Captain Harold Hemming, RGA

[Brendan Hogan]

Does anyone have any information about this officer? According to John Swettenham's biography of Andrew McNaughton and Pierre Berton's Vimy, neither very reliable sources, McNaughton built upon the pioneering flash spotting work done by Hemming in Third Army. Apparently, Hemming was a graduate of McGill University in Montreal, Canada but served with the British Army during the war. 

 

Hemming claims to have worked for a bit of a blimpish superior (Brigadier-General J.G. Rotton, GOCRA of VI Corps). “Most of them [senior artillery officers] continued to rely on Boer War experience. I remember General Rotton on whose staff I served as a Staff Captain in VI Corps saying to me one day: ‘You surveyors with your angles, co-ordinates and logarithms – you take all the fun out of war. Why, in my day, we would gallop into action and get the first round away in seconds!’” (Hemming address to the Field Survey dinner 25 March 1966, quoted in Swettenham, 78). I suspect this story is slightly embellished.

 

Any help would be appreciated!

 

Brendan

Edited 13 April , 2020 by Brendan Hogan

[Coldstreamer]

couple of possible MIC - do you have a middle name or initial ?  would help cross out the wrong uns

[The Inspector]

Hi

Officers Training Corps 1913, McGill University shows him as a Sgt in the militia qualifying to Lt. name H. H. Hemming....looking

Regards Barry

Edited 13 April , 2020 by The Inspector

[DavidOwen]

His service record is at TNA https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1132269

Sadly examining it will have to wait until after the current lockdown.

[The Inspector]

Hi All

Medal award roll shows Lt. H H Hemming, RFA, disembarked theatre 1 on 24.7.1.5...looking  Temp Lt M in D LG 15.6.16. page 5928

Regards Barry

Edited 13 April , 2020 by The Inspector

[battiscombe]

Chasseauds 1999 book 'Artillery's Astrologers'  cites him frequently, inluding tales of disagreements with Rotton and others, when for example VI Corps RA recce officer in 1918, based ir would seem on a microfilm at IWM of:  'My Story'  by Lt Col Harold H Hemming held at IWM PPMCR155. In 3rd Field Survey Company in  1915 it looks like; t/2Lt in RFA from 18 Sept 1914; the Ranging Sections were forming from July 1915 so that would fit with Hemmings also joining in France at that time.. just after OGS Crawford from the Ordnance Survey

Edited 13 April , 2020 by battiscombe

[Coldstreamer]

3 minutes ago, The Inspector said:

Hi All

Medal award roll shows Lt. H H Hemming, RFA, disembarked theatre 1 on 24.7.1.5...looking

Regards Barry

 

this is Henry Harold

 

[The Inspector]

Hi All

Here :-  https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1030012078 and here is a photo.   https://www.ancestry.co.uk/family-tree/person/tree/89797869/person/83004240978/facts...Brazil Immigration Cards. MIC on Ancestry.

Regards Barry

Edited 13 April , 2020 by The Inspector

[Brendan Hogan]

Thanks for all of the help gents. Much appreciated.

 

Brendan

Edited 13 April , 2020 by Brendan Hogan

[HarryBrook]

Henry Harold Hemming died on 1 November 1976, aged 83 years. A fulsome obituary was published in The Times on 2 November 1976 (too fulsome to post in full here) but included this paragraph on his war service - 

 

 

 

Edit to add:- On 8 July 1971 Lt.-Col. Harold Hemming wrote a very interesting obituary in The Times for Sir Lawrence Bragg, "Willie" Bragg, as he called him, describing Bragg's work on sound ranging in the Great War. 2nd Lt. Bragg, as he was in 1915, first used the French Bullweiss Sound Ranging Recorder near Ypres. 

Edited 14 April , 2020 by HarryBrook

[Twl0704]

Came to this a bit late, but the best information on Hemming can be found in a book he co-wrote with Bragg.  It's rare and expensive (Abe lists for over $100, ) but it does turn up in a number of libraries, so of which let you read it online.  It contains a number of stories of their development of sound and flash ranging.  Hemming notes that Rotton was not his only Blimp; he had difficulty with Lt Col Percy Fawcett, of Amazon explorer fame, who he saw as "unscientific."  Interestingly, Hemming's son, John, went on to become an authority on the Amazon and its peoples and a major critic and disparager of Fawcett's stories as depicted in the book and film "The Lost City of Z."

 

Bragg, Sir Lawrence, Major-General A.H. Dowson, and Lieut-Colonel H.H. Hemming.  Artillery Survey in the First World War.  London: Field Survey Association, 1971.

[Harriet]

My grandfather worked with H H Hemming - Hemming had 2 teams - one worked on sound ranging, one on flash ranging.  My grandfather was head of flash ranging.  He was awarded an OBE for his WW1 flash spotting work.  Later, at start of WW2 the teams were invited to re-convene and restart and further develop their work and train up new soldiers. By this time my grandfather was 50/51. Hemming also was there.....They worked from the camp at Larkhill, Salisbury Plain.  (As it happens my grandfather and 2 of his daughters all ended up there).  Towards the end of the war my grandfather elected to go 'active', and spent the end of the war underground, and wet, in Belgium.   I may have more info if you want to get in touch.  I have some paragraphs my mother wrote about this, I have atleast one letter written from Belgium (I haven't checked letter for origin, so am working from memory), and my sister has his diaries.   I would be interested to hear more...

[WhiteStarLine]

Harriet, welcome to the forum and there is a lot of interest in the pioneering work of these teams and their contribution.  Please share what you can!

The Report on Survey on the Western Front devotes Part 2 to Artillery Survey and sums up the work succinctly.

 

[Twl0704]

Harriet;

I'm sure you can hear members of this forum salivating at the thought of seeing prime material like your grandfather's papers.  You might notice from earlier posts that there was some confusion about Hemmings' enlistment, but it appears he was attending graduate school in Paris when the war broke out and so joined 12 Battalion, Duke of Wellington's rather than the CEF.  Someone in 18 Division pulled his engineering experience into the Royal Artillery.  18 Div had a reputation for gunnery (Major Alan Brooke, later Field Marshal Alanbrooke was serving there), but Hemming's war might still have ended as a gun position officer but for a visiting staff officer who linked him to Col Harold Winterbotham, Royal Engineers, who arranged a demonstration of his ideas and flash and buzzer devices.  These were soon in use throughout the BEF.  Winterbotham also seems to have had a hand in Lawrence Bragg being selected to investigate sound ranging, and Bragg and Hemmings became collaborators and life-long friends.

Hemmings private papers are held in the Imperial War Museum, but the added value of co-worker records is of great interest to adding context to an almost forgotten story that was perhaps as critical as the advent of radar in the next war.   

[Harriet]

"Artillery survey suffered during the pacifist inter-war period but the war in North Africa highlighted its importance. By the end of 1942 ten major survey units had been formed. Nine were conventional serving in all the main theatres, including the Far East. They played a key part in victories such as El Alamein, Anzio, Caen and Imphal, with their flash-spotting, sound-ranging and surveying of gun lines. A tenth regiment was secretly involved tracing the flight of Hitlers V1 and V2 rockets in order to locate their launch bases. These ‘soldier-scientists were all trained at the School of Survey, Larkhill, on Salisbury Plain. Their work took them to the front line and a considerable number were casualties or became POWs. This is the story of the contribution of these 4,000 men who made up the Survey Regiments. It tells of the heroes, such as Robert (Tug) Wilson of the SBS and the skilful men whose actions under the most difficult and dangerous conditions have received little acknowledgement until now."

The above is the paste quote that is on Amazon against the advert for the below book:     

Larkhill's Wartime Locators: Royal Artillery Survey in the Second World War Kindle Edition

by Massimo Mangilli-Climpson  (Author)

This is what my grandfather and HH Hemming were part of/leading? in WW2

If you are truly interested I will send copy of my mother's paragraphs, and look to see what the letter says and send bits of that in due course.  Last night I founs a reference to my grandfather, and the name given to his bit of the invention .  The family owns a brass telescope of his - possibly from his army work days?

 

 

 

[Twl0704]

Yes.  This is the continuation of what they had done in the First War.  Interestingly, the book you cite states that Hemming returned to Canada to continue his work as a stockbroker between the wars, but he was a engineer and actually appears to have remained in England and In the army.

[Harriet]

Twl0704             Unless there is evidence to the contrary, Hemming may well have returned to Canada between the wars - my grandfather definitely returned to civilian life until he was invited to reconvene at Larkhill in 1939.......he was an architect by profession.....qualified before the great war.   I have been scan reading "Report on Survey on the Western Front 1914-1918", originally printed for HM Stationery Office, as reference by White Star LIne, above.  Not sure on the relationship between this report and "Artillery Survey in the First World War" that you have cited.

[Harriet]

Hi,  This is what my mother wrote as part of a personal history - almost certainly written between 1993 and 2002 when she would have been in her 70s. - she was in the ATS and was stationed, as was one of her sisters, at Larkhill after their father was already there.  Please don't use or reproduce any of this without my knowledge and permission.  Anything anyone can add would be welcome.          Talking of her father she writes:      "He had remained on the Army Officers' reserve since 1919, and was now invited by the army to return - he could not just be called up, as he was over 50.  He jumped at the chance, and returned to resuscitate and re-organise the special unit that he had built up during the first war, and which had been virtually ignored ever since..  He even returned to the same place, Larkhill, on Salisbury Plain and found certain stores still in the same sheds they had been put away into when he left!  Some of the same people he'd worked with before also came back - must have felt just like shedding 20 years age and responsibility.  Larkhill camp consisted of the School of Artillery for training gunner officers and the School of Survey, a sub-division really.  This in turn consisted of Survey, Sound Ranging and Flash Spotting.  These last two were methods of pinpointing gun positions when either the sound or the flash were the only evidence available.  Flash spotting was what my father devised, and for which he got the OBE in the 1914-1918 war.  The original head of the two subdivisions (FS & SR) was Col. H.H.Hemming.  He was a Canadian, and a lecturer at McGill University in civilian life.  In 1941 he, my father as head of FS and a man whose name I can't remember who was head of SR all came back to Larkhill and set about re-organising their specialities.  Various other old timers also came back, I remember a Harry Platt a Yorkshire man with a nice sense of the ridiculous.  They were all instructors at the School of Survey.   In about 1944 when a lot of others had been trained, my father chose become 'active' and moved to Dover with a regiment, working from Dover Castle to pinpoint and knock out big guns across the Channel in the Calais area, which were bombarding Dover.  Later they concentrated on locating the V1 launching sites, and later still the V2 sites.  After D Day in June 1944, my father went with the regiment to Belgium and was there until the war in Europe ended, I think.  For this reason he was unable to be at our wedding in December and so my mother gave me away".      Interestingly, Hemming did not get his OBE until the 1939-45 war, I believe.

[Twl0704]

Harriet;

Brilliant story.  The Artillery Survey book by Bragg and Hemmings (along with many other documents on the subject) is available on the Defence Surveyors Historic Papers website at https://www.defencesurveyors.org.uk/historical-papers. 

Terry

[Harriet]

You may, or may not!, be interested in how I became to find this site, and why.

My grandfather's medals passed on to his only son, and before the death of his widow it transpired that she knew the medals had gone missing....and it seems that her sons had also known that the medals and some special books had all gone missing.  How and why is a mystery to this day to which no-one knows, or admits to knowing, the answer.  Early on in lockdown, driven by boredom probably, I had been looking at a few old papers, including the one that I quoted above, so idly google my grandfather's name.  He was Major B Jessop.  Nothing about him  came up......but his medals did......and for sale!!!  I immediately contacted the dealer, only to find that he had sold them, and just received final payment.  He kindly agreed to forward a letter from me ,to the new owner, in which I explained the circumstances, and my wish to buy them off him.

A year later the owner offered them back for sale, the dealer purchased them back, and then contacted me to offer first refusal!!  Not wishing to tempt fate I have kept his name to myself until now -  I now have the medals, with supporting paper work ( some of which I already had (eg London Gazette stuff).  Yippee

[Harriet]

 

 

[WhiteStarLine]

That is a fantastic story Harriet.

[charlie962]

15 hours ago, Harriet said:

I now have the medals, with supporting paper work

Yes, what an excellent result and a fascinating addition to this thread.

[Harriet]

 I have only 3 items left to share with you - one is the letter, another is a neat summary of how the field work was organised ( it came with the medals, but with no author, or source), and finally I thought I might summarise BJ's career as it illustrates how one volunteer from civvy life contributed to the survey element of the great war,.  May take a few days.              

Oh, and I can share a reference to an invention of BJ, which may have been instrumental to his obe

[Sophie]

Hi, I'm H Harold (as he was known) Hemming's granddaughter by his daughter.  My grandfather served in both wars.  I'm fascinated to read some of the posts and will come back and read them in full.  I'm afraid all his papers were lost by the museum, I think in the 70's.  as a result we have no idea what he got his medals for and all he would say was it was for eating army food.  a typical response from him to pay down his own work and make a light joke.  I have his ribbons and some of his medals.