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.
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:
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.
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:
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:
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):
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:
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’.
It can have come as no shock to Greg to be posted overseas by the Air Board. Possibly more surprising was the fact that he was going the following day:
Thursday May 30th. London. Reported to Air Board around 11.30 & received orders for overseas sailing from Folkestone next day. Went to a show in the evening. Stayed at the Grosvenor.
Hotel Cecil
At the time of Greg’s visit, the Air Board [Air Ministry] was housed in the Hotel Cecil at 80 Strand, prior to its move to Adastral House in Kingsway in 1919. The name of the hotel would have caused him a wry smile: he was not at all keen on his given names of Cecil Edward, hence his preference to be known as Greg. The Hotel Cecil was largely demolished when Shell Mex House was built in the 1930s, but the façade was kept and is still there today.
Hitting the West End…
No doubt like many before him before setting out for war, Greg spent his last evening in Blighty in going to a show. His diary doesn’t record which one, but some recently opened candidates that were then running in the West End were:
Yes, Uncle! by Nat D. Ayer and Clifford Grey at the Prince’s Theatre
The Lilac Domino by Charles Cuvillier and Robert B. Smith at the Empire
Violette by John Ansell and Norman Slee at the Lyric Theatre
Very Good, Eddie by Jerome Kern and Schuyler Greene (Herbert Reynolds) at the Palace
Going Up by Louis Achille Hirsch and Otto Harbach & James Montgomery at the Gaiety
Greg’s mention of staying at “the Grosvenor” was probably a reference to the Officers’ YMCA in Grosvenor Gardens, where he had stayed the previous night. On the whole that seems more likely for a 19-year old 2nd Lieutenant than the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane!
With Greg’s training now over, he is deemed ready for active service. His diary begins today with the receipt of orders to report to the Air Board in London.
Wednesday May 29th. Winchester. Received orders to report to Air Board on following morning before 12. Left Winchester by 8.30 train. Stayed at Officers YMCA.
Air Board
Greg refers to the ‘Air Board’, which in different incarnations in 1916 and 1917 had striven to co-ordinate the flying activities of the Army (the Royal Flying Corps) and the Royal Navy (the RNAS), with varying degrees of success.
But in January 1918 the duties of the Air Board had in fact been taken over by the newly formed Air Ministry, which directed the affairs of the nascent Royal Air Force:
The Air Ministry was created in January 1918 to oversee the birth in April 1918 of the Royal Air Force from the amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. The organisation was broadly similar to that of the Admiralty and the War Office, with a Secretary of State chairing the Air Council and the senior RAF member holding the post of Chief of the Air Staff.
But whatever the formal position, no doubt it was still referred to as the ‘Air Board’ by those summoned to appear before them.
Officers YMCA
It may seem odd that the YMCA makes this appearance in Greg’s diary, but as Emma Hanna of the University of Kent explains:
The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) was established in London in 1844 as a prayer and bible study group. At the outbreak of war the YMCA turned its pastoral experience to providing support for servicemen. By October 1914, 400 large marquees had been erected in Britain, and public appeals were launched to fund the building of large wooden huts to provide rest and recreational facilities.
…by 1918 over 1,117,000 officers and men could be accommodated in YMCA hostels in London.
Hanna, Emma: Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) , in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, et al., issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2015-01-29. DOI: 10.15463/ie1418.10544.
Quite possibly the YMCA that Greg stayed in was the hut in Grosvenor Gardens, London SW1: