Echoes of the Great War

Echoes of the Great War

In August 1984,  Radio 4 ran a programme on an intriguing War diary kept by a rector called Dr Andrew Clark .  By a strange coincidence this was the name of my 'hero' in The Long Shadow, a story of World War One as it was experienced by the Allies in Salonika, Greece.  My husband was busy sorting out a load of old newspapers and copies of the Radio Times that he's kept all these years for various reasons of his own and this article caught my eye as he rifled through them  

The real Andrew Clark was a quiet scholarly rector in the peaceful village of Great Leighs in Essex.  He was born in 1856 in Dollar, Clackmannanshire.  As a young man he went on to Oxford and took a first class degree in Greats, returning to Scotland where he married and had children.  He eventually moved to Oxford where he became known as a skilled historian.  He left Oxford with some reluctance due to the fact that his wife hated university life and preferred the quiet of a rural backwater such as Great Leighs proved to be  He was a popular and successful rector there and well liked by his contemporaries.

Dr. Andrew Clark

When war was declared in August 1914, Clark decided that he would collect as much information as possible about the reactions and events that occurred to ordinary people as the war progressed.  No one dreamt it would last as long as it did or that one million British soldiers would not return home again.  Clark's historical background served him well and with meticulous care and a keen eye for observation he determined to note everything he heard or saw relating to the War, from air raids to billeting, and from health issues to news of fatalities.  He also collected letters, recorded rumours and conversations he overheard, compared them to the officially released news with all their edited propaganda and useless information.

He also collected ephemera, recruitment posters, pasted and transcribed letters from soldiers in Flanders, Salonika and Italy that had been sent to villagers and commissioned the local schoolchildren to write essays with their impressions of any events that took place locally. For instance there was the occasion when 8,000 troops marched through the village on the way to war.  At the time the children would have been enormously thrilled and excited by such a spectacle in a quiet farming village like Great Leighs where life had been slow quiet and orderly for centuries.   He also wrote to his daughter in Scotland and gathered news from whatever sources he could find such as YMCA officials, travelling salesmen, wounded soldiers, men on leave and academic men in Oxford.

Dr Clark wrote up his diaries at night and noted events hour by hour until the 28th June 1918, when the war ended with the signing of the treaty of Versailles.  He had once been a curator at the Bodleian library and the librarian there encouraged Clark to send in his diaries as each one was compiled, foreseeing that these would have value one day as records of the period as seen from the ordinary lives of people who were not soldiers but nonetheless drawn perforce into what was in effect a 'people's war'.  There was not one, city, town, village or family in Britain that remained unaffected.  Even Great Leighs, a small village of 600 people, sent 72 men to war and 19 of these never returned.

These books lay forgotten in the Bodleian library for 70 years but were at last published as Echoes of the Great War in 1985, edited by Dr James Munson who also gave the talk on radio 4.

St Mary the Virgin, Great Leighs

Lyon Hall home of the Tritton family

My interest aroused, I recently made a visit to the village, Great Leighs.  It was always a spread out village, now bordered by a great deal of new housing.  The trees had grown and little remained of the wide empty country lanes of early last century.  However, we began with the church where the Rector held his services, St Mary the Virgin.  This attractive little church has an unusual tower.  In the graveyard we found many of the Tritton family who had lived at Great Leighs for years and still do live there at Lyon Hall opposite the church. 

Poor Dr Clark!  He had quite a walk from his own home at the Rectory to the church.  Imagine doing this in the dark of a snowy winter morning or early evening, hardly any heating allowed in the church because coal was rationed.  Yet, he seldom allowed himself to shirk his duty unless sick.

The Old Rectory

We found the Old Rectory, now looking very magnificent with wrought iron gates and sweeping driveway.  I suspect Andrew Clarke would have liked to see it looking as smart as this.  He struggled hard to keep up the work and the big garden during the war years when his groom/gardener, Charles Ward, was taken away to fight.  Charles had come to work for him as a lad of fifteen in 1909 and was responsible for the pony, drove the trap when required, looked after the paddock, kitchen garden, orchard and lawns, drains and various other jobs.  For this he got 16 shillings a week.  Dr Clark did his best to keep Charles at home with him because the young man was short in stature and did not have the required chest measurement.  Other village lads were at first rejected on such grounds and felt very upset.  They had thought it would be good to be paid to enlist and see Egypt, Malta, France or Germany.  It was still considered a splendid opportunity to see the world and get away from the village and the hard work of farming and labouring.

Dr Clark did his best to keep Charles Ward with him because the young man suffered badly from weakness of the chest and wet weather would send him to hospital at once. However, letters to the Recruitment Office were of no avail as they considered that if the young man could do all that work, he should manage army life.   Dr Clark, however,  knew he wouldn't be of much use to them on the Front and sure enough, young Ward was in hospital within a few weeks of joining up.  As soon as he was well, he was sent back to the front again.  He adored the Rector and wrote regularly with his news; simple, ordinary little letters of a country lad, but often quite touching.

Meanwhile the ageing Rector struggled with the upkeep of his home, his sick and dying wife, though he made no allusion to his private life in the diaries. He was also obliged to join a form of Home Guard as he was too old to go to war himself.  This meant walking around at night, patrolling the streets and lanes to ensure all light were out and no strangers hanging about.  Spy stories were constantly flying about and anyone vaguely foreign looking or odd was regarded with deep suspicion.  Zeppelins were often heard going close by and making bombing raids on nearby Chelmsford.

Some of the stories brought back by soldiers on leave were truly horrendous.  They put paid to the official bulletins which gave away little or nothing of the true state of affairs in order to keep up morale at home.  But the problem was that rumours then flew around, fuelled by gossip and were

often more alarming than the truth. 

Little by little old class systems were being swept away and even women were being called upon to work as all the able bodied men had to enlist.  The girls had as yet, a confused idea of identity and could at times dress in a rather comic fashion, unsure whether to look like a man or a woman.  Nothing like as elegant as in a BBC TV production, I'm afraid, where they all look pretty and smart!.  Andrew Clark describes a day when he saw some land girls walking through the village dressed in riding breeches, a long smock over these, an ordinary woman's hat atop their heads and a rattan cane in hand.  There was still a good deal of disapproval of girls who worked on the land or in factories and often from other women.  The wages, however, were high and many local girls went off to do factory work, spending the money as fast as they earned it and flaunting their 'wealth'.  But when the war ended and munitions factories closed down, wages also lowered with the resultant discontent and difficulty in re-adjustment for both men and women.

It was a strange period in human history and the diaries of Dr Andrew Clark have captured it in all its everyday detail full of moments of pathos, deep meaning and ridiculous trivia and gossip.

the End Way, Great Leighs

The Strange Failure of the Battle of Crete Relived

A very detailed and detached documentary film was shown locally this morning on The Battle of Crete in WW2.  This was of interest to me because my parents were involved in the evacuation of British troops to Crete during April 1941 and fled from Crete to Alexandria.

Operation Mercury

Alex Cairns, my father

My mother was a Greek living in Athens and met my father, who was then serving in the Royal Air Force in Signals.  They had a whirlwind romance and married in Athens.  After the wedding, my father was obliged to leave and join his unit while my mother, now a British civilian followed on as best she could.
 They were re-united on Crete and my father, despite his lowly rank, was allowed to leave with my mother when she was evacuated along with some officers and taken to Alexandria where an aunt of hers lived.  They had pity on the newly weds and so he was allowed to sit at mother's feet on the Sutherland sea plane that took them away!

It seems the RAF were not much use in defending Crete as most of the planes had been taken off the island and sent to Alexandria due to the constant German bombing which was already taking place in preparation for the air assault.   Thus the air force was evacuated quite quickly, leaving behind them all their possessions.  We lost some beautiful photographs of my mother (at the time an admired young actress and singer in Greece) and pictures of other important family members, as well as other papers and family possessions that were in my father's kit bag.
However, more importantly, they escaped safely to Egypt and later on I was born in Cairo.  Thus does Fate work.

with my mother, Diana, in Egypt

falling from the sky

dead parachutist

Operation Mercury was the German name for the invasion of Crete by airborne troops, a crack division of  testosterone filled Hitler Youth who had been trained into a brilliant force.  The idea was a daring one and the only airborne invasion ever made.  However, it went badly wrong because surprisingly the parachutes were poorly made.  And even more damaging, the supplies were sent down separately by parachute, and so the men were armed with a pistol and little else.  They made easy targets for the New Zealand troops defending the airfields.  Aiming for the legs so that they would catch the falling parachutists in heart or head, the Allied soldiers made short work of the invading force.  But what shocked the Germans even more was the passionate reaction of the Cretan civilians who issued forth from their villages and fields armed with anything they could find, bill hooks, scythes, walking sticks, clubs, old muskets from the Turkish wars.  Sadly the brutal reprisals, once the Germans captured the island were heavy, a whole region wiped out in retaliation.

General Freyberg

It seems with hindsight that the British with the help of the Australians, New Zealanders and Greeks could have won this battle but communication was almost nil and, as ever, many mistakes made.  Churchill's insistence on using veterans of WW1 like General Freyberg was certainly one mistake.  Freyberg was indeed a hero in that war but what he had witnessed then made his attitude cautious about sending in troops as cannon fodder.  Thus he may have held back when it was necessary to push forward.  But hindsight is full of blame for mistakes made in the heat and confusion and uncertainty of battle.

The saddest part of all this for me was the suffering of the Cretan population during the years of occupation.  They put up great resistance from the mountains but whole villages were wiped out, men women and children. Many of these villages have never recovered from these terrible times. These people are amongst the bravest and the help of the Greek soldiers in holding the enemy while the British army was hurriedly evacuated at last has been little recognised.  The Cretans, as well as the brave Maltese, should also have been awarded the George Cross for bravery in my opinion.

Birds in a Birdcage

The story of the Eastern Campaign in Salonika



Salonika before the Great Fire of 1917


The background of my novel The Long Shadow is Salonika, now modern Thessaloniki, in Macedonian Greece. It is a place I know well and love as a vibrant and modern city, yet with something of the Oriental about it still. The city was far smaller then and a real 'macedoine', a term coined for the soup of nations and races that mixed there.  The Balkans were under the rule of the Ottoman Empire for 200 years and the central sway of Constantinople held this heterogenous collection of nations together in comparative peace. Jews, Muslims, Christians all lived together in a neighbourly harmony and these religions were allowed to be practised for the Turks considered both Jews and Christians to be People of the Book. Plus they taxed the infidels which was a lucrative source of income. Some Jews did convert to Islam but secretly retained Jewish customs and religious practice, forming a strange sect called the Donmeh.  The vast majority of the trade came under the influence of the Jews who had been allowed to settle there by the Turks after they were expelled from Spain. Greeks were in the minoirty at that time and Athens was a little village near the sea.


During the period at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century there was much unrest in the Balkans as the central power of the Turks from Constantinople grew weaker. Many countries, including Greece, gained their independence. Salonika fell to the Greeks in November 1912 when Crown Prince Constantine rode into the liberated city amidst the wild cheering of the Greek crowds. The Jewish population was still in the majority but this was to change dramatically with the influx of Greek refugees from Smyrna, the enforced exchange of Turks and Greeks by Kemal Attaturk and during the Second World War when 50,000 Jews were taken away to Auswitzch.




Refugees from Smyrna

 During the period of the Great War the area around the city was marshy, unhealthy and malarial with the River Vardar running through to the sea.  The ancient name for this river was the Axius in Homer's stories. These marshes were later drained by the Americans and became tobacco fields or vineyards.  The city itself suffered a great fire during the war, in 1917.  This destroyed a huge portion of the old city and a modern city rose from the ruins with many of the old and interesting houses, mosques and churches lost forever.

The battles of the Western Front have always claimed greatest attention; Ypres, the Somme, Passchendale and all the other haunting names of the Western Front are well documented and lived over and over again in documentaries. We conjure up pictures of slithering mud, cold trenches, stunted trees and other harrowing scenes of Western battle zones. But who knows much about Macedonia and the freezing Vardar winds, the barren but beautiful mountains, the treacherous ravines and raging summer heat filled with malarial mosquitoes? Curious to know more, I began to explore the subject. The more I read diaries, memoirs, letters of those who loved, fought, suffered together there, the more I felt I wanted to record the bravery and courage of these forgotten and unsung heroes.



Red Cross nurses on stretcher duty

I began by writing to the British Red Cross Society to ask for information and help in research. A reply came from a very helpful lady called Joy Fawcett, sadly now deceased, who lent me several copies of war-time Red Cross Magazines and the Nursing Mirror. These proved an invaluable source of information. I then asked her if she could find anyone still alive who had some memories of their service with the V.A.D. units and a Mrs. Haire Foster kindly filled in a questionnaire for me. Mrs. Fawcett said that the old lady “rather enjoyed remembering the past”. Mrs. Haire Foster has since died but I was amused and surprised too to find that my letter, her reply and her anecdotes are still on file in the Red Cross Archives and the Imperial War Museum also.

The Balkans will perhaps always be a hotbed of unrest, intrigue, nations, languages and crazy patriots - though this arena seems to have shifted to the Middle East now. This area was the tinderbox that set the world alight with war in 1914. Empires were collapsing and struggling to hold on to their power. The death of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo led to the entry of Austro-Hungary into the Balkan conflict, later joined by Bulgaria, ancient enemies of the Greeks. Salonika was the great and flourishing port of Macedonia, holding a strategic place since the times of the Byzantine Empire. It was a prize to be captured and everyone wanted it. The Allies were determined not to let them have it and despite the supposed neutrality of the Greeks (whose King was related to the Kaiser) they sent a force over to “protect” Salonika from the enemy.


Bulgarian post on Hill 1050 north of Monastir

An Expeditionary force of British soldiers was sent out, landing there on October 5^th 1915 as part of the Allied Movement against the Austrians and Bulgarians who at that point held the Struma Heights. Barbed wire defences were set up around the city which subsequently led to its being called “The Birdcage”. Over here in Britain, our soldiers were mocked as “The Gardeners of Salonika” because they weren’t englaged in constant warfare as the troops were in France and Belgium.  According to the newspapers the the troops bunkered down around Salonika seemed to do nothing but dig roads and tend their tomatoes.  That this was totally unfair soon became clear.  To get around an army needs roads as the Romans well knew.  And there were only ancient dirtracks in those mountains, used by goats, bullocks and old carts. The British contributed greatly by building very good roads across these impassable mountains. Though there were fewer major battles, due to the impossible terrain, more men died in these fierce battles at one time than in the Western ones.  If there had been any more, there would have been no army left to fight.  These incredibly brave men assailed steep, dangerous mountain tops and ridges and were looked down upon and constantly under shellfire from the enemy comfortably seated up above with easy supplies and ammunition at hand.  As well as all these difficulties, there was the ever present threat of malaria from the steamy summer marshes which wiped out as many men as the battles did or left them forever blighted by its recurrence after the war had ended.   As my character, Dorothy Clarke, says in her war diary…”It is all very well dying for your country but not for a country that refuses to recognise your valour…” 



Tommies in a trenche nr Bairakli Juma. 
3rd batt Royal Fusiliers



The fact is few British soldiers had much clue about the Balkan area, the politicians hadn’t much clue either, even the Balkan people were confused! Salonika was a mere name on a map to a British soldier and no-one dreamed they’d ever see such a place. As for the Balkan people, they had no idea about the British either, no notion of the supposed might and power of this remote lot of islands in the Northern seas. The Brits of course, considered themselves very important, we had an Empire and all that! So when the two met it was an interesting thing to behold.
The village people were poor, backward, lacking in even rudimentary hygiene, downtrodden by years of warfare, brigandage and perpetual upheavals and dangers. They were sullen and suspicious at first. The rather stiff, quiet British exterior also disconcerted the natives who saw this as dull, heavy and stupid. The Salonikans understood better the flamboyant and extravagant gestures and attitudes of the French, Italians and Serbs. However as time went on they were surprised and glad to find that the Tommy was not there to steal from them or rape their women (which could not always be said of the other soldiers) and by the end of our time there, even the Jews admitted they would have preferred Salonika to be ceded to the British who would be just and fair rather than the Greeks who they knew would soon take over the commerce and push the Jews into a ghetto. Sadly this did occur after the war was over due to the huge influx of Greek refugees from Smyrna which tipped the population further into a Greek majority.

The great battles that began the end of the Great War took place in 1917 and names like Doiran, the Grand Couronne and Struma should take their place alongside Passchendale and Ypres. By then the Greeks and Serbs had also joined the Forces and a concerted effort on the part of the Allies helped to route the Bulgarians who simply fled from their long held heights. Like a pack of dominoes, Bulgaria then Austria fell and the whole Central Axis began to crumble. The war began in the Balkans and the beginning of the end occurrred there also thanks to the supreme, daring and brave efforts of men and women who gave up all to go and serve in this harsh and beautiful place where so many now lie buried in a corner of that foreign field.

Praise for The Long Shadow:

“I’m immensely impressed by the novel, especially the Greek scenes. It’s a marvellously accomplished book and many congratulations on an impressive achievement.” Colin Wilson (author of The Outsider, The Occult, Mysteries and many more)

"Reading Loretta Proctor's, 'The Long Shadow' reminded me of Ernest Hemingway's, 'A Farewell to Arms' but told with more passion and admiration for family heritage." Kimberly Eve http://kimberlyevemusings.blogspot.co.uk/

Photos from http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections