South Devon in the Great War

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Introduction

How many citizens of South Devon considered themselves victors by November 1918? Perhaps we shall never know. Relief, grief for fathers, sons, brothers or lovers lost in war, quiet contemplation – these are as likely to have been the overriding emotions away from newspaper headlines. This book attempts to give voice to the unsung heroes and heroines of this area. Within its pages are stories of the hopes, fears, sacrifice and endurance of the men and women of South Devon.

There were occasional, unusual highlights: the accidental shooting of two off-duty officers, a hospital ship torpedoed off the South Devon coast, a British airship crash landing on Dartmoor near Ivybridge. Otherwise life went on, bounded by the seasons, the weather and news from foreign fields.

Geographically the book covers an area that is roughly from the present day eastern boundary of the city of Plymouth to the River Exe, excluding the city of Exeter. This area is roughly bound to the north by Dartmoor and to the south by the sea. It comprises the modern day administrative districts of Teignbridge, Torbay and the South Hams. However, geographic boundaries have not served to impede the telling of a good story and so, at times, the reader is taken beyond these somewhat artificial parameters – and occasionally to distant continents – in order to complete the narrative.

The war broke out in the summer of 1914 and this is as good a starting point as any, though occasionally the narrative turns to events prior to this date in order to make specific points of explanation. Fighting ceased in November 1918 and a peace treaty was signed in the summer of 1919, but wounded servicemen were continuing to die into the 1920s. For convenience the main body of the book finishes in 1918.

Celebrations in Aveton Gifford to mark return of peace. (Cookworthy Museum, Kingsbridge)

That war is now commonly referred to as the First World War, though at the time was known simply as The War or the Great War. Throughout the book the term Great War is used.

South Devon was, in 1914, much as it is now. The main differences being fewer people, smaller towns and villages and the absence of motor vehicles, balanced by a busier railway network.

Devon’s population had not grown as rapidly in the nineteenth century as in most other parts of the country. For example, whilst in 1801 Devon was the fourth largest county by population, a hundred years later it had been overtaken and was fifteenth largest. There were exceptions. The coastal ‘resort’ towns were growing quickly and Newton Abbot had expanded as it was a sub-regional railway centre.

A troop train leaving Paignton, 1914. (Totnes Image Bank)

Littlehempston, home to Private Barter (see p. 38) remains. Its wartime story is typical of South Devon, a land of small towns and villages, coast and farmland; young men went to fight, horses were requisitioned. Those left behind carried on with the farming and waited. Some houses were eventually used as hospitals or convalescent homes for servicemen, and German PoWs arrived to work on the farms.

There were four or five towns in what is now the district of South Hams (four or five – as it is uncertain as to what constitutes the difference between a large village and a small town). These were Dartmouth, Kingsbridge, Modbury, Salcombe and Totnes; Ivybridge was a small but important industrial village then. In Teignbridge were Ashburton, Bovey Tracey, Buckfastleigh, Newton Abbot and Teignmouth. Then there were the seaside resorts of Dawlish, Torquay and Paignton and the fishing port at Brixham. Every other site of habitation ranged from a large village to a hamlet.

Each of these places was affected, to a lesser or greater degree, by the war. Many young men, some of them Reservists or Territorials, others answering Kitchener’s call to arms, went away to fight. Some never came home.

To understand how local life functioned in the early twentieth century and, crucially, how the mobilisation of August 1914 worked – how so many men and their horses were very quickly moved out of south Devon – the reader will need to know more about the contemporary railway network.

As it does now, the Great Western Railway ran west from Exeter to Plymouth – but with five branches and many, many more stations. At Newton Abbot branches thrust north to Heathfield, Bovey Tracey and Mortonhampstead, and south to Torbay and Kingswear. At Totnes a branch line went to Buckfastleigh and Ashburton. At South Brent a substantial branch, known as the Primrose line, went south to Kingsbridge. Shortly before reaching Plymouth, a branch went south-east to Turnchapel and Yealmpton.

In addition, in 1914 it was possible to stand on a platform at Exeter St David’s station and witness trains bound for Plymouth setting off in both northerly as well as southerly directions, for the London South Western Railway went to Plymouth via Crediton, Okehampton, Tavistock and Bere Alston. There was also a line from Exeter St David’s to Heathfield, which joined the Newton Abbot – Mortonhampstead branch.

Tony Rea

www.tonyrea.co.uk

Bovey Tracey railway station, now the local heritage centre. (Author’s collection)

PART 1

Business as Usual?

Can there have been anything approaching life as normal? The war impacted on daily life from the outbreak of hostilities. In August 1914 fishing in Start Bay and the rest of the Channel was halted. A decision was made to abandon the South Devon rugby season due to the large numbers joining up. Belgian refugees had begun to arrive in 1914. One family of Belgians was taken in by the Orlebars of Rutt House, near Ivybridge. In November more Belgians arrived at Sheepleigh Court, Bantham and then, in December, Frogmore. It seemed as though everybody and everything was affected by the war.

In 1914 there were thirty German men of military age living in Buckfast, South Devon. Unlike others of German nationality however, these men were never interned as enemy aliens. They were monks and they lived at Buckfast Abbey, where two-thirds of the monastic community were German.

The medieval abbey at Buckfast fell out of use and into dilapidation after the Reformation. It was re-established in 1882 by Lord Clifford of Chudleigh. By 1884 accurate drawings of the foundations had been made and a plan put forward for the rebuilding of the abbey in the style of the mid-twelfth century, based on studies of other Cistercian abbeys such as Fountains in Yorkshire. The Abbot’s Tower had been restored and a temporary church erected next to it. This was opened in March 1884. Work also started on the south wing of the monastery, which was to include the kitchen, refectory and cloister, mostly paid for by Lord Clifford. The Benedictine monks were tasked with serving the local Catholic community as priests, as well as with rebuilding the church.

In 1906 two Buckfast monks, Abbot Boniface Natter and Brother Anscar Vonier, were shipwrecked. Natter drowned, but Vonier survived and was elected as the new Abbot upon his return to the abbey. Abbot Vonier was caught out by the outbreak of war, as he was visiting Austria. The newspapers reported on 25 September that he was ‘safe in Salzberg’.

The building work carried on throughout the Great War, during which time the monks continued to farm their 50 acres of land. The German monks – most of whom had lived at the abbey for more than five years prior to the war, some for as many as twenty years – were prohibited from leaving the monastery without special licence. Of course their nationality made them subjects of suspicion and surveillance, and they had to endure hostility from some of the local population. For example, Buckfastleigh Urban District Council campaigned to have the German monks removed, but the Home Secretary refused to officially intern them.

During the war the monks of Buckfast developed medicines, made cider and supplied the people of Buckfast and nearby Buckfastleigh with firewood. The Abbey’s 100 beehives produced upwards of five tonnes of heather honey. In 1919, Abbot Vonier – who had become a naturalised British subject – thanked the Home Office for its consideration in dealing with the monks of the abbey during the war.

The quiet life of monks was touched by the war elsewhere, too. In August 1914 the opening of the new church at Wood Barton Monastery was postponed. Wood Barton, near Woodley, was constructed in 1904 by a Trappist community that moved from France because of anti-Catholic legislation by the Third Republic. Its mother house was at Melleraie. The church opening was postponed because the Abbot of Melleraie, aged 84, was thought to be too old and frail to make a Channel crossing in wartime. More bad news was to follow. On 21 August 1914 the South Devon and Kingsbridge Gazette reported that eight of the monks from Wood Barton had been conscripted into the French Army and a further ten were returning to the mother house in France. In June 1915 the same newspaper reported the death of one of those monks, a Father Gabriel. Few monks returned to Wood Barton after the war and the community closed in 1921.

Those who had believed the war would be over quickly were now having to reconsider. The war might be experienced at first hand – rifle ranges were opened up, such as those at Hillside, Kingsbridge and Modbury – or second-hand, through news media. In December 1914 the good people of Kingsbridge saw the bombing of Scarborough by the Germans on film at Kingsbridge ‘electric cinema’.

In some ways, however, life did carry on as normal. On 1 October 1915 the South Devon and Kingsbridge Gazette carried three war related stories: a local Coldstream Guardsman home on leave, a bravery award for a local soldier and a family with