Remembering the Great War – A Century Ago
Donald,
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HERBERT FITZPATRICK |
Ray Jerrems, Our Genealogist, Historian, and Adventurer
Introduction
I have been promising Alan Fitz-Patrick that I would publish articles about his side of the family more often. Somehow I have kept being distracted from this, but now I will rectify the situation!
Readers may remember that the Fitz-Patrick line traces back to Big Bill’s son John, who married Mary. Their daughter Ada married Bernard Fitz-Patrick, and one of their sons was Herbert Arthur Lionel Fitz-Patrick. This article is about Herbert.
The photo at the top of this article, taken by the famous Australian photographer Frank Hurley, shows Australian gunners in their hallmark slouch hats and their eight inch howitzer.
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History of South Africa’s support of the Allies |
Probably there are few readers who have heard of the campaign in the colony of German East Africa (later split up into Burundi, Rwanda and Tanganyika), so I will draw on a summary provided to me by Dan (“Malamba”)’s daughter Dianne (Dan was described in the Jerrems Journal of November 2012).
Before joining the First World War on the British side, South Africa’s Premier Botha, and Major-General Smuts, both former Boer War generals, had to put down an open rebellion in South Africa by units of their armed forces and some influential veterans of the Boer War who were totally opposed to anything ‘British’. With the atrocities of South Africa’s Boer War still fresh in the minds of the Afrikaans-speaking population (“Boers”) some opted, quite understandably, to support Germany.
General Jan Smuts joined the East African Campaign against the Germans about 2 years after the Campaign started, to add new impetus to the British effort. Unhappy with the staff he inherited, Smuts brought in two tough South African generals, van Deventer and Brits, who had both fought against the British in the Boer war. Upon being summoned to East Africa, Brits wryly cabled Smuts:
“Mobilisation complete. Who must I fight? The English or the Germans?”
Fortunately for England, the answer was that the force was to fight the Germans, who were eventually defeated!
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Herbert leaves his family behind |
At the time of volunteering, Herbert was the proprietor of a hotel in the small village of Lake Chrissie, not far from Barberton, where his father had been vicar. The hotel was known as “The Gin Shop” because of the large black bottles of gin behind the bar. Could Herbert have had too many gins one night with friends in the bar and they had all whipped themselves up into enlisting the next day without discussing it with their wives?
Herbert’s first posting was in German East Africa with the 4th South African Horse.
Chasing Lettow-Vorbeck (the German General) and his men in German East Africa was an agony of endurance for the Allied forces. Unlike the European battlegrounds, here disease took a heavier toll than the enemy, and the conditions under which the troops marched and fought took them to the limits of human endurance.
Alan gives us a graphic account of the extreme conditions:
“Thousands of men and animals perished. The horses and mules died in their thousands, mostly succumbing to the tsetse flies that swarmed in the bush. The men suffered from ticks which caused fever, flies, dysentery, malaria, blackwater fever, jigger fleas which burrowed into the troops’ feet, causing agony (they could only be removed with a needle or knife point) and ‘guinea worms’ whose millions of larvae spread through a human body to produce abscesses in the genitals, lungs and heart.”
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The role of heavy artillery in the First World War |
Despite having a great-uncle who served in the Australian Artillery in the First World War, reaching the level of Colonel, I must admit that my knowledge of artillery has been limited to watching ceremonial salutes of 25 pounder field guns from a safe distance when I was a boy. This lack of essential knowledge led me to research the subject!
The Australian War Museum website observes that “Artillery was the most dominant of all weapons in the First World War; it set the nature and conduct of battles, transformed the landscape, and caused the most casualties.”
The battlefield photo above shows graphically how the artillery “transformed the landscape”!
At the beginning of the First World War the main support weapon for the British Army was the long-barreled field gun.
The shells had a low trajectory (ie the shell stayed low) and a quite long range, however they were not effective against low or hidden targets.
Howitzers were developed to overcome this problem. These fired heavy shells on a high trajectory through a short barrel, enabling the shells to more readily reach and penetrate the trenches and bunkers and other fortifications. The heavier howitzers were also deployed behind the front line, tasked with destroying enemy artillery, supply routes, railways and stores.
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Different barrel calibres |
The general category of “heavy artillery” can be broken up into the barrel calibres of howitzers having 9 point 2 inches and 8 inches calibres (used by “Siege Batteries”) (see photo at top of article) and 6 inches (used by “Heavy Artillery Batteries”) (see photo above of French 6 inch howitzer). The 9 point 2 fired a massive 290 pound shell, the wheeled 8 incher a 200 pound shell, and the wheeled 6 incher a 100 pound shell, all for a maximum distance of between 6 and 7 miles. I was surprised at this relatively short range.
The 9 point two inch guns took three days to install, and the smaller guns needed a team of horses to move them. If the opposing infantry broke through, the guns could be overrun before they could be moved, in which case the gun operators quickly removed the breech blocks and took them away with them so that the enemy could not operate the guns.
I am inclined to conclude that Herbert’s Battery was equipped with the smaller and more manouverable 6 inch howitzers, which still packed an impressive punch with their 100 pound shells.
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Development of shells |
The Australian War Museum observed that “The technical aspects of artillery work advanced rapidly as the war progressed. Guns of different sizes fired a range of shells, including high-explosive (HE), shrapnel, gas, and smoke. The effectiveness of these shells was increased by the new No. 106 Percussion Fuze, which was first widely adopted by the heavy batteries from 1917. This was an instantaneous fuse that detonated the shell on top of the ground before it had penetrated.”
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The role of Herbert’s Battery |
Dianne has located a report by John Buchan of “The Times”, better known as the author of the classic novel “The Thirty Nine Steps”. This shows that Herbert’s 71st Battery and three other batteries were formed into the 44th (South African) Heavy Artillery Brigade in early 1918 at about the time Herbert joined them.
The four batteries were in position east and south of the town of Bethune, which was considered an important strategic location for its rail and canal links. During February and March this was a quiet sector, but the batteries were busy preparing reserve positions in view of a possible German attack. From the first day of April the guns were actively engaged in the recurring “counter-battery work” (trying to find and shell the German batteries).
The German all-out assault, known as the Spring Offensive, was described in my previous article of November 2013. It reached Herbert’s area on 9th April, following which the town of Bethune was almost destroyed by German bombardment (see postcard photo). All the battery positions of the Brigade, except the 125th, had been located by the enemy, who from the early morning of 9th April drenched them with high explosives and gas shells.
For a time all communications with Brigade Headquarters were cut. The falling back of the infantry division on the Brigade’s left allowed the enemy infantry to advance almost up to their gun positions (leading to one Battery being issued with rifles and machine guns to defend themselves) but the danger was averted.
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Huge number of shells fired |
The stand of 9th April checked the enemy for a time, and all batteries were able to take up less exposed positions. They suffered, however, from continuous bombardment. The expenditure of ammunition during that period had been enormous. Herbert’s Battery, for example, fired an astonishing 11,000 shells. If they were equipped with 6 inch guns the total weight of the 100 pound shells would have been 500 tons, and there would have been a huge heap of shell casings (see photo of an example).
Even more astonishing is that the wheeled howitzers were loaded by hand.
These shells would have been brought in by railway for most of the distance, then by road.
The Brigade remained on the same front for over two months until 27th June, when it was brought out to rest.
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Herbert is gassed |
On returning to the front two months later the Brigade took up positions farther south in the neighbourhood of Hulluch. By this time the Allies were preparing for their final major offensive, sometimes known as “The Hundred Days Offensive”. During August and September (during which Herbert was gassed by a gas shell on 6th September 1918) the South African batteries supported the infantry in anticipation of the German pulling back, by all moving to forward positions.
There were different types of gas, however all of them attacked the lungs when inhaled and even when the victims recovered they often suffered lung problems for the rest of their lives. The gas was either released from large containers, with the wind blowing it over the enemy troops, or carried by shells.
Herbert spent 14 days in hospital in the bustling town of Etaples, a major disembarkation point for incoming Allied troops on the West Coast, followed by almost a month in a convalescent camp. He rejoined his battery on 16th October.
While he was away he had been missing all the fun. On 12th October the batteries had assisted in the capture of Vendin. Then after Herbert returned to his Battery came a quiet period from a military viewpoint as the Germans retreated, caused by the difficulty of bridging the many canals, where heavy artillery batteries could only follow the infantry very slowly. This would have been very hard work for men like Herbert in the Batteries.
The stubborn enemy kept up a heavy bombardment during the first week of November, and on the night of the 6th the Brigade suffered its last casualties in the war, which ceased on the 11th.
Herbert returns home:
Dianne tells us that Herbert’s son Dan (her father, later known as “Malamba”) remembered waiting at the railway station as a nine year old with his mother for the returning war heroes and being deeply disappointed that there was no sign of his father. He had been confined to barracks for drunken affray! After having experienced two tough calls of duty in terrible conditions in which he had succumbed to malaria and been gassed, a bit of revelry on his return home seems most understandable, even if less so to his family desperate to see him again!
Conclusion:
For the sake of brevity we will now leave Herbert to enjoy 25 years of domestic bliss, far from the booming of the howitzers and the fear of the enemy’s retaliatory shelling. But fear not dear readers, I have more articles in mind about the prolific descendants of John Jerrems. Trust me!