Burghead stands on a promontory sticking out into the Moray Firth. We visited because we had read of the ancient chambered well there.

To visit the well requires picking up the key from the visitor centre. This, it transpired, was hard by the remains of a Pictish Fort though to be the oldest in Scotland. Apparently about half the Fort was destroyed when the town was built in the early 19^th century.

Plaque by edge of Fort:-

Site of Fort. The Visitor Centre can be seen beyond. (It’s the white building.):-

David and Charles, 1965, 254 p including 8 p Index, 2 p Appendix of Nelson’s Ships and Captains and 1 p Appendix Note on Sources.

As its title implies the book concentrates on the sea fights in which Horatio Nelson took part. While some details of his life outside the navy are mentioned these are very much by the way as far as Warner is concerned as they did not impact on Nelson’s conduct at sea. Warner contends that it was Nelson’s victories that made the winning of the Napoleonic Wars possible. Without British sea superiority Napoleon could have threatened India or even invaded Britain. He certainly had plans to do so if the Royal Navy were to be neutralised. Though Warner does not mention it the prosecution of the Peninsular War would also have been impossible without British control of the  seas.

Nelson first made his tactical acumen known at the Battle of Cape St Vincent where he moved his ship out of the battle line without orders as he realised to do so and make direct for the nearest Spanish ships would disorganise the opponent and – somewhat paradoxically – allow his commander’s ultimate intentions to be fulfilled. To naval men the line of battle “was sacred” so this unparalleled (and never repeated) leaving of the line without a direct order was a court-martial offence and meant probable disgrace, the more so since that commander, Jervis, was an extreme disciplinarian. Two other ships joined Nelson’s move however, and Jervis received him afterwards “with the greatest affection.” (He had after all won a victory due to it.)

Nelson’s next major encounter was the Battle of the Nile (more strictly of Aboukir Bay) where he split his force in two to attack both sides of the French fleet simultaneously, not as hazardous an endeavour as it might have been since the French ships were at anchor – at least at the battle’s start – and consequently unable to manoeuvre effectively. The result was confirmed when the French flagship L’Orient blew up spectacularly.

Nelson was famously to repeat disobedience at the Battle of Copenhagen. (“I have only one eye. I have a right to be blind sometimes.”) His Commander there, Parker, fully expected Nelson to ignore his signal to break off, though, if that was the correct course. However, others in the fleet of necessity obeyed it; to their cost. In many respects – the Danish ships were at anchor, and under the cover of shore guns – this was similar to the Nile, though Nelson’s tactics were slightly changed. This time he asked his ships to line up against their counterparts one by one, starting at the fifth Danish ship, the next two going on to the Danish 6 and 7 while others took on ships 4 to 1. In this way the least supportable part of the Danish fleet could be overwhelmed before the rest of it could affect the outcome. More remarkably the time elapsing between these orders being issued and their execution was extremely short. The victory cemented Nelson’s reputation.

Trafalgar was an altogether different affair; a full sea battle, one Nelson had sought for a long time. His plan was to cut the French and Spanish line in three (in the event only two such incursions were made) by the use of columns of British ships and so ensure a pell-mell battle in which he was convinced – correctly as it turned out – he would be victorious.

The details of the sea fighting of the times are gruesome. The casualties and wounds inflicted by cannonballs and splinters from wooden hulls pierced by them horrific. There was little shelter on the gun decks and no barriers to shot barrelling through them from one end to the other if raked by a broadside. On the open deck sailors and the soldiers the ships carried were even more exposed, Nelson himself felled by a rifle shot, and his national hero status thus guaranteed.  Britain’s naval supremacy was not to be seriously challenged for over one hundred years.

Whatever the faults in his private life (mercifully little of which does this account deal with) Nelson’s effect on his subordinates – not to mention the ratings – was inspiring.

Pedant’s corner:- “the Times’” (the Times’s,) “she had not formerly declared war” (‘formally’ makes more sense,) Guadaloupe (on a map. Now spelled ‘Guadeloupe’.)

BCA, 1984, 366 p.

This is an overview of the Normandy campaign from its planning through D-Day itself and on to the breakout from the beachheads to the closing of the Falaise pocket. The author’s stance on the campaign is that the Germans had the better resolve, equipment and better trained soldiers, but the Allies an overwhelming superiority in matériel and supplies. Not that that necessarily meant victory was a foregone conclusion. Much hard fighting was required. Casualty rates – on both sides – were prodigious, in some units 100%.

After the landings there was a belief among the Allies that firepower alone would suffice to beat the Germans but events proved this to be misplaced and progress did not depend on leadership. Hastings says that “few American infantry units arrived in Normandy with a grasp of basic tactics,” though their airborne troops did. There were some less than effective commanders but replacing them tended to have little effect. Even the better generals (Patton included) could not improve the performance of poor quality divisions. Problems – in both Allied armies – often lay at regimental and battalion level. German soldiers, however, adapted at once to the need for infiltration in the bocage, “their junior leadership was much superior to that of the Americans, perhaps also to that of the British.” Hastings does note that Bradley’s response to the Mortain counter-attack was, being calm and unflustered, a better command achievement than Patton’s haring around north-western France.

One thing I hadn’t realised till reading this was that even in the run-up to D-Day both Allied Air Forces were still reluctant to carry out the softening up bombing required in Northern France as they were of the opinion that they could win the war by themselves by attacking German industry and so no ground invasion would be required. Quite how this belief held on is odd since it ought to have been obvious that the German bombing Blitz on British cities had not greatly damaged the morale of the British people. Certainly not so far as to make the Government sue for peace with Germany. However, the bombing campaign over Germany in early 1944, while not really limiting aircraft production, had led to the defeat of the Luftwaffe due to the Mustang P-51 fighter’s effectiveness in inflicting losses on the Germans, whose aeroplanes and more crucially pilots consequently were not available to contest control of the skies over the invasion force. Another contributor was the Allies’ denial to the Germans of weather recording stations in the North Atlantic so hampering their forecasting. And of course there was FORTITUDE, the deception plan which had many Germans believing the Normandy invasion was a feint and another attack would take place on the Pas de Calais. As a result the Germans were unprepared for the attack when it came. Rommel of course was famously at home for his wife’s birthday and Hastings seems so tickled by the tit-bit that the German general Feuchtinger was apparently closeted away with a female friend on the night of June 5^th – 6^th that he tells us this twice.

Since the area round Caen was the hinge of the Allied force (and closest to Germany if a breakout were to take place) the Germans of course sent their best forces there. This meant the British and Canadians always faced the cream of the German troops in Normandy. The pressure was nevertheless such that Rommel was forced to use his tanks to shore up his defensive line and consequently could not concentrate them for a counter-attack. Montgomery was always conscious that British manpower was limited and the need to minimise losses resulted in overuse of what the Allies had a lot of – armour – as against a mix of armour and infantry. However, he did his reputation no good by continually misrepresenting the situation and his intentions both at the time and afterwards. In the end it was massed fire-power, particularly artillery, which wore down the Germans. In this context it is noteworthy that the historian Basil Liddell Hart later said that OVERLORD was “An operation that went according to plan but not according to timetable.”

Pedant’s corner:- focussed (many times: focused,) ditto “focussing” (focusing.) “One of the greatest throngs of commanders ever assembled … were gathered” (One … was gathered,) “Canaris’ loyalties” (Canaris’s,) “Brigadier Williams’ worst fears” (Williams’s,) “reached a crescendo” (reached a climax,) “the infantry were deployed” (was deployed,) “less weapons” (fewer weapons,) “Sepp Dietrich’s I SS Panzer Corps were quite unable” (was quite unable,) “the sheer enormity of the forces” (not enormity, they were not monstrous except in so far as any army is; ‘extent’.) “The SS were increasingly obsessed” (this is the SS as a whole, therefore ‘The SS was’,) Hodges’ (Hodges’s.)

Vindolanda Roman Fort, Northumberland, was our next stop on Hadrian’s Wall. It’s in the hands of a charitable trust.

This is the view from the entrance. The building in the background right is a replica tower:-

This is a model of the fort (in the museum at Vindolanda):-

On the way down to the remains you pass these wells and water cisterns:-

Replica tower:-

The tower gives you a feel as to how it would have been to garrison the place. This is the view south from the tower battlements:-

Roman remains from the replica tower:-

The North Gate was the only part of Housesteads Fort that opened to the north. From this angle Hadrian’s Wall itself snakes off mid right towards upper centre.

North Gate information:-

The fort’s northwest corner:-

Internal ruins:-

Fort’s southwest corner. The Fort’s museum building is in the background:-

Southeast corner:-

West wall of the fort and the museum building:-

Auckland Castle (also known as Auckland Palace) in the town of Bishop Auckland, County Durham, is the former palace of the Prince Bishops of Durham.

It houses a collection of paintings known as the Zurbaráns, which are definitely worth seeing.

The exterior of the Castle/Palace wasn’t at its best when we visited as there was some refurbishment work going on at the side of the Castle nearer the town. That was swathed in plastic. (Our usual luck then.)

Gateway at side:-

Bishop’s quarters:-

Visitor’s entrance. This may have been temporary due to the works:-

The Castle’s/Palace’s chapel, to the right of the entrance, is impressive.

Altar + stained glass windows:-

A marble altarpiece sits against the wall:-

The chapel organ is set on the wall above your head where you enter. The organist’s access is via wht looks like a precarious circular staircase whose upper part is seen to the right here:-

Ceiling. The ceiling isn’t curved. I stitched two photos to show it as a whole. It is elaborately painted:-

Clerestory detail:-

Marble pillar:-

Hamish Hamilton, 1956, 382 p, including ii p Bibliography and x p Index.

This book has been languishing on my tbr pile for decades. Quite why I left it so long I’m not sure but I’m glad now I picked it up. The author was clearly well versed in his subject. It is lucidly written and mercifully free of the alphanumeric soup of formation designations which tends to bedevil works of military history. This one focuses more on the personalities central to the story of Turkey’s involvement in the Great War – the Young Turks, Mustafa Kemal, Lord Kitchener, Winston Churchill, and the various commanders – as well as the details of the many military engagements which marked the Dardanelles enterprise.

The idea out of which the landings on Gallipoli arose came from Lt-Col Hankey, Secretary of the War Council, as an attempt to evade the impasse on the Western Front, where the Allies were neither advancing nor killing more Germans than British soldiers were being killed, by a flanking move through Turkey and the Balkans. Moorehead outlines the political manœvrings between Kitchener and Churchill (First Lord of the Admiralty) on the for side and Lord Fisher (First Sea Lord) with various others against. The issue would lead in the end to the break-up of Churchill and Fisher’s hitherto close friendship.

The aim of the operations was first, using obsolete battleships (whose loss could be borne) to force a passage of The Narrows, a pinch point between the Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmara, and then, on to Constantinople in the hope of prising Turkey out of the war. The initial solely naval effort to do so having foundered on an undetected minefield, plans were made for an amphibious landing (actually two) to take the Gallipoli peninsula and protect the flank of a further naval expedition though the Narrows. This amphibious landing was the biggest in history up to that point. It was planned in three weeks. (Compare Operation Overlord in 1944, which took nearly two years to prepare.)

Turkey had recently suffered a series of military humiliations in the Balkan wars of the early Twentieth Century, leading to the Young Turks seizing control of the government. Their hold was precarious though, and another defeat might have brought their downfall. The withdrawal of the Royal Navy, seen as all-powerful, and its French counterpart after their initial setbacks led to an upsurge in Turkish confidence and, Moorehead goes on to say, acted as a trigger for Turkish resentment to find for itself a target in its minority (and Christian) Armenian population upon whom the government thereupon instituted a policy of genocide – murder, rape (Moorehead uses the words “molest women” the first time he deals with this but the more accurate term later) and forced migration amounting to a death march. The strong implication is that without the Allied ships’ withdrawal the persecution of the Armenians would not have occurred.

The Great War in general was a catalogue of lost opportunities or doomed attempts to follow up early success. Moorehead says that over Gallipoli in particular hung a peculiar lethargy, a miasma of indecision. The one exception to this was Mustafa Kemal, who would come to be known later as Kemal Ataturk and who twice, in the hills above Anzac during the first landings and again near Suvla Bay for the later one, managed to be by happenstance in the correct spot to appreciate the danger for the Turks inherent in the situation and to forestall Allied progress. (Some idea of his desperation and borderline fanaticism is that one of his orders at Anzac read, in part, “I don’t order you to attack. I order you to die.”) None of this excuses the failure of General Stopford, commander at Suvla, (with his insistence, the weariness of his men notwithstanding, that no advance could take place without artillery support) to understand there were no Turkish entrenchments there which required such an insurance, nor of overall Commander Ian Hamilton to impress upon Stopford the necessity of quick movement into the hills when briefing him in the first place.

Moorehead is good on the conditions endured by the troops – not least the depredations ensured by the infestations of flies as summer approached, landing on food as soon as it was uncovered so that no mouthful was without its insect accompaniment – and their diverions when no fighting was taking place. With dead bodies and excrement also prevalent it is no surprise that dysentery was soon rampant among the soldiers – even the headquarters staff. British soldiers’ rations were almost entirely of bully beef, whose fat melted in the can, supplemented by plum and apple jam, with no vegetables to vary the diet. By contrast any army officer invited aboard one of the ships – away from the flies, the lice and the smell of death and decay – marvelled at clean linen, glasses, plates, meat, fruit and wine. (Of course, on land there was a decent prospect of surviving a battle; but if a ship went down you most likely drowned.)

As a precursor to Turkey’s entry into the war, and without their say, so the Germans had mined the Dardanelles (obstruction of which was an act of war) so blocking the vast majority of Russia’s exports. Russia’s grain and other exports piled up in the Golden Horn before their ships had to sail back to Russia. When the time was ripe once more to reopen trade the Revolution in that country had removed (the now Soviet) interest in the trade. According to Moorehead (at time of writing in 1956) that pre-war trade through the Dardanelles had never revived in the forty years since.

One of the aspects of the Gallipoli battles I had not realised before was the extent of submarine operations. Several British submarines penetrated into the Sea of Marmara and devastated Turkish shipping there. One submariner even swam ashore to blow up an important railway line. German submarines – easily able to access the Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar as no technology then existed to detect or prevent them – managed to torpedo some Allied warships.

The campaign saw military innovation on a large scale: as well as the experimental use of submarines and aircraft, radio, aerial bombs, land mines and other new devices, it trialled the firing of modern naval guns against shore artillery and the landing of soldiers by small boats on an enemy coast. But the story is mainly of opportunities missed and

Nevetheless it may have continued for much longer (and Moorehead suggests even succeeded in its aims) had not the Australian journalist Keith Murdoch arrived and witnessed the danger and squalor in the dugouts, the sickness, the monotonous food, the general depression. Despite being only a few hours at the front, in collaboration with the only British journalist Kitchener had allowed on the expedition, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, he planned to bypass the usual channels and break the agreement not to send reports without submitting them first to the censor at headquarters. His private letter to the Australian Prime Minister reached the eyes of Lloyd George (by now UK Prime Minister) who himself bypassed official channels by circulating it directly to the Dardanelles Committee without first asking Hamilton for his comments. The man sent out to take over from Hmailton and assess the situation for himself, Lt-Gen Charles Monro, already firmly believed that the war could only be won on the Western Front by killing Germans, Turks did not count.

Thus was set in train the process, sanctioned in the end by a visit from Kitchener himself, which led to the withdrawal of troops, at first only from Anzac and Suvla. That this was accomplished without the Turks getting wind of it – at Anzac the opposing lines were in places no more than ten yards apart – and with no loss, with the help of the famous improvised device of the self-firing rifle using dripping water from a can to fill another attached to the trigger or fuses and candles to burn through string and release a weight, in retrospect still seems astonishing.

That left only the beachhead at Cape Helles, upon which the German commander of the Turks, Liman von Sanders, unleashed a delayed attack accompanied by the heaviest artillery bombardment of the campaign on the now depleted British force the day before the final 17,000 troops were to be taken off. The British fire in response, perhaps inspired by desperation, was so devastating that the follow-up Turkish infantry refused to charge – something rarely seen before on the peninsula. This repulse convinced von Sanders that there would be no further British evacuation, but of course there was. Yet again the withdrawal was completed in the utmost secrecy and highly successful. Despite widescale destruction of supplies as the withdrawal took place the booty of food, weapons and ammunition retrieved from Cape Helles by the Turks took two years to clear up.

The hopes of those who advocated withdrawal never came to fruition, none of the troops from Gallipoli (save the Anzacs) were ever sent to the Western Front. Many more than had landed on Gallipoli were posted instead to the Salonika front or drawn into the long desert campaign against Turkey in Sinai and Palestine. Towards the end of 1918 plans were even well advanced to try again to force the Narrows by ship but were pre-empted by the Armistice.

While never neglecting the other side of the argument Moorehead’s position on the Gallipoli campaign is clear throughout the book; that its objective was worthwhile, and achievable, that its success would have shortened the war, given succour to Russia and even prevented the Revolution there and so given history a different direction.

A cruel comment on the whole business is that no special medal was awarded to those who took part.

Pedant’s corner:- “England” or “English” are used extremely often as the descriptive term for the UK or British respectively, which last also of course encompassed Empire/Dominion troops. Otherwise; Novorossik (Novorossiysk,) De Robeck (at the start of a sentence x 2. The man’s surname was de Robeck, the capital ‘D’ is therefore erroneous,) Keyes’ (several times; Keyes’s,) “on the tide” (this was in the Mediterranean. I always understood that the Mediterranean had very little in the way of tides,) “for all the control exercised on then” (on them,) Liman von Sanders’ (von Sanders’s,) thtat (that,) d’Oyly-Hughes’ (d’Oyley-Hughes’s,) commandos (these didn’t exist in units called such until World War 2,) Xerxes’ (Xerxes’s.) “At the the front” (only one ‘the’,) “rising to a crescendo” (a perennial favourite, this; the crescendo is the rise, not its culmination.)

This will be my final entry for Judith’s meme now collated by Katrina.

This one concentrates on Scotland’s best writer of the twentieth century; J Leslie Mitchell, better known as Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

Here you’ll find his classic A Scots Quair, whose first instalment, Sunset Song, is the best Scottish novel of the past 150 years plus.

Also present are his two Science Fiction novels Three Go Back and Gay Hunter, his historical novel Spartacus, two other novels, two collections of shorter stories and a history book, Nine Against the Unknown, recounting the voyages of various explorers.

Another collection of his shorter fiction Smeddum is on my tbr pile as is A Scots Hairst, which contains non-fiction pieces.

We had no idea before we went that Ashby de la Zouch had an old ruined castle, but as we were doing the detour round the town required by the street fair blocking the main road we saw a sign pointing to it.

As old castles go it’s one of the better ones.

From entrance:-

Welcome Board:-

First building:-

Further portion:-

Picture window:-

The fireplace on the left wall has the remains of shields on it:-

Interior:-

The castle was demolished as the result of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms:-

Arms and Armour Press, 1977, 406 p, including Index, plus iii p Introduction by David G Chandler, iv p Author’s Preface, four sheets of Maps and Plans, iv p Contents. First published 1912.

The Author’s Preface notes the Napoleonic Wars as an evolution, the time of change from war as involving only the clash of armies to something which involved whole nations instead.

The main body of the book follows the course of the campaign of 1813 from Napoloeon’s initial invasion to its culmination at Liepzig, the largest engagement of the Napoleonic Wars, with a brief description of the minor battle at Hanau in its aftermath. The essence of the tale is that the Russian adventure in 1812 had severely weakened Napoleon (not least in a deficit of cavalry in comparison with before, but also with many new recruits to be assimilated into his armies) if not his personal reputation as a master of war. His aura was still such that during the armistice in mid-1813 the Allies formed a pact not to engage separately the army of which the Emperor was directly in charge unless and until they had united and had a large superiority in numbers. This stricture did not apply to his Marshals who according to Petrie were very well-versed in tactical matters but a failure to train them in strategical considerations meant they were lacking at crucial junctures.

The decline in Napoleon’s abilities from his glory years is illustrated by contrasting his switherings in this campaign with his decisiveness at Jena seven years earlier. There was a fatal conflict of Napoleon’s priorities as Emperor, and dominator of Germany, compared with his military objectives. Here he tended to try to protect the land he held, specifically the city of Dresden, over his previous focus on destroying his enemies’ armies in the field. Petrie also quotes the man himself as saying experience in war does not count for much, that he thought himself as insightful in his youthful campaigns in Italy as he ever was later. His early battles were of course smaller affairs over which he could exercise a large degree of control. Noitwithstanding the fact that armies in 1813 were much more densely concentrated than in later times, by the time of Liepzig this sort of close oversight was perhaps beyond any one person.

It amused me when at one point Petrie wrote, “These extensive expeditions of considerable bodies of cavalry in the French rear are a peculiarity of this campaign which is the only instance of their employment on a large scale in a European War. Similar raids played a considerable part in the American Civil War of fifty years ago. In this case, as in 1813, the raids were generally carried out in a country the inhabitants of which were often sympathisers with the raiders, to whom they supplied food, forage, and information. Moreover, there were few or none of the modern facilities for sending information to the other side. It seems more than doubtful what success such raids could hope for in these days of telegraphs in Europe. (My emphasis.) Petrie notes a like raid by Petrushenko in the then recent Russo-Japanese War which, “can hardly be deemed a great success, and it was only possible to carry it out at all owing to the route being taken through an area devoid of telegraphs.” The thought of such wires being cut in the furtherance of raiding activities does not seem to have occurred to him. And didn’t the Boers in the also recent South African War in effect also use tactics like this? Of course the presence of technologies such as the telegraph, telephone, and radio, did not negate the opportunity for operations behind the lines in later wars.

The language of the text can be a little precious. Petrie uses unnecessary formulations such as “We left Oudinot, at 11 am,” “We now return to Ney,” etc, and there is the usual alphanumeric soup of divisions and Roman-numeralled corps. The four sheets of maps (seventeen diagrams in total) are more or less useless not only since they require awkward folding out but also because they are affixed to pages towards the end of the book, nowhere near the parts of the text they are meant to illuminate. Their appearance is also too cluttered.

Pedant’s corner:- “This broke down one” (broke down once,) England (The United Kingdom,) “6 per cent. on the then population” (of the then,) throu (through,) Friederichs’ (Friederichs’s,) many ionstances of names ending in s being treated this way – Dolffs’ (Dolffs’s,) Reuss’ (Reuss’s,) even one where the final s is not sounded and the possessive therefore positively demands “s’s” – a missing full stop, “unable note Bulöw’s advance” (unable to note,) Probetheida (Probstheida,) “came to nought” (nought = the number zero, ‘came to naught,’)|Naumburg (elsewhere Naumberg.)