My Father’s Wartime Experiences
My father left Rugby School at the end of the summer term in 1913. Letters from his
old headmaster and his housemaster confirm that he attended Rugby from 1910 to
1913. He must have decided on a career in the army, because Dr A David, writing
from Rugby School in 1919, confirmed that his progress had been quite satisfactory in
the Army Class. However, his father thought that he should be sent to a crammer to
prepare him for the entrance examination to Sandhurst Military Academy. He must
have been successful in the examinations, because he entered the Royal Military
Academy just as war with Germany was declared in August 1914. He always said that
he had the German Kaiser to thank for getting him into Sandhurst. His father signed
the application form from the War Office for his son’s admission to the Academy on
29 June 1914, and undertook to pay the sum of £150 a year for the privilege. It is one
of a number of documents in his military record, which have been preserved in the
Royal Archives at Kew. My father received his commission into the East Lancashire
Regiment direct from Sandhurst in December 1914 and joined the 3rd Battalion
stationed in Plymouth. He was sent to France to join B Company of 2
nd
Battalion of
the East Lancashire Regiment in April 1915.
Christmas 1913 was the last Christmas my father spent with his parents at 9
Alexandria Road, Southport. Little did they all know that by Christmas 1915 he
would have been horribly wounded in France. He spent most of 1916 in hospital,
fighting for his life from the effects of gas gangrene. Many of his friends were killed
in the war, including several of our relations. Father was lucky to survive, but the
Great War changed his life and the world he lived in forever.
Field Marshal Sir John French, who had commanded a cavalry battalion in the Boer
War, was the first Commander of the British Expeditionary Force, which was sent to
France in 1914. This small force was given the nickname of ‘The Old Contemptibles’,
after the German Kaiser described it as a “contemptible little army”. It consisted of
some 10,000 officers and 75,000 other ranks and included a corps of the British
Indian Army. By the time my father arrived in France, in 1915, the BEF had grown to
two field armies with a contingent of the Royal Flying Corps. The Royal Flying Corps
had been formed in 1912, following the first successful cross-Channel flight by the
French aviator Louis Bleriot on 25
th
July 1909. The potential use of aircraft for
reconnaissance and artillery observation was quickly recognised. Wireless
communication with aircraft flying over the battlefield was attempted at the Battle of
Aubers Ridge in 1915. The troops were supposed to lay white linen strips on the
ground to indicate their position for the aircraft, but few strips were laid in the heat of
the battle.
‘The History of the East Lancashire Regiment in the Great War 1914-1918’ records
that in July 1914, the 2
nd
Battalion (59
th
Foot) was stationed in South Africa. There
had been some rumours of a possible European war, but early in the morning on 30
th
July the battalion received orders to mobilize at once and man the coastal defences in
Simon’s Bay. They sailed for home on 29
th
September 1914. Twenty-one officers,
plus 853 other ranks with wives and children, were embarked on the Dover Castle,
which sailed in convoy round the Cape. There was a serious outbreak of measles
among the children on the voyage home via Sierra Leone. The Dover Castle docked
at Southampton on 30
th
October. After a short stay at Hursley Park, near Winchester,