Bombing of Field Ambulances at Noyan, March 1918

[derekjgregory]

In Purdom's classic Everyman at war, there is a short essay by Dr F.O. Taylor (who served with the RAMC and the RFA, according to the appended note), which describes the bombing of two Field Ambulances shortly after they arrived at a 'French barracks' at Noyon during the German Spring offensive.  

Taylor was part of an advance party and, having had no sleep for the past two days, dozed off.  When he woke up, four ambulances had already arrived, and as he looked up he saw 'a British aeroplane, which was flying very low and coming towards us.'  Shortly after, 'an indescribable explosion', followed by 'dull thuds and the sickening sight of men falling, groaning, spouting blood – whole limbs severed, horses frantically breaking loose...'

Taylor dragged one desperately wounded casualty into a hut which 'seemed full of frightfully wounded men' (from which I deduce that the barracks was being used as a dressing station).  The description continues, and Taylor claims that 'more than fifty non-combatants were dead, dying or wounded', their injuries made all the more severe by flying fragments of road metal ('all the wounded seemed to suffer more than any I had seen before').

Taylor says he 'gathered from quick questioning that the aeroplane must have been one captured by the Germans.'

But in another essay in the collection 'a Padre' refers to the same incident: 'We were in front of Noyon.  One of our RAMC units was marching into the barracks when a plane swooped down and bombed them...'.  But he then adds this: 'Ten days or so later we were talking about this in [the] mess.  There was a young lieutenant there who had been with the Air Force for instruction.  He turned white as death.  the plane that bombed our men was a British plane and he had been in it.  They believed the troops were Germans.'

Taylor dates the incident to 23 March 1918; I checked the records for Noyon cemetery for burials on 23/24 March and identified three Field Ambulances that suffered casualties – notably 43 FA (WO/95/1891/2) and 44 FA (WO/95.1892) FA.  Both give the date as 24 March 1918 [though perhaps that is the date of the entry in the Diary] and list the casualties; the most detailed list is the entry for 44 FA), which also notes: 'Unit reached NOYON and on arriving at barracks was immediately bombed by enemy aircraft.'

So to my questions. I should probably say that I'm working on attacks on medical facilities, including dressing stations, FAs, CCSs, base hospitals etc., and  I know that situations like these were often confused and often mis-represented for propaganda purposes (usually by claiming that the attacks were deliberate violations on clearly marked hospitals; but that's an argument for another day).  I recognise, too, that identification of legitimate targets from the air was far from easy, and that during the spring offensive the situation was often even more confused.

(a) Does anyone have any information on Dr F.O. Taylor?

(b) Can anyone identify the Padre?  He's anonymous, but the appended bio says he 'served in the Scottish Battalion in 1916 as a Private.  In 1917 he became a Brigade Chaplain, and was awarded the M.C. and Bar.'

(c) Can anyone shed more light on this attack?  In particular, is there any (other) evidence that it was friendly fire?

As always, I'd be grateful for any comments or suggestions.

 

[TEW]

ADMS diary (WO95/1884/1) mentions the incident, 24/3/18.

Took place at the Cavalry Barracks, Noyon. Says 'all wounded by bombs from enemy aircraft'.

Killed - Capt. H W Batchelor, QMS Beatton + 17 ORs.

Wounded - Lt. F V Frazier + 6 ORs.

TEW

 

[TEW]

Captain Francis Outram Taylor?

Formerly RFA.

TEW

[TEW]

The relevant DDMS diary for III Corps is missing March 1918.

5th Army DMS gives instructions to 46 CCS at Noyon 24/3/18 regarding evacuations. Then warns the OC 46 CCS against rumours.

Then says: More bombs just? dropped here and about an hour ago.

TEW

[TEW]

There can't be many Chaplains with MC & Bar. Googling the subject produces:

Rev. Samuel Green who was in France initially as a Red Cross driver. Would have been Chaplain to 1/4 London Regt. in March 1918. Unlikely?

Rev. Bernard William Vann. Notts & Derby, not officially an Army Chaplain but stood in when the brigade chaplain was absent also performed rites etc. Did serve initially as a private in London Regiment.

Rev. Noel Hudson. Another un-official chaplain. Not sure of his early service.

Rev. Mervyn Evers. Initially a Capt. In Leicester Regt. then Army Chaplain. No connection to 14th Division seen.

Rev. Arthur Edwin Ross. From Ireland, only served in war as Chaplain.

I think the phrase served in the Scottish Battalion is a little off.

Ploughing through 41, 42 & 43 Infantry Brigade HQ diaries for 1917 would hopefully pick up his posting.

TEW

 

 

 

[derekjgregory]

TEW: You are, as always, a star!  Thank you so much.

[TEW]

I did look at 46 CCS in Noyon. Things a bit hectic there. They had been ordered to evacuate the nurses then the patients and prepare to move. Late on 24th they were ordered not to evacuate the nurses. They may have already done so along with 2000+ wounded.

More wounded were admitted but the CCS were not recording admissions.

25th they admitted 25 wounded but then moved location.

No idea if the FA wounded made it to the CCS or what the FA would have done with their dead under these circumstances.

TEW

[derekjgregory]

Thanks again TEW.  I'm sure you're right about Cpt Francis Outram Taylor; obit in BMJ (1973) has him joining the Edinburgh University Battery before the war, serving with the RFA as a 2/Lt and then "invalided home", whereupon he resumed his studies at Edinburgh and gradated in medicine in 1916; then he joined the RAMC and returned to France.

It turns out there's also a list of gallantry awards to chaplains on this site (of course there is): here.  So I'm working my way through that in conjunction with your list to try to identify the anonymous Padre.

The Diary for the ADMS 14th Div also records three FAs (42/3/4) moving to the Cavalry Barracks at Noyon on 24/3 and then adds: 'The following casualties occurred at Cavalry Barracks, Noyon (all wounded by bombs)...' and gives a partial list.

I've looked at the 46 CCS Diary too, but I can't find the warning about 'rumours'; it's a difficult read, so I may have missed it, but I may be also looking in the wrong place: can you put me right, please?  The warning is interesting in itself, no?

 

[RobertBr]

On 09/11/2021 at 15:36, TEW said:

Rev. Samuel Green who was in France initially as a Red Cross driver. Would have been Chaplain to 1/4 London Regt. in March 1918. Unlikely?

Rev. Bernard William Vann. Notts & Derby, not officially an Army Chaplain but stood in when the brigade chaplain was absent also performed rites etc. Did serve initially as a private in London Regiment.

I think the phrase served in the Scottish Battalion is a little off.

The 1/4 Londons were in 56th Div 168th Bde. Another unit in the Bde were the 1/14 London Scottish. Originally a TF unit it was largely based on professionals living in London. On the start of the war many would have been eligible for a Commission but chose to stay together and serve in the ranks.

[TEW]

I did eventually realise the phrase one of the Scottish Battalions could apply to London Regiment. The unknown padre supposedly served as a private c1916.

Vann's MIC is a little complicated. It lists (supposedly for active service) his initial details as 28/ London R, (Artists Rifles?) Private #1800.

Date of entry (as an officer) is mid 1915 as he was commissioned Sept 1914.  In which case I can't see how he served in a theatre of war as a private. The 28/London Regiment on his MIC must be home service only?

TEW

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

@derekjgregory I am not sure what your particular interest in attacks on medical facilities is, but are you aware of this thread https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/292069-how-do-i-donate-this-letter-by-a-medical-officer-about-the-german-spring-offensive-bombing-march-21-2018/page/2/#comment-3064884 ? The proximity of the date of the attack described in the letter in that thread (21 March 1918) to the one mentioned in your OP (23 March 1918) is striking,. The FA involved in that incident was the 45 FA in the 15th (Scottish) Division, and the location of the attack was Achiet Le Grand.

 

[TEW]

Not that I know how to track down RFC/RAF units or ID which one might have bombed them but finding a relevant diary could shed some light.

A topic in 'Air personnel and the war in the air' perhaps?

Part of the problem here is that it was believed to be a German aircraft until the chance meeting later on. The entries I've seen show 'enemy aircraft'. Would anyone backtrack 10 days later to show it was a British plane?

I doubt my list of Chaplains with MC & Bar is complete. One would hope he was a Brigade Chaplain with 14th Division but in the muddle that was late March 1918 anything is possible.

 I'm now wondering where the mess was 10 days later where a Brigade Chaplain could bump into the pilot that bombed them?

There are different casualty tallies for this, 50 dead from Taylor, 19 dead from ADMS & 9 RAMC dead 14th Division from Medical Services:General History for approx a five day period including 24th March.

TEW

[TEW]

I've been trawling diaries of 41, 42, 43 Infantry brigades & 14 Divisiion General Staff. Lots of appendices in the latter but also missing parts from 21/3/18 which have either been added to later (September) or just don't exist.

WO95/1874 ancestry page 468/958 has a detailed narrative, starts 21/3/18, the pages are out of sync though and not all sheets are dated, bit of a tangle. However, circa 24/3/18 The division was 'reorganizing' on the west side of Noyon Canal trying to hold a line Haudival-Beaurains, the latter is closest to Noyon with 43 Brigade in place.

The Noyon Cavalry Barracks are marked on this map, about 1000 yards on the east side of the canal. By this time the bridges across the canal had been blown to stop the advance and the French were trying to defend from the west bank.

https://maps.nls.uk/view/101465383

Looks like the FAs that were bombed were on the wrong side of the canal assuming the date's correct.

Incidently, the division had been plagued by enemy aircraft since early March and on 9/3/18 a British plane bombed the division in the trenches.

There are also composite units going on here, 54 Infantry brigade is involved with 14 Division and 36 & 20 Divisions get mentioned as well as various detachments under named officers.

TEW

[derekjgregory]

Thanks everyone.  The evidence thus far that the attack was a friendly fire incident consists of two testimonies: Taylor reporting seeing 'a British aircraft' carrying out the bombing (and hence the assumption that it had somehow been captured and was being flown by a German crew) and the still anonymous Padre, despite our collective efforts, reporting the horrified reaction of a young British lieutenant: 'the plane that bombed our men was a British plane and he had been in it.'  I think the warning to the OC 46 CCS about 'rumours' could be read either way, but on one interpretation it suggests that knowledge that this was indeed a friendly fire incident was beginning to spread and there was a need to nip it in the bud.  I realise the dangers of eye-witness testimony, which is why I think it's important to identify both men, but there is nothing to suggest that Taylor or the Padre were unreliable.

I've read the thread that Lancs Fusilier references - thanks for that – but it seems describe an instance of long-range shelling rather than bombing from the air, unless I've missed something.  Incidents like these were not uncommon, though in most of the cases I've analysed the targeting was far from deliberate (and in some cases dressing stations, CCSs and even base hospitals [as at Etaples] were sited in remarkably close proximity to legitimate military targets (gun batteries, infantry base depots, etc).  My interest in all this is part of a wider project tracing attacks on medical facilities over the last 100 years or so (up to Afghanistan and Syria), and in particular what I see as an increasing tendency for these attacks to be systematic, deliberate and in conscious violation of international law.  But my other interest is in medical evacuation from France and Flanders for a new book, which I plan to call Woundscapes of the Western Front, and the multiple ways in which casualties continued to be in danger as they moved through the evacuation chain is a major concern.  So for all these reasons I'm truly grateful for everyone's help.

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

@derekjgregory, thanks for clarifying that your interest is specifically in bombing attacks, and does not extend to damage caused by shelling.

If your interest is in bombing attacks on hospitals more generally, rather than limited specifically to the Noyan incident, you must be aware of the incident referenced in this thread https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/294383-search-for-soldiers-who-died-in-a-bombing/ , cross-referenced in https://www.greatwarforum.org/topic/288720-sister-madeleine-kemp-godwaersveldt/ .

You might also be interested in what my grandfather had to say in a diary entry for June 1918, when he had contracted trench fever and had been sent to No 74 General Hospital at Trouville to convalesce:

Interview with Capt Elliott R.A.M.C. Hospital Registrar (late of Netley Hospital). He had selected me to supervise some work on making trenches and protection for the huts against bombing raids, as the Boche had quite recently bombed the Hospitals at Etaples, particularly the St John – which was practically wiped out. (honestly I don’t think the Boche were intentionally bombing these hospitals at Etaples, but as they were sandwiched in amongst Infantry Base, Depots (Reinforcements Camp), Railway sidings, Training Area and Dumps which were in themselves quite legitimate prey for enemy bombs – it was scarcely possible to miss the hospital if an attack was made on the former.

As I have said elsewhere, the diary is in fact a memoir, which my grandfather began writing immediately after the war in the early part of 1919, based inter alia on entries in pocket diaries that he had kept during the war, and letters which he had written home from the front, so it is difficult to be absolutely sure whether the passage which begins “honestly …” was his view formed at the time, or one that he came to later. My general impression, however, is that, while he recognized that he had to treat Germans as “the enemy”, his respect for them as soldiers and human beings gradually increased as the war went on.

[derekjgregory]

Thanks for this.  I can't have been clear in my earlier reply - sorry about that. In fact,  I'm interested in all attacks on medical units (bombing, shelling etc); I realise I read your original post wrongly -- I assumed you were wondering whether the attack on Noyon was the same as the one you referenced, which is why I mentioned bombing at Noyon as opposed to the shelling that took place in the incident you describe.  My files are bulging with records of attacks of all kinds, but virtually all of them seem to be accidental -- including the attacks at Étaples which the British government was perfectly happy for the press to propagandize even though their own intelligence reports revealed a radically different picture.  

[derekjgregory]

Further to the quotation from your grandfather's diary entry, for which many thanks, he was by no means alone in his view.  Some examples:

Harvey Cushing, From a surgeon's journal, 3 June 1918: We had a mild argument at the mess as to whether they purposely bombed hospitals, I having expressed the opinion that they did not. There being so many other things better worth hitting from a military standpoint, it would be a waste of expensive projectiles to drop them intentionally on hospitals. 

Hugh Wansey Bayly, Medical Officer in Khaki: During the summer two hospitals - at Etaples and the Doullens citadel - were bombed at night by German planes, but I never was convinced that hospitals were deliberately selected for attack by German airmen. In my opinion, we were not sufficiently careful to separate, by an effective margin, our hospitals from military organisations, or areas of military value, so that quite possibly the bombs that fell on hospitals were directed at legitimate military targets. At this time all permanent hospitals were marked with large red crosses, generally of broken bricks, on white backgrounds, on the ground in their vicinity, but there was not always sufficient care in assuring that there was nothing of military value within even such a short distance as 100 yards. The German Air Force, alone of their fighting services, won and retained a reputation for chivalrous conduct and knightly manners and I never heard our own flying officers refer to their opposite numbers over the line except as worthy and honourable foes. I am, therefore, loath to believe that the tragic bombing of hospitals bringing death to nurses and wounded men was intentional.

F. Noakes, The Distant Drum: At Etaples, where we could see the shrapnel bursting in the distance, the struggle was over sooner, but terrible damage was done to the hospital on which some of the bombs fell. One of the men from the bombed buildings was brought to Hardelot next day and occupied the next bed to mine. He told me that, in his opinion, the disaster had been entirely unintentional. The aeroplane containing the leader of the raiding squadron had been brought down and its occupants captured; my informant said that the German Kapitan was taken to the hospital to see the damage he had wrought, and was genuinely horrified. He showed them the map by which he had flown, and the site of the hospital was plainly marked (in German) “military works.” It was a fact that this particular hospital was entirely surrounded by training camps and store depots, as I saw for myself some time afterwards, so there may be some truth in the Kapitan’s story.... . Indeed, in a night raid on a crowded Base town it is difficult to see how such tragic errors could be avoided. The real blame lay with the authorities, for failing to segregate the wounded in clearly-defined hospital areas, like Hardelot, well away from “legitimate” targets.... To accuse the Germans of deliberately “bombing the wounded” was, in my opinion, under the circumstances, a piece of unscrupulous propaganda, and others beside myself have felt that the real criminals were those members of the “Gilded Staff” who had needlessly exposed helpless patients and nurses to danger by placing the hospital there.  

C.E. Montagu, Disenchantment: ‘… when the long row of hut hospitals, jammed between the Calais-Paris Railway at Etaples and the great reinforcement camp on the sand-hills above it, was badly bombed from the air, even the wrath of the R.A.M.C. against those who had wedged in its wounded and nurses between two staple targets scarcely exceeded that of our Royal Air Force against war correspondents who said the enemy must have done it on purpose.’ 

The British government's own files on the Etaples bombing include the following (there's much more!):

JENTZER [pilot; examined 27 May 1918] ‘stated he left his aerodrome with orders to bomb the railway and bridges and military camps at ETAPLES.  He had flown over ETAPLES before and also had seen photographs, showing large camps and much traffic on roads and railways.’  Approached from the east, hit by AA 4-5 miles out and came down near VILLIERS; only became aware of hospitals once he himself was a patient: ‘He is positive that his Higher Command is unaware of the fact that part of the camp north of ETAPLES consists of hospitals…  Prisoner was most emphatic in stating that he had no idea that hospitals were situated near ETAPLES, but expressed surprise that hospitals were situated near military camps and important railway junctions, and went on to remark that if we placed hospitals close to military camps, which are legitimate targets for dropping bombs on, we were responsible if bombs fell on hospitals.’

Report from Percy Radcliffe, Director of Military Operations [29 June 1918]:

Major-General Salmond, Commanding RAF, France, when asked for his opinion, which is presumably expert opinion, on the second raid, which took place after the Red Crosses had been increased and repainted, and special measures were taken for protecting the hospitals, states that he considers it extremely improbable that Red or White Crosses would be distinctly visible at the height from which hostile pilots drop their bombs, usually 5,000 feet or over.  General Salmond further states that he cannot say for certain whether Red or White Crosses on the ground would be visible in the light of a magnesium flare.  Finally he says that on the evidence as it stands, he sees no reason to modify his former opinion – namely, that the bombing of the hospitals was not intentional.' [Salmond's memo, 2 June, to GHQ: '‘I do not think the evidence discloses any intention of bombing hospitals.  The bridge at ETAPLES is of course a military objective of the first importance and one of the most likely approaches to it would be from the North, almost directly over the hospitals.  Further, the fact that the hospitals were not apparently marked prior to the raid and that they are situated in the middle of training and rest camps which are legitimate bombing targets would make it quite impossible to prove intention even did it exist.']

Radcliffe's conclusion: 'It does not seem possible to arrive at any definitive conclusion in the matter.  One thing however is quite clear.  We have no right to have hospitals mixed up with reinforcement camps, and close to main railways and important bombing objectives, and until we remove the hospitals from vicinity of these objectives, and place them in a region where there are no important objectives, I do not think we can reasonably accuse the Germans.’

 I hope it's obvious that none of this diminishes the horror and suffering brought about by the raids on Etaples –  I wrote a preliminary account here, and I've since extended it – but it's precisely the question of intentionality and the difficulty of accurate targeting that makes the Noyon raid so interesting to me: if it was all too easy to make a mistake so that the British bombed their own troops...

[A Lancashire Fusilier by Proxy]

On 22/11/2021 at 01:17, derekjgregory said:

Further to the quotation from your grandfather's diary entry, for which many thanks, he was by no means alone in his view.  Some examples:

Thank you so much for these quotes from other people's views at the time, and the link to your article, which I found extremely interesting. My grandfather would have had no personal knowledge of the matter. Such knowledge as he had would, I assume, have come from reading reports in the press and listening to the views expressed by his fellow soldiers, which presumably all canvassed both sides of the argument, and he would then mave made up his own mind from there.