Keeping the Old Flag Flying

Keeping the

Old Flag Flying

The World War 1 Memoir

of Kenneth Basil Foyster

Canadian soldier,

prisoner and internee

Mike Richardson

SPIDERWIZE

Peterborough UK

2018

Keeping The Old Flag Flying

Copyright © Mike Richardson 2018. All Rights Reserved.

The rights of Mike Richardson to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part may be reproduced, adapted, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the author or publisher.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-912694-39-6

eBook ISBN: 978-1-912694-40-2

Cover Photograph of 7th Canadian Battalion cap badge by L.L. Will.

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

Notes

Chapter 1

Origins

Chapter 2

Becoming a Soldier

Chapter 3

Training for War

Chapter 4

To the Front

Chapter 5

The Second Battle of Ypres

Chapter 6

Kriegsgefangener

Chapter 7

Switzerland

Chapter 8

Home

Chapter 9

After the War

List of Sources:

Preface

Kenneth Basil Foyster was one of nine siblings and a Church of England (C of E) rector’s son, born in Victorian England in relative comfort and privilege. He emigrated to Canada in the early l900s and enjoyed a somewhat mixed existence until 1914, when for subsistence reasons he enlisted into the Canadian Militia. Thereafter, he found himself mobilised, and like millions of citizens of the global British Empire, fighting in The Great War of 1914 to 1918. Kenneth served in the 1st Canadian Division, which reinforced the Allied forces on the Western Front in 1915. He fought at Ypres, was wounded, captured, imprisoned then interned, undergoing years of confinement until the war’s end.

Sometime after the end of that tragic conflict, Kenneth wrote a memoir. Some 100 years on, it is high time that this remarkable account be more widely known. Thus, I have reproduced his text, and put it as best I can in political and military context, and in the framework of his forebears, peers and descendants. This biography is the result.

The narrative focuses on Kenneth’s own words. His wartime record is clear and comprehensive, indicating an eye for detail, a good memory and a broad knowledge of international events, though after the war he may have read about the activities of the Canadian Expeditionary Force before he prepared his own version. He had also kept a diary.

Kenneth’s memoir describes his personal journey, but the story of the 1st Canadian Division in 1914 and 1915 is its background. The division was forged from the disparate, largely militia regiments of the Canadian Army in 1914, hastily trained in Canada and England, deployed to the Western Front and all but annihilated during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, winning for themselves an exceptional fighting reputation. Indeed, Field Marshal Sir John French, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), declared that the Canadians had ‘saved the day’ for the Allies.

It is possible to glean some idea of Kenneth’s character from the family records and from what he describes. He seems to have been a capable, practical, independent individual, partly due to the necessity to rise above the privations that unemployment necessitated. His sister Hilda affectionately called him ‘Slum’ - ‘Dear Old Slum’, which may describe his personal administration. He appears to have been a good friend to the fellow soldiers he describes, but comes across as fairly self-contained. The memoir also suggests that he was rather frank and perhaps irascible. That said, his cousin Betty Tillard wrote to him during the war, whilst he was suffering some hardships of which we will hear, ‘You were always so cheery, and I expect that is what has kept you going.’

Kenneth’s account is naturally somewhat subjective and often painfully direct, particularly when he detects failure. His descriptions of the character and conduct of others, especially other nationalities, will seem intolerant to today’s audience. But the reader should recall that his memoir was written nearly a century ago and perhaps everyone was more forthright then. Kenneth was also liberal in his praise of those who he thought deserved it, and to moderate his words and opinions would detract from his valuable reflection of the zeitgeist of the early 20th century. I have chosen to include almost all of them.

Finally, I have adjusted Kenneth’s spelling, leaving in his North American usage, and tinkered a little with his punctuation, but have perfected neither.

Mike Richardson

2018

Acknowledgements

Kenneth’s splendid memoir forms the bulk of this account. This book does not set out to be a history of the Great War, but to fix the context in which the memoir now sits, I have relied on and quoted from the erudite works of others. I am most grateful for the permissions I have received to do this. Foremost has been George H. Cassar’s definitive account of the activities of the 1st Canadian Division at the Second Battle of Ypres, which describes the division’s story from its formation in 1914 to its heroic manoeuvres in the Ypres salient in early 1915.¹

I have also read Desmond Morton’s valuable book about Canadian prisoners of war in Germany in World War 1.² In addition, I have consulted Colonel G. W. L. Nicholson’s history of the Canadian Expeditionary Force³ and Major T. V. Scudamore’s brief history of the 7th Battalion, published in 1930.⁴ An officer’s perspective of the prisoner of war experience, and of being an internee at Mürren, is contained in John Harvey Douglas’s book ‘Captured’.⁵ For background, I read Lyn Macdonald’s ‘1915 The Death of Innocence’.⁶

A fundamental source has been the Foyster records, as chronicled in notebooks, letters and documents by members of his extensive family. The Foysters were prolific letter writers and, though now 100 years ago or more, their missives sound as fresh today as they did then.

I have also received much assistance from my friends in the regiment that perpetuates Kenneth’s 7th Battalion; The British Columbia Regiment (Duke of Connaught’s Own), based in Vancouver. The Regiment generously invited me to join their veterans on parade during an impressive ceremony at the Canadian Memorial in Flanders in April 2015, as the Canadian Armed Forces recognised the centenary of the Battle of St. Julien in the presence of His Majesty The King of the Belgians.

Otherwise, I have used a host of written, on-line and personal accounts, particularly the records of The Imperial War Museum, The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the International Committee of the Red Cross and documents held by The National Archives UK, many published on-line by Ancestry UK. I have made much use of the website ‘The Long, Long Trail: The British Army in the Great War 1914-1918’, an invaluable resource for those researching the First World War. In addition, I have received much advice and assistance from my vastly knowledgeable e-friends in ‘The Great War Forum’. I would also like to thank the numerous individuals and organisations, in the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and Switzerland, who have given me their generous support.

I hope that I have given due and appropriate acknowledgement to all in the notes and in the list of sources. I have tried to identify the owners of the copyright material I have used and to seek appropriate permission. Should anyone believe that I have used material without suitable consent or credit, they are invited to contact me so that this may be corrected in future editions. The photographs I have used remain the property of their owners.

Finally, whilst I have attempted throughout to be accurate, there may well be errors of fact or interpretation that are entirely mine.

1 Cassar, George H., ‘Hell in Flanders Fields - Canadians at the Second Battle of Ypres’, Toronto, Dundern Press, 2010.

2 Morton, Desmond., ‘Silent Battle - Canadian Prisoners of War in Germany 1914-1919’, Toronto, Lester Publishing Ltd., 1992.

3 Nicholson, G.W.L., ‘Outside the Corps’, Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914-1919, Montreal: MQUP, 2017. Print.

4 Scudamore, Maj T. V., ‘A Short History of the 7th Battalion C.E.F.’, Vancouver, Anderson and Odlum Ltd., 1930. This book has no pagination.

5 Douglas, John Harvey, ‘Captured’, George H. Doran Co., New York, 1918.

6 Macdonald, Lyn, ‘1915 - The Death of Innocence’, London, Penguin, 1993.

Notes

Kenneth mentions many officers and soldiers in his account but gives little more than their surnames. To enhance the tale, I have attempted to identify these people, often from slender evidence, and have put the results either into the text or the footnotes. Some detections I am sure of, the others I have labelled with ‘probably’ or ‘possibly’ to indicate the level of confidence I have in my conclusions. A number may be inaccurate.

Throughout the book, I have often abbreviated infantry regiments and battalions. For example, the 1st Battalion of The Leicestershire Regiment is described as 1st Leicestershires.

Many of the officers and soldiers who died in service during the Great War were initially interred close to where they died. At the end of the war, some bodies were exhumed and concentrated at more central locations. As an example, and relevant to this book, Empire servicemen who had died all over Germany were brought together into four permanent cemeteries, including Niederzwehren, near Kassel. Deceased British service internees in Switzerland were concentrated in Vevey (St. Martin’s) Cemetery on the northern shore of Lake Geneva, where 88 World War 1 casualties lie, including some of Kenneth Foyster’s friends.

Chapter 1

Origins

Kenneth Basil Foyster was born on 12th October 1880. His distant ancestors came from Kenninghall in Norfolk, but one of their number, Samuel Foyster, moved to London in the 1700s to work. His son, also named Samuel, benefited from a handsome property inheritance, which in due course passed to Samuel’s son, John Goodge Foyster, who was Kenneth’s grandfather. After university, John was ordained, and in 1831, he purchased the patronage of All Saints’ and St. Clement’s churches in the attractive seaside town of Hastings in Sussex, famous for its proximity to the 1066 invasion landing sites of William the Conqueror. The two aforesaid churches ‘for some reason of Georgian and protestant slackness had been united in 1770’⁷, and John Goodge Foyster was rector of this accumulation.

In 1849, the two Hastings churches were re-divided and John Goodge’s younger brother Henry Samuel Foyster then moved there and became Rector of All Saints’, John retaining St. Clement’s. John died, unmarried, in 1855. Thereafter, Henry Samuel’s eldest son, Henry Brereton Foyster, became Rector of St. Clement’s and on the death of their father in 1862, Henry Brereton’s younger brother George Alfred became Rector of All Saints’. By now, the Hastings Foysters were established and well-to-do, and the Hastings parishes had become a family concern.

These two brothers both brought up substantial families in their respective rectories. Henry Brereton and his wife Anna had eight children and George, who had married Adelaide Tillard, had nine. The eldest was Adelaide, known as Ada, who was born in 1868. There followed Arthur in 1869, Gerald in 1871, Hugh in 1874, Lionel in 1878, Kenneth in 1880, the twins Hilda and Harold in 1883, and the youngest son Philip in 1888, 20 years after the birth of his elder sister.

Kenneth and his siblings had comfortable, happy childhoods in their large rectory, though their mother was reputed to be a strict disciplinarian, and the All Saints’ offspring were ‘thick’ with their St. Clement’s cousins. There was, of course a disparity of age, the older progeny being grown-up whilst the younger were still children. Kenneth recalled happy times, with games and activities, and the epicurean benefits of a well-stocked fruit garden. But children being children, rivalries developed and occasionally fights broke out. The parents split the worst offenders up when possible and this extended to choice of school. The majority of the two families’ sons went to board at the famous old English public school of Marlborough College, but seemingly to prevent contention, a couple were dispatched to the equally notable Haileybury.⁸ The daughters, as was customary in those distant times, were educated locally and at home.

Kenneth duly arrived at Marlborough in 1894, but unlike his brothers and cousins who took advantage of the educational privileges bestowed on them and passed on to fruitful careers, his sojourn there was somewhat less eminent. He did however, suffer a bad bicycling accident, crashing into a coal cart, rendering himself unconscious and suffering a gashed head and smashed finger. He recovered at home and missed a school term. Seemingly not having the ambition to go to university, Kenneth left the College in July 1898 at the age of 17.

While Kenneth was enduring school, his elder brother Gerald had joined the Indian Civil Service. Having set out on a promising career as an Assistant District Commissioner in the Punjab, he sadly contracted typhoid, dying in Mooltan in 1897.

Rather than university, Kenneth attended the small Downton College of Agriculture in Wiltshire. In 1900, he graduated with five prizes and a certificate in ‘practical proficiency in agriculture, chemistry, veterinary science, botany and knowledge of livestock.’⁹ Kenneth left Downton for a farm in King’s Lynn, Norfolk but this job came quickly to an end for unknown reasons and he returned home to Hastings. Thereafter, it seems that he fancied a change of air, and in the summer of 1901, he travelled to Canada en route to a ‘business university at St. John, New Brunswick’, but nothing further is known of this enterprise. Instead, Kenneth ended up doing temporary jobs in New Brunswick and Manitoba. Kenneth did not establish himself in any particular sphere and he came home as ‘there was no work to do’.

In 1903, Kenneth went to work for a mining company in Durham and to learn to be a coal mining engineer. It is assumed that he succeeded, as he proceeded to collieries in Carmarthenshire in Wales gaining his 1st class certificate as a mining engineer in 1908. But once again, Kenneth steered a new course, this time travelling to Saarbrücken in Germany in 1910 as an English correspondent at a German firm that built large gas engines for the mining industry. Why Kenneth took this unusual step and what his journalistic responsibilities at the company were are unknown, but from perusing family correspondence, it appears that his sojourn was not a happy one. On his return in 1911, he went to try his luck once more in Canada.

As Kenneth perambulated in this fashion, his father George had retired and with his wife and daughter Hilda, moved to Aspley Guise, an attractive village in Bedfordshire. George died there in 1911 aged 75, and unhappily, having started what promised to be a glittering career in the War Office, Kenneth’s younger brother Harold died a week later having contracted typhoid in 1908, thereafter languishing in a sanatorium.

Meanwhile, elder sister Ada had married a priest named Edmund Wethered and was busy raising four children in Oughtrington in Cheshire, where her husband was the rector. The oldest brother Arthur had become an electrical engineer, working in Edinburgh and producing a daughter with his wife Gertrude. They returned to England to live in the village of Pinner in Middlesex in 1914, Arthur also joining the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve.

Kenneth’s brother Hugh attended the Colonial College at Hollesley Bay, Suffolk and then emigrated to New Zealand, where he became a sheep farmer in Hawera on the southwest coast of North Island, marrying a local girl, Amy Good. The next in line was Lionel, who was the only sibling to take the cloth. He first worked as a curate for his brother-in-law, but as Kenneth put it, ‘having got it into his head that he would be a missionary’, Lionel moved to Canada in 1910 and was appointed as rector in the remote, coastal settlement of Bay du Vin in New Brunswick. It is worth reflecting on the effect that the British Empire had on such aspirational families in those days. Vast areas of the globe were British, and exciting careers were to be had in these places without really leaving ‘home’.

Younger sister Hilda remained in Aspley Guise but joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment, a scheme in which the British Red Cross was given the role of providing supplementary aid to the Territorial Forces Medical Service in the event of war. She became Commandant of the Aspley Guise detachment. In 1909, on leaving Cambridge University, the youngest brother Philip went to The Royal Military Academy, Woolwich and was commissioned into the Special Reserve of the Royal Engineers. He then took up employment as a civil engineer in Cheshire.

Having returned to Canada, it is assumed that Kenneth was seeking some kind of mining work as he arrived in Sydney, Nova Scotia where coal was extracted. He was to spend two years there, years which he described as ‘bad times’ and it is assumed that steady work was yet again unforthcoming. Nevertheless, he was able to visit his brother Lionel in his austere New Brunswick parish, spending the Christmases of 1911 and 1912 there.

Kenneth seems to have traversed the Atlantic a couple of times during the period 1912 to 1914 but having failed to find suitable employment in New Brunswick, he moved westwards across Canada to Victoria on Vancouver Island in British Columbia where he arrived in April 1914. In those days, the island was a large coal mining centre.

7 Hastings Observer, 23rd August 1919, Page 5.

8 In England, a public school is in fact a private one with sizeable fees. In those days, most pupils boarded during term time, returning home for the holidays.

9 The Times, 13th August 1900, Page 10.

Chapter 2

Becoming a Soldier

Kenneth commences his detailed account of his World War 1 experiences with a rather pithy but insightful declaration:

‘The War found me, as it found the Empire, in difficulties and solved those difficulties for us. The Empire was on the verge of civil war in Ireland, and the war produced, for the time being at all events, such unanimity among all sects and classes as had never been known before. I was out of a job and the war found me one.’

This assertion calls for some elaboration. In the early 1900s, Ireland was under British rule but there was considerable internal dissent. British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith’s weak Liberal Government needed the support of other parties to survive and it received some conditional assistance from John Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party, which promoted Irish home rule, a subject with which Asquith had some sympathy. However, in return for Redmond’s cooperation, in 1912 Asquith was compelled to introduce to Parliament the Third Home Rule Bill. This Bill ‘offered only limited self-government and asserted the supreme authority of the UK Parliament over all persons, matters, and things in Ireland.’¹⁰ but it was hugely divisive and fiercely opposed by the British Conservative Party that preferred that the island be partitioned into a largely Protestant north, Ulster, and a Roman Catholic (RC) south. In Ireland ill-feeling was high, rioting broke out in Belfast and both sides of the divide created paramilitary forces to defend their principles.

Clearly, this conflict was of great concern within Britain and, it seems, further afield. Kenneth considered it a threat to the cohesion of the vast British Empire which in the early 1900s, comprised about one quarter of the world and its population. In the event, when Britain went to war with Germany in 1914, the Third Home Rule Bill was of necessity postponed, but this left unsolved issues and great tension throughout Ireland. ‘Civil war in Ireland - not war on the continent of Europe - is what London feared 100 years ago. Would the British Army mutiny if ordered to force the Protestants of Ulster into Home Rule? Was the British Empire about to crumble from within? This was the question at the start of 1914.’¹¹

As for Kenneth’s comment on unanimity, it may be that he believed that the Great War, to which the whole Empire contributed men and materiel, brought a measure of pan-Empire harmony. But it also created in the dominions and colonies a greater degree of self-worth and a desire to have more say in shaping their national destiny. If he is making a more social comment, there is no doubt that the war changed relationships in Britain fundamentally. Mass employment of women, as the men enlisted and left for the front, and the military comradeship that sprang up between the differing classes of society are just two aspects that made for a more egalitarian world, a process that the Second World War augmented.

Kenneth gives the background to his own part in these momentous events:

‘In 1911, I returned to Canada, and after some two years at Sydney, Nova Scotia, I was overtaken by the bad times then existing and decided to go west. So, after a visit home I made for British Columbia and reached Victoria on April 10th 1914. From that time on, I tried everywhere and in every way to get a job, always without success.’

Presumably the 33-year-old Kenneth, whose employment aspirations had met with only fleeting success thus far, was attempting to exploit his engineering qualification in the Vancouver Island coal mines, which were extensive in those days. But fate was to lend a hand as, whilst he sought work, living in lodgings, there was unrest in the very industry he hoped to re-join.

In September 1912, the newly-formed United Mine Workers had had several disagreements with Canadian Collieries, which owned the Dunbar Mine on Vancouver Island. The issues included gas safety and union recognition. When a miner named Oscar Mottishaw was fired for alleged trouble-making, the union became involved and the miners staged a ‘holiday’ in protest. The company promptly locked them out and replaced them with Chinese, British and United States miners. By the spring of 1913, some 3,500 workers at mines across the island were off work and rioting had broken out.

Some companies made settlements, but peace was only restored when the provincial government sent in the local militia. At that time, this force consisted of two regiments: the 5th (British Columbia) Regiment of Garrison Artillery and, raised in 1912 to meet perceived coastal defence needs, the 88th Regiment (Victoria Fusiliers). International events would soon demand that these regiments take on a rather more strategic role. Nevertheless, the stage was set for Kenneth to play his part, as he now describes:

‘On July 25th, it was suggested to me that I should join one of the regiments and get sent to Nanaimo [on Vancouver Island] for the winter, where a garrison was kept owing to some recent strike riots. On thinking this over, I was very much taken with the idea and set about it that afternoon.’

Kenneth’s first military aspirations were somewhat subjective. Service would put a roof over his head and a meal before him. It was better that the hand-to-mouth existence to which he had been reduced. He continues:

‘The next day Sunday July 26th, I saw a telegram posted up that Austria had declared War on Serbia and I knew that ‘Armageddon’, as the Montreal Star used to call it, had come at last and that we were in for something much more exciting than strike duty.’

Kenneth had made a decision that would shape the next few years of his life. He now tells us how his military service commenced and gives a little philosophical background:

‘On Wednesday July 29th, all preliminaries having been gone through, I enlisted in the 88th Victoria Fusiliers.¹² Next day I attended a recruits’ drill at the Drill Hall and at the close was told to come again that day [next] week.

I believe that all or nearly all who enlist pass through three stages. The first stage consists of unbounded enthusiasm. The second reaction during this stage in peace time [is that] one is ready to kick oneself for having joined at all, in war one feels one is doing a painful duty. The third stage is halfway between. One grouses more or less according to temperament, but when all is over will join up again whenever a war comes along. One has in fact become a soldier.

The last stage is well illustrated by the South African Veterans in Canada.¹³ I have heard many of them say they have done their bit and would not go to war again, yet they were the first to join when this war broke out, and when only single men were taken, they made such a row that married men were included and a separation allowance arranged.

I think we all went through the stages in due order. I know I did and I had the first one very badly indeed. So, when I was told to come again in a week I was full of indignation. Here we were on the verge of a world war and they wasted a whole week. I was ready to drill all day and every day. I sought out the Captain of my [militia] company¹⁴ the next day, he was a real estate agent, and told him my grievance. He soothed me down as best he could and assured me that one as keen as I would soon learn that there was no chance of my being left behind. I went away only half satisfied and got through the next few days as best I could.

On Monday August 3rd, a notice was posted up summoning us to a battalion parade in the evening. Things in the war area were looking blacker and blacker and I was filled with the deepest anxiety that the Liberal Government at home would shirk their duty and cling to peace. I was airing my views to the American lady at the boarding house and saying that I would rather see the Empire beaten than disgraced, when she said to me, ‘You are a soldier and can say what you like, if you had been a civilian I should say you do not care as you won’t have to fight’. I took this as a huge compliment to a three-days-old recruit.

I duly turned up at the parade in the khaki uniform I had been given last time. There was no drill, but they dished us out with rifles, bayonets, kitbags, haversacks, water bottles etc. and an assortment, a regular heap of small straps, buckles and hooks which later resolved themselves into the Oliver Equipment.’

The Canadian-made Oliver Pattern Equipment was ineffective and unpopular as Kenneth describes in uncompromising detail later on. But he continues:

‘When this was done it was 10 p.m. We expected to be dismissed but nothing happened and at last a rumour went round that we were to be kept all night. This proved to be true and at about midnight we marched by companies to the Regimental Institute and billeted there.

Our company was put up in the billiard room which besides the billiard tables, on which we were not allowed to lie, had no furniture whatever. Our greatcoats were neatly rolled, and we did not want to undo them, so we laid on the bare floor and slept or not as best we might. I got no sleep at all as the night was broken first to sign a pay roll – I never got the money by the way – and secondly by my having to go on guard at the entrance for a time. I should explain that at that time our ‘company’ was 10 strong. The whole militia of Canada was rather a joke and a plaything before the war.

At 5 a.m. we were dismissed and told to reassemble if we heard all the hooters in the city blowing hard. I went home to breakfast and bed leaving strict injunctions to call me if the hooters went. I got up at dinner time and spent the afternoon alternately reading and going to the Institute to see the notices. There were many notices that day, first an order for recruits’ drill in the evening, then for a battalion parade and then recruits’ drill. I went to the recruits’ drill and was drawing some kit at the stores after, when the Sergeant came up to me and said, ‘You are in E Company aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yes’. He said, ‘Parade in full marching order tomorrow morning at 11’.

On my way home, I was twice stopped and asked if any of our men had gone yet and I began to feel important. On going to my room, a man called to me from his and told me to my joy that England had declared war. It was such a relief, I had been so afraid we shouldn’t and that in years to come we should get what we should have deserved.’

With hindsight, Kenneth’s attitude seems implausible, but it was far from unusual. In an age of intense national competition, the Kaiser’s Germany was broadly viewed by the citizens of Great Britain, and seemingly many people in the dominions and colonies, as a threat to European stability and to the status of the all-powerful British Empire. In addition, the British public had great sympathy for ‘poor little Belgium’, which The Kaiser invaded on 4th August causing Britain to declare war. This was greeted with enthusiasm and volunteers flocked to join the Army. Few people foresaw the lethal devastation that tactical stagnation and technological development was to visit on early 20th century battlefields. Kenneth goes on with his account:

‘In the morning [August 5th], I packed all my things, gave my key to the landlady to keep and repaired to the Institute. There I found two companies; E and F. There were two sergeants fixing up the Oliver Equipment for them and we waited our turn. I was a strap short and had some difficulty in getting it and so was not able to get away when they let us go for an hour for dinner. In one of the intervals of waiting