World War One Diary | WW1 Diary | Lt B.J. Green

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ALMOST
NONAGENARIAN

I was that choirboy

BASIL GREEN

INDEX

Chapter 1. The Eighteen Nineties
Chapter 2. School Days
Chapter 3. The Years of Adolescence
Chapter 4. A New World
Chapter 5. I Go To War
Chapter 6. The 2nd Battle of Ypres
Chapter 7. The Battles for The Aubers Ridge
Chapter 8. On The Messines Ridge
Chapter 9. At The Caisse D’epergne, Bailleul
Chapter 10. Transferred To Canadian Corps Headquarters
Chapter 11. From Soldier To Civilian
Chapter 12. Life In The Country
Chapter 13. A Momentous Decision
Chapter 14. What To Do Now
Chapter 15. The 2nd World War
Chapter 16. War Time In England
Chapter 17. Return To Peace
Chapter 18. In Retirement

Chapter 1

The Eighteen-nineties

The 1890’s! Those born during this decade and who still survive have lived through three wars, an industrial revolution and into the age of space travel, electronic and nuclear technology, the pill and the chip. It is not strange, therefore, that the way of life and its values have completely changed. It is no part of this narrative to enlarge on these changes, but rather to record the development and experiences of one brought up in the Victorian age.

The contentment found in doing one’s ‘duty in that state of life into which it has pleased God to call me’ has been largely superseded by today’s obsession – speed and greed. The ‘infernal’ combustion engine has taken the place of the horse, which at least provided us with fertiliser for the garden, free for the gathering, as against the pollution from a million exhausts. Progress like everything has its price.

As the progeny of my parents, let me first introduce them. My father Ernest Green married my Mother Margaret Baxter when he was 24 and she 21. For the first ten years of their married life they lived at ‘Neston’, Denman Road, described by the agents as in a desirable residential area of Peckham. Its desirability has long since waned, though ‘Neston’ still stands, despite the ravages of war. It was a three-storied terraced house, of which I have only the haziest recollection, except for a long narrow garden at the back.

My parents were truly God-fearing and regularly attended church with their growing family. Each day started and ended with family prayers, in which our maid joined u. My mother was the dominant character and Sundays in particular followed a rigid routine, School homework had to be finished on Saturdays, while on Sundays between morning and evening services we had little freedom to follow our own devices. We were encouraged to either read ‘good’ books or commit to memory the answers to the catechism, whether we understood them or not. Naturally I resented, but suffered without protest. I must add that far from being over strict, few children have been blessed with more loving, unselfish and well-intentioned parents.

While my father had a great sense of humour, my dear mother had none. Yet much was the fun that filled our lives and made us a happy, united and contented family.

During the first ten years of their married life, my mother bore six children, of which I was the second, having an older brother – John – and four younger sisters. It was on the 9th of December 1892 that I arrived. In those days it cost quite a lot to be born. A confinement lasted the best part of a month, during which the midwife lived with the family.

My father, an expert tea-taster, was the manager or a firm of tea and coffee merchants and financially we were relatively comfortable and able to keep one and sometimes two servants.

Let me digress for a moment to consider briefly the dramatic changes that have taken place in our social structure. In Victorian times and well into the Edwardian era, the distinction between the classes (I prefer to call them the privileged and the under-privileged) was strongly defined. Education was largely responsible. Free state education was only available in the Board schools, then controlled by the Board of Education. All other schools, private and public alike, depended on the fees charged and the condition of the schools foundation, inevitably this created segregating barriers.

Today the comprehensive secondary schools embrace children of the wealthy, the not so wealthy and the poor, throwing them all together, thus largely eliminating the sense of ‘class’. It is not inconceivable that a future prime minister could come from such a school. And why not?

In my youth, for a country girl with a board school education, domestic service offered about the only alternative to work in a factory and that often under sweated labour conditions. Although the wages paid for domestic service were minimal – about 5/- per week – accommodation, food and uniforms were provided. These were a cotton print dress, cap and apron for the morning, changed for a black dress, white cap and bibbed apron for the afternoon. They suggested subservience to the ‘master’ and ‘mistress’. We children were always addressed or referred to with the prefix ‘master’ or ‘miss’ before our names. Thank goodness it gave us no sense of superiority.

Back to our narrative. I was nearly 5 years old when the aged Queen Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee – Sixty years a Queen! It is probably my earliest vivid memory. It was a fine sunny day. All the residents turned out to line the streets, gay with flags, many three-cornered, festooned from tree to tree. I stood on the pavement with my aunts outside the house of my Baxter grandparents – 163 Grove Lane, Camberwell. My patience was almost giving out when the open carriage of the little old lady in black, with her escort of Life Guards passed by and down Dog Kennel Hill on their way to the Crystal Palace. I expected she would be wearing her crown, despite the fact that it would have perched awkwardly on top of her widow’s black bonnet. However, I waved to her and was sure her acknowledgement was meant specially for me, rather than for my aunts, who more decorously curtsied, as was appropriate for young ladies at that time.

During my first seven or eight years I can recall no other important event. Even the periodic arrival of my sisters has left no impression. Yet the little daily incidents live in my memory. The ‘magic’of the street lamp-lighter with his long pole, which brought to life dim pools of yellow light, as he zigzagged across the street from lamp post to lamp post. Before the advent of electricity, the streets were lighted with naked half-moon gas jets. Of the by-pass I knew nothing, hence the ‘magic’ to me of the lamp-lighters pole.

The cheerful ringing of the muffin and crumpet man’s bell is something not heard today. But it conjures up in my mind the delectable taste of hot-buttered crumpets for tea on a chilly winter’s evening. No less intriguing was the ease with which the muffin man balanced on his head the green baize covered board on which he carried his wares.

In the front path to the house was a heavy circular metal cover, concealing the entrance to a chute into the cellar. It was only opened up when the coalman ‘s dray arrived to replenish our coal stocks, usually two or three tons at a time. Remember that coal, in those days, cost about £1 per ton and a shilling tip to the coalman was adequate. I would sit half concealed behind the curtain in the front room, with instructions to count accurately the sacks (20 to the ton) as they emptied them down the chute. I liked the responsibility.

Before the tram lines were laid, the only public transport were the horse drawn buses and, for those who could afford it, the hansom cab, a two wheeled cabriolet, with the driver mounted behind and the reins passing over the roof. Of course there were the trains, but we only travelled on them once a year when we went for our annual holiday.

During these early years, just when, I am not clear, my grandmother Green came to live with us, more or less permanently until her death at the age of 93 in 1916. My grandfather had died when my father was only 8 years old and trouble rose over the family estate. The result was that my grandmother and her young family of four children were left, not as her solicitor assured her ‘comfortably off’, but in quite poor circumstances. WE children were told, though what truth there was I cannot say, that my fathers ‘wicked’ uncles were responsible. Two of them certainly prospered to become aldermen of the City of London.

While I never went to school until I was 8 years of age, our education in no way suffered. My mother taught us older ones, insisting on regular lessons and stressing the importance of accurate spelling and good handwriting. It was my grandmother though who taught us to read – and to read with understanding.

Incidentally I still have the original of a letter, written in 1839 by my grandfather Baxter, then ten years old, to his elder brother Henry. It is in perfect copperplate, quite amazing for one so young. Today, I regret, it would be considered a waste of time. Beautiful calligraphy is not now included in school curriculum. Other subjects take priority.

Chapter 2

SCHOOL DAYS

By 1900 the time had arrived to make a move. Great was our excitement at the prospect of new surroundings within walking distance of the open country. Actually the move was one of little more than three to Tulse Hill, but close by was Brockwell Park, with which I associate many happy hours of my childhood.

Our new address was 22A Romola Rd., Tulse Hill. How the number acquired an ‘A’ I have no idea for ours was the only house in the road with that distinction. It was larger than our first house and comfortably accommodated the family of nine, as well as two maids. The nursery was on the top floor and quite unique, for its walls were covered, not with traditional wallpaper, but with hundreds of pictures cut out from the pages of the Illustrated London News and other magazines, which had been collected over the years. There was no uniformity of shape or size. The jigsaw just grew week by week until the last blank space was filled. By moving furniture around from time to time, new vistas of delight were revealed. One was never bored by looking at epic incidents from the Boer war, palaces and stately homes and all the odd patches filled with cartoons from Punch or portraits of the famous. I have often wondered whether any of our friends have copied the idea.

Once settled in, I was considered ready for school. My brother John had already spent a few terms at a dame’s school in Peckham, from which he profited little. He soon showed his exceptional capacity for mathematics when he and I entered Lancaster College. It was a private school of some 150 boys and had acquired its somewhat grandiose title merely by being situated in Lancaster road, about ten minutes from home.

It was in form 2 that I started – a tribute to my mothers teaching. On my first day I found myself seated between two boys, one named King and the other Prince. They treated me, the new kid, with regal indifference. It is sad to recall that both, were killed in the First World War – King in Flanders and Prince with the R.F.C. in Italy.

Throughout the seven years I spent at Lancaster College I did not shine academically, while my brother John’s reports were glowing with praise, mine in comparison must of depressed my parents greatly. The fees they paid were not entirely unproductive, for the school dramatics and athletic activities absorbed my energies. I had joined the Church choir when I was about 9 and enjoyed the advantages of excellent choir and voice training. When it came to casting the Gilbert and Sullivan Operas, I usually got a leading role. Shakespeare loomed largely in our English Literature and many plays were given performances. I remember playing parts in Coriolanus, Henry V and Henry VIII. Even today Wolsey’s famous speech “Farewell! A long farewell to all my greatness……” lives vividly in my memory. One year we attempted, in French, an act from Moliere’s ‘Le Medecine Malgre Lui’, being a farce, the audience was more amused by our antics than impressed by our schoolboy French, this despite the efforts of our French master, who, presumably, was not ungratified by the result.

The school hall not having adequate stage facilities, our productions were put on at the Public Hall, West Norwood which, in those days was well equipped. The lighting, however, until its conversion to electricity, consisted of a row of naked gas burners for footlights and a similar arrangement above for the battens. The heat played havoc with any make-up, which was, therefore, used sparingly. But we put up with it.

In the field of athletics, I held my own. During my last term at school I half-cleared the prize table at our annual sports day at the Crystal Palace. But by the rule that no competitor could keep more than three prizes, I reluctantly had to return no less than four, which were then given to the runners up. However, I was proud to hold the Senior Sports Cup for that year.

Returning to the school curriculum, I was not a success with the ‘maths’ master – Buggy Root we called him. His method of teaching was far to boring for me and I made little effort to master even elementary Algebra. Euclid I absorbed much more readily. I probably had a reasoning mind, to which the proving of a theorem appealed and brought satisfaction. I passed over ‘Pons Assinorum’ (the donkeys bridge) with little difficulty. On one occasion I was called into a senior classroom to demonstrate its simplicity. I must mention our German Master. He was a real character. To us he was known as ‘Scarface’ on account of the scar he proudly carried on his cheek, which he attributed to duelling during his college days. Doctor Ederheimer had a ready wit, which often became obvious in his unusual way of teaching. He would demonstrate German Syntax in a way that caused fits of laughter, but it sunk in. The merriment he quickly quelled by assuming the role of a Prussian officer – goosestep and all. But we all liked him and he tolerated us.

The headmaster – Mr. Osman Thomas specialised in the classics and R.E. Although he walloped me twice, I am grateful to him for having given me an elementary knowledge of Latin.

The head was a strict disciplinarian, but only used the cane with good reason. He believed it more effective to make the punishment fit the crime. As an example, I well remember an occasion when a senior boy – a six footer – was caught in an act of gross indecency with two juniors, details of which rapidly spread round the school. At the end of assembly the next morning, the culprit was called on to the platform before the whole school and given a short sharp lecture, doubtless intended for us as well. He then suffered the indignity of having two buckets of cold water thrown over him. He presented a pitiful sight as he was dismissed to the showers to dry off. We rather enjoyed the incident. What happened to the two small boys we never learned.

It was while at school that one evening we had a visit from a professional conjuror – the first I had ever seen. On that evening was born a secret resolve that one day I should become a ‘Magician’. It was being in the limelight rather than curiosity that influenced me. The platform was cluttered with many pieces of gaudy apparatus and most of the tricks were mechanical, requiring little real dexterity. It was not until some years later, when I joined the Magic Circle that I realised the possibilities of sleight-of-hand and the use of cunning misdirection.

I confess that my ambition was largely fed on self-esteem. Ready submission to others was not a strong part of my nature. I enjoyed leading rather than following and so I found authority irksome. In some I must have been a bit of a rebel in the family.

I was still a schoolboy when I was taken to the Egyptian Hall in Regent Street, now long since demolished, but then leased to Maskelyne and Cooke, the fore runners of Maskelyne and Devant, who for years ran their all-magic show next to the old Queen’s Hall in Langham Place, bombed in World War II. It was at the Egyptian Hall that I first witnessed real magical illusions, which completely baffled me, for I had not then heard of ‘Pepper’s Ghost’. I saw also the first moving picture to be shown in this country. It was only a short scene, devoid of any plot – just a busy London Street with its horse-drawn buses, handsome cabs and pedestrians going about their business. They all moved jerkily, but it was a great advance on the magic lantern.

As this narrative proceeds, it will show what effect ‘magic’ has played in my life and how it probably contributed to my coming through World War I unscathed.

I was about nine years old when photography first interested me. My first camera I bought for 3d in a toyshop. It was no more than a pin-hole camera-obscura. It, however, produced a faint image in negative on a piece of glass the size of a postage stamp. I quickly discarded it and started to save furiously for a real camera – a 5/- box Brownie! This gave me much pleasure and satisfaction over several years. It was not until I was sixteen that I was able to buy a ½ - plate stand camera, fitted with a Thorne-Pickard shutter and ball release. This camera I embodied as the objective section of an enlarger I made with the addition of a 8 ½” condenser, picked up at a jumble sale for about £1. I was now equipped to do serious photography and converted the cupboard in our nursery into a darkroom.

Having a strong creative instinct, it was not natural that pictorial photography should be my inspiration. On the South Downs at the junction of the road to Jevington and the Seaford-Eastbourne Road there stood a derelict but picturesque old windmill, with parts of the sail structure missing. I found a suitable viewpoint from which the stark silhouette against a dramatic evening sky made a good composition, save for an intruding telegraph pole, which, by retouching, I converted into an acceptable clump of trees which, as I thought, pulled the composition together. It probably did, but the judges thought otherwise and rejected it for exhibition at the London Salon. My creative instinct had evidently overstepped the acceptable limit.

Music! I loved singing in the choir. I loved good church music. I still do. The choir had a large repertoire of anthems. A few of the best were composed by our choirmaster/organist. A feature of the services, remarked upon by visitors, was the rendering of the psalms. They were sung, not to the more melodic Anglican chants, but antiphonally in unison to the twelve Gregorian modes. Plainsong does not appeal to everyone and was originally intended to be sung unaccompanied. Our organist was a master at improvisation and, in accompanying the psalms, emphasised the meaning of the words, whereas the repetitive Anglican chants, in many churches, fail to do. It added a new beauty without becoming too obvious.

Today I often regret that I did not apply myself to the piano with the same enthusiasm as I did to choral music. A cousin of my mother (Aunt Ella to us) kindly offered to give us music lessons. For some years I gave up Wednesday afternoons (half holidays at school) to walking the 2 ½ miles via Brixton to Clapham. There, for a boring hour, I was made to run through endless scales and then to plug away at a book called ‘Czerny’s Exercises’. I never want to see them again. It did, however, give me a grasp of musical notation. Surely I was a rebellious pupil under a not very understanding teacher. It was not until our choirmaster took us choirboys to the Albert Hall to hear the ‘Messiah’ that my ears were opened and my understanding stimulated. Handel’s Oratorios, the ‘Passions’ of Bach and Elgar’s ‘Dream of Gerontius’ give me more pleasure than the Symphonies and Concertos. Jacqueline du Pre’s rendering of Elgar’s Celle Concerto has, in more recent years, brought much pleasure and understanding. What a tragedy that this gifted musician and her cello are, through disease now parted!

Schooldays have been called ‘the happiest days of ones life’. For a few this may be true. In retrospect, I would describe mine as ‘the most care-free days of my life’ – free from responsibility – free from decision-making – free from the urges of adolescence.

There were little prospects of my ever matriculating and so it was that at Christmas 1907 I left school, having just turned 15. I doubt whether my deficiency in scholastic honours has had any effect on my subsequent wanderings. School textbooks obviously have their place, but the experiences of life, of travel in a wider world become the ultimate master of ones fortune – the creator of one’s destiny.

Chapter 3

THE YEARS OF ADOLESCENCE

In the seven years between 1908 and 1914 I fell in love; I emigrated; I went to war – and so passed into manhood. These profound experiences, while cementing my love and duty to my family completely changed my attitude to life.

Falling in love, for me, was neither love at first sight nor a consuming passion. My early advances met with a negative response and I had to change my tactics.

Florence Ethel Powell, her parents and five younger brothers came from Stoke on Trent and lived quite near to us. Her father’s business – he was the agent to a firm of Pottery merchants – made it necessary to have an office in London.

One Sunday they all arrived at Church, filling a complete pew. I could see them from my position in the choir and frequently my eyes wandered their way. After disrobing I would hurry round to the front of the Church, hoping to find them amongst the throng of worshippers. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, but I made little progress till fortune favoured me when Bernard, the eldest boy was admitted into the choir. As head boy, it was my job to initiate him into our ways. We soon became chummy and, as our ways home followed the same route, I found out all I wanted to know.
Having to cope, at fourteen, with five brothers, the daughter’s attitude to boys was easy and uncomplicated. Gradually my friendship with Bernard gave me access to their home and one Saturday I was allowed to take him and the second boy, Eric, up to London to a matinee at Maskyline and Devants. From then onwards my friendship with the family grew closer.

Let me digress for a moment. Seaford! The very name conjures up so many of my happiest childhood memories. For as early as I can remember, it was Seaford we went for our annual holiday. We always stayed in an isolated flint-built cottage, which lay back from the road with a paddock in front. I remember so well the square closed porch, which had a sliding door into the house. This, to our young imagination was a lift and of course I was the lift attendant. The hinterland and the walk over the cliffs to Cuckmere Haven were as attractive as the heavily groined shingle-beach. One year my mother and I collected well over 100 wild flowers, including three varieties of orchid. We finally identified them all.

High and Over, with its extensive views over Alfriston and the Seven Sisters was a popular picnic spot.

I have let the chronology of my story get out of hand, so let me now return to the end of my schooldays. For a few months I entered my father’s firm – Cassell & Co., Tea and Coffee merchants of 80 Fenchurch St., E.C.

It was an old corner building with the warehouse, roasting, blending and packing departments on the street level and offices above. One entered by a flight of dingy stairs into an outer office, which probably had not changed in the last fifty years. Along one wall was a high desk to accommodate two or three clerks, who presumably preferred standing to climbing on to the high wooden stools, devoid of upholstery. Ina corner stood a vertical press to provide copies of important letters and documents. There being no type-writers, all letters were written in longhand with special copying ink and then interleaved into a book of semi-transparent thin paper, through which a facsimile of the originals could be read after passing through the press. Copying and indexing the letters was one of the jobs that occupied me between tea-making and keeping the coal fires burning.

The atmosphere was almost Dickensian. One could almost feel Bob Cratchit, standing at the desk, working at his ledgers with mittens on his hands and the coal grate empty.

During my short stay with Cassell & Co. the Sidney Street Siege took place. Sidney Street was a turning off Whitechapel High St. about a quarter of a mile from Aldgate Pump, where Fenchurch Street and Leaden hall Street converged. News that a ‘war’ was raging in the East and travelled fast and during my lunch break I joined the throng converging on the ‘battlefield’. Apparently three armed desperados had barricaded themselves in a house in Sidney Street and refused to surrender to the police. All roads giving access to the house were cordoned off. Through the lines of police, one could see the house and get an occasional glimpse of a rifle, projected from a first-floor window. High-ranking police, amongst the Home Secretary (Winston Churchill in his top hat) took shelter in doorways and directed the strategy. Making little progress, the Home Secretary sanctioned the use of troops to storm the building. The police opened up the cordon as a platoon of armed soldiers from near by barracks arrived and passed through. After briefing, they scattered, under covering fire, to their strategic positions. By now the crowd of onlookers were pushed back into Whitechapel High St. and so denied an eye-witness’s view of what followed. I returned an hour late to the office and got ticked off. Later I learned from the evening papers that two of the desperados had been killed and the third was smoked out and captured.

My wages, while with Cassell & Co. were eight shillings per week and a season-ticket from Herne Hill to St. Paul’s, leaving me with four miles to walk each day.

My father, I imagined, took me into his business to break me in gently from school life to the bigger world in the city. There was no intention of limiting my experience by staying on indefinitely. So when Harold Dougharty (my mother’s cousin) who was the actuary to a London Life Insurance Company, heard of a vacancy in an insurance company in Chancery Lane, he gave me an introduction to one of the directors. I was interviewed and taken on (heaven only knows why).

The offices of the Law Guarantee Trust and Accident Society were very posh, with uniformed commissionaires. As I was able to write well enough, I was put in the policy writing department – one of three, with a salary of £6 per month.

Within six months or so, they were taken over by the Guardian Assurance Company and we all moved down to No. 1 The Minories – an extension of Throgmorton Street. As I now knew something about the intricacies of insurance, I found myself in the Re-insurance Department. This suited me much better and gave me more responsibility. I spent much of my time visiting other companies securing re-insurance cover to spread the load on large policies. It was here that I made an effort to justify the confidence placed in me.

I must now introduce the Wheatley family who lived in Sidcup. The parents were my Uncle Percy and Aunt Emmy (my fathers sister). They had four sons. The youngest, Havelock, was eleven months my junior, Guy a year older, while Frank and Ronald were a few years older than my brother John. Uncle Percy, an ex-Merchant Navy Officer, was a most distinguished character and passed his good looks on to his four sons. In their early youth they were ‘ruled’ by their mother, who possessed a strong but vacillating personality. As children we got to know each other very well and were more like brothers and sisters than cousins.

To spend a week or so at Sidcup was always a delight for me, though the devilments we got up to are better left unrecorded. Guy was a most lovable character and when he stayed with us he used to play up to our mutual grandmother calling her by the most endearing terms as if she were his sweetheart. May be it was just buffoonery, but from big-hearted Guy, it was from the warmth within his heart. He was only 22 when he gave his life at Hill 60 in the Ypres Salient. The only record of his unknown grave being ‘Pte. J.G. Wheatley’ carved on the Menin Gate, Ypres.

In 1909 the three older boys emigrated to Canada and soon established themselves, Ronald as an accounted in Winnipeg, Frank as a Veterinary Surgeon in Fort Qu’Appelle, Saskatchewan. Havelock was then only 15 and too young.

Early in 1910 Uncle Percy and my father talked things over and decided, if agreeable to me, to send Havelock and me off to Canada. Prospects in the New World were far better than in the Old Country. Such a possibility had never entered my head. To cross the Atlantic Ocean and penetrate some 1500 miles further into the unknown was a decision few would have taken lightly. It involved complete disruption not only of my awakening love, but of all that was familiar.

When my father broached the proposition to me, my response, however, was immediate. I only saw a golden future opening up and the complete unshackled freedom of judgement and action. For the next week or so I read all I could about Canada. I studied its maps and the brochures published by the Canadian Pacific Railway. At night I dreamed of real cowboys and Indians, of Canada’s limitless and hedgeless prairies of golden wheat, extending from Manitoba, through Saskatchewan and Alberta to the foothills of the Rockies.

The industrial cities of Southern Quebec conjured up no romantic pictures. For me it was the wide open spaces of the West.

In my ignorance I planned to get a Horse and Buggy, load up my photographic equipment and stores and travel from farm to farm, maybe twenty or more miles apart, photographing all that I saw and hoped to make a living by selling prints.

I was only 17 and the spirit of adventure was strong. How little did I realise the difference between idealism and realism! But I was to learn.

It was at a dance for young people that I decided to tell my sweetheart, quite unemotionally, that I was shortly off to Canada. I now believe that Bernard must have already told her, for her encouraging response to what I said was just a pressure of the hand. I needed no more.

The dance was at one of the big houses on Denmark Hill, opposite the entrances to the house where John Ruskin once lived. Two large reception rooms opened up through an archway to make a good dancing area. The carpets had been removed revealing a polished parquet floor. Dances in those days would doubtless be regarded by the youth of today as starchy affairs. Indeed they were not! True a certain decorum was observed. Unattended girls were accompanied by a chaperone and boys wore white cotton gloves, presumably to prevent them coming in contact with female flesh. Everyone was provided with a dance programme and pencil, with spaces to fill in ones partners name. There was usually a scramble foe the Half-way Supper Dance and the Final Waltz, when the lights were dimmed. The usual dances were the Waltz, Polka, Valeta, Barn dance, Lancers and Sir Roger de Coverly. They were far more graceful and innocent than the (I hesitate to describe them) sensuous choreography performed by many Pop-Groups and the congested audiences of ‘Top of the Pops’ Allow me to be old-fashioned. I got diverted. Forgive me!

About now my family, with one exception all went down with measles – I was the last to contract it. Should I be clear to catch the boat? In a bare two weeks the Empress of Britain (25,000 tons) was due to sail from Liverpool and we had booked twp second-class passages on her. I just made it with a day or two to spare. Those tickets cost £10 each! Today a phone call a phone call to Heathrow and in less than a day one is in Toronto – but not for £10.

Both our parents were at Euston to see us off. In cash we had £15 each in golden sovereigns, carried in belts around our waists for safety. The farewells and final waves were soon over and as the train pulled slowly away, we were launched on our great adventures.

Chapter 4

A NEW WORLD

On a chilly evening, in April 1910, R.M.S., The Empress of Britain, carrying his Majesty’s Mails and a full compliment of passengers and crew, glided from the dockside at Liverpool, steamed down the Mersey into the Irish Sea and the Atlantic beyond. Flights of sea-gulls circled and hovered around the stern, ready to pounce on the tasty morsels, which were discharged with the kitchen waste. Once clear of coastal traffic the voyage was uneventful. Shuffleboard and deck quoits were popular, whenever the weather permitted, but she was not to kind. It got noticeably colder as we approached Newfoundland Bank. On the starboard side we could discern half-a-dozen icebergs emerging out of the mist. They were at least two miles away and, being pre-Titanic days, aroused interest without apprehension.

During the winter months, the St. Laurence River is not navigable to Quebec and Montreal on account of ice and ours was probably the last voyage that spring to terminate at St. John, New Brunswick.

The first landfall sighted was the rugged coast of Nova Scotia and we docked at the capital – Halifax – for a few hours, before proceeding the further 300 miles into the Bay of Fundy, where we first set foot on Canadian soil at St. John N.B. Here was the Atlantic terminal of the Transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway, which was to carry us a further fifteen hundred miles west to Winnipeg. It seemed all very strange, so different to the England we had left far behind us – the England we knew and loved so well.

After the comparative luxury of a two-berth cabin and freedom to move around a great ship and enjoy its amenities, the confinement for two and half days in a train, crowded with steerage passenger emigrants from many parts of Europe, including a number of Doukhobors from Russia, fleeing from persecution, came as a bit of a let-down.

We found some consolation from watching the ever-changing scenery as we passed from agricultural New Brunswick into the vast province of Quebec – very largely French-Canadian in speech and in their way of living. Entering Ontario, the scenery became much more dramatic. The railway skirted the North shore of Lake Superior – some 350 miles long and 200 miles wide. At times the train appeared to be travelling on a ledge hewn out of the solid rock, towering above it on one side and dropping sheer on the other.

Night was falling as we passed Manitoba and as dawn broke we arrived on the outskirts of the vast prairie lands, extending across three provinces to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains – a further thousand miles West.

By midday we pulled slowly into the covered depot in the heart of the city of Winnipeg. This was to be my home for four years, so let me try to leave some impression of its rapid transformation from merely a trading post on the Red River to becoming the metropolis of the West. I can only write of it as I found it in 1910. Today it would be unrecognisable. As the capital of Manitoba, it housed the provincial Parliament, the Law Courts, a University campus, the grain exchange and one department store (Timothy Eatons Ltd). There were two theatres and two music halls, numerous Billiard Parlours and the inevitable Saloons. Along its four principal streets ran an antiquated electric tramway with open sides. An annual was the Rodeo, staged on the University Campus. For a week the city was invaded by cowboys from Alberta with their horses and steers. It was not unusual to see native dressed Indians and their Squaws in town for a visit from their Reserve, north of the city.

The streets showed little uniformity. Modern brick and stone buildings jostled with old wooden buildings, some in the North End of Winnipeg being little more than shacks that had outlived their time.

Winnipeg, halfway across Canada, lies at the confluence of the Red River and the Assiniboine River. The Red River is some 250 yards wide as it passes through the city. It rises in Minnesota, U.S.A. and flows on to the Hudson Bay via the Nelson River. In the winter the rivers freeze solid and ice-cutting machines provide the city with ice during the summer months.

The winter freeze-up lasts from mid-November till early April. Several inches of frozen snow cover the roads and all wheeled traffic is replaced or converted into sleighs. Somehow the tramlines are kept virtually free. Once of the beaten tracks, snowshoes are essential, to avoid being engulfed in snowdrifts. Fortunately we arrived at the end of the freeze-up. The roads were rivers of slush and the rivers beginning again to be navigable.

My cousin Ronald was at the depot (the station) to meet us. Very glad we were to see him, though we must have presented very unkempt appearances. He took us along to his house, which he shared with four or five other young men, and employed a housekeeper. Hot baths and changes of clothes soon made us more presentable. That evening we held a ‘conference’ to decide our immediate future. Havelock had already decided to push on further West to join his brother Guy in the ‘Mounties’, and the next day moved on to Regina. Ronald, being already established doing accountancy for several small firms, showed little interest in taking up my ‘horse and buggy’ proposal seriously. As events proved, this was wise. One of his housemates had a connection with the Canadian Fire Insce. Co. and it seemed obvious, with my experience in the insurance world in London, to apply for a job there. An interview was arranged with the Managing Director – Conrad Riley – and what an unconventional interview it was! He was naturally interested in my previous insurance experience, then he suddenly surprised me by asking ‘Tell me’, can you converse with the deaf? I had used the sign language in getting flexibility in my fingers and was reasonably fluent. I took a chance ad said ‘oh, yes’. He may have accepted my assurance but called in the Chief Accountant, who was stone deaf. I was told to ask him whether he was still looking for an assistant. My fingers flashed the question, to which the accountant (I forget his name) smiled his approval and grunted ‘no’. A most unconventional interview, but I got the job to start immediately with, to me, the incredible salary of $100 per month. I later learned that Con Riley had stroked a Canadian Eight to victory at Henley some years previously. I was to meet him again in France during World War I.

I soon found ‘digs’ at $30 per month for board and lodging. It was in a three-storied building in Kennedy Street, opposite the Law Courts. There were about eight of us living there, with a buxom, but motherly, landlady. I was certainly the youngest, but soon made friends. With a net of $70 a month for myself, I felt quite affluent and soon saved up enough to buy myself a Cello for $115 and arranged to have lessons. I was determined to master it and devoted at least two hours a day practising. Fortunately my room was on the top floor and there were no complaints at the horrible noises the early days produced. As the lessons were eating into my income, I decided to advertise to provide magical shows for children’s parties and Masonic functions. Apparently I was the only ‘magician’ in Winnipeg, and engagements came in slowly but steadily. Eventually I was booked to entertain the Officers’ Mess of the Lord Strathcoma Horse. The press reported favourably and my clientele expanded.

With complete freedom from petty restraints, I was free to think and act on my own, but it brought responsibility as well.

The Canadian Fire Insurance Company was located right in the centre of the city and occupied two floors of a modern building next to the Grain Exchange – always a hive of industry. I soon settled down in my new job and became the ‘interpreter’ for my boss. We mutually arranged a sort of deaf and dumb shorthand so that we could converse as readily as normal folk. On one occasion the boss was called as a witness in a traffic offence. As the intermediary between counsel and witness, I received $5 and the morning off.

I well remember the day when two strangers walked into the office and asked to speak to me. My first reaction was whether they were plain clothed policemen, but my conscience was clear of any criminal activities. I had no need to worry. In fact they were talent spotters for the Winnipeg players. References in the press had led them to me. I was very English and the right age to play Philip Clandon in Shaw’s ‘You never can tell’. ‘How would you like to attend an audition for our next production?’ they enquired. I told them I had no stage experience apart from school dramatics. ‘We don’t want you to act. Just be yourself’ I was told. What an audition involved, I had no idea. But I turned up with five others and was told I had got the part.

After a weeks run at the Winnipeg Repository Theatre, the city of Winnipeg decided to sponsor the company in the National Drama Festival for the Earl Grey Trophy at the Russell Theatre, Montreal. At this festival, six cities in Canada could each send in one company. After playing one-night stands en route, we were fluent and confident. We reached the finals and won the trophy, which drew an invitation to a reception at Government House. The next day two shining limousines arrived at our hotel. The Governor-General, H.R.H. The Duke of Connaught with the Duchess and their daughter Princess Patricia received us most charmingly and we chatted informally over cocktails etc. To me, Princess Patricia then about my age, was a most beautiful lady. She smiled as we shook hands – I was captivated and almost wished she was not a Princess. In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns. How true! But I got over it quite soon and my heart returned to my real love in England.

On returning to Winnipeg, the papers gave us a full page with photographs and my boss did not regret the two weeks’ leave he had reluctantly given me.

A notable event for me was the meeting with an Austrian magician – The Great Malini. He was billed to appear at the Alexandria Hotel for one night, but the tickets cost $10 each. Malini had a reputation for holding an audience spell-bound without using any apparatus, save what he could borrow from the audience. I call him the great deliverer, for as I learned later he had never been in Austria and was in fact an American from Ohio. He spoke in broken English, with a European accent, and earned a good living by deceiving the public with his performances with a pack of cards. His act appealed to me as ideal magic, the kind I hoped to acquire. So, without hesitation, I brought a front row ticket. Some two hundred of Winnipeg’s Smart Set packed the lounge, when Malini appeared on the dais. His performance was remarkable for its audacity and subtle misdirection. It was impossible, even for me, to detect any sleight of hand. His dexterity was that of a master. After the performance he retired with his manager to their suite in the hotel. With colossal nerve and not much hope, I took a sheet of the hotel writing paper and wrote a short note, as one magician to another, (I was 18 and he about 50), asking whether he would meet me. This I sent up by a waiter. In a few minutes he returned and asked me to follow him. Malini must have been surprised that his guest was so young, but after expressing my admiration of his performance he realised that I was genuinely interested in magic, and asked me to demonstrate, with a pack of cards, a few of the standard sleights. From which he saw I had mastered the rudiments. Although offering no explanation as to his methods (I hardly expected he would), he gave me a brilliant exposition on the use of magic, claiming it represented 95% of the modus operandi. This I can now endorse from my own experience. The 5% dexterity is purely technique. This one can acquire and then forget when performing. I had spent a most illuminating hour, from which I profited a great deal and hoped that my thanks for his encouragement was adequate.

Summer in the Middle West can be a glorious experience or a nightmare from mosquitos. The tramway to the South extended a half-mile or so beyond the semi built-up area to a bend in the Red River and the Baseball field. It was here, at the weekends that a mixed party often went for canoeing, camping and swimming and very good times we had.

I remember also an evening on an old rear-paddled steamer, which made trips to Lake Winnipeg, some thirty miles to the North, returning about midnight. We danced on deck the two-step and other popular dances of the day, when Alexander’s Ragtime Band, was the rage.

The Red River was not the only place where one could swim. In addition to the Public Baths, Winnipeg possessed a fine Y.M.C.A. with a well-equipped swimming pool. There was just time during our lunch break to slip along, have a quick swim, a sandwich and back to the office. With the temperature in the 80’s, two or three of us would often spend our lunch hour at the Y.M. pool. It was there I learned I was a better diver than swimmer. The high board held no terrors and I enjoyed jack-knifing of the springboard.

Like many teenagers I found my life almost to full. Fortunately during the summer time there were only occasional magical engagements and so I was able to keep up cello practice.

I did not forsake my childhood attachment to the Church and was warmly welcomed at All Saints Church – a large wooden building, with later brick built hall and committee rooms. It was only half a mile from my digs along Broadway. I was invited to join the choir, but its standard did not attract me. Instead I formed a boys’ club, which grew to some thirty youngsters between 11 and 16 years. I interested two other ‘leaders’ and we were able to run classes in First Aid, woodcarving, Drama and swimming with plenty of games and outdoor activities.

By late 1913 I had been studying for three years and was introduced to an amateur trio of piano, violin and viola, who were looking for a cellist to form a quartet. We specialised in Chamber music in preference to the more popular light music and soon built up a small repertoire. We gave a few performances in church halls, but principally for our own edification. Later we were absorbed into the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, an amateur body of about forty players. This meant we had to extend very much our limited repertoire. I was one (the junior one) of three cellists but much enjoyed the short time I was able to play with them.

The war clouds were beginning to over-shadow Europe, though in Canada they meant very little to the average man in the street. Two years previously I had joined the Militia, similar to the Territorials in England. Winnipeg had three battalions – 90th Winnipeg Rifles, 100th Winnipeg Grenadiers and a Canadian Scottish Battalion. I enlisted in the Grenadiers, probably because I had two friends in it and their ceremonial uniform – scarlet tunic with gold facings and bearskin busby – had an obvious appeal. Our drill hall was equipped with a .22 rifle range and there we learned our basic training. The annual camp lasted two weeks and was held some thirty miles west of Winnipeg. All three battalions, forming a brigade marched there in two and a half days, bivouacking two nights en route.

The camp had a fine shooting range up to 1000 yards and there we spent much of our time. My tent was adjacent to the open-air officers’ mess kitchens. I envied them their roast beef and baked potatoes by comparison to the mess tin of stew dished out to the other ranks. At times it was pretty rough going, but we returned to Winnipeg all the fitter and had acquired the soldiers prerogative to grouse.

Returning from the 1913 camp, I arrived back to find my seat at the office already occupied and a message to report to the Managing Director. He greeted me more warmly than I had expected and immediately allayed any hovering apprehensions I may have had. During the past month or so, he told me, a new company had been formed – The Canadian Hail Insurance Company Limited – and I was offered the appointment of accountant at double my previous salary. The company had offices in the same building and with virtually the same board. Loss or damage to crops by hail was a serious factor to the western farmer and could easily produce ruin. In Alberta the risk was particularly heavy and premiums were as high as 15% per acre. The company grew rapidly and by the end of the first year the results were highly satisfactory.

After over four years away from England I was yearning to see my family and loved one again and planned a month’s leave in which to decide my future, for as yet I was not formally engaged. Accordingly, by the end of July I had got my month’s leave and booked my passage from Montreal.
August 4th arrived! England was at War! The Canadian Government had, of course, been fully in touch with impending events, but to the civilian it had been all so far away and scarcely influenced his thinking. But the staggering news that filled the papers the next day completely changed our lives, as we learned Canada, having pledged her full support to the Motherland, was also at war and that a fighting force was to be formed and sent overseas. The only regular troops in Canada at the outbreak of the war were The Lord Strathcona Horse, who were maintained for ceremonial service to the Governor-General. The militia were not committed to service overseas.

On August 5th recruiting depots were opened up from coast to coast and the response was immediate. Despite my plan to sail for England the following week, I joined the queue that formed outside our drill hall and soon found myself before the recruiting officer. He was only able to swear in those prepared to join the new army immediately. This I was not prepared to do and asked if I could enlist when the Canadians arrived in England.’ The war may be over before then’, he told me, and said I must take my chances if I wanted to serve with the Canadians. Naturally I was disappointed but I had at least ‘done my duty’.

The next few days were busy deciding what to take and what, of necessity, had to be left behind. Certainly I would take my cello whatever else had to be abandoned, to the advantage of my landlady. One large suitcase was all I could manage with my precious cello.

Arriving at Montreal, I visited the C.P.R. offices, only to be told that all passenger sailings to England had been cancelled, I was given back my passage money, regretfully and with apologies. What now I thought? I went into an adjoining hotel, bought a drink and settled down in the lounge to figure out my position. Here was I, a thousand miles from Winnipeg and with little prospect of crossing the Atlantic. After checking in my cello and luggage at the hotel, I made my way down to the docks. There was plenty of shipping lying idle and plenty of frustrated passengers milling around, but no one seemed to know anything. Every office at which I made enquiry produced a ‘nothing doing’ result.

It was later that evening when the authorities (whoever they were) gave permission for only my ship to sail, under secret orders. This was the SS Canada of 8000 tons, a small one-class boat. Within a short time word had passed round and every berth was booked, but my name was on the passenger list. For security reasons no date or time of sailing was announced and we were allowed to embark when we liked. I dashed back to the hotel, recovered my cello and baggage and slept in my own cabin.

Two nights passed before we slipped away from our dock, in darkness, and moved down the St. Lawrence towards the Atlantic. No lights, not even navigation lights gave away our position. Smoking on deck after twilight was forbidden when all portholes were effectively covered up. There was a four-piece band on board and word having been passed that someone had a cello in his cabin, the leader invited me to attend a morning rehearsal session. Apparently they decided I was good enough for the light programmes in their repertoire. From then onwards I messed with the band and so was able to play with them during lunch and a longer evening session.

We did not reach Liverpool until fifteen days after leaving Canada. What a route we had followed and where we had been, only the senior officers knew. I must mention that before disembarking, the Purser sent me a message that he wanted to see me. He not only offered me the Captain’s thanks, but also returned my passage money. I had worked my way across without knowing it.

At Liverpool I wired my parents, and there they were, on the platform at Euston when I arrived. Soon I was at home again in the old familiar surroundings, but with all the family four years older. My youngest brother, Keith, who could just reach the tabletop when I left, now took some time to accept me as a brother.

The following evening we became engaged and my four years of courting by post were over. The ‘Yes’ I received to my proposal was spontaneous and, for me, a forgone conclusion. With the nation at war, we decided to defer marriage till peace was declared. That it should be five years was inconceivable. Many believed that the war would be over by Christmas.

On enquiry at the Canadian high commissioners office, they knew nothing of the Canadian troop movements and it was not until the middle of October that the papers announced the arrival of 33,000 Canadians at Plymouth. The great fleet that had brought them across the Atlantic had been escorted by four cruisers and a number of destroyers and came through without a casualty.

It was during this waiting period that I joined the Magic Circle. No special qualifications were required, merely an interest in Magic and the payment of the annual subscription. Higher degrees, AIMC and MIMC required passing a judging panel at a public performance. The headquarters of the Magic Circle were in a hotel in Fleet Street and included a fine library of works on magic, open every Monday evening. There was a ready exchange of ideas between members and I found Monday evenings well worth while.

Chapter 5

I GO TO WAR

A couple of weeks passed since the Canadian Division had arrived in England and I was no nearer joining them. I, therefore, paid another visit to the High Commissioner’s office. This time they were more helpful. I was told that the Canadians were on Salisbury Plain, but they had no record of the 100th Winnipeg Grenadiers or even if they had ever arrived. There was only one thing for it – to go down Salisbury Plain and find out for myself. I went home a bit disconsolate, but the next day took a train from Waterloo to Amesbury, which looked the most likely station from which to start my search. It was, for there I found many soldiers with CANADA conspicuous on their shoulders and their hats adorned with the Maple Leaf badge.

I made for the Town Major’s office and told my story. They were able to advise that the 100th Winnipeg Grenadiers, a such no longer existed, but were now the 11th Canadian Infantry Battalion of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Canadian Division and were encamped at Pond Farm South on the far side of the Plain – miles from Amesbury. The Town Major did not offer to help me with transport and, as a civilian, without identity papers, thumbing a lift on military transport wasn’t easy, but I eventually reached Pond Farm South. It had taken me the best part of three hours, mostly on foot. The sentry at the entrance to the camp was an awkward cuss or over zealous in exercising his authority. As a civilian without a ‘pass’ into the camp the NCO in charge of the guard asked me a few pertinent questions, which soon established my bona fides. He sent one of his men to take me to the tent of Capt. Sewell, my previous company commander in Winnipeg. We shook hands warmly, for he had known me as a customer in his music shop on Portage Avenue. “Welcome, Green” he said, “So you have found us at last”. He phoned the Adjutant and got his O.K. and in two minutes I had taken the oath and was committed to whatever lay ahead. Capt. Sewell wrote a chit to the Quartermaster to issue me with full equipment and told me to report back.

I was fully an hour at the Q.M. Stores, being issued with everything from underwear to shaving kit, from army boots to toothbrush. Besides two shirts, uniform, greatcoat, blanket and groundsheet, kit bag, complete web equipment, entrenching tool and handle, water bottle and mess tin &c, I also drew my Ross Rifle and bayonet, all of which I had to sign for.

I left the Q.M. Stores looking something like a soldier, but felling horribly uncomfortable as I reported back to Capt. Sewell. This time I saluted as I entered the tent. He posted me to one of the four platoons in his company and instructed the platoon sergeant to find me sleeping quarters. I joined five others in a bell tent to hold eight and soon found some of my old acquaintances. I am an adaptable animal and the transformation to real army life went smoothly.

In five weeks from the outbreak of war, Canada had enlisted some 50,000 men and fully equipped 33,000. Canada’s greatest achievement was the building of Valcartier Camp, Quebec, with every service laid on. Not only were 5,000 tents erected, but railway lines were constructed and a complete telephone network installed. Provision for the stabling of a thousand horses and mules was made and the comfort of the men catered for with a hundred showers. By mid-September all was ready for the arrival of the first contingent of 33,000 me from all parts of Canada. They were able to keep their identities as battalions, but every four formed a separate brigade.

This was an unparalleled effort, unmatched by ay other country. In addition to these sixteen battalions, there was one other – Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, which was allowed to retain its famous name.

Four months the Canadians spent on the plains – four of the wettest winters recorded, churning the ground into a quagmire – maybe a foretaste of what was to come. Despite the generous fitness of the troops, a bout of spinal meningitis invaded the camps and a hundred or so men died. It seemed so needless.

The appalling weather was not allowed to interfere with the rigorous training sessions. We just had to stick it. Whether digging trenches, firing at the butts, field exercises or merely route marching, the weather was our chief and constant enemy. This miserable climate we cursed and exploded with no shortage of English and Canadian invectives. My vocabulary increased considerably!

All infantry battalions were required to form a section of twelve scouts. I volunteered to undergo the training. The sergeant in charge of our section was keen on map making and map reading. This I found much more congenial then trench digging. The chief function of scouts, we were told, was to patrol in advance and on the flanks of a company or battalion on the march, presumable to avoid surprise. In France we were never used this way, because of the continuous trench line. The section was accordingly disbanded.

How much longer was it to be before we were moved off the plains? Rumour was rife as it was announced that my battalion and four others were destined to remain in England to form a reinforcing brigade. Some, however, were needed to bring the battalions, booked for over seas, up to full strength. Forty volunteers were called for from my battalion and I was amongst those who stepped forward one pace. We were marched off for yet another medical inspection and injection against typhoid. We were ordered to strip naked and lined up before the M.O. He did his job very thoroughly. My turn came. ‘O.K’ said the M.O. He had passed me A.I and therefore fit for the slaughter.

We collected our kit, bade farewell to our pals and marched the few miles to Tidworth barracks, the temporary home of the 8th battalion. They were the 90th Winnipeg Rifles. We could t have had a more satisfactory transfer, for they had already one battle honours against rebel Indians and had served in the Boer war. Thereafter I was 22198, Pte. B J Green, ‘B’ Company, 8th Can. Inf. Batt., 2nd Brigade, 1st Canadian Division, on whose strength I served until my discharge in 1919. Another kit inspection and our cap badges were exchanged for the distinctive Little Black Devil badge baring the words ‘Hosti Acie Nominani’, which maybe roughly translated ‘named by the enemy on the field of battle’. Shortly after, we were inspected by our new C.O.– Lt. Col. L.J. Bipsett, who later as Major-General commanded the 3rd Canadian division ad was killed just before the Armistice. He gave us a pep talk, a short history of the battalion and welcomed us to his command. Never have I met a finer officer and a gentleman. The change from wet and draughty tents to having a roof over our heads made a great improvement in our living conditions. At least we were able to dry clothes around the heating stoves and attendance at medical parades was much reduced. In mid-January we again moved, this time to huts at Larkhill. It was here that on Feb 4th the whole overseas contingent was inspected and marched passed H.M. King George V, Field-Marshall Lord Kitchener and their staff. The day was notable, for it did not rain for two whole days.

It must be remembered that the Canadian contingent was made up, almost exclusively, of peace-time militia and untrained civilians from every walk of life – officer and ranker alike. On arrival of the Canadians at Plymouth, they were placed under the command of a distinguished regular British Officer – Lieut-general Edwin A. Alderson, C B. He had been first commissioned to the Royal West Kents in 1878. General Alderson was a soldier of great experience and above all a genius for the leadership of men. Every officer and man under his command respected and trusted him.

The day after the inspection by the king, we were told that, apart from necessary fatigues the day would be free until 2100 hours (9pm) The battalion would then parade in full marching order. I spent the day writing home and a long letter to my fiancée, for I knew, as we all did, that for us this was the end of Salisbury Plain, though, for security reasons, we were prevented from saying so. I had five days leave in January, when I took home the civilian clothes in which I had arrived.

In the darkness and the silence the Division marched off the Plain, through darkened Amesbury to the station sidings. The Division comprised three infantry brigades, three artillery brigades, ammunition column, divisional engineers, divisional mounted troops, ambulances and supply train.

Many trains, all with blinds drawn and only 15 watt lamp per compartment, filled the sidings. My battalion was allotted two trains to carry 1,000 men, Officers’ chargers and all our horse transport. The men were squashed in, eight to a compartment, which with our bulky kits was pretty cramped. It was long past midnight before my train moved slowly away to where we knew not. Day eventually broke, out went the lights, up went the blinds and train came to a halt. Out we clambered. Oh! What a relief. Dixie’s of hot tea, bully beef and bread arrived from the cooks’ wagon and that was breakfast. An hour later ‘all aboard’ was passed down the line. Refreshed, we climbed back and settled down to a smoke and conjecture as to where we might be making for. Some voted for Southampton, some for Folkestone, but when we reached our destination, it was at the docks at Avonmouth on the Bristol Channel.

The next day was spent embarking horses and troops to make room on the docks for more train loads. The ship assigned to the 8th battalion was a cattle-boat. The lower two decks accommodated our horses and mules in straw lined stalls. The grooms slept with them in the passages in between. How I pitied them! We staked our claim by dumping our kit on whatever deck space we could find, the more sheltered the better, and stuck to it.

Once at sea, a message from the king was read out to all ranks, bidding us ‘Godspeed on your way to assist my army in the field’. The ship rolled horribly once out in the open. The stink below decks was appalling, so many horses and men being overcome by seasickness.

On Feb 8th we sailed into St. Nazaire, at the mouth of the Loire. Each ship sailed independently without escort and it was five days later before the last transport arrived. Food on board was more then enough for those who could stomach it, we lined up with our mess tins at the entrance to the galley and received of ‘stew’ and a piece of army bread.

Disembarkation complete, we marched to a park, which had been emptied for our reception. We created quite a stir amongst the civilians, who lined the route cheering and waving, while small boys begged for ‘souvenir’. When formed up in the park, we were issued with most unmilitary garments – waist-length fur coats of many colours. They were large enough to go over our equipment, with our packs outside. We must have looked like so many Robinson Crusoes. We felt real snug inside them and to blazes with out appearance. Here also we received our first issued of ‘Iron Rations’ – a tin of bully beef, two hard tack biscuits and a bag of mixed tea and sugar. I pity anyone with dentures tackling hard tack without a chisel and mallet.

The station at St. Nazaire was a large covered building. A troop train, made up of cattle trucks to hold forty men in each, was drawn up at each platform.

After a slow journey by rail of 350 miles, which took two nights and a day, we arrived at dawn at the wayside station off Strazele, lying about twelve miles west of Ploegsteert – known to every soldier as Plug Street. We were billeted in the surrounding farms, the company officers in the farmhouse and the men on thick straw in the barns, accessible by ladder. Luxury at last, despite the rats! We slept through to midday and did an eight- mile route march in the afternoon. Here we were near enough to hear the muffled guns and at night see the flare from verey lights along the front.
After one day at Strazeele, we marched eastwards towards the battle zone. Passing through Bailleul, of which we shall hear a lot more, we marched past the Commander-in-Chief, Field Marshall, Sir John French, who was stationed with his staff in the Grande Place.

On down the rue de Lille for some five miles till we reached a largish chateau with plenty of outbuildings. It had been heavily shelled, but enough was left to billet the officers, while we spread out in the outbuildings.

The following evening, we were met on the outskirts of Plug Street wood, by guides from a battalion of the Rifle Brigade, who were holding that part of the front. A guide led my company, by well-worn tracks through the wood to a communication trench, which led to the front line. Shellfire had destroyed most of the trees and the ground in front was clear.

As untried troops we spent twenty-four hours with the Rifle Brigade, to which, incidentally the 90th Winnipeg Rifles were affiliated, to get some experience of what life in the trenches was like. It was a quiet night, except for the usual artillery strafe at dawn. Here I saw my first dead Germans. Through a periscope I counted three near our wire.

The front held by the British at this period of the war covered no more than thirty miles, from Ypres in the North to Givenchy in the South. After our brief spell at ‘Plug Street’, the Canadians marched south and set up Divisional H.Q. at Estaires, with the troops billeted in the surrounding villages. In Estaires was a jute factory, which the army had taken over and converted into Divisional baths and de-lousing station. It consisted of large wooden vats, each to accommodate four men at a time, with a copious supply of hot water. How it was changed, I never enquired. After a month without our clothes off, to soak in two feet of hot water, after a good lathering, was Elysium indeed. One’s sense of refinement disappeared as the inevitable lice invaded the seams of our clothing – their favourite nesting place. One of our special off-duty pursuits was to run a lighted cigarette along the seams of our shirt and watch the eggs squirm in their death throes. The hatched ones were crushed between our two thumbnails. Lice are prolific breeders and the only effective way of completely destroying them was to put all clothing through the de-lousing plant. 200ºF did the trick while we were bathing, but there was no guarantee that we got our own clothes back. We just sorted them out the best we could.

On Easter Day, the then Bishop of London visited the Canadians and took a service in the square at Estaires – his pulpit being a G.S. wagon.

The line the Canadians took over commanded the northern end of the Aubers Ridge, behind which lay Lille. The battle of Neuve Chapelle in March was fought out on our right flank. Had it succeeded, the Canadians would have attacked in an attempt to capture the whole of the Aubers Ridge. Only our artillery were used, though the infantry suffered a number of casualties from the heavy gun-fire during the two days’ battle. Many battles to conquer the Ridge were fought, but none succeeded.
As we were now taking over trenches on our own, the divisional commander – General Alderson addressed the troops. The following are extracts from his speech, as recorded by the official historian – Sir Max Aitken.

“All ranks of the Canadian Division; we are about to occupy and maintain a line of trenches. I have some things to say to you at this moment, which is well that you should consider. You are taking over good and, on the whole, dry trenches. I have visited some myself. They are intact and the parapets are good. Let me warn you first that we have already had a number of casualties, while you have been attached to other divisions. Some of these casualties were unavoidable, and that is war. But I suspect that some - at least a few – could have been avoided. I have heard of cases in which men have exposed themselves with no military object, and perhaps only to gratify curiosity. We cannot lose good men like this. We shall want them all when we advance and we shall want them all if the Germans advance. Do not expose your heads and do not look round corners, unless for a purpose necessary at the moment you do it. It will not often be necessary. You are provided with means of observing the enemy without exposing your heads. Young and brave men enjoy taking risks. But a soldier who takes unnecessary risks through levity, is not paying the game. The man who does so is stupid, for whatever be the practice of the German army, the individual shots they imply as snipers shoot straight and they are always watching. If you put your head over the parapet without orders, they will hit that head.

There is another thing. Troops new to the trenches always shoot at nothing the first night, you will not do it. It wastes ammunition and hurts no one. The enemy says; ‘These are new nervous troops’. You will be shelled in the trenches. When you are shelled sit low and sit tight. This is easy advice, for there is nothing else to do. If you get out you will only get it worse. And if you go out the Germans will go in. And if the Germans go in, we shall counter-attack and put them out; and that will cost us hundreds of men, instead off the few whom shells may injure. The Germans do not like the bayonet, nor do they support bayonet attacks. If they get up to you, or if you get up to them, go right in with the bayonet, you have the physique to drive it home. That you will do it I am sure, and I do not envy the Germans if you get in among them with the bayonet.

There is one thing more. My old regiment, The Royal West Kents, has been here since the beginning of the war, and it has never lost a trench. The army says,’ The West Kents never budge’. I am proud of the great record of my old regiment. And I think it a good omen. I now belong to you and you belong to me; and before long the army will say ‘The Canadians never budge”.

With these encouraging words, the battalion moved forward to its allotted trenches. The ground being flat and with no communication trenches, one could only enter or leave under cover of darkness. It was a quiet and moonless night when we met our guide. The ground from then on was broken up with shell holes and unless one new the best route, one could easily get lost. We formed single file and never let the man in front out of sight.

Both sides used verey lights – a kind of rocket fired from a special pistol. They hung in the air for 10-15 seconds, spreading an intense white light. If caught in the open, the safest way to avoid being seen was to freeze and remain motionless. One would then blend with the background, whereas the movement of lying down would attract attention.

Two verey lights were fired while we where out in the open, but not a shot was fired, Work in the trenches no longer involved the heartbreaking strain which was imposed upon all in the dark and anxious days of the autumn of 1914, when a thin line of khaki held, often wholly unsupported by reserves, so immense a line against superior forces. Once the line was stabilised, trench work, in relation to the period of exposure, was well within the powers of resolute troops. Three or four days in the front line, alternating with a similar period in support was the norm, provided nothing more than reconnaissance patrols and raiding parties were involved. Every night brought its share of fatigues - trench repairing, wiring parties, ration and ammunition supplies to be brought up and listening posts to be manned. One thing we were spared was polishing buttons etc. the duller and more tarnished they got, the better. Protected by trenches we were safe from shellfire, except from the direct hit, which could account for half a dozen casualties.

The division was fortunate in being broken in on a relatively quiet sector.

It was not until the middle of April that the Canadians were moved to the extreme north of the British front, Relieving French troops at Langemarck in the Ypres salient. On the way up we bivouacked in the fields which sloped up to Mont Des Cats, some twelve miles behind the line. A hundred or more London Motor Buses were lined up in the road that runs from Cassel to Ypres. They looked a strange sight, with all there windows boarded up. The French civilians were most intrigued, not having seen a London bus before, these took us the ten miles to Vlamertinge, a mile or so behind Ypres. The rest of the way we marched. Ypres had not been seriously battered and many inhabitants still remained. Some shops and cafes were still doing business.

The position we took over was at the farthest point on the perimeter around Ypres, and consisted of little more then a series of sandbagged breastworks, built above ground, with no protection in the rear. No attempt had been made to dig trenches, possibly because of the number of little streams that flowed through the area. At two feet down we struck water in many places. There were no dugouts and casualties were much higher then we had experienced in the trenches we had left. Fortunately we only spent a week here. We left it in a far better condition than we found it. Having handed over to fresh French colonial troops, we moved about a mile along the perimeter of the salient to the right of our 3rd brigade, which joined up with the French colonials. One suspected that a German attack was imminent as there bombardment was now continuous day and night.

Chapter 6

THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES

It would be presumptuous for me to attempt to describe the Second Battle of Ypres, or any other battle in which I took part. Others, with access to battalion diaries and documents, have produced many, many books covering every phase of the war. In any event a private soldier knows little of what is going on during a battle, apart from his platoon and its immediate surroundings. I can only record, therefore, the very limited impressions my mind retains after sixty-six years. [altered to 68], however, the letter I wrote to my parents during a lull in the fighting is still in existence, though the pencilled words now are barely discernable. My father made a copy from which these extracts are taken;

“ I know how anxious you must have been during the past week or so, with the news of the fighting in the papers, yet I could not even get a card away to set your mind at rest. However, those two weeks are over, and we have fallen back a mile or so, where things are quieter for us. My battalion has lost about 800 men out of the 1,000 that took part, but thank God I am not one of them. How we ever got through some of that fire without a scratch is a miracle. Some of these moments come back as a fearful nightmare. I cannot remember dates, or separate night from day, but it was about ten o’clock on Saturday morning, after we had been standing at the parapet all night through, when suddenly the German line opposite us was obscured behind a thick bank of yellow fumes, which came rolling slowly towards us. As it reached our trenches it poured over and filled up, turning every metal part of our equipment and rifles green. We had no protection, except by urinating on our handkerchief and tying it over the lower part of our faces. Those who didn’t collapsed, choking and groaning and several died within a few minutes.

As soon as the gas dispersed, the Germans came out and those of us capable opened up rapid fire. Some got as far as our wire but no further. All that day we held the line and never gave up. They attacked again and again all through that night, but they never entered our trenches. Had they done so, the bayonet was waiting for them. For a brief few hours we were relieved by a British battalion, and retired a few hundred yards. Having had no sleep and only iron rations for several days, we were ready to drop and many did. It was while making our way out, we were cut off by terrific machine gun fire. It was daylight and we lay down in a turnip field till the afternoon, when the Germans broke through and a general retirement was ordered – that is when they got us – the shelling was terrific; officers and men dropped everywhere. Our Colonel rallied together as many as could stand – a mere handful, perhaps a hundred – and we turned back and went for the Germans again. Well we held them and they got no further. The colonel this morning read us congratulations from the King, Lord Kitchener and General French.

It is impossible to write a connected account of what was taking place over the battle area. I just don’t know, but the papers will tell you what they are allowed to print. I am safe and that is all you will want to know.

When we were lying in the turnip field I kept my overcoat and pack for a while, but before long it was riddled with bullets, so I slithered out of them and moved away a few yards. I had no time to take anything out of my pack, so all was lost……..”

As far as my battalion was concerned, the battle lasted from April 22nd to May 6th by which time it was no longer a fighting force and was withdrawn to divisional reserve, where we waited for 80% reinforcements to arrive from England. We enjoyed five weeks of comparative peace, with only the occasional route march to keep us fit.

During the past few years I have, from time to time, contributed articles on my experiences for publication in our local church magazine and reproduce one here, which recalls an incident during the battle of Ypres;

HOSTI ACIE NOMINATI

“These words appear on the cap badge of the 90th Winnipeg rifles. This motto – ‘Named by the enemy on the field of battle’ was adopted by the regiment after its engagement with rebel Indians under Herve Riel, in the north-western territory of Canada.

It seems strange, therefore, that one of his descendants should serve with the regiment known as ‘The Little Black Devils’ during the First World War. I well recall him now with his plaited black hair, dark skin and high cheek-bones. As he did not react kindly to army discipline, they made him a sniper and let him stalk on his own, at which he was uncannily successful, until he was picked off by a German sniper.

It was the end of April 1915, when the remnant of the original 1,000 – barely200 – found themselves bivouacked in hideouts on the banks of the Yser canal. This much fought over waterway gave the Flemish city of Ypres an outlet to the coast at Nieuport, some twenty-five miles away. The worn-out survivors rested till the morrow should take them back to the demolished trenches they had recently occupied.

A few hundred yards across the canal rose the stark ruins of the Cloth Hall in the centre of this city of the dead, into which great shells were constantly thundering. The Second Battle of Ypres was drawing to its close. The Salient, though much reduced had held and the Channel Port saved. As night fell men moved about more freely. A fatigue party was employed burying, where they lay, the bloated corpses of fallen horses. Fifty yards away a young padre, with some help, was busy piling empty ammunition boxes to form a rough Alter. This he covered with a clean but crumpled cloth and placed on it a small cross, a miniature chalice and paten. Over his uniform he placed a priest’s stole. In a semi-circle around this crude table, there gathered some forty men, their Colonel amongst them. A silence fell upon this shell-torn spot as, in the darkness a simple Eucharist of both thanksgiving and memorial was offered and received – a communion of the living with the fallen and a memorial of the Greater Sacrifice. The Padre conducted the service from memory, each man alone with his thoughts until the ‘Peace which passeth all understanding’ lit the darkness with a reality one had not previously experienced.

As a menacing epilogue, one’s ears were alerted to the long drawn-out whine of a heavy howitzer shell as it rose to descend with a rushing crescendo, to find its target in the city beyond the canal. And we again became Little Black Devils.

I still have a tarnished cap bade. It bears the words ‘HOSTI ACACIE NOMINATI’.

These disjointed reminiscences cover the battle, as I remember it. No reference has been made to the overall movements and fortunes of the fifty odd battalions, Canadian and British, which were involved.

The High Command was faced with an almost overwhelming problem, when a huge gap developed in our defences. It might not be a miss if I endeavoured to include a brief outline of how this occurred. I have mentioned in the previous chapter that we were relieved by French colonial troops – mostly Turcos and Zouaves. On April 22nd they received the first attack, in concentrated measure of poison gas. It was more than human beings could stand and they left their trenches and left in panic to the rear. Through Ypres and as far as Vlamertinghe, leaving hundreds of dead and an undefended gap of four miles, into which the Germans poured. This meant that the Canadian left flank, held by the 3rd brigade was ‘in the air’. It was essential to swing back this brigade at right angles to the original front and pivoted on their junction with the 2nd brigade. My battalion, the 8th was holding this pivotal point. After the fiercest fighting the lines was alternately restored though the salient was reduced to half its original size.

The accompanying map illustrates the position better than mere words.

I cannot leave the battle of Ypres without mentioning how Company Sergt. ‘Major F.W. Hall won a posthumous V.C On the night of April 22nd the 8th Battalion took over a line of trenches from our 15th battalion. Close in rear of this position ran a high bank fully exposed to the fire of the enemy; and while crossing this bank to occupy a trench, several men of my battalion were wounded. During the early morning of the 23rd C.S.M Hall brought in two of these wounded into the trench. A few hours later, at about 9am, groans of suffering grew attention to another wounded man in the high ground behind the position. A corporal went back for him, but was wounded. Private Rogerson next attempted the rescue. He too was also wounded. Then Serg’t Major Hall made a third attempt. He reached his objective, though under heavy fire from the German trenches in front. This was deliberate, aimed fire, delivered in broad daylight. He managed to get his helpless comrade on his back, but in raising himself a little to survey the ground over which he had to return to shelter, he was shot fairly through the head and instantly killed. The man for whom he had given his life, was also killed. He came from Winnipeg and joined the 8th battalion as a private in August 1914. This was the 2nd V.C won by the Canadians during the battle.

When we finally left the Salient to be reinforced, we occupied billets in the rear. But had to pass through Ypres, now barely recognisable. Not a building but had been blown to bits. The famous Cloth Hall was but a shell, and the Grande Place pitted with shell holes. A passage for traffic had been maintained by filling shell holes with rubble from demolished buildings. I heard that fifteen children had been killed on the first day of the bombardment. They were playing innocently in the Square when death swept down on them. This tragic incident precipitated the evacuation of all civilians, who fled with only what they could carry of their possessions.

Nothing can adequately describe the chaotic condition of the ancient city. Troops rarely passed through without casualties and the Grande Place was littered with smashed-up wagons, gun carriages and ambulances, while their horses still lay where they fell.

History claims the battle as a major British success. Certainly the Channel Ports has been saved, but at what cost!

Chapter 7

THE BATTLES FOR THE AUBERS RIDGE

Had we completely broken the German lines at the battle of Neuve Chappelle, we should of gained the Aubers ridge which dominates Lille and La Bassée to the south. This would have completely altered the whole aspect of the war on the Western front, but it must be written off as a costly failure, due to lack of adequate artillery support and the late arrival of supporting troops.

The High Command did not abandon this objective – The Aubers ridge – and planned a series of battles, which lasted all through the summer of 1915. Culminating in the battle of Loos. In two of these battles – Festubert and Givenchy – the Canadian Division was involved.

During our period of rest following the Battle of Ypres, I was transferred to the Battalion Signallers, which had been virtually wiped out at Ypres. Although relieved of trench fatigues, the life of a signaller is largely one of doing a job on one’s own out in the open. Besides manning the telephones between battalion H.Q and the four companies, it also meant keeping these lines working and in particular the line to Brigade H.Q without which the brigade commander could not contact his forces. These were the days before radio and all communications were maintained over landlines trailing across the country and always liable to be severed by shellfire.

This chapter will deal principally with the life of a signaller for that was my life during the drawn out battles of Festubert and Givenchy. The distinction between a private soldier in his platoon and that of a battalion signaller on his own, is one of isolation. Surrounded by one’s comrades, one shares a sense of mutual dependence whereas a signaller, once he leaves the protection of a trench has only himself to rely on.

As soon as any line becomes ‘dead’, a signaller is detailed to find and make good the fault. His equipment is a pair of stripping pliers, a length of cable, a roll of insulating tape and a pocket telephone. A line from battalion to a company may be no more than a few hundred yards whereas back to brigade H.Q it could be up to half a mile in length.

Each battalion H.Q had detailed recent maps of the area, showing the alleged positions of all its telephone lines. They were usually useless and outdated by the constant movement of battle. New lines, therefore, had to be run out. Day or night made no difference. Communication was essential. If disrupted, the signaller abandoned his equipment and acted as a runner.

One such occasion during the fiercest part of the battle of Festubert, I particularly remember. Contact with B Company had been broken for the best part of an hour. Its trenches, only 200 yards from battalion H.Q were under terrific H.E (High Explosive) bombardment, with shrapnel covering the intervening space.

I was given a message to deliver to the O.C, B. Co and sent on my way. I confess now I have never been so fearful of ‘inevitable’ death as during that journey from shell hole to shell hole. How long it took me, I have no idea, but eventually I tumbled into the trench to find the O.C. – Capt. McMeans dead, also his 2 i/c and another officer. The remaining two officers were both seriously wounded as well as half the men of the company, the command of which had passed to C.S.M John Hay. He was awarded the D.C.M for his leadership and control of his men under the most desperate conditions. I got back to H.Q safely and reported the plight of B. Company. Two platoons of the reserve company were that night sent up to support what was left of B. Company.

The bodies of our dead officers were brought out when the battalion was relieved, and I was present when we buried Capt. McMeans beside an apple tree in the garden of his billet in Festubert. He was a fearless officer and had always set a brave example to his men. His signature appeared on many of the letters I wrote home.

It was during the battle of Festubert that all the Canadian mounted troops – The Lord Strathcona Horse, King Edward Horse and Royal Canadian Dragoons - for the first time – had to be used as infantry and they acquitted themselves well.

In June, the Canadian Division was finally withdrawn from the territory it had seized and moved to Givenchy, on the extreme south of the British front. This village was occupied by the Germans and was situated on a hill, giving the enemy almost unrestricted observation. To enter or leave our trenches by daylight, we had to negotiate the longest communication trench I had seen. We entered it at a foot of a hill, half a mile away. With its bends and twists it must have covered almost a mile.

It was in this communication trench that we passed my brother John’s battalion - the 21st London - on their way out, but I did not see him. It was not until two years’ later, when he was a flying officer in the R.F.C that we met for the only time during the war.

As a signaller at Givenchy, m duty was comparatively compared with Festubert, for the area was very well trenched and our cables, for the most part, lay along these trenches and only occasionally did we have to act as runners. The battle of Givenchy was hard fought and, although at one time we held the whole village, a small portion on the extreme right was counter-attacked and lost. One unique incident during the battle was the placing of two 18-pounder guns in our front trench. On the night before the attack the Canadian artillery moved up these two guns and got them into positions already cleared for them. The distance between the trenches was not more than seventy-five yards and the wheels of the guns had to be muffled with old motor tyres. They reached our support trenches in silence. Here the horses were unhitched and returned to their lines, while teams of men hauled the guns at least two hundred yards. At dawn we knocked down the parapets in front of the guns to uncover their field of fire.

Immediately they opened up, with at least 100 shells each and swept the ground clear of wire, demolishing the trenches and destroying a number of machine-gun posts. The infantry swarmed over with little opposition, the whole operation was a complete surprise and over so quickly. The guns were protected by one-quarter-inch armour plate, which was, nevertheless tattered and twisted like paper by the force of subsequent musketry and machine-gun fire and all the crews either killed or wounded. But by then the guns had done their job and the infantry reached their objectives. By the Aubers Ridge remained as yet unconquered.

Chapter 8

ON THE MESSINES’ FRONT

Towards the end of July we again moved north to an area south of Ypres, in the valley below Messines, which like Givenchy was perched on high ground. The Germans always seemed to command the best positions, In the valley, halfway between our lines flowed a little stream, four or five feet wide, the Douve. In shell holes, or behind fallen trees, our side of the stream, we established a number of listening posts – one in front of each company. Every night these where occupied by two men, each armed with two mills bombs. Communication with the trench was by a length of string, looped over the wrist. A series of ’tugs’ indicated all the information that was necessary – ‘Enemy party repairing their wire’, ‘German patrol active’, ‘You are about to be relieved’ etc. A junior N.C.O. was in charge of each listening post, but after posting his men, returned to the trench and looped his end of the string over his wrist and kept it in tension.

The first time on listening post was an eerie experience. The breaking of a twig or the scuttling of a rat could forebode anything. One had to suppress the temptation to use the string on our wrist. At least one had a companion, though silent, lying beside one, it was usually a better job than the numerous fatigues the company were nightly engaged on. It was a responsible job, for the safety of ones’ company against raiding parties or a general attack depended on the vigilance and quick action of its listening posts.

Our rest billets were in Rossignol Farm half a mile behind the front line and hidden from enemy observation behind a ridge, which also concealed one of our artillery batteries – not the most agreeable neighbour.

I well remember the day the when colonel sent for me and told me each unit had been instructed to write a history of the first year or the war, as it affected them and that he would like me to undertake the task for the 8th battalion. You could have knocked me down! I was told that I would access to the daily log of statistics, kept by the adjutant and authority to contact and question anybody in the battalion. I would, of course, be relieved of all company duties and sent back a mile or so, where I would be undisturbed. How I was selected I have no idea and didn’t enquire. The only evidence the colonel have had was a report from my company officers, who censored all outgoing mail. True I was one of the 5% still left of the original battalion, but that was no qualification. Certainly I was tired of warfare, who wasn’t? In fact I had begun to have serious misgivings as to the righteousness of what we were doing, but no indication was given in my letters. I probably felt somewhat ashamed, though the gain of a few hundred yards of shell-torn ground at the cost of a thousands young men killed or wounded, I found impossible to justify. In the heat of battle these thoughts never troubled me. My rifle was for killing and not only killing in self-defence. Afterwards, rolled up in my blanket, maybe on a bed of straw, the young Germans I had deliberately tried to kill disturbed my thoughts and I resolved that war was evil – I still do – but that there was no alternative, it had to be and I had to go along with it.

I found a billet near our transport lines. It was occupied by our Postal Corporal, who handled all the battalion mail. He was an ex-post office clerk and readily agreed to my joining him. There I enjoyed many amenities denied those in the trenches – even a field of ripe maize on our doorstep. It meant corn on the cob whenever we wanted it.

With my mind untroubled, I set to my task with zest. From my own experiences and all I learned from others, I completed ‘history’ of the Little Black Devils from their arrival in England to the end of the battle of Givenchy. It had taken me just three weeks. Three weeks when I could bask in the sunshine, find inspiration from the ever-changing sky above, hear the innocent song of birds and enjoy the companionship of the wild flowers around me. These ‘histories’, I later gathered, were sent to the official historian of the Canadian Army – Sir Max Aitkin (later Lord Beaverbrook) who made use of them when writing his ‘Canada in Flanders’.

In November 1915 I had my first 7-day leave to England. That green leave warrant in my hand was a ‘passport to heaven’. The leave train to Boulogne was crowded with happy, excited men, with surprise re-unions a few hours ahead. Re-unions with wives, fiancées, fathers and mothers and, above all, a respite from war. With £10 accumulated back pay in my pocket and clothed in fresh underwear, I felt like a new man. Of those magic six days in London, I now remember nothing, except catching the return leave train from Victoria to Folkestone. The partings were too emotional and I was glad when Victoria was left behind.

Soon after returning to my battalion, the division was taken out of line and moved to billets in the villages around Bailleul. By then the 2nd Canadian Division had arrived in France and Canada was represented by an Army Corps instead of merely a division. Lieut-General Alderson C.B. was appointed Corps Commander and Brig-General A.W. Currie took over command of the 1st Canadian Division, with the rank of Major- General. In Canada he had been a real estate dealer, but also commanded a battalion of militia in Vancouver and had come to France in command of the 2nd Infantry Brigade.

The British Army now held the line as far south as Arras and was heavily engaged in the battles around Loos and Lens, while the Canadians occupied a quiet sector in the north.

While at rest in Meteren a mile or so west of Bailleul, the platoon sergeant told me to report to the company office. He gave me no reason. I could hardly believe it, when I was told that a Brigade Concert Party was to be formed. One man from each of the four battalions was to be chosen as a nucleus for the party and that I had been selected to represent the 8th battalion. I was given a chit to report at once to Capt. Critchley of the Lord Strathcona Horse, at the Caisse d’Epargne in Bailleul. I knew that a caisse d’epargne was a savings bank, which only added to my surprise at the turn events had taken.

However, I went back to my billet, collected my kit and rifle and was lucky to catch the ration limber just setting off for the railway station at Bailleul, which was our advance railhead. The caisse d’epargne lay just of the square. It was not what I had expected. The bank only occupied a couple of rooms at the front and a separate entrance led to a large empty hall at the back. There was also a small-enclosed yard, in which three recently captured German prisoners were temporarily held under guard.

By midday the five of us had arrived – a captain, a sergeant, a corporal and two privates – each one a stranger to the others. We repaired to an estaminet in the Square, where an empty upper room had been allocated to us a sour billet, except for Capt. Critchley who fixed himself up in the bank manager’s house, next door to the bank. Bottles of wine were produced and we settled ourselves down to a pow-wow. Obviously we looked to the captain as chairman of the meeting, but he at once told us that we five were in this venture together, with equal responsibility for making it a success. We should ignore distinctions in rank and each contribute what he had to offer. ‘You can call me John’ said the captain; ‘Nobby, of course’ said Sergeant Clark; ‘Bill’ said the Corporal; ‘Sid’ and ‘Basil’ said the privates. Only in the citizen army of Canada could this have happened, without disturbing the strict discipline enforced and accepted when on duty.

We had been given a non-military assignment and that was how we where going to carry it out.

Chapter 9

AT THE CAISSE D’EPERGNE, BAILLEUL

Within a week, a miracle had happened. The empty hall was converted by the Engineers into a pukka theatre – a stage built from wall to wall, with a twenty-foot wide proscenium, cinema screen and drop curtain.

The hangings were made from Burlap, used for camouflaging and a peace-time scenic painter disguised the lot with camouflage paint, even to a very fine scene of the Rocky Mountains, as the centre piece to the drop curtain. From somewhere arrived two rows of posh chairs and a hundred benches to seat 600. The stage was lit with floods, made from biscuit boxes and controlled by dimmers. There was a large dressing and rehearsal room in which, working twelve hours a day, we knocked out our first programme. My part was played in two sketches – parodies of army life, written by ourselves; singing tenor in a vocal quartet and a ‘Malini’ type of act, with the only property available – a pack of cards.

The show lacked in polish what it gained in ingenuity, but the troops roared their applause. We gave two shows a day to packed audiences. Fifty centimes, to cover expenses gained admission. Officers paid 2 francs, for which they got a chair to sit on.

Here I must mention the 3rd Can. Field Ambulance, stationed a mile away. They had formed a nigger minstrel show of eight, with their chaplain, Capt. McGreer as Mr. Interlocutor in the centre. He was the only ‘white’ man, the others wore their army uniforms, but blackened their faces and hands. They were fortunate in having an outstanding musician and composer as their pianist – Gitz rice. He was a name well known as a song-writer in those days. I met him after the war doing his ‘Songs at the Piano’ act in a Broadway Theatre in New York.

A cinema projector and operator arrived, from where we did not enquire. We now had three different types of show, to provide variety and give time for rehearsing new programmes. The two officers got together and arranged the weekly programmes as follows;

Mon. & Tues. Minstrel Show
Wed. & Thurs. Film Show
Fri. & Sat. Concert Party
Sunday Evg. Film Show

We were fortunate in arranging with London Film Distributors to keep us supplied regularly with films, including all the latest Charlie Chaplin’s. We were never charged a penny for this service, which made a very generous contribution to the entertainment of the troops.

Our catchment area embraced some 100,000 men and an entertainments officer was appointed to avoid the clashing of too many units visiting Bailleul on the same day.

With the facilities the hall provided and with the backing of the Engineers, my mind dwelt on the prospect of devising a big illusion act. My card manipulation was more suitable to a small intimate audience, rather than to a packed hall of 600.

The method I had always adopted, when inventing new tricks, was to think up an ‘effect’, how impossible didn’t matter, then to find the means to achieve it. Many ideas came to mind, until I found what I was looking for viz. to unscrew the head off a human being and carry it across the stage, place it on a slender pedestal and, to prove it was not a wax model, to carry on a conservation with it. Similarly the headless body moved its limbs and walked. Eventually the head, when commanded, glided back to its body and was screwed back on again. That was to be the magical ‘effect’. It was set in an Indian Pagoda and the script written to make it into a ten-minute scene. I was dressed and played the part of an Indian fakir, while two of the company (Bill and Sid) dressed the scene as mute attendants. I worked out the complete modus operandi, except the problem of whose head to unscrew.

I must now digress to quote from an article, published in 1975 in our church magazine and introduce a new character;

LIFE WAS LIKE THIS

“It is 1915 and Bailleul, on the France-Belgium border is full of British soldiers. In a café, where one could buy eggs and chips, I first met Omer. He was working in the Bakery and serving the soldiers. He was only 12. It was in his home – a little cottage on the outskirts of Bailleul – that I was subsequently billeted for several weeks. This French peasant family were very poor and, to our standards, life was primitive. But with a warm-hearted welcome they took me in and a friendship, born of the comradeship of war, had begun.

Three years later, as the Germans advanced towards Hazebrouck, Bailleul was razed to the ground. The inhabitants fled and Omer and his parents were separated, but escaping south were eventually reunited.

OMER – BAILLEUL, 1915

After the war, in 1922, my wife and I made a pilgrimage to the battlefields. Omer and his parents have returned to Bailleul to find their home a pile of rubble. They were living in a temporary maison provisoire. Amongst the debris of their little white house we found the blackened remains of a card commemorating his First Communion. This solitary link with the past had survived, as he and our friendship had survived. The years pass on to the Second World War. It is the winter of 1939 and I am once again in France. Omer, now happily married, is living near Lens and there I find him. Then came ‘Dunkerque’ and the years of silence that followed. Had I lost him? The Germans, in their sweep to the coast occupied every town and village in fair Picardy, Pas de Calais and the Nord and Omer’s home was destroyed for the second time.

It was not until thirty years later, when my wife and I were en route to Brittany, that we decided at Boulogne to make for Bailleul, now rebuilt but still recognisable. Omer’s parents are dead, but, after devious and circuitous enquiries, we were given an address in Avion, near Lens.

There I tapped on the door. A woman opened it. Was there recognition? “I am Basil” is all I said. She turned and rushed to the back of the house. “Omer! Omer!” she called, “It is Basil – he his here”. In a moment we had embraced and the years between had vanished. Life was like this!”

Omer will recur several times in this narrative, but for the moment I decided that it would be his head I would unscrew. I briefly outlined my plans to the company and got their O.K. Getting him attached to our party presented no difficulty. I offered him 25 francs (£1) a week, which was double his earnings at the café. Language presented no problem, for his English was as good as my French. He had been very quick to pick it up from mixing with the British Soldiers. When I explained to him what we going to do and how we were going to do it, it took all my assurance to convince him it was possible.

It would be professionally unethical to divulge the modus operandi and those in the act promised to keep it secret.

Within a couple of weeks, the engineers had built the set from my designs. Omer and the company had been put through intensive rehearsal and we were ready to launch it on the ‘public’. From the audience point of view the illusion was perfect and the act remained in our programme till we were returned to our respective battalions, when the corps was moved northwards. It had been a glorious three-months respite. The return to the conditions of trench warfare, one had to steel oneself not to revolt. Inwardly I passed through a bad time, but my letters home revealed none of this. I was sorry to say ‘goodbye’ to Omer, who had endeared himself to the whole company. I had a letter from him later to tell me he had got a good job in the bakery at the Bailleul hospital, the grounds of which were used as a landing site by the R.F.C., the perimeter of which ran past Omer’s home. On evening, when within 200 yards of his cottage, a German plane swept down and opened up its machine gun on us. We jumped into the ditch beside the road and got away with it.

It was while in support trenches in front of Reninghelst, south of Ypres that I witness an unusual sight. Behind us, covering the best part of two miles were six observation balloons, which floated some 200 yards up. They were attached by strong cables, with telephone wires, to powered winches, used to haul them down. Each balloon carried two observers. Without a warning a German plane swept out of the blue and along the line of balloons, firing incendiaries. In succession each balloon was hit and fell to the ground in flames. All the observers escaped by their parachutes, miraculously dodging the flaming balloons, the only casualties being six replaceable balloons.

Following the fierce fighting in the coal-mining area of Loos at the end of 1915 there were no major battles on the British front for the rest of the winter and we ‘enjoyed’ the normal hardships of trench warfare. 1916, however, was one of the toughest years of the war. On the French front the battles for Verdun raged from February till the end of the year. The First battle of the Somme, from Arras to St. Quentin lasted five months, gained seven miles on a 20-mile frontage and cost over 400,000 British casualties. The result – Stalemate! We were destined to lose all ground won – and as much again – to the gates of Amiens – during the great German offensive in 1918.

In June 1916, just before the battle of the Somme began, came the most dramatic change in my fortunes during the whole war. I was taken out of the line and transferred to Corps H.Q., though still on strength of the 8th battalion. From then till the Armistice I never fired another shot.

A third division of Canadians had joined the Corps and a fourth was on the way. This would give us a strength of well over 100,000 men in the field, in addition to reserves for reinforcing. Such was the contribution of Canada, as well as the tens of thousands killed. My job (I had then been promoted to Sergeant) was to organise and maintain, under the overall control of the Chaplain service, a series of a dozen mobile canteens. Their purpose was to supply the troops with those things which made life tolerable. The main sources of supply were the E.F.C. (Expeditionary Force Canteens), which were located at the principal towns, some ten miles behind the line. It was Capt. McGreer (Mr. Interlocutor of the Minstrels) who, I suspect, influenced this transfer.

Chapter 10

TRANSFERRED TO CANADIAN CORPS HEADQUARTERS

Now that the Canadian Division had been expanded to an Army Corps, its organisation had to be greatly augmented. The Chaplain Service was presumably directed and administered from London, with an Assistant Director (A.D.C.S.) at corps H.Q., who did all the work. When I arrived at Corps H.Q., Capt. McGreer had been appointed Senior C. of E. Chaplain, with honorary rank of Major and I was allocated a small office adjoining that of the A.D.C.S. I messed at the corps sergeant’s mess and fixed myself with a comfortable billet.

Major McGreer, although he had his administrative duties, spent a great deal of his time up in the trenches, cheering the troops and ministering to the wounded and dying. His presence amongst the men was an inspiration and he well deserved the Military Cross with which he was subsequently awarded.

Our canteens were pushed forward as far as possible, often in a ruined building, or even a large dugout in the side of a sunken road. We actually had one in the ramparts at Ypres. When the corps moved to another area, we left all our canteens to the relieving troops and opened up new ones. They were all within range of artillery fire and we suffered a number of casualties. A corporal and two men manned each canteen and, like me, were among the lucky ones.

I drew up a simple form of cash and stock control and visited each canteen at least twice a week to replenish stock and collect the cash takings. Fiddling, of course was possible and doubtless went on in a small way, but the threat of being sent back to one’s unit was sufficient deterrent. The amount of money collected in any one day was quite considerable – several thousand francs. Supplies were distributed by limber, checked and signed for, but sometimes I was allowed to use on of the officers’ horses. They had two and could also use a car from the corps pool. I found horse riding much more to my liking than bumping along in a limber.

I must record one incident, which might have had serious repercussions. I was riding the colonel’s horse, Black Bess, and returning in the dark, after a day collecting cash. My haversack was full of francs, but securely strapped around my waist. The road I knew well and fortunately so did Black Bess. About three miles from H.Q. we were trotting along a sunken road, when we could see the glare from approaching transport. I patted Black Bess, who was getting nervous and kept a tight rein, when suddenly, around a bend in the road we were confronted with the glare from two headlights. That was enough for Black Bess. She took a mighty leap up the near side bank and over a hedge. That is when we parted! I was bruised, but soon on my feet again. I called out and searched around, but Black Bess had evidently decided she had had enough for one day. Rather disconsolately I footed it back to the village of Abeele, where corps H.Q. was stationed, to find Black Bess, snug in her stable, munching her supper of hay. Her groom was mildly amused. The next morning I took Black Bess out for exercising and we were friends again. I think she was sorry so I forgave her.

The fighting on the Somme had cost enormous casualties ad the Canadian Corps was moved south and pushed into the battle. The front was very confused and changed from day to day and it was impossible to establish canteens except in the rear areas, where the troops came back for periodic relief. In some ways this made our job easier, though we were some fifteen miles from the nearest E.F.C. at Amiens. Once a week we were loaned a lorry, which we loaded up with supplies. Life on the Somme was no picnic. Where possible we established stores of cigarettes and chocolate etc. near the main Casualty Clearing Stations, where the chaplains had free access to them and so could soothe the agonies of the wounded.

The first battle of the Somme faded out with the approach of winter and in November 1916 the Canadian Corps moved up just north of Arras to Camblain l’Abbé in preparation for the attack and capture of Vimy Ridge in the following April. Vimy Ridge had always been in German hands. They held the crest, with extensive views over the Douai Plain and the mining area of Lens, which the British were denied. A feature of the British defences was the extensive tunnelling that the engineers had made from half a mile back right into the front line trenches. These made communication trenches unnecessary, for all troops and supplies were moved up under cover and in secrecy from the Germans.

After a week of the most intense artillery fire, the Canadian Corps captured the ridge in three days and swarmed down the almost precipitous slope on the far side and on to the flat ground beyond.
The whole planning and execution of this spectacular battle had been under the command of the Corps commander – Lieut-Gen. Byng. With the battle for Vimy Ridge over, the command of the corps passed, for the first time, to a Canadian – our real estate dealer from Vancouver – Lieut-General Sir Arthur Currie C.B. He came to France a Lieut-Colonel and at Ypres commanded the 2nd Can. Inf. Bde.

One afternoon a small monoplane flew over Champlain l’Abbé and circled the church steeple, apparently to attract attention. Skimming the rooftops, a message was dropped, in a weighted handkerchief, smack in the middle of a field in the village. The plane then rapidly flew away. The message was quickly recovered and read; “Will the finder please inform my brother, Sergt. B.J. Green of Can. Corps H.Q. that I may visit the airfield within a day or so and hope to meet him.

J.S. Green
Capt. R.F.C.

From my office I had been watching the queer antics of this plane and was more than surprised when the message reached me. There was a small air strip on the high ground above the village. The Germans had many times tried to make it useless, but without success. Two days later, the little plane turned up again and found the air strip.

John soon found my office and I introduced him to Major McGreer, who offered him Canadian hospitality, before returning him to me. ‘I haven’t got much time’ John said ‘but would you like a 10 minute flip?’ ‘Sure’ I said, and in a few minutes we were standing beside the plane. It looked very small to me and had canvas-covered wings and wooden struts. The fuselage was just big enough for two – the observer in front and the pilot behind. The cockpit was quite open, save for a bit of curved Perspex in front of each passenger. We climbed in, the engine started up and we bumped along over the not to even ground. I doubt whether it could cruise at more than 80-100 miles an hour. All I know is that the higher we rose the slower we appeared to be moving. In a few minutes, however, we were over Vimy Ridge, with a clear view of the trench systems on either side. The horizon rose as we turned south for Arras and made a half circle over the German line, making for our airstrip. John had no difficulty in finding it, though I was completely lost as to my whereabouts. Features on the ground appeared so different when viewed from above. We glided down perfectly and taxied to a halt. I climbed out, no sorry to be standing on terra firma again. ‘I’ll log it as observation all quiet’ said John as he moved off to complete his ‘observation’.

The last mention of John was at the battle of Givenchy, when we passed hiss battalion as we were going into the line. Later in 1915 he was engaged in the fierce fighting for Loos. That decided him to apply for transfer to the R.FC., which was then in its infancy. After training he returned to France as a 2/Lieut. R.F.C. officers held military rank until they became the R.A.F. in 1918. With the high casualty rate in the R.F.C., promotion was rapid and John within a few months ranked as Captain, subsequently to be awarded the Military Cross. Five [altered to nine} years ago he died, leaving me the head of the family.

It was after the battle of Vimy Ridge that one evening the Camp Commandant of the Camblain l’Abbé sent for me and told me he had received a request from the Corps Commander that I report to the mess president at the H.Q mess the following evening to entertain a ‘distinguished guest’ after dinner and that there would be three others on the programme. Although I was given very short notice, I could not do otherwise than agree, wondering who I was going to meet.

The next evening I reported at the Chateau in Camblain l’Abbé. I was shown into an ante- room, where the three other entertainers were already assembled. One was the celebrated violinist Jan van de Groot, the second an operatic tenor and the third a brilliant pianist. I forget their names. They were all three serving in a Field Hospital as orderlies. An officer came in, ‘gentlemen’, he said ‘will you come this way please’. That put us at ease, for we had not been addressed as ‘gentlemen’ for years.

The mess was a very fine large room. The Corps Commander (Sir Arthur Currie C.B.) sat at the head of a long table. On his right was a young subaltern, unmistakably H.R.H The Prince Of Wales (later Edward VIII). A grand piano and a small dais occupied one end of the room. There was the confused hum of conversation and the delightful aroma of cigars – a most convivial setting. Without any formalities beyond a few words from the Mess President, the entertainment began. The tenor opened with ‘Onaway awake beloved’ followed by two lighter pieces. The standard was very high and I wondered how my effort would go down, strangely I was not in the least nervous. Van de Groot followed and played brilliantly. In response to a sustained ‘bravos’ and calls for ‘encore’, he obliged with a rendering of the song, Then so popular – ‘Roses of Picardy’.

Fortunately there was then a short break, while conversation was resumed and the Mess Stewards replenished glasses. The Mess President then introduced me and the murmur of conversation subsided. The port and liqueurs helped to make the transition from music to magic less pronounced, and I soon had them chuckling with a few selected army jokes. I gave an exhibition off pure sleight of hand, which brought me to my piece de resistance and certainly my favourite trick. From the sideboard I took a plate of fruit and approached the prince. ‘May I offer you some fruit, sir?’ I enquired. He smiled, hesitated and then took an orange. He examined it most critically, to the amusement of those around. He then chose a card from a pack spread out before him and showed it to the company – the six of diamonds. At my request he tore it into eight pieces, kept one and placed the other seven on a plate. On these I poured a spoonful of Brandy and set them alight. The ashes I dropped into an envelope sealed it and asked the Prince to take care of it. Now all was set for the dénouement. The Corps Commander had seen me perform this trick before, at a battalion concert and watched every move most carefully. Offering the prince a knife, I invited him to cut the orange open. From inside he extracted a juice-soaked six of diamonds with a small section missing, which exactly fitted the piece he had retained. The envelope of ashes, of course, proved empty. ‘Bless my soul’ he exclaimed amidst the general ovation.

The Corps Commander briefly thanked us and the mess president escorted us back to the ante-room. Here we found the table laid up for dinner for four, with two bottle of wine. We dined and wined sumptuously.

That night I slept well for in my pocket was a crumpled six of diamonds, across which was written at my request, ‘Edward, P’. Twenty years later saw the sequel to this war-time incident.

We must, for the time being leave Camblain l’Abbé and moved once again to the Ypres Salient where the prolonged battle for Passchendaele Ridge was raging. It was finally captured by the 1st and 2nd Canadian Brigades in November 1917.

In 1977 I again visited Passchendaele with my grandson, Peter. Afterwards I recorded my impression. From the article I then wrote I quote the following extract: -

“Beyond the gentle valley, chequered in the green and gold of meadow and ripening corn, lies a cluster of red-tiled cottages, their walls of varied tints aglow in the heat of the midday sun. In their midst, rising heavenward, the spire of the little church breaks the line of roofs. In the field around men till the soil, as did their grandfathers. In the evenings they will forgather in the estaminet to gossip over their beer and cheap wine. Outside the street echo to the music of childish gaiety and laughter. It is just another peaceful Flanders’ village. Yet the signpost where I stand reads PASSCHENDALE – 1 Km. Can this be the Passchendale of 1917?

Sixty years ago, pounded for weeks by a thousand guns, the village was torn apart. All that remained were a few piles of rubble which rose above a morass of mud. Over Flanders the rain pitilessly poured down, turning the ground for miles around into a sea of freezing mud, concealing the interlocking shell-holes – veritable death traps to the wounded and unwary.

In these conditions the youth of the British Empire with the youth of Germany struggled to exist and kill each other, tens of thousand to fall wounded, or mercifully to die – for them the agony of war over.

But a short while back they had left their homes, their work, their loved ones and set forth to the unknown, not reasoning why. Many many thousands found their last resting place, for they never returned. Now they lie undisturbed, awaiting the Great Reveille.

Two kilometres behind Passchendale lies Tyne Cot Military Cemetery – reputed to be the largest in the world – yet just one of some thirty or more similar cemeteries covering the Ypres Salient. This summer I visited Tyne Cot. As one journeys along the old battle fronts from Ypres in the north, through Messines and Neuve-Chapelle, the pit heads and slag heaps of Loos and Lens, the heights of Souchez and Vimy, through proud Arass to the rolling plains of The Somme, One give up counting the many hundreds of military cemeteries that are scattered through the now pleasant countryside – Picardy where red poppies grow.

Each of these gardens of rest, so perfectly tended, is know part of Britain, a gift in perpetuity from a grateful ally, given that those who died in a foreign land might rest in British soil.

Here lie the battalions of the dead. Rank upon rank of white headstones stretch almost as far as the eye can traverse. In death there are no ranks of seniority – general and private soldier lie alongside, equal in death each some mother’s son.

Despite the insidious propaganda put out by both sides, malice and hatred for the individual soldier could not exist, did we remember that he to, like us, found himself involved in war and fighting as we were fighting - and with equal unreason.

On Christmas day 1914, both British and German soldiers intermingled in one part of no-man’s land in cordial fellowship. Perhaps the angelic host looked down from heaven, proclaiming goodwill on earth for just this one day, when the guns were silent and a great quiet fell over the battlefield. There was neither hatred not bitterness. As dusk fell they parted, each side to their own trenches to stand-to, their rifles loaded their bayonets fixed.
The episode was never repeated”.

After Passchendale, the Canadian troops were sent back to Corps reserve for a well-earned spell of rest and reinforcing. The Corps Headquarters found themselves again in Camblain l’Abbé. With a stalemate on the western front, prospects of an early end of the ear were impossible to forecast. The authorities decided to set up an officer’s club in a field in the village. I was approached and given the job of drawing up provisional plans. I was given the basic facilities required and that three 50-foot army huts would be available, in addition to any necessary outbuildings. I visualised a large bungalow hotel comprising a large lounge, a restaurant to seat fifty with bar, sleeping accommodation, bathrooms and showers, barbers shop, with outbuildings to house kitchens, storerooms, water-heating plant and staff accommodation. I duly submitted plans of my ambitious lay-out. Having no architectural knowledge, I left all construction details to the engineers who would have to build it.

Within a week my plans had been approved without alteration. Building started at once under the supervision of an officer and company of Canadian engineers, who supplied all the carpenter, plumbers. Electricians, painters and labourers and in less then three weeks the buildings were completed and ready for furnishing and equipping.

I had drawn up lists of everything I could think off that would be required – from Linoleum to table lamps, armchairs to wash-up mops. An officer (previously an hotel manager) was dispatched to England, presumably with a blank cheque to select and buy everything and have it all shipped over. We must remember that the Corps was in a rest area and labour therefore plentiful.

Incidentally I had been told that I would be in chare of the club, with the rank of Warrant Officer II. The staff – 20 or so - were carefully selected from those with previous hotel experience and had served at least twelve months in France.

While the building operations were in progress, I was granted a weeks’ leave to Paris, where my Aunt Annie (my mothers sister) was living. She was married to a French artist, Henri Giot. Omer and his family were refugees and I wanted to do something for them, so I wrote to my Aunt and asked if I could bring Omer with me. Immediately came the reply – ‘Enchanté’! Omer, his parents and younger brother, Jeremie, after the Germans had driven them out of Bailleul, had fled south and had temporarily found shelter in an empty cottage at Fleury-sur-Andelle, a few miles from Rouen.

It took three trains to get there and when I eventually found them, I was distressed to see the condition in which they were living. There was a bed for the parents and a straw mattress on the floor for the two boys. They had been pushed around from place to place – just one family amongst the flood of refugees. No one wanted them. It was everyone for himself. Mentally I compared their plight with what was being prepared for the Officers in Camblain l’Abbé. Officialdom seemed unable to cope with the refugee problems, as the Germans advanced towards Hazebrouck.

The evening I found them I took them to a nearby café and we supped off a huge omelette and chips, two bottles of wine and coffee. The café put me up for the night and the following morning Omer and I set off for Paris. I booked in at a small hotel and while Omer had a bath, I nipped out and bought him a jacket, trousers, shirt, socks and shoes. He was 15 and about my height. When he tried to thank me, his eyes just filled with tears – but he was happy.

That afternoon we visited my Aunt and the Uncle I had never seen. Their quarters were somewhat primitive, neither of them being very practical and I doubt whether my Uncle sold many of his pictures. Fifty or more lay scattered around the studio. I must say though that I wished I had been inspired to paint as he did. We arranged to picnic the next day at Versailles, a few kilometres from Paris. Uncle Henri was our guide and expatiated at length on the history of Versailles, particular during the Napoleonic era. I found it a bit boring, trying to follow his rapid French, but Omer learnt more French history then he ever had during his few years schooling. The palaces, sculptures and gardens were beyond anything he had imagined. I was glad that we visited Versailles. That evening we dined at my Aunts – the menu, fish and chips with a bottle of wine. Very Anglo- Franco!

During the next two days we looked at Paris from the Eiffel Tower, visited Notre Dame, La Place de Concorde, at Fleury-sur-Andelle with a hamper of good things from Paris. Omer was greeted with wide-eyed amazement and his mother embraced us in her amble bosom. Jeremie was more interested in the contents of the hamper.

For me it had been a very pleasant week and I returned to Camblain l’Abbé to find the buildings of the club completed and the painter busy camouflaging the roofs and walls with their greens and browns, to render them less conspicuous from the air. A dozen or so of the staff had reported and were employed digging a deep dugout, to serve as a ‘fridge’ for perishable stores, beers, wines and spirits. The furnishings and equipment from England were brought up in lorries from Boulogne and in a few days the empty shell of a building was converted into the Canadian Officers Club – the best equipped in France.

It was not intended to be a profit making under taking and all charges were costed to a minimum. Tipping was forbidden from the day it opened it became the evening venue for officers for miles around, and it was soon found necessary to serve dinner in two sittings. I aimed for a high service. The premises were patrolled from 10pm to reveille by six-man guard under an N.C.O., each man doing two hours on and four hours of duty. Although in range of the German ‘heavies’, they rarely worried us. Much more frequent were bombing raids on the corps H.Q.

Further south the final battle of the Somme rolled the British army back almost to Amiens, before the enemy was exhausted and its line of communication threatened. Amiens was saved by a brilliant attack at Villers Bretteneau by the Australian Army corps, which started the demoralisation of the Germans and their retreat along the whole front. Casualties were heavy on both sides as, mile-by-mile, we recovered back to Albert and all the famous battlefields of Thiepval, Courcelette, Pozieres etc. to Bapaume and on to Cambrai. Despite the war weariness, the British moral rose higher as ultimate victory appeared in sight.

During these summer months, I could not but feel, at times, qualms of conscience when I compared my good fortune with that of my comrades in the fighting battalions. This struck me forcibly when I learned of an award of the Military Medal to a youngster (he enlisted at 17) I had known in the early days on Salisbury Plains. He was wounded at the second battle of Ypres and subsequently returned to his battalion. We had known him as ‘Cherub’ Matheson. He survived the war and wrote to me from his home in Nova Scotia. In late October 1918 I had my last leave to England, being temporarily relieved by one of the Canadian chaplains. One afternoon my fiancée and I went to a matinee at the Alhambra – ‘The Byng Boys’ – when we came out I could scarcely believe my eyes. The newsboys were shouting ‘Lille Fallen’. This great city of northern France with its vast railway centre had been one of the army’s main objectives for four years, yet we never even crossed the Aubers Ridge, which guarded it from the west. Now it was in our hands and the end could not be far away. My instinct was to get back to France with the utmost speed, to be in at the end. The leave train to Folkestone was crowded with excited men – gone were the sober expression of resignation and the sadness of partings. Wild optimism showed on every face.

At Boulogne no-one new the whereabouts of the Canadian Corps except that they were ‘on the way to Berlin’. I made my way back to Camblain l’Abbé, to find it deserted of troops. All the huts that had housed the Corps H.Q. were empty and forlorn. The club, however, was as I left it, its contents untouched, but the staff quarters were occupied by military police, who had been posted there to prevent vandalism and looting. The Corps, they told me, had pulled out three days previously on the way to Douai. No instructions had been left for me. I decided to make first for Arras (some 15 Kilometres). That was certainly in the right direction. I picked up an army lorry at Mont St. Eloi, which took me the last 8 kilometres. Ahead lay unknown country of which I had no map. What happened from then till the Armistice on Nov. 11th I have only a confused recollection. It was three days after leaving Camblain l’Abbé that I contacted Canadian H.Q. in Denain, a few kilometres from Valenciennes and learn that the divisions were pressing on ahead towards Mons. Every night we moved on a few kilometres, sleeping in out lorries and making no attempt to unload and set up headquarters.

On Nov 11th we entered Mons, the town where the British army first made contact with the Germans. Four years had passed and we were back where we started. As the clock on the town hall struck eleven, the guns were silenced and the agony of war was over. The forward troops pursued the retreating enemy, preserving a reasonable distance between them.

Strangely there were no jubilations – no celebrations – in Mons that evening. There was no rum; we were to weary and the reality of the armistice had not yet sunk in. The civilians, by contrast, were jubilant and showed their joyous welcome by opening their homes to the troops and sharing what they had. There had been no time to make billeting arrangements. It was everyone for himself and I slept in a bed that night.

On Nov. 13th a great and moving service of thanksgiving was held in the packed square of Mons. The chief chaplain of each of the Churches took part in the service and a band led the massed singing of the hymns and the National Anthem.

Despite this thanksgiving and the relief felt by all who lived to see end of hostilities, it was tragic that lives, on both sides, were sacrificed even on the morning of Armistice Day. Why, oh why!

The terms of the armistice imposed the unconditional surrender of the enemy; the Kaiser abdicated and fled to Holland; and the mighty German Army returned to their Fatherland, vanquished and disillusioned. The Allied Armies pressed forward and occupied Germany to the Rhine. The movement forward of the Canadians took us via Namur along the Meuse to Huy and Spa, till we crossed the German border at Montigne.

The local inhabitants, who a few hours earlier had witnessed the return of the columns of Germans in retreat, kept within their house, as we passed through virtually empty streets. There was no demonstration of any kind. The ultimate destination of the Canadian Corps H.Q. was Bonn-am-Rhine, where offices and billets had already been allocated by an advance party.

The Canadian Government decreed that, during the period of demobilisation, the question of civil re-establishment should be made a priority amongst the troops waiting for their discharge. The Canadian Education Service was accordingly set up under the direction of Lt-Col. Edmonds (previously a professor at Edmonton University). I was commissioned and appointed Adjutant to the Department. An Adjutant is an officer who, without having to make policy decisions, actually does all the work.

Every unit was required to appoint its Education Officer and my principal job was to act as liaison between them and the Director.

The service was absolutely voluntary as far as the troops were concerned, despite which we distributed some 25,000 manuals, covering a range of the most popular trades.

Our office was located in part of a fine house, whose owners were obviously wealthy upper class. Their attitude to us was surly from the start. It was obvious they very much resented our presence. If we met any one of the family and said ‘good morning’ they passed us in silence. In contrast Frau Edelstein, in whose I was billeted proved to be kindness itself. She was a Jewess of about 45 years of age. Her husband, a doctor, had been killed on the Russian front, leaving her with two children – Fritz who would be 16/17 and a younger sister, Elsa 12/13 years old.

Their house was commodious and well furnished, but usually the larder was empty. The Germans by the end of the war were very tightly rationed and I was glad to be able to supplement their diet with, to them, luxuries from the E.F.C. Canteen set up in Bonn.

Fritz Edelstein was a musical prodigy – his instrument – the cello. A central room in the house was the music salon, simply furnished with a grand piano and a few divans. The walls were bare and there was an absence of rugs on the parquet floor.

His accompanist, a brilliant pianist – Fraulein Eberhadt – about 30 years of age, was a devotee, as was Fritz, to Beethoven. Every evening we spent in the music salon, occasionally with one or two invited guests, and I always joined them about nine o’clock after dinner at the officers’ mess in an hotel overlooking the Rhine. Those evenings made my stay in Bonn memorable. I have referred to Fritz as a prodigy, not because of his mastery of technique, but of his understanding and sensitivity of the work he was playing and his oblivion of all around him. He had studied for several years at the Conservatoire at Cologne, and certainly had a brilliant future, yet what ultimately became of him, I never learned, after leaving Germany.

Fritz knew of my interest in the cello. One evening when we alone with Fraulein Eberhadt, he invited me to try out his instrument. Naturally I hesitate, not having touched a cello during the war, except on leave. I was, however, keen to see what I could make of his superb instrument. I gingerly placed it between my knees and played the opening bars of Saint Saens’ ‘Le Cygne’. Fraulein Eberhadt at once said ‘I know that well, let me play with you’. So we started afresh. The moment the bow touched the strings I realised I was playing a master instrument, so very different from my very ordinary one. ‘Le Cygne’ does not call for any advanced technique and encouraged by such a sympathetic accompanist, I don’t think I disgraced myself. Fraulein Eberhadt said ‘Bravo! You must continue like Fritz’. She spoke quite good English.

On Christmas Day, when I came down to breakfast, I was greeted with a candle-lit Christmas tree with little presents hanging from it. They were for me. That night I did not dine in the mess, but celebrated Christmas with poultry and plum pudding from the E.F.C., washed down with two bottles of wine from the Moselle valley.

There was, however, one incident on Christmas Day, which reflected no credit on the Canadian Corps and for which I felt ashamed. A fine statue of Kaiser Wilhelm II stood in a prominent square. During Christmas night a party of Canadian soldiers, after a to festive evening, climbed up the statue, smashed the sword in the Kaiser’s hand, knocked off his nose and the spike on his helmet and set a chamber-pot on his head in its place. The next morning the troops got a chuckle, but the German population were furious. The Canadian Camp Commandant immediately sent a letter of apology to the Mayor of Bonn, but apart from the removal of the ‘crowning glory’ the statue was not restored while we occupied Bonn.

Although my duties kept me very fully occupied each day, I found time to visit Cologne and its magnificent cathedral. It had not been badly damaged by our bombing, though the station and surroundings close by had received a proper bashing.

One weekend my cousin Ronald Wheatley and I took a journey by railway to Wiesbaden. The line skirted the west bank of the Rhine through one of its most picturesque stretches, with typical German castles perched on the islands, which appeared to grow out of the river. We passed through the wine growing areas around the river Moselle and had wonderful views of the prominence made famous by Goethe’s poem ‘Die Lorelei’. It is the one piece of German that Dr. Ederheimer installed into us at school, which I still recall.

I am afraid we ignored the formality of buying railway tickets for this journey, which was quite unofficial. When asked to show them, my cousin took a piece of paper from his pocket and peremptorily dismissed the inspector with the word ‘official’. The piece of paper was not examined.

Wiesbaden lay across the river from Mayence and was a well-known spa. We spent the evening at a very bawdy show, though unable to understand the jokes which so enlivened the German audience. That night we slept in a posh hotel and ordered breakfast to be served in our room. We made certain to be back in Bonn early on the Monday morning. Incidentally in Wiesbaden we noticed our Camp Commandant, but quickly crossed the road ‘without seeing him’. He must have noticed two British Officers, but wisely forgot that probably we were A.W.O.L. (absent without leave). Perhaps he was too!

In April 1919 the Canadian Corps was relieved in Germany and we returned to Belgium for the long process of demobilisation. We were stationed a few miles south of Brussels and so I was able to visit the battlefield of Waterloo and its great pyramid of stone with the British lion on top. As battalions were demobilised and sent back to Canada, the Education Service was reduced. My discharge papers came through in the middle of May and with them a substantial war gratuity. Later my three service medals arrived at home, together with an unexpected M.S.M. And so ended, for the time being, my life in the army.

Chapter 11

FROM SOLDIER TO CIVILIAN

During the war my family had moved to Hollingbourne Road, Herne Hill. It was here that I spent, after my discharge, the busy month before my marriage. There was just time to get the banns published and to buy the house that was to be our first home – 6 Norbury Ave., Norbury. In those days £500 would buy a four-bedroomed house in a select neighbourhood and, as I paid cash for the purchase, negotiations were concluded within a few weeks and the house furnished and ready foe occupation. Beyond the house opposite was open country and golf links. Today they are just part of suburbia – the green fields have gone.

My bride-to-be had already chosen her three bridesmaids and their dresses of pale mauve, also her bridal outfit in white satin with veil and orange blossom. Her brother, Bernard was my best man, to whom I entrusted the ring.

On June 12th 1919 I proudly escorted my beautiful bride down the aisle, the pews filled with all our relations, friends and guests, while the organ pealed out the Wedding March. And so we entered our car as man and wife, amidst the clicking of cameras and a flurry of confetti and good wishes from the crowd on the pavement. The bride’s parents held a reception at their home in Streatham and the champagne flowed. Late in the afternoon we left for Victoria en route to the Albion Hotel, Eastbourne.

1919

The bride having five brothers and I three of my own, it was not surprising that there was sufficient ironmongery and old boots tied to the back of the car to tell the world we were ‘Just Married’. We rattled along Streatham High Road to the first convenient turn-off and disposed of all the junk.

Our honeymoon was blessed with perfect sunny weather. This brought on the worst bout of hay fever I ever experienced. The honeymoon over, the hay fever disappeared, never to return – why doctors today do not prescribe a honeymoon for hay fever, I have no idea – for it worked for me.

I now had to earn a living. With the country flooded with returning soldiers looking for employment, it was far from a country ‘fit for heroes to live in’.

My father, since the armistice, had joined in partnership with a chap named Wood, who saw the possibilities offered in the disposal of the vast quantities of war surplus and they formed Green, Wood & Co. They sent me on a three-week’s visit to America to examine the possibilities of establishing trading relations with American manufacturers.

Probably I was too inexperienced commercially to break through the defences which made real progress possible. Both abroad and at home there were too many, all trying to climb on the bandwagon, and it was never certain whether one was dealing with a principal or another middleman. True I negotiated agencies with three manufacturers, but only one - Korach’s of Cleveland Ohio established a brief footing in England. The whole venture was not only a set-back, but a waste of money we could ill afford. I had good reason to distrust Wood’s judgement – always to optimistic. I saw no future in this business for me and decided to get out. I was now 28 and ambitious enough to have no intention of working with people of doubtful business acumen.

The three weeks I had given up during my first year of marriage had taught me a lesson. During my absence my wife stayed with her parents at Streatham. One evening she and a brother went round to our Norbury home to see that all was ok. They found the French windows at the back open. The intruder was still in the house, but escaped through the front door with only a few things – mostly clocks. The burglar was subsequently caught and turned out to be our local policeman, to whom we had notified our absence. He had carried out a whole series of burglaries in the district and in his house were found some fifty clocks and watches – his specialty.

I had recently qualified for admission as an Associate of the Inner Magic Circle. On the panel of judges was a Mr Ibbotson, head of the Tea Department at Joseph Travers & Son Ltd and who, during the war, had been appointed by the government Tea Controller and awarded the O.B.E. Founded in the seventeenth century, Travers was the oldest company in London under the continuous control of one family. Ben Travers, the famous playwright, who died recently, was a brother of the then managing director.

Mr Ibbotson and I, having a mutual interest in magic, he agreed to take me on as assistant to the Ceylon tea buyer, with a salary sufficient to maintain my family. I felt secure and much happier at Travers. They occupied extensive premises in Canon Street and were a much respected firm. To introduce a new packet tea – King Cup – the management invited the staff to submit ideas for packaging with a £10 prize for the winner. My entry was chosen. They obviously liked my slogan – ‘King Cup. The K.C. to win the popular verdict’.

Within a week or so I was offered the job of representative for Sussex, Hampshire and Dorset. A car was provided and a monthly salary plus commission. The previous representative having retired, I took over all his accounts. I was free to live where I liked within the area, sold my Norbury home and chose a little cottage in West Chiltington, near Storrington, some ten miles behind Worthing. The car I took over was an old bull-nosed Morris Cowley. It had a wooden dickey seat perched behind and had arrived at the stage where it was to often letting me down. For days it would be out of action – a good reason for replacing it. The price of and Austin 7 or Morris Cowley was about £150, but the car I had an eye on was a 4-door fabric covered Swift Saloon. Its price was £260. Looking to the future I was prepared to buy it. I proposed to Travers that they should advance me £200, interest free, with repayment spread over two years and also to pay all running costs while I remained in their employ. To this they readily agreed and so I took possession of my first car. It proved a good investment, for I ran it for many years and clocked up 160,000 miles before selling it for £20. It would seat five and petrol was 10d (4p) per gallon. Those were the days!

My narrative has jumped ahead a few years to maintain some kind of continuity, but I now go back to 1920. Our first child was born in the August of that year. We named her jean Mary and we were both very proud of her. In later years we had reason to be even more proud, but I must not anticipate the then unknown future.

It was while still living in Norbury that I sent Omer a return ticket between Boulogne and London. We had not met since our trip to Paris during the war. Omar would be 17/18 years old when I met him, as he came of the boat train from Folkestone and greeted him on the platform at Victoria. He was the same beaming Omer, so happy to renew our friendship. An hour later and we were walking Norbury Avenue. At the window of No. 6a smiling Ethel with Jean in her arms, welcomed us.
Everything to Omer was strange but he soon adjusted himself to our English way of life. We had everything, while his family at times had nothing. The gap was very wide.

Omer was essentially a very practical chap, able to turn his hand to most things. While, during the day I was working in London, he built a rustic bridge across a small pond in the garden – a novel and artistic feature. He was very sweet with jean, carrying her around and romping with her in the garden. He, of course, wanted to see some of the sights of London, including the zoo, where he and Ethel spent a whole day. On the Sunday we covered much of London from Buckingham Palace, via Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge.

I wanted my family and Ethel’s to meet the boy who had experienced the cruelty of war and been my friend and so was proud to introduce him. His English surprised them and at times caused much amusement. The time passed too quickly before I saw on to the train for Folkestone, with so much to recall when he reached Bailleul, his family and friends.

Since the First World War I have made six pilgrimages to the battlefields of France and Belgium. The passing years have doubtless dulled the reality of those war experiences, but to tread again the very ground fought over, always brings back vivid memories and a feeling I cannot share.

The first of these pilgrimages I made with Ethel the year after Omer’s visit. Little Jean stayed with her grandparents at Streatham and waved ‘goodbye’ as we set off on our bicycles to Folkestone. It was high summer, the sun shone from a cloudless sky, drenching us and the apple orchards of Kent. After a mid-morning break for coffee, we reached Maidstone and pulled into a shady lane for our picnic lunch. - - - - We had left it behind! We cycled the half-mile back to Maidstone, bought a bag of ripe plums, consumed two glasses of lemonade and, refreshed took to the road again. At Charing we ordered boiled eggs and a large pot of tea. While our meal was being prepared, we noticed on the sideboard a glass jug of water. In a trice we quaffed the lot.

After a gruelling day, tired and saddle-sore, we eventually reached Folkestone and the hospitality of the Cyclist Touring Club Hostel. Folkestone harbour, the next morning, reminded me of those nights when, returning from leave, I crossed the channel in a blacked-out and crowded troopship. We slid alongside the dock at Boulogne to find nothing had changed, except the khaki of British troops had given place to the blue overalls of gesticulating and clamouring dockside porters. We evaded them and, in a familiar café hard by, lunched off ‘une omelette aux champignons et frits compris’.

Our destination that first day was Bailleul, some 50 miles due east. After our exertions of the previous day, we made the obvious decision to cover the first 40 miles by train to Hazebrouck. What a train journey it proved to be! Unknown to me, third- class tickets only provided for bare wooden seats in narrow compartments. The train jolted to a stop at every station it could find on the two-hour journey. Our fellow travellers were a motley collection of villagers out for a days shopping. The women jabbered away loudly and quite incomprehensibly, while the men produced sundry bottles and smoked evil smelling French tabac. Oh! To recover our bicycles and again breath fresh air! Subsequent train journeys were made second-class. One lives and learns, but I was sorry that this was Ethel’s first impression of France.

Omer was waiting for us in the square at Bailleul as we rode in. He was on a few days leave from doing his National Service and was in French military uniform, but still the same Omer. The rebuilding of Bailleul was still in progress and most shops had reopened. The water supply was maintained by a water tower and pumping equipment, erected in the centre of the square. Omer took us down the rue du Museé to a cluster of maisons provisoires. At the door of one stood the buxom figure of Omer’s mother – Mme. Pharildé Turck. She embraced us both warmly with a tear in her eye, as her husband, Ernest, came out to add his greetings. The house had a large kitchen/living room and two bedrooms. The parents’ room was turned over to us, despite our protest. Where they all slept I do not know. Omer and his younger brother Jeremie, I suspect do in the kitchen. One cannot forget such kindness and, even today, sixty years later, Omer slept rough, giving up his room to accommodate three of my friends and me, during my final pilgrimage last year.

The one-day we spent in Bailleul rediscovered what was left of the old familiar spots. In the ruins of the Caisse d’Epargne we found tattered pieces of the ‘Indian pagoda’, where Omer ‘lost’ his head. We bade our ‘au revoirs’ to Omer as he boarded his train to return to his unit. Seventeen years were to pass before we met again. Once more we took to our bicycles, crossed the border into Belgium, on through Messines along the familiar roads to Ypres.

What sort of Ypres should we find? The four years of peace had seen great progress in the rebirth to this once thriving gateway into the industrial towns of Belgium. The population had returned as their homes were rebuilt. The medieval character of the town had been preserved and some shops, cafés and hotels had reopened in and around the square. Yet in the centre stood the bare skeleton of the famous Cloth Hall and cathedral.

Priority of restoration had rightly been given to re-housing and the time was yet to come when Ypres would once again return to its former glory.

We found a small hotel, still under completion and slept in a bare-boarded room with the minimum of furnishing. The uncanny silence of the night was, to me, the strangest contrast to the Ypres of my dreams, that lived vividly in my memory - The Ypres that died in defiance of the enemy, through four years of war.

A few newly-built cottages marked the villages of St. Jean, St. Julien, Langemark, Poelkapelle and Passchendale. We passed through all of these on our tour of the Salient. I have a well thumbed-through album containing ninety photos taken during this pilgrimage. Amongst them is a photo of the war memorial to the 1st Canadian Division, erected on the site of the first gas attack. It is simple but dignified – a tall column of granite merging into the body of a Canadian soldier, his head bent and arms reversed.

I was able to locate the spot where my platoon was entrenched, when the gas cloud came over on April 23rd 1915. The course of the battle, in my mind was, and still is, unclear and I made no attempt to describe it. My wife and I just stood together gazing across the ground that once was no-man’s land, towards Gravenstafel Ridge and beyond. What thoughts passed through my mind I cannot recall.

Our journeyings took us the entire length of the British battle zone from Ypres to the Somme. In some quieter parts there were few traces of warfare, except that the old farms and cottages had given place to new red-tiled buildings. What formerly were picturesque villages, now all looked much alike. Further back, in the billeting areas, nothing appeared to have changed. Those who lived there had picked up the threads of their former lives and life was again tranquil.

Contrasting with such places were areas, which probably can never be restored. In particular the battlefields of the Somme, where in 1922, little more than the filling-in of shell-holes on the roads and the recovery of many thousands of bodies into war cemeteries had been attempted. Every-where broken trenches, now overgrown with vegetation, scarred the country, with an occasional up-ended tank protruding. Near Thiepval we were warned by the War Graves Commission workmen, not to proceed any further. The process of exhumation was not a pleasant sight and the going was almost impossible with our bikes. We had seen enough. This much fought over ground of some 1000 sq. miles contains more war cemeteries than one who has not visited the Somme could appreciate.

Having completed our pilgrimage to the British front, we took the train (2nd class this time) stopping off at Douai, Valenciennes, Mons to take photographs with my V.P.K. (Vest Pocket Kodak) which never let me down. Then on to Brussels, Louvain, Malines, Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges and finally Ostende. By this time we had exhausted our last roll of film, but satisfied with what we had been able to record.

We sailed on S.S. Princess Elisabeth, a small ferryboat, carrying a deck cargo of fruit and about one hundred passengers. It looked likely to be a rough crossing, for everything on deck was tarpaulined and roped down. Our bicycles they lashed to the taffrail and passengers were advised to keep in the salon. It was certainly the worst crossing I had experienced, but neither Ethel nor I was seasick – just a bit squirmish! Our bicycles were drenched with rain and surf, which fortunately removed most of the contents of other peoples’ tummies, blown from the deck above.

The hard cobbled verges to the roads of France and Belgium play havoc with bikes. Ethel’s had shed both mudguards and I was glad to see dry roads when we reached London. We rattled happily along Vauxhall Bridge Road on the last lap back to Streatham and home. Before resuming our narrative at West Chiltington I should mention a contribution to ‘The Queen’s Doll’s House’ by the magic circle.

This fabulous doll’s house, some six feet long was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens R.A., famous for the Cenotaph and the R.C. Cathedral in Liverpool. Craftsmen from all over the British Isles and even from abroad had given of their skills in constructing the house and its magnificent contents.

The Magic Circles contribution was a cabinet containing a dozen or so conjuring tricks, each a perfect working model. Everything in the house had to be to the scale of 1 inch to the foot. In due course we assembled together a miniature opera hat, made by the Gibus Company, ivory billiard balls, silver Chinese rings, a sliding die box, silk handkerchiefs etc. I forget them all now. I undertook to make a 3 ½ inch high Queen Anne Cabinet with bevelled glass sides and door. To ensure authenticity, I took a number of photographs from the Victoria and Albert Museum. The materials used were Honduras Mahogany and satin wood for the inlay. The tools were a small very fine-toothed saw, Archimedean drill, scalpels, tweezers, files, sandpaper and French polish. On the glass door was engraved the insignia of the Magic Circle – the signs of the Zodiac. When finished it was vetted by Sir Edward Lutyens and the presentation made by the President of the Magic Circle, the Duke of Somerset.

A personal letter from Her Majesty, Queen Mary, expressing her appreciation and thanks now hangs in the Magic Circle Headquarters. A month or so later, I received the gold badge of a Member of the Inner Magic Circle.

In May1915 our second child was born – Robert Ashley. He would be a year old when we moved down to West Chiltington, from where we now take up our story again.

Chapter 12

LIFE IN THE COUNTRY

All our lives having been spent in suburbia, moving with our young family into a country village was quite an upheaval. The plunge was taken without weighing up what we should be losing against that which we might gain. Our cottage was supplied with neither gas nor electricity; water was pumped from a well in the garden and there was no drainage. These did not deter us, for we gained and independence and freedom from the unnatural conventionalities imposed by life in a suburban society, where one lived cheek by Jowl with neighbours, not necessarily of one’s choosing. What we did not expect was that the villagers should regard us as ‘foreign invaders’ and the process of integration into the community would not be easy. Anyone naming their house ‘Qu’Appelle’ must be a bit crazy! Let me say right away that the few ‘gentry’ accepted us at once and we were soon on visiting terms with several charming families.

West Chiltington is an isolated village charming and unspoilt. Our cottage was about a quarter mile from the centre and located on top of a hill, which gave wonderful views across the valley of the South Downs and the surrounding countryside. There was one general store, which served also as a post office and gossip centre. The pub vied with the church in popularity, certainly on those days when the Horsham Hunt met in the village – the publican was an ex- huntsman.

The church, a hundred yards away is worth describing as it played a not unimportant part in our lives. By the lynch gate were the remains of the old stocks. The fine porch was definitely Norman, though the interior arches were of the Perpendicular Period. An unusual feature was a ‘Lepers squint’, a tunnel through a main buttress, through which lepers could follow the service from the outside.

I must add a word about the unconventional rector and his rectory. When we arrived in the village, the incumbent was the Rev. Caldecott, M.A. he was regarded by the villagers almost as a squire. The women curtsied and the men doffed their caps when they met. The Rev. Caldecott, or his wife, had considerable private means and he maintained the life of a country gentlemen, with a butler, gardener and chauffer and two maids. It was his practise every evening to dress for dinner, whether with guests or en famille.

The rectory was a large house with extensive gardens, separated from the church by the Rectory Field. It was here that each summer the Flower and Baby show were held. It was usual for the rector to win a majority of the prizes – thanks to his gardener. At the first Baby Show, we entered our son, Robert, then 18 months old. He was awarded first prize, which event had some effect in breaking down any village indifference to us.

Colonel Kensington, the rector’s churchwarden. Welcomed us most cordially on our first visit to the church and we were soon on friendly terms.

At a local political meeting held in our shopping centre, Storrington, I first met Derek Kirby, the son of a wealthy Hatton Garden diamond merchant. Derek lived about two miles away and had a small estate, on the road to Coolham. He was about 27, married with two charming children and had a trained light baritone voice. He was very good-looking, not unlike Jack Buchanan. In the course of conversation he commented on the lack of community amenities in the district and invited me to his place to chat over possibilities. The result was the formation of The Chequers Concert Party. Originally it consisted of Derek, Ethel and me with two local 17-year olds – Evelyn and Joyce with Vi Barnes (Joyce’s Mother) as pianist. Ethel incidentally was a silver medallist of the Guildhall School of Music, with considerable experience as a concert artiste. We all had to be adaptable to take on any role. I was pushed, with little persuasion into the producer’s chair. The four girls wore bodices and short flared skirts made from black and white chequered material, while the men wore evening dress.
We were strictly amateur making no charge, but accepting a donation to a specific charity. After our opening show a the village hall, Storrington, engagements from surrounding villages were plentiful, but we limited our shows to not more than one per month, My business came first and I was sometimes away for a night when visiting the more remote parts of my territory.

With this venture well launched, why not try to form a church choir? I had studied that most excellent booklet “Basic Choir-Training” by Edred Wright, the director of music at King’s School, Canterbury and was confident that I could weld any reasonable group of singers into a choral unity.
The organ had one manual and two octaves of pedals with four or five stops. It was hand blown. The organist was our concert party pianist – Vi Barnes, who was scared to use the pedals. The first thing was to get the rector’s approval. Without any encouragement or enthusiasm he agreed to let me try. First I visited the schoolmaster, whom I new had two likely sons. They readily agreed and succeeded in persuading the publican’s son to join as well. Evelyn and Joyce, both of whom lived in the village, were easily enlisted. With Ethel and four other ladies she managed to interest, we now had a nucleus of sopranos and contraltos. With myself, I soon had six men lined up – Mr Gooch, who ran the general store with his 20- year old son, Stan, together with the school master, elected to sing bass, while one other and I made up the tenor line. Derek, I was sorry, was not available. Being a member of the choir at Thakeham, an adjoining village.

With Vi Barnes as our ‘organist’, we gathered together in the church for our first meeting. Although our goal was only that of a village choir, I wanted it to be a good one.

I had profited by the good training I had received as a choirboy and was inspired by the vision of Edred Wright as to what choral singing should be. His methods, his principals should be also mine. I, therefore, drew up a progressive series of training, each session to add something to that already acquired. Firstly I emphasised that offering oneself as a chorister should be regarded as a privilege and that training should be taken seriously. I was fortunate in having at least one good sight-reader in each part and the training programme produced, in a short time, a ‘team’ rather than the motley collection of voices with which we began. Much of our time was spent on the Psalms and their intelligent pointing, so often ignored by many choirs. I believe we found inspiration from a couplet from ‘Hamlet’ with which Edred Wright concludes his booklet and which I quoted frequently –

‘My words fly up, thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go’

This couplet had no small influence on the sincerity of everything we sung, even ‘Amens’ and the responses.

As the weeks passed our numbers steadily grew, though by now I asked for an audition before admission. One ‘awkward’ voice can spoil the unanimity of a choir and once admitted can be difficult to get rid of.

Two years passed before I considered we were ready to attempt a simple work like Stainer’s ‘Crucifixion’, which I felt was quite ambitious enough for a village choir. By this time we were fortunate in the arrival of a delightful personality (I wish I could remember his name) – a London barrister, a churchman, a bass baritone and, above all, a musician. At weekends he stayed with his two maiden sisters in a delightful old stone cottage in a valley below us. Rumour associated this cottage with smugglers, there being a trap-door which concealed steps down into dingy cellars.
The ‘Crucifixion’ calls for two principle soloists – a tenor and a bass. I had no alternative but to sing the tenor solos myself and took a course of lessons to extend my upper register without straining. Our barrister friend should be my bass soloist, to which he agreed after some persuasion. I was now able to start rehearsals of the choral parts. With much patience the work began to take shape. Stainer introduces a high dissonant chord to represent the fortissimo shout of the crowd – ‘Crucify him’. This gave us real trouble. I could have persisted to get it right, but in the end decided to let the choir shout the words together, followed by a very brief silence. The effect was dramatic, it was electrifying, but not what Stainer had intended and so I apologise to him for the liberty taken. It was my strong sense of the dramatic possibility at such a point that must be my excuse.

Good Friday, when we were to perform the ‘Crucifixion’, was a few weeks away and I was getting desperate to find a capable organist. Vi Barnes had served us well on the piano during rehearsals, but was no organist and lacked that sympathetic understanding that I and the choir had established in the work.

At the eleventh hour Derek came to the rescue. He introduced me to Walter Sumner, who was employed by the B.B.C. as a controller of classical programmes. In other words he manipulated the knobs that controlled the dynamics of the music. His job was exacting and demanded the services of an exceptional musician. Such a one was Walter Sumner. He was not only a brilliant pianist, but also a most competent organist. His musical talent he inherited from his father – an operatic basso-profundo. The family lived at Thakeham, though Walter, of necessity, maintained a flat in London, coming home most weekends. He was probably ten years my junior. We met at his home and a more charming fellow I have rarely met. I explained my problem and, to my great relief, he agreed to play for us. He could only fit in one Sunday foe rehearsals. I told him of the limitations of our organ, but that did not deter him and he declined to accept any fee. On the afternoon of Palm Sunday he ran through all the solo parts, came back to my place for tea and in the evening attended a full last rehearsal of the complete work.

What he produced from our funny little organ was a revelation to me and so inspired the choir that the ‘Crucifixion’ at West Chiltington was lifted on to a new plane. Walter and I were always in complete sympathy and he never questioned my interpretation, whatever he may have thought.

The choir, for this performance, was about twenty-four strong and well balanced. I massed them all on the north side of the chancel, with extra chairs in front of the choir stalls. I and my fellow soloist were next to the organ and faced the choir, unseen by the congregation and the best place from which to conduct.

The ‘Crucifixion’, as written, had five hymns for congregational participation. These I felt intruded on the continuity of the work and I accordingly omitted three of them, leaving the oratorio to build up to its dramatic pianissimo final phrase – the dying sigh – ‘And he gave up the ghost’.

We gave our performance on the evening of Good Friday to a packed church. It was offered as an act of worship and the rector, after an introductory prayer, asked that there should be no applause. At the conclusion he pronounced the benediction and the congregation dispersed silently.

I have enlarged on this particular incident as being the one which had the greatest influence on the village during my stay in West Chiltington. Thereafter the congregation considerably increased.

Another notable event, in so far as West Chiltington was concerned, was the presentation of A.A. Milne’s ‘The Dover Road’ by the de Crespigny Players. While living at Norbury, I had been closely Associated with this dramatic society and they were all my friends. Having recently produced ‘The Dover Road’, I invited the company to come down and put it on at our village hall. It was a preposterous idea, for we had no facilities for staging a play in our bare hall. True there was a wall to wall platform at one end, but nothing else, not even electric light, merely oil lamps. Through life I have had a propensity for finding a solution to the ‘impossible’ and here certainly was a challenge.

The play is set in the lounge hall of a high-class hotel on the Dover Rd. When, on the night, the curtains parted, there was a gasp of incredulity and a burst of applause which greeted the stage picture. How was it achieved? By the cooperation of many good friends, particularly Colonel Kensington. The local carpenter – he was also on occasion the village undertaker and on Sundays rang the church bells – he built the proscenium and a framework from which to hang a curtain surround, generously provided by one of the residents. The front curtains we borrowed from the village hall at Storrington and stage lighting was provided by four headlamps and 12-volt batteries, all cunningly concealed. We decided to present the play in aid of the local Nursing Association. Which covered a number of surrounding villages and would, therefore, ensure a wide patronage. It was intended to make it a real ‘pucker do’.

The stage furnishings and props were all supplied from his house by Colonel Kensington, who spared no effect in providing a very fine setting.

On a Saturday afternoon, the company arrived. A cavalcade of three cars drove through the village, to the wide-eyed bewilderment of the villagers and pulled up outside my humble cottage. We had previously extended it by the addition of a large living room, built on the back, with an open brick fireplace where once stood a shed with an old-fashioned copper and used as a wash house. Mrs. Kensington and Ethel served tea, cucumber sandwiches etc. under somewhat cramped conditions to a very jolly gathering.

Tickets at ten shillings each had been sold out, mostly, I confess, to the local ‘gentry’ (horrid word and of little consequence today). Two rows of benches at the back at two shillings were sparsely occupied by a few curious villages.

The play, a comedy was brilliantly acted, despite the occasional pattering of raindrops on the corrugated iron roof. These developed into a cloudburst, which delayed the opening of Act II for some fifteen minutes, speech being impossible to hear. The audience was imprisoned and had no alternative but to stick it out in good spirit. The play finished to rapturous applause, many curtain calls and bouquets for the three ladies in the cast, generously provided by the Colonel. After the show the company was lavishly entertained to supper by Mrs. Clarke (the mother of Mrs. Kensington) and broke up at midnight with a two–hour drive before them back to London. The Nursing Association received a substantial boost to their funds, acknowledged with grateful thanks.

Living in the country, with only the village school available, the education of our children presented somewhat of a problem. For the first few months Jean had lessons with a Miss. Barlow in the village, but this was only temporary and not very satisfactory arrangement. My sisters came to the rescue, however, and offered to take Jean as a boarder in their day and boarding school in Dulwich – Glenshee House School. Jean’s cousin, Audrey of the same age, joined the school at the same time and both completed their education there – and did well. When Robert was five or six, he joined them for the first few years of his schooling. The holidays they spent with us and several weekends each term. It was quite the happiest arrangement and set them off to a good start in life.

Chapter 13

A MOMENTOUS DECISION

It was in the early thirties that I was faced with perhaps the most momentous decision of my life. On the one hand I was approaching 40, was secure in my employment and life at home and in the community was very happy. On the other hand what did the future hold? What were the prospects for one in my disposition to acquire any distinction in life? I had no acedemic qualifications. True I had risen in the world of magic to M.I.M.C. and had a natural bent for inventing. Neither of these could I put to my advantage as the representative of a firm of wholesale grocers, however eminent that firm might be.

For many years I had a great admiration for David Devant, now living in retirement at Hove. In my youth he could well have been my ‘hero’. On the professional stage in England there was, as far as I knew, no one of his eminence and popularity in presenting the ‘impossible’ in so natural a way that it defied detection. He, too, was also a gentleman. I hope that does not sound snobbish. He was not a great showman like Houdini or Chung Ling Soo, but I regard him as a perfectionist in his method of presentation.

The problem that persisted in my mind was as to the wisdom of abandoning my somewhat humdrum employment for the more risky prospect of a life on stage, with its possible rewards – two extremes. I was neither encouraged nor discouraged in discussing the problem with my wife. Our children were contentedly engaged at school for several years and did not materially affect our deliberations. It was probably Derek Kirby who finally tipped the scales and removed the possibility of any financial risk to me. Derek’s home and farming commitments ruled out any idea of going on tour with us, but he was willing to capitalise the venture with an initial £1000, which was our estimate for promoting a touring revue company, starring a spectacular magical act.

It was a leap into the dark and had I been ten years younger I would have taken the leap with less apprehension. As it was I carried on my job for a few months, while probing and planning. I absorbed ‘The Stage’ every week, which introduced me to the Theatrical Agents for contact with artistes, to Musical Publishers, whom I found only too willing to supply band parts for any of their numbers, to Theatre circuits, Scenic Artists etc. At the same time I was planning in my mind the name under which I would perform. True I had much to do and much to learn, but eventually the decision was made and I resigned from Joseph Travers & son.

For years I had assumed the name of Basil Baxter for professional engagements. Basil Green could be anybody or nobody and I liked the alliteration of my stage name.

I opened negotiations with theatrical printers to produce a large poster to portray ‘speed’. I gave them a sketch I had made of a great luminous comet against a night sky. Sitting astride at the front was a Chinaman in flowing robes, hanging on for dear life. Behind him, stretched out to the end of the tail, were the rest of the principals and dancing troupe, clinging to each other to prevent falling off. The comet was in a nose dive, suggesting great speed. The effect of the poster they produced was stunning. It was a three-colour job and left plenty of space for print.

I will not detail all the preliminaries of casting, rehearsing, staging and the two try-out shows we put on at Swanage and Exmouth Pier Theatres, but pass on to our proper First Night at the Theatre Royal, Bristol. It was exciting and encouraging to see the hoardings announcing;

Baxter’s Productions
Present

HULLO SPEED

Featuring

CHANG KOO

the inscrutable
in his
Magical Mélange

The company consisted of;
Billy Rowland – comedian
Louis Roberts – his feed
Winifred Ward – Soubrette
Sammy Curtis – Big Boots Dancer
Soprano soloist
Chang Koo & 2 assistants
Troupe of 8 dancing girls
Wardrobe Mistress (my wife)
Musical Director
Stage Manager
Advance Publicity Man

Later we added a troupe of juveniles. We had spent about £800 on mounting the show and after a good ‘press’ from Bristol had no difficulty in booking the show for many weeks ahead. Ultimately it ran for a full year, despite the pantomime season, which reduced greatly the number of dates available. The following year we changed the show to ‘SPEED LIMIT’ with a largely new cast, but kept the Chang Koo act with new illusions. The third show, the following year, was ‘A CLEAN SWEEP’. This was completely recast and even more spectacularly mounted. The final scene being in Piccadilly Circus, with the Eros statue and all the moving Electric signs. It was during the run of this revue that our third child, Gillian was born at Worthing. I was playing at Kings Lynn when the welcome telegram arrived and dashed back over the weekend to see my wife and the new arrival.

The ‘Talkies’ had already arrived and theatres and music halls were being converted, till it became impossible to book dates. This was the end of variety and revues and, for me, the end of my stage career. I can remember our last two weeks at the Palace, Bristol and the Bedford, Camden Town, since taken over by the B.B.C. the management showed little interest in us, going all out to publicize the new ‘wonder show’ – talking pictures. Today television is taking its toll on the Talkies.

Before leaving the stage, it might be interesting to record some of the illusions which Chang Koo presented, on the 1915 version in which Omer was the ‘victim’. ‘The Floating Girl’ was probably the most spectacular. In the past this had been done in many ways, but always the hoop passed over the body twice. Chang Koo levitated the girl to about six feet from the ground, took a hoop from the audience and passed it ONCE only over the body, thus ‘proving’ it was floating without support. A deputation of three from the magic Circle came up to Bradford to see the act for themselves. After the show they came round to my dressing- room. Although they were on the right track, there was one factor which they could not account for. This I kept to myself.

‘ The Portrait comes to Life’ was a daring illusion, dependent on split second timing. A life-size portrait of a girl in canvas was inspected. It was then placed in a frame, suspended four feet from the stage. Steps were placed in front, which Chang Koo mounted, held out his two hands to the portrait and brought the girl out of the picture, on to the stage, leaving a hole in the canvas, which previously her painting had filled.

‘ Passing a girl visibly through a sheet of plate glass’. A slender stand, six feet high and a sheet of ½” plate glass are inspected. The glass is bolted to the top of the stand. Steps are placed so the girl can stand on the glass top. Above her is a rope, which she grasps. Without any cover the rope is slowly lowered as the girl passes through the glass to the ground. The glass is then unbolted and attention drawn to a 1-inch hole in the centre, to allow the rope to pass through. ‘The Elastic Girl’. The girl lies on a bench and is measured. She is only 5 feet 2 inches tall. A rope is tied round her ankles and is placed over her middle. Two members of the audience each take a rope and pull gently. The girl is seen to stretch till she measures six feet. The tension on the ropes is released and the girl contracts to her natural size. The barrel is removed and the girl is none the worse for her ordeal. Two only of these five illusions were included in any one performance, which also presented smaller items of ‘Chinese’ magic. The stage was colourful with rhythmic movements from the troops of 8 girls dressed as Coolie Boys and the musical director had scored a dramatic musical accompaniment, which created a mystical atmosphere from the moment the curtain went up. Chang Koo spoke never a word, nor showed any sign of emotion. He remained inscrutable and out of this world.

Life with a touring revue Company can at times be very hectic, particularly when playing twice-nightly dates. Unlike a Variety Show, when one does their act and is finished, with a Revue each is a member of a team and liable to be on stage half a dozen times during the show, with continual costume changes and sometimes even make-up.

Take for example a typical Monday. The first man up is the touring stage manager. By 8 am he will be down at the station yard with transport, to unload the scenery truck, with help from the stage staff; transport everything to the theatre and unload. He then meets the resident stage manager to find out how many sets of lines are available for hanging backcloths and borders. There are rarely enough, except in the bigger theatres in the cities. He will have to compromise, but we leave him to his problems. Our Musical Director arrives with resident band at 10.30 am for Band Call, at which the company is expected to attend. The wardrobe Mistress and the troupe are issuing and ironing their costumes. The Principals are unpacking their personal skips and arranging their dressing rooms, already allocated by the Stage Manager. The deadening off the backcloths. The flats are being stacked in sequence against the PS or OP walls (Prompt side or opposite Prompt). The electrician has been working on the lighting plot and all should be ready for exactly adjusting the lighting for the Chang Koo act, which is dropped into position. When satisfactory this set is struck and the opening set up for Scene 1 is dropped in.

It has been a busy morning and the company is now free for lunch and forty winks.

During the school holidays jean and Robert joined us on tour and made instant friends of the company. Very soon they knew the show by heart and conducted their own ‘rehearsals’.

Our journeying over the years took us to every part of England and Wales – from the Empire, Southampton to the Palace, Newcastle, where we played to capacity houses most nights. The queue in the Haymarket often stretched up the side road, past the stage door – a most encouraging sight.

By the end of the run of ‘Hullo Speed’ we were well known. Music publishers bombarded us to include their latest hit numbers. One publisher took a half-page in the ‘Stage’ announcing (without consenting me) that “Basil Baxter of ‘Hullo Speed’ says … … … … …about their songs” and included my photograph! Booking our subsequent shows proved a very different problem from our early experiences with ‘HULLO SPEED’. Managements now approached us, offering their vacant dates.

With the end of ‘A Clean Sweep’ I asked myself if those three and a half years had been worth while. My wife and I had lived in a totally different world. We used a very different language and friendships were mostly artificial. One has to realise that between the old-stager and the newcomer – the true professional and the amateur – there exists a chasm not readily bridged. True I was the ‘Boss’ and my wife and I were always ‘Mr. and Mrs. Baxter’, not from any aloofness but rather a deference we accepted and made little attempt to break down.

On the last night we held a party on the stage at the Bedford, Camden Town, when Derek joined us and we all parted good friends. It was not until the Second World War that I again met one of the company on the stage of Drury Lane Theatre – Louis Roberts.

Chapter 14

WHAT TO DO NOW

My father died at Seaford in his middle sixties during the run of ‘Hullo Speed’. His funeral coincided with a matinee at Merthyr Tydvil and it was quite impossible for me to get away. I felt his loss very much, but Chang Koo that night was as inscrutable as ever.

It was three years later that the final curtain came down and for the last6 time as far as I then knew. I had fortunately saved a bit, but it seemed that for the third time in my life, a change of livelihood faced me.

After Gillian was born, she and her mother stayed in rooms near Glenshee House School to be near our other two children. It was there that I joined them, pending a more permanent arrangement.

My brother Stephen, who had done good work as advanced publicity man with ‘Hullo Speed’ was then living with his wife and two boys at Shiplake-on-Thames. He was always keen on amateur dramatics and then producing ‘Daddy Longlegs’. He asked me to spend a week with them and paint the scenery. I had nearly completed the backcloth, when I suddenly felt very ‘groggy’. By midnight I was on the operating table at Marlow Cottage Hospital. All I now remember was inhaling chloroform and the blessed relief from the pains within. A burst appendix had turned to peritonitis and but for the skill of a surgeon hurriedly summoned from reading in the middle of the night, I was certainly a ‘goner’. Six weeks later I rejoined my family for a period of convalescence till I fully recovered and ready to earn my living again.

What qualification had I to offer? Accountancy in the world of insurance, Salesmanship in the grocery world, three and half years as an actor-manager and some distinction in the world of magic. Too varied to suggest stability.

At the Marble Arch end of Oxford Street opposite Mount Royal Hotel was a five-storey building in the course of conversion to a permanent Trade Exhibition. It was to be known as British Industries House, where buyers, largely from overseas could contact competing British manufacturers under one roof under ideal conditions. The industries covered a wide range from the Brewery business to Hospital Equipment – from Tools to Toys.

The whole of the fourth floor was allocated to a club for Senior Executives, Sales Managers and those holding top places in Industry. It provided not only a conference room, sumptuously appointed lounges, but a restaurant to seat 300, with well appointed kitchens and store rooms. The whole project was financed by a leading London Insurance Company and controlled by a distinguished Board of Directors.

I heard that a Club Secretary was to be appointed and I applied for the job. I was interviewed and found myself on the Short List. A second interview by the Board followed and, Heaven knows why but I was selected. True I was within the age limits and had run an officers’ club in France and met, during my travels, many influential people, but what was the deciding factor I was never told. I had unimpeachable character references and probably impressed my interrogators by prompt and frank answers the their questions.

I took over the job while the decorators and furnishers were still in possession, but found plenty to do interviewing and engaging Head Chef, head Waiter and Bar Manager, leaving them to engage their own subordinates. I also found a suitable personal secretary.

A fashion theatre on the third floor was envisaged and I drew up a set of plans, using my instinct for invention. The whole setting could be changed by one person in a couple of seconds from blue brocade to sparkling silver. The elaborate lighting set was designed and supplied by the Strahd Electric Company and controlled from a console from the back of the theatre. My plans, with slight modification, were accepted.

Once officially opened the club membership increased rapidly from a luncheon club to the meeting place from many trade conferences and dinners, while throughout the day the lounges and bar were well patronised. Within two years the card index of members contained over 3,000 names.

It was during 1935 that H.R.H. The Prince of Wales made a tour of inspection of British Industries House. It was anticipated that the resulting publicity would encourage manufacturers and buyers to use fully the facilities provided. On the staff of B.I.H. was one of the prince’s intimate circle-Raoul Casares. It was his good relationship through which the visit had been arranged. Incidentally the prince was godfather to one of Casares’ boys.

The day arrived and the Board, headed by the Earl of Elgin waited in the foyer to welcome H.R.H. Five minutes late he appeared from the rear of the building accompanied by his equerry and my brother Stephen, who at the time was a floor manager at B.I.H. he had found the prince entering by a door at the back of the building ‘to dodge the crowd at the front of the building’ was given as the excuse. Formality gave way to apologies and smiles all round.

The building had six lifts, three of which were reserved for the Royal party. These took them from the Brewery Dept. in the basement, through successive floors to the Fashion Theatre. Finally they arrived at the club, where Casares introduced me as the Secretary. After signing the Visitor’s Book the party passed through the lounge with its loungers, inspected the restaurant and kitchens and congratulated the Head Chef on the spruce condition of his equipment.

In my wallet I had put the six of diamonds, signed (Edward P.) at Camblain l’Abbé. I managed, through his equerry, to show it to the Prince and asked ‘Do you remember the occasion on which you signed this, Sir?’ He looked at it with puckered brow, hesitated as his mind travelled back to the war days. ‘Were you with the Canadians during the war?’ he asked. ‘Yes, sir, at the Corps Headquarters in Camblain l’Abbé’ I replied, ‘Camblain l’Abbé! yes! I remember. That was quite an evening. You fooled me completely’. I recovered the six of diamonds and glasses were replenished.

A year later the Prince of Wales was to become King Edward VIII. The eleven months of his reign, terminating in his abdication can never be forgotten, but they are outside my personal experiences. Each day on my way to B.I.H I passed 145 Piccadilly, the home of the Duke of York and his family. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of the two young princesses playing in their garden, visible from Hamilton Place. Little did I think then that the older girl would one day be crowned Queen Elizabeth II.

May 12th 1937 was the day appointed for the coronation of Edward VIII, but it was his brother Albert who was crowned on that day as King George VI.

What a day it was! The mile-long procession from Westminster Abbey back to Buckingham Palace wound its way through the flag-bedecked West End and Oxford Street, passing British Industries House, with its many-windowed five storeys. These are forwarded a perfect view of the long procession which accompanied the Gold State Coach, drawn by four pairs of Windsor Greys, each with its red and gold liveried postillion, bearing the newly consecrated King and his Queen.

Every seat in every window had been either sold or reserved for the Directors, their invited guests and B.I.H staff. I and my family, except Gillian who was only five, slept the previous night in beds in the Hospital Section and shared a window on the Club floor with other senior staff. Some 600 cold luncheons (either lobster or turkey salads) were served in the club. I had some sympathy for the public who lined the kerbside throughout the night, but who made merry with patriotic and popular songs of the day, despite the chilly night which preceded a dull and sunless Coronation Day during the reign of Edward VIII the throne trembled, but on this Coronation Day the stability of the Monarchy was restored.

As one entered British Industries House by the main Oxford Street doors, one’s attention was arrested by a large mural on the facing wall. It had been designed and executed by an R.A, who’s name I am now unable to recall. The mural depicted ‘British Industry’, the background being an unmistakeable painting of British Industries House, in front of which was a large statue of Britannia. The foreground was filled with ‘men at work’. A scientist with his microscope, a helmeted minor, a blacksmith at his forge, a docker, a metal-worker with his lathe, a carpenter, a technical draftsmen, a plumber, an electrician, a potter at his wheel, a glass-blower, a bricklayer. In all some twenty or more skills and trades were represented.

I mention this, as I reproduced it in the Fashion Theatre as a living tableau, to be the finale of a show we put on, following a Christmas staff dinner. All the ‘men at work’ were drawn from the staff and were dressed and made up as near as possible to the character they represented in the original. The figure of Britannia was a stunning looking girl, dressed as in the picture and standing on a four-foot high plinth. Elgar’s Land of Hope and Glory provided the music and as the curtains parted, there was a moment of electrifying silence from the distinguished audience, broken by cheering and rapturous applause and ultimate calls for ‘Producer’. The secret had been well kept and the backcloth 20’ x 12’. I could only paint after the staff had left and only the night watchman were left. I worked on the floor in and empty part of the basement, from an enlarged photograph 10” x 6”. To get the perspective correct was difficult working so close to the canvas on the floor, thus seeing so little of the whole at any one time. To get over this I squared the photo into 1-inch squares and the canvas into 2-foot squares. Using a length of wood divided into two-foot spaces, each corresponded to 1/10th of an inch on the photo, I was able to plot all essential points on the enlarged canvas. I could find no fault with the finished canvas when hung vertically.

During my years at British Industries House, we had moved to Wallington. There we found an empty converted coach-house on the banks of the River Wandle. It acquired its name – Bridgecot – being detached from the larger property, Bridge house. It lay behind two cottages and was approached by an alleyway. One went round the building to find the porched entrance, facing the large garden, which included a tennis court and apple orchard. From the porch one looked across a stone-paved sunken garden complete with sundial to a rose-covered pergola. A high vine-covered wall was the boundary on the north and the River Wandle flowed along the south side. On the lawn we played Badminton and around the garden was the craziest of crazy golf courses. The glory of the garden was a massive Beech tree, a landmark in the district.

It was while we lived here that I took up water-colour painting, prompted by intriguing aspects within the house, the garden and Baddington Park, which one entered across the road. Previously I had only worked in pen and ink and still have a picture of the interior of west Chiltington Church.

For the moment I have digressed, but I must give an impression of the delightful interior of Bridgecot. Its feature was the hallway, paved with small rectangular polished red bricks. An angled stairway led onto a balcony running round three sides of the house, thus exposing the beamed roof. A passage and door led off the balcony, giving access to the four bedrooms and bathroom. The dividing wall between two bedrooms I knocked down, making one large principal bedroom, into which I constructed built in furniture and alcoves for twin beds.

Robert was now at Wallington Grammar School and he and his friends made full use of the numerous facilities the grounds offered. During the school holidays and a t weekends, Bridgecot became a popular rendezvous.

The one thing we missed in the house was a good workshop. Fortunately between the house and the high wall on the north, there were some twenty feet of spare ground. Here Robert and I decided to build a lean-to shed against the wall. In Croydon we found a builders yard full of second hand timber from demolished buildings and bought all the floor joists, roof timbers, floor boarding, scantling for the wall frames, three windows and skylight and door necessary to build a 20’ x 12’ shed, with cedar wood weatherboarding for the wall, which we purchased new. Having levelled out the ground, foundations were laid, consisting of brick piles on cement bases. The building, when finished, was as good as any professionally built shed and had cost us under £30! It served many purposes apart from a workshop. During the winter it housed all the crazy golf equipment, tennis and badminton requisites. It served as a Guard House for the Home Guard and, after the war, was the birthplace of Wally Twist Ltd.

Chapter 15

THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Events in Europe in 1938 grew ever more ominous until March 1939 all hopes of peace vanished as Hitler announced ‘Czechoslovakia has ceased to exist’. Poland, Lithuania and Albania were all involved and ‘peace in our time’ which Chamberlain brought back from Munich was forgotten as the nation faced up to the inevitability of war. Civil Defence was organised throughout the country, gas masks by the million were manufactured and distributed to the public.

On Sunday, Sept.3rd as dawn lightened the skies, it hued a warm, sunny day, for England was still at peace, though threatened by the clouds of war. Jean and the two younger children, unaware of foreboding evil strolled through the Beech Avenue in the park to Beddington Church. But Ethel and I remained behind to listen foe any news on the radio. At eleven o’clock we heard that England was at war with Hitlers Germany. Within fifteen minutes sirens shrieked their warning. I gathered up the children’s gas masks and ran across the park to meet them. Everywhere people were scurrying for their homes.

Somewhat apprehensive we waited, but not for long for instead of the drone of enemy planes came the sirens sounding the ‘All Clear’. That night the lights went out over England and a blackout reigned for almost six years.

Had the sirens been a false alarm or a testing of public reaction, we never knew. A rigid censorship had been impose, which made acceptance of official announcements suspect. For eight months a ‘phoney’ war existed, until the miracle of Dunkerque and the evacuation from France of what was left of the British Army.

Following the invasion of Holland, Belgium and France, England would surely be the next objective of Hitler’s domination of Europe. The German plans were all set, but the English Channel and the R.A.F. stood in Hitler’s way. Invasion was accordingly postponed, giving England time to mobilise all its manpower, resources and energies in order to defend itself and ultimately to turn the tide.

The purpose for which British Industries House had been formed no longer existed and in a short time its doors were closed and I was again faced with unemployment. In 1939 I was 47 years of age and regarded as beyond combat service.

The war office early decided to appoint a director of entertainment for the troops. The impresario behind Drury Lane Theatre – Basil Dean – was their selection and a very energetic one he proved to be. Thus was born E.N.S.A. I still do not know what these Initials stand for. Unemployed actors, actresses and music hall artistes flocked to Drury Lane Theatre to join the organisation, either for service in France or with the troops in England.

Without hesitation I joined the queue at the stage door. What of my family responsibilities. Ethel joined the W.V.S. (Women’s Voluntary Service), Jean enlisted in the A.T.S., while the two younger children Robert 14 and Gillian 7 were still at school.

At the stage door of Drury Lane Theatre, we were admitted in batches of ten and queued up on the bare stage, which was large enough to accommodate two tennis courts. A number of dressing-rooms were used foe interviewing and, in turn, we were directed into one of these. There was no question of being auditioned. My interviewer, a Mr. Collings was unknown to me, but a very pleasant fellow – obviously an old ‘Pro’. A few questions established my bona fides and when I mentioned Baxter’s Promotions, it rang a bell and I was immediately asked if I would be interested in management. I of course was ‘interested’ in anything. “Do you speak French?’ I was asked “ Assai Bien” I replied. That clenched the deal and I was appointed manager of the ‘Eight of Us’, a concert party that had worked together during the summer at Clacton.

The managers job, I was told was that of E.N.S.A.’s representative with the company, to handle all finance and payment of salaries, to ensure the carrying out of all itineraries arranged and be responsible, at all times for the proper conduct of the company. I signed an agreement to this effect. I was told that we should embark for France in three days and on arrival come under the authority of the E.N.S.A. Area Superintendent in Lille. These Area Superintendents (there were three of them at Lille, Amiens and Rheims) were given honorary commissions as Captains, similar to Chaplains and Paymasters.

Let me get back to the ‘Eight of Us’ who were grouped together on the stage. I was ushered across to them and introduced as their touring manager. One of the group recognised me at once – Louis Roberts from ‘Hullo Speed’ days. It was over ten years since we had met, but he greeted me as an old friend and introduced me individually to each of the company – four men and four girls. As civilians we required special passports and military permits. A photographer on stage was kept busy photographing all those bound for France and E.N.S.A. arranged to have passports and permits ready to hand over to me at Victoria Station before the boat train left at 9am. I, therefore, had nothing more to worry about and was free to go home and break the news that I should be away for probably two months. The news was received bravely, as I new it would. Financially the family was provided for, as I had arranged for £8 per week to be paid from my E.N.S.A. salary direct to my wife.
On a bright sunny morning we crossed from Folkestone to Calais. There were only about fifty passengers on board, all civilians. We were the only E.N.S.A. party and compared with the troopship crossings of twenty-five years previous it was more of a pleasure trip. The company were all to young to have seen service in 1914-18 and, for most, it was their first visit to France.

On the dockside was a lorry with its R.A.S.C. driver, holding a large card marked E.N.S.A. This was to be our transport throughout the tour. It had been fitted with upholstered seats and we were reasonably comfortable. The driver, whom we soon got to know as ‘Bill’, handed me a sealed envelope, which gave me the address of the Area Superintendent in Lille and details of our itinerary for the first few days. I had drawn £50 in Francs from E.N.S.A. in London to cover incidental expenses, so off we went to a nearby restaurant and lunched well, with carafes of wine to wash down the omelettes and chips. Refreshed, we set of for our first destination – St Omer. It was only a short run of some forty kilometres. Hotel accommodation had already been arranged and we were soon settled in. We were booked to give two shows at the Public Hall, and I gave a call for 10am for the company to meet in the hotel lounge. Till then we were free to do as we liked. The Public hall seated about 500 and reminded me of the Caisse d’Epargne at Bailleul, except it had a more imposing frontage. As yet I knew nothing of the standard to expect from the ‘Eight of Us’. The matinee proved them to be a tip-top professional company of talented performers, with whom I was proud to be associated. The town was full of troops and, needless to say, the ‘House Full’ sign was posted up soon after the doors were open.

The following day we made for Lille, 60 kilometres nearer Germany, but still no sign of any fighting. War had not touched this part of France and life in Lille was apparently unaffected, except for the presence of the British Army, which brought in additional prosperity.

On this trip I decided to sit in front with the driver, as we were to travel the old familiar route through Hazebrouck, Strazeele, Bailleul and Armentieres, every mile of which I knew well, having covered it on foot fully laden many times during World War 1. How little it has changed! It was the first time I realised I was a veteran amongst ‘youngsters’ and poignant were my thoughts.

How ‘phoney’ it all seemed. The only contact with the enemy was on the French Maginot line far to the south. It was here that British Units were sent for spells, to give them a taste of war conditions. Belgium being neutral, the border with France was closed completely. I saw no signs of trench fortifications. The policy then was to build reinforced cement ‘pill-boxes’ at intervals, manned by machine guns to cover the ground between them. This was the main occupation of the troops, who’s otherwise enforced ‘idleness’ did little to maintain morale. It proved to be a waste of energy and materials, for in the end they were never used. The overwhelming number of German tanks attacked the British Army from the south, sweeping them to their final bridgehead – the beaches of Dunkerque. Again my thoughts run on and I deviate from my story.

The ‘Eight of Us’ made Lille its headquarters for a week, each day visiting a new area from Halluin on the Belgiam border to Carvin in the south, halfway to Arrass. At Halluin the border ran through the main street, across which had been erected a barricade. We were able to chat with the Belgian Sentries, provided we kept to our side of the line. I actually offered an English cigarette to a Belgian, which he accepted gratefully.

Omer and I had kept in touch ever since we had last met in 1922. He was now married and living in Avion, a suburb of Lens. Sunday in Lille being a free day for us, I decided to go and find him and meet his wife. Lens lay about twenty miles south of Lille and was on the bus route to Arrass. I had some difficulty in locating his address, but the surprised welcome I received more then compensated. Jeanne, Omer’s wife, was delightfully French and embraced me as an old friend, while Omer was proud to introduce her and show me round his home. He produced the choicest from his ample cellar and the time passed reminiscing. Recalling incidents of the 1st. World War and all that had happened since those days. Since doing his National Service, Omer had been employed on the railway and now, thanks to his ability, occupied a responsible position. At the end of a well-spent happy day, they saw me back on my bus to Lille.

The tour with the ‘Eight of Us’ lasted well over two months, during which we covered all the old familiar ground south of the Belgian border and parts of France new to me – the areas around Rouen and Rheims. I well remember two pleasant days spent in Dieppe, unspoiled by war and free from English tourists. Later in the war, Dieppe was to be the scene of the catastrophic raid by the Canadian Army. The War Office ‘justified’ this suicidal operation on a heavily defended open beach, as a testing assault for the Normandy landings. The cost of the lesson – a thousand lives!

Only in the larger cities were there theatres and more often we found ourselves playing in an R.A.F. hanger, a local gymnasium and on one occasion, near Rouen, we played in a circus ring. The company always adapted themselves to whatever the conditions, for it was always the audience that counted.

After an evening show we were often invited to a meal and drinks at the officers’ mess – always a jovial occasion. Occasionally I was embarrassed having to placate the hotel staff, when we arrived after midnight and refused the evening meal provided these visits were not encouraged by the E.N.S.A. authorities, but it would have been discourteous and difficult to refuse them. I found no reason to do so. We, as civilians in a war zone, had military permits, but were not subject to military discipline. Good sense controlled our conduct.

At Rheims we stayed at the best hotel – Au Coq d’Or – it was the meeting place in the evenings for young R.A.F.Officers. This was naturally encouraged by the manager, but rumour had that at times he got to chatty with some of them. One morning the Military Police arrived and arrested him. Within a week he had been tried and shot as a spy.

It was while at Rheims that we were invited to visit the cellars of the champagne firm of Moet and Chandon. Sealed doors were opened and we descended into a subterranean series of alleys, accommodating tens of thousands of bottles, each lying on its side, in various stages of maturing. On leaving, after I had expressed our thanks for the interesting tour, we were presented with a Methuselah of a famous vintage – the equivalent of eight litre bottles. At dinner that evening the head waiter skilfully uncorked it and we insisted on sharing it with other guests. Champagne, once opened does not like being re-corked.

The tour with the ‘Eight of Us’ came to an end in the middle of December, so we were able to spend Christmas 1939 at home. I was retained at full salary and told to stand by to take over a new company, due to leave in January. I spent three weeks very happily with my family and visiting parents and friends.

It was shortly after Christmas that I was asked to report to Drury Lane Theatre to receive instructions for my next assignment. The company consisted of a number of individual ‘acts’ who, unlike the ‘Eight of Us’ had not previously worked together as a team. There was therefore no ‘Guv’nor’ to be responsible for the show. E.N.S.A identified them as the ‘Hippodrome’ company and the first time I met them was on the morning of our departure at Victoria Station. An E.N.S.A. representative was there to introduce us all and to see us off. Unfortunately two turned up without their passports, due to some silly hold up we were compelled to leave without them. One of the two was our lady pianist, who also played the accordion and on whom everyone depended. The other was a comic with a tap and acrobatic dance routine. The start of the tour could not have been worse, though the E.N.S.A bloke assured me he would sort things out and see that the two were on the next boat.

On the crossing from Folkestone we got together to sort out a programme, not the easiest thing, ‘pros’ being terribly fussy as to their position on the bill. I had two well-known artistes – Florence Desmond the soubrette and Don Carlos the tenor. Each of these would be a draw on any programme. There was also a Soprano and a husband and wife comedy act and of course the two left behind. Exercising a tactful diplomacy, the sequence was satisfactorily fixed.

Our first destination was Amiens, where we were due to open that same night. On arrival I contacted the E.N.S.A Area Superintendent, who told me it was to late to cancel the show. ‘What! Without a pianist’ I protested. ‘I will get you a pianist’ he replied ‘get your company to the theatre by 6.15 and you can have a half-hour run through. That gave me no alternative. At the theatre I met our pianist - a Corporal from a local unit - in England he had played with a dance band and our much thumbed – through piano scores presented no difficulty, most of them being popular numbers of the time.

We were still to turns short and, although I had not been engaged as a performer, I got hold of pack of cards and put on an impromptu sleight-of-hand turn, which with an extra encore from Don Carlos made up the time.

The following day our two ‘stragglers’ arrived by train from Boulogne and we had a proper ‘band call’ before the evening show. When drawing our nest salaries, I found that three guineas had been added to mine for ‘stepping into the breach’.

The ‘Hippodrome’ company proved a very different proposition from the friendly concert party – the ‘Eight of Us’. The two leads – Florence Desmond and Don Carlos – gave me absolute loyalty and never queried any decision I had to make. But for the rest there was always some petty friction to be sorted out some complaint to settle. Admittedly salaries were far below those earned in peace time, but the nation was a t war and sacrifices were demanded of all. None had seen active service and did not realise how lucky they were. Compared to the troops they were over privileged. On one occasion I told them so and that, for a time, put and end to grousing.

As the weeks passed, aerial warfare in particular increased and once, while at Amiens, we had a ‘date’ at Villers Bretton-eau. I was told to take only mal members as the town was subject to artillery fire. We gave an abridged show in the open air, amidst rumbling artillery, but nothing landed to near. It was when we reached Rheims in April that the war really hotted up, as the enemy launched its offensive, which resulted in the retreat to Dunkerque. Every breakfast time we were visited by raiding planes, which dropped bombs indiscriminately on the town. There was a good basement to our hotel, where the company could take refuge. It was easy to see who were the windy ones. The married double act moved into the basement even before the siren sounded and were a bad influence on the rest of the company. In the end they begged to be sent home. I though it showed a bad spirit and lack of ‘guts’, for the hotel to receive a direct hit in a town the size of Rheims was remote. However I arranged foe them to be sent back to England and was glad to see the back of them and an improvement in moral.

We only spent another week in Rheims before the German tanks broke through at Sedan and refugees came pouring in, many in a pitiable condition. I saw a dead child lying across a pram. All troops were rushed to plug the gap and we were moved across to Rouen. Official bulletins, as usual, minimised the position and the scarcity of tanks to stop the German sweep to the coast. By then many E.N.S.A parties had already been sent back to England, for it was obvious the organisation was coming to an end.

We only did two shows in the Rouen area before air raids increased ultimately the distant rumbling of warfare grew nearer. One night, at about 2 o’clock I was woken by a messenger with instructions to be ready to move out in two hours. I signed the envelope as acknowledgement and hurriedly dressed. Don Carlos was in the same Hotel.

Rouen, though cradled in a semi- circle of hills, did not sleep peacefully that night. Wild rumours travel quickly – “German tanks are approaching the heights on the east” – one is easily prepared to accept the worst. In fact the enemy vanguard was to the north of Rouen and making for coast, to thrust a wedge between the British and French armies. These they ultimately accomplished and Rouen was only occupied with the capitulation of France.

Whatever the situation was, no one except the high command knew. My task was to get my little band back to England without directive or plan. The phoney war was over and a very real one raging.

I found Don Carlos already awake, showed him the message I had been given and told him our rendezvous point – outside the E.N.S.A. office. Taking my torch, for Rouen like the rest of northern France was blacked out, I made the two hundred yards too the hotel where the rest of the company were staying. There was much military activity on the streets and I was stopped by military police, who wished me ‘Good luck’ when I showed them my official message. I banged on the hotel door, opened by the proprietor in dressing-gown. He was naturally annoyed at being disturbed in the middle of the night, but hearing my ‘news’, he calmed down, roused his wife and made for the kitchen and prepared jugs of coffee.

Fortified by strong French coffee, laced with cognac we collected our personal baggage and made for our rendezvous, where our converted lorry and driver were waiting for us. I reported to the E.N.S.A. officer and collected an extra 1000 francs. He also gave me a letter stating that any hotel and shipping charges would be met by E.N.S.A. at Drury Lane Theatre, London. He suggested that I make for Le Harve and there contact the military transport officer. Two girls of the E.N.S.A. staff were added to my party, making us ten in all as, with a sense of relief, we took to the road as dawn was breaking. We were now not only self-dependant but a bit sleepy-eyed, as we followed the road on the north bank of The Seine, as it snaked its way to the Atlantic at Le Havre, 100 kilometres to the west. At Lillebonne we pulled up outside a café for breakfast (coffee and rolls) and to stretch our legs. I thought it was wise to keep my council to myself, rather then to start any alarmist chatter.

On arrival at Harfleur, on the outskirts of Le Havre, a great cloud of smoke covered the dock area, the result, so we were told, of heavy bombing during the night. I and the driver studied our maps and decided we had no alternative but to make for Cherbourg – a further 250 kilometres. To cross the Seine we had to retrace our way about 20 kilometres to the only bridge at Tancarville. We could then proceed via Caen and Bayeux the breadth of Normandy to the Cotentin Peninsular and Cherbourg.

That day we travelled some 300 kilometres in an army lorry, not built for passengers. No wonder nerves became frayed and speculation rife as to the morrow. I was unable to give any insurance, for we were nobody’s responsibility. At Caen, which saw such desperate fighting after the Normandy Landings, we took a long break for lunch and to rest our driver. Finally we reached Cherbourg in the late afternoon. Fortunately our driver new of a café that catered for E.N.S.A. parties and there we were welcomed, while I set off to locate the transport officer at the docks. He was a decent sort, a young captain, who proved most helpful, despite my unusual request for transport to evacuate a party of civilians.

I gathered there was a British merchant ship due to sail for Southampton that evening. He phoned the captain and, after a long harangue, persuaded him to take us aboard. For the last tine we packed into our lorry and were driven down to the docks. I thanked our driver, with a 50-franc tip, and wished him good luck on his journey back to his unit.

The boat proved very small, although it had a little dining –room /lounge and two cabins for passengers. These the ladies took over, while the three men were given blankets and made the best of it in the lounge. It was midnight before the throb of the engines told us we were on our way to England. Once clear of the harbour, it was obvious we were in for a rough passage. It was some three hours later that the engines slowed down and finally stopped. Surely we could not of reached Southampton yet. I went on deck and was amazed to find we were back in Cherbourg. The only information I could get from one of the ship’s officers was ‘I only know we were ordered to return. I cant tell you why’. It was not until dawn that the engines came to life again. The company by now were getting a bit jittery. Once more I went out on deck, others joined me as the dockside slid slowly behind us and we passed between the lighthouses into the open sea for the second time.

Thereafter the voyage was uneventful and we were thankful at last to be steaming up Southampton Water. On the train journey to Waterloo my head ached and I felt really ‘groggy’. Sleep was impossible. At Waterloo I remember nothing except waking up in the Red X room and being told I had collapsed on the platform – diagnosis – exhaustion. I was kept in the Red X room for a couple of hours before being discharged to make my way home to Wallington. The family having no idea I was back in England were shocked at my ghostly, unshaven appearance. A bath, a shave and twelve hours sleep and that was the end of E.N.S.A.

Chapter16

WAR-TIME IN ENGLAND

Chamberlain’s promise of ‘peace in our time’ had dulled the senses of the ‘man in the street’ to the Hitler threat and the imminence of war. The nation, as usual, was unprepared and the first six months of phoney war, without long daily lists of casualties, had created an artificial insensibility to the reality of our situation. Dunkerque changed all that and the Allied armies suffered their greatest defeat. The remnant that survived at Boulogne, at Calais and on the beaches at Dunkerque faced five years in P.O.W. camps. The fortunate ones, those rescued by the ‘little ships’, which to a man answered the call from the Admiralty, arrived back in England, mostly without arms and equipment. Without Artillery and transport, the defence of England relied, not on the decimated army, but, above all on the R.A.F.

France, understandably accused Britain of deserting an alley and soon capitulated.

England feverishly prepared herself for invasion, which surely must follow. Possible landing sites in the south-east were hurriedly protected by mine fields and somewhat crude beach fortifications and were sealed off from the public.

Throughout the country groups of L.D.V.s (Local Defence Volunteers) were formed. On joining the Wallington group, I was issued with a L.D.V. armband and a truncheon. Wearing any old civilian attire, we were a motley gang. The whole set-up was somebody’s bright idea, but completely fanciful.

Throughout the night, we were sent out in pairs to selected vantage points, from which we were expected to give warning of enemy parachutists. I spent one in every three nights with a very pious young man, stuck on the bridge over the railway line at Hackbridge Station. It overlooked Beddington Park and a wide area of open fields to Mitcham Common.

In the eerie hours before dawn, it is strange how the white rump of a stirring cow can be mistaken for the parachute of an enemy spy – but we refrained from reporting these incidents.

The L.D.V.s only lasted a few months, till the birth of the Home Guard put the organisation on a proper military footing. The L.D.V.s were essentially a civilian force and their status therefore, if captured, questionable. They would possibly be treated as spies. The Home Guard, being uniformed, armed and under military discipline was, under the Geneva Convention, entitled to be treated as P.O.W.s.

Having seen active service I was made Platoon Sergeant and the shed in my garden was fitted with bunks and became the Guard Room for the night patrols. Platoon H.Q. was in an empty building, some two hundred yards away next to the ‘Rose and Crown’.

From the very start training was taken seriously and the various section commanders were chosen from War 1 veterans. Men were put through practical grenade throwing, and instruction on the Vickers Machine Gun. There was an issue of one gun per platoon. Close–armed combat was not neglected, in fact bayonet-fighting was considered an essential part of the toughening-up process advocated by Higher Command. Intensive training on the rifle ranges at Caterham meant a ten-mile route march, but these sessions were always the most popular.

Detachments of Home Guard existed in every town and village throughout the country. They, therefore, had the advantage of knowing every yard of their territory. Their main purpose was, in the event of an invasion, to report instantly, to the regular forces, any suspected landings and to delay, by, defensive means, any attempted advances. They were, however, never put to this test, for the only Germans who landed on our shores, apart from spies, were P.O.W.s and the Deputy Fuhrer Hess.

After E.N.S.A’s work in France was finished, I had to find another job. My brother-in-law John Powell was well established as China and fancy goods buyer with British Home Stores and, for war service, had joined the Fire Service and experienced the horrors of the London Fire Blitz. It was he who arranged an interview for me with the Personnel Manager of British Home Stores. With so many of their staff already on active service, there was a number of vacancies. The interview was short, but I was told that all appointments meant starting ay the lowest level – a storeman in one of their branches. The Personnel Manager had started that way, but assured me that I would soon move up the ladder of responsibility.

So it was that I reported to the manager of the Croydon branch of B.H.S., donned the overalls and swept the floor of the stockroom. I also carted goods from the delivery vans, by lift, to their place in the stockroom and from there to the sales floor. After a week or so at these strenuous activities, I discarded my overalls and was initiated into the system of stock control. Within a couple of months I pinned a ‘Supervisors’ badge on my lapel and acted as under-manager, on the way to taking over a store. Before reaching this ‘dizzy height’ I was called to Headquarters in Baker Street and became a ‘merchandiser’ – an intermediary between the buyers and the stores, whose job was to allocate the bulk goods throughout the chain of 70 odd stores, according to their sales record. I was now familiar with the entire process from buying to selling and was appointed (for the duration of the war only) buyer of electrical goods, shades, tools, ironmongery and cutlery. This involved a good deal of travelling to the Midlands and Sheffield. Merchandise was generally in short supply and not therefore a buyers market.

I was still at the Croydon Store when the Battle of Britain was fought over London and its suburbs. I had a grandstand view, when on warning lookout from the roof. The spectacle was awe-inspiring, as plane after plane was shot down and crashed, usually in flames. Whether German or British, it was impossible to tell, but every crash meant more young lives were lost and more families would soon receive that dreaded telegram.

I never knew how many bombs fell in the Croydon area. All I remember is the ‘near’ one that blew in all windows in the store, scattering merchandise into a chaotic mess and injuring many from broken glass. Some form of warning of immediate danger was necessary, so I fitted up a hooter in the store, controlled from the roof. When it was sounded, the public were immediately evacuated to street shelters, while the staff took refuge in the basement. Some senior staff remained on the sales floor to prevent looting.

It was one of the turning points in the war. The Luftwaffer losses forced them to abandon the fight and ultimately turn to the V.1’s in the attempt to bring Britain to her knees. It was total war, aimed at the civilian population, who suffered no less than the armed forces. One left home each morning for work, not knowing what they might find on returning in the evening.

My home, like many others in the neighbourhood, had all its windows blown out and the front door wrenched of its hinges. Rolls of tar felt were dumped in the streets, from which we could help ourselves freely, to keep out the weather, but deprive us of daylight. Water-closets were particularly susceptible to blast. We lost at least three and it was not unusual to see a dozen or so put out in the gutter, for collection and replacement. The sanitary section of the local Engineering Department were kept busy!

Despite all these ‘inconveniences’ and the imposition of rationing, public morale generally remained high. A spirit of warm friendliness with one’s neighbours and willingness to help and comfort those in need replaced ant standoffishness. Many bombs fell, many houses were destroyed, but this new spirit of service, which united the community, did much to remain morale.

Life had to go on. Fortunately there were periods of respite from attack, when one was able to persue normal activities.

It was on a Saturday afternoon, I was in my working clothes doing a spot of gardening, when a messenger from the Town Hall arrived. The Council was in session and requested me to meet them. For what reason I had no idea. I detained the messenger, while I changed into more presentable clothes and set off for the Town Hall. The Mayor apologised for disturbing my afternoon activities and then explained the purpose of this meeting. A letter had been received from the War Office, addressed to the mayors of all boroughs, requesting them to set in motion the formation of a junior branch of the Territorial Army, to be known as the Army Cadet Force. Its object was to provide basic military training for boys in the 13-17 age group, prior to their entering the army. Although a voluntary organisation, recruits would be sworn in, issued with army uniform, and be subject to military discipline, tempered with and understanding of youth. Its officers would be commissioned in the Territorial Army, but serve without pay. I was questioned at length from many angles and finally asked if I would undertake the formation and command of a Wallington and Beddington company. Subject to being seconded from the Home Guard, whose membership I still wished to retain, I agree.
Seconding presented no difficulty and shortly I was commissioned and set about recruitment. Obviously the schools offered the most likely source. I contacted the headmasters and found them generally co-operative and ready to allow me to address the senior forms. The response was better then I had expected, for within six weeks I had recruited well over the 200 boys (90 being from the Grammar school). This gave me a company of four platoons, each of four sections. The local press had been most helpful and I received many applications for commissions as platoon commanders. I interviewed them all. Many were unsuitable for various reasons, but I selected five, the fifth I appointed Quarter-master and Welfare Officer. Our status as an independent unattached company did not last many months with three other companies we were formed into a battalion, affiliated to the Buffs, with Battalion headquarters at Purley. The C.O. (a former regular army officer) was the Chief Inspector of Physical Training with the Ministry of Education. A better C.O. it would be difficult to find. Every officer and cadet admired and respected him.

At the first battalion parade I soon found out that the Wallington Company was far the largest in the battalion and I was determined to make it the most efficient. As company headquarters we had commandeered a large empty house. For which the army paid a peppercorn rent. Being close to Beddington Park, we had a training ground for field exercises right on our doorstep. The ultimate qualification for a cadet was the obtaining of Certificate ‘A’, which embraced all parts of the training manual. The exam was both theoretical and practical and was held annually. The examiners were regular army officers, who spent a full day with each company, at the end of which, the results were announced. It is with some pride that I can recall that the ‘Pass’ percentage of my company (B) was always the best in the battalion. One year it reached 86%. Cadets, passing into the army with a Cert. ‘A’ stood the best chance of promotion to N.C.O. rank. One cadet from ‘B’ company served as an officer with the Grenadier Guards and rose to the rank of captain before the war ended. He was a Wallington Grammar School boy and, on joining the cadets, I soon marked him out as a natural leader and made him platoon sergeant in a short time.

Apart from a rigorous training programme two events took place, which resounded to the company’s credit. One was an exhibition of Cadet Training Equipment, put on at Selfridges by the Home Counties. ‘B’ company was selected to organise and provide the battalions exhibit. For months we worked hard construction novel apparatus used in training and a devise for map-reading without prismatic compasses. The exhibition lasted a week and was visited by General Montgomery, who congratulated the Colonel on the novelty and effectiveness of many of the items on display.

The result of the exhibition was a substantial increase in the rate of recruitment and my promotion to major and appointment as Second-in-Command of the Battalion.

The second event of note was an open-air production of a war-time version of ‘A M Mid –summer Night’s Dream’. Five senior cadets were joined by two sea rangers with my daughter Gillian as Puck. My garden lent itself naturally to an open –air production, for concealed behind trees and bushes, we were able to hide a dozen cadets, who performed the role of invisible fairies. Each had an index card which, when waved in a certain way, produced together the sound of the flapping of fairy wings. This, as a background to Mendelssohn’s music, gave the twilight production an ethereal effect. During the familiar overture, the elfin-like form of all-green Puck appeared spot-lighted on a low wall, from which he frisked and cavorted on to the ‘stage’.

Puck’s appearance was out of this world. Wearing only a swimsuit in green, face, shoulders, arms and legs were painted in a matching green, white hair, cut short, was concealed behind a green balaclava-type headgear, terminating above the forehead in a single whisp. Puck was the dominating character and, as played by the 12-year old Gillian, who completely lived the part, stole the show. Cleaning-oil afterwards was a lengthy and mucky process, but, under her mother’s supervision, she was ultimately restored to a recognisable human being and none the worse for the liberties taken. It would be unfair to the rest of the company not to mention the excellent performance of each one, notably Lysander and Hermia and the incorrigible Quince and his associates.

Unfortunately, although three performances had been arranged, it rained the first two evenings and the play had to be called off. However, the third night produced a bumper audience, attended by the mayor, the mayoress and many councillors, Cadet funds received a substantial boost.

From the outbreak of war, the government initiated an evacuation scheme for school children. It was a panic measure, in that it broke up families and destroyed parental control. The effect on the disrupted lives of the tens of thousands of children, suddenly placed in unfamiliar surroundings, with complete strangers was an emotional experience, both for children and parents. Evacuation undoubtedly saved many young lives from injury or death, but at a cost impossible to assess. Before the end of the war most children had been returned to their families and shared their risks. Robert, in 1939 was still at Wallington Grammar School, from where a number of boys were evacuated to Canada. We decided to keep him with us, rather than disturb his education at 14 years of age. The school continued to function despite considerable bomb damage. Lessons often had to be conducted in the underground shelters, built in the school grounds. As the V.1 attacks hotted up, we decided to evacuate Gillian to a cousin in South Wales, who managed somehow to accommodate a dozen old and young relatives in their small house. Jean was by now a sergeant in the radar section of the A.T.S. and spent most of the war in the Manchester area and we saw little of her.

Night after night, month after month the sirens moaned out their warning that the evening blitz was starting. Within minutes the drone of a V.1 on its predestined course was the signal for another sleep-broken night. Often the V.1s followed in almost continuous succession, the night filled with their ominous hum, punctuated either by a distant explosion or by an eerie silence, as the jet-propelled engine, exhausted of fuel, cutout. The evil missile then snaked its way to earth and destruction, anywhere within a half-mile radius.

Those, whose homes provided little or no shelter, were advised to sleep in one of the blast-proof shelters, equipped with bunks, built by the Council in Beddington Park. Finally we succumbed to this nightly move. To transport bedding etc. Robert and I built a handcart and fitted it with a connecting bar for attaching it as a trailer behind a bicycle. Thus equipped, the three of us - Ethel, Robert and I – were free to take a short respite from the terrors that walked the night. The trailer, packed with small tent and bedding, we attached to Robert’s bicycle and set off for Hackbridge station to spend the first night in the comparative peace of Effingham. Here we lay, in undisturbed peace, on a bed of bracken. In easy stages we reached an isolated farm, a few miles from Winchester. The farmer and his wife were goodness itself and welcomed us as refugees from a war zone. Our tent they filled with straw. Eggs and other farm produce were provided and we were invited to share and evening meal in the farmhouse. On leaving, they refused to accept any payment – an outstanding example of open-heartedness engendered by the stresses of war, those few days of peaceful bliss were, to me, like the experience of leave from the front during the First World War. We returned reinvigorated to Wallington and the menace of sirens.

Somehow, during the war I found time to build the craziest of Crazy Golf Courses, in the garden. Many of the nine hazards were reminiscent of Heath Robinson. They provided welcome respite from wartime conditions for the Cadets and Home Guard.

Prior to moving into Bridgecot, we lived for a few months in one of the six flats in Bridge House. Which was part of the same property. From the windows of our flat, on the top floor, we eyed with envy the delightful garden of Bridgecot. It was somewhat neglected, having being unoccupied for a few months. But it offered great possibilities and would be ideal for the children. On a Saturday afternoon, we enlisted the help of all the brothers-in-law, and were able to shift our furnishings and belongings at no removal cost, other than a good family party, enlivened by a greyhound race meeting in the evening. With so much happening, I have forgotten to mention the Greyhound Track I built, just before the war started. It took several months to plan and construct. In the end it was quite a remarkable achievement, which only the war prevented exploiting. It may be interesting to give a brief description; it was powered by ½ HP motor and entirely automatic. Some 10 feet long, it consisted of a track for the hare six starting traps for the greyhounds, of which we had forty and an electric result board. One merely switched on the motor, after putting six greyhounds in the traps and the race ran itself. The hare was released and, on reaching a certain point it triggered off the six trap doors. The greyhounds, unattached and quite independent, streaked up the course after the hare. The winner’s trap number, in electric light, automatically appeared on the result board, followed by that of the runner-up. Along one side of the track was a scenic panorama, representing crowded stands and a line of bookies. Illumination of the track was by overhead lighting. With the room lights out the effect was most realistic. Saturday nights were reserved for race meetings, when some twenty-five friends turned up, each with a ‘bottle of beer’. A totalisator recorded the course of betting and much was the innocent fun we enjoyed.

War in England was not all bombing, fires and sudden death. Terrible havoc resulted from the concentrated attacks on London, Coventry and practically all major cities, but life survived, despite the worst that Hitler devised.

Each year the Army Cadet Force attended a fortnight’s camp located in quiet areas. I attended three written of these and enjoyed the responsibilities that fell on my shoulders. It was noticeable how morale improved as youngsters from hard hit districts enjoyed undisturbed sleep at night. The regular army provided the cooking staff, so that cadets were spared many of the usual camp ‘fatigues’ their time was more profitably employed on practical military training, culminating in a night manoeuvre, employing at least two battalions and umpired by two regular officers.

The landings in Normandy and the subsequent advance into the interior, eventually captured the launching sites of the V.1s. Their nightly moaning dramatically ceased and, for a time, England was free from bombardment. We were able to stop our nightly trek into Beddington Park.

Hitler, however, had an even deadlier weapon then the V.1s. The V.2s, giving no warning of their approach, created far greater destruction, but the numbers launched were comparatively few and had little effect on the morale of the general public. It was those within the target areas who suffered appalling casualties and destruction of properties. Censorship doubtless restricted the publication of details and I, for one, have no idea of the frequency of the launching or whereabouts of the target areas. I was only really aware of the tragic circumstances that attended the demolition of Woolworth’s Store in Lewisham on a crowded Saturday morning.

Meanwhile the Allies were, mile by mile liberating occupied France and advancing, and eventually crossing the Rhine. The Russians, from the east were entering Berlin. Hitler then committed suicide and Germany unconditionally surrendered. War in Europe - V.E. day – had ended.

With the return of the troops to civilian life, my wartime job at B.H.S. ended. I received a substantial ‘redundancy’ payment and a presentation from the staff.

Chapter 17

THE RETURN TO PEACE

The war in Europe ended on V.E.Day. For me it was a very different celebration from that on Armistice Day 1918, when utter weariness overcame the reality.

V.E. Day will always be remembered by the end of black-out. Street lighting sprang to life and lights shone from every house. Black-out curtains became a thing of the past and street wardens were able to sleep in their own houses. It seemed that every open space had its bonfire. A huge one was lit in Beddington Park and the residents, in their thousands, danced and sang around the dying embers, late into the night. In the entrance to Bridgecot, Robert and I suspended two lengths of footlights in the form of a giant Vee. It was a day and night never to be forgotten.

Robert, who had served in the cadets as an under-officer, like many others of my company, had been called up for military service and was stationed mostly in Canterbury. On his demobilisation, both he and I were temporarily jobless. This resulted in the birth of the forerunner of all woolly toys – the invention of a machine to produce lengths of rug wool woven on to a core of twisted wire. Our first attempt was built around the family mangle. You never saw such a contraption. It never worked anyway. But it showed us the problems we had to surmount. Further prototypes followed until we were able to finalise a set of plans from which an engineer could produce a practical working model. Fortunately we had a friend, the proprietor of a garage, fully equipped to turn out the various parts. He was most helpful in advising us on modifications from an engineer’s point of view and agreed to put one of his staff on to constructing one machine. We had daily consultations as the work proceeded. The plans given to the engineer were not those of a skilled technical draughtsman and many were the modifications which had to be made. The engineer took as much interest in the project as I did and we got on famously. As the machine had a three-foot guillotine mounted on it, safety measures had to ensure that both hands were employed when the guillotine descended.
The machine finished, it was ready for testing. Fitted with a small motor, it worked perfectly, producing uniform lengths of varying diameter up to 2 ½ “ the cost, inclusive of wire drums, rollers, guillotine and motor was about £150.

We were now able to set up in business, which would certainly be unique and we hoped profitable. Accordingly we registered a private limited company – Wally Twist Ltd, the name was derived from Woolly Twist made in Wallington.

Robert had a flare for creating, from teasled twist, life-like of practically any animal and designed some thirty, from Teddy Bears to Poodles, Pandas to Pussy Cats. Had we the capital, we should have patented our invention, but an effective patent, being very expensive, we had to gamble on being first in the field, the originality of our designs and the fact that I devised a way of legally avoiding the payment of purchase tax on the toys sold. This was done with the approval of Customs and Excise who ruled that Wally Twist itself was not liable to P. Tax. There is no need to confuse readers with an explanation of how finished toys could be sold tax free, except to say that any one manufacturer, whose sales did not exceed £500p a., was exempt. Fifty separate manufacturers could therefore together do a turn over of £25,000.

We rented factory premises locally and finally took over the larger building, which had served as Home Guard Headquarters. Once the company was running efficiently under Robert’s supervision, I turned my energies to designing and constructing a series of six showcases, each depicting a humorous situation, ‘peopled’ by woolly animals. Bentall’s Toy Buyer was to come over to see them. He was sufficiently impressed to book them to be featured in their Christmas and Toy Fair. We provided an expert - Gillian – to demonstrate toy-making with Wally Twist, which found a ready sale, while made- up toys sold by the thousand. We could never supply enough Pandas to meet the demand.

As a result of this exhibition, we were approached by Atlas Handicraft Ltd. Of Manchester to write a 24-page booklet, under the title ‘Wallycraft’ to add to their popular series of craft booklets.

By now we had registered another company – Wandle Games & Toys Ltd – which enlarged our scope of activity to embrace games. Two I devised and sold them, on a royalty basis, to the Chad Valley Company, as we had neither the facilities to manufacture nor the available capital for adequate publicity. ‘Speedex’, the successful horse racing game, we manufactured and distributed ourselves. It had the advantage over other racing games, in that it could be played on any surface and any sized table. Each player operated his own horse, which could jump low hurdles. On the last day of Selfridges Toy Fair, we had sold over 1,500 @ 25/6 per set - a profitable start.

From my schooldays and the years spent in Canada I have always taken a keen and active part in amateur dramatics. Let me digress from recording my business activities and consider some of my ‘adventures’ into the world of the theatre. Looking back over the years, these have played a not unimportant part in my life. For many years I have been a member of Sutton Amateur Dramatic Club, one of the oldest in the country, dating back to the turn of the century. With the best part of a hundred members casting, even extensive plays like ‘Cavalcade’ presented no difficulties. Douglas Matthews (a former R.A.D.A. Gold Medallist) was producer-in-chief. From studying his methods and playing under his direction, I learned all I know about production.

In the late 1940’s I took on the job of drama instructor, under Surrey Education Committee, mainly working with youth. Many were the plays performed and the festivals we took part in.

It was about this time that I qualified as an Assistant member of the Guild of Drama Adjudicators. Applicants were required to sit through a performance and subsequently give a verbal adjudication before a panel of judges. Seven of us were sent to the Toynbee Hall to see Drinkwater’s ‘Abraham Lincoln’. It was a good amateur performance, with plenty of opportunity for constructive criticism. I was fortunate to be one of the four who ‘passed’ the judges.

After visiting as the delegate for Sutton A.D.C., a conference of the British Drama League in Birmingham, I retuned enthused with the idea of forming a local Dram Group, based on Croydon and surrounding district. Thus was formed thirty-five years ago, the Croydon and District Theatre Guild, of which I am now an honorary life member.

After one of two unsuccessful attempts at playwriting, I wrote the one-act play ‘One Generation to Another’ and entered it in the Beckenham Original Play Festival, where it won three awards – 1st for best play; 1st for best produced play; and second for best acted play. With this encouragement, I submitted it to the Selection Committee of Sutton A.D.C., who accepted it as their entry of the Croydon & D.T.G’s Annual Festival. Here it was again placed first, winning the Guild Shield and the Edridge Trophy. The play of six characters ids based on the relationship between ‘Jonathon Abell’ and his 13-year old grandson ‘David’. Today the play would be regarded, by modern standards, as to ‘dated’. The period of the play is 1946, since when the world has changed and, with it, social attitudes. Copies of the play are available for anyone interested in reading it, as an insight into the author’s approach to life.

One other ‘adventure’ into Theatreland occurred this time profitable and therefore professional, when I was temporarily associated with the Nestle Company. Their advertising agents approached me through an acquaintance – Ernest Heaseman – with a view to providing a feature for a review type entertainment, which it was proposed to tour the country, as an advertisement for Nestle products. I was asked to put my thinking-cap on and see if it produced anything. Eventually it did. I proposed building a giant television set, with a 6’ x 4’ screen and writing a fantasy in which those on the stage could converse freely with those on the screen, without any pre-recording. At the time I had only the roughest idea how this could be accomplished. It would be a financial gamble for us, but one we decided to take. Much preliminary research had to be made before a practical plan evolved. In one room of our factory, we built, what I can best describe as, a giant kind of epidiascope. This through a faint life-size image, through a series of mirrors and lenses onto the wall, three feet away. The illumination of the subject was only a 200 watt lamp. We estimated that at least 2000 watts would be necessary. Four 500 watt spotlights radiating onto the subject from only 5 feet, created more heat then anyone could be expected to endure for longer than a few minutes. Artificial ventilation was, added to make existence in the cabinets bearable for 15 minutes, it was then only tolerable. The ‘screen’, professionally made, was of material used for back projection and gave us a brilliant picture.

The fantasy I wrote involved a normal husband and wife and also ‘Nesta’, Nestlé’s prize cow. Nesta’s head was quite a masterpiece, made by a maker of puppets, with ventriloquial movements of the mouth, eyes and ears. She spoke English quite intelligently. From a concealed, unlighted point in the cabinet, I operated the cow’s movements and provided her ‘voice’ through a microphone with loud speakers behind the screen. The action starts on stage. The wife retires to bed, leaving the husband reading his newspaper. He ‘switches on’ the giant T.V., which shows his wife asleep in bed. She wakes up to find Nesta watching her from the end of the bed. Neither of the humans is surprised! Nesta apparently being one of the family. Conversation, between Nesta and the husband and wife, is quite fantastic and got many a laugh. To prove that the dialogue was spontaneous and not pre-recorded, the audience was invited to ask any topical question. For example ‘who won the 3.30 at Chepstow?’ Nesta might answer ‘search me! I am not interested in mere horses, give me a good bull fight’

At last we were ready to give a demonstration. I was optimistic that our gamble would come off. The Nestle Company hired a theatre in the East End for half a day, provided transport from Wallington and turned up with half a dozen Directors and Executives. Heaseman introduced us and acted as the subject to be ‘televised’. From the screen he, being no mean showman completely ‘sold’ the project he had introduced. Terms were arranged for a six-week tour of Principal Theatres at a rental of £150 per week plus £25 per week and all found for my part in the show. The touring company included several well-known acts and the public, being admitted free, packed the theatres twice daily. We opened at Cardiff and finished at the Empire, Glasgow. Any weekend I was able to get home, I turned up with a couple of 2lb boxes of Nestle chocolate. We had cases of these and distributed them as prizes to the winners of competitions that were included in the programme.

Later we hired out the apparatus to one of the exhibitors at the Ideal Homes Exhibition at Olympia, which always ensured a crowd around the stand.

Eventually it had to be dismantled, for we had not the space to store it. The four spotlights found a ready sale to Sutton A.D.C. and Robert housed and, as far as I know still has the lenses and mirrors. Maybe some day they will be resurrected and put to some new use.

Chapter 18

IN RETIREMENT

In 1965 I was 72 and felt the time had come to enjoy an active retirement. Almost 17 [20] years have passed since then and they have not been wasted. Retirement is a process of transition – the change from one set of conditions to another. One is able to be freed from many responsibilities and to choose those activities which, while still being productive, one can thoroughly enjoy.

Obviously my first responsibility was the direction of Wally Twist Ltd. With the concurrence of the shareholders, I put the company into voluntary liquidation and was fortunate in buyer for the machinery and stocks of materials. Our auditor was the liquidator and distributed the proceeds amongst the few shareholders, of which I held a majority holding. The business carried on, under its new management, but not for long. Within three months after the takeover, the new proprietor died.
As far as I know the business just faded away. Someone possibly bought our original machines, for the production of woolly toys has continued to this day. Robert had no difficulty in obtaining an appointment with the French based cosmetic firm - L’Oreal.

Here I must deviate, for a moment, from my personal narrative, to mention the not inconsiderable part that Brittany has played in the years of my retirement.

Jean, after her demobilisation, married and she and her husband (Mac) lived for a few years in Newcastle, where they ran a taxi business, while studying to enter Durham University, to read medicine. They both took their degrees. Jean distinguished herself by winning an award. For years they practised in Newcastle and were able to buy a share, with a few friends, in a four seater plane, both having got their civil pilot licences.

A Rally of Flying Clubs was held at La Baule, on the Brittany coast, to which the Newcastle Flying Club was invited. Mac and Jean flew over and, whilst making many friends, they considered one day making Brittany there ultimate home. They bought a plot of land at Ermur, Pornichet, which joins La Baule. Here there built a charming house, in the French style, which has since become a continental holiday ‘home’ for all the family. Many are the delightful holidays Ethel and I have spent there and the incursions made into the hinterland. One year Martin and I borrowed an old ‘deux chevaux’ Citroen and toured, with paint box and brushes the whole of the south of Brittany. At Pont Aven, we made sketches of the old mill, made famous by Gauguin. On another occasion Peter (an older grandson) and I covered much of Brittany’s byways, rather then highways, in a photographic exploration.

Before getting led off course, I had better return to my story.

Retirement coincided with the loss of my home, which for years I had rented. Without my knowledge and without any consultation, a firm of developers obtained planning permission for the demolition of two cottages and Bridgecot, to provide access to a block of flats to be built on the grounds which were once my garden. How I never heard a word of what was going on, I shall never know. The occupiers of the two cottages were found good alternative accommodation. My friends on the Council were amazed that I had been kept in complete ignorance of the deliberations of the planning committee. I was advised against taking legal action against the committee to have the planning permission revoked. True, I was given three months notice to move but, at my time of life, it came as a severe blow to both my wife and me. The family naturally shared our concern and, in the end, my two sisters offered to build an extension to their house in Westbere as a home for us. This had its appeal to us both and so it was settled.

For several months we shared their home, while levelling the ground, uprooting a large tree in the middle of the sight and digging the foundations, ready for the builders to take over. The builder being a personal acquaintance of my sisters, raised no objection to our preparing the ground and later, as the building progressed, to my installing all the electrical work.

I learnt a lot about building construction, as our new home took shape. Although it could not be compared to Bridgecot, it provided the minimum facilities for just the two of us. ‘Utterhay’, my sisters’ home had three bedrooms and they would usually accommodate those who came to see us.

After living a full life in Wallington, Westbere seemed remote and very quiet. It was not long before we made a few friends and, having lived in the country at West Chiltington, soon adapted ourselves to the changeless life of this quaint village in Kent. The only amenities were the Yew Tree Inn and an annual fete, held in the Rectory garden, in aid of the village church. Later a women’s institute was formed, but as this only catered to the feminine interest, the men folk were left to their own devises – Dominoes in the pub bar and gardening – neither pursuit have I taken up for choice. Soon after our arrival, I was elected a churchwarden and continued in office for fifteen years until I resigned in 1980 and became churchwarden Emeritus, which relieved me of all duties. In 1965 the organist and choirmaster Mrs Burling died. She had built up quite a useful village church choir and her death left a vacancy not easy to fill. For a month or so there was no regular organist, until a welsh ex-miner, Ivor Rundle, was found and proved to be a competent organist and natural musician. He, however, was unfamiliar with the liturgy of the Church of England. I on the other hand was an experienced choirmaster, but no organist. Together, we filled the role and were duly appointed. I would like it recorded that Ivor and I never once disagreed. He accepted my leadership at all times and ours was the happiest association. About three years ago Ivor died and with his death the choir faded out. His death was a great loss to the church, which has not yet been replaced.

Before we came to Westbere, my sister Flo produced a nativity play with marked success. We talked over the production of a more ambitious musical nativity play, in which the action was almost entirely in mime, the narrative being spoke by the deputy Head of King’s Junior School, whose beautiful bass voice and cultured speech, lifted the play on to the highest plain. With Ivor at the organ, I undertook supervision of the musical. The church choir was largely augmented by the staff of the King’s Junior School, which produced a well-balanced choir. The production justified the considerable work put in b to its preparation.

During these years I found plenty of time to produce a good number of water-colours, including many local subjects in and around Westbere. One, an interior of Westbere Church, now hangs in Westbere Hall, the property of the P.C.C.

During the summer holidays four years ago, Damien, Dr. Moloney’s youngest son, then about 13 years old was keen on model railways and had acquired a good quantity of rolling stock and track. The Maloney boys had a large playroom, built out into the garden. Damien asked me to help him build a permanent model in the playroom. Their house was next door to Utterhay and I spent about three months there, constructing the only model railway I shall ever attempt. The layout of track was quite elaborate, but the distinguishing feature of the model was the detailed scenic effect. It made an attempt to portray in 36 square feet the country around Seaford and Newhaven, with the cliffs and downland rising on either-side and a glimpse of Seaford Bay. It was the first time I had worked in acrylic colours and found them easy to use on any surface. When finished, Peter came along and made a series of 20 coloured slides. So, what ever happens to the railway, I still have a record of what it looked like.

Over the years I have attended many Village fetes and generally been disappointed at the standard of the sideshows and their lack of originality. I thought up several novel ideas, but where to store them was a problem. I had built a good sized workshop in the garden of Utterhay. Here I could build my ‘ideas’, but it would take a whole garage to store them. The Rectory at Sturry had a number of outbuildings and I hoped that one of these might be made available. The opportunity occurred when the three local parishes were united as one parish, known as Sturry with Fordwich and Westbere with Hersden. The Vicar of Sturry becoming the Rector of the united parish. It was then denoted an Area of Ecumenical Experiment. In this capacity a large measure of progress has been made, in particular with the Methodist Church. The annual summer fete at Westbere was combined with the larger fete in the grounds of Surry Rectory. By then I had enlisted the aid of David, the rector’s younger son. Together we constructed a number of novel sideshows and were able to store them, during the winter months in one of the Rectory garages.

In all, over the year, we required a dozen sideshows. The most popular and certainly the most original were the tantalizing ‘Pythagoras’. A remote control dive-bomber, a stock car racing track and the electronic-controlled ‘stop thief’. The part played by electronics was devised and constructed by my grandson Peter, my knowledge of electronics being ‘nil’. Last year I withdrew from organising the sideshows and handed them all over to David, whose more youthful approach succeeded in breaking all previous records. David, when sixteen, moved onto Canterbury Technical College, with the intention of studying to become an Architect. I wish him well.

In order to preserve the old-world and peaceful character of Westbere against any commercial exploitation, the Westbere Village Preservation Society was formed. It originated largely at the instigation of a prominent resident – Mr Robert Paine, FRIBA. A committee, of which I was a member, drew up a Constitution and Rules the cover of which carried one of my pen and ink sketches of Westbere Lane. After a few committee meetings, I took over the secretaryship. Without Robert Paine as chairman, I doubt the society would have enjoyed the same success and influence in the many projects in which it was interested.

After a number of years, I handed over the job as Secretary and was honoured by being elected President. As age increased, I ultimately retired, making way for the appointment of Mr John Stevens, a man whose business interests would be far more useful to the society, which now had some fifty members.

Relieved of this office, I agreed to take on the editorship of the local Parish Magazine. When ‘copy’ was in short supply, I resorted to publishing what I hoped would prove of interest – experiences in my life. Some of these articles have been included in these memoirs.

Before writing ‘Finis’ let me recall my sixth visit to the battlefields. It was in 1980 when I acted as guide to the rector, Peter Gausden, his wife Margaret and their then 15- year old son David. We made Omer’s home our headquarters and, although failing in health, Omer did everything he could for our comfort and well-being. Within a year Omer, an unhappy man after his wife’s death, joined her in the little cemetery at Avion, and I lost a true friend.

Peter’s father served in the First World War in the Royal West Kent’s after a period with the Rifle Brigade. He was severely wounded a couple of months before the Armistice, when the British Army had fought their way back across the Somme from Amiens to the approaches to St Quentin. The Kent’s were ordered to capture the village of Ronssay, Lt. Gausden’s objective being the ‘eastern side of Ronssay cemetery’. Peter still has his father’s Field Service Book and the original order for the attack. The objective was reached and held, but Lt. Gausden was hit in the pelvis. He was carried back to the Field Dressing Station and from thence, in successive stages, he arrived in England for several operations, spending many months in hospital before being finally discharged. Qualifying as a dentist he practised in Broadstairs until he died before David was born. His memory lives in the family as a courageous soldier.

Ronssay I only knew as a village on the Somme frontier, but where in this vast area I had no idea. On the fourth day of our tour we found it and stood on the ‘eastern side of Ronssay cemetery. In the corner, set apart, were the graves of those who had fought and died.

Our mission was complete.