BOOK REVIEW
Veteran Volunteer: Memoir of the Trenches Tanks and Captivity 1914-1919
Author: Frank Vans Agnew MC Edited by Jamie Vans and Peter Widdowson.
2014: Pen and Sword Books: Barnsley UK
ISBN 978 1 78346 277 3
This book, part biography but mainly autobiographical, is an outstanding account in the words of Captain Frank Vans Agnew MC, in both its content, extracted from his personal papers, and in its presentation. Events from 1914 onwards include the Battles of the Somme, Messines, Third Ypres, and Cambrai with the “Ironclad” tank corps. It speaks with the voice of Frank himself in his letters, mainly to his “suffragette sister” Ida ; in his personal diaries and in his own retrospective accounts of events. As such it is a unique and very special account and comes highly recommended.
Jamie Vans, the editor and biographer, inherited his Great Uncle’s papers in 1966 and has brought them to publication at a very poignant time for all who look back over the last hundred years, to Word War1.
Frank Vans Agnew was born in India in 1868, the third son (known as Tertius or Tosh) of a family from Galloway, in Scotland, who lost their wealth and position in London society so that brothers Bertie, Alec, Frank and Ernest had emigrated to America by 1884. Alec became a lawyer and the others trained as Veterinary Surgeons in Ontario, where Frank became qualified in 1895. Frank worked in Minnesota and Georgia before enlisting as a farrier, using his veterinary experience and horse riding skills in Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. This was a regiment of volunteer cavalry intended for the Spanish American War.
By 1900 Frank was a qualified assayer of precious metals, working in British Columbia for miner Nelson Fell who, with his daughters Marion and Olivia, were from then on a close part of his life. They moved to what is now Kazakhstan, where they worked for 6 years in mining. In another career shift, Frank moved to Florida in 1908, near to his lawyer brother Alec and for a time was Postmaster and “Premium peach grower” but his peaceful existence was ended when war broke out in Europe. Despite being 46 and thus over the age required, Frank travelled to England and joined the 2nd King Edward’s Horse along with many Canadians and other overseas volunteers. He lied about his age to gain entry, but not about his skill with horses.
Frank’s dairy reflects on his time with the Canadian Mounted Brigade, firstly as a bomb thrower. He was quickly promoted and after training was an observer, reporting on horseback to Commanding Officers at the Somme in 1916 and then trained as a machine gunner. As a useful cavalry rider he was then seconded to other duties, safe behind the lines, guarding General Haig. Keen for action, this did not suit him and with the demise of the cavalry as a fighting force, Frank volunteered to retrain and became a Tank Commander in the new method of warfare developed at the time.
During the battle of Messines in July 1917 Frank was wounded in an act of bravery and received the Military Cross. Present in Third Ypres and then Cambrai, Captain Frank Vans Agnew, now almost 50 years old, commanded 5th Section in his tank known as Bandit Two. On November 23rd 1917 the tank was immobilised by the Germans who took it away jubilantly, as a valuable aid to their own development plans, and the Captain and his men were taken prisoner. He spent the rest of the War, until Armistice, in various prison camps in Germany moving from Hanover to Karlsrue, then Heidelberg and finally released to Copenhagen where he again volunteered, this time to work on repatriation of fellow prisoners of war.
In 1928 at the age of sixty, Frank finally married Olivia Fell. Her sister Marion had married his lawyer brother Alec and after their untimely deaths he and Olivia took Alec and Marion’s four orphaned children into their care. One of these was Jamie Vans’ father. Thus Jamie’s Great Uncle became his adoptive Grandfather, when Jamie’s own father was only 11 years old.
Meticulous first-hand accounts of this quality are rare and as such this sensitively constructed volume, with excellent referencing and illustrations, is a real credit to Jamie Vans and to his Great Uncle’s memory.
Lin Watterson
Carisbrooke Castle Museum