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A Glimpse of Wartime Reninghelst

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Reninghelst, Great War Battlefields, Ypres Salient, Flanders Fields, Falkirk District
Reninghelst in wartime

Reninghelst, today it is Reningelst, I am using the wartime name for the village as well as other towns and villages mentioned, is a small village located in the southern part of the province of West Flanders, known as the Westhoek (the West Corner). During the First World War Reninghelst was located in a restricted zone close to the front line along with the nearby villages of Ouderdom and Dickebusch. Ypres is some 10 kilometres from Reninghelst. The population of Reninghelst in 1914 was approximately 2,400 inhabitants, and unlike Poperinghe and Ypres, Reninghelst did not have a doctor or a solicitor with the burgomaster and the priest being the most prominent citizens. It did, however, have a brewery as was usual with most villages in Flanders as well as a large number of estaminets in the village and in the surrounding rural area. Many of the children only attended school in the winter and the language spoken was a local variant of Flemish, very few in the rural areas spoke French with most French speakers being found in the larger towns of Poperinghe and Ypres. Unlike the nearby village of Dickebusch, the inhabitants of Reninghelst continued to live in the village or in the surrounding farms throughout the war. It was not until the German Spring offensive of 1918 that they were forced to temporarily move to France.

 

The Army Arrive

Reninghelst, Reningelst, Ypres Salient, Great War Battlefields, Flanders Fields, Falkirk District
Reninghelst today. Authors image

From October 1914, the area around Reninghelst was heavily populated with gun pits, camps, Field Ambulances, railways linking the various supply camps and the main rail head of Poperinghe in the rear and further on into France. The French army initially occupied the area but were replaced by a multi-national allied force that came into the area and occupied the farms and barns as billets and built new camps the names of the camps tended to reflect the nationality of the units that had originally established them. Between April 1915 and June 1916, the Canadian 1st and 3rd Divisions established camps named Ontario, Quebec and Ottawa. The Australian and New Zealand divisions established camps named Peerless, North and South Atlantic, Zealand, Waratah, Moonta, and Mud Farm. Reninghelst was also the location of Divisional HQs. The 17th Division Assistant Director of Medical Services War Diary of August 1915 records them engaged in dealing with water pollution and outbreaks of enteric fever. They were also sourcing water wells in the local area. Then a Captain and an ADC in 3rd Division, Billy Congreve records being billeted in the village with the General commanding 3rd Division. Writing on the 7 April 1915 that: ‘We moved to Reninghelst today. It is not such a bad place. The General and I share a little house and are quite comfortable. We are split up in billets all over the village and it is really better than being in one house.’ On the 15 November 1917 Father Achiel van Walleghem, a priest who was displaced from his parsonage in Dickebusch and who lived with a colleague in Reninghelst from June 1916, recorded in his diary: ‘There is a new brigade of New Zealanders camped on Reninghelst village square. Their hats are rounder than those of the Australians with red or black or blue ribbon around them.


Billets and Camps

In early April 1915, agreement was reached between the Allies and the Belgian government whereby the local population would be paid for the premises used by the army. With the troops billeted in farms this usually was of mutual benefit with the local farmer gaining the assistance of the troops to help in the harvest. Father Achiel van Walleghem recorded that: ‘… farmers who accepted British soldiers were by far the better

Reninghelst, Ypres Salient, Great War Battlefields, Flanders Fields, Falkirk District
IWM (Q 542) Team of dogs drawing a harrow at a Belgian farm near Reninghelst, April 1916.

off. Although the job was only half done, it was at least half done.

Arthur A Martin, a Surgeon Specialist, wrote in his book ‘A Surgeon in Khaki’  published in 1916 about his billet in Ouderdom: ‘Our Ambulance headquarters was about the most God-forsaken place that one could possibly imagine. The first impression one received was a dirty pond, full of fetid water and surrounded by heaped-up straw manure. Closely abutting this putrefactive manure was the cottage itself, with one front room, a kitchen a rickety stair led up to a windy loft full of corn and hops and bags of potatoes. Twelve medical officers, two chaplains, and a quartermaster lived in the tiny little room, or crowded round a table in it. Six or seven officers slept on the floor of this den at night. The O.C. and Chaplain slept in the box off our only room and the rest of us slept in the loft amidst the wheat and hops and the bitter cold draughts.’ He also found the Flemish not very welcoming describing those he met around Ypres, Ouderdom and Dickebusch as ‘..sullen, dour and suspicious..’ They may well have been however; it did not prevent other ranks from falling for local girls with one English soldier marrying a local girl. In his diary for 9 October 1917 Achiel van Walleghem records: ‘Today saw the marriage here in Reninghelst of an English soldier and a girl from this parish. A good many onlookers, civilians and soldiers. The soldiers appeared to be having a lot of fun at their pal’s expense, while he looked embarrassed and made haste to get into the motor car.

Reninghelst, Ypres Salient, Great War Battlefields, Flanders Fields, Falkirk District
Linesman map showing some of the many camps around Reninghelst

In September 1915 the 2nd Battalion Royal Scots, 8th Brigade, 3rd Division were in ‘I Camp’ located on the Reninghelst to Westoutre Road which they described in their War Diary ‘as a veritable sea of mud.’ Further camps between Reninghelst and Vlamertinghe were added in 1917, they included Toronto, St Lawrence, Erie, Winnipeg, Montreal, Halifax, Vancouver and Moose Jaw. The British also had their camps, Scottish Camp, Downshire, Red Horseshoe, Dirty Bucket Camp and the like. From 1915 the area around Dickebusch had a large concentration of troops, transport lines and horse lines. The 9th (Scottish) Division found the camps at Dickebusch Huts and Canada Huts … dismal and repellent shelters; they were swept by draughts and through their leaky roofs the rain dripped down on the disconsolate inmates. The area around them was one vast sea of mud, where it was impossible for a unit to carry out any training worth the name.’ In addition to the many camps billeting British and imperial forces there was also a large PoW camp on the Reninghelst to Poperinghe Road.


British West Indies Labour Battalion Camp

Not far from Reninghelst was Winnipeg and Montreal Camps on the De Drie Groens Farm. It was here that a segregation camp was built to house the labour battalions of the British West Indies Labour Battalion. In his diary Achiel van Walleghem records his meeting with them, and his language is both racist and offensive to today’s reader: 'At Drie Groens niggers arrived from Jamaica, in the West Indies, to work hereabouts. Dressed like all British soldiers, they are both civilised and softly spoken. Generally, they are not very popular because they have long fingers and civilians, in particular, would much rather see them leave than arrive... I came across a letter to one of these black people from his mother, what Christian and motherly feelings she expressed, not one of our mothers express herself better. Extremely frightened by the shelling these black people stare afraid when they hear a shell approaching and, when it hits the ground nearby, they dash off as of possessed.'


Reninghelst, Ypres Salient, Camps, Flanders Fields, Falkirk District
Linesman map showing the British West Indies Labour Battalion Camp

Following the bombing of the British West Indian camp the wounded were taken to the CCS at Gwalia Farm and Colonel David Rorie in his 'A Medico's Luck in the Great War' recorded the scene, again the language is both racist and offensive to today’s reader: '..the place was suddenly filled up with wounded niggers. Naturally emotional, and, equally, scared to death, besides - in many cases - being badly injured, the black men made the dressing-room an inferno of shrieks, groans and cries which were impossible to still... as one gazed around the dim-lit hall of suffering at the gleaming teeth and rolling white eye-balls of the recumbent blacks on the operating tables and stretchers, the scene and din, inside and outside, suggested an impromptu revival meeting in nether regions.'

 

Chinese Labour Corps

The Chinese Labour Corps had a camp at nearby Busseboom. In his book ‘Asia in Flanders Fields’ Dominiek Dendooven quotes from the memoir of Gunner Alexander Paton, 118th Siege Battery, who remembered a large notice erected in Reninghelst which stated, ‘Do not speak to the Chinese with a wit adding underneath ‘who the hell can. Although it is humorous it does highlight the British policy of segregation which is also reflected in the separate camps for British West Indian labourers. The Belgian and Flemish connection with China included, like the other colonial powers, economic involvement with industrial and financial interests as well as Catholic missionaries with one of these missionaries Florent Durein leaving Reninghelst to go to northern China during the First World War. Achiel Van Walleghem records in his diary on 6 August 1917 meeting members of the Chinese Labour Corps: ‘In this area we now have a lot of Chinese men whom the English use as labourers…. They have a blue linen uniform and another one of thick grey fabric and a rain cape and an overcoat, with a straw hat or a brown cap with ear flaps…Their sergeants have stripes, and their policemen a red armband, and one sees they are very conscious of rank… They are quartered in camps surrounded by barbed wire and they live in bell tents….They are principally occupied in mending roads and digging ditches, and mainly along the unloading quays. They’re not lazy and work at least as well as out civilians and the English soldiers…Several thousands of these men are working in Reninghelst and more of them in Poperinghe…In Reninghelst they have 2 big camps, 1 on the farm of the Verhaeghe siblings and 1 next to Henri Verdonck’s farm.’ He also saw first-hand the punishment administered to the CLC members ‘…to keep order among them the arguments of the cane has to be used and so their sergeants carry a thin iron rod which comes down now and then on the men’s skin…. They have other punishments too, and recently on passing by their camp I saw one with a yoke on his neck (like a lavatory seat), and another with a block and chain on his neck and thus collared, these men had to dig a ditch.’

Reninghelst, Chinese Labour Corps, Ypres Salient, Flanders Fields, Falkirk District
Image: In Flanders Fields Museum. Nine members of the Chinese Labour Corps

He felt they had little comprehension of the war observing that they laughed when they heard shells coming and stood and stared and clapped their hands however, when some of their number were killed in Poperinghe those CLC members who witnessed it were shocked. On the evening of 15 November 1917, a Chinese labourer, at the Busseboom camp, lit a cigarette which attracted the attention of the German pilots who then bombed the camp hitting a hut and killing thirteen labourers. The dead were initially buried near the camp but after the war they were exhumed and reburied in Bailleul Communal Cemetery Extension, France.  


Bailleul, Chines Labour Corps, Ypres Salient, Reninghelst, Flanders Fields, Falkirk District
Chinese Labour Corps buried at Bailleul Communal Cemetery. Authors image

The Busseboom thirteen are:

Authors image

On the 15 November 2017 a memorial park with two statues of Chinese workers was unveiled in Visserijmolenstraat in Poperinge. The Chinese workers look out from the pavilion onto the fields where the Chinese camp once stood.


Chinese Labour Corps, Busseboom, Ypres Salient, Flanders Fields, Falkirk District
Chinese Labour Corps Memorial. Authors image

Despite declaring war on Germany and providing 140,000 labourers China, a republic since 1912, was treated appallingly by her so-called allies.  The Chinese Labour Corps was invaluable to the allied victory and stayed in Flanders throughout 1919 to clear the battlefields. China joined the conflict in order to earn a seat at the peace conference and to regain her territory of Shandong and to regain her full sovereignty. China was betrayed when the Japanese were awarded Shandong and China had to endure a further thirty years of foreign occupation.

 

The Church

In a ‘Surgeon in Khaki’ Arthur Martin, a surgeon with 15th Field Ambulance, 5th Division, which was located in the school behind the church, wrote of Reninghelst and of what he found in 1915. It was ‘a large village, or rather a small town’ and that it was an important ambulance centre for French and Belgian wounded. The village ‘had a queer Dutch-looking church’ and that this was surrounded by a closely packed graveyard with the average age of the dead being eighty-five to ninety. He then comments on the number of new graves in the area of Reninghelst and ‘they are for men who have died young, suddenly, and in the springtime of their days.’ The interior of the church he described as ‘lofty, and has little in the way of adornment’. On his first visit he found the church full of French soldiers some of whom were sleeping or sitting on the straw that covered the floor of the church. He found a ‘big group crowded round a charcoal brazier warming themselves and watching the progress of a savoury stew.

Reninghelst Church, Ypres Salient, Flanders Fields, Falkirk District
Interior of Reninghelst Church today. Authors image

On his second visit a few days later, the church was now a temporary hospital with the floor still covered with straw but now wounded men were lying close together on it. The charcoal brazier was still in place but now giving out heat for the wounded. Ambulance waggons full of wounded were in the street next to the church. In the church French army surgeons were ‘busy amongst the red breeched men in the church, and three of them were engaged round an improvised operating table near the altar, where a man deeply under chloroform was having his jaw wired with silver wire for a bad fracture from a piece of shell.’ He observed that some women of the village were carrying soup to the wounded who were lying propped up against the walls of the church and an old white-haired priest was giving the last rights to a dying man. He found one man restlessly rolling in his bed of straw a sign he concluded of a man in need of medical attention and he found that his wound was bleeding through the bandages. Having stopped the bleeding and changed the man’s dressings he was thanked by the chief surgeon. He noted that most of the men had been wounded by shrapnel ‘it rips, tears, and lacerates the tissues, and repair is often impossible in face of anatomical devastation.’  In his diary for 1917, Achiel van Walleghem recorded the death of the church beadle who was killed in a road accident on 7 March on the Reninghelst to Poperinghe road ‘The poor fellow’s chest was crushed and he died later in Couthove hospital’. He also records the death of an 11-year-old orphan on 9 March who was also an altar boy at the church in Reninghelst and who was runover opposite the sexton’s house while crossing the road. He also records the death of child in Locre and a policeman in Watou from road traffic incidents and is surprised that there are not more deaths as ..those who are in charge of motor cars or horses are not infrequently drunk, the civilians as well as the soldiers.

 

Cemeteries in Reninghelst

Reninghelst was the location of many Field Ambulances. There are three CWGC cemeteries in the village the Churchyard and Extension and the New Military Cemetery.

 

Churchyard Cemetery and Extension

Both cemeteries were used from March to November 1915 by the Field Ambulances located in the area. Reninghelst. There are three graves in the churchyard and fifty-six graves in the Extension. Buried in the Churchyard Extension is an Australian Army Chaplain Reverend Michael Bergin MC who was killed in action on 12 October 1917, age 38. He enlisted on 13 May 1915 and served in the Gallipoli campaign. He never set foot in Australia. Read more here https://www.theypressalient.com/post/reninghelst-churchyard-and-extension

 

New Military Cemetery

The New Military Cemetery was begun in November 1915, after the Churchyard and Extension could no longer cope with the number of dead from the surrounding Field Ambulances. It was in use until September 1918. Read more here https://www.theypressalient.com/post/reninghelst-new-military-cemetery


Burial of an Artillery Officer

Captain William Beardmore Stewart, ‘D’ Battery, 107th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery. Died 25 May 1917. Age 33. Grave II.B17. He was the son of Duncan and Moira Beardmore Stewart, Auchenfroe, Cardross, Dunbartonshire. Read more here https://www.theypressalient.com/post/reninghelst-new-military-cemetery 


The Tragedy Of Two Royal Scots Officers

Another two officers from Scotland are buried here Captain Ronald Rioch Davidson, ‘C’ Company, 2nd Battalion Royal Scots. He is buried in Plot I, Row D, Grave 12. 2nd Lieutenant James Wilson MacTurk-Rainie, age 19, and is buried in Plot I, Row C, Grave 12. Read more here https://www.theypressalient.com/post/reninghelst-new-military-cemetery 


Brigadier-General & His Brigade Major

There were seventy-six Generals killed in the First World War one of them Brigadier-General Charles William Eric Gordon, age 39, Grave III.D.16 and commanding 123rd Brigade, 41 Division and his Brigade Major, Captain George Frederick Pragnell, age 26, Grave III.D.17 Read more here


Two Canadian Brothers

There are two Canadian brothers in the cemetery. Lieutenant Charles Richard Magrath Godwin, 1st Brigade, Canadian Field Artillery. Killed in action on 4 April 1916. Age 24. Grave I.A.16 Lieutenant John Lockart Godwin, 1st Divisional Ammunition Column, Canadian Field Artillery, attached to Z.I.C. Trench Mortar Battery. Killed in action 8 July 1916 age 26. Grave I.E.14. They were the sons of Frederick Richard and Anna Bella Lockart Godwin, Ottawa. Read more here https://www.theypressalient.com/post/reninghelst-new-military-cemetery 


Shot at Dawn

There are three men who were shot at dawn in Reninghelst and who are buried in the New Military Cemetery and you can read more here

One of the executions, that of Private William Smith, Age 20, Grave IV.B.28 was witnessed by Achiel Van Walleghem who recorded in his diary 'In the morning an English soldier is shot against the convent wall here for refusing to go into the trenches. It was his own comrades who were appointed to the firing squad. Many of the soldiers have already spoken of how painful this is to them. Some of them weep with remorse.'

 

Military Railways

The British built numerous camps and supply dumps in the area and these were fed by the expansion of military railways and tramways. Next to the church at Reninghelst a railway was built which linked Westoutre and Ypres this involved the creation of a track and the draining of the moat around the farm next to the church. Something that did not please Achiel van Walleghem who recorded in his diary on 25 March 1917: ‘They plan to construct a railway next to the church of Reninghelst….. Soldiers are busy pumping the moat dry, in order to fill in part of it for the track…. the war destroys yet another part of the parish heritage, a relic of the Middle Ages, the last remnant of the castle of the Lords of Reninghelst.’ This was probably the work of numbers 3 and 4 sections, 438 (Cheshire) Company Royal Engineers, 3rd Division. The War Diary records that they were working at Reninghelst.


Reninghelst, Ypres Salient, Flanders Fields, Falkirk District
Linesman map showing railway going over the moat

The railways were also used by armoured trains that had large calibre guns. These mobile units, such as the Australian 12-inch Howitzer known as ‘Hilda’ were used to fire on special targets. The Royal Garrison Artillery No.1 Armoured Train, originally formed in September 1915, was also used to engage German targets with this train armed with 6-inch and 4.7-inch guns. On 22 July the War Diary records that number 2 gun received a hit from a German 4.2-inch shell that was deflected by the armour and caused a fire with one NCO, Sergeant Paine, wounded. Achiel Van Walleghem records in his diary on 26 July an armoured train ‘with a gigantic gun’ passing along the railway. The train he records is 25 metres long and runs on 32 wheels with several wagons behind it with men and ammunition. ‘The men who are sitting in the wagons appear proud of their monster-machine. It travels to Bailleul’s mill, sends a few English cigars off to Fritz and a couple of hours later it comes back to its stable on a siding between the farms of Cyriel Onraet and Cannaert. Each day it has a couple of such outings and when the beast opens its maw, the whole of Dickebusch shakes.’

E01210 Australian War Memorial Hilda Australian Railway gun

Tankodrome at Ouderdom

The British had been preparing for an attack on the Messines Ridge since 1915. It had taken the form of extensive mining and the laying of charges beneath the German defences. Read more here https://www.theypressalient.com/post/cratering-the-ridge-the-mine-craters-of-messines-ridge As early as March 1917, it had been foreseen that an attack by tanks was possible and a reconnaissance of the whole of the Ypres area had been under taken by the Heavy Branch. In April the 2nd Brigade, consisting of ‘A’ and ‘В’ Battalions, was selected for this operation. In May these two battalions were equipped with thirty-six Mark IV tanks each. Railheads were selected at Ouderdom and at Clapham Junction (one mile south of Dranoutre), and though they were within the shelled area, they fulfilled most of the requirements demanded of a tank railhead. Advanced parties began arriving at these stations between May 23 and 27, and ‘A’ and ‘В’ Battalions followed them. Supply dumps were then formed, and arrangements were made to carry forward one complete fill for all tanks operating by means of Supply Tanks, which were first used in this battle. These tanks consisted of discarded Mark I machines with specially made supply sponsons fitted to them. On the 24 May 1917, Achiel van Walleghem commented in his diary on this build-up for what was to be the Battle of Messines in which tanks played a small part: ‘They say that tanks have arrived already and are standing in special shelters – huts covering on top – on Cyriel Jacob’s fields at Ouderdom.’

IWM Box 132a 1810 6 B 28G 1917 Aerial Photo showing Tankodrom at Ouderdom 9 May 1917

Captain William Watson described the ‘tankodrom’ at Ouderdom: ‘We drove first to Ouderdom, a vast and enticing railhead, which the enemy shelled methodically each night, much to the annoyance of ‘b’ tank battalion, who lived, for reasons of state, at the edge of the railhead. Their tanks were housed with disarming naivety in a series of canvas stalls surrounded by a high canvas screen. The whole erection was perhaps three-quarters of a mile in circumference. The tanks were so obviously concealed that the enemy never suspected their existence ‘В’ Battalion tanks being hidden away in wood, and ‘A’ Battalion's in specially built shelters representing huts. The tracks left by the tanks, as they moved to these positions, was obliterated by means of harrows so that enemy aircraft would not notice anything suspicious on the ground. On the 5 June 1917 Achiel Van Walleghem wrote: ‘I hear that in the night various tanks left Ouderdom over the fields and streams in front of and behind the farm of Cyriel Lamerant towards the front, and where the monsters pass all is pressed into the ground as if it were butter. Every day we await the attack.’


For Third Ypres the tanks would be faced by water obstacles in the form of the Ypres-Comines canal which ran parallel to the front of attack this required causeways and bridges to be built over the canal as well as the Kemmelbeek and the Lombartbeek this work was carried out by 184 Tunnelling Company. The only example remaining of a ‘bridge for tanks’ carries the road over the Kemmelbeek that links Vierstraat and Hallebast and was built in August 1918. Read more here  https://www.theypressalient.com/post/hallebast-tank-bridge 

 

Sources and Further Reading

  1. Armageddon Road, A VC’s Diary 1914-1916, Billy Congreve

  2. 1917 The Passchendaele Year, The Diary of Achiel Van Walleghem

  3. A Surgeon In Khaki, Through France and Flanders in World War 1, Arthur Anderson Martin

  4. A Medico's Luck in the Great War, Colonel David Rorie

  5. The War Diary of The Master Of Belhaven 1914-1918, Lieutenant-Colonel The Hon. R.G.A. Hamilton

  6. The History of the Ninth (Scottish) Division 1914-1919, John Ewing MC

  7. Asia in Flanders Fields, Dominiek Dendooven

  8. Betrayed Ally, China in the Great War, Frances Wood & Christopher Arnander

  9. A Company of Tanks, Captain WHL Watson

  10. Tanks in the Great War 1914-1918, J.F.C. Fuller


Websites

 

War Diary

WO95/1989 – 17th Division RAMC Assistant Director of Medical Services

WO95/1423 – 2nd Battalion Royal Scots (Lothian Regiment)

WO95/236/5 – No.1 Armoured Train Royal Garrison Artillery

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