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TRIUMPH ON THE WESTERN FRONT TRIUMPH on the Western Front Diary of a Despatch Rider with the ANZACs 1915–1919 Oswald Harcourt Davis MM R.E. compiled by Philip Holdway-Davis Publisher Insurance Professional Limited (Publishing) PO Box 6925 Wellesley Street Auckland City Auckland 1141 NEW ZEALAND [email protected] Phone: +64 (0) 27 380 0127 www.triumphonthewesternfront.com First published by FireStep Press in 2015 under the title Triumph on the Western Front: Diary of a Despatch Rider with the ANZACs 1915-1919 © 2015, Oswald Harcourt Davis (O H Davis Archive) and Philip Holdway-Davis All rights reserved. Apart from any use under NZ copyright law no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of Insurance Professional Limited or Philip Holdway-Davis. ISBN 978-0-473-31463-7 Front CoverPrinted Image: and bound Soldiers in walkNew Zealandamong the by ruinsBenefitz of bombed (NZ) Limited buildings in Ypres, Belgium, 1917. Royal New Zealand Returned and Services’ Association: New Zealand Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. official negatives,http://natlib.govt.nz/records/22789648 World War 1914-1918. Ref: 1/2-012950-G. Map care of “The Long, Long Trail: the British Army in the Great War”. CONTENTS Your Personal Centenary Tour Invitation ........... 2 Foreword by Michael Carragher ................. 6 Preface .............................. 10 Introduction – Oswald’s Battlefields .............. 12 Prologue – Reflections on Oswald by the Davis Family ... 21 Through England in War Time ................ 28 Map of Battlefield Lines ..................... 32 The Diaries of Oswald Harcourt Davis ............ 33 1915 .............................. 34 1916 ..............................105 1917 ..............................193 1918 ..............................284 1919 ..............................376 Other Works of Oswald Harcourt Davis ...........395 Appendix .............................398 i) Army Pigeons How They Work (reproduction of article published in 1916) ................398 ii) Examples of Oswald’s original submissions to the Press Bureau • War Time Estaminets .............. 400–404 • Getting Knocked ................ 405–410 • Digging Defence Lines ............. 411–415 • The Gates of Leave ............... 416–422 • Cant About Khaki ................ 423–437 End notes .............................438 San Fairy Ann? .........................439 FOREWORD When I read Oswald Davis’s diary in the Imperial War Museum I was impressedYet its value by two quickly things: was the evident. value of Oswaldhis account was anda writer, the difficulty and an admirerof reading of it other on microfilm. writers, Ita reallybiographer was hard of some work. in years to come and a published poet in his own right already. I often wished I could have read him with greater ease and at greater leisure. So to learn that his diary is to be published was a most welcome surprise. Oswald was a despatch rider, and the importance of the DR Oswald enlisted, ‘Don R’ no longer served in the crucial role he had in 1914,the Great but Warhe was has still been a vitalfor too cog long in the lost machinery sight of. Byof war,the timeand Oswald’s descriptions of the DR’s interaction with the Corps Pigeon Service is, to my knowledge, unique. That fact alone makes this an important book. But Oswald’s account is of much more far-ranging value. He tells us a great deal of what war was like on the Home Front. He delays enlisting out of the honesty and strength of character that in my deepest self that I should not go at present, but wait until I marks him – and out of loyalty to his family’s firm. “It seemed best go. Hard to resist the subtle, strong pressure of public opinion. To yieldfelt absolutely to this pressure certain is that weakness I ought. – thatIn a wassense how it is I decideddifficult fornot the to training. present.”The main When attraction he does of Oswald’sgo he gives account much is detail of course of enlisting what he tellsand of despatch riding and the pigeon service, but, as he describes life on the Home Front, he also gives a rich portrayal of everyday life as a soldier, the companionship and exhilaration, the snobbery and degradation: “our own humble Tommies were treated as often as 6 FOREWORD not with the most disgusting disdain and humiliating brusqueness” theby officers travails with of the “the DR manners he describes, of a railway are no porterless important and the brainsthan the of a toy dog.” The military details that he gives on the Pigeon Service, punishment leaves him appalled. He reports the bitterness of an Oldsocial Sweat: and military“They can complexities do anything that in the he army explores. with yer,Observing bar put field you Despite some louts and ‘shits’ he encounters, Oswald enjoys army life:in the “All family the soldiers way.” I have seen seem twice as happy and careless war has passed into secondary importance and, as of yore, we are as civilians”; but soon, “in the lives of most of us, great as it is, the Yet never so ‘preoccupied’ does he become that he is blind to the brutalitypreoccupied and by ugliness: our private “all theaffairs. Somme This hatefulnessis nature’s medicinal – mud or way.” dust, Machonocies and bully, sluttish inimical peasants and the strategic of things can distort recollection: “Looking back, the life does not dominance of the Hun.” Nor is he unaware of how making the best and interest in pushing my work to success, the misery of it must seem unpleasant, and I suppose, with familiarity and confidence A telling side of this observation is that “interest in pushing my have thinned like mist and gradually gained colour and warmth.” spends in the family business and off his own bat he overhauls the work to success”: Oswald’s work ethic is splendid. His home leave he Both here and at Ypres his sense of responsibility is so stern that heslovenly is taken management advantage ofhe by finds others, in the yet pigeon while heservice is aware at the of thisSomme. and towards the end he feels “the army had almost converted me into sometimes resents it he disdains “swinging the lead” himself. When a shirker”Oswald hewas is a“rather writer ashamed”. and a sensitive Really soul,he is ina sterling many ways example out of placeduty: “Iin like the being rough-and-tumble relied on.” of army life, yet he stands up for himself when he has to: “though I’d rather face shells than quarrel with a man, I felt I was right in this case,” so he takes on a bully 7 TRIUMPH ON THE WESTERN FRONT in a boxing ring and beats him – and then feels pity for the man’s humiliation. The quality of Oswald’s character runs through his account and it’s his character that gives his diary a good deal of its value. Initially good deal of Puritanism seeping through – even something of a prig. he comes across as a self-conscious, rather ‘Victorian’ figure, with a Here weis afind man a man to relywhom on. we His might honesty not seek can outbe fordisconcerting a night on the at times.town, butHe whoponders we soonwith feeldistaste: certain “why would are guardyoung our married confidences. people so demonstrative? Rather embarrassing for a squeamish chap like by refreshing, if occasionally alarming, frankness: he is utterly unabashedmyself.” But by any his initially-unattractive virginal status – if prudery anything is indignantcounterbalanced at the say all this would hardly dissemble on less personal matters. doctor who “looked as if he didn’t believe me”. Anyone who could man“The might past pride is a himselfforeign oncountry,” his purity L. P. (for Hartley Oswald’s observes; attitude “they to pre- do things differently there”. There, then, a ‘respectable’ 33-year-old today he’d be embarrassed by his ‘innocence’. Oswald recreates for usmarital this foreign celibacy country was hardly of the remarkable past. As the in strength that ‘foreign of his country’);character emerges, our trust in his descriptions, his statements, indeed his judgement, is reinforced. His diary is as vivid in its details as it is cheerhonest them in its as reflections well as dismay on the themhorror is andtestament complexity to its of objectivity war. That andboth value. revisionists and anti-revisionists will find much in here to The diary also is as well-written as might be expected of a poet. Much of it is in clipped sentence-fragments, but frequently the lyricist gains the upper hand of the gazetteer: “On my way to Shrapnel Corner, ten Gothas steered white and stately, like pieces of paleThat Gothic such masonry an original, loosed intelligent, from some well-written, cathedral roof, valuable each accountfloated, scorning earth against the silver blue of the sky.” 8 FOREWORD poisoned attitudes that persisted until recently. For far too long the could not find a publisher in the 1970s says a great deal about the partisan views of AJP Taylor and Basil Liddell Hart and their ilk, andhistoriography there was aof leftist the Great fashion War for was “snigger[ing] dominated atby patriotismthe politicised and physicalThough courage”, simplistic as attitudes George Orwell survive put in theit – public exactly mind, what in Oswald recent decadesDavis and scholarship his chums exemplified.has challenged them, and continues to do so thewith historical greater record.confidence. Publication of his diary, long after his death, allows Oswald Davis once again to “do his bit”, this time for Michael Carragher Blackrock Co Dublin March 2015 9 PREFACE (civilian) and 148768 Corporal Davis, O H (soldier). Being an avid writer,This is motorcyclistthe guts of the and Great adventurer, War Diary Oswald of Oswald takes usHarcourt on a unique Davis and in-depth journey through his war years. We join him in July 1915 when he provides us with a taste of life in Britain at war.