Lieutenant E J Rollings relinquished his commission on completion of service, 13th January 1920. He retained the rank of Lieutenant.

 

 

THE "SUNDAY EXPRESS" ON LIEUT. ROLLINGS' CAPTURE OF

 

THE PLANS OF THE HINDENBURG LINE.

 

"THE MAN WHO ENDED THE WAR."

 

Lieut. Rollings' Part . HINDENBURG LINE

 

Here we have the story of how Lieut Rollings ended the war — and won it; but what about the man who lost it?

            The German headquarters which Rollings raided was over seven miles behind the German lines through which the Australians drove a path. It was attacked by only two armoured cars, and yet so great was the panic that the officer in command fled, only pausing to tear up the papers and plans which contained the full secret of the German defence.

            To that man Germany owes her final, swift defeat, just as surely as the Allies owed victory to Rollings.

            Certainly no one was more completely in the dark about the importance of his feat than Lieut. Rollings himself. He only knew that with two armoured cars in his charge he had carried out a raid through a gap driven into the German lines by Australian troops Nine miles behind the line he had found a farmhouse, a former German headquarters, hurriedly evacuated by the staff, and into a sandbag he had thrown a lot of torn-up papers which he had found on the floor. But how was he to guess that he had ended the war?

            No small part of the romance of the whole story lies in the roundabout fashion in which Rollings's part in ending the war was at last brought home to the public and to him.

 

CHANGED PLANS

 

            At 9.30 p.m, on September 28, 1918 — eve of the great attack which was to tear the Hindenburg Line to shreds —Major D. P. Stevenson, D.S.O., M.C., commanding No. 35 Squadron of the R.A.F., marched his officers and men into a hangar just north-west of St. Quentin, and made the following, speech.

            'You see those flashes? They are the guns which for 48 hours have been drenching the Hindenburg Line with gas and high explosives.

            'It was the original intention of G.H.Q. to cross the Hindenburg Line and to winter on the other side in a position favourable to ourselves and un-favourable to the Boche.  These plans have been changed.

            A subaltern took some papers from a German staff officer. They were found to contain a complete plan of the defences of the Hindenburg Line.

            Tomorrow morning at zero, the whole Allied line, from the sea to Champagne, will go forward. We are, as it were, the hub of the whole operation. Nobody must spare himself, either body or brain, from tomorrow, in order that things may work 'as smoothly as oil.'

            'You may have to go on for six weeks, but I think that at the end of that time you will have reason to be satisfied with your work'

            At dawn the next morning the whole of the Allied Forces in Flanders were hurled at the Hindenburg Line. It crumbled, and six weeks and two days later the Armistice was signed.

            But where was the man who had stolen the plans and made  the swift ending of the war possible? His name found no place in the archives of the war— but it chanced that a mechanic, standing near that hangar at St. Quentin, had. taken a shorthand note of Major Stevenson's speech. About the time of the 13th anniversary of the Armistice he took the note to an English newspaper, which pushed the investigation forward.

            The story of the raid is almost as dramatic as its consequences, the plans were actually captured at Framerville, ten miles east of Amiens, in the battle of August 8, 1918.  Listen to Sergeant Rollings' own version: —

            'The 17th (Armoured Car) Tank Battalion, in which I was a lieutenant, was a movable unit, and on August 7, 1918, we received sudden orders to attach ourselves at once to the Australian Corps at Villers-Bretonnneux, a hundred miles away. We arrived there the same night, and our orders were short and to the point.'

            'We were to wait behind the line until the Australians had made a break in it, then race through, search for all German headquarters, raid them for documents, and shoot every German on sight.

            'I received personal orders to concentrate on a German headquarters at Framerville, which was nine miles in adduce of our front line.

            'Before dawn the next morning we were all at our posts waiting. I was in charge of two armoured cars.

 

DAWN AND ATTACK

 

            'Dawn — and hell broke loose. The Australians went over like men possessed, and 15 minutes later we received the signal — they were through!

            ''Off we went, leaving the Australians straining at the leash in the German front line, eager for more successes.

            'The tanks towed us for two and a half miles, and here we found the roads free from shell holes, and left them behind.

            'Framerville was now about seven and a half miles away: In the distance we could see the German rear guard still retreating, but fighting desperately to make a stand

            'I knew that if the break in the line was filled that would be the end of us but I decided to make a bid for it, and we raced at top speed along the Amiens-St. Quentin road.

            'After a while, however, we found we had to fight our way through the retreating Germans, but they were completely disorganised, and we killed them in scores.

            'By noon we had fought our way through to Framerville, with the German rearguard behind us being dealt with by the Australians.

            'We found the German Corps Headquarters in an old farmhouse. I remember there were three steps leading to the door, because I mounted them slowly, revolver in hand.

            'But the German staff had fled a few minutes before, apparently, and so compete was their panic that they had not stopped to burn their papers.

            'Some of the documents were torn up. but I packed every scrap into sand bags. I could not read German, and in any case I had no time to read any of the documents, so every little torn up scrap went into the sandbags.

            'When I came out I found my gunners in the car holding up four' German staff officers. We took all their papers and revolvers, but they were killed by a sudden burst of machine gun fire.

            'For three more hours we mopped up villages within a radius of twelve to 15 miles, and when we got back I handed over the sandbags to the company commander Major W. E. Boucher M.C.

            'They were sent on to General Headquarters for examination. and after that I heard nothing, except that I got a bar to my M.C.

            'A few days later, on the 28th. I was shot in the head and my active service came to an end.

            'I never knew the part those papers played in ending the war until now. In 1920 I went back to the Glamorgan police.

 

TAKE OR KILL

 

            Lieut. Colonel Valentine Vivian who was chief intelligence officer was called on to report to General Lord Rawlinson on the captured plans, to take up the story.

            'I gave each officer taking part in the battle near Arras that started on August 8, 1918— Ludendorn's Black Day as he himself called it— a small map of every German divisional and brigade headquarters known to us.

            'The officers were instructed to detail men to visit these headquarters and kill or capture any German staff found there, and to search for any documents.

            'A party of cavalry, supported by armoured cars, raided a German corps headquarters at Wancourt, south-east of Arras.

            'The place— an old farmhouse — had been hurriedly evacuated, and in one of the rooms they found the floor was littered with torn-up papers

            'The subaltern in charge stuffed all the papers in empty sandbags. He had no time to examine any on the spot, but decided to take no chances, and collected every scrap of paper in the room.

            'The scraps of paper went to G.H.Q. and the lieutenant lost interest in them as thoroughly as G.H.Q. lost interest in him.

            But, pieced together, those papers revealed in minutest detail the whole organisation of the Hindenburg Line: every machine-gun emplacement, every headquarter, every artillery position with their arcs of fire, aerodromes, ambulances, and field-dressing stations

            So complete and detailed were the plans, after they had been painstakingly pasted together, that headquarters flatly refused to treat them seriously at first. It was inconceivable that such intimate details of the German defences should have been left behind, unburned. However. G.H.Q. had learned the wisdom of examining even the unlikeliest of clues, and British air squadrons were detailed to verify the most important of the positions marked on the captured plans.

            Concealed machine-gun emplacements and ammunition dumps could not be photographed from the air, but for days British air squadrons hovered over the German line, taking all possible photographs.

 

CONFIRMATORY PHOTOS

 

            G.H.Q. was duly impressed when it was found that every detail on the air photographs was shown in the plans. It was proof enough that the plans were also accurate in the details that the cameras could not capture, and, Foch was supplied with the precise picture of the entire German defence.

            No time then for him to inquire how the plans had been captured. He knew nothing of Lieut. Rollings — but he knew that his great chance had come. The moment had come to strike, and he struck. The war was over in six weeks and two days, a signally accurate fulfilment of the prediction which Major Stevenson had made to his men at St. Quentin.

            Rollings, the man in charge of the raid that had made the swift ending of the war possible, was not in at the death.

            But fate ordained that the man who ended the war should have a more fitting reward than a policeman's pension. The mechanic who had taken the verbatim note of Major Stevenson's speech, 'thought it might be interesting,' and took it along to the 'Sunday Express,' which gave full publicity to the story, and told the public that the man in charge of the armoured car raid must have been the man who ended the war. It was a journalist, a returned man, who identified Rollings as the hero of the raid, and Rollings' own chief. Colonel Carter, who confirmed the story with the words, 'There is no doubt about it. Rollings is your man'

            Then Lady Houston came forward. She was too ill to be present at the Neath cinema, but she was renowned for her gifts to worthy causes, and she could not let Rollings' feat go unrecognised.

            When he received the cheque from the Mayer of Neath, Rollings said:

            'When I put those papers into the sandbags I had no knowledge of their value and I never knew until a fortnight ago.

            'As a police officer I would  like to impress upon you all that this was the only house I have ever burgled and I never till now knew the value of the swag.

            'I could never have performed that raid but for the strong assistance and co-operation of some very gallant men. To those men I owe a great deal. I am endeavouring to trace them.'

 

The names of the others who took part in the raid were:-

 

James Telford Yeoman - Temporary Captain, Tank Corps

Arthur Charles Wood - Lieutenant, Tank Corps

Charles Albert Blencowe - Second Lieutenant, Tank Corps

Norman Clark Wood - Lieutenant, Tank Corps

A C Kenyon

D W Hord

W James

 

The cheque presented to Ernest was for £5,000. It was donated by Lady Houston.

 

Ernest married Jennie North Smith in 1925

 

MAN WHO HELPED TO END WAR - Presented with £5000 From Lady Houston

 

       Police-Sergeant Ernest J. Rollings whose heroic raid on German headquarters on the French front in September 1918 played a great part in bringing the war to an end, was at Neath. Glamorgan, last nigh presented by the mayor with a cheque for £5000 from lady Houston as her personal recognition of his bravery.

       Thousands cheered Sergeant Rollings as he was carried shoulder-high from the Town Hall in a procession, which included the mayor and the members of the Town Council, police, members of the British Legion, and Territorials. He was escorted around the town and taken to a cinema, where the presentation was made.

       During a raid by a section of the 17th (Armoured Car) Tank Battalion upon the German headquarters at Framerville, 10 miles from Amiens, and about nine miles behind the then German line, Lieut. Rollings secured possession of a large number of valuable documents, which gave a complete account and plans of the Hindenburg Lime

       The success of the raid was one of the principal events which brought about the ending of the Great War.

       Lieut. Rollings is now serving in Neath Borough Police Force, being chief clerk in the chief constables office.

 

Lady Lucy Houston was the widow of Sir Robert Houston, 1st Baronet, Member of Parliament for West Toxteth, and a millionaire shipping magnet.