Post rest aunt

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6th October 1914

from 9085 Lce Cpl F Crawshaw, 1st Dorset Rgt, 2nd Army Corps, War Office – 6 – 10 – 14

to Miss M Crawshaw, 29 Strathleven Rd, date stamped Army Base Post Office 10 Oc 14 – censor 137

Dear Mabel

Just a few lines to let you know that I have received your welcome letter and also parcel which I was ever so glad to get. I have got a pair of the socks on and they are alright. The cough tablets where just right you couldn’t have done better and also the chic only I would have just have had some Frys plane, but still you done your best and I am more than pleased with you. Have just got a cake from Ciss a seedie, I was surprised I can assure you thank her from me. I am writing to her today.

Heard from old Muff she wrote me a letter from the old people and hopes I am alright and trusts to see me soon, I was surprised to hear from them am dropping them a line or two. You and Aunt are still Tangoing it I would if I was there, I hope you are enjoying yourselves, I expect things are much better for Aunt now that Mattie is knocking at the door good luck to him and I hope he sticks it.

Glad to see you are still busy at Stewarts and still mucking along of Stammering Sam. You know that old saying follow in Fathers footsteps its like old May her mar (Man?) was the same.

I am getting on alright and in the pink, Till I am sorry I am unable to send you any money for sending me the parcels but I will make it up to you later on lets hope so. When you next write Till could you manage to send me two red handkerchiefs as I can’t get any and thats what you need on this gaff I can assure you.

I met the other day a fellow who lives at Brixton as well I knew him when we were kids he is full Corporal and he is the Divisional Post Corporal, we had an interesting chat.

Now I must conclude hoping this letter finds you in the best of health and still merry and bright. Did Uncle Matt get his P card he should have done. I have just heard from Jess, she mentioned that she had heard from you several times and also mentions (C?) Roll on Brixton. Now that all trusting to hear from you soon with love to all from Fruity(?_)

I remain

Your loving Brother
xxxx Bid x

Also in the same envelope – same date etc

Dear Aunt

Just a few lines to thank you and Uncle Matt for the kind thoughts as regards sending me that parcel. I was very pleased to receive it and when I found the B paste I thought I was on Furlough at 29 having a afternoon cup of tea a what. Yes Aunt I am very pleased with you, and I shall never forget it either. I am getting on alright and still mucking in along of the Bhoys

Well how are you all, I am glad to see that you are all in the best of health and now that Wallies is working and Uncle Matt still taking out of the knocker you are getting on alright you deserve a little luck mate if any one does ad I hope Uncle Matt will stick it remember me to Wallie and thank him for his Bovril tell him I hope to be able to ask him what up with his hand shortly.

Have heard from 60 and also had a cake from Ciss not so bad mate. No cold tea out here or little drops of lizzie (?), could do with a drop of cold tea now.

Well thats all this time except I was pleased to get Matties letter it was a good one. Now I think this is all the news this time trusting to hear from you soon Aunt sometimes letter take longer than others you can see that by the date. So it is with fondest love to all from your old mucking in chum

I remain
your loving Nephew
BID

So you get two letters for the price of one today. I’ve broken up the stream of consciousness to make it easier for you to read.

Frank takes advantage of their little break and writes home, happily replete with paste, chocolate and cake. The Brigade had received heavy post the previous day so I suspect Frank is responding to various letters and parcels he received. He was very active in sending letters home.

I am going to split these over the week and discuss their contents in more detail as I did with the last letter.

 

At 2:45pm their rest came to an end. Orders were received to march to Béthisy-Saint-Pierre, from there they went on to billets in Verberie, four miles on. The Dorsets’ diary complains that the 14th Brigade held them up for three hours during the second stage of the march. They had marched another ten miles to the west.

At 11:30pm they received further orders that they were to entrain at Compiègne, another ten miles to the north, by 7am the following morning.

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.