Blood and Thunder Read online

  For my Grandad, who would have loved sharing this experience with me: December 1929–December 1995

  And for ‘Mummy’, who is so many miles away but is always in my heart and never far from my thoughts.

  Contents

  Title

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Eton Glossary

  Introduction

  1 ‘God Grant I May Be Old Enough’

  2 ‘The Faces of Souls in Hell’

  3 ‘Shrapnel Monday’

  4 ‘Our Little Band of Brothers’

  5 ‘God Won’t Let Those Devils Win’

  6 ‘To Die Would Be an Awfully Big Adventure’

  7 ‘The New Argonauts’

  8 ‘I Feel an Outcast to Be Alive’

  9 ‘Till Berlin’

  10 ‘Pitifully Humorous in its Imbecility’

  11 ‘We Had Not Been Taught to Surrender’

  12 ‘To Hugh or Blighty’

  13 ‘The Metal Is Gold and Tried in the Fire’

  14 ‘The Gambler’s Throw’

  15 ‘The Abomination of Desolation’

  16 ‘I Long to Fly’

  17 ‘Am I Going to Die?’

  18 Setting the Tone

  19 ‘HELL’

  20 ‘Shaking the Faith’

  21 ‘Every Shot Is Telling’

  22 ‘The Light that Failed’

  23 ‘Folded in the Dark Cloud of Death’

  Sources

  Plates

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  First and foremost thanks is due to the Provost and Fellows of Eton College. I would also like to thank, for tireless efforts that now span a number of years and without which this project would have been impossible, Penny Hatfield, former College Archivist, Jackie Tarrant-Barton of the Old Etonian Association, Roddy Fisher in the Eton College Photographic Archive and Mrs Christine Vickers, latterly of the same, and the staff of College Library.

  The enthusiasm for commemorating their school’s contribution to the Great War has been overwhelming amongst Old Etonians and the families of those that fell. In particular I would like to extend special thanks to Sir Andrew Leggatt, proud nephew of Logie, for his persistent encouragement and kindness in ensuring that this remarkable young man’s story and that of his friends was given the platform that it so richly deserved. Additionally I would like to thank David Napier for his support and an enthusiasm for the project that far exceeded his donation of material concerning his father. Also Benjamin Carey, great nephew of Henry Dundas, and his parents, the late Mr Simon and Mrs Renata Carey, for not only providing me with rich material but for giving me such freedom to write about a very special young man and to share his vibrant personality on a public stage.

  My thanks also to the late Dr J.G.C. Blacker, Sam Cholmeley, Mike Dottridge, John Drummond, the Drake Family, the Fleming Family, Henry Gold, Jerôme Gonçalves, Antony Grant, Constance Hargreaves, Nick Kaplowich, Gordon Lee-Steere, Willie Manners, Katharine Meynell, Bruno Schröder and Debbie Mesquita, Simon Shaw, The late Mr J. Shaw-Stewart, Pamela Shearn, the Stockdale Family, Magnus Spence and Anthony Whitaker.

  In addition I would like to thank the staff/archivists of the following organisations: the British Library, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the Royal Air Force Museum, the National Army Museum, the Imperial War Museum, 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards Heritage Trust & ‘Firing Line’ The Museum of the Welsh Soldier, Cardiff Castle, Summer Fields School, Oxford, the Dragon School, Oxford, Oxford University, Balliol College, Oxford, Trinity College, Cambridge, Magdalen College, Oxford and Harvard University.

  My sincerest thanks to Andy Pay and Jonathan Saunders for the many thousands of miles driven backwards and forwards across the Western Front in search of the final resting places of literally hundreds of Old Etonians. Additionally, both of them have regularly contributed their time, knowledge, research, moral support and possibly even their sanity in the pursuance of this project when they have no personal connection to Eton College.

  I also owe a debt of gratitude for the unwavering support of Eric Sauder, Peter Devitt of the RAF Museum, John Hayes-Fisher, Paul Reed and Joshua Levine (particularly in respect of his assistance in sourcing Etonians involved in aerial warfare and the loan of his research material). Also to Sophie Bradshaw at The History Press for believing in this book before it existed, and Lauren Newby for the time and effort spent turning it into the finished article.

  For advice and use of their own work/material as well as some outstanding research: Robin Schäfer, of the German Society for Military Research, Bastian Atzger, Katya Airapetiants, Tom Coghlan, Brian Curragh, Simon Ball, Andrew Birkin, Andrew Dally, Peter Doyle, Peter Hart, Allegra Jordan, Andy Lonergan, Jerry Murland and Geoff Whitfield.

  I wish to thank Sam and John Sawyer, Garry Brown, Graham Bush, Andrew Holmes, Carol, Scott, Emma, Arnie, Liz and all the others that have encouraged me and pushed me to carry on working all over Europe; in particular Pete and Mark, the self-appointed phone police on the way to Leeds, without whom the Somme chapters would not exist. Win or lose up the Blues. Also Derek Lee, Lesley Castle, Chris Ford, Karen Perkins and the team at Lees Chartered Accountants; James Hall, Karl Houghton, Trudie Lonergan, Timothy McCracken, Conor Reeves, Inger Sheil, Nicholas Hellen and Adam Young.

  Finally I wish to thank mother for all of her encouragement and for not batting an eyelid when her only daughter shunned romantic comedies and all girly pursuits for a life of military history andftball.

  Eton Glossary

  4 June – George III was a notable patron of the school and his birthday is given over to festivities in his honour. Prior to the Great War the school would fill with invitees and relatives of the boys for a combination of speeches, cricket and impressive teas during the day. In the evening there would be a grand procession of boats and a fireworks display.

  Fagging – A period of servitude that each boy would undertake at the beginning of his time at Eton. Broadly speaking a younger boy (a fag) would be allocated to an older boy (a fagmaster) and would undertake general tasks and errands for him (fagging). The practice was abolished in the 1970s.

  King’s Scholar / Colleger / Tug – At any one time, as dictated by the school’s founder Henry VI in the fifteenth century, there is space for seventy Foundation Scholars at Eton College. They live off the main schoolyard and are nicknamed ‘Collegers’ or sometimes ‘Tugs’. Entrance is by examination and these boys have the initials ‘KS’ after their name throughout their time at Eton. Rather than say they live in the house of a particular Master, it is termed that they are ‘in College’.

  Lord’s – Since the turn of the nineteenth century the boys of Eton have traditionally taken on the boys of Harrow School in an annual game of cricket at Lord’s. Prior to the Great War the match lasted for two days in July and attracted crowds in the region of 20,000. It was a social event to rival Ascot and Henley.

  Newcastle Scholarship – The most prestigious academic contest at Eton, the scholarship was founded by the Duke of Newcastle in the 1820s. Prior to the Great War it comprised a set of competitive examinations on Classics and Divinity and was extremely stringent. The winner was titled the ‘Newcastle Scholar’ for that year and received a monetary award. The runner-up was the ‘Medallist’ and a list of boys who had performed well would be one of the ‘Newcastle Select’.

  Oppidan – An Oppidan is one of the 900 or so boys who are not King’s Scholars. They live in the myriad of boarding houses across the road from the original school buildings.

  ‘Pop’ / The Eton Society – A debating society founded at the school in 1811. Traditionally Pop comprised about thirty members. Apart from a few ex-officio places, admission is by e
lection and is highly coveted.

  The Wall Game – A type offtball specific to Eton. Played up against a wall in College it is traditionally more associated with King’s Scholars. On St Andrew’s Day every year though, the Collegers play a match against the Oppidans.

  Introduction

  Why do the pupils of Eton College who served in the Great War matter more than anybody else? The answer is that they don’t. But describing the war through the eyes of her old boys enables a unique, personal retelling of a conflict approaching its centenary. This war continues to capture interest despite the fact that it has all but slipped out of living memory.

  That is not to say that one could not do just that using a group of combatants from any number of organisations, or indeed any other major British public school, but that will fall to someone else. This was my choice and for the purpose of this volume it just so happens that the soldiers, sailors, airmen, prisoners, politicians and civilians whose experiences fill its pages all happened to have had one thing in common. Their transformations from schoolboys to participants, whether direct, interrupted, reluctant or entirely involuntary, began on the banks of the Thames as they worked and played in the shadow of a grand medieval chapel and 450 years of history.

  Eton’s iconic chapel, its clock tower and its playing fields have seen their fair share of conflict in the past five-and-a-half centuries; whether it be Royalist cannons bombarding Windsor Castle from the grounds during the Civil War, or Luftwaffe bombs being run out of harm’s way by brave masters. Her founder, Henry VI, was undone by his own wars; those between the houses of Lancaster and York in the mid-fifteenth century and defeat almost saw the end of his vision of a college. Eton survived and for half a millennia has, in military terms, supplied primarily the army with Old Etonians, or ‘OEs’. One was unceremoniously beheaded during the Wars of the Roses and more met their end two centuries later when the New Model Army swept away the monarchy. An Etonian died at the Battle of Buda in 1686 as the Ottoman Empire was driven out of Hungary; at least one too during the American War of Independence. Nearly fifty OEs perished in the shambles that was the Crimean War, and at the end of the nineteenth century, old boys who had not taken up a military occupation volunteered in large numbers for the Boer Wars. In fact, 1,424 Old Etonians went to South Africa and 129 died in a conflict that was to become aftnote to the numbers who sacrificed their lives when King and country came calling a decade or so later. Neither was the Great War the end of the Etonian contribution to armed conflict. More than 700 former pupils would fall during the Second World War, followed in turn by those who perished in the Far East in the years following 1945. Old Etonians saw distinguished service in the Falklands and the cycle has sadly continued into the 21st century. On 22 April 2003 Lieutenant Alexander Tweedie died as a result of wounds received in Iraq.

  It was the most famous of military Etonians, the Duke of Wellington no less, who (apparently) claimed that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. That he meant this in terms of the spirit engendered by the public school emphasis on sporting achievement is more probable than the literal meaning. Whatever sentiment he was trying to convey as he passed by a cricket match at the school after his own sons had passed through her boarding houses, the response of Etonians a century after his own victory over Napoleon would not have disappointed him. In fact, his own great-grandson would be one of fifteen OEs to fall on 29 October 1914 alone.

  Dense populations of Old Etonians, as they had pre-war, would populate the Guards’ regiments, the Cavalry, the Rifle Brigade and the King’s Royal Rifle Corps in particular. Many would embrace new aspects of industrialised warfare, flying above the battlefields and taking to them encased in tanks; but the truth is that the nearly 6,000 old boys involved in the Great War, not including those serving or forming part of the government, represented themselves and their school in a never ending spread. From Highland regiments to the Imperial Camel Corps, the Devonshire or Gloucestershire Yeomanry to, of course, the Royal Navy; hundreds of units found within their ranks at least one OE during the course of the Great War. The overwhelming majority were officers. Some enlisted as privates but most inevitably found a commission sooner or later. Only a tiny fraction of Old Etonians who fell did so serving in the ranks.

  Whilst Eton College is iconically British, her doors were not closed to boys from abroad and it was not only home forces that were represented by former pupils. Whether by national allegiance or circumstance, armies from all corners of the Empire found Etonian representatives, be it Canada, Australia, New Zealand or India. Beyond the influence of the British flag, OEs wore the uniforms of the United States, Italy, and France as well as Serbia and Russia. Neither did every Etonian represent the same cause, for one solitary boy would serve with the Kaiser’s army.

  It stands to reason then, that the war experiences of Old Etonians were not limited to the trenches of the Western Front. As it was for the rest of the world, so it was in microcosm. The Etonian experience of the Great War was truly global. As well as France and Flanders, old boys fought and died at Gallipoli, in Africa as well as the Western Desert and Egypt; in Palestine, Mesopotamia and Persia, in the waters of the Atlantic and the Baltic and on fronts in the Balkans, the Alps, India, Siberia and Northern Russia.

  The first Old Etonians to see action were professional soldiers, regulars and reservists who had made a choice to answer a call to arms. With these and close on their heels came the Territorials, the Yeomanry; part-time soldiers who volunteered to go abroad. Eton’s old boys not only swelled the ranks of the armed services and Sandhurst on the outbreak of war, but with them the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. Members of Officer Training Corps, they knew as little of life in the wider world as they did of the realities of war when they followed their elder brothers and former schoolmates to war. And then there were the schoolboys themselves. Washed into the army on a wave of patriotism when war was declared, by 1916 it was a very different story. The Military Service Act, not enthusiasm, dictated a boy’s path into the forces whether he wished to serve or not. The Old Etonian of this generation sat dejectedly in his house library or at the dinner table with his friends as his departure loomed. They debated regiments, not professions and spoke of where their futures might lie only in terms of which cap badge would adorn their uniforms. These boys marched straight out of school, into the army and then on to the battlefields before they had left their teenage years behind.

  Wellington’s great-grandson may strike a chord, as would Charles Dickens’ grandson or the father of Bond author Ian Fleming, but a total of 1,168 Old Etonians are now known to have given their lives as a result of the Great War and the sons of clergymen, bankers, peers and businessmen were as valuable to those that knew them as the notable names.

  That the surroundings of their education were privileged is undoubted. But privilege does not follow a man, or indeed a boy, on to the field of battle. Life or death is dictated by sheer dumb luck. Littered amongst the Victoria Crosses and the famous names are the muted ends of people’s fathers and the as yet undiscovered heroism of sons and brothers. For that reason, this book is dedicated to the hundreds of fallen Etonians who have no space dedicated to them within it.

  1

  ‘God Grant I May Be Old Enough’

  Gareth Hamilton-Fletcher was interested in international politics even at Eton. In addition to being a top-notch cricketer he was a talented linguist, carrying off school prizes in French and German. In 1909, at the age of 15, he wrote home to his mother on the subject of Germany. He had been reading about the Royal Navy in the Daily Graphic. ‘Why are we deceived into thinking that Germany really means well to us?’ he fumed. ‘We are not really deceived; we only say so because it is a good excuse and we would rather go and have a game of golf or have a day’s hunting. What fools we are!’ Gareth didn’t doubt for a moment that war was imminent. ‘God grant I may be old enough to fight for my country when the time comes. God help us!’

  Spy fever w
as at its zenith. Paranoia about the might of Germany and her intentions sent a chill through vast numbers of Britons. The Secret Intelligence Service, the forerunner to MI6, came into existence that year. A large part of their remit became, naturally, German naval construction and the arms race. If it seemed at all likely that war was about to break out then information on naval mobilisation and troop movements, especially in the northern German ports, would become an overwhelming priority.

  Britain’s new intelligence agency was tested thoroughly during the Agadir Crisis of 1911 when the Germans felt the wrath of France for landing a gunboat at the Moroccan port. Europe was spiralling ever closer toward was. Interested British parties began to panic about the disposition of German warships, whether or not they planned to attack the Royal Navy. The SIS was called in and the chief of army intelligence sent a man to Brussels to undertake some intelligence gathering activity at German North Sea ports.

  A few weeks later his man was seized by the German authorities and detained on charges of espionage. Some accounts say he was dragged from his bed in the middle of the night, others that he was taken into custody whilst trying to dispose of a code book that had been planted on him by a German double agent in a public toilet.

  The arrested man was an Old Etonian. Bertrand Stewart came from an established Scottish family. He himself was born in London and went to Walter Durnford’s house at Eton in 1886. After Oxford he joined Markby, Stewart & Co. as a solicitor in London until the outbreak of the Boer War, when he enlisted in the Imperial Yeomanry and left for Africa.

  Bertrand was indicative of the enthusiastic amateur gentleman plying the espionage trade just prior to the Great War. Working directly under the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service he had that summer been firstly to Nijmegen to contact an agent working in Germany. Unwisely he crossed the border with him and he had been gathering information in Hamburg, Cuxhaven and Bremerhaven before the authorities caught up with him. It was plausible that the book had been planted. The chief of the SIS speculated that the agent he had travelled with had sold him out, having been a decoy all along. ‘It is annoying,’ stated his associate, the Director of Naval Intelligence, ‘but we must expect drawbacks such as these in this kind of business.’