Three
Dirhams
By
Ian
Felgate
Introduction.
To Fred and Sheila, wonderful parents who not only delivered the children a good life, but taught me the importance of respecting others. To the family regiment, Fred Felgate Royal Artillery (National Service), Uncle Reg Sutton Royal Artillery, Uncle Bob Marson British Army Burma (POW), Uncle George Emery RAF, Uncle Colin Smith RAF Coastal Command, ‘Uncle’ Bernie Williams (Palestine), Uncle Ken Felgate (Suez), Mark Sutton RAF (current). Finally to Bert Williams, North Staffordshire Regiment and Arthur Felgate, King’s Shropshire Light Infantry who inspired me to write this stuff in the first places.
I began searching for information about my grandfather Arthur Felgate, S/N 18264 King’s Shropshire Light Infantry (KSLI) and the exploits of his regiment which was dispatched to Salonika for three years of fighting during WW1. His original medals had somehow become lost over the years so I decided to replace them. At the same time I began putting pen to paper so to speak when ISIL began to make headline news with its treatment of foreign hostages in Northern Syria in 2014. The world was going to hell in a handcart some would say. Looking into the ISIL issue and the problems in the Middle East opened up a whole world of political intrigue to me that is taking me along my own road to Damascus. I use the present tense purely because events are unfolding before my eyes almost on a daily basis.
Respecting the efforts of a war generation and forming my own opinions on the matter requires a balance. I say this because we can now look back from the safety of 100 years and can be critical about the imperialistic race for the world’s resources which led to the worst war in the planet’s history. Condemnation in hindsight is an easy thing on either side of the conflict. Yet we honour our war dead and make promises not to repeat the same mistakes again. So if I appear to offer any criticism at all it is with the utmost respect to the family regiment.
If some of you have read dad’s memoirs in the form of his book “Tommy Johnson’s Three-penny bits” you might have asked yourself if anything else was in the wind. I was going to write my own eventually but was unsure what approach to take. I wrote mum’s section in the book after interviewing her after I flew down and stayed at their Coalgate home one weekend. When dad told me about the notes and the intention to print it as a book I was taken completely by surprise. But as I began to convert his written script into a typed version ready for printing I became quite excited because I was being given a lesson on family history which helped fill in some of the missing gaps in my own mind. I got quite a buzz working down at the printer’s office in Henderson sorting out the font size and images to be used in his book. 30 copies were eventually printed without an ISB number. A second printing is in the wind to make corrections from the original and will be given an ISB number. For example, in his book, dad is referred to as Private Felgate which should read Gunner Felgate as is customary with servicemen in the Royal Artillery. My bad.
Respecting the efforts of a war generation and forming my own opinions on the matter requires a balance. I say this because we can now look back from the safety of 100 years and can be critical about the imperialistic race for the world’s resources which led to the worst war in the planet’s history. Condemnation in hindsight is an easy thing on either side of the conflict. Yet we honour our war dead and make promises not to repeat the same mistakes again. So if I appear to offer any criticism at all it is with the utmost respect to the family regiment.
If some of you have read dad’s memoirs in the form of his book “Tommy Johnson’s Three-penny bits” you might have asked yourself if anything else was in the wind. I was going to write my own eventually but was unsure what approach to take. I wrote mum’s section in the book after interviewing her after I flew down and stayed at their Coalgate home one weekend. When dad told me about the notes and the intention to print it as a book I was taken completely by surprise. But as I began to convert his written script into a typed version ready for printing I became quite excited because I was being given a lesson on family history which helped fill in some of the missing gaps in my own mind. I got quite a buzz working down at the printer’s office in Henderson sorting out the font size and images to be used in his book. 30 copies were eventually printed without an ISB number. A second printing is in the wind to make corrections from the original and will be given an ISB number. For example, in his book, dad is referred to as Private Felgate which should read Gunner Felgate as is customary with servicemen in the Royal Artillery. My bad.
Dad made the point from the beginning that he was basing his book from memory. He also began with the words “I am not a scholar etc.” I echo some of those sentiments. My background education doesn’t really align the planets for me either when it comes to writing. My destiny took me along a different path, engineering, a profession not renowned for its ability to express itself literally, sometimes hammered in by one lecturer in the Engineering Dept. at Auckland University. I hope that teaching pedagogy has moved on.
I have called the title of my book “Three Dirhams” because I wanted a connection with my father’s book and with Granddad fighting in Salonika. After realising the limited amount of information I could find about Arthur’s battalion and the role of the KSLI in Macedonia, I decided to extend my research further afield. Turkey was essentially being attacked from two fronts during the war. One front was to the North West like units of the KSLI. However Turkey was also attacked from the South. British army units were based in Egypt. Egypt was also a stopover for troops ‘far away from the Empire’ like those from India, Australia and New Zealand enroot to the battlefields of France. This lead to an interest in the Arab Revolt in the Middle East which I want to explore in more detail.
Over the last 18 months there has been an emergence of a terrorist groups which the western media has called ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Sham) or ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) or Da’ish by other terms, based in Northern Syria. ISIL refer to themselves as al Dawla which means ‘the state’. Recently the offices of Charlie Hebdo in France were attacked and 12 members killed for ‘offences’ against the prophet Mohammed. I hope to connect these events with those of the Great War now commemorating its beginnings 100 years ago. For those of you interested in cause and effect, perhaps I could go back even 800 years earlier with the formation of the Ottoman Empire (but I won’t). For the first time I will be able link a few members of the family from the Great War to the Suez crisis of 1956. Ah! I hear you say – that’s why the dirhams or Saudi currency is in the title. Well sort of. It’s the currency I spent while transferring through Abu Dhabi on a flight to the UK in 2014. Not that 3 dirhams could get you anything just as a three penny bit today. By the way, I still have that three penny bit (pictured below). I picked it up back when I was at high school (Shirley Boys in Christchurch). The man that sold it to me took it out of a cardboard tube that contained many more. What surprised me about the three penny bit was its brightness, the whole roll contained uncirculated coins so I was told. It's also the same coin I photographed for dad's book as it fitted the time period of his story.
I have called the title of my book “Three Dirhams” because I wanted a connection with my father’s book and with Granddad fighting in Salonika. After realising the limited amount of information I could find about Arthur’s battalion and the role of the KSLI in Macedonia, I decided to extend my research further afield. Turkey was essentially being attacked from two fronts during the war. One front was to the North West like units of the KSLI. However Turkey was also attacked from the South. British army units were based in Egypt. Egypt was also a stopover for troops ‘far away from the Empire’ like those from India, Australia and New Zealand enroot to the battlefields of France. This lead to an interest in the Arab Revolt in the Middle East which I want to explore in more detail.
Over the last 18 months there has been an emergence of a terrorist groups which the western media has called ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Sham) or ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) or Da’ish by other terms, based in Northern Syria. ISIL refer to themselves as al Dawla which means ‘the state’. Recently the offices of Charlie Hebdo in France were attacked and 12 members killed for ‘offences’ against the prophet Mohammed. I hope to connect these events with those of the Great War now commemorating its beginnings 100 years ago. For those of you interested in cause and effect, perhaps I could go back even 800 years earlier with the formation of the Ottoman Empire (but I won’t). For the first time I will be able link a few members of the family from the Great War to the Suez crisis of 1956. Ah! I hear you say – that’s why the dirhams or Saudi currency is in the title. Well sort of. It’s the currency I spent while transferring through Abu Dhabi on a flight to the UK in 2014. Not that 3 dirhams could get you anything just as a three penny bit today. By the way, I still have that three penny bit (pictured below). I picked it up back when I was at high school (Shirley Boys in Christchurch). The man that sold it to me took it out of a cardboard tube that contained many more. What surprised me about the three penny bit was its brightness, the whole roll contained uncirculated coins so I was told. It's also the same coin I photographed for dad's book as it fitted the time period of his story.
Whilst researching Arthur’s Battalion based in Salonika, Greece, I couldn’t help but notice numerable historical accounts on the Arab rebellion and uprising. The rebellion was “organised” by the famous English soldier, T.E. Lawrence whom I had virtually no knowledge of. All I knew about “awrence” as the Arabs pronounced his name, was based on the David Lean film “Lawrence of Arabia”. Even though I had seen the film as a kid on TV all I could remember really was some guy in white robes on a horse waving a sword around. Well that turned out to be a camel actually. So I will attempt to put some light on that subject which became known as the “sideshow of a sideshow” in WW1.
The more I looked into the war in the Middle East the more I became obsessed with it. It is also full of ambiguity and mystery and a battle ground for the war of words between historians. The morality of the conflict I will try to leave to the reader. We are told Lawrence became a tortured soul after the war and I don’t intend to pursue his personality and traits. I don’t think I can add to the other 81 published accounts of his life that cover those hours he spent in a Turkish prison. I will also find that our allies in the Middle East who helped secure our victory with stunning successes in valleys and hot sands of the Arabian Desert were losers too. The Arabs have a wonderful story to tell, but until the current political climate changes there is no one to hear it. I watched a small number of old TV news reels of Prince Faisal and T.E. Lawrence meeting in the desert on You-Tube to get a quick snapshot of the era and the KSLI in Salonika in their white tented camp. While I was writing the beginning chapter I heard a song on the TV called Summertime Sadness which for me has been a theme song throughout this project and the whole sorry Middle Eastern mess.
So what do I want to achieve at the end of all of this? I want to know why granddad went to war and why Turkey? I want to know how the Middle East became this tangled discontinuous entity. I want to find out if the Arab revolt really was an Arab revolt. I want to investigate the relationships between Sunni and Shia Muslims and if these combined with tribal differences can offer any hope of peace in the Middle East.
Because I’m writing as I research I find I am regularly updating to replace what I believe to be errors or misunderstandings. For example ISIL don’t call themselves ISIL or ISIS or Da’ish like I thought – but al-Dawla which means ‘the state’. Again this seems to change depending on which website one consults.
Time is a big problem faced by amateur writers. Fortunately, professional biographers know this and can be quite forgiving for our shortcomings. So I don’t want any stick from the family either. Some of my writing is based on T.E. Lawrence’s accounts in his ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’. The man was amazing and well educated in history and literature. At first I found his style a bit of a grind and I believe he was trying to impress the literary world of the day, but easier than reading the King James Bible. And then I became accustomed to it and began to enjoy, even revelling in it from time to time.
“We endured for some hours, without variety except at times when the camels plunged and strained a little and the saddles creaked: indications that the soft plain had merged into beds of drift-sand, dotted with tiny scrub, and therefore uneven going, since the plants collected little mounds about their roots, and the eddies of the sea-winds scooped hollows in the intervening spaces” (Seven Pillars of Wisdom - TE Lawrence chapter X, on the road to Feisal with Tafas and his son both of the Hazimi of the Beni Salem).
Because I’m writing as I research I find I am regularly updating to replace what I believe to be errors or misunderstandings. For example ISIL don’t call themselves ISIL or ISIS or Da’ish like I thought – but al-Dawla which means ‘the state’. Again this seems to change depending on which website one consults.
Time is a big problem faced by amateur writers. Fortunately, professional biographers know this and can be quite forgiving for our shortcomings. So I don’t want any stick from the family either. Some of my writing is based on T.E. Lawrence’s accounts in his ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’. The man was amazing and well educated in history and literature. At first I found his style a bit of a grind and I believe he was trying to impress the literary world of the day, but easier than reading the King James Bible. And then I became accustomed to it and began to enjoy, even revelling in it from time to time.
“We endured for some hours, without variety except at times when the camels plunged and strained a little and the saddles creaked: indications that the soft plain had merged into beds of drift-sand, dotted with tiny scrub, and therefore uneven going, since the plants collected little mounds about their roots, and the eddies of the sea-winds scooped hollows in the intervening spaces” (Seven Pillars of Wisdom - TE Lawrence chapter X, on the road to Feisal with Tafas and his son both of the Hazimi of the Beni Salem).