For Love and Courage Read online

  CONTENTS

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  List of Illustration Credits

  Map

  Foreword

  A Note on the Text

  Dramatis Personae

  1: Mobilization

  2: Cavalry Reserve, Aubers Ridge

  3: The Bomb School

  4: Divisional Horse Show

  5: The Battle of Loos

  6: A Visit from the King

  7: Home Leave

  8: First Casualties for K.E.H

  9: Marking Time for the Squadron

  10: Spring 1916

  11: Reassembly of the Regiment

  12: CO, 27th Bn, Northumberland Fusiliers, The Tyneside Irish

  13: CO, 24th Bn, Northumberland Fusiliers, The Tyneside Irish

  14: Preparing for the Spring Offensive, 1917

  15: Arras

  Afterword

  Select Bibliography

  Acknowledgements

  Picture Section

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Lieutenant Colonel E. W. Hermon died in a hail of bullets on 9 April 1917, the first day of the Battle of Arras, leading his men of the 24th Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers into attack. He was shot through the heart, one bullet slicing through the papers in his top pocket, including the four-leaf clover his wife had given him for luck. This could have been the end of the story but he left a hitherto unknown, unpublished and uncensored collection of letters which he wrote to his beloved wife Ethel and his children, Betty, Bob, Mary, Meg and Ken: ‘the Chugs’.

  About the Author

  Anne Nason is the granddaughter of Lt. Colonel E.W. Hermon and the daughter of Mary (‘Mairky’) who bequeathed her the letters. Emigrating with her family to New Zealand in 1935 she was educated in that country, graduating with a BA degree from Canterbury University College in 1955. Returning to England in 1956 she worked in MI6 prior to her marriage to an Army Officer and has travelled the world whilst bringing up a family of two sons and two daughters. She lives with her husband in Wiltshire and currently has nine grandchildren.

  List of Illustration Credits

  All photographs and illustrations are from Anne Nason’s personal collection, with sketches taken from the original letters, except for the following which are reproduced by kind permission of:

  Eton College Archive

  Impey’s House, Eton, 1892

  Victoria Hermon

  The Cliffe

  Ethel aged sixteen

  Ethel with her sister Vio and brothers Vincent and Victor

  The family at Inverlodden, 1911

  Ethel with Meg at Inverlodden, 1911

  Jean Richards

  EWH with the Chugs at Brook Hill, 1915

  Ethel and the Chugs on the steps at Brook Hill, 1915

  Meg with two of the family dogs, 1915

  EWH sailing before the war

  Betty looking for her dog

  The History of King Edward’s Horse

  Portrait of Lt. Colonel Edward William (‘Robert’) Hermon

  Jessica Hawes

  Gordon Offord Buxton

  EWH at Aldershot with King Edward’s Horse

  Troopers of King Edward’s Horse, 1911

  Hugh McKergow

  Brook Hill House in the 1950s

  Imperial War Museum

  British troops helping with the threshing near Franvillers (Q4331)

  British soldiers in billets (Q29051)

  Souchez at the foot of Hill 119 (Q70424)

  The ruins of the cathedral at Albert (Q1475)

  Fixing scaling ladders in trenches (Q6229)

  Scene on the road beside the Scarpe at Blangy at Arras (Q6453)

  A British tank passing through Arras (Q6418)

  The cavalry resting beside the St. Pol-Arras Road (Q3217)

  Artillery moving up through Arras

  A 9.2 inch howitzer in action (Q6450)

  The scene on newly won ground near the Feuchy crossroads (Q5183)

  An 18-pounder quick-firing field-gun (Q5171)

  Battle of Arras: an advanced dressing station during the battle (Q3216)

  CWGC / The War Graves Photographic Project

  (photographs by Iain Smith)

  Marble headstone at Roclincourt CWGC

  Roclincourt cemetery

  The map sent to Ethel Hermon by Brigadier-General H. E. Trevor marking the spot where her husband was killed on 9 April 1917.

  Foreword

  Lieutenant Colonel Edward William Hermon died on 9 April 1917, the first day of the Battle of Arras, leading his men of the 24th Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers, into the attack. He now lies buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at Roclincourt, three miles from Arras. Mentioned in Dispatches three times, he was posthumously awarded the DSO.

  This could have been the end of the story, but my grandfather left a testament of his life and ideals in his letters to his wife, my grandmother, written nearly every day from his arrival in France two years before. Though keeping within the bounds of strict censorship, he was able to give a full insight into the day-to-day life of the cavalry officer in France and the frustrations that this caused whilst he and his men were kept on the periphery of the action. Later, when he gained command of an infantry battalion, the daily hardships of the infantry and the awful responsibilities of the commanding officer would become all too painfully apparent, despite a tendency to play down the severity of the situation in his letters home.

  Born on 10 June 1878, the son of Sidney and Fanny Hermon of the White House, Balcombe, Sussex, he was known to his family as ‘Robert’. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, it was whilst he was at university that the Anglo-Boer War broke out and, answering the appeal to ‘defend the Empire’, he abandoned his studies and joined the 7th Queen’s Own Hussars. He subsequently took part in operations in the Transvaal and Orange River Colony, receiving the Queen’s Medal with five clasps. By 1904 he was a married man, having wed his cousin Ethel. She joined him in South Africa and the following year their first child, Betty, was born.

  The regiment returned home late in 1905, and was stationed in England for the next six years. In the meantime, more children followed: Robert (Bob) in 1906, and Mary in 1908. It was shortly before the birth of his fourth child, Meg, in 1911, that Robert resigned from the 7th Hussars. The regiment was due to go to India and as he could not bear to leave his children behind, as was customary, he left the regular army and joined King Edward’s Horse – a Special Reserve cavalry regiment largely made up of from the old Dominions. Given command of the Oxford and Cambridge Squadron, he was promoted to major.

  After the outbreak of the First World War, in August 1914, Robert’s regiment was required to undergo months of intensive training, to bring their ‘part-time’ soldiers up to the active-service standard of a regular cavalry unit. They were then mobilized to France in April 1915. Following Robert into war were his manservant Gordon Offord Buxton (‘Buckin’), who had worked for the family since 1908, and who had elected to accompany the man he called ‘master’, as had Robert’s groom, Harry Parsons. Both would remain with him throughout the war until his death.

  My grandmother kept the letters from her beloved husband, each carefully replaced in its envelope, in the top drawer of her Georgian mahogany desk at their home in Cowfold, Sussex. These letters remained unopened after her death and, together with the desk, were left to her second daughter Mary – or ‘Mairky’ – my mother. In 1935 they travelled with us to New Zealand, and as a child I well remember seeing the bundles of letters in the drawer, tied up with ribbon. Mary was only eight years old when her father died and even into her eighties the memory of his death r
emained almost too painful for her to read them. When she died in 1991, I inherited the desk with the letters still tied in bundles in their drawer, virtually untouched. Once again they made the long sea journey back to England.

  When finally I decided the time was right to read them from start to finish, I was struck both by the testament of love that my grandparents showed for each other and by the enormous amount of historical detail that the letters revealed. Throughout, my grandfather remained an optimist. He had a huge regard for the courage of the ordinary soldier who faced the appalling conditions in the trenches with humour and stoicism. The publication of these letters will, I hope, be a testament to them as well.

  Anne Nason

  A Note on the Text

  In the two years before his death, my grandfather wrote almost 600 letters home to his wife. It has therefore been necessary to edit the collection down: some letters are reproduced in their entirety; others have had to be omitted altogether. My grandfather would often write in pencil, on message pads or on graph paper, when in the trenches or living in bivouacs, though my grandmother frequently sent writing paper on request. His handwriting was generally easy to read, though at times it has been necessary to research names and places.

  As a commanding officer my grandfather was expected to censor his own letters. Sometimes he used dashes to denote names or places he should not reveal, and occasionally the letters were marked ‘Opened by Base Censor’. He never disclosed his locations: these have been derived from the war diaries, regimental histories and Gordon Buxton’s own diary, and added to the letter headings. The letters were generally dated, but where they were not I have used the postmark as an indication. Punctuation has been largely kept as in the original.

  Anne Nason

  Dramatis Personae

  E.W.H.

  Edward William ‘Robert’ Hermon

  Ethel

  Ethel Hermon

  The Chugs

  their children:

  Bet, Betsy – the eldest daughter Betty

  Bob, Bobbo – the eldest son, Robert Arthur

  Mairky, Pookie – the second daughter, Mary

  Migwig, Wig, Meg – the third daughter, Olga

  Margaret

  Ken – Kenneth Edward, known as Benjamin or

  Ben before christening

  Addie, Adeline

  Adeline Ryan, an unmarried cousin

  Arthur

  Arthur Hodgson, a friend and neighbour in Sussex

  Brook Hill

  the family home in Cowfold, Sussex

  Dick

  Robert’s younger brother, Richard Outram Hermon

  Dogs

  dogs belonging to the family at Brook Hill: Spoot, Ben, Nell, Teeny

  The Governor, Pa

  Robert’s father, Sidney Alfred Hermon

  Juckes, Jucko

  Dr Juckes, the family doctor in Sussex

  Mimi, Ma

  Robert’s mother, Fanny née Owtram

  Nell

  Robert’s sister, Nell Hermon

  Pike

  the chauffeur at the White House

  Vic

  Ethel’s elder brother, Victor Hermon

  Vio

  Ethel’s sister

  The White House

  Robert’s parents’ home in Balcombe, Sussex

  Woolven

  Tom Woolven, the gardener at Brook Hill

  Barber

  Lieutenant, later Captain, B. H. Barber, K.E.H.

  Buckin, ‘Buccy’

  Gordon Offord Buxton, Private, later Lance Corporal, K.E.H.; formerly Robert’s manservant

  Chev

  Cheviot Dillon Bell, Captain, K.E.H.

  D.H.

  General Sir Douglas Haig

  Harry

  Harry Parsons, Private, K.E.H.; formerly a groom at Brook Hill

  Henry

  Lieutenant Henry Simon Feilding, attached K.E.H.; later Captain, Coldstream Guards

  K

  Lord Kitchener of Khartoum

  K.E.H.

  King Edward’s Horse, the King’s Oversea Dominions Regiment

  ‘Mac’

  1. Captain, later Major, J. N. MacDonald, K.E.H.

  2. Lieutenant, later Captain, D. MacKinnon, K.E.H.

  Pongo

  Lieutenant T. A. Izard, K.E.H.

  Steve

  Lieutenant, later Captain, P. D. Stevenson, K.E.H.

  Syme, ‘Slimy’

  Lieutenant D. A. Syme, K.E.H.

  MOBILIZATION

  ON THE EVE of the First World War, Major Hermon’s regiment, King Edward’s Horse (K.E.H.), was undergoing its annual training near Canterbury. With the declaration of war on 4 August 1914 the mobilization that Robert had envisaged became a reality, and the regiment was immediately assembled at Alexandra Palace in London, and then sent to Grove Park in Watford and on to Bishop’s Stortford for additional training.

  Meanwhile, on 22 August at Mons, the British army – the ‘Old Contemptibles’ of the British Expeditionary Force – engaged in their first battle on European soil for nearly a hundred years. Although the soldiers fought with great bravery, they were forced to retreat. The auspices for a quick British victory were not favourable. Reinforcements for the regular army were urgently needed and in the following April two squadrons of K.E.H., with Robert in command of ‘C’ Squadron, were mobilized to France as independent commands. He opted to take with him, as many cavalry officers did, his own horse – and his wife’s – from their stables at Cowfold. ‘C’ Squadron was detailed to the 47th (London) Division and ‘B’ Squadron to the 48th (South Midland) Division. Just before the squadrons embarked on the 21st, a telegram of encouragement arrived from King George V, their Colonel-in-Chief.

  31st July 1914, 11.15 p.m. – Old Park Farm, Canterbury

  Darling mine,

  It seems as if it will be some time before you see me home again, as if mobilization comes & everyone seems to expect it tomorrow, we shall be here for a very long time. However we will hope that things will be brighter & perhaps Prince Henry1 will work something with the Czar.

  Last night every important bridge in England was guarded by troops & every warlike preparation short of complete mobilization has been made. We are quite expecting to receive orders to mobilize at any minute. Grierson2 inspected us today & I think the squadron did right well.

  Give my love to the Chugs.

  Ever your Robert.

  3rd August 1914, 11.30 p.m. – Old Park Farm, Canterbury

  Just put on all my clo’ before going to bed to be ready for a hasty call.

  Darling mine,

  Just heard that the ‘House’ has sanctioned a complete mobilization of Army, Special Reserve & Territorials, so I take what opportunity I have of writing you another line as I expect to be on the march early tomorrow to Alexandra Park, & doubt if I shall have a minute for the next few days.

  Squadrons are marching up independently I am glad to say. Oh! If I had a squadron of good horses I wouldn’t mind but it is not much fun route marching if half one’s horses are going lame on the way. What this is going to mean for the nation I do not know.

  It really is terrible that all this should come now over so small an excuse, but it seems Germany was mobilizing before Austria sent her ultimatum to Serbia. However let us hope the fleet will give ’em Hades before long just to put our tails up.

  Love to you all my dears,

  Ever your Robert.

  4th August 1914 – Old Park Farm, Canterbury

  My darling Lassye,

  Well there’s no turning back now, for better or for worse we are committed to it.

  We start to mobilize tomorrow sending all our horses back by train at once & going ourselves by train on Friday to Alexandra Palace, where we complete & then I believe we join the 2nd London Div. (Territorial) & act as Div. Cav. to them. You will have to be awfully careful about money. You can’t b[u]y a thing in London except for spot cash. They won’t even change a five pound note.

>   I don’t know what I am going to do for servants but I think both Buxton and Harry are quite keen to follow master.

  Love to you all,

  Ever your Robert.

  Wednesday 5th August 1914, 6 p.m. – Old Park Farm, Canterbury

  Darling mine,

  I cannot get down to telephone to you as we are 2 miles out of Canterbury and the P.O. will not guarantee a call under 1½ to 2 hrs.

  I hope you got home safe & sound and I wish I could see you, I probably shall next week with luck, but there is such a lot to do & one can’t leave for long as so few know their work.

  I think I shall have the new horse for a charger but haven’t made up my mind yet. I’ll see what I can get out of our horses when we get them but it strikes me that if it comes to fighting I should like to be as well mounted as I could be.

  Give my love to the Chugs & my dear doggies.

  Ever your Robert.

  Thursday 6th August 1914, 5.15 p.m. – Old Park Farm, Canterbury

  Darling mine,

  I have had a very busy day today teaching my men to shoot & with some success. Don’t let them take my new horse if you can prevent it. Say it is a registered charger & I shall want it sent to me on Monday or Tuesday.

  I am afraid that our boat for next year is off. Will you write to Wally & say that owing to the congestion in the N. Sea I am afraid our cruise must be off.

  I shall be at Alexandra Park sometime tomorrow evening when things begin for us in earnest. Buxton is most anxious to go with Master and his wife is all for it too but I don’t quite know yet. I think I shall send him back to take care of you. I should be more comfortable if I thought you had someone you could rely upon. Anyhow I shall think it over.