125 Wade Guns p. 31.
126 Bernard Livermore Long ’Un – A Damn Bad Soldier (Batley, West Yorkshire, 1974) p. 54.
127 Hawkings From Ypres p. 64.
128 Jones In Parenthesis p. 205.
129 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 95.
130 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 149.
131 Ogle Fateful Battle Line p. 141.
132 Campbell Cannon’s Mouth p. 41.
133 Graves Goodbye p. 86.
134 Blacker Have You Forgotten p. 65.
135 Blacker Have You Forgotten p. 74.
136 Shephard Sergeant Major’s War pp. 26, 56, 57.
137 See outline pay scales in Field Service Pocket Book 1914 p. 179. Military pay was (and remains) more complex than it might seem, with trade and proficiency additions enhancing basic pay, and an assortment of deductions (their reason often not clear to the victim) reducing it.
138 Alexander Barrie War Underground: The Tunnellers of the Western. Front (Staplehurst 2000) p. 40.
139 A. V. Bullock Papers.
140 French Gone for a Soldier p. 54.
141 Adams Nothing of Importance p. 86.
142 Livermore Long ’Un p. 58.
143 Dolden Cannon Fodder p. 77.
144 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 34.
145 Dunn The War p. 300.
146 Burgoyne Diaries p. 62.
147 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 99.
148 Dolden Cannon Fodder p. 100.
149 Dolden Cannon Fodder p. 69.
150 Dolden Cannon Fodder p. 79.
151 Dolden Cannon Fodder pp. 82–3.
152 Coppard With a Machine Gun p. 44.
153 Burgoyne Diaries p. 190.
154 Rogerson Twelve Days p. 50.
155 Hawkings From Ypres pp. 36, 75.
156 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 43.
157 Blacker Have You Forgotten p. 70.
158 Dunn The War p. 471.
159 George Fortune account, private collection.
160 Ogle Fateful Battle Line pp. 35–6.
161 Quoted in Moynihan Armageddon p. 21.
162 Richards Old Soldiers pp. 66–7.
163 Burgoyne Diaries p. 96.
164 Ronald Ginns Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.
165 Baynes and Maclean Tale of Two Captains p. 136.
166 Hodges Men of 18 p. 106.
167 Edmund Blunden Undertones of War (London 1965) p. 98.
168 Martin Poor Bloody Infantry p. 79.
169 Quoted in James Sambrook (ed.) With the Rank and Pay of a Sapper (London 1998) p. 51.
170 Adams Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.
171 Reith Wearing Spurs p. 68.
172 Burgoyne Diaries p. 84.
173 Livermore Long ’Un pp. 54–5.
174 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 44.
175 Dolden Cannon Fodder p. 48.
176 Dolden Cannon Fodder p. 48.
177 Jones Papers.
178 Jones In Parenthesis p. 203.
179 Bullock Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.
180 Hodges Men of 18 p. 105.
181 Jones In Parenthesis p. 206.
182 Ginns Papers Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.
183 Jones In Parenthesis p. 75.
184 H. M. Stanford Letters, private collection.
185 Quoted in Moynihan Armageddon p. 22.
186 Graves Goodbye p. 85.
187 Crozier Brass Hat p. 123.
188 Carrington Subaltern’s War p. 83.
189 Richards Old Soldiers pp. 100–1.
190 Nicholson Behind the Lines p. 291.
191 Thomas Penrose Marks The Laughter Goes from Life (London 1977) p. 124.
192 Vaughan Some Desperate Glory.
193 Reith Wearing Spurs p. 53.170
194 Burgoyne Diaries p. 31.
195 Underhill A Year p. 26.
196 Ernest Parker Into Battle 1914–18 (London 1984) p. 36.
197 Burgoyne Diaries p. 151.
198 Livermore Long ’Un pp. 6r-2.
199 Guy Chapman Passionate Prodigality p. 205.
200 Crozier Brass Hat pp. 128–9.
201 Crozier Brass Hat pp. 72–3. George Gaffikin died bravely at the head of his company when the 36th Division stormed the Schwaben Redoubt on 1 July 1916.
202 Nicholson Behind the Lines p. 291.
203 Carrington Soldier from the Wars P. 99
204 Ashurst My Bit pp. 111–13.
205 Lucy Devil pp. 81–3.
206 Richards Old Soldiers p. 14.
207 Edward Gleichen The Doings of The Fifteenth Infantry Brigade (Edinburgh 1917) p. 14.
208 Aubrey Herbert Mons, Anzae and Kut (London 1920) p. 20.
209 De Boltz Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.
210 Abraham Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.
211 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 39.
212 Abraham Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.
213 Dolden Cannon Fodder p. 112.
214 Douglas Gill ‘Mutiny at Etaples Base in 1917’ in Past and Present No. 69 p. 89.
215 Douie Weary Road p. 39.
216 Livermore Long ’Un p. 46.
217 French Gone For a Soldier pp. 26–7.
218 Livermore Long ’Un pp. 46–7.
219 Dolden Cannon Fodder p. 14.
220 Reverend Pat Mc Cormick ‘My Diary of the War to November 1916’, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum. Shine in this context means noise, as in Kipling’s lines: When shaking their bustles like ladies so fine,
The guns of the enemy wheel into line
Shoot low at the limbers and don’t mind the shine
For noise never startles the soldier …
221 Baynes and Maclean Tale of Two Captains p. 95.
222 Graves Goodbye p. 159.
223 Graves Goodbye p. 195.
224 Hanbury Sparrow Land-Locked Lake p. 213.
225 Calloway, Quoted in Alan Wilkinson The Church of England and the First World War (London 1978) p. 44.
226 Blacker Have You Forgotten p. 157
227 De Boltz Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.
228 Seton-Hutchison Warrior p. 224.
229 Henry Williamson Love and the Loveless (London 1958) p. 252.
230 H. Owen and J. Bell (eds) Wilfred Owen: Collected Letters (London 1967) p. 521.
231 Carrington Soldier from the Wars p. 245.
232 C. T. Mason ‘War Journal’, private collection p. 85.
233 Parker Into Battle p. 86.
234 Percy Croney Soldier’s Luck (London 1965) p. 173.
235 The BBC series The Monocled Mutineer gave a starring role to Percy Topliss, although there is no evidence that he was within a hundred miles of Etaples at the time.
236 Corns and Hughes-Wilson Blindfold and Alone p. 393.
237 Carrington Soldier from the Wars p. 199
238 I. G. Andrew Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.
239 Dunham Long Carry p. 92.
240 V. F. Eberle My Sapper Venture (London 1973) p. 103.
241 Livermore Long ’Un p. 55.
242 Reith Wearing Spurs p. 49.
243 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 83.
244 Chapman Passionate Prodigality p. 18.
245 French Gone for a Soldier p. 37.
246 Ogle Fateful Battle Line pp. 34–5
247 Parker Into Battle p. 45.
248 Hawkings From Ypres p. 65.
249 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 24.
250 Burgoyne Diaries p. 156.
251 Burgoyne Diaries p. 160.
252 Tyndale-Biscoe Gunner Subaltern p. 113.
253 Graves Goodbye pp. 106–7.
254 Campbell Cannon’s Mouth pp. 28–30.
255 Blacker Have You Forgotten pp. 230–1.
256 Quoted in Dunn The War p. 109.
257 Beckett and Si
mpson Nation in Arms p. 82.
258 De Boltz Papers.
259 Quoted in McCleary (ed.) Dear Amy p. 183.
260 Douie The Weary Road p. 196.
261 Dunn The War p. 159.
262 Dunn The War p. 309.
263 Hanbury-Sparrow Land-Locked Lake p. 293.
264 Jack General Jack’s Diary p. 256.
265 Cyril Mason ‘War Journal’, private collection pp. 31, 90.
266 Sassoon Infantry Officer p. 19.
267 Adams Nothing of Importance p. 129.
268 James Agate L of C: Being the letters of a temporary officer in the Army Service Corps (London 1917) pp. 149, 160.
269 Carton de Wiart Happy Odyssey pp. 86–7.
270 Ogle Fateful Battle Line p. 168.
271 Seton-Hutchison Warrior pp. 67–8, 212.
272 Tom Burke ‘In Memory of Tom Kettle’ in The Blue Cap: Journal of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association (Vol. 9, Sept. 2002) p. 7.
273 Coppard With a Machine Gun p. 68.
274 Hale Ordeal p. 113.
275 Nicholson Behind the Lines p. 232.
Steel and Fire
1 King’s Regulations 1912 revised 1914 para 1695.
2 Turner Accrington Pals p. 98.
3 Personal account of J. P. Clingo, private collection. Clingo was commissioned into the Lincolns in late 1914, and spent most of the war on the Western Front, winning an MC in 1918.
4 Lucy Devil p. 182.
5 Extracts from General Routine Orders, 1 January 1918, Part 1 p. 14.
6 Graham C. Greenwell An Infant in Arms (London 1972) p. 157.
7 Blacker Have You Forgotten p. 43. He was right to be gloomy, for Robin had indeed been killed.
8 Nevil Macready Annals of An Active Life (2 vols, London 1924) II p. 128.
9 Extracts from General Routine Orders, 1 January 1918, Part 1 p. 65.
10 McCleary (ed.) Dear Amy pp. 19, 27.
11 Griffith Mametz p. 45.
12 Graves Goodbye p. 161.
13 Hawkings Ypres to Cambrai p. go.
14 Livermore Long ’Un p. 62.
15 Quoted in Malcolm Brown The Imperial War Museum Book of the Western Front (London 1993) p. 264.
16 Arthur Behrend As from Kemmel Hill (London 1963) pp. 138–9.
17 Campbell Cannon ’s Mouth p. 49.
18 Huntley Gordon The Unreturning Army: A Field Gunner in Flanders 1917–1918 (London 1969) p. 57.
19 Dunn The War p. 432.
20 The NCO’s Musketry Small Book (London 1915) pp. 3, 103.
21 Jones In Parenthesis p. 184.
22 Musketry Regulations Part I 1909 Reprinted 1914 p. 152.
23 Ashurst My Bit pp. 26–7.
24 Bullock Papers.
25 Turner Accrington Pals p. 99.
26 Lucy Devil p. 180.
27 Bullock Papers.
28 Groom Poor Bloody Infantry (London 1978) p. 104.
29 Preliminary Notes on the Tactical Lessons of Recent Operations SS110 (July 1916) p. 2.
30 Infantry Training 1914 pp. 134, 146. Emphasis in original.
31 Hanbury Sparrow Land-Locked Lake p. 213.
32 Liddell Diary, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.
33 Graves Goobye p. 175.
34 Seton-Hutchison Warrior p. 135.
35 C. Dudley Ward History of the Welsh Guards (London 1920) p. 119.
36 Carrington Soldier from the Wars p. 176.
37 Martin Middlebrook The First Day on the Somme (London 1971) p. 184.
38 Crozier Brass Hat p. 228.
39 Billy Congreve Armageddon Road: A VC’s Diary 1914–1916 (ed. Terry Norman) (London 1982) p. 165. Hartlepool was amongst the coastal towns raided by German cruisers in December 1914, and some men from 9/DLI were killed.
40 Middlebrook First Day p. 162.
41 Blacker Have You Forgotten p. 174.
42 It is a reflection on the weapon’s enduring, ‘eternally-obsolescent’ merit that a Scots Guards company commander bayoneted two Argentinian soldiers during a night attack in the Falklands in 1982. By then weapons were far more sophisticated than in 1918, but the need to put steel in the soul was as strong as ever.
43 Edmonds Military Operations, 1915 I p. 71.
44 Burgoyne Diaries p. 208.
45 Dolden Cannon Fodder p. 28.
46 Anthony Saunders The Weapons of Trench Warfare 1914–18 (Stroud 1999) p. ix
47 Knowledge For War p. 78.
48 Dunn The War p. 148.
49 The design was modified in the inter-war period to produce the 36 Grenade, which survived for most of my own military service, and even its replacement embodies the same essential features.
50 Ashurst My Bit p. 126.
51 Dunn The War p. 332.
52 Philip J. Haythornthwaite The World War One Source Book (London 1997) p. 195.
53 Chapman Passionate Prodigality p. 60,
54 Griffith Battle Tactics p. 123.
55 Coppard With a Machine Gun p. 103.
56 Coppard With a Machine Gun p. 66.
57 Bickersreth (ed.) Diaries p. 112.
58 Seton-Hutchison Warrior pp. 209, 215.
59 Seton-Hutchison Warrior p. 210.
60 Coppard With a Machine Gun p. 110.
61 Coppard With a Machine Gun p. 127.
62 The cavalry preferred the Hotchkiss, with its distinctive rigid ammunition feed strip. It was arguably a better-designed weapon than the Lewis, but its ammunition strip was very susceptible to dirt.
63 Quoted in Nigel Cave Passchendaele: The Fight for the Village (London 1997) p. 74.
64 Dudley Ward Welsh Guards p. 150.
65 Dudley Ward Welsh Guards p. 151.
66 Len Trawin Early British Quick-Firing Artillery (Hemel Hempstead 1997) p. 248.
67 Bidwell and Graham Fire-Power p. 11.
68 Lutyens Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.
69 Helm Papers, private collection.
70 Bickersteth (ed.) Bickersteth Diaries p. 100.
71 Osburn Unwilling Passenger p. 38.
72 Burgoyne Diaries p. 129.
73 Dunn The War p. 359.
74 Shephard Sergeant Major’s War p. 26.
75 Dunn The War p. 401.
76 Shephard Sergeant Major’s War p. 52.
77 Quoted in Terence Denman Ireland’s Unknown Soldiers (Blackrock, Co. Dublin, 1992) p. 98.
78 Dunn The War p. 398.
79 Blacker Have You Forgotten p. 260.
80 Ogle Fateful Battle Line pp. 103–4.
81 Statistics p. 451 for a summary of gun and howitzer delivery, and pp. 466–89 for notes on munitions supply.
82 Field Service Regulations 1909 Part I p. 143. Emphasis in original.
83 Quoted in David T. Zabecki Steel Wind: Colonel Georg Bruchmuller and the Birth of Modern Artillery (London 1994) p. 74
84 Arthur Behrend As from Kemmel Hill (London 1963) p. 53.
85 Rudolf Binding A Fatalist At War (London 1929) p. 194.
86 Junger Storm of Steel p. 96.
87 Westmann Surgeon p. 95.
88 Moyne Staff Officer p. 116.
89 Quoted in Prior and Wilson Command p. 197.
90 Feilding War Letters p. 299.
91 Moyne Staff Officer p. 112.
92 Talbot Kelly Subaltern’s Odyssey p. 128.
93 Jones In Parenthesis p. 197.
94 Campbell Cannon’s Mouth p. 25.
95 Campbell Cannon’s Mouth p. 162.
96 Campbell Cannon’s Mouth pp. 47–8.
97 Stanford to ‘John’, 7 July 1916, Stanford Papers, private collection.
98 Stanford to his mother, 8 July 1916, Stanford Papers, private collection.
99 Wade War of the Guns p. 92.
100 Campbell Cannon’s Mouth pp. 168–173.
101 Behrend As From Kemmel Hill p. 72.
102 Tyndale-Biscoe Gunner Subaltern pp. 96–9.
103 Denman Ireland’s Unknown Soldiers p. 66.
104 Campbell Cannon’s Mout
h p. 71.
105 Campbell Cannon’s Mouth p. 57.
106 Talbot Kelly Subaltern’s Odyssey p. 108.
107 Behrend As From Kemmel Hill p. 61.
108 Sir Martin Farndale History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, The Western Front 1914–18 (Woolwich 1986) p. 210.
109 Shephard Sergeant Major’s War p. 40.
110 Stanhope Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.
111 Graves Goodbye p. 123.
112 Ginns Papers.
113 Hawkings From Ypres p. 68.
114 Livermore Long ’Un p. 51.
115 Lieutenant W. Drury, 4/KSLI ‘Gas: Western Command Gas School’, private collection.
116 Roe Accidental Soldiers p. 62.
117 Dunn The War pp. 390–1.
118 Charles Arnold From Mons to Messines and Beyond (London 1985) p. 51.
119 Quoted in Donald Richter Chemical Soldiers: British Gas Warfare in World War I (Lawrence, Kansas, 1992) p. 211.
120 Littlewood Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.
121 Richter Chemical Soldiers p. 182.
122 Richter Chemical Soldiers p. 190.
123 Bourne Who’s Who p. 117.
124 Hanbury Sparrow Land-Locked Lake pp. 309–10.
125 Martin Poor Bloody Infantry pp. 55–6.
126 Bullock Papers.
127 Dunn The War p. 198.
128 SS 135 The Division in Attack, November 1918, pp. 69–71.
129 Martin Poor Bloody Infantry p. 84.
130 Brooks Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.
131 V. F. Eberle My Sapper Venture (London 1973) p. 130.
132 These remain the colours of the Royal Tank Regiment’s stable belt. They also explain (though they cannot excuse) a drink called the Royal Tank, made up of carefully-poured layers of Tia Maria, Cherry Brandy and Crème de Menthe. Its effect is shattering.
133 Haig Dispatches p. 155.
134 John Foley ‘A7V Sturmpanzerwagen’ in Stevenson Pugh (ed.) Armour in Profile (Windsor 1968).
135 Quoted in Malcolm Brown The Imperial War Museum Book of 1918, the Year of Victory (London 1998) pp. 198–9, 202–3.
136 Victor Archard Papers, Tank Museum, Bovington.
137 B. L. Henriques Papers, Tank Museum, Bovington.
138 C. B. Arnold Papers, Tank Museum, Bovington.
139 Griffith British Fighting Methods p. 138.
140 In much of what follows I gratefully acknowledge my debt to my PhD student David Kenyon: this is not the first occasion on which the roles of teacher and taught have been reversed.
141 Snelling Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum; Home Diary p. 38.
142 F. M. Edwards Notes on the Training, Organisation and Equipment of Cavalry for War (London 1910) p. 16.