Category Archives: December 1918

All diary entries written in December 1918.

31 December 1918; Tuesday

December 1918, ,

Up at about 6.20. Worked in the afternoon until nearly 4, then got on the car with Harvey etcetera and went to Fienvillers1 to headquarters for the dinner. Met all the old boys and helped to get ready for the fray. Commenced dinner about 7.30. Had splendid feed including roast pork. After dinner a whist drive, Sergeant Powell top and short singsong. Major McMee present after dinner for a while and replied to a toast. Sergeant-major, Sergeant Powell, Sergeant Chapman and Burden and the nursing orderlies. 25 present. Sang Auld Lang Syne at midnight.

Nursing Orderlies dinner.

  1. Fienvillers (B): 10km along the D925 from Doullens (A) toward Abbeville; Michelin square F7. ↩

29 December 1918; Sunday

December 1918,

On duty as usual. Off in the afternoon and wrote and did a little French. Had short walk with Harvey. Got election results1 –

Coalition Majority2

Mostly Conservative3.

Greenwood and Hudson4 in for Sunderland. Lot of Labour5 leaders out.

  1. Election day had been 14 December and ALL had submitted his postal vote on  13 December. Counting had been delayed until the 28th so that ballots cast by soldiers serving overseas could be included. ↩

  2. The Coalition Government was of course a continuation of Lloyd George’s wartime Coalition Government, after the 1918 election comprising 332 Coalition Conservatives, 127 Coalition Liberals, 9 Coalition National Democrats, and 4 Coalition Labour; there were also 57 Labour members, 73 Sinn Fein members who did not take their seats, and 47 Conservatives and 36 Liberals who did not join the Coalition. ↩

  3. ALL’s choices (13 December) had been Hamar Greenwood (Liberal, 27,646 votes) and Frank Goldstone (Labour, 9,603 votes). Goldstone lost his seat in the 1918 election, having served as Labour Chief Whip since 1914. ↩

  4. Ralph Milbanke Hudson, Unionist, 25,698 votes ↩

  5. Although the 1918 election is well known for the loss of (Asquith-supporting) Liberal leaders, Labour’s Ramsay Macdonald and Arthur Henderson also lost their seats (and, as already noted, the Labour Chief Whip); ALL clearly wrote “Labour”, not “Liberal” (the shorthand differs only by the ‘l’ stroke at the end of “Liberal”). ↩