The Frightful First World War
The Dead Poet’s Footsteps.
Cruel Court Martials.
The Dead Poet’s Footsteps.
One of the most famous writers of the war was the poet Rupert Brooke. He’s written a poem about the glory of war. (this was a dumb thing to do since he’d never seen the horror of it, but the people back in Britain wanted to believe him).
If I should die think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England.
Rupert used to live in Grantchester Vicarage near Cambridge, and he wrote another famous poem about it . (The poem is called “The Old Vicarage, Grantchester” … no prizes for guessing why.)
He was sent off to fight in Gallipoli but never made it. In April 1915, he was bitten on the lip by an insect and died of blood poisoning. (It must have been a dirty insect that forgot to clean its biting teeth. This was probably not the glorious end Rupert imagined) The ‘corner of a foreign field that is forever England’ is his grave in an olive grove on the Greek Island of Skyros, by the way.
When the war was over a doctor called Copeland moved into Rupert’s old rooms in Grantchester Vicarage. One frosty evening he sat reading by the fire with his bulldog at his feet…
Suddenly the dog woke up and growled at the window. In the silence that followed I heard slow, regular footsteps coming round the house and heading for the window! I threw open the window … and there was no one there!
Doctor Copeland’s landlord explained that the footsteps had been heard ever since Rupert Brooke was killed four years before. (His phantom feet must have been hurting a bit by 1919!)
Explanations:
The dog heard burglars.
Or … Rupert didn’t like being stuck in ‘ some corner of a foreign field’ and wanted to come home.
Or … the owners of Grantchester Vicarage wanted to believe that their famous lodger still remembered them. But isn’t it strange that only the ‘famous’ Rupert Brooke came back and not some ordinary Joe Blogg?
Or … maybe it isn’t Rupert’s ghost after all. Maybe it is Joe Blogg’s ghost! This is not as silly as it sounds. In Grantchester churchyard there is a memorial for the local men who died in the First World War. There are usually flowers at the foot of the memorial, put there by poetry lovers who remember the famous Rupert. Is that fair? What about the other brave men who died? Are they forgotten and do they return to haunt the Vicarage in revenge? Look carefully at the memorial and you will see half a dozen other names on there. And one of the other (forgotten) names is … ‘Joseph Blogg’.
Cruel Court Martials.
If a soldier was accused of a serious crime – like dropping his weapon and running away, or shooting himself in the foot to avoid going into battle – he’d be given a trial, known in the army as a ‘court martial’.
Could you be a judge? Try these cases …
The Case of Bellwarde Ridge
Private Allen and Private Burden were in the same regiment.
In June 1915 their regiment was ordered to move forward to the Bellwarde Ridge, France, which the Germans were defending furiously. Private Peter Allen didn’t fancy walking towards machine-guns, so he took his rifle and shot himself in the leg. He was sent to hospital to recover and then ordered to serve two years in prison with hard labour. Private Herbert Burden had joined up the year before. He told the recruiting officer he was 18 but he lied. He was just 16. When he was ordered to attack Bellwarde Ridge he was just 17 – the age of many schoolboys today. The attack was a disaster and Herbert’s friends died all around him. He had done his best but, in the end he turned and ran from the battlefield.
He was court-martialled and found guilty. What would you do with Herbert? Remember what had happened to Peter Allen – who didn’t even get to the fight. Remember that Herbert was only a boy. And remember that he’d been under heavy fire.
a) Give him a short rest then send him back into battle.
b) Send him home because he had been too young when he joined the army.
c) Give him two years’ hard labour, the same as the soldiers who wounded themselves.
d) Shoot him.
The Case Of King’s Crater.
Sergeant Joe Tose and his officer, Lieutenant Mundy, left the safety of their trench to patrol a huge bomb crater in No-Man’s Land known as King’s Crater.
As they reached the crater they were attacked by a larger patrol of German soldiers. Lieutenant Mundy was shot.
Sergeant Tose ran back to the trench and decided to warn the rest of his battalion. To slow down the German attackers he jammed his rifle across the trench and set off for the rear trenches. As he had no weapon he was charged with ‘ casting away his weapon in the face of the enemy’
Everyone said that he was a good soldier. (One witness said that the Germans spoke good English and, to add to the confusion, had called out ‘Retreat!’) What would you do with Joseph Tose?
a) Give him a medal for his quick thinking in saving the patrol?
b) Take his sergeant’s position from him and send him back to fight as a private.
c) Strap him to a gun carriage for two hours a day for 21 days as Field Punishment No.1.
d) Shoot him.
Answers:
In both cases the men were shot. Men who avoided battle by shooting themselves were not executed. Herbert Burden was one of three 17-year-olds who were shot by the British in the First World War.
Sergeant Tose was disgraced and forgotten. He did not even get his name on his village memorial until his case was looked at 80 years later. His name was finally added in 1997.
In the First World War the British shot 268 men for deserting their posts. (These are just two examples.) The German records were destroyed but they must have had the same problem. Yet it seems they shot only 48 of their own men. The Russians gave up shooting their own soldiers and the Australians never shot one.
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