Wakefield in the Great War Read online

  London is back in the [celebratory] mood, and the blood lust has gripped its people. I hope the provincial towns are meeting the crisis in a far more serious mood. I wish I could blot from my memory the scenes of the last three days. They have been of the kind that shakes one’s faith in all those things that make for moral and spiritual advancement in mankind … I confess I was appalled at the light hearted wrecklessness [sic] of my fellow men and women. Judging by the demonstrations of the crowd it might have been a picnic the nation was entering upon instead of the greatest crisis of a century – shouting, singing, cheering mobs; besides themselves with blood lust and war intoxication. They shouted patriotic songs, sang ‘Rule Britannia’ they clamoured onto the tops of the buses, waved miniature Union Jacks and generally conducted themselves in a way that proved they could have no idea of the gravity of the situation. I cannot blame them too much, however, for inside the House of Commons there was a recklessness and enthusiasm for the war that was horrible to witness … I feel sure my constituents will understand my position. I hate and loathe war; I believe we might have been kept out of it … The days that are coming will try men’s souls. I beg of all my fellow townsmen to do their best to meet the sorrow and suffering that is bound to come …

  Crowds gather outside Buckingham Palace after news broke of the outbreak of war.

  Wakefield woke to its first day at war with a mixture of excitement and dread. ‘On Tuesday’, reported the Wakefield Express of 8 August, ‘the streets presented an unusually busy appearance as the men passed along carrying their rifles and kit to the Headquarters’. The Territorials, formed to act as a home defence force for use only in case of an attack on mainland Britain, were expecting to prepare to repel a possible invasion. Reporting with them were men of the Reserves – former regular soldiers who had left the army but were still eligible to be recalled in an emergency. Most would collect their papers and kit and head off to rejoin their old regiments so as soldiers of 4 KOYLI reported to the Drill Hall, clerks were busy dealing with processing those men as quickly as possible to make room for the Territorials. The task was made more urgent by the order to the Territorials to ‘recruit to wartime strength and double’. The idea was that as each Territorial battalion reached full strength, a duplicate would begin to form. The 4th KOYLI would therefore become two battalions, those trained and ready would form the first (1/4th) and the rest would train as part of the second (2/4th) and would initially act as a reinforcement unit, sending trained replacements to the 1/4th as needed but later would form a unit in their own right. When 1/4th went to 49th (West Riding) Division, 2/4th would go to 62nd (West Riding) Division, with 49th reaching France in 1915 and 62nd in early 1917.

  Since the Territorials usually went home after training, there was little space available at the Drill Hall for them to stay until a decision was made about what they would be asked to do. For the time being, Companies of 4 KOYLI made up of men drawn from Normanton and Ossett were billeted in the Town Hall and the Court House whilst, the Dewsbury Company were housed in the newly-built Mines Rescue Station in Ings Road. The Dragoons managed to find more comfortable billets at the Bull Hotel, the White Horse, and York House and the RAMC lodged at St Mary’s School. With everyone eager for news about what would happen next, a reporter from the Wakefield Express was despatched to the Battalion’s headquarters to find out but was sent packing after the battalion’s Sergeant Major responded to his questions by bellowing in full parade ground mode: ‘I KNOW NOTHING!’ On Thursday, after inspections to ensure every man had his full equipment in good order, the Battalion set out on a route march to Crigglestone during which seventy men dropped out and were declared unfit for service, their places taken by recalled reservists.

  The process of mobilizing Britain’s army was further complicated by the fact that many policemen, postal workers and railwaymen – those most closely involved in ensuring that recall notices and travel warrants were available – were themselves reservists and were also being recalled. At the same time the West Riding County Council was anxious not to deter men from enlisting so staff who were members of the Territorials left their positions at County Hall and their heads of department were advised that they must not replace them with men who were able to enlist in the forces. To add to the confusion, the Wakefield Express reported that the recruiting office in Bank Street was being kept busy with young men who ‘seemed prepared to forfeit anything’ if only they could enlist. They, too, needed warrants and transport to reach the regimental depot of the KOYLI and the York and Lancaster Regiment at Pontefract where new battalions were being formed from the flood of applicants already coming forward.

  In peacetime, the British army could not afford things that would become vital in the event of war. It relied on horse-drawn transport for everything from artillery to ambulances and the delivery of all its supplies in the field but for generations had simply hired wagons and drivers recruited from local civilians as and when it needed them. The system that had worked so well in India and Africa would not work in France, where both horses and drivers had already been drawn into the French army. Now, the army needed to find transport as a matter of urgency. Military personnel from the Remount Service worked with veterinary surgeons to scour the Wakefield area for horses that could be requisitioned, buying fifty of them immediately. Horsepower of a different kind was also being sought and Hebble-thwaite’s, in Pincheon Street, gave notice that owing to the war and the government requiring the services of motor transport at short notice, all its charabanc excursions would be cancelled from 9 August.

  With little or no official reporting, newspapers were keen to pick up on stories about local people returning from Europe. Two Wakefield pork butchers, John H. Kilburn, who had a shop in Kirkgate, and John E. Spurr, whose shop was in Westmorland Street, were with a party from the St Helen’s Choir and gave an account of their adventurous journey home to the Wakefield Express. When they first reached Belgium, they had not seen any news of how quickly the European crisis had escalated and had been completely surprised by the welcome they began to receive from the Belgians. Everywhere they saw soldiers in the streets with bayonets fixed. In Antwerp they came across German cafes and shops that had been ransacked and saw a convoy of around 250 cars carrying Red Cross nurses towards the front lines. In Dinant they had been ordered off a bridge because it was about to be blown up. Once they understood the seriousness of the situation, they attempted to return to England as quickly as possible but had found it impossible to get a ferry back from Zeebrugge and had to go on to Ostend, finally reaching Wakefield, via Folkestone, on Friday, 7 August. By 21 August, newspapers as far afield as Dundee and Dublin were expressing fears for the safety of the Moor-house and Pickering families who had settled in the Alsace region of France, but were originally from Wakefield. Both were reported to have spinning mill businesses in Haguenau, and Jesse Moorhouse was described as having lived in the area for over thirty years. They still maintained their connection with Jesse’s son, Harry, representing Green & Co., a Wakefield firm manufacturing fuel economisers in Alsace-Lorraine, and his daughter had married a German and was living nearby in the town of Colmar. With the whole family fluent in French and German, the Yorkshire Evening Post was able to confidently tell its readers on 21 August that there was ‘not much cause for alarm’ in respect of either family.

  Requisitioned transport for the Wakefield-based 4th Battalion of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.

  Among the luxuries a peacetime army could not afford were the military hospitals it would need to treat the wounded in time of war. When the part-time soldiers of the various old Militia, Yeomanry and Volunteer units were amalgamated into a single Territorial Force in 1908, it had been realised that if ever they were actually needed for the home defence duties against invasion for which they had been created, no provision had been made for their health care. So poor was the army’s medical support that during the Boer War of 1899–1902, civilian volunteers from the St John Ambulance Brigade were sent out on six-month tours of duty to act as field medics and in the years following, even the regular army could muster just 300 nurses worldwide to treat its sick and injured.

  To try to rectify the problem, the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act of 1907 made provision for medical and nursing support by creating the Territorial Force Nursing Service in 1908, along with the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service Reserve as a back up in times of emergency. The plan was to create twenty-three regional territorial force hospitals in towns and cities throughout the country, each with planned accommodation for 520 patients and a staff of ninety-one trained nurses drafted in to run them. However, they would exist only on paper until war broke out. In the event of war, the plan was that schools and other public buildings would be requisitioned and everything from beds to bandages would be sourced from the local community. With little support from hospital authorities who discouraged their nurses from joining the Territorial Force and training limited to just seven days every two years for those ranked as Matrons, it was clear that even staffing these hospitals would be a major problem, let alone the problems associated with establishing them. It is a measure of the efforts that the nurses made that by the end of August 1914, nineteen hospitals were up and running with the remaining four operational by mid-September.

  Recognising the difficulties facing the Territorial Force Nursing Service, on 16 August 1909 the War Office issued its ‘Scheme for the Organisation of Voluntary Aid in England and Wales,’ which laid out an agreement with the Red Cross and St John Ambulance Brigade to set up both male and female ‘Voluntary Aid Detachments’ to fill certain gaps in the Territorial medical services in England and Wales, with a similar scheme for Scotland following in December of that year. By early 1914,
there were 1,757 female Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs) across the country and, although nowadays usually associated only with women, another 519 male VAD units were registered with the War Office.

  Wakefield had been quick to respond to the call and, under the enthusiastic leadership of Lady Catherine Milnes Gaskell, of Thornes House, Mrs Barton (the wife of the headmaster of Wakefield’s Queen Elizabeth Grammar School) and Mrs Nellie King (headteacher at Clarendon Street Girls School), the 31st (St John’s Wakefield) VAD was the first to be formed in the north of the country. The female detachments varied in size according to local conditions, but in the main consisted of a commandant, a medical officer, a quartermaster, and twenty-two women, two of whom were supposed to be trained nurses, but by 1914, Wakefield had sixty-four volunteers attending their regular training sessions. VADs were required to meet at least once a month, with many meeting as often as weekly, and the women had to work towards gaining certificates in Home Nursing and First Aid within twelve months of joining. They were taught how to apply bandages, to do simple dressings and the basics of invalid cookery and hygiene. In some areas it was arranged for them to go into local hospitals for a few hours each week to gain an insight into ward work, and as a result of the low number of men being recruited in certain places, women could also gain experience in outdoor activities, stretcher duties, the transport of sick and wounded and improvisation of transport for the wounded with whatever came to hand. Some didn’t take their responsibilities too seriously, while others were intent on being well-prepared for a role that they might never be called upon to fulfil. The volunteers were intended for home service only as a way of staffing auxiliary hospitals and rest stations and they received no payment or salary for these duties – all the women had to be in a position to give their services for free so membership tended to be drawn from the wealthier families.

  As the Territorials of the KOYLI prepared for their annual camp, Lady Catherine, already in her fifties and with a long record of seemingly indefatigable community work, led her VADs to the grounds of Calder Farm Reformatory in Mirfield, where tents and marquees had been set up to create a field hospital, and over the weekend of 25-26 July the Wakefield VAD was put through its paces by Sergeant Jagger of the Wakefield company of the Royal Army Medical Corps Territorials. After a 6.00am reveille on Sunday they were guided through the tasks they would be expected to carry out in actual warfare before attending worship in the Reformatory chapel. Later, they were told fierce fighting had taken place nearby and were sent out to search for and collect the ‘wounded’ within a radius of 3 miles; and to take them to a notional collecting hospital using commandeered farm wagons as their ambulances, and the female volunteers joined them at the ‘hospital’ to assist the medical orderlies. Within days, it seemed, they might be needed for real.

  When war broke out, plans to convert Clarendon Street School into a hospital for the wounded were considered but were soon abandoned and the disappointed pupils returned as normal at the end of the summer holiday. It was also suggested that the newly built West Riding police headquarters in Back Bond Street (now Laburnum Road) might be converted into a hospital, but, again, for now, there was no need. The Wakefield Board of Guardians, who held responsibility for the dependent poor and for the Union Workhouse in Park Lodge Lane, already had plans to extend its own infirmary to provide 200 beds rather than the existing 148, and at its first meeting following the declaration of war, members agreed unanimously that thirty-four beds could be made available for the treatment of wounded local soldiers. At the start it was unclear whether or not the VAD should mobilize and an advertisement in the Wakefield Express on 8 August advised members to hold themselves ready for service just in case. The same notice asked for donations of equipment, so that if necessary a local hospital could be set up quickly, and in particular asked for single iron bedsteads, mattresses, sheets, blankets, pillow-cases, men’s nightshirts and pyjamas, woollen socks, flannel shirts and money. Shops advertised the necessary fabrics for volunteers and women members of the VAD held daily sewing and knitting sessions, making shirts, socks and other items. They also turned to making preparations for the comfort of the soldiers by bottling rhubarb, plums and pears, making chutney and drying lavender to freshen sheets. Pupils at St Michael’s Girls School made a dozen pillow-cases and seven bolster cases, paying for the material themselves as the Town Hall became a collecting base for the donations pouring in.

  Also being mobilized were the members of the local scouts and guides groups. With so many postal employees being recalled to their regiments, scouts and guides were drafted in to act as messengers (in London, the security service MI5 recruited its own troop of Girl Guide messengers after finding the girls’ ‘methods of getting into mischief were on the whole less distressing’ than those of the Scouts initially recruited). Advertisements soon appeared offering the service of boys and girls for a wide variety of tasks, as clerks, runners, helping to bring in the harvest or any other jobs that might be needed. Others were deployed to guard specific ‘vulnerable points’ against potential sabotage by the German spies that were believed to have set up large networks to undermine the country from the inside. So important was their work that the wearing of a Scout uniform by anyone who was not an active member of the organisation soon became a criminal offence and some older Scouts proudly wore their uniforms to work.

  A scout certificate, c.1914. Scouts quickly became recognised as an official ‘public service’ after undertaking a wide variety of jobs to help the war effort.

  Like most towns, Wakefield also had its own chapter of the paramilitary ‘League of Frontiersmen’, an eccentric group of what can only be described as grown up boy scouts later described by Colonel H.R. Pownall as ‘mostly, but not entirely, men of middle age – or older, who have ‘‘Knocked about’’ a good deal and like the glamour of a Stetson hat, boots and breeches, and a revolver holster, who, to their great credit, wish to have a useful function in emergency but are of too independent a spirit to stomach the bonds of army discipline in peace.’ Formed in 1904 by former Northwest Mounted Policeman and Boer War veteran Roger Pocock, the organization was founded as a field intelligence corps to act as ‘the eyes and ears of the Empire’ and fears of a German invasion had encouraged a sizeable unit in Wakefield. At the start of the war, the League offered its services to send members behind German lines but were told their services would not be required, although a few Manchester-based men made their way to Belgium as the ‘British Colonial Horse’. Later, a battalion of the Royal Fusiliers was formed around a detachment of around 300 Frontiersmen and saw service in East Africa. At home, Frontiersmen came close to being adopted by the security services but in the end the organisation settled for fund-raising and charitable activities instead.

  For Wakefield people not in some kind of uniform, the outbreak of war brought more immediate concerns than the risk of attack, with the main worry in the first few days of August not the war itself, but the impact it would have on business. Both the Yorkshire Post and the Yorkshire Evening News of 6 August considered Bradford – virtually a single industry town with Germany as its biggest export customer – to be facing imminent ruin, leading historian A.J.P. Taylor’s pragmatic grandfather to observe, ‘can’t they see as every time they kill a German they kills a customer?’ Trade with Germany was particularly important to E. Green & Sons of Calder Vale Road, makers of fuel economisers who had company representatives based in Germany and concerns grew for their safety. Some of the local collieries were dependent on exporting their coal but all shipments from Hull, Goole and Immingham were stopped because of the enormous insurance premiums demanded now the country was at war. Walton Colliery was closed temporarily and it was feared that other pits would also have to close. Joseph Rhodes & Sons, at Grove Iron Works in Kirkgate, had an extensive export business to the continent and a depot at Asnieres, near Paris. By the end of August it had reached an agreement allowing the French government to take over the metal-forming machines that it had there. It was thought that they would be used for making shell cases.