The Ironclad Prophecy
NO MAN’S WORLD
THE IRONCLAD
PROPHECY
PAT KELLEHER
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies
But in battalions.”
–
Hamlet
, Act 4, Scene 5,
William Shakespeare
For Niall and Niamh
An Abaddon Books
TM
Publication
www.abaddonbooks.com
First published in 2011 by Abaddon Books
TM
, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.
Editors: Jenni Hill & David Moore
Cover Art: Pye Parr
Design: Simon Parr & Luke Preece
Marketing and PR: Michael Molcher
Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley
Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley
No Man’s World
TM
created by Pat Kelleher
Copyright © 2011 Rebellion. All rights reserved.
No Man’s World
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, Abaddon Books and Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All right reserved.
ISBN (ePUB): 978-1-84997-285-7
ISBN (MOBI): 978-1-84997-286-4
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Stephen Maugham and the Broughtonthwaite Historical Society for their continuing support. I am grateful to Faye Joy for her dedication in undertaking research and tracking down French newspaper reports and primary documents concerning the Harcourt Event and the subsequent Lefeuvre Find. I am also grateful to the estate of the late Arthur Cooke for continued access to his collection. I should also like to thank Ellie McDonald at the Broughtonthwaite Museum, who brought to my attention some of their more recent acquisitions concerning the Fusiliers. I am indebted to Bill Crinson at the British Library archive of British Periodicals, for his encyclopaedic knowledge on the history of British magazines of the period, invaluable help in tracking down issues of
Great War Science Stories
and for providing information on the works of Harold G. Cargill. Special thanks must go to all those people who have kindly contacted the publishers and offered me access to private family documents and photographs in my continuing research. Once more, I must thank my wife, Penny, for her continuing support and dedicated work in transcribing interviews.
13th BATTALION PENNINE FUSILIERS:
COMPANY PERSONNEL
Battalion HQ.
C.O.:
2nd Lieutenant J. C. Everson
2C.O.:
Company Sergeant Major Ernest Nelson
Company Quartermaster Sergeant Archibald Slacke
Pte. Henry
‘Half Pint’
Nicholls (batman)
Royal Army Chaplain: Father Arthur Rand
(CF4) (‘Captain’) War Office Kinematographer Oliver Hepton
‘C’ Company
No 1 Platoon
C.O.:
Lieutenant Morgan
No. 2 Platoon
C.O.:
2nd Lieutenant Palmer
2C.O.:
Platoon Sergeant Herbert Gerald Hobson
1 Section
I.C.:
Lance Corporal Thomas
‘Only’
Atkins
Pte. Harold
‘Gutsy’
Blood
Pte. Peter
‘Nobby’
Clark
Pte. Wilfred Joseph
‘Mercy’
Evans
Pte. Bernard
‘Prof’
Gates
Pte. George
‘Porgy’
Hopkiss
Pte. Leonard
‘Pot-Shot’
Jellicoe
Pte. David Samuel
‘Gazette’
Otterthwaite
Pte. Eric
‘Chalky’
White
RAMC
Regimental Aid Post
RMO:
Captain Grenville Lippett
Red Cross Nurses
Sister Betty Fenton
Sister Edith Bell
Driver Nellie Abbott (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry)
Orderlies
Pte. Edgar Stanton
Pte. Edward Thompkins
Machine Gun Corps (Heavy Section) ‘I’ Company: I-5 HMLS Ivanhoe
C.O.:
2nd Lieutenant Arthur Alexander Mathers
Pte. Wally Clegg (Driver)
Pte. Frank Nichols (Gearsman)
Pte. Alfred Perkins (Gearsman)
Pte. Norman Bainbridge (Gunner)
Pte. Jack Tanner (Gunner)
Pte. Reginald Lloyd (Loader/ Machine Gunner)
Pte. Cecil Nesbit (Loader / Machine Gunner)
D Flight 70 Squadron: Sopwith 1 ½ Strutter
Lieutenant James Robert Tulliver (Pilot)
Corporal Jack Maddocks (Observer)
PREFACE
“It’s a Long, Long Way to Tipperary...”
T
HE MYSTERY OF
the Harcourt Crater galvanised a generation when, in 1916, nine hundred men of the 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers vanished from the Somme. Ten years afterwards, a find in a French field revealed silent film footage, letters and journals, describing the Fusiliers’ existence on another planet, only for it to be declared a hoax and forgotten as time passed.
Almost a hundred years later, the publication of
No Man’s World: Black Hand Gang
revived interest in the case of the missing Pennine Fusiliers. Since then, members of the public have contacted the publisher with claims of new evidence, of unseen documents and letters that have lain in ordinary boxes and in dusty attics for decades, unregarded.
This volume, continuing the account of the Pennine Fusiliers’ fate, has been able to include this new information, where appropriate, with the permission of the families, in order to shed light on one of the biggest military cover-ups of the last century.
It must be remembered, however, that it was not just the 13th Battalion of the Pennine Fusiliers that vanished that day. The
HMLS Ivanhoe
, one of Britain’s secret weapons, the new-fangled ‘tanks,’ also disappeared, along with its eight-man crew.
While the mystery of the Pennines inspired lurid pulp tales in magazines such as
Great War Science Stories
, and featured in adventures like
The Curse of the 13
th
Battalion
;
The Golem of No Man’s Land
;
Zeppelin from Another World
and
Crater
of
the Somme-bies
, the
Ivanhoe
appeared in only a small number of tales published during 1928. They were written by Harold G. Cargill who, the publication’s editors sensationally suggested, was an eyewitness survivor of the Fusiliers, returned from the planet.