Daniel Boffey - Soldiers' relatives mark centenary of first world war's forgotten battle
It was the battle that
changed the course of the first world war, ushering in the collapse of the
German army on the western front and delivering the armistice some 100 days
later. Yet the battle of Amiens in France, the first day of
which was said by Gen Erich Ludendorff to have been Germany’s blackest, has
faded from public memory, left in the shadows by the horrors of the Somme and
Passchendaele.
At Amiens cathedral on
Wednesday, Prince William and the British prime minister, Theresa May, will
join 3,000 members of the public, including descendants of those who fought in
the four-day assault, 100 years to the day of the start of the battle that
brought the war out of the trenches at a cost of 46,000 allied casualties and
as many as 75,000 German losses, including those taken prisoner. May will read an
extract from the war memoirs of the then British prime minister, David Lloyd
George. The former German president Joachim Gauck is to read the poem After a
Bad Dream 1918, by Gerrit Engelke, a soldier and writer, sometimes
referred to as the German Wilfred Owen. Both men died in the last weeks before
the Armistice.
Beginning at 4.20am on
8 August 1918, Allied aircraft, tanks and infantry took their cue from 900
heavy guns to sweep through the front with such speed that some German officers
were captured while eating their breakfast. Among those killed on
that first morning was the great-great-grandfather of 18-year-old Amiens
Fowler: the Canadian soldier Frederick Spratlin, 36, was shot as he tended to
the wounds of another man. Fowler was named after the French city close to
where her ancestor was killed. “When I was little, I didn’t appreciate the
value of my name; it was the name that no one knew how to pronounce,” said
Fowler, a student. “But now I take time to tell them the story. I’m proud my
name carries his memory, and I get to tell people about him.”
L/Cpl Spratlin, a stretcher-bearer already
decorated for his bravery, was shot in the chest on the first morning of the
attack, after his battalion, moving through heavy fog, met a well-manned
machine-gun post. “He had just attended to the wounds of one
man and was going to the assistance of another when he was shot in the chest,”
wrote Capt Alexander MacDonald to Spratlin’s parents. “I was beside him at the
time and in spite of immediate attention the wound was so serious that instant
death resulted.” Some 10 years after
the war, MacDonald sought out Spratlin’s youngest daughter, Florence – Amiens’
great-grandmother – to express his continued sorrow. Florence, who died in
1996, was about seven years old when she was told of her father’s death.
One of the few of
Spratlin’s possessions to survive was his annotated Bible, a gift from his
daughter Janet, that was handed to him a week before he left Canada aboard the RMS
Empress of Britain as a member of the 75th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary
Force. Some 90 years on, the
New Testament’s soft leather cover is still bowed, indicating its former home
in Spratlin’s breast pocket. It is believed he would read extracts to those he
was seeking to save, or could not. His grieving wife, Mary Ethel, never
remarried.
Michelle Fowler, 47,
Amiens’ mother, said Florence used to talk about Spratlin almost every day.
“One of the last memories that she had of him was him getting on a street car,
maybe to work, but that was her last active memory, of saying goodbye to him. “And she had the
somewhat typical memory of the Toronto city kids of those who went to the first
world war: the boy on the bicycle carrying the telegraph. She was outside
playing, and there was one other boy on the street whose father was at war, and
when the boy cycled past that boy’s house, she knew her father had died.”
Fowler, a historian,
was inspired by the story of her relative, and a great uncle who died on Juno
beach in Normandy in the second world war. “It doesn’t seem like 100 years ago
because his memory was kept alive by her. He was always part of our life so to
speak. “He annotated the
Bible and it appears from the front cover that there were passages that gave
him comfort during certain times. Different aspects of the war were labelled –
sentry duty, officers – and had little passages by them. He had labelled out
the war. “Canada doesn’t talk
about Amiens, particularly, but we talk of the last 100 days of the war being
more a glorious chapter – and that started with Amiens.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/07/amiens-first-world-war-ww1-100-year-anniversary