The holidays, 1917

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First World War

I have to confess that I hadn’t given much thought to holidays during the First World War until I came across this volume The holidays – where to stay and what to see, 1917 – an annual publication,  first published in 1896. 

 

The 1917 edition is about half the size  of the peacetime volumes, but is still pretty substantial. There are well over 300 pages of text and advertisements, and there are hardly any references to the war.  Perhaps at the time it wasn’t necessary to continually mention the fact,  but anyone reading the guide today would find it hard to believe that at the time of publication Britain had been at war for more than two years.

As you might expect, with so many European destinations unavailable, the guide mainly features British seaside resorts and spa towns.  Blackpool, Brighton, Scarborough and Great Yarmouth all feature prominently – with no mention of risk of air raids, or the bombardment of East Coast towns by the German fleet.  Not surprisingly, inland destinations proved popular, though there are some unusual entries –  I hadn’t really considered Luton, Dunstable, Hitchin and Peterborough as prime holiday destinations!

It’s always interesting to find references to places that you know well, so I was pleased to find this advertisement for Thorpeness, a purpose built holiday “village” near Aldeburgh in Suffolk.  I stayed there several times in the 1990s, and the place has hardly changed. In fact there was far more to do there in 1917 than there is today.

Most surprisngly holiday cruises were still being advertised.  The Rotterdam Lloyd company were offering 18 day Mediterranean cruises, departing from Southampton, and calling at Lisbon, Tangier, Gibraltar and Marseille. Fares averaged about £1 per day in 1st Class, and 12s (60p) in 2nd class.  The Finland Line was also offering holidays in Finland, sailing from Hull.  I’m not an expert on the war at sea, but the Mediterranean and the North Sea must have been pretty hazardous in 1917 – certainly not suitable for a pleasure cruise.

“Hell with the lid off”

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First World War, France

As regular readers will be aware, the Tower Project has reached the First World War.  In amongst the usual school textbooks, novels and religious tracts we are now finding a good number of handbooks on soldiers’ duties, military drill and tactics, firing muskets, fighting with bayonets, care of the wounded, prayers for the soldiers and much other war related material.

This week I also came across “Out there,” which is an account of a visit to Belgium and France in 1916, undertaken by Charles Iggleston on behalf of the British government [1916.6.617]. The book is described on the spine as “A visit to the Front under the auspices of the War Office, thrillingly and graphically described.”   Naturally, it has strong patriotic overtones but at the same time it does give a flavour of how life was for the British Army of the day, in one small section of the war.

The author is full of admiration for “Tommy,” the British soldier: “dodging death at every hour of his life, he sticks to his work in grim earnest, with sublime devotion, overcoming all difficulties and obstacles, cheerful throughout, and with a fixed determination to win through in the end.”

The infantryman, he observes, “must needs bear the brunt of the fighting … all day and all night the infantryman is under fire so long as he is on duty, but in the mad rush of battle, the brunt of the fighting falls on him in a conspicuous degree.  He it is who rushes from his trench in the attack across the open, swept by a hurricane of fire from machine guns.  Only those who have seen No Man’s land between the opposing trenches can have any idea what this danger zone is like.”

The greatest everyday danger would appear to have been from the almost constant shelling, but the soldiers’ approach to them seemed almost blasé, perhaps because there was not much one could do to avoid them.  Iggleston describes walking down an open track with a subaltern, who seemed unconcerned at shells flying overhead, save for commenting, “This is a bit dangerous.”  He does then go on to explain the differences between “theirs” and “ours” and to say that one only needed to look out if the “whizz” became lower and lower…

This had its effect on the countryside “as many a blackened wall, many a roofless house, many shattered windows proclaim.”  Probably, we have all seen the photographs of this land where “traces of fierce fighting are everywhere – a bit of shattered trench, the severed trunk of a lonely tree, odd strands of telephone wire, and twisted bundles from destroyed entanglements … a spot that has been fought over and over again till the soil must have become sodden with blood.”

The descriptions of the French people living in their ruined countryside are perhaps even more heart rending than the plight of the soldiers.  Through a glass-less window, Iggleston sees an old peasant woman with a sad wrinkled face, sitting, knitting in the ruins of her cottage; having lost her two sons to the war and her two young grandchildren to a German raid.  “No one hears the white-haired peasant woman talk. She just tends her garden, lives on the few vegetables it provides, and after that – knits, knits, knits.”

Many of the French homesteads had been knocked about by the shells, but their inhabitants continued to farm their ancestral lands, sometimes gathering their harvest within yards of the Germans lines, with shells falling around them.  With all the able-bodied men away fighting, the ploughs are worked by “old men, who in England, would have been relegated to their children’s fireside, as incapable of doing another stroke of work … close by a farm cart was being drawn up a hill by a half-starved horse, an old women trying to help by pushing … while a little hunch-backed boy … added his strength to aid the struggling, panting horse.  Such are the sights one sees while traversing miles and miles of French territory.”

Today is, of course, Armistice Day, marking the anniversary of the end of the Great War.   None of the veterans survive now and increasingly the war is four or five generations removed and means only a few pages in a history book to many.  It is hard to picture the scale of the war and the vast numbers of men who were killed or died of diseases “out there,” but all of us have ancestors who lived through that time.   We should never forget.

The sinking of the Lusitania

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destruction, engineering, First World War, war

This week of cataloguing I came across a rather sad and strange reminder that our project is gradually approaching the 1^st world war. In my 1907’s shelf of books I found the ‘launch book’ for the Lusitania, the ocean liner which was famously torpedoed on the 7^th May 1915, killing over a thousand civilians travelling from the United States to England. Famous mostly perhaps because the ensuing outrage, stirred up by British propaganda, turned global popular opinion against Germany and led to US intervention in the war.The book is primarily about the construction of the vessel, which is beautiful, and so I wanted to post up some illustrations. Her story is also interesting, so I’ve included a little about her too, apologies to WWI experts, this barely skims the surface.

The Lusitania was built as part of the race for the trans-Atlantic passenger trade and was one of the largest and fastest vessels of the time. Perhaps because of this, she had been quietly part funded by the British Military authorities, with the idea that she would be used as an auxiliary cruiser in times of war. The final passengers to board her were aware of some of the risks …

 “Travellers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany . . . and Great Britain . . . and that travellers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.”

…read a notice from the German government in forty U.S.newspapers. National Archives (of America) http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/eyewitness/html.php?section=18

Though not all of them … That day, the Lusitania’s loading manifesto failed to mention a significant element of her cargo, with a supplementary manifesto, for the President of the United States only, being filed later after she had left New York. Some munitions were originally listed but what was omitted was the large amount of explosive products such as gun cotton and 52 tons of shrapnel shells. (www.lusitania.net).

It is not clear whether the Germans knew about the hushed up cargo or not, but despite it a wartime journey was always going to be risky. Tactics for evading submarines had not yet been clearly devised, however, Messr John Brown and Co. the designers of Lusitania were confident that their use of Krupp plate steel, with new methods of treatment and technique for application would make their vessel torpedo proof. Sadly this was not the case and chaos reigned as she sank within 18 minutes, killing 1,198 of her 1,959 passengers.

 The war diary of Kapitänleutnant Walter Schwieger Captain of the U-Boat that sank her described the scene:

“Many people must have lost their heads; several boats loaded with people rushed downward, struck the water bow or stern first and filled at once. . . . The ship blew off steam; at the bow the name “Lusitania” in golden letters was visible. The funnels were painted black; stern flag not in place. It was running 20 nautical miles. Since it seemed as if the steamer could only remain above water for a short time, went to 24 m. and ran toward the Sea. Nor could I have fired a second torpedo into this swarm of people who were trying to save themselves.” National Archives (of America) http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/eyewitness/html.php?section=18

The outrage at the event and the loss of so many were it seems a significant driver for America to join the war. Propaganda drove this further as strange items began to appear, such as the medals apparently issued to the torpedo crew for sinking the ship. These depicted the Lusitania sinking on one side and on the other a queue of passengers buying tickets from a skeleton (death). Whether Germany made them first but quickly destroyed them as they saw the action criticised or whether it was a conspiracy dreamed up by the British is unclear.Whatever significance the Lusitania’s sinking played in the war, there is no escaping the tragedy and loss of life. Therefore there is something eerily gloomy about finding a book so full of the excitement and pride of the manufacturers, designers and builders, who had little idea of what was to come.

War and resentment

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destruction, First World War, France, Germany, war

War artists and photographers from the First World War are well known.  Lithographs from the siege of Strasbourg during the Fraco-Prussian war in ‘Bombardement de Strasbourg’, 1870 (1906.7.2401) provide an earlier view of the work of war artists– and of the methods of waging war.  The book is composed of 21 plates of lithographs depicting war damage to the city of Strasbourg (with captions in both French and German), as well as a final series of two plates showing and naming a collection of cannons that were used and (by the looks of them) destroyed in the siege of the city.

While in the First and Second World Wars a similar picture might have been used to show the battleships, tanks or airplanes, as late as the Franco-Prussian War, these showpieces were still cannons– many from the reign of Louis XIV.  Or maybe these were shown as a sign of nostalgia– Krupps and other steel companies built modern artillery pieces for the Franco-Prussian War, and these cannons may have shown simply to show how woefully inadequate France’s and Stasbourg’s defences had been. 

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Mabel Dearmer: an unusual life (Part 2)

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First World War, Mabel Dearmer

Having become interested in Mabel Dearmer – actress, novelist, illustrator, playwright, theatre producer, vicar’s wife, and mother – I decided to find out more about her life and found a book of her letters, written to a friend just before and after the outbreak of the First World War, and published by that friend in 1915 (Letters from a field hospital, 9537.d.226). These letters chronicle her reactions to the impending war, the news of which reached her while she was recuperating from an exhausting London theatre production in the Cotswolds village of Oakridge Lynch.

Hardly any families were left untouched by horrors of the First World War and the Dearmers were no exception, although at first Mabel Dearmer could see no connection between her own life and the momentous happenings beginning to unfold on the Continent.

“I knew nothing of European complications and cared less. The murder of an Archduke meant no more to me than some tale of an imaginary kingdom in Zenda. … I did not hate the enemy, I hated the spirit that made war possible…”

Then her sons enlisted and suddenly war became a very real threat. “…I envied the proud mother who sends her sons, proud of them, proud of the war that calls them out, proud of the God of battles. But that God is not my God, and my heart was heavy.”

She returned to London and helped with European refugees while continuing with her theatre work until her husband, Percy Dearmer, offered to go to Serbia as an army chaplain. On the same day, she decided to accompany him and accepted a posting as a hospital orderly: “Here was the work for which I had waited. I had no doubt and no hesitation. Every tie that could keep me in England had been cut, every difficulty removed from my path.”

Her husband reacted calmly to her announcement that she too was to go to Serbia. “What fun” was his only comment.

In Serbia, she suffered from overwork, the mud, the fleas, prickly heat and the now intimate knowledge of war. “This war will not bring peace – no war will bring peace – only love and mercy and terrific virtues such as loving one’s enemy can bring a terrific thing like peace.”

3 months after leaving Britain, Mabel Dearmer died of enteric fever. Her friend the editor writes of her: “It is easy to go into danger when convinced that your country’s cause is righteous; she thought that for all countries war was unrighteous, yet she went.”

 Her life and that of her younger son Christopher, who was fatally injured at Gallipoli only months after his mother’s death, are commemorated on the war memorial fountain in Oakridge Lynch, near Stroud, Gloucestershire.

In memory of MABEL DEARMER
who went from Oakridge the place she loved best
to give help in Serbia where she died of fever
at Kragujevatz on July 11th. 1915, and of
CHRISTOPHER DEARMER
who died of wounds at Suvla Bay of Gallipoli
on October 6th. 1915 aged 21

Proud of the war all glorious went the son.
Loathing the war all mournful went the mother.
Each had the same wage when the day was done.
Tell me was either braver than the other.

They slept in mire who went so comely ever

Then when you wash let the thought of them abide.
They knew the parching thirst of wounds & fever.
Here when you drink remember them who died.