The Monocled Mutineer by John Fairley

Author:John Fairley [John Fairley and William Allison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780285643116
Publisher: Souvenir Press
Published: 2015-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

By now a despairing note is entering Thomson’s record of events:

About 4.00 p.m. men again broke through the picquets on the bridge, went through Étaples, broke through the picquet on the River Canche bridge, and went towards Paris Plage. None of the picquets made any determined effort to prevent these men.

And the Cavalry were still not on their way. Thomson made some half-hearted attempts to appease the mutineers.

‘We were told that all parades had been suspended,’ recalls Private Joe Perks. ‘We were even more amazed when we were told that we could draw more than our shilling a day. We were told we could draw as many francs as we liked – within reason.’

Wednesday, 12 September, was to be crisis day for Thomson, Toplis and the British Army. Three days of determined rebellion had made it impossible to dismiss the uprising as a mere explosion of anger, or the effects of drink, or the New Zealanders giving vent to frustration – all explanations which Thomson had come up with. It was impossible for Haig to countenance an impasse across his main route for reinforcements to the front. The battle for Passchendaele was due to start in eight days. There had to be a showdown.

Inside the camp all authority had by now been abdicated. Confused attempts had been made to ship the unaffected troops out to the front by train, but now, as Joe Perks and David Paton remember, the Scots just loafed about. There were no signs of officers or senior NCOs, no attempts to impose any duties – simply extra pay and extra food.

Commandant Thomson had an uncomfortable morning. The French Chef de Gendarmerie for the whole northern district arrived. There was a noisy Gallic scene ending only when Thomson assured him that the British police chief, Captain Strachan, had been fired and that loyal troops were on the way. The gendarme chief and his military colleague, Colonel Vallée, departed with assurances that the riotous assaults on French civilians would stop.

Thomson was in turn assured by the local French authority that no public record of the affair would be retained. But, if the French did keep faith with Thomson by issuing an edict to this effect, then it was an order ignored by the museum keeper at Étaples because in the archives there is a one-sentence entry. It reads: ‘A serious mutiny began in the English Camp.’

The present museum keeper, Fernand Holuigue, was 13 at the time. He says: ‘I well remember mobs of rioting soldiers in the streets. One of them had impaled a cat on a long lance and he was waving it in the air.’

Meanwhile Toplis and the rebel Scots leaders were not having it all their own way. Toplis’s demands of the Monday afternoon had still not been conceded. Sooner rather than later the authorities would bring in the machine-guns. Even if they gave way, there was no possible warranty against the sanctions of the firing squad.

The first fury of the mutiny had lapsed. There were anxious, unending meetings all over the camp – even talk of Soviets.

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