<![CDATA[Letters from Captivity]]>https://chtl.co.uk/https://chtl.co.uk/favicon.pngLetters from Captivityhttps://chtl.co.uk/Ghost 3.20Fri, 20 Sep 2024 20:58:21 GMT60<![CDATA[8 August: The End]]>https://chtl.co.uk/8-august/5f2e9774bbe64306350d8036Sat, 08 Aug 2020 13:00:00 GMTWe have come to the end of the daily posts. Thank you so much for reading them. I’ve been told that they have made great accompaniments to porridge or coffee in the morning and have been squeezed into people’s busy daily routines. I hope that they’ve brightened the Lockdown days a little!

Thank you for all your contributions and comments - this story has more aspects to unfold.

We’ll be keeping the website running for a while, so you’ll be free to delve in again whenever you want to: relive the thrill of the escape attempt; marvel at CHTL’s nerve at demanding a bottle of whiskey a day; chuckle at Churchill turning an apoplectic shade of purple; be in awe of the IRA’s postal system; smile at the warmth of the Irish hospitality; enjoy the fun of the clandestine fishing trips; wonder at the six and a quarter ounce baby and feel for poor Poppy; and so celebrate this good story in the Irish War of Independence - where ‘delightful people’ triumph and a ‘gentleman’ is treated well by ‘gentlemen.’

Anyone new to the story will be able to start from the beginning and read through at their own pace. Please spread the word; it would be lovely to have this story made more well known and celebrated. Hopefully, through the story we can help build bridges and promote reconciliation. It would be lovely to hear from people who have read the posts, and hear people’s ideas and suggestions about what we do next. Also any information, family stories, etc, that anyone has about the story and would like to be added to the collection would be very welcomed. We hope that future generations will learn about the story and discover that is possible to show kindness and respect even to your worst enemy.

Speaking of future generations...

The children of Sixth Class, St. Conaire’s National School have written an excellent collaborative presentation on Michael Brennan’s War of Independence, which includes the General Lucas capture story. We would like to encourage other schools to use the site for research, and would love to post their projects as well, on this website if they would like to display their work to a wider audience.

Sixth Class (St. Conaire's National School)'s Presentation

]]><![CDATA[7 August: The Later Years (Part 3)]]>https://chtl.co.uk/7-august/5f2d0c09bbe64306350d7f73Fri, 07 Aug 2020 09:00:00 GMTAfter the War

After the war CHTL’s needlework skills developed further: he created stunning rugs, seat covers, and evening bags for Poppy and Anne - all of which he designed himself. He entered the Stevenage Craft competitions and ruffled many a feather amongst the W.I. ladies by beating them to first and second place!

CHTL wins 1st & 2nd place, Stevenage Arts & Crafts 1951

At the end of the war, Bob; fired up by his new found faith and knowing that the army would never have been a career choice for him; enrolled at Tyndall Hall, a theological college in Bristol. After learning basic Amharic, he then embarked on a new life as a medical missionary with the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society (B.C.M.S.) in Ethiopia. His qualifications for this role consisted of a short medical course which gave him something short of a nurse’s expertise. This was of course a lot more than the people in Ethiopia had and on the grounds that some medical help was better than none, Bob set about helping where he could - distributing medicine for the soul along with that for the body.

Bill chose to stay in the army and took up the opportunity to study for a B.Sc. Engineering Degree at the Military College of Science. He was posted to what is now Pakistan where there was a lot of unrest in the area with pressure being put on the British to grant independence; echoing the Irish fight for freedom and his father’s encounters with freedom fighters all those years before.The break up of the British Empire that Churchill had so long resisted began in earnest following the war. Pakistan came in to being as a new nation, separated from its mainly Hindu neighbour India, on the 14 August 1947.

Bill met up with Christian missionaries working in the area. Being challenged by their commitment and feeling more uncomfortable with the conflict between his growing Christian faith and his duties as a soldier, Bill decided to resign his commission and become a missionary. It took three years for the army to release him: he had been an outstanding officer of which they were in short supply of, and also they had invested in his training.

Silkingrad

As Bill was battling the army for what he believed to be right and fair, CHTL was embroiled in his own battles with those in authority, back home in Stevenage.

At the end of the war the returning troops, remembering how badly their fathers had been treated when they too returned home from fighting for their country, voted for a government they felt would be more sympathetic to the working man’s needs. Churchill may have been the great war leader but he was not perceived to be a desirable leader in peace-time: he was not a man known to be sympathetic to those on the lower rungs of society.

The new Labour government that came into power was faced with the devastation of London and other cities and the desperate need for new homes for the many displaced and homeless casualties of the Blitz. Sir Leslie Patrick Abercrombie came up with what is known as the ‘Abercrombie Plan’ which contained the idea to create the ‘sub- urbanisation of surrounding country towns’. This would provide much of the desperately needed accommodation and relieve the terrible over- crowding of the inner city slums: consequently people would be able to live in much healthier conditions. Of course this came at a cost – a cost borne by the people of communities such as Stevenage who were quite happy and content living in their rural idyll and who strongly objected to the government imposing this massive change to their way of life.

Stevenage was designated the first New Town on 1 August 1946. When Lewis Silkin, who was a minister in Clement Attlee’s Labour Government, arrived in Stevenage he found the town far from ‘silent for its size, and drowsy in the dullest degree’. (Charles Dickens) The plan was not popular with local people who protested at a meeting held in the town hall. CHTL as a Tory Councillor was very much in the fore amongst the opposition.

Among those demonstrating their protest was the Vice Chairlady of the Young Conservatives who lobbed a cabbage towards the offending Silkin’s head. She avoided arrest when the police realised that the offender was the ‘general’s daughter’ and decided that it was best to turn a blind eye to that particular misdemeanour!

Silkin was adamant at the meeting, telling a crowd of 3,000 people outside the town hall (around half the town’s residents): "I want to carry out in Stevenage a daring exercise in town planning" to which he received nothing but derision. "It’s no good your jeering, it’s going to be done" he declared. Trying to find a more conciliatory tone he continued arguing that Stevenage was the ideal spot for his vision of a ‘New Town’ which would attract people and light industry away from the over-crowded, smog-ridden capital.

Silkin called on the good people of Stevenage to ‘make some sacrifice’ and so to ‘provide for the happiness and welfare of some 50,000 men, women and children’. He tried to sell a vision of a large village with a utopian ’spirit of friendliness and neighbourliness, the sense of belonging to a large family, a community.’

Sensing that the carrot wasn’t going to tempt the stubborn mule of opposition to move forward and co-operate with him, he reapplied the stick, declaring that ;’The project will go forward, because it must go forward. It will do so more surely and more smoothly, and more successfully, with your help and co-operation. Stevenage will in a short time become world-famous. (Laughter from the audience) People from all over the world will come to Stevenage to see how we here in this country are building for the new way of life.’

Silkin left the meeting to shouts of ‘Gestapo’ and ‘Dictator’. It was not only Young Conservatives who had shown their displeasure in a tangible way – some young boys had let down the tyres of the minister’s smart 25 h.p. Wolseley car and filled its petrol tank with sand.

Within two weeks, Tory Councillor Lucas had helped organise a referendum with 2,500 Stevenage residents taking part. The results showed that 52% were ’entirely against the sitting of a satellite town at Stevenage.’

The town soon made the front pages of the national press, not in the way Lewis Silkin had hoped for, but as the opposition to his plans became more vocal, local people changed the railway station signs from ’Stevenage’ to ’Silkingrad’: Clarence Elliot, who founded the Six Hills nursery, coined this name after Lewis Silkin’s announcement that Stevenage was to be the site of Britain’s first New Town. This had caused uproar, and on the night of 21 December 1946 Jack Franklin, with two friends (the sons of the local doctor), covered the Stevenage sign on the railway platform with their own version. CHTL would have very much approved of this little demonstration of defiance! P26 Stevenage in old photos compiled by Maggie Appleton, Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd

The Residents’ Protection Association, which CHTL was a prominent member of as a Tory Councillor, took the matter to the High Court in February 1947 and won on the point of order that Silkin had not properly considered the objections raised at the public Inquiry the previous October. However the politicians finally won the day persuading the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords to rule in their favour and the expansion plan went ahead.

Silkin got his own back on ‘Old Stevenage’, after the New Towns Commission had declared the Old Town would not be touched, the first significant building to be demolished in it was the Old Town Hall, where the government minister had suffered his humiliation.

p161 -162 Austerity Britain 1945 -51 David Kynaston-Kynaston [2007]

The new town was planned in line with up-to-date sociological thinking. Six self-contained neighbourhoods were created each with its own centre. In 1951 Stoney Hall and Monks Wood ”Estates” were the first to open their doors to receive the pioneering residents of the government’s daring experiment in social engineering. Bedwell was the next to be built in 1952. How Poppy and CHTL despaired at the mud and constant stream of heavy vehicles blocking up the roads and causing a constant din. Gone was the peace and tranquillity of the old Stevenage. At quite a pace the new town sprung up and was rapidly filled with London’s grateful ’over-spill’.

Lewis Silkin addressing the people of Stevenage

Old Stevenage remained much the same but it was over shadowed by the colossal size of its young namesake: ‘New Stevenage’. The planners had decided that only council housing should be built; this created a working-class community which had difficulty relating to the more middle-class townsfolk in Old Stevenage. A more enlightened planner would have copied the social mix of the old town and replicated it in the new, giving a better balance to the new town. The urban and rural communities had to make the best of their enforced cohabitation and gradually over the fifties and sixties one ‘Stevenage’ emerged as a well- known name on the map, establishing itself as a thriving community with plenty of employment and good living conditions for the majority. Those having left the deprivation of London couldn’t believe their luck when they were handed the keys to a spanking new house, even though the muddy building sites meant that it was sometime before their homes were sparkling clean.

The town was eventually a huge success and at the beginning of the 21st century had almost the highest employment rate (81%)* of anywhere in the country, with those in work earning more than the national average. However back in 1946 CHTL saw it as being far from having a glorious future. *The Economist August 3rd 2013

A Party Invite

An invitation to the Palace garden party, was a jolly hi-light of 1948. On Friday 11th June between the hours of 4 and 6. CHTL, Poppy and Anne hobnobbed with royalty and other distinguished guests in the gardens of Buckingham Palace.

Back in October 1918, as the war was drawing to its close, CHTL had been called upon to entertain royal visitors on morale boosting visits to the men at the Front.

The Prince of Wales came and had tea yesterday; he really is an extraordinary nice boy, though he is 25 years old. He upset his tea cup all over the cloth and was very apologetic. He forgot to ask after you.

Letter to Poppy, Oct 26th 1918

Of course the Prince of Wales, who had spilt his tea in his encounter with CHTL in France, had become king (Edward VIII) but had abdicated as his choice of wife did not meet government approval. The monarch who was in residence was King George VI, his brother.

Poppy and Anne wore new dresses with hats, whereas CHTL had the choice of morning dress, a lounge suit or service dress.

Bill’s Mission

In 1951 Bill left Pakistan to attend Anne’s wedding. In May 1951, he’d written again to offer his resignation from the army. The army had refused his first request to resign, three years earlier. Bill felt that his Christian beliefs did not fit with what he was required to do in the army: for instance, lay ‘booby traps’ or land mines. He was 40 years ahead of his time as it wasn’t until the 1990’s that the world began to wake up to the immorality of that practice, led by high profile campaigners such as Diana, Princess of Wales.

With his resignation from the army finally agreed, Bill had also come home to prepare for missionary work in Pakistan and intended to return there after a years missionary training. He was not going to be a typical western missionary, who went to live in a country but maintained as many of the creature comforts of Western civilisation as possible. Bill did not want to live as a rich white man amongst the people he wanted to reach. His desire was to go and live as one of them: living on their meagre diet, in accommodation like their own, sharing their day to day troubles and joys as an equal not as a superior.

Bill had already shown the communities that he wanted to work in that he wanted to be treated as one of them. As an army major, on his days off he used to visit the missionaries near to where he was stationed:

An Indian related that on the Major’s first visit to Marden, the missionaries were away, so it fell to his lot to entertain Bill Lucas until such time as they returned. What a privilege it was to have the Major under his roof! In true Pakistan fashion he prepared food for his guest, set a table before him with a nice white cloth on it, and then produced the food. To his astonishment the Major rejected the chair and table and came down and sat on the floor with the family for the meal. Another shock was soon to follow, for after the meal the Major proceeded to help wash up the dishes. No amount of protesting could cause him to desist. He had won his way into the heart of this simple Christian family.

Extract from ’Practical Christianity’ magazine of The Officers’ Christian Union 1952 edition

Left: Anne’s Wedding 1951 - CHTL was in fine form, although his social distancing rule was maintained even as Father of the bride. Right: CHTL, Poppy and Bill

Back home in England Bill began in earnest to prepare himself to return to Pakistan - beginning by eating mainly rice. He spent hours in prayer building himself spiritually for the challenges that lay ahead. His strict COPPs training had instilled in him the need to be fully equipped for your mission and he applied the same exacting discipline as he made ready for his new life in Pakistan.

CHTL would have respected Bill’s courage to stand up and say what he believed. He was uncomfortable with his son’s fiery zeal and open declaration of his faith. These were things to be held privately not to be shouted from the rooftops. Poppy was a lot more sympathetic. There was a strong bond between her and her eldest son, stemming back to the trauma they shared at his birth. Whilst CHTL busied himself with practical jobs like Martha, Poppy sat like Mary and listened.

Portmadoc

Poppy’s notes for 1951:

1951
Thurs Aug: 30 Bill left for Portmadoc
Sund Sep 2 preached on the Sower
Mond Sep 3 Boat capsized
Tues Sep 4 Read it in the morning’s paper 7a.m.
Thurs Sep 6 Hailen 6 a.m. for Portmadoc Service at 3.30 p.m.

Tues Sep 7 Retired Home
Tues Sep 11 Memorial Service Graveley
Thurs Sep 13 Bill’s body found
Fri Sep 14 (Bill had said he would be returning home that day)

Tues Sep 18 Bill buried in Graveley Churchyard.

At the end of August 1951, Bill set off for Portmadoc in Wales; where for the last few years he had volunteered at a Christian camp for boys; possibly the same one that he had attended as a boy and which had changed his life. Bill was in much demand - being a good role model, a war-time hero, and a skilled yachtsman and swimmer. Before he left he told his mother that he would return home on Friday the 14th, the significance of that simple remark struck Poppy two weeks later.

On the Sunday, Bill preached at the camp’s church service on ’The Sower’ one of Jesus’ parables. The Sower represented those like Bill who worked to spread the ’seed’ or God’s words. Some people would listen and respond whereas others would turn away. Bill knew what he’d be facing in Pakistan.

On the Monday Bill took a group of boys out on a sailing trip. His last words before he got in the boat were, "My future lies in the hands of God". The weather looked fine and the yacht, the ’Dorothy’, set sail. A freak storm suddenly blew up and the boat capsized. Bill swam for help. It was a distance he’d swam many times before during the dangerous undercover missions he’d taken part in during the war. This time he never made it to shore; his body was possibly too weak from his meagre diet. Bill died on September 3rd 1951 aged 31, on the twelfth anniversary of the start of the Second World War.

Portmadoc was the Anglicised name for this small Welsh coastal town. In 1974 its name was changed to the Welsh form and is now known as Porthmadog.

CHTL and Poppy had both become quite deaf in their old age. CHTL no doubt suffering ear damage from the tremendous explosions during WW1 battles and from standing too close to the large guns he had over-seen at Grantham and on the front in France. On the day of Bill’s death, they had locked up the house for the night and gone to bed. Neither of them heard the doorbell or the phone ringing incessantly downstairs.

The next morning, for the second time in her life poor Poppy received heart wrenching news from a newspaper flung onto her bed. CHTL couldn’t speak and left Poppy to read the devastating news for herself. A newspaper headline had brought Bill into this world and now it felt like a newspaper headline had taken him out.

Many felt that dear, gentle, kind Bill, who reflected the goodness of his namesake, his great, great grandfather William, by following his Lord so devotedly, was ‘just too good for this world.’

Poppy

The Boys camp was understandably shaken by this sudden and tragic loss of life. The young often believe that they are immune from death and to have to suddenly face up to the death of their friends was something the boys struggled to come to terms with. On Thursday, September 6th, CHTL and Poppy travelled up to North Wales to attend the memorial service held at Criccieth Parish Church.

It must have been an unbelievably difficult and painful thing to do, but CHTL applied his stiff upper lip and did his duty. How he and Poppy must have ached inside, torn apart by their overwhelming grief - there is nothing worse than losing a child. To make things worse Bill’s body had still not being recovered; although the other casualties had been retrieved from the sea.

The following day CHTL and Poppy ’retired home’ utterly exhausted. Their pain was made worse as still Bill’s body hadn’t been found. In the back of their minds must have been the wild hope that maybe Bill would be found alive. However they were resigned to the fact that Bill had died and went ahead and arranged a Memorial Service for him in their local church in Graveley on Tuesday September 11th, Poppy’s birthday.

Finally on Thursday September 13th Bill’s body was found. CHTL had to make the grim journey to identify his son’s remains which would not have been pleasant considering the time Bill’s body had spent in the sea. On Friday September 14th Bill’s body was brought home. Poppy remembered that ’Bill had said he would be returning home that day’.

Bill was buried in Graveley Church yard on Tuesday September 18.

THE FUNERAL

The funeral of Major Lucas was held very quietly in Gravely on Tuesday morning, only the Rev. R. N. Stoddart, who read the service at the graveside, and Major-General and Mrs C. H. Tindall Lucas, being present.

Newspaper cutting found amongst Poppy’s papers

There was little point for yet another service; all those who had wanted to had paid their respects at the two memorial services. Bill’s funeral was a private time for CHTL and Poppy to say their final goodbyes to their dear son who had entered their lives at such a traumatic period and yet whose presence had kept them both strong and given them hope for the future. Now they had to face the future without their gentle, kind Bill.

The inquest was held and no one was held to blame for the tragic accident:

ACCIDENTAL DEATH VERDICT

Tribute to Major Lucas’s ‘fine spirit’

A verdict of accidental death was returned by the Portmadoc, North Wales, Coroner, at an inquest on Friday on Major Arthur William Tindall Lucas, 31-year-old elder son of Major-General and Mrs C.H. Tindall Lucas, of Northwood, North Road, Stevenage.

Newspaper cutting found amongst Poppy’s papers

Last Photo of Bill

Bob by this time was a missionary in Ethiopia. His devastation at the loss of his brother was made harder by the thought that it should have been him to die young with all his faults and failings not his saintly older brother. However Bob’s strong faith enabled him to believe that his brother was safe in Heaven and that one day he would see him again.

Joys and Sorrows

The 1950’s was a mixed time of joys and sorrows for CHTL and Poppy: Anne had married, but Bill had died. Anne had two beautiful daughters, Amelia and Amanda, who CHTL doted on and who were a real comfort to their grandparents following Bill’s death. They won many a smile from sorrow. CHTL delighted in taking them to a nearby bridge over the railway, where they would squeal with glee as a train roared along the tracks below leaving them in a cloud of steam. However the doting grandfather was restricted in what he could do with his granddaughters - for instance he was banned from taking them out in his car out of concern for their safety!

Bob, who like his father had been very anxious about marrying for fear of marrying the wrong person, finally settled down to married life in 1953 with Fern Evoy, a Canadian nurse who was working for the Ethiopian Royal family. Although pleased for Bob, CHTL had one regret over Bob’s choice of wife: Fern being Canadian meant that Bob’s precious furlough was now split between Canada and England which meant that his parents saw even less of their son.

Bob and Fern’s daughter Elizabeth was born in 1954, followed by Margaret in 1955. Sadly baby Margaret didn’t reach her first birthday but died from a blood disorder. Yet more sorrow for the Lucas family.

Fern became pregnant again and she and Bob were excited about the birth of another child. Heartbreakingly another unexpected tragedy struck the family when in 1956 Fern died in child birth along with baby Michael.

Bob struggled to cope as a single parent on the mission field but it proved too much. The missionary society gave him some compassionate leave to give him time to readjust. Bob made the long journey back to England with Elizabeth.

CHTL and Poppy didn’t hesitate to offer their son and granddaughter a home - relishing the chance to spend time with them. They were hands-on grandparents, helping to look after Elizabeth whilst Bob tried to sort out the next stage in his and his daughter’s lives. Elizabeth remembers slipping in the bath and banging a tooth. She was quickly scooped up in a towel and sat on her concerned grandfather’s lap to be consoled.

Poppy would read to her granddaughters some of her own childhood favourites which she had read in turn to her children. These included 'Froggy would a wooing go' and gruesome tales about vegetables who metamorphosed into humans only to be chased and chopped up for the stew pot! The World War One favourite: ’Daisy, Daisy’ was often sung by Poppy, recalling the romantic days of her and CHTL’s courtship. Simple treats were turned into wonderful delights, such as water biscuits spread thickly with butter and then sandwiched together so that yellow worms squirmed out through each of the biscuit’s holes! Poppy also liked to take her granddaughters for walks but, in contrast to their grandfather’s noisy outings, these were along quiet country lanes where the local wildlife could be spotted and named.

Water-colour painting was Poppy’s gentle hobby and she often took herself off into the countryside to capture a pleasing landscape. It was time that she could escape by herself and maybe have time to remember happy times with those whom she now grieved for: or maybe it was a time to just shut the world and its troubles out and to concentrate on a small spot of the earth’s great beauty.

CHTL kept up his involvement in the local community and was remembered for his quiet acts of kindness. Anne recalled telling her father about a woman that she had met on the train who had to travel great distances to visit her son who had been confined to a Mental Hospital since the Great War. Somehow CHTL quietly pulled some strings and arranged for the man to be moved closer to his mother, making her life considerably easier.

Horse Racing

In his later years CHTL discovered a new hobby when he took to going to the races after he became too old to fish or shoot. Like all his previous sports and pastimes, CHTL was very serious about mastering the art. Nothing was ever done in half-measures and time and discipline had to be applied. He kept a form book and would rise early on Race days to study the form. He never bet a lot, maybe 5/- to 10/-, but always made enough to cover his expenses and to treat Poppy and his children to an occasional day out at the Races. He was a member at Newmarket, Cheltenham, Newbury, Towcester and Ascot.

A newspaper wanted CHTL to be their regular tipster which he was very flattered by, but decided not to change an enjoyable hobby into something that resembled work: the responsibility of trying to guide other people away from making foolish bets would have taken the enjoyment out of it.

As a responsible father, CHTL didn’t like the idea of his sons following him into betting on horses, but he told them that he would teach them how to do it properly so that they didn’t lose money overall. Both declined the offer - their minds being set on higher things! However Poppy always placed a small bet on a grey at the Derby each year. It’s not known whether she ever won anything: CHTL must have despaired at her romantic rather than scientific approach to betting!

The Final Fence

Poppy’s notes for 1958:

1958
Easter Monday
April 7 C. died at Towcester Races
Thursday 10 C. buried at Graveley Church yard.

It was at the Races that CHTL died. He wouldn’t have wanted a long drawn out death as his father-in-law had suffered:

It must be awful for a man who has always been a man in every sense of the word suddenly becoming helpless, instead of doing things for other people, and feeling that he is a dead weight.

CHTL’s letter to Poppy on her father’s death

As many commented afterwards CHTL’s was a very fitting end. He died helping others, ‘so typical of his very generous and kindly nature’– he was helping to push a car stuck in mud at Towcester race course. He died at the Races where he was possibly at his happiest, doing an act of kindness, trying to extract a car out of the mud where it no doubt had chosen to sink in a wilful act of defiance of its poor long-suffering owner. CHTL would have laughed at the thought that it was a car that once again had got the better of him! He won his final smile from sorrow.

CHTL & Poppy at Northwood
]]><![CDATA[6 August: The Later Years (Part 2)]]>https://chtl.co.uk/6-august/5f2b1608bbe64306350d7e8eThu, 06 Aug 2020 05:00:00 GMTRetirement

When it was clear in 1932, that the only military posting that CHTL was likely to get was to India, the decision was taken that it was time for him to retire. A posting to India would mean that Bill and Bob would have to be left behind in England to continue their education. With the great cost and time it took to travel from the UK to India the consequence of this would be that the boys would rarely be able to see their parents.

Neither Poppy nor CHTL wanted to sacrifice seeing their sons grow up and the relationship that they had with them, for the army: they had sacrificed enough over the years. Now they had the chance to settle down; have their own home and be able to be in charge of their own lives without feeling they had to answer to the military. As CHTL had been awarded the rank of Major-General, this meant that he was able to retire on a larger pension and so early retirement was an affordable option.

Bill, Bob and Anne

Although Poppy would have much preferred to have settled down in her beloved Devon beside the sea, she had to compromise yet again and agree to live in landlocked Hertfordshire under the close scrutiny of the domineering Lucas sisters. It might have been the case that CHTL was free from having to answer to the army but neither he nor Poppy was free from having to report to his family. At least Stevenage, the town chosen by CHTL to live in, wasn’t Hitchin or Welwyn where many of the extended Lucas family lived, but it wasn’t far away and Poppy felt under constant pressure to keep her nosy in-laws up-to-date with her day to day existence.

The choice of Hertfordshire made sense in the light of the fact that CHTL held the honorary title of Deputy Lieutenant of Hertfordshire. The duty of a Deputy Lieutenant was to assist in the performance of any public duty performed by the Lord Lieutenant. The Lord Lieutenant was appointed by the monarch, on the advice of the Prime Minister and was his Majesty’s personal representative in Hertfordshire.

The Lord Lieutenant’s prime duty was to uphold the dignity of the Crown. Within that remit, the Lord Lieutenant was expected to exercise the following functions:

  1. ‌‌Arrange visits by members of the Royal family and escort Royal visitors.
  2. Present medals and awards on behalf of His Majesty.
  3. Participate in civic, voluntary and social activities within Hertfordshire.‌‌
  4. Liaise with local units of the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Army, Royal Air Force and their associated cadet forces.‌‌
  5. Lead the Magistracy by chairing the Advisory Committee for the appointment of Justices of the peace and for the Appointment of the General Commissioners of Income Tax’.

The Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire at the time was Brigadier-General Thomas Walter Brand, 3rd Viscount Hampden GCVO KCB CMG (29 January 1869 – 4 September 1958). He was a British peer and soldier, the son of the 2nd Viscount Hampden. He served as an officer in the Hertfordshire Regiment, being promoted to Brigadier General during WW1. CHTL fought alongside him at Gallipoli and later at the Battle of Cambrai (1917) and the battles of 1918. It was Brand’s offer of serving as his deputy in Hertfordshire that CHTL had taken up.

Northwood

‌The house CHTL bought in Stevenage was called ‘Northwood’. It was a large Victorian house but far smaller than the Devonshire mansion Poppy had grown up in and smaller than CHTL’s childhood home, Foxholes, in Hitchin. Poppy didn’t mind the ‘downsizing’ at all; she had begun to learn to economise after realising that her father had been whittling away the family’s fortune with his excessive spending. She was very frugal, often cutting back when she could comfortably afford not to.

Northwood

It was a comfortable house. There was a tennis court (of course) and ample sized gardens for CHTL to grow vegetables. One affordable luxury CHTL wouldn’t have installed in Northwood was gas. After seeing what happened in France as a consequence of gas attacks, he was very uneasy at the thought of having a potentially lethal weapon pumped into his home. Of course the gas used as domestic fuel was not the same as the gas used in the trenches but the memories and fears of those attacks lived on in the old soldier’s mind. ‌‌

CHTL always carried with him a thick rope. He had a fear of being trapped in a burning building, so the rope was there to facilitate an escape if he ever needed it. This again possibly went back to his WW1 days and hearing about (if not seeng) what happened in towns and cities that were bombed and burnt by the Germans.

CHTL threw himself into the local community; serving as verger at the local church – an unlikely role for someone who had spent his life avoiding prayers and church services. However underneath it all he had respect for Christian beliefs, knowing that during his darkest hours in France, Belgium, Turkey, Sudan, South Africa and of course Ireland, prayers had been said daily for him by his devoted and devout parents.

Today is Sunday & I haven’t been to church. I really must make an effort as I haven’t been for months and months now & its not good for one, only out here Sunday is no different from any other day.

CHTL - Dec 23rd 1917

Religion, faith and belief were like feelings which CHTL did not find easy to express and for the most part kept hidden away. In later life his ‘spirit was willing’ to contemplate higher things from an emotionally objective distance on Sundays, but for the rest of the week, his ‘spirit’ was more than willing to join his ‘flesh’ in contemplating and thoroughly enjoying some of the ‘ways of the world’!‌‌Standing as a Tory Councillor was another way that CHTL felt he could serve his community.

‌‌The family home was stuffed full of CHTL’s war souvenirs. In 1917, CHTL collected a ‘suit of german armour, do for the occasional ball later on, one of our subalterns found it in the German trenches after the last push.’ Aug 3rd 1917

I am now collecting a large mass of trophies which I don’t think I shall ever be able to get home; machine guns, brass german shell cases and weapons of all sorts. Father asked me to send home to Hitchin as a present 2 field guns captured by the divn, that is rather beyond my scope of looting.

CHTL - Oct 3rd 1918

One of the brass German shell cases, which was well over a metre long was polished up and hung vertically on a frame made out of an old metal bedstead and used as a gong to summon the family to meals. At those meals CHTL, who disliked wasting time, would, rather rudely, finish his food before Poppy had finished serving the rest of the family and had sat down to eat.

CHTL also amassed large collections of stamps, coins, butterflies, birds eggs*, Egyptian glass, African spears and all sorts of memorabilia from the many countries that CHTL had lived in. He fascinated his children with his wide knowledge and sparked off their interest in collecting and learning about the world beyond the British shores.

* In 1954 the Wild Birds Protection Act made this hobby illegal as it began to threaten the survival of many wild birds.

In addition to being a philatelist, a numismatist, a lepidopterist and an oologist (stamp, coin, butterflies, birds eggs) CHTL displayed his knowledge of wildlife in the form of his numerous trophies from his many hunting trips in Africa and India, as well as Great Britain and Europe: along with the usual stag’s antlers, hare’s feet and animal skins there was an elephant’s ear – described to guests as the world’s largest hearing aid!

Stevenage

Stevenage was a large Market Town when CHTL purchased ‘Northwood’ as his family’s abode in the early 1930’s. It was not far from Hitchin where generations of Lucas’, had been born and bred. The population of the town at the time CHTL planted his roots was around 4-5000. This gradually rose to around 6000 and then with The New Towns Act 1946 exploded to 60,000 as part of the plan to develop 28 towns around the country.

CHL enjoying a joke

‌‌CHTL was in an elite minority in owning a car: ‘There were a lot of horses and carts and bikes. If you had a car you were somebody, then. It was a small place in those days because you could go up the High Street and not meet a car.’ CHTL was soon seen as someone of standing in the town, ‘the General’, the local magistrate, a Tory Councillor, Church Verger at Gravely and he himself became one of the local ‘characters’. CHTL’s sense of humour endeared him to those who enjoyed his unconventional attitude towards life and society; the more seriously minded souls stiffly bristled at the General’s ways.

Kathleen Jackson p72 Stevenage Voices RECOLLECTIONS OF LOCAL PEOPLE compiled by Margaret Ashby-Ashby [2005]

World War 2

When the Second World War began on 3rd September 1939, Bill and Bob both enlisted at once. Bill had gone one step better than his father and had managed to secure a place at the more academic Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, rather than at Sandhurst as CHTL had been. This was a great achievement, especially for a quiet boy who suffered with a stammer. Bill had done very well as he had merited one of the limited but highly coveted places in the Royal Engineers which only the crème de la crème gained. Bob joined up straight from school, following his father into the Royal Berkshire regiment.

Like father, like sons: CHTL, AWTL (Bill) & RHTL (Bob) as young soldiers about to go to war

The General, feeling redundant and left out of the action, immediately donned his full uniform again. He motored up to Anne’s boarding school which was near to the Norfolk coast and therefore was in an area likely to be invaded if the ‘Bosch’ weren’t held at bay. Anne’s school chums were all very impressed when a still very good looking man arrived in a general’s uniform to pick his daughter up and take her back to the relative safety of Stevenage.

The residents of Stevenage joined the rest of the country in ensuring that their houses were blacked out. They received their gas masks and practised putting them on. Of course for CHTL gas masks were not a new thing: he had survived many a gas attack in the trenches and had also seen the horrific consequences of not being adequately protected from the deadly vapours. The siren outside the fire station in Stevenage was set up to raise the alarm as soon as word came that enemy planes were on their way.

When the first air raid sounded CHTL was up and dressed in his uniform, directing the family’s evacuation to their shelter in the garden. This was one of the few air raid shelters built in Stevenage. CHTL would have studied the plans issued by the government and no doubt added to the construction. His years of living in dugouts meant that he was an expert in what was needed in a good hole in the ground!

The ‘family’ consisted of Poppy, Anne and CHTL’s man servant. The latter in his haste to get to the shelter was mortified to find he had forgotten to bring his teeth. He was so embarrassed that he would be spending the night in a cramped Andersen shelter sans teeth, with two ladies; that he tried to return to the house for his choppers. CHTL ordered him back into the shelter and then proceeded to take up his position guarding the entrance from outside. This was not so much for his family’s protection as for his enjoyment of watching the battle being fought in the skies over London. He was back in the trenches when he couldn’t help himself but dive out of his dug out to watch the latest dog fight going on:

I cant really write sense as there are a stream of thin aeroplanes going overhead & (just run outside to see quite a good blaze go up) dropping bombs, these moons are the very curse. Just been out again, a shower of our own bullets falling all round, and the aeroplane going quietly home in the searchlight with shells bursting all round. Another is just coming over now dropping bombs. Been out again but too late as usual they are all over us, far away.

Letter to Poppy, Sept 27th 1917

The bombing in London in June 1940 was so heavy that the burning houses turned the sky red.

Stevenage suffered relatively little damage from bombing, being close to London. The railway was twice a target as the Stevenage line was one of the mainlines between the North and London. The ESA factory was hit as a consequence of the second attack on the railway line.

Home Guard

The Home Guard was the natural place for a redundant general to offer his services and CHTL was soon involved.

There was a great threat of invasion in May 1940, the Allies, including ”the whole root and core and brain of the British Army”, had been pushed back to the coast and were trapped on the French beaches facing capture or death, which Churchill later called ”a colossal military disaster”. The country was called to prayer. Churchill ordered the evacuation of the troops and 42 naval vessels headed for Dunkirk. Then between 27 May and the early hours of 4 June 1940 the ’Miracle of Dunkirk’ took place when a total of 338,226 soldiers were rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk by the navy and by the seven hundred ”little ships of Dunkirk” : a flotilla of R.N.L.I. lifeboats, merchant boats, fishing boats, private yachts and small boats - more used to being messed about in by families on a day out at the seaside than in being sailed across the Channel.These were manned by volunteers who responded to the hour of crisis as best they could. On the 4th June Churchill gave his rousing ’We shall fight on the beaches’ speech, immortalising the incredible Dunkirk evacuation as a ”miracle of deliverance”. We Shall Fight on the Beaches (1940) by Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill Delivered at the House of Commons, Westminster on 4 June 1940.

The men left at home, either for being too old, too young, not deemed fit enough or needed to work in reserved occupations to keep the country going, were frustrated that they couldn’t do anything to help stop the Germans from invading. Many of these men had fought in the Great War and didn’t want all that they had sacrificed then to be lost to this new offensive from the Bosch.

The Government decided to utilise these men and in a broadcast on 14th May, 1940, asked for volunteers for what was first called the LDV (Local Defence Volunteers): Winston Churchill changed the name of the LDV to the ’Home Guard’ on 23rd August, 1940. It was hoped that around 150,000 men would volunteer but five times that number signed up in the first month rising to over a million by the end of June 1940. They had been inspired by the Dunkirk volunteers who had risked their lives to help keep the Bosch at bay. Joining the Home Guard was a way that the men at home could feel that they were doing their bit.

CHTL was one of the million who responded to the call for a home based defence force, however his role was as Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire. The Secretary of State for War, Anthony Eden sent a telegram to all Lord Lieutenant of Counties in England, Scotland and Wales on 15th May 1940 requesting their support: “I am sure”, he wrote, “ that we may count on your co-operation and help in connection with the Local Defence Volunteer Force which, as I announced last night, the Government have decided to raise...” CHTL threw himself into the role, supporting the Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire, 3rd Viscount Hampden, Brigadier-General Brand.

’The Home Guard was formed with the intention of delaying an enemy invasion force for as long as possible and to give the Government and the regular army time to form a front line from which the enemy invasion could be repelled. When they were first formed, the Home Guard were expected to fight highly trained, well armed, German troops using nothing but shotguns, air rifles, old hunting rifles, museum pieces, bayonets, knives and pieces of gas-pipe with knives or bayonets welded on the end!’

Later on they were issued with more conventional weapons, but these proved challenging as most were either relics from the Great War or they were American or Canadian guns. This was where CHTL would have been in his element, mustering the troops, boosting morale, organising training for them in the use of their antique guns and generally feeling that he was doing his bit to once again defend his country. He’d have known Major Bulleid and his house in North Road where target training took place. No doubt CHTL also kept an eye on the drill practice on ground near the gas works in Sish Lane. Those in the Home Guard who had fought in WW1 would have responded to his command and those who were too young would have been in awe of the ’General’.

In 1940 there was a parade of the Home Guard through Stevenage with the first outing of their new ’armoured car’ donated by the ESA factory to the Stevenage L.D.V., then 6 Company, 3rd Hertfordshire Battalion. It was built in the ESA factory on the chassis of the company’s Bentley. This was much more sophisticated than Jones’s delivery van in ‘Dad’s Army’: the Stevenage Home Guard’s armoured vehicle was a heavily metal-plated adapted car that would afford its occupants the best possible protection from any attacks from marauding German invaders.

http://www.home-guard.org.ukhghistory.html

However this was not as much protection as one might have wanted. J.D. Sainsbury, a twenty-first century historian, commented: ’The ’armour’ would have been of mild, rather than hardened, steel, which could be penetrated by rifle bullets, and the huge weight of the body would have made the vehicle very slow and cumbersome. It’s most interesting feature [were] the two land-service Lewis guns, one in the ’Scarfe ring’ mounting that was used by observer-gunners in First World War biplanes.’

J.D.Sainsbury was perplexed by the standard of weaponry installed on the Stevenage car, in particular the two Lewis guns: ’How these two guns were obtained remains a mystery’.

p151 The Home Guard in Hertfordshire 1940-1945 J.D, Sainsbury -Sainsbury [2012]

Realising that CHTL had been ’appointed to command the machine Gun Training Centre at Grantham’ in January 1918 and in March 1918, ’was appointed Inspector of Machine Gun Units, General Headquarters, France’ and knowing that CHTL was an eclectic collector of WW1 battlefield debris, one can guess who managed to acquire the two guns!  ‘I am now collecting a large mass of trophies …; machine guns, brass german shell cases and weapons of all sorts … 2 field guns …’ (Oct 3rd 1918)

Mr J. Appleton, Managing Director of the ESA factory, (Educational Supply Association) had donated the vehicle as his company’s contribution to the local war effort. His wife was rewarded for her husband’s generosity by being given the honour of inspecting the Home Guard, escorted by a very cheerful retired major-general dressed in full uniform: the Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Hertfordshire. The general had his arm in a sling, probably the result of his other enthusiastic contributions to the war effort.

CHTL & Mrs Appleton, Stevenage Home Guard parade

‌‌Feeding the Nation and a New Hobby

When he wasn’t guarding his dug out or parading with the Home Guard, CHTL spent the war growing vegetables and taking up Poppy’s speciality – breeding poultry. War time restrictions meant that he had to have a special licence to be a retail trader in ‘eggs, poultry including turkeys, fruit, vegetables fresh (other than potatoes)’. Having not been much of a gardener previously CHTL took to it like any challenge- with determination and an uncanny ability to excel at it. Poppy spent hours producing hundreds of jars of pickles and preserves, trying to keep up with the abundant harvests that her husband’s hard toil continuously produced.

‌‌Poppy and Anne volunteered for the Woman’s Voluntary Service and helped in the Soldiers’ Canteen which was set up in the Old Castle Inn. Poppy, ever sensible and not worrying about what others might think, took Anne’s old doll’s pram down to the canteen a mile away and returned with all the scraps of food to feed her hens. Anne served visiting servicemen, including Americans, endless cups of tea; accompanied no doubt with jam from her mother’s capacious larder full of preserves. Once she reached seventeen and had left school, Anne joined the Fannies. The Fannies were the girls who drove the ambulances and the general’s cars, and Anne had great fun.

Another astonishing war-time achievement, considering his missing fingers, was that CHTL asked his daughter to teach him to knit and he contributed many balaclavas for the troops. He also started making intricate carpets. He designed them and then stitched amazing patterns, incredibly neatly. Bill wrote to Anne after he’d been home for a few days on leave:

Father has started another carpet which seems to be very like his last one, but apparently it isn’t.

Bill to Anne - October 23rd 1939

CHTL’s patterns for his rugs which he then made into full size rugs approx 3ft x 5ft (90cm x 150cm)

Bill and Bob’s War

Whilst CHTL was involved with the Home Guard part-timers, Bill had joined the Royal Engineers and had soon showed he had outstanding skills and abilities. In December 1942 he was selected to join an elite group of soldiers and sailors in an experiment in a revolutionary new concept in warfare. The group were known as COPPs (Combined Operations Pilotage Parties). It was realised that there was a need for reconnaissance and guidance for assaults for beach invasions which COPPs were to supply.

Bill was involved in extremely dangerous missions which involved travelling into enemy waters in a submarine, transferring to canoes and then swimming ashore in shark infested waters to do a recce of the enemy’s defences, taking detailed notes and recording measurements of various kinds. CHTL had shown a talent for doing this when captured by the IRA, however he was not in possession of the sophisticated equipment that Bill became adept at using and his records of distances etc. must have seemed very crude in comparison to his son’s.

Like so many other concerned parents during the war, CHTL and Poppy never knew what their sons were involved in. CHTL understood the reasons behind censorship, although he had been frustrated by its restraints during his time on the Frontline. It was probably better that they knew as little as possible as knowledge brought extra anxiety. Few in the military knew about the existence of the COPPists and what they did; so it wasn’t until peacetime lifted restrictions that Bill was able to tell his family about his exploits.

British troops were engaged in fighting the Japanese in Burma. Among them was Bob who was a Lieutenant in the Reconnaissance Corps having originally joined the Royal Berks Regiment. The only ‘war story’ Bob ever told about his time in Burma was when he was sent to retrieve crates of supplies that had been air dropped. These were to be loaded onto lorries and transported to the waiting troops. On one occasion two crates burst open on impact meaning that the contents couldn’t be easily transferred on. Bob delighted in describing how he and his men were ‘forced’ to eat the contents of these particular containers. The lads enjoyed a sumptuous feast of tinned peaches and condensed milk – making it one of the best days of the war!

Burma was a tough place to be and Bob never spoke about the fighting he’d been involved in. He spent a rest period in India and it was here that he had a life changing experience. He was in the middle of nowhere, all alone when he heard what he described as an audible voice, saying: ‘I gave myself for you, why won’t you give yourself to me?’ Bob believed this to be the voice of Christ calling Bob to follow him. Without hesitating Bob responded and committed his life to serving God.

Bill had become a committed Christian at Marlborough, but Bob had always resisted his brother’s urges to change his ways. Now there was no stopping Bob’s enthusiasm for his new found faith and he began to avidly read the Bible. He decided after reading the New Testament that he should give away his money. He wrote to his father, as his power of attorney, explaining his decision and asking that his father would give certain amounts to various charities and recipients. Bob never doubted that his father honoured his request: however years later, when Bob went over the amounts he’d requested to be donated, he realised that he’d asked for more money to be given away than he actually had! The only possible conclusion to this conundrum was that CHTL had made up the shortfall from his own pocket.

It’s hard to know what CHTL felt when both his sons turned their backs on the army or any lucrative careers that may have been open to them, choosing to follow the religious calling they both were fully committed to. It appears that both boys reverted back to their Quaker roots and the belief that each person is ‘equal in the sight of God’ and capable of receiving the ‘light of God’s spirit and wisdom’. CHTL must have been uncomfortable with such strong views which contrasted with his view of the world and yet, although he didn’t go along with his sons’ religious zeal, he respected their right to hold their beliefs and follow the path they believed they were called to.

COPP7, the group Bill was assigned to, was sent to India and it was while Bill was in India that he was able to meet up with his brother and share the joy of Bob’s new found faith. This brought the brothers even closer together and formed a strong bond between them.

Whilst in India Bill went down with malaria. In a feverish state poor Bill had a close encounter with the regimental ‘gnu’. This wildebeest was possibly a descent of the wildebeests brought back by South Wales Borderers from the Boer War. For some reason the wildebeest took a violent dislike to the sickly Bill and attacked him. Despite being well below par the commando in him took over and Bill defended himself by thrusting his thumbs into the raging gnu’s eyes and instantly slaying the beast. The regiment were not amused to have lost their mascot. CHTL was highly amused but poor Poppy was shocked to receive Bob’s telegram informing his parents of their son’s near death experience:

Bill bruised battling bull, Bob

Following numerous recces on the beaches of Burma, Bill went on to take part in Operation Frippery, which gathered together detailed reconnaissance of beaches along the coast of Sumatra in preparation for a planned invasion of the island. It was an extremely dangerous mission, with the group coming close to losing their lives on more than one occasion, but Bill came through it and was awarded an MBE for his services.

COPP Uniform

CHTL and Poppy couldn’t have been prouder of their son. He like his father had faced immeasurable dangers with bravery and fortitude and a lot of good humour: although Lucas Junior was sure to avoid the vices his father indulged in to help him cope with the horrors he saw. Bill’s coping mechanism was found on his knees and in a well-read leather bound book, not in a bottle of whiskey!

]]><![CDATA[5 August: Later Years (Part 1)]]>https://chtl.co.uk/5-august/5f29af26bbe64306350d7df3Wed, 05 Aug 2020 05:00:00 GMT

On my escape from the Sinn Feiners I was transferred to England and given command of the 11th. Infantry Brigade at Colchester.

PARTICULARS OF EXPERIENCE AND TESTIMONIALS OF COLONEL CUTHBERT HENRY TINDALL LUCAS C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O. COLONEL COM- MANDANT 11TH INFANTRY BRIGADE. Application for the post of Chief Con- stable of Nottingham 13th November, 1922.

CHTL and Poppy finally got their wish and were able to settle down with their son and enjoy some family time together. The job CHTL had been given was far less stressful than the Irish command had been. They set up their home in Colchester, as they had in Cologne, and at last lived a more peaceful life, free from the worry of war and conflict. They discovered the delights of parenthood with young Bill and were keen to expand their family further.

One of the highlights of the year following his escape was CHTL receiving his CB. In spite of how Churchill had felt about him, there were enough people in high places who had used their influence and made sure that CHTL was rewarded for his work. It was probably politically important to show that CHTL wasn’t a failure in any way and that his heroic escape had redeemed him. Dressed in an elegant gown, which hid her rapidly growing bulge, Poppy joined CHTL at the palace to receive the award.

Barely twelve months after Bill was born, Bob (Robert Holdsworth Tindall Lucas) bounced into the world on 11th July 1921.

CHTL’s two sons were inseparable, often in trouble, Bob much more than Bill. Poor Poppy found the boys quite a handful. Once at her wit’s end, when, left on her own with them without their father’s stern rebuke to snap them into line or dear Nanny Gilbert’s skilful handling of them, Poppy resorted to getting out her hairbrush to discipline Bob. Unfortunately Poppy used the wrong side of her hair brush. Nanny returned and was horrified to see what looked like a small bottom covered in German measles and sought at first to comfort Bob believing him sick, rather than to chide him for his misdeeds! She also had to console and reassure a distraught Poppy who was appalled at the result of her attempts to chastise her son. The hair brush rash soon disappeared but Bob milked it for all it was worth while it lasted!

Family Celebrations

In 1923, the Tindall Lucas clan gathered together to celebrate William and Frances’ Golden Wedding. The family had been through some very tough times, but they were still able to celebrate the good. A photo of the happy couple surrounded by their children and their spouses was taken on the steps of The Hall in Welwyn. The grandchildren were nowhere to be seen, probably being entertained by nurses and nannies, to give the elderly couple a little peace and quiet!

William & Frances Lucas’ Golden Wedding 1923. CHTL in his usual pose, this time with Poppy and his family beside him!
Poppy, Bill & Bob - Jan. 1922

Anne, the general’s much loved only daughter, appeared five years after Bob. She was adored by her father, who always had a soft spot for little girls, and consequently she was ‘spoilt rotten’.

Anne had a governess who could be quite unkind to her behind closed doors. Deciding for once to be her protective big brothers rather than just her tormentors, Bill and Bob decided to find a solution to little sis’ problem by taking direct action. They managed to smuggle a couple of small mice into the governess’s top drawer. Problem solved! It was worth the trouble: in all the furore that followed Poppy realised that the governess wasn’t the nice person she thought she was when she first employed her.

The rapidly departing governess got some comfort from seeing two boys in disgrace and their mother despairing at where she would find another governess at short notice! Anne was the only one who was extremely pleased with the outcome!

A return to Germany

In 1927 CHTL was appointed Colonel on staff, at the General Headquarters of the Rhine Army in Cologne. Poppy was delighted to be returning to the place where she and CHTL enjoyed their first real experience of living as a married couple. She had loved that time and was only too sorry when it was curtailed and CHTL was sent to Ireland. Returning to Germany meant that life was once again lived free from family interference. This period of her life, Poppy said, was her happiest.

Bill & Bob, Nanny Gilbert with Bill

The family lived in luxury, being billeted in an impressively grand German house. Nanny Gilbert accompanied them to Cologne and was a much valued member of the household. They had a wonderful German chef who Poppy wanted to bring back to England with them. The chef didn’t want to leave his family and also must have been nervous about moving to the land of his former enemies, so turned down her offer.

One of the special privileges that went with CHTL’s rank was that he was entitled
to a box at the opera. Opera wasn’t much to CHTL’s liking, but Poppy adored it and made the most of the best seats in the house. The children enjoyed a wonderful, active life in Germany. The boys had ponies to ride and they thrived on the outdoor life. During the winter months Poppy and CHTL took their family skating on the frozen Rhine. The river was very crowded and on one occasion a very small Bob was floored by a couple of rather portly Germans. Realising that they had knocked over a British officer’s son and not seeing the General, the German skaters picked up the sobbing Bob and tried to pacify him by feeding him cream cakes and beer. The General finally found his missing son, none the worse for his fall but quite likely worse the wear from his new German friends’ misguided treat! Poppy would have been horrified at her young son’s introduction to alcoholic beverage, but CHTL was very amused!

During this time the General was in great demand for children’s parties. He had a wonderful way with children and was a captivating entertainer. He adored Walt Disney films and took his children to each new film as they were released, as much for his own amusement as for his children’s.

Bill and Bob found their father fun but also very strict and he applied army-style discipline. When the boys were struggling with bed wetting, their father awarded the boy with a dry bed a medal in the morning. It took poor Bob sometime to claim his reward but it meant so much once he got his hands on the medal. There was a ‘stiff upper lip’ policy and feelings were not discussed. Any man who had fought at the Front never came home untouched by the horror of it. CHTL had been through virtually all of the bloodiest battles, he’d seen terrors that must have haunted him for the rest of his life. He dealt with it all by pushing the worst feelings aside, never talking about them, and using his grandfather’s ‘Je me hâte de rire de tout - de peur d’en pleurer’ motto to lighten dark days.

Bob, Anne & Bill

In 1929, with the Army of the Rhine downsizing, there were few senior jobs available. In recognition of his achievements and loyal exemplary service, plus as a consolation for the lack of promotion opportunities, CHTL was awarded the rank of Major-General.

CHTL received many congratulatory letters from colleagues including one from French General Guillaumat.

My dear general,

I learn with a very great pleasure of your nomination to the rank of major- general. I send you with our most cordial congratulations and I can assure you that all of our officers who you know share my satisfaction and they too send you their compliments. We only regret having to leave you.

Your most devoted, Guillaumat

Letter written in French found in CHTL’s papers, handwriting deciphered by Christiana Betrand, translation from French by Phil Wheeler

Marie Louis Adolphe Guillaumat (January 4, 1863 May 18, 1940) was a French Army general during World War I. After the Armistice, Guillaumat was appointed Commander in chief of Allied occupation forces in the Rhineland. As described in Bob’s letter there had been a harsh winter on the Rhine in 1928/9. Some of the French soldiers had frozen to death and General Guillaumat was blamed for his failure in not providing adequate provisions to ensue that the troops were protected. The letter had been written late February 1929 - just around the time that the General was beginning to face severe criticism.

Another letter congratulating CHTL on his promotion was one from Sir William Seeds. In 1928 Seeds had become British High Commissioner for the Rhineland in Coblenz. His job was mainly to arrange the evacuation of British troops as the tenure of their occupation of Germany came to an end. Sir William was known “not to suffer fools gladly, nor always sufficiently restrain his brilliant wit” so would have enjoyed CHTL’s company. He was someone else who had succumbed to the Rhineland flu, along with Aunt Dina, Anne and two maids.

INTER-ALLIED RHINELAND HIGH COMMISSION, BRITISH DEPARTMENT, COBLENZ

February 26, 1929

My dear Lucas,

I take this first opportunity of return to work after a dose of influenza to send you our best congratulations on your recent promotion.

Please accept our best wishes for the future if the promotion entails, as presumably it will do to all our loss, your departure from the Rhineland.

Yours very sincerely Williams Seeds,

Sir William Seeds KCMG (1882–1973) was a British diplomat. He served as Ambassador to both Russia and Brazil. Sir William entered the British Diplomatic Service in 1904 and served in Washington, Peking(1908-9), Stockholm (1910), Athens(1911–13), Lisbon(1913– 1919), Berlin (1919), Bavaria (1920), Munich, Colombia (1923-1925), Venezuela(1925- 1926), Albania (1926-28).

The only job offered to CHTL in the army was a posting to India. He was very reluctant to take it. He had so enjoyed the role of father, seeing his boys grow up and develop their characters: he didn’t want to miss out on the next stage of their lives. Bill and Bob were setting off to prep school and if he took off to India with Poppy and daughter Anne, the boys would be left behind to be educated in England.

CHTL was advised to take a break for a while to see whether anything else might come up later on. He decided to go to Scotland to live a quiet life with Poppy and Anne, spending his days shooting and of course fishing. He sent freshly caught salmon down for the boys to share with their friends at their Prep School. There was still residual notoriety surrounding Bill and Bob’s father as the general who escaped from the IRA, and the boys enjoyed a little kudos among their peers for having him as their pater, as well as the goodwill generated by generous helpings of salmon the infamous general treated their classmates to!

Cheam

In 1929 Bill and Bob went to Cheam Preparatory school in Surrey. CHTL didn’t view sending his sons to school as a convenient way to get them out of the way as he put himself out to visit them. He had the curious attitude of wanting the boys to do well, but not too well that they ’burnt their brains out before they left school’. (Bob’s words)

Boarding school life came as a shock to the boys’ systems. It took Bob a little while to settle down:

Dear Mummy

I hate school I don’t want to come back next term I don’t minde work. I haven’t played football yet I don’t know about to safer noon I am getting on quit well.
I wish I hadent put the first pranergraf

With love from Lucas Miner

Gradually even Bob began to enjoy Cheam; especially as he began to excel in some lessons and build relationships with other boys and one of his teachers. A much more mature Bob wrote again to his mother - no longer just ’Lucas Miner’ which must have been a constant bug bear for Bob- forever destined to living in his older brother’s shadow: now he was the confident ’your son R.H Tindall Lucas’ someone with his own identity and with some achievements under his belt!

Cheam School Surrey 16th of March

Dear Mother

I am the very first in my class for Maths and 5th in Latin. Mr taylor is buying a new electric organ and they are building a hut for its engine and pipes for the pumped air to go into the organ, or else the organ couldent go.

With love from your son R.H Tindall Lucas

(Written on a page torn in half)

The boys threw themselves into school life taking part in various theatrical performances and sports. Bill had a great love of wildlife and became an avid butterfly collector. He was very neat and precise where as Bob was far more untidy. Bill’s skill at Technical Drawing led him to be selected later on to do reconnaissance work during the war.

The Prince and the Egg

Bill was very much the better behaved boy: Bob couldn’t help himself at times and, having inherited both parents fun-loving spirits, was often involved in pranks. The most notable example of this was when he sat down at breakfast one morning and was faced with the problem of how to crack open his boiled egg. Why should he use a spoon or a knife as everyone else did? Surely there was a more fun way of doing this routine task? He looked round for an alternative method of cracking open his boiled egg and noticed the gleaming blond head of the boy sat next to him. He thought, ‘that would do’ and tapped his egg on the boy’s head. Unfortunately his plan backed fired. The eggs were unusually soft that morning and the egg fell apart on the first gentle tap and cascaded down the boy’s face! The future Duke of Edinburgh was not amused! CHTL would no doubt have roared with laughter at his miscreant son’s gaffe, although not in front of Bob until a good while later!

Cheam School - Bill top right with the unruly hair. A very blonde Prince Phillip, standing just below Bill. Bob (blonde) is at the bottom seated on the floor, between the head master and his dog, close at hand if he decided to play up!

Prince Philip was quite a strange little boy in the eyes of his peers at Cheam. He had been born in Greece, exiled to France and his early education had been in an American school in Paris. He was described as being a "rugged, boisterous ... but always remarkably polite" boy by the school’s principal, Donald MacJannet.

In 1928, Philip was sent to the UK to attend Cheam School. When not at school he lived with his his maternal grandmother at Kensington Palace and his uncle, George Mountbatten, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven, at Lynden Manor in Bray, Berkshire. The following three years proved to be very challenging for the young prince, all four of his sisters married German noblemen and moved to Germany, his mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to an asylum, and his father moved to Monte Carlo and set up home with the Countess Andr ́ee de La Bigne. Philip had little contact with his mother for the remainder of his childhood.

It must have been hard for the Prince to fit in with his very ’British’ classmates who were still anti the Bosch having grown up fed on their fathers’ war stories. Bill and Bob had a war hero for a father, who had also escaped from the IRA. They had a loving mother too, whereas Philip had an exiled father who had turned his back on his family and was living with another woman in a shameful existence in Monaco and Philip’s mother was gradually sinking into madness. To top it all his sisters had joined the ’old enemy’ by marrying Germans. The Prince’s eight and nine year old companions didn’t have the maturity or the insight to see behind the façade of this troubled child, nor did they have the skills to understand the pain their fellow pupil was suffering: they didn’t have the patience and perhaps weren’t as kind to him as they should have been.

It wasn’t until 1937 that the Prince saw his parents again and this was after his sister Cecilie, her husband (Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse), her two young sons and her mother-in-law were killed in an air crash at Ostend; Philip, then sixteen years old, attended the funeral in Darmstadt.

p34 Heald, Tim (1991). The Duke: A Portrait of Prince Philip Heald [1991]

p69 Brandreth, Gyles (2004). Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage. London: Century. ISBN 0-7126-6103-4

p205 Vickers, Alice, Princess Andrew of Greece Vickers [2003]

p273 Vickers, Hugo (2000), Alice, Princess Andrew of Greece, London: Hamish Hamilton, ISBN 0-241-13686-5

Years later Bob had the opportunity to meet his old classmate again. Bob was Rector of Barnwell in Northamptonshire where the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester were resident. He was invited, along with his wife Maureen, to the 21st Birthday party of Prince William of Gloucester. The Duchess was keen to present Bob and his wife to the Queen and Prince Philip, especially as she knew that the Prince and Bob had been at school together. However when the moment came, the Queen arrived to greet the couple but Prince Philip was nowhere to be seen. When the Duchess enquired as to the whereabouts of the Prince she was informed that he ’was busy’ dancing with Princess Margaret. One wonders whether he’d not forgotten the egg incident and decided to get his own back on Lucas Minor with a right royal snub!

Marlborough

Bill and Bob followed their father and uncles to Marlborough. They too had to cope with the deprivations the former generation had endured at the school. Bob in particular struggled with the primitive bathroom facilities. Having inherited the Lucas shyness gene, he found it very hard to deal with the lack of privacy.

A Major J. Mullins, remembered the third week of September 1934, when ’about twenty new boys eyed each other critically and sheepishly’ as they arrived for their first term at Marlborough. Among them was Bill, 'a tall ungainly youth with a stutter who spent more time than most boys flicking his unruly, seldom brushed hair out of his eyes. Because of his height and his long limbs, he was rather clumsy, and if ever an inkpot was upset or someone’s books knocked on the floor, it was unusual for Lucas not to have had a hand in it. Being a little out of the usual, he got his leg pulled a lot, but always responded in good part. He went his own way, caring little for what others might think, and was full of irrepressible fun'. Bill went on an Inter-varsity Christian Boy’s Camp whilst at Marlborough and this was when he made the decision to become a committed follower of Christ, dedicating his life to God. He never forgot his debt of gratitude to the camp and in later years, whenever he was able, he would volunteer to help.

Extract from ’Practical Christianity’ magazine of The Officers’ Christian Union 1952 edition

Marlborough provided ’a tremendously rigorous education, both physically and intellectually’, wrote Alex Moulton who was in the year above Bill. The boys ’had to go on things called ”sweats” (long runs into Savernake Forest)’ They were taught in classes of about 20. ’It was very much blackboard teaching, going through examples, with [the master] walking around seeing how we were getting on. We were fairly senior, so discipline issues didn’t arise. We were just anxious to learn.’ The masters ’were very helpful with personal tuition; you could always see them out of hours if you were struggling on a particular point. We had prep at about seven in the morning, before chapel and breakfast.’

Bill and Bob’s house master at Marlborough was the wonderful Mr ’Jumbo’ Jennings. Not only was he very kind to the boys but also to their little sister who was very taken with her brother’s stories of their inspirational house master. Jennings had a knack of seeing the talents of the individual boys and of steering them in the right direction. Alex Moulton* described how his ’wonderful, sensible housemaster, R A U Jennings’ who seeing that he was never going to be a mathematician, switched him ’to the Woolwich Sixth, the special stream set up to prepare those boys who were going into the Royal Engineers/ Royal Artillery training college at Woolwich. It concentrated on a more practical form of mathematics’ Jennings knew that this would be more appropriate for Moulton who went on to study at Kings College Cambridge and became a famous mechanical engineer.

Although Alex Moulton didn’t go to Woolwich, Bill did and Jumbo Jennings wisely steered him into the Woolwich set where Bill worked hard not finding the work easy; but like his father, he rose to the challenge.

Alex, like Bill, was taught maths by Mr E.G.H.Kempson. ’He was a splendid man, very athletic, and famous for having taken part in one of the first ascents of Everest in the Twenties. Kempson drilled into me the fundamentals of statics and dynamics, which combine to form mechanics’ commented Moulton. Kempson’s athleticism and adventurous spirit, combined with his mechanical mathematics knowledge was ideal in being a master to inspire boys to apply to Woolwich and the Royal Engineers. This was what Bill did.

Bob was not keen on school-work and was fairly lazy, often getting into trouble. However he was in continuous competition with his brother and it was Bill who always seemed to win! Bob appeared to excel in maths and science whereas Greek was a far greater challenge which he had to repeat three times before he passed. According to the Marlborough Archives: ’In the Summer of 1937 he passed his School Certificate in Geography, Elementary Maths, Additional Maths and Science. In the Summer of 1939 he is recorded as taking his Higher School Certificate, majoring in Maths and sitting Physics as a subsid. subject.’ Although he never put any pressure on his sons to follow a particular career path, CHTL was hoping that his second son would end up in the bank; but with war looming Bob was eager to join up and do his bit.

*Dr Alex Moulton CBE, mechanical engineer, invented the revolutionary Hydragas and Hydrolastic suspension systems installed on millions of Minis and other cars. He also created the small-wheeled, two- piece Moulton bicycles, tens of thousands of which were sold in the Sixties and which are still manufactured today.

Men who set wheels in motion magazine article Published in TES Newspaper on 24 January, 1997 By: Alex Moulton

Tomorrow - CHTL takes up a new hobby to help the war effort...

]]><![CDATA[4 August, 1920]]>https://chtl.co.uk/4-august/5f286ee5bbe64306350d7d7bTue, 04 Aug 2020 05:00:00 GMT

4th August - Letter to Everilda

4 August, 1920

My old Everilda,

Will you please on receipt of this at once send a special message somehow to Mother (not by wire but by bicycle or car) and ask Mother to inform Poppy that they are not to worry about me, or wire or write , but to sit still and do nothing till they see me in person, probably early next week. They will hear nothing from me till they see me as all my movements are secret.

Yrs
C
Expense of special messenger no object, but not forget to remind me what I owe you.

The letter was addressed to ’Rev Eustace Mills, Walhern Rectory, Stevenage, Herts. England’ ; but the address was not written by CHTL, probably because his former captors were only too familiar with his handwriting. Stamped on the front of the envelope was ‘War Office’ and on the back, ‘GENERAL HEADQUARTERS IRELAND PARKGATE, DUBLIN 4 AUG. 1920’

After the Court of Inquiry was concluded with the verdict being that CHTL was absolved of all blame for his escapade, CHTL was free at last to enjoy some home leave and to meet his son for the first time. It was all still cloak and dagger stuff as there was still the fear that the IRA would try and snatch him back. He didn’t communicate directly with his family as he knew that the IRA could easily intercept his letters and discover his planned movements. So he wrote to his youngest sister Everilda who was married to a clergyman and whose surname wouldn’t be easily connected to the Lucas family.

What a moment that must have been when CHTL reached Cleveland Gardens and there was Poppy waiting for him with young Cutlett at long last able to meet his papa. CHTL arrived in Welwyn in the evening, possibly accompanied by Poppy and Bill, and was warmly greeted by his very relieved family.There was a lot of celebration and CHTL had plenty of amusing tales to tell about his time in captivity, which certainly did ’tickle’ his family.

There was some sadness mixed in with the rejoicing as CHTL’s grandmother, Augusta Carolina Jane Farmer, ńee de Blaquiere, was very ill and died on 14 August 1920 aged 92. No doubt this tough wife of a Canadian pioneer had held on to see her grandson back in one piece with his family and also another great grandson, Bill, enter the world. She could depart this life in peace.

4 August, 1920
CHTL & Poppy Aug. 1920, after his escape The space between them was because of CHTL’s embarrassment at showing any affection in public, so a strict distance was always kept.

Churchill and the Threatened Court Martial

Looking back at the beginning of July Churchill was ‘purple’ with rage and shouting at Sir Henry Wilson, Moggridge his private secretary and General Sir Charles Harrington that he was going to court martial Lucas as he was so furious that he had ‘allowed’ himself to be captured. He should have resisted - gone down fighting, taking out as many of those Sinn Feinners as he could! What sort of example was Lucas to the lower ranks? The capture of Brig general Lucas had caused Churchill enormous personal embarrassment and made him feel distinctly uncomfortable in Parliament, when his political opponents had a field day. Even his own civil servants were smirking at his fury behind closed doors! (The Military Correspondence of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson 1918-1922 edited by Keith Jeffery Entry 130, 131)

So what happened when Lucas emerged from his months captivity, inconveniently saying that he’d been well treated and not giving Churchill or others in government the excuse to go in hard and wipe his captors out? It was very awkward as the Americans and others around the world were following the story with intense interest. CHTL was a hero in Britain. The troops in Ireland were rioting at a drop of the hat. Lucas was popular with them and with most seniors army officers who were congratulating him on his escape. How could Churchill follow through with his threats and punish this errant Brigadier general?

Strangely Churchill suddenly softened and made a huge turn around in his attitude to Lucas:

ADJUTANT GENERAL*

What is the position of General Lucas now? I consider that the fact that he escaped from captivity and, secondly, was engaged in an actual fight in which he took part entirely modify the circumstances under which he was taken prisoner; and I do not think that in the circumstances any disciplinary action should be taken against him. He should, in the first instance, be called upon to submit a report of the circumstances of his captivity and escape. He is not, I presume under arrest.

5/8/20

*Adjutant-General to the Forces 1918 to 1922 Lieutenant-General Sir George Macdonogh (a Catholic convert who was distrusted as such!)

Imagine if CHTL had been arrested after escaping from a months captivity and then court-martialled?

Maybe someone reminded Churchill of his time as a captive during the Boer War in November 1899? The 25-year-old Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill who was a fresh faced war reporter and who had successfully negotiated a fee greater than people like Kipling, was travelling in an armoured train travelling between Frere and Chieveley, in the British colony of Natal in South Africa. The Boers had planned an ambush by blocking the track with a large boulder and so stopping the train. There was a fierce battle and Churchill, who was unarmed, hid in a ditch. A Boer found him and was about to shoot him when Churchill surrendered. Churchill’s life was spared and he was taken as a prisoner of war.

After about a month Churchill managed to escape by climbing a 10 foot wall (3.048 metres). He had a gruelling 300 mile journey to freedom. Perhaps Churchill with hindsight thought that he’d been a little harsh on Lucas, who had fought back with Danford unlike Churchill who hadn’t, although to be fair Churchill was a journalist and not a soldier at the time. Both Churchill and Lucas had surrendered when they knew that the alternative would be to be shot. One other thing that they had in common was their love of whiskey!

Whatever the reason Churchill decided that he should just let the matter of a court-martial drop. He could’t stand against the overwhelming wave of public support for the general. A politician has to choose his battles wisely.

(https://www.military-history.org/articles/churchills-great-escape.htm)

An Award

Brigadier-General Lucas was a hero in the eyes of the public and a hero should be celebrated and honoured: so, incredibly, CHTL was awarded a C.B. - Companion of The Most Honourable Order of the Bath, 'a title and order conferred to British and Commonwealth citizens in recognition of conspicuous service to the Crown'.

For my services in Ireland I was awarded a C.B. (New Year’s Honours List 1921).

Application for the appointment of Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire PARTIC- ULARS OF EXPERIENCE AND TESTIMONIALS OF COLONEL CUTHBERT HENRY TINDALL LUCAS C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O. COLONEL COMMANDANT 11TH INFANTRY BRIGADE. 13th November, 1922.

This was extraordinary - what had CHTL done in Ireland to merit this award? One could argue that his service during World War 1 would have easily earned him the honour, but the fact that it was specifically awarded to him for his ’services in Ireland’ throws up many questions. Was this for his seven months work before he was captured? Was it for the way he handled himself in captivity? Was it for the information he gathered on the IRA? Was it for him escaping and becoming a national hero? Or was it compensation as the army didn’t know what to do with him and the public needed to see their hero honoured?

4 August, 1920
CHTL and Poppy attending the award ceremony at Buckingham Palace 1921. Poppy was pregnant again, this time with Bob, but hiding it well.

CHTL had secretly longed to become a knight but that was not to be. Although most other army officers of his rank eventually did receive the title of ’Sir’, CHTL’s copy book was blotted enough by the Irish incident to prevent this from happening to him: a C.B. was the best he would have.

CHTL and Poppy attending the award ceremony at Buckingham Palace 1921. Poppy was pregnant again, this time with Bob, but hiding it well.

‘The Most Honourable Order of the Bath’ is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The oddly named award had its roots in a mediaeval ceremony for creating a knight, which included bathing as a symbol of purification.’

A Celebrity

It was not just the Lucas family who wanted to hear CHTL’s stories: the whole country was talking about the general and his adventures and wanted to meet the hero of the hour. CHTL suddenly found himself a minor celebrity: invitations to appear at different events started to flood in and he suddenly found that he was in demand everywhere. The invites to go shooting or fishing on large estates were always welcomed by CHTL, but not so the society gatherings that he found himself in demand as a ‘celebrity’ guest to impress the other invitees with and be one up on the ‘Lexington-Smyths’ or who else was trying to outdo everyone.

At first he enjoyed the parties and events but gradually they wore him down and bored him silly. When asked to read the lesson at York Minister, he decided to enliven a dull passage about Abraham by reading the passage using a country bumpkin drawl: his reasoning being that Abraham was a country dweller so therefore a yokel accent would be most suitable. Of course this was just CHTL feeling utterly bored and so was mischievous: he didn’t want a whole series of similar requests so this was a sure way of putting a stop to them. One can only imagine the shock of the great and the good in the congregation at this outrageous performance! Poor Poppy!

4 August, 1920

The endless stream of invitations to society parties also became hugely tedious. After having to sit amongst dull small-talkers for the umpteenth time, CHTL’s rascally nature once again broke free. He announced to a room of tiresome poseurs that he had a new party game to teach them. The socialites thinking that this was the latest new craze were eager to learn. CHTL asked the ladies to gather at one end of the room and the gentlemen to sit at the opposite end. The gentlemen were the un-churched natives of some godless country and the ladies were the missionaries. CHTL told his eager audience that when he turned off the lights: ‘the heathen were to arise and embrace Christianity’. His prank had the desired effect – the invites to posh parties soon dried up! (As told to Bob by his father)

Postscript

We have now come to the end of CHTL’s Irish Adventure, we’ve seen him back to Poppy, having narrowly missed an IRA slug and a court martial. In the end a combination of Lucas’ wit, charm and forcefulness along with his ability to side step major disasters, meant that he came out of a situation that could have been disastrous, a national hero. How a captive of the IRA could ever have described his imprisonment as ‘the time of his life’, that he found it ‘interesting and exciting’ and was ‘tickled’ by it, is extraordinary. For a very honest man to say that he ‘was treated as a gentleman by gentlemen’ and that those who looked after him were ‘delightful people’ is breathtaking in the circumstances.

This event was also arguably one of the IRA’s best. Those involved, on the whole, came out showing themselves during this short period to be men of honour and with the ability to show kindness and humanity. It won them support from those looking on -hopefully being kind reached more doubting hearts than the killing did. The propaganda war was definitely won by the IRA. Who could fail to admire an army that treated their captives so well in stark contrast to the way their enemies treated them? The fact that the whole episode caused so much mirth on both sides of the Irish Sea, with people enjoying the humour of it, is unbelievable. If only all conflicts could be like that - a cat and mouse game with no casualties!

The ordinary, non military people who rose to the, often not so welcome, challenge of hosting the captured general, should have their contribution acknowledged and appreciated for their amazing kindness in spite of the fact that they were risking their lives and that of their families. These families and individuals, did their country proud in displaying the best of Irish hospitality and friendliness. Many may have suffered loss and deprivation caused by the nation that CHTL represented, but not one of them (that I’m aware of) was anything but hospitable and considerate of my grandfather and his needs. Their compassion towards my poor grandmother was also much appreciated.

Finally, I have to say that Poppy is the unappreciated heroine throughout this. To think what she went through alongside giving birth to her first child is incredible. I always think that if anyone suffered through this story, it was her (and obviously Colonel Danford, who fortunately recovered). I’m full of admiration for her quiet, selfless fortitude. She’d taken on a lot when she’d married a soldier, but marrying CHTL had an extra level of challenge to it!

Three Additional Posts

This journey for me has been incredible as I’ve uncovered so much about my grandparents. I’m often asked what happened to CHTL after he left Ireland so I want to finish the daily posts with just three more giving an overview of CHTL & Poppy’s life post Ireland. As you can imagine CHTL’s future life and retirement were not necessarily what you’d expect from a typical British Brig general!

Hasting’s Farmhouse

Please look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL5sL3BcDqE&t=3s and if you can spare a little cash, the restoration of Hasting’s farmhouse would be a worthy cause as a place of reconciliation. The Lucas Family are hoping to donate a bench with a plaque inscribed with:

“I was treated as a gentleman by gentlemen.” Brig General CHT Lucas

Hopefully it will be a place to sit and contemplate the story - a good story from the War of Independence that unites two opposing sides in humanity, kindness, a lot of laughter and fun and respect for each other.

The Hastings Farmhouse Restoration fund

]]><![CDATA[3 August, 1920]]>https://chtl.co.uk/3-august/5f27023cbbe64306350d7d3cMon, 03 Aug 2020 05:00:00 GMT

3rd August - No Letter

3 August, 1920

Location: Fermoy - Tenby, Pembrokeshire

The Court of Inquiry was held on the 3rd August. CHTL submitted a detailed report based on his secret diary. Interestingly in his official report there was no mention of playing cards, croquet, hay making or fishing! Churchill had been very keen to court-martial CHTL. Here was another maverick army officer who was causing Churchill personal embarrassment in his humiliating questioning in the House of Commons and generally making things extremely uncomfortable for him politically.

CHTL like Sherwood Kelly would not be bent to follow what those in authority wanted. CHTL was far more tactful and respectful of authority than Sherwood Kelly ever was, but he too was never a ‘yes’ man. He was a straight-talker and would not be stopped from speaking the truth. For this he is said to have been ‘reprimanded’. The Limerick Leader of 20 August 1920 carried a report that General Lucas had been absolved of all blame in the matter of the court of inquiry, which investigated his capture. For ‘military reasons’, however, 'General Lucas would not be returning to his brigade at Fermoy but he would be posted to a position of equal importance elsewhere'.

The ‘Daily Chronicle’

GENERAL LUCAS

The ‘Daily Chronicle’ understands that General Lucas will not return to his brigade at Fermoy, as it has been decided to give him a command of equal importance elsewhere. An investigation by a Court of Inquiry into the circumstance of his capture by Sinn Feiners resulted in his being absolved from all blame.

Dan Breen, Commandant of the Third Tipperary Brigade, recalled CHTL’s time ‘in custody’:

"Lucas was held in custody for four weeks. During that time he was reared with the courtesy befitting his rank and character. Every reasonable facility was given him for communicating with his relatives. He enjoyed every comfort that his captors could provide. He was paroled while he enjoyed some fishing in mountain streams. In addition, the London Times was made available for him each morning as he sat down to breakfast. To his credit, be it said, he publicly acknowledged the kindness that had been shown to him. He is reputed to have been reprimanded by the British War Office for this open avowal."

P374 The War of Independence in Limerick Tom Toomey

CHTL had a sharp rap on the knuckles behind closed doors, but politically that would not have gone down well with the public at large.

After the Court of Inquiry was concluded - with the verdict being that CHTL was absolved of all blame for his escapade - CHTL was free at last to enjoy some home leave and to meet his son for the first time. He got on the first available ferry and crossed the Irish Sea, never to return again. Finally CHTL was back on ‘home soil’ and sent a telegram to Poppy before heading to London to see her and Cutlett:

Dated 3 Aug 20 handed in 6.45pm Tenby Rail

Tindall Lucas The Hall Welwyn
Arrived Pembroke this evening reach London early tomorrow Welwyn tomorrow evening Cuthbert

The Press was intrigued by the movements of the celebrity General:

MYSTERY OF GEN. LUCAS
TROOPS AND AEROPLANES ESCORT HIM FROM TIPPERARY

From the ‘‘Daily Chronicle’’ Special Correspondent. DUBLIN, Sunday

There is much mystery concerning the whereabouts of General Lucas since his escape as there was when he was held captive by Sinn Fein Volunteers. He left the barracks at Tipperary shortly after noon yesterday, and from that moment his movements are shrouded in official silence. He is vaguely reported as having sailed from Queenstown later in the day for England, abroad a destroyer.

Telegraphic inquiries addressed to General Lucas at Tipperary are undelivered, and the senders are advised to try his old command headquarters at Fermoy. The only fact certain, however, is the uncertainty of his present location.

GUARDING THE GENERAL.

General Lucas has determined not to be interviewed upon his experiences in captivity, and those who sought to speak to him at Tipperary yesterday were escorted from the barrack gates to the roadway by a section of the guard, carrying rifles and bayonets fixed.

Actually the military officials there appear to have been deeply suspicious of all civilians, irrespective of what credentials they could produce, whose ambition
it was to penetrate to the presence of general Lucas - perhaps there is a strong reason for this attitude, as it is firmly believed that the barracks were closely watched throughout the the morning by dubious individuals, supposedly anxious to obtain information with respect to his prospective movements.

AEROPLANE IN ATTENDANCE.

The General quitted the barracks quite suddenly. While the sentries were harassing a little group of civilians along the roadway a motor lorry, crowded with alert soldiers and carrying Lewis guns, rumbled through the barracks gates, followed by an open touring car, in which sat two gentlemen in mufti.

A second lorry, equipped similarly to the first, concluded the ‘‘convey’’, while an aeroplane watched the route. which it pursued from overhead.

Not until the tree motors had disappeared beyond a bend was it realised by the party who had been subjects of the guards’ pressing attentions, that one of the two figures in the centre car was General Lucas. All efforts since then definitely to trace him have proved futile. An inquiry I made at headquarters in Dublin this afternoon was met with the statement that there was no information to be given about him. Cork, Fermoy, and Tipperary also yielded negative results.

A DISCREDITED THEORY.

The General is understood to have pledged to secrecy the brother officers with whom he has, presumably, discussed his dramatic adventures, and in the absence of an official account of the manner of his reappearance it is not surprising that it is now suggested that he was voluntarily released by his captors.

This theory, however, is discounted by the extraordinary precautions taken to protect him from the time of his arrival at the police barracks at Pallas. it is probable, though, that the ambushing of the lorry at Oola, in which he was travelling to Tipperary on Friday, was a coincidence, and that the raiders were ignorant of the important personage it contained.

WOUNDED AT OOLA.

In the fight which ensued on that occasion General Lucas was exceedingly active, and two slight flesh wounds which he received - one in the head and one under the nose - are visible evidences of the danger he incurred.

I understand that within a week of the original kidnapping, his local captors, having demonstrated their ability to keep him in impenetrable secrecy, proposed to release him, but other counsels amongst the Volunteers prevailed, and his detention was preserved with.

It is circumstantially declared that he was well treated during his captivity. This is indubitable, and in accordance with the traditional Volunteer treatment of prisoners, but another story, that he was permitted to fish and had been promised shooting must be accepted with reserve.

For the real facts, it seems the public will have to wait for the inquiry into the circumstances of the kidnapping of the General, suggested in the ‘‘ Daily Chronicle’’, which, I was informed on high authority lately, would be held when he regained his freedom.

NO NEWS AT HIS HOME.

General Lucas’s return home is being surrounded
with such secrecy, writes a ‘‘Daily Chronicle’’ representative that even his relatives are unaware of them.

‘‘We have no communication at all as to when and how General Lucas will return.’’ said Miss Lucas last night.

‘‘We are very anxious to hear, but all we know is gained from the Press.’’

Reports that General Lucas arrived at Queenstown on Saturday night, that he is on the way to London to visit his wife in a nursing home, and even journeying by aeroplane, are current, but details are lacking as to the route he is taking. Until he has safely completed his journey, no official communication will be forthcoming.

Newspaper cutting - Lucas Family Archive

3 August, 1920

Whether CHTL really believed that the IRA would want to get him back, or whether he just decided to use that fear as an excuse to ensure that he didn’t have to return to Ireland, one can only surmise. It is known that he didn’t want to stay in command in Fermoy as he worried about being put in an awkward position if he ever encountered any of his former captors- where the tables were turned and they had become British prisoners. He’d had enough of the chaotic Irish situation long before he’d been captured and at the end of the Great War had expressed his weariness with having been through seven years of war and fighting. CHTL just wanted to settle down with his new family and enjoy a bit of peace for a change. Now this was his chance to achieve that.

Finally CHTL crossed the Irish Sea and sent a telegram before heading to London to see Poppy.

The Oola Casualties

I have Brian Murphy to thank for sending me the following two newspaper cuttings.

It’s important to remember that although it was a time of rejoicing for the Lucas family that it was also a time of mourning for the families of the soldiers that died at Oola. It’s so easy to forget that any death brings terrible heartache and that a premature violent death does not just affect one generation but can continue into the next generation. On one level, freedom fighters and politicians see casualties as worth the gains, but at the family level very often nothing appears worth the sacrifice of their loved ones.

It filled me with a cold chill when I read about how willing Churchill was to sacrifice the life of my grandfather for political gain. That helped me understand a little more of what families who lose loved ones for causes that they don’t understand or believe in feel. Many in the UK don’t understand what the fighting in Ireland has been about. That’s partly due to a lack of education and communication and I hope that the publication of these letters might help build those bridges. Too many lives were lost on both sides of the conflict, and too many families were left mourning loved ones.

CHTL was following usual procedure to write to the grieving family. One wonders just how many similar letters he had to write during the first World War. George Parker helped save his life and he would have been very grateful.

Please note that Joan’s recollection of the anniversary of her Uncle’s death is wrong. It was 30th July 1920. This could have been a mistake by the newspaper, I know personally how the media can make amazing mistakes!

3 August, 1920
3 August, 1920
]]><![CDATA[2 August, 1920]]>https://chtl.co.uk/2-august/5f255736bbe64306350d7cbdSun, 02 Aug 2020 05:00:00 GMT

2nd August - No Letter

2 August, 1920

Location: Fermoy barracks

CHTL was very busy, writing up his report for the Court of Inquiry and catching up with old friends in Fermoy. He wrote an edited version - a Court of Inquiry friendly version - of his ‘Secret Diary’, leaving out any mention of whiskey, fishing and card games.

2 August, 1920
2 August, 1920

Newspaper Speculation and Conspiracy Theories

As is their way, for generations it appears, the newspapers had to add their ‘penny’s worth to the story. The fact that CHTL kept so many newspaper cuttings with obviously incorrect information printed in them, probably indicates that he was rather amused by them.

ESCAPE OR RELEASE?

From our own correspondent.

CORK, Sunday

The regaining of his freedom by General Lucas has given rise to many rumours in Limerick and Tipperary. It is now believed that he was released, but doubt is expressed as to whether it was a voluntary decision that restored to him his liberty. That unusual military activity in certain districts of Limerick prevailed for some days prior to his release is well known, and from this the conclusion is drawn that the military had at last obtained information concerning him. A further deduction is that his gaolers suspected that the military were acting on information, and decided to liberate the captive rather than risk having the prison discovered.

The accuracy of these deductions cannot’ however, be established. General Lucas has declined to make any statement for publication, and those who imprison him may be relied upon to keep the facts of the situation to themselves. With both parties observing the strictest secrecy, there is little to be added to what has already been stated concerning his appearance on the road near Oola all the ambuscade which followed.

The encounter was a desperate one, and it was from the determination shown by the attackers, rather than from any definite knowledge on the subject, that the opinion was formed that they were aware of the general’s presence in one of the lorries. This, however, does not appear to be the case, and it is doubtful whether those who ambushed the lorries even knew that General Lucas was imprisoned in the New Pallas district. They wanted the mailbags and the rifles of the soldiers, and these they seemed determined to secure at all hazards… it is said that the raiders succeeded in capturing some of the rifles belonging to the soldiers who were in the first lorry, and also got a bag of mails, but the closest enquiries failed to get this confirmed.

Newspaper cutting found in CHTL’s papers (Lucas Family Archive)

The Daily Sketch also enjoyed speculating about the true story of the general’s sudden release/escape.

DAILY SKETCH

SILENT GENERAL

Reported to have been Set at liberty by his Gaolers.

DIRECTED TO SAFETY.

Blindfolded, Taken Away by Car, and Left in Road.

General Lucas refuses to state how he escaped from the secret prison in which he was held captive by Sinn Feiners, but says he has no complaints to make concerning the way he was treated by his gaolers.

Reticence is also maintained by the military authorities, but he is reported in certain circles that the general was released in the early morning after being informed that he was to be set at liberty.

Blindfolded, he was taken for a considerable distance in a motor car, set down in the roadway, and directed to the nearest police station, where he arrived after travelling several miles. It is also reported that the attack made on the lorry in which he was taken to Tipperary was a coincidence, the ambushing party having no knowledge of the general’s presence.

Newspaper cutting found in CHTL’s papers (Lucas Family Archive)

I think that we can safely conclude from CHTL’s letters and reports and several IRA Witness Statements and written accounts that it was a combination of Michael Brennan turning a blind eye and enormous courage and persistence on the part of the General that he escaped. There must have been the same sort of frustration a kindly keeper feels when it tries to get a captive bird to flee its cage after an extended period of rest and relaxation, and the bird is too cautious to leave the cage, fearing something bad might happen to them.

A Postscript from General Lucas

Volunteer Joe Good recalled the escape in his memoirs, in a section entitled ‘Postscript from General Lucas’:

"There was to be a remarkable sort of coda to the General Lucas business. Having been refused his parole, Lucas must have decided, quite possibly for entirely personal reasons, to make an absurdly daring escape from the custody of the Volunteers. Knowing the man's character as I did, it was no surprise to me that he fought his way to freedom with such spectacular success."

However Joe was angry at what he saw as a ‘lost opportunity in failing to trade General Lucas for Terence MacSwiney’. Terence James MacSwiney was an Irish playwright, author and Sinn Féin politician who was elected as Lord Mayor of Cork. He was arrested on charges of sedition and imprisoned in Brixton prison in England. He went on hunger strike in protest and as the British would’t budge, he died in October 1920. Joe thought that Liam Lynch would be angry too that he’d lost his bargaining chip.

To avoid having to talk to anyone at Sinn Féin GHQ, Joe had gone to London to source some guns. On his way back he got talking to some returning British soldiers. Joe, having been raised in England, had an English accent so found that the English thought him safe to talk to.

"This soldier told me a remarkable story.

He said that he was a batman to some English general …. he been brought from his billet …. to the barracks gate, where a man was clamouring for admission.

This man was General Lucas and he was in rags. Lucas had been ambushed - after he had evidently managed to escape from the Volunteers. Lucas told them that he had escaped by leaving his room in his stocking feet. He said that he been picked up on the road by a post office van which was being escorted by three or more soldiers; that the van had been attacked by Volunteers forces; that General Lucas had got a small wound across the bridge of his nose during the lengthy firing; that one of the soldiers were shot through the head and his brains were inside his ‘tin ‘at’ (steel helmet); that the escort was on the point of surrender when General Lucas picked up the dead man's rifle and opened fire on the IRA attackers; that the attackers withdrew and that Lucas then came onto the barracks - where this soldier met him."

If that part of the story wasn’t amazing enough, the soldier went on to describe what happened next:

"The soldier told me that Lucas then packed up the clothes which he had been wearing -sports coat and trousers - and told him to post these to an address in Cork city."

Joe explained why the general would want the clothes posted to Cork of all places:

"During the detention of Lucas by the Volunteers, there were some definite house in Cork city to which communications were addressed, and from which they were sometime subsequently delivered to him. It was to this address that he had the parcel dispatched, containing some garments with which we had provided him. Inside this package he left a note addressed ‘To the Sinn Féiners, or to the IRA, with the compliments of General Lucas'."

Enchanted by Dreams, Joe Good, P172 -174

Telegrams

A MONTH’S CAPTIVITY.

THE GENERAL LETTERS HOME.

…A telegram with the words “Am free again”* was received yesterday afternoon by the Gen's father at Welwyn, and shortly after 8 PM there arrived at the house an official message from the Secretary of the Irish Office containing the words “We are glad to inform you that your husband is at liberty and on his way to Fermoy.”

Mr Lucas has been receiving frequent letters of late from his son, who is always spoken well of his treatment, and has stated that he expected to be at liberty within three weeks.

The general's wife, who had a son a few weeks ago, is still at a nursing home in London, and the news of our husbands escape was conveyed to her last night by her doctor.

* see telegram below

Newspaper cutting found in CHTL’s papers Lucas Family Archive

The first telegram would have been posted to Poppy, as sister-in-law Peggy didn’t have her phone number and maybe didn’t want to send a telegram? CHTL was rejoicing at his freedom, although the War Office had immediately put a dampener on the family’s celebrations.

2 August, 1920

This second telegram went to Poppy directly. She would have been reassured as the language was definitely typical CHTL. He was at last on his way home!

2 August, 1920
]]><![CDATA[1 August, 1920]]>https://chtl.co.uk/1-august/5f2481e4bbe64306350d7c36Sat, 01 Aug 2020 05:00:00 GMT

1st August - Twentieth Letter to Poppy

1 August, 1920

Sunday

My darling Pip,

Hope to see you very shortly. Am going very strong up and about. Tell the family they wont hear from me till I am finally settled down. I have to be careful what I say in my letters.

Your

C.

This letter was written after the previous letter and may have been hand delivered so therefore arrived before No. 19. Poppy had heard that her husband was free but to have received confirmation in his own hand would have greatly reassured her.

Still under censorship, CHTL had to be careful what he wrote. This time his letters would be censored by the British but he still felt the threat that the IRA could so easily intercept his mail as they had done while they held him (such as picking up Poppy’s letters sent care of the IRA). He knew that the Volunteers shouldn’t be underestimated: they had proven time and again that they had an incredible network of informers and huge vats of resources to draw on. He also feared that they wanted to recapture him. He along with many in the military appeared to be convinced that the Oola ambush was set up so that the IRA could seize their escaped prisoner.

The popular press were behind CHTL and the public at large saw him as a celebrity, having escaped from his IRA captors in such a thrilling way. The popular comic books and magazines of the day carried the stories of ’super- heroes’ who against all the odds managed to escape from their enemies and appeared indefatigable. Characters such as the swashbuckling Zorro, the invincible John Carter of Mars and the smuggler hero the Reverend Syn, had fuelled the public’s imaginations for a decade or more.

Now they had a real life ’hero’: a dashing army officer who had survived fighting the Huns, emerging unscathed from the bloodiest battles of the Great War, to be captured by the Sinn Feiners and to have escaped from their clutches. There was the romance of him wanting to get home to his young wife and to see his newborn son for the first time. The fact that he’d had the ’time of his life’ was something that only a true hero could say - in spite of the deprivations he had suffered he had risen above them and enjoyed his adventure. It was the true stuff of Boy’s Own adventures and it would take a very rash and foolish government minister to risk his seat in the next election by going against popular opinion.

CHTL received many letters from various ’old pals’ and others who knew him, congratulating him on his escape. Among these was one from Sir General Alexander Godley:

MAYFAIR 4101
41, SOUTH AUDLEY STREET, W.1.
Aug 1st 1920
My dear Lucas
A line to congratulate you on having got away from the Sinn Feiners - I hope you are none the worse for your experiences & that they treated you well? It must have been most unpleasant & you appear to have had a battle when captured & again when released! Anyway I’m glad you’re free now
yrs sincerely
Alex Godley

Sir General Alexander Godley was serving at the time as Military Secretary to the Secretary of State for War (Churchill). Godley was another of CHTL’s many supporters in high and influential places. He had been Commander of IV Corps which was based in Germany as an occupation army and which CHTL had served in. In 1918 Godley had sent CHTL a Christmas card signed informally ’Alex Godley’ indicating a friendship between the two. He had been in the Boer War, served in Egypt and was at Gallipoli - all places where he would have come across CHTL. He was also a very keen sportsman and this would have brought the two men together. General Godley was there, right at the centre of influence, openly coming out to support CHTL.

Other supporters sent telegrams, these included one from 1st Devonshire Regiment:

Dated 31.7.20 Waterford B

OHMS handed in 4.35 pm Received 5.40 pm

To Bde Fermoy
31 July aaa all Ranks 1st Devonshire Regt Congratulates Gen Lucas on his escape
Com dg 1st Devons

There was also one from the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland or the Viceroy as some called the occupant of that office:

Dated 31.7.20
OHMS Viceregal Lodge Dublin handed in 10 am Received 10 32 am

To general Lucas Hq 6th Divn Cork
Very warmest congratulations on your escape and the plucky fight put up by your escort.
French Viceroy

The Viceroy was Field Marshal John Denton Pinkstone French. CHTL had served with the Berkshire battalion under General French’s leadership at Colesberg, in South Africa. At the first battle of Ypres, CHTL had impressed the general so much that French mentioned him in his Despatches. French was a man who inspired loyalty and admiration from the men who served under him. He had a chequered career, with historians being divided on his achievements and abilities, especially in terms of Ireland. However he was someone whom CHTL admired and more importantly at this critical moment, French admired and supported Lucas. It was said of French: ‘If he had once lost confidence in a man, justly or unjustly, that man could do no right in his eyes. He was as bad an enemy as he was a good friend'. Fortunately CHTL stayed a friend.

Major General Sir Edward Spears, wrote of French:

"You only had to look at him to see that he was a brave, determined man ... I learnt to love and to admire the man who never lost his head, and on whom danger had the effect it has on the wild boar: he would become morose, furious for a time, harsh, but he would face up and never shirk. He knew only one way of dealing with a difficulty, and that was to tackle it.”

That last line, ‘He knew only one way of dealing with a difficulty, and that was to tackle it’, could have been said about CHTL and that quality was possibly what made French think highly of him.

CHTL had a lucky escape as Churchill knew which clause to use to court martial him, this time the Secretary of State’s hands were tied by public opinion and the fear of how the troops in Ireland might react. He also realise that with support from dignitaries such as Viceroy French, he wasn’t going to be able to make CHTL look like he was in the wrong without damaging his own reputation further.

If the 32nd Division had become so emotional and violent over CHTL’s capture by the IRA what might their response be to politicians trying to punish their favourite general? It must have crossed the minds of those in power what could happen if those same soldiers heard that their esteemed general had been court-martialled! Britain had had enough displays of rioting malcontents, strikes and political murmurings, and Ireland was already in turmoil with the unrest there; especially with stories of the Black and Tan’s summary executions of IRA suspects causing even ardent supporters of the Empire to question the morality of it all. The last thing that the government needed was more displays of undisciplined troops.

General Sir R Wingate

CHTL had met Danford in the Sudan and that was where both of them learnt Arabic. This was the ‘unknown language’ that they had used when they tried to escape. CHTL obviously made a strong impression on his superiors as his old boss from his Sudan days, General Sir R Wingate contacted him. Wingate was Governor-General of the Sudan and Sirdar of the Egyptian army. He’d supported T.E. Lawrence’s (”Lawrence of Arabia”) unorthodox military accomplishments in the Hejaz, Jordan, and Syria. He obviously didn’t have a problem with officers taking unusual measures to achieve an end. Neither CHTL or Danford were ‘regular’ soldiers, both having demonstrated ‘thinking outside’ the military box to get things done. General Wingate remembered both Danford and CHTL well from their time in East Africa. He wrote to CHTL after his escape on 1 August 1920:

1 Aug. 1920

Knockenhair, Dunbar, Scotland.

My dear Lucas,

You will be inundated with letters and this requires no reply; it is merely to offer you my heartiest congratulations on your getting out of the clutches of your captors.

I had a few lines the other day from Danford – I hope he is getting on all right, though his account of his wounds shows that he had a very narrow squeak –

It is strange that two old E.A. officers should have bad luck un–pleasant experiences & I was much interested in the old ‘lingo’ being so successfully used –

We had a great E.A gathering at the dinner on the 20th July at Claridges and I only wish you had been there instead of in your temporary prison!

It is many years since we have met; but I often think of the old Sudan days & all the good work you did there–in spite of the horrid accident which so seriously damaged your hand. - I see by the papers that you are the proud father of a small (?) Babe and I hope you will find your wife and child well - how pleased she will be to have you back again.

My wife joins me in kindest remembrances and many congratulations

Every yours

RW Wingate

Letter from R Wingate 1 Aug 1920 Knockenhair, Dunbar, Scotland.

Wingate suffered the loss of his son at the Front in 1918. He was also made a scapegoat for British failings in Egypt partly because he listened to Egyptians calling for independence . Life was not good for him at the time he wrote that letter, but he managed to show kindness to CHTL. (Wingate Pasha The Life of General Sir Francis Reginald Wingate 1861-1953 by R. J. M. Pugh Pugh [2011], Wikipedia)

1 August, 1920
1 August, 1920
1 August, 1920
CHTL's friends and supporters, L-R: Godley, French, Wingate

"MYSTERY OF GEN. LUCAS"

The Press was intrigued by the whereabouts of the celebrity General and speculated about his movements. They thought that he had been smuggled back to England. However he was smuggled out of Tipperary barracks to be taken to Fermoy and then maybe later to Cork for the Court of Inquiry on the 3rd August. It was only after the inquiry that he was free to get home for his much longed for leave; to meet his son for the first time and be reunited with Poppy:

MYSTERY OF GEN. LUCAS
TROOPS AND AEROPLANES ESCORT HIM FROM TIPPERARY

From the ‘‘Daily Chronicle’’ Special Correspondent. DUBLIN, Sunday

There is much mystery concerning the whereabouts of General Lucas since his escape as there was when he was held captive by Sinn Fein Volunteers. He left the barracks at Tipperary shortly after noon yesterday, and from that moment his movements are shrouded in official silence. He is vaguely reported as having sailed from Queenstown later in the day for England, abroad a destroyer.

Telegraphic inquiries addressed to General Lucas at Tipperary are undelivered, and the senders are advised to try his old command headquarters at Fermoy. The only fact certain, however, is the uncertainty of his present location.

GUARDING THE GENERAL.

General Lucas has determined not to be interviewed upon his experiences in captivity, and those who sought to speak to him at Tipperary yesterday were escorted from the barrack gates to the roadway by a section of the guard, carrying rifles and bayonets fixed.

Actually the military officials there appear to have been deeply suspicious of all civilians, irrespective of what credentials they could produce, whose ambition it was to penetrate to the presence of general Lucas- perhaps there is a strong reason for this attitude,
as it is firmly believed that the barracks were closely watched throughout the the morning by dubious individuals, supposedly anxious to obtain information with respect to his prospective movements.

AEROPLANE IN ATTENDANCE.

The General quitted the barracks quite suddenly. While the sentries were harassing a little group of civilians along the roadway a motor lorry, crowded with alert soldiers and carrying Lewis guns, rumbled through the barracks gates, followed by an open touring car, in which sat two gentlemen in mufti.

A second lorry, equipped similarly to the first, concluded the ‘‘convey’’, while an aeroplane watched the route. which it pursued from overhead.

Not until the tree motors had disappeared beyond a bend was it realised by the party who had been subjects of the guards’ pressing attentions, that one of the two figures in the centre car was General Lucas. All efforts since then definitely to trace him have proved futile. An inquiry I made at headquarters in Dublin this afternoon was met with the statement that there was no information to be given about him. Cork, Fermoy, and Tipperary also yielded negative results.

A DISCREDITED THEORY.

The General is understood to have pledged to secrecy the brother officers with whom he has, presumably, discussed his dramatic adventures, and in the absence of an official account of the manner of his reappearance it is not surprising that it is now suggested that he was voluntarily released by his captors.

This theory, however, is discounted by the extraordinary precautions taken to protect him from the time of his arrival at the police barracks at Pallas. it is probable, though, that the ambushing of the lorry at Oola, in which he was travelling to Tipperary on Friday, was a coincidence, and that the raiders were ignorant of the important personage it contained.

WOUNDED AT OOLA.

In the fight which ensued on that occasion General Lucas was exceedingly active, and two slight flesh wounds which he received - one in the head and one under the nose - are visible evidences of the danger he incurred.

I understand that within a week of the original kidnapping, his local captors, having demonstrated their ability to keep him in impenetrable secrecy, proposed to release him, but other counsels amongst the Volunteers prevailed, and his detention was preserved with.

It is circumstantially declared that he was well treated during his captivity. This is indubitable,
and in accordance with the traditional Volunteer treatment of prisoners, but another story, that he was permitted to fish and had been promised shooting must be accepted with reserve.

For the real facts, it seems the public will have to wait for the inquiry into the circumstances of the kidnapping of the General, suggested in the ‘‘ Daily Chronicle’’, which, I was informed on high authority lately, would be held when he regained his freedom.

NO NEWS AT HIS HOME.

General Lucas’s return home is being surrounded with such secrecy, writes a ‘‘Daily Chronicle’’ representative that even his relatives are unaware of them.

‘‘We have no communication at all as to when and how General Lucas will return.’’ said Miss Lucas last night. ‘‘We are very anxious to hear, but all we know is gained from the Press.’’

Reports that General Lucas arrived at Queenstown on Saturday night, that he is on the way to London to visit his wife in a nursing home, and even journeying by aeroplane, are current, but details are lacking as to the route he is taking. Until he has safely completed his journey, no official communication will be forthcoming.

Newspaper clipping found in CHTL’s papers, Lucas Family Archive

1 August, 1920

CHTL’s destination at this point was Fermoy. It was on the 3rd August that he was able to start his journey home. Some newspapers were more informed than others. Sadly more rioting took place. This time in Tipperary to avenge the two soldiers killed in Oola.

GENERAL LUCAS.

WELL TREATED BY CAPTORS.

AIR ESCORT TO FERMOY..

From our own correspondent.

TIPPERARY, Saturday.

At the Tipperary military barracks this morning Colonel Wilson, the Officer commanding, said there was no possible chance of any access by Press representatives to General Lucas. No information whatever could be given concerning the General, and Colonel Wilson added: “ It is the wish of General Lucas to say nothing about himself.” In addition to a scratch over the eye from a slug in the firing near Oola, it is said that General Lucas was slightly injured on the nose.

There are conflicting accounts as to whether the general met the military lorry conveying the mails on the road, or whether he first made his appearance at Pallas police barracks. The police maintain the same reticence as the military, and it is impossible at present to secure definite particulars. That the General was well treated as becoming an officer of his high rank is certain. It is stated that he was given a days fishing and was promised two or three days shooting in August. At half past ten this morning a military aeroplane travelling from the direction of Fermoy, near which town the General was captured, circled repeatedly over Tipperary barracks and dropped two messages in the barrack square. The aeroplane then looped the loop and went back to Fermoy. Almost immediately afterwards a second aeroplane arrived and went through the same evolutions, dropping two messages.

It is stated on good authority that General Lucas left Tipperary about noon. Two motor lorries full of armed soldiers proceeded from the military barracks, followed by two ordinary motorcars, in which were some civilians and armed soldiers. After the motorcars came two more lorries with armed soldiers. The procession of cars pass through the main street towards Bansha, and this route would bring them to Fermoy. An aeroplane escorted the cars.

This afternoon the divisional coroner attended at the military barracks to hold an inquest on the two soldiers killed in the attack at Oola. Jurors were summoned by the police, but only one attended, and the inquest consequently felt through.

At half-past nine last night some twenty soldiers went through the streets of Tipperary shouting defiantly, and there were fears of reprisals for the killing of two their comrades at Oola. Halting outside the picture down in James Street, some of the soldiers entered and called on soldiers inside to come out and avenge their dead comrades. There was much excitement, many of the audience rose to leave, but the soldiers in the theatre refuse to come out. A military picket appeared, and an officer ordered the demonstrating soldiers to go away. About eleven o’clock a party of soldiers assembled in Bridge Street, and some of them entered the Green, where an outdoor musical entertainment was in progress, and shouted: “ Come on Lincolns; avenge your comrades.” Shouting, “Come on Sinn Feiners,” and smashing windows with stones. The windows of almost every house in Bridge Street were broken.. Nobody was injured, and no shots were fired.

Newspaper clipping found in CHTL’s papers, Lucas Family Archive

]]><![CDATA[31 July, 1920]]>https://chtl.co.uk/31-july/5f23373dbbe64306350d7bd6Fri, 31 Jul 2020 05:00:00 GMT

31st July - No Letter

31 July, 1920

Location: Ireland - Tipperary Barracks

31 July, 1920

The War Office sent a telegram to Poppy which arrived at The Hall in Welwyn on the 31st July. Poppy was still in London and as Peggy didn’t know her number she must have posted the telegram to her. Pencilled on top:

’sorry could not phone it as don’t know yr No Pegg’

Waterloo Rd OHMS Priority

To Mrs C Lucas The Hall Welwyn Herts
73 cas aaa beg to inform you report received as follows Dublin Castle to Irish office dated 30th July 9.45pm begins police at Limerick telephone message received [here] but General Lucas escaped from his place of consignment near Newcastle West Limerick this morning and was picked up by a military mail motor car with a despatch driver in front aaa the car was subsequently attacked by a party of Sinn feiners and two soldiers shot dead aaa General Lucas burst a blood vessel in escaping aaa a second military car came on the scene and saved the situation aaa the real facts not yet ascertained aaa police at Tipperary wire General Lucas now in Tipperary aaa he looks somewhat fatigued after a hard night but otherwise is well he is not confined to bed message ends Military Sec. Comorale [?] House War Office

Telegram dated 31 July 20

Poppy must have been relieved to have got this eventually. She must have felt quite left out as the Lucas family took centre stage and she became an after thought when it came to communicating with her. You would have thought that after a month of CHTL’s imprisonment, the family would have had a phone number for Poppy to keep her up-to-date with what they found out! They probably meant well, but could be quite over-powering and bossy!

Press Statement

It was in Fermoy that CHTL’s story was leaked to the press. He himself, aware of what had happened to Kelly and probably under strict instructions to keep quiet, did not speak directly to the journalists. He had told his story to his friends and maybe with a nod and a wink from him, they related the tale:

GENERAL LUCAS

DESCRIBES HIS IMPRISONMENT And Pays Tribute to his Guards

‘‘Had the Time of his Life.’’

An inquiry has been held at Fermoy into the circumstances attending the capture of Brigadier General Lucas, who was taken by Irish Volunteers while he was fishing in the Blackwater in June. The inquiry has concluded, but no details of the proceedings have yet been made public. It is, however, established that General Lucas’s place of captivity was changed every three or four days.

He was guarded continuously either by a brigade or a battalion- commander of the Irish Volunteers. He has no knowledge of the whereabouts of his final prison, but on the day of his arrival there his escort was busily engaged in organising, by a pure coincidence, the attack on the military motor mail lorry at Oola. While in this affair, the General discovered that the bars of the window of his prison were by no means so secure as they were thought to be, and after working steadily at joints in the concrete he was able to remove them and so escape. It was two o’clock in the morning when he scrambled down the wall, injuring himself in the descent, and for five hours he wandered across country in the pouring rain until finally he reached the village of New Pallas.

From here General Lucas boarded the mail lorry, which his captors had arranged to ambush, and when it was held up he seized a rifle and took an active part in the defences, being wounded by a bullet searing his forehead. For two days he remained in Tipperary barrack while the Irish government threw a screen of secrecy about him. The General desired to go to England to see his wife, who is in a nursing home, but the formalities of the military command must be obeyed, and so he languished at Fermoy simply because it is ‘‘a way they have in the army.’’

General Lucas has no complaint to make about the manner of his captivity. Always, he says, he was treated as a gentleman by gentlemen. Not for a single moment was he made to feel his position as a prisoner of war. The monotony of his captivity was relieved by books and games, and his captors joined him in fishing and shooting expeditions. As a matter of fact, General Lucas frankly declares that he had the time of his life, and his only trouble was the knowledge that his family would be anxious over his welfare. Again he admits that his guards assured him that his wife knew he was safe. ‘‘My captors were delightful people,’’ says General Lucas, ‘‘Of course I escaped at the first opportunity, but I have no complaint to make I was not a prisoner so much as an unwilling guest.’’

Newspaper article reproduced p194 In the Shadow of Shanid: the Life of Captain Timothy Madigan by Tim Donnovan

The visible wound on his face made CHTL’s message of having no complaints about his captors even more powerful. He could so easily have changed his tune and felt anger at the IRA for the attack at Oola and the killing and wounding of soldiers. Notwithstanding this, CHTL stuck to his word of honour and would not let recent events cloud his original opinion of those who held him. As a soldier he knew that (unofficially) there was a war on and the attack was part of that conflict.

The press were eager to get the story. Everyone wanted to know 'General Lucas’s account'. Saying that he’d had ’the time of his life’, was not expected but it made the story even more intriguing and CHTL more the ’hero’ and not the ’victim’.

CHTL took a big risk in leaking his story to the press, especially as he knew that Churchill wanted him court-martialled and what had happened to Sherwood-Kelly after he spoke to the press. CHTL cleverly got his story across without incriminating himself. By now CHTL was becoming very impatient: he just wanted to get back home to Poppy and to meet his son for the first time. He was going to tell his story his way and not be influenced by the authorities, even though they didn’t want to hear that he had a good time and had no complaints to make about his captors.

Report on IRA

Following the euphoria of his escape CHTL had to face the music and report to his military superiors. He was on very sticky ground. With Churchill calling for him to be court-martialled, there was an urgent need for the errant general to give a good account of his months absence and to compensate his seniors for the embarrassment he had caused them with some useful information. He told it as he saw it. The British had to choose between another bloody extended war or negotiate some form of Home Rule as Lord Cecil, his MP whom he admired, advocated.

31 July, 1920
Shadowed by the Law - GHQ Christmas card 1918 (Lucas family archive)

’After his escape General Lucas had made a report to his own authorities, a copy of which was secured by General Headquarters Intelligence. In this report he had included his impressions of I.R.A. organisations as he had seen it through contact with officers and men during the month he was a prisoner. He was impressed by their standards of discipline, determination and efficiency. In his opinion the British Forces in Ireland were confronted with a much graver military situation than was generally realised. He foresaw a long and bitter struggle, in which it would be necessary to employ much larger forces than those then garrisoning the country if the Army of the Republic was to be exterminated.

Extermination of the Irish armed forces, openly in the field, by midnight murder, or by shooting or hanging prisoners under the contorted legality of Martial Law, was in fact the policy decided upon by the British Cabinet. Voices which raised doubts of the efficiency of such a policy were ignored. In the House of Lords on 26th April Lord R. Cecil said:

“We are drifting through anarchy and humiliation to an Irish Republic... we will never settle the Irish question except with the wishes of the Irish people.”’

P81-82 No other Law, Florence O’Donoghue, ANVIL

Florence O'Donoghue (1895–18 December 1967) was an interesting character. In later life he became a historian and wrote the classic ‘No Other Law’ (the story of Liam Lynch the Irish Republican army, 1916-1923)

During the war of independence, Florence O'Donoghue  was head of intelligence in the Cork No. 1 Brigade. He successfully recruited ‘agents’ who were working right in the heart of the British army’s HQ in Ireland.

One of O’Donoghue’s most important and valuable spies was Josephine Marchment who worked as a typist in the Victoria Barracks in Cork. Josephine's first husband was killed in the First World War. Her parents in law managed to get custody of her eldest son and took him to live with them in Wales. Distraught, Josephine turned to the local IRA in Cork. They managed to go to Wales, find Josephine’s son and bring him back to Cork. O’Donoghue was one of those who organised this. At the end of the war Josephine and O’Donoghue were married.

Being so grateful to the IRA for bringing her son back to her, Josephine decided to work for the cause. She was head female clerk at the 6th Division Headquarters at Victoria Barracks, Cork and passed on secret British Army correspondence to O'Donoghue. One of Josephine’s most important bosses was General Strickland, CHTL’s immediate superior. There would have been very little that the IRA didn't know about Brig general Lucas. It was probably Josephine who got hold of a copy of CHTL’s Report.

Court Martial

There were a lot of political murmurings behind closed doors as to what to do about CHTL. Churchill wanted him court-martialled but others didn’t see him as having caused the situation but more as a victim of circumstances beyond his control. The Brigadier General’s outspoken testimony to the finer qualities of his captors rankled with those in parliament who didn’t want Sinn Fein portrayed in anything but a bad light.

Wilson’s diary mentions a conversation that he had with Lord Duncannon on Ireland, sometime between 17th and 28th July 1920. He told Duncannon that if he was in the House of Commons he would:

“march down to Lloyd George and say: “You have two courses open to you. One is to clear out of Ireland and the other is to knock Sinn Fein on the head. But, before you do this latter, you must have England on your side, and therefore you must go stumping the country explaining what Sinn Fein means. If you get England on your side-and you can-there is nothing you can’t do. If you don’t then there is nothing that you can do.”

The Military Correspondence of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson 1918-1922 edited by Keith Jeffery Entry 135

So CHTL coming out and saying that he was ‘treated as a gentleman by gentlemen’ and was held by ‘delightful people’ would not have helped to get England ‘on their side’ against Sinn Fein! He needed to have come out saying that they were evil people who were a threat to Britain and who needed to be eradicated, to have redeemed his politically embarrassing capture and given the government factions aligned to Wilson the green light to send in the troops ‘to knock Sinn Fein on the head’.

CHTL’s daughter, Anne, said that CHTL always said what he thought - it was how she and her brothers were brought up. CHTL wasn’t someone to toe the party line. In the letters to Poppy leading up to their wedding CHTL got very frustrated with his leave being postponed and he wrote, 'If it is delayed any longer I shall get very subordinate and probably be kicked out of the service'. The Quaker non-conformist genes came into the picture again – the Lucas family had generations of people who stood up and said what they believed to be right in spite of any unfavourable consequences or being in a minority with the ‘authorities’ disapproving.

Maybe certain sections of the British government had been secretly hoping that CHTL would have been killed by Sinn Fein as that would have got England ‘on their side’ to send in the troops?

Sherwood Kelly, less than a year earlier, had been conveniently disposed of on the charge of having spoken to the press without permission and it would have been very easy to have used the same technicality to have ’punished’ CHTL. Kelly may well have called on CHTL to stand as a character reference so Lucas would have been already marked as a ’subversive’ in Churchill’s eyes.

However CHTL had the huge advantage that, unlike Kelly, the vast majority of his commanding officers thought highly of him and liked him! His years of charm and working hard to keep up with friends may have paid off at his most critical hour. He had earned the respect of those he’d served under by his determined hard work and undoubtable achievements which had greatly helped towards the success of those operations he was involved with.

Churchill thought that Lucas deserved a court martial for the ‘crime’ of going fishing, allowing himself to be captured and not fighting back and taking a load of Sinn Féiners down with him. Churchill was not shy of sacrificing lives for political/military ends. Gallipoli was one such case: “The price to be paid in taking Gallipoli would no doubt be heavy,” he wrote, “but there would be no more war with Turkey. A good army of 50,000 and sea-power—that is the end of the Turkish menace.” Russia was another where Sherwood Kelly objected to the waste of soldiers lives. He’d made it very clear that he was willing to sacrifice Lucas’ life for military/political gain in Ireland.

There may have been a little envy: In November 1916, when Churchill arrived in France, following the Gallipoli disaster, he had expected to be given a Brigade and Brigadier General's rank, but Prime Minister Asquith vetoed him being given a high command. Instead Churchill was given the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, with command of a battalion of the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers. He proved to be a brave and popular officer amongst his men. CHTL was someone who had achieved the rank that Churchill had wanted and yet Churchill didn’t think Lucas worthy of it.

When it came to court martial: Brig General Dyer escaped as he had the public behind him and possibly military men were uneasy about setting a precedent in case they found themselves in a similar position. Colonel Sherwood Kelly, was an awkward character and probably CHTL was the only senior officer willing to stick their necks out for him, so he went down. However Brig General Lucas was in a different category.

CHTL had been mentioned in dispatches ten times, he was not some maverick officer who could be quietly put away. His list of referees, which contained the names of many of the most prominent generals of the day, prove that CHTL was someone who was held in high regard. Churchill was possibly not amongst the military’s favourite people, with many remembering the disaster of Gallipoli, and given the choice the army would side with their own.

]]><![CDATA[30 July, 1920]]>https://chtl.co.uk/30-july/5f21e077bbe64306350d7b85Thu, 30 Jul 2020 05:00:00 GMT

30th July - Nineteenth Letter to Poppy

30 July, 1920

Secret diary: No more entries

Official diary: No more entries

Location: Pallas Green - Tipperary Barracks

Friday[30th July]
2pm

My darling old Pip,

I am writing in bed in Col Wilsons house in these barracks.

I managed to escape through some bars in the window at 1PM this morning, and walked hatless in the pouring rain over bogs and mountains till about 7AM when I reached Pallas Green police barracks. Having had no exercise for so long it was rather exhausting, as a result I was passing blood the last part of the journey. I was a nice object when I arrived, drenched and coated with mud and some blood.

I luckily struck the house of the one honest man in the area who put me on the road to the police barracks, had he not been an honest man he would have handed me over again if he could.

The police doctor bandaged me up , and I came on here in the lorry that carries the mails. We were attacked on the way, Sin Feiners having barricaded the road. Out of the party of 8, 2 were killed and one wounded; by great luck another lorry also some police came along after a bit, otherwise we should have been probably captured. I got a slug past the side of my nose which just removed a bit of the skin.

I have been ordered by the doctor to keep quiet today to let the blood passing settle down, and it will be all right tomorrow. I hear they have a new brigadier at Fermoy, this may mean my getting a job elsewhere, but don’t count on it. I shall get more definite information when I get there.

No more news today.
Your
C
Ought to be able to fix up some leave shortly now.

Poppy didn’t need to hear all the gory details, just that he was safe, but that was the soldier in CHTL – boy’s own stuff! Typically of CHTL the main thing on his mind was getting leave.

CHTL’s letter to Poppy tied in with the accounts from the other side, although the facts were basically the same, the reasons behind the facts were different. No one wanted CHTL back in custody so he wasn’t in danger of being recaptured. He was shooting back in the attack and possibly fighting some of the men that had held him. It’s very sad that it all ended like that, but there was a war going on.

At last CHTL could relax a little after his exhausting and nerve rattling cross-country challenge, fleeing from his captors. In quite a state physically, although on an adrenaline high, CHTL needed the basics of a good feed and a hot bath before he carried on his journey.

General Lucas breakfasted at New Pallas on Friday morning, had a bath and a change of clothes, and expressed his intention to return to his command at Fermoy by the military mail which travels daily from Limerick to Cork via Tipperary and Fermoy.

Newspaper cutting found amongst CHTL’s papers labelled “Connact Tribune”

Being a very senior officer CHTL made the decision as to what his subsequent move would be. He was anxious to get out of the area as quickly as possible and knowing that the mail lorry travelled to Fermoy, decided that he’d hitch a lift.

There are many accounts of what occurred next but the ‘Connact Tribune’ report is probably one of the closest to what actually happened:

The motor mail consists of a lorry in which the mails and a guard of eight armed soldiers are carried. A motor despatch rider precedes the lorry by about 30 yards...not far from Limerick junction, the road swings slightly to the left and downhill. Concealed by the bend was a barricade comprising two country carts and a long ladder. The despatch rider had just swung round the bend and came within sight of the barricade sixty yards farther on, when shots rang out from the thick shrubbery on each side of the road. Lance Corporal Parker fell from his motor-bicycle mortally wounded in the neck. Large pools of blood on the middle of the road marked the spot. The lorry came on but found the barricade obstructing it. A second volley rang out from the rear showing that the lorry was surrounded on all sides. Immediately this was followed by a burst of rifle and gun fire behind the galvanized roof of a low shed behind the cottage opposite which the barricade was erected.

Almost before the soldiers had time to reply, there were four other casualties, Pte. Bayliss being killed dead, Pte. Smelling wounded seriously, and Ptes. Steer and Cornwall wounded slightly. Led by General Lucas, who took command, and who received a flesh wound over the eye and nose, from a gunshot which gazed him, the men dismounted. Utilising the lorry for what cover they could gain from it on the middle of the road, they vigorously replied to the concealed assailants.

An engineering motor-lorry, in which there were two riflemen, was going in the same direction, and hearing the shooting it put on speed. It was followed by six policemen, but by the time these had arrived the fight, which had not lasted more than 10 minutes altogether, was at an end, and the attackers had disappeared through the scrub and hedges in the adjoining fields.

The soldiers did not fire more than sixty rounds. Bullet marks can still be seen on the little cottage, and the bushes on the ditch between the shed and the road were cut through in several places.

Seán O’Carroll, in his witness statement, recalled the planning of the attack on the mail lorry that CHTL just happened to have hitched a lift with:

The first engagement in which those rifles figured was the Oola ambush in the late summer of 1920, and there was quite a few of them out that particular day. From what I know of all the planning that was done before this ambush, it was all based on the assumption that we would be attacking a single Crossley tender, carrying ten or twelve soldiers, with, possibly, a despatch rider on a motor cycle in front. This Crossley tender had been travelling the road from Limerick to Tipperary regularly for some time before, and it was surmised it use [to] carry mail and despatches from one post to the other. Consequently, when the Crossley tender did appear on the scene of the ambush, it looked as if everything was working according to plan.

The appearance of a "bigger and better" lorry on the scene almost immediately, and the fact that all the National Volunteer rifles were out of action after one shot had been fired, put a different complexion on the situation. These rifles were Martini Henrys, a type discontinued in the British army, and their ejectors failed to eject the empty shell of a .303 cartridge.

We were not then aware that General Lucas was in the lorry, on his way to Tipperary, after being picked up around Pallas, but the British were probably under the impression that the I.R.A. were aware of his presence and that the ambush was staged, to try and recapture him.

Everything considered, the I.R.A were probably very lucky to escape in this engagement. The British were more intent on getting away with Lucas than with waiting to fight it out, and follow up the I.R.A. who, due to the failure of the rifles, were not in a very favourable position.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. STATEMENT BY WITNESS. DOCUMENT NO. W.S. 1702. Seán O’Carroll, Quartermaster, 6th Battalion, 3rd Tipperary Brigade, I.R.A. 1917-1921.

Dan Breen’s recollection of events, possibly exaggerated by the passing of time, appeared to paint a picture of a much larger battle between the British soldiers (with RIC back up) and the Volunteers:

When I was down the country, there was to be an attack at Ballyclerihan, near Clonmel, but Robinson called it off. So then we ran into the Lucas attack. We went out to get the mail cars which used to come under military escort from Limerick to Tipperary. That was the morning that the famous General Lucas escaped, and instead of running into what we thought was the military mail at first, it turned out to be more than we bargained for. We thought there would be two or three lorries of men there - 4O soldiers - but there were that many lorries present, so after a brief engagement we withdrew. We had to bring about 150 men out of it.

We fought a rearguard action and held them at bay, and we hadn’t more than seven men who knew anything at all about fighting. We got back on our bicycles about a mile back near Oola in the County Limerick.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21 STATEMENT BY WITNESS. DOCUMENT NO. W.S. 1739. Dan Breen, Quartermaster. 3rd Tipperary Brigade.

Volunteer James Kilmartin recalled his side of events. Apparently he was under the impression that the IRA wanted the soldiers to surrender but that confusion in the midst of the battle meant that the fighting continued. He believed that there were two lorries that arrived as back-up and far more men on the British side than there actually were:

An episode which I should, have mentioned earlier was the Oola ambush which, in fact, took place before the starting of the column. This was the time when General Lucas had escaped and when we ambushed the military party which had picked him up on the road. This was a purely Company activity. It was the Solohead Company which organised and carried out this ambush... There were a few men from Dunohill with us, as well as Breen, Treacy and the Battalion Commander, Ned Reilly.

We had all discussed and arranged the matter beforehand and as far as I remember it was Treacy who had suggested that there was a despatch rider whom we should hold up and capture there. We hardly expected any large force to appear. When, therefore, a small lorry arrived on the scene of the ambush - it was, in fact, the lorry carrying General Lucas - we opened fire on it. We had arranged for a cart with a ladder mounted on it to be pulled across the road when this despatch rider would be due to arrive and when, actually, this small lorry appeared, the cart was pulled across the road.

I was in a position close to this barricade and when the lorry pulled up I stood up and called on them to surrender, which they did at once. Unfortunately, however, there was nobody else near me to take the surrender and some others of our men, who were further away and perhaps not in full view of what was happening, opened fire so that the soldiers in the lorries jumped down and fled for cover.

I remember well that morning when Ned Reilly placed us in position he said very seriously to us that we should remain exactly where we were placed, and that he would shoot the first man who left his position. Consequently, when we called on the soldiers in the lorry to surrender and some few shots had been fired, they put their hands up and said they would surrender but the firing continued from our side from men in other positions and there was only one other man near me so we could do nothing before the soldiers had all cleared off to the side of the road. I did not know at this time where Ned Reilly, Treacy or Breen were but, as it transpired afterwards, they were at the other side of the road. These men were not in a position to see what was happening or whether the soldiers had indicated their willingness to surrender, so they opened fire on them and kept it up. The soldiers standing with their hands up had no alternative but to run for cover.

The next thing was that two more lorries full of British military arrived on the scene and they began to take part in the action. I went to the gate of the field where we were looking for Ned Reilly but could see no sign of him or anyone else, but I could see a policeman from Oola - an R.I.C. man who was above us at a gate - firing down towards where we were. I could see no sign of any more of our men and I decided that they must have left us to shift for ourselves. I came back and told my men that we had better get out of this position as best we could and, in order to do this, we had to cross the road, in the course of which we were fired at all the time by the policemen above us.

The two lorries...did not get into action until we were across the road but they then turned a very heavy fire from machine guns and rifles on the lower position held by our men and made it very difficult for them to get away because the military fire raked all the ditches and cover around. However, our men all succeeded in making their escape from the position and we withdrew, considering ourselves lucky to have got away from a rather ugly position without casualties. I believe there were some casualties on the British side and it was only a good while afterwards that we learned that the first small lorry that we had held up had carried General Lucas.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. STATEMENT BY WITNESS. DOCUMENT NO. W.S. 881 James Kilmartin, Member of Irish Volunteers, Solohead, Co. Tipperary, 1917 - Second in Command

The IRA witness statements were collected twenty-eight years after the ambush, in 1948, when the Bureau of Military History was set up. The eye-witness accounts recorded just after the attack state that there was just one lorry with a second that happened to arrive as the attack was taking place, and that there were five or six soldiers/RIC men, maybe a dozen, armed with rifles and not machine guns. One has to remember that in the heat of the battle things can appear to be a lot worse than they actually are.

The Times printed an eye-witness account of the ambush on 30th July:

AN EYE WITNESS’S STORY. Mr John Lynch, a pump sinker, of Cappamore. Co, Limerick, gave a graphic account of the fight at Oola, of which he was an eyewitness. He says:- I was coming to Tipperary this morning with a cartload of timber in company with my brother Tom. It was about half-past 9, and we were about a quarter of a mile on the Tipperary side of Oola, when we heard shots in front of us. We proceeded on our way, and a short distance farther on the wife of a farmer, named David O’Donnell, ran out in a very excited state on to the road, and, putting up her hands, shouted to us to not go any farther, for there was a raid on near Howitt’s Gate. We continued on our way, however, and about 30 yards further on a policeman met us, putting up his hands and warning us to stop. We then left the horse and cart in the middle of the road and went in behind the hedge on the roadside. Looking through the hedge, we saw a motor-lorry some little distance down the road. About a dozen soldiers had got down from the lorry, and were replying with their rifles to shots which came from both sides of the road. Two soldiers lay motionless in the middle of the road, apparently dead. From behind a shed with a corrugated iron roof a heavy and continuous fusillade was directed on the soldiers. I could not say how many men were in the attacking party, but there appeared to be a good number.

When the fight had been in progress about 20 minutes or half an hour a second motor-lorry full of soldiers coming from Limerick raced up to the spot. Following them rushed five or six policemen, rifles in hand. The attackers then dispersed through the fields, firing as they ran, and the military firing after them. When the fight was over the two dead soldiers, and two or three others, who appeared to be wounded, were placed in the lorry, and the two lorries went on to Tipperary.

Volunteer Jeremiah Frewen was under the impression that the back up ’lorries’ just accidentally came across the fight:

The vehicle that the ambush was designed for was a single Crossley tender which carried mails and such-like things daily and would have an escort of about six soldiers. The other lorries came along independently and merely happened, accidentally as it were, upon the ambush position.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. STATEMENT BY WITNESS. DOCUMENT NO. W.S. 930 Jeremiah Frewen, Member ’B’ Company Tipperary Irish Volunteers, 1917-; Intelligence Officer and Assistant Brigade Q.M. 3rd Tipperary Brigade, 1918 - .

Interestingly Jeremiah Frewen agreed with the recollection of a British soldier printed in the Derby Daily Telegraph.

We are informed that the driver of the motor-lorry in which General Lucas reached safety after his escape from the Sinn Fein prison was a Derby soldier - Driver Parker, of 13, Curzon-street. A colleague of Driver Parker writes:- ‘‘I was on escort duty on the mail car from Limerick to Cork last Friday, and when we were passing a M.G.C. outpost the driver was halted by the sentry to let a civilian, as we thought, board the car, but we found it to be the stolen General. When we were proceeding round a big turn in a lonely spot on the road the driver noticed three carts put across the road as a barricade. He pulled up dead, and nearly threw us out it was done so quick. His prompt action left us about 25 to 30 yards away from the attackers, who opened fire right away from the front of us at general Lucas and the driver, who both had a lucky escapes, but the N.C.O. in charge of our escort was shot dead through the lungs and another in the neck; three were wounded.

‘‘This lasted for half-an-hour or more, when a three-ton lorry came up from Limerick to Tipperary, with stores on for the R.E.’s store there. This lorry never knew the danger until it was right on top of us. The Sinn Feiners opened a volley of fire straight at it, and the five armed escort that were on returned it. The Sinn Feiners must have thought the lorry had a stronger party on, and they dispersed, and the troops searched all about, whilst others put the bodies and wounded into the lorry. Then the carts were removed, and the driver drove as fast as he could to Tipperary. Then we left the General in safety at the barracks, and we were relieved by the Lincolns, and the driver proceeded with the mails all quite safe to Cork.’’

Sitting in the front of the lorry with the driver, CHTL was fortunate to have survived the head on attack. He was ever the natural leader, and without hesitation he took control of the situation. Ordering the men to take cover and grabbing a rifle, he fired back at the attackers; receiving a slight graze on his face from a passing IRA bullet.

After the tragic affray, General Lucas went on with the lorry to Tipperary.

District-inspector Sabson [?], from New Pallas, telegraphed to Cork for a blood-hound, which arrived six hours later, and was put to the task of tracing the attackers.

The part of the road where the attack was made has a few cottages on either side within a short distance from each other. These were carefully searched subsequently, as were also the surrounding districts; peasants were commanded at a point of a revolver to tell what they knew of the affair, but all efforts to trace the attackers proved futile, no information of any consequence being obtained.

‘Connact Tribune’ newspaper cutting

CHTL having just lost another of his ’nine lives’, demonstrated again his incredible ability to survive. As soon as he was safe in the Tipperary Barracks, CHTL put pen to paper to share his good news with Poppy.

]]><![CDATA[29 July, 1920]]>

29th July - No Letter

Secret diary: No more entries

Official diary: entry for 26th July continues…I stopped for a short time at CAHERELLY GRANGE or CASTLE till darkness and then proceeded to a farm just South of LANGFORD BRIDGE over the CAMOGIE RIVER I believe the farmhouse belongs

]]>https://chtl.co.uk/29-july/5f206ac4bbe64306350d7b17Wed, 29 Jul 2020 05:00:00 GMT

29th July - No Letter

29 July, 1920

Secret diary: No more entries

Official diary: entry for 26th July continues…I stopped for a short time at CAHERELLY GRANGE or CASTLE till darkness and then proceeded to a farm just South of LANGFORD BRIDGE over the CAMOGIE RIVER I believe the farmhouse belongs to the owner of CAHERELLY GRANGE or he used to live in it. I stayed here until I escaped at 0200 hours on the morning of the 30th July. The window of the room in which I was sleeping was barred and by bursting one of these bars I managed to escape and in doing so burst a small blood vessel in my kidney.

Location: house near Herbertstown, Bruff.

Brennan was probably very aware of the broken window bars:

In the room he [CHTL] was in, the window was barred with ordinary bars that you would see in a farmhouse, but one of the bars was missing. The McCarthy’s in their young days had taken one of the bars out to enable them to get in and out the window when they were out late. It was through that window Lucas escaped.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. NO. W.S. 656 Richard O’Connell, Member of Caherconlish Irish Volunteers 1914 Adjutant, 3rd Battalion O/C. 5th Battalion Mid-Limerick Brigade. O/C. Brigade Flying Column

Brennan wasn’t someone to have allowed such a security risk to have gone unnoticed: this was all part of his plan. He removed the guard at night from outside CHTL’s room, but on the first night (Wednesday) nothing happened and he thought that CHTL was suspicious. However on the second night (Thursday evening/Friday morning) his prisoner had escaped by removing a bar from the window.

Up to this we had always left a man on duty outside his bedroom window at night and now when the room was on the ground floor we withdrew this man. At first nothing happened (he may have suspected a trap), but when we got up on the second morning our prisoner was gone.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. STATEMENT BY WITNESS. DOCUMENT: NO. W.S. 1,068 Witness Lieut.-Gen. Michael Brennan, Brigade Adjutant East Clare Brigade; Column Commander East Clare Flying Column. Subject. National activities, East-Clare,1911-1922.

Some of the IRA volunteers were kept in the dark and believed that their captive general had escaped entirely on his own initiative:

It was thought impossible to escape through the windows on account of the iron bars and, for that reason, the guard sat outside general Lucas‘s bedroom door and not inside as he was accustomed to do. It was not observed, however, that the middle bar was broken on top and about 1 foot length of it was missing. Evidently general Lucas studied this position during the first few nights of his detention there and, one morning when the Guard opened the door, he found that his prisoner had escaped.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. STATEMENT BY WITNESS. DOCUMENT: NO. W.S. 1559. Morgan Portley, Company Captain, Ballybricken, Co. Limerick. Battalion Adjutant.

The story Bob was told by his father, was that there was only one guard posted outside CHTL’s room in the open air. In the early days of his capture there were always several armed guards inside his room, day and night. This relaxation of security would have been appreciated and noted. It was an indication that the general was not as valuable to his captors as he had been. It was pouring with rain so when a cup of tea was made for the guard he was called into the main house to drink it: 'you couldn’t drink a cup of tea in the rain'. This could well have been what the general thought. It must have been extremely stressful wondering whether he was being set up to be shot, or whether he actually did have a lucky break and could make it away in time.

When the guard didn’t return, CHTL began working on loosening the bar on the window (Bob was under the impression that the window was some sort of sky-light or at least quite high up, meaning that his father had to exert a lot of effort to climb up through it). Squeezing himself through the small gap caused CHTL to burst a blood vessel in his kidney, which resulted in him passing blood.

CHTL believed that he had escaped and was not under the impression that he’d been permitted to escape. However he would have picked up on Brennan’s hints and noted that the guard was being removed at night. He would have known that he was about to be moved on again to the care of a different brigade. He had built up a relationship with Michael Brennan, they’d shared fishing trips and been chased by the bull, they’d played cards late into the night, drinking and joking together and now he knew that he’d have to start all over again with a new set of men. Poppy was at breaking point, he’d had enough and he knew that things couldn’t go on indefinitely as they were. Tensions were rising, assassinations were happening and CHTL could see that the tide could so easily turn: his hope of reaching the shore could so easily be dashed and he could end up as yet another casualty of this unpredictable storm.

We know that CHTL was free on 31st July according to Major General Strickland’s diaries.

According to the 20th letter he escaped in the early hours of Friday 30th.

29 July, 1920
The first two arrows on the left show where CHTL was held, firstly at Caherelly Castle and then the farmhouse in Cahercorney, near Herbertstown. The third arrow points to Pallasgreen where CHTL hiked to. The fourth arrow shows where the Oola ambush took place on the 30th July. (Maps - Google)

The first two arrows on the left show where CHTL was held, firstly at Caherelly Castle and then the farmhouse in Cahercorney, near Herbertstown. The third arrow points to Pallasgreen where CHTL hiked to. The fourth arrow shows where the Oola ambush took place on the 30th July.

The farmhouse in Cahercorney near Herbertstown was on the RS14 road to Limerick. When he made his escape, CHTL went across the fields until he reached Pallasgreen. By road this is 11.5km (7 miles). Possibly by going cross country it was longer, especially as the unfit general had to negotiate quite rough terrain in the dark and wouldn’t have taken the most direct route for fear of capture. The map below shows the direction that CHTL went in but not the route that he took.

29 July, 1920

"...across the fields, through woods, through ditches and hedges, any weather, any where."

Elizabeth Ashenden, the family nurse to Francis Lucas’ children. Francis was CHTL’s grandfather

Driven on by his indefatigable survival instincts plus his overwhelming desire to get back home to Poppy and his son, CHTL battled the elements and difficult terrain to make it to safety. He had calculated the direction he should take when out for his walks with Michael Brennan. He believed that at any moment the Volunteers would discover him absent and be after him.

In spite of the tennis, hay-making and walks, CHTL wasn’t as fit as he usually was and found the going very tough. He was also, for some reason, without his boots, so was navigating the rough terrain in his stockinged feet. He was not going to give up and, ignoring the worrying leaking of blood, the rain and wind, pushed on through the night.

Joe Good had suspected that CHTL had good navigational abilities some weeks before when the IRA were transporting their prisoner across the Shannon:

"Michael Brennan arrived in a punt or boat. It was late in the night and there was no attempt to blindfold Lucas, which I thought somewhat foolish. The general was calmly and concentratedly observing the stars. He was to prove to us all later that he was an excellent soldier and resourceful navigator."

Joe Good - Enchanted by Dreams p 163

CHTL was probably glad that he’d paid attention in Lt Col Fowler’s ‘Astronomy – diagram of stars’, classes at Staff College in 1913.

The Bird had Flown

Michael Brennan took some risk in letting CHTL go. He risked falling foul of senior IRA men. It was apparent that not all of those holding him were aware of Brennan’s decision to let loose his bird. Although no one was sorry that he did get away: if the order had come from above to assassinate CHTL there would have been none willing to have carried it out.

When he was gone, there was very little made about his going. No one was very sorry about his escape. He was a nice fellow and we liked him. Besides that, the business of holding him prisoner was a considerable lot of trouble. After Lucas escaping, we had to be very quiet and keep away from the police who were very active around our area that time. We kept quiet.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. STATEMENT BY WITNESS DOCUMENT NO. W.S. 656 Richard O’Connell, Member of Caherconlish Irish Volunteers 1914 Adjutant, 3rd Battalion O/C. 5th Battalion Mid-Limerick Brigade. O/C. Brigade Flying Column

In probably a show of having attempted to recapture their prisoner, Morgan Portley of the Limerick Brigade was told to watch the roads for CHTL; but Michael Brennan knew that the general had taken across the fields. He’d realised that was what CHTL was planning by watching him take in the topography of the land whilst on their walks together. This was the route that Brennan had intended his prisoner to take.

Michael Brennan called for me and asked me to send out local Volunteers to watch the roads all around the area. The Volunteers were called out and all the roads in the area patrolled, but there was no trace of the escaped prisoner. Evidently he kept to the fields until he cut across to the main Limerick-Tipperary road and reached Pallas police barracks some time on the morning of 30th July 1920.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. STATEMENT BY WITNESS. DOCUMENT NO. W.S. 1559. Morgan Portley, Company Captain, Ballybricken, Co. Limerick. Battalion Adjutant.

Meanwhile Nicholas O’Dwyer and the East Limerick Brigade were making plans to house the general, unaware that this unwanted cargo had already been off-loaded:

In connection with the escape of General Lucas I got instructions from Sean Wall to go to Jack Hartigan’s at Castleconnell and collect General Lucas. Before going, I had decided that General Lucas was to stay in East Limerick for as short a time as possible and I had arranged, I think it was with Jack McCarthy, to have him handed over through Kilfinane on to Cork. We did not want to have the trouble of holding Lucas as it was difficult to find a suitable place to keep him and it needed a general alertness and the services of a number of men to see that his whereabouts were not discovered by the British. The Cork Brigade, which had been responsible for his capture originally, were now agreeable to take him back and we decided to get him back to them as quickly as possible. On the day that we were to have taken him from Jack Hartigan’s Bill Hayes and myself got the County Surveyor’s car and left for Jack Hartigan’s, but on the way there we were met by a friend who told us that the bird had flown. He had escaped that morning.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. STATEMENT BY WITNESS DOCUMENT NO. W.S. 680 Nicholas O’Dwyer, B.E., M.I.G.E.I., O/C. 3rd Battal- ion (Bruff) East Limerick Brigade, 1918-1921. Inspector of Local Government, Dali Eireann, 1921.

Lieut. -Col. John M. MacCarthy, Adjutant, East Limerick Brigade, was a little more astute and saw through the alleged ’escape’ tale as being a cover for Brennan releasing his bird.

Meanwhile, in July, 1920, I had made arrangements to accept custody of General Lucas, the British officer in command at Fermoy, Co. Cork, who had been captured near there some weeks previously Lucas was being moved from one locality to another, but the night before he was to reach my area he escaped. This, in fact, was welcome news to us as we saw that no advantage was being, gained by keeping him a prisoner at the cost of great inconvenience in guarding and suitably accommodating him. This, too, seemed to be the attitude of those in charge on the occasion of his escape as I am absolutely certain that the escape was a permitted one. The persons in charge of Lucas on that occasion were Michael O’Hehir and the Brennan brothers, of Co. Care, from whence Lucas had just been moved.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. STATEMENT BY WITNESS. DOCUMENT NO. W.S. 883 Lieut. -Col. John M. MacCarthy, Adjutant, East Lim- erick Brigade; Member of East Limerick Flying Column. National and military ac- tivities, East Limerick, 1900-1921.

If CHTL had stayed he might well have enjoyed his next residence, which John M. MacCarthy had already lined up:

The place of intended detention I had arranged was in a large residence occupied by Mr. David Comon at Ballinanima, Kilfinane. Mr. Condon, a close friend of mine, and an extensive landowner had no political interests. He could, in general terms, be described as a nationalist and his co-operative attitude in this instance was the forerunner of the wonderful collaboration which all classes, rich and poor, extended to us in East Limerick as the struggle reached its climax.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. STATEMENT BY WITNESS. DOCUMENT NO. W.S. 883 Lieut. -Col. John M. MacCarthy, Adjutant, East Lim- erick Brigade; Member of East Limerick Flying Column. National and military ac- tivities, East Limerick, 1900-1921.

Tadhg Crowley of the East Limerick Brigade was also not keen on looking after the IRA’s demanding prisoner but was under the impression that the bird had escaped - not been released:

On 28th or 29th July, ... I went to Kilfinane and stayed in the house of Mrs. O’Rourke in the Main Street. After arriving there, we were asked if the Column would take charge of General Lucas, that he was to be brought to David Condon’s in Ballinamina. I said that the Column could not do that kind of work, that it was a job for the local Company. The house he was being brought to was a very fine farmer’s place about a mile and a half from Kilfinane and North of the town.

The following morning after awakening, Mrs. O’Rourke’s daughter, Kathleen, brought the newspaper to our bedroom and said that General Lucas had escaped. He was in a farmer’s house between Herbertstown and Limerick end about one hundred yards from the main road North-East of the former. Apparently he had made his way across the fields to Pallasgreen police barracks.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-2l. STATEMENT BY WITNESS DOCUMENT NO. W.S. 435 Tadhg Crowley, O/C. Ballylanders Company; Adjutant East Limerick Brigade; Member of East Limerick Flying Column.

The Volunteers were confused as to what had happened to their high profile prisoner, but there was a general sense of relief all round. Captors and captive were all pleased by the outcome.

The Times described the general’s exciting escape:

A later report states that General Lucas arrived in the small hours of this morning at Pallas Village police barracks, where, on informing the garrison who he was, he was taken in and kept...Rain fell in torrents all night, and General Lucas had great difficulty in making his way through the fields and across hedges. His tattered clothing and bedraggled appearance show the ordeal he had undergone.

The Times 30 Jul 1920

29 July, 1920
Newspaper headlines - Poppy’s pencilled comment reads, ’Faked photo’
]]><![CDATA[28 July, 1920]]>https://chtl.co.uk/28-july/5f1f3d25bbe64306350d7a84Tue, 28 Jul 2020 05:00:00 GMT

28th July - Eighteenth Letter to Poppy

28 July, 1920

Secret diary: No more entries

Official diary: entry for 26th July continues…I stopped for a short time at CAHERELLY GRANGE or CASTLE till darkness and then proceeded to a farm just South of LANGFORD BRIDGE over the CAMOGIE RIVER* I believe the farmhouse belongs to the owner  of CAHERELLY GRANGE or he used to live in it. I stayed here until I escaped at 0200 hours on the morning of the 30th July. The window of the room in which I was sleeping was barred and by bursting one of these bars I managed to escape and in doing so burst a small blood vessel in my kidney.

28 July, 1920
28 July, 1920
Caherelly Castle, the Camogie River

Location: house near Herbertstown, Bruff.

Wed

My darling old Pip,

Got your letters of Wed Thurs and Friday, with father’s enclosed, last night. You really must cheer up; you are having a rotten time but it will all be over one day. It must be very trying with the boy crying such a lot, but that will soon wear off wont it. It is a great pity I cant be with you. I am pretty certain to get a months leave as soon as I am released, and it will be all right then.

Very glad you are not going to try and get down to Welwyn by train, with all the holiday traffic. This letter had better be addressed to Welwyn as you will be there before it arrives. Have not had a second batch of letters yet from the brigade, but they ought to arrive soon. We had better not call the boy Atty, after what you say, you must suggest some other names to choose from.

They are bound to keep my place open for me, and there is very little chance of my being moved elsewhere, so you cant count on that. Anyhow we will retire as soon as I conveniently can. Got a good walk yesterday afternoon which did me a lot of good. You must appreciate getting out into the park for an airing, have they got all the flowerbeds planted again properly this year.

All will come right soon, and we can settle down together in peace and comfort. Just think of that and try and forget all the present troubles.

your c

Eighteenth Letter sent to Mrs C.H. Tindall Lucas, The Hall Welwyn Herts. England, postmarked EASTBOURNE 1 45 PM 4 Aug 1920 . Blue  paper and  envelope Written in pen. Although this was the eighteen letter written, Pip received it as the 20th.

What a heart-breaking letter poor Poppy must have written – she’d just been through giving birth prematurely, her husband was in captivity, she was probably fearing that he’d be killed and on top of all that she was living with her in-laws miles from her beloved Devon, with a baby that wouldn’t stop crying. It is very likely that she was suffering from severe post natal depression. One might wonder whether receiving, what must have been, such a heart rending letter had an effect on CHTL’s captors and was the deciding factor in letting him escape: also whether Poppy's over-whelming distress made CHTL more determined to escape.

Maybe the comments he makes in Poppy’s letter are an indication that CHTL is planning to break free and come home to her:

“All will come right soon, and we can settle down together in peace and comfort. Just think of that and try and forget all the present troubles.”

28 July, 1920
28 July, 1920

CHTL had been moved: Caherelly Castle was the perfect spot to stay for a while. Down a private lane and surrounded by trees, it  wouldn’t have been easily spotted from the main road. The Camogue River was not far away. And the next stop - a farm house near Herbertstown was just a short journey which could be safely taken after dark.

Some days later, it was decided to transfer the prisoner to McCarthy’s house in Cahercorney (East Limerick Brigade area). This house was about five miles from Caherconlish on the Limerick-Herbertstown road about two miles west of Herbertstown. Transport for transfer of the prisoner was a pony and trap and Volunteers were posted at the various road junctions. The route taken was via Caherline, Caherelly and Raleighstown. McCarthy’s house was a one-storey long low building with iron bars set in the window-sills like a prison.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. NO. W.S. 1559. Witness Morgan Portley, Company Captain, Ballybricken, Co. Limerick. Battalion Adjutant.

One would have thought that this ’prison’ was the least likely, of all the places that CHTL had been held in, to escape from. The bars at the window made it appear to be impossible to break free from. However some of the Volunteers hadn’t examined the bars very closely:

In the room he [CHTL] was in, the window was barred with ordinary bars that you would see in a farmhouse, but one of the bars was missing. The McCarthy’s in their young days had taken one of the bars out to enable them to get in and out the window when they were out late. It was through that window Lucas escaped.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. NO. W.S. 656 Richard O’Connell, Member of Caherconlish Irish Volunteers 1914 Adjutant, 3rd Battalion O/C. 5th Battalion Mid-Limerick Brigade. O/C. Brigade Flying Column

The mention of the ‘good walk’ is interesting as Michael Brennan writes about taking CHTL for long walks so that he could study the layout of the countryside to aid him in escaping.

We had realised by now, of course, that nobody wanted Lucas, as his presence held up all activities. We also knew that G.H.Q. and the Dáil Government were very embarrassed by him. Threats had been made publicly that he would be held against other prisoners and obviously we couldn't play this game indefinitely against the British. When a Dublin visitor commented: "Why the hell doesn't he escape?”, I saw the solution of the difficulty. We spent three days in Caherconlish and then moved to a vacant house near Herbertstown, Bruff. We took Lucas for long walks across country and I noted with satisfaction that he studied the topography carefully from every hilltop.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. STATEMENT BY WITNESS. DOCUMENT: NO. W.S. 1,068 Witness Lieut.-Gen. Michael Brennan, Brigade Adjutant East Clare Brigade; Column Commander East Clare Flying Column. Subject. National activities, East-Clare,1911-1922.

Chased by a Bull

There is an ancient legend in Ireland about the ‘Brown Bull of Cooley’ which CHTL’s Irish companions who were also chased by the bull might have known about. In Connacht there was a queen called Maeve who was strong, powerful and a fearsome character. She was married to King Ailill whom she was very jealous of. She always wanted to be the one with the most wealth. In actual fact they were equally wealthy. Queen Maeve could match her husband in jewels, gold and other riches.

However the one thing that Ailill had that Maeve didn't was the White Bull of Connacht, an awe inspiring fierce creature which was the envy of everyone. Ailill was always boasting about his wonderful bull.

Maeve couldn't cope with her husband having something better than her and asked her knights if there were any other bulls in Ireland that could be a match for Ailill’s white bull. One of her knights told her that there was  a magnificent bull called the Brown Bull of Cooley that could outmatch the White Bull. This bull lived in Ulster.

Immediately Maeve wanted this bull and sent a messenger to ask the owner to lend his bull to her for one year. The Bull’s owner, an old man, refused to give Queen Maeve his prize bull. The messenger told the old man that Queen Maeve would take it by force. The old man still refused. Queen Maeve was furious and took her army to Ulster to get the brown bull.

There was a battle between the two sides. Two friends, Cúchulainn and Fredia found themselves fighting on opposing sides, Fredia fighting for Queen Maeve. It came down to a dual between the two friends. This went on for three days. Each night when the fighting stopped the two wept and embraced. It was Cúchulainn who finally won, killing his dear friend Fredia and in the process breaking his own heart.

Even though Queen Maeve lost, she stole the bull and brought it back to Connacht. The Brown Bull and the White Bull met and there was a terrible fight, with the Brown Bull eventually killing the White Bull. However the battle took its toll on the Brown Bull and it also died. Queen Maeve and King Ailill at last accepted that they were even. Source

It would be lovely to speculate that perhaps the encounter with the bull sparked a reminder of the story of two friends fighting on opposite sides and that this influenced Michael Brennan’s decision not to kill CHTL, but sadly that would be stretching the story into the land of fairytale legend. There’s no doubt that there was a certain level of friendship built between the soldiers fighting on  opposite sides, but nothing as deep as that of the two warriors, Cúchulainn and Fredia. The war being waged was about far more than the petty jealousy of an indulged monarch. Sadly the Irish Civil War that followed the War of Independence did see close friends on opposite sides and many hearts must have been broken by the tragedy of that. Liam Lynch and Michael Brennan who had worked together in the capture of General Lucas found themselves on opposite sides, with Liam Lynch being killed by those who he’d once been fighting with for the same cause.

Missing Digits

Following on from the photo from the 25th July showing CHTL’s left hand with the missing digits, it seems only right to explain what happened to his hand.  It was in the Sudan before the Great War that CHTL lost at least one finger if not two. He was miles from anywhere when he had an accident cleaning a gun and did the damage to his hand. Quick thinking by those with him, saved his life. They put him on the back of a donkey and taking turns to hold up his arm to stem the bleeding they walked miles to the nearest doctor who patched him up.

28 July, 1920

It’s not clear how many fingers CHTL actually lost. From the x rays it looks as if it was only one, but it is possible that he might have lost another due to infection. It appears from the Gallipoli photo that he lost his middle and index finger. He was very discreet about hiding away his damaged hand, often wearing a glove. Even his daughter wasn’t sure of the number of missing fingers being rather squeamish about it.

A fellow officer writing about him in the Auckland Star 30 June 1920 stated:

"His one physical disability is the loss of three fingers of the left hand the result of a shooting accident in the Sudan, on which occasion he had to walk 120 miles before securing medical assistance.”

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 155, 30 June 1920, Page 5

28 July, 1920
28 July, 1920

General Sir R Wingate was the Governor-General of the Sudan and Sirdar of the Egyptian army during CHTL’s time out there. (Wingate was also one of the key supporters of T.E. Lawrence’s (”Lawrence of Arabia”) military accomplishments in the Hejaz, Jordan, and Syria. Wingate supplied most of the gold sovereigns Lawrence used to persuade his Bedouin collaborators to join him) General Wingate wrote to CHTL after his escape and recalled the good and bad times in the Sudan.

"I often think of the old Sudan days & all the good work you did there–in spite of the horrid accident which so seriously damaged your hand.”

Letter from R Wingate 1 Aug 1920 Knockenhair, Dunbar, Scotland.

CHTL never allowed this ‘disability’ to be one. When men were deliberately allowing a finger or two to be shot off to give them a free pass home, CHTL was one of the ‘First in, last out’ soldiers of the Great War. He never used his injury as an excuse to not do what all other soldiers were required to do. His Irish captors were amazed at the speed with which he could deal a pack of cards.

The incredible humour of CHTL, where you cope with what could be seen as a tragedy by joking about it, is typical of his family’s attitude. His grandfather wrote a poem about ‘winning a smile from sorrow’ and this is what he did. This photo is  from his photograph album - a picture of him in Sudan, with the caption beneath “CHTL Last view of him all there”.

28 July, 1920

When you turn the album’s page, you are suddenly faced with the startling X-ray photos of CHTL’s damaged hand.

We have tried to find a doctor to give their opinion of the x rays but they have much more pressing concerns at the moment. We’d welcome comments on this - and anything else - via our contact page.

]]><![CDATA[27 July, 1920]]>https://chtl.co.uk/27-july/5f1dee84bbe64306350d79daMon, 27 Jul 2020 05:00:00 GMT

27th July - No Letter

27 July, 1920

Secret diary: No entry

Official diary (27th July): No entry

Location: House near Herbertstown, Bruff.

Things in Ireland have gone quiet. The mood is changing and a move to the care of a different brigade is being planned for the captured general.

Steve Warburton takes us on another journey of stories from the start of CHTL’s military career. He also includes diary extracts from CHTL’s time at Gallipoli.

CHTL - the Making of a Soldier and Leader of Men

CHTL was a professional soldier. It was his chosen profession as a teenager though his teachers at Marlborough forced him to confront the reality that his Maths wasn’t good enough to make it into Woolwich (the training academy for engineers and the Artillery) and that it was a good idea for him to leave Marlborough ‘early’ to go to a ‘crammer’ for Sandhurst entrance.

After the initial excitement of the Boer War at the beginning of his career CHTL did not want to settle into the life of a regimental officer waiting – via the rule of seniority – for his next opportunity or promotion.

Like many of his peers he chose service overseas within colonial administration as an avenue for advancement. He never left the army, but effectively had two periods of secondment. These opportunities were taken up by many of his contemporaries as a way of broadening their experience and encountering adventure (compared to the ‘rinse & repeat’ monotony of peacetime soldiering). The first was to the Egyptian Police Force in southern Egypt. It is likely that his focus would have been on the disruption caused by an increase in Egyptian nationalism (a forestaste of Ireland in 1920 perhaps?) and the disturbance caused by incidents such as that at Denshawai.

The Denshawai Incident in 1906 accelerated ill will towards British high-handedness. A group of British officers had been out hunting birds near the village of Denshawai. The villagers, who relied upon the birds for food, intervened. In the resulting scuffle, one officer was hurt, became separated and later died died of sunstroke, despite the efforts of a friendly Egyptian to help him. Both men were then found by a party of British soldiers who, assuming the fellah had murdered the officer, beat him to death. The British authorities over-reacted as they regarded this incident as the by-product of nationalist stirring. A special tribunal was set up to try the villagers. Of the 52 accused, four were sentenced to death, two to penal servitude for life, six to imprisonment for seven years and the rest to 50 lashes. The sentences of hanging and flogging were carried out on the site of the incident - and the villagers were compelled to watch. The effect on Egyptian opinion of the savage punishment of the villagers was electric. There was almost universal Egyptian condemnation for the "atrocity" of Denshawai and the Nationalist cause was boosted significantly.

https://www.britishempire.co.uk/maproom/egypt.htm

After Egypt, CHTL’s next posting was into the Sudan. Here his task was to develop the port facilities at Port Sudan – a new port and city developed by the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium from 1905 to ensure that effective trade with the area.

Return to the UK and direct service in the regiment followed so that by 1910 he had been promoted to Captain and served in an Adjutant role in one of the Regiment’s battalions.

He doesn’t specifically state it but with his application to Staff College in 1911 and again in 1912, it appears that Lucas had recognised that the traditional route to promotion within his Regiment would be slow. A potentially fruitful area of research concerning CHTL would be his regular command assessments during the decade after the Boer War. Unfortunately we believe that these were destroyed in the WWII Blitz as were a significant proportion of WW1 Officer’s records. At this time the Army was still bound by the principles of seniority for such appointments (rather than strictly ‘merit’, although lack of efficiency and effectiveness might result in a slowed rate of progress).

The Staff College course was preparation for the higher echelons of Army command. A decision to attend Staff College – in pursuit of the highly sought-after 'psc' (passed staff college) designation - indicates that after some uncertainty at the beginning of the decade, CHTL was determined to progress within the Army. The Staff College course was focused on Command and Control – with a concentration on Brigade-level (four battalions – 4000 men) operations for the practical elements. As suggested by an excerpt (below) of the course listing below from the 1913 Senior course, the course included lectures, war games, staff tours, history, languages and even astronomy!

Staff College - Sample Course Listing (excerpt)

1 Memoir – 1870, The Commandant.

2 Exercise in English composition, Col Oxley.

3 Indoor exercise based on army manoeuvres, 1912, Maj Howell.

4 Astronomy – diagram of stars, Lt Col Fowler.

5 France and Germany (army corps), Lt Col Malcolm.

6 Exercise on wastage of personnel in war, The Commandant.

7 Map of the Balkans, Maj Howell.

8 Canada. Geographical and general conditions, Lt Col Hoskins.

9 Franco-German War 1870-71. Transport and supply, Maj Percival.

10 Franco-German War 1870-71. Transport and Supply (syndicated 3&4), Maj Percival.

11 War game, the Commandant.

12 War game, the Commandant.

13 Paper on Canada, the Commandant.

14 Beaune-la-Rolande, 28/11/70, situation 2/12/70, Lt Col Bols.

15 'Cavalry in 1870'. Situation on the night 12-13 Aug 1870,

Maj Howell.

16 War game, Col Oxley.

17 War game, Col Oxley.

18 Engagement at Kirk Killise, Maj Howell.

19 Table showing liabilities for services of the various categories, Lt Col Hoskins.

20 Preliminary staff tour (Col Oxley’s party), Col Oxley and Col Jeudwine.

21 Preparation of a tactical exercise, Lt Col Bols.

22 Night operations, Lt Col Bols.

23 Overseas expeditions (list of books on subject), Lt Col Jebb.

24 Russian forces 8/2/04, Lt Col Malcolm.

25 Staff tour, Col Oxley and Col Jeduwine.

https://aim25.com/cgi-bin/vcdf/detail?inst_id=117&coll_id=19229

27 July, 1920
CHTL (circled) amongst fellow Staff College students

CHTL enjoyed Staff College and the sporting activities he participated in showed that he’d lost none of his youthful prowess (he was to captain the Hockey team (see photo), Tennis team and join the Ski team!)

27 July, 1920
CHTL with Staff College hockey team

The connections he made would serve him well during the war as the majority of his fellow graduates progressed into staff positions in the rapidly-expanding Army. CHTL’s career followed a slightly different course: back into his regiment and into the Western Front battles and trenches before Gallipoli and then Brigade command on the Somme (1916) and in the Arras, Passchendaele and Cambrai battles (1917).

In the 200,000 words CHTL wrote in letters and diaries during the First World War, he never does anything as grand as set out his philosophy of war. His diaries in particular are not great literature, there’s no following descriptive prose, little emotional engagement ... they are very ‘CHTL’, not intended for publication, never re-worked into Memoirs. Their function was to be records of events more than a journal of thinking. However, those recorded events give some clues about his perspectives on what professional leadership means.

CHTL believed that an officer should not waste the lives of his men or subject them to unnecessary risk or hardship. He did not hold back from ordering his troops into harm’s way for the right reasons: he’d only had command of the Brigade for 5 days when the 87th repeatedly attacked the tactically-significant Scimitar Hill at Suvla Bay in August 1915 resulting in 50% casualties in the attacking battalions. But if a plan was irresponsible, seemingly doomed to failure or likely to result in loses unacceptable for the objective gained, he would not hesitate to try and influence senior officers to change their mind. On multiple occasions he was to present the case of the inadvisability of attempted attacks whilst wasteful commands and irresponsible behaviour also drew his ire.

May 27th 1915

Hunter Weston issued orders suddenly this afternoon for the whole British line to advance to within 200 yards of the Turkish trenches after dark and dig in. Most of the Brigadiers had somehow assembled at General Lee’s hd qrs at about 3pm, all protesting, and no one much liking to tell Hunter Weston straight. The operation would have been difficult with the best troops on a dark night without giving the show away and having heavy casualties. This however was to be done mainly with territorials and a full moon. A telephone message was sent to ask some staff officers to come out and discuss the matter, fortunately Hunter Weston arrived himself, got a little annoyed but was eventually brought to reason. The result was that about a mile of the centre of the line advanced as had already been arranged up to 250x in places, with hardly a shot being fired or a casualty.

Personal Diary

June 27th 1915

Conference of COs at 10AM, Genl de lisle turned up in the middle, and explained some additions to the original plan of operations. It is remarkable how the plans grow, Genl Hunter Weston must be at the bottom of it; his plans grow daily, and tend to upset the arrangements without giving time to make alterations.

Personal Diary

July 11th 1915

Everything is absolutely disorganised here, but a start is being made to put things straight. It is almost incredible to conceive the muddle that is going on both in the army and navy behind the actual firing line, or rather off the Peninsula.

Personal Diary

July 30th 1915

De Lisle came round the trenches this morning, and took me with him. He had a bad attack of liver, cursed everyone and everything. As the battalions had been working night and day for 2 days at putting things straight, and as he had already admitted it was the best brigade he had ever seen; it seemed a little unreasonable. He put all the officers’ backs up.

He sent an insulting memo up after he got back. Last time he had a bad go of liver he apologised. I hope he will do so again.

Personal Diary

August 2nd 1915

Have been a little cheap the last couple of days with head cold , and throat. Suspected case of cholera turned out to be dysentery. De Lisle came up this morning, and was quite pleased with my proposals for making Turks think we are going to attack. He is mad at present on making stone parapets instead of sandbags. We keep on trying to sidetrack him. If a shell hits a stone parapet everyone in the trench will be killed.

Personal Diary

September 2nd 1915

Quiet day. Genl De Lisle took me round part of the 2nd line. McCauley came too. Of course most of it was wrong and has to be remade. It is a pity he does not go round before the work is started and say what he wants, instead of wasting a week’s work; there is plenty without wasting labour.

Personal Diary

Sept 18th 1915

I was up at the SWB hd qrs at the time as I had to Genl’s Byng & De Lisle there at 5.30pm. They turned up about 5.45pm. Genl Reid came too. The 3 of them, Col Going (SWB) and myself (led by De Lisle) then proceeded to walk out in the open within 400x of their trenches and full view of them and their guns to look at a machine gun emplacement. The fact that the guns or men did not open fire was no fault of ours as De Lisle had a bright red band round his hat, & they generally shell a party of four or more.

Personal Diary

Sept 20th 1915

De Lisle rode up this morning. We shall very soon have our head quarters shelled if he rides in like this every day.

Personal Diary

On July 1st 1916 he had the presence of mind and necessary grip on reality to delay and then ensure the cancellation of the 4th wave of attacks in front of the formidable Beaumont Hamel defences that his Brigade had been ordered to attack as he witnessed the 3rd emasculation of his Brigade (Cape Helles landings/early battles were the first in the Spring of 1915, followed by Scimitar Hill in August 1915).

CHTL features in Trevor Harvey’s excellent work ‘An Army of Brigadiers: British Brigade Commanders at the Battle of Arras 1917 (Helion Press 2017) pp. 77 – 79. He is identified as being ‘typical of the Arras brigadier-generals’ in some ways but also a ‘rarity – ‘an officer commissioned into an infantry regiment who commanded a brigade without having commended a battalion’.

Apart from CHTL’s 10 ‘Mentioned in Despatches’ recognition, the best summary of CHTL’s professionalism comes from his CO in 1915 – William Marshall. His reference for CHTL described him thus:

"When I, unfortunately had to relinquish command the choice fell on Major Lucas, and that without a dissentient voice, though there were many officers senior to him serving with the brigade.

I mention this (probably an unique instance of a Brigade Major succeeding to the command of a Brigade) as showing the degree of confidence placed in Major Lucas by his seniors and juniors alike."

27 July, 1920

Tomorrow back to Ireland and the final ‘billet’. Last letter to Poppy before ‘Escape’!

]]><![CDATA[26 July, 1920]]>https://chtl.co.uk/26-july/5f1c7642bbe64306350d79b0Sun, 26 Jul 2020 05:00:00 GMT

26th July - Seventeenth Letter to Poppy

26 July, 1920

Secret diary: Mon . Man posted letters , had not got mine Collared by police with list of papers Moved at 7 to Cahirelly or Gatcon Grange On again in pony trap after tank Another 3 M SW (6 miles in all) Bill drunk.

Official diary (26th July): 26th July. I was removed in a hurry at about 1900 hours owing to the fact that a man belonging to the gang was sent to Limerick to post my letters and buy some English papers for me, was arrested by the Police and subsequently released as the only incriminating evidence found on him was a list of the papers he was to purchase for me and a document showing where the letters for my escort were to be sent. I stopped for a short time at CAHERELLY GRANGE or CASTLE till darkness and then proceeded to a farm just South of LANGFORD BRIDGE over the CAMOGIE RIVER I believe the farmhouse belongs to the owner of CAHERELLY GRANGE or he used to live in it. I stayed here until I escaped at 0200 hours on the morning of the 30th July. The window of the room in which I was sleeping was barred and by bursting one of these bars I managed to escape and in doing so burst a small blood vessel in my kidney.

Monday

My darling old Pip,

Have no news of any kind, but you would probably like a line anyhow. Expect letters from you this evening as they haven’t come for two days.

Went for a short walk yesterday with my escort and we got chased by a bull and had to take temporary refuge on the top of a bank.

It is a better day today but very windy. I wrote to Grandmother yesterday to cheer her up a bit. I have a good many cuttings of likely houses but they will probably all be sold before we get a chance of seeing them. What we want is at least 6 bedrooms 2 dressing rooms 2 bathrooms, a 4 acre paddock good kitchen garden and full sized tennis lawn, I shall probably hear tonight when you go down to Welwyn.

Best love to you both.

your c

Seventeenth Letter sent to Mrs C.H. Tindall Lucas, 1 Cleveland Gardens, Hyde Park LONDON W2 postmarked EASTBOURNE 7 PM 29 July 1920. Cream paper and envelope Written in pen.

After the close encounter with the RIC patrol the Limerick Battalion decided not to push their luck any further at Dr Corboy's house and to move CHTL on to McCarthy's house in Cahercorney.

Captain Portley continued the story in his Witness Statement:

Some days later, it was decided to transfer the prisoner to McCarthy's house in Cahercorney (East Limerick Brigade area).This house was about five miles from Caherconlish on the Limerick-Herbertstown road about two miles west of Herbertstown. transport for transfer of the prisoner was a pony and trap and Volunteers were posted at the various road junctions. The route taken was via Caherline, Caherelly and Raleighstown.

BUREAU OF MILITARY HISTORY, 1913-21. STATEMENT BY WITNESS. DOCUMENT NO. W.S. 1559. Witness Morgan Portley, Kishikirk, Caherconlish, Co. Limerick. Identity. Company Captain, Ballybricken, Co. Limerick. Battalion Adjutant.

Apparently the man who got 'collared by the police' was very upset - not because he was caught, but because they didn't arrest him: 'a man who had gone to Limerick to post the General’s letters was arrested and was enormously upset because he was released at once and not considered important enough to keep!’ (p22 The Last Days of Dublin Castle : The Mark Sturgis Diaries Irish Academic Press Ltd, July 1999)

]]><![CDATA[25 July, 1920]]>https://chtl.co.uk/25-july/5f1b4f44bbe64306350d7943Sat, 25 Jul 2020 05:00:00 GMT

25th July - No Letter

25 July, 1920

Secret diary: No entry

Official diary (25th July): No entry

Location: Dr. Corboy's house in Caherconlish.

As there is nothing much to mention about the 25th July, we thought that this would be a good opportunity to learn more about CHTL, the military man. There’s no doubt that he would have entertained the ‘lads’ with stories of his time in the trenches as ‘they spoke of their experiences in internment after the Easter rebellion of 1916’. (Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 184,3 August 1920, Page 5)

Steve Warburton, who is the expert on CHTL’s WW1 experiences and custodian of his letters and diaries from the 1914-1918 war has kindly written the following:

A Snapshot of CHTL’s Experiences during WW1

The man who encountered the IRA in 1920 had over 20 years’ military experience. His first ten years featured service in 3 continents but CHTL’s military career had begun with his admission to Sandhurst in 1896. He had chosen this route to a commission rather than the one taken by others who gained their commission via initially serving in militia units.

CHTL’s fight with Lynch during his capture is the only recorded literal ‘hand-to-hand’ combat of his military career. He did, however, find himself in some ‘tight spots’ at different times.

In October 1914 CHTL got his wish to rejoin his regiment. Much to his chagrin as a Staff College student he had been deployed in early August to France as a Military Disembarkation Officer in Rouen, rather than with the Royal Berkshires. He somewhat crassly – but honestly – complained to his father that the only way he would get to the front before it was all over would be if the Berkshires suffered significant officer casualties – and so it proved.

By the beginning of October the regiment’s officer casualties were beginning to mount. CHTL returned as captain of B Coy, eventually catching up with the Berkshires at Metz Farm before the Berkshires joined the ‘Race to the Sea’, eventually deploying round Ypres on October 21st. Lucas would find himself back here in August 1916 as his Brigade recovered from 40% casualties in the battle of the Somme.

Through October and November 1914 the German Armies tried to break the Allied line at Ypres. The fighting increased in intensity as German attacks were met with increased desperation by the Allies. The Berkshires frequently being deployed to plug gaps in the line.

The week October 26th – November 2nd was a challenging one for CHTL – but it marked him out as not only a man with leadership potential, but one who could ‘step up’ when required.

October 26th.-Poor Steele blown to a jelly in the evening [of the 25th] by a ‘Black Maria’, while trying to reorganise his company behind his trenches. Gross hit in the knee by a bit of shrapnel next morning (26th), leaving me the only officer left out of the two companies.

Personal Diary

October 31st.--Last night the Company moved into trenches on top of the ridge as a reserve. - During the morning two Companies were sent off as a reserve to the 1st Division. We lay in the Polygon wood near the Race Course till 3.30 pm., and were then sent to clear some Germans out who had broken through west of Cheluvalt. As we approached the railway line just west of the town we were met with a heavy fire from the embankment. We charged and got there all right. Here we lay in an exposed position till midnight. We had several casualties including three Platoon Sergeants, and I got a bullet through my clothes...It was bitterly cold and damp lying out on the embankment.

Personal Diary

November 2nd Pressing through some houses, I came round the corner of one and saw about eight Germans falling in and two or three more tumbling out of the door not five yards away. We then saw Germans running in all directions all round us.

Finch went off to hospital after we got in, so I as senior officer went off to the Brigade Headquarters for instructions, as there now seemed to be no protection between us and the Germans. Later I heard that Colonel Graham had been badly wounded, away with the 6th Brigade, so that now I am in command of the Battalion.

Personal Diary

November 3rd Isaac sent up some hot water and washing kit so I got a bit of a wash. Find I have got a small cut across both shoulder blades as a result of the 31st. A shell pitched on our telephone dugout, wounded one of the operators and interrupted communication. Not many casualties. Bennett and Waghorn joined from the base. Companies now only eighty strong.

Personal Diary

The danger did not disappear for the Berkshires but they were a shadow of the 1000-strong battalion that had left Reading in August. CHTL had proved his ability to perform his role under pressure and to survive – the graze across his shoulder blades would not be the only close call.

In January 1915 CHTL became Brigade Major of the newly-created 87th Brigade, 29th Division which would muster in Rugby, arriving from China and India. He recounts one of the most formidable challenges of his career in a letter to his father on January 9th:

My dear Father,

I got down to Salisbury this afternoon, and am on my way straight back to Rugby where my headquarters will be at the Grand Hotel. I have no general, office, regulations, stationary, clerks, or military funds of any kind, and of course know nothing of the work.

The battalions start arriving on Monday 3 at Rugby and one at Coventry. I have to arrange for their billeting and mobilisation. Having no general I have no authority of my own, and I can only hope the COs will be amenable.

I have no doubt it will work out all right, and a staff will eventually collect. There is no prospect of leave just at present.

CHTL writes to his father (9th January 1915)

The other two Brigade Majors of the Division – Costeker and Frankland – died within hours of landing at Gallipoli on April 25th. May 1st featured CHTL’s ‘closest call’ of the campaign.

Early in the morning at breakfast they shelled the small farm we had taken over as Brigade headquarters. Fortunately the General had gone round the firing line so breakfast was put off, and everyone was outside except myself, mine and the general’s servant. I had been writing up the war diary & stopped in the middle to go into the next room to wash. I heard two shells go over, thought they were shrapnel and did not worry. The next one burst in the room I had left, the front portion came through the wall between my servant and myself as I was handing him my razor, a bit hit him between the eyes and penetrated just short of the brain. The shell had come through the roof 2’ above where I was sitting a moment before. The General’s servant was kneeling in a corner of the room making his bed and was not touched except for torn clothes etc. All my worldly possessions were blown to bits, the most valuable being a fleece-lined waterproof, waterproof sheet, air cushion and camera. Brigade headquarters removed to dug out in trench 100x NW.

Personal Diary

CHTL was a survivor – of the 500 or so officers of the 29th division who landed in the Dardanelles in on April 25th 1915, he was one of the 13 who continually served with the Division in that campaign without being killed or evacuated (wounded or sick). In contrast to the limits of the secret diary of his IRA captivity, CHTL wrote 60,000 words in his Gallipoli diaries (January 1915 – January 1916). There is no way to do them justice here, but they are available online at http://gallipolifirstandlast.blogspot.com/ for you to read at your leisure.

By June 1916 CHTL was in place with his Brigade preparing for the Somme attack. His days of charges, patrols and fighting retreats were over, and became more ones of dugouts, maps, planning, early-morning trench inspections and reports.

25 July, 1920
CHTL (right) showing his left hand with his missing fingers.

Back to Ireland tomorrow and a letter to Poppy…

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