Black Hand Gang
BLACK HAND GANG
PAT KELLEHER
For Scott and Callum
An Abaddon BooksTM Publication
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abaddon@rebellion.co.uk
ISBN (.epub version): 978-1-84997-212-3
ISBN (.mobi version): 978-1-84997-213-0
First published in 2010 by Abaddon BooksTM, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.
Editor-in-Chief: Jonathan Oliver
Cover art: Pye Parr
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Design: Simon Parr & Luke Preece
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No Man's WorldTM created by Pat Kelleher
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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank: Jean Spencer of the Broughtonthwaite Genealogical Society without whom I would never have stumbled across this story in the first place. I am also grateful to Bill Merchant of the Broughtonthwaite Real Ale Society for an insight into the history of Everson's Brewery and the Everson family in particular. I am extraordinarily indebted to Arthur Cooke, author of The Harcourt Crater: Hoax or Horror? for access to his own private collection of documents, letters and diaries pertaining to the incident and especially to surviving footage from the original Hepton film. I would also like to thank the Moore Family for their permission to view the letters and diary of Private Garside. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Stephen Maugham, secretary of the Broughtonthwaite Historical Society for his enthusiasm and tireless work in tracing original documentation. I should also thank Graham Bassett and the staff of The Pennine Fusiliers Regimental Museum for providing me with exhaustive details on the deployment and movements of the "Broughtonthwaite Mates" prior to November 1916 and whose otherwise polite refusals to supply further information only served to confirm and bolster my own research. I am also grateful to Sarah Purser of the Jodrell Bank Press Office and to Michael Wild for agreeing to discuss, over a pint of Everson's Old Fusilier, the speculations still surrounding the Harcourt event. Special thanks must also go to Jim Sherman of the War Museum of the North's Photographic Department and Mike McCulloch of the Broughtonthwaite and District Mercury in attempting to identify soldiers and individuals appearing in the Hepton footage. I would also like to thank my wife, Penny, for her continued support, encouragement and long hours transcribing interviews. Finally, I must also pay tribute to those descendants of the men of 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers who spoke to me privately for fear of ridicule and censure.
Any errors in this book are entirely the responsibility of the author.
13th BATTALION PENNINE FUSILIERS: COMPANY PERSONNEL
Company HQ.
C.O.: Major Julian Wyndam Hartford-Croft
2C.O.: Captain Bernard Edward Grantham
Company Sergeant Major Ernest Nelson
Company Quartermaster Sergeant Archibald Slacke
Pte. Jonah Cartwright (batman)
Pte. Charlie Garside (batman)
Royal Army Chaplain: Father Arthur Rand (CF4) ('Captain')
War Office Kinematographer, Oliver Hepton
2nd Lieutenant Henry Talbot, Battalion HQ,
military conductor
'C' Company
No 1 Platoon
C.O.: Lieutenant Morgan
No. 2 Platoon
C.O.: 2nd Lieutenant J. C. Everson
2C.O.: Platoon Sergeant Herbert Gerald Hobson
1 Section
I.C.: Lance Sergeant William Jessop
2I.C.: Corporal Harry Ketch
Pte. Thomas 'Only' Atkins
Pte. Harold 'Gutsy' Blood
Pte. Wilfred Joseph 'Mercy'
Evans Pte. George 'Porgy' Hopkiss
Pte. Leonard 'Pot Shot' Jellicoe
Pte. James 'Lucky' Livesey
Pte. 'Ginger' Mottram
Pte. Henry 'Half Pint' Nicholls
Pte. David Samuel 'Gazette' Otterthwaite
No. 3 Platoon
C.O.: Lieutenant Holmes
No. 4 Platoon
C.O.: Lieutenant Gilbert W. Jeffries
2C.O. Platoon Sergeant Fredrick Dixon
RAMC
Regimental Aid Post
RMO: Captain Grenville Lippett
Red Cross Nurses
Sister Betty Fenton
Sister Edith Bell
Driver Nellie Abbot (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry)
Machine Gun Corps (Heavy Section) 'I' Company
I-5 HMLS Ivanhoe
C.O.: 2nd Lieutenant Arthur Alexander Mathers
Pte. Wally Clegg (Driver)
Pte. Frank Nichols (Gearsman)
Pte. Alfred Perkins (Gearsman)
Pte. Norman Bainbridge (Gunner)
Pte. Reginald Lloyd (Gunner)
Pte. Cecil Nesbit (Gunner)
Pte. Jack Tanner (Gunner)
D Flight 70 Squadron: Sopwith 1½ Strutter
Lieutenant James Robert Tulliver (pilot)
Lieutenant Ivor Hodgeson (observer)
PREFACE
"There was a Front, but damned if we knew where..."
The Harcourt Crater is one of the greatest mysteries of World War One, along with the Angel of Mons, the Phantom Archers and the Crucified Canadian. At nearly half a mile wide, it was reputed to be the largest man-made crater on the Western Front. The official explanation was that German mines dug under the British positions in the Harcourt Sector of the Somme were filled with an experimental high explosive before being detonated on the morning of November 1st 1916, resulting in the loss of over nine hundred men of the 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers.
Indeed, this was the accepted explanation until nearly a decade after the event, when a French farmer ploughing fields which lay along the old front line dug up several mud-encrusted old film canisters and a package of documents. Inside the canisters were reels of film which, when developed, revealed silent, grainy footage of British Tommies seemingly on an alien world. The film itself was shown to great acclaim in Picture Houses around the world and it became a minor sensation. Although there were those who claimed they could identify faces in the footage, in the end most felt it to be it a hoax.
The success of the film nevertheless engendered an appetite for Space Fiction among the general public that persisted for decades; the film's grainy, iconic images inspiring thousands of lurid sci-fi magazine covers and pulp fiction stories.
My research further revealed rumours that the Government had approached the noted inventor Nikola Tesla, who had earlier claimed to have received extraterrestrial radio signals, to try to construct a device for contacting the lost men, but without any apparent success. The government of the day quietly closed the case. They officially declared the whole incident to be a "meticulously planned hoax" and it was consigned to the annals of British folklore, although documents believed to include letters and journals from the men of the 13th were discreetly returned to the families. Some eventually found their way into the hands of p
rivate collectors, where I had a chance to view them.
The original film stock from the canisters, I was disappointed to discover, did not fare as well as the letters. It was stored badly and the unstable silver nitrate composition of the film strips meant that in many cases the film decomposed, although some was salvaged and incomplete footage does still exist.
For a while, the Battalion War Diary, recovered with the film and allegedly detailing the Battalion's life and actions on another world, was relegated to the stacks in the Regimental Museum and was surreptitiously 'misplaced', having been considered an embarrassment and a stain upon the regiment's proud history.
But the myth refused to die. In subsequent years, men occasionally came forward claiming to be survivors of the battalion, returned with fantastic tales to sell, but none were believed. The story inspired the film Space Tommies, released in 1951 featuring Richard Attenborough and Richard Todd, and was the basis for a short-lived adventure strip in the boys' comic Triumph.
However, it has become apparent from my extensive research that the mystery of the Harcourt Crater and the true fate of the men of the lost 13th Battalion constitutes one of the biggest cover-ups in British military history. I hope that this, the first part of my account, will go some way towards setting the record straight. All of the major events have been drawn directly from primary sources where possible. Others, by necessity, are based on inference but nevertheless serve to hint at the trials, wonders and horrors they were to face, fighting on a Front far, far from home...
Pat Kelleher
Broughtonshaw
November 2009
CHAPTER ONE
"Waiting for Whizz-Bangs..."
The autumn sun ducked down below the Earth's parapet, staining the clouds crimson and, as the chill twilight wind began to bite, Broughton Street was busier than usual. Private Seeston fidgeted impatiently as an ambling ration party of Jocks on their way to collect food for the Front Line barged past, discussing rumours of the impending attack.
"Oi, newbie! Y'do know this is one way don'tcha, and it ain't yours?" one said as they shuffled awkwardly by.
"Sorry," said Seeston. "We've only just taken over this sector."
"Who you with?"
"Thirteenth Pennine Fusiliers."
"Thirteen, eh? Unlucky for some."
"Unlucky for Hun, we say, mate," said Seeston, bridling at the insult.
The Pennine Fusiliers was a regiment with a proud history that went back to Waterloo. They had served in the Boer and the Crimean wars, as well as during the Indian Rebellion. It was their proud boast that they were the backbone of the army in the same way their namesake mountains were considered the backbone of England. Their barracks were in Broughtonthwaite, a northern mill town nestling among the Pennine hills on the border of Lancashire and Yorkshire. The 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers was one of several local Pals Battalions raised in 1914 as part of Kitchener's New Army. With only a small standing army at the outset of the war, a million men were wanted to fight the Bosche. Towns vowed to raise as many of the new Battalions as they could muster. A patriotic fervour swept the nation as young men - driven by dull lives, poverty and the lure of adventure - signed up along with their friends, neighbours and workmates. They couldn't wait to get stuck into the Hun and were desperate to see some action before the war was over.
Their illusions didn't last. On the Western Front, along a strip of mud six hundred miles long, that stretched from the French Alps to the Belgian coast, they died in their tens of thousands, in the blasted, unhallowed ground called No Man's Land.
Seeston forged ahead. Shoulders stubbornly thudded against his as he pressed against the flow, but he was on urgent business, a runner for Battalion HQ. The air of importance that this status lent him bolstered his courage and he pushed on with the purpose of a man who knew his time was more valuable than that of those around him.
From somewhere up ahead, beyond the turn in the communication trench, a high scream punctuated the dull repetitive bass thuds of the German shells that had begun to fall.
"Make way there! Coming through."
Men backed against the walls as best they could. Seeston's advance was brought to a halt as a broad arm swept across his chest and thrust him against the revetment. He was going to say something, but as he glanced down at the khaki arm he noticed the three chevrons and thought better of it. "You an' all lad," said the Sergeant.
A couple of Linseed Lancers, red cross brassards on their upper arms, moved urgently past, carrying a stretcher. Seeston got a good look at the occupant. The man, his face swathed in dirty blood-soaked bandages, had stopped screaming and a pitiful whine surfaced though thick, wet gurgles. Inexpertly tied, the bandage had partially fallen away from his face. A couple of waiting men crossed themselves.
"Jesus. Poor bastard."
From the shattered visage a desperate, pleading eye looked up and briefly met Seeston's gaze. A small jewel of humanity set in a hellish clasp of splintered bone and bloody, chewed meat, the eye lost its lustre as its owner sank once more beneath a private sea of pain. There was a cough and sputter and the groan worked its way up into a scream again, a desperate arm clutching the air for something none of the soldiers could see. Seeston turned his head aside with a shudder. Jesus, that could be him lying there next time. There were countless ugly and obscene ways to die out here; sniper bullet, machine gun, shell fire, gas, grenade, shrapnel, bayonet, trench club. All for King and Country.
The stretcher-bearers disappeared round the traverse of the communications trench towards the Casualty Clearing Station. Seeston doubted their patient would make it. Once the stretcher-bearers were out of sight, Broughton Street came back to life, the incident consigned to a consensual silence and added to the list of things they'd seen but wouldn't tell those back home.
"That's why these things are one way, y'daft bastard," said the brawny sergeant, releasing him. "If yer going up you want High Street. Down, you take Broughton, got it? Now go back the way you came and turn left at Mash Lane."
Seeston had seen a map of Harcourt Sector back at Battalion but here, sunk into the ground between walls of wooden shoring and mud, he quickly lost his bearings. He came to a crossroads gouged into the earth. A crude hand-painted sign declared the place to be 'Idiot's Corner'. Below it, signposts pointed down different runs: Lavender Road, Parsonage Lane, Harcourt Trench, Gamble Alley. He stopped an approaching soldier.
"Excuse me mate, I'm looking for Moorside Support."
"Yeah well I wouldn't stand there and do it. It's not healthy. Idiot's Corner, that."
Seeston blinked.
The soldier rolled his eyes in exasperation. "These crossroads have been marked by Fritz 'aven't they? Every so often he drops one on it. Like I said, only an idiot would stand around here."
"I'm looking for C Company HQ."
"The Broughtonthwaite Mates? Down Mash Lane, turn left onto High Street and follow the smell of black puddin's."
"Ta, mate."
Seeston followed the direction indicated by the Tommy's outstretched hand and onto another narrow communications trench, this one linking the reserve trenches, several miles back at St. Germaine, to the front line. Having lost time, he started to jog up the trench.
He'd just turned the corner of another traverse when he collided with an officer. A few splatters of mud flew upwards from Seeston's hobnails as his foot missed the broken duckboard and sank into the open sump, splashing the officer's highly polished boots.
Crap.
It was Lieutenant Jeffries, Commanding Officer of 4 Platoon.
Crap, crap, crap.
Seeston snapped to attention.
There were some officers that you could get on with, but Jeffries wasn't one of them, with his airs and graces. In fact he seemed more concerned about his own appearance than anything else, to the point where they called him 'Gilbert the Filbert' behind his back; after that musical hall song by wassisname. And he could blow hot and cold. You ne
ver knew what you were going to get.
He was a dapper-looking cove with a thin, black, neatly trimmed moustache, not a brass button unpolished, not a crease out of place, cap set straight, everything just so. This man took care of himself, took care to remain different, better. Made a point of it. Not for him the new common purpose, all in it together for King and Country. Despite that, Jeffries had a reputation for taking suicidally dangerous risks on the battlefield.
The officer met Seeston's gaze and held it just a fraction too long to be comfortable, before his eyes flicked down to the mud on his boots. He had a way of looking at you, into you, as if he expected to find something and was profoundly disappointed when he didn't. A smile, like a shark's fin, briefly cut the surface of his face.
"Striking an officer, Private? That's a court martial offence."
"Sir, it was an accident, sir. I didn't see you. Sorry, sir."
"I'll be the judge of that. Handkerchief."
"Sir?"
"Get your handkerchief out, man, and wipe that slop off my boots and mind you don't scratch the leather."
"Sir?"
"You heard, Private."
Seeston pulled out his handkerchief and knelt down on the wet duckboard to wipe the splatters of grey chalky mud from the rich, tan, calf-length boots.
"Now why are you in such a hurry, hmm? Spit it out."
"Runner from Battalion, sir. Message for Captain Grantham, C Company, sir."
"Is that so? Short life, a runner. What's your name?"
"Seeston, sir."