The Spectator at war: Stuck in Holland

In 1914 some 1,500 men from ‘Churchill’s Little Army’, the First Royal Naval Brigade, retreated from the defence of Antwerp to the Netherlands. As a neutral country the Netherlands was obliged to intern any soliders from warring armies that crossed its borders to stop them re-joining the fight. The men were put in the ‘English Camp’ (or ‘HMS Timbertown’) in Groningen, where they were based until the war ended. From ‘With the interned sailors in Holland’, The Spectator, 24 April 1915: Sir—Réveille sounding at 6.30 every morning rouses us from our bunks, ready to face another day in Holland. We have little to do before breakfast at 7.30, so washing is a leisurely job, excepting on those mornings when we wake up and find, as we often do, that the ground is in the grip of frost or covered with a mantle of snow, which, with the help of a cutting wind sweeping across the flats and canals from Germany, keeps us quickly moving.