The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery (47 page)

Today I went with my General to see some of the men in hospital at Bailleul who were gassed at Hill 60. I am now going to put down on paper what I saw as the whole of England and the civilized world ought to have the truth fairly brought before them in vivid detail.

When we got to the Hospital, we had no difficulty in finding out in which ward the gassed men were, as the noise of the poor devils trying to get breath was sufficient to direct us. We were met by Colonel Beevor, a doctor belonging to our Division (N. Midland Div.), who took us into the ward. There were about twenty men in there, lying on mattresses, and all more or less in a sitting position propped up against the walls. Their faces, arms, hands were of a shiny grey-black colour, with mouths open and lead-glazed eyes, swaying slightly backwards and forwards, trying to breathe. I have seen some very bad sights in my life but nothing compared with this. It was the most appalling sight all these poor black faces struggling, struggling for life – what with the groaning, and the noise of the efforts for breath.

Col. Beevor, who has had as wide an experience as anyone all over the savage parts of Africa etc., told me today that he had never been so sickened in all his life. There is practically nothing to be done for them except to try and make them vomit by giving them saline. The effect the gas has is to fill the lungs with a watery, frothy matter, causing gradual suffocation. In fact it is an awful form of torture – slow drowning – taking one, two and three days. Of course, only a certain percentage die, but what a death. The others may recover, but will be crippled for life. A good many already have died. Eight died this evening of the twenty fine strong men in the ward. Not one of the men I saw had a single scratch or a wound.

The nurses and doctors were all working heaven and earth against this appalling death with their usual calmness, but one could see what they were thinking and the tension of their nerves. I spoke to some and asked what they thought of it. I cannot repeat what the doctors or nurses said: the doctors because of the words they used, the nurses because it was written in their eyes.

The gas, I am told gives out a reddish-coloured vapour. It is in cylinders which, when they send it out, is propelled a distance of 100 yds. It then spreads. An officer who was in the trenches just when they let loose the gas had a piece of sponge in his jacket. He pissed on it and put it in his mouth. It saved his life, so perhaps ammonia is a good preventative. The Germans have given out that it is a rapid, painless death – the buggers and liars. I thought I would torture the next German I came across by old medieval tortures – but no, no torture could be worse than to give them a dose of their own gas.

I want you, if you will, to arrange for this to be put into journalistic language (in correct grammar etc), and published in all the papers in England, mentioning my General by name and as coming from me. Let the truth be known to every man and woman in England, and not hidden under the usual newspaper clouds.

That letter went on 2 May. The very next day he wrote another one, sent to his mother. What he had to say in the last paragraph was surprising:

Mother dear

I got your letter by Brooke and had a talk with him about things.

I quite understand your feelings and how nervous you must be feeling.

I have written a description to Father of the gassed men – quite the most appalling sights I have ever seen. I fear I have not been able to convey accurately what the effects are – as I cannot find words for my feelings. I want him to publish it abroad over the whole of England so that every man, woman and child knows what the enemy are doing to their sons, relations, etc.

Now about St Omer. I am ready to do what you want simply for your sake, though I expect I should not like it as much, as I have got more or less into this job. I know the people, etc. Do what you yourself want. But remember it must be an order.

It was almost two months since the commander-in-chief had first made his offer. John had finally caved in.

I found his capitulation utterly baffling. All along, he had refused to be a party to string-pulling: ‘my temperament will not allow of it,’ he’d told Charlie. Yet here he was telling his mother that he was ‘ready’ to do what she wanted.

My first thought was that the sight of the gassed soldiers had frightened him. But then just twenty-four hours earlier, in the letter he wrote to his father, he was angry, not fearful. It wasn’t the letter of a man who wanted to run away; on the contrary, he seemed anxious to exact his own revenge on the Germans.

Violet’s behaviour was also confusing. From the outset, she had been at pains to conceal the moves she had made behind John’s back. Now, out of the blue, it seemed that she had admitted to him that she had engineered the job at General Headquarters. Why choose this moment to come clean when, just a few weeks earlier, she had lied to John to hide the fact that she had asked Lord Curzon to find him a job at St Omer?

And why wasn’t John furious with her
?
He had been furious with
her then: now he appeared relaxed, even sanguine, at the prospect of her intervention. ‘Do what you yourself want,’ he had said.

So what had she said to him
?
It must have been something dramatic to cause his change of heart.

Violet’s letter was not in the Muniment Rooms at Belvoir. But there were three other potential sources of information: John’s diary, Sir John’s papers, and those of Guy Brooke.

It was Brooke, the commander-in-chief’s ADC, who delivered Violet’s letter; as John mentioned, they had ‘had a talk about things’. I was hoping that one of them had made a note of their conversation. Since the move to St Omer came at Sir John’s behest, Brooke might also have recorded it in an official report to French.

I looked at John’s diary first. His reply to Violet was dated 3 May. It was more than likely that on such an important issue he was replying by return. This would mean that Brooke had delivered Violet’s letter that day, or the day before. The entries for 2 and 3 May were minimal: John had not referred to Brooke – or his decision to accept the job at General Headquarters. But two words stood out:

May 2, Sunday: … Harry left … Went to see gassed men … Something awfull …

May 3, Monday: … Saw gassed men again …

Harry was John’s cousin – Harry Lindsay; the ‘gassed men’, obviously the victims at the hospital at Bailleul. But what was ‘
something awfull
’? Was he referring to the condition of the men? Or was this a deliberately veiled reference to his decision to accept the job at St Omer? John’s punctuation and spelling were unreliable. But even he, surely, would have written, ‘Went to see gassed men – something awfull.’ He would not have entered the two words after a full stop, and on a separate line.

The following day, 4 May, John
had
seen Brooke. ‘Saw Guy Brooke and Sonny Somerset on Sharpenburg. They came to tea,’ he recorded.

Possibly, this was when Brooke delivered Violet’s letter. In which case, John had misdated his reply. But, thinking about it, the date was
immaterial. The main thing was that at some point during these three days a conversation had taken place between John and Brooke – one that had a vital bearing on John’s future, which he had omitted to mention. If ‘something awfull’
had
happened – was there a connection?

I checked Sir John’s papers. I could find no record of the conversation, or any mention of John’s move to St Omer. Nor could I find Guy Brooke’s papers to see if they would shed light on it. In 1922, he had succeeded his father to become the Earl of Warwick. Yet his wartime correspondence was missing from the substantial collection of Brooke family papers at Warwickshire County Record Office.

It was only many months later – at Plas Newydd, the Marquis of Anglesey’s home, near Bangor – that I discovered what John meant by ‘something awfull’. And it was truly awful.

There, in the Angleseys’ archives, was the letter Violet sent her daughter Marjorie on 3 May. She had just seen John’s account of his visit to the hospital at Bailleul. ‘Darling, this came from J today. Terrifying, isn’t it?’ Most of her letter was devoted to John’s account – she had copied it out. But at the end of it, she had added a note. ‘Brooke was here yesterday. He told me all about the gas. Darling, I couldn’t bear it any longer. I made him take a letter back for J. I told him he must
take the job at St Omer. “Don’t do it for my sake. Do it for Haddon!!!” ’

It was Violet’s trump card and she had played it.

Guilt, it seemed, had caused John to capitulate.
But then why hadn’t he joined Foulkes’s brigade?

Violet was writing on 3 May. In the weeks that followed, John, of course, was not transferred to St Omer. Instead, on 9 July, he was invalided home to England – a detail that he had spent a good part of his life excising from the record.

So what had happened between these two dates?

The suggestion – from the content of an article that appeared later that summer in
The New York Times
– is that John’s capitulation was in fact a feint. Whatever guilt he may have felt over the death of his brother, he was not going to let it stand in the way of his duty to King and country.

‘Remember, it must be an order,’ John warned his mother when he told her he would accept the job at St Omer.

As the events of the spring of 1915 reveal, his caveat proved to be the sticking point.
At General Headquarters
, Sir John French’s position as commander-in-chief was becoming increasingly precarious. By the end of May, his fondness for members of the aristocracy was the subject of unwelcome attention. Under the circumstances – as John knew full well – it was impossible for the C-in-C to order him to St Omer.

‘I have more trouble
with the War Office than I do with the Germans,’ French complained to Winifred on 21 May: ‘While they are fiddling Rome is burning. What we want is more and more High Explosive ammunition and they do nothing but squabble amongst themselves. I devoutly wish we could get rid of Kitchener at the War Office. I’m sure nothing will go right whilst he is there. It is hard to have enemies
in front
and
behind
.’

At the time French was writing he was embroiled in a political crisis – one that would result in the fall of Herbert Asquith’s Liberal government.

On 9 May, after the failure of the Battle of Aubers Ridge, French had spoken to Charles Repington, the
Times
war correspondent.
‘We had not sufficient
high explosives to lower the enemy’s parapets to the ground,’ he told him: ‘The want of unlimited supply of high explosives was a fatal bar to our success.’ His admission caused a sensation: British soldiers were being needlessly killed as a result of the government’s failure to supply adequate quantities of ammunition.

The finger of blame
was pointed at Lord Kitchener, under whom responsibility for munitions production fell. Whipped up by Chancellor Lloyd George, who wanted to sideline the Secretary for War, the
Daily Mail
ran the story under the headline ‘Lord K’s Tragic Blunder’ and called for his resignation.

To French’s irritation, Kitchener had not resigned. Recognizing his own popularity with the British public, he had refused to go. Yet while he remained Secretary for War, ‘The Great Shell Shortage’ split the Cabinet, with the consequence that Asquith’s government was dissolved and a coalition government formed. Within the new government, a new department was created – the Ministry of Munitions – and its responsibility handed to Lloyd George.

The scandal served
to increase the enmity between the Secretary for War and his commander-in-chief. Furious at the assault on his authority, Kitchener’s defenders retaliated by launching a whispering campaign against French. Besides accusing him of using the shortage of ammunition to cloak his own failure, they cast doubt over his moral integrity. For reasons of patriotism and discretion their accusations were kept out of the British press. But
The New York Times
published them in full.

‘The impression
has gained ground that he has lost his grip,’ the newspaper reported, ‘and that his removal from the chief of command of the troops in France has become a matter of urgent necessity. Little else is talked of in London and in Paris, and in spite of the very strict censorship exercised over the press on both sides of the Channel, the newspapers have been alluding to the matter in a sort of guarded way.

‘The absence of any
military censorship in the United States,’ the ‘veteran correspondent’ continued, ‘enables me to write more freely about this condition of affairs in
The New York Times
than in England or France, though much must necessarily be left unsaid.’

In fact, he left little unsaid. In great detail, he proceeded to outline the whispering campaign against French – a campaign that centred on his relationship with George Moore, and their proximity to members of the aristocracy, both male and female. As the report shows, the very issues that placed a question mark over French’s continued command of the British Army prevented him from ordering John to go to St Omer:

The fact of the matter
is that ‘Jackie’ French, as the British Generalissimo is known in the service, has not been altogether himself for the
past three years. Son of a country parson, he developed after the Boer war, when he had reached a General’s command, that predilection for the aristocracy which is the besetting weakness of the British ‘bourgeoisie’, and which in his case found its expression in his invariably selecting the members of his staff with a greater regard for their social rank than for their cleverness or military capacity … Formerly a family man, in the best sense of the word, with domestic tastes, and with a charming and devoted wife, and particularly nice children, French became entangled about four years ago in the toils of one of the fastest crowds of titled people in London, of whom a certain Irish peeress was the bright particular star. For a time he was said to have been completely dominated by her influence, which was a matter of common gossip, and then, two years ago, he developed that much-discussed intimacy with his great American crony and friend, George Gordon Moore of Detroit, Mich., and of England …

According to the printed admissions of this Michigander financier and promoter, his friendship with the FM is so close that Sir John has for the past two years made his home under his, that is to say, GGM’s roof, in London, instead of with his family. On the occasion of French’s periodical visits to London, since the beginning of the war, he has always stayed at Moore’s house, and during the intervals Moore has been an almost constant guest of the Field Marshal at British Headquarters in France.

There Moore has been accorded privileges and prerogatives denied to all British visitors, even to members of the Government administration, and to peers of the realm, as well as to distinguished Frenchmen of official rank. In fact, he has been treated by the British Generalissimo, at this headquarters, as if he had no secrets whatsoever from him, official, military, or otherwise.

This naturally has excited all sorts of unfavourable comment and invidious criticisms; the more so as GGM has been charged, not only in the American press but even in London newspapers, notably in the
London World
, with being associated with a naturalized German of the name of Lowenfeld, in a London concern known as the Investment Registry Company.

Quite naturally this association of the British Generalissimo in
France with an American promoter known for his German business affiliations, and the extraordinary privileges accorded to him at British Headquarters, has given rise to much unfavourable comment and criticism in English as well as in French circles. It has served to estrange Sir John from many of his former English and French friends and admirers, who find it difficult to understand why he should select in this time of danger to British Empire, as his principal confidant, a Michigander promoter.