What did Hibs do in the war, daddy?

[(((Fergus)))]

Interesting article on the Celtic website...

http://www.celticfc.net/news/stories...109162424.aspx

...Willie Maley endorsing mock trench warfare within Celtic Park as part of a recruitment drive for WW1.

Anyone know what happened at Hibs during the two world wars?

[Bishop Hibee]

Good article on the Celtc website Still, no doubt those that prefer a bit of historical revisionism will still keep on spouting rubbish.

[GerryS]

Sorry to being this one up as I know it stirs up controversy. I girl I know is doing a History project on Hibs, Hearts, Celtic and Rangers during World War I.
There is not much data on Hibs that can be easily found.
Hopefully some of our more knowledgeable Hibbie historians can help.

Cheers

[hibbytam]

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Sorry to being this one up as I know it stirs up controversy. I girl I know is doing a History project on Hibs, Hearts, Celtic and Rangers during World War I.
There is not much data on Hibs that can be easily found.
Hopefully some of our more knowledgeable Hibbie historians can help.

Cheers

There will be quite a bit in one of the hibernian history books. Tend to be quite detailed.
If i recall correctly, the ground was used as a training ground, when there was no football on, and quite a bit of recruiting.
There was also a big rail crash involving the leith battalion at Grenta. Can't remember if there were players involved, but certainly many Hibs fans were victims in that.

[leithspartan]

There's also a tendency to think of "MacRae's Battallion" as being solely a Hearts thing. In reality players and supporters of many other teams, Hibs included made up the battallion.

[vincipernoi]

I think Bobby Atherton , the 1902 cup winning captain was lost in WWI, as was Harry Swan's son

the WWI memorials at St Patrick's the Cowgate and the Sacred Heart Lauriston have hundreds of names

as the previous poster said the war destroyed a generation of young men, irrespective of their team

[Hibernian Verse]

There's a memorial that I've been to in France (name escapes me) that commemorates both the Hibernian and Heart of Midlothian players and fans that lost their lives there.

[LHWM]

I've been looking at 1914 and came across this



If you read through the pages you can see the hostility towards footballers for not stopping.


http://www.londonhearts.com/scores/i...1914090302.htm

The Gretna train disaster had a big impact on Leith.



http://www.londonhearts.com/scores/i...1915052202.htm

[ginger_rice]

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I think Bobby Atherton , the 1902 cup winning captain was lost in WWI, as was Harry Swan's son

the WWI memorials at St Patrick's the Cowgate and the Sacred Heart Lauriston have hundreds of names

as the previous poster said the war destroyed a generation of young men, irrespective of their team

http://www.hibshistoricaltrust.org.u..._atherton.html

[gilliecabbage]

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There's a memorial that I've been to in France (name escapes me) that commemorates both the Hibernian and Heart of Midlothian players and fans that lost their lives there.

http://www.heartsgreatwarmemorial.or...talmaison.html this the one u mean?

[Barney McGrew]

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There was also a big rail crash involving the leith battalion at Grenta. Can't remember if there were players involved, but certainly many Hibs fans were victims in that.

Quintinshill near Gretna, an estimated 226 dead and to this day Britain's worst ever rail disaster


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintinshill_rail_disaster

[LHWM]

[hibbybrian]

Gretna Disaster - Leith Funeral.jpg

[jae]

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There will be quite a bit in one of the hibernian history books. Tend to be quite detailed.
If i recall correctly, the ground was used as a training ground, when there was no football on, and quite a bit of recruiting.
There was also a big rail crash involving the leith battalion at Grenta. Can't remember if there were players involved, but certainly many Hibs fans were victims in that.

Large memorial to the victims at the cemetery off Pilrig Street, with names of those killed.

[ginger_rice]

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Large memorial to the victims at the cemetery off Pilrig Street, with names of those killed.

There's also a small one on the platform at Larbert station where they set out from.

[LHWM]

Photo and story from May 1931

[--------]

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Quintinshill near Gretna, an estimated 226 dead and to this day Britain's worst ever rail disaster

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintinshill_rail_disaster

There's a much more accurate account of the Quintinshill disaster in Lyn NacDonald's book "1915" - the whole of chapter 23, pages 331-341. the Sergeant John Combe she quotes in that chapter was Bobby Combe's uncle, and my Auntie Nancy's dad. Pte. Andrew Baillie, whose name is on the memorial, was my great-uncle on my father's side.

The signalmen were working a scam - the shift change was at 0600, but the morning local goods came up the line from Gretna around 0630, so the night-shift man would hang on for half-an-hour, keeping a makeshift record of train movemnets in pencil on a scrap of paper. (This record was supposed to be kept in a ledger, in ink, as the events happened.) the scam was to allow the relieving signalman another half-hour in bed, and save him the walk up to the signal-box.

That Sunday morning the morning shift man arrived on the local. He had been drinking the night before, and had a hangover. He was filling in the ledger and blethering to his mate when the first of the two troop trains carrying the Royal Scots was signalled. He 'forgot' all about the local train he had just got off, still standing at the signal-box, and accepted the troop train onto his section of the line. The result was entirely predictable - the troop train hit the local and was derailed. many of the elderly wooden carriages were smashed up, and many men were trapped in the wreckage.

The troops began to sort themselves out - the fit men got out of the wreckage and began the rescue of the more seriously injured. Things were bad enough, but then the two diddies in the signal-box forgot all about another train, the northbound London-Glasgow express, which was due any minute.

The express arrived, pulled by two locomotives couple one behind the other. (They needed two locomotives on the express for the long climb up to Beattock.) The two locomotives ploughed into the derailed carriages (wooden, lit by gas which was in tanks under the floors), and their fireboxes ignited the gas and set off a fire that burned for two days.

Between the wooden carriages, the gas tanks, and the battalion's exploding ammunition, rescue attempts became very difficult and dangerous. Many of the men couldn't be got out of the wreckage before the fire reached them. In many cases, officers and NCO's shot the trapped men rather than leave them to burn. (Andrew Baillie was one of these. He was 18 years old.)

Fire engines were slow to arrive (early Sunday morning and all that) and not a lot of use when they did. When they did arrive, they were accompanied by a crowd of sightseers from Gretna and Carlisle, who hampered rescue efforts and some of whom had eventually to be chased off at gunpoint when they began stealing the survivors' equipment for souvenirs.

(Reports circulated about some of the soldiers using the crash as an opportunity to desert - the figures seen running away over the fields were actually souvenir-hunters and looters. Since the men were in kilts, it would have been very easy to distinguish them from the sight-seers. there is no evidence of anyone deserting their comrades that day.)

In all, 214 men of the of the 1st/7th (Leith) Battalion (Territorial Force) The Royal Scots (Lothian Regiment) died in the crash and subsequent fire.

The first intention of the War Office was to send the troops on the second train (the battalion was travelling in two trains, the first of which was the one involved in the crash) and the survivors of the first train onto the troopships for Gallipoli. To do him justice, the general commanding the troopship was appalled at the idea and insisted that the men who had been on the first train, and any others from the second who had lost close family members in the crash, should be sent home. The men from the first train were so bedraggled - they had lost nearly all their equipment, that they were stoned as POW's as they marched through Liverpool to the docks, and again on the way back to the station.

At first the War Office tried to withhold pensions from the widows and seriously injured on the grounds that the men had been injured before they reached the front line and therefore weren't actually war casualties, but the outcry was so great that they agreed to pay up.

There's a memorial at the site of the crash: http://homepages.enterprise.net/iain...way/quint.html

The memorial in Rosebank is actually a mass grave - the remains of many of the men were ither unidentified, or simply not found. Details and a list of the dead below.

http://www.forrestdale.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/index.html

Oh yes, and the signalmen responsible were given three years and eighteen months respectively.

[LHWM]

You can read details of the Trial here.

Sobering stuff. Especially when you look at the ages of the men killed. Puts petty football rivalry in perspective.

[--------]

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You can read details of the Trial here.

Sobering stuff. Especially when you look at the ages of the men killed. Puts petty football rivalry in perspective.

Thanks. I never knew that the fireman had been charged as well.

[Port O'Leaf]

Many thanks to both Doddie and LHWM for their insights and info, very much appreciated guys. I recently discovered that my great grandfather and his brother were on the train, George survived but Hugh perished.

[LHWM]

There is a lot more reports that I've found. I'll post up the links later.