My grandfather Jim Begent served in the Royal Naval during the 1st World War. He was in the Royal Naval Division (RND) sent in 1914 by Churchill to Belgium to try and stop the advancing Germans. This was at a time before the trenches when cavalry officers rode on horse back. The British were forced to retreat and Jim escaped to neutral Holland where he was interned. Wearing civilian clothes smuggled in Red-cross parcels and with a forged pass hidden in a tennis ball he escaped, and hiding in the propeller shaft of a ship he made it back to England. He returned to the Navy, went to the Dardanelles and served on ships in arctic convoys. In the 2nd World War he was an Air Raid Warden in London during the Blitz.

His true story is related below by my father John Begent based on Jims letters written at the time. I still have these letters and memorabilia.

Training  Siege of Antwerp  In Action  Internment  Escape  Dardanelles

At 10.55 a.m. on Sunday 2nd August 1914 the following telegram was received at Worthing Post Office;

"To: Begent 7 Kingsland Road Worthing.
Mobilise headquarters Navalteers London"

Thus began the First World War for my father, James Henry ("Jim") Begent, at the age of 20. Having been a member of the London Division of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve since 1912, the call was not unexpected. An Able Seaman at the outbreak of war, he had enjoyed his training as a break from his work as a clerk in the London, Home Counties and Midland Bank, and was a member of No.9 Company's Field Gun crew. A faded photograph taken during practice at Broxbourne, Herts shows him on top of the "wall" as the limber was taken over. Throughout the war he corresponded with his half-sister, Mrs.Georgina ("Georgie") Marchant, who had provided him with a home in Croydon while he was working in London. She kept many of his letters, and a few years back these passed into my possession. What follows is based on them.

The first letter from him is from Mess 4, H.M.S. Egmont, Royal Naval Barracks, Chatham:
"Yesterday I had 8 hours leave in Chatham, and it was absolutely full of men in uniform. Went to the Music Hall and had in general a good time..... On the shelf in my room you will see a blue cap. I want you to please remove the "RNVR London" ribbon and send it on to me."

On 20th August he sent a letter card with photos of "Ships of the Royal Navy" to Georgie's elder daughter, Hilda (aged 8):
"..... we are either going on another ship or else going to camp at Dover in order to train up as a land force... to go perhaps abroad".

TRAINING

The next few surviving letters are headed "D25 Tent, D Company, Hawke Battalion. 1st Brigade, R.N. Camp, Deal".

It wasn't always tea. I recall him telling me that one night the lads, having drunk well, if not wisely, manhandled the slot machines on the pier down to the lower jetty, where they were found the next morning by the mystified staff. But there were already signs of more serious work ahead.

Nevertheless, there were more immediate concerns:

Georgie obliged. On 17th September he wrote:

She sent another food parcel:

As events proved, the forced marching practice was not misplaced.

THE SIEGE OF ANTWERP

Before continuing Jim Begent's own story, it is first needful to put the events into the context of the progress of the war in France and Belgium as described in Winston Churchill's book "The Great War". After the German advance had been stopped at the Battle of the Marne in the first week of September 1914, there began what became known as the "Race for the Sea" in which the left wing of the French and the right wing of the German armies sought to outflank each other, so that the fighting moved ever further north towards the Channel coast and the vital ports. Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, realised the importance of Antwerp.

His views were shared by Lord Kitchener, the new Secretary for War. Brussels had fallen to the Germans on 20th August. Thereafter Belgian and German troops remained in contact along Antwerp's outer fortress defence line until 28th September when these forts came under heavy bombardment from German 17" howitzers. The siege of Antwerp had begun. Kitchener made plans to support the Belgians, including the despatch of two 9.2" heavy guns. But on the evening of 2nd October the British Government was alarmed by a report that the Belgians had decided to evacuate Antwerp. Churchill himself went to Antwerp the next day to persuade them to change their minds. Promised help, they did; at 6.53 p.m. on Saturday 3rd October Churchill sent a telegram from Antwerp to Kitchener outlining the agreement reached with the Belgian government, and including this request:

Churchill had his answer the next morning, Sunday 4th October, in a telegram from the First Sea Lord, Prince Louis Battenberg, timed 10.30 a.m.:

The choice of the naval brigades was not fortuitous. Realising that on mobilisation the Navy would have many thousands of men in their depots for whom there would be no room in ships, in 1913 Churchill had proposed the formation of three brigades, one composed of Royal Marines and the other two of men of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and the Royal Fleet Reserve. The intention was to use these brigades for home defence in the early stages of the war, but when in August 1914 Kitchener began the formation of his first six new army divisions, Churchill offered him the Royal Naval Division; the offer was accepted.

Meanwhile Churchill went to view the front for himself. As he later wrote:

On the morning of the 4th. armoured trains with naval guns, and manned by British naval gunners, went into action against the Germans. That evening Churchill visited a contingent of 2000 Royal Marines that had arrived in Antwerp the same morning. They were already engaged with the Germans in the outskirts of Lierre. The Naval brigades were expected in Antwerp on the evening of the 5th., and at the special request of the Belgian staff they were to be interspersed with Belgian divisions "to impart the encouragement and assurance that succour was at hand". But Churchill himself had no illusions about his own position:

Monday 5th October was a day of continuous fighting. The Germans made some progress, but a counterattack by the Belgians and the Royal Marines under the command of General Paris R.M.A. almost restored the line along the River Nethe. The Germans, however, maintained a foothold north of the river, and the Belgians made a further counter-attack on the night of the 5th/6th to remove them. The attack failed, and the Belgians retired.

The Naval Brigades arrived on the morning of Tuesday 6th. General Paris was heavily involved in the fighting, and he could not assume their command. So Churchill took over. With the agreement of the Belgian HQ he ordered that the Naval Brigades should be stopped four miles short of their original destination as a support and rallying line for the Belgian troops who were falling back. By midday the three Naval and Marine Brigades were drawn up with the Belgian Reserves astride the Antwerp-Lierre road on a line between Contich and Vremde. The expected attack did not come, and the Brigades moved forward and took up new positions nearer to where the enemy had halted. But the situation continued to deteriorate, and at 10.37 p.m. that night Churchill reported to Kitchener that an general retirement on the inner line of forts had been ordered, adding that:

Churchill left that night to return to England via Ostend.

What followed is described in a letter Jim Begent wrote on 15th October to his father in Worthing:

"On Sunday Oct.4th our Brigade [the 1st.] left Deal for Dover whence we embarked for Dunkirk. We arrived there on Monday and on that night took the train the Antwerp. We did not expect to get to Antwerp without meeting the enemy, but we arrived safely on Tuesday morning [i.e. the 6th] and were joyously received by the Belgians. Our maxim gun section was first billeted in a barn, but we had not been there very long before we had orders to move off to the trenches. That night we slept by the roadside with artillery pounding away on all sides, not much sleep you bet."

Although it was not dated, it must have been on the morning of the 7th that Jim Begent wrote a hurried postcard to "Georgie" from "Boorsbeek, near Antwerp":

This card eventually reached London on 2nd December, bearing a postmark "PUTTE 23 Nov 14". There are two Puttes in the Low Countries. One is in Belgium, a few kilometres east of Malines (Mechelen), but this was already behind the German lines when the card was written; in any event, the German authorities would hardly have sent it on to England. The other Putte lies due north of Antwerp, just over the Dutch border, but to the east of the Scheldt. One can only assume that a kind Belgian found the card after the fall of Antwerp and arranged for it to be carried over the border into neutral Holland and posted there.

But to continue with the account in the letter of 15th October:

IN ACTION

"On Wednesday morning [the 7th] we took up our position in the trenches which stretched between the forts. The line of our first Brigade stretched for about 2 miles. All day the heavy guns were working while we made the trenches stronger and more shrapnel proof. All day and all night the shells screamed and burst overhead, but without damaging us very much. We were up all night watching and waiting - with loaded maxim and rifles - for an infantry attack; although we had many alarms the attack did not come off. By Heavens, it was an experience that first night under fire. In front of the trenches about 100 yds away were vicious barbed wire entanglements through which passed electricity of high power so even if the Germans had reached them I don't think they would have stood a chance of getting through.

On Thursday [the 8th] we made the trenches much stronger in case they used Lyddite shells on us and because we knew that there would be a terrific artillery duel. We expected some British heavy artillery [the 9.2's spoken of by Churchill - see above], but they never came, and all we had were the forts, the guns of which were not half as good as we had believed, and the Belgian artillery which was old and hopelessly outclassed by the Germans. That day the firing was terrific and the "damned Germans" used those 17" guns and bombarded the town over our heads. We could hear the low drone made by the great shells as they passed high overhead. They did terrible damage in the city, causing it to break into flames and killing many poor refugees, helpless men, women & children.

By this time a great many were feeling the strain & marched along as if they were dazed. I nearly went to sleep while marching, & got so fed up that I did not care one bit whether I survived or not, as along the docks the shells were bursting and smashing the houses. It was pitch dark here, & we almost had to grope our way. It was owing to this darkness that D company to which I belonged dropped behind & lost their way & have not been seen or heard of since, so heaven only knows what happened to them. My friend and I crawled under some railway trucks & joined up with the rest of our battalion. We thought the others were following but evidently they were not. However, we continued more dead than alive until we came to the Pontoon Bridge [over the Scheldt] which we crossed at 5 a.m. after marching for 8 hours.

We rested for an hour at daybreak [i.e. on the 9th] & then continued our journey towards a place called St.Nicholas where we were to take the train for Ostend. We marched all day although we could hardly drag one foot before another, but just as we were nearing St.Nicholas we had to turn back as we were warned of the presence of a large body of Uhlans [German cavalry]. We marched back about 2 miles, & were then told that we had 4 miles to march in 3/4 hour or we should probably be cut off by the evening. Well, despite our feelings we marched like demons & almost reached our destination when a Belgian brought news that the Uhlans were just in front. We spread out in extended order & waited, but after a couple of shots the Uhlans, five in number, scooted when they saw how many of us there were, & we arrived safely at St.Gillis where we were going to take the train. Our commander heard however that the Germans were cutting off the line so he would not let us get on. It was lucky for us that we did not as that train was blown up with all the refugees on it. With no other course open we marched a further 4 or 5 miles into Holland where we had to lay down our arms."

Churchill later wrote:

"Only weak parties of Germans ventured beyond Lokeren during the night of the 9th-10th to molest the retreat of the Antwerp troops. The 2nd Belgian Division and two out of the three Naval Brigades came through intact. But the railway and other arrangements for the rear brigade [the 1st.] were misunderstood, and about two and a half battalions of very tired troops, who through the miscarriage of an order had lost some hours, were led across the Dutch frontier in circumstances on which only those who know their difficulties are entitled to form a judgement."

[It should be added that not all of them were lucky enough to reach neutral Holland; some were caught by the advancing Germans and ended up in Doberitz prison camp near Berlin.]

Was it all worthwhile? Churchill thought so. His strongly held view was that but for the resistance offered at Antwerp and for the measures taken to prolong that resistance the considerable German forces engaged would have been free to carry out an almost uninterrupted march upon the Channel ports:

The new internees spent their first night of captivity (the 9th/10th) by the roadside, They were then taken by train to Terneuzen, and thence by steamer to Flushing (Vlissingen). Here Jim Begent sent another postcard to "Georgie" dated October 10th.:

"After a most adventurous time we have - some of us - arrived here [Flushing]. I don't know where we are going. Had a pretty rough time....."

The card has a coloured picture of the main street of Borsbeek, which he must have bought 3 or 4 days earlier, and carried with him on the long retreat.

His letter of 15th October concludes:

"We settled comfortably into an engine shed for the night [i.e. in Flushing] but were awakened about 10.30 p.m. & put aboard a train in which we spent 12 hours and eventually arrived at Groningen, a town of considerable size in the very north of Holland. We are quartered in a Military barracks [the Infanterie Kazerne]........

A few days later he wrote to Georgie:

INTERNMENT

Of course, it took some time for these letters and the card from Flushing to reach England, and meanwhile Georgie had instituted her own enquiries after the fall of Antwerp. From Walmer camp she received the following note dated Oct.19th 1914

A week later she had an official printed communication from the R.N.D. Record Office, 47, Victoria Street S.W., dated October 24th 1914 and addressed to "The Next of Kin of James Henry Begent, A.B., R.N.V.R."

Once the mail link was established, letters (including small sums of money) and parcels of food and tobacco began to flow from Georgie and other relatives. Conditions gradually improved; entertainments and sporting activities were organised. On 18th January 1915 the internees moved into new quarters;

A "Harriers" club was formed, and members were allowed to go on cross country runs, accompanied by an armed Dutch military cyclists. Men were allowed a few hours leave in the town, and good relations were soon established with the local population. On 27th January 1915 Jim Begent wrote to "Dear Georgie":

It was a change to be able to walk about free & to be your own master for 3 hours from 1.30 to 4.30 p.m. The first time last Friday we strolled about the town and visited the cafes & did some shopping. A good many people here speak English and of those that do not some speak French so I can make myself understood. Everybody is civil to us, and we have a good time. On Monday I went ashore with one of our No.9 [pre-war RNVR company] men, Bale, who is a cashier in the London, City & Westminster Bank, and we visited a Dutch gentleman whom we met in the barracks, Heer Dobbinga, who is an art dealer & a painter. We had afternoon tea with him. He used to visit the barracks daily until his pass was recalled, so now we visit him. His house is filled with antiques of every description. Later we met four other No.9 men and had a good feed, steaks etc. & liqueurs."

On 19th March Jim reported:

"I am writing this [letter] at a Concert given by some Dutch people to us, and it's a very good concert, too. Our "Follies" [the camp concert party] gave a show at the local theatre & had a great reception; incidentally they were presented with a laurel wreath, an honour over here."

Contact with Heer Dobbinga continued, and on 9th May Jim Begent and his friend Bale were able to entertain friends in the camp itself:

But Jim was getting restless. The same letter goes on:

"No doubt this all sounds very nice, and so it would be if it was in England; but unfortunately it isn't, and beneath this veneer of contentedness with one's lot there lurks dissatisfaction when one thinks of all the other lads fighting at the Front. No doubt you have already heard of the 2nd Brigade being in action at the Dardanelles. Two of the office [i.e. Midland Bank] men are with them."

Concern over the well-being of his former colleagues, both of the Midland Bank and the RNVR, who were on active service was a feature of his letters at this time. Indeed, for a while he managed to correspond with a Bank friend who was in the British Expeditionary Force on the Western front with the Rifle Brigade, and arranged for Georgie to send him tobacco and chocolate. Above all he wanted to get to sea with the Royal Navy. After the Battle of the Dogger Bank in January 1915 he wrote;

"What do you think of the last Naval victory - fine, wasn't it? Davies of my section in London is in the "Lion" with several more RNVR men, & one of our Thread[needle] St. [branch of the Midland Bank] staff is in the "Princess Royal" with more RNVR men. [Both ships were battle cruisers; the former was badly damaged in the action; the latter was lost at the Battle of Jutland, 31st May 1916] That's the second time they have been in action. I wish I were with them......"

It was therefore no surprise that he began to think seriously of escape. It had been tried. On 12th March Jim had reported:

But not all would-be escapees were successful. On 8th April Jim recorded that:

Nevertheless, on 28th May 1915 Jim wrote to Georgie's husband, J.F. ("Frank") Marchant, in the following terms; the importance he placed on it can be judged from the fact that it is the first letter since that of the 15th October 1915 to be written in ink - all the rest were in pencil or indelible pencil: "Dear Frank

Frank carried out these instructions. Knowing approximately when the parcels would reach Groningen Jim was able to warn fellow internees on duty in the post office hut to look out for them; the green sealing wax and small blue crosses were for identification purposes. While the attention of the Dutch supervisor was distracted the three parcels were thrown out of the window into the long grass behind the hut. From there Jim was able to recover them undetected, and thus avoid having to open the parcels in the presence of a Dutch official.

By the end of June preparations for the escape were almost complete. On Friday, 1st July 1915 he wrote:

From now on I must rely on my own memory. Only once did I persuade my father to tell me his story, and that was when I was about 15 - it may be that the conversation was triggered by the news of the German invasion of Holland & Belgium in 1940 - and long before these letters came to light. He was accompanied by a friend - I think it was his messmate, Ernie(?) Bale, mentioned above, but I cannot be sure - who had obtained civilian clothes in the same way as Jim. Their first problem was to get out of the camp in such a way that their absence would not be noticed until the next muster. As a condition of being allowed out of the camp on leave the internees had been required to give their parole that they would not try to escape. If it was discovered that a man who had escaped to England had broken his parole he was promptly sent back to Holland. Jim and his friend therefore had to give formal notice of the withdrawal of their parole. This not only meant the stoppage of their leave, but also made them marked men. However, they were still allowed outside the camp for one purpose - to visit the local public baths. Such visits were made in groups escorted by a Dutch soldier; each man was issued with a pass which had to be shown on leaving the camp and handed back on re-entering. This was their opportunity to escape.

Wearing civilian clothes under their uniforms Jim and his friend marched out of camp with the "Baths" party, escorted by a Dutch soldier. Once clear of the gates they stuffed their passes into a tennis ball which had had a slit cut in it, and threw the ball back over the wire. There it was recovered by two other internees who, already armed with towel and washing bag, sprinted up to the gates and, showing the passes, explained that they had got left behind. Allowed through, they ran down the road after the Baths squad in the sight of the guards and tagged on to the end of the squad. At a convenient point en route to the Baths the attention of the escort was distracted, and Jim and his friend slipped away from the party to a pre-determined spot where they could shed their uniforms, hide them and head for the station in civilian clothes in time to catch the train to Rotterdam, first buying their tickets with Dutch guilders.

The deception worked. The escort returned with the same number of men he had started out with; every man handed in a pass when he re-entered the camp and the number of passes received tallied with the number issued. The journey was uneventful; whenever other passengers were around Jim and his messmate kept silent or pretended to sleep. On arrival at the main station in Rotterdam they had been told to look out for a tall man wearing a striped blazer and a straw boater, and carrying a walking cane. They were to follow him when he left the station; under no circumstances were they to speak to him or get too close. He was there, sure enough, and they followed him through the streets. They had one bad moment when a large Dutch policeman took an interest in them; having got so far they decided that if he tried to stop them they would knock him down and make a run for it. Happily, his attention was distracted by something else, and they breathed again. Reaching the docks the man in the straw boater led them along a quay and as he passed the gangway of a ship flying the Red Ensign, without looking round, he pointed to it with his cane. They took the hint and boarded the ship.

They were expected, and were at once taken to the bowels of the ship. An inspection manhole was opened, and they were put into the propeller shaft tunnel and told "Keep your heads down". The cover plate was then bolted back in place over them, and they lay in the dark. Their incarceration was, of course, a precaution in case the Dutch authorities, who must have been aware by then that they were missing from the Groningen camp, decided to search the ship before it left. [I only wish that I had known enough at the time I heard his story to ask my father about the escape organisation which must then have existed; it would have had to include "Our man in Groningen"; could it have been the friendly Heer Dobbinga, the antique dealer and painter, or A.J.Hamers or M.van Huffel who had been entertained to tea on 9th May? There was also a British Consul in Groningen at the time, a Mr. J.M.Prillevitz, but it is unlikely that he would have jeopardised his diplomatic status by being directly involved. Whoever it was, someone in Groningen notified our agents in Rotterdam to expect the two escapees on a certain train, so that a guide could be arranged and a ship provided].

After a while the ship got under way, and the point of the warning to keep their heads down was all too obvious as the giant shaft began to revolve. Once clear of the port the cover was opened and they were taken to the crew's quarters where, after being allowed to clean up, they were given white jackets and told that for the duration of the voyage they would work as stewards. This was to provide a cover for them and explain their presence on board, which otherwise might have been reported to the Dutch authorities, and caused difficulties for the skipper when next he was in Rotterdam. As Jim said, "We did our best, but we weren't very good stewards".

On arrival at Harwich the next day they were both taken to the police station so that checks could be made on them, and they were interrogated by a Naval Intelligence Officer before being allowed to take the train to London. Jim Begent's obituary in the Midbank Chronicle (the Midland Bank's house magazine) after his death in July 1955 mentioned his escape from internment "disguised as a ship's steward" and added "it is said that he arrived back at Head Office penniless and was assisted by a friend with money to get home [i.e. to Frank and Georgie Marchant's house at Croydon]".

BACK TO SEA

After a short period of leave, Jim Begent returned to R.N.Barracks, Chatham, where he made sure of being drafted to sea by qualifying as a Signalman. He joined the old battleship "Mars" and went to the Dardanelles (another Churchill project) in time for the evacuation. (According to Churchill's account in his book "The Great War", if Commodore Keyes' plan had been adopted the "Mars" and other elderly battleships fitted with "mine bumpers" and accompanied by sweepers would have been used to force the Narrows ahead of the Fleet; hopefully, half of the ships would have got through to the Sea of Marmora and cut the Turkish communications. In the event, it wasn't.) By 2nd February 1916, Jim was back at Croydon. His next posting was as a Leading Signalman in the 25 year old cruiser "Intrepid" in the White Sea Squadron, charged with keeping open the supply lines to Imperialist Russia via Murmansk and Archangel. (Later the Intrepid gained fame as one of the blockships in the 1918 Zeebrugge raid). In 1917 he was serving in the gunnery training sloop "Pembroke" working out of Chatham; for the rest of his life he suffered from ear trouble consequent on being on the open bridge during the firing of the foc's'le gun. He finished the war as a Yeoman of Signals, instructing at the Signal School at the Crystal Palace. On demobilisation he returned to the Midland Bank (now HSBC), and married in 1923. In the Second World War he was an Air Raid Warden during the Blitz. In 1942 he was commissioned as a Temp.Lieutenant R.N.V.R. (Special Branch) and was the First Lieutenant of the Kingston-on-Thames Sea Cadets for four years. His love of the sea and the Royal Navy never faded.

Ewell, December 1988 John Begent

Postscript Oct 2000:

With thanks to for the Groningen Camp photos from Nick Johnston whose grandfather Reginald Wright was in Collingwood battalion and great uncle Ashley Wright in Hawke.

Information from RNVR naval records on Jim Begent and his pals mentioned above - kindly provided by John Morcombe as follows

L9/2967 AB Jas. Henry Begent RNVR Joined Hawke Bn. 7/9/14. Escaped from Holland between 6/7/15 & 16/7/15. HMS "Europa" (Base ship Mudros) 25/11/15-7/3/16. Listed in the 1914 Star roll as receiving his medal 17/6/19 at the HQ RNVR London; & his Clasp & Roses to the 1914 Star 21/12/20. (Also entitled to the British War & Victory Medal)

L9/3251 LS Stanley Hapgood RNVR Joined Drake Bn. 22/8/14. Escaped from Holland between 26/6/15 & 6/7/15. 23/3/16 Deserted from 2nd Reserve Bn. RNVR, Blandford. Enlisted in Army 11/4/16, promoted to Temp. Lt. 1914 Star was forfeited, but restored in 1924.

L9/2171 AB Reginald Seymour Cooper RNVR Hawke Bn. 914. Escaped from Holland between 26/6/15 & 6/7/15.

L9/2491 AB Ernest Edward Bale RNVR Hawke Bn. 1914. Did not escape.

John Morecombe's RND site can be found at www.jackclegg.com

Further information on the 'Timbertown' internment camp in Groningen can be found on Menno Wielinga's site at www.war1418.com/timbertown/homepage.html

Michael Robinson has produced an eBook of the Camp magazines which make fascinating reading http://www.epubbud.com/book.php?g=JQ8GLQEZ