Lonesome Memorials #15: Memorial to McCrae's Battalion, Somme Battlefield

 

The newest of our Lonesome Memorials was installed in November 2004 at the village of Contalmaison on the Somme battlefield. It's a 10-ft-high cairn (def: pile of stones, used as a marker or a memorial) that commemorates the remarkable battalion of Lt. Col. Sir George McCrae, the 16th Royal Scots, who captured the village on 1 July 1916.

The 16th (Service) Battalion (2nd Edinburgh) of the Royal Scots was raised in Edinburgh in November 1914 by Lieutenant-Colonel Sir George McCrae, a respected Liberal Member of Parliament for East Edinburgh and a volunteer soldier. 

While the battalion featured a strong contingent of volunteers from Heart of Midlothian Football Club, there were also professionals from clubs such as Falkirk, Hibernian, Raith Rovers, Dunfermline, East Fife, and St Bernard’s. In total, it is believed around 75 football clubs provided volunteers.

Sir George McCrae

Theb moved to France in January 1916 and, still under the command of Sir George, were committed into their first major battle at Contalmaison, on the Somme, on 1 July, where, fighting alongside their sister battalion, 15th Royal Scots, they were the only units in the 34th Division to achieve their initial objective—but at a terrible cost of 472 killed, wounded, or missing over only three days.

The battalion continued fighting in the Battles of the Bazentin Ridge and Pozières Ridge at the Somme,  as well as during the 1917 Arras Offensive and Third Battle of Ypres. The unit absorbed such heavy casualties in these battles that it was disbanded in 1918 before the Armistice.

The cairn features four plaques, with its main relief incorporating the cap badge of the Royal Scots, the coat of arms of Edinburgh, the emblem of the 34th Division, a cartoon by D.M. Sutherland, and finally, an image of Sir George McCrae himself. The first supporting plaque is dedicated to Heart of Midlothian, while the second is in memory of the 16th Royal Scots’ sister, the 15th Royal Scots. Finally there is an expression of gratitude to the local French population on its reverse.

Directions:

From Albert take the Menin Road (D929) to the LaBoisselle turn to D20 and proceed about 2 miles to Contalmaison. The memorial is close to the main crossroads of the village.

Was There a Missed Opportunity at S Beach Gallipoli: 25 April 1915?

25 April 1915 

It must have looked like a great plan on paper.  To get the fleet through the mined and fortified choke points on the Dardanelles, a major force would be landed at five points around Cape Helles on the tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula, seize the commanding positions a few miles to the north, and isolate and destroy the local forces, allowing free access at the Turkish defenses along the strait. Meanwhile, about 14 miles to the north, on the Aegean side of Gallipoli, a second force composed of Australia's and New Zealand's finest were expected to land, gain the heights above the beaches, and crash across the peninsula, thus sealing of the critical zone from enemy reinforcements. 

The invasion would turn about to be a double failure—unbeknownst to anyone at the time, the whole campaign was over by sundown on 25 April. At what came to be known as ANZAC the planners had missed both the elevations and ruggedness of the triple ridge-line facing the assault troops.  Down south at Helles, the defenders fought with determination at some of the beaches but left other sites thinly covered, so were vulnerable. Unfortunately, the local commanders did not understand that the key to amphibious operations was getting the hell off the beaches. The most blatant example of this was at the site designated S Beach.

At Cape Helles

Cape Helles, Gallipoli, Invasion Beaches of 25 April 1915

Click to Enlarge and Read Captions

This is a photo of a photo so there is considerable distortion.  It shows, however, all five landing beaches as well as the early objectives of Krithia village and Achi Baba hill.  The capture of both would effectively cut the peninsula and trap any remaining Turkish defending forces while allowing subsequent attacks on the Turkish forts and artillery along the straits (right on the photo). For judging distance, W Beach to the peak of Achi Baba is 5.6 miles;  X Beach to S Beach is 2.1 Miles. One correction: the caption for S Beach should be much closer to the Turkish memorial as is shown correctly on the map below.

The main force for the initial British landings at Helles was the 29th Division formed almost entirely of regular British infantry battalions brought back from colonial postings following the declaration of war on 3 August 1914.  Two Royal Naval Division battalions were attached to the 29th Division for the initial landings; Plymouth Battalion RMLI and Anson Battalion. The expectation was that once ashore the various units would link up and form a complete brigade line down to the Dardanelles shoreline to begin neutralizing Ottoman defenses of the straits.

Five beaches around Cape Helles were to be attacked: X Beach situated on the north west coast of the Cape Helles promontory; W Beach on the western section of the southern coast between Tekke Burnu and Cape Helles; V Beach at the eastern end of the cove lying between Cape Helles and Sedd el Bahr; and S Beach at De Totts Battery at the eastern end of the sweep of Morto Bay. 

S Beach  in Morto Bay Today
The De Totts Battery (Turkish Artillery) Was Placed on the Bluff

Battleship HMS Cornwallis Supported the Landing
on S Beach

At S Beach

The 2nd South Wales Borderers were to land on S Beach. Signalers, engineers, and medical personnel were attached to the detachments. The force assaulting S Beach totaled about 750 officers and enlisted with a battleship HMS Cornwallis assigned to support the landing.

The landings at nearby V and W beaches faced fierce opposition and were initially unable to break out. The forces at S Beach, however, faced few defenders, had easy access for moving quickly inland, and—since they quickly gained control of the heights above the beach—knew of the difficulties facing the assault forces at the other beaches were facing. Yet they stayed in position.  

Hans Kannengiesser (1868–1945) was a German general who eventually commanded the 9th Turkish division in the Fifth Army of General Liman von Sanders at Gallipoli. He held the Turkish rank of Pasha—roughly equivalent to marshal. In 1928  he published the work The Campaign in Gallipoli, which we have reviewed HERE.  In 1940, he published a monograph quoted here titled The Landing of the British Forces in Gallipoli which focuses on the events of 25 April 1915.  Below are his disapproving observations on the landing at S Beach that day.

Day One: Results

Landings at V Beach continued to go badly through the mid-morning and were then suspended until after dark. Invasion commander General Hamilton next suspended the landing at V Beach and diverted those forces to W Beach, where his forces were pinned down.  

The fighting at W Beach was furious. British reinforcements started landing at 9:30 a.m., and by 10 a.m. the lines of trenches had been captured, and the beach  was secured. By 12:30 p.m. the troops had linked up with the 2nd Battalion, which had landed at X beach to the left with the capture of the defensive position called Hill 114. However, it was not until 4 p.m. that the more heavily defended position to the right, Hill 138, was captured following heavy naval bombardment and an assault by the Worcester Regiment.

By the end of the day, the forces landing around Cape Helles had gained a foothold, but they had a much smaller footprint than was fully secure, and the prime objective of Achi Baba might have been on another planet.

Men of the South Wales Borderers Later in the Campaign

Day One: What If?

Suppose Lt. Col. Casson at S Beach had decided to show some initiative. Could he have saved the day for the British landings? By the time such a venture could have been organized,  his flow of reinforcements had been cut off. His only feasible mission would have been to seek consolidation of his under-sized force with the other British landings, most likely with V Beach, and take it from there. The truth of the matter is the landings were doomed to fail from the start. The determination and tactical skill of the opposition, the brutal terrain, the difficulties of amphibious operations, and the defensive advantages of artillery, machine guns, and barbed wire had all been underestimated by the mission planners. There was no chance the combined forces of S and V beaches would have ever reached Achi Baba. Colonel Casson (a future brigadier by the way) probably saved some of his men's lives by sitting in place.

Sources: Silent Landscape at Gallipoli;  The Landing of the British Forces in Gallipoli ; Cape Helles – Gallipoli & Dardanelles International 

John Dos Passos, “The Body of an American”

[from U.S.A. (1930–1936)]

Whereas the Congress of the United States by a concurrent resolution adopted on the  4th day of March last-authorized the Secretary of War to cause to be brought to the united states the body of an American who was a member of the American expeditionary force in Europe who lost his life during the world war and whose identity has not been established for burial in the memorial amphitheatre of the national cemetery at Arlington Virginia

In the tarpaper morgue at Chalons-sur-Marne in the reek of chloride of lime and the dead, they picked out the pine box that held all that was left of

enie menie minie moe plenty of other pine boxes stacked up there containing what they’d scraped up of Richard Roe

and other person or persons unknown. Only one can go. How did they pick John Doe? . . .

how can you tell a guy’s a hundred percent when all you’ve got’s a gunnysack full of bones, bronze buttons stamped with the screaming eagle and a pair of roll puttees?

. . . and the gagging chloride and the puky dirt stench of the year old dead . . .

The day withal was too meaningful and tragic for applause. Silence, tears, songs and prayer, muffled drums and soft music were the instrumentalities today of national approbation.

John Doe was born (thudding din of blood of love into the shuddering soar of a man and a woman alone indeed together lurching into and nine months sick drowse waking into scared agony and the pain and blood and mess of birth). John Doe was born

and raised in Brooklyn, in Memphis, near the lakefront in Cleveland, Ohio, in the stench of the stockyards in Chi, on Beacon Hill, in an old brick house in Alexandria Virginia, on Telegraph Hill, in a half timbered Tudor cottage in Portland the city of roses,

in the Lying-In Hospital old Morgan endowed on Stuyvesant Square,

across the railroad tracks, out near the country club, in a shack cabin tenement apartment house exclusive residential suburb;

scion of one of the best families in the social register, won first prize in the baby parade at Coronado Beach, was marbles champion of the Little Rock grammar schools, crack basketball player at the Booneville High, quarterback at the State Reformatory, having saved the sheriff’s kid from drowning in the Little Missouri River was invited to Washington to be photographed shaking hands with the President on the White House steps; —

* * * * *

though this was a time of mourning, such an assemblage necessarily has about it a touch of color. In the boxes are seen the court uniforms of foreign diplomats, the gold braid of our own and foreign fleets and armies, the black of the conventional morning dress of American statesmen, the varicolored furs and outdoor wrapping garments of mothers and sisters come to mourn, the drab and blue of soldiers and sailors, the glitter of musical instruments and the white and black of a vested choir

— busboy harvest stiff hog caller boy scout champeen cornshucker of Western Kansas bellhop at the United States Hotel at Saratoga Springs office boy call boy fruiter telephone lineman longshoreman lumberjack plumber’s helper,

worked for an exterminating company in Union City, filled pipes in an opium joint in Trenton, N.J.

Y.M.C.A. secretary, express agent, truck driver, ford mechanic, sold books in Denver Colorado: Madam would you be willing to help a young man work his way through college?

President Harding, with a reverence seemingly more significant because of his high temporal station, concluded his speech:

We are met today to pay the impersonal tribute;

the name of him whose body lies before us took flight with his imperishable soul . . .

as a typical soldier of this representative democracy he fought and died believing in the indisputable justice of his country’s cause . . .

by raising his right hand and asking the thousands with the sound of his voice to join in the prayer:

Our Father which art in heaven hallowed by thy name . . .

* * * * *

John Doe’s

heart pumped blood:

alive thudding silence of blood in your ears

down in the clearing in the Oregon forest where the punkins were punkin color pouring into the blood through the eyes and the fall colored trees and the bronze hoopers were hopping through the dry grass, where tiny striped snails hung on the underside of the blades and the flies hummed, wasps droned, bumble-bees buzzed, and the woods smelt of wine and mushrooms and apples, homey smell of fall pouring into the blood,

and I dropped the tin hat and the sweaty pack and lay flat with the dog day sun licking my throat and adams apple and the tight skin over the breastbone.

The shell had his number on it.

* * * * *

The blood ran into the ground.

The service record dropped out of the filing cabinet when the quartermaster sergeant got blotto that time they had to pack up and leave the billets in a hurry.

The identification tag was in the bottom of the Marne.

The blood ran into the ground, the brains oozed out of the cracked skull and were licked up by the trench rats, the belly swelled and raised a generation of blue-bottle flies.

and the incorruptible skeleton,

and the scraps of dried viscera and skin bundled in khaki

they took to Chalons-sur-Marne

and laid it out neat in a pine coffin

and took it home to God’s Country on a battleship

and buried in a sarcophagus in the Memorial Amphitheatre in the Arlington National Cemetery

and draped the Old Glory over it

and the bugler played taps

and Mr. Harding prayed to God and the diplomats and the generals and the admirals and the brass hats and the politicians and the handsomely dressed ladies out of the society column of the Washington Post stood up solemn

and thought how beautiful sad Old Glory God’s Country it was go have the bugler play taps and the three volleys made their ears ring.

Where his chest ought to have been they pinned

the Congressional Medal, the D.S.C., the Medaille Militaire, the Belgian Croix de Guerre, the Italian gold medal, the Vitutea Militara sent by Queen Marie of Rumania, the Czechoslovak war cross, the Virtuti Militari of the Poles, a wreath sent by Hamilton Fish, Jr., of New York, . . . . All the Washingtonians brought flowers.

Woodrow Wilson brought a bouquet of poppies.

Nijinsky's War

Vaslav Nijinsky (1890?–1950) in Les Orientales, 1911

 By Asst. Editor Kimball Worcester

The legendary Russian dancer epitomized the shocking modernity of the 20th century in the decade preceding the guns of August 1914 before sinking into irremediable schizophrenia in the 1920s. Nijinsky's sensual fire and unprecedented talent blazed through Russia, Europe, South America, and the United States. He revitalized ballet both as an extraordinary male dancer and as a choreographer. His career was short but profound, and he is remembered for truly important milestones in the history of ballet: Le Sacre du printemps (Rite of Spring), Petrushka, L'Après-midi d'un faune, Schéhérazade, and Le Spectre de la rose.

Report of the May 1913 Debut of Rite of Spring

In June 1914, Nijinsky and his new wife, Romola, a Hungarian, were living in Vienna, where their daughter Kyra was born on the 18th of that month. With the outbreak of war some weeks later, the family was interned as non-combatant prisoners of war (in effect, enemy aliens) in Budapest, at the house of Kyra's mother. Nijinsky's Russian citizenship kept them there for two years.

In the meantime, Nijinsky's former impresario, Serge Diaghilev, was in the United States, trying to arrange the dancer's extrication from Budapest so he could tour the then neutral U.S. Such prominent international figures as King Alfonso XIII of Spain, Queen Alexandra of Great Britain, and Pope Benedict XV are said to have interceded on Nijinsky's behalf. By 1916 a prisoner exchange was arranged through the United States, and Nijinsky, his wife, and daughter were released to join Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes in the States.

 A Young Nijinsky with Sergei Diaghilev

The tour was not a success. Nijinsky and Diaghilev could not resurrect their previous partnership (which had been severed upon Nijinsky's marriage in September 1913), and American audiences were as yet insufficiently "modern" to withstand the force and genius of Nijinsky's dance and choreography. The horrors of the Great War and of Nijinsky's enforced peregrinations during it have been cited as just some of the contributors to his mental descent. He ultimately spent the last 30-odd years of his life largely in institutions. Nijinsky died in 1950 in London.

"Achilles in the Trench" aka “I saw a man this morning” by Patrick Shaw-Stewart

Patrick Shaw-Stewart (1888–1917) was born in Wales son of a British general. He attended Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, where he excelled academically and was elected a Fellow of All Souls College. Associated with the socialite and aristocrat Lady Diana Cooper, Shaw-Stewart was part of her “corrupt coterie” and wrote her many intimate letters full of erotic allusions to Greek and Latin literature. Already a highly successful banker before war broke out, Shaw-Stewart joined the army in 1914 and served with Rupert Brooke in the Royal Naval Division; he was even present at Brooke’s burial in Skyros.

While known as a “war poet,” Shaw-Stewart wrote only one poem, “Achilles in the Trench” which was penned in a period of rest before fighting at Gallipoli and published after his death. The poem contains allusions to Greek literature, notably Homer’s Iliad. Shaw-Stewart was killed at Cambrai in 1917 and buried at Metz-en-Couture.  (The Poetry Foundation)

Men of the Royal Naval Division at Gallipoli

I saw a man this morning

     Who did not wish to die

I ask, and cannot answer,

     If otherwise wish I.

 

Fair broke the day this morning

     Against the Dardanelles;

The breeze blew soft, the morn's cheeks

     Were cold as cold sea-shells.

 

But other shells are waiting

     Across the Aegean sea,

Shrapnel and high explosive,

     Shells and hells for me.

 

O hell of ships and cities,

     Hell of men like me,

Fatal second Helen,

     Why must I follow thee?

 

Achilles came to Troyland

     And I to Chersonese:

He turned from wrath to battle,

     And I from three days' peace.

 

Was it so hard, Achilles,

     So very hard to die?

Thou knewest and I know not—

     So much the happier I.

 

I will go back this morning

     From Imbros over the sea;

Stand in the trench, Achilles,

     Flame-capped, and shout for me.

Eyewitness: Adolph Hitler—To the Front, October 1914

8 October 1914: Hitler's List Regiment Departs Munich
 for the Front

 

And thus at last the day came when we left Munich to fall in and do our duty. I saw the Rhine for the first time as we were ​traveling beside its gentle waves on our way westward to protect it, the German stream of streams, from the greed of our old enemy. When the gentle rays of the first sun glinted down upon us through the delicate veil of morning mist from the Niederwald Monument, the old Wacht am Rhein roared from the endless transport train into the morning sky, and my breast was ready to burst.

Then came a cold, wet night in Flanders and we marched through it in silence. When day began to break through the mist, we were suddenly met with an iron greeting as it hissed over our heads. With a sharp crack, it hurled the little pellets of shrapnel through our ranks, splashing up the wet soil. Before the little cloud was gone, the first “hurray” came from two hundred voices in response to this greeting by the Angel of Death. Then the crackling and thunder began; singing and howling, and with feverish eyes, everyone marched forward, faster and faster. At last, across beet fields and hedges, the battle began—the battle of man against man.

From a distance, the sound of song reached our ears, coming closer and closer, and jumping from company to company. Just as Death began to busy himself in our ranks, the song reached us too, and we in turn passed it on: “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles, über alles in der Welt!” (“Germany before all, Germany ahead of everything in the world”.) Four days later, we went back to camp. We even walked differently. Seventeen year-old boys now looked like men. Maybe the volunteers of the List Regiment (The Second Infantry Bavarian Regiment) had not really learned to fight, but they did know how to die like old soldiers.

That was the beginning.

Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf

June 1940: Langemark Cemetery, Flanders

Note: Hitler's inexperienced unit was  part of the assault near Ghelhuvelt Chateau that commenced on 29 October 1914. He was not part of the "Student Battalions" that attacked near Langemark earlier. Hitler did, however, visit the Langemark Cemetery on his June 1940 victory tour before signing the 1940 Armistice.

Christina Holstein's Verdun Battlefield Studies

 

Author, Guide, Historian Christina Holstein Describes
the Operation of a Gun Turret Atop Fort Douaumont

Published by Pen & Sword, 2008–2025

Reviewed by Editor/Publisher Mike Hanlon 

About the Author

Throughout the 13 years I personally led battlefield tours to the Western Front, I regularly invited Christina Holstein  to join us for a day at Verdun.  When she was available, she always captivated the group and, at the end of the day, I was invariably surprised about how much fresh information I had absorbed about the 300-day struggle. 

Once, when reading one of Christina's books, something clicked in my mind regarding a quote about American Civil War battlefields. I looked it up and found it was from Gettysburg hero Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.  I think she shares something of this attitude about Verdun.

In great deeds something abides. On great fields something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecrate the ground. And reverent men and women from afar, and generations that know us not and that we know not, drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field to ponder and dream.

British born, our author lived and worked in Luxembourg for 30 years, during which she fell in love with the Lorraine, which drew here to its most famous historical site, the city of Verdun and the surrounding battlefield. Christina eventually became a recognized authority on the 1916 battle. The Verdun tourism bureau recommended her to travelers, and she appeared  on or assisted a number of media outlets from the BBC to the Wall Street Journal. Having spent decades gathering information about the great battle, she decided to begin publishing what she had learned. Through Pen and Sword, publishers of the Battleground mega-series, she found the perfect outlet. So far, they have published seven of her works, and I'm hoping more are on the way.

The Holstein Method

Each of the works focuses on a major aspect of the fighting in and around Verdun, not only in 1916, but also during the opening of the war and afterward in 1917. They are somewhat overlapping with respect to time and were not published sequentially, following the war's chronology. Each volume, though, has a well-written narrative that does adhere to the actual chronology of the event(s). The books are highly illustrated, with photos both from the war and from the author and her circle of battlefield enthusiasts with a multitude of helpful maps and graphics. For example, the 203-page Fort Vaux volume features nearly 200 photos and 22 illustrations.

Besides having the best qualities of  illustrated historical works, the books of the VERDUN series are also superb travel guides. As is typical, the Fort Vaux volume includes numerous tips for the traveler and three very detailed walking tour itineraries, with maps, and a similar driving tour.

In summary, each of these books is packed with information. I think a lot of credit must go to the publisher. Their layout work is outstanding.

Who Should Read the VERDUN Series?

• Anyone who has read an overview history of the battle like Alistair Horne's The Price of Glory and craves to learn more about it.

• Anyone who might have visited the battlefield on a brief tour and finds that the experience has mysteriously lingered with him and wants a deeper understanding of what transpired there.

• Anyone who has heard things like, "the longest battle of WWI"  or "the Stalingrad of the Great War" or "They Shall Not Pass," and wonders just what that was all about.

• Fortification aficionados (Verdun is deeply about forts.)

• The sort of person that loves tromping  around old battlefields to smell them, and feel them, and envision what it might have been like for those who fought and died there.

The Collection: 

(Note – these are presented in historical sequence, not the order of publication.)

Approach of the German Army – 

The Battle of the Marne – Creation of the 

St. Mihiel Salient – Heroic Fort Troyon

The Keystone – Douaumont Falls! – Stalemate 

on the Right Bank –  The Wider Battlefield

The Stronghold Retaken

An Unintended Battle – Goose Ridge –  Cote 304 

Mort Homme – An Unforgetable Monument

A Modest Trapezium – Raynal in Command
Siege, Surrender, Retaken – The French Rear

Walk in The Steps of the Combatants on the
Ridges, Ravines and Forts of the Battlefield
– Visit Centre Verdun

Col. Driant at Bois des Caures – 

Damloup Battery – Fleury Village

Rebuilding Morale – It's an Artillery War
 La Voie Sacrée—Setting the Stage for 1918

Order Any of These Titles HERE

The Thankful Villages

By James Patton

This story begins with the Great Survey of the realm ordered by William the Conqueror in 1086. His agents visited every shire, compiled a list of property there and calculated the duties owed to the crown therefrom.  This manuscript was originally known as the Liber de Wintoni (The Book of Winchester), where it was originally kept.

The name Domesday Book came into use in the 12th century because its determinations were deemed complete and final, like those described in the Last Judgment (Matthew 25:31 et seq.). 

The manuscript is now held at the National Archives in Kew, London. It was first printed in full in 1783, and internet access became available in 2011. 

Then enters into this story Arthur Mee (1875–1943), a  self- described “Journalist, Author and Topographer.” His most famous work was The Children’s Encyclopedia (1908–64). In America it was called The Book of Knowledge, and every elementary school had at least one set.  

In 1936, Mee began his The King’s England series, which ran to over forty volumes, covering every parish in every shire. The publisher advertised it as the new Domesday Book.

Arthur Mee

In Enchanted Land (1936), the introductory volume to The King's England series, Mee wrote that a “Thankful Village” was one which had lost no one who served in the Great War. He was using the term village instead of parish, which was actually the basic unit of settlement in the UK at the time. In the course of his research, he identified 32 Thankful Villages. Through subsequent research, that number now stands at 53, with several contenders still being researched. 

What now follows is extracted from a BBC presentation on 10 November 1917.

‘What seems like it should have been a cause for celebration was actually a source of embarrassment and shame for many.

Edward and Ann Jameson experienced a lot of heartbreak. Four of their 13 children died at a young age, then they watched four sons head off to fight the Germans. It seemed unlikely that they would all survive.

The eldest, Makepeace, was 23 years old when war began. He was wounded twice in 1916 and later hospitalized with influenza, but he survived. His youngest brother, Joshua, 16 at the outbreak, joined up later and was struck by shrapnel which remained in his leg for the rest of his life. With their brothers Michael and Ted all four came home, along with a fifth villager, Arthur Taylor.

So their home, Hunstanworth, a cluster of farms, houses and a church high in the moors of County Durham, had become one of the lucky few—a Thankful Village.

Distribution of Thankful Villages

But as a blanket of grief shrouded thousands of communities, the Thankful Villages experienced a different emotion—shame.

"They were surrounded by villages where people were not returning," said the Rev. Michael Hampson, the vicar at St. John the Baptist Parish in Arkholme-with-Cawood, Lancashire.  His parish is also on the list. All 59 villagers who went to war, out of 320 inhabitants, survived. It’s one of only two Thankful Villages in Lancashire.

"For example, just up the road in Whittington, the big landowning family there (the Dawson-Greenes) lost two generations in the war.

"That was typical around the country. For the Thankful Villages, it was almost as if they had not joined in the sacrifice. They celebrated the peace but felt like they had not paid the price." That feeling of shame lasted for decades.

"We started talking about it around the millennium and still then there were people saying 'no, we should not shout about this, we do not want to blow our trumpet over our embarrassing privilege'," the Rev. Hampson continued.

"There was a self-imposed silence and censorship; it was felt that it would be quite wrong to celebrate that as some kind of triumph."

Perhaps in part for this reason, it is only relatively recently that any attempt to find all the Thankful Villages has been made, the work being led by historians Norman Thorpe, Rod Morris, and Tom Morgan.

The first task was to decide how to define what made up a "village.” Thinking small, they identified about 16,000 of them that existed in 1914. "We have always looked for a definite community, not just a few houses or an isolated farm with two or three cottages for the help,"  Thorpe said. "A church, a school, a village hall, any sign of a social unit is what we look for."

Michael Dunne-Willows, PhD (Newcastle), is a mathematician employed by the UK’s Office of National Statistics who has extensively studied randomness, particularly in relation to lotteries. His professional curiosity was piqued by the historians' research, so he agreed to try to calculate the likelihood that a ‘‘village” would lose no one in the Great War. Was it statistically probable there would even be some Thankful Villages?

Of the seven million British who went to war, about 880,000 died (6% of the eligible male population). Simple division yields the result that if one went to war there was about a one-in-eight chance of being killed. Crunching the numbers much further, Dunne-Willows endeavored to account for all of the unknown variables.

One area of uncertainty relates to questions about the individual circumstances of soldiers and villages. "Perhaps the village of residence played a role in which area soldiers were deployed to," explained said Dunne-Willows. "This would result in some villages having a higher or lower probability of being ‘thankful’. 

Somme Battlefield Memorial for the Accrington Pals

Perhaps the fact that often groups of friends—football teams and the like—enlisted together played a role in predetermining their survival." Probably the most well known example of how this skewed casualty figures is that of the Accrington Pals, the 11th E. Lancs, who lost 235 members within 20 minutes on the first day of the Somme. As the brother of one of the soldiers would later recall, "I don't think there was a street in Accrington and district that didn't have their blinds drawn and the bell at Christ Church tolled all the day."

After some clever mathematical manoeuvring featuring various N values and D quantities, Dunne-Willows arrived at an answer for how many Thankful Villages he reckons there should have been. 

That number is 22. Out of about 16,000.

As mentioned above, thus far Thorpe’s group has identified 53 Thankful Villages in England and Wales—none have been found in Scotland or Ireland as yet. Is Dunne-Willows’s  finding  a statistical anomaly? The faithful might call it a miracle.

Of course just because everyone came back alive, this does not mean they were unaffected by the experience.

A collection of coins belonging to John Hugill,  one-time blacksmith in Catwick, is testament to this. All 30 men who went to war from the East Yorkshire village gave him a coin which he nailed to his doorpost below a ‘lucky’ horseshoe. All of them came back but one man "left an arm behind", so Hugill cut a notch out of one coin to represent the lost limb.

Catwick's Luck Horshoe and Coins

There is one simple factor that the historians and the statistician do agree made a village “Thankful”—luck. "We have studied this from several aspects," Thorpe said. "The only conclusion we can reach is that the safe return of all those who served from a particular village was simple chance, like the casting of a die."

With the passage of time and the consequent change in attitudes, the Thankful Villages no longer feel shame. 

No Thankful Village sent more residents to war, as a percentage, than Knowlton in Kent.  The 12  who went—and came home—represented 31% of the 39 villagers, and in the Twenties the Weekly Dispatch declared Knowlton the “bravest village” in the realm and put up an impressive stone monument. While some of the other places do not even have a war memorial, today their “Thankful” status is recognized by signs, plaques, and marker stones. 

Between 2016 and 2018, English singer-songwriter Darren Hayman released a trilogy of albums inspired by and written in-situ at the then-54 Thankful Villages, including  Welbury, North Yorkshire, whose status is now in doubt.

Postscripts: Amazingly, 14 of the 53 Thankful Villages are also termed “Doubly Thankful,” having lost no one who went off to WWII as well. Arkholme, Butterton, and Catwick are among these.

Butterton's 15 Survivors of the First World War

To date there has been no effort to identify all of the WWII Thankful Villages. Since the number of those killed in WWII was less than half that of  WWI, it is likely that there would be many more than 53.   

The King’s England books are still available, published by The King’s England Press Ltd., who had acquired the rights from the original owners in 1989. 

Sources include the BBC, Staffordshire Live, The Western Front Association (UK), Sky History and the Daily Mail.

Remembering a Veteran: Major Horatio Nelson Jackson, DSC, 313th Inf., 79th Division

The Old Soldier Looking Back

Horatio Nelson Jackson was an  an intrepid, path-making  American  figure of the Daniel Boone archetype before he ever served in uniform.  In the spring of 1903, on a whim and a 50-dollar bet, Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson set off from San Francisco in a 20-horsepower Winton touring car hoping to become the first person to cross the United States in the newfangled "horseless carriage." Most people doubted that the automobile had much of a future. Jackson's trip would prove them wrong. Driving a 1903 Winton Touring Car, he became the first man to cross the continent in an automobile. 

A minister's son, born in 1872, Horatio Nelson Jackson earned his medical degree at the University of Vermont in 1893 and practiced for a few years in the towns of Brattleboro and Burlington. Then, in 1899, he married Bertha Richardson Wells, the daughter of one of the richest men in Vermont, the founder of Payne's Celery Compound, a popular cure-all that was 20 percent grain alcohol. It was her money that allowed the newlyweds to make an extended tour of Europe, buy Providence Island in Lake Champlain for a summer residence, invest in mining opportunities, purchase race horses and then automobiles—all despite Jackson's having given up his medical practice in 1900 after a mild case of tuberculosis. And it would be her money financing his improbable journey across the nation.

All Aboard: Horatio, Sewall, and Bud

Horatio's Drive and Its Remembrance

He made the drive to win the $50 bet made at San Francisco’s University Club in 1903. At the time he didn’t own a car and had little driving experience. Also, he suspected that the lack of paved roads, especially in the western parts of the country, might prove difficult, so he hired a mechanic, Sewall K. Crocker, to travel with him. They set out from San Francisco on 23 May 1903.

They passed through Sacramento  and then veered north, in part because attempts by others had foundered in the deserts of Nevada and Utah. For guidance, Jackson borrowed maps from bicyclists he met along the way.

Challenges encountered and overcome included flat tires, car breakdowns, cooking gear falling (unnoticed) off the car, the need to cross streams using a block and tackle, lost money, and near starvation.

There Were Endless Challenges

Jackson was consoled on the journey by the presence of his dog, Bud, who wore goggles because the dust from unpaved roads bothered his eyes. Driver, mechanic, and dog reached New York City on 26 July 26 1903, 63 days after leaving San Francisco. After the trip, Jackson became a successful Burlington businessman—newspaper publisher, owner of the town's first radio station, president of a bank. 

In 1944, to preserve his moment in history, Jackson donated his car (as well as his scrapbook of newspaper clippings and Bud's goggles) to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC. For the rest of his life, he never tired of telling anyone who would listen, the story of his great adventure crossing the continent with Sewall Crocker and the bulldog Bud, in a 1903 Winton called the Vermont. His 1903 Winton today sits in the National Museum of American History.

The Men, Dog, and Car Became National Celebrities 

Highly Recommended:  

Ken Burns produced a wonderful documentary about the adventure, Horatio's Drive, that can be streamed online.

15 Years After His Great Adventure, Horatio's
Family Saw Him Off to War

On to the Great War for Horatio

Already in his mid-40s when World War I broke out, he insisted on enlisting in the Army despite his age, and even arranged a personal meeting with an aging Theodore Roosevelt to seek the ex-president's intercession on his behalf, which he received. Jackson was placed on active duty as a captain in the Medical Corps. While serving with the 313th Infantry, 79th Infantry Division as a major he was wounded at the brutal fight for strongly defended Montfaucon during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, while caring for wounded men under fire. As General Pershing politely described it in his official report, "Montfaucon was held tenaciously by the enemy and was not captured until noon of the second day."

At war's end, he returned from overseas a wounded and decorated hero, having received the Distinguished Service Cross and Purple Heart, as well as France's Croix de Guerre. Back in the United States, he helped found the American Legion, served as one of its leading officers for many years, and later ran unsuccessfully for governor of Vermont. Horatio Nelson Jackson died on 14 January 1955, at the age of 82.

Major Horatio Nelson Jackson's Distinguished Service Cross Citation:

The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Major (Medical Corps) Horatio N. Jackson, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism in action while serving with 313th Infantry Regiment (Attached), 79th Division, A.E.F., near Montfaucon, France, September 26-29, 1918. Constantly working in the face of heavy machine-gun and shell fire, Major Jackson was most devoted in his attention to the wounded, always present in the line of advance, directing the administering of first aid, and guiding the work of litter bearers. He remained on duty until severely wounded by high-explosive shells, when he was obliged to evacuate.

Sources:  PBS; American Legion; Find a Grave; Highway 50; Wikipedia