No doubt to his great relief, Greg was today at last on his way home – back to Blighty. Or, as his war record has it, this was the day that he transferred from the British Expeditionary Force to the Home Establishment:
Back to the Channel
He would have made his way to one of the channel ports, most likely Boulogne, probably by train. Perhaps his route took him via Douai, Arras, St Pol-sur-Ternoise, Montreuil and Étaples, in a partial retracing of his journey from Boulogne to Aire-sur-la-Lys back in early June 1918:
Crossing the English Channel he took these two photographs, probably with his Vest Pocket Kodak camera:
“Homeward Bound” – taken by Greg crossing the English Channel. Click for larger image. Credit: Greg’s War CollectionCrossing the Channel – taken by Greg on his way home. Click for larger image. Credit: Greg’s War Collection
Judging by the way the light falls in the contre jour photograph entitled ‘Homeward Bound’, it looks as if it the ship was actually outward bound! Most likely it was passing Greg’s ship on its way to pick up more homecoming troops. And the men in the other photo could be looking into the light at the passing ship.
Greg was probably sailing on the NNW course from Boulogne to Folkestone. This was the reverse of the crossing that he made on the SS Arundel on his way out to France at the end of May 1918:
He had crossed the Channel since then, though: he went home on leave on 18 September 1918 and he had probably set off back to the Western Front on 1 October 1918. But this time, it was back to Blighty for good.
Back to Blighty
Despite its misleading similarity to the word ‘blight’, Blighty was an affectionate slang term for Britain or England. Google says that it was first used by soldiers in the Indian army, and gives its etymology as follows:
Anglo-Indian alteration of Urdu bilāyatī, wilāyatī ‘foreign, European’, from Arabic wilāyat, wilāya ‘dominion, district’.
Google’s Ngram viewer shows that the word rapidly gained currency in about 1910, but its usage fell markedly in the mid-1920s. It has enjoyed a modest revival in recent decades. Perhaps this had something to do with increased writings on the First World War as we approached its centenary. Maybe laced with a certain amount of post-modern irony.
The word ‘Blighty’ features on Laurence East’s Christmas card for 42 Squadron. It stretches on his stylised map from the Cheshire plain almost to the Thames estuary, as shown in the post for Christmas Day:
It was probably today that Greg started off on his journey back at Holyhead station. He would have travelled from North Wales, through England to France.
An LNWR train stands at Holyhead station prior to departure. Click for larger image. Credit: oldukphotos.com. The LNWR Society identifies (here) the train formation in this photograph as Jubilee class No 1915 ‘Implacable’ heading the royal train in March 1900, on the occasion of Queen Victoria’s last visit to Ireland. So the photo is over 18 years earlier than Greg’s journey, but it gives the general idea – especially as the buildings of Holyhead station looked essentially the same as late as the 1960s!
The return journey would have been essentially retracing the outbound trip on 18 September 1918 – something like:
Train from Holyhead to London Euston
Euston Square to Victoria via London Underground (Circle Line)
Train from London Victoria to Folkestone
Ferry from Folkestone to Boulogne
Train from Boulogne to Aire
Either via Desvres, Lumbres and St Omer,
Or (less likely) along the circuitous route by which he arrived on 2 June 1918 from Berck Plage, via Étaples, Montreuil, Hesdin, St Pol and Chocques, and
Today is the first day of a two week stretch of leave for Greg. He had been granted leave in the UK via Boulogne. Meanwhile, the British front continues eastwards.
Log Book
LEAVE. 18 SEPT - 2 OCT.
Leave in the UK
Greg would almost certainly have gone home to the family in Holyhead, North Wales. The journey would probably have taken him a couple of days, and is likely to have gone something like this:
Tender from Rely to Aire-sur-la-Lys
Train from Aire to Boulogne
Either via St Omer, Lumbres and Desvres (see below)
Or(less likely) back along the circuitous route by which he arrived on 2 June 1918 from Berck Plage, via Chocques, St Pol, Hesdin, Montreuil and Étaples
Ferry from Boulogne to Folkestone
Train from Folkestone to London Victoria
Victoria to Euston Square via London Underground (Circle Line)
Train from London Euston to Holyhead
On the first leg of the journey, the Aire to Boulogne route via St Omer would have been like this:
Greg’s probable route from Aire-sur-la-Lys to Boulogne, shown on a modern map (courtesy Google). Click for a larger image.
And the last leg – London Euston to Holyhead – would have been the easiest, even though the longest. There was a good, fast service from Euston to Holyhead, because it was the route that carried the post to and from Ireland.
From end to end Greg’s route to Holyhead may have been like this. It is remarkable for how little of it is in France. Although the Western Front must have seemed a world away, the line in Lys sector was in reality not far from the French coast…although by September 1918 it was getting further day by day.
A possible route taken by Greg from Aire-sur-la-Lys to Holyhead, on a modern map (courtesy Google). The route between Folkestone and London assumes running via Ashford and Maidstone. Click for larger image.
Back On the Front
In the meantime, looking east from Aire, the British front line had by this morning got well to the east of Laventie and was almost at Armentières:
The British Front on the morning of 18 September 1918. Adapted from a map accompanying General Haig’s despatches on the final British offensive. Click for larger image. Map credit: IWM/TNA/GreatWarDigital.
Next up…
Although Greg isn’t back from leave until 2 October, there will be occasional posts in the interim.
Today the war gets closer: Greg sails across from Folkestone to Boulogne in France and then travels on to Berck Plage, where ironically he has a rather lazy day. He then is a witness to one of the notorious Étaples hospital bombing raids that resulted in many casualties and major damage.
Friday May 31st. London. Caught the 7.35am from Victoria for Folkestone, arrived about 9.30. Sailed 11.15 on ‘Arundel’ for Boulogne. Arrived about 1pm. Lunch at the Louvre & then by tender to No 2 ASD at Berck Plage. Passed through Étaples, where the hospital had been bombed by Germans. Good bathing at Berck – did nothing all day.
Another raid on Étaples from 10.30 – 12.30pm.
One machine dropped a flare. Machine gun heard firing in the air. Probably one of our machines after the raiders. Furious ‘Archie’ bombardment, with no result.
London to Berck Plage
From the perspective of today’s ~30 minute train journey from St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel portal behind Folkestone, the 1918 travel time of almost two hours from Victoria to Folkestone Harbour seems rather slow. But that’s the way it was, and at Folkestone Greg boarded the SS Arundel for the crossing to Boulogne, the main French port for personnel (Calais was principally used for materiel):
Lunch at The Louvre didn’t involve a quick dash to Paris’ famous gallery, but rather the Grand Hotel du Louvre et Terminus, conveniently situated where the cross-channel ferries dock:
Advert for the Hotel du Louvre, Boulogne, from Bradshaw’s Continental Railway Guide (1913)
The 27 mile (43 km) journey south by tender from Boulogne to Berck Plage would have crossed the River Canche at Étaples (near Le Touquet):
The 27 mile journey from Boulogne to Berck Plage on a modern map, courtesy Google (click for a larger, zoomable map of the area, opens in new tab)
Étaples Hospital Raids
Étaples, an old fishing port that was a haunt of artists before the war, became home to huge British military presence. It was a major depot and training camp for the British Expeditionary Force, as well as the site of a complex of hospitals, air raids on which were the subject not only of Greg’s comment but also much wider controversy.
Wikipedia, citing E. J. King in The Knights of St John in the British Empire, says this:
Among the atrocities of that war, the hospitals there were bombed and machine-gunned from the air several times during May 1918. In one hospital alone, it was reported, ‘One ward received a direct hit and was blown to pieces, six wards were reduced to ruins and three others were severely damaged. Sister Baines, four orderlies and eleven patients were killed outright, whilst two doctors, five sisters and many orderlies and patients were wounded. [E.J.King, The Knights of St John in the British Empire, London 1934, pp.200-1.]’ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89taples]
This view of the Germans deliberately targeting the hospitals is adopted by other commentators, such as the author of the following piece:
The town’s medical prominence did not escape the attention of the German military high command, which duly organised a number of air raids on the town. Four such attacks in May 1918 were launched using incendiary bombs directed against the various hospital sites.
Given that literally hundreds of patients were suffering from fractured femurs many were unable to move to safety during such raids. They were thus assisted by hospital orderlies – who themselves came under machine gun fire from low-flying aircraft pilots watching out for just such activity. [http://www.firstworldwar.com/atoz/etaples.htm]
But some have taken a position that was less critical of the Germans’ intentions:
The Etaples hospitals were destroyed by German air raids which began on 19 May 1918 and continued until 10 August. There were grave doubts as to the wisdom of having sited large military training camps and hospitals so close together but it was generally believed that the enemy’s target was really the railway bridge over the River Canche. This belief was confirmed when a German airman who had been shot down said to his rescuers ‘if you persist in placing hospitals beside railway lines, they will continue to be bombed’. In the first attack of 19 May, in which 10 or 12 German planes took part, more than 300 patients were killed or wounded and incendiary bombs were dropped on the town of Etaples. Further raids occurred on 27 and 31 May, 28, 29 and 31 June, 1, 25 and 31 July, and 10 August. The hospital gardens were dug up for shelters. In the raid of 31 May, the St John Hospital was rendered uninhabitable with serious loss of life. [citations omitted] [Meynell, J R Army Med Corps142 43-47 (1996)]
Back home at the time, however, The Times was having none of it. Possibly referring to the same German airman, if this was the man who was brought down in the Étaples hospital raid of 19 May, the paper dismissed his protestations of a railway target in this article on 24 May 1918:
The Times, 24 May 1918. Click for full article (opens in new tab).
GERMAN SAVAGERY AT ITS WORST
HOSPITALS DELIBERATELY BOMBED
…
The captain of the machine brought down, who was wounded, and is now being cared for in the hospital he bombed, was formerly in the German Diplomatic Service. He tried at first to excuse himself by saying that he saw no Red Cross. When challenged with the fact that he knew that he was attacking hospitals he endeavoured to plead that hospitals should not be placed near railways, or, if they are, that they must take the consequences. Apart from the fact that hospitals must be near railways for the transport of their patients, in this case, as in the others, the raiders were not attacking the railway, but came deliberately to bomb the hospital area, and knew perfectly well what they were doing.
Berck Plage
By the time Greg arrived there on 31 May 1918, Berck Plage was the headquarters of 2 Aeroplane Supply Depot (2 ASD). It was here he had to wait to find out the squadron to which he would be posted. Until then, in what must have been an unsettling but anticipatory afternoon, he could note the good bathing and ‘do nothing all day’.
