The 1990 WFA AGM: The Presidential Address delivered by the Honorary President John Terraine
This seems to me to be one of our more special AGMs.
To begin with, it marks our entry into our tenth year of existence, a satisfaction that I don't need to dwell on, made even greater by the recollection of those well-wishers who gave their opinion all those years ago that the WFA would only be a ’nine days' wonder’. Well, whatever else we may have done, we've done better than that!
But our chief satisfaction, I think, lies in the ’whatever else' - and especially the ’whatever else’ contained in the last twelve months. The officers of the Association have filled in the details; I only want to point up what I believe to be a few highlights.
To begin with, there was the second Abergavenny Seminar, organized by Graham Keech. I think most people who were there will agree that the first Seminar was a great success, a very welcome addition to the WFA Calendar. The second Seminar was in my opinion (fairly widely shared, I think) even better. And now we look forward to a third organized by Tony Noyes, and if we go on getting better and better like this, he ought to indent straight away for some snowy white wings so that we can all fly off to higher places at the end of it.
I was sad that the Aisne tour fell through last year. I know the area a bit. It is one of the great battlegrounds of France, marking the furthest points of the old BEFs advance from the Marne in September 1914, intense French fighting all through the war - the big German cemetery at Malmaison bears witness to it - and another grim experience for the British Army in May 1918, on that day when the Germans made the deepest one-day advance on the Western Front of the whole war (May 10), virtually destroying the 8th and 50th Divisions My old friend Sidney Rogerson told the 8th Division's story in his book THE LAST OF THE EBB. Sidney tells us how they came down from what he calls 'the battle wrecked landscapes of Picardy and the Somme' to back areas where:
’all was peace. The countryside basked contentedly in the blazing sunshine. Trim villages nestled in quiet hollows beside lazy streams, and tired eyes were refreshed by the sight of rolling hills, clad with great woods golden with laburnum blossom; by the soft greenery of lush meadowland, shrubby vineyards and fields of growing corn.'
I've seen it like that in May; he doesn't exaggerate. Let's see if we can do a tour one day soon.
Remembrance at Ypres in 19B9 was something to remember indeed. I’ve attended quite a few Remembrances over the years, but last year's seemed to me to be exceptional. Perhaps it was because I had seen a number of depressing articles and reports to the effect that the whole thing was dying away, That soon there would only be a handful of relatives and cranks taking notice of those distant days and remembering the men whose names on the memorials were now (they said) becoming more and more meaningless.
Ypres last November gave the lie to that. I was in the overflow congregation for the St George's Church service, in the cinema round the corner. It was packed; so was the church - something like 500 people all told, I believe. I have never seen so many people in the streets watching the procession to the Menin Gate. At the Gate itself we had to have special arrangements to let us get anywhere near the centre of it. It was all quite unbelievably heart-warming. It was wonderful to get that strong feeling that we don't after all, have any monopoly of ‘Remembering’.
And this is an appropriate moment to mention our new Tours Organizer, Graham Parker and Joanna and Bertie Whitmore. All who were present will join me, I think, in thanking them for the very smooth progress of all the November 11th arrangements and also for fitting in one of the most illuminating short battlefield tours that I can remember, to Hill 62 and the Messines Ridge. Thank you Graham and Joanna and Bertie. I’m looking forward to the next one. But don't forget the Aisne.
And now to what we may almost call the ’main business’. I'm referring, as you can guess, to the Butte de Warlencourt.
Buying the Butte - and taking responsibility for it Is a new venture altogether for the WFA. I personally believe that it is an entirely correct one. I think we have a very definite and valuable role in relation to the memorials of World War I, and in this case our role is to make a memorial out of a landmark which had very nearly vanished through neglect.
Let me be quite clear about the Butte. We don’t want to be caught out in over-simplifications and exaggerations of the kind that the media revel in. The Battle of the Somme was not fought to capture the Butte de Warlencourt, or any other of the famous place-names of the battlefield. It was fought to defeat the German Army, and hopefully to end the war in 1916 - two objectives which seem to me to be entirely desirable.
In as much as the town of Bapaume was a stated objective of the first day, so was the Butte, which stands about three miles south of it. One hundred and forty-one days later, the Butte was in the front line, and so became one of the specific late objectives of the central sector of the battle. But, during that period, there must have been uncounted thousands of British troops who never saw the Butte or even heard of it. Because it rose abruptly out of what was then a featureless, devasted war landscape, it created a deep and displeasing impression; like the Abbey of Monte Cassino in 1944, it had a powerful psychological effect on those who came near it. Fred Majdalany, writing about Monte Cassino Abbey. said:
‘Everybody has experienced the sensation, when walking alone past a house, that invisible eyes were watching from a darkened interior. Hostile eyes can be sensed without being seen, and the soldier develops an exceptional awareness of this. Monte Cassino projected this feeling over an entire valley . .. the spell of its monstrous eminence was complete and haunting'.
The words seem to me to fit the Butte in November 1916 perfectly - they explain why it seemed so important to turn the Germans off it. It each case - Cassino and the Butte - the dreaded location turned out to have much less military significance than men had supposed; in the case of the Butte, the significance now is mainly symbolic It symbolises the tragedy and triumph of the Somme: the tragedy contained in the fact that Bapaume had been an objective of the first day of the battle, July 1, and still remained in German hands, and the Germans were still in the field. The triumph was the unfaltering, continuous advance of the British Citizen Army through those 141 days of battle to reach this point in the teeth of all that the splendid German Army of 1916 could do to stop it, and the lasting damage it had done to the German Army in the process.
What do we want to do with it, now that we've got it? To the best of my knowledge, the Committee has no plans to turn it into a memorial to the Unknown Bagpiper, at the bottom of a very deep shaft underneath it; nor, I think, is it intended to offer it to NATO as a Command Post for another War of the Austrian Succession; we shall, I trust summon up the resolution to reject even a very handsome offer to turn it into an underground Disneyland World War One Experience; and similarly we shall look with little favour on schemes to transform it into a luxury hotel with a honeymoon suite at the top.
We mean to try to restore to it the advantage that it gave the Germans in 1916 - observation over a wide stretch of the battlefield. This will mean clearing the brushwood which disfigures it and masks it, and when that is done we hope to erect an orientation table so that those who climbed to the top can get a sense of direction which is otherwise difficult to come by on those rolling, empty downs. That's all, but it is worth doing and, when it is done, we shall have to look after it. I am very glad indeed that the WFA has undertaken this act of Remembrance and I want to take this opportunity of thanking those who have worked so hard to bring it about - our outgoing and incoming Chairmen, David and Graham; our Treasurer, James Brazier, who is not, I believe, famous for throwing money about wildly in all directions; and finally our Secretary, Gordon, whose unavoidable absence today I very much regret, and who has thrown himself in his usual wholehearted manner into this project as he did with the plaque at Passchendaele, and without whose effort and energy I really wonder how we should get on. Thank you, all of you; I hope to speak for the Association - we are deeply grateful.
There's just one last thing I’d like to say about the Butte, which is this: as I composed these remarks, my latest information was that the Appeal Fund had already collected over £3,000 (we now know it is over £3,500) - a truly splendid response. It just goes to show what I have known for a long time: what a lovely set of people you are, you, the members of the Western Front Association. So, now it's time to thank you which I very heartily do.
And that brings me to the last of my business for today - the difficult bit. After so much that is pleasurable, there is a sad item.
Today we are changing Chairmen, which is something that happens in associations like ours at irregular intervals, and quite right too, since this is not an hereditary monarchy. David Cohen took over the job at a difficult time three years ago, and seemed to fit the description so well that one feels that he was always in it.
It is hard for me to know what to say about him, because we formed a very close and, I think, successful association during those three years - indeed, a very warm friendship - and I don't mind saying that I wish he had not felt it incumbent to withdraw just yet, though of course we are not going to lose his services.
The wonderful thing about him has been the whole-heartedness with which he has presided over the running of the WFA. He has done wonders for our external image, not least in the places with which we are so intimately concerned - Ypres, Passchendaele, Arras (with Andre Coilliot and the Souvenir Francais) and a brave attempt to build a relationship at Mons which was frustrated by a municipal election and change of politics and personnel. All this, and other relationships over here, his participation in tours and branch activities, have all, in my opinion, combined to put us 'on the map' in a way that was beyond our dreams four years ago.
It will be a long time before I forget the scene which, in its way, seems to epitomise his chairmanship - the memory of him and Gordon up somewhat rickety ladders on a perilous trestle table at Passchendaele, putting up our plaque on the wall of the mairie. Despite all the associations of that haunted location, it was a hilarious scene with a totally successful ending, thanks to the limitless good humour of the two of them and their equally limitless willingness to roll up their sleeves. I want to say a very special 'thank you' to David, and I don't find it easy. The best of luck - we shall miss you.
The good news, of course, is that we don't have to greet a stranger in the chair. As those of you who may not know him so well will have gathered, Graham Keech, in his capacity of Deputy Chairman, has already done sterling work for us. He is a long-standing Committee member; he knows what we are about and how to go about things. We are lucky to be able to draw on that experience, and with the backing of our very competent and co-operative Committee, I feel sure Graham will carry the WFA forward to still better things. There is certainly a lot on the agenda! Graham, for you too may I say, the best of luck.
Well, I've spoken rather longer than I normally do at the AGM but, as I said at the beginning, this one is special. And having repeated that thought, I now really do think it is time for me to sit down and let 'other business' of the meeting proceed.
For more about John Terraine, see here.
