1914- The Days of Hope Read online

  There had already been one unfortunate incident early on Sunday afternoon. Some elderly reservists, in charge of a coastal defence gun on the cliffs above an isolated beach, waking abruptly from a light doze after a heavy lunch, fell under the delusion that a force of naked Germans was assaulting the shores of France from the sea, and fired off several rounds at a party of British soldiers cooling off with an afternoon swim.

  All things considered, the Mayor had concluded that it would be prudent to issue a Public Notice to remind the people of Boulogne that times had changed.

  My dear Citizens. This day arrive in our town the valiant British troops, who come to co-operate with our brave soldiers to repel the abominable aggression of Germany … Boulogne, which is one of the homes of the Entente Cordiale, will give to the sons of the United Kingdom an enthusiastic and brotherly welcome. The citizens are requested on this occasion to decorate the fronts of their houses with the colours of the two countries.

  The citizens enthusiastically obliged.

  The soldiers of the 8th Brigade, arriving in a hastily commandeered cattle-boat, had not enjoyed a pleasant voyage. They were packed so closely together that, once settled, it was hardly possible to move, even to allow the few who were seasick to struggle to the ship’s rail. That had given rise to more ill-feeling than could be put down to the slight swell which had marred an otherwise calm crossing. But ill-feeling and ill-temper, like the stiff aching of cramped limbs, were soon forgotten in the warmth of a welcome so tumultuous that some well-travelled Tommies, accustomed to less cordial receptions in ports round the British Empire, could hardly believe the evidence of their eyes and ears.

  Boulogne had turned out en masse. Even the long harbour wall was packed with cheering crowds and as the ship inched towards its berth, they waved and cheered in such a frenzy that one old gentleman, more frenzied than the rest, was propelled by his enthusiasm over the edge of the pier into the water. Happily, he was promptly fished out again and delighted the crowd and the Tommies alike by coming to a watery salute on the quayside.

  The harbour was full of boats – motor torpedoes that dashed busily up and down the estuary, two cruisers of the French Navy, fishing smacks unloading the night’s catch on the town quay, and steam whistles and horns and sirens hooted and screeched and boomed a deafening welcome.

  It was all a delightful experience, if somewhat harassing for the NCOs and officers in charge of disembarkation who had the task of clearing a space through the multitude on the pier and marching the troops off in some kind of order which would not entirely discredit the British Army.

  The French army (or those of its representatives who formed the guard of honour, holding its ragged ranks with some difficulty against the pushing of the crowd) were glorious in gaudy uniforms of red and blue, looking, to the irreverent Tommies, like a male chorus-line in an operetta. But there the glory ended. Their coats of sky blue were buttoned uncomfortably over elderly paunches. Their eyes, though alight with patriotic fervour, were unmistakably rheumy. Their beards and the hair beneath their red-peaked caps were distinctly grizzled and, despite the businesslike appearance of their long rifles and bayonets, the most casual inspection would hardly have passed them as fighting fit.

  But these all-too-ancient warriors, hastily recalled to the colours, were all that was left. France had mobilised on 1 August, three days before Great Britain. The young and the fit were already in the field, and the French command was anxiously awaiting the arrival of their British allies to swell their numbers. It was not that France lacked manpower – she had already called up more than a million men – but, with the rapid and unexpected advance of the German army, the French already had an uneasy feeling that large numbers of their troops were in the wrong place. There were all too few on the left of their long line, close to the Belgian border where it was becoming increasingly clear that the brunt of the German advance would fall. The British Force, small though it was, was badly needed to extend their vulnerable line and it was with some relief that news of the first arrivals was received at the headquarters of General Lanrezac whose Fifth Army stood directly in the path of the German thrust and was in serious danger of being outflanked.

  So far, the only British soldier they had clapped eyes on was a certain Lieutenant Spears, a Junior Staff Officer who, by an accident of fate, had been the first British soldier in France. Several months earlier, when there had been no hint of war on the horizon, it had been arranged by the War Office that this young Intelligence officer should spend some weeks during the summer on attachment to the Ministère de Guerre in Paris. As the date approached and there was a real threat of war in Europe – a war, moreover, in which France was likely to be embroiled – the War Office saw no reason to revise the plan. It would be no bad thing to have an observer on the spot in a strictly unofficial capacity, for France was an unofficial ally and, despite the existence of the much-lauded Entente Cordiale, Great Britain was bound by no treaty or obligation to support her in any military emergency or adventure.

  So, according to plan and on the designated date (discreetly clad in mufti, but having taken the last-minute precaution of packing his uniform) Spears had crossed to France on a holiday steamer. It was Monday 27 July 1914. On the 28th he reported for duty in Paris – a month to the day since the Archduke Franz Ferdinand had been assassinated in Sarajevo. By nightfall Austria had declared war on Serbia, and in Britain the Admiralty had ordered the First Fleet to set sail for the north to its war station at Scapa Flow.

  The population of the British Isles, peacefully going about the daily business of unruffled life, paid little attention to reports of ‘Trouble in the Balkans’ which flared up so regularly that it seemed to be almost a fixture in the less prominent headlines of serious newspapers. But it required a far greater knowledge of history, geography and politics than the average reader possessed to begin to understand the course of the tortuous quarrels over the Slav states between the rival powers who wished to order their destinies. They had been going on for generations.

  Serbia, in particular, had been a bone of contention, first between Turkey and Bulgaria, then between Turkey and Russia, and latterly, between Russia and the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire that sprawled across Europe from Vienna to the doorstep of Asia. Serbia now enjoyed a recent and precarious independence – although in a somewhat truncated form. The Serbs had been reluctantly forced to hand over their provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina whose Slav population now lay uneasily under the Austrian yoke – still a bone of contention and the cause of deep resentment in their Serbian ‘homeland’. Russia was resentful too. Until recently, Serbia had been her protectorate and rightly belonged, in the Russian view, within the Slavic territories of the Russian Empire.

  But, by the end of 1913, Serbia was on the up and up. She had done well out of the Balkan War which had finally booted Turkey out of Europe and shared out the conquered territories between the independent Balkan states. National pride was running high. It spilled over into Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Slav nationalism that was always simmering just beneath the surface boiled up in a series of guerrilla and terrorist attacks.

  The disturbances were hailed in Serbia with ill-concealed glee. They were watched with interest by Moscow. From the viewpoint of Vienna they meant trouble, and the Austrian authorities were not slow to lay the trouble at Serbia’s door. Agents of the Austrian secret service with an ear to the ground in Serbia’s capital city, Belgrade, were feeding Vienna with suggestions that dark plots were afoot, that Serbia was backing the guerrillas by providing funds and that, when things got too hot, they could count on a safe haven in Serbia. Belgrade, they hinted, was a nest of intrigue aimed directly at undermining the suzerainty of the Austrian Empire over her Slav states. In Vienna the feeling grew that, at the first opportunity, Serbia must be taught a lesson. Austria was now on the look-out for a pretext to go to war.

  It came a few months later, in the summer of 1914, at Sarajevo, capital of the annexed Serbian prov
ince of Bosnia. Sarajevo was a hotbed of Slav nationalism that showed signs of erupting into open insurrection, and it was not by coincidence that the city had been chosen as the site for the annual manoeuvres of the 15th and 16th Corps of the Austrian army. It would do no harm to favour the fiery Slavs with a demonstration of military might, and to drive home the message with a visit by a royal personage, who was not only Inspector-General of the Austrian army, but heir to the Austrian crown.

  It was a fine summer Sunday morning. The troops had been preparing since dawn and by ten minutes to ten, when the royal train drew into Sarajevo station, they were already drawn up in burnished columns, glistening in the sunshine, on the Filipovitch parade ground. The inspection was hardly more than a formality, for the Archduke and his wife arrived from the station in an open motor car, drove at a spanking pace along the ranks and in less than twenty minutes were on their way again to the Town Hall where, according to plan, they were to receive an official welcome.

  But things did not go according to plan. The couple arrived shocked and flustered. A bomb had been thrown at their motor car and, although the Archduke and the Duchess were unharmed, one of their aides had been hurt by a flying fragment. The efforts of the mayor, desperately trying to restore the situation by launching into his prepared speech of welcome, were brushed angrily aside by the Archduke. ‘What is the good of your speeches? I come to Sarajevo on a visit, and I get bombs thrown at me. It is outrageous!’

  It was some small consolation that the culprit had been caught and arrested. It came as no surprise to learn that he was a Serb. It did not occur to the police that he had not been acting alone. It did not occur to them to drag-net the crowded streets for other suspects, nor did there seem to be any reason why the royal visit should not go ahead as planned. The suspicion that the abortive assassination had been part of a nationalist plot came later. But by then it was too late to take precautions. The royal visitors were already dead. They had been killed in the streets of Sarajevo, shot by another Serb just half an hour after his accomplice had been arrested.

  It was the excuse that Austria needed. After the first shock, over the coming weeks it was gradually realised in the corridors of power that she need look no further for a pretext on which to go to war with Serbia and settle the Slav question once and for all.

  It was evening before the news filtered through to the rest of Europe. Almost everywhere it had been a perfect summer’s day.

  The sun had shone in London where it took an army of cleaners half the morning to clean up Hyde Park after Saturday’s display by the London Fire Brigade, which had exhibited its dash and daring to five thousand eager spectators before galloping past the King in a rousing finale. Up-river at Henley, preparations were well under way for the annual regatta, and the Thames was bright with boating parties and rowdy groups of youths trying their skill as oarsmen between the marker flags. At Wimbledon, halfway through the All-England Championships, groundsmen sweated in the Sunday sunshine rolling the grass courts to velvet smoothness ready for the next week’s matches. At the seaside, summer visitors strolled on the promenades, listened to the band, and congratulated themselves on the fine weather which looked set fair for their holidays.

  The sun had blazed down on Paris where the Grand Prix was run that afternoon at Longchamps and the beau monde of Europe saw Baron de Rothschild’s Sardanapale win by a neck. It was the most dazzling event of the season. The couturiers had sent the most elegant and beautiful of their mannequins to mingle with the crowds and stun them with the most exquisite of their latest creations. Sharp-eyed fashion journalists, scribbling discreetly, noted that ‘dead black, unrelieved by any touch of colour’ was what the well-dressed woman would be obliged to wear to be à la mode in 1914. Next week, when they gushed into print in British newspapers and magazines, aristocratic England was delighted to hear it. In the wake of the tragic death of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in far-off Sarajevo, Buckingham Palace had ordered a week’s court mourning. Fashionable London was happy to learn that it could don respectful black in the certainty that, according to Paris, it was the last word in chic. Black-garbed Austrian ladies, scanning the social notes in the Wiener Tageblatt, were similarly gratified.

  28 June, the day of the assassination at Sarajevo, was a significant date for the people of Great Britain. It was the anniversary of the coronation of Queen Victoria. Seventy-seven years later, and thirteen years after her death, the accession of the old Queen was still looked on by the British as the curtain-raiser to their golden age. The Queen’s Birthday on 24 May continued to be held as a public holiday in celebration of the great Victorian Empire that spanned the globe. ‘Empire Day’ was the happy inspiration of the Earl of Meath and it had rapidly caught on. Every village was decked with flags, every church had its special service, every school its ceremony. For the children it was a day of treats and high jinks, of picnics and outings – but they were left in no doubt as to the object of the celebrations nor of the links of pride and responsibility which bound the youngest of them to the far-flung countries and islands and continents where the British flag flapped above government offices, above barracks and residencies as a symbol of Britain’s benevolent rule.

  England, Home and Beauty.

  Empire, Pride and Duty.

  In a hundred stirring tales and popular poems Rudyard Kipling had underlined the maxim that precisely summed up the popular feeling that to have been born an inhabitant of the British Isles was to have drawn first prize in the lottery of life. No Empire Day celebration was considered to be complete without a choir of schoolchildren to enliven the proceedings with a fluting rendition of Kipling’s ‘Children’s Song’:

  Land of our Birth, we pledge to thee

  Our love and toil in the years to be,

  When we are grown and take our place

  As men and women with our race.

  Nothing could have been more appropriate, and the lines were eagerly embraced by patriotic schoolteachers. They did not, however, find favour with Kipling’s own son Jack, aged twelve, and a pupil at St Aubyn’s Preparatory School at Rottingdean. His schoolfellows held him personally responsible for the tedium of being forced to learn all eight verses of the new song in honour of Empire Day in 1910, and Jack Kipling, sick to the teeth of being so unjustly baited, wrote a disgruntled letter home and laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of his father. Kipling apologised gracefully: ‘Sorry about the “Children’s Song”. You know that I didn’t write the darn thing with the faintest idea it would be so cruelly used against the young.’

  For the song itself there was no need to apologise. Kipling had merely voiced sentiments that were universally held to be part of the national heritage.

  Teach us to rule ourselves alway,

  Controlled and cleanly night and day,

  That we may bring, if need arise,

  No maimed or worthless sacrifice …

  Later he was to speak again for his bewildered generation, sick with self-reproach.

  If any question why we died,

  Tell them, because our fathers lied.

  But that was far in the future and in another world. Now the fortunes of the British Empire were at their zenith, patriotism was its watchword and nobody was questioning anything.

  Land of our Birth, our faith, our pride,

  For whose dear sake our fathers died;

  O Motherland, we pledge to thee,

  Head, heart and hand through the years to be.

  The Empire was growing all the time – and the British Army was scattered round the globe to prove it. Since the death of the old Queen the Empire had acquired new territories larger than the whole of the United States of America.

  The 2nd Battalion, The Rifle Brigade, had left for overseas in 1897, the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Now, in 1914, in the reign of her grandson, King George V, they were preparing to go home. They had missed the reign of his father, Edward VII, altogether.

  It had been quite a tour. In
its seventeen years of foreign duty, the Battalion had served in Malta and in Crete. It had done two stints in the Sudan and three in Egypt. During the Boer War it had been shipped to South Africa, had fought in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State and, after the uneasy peace, had been posted for a tour of duty to Natal. For the last seven of their seventeen years abroad, the RBs had been in India. Although they had covered some 40,000 miles by sea or river, by road or by rail, and half as many again on their feet, in all their wanderings they had seen perhaps a hundredth part of the British Empire. More than 4,000 men and 120 officers had come and gone as time-expired men had gone home and new drafts had replaced them, but there were still thirteen of the original Battalion which had sailed from Southampton seventeen years before. One of them was Quartermaster J. H. Alldridge.

  Alldridge had served under seven separate generals (including the great Sir Redvers Buller) and five Commanding Officers. There was nothing he did not know about the Battalion and no one in the Battalion who did not know it. Alldridge could produce statistics at the drop of a hat. He could name the eleven troopships in which they had travelled. He could name the men who had won medals in their tour of foreign service, from the single Victoria Cross to the sixteen Distinguished Conduct Medals and the thirty-three for Long Service and Good Conduct. Without reference to roll books he could reel off the casualties – 75 killed, 167 wounded and 191 dead of typhoid or cholera or of one of the virulent nameless fevers that struck without warning in the tropics. If pressed he would reveal, with reluctance, that, over the seventeen years, two men had deserted.

  In the weeks before their departure, despite his manifold activities as quartermaster, Alldridge had amused himself by compiling the statistics from his voluminous records. Not that there had been much time to spare. By July the heavy baggage, the mess silver and linen, the officers’ furniture, the household effects of the families on the strength, was already being packed ready to be shipped in advance and that, for the Quartermaster’s department, was a full-time job in itself. They were due to sail at the start of the Trooping Season, on 29 October. In the meantime, life continued as usual. It had been a fairly typical year, starting as it always did with the New Year’s Day Proclamation Parade which, thirty-eight years on, still celebrated annually Queen Victoria’s assumption of the title ‘Empress of India’ in 1876.