Bloody Red Tabs General Officer Casualties of the Great War 1914-1918

242 Pages·2014·14.179 MB·English

by  Frank Davies, Graham Maddocks

BLOODY
RED TABS
CENERAL OFFICER CASUALTIES
OF THE GREAT WAR 1914-1918

FRANK DAVIES GRAHAM MADDOCKS
BLOODY RED TABS
BLOODY
RED TABS
General Officer Casualties of the
Great War 1914–1918
Frank Davies & Graham Maddocks
Pen Sword
MILITARY
First published in Great Britain in 1995 by
LEO COOPER
Reprinted in this format in 2014 by
Pen & Sword Military
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire S70 2AS
Copyright © Frank Davies and Graham Maddocks, 1995, 2013, 2014
ISBN 978 1 78346 237 7
The right of Frank Davies and Graham Maddocks to be
identified as authors of this work has been asserted by him
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
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Dedicated to the memory of
Flight Lieutenant William George Davies
158 Squadron Royal Air Force
Killed in action, Normandy, 18 July, 1944.
As a child he believed th at his father,
Sergeant John Davies, K.S.L.I.,
was a General in the Great War.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgernents ix
Preface xi
Chapter
1 CMteaux Generals - The Enduring Myth, and
lts Origins. 1
2 'Honourable Exceptions' - The Reality. 26
3 The Fatal Casualties. 45
4 Wounded, Gassed and Prisoners of War. 109
Appendix l.
Cerneteries Where The Generals are Buried
or Cornrnernorated. 207
Appendix 2.
Abbreviations. 216
Appendix 3.
Bibliography. 220
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors wish to acknowledge the help received from the following in the
compilation of this work:
Tom McDonough for his many years of support and research at the Picton
Library, Liverpool.
Gerald Gliddon, Peter Kinnear, Peter Liddle, Alf Peacock, Graham Roberts
and Derek Sheard for their assistance.
Colonel H. J. Lowles, C.B.E., The Worcestershire & Sherwood Foresters
Regiment, for permission to use a photograph of Gilbert Holiday’s drawing
of Brigadier-General Grogan, V.C.
Mr Timothy Vickers, Librarian, Prince Consort’s Army Library, Aldershot,
for permission to use the library for research and for the help received from
him and his staff.
The Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s
College, University of London, for permission to quote from the Liddell Hart
papers.
The staff of the Public Record Office, Kew. Crown copyright material in the
Public Record Office is reproduced by permission of the Controller of Her
Majesty’s Stationery Office.
The Public Record Office is now named: The National Archives. All extracts
identified as PRO should now be referred to as TNA.
Every attempt has been made to trace the copyright of several illustrations in
this book. Where it has not been established the author can only hope that
anyone who can prove that they do hold such a copyright should get in touch
with the publishers.
ix
PREFACE
The idea for this book first came about on the Somme in 1989. Although
we had travelled together on the Western Front many times by then, it
was on a visit to Warloy-Baillon Communal Cemetery and Extension that
we first thought about it seriously. We were standing by the grave of 'Inky
Bill' - Major-General Ingouville Williams, C.B., D.S.O., who had been
Frank's father's brigade commander in 1914, when he had served with the
lst Battalion The King's Shropshire Light Infantry. As we looked at the
headstone, a thought crossed Frank's mind which he soon put into words:
'I wonder how many generals were killed and wounded in the Great War?'
This led to discussion on the topic and we had to admit that we just did
not know the answer to the question, nor did we know of any published
work which dealt with it. On our return home we searched in vain for
anything that would give us what we sought, but the only books which
dealt with generals directly were those which attacked either their compe
tence or the 'fact' that they were never close enough to the front line to
put themselves in danger. We already knew that this latter was untrue as
by then we had seen enough generais' graves, purely by chance, on the
Western Front alone, to know that more than a few of them were killed
serving in the front line. However, we were also aware that the public's
perception of Great War generals was that they were always far behind
the lines in the safety and comfort of their chäteaux.
As a result, we first embarked on a programme of research which would
discover exactly how many generals were killed, wounded or taken
prisoner during the course of the Great War. To emphasize our point, we
disregarded those who had died from causes other than from enemy action
or whilst not on active service ne ar or in the front line. As the numbers
began to grow, so did our incredulity and we began to wonder why anyone
could ever have thought that the generals were not there.
This made us wonder just how such an ill-conceived myth had ever
occurred and, even more so, how it had manged to endu re for the best
part of 75 years. It was not long before we decided that our findings were
so drama tic that they had to be written down for all to see, - not just to
xi
'put the record straight', but to resto re justice to the memory of senior
officers who could not 'fight back' after so many years. At the same time,
we decided that it would not be our brief to decide whether or not the
British generals of the 1914-1918 War were more or less competent than
those of our allies or their enemies. Although we had already formed our
own opinions on this subject, many more knowledgeable and erudite
authors than ourselves had debated the issue over many years, with so
many conflicting views and conclusions.
The facts are indisputable, however, and are not confined to any one
battle or period of the war. The number of casualties amongst general
officers, which includes those who were killed, died of wounds, died during
front-line service, were wounded (including gassed) or were taken pris
oner, should impress all but the extremely bigoted or those with totally
closed minds. There were 10 casualties in 1914, (the conflict did not begin
until Austust), 47 in 1915,48 in 1916, 51 in 1917 and 76 in 1918. The total
of 232 casualties includes eight generals who were wounded twice.
The biographies of them all are set out in this book and show unstinting
service to Crown and Empire and unbelievable bravery in the face of the
enemy in many foreign campaigns, skirmishes and wars. It is our belief
that we have discovered all those who became casualties, but in such a
work, entailing such a vast amount of study in an area which has never
been fully researched before, it is possible that we have missed some. If
th is is the case, we would be grateful for their details.
It is our earnest wish that three-quarters of a century aft er the end of
the Great War the record will be put straight at last and it is our most
earnest hope th at from now onwards, when the poppy petals fall at the
Service of Remembrance in the Albert Hall each November, people will
realize that some of them fall for generals.
Frank Davies and Graham Maddocks
August 1994
XlI
CHAPTER 1
Chateaux Generals - The Enduring Myth,
And lts Origins
The Myth
In 1990 a HuU teacher, Barrie Barnes, published a book, This Righteous
War, about the 'HuU PaIs' - the lOth to 13th Battalions of The East
Yorkshire Regiment and their record in the Great War. In its preface the
Member of Parliament for HuU East and now Deputy-Leader of the
Labour Party, J ohn Prescott, stated:
'Senior officers weIl behind the enemy lines (sic) seldom felt the
conditions of horror, or the bitter consequences of their own
orders, ignored the growing list of casualties and enforced a
barbaric discipline which saw the shooting of sheU-shocked
soldiers.'1
Even if one aUows for the fact that Mr Prescott presumably meant 'Senior
officers weU behind our own lines', it is inconceivable that, so recently as
1990, such a weU placed person should still continue to propagate such
untruths.
Mr Prescott's opinion was hardly published in isolation, however, nor
was his bland statement ever chaUenged for its lack of accuracy, probably
as it largely agreed with the pop ui ar perception, or more correctly
misconception, in the minds of the general public, of the conduct of senior
British officers in the Great War.
In similar vein, in an edition of the Merseyside newspaper 'The
Liverpool Echo', published to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the
Battle of Passchendaele, journalist Peter Grant stated quite gratuitously
and without real relevance to his subject matter:
'There was the extraordinary Christmas when in No Man's Land
the war ceased among the ordinary soldiers for festivities. When
Tommy exchanged a Christmas tree with Fritz - when beer was
drunk and no one wanted to resume the fighting.
'Then the generais, miles away in the next town's hotel and
1