Monocled mutineer torrent

It was hell let loose and half of us never came back. It is possible to trace the purgatorial obstacle course which our correspondents remembered, the trial gas chambers, the assault course, the bayonetting, and always and repeatedly, the sand. A Seaforth Highlander wrote from Bacup in Lancashire. He recalled seeing men wounded and killed on the assault course. Sergeant C. Jellie wrote from Takapuna, near Auckland in New Zealand, recalling seeing the Aussies cut down a Tommy who was bound to a wagon wheel doing field punishment.

But it was the detailed accounts of events during the mutiny, unprompted except by our newspaper letter, which fascinated most in that early correspondence.

The MP tried to stop us. He was rushed and thrown over the bridge. Private A. It started with the firing of the pistol of the Red Cap on the bridge. We saw the Red Cap say something to them, and then he shot the Scot dead.

The troops in the Bull Ring downed their arms and went crazy and put sleepers on the railway track to stop them going up the line.

This created a very dangerous situation as it was very near the ammunition dump. We wrote back to our correspondents, visited them, solicited further letters from around the world. There is no sign of the great camp.

But the war cemetery is reminder enough. There are more than 10, graves, the pitiful roll-call of those who lived long enough to endure the journey back from the front, but who could not hold on to life long enough to see England again. We found the grave of Corporal Wood.

Houigue, secretary of the Academic Society of Le Touquet drew our attention to accounts of the troops running amok. I particularly remember a soldier at the head of one of the groups carrying a lance on which a cat was impaled.

Aubrey Aaronson told us there were orderly-room notices recording that a number of executions had been carried out. Certainly troops had to be brought back from the line to restore order. Sergeant W. None of us knew where we were going. Only when we arrived were we told why we were there. By then all was quiet, but it must have created a great impression to see a full battalion arriving direct from the front.

In these letters and conversations with veterans, the name of Percy Toplis was occasionally mentioned.

Some thought of him as the main ringleader. But few thought there was one ringleader. Rather there were a number of hardened soldiers who took advantage of the confused and riotous situation which was developing throughout the camp.

But they remembered the name principally, 60 years on, because of the spectacular splash in the press which Percy Toplis enjoyed so soon after the end of the war. Ex-Gunner L. Charles from Weston-super-Mare wrote that the leaders were Percy and Black Jack, a six-foot black-bearded Australian from the bush.

Private Musgrove, from Wallsend on Tyne, also thought Percy played a principal role, particularly during an incident when Thomson was confronted in his car. The General was surrounded by yelling troops.

From further conversations with our correspondents emerged the characterful picture of his role in the mutiny which is detailed in the book. We do know what sort of a fellow he was.

There were, in , a lot of people living around Blackwell and Mansfield in Nottinghamshire who remembered him well. The story of his girl Dorothy and the baby is traceable through the records of Somerset House. It is the story of common soldiers who rebelled against protracted insult and brutality, recorded in dozens of letters and personal memories. Worshippers coming out from evensong scattered for cover among the gravestones to avoid being caught up in the exchange of gunfire. For with him were buried, for sixty years at least, some of the darker secrets of the First World War.

At the time the case aroused a small amount of adverse comment in the Manchester Guardian, slight praise in the Yorkshire Post, total approval in local newspapers, and some muted protest at Westminster. It took a jury just three minutes to record a verdict of justifiable homicide.

The chief constable who, it was claimed, had authorized the operation was awarded the CBE and then, within weeks, mysteriously resigned. Even in death, Percy Toplis continued to blight the lives of the establishment. Toplis had been handsome, debonair, a natural actor, a fair pianist, a renowned philanderer. He had a wild sense of humour. Even when on the run for his life, he ostentatiously affected a gold-rimmed monocle. Several of the mutineers were executed, but Toplis remained at large for three years.

The Army immediately covered up the Mutiny; thousands of the participants would die shortly afterwards in the Passchendaele offensive. Percy Toplis became one of Britain's most wanted men and was, eventually, killed by a policeman in Yet, as The Monocled Mutineer outlines, there are still a host of unanswered questions about Toplis and his role, if any, in the Mutiny.

Both a biography and history; a biography of Percy Topliss, con artist, womanizer, charmer, accused ringleader of the British Mutiny of ; an incident that the British Government did their best to Read full review. Account Options Sign in. Try the new Google Books.

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