Dan Snow's History Hit - When the World's Armies Came to Salisbury Plain

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

During World War One, Britain and its empire mobilised soldiers on a hitherto unprecedented scale. That required a huge logistical effort to feed, equip, house and train them. No place reflects these efforts better than Salisbury Plains. Now mainly sleepy villages and farmland, these plains were once home to tens of thousands of men and women who descended on the camps to prepare for war. In this episode historian Margaret McKenzie, who spent the last 30 years studying the camps, takes Dan on a tour of the site helping understand the scale of what once stood there. Margaret sadly passed away a few weeks ago, so this episode is dedicated to her and all those who served at the camps with which she became so familiar through her research.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. During the First World War, Britain and its empire mobilised men on a hitherto unprecedented scale. Millions of men were sent round the globe fighting on battlefields, for example, in the Middle East, in Africa, and particularly, of course, in Europe, be it in Slonica or, of course, on the Western Front. That number of men required a huge logistical effort, feeding them, equipping them, clothing them and training them. And Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire became a massive armed camp. It's still used by the armed forces today, but it's predominantly an area of farming and rural settlement, pretty villages dotted around amidst beautiful landscape. That would be a very different scene in the First World War.

Tens of thousands of men in prefab wooden huts, corrugated iron clad roofs, wood stoves in the First World War. Tens of thousands of men in prefab wooden huts, corrugated iron clad roofs, wood stoves in the middle, packed in around newly laid down railway tracks. A gigantic effort to prepare men for the fury of the battlefield. Now I've known about some of these camps for a while but I got a very special invitation a few months ago and that was from a woman called Margaret Mackenzie. She was actually born in New Zealand, but she moved to this area of Salisbury Plain. She moved to the UK in 1991. She spent the last 30 years researching, first the Anzac soldiers, because obviously she was from New Zealand initially, so the Australian and New Zealand soldiers, but also extending it out to study

the camps and the other soldiers that found themselves on Salisbury Plain during the First World War. She became the world's leading expert. And she also won the gratitude of many for tending the graves of those who died in training accidents or of illness in places like Fovent, Bavistock, Bedford St Martin, on Salisbury Plain. She'd been doing it for 30 years, but her neighbours got in touch recently because she'd been diagnosed with a terminal illness. And it was a chance for me to get up there and learn about the area from the person that knew most about it. What you're about to hear is a recording of my trip with Margaret around the

area, around Fovon, up onto the Downs. We were very kindly driven around by one of her neighbours, Sam Peters, and one of my great friends and she was able to share some of the extraordinary knowledge that she's accumulated over the decades. The sad news is that Margaret McKenzie passed away two weeks ago, on the 8th of November 2021. And so I thought we'd broadcast this episode of the podcast, dedicated of course to Margaret McKenzie, and as she'd have wanted me to add, all those who served at the Fovent camps with which she became so familiar. If you're interested in lots of the First World material we have at History Hit, please go to historyhit.tv, you get all the podcasts there without the ads, you also get hundreds of documentaries,

so go to historyhit.tv and check that out. But in the meantime, here's the very brilliant Margaret McKenzie, whose enthusiasm, passion, expertise and friendship is much missed by everyone that knew her, and particularly in her community, in her village, where she was something of an institution. Enjoy. I'm Margaret McKenzie, and I've lived in England for 35 years, near enough. I've been in Fafn for most of those years. And for the last 20, when I retired, I love history.

I've always loved history, which is probably one of the reasons I like to live in England, because you've got an awful lot of history here. And when I retired, I put a notice in the local parish magazine to say if anybody was interested in the history of the village, could we get together and form a society, which we did. We started researching more into the village history. I was particularly interested in the camps which were here. A lot of work had been done on researching the badgers as such, but very little was known about the camps. For example, it was presumed that the hospital had 25 beds because the local GP who worked in the hospital noted in his memoirs

that he was in charge of 25 medical beds at the military hospital. And so it's always been presumed that that was the size of the hospital. But when I started making inquiries, according to the army medical archives, they wrote to me and said that Fovent Hospital had beds 21 officers and 580 other ranks. That's a massive hospital. And that didn't include the hospital which was then later set up in Hurt at Tisbury, which was for recuperation, and it had 49 beds in Tisbury. That actually was the first of the hospitals to be built and served the people who were building the camps, because they had accidents and injuries and illnesses that needed looking after and they were looked after at Tisbury Hospital. But we should say

Margaret we're standing down the top of the chalk downland it's one of the most beautiful spots in England it's a very rural landscape term I can only see probably I don't know over a vast area probably only 50 or 60 dwellings, little hamlets and villages, beautiful wildflowers, there's butterflies fluttering all around us. What would this have looked like if we'd been here in 1917? Just talk me through this landscape. Well, we're standing on top of the dams looking onto the plain, which makes up Fovent village mainly, and the whole of the plain would have been covered with huts. I don't think there were ever any tents here in Fovent. We have no pictures of any tents, but the huts were built and they would have covered the whole of what we are looking at on the fields immediately in front of us.

There were headquarters based at East Farm and there were things like a cinema, railway station, because we had a railway that came up from the main track in Dinton Station and across carrying goods and sometimes people. Soldiers usually marched. There would have been stores, store sheds. How many recruits, soldiers, men and women, I suppose, would have been, do you think, in this landscape in front of us now? The army training would have been for 20,000 men,

and that in a village of 400 plus, you know, plus a few, was really quite substantial. The effect on the village was substantial. The women were mainly not in the army itself, but in the nursing corps. And as I say, the hospital was substantial, so the nursing corps was also quite large. A lot of the local girls and chaps came and helped in the hospital as partially trained people. They were known as VADs, voluntary aid detachments.

My great-grandmother, my Welsh great-nine was a VAD. So I'm very pleased to hear there were some here too. What about, just talk me through the landscape here. There was a train line going down to the bottom of the valley below us. And you mentioned a cinema.

How big was that cinema? I don't know exactly how big the cinema was. By the pictures of it, it probably would have held 50 perhaps at a time, but I don't know exactly. And why has this become so important to you? It's important to me personally because I like to know about the men and the girls. A lot of the nurses were very interesting too. And I like to research what the ordinary people did in the war and their memories, reading their diaries and the letters home, postcards home, that type of thing, which gives an insight into how the ordinary soldier felt about the war. So what's that years of research told you?

What were the men here, stationed here, what did they make of this place? On the whole, they thought it was pretty good because it was well set out and the roads, the pathways and roads between the huts was fairly well kept and substantial. One of them notes that at last he's come to a camp where there's no mud, which I find hard to believe. But anyhow, other soldiers wrote home that it was a horrible place and it was cold and it was wet and there was mud everywhere and it was horrible but once they'd been to France and done a stint of war coming back to the camp they thought it was wonderful. Yeah but compared to the Western Front this place was

like a paradise. Yes. What was their training like and point me to the areas in which they would have done their training and what form did that training take the training at the beginning anyhow was very basic they had to learn from the very beginning how to even march together and handle rifles and trench warfare bayoneting all those things were carried out on the parade grounds and the training grounds, which were along the bottom of the downs. And it was quite substantial. Six weeks and more, they were doing basic training to go and fight. But later on, it became more a camp for recuperation, rehabilitation. Soldiers came here who had been wounded or gassed or were ill, and they were

retrained and then assessed as to whether, A, they could go back to fight in France and Belgium, or to work here in an office, perhaps, or administration in some way, or in fact, be sent back home, whether that be a British home or an Australian home. So six weeks, they came here as complete novices. At the end of that six weeks, were they ready for France and Belgium, or was there further training? I wouldn't have thought they'd be too ready, but they were often sent,

whether they were ready or not. It was pretty rudimentary. And they learnt an awful lot when they got to France, I think, and found what life in the trenches really was like. I've been up to Salisbury Plain for a project for History Hit TV a few miles northeast of here, and in that site I saw lots of practice trenches that survived in the landscape. But you think down here there would have been crisscrossed fake front lines and trenches to try and teach them how to live, how to survive,

and how to assault in trench positions. Yes, we have photographs of the early trench training that they had. We also, unfortunately, have a couple of inquest reports of men who died. One, his grenade blew up before he had a chance to throw it. And those very early hand grenades that they used, the fuses were notoriously unreliable. And it actually blown up in his hand as he counted to three. The other one was they had thrown their hand grenades, The other one was they had thrown their hand grenades and one in particular they knew had landed and not blown up. And so when the practice was finished, they went looking for it. And unfortunately, one of the chaps trod on it.

And so that hospital here was for training accidents or was it for battlefield casualties being evacuated back from France and Belgium or elsewhere in the First World War? It was first of all for incidents that happened here, accidents, training accidents, but also illnesses. I mean, people got appendicitis and all sorts of other things, everyday things. So at first it was for that type of treatments, but later on it became a rehabilitation or a reassessment hospital for chaps coming back who'd been to some of the major hospitals, say at Portsmouth and London, and had the basic surgery or whatever was necessary and then had come down here for reassessment.

So, Margaret, it must have transformed the lives of people that were living here in this little corner of rural England in 1914. Tell me how the village changed. I suppose one of the main things was that farm labourers no longer had a job because a lot of the farmland was taken to be used for camps. So their work was done. First they joined the gangs who came down from London to build the camp. So they were busy and they were paid pretty well.

But once it was done, they were often at a bit of a loss. But by then they probably joined up and went off and fought. But the villagers themselves, there was a massive change to their life. Well, listen, I'll tell you what, Margaret, why don't you take me down to the village now and let's have a talk about that. Okay, let's do that. So Margaret, here we are at the High Street. Is this the High Street of Fovent?

Yes, we're sitting at the south end of the High Street. And it's very much changed now to how it would have been in World War I. Yeah, I mean, it's completely empty. There's no one around. We're outside the one shop we can see. There's a little post office and off-licence, a few cottages. This feels like a typical sleepy Wiltshire village. But what was it like during the First World War? It would have been teeming with men in uniform, trying to find some of the comforts of life, I guess. A lot of the houses in the High Street, their front rooms were opened

as little shops, which would have sold cigarettes and tobacco and sweets, writing paper, postcards, and all sorts of things that would have made life a little easier for them. I would dare say there were people also who had other favours that they could sell. A lot of the ladies in the village took in laundry, especially for the officers. I don't know that the soldiers worried too much about ironing their shirts. Three banks had branches here in Fovent. The village post office itself was closed because each of the camps had their own post office with their own stamp. And we have several photographs of postcards with Fovent, Sutton Mandeville and Herdcott post office stamps on them. But the numbers of people we're talking about,

we're talking about a considerable town or even a small city almost by the standards of the time. I mean, it would have been wild here. Probably. Although, of course, the soldiers were pretty busy with their training and the duties that they had to do in the camps for themselves. But, yeah, they certainly had time off, which a lot of them spent in the village. Is there a pub in this village?

There still is a pub in the village, but in those days there were four pubs. I'll bet there were. And probably all doing a roaring trade, I would think. And civilians were allowed to stay here? It wasn't one of these areas on Salisbury Plain where the civilians were all chucked out? No, no. There were about 400, 450 people in the village at that time. And no, they certainly stayed on and provided services for the soldiers in various ways. And what about lasting legacy? Some of the soldiers must have hooked up with local people

or spotted a house that one day they'd like to move back to. I mean, did it leave a lasting impression on the village into the 1920s and 30s? Yes, there were certainly some young men who stayed. And of course, some of the girls, when the war was finished, left the village and went back to where their husbands were, be that Britain or Australia, because a number of them went back to Australia. But yes, we had some Australian lads who stayed here, married local girls and got work here. Today, there's no hint that this was once a thriving mini-metropolis. What about architecturally or logistically? Is there anything now that you

can see that does hark back to that time? Yes, there's still signs if you know where to look for them. And I'll show you some later as we travel about the village. But when the camps were demolished, a lot of the huts were sold to the local farmers, partly as sheds for the farms, but also to be made into farm labourers' houses. And there's two or three of those that are still in the fields, some of them in better shape than others. And there's other things as well,

such as a lot of the sleepers from the railway were used to build the bridges over the little stream that runs through the village. A number of people used the rails from the railway to make stands for the clotheslines and things in their backyards. What about in the village? Was there any opposition to this? Was there any records of people being furious

that a lovely rural piece had been shattered by all these kids from all over Britain, all over the empire? People who had never seen countryside like this before. I expect there was, but, you know, it was something that had to be borne, and so they worked with it and made the most of what was happening to them. And a lot of these young men

would have marched down this road we're on now, headed off to the ports on the south coast and never come back. Yes, they marched down to Dinton Station and got on the train, went down to Southampton, over to France, and as you say, a lot of them didn't come back. I have a lot of stories of such men who had spent time here in the camps and then didn't come back. You listened to my chat with Margaret McKenzie about the Fovent camps. More coming up. Hi, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and in my podcast, Not Just the Tudors, we talk about everything from sex to spying, wardrobes to witch trials. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors.

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preparing for assassin's creed shadows or fascinated by history and great stories listen to echoes of history a ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week Where are we heading next? I think that we should go to the bottom of Green Grove, where the cinema and the YMCA and the post office and all sorts of things. It was really the centre of the camp. Let's go. Well, we've got about a two-minute drive out of the village. You've brought me now to a track,

and it's a very obvious right-angled track out in the more rural landscape. Tell me what was happening here. Well, the track itself originally was a Bronze Age track where the farmers from the plains north of us would have brought their cattle to be sold or exchanged, I guess, at Chislebury, one of the main market areas in this part of the town. But anyhow, it's called Green Grove and probably is the main marking road because the main camp at Faufant way up the hill and along the back of the village, then across Green Drove to Foffent Central Station, which is the main station where it stopped to let the soldiers get off.

Margaret, for those listening, had a smile on their face when she said Foffent Central, because if you could see where we are now, you'd realise how absurd it was that there was a station here at all let alone one called Central like a great big sort of metropolitan centre. It was quite big really in that it had a restroom and an office and a platform but it was fairly small but but the line went on then across the fields and across what is now the A30, which was the main road between Salisbury and Shaftesbury in those days. There was another stopping place where patients,

wounded men could get off and go straight to the hospital. And then it went a little further on, another couple of hundred yards, to the goods store where all the goods were unloaded and the train had a little rest for the night. Well, listen, Michael, we could do a whole other podcast on the massive expansion of railways in Britain and also behind the lines and on the Western Front during the First World War. We won't do it right now.

Where are you taking me to next? We're going to walk a little bit south on Green Drove to where the cinema was, right next door to the station. It was a fairly big cinema, sort of maybe 50 people could have sat in it, and they showed all the very latest films. sat in it and they showed all the very latest films. Fatty Arbuckle and Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, all the very latest films on the circuit for the soldiers to look at. Now we're very lucky because we have photographs of the cinema and there were steps leading up to it. And those steps are still here, although the cinema has gone and there is a bungalow built on the site.

But the steps are still there and the bungalow is called The Steps. So we've come to some red brick steps now, a few plants poking through, an aged bit of lichen on them. These, you think, were built for the cinema during the war? Yes, in 1915, probably, very early 1915, they were built, and we have photographs of them at that time. They're very grand, aren't they? They're beautiful, and we like to keep them beautiful there's a gentleman here waving some pictures at us which are these pictures of the steps probably hello sir what's your name john homer hi i'm dan hi dan these pictures of the old cinema

and you can just see the steps in there now. Yes. Very clear. And there's a lot of information here regarding the steps and what was all around the steps, all the barracks, and all the things that went on in the war. Is this something... Do you live locally? I live here. You live very locally, yeah. Is this something that people... It's not just Margaret. Everyone in this area seems quite engaged with this remarkable...

The kind of ghosts of 100 years ago. It is. Everyone in the village is very interested in it. And that's why all I'm going to do to them is repair them. As you can see, there's one or two loose bricks in there, but not alter it at all. Lovely. Well, good on you. Good on you. What a great custodian. We're lucky to have you. You would alter it at your peril.

I thought Margaret was going to say good on you there, but no, it's just a bit of a threat. Okay, brilliant. Well, good luck repointing. Nice to meet you. We've just come a few metres south across the road. We're now looking up at the Downs. These famous

fervent badges that have been carved into the chalk, all the different units that were here. Most people just concentrate on these badges, but what's driven you to learn more about the men who carved them? Yes, the Badgers Society have done a lot of work on the history of the badges, but it was mainly the set-up of the camps and the people who were here, both men and women working in the hospital. So along the bottom of the downs, almost the whole way,

were the rifle rangers. These ones on the east are still in their original state of World War I, but the ones over on the west, behind those fir trees, were taken over during the Second World War by the Americans who were camped in Dinton and Fonthill Magna. And they used to come here because it was all set up, ready for rifle rangers, for them to practice. And they used to arrive in their trucks, driving at great speed, we are told, through the village, and then doing their rifle practice in those holes. So they've rearranged them, built them with brick and corrugated iron, much graffiti, writing of names and addresses of those american lads and in front of us in these flat fields this is where the square bashing took place the training

the maybe digging a few trenches yes on this flat piece in front of us there was a camp here to the left, huts and a camp, but over on the flat, just at the bottom of the downs, was the training grounds, the parade ground, also where they learnt bayonet practice and marching, I expect. Yeah, a lot of that. A lot of being shouted at. The trenches, I think, were over in those fields to the west of us at the bottom of the Downs. You commissioned an aeroplane to fly over and take some photographs? Yes, but I also used Google Earth, I have to admit,

and I have the most wonderful photograph here of the rages where the bullets, the grooves where the bullets were shot, shot, shot, shot, shot. And that happened to show up on Google Earth on that particular day. Amazing. Deep furrows in the hillside there. Extraordinary. Right, where next, Margaret? We're going to go on up east of here for a mile maybe and we're going to the ASC which is the Army Service Corps field where the horses and mules gun carriages were kept and there were stables and all sorts of interesting things to look at. Lead the way. Right.

and all sorts of interesting things to look at. Lead the way. Right you are. So here we are, we've got a field, we've got a distant tractor cutting some hay over there. What happened here in this field? This is called by the locals, mule field. It's because it was where the stables were built with substantial drainage so that they could sweep them out and keep them clean.

But where the horses and the pack ponies and the mules, the workhorses who pulled the gun carriages and were destined to work on the front when they went to France. They were stabled and looked after here, had quite a number of blacksmiths. Most of the regiments had their own blacksmiths because all the officers rode horses in those days. those days and as I say they had pack ponies for carrying loads of ammunition to and from the guns at the front. I've never thought about that of course all the people working with the mules and horses would have required training back here as well it would have been working with these animals would have been a key part of it. Yes a lot of them were stable boys and were used to handling horses and other equine animals.

So they were a really very valuable part of the regiment. Tell me what the local legend has about what happened to these mules. mules? Well, of course, at the end of the war, the mules who were still here working in Fovent, the horses were valuable. And in fact, even the pack ponies were valuable and had a price. But the mules were rather dispensable, I'm afraid, and a lot of them were shot and buried in a common grave in the middle of the field, and you can still see where the soil has subsided, and there's quite a dip, which is probably one reason why they still call it mule field.

Margaret, your knowledge of this is extraordinary, but you don't just research it, you're active every Anzac Day. Tell me what you get up to. On Anzac Day, I found that nothing much was being done in the cemeteries. There were three cemeteries which serviced our camps, and nothing much was being done to remember Anzac Day. So I undertook to dress all the graves. I put Australian poppies on all the Australian graves and I put English poppies on the English graves. Then I lay a wreath on the cenotaph and I raise the Australian flag for the day. Do you worry that all the research that you do, that the stories you're keeping alive and the way you tend for the graves and Mark Anzac Day, do you worry that after your generation are gone that

people slowly will move on and these stories will drift off into the past and become obscure? Yes, it is a bit of a worry. But we have, I say we, one of the gentlemen in the village who works with the Badger Society, we have had groups of schoolchildren, classes of schoolchildren who have come for the day. And he takes them up the hill to look at the badgers and he tells them about the badgers. Then they come down to the village hall and have their lunch. And while they're having their lunch, I tell them stories about the men and some of the women who worked in the camps. Well, we've reached the end of our journey.

Tell me one of those stories. Talk to me about a soldier or a nurse that has meant a lot to you. Probably one of my favourite men was an older Australian. He was 35 when he came, so he left a wife and family back in Australia. He was a poet. Well, he was a farmer, really, but he wrote poetry and he wrote quite some lovely poems while he was here in the camp. Unfortunately, he caught the mumps as soon as he arrived,

and rather badly. So he was here in the camp for about six months, in and out of the hospital, and then recuperating. So he had time to write some rather lovely poems. Then when he was fit and he went off to France to rejoin his regiment, and unfortunately he died about two weeks before the armistice. His name was Don Clarkson.

Margaret, thank you very much for showing me around this wonderful area. It's been a great pleasure. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thanks, folks, for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History. As I say all the time, I love doing these podcasts.

They are the best thing I do professionally. I feel very lucky to have you listening to them. If you fancied giving them a rating review, obviously the best rating review possible would be ideal. It makes a big difference to us. I know it's a pain but we'd really really be grateful and if you want to listen to the other podcasts in our ever-increasing stable don't forget we've got suzanne lipscomb with not just the tudors that's flying high in the charts we've got our medieval podcast gone medieval the brilliant matt lewis and kat jarman we've got the ancients with our

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