Robin Braysher

Christmas Greetings from Noah!

Looking back, I see that my last update on ‘our’ mule, Noah, was exactly a year ago. This is very remiss of me, although if you are a member you will have been able to read more about him in the latest issue of The New Mosquito. Suffice it to say, he is in fine fettle and enjoying life in the winter paddock with his donkey and mule chums at the Redwings Horse Sanctuary near Great Yarmouth. At the Society’s annual meeting in October it was agreed that he should follow Muffin in becoming an Honorary Member of the Society, to recognise the vital part played by mules and other animals in the Macedonian campaign. A splendid certificate has been produced and will be presented in the coming year. As you can see from the photo which follows, Noah is a handsome chap who, like Muffin, is on the small size but with a big personality!

They shall grow not old …

…. as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

Take Your Partners …

With BBC Radio Three celebrating a ‘Day of Dance’, I thought I would see if I could find a suitable photo in the IWM’s online collection. As I suspected, there are a number showing Serbian troops and British medical staff dancing a kolo – a Serbian circle dance – but, as I have used some of those before, I was keen to find something different. Well, I think this is certainly different …

The Navy was There!

For understandable reasons we tend to focus on the British Salonika Army but, on this Trafalgar Day, we should remember the important part the Royal Navy played in the campaign. In the very last issue of the Salonika Reunion Association’s publication – The Mosquito (May 1969) – there is a fine tribute from the Pongos of the BSF to the Senior Service. Here are some extracts.

Remembering the BSF

As is customary on the first Saturday after the anniversary of the Bulgarian armistice (30 September 1918), SCS members and friends gathered at the Cenotaph in Whitehall on Saturday 5 October to lay a wreath and remember the dead of the British Salonika Force.

Once Through The Alphabet

Whilst the BSF did not produce a poet of the stature of Wilfred Owen, it did have Rifleman T. B. Clark of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps whose poetry was published in a small volume – Rhymes of A Rifleman – by William Nicholson & Sons Ltd of London. Whilst this has not been perpetuated through exam syllabuses, from it we get an interesting view of the campaign from a thoughtful, pre-war private soldier. So, for National Poetry Day, here is Rifleman Clark’s poem, Once Through The Alphabet – Tommy’s Version, composed in the trenches in Macedonia, October 1917.

Salonika recommended!

My thanks go to David Gallon for sharing a letter from today’s Daily Telegraph, alerting readers to the delights of visiting northern Greece and – in particular- sites associated with the Macedonian campaign.

South Asian troops in the BSF

South Asian Heritage Month seems as good a time as any to consider the, often overlooked, South Asian contribution to the Macedonian campaign. Indeed, had the campaign continued into 1919, this contribution would have been even greater as plans were well underway to “Indianize” the BSF as had already happened in Palestine, but on an even greater scale.

“The League of Death” and the BSF

On this, the 110th anniversary of the Britain’s entry into the Great War, it seems appropriate to look at a connection between the British Salonika Force and the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. This is to be found in issue 45 of The Mosquito – ‘The Official Journal of the Salonika Re-Union Association’ – published in March 1939, not very long before Britain’s entry into the next world war!

The Salonika campaign’s so boring!

No, this isn’t a sudden cri de couer after twenty years of reading about and studying the Salonika campaign, but rather an acknowledgment of the tedium experienced by many of those who served in Macedonia between 1915 and 1919. This was the subject of a fascinating podcast I recently came across.