Code-name Operation Newcombe

There is evidence that the British contribution to the French military action in Mali has been named after Colonel S.F. Newcombe. Operation Newcombe has been running since January 2013 when the British Prime Minister David Cameron put all sections of the military on alert for an "emergency deployment" to Mali to support French forces who are battling al-Qaeda forces in the northern African nation in an operation the French have themselves code-named Serval. The Royal Airforce has since played a role by deploying two C-17 Globemaster III strategic transport planes of No. 99 Squadron from RAF Station Brize Norton to the French Écreux Air Base on 13 January. Later in the same month the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) deployed a Sentinel R1 Surveillance aircraft to support the French forces. A small party of 40 'advisors' was also sent to Mali but was said to not be involved in combat.

Operation Serval has successfully secured a number of towns and is currently scaling down its activities in the hope that the Malian government forces will be able to take the initiative forward supported by a reduced French presence and a contingent of UN forces. It is not known what prompted the MoD to name the British operation after the colonel other than perhaps in recognition of his past military contribution to his country.

Dorset Treats

West Lulworth

The family gathered for Christmas 2012 in Dorset where we rented a delightful thatched cottage in the picturesque village of West Lulworth. Apart from a few research trips, it was our first time back to the UK for any significant period for over ten years. Happily my daughter had chosen a property that would evoke fond memories of bygone times. Christmas decorations that once adorned our own cottage in a small village three miles outside of Canterbury were shipped back over from Spain to decorate an inglenook fireplace that was eerily reminiscent of one I once owned. The oak bressummer beam, the brickwork, the log pile – it was all there, tricking me into thinking that time had stood still and it was the year 2000 again and the last English Christmas before we embarked on our big adventure. 

Lulworth Cove

A short walk from the cottage took us to the sheltered Lulworth Cove, once a flourishing smugglers’ haunt, and a starting point for some pleasant walks over the hills - in one direction to Durdle Door (on Christmas morning!) and in the other across Army Firing Range Walks to the Arish Mell cliffs which overlook the now inaccessible beach. It was here that T.E. Lawrence swam with his friend, Arthur Russell, the so-called ‘Patroclus’ of the small group of friends who regularly convened at Lawrence’s cottage, Clouds Hill. Russell was one of the pall bearers at Lawrence’s funeral, representing the Tank Corps period of his life alongside Stewart Newcombe as the representative of the Arabian years. 

Dorset and the West Country were mostly under water this winter so a walk to the local pub was more of an accomplishment than merely as a means of seeking entertainment or sustenance. But once reached there’s nothing quite like basking in the amazing breadth and scope of family conversations that comes from sitting for a couple of hours in a traditional pub supping pints of bitter beer while flood water flows through the kitchens!

Clouds Hill

Nearby, Lawrence’s Clouds Hill was looking forlorn and exposed, locked up for the winter and with its gardens shorn of the rhododendrons that once gave it the privacy that Lawrence craved. A sign on the gate read that the National Trust was managing a particularly virulent disease that affects the rhododendron ponticum and has caused extensive damage to trees, garden shrubs and heath plants throughout the west of the UK. Replanting with rhododendron hybrids and other native evergreens is planned to continue throughout the winter. At the moment, it looks as if a tank has veered off course and wrought havoc in the garden, creating an effective fire-guard against the heath fires that were a constant worry during Lawrence’s time. 

I had hoped to gain semi-private access to the cottage and was indeed given dates that unfortunately did not coincide with my time in the UK. The staff at the NT were very helpful in their suggestions but due to the festive holidays we were unable to make it happen. Colonel Newcombe had provided building materials and advice to Lawrence during the refurbishment of the cottage and I wanted to see if I could match his suggestions to the finished improvements. 

Newcombe had innovative ideas on heating homes and buildings. In an era when insulation in properties in the UK was not commonplace, he came up with practical suggestions that were ahead of his time. Where heat efficiency in the construction of buildings could not be improved, he developed a parallel idea that was explained in his paper of August 1954, Comfort and Cost of Heating Persons, Not Room Efficiency, which was sent out to relevant organisations and experts for their consideration and general discussion. Clouds Hill lacked any insulation and was served by two fireplaces and a ready supply of firewood. But to its owner it was ‘an earthly paradise,’ its simplicity reflecting his wishes. As he wrote to the artist and sculptor, Eric Kennington: ‘There cannot ever be a bed, a cooking vessel, or a drain in it - and I ask you... are not such things essential to life... necessities?’ A boiler and a bath was as good as it got for its owner who craved the luxury of hot water.

At Bovington Camp, the Tank Museum’s extensive collection was overwhelming. Its archive staff kindly brought out of storage the John Mansfield Crealock portrait of Newcombe - a real Christmas treat for both Newcombe and I, especially as he rarely sees the light of day.

See also: Recently discovered oil painting of S.F. Newcombe

Whether my family realised it or not, Christmas food shopping in Wareham was always going to be interrupted by a small detour to the local outfitters – A.F. Joy at 35 North Street - to pick up the key to the Saxon-era St. Martin’s Church where Kennington’s reclining effigy of Lawrence is undoubtedly the highlight, although the fragmented frescoes dating from the 12, 16 and 17th Centuries are certainly going to impress. 

Kennington's Effigy

There’s something about having the key to the church door and being responsible for locking up afterwards that reminded me of Derek Nimmo, an actor well-known for playing clerical roles (All Gas and Gaiters, Oh, Brother!, and its sequel Oh, Father! – I once interviewed him for a Dubai magazine as he was a regular visitor with his touring company, InterContinental Entertainment). The key was returned to the manager of the outfitters who is also the Church Warden, Merville Gover – the only man I have ever met that appears completely at ease with a measuring tape around his neck – and who readily gave me a copy of Lawrence’s birth and death certificates (for free) plus for a small fee a copy of Lawrence of Arabia, The Simple Facts by a former mayor of Wareham, Harry Broughton. 

Cheese, pickles and bread bought from the local farmers’ market down by the quay on the swollen River Frome would make a tasty lunch but before that I took the family for tea and crumpets at the Anglebury House Tea Rooms. Little did they know that this is where Lawrence supposedly took tea at a favourite window table. As we were the only people present we made ourselves comfortable and got into conversation with a friendly local who gave us directions to the best butcher in town. 

Reaching Dorchester via detours around flooded roads was necessary for those last minute purchases but with Christmas shopping done, the big day finally arrived. We walked over hills, we ate, we laughed, we slept, we ate again, we visited family, we drank, and then on Boxing Day I revealed a cunning plan – refreshments in the award-winning Moreton Tea Rooms. Nothing to do with Lawrence, honest!

It was raining and St.Nicholas’ Church, Moreton, was empty with a diffused light coming through the superb engraved windows created by Laurence Whistler, a post-Lawrence-era addition following partial destruction of the church by a fleeing German bomber in WW2. 

Constant companions

Lawrence’s grave is located a few metres away down a leafy country lane in an extension to the graveyard. It is approached by a brick path paid for by the T.E. Lawrence Society and can be found at the back of a well-maintained site. Someone had even placed a Welsh flag in a corner of his grave by his feet. The red dragon fluttered stiffly in the chill afternoon wind connecting Lawrence of Arabia, of Oxford, of Carchemish and finally of Dorset to Tremadog in Wales, his place of birth. To the left of the headstone was a bench donated by Arthur Russell over twenty years ago and engraved with the name Patroclus, the constant companion of Achilles in Greek mythology.

For Lawrence, Christmas in the ranks as a single man held little appeal. He once wrote to George Bernard Shaw's wife, Charlotte: 'Mankind punishes himself with such festivals.' Barracks became 'wet' and the men boisterous; Lawrence preferred to take his turn at guard duty to escape the excitement. 

In 1932, Lady Astor gifted him two heat lamps to warm the cottage and keep the damp off his books. The following Christmas he wrote to say how successful they had been. He then described how he had spent this year: ‘On Christmas day it was mild and grey,’ he wrote, ‘so we walked for fourteen miles and dinnered off a tinned chicken. The long walk made it taste good.’ 

Fourteen miles! Perhaps he walked across to the coast, maybe down to Lulworth which was generally off limits without a pass, past 'our' cottage with its smoking chimney to ‘smile at the sea.’ He once complained that it was too cold to bathe in the cove except in the rain. Then there were the gulls ‘questing through the spume’. He wrote: ‘They have the saddest, most cold, disembodied voices in the world.’

Our Christmas was nearly over. The weather had been Dorset weather. Lawrence accurately summed it up: 'wind and rain: rain and wind: wind: rain: and so on.' Corfe, with its castle, had a good pub. Still to be explored were Weymouth, Bournemouth, and Southampton, each with its Lawrence connections. It's easy to be sidetracked but it was time to go home to the sun. Happy days! 

Turkish Delights

During a recent trip to Turkey I was able to identify and visit four locations where Stewart Newcombe was imprisoned as a captive officer in 1917. These were the POW camps at Afyon-Karahisar, Bursa and two in the centre of Istanbul (Constantinople). 

See also: In the steps of Newcombe 

Beyazit Square

One of the prisons in Istanbul occupied what is today the Faculty of Political Sciences at the Istanbul University, the city’s oldest university founded in 1453. The Beyazit campus, with its imposing arched entrance facing Beyazit Square, is located in the heart of old Stamboul, close to all the major historical attractions such as the Hagia Sophia Basilica, the Blue Mosque and next to the Suleymaniye Mosque and the Grand Bazaar. In Newcombe’s time the faculty served as the guard quarters of the Daire-i Umur-ı Askeriye, the Ministry of War of the Ottoman Empire, in what is the main building of the University. The students attending the University today would have little idea of the conditions that prisoners were once kept in.

The second site, the Psamatia Prisoner-of-War Camp on the western outskirts of Stamboul, was formed around a requisitioned church and theological school, the Meryem Ana Ermeni Kilisesi - the Armenian Church of the Virgin Mary - in the Kumkapi district. This was the scene of an audacious escape attempt by Newcombe and fellow officer Francis Yeats-Brown that nearly ended in disaster.

Some 230 kms away, Bursa had been the first capital city of the Ottomans and had the nickname "Green Bursa" because of the surrounding greenery and forests. It was a well laid out city founded by Orhan Gazi in 1326 and still retains the first examples of typical Ottoman architectural style. 

Bursa Clock Tower

It was at the top of the famous Bursa Clock Tower in Tophane district that Newcombe and Elsie Chaki, his Franco-Turkish escape accomplice and bride-to-be, secretly met to plan his getaway. Bursa was famous then as it is now for its natural hot springs so it would have been entirely plausible for Elsie to visit the town to take the recuperative waters. The clock tower is conveniently situated on a high plateau overlooking the town from where Newcombe was able to see all the way to the coast through a wide valley between low lying hills to the north and the foothills of the Uludağ, "The Great Mountain", to the south of the historic centre of Bursa. It was a route he would come to know very well in the future. With the escape route agreed upon, their future together was sealed.

The highlight of my visit to the city arose from a misunderstanding with the owner of a restaurant on the edge of the gardens opposite the clock tower. My Turkish is minimal at best and my new-found friend’s English began and ended in mastering an equally minimal vocabulary necessary to his trade. Between the two of us we managed to contrive a calamitous misunderstanding that ultimately led to much hand-shaking and hugs all round from the proprietor and his many sons, to each of whom I was introduced with the term: “this is the Osmanli.” I was fortunate also in that 50% of the bill for my sumptuous feast was waived and I became the grateful recipient of gifts such as a fridge magnet, place mat and pens depicting the name and logo of the establishment. 

Entrance to Tower

It seems that in trying to explain my interest in the clock tower and gardens in my faltering Turkish it was somehow assumed that I was a relative of the colonel and the woman he later married, thus making me part Turkish. Not wishing to pass off as an imposter in a foreign country, especially of the man I’m writing a book about, but not having the necessary skills to pull back the ensuing disaster, I was grateful when they stopped taking photos of me standing by the tower and I was at last able to bid them a fond farewell, albeit with a promise to return, as one does. 

The owner and staff at the Haci Dayi Restaurant may not be able to read this, but if someone translates it for them, then I’m sorry - and I will return! You have a wonderful restaurant. As I look at the much-prized fridge magnet staring at me accusingly from where it is stuck on my angle-poise lamp, I ask myself: “Do I feel guilty?” But then I am reminded that Bursa was where Newcombe and Elsie hoodwinked their Turkish guards and where they planned his final and ultimately successful escape from captivity. As Elsie might have said: "Non, je ne regrette rien".

In memoriam A.J.D

A.J.D.

A clan elder passed away today (Thursday 6 December 2012) and although he would not have wanted to take up space on pages devoted to Stewart Newcombe's life he is remembered here because he had a keen interest and wide knowledge in all things connected to Newcombe and T.E. Lawrence. 

A.J.D worked in the Middle East for much of his life and had travelled over much of the same ground as Lawrence. He knew Arabia, the Arabs and a lot about most things and passed on his wisdom and experience to his girls, all of whom he was intensely proud. He was deeply supportive of this project, always insightful in his comments and liked nothing better than to probe the depths of my ignorance which only spurred me on to find the answers to impress him. 

He lived a life that can be best described by relating it to something that Lawrence had once said about the weather. During a break in their archaeological work at Carchemish, a Hittite city located on what is today the border between Turkey and Syria, Lawrence and C.L. Woolley were invited to join Newcombe’s surveying teams to explore the Wilderness of Zin region in today’s Southern Israel. This is how Lawrence described the differences he found in the temperature: “The Dead Sea is hot, the Red Sea is hot: this oasis is cool, and Carchemish is snowbound. Don’t you envy us our alternate frizzle and freeze?” 

The maverick spirit that was A.J.D also lived a life of "frizzle and freeze" - in more ways than one. From the deserts of Arabia to his final resting place in the home he built himself out of wood in the wilds of Alaska, he lived life to the extreme. He was equally at home in the boardrooms of major petroleum companies or at the helm of his own fishing trawlers off the west coast of Scotland as he was in hunting and fishing in the place he called the last paradise on earth.

This poem by Robert Louis Stevenson could have been written for him: 

Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the Hunter home from the hill.

The night he died the temperature had been as low as -22 C with a slight flurry of snow drifting through the Matanuska-Susitna Valley to settle on the peaks of the Talkeetna Mountains overlooking Hatchers Pass. At the end, inside the place he could finally call home - with its Persian carpets, Arabic coffee pots and mementos from his Middle Eastern journeys - he was surrounded by the warmth and love from his family and a few friends – rather more ‘frizzle’ than ‘freeze’ you could say.

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

S.F. NEWCOMBE (1878 - 1956) - CHRONOLOGY: Part One

SFN's mother, Maria Louisa (née Prangley)

 

1878 - 9 July - Born at Brecon, Wales.

The Newcombe brothers (SFN second on right)

1886 - Newcombe's father, Edward, dies and he is sent to board at Christ's Hospital School with younger brother Harley.

At Christ's Hospital

1893 - Attended Felstead School.

1896 - Enters the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich as a Gentleman Cadet. Awarded the Sword of Honour at the RMA.

1898 - Commissioned into the Royal Engineers at Chatham.

Into the R.E.

1900 - Joins the 29th Fortress Company at Cape Town, South Africa.

1901 - Joins the Egyptian Army and posted to Sudan. Reconnoitred route for proposed railway east and west of the Nile.

Queen Victoria dies on 22 January.

1907 - Journeyed to upper waters of the Nile to recon and discuss with Belgians possible rail route from Lado Enclave to Belgian Congo.

1909 - Sends secret report on Alexandretta and Baghdad Railway to the War Office.

1911 - Preliminary survey of railway from Abyssinia to Khartoum.

Leaves Egyptian Army. Short spell in the War Office.

1912 - Longmoor Military Railway Training Camp.

1913 - Begins surveys in area of Beersheba, Palestine.

1914 - Surveys in South West Palestine south to Egyptian border. For six weeks he and his men are accompanied by C.L. Woolley and T.E. Lawrence, two archaeologists from the British Museum. Addresses the 49th Annual Meeting of the Palestine Exploration Fund.

Outbreak of World War 1

August 1914 - At Compiegne during the retreat from Mons. Successfully blows up the bridge.

Recalled from France he travels with T.E. Lawrence from Marseilles to Alexandria and then onto Cairo by train.

1915 - Appointed as Commander in the 2nd Australian Division Royal Engineers during the Dardanelles campaign.

1916 - Awarded DSO for rescue attempt in a tunnelling operation.

Returns to the Western Front and distinguishes himself during the battle for Pozieres Ridge.

Sherif Hussein of Mecca launches the Arab Revolt.

1917 - Joins T.E. Lawrence in the Hejaz as head of the Military Mission. Commences raids against the Hejaz Railway.

Newcombe's arrival at Umlej, January 1917

In late October he takes command of a small mobile force and initiates a raid behind enemy lines during the Third Battle of Gaza. His force is overwhelmed and he and his men are taken into captivity.

1918 - Escaped from prison camp at Brusa with assistance from Elizabeth Chaki. Returns to Constantinople to help broker peace negotiations with the Turks.

1918 - 11 November - The Armistice comes into effect.

1919 - Briefly joins Lawrence at the Paris Peace Conference.

1919 - 15 April - Marries Elizabeth (Elsie) Chaki in the Registry Office at Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. 

Elizabeth (Elsie) Newcombe, née Chaki (1919)

On the following day the couple are blessed in a religious service in St. Margaret's Church in the grounds of Westminster Abbey. St. Margaret’s, known as ‘the Church on Parliament Square’, is a 12th-century church next to Westminster Abbey. It’s also sometimes called ‘the parish church of the House of Commons’.