From Ice Floes to Battlefields Read online

  Cherry did not expect his first trip with Richardson to last for long. Richardson would simply establish what the dogs could do in the current conditions, then return to Britain and train more dogs to take out to France and Belgium. While Cherry was away, his mother and sisters would oversee the conversion of Lamer into a hospital.

  Cherry, Richardson and the bloodhounds made it safely across the Channel, but by the time they reached Brussels the Belgian government, royal family and army were in retreat to Antwerp. With German forces about to enter the city and the British Expeditionary Force several days away, Brussels was a dangerous place to be.

  When Richardson learned that German soldiers had been shooting French army ‘sniffer’ dogs wearing coats emblazoned with a Red Cross, he decided he must also retreat and return to Scotland, where he could think about what to do next.

  Within a week of leaving England Cherry was back at Lamer, from where he wrote to Arthur Farrer, his family’s lawyer:6

  It was an awful wild goose chase. From an early stage it was obvious that it could be impossible to work dogs. Then communications were cut by the Germans … The Red Cross Staff came in by car & told us we had better get back – which we did. We might have as well run a confectioner’s shop as try & work dogs. It is most disappointing, but there it is …

  I would like to keep my power of attorney intact in case anything which really seems useful turns up. But I will never be hurried into another job of this kind again – by Treves or anybody. And I expect to get a considerable sum back from the Life Insurance, to whom you sent a cheque for £315.0.0.

  It was a horrid business.

  It was not long, however, before Cherry wrote to Farrer with news about another possible opportunity for war service:7

  I am not sure if I am going to take a job helping to run a converted yacht with wounded etc. I want a job if possible, but the doctor here refuses me medically – however I think something will turn up. But I won’t be hurried – once bit twice shy …

  When the idea of working on the hospital ship came to nothing, Treves offered to provide a car so Cherry could transport injured soldiers for the Royal Army Medical Corps. When that opportunity failed to materialise, Cherry purchased a motor bike, enlisted as a private in the Royal Engineers and went to Aldershot army camp to train as a dispatch rider. It did not take Cherry long to settle down into being a ‘Tommy’ (as opposed to an ‘Officer Boy’) and to become accustomed to working with ‘rough but very good diamonds’.

  But one day he received an unexpected telegram from the Admiralty. Would Mr Cherry-Garrard consider joining the Royal Naval Air Service’s new armoured car division? The Admiralty’s approach resulted from a long chain of coincidences which began with Farrer. He had met Lady Boothby, whose RNAS officer husband had worked with Captain Murray Sueter, who was a former shipmate of Captain Scott. Sueter, who had provided Scott with advice on his motor-sledges, was now (with encouragement from First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill) establishing a new armoured car division within the RNAS. When Boothby had mentioned Cherry-Garrard’s name to Sueter, wheels had soon been set in motion.

  By the middle of October Cherry’s commanding officer in the Royal Engineers had reluctantly agreed to release him from duty. Cherry was appointed as a Lieutenant in the RNVR and sent to join the RNAS’s Armoured Car Division. Within three weeks he had been promoted to Lieutenant-Commander and put in command of the Division’s No. 5 Squadron.

  When Cherry realised that his squadron had no headquarters and few staff, he cleared out garages and other outbuildings at Lamer and found places where his men could be billeted. He contacted George Abbott, who was now sufficiently recovered from his breakdown to sign up with Cherry; he also managed to recruit several other drivers and mechanics locally.

  As Cherry prepared his unit for action, Lamer’s spacious rooms were already filling up with wounded soldiers returning from the front. Cherry’s sisters had now, like Pennell’s sister Dorothy and Edie Bowers, sister of Cherry’s friend Birdie, joined the ranks of nurses, whose services would be much needed in the months to come.

  Soon after war had broken out Edie Bowers, a full-time nursing sister, had answered an appeal for nurses to join a mission to Serbia led by Lady Paget, wife of Britain’s former ambassador to Serbia. Lady Paget had previously helped establish a military hospital in Belgrade during the Balkan wars and now wanted to provide a 250-bed facility in Nish (Niš), where wounded Serbian soldiers could be treated.

  When Edie passed through London on her way to Southampton to catch her ship, George Wyatt, the expedition agent who had helped her brother reload the Terra Nova in Lyttelton, met her and escorted her across the city and onto the boat train to Southampton.

  Edie and her fellow-nurses boarded the troopship SS Dongola, which would carry them east; it was, as she told her mother, ‘quite a sight’:8

  all the Serbian Legation & a hundred other Lady’s, Lord’s & Sir’s arrived to shake hands, & promised us the dinner of our lives when we all returned. We were all bundled into a first class saloon carriage; the reporters from the Sphere, Mirror & Sketch were trying to take photos, notes, etc. …

  We have about 1,000 Tommies on board & a couple of hundred officers. We are the only ones of the opposite sex, one of the officers told me they were not expecting any Ladies & were highly pleased to see us arrive….. We are one of about thirteen or fourteen ships, P & O & all sorts of transport lines & we are being convoyed by several cruisers & two boats with search lights … we are fifty miles away from the ordinary trade route [and] we can also see French gun boats & English torpedoes.

  For Edie, the least-travelled member of Bowers family, being sea-sick in the Bay of Biscay was a small price to pay for such an adventure:

  we are going to such funny places … it really is an experience that I am very glad to get … You will be greatly relieved to know that we are not going up the Adriatic but going through Greece instead to Salonika … I believe we have been through one mine-field after we left Southampton; at any rate we got through alright.

  As the Dongola entered the Mediterranean and temperatures soared, nurses were barred from certain areas of the ship whilst soldiers were taking their baths. When news reached the ship that Turkey had entered the war Edie’s soldier companions began joking about having to rescue her and the other nurses from ‘hamans’. The closing of the Dardanelles to British and Allied shipping also meant that Lady Paget and her nurses would no longer be able to travel to Serbia via Salonika.

  But Edie did not mind the delay:

  We really are having an awfully good time … there is a regular scramble amongst the men to take us out & it is so funny to see how jealous some of them are when they get left behind without anybody. I am afraid I see many difficulties ahead which will make trouble … It seems so funny to think of the cold & wet in this hot climate with everybody wearing the thinnest of clothing & solar topees.

  One of the doctors on the ship turned out to be on his way to join the troopship Northbrook, on which Edie’s brother Henry had served before leaving the Royal Indian Marine and joining the Terra Nova expedition.

  When the Dongola docked in Malta, Edie, her fellow nurses, Lady Paget and the other medical staff travelling to Serbia disembarked. While they waited to find out how they would be travelling to Nish, Edie and her new friends visited the catacombs and ‘100 other places’ in and around Valletta. Within a few days transport for the next leg of their journey had been organised:

  we are being shipped in a coal barge for a bit, after that I don’t know where we shall go … what it may be in the future I don’t know but up to the present it is like a holiday with plenty of nice men to help do things for us … I wonder how I will get on ‘In Service’. I am sure it will not be all plain sailing by all means. Still I am not meeting trouble half-way.

  Conscious that her mother had been outwardly stoical but distraught about what had happened to her only son on his great Antarctic adventure just over t
wo years previously, she added, ‘Now dearest don’t worry about me, I am afraid I am not one to die an untimely death, if so we would have been shipwrecked in that awful storm …’

  Although Edie made light of the situation, Lady Paget and her nurses were now entering dangerous waters.9

  Turkey and surrounding area and Gallipoli (inset), showing Allied gains during the Gallipoli campaign (1915) and (on main map) other major fronts and advances in subsequent years. Map originally published by Carter and Mears. Image © private.

  Helles Sector, Gallipoli, showing starting position of Allied front (including Royal Naval Division sector) and gains made during June and July 1915 during advances on Krithia and Achi Bula. Map © and courtesy of Roy C. Swales.

  Notes

  1. Cherry-Garrard, chapters 8 and 9.

  2. Speak, p. 11; Priestley, ‘Wireless Memories’.

  3. The other applicant was Oates.

  4. Wheeler, Cherry, chapter 8. See also Luci Gosling, ‘Messenger Dogs: Lieutenant-Col. Richardson and the British War Dog School’ (www.maryevans.com blog); ‘Setting up the British War Dog School’ (www.bbc.co.uk), E.H. Richardson (1920), British War Dogs, Their Training and Psychology (https://archive.org/details/britishwardogsth00richrich).

  5. Evelyn Cherry-Garrard to Farrer, 18 August 1914, D/EHR/Z8/111.

  6. Cherry-Garrard to Farrer, 23 August 1914, D/EHR/Z8/122.

  7. Cherry-Garrard to Farrer, 28 August 1914, D/EHR/Z8/127. Wealthy individuals sometimes offered, or agreed when asked, to put their luxury yachts at the disposal of the government; the Sheelah, owned by Lady Beatty, the wife of Admiral David Beatty and daughter of Chicago retailer Marshall Field, was one example.

  8. Edie Bowers to Emily Bowers (undated) October, 8 November 1914, SPRI/MS1505/5/1–2; The British Journal of Nursing, 31 October 1914 (pp. 345–6).

  9. Although I have an aversion to ‘spoilers’ I would like to reassure readers that Edie Bowers (who makes no further appearance in this book) returned safely to Britain; after a long career as a nurse she retired to Scotland, where she died in her 80s. It is thanks to her that her brother’s papers were preserved and are now in the archives of the Scott Polar Research Institute.

  11

  From Blandford Camp Towards Byzantium

  Within a month of war breaking out Edward Nelson left his work at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory to join the Royal Naval Division. He had not yet completed his training when the Division was called to serve at Antwerp, but he had since been allocated to Hood Battalion, part of the Division’s 2nd Naval Brigade. In November 1914 all the Naval Brigade battalions moved en masse to a new base and training camp near Blandford Forum. Nelson’s new base was about 20 miles from Salisbury and 35 miles from Beckington, near Bath, where his parents lived.

  Christmas at Blandford had been a fairly rowdy ‘all ranks’ affair, following which Nelson and his fellow-officers were awarded a week’s home leave. Nelson had by then been allocated to Hood’s ‘A’ Company, serving under Lieutenant-Commander Bernard Freyberg.

  Freyberg, who was almost six years younger than Nelson, was an imposing young man.1 He had been born in England, raised and educated in New Zealand, swum for his adopted country at national level and worked as a dentist, territorial army officer and special constable. He had arrived in England in autumn 1914, via Tahiti, other Pacific Ocean islands, the United States (where he had abandoned a planned advanced dentistry course) and Mexico, where he had worked as an armed guard during the country’s civil war. When Freyberg heard that war had broken out in Europe he walked to the Mexican coast (some 300 miles away) and took a steamer to Britain. After he arrived in London, a chance encounter with Colonel George Richardson, with whom he had served in the New Zealand territorials, and a meeting with Winston Churchill had resulted in his present appointment. When Freyberg realised Nelson had taken part in the Terra Nova expedition, he admitted that he regretted not having applied to join the expedition for at least a season.

  Of Hood’s other senior officers, Commanding Officer Lieutenant-Commander Quilter was a Grenadier Guard, Lieutenant-Commander Parsons was a career naval officer and Adjutant Alexander Graham had worked as a soldier-cum-war-correspondent in the Boer War and a stockbroker. Most of Hood’s junior officers were, like Graham and Nelson, volunteers. Most had, like Nelson, been educated at public schools and Oxbridge colleges, but others also had connections with the navy or with Churchill.

  Rupert Brooke (Rugby, Cambridge), a charismatically handsome, sensitive young man, had joined the RND not long after returning from an extensive tour of North America and the Pacific Ocean islands. Brooke had served at Antwerp in Anson Battalion but had requested a transfer to Hood so he could be with friends already serving with the battalion.2 Brooke was also a literary protégé of Churchill’s private secretary Edward Marsh and had been working on his latest collection of poems while at Blandford.

  Denis Browne (Rugby, Cambridge organ scholar) was a school-friend of Brooke; Arthur Asquith (Winchester, New College) was the third son of the prime minister; Johnnie Dodge, an American, was a cousin of Churchill on his mother’s side; Maurice Hood, son and heir of Viscount Bridport, was related to Admirals Nelson and Hood; William Egerton’s father was Vice-Admiral Egerton (a friend of Scott and recipient of one of his final letters); Scotsman Hew Hedderwick (Fettes College) was a chartered accountant with RNVR experience.3 By February Brooke had added to his Hood ‘circle’ Patrick Shaw-Stewart (Eton, Oxford), a banker (Baring’s) who was, like Brooke, a member of the ‘Coterie’ of Lady Diana Manners.4 Around the same time musician and Olympic oarsman Frederick Septimus Kelly (Eton, Oxford) arrived from Victor Campbell’s Drake Battalion to join his friend Denis Browne.

  On 17 February Churchill arrived at Blandford to inspect what was sometimes referred to as ‘Winston’s Army’. Three days later Quilter announced that the RND’s Naval Brigades would be sailing east to join the RND’s Marine Brigade in a short campaign in Turkey. The aim was to break through the straits of the Dardanelles to Constantinople, force Turkey out of the war and thus reopen Russia’s route from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.

  On 25 February King George, accompanied by Churchill, arrived at Blandford for a final pre-departure inspection. The day was clear and bright and the sun glinted on the instruments of Hood Battalion’s Silver Band as they played the national anthem.

  Two days later, following final kit inspections and farewells, Nelson and his fellow-officers marched their men 10 miles from Blandford to Shillingstone station; from there trains took them to Avonmouth, where they boarded the Grantully Castle, which would take them, their mules, equipment and stores to Turkey.

  While Brooke and his more romantically inclined friends talked of ‘sailing to Byzantium’, another (anonymous) Hood poet had a less romantic view:5

  We’ve a rather mixed collection in the Blandford RND

  For we’ve got 5,000 sailors who have never seen the sea,

  And we’ve got a naval transport of 500 horse-marines,

  The express design of Winston to supply the Turks with beans.

  As the Grantully Castle sailed east non-sailors tried to find their ‘sea legs’ and long-serving seamen groused about being forced to wear army-style khaki uniforms, rather than navy blue. But sing-songs organised by Kelly and Browne raised spirits and passed the time. They followed a course west of the Scillies (to avoid German submarines), through the Straits of Gibraltar and along the North African coast before docking in Malta. Whilst in port, Brooke and Shaw-Stewart met up with Charles Lister, a friend and Divisional HQ linguist who had applied to transfer to Hood. As they pulled out of harbour Browne conducted the battalion band in a surprise performance of the ‘Marseillaise’ which was duly acknowledged by cheers from sailors in French ships which were moored nearby.6

  On 11 March the Grantully Castle sailed into the already crowded harbour in Mudros Bay on the Greek island of Lemnos. For the next week Nelson and his companions explored the island, carried out trainin
g exercises and practised rowing in the ocean and landing on the beach from tenders. Nelson also gave a lecture on the use of the prismatic compass, an instrument he had, thanks to Pennell, learned to use during the Terra Nova expedition.7 They were told they were leaving for Turkish waters, but after packing up, re-embarking and setting sail, they were soon back in Mudros Bay.8

  On 24 March they were transferred to Port Said, outside Cairo, where RND men were billeted in tents near the docks. Nelson initially shared a tent with Freyberg, Brooke and Dodge, but Brooke and Dodge left after two nights to join Asquith on a tour of Cairo’s ‘sights’.

  On 2 April the RND’s new Commander-in-Chief, Sir Ian Hamilton, came to inspect his men. By now Brooke was felling unwell due, he suspected, to sunstroke. Hamilton visited him in his tent where, according to Brooke, they discussed poetry, which they had discovered was a shared interest.9 Soon afterwards Brooke took a taxi to Cairo, where he joined fellow-invalid Patrick Shaw-Stewart at the latter’s hotel. By now Brooke was suffering from acute diarrhoea and a swollen sore had appeared on his upper lip.

  On 10 April the Grantully Castle left Port Said for Lemnos, towing an auxiliary vessel which would be used for troop disembarkation. As Mudros Bay was now completely full of ships the Grantully Castle continued to Trebuki Bay, on Skyros. Over the next week Nelson and his companions practised semaphore by sending messages to each other, improved their fitness by doing Swedish exercises and honed their machine-gun handling and firing skills.

  Brooke was up and about again and enjoying discussions with the ‘Latin Club’ (Brooke, Kelly, Dodge, Browne, Lister, Asquith and Shaw-Stewart) about the parallels between their current situation and ancient Greek and Roman wars. Brooke also began taking photographs of his friends and their surroundings and jotting down fragments of verse:10