September 2018 – velvethummingbee

Posted on September 30, 2018 by David Steers

NSP Lives of the First World War: 03 William Crymble

When the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian magazine published its second collection of names of men and women who had joined up after the start of the First World War in March 1915 the entry for Ballee congregation contained one name:

Captain Wm. Crymble, RAMC. Interned at Magdeburg since Mons.

William Crymble was a Captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps. His father was the principal of the school at Ballee and the whole family belonged to the congregation. He had trained to be a doctor in Belfast and Dublin, following his studies with positions at the Royal Victoria Hospital Belfast, Down District Asylum and Beckett Street Infirmary Leeds. Before the war he had joined the reserve of the RAMC and had been promoted to Captain on 13^th July 1914. His skills were very necessary once war broke out and in August 1914 he went with the British Expeditionary Force to France.

Captain William Crymble RAMC

Attached to the 14^th Field Ambulance he was amongst those taken prisoner at Le Cateau on 26^th August 1914. The story of his initial capture makes for grim reading with accusations of brutality against the enemy. The medical officers were said to be prevented from attending to the wounds of the injured, they were transported in cattle trucks to the internment centre at Torgau in Germany, with little ventilation and frequently no water.

He was interned not just in Magdeburg but in a total of four camps. Magdeburg was the first and reportedly the worst with officers being thrown in prison for failing to salute a German officer, property being confiscated and the keeping of diaries forbidden. All this was reported in the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian and based on With French in France and Flanders by Rev O. S. Watkins, an army chaplain. Sanitation was poor, facilities for exercise limited and rigid discipline enforced. At one camp prisoners from different nations were split up and separated out of national groups in an effort to break down their resistance to camp discipline. Remarkably though, over the summer of 1915, William Crymble was able to return home in an exchange of prisoners. He was returned to Holywood Barracks where he declared he felt like a “fish out of water” until he could get back to the front.

He soon got his wish and was sent to Egypt to be part of the war effort with the Mediterranean Force. But here tragedy struck. On 12^th October 1916 he died of enteric fever in Alexandria. One of his colleagues and a former fellow student at Queen’s said:

“On the day on which the sad news of his death was made known to the patients he had attended, the medical officer on duty was sharing the distress which was visible among the patients and could not always trust himself to speak. But the sorrow that could not find adequate personal expression was manifested on Sunday the 22^nd.”

The Non-Subscribing Presbyterian reported that “Rev J.H. Bibby made touching reference to his death on the Sunday succeeding the receipt of the sad news in Ballee.”

He is buried at the Suez War Memorial Cemetery in Egypt.

Posted on September 27, 2018 by David Steers

NSP Lives of the Great War: 02 Thomas Cooke

Researching the names of those who will appear on the Roll of Honour is a poignant and often melancholy experience. Many of the stories of those who served are stories of loss – loss of young life, loss of a son, a husband, a father. When I was working through the list of names on the Larne War Memorial (see above) and comparing the list of those who gave their lives with the Roll of Honour published in the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian between December 1914 and January 1916 and with the written Roll of Honour maintained by the Larne congregation I noticed a discrepancy. In the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian one name featured throughout, that of Thomas Cooke (actually spelt Cook) who was listed as ‘missing’. The Larne written Roll (which must date from 1918) also named him but included him as someone who had served rather than having lost his life.

I didn’t see his name on the Larne Memorial at first, it wasn’t where I expected it to be. In fact it clearly is there but also quite clearly was added to the list at the end. The Rev Dr John Nelson tells me that the order of service for the Larne unveiling has a picture of the memorial but Thomas Cooke’s name has been added by hand. This is confirmed by the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian for November 1921 which lists the names on the memorial but does not include that of Thomas Cooke. I don’t know when Thomas Cooke’s name was added.

Thomas Cooke was born in Larne, c.1891, the son of Thomas and Martha Cooke of Browndodd, Larne. He was married to Agnes. His exact date of birth is not known. The census shows that his father was 44 in 1911 and his mother 38, they had been married for 20 years. It also reveals that they had had 14 children, of whom eight were still alive. Seven daughters were listed as living at home with them in that year.

At the outbreak of war he was on the reserve and so was called up almost immediately, consequently he arrived in France on 19^th September 1914 serving with the 2^nd Battalion Royal Irish Rifles, just a few weeks after the outbreak of the war. He was killed in action just over a month later on 27^th October 1914. Nearly a month after that, on 21^st November, he was officially listed as ‘missing’ and it is not clear when exactly he was officially declared to have been killed.

First World War researcher Jeffrey Martin of Dromore has been of considerable help to me and has helped confirm the identity of Thomas Cooke. He has also provided a photograph of Thomas Cooke from the Ballymena Weekly Times in 1915 which he was given from Nigel Henderson’s extensive archive.

Credit: Nigel Henderson (Great War Belfast Clippings)

We can imagine the anxiety felt by his family and it may be that this anxiety continued for some years after the war. Perhaps definite confirmation of his death did not come until after the Larne Church War Memorial had been erected? Perhaps even by 1921 they still hoped he might one day return? But he died on 27th October 1914 and has no known grave. He is commemorated on the Le Touret Memorial, Pas de Calais, France.

War Memorial, Old Presbyterian Church of Larne and Kilwaughter

Posted on September 22, 2018September 22, 2018 by David Steers

NSP Lives of the Great War: 01 Alfred Turner

I am currently working towards the production of a Roll of Honour for the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland in the First World War. All being well we should be on course for the publication of as complete a Roll of Honour as possible of all the men and women of the denomination in Ireland who served in the Great War including all those who gave their lives. This will be published at a service in Downpatrick on Sunday, 18^th November at 3.00 pm.

The Roll will comprise two parts – a list, by congregation, of all the men and women whose name is known who served in any capacity in the war, and a list, with brief biographical details, of all those who were killed during the conflict or died as a direct result of their service.

It is a melancholy task to trawl through the records trying to identify the service of the hundreds of names (often no more than names to start with) and to place them in the context of a regiment or ship or other area of service. The first part of the book will consist – because of its nature – of a list of names, the second will contain a bit more detail. But all the names dealt with are human stories and there is in the case of everyone behind the name a detailed account of a life, a family, service, sacrifice, bravery and suffering.

Alongside the production of the book I thought I would add here some more detailed stories of some of the people who appear in the book. I begin, with this post, with the Rev Alfred Turner.

Rev Alfred Turner in the uniform of the YMCA

Alfred Turner was the highly respected minister of Templepatrick for a number of years and alongside his ministry held the position of the first editor of the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian magazine. Under his guidance the magazine began to maintain a Roll of Honour as the Great War commenced although this stopped at the start of 1916 and kept no record of the last two years of the war. One of the reasons for this is that Alfred Turner himself was heavily involved in war work. He served with the YMCA at the front as a uniformed non-combatant bringing support to the troops and working essentially as a chaplain. As such he was one of about five Non-Subscribing Presbyterian ministers who took on this role, although his contribution was the most extensive. As YMCA workers they conducted worship for the soldiers, distributed tea and cocoa and sold biscuits, cake, chocolate, cigarettes and candles to the troops. Alfred Turner gives full accounts of his work in the NSP and writes of feeding up to 3,000 soldiers in one go and of leading worship in packed huts where:

A great quiet pervades the place whilst the minister says prayer, and you can feel the communion of Spirit when, in the course of prayer, he commends to our Father’s guidance and keeping the loved ones in the homelands. It is a prayer in which all hearts and desires are joined, and then all unite in saying the Lord’s Prayer.

His accounts (and those of some of the others working with the YMCA) are valuable descriptions of the privations of the troops as well as their morale and attitudes which I will probably return to at some point.

The Irish Census for 1901 and 1911 record Alfred Turner’s growing family on the point of the cataclysm of the First World War. In 1901 with his wife Mary they record two sons and a daughter, his sister in law and a visiting relative plus two live-in servants. By 1911 they have two more children (a boy and a girl) another visiting relative but no live-in servants, instead there is a German governess for the growing family. In 1911 Alfred Turner misread the instructions for recording place of birth in the census and before adding ‘England’ here had written and subsequently deleted Bradford, Yorks.

His eldest son (Hugh Nelson Turner) was 14 in 1911, his next eldest son (Alfred Clough Turner) just 10. Shortly after the outbreak of war Alfred joined the Queen’s University Veteran’s Corps and patrolled the Docks with that Corps. He later also worked as a munitions worker in Belfast. His eldest son had been studying for the ministry but joined up and is listed first of all in the NSP Roll of Honour as part of the Queen’s University Officer Training Corps. By March 1915 he is listed as being with the 14^th Battalion Royal Irish Rifles, later still being commissioned into the Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment with which regiment he was wounded at Ypres in October 1917. His younger brother Arthur Clough Nelson is recorded on the War Memorial in Templepatrick Church as himself having become a Cadet before the end of the war. He would have been about 17 by then.

Old Presbyterian Church Templepatrick War Memorial

The Rev Alfred Turner was 53 in the year the Great War broke out and he managed to pack a lot into his war service as well as see his eldest son join up and face all the horrors of the Western Front, with his next son not far behind. He made a number of extended journeys to France to work with the YMCA. While he was away somebody deputised for him as editor of the NSP. I have his personal bound set of the first ten years of the magazine. It is a poignant memento and contains a copy of the October 1916 issue sent out to him at the front. That issue contains his portrait (as shown above). In my copy a line runs through the photograph where it was folded to post and on the back page is written the military postal destination where Alfred Turner was based at the time (picture above).

Posted on September 15, 2018 by David Steers

The most interesting place in Southport

Southport is always an interesting place. It has all the usual seaside details you would expect plus some features that mark it out as a little more dignified than the usual destination. Most notably these include the intricate nineteenth-century cast iron verandahs which adorn Lord Street.

But for me, for as long as I can remember, the one place that really stands out is the Shell Shop. You could easily miss it if you didn’t know it was there but it is a place I never walk past without going in.

Youthful visits to Southport with church and youth groups always included a trip to the Shell Shop. It was arranged as a museum around some rickety staircases and took the visitor on an eccentric journey to the South Sea Islands. A large and grubby looking plug from borstal hung near the end of the experience along with, I was recently reminded by Tony the current owner, a large model of a witch doctor placed there to discourage young visitors from shop lifting! Nowadays I don’t go so much for the shells as for the three floors of second hand books. I didn’t realise until a recent visit that the original Shell Shop and book shop were two separate businesses and indeed both were different to the current business, Parkinsons Books, but such was the demand from visitors for shells and other unusual items that the large stock of shells, fossils and curios from around the world remain very much a part of the display.

There is always a good selection of theology upstairs and it is always worth the hike to see what is there. But the shadowy passageway containing the 50p bargains never fails to yield some great finds. Not so long ago I purchased six random volumes of the original Dictionary of National Biography for 50p each. You might wonder why I wanted them since they are quite bulky and are, of course, available online these days, but you couldn’t leave them there for £3. Besides I only have to find 16 more and I will have the full set.