Formed as part of Lord Kitch­en­er’s ​‘Third New Army’ the 12th (Pio­neer) Bat­tal­ion, Sher­wood Foresters was a Pio­neer unit raised in Der­by on 01 Octo­ber 1914. By August 1915 they found them­selves in France. It was in ear­ly 1916 that the group made the “…chance dis­cov­ery of a bat­tered print­ing-house in the ruined town of Ypres“¹.

That group includ­ed a print­er, a Sergeant who “…in a for­mer exis­tence, as the edi­tor humor­ous­ly puts it, had fol­lowed the craft.” Res­ur­rect­ing the press and with two Offi­cer Edi­tors and Jour­nal­ists, they set about print­ing a news sheet.

This in itself was­n’t nov­el, even though the sto­ry itself is tremen­dous. In the Boer War, the Bloem­fontein Friend was the first armed forces news­pa­per, under the edi­tor­ship of Rud­yard Kipling.

What was new was the humor­ous­ly iron­ic style of the Wipers Times, the title reflect­ing sol­diers’ slang for the town of Ypres.

Issues and Circulation

Around 23 issues were cre­at­ed, the first being 100 copies, but some lat­er issues expand­ing to 250². The first two issues print­ed on the press found near the Cloth Hall in Ypres, with the amount of type lim­it­ing the set­ting and print­ing to one page at a time. This had to end when Ger­man shelling destroyed that works³. Lat­er issues were print­ed on a new­ly-found press.

Nos. 1 and 2 of ​‘The Wipers Times’ will always be our own par­tic­u­lar pets because of the cir­cum­stances under which they were done. They were pro­duced on the orig­i­nal press up by the Cloth Hall, in the days when the air was gen­er­al­ly full of shells.

Edi­tor, Wipers Times, quot­ed in Tatler 12 Decem­ber 1917

Con­tent includ­ed adverts cov­er­ing shows and improb­a­ble tourist attrac­tions, small ads, arti­cles about dai­ly life, and poet­ry. You can see some exam­ples host­ed by the Wiki­me­dia Com­mons project.

Reception

The Wipers Times was well-received from the first issue. The pro­duc­tion team regret­ting their deci­sion to print only 100 copies. It was report­ed that in 1916, offers were made of £10 — around £890 in 2022 — for copies of that first issue.

The men issued copies to ​‘the colonel, sec­ond in com­mand, adju­tant and all the offi­cers’. This led to requests for the paper from the gen­er­al com­mand­ing the divi­sion and GHQ to be sent copies.

Back home in the UK, nation­al and local cov­er­age was pos­i­tive while reflect­ing the fact that the paper includ­ed solemn memo­ri­als to fall­en friends.

… it is a sign and a sym­bol of vic­to­ry. The men who pro­duced such work under the con­di­tions which pre­vailed dur­ing its pro­duc­tion could nev­er be beat­en.

Pall Mall Gazette 23 Novem­ber 1917

Resurrection

In 2013, Ian His­lop and Nick New­man cre­at­ed a screen­play for the BBC based on this sto­ry. The 90-minute film was pro­duced in Belfast. The BBC looks to have assumed the press found was a Lib­er­ty press, and con­tact­ed the British Print­ing Soci­ety to find a suit­able exam­ples. The BPS’s Enquiries Offi­cer sug­gest­ed Tim Hon­nor be con­tact­ed and he offered his c. 1905 Arab to play the star­ring role⁴.

This, in turn, led to the the­atre pro­duc­tion of the same sto­ry in Sep­tem­ber 2016.

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Update: 11 February 2022

With thanks to Alis­tair Hall, who point­ed to a 2015 arti­cle in we made this, on Recre­at­ing the Wipers Times with some love­ly details of Matt McKen­zie’s involve­ment using some very slight­ly more civilised equip­ment than the Sher­wood Foresters would have used.

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References

1. Quot­ed from British Print­er, July 1930. Trench Print­ing and Jour­nal­ism.
2. Let­ter from QMS Leslie W. L. Tyler, quot­ed in Not­ting­ham Evening Post 22 March 1916.
3. Leeds Mer­cury, 17 Decem­ber 1917
4. Print­ing His­to­ry News, Autumn 2013

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Location

Ypres, Bel­gium

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