The Western Front

Posted on 15th Nov 2022 by English Ancestors

Original World War 1 trenches on land surrounded by trees

It has become my tradition to focus on military ancestors for my mid-November post. Today’s post continues that with the topic of trench warfare, which has become almost synonymous for us with The Great War and the Western Front. Not all our military ancestors and family members were killed in action, and the topic of trench warfare gives us an opportunity to broaden our gaze and think of others who, although they returned home safely, suffered unimaginable terrors that often blighted the rest of their lives.

By 1914, advancements in ammunitions and artillery meant the mass infantry assaults of former grand battles were no longer an option. Although field works and trenches had been used for centuries in military campaigns, they now came to the fore as a means of defence. They became longer, stretching out along entire fronts, and deeper – ideally about twelve feet deep. Their zig-zag construction prevented the enemy, should they access the trench, from firing along for more than a few yards. Typically, there would be several trench lines, each running parallel to the next, and connected by communications trenches. Hence the ‘front’ could extend up to a mile behind the first, or ‘outpost’ trench. It was through the communications trenches that food, ammunition, orders and indeed troops were delivered; also letters to and from home.

The distance between the opposing sides could be surprisingly narrow – sometimes as little as about thirty yards, but it could be as much as 250 yards. Between them was ‘No Man’s Land’, where coils of barbed wire were positioned as a means of slowing down the enemy, should they attack. If you’ve watched War Horse, you may remember that Joey the horse becomes tangled and seriously injured in the barbed wire as he runs to escape from the explosions and noise.

Although trenches gave cover for both sides, they also made for a long, gruelling war of attrition. The point was to push forward your own front by gaining control of the enemy’s trench system. This meant daring and deadly attacks, forcing men to go ‘over the top’ of their own trench’s parapet, and run across No Man’s Land towards the opposing trench. An element of surprise was preferable, but the intense artillery bombardments generally preceding such raids gave the heads-up to the enemy that attack was imminent. This gave them time to bring up reinforcements and increased the likelihood of heavy losses for the attackers. What’s more, land gained in an attack could be lost again in future enemy raids. The hundred days of the Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) for example, resulted in a gain for the British front line of just five miles. The cost of those five miles was almost six hundred thousand lives, between the two sides.

These photographs were taken in 2014 at Sanctuary Wood Trench Museum (Hill 62) near Ypres, Belgium. The trenches are original, just as the farmer found them when he returned to reclaim his land at the end of the First World War, although there has more recently been work to preserve them. This is just one section of the trenches on the land – there were more. The photos show the zig-zag layout and the depth of the trenches. Visitors can walk in them – although I can guarantee that the experience of doing so will bear no comparison with that endured by our ancestors more than a hundred years earlier.

Reading through the Battalion War Diary for the Prince of Wales´s Own (West Yorkshire) Regiment: 49th Division, in which one of my great uncles was serving, the routine seems to have been roughly one week on the front line, one week off. Away from the front, days were spent cleaning, drilling and training, relaxing, playing sport, and marching to new positions as required. In the trenches it was a different matter. Dysentry, cholera and typhoid fever were common, and trench conditions also attracted rats which got into the men’s food and nibbled at them when they were sleeping. Lice were prevalent, and constant scratching increased the likelihood of contamination of skin abrasions by lice faeces, resulting in trench fever. Also common was trench foot, caused by constant immersion of the feet in the dank, muddy water in the bottom of the trenches during and after heavy rainfall. While painful, this is preventable and treatable today, but during the conditions in the trenches in 1914-1918, the dead tissue often spread across one or both feet, sometimes requiring amputation. Similarly, frostbite could result in the loss of fingers or toes.

Even without enemy action, there was always the possibility of it, and the stress caused what we now know as PTSD but was then called ‘shell shock’, as well as a type of gum infection called trench mouth. In his War Diary entry for 29th July 1917, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Harold Tetley (again, West Yorks Regiment, 49^th Division) wrote ‘Nothing to report – Steady shelling all day by both sides’. I have tried to imagine how far from ‘normality’ conditions must stray for the one to equate to the other.

That same great uncle had a narrow escape when, following German deployment of mustard gas shells, men in his counterpart Battalion suffered such severe mustard gas effects that hundreds were evacuated to England and the land itself was rendered too dangerous for further activity. The goal of a mustard gas attack was not generally to kill but to harass and disorientate; only 2-3% of victims actually died. However, many who didn’t die were nevertheless scarred for life. Respiratory disease and failing eyesight were common post-war afflictions, and many eventually died of tuberculosis.

It almost makes one feel that those whose lives were taken were the ‘lucky’ ones – luck being a relative concept in this scenario. I think we owe it to those who returned and were ‘changed’, to try to understand what they experienced. I know I would not have been one of the brave ones.

Section of original World War 1 trenches showing muddy water collected at bottom of trench

Sources

Kirk, Andrew, Leeds Rifles: The Prince of Wales’s Own (West Yorkshire Regiment) 7^th and 8^th Territorial Battalions 1914-1918: Written in Letters of Gold. 1917. Pen & Sword, Barnsley.

UK, WWI War Diaries (France, Belgium and Germany), 1914-1920: Prince of Wales´s Own (West Yorkshire) Regiment: 49th Division: Piece 2795/1: 1/7 Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment (1915 Apr-1919 May)

The Menin Gate and Last Post Ceremony

Posted on 11th Nov 2021 by English Ancestors

Menin Gate, Memorial to the Missing, at Ypres, Belgium — Ypres Menin Gate

Two or three minutes walk from the central Market Place in Ypres, stands the magnificent Menin Gate, Memorial to the Missing. It honours all the British and Commonwealth soldiers whose bodies were never found or remained unidentified in and around Ypres after the First World War.

My first glimpse of the Menin Gate was a black-and-white postcard brought back by my great uncle who went there before I was born to remember his older brother, Cyril. Cyril is one of the 54,896 men – from the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, India, South Africa and the West Indies – whose names are engraved on the Portland Stone panels. I now have that postcard, along with some photos and one of the death notices my great grandparents sent out to family and friends.

In April 1914, as the centenary of the Great War approached, I spent a few days in Ypres, learning about the final days not only of Cyril but of another great uncle too: Joseph. Like Cyril, Joseph lost his life in the Third Battle of Ypres, also known as Passchendaele. His remains lie in Poelcapelle Cemetery.

The Menin Gate, or in Flemish Menenpoort, was historically the eastern gate opening from the walled town of Ypres (Flemish: Ieper) in the direction of the town of Menin (Flemish: Menen). The grand archway now marking the road to Menen bears no resemblance whatsoever to the original gate – as the pre-1914 contemporary photograph below shows. In fact, the whole of Ypres had to be completely rebuilt after the war.

The two stone lions guarding the entrance to the town were removed during the war to prevent damage. They were presented to the Australian nation in 1936, in honour of the more than 36,000 Australian soldiers killed or wounded on the battlefields of the Ypres Salient. They stand now at the entrance to the Australian War Memorial museum in Canberra.

Menin Gate, or Menenpoort, as it was before World War 1. — The Menin Gate (Menenpoort) before World War 1

The new gate and memorial was unveiled on 24th July 1927. It was designed in classical style by Sir Reginald Blomfield, and features a central Hall of Memory (which is also the road), loggias on the north and south sides of the building, and staircases linking the two levels.

And yet the Menin Gate is not a sad, dusty old memorial. It remains very much a part of daily life in Ypres. Since 2nd July 1928 The Last Post Association has overseen a daily act of homage to those who fell in defence of the town. Between 7.30pm and 8.30pm every evening, the road through the archway is closed, and as many as several hundred people gather.

At 8pm promptly, wearing the uniform of the local voluntary Fire Brigade, the buglers of The Last Post Association sound the Last Post – the tune used to commemorate the war dead in Britain and in Commonwealth countries.

Four buglers sounding The Last Post at the Last Post Ceremony at the Menin Gate, Ypres. — Buglers at The Last Post Ceremony at Ypres

Marching bands, visiting dignitaries and delegations from organisations throughout the world come to Ypres to take part, and to lay wreaths. But even if not one single visitor attends, the ceremony still goes ahead.

Its significance to the people of Ypres is illustrated by the fact that this daily act of hommage was interrupted only during the years of German occupation during World War II, and was resumed on the very evening the town was liberated in 1944. Today, on 11th November 2021, the 31,317th ceremony will take place.

These last two photos are from the 29,545th ceremony on 11th April 2014.

If only the world could reflect upon such bloodshed, loss of life and destruction; and resolve henceforth that hatred, violence and war will never be the answer.

Crowd gathered in the street at Ypres — Crowd gathered in the street at the Menin Gate, Ypres

Some corner of a foreign field…

Posted on 21st Nov 2019 by English Ancestors

If I should die, think only this of me;
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England…

From: The Soldier by Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

Writing these lines in 1914, Rupert Brooke could never have dreamed that one day they would come to evoke so strongly, for the people of his homeland, the young men killed in battle during the First World War. Nor, having himself died in 1915, could he have envisaged the beautifully designed and lovingly tended cemeteries that were to rise up from the devastation of rat-infested, waterlogged Flemish battlefields in the corners of which he had helped to bury the fallen.

During the hostilities, around seven million civilians and ten million military personnel lost their lives. Two of these were my great uncles. They were amongst the 1,700,000 men who fell in defence of the Flemish town of Ypres (Ieper). In 2014, wanting to make sense of their final moments, I went to Ypres. On behalf of my late grandparents and great grandparents I wanted to visit their memorials. In doing so, I crossed battlefields, walked in trenches and tried to imagine the horrors once witnessed by that now peaceful landscape.

Along the way I learned how to ‘read’ the war graves cemeteries. Below, I share some of my discoveries.

All photos were taken at Poelkapelle, Tyne Cot, Essex Farm and Hooge Crater Commonwealth War Graves Cemeteries in West Flanders.

There are two types of war graves cemetery: battlefield and military. These differ as follows: Apart from their smaller size, the hallmark of a battlefield cemetery is that the men lay exactly where they were buried by their brothers in arms during battle, only now with the addition of a permanent headstone. (See below.) When the larger military cemeteries, such as Poelkapelle and Tyne Cot were later created, many bodies were moved to these new sites and laid to rest in uniform rows, all facing the same direction.

The memorial stone in the foreground of the above image bears a closer look. Private T Barratt, below, was awarded the Victoria Cross. Apart from the soldier’s regiment and a cross, Star of David, or a Sikh, Hindu, or Muslim symbol, the Victoria Cross was the only other symbol permitted by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission on the headstones.

Close by, is the final resting place of Rifleman V J Strudwick, below. His grave also receives a lot of attention. You’ll see why – look for his age.

Notice also an inscription at the bottom of Rifleman Strudwick’s stone: Not gone from memory or from love. Families of the deceased soldier were given the opportunity to have an epitaph engraved at the bottom of the headstone, to a maximum of 66 letters. They could write their own words or choose from a number of ‘standard’ epitaphs selected by Rudyard Kipling. However, whereas the headstone itself was provided by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, any inscription had to be paid for by the family, at a cost of threepence half-penny for each letter. My Great Uncle Joe’s stone, like that of Private Barratt VC, bears no inscription – the several shillings more, presumably, than their families could spare.

Next, the grave of a Jewish soldier, Rifleman M M Green. In the Jewish tradition, visitors have left memorial Stars of David, and piled pebbles on the gravestone.

In the front row of the next image, seven stones are set closely together. This is a communal grave for seven men killed in one blast – it was presumably not possible to work out precisely which body part belonged to which soldier.

Seven contiguous gravestones, indicating one large grave containing body parts of seven soldiers.

And here, one little plot bearing the found remains of eight whole men. I won’t spell it out…

It was touching to see that local people continue to leave flowers and keepsakes, such as this rosary, on the graves of unknown soldiers.

The largest of all the Commonwealth military cemeteries anywhere in the world is Tyne Cot. Alongside 11,954 actual graves, a further 34,959 British and New Zealand soldiers are commemorated on the Memorial to the Missing. Added to the 54,896 men whose names are recorded on the Menin Gate, this brings the total of men missing in Ypres to 89,855. Most of these men do not lie undiscovered beneath the heavy Flanders soil; many were found but not identified. Their names are commemorated on the plaques of the Menin Gate or Tyne Cot, but they may also be buried in graves like the one above: A Soldier of The Great War.

One of these missing soldiers, my Great Uncle Cyril, is commemorated at the Menin Gate.

All of these grounds were given in perpetuity by King Albert I of Belgium in recognition of the sacrifices made in the defence and liberation of Belgium during the war. Designed by Sir Reginald Bloomfield and Sir Edwin Lutyens, with input from Gertrude Jekyll and Rudyard Kipling, contrary to expectations they are not forlorn, tragic ‘corners of some foreign field’. And yet nor do they glorify war. On the contrary, they are beautifully tended, tranquil spots: places to meditate on the people whose lives were so cruelly cut short.