"Student in Arms" by Donald Hankey.

[Waddell]

A while back I found a a photograph with a signature printed on it (the frontispiece to a book) amongst a soldiers items. I eventually identified it as being Donald Hankey from the book "Student in Arms". I tracked down a copy of the book a few weeks ago and have been reading a lot of the articles lately. Some of these are very good (he talks about democracy in Kitchener's army and there is a good story about a very "modern" officer) whilst some leave me wondering.

Hankey's background-in being an officer pre-war, then training in the priesthood, travelling extensively and missionary work on the streets- is very interesting. He was also unquestionably a brave man. I find his writing however tries to be all things to everyone (officer, nco or ranker depending on the article) and is often sermon like and political in its tone. There is also an article where he considers how improved relationships between workers and management will be after the war due to the strength of officer/soldier relationships in the war- Hankey was definitely a thinker but was he ahead of his time in outlook?

My question, bearing in mind that this was a best seller, is who the book was aimed at? and is this the type of book that a soldier would read at the front?

It just seems high brow book for the time and very different from most writings I have read from the era.

Any thoughts? Any reviews from the time?

Scott

[Alan Tucker]

Lieutenant Donald Sankey, 1st Battalion, Royal Warwicks

1884 October 27 Born Brighton, the seventh child of Robert (1838-1906) and Helen Hankey (1845-1900). Robert had made his fortune as a sheep farmer in South Australia, where he had gone because of his delicate health, and had a deep interest in theology. His wife was Australian-born of Scottish descent. Brothers Hugh, ‘Tommy’ (later Oxford University), and Maurice (later Secretary to the War Cabinet). Sisters Gertrude and Hilda.

1890 Began to write stories

1893-8 Attended a day school

1898 Followed his three brothers to Rugby School

1899 September Brother Hugh (ex Sandhurst and talented linguist) was an officer of the 2/Warwicks at Colchester

1900 Hugh killed in action, aged 27, with the Mounted Infantry at Paardeberg, South Africa

1900 Leaves school

c1901 Death of mother

1901 Autumn Entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, which he hated. Won a prize for the best essay on the South African War published in the RMA magazine, his first appearance in print

1903 Leaves Woolwich

1904 Commissioned into the RGA and sent to Mauritius as a Second Lieutenant

1905 Death of father leaves him with a comfortable legacy.

1906 End of the year returns home after an operation on a liver abscess. Resigns his commission and has a desire to be a ‘parson’.

1907 Four month trip to Italy and Europe

On return crams for Oxford to read theology

Returns to Africa for six months – British East Africa, Mauritius and Madagascar

c1908-11 Studies theology at Corpus Christi College, Oxford University. In vacations does ‘social work’ in poor parts of London, including Notting Dale, the Rugby School Mission and lives in Bermondsey.

1911 Early in the year attends Clergy School at Leeds. He found it stultifying so returned to Bermondsey to work in boys clubs and for the Oxford mission.

c1912 or 1913 Goes to Australia as a steerage passenger on a German liner. ‘Roughs’ it there as a labourer and doing farm work. He sought to establish a ‘wholesome refuge for London’s hopeless poor’ and to see why emigration of London boys was not a success.

1913 Winter. Returns to England and resumes work with the Mission with the intention of returning in the summer of 1914. Lives in a bug-ridden tenement in Bermondsey. He ran a boys club, took Sunday services at the Mission and visited the sick. Writes a book ‘The Lord of the Good Life’ – a study of the greatness of Jesus and the weakness of his church (published October 1914).

1914 August 8 Instead of returning to Australia enlists as a private in the 7/Rifle Brigade. He did not apply for a commission as it would be better for a ‘possible parson’ to have experience in the ranks. Made a serjeant within a week. Helped to train recruits at Aldershot, was billeted at Elstead and later went to Borden Camp.

1915 May Went to the front

1915 July 30 Wounded near Ypres and sent back to England. While recovering wrote articles for the ‘Spectator’ that were published anonymously and later went into the first part of ‘A Student in Arms’ in Spring 1916

Before he left hospital was given a commission in the RGA but

instead transferred to his brother’s old regiment, the Warwicks, as he believed he would return to the war more quickly. Joins 1st Battalion.

1915 October 6 A letter shows he was at the front as a Second Lieutenant commanding a platoon.

1916 July 1 Now a Lieutenant but left our of the main follow up attack at Redan Ridge to command a carrying party.

1916 July 31 During a short period at an Army School

1916 October 12 Killed in action

1917 Second volume of ‘A Student in Arms’ published posthumously

[bruce]

Good grief, Jack!

All you left out was his inside leg measurement!!!

Thanks for all the info on an interesting man.

Bruce

[sjustice]

Good grief, Jack!

All you left out was his inside leg measurement!!!

Thanks for all the info on an interesting man.

Bruce

+1

Thank you. An socialist activist clergyman? Wonder what the army would have thought of him in 1917/18...

Cheers,

Simon

[CarylW]

Scott wrote Any reviews from the time?

The book is available online free here and has an introduction/review from J. St. Loe Strachey Editor of The Spectator that you might find interesting

http://net.lib.byu.edu/estu/wwi/memoir/Student/HankeyTC.html

The Second series here at Project Gutenburg

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14823

I managed to get hold of an old copy of the book some years ago and read it but can't remember now what I thought of it! (age)I will read again

Caryl

[Alan Tucker]

The info came from an appendix to my epic.

Here is what I have from his writings on July 1st 1916 when he was luckily part of the 10% cadre left out of 1st Bn's attack on Redan Ridge.......

Lieutenant Donald Hankey commented about the first day of the Somme battle in his contemporary writings published after his death in 1917 as ‘A Student in Arms’. Firstly the build up….

“Now we are at rest for a day or two before the Push. I am to be left

out -in charge of carriers. Damn! I might as well be A.S.C. I see

myself counting ration bags while the battalion is charging with

fixed bayonets; and in the evening sending up parties of weary laden

carriers over shell-swept areas, while I myself stay behind at

the Dump. Damn! Damn!! Damn!!! Then I shall receive ironical

congratulations on my "cushy" job” (719).

Then the day of the attack….

“Have just seen the battalion off. I don't start for another five

hours. I loathe war. It is futile, idiotic. I would gladly be out

of the Army to-morrow. Glory is a painted idol, honour a phantasy,

religion a delusion. We wallow in blood and torture to please

a creature of our imagination. We are no better than South Sea

Islanders’’.

“Just here the attack was a failure. When I got to the Dump I found the

battalion still there. By an irony of fate I was the only officer of

my company to set foot in the German lines. After a day of idleness

and depression I had to detail a party to carry bombs at top speed to

some relics of the leading battalions, who were still clinging to the

extremest corner of the enemy's front line some distance to our left.

Being fed up with inaction, I took the party myself. It was a long

way. The trenches were choked with wounded and stragglers and troops

who had never been ordered to advance. In many places they were broken

down by shell-fire, in others they were waist-deep in water. By dint

of much shouting and shoving and cursing I managed to get through

with about ten of my men, but had to leave the others to follow with a

sergeant. At last we sighted our objective, a cluster of chalk mounds

surrounded with broken wire, shell craters, corpses, wreathed in smoke,

dotted with men. I think we all ran across the ground between our front

line and our objective, though it must have been more or less dead

ground. Anyhow, only one man was hit. When we got close the scene

was absurdly like a conventional battle picture - the sort of picture

that one never believes in for a minute. There was a wild mixture of

regiments--Jocks, Irishmen, Territorials, etc., etc. There was no

proper trench left. There were rifles, a machine gun, a Lewis rifle,

and bombs all going at the same time. There were wounded men sitting

in a kind of helpless stupor; there were wounded trying to drag

themselves back to our own lines; there were the dead of whom no one

took any notice. But the prevailing note was one of utter weariness

coupled with dogged tenacity” (720).

Hankey then described what happened next…..

“Having delivered my bombs into eager hands, I reported to the officer

who seemed to be in charge, and asked if I could do anything. I must

frankly admit that my one hope was that he would not want me to stay.

He began to say how that morning he had reached his objective, and how

for lack of support on his flank, for lack of bombs, for lack of men,

he had been forced back; and how for eight hours he had disputed every

inch of ground till now his men could only cling to these mounds with

the dumb mechanical tenacity of utter exhaustion. "You might go to

H.Q.," he said at last, "and tell them where I am, and that I can't

hold on without ammunition and a barrage. I am afraid that I went with

joy on that errand. I did not want to stay on those chalk mounds” (721).

He then reflected on the horror of war….

“I only saw a very little bit of the battle. Thank God it has gone well

elsewhere; but here we are where we started. Day and night we have

done nothing but bring in the wounded and the dead. When one sees the

dead, their limbs crushed and mangled, their features distorted and

blackened, one can only have repulsion for war. It is easy to talk of

glory and heroism when one is away from it, when memory has softened

the gruesome details. But here, in the presence of the mutilated and

tortured dead, one can only feel the horror and wickedness of war.

Indeed it is an evil harvest, sown of pride and arrogance and lust of

power. Maybe through all this evil and pain we shall be purged of many

sins. God grant it! If ever there were martyrs, some of these were

martyrs, facing death and torture as ghastly as any that confronted

the saints of old, and facing it with but little of that fierce

fanatical exaltation of faith that the early Christians had to help

them. For these were mostly quiet souls, loving their wives and children

and the little comforts of home life most of all, little stirred by

great emotions or passions. Yet they had some love for liberty, some

faith in God,--not a high and flaming passion, but a quiet insistent

conviction. It was enough to send them out to face martyrdom, though

their lack of imagination left them mercifully ignorant of the

extremity of its terrors. It was enough, when they saw their danger in

its true perspective, to keep them steadfast and tenacious.

Good grief, Jack!

All you left out was his inside leg measurement!!!

Thanks for all the info on an interesting man.

Bruce

[Muerrisch]

inside leg 31" on a good day.

[truthergw]

Maurice Hankey, Donald's brother, was one of the most influential men in the Great War. Wherever great decisions were taken, he was there. He was the supreme bureaucrat.

[bruce]

inside leg 31" on a good day.

On other days, was he a "low down bum"?

On a more serious note, this is an interesting thread.....the sort of which the Forum is so often capable. (No....I won't end it with a preposition!!!)

Bruce

[Waddell]

Thank you. An socialist activist clergyman? Wonder what the army would have thought of him in 1917/18...

Exactly. Add to that soldier, parson, common man, educated man, writer. I do wonder what the army would have thought of a soldier wearing so many hats. There are a lot of contradictions there.

There is an article about the "cockney warrior" where he points out all the faults of the cockney, but finishes by stating that the cockney is good in battle and so should be left to grumble. He seems to generalise on "types" of people and then point out their strengths as soldiers. The tone is often condescending and I can't imagine that soldiers would have liked being stereotyped as such, which brings me around to my question- who was his writing aimed at?

As his work was published in the newspapers I would guess it was a certain part of society- the conservative? the religious? But does it paint an accurate picture of what was going on?

Caryl,

Strachy was the editor at the "Spectator" and as he looked after Hankey's essays I don't think his review can be impartial. He also comes across as Hankey's biggest fan. The version of the book I have has an appendix written by Strachey where he further expands upon Hankey's abilities-

"The student in Arms, like the Apostle, had the felicity to be born free. Nature appears to have endowed him with the gift of seeing all things new. He perpetually puts things in a fresh light, and yet this light is not some ingenious pantomime effect. It has nothing forced or fantastic about it. it is the light of common day, but shed somehow with a difference."

I agree that Hankey did observe in detail, but Strachey's comments paint him as a sage. Again there is a very religious tone in the writing.

Scott

[CarylW]

Caryl,

Strachy was the editor at the "Spectator" and as he looked after Hankey's essays I don't think his review can be impartial. He also comes across as Hankey's biggest fan. The version of the book I have has an appendix written by Strachey where he further expands upon Hankey's abilities-

Scott

I see. Well I don't know how impartial you would consider The Times to be but there is a review:

The Times, Tuesday, Feb 10, 1931; pg. 19; Issue 45743; col A

Donald Hankey "A Student In Arms"

Category: Reviews

The Times appears to look favourably upon Donald Hankey in this other review "of "Letters of Donald Hankey

The Times Books of the week

The Times, Thursday, Dec 04, 1919; pg. 17; Issue 42274; col E

Among the personal work, the "Letters of Donald Hankey" must be mentioned. The letters amplify and illustrate

the outlook upon fundamental truth expressed in "A Student in Arms" Hankey puts his own point of view in a striking passage

in which he describes "the religious agnostic, who is, of course, a logical absurdity, but as I think for that very reason more likely

he is to be right"

Earlier on, starting in 1916, there are 'multiple display advertisements' for "A Student in Arms" but no actual review for that time

If you don't have access to the Times I will gladly pass any articles onto you

Caryl

[Waddell]

Thanks Caryl,

I would like to have a read of the Times review. I'll send you a PM.

Scott.