Occasional Sidenotes - Melinite & Paris during the war

 MELINITE: The French equivalent of lyddite high explosive was called "Melinite". Stewart Newcombe used melinite and guncotton to blow the bridge at Compiegne during the Mons retreat, trampling it into position with his feet after being lowered by ropes inside narrow destruction chambers built into the structure of most French bridges at that time. La Mélinite was also the nickname of the Parisian cancan dancer Jane Avril, the favourite muse of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. (See ’21 December 2011 ‘A young man’s near miss! and 17 September 2011 ‘An Oriental Assembly – Bimbashi Herbert Garland’).

PARIS: During the early weeks of the war Paris lost most of its gaiety and a hush fell upon Montmartre. The first period of mobilisation lasted 21 days during which the town was slowly emptied of its young men, leaving a perceptible thinning on its normally bustling boulevards prompting British war correspondent Philip Gibbs to write: “The life of Paris was being drained of its best blood by this vampire, war.” Under an imposed martial law even cafe terraces were closed, forcing the normally philosophic Parisian inside “like an Englishman” as if he should be ashamed of being seen drinking outside and unable to watch the world go by as he sipped an absinthe from behind his marble-topped table. Indeed, absinthe was banned at a stroke and the cafes had to close their doors by 8pm. No negative news could be broadcast under threat of court martial and even the wounded were forbidden to enter the town lest it should shake the nerve of the city they called "the entrenched camp of Paris". 

Then after Mons came the miracle of the Marne where the German advance was finally halted and a new type of war began to unfold – trench warfare, a bloody stalemate which would last a further four years. Paris breathed a collective sigh of relief, its old vitality gradually restored as the crowds took to the streets and cafes once again. This time, though, there were new faces in the crowd, trench-weary troops from every corner of the French empire mingling with the wounded who were now permitted to enter for treatment at the hands of surgeons who had stood idly by as the war progressed. With the lightly wounded came the one-legged and one-armed men who had already passed through their baptism of fire. Among them were the Tirailleurs Sénégalais, colonial corps of skirmishers, as the noun tirailleurs translates, who were first raised in Senegal but could just as well have come from the Arab and Berber populations of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco. These were joined on the boulevards or the gardens of the Tuileries by the colourful crimson uniforms of the Zouaves, nine regiments of North African infantry, or the azure of the light cavalry known as the Chasseurs d'Afrique (the huntsmen of Africa). 

British officers were also given leave to visit the city. Newcombe is known to have passed through just before he returned to London to join Lawrence in the War Office to complete the maps of Sinai and the Wilderness of Zin and to await Turkey’s decision to enter the war on the side of Germany. By then Paris was back on its feet, its spirit restored and its attractions reopened for business. Philip Gibbs wrote that Paris, without ever losing faith or courage, had “found the heart to laugh sometimes, in spite of all its tears.”

An interesting news item

On the 50th anniversary of the film, Lawrence of Arabia, the Royal Society of Chemists have offered £300 for a 'script' - the missing sequence - describing Major Herbert Garland's contribution to Lawrence's story.  

Garland's contribution to the Hejaz campaign (see: An Oriental Assembly - Bimbashi (Major) Herbert Garland and A young man's near miss!) was indeed highly significant; his invention and application of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) led directly to him using one of his own hair-trigger devices to derail the first train in the desert war on 12 February 1917 at Towaira. The effect of this one action alone must have sent ripples of alarm throughout the Turkish command and would have no doubt given immense confidence to the Arab leaders and their tribal forces at a critical stage of the campaign. 

Not Arabia, but Cabo de Gata, Spain

But Herbert Garland's influence on rail-raiding operations in the Hejaz and later in the northern sphere of operations - by which time he had left the area through ill-health - was not so much in what he invented, itself a considerable achievement in the early months of the campaign, but in the confidence he imparted to novices such as Lawrence and the untrained Bedouin in handling the material and the tools of his trade. Experienced military staff such as Newcombe and Hornby would not have needed much encouragement to pick up the ‘homemade’ devices and run with them. But Garland’s familiarity with high explosives was infectious. "Sappers handled it like a sacrament,” wrote Lawrence, “but Garland would shove a handful of detonators into his pocket with a string of primers, fuse, and fusees and jump gaily on his camel for a week's ride to the Hejaz railway."

This is also Lawrence’s description of working with a Garland mine: “Laying a Garland mine was shaky work, but scrabbling in pitch darkness up and down a hundred yards of railway, feeling for a hair-trigger buried in the ballast, seemed, at the time, an almost uninsurable occupation. The two charges connected with it were so powerful that they would have rooted out seventy yards of track; and I saw visions of suddenly blowing up, not only myself, but my whole force, every moment. To be sure, such a feat would have properly completed the bewilderment of the Turks!”  

Lawrence had come a long way from map-making and compiling reports on troop dispositions from the safety of his office in Cairo. Explosives held no mystery for him now and he was confident in handling something that was normally the domain of a select band of sappers like Newcombe, a confidence which he was to put to effective use when the campaign shifted to the north and where the use of electric plungers took over from Garland’s IEDs.  

Lawrence did not forget how useful and effective explosives could be. Nearly twenty years later, he enlisted Lord Carlow’s help in taking off the top of a tree that was threatening to hit the corner of Clouds Hill cottage if it ever came down. They obtained some gelignite from Portland and lashed it to the offending branch with an old puttee, setting a fuse which his neighbour Pat Knowles was allowed to light. Standing at a safe distance the tree came down exactly as planned except for the added inconvenience of the skylight blowing in with a pretty musical tinkle as glass showered in on the upstairs music room. Lawrence’s only comment was a wry ‘Blast!’ and Knowles was dispatched to get some replacement glass from Bill Bugg’s workshop at Bovington camp while Lord Carlow helped Lawrence saw up the branches into logs. A mixture of school-boy larks mixed with a healthy dose of Garland’s bravura with explosives.

Clouds Hill with skylight

Many years later, during a visit to Clouds Hill, I pointed out to the curator of the cottage that rain water was dripping from the same skylight onto the leather sofa which I helped shift a few inches away from the wall while she ran to get a bucket. Where was old Bill Bugg when you needed him?

It’s a thought-provoking idea to link the Royal Society of Chemists’ new found hero with a major cinematic event and make chemistry ‘sexy’ at the same time - but an interesting story all the same! I wonder what the winning script will have to say about Garland's contribution and how many more minutes will it add to a film that has historically been chopped about; apparently Imax has it down to 45 minutes!  

If you fancy yourself as a scriptwriter see:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-20594835 

But just remember how long it took Michael Wilson to get a credit! 

See: Newcombe and Lawrence on film