Death of a Common Soldier: Private Thomas James Highgate
Gerald Morgan, FTCD
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.
(Rupert Brooke, The Soldier, 1-3 (1914) )
Thomas Highgate was born in Shoreham, near Sevenoaks, in Kent on 13 May 1895, the son of John, a farm labourer, and his wife Alice. He joined the 1 Royal West Kent (RWK) Regiment (B Company), 13th Brigade, 5th Division on 4 February 1913 and was stationed with it in Richmond Barracks in Inchicore in Dublin at the outbreak of the war on 4 August 1914. His age is a vital matter, for those under 19 in August 1914 (some 200 or so) were deemed ‘unfit for service overseas’. The Army was right to classify their under 19s in this way for what lay before the 1RWK was bound to tax the physical resources of even the most hardened of regular soldiers.
At 19 years and two months Tommy Highgate must have been among the youngest and possibly himself the youngest member of this heroic and justly famous battalion. He himself had more than an inkling of what to expect and duly made his will on 5 August 1914 by way of entry in his paybook (the common practice of soldiers at this time), leaving everything that he might expect from a grateful government on his death in battle to his Irish girlfriend, Miss Mary McNulty, of 3 Leinster Street, Phibsborough.
Tommy Highgate sailed with his battalion from Dublin at 2.20 a.m. on 14 August on the SS Gloucestershire and landed in France at Havre on 15 August, moving to a rest camp some 5 miles away. On 17 August he entrained with the battalion just after midnight for a 16-hour journey by Rouen and Amiens to Landreciesl, arriving early on 18 August and thence to camp at Maroilles, some 4 miles distant. Here for the next three days he prepared himself for the test to come and for military blunders and deeds of heroism far beyond anything now associated in the popular imagination with the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava.
On 21 August Tommy Highgate marched 17 miles in hot weather from Maroilles to Houdain, and on the following day experienced an even worse march over cobble stones through the mining villages south and west of Mons to a position along the Mons-Conde canal at St Ghislain. He was thus able to see for himself from his vantage point in the front line of battle the weight of the onslaught delivered by the vanguard of the German First Army under Generaloberst von Kluck (320,000 strong), closely supported on its left by the German Second Army under Generaloberst von Bülow (260,000 strong) and the German Third Army under Generaloberst von Hausen (180,000 strong) in the morning of 23 August. The British Expeditionary Force (100,000 strong) had sailed, travelled by train, and marched into the valleys of death and were to remain in peril of complete annihilation over the next ten days.
Tommy Highgate withdrew from the canal at midnight with the 1RWK to Wasmes, 2 miles behind the front line, which he reached at 6.a.m. By now Wasmes itself was subject to heavy shelling, and in the fighting the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment of the 13th Brigade was virtually surrounded and engaged in desperate hand-to-hand fighting. A and B Companies of the 1RWK were sent to their aid, and in the ensuing fighting Major C.G. Pack-Beresford, Capt W.C.O. Phillips and 2/Lt M.F. Broadwood (all of B Company) were killed, and Lt D.C.C. Sewell (also of B Company) mortally wounded. They were opposed by no fewer than 6 German battalions, and at 11.30 a.m. were ordered to retire. They fell back on St Waast La Vallee, , having been fighting and marching without sleep and without food continuously for 36 hours. Such was the baptism of fire of our young Kentish hero.
On 25 August Tommy Highgate found himself in an even more exhausting march along the western edge of the Foret De Mormal to 2 miles south west of Le Cateauc, which was reached at 5 p.m. The day had been stiflingly hot, but the rain came down in torrents on arrival at Le Cateauc. Tommy Highgate stumbled along with his companions without water or food, but on arrival at the new destination no supplies were forthcoming.
On 26 August at 4.0 a.m. the 13th Brigade took up a rearguard position to cover the retreat, but orders were changed soon after 7.0 by when Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien had decided to give battle. Needless to say, he was hopelessly outnumbered, his 55,000 men (II Corps + 4th Division) facing some 150,000 of von Kluck’s First Army which also had a gun superiority of 3 to 1. The divisional artillery to the right suffered under the German bombardment, and the extreme right (2nd Suffolks and 2nd Manchesters of the 14th Brigade and the 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of the 19th Brigade) was overwhelmed. At that point the Yorkshire Light Infantry of the 13th Brigade to the immediate right of the 1RWK was strongly attacked. The 1RWK retired, first to Reumont, where it took up a new covering position, and then at 4.30 p.m. to Estrees, 7 miles further on, reached at 10 p.m.
On the 27 August Tommy Highgate was under arms at 1.a.m., moving off with his battalion at 3.0 a.m., through St Quentin (about 9.0 a.m.), and then to Ollezyp, south east of Ham, reached at about 3 p.m. On the 28 August he had to endure another early start to Noyan and then to La Pommeraye, a distance of some 16 miles, a march that seemed to one officer ‘the finishing touch to human endurance’. August 29 was a day of rest and re-grouping, although the march resumed at 7.0 p.m., a further 4 miles to Carlepont along hopelessly congested roads. The march continued early again in the morning of 30 August through hilly country to Jaulzy, just south of the Aisne, reached in the afternoon.
On the 31 August Tommy Highgate endured another daunting march of 20 miles in great heat over steep hills to Crepy En Valpois. On the morning of 1 September marching gave way to fighting once more, and the brunt of the German attack fell on the 1RWK. A and D Companies in the centre withdrew in good order at 10 a.m., but C Company only with difficulty on the left. B Company remained in position, retiring about noon together with the Duke of Wellington’s Regiment and the Yorkshire Light Infantry.
The 1RWK reached Silly Le Long, near Nanteuil, in the eveningf of the 1 September. On the 2 September the march resumed, 11 miles to Cuisy, just north of the Marne. On the 3 September the march continued across the Marne, and thence south east up the valley, the battalion resting on the night of 3/4 September at Coulommiers, a village south west of La Ferte Sous Jouarre, the first good rest for ten days. On 4 September the 13th Brigade, now acting as rearguard to the 5th Division, moved south shortly before midnight. On 5 September Tommy Highgate is to be found marching at night through the Foret De Crecy and reaching Tournan at the end of this long retreat at 9.0 a.m.
It is indeed a great retreat and only heroic men, heroic beyond the imagination of modern youth, could have survived it. No praise can be too high for the men of 1RWK or for the youngest among them, Tommy Highgate. He is indeed a hero of Mons and of the retreat from Mons (a retreat that signifies a military catastrophe of the first magnitude).
But we now learn in accounts of these events of August and September 1914 that on 5 September 1914, the men of the 1RWK, taxed beyond any reasonable limits of endurance, received the news of an immediate advance to battle on the Marne as ‘welcome news’ and ‘a positive tonic’ (Atkinson, p.28).
The writer seems to be writing for an audience of idiots and imbeciles. We are supposed to imagine that these depleted and exhausted troops were suddenly reanimated in miraculous fashion (perhaps by a visitation from the angel of Mons). It is an account that strains all credulity, and naturally omits all mention of the court-martial of Tommy Highgate (whose lion heart had eventually faltered) that occupied the highest level of command of the BEF on 6-8 September 1914.
No one could appreciate better than Field-Marshal Sir John French the desperate condition of his men. The ‘condition of the Army’ was ‘shattered’ and the ‘effect of our losses at the battle of Le Cateau’ was ‘far-reaching’ (p.79).
By Friday, 28 August he fully realised that the losses in officers and men were ‘upwards of 15,000’, and he now found it ‘distressing, indeed, to look at some battalions, which I had seen near Mons only some three or four days earlier in all their fresh glory and strength, now brought down to a handful of men and two or three officers’ (p.89).
Little wonder that on 29 August ‘Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien expressed it as his opinion that the only course open to us was to retire to our base, thoroughly refit, re-embark and try to land at some favourable point on the coast-line’ (p.93).
Little wonder that Sir Douglas Haig should express to him on 4 September ‘some anxiety’ concerning ‘the state of his troops’ and should observe that ‘they stood in urgent need of rest and refitment’ (p.106). But, mirabile dictu, all that has changed on 5 September.
On that day Sir John French sends his Chief of the General Staff, Lieut.-Gen. Sir A.J. Murray, ‘to visit the Corps and Cavalry Commanders and ascertain exactly the condition of their troops’ (p.110). They were ‘all … in excellent spirits and eager for the advance’ (p,110).
How has this extraordinary change been effected?
On the 6 September Tommy Highgate, evidently beyond the limit of his physical and mental resources, and absent from his battalion for at the utmost two hours and perhaps only for a few minutes, is tried by Field General Court Martial for desertion and sentenced to death.
The sentence is confirmed by Sir John French on 7 September. At 5 a.m. on 8 September orders are sent to Brigadier-General Count A.E.W. Gleichen, commanding 15th Brigade, to execute Tommy Highgate ‘at once, as publicly as possible’.
Private Highgate is shot by the roadside at 7.07 as the men of the Cheshire and Dorsetshire Regiments of the 15th Brigade set out on the march from Boissy-Le-Chatel to Charnesseuil. It is a barbarous act, tarnishing the lustre of the heroic 1RWK, an act that is worthy only of the usurper and not the defender of liberties. And of this act the much-decorated Field-Marshal Sir John French is justly silent.
Nevertheless the name of Private Thomas Highgate is to be found in the Roll of Honour of this most honourable of regiments beneath that of his brother, Private C.E. Highgate, and preceded by Rupert Brooke’s famous poem.
Surely those who put him there understood the worthiness of his conduct better than the parish councillors of Shoreham who refused to add his name to the local war memorial in February 2000. Perhaps the villagers of Shoreham should retrace the footsteps of Tommy Highgate in Belgium and France and ask themselves in all humility whether they have made the sacrifices for their native land that he himself (and others like him) did in their all too brief lives in this vale of tears.
The Shot At Dawn campaign for the 306 soldiers shot for cowardice and desertion by the British army in World War 1 has now been under way for no fewer than sixteen years. It is a campaign that is eminently worthy of public support. The policy of shooting one's own volunteers is indefensible, and was indefensible in 1914 (as comparison with the practice of the Australians and the Germans makes indisputably clear).
The legal procedures adopted were often hasty and ill-considered (for the object was not justice, but example). And in many cases the verdicts were not only unreliable but patently unjust. It is remarkable that recent British governments have shown themselves so insensitive to the need to make reparations for what was, after all, a crnme against their own people. In such a failure to make an adequae response we may discern the reason why such injustices were committed ninety years ago, namely, a lack of respect for the ordinary working man (whether English, Irish, Scottish, or Welsh).
We may reasonably ask the question as to where were the Nelsons and Wellingtons of the Great War. We admire Nelson because he led his men into battle and died in their midst with the utmost courage. We admire Wellington for the care that he took in the disposition of his men. He placed them ('the scum of the earth', as he called them) on the reverse slopes to prevent unnecessary casualties. We can be sure that he would not have sent the flower of our four nations by thousand upon thpousand into needless death in Gallipoli or on the Somme or at Ieper (Ypres).
The heroes of the First World War are those ordinary soldiers who gave their lives with such patriotic devotion at the behest of men whose sense of humanity had been numbed by the slaughters to which they had become habituated (and for which, in no small part, they were responsible).
The British government has still an unpayable debt to pay to its people, and it is still unable to admit error. Even the will to grant pardons at the remove of ninety years seems beyond the capacity of politicians still willing to send young British soldiers to their deaths in far-of lands.
Sources:
1. C.T. Atkinson, The Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment – 1914-1919 (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd, 1924).
2. Field-Marshall Viscount French of Ypres, 1914 (London: Constable and Company Ltd, 1919).
3. Major-General Sir Edward Spears, Liaison 1914: A Narrative of the Great Retreat, second edition (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode (Publishers) Ltd, 1968; republished, London: Cassell, 1999).
4. Ray Westlake, British Battalions in France and Belgium 1914 (London: Leo Cooper, 1997).
