The History of the Royal Corps of Signals Depicted in its Paintings - Gilbert Holiday.

Menin Gate - Gilbert Holiday, c. 1924

This is a study of a despatch rider passing the Menin Gate during an artillery bombardment. Gilbert Holiday served mainly in the Ypres Salient and so would have had first-hand knowledge of the scene depicted here.

On its formation the Royal Signals inherited from its parent unit, the Royal Engineer Signal Service, four major works of art, Through by F P Martin, and three paintings by Gilbert Holiday, which depicted the work of signallers during the First World War. In the next fifty years the Corps added portraits of its first Colonel Commandant, Lieutenant General Sir John Fowler and of its first Colonel in Chief, HRH The Princess Royal, Princess Mary.

In 1961, the Corps Committee decided to commission a series of paintings to commemorate the work of the Corps in the Second World War. This was the first of several commissions which have sought to depict the achievements of the Corps throughout its history.

To refresh the Corps corporate memory and to reintroduce the paintings, the collection will be serialised within the Journal’s History Section. The Summer 2025 edition featured C Telegraph Troop, Royal Engineers and the series continues with The Great War.

The British Expeditionary Force was deployed around Mons on the 22nd of August 1914 and to serve this force, a GHQ signal company, 2 Army Corps headquarters signal companies, 6 divisional signal companies, one cavalry signal Company, eight cable and five airline sections, and one lines of communication signal company were formed and sent to France. The total commitment was 75 officers, 2346 men.

The despatch rider came into prominence during the retreat from Mons and Lord French wrote in his despatch of 20th of November 1914. “...I am anxious to bring to notice the splendid work which has been done throughout the campaign by motorcyclists of the Signal Corps. Carrying messages at all hours of the day and night in every kind of weather, and often traversing bad roads blocked by transport. They've been conspicuously successful in maintaining extraordinary degree of efficiency in the service of communications...”

The Signal Service had been designed to operate with a moving army and during a mobile phase of the war the cable detachments kept divisions and brigades in touch by laying Telegraph lines from the cable waggons, often under fire. But the growth of trench warfare entirely altered the requirement, and the work grew out of all proportion.

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