Dorset's 'thankful village' in search of answers

Safely home: Langton Herring's honours board

During a recent visit to Dorset, I stayed at the county's only 'thankful village', where all men returned safely from the First World War. Langton Herring is a few miles west of Weymouth and in the porch of its tiny church the names of the men are listed on an honours board.

Included are officers and men from the army and the navy and, as you might expect in a small community, many share the same family name: there are four Farquharsons, for example, and no fewer than five Mowlams.

This summer, to mark the Centenary of the war, there are plans to unveil a slate plaque that was presented to Langton Herring by the Thankful Village Bike Run which passed through last year. In readiness for the event, efforts are now being made to discover more about the men who returned: who were they, where did they live, and what was the village like at the time?

Langton Herring church

At the moment little is known, but if anyone can shed any light on the answers, please contact me at jacwadsworth@hotmail.com and I will be delighted to pass your details on. The full list of men is given below.

Fifty three civil parishes in England and Wales have now been identified where all soldiers returned from the Great War. None have been found in Scotland or Ireland. Langton Herring is said to be 'doubly thankful' because all of its men returned from the Second World War too.

HONOURS BOARD

CF Bailey, R Sussex

CE Case, Wilts

T Carter, RN

JP Farquharson, Comm RN OBE DSO

FA Farquharson, KGO Sapper MC

KR Farquharson, Lt Comm RN DSC

ER Farquharson, Lt RN

C Ferns, CG

EW Garrett, L Corps

HM Greenhill, Maj Dorsets

FJ Hansford, RGA

A Harris, RN

AJ Thatcher, RFA

W Larcombe, R Inniskillings

F Matthews, CG

E Mowlam, L Corps

G Mowlam, RN

J Mowlam, RN

SC Mowlam, MGC

WE Mowlam, Worcesters

HJ Penfold, CG

S Peach, Wilts

R Randall, RGA

EA Sparks, RASCMT

BO Smythe, Capt Northants OBE

C Stone, RN

C Stone, RN

W Stone, RN

AJ Taylor RNR

S Wederell, Dorset

WJ Whittle, RAVC

'I have seen a school blown all to the ground'

Destruction became the new 'normality' at the Front

 

It is often thought that, when writing home, soldiers spared their families the more difficult details of life at the Front, preferring to concentrate on 'safer' matters like food parcels and the weather. But from what I have read, this was certainly not always the case.

Indeed, some of the things described in letters made me flinch and feel quite sorry for the women and children who would have read them.

Each man had his own reason for revealing all, of course, but perhaps one of the most pervading was simply that life under fire in trenches had become normal. Describing infestations of rats and lice probably seemed no worse that talking about the cat's fleas at home. And destruction and shell-fire was part of everyday life that simply had to accepted and got on with.

Below are extracts from two letters written by Private Philip Luxton, of Abertillery in South Wales, whose story is told in my book. Although he was loving husband and a father of two daughters, the letters he sent home from France in 1915 were matter-of-fact and pulled no punches.

22 March

'Dear Wife, you can tell the children that I have seen a school as big as theirs blown all to the ground and it seems as if they had to leave it all in a hurry for they left their little coats and hats. The Germans did not leave one single house standing for they are all blown to the ground. I went through a public house and there was the beer barrels in the cellar but the beer out here is not worth drinking, one pint of our beer is worth a barrel of this out here.'

23 March

'This is the fourth day for me to go without washing my face and hands for it is very dangerous to get about here at night and I have been sleeping under God's skies for this last five nights without no shelter from the cold and I may say it is very frosty here this last week but it is not so bad in the day.

'The sights where I am at present is most awful to witness for there are hundreds of dead Germans all round us chaps, for there was a terrible battle fought here last week and you will see by the papers we have captured a French village from the Germans and they were trying their best to get the village back.

'Dear Wife, while writing this letter the Johnsons [a type of shell] are flying over our heads and they make a awfull [sic] noise when they explode but I may say they are like a dog, for their bark is worse than their bite without you get too near them.'

With thanks to Anne Holland for the letter extracts, and David Clark for the postcard illustration.

Army service with a smile!

Humorous hymn sheets kept the soldiers smiling 

Following my previous post's theme of faith at the Front, here's a hymn sheet that must have raised a few chuckles among the troops.

Entitled 'Daily routine of a soldier's life told by a few well-known hymns', it belonged to Stanley Goodhead, a Manchester soldier whose vivid letters from France and Belgium are included in my book.

Most men would have known these hymns well, but even in today's more secular times when they may not be as familiar, they still make an amusing read:

3.30am Reveille - 'Christians Awake'

6.45am Rouse Parade - 'Art Thou Weary, Art Thou Languid'

7am Breakfast - 'Weekly Wait and Murmur Not'

8.15am Company Parade - 'When He Cometh'

8.45am Manoevres - 'Fight the Good Fight'

11.15am Swedish Drill - 'Here We Suffer Grief and Pain'

1pm Dinner - 'Come Ye Thankful People Come'

2.15pm Rifle Drill - 'Go Labour On'

3.15pm Lecture by Officer - 'Abide With Me'

4.30pm Dismiss - 'Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow'

5pm Tea - 'What Means This Eager Anxious Throng'

6pm Free for the night - 'O Lord How Happy We Shall Be'

6.30pm Out of bounds - 'We May Not Know, We Cannot Tell'

10pm Last Post - 'All Are Safely Gathered In'

10.15pm Lights out - 'Peace, Perfect Peace'

10.30pm Inspection of guards - 'Sleep On Beloved'

A rather different mood was struck by this hymn that was written specially for men at the Front. The words certainly pulled no punches, for example: 'For those who weak and broken lie in weariness and agony'. But at least the truth of war was confronted, and support was offered in the form of faith.

Lord God of hosts, Whose Mighty Hand

Dominion holds on sea and land,

In Peace and War Thy Will we see

Shaping the larger liberty.

Nations may rise and nations fall,

Thy Changeless Purpose rules them all.

When death flies swift on wave and field,

Be Thou and sure defence and shield!

Console and succour those who fall,

And help and hearten each and all!

O, hear a people's prayers for those

Who fearless face their country's foes!

For those who weak and broken lie

In weariness and agony -

Great Healer, to their beds of pain

Come, touch, and make them whole again!

O, hear a people's prayers and bless

Thy servants in their hour of stress!

For those to whom the call shall come

We pray Thy tender welcome home.

The toil, the bitterness, all past,

We trust them to Thy Love at last.

O, hear a people's prayer for all

Who, nobly striving, nobly fall!

For those who minister and heal,

And spend themselves, their skill, their zeal -

Renew their hearts with Christ-like faith,

And guard them from disease and death.

And in Thine own good time, Lord, send,

Thy Peace on earth till Time shall end!

With thanks to Barbara Rosser for the hymn sheet, and Jackie Carpenter for the hymn.

'The guns were firing all through the service'

'Church service before the battle'

'God' is a words that crops up frequently in WW1 soldier's letters, which is not surprising for men who grew up in a world in which Christianity was part of everyday life. Some were more devout than others and one particularly moving letter was written by 19-year-old Private Ernest Adams of Leeds, to be read by his mother and father in the event of his death. (He was killed in action near Ypres in September 1917):

'Dear Parents, I know how you will grieve and my heart aches for you, but I beseech you to think not of me as dead, but just gone home to God, there to dwell in peace and rest, freed from all earthly strife. Think too of how much pain and sin might have been mine had I lived. But now I am pure and white in God's own house. Well, goodbye, and may you find peace and joy that comes from God alone.'

Not all were quite as religious, but faith gave strength to far more men than is probably the case today. 'Thank God he has brought me through,' wrote Private Tom Fake, of Bristol, to his wife on Armistice Day. During two years in the trenches he had ended every letter to her with 'God bless you'.

Services were often held in the trenches, frequently before battle, and many found great comfort in hymns they would have sung in church at home with their families. This diary entry was written by Sergeant George Fairclough during fierce fighting on the Western Front in September 1914:

'The big guns were firing all night. We had a regimental service with the hymns: 'O God Our Help in Ages Past', 'Fight the Good Fight', 'Heavenly Father in the Mercy', and 'Lead Kindly Light', the guns were firing all through the service.'

Very often prayer books and bibles are found tucked away amongst soldiers' letters, and inside a prayer book belonging to Private Edwin Wood, a signaller with the Gloucestershire Regiment, are printed notes about the way to conduct services for troops:

The Lessons selected should be very short.

Hymns may be sung at the commencement and end of the Service,

and after the Sermon.

The Sermon should also be short.

'God save the King' should be sung before the Blessing at the end

of the Service.

Special Prayers may be added at discretion.

On the facing page is a Morning Prayer which begins:

'We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done.'

The prayer then asks God for forgiveness and for help in following a more 'righteous, godly and sober life'. Let's hope someone passed on the message to the politicans and generals.

(With thanks to Sandra Lambert, Jackie Carpenter and Andy Goodenough for the letter extracts; the Wood family for prayer book extracts; and Bob Griffin for the postcard illustration.)

Write fifteen chapters? That's the easy bit!

Sorry, no time for blogging!

Ever since July 2012, when I began this blog, the column on the right has confidently talked about 'Letters from the Trenches' being finished by January 2014. However, the more observant readers may have noticed that this deadline has now come and gone!

Let me assure you that the book has been finished (bar a few loose ends) and allow me to explain why I haven't proudly announced the fact....I'm afraid I simply haven't had time.

I had no idea that completing this, my first book, would involve so many small but time-consuming tasks that have kept me working - with no time for blogging - like a hamster on a wheel. Take the Introduction, for example, something I had thought would be a pleasure to compose after writing fifteen chapters that demanded discipline, accuracy and a lot of research. But without soldiers' letters to talk about I was bereft of ideas and it took me far longer than I had expected to marshal my own thoughts for the book's opening.

Meanwhile, I've been sorting out my bibliography and assembling credits for all the letters and pictures I've used in the book, a task made doubly difficult by my decision to list alphabetically every man and woman whose letters or diaries I've mentioned, along with their relatives who are letting me use them. It's a way of saying thankyou, and also a small tribute to the people who lived through the war or gave their lives. But boy, does it take a lot of checking!

I've also had two longstanding gaps in my text which were waiting to be filled by letters held at the Imperial War Museum in London. Only last week did I finally manage to get up there and copy them out (yes, I'm sure I could have had them sent to me, but I wanted to see the real things for myself). Were they were worth the long journey from Bristol? Certainly. One describes the final moments of the famous German pilot Baron von Richthofen before he crashed to earth; the other is a poignant letter written to a British family by a German soldier who comforted their dying son on the battlefield.

Whilst in London I also met up with my editor from Pen and Sword Books to discuss images for the book - another wearying matter! I have so many lovely pictures - all kindly lent by those who also shared their relatives' letters - that it's been an awful job deciding which to use, and one that is still ongoing.

So you see, writing the book was the easy bit. Tying up the loose ends has been far harder and...oh dear...I haven't even thought about the index yet. But none of this need worry you. I shall keep blogging even after 'Letters from the Trenches' is published - so keep watching this space!

'We are having real winter weather now'

French troops man a listening post on the Western Front, winter 1917 

Continued from previous post...
Christmas celebrations were soon forgotten when the weather turned bad on the Western Front in January 1917. It wasn't long before growling guns, frozen slush, and freezing 5.30am starts became the main talking points in this Canadian officer's letters home:

'We are having real winter weather now, colder than anything we experienced last year. There has been quite a depth of snow lying for the past ten days and the ground is frozen hard. The temperature could not have been much above zero this morning which is very cold for this country. Fortunately we are not in the trenches but in billets in a village behind the lines. It is none too comfortable in billets but I hate to think of what it must be like in the trenches.

'The day the snow started we marched ten miles in a thick storm. A very hard wind was blowing and the storm at times looked almost like a blizzard. The roads are now covered with ice and frozen slush. This mess makes very bad going for hosrses.

'I have sick parade now at 6.30am and this means getting up at 5.30am. My washing is frozen in the room every morning. I used to think that Canada was a cold coutnry. Our men are sleeping in barns without fires. The most of them are keeping in very good health in spite of the severity of the weather.

'The guns are growling away every night and day but we are just now pretty well out of the area of shelling. The shells should detonate well on the frozen ground.'

'The French know how to raise good turkeys!'

Christmas celebrations on the Western Front
Source: Nationaal Archief, Netherlands

The traditions of Christmas were always appreciated by troops fighting at the Front, and New Year letters home were full of the celebrations they had enjoyed. Festive meals were often elaborate and well thought-out and lots of planning obviously went into this repast, described by a Canadian medical officer at the beginning of 1917:

8 January, France

'We had a much better Christmas this season than last. Fortunately we were out of the trenches in resreve and billeted in huts. The weather was fairly well behaved although we had some rain. All the men has a good Christmas dinner including turkey, plum pudding, beer, nuts, candy etc. We had previously ordred 500 kilos of turkey. We made a contract for them and the dealer shipped them in from Normandy. I must say the French know how to raise good turkeys.

'The tables were set in the YMCA hut and we hired dishes from the French civilians. We had to divide the dinner into four sections, one for each company. Two were held on Christmas day and two the day after. The band rendered musical programs during the dinners and each night put on a minstrel show which was really not at all bad. We had  good dinner in battalion HQ mess, but most of our pleas ure was derived from seeing the men have a good feed and enjoy themselves for once.'

But it wasn't long before Christmas was forgotten and the officer's next letter was more concerned with growling guns, frozen slush, and freezing 5.30am starts. Extracts will be published in the next post, so watch this space.