In 1916, the vicar of Margate in Kent, the Reverend David Railton (a recipient of the Military Cross) was stationed as a padre on the Western Front near the French village of Armentières on the Belgian border when he noticed a temporary grave with the inscription, ‘An Unknown British Soldier’. Moved by this simple epitaph, he initially suggested the notion to the British wartime commander-in-chief, Sir Douglas Haig that one fallen man, unknown in name or rank, should represent all those who died during the war who had no known grave. In August 1920, having received no response from Haig, Railton muted the idea to Herbert Ryle, the Dean of Westminster, who, in turn, passed it onto Buckingham Palace.

Initially, the king, George V (pictured), was not enthusiastic about the proposal; not wanting to re-open the healing wound of national grief but was persuaded into the idea by the prime minister, David Lloyd-George.

On 7 November 1920, the remains of six (some sources state four) unidentified British soldiers were exhumed – one each from six different battlefields (Aisne, Arras, Cambrai, Marne, Somme and Ypres). The six corpses were transported to a chapel in the village of St Pol, near Ypres, where they were each laid out on a stretcher and covered by the Union flag. There, in the company of a padre (not Rev Railton), a blindfolded officer entered the chapel and touched one of the bodies.

The following morning, chaplains of the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and Non-Conformist churches held a service for the chosen soldier. Placed in a plain coffin, the Unknown Warrior was taken back on a train to England via Boulogne. At Boulogne, the coffin was kept overnight in the town’s castle, a guard of honour keeping vigil.

A British Warrior

On the morning of the 9 November, the coffin was placed in a larger casket made from wood, three inches thick, taken from an oak tree in the gardens of London’s Hampton Court Palace. Mounted on the side of the coffin, a 16th-century sword from the collection at the Tower of London especially chosen by George V. Draped over the casket, the Union flag, which had been used by Rev Railton as an altar cloth during the war. (The flag, known as the Padre’s Flag, now hangs in St George’s Chapel within Westminster Abbey). The coffin plate bore the inscription: ‘A British Warrior who fell in the Great War 1914-1918 for King and Country’.

The procession through the town of Boulogne, led by a thousand French schoolchildren and accompanied by solemn military music, took the casket to the town’s harbour. There it was met by Marshal Ferdinand Foch, the Allies’ wartime supreme commander, before being transported across the English Channel to Dover on board the HMS Verdun (named after the French battle).

A train transported the casket from Dover to London. The body was afforded pomp and ceremony at every stage of its journey – processions and gun salutes. Crowds of people, braving the cold and the rain and clad in mourning, turned out at every station to watch the train pass through carrying its precious cargo. Groups of boy scouts played the ‘Last Post’, guards of honour formed on station platforms. Every bridge was filled with silent spectators, saluting as the train passed beneath.

The train pulled into Victoria Station at 8.32 on the evening of 10 November, arriving at platform eight, greeted by a mass of people. Many were in tears. Today, next to platform eight, a plaque (pictured), unveiled in 1998, commemorates the occasion. The coffin remained on the train overnight, under guard, and surrounded by wreaths so large and so heavy that it took four men to lift each one into place.

The Procession

On the morning of 11 November 1920, exactly two years on from Armistice Day, eight soldiers placed the coffin on a horse-drawn gun carriage, borne by six black stallions. A nineteen-gun salute signalled the start of the procession. It was 9.30 in the morning. Dense, silent crowds lined the streets. Cars and all traffic were banned from the roads for the day. Muffled drums accompanied Chopin’s Funeral March as the procession slowly wound its way pass Hyde Park Corner and onto The Mall and into Whitehall, where the king laid a wreath of red roses and bay leaves on top of the casket before unveiling the newly-erected Cenotaph.

The twelve pallbearers included field marshals, air chief marshals and various generals, among them Douglas Haig. The king, as chief mourner, and his entourage then followed the cortège to Westminster Abbey. Behind them, four hundred ex-servicemen walked four abreast, and, behind them, a mass of black-clad mourners, men, women and children. Soldiers lining the roads bowed their heads and reversed arms as the cortège passed. Waiting at Westminster Abbey was a guard of honour consisting of 100 holders of the Victoria Cross and 100 women who had lost both their husbands and all of their sons during the war.

The Service

The brief service, which included at eleven o’clock a two-minute silence, was recorded. The recording became the first electrical recording ever sold to the public. Following the service, the coffin was lowered into the grave, ‘amongst the kings’. The king sprinkled the coffin with earth brought back from the Western Front.

In the week that followed, some 1,300,000 people visited the Abbey to pay their respects to the Unknown Warrior.

On 18 November, a week after the service, the grave was filled in using 100 sandbags of French soil and covered with a stone slab with the simple inscription, ‘A British warrior who fell in the Great War 1914-1918 for King and Country. Greater love hath no man like this.’

The following year, on 11 November 1921, the stone was replaced by a slab of Belgium marble, seven feet by four feet three, and six inches thick, and fully inscribed in capitals with text composed by the Dean of Westminster.

On 21 October 1921, General John Pershing of the US army awarded the Unknown Warrior the Congressional Medal of Honor, the USA’s highest military honour. The medal was framed and now hangs on a nearby pillar. In return, the US Unknown Soldier, who was interred in the Arlington National Cemetery on 11 November 1921, was awarded the Victoria Cross.

In 1923, the future Queen Mother married the future King George VI at Westminster Abbey. As the new bride left the Abbey, she placed her wedding bouquet on the grave of the Unknown Warrior, starting a tradition that is still practised today by all royal brides.

In 1993, Australia buried their unknown soldier, Canada in 2000 and, most recently, New Zealand in 2004.

Rupert Colley.

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A staunch republican and troublemaker, like his father, Georges Clemenceau was once imprisoned for 73 days (some sources state 77 days) by Napoleon III’s government for publishing a republican newspaper and trying to incite demonstrations against the monarchy. In 1865, fearing another arrest, and possible incarceration on Devil’s Island, Clemenceau fled to the US, arriving towards the end of the American Civil War. He lived first in New York, where he worked as a journalist, and then in Connecticut where he became a teacher in a private girls’ school. Clemenceau married one of his American students, Mary Plummer, and together they had three children before divorcing seven years later. (Of his son, Clemenceau, known for his wit, said, ‘If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then.’)

Five days after his divorce, Clemenceau returned to France and briefly worked as a doctor before returning to politics. In 1871, he witnessed France’s defeat to Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War.

‘A soldier of democracy’

An intellectual, Georges Clemenceau was fascinated by Ancient Greek culture, supported the work of the French Impressionists, wrote a book on Jewish history, and translated into French the works of English philosopher, John Stuart Mill. Following France’s defeat during the Franco-Prussian War, Clemenceau opposed France’s colonial ambitions, arguing that the country needed to concentrate its efforts on extracting revenge on the Germans and recovering Alsace Lorraine, territory it had lost to the Germans as part of the French surrender.

In March 1906, Clemenceau was appointed Home Affairs Minister where he earned his ‘tiger’ nickname and gained a reputation as a fierce opponent of socialism and the trade unions, most famously, in May 1906, sending in the military to suppress a miners’ strike. From October 1906 until July 1909, Clemenceau served his first term as prime minister.

Having been ousted from power, Clemenceau travelled across South America advocating the benefits of democracy: ‘I am a soldier of democracy. It is the only form of government which can establish equality for all, and which can bring closer the ultimate goals: freedom and justice.’

‘I wage war’

During the early part of the First World War, Clemenceau, refusing a position within the government, became a vocal critic of France’s strategy, especially that of Joseph Joffre, chief of the French army. However, in November 1917, aged 76, he was appointed, for a second term, as prime minister, leading a coalition government and overseeing France’s role in the eventual defeat of Germany. (He also concurrently served as the Minister for War).

On returning to power, he promised, ‘No more pacifist campaigns, no more German intrigues. Neither treason, nor semi-treason: the war. Nothing but the war.’ He cracked down on all dissenters and doomsayers within France, authorised the execution of spies and traitors, most notoriously Mata Hari, and, in the words of Britain’s wartime prime minister, David Lloyd George, ‘possessed restless energy and indomitable courage’. He paid frequent visits to the trenches, helped improve the morale of the French troops and became known, affectionately, as ‘Father of Victory’. In March 1918, he famously said, ‘My home policy: I wage war. My foreign policy: I wage war. All the time I wage war.’

Versailles

In the subsequent post-war Paris Peace Conference, Georges Clemenceau found it ‘far easier to make war than peace’. He took a firm line, determined to see Germany crippled to prevent it from ever again becoming a military threat, but Britain and the US (represented by US president, Woodrow Wilson) were against such harsh measures, believing it vital to Europe’s future wellbeing that Germany be made stable. Lloyd George believed that Clemenceau’s proposals would ‘plunge Germany and the greater part of Europe into Bolshevism.’ Nonetheless, Clemenceau scored a symbolic victory – at his insistence, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles where, in 1871, the French had surrendered to the Germans.

On 19 February 1919, during the conference, Clemenceau survived an assassination attempt. His assailant fired from close range and one bullet, which hit the prime minister in the ribs, remained there for the rest of his life. Clemenceau joked that, ‘We have just won the most terrible war in history, yet here is a Frenchman who misses his target six out of seven times at point-blank range… I suggest that he be locked up for eight years, with intensive training in a shooting gallery.’

Although Clemenceau managed to negotiate Alsace Lorraine’s return to France, he had to compromise on too many points and he left the conference feeling that Germany had been dealt with too lightly. The French public agreed and took out their frustrations on Clemenceau. Dissatisfied with their prime minister’s performance at Versailles, he was voted out of office in the elections of January 1920.

Finally, at the age of 80, the old tiger was able to retire. In his latter years, Clemenceau warned against a resurgent Germany, predicting a new war by 1940.

Georges Clemenceau died, aged 88, at home in Paris on 24 November 1929.

Rupert Colley.

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Margaretha Zelle

Born 7 August 1876 to a wealthy Dutch family, Margaretha Geertruida Zelle responded to a newspaper advertisement from a Rudolf MacLeod, a Dutch army officer of Scottish descent, seeking a wife. The pair married within three months of meeting each other and in 1895 moved to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) where they had two children.

The marriage was doomed from the beginning – 22 years older, MacLeod was an abusive husband and Zelle was never going to play the part of the dutiful wife. Their son died aged 2 from syphilis, reputably inherited from his father (their daughter would die a similar death, aged 21) and in 1902, on their return to the Netherlands, they separated.

Unable to find work and uncertain about her future, Zelle moved to Paris and there changed her name to Mata Hari, claiming she originated from India and was the daughter of a temple dancer. She started to earn a living by modelling and dancing, and found work in a cabaret. Exotically dressed, she became a huge success and was feted by the powerful and rich of Paris, taking on a number of influential lovers. She travelled numerous times between France and the Netherlands. But by now war had broken out and Mata Hari’s movements and high-ranking liaisons caused suspicion.

Arrested

Arrested by the British, Hari was interrogated. She admitted to passing German information on to the French. In turn, the French discovered evidence, albeit of doubtful authenticity, that she was spying for the Germans under the codename ‘H21’. Hari had indeed been recruited by the Germans, given the name H21 and received 20,000 francs as a down payment. Never one to turn down money, she accepted it but did no spying in return nor ever felt obliged to.

Returning to Paris, Hari was then arrested by the French and accused of being a double agent. The evidence against her was virtually non-existent, and the prosecution found not a single item or piece of information passed from Mata Hari to the Germans. The trial itself was of dubious nature as her defence was prohibited from cross-examining witnesses. Her defence lawyer was a 74-year-old man, a former lover, and his association with Hari diminished his authority. The six-man jury had little hesitation in finding Mata Hari guilty.

And shot

At dawn on 15 October 1917, Mata Hari, wearing a three-cornered hat, was led out of her cell to face her death. She told an attendant nun, ‘Do not be afraid, sister, I know how to die.’ She refused to be tied to the stake or blindfolded, and waved at onlookers and blew kisses at the priest and her lawyer. She was shot by a 12-man firing squad, each wearing a red fez. The officer in charge ensured she was dead by firing a bullet into her head. She was 41.

Thirty years later, one of the prosecutors admitted that ‘there wasn’t enough evidence [against Mata Hari] to flog a cat.’

Rupert Colley.

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Within the collective British and Commonwealth psyche, no battle epitomizes the futility of war as much as the Battle of the Somme. Almost 20,000 men were killed on the first day, 1 July 1916, alone.

It started with the usual preliminary bombardment. Lasting seven days, and involving 1,350 guns and 52,000 tonnes of explosives fired onto the German lines, British soldiers were assured that the 18-mile German frontline would be flattened – it would just be a matter of strolling across and taking possession of the German trenches.

The Battle of the Somme was designed to relieve the pressure on the French suffering at Verdun. The British army at the Somme consisted mainly of Kitchener recruits. Most had received only minimal training and many had still to grasp the skill of shooting accurately.

‘Dead men cannot move’

At 7.20 am on Saturday 1 July 1916, the first of seventeen mines was detonated; a huge explosion on the German lines at Hawthorn Ridge (pictured). The explosion was captured on film by official war photographer Geoffrey Malins and the Hawthorn Crater is still visible today.

The advance started ten minutes later, at 7.30 am. The massive explosions certainly alerted the German defenders to what was about to come.

To the south of the British, a smaller French force, transferred from Verdun. As ordered, the men advanced in rigid lines. The bombardment combined with heavy rain had ensured that the ground was akin to a sea of mud and many an advancing soldier, lumbered with almost 70 lbs of equipment, drowned.

Far from being decimated by the artillery, the German trenches ahead were brimming with guns pointing towards the advance. What followed went down as the worse day in British military history and perhaps in the history of modern warfare – 57,000 men fell on that first day alone, 19,240 of them dead. In return, the Germans suffered a ‘mere’ 8,000 casualties that first day. The Royal Newfoundland Regiment, for example, suffered ninety per cent casualties – of the 780 Newfoundlanders that advanced on 1 July, only 68 were available for duty the following day.

One of Britain’s generals at the Battle of the Somme, Sir Beauvoir de Lisle, wrote, ‘It was a remarkable display of training and discipline, and the attack failed only because dead men cannot move on’. Despite the appalling losses, Britain’s commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Douglas Haig, decided to ‘press [the enemy] hard with the least possible delay’. Thus the attack was resumed the following day. And the day after that.

Cavalry and tanks

On 14 July, following a partially successful nighttime attack, the British sent in the cavalry – a rare sight on the Western Front of World War One and one that stirred the romantic notions in old timers such as Haig. But the horses became bogged down in the mud, the Germans opened fire and few survived, either horse or man.

On 15 September, Haig introduced the modern equivalent of the cavalry onto the battlefield – the tank. Originated in Britain, and championed by Winston Churchill, the term ‘tank’ was at first merely a codename to conceal its proper name – ‘landship’ (pictured). Despite advice to wait for more testing, Haig had insisted on their use at the Somme. He got his way and the introduction of 32 tanks met with mixed results – many broke down but a few managed to penetrate German lines. But, as always, the Germans soon plugged the hole forged by the tanks. Nonetheless, Haig was impressed and immediately ordered a thousand more.

The Battle of the Somme ground on for a further two months. Nine Victoria Crosses were awarded on the first day alone; another 41 by the end of the battle. Soldiers from every part of the Empire were thrown into the melee – Australian, Canadian, New Zealanders, Indian and South African all took their part. The battle finally terminated on 18 November, after 140 days of fighting. 400,000 British and Commonwealth lives were lost, 200,000 French and 400,000 German. For this, the Allies gained five miles. The Germans, having been pushed back, merely bolstered the already heavily-fortified second line, the Hindenburg Line.

As AJP Taylor put it in his First World War, first published in 1963, ‘Idealism perished at the Battle of the Somme. The enthusiastic volunteers were enthusiastic no longer’.

Rupert Colley.

For more, see Rupert’s new book, The Battle of the Somme.

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Born 24 June 1850 in County Kerry, Ireland, Horatio Kitchener first saw active service with the French army during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and, a decade later, with the British Army during the occupation of Egypt. He was part of the force that tried, unsuccessfully, to relieve General Charles Gordon, besieged in Khartoum in 1885. The death of Gordon, at the hands of Mahdist forces, caused great anguish in Britain. Thirteen years later, as commander-in-chief of the Egyptian army, Kitchener led the campaign of reprisal into Sudan, defeating the Mahdists at the Battle of Omdurman and reoccupying Khartoum in 1898. Kitchener had restored Britain’s pride.

Boer War

Kitchener’s reputation took a dent however during the Second Boer War in South Africa, 1899-1902. Succeeding Lord Roberts as c-in-c in November 1900 with the idea of mopping up outstanding pockets of resistance, Kitchener resorted to a scorched-earth policy in order to defeat the guerrilla tactics of the Boers. Controversially, he also set up a system of concentration camps and interned Boer women and children and black Africans. Overcrowded, lacking hygiene and malnourished, over 25,000 were to die, for which Kitchener was heavily criticised.

The criticism, however, did not damage Kitchener’s career, becoming first c-in-c of India, promoted to field marshal, and, in 1911, Consul-General of Egypt, responsible, in effect, for governing the whole country.

‘Your country needs you’

At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Lord Kitchener was appointed Secretary of State for War, the first soldier to hold the post, serving under Herbert Asquith’s Liberal government. Bleakly, he predicted a long war, a lone voice among the government and military elite who anticipated a short, sharp conflict. Britain, Kitchener argued, would need an army far larger than the existing 1914 professional army, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). But the British, unlike their European counterparts, were against conscription. The answer was to raise an army of volunteers thus Kitchener went on a recruitment drive. From 7 August 1914, Kitchener’s poster appeared across the country. The government hoped for perhaps 100,000 volunteers within the first six months. Any more would cause logistical problems. In the event, they got two million by the end of 1915, such was the extent of British patriotism and British naivety.

‘A great poster’

Popular with the public but less so with the government, who found him taciturn and difficult to work with, the failure of the Gallipoli campaign saw Kitchener’s prestige fall. In December 1915, Lord Kitchener suffered a demotion. He had offered to resign, but the government, knowing how popular he was with the public, daren’t let him go. The prime minister’s wife, Lady Margot Asquith, once famously said, ‘if Kitchener was not a great man, he was, at least, a great poster.’ (Although Lady Asquith later assigned the quote to her daughter). Kitchener’s successor as secretary for war and eventual prime minister, David Lloyd George, thought little of Kitchener and criticised his wartime role in his 1937 War Memoirs. (Field Marshal Douglas Haig, Britain’s c-in-c from December 1915, was another victim of Lloyd George’s post-war denunciations).

In June 1916, Lord Kitchener was sent on a diplomatic mission to Russia to try and better coordinate the Western and Eastern Fronts. On 5 June, the ship he was travelling on, the armoured cruiser, HMS Hampshire, hit a German mine off the Orkney Islands and sunk. Nearly all drowned. Kitchener’s body was never found, leading to several conspiracy theories that he had become too much of an embarrassment and liability, and had been assassinated. That David Lloyd George, at the time the Minister for Munitions, was supposed to have been accompanying Kitchener but cancelled at the last minute, merely added to the speculation. The editor of the Manchester Guardian remarked that Kitchener ‘could not have done better than to have gone down, as he was a great impediment lately’.

Lord Kitchener’s death shocked the nation and he was deeply mourned. But today, almost a century on from his death, his poster remains one of the iconic images of the twentieth century.

Lord Kitchener’s Death Plaque and me

A friend of mine recently bought for a tidy sum Lord Kitchener’s Memorial Death Plaque. He asked me to get it valued. These 12 cm diameter bronze plaques (pictured, although this one is not Kitchener’s) were presented to the next of kin of those that had died during the Great War in the name of Britain and her empire. The design is that of Britannia holding a trident aside a lion. Beneath her is another lion gorging the German eagle, and the two dolphins are meant to represent Britain’s sea power. The inscription reads ‘He died for freedom and honour‘.

About 1,300,00 were presented and my friend has a rather macabre collection of over 3,000, including this one of Kitchener’s. I took it to an auction house in London and yes, it was genuine but, given Kitchener’s status, there are about five or six in existence. Nonetheless, my friend seems delighted to be the owner of one.

Rupert Colley.

Read more in The Clever Teens’ Guide to World War One, available as ebook and paperback (80 pages) on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

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Suddenly it comes. Her tone changes.  ‘Jean, it is I,’ she says in the voice of a young man.
Instantly, the couple recognise the voice. The woman, Jean, gasps, ‘It is Kingsley.’
‘Is that you, boy?’ says the man, his hands tightening over his wife’s.
Lowering his voice to a whisper, Kingsley says, ‘Father, forgive me.’
The man’s heart lurches, ‘There was never anything to forgive. You were the best son a man ever had.’
He feels a hand on his head then a kiss just above his brow. It takes his breath away.
‘Are you happy?’ he cries.
There is a pause and then very gently, ‘Yes, I am so happy.’

‘Christianity is dead’

Contacting the dead was a popular pursuit post-First World War, when so many parents had lost loved ones in the killing fields of the Western Front, Gallipoli and further afield. The war was without precedent in terms of fatalities, and people, throughout Europe, haunted by a generation of slaughtered men, found themselves struggling for answers. The technology of warfare had defeated everything they previously held dear – and religion had failed to provide the answers. Instead, many turned to spiritualism as a means to contact their dead directly.

And the leading proponent of spiritualism was none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His greatest invention, the straight-laced Sherlock Holmes, would have thoroughly disapproved of his creator’s conversion to séances, Ouija boards and mediums. But the great writer had lost his son, Kingsley, in October 1918, and like so many grief-struck parents, he was desperate to commune with his dead son from beyond the grave. ‘Christianity is dead,’ he once declared, ‘How else could ten million young men have marched out to slaughter? Did any moral force stop that war? No. Christianity is dead – dead!’

Kingsley Conan Doyle had been wounded in the neck on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916. 20,000 British soldiers were killed that day, plus another 40,000 wounded – the worst, single day in Britain’s military history. Two years later, however, Kingsley was recovering. But in the summer of 1918, the whole world was swept by Spanish Flu, the most devastating pandemic in modern times, which claimed at least 50 million lives. Among them, on 28 October, was 25-year-old Kingsley, his resistance compromised by his battlefield injury.

Four months later, the pandemic claimed Conan Doyle’s brother, Innes. Conan Doyle fell into a deep depression but was consoled by the fact he knew he could, at some point, reach out and contact them on the other side. But Conan Doyle’s belief in spiritualism was not caused by his son and brother’s deaths – it had been his firm conviction for many decades.

Born into a strict Roman Catholic family, Conan Doyle had all but lost his faith by the time he was 17. Declaring himself agnostic, he nonetheless felt an emptiness in his being. So, as a young newly-qualified doctor practicing in Southsea, near Portsmouth, he researched what he called ‘new religions’. In 1880, the 21-year-old doctor attended his first séance. It made a huge impression on him.

Seven years later, Conan Doyle published the first of a series that would make him a rich man and make his name the world over – A Study in Scarlet, starring Sherlock Holmes. But it was also in this same year, 1887, that Conan Doyle declared himself a spiritualist.

Conan Doyle formed a small group that met regularly in Southsea, trying their hand, with mixed results, at séances. But it was the appearance of a real medium, experienced at summoning the dead, that convinced Conan Doyle. ‘After weighing the evidence,’ he wrote, ‘I could no more doubt the existence of the phenomena than I could doubt the existence of lions in Africa.’

The Death of Sherlock Holmes

Conan Doyle wrote more Sherlock Holmes and the pipe-smoking detective made him rich. But very soon Holmes, and his erstwhile companion, Dr Watson, were keeping Conan Doyle from what he really wanted to do. Writing to his mother, Conan Doyle said, ‘[Holmes] takes my mind from better things’. For Conan Doyle, ‘better things’ meant spiritualism. The death of Holmes was not long in coming. In 1893, only six years after his first appearance, Conan Doyle killed off his indomitable sleuth, drowning him in the Reichenbach Falls in the Swiss Alps.

Now, free of the demands of his detective, Conan Doyle was able to devote all his energies to spiritualism. But not for long. So outraged were his fans by the death of Sherlock Holmes, that Conan Doyle had no choice but to bring him back to life, employing a literary sleight of hand. Sherlock Holmes was to remain his occasional and mostly unwelcome companion for the rest of his life.

In 1914, the Great War, as it was originally called, broke out. No war has been so associated with the paranormal as the First World War. The first and most notorious case occurred in August 1914. British forces had just been beaten by an advance of Germans near the Belgium town of Mons and were forced into a retreat. As the army retreated, British soldiers claimed they saw apparitions either in the form of angels or archers from the Battle of Agincourt, 1415, depending on who was telling the tale, that provided them safe passage.

Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law and good friend, Malcolm Leckie, was killed at Mons. Together with his second wife, Jean, Conan Doyle immediately began trying to dredge Leckie up from the dead through a series of séances.

The Other Side

In 1916, with the war at its height, and still seeking answers, Conan Doyle stepped up his interest in spiritualism. Whereas before he had only ‘dallied’ with the subject, now he was prepared to embrace fully a ‘breaking down of the walls between two worlds, a direct undeniable message from beyond, a call of hope and of guidance to the human race at the time of its deepest affliction’. Spiritualism was the answer to the world’s problems.

Kingsley, a firm Christian, had had no truck with his father’s spiritualism, which is why, when talking to him from the ‘other side’, he begged his father’s forgiveness for having always doubted him.

Following the war, Sir and Lady Conan Doyle stepped up their campaign – they toured the country and journeyed to Australia and the US. With the energy and enthusiasm of committed converts, they embarked on a series of grueling tours, proclaiming their message to huge audiences.

Many of his friends and contemporaries found him foolish, not least his friend, the American Harry Houdini, the famous escapologist and magician. Houdini, momentarily interested in spiritualism following the death of his mother, soon realised it was nothing but a hoax and trickery, performed by mercenary conmen exploiting the bereaved and vulnerable. The two men went to great lengths to prove each other wrong to the point of falling out. Following Houdini’s death in 1926, Conan Doyle hoped to settle it for once and all by summoning the magician from the dead. But Houdini, even from the other side, held to his guns.

The Cottingley Fairies

Conan Doyle’s reputation was questioned even more when he declared his utter belief in the Cottingley fairies. Two young girls, cousins, had used paper cut-outs of fairies and photographed themselves with them in their garden in the village of Cottingley in Yorkshire. By the time Conan Doyle, a great believer in fairies, was declaring the photos’ authenticity to the world, even going so far as to write a book on the subject, The Coming of the Fairies, the two young girls dared not say that it was no more than a silly prank.

Conan Doyle dutifully continued to write Sherlock Holmes; the last collection of short stories, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, was published in 1927, three years before Conan Doyle’s death. But despite the ridicule and the antagonism, Conan Doyle stuck to his spiritualist beliefs as he entered old age. In 1930, aged 71, he wrote, ‘The reader will judge that I have had many adventures. The greatest and most glorious of all awaits me now’. He died soon afterward, on 7 July 1930.

The greatest and most glorious adventure

At his memorial service, held on 13 July in the Albert Hall, an empty chair was placed next to Jean, his widow. 6,000 people crammed in, many out of respect but most, perhaps, in the anticipation of a memorial service with a difference – an appearance from the man himself. They were not to be disappointed. After the usual sombre service, a woman admired by Conan Doyle for her qualities as a medium, Estelle Roberts, took to the stage. Proceedings now resembled a spiritualist stage show as she passed on messages of comfort from the other side to members of her audience. After thirty minutes or so, she turned to the empty chair and shouted, ‘He is here.’ Only she, as the medium, could see him and, later, she said that Conan Doyle had been there throughout congratulating her on her performance. Speaking to Lady Jean, Roberts said, ‘I have a message for you from Arthur.’ She whispered a few words in Lady Jean’s ear.

What those words were, Lady Jean never said and we will never know, but she smiled and took obvious comfort from them.

Rupert Colley.

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In India French first met his future rival, Douglas Haig, then a captain. Indeed, Haig later lent French a large sum of money to help the latter stave off bankruptcy. While in India, French had an affair with the wife of a fellow officer. The scandal almost ended his career.  He survived and went on to serve with distinction as a cavalry officer during the Boer War where, most notably, in 1900, under the stewardship of Frederick Roberts, he lead the force that relieved the British garrison besieged in the town of Kimberley.

French was appointed Britain’s army chief-of-staff in 1911 and given command of the British Expeditionary Force, the BEF. In 1913, French was promoted to the rank of field marshal.

1914

With the outbreak of war in 1914, the BEF crossed the Channel, landing on the continent on 7 August. (Consisting of little more than 90,000 men, only half of whom were regular soldiers; the other half being reservists, the BEF had famously, and allegedly, been dismissed by the Kaiser, Wilhelm II, who, on 19 August, ordered his army to ‘exterminate the treacherous English and walk over General French’s contemptible little army.’ Hence British soldiers took pride in calling themselves the ‘Old Contemptibles’.) French’s orders, from Horatio Kitchener, minister for war, were to work alongside the French but not to take orders from them. The BEF first saw action during the Battle of Mons, 23 August 1914, Britain’s first battle in Western Europe since Waterloo ninety-nine years before.

Following the Allies’ Retreat from Mons and with the Germans advancing on Paris, Joseph Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, decided to counterattack, aided by the British. But French, concerned for his exhausted men, even at the cost of French soldiers, instead contemplated a complete withdrawal. On 1 September French received a visit in person from Kitchener who ordered him to obey Joffre’s commands.

1915

1915, a year of continuous stalemate, and the disastrous Battle of Loos, did little for the failing reputation of French, whose mood swung from one extreme to another. In December 1915, he was told to resign and was replaced as commander-in-chief by his deputy, Sir Douglas Haig.

As a way of compensation, French was showered with various titles and awards, and given command of the British Home Forces until 1918, during which time he had to deal with the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland.

French, resentful that he had been usurped by his former deputy, devoted much energy to criticizing Haig, to the point he was summoned to Buckingham Palace and told, in person by the king, to desist.

John French died on 22 May 1925, aged 72.

French’s older sister, Charlotte Despard, was a constant embarrassment to Sir John. She was, at various times, a suffragette, a Labour Party candidate, a pacifist, an Irish republican, a member of Sinn Féin, a vegetarian, a fan of Mahatma Gandhi, a communist and an admirer of the Soviet Union. One thing that remained constant in her life was Despard’s animosity towards her famous brother.

Rupert Colley.

Read more in The Clever Teens’ Guide to World War One, available as ebook and paperback (80 pages) on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

The post John French – a brief biography first appeared on Rupert Colley.

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Thomas Highgate was born in Shoreham in Kent on 13 May 1895. In February 1913, aged 17, he joined the Royal West Kent Regiment. Within months, Highgate fell foul of the military authorities – in 1913, he was upbraided for being late for Tattoo, and ‘exchanging duties without permission’. In early 1914, he was reprimanded for having a rusty rifle and deserting for which he received the punishment of forty-eight days detention.

First Battle of the Marne

On 5 September, the first day of the Battle of the Marne and the 35th day of the war, Private Highgate’s nerves got the better of him and he fled the battlefield. He hid in a barn in the village of Tournan, a few miles south of the river, and was discovered wearing civilian clothes by a gamekeeper who happened to be English and an ex-soldier. Quite where Highgate obtained his civilian clothes is not recorded but the gamekeeper spotted his uniform lying in a heap nearby. Highgate confessed, ‘I have had enough of it, I want to get out of it and this is how I am going to do it’.

Having been turned in, Highgate was tried by a court-martial for desertion. The trial, presided over by three officers, was brief. Highgate did not speak and was not represented. He was found guilty. At 6.20 on the morning of 8 September, Highgate was informed that he would be executed. The execution was carried out fifty minutes later – at 7.07, he was shot by firing squad.

Highgate’s name is shown on the British memorial to the missing at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre on the south bank of the River Marne. The memorial features the names of over 3,000 British soldiers with no known grave.

Shoreham

By the time the war had ended, Highgate’s parents had moved away from Shoreham, settling in Crayford in southeast London. Highgate had four brothers, two of whom were also killed during the war. Their names, including that of Thomas, appear on the Sidcup war memorial.

In 2000, the parish council in Highgate’s home village of Shoreham replaced its war memorial plaque bearing the names of those who had fallen during the war of 1914-1918 as the original had become worn. The original did not include Highgate’s name simply because, as mentioned, the family had moved away. Nonetheless, in 2000, after some debate, the council voted not to include Highgate’s name on the replacement plaque. However, a space was left should, at some point in the future, the people of Shoreham want his name added.

But Highgate is not alone. A correspondent informed me that “eight other lads who were born in Shoreham and fought in the war, died and are not on the Memorial”.

In November 2006, the UK government pardoned all 306 servicemen executed in the First World War but, at the time of writing (May 2015), the name Thomas Highgate still does not feature on Shoreham’s war memorial.

Rupert Colley.

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The ‘Great War’ was still less than a year old. On 18 February 1915, in response to Great Britain’s blockade of Germany, the Germans announced that it would, in future, be operating a policy of ‘unrestricted submarine warfare’. In other words, German U-boats would actively seek out and attack enemy shipping within the war zone of British waters. Even ships displaying a neutral flag, they announced, would be at risk – the Germans being aware of the British habit of sailing under a neutral flag.

The Lusitania was certainly not the first victim of Germany’s new policy – on 28 March 1915, the British ship RMS Falaba was torpedoed and sunk by German U-boat off the coast of southern Ireland. 104 people were killed, including one American.

Liable to destruction

Wealthy passengers boarding the Lusitania, a 32,000-ton luxury Cunard liner, in New York saw an advertisement issued by the US German embassy warning them of the risk:

Vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travellers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk. 

Yet any concern passengers may have harboured were brushed aside in the belief that the Germans would surely not target a civilian cruise liner. And also, with a top speed of 21 knots-per-hour, far higher than any other ship at the time, the Lusitania could easily outpace a German U-boat with a top speed of a paltry 13 knots.

Carrying 1,959 people (1,257 passengers and 702 crew), the Lusitania left New York on its 202nd Atlantic crossing on 1 May 1915. The British, knowing of the potential danger as the ship approached Ireland, gave the captain, William Thomas Turner, specific instructions. He was told that as he approached the coast he should sail at top speed and in a zigzag fashion, hence making it far more difficult for a U-boat to score a direct hit. But with thick fog and poor visibility, and wanting to save fuel, Captain Turner sailed at only 15 knots per hour and, fatefully, in a straight line. He was also told to avoid Ireland’s jutting coastline. Yet here he was, on the 7 May, within eleven miles off the coast of southern Ireland, within sight of the Old Head of Kinsale Lighthouse.

U-Boat

Lurking beneath the waters was the U20, captained by Walter Schwieger. The U20 had already downed a few smaller vessels and now, in the early afternoon of 7 May, it spotted the Lusitania at a distance of about 700 metres. At 14:09, the U20 fired a torpedo, hitting the Lusitania on the starboard side. Panic ensued. Seconds later a second explosion from deep down was heard. This, the second explosion, was what doomed the ship to its fate. It was assumed to be a second torpedo but this was not the case. Captain Schwieger always maintained that he had only fired the one, claiming: “It would have been impossible for me, anyhow, to fire a second torpedo into this crowd of people struggling to save their lives”.

The ship listed so severely to the side that the lifeboats on the port side were unreachable. Those that were dropped from the starboard side fell into the water at such a distance from the ship that people were forced into making a terrifyingly long leap in order to reach them.

The ship sank quickly – in just eighteen minutes. It sank in a mere 90 metres of water. At the point the bow hit the sea bottom, the stern was still sticking out of the water.

Rescue ships were dispatched from the Irish port of Queenstown and arrived on the scene within two hours, and, unhindered by further attacks, managed to pick up 761 survivors. But 1,198 lives were lost, including 128 of the 197 Americans on board. 59 children and 35 babies were among the dead.

A legitimate target?

So what had caused the second explosion? Records showed that down in its hold, among all the cargo and baggage, the Lusitania had been carrying ammunition for over 4,000 small arms – some four million American-made bullets. It was the unforeseen detonation of all this live ammunition that caused the greatest damage. The Germans certainly maintained this was the case but the British and the Americans denied it. History has revealed that the Germans had been right, and therefore, by carrying ammunition, the ship was, under the laws of war, a legitimate target.

Nonetheless, with the US president, Woodrow Wilson, outraged by what he saw as an atrocity, the German high command rescinded its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, although, two years later, on 1 February 1917, they re-introduced it. The British government condemned the ‘barbarian’ Germans as indeed they would five months later following the German execution of British nurse, Edith Cavell.

Historians have debated whether the Lusitania had been purposefully allowed to fall into a German trap and sunk as a means of persuading the US into joining the war. Up to this point, the US had firmly remained isolationist. In the event, it would be another two years, 6 April 1917, before the US joined the Allies but the sinking of the Lusitania and the killing of American citizens certainly played a large part in swaying the opinion of both the president and American public opinion.

Captain Turner

Captain Turner remained on the bridge of the ship until it was submerged. He then clung onto a chair in the swirling Irish waters for two hours before being rescued. He died on 23 June 1933, aged 77.

Rupert Colley.

Read more in The Clever Teens’ Guide to World War One, available as ebook and paperback (80 pages) on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstone’s, Apple Books and other stores.

The post The Sinking of the Lusitania – a brief summary first appeared on Rupert Colley.

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Exactly one month after the assassination, Europe was at war, a war that quickly spread and became the Great War, or, as we know it, the First World War. And from the post-war seeds of discontent came the rise of Nazism and the road to the Second World War.

Born to an impoverished family in Bosnia on 25 July 1894, Gavrilo Princip was one of nine children, six of whom died during infancy. Suffering from tuberculosis, the frail and slight Princip learned to read, the first in his family to do so, and devoured the histories of the Serbs and their oppression at the hands of the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires.

The Black Hand

In 1911, a friend of Gavrilo Princip’s, Bogdan Zerajic, had tried to assassinate the Austrian-Hungarian governor of Bosnia. He failed and ended up shooting himself. But it provided the young Princip with inspiration. He tried to enlist in various terrorist groups but was turned down due to his short stature

Eventually, he was accepted and tasked to join a group called the Black Hand. Its explicit purpose was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The opportunity – the occasion of the archduke’s visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, due for 28 June 1914.

The plan was known to the Serbian prime minister. Although sympathetic, he feared the consequences and ordered the arrest of the Black Hand conspirators. Fatefully, his orders came too late.

Princip and a handful of his Black Hand comrades arrived, each armed with a revolver, a bomb and, in the event of failure, a vial of cyanide. They joined, at various intervals, the throng of onlookers lined along a six-kilometre route and waited for the six-car motorcade to come into view. The first two would-be assassins lost their nerve, whilst the third managed to throw his bomb causing injury to a driver but leaving the archduke and his wife unharmed. Racked with a sense of failure, Princip trudged to a nearby tavern.

The Wrong Turn

The archduke, having delivered a speech, decided to visit the wounded driver in hospital. On his way, his driver took a wrong turn down a one-way street, a street named after Franz Ferdinand’s uncle, the emperor Franz Joseph, along which was a tavern. And in that tavern – Gavrilo Princip. Princip, astonished to see the royal car, acted on impulse. As the driver tried to engage the reverse gear, Princip jumped onto the running board and fired two shots.

Having assassinated the archduke and his wife, Gavrilo Princip tried to shoot himself but was wrestled to the ground where again he tried to kill himself by swallowing his cyanide pill. But the poison, so old, failed to work. The photograph was taken by one Milos Oberajger, an amateur photographer.

At the time of the assassination, Gavrilo Princip was a month short of his twentieth birthday. His age saved him from execution as Austrian-Hungarian law decreed that the death penalty could not be applied to those aged under 20. After a 12-day trial, Princip was sentenced instead to the maximum penalty of twenty years. While in prison, he suffered a resurgence of his tuberculosis and, due to poor hygiene and inadequate diet, had to have an arm amputated. His condition worsened and he died in the prison hospital, aged 23, on 28 April 1918.

Rupert Colley.

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