LtCol Thomas F Nangle in the Great War

This post about what Nangle accomplished with the IWGC/CWGC in the seven years following the Great War. Much of the material in the Thomas F. Nangle fonds received as part of accessions from Joseph R. Smallwood, the former Prime Minister of Newfoundland. This material sent to Smallwood by LtCol Thomas F Nangle on May 27, 1965.

Trail of the Caribou

LtCol (Reverend) Thomas F Nangle planned and supervised the selection and placement of monuments commemorating the battles in which Newfoundlanders had fought in the war. Collectively, the monuments put up at five battlefields known as the Trail of the Caribou. He also purchased a large portion of the Beaumont-Hamel battlefield to preserve the graves of Newfoundland’s fallen soldiers, and acquired part of the Somme battlefield, establishing a permanent legacy in their memory.

Biography of Thomas Nangle

Thomas Nangle born in St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 1889, the son of Mary Ellen Kelly and Thomas Nangle. He attended St. Bonaventure’s College in St. John’s, where, in addition to receiving a fine classical education under the tutelage of the Irish Christian Brothers, he was quite active in sports, especially hockey and cricket.

Nangle traveled to Dublin in 1910, where he enrolled in All Hallows College to study for the Roman Catholic priesthood. Returning to St. John’s in the summer of 1913, ordained as a priest by the Right Reverend M. F. Howley, Archbishop of St. John’s. Over the next three years he ministered to a number of parishes in and around St. John’s.

Battle of the Somme

Following the outbreak of the war in 1914, Nangle attempted to enlist in the Newfoundland Regiment but rejected on the grounds as a member of the clergy. The enormous casualties inflicted on the Newfoundland Regiment on July 1, 1916 at Beaumont Hamel re-enforced Nangle’s conviction that his proper place with the troops in Europe. Later that year, he joined the British Chaplaincy Force and assigned to the Newfoundland Regiment.

While technically the Roman Catholic padre to the Newfoundland Regiment, Nangle paid little attention to denominational lines when carrying out his duties. He gained the respect and admiration of all with whom he came into contact. During a short furlough to St. John’s in October 1917, Nangle addressed a large gathering at the Casino Theatre, where he regaled his audience with anecdotes related to the men of the regiment and made an impassioned plea for new recruits to bring its numbers up to full fighting strength. This recruiting would haunt him in later life.

Post Great War

When his work with the Imperial War Graves Commission ended in the late 1920s, LtCol Thomas F Nangle, who had left the priesthood some years previous, emigrated to Southern Rhodesia (present day Zimbabwe), where he purchased land near Qwe Qwe and became a farmer. He married Thelma Watkinson in 1930 and raised four children, three sons and a daughter.

Nangle became quite active in local affairs once settled in Southern Rhodesia. He operated a community newspaper for a number of years and served for a short time in the mid-1930s in the third Rhodesian Parliament. Thomas Nangle never returned to Newfoundland after he left in 1924. He did participate in the ceremony at Beaumont Hamel in 1966 commemorating the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of the Somme as a guest of the Newfoundland Government. He died in Rhodesia in January 1972.

Exhumations

Nangle first answered the call of the Directorate of War Graves and Enquiries and the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC), and left Newfoundland, to help oversee the exhumation of RNR casualties into over a dozen cemeteries in Belgium and France. He embarked for the UK on 24 June 1919. His photographs of men ‘digging trenches’ betrays their true purpose. However, one of the images notes an exhumation.

LtCol Thomas F Nangle tasked with uncovering the bodies of the unaccounted for and moving them to actual graves. Afterwards, Nangle took photographs of their new graves and forwarded them back home to families in Newfoundland.

Nangle’s report to Newfoundland’s Minister of Militia discussed his work in locating, exhuming and identifying the graves of Newfoundlanders, accompanied by Sergeants Henry (Harry) Snow MM 3362 and J. Murphy.

Whenever one of our graves was found it was tidied, a cross erected and if possible photographed, copies of these photographs will be sent to you for your distribution to the next-of-kin. When the bodies have been interred in proper military cemeteries and the IWGC headstone erected they will be photographed again.

LtCol Thomas F Nangle

Captain Basil Gotto the sculptor of the caribou. Nangle’s assistant, Private Henry Snow MM, a former stretcher bearer, promoted, receiving the acting rank of Sergeant, 21 July 1919 – Department of Militia memorandum from the Minister of Militia to the Chief Staff Officer, London.

The Missing

By his own admission, LtCol Thomas F Nangle less than optimistic his reconnaissance efforts would yield identifiable bodies in certain sectors. The following comments from Major T. Nangle, “Preliminary Report On War Graves And Battle Exploit Memorials,” 12 September 1919, 4-5, LAC, RG 38, volume 475, file M-19-10, Grave Sites-Major Nangle’s Reports. On 21 August 1919, the High Commissioner, Mr V Gordon (the Secretary to the High Commissioner) and Major Nagle visited Brookwood Cemetery. Having returned to Newfoundland, Nangle embarked for overseas on 3 January 1920.

Monchy

Citing Monchy, Nangle believed “the task is hopeless and that very few identifications will be made.”

Gueudecourt

Nangle thought Gueudecourt, a locale in which “the prospect of identifying bodies is next to impossible.”

Beaumont-Hamel

And, not least, Beaumont-Hamel, where “all the bodies have been collected into cemeteries and any that have not will never be found.”

Major Nangle travelled from London to St. John’s per SS SACHEM on 22 December 1921, arriving in St. John’s on the last day of the year.

James Murphy

I’M A BAYMAN!

“What are you,” said an officer to a soldier, as he passed through a trench, “a bomber or a grenadier ?” “Neither,” replied the soldier, ” I’m a
bayman.”- Extract from Father Nangle’s Lecture, 19 October 1917, the Casino Theatre.

The guns belch forth their thunder
Across the sodden ground,
An officer going through a trench
A stalwart soldier found ;
“Are you a bomber or a grenadier,
Come tell me now, my boy ?”
“I’m neither,” said the soldier,
“A bayman, Sir, I am.”

Yes, he was but a bayman,
But he had shown his grit,
When his King and Country called him
He went forth to do his bit.
He went with other baymen,
And well they fought and won
Some of the highest honors
In this fight against the Hun.

Terra Nova

Terra Nova owes her baymen
For all the wealth she owns,
Each year her large prosperity
She takes it “from their bones”;
She trusts unto the baymen
In the sunshine and the rain,
Those brave and hardy toiler-s
Who go face the treacherous main.

And now on France’s reddened soil
To-day their pluck they show,
At Monchy and at Gueudecourt
They faced and thrashed the foe,
At Beaumont Hamel, Steenbeke,
And one hundred places more,
We all have seen that baymen
Came right up to the fore.

Now, when life’s toil is ended
And we’re on the other side,
I hope to hear St. Peter
Express himself with pride
To each brave, hardy toiler
In these words with good cheer
“Walk in, you honest bayman,
There’s a good place for you here.”

– James Murphy, October 20th, 1917

Cemeteries

Bancourt British Cemetery

CWGC records the body of Captain Donnelly coming into Bancourt British Cemetery on 29 July 1920. This image from his battlefield burial site between Gueudecourt and Beauval.

Nangles likely captured this image of Gueudecourt just before or after exhuming Captain Donnelly.

The next battlefield grave site reveals Nangle’s was indeed concentrating for Bancourt British Cemetery during this period. Wallace James Lemessurier 2034, John Langer 2186, Ambrose Guy 2005, and Thomas Rodgers 2632 buried at Bancourt along with Captain Donnelly.

This battlefield grave site on the same road as Captain Donnelly’s site, but more west (further back), just on the outskirts of Gueudecourt. These four men all died on 12 October 1916.

Auchonvillers Military Cemetery

Six identified RNR at Auchonvillers. Father Nangle first struck the trail on September 24th, 1916, moving clown through Gmnmecourt
and Hebuterne to Auchonvillers, where he visited the graves of two of our heroes, later seeing the great military cemetery of the Somme, where
twenty-nine others are sleeping their last sleep.

From the outbreak of the war to the summer of 1915, this part of the front held by French troops, who began the military cemetery in June 1915. It continued to be used by Commonwealth field ambulances and fighting units, but burials practically ceased with the German withdrawal in February 1917. After the Armistice, 15 of the graves (Plot II, Row M, Graves 4-18) brought in from scattered positions east of the cemetery.

Beauval Cemetery

Beauval Communal Cemetery contains the graves of five RNR from June/July 1916 including Sgt Edmund James Higgins 756 of St. John’s, NFLD. The 4th Casualty Clearing Station at Beauval from June 1915 to October 1916 and the 47th from October to December 1916. The great majority of the burials carried out from these hospitals, but a few made as late as March 1918. After the Armistice, graves from Lucheux Military Cemetery moved to Rows A and G of this cemetery. A total of 248 Great War casualties buried

Sergeant Edmund James Higgins the Son of James and Margaret Higgins, of 95, Military Rd., St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Chocques Military Cemetery

Chocques occupied by Commonwealth forces from the late autumn of 1914 to the end of the war. The village at one time the headquarters of I Corps and from January 1915 to April 1918, No.1 Casualty Clearing Station posted there. Most of the burials from this period are of casualties who died at the clearing station from wounds received at the Bethune front. 

2nd Lt G T Gordon of the Gordon Highlanders.

The Reverend Oswin Creighton

Commenced service 16 November 1914. Chaplain to the Forces (4th Class), 1914-18. Served in Gallipoli, 1915 (29th Division); France, 1916-18 (3rd Division, Royal Field Artillery). Mentioned in Despatches. Author of With the Twenty-Ninth Division in Gallipoli (1916); Letters of Oswin Creighton, C.F., 1883-1918 (edited by his mother) (1920). Killed in action, south of Arras, 15 April 1918.

Grove Town Cemetery, Meaulte

In September 1916, the 34th and 2/2nd London Casualty Clearing Stations were established at this point, known to the troops as Grove Town, to deal with casualties from the Somme battlefields. They were moved in April 1917 and, except for a few burials in August and September 1918, the cemetery closed.

Second Lieutenant Samuel Manuel the son of Titus and Mary Jane Manuel, of Exploits, Newfoundland.

Guards Cemetery, Combles

Guards’ Cemetery begun by the Guards Division in September 1916, and carried on by other units until March 1917, and to a small extent in March, August and September 1918. It contained at the Armistice 100 graves, of which 19 those of officers and men of the Foot Guards; and then increased by the concentration into Plot II of graves from Priez Farm Cemetery. Six German graves of 1918 removed to another burial ground.

Second Lieutenant Charles Legallais Edgar‘s original burial location at Guards Cemetery.

Heilly Station Cemetery, Mericourt L’Abbe

The cemetery begun in May 1916 and used by three medical units until April 1917. From March to May 1918, used by Australian units, and in the early autumn for further hospital burials when the 20th Casualty Clearing Station there briefly in August and September 1918.

The last burial made in May 1919. Captain Augustus O’Brien the adopted son of Mrs. Bridget O’Brien, of 28.5, Lime St., St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Kemmel Chateau Cemetery

Kemmel Chateau north-east of Kemmel village and the cemetery established on the north side of the chateau grounds in December 1914. It continued to be used by divisions fighting on the southern sectors of the Belgian front until March 1918, when after fierce fighting involving both Commonwealth and French forces, the village and cemetery fell into German hands in late April. The cemetery retaken later in the year, but in the interval badly shelled and the old chateau destroyed.

There are now 1,135 Commonwealth burials of the Great War in the cemetery and 21 from the Second World War (which all date from the Allied withdrawal ahead of the German advance of May 1940).

Marcoing Communal Cemetery

Captain Rupert Wilfred Bartlett MC & Bar killed in action at Cambrai on 30 November 1917.

Note the caption states this was the grave site, not memorial of Captain Bartlett. For reasons unknown, he is now listed on the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial.

Villers-Plouich Communal Cemetery

Villers-Plouich captured in April, 1917, by the 13th East Surreys; lost in March, 1918; and regained at the end of the following September, when the 1st East Surreys the first troops to enter the village.

This is an original burial location. The hedge behind the original row over a hundred years old, revealing the honourable work of CWGC personnel.

Windmill Cemetery

Windmill British Cemetery, Monchy-le-Preux. On 23 April 1917, in the Second Battle of the Scarpe, Infantry Hill (east of Monchy) and Guemappe (due south of Monchy) captured by Commonwealth troops. Guemappe lost the same day, but retaken almost at once, and further progress made in the following days.

In May, the 29th Division began this cemetery and buried in it a number of the dead of 23 April. It continued in use until March 1918, and was used again from August to October 1918. In Plot II, Rows D and E, are buried 23 officers and men of the 1st King’s Own Royal Lancasters who died in the Battle of the Drocourt-Queant Line at the beginning of September.

Windmill British Cemetery contains 402 Commonwealth burials and commemorations of the Great War.

Three RNR identified at Windmill, including Pte Arthur Maidment 2910 of Trinity, NFLD. 35 of the burials are unidentified.

Pieta Military Cemetery, Malta

From the spring of 1915, the hospitals and convalescent depots established on the islands of Malta and Gozo dealt with over 135,000 sick and wounded, chiefly from the campaigns in Gallipoli and Salonika, although increased submarine activity in the Mediterranean meant that fewer hospital ships were sent to the island from May 1917.

One RNR buried here where Nangle captured many photographs. Buried here Cpl Richard Fowler 886 of the RNR (died 23 November 1915) as well as Pte William Herbert Lewis 50144 of the CAMC (died 2 November 1916).

Vichte Military Cemetery

The railway station at Vichte captured by the Royal Newfoundland Regiment on 20 October 1918, and the village by the 9th (Scottish) Division two days later. In Vichte Military Cemetery, Rows A and B and part of Row C in Plot I made in October 1918, by the burial officers of the 9th and 31st Divisions, and the remainder of the cemetery formed after the Armistice when graves brought in from the neighbouring battlefields.

Corporal Leo Crotty 3935, Private Walter Augustus Dean 3935.

Memorials

Failed attempts to locate the Missing soon necessitated the need for memorials to the Fallen. The public well aware of the staggering numbers of lost and missing graves, in addition to those never recovered from the battlefield. Their loss could not be forgotten – there would be little dissension regarding the plethora of memorials in the early years following the war.

Commemorative efforts in Newfoundland led by Lieutenant-Colonel Father Thomas Nangle, Newfoundland’s representative on the Imperial War Graves Commission. In July 1919, Nangle given the responsibility of overseeing the design and construction of each memorial. The memorial design, featuring a distinctive bronze caribou, submitted by British sculptor Captain Basil Gotto, selected from among the proposals submitted.

They are monuments to our glorious dead, and to our just as glorious survivors. They are monuments to the mothers that bore such brave sons and the land that bred them. They are to be an everlasting tribute to the men who gave their all that the land may live. Surely then if St. John’s could erect an expensive temporary arch for a two day’s celebration Newfoundland can spend more than 100 pounds per monument to commemorate in perpetuity the doings of her Regiment, and her 1,200 dead. If 100 pounds is all that can be spared per monument…I recommend that we erect nothing at all. Let us forget we ever had a Regiment.

Lt-Col Nangle

Six caribou sculptures cast in total, with one installed at each of Newfoundland’s then five battlefield memorials in France and Belgium and the sixth installed in St. John’s, at Bowring Park. In 2021, another battlefield memorial—the Gallipoli Newfoundland Memorial – installed in Türkiye.

Newfoundland War Memorial Park

Y-Ravine

Prime minister of Newfoundland (1919-1923) Sir Richard Anderson Squires KCMG at Y-Ravine.

Hawthorn Crater

The Hawthorn Redoubt a formidable defensive position for the Germans blown up on the morning of 1 July 1916 by a mine placed beneath the German stronghold on the ridge. The explosion, ten minutes before the whistles blew at 7:30am, destroyed the position but the timing of the detonation and the lifting of the artillery barrage meant that the position quickly reinforced by the Germans, leading to massive losses among the attacking British troops. The mine blown for a second time on the 13 November 1916 when the 51st Highland Division captured the ridge and village. In 2.09 Leaf 9B of the Thomas F. Nangle fonds, Lt-Col Thomas F. Nangle captures four images of the craters, circa 1922.

Danger Tree

Hawthorn Ridge No. 2 Cemetery

“Y” Ravine Cemetery

The cemetery made by the V Corps in the spring of 1917, when these battlefields cleared.

Originally “Y” Ravine Cemetery No.1., No.2 cemetery concentrated after the Armistice into Ancre British Cemetery, Beaumont-Hamel.

Hunter’s Cemetery

Hunter’s Cemetery (the origin of the name may refer to a Chaplain attached to the Black Watch, the Rev. Hunter), a great shell-hole, in which soldiers of the 51st Division, who fell in the capture of Beaumont-Hamel, buried after the battle. 

There are now over 40, 1914-18 war casualties commemorated in this site.

Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial

Nangle completed the purchase of the land during the summer of 1922. In October he commissioned Flemish landscape architect Rudolph Cochius to design the layout for the park. Construction began in the spring of 1923. A visitor’s lodge built from Newfoundland lumber, while more than 5,000 native Newfoundland trees planted around the battlefield’s outer edges.

Lodge

Construction of the Memorial

51st Highland Division Memorial

The 51st Highland Division Memorial within Beaumont-Hamel Park unveiled by Marshal Foch on 28 September 1924. 

Unveiling of the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial

On June 7, 1925, under beautiful weather conditions, the caribou memorial at Beaumont Hamel officially dedicated and unveiled by Field Marshal Haig accompanied by LtCol Thomas F Nangle. A large crowd present for the unveiling ceremony, composed of numerous religious, civic and military dignitaries: Marshal Fayolle, Chief of French general staff; J.R.Bennett; LCol. A.E Bernard and wife; Lt. General Sir Almer and Lady Hunter-Weston; Lt. General Sir Beauvoir de Lisle; Major W.H. and Mrs. Parsons; Major General D.E. Cayley; LCpl. A.L. Hadow; Captain and Mrs. Basil Gotto; Mr. and Mrs. Rudolf Cochius, and many others, relatives and friends of the Regiment. Each of the units of the renowned 29^th Division sent representatives for the honour guard.

The landscape architect, who designed the sites and supervised their construction, Mr Rudolph H K Cochius, a native of Holland living in St. John’s, Newfoundland. The caribous the work of the English sculptor, Basil Gotto. He also executed the statue of the “Fighting Newfoundlander,” which Sir Edward Bowring gifted to the people of St. John’s.

9th Scottish Division Memorial

9th (Scottish) Division Memorial – This tall stone cairn memorial to the 9th (Scottish) Division stands on the Point du Jour ridge east of Arras.

1st Battalion, Royal Newfoundland Regiment, joined the 9th (Scottish) Division in September 1918 as part of the reformed 28th Brigade, with Major-General Henry Hugh Tudor commanding.

28th Brigade

The RNR immediately became involved in a two-day offensive to seize control of German strongpoints and to push the Allied front deeper into enemy territory. The Regiment captured all of its objectives and advanced its line by 14.5 km, at a cost of 100 casualties.

It retreated to the village of Keiberg for a brief period of rest before entering the trenches at Ledeghem on 2 October 1918. It spent four days there, successfully defending the Allied front line from a German counterattack.

Masnières Newfoundland Memorial

Courtrai Newfoundland Memorial

The Courtrai Newfoundland Memorial in Belgium, just outside Courtrai on the road to Ghent, the only caribou memorial in Belgium. 

Monchy-le-Preux Newfoundland Memorial

The Monchy-le-Preux Newfoundland Memorial in 1919. Built atop a German strongpoint, the Caribou faces east toward Infantry Hill.

Gueudecourt Newfoundland Memorial

St. John’s Newfoundland Memorial

Nangle the Aide-de-Camp to British Field Marshal Sir Earl Haig, when he unveiled the memorial on July 1, 1924.

Nangle served as President of Newfoundland’s Great War Veterans’ Association during 1924, during which time he
oversaw the construction of the National War Memorial in St. John’s.

Agnostic

“During the war I lost all faith in Christianity and became an agnostic.”

“After the war I was faced with the choice of being a living hypocrite all the rest of my life or clearing out to avoid as much scandal as possible. I chose the later and cut adrift entirely from Newfoundland.”

Letter to Premier Joey Smallwood in 1960.

Legacy of LtCol Thomas F Nangle

“He disappeared from our history for so long, but we are bringing Nangle back.”

Robert Chafe, a Newfoundland based playwright.

Father Tom

Oh! Soggarth Aroon, to the dear land that bore you,
We welcome your presence to-day with great joy ;
The blue sky is smiling, the breeze passes o’er you,
The same as you knew them since you were a boy .
. . . The hills which you rambled,
The meadows you ” gamboled,”
They all seem to welcome you back from the Somme
The love of the masses,
Of all creeds and classes,
To-day goes out to our own “Father Tom.”

To all you are welcome, for you are from Flanders,
Where ” Our Boys ” are harnessed to Liberty’s car ;
For true are the hearts of the brave Newfoundlanders,
And they are renowned for their deeds in the war.
They’re brave and they’re clever,
God keep them so ever,
No dread have “Our Boys” of a cannon or bomb,
And with them you’re blended,
On them you’ve attended,
All have a kind word for their own “Father Tom.”

Your heart never turned on a creed or a faction,
For where you were needed you’ll appear ;
You were seen ‘mong ” Our Boys , – in the thick of the action,
And that’s what the Master picked out for you here.
Our hearts are rejoicing,
Our tongues are all voicing
The love that we bear you we’ll show since you come ;
Those old friendly faces
You’ll find in their places
To tender a welcome to you, “Father Tom.”

– JAMES MURPHY, St. John’s, Nfld., October 3rd, 1917.

St. Bonaventure’s College

On Monday, September 4, 2017, St. Bonaventure’s College held a ceremony unveiling a plaque honouring LtCol Thomas F Nangle, class of 1909. Nangle named a Person of National Historical Significance by the Government of Canada in 2016 for his dedicated service in the Royal Newfoundland Regiment as the Catholic Chaplain.

In attendance Nangle’s daughter, Mavourneen Galbraith, who travelled from New Zealand to be a part of the ceremony. Galbraith, along with President Tom McGrath unveiled the plaque at the entrance to St. Bonaventure’s College, where current students and alumni can admire and reflect on Nangle’s admirable contributions.

Nationally Significant Person

In 2016, LtCol Thomas F Nangle designated a nationally significant person by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada in recognition of his tireless efforts to keep alive the memory of Newfoundlanders’ sacrifices in the Great War and the places embodying those sacrifices.

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