- from ‘the War Illustrated, '7th June,1917
- Men of the Green Brassard
- 'Some Famous Correspondents
- and Their Work'
- by Basil Clarke
- Reporting the War for King and Country
A green brassard is the badge of war correspondents attached to British Armies in the Field. It is worn with a khaki uniform and cap, puttees or leggings and a Sam Browne belt — practically the same dress as an officer's, except for regimental and rank badges, of which the war correspondent, of course, has none.
At first the green brassard bore also the name of the wearer's newspaper or news agency, but the correspondents raised a "strafe" at being labeled in this public manner and the authorities dispensed with the names on the brassards and left them plain — a bright and pretty green, of about the same shade as a billiard-table cloth. Rules and regulations say that a. green brassard must be worn on each arm, but in practice one is generally regarded as enough.
Where and How They Work
There are only five "home" correspondents with the British Army in France. Among them they supply all the news of the British front (with the exception of the official communiqués) that reaches the home newspapers. Their work is distributed of course. Some of them write for only two or three papers, others for large groups of payers. In addition, there are in France representatives of the Colonial Press — Australian and Canadian, and also of the American.
The correspondents are attached to General Headquarters (known as G.H..Q.) and are posted at an "advanced base," whence they travel day by day to the front by their own motor-cars. They have no military rank, but are subject to military discipline. A Press Officer is in charge of them and he and his assistant officers see to it that the correspondents get authentic information, and that they exorcise reasonable discretion in what they do and write.
They live in their own mess, provided at their own expense, but staffed by Army orderlies and servants — usually men who through wounds or age have been incapacitated from more active service. The correspondents' "camp," as a rule, is some chateau or castle; but the word chateau, it is well to remember, is applied by the French to almost any detached house bigger than a cottage.
Out for "Times" and "Telegraph"
Despatches are usually written in the early evening upon return from the front. They arc censored on the premises, and sent home either by King's Messenger or by field telegraph if specially important.
The British correspondents in France besides being men of high standing in their profession, are perhaps as interesting a group of people to meet as is to be found in any mess in the war zone. The senior man, in point of years — though far from old — is Mr. Perry Robinson, of the "Times." His clean-cut face, trim grey moustache, and quick eyes under shaggy, black eyebrows, suggest the soldier rather than the writer. Perhaps the best commentary on his appearance is to be had in the fact that guards and pickets on seeing Perry Robinson flash past in his motor-car, automatically give him the "general's salute." But he has been a writer most of his life. Many years were spent in America, where he obtained considerable reputation as a journalist, an essayist, and a story-writer. In his younger days, after leaving an English university, he saw the American Western States at their "wildest and woolliest," and had many adventures as he ran through all journalistic tasks between those of reporter and proprietor.
Another well-known figure in the home correspondents mess in General Headquarters is Mr. Philip Gibbs, one of the most successful and most conscientious of English journalists. Slight in build, his pale, finely-chiselled face and big, grey-blue eyes suggest a poet and idealist rather than a man of action. But Gibbs is both. With the mind and vision of a poet, he combines an energy almost fierce, besides a great courage. His industry is tremendous. The number of his books, essays, plays and what not, done in odd hours during crowded days of newspaper work, is alone evidence of this. His moral courage is no less than his energy. It was Gibbs, alone of all the newspaper correspondents in the world that fluttered about Cook in Copenhagen years ago, who dared to say and to write that the man's claim to have discovered the Pole was humbug. He was all but mobbed for his daring, but that went for nothing. He had written what he thought, and that was enough. Gibbs has a great and kindly heart. He sees more of the suffering than of the glory of war. His writing shows how much he feels it.
"Daily Mail" Man at the Front
Another correspondent who is read far and wide is Beach Thomas, of the "Daily Mail." He is tall and spare, and almost as athletic to-day as when he "ran the mile" years ago for Oxford University, where he was president of the Athletic Union. The ruddy bronze of an outdoor life is on his cheek. His brown eyes, behind gold-rimmed spectacles, twinkle on life. He is a boy still in mind and freshness and jollity of disposition.
A love of letters and the classics has almost equal place in him with a love of nature, outdoor life, and pastimes. In the few spare moments that fall to a correspondent at the front you may find him in his room reading a well-worn Virgil (few people know that he was formerly a classics-master at "Dulwich College) or in the garden kicking a football about, or bowling fierce "overs" at an imaginary wicket. Everybody likes "Big Beach" — one of the finest and most lovable of men.
Percival Phillips, of the "Express," contributes a genial fellowship and a certain dry brand of humour, especially his own, to the war correspondents' mess. Tall, well-knit, with high forehead, he was a war-correspondent at the age of twenty when, with pack on shoulder — or should one say, with fountain-pen shirt pocket ? — he set off on his own account from his home in Pennsylvania, USA, to the Greek War, where he wrote despatches and sent them uninvited to editors, American and British, who were forced by their very excellence to use them. Since then England has been his journalistic home, though he has travelled most of the world over on behalf of his paper,
Percival Phillips' "scoop" of the Jamaica earthquake and. his account of the Delhi Durbar rank among the big things of English journalism. Besides being a fine journalist, he is a most friendly and loyal colleague.
Heater's Representative
Lastly, but not least, for he is the biggest man of all the correspondents at G.H.Q., France, comes Mr. Herbert Russell, the representative of Reuter's and the Press Association. Big, bluff, and hearty, he is known among his colleagues as "The Genial Russell." He has the sailor rather than the soldier manner, which is fitting, perhaps, for he is the son of dark Russell, the sailor and famous writer of sailor stories.
It is to the sea and sailors and especially to the Navy that Russell has devoted his enthusiasm as a journalist. But his despatches of late, with their quick, common- sense surveys of what is happening at the war, have shown that he is as "handy" a correspondent on land as on sea — and they say that Russell can give you from memory the size, armament, and equipment of any ship in the British Navy with details of its personnel, which, as the Yankees would say it "going some."
In later articles some details will be given about thc war correspondents in other fields of the war, also something of the photographers responsible for the excellent services of war-pictures with which the nation is kept supplied.
- from ‘the War Illustrated’ 30th June, 1917
- More Famous War Correspondents
- by Basil Clarke
BESIDES the war-correspondents at the British front dealt, with in a previous article, the British newspapers have representatives on each of our other fronts in Europe, Egypt, and Asia Minor, and also with many of the Allied armies. In the case of the British fronts other than the French war correspondence is in the hands of one representative who writes for a large group of papers. 'Mr. Massey, of "the "Daily Telegraph," for instance, is with the British forces in Egypt in this capacity.
He is one of the best-known and best-liked journalists in England, a successor, in fact, in the esteem of his many Press friends to his splendid colleague Bob Maguire. who died in harness during the war. Mr. Massey may be said to have graduated for the green brassard from the ranks. He made his way as a journalist by sheer excellence, and when a chance came to him he showed himself not only a first-class fact-getter, but also a writer of sterling merit. It was Massey- who stayed for hours on a, tiny storm-tossed steamer at the mouth of the Maas when the passenger ship Berlin was wrecked there not many years ago. The steamer was trying to rescue- survivors, men and women, who were twiddled together in a deck cabin on the wreck. For some days they were beyond all help : no ship could approach the wreck in such a storm. But at last it moderated, and the survivors, by most daring seamanship, wore got. off. Massev's account in the " Daily Telegraph " of the rescue and of the survivors' sufferings during the many hours spent on the wreck eclipsed anything else that was written. It was splendid work.
Official Correspondents
With the British Army in Mesopotamia is Mr. Edmund Candler, an old war campaigner. He acted as war correspondent with Sir Francis Younghusband's expedition to Tibet, one of the most romantic of war ventures. In the first battle of that campaign he received a very severe wound in the arm which entailed it’s loss. But he would not give up and was present at the entry into Lhasa.
His book "The Unveiling of Lhasa," records the details of that expedition, and shows something oi the romance of the "Hidden Land." Before going to Mesopotamia, as official correspondent with the British Army, Mr. Candler wrote some vivid war sketches from Flanders.
With the British forces in Salonika, also as joint representative of a large group of papers, is Mr. G. Ward Price, formerly of the "Dally Mail." Mr. Ward Price made up for a late start in journalism, by extraordinarily rapid progress when he did begin. He is one of the many cases of men whom journalism drew to itself from other callings. He was in business in Manchester when the "itch to write " overcame him. He left his business and went to Cambridge University to equip himself more fully.
After graduating he found an opening in journalism with the "Daily Mail," and from the first did excellent work, notably in the year East and Turkey, where he secured interviews and information of the highest diplomatic importance. He was Paris correspondent of the "Mail" when war broke out, and was among the first of the correspondents in the field.
Early Days of the War
Posted near to him, at Athens, on behalf of a large group of papers, is his former colleague, Mr. J. M. N. Jeffries, who leapt into fame through brilliant work in Flanders during the first mad rush of the German onslaught. Slim in build, with a delicately lined faced and a wealth of hair, and with a certain-preciseness of manner and dress, Jeffries might not have suggested to the casual onlooker a man of such energy, courage, and practical resource as he proved himself to be.
Jeffries was touring the war zone in his own motor-car, and sending brilliant despatches day by day, while many more experienced correspondents were waiting at the bases wondering how to get there. He was in tight corners innumerable, more than once standing right amongst the oncoming Boches as they swarmed over Belgium. Like most of the other correspondents, he was "chivvied " from pillar to post by the authorities, who forbade correspondents at that time, and was eventually arrested and sent home, as they all were. But he had had a splendid innings, one that established him in a high place among war correspondents.
"Black Sunday"
Of the British correspondents working e with the allied armies in Europe, easily the best and most distinguished is Mr. H. Hamilton Fyfe, whose work in the war is too familiar to the readers of 'The War Illustrated’ to need retelling.
Mr, Hamilton Fyfe is, perhaps the most widely travelled of all British newspaper men. He has been everywhere. To him and to the "Times," which published his despatch, is owed the lasting debt of the British nation for being the first man to give to the public any idea of the enormous danger we were in during the early weeks in the war. Hard things were said by people, not disinterested, about the famous "Times" despatch of "Black Sunday" but that message was correct in its tenor and general significance.
That despatch was the first thing to shake the silly "cocksureness" of the British nation and to awaken it to some sense of the gravity of things.
Exposer of De Rougemont
Another interesting personality, who has done fine work in the war, both on the British front and on the Russian front. is Mr. Perceval Gibbon, of the "Daily Chronicle." He is one of the most polished writers working on any newspaper. He was formerly a ship's captain, and in addition he has roamed and adventured in many lands, doing many things between editing a paper and trading beads to savages on the East African coasts
Mr. Martin Donohoe, of the same paper, who is reporting things in Russia and the Near East, is another man who has roved and seen many things. He was once in the Army and later migrated to Australia. Beginning at the bottom in journalism, he ran quickly up many rungs of the ladder by his skillful exposure of Louis De Rougemont, whose wonderful travel stories took in many shrewd and learned people, but not Martin Donohoe among them. He tracked De Rougemont's career through all its vicissitudes, and finally exposed his fables remorselessly. In the course of his researches into De Rougemont's pretensions Donohoe came to England and began a connection with the "Daily Chronicle" which he has since retained.
This is his third or fourth war. His great journalistic "scoop" was the Battle of Lule Burgas, which he telegraphed from Constantsa (at a cost of over 100 after a race by motor-car from the war zone). Incidentally, the motor-car was smashed up and abandoned on the way.
- from ‘the War Illustrated’ 7th July 1917
- Camera Correspondents
- by Basil Clarke
- Special Correspondent at the Front
To be a war photographer you need a hardihood of a specially tough and "extra - durable" sort, for shells and fighting and cataclysms are your daily bread and butter. It is, from these things that your best pictures come. There is no shirking them.
The war correspondent can at least rush for shelter, jump into a trench, or "lie doggo " in a dug-out when things become especially hot and embarrassing. To eliminate risks in this way is, in fact, his duty. His "copy" is but little better for his being able to say that a shell exploded ten yards from him that day. It is probably worse — indifferently composed through the writer having undergone shell-shock. Nor is he the better off for being actually present in an attack. From farther back he can get a better perspective of things and see more clearly what is happening.
With the war photographer all this is changed. He must be "in" at things. There is no sheltering in trenches or dug-outs for him. He wants "live" pictures of fighting. He must be part and parcel of that fight, taking almost a bigger risk than the soldiers themselves, in that he must stand up straight and steady and defenceless to be shot at while he himself sights his instrument and touches off a harmless trigger.
War photography either creates or attracts to itself an especial breed of men — men who are either so engrossed in their craft, or so constituted mentally and physically that the riskiness of their work has very little effect on them — and is certainly no deterrent.
Shells may be falling and bullets whistling past, and yet the great idea in their mind is the photograph they are "to get in a minute." I have seen a man crawling along an open space with a camera towards a spot that was being shelled, with a view to getting a shell picture at close quarters. Had the shells been exactly localised it would not have been so dangerous. But they were not. No one could say within a hundred yards where the next would fall. He got his picture, lying on the ground at about twenty-five yards range. The shock must have half stunned him, but his only concern after he had crawled back was that he hoped it hadn't shaken his plate and given him a 'fuzzygraph."
A Man with No Nerves
Of this type of camera man a good example is Lieutenant Brooks, a former "Mirror" photographer, now holding Commissioned rank as Official Photographer with the British Army in France. Brooks has no nerves at all. Ruddy-cheeked, and with twinkling, boyish eyes, he seems to go through his work with as little concern as a boy. He has generally an example of the latest thing in German hand-grenades in his pocket, which he shows and handles with most disquieting sang-froid, and day after day he goes poking his camera's nose into places which any normal man, left free to roam in the war zone as Brooks is, would shun by as many miles as possible.
The King and the Camera Man
Brooks owes much of his success as a photographer to the King and the Royal Family. He lived as a boy on the Windsor estate, and when at an early age he began "playing with a camera," as he himself puts it, the King used good-naturedly to allow himself to be photographed. Brooks soon became very skilled in this work, and eventually he became "group-photographer" to the Royal Family, accompanying them on their tours. He has photographed almost all the leading Royalties of Europe. Early in the war he acted as photographer in the Navy.
One curious story is told of Brooks during the King's visit to the British Forces in France. A general, seeing him approaching the neighbourhood of the King with a camera, ordered him rather sharply to "clear out of the way." He was not a little surprised to see his Majesty, who turned at that moment, walk forward and shake Brooks warmly by the hand. There was no more opposition from the general.
Lieutenant Brooks' colleague on the British front in France is Lieutenant Brooke. The names are often confused, and it is one of the little jokes in the war zone to name each of the two official photographers "Brooks-or-Brooke." Brooke is quite a different type of man from Brooks. There is less of the bubbling merriment of boyhood about him, less wealth of joke and cheery anecdote, but he is a clever photographer and a sterling man.
At the outbreak of the war Lieutenant Brooke gave up his work as a Press photographer and joined King Edward's Horse as a trooper. He won quick promotion, and was decorated with the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry in the field. Brooke was "invalided out" before he accepted an offer to take up photographic work again as official Army photographer. His work now is no less. risky than before.
Another very capable and successful war photographer is Captain Ivor Castle, formerly of the "Mirror," now with the Canadian Forces in France. Castle is another excellent instance of "photo-graphic nerves”.
When aviation was in its infancy in England (and a highly dangerous business, seeing that almost every aviator came to grief), Castle was photographing from the air with utmost unconcern. He took the first air photographs in this country.
He has been almost all over the world. I have reason to believe it was Captain Ivor Castle who photographed so exclusive a thing as the funeral of the Empress of China. It was done through a hole in the scenic decorations on the route of the funeral procession. His pictures from Flanders in the early part of the war and especially of Ypres during the bombardment, when I chanced to be in his company, were among the best photographs sent home. And Castle managed to stay in the prohibited war zone for a longer period than any other war photographer.
No inventory of war photography or of Press photography would be complete without mention of the three brothers Grant. This unique family have been called the "Gheeryble Brothers " of the Press, no less for their genial good-heartedness than for their warm attachment to one another, as well as bearers of the patronymic of Dickens originals. Brother "Tommy" is with the British Forces in Salonika. The neighbourhood is not new to him. He look part in the last Balkan campaign as did also his brothers, though on different sides. Brother Bernard secured many fine war pictures before getting a commission in the R.N.A.S. where he still has scope for his wonderful skill with the camera. One brother alone, Horace Grant, remains to maintain the family traditions in Fleet Street.
Baldwin's Chance on the Somme
The Australian Forces' official photographer in France, Mr. Baldwin, is a London newspaper man, as are also the official British cinema men, Messrs. Mallins, McDow, and Tong. Mallins, who "took" the famous film of the Somme offensive, shared quarters with me once in the early days of the war in Flanders, when we were both "dodging the police." He used to say then : "Oh, for a decent chance to get a battle picture!"
He got his chance on the Somme — and took it. His film of that stirring advance is known the world over
*see also links on other war-time correspondents
