Hello. Welcome to the February edition (and there was no January edition). We have some items on personal accounts of WWI from North Wales and Chester, and an article on HMS Caroline, the only surviving ship from the Battle of Jutland still in existence today.
Trevor
The Programme for 2015
Feb 7th: John Bessette: US 27th Division – Over there with O’Ryan’s Roughnecks
Mar 7th: Michael O’Brien – Double Eagles in the RFC: American Pilots in RFC
Apr 11th: Barry Kitchener – Railway Men in the Great War
May 9th: TBC
June 6th: Denis McCarthy – 16th (Irish) Division
July 4th: Chris John – German Tanks at Villers Brettoneux
Aug 1st: TBC
Sept 5th: Michael Steadman – Manchester Pals
Oct 3rd: Andrew Tonge – 1914 Race to the Sea
Nov 7th: Marietta Crichton-Stuart – Alice in Wonderland and her Lost Boys
Dec 5th: Branch Social
Diege and Steve win the lottery!
Well, perhaps not quite winning the lottery, but they have secured funding of £3200 from the Bay of Colwyn Town Council to set up a website to record the information that Diege and Steve have found on the 66 names on the Old Colwyn war memorial. The details to be recorded include the name, family address, how they died and where they are buried or commemorated. We gave details of the first of the sixty six, John David Jones, in the December 2014 edition of Dragon’s Voice. Well done guys!
And talking of websites – Wales in WWI – Cymru1914.org
Fiona has come across a new website which allows people to search through thousands of digitised newspapers, photos and manuscripts relating to life in Wales during the Great War. There are hundreds of references to Carmel, Gorsedd, Lloc, Pantasaph and Whitford (and I should add that the information about the website comes from the newsletter for those villages). See the extracts below, taken from “The Five Villages Chronicle”:
Unveiling of Chester War Memorial 1922
Civic dignitaries at the unveiling of the war memorial at Chester cathedral
Two ladies who were guests of honour at the unveiling of the Chester war memorial in 1922 had each lost three sons in the conflict. They were Mrs Mary Beatty and Mrs J Sherriff Roberts. Mrs Beatty’s son Hugh had died in Flanders on 21st September 1916 when a shell hit his working party; Peter died serving aboard HMS President when he fell overboard and drowned; and Richard, who was a sapper, died in Egypt.
HMS CAROLINE
Keith Walker
HMS Caroline, moored in Belfast harbour, has received a grant of £11.5 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund. She is the last surviving warship from the Battle of Jutland, and is
a “C” class light cruiser, built at Cammell Lairds shipyard in Birkenhead.
HMS Caroline was laid down on the 28th January1914, launched on the 29th September 1914, and commissioned on the 4th December 1914.
General characteristics
Class & type: C-Class light cruiser.
Displacement: 4,219 tons
Length: 446 ft.
Speed: 28.5 knots.
Complement: 325
Armament
2x 6in guns
8x 4in guns
1x 6 pounder gun
4x 21in torpedo tubes
War service
World War One
December 1914 to February 1915: 4th destroyer squadron.
February 1915 to November 1915: Grand fleet, 1st light cruiser squadron.
January 1916 to November 1918: 4th light cruiser squadron.
During this period she fought at the Battle of Jutland, 31st May to 1st June 1916.
World War Two
HMS Caroline served as the Royal Navy HQ based in Belfast harbour. Her complement during this time went into the thousands.
Postwar
HMS Caroline became a training ship for the RNVR based in Belfast harbour. She was decommissioned on the 31st March 2011, and her ensign was laid up in St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast.
The Future
HMS Caroline is listed as part of the National Historic Fleet, and she will now be preserved as a museum and a visitor centre within Belfast harbour (see map below).
Book Reviews
WAKE
Anna Hope
Doubleday 2014
Hardback 327 pages £12-99
ISBN 978-0-8575-5219-41
After I had given a talk on the Unknown Soldier at the Broughton and District History Group, I was given the book “Wake” by one of the members. Her comment was that I may not enjoy the book as it was written by a woman about women. She could not have been further from the truth. I loved the book.
The book is a novel by first-time novelist Anna Hope. It is the story of three women waiting for the arrival in London of the Unknown Soldier. They are all grieving in different ways because of the loss of a loved one. The book cleverly brings together the story of each woman at the funeral of the Unknown Soldier. The description of the journey from France of the soldier is beautifully done, in some deeply moving paragraphs.
The book really explains what the Unknown Soldier meant to the people, in that he became their father, husband, son, boyfriend, and brother. At his funeral, they had a form of closure for their grieving. The book is well structured, and the drawing together of her main characters is done with some skill and style.
To a WWI “anorak” like me, there are some of the military technicalities, I am not too sure are quite right, but as a novel it brings home the horrors of war, and the loss of so many men and the effects it had on their women. It is well worth a read. I read it in two sittings.
Keith Walker
PS The book is now available in paperback from Black Swan at £7.99.
UNKNOWN WARRIORS
The Letters of Kate Luard RRC (Royal Red Cross) and Bar
Nursing Sister in France 1914 – 1918
Edited by John & Caroline Stevens
The History Press 2014
Hardback 232 Pages £16-99
ISBN 978-0-7509-5923-3
This book was first published in 1930, and is now reissued. It is a series of letters sent from the front line by Kate to her family. Kate was born in 1872. She was the tenth of thirteen children of the Reverend Bixby Garnham Luard and his wife Clara.
Kate first joined the Army nursing service in 1900 and served in South Africa during the Boer War. She was 42 years old when the Great War started and was immediately sent to France with the BEF.
The language Kate uses in her letters to her father and family is very concise. She does not hold back from the horrors of the war. In one letter she describes a soldier with gas gangrene, and in another the pleasure of a walk to pick wild orchids in the woods on Vimy Ridge.
In the book Kate reports on the incident at Brandhoek when staff nurse Nellie Spindler is killed. She also reports on the nursing and death of Captain Noel Chavasse VC and Bar. Kate attended his funeral.
The bravery of Kate comes out in one of her letters:
“A boy with his face nearly in half, who couldn’t talk, and whom I was feeding, was trying to explain that he was lying on something hard in his trouser pocket. It was a live Mills bomb! I extracted it with some care as the pins catch easily.”
What comes out of the book to me is the very stoic nature of the British soldier. It is also a good source for the characters of the day, and the conditions that the soldiers where fighting under. I would highly recommend this book.
Keith Walker
RING OF STEEL
Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-18
Alexander Watson
Allen Lane pp788 £30
Fiona passed on a review of this book from the “Sunday Times”. The review is by Max Hastings, who is not my favourite of the recent cluster of “experts” on WWI, to put it mildly. Notwithstanding that, the book itself is undoubtedly of interest as it is a rare book in English on the subject of the German viewpoint, albeit written by a British author. Topics of great impact on the German and Austrian side are dealt with, such as the food blockade and starvation of civilian populations, and its effect on social disintegration and ultimately generating revolution on the home front. It deals with the Russian atrocities in East Prussia in August 1914 (where, incidentally, the Russians invaded before Germany entered Belgium).
The unrestricted U-boat war of 1917 is described as a great mistake that brought the US into the war, though in truth the US had been leaning that way since the Lusitania sinking in May 1915, if not before. The experiences of the crews serving in the U-boats of this generation are dealt with, and when you consider how crude the WWII U-boats were, the WWI ones must have been truly grim.
Much was ignored or denied after 1918 about the excesses committed by both sides. What do you know of the atrocities committed in Galicia by Russia and Austro-Hungary? Do you know where Galicia was and where it is today? Denial and neglect are dangerous, not least in the case of the Armenian massacres, which incidentally Turkey still denies today, as a Mr A. Hitler used the ignoring of the Armenian massacres as part of his reasoning for starting the Holocaust.
History teaches us lessons and we need to know both sides of the story.
Salonika centenary
From “For the Fallen” by Peter Francis, photos by Michael St Maur Shiel, published by the CWGC. £20 on Amazon.
Superb photos and descriptions of CWGC Great War memorials and graves from around the world, including some very remote ones. The book is wonderful and highly recommended.
This photo is of the Doiran monument. It commemorates the Battle of Doiran 1917 and the 2,000 Commonwealth servicemen who died in Macedonia and have no known grave. Doiran was an unsuccessful British attack on Bulgarian positions.
Trevor Adams trevormcmadams@gmail.com