Return to Trenches at Death August 6, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary , trackback
There follows a very fine ghost story from the British press. It would be fascinating to track down the sources here: drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
At the beginning of the war a famous regiment left England for France. The colonel that regiment was a man beloved of all his men, idolised by his young subalterns, and highly thought of his brigadier. For a year the colonel led his regiment through the campaign in Flanders, until one misty morning a hand grenade deprived him of an arm. The colonel left for England on the first hospital ship, and his regiment knew him no more. The colonel, after months, was fitted with an artificial arm, but he was not satisfied. He wanted above all things to get back to his regiment. He moved heaven and earth to get back there with his men, but that, he was informed, was impossible. If he liked, however, he could have the command of a garrison battalion shortly leaving for the Dardanelles. Not being of an idle disposition, he took it. After landing one of the first to fall ill with dysentery was the Colonel, He had sufficient strength to warrant his being taken to a hospital ship, however, and so for the second time, he returned to England under the Red Cross. The hospital ship docked in England on a Tuesday, and midday on Wednesday the colonel was carried into the train which was leaving for London. He never reached that city, for he died at 12.30, just half an hour after the train had left.
So far another WW1 tragedy, there are many. Here things get spooky, though.
Now the extraordinary part of this story is that at the exact moment that the Colonel died on the hospital train a company of his old regiment saw him in their trench in Flanders. There was nothing out of the ordinary happening at the time, and beyond the number of exploding shells, the ‘tick-tack’ of a machine-gun, and the occasional bursting of a hand grenade, the morning was just as many others had been. The company were at their post when the company sergeant-major turned to the company commander: ‘Beg pardon, sir, here’s the Colonel coming round; I didn’t know he was back again.’ The officer looked up. There, standing with his cap just a little to one side, as he always wore it, stood the colonel. His field-boots were caked with mud, and an old pair of binoculars were slung around his neck. The company commander was surprised, and started to walk towards him, when he dropped his stick, stooped to pick it up, and when straightened up again the colonel had gone. The officer dived down a communication trench and rushed for company headquarters. ‘Did you see him?’ he queried, breathless. The three subalterns looked up at his question, ‘See whom? Do you mean the colonel? Yes, we saw him, standing still, looking down the trench just here; we looked at him for fully a minute, and suddenly he WAS NOT THERE. Can’t make it out at all’ said the spokesman: ‘thought he was in the Dardanelles; besides, all the men saw him too, and I don’t know whether you noticed it or not— he had BOTH his arms.’
Of course, the fact he had an artificial arm is awkward there: who’s betting that that quickly got ironed out of the story.
It was not until the next week’s mails , arrived in the trenches that the regiment learned of the colonel’s death. They did not even know that he had left the Dardanelles [see above!] until they read the fatal news. Over a hundred officers and men saw Colonel at 12.50 [GMT?] on that morning, saw him so plainly, clearly, that all thought he had come back to the regiment for duty, and looked so ordinary that it never struck those who saw him that he could be anything but alive. Explanation? There isn’t one, a crystal-gazer would label it clairvoyance, your telepathist, telepathy. What would you have? Over one hundred British Tommies saw the colonel that Wednesday morning. There it is; believe it or not, as you like. Liv Echo, 21 Nov 1916, first in Daily Express
Note the convenient lack of details: we don’t know the name, the regiment, the area…
29 Aug 2015: Chris from Haunted Ohio Books writes ‘I first ran across the story about the one-armed Colonel in Psychical Phenomena and the War, Hereward Carrington, Ph.D., Dodd Mead and Company, 1918. Maddeningly, but in the fashion of contemporary paranormal reporting, it also elides the name of the Colonel and the regiment.’ I wonder if this came from Ghosts in the great war and true tales of haunted houses, thrilling experiences of “Daily news” readers. Worldcat says it was published in 1927, but the other volumes in the series are undated and I thought they were published in the 1910s. They were printed on absolutely horrible paper and cheaply bound–a very ephemeral item. The Daily News was noted for its requests to its readers for ghostly and psychic stories, which were later published in book form. S. Louis Giraud was the editor of the series.
Barry writes in with a personal WW1 story ‘On the subject of WWI return stories: this reminded me of a story my old mum use to tell of experiences living in council houses. She said that there were the obligatory chains that would rattle in the attic, a baby pram that would wheel itself up and down the hall way, as well as occasionally seeing her dead gran sitting in her favourite chair and place looking out the open back door. The ghost story relevant to your recent post is about her father. My mother’s father was killed in WWI, and her mother remarried, having several more children. My mother said that her parents were having a loud argument and in view of all present her dead father’s cane which was kept stored in a closet, moved under it’s own power, around the corner and sat it’s self against the wall, next to the head board, instantly ending the row!’
