CHAPTER TWO – DEATH OF A HERO AND AN ICE CREAM HOME-COMING
While my grandfather headed home for a reunion with the family, who had feared they might never see him again, there was no such happy return for his brother, Horace Boddington Gibbs*3 – he owed his second Christian name to his paternal grandmother, Jane.
He had embarked from Halifax, Nova Scotia, in late 1915 on board the troopship SS Missanabie as Company Quartermaster Sergeant for the 51st Overseas Battalion, but curiously he disembarked in France as Private 436011 in the 7th Infantry Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 1st Canadian Division, Canadian Expeditionary Force – possibly he had decided this was the best way to see action.
And his wish was realised as he was involved in some of the bloodiest fighting on the Western Front, yet despite or maybe because of the unrelieved horrors of the trenches, he found time to write poems, including The Question and The Ypres Trail, which he sent back to his sister, Mim, in Malvern, and these were published in the Malvern News.
THE QUESTION – BY HORACE BODDINGTON GIBBS
Sunset – but yet no peace shall bid the day farewell;
And what before the dawn?
Sunset – ablaze with beauty; but list the screaming shell,
And God’s fair landscape torn.
Night – but still no slumber comes to watchful eyes,
For war and hate’s aflame.
Night – and the crash of battle thunders to the skies:
And yet, Thy Heaven’s the same.
The harvest moon beams peacefully on the scene
Of mortal suffering;
The Milky Way o’erhead shines glittering and keen
Above the conflict’s ring;
And grey, grim humans stand to arms and gaping gun,
To wrest an earthly crown.
The stars fade swift before the rising sun,
Good Lord, look down, look down!
Morn – and far aloft the lark proclaims the light,
In joyous caroling.
Morn – and sleep-drugged warriors still pursue the fight,
Whilst soaring songbirds sing.
Day – and as the soft rays kiss the tortured land,
The ceaseless turmoil flows.
For the stubborn foe is grappling hand to hand,
And blows are met by blows.
Is it Thy will, O Lord, that Thy fair summer dawn,
And day, and sunset hours
Shall sadly darkened be, so that our babes unborn,
May glory in their sires?
Is it Thy will that Man, made in Thy image fair
Shall shatter and defile?
Is it Thy will that songs of hate shall rend the air?
Or, is it – Man is vile?
H.B.G – Somewhere in France, August 22, 1916
The Malvern News also published his graphic account of life under fire, in which he wrote to his sister: “I am alive and well and have just come out from a 48 hours’ terrific bombardment. Not for a minute did the fury of the battle abate, and the Germans came over at us three times, once in broad daylight and the other two were night attacks.
“We beat them off each time with considerable loss to them and I do not know how anyone ever gets out alive. Of course, it was indescribably terrible and wonderful, and we lost many a fine fellow. Nothing like the fury of the fighting here has ever been seen before, but we are getting the upper hand all right.
“With all the grim tragedy and majesty of it all seething in my mind, I would love to let right out and describe it all, but it would only be censored. Of the pathetic and splendid heroism of our men: of the way in which the orders flew down the line: of the tense and wonderful excitement of it all; how our boys went over the parapet at them and beat them back: of the deadly work of the yapping machine guns; of the steady stream of wounded struggling past me in the trenches as I stood to my machine gun; of the hours of torture when gigantic shells burst all around, throwing up mountains of earth and debris; of the flop,flop of the falling shrapnel; of the screech of our grand artillery passing in waves of death over us.
“Yesterday I had a thrilling walk over the tortured, shell-rent battlefields of the past two months. I have seen the great German dug-outs, their vaunted impregnable positions, their smashed and twisted guns, their piles of hastily-left ammunition and equipment. I take off my hat to the men who did this splendid work. The artillery men tell me they worked their guns till the muzzles were red hot. Yesterday the Germans threw over gas and tear-shells and we had to put on our helmets (gas masks). A man looks just like a diver in them.
“I have seen some thrilling aeronaut fights, and only this morning one of our airman brought down a German ‘plane, which burst into flames as it fell to the ground on our side of the line. If I ever get out of this, which I suppose is possible, I shall certainly have had some great experiences and seen some terrible sights.
“It is extraordinary how indifferent to death a man becomes. A German ‘Jack Johnson’ was sending enormous shells for about an hour this morning at only about 300 yards away from where we were peacefully cleaning up our little Lewis guns in the open and we and everyone seemed quite amused to see men and horses dash away from the spot. It is just the same in the trenches. I have seen men laugh and joke after being nearly buried alive by falling dirt and debris.
“There are many neat little very new cemeteries of Canadians, Anzacs and British dotted about this blasted landscape. Some of the crosses are very well and artistically made and little white-washed stones often set out the extent of a soldier’s deep and narrow bed.”
Horace went on to foretell the battlefield tours which were to follow many decades later.
He wrote: ”I suppose tourists by the thousands will come and view these battlefields for generations and will try to imagine all the sensations and hardships we are going through for their sakes now. I can picture them picnicking with tastily-assorted lunch baskets and probably getting very bored with some loquacious guide, who will roll his tongue round the mighty horrors of today. They will note the almost pathetic little hastily-scraped hole in the side of a trench in which some poor devil sat and hugged the earth while cascades of death screamed over his bowed head for hours and hours. They will pick their way carefully down into the deep well-made German dug-outs and wonder how anything could ever shift them out. It would greatly amuse me to follow a party round for a day and hear their remarks.”
His battlefield report to his sister ended : “I am safe out of shell fire as I write and the weather is beautiful. The day goes well and will go even better shortly. Am as fit as a fiddle and ready for the next crack at them.”
On September 26 – my birthday – Horace was in charge of a machine gun crew when the 1st Canadian Division was thrown into the battle of Thiepval Ridge in Picardy in an attempt to take German positions which the British troops had been unsuccessfully attacking since July 1.
The following day – nine months after landing in France and aged just 32 - Horace was dead, obliterated by one of the countless shells that rained down during one of the bloodiest battles of the Somme.
A Major of the 7th Battalion wrote to his sister, Mim, in April, 1917: “Your brother, Pte H B Gibbs, was originally reported missing as no trace of him could be found after the action. It now appears after further investigation that a large calibre shell was seen to explode in the machine gun position of which your brother was in charge, and no trace could afterwards be found of any members of the crew or the gun. It is therefore presumed that all were killed. I may say that your brother carried out his duties at all times with credit to himself and the Battalion and during our first engagement on the Somme assisted materially in stopping an enemy counter attack by his coolness and precision under the most trying circumstances.”
Horace was just one of 135,000 casualties in that most awful of Septembers - the 1st Canadian Division alone losing 6,254 men, killed or wounded.
Because of the significance of the Thiepval Ridge – this one-day objective, which had taken almost three months to secure – it was chosen as the site of the Anglo-French memorial to the "missing of the Somme,” dedicated to the men who were killed and whose bodies were never recovered, during the fighting in the vicinity from 1916 to 1918.
The memorial, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and built between 1928 and 1932, has been described as the greatest executed British work of monumental architecture of the 20th Century and dominates the peaceful rolling countryside, which once saw such unbelievable carnage.
But Horace’s name is not inscribed on the towering Portland stone-faced piers among those of over 72,000 Allied soldiers, killed on the Somme battlefields "but to whom the fortunes of war denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death".
Instead he is commemorated many miles away on the equally powerful Vimy Ridge Memorial, where his name is carved alongside those of 11,285 Canadians killed in France whose final resting place is unknown.
And Horace is also honoured across the English Channel on a memorial in Great Malvern Priory and thousands of miles away across the Atlantic on the Fort Saskatchewan Cenotaph – a lasting tribute to the immigrant farmer who never returned from the Great War to resume his toils in Alberta.
The loss of his beloved brother, who had been an ally through childhood and an inspiration into adulthood, must have coloured my grandfather’s thoughts as he landed back in England in 1919 and took the train to Malvern.
But for his wife and children it meant the end to anxious months and the promise of a return to normality.
My mother wrote: “When Father returned, we had a great celebration dinner at the Haggertys and Mr Haggerty, who was a waiter, served all dressed up. The children were at a separate table – Eric and I, Jeffrey and Eileen (his sister).
“By then my father had rejoined his original regiment attached to the Edmonton University and was teaching at the Khaki University – his friend, Edouard Sonet, who had been with the French army from1902, was also teaching and they were stationed in Ripon, Yorkshire.”
The Khaki University was the brainchild of University of Alberta president Henry Marshall Tory, who took leave from his academic duties in Edmonton and persuaded the Canadian Government to allow him to set up this pioneering organisation based in Ripon and dedicated to preparing his country’s soldiers for a return to civilian life back home.
Young men who had missed out on further education were placed in colleges and universities in England, but more importantly thousands of men learned to read and write, skills which, for many, gave them their first opportunity to send a letter home to their family.
In addition to the basic literacy and numeracy lessons, the Khaki University offered classes under four headings: Agriculture, ranging from raising livestock through to book-keeping and vegetable growing; Commerce, including skills from shorthand to banking and English composition; Languages, covering French, Spanish, Latin and Greek; and the Practical Science syllabus, spanning such topics as electricity and magnetism, wireless telegraphy, surveying, petrol and steam engines
From 1917-1919 some 650,000 men attended lectures and 50,000 were enrolled in classes, but despite the work of the Khaki University and others to help the transition to peace-time activities, there was much discontent among the Canadian troops over delays with their repatriation and broken promises of land grants from the Hudson Bay Company.
In fact one group billeted in Kinmel Park, North Wales, mutinied in March, 1919, and as the trouble escalated, five soldiers were killed and many were arrested – the dead men being buried in St Margaret’s Churchyard, Bodelwyddan.
Repatriation of all soldiers was stepped up following the riot, but it was this sense that they had not been treated fairly, which prompted my grandfather to return to Edmonton with a determination to enter politics and fight for his fellow men.
My mother wrote: “The Sonets and my mother and father took a house just out of Ripon and I went to live there, while Eric stayed at Southlea. The house was semi-detached with a house owned by the Heslingtons, who ran a market garden. We kept in touch when we went back to Canada and when I came back to England in 1933. They had a little girl and I was introduced to Snakes and Ladders.”
Professor Sonet, a great friend of my grandparents, was destined to become a revered lecturer in French at the University of Alberta, where he would enthral students with tales of his military exploits, which had included service in French North Africa with the Zoaves, the most decorated of the French Army light infantry regiments.
My mother wrote: “When the men moved away from Ripon as the troops were going back to Canada, we had to have rather primitive digs in the town. The Canadian government was offering to take the families back and I remember my father taking us to Fountains Abbey and saying: ‘You will not see anything like this in Canada.’ He and my mother were discussing going back and they said: ‘The children will have a much better chance there.’
“By then Eric had come back from Southlea and for a while, to my great joy, he treated me with all the kindness due to a lady. It did not last and he was soon back to bashing me if I displeased him.
“My mother was told to take us to Liverpool, where a troopship would be waiting. When we got there the troopship was delayed and we spent some time in a rest centre. We only had breakfast there and the rest of the time my mother took us to Lyons and to cinemas in the evening.
“Eventually we were able to go on board. The men arrived later and I can still see them marching up and we were all leaning on the side cheering. It was a long sea voyage and we were delayed by fog outside Halifax. Eric was in a rage because my father kept singing: ‘Oh, for the life of a sailor.’
“At last we got on a special troop train. Fortunately there was a doctor and a nurse on the train and they were able to treat my father, who had a poisoned arm. As we went across Canada, we were met at every station and given sweets and ice cream.
“When we arrived in Edmonton, we went to a rest centre, but we only stayed a short time as we still had our house. We moved in with just beds and a kitchen table and chairs. My father kept going to auction sales for the rest of the furniture.
“He was still teaching on a small salary at the university. One day the phone rang and he was told a good job was going at the Technical School and as he was a returned soldier, he would be given priority if he applied.”
So began a Golden Age for my mother’s family.
*See numberered author's notes
