ARTICLE: Learning to Love the French in WW1

Today I have a piece of historiography for you, in the shape of some allied interaction from the First World War. A few weeks ago I was handed a book entitled Mr. Poilu, Notes and Sketches with the Fighting French. Published by Hodder & Stoughton, slap bang in the middle of the war, this was an idealised portrait of the humble French soldier woven for the British public. This wasn’t necessary an easy sell, which makes it doubling interesting for me. Prior to 1914, Britain and France had opposed each other in wars, not fought on the same side. The conflict began when the Battle of Waterloo had only just slipped out of living memory, which means that it isn’t any old portrait of the French soldier; it’s one of the first that would not have set out to portray him as the enemy….

‘A Poilu’ (All images, unless otherwise stated come from Mr. Poilu, London, 1916)

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To help forge this image, Hodder called upon adventurer and sculptor Herbert Ward. Born in London in January 1863, he was described by an old school friend as:

A well-knit figure, with unusually deep chest and broad shoulders, deep-set blue eyes wide apart, and a remoteness, almost shyness, of manner bespeaking a reticence not perhaps in accord with the accepted convention of public school life. Anyhow, he was individual, and so to a few of us interesting. A rebel, as I now realise, against the accepted and rigid mould of the day, with visions of a wider world of travel and adventure than the study of maps in stuffy classrooms could afford.

To this end he left school early and travelled the globe, in steerage. He spent three years earning a living with back-breaking labour in Australia and New Zealand, ‘being in turn sailor, kauri-gum digger, coal and gold miner, sail-maker, gymnast in a travelling circus, and stock-rider.’ He worked his way home aboard a fully rigged sailing ship via San Francisco and Cape Horn, before setting off again, this time to America and then Singapore:

This last voyage was with the definite object of seeking adventure and experience in Borneo, where, through the interest of the Governor of the North Borneo Company, he was enrolled as a cadet in the service…He was sent on an important expedition of some hundreds of miles up the Kinabatangan River to an outpost at Penungah, among picturesque but uncertain natives. Here, for eight months, by tact and a sympathetic understanding with the natives, he did valuable work, until a severe attack of jungle fever laid him low.

Having recovered at home, it was Africa next, and here he came into contact with Roger Casement in the Congo. He was subsequently being executed for treason at about the time Mr. Poilu was being readied for print.

Varied active service in what is now the Congo Free State lasted for two and a half years, when the news reached him of Stanley’s arrival in command of the Expedition to relieve Emin Pasha in the Sudan. On his own initiative Herbert Ward collected a force of over four hundred natives as carriers, and marched down country with them to meet Stanley, placing his and their services at the great explorer's disposal. His offer was accepted, and he was enrolled as an officer (voluntary) of the Expedition, and a further two and a half years of unceasing and exciting work were passed in the centre of the Dark Continent.

Ward as a young man (left) pictured with Roger Casement in the Congo in 1886. (Wikipedia)

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If all of this is of interest, Ward wrote several books about his experiences at this time: Five Years with the Congo Cannibals, My Life with Stanley's Rear-Guard, and A Voice from the Congo. Somehow at the turn of the century, Ward found time to father five children, before the entire family settled in Paris. Here, from about 1900, Ward spent his time sculpting representations of his experiences and the people that he met in Central Africa, to much critical acclaim.

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