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No Glory No More War: Monday 4th August was the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War – and campaigners marked the anniversary with a ‘No Glory – No More War‘ event in Parliament Square.

My father was 14 when the ‘Great War’ began and had just left school. Soon after was working in a factory making munitions close to Kew Bridge. Although his only formal qualification was his school leaving certificate he worked in the drawing office rather than on the shop floor – though the only work he ever mentioned doing there was sharpening pencils. Years of working with his father in their car-building workshop as a carpenter and wheelwright had made him a dab hand with a chisel.

After some months he was out of a job, and fed up and decided – as he put it – “he might as well join the army” before he was conscripted. He went to join up and had a medical where the officer examining found he was severely deaf in one ear – and told him he could be excused military service. “Do you want to go?” he was asked and he said he did. “Good man!” he was told and signed up to the army.

Then came military training, which he didn’t much like after which he was sent to barracks. At some point when he was ordered to do some particularly time-wasting job he told the officer concerned what he thought of it and was put on a charge. Fortunately his senior officer was a sensible man, and after telling Dad he could be shot for disobeying an order told him not to be stupid again and sent him back to his unit.

Dad’s skills were not being used in the Army and he requested a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps as a mechanic. He went first to France and later to Germany, helping to repair the planes when they came back damaged. The airfields were well behind the front line and relatively safe. On April 1, 2018 the RFC became the RAF but I doubt if it made a lot of difference on the ground. And he was on the ground, and would never say if he ever went up in the air during his service.

After the end of the war Dad was one of the last of his unit to be demobbed, ending up as stores quartermaster, only coming home in 1919, bringing with him some odd iron German coins and fond memories of fraternising with the German people. He had not seen the true horror of the war, though many he knew and served with had died. And of his five sisters, only two ever found men to marry.

At the event there were much more dramatic stories of the war and the truth about it, with a number of well-known speakers including historians and others. Among them was Neil Faulkner, author of the pamphlet No Glory, which gives a real history of WW1.

Far from being the “war to end all wars” and a “victory for democracy“, it was a military disaster and a human catastrophe, “driven by big powers’ competition for influence around the globe, and caused a degree of suffering all too clear in the statistical record of 16 million people dead and 20 million wounded.“

*WW1 Veteran Harry Patch told Tony Blair ‘War is Nothing Better than legalised Mass Murder’*

I concluded my account: “While we remember the bravery and sacrifice of those who took part, we should also be aware of the pointlessness of the war and make use of its anniversary to promote peace and international cooperation.”

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All pictures from Staines on 11th November 2007

I have mixed feelings about Remembrance Day. Of course we should remember those who have died in wars, but the events which take place on Remembrance Sunday often seem to glorify war, and rejoice in military victory. Remembrance Day – or Armistice Day as we used to call it – is a day for more sombre observance and reflection, though it often passes most people by. Gone are the days when traffic across the nation stopped and cars pulled to the side of the road to observe the two-minute silence on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day“.

My father served in the Great War, though he only joined up at the start of 1918. Before he had worked in a munitions factory, but had been laid off, and was called to a medical around his 18th birthday in December 2017. He was examined and the medical officer, after finding he was deaf in one ear asked him if he really wanted to join the army – and only passed him as fit when he said he did.

“I was given the number 119377 and the rank of 3^rd Air Mechanic (called 3^rd Ack Emma), and awarded the magnificent wage of one shilling plus one penny a day, seven days a week – the extra penny because I was designated Clerk.”

Fortunately for him it wasn’t until July 1918 that he arrived in France, and the airfields had to be a little back from the front line, and they only once came under fire. Dad was impressed by the many nationalities working together – more from his short life story he wrote in his 80s:

“Chinese coolies prepared our sites and probably erected buildings; and of course they dug the petrol holes out. There was every nationality represented amongst the troops and auxiliaries. It was amazing how varied an organisation the armies were. There were lots of horses, mules and bullocks pressed in to do the work. Then there were the Tommies and the Frenchies and all the other fighting men, all colours, marching backwards and forwards – Colonials, Indians, Africans; we had an Empire then!”

And this is his account of the Armistice:

“We were up near Courtrai when the armistice was announced – cwas it alled Bissingham or something like that? We stayed there until after Christmas and a lot of the old hands went home from there. I don’t remember doing much there. I think we had an inkling that it was coming, and I was crossing over to the flight sheds which were old “Jerry” ones when I met a civilian who shouted “La guerre fini ; tres bon, monsieur”; I replied “tres bon, m’sieur”. On Christmas Day we had a concert, and all of us who did not usually do guard duty were detailed to take a two hourly turn throughout the night. I went over to do my turn at the appointed hour. I saw no one there and came away when I thought the time was up.”

As one of the latest to join the war effort, Dad stayed on in what was now the Royal Air Force, becoming a part of the occupying British Army on the Rhine (BAOR) . It was only at the very end of 1919 that he was finally returned to England and demobbed early in 1920 – with back pay of £75 – equivalent to over £3000 allowing for inflation.

Of course Dad had a very easy though not entirely uneventful war compared to most, and he had made his choice to serve, although under conscription. But many of those who went – in this and the Second World War – had little choice. Dad did his bit back at home in the Second World War in various ways too, and a younger member of my wider family was killed in action. But like many I think his experiences of the war left him convinced of its futility, and although at home we observed Remembrance Day respectfully, there was none of the militarism that seems to be a part of the Remembrance Sunday parades which often seem to encourage the anti-German spirit of “Two World Wars and one World Cup”. That Great War was supposed to be the war that ended all wars, but sadly only led to more.

As a Wolf Cub, and later a Boy Scout I had to go and march with the troop and to stand in short trousers in the cutting November wind while bugles sounded and soldiers marched. As a photographer I’ve more recently photographed some of these events, though always with a little reluctance. In quite a few years I’ve been in Paris in November and back in 2013 I was in Germany, where they do not celebrate the armistice, but instead have a more inclusive national day of mourning to remember members of the armed forces of all nations and civilians who died in armed conflicts, and now include victims of violent oppression. As here there are church services and parades to lay flowers at war memorials but it seemed a much healthier event than those in this country.

Remembrance Sunday in Staines 2007

Tag: RFC

No Glory No More War – 2014

The 11th Hour of the 11th day