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Arthur Savage

Age 92

This interview proved to be a strange but very entertaining one. A publisher friend who knew I was working on this book sent me a press cutting taken from the latest edition of a provincial newspaper. The headline read ... \"Burglar Beaten by Major's Sword\". It went on … \"Defiant 92 year old retired army Major Arthur Savage did not flinch when a burglar smashed his way into the bedroom of his home. The First World War veteran seized his ceremonial sword and lunged at the intruder. The startled burglar tried to grab the weapon, but after a short scuffle, decided to beat a hasty retreat nursing a cut cheek and torn sweatshirt.\"

The news story went on to say that the burglar was later caught by the police and was tried for this offence, together with some other crimes he had committed. As a result he went to prison for three years.

It meant travelling some distance, but I knew this Major was too good to miss. I reasoned that any ninety-two-year-old still able to engage in sword fights with burglars was obviously going to be interesting and would almost certainly have a good tale to tell of his army days in World War I.

About a week later, I was walking down the long dismal road in which our Major lived, having got the address from the newspaper. There was no telephone number listed at his address and I got no reply to the letter I had sent him, so it had to be a case of knocking on his door and hoping for the best.

The large old Victorian house lay well back from the road and had long since been turned into several flats. Pushing past some rusting old cars parked in what was once the garden, I rang the Major's bell. The bell was just below a cardboard notice saying 'Arthur, Ground Floor Flat'. As I waited and looked around I noticed the faded curtains and paintwork. It had probably not seen a brush since around 1914! I wondered how an old man of ninety-two lived in such a dump. The words of the burglar in the newspaper story came back to me. At his trial he had said \"I only broke in cos I was looking for a place to sleep, I thought it was empty, I never dreamed anyone would be living in there.\"

My thoughts were brought to a sudden halt by the clanking of a heavy chain being released behind the door. A few seconds later there was Arthur - tall, lean, with a pronounced stoop, but wiry and fit in appearance. Looking me straight in the eye he said, in a gruff voice, \"Yes, what's it about?\"

I went into my rehearsed speech about writing a book about World War I and, as he was one of the last remaining survivors, would he assist me with an interview? And didn't he get my letter?\"

\"The only letters I get are bills, so I don't bother to open them and I'd love to talk about the Great War. But\", he said, leaning towards me in a confiding way, \"can you come back in about an hour?\" Then he added in a stage whisper, \"I have a lady here at the moment.\"

\"Sure\", I replied, \"I'll be back later\", trying not to sound surprised.

\"Good man, I'll have a whisky ready for you\".

With that the door closed. As I stumbled back down the path my thoughts went into overdrive .. ninety-two-years-old yet still into sword-fighting, hard drinking and womanising! I could be about to interview the nearest approach to Errol Flynn I was ever likely to meet.

I went to a nearby cafe to kill an hour or so, over an almost inedible egg and chips. But my mind wasn't on the food. I wondered if I should wait around outside Arthur's house to see what sort of lady friend he had. Would she be a young raver, or a more mature woman? But no, it wasn't his present that concerned me, but his long distant past that I hoped he could recall.

On my return, Arthur showed me into a poorly furnished little flat and we sat by an old electric fire. He already had a couple of whiskies poured so I switched on my recorder and began the interview. His reminiscences were hard to follow and his train of thought was erratic. His memory for times, dates and places was almost photographic, but at times he seemed unable or unwilling to answer the most straightforward question. For example, he had dotted around the room many photographs of people taken, I would guess, in the 1940's or 50's, but when I asked who they were he dismissed my question with an impatient wave of his arm, saying, \"Oh, just family, they're all gone. I've outlived them all. Anyway, I thought you wanted to know about the war?\"

\"I do, but wars and families are very much connected\", I replied. Just then the deafening sound of rock music came blasting through the wall from the adjoining flat. My recorder almost blew a fuse. \"Take off your shoe and bang on the wall with it, \" said Arthur. I did and the volume subsided slightly. \"Don't you find it hard to live here?\" I asked.

\"After living in the trenches you can live anywhere, mind you we do have rats, but I've not seen any unburied dead lying around.\" He followed up even a slightly humorous remark with several minutes of laughter.

Question \"How long have you been here, Arthur?\"

Answer \"About a year. I came here when I came out of hospital. They said it was temporary until they found me a council place. That lady who was with me, when you called earlier, was a council official who has arranged for me to have what they call Meals on Wheels, so now I'll get a meal everyday, and a house cleaner is going to call twice a week.\"

He looked pleased at this news. (So my fantasies about Arthur's lady friend were unfounded I was disappointed to learn).

\"Do you know, I've been burgled five times since I've been here. I think it's that lot.\" He pointed with his walking stick at the wall from where the loud music was coming.

Question \"So, Arthur, you were a major in World War I?\"

Answer \"Good God, no, I was poor bloody infantry. I was a 'sit behind a desk' major in the 1939-1945 war, based in Whitehall, I was.\"

Question \"What sort of memories do you have of 1914-18? Just tell me about anything that comes to mind.\"

Answer \"First, we'll have another drink.\"

(He poured two more whiskies). \"We had some great men in those days. Great men. We just don't have that calibre of person any more. Of course, we had some real evil bastards, as well.\"

Question \"Tell me about some of these people you thought so highly of, and why\".

Answer \"Horatio Bottomly, do you know of him?\"

Question \"No, but the name rings a bell, wasn't he a politician?\"

Answer \"He was an M.P. but much more as well. He came from poverty, no education, nothing, but he was flamboyant, courageous and brilliant. He became a lawyer and ended up running the Financial Times. Now he was one of the very few men back home who tried to put a stop to the executions of men suffering from shellshock. You see, there was no appeal allowed at their court martial. Bottomly tried to make it so that they could appeal to a court back in Britain and the 'Old Boy' network never forgave him for interfering.\"

Question \"What was the outcome for this Bottomly?\"

Answer \"He wasn't one of them, so they got him and got him good. He went to prison for seven years for fraud. Something to do with his newspapers going broke. He came out of prison a broken man and died in poverty in 1933.

I was ordered to go on a firing squad once in 1917 to execute one of our own men. It was a hateful job. Every man begged not to have to go on it. I remember the poor chap to this day. He was led out by a military policeman and a priest. He seemed to be staggering, like he was very tired. Then he was tied to this post. An officer went up to put a blindfold over his eyes. But he straightened himself up. He only looked about twenty and wasn't very tall. But I can hear his voice now, as clear as me and you talking in this room. He said 'I need no blindfold. Curse you and your blindfold and may the judges who will surely sentence you one day show you more mercy than you've shown me.'

I admired him for that, and I've never forgotten it. Well then we had to take aim. I couldn't bring myself to shoot him. My hands were shaking so much. So I aimed about a foot to his left. Then we fired. There were nine of us and only one shot caught him in the side. He slumped forward wounded. So I wasn't the only one firing wide deliberately. I thought to myself - oh God no, we're going to have to fire again. But no, this officer, as cool as you like, walked up to him with his revolver and put a bullet in his head. Some of the men were sick, others were crying and cursing the officer who ordered them to do the job.

Now the one who put the bullet in this poor lad's head wasn't one of our lot. He was in the Royal Irish Rifles, name of Colonel Frank Crozier. He was a real evil savage bastard, and he would never miss an execution. In fact he executed one group of men with a Maxim machine gun at close range. He caught some Portuguese soldiers once who had retreated without orders so he machine gunned them, and they were our allies fighting on our side. Talk about blood lust. Those ex-public school officers were all the same type. Crozier had a wife and kids at home but I'll tell you this he used to sleep with his batman, a bloke called Dave Starret and when he died twenty years later he left Dave his entire fortune. Don't just take my word for it, you can double check. When Haig heard about all those murderous executions that Colonel Crozier was carrying out he promoted him to the rank of Brigadier General!

Most of the poor sods were convicted mainly on the evidence of doctors who were officers in the R.A.M.C. They would not accept that men could reach a point of utter exhaustion when as a result of trench warfare their nerves and brains would snap. These so called 'doctors' would not have it that there was such an illness as shellshock. They insisted the men were cowards and deserters. But I'll tell you this, my lad, no member of the R.A.M.C. was ever put in front of a firing squad.\"

Question \"All very sad when you expect medical people to protect life.\"

Answer \"Well, let's say that those in power in that war had no respect for working-class life.\"

Question \"So, apart from Bottomly, who else did you admire?\"

Answer \"Oh, so many. Philip Gibbs, later I think he became Sir Philip Gibbs. He was a writer. He went through the entire war as a war correspondent. Wonderful man. He told the truth about the real horror of it all. The dreadful slaughter, the appalling disregard and waste of human life by those in command. But before his reports reached the newspapers back home they were drastically censored. So the folks back home knew next to nothing about the hell that the men were going through. Remember that radio and television were unheard of, even telephones were very rare, in fact you hardly ever saw one.\"

Question \"So, no one ever read his full reports of what was going on?\"

Answer \"Well, yes they did, because just after the war, I think it was 1920, he wrote a wonderful book called 'Now it can be told.' It was the most authoritative book ever written about World War I. He was alongside the men in the trenches and saw it all at first hand, and he met and got to know all the commanders. He wrote all about them as well. But as you can imagine, no British publisher would dare to touch it. It was unofficially banned. So you know what the man did? He went to America and got it published over there. A few copies found their way back here. I had a copy years ago, must have read it ten times. He wrote other books about the war as well. After the war he did a lot of charity work for ex-soldiers and their families who were suffering, as so many of them were.\"

Question \"I'll try and trace some of his work. But what of your own personal memories of the war, Arthur?\"

Answer \"My memories.\" (He spoke slowly and thoughtfully). \"They are of sheer terror and the horror of seeing men sobbing because they had 'trench foot' that had turned gangrenous. So they knew they were going to lose a leg. Memories of lice in your clothing driving you crazy. Filth and lack of any privacy. Of huge rats that showed no fear of you as they stole your food rations. And cold deep wet mud everywhere. And, of course, corpses. I'd never seen a dead body before I went to war. But in the trenches the dead are lying all around you. You could be talking to the fellow next to you when suddenly he'd be hit by a sniper and fall dead beside you. And there he'd stay for days.\"

Arthur fell silent and just gazed into his glass. I decided not to press him on personal reminiscences and just let him talk generally about the war.

Question\"What else comes to mind, Arthur?\"

Answer\"Oh, just the ceaseless slaughter. There was this Chinaman. The non-stop noise of the guns, day after day, drove him and plenty of others completely mad. He went into a screaming fit. The poor soul fell over, went into convulsion and died.\"

Question\"Surely there were no Chinese involved in that war?\"

Answer\"Good Lord, yes. Britain imported boat-loads of the poor devils, about 70,000, I believe.\"

Question\"What, as soldiers?\"

Answer\"No, they were used for all sorts of work, cooking mainly. But I saw them burying the dead and any other filthy job going. A couple of them went in front of the firing squad for stealing. How could they defend themselves - they couldn't speak a word of English? I felt sorry for them, and I still do. In 1917 China offered us half-a-million men to fight on the Western front.\"

Question\"That would have won the war for us.\"

Answer\"Well, yes and no. You see, the Allied and German armies were by now exhausted and both nearly beaten to a standstill. They had suffered appalling losses. Now, you imagine bringing in a fresh strong Chinese army half-a-million strong. They would have taken over Europe. They said at the time that America insisted we turn down the Chinese offer. You know, at that time the French had an Empire in parts of Africa and they used to send their black colonial troops in first. They were poorly trained and could not cope with the cold wet weather. We could hear their screams as hundreds of them were cut to pieces by the German shells. Then when the French had the range and location of the German guns they would send in their crack troops.

Another man I recall with great affection was 'Woodbine Willie'.\"

Question\"He sounds like a Music Hall comedian.\"

Answer\"Dear me, no he was a priest. His proper name was the Reverend Studdert Kennedy, an army chaplain he was and he'd come down into the trenches and say prayers with the men, have a 'cuppa' out of a dirty tin mug and tell a joke as good as any of us. He was a chain smoker and always carried a packet of Woodbine cigarettes that he would give out in handfuls to us lads. That's how he got his nickname. At Messines Ridge he ran out into no mans land under murderous German machine-gun fire to tend the wounded and dying. Every man was carrying a gun except him. He carried a wooden cross. He gave comfort to dying Germans as well. He was awarded the Military Cross and he deserved it.\"

Question\"You actually met him?\"

Answer\"Yes, indeed, he came down the trench one day to cheer us up. Had his bible with him as usual. Well, I'd been there for weeks, unable to write home, of course, and we were going 'over the top' later that day. I asked if he would write to my sweetheart at home, tell her I was still alive and, so far, in one piece. He said he would, so I gave him the address. Well years later, after the war, she showed me the letter he'd sent, very nice it was, saying 'I saw Arthur today, he's very well and will soon be home with you'. A lovely letter. My wife kept it in a drawer until she died.

He worked in the slums of London after the war among the homeless and the unemployed. The name 'Woodbine Willie' was known to everyone in the land in those days. Died quite young, he did, and at his funeral people placed packets of Woodbine cigarettes on his coffin and on his grave as a mark of respect and love. He wrote some marvellous poetry. Have you read any poetry about World War I?\"

Question\"Yes. I like the work of Ivor Gurney, Rupert Brook and Seigfried Sassoon. Their poetry caught the mood of the war.\"

Answer\"Yes, wonderful stuff, but you must read poems by Wilfred Owen and Edward Thomas.\"

Arthur then recited some war poetry that he knew by heart. He spoke the words with great feeling and emotion. I found this very moving.

\"Of course, what really died in that war was youth, a generation of young men. In my street where I grew up one family lost six sons, all killed in France. The population was out of balance. All through the twenties and thirties a massive surplus of women because so many men had been killed. There were simply thousands of lonely women who grew old alone and never married because they lost their men in the war, and the children who grew up fatherless. The effects were far reaching. So many people were broken and lost for the rest of their lives. Mind you, all the war leaders lived to a ripe old age - except Kitchener, he died in the war, the only one who did, as far as I know. That's why you see, you'll never have a war of that sort again, because in today's wars the leaders could no longer be safe behind the lines while sending men to their deaths a few miles away. Today, if a war started no one would be safe, and they know it. Good thing in a way, I suppose, otherwise we'd have a world war every five years!\"

Question\"Tell me about Field Marshall Kitchener. He was the face on the famous poster 'Your Country Needs you' wasn't he? You say he died during the war\".

Answer\"Well, he died in 1916, he was sixty-six, but he died mysteriously. He was the war minister and he mobilised the army. For the first time in England he brought in conscription, he had to - they ran out of volunteers. He started by asking for one hundred thousand volunteers. They were soon killed, so he asked for another one hundred thousand. In the end men were being killed at a faster rate than they were volunteering. So in January 1916 they started compulsory call up. Kitchener was a fierce tough soldier and the regular army was his and they would obey him. The politicians hated and feared him. The government was weak and they knew that Kitchener could take over any time he wished. He had been fighting wars for years in India and South Africa and had the reputation for being ruthless. The press were reporting how demanding Kitchener was becoming, plus we had troubles all over the place. Ireland was on the verge of revolution and in Wales and up north, miners were out of work and their families starving. Strikes - strikes everywhere. So it was a very tricky situation all round. Now, for some strange reason that was never fully explained, the government asked Kitchener to visit Russia as Britain's representative, I think to try and persuade them not to go on to Germany's side. He set off on the cruiser HMS Hampshire and, would you believe, without an escort of any sort. They struck a mine off the coast of Scotland, an area not known as being mined, and there were no survivors. Lost with all hands, it was.\"

Question\"All very odd, Arthur. Tell me what do you think caused the war?\"

Answer\"I've thought about that many times during my life but I just don't know the answer, but I do know it wasn't the reasons we were told at the time or since. I think it was to do with vast amounts of money, international money. I also know it was planned years before 1914 because I recall as a lad, around 1909, they were always having 'mock' invasions. They would pick a town, usually on the east or south coast of England, and pretend it had been invaded by the German army. Then hundreds of our regular troops would be rushed to that town from camps as far away as the Midlands or London. The military exercise was to recapture the town. This would take a week or so, cause tremendous disruption, then off to another town, and so on.\"

Question\"What are your memories of your return after the war, the first years of peace?\"

Answer\"Unemployment. No work for anyone. I took a job with a coffin-maker. We were working day and night. 'Flu was sweeping the country. People were dying like flies. They were so weak and under-nourished. They had no defence against illness. You've never seen such poverty as there was in those days. Peoples' living conditions were appalling\".

It was getting late. I'd been chatting to this incredible old man for over three hours and he was looking tired. I switched off my recorder and put away my note books. The loud music was still pounding through the wall. I was reluctant to leave him in such surroundings, so it pleased me when he said how much he had enjoyed our journey back to 1914-18. We made some more tea. Then it was time to say our goodbyes.

The next day I got in touch with his local council to see if they could do more for a man of such years, living alone. Within two weeks he was moved to what they called Sheltered Accommodation, where he had his own flatlet and twenty-four hour care on hand. When I telephoned to see if he was all right he told me he was very happy. He even had a television in his room.

\"When the weather gets warmer\", he said, \"do come down. We can sit in the lovely gardens they have here and have a good old chat.\" I promised him I would, indeed I look forward to it. Conversation and personalities like Arthur's are very rare these days and must be cherished.

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