Anthony was born in Sussex during the Second World

War. A keen amateur historian, Anthonys interest was

stimulated by his grandfathers extensive experiences
in the army both before and during World War I.
Starting work on the railway in 1962 as a labourer, he
graduated to be the Electrification Maintenance
Engineer for the old Southeast Division of Southern
Railway. Leaving the service in the 1990s, largely as
an ideological reaction to privatisation, Anthony
concentrated on his family and his passion for history.
Now retired, Anthony lives with his wife Joan in
Maidstone. They have two grown up children and one
grandchild.

AN OLD
CONTEMPTIBLE

To my wife Joan: thank you.

Anthony Rea

AN OLD
CONTEMPTIBLE

Copyright Anthony Rea

The right of Anthony Rea to be identified as author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the
publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims
for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British
Library.

ISBN 978 1 84963 776 3

www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2014)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.
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Canary Wharf
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Printed and bound in Great Britain

Contents

Introduction
Preface

8
13

Birth of an Old Contemptible

16

1914

38

Reality

58

1915

80

1916

102

Battlefield Tour

116

The Somme

124

1917

136

Attrition

151

10

1918

162

11

Boilers

180

Appendix I The Sisters Story

202

Appendix II The Commonwealth War Graves Commission

236

Introduction
They died the noblest death a man can die
Fighting for God and Right and Liberty
And such a death is Immortality
Extract from the Roll of Honour: Plumpton Village Church

There was little that was noble or glorious in the pursuit of this
war. There is little glory attached to terrified young men,
shaking and often crying for their mothers, being given a tot of
rum before going over the top of their entrenched positions
into a hail of machine gun fire with no cover and an officer
standing behind them with a revolver aimed at their backs.
There was little glory in drowning in trenches having been
trampled upon by your comrades, or in an army that at best
sent to Dartmoor, or at worst shot, conscientious objectors.
There was no glory in the way the military enforced discipline,
a firing squad for cowardice or being shackled for hours to
guns, often during shelling for minor offences, such as being
late for roll call.
The first truly worldwide war, the Great War, that
humanity had ever experienced, broke out in August 1914 in
Europe before spreading throughout the world. Unlike in many
other theatres of this same war and many other conflicts before
or since, the fighting on the Western Front that concerns us
here was not unusually barbaric. In fact, apart from the use of
gas, it was fought within most contemporary warfare
conventions. However for Britain and her Empire the sheer
scale of the slaughter and suffering has stood it apart from
other conflicts. The major battles, the Somme, Ypres and
Passchendaele, (more particularly the third battle of Ypres),
have become associated in Britain with all that is so terrible

and tragic with war, the seemingly endless, relentless and

enormous toll of death and suffering.
The events leading up to the outbreak of this terrible war
need not delay us too soon here. Briefly, an assassination in
Sarajevo led to a sequence of events that set the countries and
empires of Europe and most of the rest of the world at one
anothers throats. Britain was drawn into the conflict when
Germany, with the largest army ever assembled, used Belgium,
Britains ally, to outflank the French defences on their advance
on Paris. While Britain had been secretly plotting with France
to send over an army in the event of them being attacked by
Germany, there was no formal treaty to compel them to do
this. Indeed with a tiny professional army compared with
Germanys huge conscripted forces there was little that Britain
could do to support both France and our ally brave little
Belgium. (Although Belgium was depicted as a small, bullied
and week nation, they were in fact one of the most vicious
colonialists in their treatment of the natives of the Belgian
Congo in the late 19th century.)
When war did break out it was welcomed in many of the
combatants major cities, London, Paris, Moscow and Berlin
being among them, with widespread popular demonstrations of
support for their governments actions. By the time the conflict
ended in November 1918, around 900,000 British and Imperial
servicemen had been killed, mostly in France and Belgium on
the Western Front, but also in Turkey, the Middle East and
Africa. The number of deaths suffered by other combatants
almost defy description. Among them, Germany suffered just
over two million, France, just under one and a half million and
Austria-Hungary a similar number. While Turkey "only"
sustained 325,000 military deaths, this represented twenty
percent of those deployed. Civilians also suffered, sometimes
worse. For example, up to two million Armenians were
allegedly massacred in the Caucasus by the Ottoman army in
conflict with the Russians in 1915.
It may be argued that for Britain it was a just war. Britain
was a democracy, albeit not a perfect one, and the war was
largely supported by a democratically elected government in

response to the invasion of Belgium. For Germany and France

however it may be argued that it was about territory and
national honour. Plans had long been made by both for an
offensive war between their countries as a result of a long
standing enmity between them.
Although there was little Britain could do to directly
defend Belgium when the German army used the country to
advance on France and Paris, the motive for her intervention
was probably genuine and subsequently justified by the
appalling behaviour of the German army in that tiny country
during their initial advance. Stories of the more lurid atrocities
were somewhat exaggerated at the time for propaganda
purposes, however there were many well-documented accounts
of the German army murdering and enslaving civilians who
opposed or upset them.
There are many reasons why this war has left an indelible
impression in the minds of many generations, not only those
directly involved in the conflict. It was the first truly world war
and the casualties and the suffering were on scale unknown
before. Many can identify with the suffering because it was so
recent and so widespread. There were few families of the
generation that endured the war, and those that immediately
followed it, who did not directly suffer greatly as a result. Not
only was it the suffering of those who fought, died or who
were injured on the Western Front so frighteningly memorable,
but many of those who survived never truly recovered from the
traumas that they endured.
Those on the home front suffered as much and in some
cases more. The families of those at the front suffered the
trauma of knowing that their men, in many cases the only
breadwinner, might never return and, to some extent, knowing
of the horrors they were being subjected to. The authorities did
not make life any simpler, separation allowances for example
often went unpaid for months and no benefit was payable for
babies conceived out of wedlock even if the parents were
consequently married. Others on the home front also had their
lives inexorably changed, sometimes for the better, as result of
war work such as assembling armaments or filling shells with

toxic and explosive chemicals. These home workers, mainly

women, were sometimes subjected to eighty or ninety hours
work a week, in often appalling and dangerous conditions on
wages, that were frequently under the minimum proscribed.
Factories owners often simply ignored any minimum
standards.
Such effects of warfare are not of course exclusive to the
Great War, but it was perhaps the first time that the adverse
effects, not solely the killing and dying at the front, were so
well chronicled. It was the first modern war. The
combatants, increasingly as the war progressed, wore khaki
uniforms and wore steel helmets that would not look entirely
out of place today. It also introduced the concept of tank
warfare, largely developed as a response the stalemate created
by entrenched defensive positions. It signalled the end of
combat using horses. The cavalries of the armies proved to be
ineffective in the conditions brought about by heavy artillery,
rapid-fire machine guns and entrenched defensive conditions,
although many cavalry units stubbornly persisted.
We are also reminded almost daily with much of the
language developed as a consequence of the War still in
common use today. Shell shocked for example, an expression
commonly used today, emanated from a condition suffered by
combatants following the stresses of warfare, not only shelling.
Today it would probably be identified as post traumatic stress
syndrome. White feathers, which during the War were handed
to young men wearing civilian clothes by, usually, young
women on the street, are still associated with cowardice.
Unsanitary and squalid living conditions are often referred to
as like being in the trenches. Bungling incompetence is often
likened, perhaps unfairly, to the actions of the army generals
who consigned so many to their death in the conflict.
This is not a story glorifying the events of the conflict. It is
also not a story claiming that young men sacrificed their lives
for their country. They certainly died fighting for their country
perhaps, but that is entirely different. With a few notable
exceptions, young men do not willingly die for anything let
alone their country. They may exceptionally sacrifice

themselves for their comrades or for their regiments perhaps,

but they do not generally willingly lay down their lives for
anyone or anything. It is not a story about heroes, whatever
they are, but a story about individuals with all their faults who
found themselves involved in a terrible conflict over which
they had little control. They did not expect to die in the War
when they enlisted; at least in the case of the volunteer British
army established at the outbreak of the War. These were young
men caught up the fervour of the times, some because they
believed in the justice of the cause, some under pressure from
their peers and some simply looking for employment and
adventure away from their mundane and sometimes hungry
existence.
This is a story about some of the British combatants and
their families. In particular it is a story about two poor rural
families living in an especially beautiful part of Sussex, in the
shadow of the South Downs. There is an account also of a very
different Manchester family as it struggles to cope with the
trauma faced by the upper classes. It is about their everyday
lives, their ambitions, their successes, their frailties and
shortcomings against the background of poverty and war. It is
neither an unusual story nor indeed a particularly heroic one
but it is a story of ordinary people caught up in a conflict, not
of their making but very much about their times.
This story includes an account of the motives, emotions
and reactions of a group visiting the cemeteries of the fallen in
Belgium and northern France which illustrates that the legacy
of the conflict is still being felt in this twenty-first century.

Preface
William took his coronation mug down from the cupboard
over the sink and placed it on the bare wooden kitchen table.
He picked up the first of two eggs that Louisa had left out the
evening before, and, cracking open the shell on the side of the
mug, emptied the contents into it. The second followed in a
similar manner. Raising the mug to his mouth he swallowed
the eggs whole in one practiced gulp. He walked into the small
sparsely furnished front sitting room and, leaving the curtains
closed, picked up the half-empty bottle of Teachers from his
table by his chair where he had left it the evening before.
Returning to the kitchen, he poured himself a generous portion
of the whisky into the now empty mug and swallowed it again
in one satisfied gulp. He put on his long gabardine coat,
struggling to get it over his jacket, taking care not to disturb his
medals. He took out his inscribed silver-plated hip flask from
the inside pocket, pulled out the cork stopper and filled it with
whisky from the bottle. Picking up his battered leather suitcase
from the hallway he left the cottage by the back door and,
having placed the suitcase into the boot of his Ford Anglia
standing in the driveway, climbed carefully into the vehicle.
The car would not start. He was thinking of looking for the
starter handle when Louisa shouted irritably from the upstairs
window, Try the choke!
He drove out of the driveway scuffing the open wooden
gate with the rusted chrome bumper of the upright Anglia as he
did so. He drove slowly and erratically down the lane turning
left onto the London Road and into town passing St Edmunds
on the corner of Willington Street. Even after all this time he
could never pass that place without pangs of anger, loathing
and waves of nausea. The taste of excrement had never left
him. He drove through the centre of town, over the river, into
Bear Lane and finally through the double iron-railed gate of
the brewery and parked in his familiar and honorary position

behind the redundant coal store well clear of any other

vehicles.
Hi Mr Selwyn, will you be all day? asked Gareth the
gateman. William did not know Gareth, he was new as were
most in the brewery since he had retired some ten years
previously. Gareth however knew William, as did most others
at the brewery new or not!
I will not be back until tomorrow afternoon young man.
Thats fine Mr Selwyn, Ill keep an eye on it for you.
The structure of the brewery was odd with a shallowpitched prefabricated roof that clearly did not fit the original
Victorian building which still retained its extraordinary tall
chimney stack. William always regretted that he had not made
a better job of the rebuilding but the odd structure still
reminded him with satisfaction of one of his greatest triumphs.
He walked unsteadily out into Inkermann Street. Cursing the
weight of his ancient leather case he put it down and paused
for breath outside Rose Cottage. He was getting hot, it was an
unseasonably warm April morning. He removed his coat
revealing his medals which glinted in the watery sunshine.
Gareth, seeing his difficulty, came to his aid, I guess youre
going to the station and up to London with all those medals?
he said pulling up alongside in the small brewery van. William
felt a surge of pride and stuck out his chest, he rarely turned up
an opportunity to display his medals. Thank you young man,
he said grateful for the lift. They told me you used to live
there, sir, said Gareth nodding towards the cottage.
Yes I did, retorted William with a tone that invited no
answer. He was remembering many events that he shared with
Louisa there, however it was the delivery of that telegram that
sadly dominated them.
Grasping his case and his ticket which Anthony had got for
him, he walked onto the London-bound platform and sat on the
lone wooden bench, the same wooden bench from which he
had witnessed Kitcheners final hours and Georges fearful
farewell to war. This could be the final year he knew, he was
of the few remaining chums. He checked his inner pocket to
ensure that he had his reservation for the Union Jack Club in

Waterloo, then felt his medals making sure that they were in
order. There were of course his First World War medals but
also campaign medals from India, the Sudan and South Africa.
He was going to his annual reunion, a reunion with the Chums.
His fingers rested on his 1914 Star with its clasp, this iconic
and rare medal that singled him out.
He was an Old Contemptible.

1
Birth of an Old Contemptible
One particularly nasty elder boy with the rather unthreatening
name of Timothy Plummer was always the first bully William
ran into.
Youre a dirty horrid smelly little sod not fit to be at a
gentlemans school, he would scream at William as he
frequently ambushed him as they left in the evening. One the
favourite beatings that Timothy subjected him to was to get his
fellow tormentors to hold him down over a fallen tree trunk out
of sight of the road, remove the rope that held up his poor
trousers and, having torn down his trousers, savagely beat him.
I am not using my fine leather gentlemans belt to beat a dirty
little ruffian like you he would say. On the last day of the
summer term of his second year at St Edmunds William,
fearing that they would be waiting for him outside the school,
hid around the back of the earth closets to the rear of the
premises hoping that he could avoid a final beating. Timothy
however would not be denied. He rounded up his pals,
searched the grounds and finally found him. As they caught
hold of him and began to twist his arm to remove his trousers
Timothy suddenly spotted the closet and smiled. Wait! he
shouted, I have a special treat for the dirty sod, he likes dirt
and I have some that he will especially enjoy. Pull him in
here, he urged running into the closet, now push him head
first into the hole.
William screamed for them to stop but this only intensified
their efforts and he was thus thrust head first into the closet.
They continued to push him down and down until his head hit
the splash board which was covered with excrement. Thats
the best place for a dirty pauper, you should not mix the likes
of us! cried Timothy flushed with excitement, now leave
him there where he belongs.

William was stuck tightly and could not avoid the excrement
entering his mouth and nose and the back of his throat. The
more he struggled the more he stuck in the hole and the more
he suffered. It was almost an hour before one of the gardeners,
who wanted to use the closet, found him and released him.
Few of the village turned out for the funeral. It was a cold
miserable wet October morning, rain being driven through the
churchyard by a strengthening wind sweeping down from over
the verdant South Downs to the south. The vicar stood over the
grave, making no attempt to hide his displeasure at having to
conduct this ceremony, he was cold and wet and such events
were something of a boring routine for him. His cassock,
surplice and stole swirled about him as he intoned the timehonoured and requisite words for the event from the scriptures
and the tiny wooden coffin was lowered into the chalky sodden
ground. At least, Sarah thought as she sobbed, he was spared a
paupers funeral; Henry said nothing, fidgeted with his cap,
and showed little emotion.
William David Selwyn was born in April 1886. He died
five months later, probably of pneumonia. Death at such an
early age was not an unusual event in Victorian England when,
in some rural areas, one in five of working class children died
in the first four weeks of their lives.
For his parents, Henry and Sarah, the more practical
consequences of their infants death compounded the tragedy.
The costs of funerals were a huge burden on poor families.
However, they found the means for a decent burial by existing
for weeks with less food and fuel, selling a few of their poor
goods sixpence was raised with the sale of Sarahs only piece
of jewellery, a ruby brooch and by borrowing from Sarahs
mother.
Some consolation arrived the following summer when the
familys fifth child was born in July. The newborn boy was
immediately christened William David in memory of his dead
brother.
He was born in the village of Streat in West Sussex in a
tied cottage on a farm on the outskirts of the tiny village. His

father was a labourer on the local farm that yielded a pittance

of a wage barely enough to keep his family in food and shelter.
That William was not born into extreme rural poverty was
entirely down to his mother. Sarah was a resourceful and, for
the period, well educated women. She could read and write,
was a proficient and prolific seamstress and often acted as the
village midwife. She grew vegetables in the small garden to
the rear of their cottage, with no little skill and flair, and
rented, although no cash ever changed hands, a small plot in
the village blacksmiths garden for a similar purpose. All this
provided a little extra income that helped towards a reasonable
standard of living. She would make clothes for the more welloff in the village and on one occasion, when the blacksmiths
daughter got married, she earned a whole shilling for designing
and making her wedding dress. Sarah was also a skilled cook
able to make the most of the poor and generally un-nutritious
food available. Hence, the Selwyn family was consequently
generally well nourished and the children grew up without
many of the childhood deficiencies and illnesses so common in
the village.
William was a welcome addition to the family and helped
make up for the loss of his brother. Even his father Henry, a
generally morose and distant figure, seemed to welcome him.
Henry was an illiterate labourer with a coarse manner and
unkempt appearance. What Sarah saw in him is difficult to
imagine. The choice of a husband was not always down to
wishes of the women, economic and peer pressures usually
prevailed even when someone as intelligent and strong-willed
as Sarah was involved. Nevertheless he was a handsome,
strong and hard-working man who generally treated Sarah and
his children well by his own and prevailing standards. He
certainly did not beat Sarah; a fate suffered by many of her
contemporaries. One could not imagine her putting up with
such treatment; indeed you would fear for anyone who tried it,
she was a formidable woman.
He did however like his drink and tobacco which
consumed a disproportionate amount of the family income. In
common with most wives, there was little Sarah could do

about this. She accepted it perhaps in return for his non

interference in the rest of the familys domestic affairs. Sarah
adjudicated on all major issues such as the remaining family
income, diet, accommodation, school and church attendance
and discipline. Perhaps as consequence of this, Henry did not
spend much time at home. When he was not working, and he
did generally work a twelve-hour day, his time was spent at the
inn with his pals, drinking, smoking and often, more worrying
for Sarah, gambling.
Henry and Sarah did not have a large family by
comparison to many. The eldest was a boy named Robert.
Robert was born in the familys first home in Cuckfield, a few
miles north of Streat and a rather larger village, in 1881. He
was already six by the time the second William was born and
was the image of his father, both in terms of his looks and
demeanour. Mabel was Williams eldest sister and nothing like
her mother. She was three years older than William, a loud and
demonstrable girl who immediately doted on the new child
probably as a response to the loss of the first William. George,
the second son, was born two years after Mabel and was still
being suckled by Sarah when the second William arrived.
Three years after William was born Elizabeth, the second
daughter, arrived after a particularly difficult birth that was to
seemingly influence her relationship with her mother
throughout their lives. There followed two more boys, Earnest,
born in 1892 and two years later the family was completed
with the birth of Edward.
William went to the village school when he was seven
years old, following his elder siblings. It was not a school that
would be recognisable in the twenty-first century. Although
universal education had been introduced by the Government
by then, in practice its provision was sketchy to say the least,
particularly in rural areas. The system was still based on the
provision of a voluntary education supplied by the local church
and charity from the squire or other local dignitaries.
The school that the Selwyn family attended was typical of
their kind. There were no books or writing material apart from
that used by the teacher. The teacher was not academically

qualified to teach at all. She was a daughter of the farmer who

employed Williams father and was unpaid. She was part of
the patronage offered by the farmer as part of his perceived
charitable duty to the villagers. As for the lessons themselves,
they were very rudimentary, simply an attempt to teach the
basics of reading, writing and arithmetic in a room that was
overcrowded to such an extent that some children had to stand
during them. Many children in the village did not attend at all
and of those that did many only intermittently. There were
sound economic as well as educational reasons for this.
Children could be an essential wage earner in the rural
community. If they were not actually earning a few pence
helping out cleaning in the squires house or running errands
for the furrier or delivering goods from the grocer to the better
off in the village, they would be at home looking after their
younger brothers or sisters while the mother could be out
earning a little to supplement the husbands wages.
Robert had already stopped going to the school long before
William started. Sarah could see that he gained little benefit
from it, not only because of the standard of education but also
because she quickly realised that he had no aptitude for
learning. His father was completely indifferent to his
childrens education, he had never gone to any school, could
neither read nor write and could see no reason why his children
should be able or want to do so. Similarly with Mabel, she
lasted barely a year at the school before her mother kept her
home and taught her to sew and help her in her dressmaking
enterprise. Poor Mabel was undervalued as were many girls in
rural families. She was made to sew for hours fulfilling the
most menial of tasks in the business while her mother carried
out the more skilful activities such as all the design and cutting
work necessary. George was however still at the school when
William started. Sarah had higher hopes for these two.
William loved it, even given the poor standard. It got him
away from the constraints of life at home and into an
environment that, even given its shortcomings, stimulated the
child, opening his young mind to other things apart from his
immediate family environment. What were books? Of what of