Category: The Great War

New Bols please

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5th October 1914

The Dorsets remained in billets for the rest of the day. Supplies began to arrive. Hats and boots, according to Glechen, although socks remained much in demand.

Operationally, things began to change within the battalion. Captain Ransome had been replaced by Lieutenant Pitt the previous day as Adjutant. An Adjutant was responsible for the day-to-day administration of a battalion. It was also announced in routine orders that Lieutenant-Colonel Bols was moving on. He had been appointed as AA and QMG of 6th Division vice Colonel Campbell DSO on the 1st October. That jumble of military acronyms meant Assistant Adjutant and Quartermaster General. Not that that helps us much. Essentially he was to be responsible for the supply, transport, accommodation and personnel management of the 6th Division. It was a very senior role. There was no indication of when he was leaving though.

Meanwhile the Brigade staff occupied themselves with serious matters. A tennis tournament (Gleichen 1 – Cadell 1) followed by a nice hot bath. Talk was rife about their next assignment as Gleichen remembers:

It was gradually borne in on us that we were going to be moved off by train to take part in a different theatre of the fighting altogether; but where we should find ourselves we had not the least idea. What caused us much joy to hear was that we had intercepted a German wireless message, two days after four out of the six Divisions had left the Aisne, to say that it was “all right, all six British Divisions were still on the Aisne!”

Unmentionable crimes

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4th October 1914

The Dorsets remained in billets during the day and at 7pm they continued to march westwards, under the cover of darkness. Their progress was severely delayed by a long column of French troops passing them on the road in motor transport.

Image of the Château de Pondron
The stunning Château de Pondron in Fresnoy-la-Rivière

Meanwhile, Gleichen was driven to the Château de Pondron in Fresnoy-la-Rivière by “Henvey (A.P.M. of 5th Division).”*

Gleichen arrived long before the rest of the troops and describes the sad state of the château when he arrived:

It had, of course, been occupied by Germans, and, equally of course, it had been ransacked and partly wrecked by them—though a good deal of furniture had been left. There were even candles and oil-lamps available, and of these we made full use, as well as of the bedrooms. I chose the lady’s (Comtesse de Coupigny, with husband in the 21st Dragoons) bedroom. The counterpane was full of mud and sand, through some beastly German having slept on it without taking his boots off, but there was actually a satin coverlet left, and pillows. All the stud- and jewellery-cases had been opened and their contents stolen, and Madame de C.’s writing-table had also been forced open, and papers and the contents of the drawers scattered on the floor. Other unmentionable crimes had also been committed.

We leave the Dorsets at midnight still waiting by the roadside, watching long columns of French troops pass them by, some distance yet to go on their 15 mile night march.

*The APM of 5th Division was probably named Major Anley; Barnett Dyer Lempriere Gray Anley. Although in Saul David’s 1914: The Outbreak of War to the Christmas Truce: Key Dates and Events from the First Year of the First World War the APM of the 5th Division is called Captain J. Monteath. I cannot find any mention of him anywhere else at the moment.

Incidentally, his chapter on Thomas Highgate makes the (I believe) repeated mistake of assuming that Highgate was executed in the grounds of Château Combreaux in Tournan-en-Brie. As I stated in 8th September’s post he couldn’t have been here, as the 15th Brigade formed the firing party, witnessed the execution and were over twenty miles away at the time.

An APM is an Assistant Provost Marshal, in charge of a Division’s policing, but not necessarily a policeman themselves, usually an experienced combat solider. Apart from the main duties of maintaining law and order, the other responsibilities of an APM was to deal with stragglers, prisoners and traffic on the battlefield. Justice within Divisions was maintained by their own “battle” police forces but this was gradually replaced during the war by official Military Police from the newly formed Corp of Military Police (CMP). The number of Military Police in the BEF was very small at the outbreak of the war (501 increasing to 764 with reservists). This figure rose to over 25,000 by the end of the war.

Let’s camp here for the night

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3rd October 1914

The 15th Brigade rested during the day, concealing themselves from enemy spotter planes. At 6pm the Dorsets paraded and marched about 12 miles to Corcy in the West.

Portrait of Robert de Montesquiou by James McNeill Whistler
Robert de Montesquiou. “Arrangement in Black and Gold” by James McNeill Whistler

Gleichen spends the day in bed with a cold. He gets driven to Longpont where he finds lodgings in the château attached to the ruined abbey at Longpont with Comte de Montesquiou-Fezensac, “a courteous and frail old gentleman”. I’m not sure Gleichen would have stayed had he known the outlandish history of his host.

This old gentleman was almost certainly Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac. He is worth dwelling on for a little while. The archetypal dandy, he counted Proust among his friends and was “the world’s most laborious sayer of nothing” according to Gustave Kahn.

His wikipedia entry had me laughing out loud. It includes such chestnuts as “he reportedly once slept with the great actress Sarah Bernhardt, after which he vomited for twenty-four hours” and “his poetry has been called untranslatable, and was poorly received by critics at the time.”

In 1901, in what became known as the Moberly–Jourdain incident, two prominent British female academics claimed to have had supernatural experiences while walking near the Palace of Versailles. They reported having seen people from the 1790s, including Marie Antoinette. These “ghosts” were possibly Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac and his friends who frequently held parties in that area dressed in period costumes.

Fog on the Aisne

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2nd October 1914

The Dorsets left Missy at 12:45am and assembled by company near the Moulin des Roches pontoon bridge. They then crossed back over the Aisne and billeted in Jury. They rested during the day and at 9:30pm the 15th Brigade marched to Droizy, where they met up with the Norfolks once again. The Dorsets must have been a bit rusty as they managed to get lost in the fog, according to Gleichen, but they eventually reached their billets in Launoy at midnight.

Why had the Dorsets slipped away in the night in such secrecy? Rumours were rife as to their destination: Antwerp, Calais and even Great Britain were proposed in conversations throughout the battalion. But no one, not even Gleichen, had any idea where they were going.

For Love and Courage

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1st October 1914

Another quiet day ended at 9:30pm with the news that the Battalion would be relived by the Essex Regiment and that they would be returning to Jury.

I was talking to my Father-in-Law a couple of weeks ago about a book of letters from Lieutenant Colonel E. W. Hermon to his wife, which we both thoroughly enjoyed. It’s called For Love and Courage.

It’s moving and heart breaking. But it’s also an insight into the impact the First World War had on class in the United Kingdom. It also features photographs of his beloved Jack Russells. What’s not to love?

I also read today with surprise that it was edited by Anne Nason, who turns out to be mother of James Nason, my old next door neighbour at boarding school. He must be very proud of his Great Great Grandfather and, of course, his mother for producing such an excellent book.

I’ll be adding more pages to this site this week, including a reading list and a Frank page for all your Frank facts in one handy place.