Woodbine Willie

The Unsung Hero of World War One

Bob Holman

• Publisher: Lion Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745957135
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Biografie in ambito religioso

Woodbine Willie was the affectionate nickname of the Reverend Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, an Anglican priest who volunteered as a chaplain on the Western Front during the First World War. Renowned for offering both spiritual support and cigarettes to injured and dying soldiers, he won the Military Cross for his reckless courage, running into No Man's Land to help the wounded in the middle of an attack. After the war, Kennedy was involved in the Industrial Christian Fellowship, and he wrote widely. This superb biography is based on original interviews with those who knew and loved him. A deep and real concern for his fellow men drove him relentlessly, and this book shows how vital was the role he played, on the battlefields of the trenches and then the slums. Bob Holman, described by the Daily Telegraph as 'the good man of Glasgow', has made a mission of living alongside the disadvantaged of British society. An accomplished writer, who contributes regularly to the Guardian, he is the author of several books, including Keir Hardie.

1

CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION, 1883–1904

It was a common enough scene in those days, an advanced collecting post for wounded in the Ypres Salient, on the evening of June 15, 1917. Twenty men all smashed up and crammed together in a little concrete shelter which would have been full with ten in it. Outside the German barrage banging down all round us… A boy with a badly shattered thigh in a corner moaning and yelling by turns for “Somefing to stop the pain.” So it had been for an hour or more. Between this Black Hole of Calcutta and Battalion H.Q. Death and Hell to go through. Hell inside and Hell out, and the moaning of the boy in the corner like the moaning of a damned soul.

There was no morphine. That was the horror. Someone must go for it. I went. I went because the hell outside was less awful than the hell in. I didn’t go to do an heroic deed or perform a Christian service; I went because I couldn’t bear the moaning any longer. I ran, and as I ran, and cowered down in shell-holes waiting for a chance to run again, I thought – thought like lightning – whole trains of thought came tearing through my mind like non-stop expresses to God knows where. I thought: Poor devil, I couldn’t have stood that a minute longer. I wasn’t doing any good either. If I get through and bring the morphia back, it will be like bringing heaven to him. That is the only heaven he wants just now, dead-drunk sleep. If I bring it back I will be to him a saviour from hell. I’d like that. I’m glad I thought of that. I can’t pretend that it was that I came for. It wasn’t. Still I’m glad. He wants to forget, to forget and sleep. Poor old chap. Heaven is a morphia pill.¹

The writer of these words did get through the shells and bullets. The wounded got the morphine, and the writer was awarded the Military Cross. His name was Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, although he was nicknamed “Woodbine Willie” because of his habit of doling out cigarettes to the troops.

These troops who lived in the trenches and survived the First World War did not just remember the fighting. Some could always smell the stink of buckets used as toilets. Others always shuddered at the thought of thousands of rats who chewed anything, including dead bodies, and licked the sweat off the faces of sleeping men. For some it was the freezing cold which, on guard duty, was so intense that they lost movement in their legs. For Studdert Kennedy it was the screams of wounded soldiers, particularly as he dragged them from the front line to the hospital.

Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy was a Church of England priest who in 1916, at the age of thirty-three, had volunteered to be a chaplain. Very quickly he was on the front line, helping doctors treat the injured, trying to staunch the blood, holding them during operations, and offering words of hope. Frequently he advanced with the men when they went over the top towards enemy fire. He would drag back the badly wounded, pray over the dying, and bury the dead. He was sometimes described as ugly. He might have lacked good looks but he never lacked courage.

His Childhood

Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy was born in a vicarage in Leeds on 27 June 1883. He was thus a Victorian, part of a Britain noted for its industrial wealth and worldwide empire. But there was another side of Britain – people in poverty. At this time, studies of poverty were few. One of the first was Seebohm Rowntree’s survey of York, for which he interviewed a large sample of people and took precise measurements of their incomes and expenditures.² In 2007, Gazeley and Newell used newly discovered material from 1904 which had been based on the Rowntree approach. They revealed that in northern towns such as Leeds, some 16.8 per cent of the wage-earning class was in primary poverty; that is, their income was not sufficient to meet “the necessities of life”. For a couple with three children this meant their weekly income was below 21s. 8d. a week.³ The area of Quarry Hill, where Studdert Kennedy was born, was characterized by back-to-back housing with the grim workhouse, the Cemetery Tavern, and the parish church of St Mary’s in the midst.

Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy’s father, the Reverend William Studdert Kennedy, was the vicar of St Mary’s. Born in 1826, he was an Irishman and the son of a clergyman. He served at churches in Ballymena and Dublin before moving to a church in Forton, Lancashire, and then to St Mary’s. With his first wife, a Miss Russell from Malahide in Ireland, he had five children, named Mabel, Norah, Eve, Frances, and John Russell. After the death of this wife, the Reverend William married nineteen-year-old Joan Anketell, also from Ireland, by whom he had a further nine children who were, according to age, Rachel, Kathleen, William, Robert, Hugh, Maurice, Geoffrey, Cecil, and Gerald. The family was large even by Victorian standards and included William’s mother for a while.

Of the seven boys, four were ordained into the ministry. Most of Geoffrey’s siblings were academically able, with two taking degrees at Trinity College, Dublin, and they no doubt stimulated his own educational progress. He kept in touch with his siblings as they all grew up, and some of them left affectionate records of him and his childhood, including his brother William. Commenting on Geoffrey’s early years, William wrote:

Mother always said he was the best baby she ever had. When he was about two years old (or less) a storm one night blew down a chimney, and some bricks fell through the ceiling close to his cot. I remember him being carried down into the nursery – and his chubby face and big smile. His first attack of asthma was when he was about six or seven. I can see him now with his large eyes, languidly playing with a wooden horse, and enduring my clumsy efforts to entertain him. He always had an extraordinary laugh, which would have been unpleasant but for the fact that it was so perfectly real.⁴

In turn, Maurice wrote:

One thing that impressed itself considerably on me in regard to him at every stage of his life was his gentle, forgiving, loving nature. He would blaze with indignation at anything nasty, mean, unmanly, treacherous or unkind – any wrong or injustice done to another; but always took with a good natured smile – or with a patient sad forgiveness – any injustice to himself.⁵

He added, “There were lots of good natured family jokes at his expense – particularly in regard to his capacity for becoming entirely lost and absorbed in every sort of book.”⁶

His sister, Rachel, commented:

He was always very fond of reading, and even before he could read himself would sit still as long as anyone would read to him. His first lessons were of rather a spasmodic nature: first one elder sister or brother would take him in hand for a while and then another, but he managed to glean a good deal of information for himself, for even as a child he was a thinker. On one well remembered occasion, when disappointed that he could not do something that he had been promised for a long time, he declared with great conviction, “everything has a beginning and everything has an end” – evidently thinking that some day he would be able to do as the others did. Sometimes his absent mindedness got him into difficulties; sent with a message, one was never quite certain what would happen; there is a family tradition that Geoff was once sent to the greengrocer’s to order two pounds of strawberries and a stone of potatoes; the man delivered two stones of strawberries and two pounds of potatoes.⁷

These loving commendations all came from siblings but Geoffrey does come over as a loving and kindly young man.

Joan Studdert Kennedy was an exceptional woman. The census records show that some of the children from the first marriage still lived with the family at various times. John Russell was there for a while and, in 1901, so were Mabel, Norah, and Eve, although they were all over thirty and may well have made practical and financial contributions to the home. The census of 1881 also shows a cook in residence and the census of 1901 mentions a nurse. But it was Joan who oversaw the running of the home and ensured that harmony was maintained. She also cared for her husband, managed the large vicarage, helped in parish work, and participated in a secular choir in Leeds – perhaps that was her relaxation. Clearly she was a woman who was devoted to her family, and Geoffrey later displayed a similar characteristic.

Remembering his mother in later years, Geoffrey wrote:

When I was a very small boy, I was called with my brothers into my mother’s room on a Sunday afternoon to have what were called Scripture lessons… The real interest of the lessons began for me when my mother produced an old book with brown battered covers and began to read – with a soft Irish brogue – the immortal prose of Pilgrim’s Progress.⁸

Little is recorded of how his father related individually to Geoffrey. He led a busy life with so many children and a large parish, so his time must have been limited. But it is clear that he participated joyfully in family gatherings, debates, and celebrations. Geoffrey’s best friend from secondary school, J. K. Mozley, who later became an Anglican minister and well-known writer, spent much of his time at the Studdert Kennedy home. He recalled that he never had to knock on the door but just walked in and always received a warm welcome from the family and then enjoyed “the deep harmony which prevailed among them”.⁹ Brother Gerald especially treasured Christmas at the home and wrote:

Christmas at St Mary’s Vicarage was a time of uproarious laughter. Ghost stories and detective stories all mixed up together with deep and prolonged discussions about theology, psychology, metaphysics, economics, ethics, evolution, etc., prolonged until well after midnight. In all which, as may easily be imagined, Geoffrey was a protagonist. I well remember father turning to me one day after a very brain-cracking discussion, and saying with a chuckle: “When I discuss things with dear Geoff, I almost see the perspiration coming out the top of his head, his brain seems to be working so hard.”¹⁰

The Church of England has had many unknown clergy who devoted their lives to serving their parishioners. The Reverend William Studdert Kennedy was one such, a priest who would now be almost forgotten had he not been the father of Geoffrey. His church was a very large building which was rarely filled to capacity. He worked hard and diligently, never seeking and never gaining distinction. Years later, Geoffrey observed that his father did not win many to Christianity but those he did tended to stay faithful for life.

J. K. Mozley noticed from his stays at the vicarage that “The district was very poor… When I first knew it, before large measures of slum clearance was carried out, it was, especially near the church, a region of poor and ill-lighted streets and alleys.”¹¹ The Reverend William Studdert Kennedy did not neglect his parishioners, and Mozley also noted that he had a core of loyal, working-class worshippers. This must have affected Geoffrey. Michael Grundy, in his book on Geoffrey, commented that during the days at St Mary’s:

Here was born his profound affection for the poor… he was always to feel genuinely at home amongst them. He saw the strong bonds of community and comradeship that waited them and discovered that though they might be poor materially, they were rich in spirit. His whole life was to be committed to the further fulfilment and enrichment of such lives.¹²

It is important to note that his concern for the working class did not start when he was a chaplain. From childhood onwards, it was as though he was being prepared for it.

Geoffrey started his formal schooling at the age of nine, when he joined a small private school run by a Mr Knightly. At some point, probably with the aid of coaching from Knightly, he also studied for Trinity College, Dublin, where it was possible to take its exams without being a regular resident. It is of interest that by 2012 the college did list him as one of its well-known students.

At the age of fourteen, he transferred to Leeds Grammar School under the headship of the Reverend John Henry Dudley Matthews. The school was over three centuries old and was local, independent, and for day pupils. The number of boys had declined in the 1880s and Matthews was appointed in 1884. Educated at Rugby and Oxford University, he was only forty but already had experience as a headmaster. He improved the libraries, the conditions of the buildings, the teaching of languages, and put an emphasis on science. By 1896, the roll showed 161 pupils. Fees were modest and thirty-five scholarships were available, and it is possible that Geoffrey obtained one of these.

He soon settled as a bright student ready to participate in all the school’s activities. A school contemporary, Alfred Thompson, commented that Geoffrey was “a very valuable member of the school, a fellow with a really good brain, a hardworking and intelligent Rugger forward with plenty of strength and grit, and a good long distance runner. He was by no means a bad gymnast, being very evenly balanced in bodily development.”¹³ In the 1901 school sports competition he won the quarter mile race.

Nor was he just interested in sport: he was also a leading member of the school’s Literary and Debating Society, and during his last debate there, according to Mozley, he seconded the opposition to the motion “That England has mainly herself to thank for her unpopularity abroad”. Mozley then quotes from the school magazine, which said that “he made an excellent speech, which again took the debate out of the domain of hard fact to the region of abstract ideas”. Commenting on his school career overall, Mozley added:

Leeds Grammar School meant a great deal to Geoffrey. He worked hard and he played har...