For nigh on nine years now, I have been writing articles for The Downsman, (incidentally I am still awaiting my first cheque), and never before have I have been criticised. It was concerning my last report in the August edition, when I presented the results of the first annual census for three years. I was told that since there are now more Alpacas in Woodcutts than humans, I should have included them in the official census. I don’t think that the complainant realises how many of these Peruvian, Inca animals there are here, far more than I have fingers and toes, and they will keep moving about. As some of you know, I spent several years of my farm management years in Southern Ireland, where I was taught the easy way of counting large groups of animals. It is a fool proof method when you think about it. You simply count all the legs and divide by four. That of course assumes that you know your four times table, if you don’t you can always ask.
The problems start when you arrive at numbers not divisible by four. This is particularly so with alpacas, where complete animals can be worth up to £10,000. After all, who wants a three legged animal at all, but especially so, when thinking of these very expensive creatures. I think you just have to assume you have miscounted and start again. If there is just one remaining after the division, you know you are wrong, have you ever seen what should be a quadruped trying to balance on one leg?
If I had been Robert L. Stevenson I might have got away with it, but these alpacas did not appear in his book, Treasure Island, can you imagine a Long John Alpaca?
Similarly, if you end up with an odd three legs, you are almost bound to be wrong, these animals are simply too expensive to have a leg missing. Three legged alpacas are as rare now, as the three wheeled car, the Robin Reliant.
While I am talking about cars, I am reminded of the huge number of pheasant road deaths, at this time of year. Have you noticed them? I personally believe that they are largely due to the modern method of feeding the growing birds. In the old days, once the birds left the rearing pen, they would be fed by a keeper walking along with a sack on his shoulder, broadcasting the feed as he went. Today the feed is distributed by a spinning disc at the base of a hopper carried in a 4x4, as the vehicle is driven along. It is my belief that the pheasants now associate cars and their movement, with being fed. Now, they have no fear of traffic, and simply expect to be fed on the road by the passing vehicles. They are now so familiarised with traffic movements, the noise and the expectation that they are constantly ‘at risk’. It is a great shame as they are beautiful birds, have a wonderful taste when cooked and do provide ‘sport’ to those who can afford to attend organised shoots. Give me ‘rough’ shooting any time. Please don’t think that I am anti shooting, or the valuable income that it brings to big and small farmers alike. I just don’t see the fun or skill in some shoots, where the birds have to be practically thrown into the air at the end of the drive, in order that they may be shot. Then at the end of the day’s shooting there is no market for the prize, which has to be buried or burnt. (Don’t worry, I’m not perfect either.) I just want the keepers to remember that I’ve got a large deep freeze.
Shooting generally is a great employer of country people, involving the collecting eggs, rearing, growing on, releasing, monitoring and policing, beating, building pens and of course keepering, where woodland and breeding and growing areas have to be managed. It has been going on for a long time, I want it to continue, but preferably for the sake of the countryside, not just for the rich business men who don’t know an oak tree from an ash. These people descend on the countryside, dressed in their immaculate tweeds, carrying ultra expensive guns, their purpose to shoot as many birds as possible to, so that they can boast about their kill over dinner that night on their return to town. They won't be taking home the odd brace or two, if they did they wouldn’t know how to pluck and dress them. It ought to be a condition that all guns should able to prepare birds for the kitchen, and be prepared to use at least a brace from every shoot they attend.
That is enough about alpacas and pheasants, now we must turn to the other quadruped, which is present in large numbers here at Woodcutts, the rabbit. They are more numerous about the countryside than I can remember for many years. There are certainly more about than any of the years that I have lived in Woodcutts. They certainly have not been a problem in the garden before. Putting up wire netting fencing this year, was a case of closing the stable door after the horse had bolted. If I thought that I would be plagued like this another year, I think I would give up the vegetable garden. Now of course they are under attack from that dreadful disease myximitosis. (I hope I have spelt it correctly, my computer has never heard of the word.) Originally introduced into this country as a control measure, it is devastating, and like so many of man’s ideas rather inhumane.
Of course in the old days there was no need for any control measures, the poachers saw to that. Nowadays few people eat wild rabbit, and for that matter pheasants either, so the poacher of these two sources of food has no outlet for his produce. An entirely different poacher exists now, the one who simply wants to kill and not use or sell his prey. At least they don’t spend hundreds of pounds to do it, as some of those gentlemen in their tweeds from the towns do.
Let us get away from the animals and look at the flora of the countryside and what has been happening this year. In the past week (the second in September), I have seen wild red and white campions in flower, both normally flowering in spring/early summer, when nothing is more welcoming, than a feast of bluebells interspersed with the odd group of red or white campions. Another late flowerer this year is the toadflax, providing a splash of yellow on the grass verges. Leaving the wild for the cultivated, what about the weigelia as it makes a special attempt to flower, for the second time this year. Fuchsias of all types are flowering wonderfully, and many other species besides. In the garden, apple trees are laden with their harvest, as are pear trees.
It is amazing which plant species have benefited from the peculiar weather pattern of this year, and which haven’t. In the wild, the elder flowered over a long period, in some cases producing flowers on some branches while berries were well formed on others. This gave a very uneven ripening and has left me with no berries available for some of that wonderful home made elderberry wine. I was certainly caught out and have not made any for the first time in many years.
Now to end with a few comments about the ‘birds and the bees’, sorry I meant birds and butterflies. Firstly the birds, or at least the pigeons, a wood pigeon is actually still building a nest in the hedge just across the lane from us, and others can be seen going through the mating rituals in the middle of September. Also, freshly, hatched eggs shells can be found on the ground. While of the butterflies, large whites are in evidence in considerable numbers on every sunny day, with occasionally a brimstone, one of the first to show in the spring, joining them. What a peculiar year!
1st/1st (Queen’s Own) Dorset Yeomanry
Only two soldiers commemorated on the village War Memorial died in the service of the Dorset Yeomanry (hereafter referred to as the QODY), the profile of the first to lose his life, Lance Sergeant Jack Fitz-Roy Walters, having appeared in the August 2005 edition of The Downsman.
Private Joseph Arthur Chaldecott, the subject of this account, was killed on active service in Palestine on the 13th of November, 1917, though his links with Sixpenny Handley seem to be rather tenuous in that (according to information published in the 1901 Census returns) he was born at East Orchard, Shaftesbury. The same returns, this time in respect of his parents, indicate that his father, Arthur Chaldecott was born at Sutton Poyontry (sic), Weymouth and by 1901 was age 32 and living, with his wife Selina (born Tinyford, Shaftesbury), at Pentridge, his profession being given as a ‘journeyman baker’. It is likely that at some time they moved into Sixpenny Handley as both are buried in the churchyard at St. Mary’s, Arthur being laid to rest on the 16th of March, 1942, his funeral service being conducted by the Revered W. J. James, while Selina survived him by over four years before she, too, was buried on the 9th of November, 1946, the Reverend E. H. Edwards officiating. Their ages are given as 72 and 77 years respectively.
Their marriage produced two sons (at least); Joseph Arthur and William Thomas, the latter being the last serviceman commemorated on our Memorial to die in the Great War, his profile to be compiled at a later date. Regarding Joseph, I would have expected him to have enlisted at Blandford, but his service records show that he went to Gillingham though the date of his joining the yeomanry is not recorded.
However, in February 2003, a brief history of Dorset’s County Yeomanry was published, page 8 of this excellent account stating that following the action that I reported in August 2005, the QODY on retirement to Alexandria became part of the 6th Mounted Brigade (formerly the 2nd South Midland Brigade) and it is armed with this knowledge that I am able to say with a reasonable degree of accuracy that Private Chaldecott lost his life on the opening day of an action that captured Turkish positions at El Maghar, the fighting lasting for 48-hours.
In order to place his death in the overall context of ongoing military actions directed against the Turkish army it is necessary to step back in time to the last day of October 1917, when, having participated in the Third Battle of Gaza, the QODY was held in GHQ Reserve when the Australian Mounted Division, which included the 3rd and 4th Australian Light Horse Brigades and the 5th (British) Yeomanry Brigade successfully fought an action which has gone down in the annals of military history as ‘The Battle of Beersheba’. Briefly, for it was an action in which Private Caldecott was to play no part, by the end of the day the mixed force of Australian, New Zealand and British cavalry with artillery support cleared Turkish forces entrenched on the northern edge of the Sinai Desert at Beersheba and from the adjacent high ground known as Tel El Saba.
Following on from this the 6th Mounted Brigade which in addition to the QODY consisted on the 1st/1st Buckinghamshire Yeomanry, 1st/1st Berkshire Yeomanry and the 17th Machine Gun Squadron moved against enemy positions at the Sheria Position clearing the area on the 6th November, prior to the action at El Maghar which though of only 48-hours duration resulted in at least eight QODY fatalities, this figure including Private Chaldecott, and I consider likely that Private Harry Lawrence Jeans and Private Thomas Burgess Nuttall who died on the 15th and 16th November, 1917, respectively may have been as the consequence of wounds received in the battle.
After securing El Maghar the brigade was engaged between the 17th and 24th of November, in the Battle of Nabi Samwell while towards the end of the month the QODY was involved in helping to repel Turkish counter attacks, these actions being the last major offensive operations of 1917.
In the years following the cessation of hostilities, the bodies of these who died on the 13th of November, 1917, a Tuesday, have been taken to Ramleh War Cemetery (now in the state of Israel). A huge concentration cemetery between the port of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Ramleh contains 4,520 burials, 3,300 of this total from the Great War.
To close this profile, the known Roll of Honour (extracted from information published by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission) for those who fell on the 13th November, 1917, from the QODY and who are buried at Ramleh reads:
230219 Pte BASTABLE, G. W.
239944 Pte BOWERMAN S.
230055 Pte CHALDECOTT J. A.
230892 Pte CRABB W. C. J.
230297 Pte CURTIS W. W.
231583 Pte DIMENT W. G.
230079 Sgt GUPPY DCM, H. J. J.
230341 Pte HANNAN W. E.
Postscript. A search of the Gazettes’ online website identifies two entries for Sergeant Harold Joseph John Guppy who was serving with A Squadron at the time of his death. From Preston, Weymouth, he is first mentioned in Despatch IV from army headquarters, Force in Egypt, Cairo, dated 16th March, 1916, and signed by General J. G. Maxwell, Commanding the Force in Egypt. Although no specific action is reported, the despatch makes in clear that it was in connection for actions on the Western Front. His second entry, Gazetted on Friday the 22nd of September, 1916, records that ‘under heavy fire he brought up an ammunition limber across the open, and then carried ammunition boxes to the firing line.’
This particular Gazette runs to many pages and is devoted, in the main, to reporting acts of conspicuous gallantry which included that reported here for Corporal (as he was at the time of his award of the Distinguished Conduct Medal) Guppy.
Today dear Lord I’m 80. And there’s much I haven’t done
I hope dear Lord, you’ll let me live until I’m 81
But then, if I haven’t finished all I want to do
Would you let me stay a while until I’m 82?
So many places I want to go, so very much to see
Do you think that you could manage to make it 83?
The world is changing very fast. There is so much in store
I’d like it very much to live until I’m 84
And if by then I’m still alive,
I’d like to stay till 85
More planes will be up in the air. So I’d really like to stick
And see what happens to the world when I’m 86
I know dear Lord, It’s much to ask (and it must be nice in heaven)
But I would really like to stay until I’m 87
I know by then I won’t be late
But it would be so pleasant to be around at 88
I will have seen so many things And had a wonderful time
So I’m sure that I’ll be willing to leave at 89 ....May be
Why is abbreviation such a long word but means shortening one?
It’s not who you know or what you know. It’s what you know about who you know.
Hi. Don’t panic but I’m in hospital. I accidentally poisoned myself. I ate what I thought was an onion but it was actually a daffodil bulb. Never mind. Doctor says I’ll be out in the spring.
5 men and a women were clinging to a rope from a cliff. They decided one had to let go or the rope would snap. The woman broke into a heart rendering speech about how she would give up her life to save the others because females were used to making sacrifices for husbands and children and getting nothing in return. What she finished all the men started clapping - problem solved!
The road to success is always under construction.
A woman goes to the doctors to complain about her husband. “Since he came to see you he’s been a different person,” she says. “He never takes me out, gives me any money or even looks at me. Your treatment has changed his entire personality. What treatment did he have?” “What treatment?” says the doctor. “I just gave him a note to the opticians for a new pair of glasses.”
Stubble is burning and leaves now are turning
The autumn is coming in fast.
Fruit turning mellow and leaves burnished yellow
The long days of summer are past.
Lanes that we walked down echo to new sound
The rusting of leaves as they spill.
Frosty-white mornings and many such warnings
That winter’s just over the hill!
Seagulls that follow the plough in the hollow
Are but just another clear sign.
Wild skies or evening as daylight is leaving
This nip in these fingers of mine.
Hillsides a browning at autumn tides crowning
A definite edge to the chill.
Nights quicker forming and other such warning
That winter’s just over the hill!
Long flights now starting of migrants departing
For lands that are warmer than ours.
Squirrels as-camper to fill up their hampers
Ere sleeping the cold winter hours.
Foliage thinning as leaves go a-spinning
And flowers lie dead ‘neath the sill.
Gales lash the awnings, take heed to these warnings
For winter’s just over the hill!