George Harbottle Goes to War
George Harbottle Goes to War Based on the memoir ‘Civilian Soldier’ by George Harbottle Illustrated and researched by Judith Dobie Edited and designed by Hannah Kennedy
“I am a Geordie, born and bred in Newcastle.”
“This is the story of how I went to fight in France in the Great War of 1914 to 1918...“
“In 1910, when I was 16 and had just got into the school cricket XI, my father took me from school and had me apprenticed to the shipping company Cairns Noble on the Newcastle Quayside.�
“Newcastle is a city built on coal. Cairns Noble were shipowners and shipbrokers who organised the export of coal and coke from the River Tyne to the continent.”
“I began work each day at 9am and went home when the work was done. I earned 7s 6d a week, paid monthly in golden sovereigns and real silver coins.”
Ve n ts p
ils
“The coal went to Helsinki, St Petersburg, Lubeck, Ventspils and Riga... Bergen
Newcastle Ham burg
don Lon
ki sin Hel
Riga ck be u L
Guttenberg Bruges Cologne
St Petersburg
“Although I hadn’t wanted to leave school, I grew to love my job; working with the Scandinavian boat owners and sorting the shipping of coal from the Newcastle Quayside to the Baltic sea ports. I learned about the river and the port, the different loading places. I learned about foreign parts and about coal and coke and the loading and storing and shipping of it.”
Danzig
...and the ships returned to Newcastle with timber pit props for the mines.”
“I was out and about all day on the river and docks.”
“No exams anymore, even office work at No. 1 Quayside was fun with a room full of chums, busy with telephone calls from all over Europe. This is how we heard news of a wider world. There were rumours of war but the rumours came and went and generally life was good.�
“What I liked best was sport - cricket most of all.”
Tuesday
Thursday
Friday
another evening...
“Every Saturday I played league cricket, home and away. Tuesday and Thursday evening was practice at the nets. Sometimes I would play tennis or golf as well.”
“In winter there were parlour games, dancing, theatre visits.”
Table tennis
Billiards
Blind man’s buff
Cards
“I wanted to get on so I learned French and learned to type. I liked reading, I went to political meetings...” Theatre
Dancing
“and of course on Sunday there was church.”
“At this time not many people had telephones but as my family had one, it was my job at weekends and after business hours to take telegrams for my principal, Mr Noble. Communication with the continent was always by telegram, and more and more telegrams came as the Scandinavian ships worried about their businesses and what they should do if war came.”
“Now there was an ominous feeling of impending war. If this happened I knew my job would vanish overnight, and that my life would change completely.”
“So war was on my mind when on August Bank Holiday 1914, a beautiful summer’s day, I sat with my cricket team outside the pavilion at Gosforth Park, waiting for the opposition to turn up.”
“Herbert Waugh, our team mate and a serving territorial in A-Company of the 6th Battalion Northumberland Fusiliers, had been called up. The 6th Battalion recruited from our sort - the Quaysiders, the commercial houses, the banks. My friend, Laurie Benson, and I decided we would enlist with them too.”
“The next work day - Tuesday - all the staff at Cairns Noble were called together. One of the firm’s directors, Russell Cairns, was a Major in the Territorial Field Artillery. He addressed us in his uniform, on his way to report for duty. If we enlisted, he said, our jobs would be kept open for our return and our salary paid.” “Jobs kept open!” “Salaries paid!”
“First thing the following morning, Laurie and I went to enlist at St George’s drill hall. The newspapers said it would be a short war, that the Russians would occupy Berlin, it would all be over by Christmas. Laurie and I hoped the war would last long enough for us to get to France.”
“After a medical, we were accepted into the regiment…”
“and sworn in.”
“I will, as in duty bound, honestly and faithfully defend His Majesty, His Heirs, and Successors, in Person, Crown and Dignity, against all enemies, and will observe and obey all orders of His Majesty, His Heirs and Successors, and of the Generals and Officers set over me. So help me God.”
“We were given uniforms and told to report next day to A-Company in Tilley’s Dance Hall in New Market Street. There we were equipped with a rifle and bayonet, leather belt and pouches and an identity disc.” Billets in halls
Billets in schools
Laurie and George
“After enlistment, life followed a pattern of billets in halls and schools and getting used to military life.”
“Eventually, in September, the whole battalion - four companies with four platoons to each company - was assembled at Gosforth Park with the rest of the Brigade. 6,000 men in all meant 16 men to each tent - a tight fit.�
“The Battalion spent the winter in various halls in the area. Our company was billeted in the Miners’ Hall in Seaton Burn. That wooden floor was the hardest I have ever slept on. This was our life...”
5.30am Reveille
Parade
Tidying
Cleaning
8am breakfast
Night operations 2 hours on, 4 hours off
Cup of tea
Kit cleaning
Best of all firing practice
Drilling
“When spring came, a move abroad was imminent. We were ready for it, afraid that the fighting would be over before we even crossed the Channel.”
“On the Friday 16th of April 1915, the Northumbrian Territorial Division began to assemble at Seaton Sluice. Five days later we marched together to Blyth to board a train for the Front.”
“By then I had become a Lance Sergeant (3 stripes but still only at Corporal’s pay!).”
“The journey took forever. We didn’t know where we were going, but we thought it was France because we didn’t have any desert equipment for Egypt. There were many stops as the train skirted London, heading to the south coast. In the middle of the night, we boarded ship and crossed to France on a calm, moonlit sea to dock in Boulogne, France, in the early hours of Wednesday 21st of April 1915. The first time ever that I had crossed the channel. Then another train ride followed by a march to Steeroorde.”
“Although we had no rest and little food since setting off, our spirits were high - we were at the start of our great adventure!�
On the 22nd of April at Ypres, the Germans launched their first gas attack of the war. On the road to Steeroorde the 6th Battalion passed a pathetic trail of old men, women and children making their way from the battle area.
This was the first of many similar scenes they saw.
George fought through the war. His first battle was at St Julien, where the Northumberland Brigade suffered heavy casualties and his employer’s only son, Lieutenant W. B. Noble of A-Company, was killed in action. His friend, Laurie Benson, with whom he had played cricket, enlisted, trained, drilled and together survived St Julien, was killed in a mortar attack on the 11th April 1916. For George this was the ‘saddest day of the war’. George survived the battle of the Somme and the Arras offensive before taking a commission in the Machine Gun Corps. When he left the Northumberland Battalion there was only a handful left of the men with whom he landed in France on the 21st April 1915. He won the Military Cross and Croix de Guerre (Palm) for action at Chateau du Bucenzy. He fought with the 15th Battalion of the Machine Gunnery Corps along the Front, including Soissons and Lens Hulluch.
Newcastle Quayside
Papers came through for George’s release at the end of February 1919 and he was demobbed at Catterick one lunchtime, took the 2.30pm train to Newcastle and two days later resumed his business career at the offices of Mann, MacNeal and Co. Ltd on the Newcastle Quayside. George donned his uniform only once more, to receive his Military Cross from King George V at Buckingham Palace, alongside his brother Tom.
George Harbottle
George Harbottle Goes to War is the story of how the life of a young Geordie was radically changed by the Great War. Based on George’s memoir, ‘Civilian Soldier’ with supplementary information from ‘The War Diary of Henry Laurence Benson’, this graphic novel illustrates how the impending world war transformed the lives of thousands of young men who bravely volunteered to serve King and country.
