"Where are we now..."

"Peace is the chief of all the world's wealth..." John Gower (1330-1408)

Chaucer's mate knew something about war. Gower was only 7 years old when the "war to end all wars" of his generation started, and peace only returned to Europe nearly half a century after his death. 71 of his 78 years on this Earth had been spent in a country at war with its nearest neighbour, France.  The so called Hundred Years War may not be a subject that is often brought into everyday conversation (!), but the dark days leading up to 1939 are, at present, often revisited. The Trump presidency, with its love of autocratic diktats, the rise of right wing parties, the rhetoric of division - all this is offered as proof that we are under threat from a new wave of dictatorships. Alt-Right is just a geekish version of Fascism. With the KKK crooning over Trump, and our own EDL in Brexit Wonderland, there is little doubt that we are in difficult times.

The key thread for us to understand is that this carefully marshalled populist tide is aiming to wash away the bulwarks that have been constructed during the 20th century - bulwarks that keep us in the calm waters of the harbour. Steve Bannon, Trump's muse, is a pirate. Famously, he expressed the desire to "destroy the state". He wants those separate countries out of the safety of the harbour, out on the high seas, where he can bully them at will.
When he says "the state" he means big institutions such as Trade Areas and the EU. Institutions that have the clout to stand up to bullies. Hence the Alt-Right's "populism". It is a means to an end, rather than a misty-eyed belief in Nationhood. But you only have to look at the way the UK is slipping towards some chaotic break up to understand that this is one genie that is extremely unlikely to go back into the bottle quietly. Bannon would look at where the UK is right now and nod approvingly.

Purely on an academic level, my own opinion is that we are in a situation more akin to the build up to WW1 than WW2.The build up of tensions on the road to war in 1914 was all to do with a mad scramble for power between increasingly nationalistic states. The militarisation of the conflict was, to some extent, inevitable. The Kaiser's advisers pushed Europe to the brink of war because they believed that that was the way to get what they wanted. The suspicion is that President Bannon's foreign policy will be no more than a series of set plays, a study in brinksmanship in Iran and the South China Seas. Meanwhile, Putin will make inroads into the Baltic states and Ukraine. Almost as if it's co-ordinated. As if someone's made a deal. A great deal.

As a Tour Guide who spends a lot of time (my family would say way too much...) in the cemeteries that are dotted around Ypres and the Somme, I am perhaps acutely aware of just how dangerous this Alt-Right game could be. One of the key questions I'm asked quite often is a disarmingly simple one - "Could this happen again?" Up till this last summer I've been able to answer with some confidence. "No. Because we're all Europeans now." Now, when that question is posed, I'll look out across the 13,000 graves at Tyne Cot Cemetery and gaze towards the distant spires of Ypres. I'll shrug my shoulders. Because I really don't know anymore. One thing is certain - politicians who talk loosely about going to war are guilty of wilfully ignoring any lessons of history. To go to war is the sign that a foreign policy has failed, not an end in itself.

So here in Europe, watch out for Bannon's new Breitbart offices in Berlin and Paris pouring  out their bile in the direction of any non right wing candidate. Expect revelations on Macron and Merkel, mostly #fakenews, chipping away at the poll numbers. Make no mistake, the demise of the EU is a major target. Sadly, it might be worth remembering that the symbol of our eventual demise at the end of the Hundred Years War was the loss of Calais. Five centuries later, our retreat from the continent might be the first step towards a different, but no less significant, defeat.

Remembering Sub. Lt. A.F. “Snowball” Wolfe (1897-1917)

 

Adapted from a chapter in The Stormy Blast (published by Natula)

 

Head Boy Arthur Wolfe was fresh out of King Edward VI School, Southampton in May 1915, and was on the beaches and cliffs of Gallipoli by the autumn. His Science teacher at the school, Owen Hobbs, had also joined the Royal Naval Division, and their paths would have crossed at Blandford, where the RNVR trained. Wolfe’s experience of war against the Turks was relatively short lived. Like so many others in that disastrous campaign, he was invalided out of the front line with dysentery, and was so ill that he did not return to active duty for a whole year. By the time he was in France at the end of 1916, the Battle of the Somme had accounted for many of the faces he would have been familiar with at Blandford – including Owen Hobbs.

 Wolfe and his colleagues were charged with the task of pushing on towards Miraumont, a village that the “Big Push” had failed to take in the summer campaign. To the north, the village of Serre also remained in German hands despite all the men and high explosives that had been thrown against it, but the fortress village of Beaumont-Hamel had fallen in the late autumn of 1916. Haig hoped that a move towards Miraumont would leave the German flanks on both sides of the valley exposed, so forcing a withdrawal. The Naval Division found the ground still wrecked from November’s actions, and the trenches needed some reconstruction work. The artillery had wiped any distinguishing features from the landscape, so movement at night became doubly difficult. The front line was often just a series of shell holes occupied by a small group of men. Any activity during the day, such as movement between shellholes, or further digging, would draw the inevitable rounds of German artillery. Troops just lay there, frozen and exposed on the side of the hill above Beaucourt. A little way to the north of Wolfe’s position, the Manchester Regiment lay in shell holes above Beaumont Hamel, and 2nd Lt Wilfred Owen used the whole terrible experience for his poem “Exposure”. The Nelson War Diary makes references to two Germans being shot when they appeared to be completely lost, and a German mail bag being recovered, perhaps simply dumped in the wrong place. The Diary states “Enemy observed at distances varying from 200 to 1000 yards.” For Wolfe and the new recruits, this was not the landscape they had expected to find.

At the end of January, 1917 the Nelson Battalion had moved back behind the lines, staying at billets in Forceville. By now, they would have been aware that there was (another) Big Push coming along, and that they would be heavily involved. They were issued with new box respirators, and inspected by the Brigadier on the last day of January. In frosty, bright conditions, they marched back to Beaucourt, taking up their positions to the north of the river on the 1st of February. New recruits and veterans alike knew the score – that no man could expect to come out of two successive Somme battles without an injury of some sort. Would they strike lucky, and get a “Blighty One”?

The initial objective was the German  trench on the ridge above Grandcourt, an attack launched at 11pm on the 1st of February. Wolfe’s unit was in reserve on this occasion, with the first wave made up of men from Hawke and Hood Battalions. The whole attack was to cover a total of less than 500 yards, but it was to take place over difficult terrain in darkness.

Initially, the attack made quick progress, with the German first trench taken. There was, however, a German machine gun strongpoint which caused the first wave some problems. The attackers on the 13th of November had seen such strongpoints cause terrible casualties (Owen Hobbs included) so officers attempted to get their units round them. Unfortunately, there was confusion, and the attacking line lost its direction. The Hood units lost contact with the advancing Hawke Battalion, and the strongpoint made it impossible for the Nelson Battalion, now called into the fray, to put some order into the line by linking up with the Hawke’s left flank. The fighting became bogged down, with the junction between the Hawke and Nelson units pinned down by the German machine gunners.

On the 4th February, 1917, Arthur Wolfe was killed in an attack that finally overpowered the strongpoint. Reports had told HQ that the problem was being caused by a machine gun in a shell hole, but it transpired that they had been facing a concrete dug out with a garrison of thirty two men. Wolfe was one of 24 officers and 647 men killed over the four days in this small corner of the Somme battlefield. From the time he had arrived in France, he had lasted just over the average of 6 weeks as a young officer.

Wolfe’s body was described as having been “buried where he fell”, on the uplands above Grandcourt. His is one of the 73,000 names on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing. Sir Edwin Lutyens’ massive open air cathedral to the lost souls of the Somme dominates the skyline, and it is the first thing to catch the eye to the south from the fields where Wolfe’s body still lies.

Back home, his old Headmaster James Fewings would have been grief stricken to hear of the loss of his Head Boy. He resigned from his post at the end of the war, having spent four years anxiously scouring casualty lists, and hearing of the news of 50 of his old charges who would never return.  He used his final speech as Headmaster to announce the setting up of a Wolfe Prize. It may well be that for the old man, the loss of “Snowball” Wolfe was of symbolic importance. The Wolfe Prize, perhaps, was set up in memory of all those fresh faced young men who marched away.