Ian Everest started his talk by outlining his family connection with WW1. His maternal grandfather had been a member of the British Expeditionary Force and had taken part in the very first battle of the war at Mons and had been captured, spending the rest of the war as a POW. Ian’s real family history interest, however, started around 1982 with the war memorial in Newhaven which carries the names of two of his Great Uncles. Knowing that he and his father were both Sussex born and bred Ian was fascinated by how the war developed and its relation to his county of Sussex which he discovered was largely responsible for servicing the Western Front.
With the current TV series of Conan Doyle it was interesting to learn that the author of Sherlock Holmes had moved to Crowborough in 1907 and had become very worried about the possibility of invasion. He wrote to The Times and called a meeting to form a Home Protection Brigade made up of the older population and they even started to dig trenches on the Downs. When the War Office heard about it they put a stop to it as they did not want uncontrolled proliferation of this sort of thing!
Ian showed many fascinating pictures and told stories of personalities including long term, well respected German families who suddenly found themselves faced with such strong anti German feeling that they were forced to flee back to Germany and their property was seized and transferred to the military.
Lord Kitchener was tasked with the recruitment of 100,000 volunteers and such was the initial enthusiasm – as well as arm-twisting and emotional blackmail – that he got 1 million!
The population was advised that if the Germans arrived they should leave by the back door, retreating 10 miles and slaughtering all animals as they went leaving the carcasses to rot.
Sussex being predominantly farming country with grassland and little mechanisation still being worked with oxen in places, as the men were persuaded to fight for their country huge changes were to occur. Two thirds of the food used in the UK had always been imported which is where the shops such as Home & Colonial and International Stores got their names, As the Germans sent their U-Boats to attack the incoming supply ships and a million of the best horses were to be sent to war of which only a handful were to return, the need to plough up the grassland for wheat forced the government to order 5000 tractors from the USA and the Land Girls became the work force of the farms.
With a bad harvest in 1916 and 10 ships a day being sunk, the situation was becoming desperate. Ian showed a wonderful clip from Pathe News of elephants being used to plough the fields and even tossing wheat into the threshing machine. In order to feed all the horses on the Western Front huge new baling machines operated by the Women’s Forage Department were made to produce compressed bales that were taken down to Newhaven or Littlehampton from all over Sussex.
In order to get into these essential ports a pass was required and you can see why with 3 million tons of armaments being shipped across the channel. In Newhaven 2500 people were employed in loading and a 5.1/2 hours daily limit was put on pub drinking hours and the men were only allowed to buy drinks for themselves! The daily ‘licensing’ hours were to continue up until very recently. The docks operated 24 hours a day and 20 ships were despatched daily.
Photos of boats painted in ‘dazzle’ camouflage to confuse the U-Boats, the growth of naval air stations with Seaplanes to drop hand held bombs, the building of airships and, towards the end of the war the plan to put anti submarine nets right across the Channel slung between huge towers, showed just how serious the U-Boat threat was to the survival of the UK. The building of what became known as the ‘Mystery Towers’ was an enormous project that only got as far as the first 3 towers utilizing 5000 men and costing £1 million each before the war came to an end. One, however, still exists standing on the sea bed off the Isle of Wight nearly a century later.
All these projects took place in Sussex as well as huge training camps. In Seaford for instance the normal population of 4000 grew to no less than 20,000 men. Camps all over the UK eventually accommodated 850,000 men in tents and later huts.
Sussex was also used for receiving the wounded back. Ian showed a picture of one of up to 3 trains a week arriving in Brighton to be welcomed by people who were still coming on holiday. The county also built the first hospital for shell shock and even the Royal Pavilion was used for a hospital with 724 beds.
On the 13th Oct the terms for the end of the war were agreed in Sussex. The architect Lutyens was given just 14 days to design and have constructed a memorial in Whitehall for the celebrations of the end of the First World War. Such was the popularity of the memorial it was converted to stone and is still used today.
Memorials were built all over the country with money contributed by the public.
Just 52 villages were able to celebrate the return of all their combatants and became known as the ‘Thankful Villages’. The only one in Sussex was East Wittering.
(A very few villages were able to celebrate the return of all their soldiers from both the first and the second world war. In an extraordinary twist one of these carries the name Upper Slaughter!)
