Dear all
A hundred years ago… during the week
just passed, King George V visited the by then “stabilising” Western Front for
the first time (somewhere in the French section, can’t find out where from
Googling, but close enough to get his boots dirty). In the coming days, The Austro-Hungarians engaged the
Russians at Limanova in the Galicia-Karpathian Mountains (December 1-13, heading
for a Russian defeat with 30,000 casualties to 12,000).
Further evidence
of the truly “world” reality of what was then dubbed The Great War developed with
skirmishing on India’s North-Western Frontier (“caused by German intrigues”
says www.greatwar.co.uk), the arrival of the first Anzacs in Suez, the capture
of the pro-German rebel leader General De Wet in South Africa, and a Portuguese
Expeditionary Force sailing from Lisbon to Angola to begin a belated response
to the German invasion of their colony two months earlier.
Meanwhile,
in Tonbridge (cunningly disguised as “Bunbridge” by my father) the 2/1st
City Of London Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, volunteer soldiers since September
and only just starting a very long run-up to “the real thing”, found themselves
ordered en masse to attend church…
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Tommy (as my father, Sam,
called himself in the early, third-person part of his memoir) and his older
brother Ted had both emerged from childhoods immersed and entangled in local C
of E churches. The family, having “come down in the world” when the boys were
tots in Manchester, and then endured many years of poverty in Edmonton, north
London, had to a considerable degree depended on a “tin church” mission to the
poor for simple charity and any kind of welcome into the community (from
children’s outings to their parents’ participation in organising special
events).
Later, via their Scout troop being run by the parish vicar, Mr
Frusher, the boys moved on to the main church, All Saints. There they joined
the choir and the vicar also gave Tommy/Sam free piano lessons – not to mention
a more general hope that his hard life might turn out all right in the end, as
my father recalled when writing the Memoir 60 years on:
‘Mr Frusher, with his dome of a head, his powerful voice and
perfect diction, had the gift of making people believe that all was well in
this best of all worlds; after his sermons, they would leave the church feeling
secure, strong, fortified, ready to meet the trials of the coming week.’
However, many of the lads
they’d enlisted with had no such background in either devotion or the practical
benefits of belonging to a church and their reverence could not necessarily be
relied upon, even though, once they’d gathered from their civilian billets
scattered all over the town, the whole business of the Sunday service was addressed
in the context of strict military discipline:
‘An excellent
breakfast on Sunday morning prepared Tommy for the preliminaries to the church
parade, which included much standing around before the Battalion’s approximate
one thousand officers and men lined up in an apparently endless chain of rows
of four.
To the rear, in
the distance, the Colonel’s white horse could just be seen. That important man
had placed himself so that, having given the orders to set the column in
motion, he could make a spectacular dash on his flying gee-gee to the head of
the column and take up his position as the leader of this huge threat to Kaiser
Bill.
Fortunately, the
soldiery knew all the noises the Colonel would make in order to get the column
moving churchwards. When they heard “Batt-alion-a!” they came to attention;
“Ayon on er raye!” and they all turned to the right; “Ee aa!” obviously meant
“Quick march!” so they all stepped off with the left foot, as they had been
taught.
Once again,
Tommy enjoyed the steady rrrp, rrrp of hundreds of heavy boots striking the
road. Heading along the high street he noticed a photographer’s tripod standing
on the pavement. He decided then and there to order a print, provided he could
find one where he was well in the picture.*
Soon, caps in
hand, they all filed into the fine, old, parish church. As he walked up an
aisle, Tommy looked around and felt compelled to admit this church looked
richer than the one he attended — the carvings more ornate and numerous. This
being a military service, it was taken by the vicar himself. He had a clear,
tenor voice but, thought Tommy, we score over him because our old man in
Edmonton is a Prebendary and a Surrogate and other impressive things which the
Bunbridge vicar wasn’t — and our vicar had a deep, old-port, very rich sort of
voice while Bunbridge’s was bell-like, and not so grand that it could even
charm the choirboys and induce them to stop fiddling and listen.
Considering that
many soldiers present had only the vaguest notions about the order of events,
the service proceeded well and smoothly — although, during the singing of one
well-known hymn, the vicar had to call a halt in order to insist that the words
as printed should be used. For instance, after the third repetition of “Glory,
glory, hallelujah” the final line wasn’t “Then we all went rolling home”, at
least not on his hymn sheet.
The return march
to the station completed, the men were free until 8.30am the following morning.
Ted, Harold and Tommy walked slowly in the general direction of their billets,
discussing such things as what to do with themselves when not on duty. Pubs
perhaps? But that cost money. Each suggestion encountered this same limiting
factor, so they settled on an occasional drink, pictures** once a week, and
roller-skating as often as possible. They had, of course, all done some roller-skating
in their boyhood, mainly in the street, and felt sure they would polish their
skills pretty quickly.’
* Sadly, this photograph didn’t
survive the decades and I never saw it.
**
Tonbridge had two cinemas at the time, the Star on Bradford Street, opened in
1910, and the Empire Picture Palace, Avebury Avenue, opened earlier that year.
All the best — FSS
Next week: The volunteer Fusiliers march about, dig trenches and wonder
why they’re not “over there” and “having a go”...
No comments:
Post a Comment