Downloaded from http://jramc.bmj.com/ on July 7, 2017 - Published by group.bmj.com
The war diary of Sir Thomas Goodwin BACKGROUND Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Goodwin KCB KCMG DSO MRCS LRCP was born on 24 May 1871. He left medical school and received a commission in the Royal Army Medical Corps as Surgeon-Lieutenant in July 1893. He served on the northwest frontier of India from 1897 to 1898, and was present at the battle of Shabkadr. He was stationed at Devonport when World War 1 was declared. He served throughout the war, being promoted to Major-General in June 1918 to become Director-General of the Army Medical Services (DGAMS). He was three times mentioned in despatches, and was subsequently awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and made KCB in 1919.
THE DIARY This diary was bequeathed to the AMS museum in 2013 to commemorate 100 years from the commencement of World War I by Mr Darren Mann of Tuakau, New Zealand, who received it from his father. How the diary came into his father’s possession is unclear. The diary is a small bound field service book that would have been standard issue to officers of the period (Figure 1). It covers the period from the first day of his mobilisation on 4 August 1914 to 11 June 1920. It has never been published before and, interestingly, corrects a number of minor historical inaccuracies previously recorded about this officer. It is an engrossing read that charts the evolution of an RAMC officer that experienced the realities of frontline trench warfare for many years which provided him the authority to represent the Army Medical Services in the USA and recruit many of their doctors and nurses, an effort that undoubtedly had an effect on the outcome of the war. A lot of the diary tells of arrangements of medical units with detailed maps, but from time to time he makes insightful comments as to what he was thinking at the time.
EXCERPTS FROM THE DIARY Mobilisation to France Major Goodwin writes in his diary that he was first mobilised towards the war effort on 6 August 1914. He arrived in Shorncliffe barracks the following day to assume command of the 4th Cavalry (103) Field Ambulance. After a mere eight days of basic training, the unit left for France, commenting in his diary ‘I think that few people can realise the very great difficulties experienced in mobilising, in a few days, a unit which does not exist in peace time’. They spent over two weeks marching through France to arrive in Rouen. The march was incredibly debilitating with ‘many horses dying due to exhaustion’, although he notes ‘both the French troops and local population turned out to cheer us’. His field ambulance arrived in Joulain on 24 August 1914, receiving their first casualties at 6:00 and coming under fire shortly after that. At that point, it took approximately two days for a wounded soldier to be repatriated back to England. He describes the great confusion experienced because the lines of battle were not yet established, regularly sending out messengers on bicycle for any kind of information, even losing two battlefield ambulances which were subsequently never found. He appears to have had to work with little chain of command until 6 September 1914 when he received his first telegraph with formal i46
orders from the Assistant Director of Medical Services (ADMS), merely writing in his diary “at last”. At that time, the field ambulance was treating 30–40 soldiers per day, and he commented on ‘the number of captured German prisoners’ and ‘the torrents of rain with no shelter to be found’. Loyalties were already tested, and he comments on 16 September 1914 when they arrived at the French village of Tour de Paissy that a local civilian had been found to be in telephone communication with the Germans and this person was subsequently ‘tried and shot by the French’. His diary describes how the enmity of the French locals to any German prisoners became more evident as the war progressed; he once commented that on capturing two German prisoners, ‘an old French lady ran up to me with a large bread knife gesturing to slit the throats of the German prisoners’. From the beginning, Major Goodwin recognised threats to British and Commonwealth soldiers that required radical changes to resolve. The question of sanitation was first mentioned as early as late September 1914, stating that only a small amount of the division had been inoculated against enteric fever of which large numbers of cases were starting to occur. For example, he arranged for the division to have enforced baths en masse at the local baths to maintain hygiene. His clearly upfront nature was set to change things and he forced his first meeting with the General Officer Commanding (GOC) the division on 22 September 1914. The General highlighted the dissatisfaction which he and his fellow commanders had with the running of the Army Medical Services in the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). However, it was made clear to Major Goodwin ‘the last thing anyone at the division wanted was a medical advisor to the general headquarters’ and Goodwin stated in his diary ‘how disappointed he was how little he was wanted’. However, his insistence seems to have changed matters, and he writes that on 27 September 1914 he arranged a conference with the GOC and wrote how he ‘got his own way’ in reorganising the medical infrastructure of the BEF. He was appointed ADMS for the 2nd Cavalry Division, serving between 22 September 1914 and 21 June 1915. The first thing he did was to establish a specific enteric hospital and organised divisional medical units into heavy and light echelons under the care of the ADMS (Figure 2). By 1 November 1914, his divisional medical facilities sometimes treated 300 casualties (mostly British, French and Indian soldiers) a day when the fighting was heaviest. By February 1915, trench warfare was now firmly established in Ypres, and he explains how the division of 2700 men was split in half, so that each man spent approximately 5 days at a time in the trenches. Of the 2700 men fighting, there were 184 casualties (56 killed or missing with the remaining wounded) over that 10-day period. However, pertinently at that same time period, he reports 606 cases of enteric fever reported in the BEF, resulting in 50 deaths. He reports, however, the seemly improbable figure of 33 000 cases of enteric fever in the French Army over the same period. He implemented sanitary measures of enforced bathing, disinfecting of uniforms, burning carcasses, digging latrines and refuse pits. Much of his diary during his time as ADMS to the cavalry division on the Western Front is relatively formal, giving updates on casualty figures (Figure 3). Sadly, he rarely makes personal references to how he was feeling at the time. He does comment about shells falling down around his headquarters in the town of
Breeze J. J R Army Med Corps 2014;160(Supp 1):i46–i48. doi:10.1136/jramc-2014-000306
Downloaded from http://jramc.bmj.com/ on July 7, 2017 - Published by group.bmj.com
Figure 1 War diary of Sir Thomas Herbert John Chapman Goodwin. Poperinghe in April 1915, causing terrible civilian casualties. He comments ‘the town looked pretty awful, houses knocked down, huge holes in the street, dead horses all over the place and not a few human corpses as well, the streets and pavements running with blood in places’. He also comments ‘I made friends the previous day with a six or seven year old French girl but shortly after the shells landed I found her dead in the street with one of her legs torn off and lying further up the street’. Another evocative moment he describes in his diary is of one day in the middle of constant shelling, being ‘surprised to hear a nightingale singing so loudly that I thought its chest would burst’. He makes a number of references to the use of gas by German units. He reports in his diary that the first casualties from gas attacks were received on 22 April 1915, with the Germans using it to make large advances on the Canadian division. Many days he reports how he slept
uneasily when the wind direction was unfavourable, and it clearly had a profound effect on him.
Assumption of command Following promotion to Lieutenant-Colonel, and having shortly before been awarded Companion of The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint Georg (C.M.G.), he assumed command of No 14 General Field Hospital on 26 June 1915. His lifestyle clearly changed and he received many distinguished guests to his unit, who were clearly more keen to visit an established field hospital than medical units on the front line! In his diary he provides a six-page list of visitors to his field hospital during his tenure as commanding officer and it reads like a roll call of the aristocracy of the Western European countries, headed by the King of England and King and Queen of Portugal and the
Figure 2 Disposition of Cavalry Division Royal Army Medical Corps units within the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front on 6 April–3 May 1915.
Breeze J. J R Army Med Corps 2014;160(Supp 1):i46–i48. doi:10.1136/jramc-2014-000306
i47
Downloaded from http://jramc.bmj.com/ on July 7, 2017 - Published by group.bmj.com
Figure 3 Excerpt from page 49 of the diary detailing the number of killed, wounded and missing during the month of May 1915.
Prince of Wales. It includes five Princes and Princesses, three Dukes, 29 Lords, five Barons and a US senator. The hospital was clearly busy including periods where there were a staggering 895 admissions during a 5-day period of a combined allied offensive. When the King visited the hospital, on its first anniversary, 21 October 1915, he commented in his diary ‘the hospital had admitted 26 773 soldiers and performed 1460 operations in that year alone’. After 18 months serving as CO of the field hospital, he returned to the Western Front from 21 January 1917 to 16 April 1917, where again he served as ADMS, but this time to a Guards Division, and was promoted to Colonel. At this time, his diary describes how the tide of war was beginning to turn against the German forces, and allied soldiers were making large advances into previously German-held positions.
Posting to America In April 1917, Colonel Goodwin’s life changed remarkably as he was appointed ADMS to Mr Balfour’s Mission to America. At the time, an unofficial correspondence had taken place between DGAMS and the surgeon general of the US Medical Service. This resulted in Colonel Goodwin being selected to proceed to the War Department at Washington to liaise between the medical services of the USA and the British Army. He arrived in Washington DC on 25 April 1917, and put forward a scheme in which the USA could provide assistance to the British by providing doctors and nurses. Three days later, on 28 April, after an interview with the war secretary, he obtained sanction for the immediate dispatch to England of six field hospitals, each containing 23 doctors and 50 nurses, as well as accessory medical personnel; he also arranged for further contingents of medical officers and nurses to be dispatched at a later date. For nine long months, his diary describes how he toured the west coast of the USA, lecturing at war colleges such as West Point and many hospitals, including Johns Hopkins and the Mayo clinic. Audiences were huge, often numbering greater than 2000, and he was able to describe in detail his experiences of life on the Western Front. He gave interviews daily, including to the vice president of the time, as well as with the former president, Theodore Roosevelt, who was lobbying heavily for US entry into the war, reporting back regularly to DGAMS, General Sir Alfred Keogh. There are moments of occasional i48
levity in the diary, such as when he remarks with surprise on having ‘received information from London about women workers and women hospitals’. He finally left the USA for England on 9 January 1918, presenting himself to General Sir Alfred Keogh to be told that he was to be promoted to Major General and to assume the post of DGAMS.
CONCLUSION The diary is a gripping read at times, and the sheer intensity of his writing clearly demonstrates that this work ethic was key to his success. From his entries it is obvious that he rarely took a day off, and even when on the western front he only had one week of leave in the first year. He writes towards the end of his diary how during the war years he gave over 1000 interviews and wrote over 2100 letters. His diary makes it clear that one of his main interests was sanitation, and like Keogh, he wrote extensively on the subject including publishing a field manual. His concerns about gas attacks clearly had an effect on him, and he pushed research into its treatment while in the USA by talking to chemicals specialists whenever he could. Finally, his influence resulted in army doctors being paid on a separate pay scale to other officers. He finished his illustrious career by being appointed governor of Queensland in 1927, which he continued until the completion of his duties in April 1932. Johno Breeze Correspondence to Major Johno Breeze RAMC, Registrar in Maxillofacial Surgery, Academic Department of Military Surgery and Trauma, Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, Institute of Research and Development, Birmingham Research Park, Birmingham B15 2SQ, UK; [email protected] The original article can be found online as supplementary file. To view please visit the journal online (http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jramc-2014-000306). Competing interests None. Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
To cite Breeze J. J R Army Med Corps 2014;160(Supp 1):i46–i48. J R Army Med Corps 2014;160(Supp 1):i46–i48. doi:10.1136/jramc-2014-000306
Breeze J. J R Army Med Corps 2014;160(Supp 1):i46–i48. doi:10.1136/jramc-2014-000306
Downloaded from http://jramc.bmj.com/ on July 7, 2017 - Published by group.bmj.com
The war diary of Sir Thomas Goodwin Johno Breeze J R Army Med Corps 2014 160: i46-i48
doi: 10.1136/jramc-2014-000306 Updated information and services can be found at: http://jramc.bmj.com/content/160/Suppl_1/i46
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The war diary of Sir Thomas Goodwin BACKGROUND Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Goodwin KCB KCMG DSO MRCS LRCP was born on 24 May 1871. He left medical school and received a commission in the Royal Army Medical Corps as Surgeon-Lieutenant in July 1893. He served on the northwest frontier of India from 1897 to 1898, and was present at the battle of Shabkadr. He was stationed at Devonport when World War 1 was declared. He served throughout the war, being promoted to Major-General in June 1918 to become Director-General of the Army Medical Services (DGAMS). He was three times mentioned in despatches, and was subsequently awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and made KCB in 1919.
THE DIARY This diary was bequeathed to the AMS museum in 2013 to commemorate 100 years from the commencement of World War I by Mr Darren Mann of Tuakau, New Zealand, who received it from his father. How the diary came into his father’s possession is unclear. The diary is a small bound field service book that would have been standard issue to officers of the period (Figure 1). It covers the period from the first day of his mobilisation on 4 August 1914 to 11 June 1920. It has never been published before and, interestingly, corrects a number of minor historical inaccuracies previously recorded about this officer. It is an engrossing read that charts the evolution of an RAMC officer that experienced the realities of frontline trench warfare for many years which provided him the authority to represent the Army Medical Services in the USA and recruit many of their doctors and nurses, an effort that undoubtedly had an effect on the outcome of the war. A lot of the diary tells of arrangements of medical units with detailed maps, but from time to time he makes insightful comments as to what he was thinking at the time.
EXCERPTS FROM THE DIARY Mobilisation to France Major Goodwin writes in his diary that he was first mobilised towards the war effort on 6 August 1914. He arrived in Shorncliffe barracks the following day to assume command of the 4th Cavalry (103) Field Ambulance. After a mere eight days of basic training, the unit left for France, commenting in his diary ‘I think that few people can realise the very great difficulties experienced in mobilising, in a few days, a unit which does not exist in peace time’. They spent over two weeks marching through France to arrive in Rouen. The march was incredibly debilitating with ‘many horses dying due to exhaustion’, although he notes ‘both the French troops and local population turned out to cheer us’. His field ambulance arrived in Joulain on 24 August 1914, receiving their first casualties at 6:00 and coming under fire shortly after that. At that point, it took approximately two days for a wounded soldier to be repatriated back to England. He describes the great confusion experienced because the lines of battle were not yet established, regularly sending out messengers on bicycle for any kind of information, even losing two battlefield ambulances which were subsequently never found. He appears to have had to work with little chain of command until 6 September 1914 when he received his first telegraph with formal i46
orders from the Assistant Director of Medical Services (ADMS), merely writing in his diary “at last”. At that time, the field ambulance was treating 30–40 soldiers per day, and he commented on ‘the number of captured German prisoners’ and ‘the torrents of rain with no shelter to be found’. Loyalties were already tested, and he comments on 16 September 1914 when they arrived at the French village of Tour de Paissy that a local civilian had been found to be in telephone communication with the Germans and this person was subsequently ‘tried and shot by the French’. His diary describes how the enmity of the French locals to any German prisoners became more evident as the war progressed; he once commented that on capturing two German prisoners, ‘an old French lady ran up to me with a large bread knife gesturing to slit the throats of the German prisoners’. From the beginning, Major Goodwin recognised threats to British and Commonwealth soldiers that required radical changes to resolve. The question of sanitation was first mentioned as early as late September 1914, stating that only a small amount of the division had been inoculated against enteric fever of which large numbers of cases were starting to occur. For example, he arranged for the division to have enforced baths en masse at the local baths to maintain hygiene. His clearly upfront nature was set to change things and he forced his first meeting with the General Officer Commanding (GOC) the division on 22 September 1914. The General highlighted the dissatisfaction which he and his fellow commanders had with the running of the Army Medical Services in the British Expeditionary Force (BEF). However, it was made clear to Major Goodwin ‘the last thing anyone at the division wanted was a medical advisor to the general headquarters’ and Goodwin stated in his diary ‘how disappointed he was how little he was wanted’. However, his insistence seems to have changed matters, and he writes that on 27 September 1914 he arranged a conference with the GOC and wrote how he ‘got his own way’ in reorganising the medical infrastructure of the BEF. He was appointed ADMS for the 2nd Cavalry Division, serving between 22 September 1914 and 21 June 1915. The first thing he did was to establish a specific enteric hospital and organised divisional medical units into heavy and light echelons under the care of the ADMS (Figure 2). By 1 November 1914, his divisional medical facilities sometimes treated 300 casualties (mostly British, French and Indian soldiers) a day when the fighting was heaviest. By February 1915, trench warfare was now firmly established in Ypres, and he explains how the division of 2700 men was split in half, so that each man spent approximately 5 days at a time in the trenches. Of the 2700 men fighting, there were 184 casualties (56 killed or missing with the remaining wounded) over that 10-day period. However, pertinently at that same time period, he reports 606 cases of enteric fever reported in the BEF, resulting in 50 deaths. He reports, however, the seemly improbable figure of 33 000 cases of enteric fever in the French Army over the same period. He implemented sanitary measures of enforced bathing, disinfecting of uniforms, burning carcasses, digging latrines and refuse pits. Much of his diary during his time as ADMS to the cavalry division on the Western Front is relatively formal, giving updates on casualty figures (Figure 3). Sadly, he rarely makes personal references to how he was feeling at the time. He does comment about shells falling down around his headquarters in the town of
Breeze J. J R Army Med Corps 2014;160(Supp 1):i46–i48. doi:10.1136/jramc-2014-000306
Downloaded from http://jramc.bmj.com/ on July 7, 2017 - Published by group.bmj.com
Figure 1 War diary of Sir Thomas Herbert John Chapman Goodwin. Poperinghe in April 1915, causing terrible civilian casualties. He comments ‘the town looked pretty awful, houses knocked down, huge holes in the street, dead horses all over the place and not a few human corpses as well, the streets and pavements running with blood in places’. He also comments ‘I made friends the previous day with a six or seven year old French girl but shortly after the shells landed I found her dead in the street with one of her legs torn off and lying further up the street’. Another evocative moment he describes in his diary is of one day in the middle of constant shelling, being ‘surprised to hear a nightingale singing so loudly that I thought its chest would burst’. He makes a number of references to the use of gas by German units. He reports in his diary that the first casualties from gas attacks were received on 22 April 1915, with the Germans using it to make large advances on the Canadian division. Many days he reports how he slept
uneasily when the wind direction was unfavourable, and it clearly had a profound effect on him.
Assumption of command Following promotion to Lieutenant-Colonel, and having shortly before been awarded Companion of The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint Georg (C.M.G.), he assumed command of No 14 General Field Hospital on 26 June 1915. His lifestyle clearly changed and he received many distinguished guests to his unit, who were clearly more keen to visit an established field hospital than medical units on the front line! In his diary he provides a six-page list of visitors to his field hospital during his tenure as commanding officer and it reads like a roll call of the aristocracy of the Western European countries, headed by the King of England and King and Queen of Portugal and the
Figure 2 Disposition of Cavalry Division Royal Army Medical Corps units within the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front on 6 April–3 May 1915.
Breeze J. J R Army Med Corps 2014;160(Supp 1):i46–i48. doi:10.1136/jramc-2014-000306
i47
Downloaded from http://jramc.bmj.com/ on July 7, 2017 - Published by group.bmj.com
Figure 3 Excerpt from page 49 of the diary detailing the number of killed, wounded and missing during the month of May 1915.
Prince of Wales. It includes five Princes and Princesses, three Dukes, 29 Lords, five Barons and a US senator. The hospital was clearly busy including periods where there were a staggering 895 admissions during a 5-day period of a combined allied offensive. When the King visited the hospital, on its first anniversary, 21 October 1915, he commented in his diary ‘the hospital had admitted 26 773 soldiers and performed 1460 operations in that year alone’. After 18 months serving as CO of the field hospital, he returned to the Western Front from 21 January 1917 to 16 April 1917, where again he served as ADMS, but this time to a Guards Division, and was promoted to Colonel. At this time, his diary describes how the tide of war was beginning to turn against the German forces, and allied soldiers were making large advances into previously German-held positions.
Posting to America In April 1917, Colonel Goodwin’s life changed remarkably as he was appointed ADMS to Mr Balfour’s Mission to America. At the time, an unofficial correspondence had taken place between DGAMS and the surgeon general of the US Medical Service. This resulted in Colonel Goodwin being selected to proceed to the War Department at Washington to liaise between the medical services of the USA and the British Army. He arrived in Washington DC on 25 April 1917, and put forward a scheme in which the USA could provide assistance to the British by providing doctors and nurses. Three days later, on 28 April, after an interview with the war secretary, he obtained sanction for the immediate dispatch to England of six field hospitals, each containing 23 doctors and 50 nurses, as well as accessory medical personnel; he also arranged for further contingents of medical officers and nurses to be dispatched at a later date. For nine long months, his diary describes how he toured the west coast of the USA, lecturing at war colleges such as West Point and many hospitals, including Johns Hopkins and the Mayo clinic. Audiences were huge, often numbering greater than 2000, and he was able to describe in detail his experiences of life on the Western Front. He gave interviews daily, including to the vice president of the time, as well as with the former president, Theodore Roosevelt, who was lobbying heavily for US entry into the war, reporting back regularly to DGAMS, General Sir Alfred Keogh. There are moments of occasional i48
levity in the diary, such as when he remarks with surprise on having ‘received information from London about women workers and women hospitals’. He finally left the USA for England on 9 January 1918, presenting himself to General Sir Alfred Keogh to be told that he was to be promoted to Major General and to assume the post of DGAMS.
CONCLUSION The diary is a gripping read at times, and the sheer intensity of his writing clearly demonstrates that this work ethic was key to his success. From his entries it is obvious that he rarely took a day off, and even when on the western front he only had one week of leave in the first year. He writes towards the end of his diary how during the war years he gave over 1000 interviews and wrote over 2100 letters. His diary makes it clear that one of his main interests was sanitation, and like Keogh, he wrote extensively on the subject including publishing a field manual. His concerns about gas attacks clearly had an effect on him, and he pushed research into its treatment while in the USA by talking to chemicals specialists whenever he could. Finally, his influence resulted in army doctors being paid on a separate pay scale to other officers. He finished his illustrious career by being appointed governor of Queensland in 1927, which he continued until the completion of his duties in April 1932. Johno Breeze Correspondence to Major Johno Breeze RAMC, Registrar in Maxillofacial Surgery, Academic Department of Military Surgery and Trauma, Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, Institute of Research and Development, Birmingham Research Park, Birmingham B15 2SQ, UK; [email protected] The original article can be found online as supplementary file. To view please visit the journal online (http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/jramc-2014-000306). Competing interests None. Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.
To cite Breeze J. J R Army Med Corps 2014;160(Supp 1):i46–i48. J R Army Med Corps 2014;160(Supp 1):i46–i48. doi:10.1136/jramc-2014-000306
Breeze J. J R Army Med Corps 2014;160(Supp 1):i46–i48. doi:10.1136/jramc-2014-000306
Downloaded from http://jramc.bmj.com/ on July 7, 2017 - Published by group.bmj.com
The war diary of Sir Thomas Goodwin Johno Breeze J R Army Med Corps 2014 160: i46-i48
doi: 10.1136/jramc-2014-000306 Updated information and services can be found at: http://jramc.bmj.com/content/160/Suppl_1/i46
These include:
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Receive free email alerts when new articles cite this article. Sign up in the box at the top right corner of the online article.
Notes
To request permissions go to: http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions To order reprints go to: http://journals.bmj.com/cgi/reprintform To subscribe to BMJ go to: http://group.bmj.com/subscribe/
