When you see the names and numbers of men we lost, read them with pride for they died with pride and never flinched. So cheer up again and if I should fall you will have this satisfaction knowing I have done my duty and my best to keep the Huns from your home and let you live in decency
Private Oakley, Hampshire Regiment, 21 August 1914
With so many Scottish troops in the camp the New Year Hogmanay was marked by partying. The Seaforth Highlanders were entertained by Sergeant-Major MacKay with a smoking concert (a relaxed concert where men sat around smoking), followed by the officers for each platoon distributing gifts and partaking in a dinner of turkey and plum pudding. Similar celebrations took place involving the 8th Gordon Highlanders, 5th Cameron Highlanders, 8th Black Watch and 9th Seaforth Highlanders, concluding with a piper playing out the old year and ushering in the new.
Despite driving snow, sleet and rain, military activity for the year opened with a visit to Aldershot and the camp by Lord Kitchener, secretary of state for war, on 27 January. He was accompanied by M. Millerand, the French minister for war. The two men inspected parades of the new army, who were said to have endured the shocking conditions with ‘good grace’. Whole divisions of the new army were drawn up on Laffan’s Plain in sub-zero temperatures. In dead silence the Scottish troops assembled while behind them brigades of artillery and the Royal Engineers formed up, followed by the infantry brigades. The weather chose the arrival of the last group of men to change into a gale accompanied by cold, driving rain. The men were made to wait in these conditions until well after three o’clock, when an officer rode up warning of Kitchener’s impending arrival. Kitchener passed among their ranks deep in conversation with one of his officers looking neither to left or right.
Following this, Kitchener’s party made its way to the Royal Pavilion, where they were received by Sir Archibald Hunter, the officer in charge of the Aldershot command. Kitchener and the French war minister inspected a parade of Cameron Highlanders and, following a delay because their cars became bogged down in thick snow, they inspected another division at Blackdown Barracks.
The New Year was ushered in with the consequences of the restriction of the free movement of technical aeronautical information involving the aircraft factory. Lieutenant-Colonel O’Gorman, the inspirational and dynamic superintendent of the factory, had assembled a group of engineers, scientists and tradesman at the Farnborough factory. Within a matter a months the factory had played a crucial role in enabling the army to catch up on Germany in the manufacture of aircraft. As with all technological developments of this kind, those involved tended not to recognise the limits placed on the free flow of information demanded by controlling groups like the army. Those passionate about aircraft development had formed ad hoc groups that exchanged information about a whole range of issues around aerodynamics. Unfortunately, these did not square with the restrictions placed on those in the factory under the Defence of the Realm Act. Having operated night and day since the outbreak of war, the aircraft factory closed for a day giving a holiday to its 4,000 employees.
In March there was a royal visit to the town and camp. It commenced with arrival at the Royal Pavilion where the king, dressed in khaki, inspected a guard of honour. The king and queen then rode across to Ewshot to witness the Royal Military Corps undergoing training. Queen Mary made her way to the new YMCA hut to inspect the new building and the arrangements made for the comfort and recreation of the troops. She joined up with the king’s party and went along Knolly’s Road and Farnborough Road observing troops on parade grounds. They then went to the aircraft factory, where they were shown around by Mervyn O’Gorman, the superintendent in charge. This in turn was followed by an exhibition of flying by the Royal Flying Corps. After lunch in the pavilion, the king and queen witnessed a cross country race on Queen’s Parade.
The following day, a Sunday, the king and queen joined representatives from all units for a divine service at All Saints’ Church. The service was conducted by Rev’d J. Benoy, senior chaplain of the forces in Aldershot. The Royal Artillery Band was conducted by the town’s well known band master, Henry Sims, with arrangements from composers such as Bach and Mendelssohn. When they exited the church and walked along Farnborough Road, they were greeted by a large crowd who had come to see them.
William Roberts provides a graphic description of what it was like to join the Royal Flying Corps in 1915. When he arrived in Aldershot the only accommodation available was under canvas. He was to become a maintenance engineer at the factory. Planes being tested had to take passengers as ballast. On his first flight the plane turned over. ‘Run away,’ shouted the pilot, ‘it’s going to burst into flames.’ An hour later he saw a Belgian pilot killed when his plane crashed. On 15 January, at Farnborough, Second-Lieutenant Gardner of the Royal Flying Corps suffered a similar fate. The extensive burns he received as the result of the crash made his body unrecognisable.
Another description about gravitating into work associated with the Royal Flying Corps is provided by Cecil King. After signing up for the army he was given a railway warrant for Aldershot. Initially he was allocated space in the barracks of the Black Watch. Conditions were primitive and the three meals a day were just sufficient to take the edge off their hunger. They were marched to the Farnborough base of the RFC, where they given largely menial tasks such as digging trenches and levelling off sites on the runways. They attended to planes that had taxied in and returned them to flying condition. Part of his training in the workings of aero engines involved being able to instantly name the parts of the engine after it had been dismantled and placed before them on the ground.
A female perspective comes from Constance Bottomley, who arrived in Farnborough after joining the WAAFs. They were kitted out in uniforms and allocated barracks at Star Hill. They were given lectures about something called VD which none of the women had ever heard of. At this stage she said, ‘France seemed very far away.’
In the case of Victor Fagance, who joined the 10th Battalion Royal West Surrey Regiment and arrived at Albuhera Barracks in December, his reason for joining up was because most of his friends had already done so. He found life at Aldershot hectic. Some of the NCOs were Boer War veterans who really knew what war was like. He described how it was discovered that men in his battalion had falsified their ages in order to join up and get to France. Due to a mistake, his name was missed off those being sent to France and he found himself with the ‘lead swingers’ in Northampton, which delayed his going to France. Fortune smiled on him because his regiment was decimated at the Battle of Loos.
Robert Parker was posted to North Camp and the tractor section of the Army Service Corps. Only six tractors existed and the test of efficiency involved reversing a tractor with a trailer attached. Further work involved working with tracked vehicles. He was given the task of moving the tractors from Aldershot to Avonmouth at 2½ miles an hour, which took him a week. Another marathon was performed by Charles Quenelle in a march from Folkestone to Aldershot, a distance of 115 miles. During the march small billeting parties would go ahead and secure billets for the men that included places like schools or mission halls. He recalled 250 men marching along the Hog’s Back on the last phase of their journey and from there looking down on ‘the holy city’ of Aldershot. Quenelle said he hated the town, which offered no place to go except the barracks where they were located. They were located in huts that dated back to the Boer War. ‘You were just a small cog in a very large wheel. No one ever explained what the purpose of the marches was you were required to do. Because of overcrowding you were never allowed to enjoy a full night’s sleep.’ One of the exercises they were required to do was attempting to fix barbed wire into the ground with a 4-inch-long screw.
The short back and sides administered by the army barbers made them all look like convicts prior to their departure for France.
Major General John Ford of the Royal Army Medical Corps came from an Aldershot command background. When he enlisted he was billeted in a tailor’s shop. He talked about new recruits walking about sloppily dressed without uniforms and doing physical exercises on the parade ground. When he enlisted as a bugler he was in constant demand for regular church parades. Cecil Tubbs of the Somerset Light Infantry, arriving at the same time, said that new recruits judged their NCOs on the basis of their competence. Sydney Woodcock arrived in Aldershot with skills in machine construction engineering so that when he was asked to draw a hexagon as his test to join the Royal Engineers he had no difficulty in passing.
Eric de Norman was posted to the Buller Barracks in July. He was allowed a tailor’s bill of £24 19s for his uniform. Much of his role was a supervisory one, going from tents to latrines and to barracks on a regular two-hour basis. He supervised meals as well as fielded complaints. Reflecting the growing need to ration his men, he was charged with weighing out meat and described the abattoir where the meat was stored as a horrible foul smelling place. The veteran sergeants made fun of a novice NCO if he got his cavalry drill wrong. Going into Aldershot was a nightmare because he found he had to salute all the time due to the number of officers based in the town. In comparison with the meagre rations available to the ordinary ranks, de Norman described the lavish fare, all served with silver service available in his mess with its fine oak panelling. Breakfast consisted of porridge, eggs, ham, sausages and bacon. For lunch a generous buffet was offered and on ceremonial occasions not only was there a mountain of food but also a wide selection of wines. Many of the officers he shared the mess with possessed their own cars. He was paid £11 12s a month.
Despite the perils of early test flying, the esprit de corps evident at the metalworkers’ dinner indicates how well O’Gorman had succeeded in bringing together a group of skilled workers dedicated to the future of flying. He effectively dismantled the demarcation lines between the sheet metal worker and the coppersmith in the factory. However, life in the factory was not without crisis, as revealed by the fire on 12 March when the bells of the approaching Aldershot fire engine were confused with warning of an enemy air attack. Rather than taking cover, scores of people ran outside to discover what was happening. Aldershot was fortunate never to have had a Zeppelin attack, because its authorities struggled to establish an efficient regime to control the levels of lighting both in the camp and town.
The factory acted as a magnet to young men. On 10 December, Edward Norkett, a motor engineer, sued Colonel Charlton for the return of his apprentice who had falsified his age in order to join up. The court ordered that Ronald Jackson should be returned to his employer.
Patriotism v. Profit – how the War Office betrayed national trust
The local paper reported events in Parliament on 16 February 1916, surrounding the tale of what it believed to be jobbery and corruption, which had commenced this year.
The dispute between the War Office and Aldershot Council and business community centred on the activities of a Colonel Gascoigne. He had returned to the active list for the army, this coinciding with the securing of a valuable piece of real estate lying between the High Street and Wellington Avenue for the Army and Navy Co-operative for whom he had worked as a manager. The War Office had taken the land in 1875 and left it empty, despite requests that it might be used by the council or sold to town businessmen. But the War Office refused to give up the land.
Now the War Office sold the land for less than half its market value to the Army and Navy Co-operative for £4,300 under a secret contract. The local paper regarded this action as inexplicable, because the army itself was now desperate for space in which to drill the thousands of new recruits pouring into the camp due to existing drill areas being taken for barracks. Further, the War Office was paying large amounts of money to rent office space all over the town for the Army Pay Unit when this land could be used to centralise the process. In commercial terms, the action of the War Office represented favouritism towards one company, and the Army and Navy had been gifted a trading advantage over other retail firms in the town.
In a very weak response to complaints made in a speech by the town’s member of parliament, Clavell-Salter, the minister stated that he simply had forgotten to inform the house of the transaction. However, he believed that members of all ranks serving in Aldershot would benefit from the presence of the store in the town. Both the business community and the council were unimpressed by this explanation, and the issue soured the relationship between the town and the War Office.
Settling where responsibility for paying for damage to the roads running through the camp as a result of intensive military activity resulted in differences of opinion between the army and Hampshire County Council, the local authority in charge of the camp’s roads. On 19 February, Hampshire reluctantly agreed to pay £13,000 for road repairs for ten roads that were experiencing severe damage. The military authorities were not prepared to admit that damage to a major extent had occurred. Hampshire refused to accept that they should pay a contribution of £577 to repair the road running through Farnborough to the county boundary with Surrey. Representation to the army authorities was now to be made about meeting the additional cost of road maintenance consequent on the expansion of military activity in Aldershot and Farnborough.
From the start of the year, shortages of a whole range of things for civilised living began to be experienced in Aldershot. There was an acute lack of suitable housing for what the Aldershot News described as the working-classes. Because of the lack of skilled labour, either through recruitment into the services or deployment in building accommodation in the camp, a scheme to build affordable housing near to the Isolation Hospital was reported as making poor progress. A case brought by the council’s environment officer highlighted this situation. A building contractor unable to find any suitable accommodation elsewhere had crammed his workers into an empty shop. In mitigation he pleaded that the shop was being used only for sleeping. As late in the year as July, the council was still debating how they could entice more money from the Local Government Board for a vital programme of house-building. The situation in Farnborough was no better because of an influx of skilled workers from around the country into O’Gorman’s aircraft factory.
On 8 January, Aldershot is in the midst of a coal famine. With its price rising to 32 shillings a ton, it became unaffordable for poorer people at the coldest time of the year. This was partially the result of congestion on the railway. One of the vicars of Aldershot, Rev’d Senior, criticised the miners for militancy and taking industrial action. He conveniently forgets the mining disaster in the Welsh Valleys in 1913 that killed over 4,000 miners and that the mine owners insisted on opening the mine in question just a week after the disaster.
By October meat was in short supply and households were limited to ¾lb per week. However, the military censor intervened when a soldier writing home complained of the monotony of his diet in the camp consisting largely of bully beef and biscuits. Meanwhile, the price of bread and flour continued to rise.
For the children of the town there was a shortage of education. Their schools were systematically occupied by the army. For instance, on 2 February, Newport Road School had around 200 soldiers in residence and on 9 February, the East End schools were taken over to billet soldiers. As well as this, a shortage of teachers developed through some volunteering for the services. Reports of their deaths started arriving. C.W. Shanks, from West End Boys’ School, serving with the Hampshire Regiment, was the first of these and Claude Elliot, born and brought up in Aldershot, was killed at Neuve Chappelle. All unmarried male teachers joined up during the year and the vacancies that were created were filled by women teachers. Although the schools were closed, nominally the numbers of children on roll increased by 414 because of the closure of schools in the camp. From 1915, maternity and childcare starts to become a major issue in Aldershot. The town was one of the first in the country to appoint a health visitor who had the responsibility for checking on children in their first year of life. By April a campaign had commenced placing pressure on the council to appoint another health visitor whose role was to provide assistance and advice to expectant mothers. Urgent work with children from 1 to 5 was identified. However, an approach to the army authorities for a centre to work from was met with refusal.
From a contemporary standpoint, the central role the churches played in the community of the camp and Aldershot is remarkable. In 1915, faced with the growing catastrophe the war represented for people’s lives, the natural tendency was to seek comfort and guidance from religion. The Aldershot News reported on an increase in membership and activity in the churches. The challenge faced was not only to provide spiritual support to the thousands of men who flooded into the camp and town, but also to provide physical support in the form of pastoral care to these men. There was evidence of, in modern parlance, ‘churches together’, as sectarian divides were put aside in the face of the challenges the churches were presented with. At first there were very few resources available to respond to the social needs of men from the barracks. Novel ways were tried to raise money. Rev’d Senior tried a ‘demanding toll’ on everyone who visited him in his vestry at Holy Trinity Church. In this way by 17 March, he had raised £54. However, much of this money appears to have paid off debts already incurred for the church’s activities, and less to support work for the troops.
From January, the combined churches began a temperance campaign when the Bishops of London and Willesden were in Aldershot to speak on the issue. In response to the widespread drunkenness at the start of the war the churches were involved in tactical moves by the police and military authorities to improve the situation. At another meeting, a Colonel Boyrne spoke about the way in which even limited consumption of alcohol interfered with a soldier’s training by reason of it making him incapable of making quick and rational decisions. In fact, it questioned whether he was capable of being a soldier altogether. He cited the outrages of German troops in Belgium after they had ransacked the stores and cellars of the country. He quoted a comment by a British general, Lord Roberts: ‘Give me a teetotal army and I will lead it anywhere.’
However this view was challenged by a letter from the trenches claiming that the rum ration was the only way he could get through it all.
Rev’d Hawkes began a tradition of keeping philosophical discussion alive during the war with two meetings at his institute attached to St Michael’s on ‘The Church 1600 – 1660’ and another relevant to understanding how and why war came on the great powers of Europe between 1815 and 1914. He chaired another meeting late in 1915 examining ways in which the desperate housing situation could be improved. From 1916, when the war started going very badly for the Allies, meetings and discussions organised by Hawkes would come to play a vital part in the town’s life. On 12 February, at his Men’s Conference in the parish hall, he came to grips with the question that although the war was wrong in the general sense, could it be justified in current circumstances? He claimed that Christ expressed neither approval nor disapproval of war. He examined the Quaker view of war, which held that it was against the will of Christ and involved the surrender of the individual conscience to those promoting war. He said he believed that for anyone joining the army in Aldershot this meant implicitly the orders of officers, which might be wrong and against a man’s conscience.
Rev’d Hawkes stated that there were two good reasons against the Quaker view. Firstly, your whole existence in society was based on compromise with absolute conditions you were unable to effectively alter. For instance, there was the fact that many of the goods and services available were the result of exploitation of unfair labour. As an individual you could not simply withdraw participation in society because you objected to a small part of how it operated. Secondly, dealing with the Quaker view that war breached the fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man in a certain sense, some nations were justified in going to war. In the family of nations, the right existed to attack another nation and punish it for wrongdoing. War was wrong because of the misbehaviour of the nation that caused it. However, the use of force was wrong when the motive for employing that force was wrong. Rudyard Kipling was wrong when he said, ‘The life of a warrior is the noblest one on earth.’ Contrary to this it might produce a magnificent character but it undermined the family of nations. He rejected the Quaker argument against war but supported a Christian movement to stop war, perhaps prefiguring the ideas behind the League of Nations. In the next months, with the hearing of cases against conscription and conscientious objection, these arguments would appear in Aldershot and Farnborough again and again.
The year marked the forty-fifth anniversary meeting of one of the Freemasons Lodges within the camp. Its numbers had been boosted by the number of masons training there. It noted, however, that a shadow had been cast over the usual convivial new member-making ceremonies by the deaths that had already taken place among its members serving overseas. The meeting took place in the new Masonic Assembly Rooms over the Market Arcade in the High Street. The lodge had moved from its premises in Station Road because the masonic hall there had been placed in the hands of the receiver. Brother A.H. Smith extended a special welcome for all those in khaki attending the meeting.
A large part of Aldershot’s economy depended on the operation of the Army Pay Department. However, a letter received by the local newspaper clearly indicates the Army Pay Corps was being so severely stretched by the extra demands made on its services by the surge in recruitment that the department appeared to be falling to pieces. The letter criticised the manner in which appointments into the corps had been made from the civil service, with no regard to the specialist skills involved in dealing with military pay. The correspondent complained about the lack of recognition accorded those who traditionally worked in the Pay Corps and were familiar with all the regulations related to its work. There was a complaint that the decision had been made to remove from each regiment its own depot with a record office. The justification for combining individual regimental based pay into a fixed centre appears to be to save money. In peacetime it worked after a fashion. The drawback is if information was required at the centre about a soldier, this was not immediately available but had to be sought from his barracks, which might be anywhere in the country. The letter complained that the civilian financial authorities were out of sympathy with the way a military pay section should operate. Faced with an outcry about its failure to manage military pay, the civilian financial authorities hurriedly drafted in untrained clerks. The new clerks had to be inducted into the Pay Corps systems, placing a great strain on the original pay clerks. Training of a pay clerk usually took five years, and yet the expectation was that the new appointees take up the reigns forthwith. The problem was further aggravated by a large number of specialist staff being sent to the Front to carry out pay duties there. This was one fifth of officers and a tenth of clerks. A further factor creating delays and mistakes for soldiers and their dependants in Aldershot was the number of changes in pay and allowances that were being produced as the war continued.
In August, Rudyard Kipling, on a visit to Aldershot, expressed concern about the gulf now beginning to develop between those who volunteered and those still not under arms. He had listened to the complaints of the men in the camp about the way those still not in uniform were prospering in their absence. Like many other commentators he was puzzled why underage recruits were not spotted by the professional soldiers responsible for their training. Also, in August, a recruit described how the 8th Light Division of the 9th Scots Division prepared to go to France. First there was the haircut, which resembled the American crew-cut of later years designed to avoid infestation by flies and lice. Troops were assembled on Aldershot Parade Ground with their Lee Enfield Rifle Mark IV, fitted with a single-blade bayonet. They carried 120 rounds of 303 ammunition and an entrenching tool. A water bottle in their haversack was an emergency day ration. In terms of clothing there was a greatcoat, a woollen shirt, three pairs of socks, a change of underclothing, a towel, soap and a comb. Around the pack was strapped a blanket roll and a ground sheet. Throughout the war questions around prisoners-of-war, both those in camps in and around Aldershot and those of Allied soldiers, would be a major concern. A letter from Private McDonald read to the group assembled in the Jubilee Hall Club seeking to encourage parcels for British POWs thanks the volunteers for the parcels that had been sent so far. He wrote of ‘wearing away the weary days as we doing nothing here’. On 4 June, parcels of food organised by Dr Gibson were dispatched to Germany. This was in response to information that POWs there were receiving inadequate food. Food was being donated even from families in chastened circumstances themselves. The aircraft factory was commended for the extent of its giving. Parcels being sent consisted of a 4lb loaf, 1lb biscuits, 12oz cheese, two tins of condensed milk, cigarettes, a cake and a box of soap. Comments appeared in the Aldershot News about how well the enemy POWs are being treated in comparison with the Allied ones in Germany. Soldiers returning from a swap of prisoners arrived back wearing wooden shoes and much in need of decent clothing. Bugler William Berry reported that the lack of food given to wounded prisoners worsened their physical condition. But for the food sent from Aldershot, more of these men would have died. He was so incensed with the treatment he received and wanted to return to the Front. Well-known local footballer J.T. Hales, who was captured early in the war, wrote about their food consisting of 6oz of black bread each for ten men, coffee without milk, stringy beans and a tiny piece of sausage or cheese. On the strength of this they were expected to carry out hard manual labour for many hours. News that a group of German POWs in a local camp had gone on strike over the level of pay they were receiving for work they did in the community was greeted with hostility.
The camp at Frith Hill between Frimley and Deepcut held German aliens as well as POWs. George Kenner was one of the aliens deemed to be from hostile countries swept up by the authorities following the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915. He had moved to London from Bavaria in 1910 and was working as an artist. Kenner painted a series of pictures and kept a diary depicting life in the camp. Breakouts took place and one highlighted the discontent that existed about the conditions those in the tents and temporary huts experienced. Kenner was later moved to another camp at Alexander Palace, and then to the Isle of Man.
In the middle of the year a commentator claimed that interest in women’s suffrage had been allowed to drop. This seemed against the evidence of the increasing role women were already playing in the life of the town and camp. The growing number of women teachers in the schools were demanding equal pay to the men they were replacing. Women bus conductors appeared on the Aldershot Traction Company buses. The essential role women would have to occupy was highlighted by a severe shortage of nurses already developing for Cambridge and Connaught Hospitals. On 26 June, the town’s first postwoman was observed delivering letters. However, in July Mr Hoffman from the Shop Workers’ Union was making disparaging remarks about the competence of the women now replacing men behind the counters in the town. ‘They have not the slightest experience of the work,’ he said. The home secretary denied driving licences to women on the basis that ‘they would not be trusted by the general public’.
Meanwhile, the seventy-strong team of ladies supporting the Seaforth Highlanders outlined the prodigious amount of clothing and goods they had produced in support of the regiment. Their record shows 9,000 pairs of socks, 2,248 shirts, 321 vests, 1,231 belts, 890 handkerchiefs, 895 scarves, 2,901 gloves/mittens, 609 cardigans, seven bales of blankets, 2,000 towels. As well as these, 4,500 pipes, 100,500 cigarettes and 2,850lb of tobacco were donated.
However, the class lines dividing middle- and working-class women’s experience of the war were becoming very apparent. Because of the rising cost of living more and more women were forced out to work. At the magistrates court on 6 August, Nellie Smith was charged with loitering on army land, an euphemism for soliciting for sex. Because of the scrutiny the police in the town took to check all arrivals, offenders such a Lucy Dudney, who took rooms in the Royal Hotel dressed as a nurse and entertained men she claimed were friends, were tracked down and brought before the court. Again on 4 September, four young women were brought before the court charged with loitering on war department land. On 24 September, charges against older women soliciting in the town refer to ‘indecency’.
In the second year of the war a number of Aldershot families were identified as making major sacrifices. For instance R.H. Dell with four sons serving received a letter from the king congratulating his family for their contribution towards the war. Congratulations from the king for his eight serving sons was also received by Mr Williams. C. Farrow of the Coldstream Guards from St George’s Road in Aldershot, presently in Egypt with the army, had five sons serving – Edward with the Royal Garrison Artillery, William with the navy on torpedo boats, Edwin, also with the Royal Garrison Artillery, Harold with the E Company of the Hampshire Regiment, and Victor with the 3rd Coldstream Guards. The Rolfe family of West View, Farnborough, had Alfred serving in France, Gary with the Medical Corps also in France, William serving with the 1st Yorkshire/Lancashire Regiment and Philip serving with the St Helen’s Regiment. Mrs Pettys of St Michael’s Road in Aldershot had sent six sons. Alfred, who was on HMS Foxglove, Herbert with the Royal Surrey Regiment, Ernest with the Royal Fusiliers, Harry on HMS Excellent. Unfortunately, one of her sons Ernest is reported missing. In June Mrs Soffe of Queen’s Road had the dreaded news that a second son had been killed.