Escape from the Legion part 2

Across the border was the village of El Umtaiye. Between lay wheat-fields. The country was occupied by Syrians and Bedouins. They were all busy harvesting their crops. As we prest toward the frontier we attracted more and more attention from the Bedouins. They seemed friendly enough, and about 10 o'clock we stopt to talk to a group of them.
     I had a premonition this was unwise. But as we hadn't had anything to eat since the night before, 1 was glad to stop and eat. They offered us food. While we were eating, Harvey questioned them about the best place to cross the border. We were told it was easier to get across at El Umtaiye than farther east, near the village of El Deir, which they said was occupied by a bad tribe.
     Suddenly a mounted Bedouin carrying a Mauser rifle and loaded down with cartridge belts dashed up. John Harvey covered him with the carbine. The Bedouin reined in his horse, declaring he was a Christian and our friend. He dismounted and joined us. He talked friendly enough, but he was getting closer to Harvey's carbine. I was about to warn Harvey when the Bedouin snatched at tho gun with both hands, and wrested it away.
     I jumped at him and wrenched the carbine from his hands. I leapt back, throwing the bolt to get a cartridge into the chamber. As I did so my foot struck a rock and I fell backward. At the same minute the Bedouin drew up his Mauser and let go at me. The fall saved my life.
     I scrambled to my feet and fired at him, but he was zig-zagging across the field, shouting to the others as he ran. Rifles appeared from beneath the wheat sheaves, and the peaceful-appearing farmers opened upon us. We were hopelessly outnumbered, so we cut down the road toward the town as fast as we could go.
     The Bedouins converged on us through the field, firing as they came. Down the road was another group of Bedouins shooting and gesticulating. They seemed to want to help us get away. When we came abreast of them they edged in, all talking at the same time and making signs to show their friendliness.
     But they seemed too much interested in our rifle, so Harvey ordered them back. At that they drew their knives and attempted to rush us. Harvey slung the carbine to his shoulder and let one of them have it, catching him between the eyes. He fired again and hit the second in the midriff, and he fell kicking to the ground. This stopt the rush. We ran on toward El Umtaiye.

John Harvey, Gilbert Clare (Bennett Jeffries Doty) and two others were deserting from the Foreign Legion and trying to reach British territory. They had only a single rifle between them and it was not long before they ran into trouble. Bedouin bandits. Doty's account above (from 'Doty's Wild Adventures in the Legion', The Literary Digest, 21 January 1928) reveals how the shooting awakens the local Caid of El Umtaiye who, accompanied by three young Bedouins, approach the deserters. Explaining that he was an English subject, he offers to take them with him to the village. Doty continues:

The next thing I knew, the Caid had Harvey's carbine. Harvey realizing we were trapt, fell upon him, and took the gun from him. At the same time, Bedouins appeared from every direction with rifles, knives, spears, and swords. I fought two who tackled me with knives. I used large stones for weapons. Lass and Weisser, the others in our party of deserters, had enough to do to take care of themselves.
     Harvey got the carbine clear and shot the Caid through the leg. We ran toward a village which lay on the railroad line, bullets singing around our ears. We were cut off from the right, the I left, and the rear. There was only one thing to do, go forward.
     We retreated Legion fashion. Harvey kept them off with the rifle, while the rest of us ran. Then, when Harvey had caught up with us, another of us took the gun and covered the Bodouins while the others retreated. We held them off until we were almost outside the village walls, when our pursuers halted.
     We were all in. We stopt by a tank, drank and rested. We decided to make another try for the border, going along the rail-road line. About 3 o'clock we started again and had gone 100 feet or so when out rode a Syrian gendarme and fired his pistol in the air. I knew then we were caught.
     Harvey dropt the carbine and threw up his hands. The gendarme was very decent. He rode up to us. Behind him were a dozen Syrian gendarmes who had been in ambush behind the walls. The corporal rode up. Harvey gave him the gun, and our break for liberty was over.

In Damascus in August 1926, Harvey and the others were court-martialed. Harvey and Doty were both given eight years in prison; the Germans (perhaps because they had not been armed) received sentences of only five years. The prisoners were dispatched from Damascus via Beirut and Marseilles to the prison at Clairvaux.

Doty's account tallies with other accounts of the incidents surrounding the desertion and capture of John Harvey. In other accounts, Doty was in a company in the column of General Andreas on its way to Soueida [Al-Suwayda] when he had an altercation with a sergeant. Rather than accept the punishment that would be due, he decided to flee into the mountains. Their hiding place was spotted by airplanes as they attempted to head south towards Palestine and Jordan.

After fifteen months, Doty was released thanks to the efforts of his family and pressure from Washington. Back in Biloxi, he wrote an account of his adventures: The Legion of the Damned: The Adventures of Bennett J. Doty in the French Foreign Legion (New York, Century Co., 1928). He spent some time at university and passed the Mississippi bar in 1936. He disappeared in March 1938, supposedly heading off to fight in the Spanish Civil War.

Following Doty's release, questions were asked in the UK about the imprisonment of a British subject. Captain Arthur Evans, M.P., asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he would make any representations to the French authorities to effect a release. Mr. Locker-Lampson, in a statement in the House of Commons on 14 December 1927, responded that the French Government had given orders for Harvey's release as soon as the matter was brought to their notice.

Sir Eric Phipps, Minister to the British Embassy, presented a note to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs from the British Government thanking him for the actions of the French government the following day. After a few days, further questions were being asked in the House: was Harvey to be discharged completely or simply released from prison in order to resume his military service with the Legion? If it was a complete discharge, was there to be a payment of £500 to the French Government? Would he be returned to Africa?

At first it seemed that Harvey was to be transferred to the barracks at Troyes where he would learn which regiment of the Legion he would finish the terms of his service. He arrived on the evening of the 16th and was ordered to Marseilles; almost immediately – while Harvey was on the train – he was ordered back to Troyes and telephone messages sent down the line intercepted him at Dijon where he was held at the barracks of the 27th Infantry Regiment until his papers arrived.

Whilst in Dijon, a payment was made to have Harvey released, the payment representing a portion of the premium that soldiers were paid upon joining the Legion; it was paid back as Harvey had not completed his five years. Once this payment was made by a representative of the British Embassy, Harvey was released on 29 December 1927.

Harvey did not have his freedom for long. On 26 January 1928 he was arrested in London and charged the following day with deserting his wife and children. Harvey pleaded guilty and was ordered to repay the sum of £177 12s. 4d. to the Bedwellty Union. Since his return to the UK, Harvey had been writing a series of articles for a London newspaper which, he claimed, he shared the proceeds with another man who had fought his case for him, and had obtained an engagement at the Victoria Palace which paid him the considerable sum of £15 a week.

Sentenced to three months in prison, the sentence was suspended as long as he paid off the debt. He was allowed to pay in installments of £10 down and £7. 10s. a week, plus 10s. for the three children and £2 costs.

Harvey's book With the French Foreign Legion in Syria was published later that year and one suspects that Harvey was able to parley his notoriety into a steady income over the next few years. However, it would not last forever and, in 1932, a new series of books began appearing as by Ex-Legionnaire 1384. Copyright records establish that the ex-Legionnaire in question was John Henry Harvey, under which name Jones was now most commonly known. It was under this name that he married his second wife, Ellen Ada Carpenter, in 4Q 1932.

Harvey's life then appears to be relatively stable. Books appeared under the names Ex-Legionnaire 1384 and Operator 1384 – 21 books over the next eight years leading up to the Second World War. Many of them were co-written in collaboration with – or more likely entirely ghosted by – William James Blackledge, an author who seems to have specialised in ghosting Foreign Legion adventures and occasionally writing about the North-West frontier for variety. At least one of the Operator 1384 novels would appear to have been ghosted by Alfred Whatoff Allen (1888-1970), who also wrote a novel under his own name for Sampson Low.

It was not all plain sailing. John Henry Harvey once again made the papers in June 1937 when it was revealed at the Old Bailey that he had been living a bigamous life with his second wife. Married for five years, the couple had argued and Harvey had disclosed that he was already a married man. On 23 June 1937, he was sentenced to 12 months hard labour.

It seems likely that the two were divorced – The Times (23 January 1940) notes the decree nici between E. B. Jones (sic) and D. H. J. Jones was made absolute at the High Court of Justice.

Following his release from jail, on 29 August 1938, David Harvey John Jones legally changed his name by deed to David Harvey John Barrington. At the time he was living at 78 Sutherland Avenue, Maida Vale. He subsequently married (as David H. J. Barrington) Miss Betty I. Blair in Paddington, London, in 2Q 1942.

The last few books by Operator 1384, as Barrington now bylined himself for his books, appeared in the early years of the Second World War, the last in 1941. In December 1940, the recently renamed Barrington, of Howley Place, Paddington, then working as a billeting officer for the St. Pancras Borough Council, was remanded on bail at Clerkenwell Police Court for obtaining £15 by means of a forged billeting notice that he had cashed at a Post Office. Unfortunately, no further press reports of the case have been found.

It is easy to forget that, with such an adventurous life behind him, Barrington had still only just entered his forties. What happened to him following his marriage in 1942 is unknown. It is possible that the marriage did not last as the only records traced for Betty I. Blair are a birth (in 1919) and a second marriage, to Edward R. Day, in 4Q 1947. It is possible that a typo has crept into records and she is Betty Joan Blair (1919-1981).

Following his change of name and the potential embarrassment of police charging him with forgery, it may be that David Harvey John Barrington adopted yet another name in order to continue his career, although quite which career we may never know.

PUBLICATIONS

Books as John Harvey
With the French Foreign Legion in Syria. London, Hutchinson & Co., 1928. Greenhill, 1995

Books as Ex-Legionnaire 1384
Hell Hounds of France, in collaboration with W. J. Blackledge. London, 1932.
Zillah: Child of the Desert, with W. J. Blackledge. London, Sampson Low & Co., 1932.
With the Secret Service in Morocco, as told to W. J. Blackledge. London, 1934.
Legion of the Lost, in collaboration with Anton Lind. London, Sampson Low & Co., 1934.
The Soulless Legion, in collaboration with W. J. Blackledge. London, Denis Archer, 1934.
The Arab Patrol. London, Sampson Low & Co., 1935.
The Desert Patrol. London & Dublin, Mellifont Press, 1935.
Spies of the Sahara. London, Sampson Low & Co., 1936.
The Son of Allah. London, Rich & Cowan, Jan 1937.
The Mutiny of Fort Saada. London, Sampson Low & Co., 1937.
Eater of Women by W. J. Blackledge, in collaboration with Ex-Legionnaire 1384. London, T. Werner Laurie, 1938.

Books as Operator 1384
The Devil's Diplomats. London, Hutchinson & Co., Jun 1935.
The Catacombs of Death [ghosted by A. Whatoff Allen]. London, Hutchinson & Co., Jan 1936.
The White Tuareg, London, Rich & Cowan, Feb 1936.
The Scourge of the Desert. London, Rich & Cowan, Sep 1936.
Queen of the Riffs. London, John Long, 1937.
The Black Arab. London, Rich & Cowan, 1937.
Jackals of the Secret Service. London, Rich & Cowan, 1938.
The Last Outpost. London, Rich & Cowan, 1938.
Spies and Rebels. London, Rich & Cowan, 1939.
McCann of the Legion, London, Cassell & Co., Sep 1939.
McCann the Spy. London, Cassell & Co., Feb 1940.
McCann the Fighter. London, Cassell & Co., 1941.
McCann the Rebel. London, Cassell & Co., 1941.

Novels as John Barrington (series: Ken Williams in all)
Murder in White Pit. London, John Langdon, 1947.
The Moving Finger. London, John Langdon, 1947.

Escape from the Legion part 1

With a thunder of galloping hoofs we swept forward, our sabres glinting in the first rays of dawn. The Arabs fired at us with their long muskets from among the ruins of their homes and fought us with sword and knife. Even as they fell under the hoofs of our horses they stabbed at us with the valour of despair. Their women faced the charge as unflinchingly as the men, wielding swords and knives and even farm implements. Many had children clinging to them.
     They had not a chance for they were hopelessly outnumbered. Within a few minutes not one was left alive. Young and old, men, women, and children, had all been massacred. We looted the smouldering ruins and stripped the dead of their trinkets. Five hundred sheep, two hundred goats, and a dozen horses were sent off to Damascus in lieu of the unpaid taxes...
     They were not our enemies. They were peaceful folk, supposed to be living under the protection of France, and their sole crime was the refusal to pay the taxes demanded of them. During all the time I was in the Legion I saw nothing more brutal or more nauseating than the slaughter of the women and children of Tel-y-Ded.

P. C. Wren inspired a generation with his thrilling tales of the Foreign Legion. Of course, it was fiction and the adventures of Beau Geste were nothing like the true nature of life in the legion. There was action, for sure. But not all the action was filled with glory, as legionnaire John Harvey, an orderly in the cavalry regiment, discovered when he joined in 1925. He joined at a time when the Rif under Abd el-Krim were advancing through French Morocco (Krim eventually surrendering in May 1926) and the Great Druze Revolt in Syria, which the French countered by sending thousands of troops – the number swelling to 50,000 – and the revolt was for the most part quashed by the spring of 1926.

Amongst the volunteers fighting with the Legion was John Harvey, who was to pen With the French Foreign Legion in Syria two years later. The book was received with mixed reviews. In The Manchester Guardian (23 August 1928), a reviewer who signed himself R.H.S. poked fun at Harvey's "incomparable command of cliche and the penny dreadful manner."

If the style is the man, then we may be pardoned a hardly repressible doubt as to whether Mr. Harvey has done himself complete justice as a witness. He cannot speak of the men in the Legion without some such phrase as "Fate's broken playthings." A night in a cafe leads to a "real mad binge." His prison is a "living tomb." A girl he met was a "dark-haired, laughing-eyed witch, ready for any devilry." Of a Syrian prostitute: "My little partner was a charming, cuddly kid. She had all the simplicity of the savage beneath a very thin veneer of civilisation." When a man writes like this a question arises in our minds as to how he thinks, and when he accuses the French of atrocity pursued as a system we do not jump immediately to the conclusion that the evidence is of necessity unimpeachable. A Blue-book in the manner of "Boys' Friend" may be accurate in every detail, but neither those who are accustomed to Blue-books nor those who are accustomed to the "Boys' Friend" will be quite sure at the first reading.

Michael Provence, in The Great Syrian Revolt and the Rise of Arab Nationalism (pp.93-094), notes:

The strange memoir of Bennett Doty is the best example. Doty was an (sic) French Foreign volunteer of American origin who later deserted with John Henry Harvey, a Foreign Legion volunteer of English origin, who also wrote a memoir. Each blames his desertion on the other. Doty's book seems more reliable and has more verifiable information. Harvey's book is more horrifying and fantastic and contains fewer names, dates, or locations. It also contains overt anti-French sentiment. Both men were veterans of the First World War, and both memoirs are inexplicably well written. Such books were apparently very popular in Europe and America, though some were clearly written by people who never served in or even visited Syria.

This was certainly not the case with Harvey, who had certainly visited Syria. Harvey, however, was not his real name, and a good deal of confusion exists over the life and career of this former Foreign Legionnaire who would go on to write at least two dozen books about the Legion – some classified as fiction, some perhaps exaggerating the truth more than a little.

A search of the internet will turn up the information that Harvey's real name was "possibly Hargreaves or Barrington". The British Library records him as Harvey, John H., afterwards Barrington and he was known to have used the name John Henry Harvey around the time he was writing his book – or more likely having the book ghosted for him. The author's name was actually Jones.

He was born David Harvey John Jones in 1Q 1900, probably in Aberdare, some 3½ miles from Merthyr Tydfil, where the birth was registered. Nothing is known about his parents, but it is possible that he was the son of John Jones, a coal miner – a hewer at the coal face – born in Beaufort, Brecknockshire, and his wife Elizabeth A. Jones (nee Davies), who had married in 1882. Six children followed: Mariah (c.1883), Margaret E. (c.1890), Elizabeth A. (c.1892), Morgan J. (c.1895), Sarah J. (c.1897) and David H. (1900). The latter is how he is registered in the 1900 census; in which Elizabeth Ann Jones is missing; it is thought that she died in 4Q 1900, aged 40 (not, I might add, in childbirth, as David H. J. Jones was born in 1Q 1900, not 4Q).

By the time the 1911 census was taken, John was aged 56 and still working as a hewer in a colliery. The children were still at home: Maria (aged 28), Elizabeth Ann (18), Morgan John (16), Sarah Jane (14) and son-in-law Morgan Lewis (32) and his adopted child, Rhys Tenreth Lewis (1).

David Harvey Jones was possibly to be found at the Aberdare Industrial Training School in Llwely Street, Trecynon, a village near Aberdare. This was an offshoot of the Merthyr Tydfil workhouse set up by the Poor Law Union in 1871 as an infirmary but converted to a school in 1877. "The school was intended to educate pauper children away from the influence of the main workhouse," according to this website. "They were given training in different trades and occupations. An "Industrial farm" also operated at the north of the school site. The school became known a "training school" from about 1895 and in 1904, four cottage homes were erected nearby."

Let me emphasise that I have no direct evidence that David H. J. Jones was the son of John Jones or that he attended Aberdare Industrial Training School. He is simply the best fit to what we know. And even that is anecdotal, as is the information that during the First World War Jones served with the South Wales Borderers. It was said that he suffered from shell-shock whilst serving with the army and had not fully recovered from its effects a decade later.

Nothing more is known about David H. Jones until 1921 when he married Mary Jane Price in Bedwellty, Monmouthshire in 1Q 1921. In the early 1920s Jones worked as a coalman and had three children. The family were impoverished and his wife and children had to claim poor relief from the Bedwellty Union. On 21 February 1925, Harvey deserted them.

And in 1925 he joined the Foreign Legion. There he met Bennett J. Doty, a young American who had signed up for the Legion under the name Gilbert Clare. Doty, from Biloxi, Mississippi, had sailed from America to look for adventure. He found it and earned the Croix de Guerre des Théâtres d'opérations extérieurs, the highest French honour. But, after that, months of watching the sand shift, pointless work details. "Benny" Doty, John Henry Harvey and two others decided to desert.