835102 Gunner Albert William Burton, RFA

Synopsis

I first met Bert Burton in September 1981 after an article about my search for First World War veterans appeared in the Chelmsford & Essex Chronicle. Seeing the article, Bert dropped me a line, and a couple of days later I was sitting in his living room with my tape recorder running. I took the photo above on that occasion.

Bert was born in Birmingham on 3rd July 1894. He'd joined the Warwickshire Territorial Field Artillery on 4th February 1912 and was given the number 943. Later, when the Territorials were re-numbered, Bert's number changed to 835102.

What follows, are the notes sent ot me by Bert Burton followed by my transcript of the interview. I visited Mr Burton again in 1985 and again took my tape recorder. That interview is also transcribed below.

Bert Burton died in High Peak, Cheshire in April 1990. He was 95 years old.

Albert Burton's notes - September 1981

Enlisted Royal Field Artillery TA Warwickshires on 4th February 1912. Attended for riding and gunnery drill three or four nights each week plus battery formations each weekend.

Summer camps of fourteen days each year.

1912: South Wales, 1913: Salisbury, 1914: Okehampton. On declaration of war the whole division moved to the Midlands.

At the end of August we were on the march with horses and guns, destination unknown. Eventually we arrived in Essex and encamped in the fields of Great Baddow. After Xmas we were billeted in cottages and farmhouses.

On March 1st it was full marching order. We entrained in Chelmsford and at dusk we were aboard ship, landing in France within a few hours.

We became a mobile brigade, going into action when and where we were wanted.

We were at Ypres, Passchendaele, the Somme and Vimy Ridge. Vimy was taken by the Canadians and we were the supporting troops. Eventually we found ourselves sleeping in German dug-outs twenty feet deep.

After the Ridge, we went back to Ypres and Passchendaele to metres of mud and water.

October 1917. My last march in action. Wounded and sent to a military hospital in France and eventually to one on the South coast.

Finally discharged August 1918 so I was at home to join in celebrations in November 1918.

Interview 1 - September 1981

AWB:
At the time war broke out we were at Okehampton, Devon at a territorial camp. We entrained immediately and returned to Birmingham where we stayed a week for mobilization.

We came by road from Birmingham via Swindon, via Berkhamsted to Chelmsford at the end of August 1914. We entered Chelmsford by the Baddow Road and we encamped at Baddow House which is now demolished. We encamped in the grounds there until after Christmas 1914. At Christmas 1914, quite a number of us went to France with horses as re-mounts to the regular army. We returned after a few days and we were brought up to full strength and on the 1st of March 1915, we left England via Southampton and landed at Le Havre in France.

We spent our first night in a barn after the cows had been turned out, and were in a deplorable state the next morning. We journeyed up the line to a place called Amiens and from Amiens, after we’d been in action for a couple of weeks, we went to Ypres. From there we went to Passchendaele, then to Albert further south, and in 1915 we received our first dose of gas.

By this time the trenches were in a deplorable condition with water knee-deep, unable to wash, unable to shave and taking whatever food came up after being wet on the old general government service wagons.

We took part in battles on the Somme and we were there for eleven months before the attack. After that we went back to Bapaume and Ypres and from there we went to Vimy Ridge which we captured with the Canadians.

We were mobile artillery and we left the Canadians looking after the ridge while we went back again to the north of the line. The conditions, which I may mention, of course were lousy. We were all that way: all scruffy, all unwashed, all dirty, living in filth with water up to our knees in old German dug-outs.

After a time I went with my major to see the first consignment of tanks which had arrived from England. They were the old fashioned tanks with two guide wheels at the back. We saw them before they went into action. After the action on the Somme, they became buried in liquid mud and our people went back to horses.

The horses kept with us throughout the war and from time to time we used to come up to the resorts of Boulogne or Calais to pick up re-mounts which had come over from Canada.

Our first taste of gas was without gas masks so we were given pads and glasses. The pads we had to wet in all manner of ways to proof them against the gas. After a time we were issued with helmets with goggles and then later on we had the old gas mask. About this time we were issued with tin hats too. We hadn’t had tin hats until this time.

PN:
What time was this?

AWB:
End of 1915 the shrapnel helmet was issued and it was a crime to be on duty or in the front line without wearing a shrapnel helmet after that.

When the gas came over we were again in the region of Passchendaele and I had a dose of ordinary gas which smelled like pear drops which affected my eyes. Other people were unfortunate and were covered in mustard gas and they were cripples and invalids after that. I had my first spectacles in those days through being gassed and I’m afraid that in one way or another the gas has affected my eyes ever since.

We were on the Somme near Albert and the weather was very bad at the time. We were ice-bound, living in bivouacs because we were out of action for a rest. When we went back into action we found that the trenches were full of ice and mud; what trenches there were left. It was quite a relief sometimes to go out of action on the Somme so that we could break the ice and have a wash.

As regards de-lousing it was almost impossible. There was one humorous incident when I was on forward observation. We found that a large hut with a red cross on the top was occupied from time to time by batches of German people, soldiers. We spotted that they always came out with towels round their necks and came to the conclusion that it was an ablutions room or a wash house which they were attending as we did behind our lines. My major and I ranged on this at a distance of about five hundred yards with an eighteen pounder gun and shrapnel was dropped over the place and immediately they all came running out with nothing on so it was quite a comical affair. I can assure you it didn’t happen again. We were never caught like that because our ablutions were too far behind the line.

We took over German trenches which were about forty five feet deep and the occupants when we got to them were either dead men or rats which we had to chase out before we could get in there.

The German trenches and the dug-outs were extremely good. They were all made up with battens of wood which were dovetailed into each other and some were as much as forty five feet below the earth. But of course, as the entrances were facing the German lines by this time, so the Germans concentrated on them and bashed in the entrances so that we had to make an entrance on the other side away from the Germans. You understand that the entrances were facing the German lines whereas they had been behind the German lines.

We also found that under the various hills, particularly at Vimy Ridge, that it was just a centre for headquarters and was a mass of caverns and passages and all built using materials which had been manufactured and brought over from Germany whereas ours were entirely different. Ours were built from lumps of wood which we scrounged from various places along the front. As I said, they were all dovetailed in; not waterproof because the water would get through anything in those days, but they were all electrically lighted and we used candles or hurricane lamps so they were much better off than we were in many respects apart from food. The German food which we found was rotten. The bread was like straw and the jam wasn’t fit to eat whereas we had bags of bread and bags of jam. It was the old Tickler’s jam which was good and [came] in cans. The German stuff we just threw away. They left it because they couldn’t cart it away.

Anyway, I suppose that is more or less the seamy side to what went on but there’s a tragic side also. I was one of a football team of about eighteen who went to France together and six of us came back. Out of those six, three of them were unable to play. I was unable to play, one of my friends was unable to play because he’d been bashed on the head while he was a prisoner, by a bottle, and another one had been gassed so badly that every time he stood up he coughed and coughed his heart out, and that went on for years. And the remarkable part about it is that one of them is alive today [the man who had been gassed] and the other is not.

Of course, you might wonder why I’m in Chelmsford so long after the war. Well the point is I came back a second time in 1940 as a civil servant. I was discharged from the First World War in August 1918 and the Armistice was signed in the November. I joined the civil service then and so coming back to the Second World War for a few moments, I spent most of my time dealing with refugees form the continent and evacuees from various towns in this country.

We had a good amateur football team in Birmingham before the war and quite a number of people wanted to join it after the war. But like many more teams that have got good footballers they had to play themselves in and they did, and we had a good team again. And that carried on until most of them decided it was time they got married. And the football team I’m sorry to say, is now defunct because the ground is just built up like many more places in and around the country.

There were three of us who kept together the whole time. One married my sister and one married my sister-in-law. The one died on his Golden wedding anniversary morning and the other died last year. He was a year older than me. The point about this is we knew each other as boys, we went to France together, we were in France the whole of the time together and we picked up again with each other immediately after the war. Our friendship was cemented I can assure you.

We were eleven months on the Somme preparing for the offensive. That was because we had insufficient horses and insufficient men. The ammunition had to be built up and of course, the Germans were doing the same on the other side. We used to hear stories about being all quiet on the Western Front and it was, actually because No-one was attacking anyone else and apart from firing a few rounds a day at each other it was really comparatively quiet. Even so, the war duties carried on. We had guards in the trenches, our patrolling in the trenches and occasional firing to wake each other up and on the morning of the Somme offensive, we went into action – we were a mobile battery – we went into action being a mobile battery and went right forward firing at a distance of two hundred and fifty yards to start with.

You might realize by this time that the forces were well up to the German line and fortunately for us the Germans retreated and we were able to follow them. The infantry followed them, the smaller machine guns followed them and we stayed back at a required distance to keep firing within a range of three miles. As we advanced after three miles, so the Garrison Artillery came up and they concentrated on the fire. What happened was anybody’s business. Nobody exactly knew what happened until things had settled down and we were quietly back making homes for ourselves again in German trenches and villages the other side of the German line. Most of the villages at that time were being demolished. One observation post we had was just the side wall of a house and no more of the house standing than that.

From the Somme we went back to Vimy where we spent a lot of time on observation and reporting to the larger units behind us. We were still mobile artillery and went where we were required. On one occasion we were withdrawn from action and we thought we were going on rest. We walked for four days, horses and guns, and we travelled a distance of about a hundred miles along the line which we couldn’t do without coming right out and going back again.

One peculiar thing again, it was on the march, twenty five kilometre march. We were on horses, I was on a horse at the rear of the battery - this was in the middle of the night - and suddenly I heard somebody say, “Are you leaving the column Burton?” I woke up on my horse’s back and it was my major in front. I’d gone from the rear of the column to the front. I stood waiting for the column to catch up and I found all the drivers were asleep on the horses and the horses were asleep, automatically walking. It’s difficult to believe but if you get on a horse’s back and he’s tired he’ll keep walking on, walking on, walking on at the same pace until he does wake up. It’s only a sound which wakes him up and I can assure you, the sound which woke them up was one which woke everyone up and that was a barrage of fire in front of us.

After the attack at Vimy Ridge we again went back again to Passchendaele to the Passchendaele mud. This was 1917 and by that time the ground which we’d occupied before was a mass of liquid mud. The only access over the ground was by duckboards and of course, they made a path which could be observed by the Germans from their observation balloons which are similar to the barrage balloons we had in the last war. The only thing is they had a basket with two observers in them and those balloons were continually shot down and they did the same with ours.

About this time. bombing started from planes. It was much different from today because the crew used to lean over the side and drop the bombs from their hands. Usually they picked a camp where people were resting and where there were several hundred horses and men in the bivouac and wait until the evening when it was getting dull and dark before they dropped them. Obviously our people began to do the same and we dropped bombs; much different from the way they drp them today. That happened from time to time and did quite a lot of damage. If you get a bomb weighing about fifteen pounds, dropping on a batch of two hundred horses which are tethered to the guns it does a lot of damage. They did do a lot of damage I can assure you. The barrage balloons were shot down by machine gun fire and after this the Germans came up with the machine guns in their planes and they fired them from the shoulder. Then after that they fixed them to their planes and our people did the same. It was a matter of tit for tat the whole time.

Anyway, on the whole it was a terrible thing at the time and there was always a seamy side. However, we often used to laugh about it and get in camp and sing and laugh about it and I suppose it’s something I would not have missed. I only hope that the youngsters today don’t have to have it.

I can now come to the time in 1917 when I was given a month’s leave because I was a time-expired territorial. Having received the territorial honourable service medal I came home to England for a month. I spent much of that time, the first week anyway, de-lousing. I remember that when I arrived home in the middle of the night, fortunately the bathroom was handy and I was able to drop my clothes through the bathroom window into the yard and that’s where they stayed until the next morning. Then I amused myself getting rid of them - it’s making me feel itchy now!

I went back to France after a month and I was back four days when I went up to rejoin the unit at Passchendaele and I caught a little bit in the leg. Within a few weeks I was home. I came by hospital train via Etaples in France across the Channel and then along the South coast to a hospital in Chichester. I stayed in Chichester for some time and then went to the convalescent camp at Eastbourne before going up to a clearing ccentre at Catterick in Yorkshire. That’s where I stayed until I got a medical board and I got my discharge the following August in August 1918.

A quiet day on the guns used to begin about four o’clock in the morning after doing guard duty at night. Usually, when no firing was being done, it was a matter of cleaning the gun under the camouflage we had, washing it down, re-greasing it ready for the next action. The day was spent on various: fetching shells and water along the communication trenches. Then we had to top and tail the shells, that is taking the clips off the top and the bottom and getting them in heaps ready to fire the next evening or night. Most of the day was spent doing fatigues or on duties such as looking for German planes. When a plane came over as big as a fly it was the duty of one of us to blow the whistle to warn everybody else to get off the ground. They soon scarpered you can take it from me.

There’s nothing much to describe in a day’s work apart from the fact that we were tramping about in mud, fetching rations and doing fatigues. When we were out on rest behind the lines it was a matter of grooming horses all day long so that one day was as bad as another - or as good as another.

One laughable incident is this. We were called out on fatigue after dark one night and I was at the latrine. I hurried up to get with the party to carry ammunition and water and such like and instead of being on level ground I found myself falling down a Johnson shell hole. I went in one side and up the other and never got on the fatigue party. I spent most of the time stripping out in a trench which was still half full of water. My pals lit a fire, I got into a pair of blankets and stayed there for a fortnight until my clothes dried.

There were so many wounded lying about that it was difficult to do anything for most of them. It was the Field Service Ambulance people who dealt with those kind of people but at times we had to do it because they were lying about without any help from anybody at all. We used to bandage them up and give them first aid and then get them carted off to a dressing station which was usually in the communication trench.

Our first casualty was in 1915 a few days after we got to France and it was a captain. We carried him from the guns - his leg was shot off below the knee and he cursed everybody carrying him and blamed them for his wounds. He was in a vile temper and he died in a vile temper and that was our first casualty too.

Actually We were not supposed to do anything about the wounded but it was a natural thing to do to help people who were suffering. In many instances a fellow would be shot dead by the side of us or be wounded the side of us. We had to do something. For the dead we could do nothing and just pushed them out the way but for the wounded we did whatever we could and bandaged them up.

I felt sorry for the horses because they couldn’t help themselves. I’ve seen horses walking about with their entrails hanging out and we’ve had to shoot them. It was a regular thing for horses to be shot in the legs by low-flying shrapnel and then again, they had to be shot as soon as we could get to them.

It’s difficult to explain all these things after so many years. We got used to seeing our friends killed and wounded but to see horses walking about with nobody to help them was an entirely different matter. When the planes came over and dropped bombs the horses were in a panic in no time and were dashing about all over the place until there were none left to dash about. That’s why we still had to go to the various ports o Boulogne and Calais and Le Havre to pick up horses from abroad because our horses were being killed off quicker than the men.

Interview 2 - December 1985

PN:
The first thing I forgot to ask you, which was really simple, was which battery you were in and which brigade.

AWB:
I was in the 242 Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 2nd Battery.

PN:
How many [men] would there be in a brigade?

AWB:
You’re catching me now. Four batteries, two hundred and fifty, a thousand. In an ordinary brigade there’d be about two thousand men; that was out-riders and gunners and what-not. That was only part of a division as you know, and a division in those days would be about forty thousand men.

PN:
What division were you attached to?

AWB:
We were not attached….

PN:
You were mobile weren’t you?

AWB
Ah, wait a moment. We were attached to a division in the first place but we became mobile artillery. That meant to say we could go anywhere. We’d suddenly be with the Canadians and suddenly leave them and go with the Americans. We were the quick firing brigade for the attack.
We were at Vimy Ridge when the Canadians took it and we took it with them. We went over Vimy Ridge with them, that’s what we were for. We turned the German guns onto the Germans and fired at them with their own guns - 5.9s. The only trouble is that the big aperture which had been behind him was now in front of him and we were not protected as they had been because they had been surrounded with sandbags but when we took the position off them they were down the hill and away and we turned the guns around in an opening as big as this room. [About ten feet square].

We took over the trenches the same. We went in with rifles in those days and we were not riflemen at all but we had to carry fifty rounds back and front.

PN:
Did you use your rifle at all?

AWB:
Oh yes. Whether we killed anybody or not I don’t know. It was a matter of letting them off mostly in the dark. I remember one of our fellas running along the trench saying, “There’s no Germans round here.” Suddenly the shells were dropping and he made up his mind there were Germans round there.

PN:
Now am I right in thinking that you went to France in the first place before you actually went over with the brigade?

AWB:
1914, with horses; re-mounts for the regular army.

PN:
How long were you out there for?

AWB:
Oh, a fortnight and then I was back.

PN:
So you were there at Christmas 1914 were you?

AWB:
Well we were not fighting. We went with the horses and we came back without any because all we had to do was look after the horses. We came back with German souvenirs of helmets and hatchets and God-knows-what but we didn’t go out as a brigade until March 1st 1915.

PN:
Do you remember hearing about the Christmas truce in 1914?

AWB:
Well, there was a Christmas truce in 1915 while we were there but it was never talked about. We even kicked a ball between the trenches same as they did, then suddenly the artillery would start in the background and we all scattered.

PN:
So you were playing football with the Germans?

AWB:
That’s right. The original one which was mentioned on radio and in papers in those days, we laughed at. We thought it was funny. It was only a matter of kicking a ball about and such like. The Germans couldn’t play football in those days, not like we did. If we played the French or Germans or anybody else we’d win about ten nothing. The Germans were volleyball players but they soon learned to play football, and the French.

PN:
How did that come about then that you should be playing football with the Germans?

AWB:
“Oi, have a game of this mate, have a kick.” And they’d say, “Come on English, you play.” That’s what we did. They’d say, “No shooting tonight, we play football.”

PN:
That was Christmas?

AWB:
That was anytime. We were about two hundred and fifty yards apart in trenches.

PN:
So you were without your guns then?

AWB:
The shortest distance we fired was three hundred and fifty yards and they had a range of three miles. The reason we were so near to the trenches was not to fire at them with field guns but to fire over the top. It’s like firing from the other side of Broomfield or Great Waltham into Chelmsford and in between you’ve got the soldiers in rows.

The trenches weren’t all in straight lines. The Germans would be here and we’d be there and it was a matter of firing sideways at each other.

PN:
It was all zig-zags, the trenches, wasn’t it?

AWB:
That’s right, that’s just what I’m saying. The trenches were not straight as people imagine.anyhow and then you had the communication trenches off those which were dug by our engineers, or so called engineers digging holes.

PN:
I didn’t realize you played football with them.

AWB:
Oh yes, often did. And when they came back here as prisoners in the Second world war I was in an office near Kidderminster. The first Sudeten Germans came over then and said, “we played football, we played football.” A ball was supplied to them and that was that. That was in Worcestershire in the Second War and that’s how they improved.

But do you know, the remarkable part about it has always been to me that both the French and the Germans and the Belgians speak good English. We couldn’t speak their language although we thought we could. We’d go into an estaminet and say, “Avez vous cafe au lait pour un sous sil vous plait?” and show her a halfpenny and she’d say in English, “I can supply coffee for a halfpenny, yes.”

PN:
Lots of the Germans had worked in England before the war.

AWB:
They were waiters and cooks and all manner of things. Whether they were spies or not is anybody’s business. But the Germans were good at everything and I often used to wish they were on our side instead of the French.

PN:
What did you think of the French troops?

AWB:
Not a lot. They were the people who would go out of action with their quick firing guns and leave us with our Boer War guns which they were. They were breech loaders converted from muzzle loading. We used to ram the shell, in the Boer War, down the muzzle, down the barrel. We’d put the shell in, then you put a bag of cordite in, then the T-tube which fitted into the breech. When you pulled the lever to fire the gun there was a spark from the T tube which ignited the cordite which ignited the shell. Now, with the quick firing guns it was pick up, ram in, shut, bang! Pick up, ram in, shut, bang! We had the same eventually but not until the Somme in 1916.

We went out with vicious looking guns which were camouflaged and such like and which we’d used in training before the war. They were breech loaders converted from the Boer war which I remember celebrating as a kid; waving our flag and such like.

PN:
Why did you join the Territorials in the first place?

AWB:
Just because it was fashionable to do so. I also gave a wrong age like so many more. I put twelve months on my age to get in. I had the date tattooed on my arm and I’ve always regretted it. FMC - For My Country - RFA 1912. That was February 1912 and I belonged to a church then, Church of Christ; Baptists and they all ignored me. And eventually they were trying to buy me out, which I agreed to, which cost £20 in those days, because they objected to me walking about in uniform. Then the ‘14-’18 war broke out.

We were at camp at the time and we were mobilized while we were at camp and that’s when we came here to Chelmsford. We arrived at Chelmsford in ’14.

Half the church people were consciencious objectors and the other half were not. Our football team originated from the church and when I was down here in Great Baddow I saw members of our football team arriving in the brigade and the division. Some were in the infantry, some were in the artillery and some came to us. My pal who was a friend from about the age of ten years was more or less a consciencious objector but he came into the army. He eventually became my brother-in-law and was later a church deacon but he never altered his opinion about war. He didn’t want it to happen.

PN:
So when the war broke out you were all stirred up with patriotic fervour were you?

AWB:
Well, one reason I joined the artillery was my father used to be a sergeant in the cavalry - regular army. He was a junior boxing instructor and a rough rider and I always thought I’d like to be a rough rider. In those days there were no motor cars about – only an occasional one, open top with a woman sitting on with a big veil around her head and the old driver with a deerstalker hat and such like, and a fella in front with a red flag.

There were no cars to speak of, it was horses and they used to turn the horses into the fields: the baker’s horse, the coal carter’s horse, the milk horse and all those kind of things. As kids we used to go into the field and catch them and ride them round the field bareback. My pal and I tried to join the Royal Canadian Police in 1911 but when we went to the recruiting sergeant he told us to go away and come back when we were six foot tall. Well the other one was stumpy like me - he belonged to the church as well - so we said we’d join the army. The next thing I know, he joined the army and I joined the territorials. He was in the Kings Royal Rifles and the church bought him out. He’d still got his uniform and everything and he was in the reserve and the day war broke out he left a note under his pillow and was never seen or heard of again. He was killed at Neuve Chappelle.

That was how things happened. It was a matter of being, “alright, we’ll bat” and in that respect I think the youth of the country should be like that. What could have happened if they’d all slacked behind and been consciencious objectors and didn’t go?

PN:
Were you offered bounty money to go to France as a territorial?

AWB:
All we got when war was declared was a mobilization fee of five pounds and we were asked to be volunteers to go anywhere in the world. We all volunteered with the idea of going to France but we got a silver Imperial Service badge we used to wear. That meant we could go anywhere and some of them were saying, “Blimey, they’re going to send us to Egypt” or “They’re going to send us to India”. Well, we finished up where we wanted to go: France.

PN:
You were a time-expired territorial in 1918 [No, 1917] weren’t you?

AWB:
I signed on for five years; four years in the territorials and one year in reserve. Well the time I was in the army that expired in 1917 and again I got a £5 grant being time expired and I had to sign on again as a territorial. Territorials were forgotten by then and we were all recognised as Field Artillery. The old territorial badges were taken off us and we were given RFA: Royal Field Artillery. A lot of my pals carried on after the war as territorials and I would have done if I’d been alright.

PN:
I remember you telling me you were gassed. Where was that and what time of year?

AWB:
I was gassed at Ypres.

PN:
Was that when the Canadians were gassed?

AWB:
No, Canadians were at Vimy. I can’t say who was there and who was not because we didn’t really know. We could see the old gateway of Ypres in the distance from our trenches and it was just a skeleton, there was no town left or anything left. It was Passchendaele actually; where we were knee-deep in mud. That’s where we were gassed.

We were gassed from time to time, so many times. We were gassed on the Somme in 1916 and the advance was so quick that we were through the gas cloud before it could do any harm although we felt the effects of it. The actual gassing though was at Passchendaele in 1917.

PN:
Did you have to come home or that or not?

AWB:
No, [laughs], I went into hospital for gas and deafness and they used to syringe my ears with a syringe as big as a football pump. That was with the Canadian Red Cross men. I had three weeks in hospital and then we were kicked out as A1 again. “Right, come on, out, out!” Some objected and said they were sick and suchlike but the officer didn’t know and didn’t care. You had duty and sickness parades and that was it; they couldn’t afford to do anything else. People were half gassed and half dead sometimes but they were still A1.

PN:
I thought you were gassed in 1915, you see, that’s why I asked.

AWB:
We were not actually gassed but we felt the effects of it. But 1915 was not worth bothering about as far as we were concerned. It was one of those things we soon got over. They had gas shells later on. They used to fire a kind of rocket and the gas used to disperse in the air over the troops

PN:
Now were on the Somme for 11 months, that’s right isn’t it? So you were there for the 1st July were you?

AWB:
That’s right. The 11 months included the 1st of July and before the 1st July. I’d say we were there at the beginning of the year, just after Christmas, preparing for July. The preparation was preparing the gun positions and getting the range from observation. [You’d have to] go forward into No-Man’s land and the trenches were so far apart on the Somme it was a different world. I even rode a horse into a village called Hebuterne which had all been cleared up where there the houses were skeletons and there was nothing left. I rode the horse along this village street and just turning the corner I saw a couple of Uhlans. You know what Uhlans were?

PN:
They were German cavalry weren’t they?

AWB:
That’s right, with their flat hats and their lances and such like. It frightened me to death. I think they were frightened to death too. I turned round in the saddle, there was nobody behind me, and I shouted, “Hi, come on!” and they turned and galloped off like hell and so did I.

PN:
They were the crack cavalry weren’t they?

AWB:
Yes, that’s right. They were when they started but like our cavalry there were so ew let there were no cracks left eventually.

PN:
Can you remember what part of the Somme you were firing on? What villages were nearby?

AWB:
Bapaume, Thiepval, Martinpuich… a load of them, quite a number of them. That’s where the first tanks went into action on the Somme.

PN:
Yes, they went in at Flers didn’t they?

AWB:
That’s right. Well I went back with my major to Martinpuich to see where they were under camouflage. In those days the tanks had two drivers and they had a couple of wheels at the back to guide them with. And it was a matter of if one driver was killed, the other one would go round in circles more or less until someone took over. They had tracks on each side as they do today but now they only need one driver and now they don’t have guide wheels on the back like they used to. At the back it was like driving a truck with two wheels and a frame and you could say it was tantamount to a boat being guided in the right direction.

PN:
What did you think when you saw the tanks for the first time?

AWB:
There were differences of opinion and I’m afraid I was one of them who thought they were death traps., well they were. They were alright when they went into action in the first place because they frightened the Germans to death. As soon as they got used to them though they were digging holes full of mud and as soon as they went down they stayed down. They certainly did a fine job because when they were out in the open on the plain they got the machine gunners who were firing from inside and they were well protected..

But it was surprising the number of tanks we saw, when the Germans got used to them, which had been smashed up and lay in a heap of rubble. They lay there for a long time and what became of them after that I don’t know; scrap iron I suppose. They were frightening things but fancy being inside that and being roasted alive and all that kind of thing.

Anyway it was one of those things we could not talk about in those days. All those that had seen them were sworn to secrecy and then when the Somme started they came forward. Don’t forget, they were going over virgin soil in those days, before the Somme offensive actually started. But when they got used to them it was a matter of going down a shell hole and staying down a shell hole. When you get a Johnson hole as big as this house foundations and you get a tank about twelve feet long, down in the water and the mud, what could you do? We were in mud up to our waists, wearing waders. When we took over the German positions too we were wading through water to get to the bunk.

The rats were our companions down there, thousands of rats; as many rats as there were lice. It’s surprising isn’t it where the rats came from?

I woke up one night in a little dug-out. There was Tiny Mitchell, six foot nothing, and myself so I had my head against the wall by the entrance and my feet up near his head. He’d got his head by my feet and his feet were sticking out into the trench. We suddenly both woke up and I said, “what’s that?” I could hear squeak, squeak, squeak and I felt something warm under my neck. It was a bloody rat! He grabbed it and threw it out and got it under the heel of his boot and says, “get out you so and so” and that’s where it lay until next morning. It had come in for warmth behind my nut. We used to swear the rats smoked our cigarettes!

We went to Vimy in 1915, before the Somme offensive. That was when the Canadians were supposed to take it - which I suppose they did - and we were with them. We took over German dug-outs there and fired their guns at them. That became a quagmire.

After that we found ourselves on the road again, in action somewhere else, and we never knew where till we got there. If we were going along the line for about five miles we’d probably travel fifty kilometres and hoodwink the Germans.

PN:
I’ve just got a little note here asking if conditions at Passchendaele were worse than on the Somme, which presumably they were, were they?

AWB:
Well I would say not comparable. The Somme became a quagmire. It was ok when we first arrived because the ground was firm enough, but after a few months of horses and guns and marching infantry and such like it was knee deep in mud. The only point about it, we moved about more on the Somme; we moved quicker on the Vimy Ridge; we moved about quicker than we could when we went to Passchendaele. Passchendaele had already had the First Battle of Ypres and we were there for the Second Battle of Ypres and by that time the troops were not moving very far at all.

PN:
That was 1917, wasn’t it?

AWB:
That’s right. We were there all through the Summer until I was invalided home in October.

PN:
Can you tell me about that because I know you told me last time that you were wounded. You got shell splinters in the leg didn’t you?

AWB:
In the shin.

PN:
How did that happen? Were you firing at the gun when something came over?

AWB:
I was being taken away as a gas invalide when a shell burst and that’s all I knew about it. That was at Passchendaele. [I was taken away in a] field ambulance. It troubled me for a long time but it doesn’t trouble me now. I had a full pension for a long time which I think was about twenty nine shillings in those days. I’ve forgotten really.

PN:
Did you ever play Crown and Anchor?

AWB:
No I did not, but the funny part about it is that my brother-in-law did. When we were broke after coming from the trenches, he used to get my brother-in-law, another brother-in-law and myself [and] he used to loan us money to sit down by him while he called out all the things they called out at Crown and Anchor: “Who’ll back the old mudhook” and such like, and we used to put some of his money on the Crown and Anchor board. When the crowd had gathered round - soldiers like - we used to slide away. He used to slip us some money and we would go to the canteen which was in a tent and we would get rice, tinned milk and various other things from there. I acted as cook for the three of us: we had a fire over a brazier – in a tent when the enemy were dropping their bombs which they used to drop from the plane by hand then in those days, and that’s the only time I’ve ever had anything to do with Crown and Anchor. But he was not always winning. They broke him once and he had to go round borrowing money to get it ready to start up again. But no, as regards Crown & Anchor, I’ve never played it apart from that and I’ve never played cards or anything else for money. Not even now would I back or bet on anything.

PN:
How did you spend your free time then, when you were out of the line?

AWB:
Working! [Laughs]. When we had free time out of the line we would get a day off to one of those towns like Boulogne and we suddenly found we were working. We were going out to Boulogne with head gear and picking up horses from the re-mount depot, then riding them back; a matter of eighty kilometres bareback: ride one, leave one.

As regards time, when we were out of action for a rest it was laughable. We were up about four o’clock in the morning exercising horses, grooming horses, watering horses, cleaning the harness, and by that time it was about eight o’clock and time to have breakfast if we were lucky. Then it was taking the horses out for exercise again or gunnery drill; gunnery drill which we knew by heart, we used to do it automatically. Out of action we had to do gun drill by numbers, there was no time to sit and lark about. As soon as we thought we would have a rest during the afternoon, the whistle would sound to fall in. They did away with bugle calls in the line. Then it was fatigue party wanted for this, that and the other. There was plenty of fatigue parties. There was no rest out of action. I guarantee when the Germans were not firing when we were in action, we had more rest than we had when we were out of action.

The infantry were the same. When you came out of action it was a matter of cleaning up and getting rid of the lice if we could. You’d turn up the collar and find a mass of lice underneath, get a candle and shoot them with the candle: bang, bang, bang, bang; dead lousy.

PN:
Did they ever send any medication out to get rid of the lice, gas crystals and things like that?

AWB:
[Laughs]. No, no not to us anyway. Whether other people had it, I don’t know. I even came home on a month’s leave and found myself killing the lice a week after I’d got home. We stood outside New Street Station, my sister and I, and she said, “Oh dear, come on we’d better go home.” When I got home I turned up my tunic collar and they were crawling along in thousands. I had a hot iron, I had a candle at home and all that kind of thing, dropped my clothes through the bathroom window, the under-clothes, and got rid of those that way. And by the time I went back at the end of the month I was clean. But by the time I’d been in France for twenty four hours I was dead lousy again. Everybody was the same. Our first pal we found was most clean. He used to take his shirt off and wash himself up to the shoulders under a canvas bucket. Someone shouted out, “Farmer, you’re lousy, look under your arms.” He was dead lousy under his arms and when we had a look we were all the same.

PN:
When you came home from France, what did you think of people’s attitude to the war in Britain? Did it conflict with yours? Were you despondent by that time and were they still all patriotic?

AWB:
They were patriotic, yes. There used to be hundreds of people meeting relatives at Victoria station and the other stations and it was very funny. I remember one incident quite well when a woman called out, “Do you know our George? He’s in the artillery as well.” One bloke yelled out, “thousands of others are too missus.” There was a general laugh about it if we knew her George who was in the artillery. We didn’t know our next door neighbour sometimes.

PN:
Did you talk about the war to your family when you came home?

AWB:
Not much. We were allowed to write uncensored letters in green envelopes and we could tell our family what we liked without mentioning places. Well, they could tell from our letters, and also from our condition when we got home. I arrived home at one o’clock in the morning with a rifle, a hundred rounds of ammunition and a sheepskin coat, saturated with mud and dead lousy. Because when I came on leave they called out, “You’re wanted – Battery. Here y’are you’re going on a month’s leave and here’s five pounds.”

Well the five pounds became a hundred pounds and the hundred pounds was soon spent. It meant that [when] were were discharged we have very much less money than we thought we’d got because we [had] had it in advance.

PN:
Were you glad of leave though?

AWB:
I was glad of leave but I thought that in a way I’d rather not go home. Several pals had come home and a fortnight after, or a few days after they were smashed up. It usually followed that way: a bloke would go on time-expired leave, come home, enjoy himself and seem to get careless when he got back or run into something that was being fired in his direction. I was not back for very long before I was gassed. I was home in the August ‘17 and in the October I was back in this country on a Red Cross train.

PN:
There was nothing you could do about it though was there?

AWB:
No, it was one of those things which happened. I’ve known fellows, gunner friends of mine on the gun, who’ve been buried by a shell and crawled out alive. Our whole battery staff took refuge in a German dug-out at Vimy where they installed their field telephones and one shell dropped on them and we never saw them again. We collected them in sandbags. It’s just how things happen.

PN:
I suppose you became a fatalist.

AWB:
Not really. No, I think it was more annoyance. Had we given way to our feelings, well I don’t think we should have survived. There was always a seamy side and always something to make you laugh about and talk about and swear about. And the first thing we thought of was shelter; getting shelter for ourselves, building one out of German materials. Their dug-outs were forty five feet deep and all built of interlocking beams. We used to scrounge ours from their trenches and their dug-outs when we broke them up and set them in the street. While they were lying in their trenches for twelve months or so doing nothing, they were digging deep dug-outs. One position we took over at Passchendaele was an underground labyrinth of offices lit by electricity. We never had that until we took it off them.

PN:
A lot of it was concrete as well.

AWB:
Well, concrete around the entrances, yes. mostly they were built of interlocking pieces made in Germany and brought up the line. They could dig a hole and put up a framework, plonk and the weight of the earth would hold it together, like dovetailing drawers. You can just imagine a beam across the top and two uprights and they were the sizes as required.

PN:
Our generals didn’t believe in digging deep dug-outs because they thought we’d be moving forward all the time, didn’t they?

AWB:
I don’t think we knew how to concentrate on building interlocking timber for dug-outs and such like and the answer was that everybody wanted to go forward, never mind the generals. [The idea was] “Let’s get out of this hole and find somewhere else.” Invariably we found something better but the only thing is, as I’ve said before, is that when we got to the German dug-outs the entrances were facing the German lines. It was the same as the gun positions. The entrance for the gunners was facing the German lines. So we used to turn the guns round and fire that way. But we didn’t stay there long enough…

The longest period we stayed at all: one on the Somme in preparation for it, and the second one at Passchendaele. That’s the place where I fell down a shell hole full of water. I was lying in a trench dug-out, a bunk arrangement, with nothing on, for a fortnight while my clothes were drying round a bucket.

PN:
Did you make the bunks in the dug-outs out of the duckboard tracks?

AWB:
Well, I’ll be quite candid about this. If we found any duckboard, which we did at times, particularly from the ablution rooms, then it was chopped up for firewood so that we could have a fire in a bucket in the gun position or the dug-out. We didn’t think of preserving that kind of thing although we saved the longer pieces of wood for building our dug-outs. In the first place, when we got to France in 1915, we used to chop small trees to make shelters. You’d bank up the earth on each side of the gun and put timber cross the top. You know what happened eventually, it all collapsed, but it was there long enough for us to use.

PN:
What did you think of the generals, people like Haig?

AWB:
The generals? Well, we were so far from them we didn’t have much to do with them, we only heard of them. The only time I saw one to speak to was when I was being pulled up for riding a horse too fast. I wasn’t riding him, the horse was riding me. He was running away with me but I wouldn’t let him stop. That’s the only time I had anything to do with a general so what the generals did in their wisdom I just don’t know. They seemed to have done well; the outcome was good as far as we were concerned.

PN:
So you had faith in them then?

AWB:
Oh, they were there for a purpose. We had got to have faith in somebody. We had faith in our own officers and I was always out with our major. He was a good old top. He’d say, “Come and have a look at this Bert. What do you think of that?” At one time I said to him, “have you got it right sir?” He said, “what?” I said, “this has a red cross on the roof.” He said, “that’s the one. He said that’s not a red cross place at all, not a hospital, it’s an ablutions room.” The Gemans were coming out with towels round their necks. So we ranged onto that building and fired a few shrapnel shots over I and they all came running out with nothing on. They’d been bathing. They had tubs like we had: barrels cut in two. You’d stand in a barrel and a bloke would bring a canvas bucket of water and pour it all over you. That was our bath. So that was it and he was the one I went with to see the tanks eventually at Thiepval on the Somme.

PN:
Just one final point. I’ve got down here that you’ve got two numbers. Originally you were number 943. Now was that your Territorial number?

AWB:
943 was my old number. The territorials originated from the Volunteers and the Volunteers were mostly ex soldiers and such like. Then in 1908 they changed the Volunteers to the territorial army and that’s when we all wanted to go. We all wanted to be dressed up in uniform and ride through the streets of Birmingham on horseback.

A lot of my friends who used to go to the church with me and who played in the football team, joined up. There was Harry Palmer and Les Palmer and Arthur Palmer who were all brothers and several others of our football team and some we never saw again. We wished each other good luck and that was that. Arthur and Harry, we never saw them again, they didn’t come back. They were with the Warwickshire infantry and that was that. They went up joyfully, full of song and such like, marching up to the Somme front, and they finished. ‘Course, the Germans must have known about this preparation for the Somme offensive as well as we did because they were always ranging on us with their guns.

They always had the observation balloons up which in the Second war became barrage balloons. Those balloons had a cradle and you’d see a couple of observers in the cradle, with glasses, ranging on the German lines. Then you would see on the opposite side, the Germans doing the same. Then one of our planes would go over and fire two or three shots and down the balloon would go, bump. The observers would come out by parachute and it happened time and again on our side of the line and on their side of the line.

End