British Empire in Pas-de-Calais, in one or two words...

[Teebo]

Hello everyone!

As I already explained in another topic a few month ago (here), I'm working on an exhibition about the British Army, in Pas-de-Calais, but not on the front, more about the "back" : GHQ's, billets, wedding... Etc...

We are already pretty close from finishing it (or at least the first version), and we are looking for a title. I hate to admit that we are pretty dry!! One of our major problems is that we feel that "british" WW1 historiography is more centered toward Ypres and Somme, than Pas-de-Calais...

Please help up in our task, not by proposing a title, but by giving us, in a few words, what you think about first when you see "WW1 Pas-de-Calais".

Thank you very much!

Thibault

[ianw]

A home away from home - just like Kent apart from the beer.

[widavies]

Hello everyone!

As I already explained in another topic a few month ago (here), I'm working on an exhibition about the British Army, in Pas-de-Calais, but not on the front, more about the "back" : GHQ's, billets, wedding... Etc...

We are already pretty close from finishing it (or at least the first version), and we are looking for a title. I hate to admit that we are pretty dry!! One of our major problems is that we feel that "british" WW1 historiography is more centered toward Ypres and Somme, than Pas-de-Calais...

Please help up in our task, not by proposing a title, but by giving us, in a few words, what you think about first when you see "WW1 Pas-de-Calais".

Thank you very much!

The gateway to either home heaven or hell!!

Regards

Will Davies

Thibault

[Ron Clifton]

Hello Thibault

How about something like "First Step to War"?

Ron

[Teebo]

Those are already pretty good ideas!

Thanks for your help! Keep them coming!

[Michael Johnson]

"We're now in France"

[truthergw]

The back of the front

[Chris_Baker]

Billets and beer

[Steven Broomfield]

The back of the front

Sounds like something Dame Celia Volestrangler and ageing juvenile Binky Huckaback would appear in.

[truthergw]

I think you may be confusing my suggestion with " The downside of up". Or perhaps not.

[regimentalrogue]

Where "Home" and "Front" converge.

[rendellers]

Close to Home or War

or

Closer to Home or War?

[dycer]

I take a sanguine view of the subject matter.

From a Diary,

4th November 1914-Arrived Le Havre and marched up to rest camp.The following morning Alarm given and we marched from rest camp,halting on roadside where I fell asleep.At the goods entrance of Le Havre Station we were bundled into cattle trucks marked 40 Hommes or 8 Chevans.

(While the transport was being loaded up we just wandered about the yard.Outside the gates,the local youngsters were milling around offering to get things,even offering the services of their sisters.I wanted some bread so I asked a wee boy who said he would go and get me some.I gave him my half crown and this wee character set off across the road and disappeared round the building.I said to myself,"I wonder if he will come back?",and just at that he looked back and thumbed his nose at me.He was gone.)

Fully loaded the trains set off while we sat with our legs dangling out of the sliding doors.

7th November 1914-Detrained and marched to Heuringhem.

14th November 1914-Stayed Heuringhem 3 nights.Marched to Outersteen.There we joined the 22nd Infantry Brigade and marched to Fleurbaix.Today the Battalion went into the trenches.

(We moved into the line in a section what was no line at all at that time,a place called Bois Grenier.One man killed at night by a sniper.These snipers were very,very skilful.I have seen when we just put anything up and the next thing-crack!)

George

[Dragon]

So close.

*****

So near, so far.

******

The last stop / The last stop before

*****

Zenith

*****

Under the shadow

[keithfazzani]

The far side of the ditch

[salesie]

Lions' Den.

Cheers-salesie.

[daggers]

'Behind the Lines' ???

[Simon Jones]

Please help up in our task, not by proposing a title, but by giving us, in a few words, what you think about first when you see "WW1 Pas-de-Calais".

These all seem to be titles which was not what Teebo was asking for.

[Chris_Baker]

Ok. What I think of.

Billets. Estaminets. Beer. Sing-songs. Cafes. Egg and chips. Omelettes. Madame. That girl at Norrent-Fontes. Farms. Barns. Great piles of manure. Route marches. Railways. Base wallahs. Postcards of Bethune. Great conical coal slag heaps.

[Fogarrach]

Out - Looking ahead, nervous, unimpressed, tired.

Return - Tired. Shopping, queueing, looking ahead then home.

[Dragon]

These all seem to be titles which was not what Teebo was asking for.

How do you know that what I wrote are not thoughts? As someone who writes the odd thing, I think in concepts rather than paragraphs. Does it matter whether the thoughts are one word long or three or fifty?

As it happens, I looked up some of the material I have written about my own visits to the area and picked out some of my thoughts. If you want me to post entire pieces, I will. Try:

Mont-Huon Military Cemetery, Le Tréport, Normandy

Mont-Huon is at the edge of the world, the place where your drive across continents from the far side of Asia ends in the white cliffs sliced by a giant’s sword from the Normandy chalk. It is as stone-still as it has been for centuries, unless there’s a farmer trawling his tiny growling tractor across the huge fields which curl over the horizon.

Stand at the gate. Look. To your left, the rough ridge of the chalky lumps of cliffs and a sea-traced line dissecting the eggshell blue into sky and ocean at the horizon. To your right, a sculptural water-tower and a stumpy copse of bristling trees concealing a smallholding. Ahead of you, through the iron gate, two thousand men and a few women from the three hospitals at le Tréport, people who made it thus far towards England and no further.

You can hear a lark beading the sky with liquid crystal notes. You can hear the shushing and pulling of the waves tearing the pebble beach to shingle. You can hear the pained gulls wailing overhead.

The only movement is the cemetery gardener scratching at the daffodil clumps with his hoe.

He greets you quietly. Bonjour, m’sieur’dame.

And returns to his gentle scraping hoeing.

Walk along the lawn path which takes you to the Cross of Sacrifice and carry on past it for three plots. Private Wrench lies on the left as the iron gate swings closed behind you, beyond the Stone of Remembrance on his right, and his dead feet point at the solid classical building at the far end. He is foot to foot across a thin lawn with a row of German soldiers and he directly faces August Nowatzki (8.10.16), Erich Kossow (12.10.16) and Georg Golz (16.10.16).

See. Here is a grave is alone from the rest. Gertrude Chambers, one of the few civilian women buried in a military cemetery. Feel the desolation in her epitaph, so different from the dutiful, restrained phrases chosen by the young soldiers’ devastated families.

Had He asked us

We would say

God, we love her,

Let her stay.

The CWGC says stiffly that she died on 1st December 1918, while visiting her husband who was in Le Tréport military hospital. Imagine. He must have been severely ill for her to have undertaken such a journey from Hackney and crossed the Channel on a heaving boat in the winds of winter to travel through a torn-apart country. She died. Probably from flu. Did he die? I don’t think so. She was 27.

The Cemetery Registers tell you that by July 1916, there were three military hospitals in the tiny town of le Tréport. As the torn-up casualties were hauled or crawled to the dressing stations at the Front, the hospital trains and trucks swayed and crawled and grumbled over the corpses, mud and dead fields of Normandy and Picardy to the breezy villages of billowing white hospital tents on the cliffs overlooking the Channel. Then they returned for more. more, more.

As the main military cemetery rapidly filled up, a new burial place at Mont-Huon was selected. It is just over the fields from a hospital site where you can feel the ghosts among the ruins, hear them cry. You can stand on the cliff top above le Tréport and look across at the original cemetery: row on precise row of perfect white teeth among the chaotic jumble of the darkly ornate French cemetery which seems to be sliding and tumbling down the hillside threatening to engulf the careful rows of British soldiers.

You can turn away from the buzz of the town going about its daily seaside life in the seafood restaurants and the fishing harbour and look out at the timeless changing sea in the wafting breeze and try to think the thoughts of the men who painfully knew that these cliffs were their last stop before the boat to Britain.

So close.

©Gwyneth Roberts

March 2003

[Le_Treport]

their last stop before the boat to Britain.

So close.

Finding it hard to put MY thoughts into words, but this last post is good.

Not for me to decide of course - but these last two pairs of words ('last stop' and 'so close') seem to work for me... in that they refer to going into battle and coming out: the finality of things; the nearness of it all yet the unfamiliarity of it all.

[Teebo]

Thank you all for your help. It really helps our creativity and gave us nice starting point for reflexion.

[27thBN]

Home or Hell....

[angelab]

Bewildering, terrifying

First time going abroad for many (In fact, my grandfather, and my father-in-law, vowed never to go abroad again after their experiences - and they never did).

Picking up garbled words of French, to obtain necessities of life. Good experiences/bad experiences with the locals

Strangeness of how life could continue in towns and villages that were back from the front, as if no war was going on.

Bethune, Bailleul, Arras, Loos - devastated places.

Etaples - hospitals - training - "bull rings"

Boulogne, Calais - transit port for troops, materials, wounded soldiers

Montreuil - HQ - Haig - garrison town

How much war damage had to be repaired afterwards. Resulting 1920s architecture in Arras, Bethune, Bailleul, etc.

Angela

PS Where is the exhibition going to be, Teebo? And when? Sounds interesting.