No Man's World

Smile, Smile, SMLE...

2011-09-06T14:35:00.001+01:00

The most important piece of equipment for a British Tommy in the First World War was his rifle. For most, this was the SMLE or Small Magazine Lee Enfield rifle (the 'small' refers to the barrel length, not the magazine). It was a British Army standard issue bolt action rifle that fired .303 calibre high velocity ammunition. It had a deadly accuracy over several hundred yards and an effective range of over two thousand yards.

The magazine held ten rounds and could be loaded from the top with individual rounds or five round clips (ammunition pouches on a soldier's webbing could hold up to one hundred and fifty rounds). Soldiers could fire fifteen rounds a minute ‘rapid fire’ as a matter of course and up to twenty eight in ideal conditions. Sustained volley fire could have such a devastating effect it was often attributed to machine guns.

However, it was an offence to fire the rifle without specific orders from an NCO or officer. To prevent soldiers firing off entire clips, the magazine could be locked off with the cut off plate, leaving one bullet ‘in the spout’, but preventing further rounds from being cycled up into the chamber until ordered. The magazine cut off was left open when directly engaging the enemy.

Magazine cut off

Just as lethal as the rifle, though, was the bayonet. The barrel of the Lee Enfield was much shorter than the German standard issue Mauser rifle, which put the British Tommy at a disadvantage during close combat. The answer?

A longer bayonet. Seventeen inches long, in fact.

In the right hands, the Enfield was an effective and precise weapon. It would serve the Pennine Fusiliers well in their fight for survival - for as long as the ammunition lasted.

Tesla and the Tommies - Part 2

2011-08-19T10:24:00.002+01:00

It wasn’t just Tesla’s theories about ‘death rays’ that the British Government were interested in. In 1899 Tesla claimed to have received faint radio signals from outer space on his array at Pike’s Peak in Colorado Springs and believed them to be a form of interplanetary communication.

Tesla's Colorado Springs Laboratory

"The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been first to hear the greetings of one planet to another."

-Nikola Tesla, "Talking with Planets", Colliers Weekly February 9th 1901.

Then, in 1926, the Hepton footage was discovered in a French field, along with the journals and letters that constituted the rest of the Lefeuvre find. The silent black and white film, depicting the Pennine Fusiliers apparently alive and on an alien world, was shown to packed picture houses around the world. If the Pennines really were stranded on another planet, it occurred to some in the War Office that there maybe a way of communicating with them. They urgently sought confirmation from Tesla. Partly financed in secret by the British Government, Tesla continued to refine his Teslascope in an attempt to contact the battalion by radio, hoping to detect a responding radio communication from them. No such signal was ever detected or, if it was, its contents have been kept secret to this day.

In the end, the Government officially declared the Hepton footage to be a hoax but nevertheless continued its clandestine funding of Tesla’s research for some years after, suggesting that at least one or two powerful political figures believed in the provenance of the film. But, in the early 1930s, Ramsay MacDonald's Government became disillusioned with Tesla’s progress and withdrew its support.

However, the fate of the 'Broughtonthwaite Mates' along with this early governmental research served to foster an underlying attitude within Whitehall that, in the 1950s, eventually inspired the Government’s decision to form the British Rocketry Group.

Tesla and the Tommies - Part 1

2011-08-12T14:59:00.000+01:00

In the minds of the public and the press, Nikola Tesla, famed scientist and inventor, became embroiled the Harcourt Event shortly after the First World War and has been linked with it ever since.

Nikola Tesla circa 1890

In the aftermath of the war, the War Office held an enquiry into the 1916 events at Harcourt. Despite the official explanation that the Harcourt crater was created when the Germans blew up a mine filled with ‘experimental explosives’, popular conjecture focused on ‘death rays’. Indeed, in 1914, the War Office itself had offered a reward of £25,000 to anybody who could create such a weapon. It was no great leap to assume that the Germans might have been working on something similar and Tesla appeared before the enquiry testifying to the scientific possibility of such a ray causing the crater.

Tesla claimed to have built such a ‘death ray’ himself. Many other people subsequently made similar claims, including Britain’s own Harry Grindell Matthews. However, Tesla was said to have been testing the application of this ‘peace’ ray technology as early as 1908, at his Wardenclyffe laboratory. When Robert Peary set off on an expedition to the North Pole, Tesla asked him to look out for any unusual activity as he intended to test his ray. Peary saw nothing. Tesla assumed his ray failed.

Tesla's Wardenclyffe tower

It wasn’t until 1927, however, that news of the 1908 Tunguska explosion reached the outside world, after a Russian expedition to the remote site. When it was implied that Tesla’s ray might have been the cause of the explosion, to some it was proof positive of Tesla’s unwitting involvement in the Harcourt Event, too, suggesting that a further test of Tesla’s death ray misfired, causing the deaths of 900 British soldiers. It was a theory Tesla was quick to refute, citing the Hepton footage itself, which had been found a year earlier and quite clearly showed the soldiers to be alive. The fact that shortly afterwards the British government declared the footage to be a hoax only served to fuel the conspiracy theories.

There were others, though, that saw a different explanation for what happened at Tunguska - a failed attempt at recreating the Croatoan Working.

Communications Trench No.1

2011-07-22T09:29:00.000+01:00

With the publication yesterday of The Ironclad Prophecy, the second book in the No Man’s World series, here’s your chance to catch up with all the bumf from HQ in a round-up of recent latrine rumours, reviews, readings, interviews and podcasts.

First up is a wind-up gramophone recording from Abaddon Books’ own dugout, where David Moore debriefs Pat Kelleher on the background to the No Man’s World series.

Next comes a barrage of questions from behind the lines courtesy of Gareth Wilson at The Falcata Times, who followed up with an explosive review.

Graeme Flory over at Graeme’s Fantasy Book review also gave the book a bright Very flare of a review and wanted to know more about the historical inspirations behind the series.

And for those of you who are still wondering about going ‘over the top’ into No Man’s World, Boston Book Bums recently fired off a brilliant review of the first book in the series, Black Hand Gang.

Still not enough for you? Then ‘Stand to’ on the fire step and take a peek over the parapet of Book 2 with David Moore’s trench periscope as Pat Kelleher reads an extract from The Ironclad Prophecy at this year’s Alt.Fiction.

Finally, Cavan Scott wanted to know which book I wished I written. Find out what it is here.

And if you’re curious about the tank featured in the books, check out previous posts here and here and follow PennineFusilier on Twitter.

Landships Ho!

2011-07-15T10:18:00.001+01:00

When the Pennine Fusiliers vanished in November 1916, they weren’t the only British troops to disappear. It is now widely acknowledged that a Mark 1 male tank, the HMLS Ivanhoe, vanished with them.

Partially inspired by HG Wells’ 1903 tale in the Strand magazine, The Land Ironclads, the tank was conceived as an armoured landship to counter the German machine gun and trench defences. They were organised into several companies under the command of the Machine Gun Corps, each with a small complement of Mark 1 male and female tanks (also called bulls and bitches).

Both male and female tanks had fore and aft light machine guns and side gun sponsons. In the Mark I male tanks these were armed with two 6 pounder Hotchkiss guns and two Hotchkiss belt-fed machine guns:

The Mark I female tank had smaller side sponsons, equipped only with four Vickers machine guns:

These armoured behemoths were thirty two feet long, weighed twenty eight tons and could reach a maximum speed of four miles per hour. They were powered by a 105hp hand-cranked Daimler engine and had a crew complement of eight. It took four of them just to turn the starting handle. It also took four men to drive it. The driver and tank commander sat up front in a small cabin. Each tank track was also controlled by separate secondary gears, manned by two gearsmen at the rear. The other four crew were gunners and loaders.

After the tanks’ first notable victory at Flers Courcelette, in September 1916, 'I' Company of the Machine Gun Corps Heavy Section was deployed to the Harcourt sector, with the hopes that it would help break the deadlock there before winter set in.

It wasn't to be.

HG Wells and his Ironclad Prophecy

2011-07-05T11:12:00.001+01:00

Since the Napoleonic Wars at the beginning of the nineteenth century there had been a persistent fear of invasion in Britain and there had long been a public appetite for Coming War stories or Invasion Literature, pitting Britain against a series of pitiless foreign invaders, from The Battle of Dorking by George Chesney in 1871 to The Invasion of 1910 by William Le Queux in 1906.

As well as his 1898 novel The War of the Worlds, H.G. Wells further added to the genre in 1903 by writing a prescient short story that was published in The Strand magazine. Entitled The Land Ironclads, it envisioned a navy of huge 100 foot long armoured machines like battle cruisers, driven by pedrails; wheels with feet like those of an elephant or caterpillar attached to the rims. These terrifying smoke-belching land ships bristled with guns and were filled with troops. They rolled across the battlefield, blinding the enemy with searchlights and crushing their trench defences.

A little more than a decade later they were to become a reality.

Wicked Leaks

2010-12-06T18:24:00.005Z

Many theories explaining the Harcourt Event exist, from the official (experimental high explosive German mine) to the bizarre (UFO abduction).

The Great Croatoan Working , a perverse and horrific rite, was allegedly performed by a disciple and, later, bitter rival of Aleister Crowley on the battlefields of World War One in an attempt to create a portal allowing elder entities entrance to Earth. Some occult conspiracy buffs claim this ritual to be responsible for the mysterious events on the Somme in 1916, resulting in the disappearance of the Pennine Fusiliers and the creation of the crater itself.

Today, 94 years later, as a result of the recent diplomatic and military leaks on the internet, information has been brought to light concerning

"mysterious rituals performed by elements of the United States military forces in Iraq".

Reports from Russia suggest that the US Military may have taken advantage of the Iraq War to conduct secret occult research. They also state that:

"the Americans have constructed a nearly one kilometre circle around their massive excavation."

The diameter corresponds alarmingly to the size of the Harcourt Crater and raises grave concerns that they may have been attempting to replicate the Great Croatoan Working.

Linked to this are subsequent reports of 'mass suicide' among US soldiers involved in "a rite to open an ancient portal or 'star gate'." Was it suicide, were they driven mad, or were they, in fact, blood sacrifices needed to power the Croatoan ritual itself?

Have the US Military been meddling in unholy attempts recreate the Working of one of Britain's most infamous occultists and reopen a portal to a place where 900 British Tommies were consigned over 90 years ago? And, if so, to what possible end?

At the Going Down of the (Alien) Sun...

2010-11-01T08:05:00.003Z

Ninety four years ago today, the 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers vanished from the Somme leaving, in their wake, a great scar on the landscape.

This year, for the first time in living memory, there will be no WW1 veterans gathered at the memorial in the nearby town of St. Germaine or laying a wreath at the site of the Harcourt Crater to remember long fallen comrades, comrades who found themselves, as the Hepton Footage would have us believe, on another world.

Their legacy may yet exist on that nameless alien planet and it may be that "They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old" at least, that is, if the theory of Relativity holds sway.

But today in Broughtonthwaite, at 7.30am wreaths were laid at the foot of the war memorial before St Chads in memory of those who vanished this day, at that time, in 1916.

We will remember them.

Missing in Action

2010-06-30T22:28:00.001+01:00

The War ground on and the rest of Britain moved on with it. The suffering of the families in Broughtonthwaite though, continued, with parents, wives and relations petitioning the War Office for news on their lost ones. Not for them the relief or grief of scouring the newspapers for familiar names in the casualty lists or the lists of dead. A confirmation of death would be a blessing compared to the agony of not knowing.

However, the War Office was unable or unwilling to give an answer. The extraordinary circumstances surrounding the 13th Battalion elicited no special treatment from the bureaucrats. The relatives were dealt with in the same brisk, business-like manner as the families of tens of thousands of other soldiers. The men were simply listed as Missing. Not Dead, or Died of Wounds, or Killed in Action, just Missing.

Reproduced courtesy of the Cooper family.

And that continued to be the official response until the Committee of Enquiry into the Harcourt Incident delivered its secret report. The men of the 13th Battalion were officially declared Dead in 1921 and the families of the Broughtonthwaite Mates had to take what little comfort they could in that.

Until the events of 1926, that is.

Hun Horror at Harcourt?

2010-06-14T10:25:00.003+01:00

The Battle of the Somme had dragged on throughout the summer of 1916 and, in its dying days, at twenty minutes past seven on the morning of 1st November, nine hundred men of the 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers, a Pals Battalion known as the ‘Broughtonthwaite Mates’, went over the top.

Their objective was to attack the entrenched German machine gun positions in Harcourt Wood. It meant crossing over quarter of a mile of No Man’s Land, up a gentle incline that recent autumn rains had turned into a lethal quagmire. It was to be the last large scale attack of the campaign. In a bid to finally take and hold the Harcourt sector of the German line that had resisted the British advance all summer, the 13th Battalion marched resolutely into the gas cloud drifting across No Man’s Land to do their duty for King and Country.

And vanished.

The northern mill town of Broughtonthwaite, where the regiment had its barracks, was understandably devastated when the tragedy was reported by the local newspaper.

Broughtonthwaite Mercury, Thursday 2nd November 1916

As the town mourned its heavy losses, the relatives pressed for answers from a reticent Government. Philanthropist and magnate, George Everson of Everson's Brewery, twice mayor of Broughtonthwaite and whose son, Second Lieutenant James Charles Everson, was among the missing, brought considerable pressure to bear on the government.

In response, the War Office claimed that the Germans had set off mines dug deep below the British positions, packed with ‘an experimental explosive’. However eye witnesses at the time, as the cutting above illustrates, claimed to hear no explosion that could account for such a catastrophic event.

It didn’t take long for rumours to spring up concerning the extraordinary circumstances of the Pennines’ disappearance. Some ascribed supernatural explanations. Others talked of Bosche Zeppelins and death rays.

Questions were asked in Parliament. The government stuck to its original statement, seeking to turn the tragedy into propaganda while secretly setting up a Committee of Enquiry to investigate the incident. Its eventual findings would be sealed for an unprecedented one hundred and fifty years. The families and descendants of those lost will have to wait until the opening of the records in 2069 to discover the official verdict.

Over the Top

2010-06-06T16:54:00.005+01:00

Along with the Angel of Mons and the Phantom Bowmen, the Harcourt Crater is one of the enduring myths of the First World War when, on the 1st November 1916, some 900 men of the 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers vanished from the face of the Earth.

Although many claims on the truth have been made, the Harcourt Crater and disappearance of the ‘Broughtonthwaite Mates’ have never been satisfactorily explained and with the deaths in recent years of the last surviving World War One veterans, there is now no one alive who can remember, first hand, the tragedy of All Saint’s Day, 1916.

However the publication of a new book, No Man's World: Black Hand Gang from Abaddon Books, has prompted a resurgence of interest in the ninety-four year old mystery.

Was there any truth to government claims at the time that the crater was the result of experimental explosives? Or was it, as some believe, the work of supernatural forces? Did Nikola Tesla appear before the secretive government Committee of Enquiry into the Harcourt Event and, if so, why?

For those interested in seeking further information about the Harcourt mystery and the true fate of the Broughtonthwaite Mates, your search continues here.