Ronald Skirth
Encyclopedia
John Ronald Skirth served in the Royal Garrison Artillery
during the First World War. His experiences during the Battle of Messines
and the Battle of Passchendaele led him to resolve not to take human life, and for the rest of his army service he made deliberate errors in targeting calculations to try to ensure the guns of his battery missed their aiming point on the first attempt, giving the enemy a chance to evacuate. Many years later, after retiring from a career as a teacher, he wrote a memoir of his years in the army, describing his disillusionment with the conduct of the war and his conversion to pacifism
. In 2010 the memoir was published as The Reluctant Tommy.
and grew up in Bexhill-on-Sea
. In the First World War, having volunteered for the British Army
under the Derby Scheme
, and having requested that the process be expedited, he was called up in October 1916, two months before his 19th birthday. He became a Battery Commander's Assistant in the Royal Garrison Artillery
, responsible for making the calculations necessary to target the large guns of a field battery. When he argued with a superior officer over whether to use a French church for target practice he was demoted in rank from Corporal
to Bombardier
.
Skirth saw action in the Battle of Messines
, in which two of his closest friends, Bill and Geordie, were killed. On the same day he had an "epiphany" when he stumbled across the body of a dead German of about his own age, and realised that one of the shells he had targeted might well have killed him. This was to mark a turning point in his thinking about the war as he determined that he was morally responsible for his actions and for their consequences, despite the chain of command.
During the Battle of Passchendaele, Skirth and another friend, Jock Shiels, left their post when they discovered that their commanding officer had ignored an order to withdraw from the front line. Skirth was knocked out by a shell which killed Shiels, and subsequently suffered from shell-shock and amnesia
. Following a period of convalescence in hospital in France, he was sent to the Italian Front
in December 1917, where his battery was being reorganised. There, following a relapse of shell-shock, he was treated in hospital in Schio
and at the mud spa at Montegrotto.
In Italy, Skirth made a resolution that he would do everything within his power to avoid further loss of human life. He felt that the "just war" he had signed up for was anything but just, and was disillusioned with the army and the conduct of the war. In a church in the Italian village of San Martino
, near Vicenza
, he made a private pact with God that he would never again help to take a human life. He wrote to his future wife, Ella Christian, claiming that he had become a pacifist and a conscientious objector
. He also began a campaign of small acts of sabotage
, introducing minor errors into his trajectory calculations so as to mistarget the guns, such that they "never once hit an inhabited target" on the first attempt, giving the enemy a chance to evacuate. His actions were never discovered by his superiors.
Apparently he carried out this sabotage while actually in Italy. Skirth remained in Italy until February 1919, aside from a fortnight of leave back in England in November and December 1918. He received the British War Medal
and Victory Medal
for his war service but declined the Military Medal
, which he felt was offered as part of an attempt to whitewash a fatal accident he had tried to prevent.
, before transferring in 1922 to a post at a school in Uxbridge
.
In 1923 he and Ella Christian became engaged and the following year, after Skirth secured a job at the Little Ealing Senior Boys' School and found a flat they could share in Ealing
, they married, on 29 December 1924, at the Church of St Barnabus in Bexhill. In September 1929 their only child was born, a daughter whom they named Jean. (They had expected a boy, who would have been called John.)
During the Second World War, the family was evacuated to South Wales with Skirth’s school. In his forties by this point and suffering from ill health, he was not expected to fight, but his anti-war views earned him the labels "crank, visionary, communistic and impractical".
After the war, the family returned to Ealing, where Skirth and his wife Ella lived, in various homes, throughout their life together, and where he continued to work as a teacher until he took early retirement in 1958. He died there in 1977.
a much-annotated copy of Francis Turner Palgrave
's Golden Treasury. His favourite poets were John Keats
, Percy Bysshe Shelley
and Lord Byron. He had an intense love of beauty, which he found all around him in music, architecture and the natural world. On the Western Front, he wrote, he was "deprived of the one thing that to me was as precious as life itself, my love of beauty".
Although Skirth had volunteered for the Army in 1915, as an idealistic patriot
, convinced that "King and Country" were causes worth fighting for, it was not long before he became disillusioned with the war and the army. He attributed this to a combination of his sensitive character, his Christian upbringing and sense of right and wrong, and, most significantly, the horror of his war experiences.
After the war, Skirth remained a convinced pacifist for the rest of his life. He believed that Britain should not have declared war on Germany
in 1939 and claimed that he would rather surrender and face occupation
than take up arms against a hostile force. Writing in the early 1970s, he expressed hope that the next generation of political leaders would not make the same mistakes as their forebears.
s with many hundreds of pages, and over the next few years, despite suffering two stroke
s, he repeatedly went back to the material, editing, amending and adding to what he had written.
Skirth gave the memoir to his daughter Jean in 1975, two years before his death in 1977 Although for many years she found it too upsetting to read in full, she felt that it was a story that should be shared with others, and in 1999 she donated four of the five ring binders, containing the bulk of the memoir but excluding its more personal sections, to the Imperial War Museum
in London, where they remain to this day.
Once it was made available to researchers and academics, Skirth's memoir began to attract attention, and his story was featured in Richard Schweitzer's The Cross and the Trenches (2003), Michele Barrett's Casualty Figures (2007), and in Ian Hislop
's documentary Not Forgotten
: The Men Who Wouldn't Fight (2008), in which Hislop interviewed Jean Skirth about her father's war experiences.
, as The Reluctant Tommy: Ronald Skirth's Extraordinary Memoir of the First World War, edited by Duncan Barrett. Barrett wrote in an introduction that he felt that Skirth's story "deserved as wide an audience as possible—and to be read in its protagonist's own words". Skirth's daughter Jean, who had given permission for the memoir to be published remained uncertain whether publishing the memoir was what her father would have wanted, but believed that it was important that his story was widely known.
The book carried a foreword by Channel 4 News
anchor Jon Snow
, in which he wrote about his grandfather Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas D'Oyly Snow
. Referring to the popular description of the lower ranks as "lions led by donkeys
", Snow acknowledged that "If Ronald Skirth was a 'lion', Thom Snow was ultimately a 'donkey'."
in the Evening Standard and Jonathan Gibbs in the Financial Times, as well as coverage in the Daily Mail, Socialist Worker and the Sunday Express.
Not all criticism has been favourable. A review in the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are magazine remarks on the disparities between official war records and Skirth's version of events:
Royal Garrison Artillery
The Royal Garrison Artillery was an arm of the Royal Artillery that was originally tasked with manning the guns of the British Empire's forts and fortresses, including coastal artillery batteries, the heavy gun batteries attached to each infantry division, and the guns of the siege...
during the First World War. His experiences during the Battle of Messines
Battle of Messines
The Battle of Messines was a battle of the Western front of the First World War. It began on 7 June 1917 when the British Second Army under the command of General Herbert Plumer launched an offensive near the village of Mesen in West Flanders, Belgium...
and the Battle of Passchendaele led him to resolve not to take human life, and for the rest of his army service he made deliberate errors in targeting calculations to try to ensure the guns of his battery missed their aiming point on the first attempt, giving the enemy a chance to evacuate. Many years later, after retiring from a career as a teacher, he wrote a memoir of his years in the army, describing his disillusionment with the conduct of the war and his conversion to pacifism
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...
. In 2010 the memoir was published as The Reluctant Tommy.
Early life and war service
Skirth was born in ChelmsfordChelmsford
Chelmsford is the county town of Essex, England and the principal settlement of the borough of Chelmsford. It is located in the London commuter belt, approximately northeast of Charing Cross, London, and approximately the same distance from the once provincial Roman capital at Colchester...
and grew up in Bexhill-on-Sea
Bexhill-on-Sea
Bexhill-on-Sea is a town and seaside resort in the county of East Sussex, in the south of England, within the District of Rother. It has a population of approximately 40,000...
. In the First World War, having volunteered for the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
under the Derby Scheme
Derby Scheme
The Derby Scheme was a voluntary recruitment policy in Britain created in 1915 by Edward Stanley, 17th Earl of Derby. The concept behind The Derby Scheme was that men who voluntarily registered their name would be called upon for service only when necessary...
, and having requested that the process be expedited, he was called up in October 1916, two months before his 19th birthday. He became a Battery Commander's Assistant in the Royal Garrison Artillery
Royal Garrison Artillery
The Royal Garrison Artillery was an arm of the Royal Artillery that was originally tasked with manning the guns of the British Empire's forts and fortresses, including coastal artillery batteries, the heavy gun batteries attached to each infantry division, and the guns of the siege...
, responsible for making the calculations necessary to target the large guns of a field battery. When he argued with a superior officer over whether to use a French church for target practice he was demoted in rank from Corporal
Corporal
Corporal is a rank in use in some form by most militaries and by some police forces or other uniformed organizations. It is usually equivalent to NATO Rank Code OR-4....
to Bombardier
Bombardier (rank)
Bombardier is a rank used in artillery units in the armies of Commonwealth countries instead of corporal. Lance-bombardier is used instead of lance-corporal....
.
Skirth saw action in the Battle of Messines
Battle of Messines
The Battle of Messines was a battle of the Western front of the First World War. It began on 7 June 1917 when the British Second Army under the command of General Herbert Plumer launched an offensive near the village of Mesen in West Flanders, Belgium...
, in which two of his closest friends, Bill and Geordie, were killed. On the same day he had an "epiphany" when he stumbled across the body of a dead German of about his own age, and realised that one of the shells he had targeted might well have killed him. This was to mark a turning point in his thinking about the war as he determined that he was morally responsible for his actions and for their consequences, despite the chain of command.
During the Battle of Passchendaele, Skirth and another friend, Jock Shiels, left their post when they discovered that their commanding officer had ignored an order to withdraw from the front line. Skirth was knocked out by a shell which killed Shiels, and subsequently suffered from shell-shock and amnesia
Amnesia
Amnesia is a condition in which one's memory is lost. The causes of amnesia have traditionally been divided into categories. Memory appears to be stored in several parts of the limbic system of the brain, and any condition that interferes with the function of this system can cause amnesia...
. Following a period of convalescence in hospital in France, he was sent to the Italian Front
Italian Campaign (World War I)
The Italian campaign refers to a series of battles fought between the armies of Austria-Hungary and Italy, along with their allies, in northern Italy between 1915 and 1918. Italy hoped that by joining the countries of the Triple Entente against the Central Powers it would gain Cisalpine Tyrol , the...
in December 1917, where his battery was being reorganised. There, following a relapse of shell-shock, he was treated in hospital in Schio
Schio
Schio is a town and comune in the province of Vicenza situated North of Vicenza and East of the Lake of Garda. It is surrounded by the Little Dolomites and Mount Pasubio.-History:...
and at the mud spa at Montegrotto.
In Italy, Skirth made a resolution that he would do everything within his power to avoid further loss of human life. He felt that the "just war" he had signed up for was anything but just, and was disillusioned with the army and the conduct of the war. In a church in the Italian village of San Martino
Campo San Martino
Campo San Martino is a comune in the Province of Padua in the Italian region Veneto, located about 40 km northwest of Venice and about 15 km north of Padua...
, near Vicenza
Vicenza
Vicenza , a city in north-eastern Italy, is the capital of the eponymous province in the Veneto region, at the northern base of the Monte Berico, straddling the Bacchiglione...
, he made a private pact with God that he would never again help to take a human life. He wrote to his future wife, Ella Christian, claiming that he had become a pacifist and a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
. He also began a campaign of small acts of sabotage
Sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...
, introducing minor errors into his trajectory calculations so as to mistarget the guns, such that they "never once hit an inhabited target" on the first attempt, giving the enemy a chance to evacuate. His actions were never discovered by his superiors.
Apparently he carried out this sabotage while actually in Italy. Skirth remained in Italy until February 1919, aside from a fortnight of leave back in England in November and December 1918. He received the British War Medal
British War Medal
The British War Medal was a campaign medal of the British Empire, for service in World War I.The medal was approved in 1919, for issue to officers and men of British and Imperial forces who had rendered service between 5 August 1914 and 11 November 1918...
and Victory Medal
Victory Medal (United Kingdom)
The Victory Medal is a campaign medal - of which the basic design and ribbon was adopted by Belgium, Brazil, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Siam, Union of South Africa and the USA in accordance with decisions as taken at the Inter-Allied Peace Conference at...
for his war service but declined the Military Medal
Military Medal
The Military Medal was a military decoration awarded to personnel of the British Army and other services, and formerly also to personnel of other Commonwealth countries, below commissioned rank, for bravery in battle on land....
, which he felt was offered as part of an attempt to whitewash a fatal accident he had tried to prevent.
Later life
In September 1919 Skirth returned to England, to commence teacher training, for which he had signed up before leaving to serve in the army. He trained in London, and after graduating taught briefly at a school in Bexhill-on-SeaBexhill-on-Sea
Bexhill-on-Sea is a town and seaside resort in the county of East Sussex, in the south of England, within the District of Rother. It has a population of approximately 40,000...
, before transferring in 1922 to a post at a school in Uxbridge
Uxbridge
Uxbridge is a large town located in north west London, England and is the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Hillingdon. It forms part of the ceremonial county of Greater London. It is located west-northwest of Charing Cross and is one of the major metropolitan centres...
.
In 1923 he and Ella Christian became engaged and the following year, after Skirth secured a job at the Little Ealing Senior Boys' School and found a flat they could share in Ealing
Ealing
Ealing is a suburban area of west London, England and the administrative centre of the London Borough of Ealing. It is located west of Charing Cross and around from the City of London. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. It was historically a rural village...
, they married, on 29 December 1924, at the Church of St Barnabus in Bexhill. In September 1929 their only child was born, a daughter whom they named Jean. (They had expected a boy, who would have been called John.)
During the Second World War, the family was evacuated to South Wales with Skirth’s school. In his forties by this point and suffering from ill health, he was not expected to fight, but his anti-war views earned him the labels "crank, visionary, communistic and impractical".
After the war, the family returned to Ealing, where Skirth and his wife Ella lived, in various homes, throughout their life together, and where he continued to work as a teacher until he took early retirement in 1958. He died there in 1977.
Character and beliefs
A self-confessed 'dreamer' with a romantic sensibility, Skirth was very fond of literature, and in particular poetry; he took with him to the Western FrontWestern Front (World War I)
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...
a much-annotated copy of Francis Turner Palgrave
Francis Turner Palgrave
Francis Turner Palgrave was a British critic and poet.He was born at Great Yarmouth, the eldest son of Sir Francis Palgrave, the historian and his wife Elizabeth Turner, daughter of the banker Dawson Turner. His brothers were William Gifford Palgrave, Inglis Palgrave and Reginald Palgrave...
's Golden Treasury. His favourite poets were John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
, Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
and Lord Byron. He had an intense love of beauty, which he found all around him in music, architecture and the natural world. On the Western Front, he wrote, he was "deprived of the one thing that to me was as precious as life itself, my love of beauty".
Although Skirth had volunteered for the Army in 1915, as an idealistic patriot
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...
, convinced that "King and Country" were causes worth fighting for, it was not long before he became disillusioned with the war and the army. He attributed this to a combination of his sensitive character, his Christian upbringing and sense of right and wrong, and, most significantly, the horror of his war experiences.
After the war, Skirth remained a convinced pacifist for the rest of his life. He believed that Britain should not have declared war on Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in 1939 and claimed that he would rather surrender and face occupation
Military occupation
Military occupation occurs when the control and authority over a territory passes to a hostile army. The territory then becomes occupied territory.-Military occupation and the laws of war:...
than take up arms against a hostile force. Writing in the early 1970s, he expressed hope that the next generation of political leaders would not make the same mistakes as their forebears.
Memoir
In January 1971, having retired from his teaching career, Skirth began work on a handwritten memoir which described his conduct and experiences during the First World War, and in particular his experience of disillusionment. Although he initially intended to focus on his relationship with his wife Ella, touching on the war only briefly, he soon felt under a "compulsion" to write more about his war experiences. He worked on the memoir for over a year, eventually filling five green ring binderRing binder
Ring binders are folders in which punched pieces of paper may be held by means of clamps running through the holes in the paper...
s with many hundreds of pages, and over the next few years, despite suffering two stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
s, he repeatedly went back to the material, editing, amending and adding to what he had written.
Skirth gave the memoir to his daughter Jean in 1975, two years before his death in 1977 Although for many years she found it too upsetting to read in full, she felt that it was a story that should be shared with others, and in 1999 she donated four of the five ring binders, containing the bulk of the memoir but excluding its more personal sections, to the Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museum is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. The museum was founded during the First World War in 1917 and intended as a record of the war effort and sacrifice of Britain and her Empire...
in London, where they remain to this day.
Ian Hislop
Ian David Hislop is a British journalist, satirist, comedian, writer, broadcaster and editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye...
's documentary Not Forgotten
Not Forgotten (TV)
Not Forgotten is a British television documentary series made by Wall to Wall for Channel 4. The series examines the impact on British society of the First World War. It is written and presented by Ian Hislop...
: The Men Who Wouldn't Fight (2008), in which Hislop interviewed Jean Skirth about her father's war experiences.
Publication
In 2010 the memoir was published in book form by MacmillanMacmillan Publishers
Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...
, as The Reluctant Tommy: Ronald Skirth's Extraordinary Memoir of the First World War, edited by Duncan Barrett. Barrett wrote in an introduction that he felt that Skirth's story "deserved as wide an audience as possible—and to be read in its protagonist's own words". Skirth's daughter Jean, who had given permission for the memoir to be published remained uncertain whether publishing the memoir was what her father would have wanted, but believed that it was important that his story was widely known.
The book carried a foreword by Channel 4 News
Channel 4 News
Channel 4 News is the news division of British television broadcaster Channel 4. It is produced by ITN, and has been in operation since the broadcaster's launch in 1982.-Channel 4 News:...
anchor Jon Snow
Jon Snow
Jon Snow is an English journalist and presenter, currently employed by ITN. He is best known for presenting Channel 4 News.He was Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University from 2001 to 2008.-Early life:...
, in which he wrote about his grandfather Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas D'Oyly Snow
Thomas D'Oyly Snow
Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas D’Oyly Snow KCB, KCMG was a British General in the First World War who commanded during some of the major battles of the Western Front. He had two nicknames, ‘Slush’ and ‘Snowball’, both plays on 'Snow'.-Education and early military career:Snow was born on 5 May 1858...
. Referring to the popular description of the lower ranks as "lions led by donkeys
Lions led by donkeys
"Lions led by donkeys" is a phrase popularly used to describe the British infantry of the First World War and to condemn the generals who commanded them. The contention is that the brave soldiers were sent to their deaths by incompetent and indifferent leaders...
", Snow acknowledged that "If Ronald Skirth was a 'lion', Thom Snow was ultimately a 'donkey'."
Critical reaction
The Reluctant Tommy received largely favourable reviews by Richard HolmesRichard Holmes (military historian)
Brigadier Edward Richard Holmes, CBE, TD, JP , known as Richard Holmes, was a British soldier and noted military historian, particularly well-known through his many television appearances...
in the Evening Standard and Jonathan Gibbs in the Financial Times, as well as coverage in the Daily Mail, Socialist Worker and the Sunday Express.
Not all criticism has been favourable. A review in the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are magazine remarks on the disparities between official war records and Skirth's version of events: