British Voices (4 page)

28 February

It is now a month since I did anything in this, that is bad work for a diarist, but only a few more pages will see the finish, so I must see it through to the end. I gave up, for simple reason, that each day was a repetition of the day previous, if we weren't on guard in some place, we were patrolling somewhere else, or else having a route march, and we seem to have had plenty of those. Night after night we have been ordered out, ‘Michael Collins had been located, he was imprisoned in such and such a house, the CID had him surrounded', and all sorts of rumours. At the time of writing, he is still at large, and from what I can see of the situation he is likely to be, the population of Dublin are too loyal to give him away. I was going to say I hope he keeps free, but someone might see this before I get it home so that is better left unwritten. The ambushings, killings and raids still go on, how the people of Dublin stick it, I don't know. Only a few days ago, Gilby and I were going round by the Bank of Ireland on to Sackville Street, when a fight began. The place was alive with bullets, we dodged into a chemist's shop out of the way, and listened to the windows going. All was over in two minutes, then the ambulances were on the scene picking up the casualities. A young woman was hit, but not seriously, grazed her arm, she was badly frightened. She was someone well educated, her Irish was well spoken. Gilby and I got her to a tram, then we cleared off to barracks. We were out all over the place that night, bringing suspects out of their beds. Some we found in bed fully dressed, of course they came along. Others were in bed in their birthday suits, fancy that in the middle of winter. The only time we completely undress is when we go to have a steam bath, something like a Turkish Bath, but they did about a dozen at a time. We go in fairly white, I was going to write white, but we are a bit brown looking yet, and we come out like boiled lobsters. I did manage to click a cushy three days, when I was posted as court orderly at a court martial when three men were on trial for the murder of some of the officers at Jury's Hotel in ‘Bloody Sunday'. They are now in Mountjoy Prison awaiting execution. I think I shall always remember their names and what they look like, they were called Johnston, Potter and Green, only youths, but the court found them guilty. Whether they are to be hung or shot I don't know, the presiding officer just said ‘Guilty' and sentence will be pronounced in due course. I did without dinner one day to hear an Irish barrister pleading for one of the prisoners. It was a splendid appeal in all the pathos that Irish eloquence could command. If it had rested with me, they would have got off but the evidence against them was too overwhelming, the barrister spoke for three hours. My job was to escort the witnesses for the defence to the witness box. The trial being a court martial, everything was done in military style, scrupulously fair, anybody who could say anything in the prisoners favour said their little bits, but to no purpose, no other verdict could have been found. But I must forget that incident. There is a rumour going round that the Indian draft, that means us, are being sent to Portobella Barracks on the other side of the city, but how true that is I don't know. One thing that seems peculiar, is that we have had four medical examinations in the last fortnight, the reason I don't know, nor does anyone else. They must think we have brought some contagious disease from India with us. We have had some beastly weather, the barrack square has never been dry since the day we landed. One good thing all our boots have to be dubbined instead of polishing, we are a bit out of practise not having done anything in the cleaning line all the time we were out East. Which reminds me that I have never completed my notes I had on one or two things owing to our sudden departure from Lahore. So I think it will be the best thing I conclude with a summary and leave Dublin alone, I'm sick of the place, I think we all are.

Details

This account is taken from the private papers of Brigadier Frederick Clarke, which are housed in the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives in Kings College London. Clarke was born and educated in Leicestershire. He joined the Territorial Force in 1912 as a second lieutenant in the 10th London Regiment, and was promoted to captain in 1913. In the First World War, he served in Gallipoli, Egypt and Palestine. He saw service in India with the 57 (Wildes Rifles) Frontier Force and the 25th (County of London) Battalion (Cyclists) London Regiment. He transferred to the Essex Regiment as a lieutenant in 1916, and served with them in Ireland from 1919 to 1922. He was appointed captain in 1925, and attended Staff College from 1927 to 1929. He was a General Staff Officer at the Small Arms School in Wiltshire from 1930 to 1932 and served with the Essex Regiment during the Saar plebiscite. He was the commander of the Nigeria Regiment, Royal West African Frontier Force from 1938 to 1939. During the Second World War, he served in Europe and Africa, mainly in logistics and support services. He retired in 1947. Brigadier Clarke was the co-author of
The History of the West African Frontier Force.

A
LETTER FROM
the War Office 23rd October, 1920 informed that I had been selected for a regular commission. On the 11th December I was gazetted to the Essex Regiment and posted to the 1st Battalion, the old 44th Foot. I was given leave for a month and ordered to report to the Battalion at Kinsale, which I discovered to be a small port on the south coast of County Cork.

The Battalion was quartered in ancient barracks designed for defence as well as accommodation, a characteristic of most, if not all, the barracks in Southern Ireland. The unit was, however, split up, and only Headquarters and one company with a few recruits were in these barracks. One company and the machine gun platoon were at Fort Charles about two miles away overlooking the harbour entrance. Then there was one company at Bandon, ten miles to the west and another at Clonakilty (to which name the locals added ‘God help us') on the sea coast ten miles south of Bandon. There were also several detachments of one platoon.

I was posted to ‘B' Company at Fort Charles and left at once to this old fort, which had been built during the reign of Elizabeth I. The mess and living rooms were quite comfortable, and the men's quarters were warm and dry.

The Company was commanded by one Thompson a keen fisherman, better known as ‘Trout' not only for his skilling this fish, but a facial resemblance to it. He had about 21 years service, had fought in the Boer War and finally commanded the 2nd Battalion in France during the autumn of 1917. He was full of anecdotes and strange names for things and people. For instance, doctors were ‘farriers'; a clergyman a ‘God-Botherer'; a perambuler was a ‘spawn truck'.

I was soon settled down and got on well with the Trout who taught me a good deal about peacetime administration. As a result I was never in my regimental service called upon to pay for losses, which was the fate of a good many officers. A few days after I joined ‘R.G.' turned up. He was posted to ‘C' Company so I did not see much of him at first.

It was at Kinsale I first met Regimental-Sergeant-Major ‘Bill' Bailey who was a ‘proper Essex calf ' from Coggeshall where the ‘wise men' come from. When the Battalion was serving in the famous 29th Division Gallipoli he rose from Sergeant to RSM and won the DCM.

It was not long before I took part in a sweep to trap some notorious ‘shinners'. Leaving the Fort at crack of dawn, with two sections of my platoon, we travelled a number of miles in RAF Crossley trucks to an arranged rendezvous with other parties and where we debussed. It appeared to me that this movement in trucks was unsatisfactory, not only did it give the game away, but one soon heard that the most successful ambushes of troops and police were when riding in vehicles. But, then, I had the value of a suspicious mind drummed into me at the Mountain Warfare School in India.

Having left the vehicles we moved to search a given lane with other parties on either side of us at a distance of several hundred yards. We saw nobody in the fields as we tramped over them. A sergeant who had been on a number of these parties told me, that the people were usually in bed until well after eight o'clock. We searched a so-called farm and found one old woman in bed sharing the one room with fowls, pigs and traces of a cow. The stink was awful.

The next was a better farm with two storeys. Having surrounded the place I went in with my sergeant and found the family at breakfast. I told them to sit down, put their hands on the table and keep still. I covered them with my revolver whilst the sergeant searched downstairs where he found nothing. He then went upstairs whilst a corporal searched the few outbuildings. Presently the sergeant rushed down stairs and was violently sick outside. I turned to leave and on going out a spinster with a nasty sneer, produced a bottle of whisky from a drawer and handed it towards me so as to show that my sergeant had forgotten to pick it up. I ignored the woman and spoke to the father of the flock, a decent looking old fellow, and told him I was sorry to have disturbed them. The sergeant would never tell me what horrid sight he had seen upstairs.

And, so we went on all the morning until about 2 p.m. we arrived at the final rendezvous with the other parties. Nothing had been accomplished by any of them which appears to have been the usual result.

The Battalion owned a large black dog of uncertain parentage. He was known as Niger and had been largely responsible for the death of two Shinners. They were up a tree, probably with the intention of acting as snipers. Niger passing with a patrol scented them and barked by the tree until the patrol noticed and shot the would-be snipers. He did not belong to any particular company but seemed to visit all in turn but not noticing any individual. He would always follow a body of troops he saw wearing equipment and leaving barracks, so he took part in many drives against the Shinners. He would go to Cork and wander through the barracks there but always found his way back to the Essex lorry in time. The locals used to say he was an emissary of Satan, and when he happened to be riding conspicuously, which he often did, on the leading lorry of a convoy, they would remark: ‘There goes the bludy Essex wid the divil leading 'em'.

In March the Company was ordered to relieve the garrison at the lighthouse on the Old Head of Kinsale about eight miles to the south west of the town. I was detailed to go with my platoon. We lived in old coast guard cottages and suffered from intense boredom, bad rations, dust instead of coal and paraffin lamps. We were there a month and during that time were never visited by a senior officer.

To keep the troops amused I wired the area round our billet and constructed one or two fire positions. We had no means of contact with the outer world except by patrols. There was, however, a telephone to a switchboard in the local post office cum-public house about a mile down the track towards Kinsale. This was, of course, useless from the point of view of security. The following anecdote gives some idea of how we managed to ensure the secrecy of a particular little operation. One morning I was called to the telephone by an officer at Kinsale who spoke to me in kitchen Urdu: