Fred Saunders in
football kit in 1920

Corporal Harry Lovell rejoined
his regiment after
being wounded

George Thomas Wheeler Collins in later life

Phillip Campion, torpedoed again

.

100 Hundred Years Ago – April and May 1918

At Home

The two spring months of April and May, a century ago, seem to have been fairly uneventful in Bugbrooke. Thankfully no more of its young men were killed at the front. The School Log records little. The school reopened on 8th April after the Easter holiday, a delivery of coal (ordered on 7th March) finally arrived on 19th April, and the School closed again from 17th to 27th May for the Whit holiday.

In the Ambler family, 18 year old Percival Evelyn AMBLER graduated from his basic training with the Royal Fusiliers and was appointed acting lance corporal on 5th May. About the same time his older brother, Harry James AMBLER, was on his way back to the war in East Africa after having been invalided home with a sprained knee.

Harry George LOVELL, who had recently rejoined his regiment (Scots Guards) after being wounded, was promoted to corporal on 16th May. Harry William TURLAND (a former railway man who had served as a sapper in the Royal Engineers) was discharged from service due to sickness on 28th May. George Thomas Wheeler COLLINS, aged just 19, was appointed to a commission in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment on 29th May, becoming one of Bugbrooke’s few commissioned officers. After a period of garrison duty in Dover he was to arrive in France just 5 days before the armistice.

On the Western Front

However if Bugbrooke was uneventful, all was certainly not quiet on the Western Front. This was the time of Germany’s Spring Offensive. The first phase of that, Operation Michael, was described in the last article. The final German attack in that offensive took place on 4-5th April (the Battle of Avre) with British and Australian forces halting further enemy advance towards the town of Amiens. The Germans then however mounted a second offensive known as Operation Georgette (or sometime as the Battle of Lys). The offensive started on 9th April in the northern part of the front where the German plan was to break through the allied line and drive west to the English Channel, cutting off the British forces from their supply line, which ran through the ports of Calais, Dunkirk and Boulogne. It was a bold plan which came close to succeeding. By 11th April the British situation was desperate causing Haig to issue the following stirring appeal:

“There is no other course open to us but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man. There must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end.”

Ultimately the British forces, with some later support from French troops, did thwart the offensive, but as always with heavy losses on all sides. One point of interest is that fighting alongside the British was a division of Portuguese troops, who were overrun on the first day of the offensive, despite some acts of great individual bravery.

The Germans launched a third Spring Offensive towards the end of May. This was further south against mainly French forces.  Called the Third Battle of Aisne it was to bring the Germans within 35 miles of Paris before it was halted.

The 28th May saw the first major battle for American troops. This was the battle of Cantigny, where the US 1st Division took a village of that name situated on high ground that had formed an observation post for German artillery. The Americans acquitted themselves well, especially in defending the village from a series of fierce German counter attacks.

In the Air

Earlier on 21st April, over another part of the western front, the German flying ace, Manfred von Richthofen – the ”Red Baron”- was shot down and killed.

Zeebrugge Raid

One of the most daring exploits of the whole war took place in the early hours of St Georges Day 23rd April. This was the raid on Zeebrugge, and was aimed at curbing the U-boat menace. The Germans had established their main submarine base at Bruges, (not something you’d associate with this charming medieval city). The base here was well inland, a safe distance from naval attack, but connected by canals to the English Channel at Zeebrugge and Ostend. The object of the raid was to block up the canal entrance into Zeebrugge harbour by sinking three obsolete warships across the mouth of the canal. To give these ships a chance of reaching their goal, a diversionary attack was mounted on the opposite, outer side of the harbour Mole (breakwater), The diversionary attack was led by another elderly cruiser HMS Vindictive, followed by two requisitioned Mersey ferries (with the singularly unmartial names of Daffodil and Iris) carrying a storming force of marines. The raid largely achieved its object. Two of the old ships were sunk across the canal mouth, the third a little further out in the harbour. Unfortunately however the effect on the passage of U-boats was far from complete. Partly this was because a similar attempt to block Ostend failed. But even at Zeebrugge the U-boats could still squeeze out at high tide. Nevertheless the sheer heroism of the raid made for a great propaganda boost at a difficult time of the war; and resulted in no fewer than eight Victoria Crosses being awarded.

Philip CAMPION torpedoed again

While it is unlikely that anyone from Bugbrooke was involved in the above naval exploits, one Bugbrooke man was to encounter the threat from U-boats in another theatre of the war. On 27th May Philip CAMPION was on board the liner turned troopship Leasowe Castle, a day out from Alexandria and bound for France. His Warwickshire Yeomanry regiment had completed their duties in Egypt and Palestine, and were heading to be retrained as machine gunners on the western front. They were in a convoy with six other liners and an escort of Japanese destroyers (Japan was our ally in the First War).  Philip describes the scene in his war memoir as “a most majestic and impressive sight”.  When night came it was “a beautiful moonlit one, in fact we were loath to go to bed. However at last we went, and got some sleep, when at midnight a torpedo hit our ship fairly, the explosion shook her from stem to stern.” Philip and most of his comrades got off the ship in the lifeboats. Others were not so lucky. Philip goes on to describe the dramatic end of the ship: “Down went her stern, we watched horribly fascinated, men jumping and falling off in all directions the ship absolutely vertical for some seconds. We saw the Captain, our own Colonel Leslie Grey Cheape and Adjutant, remain calmly on the bridge and go down with her. When she was gone there remained a seething vortex, screams of dying men, all that was possible was done to rescue them, but a hundred and one brave fellows were lost with her.”

This was the second time Philip had escaped from a torpedoed troop ship. The first time was when he was bound for Egypt back in 1915. He also witnessed the sinking of another troopship on his way to Gallipoli later that year.  The whole of Philip Campion’s war memoir can be read in pdf format on the LINK website.

Jim Inch for the 100 Years Project