The Monocled Mutineer : The First World War’s Best-Kept Secret, The Etaples Mutiny
by John Fairley and William Allison
(Souvenir Press, £10)

THIS new edition of a book first published in 1978 heralds the hoped-for opening of the military files on the larger than life figure of Percy Toplis, named by the authorities as a leader of the Etaples mutiny by WWI British and empire troops in 1917.

Situated in northern France, Etaples was a huge holding camp for troops in their final training before going to the front.
According to one veteran it was “a hellish dump without a single redeeming feature” and was run more like a concentration camp by the hated military police and instructors, “the canaries.”

A mutiny against the sadistic regime, large enough to threaten the continuation of the allied war effort, was only suppressed after six days by troops withdrawn from the trenches.

The book covers the colourful career of Toplis, a working-class lad who deserted like so many others.

But, unlike his compatriots, he had the chutzpah to con his way back into the army and then the air force by relying on his thespian skills to adopt the uniform and manners of any rank he chose.

The suspicious circumstances in which this remarkable adventurer was shot down in a police ambush on the open roads near Penrith has led to strong suggestions that this official murder was ordered from on high to prevent a trial leading to the public exposure of the Etaples mutiny, which was kept under wraps.

If the account of the many exploits of the khaki Pimpernel is necessarily based largely on informed supposition, the core of the book lies in the central chapters detailing the course and events of the mutiny itself.

When the book was adapted by Alan Bleasdale for a powerful TV drama in 1986, attracting 10 million viewers, the Thatcher government took fright and condemned the programme as another example of the BBC’s “well-known” left-wing bias.

The authors worked hard to track down survivors of the mutiny, a vast number having been conveniently silenced in the subsequent slaughter of Passchendaele. It will be interesting to see how much of the official reports will be redacted.

The reader is also left wondering how many other mutinies against the mindless chaos and pointless bloody sacrifices of a generation must lie suppressed under Establishment censorship.

Review by Gordon Parsons