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    Chatham in the Great War
    Chatham in the Great War
    Chatham in the Great War
    Ebook174 pages2 hours

    Chatham in the Great War

    By Stephen Wynn

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    About this ebook

    Discover a coastal English town’s vital role in WWI with this local history covering Royal Navy actions and the pursuit of escaped German prisoners.

    Home to one of the Royal Navy’s three major dockyards, Chatham played a very important part in Britain’s Great War effort. Only six weeks into the war, residents took a major blow as three vessels from the Chatham Division—HMS Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue—were sunk by a German submarine. Two months later, the battleship HMS Bulwark exploded and sunk whilst at anchor off of Sheerness on the Kent coast.

    It wasn’t all doom and gloom, however. Winston Churchill, as the First Lord of the Admiralty, visited Chatham early in the conflict. Two German prisoners of war, Lieutenant Otto Thelen and Lieutenant Hans Keilback, escaped from Donnington Hall in Leicestershire—only to be re-captured in Chatham four days later.

    By the end of the war, Chatham and the men who were stationed there had truly played their part in ensuring a historic Allied victory. This volume vividly captures the town’s service, sacrifice, and legacy.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateJan 31, 2017
    ISBN9781473864931
    Chatham in the Great War
    Author

    Stephen Wynn

    Stephen is a retired police officer having served with Essex Police as a constable for thirty years between 1983 and 2013. He is married to Tanya and has two sons, Luke and Ross, and a daughter, Aimee. His sons served five tours of Afghanistan between 2008 and 2013 and both were injured. This led to the publication of his first book, Two Sons in a Warzone – Afghanistan: The True Story of a Father’s Conflict, published in October 2010. Both Stephen’s grandfathers served in and survived the First World War, one with the Royal Irish Rifles, the other in the Mercantile Marine, whilst his father was a member of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps during the Second World War.When not writing Stephen can be found walking his three German Shepherd dogs with his wife Tanya, at some unearthly time of the morning, when most normal people are still fast asleep.

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      Book preview

      Chatham in the Great War - Stephen Wynn

      www.historylearningsite.co.uk

      Prologue

      Chatham is a long established town having first been officially recorded in 880 AD, when it was spelt slightly differently, as Cetham. It is one of the Kent towns which sit along the A2 road, which in Roman times was known as the Celtic route, although the Anglo-Saxons referred to it as Watling Street.

      For centuries it remained no more than a village, but by the sixteenth century that changed when during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, in 1568, a Royal Dockyard was built at Chatham. Originally it was only intended as a refitting base for ships of the British Royal Navy, but over time it developed into a major military shipbuilding yard. During its working lifetime, literally hundreds of vessels were built and launched from there.

      Such was the dockyard’s importance to the British establishment that a number of defensive fortifications were built around it to protect it from attack. King Henry VIII had ordered a fort to be built at what is now Sheerness, as a defensive structure at the mouth of the River Medway, to prevent the naval dockyards at Chatham from being attacked by enemy shipping. Any belief that such an attack wasn’t possible, was dispelled by the Dutch raid which took place along the River Medway between 9 and 14 June 1667 during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, when a fleet of sixty Dutch ships and 1,500 Marines under the command of Lieutenant-Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, first attacked and then captured the Kent town of Sheerness, destroying the town’s fort which was in the process of being strengthened, before sailing on to Chatham. Once there they set fire to and destroyed, thirteen Royal Navy vessels. Not satisfied with that, they ‘stole’ both HMS Unity and HMS Royal Charles, the flagship of the Royal Navy, and towed them back to Holland as prizes.

      Not only was this a massive blow to the pride of the British as a nation, but it still rates as one of the worst defeats in the entire history of the Royal Navy. King Charles was somewhat embarrassed, as well as being a tad miffed by the Dutch actions in attacking the British along the River Medway, as at the time both sides had entered into peace negotiations in an attempt to end the conflict. One of the more staggering facts about the Dutch attack was that the British, through intelligence reports, had been aware that such an attack was likely to take place, but despite being in possession of this information, they did nothing to bolster their defences in and around the Kent area, with most of the British ships being at anchor off Harwich and further up the coast, in Scotland.

      Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there were political as well as military rumblings taking place throughout Europe on an almost continual basis making the threat of war or invasion, perceived or otherwise, never far from people’s minds. This resulted in the fortifications in and around the Chatham area being both increased and improved, the work having begun in 1756. They were strategically placed rather than just randomly set down, but within fifty years even more forts were built for the defence of the area, and fifty years later, in the aftermath of the Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom, even more forts were constructed including Fort Luton, Fort Borstal and Fort Bridgewood.

      Fortunately with Kitchener Barracks, the Royal Marine Barracks, Brompton Artillery Barracks and Melville Barracks, there were plenty of places to house the soldiers that were needed to man all of the forts. Chatham has a long and illustrious military history dating back hundreds of years, but it is mainly for its naval background that it is best remembered.

      The Royal Navy Barracks at Chatham were known as HMS Pemboke, the name taken from one of the naval ships moored at Chatham Dockyards. The other was HMS Collingwood.

      The barracks had been built on land, which had previously been home to an old convict prison and a torpedo factory, at a cost of £500,000, and contained sufficient living quarters for between 3,000 and 5,000 officers and ratings. They were ready for occupation by January 1903. Prior to this time naval depot ships that were anchored at the naval dockyards at Chatham were used for accommodating those who were either undergoing their initial naval training or who were there on a course.

      At the outbreak of the war in August 1914, 205 ships of the Royal Navy, along with their crews, were part of what formed the Chatham Division, which was stationed, not surprisingly, at Chatham.

      North of Chatham at Lodge Hill on the outskirts of the village of Chattenden, was a pre-war anti-aircraft site. Its importance greatly increased with the outbreak of the First World War, being in an ideal location to provide cover to the Royal Navy base at nearby Chatham from potential aerial bombardment by either German aircraft or Zeppelins.

      CHAPTER 1

      1914 Starting Out

      It was already being mooted in the early weeks of the war that it would all be over by Christmas, because once the British Tommy had given the Germans a good old fashioned bloody nose, they wouldn’t want to know anymore. But sadly in those last five months of 1914, about 37,000 UK and Dominion servicemen and some civilians lost their lives, a strong indicator that Germany was not going to be the easy pushover that many people had initially suggested.

      One of the main reasons for such heavy casualties was the tactics that were employed, especially by Germany and France, whose generals still appeared to favour large scale frontal assaults. These attacks were simply based on sending large numbers of their soldiers running head first, as fast as they could, towards enemy-held positions whose defensive strategy was based upon a number of strategically placed, murderous machine-gun positions that were spewing out thousands of rounds of ammunition towards their attackers. It turned no man’s land into killing fields.

      Back home in Chatham the sight of military personnel in uniform was nothing new for local residents, after all, there had been a naval dockyard in the town for 400 years. The Fort Pitt Military Hospital at Chatham had been treating wounded British soldiers from the early days of the war. Once their wounds had been treated they were moved on to nearby VAD Hospitals, where they could spend time convalescing, enabling them to make a full recovery. This in turn released urgently needed hospital beds for incoming wounded soldiers who had been sent back from the front.

      The Kent & Sussex Courier dated Friday, 13 November 1914, carried the following article:

      ‘HOLLINGBOURNE WORKHOUSE UTILISED FOR WOUNDED

      Some thirty-five wounded British wounded Tommies are now convalescent enough to leave Fort Pitt Military Hospital, Chatham, and have been sent to Maidstone and District. Nineteen, represented eighteen regiments from England, Scotland and Ireland, are at Hollingbourne Workhouse, which is probably the first Workhouse in England to accommodate British wounded. Sixteen are placed under the care of the VAD Hospital at Hayle Place. All the men are perfectly happy in their new surroundings. The majority came from the trenches at Armentieres, on the coast battle, and are shot in the hands and legs.’

      Fort Amherst

      In 1715 the Duke of Marlborough ordered that a survey be carried out of the defensive needs of the Chatham area, which in essence saw the beginning of what became Fort Amherst. Over the years the original defences were added to and when the Napoleonic wars broke out in 1803 the government provided a large sum of money to enable the fortifications to be greatly improved. The building work would continue for another eight years, whilst the war would continue with the French, under the command of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, until 1815.

      Throughout the next hundred years the fort would see highs and lows, which would include improvements as well as a reduction in its military needs, with parts of the fort being demolished in 1878.

      With the outbreak of the First World War Fort Amhurst was taken out of mothballs and used extensively as a holding post for soldiers and their equipment who were mustering in Kent in readiness for their deployment to France and Belgium.

      Fort Pitt Military Hospital

      Fort Pitt was built long before the start of the First World War, in fact by 1914 it had already been in existence for 102 years. Work had begun on it in 1805, and took seven years to complete. Its location was not just some random accident. Along with the other nearby forts, Amhurst and Clarence, it was built on high ground overlooking the River Medway, to form part of Chatham’s defences against an invading aggressor. The town’s dockyard was a particularly important military asset, one that needed defending at all costs, remembering of course that in 1805, Great Britain was still at war with Napoleon’s France.

      The first military occupants of the fort were the Royal Marine Artillery, who were in residence between 1814 and 1815. It was only because of the Battle of Waterloo that the fort began its long and industrious life as a military hospital, when it started looking after returning wounded British soldiers. From 1828 soldiers who had been badly injured in the service of the Crown were sent to Fort Pitt, which became a central unit for soldiers who had suffered such life-changing injuries. After building work on additional hospital accommodation had been completed in 1847, a lunatic asylum was added to the fort.

      During the Crimean War it was once again used as a military hospital for wounded and sick soldiers returning from the fighting. Such was its military importance at the time, that the medical facility was visited by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert on more than one occasion, whilst the famous pioneer of professional nursing and medical statistics, Florence Nightingale, set up the first ever Army medical school there.

      By the outbreak of the First World War, Fort Pitt had become an established military hospital, specifically set aside to deal with wounded, sick and injured soldiers. It was open throughout the war in that capacity, finally closing for business in 1919, after the last of the wounded men had left and it was no longer economically viable to keep it open.

      Fort Pitt Military Cemetery Chatham.

      Today, some of those original buildings still survive and the site they stand on is now occupied by the Fort Pitt Grammar School.

      Those servicemen who died of their wounds whilst being treated at Fort Pitt Military Hospital, were in the main buried at Fort Pitt Military Cemetery. There are 266 First World War graves in the cemetery, which was originally owned by the War Department.

      The first burial in the cemetery from the Great War was that of Private (6737) Walter Henry Smith of the 6th Battalion, Duke of Cambridge’s Own (Middlesex) Regiment, who died on 18 August 1914. He was born in Enfield and had enlisted at Mill Hill in Middlesex on 24 July 1913.

      What made Walter’s death even more poignant was how he was killed. He did not die on the battlefields of France or Belgium, he hadn’t even left these shores; his death was a tragic accident. He was on guard duty in Chatham when another sentry accidentally dropped his rifle, which went off, the bullet striking Walter in his side; he died of his wounds soon afterwards. At the subsequent inquest, a verdict of accidental death was returned. The name of the soldier whose weapon it was or what action if any,

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