A day off! And a trip to the seaside at Paris-Plage that didn’t go entirely to plan…
Diary
Thursday July 11th 1918. The first of a series of tenders to the seaside went down to Paris-Plage.
I was picked out.
Tender left mess at 1.30 & owing to driver not knowing the way arrived at Paris-Plage at 5 pm.
Raining most of the way, but fine at Paris-Plage – which is quite a nice little place on the coast near Etaples. Had a walk around, dined at the Continental Hotel, & left at 9.30.
Arrived in camp at 2 am. Got lost on way home.
Paris-Plage
About a 45 mile (72 km) journey by road from Rely, and near Étaples, the town is today formally known as Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, often shortened to Le Touquet. The early years of the 20th century witnessed its development, and it became a fashionable resort for Parisians – hence the name.
‘Western Theatre of War’ map extract showing Paris-Plage in relation to Rely, Merville and the Lys Sector. Map credit: IWM/TNA/GreatWarDigital
It took Greg 3½ hours to get there and 4½ hours to get back. Not a great rate of net progress in either direction! Presumably driving was more difficult on the return journey because of a general lack of illumination in the dark. Étaples was still liable to German air raids, much as Greg had experienced when he was first posted to France – less than six weeks earlier, but an age ago:
Having started his journey from Berck Plage to Aire-sur-la-Lys yesterday at 8pm, and having got as far as Étaples, Greg continues – slowly – today:
Diary
Sunday June 2nd 1918. Got up in time to catch the 6.30am train, which did not appear till 10.30am. Train left Etaples at 12.30pm – fearfully slow travelling. When tired, we got off and walked alongside.
Long Stop at St Pol[-sur-Ternoise].
About 10pm arrived within sight of the gun flashes.
When passing through Chocques about 2½ miles from the front line there was a strafe on.
Arrived at Aire about 1.30am (about 80 miles in over 13 hours!).
Couldn’t get rooms in Aire, populace having fled; after wandering round about an hour, we slept in a railway truck.
So Greg had his first encounter – if not a particularly close encounter – with the Western Front. This is the somewhat circuitous route that he followed:
Greg’s route from Berck Plage to Aire-sur-la-Lys , shown on a modern map (courtesy Google). Click for a larger, zoomable image (opens in new tab).
An Earlier Battlefield
Two thirds of the way from Étaples to St Pol, Greg passed a few miles south of Azincourt, the scene of the major battle between Henry V’s English and Welsh army and the French forces of Charles VI in 1415. 500 years later, the British (including the English and Welsh) and the French were on the same side…and this time there were now longbowmen.
It was Quicker Before the War…
Greg says that it took him 13 hours to travel the (indirect) 80 miles (130 km) from Étaples. From Berck Plage – only a few miles further – it took a total of 29½ hours! And the irony is that before the war there was a twice-daily direct (albeit cross-country) service from Berck Plage to Aire that took under 7 hours:
Bradshaw’s 1913 timetable for the direct Berck-Aire servicePre-war route from Berck Plage to Aire-sur-la-Lys , shown on a modern map (courtesy Google). Click for a larger, zoomable image (opens in new tab)
A Night in a Railway Truck
The railway station at Aire-sur-la-Lys has now closed, and the tracks have mostly been ripped up. But here is the site of the station and yard in June 2018, showing where Greg probably spent the night in his unorthodox – and probably uncomfortable – accommodation.
Site of Aire-sur-la-Lys railway station and yard, seen in June 2018. Click for larger image. Photo: Andrew Sheard
In Berck Plage, at the HQ of 2 Aeroplane Supply Depot, Greg learnt that he was posted to 42 Squadron, one of the RAF’s ‘corps’ squadrons. That evening, he began his journey to Aire-sur-la-Lys, the railhead for the squadron’s base, but didn’t get very far…
Saturday June 1st. Posted to No 42 Squadron, together with Cooper, Charlesworth & Mesinger.
Left Bercque [sic] at 8 pm by lorry for Rang du Fliers, for train to Aire.
Caught a train as far as Etaples. Stayed the night at the Officers’ Club.
So he travelled about 11 miles (18 km), going north back towards Boulogne:
The first stage of Greg’s journey from Berck Plage to Aire on a modern map (courtesy Google). Click for a larger, zoomable map (opens in new tab)
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’.
