1. The Interwar Years: 1919 to 1939
Recovery and Remembrance
Joe Rutherford found his way that night to Hawthorn Leslie’s shipyards in Hebburn on the River Tyne, where he had worked before the war. Joe and others from his regiment had endured 1,479 days of hunger and anguish in captivity. The Germans had captured them in October 1914. Four years of Prisoner of War camps in Germany had left scars on his mind. The years of confinement haunted him, and his mind was still in turmoil. He had lost friends too; friends who the enemy had shot on the Western Front or when escaping from the POW camps. Others became ill and died before they could experience the sweetness of the freedom he was now enjoying. There had been too many days when guards were watching his every move, blocking any attempt to escape. But he was fortunate to have survived the Great War that had killed or maimed so many millions of people, including two of his closest friends and three brothers-in-law.
It was a chilly night on Tyneside[1], the shipyards, factories and workers’ terrace houses enveloped with fog and hoarfrost. Joe recalled the Vehnemoor Celle VI POW Camp in the peat moss bogs of the north-east of Germany. He and his marras[2] had attempted an escape on just such a night. The camp was thirty-odd miles from the Dutch border, and they had almost made it. But that was January 1917, two years earlier and a little over midway through the Great War. They spent close to two years as POWs at Germany’s largest POW camp at Soltau after that.
The constant rumble and hammering of the yards and factories of Tyneside reminded him of muffled guns and rifle fire. And the smoke rising from dozens of factories created an acrid smog[3] like that of the battlefields. Joe soon dismissed that analogy from his mind as unpleasant memories. He had survived a month of hell on battlefields of the Western Front early in the war too. “It doesn’t sound much,” he thought. “But in that one short month, my battalion lost most of its original 1,000 officers and men. They had trained together and travelled to the battlefields of France together. 800 fellow Durham Light Infantry marras had lost their lives or limbs or freedom within one month of arriving at the River Aisne on the Western Front in France. Joe had read that three-quarters of a million British soldiers had died or were missing in action in that war. And the enemy wounded another one and a half million men in that “war to end all wars”.
“Many of those men were only boys,” thought Joe. “And the war had disabled many who could never again work or lead a regular life.” He thanked God in silence that he had not suffered the same fate.
Tyneside was one of the leading industrial regions in the world for coal mining and shipbuilding since the Industrial Revolution when Britain produced most of the world’s ships. Along with Clydeside, Merseyside and Wearside, they had built more ships in the last century than anyone anywhere else in the world. Besides the collieries, Jarrow and Hebburn had two primary employers: Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company, by far the largest employer in Jarrow, and the smaller Hawthorn Leslie and Company in Hebburn. Between them, they provided a living for 90% of the workers of this part of Tyneside. Joe had worked for Hawthorn Leslie before he left for the Great War in 1914. And he had worked there before he left for the 2nd Anglo-Boer War in South Africa in 1901.
At Hawthorn Leslie’s Hebburn yards, Joe found his old marra Mike O’Brien meandering in the darkness too. Joe and Mike were lifelong friends who had fought in two wars together and had endured the Great War side by side in the battles on the Western Front and three POW camps in Germany.
“Aalreet[4] Mike, what are ye doing here at this time of night?” he called out in his best shipyard Geordie[5] livened up with a touch of Irish brogue?
“Aalreet Joe, I suppose the same as ye,” replied Mike winking. They both laughed and embraced.
“They are still hard at work,” commented Joe while surveying the yard. “Look. There are at least a dozen ships in different stages of building at our old yard, including destroyers, cargo ships, tugs and a large passenger-cargo ship. And Palmers? They look busy too. I visited there yesterday.”
“Aye, lots of work. We must get in there again,” replied Mike. “But with the war over, they will not be getting as much work.”
“How are ye doing, Mike,” asked Joe. “Getting any stronger?”
“I guess so. And you, Joe?” asked Mike.
“Aye, getting there; getting there,” replied Joe. “Mary is doing a fine job of looking after me. And I’m home with my little family again!”
“Aye,” replied Mike. “It’s such a pleasure to be back home. Ruth is looking after me too. And my little Michael is such a fine laddie.”
Joe and Mike considered themselves very fortunate! They were home on Tyneside at long last. Joe was taking walks every night through his familiar neighbourhoods of Jarrow and Hebburn on the south bank of the River Tyne and often met his old companion. They were both enjoying the freedom and aloneness of being able to walk out of their front doors and explore their old haunts without being watched by guards.
“What you and I have been through together, my old marra!” said Joe. “We are now close to forty years old, most of that as marras.”
“Why did we go, Joe?” asked Mike.
“Because we believed it was our duty to protect this country and our families from the Boche,” responded Joe, repeating his old refrain.
“Aye, that was it. But did we need to go?” asked Mike. “We had done our duty in South Africa and India. Why did we have to go to France in this bloody war?”
“I ask myself that every day, too, my marra,” replied Joe. “I left Mary and our two bairns behind to go to a filthy trench war and German POW camps. They suffered; I suffered; we all suffered. Why? I don’t know. So many men, young and old, joined the Army. We just got caught up in it and felt we had to join, I guess. I can’t remember the details. I just remember we were at peace and enjoying our lives and work one day, and then we were signing up for war again on the next day.”
“Aye. It makes little sense, does it?” mumbled Mike.
Back at home, Joe slipped into bed with Mary, who was sleeping. She was warm through her nightclothes, so he fit his body into the contours of her form.
Then, after giving her a soft kiss on the neck, he fell asleep.
At once, he was on the Chemin des Dames above the River Aisne in France. The night was black except for the constant flashes of guns and exploding shells.
“There’s not much bloody protection in these trenches,” murmured Mike. “How can we stay safe here?”
“Aye, I don’t know where we should hide from the Boche aiming at us over there,” Joe replied. “They are so close we could reach out and touch them.”
“Is this it?” asked Jack. “Two lines of soldiers facing and shooting at each other in the rain and mud? Is this our new war?”
“Looks like it,” Joe mumbled. “It’s a bloody miserable state of affairs.”
“Aye. There is no protection against those bloody Boche shells,” added Mike. “Well, laddies, it was nice knowing ye. God knows how long we’ll survive out here.”
Then, from the trench, looking out across the scarred terrain to the German entrenchments, they saw movements. German soft uniform caps and spiked helmets appearing from time to time above their parapets as the German troops prepared for their attack. The morning was misty and dark, and the rain started pouring in sheets. Joe’s fingers had stiffened, and they weren’t sure how they could fire their weapons should the enemy charge.
“Bloody hell,” whispered Mike then. “I don’t have a comfortable feeling, laddies. Sitting in these open shallow trenches with the rain beating on us? It’s bloody freezing and dangerous. We have the German Army staring at us from a few yards away over there, and those movements may mean they will soon attack us.”
“Aye Mike, this doesn’t look good for us,” replied Joe. “But we had better bloody well do our best if we want to survive. I reckon the Boche is just as wet and freezing as we are. Keep your heads low and let’s watch what’s going on around us. Stay alive!”
“And those darkies next to the West Yorkshires? Are they fighting men?” asked Jack.
“I bloody well hope so,” replied Mike.
Minutes later, the Germans launched a fierce attack along the entire Allied line. It began with the horrific storm of an artillery barrage. With the wind and beating rain, it became a storm of fire and water. Shells exploded before and behind the trenches and even overhead, raining shrapnel on us unsuspecting newcomers. German machine guns and rifles opened fire along the line. Bullets whizzed past them and embedded themselves in the earth mound behind them or ricocheted off boulders and helmets. It was so loud; they couldn’t communicate with each other. The smoke, rain, and mist made it impossible to see the enemy. And it continued nonstop for over an hour.
“Keep your heads low, laddies, and return fire as best you can,” yelled a corporal nearby.
How?” cried Mike, “I can’t see the bastards!”
“Just fire in their direction,” yelled the corporal. “They’ll get the message, and we might down a few.”
After the first shocks, which had frozen them in their positions, they rallied their strength and nerve and fought back as hard as they could. The noise was deafening, the whizzing bullets frightening, and the soundwaves and shrapnel from the exploding shells battered our line nonstop.
“We’ll give you as much as you are giving us, you bloody Hun,” yelled Mike while unloading his rifle over and over in rapid-fire towards the German line.
Mike’s fellow Durhams, along the line, did the same, including Joe. And, after a few minutes to prepare their guns, the British artillery were returning shells in rapid-fire too. And between the blasts from the canons, there were cries of pain from their fellow Durhams.
The Moroccans on their right came under the massive attack too and were panicking and retreating. So, as the Moroccans pulled back, the Officer Commanding 1st West Yorkshire Regiment moved one of his companies to cover the gap caused by their retreat. Then the Moroccan officers rallied their men for a while, and they moved forward again. There was total confusion. And not knowing the British had moved into their position, the Moroccans opened fire on the men of the 1st West Yorkshire Battalion, who suffered thirty casualties as a result – friendly fire and complete chaos!”
“I told you so,” called Jack as loud as he could, “You can’t trust those Wogs to get things right!”
“I think we are all in the same bucket here, Jack,” I yelled, “no matter the colour of our skin.”
“A bloody dangerous bucket!” screamed Jack.
“Look up there, laddies,” called Joe. “It’s a plane. I can see the pilot and a bombardier. They’re coming our way. Watch them.”
“They’ve dropped a bomb,” screamed Mike. “It’s coming straight for us!”
“Dive for cover,” screamed Joe!
Joe awoke in a sweat. Mary had heard him groaning and calling out “bloody dangerous” and “dive for cover”. So, she was awake too and comforting him.
“Relax, darling,” said Mary. “You must have had a nightmare. I’ll bring you some tea and a biscuit.”
“I’m sorry I woke you up, my darling,” said Joe. “A bomb was coming straight for us, and then I woke up, thank God.”
“That’s all right, Joe. You poor darling. We’ll have some tea, and you can tell me all about it. Then we’ll go back to sleep, my love.”
§
Joe walked every night now regardless of the weather as soon as Mary and the children were asleep. He enjoyed breathing in the air of Tyneside, despite, or because of, its familiar pall of industrial smoke. He had drawn breath in this smog-filled environment since his childhood. The breezes of the POW camps of the Lüneburg Heath in rural North Germany had been so clean and healthy. But it was not the air of his homeland. He enjoyed the freedom to walk wherever he pleased, unfettered in familiar surroundings. And he cherished the liberty of allowing his mind to overcome the turmoil of his last four years.
Joe and Mike often met, walking together while reminiscing about their exploits since they had first joined Queen Victoria’s Army in 1900. As soldiers, they had shared many experiences in South Africa, India, France, Belgium, and Germany over two decades. The friends remembered many of the fun times and avoided reawakening their nasty episodes, the stuff of their inescapable nightmares. Yes, they lost many of their old marras, but they made many friends too along the way. And they treasured their medals and the King’s letter to homecoming British POWs to honour their sacrifices. And both Joe and Mike still had their limbs and faculties intact!
“My God, Mike, how did we live through these last few years?” asked Joe.
“It’s a miracle, Joe,” replied Mike. “We survived hell. I’m home, but I can’t escape it. I’m dreaming about it every night. But what of those who didn’t return?”
“Aye,” replied Joe as if from a distance, “I’m dreaming about it too, Mike. Billy, Jack, Fred, and the hundreds or thousands of others we left there in the blood and mud of the battlefields. Mary’s three brothers who died within a few miles of each other near Ypres. I’m grim every time I remember them dying in those trenches. What has become of their remains?”
“Buried in the mud of France and Flanders,” lamented Mike. “Far from their beloved Tyneside.”
“Aye,” replied Joe, “buried in the mud of France and Flanders. But their souls are now in heaven.”
Of the millions of Britons who went to fight in the Great War, 10% never came back. The official final and corrected casualty figures of the British Army for the Great War were 574,000 killed in action. Over 250,000 were missing and presumed dead. The war disabled or damaged another 1.7 million, badly enough to qualify for a war pension. Over 40,000 men had their limbs amputated during the war; 272,000 suffered other debilitating injuries in the legs or arms; 60,000 injured in the head or eyes, and 89,000 sustained further severe damage to their bodies. Many returning soldiers weren’t as fortunate as Joe and Mike. The disabled soldiers of this war needed continued care, many for the rest of their lives. Most of these men found it difficult, if not impossible, to regain employment on their return. It took over a year for the last soldier to leave St. Nicholas Hospital in Newcastle.
“Who do we blame for all that misery?” asked Mike. “The Boche Kaiser Wilhelm II and his generals, aye. But what of our generals too? Did they give a damn for the thousands of men they sent over the top to their deaths? What did we mean to those arrogant bastards?”
“Aye, and they say the worst was Field Marshal Haig,” replied Joe. “They call him Butcher Haig. I’ve heard that there were two million British casualties endured under his command.” [6] [7] I reckon the generals had a job to do, Mike. They must win the wars, no matter how. They decided on the strategies and made their battle plans. We were just their cannon fodder!”
“Aye, that’s true,” concurred Mike, “They had a job to do, with us as cannon fodder soldiers! Are there not smarter ways to win wars without so many casualties?”
“Maybe,” replied Joe. “But from what we have seen, they don’t know them!”
Joe and Mike surveyed the shipyards in silence for a long time, deep in their memories and thoughts, until Joe concluded: “We must count our blessings and thank God that we and thousands of others are still alive and returning home to live and work again!”
They had survived the horrific 1914-1918 Great War, a war that resulted in 17 million deaths and 20 million wounded. There they lost many more marras in the treacherous vermin- and disease-ridden trenches and the cramped German POW work camps. Towards the end of the war, they were facing starvation through the chronic lack of enough food in Germany. They had survived the 1918 flu too.[8] Doctors have described the 1918 flu pandemic as one of the most significant natural disasters in human history and it may have killed more people than the Black Death of Medieval Europe. [9]
“Aye,” replied Mike. “We must now recover our strength as soon as we can and get back to work, Joe. We are so much luckier than those poor bastards who have returned damaged.”
Joe and Mike parted ways and returned to their sleeping wives. Once more, Joe slipped back into bed next to a sleeping Mary and was soon asleep.
They were crossing a bog, sinking up to their waists in frigid water and mud, then reached a ploughed field.
“Look after yourselves,” said Joe. “They say we have to cross this muddy field under fire while returning fire without protection!”
“Shite,” added Jack. “Bloody madness!”
And then the attack began. Hundreds of British troops were shouting and running through the mud while firing through their comrades at the enemy. The Germans climbed out of their trenches and ran towards them too. It was frightening! Bullets whizzed past them in every direction the whole time, while shells exploded at random across the entire field. British guns were lobbing projectiles also, from behind their lines into the German defences on the other side of the Meteren Becque. The noise of battle was horrific, and smoke covered the entire battlefield, so it was difficult to see ahead of their bayonets! And men were dropping too often around them.
“Stick with me, lads,” screamed Joe to his marras.
“Right next to you, Joe,” called Mike.
“Right behind you, Joe,” yelled Fred.
“I’m with you too,” called Jack back from just ahead of Joe.
So, on and on they ran, weaving around their fallen wounded and dead fellows in the mud. Then Jack stumbled and fell face-first into the mire.
Jack’s hit,” Joe shouted. “I’ll check him out. Keep going.”
Joe dropped to the mud and crawled back to check on his marra. But Jack had taken a bullet through his forehead.
“He’s dead, a bullet to the forehead,” Joe called forward to the others. “Jack’s gone!”
“Keep going, my marra,” responded Mike looking back. “Keep going as fast as you can. Catch up with me. They will collect and bury Jack after the battle.
And so, on they ran through the hail of bullets and shrapnel from exploding shells. More men dropped to the mud when hit. Soon enough, they came upon the enemy and engaged in one-on-one combat, thrusting their bayonets into very young Germans as they went, and dodging the German blades as best they could.
Joe saw a German soldier running straight for him, rifle and bayonet extended towards him, screaming. He tried as hard as he could to deflect the weapon as the soldier made his determined effort, jabbing his blade in Joe’s direction. He yelled “Halt”, then awakened, shaking and sweating as if from a fever. His shouting awoke Mary. “Joe, Joe, you’re all right, my darling. Wake up, it’s all right.” She was soothing him and stroking his brow as he emerged from his sleep.
“You’re fine, darling. Having another nightmare?” asked Mary.
“Jack,” cried Joe. “We lost Jack! And a German soldier was about to stab me.”
“I know, dear Joe,” replied Mary. “You told me about Jack. Stab you? My God, did that happen to you over there?”
Joe didn’t reply. He just looked into her eyes at first, as the reality of being back in a warm bed next to his wife registered.
“I’m sorry, my darling,” said Joe. “The memories keep pouring back. I can’t get rid of them. But the soldier didn’t stab me. I awoke.”
“You will get rid of them, my love. You will once you have worked through them,” said Mary, then kissed him on the forehead. “I’ll make some tea, and we’ll go back to sleep.”
§
The sight of unemployed ex-servicemen on the streets became common and something of a scandal. The Gateshead Employment Exchange targeted local places of entertainment to see if they could use any more men. They considered the job of cinema projectionist ideal for those disfigured by a war injury since they worked in darkness and were seen by no one. They asked cinemas to project information about unemployed ex-servicemen on the screen each week, as a way of reaching out to employers. [10]
But many soldiers couldn’t go back to their original line of work because of injuries or the effects of shell shock.[11] As early as 1916, schemes were being funded to offer workshops full of equipment for wounded returning soldiers to develop new skills, earn money, and gain independence and self-respect. This continued and grew after the war's end.
Luckier men had jobs kept open for them. But most others, able-bodied and wounded alike, competed for work in a changed and more complex environment. The war led Tyneside shipyards to an over-reliance on government contracts for a limited range of products, and they became vulnerable. So, engineering companies tried to diversify their post-war profile. Armstrongs of Elswick, Newcastle, for example, returned to making automobiles and vans to meet growing demand. They branched into locomotives, pneumatic tools, and combustion engines too. But many smaller companies lacked the capital to diversify. [12]
Back to work
Once he had recovered enough, Joe found menial work from time to time, but it was not what he had done before the war, and not what he had hoped for either. But he was ready to contribute to the household and take the pressure off Mary without overexerting himself during his recovery.
It was a short-lived irony that the standard of living in England had improved during the war. Full employment, rationing, rent control, rising bacon imports, increased consumption of milk and eggs, meant that many working-class families were in a better position than before the war. Workers’ incomes doubled on average between 1914 and 1920, and, in the war's aftermath, when price levels dropped, the war-boosted wage levels remained the same. [13]
Mary spoke to his past manager, Gerald Robinson, at Hawthorn Leslie, whom she had kept abreast of his return to Jarrow and his recovery progress. When Joe had left, she had used his contacts at the shipyard to find employment for herself, ensuring income for their family. Now the time was approaching to switch back from herself to Joe as the wage-earner, and they agreed to do everything they could to make that happen.
The Government encouraged women to leave their jobs after the war to give them back to servicemen. The women received out-of-work compensation, but that didn’t last long. In December 1919, Gateshead Council reminded the tram company they had only agreed to use female conductors for the duration of the war. Ex-soldiers’ organisations condemned any woman being hired who was not a widow or a dependant, “thus depriving ex-servicemen, widows, and dependants of the means of making a livelihood.” [14] These were still trying times for many on Tyneside and elsewhere. The Newcastle Daily Journal reported in December 1918 that in Newcastle alone, there were 15,000 unemployed women, many former Munitionettes, as they called the female munitions workers during the war. [15] Unrest and dissatisfaction with post-war job conditions resulted in sporadic strike action. [16]
In many aspects of life, they continued hearing echoes of the Great War in the years after the Armistice. But conditions settled on Tyneside once more, and as with many of the others, Joe’s strength returned. After three months, Joe was ready and keen to go back to work. He met with his old boss at Hawthorn Leslie, Gerald Robinson, to discuss the possibility of returning, cap in hand.
“Welcome back, Joe,” bellowed Gerald Robinson in his fashion as he thrust out his hand to shake Joe’s. “So canny good to see ye back home and in good health!”
“Terrific, Mr Robinson. Thank ye, thank ye so much,” replied Joe. “Ye don’t know how canny good it is for me to be back here, believe me.”
“Four years, Joe,” said Robinson. “How did ye survive that?”
“I ask myself that every night, sir,” he replied. “But I had to survive to look after my wife and children, so I had to make it back. I refused to die even though the Boche did their best to kill me.”
“Well, it’s an excellent thing too,” replied the headman, “now let’s discuss the reason for this meeting, getting you back to work here. Joe, we don’t have your old job anymore. Sam Mitchell has taken it, and I'm loath to remove him from it. But we can put you back in the yard helping wherever they need you.”
“That will be right with me, sir,” replied Joe, “I prefer to work out in the open.”
“Good,” bellowed the headman. “Well, that settles it then. You can start tomorrow.”
“Terrific Mr Robinson. Thank you, thank you so much!” concluded Joe as he backed out of his office, cap in hand with respect, making his way home full of joy and pride.
“I have a paying job again, Mary,” he announced with pride, “A good-paying job. Mr Robinson said I could start tomorrow.”
“Oh Joe,” said Mary as she moved toward him, “I could see you needed that again. Now we can return to the old days as a family!”
“Aye, and you can go back to raising our little ones,” replied Joe.
§
The consequences of war
But for the people of Tyneside as elsewhere, it was soon plain they had lost the grand times of old. Gone were the gaiety and devil-may-care attitudes of pre-war Edwardian days. For Great Britain, the war had punched a massive hole in the treasury. From being the world's largest overseas investor, it had become one of its biggest borrowers. Inflation doubled between 1914 and its peak in 1920; the value of the Pound Sterling and consumer expenditure fell by over 61%. [17] Reparations in the form of free German coal depressed the British coal industry, one of the major employers on Tyneside. To offset its huge repayments, Germany could pay in kind or in cash. Commodities paid in kind included coal, timber, chemical dyes, pharmaceuticals, livestock, agricultural machines, construction materials, and factory machinery. The Allies deducted the gold value of these commodities from what they required Germany to pay. [18]
Britain, with a population of 38 million in 1918, had changed! One significant change was the empowerment of women. During the war, women had filled-in for men's jobs. After the Great War women gained the right to vote as a direct consequence, resulting in enormous political and social change, for the returning veterans in particular. Yet another significant development was Labour emerging as a powerful social and political movement, and a force for change.
Reminders of the war were everywhere in those early post-war days, and they couldn’t forgive the Germans. In January 1919, the City of Newcastle Golf Club allowed no person of enemy origin to become a member of the club, and they didn’t allow “such persons” to play on the course.
When Newcastle United played again, Joe and his marras attended one of the first matches at St. James’ Park.
“Look, Joe,” called Mike while pointing to an enormous poster at the entrance to the stadium, “Newcastle United players who fought in the Great War. I recognise a few of them who were in the Durham Light Infantry.”
“Aye Mike,” replied Joe. “I’ve heard that 100 ex-players and officials of Newcastle United served in the Great War. And a grand bunch of lads they were too, both as football players and as soldiers! They awarded Thomas Rowlandson of Newcastle United a Military Cross, and Donald Simpson Bell, remember him? They awarded him the Victoria Cross.”
Within the stadium, they saw the disabled enclosure, full of injured men in hospital uniforms. Women were circulating through the aisles, passing the hat soliciting money for hospitals. Lines of blind veterans walked, each with a hand holding the shoulder of the next, to points in the bleachers where volunteers commentated on the match for them. Mike and Joe thought they had seen everything, but the sight of blind veteran football fans led into the stadium in such a fashion was disturbing for them. The stadium rocked and echoed to “Tipperary” for the Irish during the match, and repeated strains of the trench favourite, “We're here, because we're here, because we're here.” [19]
The Saturday evening after Joe’s return to work the marras met once more at the Rolling Mill Pub, just as they had before the Great War. Joe had sworn off his Brown Ales while he was recovering and not working. But now that both he and Mike were back at work and earning a living again, life could and should return to normal. A couple more ex-servicemen marras from the shipyard joined them, and Joe’s brothers William, George and Thomas too.
“Well here’s to peacetime on Tyneside,” toasted Mike once they received their ale. “And may it be a long and prosperous peace!”
The men clinked their thick beer glasses together and called “Cheers. We’ll drink to that,” in unison.
“Well, ye soldiers have been through so much,” observed William. “And a fine lot ye are too!”
“Coming from William, that was a real compliment,” thought Joe.
“Aye,” replied Joe. “Two wars, my brothers. We have fought for the Empire in two wars.”
None of Joe’s brothers had ever enlisted in the army. Their father, the staunch Irishman that he was to his end in 1910, wanted nothing to do with a British war. Joe was the black sheep, and his father never forgave him for fighting in the Boer War.
“It was a right lark,” boasted a reinvigorated Mike. “We had a grand time. Even with the bloody Boche in Germany, didn’t we Joe?”
“I wouldn’t call it a lark, Mike,” answered Joe. “But we lived as best we could in the face of the adversity!”
“Ooooh, where did you learn that haughty word?” asked Mike.
“From the Kommandant of Soltau Camp,” Joe chuckled. “He used such haughty English military words often, ye remember?”
“Aye, stupid man,” Mike growled, then quoting the Kommandant said “English Shweine! You have made me furious!” Mike and Joe both laughed. And laugh they could – now they were free of the Kommandant.
Then the Rutherford brothers launched into a lively evening of questions on the Great War to copious pint glasses of Brown Ale. “Were the trenches as terrible as they had heard?”; “Were there so many rats as they say?”; “Could they see the Bosch in their trenches?”; “What food did you get in the trenches and in the camps?” And many more such questions.
Joe and Mike and their marras soaked up the ales and regaled their audience with tales of pain and starvation, machine guns, bayonets and blood and guts, filth, vermin, weak soup and black bread. They spoke of working full days when always hungry and of disease and injuries at the hands of the enemy. But as free men again, they could now relate their experiences with occasional doses of good-hearted joking and laughter. It had been a terrible time. But as life wore on and the darkest memories faded, the better times and lighter moments rose to the fore. They could laugh again!
But Joe’s nightmares weren’t over yet. That night, he once again cuddled up to Mary in bed. He told Mary about his conversation at the pub, then fell asleep next to her.
At 15:45, they ordered the Durhams to advance at La Vallée and attack the village of Ennetières. Joe could see the advance guards walking on the grass verges to deaden their noise, passing groups of French cavalry. One of these groups was a detachment of cuirassiers, [20] their cuirasses, body armour, and helmets by then rusty. One of them called out to Joe’s company, “Hullo, Tommie, I was at Oxford.”
La Vallée was at the edge of a rise on which the Lille fortresses stood. There they began their demonstration[21] under a heavy fire of shrapnel, and they sent Joe’s company south-eastward towards Fort d'Englos. The company advanced through a bog in extended order for 100 yards when a hail of bullets came from the right, left and front. Shrapnel from exploding shells once more rained on them. Beyond the bog, they were into farm fields filled with turnips.
“Drop!” was the order at that point. “So Joe and his marras fell flat to the ground and attempted to conceal themselves behind the turnip greens, while shrapnel from exploding shells rained on them. They then rose and rushed forward through the turnip field with no cover whatever.
“Drop,” Joe shouted again. The bullets were so thick now that the only thing they could do was lay their faces sideways on the mud and lie flat.
“Are you injured, Fred?” I called.
“Aye, sore but no open wound,” replied Fred.
They advanced again with caution, reinforced by the men in front of them, then dropping and remaining there for two hours while the bullets were so thick. Then just before dusk, Fred risked a look over turnip-tops and got a piece of shrapnel in the shoulder, letting out a scream of pain as he rose his body just above the turnip leaves. Then a rifle-bullet struck Fred in the stomach. He collapsed into the mud between the vegetables, writhing in his death-throes. Once again, assisted by Mike, Joe turned back to help their marra, but to no avail.
“Fred is dead, Mike,” shouted Joe. “They’ve killed yet another of our marras. What a bloody war.” The Germans had reduced their small group of Jarrow shipyard marras to two.
They had no choice but to leave Fred where he was as they moved on. But despite intense rifle fire, the 2/DLI got as far as Ennetières before dusk. By 5 p.m., they had taken Ennetières, and at 8 p.m., the action over, they searched with caution for shelter. The streets were empty, or so it seemed. Joe and Mike came upon a house in the principal street where they entered and encountered an appalling sight. Having searched the entire house and finding no one, they entered the cellar where they found a horror scene.
“My God, Mike,” whispered Joe. “Those are dead citizens down there.”
In the dim light from the cellar door, they could see the outlines of many bodies – arms, legs and heads scattered across the floor – a heap of bloodied dead villagers. They concluded that the Germans had herded them into the cellar and executed them.
“Look, Joe,” whispered Mike. “I think one of them is still alive over there.”
In one corner, an older man and woman lay shattered by a grenade. They edged closer to help the old man, who was still alive and moving, but he died soon after they got to him.
It shook them to the core, so they left that house and moved through the village. There were no bodies of German soldiers anywhere – their army had removed them – but they came upon a small group of six French Dragoons who they had seen patrolling the previous night. To their horror, Joe and Mike saw that someone had removed their eyes, ears and noses.
“What the hell is this?” cried Mike. “These Boche are barbarians!”
Then a little further along they found a Frenchman standing erect but dead in the corner of a brick wall. They had removed his eyes, nose and ears too.
“What are we dealing with here,” Joe murmured to Mike. “Savages? Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Joe awoke in a sweat but made no noise, so Mary didn’t awaken. He then arose in silence, dressed and made his way out into the street and turned toward the river and shipyards.
When Joe and Mike met that morning, he complained about his nightmares.
“I can’t get rid of them, Mike,” said Joe. “I have them every night.”
“Aye, Joe, me too,” replied Mike. “I’m afraid that war will never leave us alone.”
“Mary is so sweet,” said Joe. “She is taking it in her stride and makes me tea when I wake up, shouting sometimes.”
“Aye, Ruth is an angel too,” replied Mike. “Thank God we have them at our side now.”
“Without me knowing, Mary spoke to our doctor about my nightmares,” said Joe. “He said it was probably from what they call shell shock, caused by our time in the trenches. I remember having them in the camp too. The doctor said they would stop in time.”
“Well, I hope it’s sooner rather than later,” replied Mike. “They are driving me crazy!”
§
For those at home with their families, celebratory events at the end of the Great War were of paramount importance. They had suffered long enough. It was time to remember and rejoice. The combatants signed the Treaty of Versailles on the 28th of June 1919 and declared the 19th of July as Peace Day. More celebrations took place over the summer of 1919 on Tyneside, as they did in the other Allied Power countries. The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the many peace treaties that brought the Great War to an end. This Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. They signed it five years to the day after the 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Although the Armistice, signed on the 11th of November 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The Secretariat of the League of Nations registered the Treaty of Versailles on the 21st of October 1919. [22]
The most critical and controversial provision of the Treaty of Versailles required Germany and her allies to accept responsibility for causing the damages of the war. A War Guilt clause forced Germany to disarm, make territorial concessions, and pay enormous reparation costs to countries of the Entente. Economists such as John Maynard Keynes predicted that the treaty was too harsh, declaring the reparations figure excessive and counterproductive. But prominent persons on the Allied side, such as French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, criticised the treaty as too lenient on Germany.
The newspapers covered the talks and final treaty at length. So Joe reported back to his marras at the pub on the following Saturday.
“So, what’s all this talk about the treaty of whatever?” asked Mike.
“It’s the final agreement between all sides in the Great War over what Germany should pay us for the damage they caused,” replied Joe.
“Well, I hope they are paying dearly,” called another patron veteran who had overheard Joe.
“Aye, they are,” replied Joe. “But not everybody’s happy about it, even on our side.”
“Well, they probably weren’t there, like us,” he responded.
“A few are saying our demands are too high and could cripple Germany further,” replied Joe.
“And what’s wrong with that?” asked Mike.
“Well, a few wise men are saying it could cause another war down the track,” replied Joe. “Don’t ask me how. That’s just what they’re saying.” To which a few comments ran around the pub, calls like “idiots”, “traitors”, “fools”.
Joe understood and empathised with the reactions full well. “Well, as they say, don’t shoot the messenger,” said Joe with an enormous grin. “I’m only telling you what the newspapers have been saying.”
“We should be thankful they have put it to bed,” said Joe. “Even though the fighting stopped on the 11th of November last year, they had to work out a treaty. Now that’s happened.”
For the ordinary folk of Great Britain, the Treaty of Versailles marked the definitive end of a war that had affected them for so long. There were Victory Teas everywhere. They laid out feasts on decorated trestle tables. In streets and church halls, music filled the air, and revellers wore fancy dress. They festooned the streets with bunting. Many parties moved into the fields and commons, adding sports events. In Gateshead, a £1,000 Council grant, supplemented by individual subscriptions, paid for a grand fete where army regiments paraded in uniform alongside bands and carousel roundabouts. Displays included drill and gymnastics, circus performers and a dog show. Thousands of visitors came in friendly spirits to the Newcastle Town Moor on the 24th of June for the Newcastle Victory Festival. There was a musical festival, and the rides were favourites. [23]
Most of these events were enjoyable and peaceful. But there were a few unwanted incidents that the men discussed that evening in the pub.
“Did you hear about that twenty-nine-year-old woman, Gertrude Waller, who was found in a court of law to have been “drunk and incapable” at a Victory Tea in Lambton Street, Gateshead?” said Joe with a laugh. “The prosecuting constable said a few of these street parties had developed into drunken orgies! He said that children were begging in the street to pay for admission to the events.”
“Aye, and a few people were destroying trees for decorations,” added Mike with a laugh too. “What are we becoming, drunken vandals?”
“Aye, but then the constable refused to give permission for any new celebrations,” said Joe. “That’s not fair. That a few rowdies can spoil the fun for all the others?”
Word had circulated before the celebrations in Gateshead that the returned local veterans of Jarrow were planning a reunion. The Durham Light Infantry, the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, the Tyneside Irish and the Tyneside Scottish were to take part in a parade. They dressed up in their bright dress uniforms and put on a grand show. After the formal programme, the regiments dispersed into informal groups intermingled with civilians. They swapped war stories, updated each other on the events since their return and sang regimental and other favourite wartime songs over large mugs of ale.
Although most of the soldiers gathering at the 28th of June celebrations were born Geordies or living on Tyneside, a few had arrived from farther afield. Among these was Walter (Walt) Lane of 2/DLI C-Company, a close friend and fellow “Durham”, even though he was born in Leeds. He had returned to Leeds to visit his family after being a 2/DLI prisoner with Joe and Mike in Germany and ended up staying. But Geordie or not, he couldn’t miss this reunion and made his way to Gateshead for the celebrations.
At first, the banter was alive and humorous.
“If ye have trouble understanding us, let me know Walt, and we'll translate for ye,” laughed Mike.
“I learn'd enough Geordie from ye chaps in Germany, so I’m sure I will cope,” replied Walt to the wild laughter of the assembled marras. And the Geordies had softened their dialect during the wars since, in the beginning, no non-Geordie had understood them.
“Where’s your flintlock Jimmie?” Walt called to a Fusilier he had met at Soltau. He was alluding to the 17th-century French word fusil, a flintlock musket that had given the Fusiliers their name.
“I left it with the Bosch,” replied the Fusilier. “They took it from me, so I told them they could keep it since they’ll need it now more than me!”
“When they get up off the floor,” called another over raucous laughter. After four years of fear and hatred of the Germans, they felt a soldier’s empathy for the defeated enemy now.
And then the conversation turned to more practical matters. Who had work and who didn’t? Were those unemployed being looked after by the military? Who had found their women waiting and who had not? Whose families had expanded whether through their own loins or from someone else’s? And who had lost Tyneside friends and relatives? But Joe and Mike resolved not to talk of the war again after this day.
“That’s it,” said Joe, “the war is over, and we should stop going back over it.”
“Agreed,” concurred Mike and Walt. “We need to look forward to the rest of our lives!” And this vow held. They observed the Remembrance Days in silence and never discussed the wars again.
But for Joe, the war hadn’t left his mind. That night, as he joined Mary in bed, he expressed his worry to her about his recurring nightmares.
“You know, Mary,” said Joe, “when I go to bed every night, I worry about having another of those terrible dreams. I want to forget the war. My dreams mustn’t remind of it every night in my sleep.”
“You’ll get over it, Joe,” said Mary. “But your mind isn’t yet ready to let it go just yet. You’ve had a long and terrible time during the war, and your mind is still working through it. The doctor said you were probably suffering from mild shell shock and that it would take time to disappear. I’m sure you will get through it soon enough.”
Joe accepted Mary’s response, knowing that she was often right about such matters. They discussed it a few more minutes until Joe fell asleep.
Major Blake took two platoons of C-Company into a sugar factory near Ennetières. From there, they fired on the attackers from the upper storey. Then a massive German shell fell into the building, smashing the machinery and killing and crushing the men inside, including the major. The other two platoons, under Lieutenant Norton, took part in bitter fighting after dark in the village's south.
Joe and Mike had provided cover for each other as always, working as a compact fighting unit. They stood crouched with their backs against the wall of an abandoned house in Ennetières while looking over a low barrier in front. There was a fierce firefight. And it was so dark they couldn’t recognise anything in the gloom except for the many flashes of rifle fire. Lieutenant Norton and the others weren’t far from them, but they could hear the Germans approaching from every direction. Lieutenant Norton’s company had retreated into the village. But it was only a temporary escape. It was now looking bleak for Joe and Mike. And they were alone and surrounded by Germans!
“Look out there, Mike,” Joe whispered while looking into the darkness. “They aren’t ours, that’s for sure!”
“Aye, it looks like we’re trapped here,” whispered Mike. “Finished.”
“Aye, I reckon you are right,” Joe replied. “The Germans have surrounded us. What happens now, I can’t imagine, Mike. Could this be our end?”
“We can’t run,” responded Mike, “or they’ll shoot us for sure.”
“Aye, let’s stay put and hope they miss us,” said Joe.
“I don’t think there’s much chance of that my marra,” concluded Mike. “As far as I can see, we’re finished!”
“Not yet, Mike,” I replied, “but if we raise our rifles, we will be.”
Somebody cried out in the distance; “They shot Lieutenant Norton!”
Shots were still ringing out in that direction. Joe and Mike saw the distinct shapes of the many German soldiers approaching mere yards away. Their gleaming bayonetted rifles held from their hips at forty-five-degree angles and their menacing pointed helmets identified them as German. Joe couldn’t stop trembling. And he heard Mike’s rapid breathing and gasping from time to time. Then they listened to the tramping of boots on cobblestones.
“Where are they going?” whispered Joe.
“They are approaching us,” whispered Mike.
“Hände hoch,” snarled one of the approaching Germans. “Drop your weapons! No weapons! Hände hoch!”
Joe woke up and cried aloud “Drop your weapons! No weapons! Hände hoch!”
“What, Joe?” called Mary in a state of shock. “Joe, are you all right? What’s that you’re saying?”
“That’s how they got us, Mary, the Boche. ‘Drop your weapons! No weapons! Hände hoch!’”
“Well, they only had you for a while, my darling,” replied Mary. “And now you are back with me and recovering from your four years of hell.”
“Aye, Mary,” replied Joe, calming. “That was it for sure. Four years of hell.”
“But you’re not in hell any longer. Now you are back with your children and me in Jarrow,” said Mary embracing and kissing him.
“Aye, Mary. That I am,” replied Joe with a smile as he embraced her. “And it’s so good to be back, believe me. If only these nightmares reminding me of my time in the war would stop. I want to forget it all now.”
Mary smiled back at him and replied, “They will, my dear; they will. Let me get us some tea and biscuits.”
§
Another significant event that occurred during 1919 was the 18th of July unveiling of the full-sized wood-and-plaster model of a Cenotaph to the “Glorious Dead” as designed by the Architect Edwin Lutyens. The Government presented it to the public in its allocated position in London’s historic Whitehall, within easy walking distance of the Prime Minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street. To celebrate and mark the end of the Great War, a committee chaired by the foreign secretary Lord Curzon declared a Bank Holiday in Britain on the 19th of July, Peace Day.
Victory parades across Britain celebrated the end of the Great War. That morning in London, many thousands that had arrived overnight gathered. It was a spectacle never seen before, with 15,000 troops taking part in the victory parade. Allied commanders such as U.S. Expeditionary Force Commander Pershing, Allied Supreme Commander Foch and British Commander-in-Chief Haig, saluted the fallen comrades at the Cenotaph. Bands played, and the central parks of London hosted many performances entertaining the crowds.
Then on the 15th of August, the “Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act” provided for returning servicemen to get their old jobs back. Then on the 30th of August, they resumed the Football League four years after they had abandoned it because of the war. This was the most important announcement for working-class British workers who had been missing their favourite sport for over four years.
On the 26th of September 1919, a Friday, Mary Rutherford gave birth to Margaret in Jarrow. The baby girl was their fourth child, third daughter and the sixth member of Joe’s growing family. But Margaret was too long for Molly, who was almost 5, so, they called her Peggy. Women gave birth at home. In middle-class households, they often hired a live-in nurse for the two weeks prior and a month after the birth. For working-class women, there was no such luxury apart from an overworked midwife on the day of the delivery, and there was no paternity leave then for the husband to stay home and help! [24]
Early that morning, Mary’s water broke, and she sent Joe to alert her sisters that this was the day. Her younger sister Sarah sent Margaret to fetch the midwife while she went to Mary to prepare her for the birth. They dispatched Joe to work for the day while the women did their magic. Soon the midwife Susan arrived with Margaret and Mary’s other younger sister Ellen. They had brought paraffin lamps to brighten the bedroom since electricity had not yet reached these terraces. They boiled the water and washed the bedroom furniture to make sure of the most hygienic conditions for birth. The midwife cleaned her instruments and lined up her potions to prepare for her work. Then they settled in to encourage Mary through her contractions. After several hours, they welcomed a baby girl into the world at 227 High Street Jarrow.
“Another baby girl, Joe,” said Mary when he entered their bedroom. “I hope that’s all right with you?”
“Just what I wanted, Mary,” replied Joe. “Sure, I would like another son. But I love my girls.”
Joe celebrated the recent Rutherford arrival that evening with two Brown Ales at the Rolling Mill Pub. The lads talked football, and Joe and Mike regaled their marras with entertaining stories of their team, the POWers, while in the German POW camps. Uplifting or fun war exploits were permissible memories. On the following Sunday, Joe and his marras attended a local football match. The match was between the Jarrow football club, playing under the name of Palmers Jarrow, and Middlesbrough Res. They played at the Curlew Road ground, which had suffered through neglect during the war. Following a North Eastern League inspection of the field, they instructed the club to remove the pieces of broken glass and stones and try to keep the pitch in a playable condition. In March 1920 the name of the club returned to Jarrow AFC, 'Palmers' being dropped from the title. [25] Other football news that year included Leeds City FC, of the Football League Second Division, being expelled from the Football League on the 13th of October amid financial irregularities. And on the 17th of October, with the collapse of Leeds City, they formed a new football club in the city and named it Leeds United. With Port Vale FC, based in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, set to take the old club's place in the Football League, the new Leeds club had to wait until the next football season for a chance of Football League membership.
§
Remembrance Day 1919
The British held the first Armistice Remembrance Day at Buckingham Palace on the 11th of November 1919, starting with King George V hosting a “Banquet in Honour of the President of the French Republic” during the evening hours of the 10th of November 1919. [26] They held the first official Armistice Day events in the grounds of Buckingham Palace on the morning of the 11th of November 1919. Britain had decided early in the Great War they should bring none of the fallen back to the islands. Those already buried or left behind on the Western Front would stay right there. Instead, they erected the Cenotaph in Whitehall to honour them on British soil, and they built memorials throughout the Empire with the names of the fallen engraved on them to remember their heroes on each Remembrance Day into perpetuity.
This set the trend for a Day of Remembrance for decades to come. In South Africa, Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, author of Jock of the Bushveld, proposed a two-minute silence to Lord Milner. This had been a daily practice in Cape Town from April 1918 onward. After a Reuters correspondent described this daily ritual to the office in London, it spread throughout the British Empire within weeks. [27] This two-minute period of silence at 11:00 a.m. local time is a sign of respect for the 20 million people who died in the war in the first minute and dedicated to the living left behind in the second minute. They understood the latter to be wives, children and families left behind but distressed by the Great War. They resolved to repeat this custom forever. The entire population, most of whom had lost family or friends, complied. Church bells and factory buzzers announced the hour before everyone downed tools to “give their thoughts, prayers and thanks to those who gave their sacrifices with two minutes of impassive, deathly, silence”. Across Tyneside, trams stopped, and pedestrians stood in the streets, baring their heads to the falling snow.
Everything and everyone stopped. Buses, trains and factories came to a halt; they cut electricity supplies off to stop the trams; wherever possible, they brought even the men of Royal Navy ships to rest. Workers in offices, hospitals, shops and banks stopped working; schools became silent; court proceedings came to a standstill, and so did the stock exchange. Life ceased altogether in what The Times described as “a great awful silence”. There had been no instructions on where people should honour the silence. They assumed everyone should pause at their tasks, but most went outdoors to stand in silence in a public place. There were church services, and the forces’ chaplain spoke at the Cenotaph. [28]
Joe and Mike were at work in the shipyards when the hour of remembrance arrived, and along with many other veterans they took off their caps and bowed their heads in silence, memories flashing through their minds, and a tear or two rolling down their cheeks. At home, Mary and the other women of Tyneside emerged from their houses into the streets, children in tow, and did the same. Those whose men had returned were rejoicing, while those who had lost their menfolk mourned. This first day of remembrance was a very solemn occasion filled with mixed emotions.
In France and Belgium recovery of the battlefields and the search for the fallen was in progress. They were restoring their decimated infrastructure, farmlands, and spirit. The Tour de France cycling race, not run since 1914, had restarted on ravaged French roads that summer. The 1919 Tour de France was the 13th edition of the Tour de France, taking place from the 29th of June to the 27th of July over a total distance of 3,450 miles, longer than the earlier Tours.[29] Three former winners of the Tour, François Faber, Octave Lapize and Lucien Petit-Breton had died fighting in the war. So, two other past winners, Philippe Thys and Odile Defraye started the race.[30] The war had only been over for seven months, so most cyclists could not train enough for the Tour.[31] For that reason, there were few new younger cyclists, and the older cyclists dominated the race.[32]
Worldwide, those pulled into the Great War looked forward to a more promising and peaceful future. The Rutherfords and Burgesses and their broader families and friends had overcome the turmoil, hardships, and lost men caused by the war. Joe and Mike had settled into their peacetime lives with their ever-expanding families and working at Hawthorn Leslie again. Mary had returned to her pre-war routine of looking after her husband and children. The football leagues had restarted, and their fans had reassembled behind them with passion as if nothing had happened, Joe and Mike included. Life was returning to normal, and memories of the Great War faded. Joe’s nightmares were less frequent, and he had fewer interruptions to his sleep.
In the vanquished German Empire, the chaos of the German Revolution was over, and they had established a more stable Weimar Republic. But a hitherto unknown Great War German Corporal by the name of Adolf Hitler had already launched his journey to power.
§
The Rollercoaster Twenties
The year 1920 was uneventful in Britain. In February, the Council of the League of Nations met for the first time in London, and War Secretary Winston Churchill announced that Britain was to replace conscripts by a volunteer army of 220,000 men. In March, Queen Alexandra unveiled a monument to Nurse Edith Cavell, the British heroine who had helped soldiers escape the Germans in Belgium during the Great War. The British Army promoted Sir William Robertson, who had enlisted in the British Army in 1877, to Field Marshal. He was the first soldier to rise from private to the highest rank in the British Army. Then on the 10th of November 1920, the remains of an unknown soldier arrived from France aboard the Admiralty V-class destroyer HMS Verdun for burial in Westminster Abbey.
King George V unveiled the permanent version of the Cenotaph the next day. The permanent Cenotaph designed by Architect Sir Edwin Lutyens and constructed of limestone from the Isle of Portland, Dorset had replaced the temporary Cenotaph to “The Glorious Dead” in Whitehall. On the same day, they buried the “Unknown Warrior” in Westminster Abbey.
On the following Saturday, the patrons of the Rolling Mill Pub discussed the Unknown Warrior.
“They’ve brought back and buried the bones of an unidentified fallen soldier in London,” announced Joe to his marras. “They buried him beneath a black gravestone in Westminster Abbey. It’s the only grave in the abbey on which you’re not allowed to walk, a great honour.”
“Why did they do that?” asked Mike.
“Because we lost so many of our fellow soldiers in the trenches and no-man’s-land who never had a burial,” replied Joe. “They buried others in the many cemeteries on the French and Belgian battlefields. But for their families, their dead are too far away to honour in those cemeteries. The British Army meant the Grave of the Unknown Warrior to honour them here in England. I think it’s time they did that, don’t you? Who knows? That unknown soldier buried in Westminster in soil brought from France could have been one of our marras.”
“Aye, and I’ll second that,” added Mike, as did the other veterans in the pub that day, who stood up as one and, removing their caps, bowed their heads in remembrance before raising their glasses to the fallen.
“And the French and Americans have done the same thing,” added Joe.
The patrons of the pub grew solemn and silent at this news.
Then someone at a nearby table asked: “Why are they calling it the Unknown Warrior?”
“It’s the title they’ve given this grave to remember those without graves on the battlefields,” replied Joe. “The Government is honouring those thousands of missing soldiers with this burial at Westminster Abbey among the many Kings and Queens of Great Britain. The greatest poets, authors, scientists, explorers, and politicians of Great Britain buried there, too. But the Grave of the Unknown Warrior is the most honoured now.”
“They should stop these bloody wars,” said Mike. “Then we wouldn’t need these graves and cenotaphs. I, for one, am finished with wars.”
“Aye, Mike,” replied Joe. “I have to agree with you on that one.”
That night, Joe had one of the last of his recurring dreams, brought on by the talk of the Unknown Warrior.
There they stood in a very dark and dismal Ennetières, cut off from their regiment and surrounded by German soldiers. Joe and Mike understood the order “hände hoch” despite not knowing German. They had learned to say “hande in die lug” (“hands in the air”) when capturing Afrikaans-speaking fighters in the 2nd Anglo-Boer War in South Africa, and the German command sounded similar to them. Besides, their captors' attitude and hostile gestures reinforced their understanding. Realising that they had no other option than to surrender, they discarded their weapons and raised their hands while turning to face their enemy at close quarters. It was the terrible moment they had never reckoned on experiencing – eye-to-eye with the enemy.
“I’m ready to die,” whispered Mike. “This is the worst thing that could have happened to us, Joe! But I’m ready to die for my King and country.”
“Aye, that’s true, Mike,” murmured Joe while gathering his thoughts on the matter. “I have never even thought of this happening to us, but I’m not prepared to die. I can’t die because I have a wife and bairns at home. And nor should you be, my old friend, for your wife’s sake. We will survive this war the way we did the last. I told Mary that, should I die, she was free to remarry. But this upset her very much; she cried and cried, so we didn’t discuss it any further. We also discussed the possibility of injury. And she said she would nurse me back to full health as soon as I was home. But we never discussed the possibility of capture by the enemy. Our training didn’t cover it, and it never occurred to me, although, based on our experience in the South African War, it should have.”
“Aye, Ruth and I had more or less the same talk,” replied Mike. “And she became upset too. So, I guess that’s a topic you should best leave unsaid with women.”
“Nee, Mike,” replied Joe. “It’s right to talk about it. You’re tied together now, so you need to share such thoughts. It’s how you speak of it that’s important.”
“Aye, Joe,” replied Mike. “But I’m sure you’re better at it than I am.”
Their German guard then rebuked them again, poking them with his rifle with a loud and stern warning, “Nicht sprechen!” A German officer nearby translated this command into English for the assembled British prisoners. “No talking, take off your equipment and leave it here,” he said, pointing to a pile of discarded rifles and other military equipment. “Keep quiet and do what the guards tell you.” The men followed orders but could hold on to personal items such as letters, pay books or photos of their sweethearts and children. An interrogating German officer examined these later.
There was loud shouting and occasional gunshots as the Germans herded together more surviving Tommies of the 2/DLI and other battalions into a tight group on the edge of the village now under German control. Joe and Mike couldn’t see much at first, but soon enough, their companions appeared out of the acrid smoke-filled gloom, most of whom had glum looks on their faces. A few of these recent arrivals were resisting the guards. The Germans brought the few more challenging ones to heel through brutal blows to their bodies with their rifle butts. They shot those that gave the enemy any reason to execute them, even if not permitted by the war conventions. Those Tommies, too, soon realised that any further resistance was futile. The marras recognised a sizeable group of Sherwood Foresters coming in their direction. The prisoners’ numbers had swollen to a group of 100 or more. Then there were East and West Yorkshiremen, Moroccans and French soldiers too, many of whom Joe had fought alongside in his first battle. They appeared out of the mist and smoke, shuffling forward as a group. No one dared utter a word. They awaited their fate in stony silence while their captors barked out incomprehensible blasts of commands and degrading insults, in English or French from time to time too.
Joe gave a sideward glance and grimace to Mike, but he avoided provoking tension with the guards by talking. Their immediate future was very much on their minds. To the best of Joe’s knowledge, they had received no information during training on the rules of war for prisoners. They couldn’t know that Chapter II of the Geneva Convention, signed in October 1907 at The Hague, focussed on prisoners of war: “Prisoners of war are in the hostile Government’s power, but not of the individuals or corps who capture them. They must humanely treat all POWs. All the belongings of prisoners, except arms, horses and military papers, remain the POW’s property.” [33]
But a Durham officer POW knew of this convention, and he shared his knowledge with as many lower rank men as he could before being separated from them, officers going to separate camps.
“Remember men; you’re soldiers, not animals,” he said. “But you mustn't argue with them since you might provoke them. Just remember your rights and discuss any grievances you have at the right time with a German officer.”
Now and then, they got another harsh nudge in their back or neck from a German rifle to move them on quicker, which they daren’t protest.
But Mike couldn’t hold back, muttering, “Bloody Huns!”
“Careful, Mike,” Joe reminded him; but it was too late.
“Was? Was hast Du gesacht?” asked the guard, screaming. Mike looked surprised and shrugged his shoulders. But the guard wasn’t happy with that gesture. He was sure that he had heard the word “Hun” and knew it was an insult.
The guard grabbed Mike and spun him around to meet his rifle straight on. “Was has Du gesacht?” he yelled. Then a German officer close by speaking to the guard, said “Lass das sein, Korporal. Wir mussen weiter. Keine scheiße.”
No one translated that for the British soldiers, but whatever the officer said defused a dangerous situation, sanity returned, and the column resumed its forward progress. The Germans herded the prisoners to a mustering point on the road out of Ennetières towards the new German lines. After a march of two hours, they arrived at a wire enclosure resembling a rough cage where the Germans had already assembled at least 200 to 300 or more British, French and Moroccan prisoners. There they waited in groups as their captors rounded up more and more.
“Shite,” cursed Mike in a whisper. “Are we animals or soldiers?”
“To these guards, we are animals,” replied Joe. “They could shoot us like animals.”
Joe awoke, at that point, shouting “They could shoot us like animals.”
And once again, Mary awoke and calmed him through her tenderest embrace and gentle voice.
“It’s all right, my darling,” she said. “You’re awake and home in Jarrow and fine. Just in time for tea and biscuits.”
Following the tea and biscuits, Joe and Mary slipped away into a deep slumber.
But Joe was back in his dream, picking up where he had just left off. The march to the Dulag had not been without incident. The occasional stray friendly bullet or shell from the British side of the front lines had wounded or killed Allied soldiers and Germans alike. They had to circumnavigate the shell holes in the road too. A fresh set of guards, including German lancers on horseback, escorted them. But then, a few nasty incidents unfolded in front of them.
In one incident, a few cantankerous Tommies were defying the guards, and a scuffle ensued.
“Get back in line, you,” shouted a German guard.
“Up yours, you bloody Hun,” replied one soldier. “I answer only to British officers, not you scum.”
Then another such protest broke out a scant distance away, and then another.
“You can’t treat us like cattle,” shouted another Tommy.
“Yeah,” called another, as the protests grew. “We’re men, not animals.”
The guards called in their Lancers, who charged into the ranks on horseback. Under direction from the German guards, they speared the protesting Tommies like wild pigs with their lances. To them, the objections voiced by the British prisoners were equivalent to resistance or trying to escape. It gave them an excuse to rid themselves of ill-tempered men and to make sure that the rest toed the line.
“Shite, Mike; did you see that?” murmured Joe to his marra. “What they just did was the same as the British officers’ sport of Pig-Sticking in India, with the same disgusting result. Do you remember that?”
“Aye, Joe,” murmured Mike. “These are cruel bastards. We had better behave ourselves and stay out of trouble for now. Otherwise, we’ll end up on the end of one of those lances.”
A German soldier noticed them talking to each other and shouted “Wovon sprechen Sie?” [34] while lowering his rifle in their direction. In this instant so soon after their capture and the lancer incident, they froze in terror.
“I don’t know what he is saying,” whispered Joe, “but he looks as if he could shoot us without a problem.”
“Aye, Joe. Or bring one of those lancers back to stick us,” replied Mike, reaching his hands even higher and nodding to the guard. “Let’s be careful.”
Joe and Mike weren’t sure what he was saying but understood his intent. So, they both held their hands higher in the air and called “Nix, nix, nix”. They had learned that this word meant “nothing” and hoped it would placate their antagonist. That satisfied the guard for the time being, who found their reaction with “nix, nix, nix” humorous, laughing with his buddies and humiliating the Tommies even further.
And at that point, Joe awoke again. But this time he didn’t shout and awake Mary. Instead, Joe walked it off. He gathered his clothes and slipped out of the bedroom and dressed downstairs. He then left the house in the middle of the night and made his way to the river where he worked through his dreams and memories by talking aloud to himself about them no longer being real.
§
By the start of the third decade of the 20th century, a great irony was about to play out in Britain and elsewhere. The principal players were those that inherited the wealth created by the Great War, the Nouveaux Riches, on the one hand, versus those that were suffering from the decline of the more traditional industries, those who had helped make Britain wealthy and robust before the Great War. Joe and his fellow workers of the North East were in this latter group. In the post-Great War world, a pivotal new decade began that became known worldwide as The Roaring Twenties. It proved to be a wild and joyous time for some, but a more challenging time for the majority in parts of Great Britain.
But apart from ceremonies of remembrance and a period of grieving for many, the Roaring Twenties launched an exciting era of new and useful changes and innovations that contributed to better social and cultural trends. These paradigm shifts, fuelled by a period of economic prosperity, were most visible in the principal cities such as Berlin, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York City and Paris. In the French Third Republic, they knew the decade as Les Années Folles (the Crazy Years), [35] emphasising the era's chaotic social, artistic and cultural dynamism. For women, knee-length skirts and dresses, taboo in Victorian and Edwardian times, became acceptable, as did bobbed cut hair with a marcel wave and listening to jazz. They often referred to women who pioneered these trends as flappers, [36] who became known for flaunting their disdain for what was before considered acceptable behaviour.
For the fortunate, the Great War had proved very profitable. Manufacturers and suppliers of goods needed for the war effort had prospered throughout the war years and become wealthy. For the “Bright Young Things” from the aristocracy and the more affluent classes, life had never been better. Nightclubs, jazz clubs and cocktail bars blossomed in the cities. Was the hedonistic lifestyle an escape from reality? This generation had missed the war, being too young to fight, and there may have been a sense of guilt they had escaped the horrors of war. Maybe, since Britain lost so many young lives on the battlefields of France and Flanders, the youth of the 1920s felt a need to enjoy life to the fullest. [37]
Women had gained confidence and become more integrated into the workplace. The 1920s was the decade in which fashion abandoned the customs of Victorian and Edwardian times and entered the modern era with gusto. They reflected this independence in the new styles. Hair and dresses were shorter, and women were smoking, drinking and driving motorcars. Far more women entered the job market. Typewriters, filing cabinets, and telephones brought many unmarried women into clerical jobs.
But for the working people of Tyneside and the other traditional industrial areas of Great Britain, life had not changed and was still the struggle it had always been. They were far from the nightclubs, jazz clubs and cocktail bars of the world’s major cities, in every respect. The daily grind for the workers of Tyneside was the norm, improved a little of late through social reform laws and improved wages. They still shuffled their ways to the collieries, shipyards and factories six 10-hour days a week, performing the same work they had carried out for decades, interrupted only by wars. But even as the decade started and orders for warships declined, they knew that tougher times were coming.
Life had returned to pre-war norms when Joe’s second son and fifth child Thomas Henry Rutherford was born on the 3rd of December 1920 at home in Jarrow. He would become known as Harry after his lost uncle, Mary’s brother, who died in the war. This year saw the record highest annual number of births in Britain, as over a million love-starved soldiers had returned from the war. With five children and two adults, the Rutherford household was getting a “wee bit crowded”.
“Well done Mary,” said Joe. “We now have two sons and three daughters!”
“Aye, Joe,” replied Mary, “and I’m risking exhaustion!”
“I always told you I wanted an enormous family, my love.”
“Aye, that you did Joe,” responded Mary, “and I reckon we are there.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Joe with a wink, “there’s still room for a couple more.”
Such conversations were typical. Families were often large since there was no real contraception then, and there was a tradition of producing extended families to look after the parents and grandparents in their old age, a homemade pension scheme of sorts.
“Well, I love every one of them,” whispered Mary. “They are so precious!”
Satisfied that Mary was in agreement, Joe worked out where to put his many children. The babies slept with them in their bedroom. They put the older ones, John Irwin, 9 years old, Violet, 7 years old and 6-year-old Molly in the back room.
Tyneside flats varied in size, having one or two bedrooms as the lower unit, made smaller by the staircase to upstairs. Upper apartments could use the attic space for more bedrooms. It was possible to have three or four bedrooms spread over two to three floors, often with a dormer window to the front.
But the Rutherford family’s flat was a ground floor unit with only two bedrooms for an expanding family. The kitchen and adjoining dining room contained a cast-iron coal range for cooking, and they extended a small terrace to the rear by an outshot [38] serving as a scullery, a typical feature of Victorian terrace houses. They only provided water in this scullery, with a Belfast sink and often a separate stove heating a wash pan for laundry. They bathed there in a galvanised iron bath once a week. The kitchen and dining room was the most extensive and warmest room in the house. It served as the social focal point with two comfortable armchairs added for relaxing. As was typical for their time, each flat had a small enclosed yard at the rear with an outside toilet or 'netty' as they called it in the local dialect. They built most of these terraces from the 1870s until the outbreak of the Great War in 1914.
§
“Normality” returned to politics in the Great War’s wake in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, and Germany. Conservatives defeated the leftist revolutions in Finland, Poland, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Spain. But Russia became the base for expansionist Soviet Communism. [39] In Germany, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) referred to as the Nazi Party, replaced the German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei - DAP), founded in 1919. The Nazi Party emerged from the German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post-Great War Germany.
In January 1921, with unemployment standing at over one million people, the Government announced an increase in the Unemployment Benefits. But by June that same year unemployment had reached over 2 million with another 2 million workers involved in various pay disputes.
At supper one evening in August, the conversation centred on the pending school year. John Irwin had turned ten years old.
“You are a fortunate boy, John,” exclaimed Joe. “When I was your age, they pulled me out of school and sent me to work in the pits.”
“Why can’t I do that, Da?” responded John Irwin. “I wouldn’t mind.”
“Because I want you to turn out better than I have, young man,” answered Joe. “I want you to go to school for a few more years than I did, as required now by law, and you will become a better man. And believe me, you wouldn’t enjoy working in the pits.”
“You’re a fine man, Da,” said John Irwin. “You read and write, you can do arithmetic, and you know so much about life. I think you are a much better man than the fathers of most of my friends.”
Joe held firm despite his son’s flattery.
“John Irwin Rutherford, I want you to be a better man than me, don’t you understand? I will never be more than a labourer. That is my lot in life, not that I mind since that is how I feed my family. My father was a labourer. And my grandfather was a farmworker in Ireland. But I want to see my children achieve something more in life than just hard work in the pits or shipyards. Things are changing in these modern times. People are living better if they find better work. I will never be more than I am today – a hard worker, earning just enough to live in this house and feed my family. But I want my children to have more, don’t you see? That’s what I want for you, John. And the same for you, Violet, and for you too, Molly. That is why the Government now requires more years in school, so you can learn more and be smarter!”
In 1921 the 1918 Education Act came into effect, raising the school leaving age from twelve to fourteen. State primary education was free for children from age five. They expected even the youngest children to attend for the full day from 9 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. Classes were large, learning was by rote, and they shared books between groups of pupils, as books and paper were expensive. The teachers taught nature study, sewing, woodwork, country dancing and traditional folk songs too. [40] This law was a milestone for developing the nation.
Life was turning the corner from the Dickensian world of the Victorians when labourers worked until they dropped and were prisoners at the bottom of a class-obsessed society. From the 1920s onward, social classes were being shattered. In principle, anyone could rise above the squalor of the working classes if they were smart enough and worked hard. Joe was right. These recent laws opened up more rights and more chances in life for his children. England had one of the best educational systems in the world, including the most prominent and ancient universities of the time. But up to that point, British education only catered for the middle and upper classes of British society. Successive twentieth-century governments changed that by making primary school education available to the broader population and by lifting them up through more prolonged exposure to learning. Dramatic social changes were underway, and these were to improve society!
The Great War had changed so much. That long and disastrous conflict had robbed so many young men of their lives. But the Great War had been a “Great Catalyst” for change. The men had gone to war; the women had gone to work in their places; society had been under enormous pressures from the war, and these led to significant changes in the lives of workers, male or female. The Great War was to prove a pivotal point in the history of the Western World.
§
One Saturday pub evening in October 1921, Joe arrived with a red cloth flower attached to his vest with pride. He noticed at once he was not alone, with most of the pub’s veteran patrons wearing one too. In the leadup to Remembrance Day 1921, a new custom appeared in Jarrow and throughout the British Empire and America – the lapel Poppy.
“What a great idea,” declared Mike when seeing his marra wearing this symbol of remembrance.
“Aye, Mike, that it is for sure,” replied Joe. “I hope it lasts. I, for one, will never be without one at this time of year for as long as I live.”
“How did it happen, Joe?” asked Mike.
“As far as I know, the Americans started it, but General Haig announced that Britain will follow the Doughboys this time.”
“Well, it’s good to know that they will remember our time over there.”
“Aye, and everyone’s buying them, not just veterans,” added Joe.
In autumn 1918, Moina Michael was an American teacher working for the YMCA Overseas Secretariat in New York. On the 9th of November, Moina had a moment of inspiration when she happened upon a magazine illustration accompanying John McCrae's poem “In Flanders fields, the poppies blow.” Miss Michael made a vow to wear a red poppy in memory of those who had fallen in the war. From that moment, she devoted her energy into getting the red poppy adopted in the United States as a national memorial symbol. At a conference in 1920, the National American Legion adopted it as their official symbol of remembrance, and this inspired Frenchwoman Anna E. Guérin to introduce the artificial poppies used today. Madame Guérin went in person to visit Field Marshal Earl Douglas Haig, founder and President of The British Legion. She persuaded him to adopt the Flanders Poppy as an emblem for The Legion. They launched the first British Poppy Day Appeal that year, in the run-up to the 11th of November 1921. It was the third anniversary of the Armistice to end the Great War. Proceeds from the sale of artificial French-made poppies went to ex-servicemen in need of welfare and financial support.
§
Peace and remembrance was very much a part of the fabric of life throughout those countries the Great War had affected. But dissension was always present somewhere in the British Empire. Between 1919 and 1923, violence engulfed Ireland as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) fought a guerrilla campaign against the British state in pursuit of an Irish Republic. Britain itself was a theatre in the war too. Cities such as London, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Glasgow and their environs were fertile grounds for establishing IRA companies, Irish Republican Brotherhood circles, Cumann na mBan branches and Na Fianna Éireann troops. [41]
“For too long the British have ridden roughshod over the Irish,” proclaimed Mike at one of their Saturday evening gatherings at the Rolling Mill Pub.
“But it no longer concerns us, Mike. We are British now,” replied Joe.
“British my left foot,” snapped Mike. “We are of Irish blood and will always be of Irish blood. You mustn’t forget that!”
“Come on now, Mike,” pleaded Joe. “You and I married to Geordie women, and we have Geordie children born right here in Jarrow. We have work and make a living with Geordie employers. Mike, we earn our living here in England, not in Ireland,” Joe added. “What has Ireland ever done for us, apart from giving us our parents?”
“And heritage,” snapped back Mike. “Once an Irishman, always an Irishman!”
Before long the other patrons of the pub overheard these comments, raising a resounding agreement among the Irish and inciting the ire of the Geordie patrons. Joe tried to calm things. He leant across the table and spoke in muted words “Don’t start a fight on this, Mike. I’m not in the mood for a fight.”
But it was too late. Before long, the shouting became physical, and the pushing and shoving started. Then a full-on battle ensued with fists and chairs and other objects flying in every direction until they broke a mirror and the publican rang the closing bell twice and chased the lot out of his pub. Under normal circumstances, when the publican rang the bell twice, the first time meant “last call” for more drinks and the second time announced that the bar was closed. On that night, he rang them both together. The door bolted behind them, the brawl continued outside until the alcohol got the better of the men in the chilled night air and they collapsed in a heap on the road, gasping and laughing.
Mike had joined the Irish Self-Determination League (ISDL) of Great Britain, established in London in 1919, and had talked Joe into attending a few meetings although Joe never became as drawn in as Mike had. For many years the talk in the pubs of Jarrow had often swung towards Irish politics. Among the workers of Irish descent, there was lots of sympathy towards the affairs of their homeland. And among the non-Irish, there was lots of apathy, but it turned to anger whenever Irish politics crept into a discussion. They made no impression on Joe, even after he had attended two meetings. But Mike had become politicised.
Mary heard of the battle at the pub and what had started it.
“I hope they didn’t involve you in that fight at The Rolling Mill Pub the other night, Joseph,” she asked in her sternest voice and addressing him with Joseph, as she did whenever he was in trouble.
“Well, not quite, Mary,” he began. “I mean, not on purpose.”
Mary’s look became sterner, her fists planted on her hips.
“Mary, it went like this. Mike and I were having a normal conversation when he started with his political shenanigans on the Irish and the British. I didn’t want to get involved in that, but he insisted. I suppose Mike had drunk a few too many ales and became a wee bit too political. Believe me, I tried hard to steer him away from the nonsense, but he insisted and became louder. And that’s when the argument broke out with the English and Irish patrons ending in a fight.”
“Joseph,” she began, “how can ye become involved in the political talk? Ye know how hot-headed the Irishmen and hotter-headed Geordies around Jarra can be. It isn’t worth getting involved. What will become of us if they hurt ye or ye end up thrown in gaol?”
Joe realised he had erred in his ways and vowed to Mary that he would never again become involved in such an argument. He would have a stern word with his best marras too to make sure such an incident never happened again at the pub, or anywhere else. But during the early months of 1921, the Irish Republican Army carried out attacks throughout the region until on 9th July they agreed on a truce with the British Government.
§
On the 16th of June 1923, Mary Rutherford gave birth to Beatrice May, their sixth child at home in 227 High Street, Jarrow, who became known a Beattie.
In that year, coal mining reached a peak in County Durham with 170,000 miners, up from 154,000 in 1919. But many industries in North East England were experiencing harder times in the 1920s. Demand for traditional industrial products was fading, and the Great War had only provided a temporary boost. During the 1920s, low demand and foreign competition beset coal mining in Britain. Between 1921 and 1925, the British Government subsidised the industry. But the Mining Industry Act of 1926 ended the subsidies and encouraged voluntary amalgamation of the marginal mines. So, coal mining in Great Britain was facing tough times, consolidation and closures.
“Our marras in the collieries are in trouble,” said Joe one day. “Because of cheap, or even free, German coal, our mines are struggling to stay alive.”
“Aye, that is because of the money Germany has to pay back for the Great War,” replied Mike. “They are giving it away for free. How can our mines survive that?”
“You know, laddies, Germany is getting stronger again while we are struggling,” said Joe, “It’s not right. The papers are talking about a troublemaker called Adolf Hitler. I know little about him, but from what I know, he gives these wild speeches and is getting a lot of support for his ideas over there. ”
The German term Goldene Zwanziger, or Golden Twenties, represented Germany's healthy economic recovery and growth in the wake of the Great War. But the humiliating peace terms in the Treaty of Versailles provoked bitter indignation throughout Germany and weakened the new democratic Weimar Republic. That treaty stripped Germany of its overseas colonies, of Alsace and Lorraine on the western border with France, and of Polish districts in the East. Germany had agreed with reluctance not to have an Army, Navy or Air Force, to satisfy the demands of its Great War enemies.
The Allies’ onerous reparation demands through shipments of raw materials and annual payments were biting. [42] They printed vast quantities of paper money to meet their needs, causing hyperinflation. The people of Germany needed wheelbarrows full of banknotes to pay for essential items. After a crippling war and the hardships that followed it, hyperinflation was a final blow. It was only after the Weimar Republic started radical economic reform measures that an environment of financial stability and prosperity returned in Germany. [43]
In the interim, and as a direct consequence of unhappiness among the working people, the Nazis used a patriotic rally in a Munich beer hall on the night of the 8th of November 1923 to launch an attempted coup d'état. Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, along with Great War General Erich Ludendorff and other Kampfbund leaders tried to seize power in Munich, Bavaria. This putsch failed at once, but the next morning the Nazis staged another march of 2,000 supporters through Munich to rally support. Troops opened fire and killed 16 Nazis. The police arrested Hitler, Ludendorff and others and a court tried them for treason and imprisoned them in March 1924. While in prison, Hitler wrote the first volume of his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf (My Struggle). The Weimar Republic banned the Nazi Party, but it continued to run under the name of the “German Party”. When they released Adolf Hitler from prison on the 20th of December 1924, he reorganised the Nazi Party, with himself appointed as its undisputed leader. He then gained widespread support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, anti-Semitism, and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda.
“We will need to watch out for this Hitler,” concluded Joe. “He is getting a lot of support in Germany. ”
“Is he like the Kaiser?” asked Mike. “Could he start another war?”
“Ne, he comes from a low upbringing, but maybe because of that the common people like him,” replied Joe. “And that could become dangerous.”
On the 19th of April 1925, Joe and Mary’s seventh child, Dorothy, was born, and they called her Dolly. Joe and Mary decided that they could not expand their little clan any further after that. Mary was 38 years old and felt she didn’t have the strength for any more children. Not only that, but their tiny flat couldn’t accommodate more than nine, not to mention the rising costs of such an extensive family. It satisfied Joe that with two sons to carry on from him, and five daughters to look after him and Mary in their old age, they had reached the ideal size of a family. And Joe was a proud and caring father to them but becoming concerned about the economic conditions on Tyneside.
§
Closures begin on Tyneside
By the mid-1920s in Britain, the postwar period of prosperity was over in areas of traditional industry, coal in particular. Poverty amongst the unemployed coal miners contrasted with the affluence of the middle and upper classes during the twenties. [44] Then on the 31st of July 1925, the Government announced that it was to grant a subsidy to the coal industry for nine months to support existing wage levels while a Royal Commission conducted an inquiry into the emerging problems. The Daily Herald called this day Red Friday. Nine months later, the 1926 General Strike followed, with unemployment remaining at over two million.
Shipbuilding was in decline too. Whereas Great Britain had produced most of the world’s ships during the 19th century, many emerging industrial nations had by the 1920s launched their own shipbuilding capabilities. Shipbuilding and engineering strikes occurred in the north-east of England, including Tyneside where they set up soup kitchens to feed starving families. The industrial growth of the 19th century went into a gradual decline, followed by closures and mergers of the smaller players throughout the industry.
“These developments worry me,” commented Joe after reading of the closures one day. “How long will it take to reach us here on Tyneside?”
“It’s here now,” exclaimed Mike. “Look at Armstrongs of Elswick across the river. They are closing a few of their works.”
“Aye, they were a big supplier of weapons, ammunition and transport vehicles for the Great War. Peacetime is not good for those works,” replied Joe.
“And colliery closures, Joe?” asked Mike. “That cheap German coal is closing our collieries too.”
“Aye. That’s why our miners are struggling. These are troublesome times for them,” repeated Joe. “But so many strange things are happening in this world. Maybe coal and shipbuilding is no longer the place to be. Maybe the future for us is not here, but out there somewhere – further south? I’ve heard that a lot of new factories are opening down there.”
While the traditional industries were declining, there were significant technological developments during the 1920s that created enormous social and economic changes. A group of leading wireless manufacturers including Marconi formed the British Broadcasting Company on the 18th of October 1922. Daily broadcasting by the BBC began in Marconi’s London studio, 2LO, in the Strand, London, on the 14th of November 1922. Karl Ferdinand Braun’s cathode ray tube helped John Logie Baird, inventor of the first working television in 1925. Record companies such as Victor, Brunswick and Columbia introduced electrical recording on their phonograph records in 1925, resulting in a more lifelike sound. The Automated Musical Instrument Company launched the first jukeboxes in 1927. Warner Brothers produced the first movie with a soundtrack in 1926; silent films gave way to sound films. These pioneers and their innovations launched new entertainment industries that became everyday phenomena within a brief space of time. But they centred most of these new industries around London.
The rise of automobiles led to new leisure activities and businesses. The car became the centre of middle and working class life, supporting another vast industry with employment for thousands. And this vehicle helped start the petroleum and petrochemical industries. But most of these industries were in the south.
These brand-new industries in Britain and elsewhere would replace the traditional heavy industries of the Industrial Revolution that Britain had dominated for so long. Joe may have been right in his assessment – maybe the future was somewhere other than on Tyneside?
Faced with the poor prospects of employment in Jarrow, the eldest Rutherford children had moved south in 1926 to better pastures. John Irwin was only 15 but assumed responsibility for 13-year-old Violet and 12-year-old Molly when they migrated to Surrey. It had been a tricky move for the older Rutherford children, as with so many inexperienced people moving to the south. With their heavy Geordie dialect and accents, the Southerners had difficulty understanding them. For Violet in particular, at 13, it was a major upheaval in her life. The daughters of Joe’s older brother William, Betty and Jane, had moved at the same time to Croydon too. Jarrow to Croydon was becoming a migratory path for the Rutherford family, but Joe and Mary and the younger children remained in Jarrow for the time being.
§
Into the Tumultuous Thirties
“So, what the hell is going on now, Joe?” asked Mike one Saturday at a late October 1929 evening at the pub. “Everybody’s talking about a financial crisis. What the hell is that all about?”
“I don’t know either, Mike,” replied Joe. “But it’s all over the newspapers this morning. They say it’s a serious crisis and will affect everybody. It has something do with the stock markets, whatever they are, and banks and factories too. I don’t understand it, but they are saying it will kill a lot of businesses and cause more unemployment.”
“Just what we needed, Joe,” replied Mike. “No sooner are we settled after that war, than we may be out of a job. It’s just one crisis after another!”
“Aye, Mike,” replied Joe. “We seem to be in a new war, or some other enormous problem, every ten years. But we will survive this as we did all the others.”
The boom years of the Roaring Twenties resulted in reckless business practices and a frenzied buying of company shares. The market had a nine-year run that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average increase in value tenfold, peaking on the 3rd of September 1929. Then a significant slide in stock prices began on Wall Street on the 4th of September 1929. On the 24th of October, known as “Black Thursday”, Wall Street lost 11%. The Wall Street Crash had started. On the following Monday the 28th of October, there was a sharp fall on the London Stock Exchange. The Wall Street Crash continued later that day with the New York Stock Exchange falling by 13%. Then on the 29th of October 1929, known as “Black Tuesday”, panicked sellers traded four times the average volume on the New York Stock Exchange, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by a further 12%. They often cite Black Tuesday as the start of the Great Depression. It became known as the Great Crash of 1929, and it was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States.
The Great Crash signalled the start of the decade-long Great Depression that affected western industrialised countries. The Crash forced many banks into insolvency. By 1933, 11,000 of the United States’ 25,000 banks had failed. The failure of so many banks led to a nationwide loss of confidence in the economy. This led to much-reduced levels of spending and demand and hence of production, further aggravating the downward spiral. U.S. manufacturing output fell to 54% of its 1929 level. The Great Depression was to have devastating effects in countries both rich and poor. Personal income, tax revenue, profits and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by over 50%. Unemployment in the U.S. rose to 25% and in a few countries rose as high as 33%. [45]
When the Great Slump, as they knew it in Great Britain, began, the British economy was still far from recovered in full from the effects of the Great War. Britain’s world trade fell by half from 1929 to 1933. Traditional industry production dropped by a third and profits plunged in most other industries. [46] Hardest hit by economic problems were the industrial and mining areas in the north of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. These areas were hardest hit because of the structural decline in British industry. Staple industries such as coal, steel and shipbuilding were smaller, less modern, less efficient and over-staffed compared to their continental rivals. Unemployment reached 70% in a few regions at the start of the 1930s with over 3 million out of work in total. Many families depended on payments from the local government known as the dole, and for the poorest soup kitchens became their only hope for survival. These soup kitchens, often offered by local churches or charitable groups such as the Salvation Army, became commonplace throughout the stricken old industrial regions of Great Britain.
§
Tyneside, Wearside and Teesside were hard hit in the ensuing years, and the workers of the shipbuilding industry endured times of continual apprehension as the companies they worked for approached closure. The Great Slump caused a collapse in demand for ships. Between 1929 and 1932 ship production declined by 90%, and this affected the supply industries such as steel and coal. In towns and cities in the North East, unemployment reached as high as 70%.
“Palmers has shut their doors, Joe,” exclaimed Mike one day in June 1932. “That closure has put so many outstanding men out of work – most of the men of this town. First, the mine closures, and now it’s happening to us in shipbuilding.”
“Aye, Mike,” replied Joe. “When Palmers shuts down after so many excellent years, Hawthorn Leslie must follow soon enough.”
On the 19th of June 1932, the Palmer Shipyard, founded in 1852, launched its last ship, the HMS Duchess, at Jarrow, and closed its doors in 1933. Palmers built the battlecruiser HMS Queen Mary, 10 Royal Navy battleships, a dozen cruisers, over two dozen destroyers, monitors, gunboats, cargo ships, tankers, passenger ships and tugs and more. It had a long and proud history of shipbuilding. That shipyard alone accounted for 80% of Jarrow’s workforce, leaving 10,000 unemployed.
But it didn’t end with Palmers. The smaller Hawthorn Leslie at Hebburn was still building ships, but the yard was forced to reduce its workforce by 20% to 1,000 workers in 1933. Joe Rutherford and Mike O’Brien were among the unfortunate workers dismissed by that reduction. They had retrenched Joe, 52, for the first time in his hard-working life. He entered his home on that fateful day and threw his arms around his waiting wife. Mary had already heard of the retrenchments from other women. The tension over the past few weeks had been too much for this hard-working, conscientious family man.
“They have let me go, Mary,” he told her, tears welling up in his eyes. “How could they do that after these many years I’ve worked for them?”
“Now Joe,” said Mary, “you know they must have had their reasons. We knew things were getting desperate. Look at how many men are out of work out here. These are tough times!”
“They are Mary,” replied Joe, pulling himself together, “I don’t know what we will do. There isn’t any work anywhere in the North East.”
“We’ll pull through, Joe,” responded Mary. “We will tighten our belts and live off the dole until you can find more work. You’ve survived two wars; you can survive this, my dearest! I know you can do it.”
“Aye, Mary,” Joe concurred. “That we will. I’ll apply for welfare right away.”
In the 1920s and 1930s, Britain had an advanced welfare scheme compared to many industrialised countries. In 1911, the Liberal government of Herbert Henry Asquith had put compulsory national unemployment and health insurance in place. But with the mass unemployment of the 1930s, payments to the insurance dried up, resulting in a funding crisis. So in August 1931, a government-funded Unemployment Benefits scheme replaced that of 1911. This scheme, for the first time, paid out according to need instead of the level of contributions. This unemployment help required a strict means test. When applying for unemployment pay, a government official inspected the applicants to make sure they had no hidden earnings or savings, undisclosed sources of income or any other means of support. For many poor people, this was a humbling experience and was much resented. But it provided the much-needed relief.
Mary performed miracles in her little kitchen by changing her approach to cooking to accommodate the shortages of expensive ingredients such as meat. Soups and stews and pies became the most important meals of the day. These she prepared by stretching small portions of meat with gravies and ample vegetables such as potatoes, carrots and cabbage and barley or other grains or beans when available to become tasty and nourishing meals. Mary started soups with stock derived from paltry amounts of lamb or cheap cuts of beef or marrow bones simmered with onions in an enormous pot to extract the most outstanding flavour. To that, she added root vegetables and inexpensive brassicas, roots and stems included, and added to the meals as the week wore on and more ingredients became available. This she had learned from the time-honoured traditional French pot-au-feu. None of her family complained of the reduction in meat and praised her for such filling and delicious fare. But in those times no one had the privilege of being fussy. And in this way, Mary could support the strength and health of her family well within the constraints of their meagre dole.
One Saturday night at the Rolling Mill Pub soon after the retrenchments, the conversation turned to the crisis in North East England and of the hardship of forgoing their favourite beverage.
“How much longer can we meet here over a few Broons?” asked Mike. “We won’t be able to afford them anymore. So enjoy these last ones, my marras.”
“Aye,” lamented Joe. “These are tough times. So many men are unemployed in this town! I don’t know who is working these days. I doubt I’ll be able to afford a Broon much longer either.”
“At least we have the Unemployment Benefits, thank God,” piped in another. “But our government is in crisis! Will somebody ever fix this shite?”
“It’s no wonder that those Fascists under Mosley are getting stronger,” commented Mike, “They are attracting many followers.”
“Not only here, Mike,” replied Joe. “I have read that Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party is now heading the government in Germany. That is shite in the making!”
“Aye, that is for sure,” replied Mike, “I saw him on the News Reel in the cinema the other day. He’s a madman, screaming and pounding his fists through his speeches. He will lead us into another war, mark my words!”
“Aye, you could be right, Mike,” replied Joe. “You could be right, God help us!”
But despite its growth in popularity, the Nazi Party might never have seized power had it not been for Reparations and the Great Depression of the 1930s and their effect on the people of Germany.
§
The year 1936 was notable in Britain for the death of George V aged 70, on the 20th of January at Sandringham House, Norfolk, and the scandal surrounding his succession. His eldest son, Prince Edward, Prince of Wales succeeded as King Edward VIII. On the 21st January King Edward VIII broke royal protocol by watching them proclaim his accession to the throne from a window of St. James's Palace in the company of his still-married lover Mrs Wallis Simpson.
But the scandal surrounding the King’s love affair continued. On the 20th of October, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin confronted King Edward VIII on his relationship with Mrs Wallis Simpson, a married American woman that the king had fallen in love with and wanted to marry. After many meetings with the King, the Prime Minister informed him on the 2nd December that if he insisted on marrying Mrs Simpson, he had to abdicate. King Edward signed an instrument of abdication on the 10th of December at Fort Belvedere, witnessed by his three brothers, The Duke of York, The Duke of Gloucester and The Duke of Kent. On the 11th December Parliament passed His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936, providing the legislative authority for the King to abdicate. The King performed his last act as sovereign by giving royal assent to the Act. Prince Albert, Duke of York, or Bertie to his family and closest friends, then became King George VI.
Talk among the unemployed, queuing in large numbers at the employment offices, expressed their frustration and disdain.
“That is what’s wrong with our Royals,” said someone. “When they die, you never know how the next one will work out. This one is a prat.”
“Aye,” replied another, “George V saw us through the Great War. He was an excellent King. But that American woman has taken over his son.”
“Maybe she pleases the poor bugger in bed,” said another to laughter from all around him.
“Well, he won’t have our problems in France, or wherever he ends up,” answered another. “He need not labour like us.”
They had a point. Millions were starving in the traditional industrial regions of Great Britain, while the shenanigans were playing out amongst their royalty who had boundless wealth. It caused a lot of disdain.
Another important event for North East England of 1936 was the Jarrow March, or Jarrow Crusade, from the 5th to the 31st of October. The closing of Palmers shipyard was the trigger for 200 unemployed men to march the 274 miles from Jarrow to the House of Commons in London in protest against unemployment. Opposition from the British Iron and Steel Federation, an employers' organisation with its own plans for the industry had frustrated plans for Palmers’ replacement. This led to the decision to leave on the hunger march. The “Crusaders” carried a petition to the British government requesting the re-establishment of an industry in the town. During their journey, local branches of the main political parties gave them sustenance and hospitality, and the public gave them a warm welcome on their arrival in London
The House of Commons received the petition, but they didn’t debate it, and the march produced few immediate results. The Jarrovians went home, believing they had failed. However, despite a sense of failure among the marchers, the Jarrow March became recognised as a defining event. It helped to foster the change in attitudes which prepared the way to more social reform measures later.
§
South to Croydon for another start in life
By 1936, 25-year-old John Irwin, the 23-year-old Violet and 22-year-old Molly had paying jobs in the south. Violet was working in the house of a wealthy couple in Croydon and at 21 had married Welshman Trevor Noel Hodge, born in Glamorgan, in 1934 in Surrey. They were living near Croydon with their first child and Joe’s first grandchild, Brian. Trevor Hodge’s brother Reginald Hodge had married Violet’s cousin Elizabeth Mary (Betty) Rutherford in 1933 in Epsom, and he had brought Violet and Trevor together. John Irwin found work in Croydon and met Mabel Mobley from West Ham, Essex, whom he married in September 1936 in Croydon. Molly was also working in a grand house in Croydon as a servant. They were encouraging their parents to follow with the younger children. With every letter they wrote, they appealed to Joe and their mother to make the leap into a new and more promising life. Those letters and Jarrow March convinced Joe to move at last.
“I’m moving south, Mike,” said Joe one day in late October. “I will follow those Jarrow Crusaders and my eldest children with the rest of my family. All my children down there have paying jobs. That’s where the jobs are. We spend our days in the employment queues getting no work. I can’t stand it anymore. I’ll be discussing it with the family tonight. Will you and Ruth come too?”
“I’d love to, Joe,” replied Mike. “But it’ll take a lot of talking to get Ruth to move. She has a paying job here still, and her employers have put her in charge of the household. It’s an excellent position she has always hoped for, so she will not want to leave. But I understand why you are going. There’s nothing here for me either. I’m not sure what will become of us, but I’ll be working on it.”
“We’ve been through a lot together, my old marra,” said Joe. “Please understand that I must go, and I hope that you and Ruth can join us one day. I’m sure she’ll find employment down there, and you too. It’s boom time in the south. Please try to convince her. I’ve had enough of unemployment lines here, and I want to join my older children in Croydon.”
“Is that where you are going, Croydon?” asked Mike. “I’ve heard talk of that place because of London airport being there.”
“Aye, and that’s where my children are. And that’s where there are many new factories and work, so that’s where I’ll be going,” replied Joe.
“Has life always been like this, Joe?” asked Mike. “We have been through two wars, the trenches of France, the POW camps of Germany, the 1918 flu, and now this Great Slump, as they are calling it. Why must we go through all these troubles?”
“I guess that’s just the way life is, Mike,” replied Joe. “It has nothing to do with us, and it has always been like that, I reckon.”
And so, on that note, the two close friends realised that their paths were parting. “Aye, that’s just the way life is,” echoed Mike while giving Joe a forceful hug, before turning and heading home.
§
Joe waited until the remaining children were sitting for supper one evening in 1936. Peggy, the eldest of the children still at home, was a youthful woman of 17 and out searching for employment; Harry was 16 and looking for work too. Beattie was 14 and had finished her education that summer and Dolly at 12 was the last Rutherford child still in school.
“Mary, children, I have been pondering our situation here, and I’ve decided it’s time to follow John, Violet, Molly and the others to Croydon,” he announced.
“We will follow whatever you decide, Da,” replied Mary. “If you think we should move, then we will support your decision.”
“Well, as you know, Da, there’s no work here in Jarrow,” responded Peggy. “So, I’ll support your decision for sure.”
“What of our friends, Da?” replied Beattie.
“Aye, what of our friends, Da?” added Dolly.
“Your friends will follow us, girls,” responded Joe, “I know of many families thinking along the same lines since the Jarrow March. We have no choice. No one, including the Government, knows what to do for work for us here, and we can’t go on living here without work and money.”
“And where will we live?” asked Dolly.
“John and Violet are working on that,” said Joe. “They are looking for lodgings for us in Croydon.
“And where is Croydon?” asked Beattie.
“Just south of London, Beattie,” replied Peggy, “You know from Violet’s letters.”
“Just making sure,” murmured Beattie.
“Well, Joe, we will pack our things right away,” said Mary. “We will be ready when you are.”
The entire family had agreed that Joe’s decision was the right way to go, despite leaving their friends in Jarrow, and they followed his lead. So once Joe had arranged transportation, he told his family they should finish packing their things as soon as possible. In the working-class homes of the North East, there wasn’t much to take with them. Joe had found cheap transport shared with others going to Croydon to carry their belongings, including their beds and their few other pieces of furniture. John and Violet had by then reserved a “two up, two down” terrace house at 75 Cedar Road in East Croydon for them to occupy. It was within easy walking distance of East Croydon train station. They pledged to support the family as best they could until Joe found work. Joe scraped together enough to buy the one-way family train tickets to London, and they set out towards the unknown south full of excitement and apprehension. They missed John’s wedding in September, but celebrated with them after the fact and settled into their new home in East Croydon.
Before they left, Joe and Mike met for one last time the night before at their meeting place above the yards.
“Aalreet, my old marra,” called Joe.
“Aalreet, Joe,” called Mike with a chuckle. “What are ye doing out here at this time of night?”
“I’m here to say goodbye to an old friend of mine,” said Joe. “And ye?”
“The same, Joe,” replied Mike, the tears growing.
The two men then threw their arms around each other and embraced for the longest time.
“Take care of yourself, Joe,” said Mike. “And write to me from time to time. We mustn’t lose touch with each other after all we’ve been through together.”
“Aye, Mike, that’s for sure,” replied Joe. “I’ll let you know how it is down there. Can’t be as bad as Germany, can it?”
But Mike couldn’t respond. He just gave a parting gesture, turned and walked away. Joe understood his feelings and mirrored his gesture while departing too.
It was a dramatic move for the Rutherfords. Joe, Mary and their children had been born and grown up in Jarrow. They had left the only home they had ever known and were insecure. But Joe found a temporary job at once washing dishes at the fashionable old Hotel Café Royale in Regent Street, London to tide him over until he could find a “proper job” closer to home.
“I did my first day of work in the south today, Mary,” said Joe. “Getting there and back is no problem. “The walk to East Croydon station takes 12-minutes. The train to Victoria Station, London, is quick, and then I have another short walk past Buckingham Palace and Green Park to Piccadilly and Regent Street. It takes a little longer than my walk to work in Jarra, but it’s not bad.”
But it wasn’t long before Joe found work at a factory at Elmers End in Beckenham, a 14-minute ride there by train. He started on the assembly line at Muirhead and Co, a company involved in telecommunications since manufacturing the first electro-mechanic telegraphic equipment, around the mid-19th century. This worldwide known firm developed and produced many items used in wireless relays, multiplexers, recorders and cables and was growing fast. Soon Peggy found a job near home. A women’s clothing shop in Croydon’s town centre took Beattie on as a trainee seamstress. They enrolled Dolly in a school nearby, and the Rutherford family resettled and became comfortable in their new surroundings in no time.
§
Empires reborn
By early 1937, the Rutherfords had settled into their new surroundings at 75 Cedar Road, East Croydon, and apart from Dolly, were all working and contributing to the family’s living expenses. Life was soon better than their past in Jarrow, even if it was in another and unfamiliar corner of England. At least there they had work and wages to ease the stresses of everyday life.
Joe continued his practice of reading the daily newspapers to understand what was going on in the world. He bought a used radio from a fellow worker and listened to BBC News every evening after supper too. The British newspapers had blocked the Government-run BBC from broadcasting news from its foundation in 1922. But over time, it gained the right to edit the news copy and, in 1934, created its own newsroom. But it could not broadcast news before 6 p.m. Joe was keeping up with the drama unfolding in Europe and around the planet, including places he had never heard of, where earth-shattering events were moving at a blistering pace. Of interest were the ongoing and worrying developments in Germany and Italy.
In Italy on the 9th of May 1936, Benito Mussolini, leader of the ruling National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista - PNF) [47] since he had taken power in 1922, announced that they had placed Ethiopia under the sovereignty of Italy. An assembled crowd of 400,000 before the Palazzo Venezia exploded into wild cheers. They continued rejoicing into the early hours of the following morning. Mussolini proclaimed the King of Italy as Emperor of Abyssinia. “Ethiopia's destiny is sealed,” Mussolini declared to his masses. “All knots have been severed by our shining sword. Italy, at last, has her Empire.”[48] Mussolini coined the term “Axis Powers” in November 1936, when he spoke of the Rome-Berlin Axis as the treaty of friendship between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
In August 1936, Hitler had responded to a growing economic crisis in Germany with his vast rearmament programme. He ordered Herman Göring to carry out a plan to “prepare Germany for war within the next four years”. [49] The plan envisaged an all-out struggle between Judeo-Bolshevism and German National Socialism. Hitler believed his strategy needed a committed effort of rearmament regardless of the economic costs. [50]
One evening early in 1937 at the local pub where Joe often met up with his recent Croydon friends, other migrated Geordies and his eldest son, the talk turned to the events unfolding in Europe.
“Can you believe what is going on out there?” asked Joe. “We watched this happening before the Great War. Is that where we are heading again?”
“Aye, the bloody Huns are at it again under this new maniac Hitler,” responded one of the other patrons.
“And the Italians?” asked Joe. “They fought with us against the Germans during the Great War, but now under that other nutter Mussolini, it looks as if they are cosying up with the Germans.”
“Aye, true,” was the response, “but we need not worry over the Italians. It’s the Huns we need to be worried about once more!”
“And the Russians?” asked Joe.
“They’re too busy with their own internal shite,” exclaimed yet another to peals of laughter.
“It’s no joke,” responded Joe. “I’ve read that dictator Stalin has been busy with his Great Purge, as they are calling it, killing millions of his own people. But, aye, I’m most worried about Hitler. I’ve read somewhere that those who forget the past, repeat it. We will have another Great War, mark my words.”
George Santayana, the brilliant philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist, once said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” [51] By the 1930s, it was these European Fascists who were forgetting the lessons of history, so soon after the horrific Great War.
“And closer to home, what of our new King?” asked another patron.
“Aye, he's gannin' micey for that married American hinny,” replied Joe. Then noting the puzzled looks from his companions, said, “Sorry, he’s gone nutter for that married American woman, what’s her name?”
“Simpson, Wallis Simpson,” replied someone, “She’s a gold digger after our weak King. A bloody disgrace, that!”
“Aye,” said another. “What do we need royals for, anyway?”
In the pubs and parlours of working-class Britons, the goings-on of their royalty during 1936 was a frequent topic of discussion. They had been following the drama surrounding King Edward VIII’s love affair with “that American woman”, and the King’s abdication in December in favour of marrying her. The royal antics disgusted many and amused others. So the most notable and happy event of the year 1937 in Britain was the coronation of King George VI. Prince Albert, Duke of York, had ascended to the throne with Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at the end of the year before when his brother abdicated. They became King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Empire and the Emperor and Empress of India. This grand ceremony took place on the 12th of May 1937 at Westminster Abbey.
The BBC made its first outside broadcast covering the event. They broadcast the coronation procession on the BBC Television Service, which had only been operating since the preceding November. They laid several tonnes and 8 miles of television cabling across central London so they could send the images from three Emitron television cameras to the transmission centre at Alexandra Palace. The BBC’s Frederick Grisewood did the commentary from the cameras at Hyde Park Corner. In reviewing the transmission, The Daily Telegraph commented: “Horse and foot, the Coronation procession marched into English homes yesterday.” The Daily Mail said: “When the King and Queen appeared the picture was so vivid that one felt that this magical television will be one of the greatest of modern inventions.” [52]
It riveted only the privileged elite who saw that event on their television sets while most of their subjects around the British Empire listened on their radios. The coronation service of George VI was the first filmed on TV, and it even required the forty camera crew members inside the Abbey to wear evening dress. They then broadcast the service from these recordings, with the authorities censoring only one small section, a clip of Queen Mary wiping a tear from her eye. They later showed it in edited form as a newsreel in cinemas across the British Empire.
In the Rutherford home, there was both consternation and joy over the antics of their royalty.
“That coronation was wonderful,” declared Molly, “I love these grand royal events.” To which everyone agreed, the girls in their excitement exchanging comments on the uniforms and dresses and horse carriages.
“Aye, but the antics of our last king were pukka disgraceful,” replied Joe. “I have lived through many of our great monarchs. I was a soldier for Queen Victoria, Edward VII and George V. Victoria was a grand queen who I fought for when I joined the Army and went to South Africa. Edward VII was a dandy and party animal, but I fought for him too against the Boers when he became king in 1901. King George V was a fine monarch, and I fought for him during the Great War. I received a letter from him thanking me for my contribution as a POW in Germany, and I’m so proud of that. Edward VIII didn’t act the way a monarch should. I hope that King George VI will be a noble king for us again. But he is coming into troubling times just as his father did in 1911 when your mother and I married!” Joe’s monologue had left his women speechless, so they shelved the topic for a while.
Preparations for war in 1936 and 1937 were everywhere progressing in the UK. For example, on the 6th of November 1936, the Royal Air Force's Hawker Hurricane single-seat fighter plane performed its maiden flight at Brooklands, Surrey. And in December 1937 it entered service in the Royal Air Force at No. 111 Squadron at Northolt, as its first monoplane fighter.
On the 25th of November 1937, Nazi Germany signed a pact with the Empire of Japan. Hitler abandoned his plan of an Anglo-German alliance, blaming “inadequate” British leadership. [53] At a meeting at the Reich Chancellery with his foreign ministers and military chiefs that November, Adolf Hitler restated his intention of gaining more “Lebensraum”[54] for Germans. He believed this territory was necessary for Germany’s natural development, and he was ready to take it by force. Hitler ordered preparations for war in the East to begin as early as 1938 and no later than 1943. He felt that by grabbing Austria and Czechoslovakia, he could correct the severe decline in living standards and the economic crisis in Germany. [55] [56] Hitler had urged quick action before Britain and France gained a permanent lead in the arms race. [57]
“I heard the same from the Kaiser before the Great War,” commented Joe. “And here we go again. It’s scary!”
On the 28th of May 1937, Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister after Baldwin's retirement. Chamberlain signalled an intention to continue Baldwin's policies by making few changes to the cabinet. [58]
At the start of 1938, Hitler asserted control over the military-foreign policy apparatus, dismissing Neurath as foreign minister and appointing himself as Oberster Befehlshaber der Wehrmacht. [59] [60] From then onwards, Hitler carried out a foreign policy aimed at waging war. [61]
Tensions were high across the entire globe but reaching worrying levels across Great Britain and Europe. The US government appointed Joseph P. Kennedy as United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom on the 8th of March 1938. Kennedy rejected the beliefs of Winston Churchill that any compromise with Nazi Germany was impossible. Instead, Kennedy supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement.
The Prime Minister met German Chancellor Adolf Hitler on the 13th of September 1938 to negotiate an end to German expansionist policies. On the 30th of September, Neville Chamberlain returned to the UK triumphant from Munich, waving the resolution signed the day earlier with Germany, at Heston Aerodrome, where he gave a quick speech to the gathered crowd. Later in Downing Street, he gave his famous “Peace for our Time” speech, and George VI and Queen Elizabeth appeared with Chamberlain on the balcony of Buckingham Palace that day to celebrate the agreement.
By 1939 in Germany, Hitler had disregarded the restrictions imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles and annexed territories populated by millions of ethnic Germans. He established the Dritte Reich (Third Empire) as the reborn German Empire. Hitler aspired to a much larger Empire than that which had collapsed a generation earlier under the German Kaiser. In Italy, the delusional Benito Mussolini saw himself as the saviour of the Roman Empire of Italia in the hopes and dreams of re-establishing Italy to its glorious Roman past. At the same time the Japanese Empire, which had existed since the Meiji Restoration in 1868, was reaching its zenith under the slogan Fukoku Kyōhei. Translated, the slogan read “Enrich the Country, Strengthen the Armed Forces”.
On the 31st of March 1939, Britain pledged support to Poland in case of an invasion. Then they formed the Royal Armoured Corps on the 4th of April and re-established the Women’s Royal Naval Service on the 11th of April. On the 27th of April the Military Training Act introduced the conscription of men aged 20 and 21 to undertake six months of military training. They created the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) on the 28th of June. On the 1st of July, the Women’s Land Army re-formed to work in agriculture, preparing for losing male agricultural workers for an eventual war. By mid-1939, they recalled Parliament, called up Army reservists and placed Civil Defence workers on alert. On the 24th of August the Emergency Powers Act, 1939, gave full authority to Defence Regulations, emergency regulations passed on the outbreak of war. These regulations were to become the fundamental principles of everyday life in the United Kingdom in the event of a conflict. Then on the 30th of August, they ordered the Royal Navy to war stations.
And so it was that by mid-1939, mighty empires were on the rise again around the entire world and gearing up for total war, just as they had a generation earlier.
“He is now calling Germany the Third Empire,” said Joe one day. “The Second Empire was the Kaiser’s Germany we fought. I thought we had ended the empires with the Great War, but both Germany and Italy are talking about their empires. I don’t like what’s going on in Germany.”
Anxiety was mounting in the Rutherford household as it was in most other homes across the British Empire. Older adults could remember the horrors of the last war and had no interest in repeating that experience. One Sunday evening at the end of August, as they gathered for tea, the talk digressed to war.
“I believe we are to become involved in yet another European conflict,” began Harry. “What do you think, Da?”
“It feels just as it did in July 1914,” replied Joe. “I can’t believe it, but it sure looks as if we may fight the Huns again soon. But not me! I've been through enough wars, thank you.”
“Aye, that you have, Da,” echoed Mary. “I’ll not have you going off again!”
“You’re safe at your age, Da,” added Peggy.
“Aye, but I don’t know how safe we are,” replied Joe. “In the Great War, the Huns bombed England. I have read that the Germans carried out raids on London during most of the Great War, using airships, bomber planes and seaplanes. They have much better aeroplanes now, and I suppose, bigger bombs than they did then. It wouldn't surprise me if they tried it again.”
“That goes for me too,” said Harry. “I’ve read that the way the Allies treated the Germans after that victory, demanding crippling reparations, may have paved the way for Hitler and the Nazis and another Great War.”
“Aye, you may be right, Harry,” concurred Joe. “I’ve heard that often enough too.”
“Oh my God,” cried Peggy. “That is most worrying. They could bomb us again right here?”
Now that was a very sobering thought, and it left everyone quiet and reflective for the rest of the tea, asking only the occasional “pass the” something or other and less consequential chit-chat.
“Well, if that could happen, we must be ready,” blurted Peggy after contemplating the conversation. “Shouldn’t we be talking to our neighbours of building a shelter we can go to if they bomb us? I’ve noticed that others in the neighbourhood have done that.”
“Aye, now that’s a canny superb idea,” replied Harry. “I’ll talk to them.”
Then they dispersed for the evening, knowing little of the changes soon to descend upon them.
§
[1] The industrial and urban areas on both banks of the River Tyne, historically part of the counties of Northumberland (north bank) and County Durham (south bank) including the urban areas of Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, Tynemouth, Wallsend, South Shields, Hebburn and Jarrow. This busy region is extended south in County Durham to Wearside on the River Wear and Teesside on the River Tee.
[2] A friend, pal, buddy or mate in the north of England, especially among the working classes.
[3] “The morning fog”, Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel, 3 July 1880. It is really not fog at all, but cloud of pure white mist. warmer and much less wetting than a “Scotch Mist”, not differing entirely from the true British fog, facetiously spelled “smog” because it’s always coloured and strongly impregnated with smoke, a mixture as unwholesome as it is unpleasant.
[4] Geordie for “hello” or “you ok?”
[5] The people of the Tyneside area, called Geordies, have a reputation for their distinctive dialect and accent. Tynesiders may have been given this name, a local diminutive of the name George, because their miners used George Stephenson's safety lamp (invented in 1815 and called a Geordie lamp) to prevent firedamp explosions, rather than the Davy lamp used elsewhere.
[6] “Field Marshal Douglas Haig would have let Germany win, his biography says.” The Times. 10 November 2008
[7] “World War I's Worst General”. Military History Magazine. 11 May 2007.
[8] That pandemic went on to infect 500 million people worldwide and cause the deaths of 50 to 100 million people. Taubenberger, Jeffery K.; Morens, David M., 1918 Influenza: the mother of all pandemics, 2006
[9] Potter, C. W., A History of Influenza, Journal of Applied Microbiology, October 2006
[10] Jo Bath, Great War Britain: Tyneside, Remembering 1914-18, 2015
[11] We now know that these combat veterans were facing was likely what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
[12] Jo Bath, Great War Britain: Tyneside, Remembering 1914-18, History Press, 2015
[13] Joanna Bourke, First World War, Another battle front, The Guardian, 11 November 2008
[14] Jo Bath, Great War Britain: Tyneside, Remembering 1914-18, History Press, 2015
[15] Jo Bath, Great War Britain: Tyneside, Remembering 1914-18, History Press, 2015
[16] Jo Bath, Great War Britain: Tyneside, Remembering 1914-18, History Press, 2015
[17] “Inflation value of the Pound” (PDF). House of Commons.
[18] Marks, Sally, The Myths of Reparations. Central European History. Cambridge University Press, 1978
[19] Jo Bath, Great War Britain: Tyneside, Remembering 1914-18, History Press, 2015
[20] French cavalry regiments that still wore a covered cuirass, a piece of armour which covers the torso. and a plumed helmet, while on active service in the field
[21] According to the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, in military terminology, a demonstration is an attack or show of force on a front where a decision is not sought, made with the aim of deceiving the enemy. A related diversionary maneuver, the feint, involves actual contact with the enemy, unlike a demonstration.
[22] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles
[23] Jo Bath, Great War Britain: Tyneside, Remembering 1914-18, History Press, 2015
[24] Ben Johnson, The 1920s in Britain, http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-1920s-in-Britain/
[25] Patrick Brennan, http://www.donmouth.co.uk/local_history/jarrow_fc/jarrow_fc.html
[26] Banquet in honour of The President of the French Republic, Monday 10 November 1919, Royal Collection.
[27] Royal Canadian Legion Branch # 138. 2-Minute Wave of Silence Revives a Time-honoured Tradition The Royal Canadian Legion. Undated.
[28] Emma Mason, BBC History Magazine, Sunday 9th November 2014
[29] Augendre, Jacques (2016). Guide historique [Historical guide] (PDF). Tour de France (in French). Paris: Amaury Sport Organisation. Archived (PDF) from the original on 17 August 2016.
[30] Tom James (15 August 2003). “1919: Christophe in Yellow - but not in Paris”
[31] “1919: Wanhoopspoging levert Firmin Lambot Tourzege op” (in Dutch). Tourdefrance.nl. 19 March 2003.
[32] Sports Illustrated. Archived from the original on 5 August 2011
[33] Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land. The Hague, 18 October 1907.
[34] “What are you talking about?”
[35] Andrew Lamb, 150 Years of Popular Musical Theatre, Yale University Press, 2000
[36] Price, S (1999). “What made the twenties roar?” Scholastic Update, Vol. 131, Issue 10.
[37] Ben Johnson, The 1920s in Britain, http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-1920s-in-Britain/
[38] A pitched extension of a main roof similar to a lean-to but an extension of the upper roof serving as an additional room at the back of the house.
[39] Gordon Martel, ed. (2011). A Companion to Europe 1900–1945
[40] Ben Johnson, The 1920s in Britain, http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-1920s-in-Britain/
[41] Gerard Noonan, The IRA in Britain, 1919-1923: 'In the Heart of Enemy Lines', Oxford University Press, 2014
[42] Ian Kershaw, Weimar: Why did German Democracy Fail? St. Martin's Press, 1990
[43] Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (2013)
[44] Ben Johnson, The 1920s in Britain, http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-1920s-in-Britain/
[45] Frank, Robert H.; Bernanke, Ben S. Principles of Macroeconomics (3rd ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2007
[46] H. W. Richardson, “The Economic Significance of the Depression in Britain,” Journal of Contemporary History (1970)
[47] Kevin Passmore, Fascism: A very short introduction, (Oxford UP, 2014)
[48] The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957) Mon 11 May 1936 “MUSSOLINI PROCLAIMS ITALY AN EMPIRE”
[49] Overy, Richard, Misjudging Hitler. In Martel, Gordon. The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered. Londn: Routledge, 1999
[50] Messerschmidt, Manfred, Foreign Policy and Preparation for War. In Deist, Wilhelm. Germany and the Second World War. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990
[51] George Santayana, Reason in Common Sense, volume 1 of The Life of Reason, 1905.
[52] The story of BBC Television – Television out and about. bbc.co.uk.
[53] Messerschmidt, Manfred, Foreign Policy and Preparation for War. In Deist, Wilhelm. Germany and the Second World War. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990
[54] Living space
[55] Messerschmidt, Manfred, Foreign Policy and Preparation for War. In Deist, Wilhelm. Germany and the Second World War. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990
[56] Carr, William, Arms, Autarky and Aggression. London: Edward Arnold, 1972.
[57] Messerschmidt, Manfred, Foreign Policy and Preparation for War. In Deist, Wilhelm. Germany and the Second World War. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990
[58] Mercer, Derrik, ed. Chronicle of the 20th Century. London: Chronicle Communications Ltd., 1989.
[59] Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces
[60] Overy, Richard, Misjudging Hitler. In Martel, Gordon. The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered. London: Routledge, 1999
[61] Messerschmidt, Manfred, Foreign Policy and Preparation for War. In Deist, Wilhelm. Germany and the Second World War. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990
1. The Interwar Years: 1919 to 1939
Recovery and Remembrance
Joe Rutherford found his way that night to Hawthorn Leslie’s shipyards in Hebburn on the River Tyne, where he had worked before the war. Joe and others from his regiment had endured 1,479 days of hunger and anguish in captivity. The Germans had captured them in October 1914. Four years of Prisoner of War camps in Germany had left scars on his mind. The years of confinement haunted him, and his mind was still in turmoil. He had lost friends too; friends who the enemy had shot on the Western Front or when escaping from the POW camps. Others became ill and died before they could experience the sweetness of the freedom he was now enjoying. There had been too many days when guards were watching his every move, blocking any attempt to escape. But he was fortunate to have survived the Great War that had killed or maimed so many millions of people, including two of his closest friends and three brothers-in-law.
It was a chilly night on Tyneside[1], the shipyards, factories and workers’ terrace houses enveloped with fog and hoarfrost. Joe recalled the Vehnemoor Celle VI POW Camp in the peat moss bogs of the north-east of Germany. He and his marras[2] had attempted an escape on just such a night. The camp was thirty-odd miles from the Dutch border, and they had almost made it. But that was January 1917, two years earlier and a little over midway through the Great War. They spent close to two years as POWs at Germany’s largest POW camp at Soltau after that.
The constant rumble and hammering of the yards and factories of Tyneside reminded him of muffled guns and rifle fire. And the smoke rising from dozens of factories created an acrid smog[3] like that of the battlefields. Joe soon dismissed that analogy from his mind as unpleasant memories. He had survived a month of hell on battlefields of the Western Front early in the war too. “It doesn’t sound much,” he thought. “But in that one short month, my battalion lost most of its original 1,000 officers and men. They had trained together and travelled to the battlefields of France together. 800 fellow Durham Light Infantry marras had lost their lives or limbs or freedom within one month of arriving at the River Aisne on the Western Front in France. Joe had read that three-quarters of a million British soldiers had died or were missing in action in that war. And the enemy wounded another one and a half million men in that “war to end all wars”.
“Many of those men were only boys,” thought Joe. “And the war had disabled many who could never again work or lead a regular life.” He thanked God in silence that he had not suffered the same fate.
Tyneside was one of the leading industrial regions in the world for coal mining and shipbuilding since the Industrial Revolution when Britain produced most of the world’s ships. Along with Clydeside, Merseyside and Wearside, they had built more ships in the last century than anyone anywhere else in the world. Besides the collieries, Jarrow and Hebburn had two primary employers: Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company, by far the largest employer in Jarrow, and the smaller Hawthorn Leslie and Company in Hebburn. Between them, they provided a living for 90% of the workers of this part of Tyneside. Joe had worked for Hawthorn Leslie before he left for the Great War in 1914. And he had worked there before he left for the 2nd Anglo-Boer War in South Africa in 1901.
At Hawthorn Leslie’s Hebburn yards, Joe found his old marra Mike O’Brien meandering in the darkness too. Joe and Mike were lifelong friends who had fought in two wars together and had endured the Great War side by side in the battles on the Western Front and three POW camps in Germany.
“Aalreet[4] Mike, what are ye doing here at this time of night?” he called out in his best shipyard Geordie[5] livened up with a touch of Irish brogue?
“Aalreet Joe, I suppose the same as ye,” replied Mike winking. They both laughed and embraced.
“They are still hard at work,” commented Joe while surveying the yard. “Look. There are at least a dozen ships in different stages of building at our old yard, including destroyers, cargo ships, tugs and a large passenger-cargo ship. And Palmers? They look busy too. I visited there yesterday.”
“Aye, lots of work. We must get in there again,” replied Mike. “But with the war over, they will not be getting as much work.”
“How are ye doing, Mike,” asked Joe. “Getting any stronger?”
“I guess so. And you, Joe?” asked Mike.
“Aye, getting there; getting there,” replied Joe. “Mary is doing a fine job of looking after me. And I’m home with my little family again!”
“Aye,” replied Mike. “It’s such a pleasure to be back home. Ruth is looking after me too. And my little Michael is such a fine laddie.”
Joe and Mike considered themselves very fortunate! They were home on Tyneside at long last. Joe was taking walks every night through his familiar neighbourhoods of Jarrow and Hebburn on the south bank of the River Tyne and often met his old companion. They were both enjoying the freedom and aloneness of being able to walk out of their front doors and explore their old haunts without being watched by guards.
“What you and I have been through together, my old marra!” said Joe. “We are now close to forty years old, most of that as marras.”
“Why did we go, Joe?” asked Mike.
“Because we believed it was our duty to protect this country and our families from the Boche,” responded Joe, repeating his old refrain.
“Aye, that was it. But did we need to go?” asked Mike. “We had done our duty in South Africa and India. Why did we have to go to France in this bloody war?”
“I ask myself that every day, too, my marra,” replied Joe. “I left Mary and our two bairns behind to go to a filthy trench war and German POW camps. They suffered; I suffered; we all suffered. Why? I don’t know. So many men, young and old, joined the Army. We just got caught up in it and felt we had to join, I guess. I can’t remember the details. I just remember we were at peace and enjoying our lives and work one day, and then we were signing up for war again on the next day.”
“Aye. It makes little sense, does it?” mumbled Mike.
Back at home, Joe slipped into bed with Mary, who was sleeping. She was warm through her nightclothes, so he fit his body into the contours of her form.
Then, after giving her a soft kiss on the neck, he fell asleep.
At once, he was on the Chemin des Dames above the River Aisne in France. The night was black except for the constant flashes of guns and exploding shells.
“There’s not much bloody protection in these trenches,” murmured Mike. “How can we stay safe here?”
“Aye, I don’t know where we should hide from the Boche aiming at us over there,” Joe replied. “They are so close we could reach out and touch them.”
“Is this it?” asked Jack. “Two lines of soldiers facing and shooting at each other in the rain and mud? Is this our new war?”
“Looks like it,” Joe mumbled. “It’s a bloody miserable state of affairs.”
“Aye. There is no protection against those bloody Boche shells,” added Mike. “Well, laddies, it was nice knowing ye. God knows how long we’ll survive out here.”
Then, from the trench, looking out across the scarred terrain to the German entrenchments, they saw movements. German soft uniform caps and spiked helmets appearing from time to time above their parapets as the German troops prepared for their attack. The morning was misty and dark, and the rain started pouring in sheets. Joe’s fingers had stiffened, and they weren’t sure how they could fire their weapons should the enemy charge.
“Bloody hell,” whispered Mike then. “I don’t have a comfortable feeling, laddies. Sitting in these open shallow trenches with the rain beating on us? It’s bloody freezing and dangerous. We have the German Army staring at us from a few yards away over there, and those movements may mean they will soon attack us.”
“Aye Mike, this doesn’t look good for us,” replied Joe. “But we had better bloody well do our best if we want to survive. I reckon the Boche is just as wet and freezing as we are. Keep your heads low and let’s watch what’s going on around us. Stay alive!”
“And those darkies next to the West Yorkshires? Are they fighting men?” asked Jack.
“I bloody well hope so,” replied Mike.
Minutes later, the Germans launched a fierce attack along the entire Allied line. It began with the horrific storm of an artillery barrage. With the wind and beating rain, it became a storm of fire and water. Shells exploded before and behind the trenches and even overhead, raining shrapnel on us unsuspecting newcomers. German machine guns and rifles opened fire along the line. Bullets whizzed past them and embedded themselves in the earth mound behind them or ricocheted off boulders and helmets. It was so loud; they couldn’t communicate with each other. The smoke, rain, and mist made it impossible to see the enemy. And it continued nonstop for over an hour.
“Keep your heads low, laddies, and return fire as best you can,” yelled a corporal nearby.
How?” cried Mike, “I can’t see the bastards!”
“Just fire in their direction,” yelled the corporal. “They’ll get the message, and we might down a few.”
After the first shocks, which had frozen them in their positions, they rallied their strength and nerve and fought back as hard as they could. The noise was deafening, the whizzing bullets frightening, and the soundwaves and shrapnel from the exploding shells battered our line nonstop.
“We’ll give you as much as you are giving us, you bloody Hun,” yelled Mike while unloading his rifle over and over in rapid-fire towards the German line.
Mike’s fellow Durhams, along the line, did the same, including Joe. And, after a few minutes to prepare their guns, the British artillery were returning shells in rapid-fire too. And between the blasts from the canons, there were cries of pain from their fellow Durhams.
The Moroccans on their right came under the massive attack too and were panicking and retreating. So, as the Moroccans pulled back, the Officer Commanding 1st West Yorkshire Regiment moved one of his companies to cover the gap caused by their retreat. Then the Moroccan officers rallied their men for a while, and they moved forward again. There was total confusion. And not knowing the British had moved into their position, the Moroccans opened fire on the men of the 1st West Yorkshire Battalion, who suffered thirty casualties as a result – friendly fire and complete chaos!”
“I told you so,” called Jack as loud as he could, “You can’t trust those Wogs to get things right!”
“I think we are all in the same bucket here, Jack,” I yelled, “no matter the colour of our skin.”
“A bloody dangerous bucket!” screamed Jack.
“Look up there, laddies,” called Joe. “It’s a plane. I can see the pilot and a bombardier. They’re coming our way. Watch them.”
“They’ve dropped a bomb,” screamed Mike. “It’s coming straight for us!”
“Dive for cover,” screamed Joe!
Joe awoke in a sweat. Mary had heard him groaning and calling out “bloody dangerous” and “dive for cover”. So, she was awake too and comforting him.
“Relax, darling,” said Mary. “You must have had a nightmare. I’ll bring you some tea and a biscuit.”
“I’m sorry I woke you up, my darling,” said Joe. “A bomb was coming straight for us, and then I woke up, thank God.”
“That’s all right, Joe. You poor darling. We’ll have some tea, and you can tell me all about it. Then we’ll go back to sleep, my love.”
§
Joe walked every night now regardless of the weather as soon as Mary and the children were asleep. He enjoyed breathing in the air of Tyneside, despite, or because of, its familiar pall of industrial smoke. He had drawn breath in this smog-filled environment since his childhood. The breezes of the POW camps of the Lüneburg Heath in rural North Germany had been so clean and healthy. But it was not the air of his homeland. He enjoyed the freedom to walk wherever he pleased, unfettered in familiar surroundings. And he cherished the liberty of allowing his mind to overcome the turmoil of his last four years.
Joe and Mike often met, walking together while reminiscing about their exploits since they had first joined Queen Victoria’s Army in 1900. As soldiers, they had shared many experiences in South Africa, India, France, Belgium, and Germany over two decades. The friends remembered many of the fun times and avoided reawakening their nasty episodes, the stuff of their inescapable nightmares. Yes, they lost many of their old marras, but they made many friends too along the way. And they treasured their medals and the King’s letter to homecoming British POWs to honour their sacrifices. And both Joe and Mike still had their limbs and faculties intact!
“My God, Mike, how did we live through these last few years?” asked Joe.
“It’s a miracle, Joe,” replied Mike. “We survived hell. I’m home, but I can’t escape it. I’m dreaming about it every night. But what of those who didn’t return?”
“Aye,” replied Joe as if from a distance, “I’m dreaming about it too, Mike. Billy, Jack, Fred, and the hundreds or thousands of others we left there in the blood and mud of the battlefields. Mary’s three brothers who died within a few miles of each other near Ypres. I’m grim every time I remember them dying in those trenches. What has become of their remains?”
“Buried in the mud of France and Flanders,” lamented Mike. “Far from their beloved Tyneside.”
“Aye,” replied Joe, “buried in the mud of France and Flanders. But their souls are now in heaven.”
Of the millions of Britons who went to fight in the Great War, 10% never came back. The official final and corrected casualty figures of the British Army for the Great War were 574,000 killed in action. Over 250,000 were missing and presumed dead. The war disabled or damaged another 1.7 million, badly enough to qualify for a war pension. Over 40,000 men had their limbs amputated during the war; 272,000 suffered other debilitating injuries in the legs or arms; 60,000 injured in the head or eyes, and 89,000 sustained further severe damage to their bodies. Many returning soldiers weren’t as fortunate as Joe and Mike. The disabled soldiers of this war needed continued care, many for the rest of their lives. Most of these men found it difficult, if not impossible, to regain employment on their return. It took over a year for the last soldier to leave St. Nicholas Hospital in Newcastle.
“Who do we blame for all that misery?” asked Mike. “The Boche Kaiser Wilhelm II and his generals, aye. But what of our generals too? Did they give a damn for the thousands of men they sent over the top to their deaths? What did we mean to those arrogant bastards?”
“Aye, and they say the worst was Field Marshal Haig,” replied Joe. “They call him Butcher Haig. I’ve heard that there were two million British casualties endured under his command.” [6] [7] I reckon the generals had a job to do, Mike. They must win the wars, no matter how. They decided on the strategies and made their battle plans. We were just their cannon fodder!”
“Aye, that’s true,” concurred Mike, “They had a job to do, with us as cannon fodder soldiers! Are there not smarter ways to win wars without so many casualties?”
“Maybe,” replied Joe. “But from what we have seen, they don’t know them!”
Joe and Mike surveyed the shipyards in silence for a long time, deep in their memories and thoughts, until Joe concluded: “We must count our blessings and thank God that we and thousands of others are still alive and returning home to live and work again!”
They had survived the horrific 1914-1918 Great War, a war that resulted in 17 million deaths and 20 million wounded. There they lost many more marras in the treacherous vermin- and disease-ridden trenches and the cramped German POW work camps. Towards the end of the war, they were facing starvation through the chronic lack of enough food in Germany. They had survived the 1918 flu too.[8] Doctors have described the 1918 flu pandemic as one of the most significant natural disasters in human history and it may have killed more people than the Black Death of Medieval Europe. [9]
“Aye,” replied Mike. “We must now recover our strength as soon as we can and get back to work, Joe. We are so much luckier than those poor bastards who have returned damaged.”
Joe and Mike parted ways and returned to their sleeping wives. Once more, Joe slipped back into bed next to a sleeping Mary and was soon asleep.
They were crossing a bog, sinking up to their waists in frigid water and mud, then reached a ploughed field.
“Look after yourselves,” said Joe. “They say we have to cross this muddy field under fire while returning fire without protection!”
“Shite,” added Jack. “Bloody madness!”
And then the attack began. Hundreds of British troops were shouting and running through the mud while firing through their comrades at the enemy. The Germans climbed out of their trenches and ran towards them too. It was frightening! Bullets whizzed past them in every direction the whole time, while shells exploded at random across the entire field. British guns were lobbing projectiles also, from behind their lines into the German defences on the other side of the Meteren Becque. The noise of battle was horrific, and smoke covered the entire battlefield, so it was difficult to see ahead of their bayonets! And men were dropping too often around them.
“Stick with me, lads,” screamed Joe to his marras.
“Right next to you, Joe,” called Mike.
“Right behind you, Joe,” yelled Fred.
“I’m with you too,” called Jack back from just ahead of Joe.
So, on and on they ran, weaving around their fallen wounded and dead fellows in the mud. Then Jack stumbled and fell face-first into the mire.
Jack’s hit,” Joe shouted. “I’ll check him out. Keep going.”
Joe dropped to the mud and crawled back to check on his marra. But Jack had taken a bullet through his forehead.
“He’s dead, a bullet to the forehead,” Joe called forward to the others. “Jack’s gone!”
“Keep going, my marra,” responded Mike looking back. “Keep going as fast as you can. Catch up with me. They will collect and bury Jack after the battle.
And so, on they ran through the hail of bullets and shrapnel from exploding shells. More men dropped to the mud when hit. Soon enough, they came upon the enemy and engaged in one-on-one combat, thrusting their bayonets into very young Germans as they went, and dodging the German blades as best they could.
Joe saw a German soldier running straight for him, rifle and bayonet extended towards him, screaming. He tried as hard as he could to deflect the weapon as the soldier made his determined effort, jabbing his blade in Joe’s direction. He yelled “Halt”, then awakened, shaking and sweating as if from a fever. His shouting awoke Mary. “Joe, Joe, you’re all right, my darling. Wake up, it’s all right.” She was soothing him and stroking his brow as he emerged from his sleep.
“You’re fine, darling. Having another nightmare?” asked Mary.
“Jack,” cried Joe. “We lost Jack! And a German soldier was about to stab me.”
“I know, dear Joe,” replied Mary. “You told me about Jack. Stab you? My God, did that happen to you over there?”
Joe didn’t reply. He just looked into her eyes at first, as the reality of being back in a warm bed next to his wife registered.
“I’m sorry, my darling,” said Joe. “The memories keep pouring back. I can’t get rid of them. But the soldier didn’t stab me. I awoke.”
“You will get rid of them, my love. You will once you have worked through them,” said Mary, then kissed him on the forehead. “I’ll make some tea, and we’ll go back to sleep.”
§
The sight of unemployed ex-servicemen on the streets became common and something of a scandal. The Gateshead Employment Exchange targeted local places of entertainment to see if they could use any more men. They considered the job of cinema projectionist ideal for those disfigured by a war injury since they worked in darkness and were seen by no one. They asked cinemas to project information about unemployed ex-servicemen on the screen each week, as a way of reaching out to employers. [10]
But many soldiers couldn’t go back to their original line of work because of injuries or the effects of shell shock.[11] As early as 1916, schemes were being funded to offer workshops full of equipment for wounded returning soldiers to develop new skills, earn money, and gain independence and self-respect. This continued and grew after the war's end.
Luckier men had jobs kept open for them. But most others, able-bodied and wounded alike, competed for work in a changed and more complex environment. The war led Tyneside shipyards to an over-reliance on government contracts for a limited range of products, and they became vulnerable. So, engineering companies tried to diversify their post-war profile. Armstrongs of Elswick, Newcastle, for example, returned to making automobiles and vans to meet growing demand. They branched into locomotives, pneumatic tools, and combustion engines too. But many smaller companies lacked the capital to diversify. [12]
Back to work
Once he had recovered enough, Joe found menial work from time to time, but it was not what he had done before the war, and not what he had hoped for either. But he was ready to contribute to the household and take the pressure off Mary without overexerting himself during his recovery.
It was a short-lived irony that the standard of living in England had improved during the war. Full employment, rationing, rent control, rising bacon imports, increased consumption of milk and eggs, meant that many working-class families were in a better position than before the war. Workers’ incomes doubled on average between 1914 and 1920, and, in the war's aftermath, when price levels dropped, the war-boosted wage levels remained the same. [13]
Mary spoke to his past manager, Gerald Robinson, at Hawthorn Leslie, whom she had kept abreast of his return to Jarrow and his recovery progress. When Joe had left, she had used his contacts at the shipyard to find employment for herself, ensuring income for their family. Now the time was approaching to switch back from herself to Joe as the wage-earner, and they agreed to do everything they could to make that happen.
The Government encouraged women to leave their jobs after the war to give them back to servicemen. The women received out-of-work compensation, but that didn’t last long. In December 1919, Gateshead Council reminded the tram company they had only agreed to use female conductors for the duration of the war. Ex-soldiers’ organisations condemned any woman being hired who was not a widow or a dependant, “thus depriving ex-servicemen, widows, and dependants of the means of making a livelihood.” [14] These were still trying times for many on Tyneside and elsewhere. The Newcastle Daily Journal reported in December 1918 that in Newcastle alone, there were 15,000 unemployed women, many former Munitionettes, as they called the female munitions workers during the war. [15] Unrest and dissatisfaction with post-war job conditions resulted in sporadic strike action. [16]
In many aspects of life, they continued hearing echoes of the Great War in the years after the Armistice. But conditions settled on Tyneside once more, and as with many of the others, Joe’s strength returned. After three months, Joe was ready and keen to go back to work. He met with his old boss at Hawthorn Leslie, Gerald Robinson, to discuss the possibility of returning, cap in hand.
“Welcome back, Joe,” bellowed Gerald Robinson in his fashion as he thrust out his hand to shake Joe’s. “So canny good to see ye back home and in good health!”
“Terrific, Mr Robinson. Thank ye, thank ye so much,” replied Joe. “Ye don’t know how canny good it is for me to be back here, believe me.”
“Four years, Joe,” said Robinson. “How did ye survive that?”
“I ask myself that every night, sir,” he replied. “But I had to survive to look after my wife and children, so I had to make it back. I refused to die even though the Boche did their best to kill me.”
“Well, it’s an excellent thing too,” replied the headman, “now let’s discuss the reason for this meeting, getting you back to work here. Joe, we don’t have your old job anymore. Sam Mitchell has taken it, and I'm loath to remove him from it. But we can put you back in the yard helping wherever they need you.”
“That will be right with me, sir,” replied Joe, “I prefer to work out in the open.”
“Good,” bellowed the headman. “Well, that settles it then. You can start tomorrow.”
“Terrific Mr Robinson. Thank you, thank you so much!” concluded Joe as he backed out of his office, cap in hand with respect, making his way home full of joy and pride.
“I have a paying job again, Mary,” he announced with pride, “A good-paying job. Mr Robinson said I could start tomorrow.”
“Oh Joe,” said Mary as she moved toward him, “I could see you needed that again. Now we can return to the old days as a family!”
“Aye, and you can go back to raising our little ones,” replied Joe.
§
The consequences of war
But for the people of Tyneside as elsewhere, it was soon plain they had lost the grand times of old. Gone were the gaiety and devil-may-care attitudes of pre-war Edwardian days. For Great Britain, the war had punched a massive hole in the treasury. From being the world's largest overseas investor, it had become one of its biggest borrowers. Inflation doubled between 1914 and its peak in 1920; the value of the Pound Sterling and consumer expenditure fell by over 61%. [17] Reparations in the form of free German coal depressed the British coal industry, one of the major employers on Tyneside. To offset its huge repayments, Germany could pay in kind or in cash. Commodities paid in kind included coal, timber, chemical dyes, pharmaceuticals, livestock, agricultural machines, construction materials, and factory machinery. The Allies deducted the gold value of these commodities from what they required Germany to pay. [18]
Britain, with a population of 38 million in 1918, had changed! One significant change was the empowerment of women. During the war, women had filled-in for men's jobs. After the Great War women gained the right to vote as a direct consequence, resulting in enormous political and social change, for the returning veterans in particular. Yet another significant development was Labour emerging as a powerful social and political movement, and a force for change.
Reminders of the war were everywhere in those early post-war days, and they couldn’t forgive the Germans. In January 1919, the City of Newcastle Golf Club allowed no person of enemy origin to become a member of the club, and they didn’t allow “such persons” to play on the course.
When Newcastle United played again, Joe and his marras attended one of the first matches at St. James’ Park.
“Look, Joe,” called Mike while pointing to an enormous poster at the entrance to the stadium, “Newcastle United players who fought in the Great War. I recognise a few of them who were in the Durham Light Infantry.”
“Aye Mike,” replied Joe. “I’ve heard that 100 ex-players and officials of Newcastle United served in the Great War. And a grand bunch of lads they were too, both as football players and as soldiers! They awarded Thomas Rowlandson of Newcastle United a Military Cross, and Donald Simpson Bell, remember him? They awarded him the Victoria Cross.”
Within the stadium, they saw the disabled enclosure, full of injured men in hospital uniforms. Women were circulating through the aisles, passing the hat soliciting money for hospitals. Lines of blind veterans walked, each with a hand holding the shoulder of the next, to points in the bleachers where volunteers commentated on the match for them. Mike and Joe thought they had seen everything, but the sight of blind veteran football fans led into the stadium in such a fashion was disturbing for them. The stadium rocked and echoed to “Tipperary” for the Irish during the match, and repeated strains of the trench favourite, “We're here, because we're here, because we're here.” [19]
The Saturday evening after Joe’s return to work the marras met once more at the Rolling Mill Pub, just as they had before the Great War. Joe had sworn off his Brown Ales while he was recovering and not working. But now that both he and Mike were back at work and earning a living again, life could and should return to normal. A couple more ex-servicemen marras from the shipyard joined them, and Joe’s brothers William, George and Thomas too.
“Well here’s to peacetime on Tyneside,” toasted Mike once they received their ale. “And may it be a long and prosperous peace!”
The men clinked their thick beer glasses together and called “Cheers. We’ll drink to that,” in unison.
“Well, ye soldiers have been through so much,” observed William. “And a fine lot ye are too!”
“Coming from William, that was a real compliment,” thought Joe.
“Aye,” replied Joe. “Two wars, my brothers. We have fought for the Empire in two wars.”
None of Joe’s brothers had ever enlisted in the army. Their father, the staunch Irishman that he was to his end in 1910, wanted nothing to do with a British war. Joe was the black sheep, and his father never forgave him for fighting in the Boer War.
“It was a right lark,” boasted a reinvigorated Mike. “We had a grand time. Even with the bloody Boche in Germany, didn’t we Joe?”
“I wouldn’t call it a lark, Mike,” answered Joe. “But we lived as best we could in the face of the adversity!”
“Ooooh, where did you learn that haughty word?” asked Mike.
“From the Kommandant of Soltau Camp,” Joe chuckled. “He used such haughty English military words often, ye remember?”
“Aye, stupid man,” Mike growled, then quoting the Kommandant said “English Shweine! You have made me furious!” Mike and Joe both laughed. And laugh they could – now they were free of the Kommandant.
Then the Rutherford brothers launched into a lively evening of questions on the Great War to copious pint glasses of Brown Ale. “Were the trenches as terrible as they had heard?”; “Were there so many rats as they say?”; “Could they see the Bosch in their trenches?”; “What food did you get in the trenches and in the camps?” And many more such questions.
Joe and Mike and their marras soaked up the ales and regaled their audience with tales of pain and starvation, machine guns, bayonets and blood and guts, filth, vermin, weak soup and black bread. They spoke of working full days when always hungry and of disease and injuries at the hands of the enemy. But as free men again, they could now relate their experiences with occasional doses of good-hearted joking and laughter. It had been a terrible time. But as life wore on and the darkest memories faded, the better times and lighter moments rose to the fore. They could laugh again!
But Joe’s nightmares weren’t over yet. That night, he once again cuddled up to Mary in bed. He told Mary about his conversation at the pub, then fell asleep next to her.
At 15:45, they ordered the Durhams to advance at La Vallée and attack the village of Ennetières. Joe could see the advance guards walking on the grass verges to deaden their noise, passing groups of French cavalry. One of these groups was a detachment of cuirassiers, [20] their cuirasses, body armour, and helmets by then rusty. One of them called out to Joe’s company, “Hullo, Tommie, I was at Oxford.”
La Vallée was at the edge of a rise on which the Lille fortresses stood. There they began their demonstration[21] under a heavy fire of shrapnel, and they sent Joe’s company south-eastward towards Fort d'Englos. The company advanced through a bog in extended order for 100 yards when a hail of bullets came from the right, left and front. Shrapnel from exploding shells once more rained on them. Beyond the bog, they were into farm fields filled with turnips.
“Drop!” was the order at that point. “So Joe and his marras fell flat to the ground and attempted to conceal themselves behind the turnip greens, while shrapnel from exploding shells rained on them. They then rose and rushed forward through the turnip field with no cover whatever.
“Drop,” Joe shouted again. The bullets were so thick now that the only thing they could do was lay their faces sideways on the mud and lie flat.
“Are you injured, Fred?” I called.
“Aye, sore but no open wound,” replied Fred.
They advanced again with caution, reinforced by the men in front of them, then dropping and remaining there for two hours while the bullets were so thick. Then just before dusk, Fred risked a look over turnip-tops and got a piece of shrapnel in the shoulder, letting out a scream of pain as he rose his body just above the turnip leaves. Then a rifle-bullet struck Fred in the stomach. He collapsed into the mud between the vegetables, writhing in his death-throes. Once again, assisted by Mike, Joe turned back to help their marra, but to no avail.
“Fred is dead, Mike,” shouted Joe. “They’ve killed yet another of our marras. What a bloody war.” The Germans had reduced their small group of Jarrow shipyard marras to two.
They had no choice but to leave Fred where he was as they moved on. But despite intense rifle fire, the 2/DLI got as far as Ennetières before dusk. By 5 p.m., they had taken Ennetières, and at 8 p.m., the action over, they searched with caution for shelter. The streets were empty, or so it seemed. Joe and Mike came upon a house in the principal street where they entered and encountered an appalling sight. Having searched the entire house and finding no one, they entered the cellar where they found a horror scene.
“My God, Mike,” whispered Joe. “Those are dead citizens down there.”
In the dim light from the cellar door, they could see the outlines of many bodies – arms, legs and heads scattered across the floor – a heap of bloodied dead villagers. They concluded that the Germans had herded them into the cellar and executed them.
“Look, Joe,” whispered Mike. “I think one of them is still alive over there.”
In one corner, an older man and woman lay shattered by a grenade. They edged closer to help the old man, who was still alive and moving, but he died soon after they got to him.
It shook them to the core, so they left that house and moved through the village. There were no bodies of German soldiers anywhere – their army had removed them – but they came upon a small group of six French Dragoons who they had seen patrolling the previous night. To their horror, Joe and Mike saw that someone had removed their eyes, ears and noses.
“What the hell is this?” cried Mike. “These Boche are barbarians!”
Then a little further along they found a Frenchman standing erect but dead in the corner of a brick wall. They had removed his eyes, nose and ears too.
“What are we dealing with here,” Joe murmured to Mike. “Savages? Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Joe awoke in a sweat but made no noise, so Mary didn’t awaken. He then arose in silence, dressed and made his way out into the street and turned toward the river and shipyards.
When Joe and Mike met that morning, he complained about his nightmares.
“I can’t get rid of them, Mike,” said Joe. “I have them every night.”
“Aye, Joe, me too,” replied Mike. “I’m afraid that war will never leave us alone.”
“Mary is so sweet,” said Joe. “She is taking it in her stride and makes me tea when I wake up, shouting sometimes.”
“Aye, Ruth is an angel too,” replied Mike. “Thank God we have them at our side now.”
“Without me knowing, Mary spoke to our doctor about my nightmares,” said Joe. “He said it was probably from what they call shell shock, caused by our time in the trenches. I remember having them in the camp too. The doctor said they would stop in time.”
“Well, I hope it’s sooner rather than later,” replied Mike. “They are driving me crazy!”
§
For those at home with their families, celebratory events at the end of the Great War were of paramount importance. They had suffered long enough. It was time to remember and rejoice. The combatants signed the Treaty of Versailles on the 28th of June 1919 and declared the 19th of July as Peace Day. More celebrations took place over the summer of 1919 on Tyneside, as they did in the other Allied Power countries. The Treaty of Versailles was the most important of the many peace treaties that brought the Great War to an end. This Treaty ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. They signed it five years to the day after the 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Although the Armistice, signed on the 11th of November 1918, ended the actual fighting, it took six months of Allied negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference to conclude the peace treaty. The Secretariat of the League of Nations registered the Treaty of Versailles on the 21st of October 1919. [22]
The most critical and controversial provision of the Treaty of Versailles required Germany and her allies to accept responsibility for causing the damages of the war. A War Guilt clause forced Germany to disarm, make territorial concessions, and pay enormous reparation costs to countries of the Entente. Economists such as John Maynard Keynes predicted that the treaty was too harsh, declaring the reparations figure excessive and counterproductive. But prominent persons on the Allied side, such as French Marshal Ferdinand Foch, criticised the treaty as too lenient on Germany.
The newspapers covered the talks and final treaty at length. So Joe reported back to his marras at the pub on the following Saturday.
“So, what’s all this talk about the treaty of whatever?” asked Mike.
“It’s the final agreement between all sides in the Great War over what Germany should pay us for the damage they caused,” replied Joe.
“Well, I hope they are paying dearly,” called another patron veteran who had overheard Joe.
“Aye, they are,” replied Joe. “But not everybody’s happy about it, even on our side.”
“Well, they probably weren’t there, like us,” he responded.
“A few are saying our demands are too high and could cripple Germany further,” replied Joe.
“And what’s wrong with that?” asked Mike.
“Well, a few wise men are saying it could cause another war down the track,” replied Joe. “Don’t ask me how. That’s just what they’re saying.” To which a few comments ran around the pub, calls like “idiots”, “traitors”, “fools”.
Joe understood and empathised with the reactions full well. “Well, as they say, don’t shoot the messenger,” said Joe with an enormous grin. “I’m only telling you what the newspapers have been saying.”
“We should be thankful they have put it to bed,” said Joe. “Even though the fighting stopped on the 11th of November last year, they had to work out a treaty. Now that’s happened.”
For the ordinary folk of Great Britain, the Treaty of Versailles marked the definitive end of a war that had affected them for so long. There were Victory Teas everywhere. They laid out feasts on decorated trestle tables. In streets and church halls, music filled the air, and revellers wore fancy dress. They festooned the streets with bunting. Many parties moved into the fields and commons, adding sports events. In Gateshead, a £1,000 Council grant, supplemented by individual subscriptions, paid for a grand fete where army regiments paraded in uniform alongside bands and carousel roundabouts. Displays included drill and gymnastics, circus performers and a dog show. Thousands of visitors came in friendly spirits to the Newcastle Town Moor on the 24th of June for the Newcastle Victory Festival. There was a musical festival, and the rides were favourites. [23]
Most of these events were enjoyable and peaceful. But there were a few unwanted incidents that the men discussed that evening in the pub.
“Did you hear about that twenty-nine-year-old woman, Gertrude Waller, who was found in a court of law to have been “drunk and incapable” at a Victory Tea in Lambton Street, Gateshead?” said Joe with a laugh. “The prosecuting constable said a few of these street parties had developed into drunken orgies! He said that children were begging in the street to pay for admission to the events.”
“Aye, and a few people were destroying trees for decorations,” added Mike with a laugh too. “What are we becoming, drunken vandals?”
“Aye, but then the constable refused to give permission for any new celebrations,” said Joe. “That’s not fair. That a few rowdies can spoil the fun for all the others?”
Word had circulated before the celebrations in Gateshead that the returned local veterans of Jarrow were planning a reunion. The Durham Light Infantry, the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, the Tyneside Irish and the Tyneside Scottish were to take part in a parade. They dressed up in their bright dress uniforms and put on a grand show. After the formal programme, the regiments dispersed into informal groups intermingled with civilians. They swapped war stories, updated each other on the events since their return and sang regimental and other favourite wartime songs over large mugs of ale.
Although most of the soldiers gathering at the 28th of June celebrations were born Geordies or living on Tyneside, a few had arrived from farther afield. Among these was Walter (Walt) Lane of 2/DLI C-Company, a close friend and fellow “Durham”, even though he was born in Leeds. He had returned to Leeds to visit his family after being a 2/DLI prisoner with Joe and Mike in Germany and ended up staying. But Geordie or not, he couldn’t miss this reunion and made his way to Gateshead for the celebrations.
At first, the banter was alive and humorous.
“If ye have trouble understanding us, let me know Walt, and we'll translate for ye,” laughed Mike.
“I learn'd enough Geordie from ye chaps in Germany, so I’m sure I will cope,” replied Walt to the wild laughter of the assembled marras. And the Geordies had softened their dialect during the wars since, in the beginning, no non-Geordie had understood them.
“Where’s your flintlock Jimmie?” Walt called to a Fusilier he had met at Soltau. He was alluding to the 17th-century French word fusil, a flintlock musket that had given the Fusiliers their name.
“I left it with the Bosch,” replied the Fusilier. “They took it from me, so I told them they could keep it since they’ll need it now more than me!”
“When they get up off the floor,” called another over raucous laughter. After four years of fear and hatred of the Germans, they felt a soldier’s empathy for the defeated enemy now.
And then the conversation turned to more practical matters. Who had work and who didn’t? Were those unemployed being looked after by the military? Who had found their women waiting and who had not? Whose families had expanded whether through their own loins or from someone else’s? And who had lost Tyneside friends and relatives? But Joe and Mike resolved not to talk of the war again after this day.
“That’s it,” said Joe, “the war is over, and we should stop going back over it.”
“Agreed,” concurred Mike and Walt. “We need to look forward to the rest of our lives!” And this vow held. They observed the Remembrance Days in silence and never discussed the wars again.
But for Joe, the war hadn’t left his mind. That night, as he joined Mary in bed, he expressed his worry to her about his recurring nightmares.
“You know, Mary,” said Joe, “when I go to bed every night, I worry about having another of those terrible dreams. I want to forget the war. My dreams mustn’t remind of it every night in my sleep.”
“You’ll get over it, Joe,” said Mary. “But your mind isn’t yet ready to let it go just yet. You’ve had a long and terrible time during the war, and your mind is still working through it. The doctor said you were probably suffering from mild shell shock and that it would take time to disappear. I’m sure you will get through it soon enough.”
Joe accepted Mary’s response, knowing that she was often right about such matters. They discussed it a few more minutes until Joe fell asleep.
Major Blake took two platoons of C-Company into a sugar factory near Ennetières. From there, they fired on the attackers from the upper storey. Then a massive German shell fell into the building, smashing the machinery and killing and crushing the men inside, including the major. The other two platoons, under Lieutenant Norton, took part in bitter fighting after dark in the village's south.
Joe and Mike had provided cover for each other as always, working as a compact fighting unit. They stood crouched with their backs against the wall of an abandoned house in Ennetières while looking over a low barrier in front. There was a fierce firefight. And it was so dark they couldn’t recognise anything in the gloom except for the many flashes of rifle fire. Lieutenant Norton and the others weren’t far from them, but they could hear the Germans approaching from every direction. Lieutenant Norton’s company had retreated into the village. But it was only a temporary escape. It was now looking bleak for Joe and Mike. And they were alone and surrounded by Germans!
“Look out there, Mike,” Joe whispered while looking into the darkness. “They aren’t ours, that’s for sure!”
“Aye, it looks like we’re trapped here,” whispered Mike. “Finished.”
“Aye, I reckon you are right,” Joe replied. “The Germans have surrounded us. What happens now, I can’t imagine, Mike. Could this be our end?”
“We can’t run,” responded Mike, “or they’ll shoot us for sure.”
“Aye, let’s stay put and hope they miss us,” said Joe.
“I don’t think there’s much chance of that my marra,” concluded Mike. “As far as I can see, we’re finished!”
“Not yet, Mike,” I replied, “but if we raise our rifles, we will be.”
Somebody cried out in the distance; “They shot Lieutenant Norton!”
Shots were still ringing out in that direction. Joe and Mike saw the distinct shapes of the many German soldiers approaching mere yards away. Their gleaming bayonetted rifles held from their hips at forty-five-degree angles and their menacing pointed helmets identified them as German. Joe couldn’t stop trembling. And he heard Mike’s rapid breathing and gasping from time to time. Then they listened to the tramping of boots on cobblestones.
“Where are they going?” whispered Joe.
“They are approaching us,” whispered Mike.
“Hände hoch,” snarled one of the approaching Germans. “Drop your weapons! No weapons! Hände hoch!”
Joe woke up and cried aloud “Drop your weapons! No weapons! Hände hoch!”
“What, Joe?” called Mary in a state of shock. “Joe, are you all right? What’s that you’re saying?”
“That’s how they got us, Mary, the Boche. ‘Drop your weapons! No weapons! Hände hoch!’”
“Well, they only had you for a while, my darling,” replied Mary. “And now you are back with me and recovering from your four years of hell.”
“Aye, Mary,” replied Joe, calming. “That was it for sure. Four years of hell.”
“But you’re not in hell any longer. Now you are back with your children and me in Jarrow,” said Mary embracing and kissing him.
“Aye, Mary. That I am,” replied Joe with a smile as he embraced her. “And it’s so good to be back, believe me. If only these nightmares reminding me of my time in the war would stop. I want to forget it all now.”
Mary smiled back at him and replied, “They will, my dear; they will. Let me get us some tea and biscuits.”
§
Another significant event that occurred during 1919 was the 18th of July unveiling of the full-sized wood-and-plaster model of a Cenotaph to the “Glorious Dead” as designed by the Architect Edwin Lutyens. The Government presented it to the public in its allocated position in London’s historic Whitehall, within easy walking distance of the Prime Minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street. To celebrate and mark the end of the Great War, a committee chaired by the foreign secretary Lord Curzon declared a Bank Holiday in Britain on the 19th of July, Peace Day.
Victory parades across Britain celebrated the end of the Great War. That morning in London, many thousands that had arrived overnight gathered. It was a spectacle never seen before, with 15,000 troops taking part in the victory parade. Allied commanders such as U.S. Expeditionary Force Commander Pershing, Allied Supreme Commander Foch and British Commander-in-Chief Haig, saluted the fallen comrades at the Cenotaph. Bands played, and the central parks of London hosted many performances entertaining the crowds.
Then on the 15th of August, the “Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act” provided for returning servicemen to get their old jobs back. Then on the 30th of August, they resumed the Football League four years after they had abandoned it because of the war. This was the most important announcement for working-class British workers who had been missing their favourite sport for over four years.
On the 26th of September 1919, a Friday, Mary Rutherford gave birth to Margaret in Jarrow. The baby girl was their fourth child, third daughter and the sixth member of Joe’s growing family. But Margaret was too long for Molly, who was almost 5, so, they called her Peggy. Women gave birth at home. In middle-class households, they often hired a live-in nurse for the two weeks prior and a month after the birth. For working-class women, there was no such luxury apart from an overworked midwife on the day of the delivery, and there was no paternity leave then for the husband to stay home and help! [24]
Early that morning, Mary’s water broke, and she sent Joe to alert her sisters that this was the day. Her younger sister Sarah sent Margaret to fetch the midwife while she went to Mary to prepare her for the birth. They dispatched Joe to work for the day while the women did their magic. Soon the midwife Susan arrived with Margaret and Mary’s other younger sister Ellen. They had brought paraffin lamps to brighten the bedroom since electricity had not yet reached these terraces. They boiled the water and washed the bedroom furniture to make sure of the most hygienic conditions for birth. The midwife cleaned her instruments and lined up her potions to prepare for her work. Then they settled in to encourage Mary through her contractions. After several hours, they welcomed a baby girl into the world at 227 High Street Jarrow.
“Another baby girl, Joe,” said Mary when he entered their bedroom. “I hope that’s all right with you?”
“Just what I wanted, Mary,” replied Joe. “Sure, I would like another son. But I love my girls.”
Joe celebrated the recent Rutherford arrival that evening with two Brown Ales at the Rolling Mill Pub. The lads talked football, and Joe and Mike regaled their marras with entertaining stories of their team, the POWers, while in the German POW camps. Uplifting or fun war exploits were permissible memories. On the following Sunday, Joe and his marras attended a local football match. The match was between the Jarrow football club, playing under the name of Palmers Jarrow, and Middlesbrough Res. They played at the Curlew Road ground, which had suffered through neglect during the war. Following a North Eastern League inspection of the field, they instructed the club to remove the pieces of broken glass and stones and try to keep the pitch in a playable condition. In March 1920 the name of the club returned to Jarrow AFC, 'Palmers' being dropped from the title. [25] Other football news that year included Leeds City FC, of the Football League Second Division, being expelled from the Football League on the 13th of October amid financial irregularities. And on the 17th of October, with the collapse of Leeds City, they formed a new football club in the city and named it Leeds United. With Port Vale FC, based in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, set to take the old club's place in the Football League, the new Leeds club had to wait until the next football season for a chance of Football League membership.
§
Remembrance Day 1919
The British held the first Armistice Remembrance Day at Buckingham Palace on the 11th of November 1919, starting with King George V hosting a “Banquet in Honour of the President of the French Republic” during the evening hours of the 10th of November 1919. [26] They held the first official Armistice Day events in the grounds of Buckingham Palace on the morning of the 11th of November 1919. Britain had decided early in the Great War they should bring none of the fallen back to the islands. Those already buried or left behind on the Western Front would stay right there. Instead, they erected the Cenotaph in Whitehall to honour them on British soil, and they built memorials throughout the Empire with the names of the fallen engraved on them to remember their heroes on each Remembrance Day into perpetuity.
This set the trend for a Day of Remembrance for decades to come. In South Africa, Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, author of Jock of the Bushveld, proposed a two-minute silence to Lord Milner. This had been a daily practice in Cape Town from April 1918 onward. After a Reuters correspondent described this daily ritual to the office in London, it spread throughout the British Empire within weeks. [27] This two-minute period of silence at 11:00 a.m. local time is a sign of respect for the 20 million people who died in the war in the first minute and dedicated to the living left behind in the second minute. They understood the latter to be wives, children and families left behind but distressed by the Great War. They resolved to repeat this custom forever. The entire population, most of whom had lost family or friends, complied. Church bells and factory buzzers announced the hour before everyone downed tools to “give their thoughts, prayers and thanks to those who gave their sacrifices with two minutes of impassive, deathly, silence”. Across Tyneside, trams stopped, and pedestrians stood in the streets, baring their heads to the falling snow.
Everything and everyone stopped. Buses, trains and factories came to a halt; they cut electricity supplies off to stop the trams; wherever possible, they brought even the men of Royal Navy ships to rest. Workers in offices, hospitals, shops and banks stopped working; schools became silent; court proceedings came to a standstill, and so did the stock exchange. Life ceased altogether in what The Times described as “a great awful silence”. There had been no instructions on where people should honour the silence. They assumed everyone should pause at their tasks, but most went outdoors to stand in silence in a public place. There were church services, and the forces’ chaplain spoke at the Cenotaph. [28]
Joe and Mike were at work in the shipyards when the hour of remembrance arrived, and along with many other veterans they took off their caps and bowed their heads in silence, memories flashing through their minds, and a tear or two rolling down their cheeks. At home, Mary and the other women of Tyneside emerged from their houses into the streets, children in tow, and did the same. Those whose men had returned were rejoicing, while those who had lost their menfolk mourned. This first day of remembrance was a very solemn occasion filled with mixed emotions.
In France and Belgium recovery of the battlefields and the search for the fallen was in progress. They were restoring their decimated infrastructure, farmlands, and spirit. The Tour de France cycling race, not run since 1914, had restarted on ravaged French roads that summer. The 1919 Tour de France was the 13th edition of the Tour de France, taking place from the 29th of June to the 27th of July over a total distance of 3,450 miles, longer than the earlier Tours.[29] Three former winners of the Tour, François Faber, Octave Lapize and Lucien Petit-Breton had died fighting in the war. So, two other past winners, Philippe Thys and Odile Defraye started the race.[30] The war had only been over for seven months, so most cyclists could not train enough for the Tour.[31] For that reason, there were few new younger cyclists, and the older cyclists dominated the race.[32]
Worldwide, those pulled into the Great War looked forward to a more promising and peaceful future. The Rutherfords and Burgesses and their broader families and friends had overcome the turmoil, hardships, and lost men caused by the war. Joe and Mike had settled into their peacetime lives with their ever-expanding families and working at Hawthorn Leslie again. Mary had returned to her pre-war routine of looking after her husband and children. The football leagues had restarted, and their fans had reassembled behind them with passion as if nothing had happened, Joe and Mike included. Life was returning to normal, and memories of the Great War faded. Joe’s nightmares were less frequent, and he had fewer interruptions to his sleep.
In the vanquished German Empire, the chaos of the German Revolution was over, and they had established a more stable Weimar Republic. But a hitherto unknown Great War German Corporal by the name of Adolf Hitler had already launched his journey to power.
§
The Rollercoaster Twenties
The year 1920 was uneventful in Britain. In February, the Council of the League of Nations met for the first time in London, and War Secretary Winston Churchill announced that Britain was to replace conscripts by a volunteer army of 220,000 men. In March, Queen Alexandra unveiled a monument to Nurse Edith Cavell, the British heroine who had helped soldiers escape the Germans in Belgium during the Great War. The British Army promoted Sir William Robertson, who had enlisted in the British Army in 1877, to Field Marshal. He was the first soldier to rise from private to the highest rank in the British Army. Then on the 10th of November 1920, the remains of an unknown soldier arrived from France aboard the Admiralty V-class destroyer HMS Verdun for burial in Westminster Abbey.
King George V unveiled the permanent version of the Cenotaph the next day. The permanent Cenotaph designed by Architect Sir Edwin Lutyens and constructed of limestone from the Isle of Portland, Dorset had replaced the temporary Cenotaph to “The Glorious Dead” in Whitehall. On the same day, they buried the “Unknown Warrior” in Westminster Abbey.
On the following Saturday, the patrons of the Rolling Mill Pub discussed the Unknown Warrior.
“They’ve brought back and buried the bones of an unidentified fallen soldier in London,” announced Joe to his marras. “They buried him beneath a black gravestone in Westminster Abbey. It’s the only grave in the abbey on which you’re not allowed to walk, a great honour.”
“Why did they do that?” asked Mike.
“Because we lost so many of our fellow soldiers in the trenches and no-man’s-land who never had a burial,” replied Joe. “They buried others in the many cemeteries on the French and Belgian battlefields. But for their families, their dead are too far away to honour in those cemeteries. The British Army meant the Grave of the Unknown Warrior to honour them here in England. I think it’s time they did that, don’t you? Who knows? That unknown soldier buried in Westminster in soil brought from France could have been one of our marras.”
“Aye, and I’ll second that,” added Mike, as did the other veterans in the pub that day, who stood up as one and, removing their caps, bowed their heads in remembrance before raising their glasses to the fallen.
“And the French and Americans have done the same thing,” added Joe.
The patrons of the pub grew solemn and silent at this news.
Then someone at a nearby table asked: “Why are they calling it the Unknown Warrior?”
“It’s the title they’ve given this grave to remember those without graves on the battlefields,” replied Joe. “The Government is honouring those thousands of missing soldiers with this burial at Westminster Abbey among the many Kings and Queens of Great Britain. The greatest poets, authors, scientists, explorers, and politicians of Great Britain buried there, too. But the Grave of the Unknown Warrior is the most honoured now.”
“They should stop these bloody wars,” said Mike. “Then we wouldn’t need these graves and cenotaphs. I, for one, am finished with wars.”
“Aye, Mike,” replied Joe. “I have to agree with you on that one.”
That night, Joe had one of the last of his recurring dreams, brought on by the talk of the Unknown Warrior.
There they stood in a very dark and dismal Ennetières, cut off from their regiment and surrounded by German soldiers. Joe and Mike understood the order “hände hoch” despite not knowing German. They had learned to say “hande in die lug” (“hands in the air”) when capturing Afrikaans-speaking fighters in the 2nd Anglo-Boer War in South Africa, and the German command sounded similar to them. Besides, their captors' attitude and hostile gestures reinforced their understanding. Realising that they had no other option than to surrender, they discarded their weapons and raised their hands while turning to face their enemy at close quarters. It was the terrible moment they had never reckoned on experiencing – eye-to-eye with the enemy.
“I’m ready to die,” whispered Mike. “This is the worst thing that could have happened to us, Joe! But I’m ready to die for my King and country.”
“Aye, that’s true, Mike,” murmured Joe while gathering his thoughts on the matter. “I have never even thought of this happening to us, but I’m not prepared to die. I can’t die because I have a wife and bairns at home. And nor should you be, my old friend, for your wife’s sake. We will survive this war the way we did the last. I told Mary that, should I die, she was free to remarry. But this upset her very much; she cried and cried, so we didn’t discuss it any further. We also discussed the possibility of injury. And she said she would nurse me back to full health as soon as I was home. But we never discussed the possibility of capture by the enemy. Our training didn’t cover it, and it never occurred to me, although, based on our experience in the South African War, it should have.”
“Aye, Ruth and I had more or less the same talk,” replied Mike. “And she became upset too. So, I guess that’s a topic you should best leave unsaid with women.”
“Nee, Mike,” replied Joe. “It’s right to talk about it. You’re tied together now, so you need to share such thoughts. It’s how you speak of it that’s important.”
“Aye, Joe,” replied Mike. “But I’m sure you’re better at it than I am.”
Their German guard then rebuked them again, poking them with his rifle with a loud and stern warning, “Nicht sprechen!” A German officer nearby translated this command into English for the assembled British prisoners. “No talking, take off your equipment and leave it here,” he said, pointing to a pile of discarded rifles and other military equipment. “Keep quiet and do what the guards tell you.” The men followed orders but could hold on to personal items such as letters, pay books or photos of their sweethearts and children. An interrogating German officer examined these later.
There was loud shouting and occasional gunshots as the Germans herded together more surviving Tommies of the 2/DLI and other battalions into a tight group on the edge of the village now under German control. Joe and Mike couldn’t see much at first, but soon enough, their companions appeared out of the acrid smoke-filled gloom, most of whom had glum looks on their faces. A few of these recent arrivals were resisting the guards. The Germans brought the few more challenging ones to heel through brutal blows to their bodies with their rifle butts. They shot those that gave the enemy any reason to execute them, even if not permitted by the war conventions. Those Tommies, too, soon realised that any further resistance was futile. The marras recognised a sizeable group of Sherwood Foresters coming in their direction. The prisoners’ numbers had swollen to a group of 100 or more. Then there were East and West Yorkshiremen, Moroccans and French soldiers too, many of whom Joe had fought alongside in his first battle. They appeared out of the mist and smoke, shuffling forward as a group. No one dared utter a word. They awaited their fate in stony silence while their captors barked out incomprehensible blasts of commands and degrading insults, in English or French from time to time too.
Joe gave a sideward glance and grimace to Mike, but he avoided provoking tension with the guards by talking. Their immediate future was very much on their minds. To the best of Joe’s knowledge, they had received no information during training on the rules of war for prisoners. They couldn’t know that Chapter II of the Geneva Convention, signed in October 1907 at The Hague, focussed on prisoners of war: “Prisoners of war are in the hostile Government’s power, but not of the individuals or corps who capture them. They must humanely treat all POWs. All the belongings of prisoners, except arms, horses and military papers, remain the POW’s property.” [33]
But a Durham officer POW knew of this convention, and he shared his knowledge with as many lower rank men as he could before being separated from them, officers going to separate camps.
“Remember men; you’re soldiers, not animals,” he said. “But you mustn't argue with them since you might provoke them. Just remember your rights and discuss any grievances you have at the right time with a German officer.”
Now and then, they got another harsh nudge in their back or neck from a German rifle to move them on quicker, which they daren’t protest.
But Mike couldn’t hold back, muttering, “Bloody Huns!”
“Careful, Mike,” Joe reminded him; but it was too late.
“Was? Was hast Du gesacht?” asked the guard, screaming. Mike looked surprised and shrugged his shoulders. But the guard wasn’t happy with that gesture. He was sure that he had heard the word “Hun” and knew it was an insult.
The guard grabbed Mike and spun him around to meet his rifle straight on. “Was has Du gesacht?” he yelled. Then a German officer close by speaking to the guard, said “Lass das sein, Korporal. Wir mussen weiter. Keine scheiße.”
No one translated that for the British soldiers, but whatever the officer said defused a dangerous situation, sanity returned, and the column resumed its forward progress. The Germans herded the prisoners to a mustering point on the road out of Ennetières towards the new German lines. After a march of two hours, they arrived at a wire enclosure resembling a rough cage where the Germans had already assembled at least 200 to 300 or more British, French and Moroccan prisoners. There they waited in groups as their captors rounded up more and more.
“Shite,” cursed Mike in a whisper. “Are we animals or soldiers?”
“To these guards, we are animals,” replied Joe. “They could shoot us like animals.”
Joe awoke, at that point, shouting “They could shoot us like animals.”
And once again, Mary awoke and calmed him through her tenderest embrace and gentle voice.
“It’s all right, my darling,” she said. “You’re awake and home in Jarrow and fine. Just in time for tea and biscuits.”
Following the tea and biscuits, Joe and Mary slipped away into a deep slumber.
But Joe was back in his dream, picking up where he had just left off. The march to the Dulag had not been without incident. The occasional stray friendly bullet or shell from the British side of the front lines had wounded or killed Allied soldiers and Germans alike. They had to circumnavigate the shell holes in the road too. A fresh set of guards, including German lancers on horseback, escorted them. But then, a few nasty incidents unfolded in front of them.
In one incident, a few cantankerous Tommies were defying the guards, and a scuffle ensued.
“Get back in line, you,” shouted a German guard.
“Up yours, you bloody Hun,” replied one soldier. “I answer only to British officers, not you scum.”
Then another such protest broke out a scant distance away, and then another.
“You can’t treat us like cattle,” shouted another Tommy.
“Yeah,” called another, as the protests grew. “We’re men, not animals.”
The guards called in their Lancers, who charged into the ranks on horseback. Under direction from the German guards, they speared the protesting Tommies like wild pigs with their lances. To them, the objections voiced by the British prisoners were equivalent to resistance or trying to escape. It gave them an excuse to rid themselves of ill-tempered men and to make sure that the rest toed the line.
“Shite, Mike; did you see that?” murmured Joe to his marra. “What they just did was the same as the British officers’ sport of Pig-Sticking in India, with the same disgusting result. Do you remember that?”
“Aye, Joe,” murmured Mike. “These are cruel bastards. We had better behave ourselves and stay out of trouble for now. Otherwise, we’ll end up on the end of one of those lances.”
A German soldier noticed them talking to each other and shouted “Wovon sprechen Sie?” [34] while lowering his rifle in their direction. In this instant so soon after their capture and the lancer incident, they froze in terror.
“I don’t know what he is saying,” whispered Joe, “but he looks as if he could shoot us without a problem.”
“Aye, Joe. Or bring one of those lancers back to stick us,” replied Mike, reaching his hands even higher and nodding to the guard. “Let’s be careful.”
Joe and Mike weren’t sure what he was saying but understood his intent. So, they both held their hands higher in the air and called “Nix, nix, nix”. They had learned that this word meant “nothing” and hoped it would placate their antagonist. That satisfied the guard for the time being, who found their reaction with “nix, nix, nix” humorous, laughing with his buddies and humiliating the Tommies even further.
And at that point, Joe awoke again. But this time he didn’t shout and awake Mary. Instead, Joe walked it off. He gathered his clothes and slipped out of the bedroom and dressed downstairs. He then left the house in the middle of the night and made his way to the river where he worked through his dreams and memories by talking aloud to himself about them no longer being real.
§
By the start of the third decade of the 20th century, a great irony was about to play out in Britain and elsewhere. The principal players were those that inherited the wealth created by the Great War, the Nouveaux Riches, on the one hand, versus those that were suffering from the decline of the more traditional industries, those who had helped make Britain wealthy and robust before the Great War. Joe and his fellow workers of the North East were in this latter group. In the post-Great War world, a pivotal new decade began that became known worldwide as The Roaring Twenties. It proved to be a wild and joyous time for some, but a more challenging time for the majority in parts of Great Britain.
But apart from ceremonies of remembrance and a period of grieving for many, the Roaring Twenties launched an exciting era of new and useful changes and innovations that contributed to better social and cultural trends. These paradigm shifts, fuelled by a period of economic prosperity, were most visible in the principal cities such as Berlin, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York City and Paris. In the French Third Republic, they knew the decade as Les Années Folles (the Crazy Years), [35] emphasising the era's chaotic social, artistic and cultural dynamism. For women, knee-length skirts and dresses, taboo in Victorian and Edwardian times, became acceptable, as did bobbed cut hair with a marcel wave and listening to jazz. They often referred to women who pioneered these trends as flappers, [36] who became known for flaunting their disdain for what was before considered acceptable behaviour.
For the fortunate, the Great War had proved very profitable. Manufacturers and suppliers of goods needed for the war effort had prospered throughout the war years and become wealthy. For the “Bright Young Things” from the aristocracy and the more affluent classes, life had never been better. Nightclubs, jazz clubs and cocktail bars blossomed in the cities. Was the hedonistic lifestyle an escape from reality? This generation had missed the war, being too young to fight, and there may have been a sense of guilt they had escaped the horrors of war. Maybe, since Britain lost so many young lives on the battlefields of France and Flanders, the youth of the 1920s felt a need to enjoy life to the fullest. [37]
Women had gained confidence and become more integrated into the workplace. The 1920s was the decade in which fashion abandoned the customs of Victorian and Edwardian times and entered the modern era with gusto. They reflected this independence in the new styles. Hair and dresses were shorter, and women were smoking, drinking and driving motorcars. Far more women entered the job market. Typewriters, filing cabinets, and telephones brought many unmarried women into clerical jobs.
But for the working people of Tyneside and the other traditional industrial areas of Great Britain, life had not changed and was still the struggle it had always been. They were far from the nightclubs, jazz clubs and cocktail bars of the world’s major cities, in every respect. The daily grind for the workers of Tyneside was the norm, improved a little of late through social reform laws and improved wages. They still shuffled their ways to the collieries, shipyards and factories six 10-hour days a week, performing the same work they had carried out for decades, interrupted only by wars. But even as the decade started and orders for warships declined, they knew that tougher times were coming.
Life had returned to pre-war norms when Joe’s second son and fifth child Thomas Henry Rutherford was born on the 3rd of December 1920 at home in Jarrow. He would become known as Harry after his lost uncle, Mary’s brother, who died in the war. This year saw the record highest annual number of births in Britain, as over a million love-starved soldiers had returned from the war. With five children and two adults, the Rutherford household was getting a “wee bit crowded”.
“Well done Mary,” said Joe. “We now have two sons and three daughters!”
“Aye, Joe,” replied Mary, “and I’m risking exhaustion!”
“I always told you I wanted an enormous family, my love.”
“Aye, that you did Joe,” responded Mary, “and I reckon we are there.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Joe with a wink, “there’s still room for a couple more.”
Such conversations were typical. Families were often large since there was no real contraception then, and there was a tradition of producing extended families to look after the parents and grandparents in their old age, a homemade pension scheme of sorts.
“Well, I love every one of them,” whispered Mary. “They are so precious!”
Satisfied that Mary was in agreement, Joe worked out where to put his many children. The babies slept with them in their bedroom. They put the older ones, John Irwin, 9 years old, Violet, 7 years old and 6-year-old Molly in the back room.
Tyneside flats varied in size, having one or two bedrooms as the lower unit, made smaller by the staircase to upstairs. Upper apartments could use the attic space for more bedrooms. It was possible to have three or four bedrooms spread over two to three floors, often with a dormer window to the front.
But the Rutherford family’s flat was a ground floor unit with only two bedrooms for an expanding family. The kitchen and adjoining dining room contained a cast-iron coal range for cooking, and they extended a small terrace to the rear by an outshot [38] serving as a scullery, a typical feature of Victorian terrace houses. They only provided water in this scullery, with a Belfast sink and often a separate stove heating a wash pan for laundry. They bathed there in a galvanised iron bath once a week. The kitchen and dining room was the most extensive and warmest room in the house. It served as the social focal point with two comfortable armchairs added for relaxing. As was typical for their time, each flat had a small enclosed yard at the rear with an outside toilet or 'netty' as they called it in the local dialect. They built most of these terraces from the 1870s until the outbreak of the Great War in 1914.
§
“Normality” returned to politics in the Great War’s wake in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, and Germany. Conservatives defeated the leftist revolutions in Finland, Poland, Germany, Austria, Hungary and Spain. But Russia became the base for expansionist Soviet Communism. [39] In Germany, the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) referred to as the Nazi Party, replaced the German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei - DAP), founded in 1919. The Nazi Party emerged from the German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post-Great War Germany.
In January 1921, with unemployment standing at over one million people, the Government announced an increase in the Unemployment Benefits. But by June that same year unemployment had reached over 2 million with another 2 million workers involved in various pay disputes.
At supper one evening in August, the conversation centred on the pending school year. John Irwin had turned ten years old.
“You are a fortunate boy, John,” exclaimed Joe. “When I was your age, they pulled me out of school and sent me to work in the pits.”
“Why can’t I do that, Da?” responded John Irwin. “I wouldn’t mind.”
“Because I want you to turn out better than I have, young man,” answered Joe. “I want you to go to school for a few more years than I did, as required now by law, and you will become a better man. And believe me, you wouldn’t enjoy working in the pits.”
“You’re a fine man, Da,” said John Irwin. “You read and write, you can do arithmetic, and you know so much about life. I think you are a much better man than the fathers of most of my friends.”
Joe held firm despite his son’s flattery.
“John Irwin Rutherford, I want you to be a better man than me, don’t you understand? I will never be more than a labourer. That is my lot in life, not that I mind since that is how I feed my family. My father was a labourer. And my grandfather was a farmworker in Ireland. But I want to see my children achieve something more in life than just hard work in the pits or shipyards. Things are changing in these modern times. People are living better if they find better work. I will never be more than I am today – a hard worker, earning just enough to live in this house and feed my family. But I want my children to have more, don’t you see? That’s what I want for you, John. And the same for you, Violet, and for you too, Molly. That is why the Government now requires more years in school, so you can learn more and be smarter!”
In 1921 the 1918 Education Act came into effect, raising the school leaving age from twelve to fourteen. State primary education was free for children from age five. They expected even the youngest children to attend for the full day from 9 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. Classes were large, learning was by rote, and they shared books between groups of pupils, as books and paper were expensive. The teachers taught nature study, sewing, woodwork, country dancing and traditional folk songs too. [40] This law was a milestone for developing the nation.
Life was turning the corner from the Dickensian world of the Victorians when labourers worked until they dropped and were prisoners at the bottom of a class-obsessed society. From the 1920s onward, social classes were being shattered. In principle, anyone could rise above the squalor of the working classes if they were smart enough and worked hard. Joe was right. These recent laws opened up more rights and more chances in life for his children. England had one of the best educational systems in the world, including the most prominent and ancient universities of the time. But up to that point, British education only catered for the middle and upper classes of British society. Successive twentieth-century governments changed that by making primary school education available to the broader population and by lifting them up through more prolonged exposure to learning. Dramatic social changes were underway, and these were to improve society!
The Great War had changed so much. That long and disastrous conflict had robbed so many young men of their lives. But the Great War had been a “Great Catalyst” for change. The men had gone to war; the women had gone to work in their places; society had been under enormous pressures from the war, and these led to significant changes in the lives of workers, male or female. The Great War was to prove a pivotal point in the history of the Western World.
§
One Saturday pub evening in October 1921, Joe arrived with a red cloth flower attached to his vest with pride. He noticed at once he was not alone, with most of the pub’s veteran patrons wearing one too. In the leadup to Remembrance Day 1921, a new custom appeared in Jarrow and throughout the British Empire and America – the lapel Poppy.
“What a great idea,” declared Mike when seeing his marra wearing this symbol of remembrance.
“Aye, Mike, that it is for sure,” replied Joe. “I hope it lasts. I, for one, will never be without one at this time of year for as long as I live.”
“How did it happen, Joe?” asked Mike.
“As far as I know, the Americans started it, but General Haig announced that Britain will follow the Doughboys this time.”
“Well, it’s good to know that they will remember our time over there.”
“Aye, and everyone’s buying them, not just veterans,” added Joe.
In autumn 1918, Moina Michael was an American teacher working for the YMCA Overseas Secretariat in New York. On the 9th of November, Moina had a moment of inspiration when she happened upon a magazine illustration accompanying John McCrae's poem “In Flanders fields, the poppies blow.” Miss Michael made a vow to wear a red poppy in memory of those who had fallen in the war. From that moment, she devoted her energy into getting the red poppy adopted in the United States as a national memorial symbol. At a conference in 1920, the National American Legion adopted it as their official symbol of remembrance, and this inspired Frenchwoman Anna E. Guérin to introduce the artificial poppies used today. Madame Guérin went in person to visit Field Marshal Earl Douglas Haig, founder and President of The British Legion. She persuaded him to adopt the Flanders Poppy as an emblem for The Legion. They launched the first British Poppy Day Appeal that year, in the run-up to the 11th of November 1921. It was the third anniversary of the Armistice to end the Great War. Proceeds from the sale of artificial French-made poppies went to ex-servicemen in need of welfare and financial support.
§
Peace and remembrance was very much a part of the fabric of life throughout those countries the Great War had affected. But dissension was always present somewhere in the British Empire. Between 1919 and 1923, violence engulfed Ireland as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) fought a guerrilla campaign against the British state in pursuit of an Irish Republic. Britain itself was a theatre in the war too. Cities such as London, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Glasgow and their environs were fertile grounds for establishing IRA companies, Irish Republican Brotherhood circles, Cumann na mBan branches and Na Fianna Éireann troops. [41]
“For too long the British have ridden roughshod over the Irish,” proclaimed Mike at one of their Saturday evening gatherings at the Rolling Mill Pub.
“But it no longer concerns us, Mike. We are British now,” replied Joe.
“British my left foot,” snapped Mike. “We are of Irish blood and will always be of Irish blood. You mustn’t forget that!”
“Come on now, Mike,” pleaded Joe. “You and I married to Geordie women, and we have Geordie children born right here in Jarrow. We have work and make a living with Geordie employers. Mike, we earn our living here in England, not in Ireland,” Joe added. “What has Ireland ever done for us, apart from giving us our parents?”
“And heritage,” snapped back Mike. “Once an Irishman, always an Irishman!”
Before long the other patrons of the pub overheard these comments, raising a resounding agreement among the Irish and inciting the ire of the Geordie patrons. Joe tried to calm things. He leant across the table and spoke in muted words “Don’t start a fight on this, Mike. I’m not in the mood for a fight.”
But it was too late. Before long, the shouting became physical, and the pushing and shoving started. Then a full-on battle ensued with fists and chairs and other objects flying in every direction until they broke a mirror and the publican rang the closing bell twice and chased the lot out of his pub. Under normal circumstances, when the publican rang the bell twice, the first time meant “last call” for more drinks and the second time announced that the bar was closed. On that night, he rang them both together. The door bolted behind them, the brawl continued outside until the alcohol got the better of the men in the chilled night air and they collapsed in a heap on the road, gasping and laughing.
Mike had joined the Irish Self-Determination League (ISDL) of Great Britain, established in London in 1919, and had talked Joe into attending a few meetings although Joe never became as drawn in as Mike had. For many years the talk in the pubs of Jarrow had often swung towards Irish politics. Among the workers of Irish descent, there was lots of sympathy towards the affairs of their homeland. And among the non-Irish, there was lots of apathy, but it turned to anger whenever Irish politics crept into a discussion. They made no impression on Joe, even after he had attended two meetings. But Mike had become politicised.
Mary heard of the battle at the pub and what had started it.
“I hope they didn’t involve you in that fight at The Rolling Mill Pub the other night, Joseph,” she asked in her sternest voice and addressing him with Joseph, as she did whenever he was in trouble.
“Well, not quite, Mary,” he began. “I mean, not on purpose.”
Mary’s look became sterner, her fists planted on her hips.
“Mary, it went like this. Mike and I were having a normal conversation when he started with his political shenanigans on the Irish and the British. I didn’t want to get involved in that, but he insisted. I suppose Mike had drunk a few too many ales and became a wee bit too political. Believe me, I tried hard to steer him away from the nonsense, but he insisted and became louder. And that’s when the argument broke out with the English and Irish patrons ending in a fight.”
“Joseph,” she began, “how can ye become involved in the political talk? Ye know how hot-headed the Irishmen and hotter-headed Geordies around Jarra can be. It isn’t worth getting involved. What will become of us if they hurt ye or ye end up thrown in gaol?”
Joe realised he had erred in his ways and vowed to Mary that he would never again become involved in such an argument. He would have a stern word with his best marras too to make sure such an incident never happened again at the pub, or anywhere else. But during the early months of 1921, the Irish Republican Army carried out attacks throughout the region until on 9th July they agreed on a truce with the British Government.
§
On the 16th of June 1923, Mary Rutherford gave birth to Beatrice May, their sixth child at home in 227 High Street, Jarrow, who became known a Beattie.
In that year, coal mining reached a peak in County Durham with 170,000 miners, up from 154,000 in 1919. But many industries in North East England were experiencing harder times in the 1920s. Demand for traditional industrial products was fading, and the Great War had only provided a temporary boost. During the 1920s, low demand and foreign competition beset coal mining in Britain. Between 1921 and 1925, the British Government subsidised the industry. But the Mining Industry Act of 1926 ended the subsidies and encouraged voluntary amalgamation of the marginal mines. So, coal mining in Great Britain was facing tough times, consolidation and closures.
“Our marras in the collieries are in trouble,” said Joe one day. “Because of cheap, or even free, German coal, our mines are struggling to stay alive.”
“Aye, that is because of the money Germany has to pay back for the Great War,” replied Mike. “They are giving it away for free. How can our mines survive that?”
“You know, laddies, Germany is getting stronger again while we are struggling,” said Joe, “It’s not right. The papers are talking about a troublemaker called Adolf Hitler. I know little about him, but from what I know, he gives these wild speeches and is getting a lot of support for his ideas over there. ”
The German term Goldene Zwanziger, or Golden Twenties, represented Germany's healthy economic recovery and growth in the wake of the Great War. But the humiliating peace terms in the Treaty of Versailles provoked bitter indignation throughout Germany and weakened the new democratic Weimar Republic. That treaty stripped Germany of its overseas colonies, of Alsace and Lorraine on the western border with France, and of Polish districts in the East. Germany had agreed with reluctance not to have an Army, Navy or Air Force, to satisfy the demands of its Great War enemies.
The Allies’ onerous reparation demands through shipments of raw materials and annual payments were biting. [42] They printed vast quantities of paper money to meet their needs, causing hyperinflation. The people of Germany needed wheelbarrows full of banknotes to pay for essential items. After a crippling war and the hardships that followed it, hyperinflation was a final blow. It was only after the Weimar Republic started radical economic reform measures that an environment of financial stability and prosperity returned in Germany. [43]
In the interim, and as a direct consequence of unhappiness among the working people, the Nazis used a patriotic rally in a Munich beer hall on the night of the 8th of November 1923 to launch an attempted coup d'état. Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler, along with Great War General Erich Ludendorff and other Kampfbund leaders tried to seize power in Munich, Bavaria. This putsch failed at once, but the next morning the Nazis staged another march of 2,000 supporters through Munich to rally support. Troops opened fire and killed 16 Nazis. The police arrested Hitler, Ludendorff and others and a court tried them for treason and imprisoned them in March 1924. While in prison, Hitler wrote the first volume of his autobiography and political manifesto Mein Kampf (My Struggle). The Weimar Republic banned the Nazi Party, but it continued to run under the name of the “German Party”. When they released Adolf Hitler from prison on the 20th of December 1924, he reorganised the Nazi Party, with himself appointed as its undisputed leader. He then gained widespread support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, anti-Semitism, and anti-communism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda.
“We will need to watch out for this Hitler,” concluded Joe. “He is getting a lot of support in Germany. ”
“Is he like the Kaiser?” asked Mike. “Could he start another war?”
“Ne, he comes from a low upbringing, but maybe because of that the common people like him,” replied Joe. “And that could become dangerous.”
On the 19th of April 1925, Joe and Mary’s seventh child, Dorothy, was born, and they called her Dolly. Joe and Mary decided that they could not expand their little clan any further after that. Mary was 38 years old and felt she didn’t have the strength for any more children. Not only that, but their tiny flat couldn’t accommodate more than nine, not to mention the rising costs of such an extensive family. It satisfied Joe that with two sons to carry on from him, and five daughters to look after him and Mary in their old age, they had reached the ideal size of a family. And Joe was a proud and caring father to them but becoming concerned about the economic conditions on Tyneside.
§
Closures begin on Tyneside
By the mid-1920s in Britain, the postwar period of prosperity was over in areas of traditional industry, coal in particular. Poverty amongst the unemployed coal miners contrasted with the affluence of the middle and upper classes during the twenties. [44] Then on the 31st of July 1925, the Government announced that it was to grant a subsidy to the coal industry for nine months to support existing wage levels while a Royal Commission conducted an inquiry into the emerging problems. The Daily Herald called this day Red Friday. Nine months later, the 1926 General Strike followed, with unemployment remaining at over two million.
Shipbuilding was in decline too. Whereas Great Britain had produced most of the world’s ships during the 19th century, many emerging industrial nations had by the 1920s launched their own shipbuilding capabilities. Shipbuilding and engineering strikes occurred in the north-east of England, including Tyneside where they set up soup kitchens to feed starving families. The industrial growth of the 19th century went into a gradual decline, followed by closures and mergers of the smaller players throughout the industry.
“These developments worry me,” commented Joe after reading of the closures one day. “How long will it take to reach us here on Tyneside?”
“It’s here now,” exclaimed Mike. “Look at Armstrongs of Elswick across the river. They are closing a few of their works.”
“Aye, they were a big supplier of weapons, ammunition and transport vehicles for the Great War. Peacetime is not good for those works,” replied Joe.
“And colliery closures, Joe?” asked Mike. “That cheap German coal is closing our collieries too.”
“Aye. That’s why our miners are struggling. These are troublesome times for them,” repeated Joe. “But so many strange things are happening in this world. Maybe coal and shipbuilding is no longer the place to be. Maybe the future for us is not here, but out there somewhere – further south? I’ve heard that a lot of new factories are opening down there.”
While the traditional industries were declining, there were significant technological developments during the 1920s that created enormous social and economic changes. A group of leading wireless manufacturers including Marconi formed the British Broadcasting Company on the 18th of October 1922. Daily broadcasting by the BBC began in Marconi’s London studio, 2LO, in the Strand, London, on the 14th of November 1922. Karl Ferdinand Braun’s cathode ray tube helped John Logie Baird, inventor of the first working television in 1925. Record companies such as Victor, Brunswick and Columbia introduced electrical recording on their phonograph records in 1925, resulting in a more lifelike sound. The Automated Musical Instrument Company launched the first jukeboxes in 1927. Warner Brothers produced the first movie with a soundtrack in 1926; silent films gave way to sound films. These pioneers and their innovations launched new entertainment industries that became everyday phenomena within a brief space of time. But they centred most of these new industries around London.
The rise of automobiles led to new leisure activities and businesses. The car became the centre of middle and working class life, supporting another vast industry with employment for thousands. And this vehicle helped start the petroleum and petrochemical industries. But most of these industries were in the south.
These brand-new industries in Britain and elsewhere would replace the traditional heavy industries of the Industrial Revolution that Britain had dominated for so long. Joe may have been right in his assessment – maybe the future was somewhere other than on Tyneside?
Faced with the poor prospects of employment in Jarrow, the eldest Rutherford children had moved south in 1926 to better pastures. John Irwin was only 15 but assumed responsibility for 13-year-old Violet and 12-year-old Molly when they migrated to Surrey. It had been a tricky move for the older Rutherford children, as with so many inexperienced people moving to the south. With their heavy Geordie dialect and accents, the Southerners had difficulty understanding them. For Violet in particular, at 13, it was a major upheaval in her life. The daughters of Joe’s older brother William, Betty and Jane, had moved at the same time to Croydon too. Jarrow to Croydon was becoming a migratory path for the Rutherford family, but Joe and Mary and the younger children remained in Jarrow for the time being.
§
Into the Tumultuous Thirties
“So, what the hell is going on now, Joe?” asked Mike one Saturday at a late October 1929 evening at the pub. “Everybody’s talking about a financial crisis. What the hell is that all about?”
“I don’t know either, Mike,” replied Joe. “But it’s all over the newspapers this morning. They say it’s a serious crisis and will affect everybody. It has something do with the stock markets, whatever they are, and banks and factories too. I don’t understand it, but they are saying it will kill a lot of businesses and cause more unemployment.”
“Just what we needed, Joe,” replied Mike. “No sooner are we settled after that war, than we may be out of a job. It’s just one crisis after another!”
“Aye, Mike,” replied Joe. “We seem to be in a new war, or some other enormous problem, every ten years. But we will survive this as we did all the others.”
The boom years of the Roaring Twenties resulted in reckless business practices and a frenzied buying of company shares. The market had a nine-year run that saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average increase in value tenfold, peaking on the 3rd of September 1929. Then a significant slide in stock prices began on Wall Street on the 4th of September 1929. On the 24th of October, known as “Black Thursday”, Wall Street lost 11%. The Wall Street Crash had started. On the following Monday the 28th of October, there was a sharp fall on the London Stock Exchange. The Wall Street Crash continued later that day with the New York Stock Exchange falling by 13%. Then on the 29th of October 1929, known as “Black Tuesday”, panicked sellers traded four times the average volume on the New York Stock Exchange, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by a further 12%. They often cite Black Tuesday as the start of the Great Depression. It became known as the Great Crash of 1929, and it was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States.
The Great Crash signalled the start of the decade-long Great Depression that affected western industrialised countries. The Crash forced many banks into insolvency. By 1933, 11,000 of the United States’ 25,000 banks had failed. The failure of so many banks led to a nationwide loss of confidence in the economy. This led to much-reduced levels of spending and demand and hence of production, further aggravating the downward spiral. U.S. manufacturing output fell to 54% of its 1929 level. The Great Depression was to have devastating effects in countries both rich and poor. Personal income, tax revenue, profits and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by over 50%. Unemployment in the U.S. rose to 25% and in a few countries rose as high as 33%. [45]
When the Great Slump, as they knew it in Great Britain, began, the British economy was still far from recovered in full from the effects of the Great War. Britain’s world trade fell by half from 1929 to 1933. Traditional industry production dropped by a third and profits plunged in most other industries. [46] Hardest hit by economic problems were the industrial and mining areas in the north of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. These areas were hardest hit because of the structural decline in British industry. Staple industries such as coal, steel and shipbuilding were smaller, less modern, less efficient and over-staffed compared to their continental rivals. Unemployment reached 70% in a few regions at the start of the 1930s with over 3 million out of work in total. Many families depended on payments from the local government known as the dole, and for the poorest soup kitchens became their only hope for survival. These soup kitchens, often offered by local churches or charitable groups such as the Salvation Army, became commonplace throughout the stricken old industrial regions of Great Britain.
§
Tyneside, Wearside and Teesside were hard hit in the ensuing years, and the workers of the shipbuilding industry endured times of continual apprehension as the companies they worked for approached closure. The Great Slump caused a collapse in demand for ships. Between 1929 and 1932 ship production declined by 90%, and this affected the supply industries such as steel and coal. In towns and cities in the North East, unemployment reached as high as 70%.
“Palmers has shut their doors, Joe,” exclaimed Mike one day in June 1932. “That closure has put so many outstanding men out of work – most of the men of this town. First, the mine closures, and now it’s happening to us in shipbuilding.”
“Aye, Mike,” replied Joe. “When Palmers shuts down after so many excellent years, Hawthorn Leslie must follow soon enough.”
On the 19th of June 1932, the Palmer Shipyard, founded in 1852, launched its last ship, the HMS Duchess, at Jarrow, and closed its doors in 1933. Palmers built the battlecruiser HMS Queen Mary, 10 Royal Navy battleships, a dozen cruisers, over two dozen destroyers, monitors, gunboats, cargo ships, tankers, passenger ships and tugs and more. It had a long and proud history of shipbuilding. That shipyard alone accounted for 80% of Jarrow’s workforce, leaving 10,000 unemployed.
But it didn’t end with Palmers. The smaller Hawthorn Leslie at Hebburn was still building ships, but the yard was forced to reduce its workforce by 20% to 1,000 workers in 1933. Joe Rutherford and Mike O’Brien were among the unfortunate workers dismissed by that reduction. They had retrenched Joe, 52, for the first time in his hard-working life. He entered his home on that fateful day and threw his arms around his waiting wife. Mary had already heard of the retrenchments from other women. The tension over the past few weeks had been too much for this hard-working, conscientious family man.
“They have let me go, Mary,” he told her, tears welling up in his eyes. “How could they do that after these many years I’ve worked for them?”
“Now Joe,” said Mary, “you know they must have had their reasons. We knew things were getting desperate. Look at how many men are out of work out here. These are tough times!”
“They are Mary,” replied Joe, pulling himself together, “I don’t know what we will do. There isn’t any work anywhere in the North East.”
“We’ll pull through, Joe,” responded Mary. “We will tighten our belts and live off the dole until you can find more work. You’ve survived two wars; you can survive this, my dearest! I know you can do it.”
“Aye, Mary,” Joe concurred. “That we will. I’ll apply for welfare right away.”
In the 1920s and 1930s, Britain had an advanced welfare scheme compared to many industrialised countries. In 1911, the Liberal government of Herbert Henry Asquith had put compulsory national unemployment and health insurance in place. But with the mass unemployment of the 1930s, payments to the insurance dried up, resulting in a funding crisis. So in August 1931, a government-funded Unemployment Benefits scheme replaced that of 1911. This scheme, for the first time, paid out according to need instead of the level of contributions. This unemployment help required a strict means test. When applying for unemployment pay, a government official inspected the applicants to make sure they had no hidden earnings or savings, undisclosed sources of income or any other means of support. For many poor people, this was a humbling experience and was much resented. But it provided the much-needed relief.
Mary performed miracles in her little kitchen by changing her approach to cooking to accommodate the shortages of expensive ingredients such as meat. Soups and stews and pies became the most important meals of the day. These she prepared by stretching small portions of meat with gravies and ample vegetables such as potatoes, carrots and cabbage and barley or other grains or beans when available to become tasty and nourishing meals. Mary started soups with stock derived from paltry amounts of lamb or cheap cuts of beef or marrow bones simmered with onions in an enormous pot to extract the most outstanding flavour. To that, she added root vegetables and inexpensive brassicas, roots and stems included, and added to the meals as the week wore on and more ingredients became available. This she had learned from the time-honoured traditional French pot-au-feu. None of her family complained of the reduction in meat and praised her for such filling and delicious fare. But in those times no one had the privilege of being fussy. And in this way, Mary could support the strength and health of her family well within the constraints of their meagre dole.
One Saturday night at the Rolling Mill Pub soon after the retrenchments, the conversation turned to the crisis in North East England and of the hardship of forgoing their favourite beverage.
“How much longer can we meet here over a few Broons?” asked Mike. “We won’t be able to afford them anymore. So enjoy these last ones, my marras.”
“Aye,” lamented Joe. “These are tough times. So many men are unemployed in this town! I don’t know who is working these days. I doubt I’ll be able to afford a Broon much longer either.”
“At least we have the Unemployment Benefits, thank God,” piped in another. “But our government is in crisis! Will somebody ever fix this shite?”
“It’s no wonder that those Fascists under Mosley are getting stronger,” commented Mike, “They are attracting many followers.”
“Not only here, Mike,” replied Joe. “I have read that Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party is now heading the government in Germany. That is shite in the making!”
“Aye, that is for sure,” replied Mike, “I saw him on the News Reel in the cinema the other day. He’s a madman, screaming and pounding his fists through his speeches. He will lead us into another war, mark my words!”
“Aye, you could be right, Mike,” replied Joe. “You could be right, God help us!”
But despite its growth in popularity, the Nazi Party might never have seized power had it not been for Reparations and the Great Depression of the 1930s and their effect on the people of Germany.
§
The year 1936 was notable in Britain for the death of George V aged 70, on the 20th of January at Sandringham House, Norfolk, and the scandal surrounding his succession. His eldest son, Prince Edward, Prince of Wales succeeded as King Edward VIII. On the 21st January King Edward VIII broke royal protocol by watching them proclaim his accession to the throne from a window of St. James's Palace in the company of his still-married lover Mrs Wallis Simpson.
But the scandal surrounding the King’s love affair continued. On the 20th of October, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin confronted King Edward VIII on his relationship with Mrs Wallis Simpson, a married American woman that the king had fallen in love with and wanted to marry. After many meetings with the King, the Prime Minister informed him on the 2nd December that if he insisted on marrying Mrs Simpson, he had to abdicate. King Edward signed an instrument of abdication on the 10th of December at Fort Belvedere, witnessed by his three brothers, The Duke of York, The Duke of Gloucester and The Duke of Kent. On the 11th December Parliament passed His Majesty's Declaration of Abdication Act 1936, providing the legislative authority for the King to abdicate. The King performed his last act as sovereign by giving royal assent to the Act. Prince Albert, Duke of York, or Bertie to his family and closest friends, then became King George VI.
Talk among the unemployed, queuing in large numbers at the employment offices, expressed their frustration and disdain.
“That is what’s wrong with our Royals,” said someone. “When they die, you never know how the next one will work out. This one is a prat.”
“Aye,” replied another, “George V saw us through the Great War. He was an excellent King. But that American woman has taken over his son.”
“Maybe she pleases the poor bugger in bed,” said another to laughter from all around him.
“Well, he won’t have our problems in France, or wherever he ends up,” answered another. “He need not labour like us.”
They had a point. Millions were starving in the traditional industrial regions of Great Britain, while the shenanigans were playing out amongst their royalty who had boundless wealth. It caused a lot of disdain.
Another important event for North East England of 1936 was the Jarrow March, or Jarrow Crusade, from the 5th to the 31st of October. The closing of Palmers shipyard was the trigger for 200 unemployed men to march the 274 miles from Jarrow to the House of Commons in London in protest against unemployment. Opposition from the British Iron and Steel Federation, an employers' organisation with its own plans for the industry had frustrated plans for Palmers’ replacement. This led to the decision to leave on the hunger march. The “Crusaders” carried a petition to the British government requesting the re-establishment of an industry in the town. During their journey, local branches of the main political parties gave them sustenance and hospitality, and the public gave them a warm welcome on their arrival in London
The House of Commons received the petition, but they didn’t debate it, and the march produced few immediate results. The Jarrovians went home, believing they had failed. However, despite a sense of failure among the marchers, the Jarrow March became recognised as a defining event. It helped to foster the change in attitudes which prepared the way to more social reform measures later.
§
South to Croydon for another start in life
By 1936, 25-year-old John Irwin, the 23-year-old Violet and 22-year-old Molly had paying jobs in the south. Violet was working in the house of a wealthy couple in Croydon and at 21 had married Welshman Trevor Noel Hodge, born in Glamorgan, in 1934 in Surrey. They were living near Croydon with their first child and Joe’s first grandchild, Brian. Trevor Hodge’s brother Reginald Hodge had married Violet’s cousin Elizabeth Mary (Betty) Rutherford in 1933 in Epsom, and he had brought Violet and Trevor together. John Irwin found work in Croydon and met Mabel Mobley from West Ham, Essex, whom he married in September 1936 in Croydon. Molly was also working in a grand house in Croydon as a servant. They were encouraging their parents to follow with the younger children. With every letter they wrote, they appealed to Joe and their mother to make the leap into a new and more promising life. Those letters and Jarrow March convinced Joe to move at last.
“I’m moving south, Mike,” said Joe one day in late October. “I will follow those Jarrow Crusaders and my eldest children with the rest of my family. All my children down there have paying jobs. That’s where the jobs are. We spend our days in the employment queues getting no work. I can’t stand it anymore. I’ll be discussing it with the family tonight. Will you and Ruth come too?”
“I’d love to, Joe,” replied Mike. “But it’ll take a lot of talking to get Ruth to move. She has a paying job here still, and her employers have put her in charge of the household. It’s an excellent position she has always hoped for, so she will not want to leave. But I understand why you are going. There’s nothing here for me either. I’m not sure what will become of us, but I’ll be working on it.”
“We’ve been through a lot together, my old marra,” said Joe. “Please understand that I must go, and I hope that you and Ruth can join us one day. I’m sure she’ll find employment down there, and you too. It’s boom time in the south. Please try to convince her. I’ve had enough of unemployment lines here, and I want to join my older children in Croydon.”
“Is that where you are going, Croydon?” asked Mike. “I’ve heard talk of that place because of London airport being there.”
“Aye, and that’s where my children are. And that’s where there are many new factories and work, so that’s where I’ll be going,” replied Joe.
“Has life always been like this, Joe?” asked Mike. “We have been through two wars, the trenches of France, the POW camps of Germany, the 1918 flu, and now this Great Slump, as they are calling it. Why must we go through all these troubles?”
“I guess that’s just the way life is, Mike,” replied Joe. “It has nothing to do with us, and it has always been like that, I reckon.”
And so, on that note, the two close friends realised that their paths were parting. “Aye, that’s just the way life is,” echoed Mike while giving Joe a forceful hug, before turning and heading home.
§
Joe waited until the remaining children were sitting for supper one evening in 1936. Peggy, the eldest of the children still at home, was a youthful woman of 17 and out searching for employment; Harry was 16 and looking for work too. Beattie was 14 and had finished her education that summer and Dolly at 12 was the last Rutherford child still in school.
“Mary, children, I have been pondering our situation here, and I’ve decided it’s time to follow John, Violet, Molly and the others to Croydon,” he announced.
“We will follow whatever you decide, Da,” replied Mary. “If you think we should move, then we will support your decision.”
“Well, as you know, Da, there’s no work here in Jarrow,” responded Peggy. “So, I’ll support your decision for sure.”
“What of our friends, Da?” replied Beattie.
“Aye, what of our friends, Da?” added Dolly.
“Your friends will follow us, girls,” responded Joe, “I know of many families thinking along the same lines since the Jarrow March. We have no choice. No one, including the Government, knows what to do for work for us here, and we can’t go on living here without work and money.”
“And where will we live?” asked Dolly.
“John and Violet are working on that,” said Joe. “They are looking for lodgings for us in Croydon.
“And where is Croydon?” asked Beattie.
“Just south of London, Beattie,” replied Peggy, “You know from Violet’s letters.”
“Just making sure,” murmured Beattie.
“Well, Joe, we will pack our things right away,” said Mary. “We will be ready when you are.”
The entire family had agreed that Joe’s decision was the right way to go, despite leaving their friends in Jarrow, and they followed his lead. So once Joe had arranged transportation, he told his family they should finish packing their things as soon as possible. In the working-class homes of the North East, there wasn’t much to take with them. Joe had found cheap transport shared with others going to Croydon to carry their belongings, including their beds and their few other pieces of furniture. John and Violet had by then reserved a “two up, two down” terrace house at 75 Cedar Road in East Croydon for them to occupy. It was within easy walking distance of East Croydon train station. They pledged to support the family as best they could until Joe found work. Joe scraped together enough to buy the one-way family train tickets to London, and they set out towards the unknown south full of excitement and apprehension. They missed John’s wedding in September, but celebrated with them after the fact and settled into their new home in East Croydon.
Before they left, Joe and Mike met for one last time the night before at their meeting place above the yards.
“Aalreet, my old marra,” called Joe.
“Aalreet, Joe,” called Mike with a chuckle. “What are ye doing out here at this time of night?”
“I’m here to say goodbye to an old friend of mine,” said Joe. “And ye?”
“The same, Joe,” replied Mike, the tears growing.
The two men then threw their arms around each other and embraced for the longest time.
“Take care of yourself, Joe,” said Mike. “And write to me from time to time. We mustn’t lose touch with each other after all we’ve been through together.”
“Aye, Mike, that’s for sure,” replied Joe. “I’ll let you know how it is down there. Can’t be as bad as Germany, can it?”
But Mike couldn’t respond. He just gave a parting gesture, turned and walked away. Joe understood his feelings and mirrored his gesture while departing too.
It was a dramatic move for the Rutherfords. Joe, Mary and their children had been born and grown up in Jarrow. They had left the only home they had ever known and were insecure. But Joe found a temporary job at once washing dishes at the fashionable old Hotel Café Royale in Regent Street, London to tide him over until he could find a “proper job” closer to home.
“I did my first day of work in the south today, Mary,” said Joe. “Getting there and back is no problem. “The walk to East Croydon station takes 12-minutes. The train to Victoria Station, London, is quick, and then I have another short walk past Buckingham Palace and Green Park to Piccadilly and Regent Street. It takes a little longer than my walk to work in Jarra, but it’s not bad.”
But it wasn’t long before Joe found work at a factory at Elmers End in Beckenham, a 14-minute ride there by train. He started on the assembly line at Muirhead and Co, a company involved in telecommunications since manufacturing the first electro-mechanic telegraphic equipment, around the mid-19th century. This worldwide known firm developed and produced many items used in wireless relays, multiplexers, recorders and cables and was growing fast. Soon Peggy found a job near home. A women’s clothing shop in Croydon’s town centre took Beattie on as a trainee seamstress. They enrolled Dolly in a school nearby, and the Rutherford family resettled and became comfortable in their new surroundings in no time.
§
Empires reborn
By early 1937, the Rutherfords had settled into their new surroundings at 75 Cedar Road, East Croydon, and apart from Dolly, were all working and contributing to the family’s living expenses. Life was soon better than their past in Jarrow, even if it was in another and unfamiliar corner of England. At least there they had work and wages to ease the stresses of everyday life.
Joe continued his practice of reading the daily newspapers to understand what was going on in the world. He bought a used radio from a fellow worker and listened to BBC News every evening after supper too. The British newspapers had blocked the Government-run BBC from broadcasting news from its foundation in 1922. But over time, it gained the right to edit the news copy and, in 1934, created its own newsroom. But it could not broadcast news before 6 p.m. Joe was keeping up with the drama unfolding in Europe and around the planet, including places he had never heard of, where earth-shattering events were moving at a blistering pace. Of interest were the ongoing and worrying developments in Germany and Italy.
In Italy on the 9th of May 1936, Benito Mussolini, leader of the ruling National Fascist Party (Partito Nazionale Fascista - PNF) [47] since he had taken power in 1922, announced that they had placed Ethiopia under the sovereignty of Italy. An assembled crowd of 400,000 before the Palazzo Venezia exploded into wild cheers. They continued rejoicing into the early hours of the following morning. Mussolini proclaimed the King of Italy as Emperor of Abyssinia. “Ethiopia's destiny is sealed,” Mussolini declared to his masses. “All knots have been severed by our shining sword. Italy, at last, has her Empire.”[48] Mussolini coined the term “Axis Powers” in November 1936, when he spoke of the Rome-Berlin Axis as the treaty of friendship between Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
In August 1936, Hitler had responded to a growing economic crisis in Germany with his vast rearmament programme. He ordered Herman Göring to carry out a plan to “prepare Germany for war within the next four years”. [49] The plan envisaged an all-out struggle between Judeo-Bolshevism and German National Socialism. Hitler believed his strategy needed a committed effort of rearmament regardless of the economic costs. [50]
One evening early in 1937 at the local pub where Joe often met up with his recent Croydon friends, other migrated Geordies and his eldest son, the talk turned to the events unfolding in Europe.
“Can you believe what is going on out there?” asked Joe. “We watched this happening before the Great War. Is that where we are heading again?”
“Aye, the bloody Huns are at it again under this new maniac Hitler,” responded one of the other patrons.
“And the Italians?” asked Joe. “They fought with us against the Germans during the Great War, but now under that other nutter Mussolini, it looks as if they are cosying up with the Germans.”
“Aye, true,” was the response, “but we need not worry over the Italians. It’s the Huns we need to be worried about once more!”
“And the Russians?” asked Joe.
“They’re too busy with their own internal shite,” exclaimed yet another to peals of laughter.
“It’s no joke,” responded Joe. “I’ve read that dictator Stalin has been busy with his Great Purge, as they are calling it, killing millions of his own people. But, aye, I’m most worried about Hitler. I’ve read somewhere that those who forget the past, repeat it. We will have another Great War, mark my words.”
George Santayana, the brilliant philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist, once said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” [51] By the 1930s, it was these European Fascists who were forgetting the lessons of history, so soon after the horrific Great War.
“And closer to home, what of our new King?” asked another patron.
“Aye, he's gannin' micey for that married American hinny,” replied Joe. Then noting the puzzled looks from his companions, said, “Sorry, he’s gone nutter for that married American woman, what’s her name?”
“Simpson, Wallis Simpson,” replied someone, “She’s a gold digger after our weak King. A bloody disgrace, that!”
“Aye,” said another. “What do we need royals for, anyway?”
In the pubs and parlours of working-class Britons, the goings-on of their royalty during 1936 was a frequent topic of discussion. They had been following the drama surrounding King Edward VIII’s love affair with “that American woman”, and the King’s abdication in December in favour of marrying her. The royal antics disgusted many and amused others. So the most notable and happy event of the year 1937 in Britain was the coronation of King George VI. Prince Albert, Duke of York, had ascended to the throne with Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at the end of the year before when his brother abdicated. They became King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Empire and the Emperor and Empress of India. This grand ceremony took place on the 12th of May 1937 at Westminster Abbey.
The BBC made its first outside broadcast covering the event. They broadcast the coronation procession on the BBC Television Service, which had only been operating since the preceding November. They laid several tonnes and 8 miles of television cabling across central London so they could send the images from three Emitron television cameras to the transmission centre at Alexandra Palace. The BBC’s Frederick Grisewood did the commentary from the cameras at Hyde Park Corner. In reviewing the transmission, The Daily Telegraph commented: “Horse and foot, the Coronation procession marched into English homes yesterday.” The Daily Mail said: “When the King and Queen appeared the picture was so vivid that one felt that this magical television will be one of the greatest of modern inventions.” [52]
It riveted only the privileged elite who saw that event on their television sets while most of their subjects around the British Empire listened on their radios. The coronation service of George VI was the first filmed on TV, and it even required the forty camera crew members inside the Abbey to wear evening dress. They then broadcast the service from these recordings, with the authorities censoring only one small section, a clip of Queen Mary wiping a tear from her eye. They later showed it in edited form as a newsreel in cinemas across the British Empire.
In the Rutherford home, there was both consternation and joy over the antics of their royalty.
“That coronation was wonderful,” declared Molly, “I love these grand royal events.” To which everyone agreed, the girls in their excitement exchanging comments on the uniforms and dresses and horse carriages.
“Aye, but the antics of our last king were pukka disgraceful,” replied Joe. “I have lived through many of our great monarchs. I was a soldier for Queen Victoria, Edward VII and George V. Victoria was a grand queen who I fought for when I joined the Army and went to South Africa. Edward VII was a dandy and party animal, but I fought for him too against the Boers when he became king in 1901. King George V was a fine monarch, and I fought for him during the Great War. I received a letter from him thanking me for my contribution as a POW in Germany, and I’m so proud of that. Edward VIII didn’t act the way a monarch should. I hope that King George VI will be a noble king for us again. But he is coming into troubling times just as his father did in 1911 when your mother and I married!” Joe’s monologue had left his women speechless, so they shelved the topic for a while.
Preparations for war in 1936 and 1937 were everywhere progressing in the UK. For example, on the 6th of November 1936, the Royal Air Force's Hawker Hurricane single-seat fighter plane performed its maiden flight at Brooklands, Surrey. And in December 1937 it entered service in the Royal Air Force at No. 111 Squadron at Northolt, as its first monoplane fighter.
On the 25th of November 1937, Nazi Germany signed a pact with the Empire of Japan. Hitler abandoned his plan of an Anglo-German alliance, blaming “inadequate” British leadership. [53] At a meeting at the Reich Chancellery with his foreign ministers and military chiefs that November, Adolf Hitler restated his intention of gaining more “Lebensraum”[54] for Germans. He believed this territory was necessary for Germany’s natural development, and he was ready to take it by force. Hitler ordered preparations for war in the East to begin as early as 1938 and no later than 1943. He felt that by grabbing Austria and Czechoslovakia, he could correct the severe decline in living standards and the economic crisis in Germany. [55] [56] Hitler had urged quick action before Britain and France gained a permanent lead in the arms race. [57]
“I heard the same from the Kaiser before the Great War,” commented Joe. “And here we go again. It’s scary!”
On the 28th of May 1937, Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister after Baldwin's retirement. Chamberlain signalled an intention to continue Baldwin's policies by making few changes to the cabinet. [58]
At the start of 1938, Hitler asserted control over the military-foreign policy apparatus, dismissing Neurath as foreign minister and appointing himself as Oberster Befehlshaber der Wehrmacht. [59] [60] From then onwards, Hitler carried out a foreign policy aimed at waging war. [61]
Tensions were high across the entire globe but reaching worrying levels across Great Britain and Europe. The US government appointed Joseph P. Kennedy as United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom on the 8th of March 1938. Kennedy rejected the beliefs of Winston Churchill that any compromise with Nazi Germany was impossible. Instead, Kennedy supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement.
The Prime Minister met German Chancellor Adolf Hitler on the 13th of September 1938 to negotiate an end to German expansionist policies. On the 30th of September, Neville Chamberlain returned to the UK triumphant from Munich, waving the resolution signed the day earlier with Germany, at Heston Aerodrome, where he gave a quick speech to the gathered crowd. Later in Downing Street, he gave his famous “Peace for our Time” speech, and George VI and Queen Elizabeth appeared with Chamberlain on the balcony of Buckingham Palace that day to celebrate the agreement.
By 1939 in Germany, Hitler had disregarded the restrictions imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles and annexed territories populated by millions of ethnic Germans. He established the Dritte Reich (Third Empire) as the reborn German Empire. Hitler aspired to a much larger Empire than that which had collapsed a generation earlier under the German Kaiser. In Italy, the delusional Benito Mussolini saw himself as the saviour of the Roman Empire of Italia in the hopes and dreams of re-establishing Italy to its glorious Roman past. At the same time the Japanese Empire, which had existed since the Meiji Restoration in 1868, was reaching its zenith under the slogan Fukoku Kyōhei. Translated, the slogan read “Enrich the Country, Strengthen the Armed Forces”.
On the 31st of March 1939, Britain pledged support to Poland in case of an invasion. Then they formed the Royal Armoured Corps on the 4th of April and re-established the Women’s Royal Naval Service on the 11th of April. On the 27th of April the Military Training Act introduced the conscription of men aged 20 and 21 to undertake six months of military training. They created the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) on the 28th of June. On the 1st of July, the Women’s Land Army re-formed to work in agriculture, preparing for losing male agricultural workers for an eventual war. By mid-1939, they recalled Parliament, called up Army reservists and placed Civil Defence workers on alert. On the 24th of August the Emergency Powers Act, 1939, gave full authority to Defence Regulations, emergency regulations passed on the outbreak of war. These regulations were to become the fundamental principles of everyday life in the United Kingdom in the event of a conflict. Then on the 30th of August, they ordered the Royal Navy to war stations.
And so it was that by mid-1939, mighty empires were on the rise again around the entire world and gearing up for total war, just as they had a generation earlier.
“He is now calling Germany the Third Empire,” said Joe one day. “The Second Empire was the Kaiser’s Germany we fought. I thought we had ended the empires with the Great War, but both Germany and Italy are talking about their empires. I don’t like what’s going on in Germany.”
Anxiety was mounting in the Rutherford household as it was in most other homes across the British Empire. Older adults could remember the horrors of the last war and had no interest in repeating that experience. One Sunday evening at the end of August, as they gathered for tea, the talk digressed to war.
“I believe we are to become involved in yet another European conflict,” began Harry. “What do you think, Da?”
“It feels just as it did in July 1914,” replied Joe. “I can’t believe it, but it sure looks as if we may fight the Huns again soon. But not me! I've been through enough wars, thank you.”
“Aye, that you have, Da,” echoed Mary. “I’ll not have you going off again!”
“You’re safe at your age, Da,” added Peggy.
“Aye, but I don’t know how safe we are,” replied Joe. “In the Great War, the Huns bombed England. I have read that the Germans carried out raids on London during most of the Great War, using airships, bomber planes and seaplanes. They have much better aeroplanes now, and I suppose, bigger bombs than they did then. It wouldn't surprise me if they tried it again.”
“That goes for me too,” said Harry. “I’ve read that the way the Allies treated the Germans after that victory, demanding crippling reparations, may have paved the way for Hitler and the Nazis and another Great War.”
“Aye, you may be right, Harry,” concurred Joe. “I’ve heard that often enough too.”
“Oh my God,” cried Peggy. “That is most worrying. They could bomb us again right here?”
Now that was a very sobering thought, and it left everyone quiet and reflective for the rest of the tea, asking only the occasional “pass the” something or other and less consequential chit-chat.
“Well, if that could happen, we must be ready,” blurted Peggy after contemplating the conversation. “Shouldn’t we be talking to our neighbours of building a shelter we can go to if they bomb us? I’ve noticed that others in the neighbourhood have done that.”
“Aye, now that’s a canny superb idea,” replied Harry. “I’ll talk to them.”
Then they dispersed for the evening, knowing little of the changes soon to descend upon them.
§
[1] The industrial and urban areas on both banks of the River Tyne, historically part of the counties of Northumberland (north bank) and County Durham (south bank) including the urban areas of Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, Tynemouth, Wallsend, South Shields, Hebburn and Jarrow. This busy region is extended south in County Durham to Wearside on the River Wear and Teesside on the River Tee.
[2] A friend, pal, buddy or mate in the north of England, especially among the working classes.
[3] “The morning fog”, Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel, 3 July 1880. It is really not fog at all, but cloud of pure white mist. warmer and much less wetting than a “Scotch Mist”, not differing entirely from the true British fog, facetiously spelled “smog” because it’s always coloured and strongly impregnated with smoke, a mixture as unwholesome as it is unpleasant.
[4] Geordie for “hello” or “you ok?”
[5] The people of the Tyneside area, called Geordies, have a reputation for their distinctive dialect and accent. Tynesiders may have been given this name, a local diminutive of the name George, because their miners used George Stephenson's safety lamp (invented in 1815 and called a Geordie lamp) to prevent firedamp explosions, rather than the Davy lamp used elsewhere.
[6] “Field Marshal Douglas Haig would have let Germany win, his biography says.” The Times. 10 November 2008
[7] “World War I's Worst General”. Military History Magazine. 11 May 2007.
[8] That pandemic went on to infect 500 million people worldwide and cause the deaths of 50 to 100 million people. Taubenberger, Jeffery K.; Morens, David M., 1918 Influenza: the mother of all pandemics, 2006
[9] Potter, C. W., A History of Influenza, Journal of Applied Microbiology, October 2006
[10] Jo Bath, Great War Britain: Tyneside, Remembering 1914-18, 2015
[11] We now know that these combat veterans were facing was likely what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
[12] Jo Bath, Great War Britain: Tyneside, Remembering 1914-18, History Press, 2015
[13] Joanna Bourke, First World War, Another battle front, The Guardian, 11 November 2008
[14] Jo Bath, Great War Britain: Tyneside, Remembering 1914-18, History Press, 2015
[15] Jo Bath, Great War Britain: Tyneside, Remembering 1914-18, History Press, 2015
[16] Jo Bath, Great War Britain: Tyneside, Remembering 1914-18, History Press, 2015
[17] “Inflation value of the Pound” (PDF). House of Commons.
[18] Marks, Sally, The Myths of Reparations. Central European History. Cambridge University Press, 1978
[19] Jo Bath, Great War Britain: Tyneside, Remembering 1914-18, History Press, 2015
[20] French cavalry regiments that still wore a covered cuirass, a piece of armour which covers the torso. and a plumed helmet, while on active service in the field
[21] According to the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, in military terminology, a demonstration is an attack or show of force on a front where a decision is not sought, made with the aim of deceiving the enemy. A related diversionary maneuver, the feint, involves actual contact with the enemy, unlike a demonstration.
[22] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles
[23] Jo Bath, Great War Britain: Tyneside, Remembering 1914-18, History Press, 2015
[24] Ben Johnson, The 1920s in Britain, http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-1920s-in-Britain/
[25] Patrick Brennan, http://www.donmouth.co.uk/local_history/jarrow_fc/jarrow_fc.html
[26] Banquet in honour of The President of the French Republic, Monday 10 November 1919, Royal Collection.
[27] Royal Canadian Legion Branch # 138. 2-Minute Wave of Silence Revives a Time-honoured Tradition The Royal Canadian Legion. Undated.
[28] Emma Mason, BBC History Magazine, Sunday 9th November 2014
[29] Augendre, Jacques (2016). Guide historique [Historical guide] (PDF). Tour de France (in French). Paris: Amaury Sport Organisation. Archived (PDF) from the original on 17 August 2016.
[30] Tom James (15 August 2003). “1919: Christophe in Yellow - but not in Paris”
[31] “1919: Wanhoopspoging levert Firmin Lambot Tourzege op” (in Dutch). Tourdefrance.nl. 19 March 2003.
[32] Sports Illustrated. Archived from the original on 5 August 2011
[33] Convention (IV) respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its annex: Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land. The Hague, 18 October 1907.
[34] “What are you talking about?”
[35] Andrew Lamb, 150 Years of Popular Musical Theatre, Yale University Press, 2000
[36] Price, S (1999). “What made the twenties roar?” Scholastic Update, Vol. 131, Issue 10.
[37] Ben Johnson, The 1920s in Britain, http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-1920s-in-Britain/
[38] A pitched extension of a main roof similar to a lean-to but an extension of the upper roof serving as an additional room at the back of the house.
[39] Gordon Martel, ed. (2011). A Companion to Europe 1900–1945
[40] Ben Johnson, The 1920s in Britain, http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-1920s-in-Britain/
[41] Gerard Noonan, The IRA in Britain, 1919-1923: 'In the Heart of Enemy Lines', Oxford University Press, 2014
[42] Ian Kershaw, Weimar: Why did German Democracy Fail? St. Martin's Press, 1990
[43] Eric D. Weitz, Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy (2013)
[44] Ben Johnson, The 1920s in Britain, http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-1920s-in-Britain/
[45] Frank, Robert H.; Bernanke, Ben S. Principles of Macroeconomics (3rd ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2007
[46] H. W. Richardson, “The Economic Significance of the Depression in Britain,” Journal of Contemporary History (1970)
[47] Kevin Passmore, Fascism: A very short introduction, (Oxford UP, 2014)
[48] The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957) Mon 11 May 1936 “MUSSOLINI PROCLAIMS ITALY AN EMPIRE”
[49] Overy, Richard, Misjudging Hitler. In Martel, Gordon. The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered. Londn: Routledge, 1999
[50] Messerschmidt, Manfred, Foreign Policy and Preparation for War. In Deist, Wilhelm. Germany and the Second World War. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990
[51] George Santayana, Reason in Common Sense, volume 1 of The Life of Reason, 1905.
[52] The story of BBC Television – Television out and about. bbc.co.uk.
[53] Messerschmidt, Manfred, Foreign Policy and Preparation for War. In Deist, Wilhelm. Germany and the Second World War. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990
[54] Living space
[55] Messerschmidt, Manfred, Foreign Policy and Preparation for War. In Deist, Wilhelm. Germany and the Second World War. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990
[56] Carr, William, Arms, Autarky and Aggression. London: Edward Arnold, 1972.
[57] Messerschmidt, Manfred, Foreign Policy and Preparation for War. In Deist, Wilhelm. Germany and the Second World War. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990
[58] Mercer, Derrik, ed. Chronicle of the 20th Century. London: Chronicle Communications Ltd., 1989.
[59] Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces
[60] Overy, Richard, Misjudging Hitler. In Martel, Gordon. The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered. London: Routledge, 1999
[61] Messerschmidt, Manfred, Foreign Policy and Preparation for War. In Deist, Wilhelm. Germany and the Second World War. 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990
