To Fight the Dragon

THE FIRST WORLD WAR ACCOUNT OF CORPORAL PHILLIP WESTON

COMPILED BY PETER WESTON. 2011

TO FIGHT THE DRAGON

FROM VINEGAR HILL TO FRANCE WITH CORPORAL PHILLIP WESTON

TO FIGHT THE DRAGON. Army Records

In the Weston family records there is an old letter from the trenches written on six pages of army issue writing paper. It would seem as though the writer was pondering upon the foolishness of war and perhaps wondering how he could explain to his family, or even to himself, the reason why men must fight. Using almost apocalyptic language, he describes an iron dragon, with five heads and 2,500 eyes; with 91 steel claws for its fingers and a body five miles long. Waddling on 200 short legs it dragged itself over the ground.

This monster was able to blow poisonous gas from its nose and shoot flames from its eyes. From its mouth came a rain of lead and steel and its tail tapered down to a large steel sword. It had an insatiable appetite to possess the whole earth, and devoured groaning men, screaming women and children, even whole countries, in its path to conquer.

Men were called from the comfort of their homes, work, and families to arise and resist the monster lest it conquer the whole earth, and even though they might be weaker, they went forth and held fast at great cost. The last word on the lips of the many who died was “I die for freedom”.

At the time that it was written the writer wouldn’t have known the outcome of the first world war, but it shows us a picture of a sensitive, intelligent and imaginative man who was asking himself the hard questions of life. What manner of man was he, and what did he see?

The letter was written from the trenches in a moment of reflection by Phillip Weston. Aged 29 and married with a small son, Phillip was the youngest son of Samuel and Sarah Weston of Vinegar Hill,

Hunterville. They were known as a God fearing family; committed Christians. Phillip was the youngest of a family of fourteen, he would have led a sheltered life compared to his elder pioneering brothers. He was on the family farm when the first world war broke out and at the time of his conscription had been married to Dorothy Eggleton for only eleven months. Their son, Philip, was three weeks old. (Wedding photo previous page)

Dorothy also came from a staunch God fearing family, being the eldest daughter of William and Cecily Eggleton. William was a milling contractor of Bunnythorpe who in the harvest season worked from farm to farm with his mill. He was the choirmaster in the Wesleyan church, the local school committee chairman, and the secretary of the local temperance movement, the “Band of Hope’. It is of interest that the Band of Hope had a membership in Bunnythorpe of 232 in 1896. The temperance movement encouraged folk to pledge themselves teetotal; this was intended to affect the vote towards prohibition. A lot has changed since then!

The dilemma for a man of Christian convictions was that although he was required to respond to the call of his country the taking of a human life was unacceptable. There were different ways that this was handled. Some objected on the grounds of conscience and were imprisoned. In Tauherenikau camp there were about forty prisoners who wouldn’t co-operate with any army duty at all. Others took a non-combatant role such as a stretcher bearer, nurse or driver, and yet others took the stance that they had a duty to fend off the evil that was threatening their land, so they became combatant soldiers.

The Rev J W Shaw of Invercargill preached on 9th May, 1915:

”We are called to go and forth and smite the evil thing and not falter. Give them according to their deeds and according to their wickedness of their endeavours” It would appear that Phillip was in agreement with this opinion.

Nowadays it is less acceptable to be involved in armed combat than it was then, but think about it a moment. Why is the Moriori extinct? Because he was a pacifist. Sometimes it is necessary to fight.

The newspaper of 14/2/17 had a notice that in No 6 Manawatu recruitment district Weston Phillip, Hunterville, farmer, was to be conscripted for the army. Prior to 1st August 1916 all new recruits were volunteers. Then firstly singles, next marrieds, and finally marrieds with one child were conscripted. Phillip was in the latter class. During the year 1918 his brother Lew Weston was called up on 25th April and on 21st May Dave and Len Weston were called up. Lew got as far as his training in the Trentham camp. Dave didn’t pass the medical, and Len appealed on the grounds of essential services. It was difficult to win such an appeal, and I don’t know what judgement was made, but Len didn’t go to war. Perhaps it ended first.

(Photo previous page is of Dorothy, who waited for Phillip at home)

THE WESTERN FRONT

During the year that Phillip was enlisting and training there were several significant battles which I will mention, in order to give some background.

The German offensive began in August 1914 and progressed south through Leige in Belgium. It eventually reached France and was headed towards Paris. If France had been conquered the German vision of expansionism would have been well on the way. The world would have been well in the dragon’s grip.

Leige was where the brave Belgian army had first held out against the German advance even though they were outnumbered ten to one. The Belgians used a system of fortification tunnels left over from the Crimean war sixty years before but it hadn’t withstood the onslaught and the German army soon occupied Belgium. When it became obvious that they couldn’t hold their ground they flooded their low lying land causing the German army to bog down. Unfortunately later on this was the fate of the British also.

The British became involved as they had a treaty with Belgium and ultimately they also were under threat. The battle only covered a relatively small area on the border between France and Belgium. The distance between Amiens and Ypres, the extremities of the battle, would be a bit over 100 miles (80k) as the crow flies. The main areas of battle, Somme and Ypres, were each contained in an area of only about 50 km and the total front was only about 100 km.

Belgium was no match for the Germans who mushroomed out on their way south to France. Britain was not as well prepared as Germany and by 1916 the Germans had gained enough ground to occupy the Somme. The battles of the western front can be divided into two main areas, Somme and Ypres.

The Battle of Somme… France….Including battle of Amiens.

This is where Germany was confronted by the British forces, engaging them in various battles along the Somme valley.

The first battle of Somme was in July 1st 1916 in which the British made a successful attack . Due to a disagreement between two British Generals this attack was not reinforced with the result that the Germans counter attacked inflicting the allies with 60.000 casualties in one day. 20.000 dead and 40.000 wounded.

Somme is a huge river valley that was the scene of many advances and withdrawals during its time. It could be said that the four years of war consisted of a giving and taking of the same area. I understand that the first and last fatalities, although four years apart, are buried in the same place.

The Somme valley was a major scene of the final 100 days of war, mentioned later.

The Battle of Ypres …….Belgium……Messines - 7th June 1917

Ypres is a historic cloth making town located on a strategic access road which resulted in it being shelled to near obliteration as the Germans attempted to halt supplies to the British.

Messines was on a slight ridge and German trenches were dug to hold this ground. However the British, over a period of a year, tunnelled under the German lines and mined them. The resulting explosion took 10,000 German lives, plus netted 7,000 prisoners. It was the loudest explosion created by man up to that time. The sound carried 130 miles and was heard in London by the Prime Minister Lloyd George who was listening on the terrace of the House of Commons. Nearly a million pounds of high explosive were detonated in an instant and the crater of that explosion can still be seen today.

Passchendaele or The Third battle of Ypres - 1917

Flanders, or Flandre in French, the location of Ypres, is a low lying coastal area common to both Belgium and Northern France. The

meaning of the name is ‘Flooded Land’. The water table was only a foot or so beneath ground level.

Flanders was extreme in its muddy condition being a reclaimed low lying area. The dykes that drained the battle fields had long broken up, and with the continual shell pounding, coupled with the weather, had produced shell holes that not only were filled with water, but often were bottomless, like quicksand, only wet. Any transport of the wounded, of supplies, and in particular the transport of the huge shells and the guns that fired them, was difficult, and sometimes impossible.

The battle to take Passchendaele was supposed to take four days but it took from July 31st to November 10th to complete at the cost of 26,000 British, and 310,000 German lives. Passchendaele (Battle of)

New Zealand division was not there for the entire battle, in June 1917 they relieved a British division, and later were relieved by the Canadians.

Looking at Passchendaele today on Google Earth it seems a small village, no bigger than Hunterville in the Rangitikei, and no more threatening or strategically important.

For the interest of Mangaweka readers Passchendaele is nothing like its namesake the hairpin bend on the Te Kapu road. Most of the battlegrounds of France are on flattish, high density agricultural areas, but Passchendaele is on a small ridge, only a forty metre contour, not even as big as the hills around Mount View, Marton, but enough for a slight vantage point. Passchendaele just had the misfortune to be in the way of the advancing army. Only five miles were gained in that battle, and those were lost a few months later, then a few months later again regained.

The battle was begun by the British firing four and a half million shells into no man’s land to ‘lighten up the enemy’. The purpose of this was to try and break through the barbed wire entanglements with the shell fire, to cut the communication lines, and generally try to harass and unnerve the enemy.

Photos of the area show thousands of trees shot off at about a metre or two in height, their jagged ends pointing skywards. Passchendaele village is seen as few mounds and holes, and a hump where the church was supposed to be. An aerial photo shows a bog hole with the outline of the roads.

A quote from a German soldier says:

“We reached the ruins of a village. Out of the hideously scarred soil of Flanders rose black, splintered trunks of trees, all that was left of a large forest. Vast swathes of smoke hung around, and dimmed the evening with their heavy, gloomy clouds. Over the naked earth, which had been so pitilessly and

repeatedly ripped open, hovered choking yellow or brown glasses that drifted sluggishly about.”

Flanders had an unnaturally high water table, and the drainage dykes hadn’t been maintained during the war. Unseasonal rain, combined with shell damage, produced the mud that this battle is well known for. The mud and water in the shell holes was so deep that soldiers could drown in it while advancing, that is if they survived the bullets. Any advance made was through clinging mud; trenches usually collapsed and only water filled shell holes were left. In these conditions the men attempted to engage the enemy and hold ground until they were relieved every few days. During this time they could likely be living in waist deep mud, relying upon the mess orderlies to bring up food before daylight, and using bully beef tins when they relieved themselves, tossing the contents up and over the trench wall, later to be covered with lime, if possible.

When relieved the men staggered back behind the lines on a system of duck walks. They often met those who were supposedly relieving them asleep, exhausted in the mud. To fall into a shell hole could mean death as they were often bottomless, like quicksand.

German fortifications were concrete pill boxes, large enough to hold 20 - 30 men, with a machine gun slit facing out. They were equipped with a stove and below the floor was a water tank. They were somewhat like the fortifications around the New Zealand coast, only better. However the Germans were just as wet and cold as the British.

The New Zealand division replaced a Tommy division who fought to dropping point. The Kiwis discovered wounded British soldiers out in no man's’ land in shell holes. They had been overlooked and lain there for up to four days and nights, left behind after the withdrawal of their mates. Some were dead and others insane.

A quote from war correspondent Phillip Gibbs reads thus:

“Yesterday luck was dead against them. Archangels would have needed their wings to get across such ground, and the London men had no divine help in that way, and had to wade and haul out one leg after the other from this deep sucking bog, and could hardly do that. Hundreds of them were held in the bog as though in glue, and sank above their waists. Our artillery barrage, which was very heavy and wide, and moved forward at a slow crawling pace, but it could not easily be followed.

It took many men an hour and a half to come back a hundred and fifty yards. A rescue party led by a sergeant-major could not haul out men breast high in the bog until they had surrounded them with duckboards and fastened ropes to them. Our barrage went ahead and the enemy's barrage came down, and from the

German blockhouses came a chattering fire of machine-guns, and in the great stretch of swamp the London men struggled.“

Perhaps the only advantage of the muddy conditions was that the shrapnel shells wouldn’t explode on impact with the ground as they were designed to. The ground was far too soft to detonate them, any that exploded would spout up mud like a geyser, harming nothing.

Death was courted every day. Death and danger were the means whereby a soldier was transformed from a raw recruit who, having lost his bravado hugged the ground at every shell shot, into a hardened veteran who could stand among shell fire and judge by the sound where the next one would land. That is until he too lost his nerve.

How did men handle the sight of their comrades being blown to pieces before their eyes?

It had to be taken in context. Over a period of time men were slowly becoming accustomed to living with death. Today we have no way of experiencing the facing of live fire, in which graphic death was the normal, not the unexpected. As Phillip was only in the front for about twelve months we don’t know how much adjustment he personally had to make, but had he walked out of his homestead at Vinegar Hill and seen someone blown to bits, it would have been an indescribably greater trauma than within the context of Flanders.

The horror is shown in this memory of a British soldier:

“I was working my way back to the trenches when I found a young fellah with a grievous wound in his stomach. Being in agony he begged me to shoot him. There was no possible hope for him, and without hesitation I reached for my pistol, but before I could fire it he passed from this life.

And when that fellah died, he just said one word: ‘Mother.’ It wasn’t a cry of despair. It was a cry of surprise and joy. I think - although I wasn’t allowed to see her - I am sure his mother was in the next world to welcome him. And he knew it. I was just allowed to see that much and no more. And from that day until today I shall always remember that cry and I shall

always remember that death is not the end..

This is the background into which a raw recruit would find himself thrown.

TO EUROPE MARCH 1917, “They left their comfortable homes and their fathers and their mothers and came together”

While the aforementioned was happening Phillip’s service began on 10/3/17 and after a period of about five months training at Trentham he embarked for Europe on 15/8/17 with the 29th Reinforcements. The journey took about seven weeks.

There were three routes used. The first was via Albany, South Australia through the Suez Canal, breaking the journey at the British army base at Cairo. Until 1916 this was the main route as Cairo was as far as horses could travel without a break. New Zealand troops camped there for training and to acclimatise both themselves and their horses (if they were mounted). It was from here that troops engaged in battle against the Turks, in the eastern front.

The route from Egypt was via the Mediterranean, landing at Marseilles. The soldiers were transported by slow train up through France to the battle line. This was a journey of some 60 - 70 hours in box wagons that were used either for men or horses. Alternatively the route was via the Panama Canal, or via Albany, South Australia, and Cape town, South Africa.

As we were no longer sending mounted troops with horses in 1917 it is likely that Phillip travelled via Cape Town where they usually disembarked for a while. I can picture him gazing at Table Mountain where his older brother William had climbed twenty years previously. William had died of enteric fever in Mozambique.

Conditions on board were reasonably crowded and after two weeks Phillip was on sick parade with a bout of influenza. Such sicknesses were easily spread in those conditions. The troops were kept busy with lectures on health, semaphore, French and German language, pistol drill, and anything else; activities like drill, rugby or cricket, wrestling or boxing, music, or anything that kept them fit and occupied. Also ablutions, and duties like the forty men shovelling coal to the boilers each four hour shift.

October 1917

Phillip arrived in England on 2/10/17, disembarking at Glasgow according to his records. Alternative ports used to disembark were Liverpool or Plymouth. The troops were moved by train and the next day he is recorded as having arrived at Sling, which was the main New Zealand army base camp located in Wiltshire, on the Salisbury Plain. Built to house 4,000 men, it was known

as the sort of place that you would be pleased to get out of and go to the front. It was now autumn and in winter Sling was prone to gloomy fogs in which visibility was only a few metres. Often it was snowbound. . Camp life was hard, with sickness sometimes rife in the camp, especially influenza and measles. Men would sometimes collapse on parade through fatigue and sickness. In the Sling cemetery lie over a hundred men that never even made the shores of France, succumbing to sickness. It was later thought that the influenza epidemic of 1918 was spread from Sling, as the conditions were very conducive to the spread of disease.

The programme was parade ground drill, inspections, route marching, pack drill with an 80lb pack, and anything else that was needed to condition men who had little exercise for the last two months on board ship. As well as this the men were instructed on the use of rifles and Lewis machine guns. There were lectures on health, in fact on anything and everything.

Sling was the type of place depicted on movies of today where the aim of the camp was to push the men to the limits of their endurance. There was continual shouting of commands and a standard that seemed impossible to meet. A soldier could expect to spent between two and three months in training between this camp and Etables in France, where after three weeks Phillip was posted. On 18/10/17 he sent a postcard from Stratford, and then he arrived at Etables on 29/10/17. (Map shows Sling in the North and Etables in the South)

On the coast by the Somme estuary the camp at Etables was known as a God forsaken place which was famed for its ‘bull ring’. This was an area in the sand dunes in which the army set about to either make or break its men. It was not a popular place at all.

Said to be able to take 80,000 - 90,000 men, Etables was the training area for anything military. It also boasted a hospital and a detention centre. This

camp would be a far cry from the farm at Vinegar Hill where Phillip was self employed. The training covered trench digging, trench maintenance, trench warfare, bayonet drill, gas drill, barb wire work, route marching, Mills bomb throwing, Lewis gun training... in fact anything at all. It went far beyond this too, for specialised courses for anything and everything were all done here, and men were recalled there from time to time for this.

A soldier could expect to spend five weeks there but according to records Phillip was there until 19/1/18, about eleven weeks. He emerged from there to join the Second Canterbury Battalion at Flanders.

LIKE DUNG ON A FIELD

This is what the LORD declares: ‘Dead bodies will lie like dung on the open field, like cut grain behind the reaper, with no one to gather them.’ Jeremiah 9: 22

Polederhoek Chateau December 1917

By November 1917, having taken Passchendaele, the New Zealand Division were fatigued and enduring winter in the line until February 1918. During this time they unsuccessfully attacked Polederhoek Chateau. The muddy conditions were against them, preventing placement of their guns, but they pressed forward against intense machine-gun fire, overcoming a number of enemy strongpoints, Eventually they were forced to go to ground. The line had been pushed forward slightly but the chateau remained out of reach. About 80 soldiers lost their lives and hundreds were wounded. The futility of the attack was underscored nine days later, after the New Zealanders had withdrawn from the line, when the Germans regained all the ground they had lost.

The New Zealand casualties over the winter months (including Polderhoek Chateau) had amounted to 3,000, including over 500 killed. (The term ‘casualty’ includes both dead and wounded).

In this battle a particularly gallant incident took place. An enemy strongpoint manned by 16 Germans was proving to be stubborn. The section commander and several men attacking it were killed. Private H J Nicholas then rushed forward, followed by his section, and reached the parapet before the occupants realised it. He shot the platoon commander who confronted him, and with the bayonet and both his own and German bombs lying about. He killed the whole of the garrison single-handed except four wounded whom he took prisoner. Nicholas was awarded the V.C.

January 1918

The Second Canterbury Division doesn’t get a lot of mention in the war

records but we can assume that it was there alongside the rest of the New Zealand division and that Phillip was there with them during the abortive attempt to take the Polderhoek Chateau in those winter conditions, or at least shortly after, in 19/1/18. It would not have been a very encouraging introduction to action in war.

In contrast to this debacle, a Christmas truce tradition was started by the Germans in 1914. Firing stopped in the entire Western Front and the Germans put out little Christmas trees. They sang "Stille nacht, heilige nacht" (Silent night, holy night), while the British responded with "O Come all ye Faithful." (Phillip would have still been at Etables for Christmas).

A British private wrote five pages in pencil on notebook paper. To his mother he writes:

"Dear Mater...the Germans began placing ...lights all along the edge of their trenches and coming over to us - wishing us Happy Christmas....since about teatime yesterday, not a shot has been fired on either side up to now." "After breakfast we had a game of football at the back of our trenches! We've had a few Germans over to see us this morning. They also sent a party over to bury a sniper we shot in the week. He was about 100 yds from our trench. A few of our fellows went out and helped to bury him...About 10.30 we had a short church parade, held in the trench. How we did sing. O come all ye faithful."

The Division was to hold the area over winter until the American reinforcements arrived. A great deal of effort was made to this end in difficult winter conditions. Minor raids and skirmishes by both sides continued, and from time to time artillery fire intensified. There was a great deal of shelling on cross-roads and other centres of activity and there were casualties in rear areas.

There are very few remaining letters from Phillip, so in this article I have quoted from other diaries that can be found online, and from books.

I would recommend that anyone reading this who has computer access to examine some of the stories and film clips in the archives. You will be shocked and amazed to see what the men in the forces went through. I can’t describe it in this article, I wouldn’t even try. Even the sheer numbers of the men is beyond our imagination as country folk.

It was a mammoth task to supply the troops with food and ammunition. Hundreds of trains and trucks were used, the roads and railways quickly deteriorating. There were health issues like ‘trench foot’, in which continual submersion in water in flooded trenches caused gangrene to set in, similar to frostbite. If not treated it could lead to amputation.

One soldier is on record as using some of his rum ration to massage his feet. Navy rum was a lifesaver to soldiers in cold and wet conditions, and it worked on feet as well!

Then there were the rats. Rats were the only thing to thrive on the carnage. They were as big as cats and gorged on human flesh until they could only drag their bloated bodies along.

At this point perhaps one could take a second thought as to the cost of ‘fighting the dragon’.

“Out of its mouth came a rain of lead and steel and it shook its scales so that the whole world trembled at the noise”.

A 21 year old soldier from Carterton has this reflection to make after nine sleepless nights in the front line mud of Passchendaele.

“There are times when one’s mind is filled with the awful waste and desolation that is the essence of war.

Waste of everything. Waste of time, of money, property and lives. The progress of the world is at a standstill, which half the nations are using their brainpower, war power, and money power to exterminate the other half, the world has gone mad!

Surely this fair earth was not created by the Almighty to be torn, shattered and churned to mud by the hell blasting cannon, and fouled by rotting bodies of men killed in their prime. Surely humans were not bought into this world to be disemboweled, torn, shattered, blinded or maimed for life by these man made engineers of destruction“.

A quote from Norman Hutchinson who was in the 29th reinforcements at the same time as Phillip.

“We went up to the front and then we were mostly on working parties carrying ammunition up. You had to take everything up for the line. It took about eight men outside the line to keep one in there. You had the duckboards to work on and everything else was water. The shell holes were all full of water and you had to stick to the duckboards, otherwise you would be bogged down.

But then you used to take whatever it was - ammunition and sandbags and so forth – and leave them so far from the front, and they used to come out at night and get them. There was a sandbag kitchen on the way home, about two-thirds on the way home to the horse lines, and the Salvation Army used to dish out cups of cocoa

for the troops as they came back from near the front.

It was beginning to freeze. You had possies where you slept. All you'd take off would be your boots. And the Germans had a particular type of weapon, the Minenwerfer, a wooden gun which was at a range of about 350 yards. And the thing was, they had eighty pound of high explosive; they had a time fuse on them, so that sometimes they went off before they hit the ground - and sometimes they hit the ground before they went off. And my first introduction to explosions was these Minenwerfer, which seemed to be quite plentiful.

Lice were very much a problem, in that you would come out of the line and you would have a shower rigged up for you; and by the time you got-the soap on they'd turned the water off because they were short of water. And you had to hand in your underclothes, which were all deloused with the candle, and you got new ones when you went out. The only trouble was, the new ones, they didn't come past your knees, very largely.

That was my turn with the infantry. After about a month I shifted I applied for my transfer to the machine guns, which I'd been trained on in New Zealand, and it was granted“. Norman Hutchinson.

THE RAILWAY The Railways

Phillip was in an area that used a system of army railway, which of course was common to most areas, as he related this story to his family:

“We were marching up to the front lines each day, and returning to camp at night on the same route, which followed a railway track used for transportation to the lines. It was similar to a bush railway, and was extended as ground was gained. One day as we marched up we noticed that it had been laid right over the top of the body of a German soldier, his head out on one side of the track and his feet out on the other! On the way home that evening we were not greatly surprised to see that it was still there, but without his boots!”

Military tramways were used to transport the guns up to and through the lines as an advance was made, and also transportation of anything else. Ammunition, food, soldiers and corpses alike were all transported in this way. They were called ‘light’, but that meant in construction, being temporary. Some were the full size of a normal line, and others small like bush tramways, and were rapidly constructed without much ballast, by companies of engineers, working like an ant colony. The Germans also had similar light narrow gauge trench railways…………….An extract from an online war diary says;

“Between us and the battery a railway ran straight up towards Messines Ridge. It was used by one of those big railway guns, which used to slip quietly up during

the night, fire a few rounds and slip down again. On our other side was a light railway on which ran small cars conveying men or ammunition. In front and crossed by both railways ran the main road from Ypres to Lille.

Within the family there is some debate as to whether the account of the German soldier’s body under the railway is fact or fable. I have seen movie footage of engineers laying such track and their work seemed highly organised and professional. It is hard to imagine track being laid over a corpse. One of the uses of those rail systems was to transport bodies back behind the lines for burial, so would a corpse be left lying under the tracks? It was of paramount importance to bury the dead to prevent spread of disease, where access was possible. However it is a certainty that the boots would have been taken. German boots were far superior to British! Any useful item of clothing, or any rations were removed from the dead when expedient. The only safe conclusion we can draw is that these railways existed where Phillip was located.

BUT!……..We are looking from the perspective of people who have never seen war. We rarely even see a dead body unless we are in the emergency services.

It is well documented that these soldiers, many of whom were still in their teens, had fought in conditions where bodies were so thick in and around the trenches at times that it was not possible to move without treading on one. You could fall into an exhausted sleep only to discover when you awoke that you had been lying on, or adjacent to, a dead body. In the extreme conditions of wet bodies were not buried, they just blackened and rotted where they fell, stirred up any shells that should hit them. We can read of liberties taken with dead bodies that would be totally unacceptable today, they were unacceptable then too, but how does a young man process such an assault on their sensibilities? It is no wonder that returned soldiers tended to stick to their own kind, for who else could they unburden themselves too? Yes, unfortunately this account of Phillip’s could be quite true.

GAS WARFARE “The awful dragon blew from its nose poisonous gases”

It was in battles such as these that gas was used. Earlier the French had used tear gas but now both sides developed and used first chlorine gas, an irritant to the lungs, and a poison, next phosgene and then mustard gas. Mustard gas, or dichlorodiethylsuphide, had the effect of covering and blocking any surface that it touched, so that inside the lungs it coated the surfaces that were supposed to absorb air. In effect it drowned the victim without him being under water.

Gas could be released from canisters on the ground or fired from shells. In the latter case they made a gurgling sound as they flew over, and then

cracked like a rotten egg to let the gas out. The smell was not too noticeable until the eyes started to smart and run, then it was too late. Care needed to be used or the gas could drift over your own lines, blown in a breeze.

Even the residue on their boots could be fatal if it was tramped into a dugout. If it contacted the skin it left a grievous burn, especially to the most tender parts of the body, as prisoners of war found out when they were forced to empty gas containers. Gas’s only advantage was that it killed rats too, and any other animal!

Nerve gas was invented by Germany but supposedly never used, although gas symptoms of nervousness leading to extreme agitation, then leading to hallucinations and insanity certainly raised some questions in the victims of gas, however shell shock could account for similar symptoms.

Phillip would have been issued with a gas mask and no doubt would have had to use it at times.

A quote from a war record describes the use of gas:

“Utterly unprepared for what was to come, the [French] divisions gazed for a short while spellbound at the strange phenomenon they saw coming slowly toward them.

Like some liquid the heavy-coloured vapour poured relentlessly into the trenches, filled them, and passed on.

For a few seconds nothing happened; the sweet-smelling stuff merely tickled their nostrils; they failed to realize the danger. Then, with inconceivable rapidity, the gas worked, and blind panic spread. Hundreds, after a dreadful fight for air, became unconscious and died where they lay - a death of hideous torture, with the frothing bubbles

gurgling in their throats and the foul liquid welling up in their lungs. With blackened faces and twisted limbs one by one they drowned - only that which drowned them came from inside and not from out.”

I have heard of instances where in the night the scent of new mown hay, or the stench from putrefying bodies of men or mules had been mistaken for gas by less experienced officers. I can imagine the responsibility which must have weighed on the shoulders of such officers. They had to be alert as the lives of the troops depended on their ability to identify the gas and make the call to don the gas masks. One over-conscientious Australian officer purposely subjected himself to gas so that he could identify it easily. It worked too well and the well meaning chap was invalided home, later to die.

War correspondent Phillip Gibbs says:

“Many times places have been drenched with gas that kills, and soaks down heavily into dug-outs and tunnels, and stifles men in their sleep before they have time to stretch out a hand for a gas-mask, or makes them die with their masks on if they fumble a second too long.

The enemy, who was first to use poison-gas, should wish to God he had never betrayed his soul by such a thing, for it has come back upon him as a frightful retribution, and in Lens, in those deep, dark cellars below the ruins, German soldiers must live with terror and be afraid to sleep.”

THE LETTER

February 1918

In Phillip’s letter to his

brother-in-law, sixteen year old Clarence Eggleton, son of the milling contractor of Bunnythorpe, we can see a glimpse of the horrors of this battle,

but below are some extracts gleaned from a website. (Photo of Clarence’s father’s mill on previous page)

The letter is dated 26/2/18, two days after the order of 24/2/18 to relieve the NZ Division and withdraw to the reserve area at Staple, west of Hazebrouck, (Ypres) for a rest period. The term ‘rest periods’ was something of a misnomer. It just describes periods out of the line. Much time would be taken up in training, inspections and working parties. Especially working parties; making roads, digging trenches – heavy physical work. Soldiers not only risked death and wounds but must have become physically worn out by three or four years of heavy, unremitting toil.

Even though Philip had served only five weeks at the front so far, I can see no reason for him to be at some other place than the rest of the New Zealand Division. However the gunfire which he describes would not have been heard at Staple, it was too far from the lines. The small village of Staple today is shaped like a triangle, with a prominent large church in the centre. Assuming that Phillip was here, this is likely to be the church that he mentions below. (Photo previous page is as close as street view Google Earth can get to it)

February 26th 1918

Dear Clarence,

“Well dear boy, away down under in that glorious little country of N.Z, how are you getting on I wonder. I suppose you are quite a man now, very likely in charge of an engine and boss over a gang of men? But are there any men left there now ? ...... I am writing this in an old barn “somewhere in France”. There are 16 of us billeted in an empty space about 12 by 20. The rest is filled with straw and beans and one or two stock pens and pig pens butt on to it. This is a very old structure is built of neither wood nor brick but of sticky Flanders mud and the roof is a thatch one. There are numerous holes in both roof and walls, for ventilation, I presume, but rather overdone. Outside, some 20 yards from front, is the farmhouse, cowhouse and fowl roost, all under one roof. On the left as we face the house is the stock shed, while the entire space between is taken up by a manure heaps, straw etc, which has been used for bedding stock and which is allowed to rot before being used as manure. It is a pretty little country district here, with little villages scattered about like currants on a cake, only closer together. The people about us are mostly well dressed and respectable looking and go to church on Sunday like decent Christians. On Sunday last I watched them coming out of church and it put me in mind of old times to see them clustered about the church doors, the women gossiping and the men,-- well there were very few men amongst them. We live fairly well just now. We run a mess fund amongst six of us, and buy extras in the shape of bread, butter, milk etc, which on top of our rations makes good living, but don’t the Froggies charge some. Butter is 4/6, eggs 3/6 for 14, bread for 14d a loaf and so on, but we

buy with good grace as long as we have the francs. I expect you wonder what this war is like. I can tell you it is a ding dong sport. For instance last night when we came out from the trenches Fritz was throwing over gas shells by the hundreds, but didn’t get one of us. Our guns throw over a fearful amount of shells and the roar during a strafe is something unimaginable, As for Fritz’s shells, those that burst go off like a boiler that bursts under 200 pounds of steam ! The trenches are warm and comfortable, provided with feather beds and hot and cold water laid on for the bath. Of an evening Fritz entertains us with an overture by his Lewis guns; it is most interesting. Well, I must cease from scribbling now and have a wash. I only have one a day now, and sometimes I miss for six days. Remember me kindly to all, I wish that I were able to see you all again, but this cannot be just yet. Be good old chap, your affec. Bro. Phill

The letter can be divided into three parts. The first deals with the present.

“There are 16 of us billeted in an empty space about 12 by 20. The rest is filled with straw and beans and one or two stock pens and pig pens butt on to it. This is a very old structure is built of neither wood nor brick but of sticky Flanders mud and the roof is a thatch one. There are numerous holes in both roof and walls, for ventilation, I presume, but rather overdone. Outside, some 20 yards from front, is the farmhouse, cowhouse and fowl roost, all under one roof. On the left as we face the house is the stock shed, while the entire space between is taken up by a manure heaps, straw etc, which has been used for bedding stock and which is allowed to rot before being used as manure.”

Phillip was the master of the understatement. ‘Numerous holes rather overdone!’ They were living in quarters vacated by animals, and it was winter! Still, much better than the trenches !

“We live fairly well just now. We run a mess fund amongst six of us, and buy extras in the shape of bread, butter, milk etc, which on top of our rations makes good living, but don’t the Froggies charge some. Butter is 4/6, eggs 3/6 for 14, bread for 14d a loaf and so on, but we buy with good grace as long as we have the francs.”

Somewhat inflated! The prices of butter, bread and milk were about that fifty years later!

On arrival at the front troops were often billeted among the local villagers who were extremely depleted of their menfolk as all Frenchmen of a fighting age had been enlisted. However the girls would take no nonsense from the soldiers. The marching song “Mademoiselle from Armentieres” was written about a mademoiselle that had clobbered a soldier who was making unwanted advances to her. However soldiers were not angels. In Etables there was a whole secure unit that held those who: ‘had engaged with the female public in an inappropriate manner.’ Those held there were

undertaking mercury treatment for VD while serving hard labour. It was not considered acceptable to render yourself unfit for military service in this way!

There are many tales of the kindness of the French. One soldier (not in Phillip’s battalion) was billeted with a toothless old lady in a remote farmhouse. He was coming down with a fever, and despite his protest, she bundled him off to bed and nursed him with the very best of her food and care until he recovered. When he tried to thank her she showed him a photo of a young man who looked very similar to himself. “I should be thanking you,” she said. “This is a photo of my son who was killed by the Germans a few months ago. By you being here you have given me a chance to have my own son back for a few days, so I want to thank you!”

Farming would continue as far as possible, old men, women and children often working within the range of shells and bullets. but eventually farms within the battle zone were abandoned. Crops would be left unharvested and grain sprouted in the silos. Villages fell victim to total destruction, to be left as piles of brick or chalk, only a colour in the ground sometimes. Ancient church spires were the first to go as they provided markers for artillery fire.

A soldier tells of passing through an abandoned farm where there were buckets of fresh milk in the dairy. Impulsively he emptied his water bottle and refilled it with milk. That evening when he was billeting down he noticed two young French refugee girls with a crying baby. He shared his rations with them and then he asked, “What is the matter with your baby?” “The baby is not even ours, we don’t know where the mother is, but right now we need a miracle, we need some milk!” The army lost a water bottle, but the baby got its miracle.

Next Phillip deals with the battle he has just left.

“I expect you wonder what this war is like. I can tell you it is a ding dong sport. For instance last night when we came out from the trenches Fritz was throwing over gas shells by the hundreds, but didn’t get one of us. Our guns throw over a fearful amount of shells and the roar during a strafe is something unimaginable, As for Fritz’s shells, those that burst go off like a boiler that bursts under 200 pounds of steam ! The trenches are warm and comfortable, provide with feather beds and hot and cold water laid on for the bath. Of an evening Fritz entertains us with an overture by his Lewis guns; it is most interesting.”

(Actually a Lewis gun was a British weapon).

Another Soldier's diary record describes it more like this.

“I can feel the guns of that battery in my ears yet. Every time a gun went off it felt like hitting your head against a stone wall. This battle has lasted for days; now it

is again that continuous roar that effaces, or rather, consumes, all individual noises, that makes even fierce explosions close by you indistinguishable. Everything disappears in one loud, rolling, threatening volume of sound. The air carries it a hundred miles distant, and tremblingly they listen, south and north, west and east, where they cannot see the horror of all this.

But if you come nearer, it is like the bowels of the earth exploding. Our soldiers sit in their dugouts, and cannot do anything but trust to luck. Just now the infantry must keep quiet; only the big guns are talking. The waiting infantry is, as it were, locked in prison. The men cannot get out, nor can anybody approach them. The way to them is fraught with fearful danger.

All around spatter steel splinters, shrapnel bullets, stones and earth. If you are hit you are dead or crippled. What shall one do? One smokes incessantly, until the air in the narrow shaft is heavy enough to cut. That is bad, but somehow it helps one to endure the horrors of the situation.

You live for days in the closest contact with your comrades in a contracted space. You cannot move, and are unable to think clearly. Never did I realize how difficult it can be to lead a human life. There is nameless agony in it.

Suddenly there is a terrible explosion quite near you. The earth is moving. Splinters drop from nowhere. Our works have been hit at an adjacent point, but thank Heaven! there are no wounded. Nobody was stationed there when the projectile struck.

There is still another explosion, this time the other side of us. Nine dugouts have been hit and have collapsed.”

There are accounts of machine gun teams who were unable to hear the sound of their own weapons because of the noise of shelling. If the machine gun was vibrating, it was firing.

The percussion, or air pressure caused by explosion, disoriented many men. Others suffered extreme head pain, to the point where they would remove their helmet and look for a wound, but it was all caused through percussion. As a result of being exposed to such conditions there are many accounts of shell shock, deafness, or nervous disorders in which a man would lose his mind and either desert, or perhaps charge out into the line of fire. Many would curl up into a foetal position and just cry. Neurasthenia was not a recognised disorder until the end of the war when returned men became irrational in their behaviour, or had speech loss and similar nervous disorders. A quote from a sufferer from nerve gas and shell shock says:-

“I knew that I had it when I was calling out and so forth. They had a padded cell

which they would threaten to put me in if I didn’t quieten down. I ran a high temperature and they had to feed me milk with a bottle, which I promptly bought back up. I kept seeing this terrier that was chasing a rat in a drain, and every time he barked, I barked.------You follow!? This was delayed shell shock.

A quote from “Boy soldiers at War” Richard Van Emden.

“The lad was on his knees, his back to me, frantically tunnelling with his bare hands into the earth in a futile attempt to escape the mayhem that was developing around us. “C’mon lad!” I shrieked, tugging at his tunic. The young soldier resisted with a strength born of fear. All the time his two hands were clawing feverishly at mother earth. Blind panic had not even allowed his common sense to use his entrenching tool. I pulled him back into the trench. The sight of the lad lying on the duckboard shook me rigid. In less than half an hour his entire head of hair changed from close black to virgin white! The horrendous sight was well nigh unbelievable! The ravages of fear and terror had bleached his young looks in minutes and turned him into a frightful sight of half old and half young. Everyone in the front line knows fear, but to see it visually, so stark, was horrible.”

This boy was 16 years old. Many 16 or 17 year old soldiers, ones who had lied about their age to enlist, would lose their nerve and desert, for which they were court martialed and shot.Age had nothing to do with this incident as many 16 year olds made fine soldiers and leaders while older men were just as able to lose their nerves. Others, not being able to sleep without recurring nightmares just went up the back with a rifle and blew out their brains. This might not happen until years later.

As to the ‘trenches with their feather beds! Hot and cold running water too,’ Yeah right!

There was a constant battle with louse infestation. Every break away from the lines time was spent de-lousing. There were baths for delousing and in one village a large vat in a tanning plant was commandeered for this purpose. Lice were a part of life for the duration of the war.

He has a reference to the future where he wonders if there will be any men left after the war to run the mills of the future. Considering that there were up to eight million lives lost between Germany, Britain, and the allies of each side he asked himself a very good question.

Today, with the interest in ANZAC we are regaled with movies which depict a continuous offensive attack. We tend to think of a war as a continuous engagement in battle, but this is not the true case. The whole army was not fighting in the front line trenches. There were considerable lengths of time, like winter, when offensives were not begun as it would be impossible to

sustain them in the winter conditions. The front lines would always be occupied of course, engaging each other with gunfire. The men did front line duty for four days or so, where they lived in their trenches, on the alert at all times, in action. The second and third trenches were ready at all times to be called up for support. Every few days, depending on conditions, the front line soldiers would be replaced by another lot of men, sometimes fresh, but sometimes as weary as the men they were replacing.

Behind the front lines one of the most difficult problems was boredom. Waiting…waiting… waiting for supplies, the weather, orders, counter orders. Waiting for who knew what?

Most of the time spent behind the lines was used on support work that was needed to keep thousands of men fed and cared for, and for maintenance work. In the battle line, when ordered to dig in, each soldier was expected to dig 9 feet (3 metres) of trench, 5 feet (1.5 metres) deep, 5 feet in width at the top, and 3 feet at the base. This was done with the trench tool, a short shovel with an adjustable swivel where the handle joined the blade. This tool could be used as a shovel, a spade and a pick. The Infantry in particular could be detailed for trench maintenance and construction of underground dugouts or to dig trenches in anticipation of them being needed. Sometimes tank trenches were required, another foot wider, just enough to trap a tank.

Behind the lines there were vast underground dugouts constructed, both on Allied and German sides. These were at times large enough to contain two companies of soldiers, sleeping them on two tier bunks. More than this though sometimes tunnelling was done as a way of infiltrating the enemy line, to mine it, as in the battle of Messines. Tunnelling gangs worked; digging and filling sacks with soil, or sometimes filling a system of underground railway wagons, which would transport the soil to where it was hoisted up with a winch. Gas proof curtains were used. Although the atmosphere was thick with the smell of unwashed warm bodies, it at least was warm and safe, unless an enemy grenade was thrown down! Of course this lead to ‘trench mentality’, where the security of the dugout was something that made the danger of an offensive even harder.

Another common duty was barb wire work where entanglements were laid. Trench maintenance would have been the most common and needful occupation and because of continuous shell fire trenches always need work. As the sides collapsed ‘revetting’ or using framework together with sandbags to build up the sides of the trenches, or duck walk boarding to lay in the bottom of them. Infantry soldiers were seconded to the engineers to labour on the laying of rail tracks, roading, or laying of cable or water pipe. There were burial parties, stretcher bearers, and food, water, or ammunition had to be transported.

OPERATION MICHAEL MARCH 1918 “Hold a little longer, we hear you and are coming in our millions, only hold a little and we shall be with you”.

When the battle between the Russians and the Germans ended, Germany was able to concentrate her whole army in the Eastern front, against the British. It was a last ditch stand and everything was gambled on its success. ‘Operation Michael’, the (German) Spring Drive, was commenced on 21 March 1918, at 4.40 am. Germany had amassed 4,000 field guns, 2,600 heavy guns, and 3,500 mortars, which they used with frightening intensity.

The NZ Division had been engaged in rest and open-warfare training in the Staples area, north-west of Hazebrouck in the Ypres area, but were immediately ordered to entrain about 100 miles south to the Somme area. After many orders and counter-orders HQ NZ Division arrived at Hedauville, a village north-west of Albert, on 26 March 1918.

Operation Michael was Germany’s last chance to win the war. They gave it all they had now that they had the manpower that they needed. The British army, worn out from the battles of 1917, were soon in retreat. This was the drive in which Phillip would have experienced most of his action, and seen the effect of war on the countryside of France.

The very success of the German advance led to their eventual failure as they were stretched to their limits in this drive. Their whole country had been very restricted in food supplies, their army was underfed, and as they advanced they soon came across abandoned British Army food supplies, and even cellars of French wine. Orders were given to shoot holes in any wine barrels found but it was simply impossible to prevent these half starved soldiers from indulging. The Germans were wearing down in their strength and morale and that was enough to slow their progress. They were still able to take ground but they were now beginning to run out of manpower and resources that were needed to hold their ground. By April the battle had retreated to Amiens. It was at this time that the long awaited American army reinforcements joined the battle and now Germany was out numbered.

The battle of Amiens was the turning point, known as the beginning of the ‘hundred days of war’. The town was a vital link for both road and rail. If Amiens was captured, the German aim of pushing the British back into the sea could be achieved. Amiens was defended successfully but at a cost of 22,000 dead or wounded on the Allied side and 27,000 on the German side.

Battle of Amiens The hundred day battle was the drive that reversed the direction of the war. These battles are well documented on youtube and are well worth a look. The distance of the retreat was only about 60 miles, (90k), from Amiens to Le Quesnoy where armistice was signed.

Battles are won or lost in the mind as much as in the muscle, by brain as well as brawn. A new day had arrived where commanders with the previous century’s mentality of “whoever has the most cannon fodder wins”, were being replaced with commanders like Lieutenant General Sir John Monash of the Australian army, who had degrees in engineering, law and arts. Planning was meticulous and the casualty rate was now only a fraction of what it had been. Of course this had to be as there was no longer a limitless supply of volunteers. Only New Zealand and Britain conscripted men and fewer people wanted to be a dead hero! Once the men knew they were winning the pace picked up.

The British, now reinforced by the Canadians, the Americans, and the Australians under Monash, were able to each command a portion of the line and push back the German army, regaining the areas that had been lost over the last few months and gradually forcing the German army to funnel back through Belgium to a surrender.

As Germany retreated from the French towns that they had been occupying they destroyed all that they could to try and slow the British advance. Many of the Germans as individual soldiers had formed good relationships with the local French so they were in a difficult position when ordered to destroy homes and property.

The Germans had occupied the best French homes and commandeered the food of the French for themselves which had not made them popular as an occupying force. Old men and young French girls had been commandeered to German labour camps….. or worse, leaving only women and children to hold the villages together.

The Germans had freely helped themselves to whatever they wanted to furnish their dugouts, and even trucked valuables back to Germany for their private use …. or just destroyed them. The French were now outraged to see their villages totally destroyed.

To quote from war correspondent Phillip Gibbs who interviewed the French after their liberation:

A woman told me, with a quivering rage in her voice, that a German officer rode his horse into her room one day. Another woman showed me the cut down her hand and arm which she had received from a German soldier who tried to force his way into her house at night. Other stories have been told me by women white with passion. Yet it is clear that, on the whole, the Germans behaved in a kindly, disciplined way until those last nights, when they laid waste so many villages and all that was in them.

Strange fellows! Who knows what to make of them? “They were kind to the children … but they burnt our houses." — "Karl was a nice boy. He cried when he

went away. , . But he helped to smash up the neighbours' furniture with an axe." — "The lieutenant was a good fellow . . . but he carried out the orders of destruction."

The battles had bought complete destruction to villages caught in the midst of the battlefield, even to the extent of only some brick coloured soil amongst the shell holes marking the former site of a home or farm. In war everyone is affected.

Therefore the British troops were welcomed as liberators.

The New Zealand Division’s part of this offensive was in the area of Somme. To cover this part of the battle I show a few extracts from The Official War History. These extracts can be referred to at such time when more of Phillip’s action comes to light:

“After 2 sleepless nights, a fatiguing train journey and forced marches, they had been, because of a changed situation, diverted from their pre-arranged assembly areas, and with marked skill concentrated at Hedauville.

Without delay, unit by unit, they had marched into the battle and closed the gap on the Ancre, and won an admirably strong position overlooking the German lines. They had constructed formidably wired reserve trenches through which only a grand assault could hope to break.

Artillery, machine-guns and mortars had been handled with boldness and efficiency, and despite exhaustion and exposure the men in the trenches were throughout cheerful and confident. It is not too much to say that they eagerly awaited an enemy attack, assured of their power to repel it with their Lewis guns and rifles. When they attacked, here and there they had bitter fighting and were foiled, but generally they smote the enemy irresistibly……….

Throughout July and into August the division undertook local operations aimed at deepening its defences in front of Hebuterne, in the course of which the Germans evacuated Rossignol Wood and its adjoining trenches.

By 16 August elements of NZ Div occupied the western part of Puisieux, repelling local counter-attacks. It would be 21 August before a surprise attack by 3rd Brigade took the remainder of the village; a determined counter-attack being repelled the next day

The map on previous page shows the more well known locations mentioned.

Many of the locations of battles are just vague names on a map, small villages which were really only a group of farm houses, or some ridge, hill or spur that was indistinguishable from any other.

Names like Dead Horse Corner, Moated Grange, Stinking Farm, Suicide Corner, Shell Trap Barn, which meant nothing to anyone except the soldiers themselves. On some hillside with a name like Swallow’s, Hell, or Polygon Woods, they would attempt to take ground against German machine gun fire, digging in frantically with their entrenching tools. This is today high density agricultural land, but no part of it was exempted from battle, every acre was effected. Imagine this in our locality, there might well be a battle of Makohine, of Mangaonoho, of Rowe’s Rd, of Vinegar Hill, and the rest of the localities until the defence of the township of Hunterville. The soldiers now were using their own initiative as never before.

The Battle of Bapaume 24th August 1918; The day of two V.C.s

The 1st Wellingtons made the attack with three companies in line, one of which threatened to be hung up by five enemy machine-guns in a line. When 20 yards from the guns, Sergeant J.G.Grant and another soldier rushed the centre post under point-blank fire, and with his men now on his heels cleared it and others to the left and right. The company was now able to occupy its objective.

A section under Sergeant R..S.Judson rushed forward under heavy fire and captured a machine-gun. While they consolidated Judson went alone 200 yards up a sap, bombing two machine-gun crews as he went. Jumping out of the trench he ran ahead of them and standing on the parapet ordered the two officers and ten men to surrender. They fired instead, but he threw a bomb and jumped in and killed two, put the rest to flight and captured two machine-guns. By nightfall Grevillers and Bienvillers were both in our hands. 400 prisoners were taken.

To the south of Grevillers a particular act of bravery took place. Sergeant Samuel Forsyth of the New Zealand Engineers was attached to 2nd Auckland on

probation for a commission. When his company came under heavy fire he rushed three machine-gun posts and took their crews prisoner. Later, in a daring reconnaissance (in which he was wounded) he led a tank towards more machine-guns. When it was put out of action he organised its crew and led them under fire to where those guns could be outflanked. This enabled the advance to continue. At that moment, a sniper killed Sergeant Samuel Forsyth, aged 25 from Wellington, who was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.

Sergeant R S Judson, Sergeant John Gilroy Grant, aged 29 of Hawera, and Samuel Forsyth were awarded the Victoria Cross.

It says a great deal about the level of fighting in which the Division was engaged that three Victoria Crosses were awarded within a week. On the other hand it is sobering to realise that a heroic action such as these, achieved by an adrenalin charged soldier, was to the opposite side, a ‘barbaric and mindless slaughter’.

There are no winners. Perhaps the real heroes of the day were soldiers like a German officer, who in the heat of battle was about to bayonet a British officer. With a silent plea the British officer pulled his family photo out of his pocket. The German was moved to mercy and passed him by, hoping and praying for the rest of the war that his opposition number made it back to his loved ones in the photo.

Within the context of battle though, such daring advances were essential and there are a number of similar events recorded within the Australian division. Once again the battle is in the mind and to see such a conquest made the hearts of the British allies arise with boldness, and the hearts of the Germans faint with fear.

A wise commander would work with the war correspondents to capitalise on the publicity from such heroic acts. This was not for his own ego, but to further encourage the men. It was all battle psychology.

September 1918 During this advance we see from the Wanganui Chronicle that Phillip was wounded at this time.

“6th September 1918; Weston. P., 57289. L-Cpl (Mrs D Weston, Hunterville) Wounded

The actual event was about two weeks earlier on 26/8/18 in the locality of Bapaume. Probably a ‘walking case’ he would have first gone to a Casualty Clearing Station, then after some first aid, would have been taken first by road and then by train to a Field Hospital.

According to his record Phillip was admitted on 26/8/18 to the field hospital at Rouen, about 120 miles (200ks) away, suffering from an injury to his face. The next day he was transferred to Buchy convalescent hospital and he was discharged about three weeks later on 18/9/18, then back at Etables camp where he stayed for 24 days, returning to the Division on 14/10/18.

Field hospital at Rouen

I read an account of a lone Padre in a field hospital who was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of young men, terribly wounded, many about to die. Amidst all this need who should he go to first and what should he say? Apprehensively he approached a young soldier, who wouldn't have been any older than nineteen and was obviously beyond the help of the medics. “Do you have a faith, soldier,” he asked. “Do you believe in God?” The lad was weak through shock, and in pain, but he replied, “I have never given it a lot of thought.” “Have you ever read the Bible?” asked the padre, although he wondered why he bothered, it was hardly likely that this young soldier ever had any reason to do that. “No Padre,” replied the soldier, “I never have and I would have absolutely no idea what is in there.” Desperately crying out silently to God for a clue as where to go next before the soldier slipped away, the padre said, “Can I read you something out of the Bible?” The thought came to him; Proverbs 23 v 26. Quickly he turned his bible to the page and read only half of the verse, which says: “My son. Give me your heart.” The soldier looked quite surprised. “Does the bible really mention me!?” he exclaimed. The padre was not sure how to answer that, so he quickly explained that God knows everyone and loves them, that is why he wants us to give Him our hearts. “Well,” said the soldier thoughtfully, “If God has my name there in the bible and has commanded me to give Him my heart, I want to obey that; how do I do it?” The padre led the soldier though a simple prayer in which he gave his life into the hands of the Lord. Shortly after that, as the padre watched, he slipped away from this world into the care of the Lord whom he so recently had given his heart to. The padre stood up, still wondering what he had said to bring that about. As he turned around to go to the next case he noticed the name tag of the soldier.

His name was George Myson!

(Photo above is of a field hospital and below are Dorothy and Phillip Jnr.)

A card to Phillip from his son at home.

October 19th 1918

Dear Dorothy Just a line to let you know that I am well and am living high in the same village as the last letter was written from. There are a lot of Hunterville boys here now. Brant, Stratford, Able, Roulston (in ambulance) and Spencer Alderson. Sid (Alderson) is out of the line now. I hear he did some very good work up here, crossing and re-crossing a bridge that a whole platoon would not face. What he did was not recognised because of some bungle but his C.O. although for the above reason was not able to recommend him for honours, recognised his work by sending him for a trip out of the line.

Affectionately Phill.

The army records of the above local soldiers show that they were in this area at this time. August to November 1918 or longer. Charles Allen Brant. Hunterville. 2nd NZ Area Camp Coy Wellington Reg Driver for Ellis Brothers.

George Stratford Hunterville. Canterbury Coy Shop assistant for Ellis Brothers.

James David Roulston Hunterville 2nd NZ Field Ambulance Teacher. .

Sidney Martin Alderson Rewa. Farmer.

Spencer Frederick Watson Alderson Rewa Farmer. 18/8/18 Spencer and Sidney Alderson of Rewa where first cousins of Dorothy, and brothers in law to David, Phillip’s brother. Sidney provided a vivid account of the Gallipoli campaign. Unfortunately it’s whereabouts is unknown.

Although there is a Donald and an Alexander Abel on the local war memorial I have not been able to find their records.

August 1918 (Approx) To the family The weather has been bad and it has been raining all day. I have spent most of my time reading. I suppose you and Nell with the two kiddies will go to church in the afternoon. The place must seem horribly quiet to you now that Lew has gone, but no doubt you find plenty to do to keep you busy. I suppose this boy of ours is a handful in himself. At any rate I hope you are both well and Nell and Ray also. From your loving husband, Phillip. (Written at the time that his brother Lew was balloted).

Phillip had been back in the line for about a week when the following action took place.

CAMBRAI. THE FINAL RETREAT OF THE GERMANS.

The attack started before dawn on 23 October and by 0800 hours 42nd Division had secured its objective and the stage was set for NZ Div to pass through. The leading infantry were 1st Otago (right) and 2nd Canterbury (left) who went forward at 0840 hours on a misty morning, made more so by a smoke barrage of over an hour which had been put down on the valley south and north of Verquigneul. There was relatively little initial resistance, even on the railway across the front where several machine guns and 47 prisoners were taken. In Verquigneul hamlet there were many German dead as a result of the barrage. By 1000 hours 1st Otago and 2nd Canterbury had reached their first objective, the Neuville–Escarmain road. The 2nd Otago and 1st Canterbury now came forward to replace them, and the guns took up new positions between Romeries and Verquigneul. In the intervening period aggressive raids had been carried out towards Orsinval and the woods in its vicinity.

The task given to the NZ Division, in what would turn out to be its last major action of the war, was to advance four miles east to establish a line on the western edge of the Mormal Forest, northwards through Herbignies (one mile east of Le Quesnoy) to the Tous Vents cross-roads. Should opportunity offer, exploitation was to be carried out into the forest.

(Painting by George Butler from the National Collection of War Art.)

By 3 November 1918 the line had been advanced a little eastwards by ‘peaceful penetration’. On that date, 3rd Brigade held the whole divisional front, about 2,500 yards. Meantime, back at Le Quesnoy efforts by 3rd Brigade to clear the town had for many hours been frustrated by a tenacious defence and the integral strength of the position. Although the ramparts were obsolete in terms of modern artillery they still presented a substantial obstacle to movement and provided cover from which the defenders brought fire to bear on the attackers.

There was a substantial civilian population still in the town, which had been occupied by the Germans for over four years since 26 August 1914. About 1100 hours three captured Germans were sent in through the Landrecies Gate inviting surrender. There was no reply and enemy fire continued well into the afternoon. At 1500 hours two more German prisoners were sent in and returned to say that the men were willing to surrender but the officers refused. A surrender proposal from the General-Officer-Commanding the New Zealand Division was dropped by aeroplane without result. It was apparent that a conventional bombardment of the inner town within the confines of the high ramparts would cause many civilian casualties. The decision was taken to avoid this.

About 1600 hours in what resembled a medieval coup de main a platoon of the 4th Rifles reached the western bank of the deep inner moat. The final rampart rose before them as an uncompromising cliff of red brick, completely unscaleable except at one spot. Here a 30 feet scaling ladder could just reach the top of the final wall. It was at best a hazardous enterprise but a platoon was detailed to attempt it. Only three or four could ascend at the same time due to the flimsiness of the ladder.

Covering fire was provided to the best extent possible, and on a one-man front (Second-Lieutenant L.C.L. Averill MC), the ramparts were breached. Averill sent a revolver bullet after two Germans fleeing from a bombing post; the remainder of the platoon swarmed up, and then the whole battalion gained entry to the town. The German commander at last recognised a fait accompli and surrendered. 700 prisoners were taken and much material. Phillip 2nd left seated.

On 11 November 1918 on the Armistice the New Zealand Division was for the most part concentrated in the IV Corps rear area at Beauvois-en-Cambresis and Fontaine

TOWARDS COLOGNE November 1918

(Phillip at left of photo) All through the latter period of time the New Zealand division had been steadily advancing, along with the British Allies. They were in the area of Beauvois when on 11th November, Armistice was called.

In effect an armistice is an agreement to cease fire pending a formal agreement of surrender.

December 16th 1918 they began on a march that was to lead them in a path directly to Cologne, through the German border, a distance of 160 miles. The German retreat had left the railway system sabotaged, or unusable. In Cologne they would occupy the city to see that the armistice was adhered to until they were demobilised early from February to March, 1919. The route would take them by way of Soesmes, Bavay, Maubeuge, Thuin, Charleroi, Namur, Huy, Liege, Pepinster, Verviers and Herbesthal, to finish in Cologne.

The men now marched carrying their packs and rifles and were welcomed as liberators all the way through Belgium. Old men and women, overcome by emotion, shed tears as they lined the streets to welcome them. At Charleroi the battalion cooks had no-one turn up for breakfast one morning, such was the hospitality of the locals. All were still out celebrating. At Verviers, a wool manufacturing centre, the New Zealand farmers were welcomed by several wool buyers who had made wool buying trips to New Zealand and Australia before the war, and were eager to see trade start again.

Arriving at Herbesthal the men entrained for the rest of the journey to Cologne; until then the track was not safe, often partially destroyed as a result of the war.

December 1918

Phillip, who had been granted leave for England on 14/11/18, would have joined the forces at this stage, as he returned on 20/12/18. He records on a postcard.. Cologne. 20th Dec. 1918 The entry was lead by the 1st Canterbury Battalion The entraining took three days using 21 trains, which had German drivers and stokers. A train left every three hours and the trip took four hours to complete. By Boxing Day they were in Cologne.

Over the previous weeks thousands of German soldiers had been retreating through this area. Now there were only a few despondent and dishevelled Germans left guarding the border, just waiting to be demobilised. There were hundreds of German trucks and guns abandoned along the way.

On Armistice the newspaper reported:

“The Germans have handed over about 2,000 planes, and the Australian pilots were there to receive them. They were all sorts, from large bombers to small scout planes. There was even a plane that was modified with corrugated (?) iron on the fuselage, for protection as it strafed the trenches. The Aussies lost no time in trying these planes out, amazing the German pilots with their daring and skill. “Thank goodness we didn’t meet you in combat!” was all the Germans could say.”

In fact both sides had daring and skilled pilots. Both sides relied on those small planes for reconnaissance, along with balloons. Fitted with Vickers or Lewis guns, the young pilots strafed whatever they could, often at nearly ground level. Like Snoopy and the Red Baron, only much more serious.

It was unknown what reception the soldiers might receive on entering German territory, some warned that they could be spat upon in the streets, even by children. It may have happened in some instances but generally they were simply ignored. Despite this the German civilians were as pleased to see the end of the hostilities as anyone else as they were at a low ebb, having been chronically short of food.

No-one wants war except perhaps politicians and manufacturers of arms so as time went on the Germans seemed to go out of their way to approach the soldiers, some of them seeking business opportunities after the war. Many of the munitions factories were now being converted to other uses, one factory which had been used to manufacture mustard gas was now producing wire cable.

The New Zealanders were not slow to avail themselves of the chance to explore. There were excursion steamers plying the Rhine which could carry up to 1,000 diggers. Some had already visited Bonn, Coblenz or Brussels.

There were guided tours around the museums, shooting galleries etc. There were cafes, and at night the Grand Opera. It was possible to make up a shooting party to hunt hares, or even deer.

To us this might sound commonplace, but to put it in perspective, I will make this comment.

A man was once shown in a dream firstly Heaven, and then Hell. When asked to describe them he had this to say. “It is all by comparison. If you have seen the horror of Hell, all else is Heaven. Conversely, if you have experienced the joy of Heaven, all else is Hell. But if you have seen both, it is beyond words to describe the difference.”

These soldiers had seen Hell on earth. Many of their mates hadn’t made it through. By comparison they were now in heaven, and making the most of it too!

TO ENGLAND January 1919

Beginning on January 14th the troops started their demobilisation. They left Cologne for Rouen, a sixty hour journey by train. The New Zealand mounted rifles loaded their horses on the train after parading them to the station.

The process took until April as there was a limit as to what the railway could handle. They were moved at the rate of 1,000 men every three days. At Rouen the horses (4,300) were sold, most going to the abattoirs, and all other equipment was disposed of to be used by the occupational forces. I have only heard of two horses that were returned to NZ and they were both returned from Egypt.

It was a logistical nightmare to now get all the troops home, of course they all wanted to go immediately, but many were held in camp until their turn came. It took about 8 months for the total evacuation of all troops. During this time they could take leave.

February 1919

The men were entrained for the port of Le Havre, on their way to England, where Philip arrived on 25/2/19. A week later he was back at Sling, where from there he went to Larkhill, an old airfield that had been converted to an army camp. He may not have realised it but he was not too far in distance from the area from which his forebears came, Steeple Langford (See photo on page 7 for these places)

Phillip sent two cards to his sister, Harriet Young.

Dear Hattie, Arrived here via Cologne, Rouen, Le Havre, Weymouth to this camp on Mar 2. Thank heaven France is left behind. Owing to strikes our boats are all held up. Shall be lucky now if I leave her by beginning of June. Had a rough trip over but good in comparison to some drafts. Go on leave in 5 - 6 days, will try for a month. Billets not good here in comparison to Germany also have to pay for train rides. Weather bad. Phil.

Dear Hattie, I am on leave and doing a flying tour of England, Scotland and Ireland but I find 14 days too short. I have visited Dublin and Belfast and been in many of their factories and am now in Glasgow. I hope to go from here to Edinburgh but my time is getting short. I find the Scottish people most hospitable and the lasses very bonny. I shall send you the English papers you wanted. Phil Salisbury Mar 3 1919

April 1919

According to the cards that he sent to his sister Hattie Phillip arrived at Weymouth on March 2nd, 1919. Weymouth was a coastal military base, and he immediately left there for Salisbury, another military base nearby.

The soldiers were given two months of paid leave at the end of the war, and Phillip took up four weeks of that to tour Ireland and Scotland. There is a letter in existence from him which describes his trip up to Scotland where he visited an Aberdeen Angus stud farm.

May 1919

His leave is recorded in April, then he embarked on the ‘Tahiti’ for the voyage home on 27/5/19. He was finally discharged on 3/8/19.

On returning to New Zealand Phillip farmed at Vinegar Hill, Hunterville, where he raised four children. He died from bladder cancer in 1934 when he was 47. It is sometimes wondered if the strain that these soldiers were under resulted in an early death.

Phillip at least had a home and farm to return to. So many others from farming backgrounds were settled on border line soldiers’ blocks only to have to deal with the great depression 10 years later. Many men suffered from post battle trauma as we now call it. It was a form of depression as they now fought to re-adjust to normal life. It has taken nearly 100 years for us to recognise what these men went through for their country.

I have noticed that human nature doesn’t change too much in war. We have core values that have been instilled in us from childhood. If we are brought up to have faith in God the war won’t usually take it away, neither will war give faith to those who have none. Likewise war doesn’t make us either brave or cowardly, we are one or the other from birth and the war just

reveals what we are. In the stories I have read there are all sorts of people, Godly men stay Godly, and the opposite also stay the same, but have been given an opportunity to consider life and death.

Many people ask, perhaps in half jest, if the British and the Germans were both praying to God for His protection, who would be answered? Whose side was God on? Well, of course God doesn’t side with any particular nation, as none of them fully meet His criteria, but as individual soldiers cry out to Him, He would have responded to them on an individual basis.

All that He requires is our response.

FOOTNOTES

That is all that I have to say about Phillip, although I am sure that more information will be found and added as time goes on. I now want to dedicate a page to the thoughts that have come to me as I have studied the subject of the First World War, which is a new subject to me. I have entitled this account ‘To Fight the Dragon’, which is inspired by Phillip’s letter, but I believe that there is more below the surface of this title than what meets the eye. We could say that every action of man, be it peaceful or antagonistic, is inspired spiritually. The Bible tells us that our battles aren’t against humans, but are spiritual. (Ephesians 3)

We struggle with the global evils of terrorism, the rise of ISIS, the tragic plight of refugees, events in the Ukraine, the deadly Ebola virus, starvation, poverty, the destruction of the environment, corrupt governments and countless other domestic, local and international issues. Besides that we face struggles against evil in our own lives – temptation, sin and addiction.

At the same time as Phillip was fighting in France, the ANZACs, along with Major T. E. Lawrence, (Lawrence of Arabia,) were fighting against the Turks. When Britain gained that area which the Turks had held for over 600 years Lord Balfour declared the piece known as Palestine to be set aside as a homeland for the Jews, who for 2,000 years had been a displaced people.

Why is the existence of the Jews so important, or why do they need a homeland? Well firstly ask why God doesn’t intervene in today’s world?

There has always been a strong school of thought in Christian circles that a time will come when Jesus will return to intervene on earth. Should that happen the place that He is supposed to return to is Israel, and the people He is supposed to use as his chosen helpers will be the Jews, or Israelis.

In order for this to happen Israel firstly had to be re-established as a nation

and occupy their own land. In the 1800’s an organization called the Zionist Movement began to finance Israelis to move back to Palestine, even though it was still under Turkish rule. After the Balfour statement of independence at the end of WW1, Jews began to return in earnest, and in 1947 Israel became a recognised nation in its own right.

Israelis, like any other people, are not perfect but since 1947 they have had to endure a continual harassment from their neighbours. Have you ever stopped to wonder why that is?

Time and again Israel has ceded fairly won land to the demands of neighbouring countries, yet these countries are not satisfied, ….why? Why is it that until recently all the media shows an anti Israeli bias? Or why do some of Israel’s neighbours say that they won’t be satisfied until Israel no longer exists?

Are we are seeing a spiritual battle here, as well as natural one? In Bible times King Herod killed all the baby boys under the age of two in order to try and kill Jesus. He unconsciously recognised that Jesus had a spiritual value of far greater significance that just the average Jewish baby.

Why did Hitler want to exterminate the Jews? There is a German war cemetery in France that has 12,000 Jews buried there that gave their lives to defend Germany. Yet in the next world war they were being sent to the gas chambers!

We see then that there are nations that subconsciously don’t want a people or a place for Jesus to come and reign as king…….Do we ourselves want Him?

If I told you that the Devil prowls around like a lion, seeking whom he may devour you possibly would laugh at me, yet that is what the bible says, and I think that there is plenty of evidence to support it.

War is never going to be desirable, it has a huge cost, but I wonder sometimes if there isn’t an agenda that is yet to be revealed. Will one day those old bible predictions be fulfilled?

Phillip was fighting the dragon but the dragon was more than just the German army. Perhaps the dragon was Satan himself.

Peter Weston 2011

Sources… NZ army personnel records See page one.

From Bapaume to Passchendaele, by Philip Gibbs Click here

The New Zealand Division, by John Gray Click here

THE DRAGON. By Phillip Weston.

Once upon a time there lived a small and young dragon in a country far across the sea. It was very ugly and most cruel and loved to catch little children and their mothers to eat.. Because it ate so many it grew longer and more ugly. It grew five heads with five thousand eyes in each so that it could see everything in the whole world without turning. None of the heads slept at the same time, so that it’s beady eyes were always watching for some fresh food to devour. It’s body grew five miles long, covered on the top with iron scales, and on the underside with silk. It walked on two hundred short legs, so short indeed that it could only waddle and drag its body over the ground. It’s feet were padded with rubber, but of the same shape of those of a hawk, except that it had ninety nine claws on each foot, and each one was of steel.

It’s tail grew to be three hundred miles long and was covered with scales like the body, tapering at the end to a sharp, steel like sword with a sting in the tip, which it slew it’s victims before devouring them.

Now this monster had devoured all the people in it’s own country and it saw with its 2,500 eyes, many countries over the world where there was much food, and all the eyes of each head looked into the eyes of the other as if to say; “We will go and devour all that is before us and grow longer and fatter, so that we shall cover the whole earth.”

So it crossed into the next country, crawling softly on its feet of rubber and its silken belly so that no-one heard it coming, until all at once this awful dragon blew from its nose poisonous gases and short flames of fire from its eyes. Out of its mouth came a rain of lead and steel and it shook its scales so that the whole world trembled at the noise. The country before it was devoured, even those who had escaped the gas and the flames and the shower of lead and iron were killed with the sword on the tail of this monster.

Now the people of the world heard this terrible noise and the screams of the woman and the children and the groans of the men, and said; “We will go forth and destroy this monster or it shall grow and fill the whole earth, we shall burn out its eyes and tear the five heads from it’s body, and cut off the sword from it’s tail so that it shall kill and devour no more.”

So they banded themselves together, all the bravest and strongest from the four corners of the earth. They left their comfortable homes and their fathers and their mothers and came together’ saying; “We shall avenge those who have been destroyed, and our battle cry is FREEDOM!”

They clothed themselves in simple armour and went forth and met the dragon as it came on its way devouring and destroying.

Now when this vile beast saw them coming at a distance, it said within itself; “Behold, this is the army of the people of the whole earth, I shall come upon them and destroy them and sprinkle the blood of them upon my body, and I shall grow and occupy the whole earth. The people shall be my slaves and I shall be their saint.”

So the terrible dragon came on and the thunder of its coming filled the whole earth. It shot daggers of light from its thousands of eyes. A hail of steel and lead came out of the mouth of each of its five heads. Its sword pointed tail lashed hither and thither, seeking a victim, while with its feet it endeavored to drag all life under and tear them to pieces.

Now the army of the world was sore pressed, many were destroyed, but fell crying; “I die for freedom!” Their last breath formed the word “Freedom”.

Nor could they pierce the hide of the beast because of the iron scales which blunted their weapons and broke them, but a few succeeded penetrating beneath the scales with long shafts pointed with steel, and a few of the very bravest got as far as tearing out some of the eyes of one head, and then fell, breathing with their last feeble breath the word; ‘FREEDOM’.

And the beast turned aside from the pain of its wounds. Even as it turned the armies of the world reformed themselves in strong lines across it’s path, at the same time crying; “Come on you men of the earth and help us destroy this creature, for it presses us sore, and if you come not it shall trample and devour you”.

And even as they spoke the beast turned upon them again in greater fury and it dashed hither and thither against their lines, scattering death and destruction all around. But although the army of the world sweated in agony and groaned in distress, they held fast.

Now when the people gathered all over the earth heard the thunder of battle, and the last word of the fallen was born to them, and the cry of agony came from the suffering army, they gathered themselves together, all the free men, both strong and weak, crying; “Hold a little longer, we hear you and are coming in our millions, only hold a little and we shall be with you”.

So the people toiled night and day building great iron devices………. End