From the archive: Advance and retreat
Janet Scott continues her series on the Friend and the first world war and writes about instances of joy among suffering
On 20 March 1918 the German army began what was to be a successful offensive in France. This had a great impact on Friends’ work. The 12 April edition of the Friend reported that at Meeting for Sufferings:
Reference was made to the suffering even then being undergone by many men only a few hundred miles away; and the prayer was offered that we, too, might be ready to hold our lives cheap for the Kingdom of God, and to dedicate ourselves to the service and redemption of our fellows.
Ruth Fry described the situation of the War Victims’ Relief workers in France to Meeting for Sufferings. The Friend on 12 April reported her words:
On March 20th a heavy bombardment warned the workers that the attack had begun, and next day, refugees came streaming into Ham. On the 22nd all were ordered to leave Ham, and the workers were busy helping the inhabitants to get off, distributing the stores to English soldiers, and aiding the wounded. They learned by experience what it was to fly for their lives before an advancing army, and they shared the sufferings of the refugees. Some escaped on foot; others engaged in ploughing had to drive off their horses, leaving the ploughs where they were…
It is believed that all the workers are safe, and they have been asked by both the English and French authorities to help in the evacuation of the villages and to assist the refugees in all parts of France. Much had been done in Paris, in arranging canteens at the stations where famished and helpless people were arriving all night long. Probably all the newly erected houses have been destroyed, and stores, ploughs and motor tractor lost; but all the labour has not been lost, since the trust and affection of the people have been gained.
In a personal account R F Theobald wrote in the same issue about leaving the Somme area:
The people of Ham were roused from their beds and ordered to leave the town… by train that morning… All we could do was to help the people to get their things to the station. Both our cars were kept busy conveying refugees and their belongings from their homes, and others of us were able to carry bundles and push their wheelbarrows…
At the station, everyone bundled into the cattle trucks and dirty old third-class compartments that composed the long train of forty-eight carriages. Some of the refugees tried to get their large wheelbarrows through the much smaller carriage doors, and one woman with a small boy brought a miserable old cow down to the station, hoping to get her on board too…
No one on our train knew where we were going, so it was a case of faith.
Friends’ Ambulance Unit (FAU)
A brief report on 19 April said:
It will be understood that the situation and circumstances of the Unit in France have recently been, and are at present, full of difficulty and danger… The Barge Secours has been evacuated, and the French Civilian Evacuation Section of the Unit has been hard pressed. Very heavy pressure has also fallen upon the Convoys and Ambulance Trains, and there have been some narrow escapes from injury and death. Sections 13, 14 and 19… have been undertaking work of exceptional difficulty.
Later reports, on 3 May, contained further details:
[Section 14] The shelling of the village in which the men and cars were accommodated caused some damage to the cars, though luckily not to the engines. The only casualty among the personnel was that one member who was shaving when a shell exploded unpleasantly near his billet cut himself!…
[Ambulance Train No. 16] have it heavily borne in upon them that life consists of trips, trips, and yet more trips, with feeding and sleeping thrown in as a mere after-thought.
This train also reported its joy when amongst its load was an old member of its personnel. On 17 May the following appeared in the Friend:
Alfred Willis Clemes joined the Unit in July 1915, and came to France with the original crew for this train. He afterwards became Senior N.C.O. on No. 11 Ambulance Train, and after many months of valuable service left to join the Australian Imperial Force… He was wounded in the recent fighting, and it was the good fortune of his first train to receive him as a patient! I am glad to be able to say that his wounds were slight and he is progressing satisfactorily.
Deaths in France
Death notices in the Friend in April and May included: Ernest Cooper Stephenson, Eric George King, William Indoe Worner, Sidney Fayers, J H Whitworth, A W Johnson, Raymond Driver Richardson, Hubert Pumphrey, John D Swinborn and Christopher York Pease, who died in action.
Corder Catchpool
On 28 March Corder Catchpool faced his fourth court martial, having already served three prison sentences aggregating sixteen months hard labour. On 12 April the Friend reported that as part of his statement he said:
On the day of discharge… I heard of the awful struggle which has just broken out with fresh intensity in France. Words seem a mockery at such a time… There is hardly a moment when my thoughts are not with the men in France, eager to help the wounded by immediate human touch with their sufferings. This I was privileged to do during nineteen months spent at the front with the FAU… while it was still possible to give voluntary service. At times the impulse to return to this work becomes almost irresistible.
May God steady me, and keep me faithful to a call I have heard above the roar of the guns. By the feverish activity of my hands, I might help to save a fraction of the present human wreckage. That would be for me no sacrifice. It costs far more to spend mind and spirit, if need be, in the silence of a prison cell, in passionate witness for the great truths of Peace…
I honour those who, in loyalty to conscience, have gone out to fight… I am enlisted in active service as a soldier of Jesus Christ, who bids every man be true to the sense of duty that is laid upon his soul.
Corder Catchpool was sentenced to another eighteen months hard labour. On 19 April the Friend reported that whilst on his third prison sentence he had received the 1914 Ribbon for his services at the front with the FAU. He was permitted to keep the ribbon in his cell.
He did not wear the decoration while with his unit for a fourth court-martial until he was ‘read out’.
A great escape?
On 5 April the Friend told the remarkable story of an Old Aytonian, William Ivan Armstrong, a soldier who escaped from internment in Germany at Ruhleben:
His first attempt to escape was a little over a year ago, but he and a companion were soon caught, and given a month in the ‘cage’ – German bread and water, and boards to lie on. But for the ingenuity of a gentleman… who found a hole in the wooden side of the cage and fed them with Bovril through a pipe stem, they would have died.
Their next attempt at escape lasted six days and ended with them being found asleep exhausted from walking about 100 miles. The report continued that back at Ruhleben three of them escaped again. They travelled by train to a lonely part of North Germany. For six nights they travelled over moors, bogs, ditches, rivers and canals. Finally they reached Holland and then London.
And finally…
The Friend on 17 May contained a report from the Friends’ War Victims’ Relief Committee on an unusual piece of work:
Soon after the German offensive and the withdrawal of our workers from the invaded districts, a unit was dispatched to Lourdes, in the extreme South of France, at the foot of the Pyrenees, where they assisted in re-establishing in one of the great hotels of the city of the Virgin the unhappy inmates of the [Amiens] lunatic asylum. This was successfully accomplished, and for a while the party were occupied in the monotonous but useful task of night duty in the building. Their services were much appreciated by the head doctor, who said that they had been the means of creating a record – not one of the patients, deterred by the novel grey-uniformed guard, had attempted to escape!
