Cadburys at War World War I at Home

MUSIC: The Man Comes Around by Johnny Cash

100 years ago, young men like these were fighting in World War I.

Jab! Hand up...

Not many saw themselves as soldiers before they went.

I've been a fighter all my life, and it's a really tough sport.

We're taking ex-world champion boxer Richie Woodhall

out of the ring and into the lives of two brave Birmingham brothers.

Two men whose world-famous family

objected to the very concept of war.

I just can't imagine what it must have been like.

Our little island managed to mobilise

over six million fighting men between 1914 and 1918.

But many good lads just didn't come back.

Laurence and Egbert Cadbury both risked their lives,

but only one of them went to fight.

With special access to their private letters,

Richie's going to hear this dramatic war story in their own words.

A flaming picture, like the final scene in the tragedy of Ypres...

I heartily agree with you

in regards to this bloody murder that's going on.

Nearly all the men I know have been done in.

They were heirs to a chocolate fortune,

and wanted to do their bit for the country.

But, by joining the fight,

they risked tearing their famous family apart.

And 100 years ago, there would have been no ducking the big question -

will you fight?

Hidden away in the University of Birmingham archives

is a large collection of letters.

Two brothers wrote them during the First World War.

The Cadburys were a close family,

and while their sons Laurence and Egbert

were caught up in the conflict,

it was the only way they could keep in touch.

'Dear Bertie. All the guns in creation seem to be here.

'Everybody is having the usual lucky escapes,

'with shoulder straps being cut,

'holes punctured in their clothes, etc...'

..but our faith is still unshaken.

Laurence was the eldest, and the first to go.

He was 25 and working for the family firm

when Britain entered the war in August 1914.

Within a few months, he was at the front.

Egbert, known to everyone as Bertie, was still at university.

At six foot three, the 18-year-old stood out

among the 11 Cadbury children.

They were both fit, adventurous young men

from Bournville in Birmingham,

which is where Richie is heading.

I feel quite privileged and quite excited, really.

Excited because I want to know what the letters reveal,

and quite privileged because this is a world-famous family.

Bournville has an extraordinary story of its own.

Laurence and Bertie's father, George,

built the famous Cadbury factory here, and a whole village around it.

Using his wealth,

he took his workers out of the city slums to a better life.

We've asked historian Rebecca Wynter

to guide Richie through the Cadburys' war years.

Apart from chocolate, they were well-known Quakers.

George's faith made him a committed pacifist,

and he'd been an active campaigner against the controversial Boer War

in South Africa.

Just over a decade later,

he still didn't agree with anyone fighting -

least of all his children.

It sounds like there was a bit of a conflict coming

in terms of the family - war's breaking out,

and the two lads are at an age where they could be called up.

Erm...yeah, they're certainly of fighting age,

so, erm...

there would have been a sense that there's duty to the country

but also this...

real issue that they have,

which is they're of the Quaker faith,

so their father's been very anti-war in the past,

and it's...how are they going to take things from here?

It's hard to imagine how George reacted

when Bertie signed up to be a fighter pilot.

At least Laurence had found a way of doing HIS bit

without abandoning his faith.

He joined an unarmed ambulance convoy to France.

I see a bit of a storm brewing here within the family, most certainly.

You've got two lads who

are at an age where they could go off to war,

but you have a father who's a prominent figure in society

who's totally against it, and it's got to have caused friction.

Quakers like the Cadburys campaigned for peace -

but they had to tread carefully.

Britain's patriotic drive had kicked into gear,

and they were in the minority.

Most of Laurence and Bertie's friends were joining up to fight.

To get a sense of how conflicted the Cadburys would have been,

Richie's come to Woodbrooke in Birmingham.

This former Cadbury home is now Europe's largest Quaker college.

Followers of the faith call themselves Friends.

And in these peaceful surroundings,

they still question the rights and wrongs of war.

Friends, I hope you'll forgive if I don't stand up.

I could stand up, but I should fall over!

And my Zimmer is over there.

Stanley Holland's strong Quaker faith

stopped him from fighting in the Second World War.

Instead, he joined the Friends Ambulance Unit,

which was founded by Laurence and his Quaker friends

during World War I.

I had reached the conclusion

that there was only one way

of stopping Nazi Germany and its atrocities,

and that was not the way the Quakers would have approved of.

And I put it to my wife,

"How else would Hitler have been stopped?"

These are not decisions that are easily made.

-And you carry on worrying about it.

-HIS VOICE CRACKS

Wow. That was quite a moving experience, to be quite honest.

What they did back then in World War I

was going totally against that tradition

in many, many respects.

So now I understand how big a decision it was

that they had to make.

People were saying the war would be over by Christmas,

and Laurence was in a hurry to get involved.

An early letter shows it didn't take him long.

On our arrival it was pretty evident we had to get busy good and quick.

Wounded were pouring in.

Laurence was barely off the boat

when the first challenge greeted him.

It was Halloween 1914,

and with 43 founding members of the Friends Ambulance Unit, the FAU,

he landed in France.

The young Quakers' mission was to save lives.

But with just eight weeks' basic first-aid training

and only three doctors among them, they were ill-prepared.

They receive news that, erm...

casualties are streaming back from the front,

they race across,

and they're confronted by

a mass of kind of seething humanity

that's on the floor, on straw...

They've been there for three days,

so the stench is quite horrendous.

And they set to work.

So this is their introduction to war, they've...

-That's how it started.

-Yes. Exactly.

Rebecca, our historian, knows this story well,

but the details are not so familiar to Laurence's son,

Sir Dominic Cadbury.

I think it's fascinating because

I didn't really talk to my father about the war,

and he didn't talk about it to me.

I'm also learning about the roles that my father played in it,

that my Uncle Egbert played in it,

and that's educational for me, but also

it's of course very personal.

This part of Sir Dominic's famous family history

isn't well-known,

so he's keen to learn more about the letters.

-Rebecca, you've read through the letters...

-Yes.

-..in their entirety, which of course I haven't.

-Mm.

But I know that my father

-went at the earliest opportunity to France.

-Mm-hm.

He's never been sure

how much his father's pacifist Quaker faith

would have affected his decision-making.

He would have seen himself at the start of the war

as one of the men, you know...

-Mm-hm.

-..doing his thing for the war.

Then, I imagine that as the war progressed,

-this became more of an issue.

-Yeah.

And that's when his conscience would have been...

-He would have been saying, "Well, am I doing the right thing?"

-Yeah.

And he goes through, I'm sure, a mental battle over that.

Under the banner of the Red Cross, and the Order of St John,

the volunteer ambulancemen

patched up 3,000 wounded soldiers at Dunkirk.

But things would get far worse.

The patriotic drive gathered pace at home,

and a million more British Tommies were at the front by Christmas.

Bertie's view of the war was different to his brother's.

HE wanted to fight.

The exciting reports Laurence had been sending home from France

made the 18-year-old even more determined to do his bit.

I went to Chingford where I learned to fly,

and having got on rather fast I was appointed to this station

which is said to be the best home station going.

The Royal Navy's air station in Great Yarmouth

became Bertie's new home in the summer of 1915.

In true Cadbury fashion, he was soon in the thick of things.

Oh, my God. I have just heard I have got to do my first patrol. Tonight!

He had taken on one of the most dangerous jobs going -

and Richie is about to find out why.

By coming here,

I really feel I'm getting closer to Egbert's story.

Got to remember that pilots back then, they were like pioneers,

they were doing things in these planes that were never done before.

And although Egbert's not here to tell us of his experiences,

the planes that he flew are still flying today,

so I think I'm in for a real treat.

These hangars at the Shuttleworth Collection in Bedfordshire

are full of vintage aircraft.

And they still fly them.

Today, the weather's not great for the pilots.

But Richie has found an opening.

Do you think you can get in this?

You know what - I'd love to have a go.

Bertie spent hours patrolling the Norfolk coastline

in a plane like this one.

He was on the lookout for German bombers.

-How's that?

-That is fantastic! Oh...

It's a tight squeeze for Richie,

but he can only imagine what it must have been like for Bertie.

At 20,000 feet,

the air would have been thin and 20 to 30 degrees below freezing.

I found that very uncomfortable, to be quite honest, in there,

and the vision wasn't too good either,

I'm just imagining what it was like, sitting in there, looking out...

Yeah.

-I don't think I'd be cut out for it, to be quite honest.

-Right.

They still build these old warbirds,

and Bob Richardson wants to show Richie

just how exposed pilots like Bertie would have been.

..And it doesn't look too appealing to me, to be quite honest.

Yeah, well...you know, it's a wicker seat,

it's hardly bulletproof, is it?

That wicker seat sits on top of the fuel tank,

and Bertie would have been sent up on his own

after just three to four hours' training.

It was a very hazardous lifestyle, there's no doubts about that,

compared with what we experience today.

And they were indeed sacrificed, in my view.

The average life expectancy of a new fighter pilot

was just 11 days.

Lacking even the basic safety equipment, like a parachute,

more than half of the 14,000 airmen killed in World War I

died in training accidents.

You've got to take your hats off to these guys, really.

But I suppose young lads, they think of themselves as invincible.

But eventually, it did take its toll

on even the most enthusiastic pilot.

After only a month at Yarmouth,

Bertie's second letter to Laurence

shows the shine was coming off his flying ambitions.

I heartily agree with you

in regards to this bloody murder that is going on.

Nearly all the men I know have been done in.

Another member of the Cadbury family

has grown up trying to imagine what the war was like.

Justin Cadbury is Bertie's grandson.

..Because he never told me, really, what he did,

so I had to learn this from other people...

Today, he's finally going to hear from the man himself.

Richie's brought Bertie's letters -

and this one shows the young flyer wasn't only interested in planes.

This is the first one.

-Wow!

-It's 1915...

I can read the first...

-You can read the first...?

-I can read the first sentence very well,

and not something one would read out on television, possibly!

Amongst the crowd,

I noticed the prettiest girl I have ever seen in my life.

By God, she was some girl.

Just as we were getting to understand each other,

one of my blasted mechanics came up and told me the engine was ready.

"I said, 'Curse the bugger for not having

"'enough sense to bust something, so that I could not start.'

"So I had to fly away home. You can imagine my feelings."

Bertie was better at chasing German Zeppelins.

The huge airships were bombing Britain,

and it was his job to stop them.

He never saw himself as a hero,

he very much felt it was just doing it for his fellow man.

In 1916, he became only the second fighter pilot

to down one of the massive airships.

In 1918, Commander Cadbury and his gunner, Bob Leckie, did it again.

And Justin, being a Quaker family,

do you think that your grandfather was a bit of a rebel?

Yes, I think he was,

reading a little bit more about the history -

obviously to me he was just my grandfather

and a very loving...

a very loving grandpa, as I called him,

but indeed he WAS a rebel.

He was set apart to be different.

Richie's got one more surprise for Justin.

We have a recording

of your grandfather from the 1950s...

His grandfather may not have told him the story...

but he did tell the BBC.

-RECORDING:

-'..At about 15,000 feet, coming through the clouds,

'I saw three Zeppelins right ahead of us.'

'I altered course, so as to get ahead of the Zeppelins.

'I then turned my machine,

'and attacked the leading Zeppelin head-on from underneath...'

She looked simply immense,

and completely blotted out the starry sky above us.

-RECORDING:

-'Bob Leckie gave her

'a few bursts of fire, of tracer bullets.

'And within a matter of seconds,

'flames started to leap from her bows.

'And in an incredibly short time,

'her nose dropped, and she went hurtling down,

'a mass of flames, into the clouds below.'

(Wow...)

Well...

I can't say any words to match what I've just

seen and heard and witnessed,

it's an extraordinary piece of history. Extraordinary.

-Had you heard that before?

-Never. I've never heard that before.

And he never told me the story.

Because...he had this extraordinary shy modesty,

which he simply wouldn't.

He would have to have been put under great pressure

from people far greater than his grandson

to tell a story like that, and it's...

very personal, very moving.

And I can hear and feel the man

absolutely as he tells the story, and it's awe-inspiring.

'I think that was a real big moment because he's only heard stories'

from his family members,

but to actually hear it from his grandfather himself,

yeah, that was brilliant.

While military commanders pushed their men

and machines to the limit,

Laurence was busy picking up the pieces on the Western Front.

He had complete commitment, and he...

he wouldn't have been, I think,

put off by any horrors that he saw -

I mean, he had a pretty strong stomach.

And, he'd have needed one.

In May 1915, Laurence's account of casualties

flooding into their makeshift hospital

near the besieged Belgian city of Ypres was graphic.

'The chateau, so quiet and pleasant an hour or two before,

'was already full of men.'

They were smashed and bleeding,

or choking and making awful noises in their throats.

We then learned for the first time of the asphyxiating fumes.

MACHINEGUN FIRE

He had witnessed the Second Battle of Ypres,

and the first German gas attack on the Western Front.

The month-long stalemate left 70,000 British and French soldiers dead.

Typed copies of the brothers' letters

were circulated among the family.

Newspapers were also full of war stories, and the rising death toll.

March 1916 saw a new law,

and a new phase in the military campaign.

From now on, if you were young enough and fit enough,

you had to fight.

Look at him. He's pointing at you.

Can YOU say no?

The Military Service Act

ramped up recruitment -

but for pacifists like the Quakers,

there was an important clause.

On paper, at least,

men could ask to be exempt from conscription

on the grounds of their faith.

They were called conscientious objectors.

But many people saw them as cowards.

In the months leading up to conscription,

young men still at home

were the targets of an unofficial naming and shaming campaign.

White feathers became weapons,

designed to destroy reputations.

Richie, I've known this trunk all my life,

but I was over 60

before I actually opened it to see what was inside,

and found it was very much the story of my one grandfather.

Keith James's grandfather, Alfred,

had a farm to run, and a mother and two sisters to support.

It was tough working the land on his own.

But one day at the end of 1915,

his loyalty and honour were called into question in dramatic fashion.

One day, he went to Ross Market,

where he would have been amongst friends and chums

that he'd known, and other families,

and all of a sudden this...

what I would describe as a sort of Boadicea of a woman

came bustling through the market

and thrust upon him a white feather.

And of course, my grandfather

would have been mortified by this, absolutely mortified.

Alfred enlisted as a gunner in the Royal Garrison Artillery

almost immediately,

leaving his mother and sisters to tend the Herefordshire farm alone.

That little fella was his dog tag -

-that's been at to Battle of the Somme.

-The Battle of the Somme!

Yeah, that was at the Battle of the Somme.

That's heard the big guns roar.

That's unbelievable.

I've never touched anything from the Battle of the Somme,

-to be quite honest, so...

-Yeah.

-..I'm privileged.

So Keith, what actually happened to your grandfather?

Well, he did survive the war.

He was in France until 1918, and then he was severely wounded.

But for him, another great tragedy befell him

because when he got back here,

he found that because there was no man to work the land,

his family had been evicted.

So he had nothing, really, to come home to.

And I can imagine the poor fellow was quite heartbroken.

Because at the end of the day this was supposed to be

a land fit for heroes...

and he came home to nothing.

Again, Richie's left to wonder what HE would have done.

That decision ultimately changed, probably,

the whole course of his life,

certainly his livelihood,

and a family tradition when he came back that had gone.

And he was homeless. It's just an incredible story.

Conscription was also becoming a problem

for the Friends Ambulance Unit.

A surge of new recruits joined them in 1916,

as an alternative to military service.

One of Laurence's letters home suggests

he wasn't convinced by everyone's motives.

I don't object to consciences...

not even overly manured ones.

Things got worse when news spread among the unit

that conscientious objectors were being jailed at home

for refusing to help the war effort.

Some threatened to quit in protest.

Among the letters,

Rebecca has found evidence

that Laurence was considering a drastic course of action.

We've actually found this in the archives.

So, he's gone out as a noncombatant...

-Mm-hm.

-..as a volunteer,

and here you can see

he's actually written off to...

-..join up, in essence.

-Mm-hm.

So, these are the forms.

He's interested in joining

the Royal Field Artillery.

And here you have

the forms themselves.

Yeah, I've never seen these.

The prospect of another son joining up to kill the enemy

was quite a bombshell for the Cadbury family.

Laurence received a flurry of letters,

including one from his war hero brother Bertie,

urging him not to join the Army.

To join now would be disastrous, so for God's sake

don't dream of doing so,

for I am absolutely positive you will regret it.

There were people who were conscientious objectors,

and this was becoming controversial

and he would have wanted to be...

He, as a volunteer,

would have found it difficult, I think,

-to come to terms with the fact that he was seen in any way...

-Mm.

..to be ducking his responsibilities at all,

that was just not him.

There is also a scribbled note from Laurence,

spelling out HIS feelings.

And you see here at the very top

of the list of "Against the FAU,"

he says, "The shame of being a noncombatant -

"A, now, and B, after the war."

Shame was driving him towards the Army -

but the letters show he was already risking his life.

You can see here he's really in the very thick of the fighting -

obviously there's ammunition going off, there are shots being fired.

And he says here,

"When you are carrying fellows on stretchers

"up and down mountains of bricks and masonry,

"and the shells come zing, bang overhead,

"and the bits patter down on the ground

"and hit tiles with a metallic clang,

"it is at times unpleasant."

With a plunk and a roar, up go bits of the house,

and the air is full of dust and flying pieces.

You can't turn and run, as inclination suggests.

Rebecca's been doing some more digging among the archives,

to find out what was on George Cadbury's mind

now that his sons were so heavily involved in the war.

-Found another letter...

-OK.

..which is a little later on in the war.

It's from George this time,

and he says actually

"These young men may become, in the future,

"the best advocates of peace,

"having witnessed for themselves the horrors of war."

Mm.

Cadbury had in fact shown his support for the troops all along,

sending chocolate to raise morale, and funds for hospitals.

But now, the famous pacifist

was defending Quaker fighters in a national newsletter.

And there were a lot of them.

Virtually a third,

so 33% of all young Quakers

of fighting age, had enlisted.

I find that incredible.

So, again they would be going against family tradition,

family values...

-Mm.

-33%, I think, is a lot.

-Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, absolutely,

you can see that there's a real sense of erm...duty,

just as the rest of the nation is having to decide between

the voices of war and peace,

actually, so too are Quakers.

The war had caused divisions among the Quaker community.

But this photo shows the Cadburys remained united.

George, the proud chocolate king,

looks on as the King of England

presents Bertie with his flying medals.

Over 2,000 Cadbury workers

were honoured for their war service that day -

including the 218 who died.

Laurence hadn't fired a shot,

but he was decorated for his bravery by Britain and France.

They may have had different paths during the war,

but I think they started from the same place, that they wanted to do

what they felt they could do, as quickly as possible,

to help the country -

and they were quite different routes, it's true,

but I don't think that

they perhaps thought of them as being as different as we do now.

I always like to put myself in the position,

what I would do in their place? It would be very, very difficult.

And as this story unfolded,

I got quite concerned

what was going to happen to these two brothers, Egbert and Laurence -

after all they'd been through, they could quite easily have been killed.

But they came through it stronger,

with their brotherly bond, and the Cadbury reputation, still intact.

Hear more incredible war stories from your area

with World War One At Home, at bbc.co.uk/wwi.