Brig-Gen A G Thomson

[Phil Andrews]

Whilst Walking Arras with Paul Reed (the man, not the book!) a couple of years ago I took a photo of one of the graves in Faubourg d'Amiens Cemetery, of one Arthur Yalden Graham Thomson, MC & bar. Nothing too amazing to have MC & bar, but a little unusual, hence the photo. CWGC identifies his father as Brig Gen A Graham Thomson, CB, CMG, RE. A bit of digging around on the interweb gave me further info about his time at Etaples, particularly the Mutiny there, but I also came across an auctioneer's site which handled the sale of the Brig-Gen's medals recently (£4300). They were sold "with a quantity of research" some of which might give a better insight into the man's character. I'll quote it all here to save everyone looking it up but have the link too should you wish to see it.

An important C.B., Great War C.M.G. group of ten awarded to Brigadier-GeneralA. G. Thomson, Royal Engineers, who was Base Commandant at Etaples at the timeof the mutiny: quickly hushed up by the authorities, details of the rebelliononly really emerged to a wider audience in the B.B.C. series "The MonocledMutineer", the story of Percy Toplis - had not Thomson relented to the latter'sdemands, a wider rebellion may well have infected the ranks of the entire Army:arguably, however, to Thomson and his cohorts must fall shared responsibilityfor running a brutal regime that came to its bloody conclusion in those darkdays of September 1917 - in an orgy of destruction, murder and rape bythousands of discontented troops

The Most Honourable Order of the Bath, C.B. (Military) Companion's breastbadge, converted for neck wear, silver-gilt and enamel, in its Garrard &Co. case of issue; The Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George,C.M.G., Companion's neck badge, silver-gilt and enamel; Egypt and Sudan1882-89, dated reverse, 2 clasps, Tel-el-Kebir, Suakin 1885 (Lieut. A. G.Thomson, 17th C[o. R.]E.), partial loss of unit details due to bruising;Queen's South Africa 1899-1902, 5 clasps, Cape Colony, Orange Free State,Johannesburg, Diamond Hill, Belfast (Lt. Col. A. G. Thomson, R.E.); King'sSouth Africa 19001-02, 2 clasps, South Africa 1901, South Africa 1902 (Lt. Col.A. G. Thomson, R.E.); 1914 Star (Col. A. G. Thomson, C.B.); British War andVictory Medals, M.I.D. oak leaf (Col. A. G. Thomson); Coronation 1911;Khedive's Star 1882, official correction to rank on the K.S.A., the Egypt Medalpitted and bruised, nearly very fine, the remainder very fine or better (10)£3000-4000 Footnote

C.B. London Gazette 19 June 1911.

C.M.G. London Gazette 14 January 1916.

Andrew Graham Thomson was born in February 1858, the son of SurgeonMajor-General Thomson, onetime an Honorary Physician to Queen Victoria andEdward VII.

Commissioned in the Royal Engineers in January 1877, he joined the 17th Company,R.E. at Aldershot and proceeded to Malta in 1880, and thence, in 1882, toEgypt, where he witnessed active service. Initially employed at Alexandria andRamleh, he was among the first troops to be landed in Ismailia, where he actedas A.D.C. to the C.R.E. before rejoining his Company in time for the battle ofTel-el-Kebir (Medal & clasp). And in the subsequent Suakin operations of1884, he was present at the actions of Hasheen and the affair at Tamaai and, insupport of the Scots Guards, held the furthest advance post on the line toBerber at Tambuk (clasp). He was mentioned in despatches.

Having then been advanced to Captain in January 1888 and to Major in August1895, Thomson witnessed further active service in South Africa, taking part asa Divisional C.R.E. in operations in the Orange Free State, including theactions at Vet River and Zand River, and in the Transvaal, including the actionat Belfast. He was also responsible for the construction of the firstblockhouse at Komati Point, but was invalided with malaria in July 1902(Queen's Medal & 5 clasps; King's Medal & 2 clasps). Again mentioned indespatches, he was also given the Brevet of Lieutenant-Colonel.

Confirmed in the latter rank in April 1903 and as a substantive Colonel inApril 1908, Thomson was appointed Commandant of the R.M.A. Woolwich in thelatter year, in which capacity he was awarded his C.B. and served until 1912,when he was placed on half-pay after attracting the wrath of Lord Roberts, whofelt he had been too lenient to his young charges at "The Shop": an experiencethat no doubt contributed to the harsher regime he put in place at Etaples.

Base Commandant - Etaples

Recalled on the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914, Thomson was quicklyembarked for France as Commandant, Lines of Communication, in which capacity hewas awarded his C.M.G. and thrice mentioned in despatches (London Gazettes 4and 9 December 1914 and 1 January 1916 refer), prior to taking up hisappointment at Base Camp at Etaples in the temporary rank of Brigadier-General.Of subsequent events no better source may be quoted than The Monocled Mutineer,by William Allison and John Fairley, from which definitive history thefollowing extracts have been taken:

On the brutal regime:

'Etaples displayed the crucifixion of the British soldier daily in fearfultriptych: the perfunctory notes of the 'Last Post' sounded like an endless loopof dismal muzak on the brow of the hill; at its foot was the parade of victimslashed by their wrists in Army Field Punishment No. 1; and in the deadeningsand and silt of the beach beyond, hundreds, thousands of troops were abusedand mauled by instructors whose violence and sadism were to be remembered evenafter some of the horrors of the battlefields themselves faded from the mind.This was the British Army's No. 1 training camp. Its regime was so sickeninglybrutal that men were to plead to go up the line and face the enemy.'

On executions, as related by Harry Silvester, later the famous dance orchestraleader:

'The first man I had to help to kill was a private in my own regiment, theArgyll and Sutherland Highlanders, a fact which filled me with even greatershame. He was said to have fled in the face of the enemy.

We marched to a quarry outside Etaples at first dawn. The victim was bought outfrom a shed and led struggling to a chair to which he was bound and a whitehandkerchief placed over his heart as our target area.

Mortified by the sight of the poor wretch tugging at his bonds, twelve of us,on the order, raised our rifles unsteadily. Some of the men, unable to facetheir ordeal, had got themselves drunk overnight. They could not have aimedstraight if they had tried, and, contrary to popular belief, all twelve gunswere loaded. The condemned man had also been plied with whisky during thenight, but he had remained sober through fear.

The tears were rolling down my cheeks as he went on attempting to free himselffrom the ropes attaching him to the chair. I aimed blindly and when thegunsmoke had cleared away we were further horrified to see that, althoughwounded, the intended victim was still alive. Still blindfolded, he wasattempting to make a run for it still strapped to the chair. The blood wasrunning freely from a chest wound. An officer in charge stepped forward to putthe finishing touch with a revolver to the poor man's temple.

He had only once cried out and that was when he shouted the one word 'mother'.He could not have been very much older than me. We were told later that in facthe had been suffering from shell-shock, a condition not recognised by the armyin 1917.

By the time I had taken part in four more such dawn executions, I did not haveto feign illness. Like the other executioners. I was screaming in my sleep andphysically ill every day. I was put into a hospital and strapped down to thebed to prevent me running away. I was then sent away from Etaples and all itshorrors to the Italian Front. The simple business of being twice wounded therewas less injurious by far than all the mental scars that Etaples left with mefor the rest of my life.

Small wonder that Etaples was to be the scene of a frantic wild uprising – aneruption that was to turn into six days of open mutiny with 100,000 menimmobilised in the vital week before the start of the Passchendaele offensive,with thousands of them hunting down police and officers, and infantry andcavalry pulled out of the line to put them down. Etaples also had one uniqueingredient to contribute to the poteen of rebellion; besides humiliation anddegradation inside the base, there was defiance outside it ... '

Mutiny - Sunday 7 September 1917

'When the mutiny came to Etaples, the combination of the Scots and theAustralians, the special grievances of the New Zealanders, the oratory of PercyToplis, the common hatred of the Red Caps and Canaries [instructors], theburgeoning populism, purveyed by papers like John Bull, were together to provea deadly mix. For six days Brigadier-General Thomson and his staff would standhelplessly by and watch the old order collapse and threaten the fightingability of the British Army, just as their ally on the Eastern Front, Russia,was about to be levered out of the war for good by revolution ... '

On Thomson being cast into the River Canche:

'A group of a hundred mutineers had crashed into the midst of an officers'meeting and summarily ordered them to their feet ... The mutineers then loadedCommandant Thomson and a dozen officers into two trucks and set off with themdown the road to the bridge over the River Canche. The little convoy coveredthe half-mile from the commandant's office at a slow pace so as to give thecheering men lining the route a good view of what was going on. On the bridgethe two lorries stopped. There was a moment of silence, then the trucks tippedup and slid the top echelon of the British Army's No. 1 Base over the parapetand into the river - another incident unrecorded in the official diary. By thetime Thomson and his senior officers hit the water and were swimming for theirlives, the banks of the River Canche were crowded with hundreds of men yellingand hooting derisively ... '

On destruction and murder:

'About 1,500 mutineers had succeeded in making it over the railway into thetown, leaving a trail of havoc and devastation. When the troops roared in, theFrench customers in the cafes and estaminets had fled to their homes, and therestaurant owners had closed their doors only to have them smashed down by theinvaders.

Those who could not crash their way into the cafes because of the crowdsalready jammed inside had barrels of beer and wine rolled out to them in thesquare. Street stall-holders whose business it was to turn out soggy potatochips on paraffin-heated braziers had disappeared along with the entire localpopulation. Behind locked doors they listened in terror to the bedlam in thesquare.

A mixture of threats and pleas by equally terrified military policemen and BullRing instructors had resulted in some of these fugitives being given refuge byhouseholders in streets just off the square. Inside, they huddled in littlegroups too scared to speak as the rebels rampaged long into the night. In therue Saint-Pierre the door of one house was smashed down by Australians andScots who found a military policeman and a Canary hiding under the same bed.Outside the bedroom door, an elderly French fisherman and his wife, dressed intheir customary all-black Sunday-night clothes, stood weeping as the fugitiveswere kicked and battered and left for dead.

When the potato supply ran out back in the square, the braziers were overturnedand the paraffin used to set fire to the barrels that had been drained. Tothese bonfires were added piles of chairs and tables taken from both inside andoutside the cafes. The centre of Etaples was a wreck by the time the firstofficers' patrol could get there at about 11 p.m. ... '

On rape:

'Fifteen rebels made their way to Paris Plage in a stolen lorry, havingcaptured two young W.A.A.Cs en route. The attempts of the girls to scream forhelp were stifled when the underwear, of which they had been stripped, wasstuffed into their mouths. The lorry halted for two hours in the woodlands ofLe Touquet where the girls were carried out, forced to the ground andsystematically ravaged by men behaving like sexually starved animals.

The girls were left half-naked by the roadside when the mutineers resumed theirride into Paris Plage, yelling that they would be back for more after they hadhad a drink. But, before that threat could be carried out, a bunch of rebels onfoot caught up with the two women who were again forced to submit to a similarordeal. Bruised, battered and beaten, as well as repeatedly raped, they wererescued early the following morning ... '

On Thomson's first confrontation with Percy Toplis:

'By now Thomson was desperate. He took to the back seat of his long, open staffcar on a tour of the areas of the camp that he had never seen before, stoppingoff wherever mobs of mutineers were gathered to deliver speeches that startedoff in a blustering manner, but finished in conciliatory fashion when he sawthat threats were not going to work.

By 6.30 on the Monday evening, when Thomson ran into the Toplis mob on theriver road, the much-shaken, confused general thought that they were on theirway to raid the detention camp when in fact they had already been there. He wasattempting to close the door of an empty stable. His car had to stop becauseToplis and his men were blocking its route. Thomson stood up in the back onlyto have his opening sentence drowned in a storm of abuse. He got as far as, 'How dare you call yourselves soldiers, British soldiers…' when the mob closedin on his vehicle and started to rock it violently. He was forced to sit downagain.

Toplis had dressed for the part. That is to say, this was one of the fewoccasions when he was actually attired in a private's uniform and not that ofan officer. He held up his hand, signalling for silence from his followers.'What a sight it was to see the commanding officer there with tears in his eyesbegging of us to let this trouble subside,' recalls a Lancashire Fusilier,George Souter of Ardwick,' and appealing for us to keep up the tradition of theBritish Army.'

The sight of the ashen-faced general, sitting now in the back seat, encouragedToplis to climb on the running-board and dictate the terms for ending themutiny. It was for Toplis, of course, an entirely academic exercise since hehad no intention of enduring the Etaples base in any shape or form. He wassimply revelling in the revolution. The revolt would end, he told Thomson, onlywhen the town of Etaples was thrown open to the troops, when the Bull Ring hadbeen closed, the Military Police removed and food and general conditionsimproved. Thomson turned to make his chauffeur drive on, but he was forced tohear out the private's demands.

He made no reply at that moment, but in the end he would be forced to concedeevery condition Toplis had laid down. It had been a short, sharp speech and,after he had delivered it, Toplis stepped down from the car and ordered his mento clear the way for it to continue...'

On the mutiny reaching crisis point:

'Wednesday 12 September, was to be crisis day for Thomson, Toplis and theBritish Army. Three days of determined rebellion had made it impossible todismiss the uprising as a mere explosion of anger, or the effects of drink, orthe New Zealanders giving vent to frustration – all explanations which Thomsonhad come up with. It was impossible for Haig to countenance an impasse acrosshis main route for reinforcements to the front. The battle for Passchendaelewas due to start in eight days. There had to be a showdown ... '

On Thomson's final confrontation with Toplis:

'At three o'clock Thomson, in despair, saw a thousand men brush contemptuouslypast the pickets and march off to the pleasures of Paris Plage. He decided tomake a last personal attempt to turn the tide. Once again he called round hisopen staff car and drove slowly up towards the mutiny headquarters in the ScotsIBD. A meeting was still in progress, but the news of Thomson's arrival endedit abruptly.

'All of the Scots crowded round,' says Jack Musgrove. 'In fact they were goingto pull him out of the car. They wanted guarantees before they would settle therebellion. They had to keep all the police away, close the Bull Ring, open upthe town of Etaples. The general just stood there. And suddenly it was allgranted. Just like that.'

Faced with the bitterness and determination of the mutineers, Thomsoncollapsed. Toplis and his followers had won.

Written Orders were posted round the camp saying that Etaples would be openuntil 10.00 p.m. All troops would henceforth go straight through to the frontwithout any training at the Bull Ring. The police would not return.

Ironically, Thomson got back to his office to find the message he had hoped forwaiting for him – but too late. The 19th Cavalry Hussars were ready to movewith machine-guns at an hour's notice. And the 1st Honourable ArtilleryCompany, with 360 men under Lieutenant-Colonel Cooper, would be arriving at6.30 p.m....'

Reduced to Colonel and placed on half-pay in January 1918, Thomson's servicerecord received the following official endorsement: 'From the Field Marshal: nolonger fit to exercise command in the very important position of BaseCommandant Etaples and have found it necessary to appoint a younger man tosucceed him.' However, with events at Etaples seemingly under wraps, Thomsonwas restored to his old rank and sent to Holland to command our P.O.Ws, many ofthem ex-Royal Naval Division men. Once again, however, his disciplinarianapproach appears to have caused some upset, though in fairness the BritishMinister at The Hague later wrote to thank him for his good work, saying thathe had been a great help in bringing about friendly relations between the twocountries.

Thomson, who was placed on the Retired List in February 1919, retired to Veveyin Switzerland, where he died in 1926; sold with a quantity of research and a paperback copy of The Monocled Mutineer.

And if that wasn't enough for him, he lost his son 2 months after the mutiny. Interesting comment near the beginning though, that he was Commandant at the RMA in Woolwich "until 1912, when he was placed on half-pay after attracting the wrath of LordRoberts, who felt he had been too lenient to his young charges at "The Shop":an experience that no doubt contributed to the harsher regime he put in placeat Etaples."

[charlesmessenger]

Interesting, but the quote from Victor (Not Harry!) Silvester should not be believed. Unfortunately for him, his service record has survived and shows that he never served with the British Army in France. The only times that he might have set foot in the country were in autumn 1916 en route to join G M Trevelyan's ambulance in Italy and on his return to UK shortly before the end of 1917. True, he did enlist in the 2nd London Scottish in November 1914, aged 14 and was not reclaimed by his father as being underage until February 1916. In September 1916 he re-enlisted in the 3rd Argylls, but was almost immediately discharged because of his age. After Italy he joined the Inns of Court for officer training in January 1918, and then to No 6 Officer Cadet Battalion that June. He was posted to the 2nd Artists' Rifles in June 1918 and was with them until the end of the war, but still in the ranks. He claimed to have been commissioned just after the war and then went to Sandhurst as a cadet, resigning because he wanted to be in a dance band. There is no evidence that he was commissioned and his name does not appear in the Sandhurst records. Why a man who became such an institution in Britain should have let his imaginationh run so wild in his autobiography - Dancing is My Life, Heinemann, 1958 - is a mystery!

Charles M

[Terry_Reeves]

To illustrate Charles's post, his service record shows he was discharged under King's Regulations, para 392 (vi) "a Soldier under 17 years of age at date of application for discharge" . He was discharged on 12 September 1916. He landed in Italy with the BRCS/Order of St John on 1 October, 1916. There is also a lot of doubt about the the extent of Percy Toplis's involvement at Etaples

TR

[Phil Andrews]

I agree. I'd seen stuff previously about Toplis's non-involvement and was dubious about some of the details raised in the auction details, including Harry Silvester!! However, I assume (and I know that's always dangerous!) that some of the details about Thomson's earlier experiences & history are accurate. Some of the details (being deposited in the river etc) seem to be backed up elsewhere.

[Moonraker]

On 6/4/2011 at 16:33, Phil Andrews said:

 

The sight of the ashen-faced general, sitting now in the back seat, encouragedToplis to climb on the running-board and dictate the terms for ending themutiny. It was

And if that wasn't enough for him, he lost his son 2 months after the mutiny. Interesting comment near the beginning though, that he was Commandant at the RMA in Woolwich "until 1912, when he was placed on half-pay after attracting the wrath of LordRoberts, who felt he had been too lenient to his young charges at "The Shop":an experience that no doubt contributed to the harsher regime he put in placeat Etaples."

In the TV series now being repeated on the Yesterday channel, the Thomson character recalls how he was publicly humiliated by Sir John French at an inspection of cadets in the hot summer of 1911. At a previous routine parade, he said, he had allowed the cadets to parade in shirt-sleeves, and encouraged tennis and social events. As the book on which the series is based would have it, French departed from the usual platitudes in his public address  to demand a return to the previous standards. According to The Times report of July 20, Thomson himself in his own speech deprecated a lack of support when it came to discipline from the Corporals of the Senior Class. French's speech - as reported in The Times -  was actually complimentary, though it did express regret about the Corporals' lack of co-operation and stressed the need for discipline in all forms of military activity. No public criticism - if, indeed, there was any - of Thomson was mentioned.

 

Moonraker

[sassenach]

Apologies for dumbing this thread down a little, but if anyone has been watching the MM repeated on Yesterday, did last weekend's episode appear to end after about 50 minutes, at a commercial break rather than the end of the actual episode? If not it must be my PVR playing up. 

[Moonraker]

My recording saw me through to the end credits, which I wanted to read to check the name of the policeman:

 

Edwin Woodhall.

 

Interesting man.

 

Moonraker

[sassenach]

Thanks, Moonraker. Very odd; I guess the EPG on my recorder had gone wrong somehow.