Hello. Welcome to the May edition. This edition has an article by Keith on the WAAC and a a couple of book reviews. So, you thought PoWs escaping was all about Colditz and WWII? Read on!
You will not have the highly dubious pleasure of our company on the 9th, as we are hopefully off to Salonika.
Trevor
The Programme for 2015
May 9th: Steve Binks – “Some Kind Hand” pilgrimage – two years in
June 6th: TBC
July 4th: Chris John – German Tanks at Villers Brettoneux
Aug 1st: Harbinder Singh – Sikhs in the Great War
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
Last month’s speaker
Last month’s speaker was Anne Pedley talking about the Royal Welch Fusiliers in the Great War. As you all know who she is, I have not published a photo of her!
A Local North Wales Hero – Albert Nevitt
Keith Walker
While I was researching some of the graves at Bodelwyddan, I came across the story of Albert Nevitt. It is a paradox of war when we give a man a Military Cross for killing people then an Albert Medal for saving people’s lives.
Albert Nevitt was born in 1893 to Henry and Sarah Nevitt. The 1901 census has the family living at 16 Junction Drive, Llandudno Junction. Albert was the 7th of 9 children.
Albert Nevitt was a young teacher when the war started. He enlisted and became Private s/n 16225 Albert Nevitt of the 10th Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers. He soon applied for a commission, and was made a temporary Second Lieutenant with effect from the 24th January 1915 with the 12th Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers. After passing through officer training, he was sent to France on the 31st March 1916.
On the 16th May 1916 The London Gazette announced that:-
His Majesty the King has graciously pleased to confer the Military Cross on the undermentioned officer in recognition of his gallantry and devotion to duty in the field.
Albert Nevitt’s citation reads:-
Temp. 2nd Lt Albert Nevitt, 12th Bn (formerly 10th Bn R.W.Fus )
“For conspicuous gallantry when leading a bombing attack upon a communication trench, all but one of his men became casualties, but with this man he went on to within 10 yds of the enemy, when he was himself wounded. He had previously shown great daring on reconnaissance”.
Second Lt Albert Nevitt was returned home from France wounded. He soon recovered and by September of 1916 he was a Lieutenant temporarily attached to the 62nd Training Reserve Battalion at Kinmel Camp.
Because of his experience of so-called “bombing attacks” with grenades, he became an instructor at the camp’s bombing and grenade school. It was at the school where things for him became more dangerous than at the front.
It was on the 4th and 24th of September 1916 that the following incidents took place.
The London Gazette of the 4th January1918 gives us a little of the detail of what took place after which Albert Nevitt was awarded the Albert Medal.
Lieutenant Albert Nevitt, M.C. Royal Welsh Fusiliers
“On the 4th September 1916, bombing instruction was taking place in a trench occupied by Lieutenant (then 2nd Lieutenant) Nevitt, another officer, and two men. One of the men threw a bomb which hit the parapet, and fell back in the trench, where it was deeply embedded in mud and water. Lieutenant Nevitt at once groped for the bomb. He failed first attempt but made a second and successful attempt, seized the bomb, and threw it over the parapet, where it at once exploded.
On the 24th September 1916, bombing instruction was taking place under the command of Lieutenant Nevitt. Another officer and three men were present in the trench. A bomb fell back in the parapet into the trench, whereupon the men rushed for the entrance nearly knocking over Lieutenant Nevitt. In the confusion, Lieutenant Nevitt lost sight of the bomb but he searched for it, and, having found it, threw it clear, when it at once exploded. Only one of the men had succeeded in escaping from the trench when the bomb exploded. On both occasions, Lieutenant Nevitt’s courage and presence of mind undoubtedly saved the lives of others.
For these actions Lieutenant Nevitt was awarded the Albert Medal.”
But it did not end there. On the 4th October 1916, there was an explosion in a bomb store and Lieutenant Nevitt went in to aid an injured sergeant. This act is not mentioned in his citation.
The Albert Medal is a civil decoration instituted by Royal Warrant on the 7th March 1866. It was awarded to recognise the saving of lives. In WWI, 97 were awarded to soldiers. A total of 571 were awarded from 1866 until 1971, when it was replaced by the George Cross.
On the 21st March 1918, Lieutenant Nevitt was promoted to Captain. He was then serving with the Kings Royal Lancashire Regiment.
Captain Albert Nevitt’s medal card shows he received the British War Medal and Victory Medal:
Captain Nevitt survived the war. He returned to teaching and became the headmaster of Deganwy school.
Albert Nevitt died on the 4th August 1966 at the General Hospital Llandudno. He left a wife, Honoria Mary b.1903 d. 2nd September 1966, and two children, Peter John and Heather. He is buried at St Hilary’s Parish Church, Llanrhos.
Part of his obituary in the North Wales Weekly News reads:-
“FORMER DEGANWY HEADMASTER- DEATH OF MR ALBERT NEVITT.
Mr Albert Nevitt of Gannock Court, Deganwy who died on Thursday aged 73, was headmaster of Deganwy School for 33 years until his retirement. A native of Conway Borough, he was the son of Alderman and Mrs Henry Nevitt of Llandudno Junction. He was a Captain in the Royal Welch Fusiliers during the 1914-1918 war and won the MC. In the Second World War, he was commissioned in the RAF.
Mr Nevitt was Vicar’s warden of Llanrhos Parish and was treasurer of All Saints Church Deganwy for 27 years.”
Just as a matter of interest, Albert Nevitt’s brother, Thomas Nevitt, s/n M/2018903 also served. His medal card informs us that he arrived in France on the 10th December 1914. He was awarded 1915 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal. He was with the Army Service Corps, 6th Aux, Petrol Coy, Mechanical Transport. He died on the 13th November 1918 aged 27 (please note the date) and is buried at Terlincthun British Cemetery, Wimille, France.
References and acknowledgements :-
- North Wales Weekly News.
- CWGC website
- “Kinmel Park” by Robert H Griffiths, published 2014 by Gwasg Carreg Gwalch
- London Gazette.
- Medal Yearbook
A cartoon from the WWI collection of the Public Record Office for Northern Ireland
This is from the papers of Major Denton de la Cour Ray, held by PRONI in their wonderful new offices in the Titanic Quarter, where the new WFA Antrim and Down branch meet. They have recently published a catalogue of all the WWI source documents which they hold.
Book reviews
I ESCAPE!
The Great War’s Most Remarkable PoW
Captain JS Hardy DSO MC
Introduction by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Pen & Sword Military, Barnsley
2014, £19.99, xvii, 158pp, ills
ISBN 978-1-47382-376-1
This book was originally published in 1927, hence the original forward by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Jocelyn Lee Hardy had a somewhat chequered career, as we will see, and a varied life. He had some family connections with Ireland as his father was from County Down, and so joined the Connaught Rangers, much like Max Staniforth did, and was later in the Inniskillings. After the Great War, Hardy was in Dublin probably as part of the notorious “Cairo gang”, who were a section of British intelligence.
This book is an account of Hardy’s escape exploits as a PoW in Germany. After many fruitless attempts, he did in fact succeed in getting across the Dutch border, and returned to active service right at the end of the war, before being invalided out with a severe wound that resulted in the loss of a leg. It is worth noting that this book, of course, predates both the popular image of WWII escapees in films and books, and, of course, the Colditz book by Airey Neave “They Have Their Exits”, also incidentally recently republished by the same publisher. In the Great War, there were most certainly PoW camps and would-be escapees, and Hardy was one of those!
Hardy’s war finished for the first time when he was captured on 27th August, 1914 at Maroilles as part of the action at Le Grand Fayt, and he then spent over 3 years as a prisoner in Germany. His final, successful escape attempt was remarkably undertaken from Fort Zorndorf which was the furthest location from the Dutch frontier of any of the camps that he was in. In fact, the camp was almost on the Polish border and was the equivalent of Colditz Castle in WWII, that is, a very secure camp for troublesome escapees. It is quite remarkable how far he got across country in his adventures as he covered quite a lot of ground in Germany, mostly by train. Of course, he spoke good German and French. Is there a lesson there for language teaching in our schools today, and even for WWI historians who complain about sources not being in English?
The book is written in an easy to read, newspaper style. I can only describe it as a cross between the, serious, Colditz memoirs of Airey Neave and Michael Palin’s, fictitious, “Ripping Yarns”, if you are old enough to remember them. It is excellent that it has been republished and the publisher is to be congratulated for doing so.
Hardy became very good friends with a Russian officer, Baschwitz, with whom he had a long but ultimately unsuccessful journey round the Baltic coast. Remarkably, in their travels Baschwitz called on a German family whom he knew in Berlin to see if they could help him, but unfortunately the husband was away. Nonetheless, the wife gave him a handful of her husband’s cigars and did not call the police. Although this particular odyssey ended in failure when the two escapees were recaptured on the island of Rugen, Baschwitz did later manage to escape to Britain. Hardy and Baschwitz met up when they were both back “home” and there is a photo of the two of them together on the back dust cover. Incidentally, Baschwitz spoke impeccable English, French, and German to the extent that he could argue with German officials and not be spotted as a foreigner. Whow!
Amongst the other prisoners that Hardy mentions is Roland Garros, the French air hero, who also escaped successfully in 1918 from Zorndorf, but was shot down and killed just before the end of the war in the Ardennes. The French tennis stadium and tournament are named after him, as he was a keen tennis player when he was a student in Paris.
The preface to the re-published version of the book does, to its considerable credit, deal with Hardy’s time in Dublin during the Irish War of Independence, which was far from being Britain’s finest hour. In 1920, Hardy was implicated in the deaths of three republican prisoners who were supposedly “shot while trying to escape”, as retaliation for the assassinations earlier that day of some of the Cairo gang, who were British intelligence officers and who, unbelievably, lived in digs in middle-class civilian Dublin. The assassinations were followed later that day by the British Army firing into the crowd at a Gaelic football cup final and killing, at random, 14 civilians as retaliation. This day was referred to as the original “Bloody Sunday” as 31 people are believed to have died.
Hardy was not in the Black and Tans, who never operated in Dublin, nor does he seem to have been in the “Auxies” who did operate there, but rather seems to have been in military intelligence of some sort. He is believed to have killed the grandfather of the actor Brendan O’Carroll in his own home in central Dublin, as described in a recent episode of the BBC’s “Who Do You Think You Are”, available on DVD. Hardy later became an affluent banker, drove a Rolls Royce and wrote some works of fiction. So, as I said earlier, a rather chequered career! Indeed, one cannot help but wonder what effect 3 years of captivity and then being back in the carnage on the Western Front had on his mental state.
All in all, this does not detract from the book on his escape activities but perhaps helps to place his life into some sort of perspective. I would happily spend my own money on the book.
IMPERIAL GERMANY’S “IRON REGIMENT” OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
War Memories of Service with Infantry Regiment 169 1914-1918
John K Rieth
Badgley Publishing Company, Winchester, Ohio, USA
2014, $19.95, xx, pp321, ills, photos, 20 maps
ISBN 978-0692301203
This book has been written by a retired US army officer whose grandfather was in the Germany Army in WWI and who left a diary of his time in the army. Albert Rieth was conscripted into the army in 1912 from his home in Baden, today the federal German state of Baden-Wurttemberg. He was a jewellery maker. Fortunately, when he was invalided out in 1915 his health was still good enough for him to revert to his trade. He emigrated to Rhode Island in the 1920s with his family. His son, the author’s father, was in the US army in WWII. Such are the complexities of family history, especially in the United States.
The author has sought to put together an account of his grandfather’s regiment in WWI from his diary, the official regimental history, and the account of Otto Lais, who particularly wrote about his own experiences at Serre on the Somme in 1916. Lais’ account has a large gap after the Somme and then deals with the last days of the war. Obviously, the writings of Albert Rieth, the grandfather, and Otto Lais were in German, so much effort has been expended in deciphering hand-written accounts in old Gothic script. The end result is a book in English on the war experiences of a regiment in the army of Baden-Wurttemberg. That alone is a remarkable achievement.
The strongest aspects of the book are the personal writings of Albert Rieth and Otto Lais. However, they do not cover the whole war period. Perhaps of most relevance to a British reader is the account by Otto Lais of the fighting around Serre in 1916. Anyone who has a special interest in that aspect of the Somme will find the writings of Otto Lais fascinating. (He too survived the war and became a noted artist whose work was later banned by the Nazis for being too modernistic).
The material from the regimental history I found to be of less interest than the personal recollections. It would have benefited from more, and better, maps and diagrams to show what was happening, along the lines of Jerry Murland’s book on the retreat from Mons, as it was otherwise not easy to follow.
There is a certain amount of “carpet laying” accounts of what was happening generally in the war which are superfluous to any WFA member but perhaps are needed for an American readership whose familiarity with WWI is often minimal (in spite of the Meuse-Argonne battle in 1918 causing the greatest number of US casualties of either WWI or WWII). I would also query the use of some of the books which are quoted from, as I think there are better sources, especially on the origins of WWI.
There are some inaccuracies that grate. At Verdun, the total deaths of the French and German armies were 300,000 – not 300,000 for each side. The Russians ceasing hostilities in 1917 did not free up all the Germans troops on the Eastern front – about 1 million were kept there to administer the occupied territory and to bring in the much needed, for Germany, food supplies from the steppes, as described by Vejas Liulevicius, a US academic writer. The “rolling hills to the east of Albert” are a total mystery to me and to anyone else who has been on the Somme!
Perhaps one of the most human moments in the personal accounts is Otto Lais’ machine gun crew returning to the rear and being greeted like old friends by a group of wounded British soldiers that they had taken prisoner a few days earlier. The resulting pleasantries were in a mix of English, French and German, and they even swap souvenirs. This is in sharp contrast to events a short time before when they were all trying to kill each other. Such is the madness of war.
Altogether, this is an interesting book and a worthwhile addition to writings on the Central Powers side of WWI.
From the archives of the British Medical Journal
Trevor Adams trevormcmadams@gmail.com