Passchendaele

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Thursday 13th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

I commend the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) for an impressive first speech. I thought his mention of Hedd Wyn, who died at Passchendaele aged 30 was particularly appropriate. It reminds us all of what talent was lost, what futures were lost, and what artistic flourishing could have taken place in this country but for that first war.

I was also pleased that the hon. Gentleman acknowledged his predecessor, Mark Williams, saying that he was held in affection throughout the House. He most certainly was. He was one of those Members who have friends across the political spectrum. People would support him just because he was Mark: the political differences dissolved.

I took exception a little to the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion that Ceredigion was the finest place in Wales to go on holiday—Porthcawl is obviously a great seaside town—but I hope that his speech inspired those who were listening to think of Wales for their holiday destination this year, because we have so many beautiful places. We must keep a welcome in our hillsides, no matter whether it is in the north or the south.

One thing is certain. There is not a family in the United Kingdom who will not, over the coming months, be remembering the first world war and the family members who were lost, the futures that were lost, as a result of that war. I have a tiny pocket diary that my grandfather took with him to the front. In it, he made a few comments every day about what he saw. I spent a lot of time tracking what he was talking about, and looking at the experiences that he made a note of. He left for war on 13 August 1914, noting:

“We left Limerick by train for Queenstown, embarked on the SS Matheron of steamers Liverpool.”

When he arrived in Belgium, the new idea of moving soldiers to the front quickly was in play. Off he went on a train journey. He spent many hours, indeed days, on that train, which went into sidings as those in charge tried to get all the trains with all the troops to the front as quickly as possible. On 20 August 1914, they finally arrived in a field, where they disembarked. They had nowhere to sleep: they had no tents and no blankets. They lay down in that field, exhausted by the journeys that had taken place from 13 August to 20 August, and slept.

Before they had a chance to sleep, however, they were addressed by Sir John French, who said:

“Our cause is just. We are called upon to fight beside our gallant allies in France and Belgium in no war of arrogance, but to uphold our national honour, independence and freedom.

We have violated no neutrality, nor have we been false to any treaties. We enter upon this conflict with the clearest consciousness that we are fighting for right and honour.

Having then this trust in the righteousness of our cause, pride in the glory of our military traditions, and belief in the efficiency of our army, we go forward together to do or die.”

We are still faced with that dilemma. What do we do as a nation when others violate neutrality and are false to the treaties that have been entered into? Do we then prove false to treaties that we have entered into to come to the support and aid of others? That is the dilemma that the House faces every time we have a debate about whether to go to war. In my time in the House, I have taken part in three debates in which we have had to decide whether to commit our personnel and to take that decision. Each time, it is the issue of neutrality and our treaty commitments that we consider. That is the thing that helps us to make our decision.

My grandfather’s diary recounts countless days of heavy shellfire, near escapes from death, exhaustion and countless movements, as he survived the battles of Le Cateau and Mons, and the great retreat from Mons and Marne. He then took part in the first battle of Ypres.

In the first battle of Ypres, the British expeditionary force lost 2,368 officers and 55,787 men. The British regular Army virtually disappeared, leaving only a framework for the new mass armies that were to come. The German army lost 130,000 men, the French 50,000 and the Belgian 32,000. Sometimes when I read the diary, I ask myself—what we have learned and what I need to learn as, hopefully to be again, a member of the Select Committee on Defence. In the Select Committee, we have many times looked at reports about equipment. It is one of the Committee’s major priorities.

On 17 October 1914, my grandfather noted:

“Very fine morning, all my chums congratulated me on my birthday. We got a blanket served out to us. We have had nothing to cover us since we came out. Severe fighting is going all along the canal”.

From August to October, they had no blanket—nothing to cover them, despite the battles that they had fought and survived. There was hardly a man of the original expeditionary force who possessed more than the clothing he stood up in and that was often woefully inadequate. It is no wonder the Defence Committee even today is concerned about equipment, logistics, preparation and planning for war.

On 29 October 1914, my grandfather noted:

“Terrific firing all day and night. The Indian troops came here to relieve us, they look a fine lot of men, Gurkha, Sikhs and Punjabis.”

It reminds us that, even then, alliances, coalitions and interoperability were the way in which wars were fought. We rarely stand alone. In that war, 90,000 Indian soldiers and 50,000 labourers served in two infantry and cavalry divisions.

On 1 November 1914, my grandfather noted:

“Damp morning had to clean our saddles and harnesses.”

My grandfather was a signalman and often rode out to ensure that communications between the trenches and senior military command were clear. He continued:

“This was a quiet day in Beuvry but it was the 23rd day of the First battle of Ypres”.

It was also a time of great destruction and horror for the civilian population living in that area. We have talked a great deal about the impact of the war on our personnel, but it was also a time of great horror for civilian populations, who had no idea of where to flee for security. They had no idea where there was safety, and where a bombardment would not lead to death and destruction. Many people were forced out of their homes.

My town of Porthcawl took in many refugees from Belgium, as did many towns across the United Kingdom. This is also a lesson that we still carry with us today—the importance of refuge, and of offering support to refugees and civilians, who, more often than our military personnel, are the ones who are slaughtered during warfare.

One of the things that happened as a result of the first world war was that we recognised that we needed to take responsibility for how we dealt with war, because in the second battle of Ypres the Germans used poison gas for the first time, and created alarm among the stricken British and French colonial defenders. Chlorine gas was a new experiment, and its success surprised the German commanders, but it also led us to look later at developing a law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law, and at what was going to be acceptable and unacceptable. It is horrifying that we still see the use of chlorine gas and mustard gas in Syria, something we thought we had stopped, and that everyone in this House, no matter of which political party, roundly condemns. It is viewed with the horror with which we viewed its first use back in 1915.

We also read with horror the stories of the impact of that relentless pounding on the mental health of the people who fought and the refugees who traipsed back and forth across the countryside trying to find safety:

“I’ll tell you this much, I might not have been wounded in the body but I was wounded in my mind. I don’t know if you can imagine it but obviously, when there is shell fire, you get down to get cover, only an idiot wouldn’t get down, so you get down and you can’t get your nails into the ground and your head under the ground and you can’t get down because you can’t go any further. You’re on the ground and your nails are dug in the ground and there you are and the shells are bursting around and there’s screaming bits of shells and they’re not just bits of metal, they’re hot metal flying all over the place and there are machine guns going and pandemonium all around. How the devil did you get out of that unscathed? How did you get out? It’s a miracle, if there’s such a thing as a miracle.”

That was written by Sergeant Bill Hay of the 9th Battalion, and I think it is one of the most graphic descriptions of what it must have been like to have been in that hell.

On Sunday 2 May 1915, my grandfather noted:

“Dull day, we rested to-day. Lots of troops went past suffering from poisoning from the gas. A terrific bombardment commenced about 5 o’clock, the noise is terrible…this is the heaviest bombardment I have heard. I had to go to Vlamertinge at 9 o’clock it was black dark and shells were bursting over my head. It was a terrible experience it being my first night out on the line in black darkness. The roads are full of our chaps suffering from gas poisoning.”

The diary ends on Wednesday 14 July 1915:

“Went and laid a line from signal office to 3rd Corps HQ finished dinner time. There was a very heavy bombardment last night in front of the Durham’s trenches between Messines and Ploegsteert. I left Bailleul at 4.38 for England on leave, arrived at Boulogne at 9 pm”.

That is the last we know of my grandfather’s day-to-day experiences. He died at the third battle of Ypres. We know that Driver Albert Edward Ironside, No. 17785, died on 22 July 1917. He is buried in plot 1, row F, grave No. 4 in Dozinghem military cemetery in Belgium. The advance dressing stations in the area were humorously named by the troops: Dozinghem, Mendinghem and Bandaghem. The cemeteries that were created perpetuate those names. We do not know when my grandfather was injured or how he died. We were told that he was poisoned by gas. From 10 July 1917, mustard gas was used every night against British positions. The Glamorgan Gem contains an article by Ceri Joseph of the Porthcawl Museum, which has been running amazing exhibitions on the first world war over this whole period to explain the local context, the service that the local people gave and the impact of the war on the town. In the article, Ceri suggests that German tactics had changed in that month. They allowed the British to cover an increasing amount of ground in the hope that they would lose momentum. Forward signal parties would often become involved in fighting, and Albert might have been trapped and died fighting.

What lessons can we learn? What knowledge can one man’s experience give us? Never again should we send people to war without full preparation and without the kit and equipment that they need. We have done that recently. Members of this House did not want to send anyone into Afghanistan with the wrong equipment, but that is what we did. This is something we must always question before we make these decisions. We have also learned that there are few short wars. All wars have long-term consequences. Those who came back from the first world war had to live with their experiences, as did their families and their communities. That war still resonates with us here and with their families, even today.

The accountability of generals has increased. The Defence Select Committee, and this House, demand to know why mistakes have been made and why certain things have happened. We are better at doing that now, and I believe that we play an honourable role here in that regard. All working men, and married women, achieved the vote after the war. The Government were frightened that those men, returning from the horrors, armed and experienced, would revolt against them if they did not give them the vote. They got the vote but they still had to face the horrors of the great depression. I should like to end on what is, for me, a positive note. In the first election following the conflict, Labour tripled its vote. Five years later, the party formed a Government for the first time.