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The 2nd Battle of Ypres
July 31st - November 10th 1917

"PASSCHENDAELE"

Day One - July 31st 1917

With chilling irony, as the Battle of Passchendaele started on July 31st 1917, a British cargo ship

SS Belgian Prince was hit by a torpedo off the Atlantic coast of Ireland with a loss of 40 lives

Wreath 31st July 2017

Portsmouth Naval Memorial Southsea

BIOGRAPHY No.1

John F White (1896 - 1917)

Pte. Royal Army Medical Corps 461550

From a naval family based in the city since the 1870's, John Frederick White volunteered to serve but not in a combat role. As a member of the RAMC,he was a stretcher bearer, one of the most dangerous and courageous roles in the Great War. The RAMC retrieved and tended the wounded on the battlefield and in casualty clearing stations operating under fire and without the agreement that has protected medical staff in the conflicts since WW1.

An accomplished musician, he took his clarinet to war with him.

John Frederick died on the first day of Passchendale at Pilckem Ridge His body was never recovered and the Army Grave's Service was never able to trace his remains. He was posthumously awarded the Victory John Frederick in RAMC uniform and British War Medals and is commemorated on Panel 56 of the Menin Family archive Gate memorial and the Portsmouth WW1 memorial in Guildhall Square.

Portsmouth Poetry Passchendaele Big Screen Video

Includes interview with Lynda Ibbotson, niece of John Frederick White

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0dpGf3teoY2b1NyTm1ZUlBDMDg

Portsmouth Poetry Passchendaele Big Screen Video

Includes interview with Lynda Ibbotson

niece of John Frederick White

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0dpGf3teoY2b1NyTm1ZUlBDMDg

Portsmouth Cenotaph, Guildhall Square

The R.A.M.C.
Formed in 1898 the Corps operated a "Chain of Evacuation" under fire as stretcher bearers to collect wounded men give them initial first aid and move them to 'dressing stations' for immediate attention and then to Casualty Clearing Stations close to the 'front'. Often a tented camp, CCS’s were often grouped into clusters of two or three in a small area, usually a few miles behind the lines and on a railway line. A typical CCS could hold 1,000 casualties at any time, and each would admit 15-300 cases, in rotation.

Kind permission of the Imperial War Museum Serious operations such as limb amputations were © IWM (Q 5935) carried out here. Some CCS’s were specialist units

for nervous disorders, skin diseases, infectious diseases, certain types of wounds, etc. Disabled men and those whose recovery would take a long time were repatriated to military hospitals in in Britain. Netley in Southampton and St James's Hospital in Portsmouth were used for this kind of treatment which included Post Traumatic Stress Disorder known then as "shell shock". It is estimated well over 1.5million lives were saved by the RAMC on the Western Front alone. RAMC soldiers were also responsible for the deeply traumatic work of recovery and identification of the dead.

"I kneel behind the soldier's trench,

I walk 'mid shambles, smear and stench,

The dead I mourn,

I bear the stretcher and I bend

O'er Fritz and Pierre and Jack to mend,

What shells have torn"

John Finley RAMC

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum
© IWM (Q 2855)

Memorial to RAMC National Arboretum

Two Poets
On the afternoon of the first day of Passchendaele, two rising young poets died within a couple of miles of each other
Hedd Wyn from Wales and Francis Ledwidge from Ireland

Ellis Humphrey Evans, 'Hedd Wyn' (1887 – 1917)

Ellis Humphrey Evans was he eldest of eleven children born to Evan and Mary Evans in Trawsfynydd, Meririonydd in Wales. Despite only a basic education, he had composed his first poem at eleven, "Y Das Fawn" (the peat stack). Highly influenced by the Romantic poet Shelley, he took part in numerous competitions and local Eisteddfodau and won his first 'chair' in Bala in 1907. At the age of 20, he adopted the bardic name 'Hedd Wyn', Welsh for "blessed peace" a reference to the sun's rays penetrating the mists in the valleys of Meirionydd. Like Robert Burns, he was also known as the "shepherd poet".

Although he was a pacifist and agricultural work was a 'reserved occupation', the introduction of conscription required his family send one of its sons to war. Ellis enlisted rather than send his younger brother Robert. In June 1917, Hedd Wyn joined the 15th Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers and on July 31st they marched to Pilckem Ridge.

A fellow soldier, Simon Jones, recalled,

"We started over Canal Bank at Ypres and he was killed half way across Pilckem. I've heard many say that they were with Hedd Wyn and this and that, well I was with him... I saw him fall and I can say that it was a nosecap shell in his stomach that killed him. You could tell that... He was going in front of me, and I saw him fall on his knees and grab two fistfuls of dirt... He was dying, of course... There were stretcher bearers coming up behind us, you see. There was nothing – well, you'd be breaking the rules if you went to help someone who was injured when you were in an attack."

Hedd Wyn was carried to a first-aid post still conscious and died at about 11:00 a.m. He is buried in Artillery Wood Cemetery, near Boezinge, Belgium.

In September 1917, the National Eisteddfod, held in the company of Prime Minister David Lloyd George, announced that the winner of the bardic chair was an entry submitted under the pseudonym 'Fleur de Lys'. Trumpets were sounded three times for the author to identify themselves until the Archdruid Dyfed announced the winner had been killed in action six weeks earlier. The empty chair was then draped in a black sheet. It was delivered to Evans' parents in the same condition, The festival is now referred to as "Eisteddfod y Gadair Ddu" ("The Eisteddfod of the Black Chair").

Francis Ledwidge, (1887 - 1917)

Francis Edward Ledwidge, like Hedd Wyn, was a farm labourer poet. Born in Janeville, Slane, County Meath in Ireland, the eighth of nine children in a poverty-stricken family. Sometimes known as the "poet of the blackbirds",

Leaving school at thirteen, he worked in various jobs. He was sacked for trade union activity as a member of the Meath Labour Union. He was both a Nationalist and Left-wing.

Strongly built, with striking brown eyes, he wrote where ever he could – sometimes even on gates or fence posts. From the age of fourteen his works were published in his local newspaper until he won the patronage of the writer, Lord Dunsany, who introduced him to W.B. Yeats.

The outbreak of the Great War split Irish Nationalists into those who supported the war and those who did not. Although instinctively one of the latter, Ledwidge enlisted (24 October 1914) in the 5th battalion Royal Inniskillin Fusiliers, Lord Dunsany's regiment, despite Dunsanay's opposition and offer of an income to support him. Some have speculated that he went to war because his sweetheart Ellie Vaughey had found a new lover whom she later married, but Ledwidge himself wrote forcefully, that he could not stand aside while others sought to defend Ireland's freedom.

He fought in the Dardenelles and Serbia despite losing rank for being drunk after the failure of the Easter Rising in 1916.

On 31 July 1917, a group from Ledwidge's battalion of the Royal Inniskillin Fusiliers were road-laying in preparation for an assault during the Third Battle of Ypres, near the village of Boezinge, northwest of Ypres. While Ledwidge was drinking tea in a mud hole with his comrades, a shell exploded alongside, killing the poet and five others. A chaplain who knew him, Father Devas, arrived soon after, and recorded "Ledwidge killed, blown to bits."

Although the two never met, Ledwidge' remains were buried at Carrefour de Rose, and later re-interred in the nearby Artillery Wood Military Cemetery, Boezinge, where the Welsh poet Hedd Wyn is buried.

Then in the lull of midnight, gentle arms
Lifted him slowly down the slopes of death
Lest he should hear again the mad alarms
Of battle, dying moans, and painful breath.

And where the earth was soft for flowers we made
A grave for him that he might better rest.
So, Spring shall come and leave it seet arrayed,
And there the lark shall turn her dewy nest

Francis Ledwidge

PASSCHENDAELE TIMELINE 1917

THIS LISTS THE MAIN ENGAGEMENTS AND EVENTS OF THE BATTLE. IT DOES NOT DETAIL THEM OR EXPLAIN THE COMPLEXITIES OF STRATEGY, OFFENSIVE AND COUNTER-OFFENSIVE FOR WHICH YOU SHOULD CONSULT THE MANY DETAILED HISTORIES OF WW1

Admiral John Jellicoe

Field Marshal Douglas Haig

David Lloyd George

Herbert Onslow Plumer

1916 - 1917

Losses to merchant shipping lead Admiral Jellicoe to warn Douglas Haig that the war will be lost for lack of supplies by 1918 unless submarine activity is curtailed. Haig devises a plan to attack the German line on the Ypres Salient. The plan is shelved due to the demands of the Battle of the Somme. On 1 January 1917, Haig is made a Field Marshall. King George V sends him a handwritten note ending: "I hope you will look upon this as a New Year's gift from myself and the country". In 1917 Haig puts his proposal to the Prime Minister David Lloyd George and his newly formed War Policy Committee. Despite opposition from Lloyd George and personal animosity between the two, Haigs plan is accepted, no alternative strategy being presented.

18 - 30 July Preparatory Bombardment -------------------------------------

Under General Sir Hubert de la Poer Gough, the British 5th & 2nd Army with the Fench 1st Army attack the German army on the northern flank of the Western Front running from Lille to the Ypres Salient capturing Pilckem Ridge. This initial success may have led to over-confidence in Haig's plans.
2 August Rains begin, battle halted -----------------------------------------

The second objective to take the line on the Gheluvelt plateau. A notable German counter-offensive leads lbrecht von Thaer, Staff Officer at Group Wytshchate, to note casualties half those at the Somme 1916 and that German troop morale was higher than in 1916.
25 August 2nd Phase Commences ..................................................

The British plan for the battle fought from 20–25 September, included more emphasis on the use of heavy and medium artillery to destroy German concrete pill-boxes and machine-gun nests, which were more numerous in the battle zones being attacked and to engage in more counter-battery fire. The German force re-took some pill-boxes, these were lost during Polygon Wood
26 September - 3 October Battle of Polygon Wood ---------------------

To complete the capture of the Gheluvelt Plateau and occupy Broodseinde Ridge. By coincidence, the Germans sought to recapture their defences around Zonnebeke with a methodical counter-attack at the same time. Plumer declined to exploit the success then changed his mind and later changed it again.
7 October Canadian Forces Join the offensive -------------------------

British and French advance toward Passchendaele. General Birdwood later wrote that the return of heavy rain and mud sloughs was the main cause of the failure to hold captured ground. Fighting strained German fighting power to the limit but German forces managed to prevent a breakthrough.
12 October 1st Battle of Passchendaele -----------------------------------

Minor operations from 20–22 October, to maintain pressure on the Germans while the Canadian Corps prepared for a series of attacks from 26 October leading to a final assault on Passchendaele from 30 October.
6 - 10 November Passchendaele taken ------------------------------------

WW1 Military strategy involved preparatory bombardment to damage and the weaken enemy line and exhaust their troops. The battle was meant to start several days earlier but was delayed by morning mists which prevented airial reconnaissance.

---------------------------------------------------- 31 July Battle Commences

31 July - 2 August Battle of Pilckem Ridge

The region experiences heavy rainfall, the heaviest on record in over 30 years halting the battle until 10 August
10 August Battle recommences / Capture of Westhoek

The 2nd phase of the battle plan entrusted to Field Marshall Herbert Charles Onslow Plumer, 1st Viscount Plumer who oversees Menin Road Ridge, Polygon Wood & Broodseinde
------------------------- 20 - 25 September Battle of Menin Road Ridge

Planned to cover 1,000–1,500 yd and then swiftly defeat German counter-attacks inflicting a severe blow on the German 4th Army causing many losses and threatening the hold on Broodseinde ridge. Better weather benefitted the British attackers by drying the ground, raising mist which obscured British infantry attacks made around dawn, then clearing to reveal German formations to air and ground observation, well in advance of their arrival on the battlefield.
-------------------------------------------- 4 October Battle of Broodseinde

Canadian forces arrive to strengthen BEF. Germany changes its defensive tactics including plans to possibly abandon the Ypres Salient
-------------------------------------------- 9 October Battle of Poelcappelle

Another Allied attempt to gain ground around Passchendaele. Heavy rain and mud again made movement difficult and little artillery could be brought closer to the front. Allied troops were exhausted and morale had fallen. After a modest British advance, German counter-attacks recovered most of the ground lost. The next day Haig ordered the offensive halted until weather improved.
--------------------------------- 26 October 2nd Battle of Passchendaele

Three rainless days from 3–5 November eased preparation for the next stage, which began on the morning of 6 November, by the 1st & 2nd Canadian Divisions. In less than three hours, Passchendaele was captured and a final action on 10 November gained control of the remaining high ground north of the village.

August 2nd 2017 / 1917

The rains came today,

stout winds, unseasoned chill,

to wash away the vivid febrile summer.

Grumbling, unprepared,

hunched against the weather,

we run to home, relief

and shared complaint

from this barometric misfortune.

The rains came today,

incessant pitiless

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum turning the ground to mire.
© IWM (Q 6053) We watched the dead rise up up through their blanket of clay,

horses and men drown.

Only the orders did not falter

Josh Brown only the ceaseless dying.

BOY SOLDIERS

250,000 boys and young men under the age of 19 (the legal age) enlisted during WW1

Many thousands more tried their luck and were turned away

Reasons probably include --

Patriotism
Widespread failure to understand the real nature of WW1 fighting
Escape from dreary lives with little prospect of advancement
Most people didn’t have birth certificates so it was easy to lie
The recruitment process included medical checks and, in an are of undernourishment , a strapping lad could easily get through.
Recruitment officers were paid two shillings and sixpence (£6) for each new recruit. Widespread evidence shows recruiting officers knew that most boys were underage and even cajoled boys into enlisting and gave them false ages

Newspaper article announcing Sidney Lewis's discharge from the army

The youngest known recruit was 12 !

Private Sidney Lewis served at the Somme when he was only twelve. George Maher, who was only 13 at the time, claims Lewis was too short to see over the edge of the trench."The youngest was 12 years old. A little nuggety bloke he was, too. We joked that the other soldiers would have had to have lifted him up to see over the trenches."

The youngest soldier to die was 14 !

Private 6322 John Condon is buried in Poelcapelle cemetery (Row F, Plot 56) Pte Condon, lied about his age to fight for his country, is recorded as the youngest soldier to die in the war. He was killed in the Second Battle of Ypres, less than 10 miles away, on May 24, 1915 in one of the worst massacres of the war when the Germans used poisonous chlorine gas for the first time. The boy soldier had claimed he was 18 when he enlisted in his home town of Waterford, Ireland. He was really a pre-pubescent 12-year-old, too young to shave. He was 14 when he was killed. Claims that he was actually 18 have been rejected by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Only the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey receives more visitors.

Fifteen-year-old Cyril Jose, a tin-miner's son from Cornwall, joined for adventure and to escape crippling unemployment.

He wrote to his sister,

"Dearest Ivy, stand back. I've got my own rifle and bayonet. The bayonet's about 2ft long from hilt to end of point. Must feel a bit rummy to run into one of them in a charge. Not 'arf. Goodbye and God bless you, from your fit brother, Cyril."

Cyril survived the war and wounding at the Somme but the bloodshed he witnessed in France turned him into a vehement opponent of militarism for the rest of his life.

In one letter home he poured scorn on the British commander, Field Marshal Earl Haig.

"What brains Earl Douglas must have. Made me laugh when I read his dispatch. 'I attacked.' Old women in England picturing Sir Doug in front of the British waves brandishing his sword at Johnny in the trenches... attack Johnny from 100 miles back. I'll get a job like that in the next war."

BIOGRAPHY No.2

Frederick W J Farr (1900 – 1967)

Pte. 14th Hants 20957

Pte. Bedfordshire Regiment 47006

Born in Frederick Street Landport to a family of greengrocers and boot and shoe makers who had lived in Portsmouth since the late 1700’s. Frederick was working at Brickwoods Brewery when he enlisted. Brickwoods was the first business to in Portsmouth to employ women to replace the men who had gone to war. He was still living in Frederick Street in 1939 and working as a greengrocer.

Frederick enlisted at the age of 16, his age was recorded as 19 and 7 months. He was classified as a First Class Signaler

Suffered a minor head injury on the first day of the Somme

On 17th April 1917 his mother wrote to the War Office stating that he had written to her wanting to come home and that he was only 16 years old. Frederick’s father was also serving, in India, and his mother was facing great hardship supporting her two children at home. She had sent Frederick’s birth certificate to his Commanding Officer four to six weeks previously and had not heard anything in reply.

He was eventually posted back to England on 20th May 1917.

A second letter from his mother dated 17th September 1917 complained that Frederick still had not been discharged:

"I should very much like to have home him with me he is not 17 yet and his father is away in India, so I feel it very much to be parted from both of them"

Frederick was finally discharged from the army on 11th October 1917.

Frederick’s regiment, the 14th Hampshire, did fight at Passchendaele. He would have again seen active service had his mother not interceded and secured his discharge.

Frederick was awarded the British War and Victory Medals.

Signallers working on trench communications. The use of telephone in the trenches was a major technological advance which impacted on military strategy strategy.

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum

Describing the training of a boy soldier in World War One.....

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade

How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;

Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;

And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.

Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads

Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.

Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,

Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.

Wilfred Owen 'Arms and the Boy'

Punch cartoon Auguest 1916
Officer (to a boy of thirteen who, in his efforts to be taken on as a bugler, has given his age as sixteen) "DO YOU KNOW WHERE BOYS GO WHO TELL LIES?"
Applicant "TO THE FRONT SIR."

PALS REGIMENTS & THE 'POMPEY PALS'

When the 'Great War' started in 1914, Germany had considerably more 'regular' full time soldiers than Great Britain. The British regular army was a small professional force consisting of 247,432 troops supported by a Territorial Force and by reservists. The result was an urgent call to the men of Britain to join up and defend the homeland and Empire from the 'Hun' - symbolised in Kitchener's famous poster. On a patriotic wave, thousands enlisted. In August 1914, 300,000 men had signed up to fight, and another 450,000 had joined-up by the end of September. Recruitment remained fairly steady through 1914 and early 1915, but it fell dramatically after the Somme campaign leading to the introduction of conscription in 1916.

The first Portsmouth Battalion march past the Town Hall (now the Guildhall) in 1914

Photo by kind permission of local historian John Sadden Portsmouth Grammar School

A prominent feature of the early months of volunteering was the formation of 'Pals Battalions' which allowed men who came from the same area, had worked or gone to school together, to join up, train and be allocated to the same units. The idea of General Sir Henry Rawlinson who suggested that men would be more inclined to enlist if they knew that they were going to serve alongside their friends. He appealed to London stockbrokers to raise a battalion leading 1600 men to enlist in the so-called "Stockbrokers' Battalion" and leading thousands more to follow their example across the country. The policy of drawing recruits from amongst the local population ensured that, when the Pals battalions suffered casualties, whole towns, villages, neighbourhoods and communities back in Britain were to suffer disproportionate losses. With the introduction of conscription in January 1916, no further Pals battalions were raised.

In August 1914 the Portsmouth Citizens Patriotic Recruiting Committee chaired by the Lord Mayor called on the men of the city to form a Pals Battalion if not engaged in essential war work. The city and surrounding areas quickly raised two battalions (the 1st and 2nd 'Pompey Pals' assisted by Portsmouth Foortball Club. These were the 14th& 15th (Portsmouth) Battalions Hampshire Regiment.

On 3 September 1914, the 1st Pompey Pals first action began in a battle on the River Ancre. Having started with 587 men, at the end of the day 440 casualties had been sustained. The 2nd Pompey Pals were in action for the first time on 15 September 1914. 12 Military Medals as well as a Conspicuous Service Medal were awarded. Of 557 men, 305 were either killed or wounded.

Serving with distinction in many of the famous battles on the Western Front including the Somme and Passchendaele, over 6000 men enlisted and 1425 never returned home. The "Pompey Pals" are commemorated on a memorial at Fratton Park.

Their memory is kept alive by the Pompey Pals Project .

Visit their website at http://pompeypals.org.uk

Pompey Pals Passchendaele Centenary Event September 9 2017

Albert Victor Webb 1898 - 1917
A 'Pompey Pal'
14th (Service) Battalion Hampshire Regiment

Born and raised in Portsmouth one of ten children, Albert Webb joined the 1st Pompey Pals Battalion.
He died on 1 August 1917 during the opening battle of Passchendaele, Pilckem Ridge.

His body was never recovered.
He is remembered on the Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres, Belgium

For more information visit the Pompey Pals Project

Regiments Served In by Portsmouth Soldiers

The engagements soldiers fought in such as Passchendaele depended on the Regiments they served in

On enlisting, men could request the regiment they wished to serve in - Dudley Hugo Heynes (biography follows) asked initially to serve in the Artists Rifles the same regiment as Wilfred Owen. Siegfried Sassoon served in the Royal Welsh despite being a Londoner. The biographical research uncovered by Portsmouth Poetry in this project shows men from the city served in many regiments. However, in the main, men from Portsmouth will have joined 'local' regiments and battalions mainly the Hampshire, Sussex and Dorsetshire regiments

The battalion was the standard operational unit of all British infantry during the Great War. Each battalion belonged to a regiment.

Hampshire Regiment

Known as the "Hampshire Tigers" due to the tiger on the regimental badge,. Based in Hampshire and the IoW with many battalions, the Hampshire Regiment served across the Great War not only on the Western Front but in Gallipoli, India and the Middle East amongst other engagments.

The 'Pompey Pals' battlaions were 14th and 15th Battalions Hampshire Regiment

Details of the Hamshire Regiment and useful guidance on how to research soldiers from WW1 can be found on the "Long Long Trail" website

http://www.1914-1918.net/hants.htm http://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/battles

There is a Museum and Memorial Garden dedicated to the regiment in Winchester. Admission is free

Website http://www.royalhampshireregiment.org

Dorsetshire Regiment

At the start of the First World War, the Dorsetshire Regiment had two Regular battalions, one Special Reserve battalion and one battalion of Territorials (part-time volunteers). They were expanded to nine battalions and a single company serving within the 2nd Hampshire Regiment. The http://www.1914-1918.net/sussex.htm

Dorset Regiment fought in France and Belgium, Mesopotamia, Gallipoli, Egypt, Palestine and North Russia.

For more information visit the Keep Military Museum website

http://www.keepmilitarymuseum.org/history/first+world+war/the+dorsetshire+regiment

Sussex Regiment

The Sussex served on the Western Front as well as Gallipoli, India, the Middle East and Italy amongst others

Details can also be obtained on the 'Long Long trail' website

http://www.1914-1918.net/sussex.htm

The 63rd (Royal Naval) Division

The enormous shortage of men serving when WW1 was declared was remedied by encouraging men to enlist until the introduction of conscription in 1916. A large number of men in the naval towns across the country were registered as naval reservists and volunteers. At the start of the war, it was decided to bring those men not required for naval service together to form military unit. This became the 63rd (Royal Navy) Divsion. The division fought at Antwerp in 1914 and at Gallipoli in 1915. In 1916, following many losses among the original naval volunteers, the division was transferred to the British Army to fight on the Western Front for the remainder of the war including the 2nd Battle of Passchendaele

For more information visit the 'Long Long Trail' website

http://www.longlongtrail.co.uk/army/order-of-battle-of-divisions/63rd-royal-naval-division

Rupert Brooke in Portsmouth

Of the many talented poets writing in and during the First World War, the best known are Siegfried Sassoon, William Owen and Rupert Broke. Brooke’s poem “The Soldier” is one of the nations best known and most loved poems. Less well known, is that Brooke served some of his military career in Portsmouth.

Like many young men, Brooke joined up eagerly in 1914 swept up by a wave of patriotism and,possibly, his uncertainty about his sexuality. Having failed to become a war correspondent, he joined the Nelson Battalion of the Royal Naval Division, later reformed as the 63rd (Royal Naval) Division and in November 1914 was posted to Portsmouth.

Described by W B Yeats as ‘the handsomest young man in England’, he had won prizes for poetry whilst still at school, was part of the infamous Bloomsbury Group of writers and went “skinny dipping” with Virginia Wolfe when at Cambridge where he was also an active Fabian.

He described his training at Portsmouth in letters to Lady Eileen Wellesley. His ‘short spree’ in Portsmouth (as he described it to fellow poet Walter De La Mare) ended when the Division was posted on its Antwerp Expedition in October 1914. Brooke complained that he had only observed the fighting and of a ‘ghastly sort of apathy [and unwillingness to die] over half the country’.

Brooke was transferred to the Hood Battalion and after further training put in charge of a 30-man platoon. In February 1915, they sailed for Gallipoli with the British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force but he never reached the Gallipoli bloodbath. He developed sepsis from an infected mosquito bite and died on April 23, 1915. His famous poem was published a month later and became well known following a quotation in the Times Literary Supplement in 1915. It fell out of favour as the death toll mounted.

Brooke got the wish he expressed, he was buried on the Greek Island of Skyros by his friends and fellow war poets Stanley Casson and Patrick Shaw-Stewart. He was later commemorated in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey.

A detailed study of Brooke in Portsmouth has been published by local historian and archivist John Sadden

The Soldier

[also known as "Nineteen Fourteen: The Soldier"]

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there’s some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England’s, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England
given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Rupert Brooke's Grave Skros

Portsmouth in the First World War

As the major base of the Royal Navy with a history gong back to Henry VIII and the Romans, it is easy to think of Portsmouth as 'the navy' and forget that it was also a military town. Portsmouth and Southampton played a major naval role (both Royal and Merchant) in WW1, were sizeable military bases, were significant for the influx of troops from the Empire and for the treatment and demobilisation of soldiers.

In addition to the vast RAMC Netley Hospital near Southampton, Haslar in Gosport and St James's Hospital in Portsmouth treated the wounded and men with 'shell shock' . The Dockyard had a vital role in maintaining supplies and many local women worked there during the Great War

including relatives of some of the men whose biographies form the Portsmouth Poetry Passchendaele Project.

BIOGRAPHY No. 3
John D Cherrett MM (1880 – 1950)

Pte. Royal Hampshire Regiments 14614

Pte. Royal Defense Corps Protection Company 81475

The youngest of six children, all born in Portsea, his father Mark came to Portsmouth with the Royal Navy, married Portsmouth born Amelia Gardener and

later became the landlord of the Ship and Castle at Rudmore Wharf.

John Cherrett married Portsmouth girl Mabel Millican in 1899, they had nine children.

Ship & Castle early 1900's

He worked as a coal heaver, an unreliable occupation. In September 1914 he was charged with “unlawful possession” of a portion of a floating wooden stage picked up on the foreshore and fined having “had not done any work for some time” Coal heaver was a reserved occupation, but by December 1914 John Cherrett had enlisted probably because he was still out of work.

John Cherrett served with the 14th, 15th and 11th Hampshire Regiments and the Royal Defense Corps Protection Company. During his service, he suffered several injuries including a gunshot wound to his head on the first day of the Battle of Passchendaele and trench fever in 1918.

In March 1918 John Cherrett was awarded the Military Medal for “gallant rescue work under heavy fire at Messines in November 1918”. He was discharge from the army 2nd March 1919. He died in Portsmouth in 1950.

John’s brother Frederick A Cherrett also fought in the First World War. Having served with the Scots Guards in the South Africa war he was sentenced to 84 days hard labour for “drunkenness on duty” and forfeited his war decorations. He rejoined his regiment on 13th September 1915 but was discharged 20.4.17 no longer fit for service. His medals were restored to him in 1923.

John’s cousin’s son Percy Cherrett was a professional footballer and played for Portsmouth from 1920 - 1923.

Percy Cherrett Portsmouth FC

Field Marshal Douglas Haig

"Lions led by Donkeys"
This description of ineptitude and disregard for the lives of ordinary soldiers now haunts the reputation of Haig.

Popularised by the book 'The Donkeys (1961)' by (later) Conservative Minister Alan Clark and the play and film 'Oh What A Lovely War' based upon it.

The origin of the phrase is unknown and is likely to have been a comment about the German military leadership arising from the memoirs in 1921 of Princess Evelyn Blucher which attributed it to the German GHQ in 1918

Siegfried Sassoon

Whilst the 'War Poets' chose to write about the tragedy of WW1, Siegfried Sassoon, a decorated war hero (he was nominated for a VC),was vitriolic in his condemnation leading him to write to his commanding officer a letter read out in Parliament refusing to fight under commanders with 'callous complacency' for the lives of the men they sacrificed and 'not enough imagination' to realise their suffering!

Field Marshal Douglas Haig

1st Earl Haig, KT, GCB, OM, GCVO, KCIE

19 June 1861 – 29 January 1928

Haig commanded the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front from late 1915 until the end of the war commanding the Battle of the Somme, the 3rd Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele), the German Spring Offensive and the Hundred Days Offensive leading to the Armistice of November 1918.

Born in Edinburgh in 1861 his father ran the family business Haig & Haig Whisky. He was educated at minor public schools and studied Political Economy, Ancient History and French Literature at Oxford though much of his time was spent socialising (as a member of the Bullingdon Club) and in equestrian sports playing on the university polo team (he played for England in 1886 against the USA). He failed to complete his degree before entering Sandhurst Royal Military College passing with merit to a commission as Lieutenant in the 7th Hussars.

His military career was impressive. He served in the Sudan War in 1898 , the Boer war 1899-1902, was Inspector General of Cavalry in India, served in the War Office, as Chief of Staff in India and at Aldershot. Not hesitant in criticising superior offices (at least in private) he gained a reputation for good advice and for system reforms including the formation of the Territorial Army and an Expeditionary Force of 120,000 men which would be deployed to France in 1914.

Upon the outbreak of the war in August 1914, Haig helped organize the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), commanded by Field Marshal Sir John French. He quickly became critical of French and his criticism rapidly became more open and embittered until his appointment as Commander-in-Chief BEF was announced on 10 December 1915.

At the start of 1916 Haig appears to have bcome more religious seeing himself as God's servant and was keen to have clergymen sent out whose sermons would remind the men that the war dead were martyrs in a just cause. That year, he commanded the Battle of the Somme. Intended to hasten a victory for the Allies, it was the largest battle of WW1 on the Western Front. More than 3 million men fought and one million were wounded or killed, making it one of the bloodiest battles in human history.

The Somme altered perception of the Great War. Voluntary enlistment would have dropped had it not been replaced by conscription. It also helped to fuel the antagonism between Haig and Prime Minister David Lloyd George especially following the slaughter of Welsh troops at Mametz Wood.

Having been promoted to Field Marshal, Haig oversaw his plan to secure the Belgian coast by The Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele). Although the casualties were less and the battle contributed to the German defeat in 1918, the re-run of the slaughter helped to cement the image of Haig as “the Butcher of the Somme” or “Butcher Haig” making him a controversial and hated military leader.

The Canadian War Museum comments:
"His epic but costly offensives at the Somme (1916) and Passchendaele (1917) have become nearly synonymous with the carnage and futility of First World War battles."

His defenders such as Sir John Davidson have praised his leadership and the failure of critics to recognise the adoption of new tactics and technologies by forces under his command.

Haigs Plan for Passchendaele (the 3rd Battle of Ypres)
WHY WAS A RE-RUN OF THE SOMME SANCTIONED?

Why did Haig propose the 3rd Battle of Ypres less than a year after the tragedy of the Somme?

In 1916, Admiral Jellicoe (head of the Royal Navy) told Haig that shipping losses were so heavy that, were they to continue, Britain would lose the war by 1918. As an empire, Britain relied upon imported materials both to feed the army and the nation (there was rationing in WW1) and for essential military materials. Germany knew this and fought an aggressive and successful war at sea using submarine warfare for the first time from 1915, having declared the area around the British Isles a war zone, in which all merchant ships, including those from neutral countries, would be attacked.

Haig devised a plan for the army to break through the German line and progress to the north-east coast and incapacitate the submarine bases and gain control over vital German rail supply lines. The best location to do this was on the Ypres Salient close to the village of Passchendaele.

He proposed to launch this offensive in 1916 but the Somme took up both his attention and the necessary resources. The plan was shelved.

Haig presented his proposal to the War Policy Committee just months after the Somme. It was never going to be warmly received, the Somme had killed over half a million Allied men.

Haig had implacable opposition from Prime Minister David Lloyd George. The two despised each other. They came from different backgrounds - one middle class the other wealthy. One was non-conformist and now agnostic the other staunch Anglican. Their political views were opposed, one a radical Liberal the other right of centre Tory. Lloyd George was a product of a changing world, Haig a product of its Victorian past. And then there was Mametz Wood in which Welsh units, notably the 38th (Welsh) Division, had been slaughtered by the machine guns Haig thought “over-rated” and the belief that he blamed the lack of “push” on the Welsh.

In the end the offensive was reluctantly sanctioned because no alternative to curb the losses at sea was put forward. In addition, there had been mutiny amongst French troops in April/May and an attack on the Flanders front would distract German forces and give valuable relief to the French enabling them to restore morale and order.

Haig had backed his proposal with two powerful arguments:

That the Somme had damaged German morale guaranteeing rapid success. In truth, there had been no more decline in morale than there was amongst the BEF and it is likely that Haig had merely ‘assumed’ that it was inevitable. (Initial success in the 3rd Ypres may well have caused over confidence as a result)

Haig admitted there had been shortcomings in strategy at the Somme but argued that he and his fellow commanders had learned valuable lessons from them. He was correct but failed to recognise that similar improvements had been made in the tactics of the enemy.

These oversights and Haigs failure to foresee the heavy rainfall would combine to turn 3rd Ypres into an indescribable hell.

Delays to the start of the battle caused by early morning mists that interupted the necessary reconnaissance also meant that by the time it did begin any element of surprise had been lost and the German army had taken measures to strengthen its position.

Battle of Pilckem Ridge. Pack mules passing a wrecked artillery limber and dead mules of the 36th Division on the road at Saint-Jean, 31 July 1917.

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum
© IWM (Q 5773)

“I have said that Warrior never flinched from a shell….he would shy at nothing, but as we approached Ypres he shied so violently that I very nearly fell off. What had disturbed him was a party of some hundreds of Chinamen digging graves. I found it difficult to get him to go on, and he trembled all over”

Major General ‘Jack’ Seely CB, CMG, DSO

“Warrior: The Amazing Story of a Real War Horse”

With the kind permission of Racing Post Books

An inspiration for the novel “Warhorse”, Seely and Warrior ('the horse the Germans could not kill') fought in and survived every major engagement from 1914 to 1918 including the Somme & Passchendaele where Warrior had be rescued from the mud. Both man and horse came from the Isle of Wight.

Gas! GAS! Quick, Boys!

The First world War was the first to be fought with chemical weapons.

French army employed grenades filled with tear gas in August 1914. The small quantities of gas were not even detected by the Germans. In October the Germans fired fragmentation shells at the British filled with chemical irritant but the concentration was too small to be noticed. After a failed attempt at mass use against the Russians, the first chlorine gas attack by German forces took place in January 1915. Soon, the German Army had 168 tons of chlorine deployed north of Ypres and released a gray-green cloud that drifted across positions held by French Colonial troops from Martinique who broke ranks.

The Germans used gas three times against the 1st Canadian Division and the British in the 2nd Battle of Ypres. At Hill 60, British records state "90 men died from gas poisoning in the trenches or before they could be got to a dressing station; of the 207 brought to the nearest dressing stations, 46 died almost immediately and 12 after long suffering.”

The French and Germans began to produce masks for troops while in Britain the Daily Mail encouraged women to manufacture cotton pads. A million gas masks were produced in a day. Unfortunately, the design was useless when dry and caused suffocation when wet leading to the deaths of scores of men. By 6 July 1915, the entire British army was equipped with the far more effective "smoke helmet" designed by a British Major, Cluny MacPherson.

Though outraged by the "cowardly" use of poison gas at 2nd Ypres the British soon developed their own, first used at Loos in Spetember 1915.

Problems with chlorine gas led all sides to develop more toxic alternatives. The most effective was 'mustard gas' (not actually made from mustard but similar in smell) introduced by Germany in July 1917 prior to Passchendaele.

Although it could be fatal, mustard gas was not a killer but was effective to harass, demoralise and disable and in the soil could pollute the battlefield for several days, weeks, or even months.The skin of victims blistered, eyes became sore, they began to vomit. Internal and external bleeding and damage to the bronchial tubes followed. Extremely painful, victims could take weeks to die of mustard gas exposure.

Vera Brittan

"I wish those people who talk about going on with this war whatever it costs could see the soldiers suffering from mustard gas poisoning. Great mustard-coloured blisters, blind eyes, all sticky and stuck together, always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying that their throats are closing and they know they will choke."

Increased production meant the Allies mounted more gas attacks than the Germans in 1917 and 1918 especially following the entry of the USA. Winds on the front created conditions more favourable to the Allies.

The use of gas by all major forces in World War I constituted a war crime as its use violated the 1899 and 1907 Hague agreements prohibiting the use of "poison or poisoned weapons" in warfare.

Stereoscope photograph from a series widely sold in the UK during WW1 purchased by Portsmouth Poetry

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed
through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues --

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Wilfred Owen

BIOGRAPHY No.4

Albert G Haskett (1883 – 1918) M.M.

Pte. Duke of Edinburgh’s (Wiltshire) Regiment 33475

Born in Portsmouth in 1883, the third of eight children. His maternal family date back to the mid-1700s and on his father’s came to Portsmouth between 1862 and 1864. Albert’s parents Charles and Sarah met and married here and all their relatives were greengrocers selling off a horse and cart.

Neighbours of Albert’s uncle William noticed he had been absent for several days and sent a young girl up a ladder to the bedroom window where she found him dead on the bed. That girl was May Ockendon who may have been a cousin of James Ockendon who was the first Portsmouth born soldier to be awarded the Victoria Cross in the First World War in the Battle of Passchendaele.

Albert married Ethel Daniels in Portsmouth in 1915, and they lived at 9 Cobbett Road.

Albert enroled under the Derby scheme, and was called up in January 1917 and sent to France joining the 2nd Battalion Wiltshire Regiment. March 1917.

After the attack on the Hindenburg Line and a month in training they went to Passchendaele. On the 31st July they took part in the Battle of Pilkem Ridge and in late August relieved the Australians at the newly captured Messines Ridge. Remaining there for three months consolidating their position and taking part in many trench raids.

In October 1918 Albert was awarded the Military Medal for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty whilst carrying dispatches under heavy shell fire. He was killed in action east of Eth on 4th November 1918.

Albert Haskett was gassed whilst fighting at Passchendaele

Albert’s two brothers also served and his sister Emily was a Special War Worker as a female mechanic at the Hampshire Munition Factory Portsea and at Gun Wharf for 4 years.

A female munition worker operating machinery to move shells in a factory at an undisclosed location

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum

Albert Haskett survived Passchendaele only to die either 5 or 7 days before the war ended. Our research gives his death as November 4th but Tim Backhouse gives it as November 6th. His wife and family will have suffered the additional agony of learning of his death after the war had officially ended and they had expected to welcome him home!
Even in Portsmouth, they were not alone in this....

An Additional Suffering: Late Death Notifications

Several methods were used during WW1 to notify relatives of the death of a soldier. The most common were telegrams or an 'Army Form' posted to the name and address given by the soldier on enlisting. Relatives could be telephoned if an officer came from a family who owned a phone. A Letter of Condolence written by the immediate commanding officer or often the padre could be sent where a soldier was especially respected or had displayed valour. Information was sent back from the Front to London where the telegram or army form would be completed and sent out. Telegrams were brutally short and cold. Army forms were brutally formal and consisted of a pre-printed document into which individual details such as name, rank, regiment and date of death were copied.

Soldiers supplied a next of kin in their details when they joined up so it could a wife, parent, sibling or another relative. Most men gave their wife, their mother or their sister so the overwhelming majority of death notifications were received by women!

“There came a sudden loud clattering at the front door knocker that always meant a telegram.

For a moment I thought that my legs would not carry me, but they behaved quite normally as I got up and went to the door. I knew what was in the telegram - I had known for a week - but because the persistent hopefulness of the human heart refuses to allow intuitive certainty to persuade the reason of that which it knows, I opened and read it in a tearing anguish of suspense.

"Regret to inform you Captain E.H. Brittain, MC, killed in action Italy June 15th"

"No answer," I told the boy mechanically, and handed the telegram to my father, who had followed me into the hall. As we went back into the dining-room I saw, as though I had never seen them before, the bowl of blue delphiniums on the table; their intense colour, vivid, ethereal, seemed too radiant for earthly flowers.”

Vera Brittain

'Testament Of Youth'

In an age of telegraphic communication, it took time for details to be written up, sent back to 'Blighty' and processed before being sent out to relatives. The time this took depended on the state of communications links; the distance (notices from Gallipoli or India for example took longer than from France and Belgium); and the state of the war. The more deaths that had occurred the more there were to be processed! On average, a death on the Western Front took around 2 weeks to reach home.

Wilfred Owen died exactly one week before the cease fire that ended WW1.

At 11.00 am on November 11th the church bells in Shrewsbury had just started to ring to announce the war had ended when there was a knock at the door of the Owen family home in Monkmoor Road. Mrs Owen answered, the postman handed her the telegram announcing Wilfred was dead. she fell to floor weeping.

Susan Owen c.1918

The double tragedy, obscene in its cruelty, experienced by Susan Owen on the day peace was declared was not unique. Many mothers, sisters and wives endured the same loss at the very time they thought their prayers had been answered! Our work and the research by the late Tim Backhouse has uncovered the following men from Portsmouth whose families suffered this same tragedy.

ARTHUR ROBERT NICHOLS 23rd October 1918 (2 weeks before the Armistice means notification of his death will either have reached his family after peace was declared or shortly before

ALBERT GEORGE HASKETT 4th or 6th November 1918 (either 7 days or 5 days before. His relatives will not have received the notification until after the Armistice was declared) Albert was one of the 12 Passchendaele Exhibition biographies

FREDERICK CHARLES THICK 9th November 1918 (2 days before means his family will have received the notification some days after the war ended)

ALFRED ERNEST TILLEY 11th November 1918 Armistice Day. When the Germans surrendered the British decided to make the actual cease fire 11.00 am on the 11th of November, the eleventh month of the year, for dramatic effect. Fighting continued until the very second. Many men died needlessly. Alfred Tilley died within a few hours of the end!

Men continued to died in the months after the Armistice from injuries and illnesses suffered in the war. In the weeks immediately after the end of WW1 SYDNEY GEORGE DAY RN (November 24th), ARTHUR CHARLES HALL (November 28th), ALFRED NIXON (November 30th) and HENRY CHARLES MOORE (December 27th), all men of Portsmouth died as a result of the war!

Rain: The Battle of Mud

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum
© IWM (Q 5941)

The lasting images of Passchendaele are of a hellish mire. Broken remnants of trees pointing out of a sea of slime. Men and horses struggling through a clinging morass. We remember the 3rd Battle of Ypres as ‘Passchendale’, to the men who endured it it was the “Battle of Mud”

Flanders is a flat landscape. Much farmland is reclaimed. The water table is very high. Even when the surface appears dry it can be sodden below; even a shallow dig reaches water. Farming the land required extensive drainage systems.

"When the clouds shake their hyssops, and the rain
Like holy water falls upon the plain,
'Tis sweet to gaze upon the springing grain
And see your harvest born."

Francis Ledwidge

The area has a history of heavy rain in late summer and autumn. The decision to launch a major offensive at that time may be questionable. Despite the evidence to the contrary, for many years Haig claimed that the BEF had little knowledge of this weather pattern.

On August the second, the 3rd day of Passchendaele (Pilckem Ridge), rains start that caused the battle to be halted for 8 days. August and October were the worst recorded precipitation in over 30 years. In August 1917, 127 mm of rain fell in Flanders, double the normal average for the month. In October 30 mm of rain fell in five days ( 4th to the 9th).

But rain alone was not the cause of the hell that made Passchendaele infamous!

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum
© IWM (E(AUS) 1233)

WW! trench warfare involved heavy preliminary bombardment before the battle proper commenced. This served several purposes.

It was meant to damage enemy emplacements and reduce numbers. 24 hour bombardment was to fatigue enemy troops (sleep was brief) and reduce morale. The resulting shell holes also provided important fox holes into which men going ‘over the top’ could seek shelter. But it damaged the Flanders topsoil exposing clay that soon became mire and it damaged the delicate drainage systems so the water remained where it had fallen. Shell craters became deep pools of stagnant water that men seeking shelter from machine gun fire could not escape. The wounded who might normally have survived suffocated in the liquid mud. Running across ‘no-mans land’ in a “push” was slower and more difficult leaving men vlunerable to sniper and machine gun. More men died of drowning than in any other battle in recorded history.

If that was not enough, heavy mist in the days before the battle (themselves an indicator of what was to come) made aerial reconnaissance impossible. The start of the battle was delayed for several days allowing the German army to prepare for an offensive and destroying any benefit of surprise.

September was mostly dry but not enough to begin to resolve the swamp the Ypres Salient had become. The three major pushes in the sector (Menin Road,Polygon Wood and Broodseinde) took place during this period helped by strong supporting artillery fire.

In an interview with war correspondents on 11 October Field Marshal Haig acknowledged the weather and terrain problems -‘It was simply the mud which defeated us …..The men did splendidly to get through it as they did. But the Flanders mud, as you know, is not a new invention” Despite this, Haig denied knowledge of the Flanders rain for many years after before finally admitting it was a fact his forces should (and could) have known.

If Haigs persistence in continuing the battle seems questionable, there were real dangers in halting the offensive. It would have been difficult and costly in lives to hold the position so there was some tactical necessity. Perhaps it can be argued that the final push to capture Passchendaele through the dreadful mud of October and November was a combination of this tactical necessity, However Haig’s inflexible desire to push on was also a cause.

For the Germany the rain was Heaven-sent. Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, the Field Marshal in command noted in his diary (12 October 1917) – “Sudden change of weather. Most fortunate rain, our most effective ally”

BIOGRAPHY No.5
David Craven (1898 – 1977)

Pte. 2nd Hampshire Regiment 23355

The Craven family, house painters had lived in Portsea since 1740 and were still there in 1939. David was born in in 1 Cottage Lane in 1898 and still there when WW1 started.

In 1913 the Portsmouth Evening News reported that David (then aged 15) had been charged with stealing jewellery from a house in Bramble Road with an accomplice, Charles Jenkins. Placed on probation, he was charged with another offence the following year and sentenced to two years in a Borstal institution. Six months later he was in the army.

LADS IN LODGINGS

David Craven, 15 ½ , an apprentice, of Cottage-lane, and Chas. Jenkins, 15, of Bramble-road, were jointly charged with stealing on the 3rd inst., three gold rings, one brooch, and 15s., valued together at £3, the property of Sarah A. Watson, at 10 Bramble-Road.

Portsmouth Evening News 8th October 1914

David Craven enlisted with the 2nd Hampshire Regiment in January 1915, six months in to his two year sentence. It was common practice for young offenders to be recruited in exchange for their release on licence. His service records did not survive the Second World War and the only remaining history of his service in the National Roll of the Great War lists Loos, Ypres, the Somme, Arras, Passchendaele, the German Offensive and Allied Advance of 1918.

He was demobilised February 1919, and awarded the Victory and British War medals. He married Nellie Haswell in Portsmouth in 1929, but is the only person recorded as living at 3 Cottage Lane in the 1939 Census Register.

David Craven’s battalion fought at the front line of the first day of the Battle of Langemarck. The Battalion’s diary entry records

“Night very dark and ground very boggy. Some men had to be pulled out by ropes. Battn experienced some shelling on the march and suffered a few casualties. Men behaved very steadily and there was no noise.”

Battle of Langemarck. British troops moving forward over shell-torn ground near Pilckem, 16th August 1917.

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum

BIOGRAPHY No.6
John Henry Ficken (1880 – 1941)
B.Q.M.S. Royal Garrison Artillery 19343

John Ficken’s story is unusual because his father Johan was a German immigrant who moved to London before 1880.

He was already a soldier 1911 with the Royal Garrison Artillery on Spitbank Fort. He married Amy Ellis daughter of a gunner in the Royal Marine Artillery whose family can be traced to 1732. They had one daughter, Joan, and were living at 7 Hollam Road in 1939 . John worked for Southdown Motor Services.

A serving soldier when the war broke out. John’s Battery mobilised in August 1914 and went to Egypt and then France. The National Roll of the Great War records that he played a “distinguished part” in the Battles of Ypres II, Somme, Vimy Ridge, Messines, Passchendaele, the Retreat and Advance of 1918 and was still serving in 1920. He became Battery Quarter Master Sergeant.

Three of his brothers also served; Frederick a Leading Stoker in the RN, Albert a Sergeant of the Essex Regiment and Henry a Private of the London Regiment and Labour Corps. Frederick was killed in action at the Battle of Jutland, Albert at the Battle Somme in 1st July 1916. This moved John to request that Henry be allowed to transfer to his battalion. The request was granted but Henry had four cases of being AWOL and was finally tried for desertion and sentenced to two years detention in 1917. This was overturned in exchange for returning to the front line.

At Passchendaele John served in the 32nd Siege Battery; the siege battery’s responsibility was to bombard the enemy artillery with heavy explosives and target strongpoints behind enemy lines.

John Ficken died in Portsmouth on 26th December 1941.

A 15-inch Mark II howitzer of the Royal Garrison Artillery elevated and ready to fire, near Ypres, 27th September 1917, during the Battle of Polygon Wood part of the Battle of Passchendaele.

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum

“What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

from ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’

Wilfred Owen

(Written between September & October 1917)

Hello
Life In The Trenches:edit title.

Imagine being asked to stand in a line in a field with dozens of others for 14 hours (or more) a day for several weeks (7 days a week) without access to a mobile, laptop or any modern communications and unable to contact your loved ones except for an occasional hand written letter. You are woken at dawn. There are no showers and only a few rudimentary toilets. Facilities for sleeping a very poor. You cannot change your clothes and have to wear the same clothes 24 hours a day for the whole period. You will smell awful and everyone around you will smell.

After several weeks you are given a few days off. You get to wash, wash and change your clothes, get drunk, enjoy some entertainment or educational programmes. You still cannot communicate. After these few days respite, you go back to stand in a field for another few weeks. This is your life. There is no foreseeable end and this may last for months or years!

A ditch has been dug several feet deep and you stand, sit and sleep in this ditch. There is no cover. If it rains the ditch fills with water. The water will contain human waste, it smells. There are rats. Every few days you will have to stay up all night to guard those who are sleeping.

Your ditch is four or five foot deep in parts and much deeper in others. About a hundred yards away is a huge, very loud, artillery cannon and it fires a shell every minute sometimes 24 hours a day non stop for several days even when you are trying to sleep. It can be so loud you cannot hear and proper sleep will be impossible. A few hundred yards away is another one but it’s pointed at you and firing shells back at your ditch. There are people like you in another ditch and you have to try and shoot at them with a manual rifle (it gets stuck easily) and they are trying to shoot you. In the parts of the ditch which are low you have to keep bent down so your head is not above the ground and you get shot. Where it’s high you have to climb up and try to shoot at the others while trying not to get hit. The people who die will lie in the ditch by you. They may stay there for a long time before anyone can come and take them away.

You will be in this hell when its baking hot or freezing cold, when it pours with rain and when it snows.

Finally, when you turn away from the people trying to shoot you, in many parts of the line not far behind you are loads of graves. Some already have people buried in them, some of whom would have been your friends or even close relatives. The rest are open waiting for the people who get killed, one of whom might be you! Very heavy rain may wash away the soil on the graves exposing the dead. The dead and the body parts in your trench and on the ground around it encourage the rats which, being well fed, grow to the size of a large cat. The rats often nibble at your ears or nose when you are asleep. You will have lice that bring disease leading to “Trench Fever”. The water in the ditch causes your feet to rot leading to “Trench Foot” which can result in amputation or gangrene.

Frequently, the enemy will release poison gas or you will release gas on them which often blows back onto you if the wind changes. The gas is choking, acidic and causes breathing problems and blisters on the skin.

Then sometimes your cannons will stop. A person in charge will blow a whistle and you have to climb up out of your ditch and run toward the other ditch to try and take it while they shoot at you with machine guns aimed across each other so you will have to run through two lines of constant machine gun bullets. If you are wounded there is no certainty stretcher bearers will reach you. There is no immunity for them. At Passchendaele you are likely to drown in the deep slimy mud even if your injuries are slight. The only places to hide from the bullets are shell holes and they are full of stagnant water.

This is a rough description of life in the trenches, a hellish mixture of boredom, illness, fear, death and horror

Wilfred Owen described the combination of fear and boredom and the double threat of death from the enemy and from the elements in a poem "Exposure" finished just days before his death

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us ...
Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent ...
Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient ...
Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous,
But nothing happens.

Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.
Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles,
Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
What are we doing here?

The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow ...
We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.
Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army
Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray,
But nothing happens.

Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.
Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow,
With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause and renew,
We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance,
But nothing happens.

Pale flakes with lingering stealth come feeling for our faces--
We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed,
Deep into grassier ditches. So we drowse, sun-dozed,
Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.
Is it that we are dying?

Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires glozed
With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there;
For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs;
Shutters and doors all closed: on us the doors are closed--
We turn back to our dying.

Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn;
Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.
For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid;
Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born,
For love of God seems dying.

To-night, His frost will fasten on this mud and us,
Shrivelling many hands and puckering foreheads crisp.
The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp,
Pause over half-known faces. All their eyes are ice,
But nothing happens.

BIOGRAPHY No. 7
Harry R Squires (1888 – 1917)
Pte. Hampshire Regiment 34163
Military Medal

Born in Portsmouth, the fifth of 11 children; five boys and six girls. His parents, John and Ellen Squires, were also born in Portsmouth. In 1901 they are living at 88 Lower Church Path, Fratton.

Harry Squires married Daisy Smith in Portsmouth in 1910,they had two children, Dorothea and Violet. Harry’s army service records have not survived the National Roll has two entries for him, giving some contradictory information and his enlistment as November 1916 and January 1917.

His brothers Albert and Charles also enlisted in 1916; Harry and Albert to the Hampshire Regiment and Charles to the 4th Worcestershire Regiment. Albert, the eldest a Rifleman, was killed in action in the second Battle of Gaza on 19th April 1917. He had been a soldier for six months.

Harry and Charles were both drafted to the Western Front early 1917. Harry Squires was fighting with the 2nd Battalion Hampshire Regiment acting as an unpaid Lance Corporal.

The Battalion’s War Dairy of 24th August records:

Early morning quiet. Some enemy aeroplanes flying low over our lines, his artillery was not so active as usual … 6 killed, 9 wounded, 1 wounded (at duty)

Harry was one of the six killed. He was posthumously awarded the Military Medal for “acts of gallantry and devotion to duty under fire”.

After Harry’s death Daisy remarried to Walter Gellender who, along with his brother Alexander, also served in the First World War. Walter Gellender was discharged as medically unfit but his brother Alexander was severely wounded in the Battle of Passchendaele which resulted in the amputation of his foot. Walter went on to become the Secretary of Portsmouth Disabled Ex-Servicemen’s Association.

BIOGRAPHY No. 8
Dudley Hugo Heynes (1885 – 1918)

Pte. Artists Rifles Regiment 8032

2nd Lt. Royal Field Artillery 20126

Dudley Heynes was born in Bolton where his father was a Baptist minister. He moved to Portsmouth with his wife Helen either late 1914 or early 1915 after graduating as a Solicitor to work for Pink and Marston Solicitors in Hampshire Terrace making their home in 83 Winter Road, Southsea.

Newspaper articles report some of Heynes’ court cases. During the war, Pink and Marston were regular contributors to the War Relief Fund, an act that Dudley refers to with admiration in one of his letters to his wife.

Dudley and Helen had two children, Morris (b. 1915) and Lynette (b. 1917). He spent little time with them, but Helen regularly sent him photos. The 1939 register shows Helen and Morris still living at 83 Winter Road and that Morris has followed his father into practicing law.

In June 1916 Dudley enlisted in the Artists Rifles, a selective regiment whose members included war artist Paul Nash and poet Wilfred Owen. He was gazetted as a 2nd Lieut. with the Royal Field Artillery in December and served in the field from 12th February 1917. His battery was attached to the Royal Horse Artillery, and letters home refer to his horse “good old Polly”.

As an officer Dudley held his soldiers in extremely high esteem. Dudley wrote and received letters frequently. They evidence is love for his family, his admiration and respect for all British soldiers and his anger at the ‘Boche’.

He took hardship in his stride:

“I have not slept away from the various gun positions since Jun 24th [21 days] – longer than any other officer in the whole Brigade, and I only had one night in rest where the others had three weeks. It couldn’t be helped…” (extract of a letter to Helen dated 15th August 1917).

Dudley Heynes‘ battalion was in the field throughout the Battle of Passchendaele. On 27th August he suffered a gunshot wound to his head. His diary entry records:

“Boche 4.2 bursts behind me – splinter hits me back of head under tin hat … Drive by ambulance then to Praven C.C.S. [casualty clearing station]. 5 dressings inoculation and probing.” 30th August; “Head x-rayed – small foreign body.” His letters to Helen (two on the 28th August) were written to curb her fears and refer to a ‘little cut’ on the head

Dudley was sent home for a short period to recuperate, and then returned to the front. His letters became less frequent and not until 6th November, the day the Canadians took Passchendaele does he admit to being ill having stood “in the rain peering through field glasses and taking compass bearings) coupled with the new Boche gas which attacks throat and voice, left me in a pretty rotten condition.”

His last letter to his wife was written the day he was killed in action by a bomb dropped from an enemy

aircraft. He wrote that he hoped “be home while it is still warm enough for [her] to wear” her new summer dresses.

Photograph from Obituary of 2nd Lt D H Heynes

Extract from a letter to his wife from Dudley Heynes 24th August 1917, Passchendaele

…”I think the first thing I want to do is to send you a copy of some verses one of our own signallers composed and dedicated to his wife and child. It is a sacred matter, but I was so struck with the beauty of the poetry when I was censoring letters that I could not resist copying them. I wish I could have written them, and I trust I may be forgiven this breach of privilege in repeating them. They are so good I make it my excuse. Don’t make use of them, I can’t very well ask the writer’s permission.!

Though we have reached the Parting Ways,

And hands no longer meet,

Yet we are near in thoughts sincere

To keep old memories sweet.

At night and morn my prayer ascends

To Him who guides our way

That he will keep the Love Link strong

Until our Meeting Day.

Though I may sigh and long for you

Love keeps sweet memory green,

I will wait the meeting time

While God keeps watch between.

The archive of Dudley Heynes’ personal papers, letters to his wife, diary entries and notes made in training is held by Portsmouth Records Office, Museum Road, Portsmouth, PO1 2

Website http://www.portsmouthmuseums.co.uk

Portsmouth Poetry wishes to thank the records Office for their assistance in researching Dudley Heynes

The quality of the man Dudley Heynes was is also evidenced in this obituary.....

Dudley Heynes is buried at the small Blangy Tronville Communal Cemetery in BLANGY TRONVILLE Communal Cemetery
Somme department, Hauts-de-France .

His grave is No.11 in this row.

There are 42 graves in total.

Dudley Hugo Heynes -- Missing Memorial, Frome

In the process of researching Dudley Heynes, we discovered that there was a memorial plaque commemorating him in the Memorial Theatre Frome.

Opened in 1925 as a memorial hall in memory of those who fell in the 1st World War, it became a theatre and cinema in the 1930's with the installation of seating and traded as "The Grand". The plaque was originally located in Sheppards Barton Baptist Church in the town and was relocated to the Memorial Theatre when the church closed.

However, an enquiry at the theatre on our behalf failed to trace the plaque. If you have any information regarding this important memorial we would love to hear from you.

Memorials Online website https://www.warmemorialsonline.org.uk/memorial/148165

Memorial Theatre website http://www.fmt.website

The War Poets

Why did WW1 produce such an outpouring of poetry?

A remarkable fact of the first world war was the extraordinary number of poets it involved. Numerous collections of WW1 poetry have been published. The term ‘war poet’ is almost exclusively used to refer to world war one. Around 50 talented and published poets wrote during the Great War, all but a few fought in it.

Even more remarkable, is the evidence that countless others wrote down their experiences in poetry; men and women who are not ‘recognised’ as poets. Many of them wrote powerful and moving verse suitable for publication.

One possibility is that there was a particular flowering of poetic talent in the late C19th and early C20th Centuries whose lives just happened to coincide with and, in many cases end with the war.

But the real explanation evidenced by those who wrote but were not intent on becoming published authors is more inspiring. That even in the most vile of situations surrounded by death and carnage people craved beauty and inspiration and that they were able to find it is testament to the redemptive power of poetry.

The following list includes some of the recognised (published) WW1 poets. Those who died during the war are indicated with *

Hilaire Belloc, Vera Brittain, Rupert Brooke, May Wedderburn Cannan,

Eric Thirkell Cooper, Leslie Coulson *, John Crommelin-Brown, Jeffery Day*, Geoffrey Deamer, Eva Dobell, Eleanor Farjeon, Geoffrey Faber, Gilbert Frankau, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, Julian Grenfell*, Robert Graves, Ivor Gurney,

Thomas Hardy, F W Harvey, Hedd Wyn*, W N Hodgson* Dyneley Hussey,

Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, Anna Gordon Keown, Tom Kettle*, Rudyard Kipling, Francis Ledwidge*, Roland Leighton, PHB Lyon, John McCrae*, Bernard Moore, Henry Newbolt, Robert Nichols, John P O'Donnell*, Wilfred Owen,

John Oxenham, Vivian de Sola Pinto, Jessie Pope, Herbert Read,

Isaac Rosenberg*, Lady Margaret Sackville, Siegfried Sassoon, Owen Seaman, Alan Seeger*, Charles Sorley*, Patrick Houston Shaw-Stewart*, Will Streets*, Muriel Stuart, Edward Thomas*, Katherine Tynan, Arthur Graeme West*,

T. P. Cameron Wilson*

BIOGRAPHY No.9
John H Fletcher (1881 – 1917)

Pte. 6th Battalion Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry 260127

John Fletcher was the fourth of five children born to James and Ellen Fletcher who moved to Portsmouth between 1881 and 1885. In 1891 the family lived at 99 Belgrave Square. James, a mineral water manufacturer had a brushes with the law until his death in 1897. Ellen took over the business, before advertising in the Portsmouth Evening News for a partner. She married Robert Fletcher, a man 21 years her junior, something John was not happy with and which led to a couple of court appearances. Ellen and Robert later separated and she suffered bankruptcy in 1902.

John married Portsmouth girl Harriett Croomer in 1901 and they moved to 58 Lancaster Road. By the 1911 census they had moved again to 7 Warwick Street, John’s occupation is recorded as carman and they have four children.

John Fletcher enlisted with the Royal Navy in 1906, he later he deserted. In October 1916 John enlisted with the Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry, and was posted to the Western Front.

At Passchendaele John’s battalion (6th) was in training until they were sent to relieve the 7th Battalion K.R.R.C. in the trenches. They fought in the Battle of the Menin Road Ridge, where John Fletcher lost his life. He is commemorated at Tyne Cot Memorial in Belgium.

Men taking a rest break Battle of Menin Road Ridge: "Clapham Junction"

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museumm
© IWM (E(AUS) 768)

John’s wife Harriett remarried in 1920 and she is recorded in the 1939 Register living at 8 Warwick Road, her and John’s address during the war

Some Came Home

Patriotic Postcard sent from Portsmouth on June 30th at 8.30pm (Year unknown)

The rucksack opens to access a paper strip of photos of Portsmouth and Southsea

The letter reads --

"Dear Gwen, Just a card to say I have got my discharge shall be home sometime Thursday but not till late I expect so don't write to this address again. Goodbye hoping to see you the weekend Love Jack"

An addition reads - "Got a week sick leave pending my discharge"

BIOGRAPHY No.10
George R Stebbens (1897 – 1961)

Pioneer and Sapper Royal Engineers 126425

A first generation Portsmouth boy, third of four children, his parents had moved to Portsmouth between 1893 and 1897. Father Charles was a shipwright in Portsmouth Dockyard living at 6 Northumberland Road. In 1901 and 4 Eton Road, Southsea in 1911.

George Stebbens secured an appointment in Horsham in 1913 as a telegraphist moving to Sutton in 1914 and from there to Faversham as an SC&T – Sorting Clerk and Telegraphist.

George was called up in September 1916, to the Royal Engineers Signal Depot as a Wireless Operator and he joined the BEF on 13th March 1917, transferred to the 50th Divisional Signal Company on 25th August 1917 four weeks in to the Battle of Passchendaele. Their role was to keep all lines of communication open, from wireless to visual to pigeon, and report on and immobilize German cables

In May 1918 George was at the enemy attack on the Chemin des Dames. The 50th Divisional Signals Company War Diary records:

“The bombardment opened at 1am and is reported to have been the heaviest on record.” Having received warning of the attack the night before, the Divisional Signal Office was moved to a dugout under Chateau Hanotaux. The Signal division had to attempt to keep lines of communication open as effectively as possible whilst being bombarded with enemy shells. The barrage was brutal and devastating:

“All wireless personnel and equipment are missing.”

George Stebbens was one of 134 missing or wounded having been taken prisoner. His family was informed but given very little despite the efforst of his sister Dorothy. George was eventually repatriated

Reported Missing

My thought shall never be that you are dead:

Who laughed so lately in this quiet place.

The dear and deep-eyed humour of that face

Held something ever-living, in Death’s stead.

Scornfull I hear the flat things they have said

And all their piteous platitudes of pain.

I laugh! I laugh! – For you will come again –

This heart would never beat if you were dead.

The world’s adrowse in twilight hushfulness,

There’s purple lilac in your little room,

And somewhere out beyond the evening gloom

Small boys are culling summer watercress.

Of these familiar things I have no dread

Being so very sure you are not dead.

Anna Gordon Keown

BIOGRAPHY No.11
Charles W Greentree (1887 – 1950)

Driver/Saddler 4th Canadian Division Ammunition Column 183692

Charles Greentree was one of three brothers, 2nd generation Portsmouth boys with three sisters. Both sets of grandparents had moved to Portsea in the 1850s. By the 1891 census they were living in Hope Street without their father.

The brothers (Charles, George and Frederick), with thousands of other children, were taken by Dr Barnardos to start new lives in Canada where they became farm workers

From the early C20th until the 1970's, many thousands of children, either orphans or 'in care' were sent to Australia or Canada, to start a 'new life'. Dr Barnados and many other children's charities participated. Undoubtedly 'well intentioned', the programme has in recent years been exposed as flawed and often involved abuse and exploitation.

The oldest of the brothers, Charles joined up in November 1915 and sailed for England in September 1916 before being sent to the front on 21st August 1917. He stayed in Portsmouth his 'home' town (the naval port had a major role in troop movement) and married Violet Freeman there in December 1916.

Brother George had joined in 1914 a day after youngest brother Frederick. Sent to the Western Front in May 1915; he was blown out of a wagon and suffered shell shock, and was discharged as medically unfit.

Frederick was also sent to the Western Front in 1915, and taken prisoner . He was released on 8th January 1919 after four years as a POW dying of meningitis attributed to his war service 18 months later.

Charles was the only one of the Greentree brothers to fight at Passchendaele. He appointed a Saddler on arrival in the field and his division went straight to join the battle. Fighting for the Canadian Divisions was incessant; they had to deal with artillery, light and heavy trench mortar, gas shells and aircraft shelling.

“Taken as a whole, the fighting during this tour was some of the heaviest that has been encountered in the war.”

4th Canadian Division War Diary August 1917

Charles was granted special leave of absence to England for 14 days on the 29th December and returned to the Front 12th January 1918. His son Roy Charles was born the following September. After the war he returned to Canada with his wife and son and became a Game Warden.

Canadian Divisions arrived at Passchendaele on 7 October. Three rainless days from 3–5 November eased preparation for the final assault on Passchenaele on the morning of 6 November by the 1st and 2nd Canadian Divisions. In less than three hours, Passchendaele was captured. A final action on 10 November, by the Canadians took control of the remaining high ground north of the village near Hill 52

Injured Canadian soldiers were treated in Portsmouth's St James's Hospital which had ceased operation as an 'asylum' for the purpose

Passchendaele 12 October - 6 November: View of the battlefield through which Canadian Divisions advanced with Passchendaele Church on the horizon, showing the waterlogged state of the ground.

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum
© IWM (Q 56258)

BIOGRAPHY No.12
Percy Eastland (1898 – 1970)

Pte. 1st Hampshire Regiment 15128

Born in Portsmouth, the third of four children; Charles, Albert, Percy and Mabel. His father Albert, a naval armourer, moved the family to Portsmouth from Surrey between 1893 and 1896 when he was posted to HMS Excellent in March 1895. In 1901 the family was living at 32 George Street. The address was still in the family in 1939 though Percy is living in Fareham with his wife Annie, they married in1934.

Percy joined the1st Hampshire Regiment 1915 and was posted to the Western Front. He was wounded in the Battle of the Somme, recovered and returned to active service fighting at Passchendaele and the 1918 retreat where he was seriously wounded and subsequently lost his leg.

Percy’s brothers and his father also served in the war; brothers Charles and Albert in the Hampshire Regiment and father Albert back in the navy where he was in Battle of Jutland before being put on shore duties. Albert junior was a 1st Class Signaller and suffered a gunshot wound to his left shoulder in 1917 and was discharged in 1918. Charles also fought on the Western Front in the Battles of Arras and Messines. He was wounded and taken prisoner of war in 1918 and held at Darmstadt POW camp until 1919.

Percy Eastland army returned to active service in the Battle of Passchendaele after being injured at the Somme. He severely wounded, in the 2nd Battle of Arras 1918. Alone and unable to move for several hours, he was found by the 1st Hampshire Regiment’s Padre Rev. S E Swann. Rev Swann and his batman carried Percy back to the British trenches on a stretcher “a nightmare journey through a hail of shells and bullets”. Percy had always wanted to thank Rev Swann personally for rescuing him and his chance came when Canon Swann came to Portsmouth to preach at Portsmouth Cathedral on 19th September 1954. “But for Canon Swann I should have died

Photograph from Portsmouth Evening News article on the meeting of Percy Eastland and Canon Swann 1954

The Outcome of the Battle of Passchendaele:

A British soldier stands besides Army carpenter making

the grave of a comrade near crosses for war graves, 1

Pilckem 22nd August 1917 18 August 1917

Royal Field Artillery Gunners British tank half submerged hauling a field gun out of the mud in mud and water near St Julien, North of Ypres, 2 August 1917 12 October 1917.

Photographs by kind permission of the Imperial War Museum
© IWM (Q 2756) © IWM (Q 5885) © IWM (Q 5937) © IWM (Q 6327)

Passchendaele lasted 103 days

Over half a million men died

Historian AJP Taylor claimed that figures were officially altered to reduce casualties numbers. Although he challenged Taylor, military historian John Terraine quoted "normal wastage" as averaging 35,000 per month in the "quiet periods". The Total average for Passchendaele is 5000-6000 per day or 90,000 British and Allied casulaties per month!

Men and horses drowned in the mud. More men died from drowning (not enemy fire) than in any other recorded battle in history

Thousands were wounded or suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Few survivors ever talked about their experiences

"When the war ended, I don't know if I was more relieved that we'd won or that I didn't have to go back. Passchendaele was a disastrous battle – thousands and thousands of young lives were lost. It makes me angry. Earlier this year, I went back to Ypres to shake the hand of Charles Kuentz, Germany's only surviving veteran from the war. It was emotional. He is 107. We've had 87 years to think what war is. To me, it's a licence to go out and murder. Why should the British government call me up and take me out to a battlefield to shoot a man I never knew, whose language I couldn't speak? All those lives lost for a war finished over a table. Now what is the sense in that?"

— Harry Patch

Buttes New British Cemetery in Zonnebeke, Flanders

There are many cemeteries around the Ypres Salient, including the mass graves witnessed by Jack Seely

The Buttes New British Cemetery in Zonnebeke. Zonnebeke, West Flanders, Belgium seen here is one of the smaller burial grounds resulting from Passchendaele. It contains 2093 dead of whom 1600 (76%) are unidentified

Many dead remained where they fell or were absorbed into the mud. In 1919, when the battlefield clearances began, the bodies of 25,000 Commonwealth soldiers were found in the area north, south and east of Passchendaele. More than 70% were unidentifiable. Of the 11,954 men honoured at Tyne Cot 8367 (70%) are unidentified dead.Their graves are marked with the words "Known Unto God"

Some 42,000 bodies have never been recovered. These include John Frederick White RAMC of Portsmouth

The village of Passchendaele was completely obliterated

These arial reconnaissance photographs show the village of Passchendaele taken immediately before (lower) and immediately after the Battle. The dots in the post battle photograph are thousands of mud filled shell craters!

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum

Having taken Passchendaele, Haig chose not to advance to the submarine bases that had been his objective.

German General Staff documents state Germany had been brought near to certain destruction (sicheren Untergang) by the battle. Had it been continued for two more weeks it is possible the war might have ended in 1917 not 1918

The nomclementure applied to General Haig as the “Butcher of the Somme” continues to be debated, his responsibility in Passchendaele is often overlooked

Haig was an experienced military leader in both fighting and managment roles

He was fighting using military skills and tactics that had become less effective by because of significant techological advances in warfare the late C19th and earlt C20th.

These included -
Submarine warfare, chemical weapons, tanks,telephone communications, arial reconaissance and the machine gun.

The last three especially altered the parameters of trench tactics. Haig and his commanders were learning on their feet.

But

He stuck to a faith in cavalry

He remained convinced that the "resolve" would win even when it was costing thousands of lives

He continued to believe that the machine gun was "over-rated" even after the fatalities of the Somme and the exemplar of Mametz Wood

Although the 'lions led by donkeys' sobriquet surfaced in the 1960's, Siegfried Sassoon played a major part in advancing this damning opinion of WW1 military leadership long before the term became well known.

"My subject is War and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity"

Wilfred Owen

The 'war poets' chose either to romanticise WW1 or, in the main, give voice to the tragedy and suffering. These were not 'pacifists' or anti-war poets, the overwhelming majority were serving soldiers but they felt the need to express and make understood the suffering war involves.

Sassoon was different.

In addition to the 'pity', his poems often castigate those who sent men to their deaths and criticise military leadership. These include journalists, women at home, local dignitaries (who often played a key role in recruitment as in Portsmouth) and military leaders.

"The General" (1917) is a scathing parody of command ineptitude and, although written about his superior officer in the Royal Welsh (Maj-Gen Sir Reginald Pinney), is often taken as a condemnation of Haig. However, his poem "Song-Books of the War" mentions Haig by name.

Sassoon's poems identify with the ordinary soldier both in subject and they way they are written and often express the social chasm that existed between senior officers and the 'ranks' and the ease with which men were sent to their deaths.

Right hand arch of the Menin Gate Memorial. The missing of the Army Service Corps are inscribed on

Panel 56, just visible to the right inside the doorway including John Frederick White

For many years Haig claimed that the heavy rain of 1917 could not have been foreseen but finally admitted that heavy August rain in Flanders was well known

Butcher or Hero?

"Victory will belong to the side that holds out the longest. There is no other course open but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man. There must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the end."

Haig, Order of the Day (11 April 1918)

"He was a painstaking professional soldier with a sound intelligence of secondary quality. He had the courage and stubbornness of his race. But he did not possess the necessary breadth of vision or imagination to plan a great campaign against some of the ablest generals of the war. I never met a man in a high position who seemed to me so utterly devoid of imagination."

Lloyd George, War Memoirs (1928)

"In all the British offensives the British casualties were never less than 3 to 2, and often nearly double the corresponding German losses… The campaign of 1916 on the Western Front was from beginning to end a welter of slaughter."

Winston Churchill, The World Crisis (1923)

"Haig had a fine appearance, and a stern devotion to duty. Though he had no more idea than others how to win the war, he was sure that he could win it. Divine help would make up for any deficiencies on his part. This unshakeable confidence, and the support of the king, enabled Haig to survive a long record of failure and to emerge in the end victorious… A later generation may feel that Haig should have stood on the defensive and waited for the tanks. The French would not have tolerated this. The British public would have been still more indignant. Haig had to do what he did and, though he did not succeed, no one better was found to take his place."

AJP Taylor, The First World War (1963)

"As an executive commander there has hardly been a finer defensive general; in contrast, among those who have gained fame as offensive generals none perhaps have made worse errors… His mind was dominated by the instinct of method, where he failed was in the instinct of surprise – originality of conception, fertility of resource, receptivity in ideas. In his qualities and defects he was the very embodiment of the national character and the army tradition."

Sir Basil H Liddell Hart, Reputations (1928)

For a century, opinion on Haig has been split between two divergent summaries, the highly critical and the apologist. There have been great and accomplished names in both camps.

This quote from the close of the war demonstrates that, despite the Somme and Passchendaele, Haig's Victorian view that 'resolve' would win ignoring the cost in lives was unshaken!

The depiction of Haig as intractable and lacking in imagination originated with David Lloyd George. However, it must be remembered the men hated each other. Not only did they come from different and opposing backgrounds, Haig hated Lloyd George for 'interfering' in military matters by making him more accountable to the war Council and Lloyd George hated Haig for Mametz Wood and for the implications the war had for his political career. It has been said that Lloyd George agreed to Passchendaele in the hope that it would ruin Haigs career and remove him! EKG Sixsmith ("Douglas Haig" 1976) argued that Lloyd George was the prime cause of the damning view of Haig and that his opinion was very different before the Somme.

Haig's response to Churchill was that French pressure which forced him to keep fighting on the Western Front in 1916–1917, and wrote about the battle of Passchendaele in 1917:

‘

"It is impossible for Winston to know how the possibility of the French army breaking up in 1917 compelled me to go on attacking. Pétain pressed me not to leave the Germans alone for a week, on account of the awful state of the French troops."

A J P Taylor's account of WW1 at its 50th anniversary was a major addition to the critical view of British military leadership. It manages to be both damning and give a grudging defence!

Perhaps the most reasoned assessment comes from Liddell Hart, that Haig was both accomplished and inept leading to some catastrophic decisions. A military man of his era in both the best and the worst aspects!!

In Flanders Fields, by John McRae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD

Canadian poet, teacher of English and Mathematics, pathologist, physician, author, artist and both a soldier and a surgeon during WWI

Although he later visited the Cambrai battlefield, Field Marshall Haig did not visit Passchendaele either while his troops were dying there or after the battle had ended. He remained committed to the belief that resolve could overcome any obstacle, even the mud and the machine guns he said were ’over-rated’!

When Passchendaele was over his Chief of Staff , Sir Launcelot Kiggell, visited the area for the first time. He said to have broken into tears at the sight

of the muddy wasteland and said, “Good God, did we really send men to fight in that?”. His driver is said to have given the laconic response "It's worse over that ridge, Sir!"

Note - Brigadier-General John Davidson later claimed it was actually himself in the autumn of 1917 on first seeing the morass in which the army fought, not Kiggell. There is no evidence to corroborate this.

The men who suffered and died at Passchendaele and the other battles of the ‘Great War’ (the “war to end all wars”) are our recent relatives

“Have you forgotten yet?
Look up and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget”
‘Aftermath’

Siegfried Sassoon

Copyright Siegfried Sassoon by kind permission of the Estate of George Sassoon

"As a small boy in Southsea, I saw streets disfigured by ragged, unwanted ex-soldiers, medalled but ill, blind, maimed, selling matches, bootlaces, notepaper, trundling barrel-organs or standing with a melancholy dog or monkey beside a decrepit hurdy-gurdy. Whether they were pleading or abusive, resigned or menacing, they appalled me. Their wretchedness suggested that, in overthrowing Germany, they had earned some monstrous penalty now being inexorably exacted."

Peter Vansittart

Voices from the Great War Pimlico Books

[Copyright Note -- this is the only item (quotation or image) for which permission to use has not been sought and given where copyright exists. In preparing for the exhibition, permission was sought from the publishers Random House who own/owned Pimlico but without success as the book is no longer in print. All attempts to track down Vansittart's widow who inherited his literary estate both in the UK and abroad failed despite contacting his solicitor who drew up and executed his will. UK copyright law allows non-profit use of limited quotations where every reasonable effort has been made to secure permission from the estate of an author. With regret, the quotation was not used in the exhibition but is included here as it is such a succinct and well written description of the fate of so many WW1 combatants. If you have information which would allow us to contact the current owner of Peter Vansittart's estate please contact us.

Josh Brown

Portsmouth V.C.'s

The Victoria Cross is the highest British award for valour in battle. During Passchendaele, several of the men in our biographies were awarded the Military Medal, the award immediately below the VC.

Three Victoria Crosses were awarded to Portsmouth men or men commanding soldiers from the city. They were not included in the Portsmouth Poetry Passchendaele Project only because their details are already well documented.

Dennis Hewitt

14th Battalion Hampshire Regiment (the 1st ‘Pompey Pals’). VC won at St Julien on the 1st day of Passchendaele (31st July 1917). Having joined the regiment in 1917 as a 2nd Lieutenant after leaving Winchester College he found himself in charge of a company at 19! Hewitt organised his men despite being badly wounded at Pilckem Ridge and led them to the next objective line which was secured. Hewitt died in a hail of machine gun fire. He has no known grave and is remembered at Tyne Cot. The VC was awarded posthumously.

Montague Moore

15th Battalion Hampshire Regiment (the 2nd ‘Pompey Pals’). Joined the Hampshires after Sandhurst. Joined Passchendaele after removering from wounding at Messines Ridge. Led an attack on 20 October suffering heavy losses and then shelled by British artillery the following day. Moore and 10 surviving men sheltered for a day and night until they could return to British lines in the morning mist. They had been in ‘no man’s land’ for 48 hours. Moore died in Kenya in 1966.

James Ockenden

1st Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers. After fighting and being wounded at Gallipoli, he was awarded the Military Medal in France in 1917 before being sent to Passchendaele. As an acting Sergeant-Major, on 4th October at Langemark, he saw that his company were held up by machine gun fire, rushed the gun and captured it. Then he led his company into an attack despite heavy fire forcing a garison to surrender. Born and brought up in Landport, he survived the war and returned to Portsmouth to work in the dockyard. Crowds chered him on his return home. He died in 1966. The City Council named Ockenden Close in his honour. His family still live in the city. There is a memorial to James Ockenden in the Fratton British Legion and a family bench in Burgoyne Gardens Southsea. James Ockenden was also awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre. A pavement memorial was laid on October 4th 2017 to mark the centenary of his heroism.

James Ockenden VC Memorial Bench Burgoyne Gardens Southsea Seafront

For an account of Ockenden's war visit:

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/heritage/war-hero-was-cheered-in-the-streets-on-his-return-home-1-3835877

Additional Sites providing information and biographies of Portsmouth men at Passchendaele

Portsmouth Grammar School Book of Remembrance

131 ex-PGS pupils fought in WW1 and the fallen were commemorated in a school project in 2014. They include four men who fought at Passchendaele

Cecil Harte Barry

Lieytenant 17th Battalion Royal Irish Regiment and 57th Squadron Royal Flying Corps. Killed in action 21st August 1917. Listed at Tyne Cot

Cyril Alfred Spencer Buck

2nd Lieutenant 18th Battalion London Regiment (London Irish Rifles) and attached to 2nd/3rd Battalion London Regiment (Royal Fusiliers). Killed in action 26th October 1917. Listed at Tyne Cot.

Arthur Graham Cook

Private 1st Portsmouth Battalion 14th Hampshire Regiment (1st Pompey Pals). Died of wounds 17th September 1917. Buried in Reninghelst Cemetery

Lionel Ernest Schloss

2nd Lieutenant 44th Company Machine Gun Corps. Killed in action on the 1st day of Passchendaele 31st July 1917. Listed at the Menin Gate Memorial

Details of these men can be found on the Portsmouth Grammar School website at

http://www.pgs.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Book-of-Remembrace

History In Portsmouth

The excellent local history website of the late Tim Backhouse details the largest number of biographies of men from Portsmouth who died in WW1. This is the most detailed and comprehensive research yet published about men from the city in the Great War. Backhouse took the names of the WW1 dead from the Portsmouth Cenotaph and researched them and their families. He also discovered a number of men missing from the memorial roll. Among these are the following names of 47 men who fought (or may have fought) at Passchendaele.

Henry Thomas Allen

Reginald Egbert Batchelor

Reginald Harold Chamberlain

Clarence Harold Churchill

Reginald Arthur Clarke

Frank Clay

Cecil Herbert Mowlam Collingwood

Henry George Couzins

Clarance W Cox

Charles Edward Crockford

Charles Walter Dangerfield

Allen James Day

William Garnett Daysh

Charles David Dollery

Frederick Alexander Drackett

Arthur Boyett Earle

Alfred Stewart Earwicker

William John Edney

Frederick Frampton

Hugh Bernard German

John George Giles

Henry Cecil Hall

George Joseph Hankin

Frank James Henley

Ernest Harold Hoff

Albert Edward Hooker

Alfred William Horn

Henry Pembroke Innes

Abel Cain Ivery

George Bensly Iveson

George Stinton James

Sydney John Jenkins

Burton Thomas Knox

William Wallace McCrerie

Alfred Parfoot

George Edwin Harold Parks

George Powell

Albert Edward Roles

Edgar Thomas Smith

Charles Leonard Stokes

Willian Edward Stone

John Charles Dodsworth Tetley

Frederick George Thomas

Stanley Benjamin Tidy

Alfred Ernest Tilley

David Underdown

William Thomas Wills

Website

http://historyinportsmouth.co.uk/people/ww1/index.htm

Portsmouth Poetry

Portsmouth Poetry is a non-profit voluntary body launched during the 2016 Portsmouth Festivities which was set up to promote mixed-arts events and activities in the city. Its mission is to work in partnership with other venues and organisations in art, theatre, music and education to provide performances and community and educational projects based upon poetry drawing on a broad spectrum of expertise.

The Passchendaele Project

The Project arose out of discussions with Portsmouth Cathedral to promote poetry based events in the Cathedral in keeping with the ethical and humanitarian concerns that are shared by poets and faiths. More than four years into the centenary commemoration we were concerned that Passchendaele being less well known than other WW1 engagements and overshadowed by the Somme might not receive the remembrance it deserved. We decided to produce an exhibition, performance and educational activities to highlight not

only the tragedy of Passchendaele but the contribution to it from the city of Portsmouth. The exhibition and performance were located in St Thomas's Cathedral as part of the 2017 Portsmouth Festivities

The HLF funded project comprised

In-depth historical research to identify and produce biographies of Portsmouth participation in the battle

Battle of Passchendaele

A month long commemorative exhibition in Portsmouth (St Thomas’s) Cathedral and video narrative on

the Guildhall Square Big Screen

An autumn term schools project for Year 7-11 3 pupils.
A digital archive of the research outcomes and permanent home for the exhibition materials

Heritage Lottery Fund ‘First World War then and now’

The Heritage Lottery Fund ‘First World War then and now’ programme seeks to encourage and fund local events and projects which identify and highlight the involvement and contribution of local communities.

The Passchendaele Project was recognised by a £10,000 award as making an important contribution to local heritage by helping the city to recognise and understand its recent history and the part it and its people played.

A £6,000 award from Arts Council England funded an accompanying performance “The Angels Cry” in the Cathedral (June 20) produced by Portsmouth Poetry and the New Theatre Royal.

The Research Project

A professional archivist with proven expertise, Donna Bish, was engaged to complete research to identify people from Portsmouth who had participated in the 3rd Battle of Ypres. Her brief was to conduct initial research to identify participants and an overview of their stories to form a 'shortlist' from which 12 would be selected for more detailed investigation. These 12 would form the core of the exhibition. Time constraints meant that this research would have to be completed in 3 months.

In total, nearly 250 Portsmouth WW1 participants were identified - names, an address, rank and regiment. Initial research removed those found not to have fought at Passchendaele or for whom no further records existed.

An interim shortlist of around 68 persons secured more detail and again it was possible to eliminate more either because additional information did not exist or would take longer to acquire than was available.

A meeting discussed approximately 20+ biographies and the final 12 were selected both because of their stories and to reflect a diversity typical of the WW1 experience. These 12 were investigated in depth and formed the core of the exhibition.

Researching WW1 - the buried truth of the Great War

The Portsmouth Poetry Passchendaele Centenary research project was an enormous success. The diligence and expertise of our archivist Donna Bish produced a depth of detail and information rarely achieved in investigating the Great War and for each of the 12 biographies in our exhibition included not only detail of the experience at Passchendaele but the war service, their lives and family details (particularly rare). The end result is some of the most informative research into WW1 and Portsmouth.

Researching WW1 is very difficult. To obtain information, three things are needed-

1 informative data has to have been properly collected

2 the data needs to have been recorded effectively

3 this information needs to be safely archived so as to be accessible to subsequent generations.

If any one of these is inadequate, securing reliable information will be difficult and obscured. In the case of the first world war, all three are faulted!

The British armed forces kept only the briefest of information on its men. By contrast, better recording was made by our allies such as the Canadians and he best records were kept by the Germany evidenced, for example, in the Wikipaedia entry on Passchendaele which gives detailed German casualty figures and none for the BEF. In addition, slightly better records were kept of officers than the rank and file though still minimal in content and rigorous censorship at the time limited the content of letters home, war diary entries and the scenes permitted in photography. Much of our understanding of the true horror of 3rd Ypres has come from German and French forces where these restrictions were less vigorous.

Subsequent storage and archiving is a problem. The records of officers were kept in a rural location and have survived. Those of ‘ranks’ were stored in London and 60% were lost in a direct hit during the WW2 ‘blitz’. Military records, where they have survived, have no connection with other records such as the national census so that to complete a full account of the lives of WW1 servicemen requires accessing data from unconnected sources. A number of online ‘ancestry’ sites now exist but are still far from complete, unconnected and expensive to access. Researching our recent past is costly, very time consuming and requires a good understanding of how conduct such investigation. The best outcome of the WW1 Centenary would have been to coordinate these sources.

“Every time an old person dies, it’s like a library burning down.” Alex Haley
The universal response of those men who did survive the war. Symptomatic of PTSD, they buried the horror internally and never spoke about it. All but a few, took their story to the grave. In the 1960’s the BBC attempted a documentary for the 50th anniversary in which veterans would talk of their experiences. Over a thousand veterans were approached but only 15 would agree to do so and most of these reluctantly. The famous Harry Patch did not talk of his experiences until the very end of his long life.

Not only do these problems hamper the investigation of WW1, they fuel controversy and disagreement over what happened. Even obtaining an agreed figure on the number of men who died during Passchendaele is impossible!

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum © IWM (Q 2978)

Portsmouth Poetry Passchendaele Project Research
b
ARCHIVED RESEARCH DATA

To access details of the research and how it was completed, the full biographies of the 12 Portsmouth men featured here and in our Exhibition and the identifying information on over 400 Portsmouth WW1 soldiers, CLICK ON THE BUTTON "RESEARCH" BELOW TO DOWNLOAD IN PDF

RESEARCH

This research, a valuable contribution to our understanding of WW1 and the history of Portsmouth and its people, was made possible by the generous support of the Heritage Lottery Fund

The Exhibition

The exhibition consisted of 30 printed plates mounted on 5 display boards hung from the windows of the Ambulatory of Portsmouth Cathedral. A display banner at the start and end of the displays explained the project purpose and provided information about the Battle of Passchendaele and concluding information about the battle and the people and organisations who had assisted the production of the exhibition.

In addition to the biographies there were illustrative images and quotations used to narrate the exhibition

The exhibition opened on June 16th and closed July 14th 2017

The Angels Cry

Written and Choreographed by Liz Weston and Donna Bish, "The Angels Cry" incorporated drama, dance, music, singing, film and images to tell the story of World War 1 as it was experienced by the women left behind - mothers, wives, lovers and sisters, the people most frequently given as next of kin when men enlisted drawing parallels with more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Women who worked in the factories to supply the war, endured the hardship of raising families alone and suffered grief when their men died. The title is taken from "Passchendaele" by Iron Maiden

Acknowledgements:
PORTSMOUTH POETRY WISHES TO THANK THE FOLLOWING FOR THEIR HELP AND ADVICE IN MAKING THIS POSSIBLE

Heritage Lottery Fund

Portsmouth Cathedral

Donna Bish Archivist

Professor Brad Beavan & Dr Karl Bell

Gateways to the first world war at

University of Portsmouth

Chris Pennycook

Pompey Pals Project

John Sadden

Portsmouth Grammar School

Alan Laishley

Portsmouth WW1 Research

Racing Post Books

The Estate of George Sassoon

Imperial War Museum

Portsmouth Records Office

By kind permission of the Imperial War Museum

p
Portsmouth Poetry Passchendaele Project: A Personal Evaluation

The intention of the Passchendaele Project was to raise awareness and understanding of WW1 and to engage local people with their heritage. How can we judge the extent to which this has been achieved? Numbers, where possible, tell us how many have accessed the information but not its impact. Oral and written responses tell us more. Here is my own experience.

For 10 months, Passchendaele took over my life. Most days were spent working on some aspect of the project. Initially, I was dispassionate about the battle and those who endured it. It was history. But slowly, the men and women who lived through this terrible period, the poets who chronicled its pain and bravery became ‘real’. No longer names from a distant past, they became people, neighbours and relatives whose stories were deeply moving.

As the project progressed I became more personally and emotionally engaged. Passchendaele is not just a piece of history it is part of our own identity which we have a personal duty to protect. On more than one occasion it brought me to tears!

How can you not be sad reading the letters of Dudley Heynes to his beautiful young wife; the death of the talented young Frederick White while saving others, the bravery of the priest who rescued Percy Eastland or the unfathomable tragedy of Albert Haskett who survived Passchendaele only to die three days before the war ended? How can you not be moved reading the poems and memories of those who endured and died? Hedd Wyn and Francis Ledwidge whose talent would have made them famous C20th poets had they not died on the same afternoon. Vera Brittain’s numbed misery on receiving the death notification of her brother. Harry Patch’s incomprehension at the futility of the Great War. Siegfried Sassoon’s rage against its injustice and incompetence.

Slowly, I began to reconnect with my own father and grandfather. I was very young when Taid (Welsh for Granddad) died. He was a miner turned brilliant carpenter; well read, warm and generous but (so I was told) prone to dark moods and hypochondria. I started to remember some of his letters to my mother in the 1950’s and family reminiscences and identify the dark spectre of PTSD they had failed or refused to recognise. I thought more and more of the little I knew of my fathers WW2 experiences at D Day and in the months after and the magnitude of what he had been through and how he and my father in law both refused to talk of the war keeping it forever locked deep inside, an unspoken past. I felt and still feel a profound sorrow that it was only after their passing that I recognised the scale of what these close relatives had lived through and survived.

Throughout, there were unbelievable, improbable coincidences.

My birthday was a few days after I purchased the postcard sent from Portsmouth that featured in the exhibition under the title “Some Came Home”. Late that evening Matthew, my eldest stepson, suddenly said, “You bought a world war one postcard this week”. Surprised, I asked him how he knew to which he replied “You bought it from my father!” A hospice had been given the postcard collection of a lady they had cared for and Matt’s father had volunteered to sell them on Ebay to raise funds. The likelihood of the purchaser being someone he knew is more than remote.

My wife knows little of the history of her Irish family, Dublin Quakers. I came late from the Cathedral after setting up the exhibition to join her and her uncle Henry, the youngest of her late mother’s siblings. Explaining the project and exhibition I mentioned John Frederick White who died on the first day of Passchendaele working as a stretcher bearer in the RAMC. On hearing this, Henry said “Of course, Dad was a stretcher bearer at Passchendaele” It was something we did not know. As an Irishman, fighting in WW1 was uncertain especially as a Quaker. Had the visit been on another day this information might never have surfaced. Knowing the fate of John Frederick White and the conditions under which RAMC operated meant we understood just how heroic it was.

My grandfather served throughout WW1. He joined the 4th Batt Royal Welsh Fusilliers when war was declared, a few months before my mother was born and finished when the war ended. He fought on the Western Front in France and Flanders including the Somme and Passchendaele. He came home but managed to escape returning to the pit unlike every one of my uncles and male cousins. He brought home three brass shell cases, three of the millions fired. These he turned into vases each decorated with ‘Cymru Am Byth’ and listing every single engagement he had fought in.

After his death, my aunts and cousins coveted these vases but Nain (Welsh for Nanny) would not contemplate parting with them. Until that is my mother, sister and I visited when I was 11. On the day of our departure, I expressed a liking for them and without hesitation Nain handed me the largest of the three saying “Then you have this Cariad!”

Only years later did I learn that this had caused a dreadful family row! Not only had Nain refused to discuss parting with them before, not only had she given them to a child who could not begin to understand their importance, she had separated the three breaking the list that recorded Taids war! Of course they were right. I often wondered about the other two. Then came this project and a much greater understanding of what that record of combat truly meant.

The vases haunt me and now I have begun a possibly fruitless search for my relatives in a thin hope that I may be able to right the injustice my naïve 11 year old self imposed on my distant family.

Remembrance takes many forms.

‘Mae hen wlad fy nhadau ' [Welsh National Anthem]

The land of my fathers is dear unto me, a land where the minstrels are honoured and free, Its warring defenders, so gallant and brave, For freedom their life's blood they gave

Josh Brown October 2017

Where copyright protection is known to exist on any part of this website (image or textual) this has been sought and is indicated. Should you wish to use any of this material you must secure the permission of the Intellectual Property holder. Do not assume that these items are for free use. All materials secured by our researcher were copyright checked and permissions were obtained. Note that copyright on written materials such as books and poetry lasts for 70 years after the death of the author but family archives and private material of these may continue to be copyright. [The photographs from the imperial War Museum used here, although 100 years old, are still the property of the IWM and permission must be obtained for their use.] The material published here is the property of Portsmouth Poetry but, in keeping with the objective of this project and the Heritage Lottery Fund award that made it possible, we waive all intellectual property rights and you are free to use it. Should you use any of this website in any form of publication, we would ask that you respect the considerable effort and generosity that has made it possible and reference its source.

Thank You

Portsmouth Poetry is a project to promote mixed-arts events and activities in the city. A non-proift voluntary organisation, its Mission is to work in partnership with other venues and organisations in art, theatre, music and education to provide performances and community & educational projects the city drawing on a broad spectrum of expertise. “From A Borrowed Biro” reflects the way in which we all ‘use’ the words of poets at key points in our lives and is adapted from a lyric by the poet, author and broadcaster Clive James who has endorsed its use.

portsmouth poetry From A Borrowed Biro

From A Borrowed Biro

Gallery

The 2nd Battle of YpresJuly 31st - November 10th 1917

"PASSCHENDAELE"

Day One - July 31st 1917

Portsmouth Cenotaph, Guildhall Square

Two PoetsOn the afternoon of the first day of Passchendaele, two rising young poets died within a couple of miles of each other Hedd Wyn from Wales and Francis Ledwidge from Ireland

PASSCHENDAELE TIMELINE 1917

BOY SOLDIERS

PALS REGIMENTS & THE 'POMPEY PALS'

BIOGRAPHY No. 3John D Cherrett MM (1880 – 1950) Pte. Royal Hampshire Regiments 14614 Pte. Royal Defense Corps Protection Company 81475

Field Marshal Douglas Haig

Haigs Plan for Passchendaele (the 3rd Battle of Ypres)WHY WAS A RE-RUN OF THE SOMME SANCTIONED?

BIOGRAPHY No.4 Albert G Haskett (1883 – 1918) M.M. Pte. Duke of Edinburgh’s (Wiltshire) Regiment 33475

Rain: The Battle of Mud

BIOGRAPHY No.6John Henry Ficken (1880 – 1941)B.Q.M.S. Royal Garrison Artillery 19343

HelloLife In The Trenches:edit title.

BIOGRAPHY No. 7Harry R Squires (1888 – 1917)Pte. Hampshire Regiment 34163Military Medal

BIOGRAPHY No. 8Dudley Hugo Heynes (1885 – 1918) Pte. Artists Rifles Regiment 8032 2nd Lt. Royal Field Artillery 20126

The War Poets

BIOGRAPHY No.9John H Fletcher (1881 – 1917) Pte. 6th Battalion Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry 260127

Some Came Home

BIOGRAPHY No.10George R Stebbens (1897 – 1961) Pioneer and Sapper Royal Engineers 126425

BIOGRAPHY No.11Charles W Greentree (1887 – 1950) Driver/Saddler 4th Canadian Division Ammunition Column 183692

BIOGRAPHY No.12Percy Eastland (1898 – 1970) Pte. 1st Hampshire Regiment 15128

The Outcome of the Battle of Passchendaele:

Butcher or Hero?

In Flanders Fields, by John McRae

Portsmouth V.C.'s

Additional Sites providing information and biographies of Portsmouth men at Passchendaele

Portsmouth Poetry

The Passchendaele Project

A £6,000 award from Arts Council England funded an accompanying performance “The Angels Cry” in the Cathedral (June 20) produced by Portsmouth Poetry and the New Theatre Royal.

The Research Project

Researching WW1 - the buried truth of the Great War

Portsmouth Poetry Passchendaele Project ResearchbARCHIVED RESEARCH DATA

RESEARCH

The Exhibition

The Angels Cry

Acknowledgements:PORTSMOUTH POETRY WISHES TO THANK THE FOLLOWING FOR THEIR HELP AND ADVICE IN MAKING THIS POSSIBLE

pPortsmouth Poetry Passchendaele Project: A Personal Evaluation

The 2nd Battle of Ypres
July 31st - November 10th 1917

Two Poets
On the afternoon of the first day of Passchendaele, two rising young poets died within a couple of miles of each other
Hedd Wyn from Wales and Francis Ledwidge from Ireland

BIOGRAPHY No. 3
John D Cherrett MM (1880 – 1950)

Pte. Royal Hampshire Regiments 14614

Pte. Royal Defense Corps Protection Company 81475

Haigs Plan for Passchendaele (the 3rd Battle of Ypres)
WHY WAS A RE-RUN OF THE SOMME SANCTIONED?

BIOGRAPHY No.4

Albert G Haskett (1883 – 1918) M.M.

Pte. Duke of Edinburgh’s (Wiltshire) Regiment 33475

BIOGRAPHY No.6
John Henry Ficken (1880 – 1941)
B.Q.M.S. Royal Garrison Artillery 19343

Hello
Life In The Trenches:edit title.

BIOGRAPHY No. 7
Harry R Squires (1888 – 1917)
Pte. Hampshire Regiment 34163
Military Medal

BIOGRAPHY No. 8
Dudley Hugo Heynes (1885 – 1918)

Pte. Artists Rifles Regiment 8032

2nd Lt. Royal Field Artillery 20126

BIOGRAPHY No.9
John H Fletcher (1881 – 1917)

Pte. 6th Battalion Duke of Cornwall Light Infantry 260127

BIOGRAPHY No.10
George R Stebbens (1897 – 1961)

Pioneer and Sapper Royal Engineers 126425

BIOGRAPHY No.11
Charles W Greentree (1887 – 1950)

Driver/Saddler 4th Canadian Division Ammunition Column 183692

BIOGRAPHY No.12
Percy Eastland (1898 – 1970)

Pte. 1st Hampshire Regiment 15128

Portsmouth Poetry Passchendaele Project Research
b
ARCHIVED RESEARCH DATA

Acknowledgements:
PORTSMOUTH POETRY WISHES TO THANK THE FOLLOWING FOR THEIR HELP AND ADVICE IN MAKING THIS POSSIBLE

p
Portsmouth Poetry Passchendaele Project: A Personal Evaluation