes, so besides our barge and hospital work we were temporarily commissioned by the Local Transport Office.
I was detailed to take two officers inspecting the Archic stations north of St. Omer one wet snowy afternoon, and many were the adventures we had. It was a great thing to get up right behind our lines to places where we had never been before, and Susan ploughed through the mud like a two-year old, and never even so much as punctured. We were on our way back at a little place called Pont l'Abbesse, about 6.30, when the snow came down in blinding gusts. With only two side lamps, and a pitch dark night, the prospect of ever finding our way home seemed nil, and every road we took was bordered by a deep canal, with nothing in the way of a fence as protection. It was bitterly cold, and once we got completely lost; three-quarters of an hour later finding ourselves at the same cottage where we had previously asked the way!
At last we found a staff car that promised to give us a lead, and in time we reached the main St. Omer road, finally getting back to Pont-le-Beurre about 10 p.m. I 'phoned up to the Convoy to tell them I was still in the land of the living, and after a bowl of hot soup sped back to camp.
My hands were so cold I had to sit on them in turns, and as for feet, I didn't seem to have any. Still it was "some run," and the next day I spent a long time hosing off the thick clay which almost completely hid the good Susan from sight.
Another temporary job we had was to drive an army sister (a sort of female Military Landing Officer) to the boat every day, where she met the sisters coming back from leave and directed them to the different units and hospitals.
One of the results of the closing of Boulogne harbour was that instead of the patients being evacuated straight to England we had to drive them into Boulogne, where they were entrained for Havre! A terrible journey, poor things. Twenty to twenty-four ambulances would set off to do the thirty kilometres in convoy, led at a steady pace by the Section Leader. These journeys took place three times a week, and often the men would get bitterly cold inside the cars. If there was one puncture in the Convoy we all had to stop till a spare wheel was put on. We eagerly took the opportunity to get down and do stamping exercises and "cabby" arms to try and get warm. To my utmost surprise, on one of these occasions my four stretcher patients got up and danced in the road with me. Why they were "liers" instead of "sitters" I can't think, as there was not much wrong with them. À propos I remember asking one night when an ambulance train came in in the dark, "Are you liers or sitters in here?" and one humorist scratched his head and replied, "I don't rightly know, Sister, I've told a few in my time!" To return to our long convoy journeys: once we had deposited our patients it was not unnaturally the desire of this "dismounted cavalry" unit to try the speed of its respective 'buses one against the other on the return journey; to our immense disappointment this idea was completely nipped in the bud, for Boss rode on the first car.
Permission however was given to pass on hills, as it was considered a pity to overheat a car going down to second gear when it could easily have done the hill on third! That Boulogne road is one of the hilliest in France, and Susan was a nailer on hills. I remember arriving in camp second one day. "How have you got here?" asked Boss in surprise, "I purposely put you nineteenth!"
Heasy, Betty, and I in celebration of two years' active service had permission to give a small dance in the mess at the beginning of the new year. We trembled lest at the last moment an ambulance train might arrive, but there was nothing worse than an early evacuation next morning and all went off excellently. I was entrusted to make the "cup," and bought the ingredients in the town (some cup), and gravely assured everyone there was absolutely "nothing in it." The boracic powder was lifted in my absence from the Pharmacie to try and get the first glimmerings of a slide on that sticky creosoted floor. The ambulances, fitted with paper Chinese lanterns, were temporarily converted into sitting out places. It was a great show.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Christmas 1916 - John Gibson Pitt, 8th Battalion, A.I.F.
By Christmas 1916 Private John Pitt of ‘D’ Company, 8th Battalion had risen to the rank of 2nd lieutenant. John (who was originally from England), in his own diary records this as he is given leave in Paris:-
Saturday December 23rd
We did grouping practices on the 30 yards range in the morning. In the afternoon we did a road ------ and at 3.30 were given our passes for Paris and straight away put all our best togs on. Had some tea and then got paid which crowned our joy. The train was due to leave Picquigny at 5.38 but we had to do a freeze on the station for two hours before it eventually turned up. We settled down in a 1st class compartment with 3 French officers who were excellent chaps and spoke English very well.
Xmas Eve
We steamed into the Gare Du Nord at Paris after a long journey at 3 am and as ever were just about ravenous a MS Corpl showed us a Red and –uff- underground where we got a good feed. Then we had to start looking for a hotel and it was a good while before 4 of us succeeded in getting rooms at the Grand Hotel. I got room number 949 on the fifth floor. Some Hotel. Turned in at about 4 o’clock. Hot bath and up at 9.30 to breakfast which according to the Parisian style consisted of steaming hot coffee and rusks. This is a beautiful place and there are some big bugs of here of all nationalities. We started off to have a look round after reporting to the RSM. A guide eventually collared Lenbury Dillon and myself and we allowed him to show us around. We went round slowly in a taxi,, he explaining the various places of interest as we went and stopping when necessary. It is certainly a very beautiful city and well named Gay Paris. We had lunch at the Brasserie Universille and then went out exploring again in the afternoon and back to the hotel. We saw the Notre Dame Eiffel Tower, Napoleons tomb and Place De La Concorde, which is a beautiful spot and all the other well known places. We bought tickets for the Opera tonight and after having had tea at the American tea rooms and dinner at Prunier? we made for the Opera Pomique and saw Carmen, which although all in French, we appreciated to the full there being some marvellous singing and acting.
Xmas Day 1916
Up at 9 o’clock. Breakfast. Further exploration of the city returning to the hotel for our Xmas dinner at 1 o/c., 15 Australian Officers being present. Dobbin and I then strolled some more and had dinner at the cafe –ois— and then went to the Nouveau Cirque a variety show. Just caught the 11.4 train by the skin of our teeth. Paris is absolutely full but there are very few British soldiers there at all. We had a very pleasant and educational trip.
Boxing Day 1916
Slept very little on the train and after a very tiresome journey arrived at Picquigny at 6 am. Slept for an hour had breakfast and turned out on parade at 9 o/c. The CO roaring because some of us were unshaven. PT was not too acceptable this morning. Judging distances. Live bomb throwing in the afternoon. Lecture at 5 o/c on German grenades.
Saturday December 23rd
We did grouping practices on the 30 yards range in the morning. In the afternoon we did a road ------ and at 3.30 were given our passes for Paris and straight away put all our best togs on. Had some tea and then got paid which crowned our joy. The train was due to leave Picquigny at 5.38 but we had to do a freeze on the station for two hours before it eventually turned up. We settled down in a 1st class compartment with 3 French officers who were excellent chaps and spoke English very well.
Xmas Eve
We steamed into the Gare Du Nord at Paris after a long journey at 3 am and as ever were just about ravenous a MS Corpl showed us a Red and –uff- underground where we got a good feed. Then we had to start looking for a hotel and it was a good while before 4 of us succeeded in getting rooms at the Grand Hotel. I got room number 949 on the fifth floor. Some Hotel. Turned in at about 4 o’clock. Hot bath and up at 9.30 to breakfast which according to the Parisian style consisted of steaming hot coffee and rusks. This is a beautiful place and there are some big bugs of here of all nationalities. We started off to have a look round after reporting to the RSM. A guide eventually collared Lenbury Dillon and myself and we allowed him to show us around. We went round slowly in a taxi,, he explaining the various places of interest as we went and stopping when necessary. It is certainly a very beautiful city and well named Gay Paris. We had lunch at the Brasserie Universille and then went out exploring again in the afternoon and back to the hotel. We saw the Notre Dame Eiffel Tower, Napoleons tomb and Place De La Concorde, which is a beautiful spot and all the other well known places. We bought tickets for the Opera tonight and after having had tea at the American tea rooms and dinner at Prunier? we made for the Opera Pomique and saw Carmen, which although all in French, we appreciated to the full there being some marvellous singing and acting.
Xmas Day 1916
Up at 9 o’clock. Breakfast. Further exploration of the city returning to the hotel for our Xmas dinner at 1 o/c., 15 Australian Officers being present. Dobbin and I then strolled some more and had dinner at the cafe –ois— and then went to the Nouveau Cirque a variety show. Just caught the 11.4 train by the skin of our teeth. Paris is absolutely full but there are very few British soldiers there at all. We had a very pleasant and educational trip.
Boxing Day 1916
Slept very little on the train and after a very tiresome journey arrived at Picquigny at 6 am. Slept for an hour had breakfast and turned out on parade at 9 o/c. The CO roaring because some of us were unshaven. PT was not too acceptable this morning. Judging distances. Live bomb throwing in the afternoon. Lecture at 5 o/c on German grenades.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Christmas 1916 - A White Christmas in London
This article published in ‘The Times’ on 26th December 1916 describes the Christmas activities on and around London for the soldiers on leave in 1916.
It was bitterly cold and wet in the trenches in France and London had a fall of snow on Christmas Eve. Those waking up early would have been greeted by a ‘White Christmas.’
CHRISTMAS
THE THIRD WAR-TIME CELEBRATION
ENTERTAINING THE SOLDIERS
Christmas Day, the day of peace and good will, found the British nation determined that there cannot yet be peace, but inspired with the thought that before another year passed an abiding peace may have been won. The Master of the Temple in his morning sermon expressed the attitude of the people when he said that the heavy, throbbing darkness of a year ago has been relieved by faint rays of hope.
And so it was that while few men yesterday could sincerely wish their neighbours “A Merry Christmas.” And festivities either in the homes or in public places were never more subdued, there was a fine spirit abroad. Those who denied themselves accustomed luxuries looked forward to a Christmas yet to come when the cloud of sorrow shall have been dispersed. Where there were vacant chairs wives and mothers let their thoughts look ahead to the return of the men who had gone out to battle. Somehow the knowledge that the nation is at last uniting to win the war brought confidence and hope, which gave the third war Christmas its own quality and its own cheerfulness.
In the early hours of the morning a sudden wind arose which was presently followed by a fall of snow. At daybreak roofs and gardens in the suburbs had a thin covering and families gathering at the breakfast table said it was like an old fashioned Yuletide. The snow did not last; but during the day the sun shone and the weather was much better than it was on Christmas Day last year. The cold morning did not prevent a fine swimming race in the Serpentine for the ‘Peter Pan’ Cup.
Less Travelling
Above all else it was a stay-at-home Christmas Day. Certain people have ignored the appeal not to travel and are spending the holiday at the seaside or in the country, but there has been nothing like the Christmas traffic of ordinary years. The only crowded trains yesterday were the “leave” trains from France. Four come into Victoria during the early part of the day and hundreds of trench-stained men stepped gleefully into the London Streets prepared to enjoy every hour of a well earned holiday. It was noted that some of the soldiers went straight from the station to the afternoon service at Westminster Abbey. There was a reverse side to the “leave” picture. Several trains took away men whose days of freedom were completed. The soldiers made no complaints, but some of their relatives were disappointed that they should be torn away on this particular day of the year.
The Soldier at Home
The happiest homes yesterday were undoubtedly those where soldier members of the family were enjoying leave. There (if the money could be found) no compunction was felt over feasting on turkey and the luxuries of the season. For the lonely soldiers many entertainments had been arranged. In every Y.M.C.A. hut in London (and there are now 60 of them) soldiers and sailors were welcomed to dinner and tea. The huts had been decorated and for amusements the men in Khaki had concerts and old-time Christmas games. There were also Christmas parties at the Church Army huts, while many soldiers without friends were bountifully entertained in private homes.
The wounded in the military hospitals were well cared for. Gifts for the patients had been poured into the institutions, many of them by anonymous well wishers. At one of the London hospitals 1,800 men hung up their stockings and found them filled with comforts in the morning. There was good fare for those able to eat it and score of ward concerts were given during the day.
In the hotels the day was observed very quietly. Festivities originally planned for the holiday had been cancelled to meet the call for economy. There were no decorations and the restrictions on courses kept the menus within reasonable limits. Where the Christmas dinner was served at midday the regulations had been relaxed to the extent of allowing three courses to be served instead of two, but if it had not been for the inclusion of turkey and plum pudding there would have been nothing to distinguish the meals from those of an ordinary day.
It was bitterly cold and wet in the trenches in France and London had a fall of snow on Christmas Eve. Those waking up early would have been greeted by a ‘White Christmas.’
CHRISTMAS
THE THIRD WAR-TIME CELEBRATION
ENTERTAINING THE SOLDIERS
Christmas Day, the day of peace and good will, found the British nation determined that there cannot yet be peace, but inspired with the thought that before another year passed an abiding peace may have been won. The Master of the Temple in his morning sermon expressed the attitude of the people when he said that the heavy, throbbing darkness of a year ago has been relieved by faint rays of hope.
And so it was that while few men yesterday could sincerely wish their neighbours “A Merry Christmas.” And festivities either in the homes or in public places were never more subdued, there was a fine spirit abroad. Those who denied themselves accustomed luxuries looked forward to a Christmas yet to come when the cloud of sorrow shall have been dispersed. Where there were vacant chairs wives and mothers let their thoughts look ahead to the return of the men who had gone out to battle. Somehow the knowledge that the nation is at last uniting to win the war brought confidence and hope, which gave the third war Christmas its own quality and its own cheerfulness.
In the early hours of the morning a sudden wind arose which was presently followed by a fall of snow. At daybreak roofs and gardens in the suburbs had a thin covering and families gathering at the breakfast table said it was like an old fashioned Yuletide. The snow did not last; but during the day the sun shone and the weather was much better than it was on Christmas Day last year. The cold morning did not prevent a fine swimming race in the Serpentine for the ‘Peter Pan’ Cup.
Less Travelling
Above all else it was a stay-at-home Christmas Day. Certain people have ignored the appeal not to travel and are spending the holiday at the seaside or in the country, but there has been nothing like the Christmas traffic of ordinary years. The only crowded trains yesterday were the “leave” trains from France. Four come into Victoria during the early part of the day and hundreds of trench-stained men stepped gleefully into the London Streets prepared to enjoy every hour of a well earned holiday. It was noted that some of the soldiers went straight from the station to the afternoon service at Westminster Abbey. There was a reverse side to the “leave” picture. Several trains took away men whose days of freedom were completed. The soldiers made no complaints, but some of their relatives were disappointed that they should be torn away on this particular day of the year.
The Soldier at Home
The happiest homes yesterday were undoubtedly those where soldier members of the family were enjoying leave. There (if the money could be found) no compunction was felt over feasting on turkey and the luxuries of the season. For the lonely soldiers many entertainments had been arranged. In every Y.M.C.A. hut in London (and there are now 60 of them) soldiers and sailors were welcomed to dinner and tea. The huts had been decorated and for amusements the men in Khaki had concerts and old-time Christmas games. There were also Christmas parties at the Church Army huts, while many soldiers without friends were bountifully entertained in private homes.
The wounded in the military hospitals were well cared for. Gifts for the patients had been poured into the institutions, many of them by anonymous well wishers. At one of the London hospitals 1,800 men hung up their stockings and found them filled with comforts in the morning. There was good fare for those able to eat it and score of ward concerts were given during the day.
In the hotels the day was observed very quietly. Festivities originally planned for the holiday had been cancelled to meet the call for economy. There were no decorations and the restrictions on courses kept the menus within reasonable limits. Where the Christmas dinner was served at midday the regulations had been relaxed to the extent of allowing three courses to be served instead of two, but if it had not been for the inclusion of turkey and plum pudding there would have been nothing to distinguish the meals from those of an ordinary day.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Christmas 1916 - with the 4th Field Ambulance, A.I.F.
Private William Dalton Lycett, 2063, of the 4th Field Ambulance A.I.F. enlisted on 12th September 1914, he embarked on the 22nd December 1914 at Melbourne on the H.M.A.T. “Berrima”.
This extract is from his diary which can be found online at Anzacs.net: - and describes his 1916 Christmas which was cold and very wet.
Monday 18th December, 1916
Arrived at Albert between 4 and 5 a.m., told my unit was at Dernancourt, about 4 miles away, by R.T.O. Walked to Dernancourt, unit not there, on to Edge Hill, Buire, Ribemonte and Maricourt where got hold of another R.T.O who told me my unit had moved yesterday. Had walked about 10 to 12 miles. Got on train at Maricourt about 2 p.m. and got to Amiens when told no train to Vigny-Court where my unit now is until 6-7 a.m. in morning. Had difficulty getting pass into town to get a meal and feeling dead beat and worn out. In Y.M.C.A. tonight.
Tuesday 19th December, 1916
Stayed in Y.M.C.A. by Amiens station all night, place crowded and had to stand up most of time, also very cold. Caught a train at 6-7 a.m. and arrived at Vignacourt about 7.30 a.m. Very large village and had to walk round for about an hour before found where our unit was billetted. Had breakfast and was glad to turn into bed in a loft full of straw. Slept through till tea-time when got up and had tea. Received some letters and Xmas cards then had yarn with the boys. Turned in about 8 p.m.
Wednesday 20th December, 1916
Got up this morning about 8 a.m. and had breakfast. Are running a small hospital for chaps with colds and influenza in barn beneath our loft. Had shave and good clean up then re-arranged my kit before dinner. On duty at 2 p.m., had ten patients in with very bad colds, fairly busy all afternoon, very cold and place awfully draughty. Some of our chaps got Xmas parcels from home today and we have been eating nearly all day. After tea did little writing and turned in about 9 p.m. Off duty 8 p.m.
Thursday 21st December, 1916
Slept as sound as a top and up at 8.30 a.m. this morning. After breakfast gave a hand generally till dinner time and then went on duty at 2 p.m. for the afternoon shift. Got a dozen patients in today all suffering from the effects of the cold weather. Rained today. Had a few dressings and various odd duties to attend to and then tea at 5 p.m. After tea gave patients cocoa at 7.30 p.m. and then did some writing. Getting very good tucker just now. Off duty 8 p.m. and turned in 9 p.m.
Friday 22nd December, 1916
Up at 8.30 a.m. and had breakfast, getting very good tucker just now. Did few odd jobs this morning, very cold and raining, went out at 11 a.m. and had cup of coffee. On duty at 2 p.m., only ten patients in today, few dressings etc. Did some writing before tea and received three letters, one from home, two from Dais. Tea at 5 p.m. after which cleaned up and was busy writing till 8 p.m. when went off duty and then played bridge till 9 p.m. Cold again tonight and turned in 9.30 p.m.
Saturday 23rd December, 1916
Up at 8.30 a.m. and had breakfast. Afterwards got cleaned and shaved. Getting large sick parades, nearly all the men suffering from severe colds. Had French kiddie about 8 years old in, slate blew off roof and gashed his face, sent him to Amiens hospital. Very cold, raining and blowing a gale. On duty at 2 p.m., a dozen patients in. Our hospital is an old barn and patients lie on straw. Am on committee for Xmas dinner and we had a meeting this afternoon. After tea wrote three letters and then turned in at 9 p.m.
Sunday 24th December, 1916
Got up about 8.30 a.m. and had breakfast, raining and very cold so went back to bed again till 12 noon as am not on duty till 2 p.m. Only 10 patients in today, some foments and dressings, chaps coming in all the time for cough medicine. Tea at 5 p.m. then cleaned up and did dressings again. Had to go up street to foment boil on sick officer. Most of boys went to church tonight so stayed in and looked after hospital. Wrote letter. Off duty 8 p.m. and turned in.
Monday 25th December, 1916
Xmas day, my 3rd Xmas from home. Did not get up till 12 noon, raining and very cold. On duty 2 p.m., gave Xmas boxes from Australia. to patients, did not get our own, but had one from our old O.C. Col. Beeston. Did dressings etc. and gave patients tea at 4 p.m., Xmas cake etc. Had dinner ourselves at 5 p.m. in hired room, very good, goose, vegetables, pudding and cakes. Geese cost 35/- each, bought from regimental fund, good job. Spent very pleasant evening, finished 8 p.m. and returned to billet and to bed.
Tuesday 26th December, 1916
Stayed in bed again till 12 noon, still raining and cold, mud very rotten and boots wet through. Big lot of men losing their voices. On duty 2 p.m., did dressings etc. and various odd jobs till tea time 5 p.m. Only six patients today, having evacuated some to C.C.S. After tea some of boys went to concert in village. Stayed behind and had game of bridge then wrote letters till turned in at 9 p.m. A.D.M.S. inspected our billet today, all correct.
Wednesday 27th December, 1916
Got up about 11 a.m. and gave a hand with some dressings till dinner time at 12.30 p.m. On duty at 2 p.m. and had good number more dressings, foments etc. to do. Received a large parcel from home this afternoon. Have about 20 patients in hospital. Our Staff Sgt. dispenser (Bankier) received notice to be ready to go to O.T.C. in England tomorrow. After getting everything done by about 3.30 p.m. had game of bridge till tea time at 5 p.m. After tea and had cleaned up wrote four letters. Off duty 9 p.m. and turned in.
Thursday 28th December, 1916
Was coughing a good deal last night and did not sleep too well. Up at 10.30 a.m., very hard white frost overnight and pretty cold. Gave a hand with patients and had a walk up street with S.S. Bankier before dinner, who left us today for O.T.C. England. On duty at 2 p.m. About two dozen patients, did dressings etc. and gave out medicines, after which had game of bridge till tea-time at 5 p.m. Cleaned up after tea and then played bridge till went off duty at 8 p.m. when had some rum and milk and turned in.
Friday 29th December, 1916
Did not cough so much last night, but was very restless and did not sleep well. Got up at 10.30 a.m. and got out some medicine for Major Bentley. Dinner 12.30 p.m. General parade at 2.15 p.m. in full marching order and inspection by A.D.M.S. Did not go myself as had to stay and look after hospital, kept pretty busy, about 20 patients. Tea at 5 p.m. At 5.30 p.m. went to divisional boxing tournament held in Hall in village. One of our men Dvr. Perry won his contest. Very good show, back at billet 9.30 p.m. and turned in.
Saturday 30th December, 1916
Had very rotten night, cough very bad and perspired heavily, hardly slept at all but fell asleep about 7 a.m. and did not get up till 12 midday. General parade at 11.30 a.m. but did not get up for it. On duty at 2 p.m. At 2.30 p.m. things being alright went with four other chaps to large house where lady lent us piano and had a practice at "Sweet and Low" which we are to sing on Monday night. Returned for tea at 5 p.m. Cleaned up, gave out medicines and read newspaper. Off duty 8 p.m. and turned in 8.30 p.m.
Sunday 31st December, 1916
Slept very poorly again last night, cough worrying me considerably. Got up about 8.30 a.m. doing various odd jobs during morning and had walk up street before dinner. At 1.30 p.m. went round and had another practice at our various songs and part song till 3 p.m. when came back to billet and yarned till tea-time at 5 p.m. After tea wrote letters and then played bridge and talked till about 9 p.m. when turned in.
This extract is from his diary which can be found online at Anzacs.net: - and describes his 1916 Christmas which was cold and very wet.
Monday 18th December, 1916
Arrived at Albert between 4 and 5 a.m., told my unit was at Dernancourt, about 4 miles away, by R.T.O. Walked to Dernancourt, unit not there, on to Edge Hill, Buire, Ribemonte and Maricourt where got hold of another R.T.O who told me my unit had moved yesterday. Had walked about 10 to 12 miles. Got on train at Maricourt about 2 p.m. and got to Amiens when told no train to Vigny-Court where my unit now is until 6-7 a.m. in morning. Had difficulty getting pass into town to get a meal and feeling dead beat and worn out. In Y.M.C.A. tonight.
Tuesday 19th December, 1916
Stayed in Y.M.C.A. by Amiens station all night, place crowded and had to stand up most of time, also very cold. Caught a train at 6-7 a.m. and arrived at Vignacourt about 7.30 a.m. Very large village and had to walk round for about an hour before found where our unit was billetted. Had breakfast and was glad to turn into bed in a loft full of straw. Slept through till tea-time when got up and had tea. Received some letters and Xmas cards then had yarn with the boys. Turned in about 8 p.m.
Wednesday 20th December, 1916
Got up this morning about 8 a.m. and had breakfast. Are running a small hospital for chaps with colds and influenza in barn beneath our loft. Had shave and good clean up then re-arranged my kit before dinner. On duty at 2 p.m., had ten patients in with very bad colds, fairly busy all afternoon, very cold and place awfully draughty. Some of our chaps got Xmas parcels from home today and we have been eating nearly all day. After tea did little writing and turned in about 9 p.m. Off duty 8 p.m.
Thursday 21st December, 1916
Slept as sound as a top and up at 8.30 a.m. this morning. After breakfast gave a hand generally till dinner time and then went on duty at 2 p.m. for the afternoon shift. Got a dozen patients in today all suffering from the effects of the cold weather. Rained today. Had a few dressings and various odd duties to attend to and then tea at 5 p.m. After tea gave patients cocoa at 7.30 p.m. and then did some writing. Getting very good tucker just now. Off duty 8 p.m. and turned in 9 p.m.
Friday 22nd December, 1916
Up at 8.30 a.m. and had breakfast, getting very good tucker just now. Did few odd jobs this morning, very cold and raining, went out at 11 a.m. and had cup of coffee. On duty at 2 p.m., only ten patients in today, few dressings etc. Did some writing before tea and received three letters, one from home, two from Dais. Tea at 5 p.m. after which cleaned up and was busy writing till 8 p.m. when went off duty and then played bridge till 9 p.m. Cold again tonight and turned in 9.30 p.m.
Saturday 23rd December, 1916
Up at 8.30 a.m. and had breakfast. Afterwards got cleaned and shaved. Getting large sick parades, nearly all the men suffering from severe colds. Had French kiddie about 8 years old in, slate blew off roof and gashed his face, sent him to Amiens hospital. Very cold, raining and blowing a gale. On duty at 2 p.m., a dozen patients in. Our hospital is an old barn and patients lie on straw. Am on committee for Xmas dinner and we had a meeting this afternoon. After tea wrote three letters and then turned in at 9 p.m.
Sunday 24th December, 1916
Got up about 8.30 a.m. and had breakfast, raining and very cold so went back to bed again till 12 noon as am not on duty till 2 p.m. Only 10 patients in today, some foments and dressings, chaps coming in all the time for cough medicine. Tea at 5 p.m. then cleaned up and did dressings again. Had to go up street to foment boil on sick officer. Most of boys went to church tonight so stayed in and looked after hospital. Wrote letter. Off duty 8 p.m. and turned in.
Monday 25th December, 1916
Xmas day, my 3rd Xmas from home. Did not get up till 12 noon, raining and very cold. On duty 2 p.m., gave Xmas boxes from Australia. to patients, did not get our own, but had one from our old O.C. Col. Beeston. Did dressings etc. and gave patients tea at 4 p.m., Xmas cake etc. Had dinner ourselves at 5 p.m. in hired room, very good, goose, vegetables, pudding and cakes. Geese cost 35/- each, bought from regimental fund, good job. Spent very pleasant evening, finished 8 p.m. and returned to billet and to bed.
Tuesday 26th December, 1916
Stayed in bed again till 12 noon, still raining and cold, mud very rotten and boots wet through. Big lot of men losing their voices. On duty 2 p.m., did dressings etc. and various odd jobs till tea time 5 p.m. Only six patients today, having evacuated some to C.C.S. After tea some of boys went to concert in village. Stayed behind and had game of bridge then wrote letters till turned in at 9 p.m. A.D.M.S. inspected our billet today, all correct.
Wednesday 27th December, 1916
Got up about 11 a.m. and gave a hand with some dressings till dinner time at 12.30 p.m. On duty at 2 p.m. and had good number more dressings, foments etc. to do. Received a large parcel from home this afternoon. Have about 20 patients in hospital. Our Staff Sgt. dispenser (Bankier) received notice to be ready to go to O.T.C. in England tomorrow. After getting everything done by about 3.30 p.m. had game of bridge till tea time at 5 p.m. After tea and had cleaned up wrote four letters. Off duty 9 p.m. and turned in.
Thursday 28th December, 1916
Was coughing a good deal last night and did not sleep too well. Up at 10.30 a.m., very hard white frost overnight and pretty cold. Gave a hand with patients and had a walk up street with S.S. Bankier before dinner, who left us today for O.T.C. England. On duty at 2 p.m. About two dozen patients, did dressings etc. and gave out medicines, after which had game of bridge till tea-time at 5 p.m. Cleaned up after tea and then played bridge till went off duty at 8 p.m. when had some rum and milk and turned in.
Friday 29th December, 1916
Did not cough so much last night, but was very restless and did not sleep well. Got up at 10.30 a.m. and got out some medicine for Major Bentley. Dinner 12.30 p.m. General parade at 2.15 p.m. in full marching order and inspection by A.D.M.S. Did not go myself as had to stay and look after hospital, kept pretty busy, about 20 patients. Tea at 5 p.m. At 5.30 p.m. went to divisional boxing tournament held in Hall in village. One of our men Dvr. Perry won his contest. Very good show, back at billet 9.30 p.m. and turned in.
Saturday 30th December, 1916
Had very rotten night, cough very bad and perspired heavily, hardly slept at all but fell asleep about 7 a.m. and did not get up till 12 midday. General parade at 11.30 a.m. but did not get up for it. On duty at 2 p.m. At 2.30 p.m. things being alright went with four other chaps to large house where lady lent us piano and had a practice at "Sweet and Low" which we are to sing on Monday night. Returned for tea at 5 p.m. Cleaned up, gave out medicines and read newspaper. Off duty 8 p.m. and turned in 8.30 p.m.
Sunday 31st December, 1916
Slept very poorly again last night, cough worrying me considerably. Got up about 8.30 a.m. doing various odd jobs during morning and had walk up street before dinner. At 1.30 p.m. went round and had another practice at our various songs and part song till 3 p.m. when came back to billet and yarned till tea-time at 5 p.m. After tea wrote letters and then played bridge and talked till about 9 p.m. when turned in.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Christmas 1916 - 5th Leicestershire's.
The next account comes from the excellent book “The Fifth Leicestershire (A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment T.F., During The War, 1914-1919)by J.D. Hills.”
Christmas 1915 was the 5th Leicestershire’s first in France, away in Foreign Fields. Christmas 1916 found them at Monchy in trenches with clinging mud, everything was wet and cold.
On the 6th December we marched to the Souastre huts, where the Colonel returned to us, and we once more began to feel fit; the huts here were not palaces, but were far better than those we had left at Halloy. On the 11th we moved up through Bienvillers and went into our old trenches opposite Monchy. But the recent heavy rains had undone all the good that we had done in the early autumn, and they were now in a very bad state. On the right of the Hannescamps road they were particularly bad, and Liverpool Street, which ran from Lulu Lane to the front line, was almost impassable. There was the same terrible clinging mud, feet deep, that we had found at Richebourg a year before, and the old troubles of lost gum boots began again. Fortunately we were now prepared, and were able to combat the dangers of "trench foot." Each Company had its drying room—a dug-out occupied by the Stretcher bearers, and kept warm by an ever burning brazier. Here at least once in every 24 hours every man who could possibly have got wet feet, and every man wearing rubber boots, came, had his feet rubbed, and was given dry socks and boots, while at Headquarters and in Bienvillers were large drying rooms where the wet boots could be dealt with. In this way we were able to keep almost free from the complaint, and the few men whose feet did fail were all men who had had "trench feet" the previous winter, and were consequently always liable to it.
All this time it was not only wet, but cold, and after Christmas it became colder until the first week in January, when heavy snow fell. Thenceforward, until the middle of February, there was continuous frost with occasional heavy falls of snow, though generally the days and nights were fine and clear. For several feet down, the ground was frozen hard, and digging became absolutely impossible. There was now solid ice instead of water in the trenches, and the front line sentries found their task a particularly cold one. Fortunately by this time the trench cook-house was not only an established thing but had become a very successful affair, and four times a day hot meals were carried in tanks and food containers from Battalion Headquarters to the front line. For this purpose the rectangular tanks from the cooks' wagons were used, being carried by two men, on a wooden framework or stretcher. Along a road or up a well made communication trench this was a comparatively light task, but to carry a tank full of hot tea over slippery shell holes and through knee-deep mud was a difficult matter, and on more than one occasion a platoon lost its hot drink at night through the disappearance of the carriers into some shell hole. The wonderful thing was that both tea-less platoon and drenched carriers would laugh over it all.
Christmas Day was spent in trenches. We were relieved in the afternoon by the 4th Battalion, who had their festivities on Christmas eve, and went back to Souastre, where the following day we, too, had our dinner. Pigs had been bought and killed, and we all gorged ourselves on roast pork and plum pudding, washing them down with beer—a very satisfactory performance. There were also the usual games and Company dinners, and we all spent a very enjoyable few days. Later on we managed to arrange a Battalion concert which was a tremendous success, and voted by all a most excellent evening; the "star" turn was Colonel Jones, who gave a recitation.
The weather made raids and active operations impossible, and though we made all preparations for a rifle grenade demonstration to assist a Staffordshire raid on New Year's night, this had to be cancelled on account of the snow. Patrols, however, still continued to tour No Man's Land in the hopes of finding a stray Boche, or encountering a Boche patrol. In front of Essarts the lines were so far apart that there was plenty of room for a small pitched battle, and night after night Lieuts. Pearson, Creed, Poynor, and others visited such familiar haunts as the "Osier Bed," "Thistle Patch," "Lonely Tree," and other well-known places. The first to meet the enemy was Lieut. Pearson, who came upon a small party in the "Thistle Patch," who made off rapidly back to their lines. Our patrol used their rifles, but, though they hit one of the enemy, failed to take a prisoner, and for a week or two the Boche did not show himself. Then on the 10th January, 2nd Lieut. Creed, with a mixed party of scouts from all Companies, while reconnoitering the "Osier Bed" suddenly found that a party of the enemy was in their right rear and close to our wire, where four of them could be seen. Our patrol turned at once and ran straight at the four as fast as they could, coming, as they ran, under a heavy fire from a Boche covering party lying some 50 yards out. Pte. A. Garner was killed outright, but the remainder, led by 2nd Lieut. Creed and Pte. Frank Eastwood of "C" Company, rushed on and wounded and captured one of the four, who was found to be the officer. The remainder of the enemy took the alarm in time and made off. The officer proved to be an English-speaking subaltern of the 55th Regt.—our old opponents of Hohenzollern in October, 1915. He was led down to the Aid Post to have his wound dressed, much to the disgust of Captain Terry, the M.O., who would have liked to have killed him outright, though Serjeant Bent, the medical orderly, took compassion on his shivering prisoner and fed him on hot tea, and actually gave him a foot warmer!
This little affair caused the Boche extreme annoyance, and the following day he spent the morning shooting at Berlin Trench, the Bienvillers road and Bienvillers itself, round the Church. As we were relieved during the morning we had to march out through it all, and found it particularly unpleasant, especially when a shell hit the R.E. Dump, exploded an ammunition store, and sent the house at the Church corner several hundred feet into the air.
Christmas 1915 was the 5th Leicestershire’s first in France, away in Foreign Fields. Christmas 1916 found them at Monchy in trenches with clinging mud, everything was wet and cold.
On the 6th December we marched to the Souastre huts, where the Colonel returned to us, and we once more began to feel fit; the huts here were not palaces, but were far better than those we had left at Halloy. On the 11th we moved up through Bienvillers and went into our old trenches opposite Monchy. But the recent heavy rains had undone all the good that we had done in the early autumn, and they were now in a very bad state. On the right of the Hannescamps road they were particularly bad, and Liverpool Street, which ran from Lulu Lane to the front line, was almost impassable. There was the same terrible clinging mud, feet deep, that we had found at Richebourg a year before, and the old troubles of lost gum boots began again. Fortunately we were now prepared, and were able to combat the dangers of "trench foot." Each Company had its drying room—a dug-out occupied by the Stretcher bearers, and kept warm by an ever burning brazier. Here at least once in every 24 hours every man who could possibly have got wet feet, and every man wearing rubber boots, came, had his feet rubbed, and was given dry socks and boots, while at Headquarters and in Bienvillers were large drying rooms where the wet boots could be dealt with. In this way we were able to keep almost free from the complaint, and the few men whose feet did fail were all men who had had "trench feet" the previous winter, and were consequently always liable to it.
All this time it was not only wet, but cold, and after Christmas it became colder until the first week in January, when heavy snow fell. Thenceforward, until the middle of February, there was continuous frost with occasional heavy falls of snow, though generally the days and nights were fine and clear. For several feet down, the ground was frozen hard, and digging became absolutely impossible. There was now solid ice instead of water in the trenches, and the front line sentries found their task a particularly cold one. Fortunately by this time the trench cook-house was not only an established thing but had become a very successful affair, and four times a day hot meals were carried in tanks and food containers from Battalion Headquarters to the front line. For this purpose the rectangular tanks from the cooks' wagons were used, being carried by two men, on a wooden framework or stretcher. Along a road or up a well made communication trench this was a comparatively light task, but to carry a tank full of hot tea over slippery shell holes and through knee-deep mud was a difficult matter, and on more than one occasion a platoon lost its hot drink at night through the disappearance of the carriers into some shell hole. The wonderful thing was that both tea-less platoon and drenched carriers would laugh over it all.
Christmas Day was spent in trenches. We were relieved in the afternoon by the 4th Battalion, who had their festivities on Christmas eve, and went back to Souastre, where the following day we, too, had our dinner. Pigs had been bought and killed, and we all gorged ourselves on roast pork and plum pudding, washing them down with beer—a very satisfactory performance. There were also the usual games and Company dinners, and we all spent a very enjoyable few days. Later on we managed to arrange a Battalion concert which was a tremendous success, and voted by all a most excellent evening; the "star" turn was Colonel Jones, who gave a recitation.
The weather made raids and active operations impossible, and though we made all preparations for a rifle grenade demonstration to assist a Staffordshire raid on New Year's night, this had to be cancelled on account of the snow. Patrols, however, still continued to tour No Man's Land in the hopes of finding a stray Boche, or encountering a Boche patrol. In front of Essarts the lines were so far apart that there was plenty of room for a small pitched battle, and night after night Lieuts. Pearson, Creed, Poynor, and others visited such familiar haunts as the "Osier Bed," "Thistle Patch," "Lonely Tree," and other well-known places. The first to meet the enemy was Lieut. Pearson, who came upon a small party in the "Thistle Patch," who made off rapidly back to their lines. Our patrol used their rifles, but, though they hit one of the enemy, failed to take a prisoner, and for a week or two the Boche did not show himself. Then on the 10th January, 2nd Lieut. Creed, with a mixed party of scouts from all Companies, while reconnoitering the "Osier Bed" suddenly found that a party of the enemy was in their right rear and close to our wire, where four of them could be seen. Our patrol turned at once and ran straight at the four as fast as they could, coming, as they ran, under a heavy fire from a Boche covering party lying some 50 yards out. Pte. A. Garner was killed outright, but the remainder, led by 2nd Lieut. Creed and Pte. Frank Eastwood of "C" Company, rushed on and wounded and captured one of the four, who was found to be the officer. The remainder of the enemy took the alarm in time and made off. The officer proved to be an English-speaking subaltern of the 55th Regt.—our old opponents of Hohenzollern in October, 1915. He was led down to the Aid Post to have his wound dressed, much to the disgust of Captain Terry, the M.O., who would have liked to have killed him outright, though Serjeant Bent, the medical orderly, took compassion on his shivering prisoner and fed him on hot tea, and actually gave him a foot warmer!
This little affair caused the Boche extreme annoyance, and the following day he spent the morning shooting at Berlin Trench, the Bienvillers road and Bienvillers itself, round the Church. As we were relieved during the morning we had to march out through it all, and found it particularly unpleasant, especially when a shell hit the R.E. Dump, exploded an ammunition store, and sent the house at the Church corner several hundred feet into the air.
Monday, December 07, 2009
Christmas 1916 - With a Field Battery.
This short account of Christmas 1916 comes from C.A. Rose.
C.A. Rose M.C., was a member of the Royal Field Artillery and his book “Three years in France with the Guns: Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery” is a record of the work of a Royal Field Artillery Battery.
After action on the Somme Christmas found his Field Battery concealed In Sailly-Saillisel.
The country, in this part, was undulating, and better suited to the concealment of battery positions, and nowhere was the enemy able to overlook our territory. Our area included the defence of the joint villages of Sailly-Saillisel, situated on commanding ground, which the French had recently bravely stormed. Combles, too, which lay in a basin shaped hollow, was interesting as having been the centre of supplies for the southern portion of the German Army operating in the battle, and much booty was discovered in the huge catacombs which ran underneath the town.
'Xmas passed in much the same way as in the previous year. A smart bombardment was carried out in the morning in order to advise the enemy that anything in the way of fraternizing would not be countenanced by us. At mid-day the men partook of their 'Xmas fare, which had been fetched from Amiens, and a short service was conducted by the Padre in one of the gun-pits. A slight disturbance took place at dusk, when the S.O.S. went up from the front line and all batteries immediately opened out. It seemed a rather extraordinary occurrence, as the evening was unusually quiet, and, presently, it was discovered to have arisen through an error, due to the fact that the enemy had put up a coloured light in between two ordinary Verey lights which constituted our own S.O.S.
About this time the enemy caused considerable annoyance to a certain Battalion Headquarters, situated in a quarry close behind the lines, by occasionally dropping a shell right into it, the position having probably been discovered by his aircraft. Retaliation tactics were adopted, which consisted of subjecting the hostile trenches to a sharp half-hour's bombardment from eight batteries, firing a total of 2,000 rounds. The enemy was well known to be very thick-skinned, but these measures met with instant success, and it was only necessary to remind him once again that we were not to be trifled with in this way.
After the New Year, a severe spell of frost set in, with an occasional heavy fall of snow, and we were somewhat annoyed when orders came through to sideslip our position further south, as we had made our quarters fairly comfortable by this time, and expected to remain undisturbed throughout the winter. The new position was situated behind the ruined village of Rancourt, facing St. Pierre Vaast wood, and was one of the worst and most disagreeable localities it was ever our lot to occupy, as we were, more or less, water-logged the whole of our time there. Much difficulty was experienced by both friend and foe in entering their respective front line, so much so that, by common consent, sniping by rifle fire was discontinued until parapets were constructed and made fit for occupation. However, sniping was still indulged in by the artillery, and no parties of any size were permitted to go about freely near the front line under observation. Affairs continued thus until the middle of February, when it became apparent that something unusual was taking place in enemy territory, and great explosions were heard, after which volumes of smoke were seen to rise in large columns. These, as was afterwards proved, were due to preparations being made by the enemy to evacuate the low-lying country, into which they had reluctantly been forced, as the result of the battle of the Somme, prior to falling back upon the great prepared defences known as the Hindenburg Line.
C.A. Rose M.C., was a member of the Royal Field Artillery and his book “Three years in France with the Guns: Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery” is a record of the work of a Royal Field Artillery Battery.
After action on the Somme Christmas found his Field Battery concealed In Sailly-Saillisel.
The country, in this part, was undulating, and better suited to the concealment of battery positions, and nowhere was the enemy able to overlook our territory. Our area included the defence of the joint villages of Sailly-Saillisel, situated on commanding ground, which the French had recently bravely stormed. Combles, too, which lay in a basin shaped hollow, was interesting as having been the centre of supplies for the southern portion of the German Army operating in the battle, and much booty was discovered in the huge catacombs which ran underneath the town.
'Xmas passed in much the same way as in the previous year. A smart bombardment was carried out in the morning in order to advise the enemy that anything in the way of fraternizing would not be countenanced by us. At mid-day the men partook of their 'Xmas fare, which had been fetched from Amiens, and a short service was conducted by the Padre in one of the gun-pits. A slight disturbance took place at dusk, when the S.O.S. went up from the front line and all batteries immediately opened out. It seemed a rather extraordinary occurrence, as the evening was unusually quiet, and, presently, it was discovered to have arisen through an error, due to the fact that the enemy had put up a coloured light in between two ordinary Verey lights which constituted our own S.O.S.
About this time the enemy caused considerable annoyance to a certain Battalion Headquarters, situated in a quarry close behind the lines, by occasionally dropping a shell right into it, the position having probably been discovered by his aircraft. Retaliation tactics were adopted, which consisted of subjecting the hostile trenches to a sharp half-hour's bombardment from eight batteries, firing a total of 2,000 rounds. The enemy was well known to be very thick-skinned, but these measures met with instant success, and it was only necessary to remind him once again that we were not to be trifled with in this way.
After the New Year, a severe spell of frost set in, with an occasional heavy fall of snow, and we were somewhat annoyed when orders came through to sideslip our position further south, as we had made our quarters fairly comfortable by this time, and expected to remain undisturbed throughout the winter. The new position was situated behind the ruined village of Rancourt, facing St. Pierre Vaast wood, and was one of the worst and most disagreeable localities it was ever our lot to occupy, as we were, more or less, water-logged the whole of our time there. Much difficulty was experienced by both friend and foe in entering their respective front line, so much so that, by common consent, sniping by rifle fire was discontinued until parapets were constructed and made fit for occupation. However, sniping was still indulged in by the artillery, and no parties of any size were permitted to go about freely near the front line under observation. Affairs continued thus until the middle of February, when it became apparent that something unusual was taking place in enemy territory, and great explosions were heard, after which volumes of smoke were seen to rise in large columns. These, as was afterwards proved, were due to preparations being made by the enemy to evacuate the low-lying country, into which they had reluctantly been forced, as the result of the battle of the Somme, prior to falling back upon the great prepared defences known as the Hindenburg Line.
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Christmas 1916 - A War Christmas at Home.
This article entitled “My Three War Christmases In Flanders, Denmark, and Old England by Basil Clarke” comes from the excellent site “The Great War in A Different Light.”
Christmas 1915 by War Correspondent Basil Clarke was spent in the North Sea nearing the port of Copenhagen, with Danish hospitality. Now in 1916 he’s back home again in ‘Old England’ for a War Christmas at home.
1916
Two good ideas struck me at once. The first was to see and to write just how a wounded soldier is sent home from the front-line trenches. The second was to have a War Christmas at home. And with strategic ingenuity, prompted thus by desire, I contrived to make one purpose helpful and fulfill the other. I would see a wounded soldier from trench to home, and by so doing arrive home myself for Christmas. Bound for "Blighty".
I bade good-bye to colleagues in the War Correspondents' Camp, hitched on my shrapnel helmet and gas-mask, and made my way to the front-line trenches. It was at a grim spot on the Ancre tributary of the Somme, called Beaumont-Hamel. Little more than a month earlier this battered heap of stones and bricks and homesteads had been the scene of one of the most desperate fights in all the Somme battles. Now, the lines lay beyond it, just over the crest of a hill.
I waited by the stretcher-bearers' dug-out in the front-line trench. Fritz was sending over shrapnel and "heavy stuff," which whined piteously through the air, ' while occasionally a sniper's rifle brought a new note into the rumble of sounds.
"Stretcher-bearers ! " The call came from along the trench, away to the right. Off went the boys from the dug-out, as I trailed behind as best I could over the mud and the shell-holes. A sniper's bullet had caught one poor fellow in the thigh. He had been crossing an open space where no trench existed. The bearers, with great labour — and much danger to themselves — carried him down to the regimental Aid-post, in a dug-out in the village below. And from that point began the joint journey home of Private J. C. H. Oldham, who was wounded and pining for "Blighty," and of myself, war correspondent, anxious to fulfill an interesting mission which would, land me home for Christmas.
I forget what the date was, but at the outset it promised to give me ample time to achieve my personal purpose. But at the aid-post Private Oldham was kept some two hours before passing on to the advanced dressing-station. At the A-D-S. he was kept about four hours before going on to the main dressing-station. And at the M.D.S. he spent, if I remember rightly, a day and a half before going on to the casualty clearing-station. His stay there was four and a half days. I saw the prospect of reaching "Blighty" by Christmas becoming poorer and poorer.
Joyous Home-Coming
He got away at last, and I with him. With five hundred wounded, weary souls I made the journey from the battle zone to the coast. We stopped in sidings and restarted, stopped again and again, and did not land till the small hours of the following morning. Again Oldham was whisked off on a stretcher — this time to a base hospital. How long would they keep him ? I spent some days with nothing better to do than hunt round the shops of Boulogne, choosing little presents that should be in keeping with the season, if only I could arrive home in time. Day followed day without seeing Private Oldham ready for transport. I must give up the Christmas idea.
One dull December morning out came his stretcher. Off he was driven to a ship at the quay, I in the same motor-ambulance. I saw him placed in a hospital ship, painted a bright apple-green ; I saw him landed at a southern English port in the grey of a drizzly morning, and I saw him set quietly down on the snow-white bed of a London hospital — with tears in his eyes born of weakness and sheer joy at being back in "Blighty."
I too, had my own joy of home-coming. Alice was radiant ; the little fellows swarmed around me, an avalanche of excited humanity. And they hung up their stockings that night, and Santa Claus put in them unusual little presents, some of them marked " Boulogne-sur-Mer."
That was my Christmas of 1916, a great Christmas, something like an old-time Christmas.
Christmas 1915 by War Correspondent Basil Clarke was spent in the North Sea nearing the port of Copenhagen, with Danish hospitality. Now in 1916 he’s back home again in ‘Old England’ for a War Christmas at home.
1916
Two good ideas struck me at once. The first was to see and to write just how a wounded soldier is sent home from the front-line trenches. The second was to have a War Christmas at home. And with strategic ingenuity, prompted thus by desire, I contrived to make one purpose helpful and fulfill the other. I would see a wounded soldier from trench to home, and by so doing arrive home myself for Christmas. Bound for "Blighty".
I bade good-bye to colleagues in the War Correspondents' Camp, hitched on my shrapnel helmet and gas-mask, and made my way to the front-line trenches. It was at a grim spot on the Ancre tributary of the Somme, called Beaumont-Hamel. Little more than a month earlier this battered heap of stones and bricks and homesteads had been the scene of one of the most desperate fights in all the Somme battles. Now, the lines lay beyond it, just over the crest of a hill.
I waited by the stretcher-bearers' dug-out in the front-line trench. Fritz was sending over shrapnel and "heavy stuff," which whined piteously through the air, ' while occasionally a sniper's rifle brought a new note into the rumble of sounds.
"Stretcher-bearers ! " The call came from along the trench, away to the right. Off went the boys from the dug-out, as I trailed behind as best I could over the mud and the shell-holes. A sniper's bullet had caught one poor fellow in the thigh. He had been crossing an open space where no trench existed. The bearers, with great labour — and much danger to themselves — carried him down to the regimental Aid-post, in a dug-out in the village below. And from that point began the joint journey home of Private J. C. H. Oldham, who was wounded and pining for "Blighty," and of myself, war correspondent, anxious to fulfill an interesting mission which would, land me home for Christmas.
I forget what the date was, but at the outset it promised to give me ample time to achieve my personal purpose. But at the aid-post Private Oldham was kept some two hours before passing on to the advanced dressing-station. At the A-D-S. he was kept about four hours before going on to the main dressing-station. And at the M.D.S. he spent, if I remember rightly, a day and a half before going on to the casualty clearing-station. His stay there was four and a half days. I saw the prospect of reaching "Blighty" by Christmas becoming poorer and poorer.
Joyous Home-Coming
He got away at last, and I with him. With five hundred wounded, weary souls I made the journey from the battle zone to the coast. We stopped in sidings and restarted, stopped again and again, and did not land till the small hours of the following morning. Again Oldham was whisked off on a stretcher — this time to a base hospital. How long would they keep him ? I spent some days with nothing better to do than hunt round the shops of Boulogne, choosing little presents that should be in keeping with the season, if only I could arrive home in time. Day followed day without seeing Private Oldham ready for transport. I must give up the Christmas idea.
One dull December morning out came his stretcher. Off he was driven to a ship at the quay, I in the same motor-ambulance. I saw him placed in a hospital ship, painted a bright apple-green ; I saw him landed at a southern English port in the grey of a drizzly morning, and I saw him set quietly down on the snow-white bed of a London hospital — with tears in his eyes born of weakness and sheer joy at being back in "Blighty."
I too, had my own joy of home-coming. Alice was radiant ; the little fellows swarmed around me, an avalanche of excited humanity. And they hung up their stockings that night, and Santa Claus put in them unusual little presents, some of them marked " Boulogne-sur-Mer."
That was my Christmas of 1916, a great Christmas, something like an old-time Christmas.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Christmas 1916 - First Canadian Division.
Over the last two years I posted many articles on the first two Christmas’s of the First World War.
Christmas 1916 brought to the end a devastating year for the British Army. The Battle of the Somme begun on 1st July 1916 had finally come to a close in November 1916 and a state of stalemate was still the order of the day on the Western Front.
This piece of First World War history comes from the book, “The Great War as I Saw It” by Canon Frederick George Scott, C.M.G., D.S.O. who was the Senior Chaplain to the First Canadian Division.
Christmas 1916
It was certain now that all serious fighting was at an end till next spring, so everyone settled down to his work with a sense of relief and tried to make the best of things. A few days after my return from Albert I went to England.
On my return to France, I heard with some regret that our Divisional Headquarters were going to move, and that the Corps would make Camblain l'Abbé their headquarters. On December 20th we moved back to the town of Bruay, where we were to stay till after the New Year. Bruay in comparison with Camblain l'Abbé is a large and thriving town, all the inhabitants being more or less connected with the mines in the neighbourhood. Our Headquarters were in the administration building of the Mining Company, in a square, and I had a billet in a street near by. There was a good theatre in the place, which our 1st Divisional Concert party took over, and where I had services on Sunday. In and around the town were several of the battalions; the rest of the division were in the villages near by. Bruay had not been shelled, and the mines were being worked as in pre-war days. It was a comfort to have the men out of the line once again, and the roads round about were very pleasant, the country being hilly and unspoilt. Bethune was within easy reach, and a visit to the quaint town made a pleasant afternoon's ride.
Rumours were abroad that with the opening of Spring we were to begin an offensive, and it was generally believed that towards the close of the next year we might hope for the end of hostilities. Our men were being trained, when weather permitted, in open warfare, and the time of so-called rest was really a period of constant activity. The chief hotel in the place became an officers' club, and very pleasant were the reunions we had there. I was glad we were going to spend Christmas out of the line, and determined to take advantage of the theatre as a place for Christmas services. The 8th and 14th Battalions were quartered in the town, besides some smaller units, so we had a good many men to draw upon for a congregation.
On Christmas Eve, at half-past eleven, I had a celebration of the Holy Communion. We had a splendid band to play the Christmas hymns, and a large number of men attended. The stage was made to look as much as possible like a chancel, and the service was very hearty. Many made their communion. I also had a watch-night service on New Year's Eve. The theatre was almost filled with men—there were rows of them even in the gallery. It was an inspiring sight, and we all felt we were beginning a year that was to decide the destinies of the Empire. I told the men that somewhere in the pages of the book which we were opening that night lay hidden the tremendous secret of our success or failure. At ten minutes to twelve we sat in silence, while the band played Chopin's Funeral March. It was almost too moving, for once again the vision came before us of the terrible battle-fields of the Somme and the faces that had gone. Then we all rose, and there was a brief moment for silent prayer. At midnight the buglers of the 14th Battalion sounded the Last Post, and at the close the band struck up the hymn "O God our help in ages past." A mighty chorus of voices joined in the well-known strains. After the Benediction, I went down to the door and shook hands with as many of the men as I could and wished them a happy New Year. No one who was at that service will ever forget it. As we found out, the trail before us was longer than we had expected, and the next New Year's Eve found many of us, though, alas, not all, in that theatre once more, still awaiting the issue of the conflict.
In January, I paid a flying visit to the Canadian Cavalry Headquarters at Tully near Abbeville, and saw many old friends. On my return, I had a curious experience which throws a light upon railway travelling at the Front. A friend had motored me to Abbeville that afternoon, just in time to catch a leave-train full of men returning from England. I only wanted to go as far as St. Pol, about thirty miles off, where I hoped to get a car for Bruay. I got into a carriage with four officers, one of whom was a chaplain who had just been decorated with the D.S.O. I had crossed the Channel with him once before, so was glad to renew our acquaintance. The train left Abbeville about four o'clock. We found ourselves in a second-class compartment. The windows were broken, the floor was dirty, and there was no lamp to lighten our darkness. By pulling down the curtains we tried to keep out the cold wind, but the draught was very unpleasant, and we had to trust to the accumulated warmth of our bodies to keep from freezing.
Instead of going directly to St. Pol, for some reason or other, the train started off to the South. We travelled on and on at a snail's pace, and had frequent and lengthy stops. When the light died away, we should have been in complete darkness if one of the officers had not brought a candle with him. Hour after hour passed by and we began to get hungry. Somebody had some sandwiches and a piece of cake, and this was shared by all the company. It served to stimulate rather than soothe the appetite. About midnight to our astonishment we found we had got to Canaples, where I had stayed when we were going to the Somme. Someone said there had been a railway accident and we had to travel by branch lines. In spite of the cold, we tried to sleep. I sat between my parson friend, who was inclined to be stout, and another officer who was remarkably angular. When I leaned upon my corpulent friend, his frequent fits of coughing made my head bounce as though it were resting on an air-cushion. When I got tired of this and leaned against my angular friend on the other side, the jolting of the carriage scraped my ear against his ribs. I spent the night by leaning first on one companion, and then on the other. The morning found us still travelling, and finally at half-past ten the train drew up once more at our starting point in Abbeville station. Having been eighteen hours without food or drink or the opportunity of a shave, I thought it was about time to retire, and told my companions that life was too short to spend it in railway journeys of that description. So, with a feeling of superiority and independence which made the others green with envy, I bid them good-bye. I never heard any more of my friends, but, although the war has long since ended, I have a sort of dim impression in my mind that they are still travelling round and round and coming back to Abbeville again. I went over to the officers' club and had a good wash and luncheon, and there meeting a very nice engineer officer, I asked him if he could tell me where I could find any lorries going North. I told him my railway experience, and it so moved him that he very kindly sent me off in his own car to St. Pol, where I was picked up by one of our staff cars and taken home in time for dinner. Railway journeys in France were not things to remember with pleasure, and if they were bad for the officers, what must they have been for the poor men in the crowded third-class carriages?
At the end of January, our pleasant life at Bruay came to an end, and we moved off to Barlin which was to be our headquarters for a month and a half. It was while we were there that I had an attack of trench-fever, which, like being "crummy," is really part of a complete war experience. Barlin was not a bad place of residence. There were many men within easy reach, and I had an upper room in the Town Hall for use as a chapel. The presence of a well equipped British hospital also gave one opportunities of seeing our wounded men. We had come to know by this time that the first task which lay before us in the opening of spring was the taking of Vimy Ridge, and our life became filled with fresh zest and interest in view of the coming attack.
Christmas 1916 brought to the end a devastating year for the British Army. The Battle of the Somme begun on 1st July 1916 had finally come to a close in November 1916 and a state of stalemate was still the order of the day on the Western Front.
This piece of First World War history comes from the book, “The Great War as I Saw It” by Canon Frederick George Scott, C.M.G., D.S.O. who was the Senior Chaplain to the First Canadian Division.
Christmas 1916
It was certain now that all serious fighting was at an end till next spring, so everyone settled down to his work with a sense of relief and tried to make the best of things. A few days after my return from Albert I went to England.
On my return to France, I heard with some regret that our Divisional Headquarters were going to move, and that the Corps would make Camblain l'Abbé their headquarters. On December 20th we moved back to the town of Bruay, where we were to stay till after the New Year. Bruay in comparison with Camblain l'Abbé is a large and thriving town, all the inhabitants being more or less connected with the mines in the neighbourhood. Our Headquarters were in the administration building of the Mining Company, in a square, and I had a billet in a street near by. There was a good theatre in the place, which our 1st Divisional Concert party took over, and where I had services on Sunday. In and around the town were several of the battalions; the rest of the division were in the villages near by. Bruay had not been shelled, and the mines were being worked as in pre-war days. It was a comfort to have the men out of the line once again, and the roads round about were very pleasant, the country being hilly and unspoilt. Bethune was within easy reach, and a visit to the quaint town made a pleasant afternoon's ride.
Rumours were abroad that with the opening of Spring we were to begin an offensive, and it was generally believed that towards the close of the next year we might hope for the end of hostilities. Our men were being trained, when weather permitted, in open warfare, and the time of so-called rest was really a period of constant activity. The chief hotel in the place became an officers' club, and very pleasant were the reunions we had there. I was glad we were going to spend Christmas out of the line, and determined to take advantage of the theatre as a place for Christmas services. The 8th and 14th Battalions were quartered in the town, besides some smaller units, so we had a good many men to draw upon for a congregation.
On Christmas Eve, at half-past eleven, I had a celebration of the Holy Communion. We had a splendid band to play the Christmas hymns, and a large number of men attended. The stage was made to look as much as possible like a chancel, and the service was very hearty. Many made their communion. I also had a watch-night service on New Year's Eve. The theatre was almost filled with men—there were rows of them even in the gallery. It was an inspiring sight, and we all felt we were beginning a year that was to decide the destinies of the Empire. I told the men that somewhere in the pages of the book which we were opening that night lay hidden the tremendous secret of our success or failure. At ten minutes to twelve we sat in silence, while the band played Chopin's Funeral March. It was almost too moving, for once again the vision came before us of the terrible battle-fields of the Somme and the faces that had gone. Then we all rose, and there was a brief moment for silent prayer. At midnight the buglers of the 14th Battalion sounded the Last Post, and at the close the band struck up the hymn "O God our help in ages past." A mighty chorus of voices joined in the well-known strains. After the Benediction, I went down to the door and shook hands with as many of the men as I could and wished them a happy New Year. No one who was at that service will ever forget it. As we found out, the trail before us was longer than we had expected, and the next New Year's Eve found many of us, though, alas, not all, in that theatre once more, still awaiting the issue of the conflict.
In January, I paid a flying visit to the Canadian Cavalry Headquarters at Tully near Abbeville, and saw many old friends. On my return, I had a curious experience which throws a light upon railway travelling at the Front. A friend had motored me to Abbeville that afternoon, just in time to catch a leave-train full of men returning from England. I only wanted to go as far as St. Pol, about thirty miles off, where I hoped to get a car for Bruay. I got into a carriage with four officers, one of whom was a chaplain who had just been decorated with the D.S.O. I had crossed the Channel with him once before, so was glad to renew our acquaintance. The train left Abbeville about four o'clock. We found ourselves in a second-class compartment. The windows were broken, the floor was dirty, and there was no lamp to lighten our darkness. By pulling down the curtains we tried to keep out the cold wind, but the draught was very unpleasant, and we had to trust to the accumulated warmth of our bodies to keep from freezing.
Instead of going directly to St. Pol, for some reason or other, the train started off to the South. We travelled on and on at a snail's pace, and had frequent and lengthy stops. When the light died away, we should have been in complete darkness if one of the officers had not brought a candle with him. Hour after hour passed by and we began to get hungry. Somebody had some sandwiches and a piece of cake, and this was shared by all the company. It served to stimulate rather than soothe the appetite. About midnight to our astonishment we found we had got to Canaples, where I had stayed when we were going to the Somme. Someone said there had been a railway accident and we had to travel by branch lines. In spite of the cold, we tried to sleep. I sat between my parson friend, who was inclined to be stout, and another officer who was remarkably angular. When I leaned upon my corpulent friend, his frequent fits of coughing made my head bounce as though it were resting on an air-cushion. When I got tired of this and leaned against my angular friend on the other side, the jolting of the carriage scraped my ear against his ribs. I spent the night by leaning first on one companion, and then on the other. The morning found us still travelling, and finally at half-past ten the train drew up once more at our starting point in Abbeville station. Having been eighteen hours without food or drink or the opportunity of a shave, I thought it was about time to retire, and told my companions that life was too short to spend it in railway journeys of that description. So, with a feeling of superiority and independence which made the others green with envy, I bid them good-bye. I never heard any more of my friends, but, although the war has long since ended, I have a sort of dim impression in my mind that they are still travelling round and round and coming back to Abbeville again. I went over to the officers' club and had a good wash and luncheon, and there meeting a very nice engineer officer, I asked him if he could tell me where I could find any lorries going North. I told him my railway experience, and it so moved him that he very kindly sent me off in his own car to St. Pol, where I was picked up by one of our staff cars and taken home in time for dinner. Railway journeys in France were not things to remember with pleasure, and if they were bad for the officers, what must they have been for the poor men in the crowded third-class carriages?
At the end of January, our pleasant life at Bruay came to an end, and we moved off to Barlin which was to be our headquarters for a month and a half. It was while we were there that I had an attack of trench-fever, which, like being "crummy," is really part of a complete war experience. Barlin was not a bad place of residence. There were many men within easy reach, and I had an upper room in the Town Hall for use as a chapel. The presence of a well equipped British hospital also gave one opportunities of seeing our wounded men. We had come to know by this time that the first task which lay before us in the opening of spring was the taking of Vimy Ridge, and our life became filled with fresh zest and interest in view of the coming attack.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Battle of the Suez Canal - In 'The Times'.
This account of the Battle for the Suez Canal was published in ‘The Times’ on February 19th 1915.
Interesting reading for the British public.
Battle of the Suez Canal
A First-Hand Account of the Unsuccessful Turkish Invasion
ISMAILIA, Feb. 10.
Though skirmishing had taken place between the enemy's reconnoitering parties and our outposts during the latter part of January, the main attack was not developed until Feb. 2, when the enemy began to move toward the Ismailia Ferry. They met a reconnoitering party of Indian troops of all arms, and a desultory engagement ensued, to which a violent sand storm put a sudden end about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The main attacking force pushed forward toward its destination after nightfall. From twenty-five to thirty galvanized iron pontoon boats, seven and a half meters in length, which had been dragged in carts across the desert, were hauled by hand toward the water, with one or two rafts made of kerosene tins in a wooden frame. All was ready for the attack.
The first warning of the enemy's approach was given by a sentry of a mountain battery, who heard, to him, an unknown tongue across the water. The noise soon increased. It would seem that Mudjah Ideen ("Holy Warriors")—said to be mostly old Tripoli fighters—accompanied the pontoon section and regulars of the Seventy-fifth Regiment, for loud exhortations often in Arabic of "Brothers die for the faith; we can die but once," betrayed the enthusiastic irregular.
The Egyptians waited till the Turks were pushing their boats into the water; then the Maxims attached to the battery suddenly spoke and the guns opened with case at point-blank range at the men and boats crowded under the steep bank opposite them.
Immediately, a violent fire broke out on both sides of the canal, the enemy replying to the rifles and machine gun fire and the battery on our bank. Around the guns it was impossible to stand up, but the gunners stuck to the work, inflicting terrible punishment.
A little torpedo boat with a crew of thirteen patrolling the canal dashed up and landed a party of four officers and men to the south of Tussum, who climbed up the eastern bank and found themselves in a Turkish trench, and escaped by a miracle with the news. Promptly the midget dashed in between the fires and enfiladed the eastern bank amid a hail of bullets, and destroyed several pontoon boats lying unlaunched on the bank. It continued to harass the enemy, though two officers and two men were wounded.
As the dark, cloudy night lightened toward dawn fresh forces came into action. The Turks, who occupied the outer, or day, line of the Tussum post, advanced, covered by artillery, against the Indian troops holding the inner, or night, position, while an Arab regiment advanced against the Indian troops at the Serapeum post.
The warships on the canal and lake joined in the fray. The enemy brought some six batteries of field guns into action from the slopes west of Kataib-el-Kheil. Shells admirably fused made fine practice at all the visible targets, but failed to find the battery above mentioned, which, with some help from a detachment of infantry, beat down the fire of the riflemen on the opposite bank and inflicted heavy losses on the hostile supports advancing toward the canal. A chance salvo wounded four men of the battery, but it ran more risk from a party of about twenty of the enemy who had crossed the canal in the dark and sniped the gunners from the rear till they were finally rounded up by the Indian cavalry and compelled to surrender.
Supported by land naval artillery the Indian troops took the offensive. The Serapeum garrison, which had stopped the enemy three-quarters of a mile from the position, cleared its front, and the Tussum garrison by a brilliant counter-attack drove the enemy back. Two battalions of Anatolians of the Twenty-eighth Regiment were thrown vainly into the fight. Our artillery gave them no chance, and by 3:30 in the afternoon a third of the enemy, with the exception of a force that lay hid in bushy hollows on the east bank between the two posts, were in full retreat, leaving many dead, a large proportion of whom had been killed by shrapnel.
Meanwhile the warships on the lake had been in action. A salvo from a battleship woke up Ismailia early, and crowds of soldiers and some civilians climbed every available sandhill to see what was doing till the Turkish guns sent shells sufficiently near to convince them that it was safer to watch from cover. A husband and wife took a carriage and drove along the lake front, much peppered by shells, till near the old French hospital, when they realized the danger and suddenly whisked around and drove back full gallop to Ismailia.
But the enemy's fire did more than startle. At about 11 in the morning two six-inch shells hit the Hardinge near the southern entrance of the lake. The first damaged the funnel and the second burst inboard. Pilot Carew, a gallant old merchant seaman, refused to go below when the firing opened and lost a leg. Nine others were wounded. One or two merchantmen were hit, but no lives were lost. A British gunboat was struck.
Then came a dramatic duel between the Turkish big gun or guns and a warship. The Turks fired just over and then just short of 9,000 yards. The warship sent in a salvo of more six-inch shells than had been fired that day.
During the morning the enemy moved toward Ismailia Ferry. The infantry used the ground well, digging shelter pits as they advanced, and were covered by a well-served battery. An officer, apparently a German, exposed himself with the greatest daring, and watchers were interested to see a yellow "pie dog," which also escaped, running about the advancing line. Our artillery shot admirably and kept the enemy from coming within 1,000 yards of the Indian outposts. In the afternoon the demonstration—for it was no more—ceased but for a few shells fired as "a nightcap." During the dark night that followed some of the enemy approached the outpost line of the ferry position with a dog, but nothing happened, and day found them gone.
At the same time as the fighting ceased at the ferry it died down at El Kantara. There the Turks, after a plucky night attack, came to grief on our wire entanglements. Another attempt to advance from the southeast was forced back by an advance of the Indian troops. The attack, during which it was necessary to advance on a narrow front over ground often marshy with recent inundations against our strong position, never had a chance. Indeed, the enemy was only engaged with our outpost line.
Late in the afternoon of the 3d there was sniping from the east bank between Tussum and Serapeum and a man was killed in the tops of a British battleship. Next morning the sniping was renewed, and the Indian troops, moving out to search the ground, found several hundred of the enemy in the hollow previously mentioned. During the fighting some of the enemy, either by accident or design, held up their hands, while others fired on the Punjabis, who were advancing to take the surrender, and killed a British officer. A sharp fight with the cold steel followed, and a British officer killed a Turkish officer with a sword thrust in single combat. The body of a German officer with a white flag was afterward found here, but there is no proof that the white flag was used. Finally all the enemy were killed, captured, or put to flight.
With this the fighting ended, and the subsequent operations were confined to "rounding up" prisoners and to the capture of a considerable amount of military material left behind. The Turks who departed with their guns and baggage during the night of the 3d still seemed to be moving eastward.
So ended the battle of the Suez Canal. Our losses have been amazingly small, totaling about 111 killed and wounded. Our opponents have probably lost nearly 3,000 men. The Indian troops bore the brunt of the fighting and were well supported by the British and French warships and by the Egyptian troops. The Turks fought bravely and their artillery shot well if unluckily, but the intentions of the higher command are still a puzzle to British officers.
Did Djemal Pasha intend to try to break through our position under cover of demonstrations along a front over ninety miles in length with a total force, perhaps, of 25,000 men, or was he attempting a reconnoissance in force? If the former is the case, he must have had a low idea of British leadership or an amazing belief in the readiness and ability of sympathizers in Egypt to support the Turk. Certainly he was misinformed as to our positions, and on the 4th we buried on the eastern bank the bodies of two men, apparently Syrians or Egyptians, who were found with their hands tied and their eyes bandaged. Probably they were guides who had been summarily killed, having unwittingly led the enemy astray. If, on the other hand, Djemal Pasha was attempting a reconnoissance, it was a costly business and gave General Wilson a very handsome victory.
Till the last week of January there had been some doubt as to the road by which the Ottoman Commander in Chief in Syria intended to advance on the canal. Before the end of the month it was quite clear that what was then believed to be the Turkish advanced guard, having marched with admirable rapidity from Beersheba via El Auja, Djebel Libni, and Djifjaffa, was concentrating in the valleys just east of Kataib-el-Kheil, a group of hills lying about ten miles east of the canal, where it enters Lake Timsah. A smaller column detached from this force was sighted in the hills east of Ismailia Ferry. Smaller bodies had appeared in the neighborhood of El Kantara and between Suez and the Bitter Lakes.
The attacks on our advanced posts at El Kantara on the night of Jan. 26 and 27, and at Kubri, near Suez, on the following night, were beaten off. Hostile guns fired occasional shells, while our warships returned the compliment at any hostile column that seemed to offer a good target, and our aeroplanes dropped bombs when they had the chance; but in general the enemy kept a long distance off and was tantalizing. Our launches and boats, which were constantly patrolling the canal, could see him methodically intrenching just out of range of the naval guns.
By the night of Feb. 1 the enemy had prepared his plan of attack. To judge both from his movements during the next two days and the documents found on prisoners and slain, it was proposed to attack El Kantara while making a demonstration at El Ferdan, further south, and prevent reinforcements at the first-named post. The demonstration at Ismailia Ferry by the right wing of the Kataib-el-Kheil force which had been partly refused till then in order to prevent a counter-attack from the ferry, was designed to occupy the attention of the Ismailia garrison, while the main attack was delivered between the Tussum post, eight miles south of Ismailia, and the Serapeum post, some three miles further south. Eshref Bey's highly irregular force in the meantime was to demonstrate near Suez.
The selection of the Tussum and Serapeum section as the principal objective was dictated both by the consideration that success here would bring the Turks a few miles from Ismailia, and by the information received from patrols that the west bank of the canal between the posts, both of which may be described as bridgeheads, were unoccupied by our troops. The west bank between the posts is steep and marked by a long, narrow belt of trees. The east bank also falls steeply to the canal, but behind it are numerous hollows, full of brushwood, which give good cover. Here the enemy's advanced parties established themselves and intrenched before the main attack was delivered.
Interesting reading for the British public.
Battle of the Suez Canal
A First-Hand Account of the Unsuccessful Turkish Invasion
ISMAILIA, Feb. 10.
Though skirmishing had taken place between the enemy's reconnoitering parties and our outposts during the latter part of January, the main attack was not developed until Feb. 2, when the enemy began to move toward the Ismailia Ferry. They met a reconnoitering party of Indian troops of all arms, and a desultory engagement ensued, to which a violent sand storm put a sudden end about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The main attacking force pushed forward toward its destination after nightfall. From twenty-five to thirty galvanized iron pontoon boats, seven and a half meters in length, which had been dragged in carts across the desert, were hauled by hand toward the water, with one or two rafts made of kerosene tins in a wooden frame. All was ready for the attack.
The first warning of the enemy's approach was given by a sentry of a mountain battery, who heard, to him, an unknown tongue across the water. The noise soon increased. It would seem that Mudjah Ideen ("Holy Warriors")—said to be mostly old Tripoli fighters—accompanied the pontoon section and regulars of the Seventy-fifth Regiment, for loud exhortations often in Arabic of "Brothers die for the faith; we can die but once," betrayed the enthusiastic irregular.
The Egyptians waited till the Turks were pushing their boats into the water; then the Maxims attached to the battery suddenly spoke and the guns opened with case at point-blank range at the men and boats crowded under the steep bank opposite them.
Immediately, a violent fire broke out on both sides of the canal, the enemy replying to the rifles and machine gun fire and the battery on our bank. Around the guns it was impossible to stand up, but the gunners stuck to the work, inflicting terrible punishment.
A little torpedo boat with a crew of thirteen patrolling the canal dashed up and landed a party of four officers and men to the south of Tussum, who climbed up the eastern bank and found themselves in a Turkish trench, and escaped by a miracle with the news. Promptly the midget dashed in between the fires and enfiladed the eastern bank amid a hail of bullets, and destroyed several pontoon boats lying unlaunched on the bank. It continued to harass the enemy, though two officers and two men were wounded.
As the dark, cloudy night lightened toward dawn fresh forces came into action. The Turks, who occupied the outer, or day, line of the Tussum post, advanced, covered by artillery, against the Indian troops holding the inner, or night, position, while an Arab regiment advanced against the Indian troops at the Serapeum post.
The warships on the canal and lake joined in the fray. The enemy brought some six batteries of field guns into action from the slopes west of Kataib-el-Kheil. Shells admirably fused made fine practice at all the visible targets, but failed to find the battery above mentioned, which, with some help from a detachment of infantry, beat down the fire of the riflemen on the opposite bank and inflicted heavy losses on the hostile supports advancing toward the canal. A chance salvo wounded four men of the battery, but it ran more risk from a party of about twenty of the enemy who had crossed the canal in the dark and sniped the gunners from the rear till they were finally rounded up by the Indian cavalry and compelled to surrender.
Supported by land naval artillery the Indian troops took the offensive. The Serapeum garrison, which had stopped the enemy three-quarters of a mile from the position, cleared its front, and the Tussum garrison by a brilliant counter-attack drove the enemy back. Two battalions of Anatolians of the Twenty-eighth Regiment were thrown vainly into the fight. Our artillery gave them no chance, and by 3:30 in the afternoon a third of the enemy, with the exception of a force that lay hid in bushy hollows on the east bank between the two posts, were in full retreat, leaving many dead, a large proportion of whom had been killed by shrapnel.
Meanwhile the warships on the lake had been in action. A salvo from a battleship woke up Ismailia early, and crowds of soldiers and some civilians climbed every available sandhill to see what was doing till the Turkish guns sent shells sufficiently near to convince them that it was safer to watch from cover. A husband and wife took a carriage and drove along the lake front, much peppered by shells, till near the old French hospital, when they realized the danger and suddenly whisked around and drove back full gallop to Ismailia.
But the enemy's fire did more than startle. At about 11 in the morning two six-inch shells hit the Hardinge near the southern entrance of the lake. The first damaged the funnel and the second burst inboard. Pilot Carew, a gallant old merchant seaman, refused to go below when the firing opened and lost a leg. Nine others were wounded. One or two merchantmen were hit, but no lives were lost. A British gunboat was struck.
Then came a dramatic duel between the Turkish big gun or guns and a warship. The Turks fired just over and then just short of 9,000 yards. The warship sent in a salvo of more six-inch shells than had been fired that day.
During the morning the enemy moved toward Ismailia Ferry. The infantry used the ground well, digging shelter pits as they advanced, and were covered by a well-served battery. An officer, apparently a German, exposed himself with the greatest daring, and watchers were interested to see a yellow "pie dog," which also escaped, running about the advancing line. Our artillery shot admirably and kept the enemy from coming within 1,000 yards of the Indian outposts. In the afternoon the demonstration—for it was no more—ceased but for a few shells fired as "a nightcap." During the dark night that followed some of the enemy approached the outpost line of the ferry position with a dog, but nothing happened, and day found them gone.
At the same time as the fighting ceased at the ferry it died down at El Kantara. There the Turks, after a plucky night attack, came to grief on our wire entanglements. Another attempt to advance from the southeast was forced back by an advance of the Indian troops. The attack, during which it was necessary to advance on a narrow front over ground often marshy with recent inundations against our strong position, never had a chance. Indeed, the enemy was only engaged with our outpost line.
Late in the afternoon of the 3d there was sniping from the east bank between Tussum and Serapeum and a man was killed in the tops of a British battleship. Next morning the sniping was renewed, and the Indian troops, moving out to search the ground, found several hundred of the enemy in the hollow previously mentioned. During the fighting some of the enemy, either by accident or design, held up their hands, while others fired on the Punjabis, who were advancing to take the surrender, and killed a British officer. A sharp fight with the cold steel followed, and a British officer killed a Turkish officer with a sword thrust in single combat. The body of a German officer with a white flag was afterward found here, but there is no proof that the white flag was used. Finally all the enemy were killed, captured, or put to flight.
With this the fighting ended, and the subsequent operations were confined to "rounding up" prisoners and to the capture of a considerable amount of military material left behind. The Turks who departed with their guns and baggage during the night of the 3d still seemed to be moving eastward.
So ended the battle of the Suez Canal. Our losses have been amazingly small, totaling about 111 killed and wounded. Our opponents have probably lost nearly 3,000 men. The Indian troops bore the brunt of the fighting and were well supported by the British and French warships and by the Egyptian troops. The Turks fought bravely and their artillery shot well if unluckily, but the intentions of the higher command are still a puzzle to British officers.
Did Djemal Pasha intend to try to break through our position under cover of demonstrations along a front over ninety miles in length with a total force, perhaps, of 25,000 men, or was he attempting a reconnoissance in force? If the former is the case, he must have had a low idea of British leadership or an amazing belief in the readiness and ability of sympathizers in Egypt to support the Turk. Certainly he was misinformed as to our positions, and on the 4th we buried on the eastern bank the bodies of two men, apparently Syrians or Egyptians, who were found with their hands tied and their eyes bandaged. Probably they were guides who had been summarily killed, having unwittingly led the enemy astray. If, on the other hand, Djemal Pasha was attempting a reconnoissance, it was a costly business and gave General Wilson a very handsome victory.
Till the last week of January there had been some doubt as to the road by which the Ottoman Commander in Chief in Syria intended to advance on the canal. Before the end of the month it was quite clear that what was then believed to be the Turkish advanced guard, having marched with admirable rapidity from Beersheba via El Auja, Djebel Libni, and Djifjaffa, was concentrating in the valleys just east of Kataib-el-Kheil, a group of hills lying about ten miles east of the canal, where it enters Lake Timsah. A smaller column detached from this force was sighted in the hills east of Ismailia Ferry. Smaller bodies had appeared in the neighborhood of El Kantara and between Suez and the Bitter Lakes.
The attacks on our advanced posts at El Kantara on the night of Jan. 26 and 27, and at Kubri, near Suez, on the following night, were beaten off. Hostile guns fired occasional shells, while our warships returned the compliment at any hostile column that seemed to offer a good target, and our aeroplanes dropped bombs when they had the chance; but in general the enemy kept a long distance off and was tantalizing. Our launches and boats, which were constantly patrolling the canal, could see him methodically intrenching just out of range of the naval guns.
By the night of Feb. 1 the enemy had prepared his plan of attack. To judge both from his movements during the next two days and the documents found on prisoners and slain, it was proposed to attack El Kantara while making a demonstration at El Ferdan, further south, and prevent reinforcements at the first-named post. The demonstration at Ismailia Ferry by the right wing of the Kataib-el-Kheil force which had been partly refused till then in order to prevent a counter-attack from the ferry, was designed to occupy the attention of the Ismailia garrison, while the main attack was delivered between the Tussum post, eight miles south of Ismailia, and the Serapeum post, some three miles further south. Eshref Bey's highly irregular force in the meantime was to demonstrate near Suez.
The selection of the Tussum and Serapeum section as the principal objective was dictated both by the consideration that success here would bring the Turks a few miles from Ismailia, and by the information received from patrols that the west bank of the canal between the posts, both of which may be described as bridgeheads, were unoccupied by our troops. The west bank between the posts is steep and marked by a long, narrow belt of trees. The east bank also falls steeply to the canal, but behind it are numerous hollows, full of brushwood, which give good cover. Here the enemy's advanced parties established themselves and intrenched before the main attack was delivered.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
The Battle of the Suez Canal – February 1915.
At the outbreak of war in 1914 Egypt, was ruled by the British, who had taken charge in 1882, but it was officially part of the Ottoman Empire. Free and secure access to the Suez Canal was vital to the British Empire. The most valuable parts of the Empire were east of Suez, as were the dominions of Australia and New Zealand and their invaluable volunteers. At the start of 1915 crucial reinforcements were travelling through the canal on their way to the Western Front, where the Australian and New Zealand divisions would soon be considered to be amongst the best troops available to Britain.
General Sir John Maxwell, the British commander in Egypt, had 70,000 troops at his disposal at the start of 1915, although many of them were either in training or transit. On the canal Major-General A. Wilson had 30,000 men, most from the Indian Army but with some Egyptian artillery, spread out along the length of the canal. Wilson also had access to a number of French and British airplanes, and a small naval squadron. It had been decided to conduct an essentially passive defense of the canal. The main British defenses were on the western bank, with a few fortified posts on the eastern bank.
At the start of 1915 the Turks decided to launch an expedition towards the Suez Canal. It would be commanded by Djemal Pasha, the Minister of Marine and one of the triumvirate that ruled the Ottoman Empire. He was also governor of Syria and Palestine and commander of the Ottoman Fourth Army. He was ably supported by his German chief of staff, Baron Kress von Kressenstein.
Djemal Pasha was faced with a formidable set of problems. His army was only 20,000 strong, so he would be outnumbered at the canal. To get to the canal zone his army would have to cross the Sinai desert, a potentially difficult journey. There were only three possible routes across the desert, of which the northern coastal route and the central route were the most favourable. Most dangerously for the Turks, the purpose of the expedition was unclear. At the time Djemal Pasha seems to have been hoping for a revolt to break out in Egypt at the approach of his army, and despite being outnumbered by more than three to one was planning an invasion. In the aftermath of the campaign, he consistently claimed that he had never intended to invade Egypt, only to make a reconnaissance in force and to damage to canal.
The expedition was well planned. The main force, 15,000 strong, took the central route across the desert. The remaining 5,000 troops were sent along the northern and southern coastal routes. Pontoons had been built in German and smuggled through Bulgaria to Turkey. The main force took ten days to march across the desert, moving at night in an attempt to hide their movements. By 1 February the main force of 15,000 men was close to the canal.
By then any hope of surprise was gone. The two flanking forces had launched feint attacks at Kantara to the north and Kubri to the south on 26-27 January. Warned by this that a Turkish army was in the area, British and French aircraft had then located the main force. The attack was to be made towards Ismailia in the middle of the canal.
The attack was made at 3 a.m. on 3 February. The Turkish troops came under heavy fire as they attempted to cross over the canal, and only three pontoons and their crews reached the west bank, where they were quickly killed or captured. A series of attacks followed during the day, but were no more successful. On the next day Djemal Pasha ordered a retreat back to his base at Beersheba.
The British had seen off the attack on the canal, but they would now pay for their passive defence. Two companies of Ghurkhas attempted a counterattack on 3 February, but otherwise the Turks were allowed to escape. Even so, Djemal Pasha’s men had suffered around 1,400 casualties (according to his own figures). British losses were only 150, but the policy of defending the western bank of the canal came under attack.
General Sir John Maxwell, the British commander in Egypt, had 70,000 troops at his disposal at the start of 1915, although many of them were either in training or transit. On the canal Major-General A. Wilson had 30,000 men, most from the Indian Army but with some Egyptian artillery, spread out along the length of the canal. Wilson also had access to a number of French and British airplanes, and a small naval squadron. It had been decided to conduct an essentially passive defense of the canal. The main British defenses were on the western bank, with a few fortified posts on the eastern bank.
At the start of 1915 the Turks decided to launch an expedition towards the Suez Canal. It would be commanded by Djemal Pasha, the Minister of Marine and one of the triumvirate that ruled the Ottoman Empire. He was also governor of Syria and Palestine and commander of the Ottoman Fourth Army. He was ably supported by his German chief of staff, Baron Kress von Kressenstein.
Djemal Pasha was faced with a formidable set of problems. His army was only 20,000 strong, so he would be outnumbered at the canal. To get to the canal zone his army would have to cross the Sinai desert, a potentially difficult journey. There were only three possible routes across the desert, of which the northern coastal route and the central route were the most favourable. Most dangerously for the Turks, the purpose of the expedition was unclear. At the time Djemal Pasha seems to have been hoping for a revolt to break out in Egypt at the approach of his army, and despite being outnumbered by more than three to one was planning an invasion. In the aftermath of the campaign, he consistently claimed that he had never intended to invade Egypt, only to make a reconnaissance in force and to damage to canal.
The expedition was well planned. The main force, 15,000 strong, took the central route across the desert. The remaining 5,000 troops were sent along the northern and southern coastal routes. Pontoons had been built in German and smuggled through Bulgaria to Turkey. The main force took ten days to march across the desert, moving at night in an attempt to hide their movements. By 1 February the main force of 15,000 men was close to the canal.
By then any hope of surprise was gone. The two flanking forces had launched feint attacks at Kantara to the north and Kubri to the south on 26-27 January. Warned by this that a Turkish army was in the area, British and French aircraft had then located the main force. The attack was to be made towards Ismailia in the middle of the canal.
The attack was made at 3 a.m. on 3 February. The Turkish troops came under heavy fire as they attempted to cross over the canal, and only three pontoons and their crews reached the west bank, where they were quickly killed or captured. A series of attacks followed during the day, but were no more successful. On the next day Djemal Pasha ordered a retreat back to his base at Beersheba.
The British had seen off the attack on the canal, but they would now pay for their passive defence. Two companies of Ghurkhas attempted a counterattack on 3 February, but otherwise the Turks were allowed to escape. Even so, Djemal Pasha’s men had suffered around 1,400 casualties (according to his own figures). British losses were only 150, but the policy of defending the western bank of the canal came under attack.
Monday, November 23, 2009
V.A.D.
This great poem appeared in the ‘Punch’ on August 15th 1917.
Entitled the V.A.D., it’s amusing, funny and captures the ‘Florence Nightingale’ effect of the common girl now turned angel.
I’ve no idea who wrote it!
V.A.D.
There's an angel in our ward as keeps a-flittin' to and fro
With fifty eyes upon 'er wherever she may go;
She's as pretty as a picture and as bright as mercury,
And she wears the cap and apron of a V.A.D.
The Matron she is gracious and the Sister she is kind,
But they wasn't born just yesterday and lets you know their mind;
The M.O. and the Padre is as thoughtful as can be,
But they ain't so good to look at as our V.A.D.
She's a honourable miss because 'er father is a dook,
But, Lord, you'd never guess it and it ain't no good to look
For 'er portrait in the illustrated papers, for you see
She ain't an advertiser, not our V.A.D.
Not like them that wash a tea-cup in an officer’s canteen
And then "Engaged in War Work" in the weekly Press is seen;
She's on the trot from morn to night and busy as a bee,
And there's 'eaps of wounded Tommies bless that V.A.D.
She's the lightest 'and at dressin's and she polishes the floor,
She feeds Bill Smith who'll never never use 'is 'ands no more;
And we're all of us supporters of the harristocracy
'Cos our weary days are lightened by that V.A.D.
And when the War is over, some knight or belted earl,
What's survived from killin' Germans, will take 'er for 'is girl;
They'll go and see the pictures and then 'ave shrimps and tea;
'E's a lucky man as gets 'er—and don't I wish 'twas me!
Entitled the V.A.D., it’s amusing, funny and captures the ‘Florence Nightingale’ effect of the common girl now turned angel.
I’ve no idea who wrote it!
V.A.D.
There's an angel in our ward as keeps a-flittin' to and fro
With fifty eyes upon 'er wherever she may go;
She's as pretty as a picture and as bright as mercury,
And she wears the cap and apron of a V.A.D.
The Matron she is gracious and the Sister she is kind,
But they wasn't born just yesterday and lets you know their mind;
The M.O. and the Padre is as thoughtful as can be,
But they ain't so good to look at as our V.A.D.
She's a honourable miss because 'er father is a dook,
But, Lord, you'd never guess it and it ain't no good to look
For 'er portrait in the illustrated papers, for you see
She ain't an advertiser, not our V.A.D.
Not like them that wash a tea-cup in an officer’s canteen
And then "Engaged in War Work" in the weekly Press is seen;
She's on the trot from morn to night and busy as a bee,
And there's 'eaps of wounded Tommies bless that V.A.D.
She's the lightest 'and at dressin's and she polishes the floor,
She feeds Bill Smith who'll never never use 'is 'ands no more;
And we're all of us supporters of the harristocracy
'Cos our weary days are lightened by that V.A.D.
And when the War is over, some knight or belted earl,
What's survived from killin' Germans, will take 'er for 'is girl;
They'll go and see the pictures and then 'ave shrimps and tea;
'E's a lucky man as gets 'er—and don't I wish 'twas me!
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Not to shoot at the airship.
The ‘New York Times’ carried an amusing article from London on September 10th 1914.
The day before the Admiralty tried to stop over enthusiastic citizens from getting their guns and shooting at a naval airship.
AIRSHIP GOING OVER LONDON
Admiralty Warms People Not to Shoot at the Friendly Visitor.
London. Sept 9. - The Admiralty announced tonight that one of the British naval airships would make short cruises over London over the next few days and night.
The public is warned not to shoot at the airship.
The day before the Admiralty tried to stop over enthusiastic citizens from getting their guns and shooting at a naval airship.
AIRSHIP GOING OVER LONDON
Admiralty Warms People Not to Shoot at the Friendly Visitor.
London. Sept 9. - The Admiralty announced tonight that one of the British naval airships would make short cruises over London over the next few days and night.
The public is warned not to shoot at the airship.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Aarsen Grenade-Gun.
This interesting article and pictures comes from “The Illustrated War News, Number 21, Dec. 30, 1914.”
I not sure how sucessful the Aarsen Grenade-gun was, but it looks a pretty terrifying weapon from the pictures.
One of the features of the present war which have been drawn attention to by "Eye-Witness" in his letters from the Front, is the resuscitation of fighting with hand-grenades on both sides. Particularly has this been the case during the battles in Northern France and Flanders, wherever the trenches approached one another within flinging distance. There also, on occasion, where the troops facing one another were further apart, and beyond reach of a throw by hand, an improvised catapult of the classic type has been devised by our men for slinging hand-bombs; utilising a metal spring bent back and held fast in a notch, to be released on the lighting of the fuse.
HAND-GRENADES SHOT FROM A GUN!—AARSEN GRENADES BURSTING IN THE OPEN.
In the photograph above the shells are seen bursting at a certain distance from the firing-point. Our soldiers in the trenches in Flanders, according to "Eye-Witness," have made improvised hand-grenades for themselves, utilising empty jam-tins. These are charged with gun-cotton and fused, and on being lighted are flung across among the Germans in their trenches.
I not sure how sucessful the Aarsen Grenade-gun was, but it looks a pretty terrifying weapon from the pictures.
HAND-GRENADES SHOT FROM A GUN!—THE AARSEN GRENADE-GUN BEING LOADED.
One of the features of the present war which have been drawn attention to by "Eye-Witness" in his letters from the Front, is the resuscitation of fighting with hand-grenades on both sides. Particularly has this been the case during the battles in Northern France and Flanders, wherever the trenches approached one another within flinging distance. There also, on occasion, where the troops facing one another were further apart, and beyond reach of a throw by hand, an improvised catapult of the classic type has been devised by our men for slinging hand-bombs; utilising a metal spring bent back and held fast in a notch, to be released on the lighting of the fuse.
"Above is" a photograph of a Danish experimental gun, designed at Copenhagen, for firing Aarsen hand-grenades. The grenades are shown in the act of being introduced into the breech of the weapons, and the apparatus for holding each grenade in the hand is clearly shown.
HAND-GRENADES SHOT FROM A GUN!—AARSEN GRENADES BURSTING IN THE OPEN.In the photograph above the shells are seen bursting at a certain distance from the firing-point. Our soldiers in the trenches in Flanders, according to "Eye-Witness," have made improvised hand-grenades for themselves, utilising empty jam-tins. These are charged with gun-cotton and fused, and on being lighted are flung across among the Germans in their trenches.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Dangerous Sandbag.
This amusing little extract comes from the Punch in January 1916.
I’m never sure with the ‘Punch’ what is real and what is fiction. But I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt as it is quite amusing. Anyway -
An extract from a letter written to a loved one from the Front:—
"I received your dear little note in a sandbag. You say that you hope the sandbag stops a bullet. Well, to tell the truth, I hope it don't, as I have been patching my trousers with it."
I’m never sure with the ‘Punch’ what is real and what is fiction. But I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt as it is quite amusing. Anyway -
An extract from a letter written to a loved one from the Front:—
"I received your dear little note in a sandbag. You say that you hope the sandbag stops a bullet. Well, to tell the truth, I hope it don't, as I have been patching my trousers with it."
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The Soldiers Epitaph - He Died for England.
For Armistice Day I have chosen this poem by an unknown author.
It was published in the New York Times – June 1915 and captures the spirit and feelings of the time.
Under the Heading “The Soldiers Epitaph’ the poem was entitled “HE DIED FOR ENGLAND”.
It was an inscription on the tombstone of a private soldier killed in action.
"HE DIED FOR ENGLAND."
These four short words his epitaph,
Sublimely simple, nobly plain;
Who adds to them but addeth chaff,
Obscures with husks the golden grain.
Not all the bards of other days,
Not Homer in his loftiest vein,
Not Milton's most majestic strain,
Not the whole wealth of Pindar's lays,
Could bring to that one simple phrase
What were not rather loss than gain;
That elegy so briefly fine,
That epic writ in half a line,
That little which so much conveys,
Whose silence is a hymn of praise
And throbs with harmonies divine.
It was published in the New York Times – June 1915 and captures the spirit and feelings of the time.
Under the Heading “The Soldiers Epitaph’ the poem was entitled “HE DIED FOR ENGLAND”.
It was an inscription on the tombstone of a private soldier killed in action.
"HE DIED FOR ENGLAND."
These four short words his epitaph,
Sublimely simple, nobly plain;
Who adds to them but addeth chaff,
Obscures with husks the golden grain.
Not all the bards of other days,
Not Homer in his loftiest vein,
Not Milton's most majestic strain,
Not the whole wealth of Pindar's lays,
Could bring to that one simple phrase
What were not rather loss than gain;
That elegy so briefly fine,
That epic writ in half a line,
That little which so much conveys,
Whose silence is a hymn of praise
And throbs with harmonies divine.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
How to treat a Wife.
I love this quote taken from ‘The Punch’ in March 1916.
How to treat a Wife.
An extract from lecture by N.C.O.:—
"Your rifle is your best friend, take every care of it; treat it as you would your wife, rub it all over with an oily rag every day."
How to treat a Wife.
An extract from lecture by N.C.O.:—
"Your rifle is your best friend, take every care of it; treat it as you would your wife, rub it all over with an oily rag every day."
Monday, November 09, 2009
The Passing of a Zeppelin.
This ia an excellent article from 'The Great War in a Different Light'.
Originally from the book 'Many Fronts' edited by Lewis R. Freeman 1918.
This provocative piece captures the wonder, awe and terror of a night raid over London.
"In the year that had gone by since the first great air-raid on London we knew that much had been done in the way of strengthening the defences. Just what had been done we did not, of course, and do not, know. We knew that there were more and better guns and searchlights, and probably greatly improved means of anticipating the coming of the raiders and of following and reporting their movements after they did come. At the same time we also knew that the latest Zeppelin had been greatly improved; that it was larger, faster, capable of ascending to a greater altitude, and probably able to stand more and heavier gun-fire than its prototype of a year ago. It seemed to be a question, therefore, of whether or not the guns could range the raiders, and, if so, do them any vital damage when they did hit them. The aeroplane was an unknown quantity, and, in the popular mind at least, not seriously reckoned with. London knew that the crucial test would not come until an airship tried again to penetrate to the heart of the metropolitan area, and awaited the result calmly if not quite indifferently.
The Zeppelin raids of the spring and early summer, numerous as they had been, had done a negligible amount of military damage and scarcely more to civil property. The death list, too, had, mercifully, been very low. It seemed significant, however, that the main London defences had been avoided during all of this time, indicating, apparently, that the raiders were reluctant to lift the lid of the Pandora's box that was laid out so temptingly before them for fear of the possible consequences. Twice or thrice, watching with my glasses after I had been awakened by distant bomb explosions or gunfire, I had seen a shell-pocketed airship draw back, as a yellow dog refuses the challenge that his intrusion has provoked, and glide off into the darkness of some safer area. "Would they try it again?” was the question Londoners asked themselves as the dark of the moon came round each month, and, except for the comparatively few who had had personal experience of the terror and death that follow the swath of an air-raider, most of them seemed rather anxious to have the matter put to the test.
Last night—just twelve "darks-of-the-moon" after the first great raid of 1915—the test came. It was hardly a conclusive one, perhaps (though that may well have come before these lines find their way into print), but it was certainly highly illuminative. I write this on my return to London from viewing—twenty miles away—a tangled mass of wreckage and a heap of charred trunks that are all that remain of a Zeppelin and its crew which—whether by accident, intent, or the force of circumstances will probably never be known—rushed in where two others of its aerial sisters feared to fly, and paid the cost.
There was nothing of the surprise (to London, at least; as regards the ill-starred Zeppelin crew none can say) in last night's raid. The night grew more heavily overcast as the darkness deepened, and towards midnight stealthy little beams of hooded searchlights pirouetting on the eastern clouds told the home-wending Saturday night theatre crowd that, with the imminent approach of the raiders, London was lifting a corner of its mask of blackness and throwing out an open challenge to the enemy. This was the first time I had known the lights to precede the actual explosion of bombs, and the cool confidence of the thing suggested (as I heard one policeman tell another) that the defence had something "up their sleeves."
It was towards one in the morning when I finished my supper at a West End restaurant and started walking through the almost deserted streets to my hotel. London is anything but a bedlam after midnight, but the silence in the early hours of this morning was positively uncanny. Now, with the last of the 'buses gone and all trains stopped, only the muffled buzz of an occasional belated taxi—pushing on cautiously with hooded lights—broke the stillness.
Reaching my room I pulled on a sweater, ran up the curtain, laid my glass ready and seated myself at the window, the same window from which, a year ago, I had watched those two insolently contemptuous raiders sail across overhead and leave a blazing wake of death and destruction behind them. On that night, I reflected, I had felt the rush of air from the bombs, and—later—had watched the firemen extinguishing the flames and the ambulances carrying the wounded to the hospitals. Would it be like that to-night? I wondered (there was now no doubt that the raiders were near, for the searchlights had multiplied, and far to the south-east, though no detonations were audible, quick flashes told of scattering gun-fire), or would the defence have more of a word to say for itself this time f I looked to the eastern heavens where the shifting clouds were now "polka-dotted" with the fluttering golden motes of a score of searchlights, and thought I had found my answer.
There was no wheeling and reeling of the lights in wide circles, as a year ago, but rather a steady persistent stabbing at the clouds, each one appearing to keep to an allotted area of its own. "Stabbing" expresses the action exactly, and it recalled to me an occasion, a month ago, when a " Tommy," who was showing me through some captured dug-outs on the Somme, illustrated, with bayonet thrusts, the manner in which they had originally searched for Germans hiding under the straw mattresses. There was nothing "panicky" in the work of the lights this time, but only the suggestion of methodical, ordered, relentless vigilance.
"Encouraging as a preliminary," I said to myself; "now" (for the night was electric with import) "for the main event!"
There was not long to wait. To the south-east the gun-flashes had increased in frequency, followed by mist-dulled blurs of brightness in the clouds that told of bursting shells. Suddenly, through a rift in the clouds, I saw a new kind of glare—the earthward-launched beam of an airship's searchlight groping for its target—but the shifting mist-curtain intervened again even as one of the defending lights took up the challenge and flashed its own rapier ray in quick reply. Presently the muffled boom of bombs fleeted to my ears, and then the sharper rattle of a sudden gust of gun-fire. This was quickly followed by a confused roar of sound, evidently from many bombs dropped simultaneously or in quick succession, and I knew that one of two things had happened—either the raider had found its mark and was delivering "rapid fire," or the guns were making it so hot for the visitor that it had been compelled to dump its explosives and seek safety in flight. When a minute or more had gone by I felt sure that the latter had been scuttled, and that it was now only a question of which direction the flight was going to take.
Again the eastward searchlights gave me the answer. By twos and threes—I could not follow the order of the thing—the lights that had been "patrolling" the eastern sky moved over and took their station around a certain low-hanging cloud to the south. The murky sheet of cumulonimbus seemed to pale and dissolve in the concentrated rays, and then, right into the focus of golden glow formed by the dancing light motes running wild and blind as a bull charges the red mantle masking the matador, darted a huge Zeppelin.
Perhaps never before in all time has a single object been the centre of so blinding a glare. It seemed that the optic nerve must wither in so fierce a light, and certainly no unprotected eye could have opened to it. Dark glasses might have made it bearable, but could not possibly have resolved the earthward prospect into anything less than the heart of a fiery furnace. Indeed, it is very doubtful if the bewildered fugitive knew, in more than the most general way, where it was. Cut off by the guns to the south- east from retreat in that direction, but knowing that the North Sea and safety could be reached by driving to the north-east, it is more than probable that the harried raider found itself over the "Lion's Den" rather because it could not help it than by deliberate intent.
What a contrast was this blinded, reeling thing to those arrogantly purposeful raiders of a year ago! Supremely disdainful of gun and searchlight, these had prowled over London till the last of their bombs had been planted, and one of them had even circled back the better to see the ruin its passing had wrought. But this raider—far larger than its predecessors and flying at over twice as great a height though it was—dashed on its erratic course as though pursued by the vengeful spirits of those its harpy sisters had bombed to death in their beds. If it still had bombs to drop its commander either had no time or no heart for the job. Never have I seen an inanimate thing typify terror—the terror that must have gripped the hearts of its palpably flustered (to judge by the airship's movements) crew—like that staggering helpless maverick of a Zeppelin, when it finally found itself clutched in the tentacles of the searchlights of the aerial defences of London.
All this time the weird, uncanny silence that brooded over the streets before I had come indoors held the city in its spell. The watching thousands—nay, millions—kept their excitement in leash, and the propeller of the raider—muffled by the mists intervening between the earth and the 12000 feet at which it whirred—dulled to a drowsy drone. Into this tense silence the sudden fire of a hundred anti-aircraft guns— opening in unison as though at the pull of a single lanyard—cut in a blended roar like the Crack o' Doom; indeed, though few among those hushed watching millions realised it, it was literally the Crack o' Doom that was sounding. For perhaps a minute or a minute and a half the air was vibrant with the roar of hard-pumped guns and the shriek of speeding shell, the great sound from below drowning the sharper cracks from the steel-cold flashes in the upper air.
It was guns that were built for the job—not the hastily gathered and wholly inadequate artillery of a year ago—that were speaking now, and the voice was one of ordered, imperious authority. Range-finders had the marauder's altitude, and the information was being put at the disposal of guns that had the power to " deliver the goods" at that level. What a contrast the sequel was to that pitiful firing of the other raid! Only the opening shots were "shorts" or "wides" now, and ten seconds after the first gun a diamond-clear burst blinking out through a rift in the upper clouds told that the raider—to use a naval term—was "straddled," had shells exploding both above and below it. From that instant till the guns ceased to roar, seventy or eighty seconds later, the shells burst, lacing the air with golden glimmers, and meshed the flying raider in a fiery net.
For a few seconds it seemed to me that, close-woven as was the net of shell-bursts, the flashes came hardly as fast as the roar of the guns would seem to warrant, and I swept the heavens with my glasses in a search for other possible targets. But no other raider was in sight; there was no other "nodal centre" of gun-fire and searchlights. Suddenly the reason for the apparent discrepancy was clear to me. The flashes I saw (except for a few of the shrapnel bullets they were releasing) were only the misses; the hits I could not see. The long-awaited test was at its crucial stage. Empty of bombs and with half of its fuel consumed, the raider was at the zenith of its flight, and yet the guns were ranging it with ease. It was now a question of how much shell-fire the Zeppelin could stand.
In spite of the fact that the airship—so far as I could see through my glasses—did not appear to slow down or to be perceptibly racked by the gun-fire, I have no doubt what the end would have been if the test could have been pressed to its conclusion in an open country. But bringing a burning Zeppelin down across three or four blocks of thickly settled London was hardly a thing the Air Defence desired to do if it could possibly be avoided. The plan was carried to its conclusion with the almost mathematical precision that marked the preliminary searchlight work and gunnery.
From the moment that it had burst into sight the raider had been emitting clouds of white gas to hide itself from the searchlights and guns, while the plainly visible movements of its lateral planes seemed to indicate that it was making desperate efforts to climb still higher into the thinning upper air. Neither expedient was of much use. The swirling gas clouds might well have obscured a hovering airship, but never one that was rushing through the air at seventy miles an hour, while, far from increasing its altitude, there seemed to be a slight but steady loss from the moment the guns ceased until, two or three miles further along, it was hidden from sight for a minute by a low-hanging cloud. Undoubtedly the aim of the gunners had been to "hole," not to fire the marauder, and it must have been losing gas very rapidly even— as the climacteric moment of the attack approached— at the time increased buoyancy was most desirable.
The massed searchlights of London let go shortly after the gun-fire ceased, and now, as the raider came within their field, the more scattered lights of the northern suburbs wheeled up and fastened on. The fugitive changed its course from north to north-easterly about this time, and the swelling clouds of vapour left behind presently cut off its foreshortened length entirely from my view. A heavy ground mist appeared to prevail beyond the heights to the north, and in the diffused glow of the searchlights that strove to pierce this mask my glasses showed the ghostly shadows of flitting aeroplanes—manoeuvring for the death-thrust.
The ground mist (which did not, however, cover London proper) kept the full strength of the searchlights from the upper air, and it was in a sky of almost Stygian blackness that the final blow was sent home. The farmers of Hertfordshire tell weird stories of the detonations of bursting bombs striking their fields, but all these sounds were absorbed in the twenty-mile air-cushion that was now interposed between my vantage point and the final scene of action.
Not a sound, not a shadow, heralded the flare of yellow light which suddenly flashed out in the north-eastern heavens and spread latitudinally until the whole body of a Zeppelin—no small object even at twenty miles—stood out in glowing incandescence. Then a great sheet of pink-white flame shot up, and in the ripples . of rosy light which suffused the earth for scores of miles I could read the gilded lettering on my binoculars. This was undoubtedly the explosion of the ignited hydrogen of the main gas-bags, and immediately following it the great frame collapsed in the middle and began falling slowly toward the earth, burning now with a bright yellow flame, above which the curl of black smoke was distinctly visible. A lurid burst of light—doubtless from the exploding petrol tanks —flared up as the flaming mass struck the earth, and half a minute later the night, save for the questing searchlights to east and south, was as black as ever again.
Then perhaps the strangest thing of all occurred. London began to cheer. I should have been prepared for it in Paris, or Rome, or Berlin, or even New York, but that the Briton— who of all men in the world most fears the sound of his own voice lifted in unrestrained jubilation —was really cheering, and in millions, was almost too much. I pinched my arm to be sure that I had not dozed away, and, lost in wonder, forgot for a minute or two the great drama just enacted.
Under my window half a dozen Australian "Tommies" were rending the air with "coo- ees" and dancing around a lamp-post, while all along the street, from doorways and windows, exultant shouting could be heard. For several blocks in all directions the cheers rang out loud and clear, distinctly recognisable as such; the sound of the millions of throats farther afield came only as a heavy rumbling hum. Perhaps since the dawn of creation the air has not trembled with so strange a sound—a sound which, though entirely human in its origin, was still unhuman, unearthly, fantastic. Certainly never before in history—not even during the great volcanic eruptions—has so huge a number of people (the fall of the Zeppelin had been visible through a fifty- to seventy-five-mile radius in all directions, a region with probably from 10,000,000 to 15,000,000 inhabitants) been suddenly and intensely stirred by a single event.
It was undoubtedly the spectacularity of the unexpected coup that had made these normally repressed millions so suddenly and so violently vocal. Many—perhaps most—stopped cheering when they had had time to realise that a score of human beings were being burned to cinders in the heart of that flaming comet in the northeastern heavens; others—I knew the only recently restored tenements where some of them were—must have shouted in all the grimmer exultation for that very realisation. I can hardly say yet which stirred me more deeply, the fall of the Zeppelin itself or that stupendous burst of feeling aroused by its fall.
By taxi, milk-cart, tram, and any other conveyance that offered, but mostly on foot, I threaded highway and byway for the next four hours, and shortly after daybreak scrambled through the last of a dozen thorny hedgerows and found myself beside the still smouldering wreckage of the fallen raider. An orderly cordon of soldiers surrounding an acre of blackened and twisted metal, miles and miles of tangled wire, and a score or so of Flying Corps men already busily engaged loading the wreckage into waiting motor-lorries—that was about all there was to see. A ten-foot-square green tarpaulin covered all that could be gathered together of the airship's crew. Some of the fragments were readily recognisable as having once been the arms and legs and trunks of men; others were not. A man at my elbow stood gazing at the pitiful heap for a space, his brow puckered in thought. Presently he turned to me, a grim light in his eye, and spoke.
"Do you know," he said, "that these" (indicating the charred stumps under the square of canvas) "have just recalled to me the words Count Zeppelin is reported to have used at a great mass meeting called in Berlin to press for a more rigorous prosecution of the war against England by air, for a further increase of frightfulness? Leading two airship pilots to the front of the platform, he shouted to the crowd, 'Here are two men who were over London last night!' And the assembled thousands, so the despatch said, roared their applause and clamoured that the Zeppelins be sent again and again until the arrogant Englanders were brought to their knees. Well"— he paused and drew a deep breath as his eyes returned to the heap of blackened fragments—"it appears that they did send the Zeppelins again—more than ever were sent before—and now it is our turn to be presented to 'the men who were over London last night.' I wonder if the flare that consumed these poor devils was bright enough to pierce the black night that has settled over Germany?”
The tenseness passed out of the night, and— the raid was over. Who knows but what, so far as the threat to England is concerned, the passing of a Zeppelin marked also the passing of the Zeppelin? "
Originally from the book 'Many Fronts' edited by Lewis R. Freeman 1918.
This provocative piece captures the wonder, awe and terror of a night raid over London.
"In the year that had gone by since the first great air-raid on London we knew that much had been done in the way of strengthening the defences. Just what had been done we did not, of course, and do not, know. We knew that there were more and better guns and searchlights, and probably greatly improved means of anticipating the coming of the raiders and of following and reporting their movements after they did come. At the same time we also knew that the latest Zeppelin had been greatly improved; that it was larger, faster, capable of ascending to a greater altitude, and probably able to stand more and heavier gun-fire than its prototype of a year ago. It seemed to be a question, therefore, of whether or not the guns could range the raiders, and, if so, do them any vital damage when they did hit them. The aeroplane was an unknown quantity, and, in the popular mind at least, not seriously reckoned with. London knew that the crucial test would not come until an airship tried again to penetrate to the heart of the metropolitan area, and awaited the result calmly if not quite indifferently.
The Zeppelin raids of the spring and early summer, numerous as they had been, had done a negligible amount of military damage and scarcely more to civil property. The death list, too, had, mercifully, been very low. It seemed significant, however, that the main London defences had been avoided during all of this time, indicating, apparently, that the raiders were reluctant to lift the lid of the Pandora's box that was laid out so temptingly before them for fear of the possible consequences. Twice or thrice, watching with my glasses after I had been awakened by distant bomb explosions or gunfire, I had seen a shell-pocketed airship draw back, as a yellow dog refuses the challenge that his intrusion has provoked, and glide off into the darkness of some safer area. "Would they try it again?” was the question Londoners asked themselves as the dark of the moon came round each month, and, except for the comparatively few who had had personal experience of the terror and death that follow the swath of an air-raider, most of them seemed rather anxious to have the matter put to the test.
Last night—just twelve "darks-of-the-moon" after the first great raid of 1915—the test came. It was hardly a conclusive one, perhaps (though that may well have come before these lines find their way into print), but it was certainly highly illuminative. I write this on my return to London from viewing—twenty miles away—a tangled mass of wreckage and a heap of charred trunks that are all that remain of a Zeppelin and its crew which—whether by accident, intent, or the force of circumstances will probably never be known—rushed in where two others of its aerial sisters feared to fly, and paid the cost.
There was nothing of the surprise (to London, at least; as regards the ill-starred Zeppelin crew none can say) in last night's raid. The night grew more heavily overcast as the darkness deepened, and towards midnight stealthy little beams of hooded searchlights pirouetting on the eastern clouds told the home-wending Saturday night theatre crowd that, with the imminent approach of the raiders, London was lifting a corner of its mask of blackness and throwing out an open challenge to the enemy. This was the first time I had known the lights to precede the actual explosion of bombs, and the cool confidence of the thing suggested (as I heard one policeman tell another) that the defence had something "up their sleeves."
It was towards one in the morning when I finished my supper at a West End restaurant and started walking through the almost deserted streets to my hotel. London is anything but a bedlam after midnight, but the silence in the early hours of this morning was positively uncanny. Now, with the last of the 'buses gone and all trains stopped, only the muffled buzz of an occasional belated taxi—pushing on cautiously with hooded lights—broke the stillness.
Reaching my room I pulled on a sweater, ran up the curtain, laid my glass ready and seated myself at the window, the same window from which, a year ago, I had watched those two insolently contemptuous raiders sail across overhead and leave a blazing wake of death and destruction behind them. On that night, I reflected, I had felt the rush of air from the bombs, and—later—had watched the firemen extinguishing the flames and the ambulances carrying the wounded to the hospitals. Would it be like that to-night? I wondered (there was now no doubt that the raiders were near, for the searchlights had multiplied, and far to the south-east, though no detonations were audible, quick flashes told of scattering gun-fire), or would the defence have more of a word to say for itself this time f I looked to the eastern heavens where the shifting clouds were now "polka-dotted" with the fluttering golden motes of a score of searchlights, and thought I had found my answer.
There was no wheeling and reeling of the lights in wide circles, as a year ago, but rather a steady persistent stabbing at the clouds, each one appearing to keep to an allotted area of its own. "Stabbing" expresses the action exactly, and it recalled to me an occasion, a month ago, when a " Tommy," who was showing me through some captured dug-outs on the Somme, illustrated, with bayonet thrusts, the manner in which they had originally searched for Germans hiding under the straw mattresses. There was nothing "panicky" in the work of the lights this time, but only the suggestion of methodical, ordered, relentless vigilance.
"Encouraging as a preliminary," I said to myself; "now" (for the night was electric with import) "for the main event!"
There was not long to wait. To the south-east the gun-flashes had increased in frequency, followed by mist-dulled blurs of brightness in the clouds that told of bursting shells. Suddenly, through a rift in the clouds, I saw a new kind of glare—the earthward-launched beam of an airship's searchlight groping for its target—but the shifting mist-curtain intervened again even as one of the defending lights took up the challenge and flashed its own rapier ray in quick reply. Presently the muffled boom of bombs fleeted to my ears, and then the sharper rattle of a sudden gust of gun-fire. This was quickly followed by a confused roar of sound, evidently from many bombs dropped simultaneously or in quick succession, and I knew that one of two things had happened—either the raider had found its mark and was delivering "rapid fire," or the guns were making it so hot for the visitor that it had been compelled to dump its explosives and seek safety in flight. When a minute or more had gone by I felt sure that the latter had been scuttled, and that it was now only a question of which direction the flight was going to take.
Again the eastward searchlights gave me the answer. By twos and threes—I could not follow the order of the thing—the lights that had been "patrolling" the eastern sky moved over and took their station around a certain low-hanging cloud to the south. The murky sheet of cumulonimbus seemed to pale and dissolve in the concentrated rays, and then, right into the focus of golden glow formed by the dancing light motes running wild and blind as a bull charges the red mantle masking the matador, darted a huge Zeppelin.
Perhaps never before in all time has a single object been the centre of so blinding a glare. It seemed that the optic nerve must wither in so fierce a light, and certainly no unprotected eye could have opened to it. Dark glasses might have made it bearable, but could not possibly have resolved the earthward prospect into anything less than the heart of a fiery furnace. Indeed, it is very doubtful if the bewildered fugitive knew, in more than the most general way, where it was. Cut off by the guns to the south- east from retreat in that direction, but knowing that the North Sea and safety could be reached by driving to the north-east, it is more than probable that the harried raider found itself over the "Lion's Den" rather because it could not help it than by deliberate intent.
What a contrast was this blinded, reeling thing to those arrogantly purposeful raiders of a year ago! Supremely disdainful of gun and searchlight, these had prowled over London till the last of their bombs had been planted, and one of them had even circled back the better to see the ruin its passing had wrought. But this raider—far larger than its predecessors and flying at over twice as great a height though it was—dashed on its erratic course as though pursued by the vengeful spirits of those its harpy sisters had bombed to death in their beds. If it still had bombs to drop its commander either had no time or no heart for the job. Never have I seen an inanimate thing typify terror—the terror that must have gripped the hearts of its palpably flustered (to judge by the airship's movements) crew—like that staggering helpless maverick of a Zeppelin, when it finally found itself clutched in the tentacles of the searchlights of the aerial defences of London.
All this time the weird, uncanny silence that brooded over the streets before I had come indoors held the city in its spell. The watching thousands—nay, millions—kept their excitement in leash, and the propeller of the raider—muffled by the mists intervening between the earth and the 12000 feet at which it whirred—dulled to a drowsy drone. Into this tense silence the sudden fire of a hundred anti-aircraft guns— opening in unison as though at the pull of a single lanyard—cut in a blended roar like the Crack o' Doom; indeed, though few among those hushed watching millions realised it, it was literally the Crack o' Doom that was sounding. For perhaps a minute or a minute and a half the air was vibrant with the roar of hard-pumped guns and the shriek of speeding shell, the great sound from below drowning the sharper cracks from the steel-cold flashes in the upper air.
It was guns that were built for the job—not the hastily gathered and wholly inadequate artillery of a year ago—that were speaking now, and the voice was one of ordered, imperious authority. Range-finders had the marauder's altitude, and the information was being put at the disposal of guns that had the power to " deliver the goods" at that level. What a contrast the sequel was to that pitiful firing of the other raid! Only the opening shots were "shorts" or "wides" now, and ten seconds after the first gun a diamond-clear burst blinking out through a rift in the upper clouds told that the raider—to use a naval term—was "straddled," had shells exploding both above and below it. From that instant till the guns ceased to roar, seventy or eighty seconds later, the shells burst, lacing the air with golden glimmers, and meshed the flying raider in a fiery net.
For a few seconds it seemed to me that, close-woven as was the net of shell-bursts, the flashes came hardly as fast as the roar of the guns would seem to warrant, and I swept the heavens with my glasses in a search for other possible targets. But no other raider was in sight; there was no other "nodal centre" of gun-fire and searchlights. Suddenly the reason for the apparent discrepancy was clear to me. The flashes I saw (except for a few of the shrapnel bullets they were releasing) were only the misses; the hits I could not see. The long-awaited test was at its crucial stage. Empty of bombs and with half of its fuel consumed, the raider was at the zenith of its flight, and yet the guns were ranging it with ease. It was now a question of how much shell-fire the Zeppelin could stand.
In spite of the fact that the airship—so far as I could see through my glasses—did not appear to slow down or to be perceptibly racked by the gun-fire, I have no doubt what the end would have been if the test could have been pressed to its conclusion in an open country. But bringing a burning Zeppelin down across three or four blocks of thickly settled London was hardly a thing the Air Defence desired to do if it could possibly be avoided. The plan was carried to its conclusion with the almost mathematical precision that marked the preliminary searchlight work and gunnery.
From the moment that it had burst into sight the raider had been emitting clouds of white gas to hide itself from the searchlights and guns, while the plainly visible movements of its lateral planes seemed to indicate that it was making desperate efforts to climb still higher into the thinning upper air. Neither expedient was of much use. The swirling gas clouds might well have obscured a hovering airship, but never one that was rushing through the air at seventy miles an hour, while, far from increasing its altitude, there seemed to be a slight but steady loss from the moment the guns ceased until, two or three miles further along, it was hidden from sight for a minute by a low-hanging cloud. Undoubtedly the aim of the gunners had been to "hole," not to fire the marauder, and it must have been losing gas very rapidly even— as the climacteric moment of the attack approached— at the time increased buoyancy was most desirable.
The massed searchlights of London let go shortly after the gun-fire ceased, and now, as the raider came within their field, the more scattered lights of the northern suburbs wheeled up and fastened on. The fugitive changed its course from north to north-easterly about this time, and the swelling clouds of vapour left behind presently cut off its foreshortened length entirely from my view. A heavy ground mist appeared to prevail beyond the heights to the north, and in the diffused glow of the searchlights that strove to pierce this mask my glasses showed the ghostly shadows of flitting aeroplanes—manoeuvring for the death-thrust.
The ground mist (which did not, however, cover London proper) kept the full strength of the searchlights from the upper air, and it was in a sky of almost Stygian blackness that the final blow was sent home. The farmers of Hertfordshire tell weird stories of the detonations of bursting bombs striking their fields, but all these sounds were absorbed in the twenty-mile air-cushion that was now interposed between my vantage point and the final scene of action.
Not a sound, not a shadow, heralded the flare of yellow light which suddenly flashed out in the north-eastern heavens and spread latitudinally until the whole body of a Zeppelin—no small object even at twenty miles—stood out in glowing incandescence. Then a great sheet of pink-white flame shot up, and in the ripples . of rosy light which suffused the earth for scores of miles I could read the gilded lettering on my binoculars. This was undoubtedly the explosion of the ignited hydrogen of the main gas-bags, and immediately following it the great frame collapsed in the middle and began falling slowly toward the earth, burning now with a bright yellow flame, above which the curl of black smoke was distinctly visible. A lurid burst of light—doubtless from the exploding petrol tanks —flared up as the flaming mass struck the earth, and half a minute later the night, save for the questing searchlights to east and south, was as black as ever again.
Then perhaps the strangest thing of all occurred. London began to cheer. I should have been prepared for it in Paris, or Rome, or Berlin, or even New York, but that the Briton— who of all men in the world most fears the sound of his own voice lifted in unrestrained jubilation —was really cheering, and in millions, was almost too much. I pinched my arm to be sure that I had not dozed away, and, lost in wonder, forgot for a minute or two the great drama just enacted.
Under my window half a dozen Australian "Tommies" were rending the air with "coo- ees" and dancing around a lamp-post, while all along the street, from doorways and windows, exultant shouting could be heard. For several blocks in all directions the cheers rang out loud and clear, distinctly recognisable as such; the sound of the millions of throats farther afield came only as a heavy rumbling hum. Perhaps since the dawn of creation the air has not trembled with so strange a sound—a sound which, though entirely human in its origin, was still unhuman, unearthly, fantastic. Certainly never before in history—not even during the great volcanic eruptions—has so huge a number of people (the fall of the Zeppelin had been visible through a fifty- to seventy-five-mile radius in all directions, a region with probably from 10,000,000 to 15,000,000 inhabitants) been suddenly and intensely stirred by a single event.
It was undoubtedly the spectacularity of the unexpected coup that had made these normally repressed millions so suddenly and so violently vocal. Many—perhaps most—stopped cheering when they had had time to realise that a score of human beings were being burned to cinders in the heart of that flaming comet in the northeastern heavens; others—I knew the only recently restored tenements where some of them were—must have shouted in all the grimmer exultation for that very realisation. I can hardly say yet which stirred me more deeply, the fall of the Zeppelin itself or that stupendous burst of feeling aroused by its fall.
By taxi, milk-cart, tram, and any other conveyance that offered, but mostly on foot, I threaded highway and byway for the next four hours, and shortly after daybreak scrambled through the last of a dozen thorny hedgerows and found myself beside the still smouldering wreckage of the fallen raider. An orderly cordon of soldiers surrounding an acre of blackened and twisted metal, miles and miles of tangled wire, and a score or so of Flying Corps men already busily engaged loading the wreckage into waiting motor-lorries—that was about all there was to see. A ten-foot-square green tarpaulin covered all that could be gathered together of the airship's crew. Some of the fragments were readily recognisable as having once been the arms and legs and trunks of men; others were not. A man at my elbow stood gazing at the pitiful heap for a space, his brow puckered in thought. Presently he turned to me, a grim light in his eye, and spoke.
"Do you know," he said, "that these" (indicating the charred stumps under the square of canvas) "have just recalled to me the words Count Zeppelin is reported to have used at a great mass meeting called in Berlin to press for a more rigorous prosecution of the war against England by air, for a further increase of frightfulness? Leading two airship pilots to the front of the platform, he shouted to the crowd, 'Here are two men who were over London last night!' And the assembled thousands, so the despatch said, roared their applause and clamoured that the Zeppelins be sent again and again until the arrogant Englanders were brought to their knees. Well"— he paused and drew a deep breath as his eyes returned to the heap of blackened fragments—"it appears that they did send the Zeppelins again—more than ever were sent before—and now it is our turn to be presented to 'the men who were over London last night.' I wonder if the flare that consumed these poor devils was bright enough to pierce the black night that has settled over Germany?”
The tenseness passed out of the night, and— the raid was over. Who knows but what, so far as the threat to England is concerned, the passing of a Zeppelin marked also the passing of the Zeppelin? "
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