Christmas 1914: ‘A man playing a penny whistle’ Chandos Hoskyns

• 

  Chandos Hoskyns at Winchester College

• 

  Lieutenant-Colonel Chandos Hoskyns

Today I’m commemorating my maternal grandfather Lieutenant-Colonel Chandos Hoskyns. This is a letter he wrote to his family in December 1914.  I suspect what’s being describing the start famous ‘Christmas Truce’.  

2nd Bn Rifle Bde.
25th Inf Bde.
8th Divn.
Brit. Exp. Force
[Xmas 1914]

Darling all!

I hope you got my Xmas letter all right only I hear Grannie sent it on, the one thing I did not want done as I particularly wanted you all to get it together on Xmas day.

I am sending you the IVth Corps Xmas Card – rather a crude drawing I’m afraid but you’ll find it rather interesting as it has on it all the signatures of the other company officers. It will be rather nice to keep won’t it. E P Watts 53rd Sikhs (FF) is attached to us as second in command of the company. He is a topper. He is in the Indian Army (FF = Frontier Force) & as hard as nails.

I got a topping letter from Mr Gilbert at the same time as your last one. Just after I got it a frantic [?] note came from HQRS “Stand to arms at once!! this was in the trenches. Apparently an aeroplane of ours had been reconnoitring & had seen masses of G’s troops concentrating behind the village in front of us. Great excitement. That night patrols went out to find out what they could. One came back saying the Germans were cutting their own barbed wire entanglements to get through preparatory to making an attack. However nothing happened. On our right some miles away the line was heavily attacked. Later on a funny thing happened. A patrol went, (trembling in every limb) got quite close to the enemy and actually heard — (another thrilling instalment in our next issue) a man playing a penny whistle & man singing!

I got a topping letter from Mr Gilbert at the same time as your last one. Just after I got it a frantic [?] note came from HQRS “Stand to arms at once!! this was in the trenches. Apparently an aeroplane of ours had been reconnoitring & had seen masses of G’s troops concentrating behind the village in front of us. Great excitement. That night patrols went out to find out what they could. One came back saying the Germans were cutting their own barbed wire entanglements to get through preparatory to making an attack. However nothing happened. On our right some miles away the line was heavily attacked. Later on a funny thing happened. A patrol went, (trembling in every limb) got quite close to the enemy and actually heard — (another thrilling instalment in our next issue) a man playing a penny whistle & man singing!

Well there is no more news to tell. We are resting now after 6 days running in trenches. By Jove the dirt – One almost walks about without meaning to.

Much love to all

Your loving

Chan

Lieutenant-Colonel Chandos Hoskyns
1885 – 1940
Lest We Forget

Chan [pronounced ‘Shan’] also fought in the Second World War taking part in the Seige of Calais in 1940 where he was badly wounded. He was transferred to a hospital in Dover and was expected to live by the doctors but he was too concerned about the men under his command still fighting, which hindered his recovery. His death had such an enormous impact on his wife, Joyce Austen Taylor who had already lost her only brother in the First now loses her husband and is devastated. It had a particularly bad effect on my mother, his daughter. It never left her and shaped many of her choices in life. There are more forbears in the wider Hoskyns family who dealt with loss in both wars as with families all over the world.

Sarah Vernon © 11th November 2020

Christmas 1914: Chandos Hoskyns in the Trenches

Chandos Hoskyns at Winchester College

FROM THE ARCHIVE [yearly re-post]

IV Corps Christmas Card

My maternal grandfather, Chandos Hoskyns was commissioned into The Rifle Brigade [Greenjackets] in 1914. During The Great War, he fought in Thessaloniki, Greece, and in the trenches of France from where he sent the following letter in which he tells his family about something surprising and unusual.

2nd Bn Rifle Bde.
25th Inf Bde.
8th Divn.
Brit. Exp. Force

[Xmas 1914]

Darling all!

I hope you got my Xmas letter all right only I hear Grannie sent it on, the one thing I did not want done as I particularly wanted you all to get it together on Xmas day.

I am sending you the IVth Corps Xmas Card – rather a crude drawing I’m afraid but you’ll find it rather interesting as it has on it all the signatures of the other company officers. It will be rather nice to keep won’t it. E P Watts 53rd Sikhs (FF) is attached to us as second in command of the company. He is a topper. He is in the Indian Army (FF = Frontier Force) & as hard as nails.

I got a topping letter from Mr Gilbert at the same time as your last one. Just after I got it a frantic [?] note came from HQRS “Stand to arms at once!! this was in the trenches. Apparently an aeroplane of ours had been reconnoitring & had seen masses of G’s troops concentrating behind the village in front of us. Great excitement. That night patrols went out to find out what they could. One came back saying the Germans were cutting their own barbed wire entanglements to get through preparatory to making an attack. However nothing happened. On our right some miles away the line was heavily attacked. Later on a funny thing happened. A patrol went, (trembling in every limb) got quite close to the enemy and actually heard — (another thrilling instalment in our next issue) a man playing a penny whistle & man singing!

Well there is no more news to tell. We are resting now after 6 days running in trenches. By Jove the dirt – One almost walks about without meaning to.

Much love to all

Your loving

Chan

‘Stories of the unofficial truce between British and German troops on Christmas Day 1914, are now well‑known, and were known about at the time, through press reports and letters from the Front. This photograph of German and British troops fraternising in No-Man’s-Land on Christmas Day 1914, appeared in the Daily Mirror in early January 1915.’

I am indebted to Tony Allen of World War I Postcards for the use of both images.

Chandos Hoskyns was the son of Benedict and Dora Hoskyns of the Sicilian Earthquake feature.

Related

• WWI Christmas Postcards
• The Greenjackets Museum

Sarah Vernon © 20 June 2014

Great Uncle Norman: ‘shot by a single sniper’ | First Night History

I’ve decided to make this a regular re-post for November 11th, particularly pertinent this year in light of the fact that everything this and succeeding generations fought and died for is going for a Burton. As I said to Christoph Fischer earlier, I wish I could go back in time and tell my parents, grandparents and other forebears not to fight, not to sacrifice their lives because, come the 21st century, it will have made not a jot of difference.

‘Five foot ten of a beautiful young Englishman under French soil. Never a joke, never a look, never a word more to add to my store of memories. The book is shut up forever and as the years pass I s…

Source: Great Uncle Norman: ‘shot by a single sniper’ | First Night History

‘It’s the end of the 1916 winter and the conditions are almost unbelievable…’

Somme Mud by E.P.F. Lynch

‘It’s the end of the 1916 winter and the conditions are almost unbelievable. We live in a world of Somme mud. We sleep in it, work in it, fight in it, wade in it and many of us die in it. We see it, feel it, eat it and curse it, but we can’t escape it, not even by dying.’

Christmas 1914: Chandos Hoskyns in the Trenches

FROM THE ARCHIVE

IV Corps Christmas Card

My maternal grandfather, Chandos Hoskyns was commissioned into The Rifle Brigade [Greenjackets] in 1914. During The Great War, he fought in Thessaloniki, Greece, and in the trenches of France from where he sent the following letter in which he tells his family about something surprising and unusual.

2nd Bn Rifle Bde.
25th Inf Bde.
8th Divn.
Brit. Exp. Force

[Xmas 1914]

Darling all!

I hope you got my Xmas letter all right only I hear Grannie sent it on, the one thing I did not want done as I particularly wanted you all to get it together on Xmas day.

I am sending you the IVth Corps Xmas Card – rather a crude drawing I’m afraid but you’ll find it rather interesting as it has on it all the signatures of the other company officers. It will be rather nice to keep won’t it. E P Watts 53rd Sikhs (FF) is attached to us as second in command of the company. He is a topper. He is in the Indian Army (FF = Frontier Force) & as hard as nails.

I got a topping letter from Mr Gilbert at the same time as your last one. Just after I got it a frantic [?] note came from HQRS “Stand to arms at once!! this was in the trenches. Apparently an aeroplane of ours had been reconnoitring & had seen masses of G’s troops concentrating behind the village in front of us. Great excitement. That night patrols went out to find out what they could. One came back saying the Germans were cutting their own barbed wire entanglements to get through preparatory to making an attack. However nothing happened. On our right some miles away the line was heavily attacked. Later on a funny thing happened. A patrol went, (trembling in every limb) got quite close to the enemy and actually heard — (another thrilling instalment in our next issue) a man playing a penny whistle & man singing!

Well there is no more news to tell. We are resting now after 6 days running in trenches. By Jove the dirt – One almost walks about without meaning to.

Much love to all

Your loving

Chan

‘Stories of the unofficial truce between British and German troops on Christmas Day 1914, are now well‑known, and were known about at the time, through press reports and letters from the Front. This photograph of German and British troops fraternising in No-Man’s-Land on Christmas Day 1914, appeared in the Daily Mirror in early January 1915.’

I am indebted to Tony Allen of World War I Postcards for the use of both images.

Chandos Hoskyns was the son of Benedict and Dora Hoskyns of the Sicilian Earthquake feature.

Related

• WWI Christmas Postcards
• The Greenjackets Museum

Sarah Vernon © 20 June 2014

Great Uncle Norman: ‘shot by a single sniper’

They Shall Grow Not Old © Sarah Vernon (prints, posters, cushions, cards)

‘Five foot ten of a beautiful young Englishman under French soil. Never a joke, never a look, never a word more to add to my store of memories. The book is shut up forever and as the years pass I shall remember less and less, till he becomes a vague personality; a stereotyped photograph.’

Captain Norman Austin Taylor © Sarah Vernon

Poor Norman.

Such a commonplace death.  Shot by a single sniper. Youngest child, only son.  Three sisters and a father left to grieve along with so many other fathers, mothers, sisters, wives, brothers, children.

“Poor Norman,” said my grandmother Joyce in the 1950s, and turned away so that her youngest son changed the subject.  Was she still, so many, many years later, too saddened by her brother’s death to talk or had he, for her, become nothing but a stereotyped photograph about whom she felt unable to talk?

A stereotyped photograph.  I have two in my possession, both of Norman in Army uniform. The round, boyish face of inexperience looks at me in the one [above]: a bland, almost formal, expression gives way to a makeshift confidence on closer inspection and, with arms folded, suggests a reluctance to be photographed.

In the other [below], he leans against a pillar with engaging insouciance; a cigarette holder, the ash about to drop, rests between sturdy fingers.  Three or four years, maybe less, separate the pictures. The poise in the latter cannot mask the face of a man who has experienced the muck and the noise, the unutterable panic and horror of trench warfare.

Captain Noman Austin Taylor © Sarah Vernon

‘He was hit at four o’clock on the morning of 24th March 1918,’ wrote Joyce the following year.  ‘I felt that icy hand on my heart which I shall never now feel again.’   When I first read my grandmother’s words, I took her to mean that only her brother’s death could produce such an icy hand.  I look at the words now and see only that she felt her heart would never feel anything again.  Perhaps that is why she turned away from her son.

We will remember them.

Captain Norman Austin Taylor 1895-1918

@ALBerridge I thought you might enjoy this post about my great-uncle during #WWI http://t.co/p8CYYU8nRz

— First Night Design (@FirstNightArt) May 15, 2014

@FirstNightArt That’s beautifully written and very moving. No high drama, just the reality of human loss in a war. Great post – thank you.

— Louise Berridge (@ALBerridge) May 15, 2014

@ALBerridge I’m so glad you like it.

— First Night Design (@FirstNightArt) May 15, 2014

Take care and keep laughing!

Originally posted on First Night Design.

Related articles

• No More War
• The brothers in arms claimed by the Western Front (telegraph.co.uk)
• Great Profits during the Great War? | Elizabeth Bruton and Graeme Gooday (oddonion.com)
• WWI deaths showed the humanity amid the horror (telegraph.co.uk)
• WWI in Color (metafilter.com)

Return to Trenches at Death – Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog

Originally posted on Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog.

There follows a very fine ghost story from the British press.

At the beginning of the war a famous regiment left England for France. The colonel that regiment was a man beloved of all his men, idolised by his young subalterns, and highly thought of his brigadier. For a year the colonel led his regiment through the campaign in Flanders, until one misty morning a hand grenade deprived him of an arm. The colonel left for England on the first hospital ship, and his regiment knew him no more. The colonel, after months, was fitted with an artificial arm, but he was not satisfied. He wanted above all things to get back to his regiment. He moved heaven and earth to get back there with his men, but that, he was informed, was impossible. If he liked, however, he could have the command of a garrison battalion shortly leaving for the Dardanelles. Not being of an idle disposition, he took it. After landing one of the first to fall ill with dysentery was the Colonel, He had sufficient strength to warrant his being taken to a hospital ship, however, and so for the second time, he returned to England under the Red Cross. The hospital ship docked in England on a Tuesday, and midday on Wednesday the colonel was carried into the train which was leaving for London. He never reached that city, for he died at 12.30, just half an hour after the train had left.

So far another WW1 tragedy, there are many. Here things get spooky, though.

Now the extraordinary part of this story is that at the exact moment that the Colonel died on the hospital train a company of his old regiment saw him in their trench in Flanders. There was nothing out of the ordinary happening at the time, and…

via Return to Trenches at Death – Beachcombing’s Bizarre History Blog.

Playing the Cello in the Trenches

An Account of the First World War ‘Trench Cello’ of Harold Triggs

Harold Triggs was born in 1886 in Eastbourne, where his father was for many years the managing director of Devonshire Park and Baths. He and his two sisters, Theodora and Grace, would have been surrounded by music from an early age, but Grace, who played the violin, was the only one of the three to choose it as a career and she gave various concerts in the area that were well-reviewed.

Harold first worked as an insurance clerk, although he kept up his musical activities by joining the Oxford and Cambridge Musical Club in 1906. He was to remain a highly-regarded and active performing member of the Club until at least 1954, and Laurence Pettitt, one of the Club’s regular accompanists, wrote of him in the Club’s “80th Anniversary History” that he was “a very fine player in some of the best chamber ensembles.”

Early in the War Harold joined the Royal Sussex Regiment, and in October 1915 was promoted to the rank of Temporary Second Lieutenant. At some point he acquired a “holiday cello” of a type made by W.E. Hill and Sons around 1900, and it was this instrument that he took to France, where a number of young French players had already taken up the idea of playing in the trenches. On the front of this cello are painted the Royal Sussex Regiment’s insignia.

The look of Harold Triggs’s cello when seen from the side is more-or-less normal except for the lack of arching, but from the front or back it is rectangular, as an ammunition box would be. The neck is secured to the body with a normal mortise joint before being fixed to the button at the top of the back with a brass bolt. After that it is simple, the fingerboard slides into place on the neck and the top nut…

Continue reading: The Royal Academy of Music

In the clip below, cellist Steven Isserlis plays on this cello. My connection is still too slow to be able to listen to it except in incoherent snatches but I have no doubt the experience is immeasurably moving.

Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen

“Wilfred Owen plate from Poems (1920)” by Unknown

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen [1893-1918]

Book review – Harry’s War: The Great War Diary of Harry Drinkwater | Book Review | History Extra

Reviewed by: Nigel Jones

Amid the array of books marking the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, this is a real find: a full-length, contemporaneous diary kept by a soldier who served throughout the entire conflict, initially joining up in 1914 as a volunteer private and later commissioned as an officer.

Harry Drinkwater, a cobbler’s son from Stratford-upon-Avon, joined a Birmingham ‘Pals’ battalion after being rejected by the regular army for being too short. Shipped to the western front after training in November 1915, he was immediately plunged into the realities of war. As he wrote: “Heard a fearful crash and found the next dugout to ours blown to blazes and Sergeant Horton with it. He had been our physical drill instructor since the beginning. He was a fellow I liked. As soon as I heard the crash I made my way out, and, with the help of Sergeant Wassell dug him out; he was very near a ‘gonner’. Wassell and I carried him to the rear. Before we could get him anywhere near a dressing station he had departed this life. He was our first casualty, and our first experience of death.”

Drinkwater was to have plenty more experience during the next three blood-drenched years. Shells dropped all around him, decimating groups he had just left; bullets whistled past his ears; mines erupted in flames beneath his feet. Poison gas wafted on the breeze, his friends dropping one by one. But from the Somme and Passchendaele to the Italian front and the German offensives of spring 1918, Drinkwater remained…

Read more: Book review – Harry’s War: The Great War Diary of Harry Drinkwater | Book Review | History Extra.

East End Soldiers Of World War One | Spitalfields Life

Originally posted on Spitalfields Life.

In the week of the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, I have compiled these biographies of just a handful of the thousands of those from the East End who served in the conflict. These photographs are selected from those gathered by Tower Hamlets Community Housing for their exhibition which runs until 29th August at 285 Commercial Rd.

George Gristey was born in Hackney on 13th March 1890. At the time of his death his mother, Laura, lived in Cranbrook Rd, Green St, Bethnal Green. George served as a Private in the East Surrey Regiment and was killed in action in Belgium on 23rd June 1915 and buried at Woods Cemetery, south-east of Ypres in West Flanders.

Read more East End Soldiers Of World War One | Spitalfields Life.

The Memories of August 1914 • Royal de Luxe • Liverpool

Rogues & Vagabonds

Originally posted on 14-18 Now

The world-renowned street theatre company Royal de Luxe retells the story of the famous Liverpool Pals Battalions, the young men who volunteered alongside their next-door neighbours, family members and friends to fight for Britain on the battlefields of Europe. Giants  including the Little Girl, much missed since her previous visit to Liverpool, and her pet dog Xolo will roam the city, drawing crowds into its ranks wherever it ventures.

When the Giants last visited the city in 2012, to mark the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic, 800,000 people came out to see them. This summer they return to recall the fevered atmosphere of those early months of the war, and to honour a courageous generation of Liverpudlians.

The Memories of August 1914 route can be found here.

14-18 Now

View original post

Siegfried Sassoon, Hopelessness and Iraq

Critical Dispatches

Snooping around the charity shops of West London a week past, I spied a copy of Siegfried Sassoon’s fictionalized autobiography, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, on sale for £1. The discovery of a such a volume came as a revelation as although I had been aware of and enjoyed Sassoon’s poetic work (along with Wilfred Owen, he is my hero as far as political poetry is concerned) since I was a preteen– as I am sure anyone born in the North West of England is bred into – I had no idea that he also published prose. At a quid, I would have been the worst sort of miser not to pick it up.

The scale of the whole thing – the de-humaning conditions, the destruction of human life, the sheer hopelessness of it all – is nothing less than horrifying. I remember reading in Savage Continent, Keith Lowe’s brilliant…

View original post 614 more words

Christmas 1914: Chandos Hoskyns in the Trenches

IV Corps Christmas Card

My maternal grandfather, Chandos Hoskyns was commissioned into The Rifle Brigade [Greenjackets] in 1914. During The Great War, he fought in Thessaloniki, Greece, and in the trenches of France from where he sent the following letter in which he tells his family about something surprising and unusual.

2nd Bn Rifle Bde.
25th Inf Bde.
8th Divn.
Brit. Exp. Force

[Xmas 1914]

Darling all!

I hope you got my Xmas letter all right only I hear Grannie sent it on, the one thing I did not want done as I particularly wanted you all to get it together on Xmas day.

I am sending you the IVth Corps Xmas Card – rather a crude drawing I’m afraid but you’ll find it rather interesting as it has on it all the signatures of the other company officers. It will be rather nice to keep won’t it. E P Watts 53rd Sikhs (FF) is attached to us as second in command of the company. He is a topper. He is in the Indian Army (FF = Frontier Force) & as hard as nails.

I got a topping letter from Mr Gilbert at the same time as your last one. Just after I got it a frantic [?] note came from HQRS “Stand to arms at once!! this was in the trenches. Apparently an aeroplane of ours had been reconnoitring & had seen masses of G’s troops concentrating behind the village in front of us. Great excitement. That night patrols went out to find out what they could. One came back saying the Germans were cutting their own barbed wire entanglements to get through preparatory to making an attack. However nothing happened. On our right some miles away the line was heavily attacked. Later on a funny thing happened. A patrol went, (trembling in every limb) got quite close to the enemy and actually heard — (another thrilling instalment in our next issue) a man playing a penny whistle & man singing!

Well there is no more news to tell. We are resting now after 6 days running in trenches. By Jove the dirt – One almost walks about without meaning to.

Much love to all

Your loving

Chan

‘Stories of the unofficial truce between British and German troops on Christmas Day 1914, are now well‑known, and were known about at the time, through press reports and letters from the Front. This photograph of German and British troops fraternising in No-Man’s-Land on Christmas Day 1914, appeared in the Daily Mirror in early January 1915.’

I am indebted to Tony Allen of World War I Postcards for the use of both images.

Chandos Hoskyns was the son of Benedict and Dora Hoskyns of the Sicilian Earthquake feature.

Related

• WWI Christmas Postcards
• The Greenjackets Museum

Sarah Vernon © 20 June 2014