What is America to me?

As the newly inaugurated President Trump repeated the words “America First”, I thought of the immaculate white crosses above Omaha Beach in Normandy. Their beautifully tended cemetery above the DDay landing sites are testament to the fact that eventually all of us have to face the fact that we are citizens of a big wide world, a world that faces common problems that require collaborative efforts. America would not have defeated Fascism by repeating Trump’s mantra. 

In June of 2019 Single Step Tours helped the Honors College at the University of Wyoming construct a tour of the battlefields of northern France. We met up in London, and caught a ferry to Caen in bright sunshine. Three nights in Bayeux gave us the opportunity to explore the DDay battlefield in some detail, but perhaps the strongest impression on the students was when we stood on the sandy beach and looked up at the bluffs. In that moment we shared the perspective of those brave young soldiers  as they emerged from their landing craft on that fateful morning. It was experiential learning at its most powerful.

The tour moved on to the WW1 battlefields. The poetry of that war was shared and reflected upon in the fields of the Somme, where in 1916 the world began to see what industrialised warfare was capable of. We were also able to look at the challenges faced by nurses and doctors in these horrific circumstances. 

The last leg of the tour took us to Dunkirk, where 338,000 British soldiers were rescued from the beaches and returned to the U.K. in 1940. Hitler’s Blitzkreig had won a battle, but the successful evacuation played an important part in ensuring that the forces of liberal democracy would win the war. The view across the beaches was the ideal setting for a more general reflection on warfare in the 20th century. What causes war? Why fight? Most importantly, how should the lessons of the 20th century guide us through the 21st? 

The students and faculty of the University of Wyoming were thoughtful, open minded people who brought a variety of disciplines to the mix. Their contributions to the discussion on the ferry home showed that the whole experience had a profound impact on them. It was a reminder to me of why the battlefields are the best classroom a teacher could wish for, and why I do what I do. 

“What will survive of us is love...”

Working on a book about Welsh rugby star Charlie Pritchard has brought this line of Philip Larkin’s to mind more than once. 

Charlie was killed after leading a trench raid in August 1916, and now lies in a CWGC Cemetery at Chocques, near Béthune. A famous rugby international in his day, Charlie had been a firm favourite of the fans at Rodney Parade, where he led a ferocious pack of forwards in the famous Black and Amber shirt of Newport RFC. It would have been no surprise to people in his home town that he had shown such selfless leadership on the Western Front. For years after his death, his daughter would be greeted by strangers in the street, all wanting to tell her that her father had been a great man. More than just a rugby player.

Charlie’s family, of course, were well aware of that. His wife Florence was forever unable to face the day of his death, the 14th of August. Her children recalled that she would cut a bloom from Charlie’s rose garden and place it in a vase in the centre of the dining room, then retire to bed for the rest of the day. Her daughter Violet, born a few weeks after the death of Charlie, came to dread the 14th August every year, when the family’s wound would open once more. Violet died in 1985 - on the 14th of August. 

Walter Martin (Newport RFC and Wales)

On 3 May 1933 friends and family gathered at a graveside in Newport, South Wales. Thousands had lined the streets as the funeral cortège climbed the hill to the church. All were united by a desperate sense of grief and guilt.
Walter Martin had been diagnosed with cancer and had been recovering at Saint Woolos Hospital but mental instability had plagued his recovery. His family had even removed disinfectant from cupboards, so worried were they that Walter would kill himself. Close friends were also aware of the danger and visited him daily.
There was an impressive collection of Welsh sporting celebrities at the funeral. One of these was Tommy Vile, Walter Martin's partner in the Newport rugby side, a man whose leadership and tactical nous turned a clever but sometimes frustratingly inconsistent player like Walter into a man who managed to represent his country, a shredder of opposition defences who accumulated over 300 points for Newport. Elusive and brave, he had played a key part in the famous 1912 defeat of the plegendary Springboks. By 1933, however, Walter was a pale shadow of his former self, a gifted sportsmen fallen from grace.
Like so many men of that era his sporting career was cut short by the declaration of war in 1914. Walter, along with many fellow members of the Newport club, joined the South Wales Borderers. The misfortunes of war led Martin and his pals to Salonica. Not as famous a front as the Somme or Ypres perhaps, but the British Army alone lost over 10,000 men in this often forgotten corner of the Great War.
At the Battle of Doiran Walter Martin's bravery and leadership lead to the award of the DCM ( Distinguished Conduct Medal). The citation described Walter as "totally regardless of danger" as he rescued a wounded man under shellfire and carried him to the safety of the Allied trenches.
The four years lost to war robbed Walter and so many others of precious time when he was at the peak of his athletic powers. It may well be that the war had damaged him for ever, as his mental health deteriorated after he finished playing in 1921. His family and friends had to endure the view from the front seats as the tragedy of Walter Martin's last act unfolded. He was found dead in his room at the hospital having strangled himself with a scarf on 30th April 1933. Although Walter had left the trenches fifteen years back, he was as much a victim of the war as the men who had never returned home.

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.

 

 

Walter Martin

On May 3rd 1933 friends and family of Walter Martin gathered at a graveside in Newport, South Wales. Thousands had lined the streets as the funeral cortège slowly climbed the hill to the church. All were united by a desperate sense of grief and guilt.

Walter had been diagnosed with cancer and had been treated at Saint Woolos Hospital but mental instability had plagued his recovery. His family had even removed disinfectant from cupboards, so worried were they that Walter would kill himself. Close friends were also aware of the danger and visited him daily, hoping that he would see a light at the end of the tunnel. 

There was an impressive collection of Welsh sporting celebrities at the funeral. One of these was Tommy Vile, Walter Martin's partner in the Newport rugby side, a man whose leadership and tactical nous turned a clever but sometimes frustratingly inconsistent player like Walter into a man who managed to represent his country. He built a reputation as a shredder of opposition defences and accumulated over 300 points for Newport. Elusive and brave, he had played a key part in the famous 1912 defeat of the legendary Springboks. By 1933, however, Walter was a pale shadow of his former self, a gifted sportsman fallen from grace. 

Like so many men of that era his sporting career was cut short by the declaration of war in 1914. Walter, along with many fellow members of the Newport club, joined the South Wales Borderers. The misfortunes of war led Martin and his pals to Salonica. Not as famous a front as the Somme or Ypres perhaps, but the British Army alone lost over 10,000 men in this often forgotten corner of the Great War. 

At the Battle of Doiran Walter Martin's bravery and leadership lead to the award of the DCM ( Distinguished Conduct Medal). The citation described Walter as "totally regardless of danger" as he rescued a wounded man under shellfire and carried him to the safety of the Allied trenches.

The four years lost to war robbed Walter and so many others of precious time when he was at the peak of his athletic powers. It may well be that the war had damaged him for ever, as his mental health deteriorated after he finished playing in 1921. His family and friends had to endure the view from the front seats as the tragedy of Walter Martin's last act unfolded. He was found dead in his room at the hospital having strangled himself with a scarf on 30th April 1933, perhaps as much a victim of the war as any of those men who lie in the immaculate CWGC cemeteries.

98 years on...

98 years after the guns fell silent on the Western Front I find myself thinking of the 3500 US troops killed or wounded on that morning despite the fact that the generals knew that the armistice had been signed at 5am. The assaults on German positions continued right up to the designated 11am end to hostilities. Later, Congressman Fuller asked "Black Jack" Pershing if American lives had been "needlessly wasted" that morning.
Up at Compiegne, the German delegation had been startled by Foch's intransigence. His Gallic shrug and level stare was the response of a man who had seen his country bleeding to death over the course of the 4 years. "Tell these gentlemen that I have no proposals to make" he said, and waved them away.
No proposals, perhaps - but plenty of demands. German troops were to leave France, Belgium and Luxembourg. They were also to return Alsace Lorraine to France - that old wound had barely dried since the Franco Prussian War nearly 40 years back. France and its Allies were out to ensure that Germany would never be in a position to cause trouble again.
But as every History student knows, the severity of the peace treaty at Versailles did much to guarantee that there would be future conflict. It provided fertile soil for the growth of the Nazi Party in the succeeding decades, and the bitter crop was harvested in the self same railway carriage in Compiegne in 1940.
Those History students will be asking some big questions today.
They will see that we descended into World War in 1914 and 1939 because the world order was unstable, and it was challenged by ultra nationalists. Vast economic forces, barely understood at the time, caused tensions inside countries, and beyond their borders. These were exploited by political chancers who had little real understanding of the demons that they were unleashing on the world.
So - big questions...

Wilfred Owen

It was on this day - November 4th, 1918 - that the poet Wilfred Owen was killed leading his men in an attack across a canal near Ors. The war was in its final few days, and the 25yr old's parents took delivery of the dreaded telegram as the church bells were ringing out to celebrate the end to four years of hostilities. There is a link to his poems here - opinion may be divided as to how representative Owen was of the typical WW1 officer, but there can be no doubting the power of his verse, nor the extent of his influence on our own perception of the conflict. The poetry, he said, was in the Pity...

The canal bank nr Ors, where Owen was killed on Nov 4th 1918

Somme Burials

Piece from Times here

Work on site at La Boiselle, Summer 2013

Customised Tours this month

Much of September was spent on the road, with two big bespoke tours here in the UK and Ireland. Both itineraries started and ended in Heathrow, but followed slightly different trajectories.
The first was a two week cultural tour of Wales and Ireland, staying on Cardiff Bay, Dylan Thomas' Laugharne, Dublin, WB Yeats' Sligo, Snowdonia and Shakespeare's Stratford-upon-Avon.
The second tour was with a party of just over 20 people, staying in hotels at Bath, Cardiff and London. Again, the focus was on the cultural and historical sites that make the UK such a popular destination. Are we Brits guilty of taking what we have for granted?

 

On Tour

Le Tour is the biggest event in France. A sporting public still raw from the disappointment of defeat by Portugal in Euro 2016 gathered in huge numbers to cheer the riders on. On Mt Ventoux, the enthusiasm of those crowds caused a crash that will go down in Tour folklore, as Sky's Chris Froome decided against waiting for a spare bike to be delivered and started running up the infamous slope.
Chaos and controversy have never been far away from this famous race. The winner of the inaugural Tour in 1903, Maurice Garin, was subsequently banned for two years for cheating in the 1904 Tour, effectively ending his career. The circumstances surrounding Garin's ban are still shrouded in mystery, with the Tour de France archives lost after the Nazi invasion of 1940.
Known as "The Little Chimney Sweep", Garin was born in the shadow of Mont Blanc in the Aosta valley in Italy. His family illegally crossed the Alps to France to look for work in the North, and there was a story of little Maurice being smuggled in by a local trafficker/guide in return for some local cheese. After working as a chimney sweep in Reims, Maurice Garin moved to Lens and opened a bike shop.He only returned once to his birthplace in Italy to see the 1934 Tour pass through his home town. It is perhaps interesting in a modern context to remember that he would always see himself as a Frenchman. A properly controlled border would have seen his family staying south of Mont Blanc, and Garin riding for Italy. Much more likely, his impoverished family would never have got within touching distance of a bike.

That Inaugural Tour of 1903 included a mammoth 471km stage from Nantes back to Paris, where Garin was crowned as the victor by a winning margin that still stands as a record - 2hrs 59minutes and 31 seconds. It makes Chris Froome's 2016 winning margin of 4 minutes and 5 seconds look a little less comfortable than it appeared to be. Whatever Garin (and several others) did to justify a ban a year later, there were no doubts raised as to his supremacy in 1903. The Little Chimney Sweep had swept all before him.

This year I took the opportunity to see the Tour as it played out its dramatic final scenes in the mountains around Mont Blanc. The whole event is pure theatre, from the moment you settle into your chosen viewing point to the last view of the exhaust pipes of the team cars. An hour or so before the riders are due to pass, a carnival of all shapes and sizes rolls by, firing various freebies at the crowd from sponsors - dishwasher samples, Madeleines, baseball caps and sausages. Then there is a distant thumping of the hoardings, away round the bend from your chosen stretch of road, and a rider appears, hunched over his handlebars, on a desperate quest for glory. The fizz of tyres on Tarmac, flashes of lycra'd colour, and a great rush of air that follows the back of the peloton as it pursues the leader.


This sequence is repeated over three weeks every summer. Sometimes you're lucky enough to see it live, but TV coverage makes it almost impossible to miss it. For the French, in a world stripped of certainties, it is a constant image in their sporting and cultural year. Reading about an aged Catholic priest having his throat cut at the altar of a church in a sleepy French village will only make them tighten their grip on such certainties. A man at the wheel of a lorry, drunk on the propaganda of a death cult, will not stop their Bastille Day.

2016 has raised questions about the UK's certainties. Are we "European" any more?
An early test - and perhaps an insight into what it means to "Brexit"- came with the huge queues at the Border Control gates at Dover. Brits, of course, are known for their patience in line. It is a national pastime to rival the Tour.The writer George Mikes once noted that "An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one". But 10 hours in a car with screaming children will have stretched the mental resources of the hardiest Brit. There would have been no point suggesting to those folks that the French, faced with the atrocity at Nice, were simply "Taking Back Control" of their borders.

Brexit raises many many issues for those of us who are dependent on travelling to the EU without undue hassle. Tourism between France and the U.K. is important for both economies. It was noticeable in recent days that there were large numbers of UK fans watching the Tour, encouraged by the success of Messrs Wiggins and Froome. Both countries would be the poorer if Brexit meant us retreating across the Channel.

For Single Step Tours, it is in the main UK visitors who travel to France and Belgium to see the WW1 battlefields. Brexit will not stop people wanting to make those pilgrimages. For me, however, there is a sense that the game has changed. When we stop in a vast space such as the Tyne Cot Cemetery on the Passchendaele Ridge outside Ypres, surveying 13,000 headstones, I am invariably asked "Can this happen again?"
My automatic reply before June 23rd ?
"No - because we're Europeans now"
So much better as an answer than a vague shrug of the shoulders and "I don't know".

Summer Plans

  "Education is not the filling of a pail, but rather the lighting of a fire..."

The words of WB Yeats always struck me as one of the wisest, but most widely ignored things ever said about education. This summer a Single Step Tour will give me the opportunity to visit his grave in County Sligo to pay my respects to one of the great names of Western civilisation.

The bespoke cultural tour will start with a Heathrow pick up, followed by a drive to Cardiff, where there will be some family roots to uncover. After a stay at the beautiful St David's Hotel on the Bay, we will drive to Laugharne. A night of "Poems and Pints" at Dylan Thomas' favourite watering hole, Brown's Hotel should get us in the mood for a day spent around the Welsh wizard's home town.

A crossing from Fishguard to Rosslare takes us next to the Emerald Isle. First up, a stay in Dublin, where we can sample the delights of Temple Bar, as well as retrace the steps of the Easter rebels of a hundred years ago. Our base will be the Grand Canal Hotel

Then the pilgrimage to Yeats country - with a visit to his grave and a trip to the mythical The Lake Isle of Innisfree

The route back to Heathrow will take us back over to Wales - North wales this time, where we will spend some time at Portmeirion and Snowdonia as well as studying the work and creative environment of another Thomas - the priest poet, RS Thomas.

A day and night at Shakespeare's Stratford rounds off a busy few days for the "pilgrim souls" on this bespoke tour...

In Memoriam Fred Spencer, RFA.

Fred and his sister were orphaned at a young age, their Salvation Army parents struck down by illnesses contracted ministering to the poor in the city of Birmingham. Brother and sister were looked after in different but related households, the only alternative to the dreaded workhouse.

Fred joined the Royal Field Artillery, and arrived in France in the spring of 1915. He lasted until the preparatory phases of the Third Battle of Ypres, otherwise known as the Battle of Passchendaele. At the start of June 1917 he was wounded in action, and taken to one of the field hospitals at Lijssenthoek, just outside Poperinge. He succumbed to his injuries on June 3rd.

His sister's grand daughter visited his grave on the 22nd March 2014, the first member of the family to do so, as a bespoke trip with Single Step Tours. We discovered that his sister had paid some money to include an epitaph on his grave stone - "Peace after Pain". Only the two siblings could possibly appreciate the truth of that statement.

 97 years after his death, Fred's photo and details on the Visitors Centre database are now there for eternity. Lest We Forget.