Although she would have been prepared for the worst for several months, it does not take much of an imagination to realise how deep the blow Alf’s death would have been to Maude when she read the telegram.
After receiving the scant details and news that he had been properly buried from Lt Young, Maude had to manage her husband's business affairs as best she could. Fortunately, Alf’s business partner was on hand to help. However, she still had to run the shops and Maude’s situation must have been daunting: this was still an age that believed a woman’s place was in the home. The learning curve must have been steep. With time and energy now focussed on keeping financially afloat, Ron and Les (my grandfather), still two young boys, were sent to boarding houses. Les latter revealed this to be a soul-destroying experience that stayed with him throughout his life.
In the 1920s, financial calamity stuck as the family’s savings were lost in a series of banking collapses. However, the details are sketchy. Luckily, a shop was kept going and Les took this over when he was old enough. It says something of his abilities that he succeeded in making the shop a success despite his youth. Les also met his future wife Joan when she came along one day to buy some goods. So it is somewhat ironic that Alf’s death set in motion the fate through which my mother, my brother and I owe our existence.
But going back to 1917, the family suffered far more agony than Les was apparently aware of, as he never spoke of the details. Logging on to the War Graves Photographic Project (TWGPP) database, Alf’s final resting place was listed as Earlsfield, near Clapham Junction, which was clearly not the case. Intrigued, my mother and I made a small donation and received an image of grave, which proved to be the final resting place of Eliza and Constance, Alf’s mother and sister. Both had died in 1917. Alf’s name was listed at the bottom, recording that he had fought and died in the Great War. The wording is ambiguous and led to the understandable confusion with the TWGPP.
So mother and sister had also died in the same year. What had happened? Tuberculosis (TB). Constance died of TB in June, followed by Eliza in December. She had also contracted the disease. Alf was killed in November. For Alf’s father, Wilf, it must have been a terrible year: a daughter, a son and his wife all dead within the space of six months. Les never mentioned this grave, which suggests he was either unaware of its existance or unaware of its location. He certainly never mentioned that his grandmother and aunt had died of TB. Perhaps Wilf and Maude never discussed these matters with the two boys and, given the pain they must have felt, it is understandable why.
What happened to Philip?
But the story does not end here. I wanted to know what had happened to Lt Young, the officer who had sent Maude the letter of condolence and enabled the family to trace Alf’s story. Had he survived?
For many hardened First World War veterans, instant death held no fear. It was the thought of a painful wounding – one that left the body wracked and ruined, or led to a slow and tortuous demise – that haunted their imaginations. In an age where body armour primarily consisted of a helmet*, there was a far higher chance that damage to the human frame from shrapnel and flying debris would be both deep and severe. To make matters worse, modern casualty clearing was also in its infancy; injured soldiers that survived the initial trauma often slowly died on the way to a clearing station. Others then died in the first stages of post-combat care. Indeed, some of the most harrowing memoirs and recollections detail the battle to save lives behind the frontlines.
*Although there was a roaring trade in rudimentary (compared with today) armoured vests etc. Some men swore these were vital, others believed they were near useless.
Even if a wounded soldier was successfully stabilised, he then faced the threat of post-operative infection and disease. In an age without antibiotics and other life-saving drugs, this was a very real and very dangerous hazard. Others faced the horror of shrapnel stuck inside their frames. This was not because the surgeons were deficient in skill; they simply lacked the technology to conduct successful operations. Amputation of mangled limbs was all too common and the sight of men returning from the front with arms and legs missing is well known even to this day. Prosthetic limbs could help and grant some degree of independence. For serious cases, the government tried to create worthwhile jobs. Badly burned combatants also faced an enormous uphill struggle. For the wounded and maimed, the government also paid a compensatory sum and topped up their war pensions. However, it was lacklustre in officially recognising post-traumatic stress, which was then defined as shell shock. The story of these men is ably explored in the work Forgotten Lunatics by Peter Barham.
But perhaps the worst of all wounds was paralysis or, to be more precise, total paralysis. Something of the deep, dark fear that surrounded this topic was a central theme in the 1938 novel and 1971 film adaptation Johnny got his gun. Total paralysis was Lt Philip Young's fate.
Several months after Alf’s death, 243 MG Coy was still operating in the Gavrelle/Oppy region and had avoided the main thrust of the vast German offensives that started in spring 1918. But just before and during the offensives – which occurred to the south of 243’s sector – the fighting across their section of the front intensified. Recalling Alf’s fate of simply standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, Lt Young was struck in the neck by a piece of shell on 11 April 1918. The metal lodged in his spinal column causing ‘total paralysis of the trunk and legs and of the right arm’, according to his medical files. These add that it ‘was not advisable to operate’ and that 'the wound is still discharging and he is gravely ill.’ Young was transferred to the Empire Hospital for Officers. Damaged, wracked and broken, he was unable to survive for more than several months. Although many miles away from the front, the wounds he had suffered in France finally claimed him. He was buried by his family in a west London cemetery, near Cheam.
Reading deeper into his files, a disturbing series of events comes to light. While Young was struggling in the hospital, the War Office was dragging its feet in paying his entitlements for the grevious wounds he received while on active service. In fact, it also appears the War Office was also busy failing others in the same hospital. The hospital’s commanding officer wrote to his immediate superiors damning these late payments. It is worth noting this letter at length as its contents are revealing.
‘This hospital is for paralysed officers…for some reason or other, just recently we have had great difficulty in obtaining a proper reward in these cases [of paralysis]. Lt Young received this morning a note to say that he was being granted 17/6d a day by Messrs Cox [Young’s bank] There is no word of a lump sum gratuity.
‘This matter is of great importance. I am sure that people would not like to know that paralysed officers were being in any way shabbily treated, but as we are in charge of these officers we shall feel it in our duty to take this matter before the highest authorities unless we get proper answers to our letters dealing with these subjects and due consideration to the nature of the cases that we write about. Last year the awards were reasonable and fair, but this year there has been great difficulty in obtaining proper consideration of these paralysed cases.’
This was stern stuff and the reaction of those higher up was an incandescent anger at being told the tawdry truth that they themselves had created. Threats were levelled back towards the hospital's CO. However, his letter and other appeals appear to have worked, with Young soon in receipt of financial assistance, although most begrudgingly. Sadly, Young died shortly afterwards and the War Office promptly demanded repayment of the award given. To make matters worse, Young apparently owed his bank a trifling sum on his death. The bank now requested repayment, which was vigorously resisted by Young’s brother and other family members. Even for the time, both the state and the bank were displaying a disgusting degree of penny pinching.
This attitude still stalks the corridors of the UK’s Ministry of Defence. One only need think of the treatment meted out to those unlucky troops wounded and maimed in Britain’s more recent wars. How many more cases like theirs will we continue to read about? Instead of awarding egregious bonuses to high-ranking civil servants who have battled nothing more than a low battery on their Iphones or Blackberries, the monies should be spent on those who fought in the service of our country or were wounded by terrorist outrage. It is the least we can do.
