The Shadow of War (46 page)

Tommy Rollocks
– bollocks / testicles.

Two and eight
– state (as in a state of agitation).

Marcel Desoutter was one of six children of Louis Albert Desoutter, an immigrant French watchmaker, and Philomène Duret. Learning to fly with the Blériot Company at their Hendon works,
he passed the flying tests at the age of seventeen. At the London Aviation Meeting, held at Hendon Aerodrome at Easter 1913, the control stick slipped from his hand while flying his 50hp Blériot Gnome, and the craft dived into the ground at the edge of the aerodrome. Desoutter's leg was badly broken and later had to be amputated above the knee.

He was fitted with the standard wooden leg, but his younger brother Charles used his knowledge of aircraft materials to design a new jointed duralumin alloy leg of half the weight, with which he was able to return to flying. In 1914 the pair formed Desoutter Brothers Limited to manufacture artificial limbs. The firm expanded during and after the Great War, and moved to The Hyde, Hendon, in 1924.

This is a German patriotic anthem (‘The Watch/Guard on the Rhine'). The song's origins are rooted in the historical French–German enmity, and it was particularly popular in Germany during the Franco-Prussian War and the Great War.

The Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM) was, until 1993, a very high award for bravery (second only to a Victoria Cross). The medal was instituted in 1854, during the Crimean War, to recognize gallantry within the ranks, for which it was the equivalent of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) awarded for bravery to commissioned officers. In the aftermath of the 1993 review of the honours system, as part of the drive to remove distinctions of rank in awards for bravery, the DCM was discontinued (along with the award of the DSO and of the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal). These three decorations were replaced by the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, which now serves as the second-level award for gallantry for all ranks across the whole armed forces.

Deolali, India, was the site of a British Army transit camp notorious for its unpleasant environment, and the boredom and psychological problems of soldiers who passed through it. Its name is the origin of the phrase ‘gone doolally' or ‘doolally tap', a phrase meaning to ‘lose one's mind'. ‘Tap' may refer to the Urdu word for a malarial fever.

Dunnage is a term with a variety of related meanings but, typically, refers to inexpensive or waste material used to protect, load and secure cargo during transportation. Dunnage also refers to material used to support loads and hold tools and materials up off the ground (such as jacks, pipes) and supports for air conditioning and other equipment above the roof of a building.

Agate
– say/said (‘be agate' – to say).

Alreet
– all right (‘reet' – right).

Barm cake
– ‘barm' is the foam, or scum, formed on the top of the liquor when beverages such as beer or wine (or feedstock for hard liquor) ferment. It was used to leaven bread, or set up fermentation in a new batch of liquor. In parts of the north-west of England, and throughout Yorkshire, a ‘barm' or ‘barm cake' is a common term for a soft, floury bread roll (on menus in chip shops there is often an option of a ‘chip barm'). The term ‘barmy' may derive from a sense of frothy excitement.

Best slack
– ‘slack' is very small pieces of coal, almost coal dust; ‘best slack' would be less dust, more small pieces; ‘nutty slack' would be bigger, more expensive pieces.

Brass
– money.

Childer
– children.

Dacent
– decent.

Daft apeth
– silly person (derived from ‘ha'p'orth' – halfpennyworth).

Feight
– fight.

Fettle
– sort out.

Laik
– play.

Lanky
– Lancastrian.

Like talkin' to a wood stoop
– talking to someone who doesn't listen or can't hear (a stoop is a raised, flat area in front of a door, usually with one or more steps leading up to it).

Lummox
– big lump.

Mebbe
– maybe.

Mesen
– myself (‘sen' – self).

Moither
– worry.

Neet
– night.

Nowt
– nothing.

Ollus
– always.

Once every Preston Guild
– rarely (Preston Guilds take place every twenty years).

Once every Sheffield Flood
– very rarely; even more rarely than Preston Guilds. (On the night of 11 March 1864, 238 people were killed, 130 buildings destroyed and 15 bridges swept away in a devastating flood caused by the collapse of the Dale Dyke dam.)

Owt
– anything.

Sken
– look.

Tha'sen
– yourself (‘tha' – thou).

Th'eed
– the head.

Th'sels
– themselves.

T'morn
– tomorrow (or tomorrow morning).

Tyke
– Yorkshire person.

Yonder
– over there or beyond.

The fourth Royal Navy ship to carry the name, the
Enchantress
was a twin-screw Admiralty yacht, launched at Belfast in 1903. Capable of 18 knots, her length, beam and draught were 320ft, 40ft, and 16ft. This ship was the special service vessel, or official yacht, of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty.

Enfilade is a concept in military tactics used to describe a formation's exposure to enemy fire. A formation, or position, is ‘in enfilade' if weapons' fire can be directed along its longest axis.

A total of 346 British and Commonwealth soldiers were executed during the Great War. Such executions, for crimes like desertion and cowardice, remain a source of controversy, with some believing that many of those executed were suffering from what is now called ‘shell shock'. Between 1914 and 1918, the British Army identified 80,000 men with what would now be defined as the symptoms of shell shock. However, senior commanders believed that if such behaviour was not harshly punished, others might be encouraged to do the same and the whole discipline of the British Army would collapse.

Some men faced a court martial for other offences but the majority stood trial for desertion from their post, ‘fleeing in the face of the enemy'. A court martial was usually carried out with some speed and the execution followed shortly afterwards. In his testimony to the post-war Royal Commission examining shell shock, Lord Gort said that it was a weakness and was not found in ‘good' units. The continued pressure to avoid the medicalization of shell shock meant that it was not, in itself, an admissible defence.

Executions of soldiers in the British Army were not commonplace. While there were 240,000 courts martial and 3,080 death sentences handed down, of the 346 cases where the sentence was carried out, 266 British were executed for ‘Desertion', 18 for ‘Cowardice', 7 for ‘Quitting a post without authority', 5 for ‘Disobedience to a lawful command' and 2 for ‘Casting away arms'. In some cases (for instance, that of Private Harry Farr), men were executed who had previously suffered from shell shock and who would very likely today have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or another psychiatric syndrome, and would not be executed.

Immediately after the Great War, there were claims that the execution of soldiers was determined by social class. During the war, fifteen officers were sentenced to death, but all received a royal pardon. In August 2006, the British Defence Secretary Des Browne announced that, with Parliament's support, there would be a general pardon for all 306 men executed during the Great War. A new law passed on 28 November 2006, and included as part of the Armed Forces Act, pardoned men in the British and Commonwealth armies who were executed in the Great War. The law removes the stain of dishonour but it does not cancel out sentences.

The Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the UK Ministry of Defence, before finally losing its identity in mergers with other institutions. The first site was at Farnborough Airfield in Hampshire. In 1904–1906 the Army Balloon Factory, which was part of the Army School of Ballooning, under the command of Colonel James Templer, relocated from Aldershot to the edge of Farnborough Common in order to have enough space for experimental work. In October 1908, Samuel Cody made the first
aeroplane flight in Britain at Farnborough. In 1988 it was renamed the Royal Aerospace Establishment before merging with other research entities to become part of the new Defence Research Agency in 1991.

Field punishment was introduced in 1881 following the abolition of flogging and was a common punishment during the Great War. A commanding officer could award field punishment for up to twenty-eight days.

Field Punishment Number One (often abbreviated to ‘F. P. No. 1' or even just ‘No. 1') consisted of the convicted man being placed in fetters and handcuffs or similar restraints and attached to a fixed object, such as a gun wheel, for up to two hours per day. During the early part of the war, the punishment was often applied with the arms stretched out and the legs tied together, giving rise to the nickname ‘crucifixion'. This was applied for a maximum of three days out of four, up to twenty-one days in total. It was usually applied in field punishment camps set up for this purpose a few miles behind the front line, but when the unit was on the move it would be carried out by the unit itself. It has been alleged that this punishment was sometimes applied within range of enemy fire. During the Great War, Field Punishment Number One was issued by the British Army on over 60,000 occasions. Although the 1914 Manual of Military Law specifically stated that field punishment should not be applied in such a way as to cause physical harm, abuses were commonplace (for example, the prisoner would deliberately be placed in stress positions with his feet not fully touching the ground).

In Field Punishment Number Two, the prisoner was placed in fetters and handcuffs but was not attached to a fixed object and was still able to march with his unit. This was a relatively tolerable punishment. In both forms of field punishment, the soldier was also subjected to hard labour and loss of pay. Field Punishment
Number One was eventually abolished in 1923, when an amendment to the Army Act which specifically forbade attachment to a fixed object was passed by the House of Lords.

Robert James ‘Bob' Fitzsimmons was a British professional boxer who made boxing history as the sport's first three-division world champion. He was successively Middleweight, Light Heavyweight and Heavyweight World Champion. Fitzsimmons is the lightest of all Heavyweight Champions, an accolade that, almost certainly, will never be taken from him. Nicknamed ‘Ruby Robert' and the ‘Freckled Wonder', he took pride in his lack of scars and appeared in the ring wearing heavy woollen underwear to conceal the disparity between his significant trunk and puny legs. He was known for his pure fighting skills and his dislike of training. Fitzsimmons is ranked 8th on
Ring Magazine
's list of the ‘100 Greatest Punchers of all Time'.

The Gewehr 98 (abbreviated G98) was a German bolt-action Mauser rifle firing cartridges from a five-round internal clip-loaded magazine. It was the German service rifle from 1898 to 1935, when it was replaced by the Karabiner 98k. The Gewehr 98 was the main German infantry weapon of the Great War.

Snipers rely on their skill, the quality of their rifle and its sight, but also their ammunition. The first 5,000 rounds out of a new mould are packaged with a green spot so that they can be used by snipers, before the balls of later rounds suffer from minor deteriorations in the ball moulding through wear.

These are the long, fine feathers which are found on the backs of certain types of domestic chicken; they are often brightly coloured, especially on roosters. In military parlance, the hackle is a clipped feather plume that is attached to a military headdress. In the British Army the hackle is worn by some infantry regiments, especially those designated as fusilier regiments and those with Scottish and Northern Irish origins. The colour of the hackle varies from regiment to regiment.

Lancashire Fusiliers: primrose yellow.

Royal Fusiliers: white.

Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers: grey.

Royal Irish Fusiliers: green.

Royal Northumberland Fusiliers: red over white.

Royal Scots Fusiliers: white.

Royal Warwickshire Fusiliers: blue over gold.

Royal Welch Fusiliers: white.

An oatcake, or type of flatbread, made from oatmeal and sometimes flour, cooked on a griddle or baked in an oven. In Lancashire and Yorkshire, oatcake was a staple of the diet up to the Great War. Oatcakes were often called ‘havercakes' (from ‘hafr', the Old Germanic word for oats). The word is perpetuated in the nickname ‘Havercake Lads' for the 33rd Regiment of Foot (The Duke of Wellington's Regiment, West Riding) and also in the term ‘haversack'.

On 5 September 1914, the first day of the Battle of the Marne, Thomas Highgate, a nineteen-year-old British private, was found hiding in a barn dressed in civilian clothes. Highgate was tried by
court martial, convicted of desertion and, in the early hours of 8 September, was executed by firing squad. His was the first of 306 executions carried out by the British Army during the Great War. The only son of a farm worker, Thomas Highgate was born in Shoreham, in Kent, in 1895. In February 1913, aged seventeen, he joined the Royal West Kent Regiment. On the first day of the Battle of the Marne, and the 35th day of the war, Private Highgate's nerves got the better of him and he fled the battlefield. He hid in a barn in the village of Tournan, a few miles south of the river, and was discovered wearing civilian clothes by a gamekeeper who happened to be English and an ex-soldier. Highgate confessed: ‘I have had enough of it, I want to get out of it and this is how I am going to do it.'