Armistice Day: Centenary

Lord Cope of Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cope of Berkeley (Con)]

My Lords, this debate is quite rightly focused on the 11 November Armistice, which silenced the guns on the Western Front of the “Great War for Civilisation”, as it is called on the reverse of the war medal. But we should not forget that that was not the only front. Three other armistices were signed in the preceding weeks of 1918, with Bulgaria on 30 September, Austria-Hungary on 3 November, and the Ottoman Empire on 30 October, ending hostilities on the Turkish front the following day.

My father was a wartime soldier in the Royal Artillery in the First World War, first in France and Belgium, until he was wounded at Passchendaele, and after a hospital in France and convalescence in England he was sent to join the so-called Egyptian Expeditionary Force in Palestine under General Allenby. He therefore served on both the Western and Turkish fronts.

In 1914, we British had underestimated the Turkish forces, but we had learned our lesson the hard way. Our naval attempt to force the Dardanelles was thwarted, with great loss. The increasingly desperate attempt over months to advance at Gallipoli was defeated, also with terrible loss of life. The first advance in Mesopotamia led to a humiliating surrender at Kut. Later we recovered the ground, but we did not get all that much further in Mesopotamia.

In trying to advance up the coast of Palestine from Egypt we lost the first two battles of Gaza, right at the start. By then, 1917, we certainly did not underestimate the quality or fighting spirit of the Turkish army, nor the skill and leadership of its commanders, including Mustafa Kemal, later known as Atatürk—the founder of secular Turkey—and German generals such as von Sanders.

General Allenby’s army was skilfully led and, in a war of manoeuvre and surprise, it won the Third Battle of Gaza, and then went on to capture Jerusalem in December 1917. Once his army had been reinforced with Indian and Empire troops to replace those withdrawn for the Western Front, he pressed on again and won the Battle of Megiddo in the following year.

The Plain of Jezreel had seen two great battles before in history. In 609 BC, the Bible tells us that the Egyptians won a major battle at Megiddo in their war with the Babylonians. Almost a millennium before that, the hieroglyphs at Luxor tell us that in the first Battle of Megiddo, in around 1457 BC, the Egyptians crushed the Canaanite forces on much the same ground in an epic battle. It is through these great ancient battles that Har Megiddo is known to us as Armageddon. In 1918, Allenby’s crushing victory at Megiddo enabled him to capture Damascus, then Beirut and Aleppo; so, with our armies on the edge of Turkey itself, it led to the Armistice of 31 October. It also led to the ennoblement of Viscount Allenby of Megiddo. Many of us remember Michael, the third Viscount, who made such a valuable contribution to the Cross Benches.

The slaughter on the Turkish front was not perhaps on the same industrial scale as that on the Western Front, but it was huge. Many of the troops involved came from Britain’s loyal Empire, in particular from the wider India—as it was then defined—and from Australia and New Zealand. We should not forget this theatre of the Great War. It led to the long-predicted end of the Ottoman Empire. My father’s letters home at the time reflect his relief at having survived the war—and of course I share that sentiment.

The armistices, including that on the Western Front, were phrased as temporary truces, which fortunately were extended. The final tragedy of the Great War was the peace conference; the powerful speech just now of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, explains why. The emotions and political pressures involved were inevitably huge. Wavell, then an officer on Allenby’s staff but later field marshal, commented at the time:

“After the war to end all wars they seem to have”,


made a,

“‘Peace to end Peace’”.


That is how things turned out, both in Europe and in the Middle East. It is a message to us, as the noble and gallant Lord said, that we must not forget.

First World War: Empire and Commonwealth Troops

Lord Cope of Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cope of Berkeley (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Lexden’s excellent Question mentions the First World War. My father—who fought in that terrible conflict—and his generation did not often talk about it, but when they did, they always called it the Great War. Of course, it was a world war. He volunteered in 1915 and, like more than 1 million others from all over the Empire, he served in the Royal Artillery.

In France and Belgium he was with a 9.2 inch Howitzer battery. You can see a 9.2 Howitzer in the Imperial War Museum and another carved full size in stone on the top of the Royal Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner. It was a heavy gun and the shells weighed 290 pounds—a four-man lift, particularly if you were going to do it all day and all night. My father particularly valued the work of the West Indian soldiers who worked with him in the essential service of supplying ammunition to the guns—imagine the difficulties and dangers of bringing those shells right up to the front in the huge quantities required. More than 3 million 9.2 inch shells were fired during the war by British, Australian, Canadian and other—Indian, I think—artillery.

My father was wounded during the Third Battle of Ypres and after hospital in France—happily, in the casino at Le Touquet—he was sent to Palestine to join General Allenby’s successful army against the Turks. There again he served alongside many from Australia, New Zealand and India, as well as Arabs. Many of them had already served at Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia, at the cost of a huge number of lives.

In talking of the Indian troops who fought alongside us on the Western Front and elsewhere, I mention only Hodson’s Horse—now an armoured regiment in the Indian army—which, rightly, still celebrates annually its part in the important Battle of Cambrai in 1917. In total, 74,000 Indian soldiers died in that war and 11 won the Victoria Cross.

We should also recall the almost forgotten fighting in east and west Africa, particularly around the German colonies. I think the only media mention of any prominence was the excellent film “The African Queen”, which was set in Africa during the First World War. But there was much serious fighting of a more conventional kind involving the King’s African Rifles—over 30,000 strong—the Royal West African Frontier Force and others from South Africa and, again, India.

The Great War is rightly called a world war and Empire troops—Commonwealth troops, as we would now call them—played a large and vital role. We will remember them.