The Home Front in Devon during 1914 - Dr Richard Batten

 

 

This Great War recruiting poster was one of hundreds produced by the authorities during the 1914-18 conflict to encourage people to ‘do their bit’.  It was designed by Robert Baden-Powell, later ennobled as Baron Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting Movement     

Image credit: Museum Victoria

Visitors who have enjoyed The Great War at Fairlynch exhibition will be interested in hearing what an Exeter University researcher has discovered about Devon’s readiness for war 100 years ago.

World War One specialist Richard Batten, from the University of Exeter

From August 1914 to December 1914, Devon’s population witnessed the transformation from peacetime to wartime.  The residents of Devon were encouraged to participate with the war effort which ranged from recruitment campagns to war charities.  Dr Richard Batten’s talk, presented by the Otter Valley Association, will explore how Devonians responded to the circumstances of wartime on the Home Front in 1914.

“The commemoration of the Western Front should not wholly overshadow the wide-ranging activities of the men, women, and children of the British Home Front,” says Dr Batten. “Devon’s local tendency toward charity over service reflects the unusual autonomy of its citizens as they attempted to navigate the different challenges of the war.”

The talk will take place on Tuesday 7 October at 7.30 pm in East Budleigh Village Hall.  Admission costs £2.00 for OVA members and £2.50 for non-members.

‘The Great War at Fairlynch’ 2015 exhibition at Budleigh Salterton’s very special museum! Reviews included: “Wonderful display on WW1, informative, bright and relevant. Well done!! 

World War One was no picnic for teddy bears

 

Cecil the Great War teddy bear: one of the items on display in 'The Great War at Fairlynch' exhibition in Budleigh Salterton's museum

St Christopher medallions, four leaf clovers, rabbit’s feet...  many people wouldn’t dream of setting out on a journey or an important possibly dangerous  mission without the protection of their favourite charm.  Of special appeal to the inner child in us has been the teddy bear. One of the best known examples was Mr Whoppit, the teddy bear mascot and ‘magic talisman’ which land and water speed record holder Donald Campbell insisted on having with him on every run.

The development of teddy bears in the early years of the 20th century made them the perfect companion for many soldiers in wartime. Averaging only six inches tall they didn’t exactly meet army height requirements and their turn-out was often not of the smartest on parade. But they were loyal, accompanied their men everywhere during the war and sometimes gave rise to the most incredible stories of bravery and true grit.

Such were the soldier bears. Usually given to the men by their mothers, sisters or girl-friends, they were tucked into pockets where they could keep look-out and protect the wearer from danger.  

The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa www.warmuseum.ca has on display what has been described as “an especially intimate and heartbreaking reminder of the sorrows of war” in the shape of a ragged teddy bear.  The ten-year-old daughter of an army medical officer, had given it to him to keep him safe during World War One. Two years went by and her brother Howard wrote one day to ask “Dear Daddy, I hope you’re well and that the teddy bear is fine.”  The family was devastated when Howard’s letter was returned with a black stamp and the simple message ‘Killed in action. Return to sender.’  The officer had been killed at Passchendaele in 1917.  The teddy bear is on display along with Howard’s letter, donated to the museum by the officer’s grand-daughter.  

The soldier bear on display in Budleigh Salterton’s Museum is named Cecil and belonged to Herbert Alcock Elgee, a Captain in the Royal Engineers who carried him in his knapsack throughout the war.  The Museum’s records state that he was born in 1907 in South Africa and joined the Great Bear Regiment of Canada in 1915.  

Among the stories of Cecil’s heroic deeds is an account of how in 1916, tired after a battle, he crawled into a hole to sleep. The hole turned out to be the muzzle of a German field gun, which Cecil thus put out of action.  Luckier than the Canadian medical officer, Captain Elgee survived the war, although Cecil did not escape totally unscathed: cockroaches apparently ate one of his ears in India.  

After the war the pair lived in Copplestone Road in Budleigh Salterton, where Captain Elgee died in 1957 aged 89. Following his death his daughter, the artist Cecil Elgee, donated the bear to Fairlynch Museum. 

World War Two also had its soldier bears. A famous tale is told of the Campbell twins, both Old Etonian officers decorated for bravery and devoted to their little companions-in-arms.  Grubby was the name of the soldier bear belonging to Second Lieutenant Edward Fitzgerald Campbell, MC (1910-91).  Captured at St Valery in France, the young officer was searched by German soldiers who quickly discovered and seized Grubby to their great amusement. The soldiers’ mockery of Lieutenant Campbell came to an end when a German officer intervened, rescued Grubby and handed him back to his owner.  The pair spent their captivity together as prisoners of war for the next three years and were never parted again from each other.

Edward Campbell’s brother Sir Guy Theophilus Halswell Campbell, 5th Bt. (1910- 1993),  also had his own soldier bear, named Young.  The pair served faithfully together in East Africa during World War Two and survived the conflict, Guy being awarded the Military Cross like his brother. 

Another Eton-educated officer famous for his attachment to his teddy was Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Arthur Montague Browning, known by friends as 'Boy Browning'. He married Daphne du Maurier in 1932.   After a distinguished career in the 1914-18 conflict he commanded the 1st Airborne Division and 1st Airborne Corps during the Second World War, travelling by glider to take part in Operation Market Garden and the assault on Arnhem. In his pack, he carried not just one but three teddy bears and a framed print of Albrecht Dürer's The Praying Hands.

Visit ‘The Great War at Fairlynch’ exhibition at Budleigh Salterton’s very special museum! Reviews include: “Wonderful display on WW1, informative, bright and relevant. Well done!!!” 

 

Kate Adie helped make Budleigh LitFest a hit

Kate Adie with a ‘Great War at Fairlynch’ deckchair designed by 10-year-old pupil Charlie at St Peter’s Church of England Primary School.  “It’s the first time I’ve been photographed with a deckchair,” she admitted.

A top BBC broadcaster was one of the guest speakers at the 2014 Budleigh Salterton Literary Festival who have recently published books to mark the Great War centenary.

Kate Adie OBE, DL, the Corporation’s chief news correspondent in the late eighties, has reported from war zones around the world.  Her latest book, Fighting on The Home Front, examines the legacy of women in the 1914-18 world conflict. Her talk in St Peter’s Church on Sunday 21 September, the last day of the Literary Festival, provided a well illustrated insight into the way in which women’s contribution to the war effort helped to overcome outdated prejudices about their role in society. 

From driving trams to nursing on the front line, from delivering mail to making munitions, women performed groundbreaking functions that would steadily lead to female emancipation, even though they would have to wait a further frustrating ten years after the war before receiving the vote. Not until 1928 did the Representation of the People Act provide equal suffrage for men and women.

The work was far from glamorous, and frequently dangerous, evidenced with that photo of a lonely ploughwoman or the shocking accounts of fatalities and illness in the munitions factories.  Yet Kate Adie’s story was an inspiring one, including the history of the brave women of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry formed as early as 1907.  

Click  here  to read how, a few months ago, a nine-year-old Budleigh schoolgirl was similarly inspired by the story of the FANY volunteer who died in France on 24 August 1918. Eveline Fidgeon Shaw, whose family lived at Rosehill on Budleigh Salterton’s West Hill, was awarded the Croix de Guerre avec palme for her service with the French Red Cross. “A volunteer driver of devotion and courage beyond all praise,” was how the official citation described her. “She exerted herself selflessly, completely disdaining danger and fatigue, whilst carrying out evacuations, often in difficult circumstances and under enemy air attacks. She died as a result of a contagion illness contracted in the course of duty.”  

 

 Joyce Dennys studied at Exeter Art College before serving as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse from 1914 to 1917. The above poster is one of her best known wartime works  

 Joyce Dennys' WRNS poster dates from around 1918

Two of the Budleigh-based artist’s posters can be seen in the Museum’s ‘Great War at Fairlynch’ exhibition, and there are many other Joyce Dennys paintings on the ground floor of Fairlynch. You can find out more about the artist by clicking on http://budleighbrewsterunited.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/more-joyce-dennys-paintings-on-display.html

 

This was Kate Adie’s first ever visit to Budleigh Salterton. Let’s hope that she will be inspired to come again. She had an enthusiastic audience. She was intrigued by those deckchairs. And of course she will have been impressed that Budleigh was the home town of Joyce Dennys, whose wartime recruitment posters must have done so much to inspire women and to aid the cause of female emancipation.  

‘The Great War at Fairlynch’ 2015 exhibition at Budleigh Salterton’s very special museum! Reviews included: “Wonderful display on WW1, informative, bright and relevant. Well done!! 

 

 

Fishing for the Navy

Left to right: Walter Mears, Harry Rogers, William Sedgemore, Tom Sedgemore, Charlie Pearcey, Frank Mears, Jack Pearcey and William Pearcey

Image credit: Fairlynch Museum

‘The Salterton lads off to lend a helping hand’ is the handwritten caption to this image of confident-looking recruits for the Royal Navy. Taken on 4 August 1914 by a G. Blackburn according to Fairlynch Museum records, it shows various members of well-known Budleigh Salterton fishing families about to depart from Budleigh Salterton railway station.  

The picture, of course, does not tell the whole story of Budleigh’s fishermen and the Great War.

 Recent research has shown that in Cornwall in 1914, farmers were hesitant to join the Army  but were more willing to join the Navy. The Cornish newspaper The West Briton reported that there were places in Cornwall in which the calls for the army were “unheeded by youths and young men who are really anxious to join the Navy.”  It could be argued that the strength of the naval tradition in Cornwall was also true of Devon, writes Richard Batten in his 2013 study of Devon and the First World War. “In many instances, Devon’s military patriotism was defined through its naval past with figures such as Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh to epitomise the heroism of Devon’s menfolk.”

This inclination for Devon fishermen to join the Navy rather than the Army was shown on 19 November 1914 when The Western Times carried the story that the recruiting drive for the Royal Naval Reserve in Brixham had been very brisk to the extent that the young fishermen of the town had responded with “exceptional fervour.”

However, Dr Batten points out, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact number of recruits into the Navy for the period from 4 August until 30 December 1914. In the majority of the newspaper reporting for recruiting in Devon, it is clear that the recruitment figures are combined for the Army, the Navy and Territorials. An example of this was when the Lord Lieutenant for Devon, Lord Fortescue, spoke on 23 November 1914 that Devon had recruited another “5000 for the regular army and navy.” He does not provide a distinction between how many were recruited for the Army or for the Navy.

It was clear, however, as the The Western Times went on to state in the above report of 19 November 1914, that the surge in enlistment for the Navy had led to a shortage of fishermen. This, the fishing industry claimed, would result in them suffering and  “many smacks being compulsorily kept on the moorings.”

A problem faced by the fishermen of Budleigh Salterton and others on the south coast of Devon was caused by the restrictions of the limited fishing zone established by the Admiralty. Strict regulations had also been issued to stop small rowing boats from fishing. The practice of fishing by night had also been banned, causing, so it was reported, “a great deal of destitution among fishermen.”

It seems that the Great War played a significant part in the decline of Budleigh Salterton’s fishing industry. Not only was there a loss of manpower through death and disability, but the increased intensity of naval activity on this part of the coast made it difficult for many to earn a living from the sea.  The difficulties continued even after the war had ended. This can be seen in a letter addressed to the local MP Major Morrison Bell and copied to the Editor of The Daily Gazette on 1 July 1921 by Budleigh resident Marmaduke Sheild. 

Writing from his home, Lark Barrow, on West Hill, this distinguished surgeon, a fisherman himself, stated the case for the men of Budleigh as follows:

Dear Sir,

I am writing on behalf of the fishermen here to implore your immediate aid and intervention in a matter which virtually affects them.

The naval manoeuvres, soon to take place, are to be held on a sea area where the men gain their living at this time of year -  the crab and lobster grounds.

It seems strange, with a Fishers and Admiralty Board, that such a locality should have been selected. I do not see why the exercise could not take place some three miles further out, and clear the area altogether.

These men have sunk much money in gear, pots, motor boats and so on, and their case is indeed a hard one. Many of them are ex-Service men to whose bravery and devotion in the horrors of the late war the whole country testifies.

On all grounds, therefore, this order should at once be reconsidered, and I trust that you and other Members of Parliament along this part of the coast of Devon, will at once raise the question in the House.

I am, your obedient servant,

A. MARMADUKE SHEILD  MB, FRCS

 

In contrast to the scenes of confident young sailors departing for the war in 1914 it’s worth reading the thoughts of Stephen Reynolds.  ‘Fisherman’s Friend, Social Reformer and author’,  as he is described on the blue plaque erected by the Sid Vale Association on the wall of Sidmouth Museum.

Reynolds is famous among other things as the author of A Poor Man’s House (1908) about the fishing community that he lived in at Sidmouth. He was a member of the committee of inquiry into Devon and Cornwall fisheries in 1912 and following the outbreak of war was appointed  as resident fisheries inspector  for the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries.

In a letter quoted by Richard Batten he recorded the gloomy experience for him of watching the local Naval Reserves depart at Sidmouth Railway Station on 4 August. Amongst the crowd at the station, the Reservist families and he were, as he put it, “the saddest – Lord, how sad we are.” At the back of his mind was the thought that his “fishery works of years” would be, in his words, “smashed, probably by this accursed international insanity.”   

There were of course those Sidmouth people in 1914 who greeted the news of the declaration of war with patriotic euphoria; who, as Reynolds writes, “get the war fever, see red, and are happy.” In his view their behaviour was due to the fact that they were fortunate not to have the “faculty of seeing too far in front.”    


Visit ‘The Great War at Fairlynch’ exhibition at Budleigh Salterton’s very special museum! Reviews include: “Wonderful display on WW1, informative, bright and relevant. Well done!!!” 

 

Horsepower or pedal power?

Cycling for the King: a Great War recruiting poster

 Increasingly, horses were used for reconnaissance and for carrying messengers rather than for cavalry charges, but even this function was being taken over by mechanised forms of transport. Just as the cavalry gave way to tanks, so the horse was giving way to motorcycles.

Aged 19 in this photo, taken in France in May 1916, Budleigh Salterton’s Private Charles Reginald Teed, from Budleigh Salterton, is looking rather pleased with his motorcycle in his role as a despatch rider      Image credit: Trevor Teed

On a smaller scale, the bicycle was also proving to be more effective than the horse.  Volunteer cyclist units had been formed as early as the 1880s, with the first complete bicycle unit (the 26th Middlesex Rifle Volunteers) being raised in 1888. Cyclists were occasionally employed during the Boer War. The bicycle was found to be invaluable for reconnaissance and communications work, being lighter, quieter, and logistically much easier to support than horses.

 

An  Army Cyclists Corps cap badge

Image credit: www.intriguing-history.com

The Army Cyclist Corps was formed in 1914, made up of a number of pre-existing cyclist battalions from the Territorial Force where they had mainly undertaken the role of coastal patrols. 

 

British cyclists passing through the ruined village of Brie, Somme, France in March 1917.  Photo by Lt Ernest Brooks, the first and the longest-serving of the British war photographers during the 1914-18 conflict      
 Image credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org

The first cyclist units went overseas in 1915 to France and Flanders and to Gallipoli and were used mainly for reconnaisance. The conditions of trench warfare made them ineffective for combat use, and even their reconnaissance function was limited given the conditions of trench warfare.  In the last year of the war, however, with the deadlock of the trenches overcome, they once more proved invaluable for reconnaissance. 

Image credit: Commonwealth War Graves Commission
www.cwgc.org

It was on 31 October 1918 that 22-year-old Private Walter French of XIX Corps of the Army Cyclist Corps was killed in action. He was the son of Archibald and Malera French of Knowle, Budleigh Salterton.  No grave is recorded for him, but his name appears on the memorial in the parish church of St Peter, on the town’s war memorial and on the Tyne Cot Memorial in Belgium, seen above.

The Army Cyclists Corps was disbanded in 1919.

Visit ‘The Great War at Fairlynch’ exhibition at Budleigh Salterton’s very special museum! Reviews include: “Wonderful display on WW1, informative, bright and relevant. Well done!!!” 

 

A need for horsepower

Above: War Horse - Passchendaele, by Budleigh-based photographer Mo Sandford.  
©  Mo Sandford FRPS 2014
The author Michael Morpurgo has described her work as "deeply moving and interesting." More of Mo Sandford's remarkable photos of World War I battlefields can be seen here

There was a need for men. There was also a need for horses.  Thanks in part to novels, plays and documentaries made in recent years their role in the Great War has become more widely known. 

Thousands of them were employed to pull field artillery; six to twelve horses were required to pull each gun.  Men like Trumpeter Reginald Farr from East Budleigh and Gunner Herbert Harding from Budleigh Salterton would have found themselves working alongside horses, serving as they did with the Royal Field Artillery. This, the largest section of the artillery, was responsible for the medium calibre guns and howitzers used near the front line and was a relatively mobile force, supplemented by the Royal Horse Artillery. 

Even more important would have been the role of horses in the Royal Garrison Artillery, in which East Budleigh’s Gunner Thomas Teed from East Budleigh and Bombardier Edward Warren from Budleigh Salterton saw service.  The siege batteries to which they belonged were equipped with heavier, large calibre guns located some way behind the front line. 

This ‘war horse’ themed deckchair was used to publicise the ‘Great War at Fairlynch’ exhibition. It was designed using artwork supplied by 11-year-old Viki, a pupil at Otterton Primary School

At the outset of war the Army had only 25,000 horses and the War Office immediately set about the business of finding half a million more to go into battle.  As a largely rural area the Lower Otter Valley was seen as a prime source of horses.  “Notice was given that they were to be brought to the Rolle Mews at a stated time and if suitable for the army, would be taken and an agreed price was paid,” recalled Jim Gooding in Budleigh in Bygone Days.  “No horse  was allowed to  be  exempt  on personal or sentimental grounds, and there was many a tearful farewell as horses and owners were parted. 

Dr Richard Batten in his study of Devon during the First World War quotes figures which suggest that the county’s agriculture suffered as a result.  “The productivity of Devon’s farmers was compromised due to a shortfall in both manpower and the number of plough horses which had been commandeered for use in the Army,”  he writes. “In 1918, there were only 707 plough horses remaining in Devon compared with the 1,325 plough horses in 1917.”

For some local men used to handling animals the Royal Army Veterinary Corps would have been a suitable unit to join: such was the case of Newton Poppleford’s Burt Smale, whose father was a cattle-dealer. Apparently  wounded in France while serving with the RAVC he was returned home, was discharged with a disability and subsequently lived at Glebe Farm in the village.

 

Image credit: Fairlynch Museum

Another local man who worked with horses during the Great War was East Budleigh’s Frederick Stickland, seen above.  Ranked as Shoeing Smith, equivalent to a Corporal, he was responsible for making and fitting shoes on horses in the Royal Field Artillery.   

 

He died on 21 July 1917, and is buried in All Saints’ churchyard in East Budleigh. At an earlier  stage in the war he had served in Mesopotamia, where according to his headstone he contracted an illness which was the cause of his eventual death..

 

At the time of his death he was based at Haynes Park, Bedfordshire, one of the six depots which made up the Signal Service Training Centre, headquartered at Woburn.  Frederick Stickland’s depot included Riding and Saddlery.

A horse-drawn field ambulance in the Somme district, France, in September 1916. Imperial War Museum copyright image Q1098 

Among the most important roles of horses during the war was the transport of injured soldiers by ambulance from casualty clearing stations to field hospitals.

It was a vital part of units like the 13th Australian Field Ambulance in which former Budleigh Salterton GP Dr Thomas Evans served between 1916 and 1919.  The son of a Budleigh GP, he was the husband of local writer and artist Joyce Dennys and saw action as a Major with the Royal Army Medical Corps at Gallipoli and then in Egypt and France.  After the war he returned to Budleigh where, like his father, he was the town’s GP for many years, known as ‘Dr Tom.’ Perhaps it was his experience with horses during the Great War which made him, as one of his patients recalled, a passionate believer that “every day spent out of the saddle is a day wasted.” 

The patient was the writer R.F. Delderfield, who lived for a time in Budleigh Salterton. “Tom is among the keenest riders to hounds in the county,” he wrote in his autobiography Nobody Shouted Author. “Not long after I started going to him with unclassified illnesses I found out that when in doubt he invariably prescribes hunting. He means ‘hunting’ with the ‘g’ and no nonsense about it, as I found out shortly after I told him about my pain.

Tom is a conscientious doctor and doesn’t leave anything to chance. He went over me like an Army surgeon looking for a loophole in the cast-iron pension claim and, when he had finished and I was putting my shirt on, he said:

‘It’s like I told you, there’s nothing wrong with you that a day on a horse wouldn’t cure!”

 

For many, recruitment posters such as this evoke celebrated moments in warfare which have made the charge of massed horsemen one of the most awesome sights in battle, and cavalry regiments the most prestigious units in any army.

By the time of World War One, it was clear that the cavalry’s days were numbered, faced with modern machine gun fire, artillery and barbed wire.  Allied cavalry did have some success in the Middle Eastern theatre, possibly because they faced a weaker and less technologically advanced enemy.

Captain Leonard Seymour Lambert Dacres was one officer who enjoyed the prestigious membership of the 21st Prince Albert Victor's Own Cavalry, otherwise known as Daly’s Horse after it was raised as the 1st Punjab Irregular Cavalry by Lieutenant Henry Daly at Peshawar on 18 May 1849. It was one of five regiments of Punjab Cavalry raised to guard the North West Frontier of India, which soon became famous as part of the legendary Punjab Frontier Force or the ‘Piffers.

During the First World War, Daly's Horse served in the Mesopotamian Campaign as part of 6th Indian Cavalry Brigade. It fought on the Tigris Front and took part in the capture of Kut al Amara and Baghdad. It also fought in the actions of Istabulat, Ramadi, Daur and Tikrit in modern-day Iraq.

At some stage Leonard Dacres had joined the Indian Army Reserve of Officers Political Department. The son of a distinguished naval officer, he died of typhus at the age of 34 on 20 April 1919 and was buried in a Baghdad cemetery. His father Captain Seymour Dacres, of HMS Constance, had also died of illness, while serving in Yokohama, Japan. His mother Ethel was living at Park Lodge, in Little Knowle, near Budleigh Salterton.  

 

 Image credit: http://www.theygavetheirtoday.com/my-thoughts.html

He is not commemorated locally but his name appears on Brighton War Memorial, and also on the above memorial in St Stephen’s Church, Gloucester Road, London.  This was probably because his address at probate was given as 21 Nevem Mansions, Earls Court. 

Visit ‘The Great War at Fairlynch’ exhibition at Budleigh Salterton’s very special museum! Reviews include: “Wonderful display on WW1, informative, bright and relevant. Well done!!!”