Battlefield Phantoms

Visions are often seen in times of war. The Phantom Sentry of Ypres is a typical case and is one of many such stories related by men who faced death on an appalling scale during World War One.

The incident happened one particularly dark night when an ambulance was taking it badly wounded soldier to a hospital in Poperinghe. Suddenly, on a deserted stretch of the road the driver saw his path was blocked by the glowing, ghost-like figure of a British sentry. The driver braked hard bringing the ambulance to a halt only inches short of the man in the road. But when the driver got out he found the sentry had vanished into thin air. What the driver saw next was even more alarming for there, only a few feet in front of his vehicle, was a deep shell crater; to have plunged into it would have meant certain death. Without doubt the Phan­tom Sentry had saved two lives but there were other ghost soldiers whose appear­ance gave hundreds of men on the battlefield courage and hope.

I n September 1914, the London Evening News reported that ancient bowmen led by St George had appeared in no-man's-land at Mons in France. The warriors, all dressed in shining armour and mounted on magnificent white horses, had charged the enemy lines and driven the Germans back with arrows and swords.

Even before the published story reached the front-line, troops on both sides swore they had seen the ghostly horsemen. Others said they had seen a single angel moving among the wounded and the dying and so the legend of the Angels of Mons was born. During the First World War not all ghosts appeared on the battlefield. According to some reports a British soldier called Harry Kirkup had a strange encounter which was to haunt him for years.

Kirkup, then a sergeant in a northern regiment was a complete sceptic, not to say cynic when it came to believing in ghosts but on this particular night he was to change his mind. Evidently there was a thick fog in Newcastle and Kirkup had got lost trying to get to Central Station. Just when he had given up all hope of catching his train he saw another soldier appear out of the gloom. The stranger told Kirkup he was on his way to the station and would guide him there. As they walked Harry noticed the stranger's uniform was of the kind worn in the South African War, now some 16 years past, and he became slightly alarmed when the stranger said he was returning to his unit. Still, there was nothing really sinister about the man so when they arrived at the station and he suggested they share a compartment for the journey to London, Kirkup agreed. The train moved off and the stranger became very talkative.

He explained to Harry that this particu­lar night was similar to the one 18 years ago, in 1899, when he was travelling back to his unit in London. The only other person travelling in the compartment on that particular occasion was a thin, bony-faced man dressed in an ill-fitting black suit who for all the world looked like an undertaker.

Although Kirkup was amazed the stran­ger could recollect the events of a night 18 years ago in such detail he did not interrupt the story. The stranger con­tinued by telling Harry he felt ill at ease with the man in black and as he reached into his pocket for a cigarette hoping that a smoke would keep him awake, he inadvertently pulled out his wallet con­taining a month's pay which spilled onto the floor.

As the stranger gathered up the money he was aware of the man opposite watching his every move. Not long afterwards the stranger felt himself dropping off to sleep but a sixth sense made him wake up. The man in black had drawn a knife and was lunging it at him. The two men fought savagely the stranger said, however the man in black was too strong for him and raised the knife for the lethal blow.

Kirkup said the stranger was lucky the knife had missed a vital spot, to which the stranger replied it had not, the knife was driven through his heart and it killed him. Before the startled, disbelieving Harry could reply, the South African War soldier disappeared. Harry Kirkup continued his journey to London alone and never saw the stranger again.

Phantom soldier stories like the Kirkup one are open to conjecture simply because there is only a single witness to the event whereas others such as the Lost Battalion of Hill 60 and the Maginot Ghost Army defy explanation, especially as so many other men actually saw both events close to hand. Hill 60 was a key landmark in the Gallipoli campaign in the Dar­danelles in 1915. A year earlier the Turks had entered the war on Germany's side and twelve months later a force of Commonwealth and French troops landed at the Gallipoli Peninsula as part of a bold plan of attack. The idea was to seize the Dardanelles, a narrow straight joining the Aegean Sea with the Sea of Marmara, knock Turkey out of the war and open a supply route to Russia.

On 12th August 1915, the First-Fifth Battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment were ordered to advance on Hill 60 in Sulva Bay. As the men moved up the hill they had to pass through some thick, low clouds and it was at this point that the whole regiment disappeared. Months later the decomposing bodies of less than half of the men were found but the fate of their comrades was not known. These men were posted as missing in action and after the war came to an end the British authorities, thinking the Turks may have taken them prisoner, asked for whatever remained of the Regiment to be returned. The Turks denied all knowledge of the events on Hill 60 saying they had made no contact whatsoever with First-Fifth Norfolks. The incident seemed closed, then 50 years later three witnesses, F Reichardt, R Newnes and J L Newan made a startling statement about the missing men.

The witnesses were veterans of the New Zealand field company involved in the campaign. From their vantage point overlooking Hill 60 the three men had seen a strange formation of six or eight big clouds hovering 500ft above the ground. Each cloud they said was shaped like a loaf of bread. Below these was another cloud about 245m long, 60m wide and 65m high. It was similar in shape and was resting on the ground where it straddled a dry creek-bed. According to the New Zealanders, the First-Fifth Battalion marched up the hill and into the lower cloud without hesitation. When the last trooper had entered it the cloud slowly lifted into the air where it joined the other formation and drifted off to the north. Hill 60 was deserted, no living soul could be seen.

The New Zealanders' statement came in for much controversy especially as the Allies had attacked Hill 60 in force nine days later (on 21 August 1915) in heavy mist and were virtually wiped out in the battle. Reichardt and his comrades were accused of confusing the dates and sequence of events and were also ridiculed for waiting until 1965 before telling their strange story. It is unlikely the riddle of the missing battalion will ever be solved.

Stories relating to the Maginot Ghost Army are a complete contrast to the incident on Hill 60 for two main reasons. First, they concern an army which was never reported to be missing in action and secondly, tales of French ghost soldiers did not begin until 1973. The Maginot Line was a massive fortification system built by the French to check an invasion by Nazi Germany. Basically the system contained machine gun emplace­ments, underground barracks, hospitals and its own railway to transport the troops from one point to another. Built at the staggering cost of 230 million this concrete structure ran along the whole of the eastern frontier of France, from Belgium to Switzerland.

After the war the fortifications were abandoned and lay silent for years then, in 1973, for no apparent reason they became active again. It all started when two spinsters, Marie and Brigitte Larousse who lived near the derelict emplacements, heard heavy lorries and the sound of marching troops. When the sisters could find no sign of military activity in the area they became distres­sed and reported the matter to the commander of the local garrison who said there had been no recent troop move­ments in that region. The mystery deepened when a farm worker, Pierre Chalmain, insisted he had observed a battalion of French soldiers in World War Two uniforms digging trenches near one of the blockhouses. Chalmain went back a week later but there was no sign of the soldiers and the ground around the blockhouse appeared to be untouched.

Perhaps the most chilling story about the French ghost soldiers came from an  insurance salesman named Charles Bonet. He claimed he was driving from Metz to Luxembourg when his car broke down and while waiting for a repair truck he decided to listen to the radio. Suddenly the programme he was tuned in to was interrupted by the voices of army officers discussing an underground ammunition store. Moments later Bonet heard the voice of General Maxine Weygand who was a member of the Vichy Government in 1940 and also Chief of the General Staff. Weygand was announcing that the Maginot Line was to be aban­doned as part of the French withdrawal from the advancing German Army. Bonet was stunned to say the least for Weygand had died in 1965 and on checking, the

Japanese infantry and all but six of the Americans were killed. Evidently the remaining men were captured then brutally tortured to death. Soon after the incident, natives and Allied troops reported seeing six American soldiers patrolling the jungle in the area of the massacre. The men, who all appeared gaunt, pale and battle weary, would vanish into thin air when approached. Rumours of the ghost patrol soon spread. Stories began to filter through to the Allies that the ghost Marauders had killed many of the Japanese responsible for the ambush and that the other Nippon troops had committed harakiri sooner than face being hunted down.

Christiansen knew little about the Marauders. They were far from his mind when he sat down to rest in the jungle near Maingkwan in May 1957. Therefore, he was paralysed with fear when six ragged, armed men came out of the undergrowth towards him. They didn't speak to the missionary but motioned him to lay down and tied his hands behind his back. Shortly after he passed out. When he awoke hours later his hands had been cut free and the Marauders had gone. Christiansen truly believed he had been dreaming but when he arrived at Maing- kwan the villagers said the ghost patrol had been seen twice that day.

Belief in ghosts does not apply only to the common soldier or the civilian. During World War Two, Air Chief Marshall Dowding had the responsibility of sending young RAF pilots to face the onslaught of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. Many of them were to perish but Dowding refused to believe that death was final. During the war he said of his missing pilots ‘Don’t think of them as dead…..they are very much alive and active…I look forward to giving the evidence on which I base my belief.’

If you are looking at this you must be interested in ghosts, so why not read my three ghost stories available on Amazon as e-books or paperbacks.

Why Weeps the Willow - The north Norfolk coast in the autumn of 1917. A restless ghost searches for a means of experiencing physical love again. A teenage girl tries to find her way through the pitfalls of a first emotional encounter. A ruthless woman determines to hold on to her family's estates in the face of all adversity.  A soldier is invalided home from the battlefields of France, suffering from amnesia. Add incest, espionage and murder, then look for the answer to the question posed on a suicide's grave. Why Weeps the Willow?

Let Sleeping Evils Lie – a midnight vigil in a churchyard by students trying to contact a ghost said to haunt it, and some impromptu dabbling with an Ouija board in a youth club a few days later, awaken a sleeping evil it would have been better to leave undisturbed. 

Murder out of Memory - A compelling tale of love and murder, told by the ghosts of the two people involved. Or were they ghosts?  Even after battling to put right the grave miscarriage of justice he’d discovered had followed the murder, Peter was still not completely sure about that.