Tommy (96 page)

So many individuals have helped me during the research for this book that it is impossible to thank them all by name. However, I owe a particular debt to Major General Jonathan Bailey, Hugh Bicheno, Dr John Bourne, Clive Priestley and Lieutenant Colonel Les Wilson for their advice and assistance. My PhD student David Kenyon unearthed valuable information on the actions of the cavalry around High Wood on 14 July 1916; Alexander Caldin carried out useful research on trench newspapers and the backgrounds of senior officers, and Corinna Holmes and Frank Turner collated quotations for copyright clearance, which may not have been the most exciting of tasks.

As ever, I am grateful to Rod Suddaby and his team at the Department of Documents, Imperial War Museum; the staff of the Liddle Collection at the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds; the librarians of the Joint Service Command and Staff College, the Royal Military College of Science and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. This book could scarcely have been written at all without the kindness of the librarian and staff of the Prince Consort Library at Aldershot, and the forebearance of their dogs.

Arabella Pike of HarperCollins gave wise strategic direction, and Kate Johnson dealt efficiently and sensitively with a myriad of tactical details all too easily overlooked in large, complex engagements. Amanda Russell tracked down the photographs. Last, but emphatically by no means least, my wife Lizzie worked tirelessly gleaning information from books and archives. She also helped me through those impossibly bleak moments, more frequent in this than in any other book I have written, when the nature of the subject matter had me staring across my Hampshire garden through a mist of tears.

For permission to quote from material to which they control the copyright I am grateful to the following. Sheila Barnett for the papers of A. J. Arnold, David S. Chambers for the papers of Guy O. Chambers, Betty Morris for the papers of A. V. Bullock, Alan Debes and the grandchildren of the Reverend T. H. Davies for the war diary of the Reverend T. H. Davies, Jon Wickett for the diaries of Stapleton Tench Eachus, Eric Foakes, John Foakes and Amanda Foakes for the papers of H. Foakes, George Fortune and Kathleane Peake for the account of George Fortune, the Trustees of the Imperial War Museum for the correspondence of Field Marshal Sir John French, A. Gaskell for the diary of C. H. Gaskell, Elizabeth Robinson for the diaries of Ron Ginns, Dr Patrick Ottaway for the papers of Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Hutton, Margaret Cruft for the papers of the Reverend Pat Mc Cormick, Andrew Paton for the Scott Macfie Papers, Daphne Crabtree for the diary of Cyril Thomas Mason, Paul P. H. Jones for the memoirs of Percy Hughes Jones, Anne Stobbs for the diaries of Roland Brice Miller, Diana Sellors for the diaries of the Reverend John Sellors, Auriol Ingram and Jackie Ingram for the letters of Arthur Smith, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Stanford for the letters of H. M. Stanford, Colonel Richard Brook and the Board of Trustees of the Chevening Estate for the papers of the Earl Stanhope, Dorothy Shotter and Nick Shotter for the diaries of William Shotter, Phil Morgan for the letters of Percy Smith, Pamela McCleary for the letters of Bill Sugden, Lieutenant General Sir Hew Pike for the diaries of R. H. D. Tompson, and Colonel Jolyon Jackson for a letter of W. C. C. Weetman.

I acknowledge the permission of the following publishers to quote from works whose rights they control. Pen and Sword Books Ltd for the Marquess of Anglesey
The History of the British Cavalry,
Brewin Books Ltd for Charles Arnold
From Mons to Messines and Beyond,
Armand Colin for Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau
14–18: Les Combattants des Tranchées,
Sir John Baynes and the late Hugh Maclean for
A Tale of Two Captains,
Pen and Sword Books Ltd for John Bickersteth (ed.)
The Bickersteth Diaries 1914–18,
Pen and Sword Books Ltd for C. P. Blacker
Have You Forgotten Yet?,
Penguin Books for P. J. Campell
In the Cannon's Mouth,
Robert Hale for William Carr
A Time to Leave the Ploughshores,
The Naval and Military Press for Peter Chasseaud
Topography of Armageddon,
The Irish Academic Press for Terence Denman
Ireland's Unknown Soldiers,
Jonathan Horne for his edition of the Reverend Charles Doudeney's papers,
The Best of Good Fellows,
The Naval and Military Press for Charles Douie
The Weary Road,
The Colonel of the Royal Welch Fusiliers for James Churchill Dunn
The War the Infantry Knew,
Her Majesty's Stationery Office for Sir James Edmonds
Military Operations
…, Lionel Leventhal Ltd for Cyril Falls
War Books,
the family of William Fisher for
Requiem for Will
(ISBN 09531061 01, published at Boughspring, Wyesham Road, Wyesham, Monmouth, Gwent, NP5 3JU), Pen and Sword Books Ltd for Brian Bond (ed.)
Staff Officer: The Diaries of Lord Moyne
(then Walter Guinness), The Naval and Military Press for Rowland Feilding
War Letters to a Wife,
The University of Indiana Press for A. Lytton Sells (trans, and ed.)
The Memoirs of fames II: His Campaigns as Duke of York 1652–1660,
Pan Macmillan for J. M. Craster (ed.)
Fifteen Rounds a Minute … Edited from the diaries of Major ‘Ma' Jeffreys and others,
Gill & Macmillan Ltd, Dublin for Tom Johnstone
Orange, Green and Khaki,
Tom Burke (Chairman, Royal Dublin Fusiliers Association) for his article on Lieutenant Tom Kettle in
The Blue Cap
Vol. 9 Sept 2002, H. H. Sales for Bernard Livermore
Long 'Un – A Damn Bad Soldier,
The Naval and Military Press for John Lucy
There's a Devil in the Drum,
John H. F. Mackie for
Answering the Call: Letters from the Somerset Light Infantry 1914–19,
Mainstream Publishing for
In Flanders Fields
(poem
In Memoriam, Private D. Sutherland
by Ewart Alan Mackintosh), Pan Macmillan Ltd for Harold Macmillan
Winds of Change,
Serpent's Tail for Frederic Manning
Her Privates We,
The Society of Authors as literary executors of John Masefield for
The Battle of the Somme,
Pen and Sword Books Ltd for John Masefield
The Old Front Line,
A. P. Watt Ltd on behalf of Mrs A. S. Hankinson for R. H. Mottram
The Twentieth Century: A Personal Record,
Pen and Sword Books for Captain Harry Ogle
The Fateful Battle Line,
The Random House Group Ltd for Ian Ousby
The Road to Verdun
published by Jonathan Cape, Oxford University Press for John Bell and H. Owen (eds)
Wilfred Owen: Selected Letters,
Pen and Sword Books for Ernest Parker
Into Battle,
PFD on behalf of the Estate of J. B. Priestley for
Margin Released: A Writer's Reminiscences and Reflections
(Copyright the Estate of J. B. Priestley 1962), Christopher Reith for John Reith
Wearing Spurs,
Pen and Sword Books for Donald Richter
Chemical Soldiers,
Colonel John Sainsbury for
The Hertfordshire Yeomanry,
Faber and Faber for Siegfried Sassoon
Memoirs of an Infantry Officer,
HarperCollins Publishers, Australia, for May Tilton
The Grey Battalion,
Pen and Sword Books Ltd for William Turner
The Accrington Pals,
Eland Books, 61 Exmouth Market, London EC1R 4QL, for the 2000 edition of William Woodruff
The Road to Nab End,
The London Stamp Exchange for Edward Underhill
A Year on the Western Front,
Chrysalis Book Group for Aubrey Wade
The War of the Guns,
Naval and Military Press for C. Dudley Ward
History of the Welsh Guards.

Despite my best endeavours I have failed to track down all copyright holders. I apologise to those concerned, but if they contact me through HarperCollins Publishers I will make appropriate recompense and ensure that an acknowledgement is inserted in any future edition of this book.