LIEUTENANT MILNE IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT
In February 1915, the newly commissioned Second Lieutenant Alan Alexander Milne, aged 33,arrived at Golden Hill Fort, Freshwater to join the 4th Battalion of the 11th Royal Warwickshire Regiment. He was a most unlikely soldier as he held strong and unfashionable views as a pacifist. His only experience had been drilling the London Old Boys Corps as a civilian in August 1914. He proved to be useless with firearms. “ I never… fired a shot in anger and only twelve under the impetus of any other emotion. These all missed the musketry instructor but hit the Isle of Wight…” His time was spent in drilling the men and basic training. He resided at “Delaware” The Avenue, Totland Bay
In August 1915, he was made a Signals Officer and spent a 9 week course at the Southern Command Signalling School at Wyke Regis, near Weymouth As a qualified Instructor he wrote: “Its rather a pleasant job in its way. I’m entirely my own master, order my own parades, and do things entirely in the way I think best…” He could have been assigned to the 2nd Battalion, which on the Front had all its officers wiped out. He tried to transfer to the Flying Corps as an Observer but failed his eye test.
On his return to the Island, the Battalion had moved to Sandown, and Lieutenant Milne rented a furnished cottage where he was joined by his wife, whom he had married in 1913 and 2 servants. He was regarded as a very efficient Signals Officer and had become an expert of laying telephone lines, signalling lamps, power buzzers, heliographs as well as being proficient in Morse and Semaphore. He led a pleasant existence at Sandown. His duties were light. Before the War he had been Assistant Editor of Punch and he continued to write for that magazine. He was persuaded by his wife to write a play to entertain the troops and this led to his writing plays for the London Stage.
This came to an end in July 1916, when he was sent to the Front in France. Here he found himself in the early stages of the Battle of the Somme. He was in the Front line, under shell fire and saw a number of close friends killed in action. On one occasion he was completely isolated in the front line under bombardment. By now he loathed the Army. On another occasion, the Battalion charged from its trench but was unable to reach the German trenches. 3 Officers and 60 men were mown down by machine gun fire. The remaining 2 Officers in the attack and 100 men were wounded.
At the Battle of Arques, a side show of the Somme in November 1916, he became very ill with Trench fever and was invalided back to England. where he was in hospital for many weeks. He returned briefly to Sandown again in January 1917, but was transferred to the Royal Signal Corps at Fort Southwick in April 1917 as a Signals Instructor. He was still suffering from his illness and returned to the Island for 3 weeks in July 1917 to the Convalescent Hospital for Officers at Osborne House.. In September 1917 a Medical Board assessed him as only suitable for sedentary work. He was transferred briefly to Dover, but in November 1917, he was seconded to the War Office to work in Intelligence and Propaganda where he remained, apart from a mysterious mission to France for 2 weeks in September 1918, until he was discharged from the Army in February 1919.
His experiences on the Somme confirmed his unswerving pacifism but he was so convinced of the evil of Nazism that he returned to the colours as Captain in the Home Guard in East Sussex from 1940 to 1944.
Who was Captain Milne really? He shot to everlasting fame in the 1920s with 4 books; “When we were very young”, “Now we are Six”, “Winnie the Pooh” and “The House at Pooh Corner”. He was of course – A.A.Milne.
JOHN MATTHEWS