Railways and Remembrance Railways of the Great War with Michael Portillo

World War I was a railway war.

I'm going to find out

how the railways helped to precipitate a mechanised war...

..defined how it was fought,

conveyed millions to the trenches

and bore witness to its end.

I've taken to historic tracks

to rediscover the locomotives and wagons of the war

that was supposed to end all war...

..and to hear the stories of the gallant men and women

who used them in life and in death.

I've been travelling through Britain and northern Europe,

discovering how the railways shaped the First World War

from start to finish.

-One shell, 400 casualties.

-That's a good example

of the destructive power these railway guns had.

-Ready? Lift.

-Whoo!

I've learnt that in total war,

victory depended on logistics as much as on military might.

The depot here was feeding 1.2 million men daily.

The railway was absolutely critical.

And that Britain's home network made big changes to meet the challenge.

In that first 24 hours,

only one train was late and only by 15 minutes.

-We'd settle for that now, wouldn't we?

-We certainly would.

Now, on the last leg of my war journey,

I'm going to explore the aftermath of this horrendous conflict.

For four years the railways had fed the front line

with vast numbers of men and huge volumes of munitions and supplies.

Despite sending men and equipment to France and Belgium,

they'd also kept the trains running at home.

Even when the armistice had been signed in a railway carriage,

their work wasn't done.

As Britain continued to mourn its dead,

the railways played an important part in their remembrance.

Today, I'll hear the stories of the railways' war heroes.

What a privilege for the passengers

to have two VCs working on the train. Extraordinary.

Absolutely, but then they probably never knew.

Encounter a historic railway wagon used to honour the fallen.

It's a replica of the coffin of the Unknown Warrior.

His remains were conveyed in this van.

And hear how the railways helped to give birth

to battlefield tourism.

You've got the British Legion

organising 11,000 people to come for a ceremony.

I mean, that is in itself pretty much a military-scale operation.

Today's remembrance journey begins in the heart of London

and will take me to the rural home of the Kent and East Sussex Railway.

Finally, I'll cross the Channel to Belgium

tracing pilgrimages to Ypres,

where thousands of British soldiers fought and died.

LAST POST PLAYS

Acts of remembrance are held in villages, towns and cities

across the British Commonwealth.

They were inaugurated by King George V in 1919,

just a year after the slaughter of the Great War had ended.

Even before the annual November ritual had commenced,

a service was held at St Paul's Cathedral in London

to the memory of those from railway companies

whose service had cost them their lives.

Britain's proud pre-war railway industry

had employed more than half a million men.

Over 180,000 of them answered the call to serve in the Great War

and by its end more than 18,000 of them had died.

The railways were in mourning

and they organised a singular tribute on a lavish scale.

Railway Director and Territorial Army volunteer, Jeremy Higgins,

knows the history.

On May the 14th, 1919,

an extraordinary service is held here in St Paul's.

What was the scene like on that day? Who was here?

This place would have been packed, it would have been full

of senior managers and dignitaries from the railway, families.

-The king himself was here.

-So the service of railwaymen

was well and truly recognised when the war had come to an end.

Amazingly, yes. Yeah, it was huge.

The music was provided by an orchestra

made up of railway employees,

including women who had filled men's shoes during the war.

They played a programme

including Handel's Largo in G to a congregation of 4,000,

each of whom was presented with an extraordinary Order of Service.

"St Paul's Cathedral. Divine Service in memory of those railwaymen

"who laid down their lives for their country in the Great War 1914-1918."

And what is striking about it is whereas an order of service today

is normally quite a thin thing, this is huge, it's a book,

because it's got 18,000 names in it.

-Correct.

-It lists each man's railway grade and military rank.

Jeremy has embarked on the daunting challenge

of unearthing the personal histories of each and every one.

What set you on this task of finding out about these people?

I'd just come back from serving in Iraq, I spent six months in Iraq.

My first day back at work, I was standing at Leamington Spa station,

there's a really large memorial to the Great Western railwaymen who died.

And it struck me that they were just a list of names, so I took one,

took it home with me, researched it and found a story.

And seven years on, I've now located 12,500 of those that died

and it's become something of a passion, I think.

Jeremy's research has uncovered railwaymen

working in every theatre of war

and all the services including the Royal Navy.

One was amongst the earliest naval casualties.

If you look down here there's a guy, George Coleman,

Dining Car Attendant, Steward.

-Steward on a ship?

-He was a steward on a ship,

he worked for the Midland Railway at St Pancras.

He died on HMS Cressy on the 22nd of September 1914.

So right at the start of the war.

And Cressy was one of three ships,

HMS Aboukir and Hogue were the other two,

sunk within two hours in the North Sea by the same U-boat.

-With what loss of life?

-Well, there were 1,457 who lost their lives

and over 35 railwaymen.

The sinking of three ships by a single U-boat

was a sign of the deadly role that submarines would play throughout the conflict.

Another military technology that came of age

during the First World War was air power.

And men trained in the language of tracks and steam

were amongst the first to excel in the skies.

The railway had many technical-minded people

and I think that they were attractive to the Air Force.

So over 30 railwaymen died in the air.

-And were any of those distinguished pilots?

-Some of them, yes.

One called Harold Day, he was a sub-lieutenant in the Navy.

He was what we would describe today as an "ace".

He shot down over 11 aircraft.

Unfortunately, he was killed in an accident,

his plane fell out of the sky and he was killed.

The next day, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

I mean, that is a revelation to me.

I imagined railwaymen doing what they had trained to do in peace time,

working with machinery and so on,

but the idea that they were also in the air,

the idea that they were "air aces"

this is something completely new to me.

And you've discovered these biographies. Fantastic.

Harold Day was by no means

the only railwayman to be honoured for his valour.

The railways had their fair share of heroes,

including at least six recipients

of the highest award for gallantry the Victoria Cross.

Did any of the Victoria Cross winners survive the war?

Yes, at least two. And they worked for the London and North Western Railway.

One was a train driver, the other one was a guard,

and they worked together on the same train on at least one occasion.

What a privilege for the passengers

to have two VCs working on the train. Extraordinary.

Absolutely, but then they probably never knew.

The London and North Western Railway

named locomotives after these heroes in honour of their homecoming.

They were just two of around two million men

who had to be brought back from the Western Front after the cease-fire,

a daunting task that fell to the railways.

By the middle of 1919, with demobilisation in full swing,

those who had survived were starting to look to the future.

With the end of the war at last joy could be mixed with sorrow

and as millions of men returned from their postings

the railway stations were witness to emotional reunions between survivors and their families.

In July 1919, when the temporary armistice

had been converted into a lasting peace,

the trains brought thousands to the capital

to give thanks and to celebrate.

The trigger for the Peace Day celebrations in London

was the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919.

Its terms had been imposed on Germany by the victorious Allies,

who hoped that it would prevent the cataclysm of the First World War

ever being repeated.

I'm hearing the story from historian, Heather Jones.

Given that the war had begun

with vast military mobilisations by railway,

does the Treaty of Versailles touch upon the railways?

It does indeed. After the armistice,

Germany had already had to hand over 4,500 or so locomotives,

117,000 freight trains.

And after the Treaty of Versailles,

it has to hand over almost two thirds of that again.

So it really impacts on the German railway network.

There had been doubts about whether Germany would sign up to this severe treaty,

but on the 28th June it did.

With peace now official, some wanted to revel in victory,

while others believed that it was time to rise above wartime rivalries.

Rather than a victory celebration

a Peace Day was planned for the 19th of July, 1919.

Did Peace Day attract crowds from around the country, presumably arriving by train?

It did indeed. There are special trains laid on and people arrive into London very early in the morning.

Some people arrive as early as half past four in the morning,

and stake out their spots to get the best view of the parade.

The crowds are six to ten people deep

and they let children through to the front cos otherwise they would have no view of the parade at all.

There's many troops from Allied countries in London at the time.

The Belgians are camping in Kensington Gardens for example

where over 50,000 meals are served to them over the course of the festivities.

The celebrations included special events for children,

musical entertainment and fireworks in Hyde Park.

But the centrepiece was the Victory Parade,

which passed along this very stretch of The Mall.

They have a very long parade which takes in a large swathe of London,

working class areas as well as middle class and upper class areas.

And that's quite intentional, this is supposed to show a nation

divided by class but united in relief and celebration at the end of the war.

And it's a very sombre parade for part of it,

because it passes by the Cenotaph,

which was a temporary monument erected just for the Victory Parade,

but which the public liked so much, this idea of the empty tomb,

this very simple style, that it's created into a permanent memorial.

We've got soldiers from the Allied forces marching up and down the Mall,

but I suppose the sense of national bereavement

must have been so intense that in some way the dead are present.

Absolutely. There are very much mixed feelings among the crowd.

Many people are jubilant and cheer,

particularly when they see their own regiment passing.

There are people dancing in Oxford Street.

And it's very understandable, this is the generation who thought they wouldn't survive the war.

They're young, they're suddenly free of this great burden of the war.

But for those who've lost someone,

they feel this is really dancing on the graves of their loved ones.

A poem by Alfred Noyes really sums this up.

He wrote, "Oh, how the dead grin by the wall

"Watching the fun of the victory ball".

Oh. Bitter stuff.

Most of the thousands of war dead were buried where they fell,

but a few celebrated figures were repatriated after the armistice.

I'm now on my way to the East Sussex countryside,

on the trail of a humble railway vehicle elevated to greatness

by its role in their story.

Here at the Kent and East Sussex Heritage Railway,

Passenger Luggage Van 132 has recently been restored.

-Good afternoon.

-ALL: Good afternoon, sir.

-Brian, hello.

-Hello

Brian Janes has researched the van's remarkable history.

Now this is, what, the coffin of the Unknown Warrior?

Yes, it's a replica of the coffin of the Unknown Warrior,

who was conveyed in it, whose remains were conveyed in this van.

The ironwork was produced by the grandson of the original maker.

And the Unknown Warrior travelled in this vehicle when?

How long after the end of the First World War was that?

It was in November 1920.

It was to coincide with the opening

of the permanent Cenotaph in Whitehall.

The Unknown Warrior was one of the war's many unidentified victims.

His body was brought from France by boat

then travelled by rail to London to be buried in Westminster Abbey.

He wasn't the first hero to travel in this wagon.

As a newly-built prototype in May 1919,

it was selected to transport the remains of nurse Edith Cavell,

shot by the Germans for helping British prisoners of war

to escape from occupied Belgium.

Then in July of that year,

it brought home another civilian, Ship's Captain Charles Algernon Fryatt of the Great Eastern Railway.

Now, explain to me, how could a railwayman be a ship's captain?

Most of the railways ran connecting steamer services to the continent.

And the Great Eastern Railway who employed Captain Fryatt

ran a service from Harwich to Holland.

And he was a captain of one of those cross-Channel steamers.

When the First World War broke out Holland was still neutral,

so the service was maintained from England to Holland.

As Britain and Germany vied for command of the seas,

Captain Fryatt found his ferry menaced from beneath the waves.

He had several brushes with U-boats who were trying to intercept him.

On the first occasion, he managed to outrun a U-boat at 16 knots,

which was very fast for that boat.

On the second occasion, a U-boat tried to stop him

and he turned the boat towards the U-boat and attempted to ram it.

The U-boat escaped

In Britain Fryatt's courage was celebrated, but the Germans wanted revenge.

About 15 months later,

they actually ambushed the Brussels and captured Captain Fryatt.

He was taken as a prisoner.

They decided then that he was a guerrilla,

somebody who was fighting war outside uniform,

and they took him to Ostend and he was tried and summarily shot.

That seems absolutely outrageous,

cos as I understand it when they were trying to apprehend his ship,

he simply used the ship to try and resist,

-to attack the U-boat with his civilian unarmed vessel.

-Yes.

That's indeed the case, yes.

But the rules of war at that time were confused

and U-boats in particular caused many problems.

At home, Fryatt's killing caused outrage,

and after the war his body was repatriated

and his heroism honoured at a special ceremony at St Paul's.

His remains were taken by special train to Antwerp

where they were loaded on to a British destroyer.

And at Dover the remains were transferred to this van

and came to Charing Cross in London

where the formal ceremony to St Paul's commenced.

What a way of marking him out

to bring him in this van and then to St Paul's Cathedral.

Oh, indeed, yes. It was a real mark of respect

and he was extremely well thought of.

One of the tragedies of Captain Fryatt

is that he was slowly forgotten.

By the Second World War, probably very few people knew of him,

but we hope to keep his memory alive with this exhibit.

When van number 132

made its solemn journey from Dover to London carrying Captain Fryatt,

it travelled on the lines of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway,

among the hardest-working tracks of the war.

Today the quickest route from the capital to the continent is via the Eurostar,

but a century ago the Folkestone sea crossing

was the preferred way to reach the front.

Over the course of the war, the South Eastern and Chatham

carried some ten million servicemen and civilian volunteers

to and from the port.

I'm now following in their footsteps,

en route to Belgium where the well-worn rail routes to the front

lived on after the end of the fighting.

When the guns had fallen silent the bereaved set forth

to visit the places where their loved ones had died.

Early pilgrims were people of means,

who could pick their way through the shattered landscape.

But as the vast cemeteries were constructed,

the trains carried grieving masses to corners of foreign fields.

These early railway tours

set the tone for the battlefield visits that continue to this day.

To unearth the story, I've come to Ypres,

described in a 1922 Bradshaw's Guide

as "a melancholy monument to the terrible havoc of war."

Under British control for the duration of the conflict,

Ypres had witnessed five major battles.

After the troops left the locals began to restore their city brick by brick,

but it would take until the 1960s

to finish rebuilding the iconic medieval cloth hall.

A decade after the armistice,

this battle-ravaged town played host to a railway pilgrimage on an epic scale.

I'm hearing the story from Pam and Ken Linge,

a couple with a shared passion for the social history of the war.

-Hello, Pam.

-Hi.

-Hello, Ken.

-How you doing?

Very good I'm most interested in these post-war pilgrimages.

-When do they get going?

-For the masses, I think in the early '20s.

In 1923, the St Barnabas hostels started,

and that was a charitable organisation

where the poor could actually come and visit

the graves of their relatives.

And that continued up to 1927,

which was the final one which brought 700 people.

-And after 1927 it all moved up a gear?

-It did.

By 1928 you've got the British Legion

organising 11,000 people to come here for a ceremony.

-11,000 people. This was an operation on a military scale in itself.

-Yes.

Who were these people? Some of them, I guess, were ex-servicemen, others were bereaved?

Yeah, old soldiers enjoyed the camaraderie,

cos it was back to the time when they'd been with all their friends.

The wives and mothers had a sense of closure

to be able to visit the graves.

Even at the time this was dubbed "An Epic Pilgrimage"

and to organise it the staff of the Legion

put their faith in the railways.

Mobilising the pilgrims posed similar challenges

to those faced 14 years before,

when the British Expeditionary Force had been brought to the battlefield.

They had first of all to get everybody ticketed, everybody organised

from all of the areas within the UK,

from Ireland, from Scotland,

putting on special trains in the UK to get them down to the ports.

And then once they're in France and in Belgium,

they then organised 21 special trains

and roughly parties of 500 people.

Each were given a train,

that train went with them throughout their visit.

Over three days, the touring trains

carried the pilgrims around the battlefields,

where they visited reconstructed trenches and newly-built cemeteries.

Arranging food and accommodation for such huge numbers was no mean feat.

You've got all those 11,000 people billeted,

either with local families or in schools or colleges.

Each of the people that was coming got this book beforehand

and it explained about the instructions

and where they were going and all of the things they had to have with them.

The book offered advice on everything

from foreign currency to suitable footwear,

even warning British pilgrims not to be disappointed

if their continental hosts offered coffee instead of tea.

The grand finale of the event was a ceremony at Ypres,

the toughest challenge for the local railways.

You've got 11,000 people being trained into the station

and then you had to marshal them around Ypres.

There was a service at the Menin Gate

and then each of the groups processed through the town.

So from the material that you've got here,

what do you know about people's reactions to being on the pilgrimage?

After the pilgrimage, they produced a souvenir book

called The Story of an Epic Pilgrimage. It had anecdotes

and sort of stories from each of the groups.

One of the pilgrims from the northwest wrote,

"I couldn't help thinking of the days when you had to cross this same place

"on your hands and knees with shells dropping continually,

"when Ypres was surely worse than Hell itself.

"What a change that day with the bands playing, flags flying

"and all the houses rebuilt.

"I could see in my mind's eye

"the phantom army that had marched that way never to return."

Very poignant.

The early post-war pilgrimages by railway

brought first the old comrades of those who'd been slain and their mothers and their widows,

and then their sons and daughters.

And today, by an almost uninterrupted continuum,

those graves are visited by the great-grandchildren.

Even while the fighting still raged on the Western Front,

the task of collecting and commemorating the fallen had begun.

The first cemeteries opened in 1921,

and a decade later there were over 900,

all characterized by the distinctively simple headstones

chosen by the Imperial War Graves Commission.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of tourists

come to pay their respects,

including many British schoolchildren.

Is there anyone here today

who's come to visit the grave of an ancestor or a relative?

-What's your name?

-Georgie Sells.

-And who is it who's buried here?

-Rifleman Frank Madley.

-And what's his relation to you?

-He's my great-great-uncle.

-What do you know about his story?

He was killed near Mousetrap Farm.

And his best friend was hurt in the same shell that hit him.

And his best friend went home to tell his family.

And his only sister answered the door

and they got married after they met.

That's an extraordinary story, isn't it?

Have you honoured an ancestor while you've been here?

Well, I saw his grave, the Earl of Faversham, yesterday.

-And what do you know about him?

-He was my great-grandfather, on my mum's side.

There's a story that he was buried with his dog,

but he wasn't, actually, his dog was looked after by the Prime Minister

who was a good friend of his and the dog was very sad apparently.

So what was it like for you when you came along to pay tribute to the Earl of Faversham?

It was nice, very touching.

I liked feeling that he was right in front of me.

These children are lucky to be able to visit their ancestors' graves,

more than 180,000 British and Commonwealth servicemen

lie in unnamed graves.

The bodies of thousands more were never found.

To mark their sacrifice,

the Imperial War Graves Commission built memorials to the missing,

and the first was the Menin Gate, unveiled in Ypres in 1927.

LAST POST PLAYS

Designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield,

it's inscribed with the names of more than 55,000 men.

And every evening at eight, the Last Post is sounded in their honour.

World War I was marked by terrible tragedy,

but also witnessed acts of extraordinary heroism.

Disasters on the battlefield

were matched by almost inconceivable feats of organisation.

Through it all ran the tracks of the railways,

which defined the wartime experiences of servicemen and civilians alike.

The youngsters who visit war monuments today

have joined a line of pilgrims that stretches back nearly a century.

My whole journey has focused on railwaymen and women,

perhaps forgotten, whose routines at home

and whose gallantry abroad were vital to the war effort.

But to me as a train enthusiast, it's distasteful that the railways

were the conveyor belt that carried men by the thousand to the slaughter.

By some perversion the train became an essential component of mechanized war.