"Out of the lime-light" wartime experiences of 17 North Shields men

This year’s talk on the nearest Saturday to Armistice Day is by Alan Fidler, who led the Northumbria World War One Commemoration Project.

Alan will talk about a little-known aspect of WW1, how 17 North Shields men – all members of the Royal Naval Division – spent most of the First World War as internees in Holland.

After an unsuccessful attempt in 1914 assisting the Belgian army to defend Antwerp, a key coastal port, they were marched to the Netherlands to avoid capture by the advancing German forces. As the Dutch government had declared itself neutral, any members of the fighting forces coming into the Netherlands were held in internment until the end of the hostilities. As such, these men were among almost 1,500 others living under enforced residency in a camp they nicknamed HMS Timbertown in Groningen.

It certainly wasn’t the wartime experience they expected, spending four years working in factories and farms around Groningen, even being granted home leave on condition they returned to captivity. Some wrote to Shields newspapers, with one asking if there was a Prisoner of War Relief Fund in North Shields, adding that they were ‘prisoners, out of the lime-light, forgotten even by our own townspeople’.

An expert on WW1 and its impact on North Shields people, Alan will share research gathered as part of the project about the 17 men, their lives in Groningen and what life was like afterwards for some of them.

In setting the context, he will explain how two naval brigades – a total of eight battalions – were formed in August/September 1914 by Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty. They comprised a mixture of regular seamen and officers plus naval reservists and embarked for France and Belgium in early October 1914. The two naval brigades and a brigade of the Royal Marine Light Infantry were sent by Churchill to assist the Belgian army in defending Antwerp.

Alan set up the Tynemouth World War One Commemoration Project in 2010 and it was subsequently re-named the Northumbria World War One Commemoration Project. His interest in the war and its sad consequences for local families in the area covered by the old Tynemouth borough, was sparked by the hundreds of family headstones in Preston Cemetery that note the loss of family members at sea and abroad, as well as the many Commonwealth War Graves, for men who died in the war and the immediate aftermath.

Further information about the project, which gained The Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service, is available on https://northumbriaworldwarone.co.uk/

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