Letters From the Front

Dated:

Rhyl,

No. 8 Camp, Kinmel, P.la

Writing to his mother, Captain Howard Clouston gives the following report on the disturbances at Rhyl. He writes:

Briefly, the facts are that the men were sore because the 3^rd Division was getting all the boats. The 3^rd was going home in complete units. Now a lot of the original units are here and their places were filled by conscripts when they were wounded, etc. Therefore the draftees were getting home as the originals and the originals were staying here. Headed by a few fools they started at their own canteens and got the eats and some beer. I was up till 3 a.m., patching up a couple of bruised heads.

When daylight came the looting continued, and they got a couple of carloads of beer on the track right at the camp. They took it in mess tins, jugs and fire buckets, they drank it and even bathed in it, naturally there was the deuce to pay. They did not fire on the officer's quarters. There were no officers, V.C. or others killed, although a few got some stone wounds, etc. and I patched up a couple. 5 rioters (See note 1) are dead, two are on the dangerously ill list; about 30 are in the hospital. We had it fairly busy, of course, with others who got minor bumps.

They did rob the sergeants messes and the officers messes of booze, as well as their own canteens, but only smashed their own quarters and some of the guard rooms.

They appropriated all the tobacco and emptied the central canteen stores. They took all the Quartermaster's stores and looted and smashed the Y.M.C.A but not the Salvation Army. They were absolutely insane in the way they went for their own quarters and left ours alone. They did smash “ Tin Town” or the stores of the civilians here at the camp. There was a small amount of stray shooting, mostly by drunken soldiers. In fact it was the booze that did the whole damage.

General Turner came down from London by train, not by aeroplane. The news reports were written Rhyl and were very incorrect. At Rhyl they were badly frightened. Of course, 5 dead is bad enough and a few thousand dollars damage is pretty expensive. There is a notion there is something behind it all. One Russian leader was killed, got a bayonet through his stomach, and another is in jail and may be shot. They have all sorts of evidence against him. Am sorry to spoil some good newspaper stories, but I know the facts.

Howard