A young man's near miss!

Herbert Garland's "providential escape” 

Workers arriving at the Woolwich Arsenal

The grandson of Major Herbert Garland, Chris Mitchell of New Zealand, sent in this interesting footnote to the life of Stewart Newcombe's colleague in the Hejaz (see my blog on Garland's fascinating life story dated Saturday, September 17, 2011). It seems that Garland very nearly didn't make it to the desert as many years earlier, under very different circumstances, he found himself less than half an hour away from almost certain death. On Thursday 19 June 1903, when aged 20 years old and a student of munitions, he was due to attend a class to learn how to handle lyddite explosive as part of his army training at the Royal Woolwich Arsenal ammunitions factory in South London. Since 1888, Britain had been manufacturing picric acid as a chemical compound for use in Army and Navy shells under the name lyddite, a highly unstable compound when allowed to over-dry. The shell packers at Woolwich had started work that morning at 7am checking the shells in the “danger buildings”, known as the “islands”, situated on Plumstead marshes about 1.5 miles from the main gate of the arsenal and far removed from the main town. These shells had been filled two days previously with liquid lyddite and left to gradually solidify. The men wore special clothing and felt-soled shoes against contaminating the compound which became highly volatile if salt picrates formed near exposed shell casings. At 8:11am Garland’s classroom hut and outlying buildings were completely destroyed by an enormous explosion that killed sixteen men and injured twice as many more. Windows were shattered up to a mile away and the noise could be heard three miles distant. Garland had been due to arrive at 8:30am to witness the manufacturing process and storage requirements. For him it was a very lucky escape.

A contemporary newspaper reported the gruesome details of the disaster and was quick to highlight the dangerous conditions experienced by the Arsenal workers on a daily basis: “The British Government pays from £1 to £1 10/ a week to work in the shell-filling sheds at Woolwich Arsenal. The pay is less than that of London County Council road-sweepers, and to earn it men must face death every minute of their working day.” To further illustrate the point, the newspaper stated, “The real cause of the latest disaster at the arsenal will probably always remain a mystery, for not one of the men implicated lives to tell the tale.” 

The following day a Sheffield newspaper reported that a local man, Herbert Garland, had “a providential escape” and a telegram had been received containing assurances of his safety. 

Lyddite Memorial

The incident was discussed in parliament and reported as far afield as the New York Times. Months later, a pink granite obelisk was erected over the mass grave of the victims in nearby Plumstead Cemetery.

But for those twenty minutes, Garland's future contribution to the war in the east would certainly have been sorely missed. The assault of Gallipoli, the defence of the Suez Canal and his contribution to the British Military Mission to the Hejaz in support of the Arab Revolt would each have been denied Garland's unique talents, as well as the undeniable bravery of a man who knew only too well the devastating effects of the tools of his trade. A further consequence of those missing minutes was pointed out by Garland's grandson who wrote, “If he had been a few minutes early on this particular day our Garland family branch would have ended there!”

My thanks once again go to Chris Mitchell for drawing the news item to my attention.

Newcombe's Colt .455 Revolver

Throughout the desert campaign as head of the British Military Mission to the Hejaz, Stewart Newcombe carried a Colt revolver as his sidearm of choice. It was a hefty gun to carry but before the introduction of lighter metals, power meant size and the Colt New Service .455 Eley was a large, heavy, double-action, swing-out 6 cylinder revolver with real stopping potential. 

Even before Kitchener created his New Army, it became obvious that the Webley and Scott factory in Birmingham would not be able to single-handedly fulfil military requirements for supplies of the standard British service revolver, the Webley .455 Mark V and its 1915 variant the Mark VI. Traditionally, British Officers were required to purchase their own sidearm from a gunsmith, a military outfitter, or from the Government with the former two methods classed as ‘private purchase’; in fact, a number of corps were also issued with pistols as self-defence weapons especially when separated from their main weapon, including the Machine Gun Corps, The Royal Flying Corps, and the Tank Corps. Pistols were successfully used in areas where a rifle would be an unnecessary encumbrance, such as the close confines of trench raiding, patrols or tunnelling. Finding the weapons and ordnance with which to equip the swelling ranks of Kitchener’s Army required the War Office to look beyond domestic and imperial facilities. To meet the demand for pistols – the British military services purchased approximately half a million pistols during the Great War - the War Office turned to the two foremost manufacturers of handguns in the world, Colt and Smith & Wesson of America. Both manufacturers immediately responded with variants of their large frame revolvers chambered to match the British .455 cartridges in general use at that time. 

By 1917, Colt had manufactured upwards of 55,000 .455 New Service revolvers for British and Commonwealth armed forces which upon receipt were then stamped with arrow government acceptance and inspection markings. Between 1914 and 1917, the Army and Navy Cooperative Society sold 1000 Colt revolvers, a quarter of all private purchases.  

 

Newcombe’s Colt was personalised with his name, rank and regiment engraved on the butt end on either side of the lanyard ring and was carried in a non-Military issue purpose-made leather holster with belt attachments to his own design for use with desert garb.