Laid Bare

I remember, on New Year's Day, saying to the In-Charge: 'I wonder if anyone, a hundred years ago, knew what kind of year they were welcoming in?'
For most people, it was probably a New Year like any other - Auld Lang Syne, the coal and the bread on the doorstep, a few jars too many...
When I said it, both of us sort of  - paused - hindsight being what it is. The In-Charge numbers war heroes amongst his ancestors, a father and son who died together at Passchendaele in 1917, so his genetic memory (as it were) of the First World War runs very deep.

Having studied various aspects of that war at college, and, more recently and far more poignantly, having visited Ypres, Tyne Cot and many of the other Passchendaele war cemeteries to mark the 90th anniversary of that terrible battle, it runs pretty deep with me too.

There were no graves for the In-Charge's relatives to visit, just the knowledge that the bodies of their beloved men had been lost forever in Flanders mud. But we found their names - at long last - carved on the great wall at Tyne Cot, where 12,000 soldiers are buried and another 35,000 have their names inscribed on the wall, because they too were never found. It was a naked moment for us all - a raw, vulnerable sensation of being laid bare, feeling the loss of them, the waste, all over again, despite the years, despite the generations.

I say us, because our son was there as well. He had been asked to make a speech on that memorable occasion. The Queen was present, and Prince Philip, and the Queen of the Belgians (their King was in hospital at the time), and representatives of all the Allied armies, and Governments. It amounted to a lot of Big White Chiefs and scrambled egg on shoulders.

I am lucky enough to have a DVD of my son's speech, as one of the many cameramen present sent it to me afterwards - a kindness I greatly appreciated. I also found it on YouTube recently, to my surprise, and if you'd like to watch it, you can, via this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM_Q1sG55yU 

(The coverage starts 40 seconds into the recording, and finishes 4.40 later)


He was magnificent. Neither the In-Charge nor I could have uttered more than a couple of words without breaking down completely, but No 1 Son did a fantastic job, which only served to make me cry even more.

Ypres, totally destroyed during the battles of Passchendaele, was identically rebuilt after the War. The Last Post has been sounded every evening since the end of WW1 at the town's Menin Gate - except during Hitler's occupation

The next day, we were taken to the battlefield where they died - and someone who knows a great deal about military tactics and even more about Passchendaele, explained just why the In-Charge's great uncle Ronald was killed.

It was a quiet field, sloping gently upwards to a small knoll of trees, and planted with cabbages.
Such an innocent-looking landscape. You would never guess how many men lie beneath it.
Beautiful boys, just like my son, most of them.
It was the slope that killed Ronald - he'd been given the almost impossible task of leading his men up the hill to take the German position at the top. There was nowhere for them to hide, and the Germans just picked them off.
His father, Harry, died because when Ronald was brought into his headquarters, mortally wounded, Harry insisted on going to find a doctor to try and help his son. Lieutenant-Colonels weren't generally cannon-fodder in the First World War, but on that occasion Harry, a veteran soldier, was in the wrong place at the wrong time; and the saddest part of all is that no doctor could have saved Ronald at that stage, anyway.

We found their names, at last

Melancholy thoughts for a Monday afternoon. Thoughts prompted by the year that's in it, and by the fact that - just two months into2014 - every time you turn on the radio or the television, the Ukraine is teetering on the brink of something potentially explosive, potentially disastrous.

I was in Sligo Town earlier on, and the chap behind the counter of a shop I visited spurned my platitude about the gloriously sunny day.
'I wonder what will happen in the Ukraine?' he said.
We talked about it for a few minutes.
'The guy I work with is Polish,' he commented. 'He says if anything happens in the Ukraine, Poland will probably get involved, and he will have to go home and join the army - all his family are in Poland.'

Who could blame him?
When the politicians and financiers and economists string us up in the tangled webs they weave, what option are we left with but to defend the values, the people, the land - all the things we love most and hold most sacred.
I came away feeling that, collectively, we have all been here before.
And perhaps, collectively, learned very little.

The memorial at Tyne Cot, bearing Kipling's words: 'Their Names Liveth For Evermore'

The Tragedies of War

A poppy from our garden for Remembrance Day

Yesterday, in The Challenges of War I started telling you about my husband’s great grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel Harry Moorhouse and Harry’s son, Ronald who fought together at the front from September 1915, first on the Somme and later at Passchendaele. I got as far as 1916, when Ronald was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry.

Today’s story takes us into 1917, and the Third Battle of Ypres, otherwise known as Passchendaele. It was named for the village that it obliterated, and it was one of the bloodiest and most widely remembered battles of the First World War.  Lloyd George, who had become Prime Minister just the year before, later wrote that Passchendaele together ‘with the Somme and Verdun, will always rank as the most grim, futile and bloody fight ever waged in the history of war’. He was probably right.

It’s easy to simplify a battle, nearly 95 years after the event, but of course it wasn’t simple. It’s easy to judge too, and many have stood in judgement over Field Marshall Haig, but he, Plumer – all the architects of that offensive – were only trying to win the war, to do their best for King and country against all the odds. They probably did make mistakes, but I’m not a military strategist. Even so, looking back, it's possible to identify several things that must have compounded to make the horror of Passchendaele inevitable.

At the time, the front line basically extended from Belgium to the French/Swiss border, with one of the areas most under pressure being Ypres – a place within easy reach of the Channel. At all cost – and it was at a cost – Haig needed to prevent the Germans from reaching the Channel, and every year the battles to defend the front line became bloodier and bloodier. By 1917 the scene was set for something pretty catastrophic.

There had been a two year operation – the biggest of its kind in military history – to undermine the German lines with miles of tunnels and galleries in order to blow up their front line. A ‘landscape makeover’ waiting in the wings, if ever there was one. Bear in mind also that this part of Flanders was already reclaimed land, full of dykes and drains, criss-crossed by streams – a flat landscape that could, and often did, get very wet. So the terrain alone was a serious hazard.

The Third Battle of Ypres began in June and went on until November. It started with the explosion as the German lines were blown up – the mines and galleries had been filled with 1 million pounds of high explosive (450,000kg). The after-shocks were felt in London. Then the Allied guns started firing. They fired over 4 million shells to launch the offensive. At this stage, I would imagine that no part of the area was recognisable. And – about a month or so into the battle, it started to rain. It was the worst rainfall for 30 years. Tanks bogged down, soldiers and horses drowned in the unending mud, troops were unable bury the dead. The archetypal pictures of the First World War were born out of scenes such as this.

During the four-month battle, the Allies lost 310,000 men, the Germans 260,000. The Allies gained a few feet here and there, and lost them, and gained them again. It has been estimated that they gained roughly 2 inches (5cm) of ground for each soldier lost. By any calculation, that is expensive ground. But, perhaps even more important than ground gained was that they held the line.

When you consider how appalling life must have been at the front, it’s not surprising that letters home said so little. What could they possibly say? All they could do was send their love, say ‘I’m all right’.

By October 1917, Harry had been given the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and had assumed command of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry's 4^th Battalion. Ronald, at the age of 22, was a Captain. The 4th Battalion were being held in reserve, ready for action at any moment. That moment came on the night of 8/9 October. In intense darkness, Harry led his men forward, towards the old German positions. The terrain was so bad that progress was slow, and when the 5^th Battalion came under heavy fire, Harry’s men were needed as reinforcements. They too were now in the firing line, and having to make detours to get through land that was an impenetrable morass.

I have seen that ground. Now, over 90 years on, it is a quiet field where cabbages and potatoes are grown. It rises gently up a slope to that rare thing in Flanders, a low ridge. On one side is Wolf Copse, on the other Belle Vue. On 9^th October 1917, the Germans held the high ground, and the fire raining down on the two Battalions was so devastating, it was preventing any advance. Ronald – Captain Moorhouse, bravely led a company of men up the slope in an attempt to capture the high ground and silence the guns. In the ensuing battle, he was badly wounded.

Captain Ronald Wilkinson Moorhouse

He was carried to his father’s headquarters, not far behind the front line. As soon as Harry saw how seriously injured his son was, he insisted on setting out to find a doctor to tend his wounds. Several people tried to go detain him, and go in his place, but his concern for Ronald was so great that he set out himself.

He was shot by sniper fire and died in the arms of one of his men.

Ronald died within the hour.

We understand that this is the only known case of a father and son dying together at Passchendaele. The King and Queen sent a telegram to Susanna, Harry’s wife, to tell her of their deaths. The soldier who had held Harry as he died also wrote to her.

Unsurprisingly, she never really recovered. There weren’t even any graves to visit in the years after the war. It wasn’t until much, much later that the family were able to see their memorial, but eventually the time came to pay a very public tribute to Harry and Ronald, and honour the sacrifice they so gallantly made.

I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.

You can find the first part of this story in The Challenges of War

The Challenges of War.

Before I begin, I would just like to thank everyone who left such generous and kind comments on my entry last week. It was lovely to receive them - and a great encouragement to continue!

This week’s 100 Word Challenge for Grown Ups was to write 100 words with the title, or theme ‘...lest we forget...’

I have to say that, despite Julia’s words to the contrary, I found this much harder than last week’s – but mostly because it was difficult to decide how to use the prompt. It seemed so overwhelmingly associated with Remembrance Day, that I felt I should go off in another direction, but in the end I couldn’t.

There’s a lot of family memory rooted in this one weekend every year, and it is only right that I should honour it.

But first, I want to tell you a story – a true story.

And as we are allowed to include a photograph as part of this week’s challenge, I shall do so, when I get to my entry further on.

My husband’s great grandfather was Harry Moorhouse. He was born in 1869, near Leeds in Yorkshire, and came into the world, as the expression was, hosed and shod. His family owned a woolen mill, but as a young man, making cloth didn’t sing to him as much as the idea of adventure, so instead, at 22, he joined the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, and became a professional soldier. His first active service was in South Africa during the Boer War.

In the early 1890s he married his sweetheart, Susanna Marsdin and they had three children – Ronald Wilkinson, Lydia Marjorie and a second son, Alan. Marjorie, as she was known, was my husband’s grandmother.

When war was declared in 1914, Harry eagerly reported for duty in Wakefield, joining the KOYLI’s 4^th Battalion as a Major. His son Ronald had no intention of being left behind, and, volunteering immediately, received a commission as Second Lieutenant in the same Battalion. Father and son arrived in France together in April 1915.

Just four months later, Harry was wounded. A bullet went through his ankle and he was sent back to England; but by the end of the year had returned to the front, and in January 1916 he received the Distinguished Service Order. He was wounded again during the first days of the Battle of the Somme in July – a bullet this time going through his shoulder, and shrapnel damaging his upper arm. At the time, Harry was standing in for the battalion commander who had himself been been wounded, and he refused to leave his post, but after a further hour and a half he had lost so much blood that he was forced to go to the field hospital. Once again he was sent back to England for medical treatment in Leeds.

Both he and Ronald wrote regular letters home, and we are lucky enough to still have some of these in their tiny, typically early-twentieth century envelopes.  They say very little about what life was like at the front – there was probably no point, as letters were heavily censored – but they are full of love and reassurances.

Ronald meanwhile had been promoted to Temporary Captain, in charge of his own company, a role he obviously fulfilled with great courage and competence, as in April 1917 he led a raid on enemy trenches, commanding 91 men and 4 other officers. Under cover of darkness, their faces blackened, and with a protective barrage of fire exploding all around them, they advanced through mud, wire and craters to the German front line. Unbelievably, they were successful, but their mission was destined to fail, as when they got there it was to find the trenches abandoned, the machine guns removed. However, they immediately came under heavy fire. Calmly and with great leadership, Ronald got all his men away, even though he was wounded himself while helping another injured man back to their own lines. No one was killed and Ronald was sent back to England on a hospital ship, much to his mother’s relief. But the respite didn’t last for long – a month later he returned to the front where he was not only made Captain, but also received the Military Cross for his heroism. He was just 22 years old.

I wish I could tell you that the story of their time in France ended there, but it didn’t. Worse was to come.

I’ll tell you what happened tomorrow.

For now, with Harry and Ronald Moorhouse very much in mind, here is my entry for this week’s 100 word challenge.

The challenge was to write exactly 100 words including the phrase ‘...lest we forget...’

I understand it was supposed to be 100 words, plus the 3 words of the prompt.

If not, then my piece can lose its title.

The photograph is of Lieutenant Colonel Harry Moorehouse, DSO TD, Chevalier de Legion d’Honneur, 4^th Battalion, the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.

...lest we forget...

...lest we forget the roaring and the thunder,

the shells, the gas, the stench of naked fear,

the broken cries of grown men for their mothers,

the midnight thoughts – ‘Whose madness brought me here?’

...lest we forget the mud, the filth, the anger,

the freezing of the heart as comrades die,

the images of sweethearts, home and young ones

quenched deep in eyes locked, sightless, to the sky.

...lest we forget the fear of sleep  –  of dreaming -

by those returned, unharmed by guns or men;

remember: though the past’s a different country,

today they will be fighting once again.

---

Harry and Ronald's story continues in The Tragedies of War