Pageturners: MI7 Assassin - The Tourist Train
George Bernard Shaw at the start of the war advised soldiers on both sides to shoot their officers and go home. He was blacklisted. Famous public figures said he should be shot or tarred and feathered
Welcome to Pageturners, a book I’m writing in which I share what I’ve learnt – and am still learning – about comic writing, film writing, novel writing and how new writers can sell their stories.
For the next six weeks or so I’ll be sharing with you the back story of MI7 Assassin, revealing the experiences that compelled the protagonist to become an assassin, including his meeting with real historical figures, many of whom feature prominently in the novel.
And I welcome your feedback or questions, so do leave a comment below!
Missed the Pageturners intro? Read it here.
Sean Stone. The MI7 Assassin.
He didn’t believe in pacifism or any other ism
He just wanted the war to stop.
He just wanted the voices in his head to stop.
But the dirty secret of war is that the dead stay with you.
Much of MI7 Assassin is set on a train, so the route, the passengers, and the number of carriages, become important. And especially MI7’s objective. What did MI7 hope to achieve with these VIP tours, which were kept rather quiet? Because when they were discovered, they were criticised as freeloading junkets. It requires an explanation as to the motives of all concerned.
VIP guests of the British army would regularly travel in a luxury Pullman staff train from London to the south coast of England and then cross by ferry to France. From there, another luxury train was waiting to take them to General Haig’s headquarters. The trips were so frequent the route was known as ‘the tourist line’ or ‘The Cook’s Tour’ (after Thomas Cook, the travel agents). After being guests of General Haig, the VIPs would then be driven to the Somme and the trenches of the old front line before the Germans withdrew to the fortifications known as The Hindenburg Line. They would see some of the devastation of the Somme and hear of the plans for a great Allied victory in 1917.
MI7’s intention was to wine and dine and look after the guests so well, that they would return home with a positive view of the war. It seems to have worked. Thus, George Bernard Shaw at the beginning of the war advised soldiers on both sides to shoot their officers and go home. He was blacklisted: bookshops removed his books; his plays were boycotted, and his friends – such as G.K. Chesterton and H.G. Wells – turned against him. Wells called Shaw ‘an idiot child screaming in a hospital’. Famous public figures said he should be shot or tarred and feathered.
He was ‘cancelled’, just as writers today are cancelled for speaking out on various subjects.
‘There was no room for pacifism…we’ve got to beat the Boche.’
George Bernard Shaw
But Shaw was such a legendary figure, it was important to have him ‘on side’, to help with the recruitment of Irish soldiers, so he was invited to General Haig’s HQ in 1917. Haig made a great fuss of Shaw and arranged a special vegetarian meal for him. Haig’s officers, huge fans of the writer, queued up for his autograph. Shaw then wrote a more conciliatory account, ‘Joyriding at the Front’, singing the praises of the ‘chivalrous’ General Haig and his conduct of the war and concluding, ‘There was no room for pacifism…we’ve got to beat the Boche.’
Shaw’s quirky tone was still not to everyone’s liking, and there is sarcasm in his title ‘joyriding’, suggesting a stolen journey. Even so, MI7’s plan had succeeded. Shaw had been brought ‘on side’.
At the beginning of the conflict, Britain’s most famous authors – Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, G. K. Chesterton and more – had been asked to write propaganda, supporting the war, but to keep MI7’s role in their endeavours a secret. All of them agreed. So there was little criticism of the conflict which these famous authors presented as a ‘just war’. There’s no doubt, if there was a war today, many of Britain’s leading writers would similarly agree to write propaganda for the successor to MI7.
The train itself was made up of sleeping carriages – each carriage with eleven compartments, some single, some two berth, and a dining carriage. Inscribed on the outside: ‘Compagnie des Wagons-Lits et des Grands Express.’ These carriages were easily the match of the Pullman coaches on the first leg of the VIPs’ journey. As the Orient Express route was shut down for the duration of the war, it seems likely that these carriages were requisitioned from the Orient Express. However, no one would ever admit to it at a time when British soldiers were being transported to the front in horse trucks and often returning in hospital trains. Shaw himself admits that he self-censored his account of his visit to the front.
It’s still a sensitive subject even today. The two TV documentaries on the Great War railways (Michael Portillo’s Railways of the Great War and Chris Tarrant’s Railways of the Western Front) never mention the horse trucks (marked ‘Hommes 40, Chevaux 8’) used to transport soldiers to the front. It appears the subject is still being censored. But the men complained bitterly about the way they were taken to the front line. As Private W. T. Colyer revealed:
‘We were not expecting to travel first or even second class on the train, but we thought we might have a reasonable chance of 3rd. It turned out we were to go about 7th class; i.e. in plain cattle-trucks with a little straw on the floor of them.’
Certainly the Orient Express company, The Compagnie International des Wagons Lits (CIWL), was still producing luxury carriages during the war. This included commissioning two new luxury, mahogany restaurant carriages in 1917. So they were being used by someone somewhere. Hardly essential war work. In 1918, one of these carriages was requisitioned by the French Marshal Foch as his mobile office. It was here the armistice was signed by the defeated Germans in November 1918. The carriage was then used again in 1940 by Hitler to accept the French defeat.
So who else was travelling by such luxury trains so frequently that the CIWL was able to continue its luxury train business in wartime? And to where? Lavish journeys to distant parts of Europe were out of the question. King George V, the French President Poincare and other heads of state visited Haig at his GHQ. They may have travelled there by car, but a train has a restaurant, sleeping compartments, a lavatory and room to walk around. Cocooned from the world, it’s a far more comfortable way to travel.
But it’s not a story to reveal to the public. Ever. Even one hundred years later. After all, even today, Rees-Mogg is still defending British atrocities in the Boer War. It’s kept quiet, the same way that young soldiers were being sent to the front in horse trucks. Like they were animals.
But, despite its opulence, our ‘palace on wheels’ was no ‘Western Front Express’ as the congested railway lines would be loaded with munitions, food supplies, troops and hospital trains, that must take priority, especially as a new offensive was about to begin. Stopping and starting, travelling at walking speed on occasion, and being diverted into sidings and avoidance lines would be the norm.
But the sumptuous luxury of the Orient Express would at least make the journey a little less arduous for the war tourists.