(Continued from previous post located HERE)…
TO REDEEM THE PAST:
Glimpses of the Great War based on the letters of Eric Standring
©2014 All Rights Reserved
Malta
The initial wounds that Eric had received did not seem too significant. However they became infected and he was sent to on the hospital ship “Maheno” to Mudros and then later to Malta. He wrote to his parents.
I am now in camp hospital called Ghain Tuffiegha. It is a beautiful place in the country by the seaside. All is nice and green now and the climate is just all right. I am hungry as a horse. It is a great sensation to feel no bullets whizzing past or to be dodging into dug-outs when shells come. It is just exactly like rabbits. You may get out and begin cooking your evening meal when you hear. “Get into your dugouts!” Everyone bolts like fury, and then “whizbang” and the place where you were may be cut up with shrapnel. You get so used to the noise that you don’t notice it. I had a dug out in the centre of a clump of bushes like blue gums. I slept soundly all night and in the morning the Major, whose dug-out is just above mine said “Did you get hit?” I said no. He said a shell case had landed in my bushes from one that burst just over me. I never heard it. If a shell case hits you it is goodbye as it cuts you in half if it strikes your body.
I am going to Valetta tomorrow probably, as I can hobble around alright. Just three miles from here is St. Paul’s Bay, where Paul is supposed to have landed. This is a great place for churches and monks. The principle industry and seems to be lace making. Well I must close now as I want to get this posted. We’re getting pretty well treated and being sergeant makes a difference as there is a good sergeants Mess.
With best love to all,
Your loving son,
Eric
I do not think I will be able to go to Gallipoli for some weeks yet when, but will look after myself there.
It is impossible to write from Gallipoli as we are a long way from the sea and can only sneak down at night there.
While Eric’s physical injuries were healing he seems not to have been well.
13 October 1915
Ghain Tuffiegha
Malta
Dear Mum and Dad
As I am sorry to tell you how I am not getting on too well and have been today put down to be invalided home, whether to NZ or England I can’t say yet. I feel pretty weak and ill just now and will be glad to get a complete rest. It is just exhaustion with me and it is proving a common cause of invaliding here.
I would like to get home for a spell, but would like to arrive in NZ fat and well so I am what I think after such a sea voyage. Well I will write again as soon as I know if it is England or New Zealand. I am in no danger you understand but just need a change of life. I hope all is well with you all. Love from
Your son
Eric
9/481 Sergt H. E. Standring
O.M.R. (N.Z.)
He was described in his Army records as having “Neurasthenia (slight)”. We would probably describe it now as a form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Recuperation in England
On 23 October, Eric embarked on the “HS Oxfordshire” bound for England. He had a bunk with sheets on it but was also suffering from jaundice.
We reached Southampton at about 9:30 am. We berthed in the hospital ships wharf. There were three hospital ships from France, the “Aquitania” from the peninsula and us. The “Aquitania” is absolutely it for size and looks very well as a hospital ship. There was a long hospital train beside us and we got aboard in decent steam heated carriages, very comfortable. We left about 2:00 pm and were off for London. We went very fast and not in the regular line but a good way out of our way. You may be sure we remained glued to the windows. The English country is very beautiful just now as all the many trees are all colors of the autumn. I can say I was very pleased with the whole country we passed.
Well, we only stopped once and what place do you think it was. You will hardly guess. Well it was Staines*. I guess you know that place well. We wouldn’t have stopped there only something happened to the engine. We crossed the Thames just before we got to Staines and again after. I had a good look out of the window and a woman came along and gave me a large bag of apples and pears. I saved the bag and am sending it to you as memento of Staines as it was the only one I could get as we were locked in.
(Editor’s note: *Staines is the ancestral home for many of our Dexters since the 17th Century…)
In London he was taken to the Fulham Military Hospital.
It is jolly comfortable and a great improvement on Colonial Military Hospital, which are rough to say the least of them. We NZ and Australians are all together. The place is good and the tucker and doctors excellent. I get fish and boiled eggs for breakfast, a big pint of hot milk in the morning at 11.00 am. A boiled chicken and milk pudding for dinner and boiled eggs or a little fried sole for tea and cocoa for supper with the bread and butter. I am very troubled with insomnia and usually have another pint of milk about midnight and a cup of Bovril about 4:00 am so I might get fat again.
Clearly in London wounded soldiers were being well treated.
I stayed in hospital all last Monday but on Tuesday I went to the Lord Mayors Show. An invitation came before or New Zealand and Australians in this hospital to be the guests of the union bank of Australia Ltd for the shower. So we all dinked up in our lovely blue hospital uniforms and were marshalled by two or three fair ones to a motor-bus waiting outside. Pouring with rain. We got inside and outside on top and buzzed off. When we got down to the centre of London who we found the way blocked and crowds and crowds lining the streets. Never saw such crowds. Well, we had secured a special dispensation the crowds opened and our bus passed into the closed streets to get to our destination. You should have heard the cheers. I think our lone bus got more share of attention then the Lord Mayors Show coming on behind. We got to the Union Bank in Cornhill St and took seats in the window. The program of the procession is enclosed. It was very imposing, and the Lord Mayor’s carriage is most wonderful. Just like Cinderella’s coach as we used to imagine it.
There was a lot of funny old jossers in fur coats and three cornered hats in different carriages. Well after the show which took about 2 hours to pass, we went upstairs and sat down to a most sumptuous luncheon. Then we got into our motor-bus again and sailed off home amidst the plaudits of the populace as we were all hakaing and cooeeing in the pouring rain and got pretty damp but they soon hustled us off to change when we got inside again.
Next day, Wednesday, a young lady named Miss Lessing whose people are big bugs here, came in a whopping motor to show four of us Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament. She came about 9:00 am and we drove through all the principal places, Hyde Park, Rotten Row, Piccadilly etc. landed at the Parliament. Her uncle is in Parliament and she is well known so we saw more than anyone else would get a chance to. In a main door on the right hand side is a huge hall under repairs. On the floor is a brass plate where Clive stood while he was impeached and on the step above is where Charles II stood. We got right onto the floor of the House of Commons and took our seats on the benches. I sat on the government benches to say I had sat in the British House of Commons. The house is rather small and is all paneled in black timber, oak I suppose, but it looks pretty dingy….
We saw all there was to be seen I think and then went Westminster Abbey. It is a grand and wonderful building and is too great to describe. A lot of the tombs and effigies are sand bagged for bombs but there are great things to be seen all the same…….
I have been well fitted out with warm underwear by the NZ Ladies War Contingent Association. They are very good and kind to us NZ chaps. We get plenty of tobacco etc. every week, and when I first got to hospital, I got a razor, strop, hair brushes and combs, toothbrush etc. baksheesh.
He later writes
London is very dark at night as no lights are allowed and all night powerful search lights play all over the sky looking for Zepps.
Eric does have time to reflect on his father on his thoughts of the war
I am afraid we are going to have all our work in the Dardanelles for nothing as they are talking of abandoning the whole place. I have a few eye openers for you when I get back to tell you of the campaign there and the mad bungling.
He also strongly makes the point of trying to keep others of the family out of the war.
In view of the urgent calls they are making for recruits, be sure you don’t let Gordon or Vic volunteer. One in a family is enough and I am sure that neither of them could stand the hardships and privations. When I went I was as strong as anyone in the regiment and many as strong will be broken men for the rest of their naturals.
Marriage
On the 24th December 1915 Sergeant Hubert Eric Standring and Doris May Mansergh married in the registry office in Salford, Lancashire, under a special license. Eric was 21, and while Doris claimed she was also a 21, but she was several years older. Eric also gave his occupation as Civil Engineer.
The two witnesses were wounded soldiers who were pulled in off the street. Doris and Eric told no one they were getting married. Afterwards they ran into a cousin of Doris’ and told her. They waited until Boxing Day to tell Mr and Mrs Mansergh. There is no copy of the letter that must have come from Eric advising his parents that he was married. A later letter Gladys tells some details.
Eric had been discharged from Hospital on 21 November 1915 and even if he had gone directly to Manchester he would only have known Doris for a few weeks. New Zealand soldiers in England were given free train passes to visit friends and family in England. Thomas (Tom) Mansergh had been a childhood friend of the Rev James. Rev James, in his papers had a photo of Tom as a young man. However as late as 4 November 1915, Eric is telling his father that he has lost Mr Mansergh’s address.
Doris was the younger daughter of Tom and Grace Mansergh. An older sister, Ethel had married Sydney Whitney but Doris lived at home with her parents. The Mansergh home called “Sunny Lea” was in Northumberland Road, Higher Broughton, Salford (now part of Greater Manchester).
There are no photos of the wedding, no other photo of Doris and only one letter that she wrote to Gladys in 1917. Clearly though Eric was madly in love with her.
On 4 March 1916, a marriage notice appeared in the “Otago Daily Times”.
STANDRING —MANSERGH.— On December 24, 1915, in Manchester, England, Sergeant Hubert Eric Standring, 12th 0.M.R., Main Body N.Z.E.F., fourth son of the Rev. J. Standring, Middlemarch to Doris May, younger daughter of Thomas E. Mansergh, Esq.,“Sunny Lea”, Higher Broughton, Manchester.
A fuller description of the event appeared in the “Dominion” on 23 March.
On December 24, by special license, a ‘khaki’ wedding of New Zealand interest was solemnised at Manchester; some who were not in khaki were wearing the blue hospital uniform. The bridegroom was Sergeant Eric H. Standring, third son of the Rev. James Standring, Presbyterian minister, of Middlemarch, Central Otago, and well-known in both the Oamaru and Dunedin districts. Previous to the war Sergeant Standring was on the engineering staff of the Public Works Department in New Zealand, but resigned to further his studies in his profession. He came from New Zealand with the Main Body, and went to Gallipoli. He was wounded, and then sent to Malta, but as the wounds in the knee (apparently slight at first) became septic later, he was invalided to England, arriving in November. Mrs. Standring is the second daughter of Mr. Thomas E. Mansergh, a well-known chemical manufacturer at Salford and Clifton, Manchester. Since his wedding, Sergeant Standring has come up to the camp at Hornchurch, and he is expecting to leave for the front again, Egypt, very soon.
France
Eric returned to active service in January 1916, and was sent back to Egypt. Following the loss of personnel in Gallipoli, the OMR was reduced to a squadron and there was no room for Eric.
Soldiers were given the option of joining the infantry or the artillery. Eric chose the New Zealand Field Artillery. (Seemingly the mounted troops were in demand here as horses were still used to pull the guns).
Eric lost his rank as a Sergeant and became a simple Gunner. This clearly upset the Rev James as there is a letter from the New Zealand High Commissioner to Rev James, in response to his query, explaining that the change in rank was because the skills in one branch of the military cannot be carried over to another.
Eric was busy in Egypt learning the artillery skills and by April had been promoted to Bombardier. He then went to France and writes:
Here I am again writing to you from still another country. I can’t not to have you in the last letter that I wrote from Egypt, that we were going, as it would have been censored. We sailed from Port Said and had a rough voyage to who (censored) where we landed last Thursday. Then we had a 52 hour journey in the train to this place old.
My word France is a beautiful country. It is just spring here now and everywhere the buds are coming out into blossom and leaf. In fact the south of France is just one garden of blossoms.
We passed through some big towns but did not stop in any. The weather here is awfully cold and it is raining and mud is everywhere, but the people here say it is just a cold snap is the weather is getting mild now. It must be anyway as all daffodils, crocuses, violets and cowslips are out.
It seems a terrible long war this one and I am about full up of it. Wish sometimes I had waited until the 14th reinforcements, but am always pretty glad to be able to say I came with the Main Body, as there are so few of us left now.
(Continued in Next Post…)
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