Heroic ancestors of Blackadder stars who reveal truth about the Great War... And sorry, Baldrick, they prove Mr Gove was right
- Michael Gove said the Left is encouraging us to view war 'through fictional prism of dramas such as Blackadder'
- Said drama portrayed Great War as a 'misbegotten shambles'
- However, many relatives of show's stars fought in the Great War
- Hugh Laurie’s great-uncle served in Canadian Light Infantry
- Ben Elton's grandfather bravely fought for the Central Powers
By GUY WALTERS
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The conflict has been brutal and attritional. But neither side in the extraordinarily heated debate about how Britain is to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I shows any signs of being ready to surrender.
First to go over the top in this modern-day trench war was Education Secretary Michael Gove, who robustly argued in the Mail that the Left is encouraging us to view the war ‘through the fictional prism of dramas such as Oh! What A Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles — a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite’.
Mr Gove’s targets were enraged — especially by his inclusion of Blackadder.
Stars of the show: (Left to right) Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry, Tony Robinson and Hugh Laurie in Blackadder
Among those returning fire was none other than Sir Tony Robinson, the actor and Labour Party activist who played the hapless Baldrick in the hit BBC TV comedy series.
‘I think Mr Gove has just made a very silly mistake,’ he said. ‘It is not Blackadder that teaches children about World War I.
‘To make this mistake, to categorise teachers who would introduce something like Blackadder as Left-wing and introducing Left-wing propaganda, is particularly unhelpful and irresponsible from a minister of education.’
Mr Gove’s department immediately hit back. ‘Tony Robinson is wrong,’ said a spokesman. ‘Michael wasn’t attacking teachers, he was attacking the myths perpetuated in Blackadder and elsewhere.’
Whatever the result of the battle, there can be no doubt that Blackadder will remain for many, throughout this centenary year, one of TV’s most vivid depictions of the Great War.
First screened 25 years ago, Blackadder Goes Forth featured Rowan Atkinson as the scheming and risk-averse Captain Edmund Blackadder, who was surrounded by upper-class idiots in the form of Stephen Fry’s General Melchett and Hugh Laurie’s Lieutenant George, and lower-class cannon fodder such as Private S. Baldrick.
Although all six episodes of the show are very funny — and, ultimately, poignant — the series undoubtedly portrayed the British conduct of the war as utterly moronic. While most historians dismiss this simplistic view, the influence of Blackadder has been stronger on the young generation’s perception of the war than any academic could ever hope to achieve.
Many would agree that Mr Gove is right to be worried by the distorted perspective this has fostered.
However, there is a huge irony at the heart of Blackadder. For while its writers and lead actors depicted a hopeless shambles overseen by fools, the cast’s own grandfathers and great uncles all fought in the war — and far from being a bunch of incompetents, they were all brave and heroic men.
For example, there is Hugh Laurie’s great-uncle, Sergeant William Mundell, who served in Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. Born in Scotland in 1879, Mundell had first seen action during the Second Boer War, when he served as a trooper in the Imperial Yeomanry.
Historic: Stephen Fry's grandfather Martin Neumann (left) and a newspaper clipping showing William Mundell - Hugh Laurie's great-uncle (right)
Afterwards, Mundell emigrated to Canada with some of his brothers and sisters, where they established a farm near Brooks in Alberta, some 120 miles south east of Calgary.
However, with the outbreak of the Great War, Mundell was determined once more to fight for his country. On September 12, 1914, after a journey of some 2,500 miles, he arrived in Levis in Quebec, where he enlisted with the newly formed ‘Patricias’ (named after Princess Patricia of Connaught, the daughter of the Governor General at the time).
As the regiment’s Lieutenant-Colonel Farquhar observed, adventurous veterans such as Mundell were the ‘best of the breed’, and on September 27 the regiment sailed to Europe to join the 27th Division of the British Army in Flanders.
When its troops were inspected by Lord Kitchener himself, the Field-Marshal was impressed by the number of medals worn by members of the Patricias.
‘Well!’ he said. ‘Now I know where all my old soldiers went to!’
The regiment saw plenty of action, with some particularly brutal close-quarter fighting at St Eloi.
Unlike in Blackadder, death was no respecter of rank, and on March 20, 1915, Lieutenant-Colonel Farquhar himself was mortally wounded by a sniper.
Mundell himself was often at the thickest of the fighting, and one report states he was so brave that his officers recommended him for the highest honour of all — a Victoria Cross.
At the beginning of April, Mundell and his fellow Patricias were moved to an area called Polygon Wood near Ypres, and positioned just 50 yards from the German trenches. The regiment was constantly mortared, and on April 12 it was bombed by a Zeppelin, but there were no casualties.
Heroes: Tony Robinson's €grandfather Horace Edward Parrott (left) and Rowan Atkinson’s great-uncle Albert
Five days later, just as the Patricias were about to be relieved, a shell exploded near Mundell and four others. All five men were instantly killed.
The news of his death soon reached home in Canada, where the Calgary News Telegram conveyed the sad news. ‘He was the first to bring distinction to this city,’ the report proclaimed.
Although Mundell never won the Victoria Cross, it is clear he was immensely brave, and most unlike the gibbering twit portrayed by his great-nephew in Blackadder.
A similar gulf between forebear and fictional portrayal can be found in the case of actor Stephen Fry’s maternal grandfather, Martin Neumann, who was just as courageous as Sergeant Mundell — but fighting for the other side.
When the war broke out, Neumann was only 17 and living in Hungary. However, a year later, he travelled to Vienna, in the mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire, where he enlisted as a private to fight against Britain and her Allies.
Like Mundell, and most unlike Fry’s Blackadder character General Melchett, Neumann was no coward. He fought on the Eastern Front against the Russians in the battle for Romania, where the conditions were atrocious. Many suffered from frostbite because of the cold, and food and water were extremely scarce. Unsurprisingly, morale was low.
But despite it all, Neumann fought well. On the night of September 23, 1916, his actions saw him recommended for a medal. ‘Under the heaviest artillery fire, he supported his advancing troops,’ the report read.
Owing to his bravery and leadership, Neumann swiftly rose through the ranks, and by the end of the war he had become an officer. But more importantly, he had survived.
Stephen Fry’s grandfather is not the only member of the Blackadder team who fought ‘on the wrong side’ during World War I. The co-writer of the series, Ben Elton, also had a grandfather who bravely fought for the Central Powers.
Family ties: Blackadder writer Ben Elton (left) and his German army ancestor Victor Ehrenberg
His name was Victor Ehrenberg, and he was born in the Hamburg suburb of Altona in 1891. An architecture and a Classics student, Ehrenberg was drafted into the army as an NCO in 1914. His job was to keep watch on the French through a pair of periscopic binoculars that could be raised above the edge of the trench.
The role was a highly dangerous one, and Ehrenberg was awarded the 2nd Class Iron Cross in September 1914.
In a private memoir that I have unearthed, Ehrenberg recalled episodes of his service that were both comic and grim. ‘I remember the French running away in their red trousers,’ he wrote. ‘They still wore them at the beginning of the war.’
Ehrenberg saw many comrades die, but he found the death of horses particularly affecting, and almost worse than seeing men dying. ‘With their heads and legs lifted high, they seemed to be a symbol of the suffering and protesting of all innocent creatures,’ he observed.
By the spring of 1915, Ehrenberg was promoted to sergeant, and he would justify that honour throughout the rest of his war. During the Battle Of The Somme the following year, he led a column of ammunition trucks through heavy shelling, which was a ‘most dangerous and nerve-racking experience’.
At one point, Ehrenberg and his troops needed to cross a bridge that was under extremely heavy fire, but his men refused to continue.
In action: Stephen Fry and Rowan Atikinson in Blackadder Goes Forth 1989
‘I finally got them on the move again,’ Ehrenberg recalled. ‘We crossed the bridge, one vehicle at a time, and when I reported at the battery to the captain, who otherwise had shown a cold dislike of myself, he greeted me with warm friendliness.’
However, in spring 1917, Ehrenberg’s luck finally ran out, when he was hit by a fragment of shell in his right heel. Hospitalised in Frankfurt, he was visited by a young woman called Eva Sommer, who would later become his wife, and therefore Ben Elton’s grandmother.
Eva was a voluntary war worker on the home front in Germany, and throughout the conflict, she conveyed her thoughts in poetry. As the conflict raged, her words grew more bitter.
In her 1917 poem, Fallen In The Motherland, she wrote: ‘We don’t die, like out there on the field of battle. Buried alive, or in combat, as a hero. The war takes our life and our happiness. Slowly we die, bit by bit. We can’t change it.’
By May 1918, Ehrenberg had recovered, and he returned to his regiment and was made a lieutenant. Once again, he was wounded, but only slightly, and said he felt more ill because of the tetanus injections.
After the Armistice, Ehrenberg returned home to find what he called a ‘sad and disillusioned’ Germany. He later wrote: ‘I had even then hardly realised what “war” meant. I certainly had no idea to what extent the world had changed.’
At least Ehrenberg was able to go back home.
Such a fate was not enjoyed by Rowan Atkinson’s great-uncle, Albert Henry Atkinson, who grew up in Consett in County Durham.
A ‘fruit hawker’ by trade, Albert had married his sweetheart Jennie Purves in Newcastle in December 1912, when he was just 18.
Three years later, he signed up to fight in the war, and by November 1916, he had joined the 20th (Service) Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry.
Enlisted as a private, Atkinson spent that winter at the Ypres Salient (the area held by the Allies for two-and-a-half brutal years before being used as the jumping-off point for an offensive towards the Passchendaele Ridge, which was meant to break through to the Belgian coast and knock the Germans out of the war).
There was a huge loss of life there and the conditions were appalling, somewhat similar to those portrayed in Blackadder — one of the few accurate elements in the TV series.
As one fellow private later wrote: ‘The first night I spent in the trenches in the bitterly cold frosty weather, I half-fainted. You couldn’t keep your feet warm.’
When it wasn’t frosty, the trenches were so waterlogged that the soldiers’ feet were permanently wet.
'Fictional prism': Education Secretary Michael Gove said the Left were encouraging us to view the war through dramas such as Oh! What a Lovely War and Blackadder
Of course, the cold and wet were not the only enemy, and night after night, Atkinson and his comrades were shelled. Inevitably perhaps, he was wounded — in his right thigh, on January 31, 1917 — and had to be sent back to Britain.
He recovered, and on June 11, 1917, he returned to the Front.
Sadly, he had just three months to live. On September 20, Atkinson and the battalion participated in the start of the Battle Of Menin Road as part of the Third Battle Of Ypres.
The day was a frustrating one, with the unit unable to reach its objective, owing to German shelling, although there had only been three fatal casualties. The next day would prove to be far more expensive in human life.
At around 9am, the battalion went over the top, and — supported only by a meagre artillery barrage — they were cut down by murderous machine-gun fire and forced to dig in. The Germans counter-attacked that afternoon.
Although the lads from Durham were able to hold them off, the unit lost two officers and 33 men. One of them was Albert Atkinson.
It is not clear exactly how he died. All we know is that he won no medals, and had no effects to send home. All his wife Jennie would receive would be a Memorial Scroll, which she later lost in a fire.
In Blackadder, the most lovable character is perhaps Tony Robinson’s Private Baldrick. He is often to be found concocting food and drink from whatever vile ingredients he can forage.
Strangely enough, the wartime career of Robinson’s grandfather, Horace Edward Parrott, was not
entirely dissimilar, since he was a Canteen Steward in what was then called the Merchant
Service (later known as the Merchant Navy).
entirely dissimilar, since he was a Canteen Steward in what was then called the Merchant
Service (later known as the Merchant Navy).
Although it would be too easy to chortle at this coincidence, serving in any capacity on the high seas during the war was no easy matter.
Just as in World War II, getting supplies across the Atlantic was an essential — and extremely
hazardous — business.
hazardous — business.
From 1914 to 1918, some 7,759,090 tons of shipping was lost to German submarines, at the cost of the lives of 14,661 merchant seamen.
In recognition of their bravery, the sailors were decorated.
Horace himself was awarded the Mercantile Marine Medal and the British Medal.
And if that wasn’t enough, when war broke out again in 1939, the indefatigable Horace, at the age of 53, once more signed up to serve in the Merchant Navy. He would gain five further awards, which is a lot more than Baldrick ever won.
What the experiences of all these men — from different sides of the conflict, and on land and sea — show us is that the reality of the war and the characters of the men who fought it were very different from what is portrayed in Blackadder.
If William, Martin, Victor, Albert and Horace could still see how their descendants depicted the war, I fear they might feel their courage — and sacrifice — were now held cheap by a generation whose
qualities make a rather poor comparison to their own.
qualities make a rather poor comparison to their own.
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