Tiger Tim in Flanders

Although not specifically mentioned by name, the subject of Tiger Tim in Flanders is quite obviously the Commanding Officer of the 9th Seaforths, Lieutenant-Colonel Timothy Fetherstonhaugh. The poem describes an evening in the Officer’s Mess where the Lt-Colonel holds court and berates his junior officers for their perceived shortcomings. Like many of Zem Zem’s poems, it is undated, but one of the officers mentioned, Captain Haggard, joined the battalion in March 1916 and another, Captain Turcan, was wounded in October 1916 so most likely written between those dates. The battalion HQ was at Oosthove Farm, on the French-Belgian border, between January and May 1916 some 10 miles behind the front line and would have provided a reasonably comfortable billet in which the type of Officers Mess night suggested by the poem might have been held.

If we assume that the poem was written around April 1916 then Zem Zem would have been with the battalion around four months and it is clear that he had already taken a dislike to the CO. From the line “The doctor sits at my side and grins, but I’ve got my eye on some of his sins” he probably sensed that feelings were mutual.

The relationship between Medical Officer and CO was important to the health and welfare of the men, particularly in a Pioneer battalion when occupational health issues such as sanitation, poor nutrition and disease were more likely to reduce the battalion strength than death and injury from enemy fire. So why did these two men clearly not warm to each other? To answer that, we have to look at Lt. Colonel Fetherstonhaugh’s background and career prior to 1916 and the clash with Zem Zem over “Who’s that cutting my Stilton Cheese? Hang it mind what you’re doing please”!

Colonel Fetherstonhaugh was born on 1st January 1869 at Kirkoswald, near Penrith in Cumbria. He was christened Timothy in accordance with a long-standing tradition for first born sons of the family. His father had been a Lieutenant in the 13th Hussars and later a High Sherriff of Cumberland and Deputy Lieutenant of the County. His mother was a younger daughter of the 3rd Lord Dorchester. The Fetherstonhaugh’s were descended from a branch of the Northumberland Fetherstonhaugh family that had first come to Kirkoswald in the late 16th century. The family were ardent Royalists during the English Civil War and an ancestor, also called Timothy, had been beheaded at Chester in 1651 having incurred the wrath of Oliver Cromwell.

The Timothy Fetherstonhaugh of this poem had made the army his career. He joined the Leicester Militia in February 1887 and two years later, aged 20, was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Seaforth Highlanders. We don’t know why he chose the Seaforths over his home county regiment, but he was soon on active service with the 2nd Seaforths on the North West Frontier in India where he took part in the in the second Hazara expedition in March 1891. Promotion to Lieutenant followed in December. The battalion returned to home in 1893 but was sent back to India in 1895 to take part in the relief of Chitral, with Fetherstonhaugh acting as assistant field engineer.

On return to the UK, Fetherstonhaugh was promoted to Captain and took part in Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee parade through London in June 1897. The battalion was stationed in Dover for the next 18 months, giving the newly promoted Captain Fetherstonhaugh plenty of occasions to visit the family’s London home in Green Street, Park Lane and enjoy the social life of a Victorian army officer. In December 1898, just a few days short of his 30th birthday, he married Miss Nancy Carr-Lloyd, daughter of James Carr-Lloyd and Alice Wodehouse, at St Pauls Church, Knightbridge. The Penrith Observer carried a detailed report of the wedding, including a dinner held by his tenants in the Fetherston Arms Hotel in Kirkoswald to celebrate the event. The factor, a Mr T.Birkett, gave a brief speech noting that “Captain Fetherstonhaugh had endeared himself to all with whom he had come in contact (applause). As they knew, he had adopted the profession of arms, and had already seen considerable service. In whatever he had had to do Captain Fetherstonhaugh had borne himself in such a way that they would feel proud that he was a Cumbrian, and that there was such a man left to protect our country rights (applause).”

The Carr-Lloyds were an old Sussex family descended from Dr Robert Carr, Bishop of Chichester and Sir James Lloyd, Baronet of Lancing. Nancy’s father was a captain in the Royal Sussex Militia and her grandfather had been a Colonel in the Royal Artillery and an Aide de Camp to Queen Victoria. So the new Mrs Fetherstonhaugh would have understood the sacrifices of an army officer’s wife when only a month after the wedding the battalion moved to Fort George for the prospect of garrison duty on home turf. There the battalion furnished the Royal Guard for the Queen at Balmoral, marched through Easter Ross and Nairnshire on a recruiting tour, and received its Seventh Stand of Colours from Queen Victoria at Balmoral on 29th September 1899.

It is doubtful that Nancy spent much time in married quarters at Fort George as she was soon pregnant and on 7th October 1899 delivered the son and heir, another Timothy, at home in London. Whether his father was present is not reported but he was there at the christening on 2nd November in the same church as his marriage 11 months earlier. It was a short-lived sojourn. On 11th October war had been declared between the British government and the Boer Republic and the 2nd Seaforths were hastily mobilised, sailing from Glasgow on 20th October. Captain Fetherstonhaugh was soon in South Africa and with his battalion at the disastrous (for the British) Battle of Magersfontein on 11th December 1899. Stranded on the rocky approach to Magersfontein kop, the Highland brigade was caught in the open by withering Boer rifle fire and suffered over 900 casualties, amongst them Captain Fetherstonhaugh, who was seriously wounded.

After a lengthy recuperation he returned to Scotland in 1901 as Adjutant to the 1st (Ross-Highland) Volunteers, a reserve Battalion for the Seaforths based in Dingwall and where in 1902 he established the 2nd Seaforths Veterans association. His final appointment was Commandant of the School for Instruction of Auxillary Officers in Edinburgh, before retiring from the army in 1909 after a distinguished 22 year career. 

By 1914 Fetherstonhaugh was a pillar of the Cumberland establishment, a deputy lord Lieutenant, Captain in the yeomanry and a Commissioner for the Boy Scouts. Retired from the army (although still on the reserve list) and with two young daughters in addition to his son, Major Fetherstonhaugh would have felt very settled in his peaceful country life. The imperial tensions in Europe barely registered in Cumberland, so it would have been a shock when war was declared on 3rd August and a weary acceptance of his recall to the Army active list.

Made up to Temporary Lieutenant Colonel and Officer Commanding 9th Seaforths, he was quickly in campaign mode and on 13th August, just days after rejoining the regiment, in a letter to the Lancashire Evening Post he wrote: “The Highland women are saying they will get in the harvest, and plough, and sow, for just as many years as it takes the men to beat the Germans. I hope the Cumberland women will do the same.”

By April 1915 he was even more forthright, writing to his estate office in response to a request for money to buy prizes for a whist drive in support of the Church Institute building, of which he was a Trustee:

“Sir, From the way in which the men eligible for service so carefully avoid recruiting meetings, and the ridiculously short roll of honour that Kirkoswald can only show, it is evident that a Church Institute is not so much needed there, as an establishment to rid patients of the microbe which affects the fearful unpatriotic spirit in time of war, which prevents them from taking on the risks of personal service.”

Clearly, Timothy Fetherstonhaugh was not afraid to voice his opinions and so it was that the 45 year old Lt-Colonel now found himself in the Officers Mess with a 35 year old medic from Fife, a man whose upbringing could not have been more different. Comparing photographs of them both, the dutiful expression on the stern army officer contrasts with the inscrutable, smiling civilian doctor. To the former Medical Superintendent of the Fife and Kinross asylum, the formality of the officer’s mess that the Lt-Colonel presided over in the midst of the mud and mayhem of the Western Front must have seemed more crazy than many of his former patients. And at a time when Britain still observed an overtly class-based social structure, a personality clash between the temporarily commissioned Medical Officer and his Regular Army Commanding Officer was perhaps inevitable.

By Craig Durham, The Highlanders Museum (Queen’s Own Highlanders Collection) Volunteer