Seeking Gardens At War

My research time period, which I think of as being an extended long nineteenth century, takes me beyond World War One to 1930, where most long nineteenth century works end with the outbreak of that war. I purposively chose to research beyond it, whilst keeping the terminology as, in my view, the women of my period are working, and engaging, with nature long beyond the First World War. As women of that time, their experiences are fundamentally shaped  by the nineteenth century, and their influence, and experiences don’t cease at the outbreak of war. In fact, if I was to end in 1914, the women of Swanley Horticultural College, who only started to enter the school in small numbers in 1891, would only have been out of that school for a few years, and all their experience beyond that point would be lost to me.

That I choose to include in my research a time that includes, and moves beyond, the First World War means I, rather obviously, also get to include the experiences of the war years. Not only do I get to understand how female experiences and expectations shifted and were altered during this time, but when I allow myself the time to drift away from my core topic and off into research holes, I get to read about the men too.

Swanley, covered in my first primary research chapter, started life as a school for men, and it was only later that they began to take female students, before shifting entirely into a ladies college. This year, I have been looking at the early students, trying to understand who they were, and many of them are, therefore, men. Now, typically, as they aren’t my research subject, and there are too many students to research generally, I haven’t been able to do a deep dive on the men. However, one, Herbert Cowley, caught my eye, and I thought I would cover him here, this Remembrance season.

Herbert, 1885 - 1967, was a gardener, garden photographer and writer, who worked at Kew Gardens, and edited the journal The Garden for many years. He was born in Wantage, Berkshire, to Mary and Henry Cowley. Perhaps it was Henry who first encouraged Herbert into the garden, as his occupation both in Herbert’s school registration, and in the 1891 and 1901 censuses is given as a domestic gardener. Whatever the initial inspiration Herbert, joined the school when he was just 15 on 18th September 1900,  staying for almost two years, leaving on 1st August 1902, before joining Kew.

The 12th Battalion joins the First World War

In the summer of 1914, war was declared and, with that, men began to sign up to the forces to fight for their country. This includes Herbert who, on 4 September 1914, joined the 12th Battalion, London Regiment, a group who saw intensive action on the Western Front including in the Battles of the Somme and Passchendaele. On Christmas Eve 1914, as parts of the Western Front observed a truce and opposing soldiers contemplated the idea of a festive game of football, the Battalion boarded a ship in Southampton and made the journey to France, arriving in  Le Havre very early on Christmas morning following a crossing that had been ‘calm, cold and made for the most part in bright moonlight’. (p. 24, The Rangers’ Historical Records).

Herbert’s first nights on the continent were far from comfortable, sleeping in tents in a camp bordered by a hospital on one side and a cemetery on the other, waking to a severe frost on Boxing Day,  which later turned to rain ‘turning the whole camping ground in a veritable quagmire’, before ‘culminating in a tremendous storm on the night of December 28th, which wrought havoc among the tents’ (p. 25, The Rangers’ Historical Records). The 29th wasn’t much better, standing in ‘pouring rain and a howling wind’ (p. 26, The Rangers’ Historical Records)  either digging waggons out of the thick mud, searching for horses lost in the storm, or standing on parade through ‘a series of blinding hail storms’ (p. 26, The Rangers’ Historical Records). They moved from here to the village of Blendecques, in northern France, where they were billeted in school rooms, barns, and large houses, as Christmas letters from home started to filter through.

As the new year ticks by, the Battalion remained at Blendecques for around a month, leaving on 29th January for Hazebrouck and Outersteene where they joined the 28th Division before a journey to cross the border, heading to Ouderdom, Belgium. On the 8th February the battalion marched to Ypres, finding a ‘desolate city [with] an absence of windows that gave an effect of ruin’ (p. 27, The Rangers’ Historical Records). It was here that the battalion began to encounter one of the defining features of the First World War, the trenches, moving, under fire for the first time, across open country to carry rations to the front line (at this stage there are no communication trenches to reach the front). Moving in and out of the front lines at Ypres after the next few weeks, on 22nd March they moved to Bailleul where they became attached to the 84th Brigade and moved to fresh billets at Dranoutre from where ‘night working parties were supplied for the trenches in front of the Lindenhoek cross-roads…a quiet and pleasant tour after the experience of the trenches at Ypres’ (p. 31, The Rangers’ Historical Records). Several long marches followed for the Battalion, until they reached Locre for a service held by the Bishop of London (who arrived an hour late), who told the gathered troops "As you could not come to the Church I have brought the Church to you”, which received a subdued "Pity you did not bring it a little nearer” in response (p. 32, The Rangers’ Historical Records).

At this point, our group receives a short break, holding Battalion Sports on 6th April, complete with music and comic elements. After a few more moves, on 16th April the Battalion moved to St. Jean, and on the 17th they moved on to Zonnebeke, where they remained until relieved on the night of 23rd - 24th April, ‘a period of little activity and few casualties’ (p. 33, The Rangers’ Historical Records). Towards the end of April, the Battalion headed towards St Julien to support the Suffolks, a journey that cost the Battalion dearly, with 21 deaths and 38 injured; journeying back to Verloerenhoek a few days later from where they supplied fatigue parties for work at Zonnebeke nightly. On 2nd - 3rd May, the Battalion was sent to dig, and man, a trench line on the Frezenburg ridge which became the front line on the following night and saw heavy shelling from the Germans, resulting in a number of casualties. After ‘many days under continual shell fire’, relief arrived on 7th - 8th May allowing the Battalion to retire to dugouts at 4am. Unfortunately, at 6am heavy shelling began at the dugouts, bringing more casualties and removing the chance of any rest. Moving from here just a few hours later, the Battalion ‘had to pass through a gap in the barbed wire in front of the G.H.Q. line on which German machine-guns were trained, and suffered heavily in its passage. The whole of the ground over which the further advance took place was heavily shelled, and in place exposed to heavy rifle and machine-gun fire, so that the Battalion rapidly dwindled’ (p. 35-6, The Rangers’ Historical Records). After this fighting, only 53 members of the battalion remained unscathed, ‘all the remainder were either taken prisoner, killed, missing or wounded’ (p. 36, The Rangers’ Historical Records).

“The determination of the attack, it is said, was such that the Germans thought it could only have been made by troops sure of speedy and strong support, not, as in fact was the case, by practically the last remaining troops between them and Ypres, and so the enemy dug in without further advance, and thus was achieved the object for which so many gallant souls gave up their lives. The few survivors, after assisting to dig trenches in the vicinity for the next two or three days were ultimately withdrawn to the rest they so richly deserved.” (p. 36, The Rangers’ Historical Records)

Herbert’s War

It isn’t always easy to get an understanding of the experience of individuals in the First World War. However, happily for us, Herbert wrote back to The Garden regularly.

On 8th May 1915 we learn that Herb has been injured: ‘Our Sub-Editor Wounded in Action. - We regret to state that our Sub-editor, Mr H. Cowley, who has been “somewhere in France or Belgium” with the 12th County of London Regiment since Christmas Day has been wounded.’ We learn that he sent back a postcard, dated 25th April, saying ‘For the past eight days we have been in severe battle. I am slightly wounded by shell - only a bruised rib, and am in hospital. I expect to return to battle in a day or two. Dreadful warfare is still raging. It is a great struggle - we must win’. Comparing the dates found here to the wider Battalion history is interesting as you gain a more personal view of the war effort, whilst being able to place the individual in the wider context - I think this postcard must have been near St Julien during their advance to support the Suffolks, and perhaps he was one of the 38 wounded, noted above.

Only one week later, on 15th May The Garden carries another notice. ‘Our Sub-Editor Again Wounded in Action - We regret to state that our Sub-Editor, Mr H. Cowley, has again been wounded in action, and is now in hospital at Oxford. We have no particulars of his injuries, but in a postcard received from him on Monday morning he states that he was wounded in the knee while bandaging another soldier in the trenches. His address at present is Rifleman H. Cowley 2477, Surgical 7, 3rd South General Hospital, Oxford’. Again, comparing the individual account with the wider history, based on the dates here, I would guess that he was wounded during the fighting on and around Frezenburg. 

On 2 October 1914 we get our next update, which is also a celebration of Herbert’s appointment as the new editor of The Garden. ‘Mr Cowley has been serving with the “London Rangers” 12th County of London Regiment since the outbreak of war, and lately returned from the Front with a wound, which has, happily, healed. It has left him, however, with a stiff leg, which will prevent him again going on active service, and the military authorities have now “demobilised” him’. Just two months later on 8th December Herbert married Miss Elsie M. Hurst, an occasion that again graced the front page of The Garden, on 18 December, in a piece that also noted his war injuries ‘Mr Cowley joined the 12th London Regiment (The Rangers) on the outbreak of war, and has twice been wounded at Ypres’. 

Searching for Gardens

From his early schooling at Swanley, choice of practical career at Kew, and his his pivot into journalism and writing both at The Garden, in his own publications such as Vegetable Growing in Wartime, and acting as a garden photographer it feels as though Herbert certainly found an area of work that he (hopefully) enjoyed, and decided to to dedicate himself to. In fact, his love of gardens even fed through into his time at the front. As, I hope, the above shows Herbert’s time in the 12th Battalion was characterised by the trenches of Ypres, and doing supply runs at considerable risk across open ground; seemingly endless marches and movements for often no good reason in the freezing cold and stormy conditions of northern France and Belgium; chaos, destruction and being a part of a volunteer battalion that was heavily decimated in just a few months. 

However, even during his months in Europe, gardens were still never far from Herbert’s mind. On 16th January 1915, Herb writes back to say “since our arrival in France we have been camped under canvas in a dreadful quagmire but, despite most depressing surroundings, we have kept merry and bright.’ Even as he’s thrust into war, Herbert was ever the naturalist, ‘there is one side of the life that most fellows miss, but never escapes my observation - I mean the trees and other vegetation. The Venetian Sumach looks fine, and the Norfolk Island Pine - looked upon as tender at home - stands the severe weather here with impunity. I have seen Irises growing freely on the roofs of thatched cottages, but the wilding that has given me the greatest pleasure is Traveller’s Joy, here, as in our Surrey lanes, seen rambling oven farm buildings and invariably marking the approach to a village, often a most welcome sight after a march over open country’.

Later, on 26 June, The Garden carried an article, ‘A Garden in The War Desert’, based on an experience he had during his time at the front. In this article, Herbert recounts a day trip of sorts, in such a way that it would be easy to mistake it for any visit to a National Trust near your holiday destination, a place a friend had been before and recommended. Of course, this was not a holiday, and yet it was a recommendation he must take up, ‘I mused lightly upon a message given me by a gardening friend six months ago before leaving England with the British Expeditionary Force. It was, in effect, that should I by any chance get to the little village of Zonnebeke, I was to be sure to call at the Chateau, where a welcome would await me, and I should find much of interest in the garden there’.

So, as his ‘party of five khaki-clad riflemen and one sergeant marched at a slow pace along the main road of the ruined village of Zonnebeke [where] the heavy strain of many days and nights in the trenches was written unmistakably upon their unwashed and unshaven faces’, the recommendation came back to him. The article provides a sense of someone seeking of a semblance of normalcy in an entirely non-normal scenario, where the men are almost dissociating from the devastation around them, ‘the party marched on through the ruined village, paying little heed to the scenes of desolation to which they were only too well accustomed’. Their visit to Zonnebeke on this occasion was with the purpose of seeking out enemy snipers that were concealed amongst the ruined buildings of the town, but instead, he is drawn to large house which turns out to be the Chateau of Zonnebeke, and he quickly finds his way to the garden.

We receive a description of a garden that is large, walled, formally designed with a brilliant display of large, well-formed pansies near bushes of lavender and rosemary grow. But, simultaneously it is an eerie, uncomfortable space, where the weeds are running rife, where the large circular pond he thinks would make a good home for aquatic plants is not a pond at all, but a water filled hole made by enemy shells. Where the old fruit trees were damaged by shell fire and the plants in the conservatory have been left to perish. Yet, before leaving the garden to return to their duties of seeking out enemy combatants through a hole made by a shell in the garden wall, Herbert spies signs of life, ever hopeful amongst the destruction, ‘the good-natured Aspidistras were little the worst for their neglect, while a few succulents, natives of dry desert regions, were having the time of their lives’.

It’s unclear exactly when this visit took place, but if I was to guess I would assume it was between the 17th and 23rd of April 1915, a time before Herbert was injured when the battalion was in Zonnebeke, and was ‘a period of little activity and few casualties’. Reading this article was a fascinating insight into the mind of someone that despite being in a horrific situation, was still able to seek out moments of joy, and to connect with the natural world around him, even where that space is being changed, damaged, and shaped by aggressive and violent human intervention. Outside of that violence, however, there is still space to find  hope that the natural world is fighting through, and continuing to thrive. I wonder if that thought gave him any comfort, or perhaps just a sense of normalcy, if only for a few minutes. 

It is also unclear exactly where this garden is, as Herbert doesn’t reveal the address given to him by his friend. However, there is a building known as ‘the chateau of Zonnebeke’ that still exists, which was the site of fierce fighting during the war, particularly during 1917, and was damaged throughout World War One by shelling. This could well be the same chateau that drew in Herbert, and if it is then this sense of finding hope in natural spaces continues, as today, the grounds are home to the Passchendaele Museum, which features eight memorial gardens, as well as reconstructed trenches, all designed to provide a sense of wellbeing, reflection, and place, as well as a garden which showcases nature’s reclamation of the war ravaged lands left behind - something that I think Herbert would have liked.

For the history of the 12th Battalion, London Regiment, I’ve drawn extensively on The Rangers' historical records from 1859 to the conclusion of the Great War by Vincent Wheeler-Holohan and G.M.G. Wyatt.

For articles in The Garden, I used this link: https://archive.org/details/gardenillustrate7915lond/mode/2up

Herbert’s ‘Garden in the War Desert’: https://archive.org/details/gardenillustrate7915lond/page/312/mode/1up?view=theater&q=cowley