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WITH MANCHESTERS IN
THE EAST
Published by the University of Manchester at
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS (H.M. MCKECHNIE, Secretary)
12 LIME GROVE, OXFORD ROAD, MANCHESTER
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
LONDON: 39 Paternoster Row
NEW YORK: 443-449 Fourth Avenue and Thirtieth Street
CHICAGO: Prairie Avenue and Twenty-fifth Street
BOMBAY: 8 Hornby Road
CALCUTTA: 6 Old Court House Street
MADRAS: 167 Mount Road
[Illustration: THE BATTALION OFFICERS ON MOBILIZATION, AUGUST 1914
_Photo: Warwick Brookes_
_Front Row, left to right_--Rev. E.T. Kerby, Chaplain; Capt. C. Norbury;
Capt. H.G. Davies; Capt. and Adj. P.H. Creagh; Major G.B. Hurst;
Lieut.-Col. H.E. Gresham; Major J.H. Staveacre; Major J. Scott;
Capt. J.N. Brown; Capt. H. Smedley.
_Middle Row, left to right_-- ----; Lieut. F. Hayes; Capt. J.F. Farrow
(R.A.M.C.); Lieut. G. Chadwick; Lieut. W.G. Freemantle;
Lieut. C.H. Williamson; Capt. A.T. Ward Jones; Lieut. W.F. Creery;
Capt. C.E. Higham.
_Back Row, left to right_--Capt. T.W. Savatard; Lieut. B. Norbury;
Capt. D. Nelson; Lieut. D. Norbury; Lieut. E. Townson; Lieut. G.S.
Lockwood; Lieut. J.H. Thorpe; Lieut. G.C. Hans Hamilton; Lieut. H.D.
Thewlis; Lieut. A.H. Tinker.
_Absent_--Capt. R.V. Rylands.]
WITH MANCHESTERS
IN THE EAST
BY
GERALD B. HURST
MANCHESTER:
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
12 LIME GROVE, OXFORD ROAD
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
London, New York, Bombay, etc.
1918
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
During the passage of this book through the press, the Author has been
engaged overseas on active service, and has been unable to devote the
necessary attention to the correction of the proofs, etc. Due allowance
must therefore be made for such errors as have crept into the pages.
The Publishers have felt obliged to delete the numbers of the
Territorial Battalions mentioned in the book, a fact which accounts for
occasional vagueness in terminology.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PUBLISHERS' NOTE v
CHAPTER
I. EASTWARD HO! 1
II. THE SUDAN 12
III. GALLIPOLI 23
IV. THE AUGUST BATTLES AT CAPE HELLES 33
V. TRENCH WARFARE ON GALLIPOLI 45
VI. THE STRAIN 56
VII. THE LIMIT 65
VIII. LAST WORDS ON GALLIPOLI 71
IX. REVIVAL IN EGYPT 76
X. ON THE SUEZ CANAL 82
XI. SINAI 88
XII. THE TERRITORIAL IDEA 95
APPENDIX--EXTRACT FROM A LETTER
FROM GENERAL WINGATE 100
INDEX 103
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Battalion Officers on Mobilization, August
1914 _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Lieut.-Col. H.E. Gresham 2
Arrival at Khartum, 2nd October 1914 10
General Sir F.R. Wingate, G.C.B., K.C., M.G. 14
Map of Gallipoli 24
(a) In Khartum Station }
} 40
(b) In a Turkish Trench }
C Company, The British Camel Company 62
Group of Officers, Egypt, 1914 84
With Manchesters in the East
CHAPTER I
EASTWARD HO!
Our Battalion of the Manchesters was typical of the old Territorial
Force, whose memory has already faded in the glory of the greater Army
created during the War, but whose services in the period between the
retreat from Mons and the coming into action of "Kitchener's Men" claim
national gratitude.
Their earlier history hardly emerges from parochialism. Founded in 1859
and recruited mainly from the southerly suburbs of Manchester, the
Battalion lived through the common vicissitudes of the English Volunteer
unit. It knew the ridicule and disparagement of the hypercritical and
cosmopolitan, the too easy praise of the hurried inspecting general, the
enthusiasm of the camp fire, the chill of the wet afternoon on a wintry
rifle range at Crowden. The South African War gave many a chance of
active service, and infused more serious and systematic training in the
routine of the yearly Whitsuntide camps. At that time everything
depended on the Regular officer who acted as adjutant, and officers and
men owed much to the inspiring energy of Captain (now Colonel) W.P.E.
Newbigging, C.M.G., D.S.O., of the Manchesters, whose adjutancy
(1902-1907) meant a great step in their efficiency. The letter "Q,"
which signifies success in all examinations required by the War Office,
figured in the Army List after most of our officers' names during this
vivid and strenuous phase. For the rest, the pre-War period turned
mainly on the fortnightly camps and occasional Regimental exercises.
Salisbury Plain, the Isle of Man, Aldershot and a few North Country
areas are full of memories of manoeuvre and recreation in a peaceful
age. Regimental exercises filled weekends in Cheshire or the West
Riding.
Volunteering served many purposes in England. It kept alive in luxurious
times a sense of discipline and a cultivation of endurance. Its
comradeship brought classes together so closely that the easy
relationship between officers and men in the 1st line Territorial unit
of 1914-1915 was the despair of the more crusted Regular martinet. Its
joyous amateurism freed it from every trace of the mental servitude
which is the curse of militarism, and stimulated initiative and
individuality. Long before the War, most Territorials believed in
universal training, not so much on account of the German peril, which to
too many Englishmen seemed a mere delusion, as on account of its
social value. It is pleasant to remember how solidly Lord Roberts
received local Territorial support when he made the most prophetic of
all his speeches in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on the 22nd October
1912.
[Illustration: _Jerome, Southport._
Lieutenant-Colonel H.E. GRESHAM.]
Lord Haldane's conversion of the Volunteers into the Territorial Force
of 1907 meant little change in the internal economy or in the personnel
of this Battalion. Its mounted infantry company, 140 strong, and its
cyclists were lost in the interest of uniformity. Nevertheless, the
change made us better fitted for war by incorporating us in the larger
Divisional organisation essential in European war. Volunteer units
supplied select companies for South Africa in 1899 and 1900. The East
Lancashire Territorial Division was ready to take the field _en bloc_
against the Germans in 1914.
The story to be told in these pages is so largely that of one battalion
that a word can be said of its leaders in August, 1914, without making
any claim to special pre-eminence, for our old and honourable rivalries
with other local battalions faded long ago in mutual confidence.
Lieutenant-Colonel H.E. Gresham, who had commanded since 1912, was an
ideal C.O.--a Territorial of long service and sound judgment, a fine
shot, and in civil life a distinguished engineer. In Major J.H.
Staveacre, the junior Major, we had an incomparable enthusiast, with a
zest for every kind of sport, a happy gift of managing men and an almost
professional aptitude for arms which had been enriched by his
experiences in the Boer War. Captain P.H. Creagh of the Leicestershire
Regiment was a fine adjutant, whose ability and character were to win
him recognition in wider fields. His management of our mobilisation was
beyond praise. The quartermaster, Major James Scott, was an old
Manchester Regiment man, with a record of good work at Ladysmith and
Elandslaagte. Of the company officers and N.C.O.'s, there is no need to
add here to the tribute which will be theirs in any detailed history of
Gallipoli. Nothing was more characteristic than their readiness to
volunteer for foreign service as soon as we mobilised--long before the
immensity of the War was understood, and considerably before the day of
the lurid poster and the recruiting meeting.
The Manchester Territorial Infantry Brigade was embodied on the 4th
August 1914, and on the 20th marched out through Rochdale to a camp on
the Littleborough moors near Hollingworth Lake, where they were asked to
offer themselves for service abroad. Twenty-six officers and 808 men of
our Battalion (roughly, 90 per cent. of our strength) volunteered. A
wise pledge, afterwards unavoidably broken, was given by the authorities
that no man should be transferred from his own unit against his will.
We dropped down the Channel on the evening of the 10th September 1914 in
a convoy of fourteen transports and one ammunition ship, with H.M.S.
_Minerva_ as escort--the first Territorial Division that ever left
England on active service. We sailed in a ship with a few East
Lancashire details and the Headquarters Staff of the Brigade. General
Noel Lee, the Brigadier, was an old Manchester Territorial officer, who
understood the Territorial spirit to a nicety, and his death from wounds
received in the battle of the 4th June 1915 was our irreparable loss.
The Brigade Major was a tower of strength when on Gallipoli.
Of our Battalion, who enjoyed during those shining autumn days their
first vision of Gibraltar "grand and grey," with its covey of German
prizes in harbour, and of the Mediterranean, then free of the submarine,
and who half feared that the War would be over while they were still
buried in the African desert, only a small number survive unscathed.
Many sleep amid the cliffs and nullahs of Gallipoli.
The virtues and capacities of these my comrades will always haunt my
imagination. Their psychology was extraordinarily interesting. They were
unlike the Regulars, who preceded them in the field, and to some extent
unlike the New Army, which gathered in their wake.
They had very little of the professional soldier. Only 45 among them had
ever served in the Regular Army. Their homes and callings and the light
amusements of a great city filled their minds in the same way as the
Regimental tradition and routine filled those of the old British Regular
Army. With a few exceptions, the feeling of duty was a far stronger
motive to their soldiering than any love of adventure. These Manchester
men had little of the Crusader or Elizabethan but his valour. They were,
in fact, almost arrogantly civilian, coming from a country which had
dared ineptly to look down on its defenders. The Northerner is not an
enthusiast by nature. His politics are usually limited to concrete
questions of work and wages, prices and tariffs, and he knows no
history. The Germans in August, 1914, were still "Lancashire's best
customers"--not a warlike race bent on winning world-empire by blood and
iron. The social traditions of the middle-class urban population, from
which the Territorials were drawn, had never fostered the military
spirit, nor the power to recognise and understand that spirit in others.
In such circumstances the sober zeal with which middle-aged sergeants
forsook their families and businesses at the very outset of the War,
without a moment's hesitation, is a signal proof of their character. No
men were ever greater lovers of peace. Some philosophers have seen or
tried to see in the War a judgment on the luxury and frivolity of
pre-War England, on her neglect of defence, and her absorption in
opulence. Were this the case, it would be ironical to reflect how the
North Country homes, first and most cruelly scourged by the War, were
homes to which the so-called "sins of society" were least known and most
repugnant, and where military training had been long pursued in the
teeth of public ridicule and at the sacrifice of leisure. Long
afterwards the father of a very talented private (Arthur Powell), who
was killed in Turkey, wrote of his son: "We never intended him for the
rude alarums of war, but his sense of duty and the horrors of Belgium
fired his imagination, so that with hundreds of thousands of
high-spirited young Englishmen, he placed himself in his country's
service." This cast of thought is uncommon in the ranks of a Regular
army.
Officers and N.C.O.'s were obviously and admittedly amateurs, and never
acquired the distinctive dash of the old Army. Soldiering was not their
profession. Yet Territorials like the Manchesters possessed a range of
talent in many ways beyond the normal standard of the Army. They had the
manual arts and crafts of the industrial North. These volunteers were in
civil life builders and joiners; railwaymen, tramwaymen, engineers;
clerks, shorthand-writers, draughtsmen, warehousemen, packers; carters
and fitters; telephonists, chemists. When half of C Company was suddenly
converted into the British Camel Corps at Khartum it was discovered to
contain the camel-keeper of Bostock's menagerie. We found piano-tuners
for the Sirdar's Palace, gardeners for the Barrack plantations, and in
later days expert mechanics for anti-aircraft gunnery. Skilled clerks
like Sergeants J.C. Jones and Beaumont were marked out by Nature for the
orderly room. Many men well qualified to hold commissions served in the
ranks and died before the nation recognised their quality. Lastly, we
could turn out more barristers than all the other East Lancashire units
put together. It would be hard to imagine better officers than our
three ex-Juniors of the Northern Circuit--N. H.P. Whitley, J.H. Thorpe
and Hans Hamilton.
With the New Army, that was destined to do so much to save the cause of
civilisation, our men had more in common than with the Regulars. In
1914, however, we had inevitably a less thorough training in technique
than that which fell to their lot in the ensuing years. Only a few of
our officers had gone the round of "schools of instruction" and
"courses." We had fewer specialists, and our equipment was probably
inferior. During all our Eastern experiences we used the long rifle
only. It was, however, a real advantage to have had nearly sixty years'
record as a Volunteer unit behind us, with all sorts of Regimental
traditions, which lie at the roots of comradeship and ensure happy
relations between officers and men. Another distinctive virtue of the
Territorial system about Manchester was that all ranks, from
Brigadier-General to private, came from one neighbourhood, and viewed
life from much the same angle. They ran to type, and their interest in
soldiering, obviously spontaneous in the first instance, had been
fostered by common experiences in time of peace.
We saw Malta in the far distance on the evening of the 21st September,
and next day, in mid-afternoon, our convoy unexpectedly met an Indian
Division on its way from Bombay to Marseilles. Their transports, mainly
British Indian liners, passed ours and exchanged escorts with us,
thrilling the least imaginative with pride in the Empire and a sense of
the illimitable issues at stake in Europe. We had left England ringing
with the legendary passage of the Russians from Archangel, the snow
still clinging to their furs, just as the British Army in Spain, in
1812, had been cheered by a similar mirage of Russians streaming to
their aid through Corunna. The first paper that we read on reaching
Egypt announced in giant headlines the arrival of 250,000 no less
shadowy Japanese at Antwerp. But the Indians were real. Their appearance
was a true touch of the World War and they reached the firing line in
Flanders on the 19th October.
We eventually arrived at Alexandria on the 25th September 1914. B
Company, under Captain (afterwards Lieutenant-Colonel) J.N. Brown, was
dropped here, half of it under Captain E. Townson going on to Cyprus,
which they garrisoned until the eve of its annexation. Eventually the
whole Company, then under Captain (afterwards Major) D. Nelson, was
reunited to the rest of the Battalion when it left for the Dardanelles.
The remaining part of the Division also disembarked at Alexandria, in
order to relieve the Regular garrisons of Alexandria and Cairo. The
Battalion passed on to Port Said. As we neared the harbour, our men
hailed watchers on the quay for the latest news. Antwerp was then at its
last gasp, and the _Aboukir_, _Hague_ and _Cressy_ had been torpedoed in
the North Sea. The first cry from the ship was "How is City getting
on?" League football was still the first interest of Young England in
the second month of the Great War.
We sailed down the Canal on a scorching Sunday morning to Suez and the
Red Sea. A few Indians guarded its banks. Onward through the misty heat,
under escort of a destroyer, with a wind blowing hot from Arabia, to
Port Sudan, where we put in at 11 A.M. on the 30th September. The
temperature was 105 deg. F. in the shade. Here half of C Company, under
Captain T.W. Savatard (afterwards killed on Gallipoli) were left to
garrison and construct defences for the place. Once a desolate coral
reef, it is now a great harbour with the promise of a greater future.
This first night of Africa we rowed happily across its starlit lagoon in
the full glamour of the East to enjoy British hospitality.
Next morning we started, with Major Boyle of the Egyptian Army Staff as
a "cicerone," on the long railway track from the sea to Atbara and
Khartum, past scattered villages peopled by staring Fuzzy Wuzzies with
erect and luxuriant black hair, and across hot stretches of desert and
rock. At a quarter past eleven on the morning of the 2nd October 1914 we
arrived at Khartum North, where we detrained and were met by the Sirdar,
General Sir Reginald Wingate, then Governor-General of the Sudan, and
his Staff. We marched over the Blue Nile Bridge to the spacious British
barracks, the only spot in the Sudan where the Union Jack flies
unaccompanied by the flag of Egypt, and relieved the Suffolk Regiment.
In the afternoon our band played them out of the cantonment, and we
cheered them on the first stage of their long journey to the
blood-stained battle-fields of Flanders.
[Illustration: ARRIVAL AT KHARTUM, 2nd OCTOBER 1914.]