The Last Veteran: Harry Patch and the Legacy of War. Peter Parker

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СКАЧАТЬ He felt that a new parliament ‘possessed of the authority which a General Election alone can give it’ would be needed ‘to make the peace of Europe and to deal with the difficult transitional period which will follow the cessation of hostilities’. Just how difficult that transitional period would be soon became apparent.

      Often referred to as a ‘khaki election’ because it took place immediately after a war, the 1918 general election might equally have been dubbed a ‘petticoat’ one, since it was the first in which women – at any rate, women property-owners over thirty – had the vote. With the massive losses suffered in the war, the women’s vote was more significant than its legislators might have envisaged. Given that many of those in khaki were still on active service abroad and that many women were in mourning for a husband, son, father, brother or fiancé, it must have looked like a ‘black’ election as much as a khaki one at the polling booths. The shadow of the war certainly loomed over the election in Nottingham, where now redundant shell cases were used to make up the shortfall in ballot boxes. It was also the first election in which men who were not property-owners were allowed to vote, but they had to be twenty-one. Many former servicemen like Harry Patch, who was twenty when the election took place, discovered that while they were deemed old enough to be sent off to fight for their country, they were still considered too young to vote. The result of the election was an overwhelming victory for a coalition chiefly composed of Liberal and Conservative members under the renewed premiership of Lloyd George.

      It was all very well to win a general election, but Lloyd George now needed to lead the country into a post-war future with all its attendant problems. Making the peace in Europe would prove to be a great deal easier than maintaining it at home. In his Special Order of the Day for 12 November 1918, the Commander-in-Chief General Haig had assured his victorious but exhausted troops that ‘Generations of free peoples, both of your own race and of all countries, will thank you for what you have done’. Similarly, the Liberal Party’s election manifesto had promised: ‘In the field of creative reform at home, social and industrial – our first duty is owed to those who have won us the victory and to the dependants of the fallen. In the priorities of reconstruction they have the first claim, and every facility should be given them not only for reinstatement, and for protection against want and unemployment, but for such training and equipment as will open out for them fresh avenues and new careers.’ Unsurprisingly after such promises, those returning to Britain from the battlefields expected to find it the ‘fit country for heroes to live in’ that Lloyd George’s government had pledged.

      Getting back to Britain in the first place was often difficult: one of the principal complaints among the armed forces was the slow pace of demobilisation. An end to hostilities did not mean an immediate end to war service, and even soldiers who had been in Britain on 11 November 1918 often had a long and frustrating wait before they returned to Civvy Street. The army had been very quick to recruit soldiers but less swift to let them go. ‘It had taken three days to get me into uniform,’ Harry Patch recalled, ‘but it would be five months before I got out of khaki and out of the army.’ The government’s decision to give priority to men whose particular skills were required to get the wheels of industry turning once more was particularly unpopular, chiefly because many of these so-called ‘key men’ had been considered too important to send to France and had been allowed to enlist only when the fighting forces had been seriously depleted. This meant that those who were last in were often first out – a policy that did not find favour among those who had been serving for much longer periods. Guy Chapman remembered the anger caused when the first person from his battalion to be demobbed was a man who had seen only fourteen weeks’ service: he was a miner and therefore needed back in England. This demobilisation by individual rather than by battalion was logistically complex and destroyed the sense of group loyalty that had kept men going during the war. Under pressure, the scheme was eventually abandoned, but while in force it led to mass discontent.

      The discipline that had carried many of the soldiers through almost unimaginable hardships at the front seemed merely irksome now that the war was over, and it began to break down. On the Isle of Wight Harry Patch’s company particularly resented being ordered about on parade and taken for route marches by a peacetime officer who had risen from the ranks. The men finally refused to turn out for this officer, even when he challenged them with a revolver. They subsequently returned to talk to him with loaded weapons, and when he cocked the trigger of his revolver, the men responded by pulling back the bolts of their rifles. ‘Now, you shoot, you bugger, if you dare,’ one of the men shouted, and the officer very sensibly backed down. A brigadier was sent to Freshwater to sort out what had in effect been a mutiny. He listened to both the officer’s account and the men’s grievances. One man complained that they had joined up for the duration but were still waiting to be demobilised and return to their jobs three months after hostilities ceased. The brigadier, perhaps fearing that disaffection among the ranks would spread, gave orders that the company be excused parades. Thereafter they only did fatigues – little more than keeping the camp tidy – until they were demobbed. ‘We had decided ourselves that we were more or less civilians, and that army rules no longer applied to us,’ Patch recalled.

      A small mutiny at Golden Hill Fort was easy enough to deal with, but by January 1919 much more worrying instances of military insubordination were occurring elsewhere. Fears of the sort of mass revolt that had occurred in Russia led to a misguided decision to keep British forces hard at it in order to distract them from any revolutionary ideas they might be entertaining now that they no longer had a war to fight and were anxious to leave the army as soon as possible. It was one thing to have demob delayed, quite another to be subjected to increased military discipline without any particular purpose in view.

      The worst, most prolonged mutiny took place at Calais in January 1919 and was a direct result of the men’s impatience at the slow pace of demobilisation. Private John Pantling of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC) stationed at the Val de Lièvre camp had been arrested and imprisoned for making a seditious speech to his fellow soldiers, some of whom subsequently broke into the jail in which he was being held and helped him escape. The sergeant who was guarding Pantling was then arrested, but released when the mood of the men was felt to be growing ever more dangerous. As on the Isle of Wight, a senior officer listened to the men’s grievances and agreed to some concessions and an improvement in conditions, but the subsequent setting up of so-called Soldiers’ Councils in the various army camps at Calais smacked too much of Soviet practices for the military authorities, and it was decided that Pantling should be found and rearrested. When he was, not a single one of the 2,000 men at Val de Lièvre answered the reveille. An equal number of men from a neighbouring camp joined the Val de Lièvre contingent in marching on GHQ to demand the release of the troublesome private. This was granted, but by now the mutiny had spread, with some 20,000 men involved. General Byng, a seasoned soldier who had led the Third Army to victory the previous year, was sent to Calais to put an end to the disturbances, but his troops simply joined the mutineers. Eventually a further meeting was organised at which further concessions were granted, and on 31 January the mutiny came to an end.

      Such behaviour was not confined to troops still serving abroad, and January 1919 proved a testing time for Lloyd George’s coalition government, which – apparently without consulting the army – had promised rapid demobilisation. While General Byng was dealing with the RAOC in Calais, General Trenchard of the RAF had been sent to quell a disturbance at Southampton, where 20,000 soldiers had mutinied and taken over the docks. To his considerable surprise, Trenchard was manhandled by the troops he had come to address and was obliged to summon armed troops from Portsmouth together with a detachment of military police. These men surrounded the unarmed mutineers, who, perhaps aware of Trenchard’s reputation for ruthlessness, called off their action.

      Mutinies were not simply confined to the army. Five hundred members of Trenchard’s RAF stationed in squalid conditions at Biggin Hill in Kent reacted to a particularly disgusting supper one evening by convening a meeting at which ‘The Red Flag’ was sung and a decision was taken to disobey orders. The following morning, as at Val de Lièvre, reveille was ignored and a deputation was sent to the commanding officer with a long list of demands. The authorities СКАЧАТЬ