WAR TROPHIES

After the First World War, it was quite common for war trophies to be distributed as “souvenirs” to towns and cities to be put on display. Councils all over the country applied to the War Office hoping that their town would be considered a suitable place to exhibit items such as captured German guns.  The British government started distributing captured German armaments in 1915 and these  trophies were popular, a huge morale booster.  In November 1916, the government established a War Trophies Committee to officially distribute pieces of captured weaponry, which were often used as a way of raising funds by the towns which received them. After the Armistice, the Germans were required to  abandon all of their heavy guns and a quarter of their field artillery. Suddenly, the War Trophies Committee had 100,000 pieces to send to every part of the country and our local newspaper reported that towns and villages were “clamouring” for the trophies and complaining when other towns got “better” trophies than they did.

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Not everyone wanted one of these guns.  Letters were published in the local newspapers criticising them.  Stocksbridge Council had written to the Territorial Headquarters at York to apply for a howitzer and a field gun, but in the Council meetings Joseph Sheldon argued against this decision whilst Councillors Truman and the Rev. Foster argued for them.  Two guns arrived in 1920, one being placed in Fox Glen and the other on a triangle of land at Knowle Top, Bracken Moor.

 

It only took a few years for the attraction of these pieces to begin to wane.  Councils debated scrapping them, sometimes going round in circles before a decision was made.  Others had never got round to displaying these trophies and just quietly disposed of them.  In some places locals took matters into their own hands; in Coniston a local man who had been awarded the VC came out of a pub one night in the early 1920s and rolled the town’s gun down into the lake. In some places the police were forced to stand aside to prevent provoking a riot as large groups of men dragged the guns into ponds and rivers. 

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Penistone had two guns, which were said to be a danger to local children who were playing on them.  They had originally been in front of the parish church before being taken to the Recreation Ground.  In 1922 they were removed and placed in the Council’s yard where they continued to pose a problem because local children trespassed into the yard in order to play on them.  The danger lay in the fact that the guns tilted, and children were being injured.  The council could not agree on what to do with them.  Stocksbridge Council also debated moving its guns, but nothing happened.  This scenario was being played out all over the country as the trophies fell out of favour.  Joseph Kenworthy commented that the guns were “a hideous memorial of the Great War.”

 

In 1924 the local paper printed an article which stated that times were changing; “No longer do we set great store by captured war trophies, as emblems of our prowess and memorials of our might in battle.”  In Stocksbridge the guns stayed where they had been put and Councillors Sheldon and Truman continued to argue about them.  In 1925 Joseph Sheldon called the guns “heathenish,”  while Mr. Truman objected to their removal.  Mr. Sheldon remarked that plenty of evidence of the results of the Great War could be seen in the district, namely, the disabled men who had returned after serving.  People did not need these guns as reminders, especially as they now had the Clock Tower War Memorial.  The guns were an unpleasant reminder to those who had lost sons and relatives in the conflict.  Mr. Truman thought that they were trophies of war, and in years to come would acquire historic interest and value.  They were obtained at huge cost, and should serve as emblems of a peace won through enormous sacrifice; it would be vandalism to remove them.  The Chairman of the Council had the casting vote, and the guns stayed where they were.   

 

In 1927 there were suggestions that the guns ought to be incorporated into the landscaping around the Clock Tower which was then being carried out. Joseph Sheldon, who had done so much work into getting the war memorial for Stocksbridge, was vehemently against this and said that the guns ought to be sold to the steelworks for scrap.  He thought that no one could say for sure that these guns had not been the cause of the deaths of “some of the local brave men.”

 

In 1928, six years after the Council first discussed removing the guns, the Clerk wrote to the British Legion to ask their views on removing them and selling them for scrap.  They were in favour of this, and the Home Office agreed to the sale of the guns, on the proviso that the proceeds were given to the British Legion.  The Council deferred the matter and it was another year before the guns were finally removed, in January or February 1929.  Penistone Council also decided to scrap their guns at this time. 

 

Some towns kept hold of their German guns but any remaining by the time of WW2 were generally taken for the War Effort as scrap, and melted down.  Very few of these war trophy guns from the Great War survive where they were originally displayed.