Month: November 2014

Mabel and her John Willie

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5th November 1914

Letter to Miss M Crawshaw, 29 Strathleven – date 11 – 14 envelope franked 5 No 14 (censor no 137 still at it)

Dear Till

Many thanks for your welcome and interesting letter which I received on the 31st. I am pleased to hear that you are getting on alright and still mucking in. What’s the idea of asking me to write to your John Willie, for I don’t know him, you get him to send me out some chocolates, do you know Till that chocolate is as good as anything out here, and every one is after it.

You say what do I want for Xmas wait and see how things go for its a long way off yet, and goodness knows what will happen. Yes mate I could do with some Tooth Powder, for you should see them now they are proper gone, no I never got the toothbrush thats the only thing I never received, and I can account for that, one of our fellows took the Companies mail in the firing line and he got killed, and of course they got lost.

It is Sunday and its a fine day too and no cold tea roll on a long time. Glad to hear Tom is safe remember me to him, lets have his address and I will drop him a few lines, for thats what you look forward to more than anything else, is a letter.

Till I have forgot to tell you before, and that is that all my clothes are at Jessies home, two lots that basket and a box, I was going to send them home but we never had time wasn’t allowed out and we had to get rid of them at once. I had just bought another suit a navy blue a lovely one it cost 55/- and I only put it on twice, bowler shirts ties, socks collars watch Bank Book with 5/- in it, your hair brushes, overcoat, in fact every think. Yes I hear from Jess she sent me out a parcel not long ago, and her brother dropped me a few lines, as well, yes poor Jessies getting on alright, just as the War started I was getting on alright, at her home for I used to go round for dinner and Tea on Sundays, and supper in the week, only the old lady didn’t drink she hates the sight of it.

Well Till I am getting on alright and still in the pink, you say the war can’t last much longer don’t you believe it, for it will last longer than people think worse luck. I am still waiting to hear from your (Friend) and I have wrote to your impersonator, I mean your Johnnie. Glad to hear that Matties leg is better and that he is working, you still mucking in at Stewarts glad to hear that Ciss got my letter, I have dropped her a card since.

Remember me to all at home and I hope you are still mucking in, what time are you getting to bed,  now that the pubs close at 10 o’clock. Now I think this is all the news at present trusting this finds you all in the best of health and hope to hear from you soon.

P.S. Don’t forget the tooth powder Glad Eye

I remain

your loving Brother

Bid
xxxxx

Frank wrote this letter on the 1st November, the previous Sunday, but it didn’t get posted until the 5th November. I am not sure he is in the position to be writing letters at the moment. He most probably wrote it in the morning as I would have thought he would have mentioned the bus journey if he had written it in the evening.

Mabel has presumably asked Frank to write to her boyfriend. Frank taunts her and indignantly asks for payment in chocolate. Later on in the letter he reveals that he has already written to her “John Willie”. Frank might pull a leg or two but he’s very kind at heart.

John Willie is a phrase that later became associated with John Thomas. I don’t need to explain the meaning of that, but I don’t think he’s being that crude here. In fact, there were a few songs from the time with the name John Willie in. I stumbled upon this thread of enquiry looking through the Routledge Dictionary of Slang. There was “Fetch John Willie” from 1910 and “Have you seen my John Willie” from 1914. I cannot find the lyrics to these songs but what I did find was this song by George Formby Senior. Yes, that one’s dad. He was a popular Music Hall entertainer and he played a character called “John Willie” who was “the archetypal gormless Lancashire lad … hen-pecked, accident-prone, but muddling through” (according to historian Jeffrey Richards).

Here is the 1908 song in sterophonic technicolor:

This “John Willie” is most probably the first mention of my Great Grandfather, Carl Robert Debnam. He was also in the army, a Gunner in the 41st Company, Royal Garrison Artillery. He had returned to the UK in July, after a tour of duty in Sierra Leone. He was yet to be posted to war. In fact he didn’t make it to France until late the following year. And, yes, he didn’t use his first name; everyone called him Robert (or Bob).

I’ll return to the letter tomorrow.

Meanwhile the Dorsets were still nervous about being next to the French, who were regularly announcing their intention to attack Messines. Further up the line they had regained a toehold in Wytschaete. In fact the 11th Brigade War Diary records that Colonel Butler reported the French were in front of the Dorsets’ trenches during the early morning of the 5th. Throughout the day different reports come in about the French preparing to attack.

Most worrying was the 8:15pm report that the Dorsets’ line had been broken, prompting Butler to send reinforcements. The Germans had attacked the Dorsets very suddenly at 7pm. The Dorsets diary reports that C Company was ordered to counter attack. After this point no indication is given of whether they regained the trench at all. It just reports that rifle fire slackened and they settled down to an eerie but quiet Guy Fawkes night shrouded in thick fog.

Elsewhere all the signs of impending trench warfare continued. The Germans were reported throwing up barricades in front of their positions opposite the Rifle Brigade who were also stationed in Ploegsteert Wood.

Le Battle Royale

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4th November 1914

After a quiet morning the Dorsets witnessed French troops retiring from the direction of the Institute Royale, which was a large collection of monastical buildings in Messines. There’s an interesting blog on excavations in Messines here along with some interesting photographs of the Intitute before and during the war.

Knowing the French tactics for offensive the Dorsets assumed that a counter attack was imminent and so they informed a certain Colonel Butler. This was Lieutenant Colonel Richard Harte Keatinge Butler. He had been CO of the 2nd Bn Lancashire Fusiliers but had now assumed responsibility for the entire Ploegsteert Wood area. This entailed much of the 11th and 12th Brigades. We’ll hear more about Butler later on.

The French never counter attacked, presumably because of the heavy mist that day. The Dorsets sent out patrols out to find out what the French were up to on their immediate left. Other than that the rest of the day was fairly quiet.

Interestingly, as German snipers began to worm their way into the eastern edges of the wood, requests came into 11th Brigade HQ for rifle and hand grenades and steel loopholes. The British didn’t have an answer to the German’s sniping at this period in the war as we’ve seen before. This evidence shows that the British troops on the ground were crying out for the equipment to respond effectively but they weren’t to get it for a very long time.

If it wasn’t for those bosky kids

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3rd November 1914

The Dorsets spent the day being shelled in the woods, but at 4pm were gathered together and ordered to relieve the 2nd Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, who had scratched out some very basic trenches in the recent fighting. The History of the Dorsetshire Regiment 1914-1919 lists them as the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers. I’ve just looked at the 11th Brigade war diary and it uses the abbreviation of “innis fus” so it looks like the War Diary is correct. Whoever they were, the relief was completed by 6pm. The rest of the night was quiet.

The Dorsets found themselves at the junction between what became known as two separate battles; the Battle of Armentières was dying away to the south and the Battle of Messines was now raging away just to the north. Ploegsteert Wood was a natural barrier between the two battles but the Germans were still pushing very hard to take it.

The map today is a bit of a leap of faith and I would be most grateful for more information if anyone has any. Since the 15th Brigade has been practically broken up after leaving La Bassée, there’s a paucity of information available. Gleichen’s memoirs have been very useful so far. I’ve located the Dorsets along a north westerly line running from the Messines-Ploegsteert road (Mesen on the Google map) to the River Douve, with Frank halfway along that line entrenched somewhere in a field. The line at this point is clearly marked on the Michelin illustrated guide to the battlefields (1914-1918) Ypres and the Battles of Ypres as bending around the north of Ploegsteert Wood (on the map just left of St Yvon).

Map of the Messines front
The Messines front during November 1914

 

 

Plugging the gap

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2nd November 1914

Ploegsteert Wood. later anglicised to Plugstreet, is a large wood between Armentières in the south and Messines in the north. It held some strategic value in enclosing Hill 63, a rare high point which offered the British a toehold in targeting the Messines ridge to the north which had just fallen to the enemy.

On the morning of the 2nd November 1914, the British 4th Division held a thin twelve miles of front including a line of three villages along the eastern edge of the woods: La Gheer, Le Péverin and St Yves. The Germans were attacking all along the line from here to Ypres in the north. Their overwhelming superiority of both numbers and firepower was destroying the cream of the British Army. There were only so many last gasp charges the BEF could make.

At 2pm the Dorsets moved into position on a road junction along from the Petit Pont. They then withdrew westwards 2 hours later to cook a meal. At 6pm A Company moved into prepared trenches, further east into the wood. B and D Companies, meanwhile, began to dig trenches along the line of the Ploegsteert – Messines Road, south of a château, which I think was probably Chateau du Mont de la Hutte. It’s now ruins. Without the 1914 map referenced by the Dorsets’ war diary, it’s impossible to know exactly where they were but I’ve marked the rough locations for now.

There’s a 1915 sketch of the château available on the Imperial War Museum reproduced below.

Chateau de la Hutte between Messines and Ploegsteert; The Forward Estaminet, Messines Road
Chateau de la Hutte between Messines and Ploegsteert; The Forward Estaminet, Messines Road© IWM (Art.IWM ART 4802)

Busman’s holiday

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1st November 1914

The Dorsets awoke on a fine Sunday morning, perhaps expecting a nice leisurely breakfast and a stroll around Strazeele. However, at 7.50am they were greeted by a II Corps Staff Officer, Colonel Shoubridge, who announced that they were to be taken away by buses to the front. How dismayed they must have been. Their promised seven days rest vanished in an instant.

I think that II Corps knew it would be a tough ask so they decided to apply a bit of motivational management. Colonel Shoubridge himself was an ex-1st Dorsets man. As the men climbed wearily into the buses Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, II Corps’ commander, arrived and spoke to them, praising their fine fighting at Pont Fixe. The phrase forms the title of a self-published book I’m still trying to track down by Captain A.L. Ransome, “The fine fighting of the Dorsets”, portions of which embellish the official History of The Dorsetshire Regiment 1914-1919.

I have reasons to doubt his sincerity. Smith-Dorrien had actually been very critical of the 15th and 13th Brigades’ performance at Pont Fixe as I’ve explored in a previous post. He also claimed that the Dorsets and Cheshires “did not put up a resolute resistance” on the 22nd October at Violaines.

But these were desperate times and every spare unit was needed. The rumble of guns heard by the Dorsets the previous evening had been the sound of the Germans breaking the British line at Gheluvelt, east of Ypres in Belgium. Only a desperate charge by the 2nd Bn Worcestershire regiment on the 31st October had saved the situation. It remained critical time for the Allies and the British and French poured their tattered troops in to plug the gaps. The Dorsets were bound for Ploegsteert, where they were being attached to the 4th Division, who were having a very hard time of it.

And so the Dorsets grudgingly clambered aboard buses. Buses straight from the streets of London., manned by volunteers, painted red and white and still plastered with adverts for Evening News and Wright’s Soap.

London Buses in World War One
London B-Type Buses

The London B-Type Motor Omnibus could hold 24 men, so between 30 and 40 buses would have trundled over the border into Belgium. It must have been a bizarre couple of hours for Frank, as if his old London life had suddenly emerged out of the past.

The journey would have been pleasant enough for the Dorsets as they enjoyed clear blue skies, very similar to today’s weather 100 years later. This wasn’t to last. As they approached Lindenhoek they could actually see heavy shelling to the north east at Wytschaete. Messines to the east had fallen and the Germans were pushing forward into Ploegsteert wood three miles east of Neuve Eglise.

At 3pm the Dorsets went into billets at Neuve Eglise. At 5pm B Company was sent out as an outpost on the Wulverghem-Neuve Eglise Road. C and D Companies entrenched nearby. Frank and the rest of A Company remained in billets in Neuve Eglise. An hour later they were joined by the rest of the Battalion, leaving just one platoon of B Company covering the road.