The World in 1914

For many years the boiling pot of European politics had simmered away in the background of people’s everyday lives. Militarism was rife throughout Europe and the British Empire was involved in a naval arms race with Germany, a result of the Kaiser’s policy of Welt Politik.

The German leadership wanted to ensure that the nation had it’s ‘place in the sun.’ They wanted to create an overseas colonial empire and move away from their traditional Eurocentric foreign policy as formulated by Bismarck.

The creation of a powerful fleet of warships and such an aggressive foreign policy upset the European balance of power and put Germany on a collision course with Great Britain. The seriousness with which the British Government viewed this issue is illustrated by the abandonment of the age old policy of ‘splendid isolation,’ where Britain remained aloof from conflicting European alliances.

In 1904 Britain put aside her colonial differences with France and entered into an alliance known as Entente Cordiale. She followed this in 1907 with a similar agreement with Russia. Opposing the Entente was the German lead Triple Alliance that tied her to the decaying Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy. However, Italy’s position would change as war approached as the chance to improve her lot at the expense of her traditional enemy, Austria-Hungary, proved too strong to resist. Thus Germany found itself potentially surrounded and facing the real possibility of a war on two fronts.

The early years of the new century had seen several international flashpoints but mutual common sense and a feeling of being not quite ready for war pervaded, allowing the European status quo to carry on.

In the summer of 1914 it was to explode in the most cataclysmic fashion imaginable and destroy millions of people’s lives forever.

The early summer of 1914 was a spectacularly warm one. The Cook family business continued as normal with all three brothers now having settled in to running the company following the death of their father. Down in Brighton at the school, Eddie Cook was busy with his studies and also making a name for himself on the cricket pitch, excelling as the school First Elevens all-rounder. The Brighton School Past & Present magazine reflects on the 1914 cricket season and in the notes on the First Elevens section he is described thus:

R.E. Cook. – Bowls at a good pace and keeps a splendid length; his batting shows a marked improvement; he hits well and with great power.

This was the Cook’s world in early 1914. A successful business had been passed from one generation to another with an heir from the next generation poised to take the business on into the middle of the still new 20^th century.

I have recently found the photograph below which is of King Edward VII memorial parade in May 1910. There are several pictures of this parade but I have never seen this one before and I was delighted to see some familiar faces. Almost in the centre of the photograph, staring directly at the camera, just below the banner of the Crawley Temperance Society is Uncle Ted. The two ladies on the right are Aunt Em and Ted’s wife Laura.

So Eddie’s parents are in the picture is it too much to hope that he is the boy turning round to speak to some friends? Of course we will never know.

Close to the front of this picture are gentlemen from the Crawley Rifle Club including young Bernard Taylor, looking splendid in a bowler hat, who was to join the Royal Flying Corp and win the Croix de Guerre during the Great War.

Everyone in the photograph would have the lives changed forever by the impending catastrophe. 

For Laura

Second Lieutenant R. E. Cook was never far from my thoughts last weekend. On Sunday April 13^th I travelled to Crawley to pay my respects. The previous weekend some of the townspeople were out in force to help prepare The Heroes Walk in the Memorial Park. Unfortunately, due to work commitments, I was unable to make the original planting but on Sunday I was able to rectify this by planting some special poppy seeds that I had brought back with me from my recent trip to Flanders.  I also managed to plant some poppy seeds in various other “Old Crawley” locations.

A hundred years ago in 1914 Eddie Cook was a school boy, the heir to the family building business, and surely must have been a delight to his parents.

Just four short years later, he was dead and 96 years ago his parents long grief was just starting.

I have often thought over the years just how painful this must have been for Ted and Laura. Sometime ago I composed a poem which I have called ‘For Laura.’

From the corner of the road

I saw you turn into the station

Just one more brave boy

Going back to the Front

To stem the German tide

To try and save our Nation.

Your first leave had come and gone

Towards the end, behind the grim exterior,

I saw my boy again

Just one more frightened boy

Having known the unknowable

And knowing that the final onslaught was to come.

Everywhere the talk was of

The Kaiser’s million extra men

I watched the train arrive and then

Came a brief, sad, wave

From my boy

The bravest of the brave.

The train pulled away from the platform

And six weeks later came the telegram

Just one more fallen boy

But mine – my heart, my love, my joy.

To leave us left to think of what might have been –

‘Died of wounds April Thirteenth 1918.

The Army Council express sympathy.’

Ninety-Six Year Ago...

Ninety-six years ago, Eddie Cook is dying of a gun shot wound to the abdomen. In the morning he will be found to be dead on admission at Mendinghem Casualty Clearing Station.

Second Lieutenant R.E. Cook had joined the 11^th Suffolk’s Battalion just in time to endure the Kaiser’s battle in March 1918. Having been fortunate enough to survive he and the remnants of his battalion were moved to the Armentieres sector little suspecting that this would be where the next German hammer blow would fall on 9^th April.

The Suffolks were sent out into a cornfield and told to dig in and keep the enemy at bay to the last man. Somehow some of the battalion escaped and various war maps and diaries show the 11^th Suffolks withdrawing over the Armentieres-Bailleul railway line on the 10/11^th April.

On the 11^th of April Haig issued his famous “Backs to the Wall” proclamation. The 11^th Suffolks war diary says that the battalion was not involved in any major fighting on that day but did set up outposts and sent out patrols. My best guess of what actually happened to Eddie Cook is that he was shot whilst leading a patrol to reconnoitre.

Tomorrow my family and I will be thinking of him. We remember.

The Last Post

Can any words I write do justice to the Last Post? No matter how many times I attend the ceremony it never fails to move me. The dedication shown by the buglers and the city of Ypres is humbling. For that brief moment their names are alive again. Tommy Butler looks across the way at Stan Killick. Charlie King is there underneath one of the arches and back across again, and up the stairs is Joe Johnson. Joe Johnson and his brother William were blown up in a trench together. They survived but sadly they were both killed before the end of the war.

There are over 55,000 names on the Menin Gate of men who disappeared into the mud amidst the carnage and the hell that was the Great War.

We should never forget.