1916 British half-penny: The Somme

[villa66]

On the centennial of the Battle of the Somme, a British half-penny of that terrible year, 1916.

Novelist William Bradford Huie wrote: “But the Britain of Geoffrey Barham had lost too much...When a little land loses [nearly 20,000] of its youth, dead between dawn and dusk, as Britain did at the Somme, it bleeds too much.”

On New Year’s Eve, 1916, British troops in the dirt trenches sang Auld Lang Syne, or rather, borrowed the tune and sang instead the continuous refrain: “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re....” And if they were lucky they slept for a few interrupted hours afterward, and if they were lucky they awoke to a New Year’s Day, 1917.

This particular 1916 half-penny has not seen much handling. Its surfaces are hardly worn at all. Evocative, in a way, of Laurence Binyon’s For the Fallen: “They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we shall remember them.”

[villa66]

Of course you can say approximately the same thing using a 1916 French 5-centime, a 1916 German 2-pfennig, a 1916 Russian 1-kopek, a 1916 Austrian 1-heller, or a 1916 Italian 2-centesimi. So because it’s 2016, and because men and women in every country have such short memories, well—and please excuse the language—but damn, damn, and damn it anyway.

v.

[Mynter]

" Our boys serving as cannon fodder at the Somme" , Liam Neeson as Michael Collins proclames in the movie with the same name. I remember the phrase clearly because I was surprised to learn that English provides an exact translation of the german word " Kanonenfutter ".
What strikes me when looking on your really nice Halfpeny is how worn the revers - die must have been. A tribute to wartime- minting or a matter to avoide ghosting ? perhaps KAM might know ?

I am taking the liberty to show my Munich- 10 pfennig and my Stuttgart 1- mark. 1916 in Germany was the last year of the peacecoinage, after that iron and zinc entered the scene ( disregarding the 1/2 mark, wich for unknown reasons was minted in good silver until 1919 ).

For a collector of german coins , otherwise 1916 is " The year of the Elephant " ( and of the other Tabora- siege-coins )

[Arminius]

Here is a French issue if that year.

The French even relocated a part of their minting activity to Spain in this year:

[ externes Bild ]

(to reduce the picture size in your browser window press ctrl + - )

1916 AD., France, Madrid mint (Spain), 5 Centimes, KM 842.
★ Star mark (for Madrid mint) right of "5 c"

Regards

[villa66]

The American soldiers who began arriving in France in 1917--or so I read in a contemporary account--often called the big French 10-centimes "clackers;" the smaller 5-centime like this one the Americans often called "little clackers."

I note--thinking about it just now--that these big coppers must have departed circulation soon afterward, for a while at least. When I was younger, AU and better French silver from 1916-19 was everywhere one looked (in the U.S), or so it seemed. And the copper-nickel 5-, 10- and 25-centimes of 1917-19 were also extremely common in AU and better (and still are). But I just don't remember seeing nice "clackers" and "little clackers" in anything like similar quantities--especially not in the near-pristine condition Americans are accustomed to seeing other contemporary French minors.

Withdrawn, maybe, and shipped off to the colonies with the newly-minted late models (1920-21) of these big bronzes?

v.

[villa66]

" Our boys serving as cannon fodder at the Somme" , Liam Neeson as Michael Collins proclames in the movie with the same name. I remember the phrase clearly because I was surprised to learn that English provides an exact translation of the german word " Kanonenfutter ".
What strikes me when looking on your really nice Halfpeny is how worn the revers - die must have been. A tribute to wartime- minting or a matter to avoide ghosting ? perhaps KAM might know ?

I am taking the liberty to show my Munich- 10 pfennig and my Stuttgart 1- mark. 1916 in Germany was the last year of the peacecoinage, after that iron and zinc entered the scene ( disregarding the 1/2 mark, wich for unknown reasons was minted in good silver until 1919 ).

For a collector of german coins , otherwise 1916 is " The year of the Elephant " ( and of the other Tabora- siege-coins )

J 17 1916 F Re.JPG

J 17 1916 F Av.JPG

J 13 1916 D Re.JPG

J 13 1916 D Av.JPG

Several interesting items here. The coins of course, the gently-aging appearance of the nice early-in-the-century 1-mark (these coins always evoke so much, at my house anyway), and your sharp 1916 10-pfennig (my, my).

About the continuing mintage of the silver 1/2-mark. Indeed, why? Krause says many of these were blacked at the mint to discourage hoarding, so I guess the need for the denomination was intense enough--and the difficulties in coming up with a correctly-sized replacement of compatible color were severe enough--that disguising the silver piece was the best option available in the press of wartime.

Which brings me to the 1916 half-penny. Good call on the coin's problems. (In my coin-notebook I have this entry keyed to a big British penny of 1916, but it was too difficult to get to so I used a 1916 halfpenny that I had on my desk at the time.) I wasn't pleased with the (overexposed) photos, but hoped the traces of lustre on the obverse would make my point. I did, however, expect my Italian friends--where I had also posted--to ask why the coin was so worn, and was prepared to explain that it wasn't circulation wear at all, but instead the two factors that you mentioned above (hats off!)--wartime exigencies and the ghosting that often made the reverse of these coins so weak.

Finally, "Kanonenfutter." I did not know about this particular parallelism, but should have. What an explosion of cynicism there was at war's-end, right across Western culture, no matter who had been on what side during the war. Of course it gets effectively obscured by events both great and small, but in personal terms it's terrible to imagine trying to fit one's self into a regular peacetime life afterward. But then of course it got worse.

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Hey, I'm just about finished acclimating myself to a change of computers and hope to be around a little more. And yeah, the DOA coins--some of the best coin stories going....

v.

[KarlAntonMartini]

I see nearly no traces of wear on your Halfpenny. I think the Mint had to use dies longer than in peacetime years. I didn't find precise information about this point, but learned from John Craigs book on The Mint: "fifty-four of the small staff were called up for the forces of the War 0f 1914-1918; of those left for essential work, four were killed and more injured on the premises by a German bomb from the air. [...] immense demands for coin continued during the war. Long hours were worked throughout by a staff considerably swollen by fresh recruitment and small night shifts were twice necessary. [...] A novel activity added to the pressure; in virtue of the skills aquired in its own plenishing, the Mint supplied to the munition factories a wide variety of precision gauges, close on 3,000 in all, for control of the manufacture of small-arms ammunition. [...] machines for filling the belts of machine-guns were made and the Mint supplied 360,000 parts of gun dial sights."
Best regards, KarlAntonMartini

[Mynter]

I see nearly no traces of wear on your Halfpenny. I think the Mint had to use dies longer than in peacetime years. I didn't find precise information about this point, but learned from John Craigs book on The Mint: "fifty-four of the small staff were called up for the forces of the War 0f 1914-1918; of those left for essential work, four were killed and more injured on the premises by a German bomb from the air. [...] immense demands for coin continued during the war. Long hours were worked throughout by a staff considerably swollen by fresh recruitment and small night shifts were twice necessary. [...] A novel activity added to the pressure; in virtue of the skills aquired in its own plenishing, the Mint supplied to the munition factories a wide variety of precision gauges, close on 3,000 in all, for control of the manufacture of small-arms ammunition. [...] machines for filling the belts of machine-guns were made and the Mint supplied 360,000 parts of gun dial sights."
Best regards, KarlAntonMartini

Thank you KAM. The passage you are citing clearly explanes why the appearence of the english warcoins could have been rather poor compared to prewar-standard. Immense demand plus a considerable loss of scilled workers could sum up to an overextended die- life and slobby craftsmanship.

[Mynter]

About the continuing mintage of the silver 1/2-mark. Indeed, why? Krause says many of these were blacked at the mint to discourage hoarding, so I guess the need for the denomination was intense enough--and the difficulties in coming up with a correctly-sized replacement of compatible color were severe enough--that disguising the silver piece was the best option available in the press of wartime.
v.

The 50-pfennig/ 1/2 mark really is an unsolved puzzle. ( Now we are leaving the Somme for good, or perhaps not quite as a german soldier recieved a daily pay of 51 pfennig ). Why was this last silvercoin not substituted and were the black 1/2 mark really blackend or rather struck an unblanched blanks ?

[KarlAntonMartini]

The raid that hit the Royal mint was on 13th June 1917, here a photograph: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205194010

[villa66]

Thanks--I really wanted to ask whether it was by Zeppelins or by airplanes. Airplanes.

Good quotation on mint operations, etc.

v.

[villa66]

About the "blacking." However the effect may have been accomplished, there's a related question I've wanted to ask for a long time: does anyone know about whether any contemporary French silver got similar treatment? Sometimes silver blacks with age and/or atmospherics, of course, but because of the German pieces I sometimes wonder about the nearby French silver.

And the 51 pfennig daily pay--any idea what time frame, or just generally WWI?

v.