Tommy (86 page)

3
J. M. Craster
Fifteen Rounds a Minute: The Grenadiers at War 1914
(London 1976) pp. 2–3.

4
Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Hamilton
Origins and History of the First Grenadier Guards
(London 1874) p. 3.

5
Craster
Fifteen Rounds
p. 5.

6
Feilding
War Letters
p. 4.

7
Graham
A Private
p. 115.

8
Graham
A Private
p. 266. ‘Little Sparta' is Graham's nickname for the guards depot at Caterham, where recruits of all foot guards battalions were trained.

9
Papers of Lt Col. K. A. Oswald, Commanding Officer, 3/4th Queen's, Queen's Royal Surrey Regiment Museum, Clandon Park, Guildford.

10
Papers of Lt Col. K. A. Oswald.

11
‘History of 1/4th Battalion the Queen's Royal West Surrey Regiment', Queen's Royal Surrey Regiment Museum, Clandon Park, Guildford.

12
Unpublished company history quoted in William Turner
Accrington Pals
(London 1992) p. 29.

13
A. S. Durrant Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

14
Lancelot Dykes Spicer
Letters From France 1914–1918
(London 1979) p. xiii.

15
Quoted in Turner
Accrington Pals
pp. 67–8.

16
Quoted in Turner
Accrington Pals
p. 68.

17
Quoted in Turner
Accrington Pals
p. 145

18
Edmonds
Military Operations, 1916
(2 vols 19) I p.

19
Turner
Accrington Pals
p. 210.

20
P. J. Campbell
In The Cannon's Mouth
(London 1986) p. 127.

21
Quoted in Michael Moynihan (ed.)
Greater Love
(London 1980) p. 115.

22
R. B. Miller account, private collection.

23
Quoted in Turner
Accrington Pals
p. 141.

24
Quoted in Turner
Accrington Pals
p. 116.

25
Quoted in Howard Pease
The History of the Northumberland (Hussars) Yeomanry
(London 1924) p. 116.

26
Dunn
War
p. 185.

27
Dunn
War
p. 484.

28
Dunn
War
p. 356.

29
Lieutenant Colonel Peter Crocker ‘Some thoughts on the Royal Welch Fusiliers in the Great War', unpublished.

30
David Thompson ‘The 2nd Battalion Durham Light Infantry in the Great War' in
Stand To,
The Journal of the Western Front Association (no. 65, Sept. 2002).

31
John S. Sly ‘The men of 1914',
Stand To
(no. 34, Summer 1992).

32
R. H. Mottram ‘Ten Years Ago: Armistice and other memories, forming a pendant to
The Spanish Farm Trilogy
(London 1928) p. 113.

33
Lord Moran
The Anatomy of Courage
(London 1945) p. 64.

34
Moran
Anatomy
p. 134.

35
Though there are lies, damned lies and statistics: it was more dangerous to be a flying member of the Royal Flying Corps (which had a total strength of only 121, 518 in January 1918) than to be in the infantry, 1,750,729 strong on the same date.
Statistics
p. 230.

36
Peter Simkins ‘The Four Armies 1914–18' in D. G. Chandler (ed.)
The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Army
(Oxford 1994) p. 259.

37
Ernest Shephard
A Sergeant Major's War
(Ramsbury, Wilts, 1987) p. 124.

38
Dunn
War
p. 245.

39
Quoted in Judith Fay and Richard Martin (eds.)
The Jubilee Boy
(London 1987) pp. 89–90.

40
Norman Gladden
Ypres 1917
(London 1967) pp. 16, 40.

41
Feilding
War Letters
pp. 290–1.

42
De Boltz Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

43
P. Smith Papers, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

44
Frederick James Hodges
Men of 18 in 1918
(Ilfracombe 1988) p. 17.

45
Hodges
Men of 18
p. 216.

46
William Fisher
Requiem for Will
(privately printed, Monmouth 2002) pp. 4–5.

47
J. B. Priestley
Margin Released
(London 1962) p. 32.

48
Fisher
Requiem
p. 62.

49
Quoted in Les Carlyon
Gallipoli
(Sydney 2001) p. 270.

50
John Cusack and Ivor Herbert
Scarlet Fever: A Lifetime with Horses
(London 1972) pp. 8, 13.

51
Arthur Osburn
Unwilling Passenger
(London 1932) p. 263. But J. C. Dunn, for much of the war RMO of 2/Royal Welch Fusiliers, had also served in the ranks in the Boer War and saw the First World War in a less gloomy light.

52
William Woodruff
The Road to Nab End
(London 2002) p. 12.

53
Joseph Garvey ‘Memoirs of a Nonentity', unpublished typescript, private collection, pp. 2–3.

54
Unpublished account by George Fortune, private collection.

55
Sleeve notes to Mike Nicholson
Stone by Stone,
Cilletune Music, West Chitlington, West Sussex, 2001–2.

56
Quoted in Flora Thompson
Lark Rise to Candleford
(London 1979) p. 10.

57
Thompson
Lark Rise
pp. 47–9, 54, 241. Private Edwin Timms, Canadian Infantry, was killed near Ypres on 26 April 1916 at the age of thirty-six.

58
John Baynes
Morale
(London 1967) pp. 212–13.

59
J. M. Winter
The Great War and the British People
(London 1985) pp. 50–3.

60
Jay Winter ‘Army and Society: The Demographic Context' in Ian F. W. Beckett and Keith Simpson (eds)
A Nation in Arms
(Manchester 1985) p. 200.

61
Standish Meacham
A Life Apart: The English Working Class 1890–1914
(London 1977) p. 58.

62
Henri Barbusse
Le Feu
(Paris 1917) p. 23. Author's translation.

63
Stephen Westmann
Surgeon with the Kaiser's Army
(London 1968) p. 24.

64
Statistics
p. 30.

65
Osbert Sitwell
Great Morning
(London 1948) p. 259.

66
Frank Richards
Old Soldier Sahib
(London 1936) p. 23.

67
For the structure of the general staff see
King's Regulations and Orders for the Army 1912, Revised August 1914
(London 1914).

68
Cusack and Herbert
Scarlet Fever
p. 16.

69
Herbert Wootton questionnaire compiled during my research for
Firing Line
(London 1985).

70
R. A. Lloyd questionnaire compiled during research for
Firing Line.

71
Richards
Old Soldier Sahib
pp. 21–2.

72
R. G. Garrod Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotheron Library, University of Leeds.

73
W. J. Nicholson Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

74
Lucy
Devil
p. 15.

75
Garvey ‘Memoirs', pp. 2–3.

76
Lucy
Devil
pp. 37–8.

77
Garvey ‘Memoirs' p. 14.

78
Garrod Papers, Liddle Archive.

79
R. Chant Papers, Liddle Archive, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.

80
Chant Papers.

81
‘Traditions, Treasures and Personalities of the Regiment', Queen's Royal Surrey Regiment Museum, Clandon Park, 2001.

82
Wootton questionnaire.

83
Hanbury Sparrow questionnaire.

84
Quoted in Sir George Barrow
The Fire of Life.
(London 1941) p. 14.

85
Richards
Old Soldier Sahib
p. 25. The magazine was where the battalion's ammunition was stored, and forming fours was a drill movement. Soldiers of a later generation added a 17-pounder gun to the collection.

86
A wad was certainly a sandwich in 1914, though in my own time in NAAFI queues in the 1960s it had been transformed into a piece of cake.

87
Lucy
Devil
p. 59.

88
Percy Croney
Soldier's Luck
(Exeter 1965) p. 137.

89
Richards
Old Soldier Sahib
pp. 39–40

90
Richards
Old Soldier Sahib
p. 32.

91
Con Costello
A Most Delightful Station: The British Army and the Curragh of Kildare, Ireland 1855–1922
(Cork 1999) pp. 149–74.

92
Richards
Old Soldier Sahib
pp. 109–10.

93
Private information from an RSM of The Queen's Regiment. Thank you, Jack, for this and for so much else.

94
Costello
Curragh
p. 261.

95
Lucy
Devil
p. 63.

96
Hodges
Men of 18
p. 50.

97
Ian F. W. Beckett and Keith Simpson (eds)
A Nation in Arms
(Manchester 1985) p. 39.

98
Beckett and Simpson (eds)
Nation in Arms
(p. 91).

99
Quoted in John Connell
Wavell: Soldier and Scholar
(London 1964) p. 34.

100
Major General M. F. Rimington
Our Cavalry
(London 1912) p. 18

101
Quoted in Beckett and Simpson (eds)
Nation in Arms
p. 67.

102
Order of Merit in the Papers of Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Hutton, Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum.

103
John Baynes and Hugh Maclean
A Tale of Two Captains
(Edinburgh 1990) pp. 9, 22.

104
Sitwell
Great Morning
pp. 118–19.

105
Sitwell
Great Morning
pp. 183–4, 258.

106
Punch
11 October 1899. Tompkins might have considered turning the battalion about, so that it would still be in quarter column, but now facing north. He would bear in mind, though, that it was now inverted, with H, its most junior company, at the head of the column and thus breaking the laws of seniority. Ordering the battalion to deploy from column into line to the right would have produced the gratifying result of markers scampering forward from the right front of each company to mark out the new line under the direction of the mounted adjutant, a regular to whom this was food and drink: companies would then take post on the markers. Deployment to the right meant that A Company would now be on the right of the line, as 102 was its due. The line could now be moved forward with a gentle ‘right incline', and the problem would be solved. I suspect that the general might not have liked the temporary inversion, but this is the quickest practical solution. None of this would have mattered much under Boer fire a year later.

107
Quoted in J. D. Sainsbury
The Hertfordshire Yeomanry
(Welwyn 1994) pp. 118–19.

108
S. F. Hatton
Yarns of a Yeoman
(London ND) p. 22.

109
Pease
Northumberland Hussars
p. viii.

110
Brian Bond (ed.)
Staff Officer: The Diary of Lord Moyne
(London 1987) p. 23.

111
George Ashurst
My Bit
(Ramsbury 1986) p. 15.

112
Ashurst
My Bit
p. 25.

113
For detailed establishments see
The Territorial Year Book 1909
(London 1909) pp. 29–34.

114
Beckett and Simpson (eds)
Nation in Arms
p. 129.

115
Latin for ‘Everywhere', and granted instead of the specific battle honours worn by regiments of infantry and cavalry. It is shared by the Royal Engineers, and cynics maintained that while it did indeed mean ‘Everywhere' where engineers were concerned, for the artillery it meant, all too literally, ‘All over the place'.

116
John Reith
Wearing Spurs
(London 1966) p. 17.

117
Personal information from Field Marshal Lord Harding, 1986. Although he was generally known as John, Harding was actually christened Alan Francis.

118
Bryan Latham
A Territorial Soldier's War
(Aldershot 1967) p. 1.

119
Latham
Territorial
p. 3.

120
Norman Tennant
A Saturday Night Soldier's War 1913–1918
(Waddesdon, Bucks 1983) pp. 2, 4, 6, 10.

121
Beckett and Simpson (eds)
Nation in Arms
p. 72.

122
Quoted in Beckett and Simpson (eds)
Nation in Arms
p. 131.

123
Hatton
Yeoman
p. 27.

124
Territorial divisions originally had regional tides and were not numbered until May 1915. By then regular and New Army divisions had extended divisional numbering as far as forty-one, and first-line territorial divisions were numbered in the order they went abroad as formed bodies. First was 42nd (East Lancashire) Division, and then 43rd Wessex, 44th (Home Counties), 46th (North Midland), 47th (2nd London), 48th (South Midland), 49th (West Riding), 50th (Northumbrian), 51st (Highland), 52nd (Lowland), 53rd (Welsh), 54th (East Anglian), 55th (West Lancashire) and 56th (1st London) Divisions. Second-line territorial divisions were formed from units like 2/4th Queen's, the nucleus of its soldiers left behind when 1/4th Queen's left for India. These comprised 45th (2nd Wessex), 57th (2nd West Lancashire), 58th (2/1st London), 59th (2nd North Midland), 60th (2/2nd London), 61st (2nd South Midland), 62nd (2nd West Riding), 63rd (2nd Northumbrian), 64th (2nd Highland), 65th (2nd Lowland), 66th (2nd East Lancashire), 67th (2nd Home Counties), 68th (2nd Welsh) and 69th (2nd East Anglian) Divisions.