In the late Spring of 1916, my uncle Jack, six weeks shy of his 17th birthday was wounded by shellfire while serving with the world’s greatest terrorist force.
It was either the 31st May or the 1st June.
The shell was fired by Kaiser Wilhelm’s High Seas Fleet and struck the British Navy’s Battle Cruiser
HMS Princess Royal off Jutland, killing all those nearest my uncle and gave him a wound which, resulted in him having a pigskin stomach. He was mad about the sea and went on to serve the full 12 years which he had signed up for.
His father had died early in 1914 and from what I have gathered would sooner have his sons
in hell than in British Uniform.
The HMS Princess Royal was not badly damaged in the Battle. It is said that it was the one battle where the British might have lost the war. Britain’s Grand Fleet sustained 8,000 fatalities at Jutland but remained stronger than Germany’s High Seas Fleet which remained largely bottled up in the Baltic.
A month following Jutland, on July 1st 1916, the British Army sustained over 57,000 casualties, 19,400 plus fatal (according to Wikipedia’s latest calculations).
The battle continued until 18th November 1916 involving more than 3,000,000 British, French and German Forces, involving about one million casualties.
The British top Brass continued to send men wearing “bulls wool” uniform against massed German
machine gun and artillery fire. See my BLOG “SERMONS IN STONES” ,incorporating a feature of mine published in THE IRISH DEMOCRAT in July 1986 following a visit to those killing fields.
Anyhow the world’s greatest terrorist body in 1916 was Britain’s Royal Navy, as it had been since Nelson bombarded Copenhagen in April 1801.
A British Gunboat – “The Helga” had shelled Dublin’s Liberty Hall during Easter Week, and larger
British vessels with big guns loosed them at mountains in Co Galway, to frighten insurgents led by
Liam Mellows believed to be lurking there somewhere.
Manchester Guardian Editor C.P.Scott recorded in political diaries (released apparently ignored in 1961, thirty years after death) his witnessing David Lloyd twice threatening to level Athens to the ground.
Kemal Attaturk established Turkey’s capital in Ankara, beyond the range of Britain’s big guns which could destroy Constantinople.
Lloyd George, Churchill and company were super-terrorists. Arthur Griffith and Michael Collins signed the so-called “Treaty” in December 1921, when they were made an offer they couldn’t refuse.
A template for Mario Puzo’s THE GODFATHER, if ever there was.
A year later, in December 1922, Lloyd George tried putting the frighteners on Attaturk.
He expected British Commonwealth governments to meekly follow suit, as was their custom.
They didn’t, Tory Backbenchers formed a Committee and their party withdrew from the Coalition with Lloyd George’s Liberals.
Lloyd George lost office, never to regain it.
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