The Kettle

April 2014 An online monthly magazine for group travel organisers

Inside this issue This month’s Guided Tour On Paper, The Cavalry of the Clouds & The Zeppelins looks at the first air raids on Britain when the Zeppelins came and how our Great War pilots learned to bring them down. There are also descriptions of three new Great War Tours: two in London Bearskin & Blighty and Women of The Great War & Men with Splendid Hearts: The Great War in Essex.

Ideas for your group to do on your own or with us

Published by City & Village Tours

The Cavalry of the Clouds & The Zeppelins Should the early history of military aviation not appear to the £1000 jackpot in 1909 for flying across the English contain much promise for an interesting coffee break please Channel Northcliffe was a tad disappointed having hoped read on because it might just surprise you. You might even that Wilbur Wright would accept the challenge. Bleriot’s find yourself drawn to going to see some early aeroplanes. aeroplane was displayed in the window of Selfridges on

Military aviation began with balloons. In 1794 during the Oxford Street drawing huge clouds. HG Wells’ recently French Revolutionary Wars the French brought the Siege published novel The War in the Air reflected the growing of Manburg to an abrupt end when they sent up a balloon public interest in and fear of aerial conflict and following to expose the enemy positions. This so unnerved the Bleriot’s success Wells wrote in the Daily Mail that Austrian and Dutch besiegers that they simply gave up and Britain was no longer an inaccessible island. Zut alors! A Frenchman had flown onto our shores! went home. Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin made his first balloon ascent in 1863 in America as an observer for the In 1912 an aeroplane was first used in war when Italy Union troops during the American Civil War. seized Tripoli from the Ottoman Empire and established

Von Zeppelin became a military hero in the 1870-71 Libya as an Italian colony. The Italians flew Farman Franco-Prussian War and later served as a Commander Pushers (pushed by the propeller placed not on the nose of the Uhlans – the famed and dashing light cavalry who but behind the cockpit) using them primarily for infantry carried sabres and lances trailing colourful pennants. reconnaissance but in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 they Following a less successful stint in the Prussian Cavalry became offensive weapons as Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia and aged 52 von Zeppelin retired to devote himself to and Montenegro went up against the Ottoman Empire dirigibles. After many experiments he partnered up with taking Macedonia and Thrace from the Turks before Daimler and flew his first successful rigid airship – the fighting among themselves over the spoils. As the rumbles Zeppelin LZ1 in July of 1900. By the way, just so you of discontent and conflict that would end in world war know, if it’s not rigid, that is to say it has no internal grew and multiplied Lord Northcliffe wrote editorials framework, it’s not a dirigible, it’s a blimp. about the growing threat of attack from the air. He was castigated for being sensationalist. Zut Alors! Just three years later, in 1903, at the giddy height of ten A Tearing Hurry feet, the Wright brothers made the world’s first controlled, Sir Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith CBE was born in powered and sustained heavier-than-air flight at Dayton the year of the infamous Ripper murders and, remarkably Ohio and just three years after that The Daily Mail, led by for a pioneer in a field so fraught with mortal danger, he Lord Northcliffe, started putting up cash prizes for lived for a mighty 101 years until 1989. Sopwith’s first achievements in aviation. When Louis Bleriot scooped flight was in a Farman at the Brooklands motor course

where AV Roe had built the first all British aeroplane (the 1909 Avroplane with a JA Prestwich motorcycle engine). Sopwith would go on to build 18,000 aircraft for the British and allied forces during World War One: the Baby, Pups, Dolphins, Snipes, Cuckoos, Salamanders and most famously of all the single seat biplane twin-gun Camel which was credited with shooting down more enemy planes than any other allied aircraft. Biggles flew a Sopwith Camel. The Imperial War Museum due to reopen in July following a major refurbishment has one of just seven surviving Sopwith Camels – one that was shot down by a Zeppelin in August 1918.

Sopwith (right) described how at the outbreak of the war Britain had no fighter craft and we had to get our skates on:

Development was so fast! We literally thought of and designed and flew the airplanes in a space of about six or eight weeks. Now it takes approximately the same number of years.

Relatively inexperienced pilots flying barely tested aeroplanes meant that many lives were lost to mechanical failure and accidents and, as we’ll see later, the pilots, six pound bombs would fall. But the nightly raids which determined to bring down the Zeppelins, customised their were accompanied by the dropping of banners and leaflets own aeroplanes, tinkering with the engines, the wings and announcing that The German army stands before the gates the fuselage and thus further risking their young lives. of Paris – you have no choice but to surrender, maddened Cavalry of the Clouds the French government and military. Eric Fisher Wood an In each of the Great War nations the new air services were American attaché in Paris at the time of the Six O’Clock seen as an extension of the cavalry. In Germany at the start Taube wrote in his diary: of the war the pilots who learned how to fly the machines Nothing could better have been calculated to disquiet the were all but chauffeurs for the Prussian officers with French. They have always considered themselves kings Napoleonic training who had traditionally performed the of the air. duties of observation and reconnaissance on horseback. These officers took to the skies magnificently, if not very Indeed the French were innovative aviation pioneers and practically, as though still on horseback, with sabre, spurs one of the very few nations to have any pre Great War and traditional picklehaube helmet. It was a German officer combat flying experience having used aircraft when Lieutenant Ferdinand von Hiddesen, who had learned to fly quelling Arab uprisings in Algeria and Morocco in the two years before 1914. during the closing years of the Belle Epoque, who, on 30 August 1914 flew over Paris and dropped the first bombs At the start of the war half of Germany’s total of 246 ever to fall on a city from an aeroplane. Two people were planes were Taubes whose name, rather grotesquely, killed. That night Paris ordered the world’s first blackout means dove. The design of the wings had been based on and for the next few weeks the German bombers returned the shape of the flying seeds of a tropical flowering plant every evening at 6.00pm. Parisians called the raids the Six called the Zanonia, part of the cucumber, pumpkin and O’Clock Taube. It is said that Parisians would gather at squash family: the seeds shaped not unlike those of the pavement cafes and place bets on where the three or four sycamore tree. These tiny aircraft were so stable the pilot could climb out and lie on the wing while the plane made great circles. A Taube would be the first to drop bombs on London having earlier flown escort to the Zeppelins.

Flying Death Notices Pre-radar, the Taube was a sort of low tech Stealth aircraft as the linen wings were painted with clear nitrate dope (a plasticised lacquer designed to tighten and stiffen the linen rendering it airtight and waterproof), which made the aeroplane virtually transparent and almost impossible to see against a clear sunny sky. Some early aircraft of the Great War had the structure outlined in black which gave rise to the description of flying death notices but few aircraft had national markings – until being shot at and brought down by your own side became a problem. At first British aircraft were painted with the Union flag but on 26 October 1914 two men called Hosking and Crean of No 4 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps were shot

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The Taube Dove & Zanonia seed down in flames by British troops who mistook the Union the following January he’d set up search lights, stationed flag for the Iron Cross of Germany. Following this awful sixty aeroplanes in the London-Sheerness-Dover triangle tragedy the Royal Flying Corps adopted the stylised and ordered pilots to learn how to fly at night. poppy cockade or roundel resembling a bulls eye that The Bombing Begins had been used by the French since the time of the French Because of his family connections to the British Royals Revolution. They reversed the colours so that the British the Kaiser was initially reluctant to allow England to be roundel was red, white and blue reading from the centre. bombed: like many he believed the whole thing would The Italians, Belgians, Russians and Americans also blow over before too long. But it didn’t and under pressure used roundels and today the First World War aviation from his generals the Kaiser gave the go ahead to let historical association magazine is called the Cross England, but not London, to be attacked from the air. & Cockade International. Thus it was that in the first ever air raid on Britain bombs Army & Navy fell in January 1915 - on Great Yarmouth! Not by design – Britain had run a programme from 1909 to build rigid the target had been the Humber - but Britain’s greatest airships but after Bleriot’s Channel crossing they began defence and weapon against the airships was always the to look more towards aviation. In 1911 The Royal weather. Blown hopelessly off course 4 people would die Engineers disbanded its Balloon Section and created and 16 would suffer injury that evening in Norfolk, the the Air Battalion head quartered at Farnborough, which first a 53 year old cobbler called Samuel Smith who came also became the location of the Army Aircraft Factory. outside to see where the noise was coming from and the The army and navy would initially combine to form a second, Martha Taylor, a 72 year old spinster walking home single Royal Flying Corps but before long the traditional with her groceries. Attacks on Ipswich, Bury St Edmunds, tensions between the two proved insurmountable and Southend, Ramsgate and Dover followed and within a the senior service left to establish the Royal Naval Air month the Kaiser had lifted the embargo on London with Service. The two services would be merged to form the generals cynically agreeing to his (impossible to the Royal Air Force towards the end of the war in 1918, guarantee) condition that no historic properties or royal becoming the world’s first air force to become palaces be damaged. independent of army or navy control. Ten months after the outbreak of the war the first bombs At the start of the war the Admiralty under Churchill fell on the capital. On number 16 Alkham Road in Stoke assumed the Home Defence of the capital and the Army Newington to be precise. The occupant a clerk called Albert the rest of the country. Churchill, who had taken flying Lovell escaped uninjured with his family but in Hoxton a lessons in 1913, was alone in the government in believing 3 year old was killed and two adults died in the Balls Pond in the threat of aerial attack with London, the Woolwich Road. In Shoreditch the Empire Music Hall was evacuated Arsenal and Portsmouth the most likely targets. when incendiary devices fell on the roof. In Shoreditch and In October 1914 he ordered blackouts in London and by Spitalfields a whisky distillery and a synagogue were hit

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and two Jewish East Enders died. The last bomb of that men lowered in the cloud cars first used in March 1915. If first raid fell on Stratford. From that night until the end caught in cloud the captain could throttle back the engine of the war Germany would mount fifty-two Zeppelin and lower a steel cable on the end of which a crewman sat bombing raids on the United Kingdom. Not all of the in a plywood tub shaped like a cartoon bomb to dangle up airships that took part in the raids were Zeppelins but to 1000 feet below the airship and deliver Bernie-the-Bolt the name very soon became the Hoover of airships. left a bit, right a bit instructions back to the airship by telephone. There’s one in the Imperial War Museum. Brave Men They were called Baby Killers by the British press but Fishing for Zeppelins the Zeppelin crews were undoubtedly brave men fighting At the beginning of the war the weather was by far loyally and fearlessly for their country. Flying at 10,000 our biggest weapon against the airships, pretty much feet the temperature fell as low as minus 30°C so the everything else in our arsenal was hopelessly ineffective. German crews were clad in fur overcoats on top of leather The Lewis Gun could fire a 50-100 round burst of overalls on top of thick serge uniforms on top of thick machine gunfire but against an airship made up of many woollen underwear. Scarves, goggles, leather helmets independent cells the worst damage would be a slow and gloves completed the weather proofing and thus puncture. The Woolwich Arsenal developed a flaming encumbered the men had to climb wooden step ladders bullet but it was too temperamental to be used in a and, dizzy from the thin air at high altitudes, they had to machine gun having a tendency to explode so many of pass between gondolas by crawling along narrow catwalks Churchill’s fleet of aircraft were armed with single-shot, that ran along the keel. Many men were lost simply by breech loading Martini-Henry cavalry carbines that had falling overboard. last been fired in anger during the Zulu Wars. Obviously

Fortified on vacuum flasks of strong coffee with built to last three Martini-Henry rifles were seized from provisions of bread, sausages, chocolate and tinned stew, Taliban fighters by US Marines in Afghanistan in 2011. that heated itself luke-warm when the tin was opened, and armed only with paper maps, torches and hand held Even if the pilot could hold his fragile craft steady enough compasses the raiders were entirely at the mercy of the and free both hands in order to fire these sawn-off rifles it weather and were very often blown miles off course. was unlikely that they’d reach sufficient altitude to take Relying on steering by dead reckoning over the sea, fog aim let alone climb high enough to fly above the Zeppelins and even heavy cloud could wreck a mission and one to drop bombs as the aircraft available in 1914 and 1915 lightning strike could spell disaster and death. To jump might take 50 minutes to reach 10,000 feet. This limitation or to burn was the nightmare question that faced every rendered ineffective the only other weapons available early Zeppelin crewman: parachutes were rarely carried. in the war including the Rankin Darts – 1IB bombs with a Zeppelins absorbed rain adding extra weight that forced sharp steel nose to pierce the skin of the Zeppelin and four them lower – potentially within range of anti-aircraft fire pivoting tail vanes to snag on the envelope and fire the from the ground. If ice froze on the propellers sharp shards detonator. A weapon developed at the Army Factory at thrown back with terrific force might puncture the airship. Farnborough, but thankfully never issued to the Royal

The terrifying Cloud Car that would be trailed up to 1000 yards beneath the Zeppelin

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Sub Lieutenant Reginald Rex Warneford

Flying Corps, was the Fiery Grapnel – a pair of four Half A Sixpence fluked, pirate-like grappling hooks packed with petrol Zeppelins, unlike the primitive planes available to all sides based explosives. The pilot was meant to trail the hook at the beginning of the war, could travel long distances at at the end of a steel cable and fish for Zeppelins! Absurd great height. Britain can be overcome by means of airships though it seems Russian Ace pilot Alexander A. Kazakov claimed Peter Strasser, the commander of the Zeppelin really did carry a ships anchor, which he would throw at force. Throughout 1915 and 1916 Zeppelins as big as enemy aircraft to snag and tear off their wings. battleships would loom silently out of the night sky blasting Britain’s east coast and the capital. On the ground The First Success there was little in the way of civil defence and no warning Our pilots did have some success with these rudimentary sirens. Instead boy scouts blew bugles and policemen on weapons but only if they were already airborne when they bicycles blew their whistles and whirled rattles. There encountered a Zeppelin. Flying a tiny single-seat Morane were no public shelters, people were told to go indoors Parasol - it hardly sounds like an aeroplane let alone a and hide in cellars and under tables. But for many so combat plane - over occupied territory in Belgium, fascinating was this novel sight that often the streets filled Sub Lieutenant Reginald Rex Warneford of No 1 Squadron when the Zeppelins came. Bob Peacock of Peacock Travel RNAS was ordered to join a four plane midnight attack on from Cambridge told me that his mum was at home in Zeppelin sheds at Bercham. He had lost sight of his fellow Walthamstow when a Zeppelin came. Drawn by the noise pilots when he spotted the massive LZ-37 Zeppelin airship of neighbours gathering outside Bob’s mum went outside at Ostend returning to the very sheds that he had been too. Overwhelmed by the sight of the Zeppelin above and ordered to attack. Warneford followed the airship for 50 unsure what she should do Mrs. Peacock brought her minutes passing over Bruges. It was June 1915 and young washing in off the line! Life in the UK at the start of the Rex Warneford, 23 years old and with just a dozen solo war was somewhere between Half A Sixpence, based on flights to his name had never flown in the dark before. the HG Wells novel of 1905 Kipps and the dawn of a very His only weapons were a revolver, the Zulu-Wars vintage new world. Henry-Martini carbine and six 20-pound bombs. When the Zeppelin dropped to 7,000ft, Warneford was able to climb Beautiful & Terrifying above it and drop his bombs. The airship was ripped apart Despite the undoubted terror it is extraordinary reading and engulfed in flames Warneford crash-landed 35 miles the eye-witness accounts to find the words beautiful and behind German lines. Finding that the only damage was a magnificent cropping up time and time again. Most people broken fuel line, Warneford patched it up with a cigarette had never seen anything man made in the sky before and holder, took off again and flew home. Rex Warneford, now they were mesmerised by the sight of the massive the first pilot in the world to shoot down a Zeppelin, silver airships, the size of London’s Gherkin building. became an instant hero across the empire and the next day Three Zeppelins took part in the fourth raid on Britain in received a telegram from King George V conferring on September 1915. One developed engine trouble and turned him the Victoria Cross. Rex Warneford was killed ten days back after dropping its bombs on unlucky East Dereham in later in a non-combat flying accident in France. Norfolk. L13 made landfall over Kings Lynn and followed the River Ouse and Bedford Level Canal to Cambridge

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from where it was able to use the distant glow of the Send The Bill To The Kaiser! London lights to chart a course south to the capital. Germany hoped that the ghoulishly terrifying airships Golders Green took three bombs, probably as the Captain raining death on London would subdue the British but checked his sights, and then at 10.45pm flying at 8,500 after the fifth raid on London the Evening News reported feet and 37 miles an hour the Zeppelin dropped bombs on the sense of disappointment many Londoners felt at having Bloomsbury, Leather Lane and Hatton Garden. A massive missed the show. Miss Bannerman, a VAD (Voluntary 660IB bomb fell on St Bartholomew Hospital at Aid Detachment worker) wrote:

Smithfield leaving a crater eight feet deep and shrapnel I have lived through an air raid and I feel life has been damage to the hospital walls that can still be seen today. worth living. From the telephone exchange on London Wall Alfred Crouch witnessed the attack: Another VAD from Ware in Hertfordshire was travelling home on the late train with her friend, also a VAD nurse, A streak of fire was shooting down straight at me, it when Captain Mathy’s Zeppelin dropped bombs on them. seemed, and I stared at it uncomprehending. The bomb One landed in the River Lea with an almighty splash that struck the coping of a restaurant a few yards ahead and soaked the ladies. In a letter to her fiancé serving in the then fell into London Wall and lay burning in the roadway. trenches (kept by her grandson Charles Fair) she wrote: I looked up, and at the last moment, the searchlight caught the Zeppelin full and clear. It was a beautiful and Think of two maidens returning by a late train, hearing terrifying sight. a noise, and looking out of the window and there, like the Ghost Ship “sailing comfortably over the stars” was a A number 35 bus was hit near Liverpool Street Station fine fat Zeppelin. Soon – Crash! Crash! And we caught and a number 8 in Shoreditch: passengers, a driver and a glimpse of falling bombs, our heads thrust out of the a clippie died. £530,000 worth of damage was wrought window. Then, splash! One fell into the river quite close upon London that night. In the morning Lord Kitchener at hand as well. The Lea water does not improve coats summoned the Royal Flying Corps commander to his and skirts and Olive says we shall send in the bill to the office demanding action. The next month bombs fell on Kaiser! Theatreland. At 9.35pm an army officer travelling in a black cab along the Strand saw the bombs fall: The prize though for over-excited romanticism of Zeppelin raids belongs to DH Lawrence: Right overhead was an enormous Zeppelin. It was I cannot get over it. The Zeppelin is in the zenith of the lighted up by searchlights and cruised along slowly and night, golden like the moon, having taken control of the majestically. I stood gaping in the middle of the Strand, sky. Our cosmos has burst; the stars and the moon blown too fascinated to move. Then there was a terrific away, the envelope of the sky burst out, and a new cosmos explosion, followed by another and another. has appeared.

The bombs fell just as the Lyceum audience from emerged to buy interval drinks from the street carts and pubs. How To Bring Down a Zeppelin Seventeen died and 21 were badly injured. Shrapnel The British reaction to the Zeppelin raids must have been damage still visible on the walls of St Clement Danes deeply frustrating to the Germans. The raids stopped and Church on the Aldwych dates from this attack. We also all was quiet on the Home Front until 1916. Meanwhile have an eye-witness account of this attack from the a technological arms race was in full swing. If the airships Captain of the Zeppelin, Kapitanleutnant Heinrich Mathy: could kindle and explode by accident why couldn’t we bring down the Zeppelins? Within just the first two years The picture we saw was indescribable, beautiful – of the war our pilots had grown immeasurably in skill and shrapnel bursting all around.

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our planes improved and were increasingly able to match fighter aircraft were brought home from France to form the flying altitudes of the Zeppelins. But the airships four Home Defence Squadrons. The Royal Flying Corps were much more stable than the planes and had more put in place plans for unbroken patrols during raids and crew to return fire while our bullets passed harmlessly at times when weather conditions suggested that raids were through the airship’s hull causing, according to Zeppelin most likely. This was of huge strategic importance enabling expert Dr Hugh Hunt of Cambridge University, as much our pilots to be ready for action at high enough altitudes damage as a pinprick in a child’s balloon. The rigid when the Zeppelins came. canvas shell of the airships and the gas-impermeable sacs Ingram Messages kept the hydrogen carefully segregated from the air and it With radar yet to be invented and wireless still in its infancy was the oxygen in the air that was needed to ignite the control and command was very primitive and our pilots hydrogen. If we could rupture enough hydrogen sacs in relied largely on Ingram Messages. Invented by RNAS one go so that the hydrogen and air were present together officer Lieutenant Ingram in 1915 these were white cloth for long enough and in sufficient quantities we could panels, 20 foot by 4 foot rectangles and 8 foot diameter create a pyrotechnic cocktail and bring the airship down. discs, that were laid out on the ground at aerodromes like In an odd aside the gas sacs of Zeppelins were made from Stow Maries near Maldon in Essex. The rectangles were the intestines of cows. It took more than 250,000 cows to arranged in a T shape with the discs placed around it in make a single airship leading to a ban on the production any of 40 different positions to signal the presence of of bratwurst and other popular German sausages in raiders in 25 pre-defined land and sea locations. Patrolling Germany, Austria, Poland and Northern France for much airborne pilots of the war. It seems the Zeppelin crews were privileged flew over to read to have sausage in their rations. the messages.

Delivering Flame After Puncture Those involved in the race for the new weapons included Lieutenant Brock of the famous fireworks family and the Sparklets soda siphon company who developed a tracer bullet. The breakthrough came when two new bullets were paired. New Zealand engineer James Pomeroy’s exploding bullet, filled with nitro-glycerine, fired alone did not ignite the Zeppelins as the momentary explosion was over too soon but when Pomeroy bullets were fired alternately with Buckingham’s Mark VII incendiary bullet which, like Brock’s, drew a trail of phosphorescent flame in its wake, the hydrogen and oxygen had time to mix and the result was an almighty explosion that would bring down the airship. The War Office manufactured millions of the Pomeroy, Brock and Buckingham bullets, which could be fired from a Lewis Gun and in May 1916

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The Zeppelins Return & This Time We’re Ready The airship came down in the Hertfordshire village of On the night of 3/4 September 1916, 12 navy and 4 army Cuffley. The following day was a Sunday and tens of German Zeppelins arrived for what was to be the largest thousands of people came to see the wreckage. airship raid on Britain. The Germans did not yet know about Schoolboy Patrick Blount saw the dead crew, writing in the Pomeroy-Brock-Buckingham ammunition and Britain a letter to his father: was now to have its first air hero. Nineteen year old They were brown, like roast beef.

Lieutenant William Billy Leefe Robinson, No 39 Squadron The Vicar of Cuffley refused to bury the crew and so RFC, had taken off from Sutton Farm airfield near they were laid to rest in Potters Bar where feelings also Hornchurch in Essex in his BE2c and had been patrolling ran high and a local woman threw eggs at the coffins. for three hours when he caught up with a Schutte-Lanz (an Billy Robinson became an instant hero rewarded with airship but not a Zeppelin) numbered SL11 at an altitude of £4200 in prize money. Babies, flowers and hats were 11,000 feet just after 2.00am. The determined young pilot named after him. Six months later he was taken prisoner fired round after round of Pomeroy and Brock exploding of war after being shot down by German Ace Manfred bullets from his Lewis Gun from below, from the side and von Richtofen, The Red Baron. Billy Robinson survived from the rear until finally the airship caught fire. the war only to die in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918.

Millions of people across a seventy-mile stretch of south Captain Mathy & Wulstan Tempest east England witnessed the destruction of SL11 including The most ambitious of German raids was a failure. Muriel Dayrell-Browning who was staying at the 263 bombs and over 200 incendiary devices had been Strathmore Hotel in London’s Knightsbridge: dropped but only 4 people had been killed and 16 hurt At 2.30am I was awakened by a terrific explosion and was and a mighty German airship had been downed. at the window in one bound when another deafening one This was to be the last time the German army sent shook the house. Nearly above us sailed a cigar of bright airships to Britain but at the very end of September 1916 silver in the full glare of about twenty magnificent the German navy sent 12 airships including three months- searchlights… It was a magnificent sight and the whole old L31, a new bigger, faster super-Zeppelin captained by of London was looking on and holding its breath. Heinrich Mathy who had soaked Olive and her friend’s

When the airship disappeared northwards into cloudy skies coats and frocks in September of 1915. That night Mathy Muriel thought: bombed South and East London: Streatham, Brixton,

… the fun was over. Then, from the direction of Barnet Camberwell and Leyton, killing 22 and wounding 75. Two Zeppelins were brought down that night. and very high a brilliant red light appeared … Then we saw it was the Zeppelin diving head first. That was a sight. Captain Heinrich Mathy was the most reknowned of the She dived slowly at first … then the second burst and the airship commanders. Second Lieutenant Wulstan Joseph flames tore up into the sky and then the thud and cheers Tempest, born in Pontefract in West Yorkshire in 1893, thundered from all round us … the plane lit up all London was soon to become a household name. The Tempests and was rose red … It was magnificent, the most thrilling came from an illustrious line of warriors who were scene imaginable. named in the Domesday Book and had sold the Manor

Three RFC pilots based at Suttons Farm who brought Zeppelins down Billy Leefe Robinson,Wulstan Tempest & Frederick Sowery

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of Gisburn to raise a regiment of horse during the Civil A week later, on 1 October 1916, Mathy and his crew died War. Even in peacetime the Tempests were in the front when they were brought down by Wulstan Tempest. line – Wulstan’s father was on the bench of the West Although there is a somewhat gung-ho account that has Riding Quarter Sessions during the 1893 coal strike and Tempest interrupting a meal with his fiancé in an Epping had ridden out among the miners at Featherstone to read restaurant to return to the airfield and scramble to bring The Riot Act. When war broke out Wulstan and his down L31 before returning to finish his meal it is safer to brother Edmund were farming in Saskatchewan. Both assume that he was already airborne as part of the relays men returned home at once and joined the King’s Own that had been established to counter the Zeppelin raids. Yorkshire Light Infantry. Mathy’s L31 should have been part of a swarm of eleven

Wulstan Tempest was wounded at the First Battle of airships but most had been blown off course by dreadful Ypres in the first year of the war and returning home to weather or were being slowed by the weight of rain and ice. recover he learned to fly and joined the fledging Royal A pyramid of searchlights locked on to L31 and anti-aircraft Flying Corps. Tempest was posted to No 39 Squadron fire caused him to jettison his bombs over Cheshunt in an attempt to climb out of sight above the clouds. and was based at Sutton Farm near Hornchurch with Billy Robinson flying BE (Bleriot Experimental) craft, Fifteen miles way, patrolling above Hainault, Wulstan which were Kleenex and spit contraptions of canvas Tempest saw Mathy’s Zeppelin and flew towards it through wood and wire. The pilots tinkered with their aeroplanes, the anti-aircraft fire. During the pursuit Tempest’s pimping them in modern parlance, to gain the height mechanical pressure pump malfunctioned and to keep up needed to bring down a Zeppelin. It was incredibly the pressure in his petrol tank he had to use a hand pump. reckless, the modifications made by these young men Exhausting at the best of times this was an agonising included stripping out the fuselage sub-frame and exercise in the thin air at high altitude for the 30 minutes replacing it with a flimsy skeleton of frames which meant it took him to catch up with the Zeppelin and once he that the aeroplanes often broke in two when they landed. emerged through the cloud cover he only had one free An exhaust modification that partly overcame the hand with which to fire at the ship. problem of fuel combustion becoming disrupted in the I accordingly gave a tremendous pump at my petrol tank thinning air at higher altitudes led to the planes misfiring and dived straight at her, firing a burst straight into her at ground level but all that mattered was bringing the as I came. I let her have another burst as I passed under her Zepps down. and then, banking my machine over, sat under her tail and, Aware of the growing threat, especially after the two flying along underneath her, pumped lead into her for all Zeppelins had been brought down on his last mission I was worth. I could see tracer bullets flying from her in Captain Mathy wrote in his diary: all directions, but I was too close under her for her to concentrate on me. As I was firing I noticed her begin to go It is only a question of time before we join the rest. red inside like an enormous Chinese lantern and then a Everyone admits that they feel it. If anyone should say flame shot out of the front part of her and I realized she was that he was not haunted by visions of burning airships, on fire. She then shot up about 200 feet, paused, and came then he would be a braggart.

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roaring straight down onto me before I had time to get out of the aluminium frame of the Potters Bar Zeppelin was of the way. I nose-dived for all I was worth, with the Zepp recovered for the war effort but just as much seemed to tearing after me and expected every minute to be engulfed make its way into souvenirs. Spars recovered from the in flames. I put my machine into a spin and just managed wreck were made into an alter cross for the church of to corkscrew out of the way as she shot past me, roaring St Mary the Virgin and All Saints, Potters Bar. Later like a furnace. Tempest became a Major. He survived the Great War

The Zeppelin Oak despite a lengthy assignment of night-bombing on the L31 came down at midnight in Oakmere Park in Potters Western Front. During the Second World War Wulstan Bar. Captain Mathy, aged 33, and all of his 20 crewmen Tempest commanded the Home Guard in Newbury. He died in 1966. died. Mathy chose to jump and in the following days a local farmer would charge sightseers a shilling a head to Mathy’s death had marked the beginning of the end of the see the macabre outline of the captain in the grass caused Zeppelin offensive on Britain and the raids petered out. by the impact of his body. Mathy and his crew were buried The Zeppelin threat was effectively neutered. In all there in the military cemetery at Cannock Chase where most were 52 Zeppelin raids with 556 killed and 1,357 injured. Germans who died on British soil during the Great War Vital military installations had rarely, if ever, been hit by were laid to rest. What was left of the Zeppelin’s nose the wildly inaccurate bombing capabilities of the giant came to rest at what would become known as The airships. But the terror of attack from the air was far from Zeppelin Oak. When the park was built on The Zeppelin over. On 25 May 1917 the first Gotha bombers arrived Oak found itself in the front garden of Number 9 Tempest over Folkestone and London, dropping even more death Avenue, Potters Bar. It was cut down in the 1930s by and destruction. Gotha! You can see why the Windsors a Mr. Bill Crowley from number 7 who feared falling had to change their name. branches might injure his children: the saw blade was snagged over and over by pieces of metal embedded in the Reading List: trunk. The houses were later demolished and the site is The Baby Killers: German Air Raids on Britain in the now a private road called Wulstan Park. First World War. Thomas Fegan.

And Second Lieutenant Wulstan Tempest? He fractured London 1914-17: The Zeppelin Menace. Ian Castle his skull crash landing but the following day he came to Aircraft & Flyers of the First World War: Joseph A. Phelan Potters Bar to see the wreckage of L31 paying the farmer a shilling alongside all the other visitors to see the macabre And look out for a repeat of Dr Hugh Hunt’s documentary outline of Captain Mathy in the grass. As at Cuffley, much Attack of the Zeppelins first shown on C4 in August 2013.

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A Christina Broom photograph from the collection of the Museum of London and on display there until September 2014

The Guards in the Great War

Blue Badge Guide Martin served in the band of the Scots Irish Guards. Now, the eagled amongst you may have Guards for thirteen years, playing clarinet in the band and noticed that only four regiments of guards are mentioned. violin in the orchestra. His interest in the history of the The reason? Because, perhaps surprisingly, there was no Guards has never faulted since and combined with his Welsh Guards regiment in 1914 and the Irish Guards having personal experience brings a very special flavour to our only been formed in 1900 were yet to win their first battle Great War anniversary tour: Bearskin & Blighty: London honour. in the Great War. Here he dips into the vast story of the The Welsh Guards were formed at the request of the people Guards in the Great War. of Wales and King George V ordered the Secretary of State On August Bank Holiday 1914, Great Britain declared for War, Lord Kitchener to raise “ a Welsh regiment of foot war on Germany. Immediately there was an outbreak guards”. It was the 6th February 1915. The then Major of patriotic fervour, and a rush of volunteers to get to General Household Division London District Lieutenant France, in order not to ‘miss’ the war that everyone General Sir Francis Lloyd, accepted this challenge and thought would be over by Christmas. The Guards promised to achieve this task so confidently that he said Regiments – including the Household Cavalry – were the fifth regiment of foot guards The Welsh Guards would immediately mobilised to be sent off with Sir John muster on the 27th February and would mount Kings Guard French’s ‘British Expeditionary Force’, the BEF. Has Buckingham Palace on their national day of St. David two ever a better name been devised for what was a relatively days later. small standing army compared to the millions of men Welshmen from the other Guards Regiment were massing on mainland Europe? It smacks of ‘Boys Own’ encouraged to transfer, in particular the Grenadiers who bravery and sounds as through the troops are being sent had always recruited from Wales and who transferred 300 off to darkest Africa – not a few miles over the Channel. trained NCO’s and Guardsmen in one fell swoop. The first Kaiser Wilhelm had his own name for the BEF – commanding officer was Lt. Col. Murray-Thriepland from ‘The Contemptible Little Army’ – which was soon the Grenadiers and the first R.S.M. Stevenson was from the paraphrased and became the title of a stirring march Scots. As promised the Welsh Guards mounted Kings composed by the Bandmaster of the Argyle and Guard Buckingham Palace on March 1st 1915 still wearing Sutherland Highlanders – ‘The Great Little Army’. the uniforms of their old regiment. It is still the tradition that for the annual British Legion Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall, the The Regiment was raised in a remarkably short time and Guards always march on to the arena with ‘The Great paraded with a full military band under their Bandmaster Little Army’. Mr Andrew Harris. The money to purchase the instruments was given by the City of Cardiff and the Regiment adopted On mobilisation, the four Regiments of Guards ‘Men of Harlech’ and ‘The Rising of the Lark’ as their prepared to sail. The Grenadier, Coldstream, Scots and continues on page 14

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The 1914 Star, known as the Mons Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal, affectionately referred to as Pip, Squeak & Wilfred. Below left: Captain Alan Tritton of Lyons Hall, Great Leighs, Essex, 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards, killed in action 26 December 1914. Below Right: Although 13 years in the Scots Guards, you might have met Blue Badge Guide Martin wearing this Great War uniform of a Royal Artillery Lieutenant on the City & Village Tours stand at the Excursions exhibition at the Alexandra Palace back in January. Left page: A Christina Broom photograph of 1914 or 1915 showing men from Bermondsey in South East London in the 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards at Wellington Barracks.

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regimental marches. After performing for the first time This really was the war where old fighting methods were on Changing of the Guard on St David’s Day 1915, the pitched against new, mechanical methods of destruction – Band then performed in the evening at a Welsh Patriotic with terrible results. At the First Battle of Ypres, the Meeting at the London Opera House in the presence of ‘Blues’ set the pace with an exploit known as ‘The Mad Lord Harlech. Gallop’. The incident occurred on 26th October 1914, when they were ordered to make a diversionary attack. Training commenced at the White City London and a 2nd Whilst one dismounted squadron gave covering fire, the Training Battalion was housed at the Tower of London. remainder of the Regiment galloped right across the front On August 17th 1915 the Battalion, now fully equipped of the enemy lines. Fortunately, the Germans were too and battle trained wearing their new uniforms and cap astonished for accurate fire and amazingly there were badge of the emblem of Wales, the leek, marched from few casualties. the White City to Waterloo Station to embark for France where three months later they were to write their names The cavalry have always had a reputation for doing things into the annals of history and win, at Loos, the first of ‘their way’ – and during the second Battle of Ypres, their twenty-one Battle Honours. Captain Lord Leveson-Gower (son of Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland of The Hospital in the Oatfield), who was Whilst the Welsh Guards First Battalion sailed for France, badly hit in the thigh, was found smoking a huge cigar the Second, Reserve Battalion were training at Marlow in whilst sitting on a small, unwounded German soldier to Buckinghamshire. It is maybe surprising to find that in keep himself dry and out of the mud. He was carried 1914 at Pullingshill Woods near Marlow, a complete set back, as he still delighted to tell everyone years later, of trenches was dug. The 1,400m system of trenches were by two corporals named Coffin and Churchyard. dug two metres deep and two metres wide and were most likely constructed by the Grenadier Guards and the local By August 1915, the bravery and style of the Guards people of Marlow. The Grenadier Guards, Welsh Guards, Regiments was becoming obvious – particularly to Lord Royal Engineers and Royal Army Medical Corps, who Kitchener, and against a certain amount of opposition, were all based at the Bovingdon Green camp, are believed he decided to form the Guards Brigade. This would to have used the trenches during a two year period. concentrate all the Guards into one elite fighting formation. This arrangement remains in place today. In addition to the Regiments of Foot guards, the So the Guards now fought side by side. As a particular Household Cavalry were also mobilised and sent to mark of respect, at the end of the War the King decreed France. They arrived complete with horses and all of that in future soldiers in the Guards would no longer be the equipment necessary to fight the war with cavalry. known as Privates – but as Guardsmen. A tradition,

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The Guards continued fighting in every theatre of war He was a brave young man, but his poor eyesight made it on the Western Front and at the end of the Great War had almost impossible for him to fight or lead his men ‘over the lost 14,653 men, with 28,389 wounded. It is difficult to top’ as he was often left wandering aimlessly. Without his pick just one story which demonstrates the awfulness of father’s influence Jack would never have passed his army the war and the bravery of those involved but there is medical as fit to serve. The casualty rate among junior however one haunting story which involves the Irish officers in the trenches was much higher than NCOs or Guards and the son of the great writer and poet, Rudyard other ranks and on average, a junior officer leading from Kipling. Kipling wrote a History of the Irish Guards in the front survived just six weeks. On the second day of the the Great war and in 1918 published a poem ‘The Irish attack at the Battle of Loos in 1915, John Jack Kipling, Guards’. It commemorates this fine regiment, only just six weeks past his 18th birthday, was seen stumbling founded in 1900, and links it back to the tradition of all blindly through the mud, screaming in agony after an army regiments… exploding shell had ripped his face apart. He wasn’t seen

We're not so old in the Army List, again. The failure to find John's remains fuelled the author's But we're not so young at our trade, long-term obsession that his only son had survived.

For we had the honour at Fontenoy But it was not to be. Kipling eventually came to accept Of meeting the Guards' Brigade. John's fate. And despite a grief-stricken crusade to find

What is not mentioned is that Kipling’s own son was them, the remains of his ‘dear old boy’ were not officially killed whilst serving in the Irish Guards, a loss for ‘discovered’ until 1992. Yet there are those who believe that which Kipling blamed himself and never recovered from. the body interned in a grave bearing his name at plot seven, Kipling’s only son John was 17 in 1914. He desperately row D of St Mary's Advanced Dressing Station Cemetery, wanted to join the navy, but was refused as he had very near Loos, are not those of the author's son. Kipling did poor eyesight and could see little without his spectacles. write a poem commemorating his son’s loss, but the poem You get an idea of just how poor young Jack’s eyesight ‘My Boy Jack’ is not about a soldier serving on land, but was from the thick eye glasses he is wearing in the about the sailor serving at sea. It is full of naval references. photograph opposite taken by Christina Broom, Britain’s Without his intervention, Jack would not have been in the first female press photographer. The photograph is part trenches in the first place. Heartbroken Kipling wrote: of a small exhibition of Broom’s Great War photographs If any question why we died that is being shown in the foyer of The Museum of Tell them, because our fathers lied London until 28 September 2014. Kipling died in London in 1936, and has no descendants Rudyard Kipling, the great patriot, was devastated that today. The only one of his children who made it past the age his boy had been turned down and so contacted his friend of 18, Elsie, died childless in 1970. How many other British Lord Roberts, one of the British Field Marshals and families petered out when their young were lost in The Colonel of the Irish Guards. Strings were pulled and Great War? One hundred years later the Guards Museum John ‘Jack’ Kipling was commissioned as a Second are instrumental in remembering and marking this great Lieutenant into the 2nd Battalion of the Irish Guards. sacrifice. Continues overleaf….

Horse Team, 4th Battalion. (Pioneers) Coldstream Guards

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The Flanders Memorial Garden is an initiative of The The John McCrae poem In Flanders Field has been Guards Museum at the Wellington Barracks on Birdcage engraved around the outside edge of the circular memorial Walk alongside St James’s Park where it is currently which was filled with the soil brought from the battlefields being constructed just outside the Guard’s Chapel. and in which poppies will grow.

The garden is a gift from the Belgians in commemoration The Flanders Memorial Garden was to be enclosed by of the 100th anniversary of the Great War and in thanks a hoarding until Remembrance Sunday when it is to be to the British people for their sacrifice in liberating the officially unveiled by HM Queen Elizabeth but under country. pressure from the London Borough of Westminster The It was the people of Bruges who offered safe haven to Guards Museum has agreed to remove the hoarding in May. the exiled King Charles II before he was restored to the You can visit The Guards Museum, the Guards Chapel and throne and it was in Bruges in 1656 that the first Guards the Flanders Memorial Garden as part of the Bearskin & Regiment was raised to protect him. This was Lord Blighty: London in the Great War tour available Wentworth’s Regiment to which the Grenadiers trace weekdays all year. Each ticket for the tour includes a their lineage. During the Great War the regiments fought donation towards the cost of The Flanders Memorial Garden valiantly on Belgian soil so the symbolism of bringing The Bearskin & Blighty Tour available now and through sacred soil from seventy Flanders battlefields where so into the coming years also tells the story of the Zeppelin many Guardsmen fought and died is very poignant. raids on London and life on the Home Front and includes The soil, collected by Belgian and British schoolchildren visits to the Great War in Portraits exhibition at the National was put into seventy sandbags and was brought to Portrait Gallery, the Great War Propaganda exhibition at the London on board the Belgian Navy frigate Louisa Marie Museum of London Docklands or the new First World War last autumn. The Louisa Marie moored alongside HMS Galleries, depending on when you come. Belfast and the bags were loaded onto the gun carriage of the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery, which was Please see the facing page for more details. then accompanied to the Wellington Barracks by mounted members of the Household Cavalry from the Life Guards and the Blues and Royals and mounted officers of the Metropolitan Police.

The memorial garden has been designed by an internationally acclaimed landscape architect called

Piet Blanckaert from Bruges who believes that the You can watch a short video of Guards Museum Curator garden should be a strong symbol of hope for the future. Andrew Wallace talking about the gathering of the sacred Within a rectangular garden that represents the battle soil for the Flanders Memorial Garden from 70 Belgian fields of the Ypres Salient is an elevated circle that battlefields with video of the procession through London evokes the circular aperture at the top of the Menin Gate from HMS Belfast to the Wellington Barracks here. Memorial in Ypres, as well as symbolizing eternal life.

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Bearskin & Blighty: The Great War in London In the morning we will look at the role of London’s Guardsmen during the Great War with visits to the Guards Chapel and Museum and the new Flanders Memorial Garden. In the afternoon a short coach tour will tell the story of London during the Great War and we will visit a Great War exhibition. You can choose The Great War in Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery or the new First World War galleries at the totally refurbished Imperial War Museum. Whichever afternoon visit you choose the morning stays the same with morning coffee and a lunch of Win The War Pie included in the tour fee and the walking will be very gentle covering no more than 1500 yards which is spread out throughout the day.

Meet our Blue Badge Guide just off Parliament Square at 10.30am for morning coffee and biscuits included in the tour fee in a pub long frequented by guardsmen from the nearby Wellington Barracks and named after the Mons Star medal won by so many brave young guardsmen of the British Expeditionary Force during the opening battles of the Great War. At Wellington Barracks alongside St James’s Park we visit the Guards Museum and whenever possible the Guards Chapel to hear the stories of Britain’s brave guardsmen on the battlefield and at home in Blighty. Strident Suffragettes put down their Votes for Women We’ll also show you the Flanders Memorial Garden banners and began to hand white feathers to young for which soil was brought with great ceremony from men not in khaki and women from all social classes Flanders Field and which will not be officially opened were encouraged to volunteer for work in the by HM Queen Elizabeth II on Remembrance Sunday. munitions factories, hospitals, soup kitchen and canteens. To round off a fascinating day out choose Back to the pub for a lunch of Win The War Pie – an afternoon visit from one of the following options: meat (or vegetarian) pie served with seasonal potatoes From now until 15 June 2014: The Great War in and vegetables. This was a recipe encouraged among Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.

Brits during the Great War and which was served at Buckingham Palace as well as by the redoubtable Mrs From 1 August 2014 to 2018 (yes 2018!): the new Bridges, both Upstairs & Downstairs in Eaton Square. First World War galleries at the totally refurbished Imperial War Museum. We begin the afternoon with a compelling coach tour that tells the story of the first air raids on London by In each case we’ll stay on site to buy refreshments Zeppelins the size of battleships. We’ll follow the before heading home at 4,45pm. All tour options are actual route of Zeppelin raids on the capital and available Mondays to Saturdays and cost £24.00 per you’ll hear eye witness accounts of the attacks and person including morning coffee with biscuits, main course lunch, all admission costs and a donation to one hundred years later you will see the surviving the Flanders Memorial Garden. This price is valid for physical evidence of the shrapnel and bomb damage all trips that take place on or before 31 March 2015. from the Zeppelin attacks. This was the first time that Not too much walking is included in this day war came to the Home Front and the first time that women became an essential part of the war effort. To Book this Tour for your Group Call us on 0208 692 1133.

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Men With Splendid Hearts

A Story of the Great War in Rural Essex If you saw the Jeremy Paxman four part examination of mile along the lane from the church – the prime spot Britain’s Great War, aired on the BBC in February you opposite St Mary the Virgin, with its round Saxon tower, might have seen him visit the church of St Mary the being occupied by Lyons Hall, home to the Tritton family, Virgin at Great Leighs in Essex where the Reverend Squires of Great Leighs who gave a son, Captain Alan Andrew Clark kept a detailed diary of life in the village John Tritton, to the Great War. When I stood peering up during the First World War. The full diary runs to three the sweeping driveway of the huge old rectory, sold off million words in 92 handwritten volumes and is kept at by the church many moons ago, I thought about the groom The Bodleian Library in Oxford where the scholarly and gardener Charles Ward who had started to work for Rector had been a student. The living of Great Leighs the Rector in 1909 as a boy of fifteen. Ward had many was and remains in the gift of Lincoln College, Oxford. duties from looking after the pony and trap to maintaining Beginning on 2 August 1914 Clark set about recording the gardens and keeping the drains running clean but he the sights and sounds of the war in rural Essex through was always a sickly boy having a weak chest and the the activities of the villagers, his friends, relatives and Rector did his best to keep him from the war. When Ward’s acquaintances. He recorded everything from air raids enlistment papers arrived Clark wrote to the Recruiting and recruitment campaigns to experiences of billeting Office but they felt that if the young man could manage and rationing. He wrote down conversations and the Rector’s workload he would be fit for war and off he eavesdroppings and carefully recorded rumours relating went. Within weeks he’d fallen ill and was hospitalised to the war, comparing them to officially released news but as soon as he was well enough he was sent back to and war propaganda. the front. Charles Ward died in France in November 1917.

The experience of the Great War was very different in Clark wasn’t a well man himself (he would die in 1922 rural Essex compared to cities like London. In Great aged 66 and was buried in a very modest grave in Parson’s Leighs the largely agricultural community of 600 people Corner in the Great Leighs churchyard) and after the help learned of the outbreak of the war from a notice pinned left he struggled to keep house and look after his sick and in the Post Office window but it was by no means remote: dying wife but he too had to play his part in the war effort. seventy-two men from the village would go to war, Too old to be sent to the front he was however obliged to nineteen would not return. The Rector recorded it all. join the Home Guard and patrol the lanes and streets of In the 1980s selections of the diaries were published in a the village after dark on the lookout for spies, strangers thoroughly engrossing book using the Rector’s own title and foreigners. Rumours were rife of German spies racing for his diaries: Echoes of the Great War. along country lanes on brightly lit motorcycles to guide

Clark lived in the big old Georgian rectory about half a the Zeppelins to London! The Great War is such a huge

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story, too vast and overwhelming perhaps to ever On Remembrance Sunday 2014 the banners will be blessed understand completely, but the diaries of the Reverend and hung in the churches.

Andrew Clark of Great Leighs give us a very human Groups will come to Great Leighs church and over morning and digestible flavour of rural life in Essex during those refreshments our Blue Badge guide will introduce the story tumultuous and unprecedented years. of Essex during the Great War and the diary of the Reverend Today Great Leighs church is typical of many rural Clark - we hope to provide some second-hand copies of the parishes, sharing its priest with two other churches, diary for sale with the money raised going to church funds. hosting Sunday services on a rota system and with Local family historian Pat is going to tell us about the BBC a dwindling congregation struggling to pay its way. visit when Mr Paxman interviewed the niece of Privates’ But also typical of many rural parishes it is much loved Arthur and Dick Fitch whose names are on the Great by that congregation and when I visited I was greeted War Memorial in front of the church. Dick lied about his warmly and proudly by parishioner and local family age to enlist in 1913 and died at the Battle of Mons in August historian Pat Watkinson and the Church Warden Judy 2014 right at the beginning of the war. Arthur died on New Goodrum. The ladies are excited by the interest in their Years Day 1915. On the 10 January 1915 the Reverend church generated by the Great War centenary and of Andrew Clark held a service in the church in memory of course by the visit of Paxman who they both describe the Fitch brothers both of the Essex Regiment and also of as wonderful, polite and charming. We all agreed we are Captain Alan George Tritton of the Coldstream Guards and glad he’s got rid of the short-lived beard. The plan we Lyons Hall, Great Leighs, who had died on Boxing Day have made together is that when we visit with our 1914. Pat is going to show us some slides of photographs of groups the ladies will, in return for a much-welcomed the young men whose names are carved into the Great Leighs donation, serve coffee with biscuits and display for us Great War Memorial and of the houses in the village where one of the three Great War commemoration banners they lived together with some information about what they that the villagers of the three parishes of Great & Little did in the village before the war and of their families.

Leighs and Little Waltham are making. Villagers are It’s a fitting start to our new tour called Men With Splendid being approached to sew a button onto a banner in Hearts (from a Great War poem by Rupert Brooke) which memory of a fallen soldier, perhaps a family member tells the story of the Great War through the eyes of the young or just for an unknown soldier who died for our country. men of rural Essex as well as some very brave young men

Churchwarden Judy Goodrum & local family historian Pat Watkinson at Great Leighs church. Behind Judy you can see Lyons Hall former home of Captain Alan Tritton, Coldstream Guards and son of the local Squire, who was killed in action in 1916.

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A Great Leighs family in 1915, The Carter family of Rochester Farm who came to rural Essex as pioneers of the new air be taken prisoner of war - he’d be shot as a spy. service. When we leave Great Leighs we’ll drive cross country to the Blackwater Estuary which was to become Returning to England he was awarded the Distinguished a strategic location in the fight to defend the capital from Service Order for Conspicuous Gallantry and still aged just the first air raids on the UK. By 1915 it became clear that 19 was given command of the new 37 Squadron charged the Zeppelin Captains who had only maps and hand held with the eastern aerial defence of the capital from its new compasses to rely were using the Blackwater Estuary as base at Stow Maries. Sitting between Chelmsford and a key geographic marker to direct them toward London. Maldon in Essex, Stow Maries is on the Western end A new Home Defence Air Squadron would be created to of the Denge Peninsula formed by the estuaries of the be based at three airfields to defend the estuary with a Rivers Crouch and Blackwater as they run into the North very, very young man with a splendid heart at the helm. Sea. At a time when the Zeppelin captains navigated by a mixture of hand held compass, paper map and dead Claude Alward Ridley was born in Sunderland in 1897 reckoning the Denge was a big navigational landmark for but grew up, the third of three children in a wealthy raiders so this was an important strategic defence location. family, in London’s Notting Hill. He went to Sandhurst College straight from St Paul’s School. In 1915 Ridley The Grange at Woodham Mortimer was requisitioned joined No 3 Squadron Royal Flying Corps in France but as the Headquarters Flight with A Flight despatched to was wounded and returned to London to recover before Rochford just across the Crouch (now Southend Airport) being posted to the airfield at Joyce Green near Dartford and C Flight to Gardners Farm across the Blackwater at that had been set up as part of the early defence of London Goldhanger. Now promoted to Captain Ridley young against the Zeppelins. On 31 March 1916 Ridley flying a Claude led the first recorded operational flight from the BE2c harassed Airship L15 with machine gun fire, which new aerodrome on the night of 23/34 May 1917 to face a was then caught over Purfleet by Ridley was sent back swarm of Zeppelins approaching London. It was Second to France with the brand new 60 Squadron where he Lieutenant L.P Watkins of C Flight scrambling from specialised in the incredibly dangerous business of flying Goldhanger that would bring down Zeppelin L48 at British spies into occupied territory under cover of dark. Theberton in Suffolk on 17 June 1917. It was both 37 Dangerous not least because he had to reconnoitre over Squadron’s first confirmed destruction of an enemy aircraft the German occupied territory during daylight hours to and the last Zeppelin to be brought down by Great Britain select suitable landing spots. during the war. Attention would then turn to tackling the fixed wing Gotha bombers that would menace London He flew a French built Morane Bullet, (pictured to the for the remainder of the war. right) which was fast but temperamental. On 3 August 1916 he landed his spy in a field near Douai but his engine By 1919 A and C Flights had joined B Flight at Stow stalled and refused to start again. For three months he Maries but 300 personal and 20 aircraft was too much for survived behind enemy lines despite speaking neither this remote hilltop so the squadron moved to Biggin Hill French nor German as he made his way to safety in in Kent and the aerodrome was returned to farmland. Holland. Along the way Ridley spied on German Remarkably although the wooden hangars eventually aerodromes and installations arriving in Holland with collapsed none of the original brick built buildings were valuable information. Ridley returned to 60 Squadron ever demolished housing agricultural equipment and but was no longer allowed to fly because now if he was labourers for the next ninety years. In 2008 the 22 shot down or crashed behind enemy lines he would not surviving buildings had a close shave with the demolition

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ball when the site was scheduled to be sold off for a & Sport and the Heritage Lottery Fund, which will caravan park. Businessman Russell Savory (photographed help secure the aerodromes long term future. We aim to for the Daily Telegraph above) was looking for somewhere be part of that future by taking some of the first coach to house the workshops to build his RS Performance sports parties to visit the site as part of our new day trip cars. With his then business partner Steve Wilson, he Men With Splendid Hearts: The Great War in Essex bought the site for £500,000, asked the local council to put described on the next page. a preservation order on the remaining 22 buildings and set about saving them with a growing team of volunteers.

This was definitely a Downton Abbey sort of world. The Officers Mess had indoor bathrooms and a special room for the silver while the lower ranks slept in tents and made do with outside privies. To ensure that dignity was maintained the ladies hostel for women communications and domestic workers was built with windows six feet above the ground.

In October 2013 Stow Maries Aerodrome received a grant Below: Claude Ridley in his Morane Bullett in France of £1.5 million from the Department for Culture, Media serving with 60 Squadron Royal Flying Corps.

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Men With Splendid Hearts - The Great War in Rural Essex A Brand New Day Trip For Groups A fascinating new day to mark the centenary of the hundred years ago including the role of women on Great War available from summer 2014 and on into the Home Front and the first air raids on the UK the next couple of years: the price given with this when giant Zeppelin airships used Essex rivers like description is valid for all tours that take place on the Crouch and the Blackwater to find their way to or before 31 March 2015. We take a look at the London and other prime targets.

Great War as it was experienced by the families of We’re going to stop in Maldon for free time to buy rural Essex and in particular we look at the stories lunch. Several buildings in Maldon were destroyed of some young men of Great Leighs where the vicar during a Zeppelin raid in 1915 and you’ll hear today kept a very detailed war diary and of the pioneering experience of the young men of the Royal Flying Corps stationed at Stow Maries. Such young men as these were described by war poet Rupert Brooke as Men With Splendid Hearts.

Our guide will hop on your coach at Boreham near Chelmsford on the A12 and you’ll continue on together the couple of miles to Great Leighs where the vicar in 1914 began to keep a detailed diary of village life that offers a unique insight into rural life one hundred years ago. At his church we’ll be begin our day with morning coffee and biscuits included in the tour fee and a talk and a short film and slide show from the Blue Badge Guide and a local family historian that shines a spotlight on the lives, loves and deaths of some of the young men of Great Leighs whose names are carved on the war memorial here. This is the church visited by Jeremy Paxman for his BBC Great War series.

On leaving this lovely old church with its round Saxon tower we’ll take a coach tour of rural Essex heading cross country to the Blackwater Estuary. Along the way you’ll hear about local life one

22 City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 [email protected] about the impact of the Great War on families living And please don’t go thinking this is just for the men! in this ancient and attractive town. You can, if you This is a very human story: of the 22 year old war prefer, opt to pre-book a group pub lunch for your hero pilot put in charge of 37 Squadron RFC (Home group, let us know when you book. Defence), of the equally young men under his

Stow Maries is unique: of the 250 aerodromes built command risking their lives in impossibly frail aircraft during the First World War only ten survive in any (replicas of which you will see today) and of the form and Stow Maries is the only one to have women stationed here in support roles and housed in remained virtually untouched for the past 100 years. huts with windows way off the ground to protect their There are 24 original Grade II* listed Royal Flying modesty! And who knows if the wind is in the right Corps buildings from the officers mess to the pilots’ direction we might even be lucky enough to see an ready room, radio room, ambulance station. The early plane in action. This is also an important wildlife dangers faced by these young men is illustrated by site so look out for the teatime barn owl and maybe the presence of the morgue, the collision between the even take a stroll through the rather nostalgic flower old and new technology is illustrated by the presence meadow before gathering in the men’s Mess Hall for tea and cake before heading home at 4.45pm. in this brave new world of aviation of a blacksmiths.

At the end of the war the pilots moved to Biggin Hill The tour is available Monday to Saturday throughout and the site returned to agricultural use. The ghosts the year from June 2014 and includes morning coffee of the Men With Splendid Hearts were silent until with biscuits, a donation to Great Leighs Church, entrance to Stow Maries Aerodrome and tea and cake. entrepreneur Russell Savory (also a Splendid Heart!) moved his hand built sports car business onto this Adults & Seniors: £24.00 atmospheric Great War site and began the restoration You don't need to walk further than 400 that continues today with lottery funding and – you! metres (440 yards) during this day trip - Because if you join us for this new day you will be although individuals can add a bit more of among the first groups to visit Stow Maries and help a walk through the meadow at Stow Maries if they want to on the day. this key piece of Great War history survive and thrive for our grandchildren to know. Coach Mileage: 40

You can buy beautiful Russell Savory photographs like this at Stow Maries

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From Suffragettes to Munitionettes Some Women of the Great War

Before 1914 British men went off to fight the wars of England on the streets of Deal and Walmer. The Order of Victoria’s Empire in far flung places that were coloured the White Feather was the brainchild of a retired Admiral pink on the maps on the schoolroom walls and the Charles Penrose Fitzgerald and his great advocate was women stayed at home. But one hundred years ago Scarlet Pimpernel author the Baroness Orczy then living in this year, the war came to the Home Front and wives, rural Kent. In September 1914 the Baroness wrote to the daughters, mothers, citizens without the vote, left women of England through the pages of the Daily Mail: behind the Edwardian era as, in the face of long Your hour has come! The great hour when to the question entrenched prejudices, they slowly became essential which you yourselves have asked incessantly these few to the efforts to win this world war. For the women weeks past: “I want to do something – what can I do?” of Britain nothing would ever be quite the same again. Your country has at last given answer. Women and girls

In the years leading to 1914 demands for votes for of England, you cannot shoulder a rifle, but you can women gained momentum. How ironic that campaigners actively serve your country all the same. You can serve her for equality and civil rights be dubbed with the sort of in the way she needs it most. Give her the men she wants! nickname that would soon also be applied to almost Give her your sweetheart, she wants him: your son, your every role that women performed during the Great War - brother, she wants them! Your friends, she wants them all! for the terms munitionettes, copperettes and sailorettes Baroness Orczy set up the Women of England’s Active all followed from the first use of the demeaning suffix Service League with 20,000 members who pledged not to be applied first in the word suffragette. When war came, seen in the company of any man who had not answered his almost overnight, the demand for the vote was dropped country’s call. She was not alone is such activity. Upper by the majority of the campaigners who instead switched class women positively hurled themselves onto committees their attention to the war effort. On 5 September 1914, and into societies and leagues. In 1916 Lady Denman less than a month after Britain declared war on Germany became the first Chairman of the Women’s Institute, itself the Chatham Times reported on an amusing, novel and a Great War initiative set up here in 1915, after the model forceful method of obtaining recruits for the war when of the original Canadian organisation, to encourage white feathers were handed out for the first time in countrywomen to get involved in growing and preserving

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food to help to increase the supply of food to the war-torn out in full evening dress and tiaras. Not far away in the nation. Prior to her WI role Lady Denman had run the dunes behind Calais Millicent Leveson-Gower, Duchess Smokes For Soldiers Fund turning the ballroom of her of Sutherland also brought the country house experience house in Buckingham Gate into a cigarette and tobacco to her field hospital (The Number 9 Red Cross Hospital) packing station. Patron of the Society was none other by encouraging her staff to dance to gramophone records than Queen Alexandra who, apparently, liked a secret beneath the stars until midnight. How gay! How unlike the puff herself. Volunteers greeted soldiers and sailors at grim picture painted by BBC’s The Crimson Field! ports and railway stations with free cigarettes, tobacco Meddlesome Millie, the Red Duchess horrified many of her and pipes: They are hungry for smokes said Trudie peers with her liberal, some said socialist views. Novelist Denman, give them tobacco and there is no hardship Arnold Bennett satirised her in his Five Towns series set in they will not cheerfully suffer. the Potteries as Interfering Iris after she campaigned for the Field Marshall Lord Roberts (who’d helped Rudyard welfare of pottery workers, notably managing to outlaw the Kipling get his boy Jack into the Irish Guards) was the use of lead glazes. Millicent, aged 47, arrived in Belgium Victorian veteran hero of everything from the Indian with eight nurses and a surgeon, Mr Oswald Morgan of Rebellion of the 1850s (during which he was awarded Guys Hospital, in the first few weeks of the war setting up the Victoria Cross) to the Second Anglo-Afghan War her first field hospital in a convent. Finding herself trapped of the 1870s and the Second Boer Wars which ended in behind enemy lines she talked herself free with her fluent 1902. Lord Roberts had died of pneumonia in his 80s German and personal acquaintance with the Kaiser! Back while visiting Indian troops at St Omer in November in London she published an account of her experiences 1914 and his fame as a national hero was enough to fund entitled Six Weeks at The War. the single-handed campaign of Miss Gladys Storey who By November 1914 she was back in business, this time at sold sixpenny portraits of the Field Marshall to raise the Hotel Belle Vue at Malo-les-Bains, Dunkirk as an money to send Bovril to the troops in the trenches. evacuation hospital with up to 100 beds and then from July Meanwhile at Highclere Castle Almina, the 5th Countess 1915 Number 9 Red Cross Hospital became a Tent Unit at of Carnarvon wasted no time at all in setting up a hospital Bourbourg. It only operated here for six months but was receiving the first injured men from the battlefields of to be immortalised in a remarkably beautiful series of ten Flanders within a month of the outbreak of the war. paintings by French artist Victor Tardieu, who having Some aristocratic ladies even went so far as to venture fought and received wounds in the trenches became a close to the battlefields themselves in their eagerness patient at what would become known as the little hospital to nurse the wounded men. Constance, Duchess of in the oatfield. Tardieu painted his canvases en plein air Westminster, who had won a bronze medal for sailing while a patient and anyone who takes the opportunity to at the 1908 London Olympics, ran the No 1 British Red see them displayed together at the Florence Nightingale Cross Base Hospital at Le Touquet from October 1914 Museum until 26 October 2014 will find that these vividly until July 1918 with her trusty Irish Wolfhound by her coloured pictures, full of light and full of life will live in side. The Countess, with a coterie of aristocratic friends, their minds for a long time. society ladies like herself, cheered the men they nursed every day by appearing every night on the wards decked The artist was clearly much enamoured of the Duchess depicting her almost as an angel who floats above the bed of one of her charges. Indeed Hugh McCorquodale, wounded at Passchendale (and who was later to marry novelist Barbara Cartland), who was treated at the hospital said exactly that, the Duchess dressed all in white and always wearing pearls, used to look like an angel. Back in Blighty, author Enid Bagnold, born at Rochester in Kent and best known for her novel National Velvet published in 1935, was a nurse at the Royal Herbert Hospital in Woolwich. Named after War Secretary Sidney Herbert, the man who had sent Florence Nightingale to the Crimean War as an observer, the Royal

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Doctors Flora Murray and Louisa Garrett Anderson of the Endell Street Military Hospital, Bloomsbury Herbert Military Hospital was designed by Nightingale’s tut at the screen on Sunday evening at 9.00pm when you nephew based on her revolutionary designs for light and settle down to watch the series. It is said that the tippet airy wards. While at Woolwich Nurse Enid Bagnold cape was designed by Florence Nightingale: wrote A Diary Without Duties, which one hundred years to conceal curvaceous bosoms from the eyes of the later gives the reader (and, now out of copyright, it can licentious soldiery. be read for free online) a vivid insight into life and death By the end of the Great War there were 70,00 VADS, on the wards of a Great War hospital: some abroad but most at home. They volunteered as Oh visitors, who come into the ward in the calm of the assistant nurses but also as ambulance drivers and cooks. long afternoon, when the beds are neat and clean and Vera Brittain, mother of Shirley Williams, (life peer and the flowers out on the tables and the VADS sit sewing at former MP) served as a VAD at home and later in France. splints and sandbags, when the men look like men again She wrote one of the most famous autobiographies of the and smoke and talk and read – oh if you could see what First World War, Testament of Youth. I cannot recommend lies beneath the dressings! highly enough, if you’ve not read it already, to buy yourself a copy of Vera Brittain’s book, for few works tell so well The VADS were the members of the Vountary Aid the story of women during the Great War. A film of Detachments, some men, but mostly upper-middle class Testament of Youth is currently in production for release girls and women who were trained in first aid and in 2015. Vera Brittain lost both her fiancé and her beloved nursing. In 1909 the War Office established the Scheme brother during the war. Her words on this terrible loss, for the Organisation of Voluntary Aid and the Red Cross a loss shared by so many of her generation, is haunting: were given the role of training and providing volunteers as supplementary aid to the Territorial Forces Medical There seemed to be nothing left in the world, for I felt that Service in the event of the war, By the time war came Roland had taken with him all my future and Edward all my past. there were 9000 VADS to support just 300 Queen Alexandra Imperial Military Nurses (plus a reserve of In Torquay Agatha Christie was, for a short time a VAD, 200 QA nurses) and 600 civilian nurses. These are the but it suited her not and she left to volunteer in a dispensary women of the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military instead. At the start of the war thousands of Belgian Nursing Service with the cherry red cloaks or tippets refugees were arriving at Folkestone and Dover with the in Crimson Field. Cherry Red! No, no no! A retired authorities acting quickly to disperse them around the QARANC nurse (Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army country. Some went to Torquay where Christie, perhaps Nursing Corps) who is organising for her colleagues influenced by a potent mix of this influx of foreigners, the to take our Women of the Great War Tour in September, poisons in the dispensary and searching for her very own including a visit to the Hospital in the Oatfield exhibition Sherlock Holmes created Hercule Poirot. at the Florence Nightingale Museum, tells me that she Back in Kent Baroness Orczy, (creator of one of the first and her colleagues are up in arms that the BBC got it female detectives – Lady Molloy of Scotland Yard) wrong. Not cherry red, the tippets of the QAs have Hungarian by birth but British by marriage and with her always been scarlet! Please, on their behalf, have a quick

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Hungarian mother living a somewhat uncomfortable and Louisa Garrett Anderson and Flora Murray would go on unpopular life, as an enemy alien just outside of Maidstone to treat 26,000 men in Endell Street. It was a far cry from nevertheless wrote of the Belgian refugees: the experience of Scottish doctor and suffragist Elsie Inglis

Dear Belgians, how we loved them, how we pitied them. who had trained in Edinburgh under Dr Sophie Jex-Blake. All the same, we were very thankful to our authorities Not needed by Louisa Garret Anderson to whom she when the whole of the Maidstone district was included volunteered her services Elsie wrote to the War Office in the military area where no alien, whether friend, offering a 100 bed hospital unit staffed by women to be ally or foe, was allowed to dwell within its boundaries. deployed anywhere in the war zone. She received a letter back telling her to go home and sit still. She didn’t go Not all women found service as nurses for, of course, home at all; she went with her team of lady doctors first some were already fighting long established prejudices to Serbia and later to Russia. to be accepted as doctors. Louisa Garrett Anderson was the daughter of Elizabeth Garret Anderson, Britain’s first Another remarkable Woman of the Great War also went female doctor. An ardent suffragette Louisa established to Serbia. She was Mabel St Clair Stobart, already in her the Women’s Hospital Corps Team and ran a hospital in 50s at the outbreak of the war, who took a team of female the empty Hotel Claridge in Paris treating many men doctors and nurses to Serbia in 1915. From 31 May to wounded at the First Battle of The Marne in 1914. 15 November 2014 if you visit the Dorset County Museum Early in 1915 they moved the hospital to Wimereux and in Dorchester you can see A Dorset Woman at War: gradually earned a grudging acceptance from the Royal Mabel Stobart and the Retreat From Serbia 1915, Army Medical Corps, who increasingly stretched by the 30 powerful black and white photographs of Mabel and sheer numbers of wounded men, invited the women to her team training at Studland in Dorset and running a field run a 500 bed hospital in London based in an old camp and dressing station behind the front line in Serbia as workhouse in Endell Street, Bloomsbury, just off the well as some images from their 800 mile journey through Shaftesbury Avenue. Legend has it that arriving in snow covered mountains to the Albanian Coast. Please London the RAMC Colonel on site greeted the new see One To Do On Your Own on page 32 for more doctors sent him with the words: Good God! Women! information. Continues overleaf…..

Women’s Police Service on patrol at a London railway station from the collection of the Imperial War Museum.

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Before leaving to set up her own organisation which she but has been renamed The Princess Royal’s Volunteer Corps. called The Women’s Sick & Wounded Convoy Corps It is still a British, independent, all female unit that is Mabel St Clair Stobart had been a FANY - the rather affiliated to, but is not part of, the Territorial Army. wonderful fur clad ladies on this month’s front cover So much for the aristocratic, upper and middle class women are FANYs. The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry was the what of the working classes? I would have wanted to be marvellously eccentric brainwave of an old war horse, driving an ambulance in my big old fur coat with my closest Sergeant Major, later Captain Edward Baker, who had pal at my side and a small dog on my lap but I would have been wounded in the Sudan, to send women on been spending my days in the Woolwich Arsenal alongside horseback out onto the battlefield like Amazonian my mother’s extended family who were housed in the damp paramedics to tend to wounded soldiers. At the outbreak wooden hutments built for Great War Arsenal workers on old of the Great War the FANY volunteers were expected to farmland between Plumstead and the just-about-Kent village provide their own horses and pay for their own uniforms of East Wickham. Hutments meant to be temporary for the thus only women of independent means could join up. war effort but which would house these Arsenal families The FANY held training events in Hyde Park Hunting for over 50 years until they were finally demolished and the for Casualties and taking part in Wounded Rescue occupants, those who hadn’t been wiped out by rampant TB, Races. Later the RAMC offered more serious training were rehoused in new opportunities involving the preparation of tents and brick council houses – buildings as temporary hospitals alongside first aid and but not until all of their stretcher drills. And the FANYs took driving lessons belongings had been for it wasn’t to be on horses that they took to the taken from them, with battlefield but at the wheel of motor ambulances. little dignity afforded, In October 1914 six pioneering FANYs had become to be fumigated whether the first women’s voluntary organisation to go out to they needed it or not. the war taking with them to Calais three civilian nurses, In Testament of Youth two male wound dressers, an ambulance driver and a Vera Brittain (right in total kitty of £12.00. The British Army wanted nothing VAD uniform with her to do with them so they worked for the French and beloved brother Edward) Belgian armies. Lieutenants Grace McDougall, Lilian acknowledges that her Franklin and Sergeant Isabel Wicks were joined in first experiences of exhausting physical labour, which she February 1915 by Muriel Thompson who in 1908 had finds to be rather an ordeal, is an ordinary reality of daily won the first ever ladies motor race at Brooklands. drudgery for many working women from less privileged On 1 January 1916 the first officially recognised backgrounds. We women of the working classes worked British FANY in vital if maybe far less glamorous roles. We toiled in the convoy started munitions factories, our skin turning yellow from the operations in chemicals. We punched tickets on the buses and shovelled the war zones coal. Some of us managed to join the Women’s Police of France driving Service, the WPS, that had been set up by Margaret Damer ambulances for Dawson, a militant suffragette and veteran campaigner the British Army. against the sex trade, to deal with the problem of prostitution In that first year and what the Sussex Times called the enthusiastic amateurs they would carry who gathered wherever men in uniform gathered. 80,000 wounded men as well as The WPS separated courting couples in the bushes of public running canteens, mobile bath units and entertainments parks and shooed prostitutes from public squares and train for the troops in the form of a mobile cinema. The stations. Inevitably they were called copperettes. Margaret mobile bath unit was nicknamed James – water was Damer Dawson is buried in the churchyard of St Stephen’s, heated by the ambulance engines to fill ten collapsible Lympne which sits on the cliff edge of old Saxon shore baths with the unit able to offer the rare chance of a hot looking out over the Romney Marsh. Visit if you can, her bath to up to 40 front line troops an hour. These wealthy grave is adventurous women became infamous for the enormous behind the fur coats they sported during the winter months – church, very Mammoth Hamster Units said one wag. Back home the close to the FANYs gave talks and lectures about their experiences cliff edge. to raise money. FANYs were often seen as a monstrous It’s a special challenge to the natural order of things and their khaki spot and if you uniforms could attract great trouble. In 1915 Mary have a chance Baxter-Ellis was stoned in the street when she returned to visit take a in khaki to visit her father in a Northumberland town. flower to lay After the war ended the FANYs provided a guard of on the grave honour when the body of Edith Cavell was brought of a Woman of home. The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry still exists today the Great War.

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New Tour - Women of the Great War With The Hospital in the Oatfield at the Florence Nightingale Museum or the Imperial War Museum In 1914 the War came to the Home Front and women were We’ll break for free time for lunch or you can include a part of a new Front Line. This new tour in London shines one or two course lunch with coffee if you prefer. In the a light on the many and varied experiences of the Women afternoon we visit the small but quite memorable Hospital of the Great War with a visit to the Hospital in the Oatfield in the Oatfield exhibition at the Florence Nightingale exhibition at the Florence Nightingale Museum until 27 Museum (from now until 26 October 2014) or the women October 2014 or the displays on women in the First World and the great war displays in the new First World War War galleries at the Imperial War Museum from July 2014 Galleries at the newly refurbished Imperial War Museum and right through until 2018. Walking is minimal and the (from late July 2014 and onwards to 2018!). After time days are available with or without lunch included. to buy refreshments you’ll heading home at 4.45pm.

Come and meet our erudite and entertaining tour guide With the Hospital in the Oatfield (until 26/10/14) at the Museum of London Café to buy for morning Adults & Seniors: £15.50 refreshments at 10.30am. Until late September 2014 Including one-course lunch & coffee £25.00 you can see the small collection of Great War photographs two-course and coffee £29.00 taken by the UK’s first female press photographer With the Imperial War Museum (from late July 2014) Christina Broom (come after this date and we’ll pick out Adults & Seniors: £11.50 another Women and The Great War detail to start the day). With one-course lunch & coffee £21.00 With two-course lunch and coffee £25.00 During the morning we are going to take a coach tour of London to tell the story of how the women of Britain stepped out of the Edwardian Age as they stepped forward to do their bit for the war effort. We’ll show you where they set up hospitals and campaigns to provide Smokes for Soldiers, you’ll hear all about the activities of the militant suffragettes, the Order of the White Feather, the VADS, the FANYs and the WAACs. We’ll trace the silent and deadly progress of the Zeppelins over the streets of London and discover the surprisingly common signs of the Zeppelin bomb damage that survive in the capital city today. We’ll tell the pioneering story of the Women’s Police Service who shooed courting couples from the bushes and chased the good time girls away from the soldiers at the train stations.

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How Booking Our Trips Works

Original & Entertaining Tours Since 1988 All of our trips are designed for British groups that City & Village Tours has been providing original and include folk who cannot walk as well as they once entertaining days out for British groups since 1988. could but because groups vary in their interests so do our days out. We specialise in guided tours for groups of 35 or more people who like to see a lot without walking There are 18 brand new itineraries in the 2014 too far. You book your own coach locally and our brochure with prices valid until 31 March 2015 top-notch Blue Badge Guide joins you, on your For a print copy please call coach, for a great day out. 0208 692 1133 or click here.

From The Hospital in the Oatfield exhibition at the Florence Nightingale Museum. Visit as part of our new Women of the Great War tour available daily now and until 26 October 2014

You Book the Coach & We Do the Rest for days out that your members will talk about for a long time to come

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The Paperwork A week before your trip we write to your coach When you make a telephone booking with us we will get you company to outline all the essential information safely booked in. If we need to speak to one or more venues that the coach driver will need from the exact it might take a day or two to hear back from them so it’s best meeting point with the guide to the guide’s not to call us the same day as your meeting. name and mobile telephone number. We will send you a copy of this document so that you Once you are safely booked in we’ll call you to confirm and as the group organiser, your coach driver and sort out the deposit. We can take this over the phone by card our tour guide are all singing from the same (free for debit cards, 2% for credit cards) in which case we song sheet. fill in the booking form for you and send you written confirmation of your tour. On the day of your trip our tour guide meets your coach and you can sit back and enjoy the Alternatively we can pop a booking form in the post day along with your group. A day out that your (or we can email it to you). We ask you to complete the folk will remember for a long time. And thank booking form and return it to us with a £25.00 deposit you for! within 14 days of us making the booking. Don’t forget that after the trip you can call us Once we receive your deposit and booking form we will to request a refund for anyone who wasn’t able send you a receipt and a written tour confirmation which to come on the day. We take a one-off admin includes a fill in section for when you pay for the tour fee of just £2.00 from the total of any refund seven days before it takes place. cheque, whether it is for one or ten people.

We can send you a free poster to help promote the trip or Call us on 0208 692 1133 if you would you can ask us for images and whatnot to put on your own like a printed copy of the brochure. website.

If the trip doesn’t get off the ground with your members You can read our brochure online by and you need to cancel you can do so right up to seven days clicking here. before the tour date and we will refund your deposit in full.

If the day is to go ahead we ask for payment to reach us Or visit our website at seven days before the trip. Pay us for how many you are www.cityandvillagetours.com expecting to come as we can always refund for no shows on the day so long as the number in the group doesn’t fall There are many itineraries on our below our minimum of 35 people and we are ourselves able website that are not in the brochure. to get a refund for any food stops or admissions included.

Christina Broom The UK’s first female press photographer. See a small selection of her Great War photographs at the Museum of London until 28 September 2014 31 City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 [email protected]

ONE TO DO ON YOUR OWN

Dorset County Museum in Dorchester is an A Dorset Woman at War: independent museum and educational charity. The Museum is owned and managed by the Dorset Mabel Stobart & the Natural History and Archaeological Society with retreat from Serbia in 1915 financial support from Dorset County Council and West Dorset District Council. A Dorset Woman at War celebrates the achievements of one little-recognised but The museum is open Monday to Saturday all year redoubtable woman. At the heart of the exhibition round. During the Mabel Stobart exhibition which is a collection of 30 powerful black and white runs from 31 May to 15 November 2014 the photographs taken of Mabel Stobart and her team museum is open from 10am to 5pm (4pm in November). of volunteers at their training base in Studland, Dorset, their field camp and dressing stations Groups who book in advance are offered pay behind the front line in Serbia and the relentless £7.00 (Gift Aid Entry) or £6.35 (Standard Entry) 800 mile journey through snow-covered mountains per person for a visit and this includes a guided tour to the Albanian coast when the Serbian Army was with one of the museum’s specialist tour guides and in retreat. On the ten-week march they were refreshments. A minimum charge of £75 applies. accompanied by one hundred thousand soldiers and many thousands of civilian refugees fleeing their Contact [email protected] or villages before they fell to pursuing enemy troops, call 01305 756832 for more details or to book just a few miles behind. a visit for your group.

A Great War exhibition in Dorchester, Dorset from 31 May to 15 November 2014

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Free Colour Posters To help you fill the coach - A4 magazine size.

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City & Village Tours Limited California Building Deals Gateway London SE13 7SB

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