'When we come back from first death'

Thomas MacGreevy and the Great War

A Machine Readable Version

Susan Schreibman

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[p.15]
by Susan Schreibman

Thomas MacGreevy, poet, translator, art and literary critic — a man of letters in the old sense of the word, was born in Tarbert, Co Kerry, Ireland in 1893. After completing national school he sat for the civil service exam and entered the British Civil Service in February 1910, first serving in the Irish Land Commission, then the English Charity Commission, and from 1913, in the Department of the Admiralty in London. MacGreevy's major creative work was a book of poems published by Heinemann in 1934. It is a slim blue volume simply entitled Poems. My thanks to the Friendly Sons on St Patrick (Philadelphia Chapter) for a generous grant which allowed me to carry out this research. My thanks also to the MacGreevy estate for permission to quote from Thomas MacGreevy's unpublished memoirs, and to Martin Staunton who first suggested this article, and whose eagle eye caught several mistakes. Any remaining errors are wholly my own. N Even the most cursory glance through this volume, written largely between 1924 and 1932, shows how much the Great War influenced MacGreevy's poetry.

Unusually, MacGreevy's war experience started long before he sailed for the Somme France. It began within days of the British declaration of war when he was transferred to Naval intelligence. By the time MacGreevy got his bearings, his new supervisor was William Reginald Hall, the Director of Naval Intelligence. Rear-Admiral Reginald Hall was described in March 1918 (rather gushingly) by Dr Page, the then American Ambassador in London to President Wilson, as the 'one genius that the war has developed . . . All other secret service men are amateurs by comparison . . . For Hall can look through you and see the very muscular movements of your immortal soul while he is talking to you.' Admiral Sir William James, The Eyes of the Navy: A Biographical Study of Admiral Sir Reginald Hall (Methuen, 1955), p.xvii. N 'Blinker' Hall (so named for his incessant blinking, due, his daughter claimed, to malnutrition as a child Patrick Beesly, Room 40: British Naval Intelligence 1914-18 (Hamish Hamilton, 1982), p.34. N born in June 1870, was the son of the first Director of the Intelligence Division (D.I.D.) of the Admiralty, Captain William Henry Hall. James, p.2. N Like his father, he had a distinguished naval career. Just when it looked as though he would be promoted even further, he had to relinquish the command of his ship due to ill health and seemed destined 'either for retirement or some obscure post ashore'. Beesly, p.36. N Fate intervened. On 14 October 1914 when the then D.I.D., Henry Francis Oliver, became Naval Assistant to the First Lord, and the next month Chief of the War Staff, Beesly, loc.cit. N Hall was chosen to replace him. When Hall arrived, he found that Oliver had set up a secret department within the Admiralty which came to be known as 'Room 40' or 'Room 40 O.B.' — the O.B. standing for Old Building where the office was located.

Room 40 was headed by a fifty-nine year old Scotsman, Sir Alfred Ewing and was filled with leading British scientists, professors and professionals who intercepted and broke German codes throughout the war. At first the German codes were changed every three months, but when the Germans deduced from the movement of British ships that the Admiralty was obtaining intelligence from their signals, they changed the key every twenty-four hours. Although Room 40 was under Hall's command, MacGreevy's contact with the operations in Room 40 were slight. In MacGreevy's memoirs, written in the last years of his life, he mentions once delivering a message to Room 40, through a misunderstanding. He was, most unusually, allowed in, and just as quickly ushered out, being requested not to mention anything of what he had seen. Thomas MacGreevy, Memoirs, p.262-3. N More ominously, just before MacGreevy was to leave for his summer holidays in 1916, H.C. Hoy of Room 40 asked MacGreevy if he would take notes 'on the state of political feeling' in his part of the country and prepare a report for the D.I.D., who then might consider putting it in front of the Prime Minister. Memoirs, p.285. N MacGreevy objected not, as he readily admits for political reasons, but because he was going on holiday and wanted to leave work behind. Memoirs, p.286. N

During the year and a half MacGreevy worked in the office of the D.I.D. he generally worked nights, twelve hours on and twenty-four hours off, with an officer of the Marine Section, Major (afterwards Colonel) Sinclair, and an officer of the Naval Section, a Latinist named Johns. Memoirs, p.244-5. N Their work consisted of sorting telegrams and diplomatic and military reports for the day staff. Cots were provided for quiet periods, but MacGreevy, not one for sleeping whenever the opportunity existed for congenial conversation, would do the rounds, first stopping in Johns' office, moving on to Sinclair's and concluding with the one-armed messenger, until all had fallen asleep or more work came in. Memoirs, p.264. N

Perhaps because his work was considered essential to the war effort, coupled with his lack of ideological or any other interest in soldiering, during the first months of the war MacGreevy simply initialled the direct appeals for recruits from the War Office that had begun to circulate in government departments, and passed them on. Memoirs, p.256. N By mid-1915, however, the newly-formed Ministry of Munitions decided to compile a National Register of all persons, male and female, between the ages of fifteen and sixty-five. On 15 July 1915 the Act of Parliament received Royal Assent, and Sunday 15 August was set aside for the 'populace to provide particulars of age and occupation; Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and The First World War (Macmillan, 1965), p.61. N the names of those of military age were copied onto pink forms As social historian Arthur Marwick notes: 'the Civil Service having a most inept sense of values'. N and a star was placed against the names of those in essential occupations', Marwick, p.62. N such as MacGreevy. The government wasn't fooling anybody though: it was widely believed that the register was the first step for out and out conscription. MacGreevy, who was always meticulously conscientious, could have waited until after his summer holidays in August to fill up the forms. Indeed, sensing what was [p.16] coming he could have opted to stay in Tarbert. He did neither, and instead filled them up before leaving London for Tarbert in early August.

1916 was a year in which the perception of the war by both the general public and those fighting changed radically. It was also a year which was pivotal in charting a future for Thomas MacGreevy. Interestingly, the 1916 Rising, which had a profound impact on so many in Dublin, had little impact on MacGreevy's life in London. The arrest, trial and subsequent hanging, however, of Sir Roger Casement, a distinguished member of the Consular Service who, upon his retirement in 1912 became increasingly involved in the cause of Irish nationalism, seemed to mark a turning point in MacGreevy's perception of Irish national identity. It was, in fact, under Hall's orders that Casement was caught on the Kerry coast on 22 April. Room 40 had intercepted at least thirty-two messages between Count Bernstorff (the German Ambassador in Washington) and his government dealing with German assistance for Sinn Fein in the first three years of the war. It is not clear how many of these messages were decoded contemporaneously. It is clear, however, that Hall had enough information to be aware that an armed uprising was being planned in Dublin for 23 April, and that Casement was due to arrive off the west coast of Ireland sometime between the 9 and 15 of April. Hall's information was accurate. Casement landed on the 20 April at Banna Strand and was captured two days later. Beesly, pp. 188-9 N Ironically, Casement had ostensibly returned to Ireland to try to prevent the Easter Rising, but he came in a U-boat accompanied by a ship full or arms and ammunition.

Casement was brought back to London on Easter Sunday. He was immediately brought under escort to Scotland Yard, where Basil Thompson, head of the C.I.D., and Hall interrogated him. Brian Inglis, Roger Casement (Hodder and Stoughton, 1973), p.318. N He was then taken to Brixton prison, and later returned to be interrogated on Easter Monday. The London papers gave almost as much coverage to Casement's capture and trial as to the Rising. The press coverage inspired MacGreevy to write his first story — a dialogue between Roger Casement in prison and Sir Arthur Nicolson, Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office.

Not long after the Easter Rising and Casement's capture, MacGreevy was asked to deliver a sealed communication to the Admiral Commanding at Queenstown (now Cobh). It was not uncommon for MacGreevy, a Second Division Clerk, to be asked to deliver communications which were deemed too important to be trusted to a regular messenger, and too confidential to send over the wires. In his year and a half with the Admiralty he was frequently called upon to deliver such envelopes to various Admirals throughout the British Isles. However, the communication he delivered on 9 May, 1916 in Queenstown, six days after the first of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising were executed, and the day after the execution of Con Colbert (whom MacGreevy had met while a civil servant in Dublin), probably held greater personal import for MacGreevy than anything else he had been asked to do by the Admiralty. When he dutifully delivered the communication to the admiral commanding at Queenstown, he seems to have had little idea that he might be playing some part (however small) in the British crackdown in Ireland. Memoirs, p.283. N It seems never to have occurred to MacGreevy not to have delivered the envelope, nor that he, rather than one of the other clerks, was sent to Ireland because his being Irish guaranteed him safer passage than his English counterparts. The incident perhaps only in retrospect, however, provided another step for MacGreevy along the road to political awareness.

In May 1916 universal conscription finally became law. See Marwick p.76 and ff, and J.M. Bourne Britain and the Great War: 1914-1918 (Edward Arnold, 1989), pp.122-3. N Yet, two months earlier, in March 1916, MacGreevy had enlisted in the Royal Field Artillery. It is not clear why he joined up when he did. The most likely explanation is that seeing the writing on the wall he opted to enlist while he still had some choice in the matter rather than wait to be conscripted. Had he waited, however, until May, until after the 1916 Rising and the subsequent execution of its leaders, he may never have enlisted. Nevertheless, once he had the bureaucratic wheels were set in [p.17] motion, and exactly one year later, he was posted to the Royal Field Artillery depot at Woolwich.

MacGreevy's opting for the Artillery was as much a matter of chance as design. He had heard that the Artillery was looking for cadets and he interviewed with Major Dawson of the War Office. As an artillery cadet, MacGreevy's training was much longer than for other would-be officers including as it did detailed instruction in gunnery as well as the usual officer training. Field Artillery Training: 1914. (General Staff, War Office, 1914), pp.144 & 409. N

After a short stint at a training school in Bloomsbury, MacGreevy was posted early in May 1917 to No. 1 Officer Cadet School at St John's Wood. It was probably here that he met Geoffrey England Taylor, a cadet five years his junior, to whom he dedicated the first poem in Poems, entitled 'Nocturne'.

After St John's Wood, MacGreevy's and Taylor's training continued in Shoeburyness, Larkhill and Boyton. Early in November 1917, MacGreevy and Taylor received their commissions as second Lieutenants in the Royal Field Artillery. A little over a month later, the two men sailed for Le Havre from Southampton, and from there took a train to the Ypres Salient. Thus on 1 January 1918, Second Lieutenant Thomas MacGreevy reported for duty with the 148th Brigade and was assigned to 'A' Battery, RFA, 30th Artillery, a division which previously distinguished itself for achieving one of the few successes on the first day of the Somme. Second Lieutenant Geoffrey Taylor reported for duty with the 149th but had the bad luck of being transferred from guns to trench mortars during his first posting. As MacGreevy put it in his memoirs, being transferred to trench mortars was 'the greatest misfortune to befall a gunner-officer. A trench mortar battery was regarded with horror by all artillery men,' and referred to as nothing less than a 'suicide club'. Memoirs, pp.318-19. N

The day MacGreevy joined his Brigade at Halebast, near Dickebusch, they were supporting the front line in battle. In his memoirs, MacGreevy describes his first night on the Ypres Salient: We were being shot at, being shot at steadily and accurately. The stuff, heavy stuff, was coming down on us hard and fast. Twice the sandbagged roof of the dugout was hit with five-nines, German high explosive shells. The light went out both times; the whole dug-out shook. Still it did not fall in on us. We were able to light up again. If this was war it was not a battle. To the Germans it was only a routine 'shoot'. We would send them back their ration of shells when the scheduled hour came round. Meantime we had to take what was coming to us for the half-hour or forty minutes the bombardment lasted. Memoirs, pp.342-3. N

That day orders had been received from HQ that the 37th Divisional Artillery would be relieving them. By 5 January the brigade was marching to Steenbecque where they would entrain and be moved behind the lines for training. But during those first five days, MacGreevy witnessed something that over nine years later he would inscribe in poetry. The second poem in Poems, 'De Civitate Hominum', (the end of which is reprinted below) about a British airman being shot down near the front line, was only the first of such deaths that MacGreevy would witness: There are fleece-white flowers of death
That unfold themselves prettily
About an airman
Who, high over Gheluvelt,
Is taking a morning look round,
All silk and silver up in the blue.

I hear the drone of an engine
And soft pounding puffs in the air
As the fleece-white flowers unfold.

I cannot tell which flower he has accepted
But suddenly there is a tremor,
A zigzag of lines against the blue
And he streams down
Into the white,
A delicate flame,
A stroke of orange in the morning's dress.

My sergeant says, very low, 'Holy God!
'Tis a fearful death.'

Holy God makes no reply
Yet.

Susan Schreibman, Collected Poems of Thomas MacGreevy: An Annotated Edition (Anna Livia Press & The Catholic University of America Press, 1991), p.3. N

Some weeks later MacGreevy himself realised the power over life and death he himself held. In his memoirs, MacGreevy relates an incident early on in his military career in which he initiated a gun attack: It was on a day when I was observation officer. The post was in the front line. The road up to Saint Quentin from the German lines was clearly visible. Suddenly I noticed a group of German soldiers appearing on that road and, as quickly as they might, descending from it by what must have been a very narrow and very rugged pathway. For they went one by one so that I had time to plot the point with compass, map, etc., not enough time to 'get' the German lads themselves, (which I was not conscious of wanting to do), but at least to make that descent still less negotiable for them than already it obviously was. So I told my signaller to telephone the battery and when he was through I turned on the guns, well and truly 'plastering' the spot for a few minutes. It must have been a fair distance behind the German front line for through my glasses I had noticed that the German lads were not wearing steel helmets but forage caps with, I think, red bands. I say that I was not conscious of wanting to 'get' them as Germans or as fellow human beings. Memoirs, p.282. N

This passage is interesting for several reasons. On a personal level it demonstrates MacGreevy's ambiguous feelings about being a soldier. On the one hand he was 'out there' to (as he puts it) 'get' German soldiers. On the other hand, he thought of them as fellow human beings rather than as 'the enemy'. MacGreevy was certainly not a willing soldier, but he did do what he was expected to do, and did it well. On a more general level, this passage is interesting because it gives quite a good picture of the type of work that artillery Officers did. It was highly dangerous, yet, for all its risks, MacGreevy writes wistfully of his turn as Observation Officer: I noticed that the soldiers on the opposing sides had ways of playing games with each other. Thus an English machine gunner might rattle off a few rounds to the rhythm of Daa, Da-Dah, Dah and stop. Back immediately would come the answering close of the rhythm from a German machine-gunner, Dah, Dah. Then there would be silence for another while. At that observation post too I became conscious of the pang of leaving the infantry at dust. There they would be, standing on the first step, at the alert in case of possible surprise attack, steel helmets on the rifles at the ready. One had been with them since dawn, engaging from time to time in friendly exchanges; now they returned a wistful 'Goodnight' as one passed towards a communication trench that led away from them and back towards the guns on the protection of which they counted so much. Memoirs, p.282-3. N

A Brigade of Artillery was composed of three batteries of field artillery, each with its ammunition column. So, for example, in MacGreevy's Division, the 30th, there were two artillery brigades, the 148th (MacGreevy's), and the 149th (Taylor's). The 148th was then divided up into four batteries, A, B, C and D. MacGreevy was assigned to A Battery on 1 January 1918. Thomas MacGreevy's Army Service Record. N On 21 March, when the Germans launched their Spring Offensive, MacGreevy had been on leave in Kerry. He was halfway through it when orders to return to his brigade arrived. MacGreevy must have returned to the St Quentin area (where his brigade was supposed to be) around 5 April, but could not find them. In all the confusion, it took him 60 hours to locate and then reach his Brigade. Memoirs, p.394. N When MacGreevy arrived Major Stanley made him orderly officer for a week — which MacGreevy agreed to with alacrity.

During the first day of the offensive six of his brigade's guns had been destroyed. When, on the first evening of the first day of the offensive the British launched a counter-attack, the wounded were later found where they had fallen. Further, they reported that the advancing Germans gave them drinks of water when asked. MacGreevy's battery commander had spent the day on his horse in his pyjamas and greatcoat, and had taken part in the evening's counter-attack. In his memoirs, [p.18] MacGreevy noted that the type of moving warfare the British engaged in during the German Offensive was what the Horse and Field Artillery were best trained for — even if the movement had been in the wrong direction. Memoirs, pp.398-99 N

MacGreevy remained in the line until 3 October (except for rest and training) when he was wounded by shell fire. Several days later he was transferred to a hospital in Manchester, and after the Armistice sent to Athlone (the only artillery depot in Ireland), coming under orders of the 5th Reserve Brigade, and posted to the 27th Reserve Battery. On 22 January 1919, MacGreevy resigned his commission

It is only fitting that as a writer himself, MacGreevy's own words end this article. 'Nocturne' is the first poem in Poems. It is dedicated to Geoffrey England Taylor, 2nd Lieutenant, R.F.A., with the simple note afterwards, in inverted commas, 'Died of Wounds' — which is probably all MacGreevy ever found out about his friend's demise. Taylor died on the 26 September as he was taking ammunition up to his battery under heavy fire. The Chigwellian (December 1918), p.29. My thanks also to Nick Deacon for his help in researching information on Geoffrey England Taylor. Taylor was serving with 'Y' Trench Mortar Battery, 33rd Division, and is buried in Thilloy Road Cemetery, Beaulencourt, just south of Bapaume. He was 20 years old. N In his memory, MacGreevy wrote these lines which capture the sense of hopelessness and Godlessness that must have plagued, however fleetingly, so many men who fought with an unprecedented spirit of self-sacrifice in the Great War: I labour in a barren place,
Alone, self-conscious, frightened,
blundering;
Far away, stars wheeling in space,
About my feet, earth voices whispering.

Susan Schreibman is a writer from New York now living in Dublin. She is currently a Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Dublin.