During the opening months of the war, Stewart Newcombe’s skills were needed not in Arabia but in France where the British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.) had landed in August 1914 in support of the French war plan. With no prior knowledge or involvement in the development of French strategic aims, the British forces soon became tied down in a faulty strategy that was beset with misunderstandings and doomed from the start.
With great credit, the French army had
been largely reconstructed and reorganised following the disastrous Battle of
Sedan in 1870, which had seen its army and its last emperor, Napoleon III,
captured during the Franco-Prussian War. Remodelled on German lines of
conscription, France adopted a decentralised approach to recruitment and
training. At the start of the First World War, it had mobilised nearly 4
million men into 47 divisions under its Commander-in-Chief, General Joffre. By
the end of the war it would call up over twice that number, including nearly
half a million colonial troops. Its original battle scheme, Plan XVII, was
pitted against Germany’s Schlieffen Plan and unfortunately it came largely
undone in the opening moves which saw the German army invade France through
Belgium, a move that the French was convinced would not happen due to the
British treaty guaranteeing Belgium neutrality, the so-called “scrap of paper”
as Germany insisted on belittling the agreement. France was outwitted and out
of position having focussed too heavily on retaking Alsace Lorraine which had
been in German hands since 1871. Thereafter, it was a matter of reorganisation
and redeployment, reacting to the unique conditions of a modern war, with huge
armies supported by new technology ultimately leading to stalemate
and bloody attrition during four years of static trench warfare.
The British mobilise
The British mobilise
Within days of mobilisation, Newcombe
took command of the 8th R.E. Railway Company, one of two regular
companies based at the Longmoor Military Camp in Hampshire which were
responsible for maintaining and providing the British Army with its railway
transportation requirements. His second-in-command was Captain E. Woodhouse who
by the end of the war would become Assistant Director of Railways at the War
Office. With 30 tons of technical stores to be transported across to Le Havre
in France, the Railway companies were allocated just five days in which to mobilise
in readiness for embarkation.
When their ship reached Le Havre 8th
Company found they had very little to do as a prior agreement meant that the French
were tasked with carrying out anything to do with railway transport in support of
the original expeditionary force. Spending two or three days here and there, Newcombe’s
company criss-crossed the country by train with very little substantive work to
occupy them. Woodhouse later recalled that Newcombe was only with the company for
a short time after they reached France, ‘but was a most valuable advance agent;
without him I think it is doubtful whether we would have got any railway jobs
to do.’
After settling his men to whatever
useful projects he could find, Newcombe’s impatience led him to seek out work
more suited to his own individual skills. Ahead of him, the ensuing
difficulties encountered by the B.E.F. in the face of aggressive manoeuvres by
the Germans were quickly leading to general disarray within the British forces.
It was a fast-moving and volatile situation and one that Newcombe relished for
the opportunity to get in at the thick of the action.
The retreat of the B.E.F. from Mons to
the Marne at the end of August 1914 called
for the destruction of several key river crossings. Eager to be involved in any
action after weeks of camp duties, Newcombe positioned himself in the vanguard of the retreat to assist in
slowing up the advancing enemy.
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| The Great Retreat 1914 |
A continuous crescendo of guns
accompanied the weary retreat of the British Expeditionary Force as it stumbled
down the roads of Northern France under a blazing summer sun. During the
thirteen days of retreat it has been estimated that the infantry averaged about
four hours sleep in twenty-four, and the cavalry only three. General Edmund
Allenby was the Commander of the Cavalry Division, consisting of four Cavalry
brigades, with two brigades of horse artillery and a field squadron of Royal
Engineers and signallers. The cavalry’s role, traditional in any retreat, was
to hold up the advancing enemy forces where mobility and endurance were best
suited to a rearguard action. As events unfolded, Allenby became hard pressed
to deal with the confused and ever-changing military situation as well as the
difficulty of the terrain which included a dense impenetrable forest laying
diagonally across his line of retreat. This had the effect of forcing the
cavalry closer into the flanks of the German columns leaving little room for
manoeuvre.
Inevitably, mistakes were made but
Allenby remained resolute in his own abilities and in those of his men and
horses who were continually in action, either occupying rearguard positions or
under heavy shell fire. Unable to engage in close combat where their
superiority would have told, the British cavalry withstood a steady barrage
from long-range enemy guns and became somewhat scattered as a result. A
constant stream of men, horses and guns made their way south along the rutted
tracks and roads, their backs to the enemy and
closing doors where possible behind them.
The bridge at Compiegne
The bridge at Compiegne
One line of retreat across the magnificent stone bridge at Compiegne
was to be permanently closed by the Royal Engineers in a spectacular demolition
that would prove to be a classic example of the art of bridge blowing.
Following a request by the French the demolition was ordered to take place on
the morning of August 31, allowing time for the Commander-in-Chief to evacuate
his headquarters which were in the town. The imperial architecture of Compiegne
confirmed its status as a royal town strategically located on the River Oise at
the heart of the Picardy region and a vital crossing point for the retreating armies
emerging from the cover of the surrounding forests. It was in these same
forests that Jeanne d’Arc was captured in 1430 by the Burgundians while
attempting to free the town before she was herself sold to the English. The
Imperial Palace of Compiegne was where the royal entourage of Napoléon III and
the Empress Eugenie held their summer court to the delight of their eclectic
guest lists which included the great writers, artists and musicians of the day.
The young Ned Lawrence - as T.E. Lawrence was known to his family - was also familiar with the town and would have crossed
its bridge just six years before on one of his long bicycle tours of France in
search of castles while studying medieval military architecture as part of his
History degree at Oxford. On this late summer’s day, remnants of the
British army streamed through the town as the statuettes at the top of the
tower of the 16th Century L’Hôtel de Ville struck continually on the
quarter-hour, marking a constant and rhythmic toll to accompany the weary
footfall of the retreating army.
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| Compiegne Bridge in happier times |
Lieutenant B. K. Young of the 9th
Field Company, accompanied by his section Sergeant and eight sappers on
bicycles, arrived at 5p.m. on the 30th to prepare the bridge,
calculating that it would require a charge of two and a half tons of gun-cotton
for the haunches of each arch. As the bridge at Compiegne had three arches
supported by two massive piers it would prove extremely fortunate when only one
ton of explosive could be found supplemented by a ton of French melinite. While
they made their preparations Young remained unaware that he had made a gross
miscalculation.
Brigadier-General Fowke arrived on the
scene soon after, accompanied by Captain Newcombe. Together with Young they
inspected the site and Newcombe was left in charge of the preparations which
would have to be carried out throughout the coming night. A French officer
handed Newcombe a set of plans of the bridge which indicated where the
demolition chambers had been placed, a feature of many bridges in the region.
Newcombe set the sappers to work in removing the pavé setts to expose
the chambers, of which there were three in each pier, each one 18 inches in
diameter and 30 feet deep, going well below the water line. It was into these
cramped chambers that the explosives had to be placed, a dangerous task that
Newcombe elected to personally undertake. As he could not bend his body in the
narrow shaft his team lowered him by rope into each of the six chambers in turn
with 400lbs of gun-cotton tied up in sandbags and with three slabs prepared
with primers and detonators in each bag. He then tamped these into position
with his feet. About a hundred pounds of melinite was added as a sort of insurance
for each charge, and finally a layer of three sandbags filled with gravel to
complete the filling. The work was long and arduous and it was daybreak on the
morning of the 31st August when the fuzes and leads, prepared
by Young, were finally placed across the pavé, two sets of each, in grooves
which were then filled with sand and gravel.
A lucky escape!
A lucky escape!
Throughout this preparation the
roadway had to be kept open for endless lines of traffic escaping the oncoming
German army. All through the night a steady stream of over-laden vehicles of
every kind crossed the bridge unaware that Newcombe and his men were working
below in the darkness. But by dawn all was ready. Despite his exhaustion, Newcombe
sent the Sergeant and the sappers back to find their company taking with them
the surplus gun-cotton, while he remained behind with Young to blow the bridge.
After all his hard work he was not prepared to miss the fruits of his labour.
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| British Cavalry passing through Compiegne |
The orders were that the demolition
was to be made as soon as all the cavalry had crossed. Finally, at 11 a.m. a
message was received from General Allenby saying that his division was clear.
Newcombe brushed seniority to one side and gave the honour to Lieutenant Young
who wasted no time in attaching the wooden handle to the exploder. Newcombe
made one last check, running his eyes along the lines of fuzes which ran from
the box and fanned out across the bridge before disappearing into the
demolition chambers. At last, he nodded his satisfaction as Young prepared to press
home the charge.
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| WW1 Exploder Box |
Just at that moment, as Young pushed
down on the ‘T’ shaped plunger, a car full of fleeing refugees raced onto the
unguarded bridge, hurtling towards the two startled engineers and into imminent
danger. As the plunger buried itself up to the hilt in the blasting box, a
miracle occurred and the explosion failed, the fuzes not detonating. The car
raced off the end of the bridge and disappeared into the town, the occupants unaware
of how close they came to an almost certain death. The two men, baffled but
immensely relieved by the mishap, ignored the usual rule of leaving a half an
hour delay in returning to the scene and set to immediately. Within a few
moments the alternative six foot fuze did its job – but all too suddenly, burning
rapidly in only 30 seconds, the enclosed flame racing along its length without
heed to the safety margins set by the two sappers. This time the effect was
spectacular. Newcombe and Young watched in amazement as the whole structure
simply vanished in almost complete silence, with the result that there was little
debris showing above the water line and no damage to the windows or structure
of two hotels, the Hôtel Du Pont-Neuf and the Hôtel de Flandre, which were situated a few
metres from either end of the bridge.
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| Newcombe's handiwork |
It was later described with some pride
in the History of the Corps of the Royal Engineers as one of the
cleanest demolitions of the war. In its typically unflappable tone, belying the
inherent dangers and the possibility of a calamitous outcome, the Journal was pleased to announce: ‘The happy
escape of the refugee car, followed by the complete success of the demolition,
was a sufficiently satisfying climax to a very hard night’s work.’
Turkey enters the war
Turkey enters the war
Early on the morning of 29th
October 1914 Turkey formally entered the war on the side of Germany when its fleet
attacked the Russian Black Sea ports of Sebastopol, Theodosia, Novorossiysk and
Odessa. It took two days for the rumours to be confirmed during which a twelve
hour deadline expired offering a final olive branch to the Turkish Government
requesting them to dismiss German naval and military missions and pull back
from the brink of war. It was a futile hope and at 5.05p.m on 31 October, the
order went out from the Admiralty to all ships, ‘Commence hostilities at once
against Turkey.’ The Ottoman Empire would not live to see another day of peace.
With Turkey now in the war Newcombe’s
role on the Western Front was over, for the time being. After settling matters
with the 8th Railway Company he returned to London to complete his
Sinai and Palestine maps and reports, sharing the same offices as T.E. Lawrence in
the M.O.4 department at the War Office in Whitehall. Lawrence was now busy
preparing the maps and the reports on the Wilderness of Zin and the Sinai
Peninsula for printing. On 3 December 1914, Lawrence informed W.J. Crace, the
Honorary Secretary of the Palestine Exploration Fund that he and Newcombe had
been ‘uncomfortably busy’ wrapping up their affairs before heading out to the East.
On 9 December, Newcombe and Lawrence
set off across France by train to the port of Marseilles and the quayside at La
Joliette from where the Messageries Maritime steamships departed for the East.
Taking a 2nd Class passage to Port Said they reached Cairo on
Tuesday 15 December where they were later joined by other specialists in Middle
Eastern affairs who had been ordered to Egypt.
Just before he left, Lawrence wrote to
a friend, Mrs Winifred Fontana, who had recently fled Syria following the
Turkish declaration, asking her if there were any commissions he could do for
her in Aleppo the following spring. It seems that Lawrence, in common with many
of his contemporaries, did not think that the war would last for many more
months.
FIRST ARTICLE IN THE CENTENARY OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR SERIES
