The Ironclad Prophecy Read online

  NO MAN’S WORLD

  THE IRONCLAD

  PROPHECY

  PAT KELLEHER

  “When sorrows come, they come not single spies

  But in battalions.”

  – Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5,

  William Shakespeare

  For Niall and Niamh

  An Abaddon BooksTM Publication

  www.abaddonbooks.com

  [email protected]

  First published in 2011 by Abaddon BooksTM, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

  Editors: Jenni Hill & David Moore

  Cover Art: Pye Parr

  Design: Simon Parr & Luke Preece

  Marketing and PR: Michael Molcher

  Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

  Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

  No Man’s WorldTM created by Pat Kelleher

  Copyright © 2011 Rebellion. All rights reserved.

  No Man’s WorldTM, Abaddon Books and Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All right reserved.

  ISBN (ePUB): 978-1-84997-285-7

  ISBN (MOBI): 978-1-84997-286-4

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to thank Stephen Maugham and the Broughtonthwaite Historical Society for their continuing support. I am grateful to Faye Joy for her dedication in undertaking research and tracking down French newspaper reports and primary documents concerning the Harcourt Event and the subsequent Lefeuvre Find. I am also grateful to the estate of the late Arthur Cooke for continued access to his collection. I should also like to thank Ellie McDonald at the Broughtonthwaite Museum, who brought to my attention some of their more recent acquisitions concerning the Fusiliers. I am indebted to Bill Crinson at the British Library archive of British Periodicals, for his encyclopaedic knowledge on the history of British magazines of the period, invaluable help in tracking down issues of Great War Science Stories and for providing information on the works of Harold G. Cargill. Special thanks must go to all those people who have kindly contacted the publishers and offered me access to private family documents and photographs in my continuing research. Once more, I must thank my wife, Penny, for her continuing support and dedicated work in transcribing interviews.

  13th BATTALION PENNINE FUSILIERS:

  COMPANY PERSONNEL

  Battalion HQ.

  C.O.: 2nd Lieutenant J. C. Everson

  2C.O.: Company Sergeant Major Ernest Nelson

  Company Quartermaster Sergeant Archibald Slacke

  Pte. Henry ‘Half Pint’ Nicholls (batman)

  Royal Army Chaplain: Father Arthur Rand

  (CF4) (‘Captain’) War Office Kinematographer Oliver Hepton

  ‘C’ Company

  No 1 Platoon

  C.O.: Lieutenant Morgan

  No. 2 Platoon

  C.O.: 2nd Lieutenant Palmer

  2C.O.: Platoon Sergeant Herbert Gerald Hobson

  1 Section

  I.C.: Lance Corporal Thomas ‘Only’ Atkins

  Pte. Harold ‘Gutsy’ Blood

  Pte. Peter ‘Nobby’ Clark

  Pte. Wilfred Joseph ‘Mercy’ Evans

  Pte. Bernard ‘Prof’ Gates

  Pte. George ‘Porgy’ Hopkiss

  Pte. Leonard ‘Pot-Shot’ Jellicoe

  Pte. David Samuel ‘Gazette’ Otterthwaite

  Pte. Eric‘Chalky’ White

  RAMC

  Regimental Aid Post

  RMO: Captain Grenville Lippett

  Red Cross Nurses

  Sister Betty Fenton

  Sister Edith Bell

  Driver Nellie Abbott (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry)

  Orderlies

  Pte. Edgar Stanton

  Pte. Edward Thompkins

  Machine Gun Corps (Heavy Section) ‘I’ Company: I-5 HMLS Ivanhoe

  C.O.: 2nd Lieutenant Arthur Alexander Mathers

  Pte. Wally Clegg (Driver)

  Pte. Frank Nichols (Gearsman)

  Pte. Alfred Perkins (Gearsman)

  Pte. Norman Bainbridge (Gunner)

  Pte. Jack Tanner (Gunner)

  Pte. Reginald Lloyd (Loader/ Machine Gunner)

  Pte. Cecil Nesbit (Loader / Machine Gunner)

  D Flight 70 Squadron: Sopwith 1 ½ Strutter

  Lieutenant James Robert Tulliver (Pilot)

  Corporal Jack Maddocks (Observer)

  PREFACE

  “It’s a Long, Long Way to Tipperary...”

  THE MYSTERY OF the Harcourt Crater galvanised a generation when, in 1916, nine hundred men of the 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers vanished from the Somme. Ten years afterwards, a find in a French field revealed silent film footage, letters and journals, describing the Fusiliers’ existence on another planet, only for it to be declared a hoax and forgotten as time passed.

  Almost a hundred years later, the publication of No Man’s World: Black Hand Gang revived interest in the case of the missing Pennine Fusiliers. Since then, members of the public have contacted the publisher with claims of new evidence, of unseen documents and letters that have lain in ordinary boxes and in dusty attics for decades, unregarded.

  This volume, continuing the account of the Pennine Fusiliers’ fate, has been able to include this new information, where appropriate, with the permission of the families, in order to shed light on one of the biggest military cover-ups of the last century.

  It must be remembered, however, that it was not just the 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers that vanished that day. The HMLS Ivanhoe, one of Britain’s secret weapons, the new-fangled ‘tanks,’ also disappeared, along with its eight-man crew.

  While the mystery of the Pennines inspired lurid pulp tales in magazines such as Great War Science Stories, and featured in adventures like The Curse of the 13th Battalion; The Golem of No Man’s Land; Zeppelin from Another World and Crater of the Somme-bies, the Ivanhoe appeared in only a small number of tales published during 1928. They were written by Harold G. Cargill who, the publication’s editors sensationally suggested, was an eyewitness survivor of the Fusiliers, returned from the planet.

  While there was no evidence to suggest that Cargill was ever a member of the Pennine Fusiliers, his name not appearing in any official war records, nor indeed in a list of the missing, it is clear from his personal correspondence that he knew more than he was telling, or perhaps was allowed to tell.

  The Ivanhoe and its crew were portrayed in those tales as cheery, jingoistic modern day knights-in-armour, riding out across a strange planet on colourful, rip-roaring quests.

  The truth, however, is more inauspicious.

  Military records show that the Ivanhoe, with five other tanks from I Company, Machine Gun Corp, Heavy Section, was ordered into battle on 1st November 1916 to support an assault on Harcourt Wood by the Pennines. Of those tanks, three broke down before they reached the front line. I4, the female tank Igraine, was mired in mud and abandoned. Wreckage of I3, the Invicta,was found at the bottom of the Harcourt Crater itself. It is assumed that it drove blindly over the edge, moments after the crater’s appearance, killing all on board.

  All of the major events in this account are drawn, where possible
, from primary sources, including fragments of the Ivanhoe’s tank diary. Scribbled in faded pencil and almost indecipherable in places, they were found among the papers of Arthur Cooke, author of The Harcourt Crater: Hoax or Horror? While incomplete, the fragments do give some clues to the apparent fate of the Ivanhoe and its crew, a fate that is firmly entrenched in that of the Pennine Fusiliers.

  And it is uplifting to discover from these sources that while the Pennines were fighting for their existence in a place that was, most definitely, a long, long way from Tipperary, throughout the travails and terrors they had to endure their hearts did, indeed, remain right here.

  Pat Kelleher

  Broughtonshaw

  December, 2010

  PROLOGUE

  “Here Comes The British Navy,

  Sailing On The Land...”

  Elveden, Suffolk, May 1916

  THE GREAT ARMOURED beast stood passively, like a great destrier waiting to be ridden into battle.

  Lieutenant Arthur Mathers tried to hold his nerve in front of his men but, despite his efforts, the muscle beneath his right eye began to twitch uncontrollably. His palms began to sweat and he started to hyperventilate. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest.

  To his men beside him, this thing was a magnificent brute. They crowded around it admiringly, patting its flanks and inspecting it like a prize thoroughbred.

  “Bleedin’ hell, it’s a sight, isn’t it, sir?” Wally Clegg, the small, thin-haired cockney beside Mathers, beamed with a joy the officer couldn’t feel.

  “Yes, Clegg. Yes it is,” said Mathers, trying to temper his rising fear.

  Reginald Lloyd looked over at the small man with the weary air of one given to correcting those less educated than himself. “It’s not an it, Wally. Tanks are a he or a she.” Reggie had been a butler to minor aristocracy, but had joined up to ‘do his bit,’ a duty he seemed to interpret as trying to instil some manners into his crewmates.

  “Well, begging your pardon, Reggie, but I ain’t no vet. How do you tell them apart?”

  “Most of us, Wally, paid attention on the course, but for your benefit, both types have front and rear machine guns, but females have smaller sponsons either side with two Hotchkiss machine guns in each, while the males, like this one here, have bigger sponsons, each with a six-pounder gun and a Hotchkiss.”

  “By God, the Hun’ll pay now,” said Wally, with evident glee. He was a chipper bloke, Wally. A motor omnibus driver before the war, he had a wife and eight kids. Loved his family, he did, and talked about them at the drop of a hat. It was a pity that they were all dead, having died in a Zeppelin raid on the East End.

  Norman Bainbridge smacked his hand on the barrel of the six-pounder. “Aye, the Hun’ll be running scared all right, but only because of your driving!” Norman had been in the music hall, as he was never shy of reminding people, although often so far down the bill you needed spectacles to see his name. Life and soul he was; wherever there was a pianola, there he was leading the singing.

  Frank Nichols, an electrical engineer, answered a cryptic advert placed in The Motor Cycle magazine by the War Office and ended up here. He walked around, inspecting the huge caterpillar tracks. “I tell you what; I certainly wouldn’t like to see this bugger coming at me, Alfie.”

  Alfie Perkins, his fellow gearsman, was checking out the one-and-a-half-ton hydraulic steering tail, with its iron wheels, at the rear of the tank. He’d joined the Motor Machine Gun Service to be a motorcycle machine gunner, before volunteering for the new Heavy Section. “Me neither. I wouldn’t want to be the Hun when we get over there.”

  The fearsome metal beast before him was a Mark I tank. At thirty-two feet long and eight feet high, with its distinctive rhomboid shape, the ironclad land ship weighed twenty-eight tons. This was Britain’s new secret weapon. It was going to help turn the tide of the war and break the deadlock on the Somme. And put the wind up Fritz. More than that, this one, designated I5, was theirs.

  The tank had been tuned, the guns cleaned, and Cecil Nesbitt had just put the finishing touches to the name, now painted on the side of the front track horn. Cecil was the youngest crewmember. An orphan and a truculent sod, he’d been signed up by his Platoon Commander, who just wanted shot of him, and he had found a real home. He looked to big Jack Tanner, who nodded with satisfaction. Jack used to be a boxer in a travelling fair until he joined up. His brother was in the Royal Navy and had been killed at the battle of Jutland. He thought joining the ‘Land Navy’ a fitting tribute to him.

  They stood back and looked at it with pride. HMLS Ivanhoe.

  Outside of the top-secret camp at Elveden, very few people had seen a tank, let alone knew what one was, and that was no surprise. The project was so secret that most men applied without any real idea of what they were applying for. They just knew the pay was slightly better. Three separate perimeters surrounded the camp. No one could get in or out, and it was impossible to get hold of passes for leave. Should they actually manage to see anyone from outside, there was a one hundred pound fine, or six months’ imprisonment, if they disclosed anything about what went on in there. No wonder they were nicknamed the Hush Hush Crowd.

  Then there were the months of training, without any hint of what it was they were training for. There was lots of drill and training on Vickers machine guns, but with no reasons why. It was months before they even saw a real tank.

  And the tank before them wasn’t just any tank. This was their tank. They were learning to drive it. It wasn’t easy. It took four people just to steer it.

  Today was merely battle practice, that was all, but Mathers was nervous.

  He had a secret phobia of enclosed spaces, but he would master his fear. He would master this brute machine and make it his.

  “Right” he said, as his crew crowded about the sponson hatch. “Top brass will be watching today. I’ve even heard a rumour that the King himself might be coming to watch. So, let’s show them and the rest of I Company what the Ivanhoe can do, eh?”

  His crew were in a jocular mood and gave a rowdy cheer.

  “That shower in the Igraine reckon they can reach the ‘enemy trenches’ before we can,” continued Mathers. “I’ve got five guineas in the Officer’s Mess that says we’ll beat them.”

  It may have been just a training exercise, but now there was money on it, it was serious. This meant war. They entered through the hatches at the rear of the sponsons. At barely four foot high they were a bit of a squeeze, and you had to watch your head, too.

  Inside, the compartment was barely five feet high. They couldn’t stand up straight without cracking their heads on the low roof. The Daimler engine almost reached the roof. With a small wooden platform behind it, it sat squarely in the middle of the white-painted compartment, taking up most of the space. Two wooden gangways, less than two feet across and eight feet long, ran down either side.

  These opened out into the sponsons, the turrets projecting out either side of the tank, where the six-pounder guns sat, manoeuvred by the sheer strength of the gunner alone. Behind them were the belt-fed Hotchkiss machine guns. To the rear of each sponson was a small entrance hatch.

  At the back of the engine was the large starting handle. It took four men to turn it in order to start the engine up.

  Either side of that, each caterpillar track had its own gear system, each operated by a gearsman. Privates Alfie Perkins and Frank Nichols manned the independent gears, one for each track.

  At the front, in a slightly raised cockpit, Private Wally Clegg, the small bantam cockney, sat in the right-hand driver’s seat, and the tank commander, Lieutenant Mathers, in the left seat, next to him, to operate the steering brakes.

  Once the hatches clanged shut, sealing the men in, Mathers felt the panic rising in him. Wally ran the engine up. Frank and Alfie stood by their track gears at the back. The Ivanhoe set off across the training ground.

  The tank commander, using steering brakes for each track, could only make slight tur
ns along with the driver, using the wheel that controlled the steering tail. Large swinging manoeuvres took four men.

  The engine was too loud for verbal instructions, so Mathers had to get the attention of the gearsmen by banging a wrench on a pipe. He gave a signal with his hand to swing right. He stopped the tank and locked the differential gear. Alfie put his track gear into neutral, stopping the right hand track, while Frank pushed the left track gear into first speed, swinging the tank to the right. The tank had to stop again, while Mathers re-engaged the main gears, and Alfie took the right track out of neutral. It was a long and laborious process.

  Obstacles filled the training ground: earthwork ramps, trenches, craters, barbed wire entanglements and deep ditches, all to test the prowess of the tank crews. The noise of the engines filled the training area, as six tanks of 2 Section, I Company set off over the course, the guns blazing away at targets. The Igraine got itself ditched in a crater. The Illustrious threw a track.

  The Ivanhoe advanced on a large crater, teetering on the lip until the front track horns tilted, and the tank crashed down. The tracks caught the ground in the trough and began to haul the ironclad up the far side.

  With the engine running, the temperature inside was becoming almost unbearable, and the compartment soon filled with petrol vapour and cordite fumes.