World War 1 Veterans

370395 Pte Francis George Seddon, 8th London Regt

2012-01-01T16:14:00.000Z

I interviewed Francis Seddon in November 1986 when he was then aged 89. Born on the 11th June 1897, Francis - always known as Frank - had joined the 8th (City of London) Battalion, The London Regiment (Post Office Rifles) one week before his 17th birthday on the 4th June 1914. He was given the number 1959. Frank had left school at the age of 14 and taken a job as telegraph messenger for the Post Office. Born and bred in London's East End and still living in London, The Post Office Rifles was a logical choice. As Frank told me, "I was young and active and full of adventure and I fancied the territorials. There was no sign of war." I'll let him take up the story in August 1914.

"We were on our way to camp, Eastbourne I think it was, and the train got as far as Three Bridges and stopped. Then the rumours started going around. The train shot us back to London Bridge where we detrained and marched to our barracks in Bunhill Row with a band playing. When we got there we were paraded and lined up and our colonel addressed us. His words were, "the ultimatum to Germany expired at midnight. The Post Office Rifles will be mobilised." And a big cheer went up, I remember that.

"I was with several friends, all boy messengers, about half a dozen of us I suppose: Harfleet, Johnny Harris, Greig Haynes and some others I can't recall now. We were all about the same age and we all came from the same office: West Central London. [1780 William A J Harfleet must have joined up in late January or early February 1914. 1816 John F Harris must have joined up in February 1914. I have been unable to identify Greig Haynes].

"My parents were terribly worried about me going to fight. In fact when I was at camp they came down to see me to see if I was alright. I wasn't a bit worried though, I was enjoying it. We were addressed by the Bishop of London and in his sermon he said, "I would not like to see England a German province." Because at that stage it was a critical time and the Old Contemptibles were fighting for their existence in France. They really wanted the territorials to volunteer and we got around the contract about home service by volunteering [to serve overseas].

First of all we occupied the basement of King Edward Building in the City of London and we occupied that for two weeks. We was having kit inspections and getting our equipment ready and eventually we marched all the way down to East Grinstead and we set up a camp there. That was our first stop. After that we went to Abbots Langley and that's where the 1st Battalion went to France from. I was too young though, even though I'd volunteered, and so I and a few others went to Cuckfield near Haywards Heath in Sussex. I was there four or five months and a nice billet it was. I spent Christmas there and blow me, my mother and sister came down to see me, all that way. They was more worried than I was.

"We eventually went out to France about May 1916 and all of us pre-war telegraph boys was together. I spent my nineteenth birthday in the trenches and I got my bullet on the 7th October at the Battle of the Somme. We had what they called a creeping barrage when we went over and in between the bursts there were German snipers picking us off one at a time. That's how I got caught. I crawled to our trenches, inch by inch, and a bloke who was in the trench helped me down. I was taken to the nearest field hospital and was sent from there to another little town, Dijon I think. I was there for about a week and then crossed the Channel in a hospital ship. From there up to Bradford and we was heroes then; top VIPs. Everything was laid on for us: travel, theatre, music halls, cigarettes; everything was laid on for us because they knew we'd given our lives in the trenches to save England.

"I was nearly twelve months recovering from that wound and I had electric treatment and all kinds of things. Of course, the nerves had been severed in my leg which never really got well."

Frank eventually rejoined his battalion but never served overseas again. Instead, he became a sergeant instructor, passing out at Aldershot and then helping to train up young eighteen-year old soldiers. At 21 years old, Frank was now a seasoned veteran and he would later receive the Territorial Force War Medal along with the British War and Victory medals; a collectable trio by dint of being underage and having volunteered to serve overseas.

Writing to me in February 1987 after I had sent him a typescript of our interview, Frank wrote:

"Very interesting, however I want you to know that my main concern is what happens today. I am half blind and half deaf caused by hospital treatment. Furthermore, during my treatment, I was evicted from my house and home by and Act of Parliament. I had paid rent for 18 years but along with many ex-servicemen, evicted at the end of our war. You probably do not remember that famous Lloyd George speech [where he said] we will make England a land fit for heroes to live in. Being evicted was a deep down body blow. I am now in the last few days of my life but my record still remains: Post Office Territorials 1914."

When he died in November 1990 at the age of 93, Frank Seddon was one of the last Post Office Rifles veterans of the First World War.

POR cap badge cut into chalk at Fovant courtesy of Panoramio.

25907 Dvr James Goodson, RFA

2011-11-25T06:06:00.001Z

I interviewed James Goodson on the 5th November 1988 at the Royal Star & Garter Home in Richmond-upon-Thames.

James was born in Bethnal Green, east London on the 26th December 1883. He joined the Royal Field Artillery on the 24th August 1902, signing up for three years with the colours and nine on the reserve. As he told me when I interviewed him, "When the First World War come, I had just twenty days to do on the reserve. My reserve service would have finished on the 24th August and I wouldn't have been liable to go. Instead, I was overseas in a few days."

James Goodson was a feisty character and didn't pull any punches during the few hours that I spent with him. Yesterday, on Twitter, IWM_Centenary (The Imperial War Museum) noted that on the 24th November 1918, in a speech at Wolverhampton, Lloyd George had asked, "What is our task? To make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in." Seeing this, I was reminded of James Goodson's response when I had asked him whether he felt that Britain was a land fit for heroes. This is what he said:

"When I finally left the army I went to my job where I'd been when I'd been called up, and the guvnor hadn't got time to give me a job. So that was my thoughts about that: "well done my good and faithful hero, here's a ticket to the workhouse for you." That was my thoughts then and it was the thoughts of a good many more boys who come home. They come home to nothing, that was the tragedy of it. That was the tragedy of the war as far as I was concerned. Men pawned their medals directly they got them, so much so that the government had to bring out an order: "No more medals to be pawned." So you know what they done? Sewed them on a waistcoat and pawned the waistcoat. That's how they got round that. They was the heroes. The country badly let them down. Badly."

James Goodson served throughout the war and went into Germany with the Army of Occupation, finally returning home in 1920. When I met him, he stood about five feet nothing in his socks, was as bright as a button, nobody's fool, and 104 years old. He died In April 1990 aged 106. The photo of James on his horse dates to around 1904.

200209 A/Cpl Archie Walter Parker, 4th Suffolk Regt

2011-09-12T23:02:00.004+01:00

I never met Archie Parker, but I received several letters from him in 1987 and 1988 and the following extracts are taken from these.

"My name is Archie Walter Parker and I was born in Ipswich, Suffolk on the 20th September 1895. I joined the 4th Battalion, Suffolk Regiment in 1912. Our drill hall was at Ipswich so it was easy to go there from our homes. We used to go about two nights a week which was very handy. I joined them because they were only territorials and we had regular work to go to. I was in the local A Company and my number was 1630, later 200209.

[The 1911 census shows Archie living at 65 Rendlesham Road, Ipswich with his parents Albert William Parker (aged 43), Emma Parker (aged 40) and eight siblings. Millicent, at 21, was the eldest, whilst Arthur Wilfred Parker, at nine months, was the youngest. Fifteen-year-old Archie was working as a boot packer for a boot manufacturer.]

"In 1914 we went to Yarmouth for camp for a fortnight - as we thought - and then the war broke out so we had to come back to Ipswich to be mobilized at our drill hall. We went to Felixstowe, doing duty on the coast, and our billet was a large golf house from which the golfers had had to leave in a hurry, leaving a lot behind. We were then relieved and we went in the country to sleep in the fields. One was in Tiptree in Essex, near a strawberry field. Then we went to Colchester, having to march about ten miles to the Severalls Hospital which was then a lunatics' hospital. We slept in tents there and we had to run around the hospital twice before breakfast. We used to march down to Colchester and do sentry duty at an officers' billets and we used to go out to a village called Elmstead to train doing trench building and the like.

"One day our officers asked who would volunteer to go to Egypt, Malta or Gibralter. Many of us did and we ended up on an old cattle steamer at Southampton. We landed in Le Havre, France, and what a surprise! We could do nothing about it, there it was. We marched up a steep hill and went into tents where there were some troops who had been wounded. I met a soldier there who had been wounded and was from Ipswich, and afterwards both he and I worked for the same firm. Then we went by train to Rouen for about two nights, and then to St Omer. This was the British Headquarters where General Roberts died and my brother, who was a sergeant, went down to the station as a bearer.

[Archie's brother was 1100 Sergeant William George Parker, later 83371 CQMS Machine Gun Corps, and later still RQMS MGC]

9732 Pte Stan Brown, 1st Leics, later 32526 1st South Staffs

2011-09-11T10:14:00.005+01:00

Stan Brown was the second Great War veteran I ever interviewed. I met him in 1981 and visited him many times until his death in 1987. A South Londoner, Stan had moved to my home town of Chelmsford in Essex and was an active member of the Chelmsford branch of The Old Contemptibles Association. He was also its youngest member and perhaps, not surprisingly, the last of that band to "fade away". Writing on behalf of the Chelmsford branch in the last ever issue of The Old Contemptible magazine, "the official organ of the Old Contemptible Association" in December 1975, Stan wrote,

"I am delighted to say we are going to carry on as a branch, after attending a full Area Committee meeting and finding the other branches with the Area are going to, we could not let them down and will soldier on. There are only six of us..."

Stan Brown was born David Stanley Brown in Dulwich on the 31st March 1897. I always knew him as Stan, and all of his surviving military records record him as Stanley Brown. Interestingly though, he signed off his editorial in the 1975 Old Contemptible magazine as DSB. He told me,

"I was christened David Stanley Brown but my mother never allowed me to be called David. As far as she was concerned, the name was like ditch water. I found out afterwards that my father's eldest brother was called David and he'd died in a bloomin' inebriate zone in Streatham."

On joining the army he told me,

"In 1913 I was apprenticed to a dentist. One day he accused me of making a false plate. I said I hadn't and I slung the thing at him. I knew I'd be in hot water so I ran away and slept on a park bench that night. I enlisted at Herne Hill the next day and became attached to the East Surreys."

A surviving entry in the Surrey Recruitment Registers notes that Stan joined the 4th (Extra Reserve) Battalion of the East Surrey Regiment at Kingston-on-Thames on the 16th May 1913. He would have been 16 years old, although he is recorded as being 17 years and 10 months. In Stan's words,

"I first joined the East Surrey militia [it would have been the militia before 1908 when it became the Special Reserve and Extra Reserve] after telling them I was eighteen. They didn't believe me but said if I stayed for four months they'd make me eighteen."

His papers note that he stood five feet, five and three quarter inches tall, weighed 116 pounds, had blue eyes and brown hair and a distinctive mole (which I personally don't recall). His trade was noted not as a dental technician but as an electrician's fitter, employed by W A Wilson of 150 Norwood Road, Norwood.

"When I joined the East Surreys," Stan explained, "the Commanding Officer asked if anyone liked gymnastics. Like a fool I said I did and I became the sparring partner for the battalion's boxing champion. This chap had a cauliflower ear and I must have clouted it because he whacked me about so much that he broke my nose and landed me up in hospital. The East Surrey Regiment had a bad reputation as a regiment and were known as the drunken half-hundred. After the boxer clouted me I think they were quite worried because he could have done me serious injury and I was still only young. Anyway, after the four months I joined the Leicesters as an eighteen year-old as my brother [Ewart Gladstone Brown] was already in the regiment and was well-liked."

Actually, as the records show, Stan's time with the East Surrey's amounted to a little over two months. He joined the Leicestershire Regiment on the 23rd July 1913 and was given the number 9732. His brother, who had joined the regiment in 1911 and would be invalided out of the army in 1915 with a bullet wound to his head, picked up at Neuve Chapelle, was 9302. Again, the Surrey Recruitment Registers noted Stan's particulars: eighteen years old (he was still only sixteen), five feet six inches tall, 119 pounds with a fresh complexion.

Fast forward a year and Stan is in France, having arrived with the 1st Battalion on the 9th September 1914. He was seventeen years and five months old and must have been one of the youngest soldiers of the BEF. His brother Ewart, (known to Stan as 'Glad) was serving with the 2nd Battalion in India and wouldn't arrive in France until December 1914. Therefore, although it was Glad who had seen more service with the Leicesters, it was Stan who would end up being the Old Contemptible.

"I saw fighting on the Aisne, in the caves on the heights above the Aisne. We went through a place called Vailley and we went three months without pay, cigarettes or anything else. By the time we got to Vailley our shoes had got holes and I remember Captain [W. C.] Wilson, my Company Commander, wearing a bloomin' sailor's overcoat and I was wearing a pair of German boots and a pair of short corduroy knickers. We never went out to France with our best uniform; that was supposed to be sent to Paris for when we got there. But we never got them and never found a bloke who had his either."

Stan also took part in the Christmas truce on Christmas Day 1914 when the battalion was at Chapelle Armentieres.

"At Christmas 1914 we had a kind of armistice if you like, to say there'd be no firing on Christmas Day, but it didn;t happen just like that. On Christmas Eve, as far as we were concerned, we was still at war, but in the evening on sentry-go we heard singing from Jerry. He was only fifty yards away and they was saxons to the best of my recollection. We had the Stand-To because we didn't know what all the singing was about to start off with. On Jerry's wire there were bits of paper, bits of rag, and all sorts of things saying "Happy Christmas", some in German, some in English because a lot of the Germans had worked in England. They held up a bottle of wine and I know our bloke shot at it. Well it all got quiet. I don't know if we had breakfast that morning, I suppose we did; we had a drink. Everything was peaceful and eventually one of the Germans held up a card with "Merry Christmas" written on it, and come on over the top.

"Everybody was dubious in our trench, saying kind of, should we or shouldn't we and all of this bloomin' caper, and then one or two more Germans come up. Then eventually we decided, well they haven't got any rifles on 'em and we went over. And our Buchanan-Dunlop who come to us as Battalion Commander, he kind of led the singing!

"We didn't all group in one place, we was spread along an area about a hundred yards and we mixed in with some others and they give us a bottle of wine and cigars and we thought to ourselves, well they must be bloomin' well-off in Jerry-land. All we got was a tin of Tickler's jam and we went back into the trench and brought out a couple or three tins of jam to give to these Jerries."

Lt Frederick Mason Matthews 2/1st Essex Yeomanry

2011-08-28T19:22:00.014+01:00

Frederick Mason Matthews was one of the first Great War veterans I interviewed, and I see from my notes that I met him at his home in Great Dunmow in Essex on the 7th October 1981 when he was 90 years old. Frederick was born in the nearby village of Good Easter on the 27th March 1891 and had been a farmer before the outbreak of war.

The 1911 census shows Frederick living at home with his family at Falconer's Hall, Good Easter. The family comprised his father, mother, brother Reginald and two servants. Frederick and Reginald are noted as assistant farmers.

Falconer's Hall was a significant property and the family was almost certainly well-off. This modern-day photo from geograph.org gives a glimpse of the property viewed from Souther Cross Road:

Whilst this aerial shot courtesy of Google suggests that the immediate area appears to be little changed since Frederick and his family lived there:

My notes state Frederick's number with the Essex Yeomanry as 1818 but his MIC (top) shows that this number was in fact a Hertfordshire Yeomanry number. I had known that he was later an Acting Captain and the MIC confirms this. I presume a service record also survives but I have yet to investigate this.

I do know from my own research into regimental numbers that 1818 for the Hertfordshire Yeomanry dates to around the 3rd September 1914 and that, according to Frederick Matthews, he arrived at Southampton in October or November 1914. The MIC indicates that he arrived in Egypt on the 8th November and so he'd been in khaki for little over two months. Frederick remembers that,

"We arrived at Alexandria after twenty-four days' travel and from there we entrained for Cairo. On arrival there we marched to Abassia Barracks which were being occupied by regulars of the 3rd Dragoon Guards. We took over their horses and they went out to France."

Frederick Matthews served in Gallipoli, reaching Suvla Bay in August 1915:

"There were no landing places and the ship was brought as near to the shore as possible and we were told to wade in. The Turks were up in the hills and they could see our every movement. We hadn't been landed more than five minutes when we lost our colonel, shot through the head."

Lieutenant Colonel Samuel Gurney Sheppard DSO (above) died of wounds on the 21st August 1915 aged 50. He was educated at Eton and had been a member of the London Stock Exchange since 1887. He had won his DSO whilst serving with the Imperial Yeomanry in the Second South African War. He is buried in Green Hill Cemetery on Gallipoli.

"After the initial landing we went to a rest camp and then we were told at night to get ready to go up to the front line trenches and that someone would guide us up there. A chap turned up and we later discovered that he must have been a Turkish officer in disguise. He told our C.O. to follow him and we all landed up in Turkish trenches. Of course, when we discovered where we were we all got our as quick as possible and made our way back to our own lines.

"Later on we were sent up to the front line at Chocolate Hill and the troops who we relieved had been there for three weeks without a break. They were absolutely dead asleep at their posts and our first duty was to bury the dead bodies which lay in front of our wire and which had been there for some while. The heat was unbearable and of course the flies were terrible. It was not a nice job. There were some wells which had been sunk by the Turks long ago but they'd all been poisoned. There was no end of illness with people going sick with dysentry and enteric fever. I cam away with eneteric fever and dysentry in October 1915. I was a stretcher case and was sent to Aberdeen for convalescence for three months, followed by two months' sick leave. I then applied for and was given a commission [with the 2/1st Essex Yeomanry] in England."

Frederick Mason Matthews, who was immensely proud of the fact that he was the first person in Good Easter to volunteer during WW1, died in Chelmsford in December 1983 aged 92.

A/200935 Pte Arthur Gilbert Sewell, 21st KRRC

2011-03-09T20:48:00.005Z

I interviewed Arthur Sewell at his home in Galleywood, Essex in December 1982 when he was 91 years old. He was born in Galleywood on 12th May 1891 and was working as a storeman for Baddow Brewery when he attested under the Derby Scheme in December 1915. He was then aged 24 years and seven months and was called up on the 8th February 1916, joining the 3/6th Essex Regiment. He was given the number 5962. He was later transferred to the regular 2nd Battalion of the Essex Regiment and given a new number, 40474.

"We were moved from Chelmsford to Warley and then to East Ham where we were billeted in private houses. Then we were transferred to Wendover in Buckinghamshire where I completed most of my training. We arrived in France in mid 1916 and were training at Etaples for a short time before being moved up to the Somme.

"The trenches were awful, there's no getting away from it. You were up to your knees in mud and once it got under your skin it was weeks before it would come out again.

"You'd have a dug-out with old iron and bits and pieces and you'd go in there providing there hadn't been a gas attack. Our cookers used to get shelled and bust up and many a time we had to make do on cheese and bully beef. I remember one day we had a hard biscuit and a raw kipper.

"We'd go over the top having shelled their trenches and they wouldn't be there because they'd retreated. Then they'd shell us and even if we got back safely we'd hear the wounded out there and some of us would have to volunteer to go back through the barbed wire and get them.

"We'd have to go out on listening duty and it was the daftest thing. You could hear the Germans laughing and singing but we couldn't report what we heard because we couldn't speak German.

"In the trenches we'd do two hours on the fire-step, four in the trench and then rest. One occasion when it was bitterly cold and snowing I covered myself with blankets which froze solid on me. You can't really explain to anyone what it was like, you had to be there."

Fortunately, as I discovered this evening on Ancestry, water-damaged papers from Arthur's service record survive in WO 363. He was posted to the 3rd Essex Regiment on the 28th September 1916 and posted immediately to the 2nd Battalion on the same day. On the 11th September 1916 he was transferred to the 21st King's Royal Rifle Corps and given the number A/200935. Arthur recalled this number when I met him and also recalled his original attestation date as 15th December 1915 although his papers show that he actually attested four days earlier than this.

On 1st April 1917, Arthur Sewell was wounded. He recalled, "We were repairing a little opening in the parapet and although we didn't take much notice of it at the time, there was a sniper opposite it. On the occasion that I happened to be leading, he fired and I got a bullet which went through my chest and down into my arm, wrecking my nervous system. I was very lucky not to lose my life. The buckle on my braces directed the trajectory of the bullet and if it had gone the other way it would have been in my heart. They carted me off to a Canadian hospital at Boulogne and I was in there a month before being taken to Blighty. They said that I'd be near home in London but I found myself in Scotland where I stayed for nine months until I had my operation. I left there on Christmas Eve 1917 and was then transferred to Chelmsford hospital. I had electric treatment for four years and was finally pensioned off in 1921 after I had my final exam at Chelsea."

Arthur's service record confirms that he was admitted to Edinburgh War Hospital on the 26th April 1917 and that he was discharged on the 6th December that year, his home address given as Lower Green, Galleywood, Chelmsford. He was discharged from the army on the 27th December 1917 and was awarded a pension of 27 shillings and sixpence, reduced to 22 shillings after four weeks.

During my short time with Arthur Sewell, the only time I met him, he mentioned, "my mother received a letter saying that I'd been wounded and then another to say my brother had been killed."

Searches on Find My Past reveal that his brother was William (or Willie) Sewell who was killed in action on the 19th May 1917 whilst serving with the 2nd Battalion of the South Wales Borderers. Like Arthur who was one year older, Willie had previously served with the Essex Regiment. His Essex Regiment number - 33190 - suggests that he probably joined up a little earlier than Arthur. William Sewell has no known grave and is commemorated on Bay 6 of the Arras Memorial. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission notes that he was 24 years old and was the son of Arthur Peter and Lilian Sewell of Lower Green, Galleywood, Chelmsford, Essex.

Arthur Sewell, who lived in Galleywood all his long life, died the year after I met him. His death was recorded in the December quarter of that year.

12097 Pte Frederick James Cutts, Army Cyclist Corps

2011-01-25T06:19:00.004Z

Frederick James Cutts was born in Brixton on the 27th December 1897. When I interviewed him in the early 1980s he told me that he had joined the army on Empire Day - the 24th of May - 1916. Surviving papers in WO 363 confirm that to be the case, but he had attested for service in January of that year. He had given his age as 18 years, his trade as "clerk" and his address as 144 Lowden Road, Herne Hill, South-West London. He stood five feet five and a quarter inches tall and gave his next of kin as his father, William Ernest Cutts, also of the same address.

Frederick joined the Army Cyclist Corps and was given the number 12097. He told me:

"After I joined up, my brother complained because I wasn't old enough. I got ticked off but I was sent to Chiseldon training camp in Wiltshire. Before the war, each division had a cyclist company and when war broke out they formed the Army Cyclist Corps. When I went abroad, I joined the 7th Corps Battalion. Our sign was the polar bear which obviously originated from the polar bear constellation of seven stars."

Frederick told me that he'd arrived in Rouen In January 1917. He was just slightly out as his service record notes that he embarked at Folkestone on the 20th February 1917 and landed in France the same day. He was posted to the VII Corps battalion on the 11th April 1917. On arrival in France, "when the company commander saw me he said, "oh, we've got the Boys' Brigade here."

Frederick Cutts spent three days in hospital in January 1918 with "debility" possibly occasioned by the freezing cold weather, and the following month he was given leave to the United Kingdom. He was in Peronne in France when the Germans launched their major offensive in March 1918 and remembered,

"On March 21st 1918 which was a foggy day, I was out on a detachment on my own when I was called back to HQ to be told that the Germans had broken through. We retreated so fast we had to leave a hundred bikes behind which we smashed up. A colleague and I were told to stay at our post at the citadel until our B Company commander came through with his party. My comrade and I observed a party of believed German cyclists accompanied by a section of the motorcycle machine gun corps and we made our way out of Peronne without further ado. We cleared the bridge which ran over the river just before it was blown up by the Royal Engineers."

In November 1918, Frederick received two weeks' compassionate leave to return to the UK to visit his father who was seriously ill. By the time he arrived home however, his father had already died and been buried. He remembers that when he left for the UK his place on the Lewis Gun team was taken by a man who was subsequently killed and "reported as the last man to be killed in the Great War." He had previously served with the Essex Regiment.

Frederick Cutts died in Chelmsford, Essex in June 1996 aged 99. A photo, taken in France, and his demob certificateare appended below.

10707 Pte Leonard Baker, 11th Essex Regt

2010-09-18T07:46:00.003+01:00

Synopsis
I interviewed Leonard Baker on the 13th July 1987 at Redbond Lodge in Great Dunmow, Essex. He was then 91 years old and in failing health. He was born at Duddenhoe End, Essex in April 1896 and was working as a farm labourer when war was declared. He joined the 2nd Essex Regiment in September 1914, joining up under regular terms of enlistment and as a career soldier rather than for the duration of the war. He was given the number 10707. Leonard was posted to the 11th Battalion soon after joining up and he arrived in France on the 30th August 1915 on the day that the 11th Battalion arrived as a battalion, overseas. The 11th Essex Regiment formed part of the 18th Infantry Brigade in the 6th Division.

Interview

PN:
Your name please.

LB:
Leonard Baker.

PN:
And when were you born?

LB:
I was born at Duddenhoe End, near Elmdon near Saffron Walden.

PN:
What year was that?

LB:
1896. I shall be 92 next April.

PN:
What was your trade before the war?

LB:
Farm labourer.

PN:
When did you join up?

LB:
I joined up, well, I joined up at Cambridge in 1911 but I didn’t pass. I went up to Whitehall, London but I didn’t pass there so I went home again. They took me down into a room and I had to wait there until four o’clock. I had a captain form the Navy and he come to see me and they wanted me to join the Navy [but] I wouldn’t join the Navy because I wanted to go with my mate. However, I got sent home again.

PN:
And that was 1911 you say?

LB:
That was 1911.

PN:
So that was a long while before the war then.

LB:
Oh yes.

PN:
You wanted to join the army because a friend was joining?

LB:
Yes.

PN:
Why were you at Cambridge?

LB:
Well we was out one Sunday night for a walk and two or three of us there said wed go down to Cambridge and try and pass and join the army.

PN:
Why weren’t you accepted for the army?

LB:
I was accepted at Cambridge but I wasn’t accepted up at Whitehall because my little fingers were [deformed]. I was born like that.

PN:
When the First War broke out, you joined up again.

LB:
Yes.

PN:
What year was that?

LB:
I joined up in 1914.

PN:
Where did you go to enlist?

LB:
I was out to France, up in the Ypres front. Nine months I was up at the Ypres front and then I got sent down. I can’t think of the name of the place now. I got sent right down south.

PN:
When you joined up when the war broke out did you join up with the 1st Essex or the 2nd Essex.

LB:
I joined up with the 2nd Essex when the First War broke out .

PN:
What division was that?

LB:
18th Brigade, 6th Division .

PN:
When did you first go out to France?

LB:
I think I went out to France the beginning of 1915.

PN:
Was it all Essex men in the battalion?

LB:
Yes, it was the Essex Regiment.

PN:
Did you join up at Saffron Walden? When the war broke out lots of men volunteered to join the army didn’t they? And you were one of them. Did you go down to the drill hall in Saffron Walden?

LB:
Yes.

PN:
And then you went out to France? Were you there for the Second Battle of Ypres?

LB:
I was there for the First Battle of Ypres.

PN:
In 1914?

LB:
Yes.

PN:
That was Christmas time?

LB:
Yes, I was out in 1914 .

PN:
Do you remember you number still?

LN:
My number? Ten seven oh seven. [10707]

PN:
And were you a private?

LB:
Private.

PN:
Were you wounded out there at all?

LB:
Well I did get hit in the leg with a bit of shrapnel but I never had to stop anywhere like.

PN:
Did you stay out in France and Belgium until the end of the war?

LB:
Yes. I was up the Ypres front over nine months and then they shifted us down south. I was in the 18th Brigade, 6th Division.

PN:
That was all regular soldiers wasn’t it? A regular division.

LB:
Yes.

PN:
So how did you come to be put into that division because you weren’t a regular soldier were you?

LB:
I joined up with the regulars you see. I was in the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Essex.

PN:
After you were refused at Whitehall in 1911 did you try and join up again?

LB:
Well yes. They refused me just because of my little fingers.

PN:
What I’m trying to work out is whether you joined up as a volunteer after the war had broken out or whether you’d already joined up and were called up as a reservist.

LB:
No, I joined up when the war broke out.

PN:
Where did you do your training?

LB:
Some at Brighton and several different places.

PN:
What were the conditions like when you got out there?

LB:
Poor; very bad. I was out on the Ypres front. I was at Ypres for nine months before I got shifted further south.

PN:
How far south? The Somme front or further south than that?

LB:
I was on the Somme front, yes. I can’t think of the names.

PN:
Do you remember playing Crown and Anchor or any of those sort of games?

LB:
Oh yes. I can remember being paid out one Friday and I went playing Crown & Anchor and I lost all my money that day.

PN:
I met a man last week in White Roding, who’s 95 now, and he used to run a Crown & Anchor board and he was quids in. He came out with a lot of money.

LB:
Me and my friend we used to run a Crown and Anchor board.

PN:
Because only three dice won didn’t they, and you’d take the rest of the money.

LB:
That’s it.

PN;
Did you play housey-housey?

LB:
Oh yes.

PN:
Did you come home on leave when you were out there?

LB:
Yes. I used to have leave every year. The first one I think was seven days and the next one was ten days,

PN:
You said you were in the 1st and 3rd Battalions [of the Essex Regiment] as well. Is that right?

LB:
I was in the 1st and the 2nd. I wasn’t in the 1st in the First World War; I was in the 2nd Battalion and the 11th Battalion .

PN:
What division was the 11th Essex in?

LB:
18th Brigade, 6th Division.

PN:
What about the 2nd Essex then?

LB:
I forget now. I liked the 2nd Essex. I was in the 1st Essex as well but that was when I come back and I was in Ireland.

PN:
So you were in the army for quite a while then weren’t you?

LB:
Yes, I done over seven years in the regulars.

PN:
So from 1914 until 1921?

LB:
Yes.

PN:
So you went to Ireland in 1921.

LB:
I had two turns out in Ireland. The first time I was out in Ireland I was up at… the big station in the north of Ireland.

PN:
Do you remember any places in France? Do you remember Albert and the golden virgin?

LB:
Yes, yes I do remember.

PN:
And when you were in the Ypres sector did you go to places like Poperinghe?

LB:
Poperinghe, yes. I know Poperinghe well. I used to come back for a rest at Poperinghe.

PN:
Did you got to Toc H at Poperinghe?

LB:
Toc H. I couldn’t tell you. I know our headquarters was at Ypres.

PN:
What was it like in the trenches.

LB:
To tell you the truth I was very lucky in a way. A captain come around – and this was before we had tin hats – and I should think there were three or four hundred [dead and wounded] soldiers laid in a heap under a tree. He come round and picked out seven of us and he wanted another one so he picked me out. We was to take these wounded – well wounded and dead, there was more dead than wounded – across to a sunken road where the horse ambulances came and picked them up. I was lucky really, in a way, because we were there at five in the morning when the fighting broke out again and we were kept in the road.

PN:
That sounds as though there was a big battle going on at that time.

LB:
Yes there was.

PN:
What was the food like?

LB:
Well, to tell you the truth, me and my mate had a biscuit between us for two days. We had half a biscuit a day. Then one morning they come round and said you’d have to come down the valley, about a mile down the valley, to pick up some rations. They’d got them down the valley and they couldn’t get them up to us like. I know that what they give me was the fore part of a bullock; you know, the front legs and that, and I can remember I hadn’t had grub for two days, just half a biscuit and I ate a big lump of fat out there. Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t know, I thought I was going to snuff it. I did feel bad.

PN:
Did you move down to the Somme front?

LB:
Yes.

PN:
What was it like down there?

LB:
Jolly rough. I can remember help burying some Germans and well, they were some of the biggest blokes I’ve ever seen. German Guards they were, great big fellas.

PN:
Were you at Passchendaele.

LB:
Yes.

PN:
What was it like there?

LB:
Bad there.

PN:
Where do you think conditions were the worst?

LB:
I can’t think of the name of the place we went. I was up at Ypres and Passchendaele and then they shifted our battalion in the 6th Division, right down south.

PN:
When did you transfer to the 11th?

LB:
Well we had to go where they sent you? You never knew where you was going to?

PN:
Do you remember when you transferred to the 11th? Would that be 1916 or 1917?

LB:
Well it’s a job to remember.

PN:
When you joined up in 1914 they didn’t say anything about your fingers then?

LB:
Oh no. They’d take anybody then. They passed you off, no trouble about that.

PN:
Were you a religious man?

LB:
Oh yes, yes.

PN:
Can you remember the names of any of your officers?

LB:
I know we had one officer by the name of Bartlett. I can’t think of the [other] names now.

PN:
Did you enjoy life in the army?

LB:
Oh yes.

PN:
I suppose you must have done because you stayed on after didn’t you?

LB:
Yes.

PN:
You didn’t want to make a career of it though?

LB:
No. I lost my father and mother while I was in the war.

PN:
What was it like coming home on leave. Was it a relief?

LB:
Oh yes. We had leave every year. I had seven days the first time and ten days the next time.

PN:
How did they do it, by alphabetical order?

LB:
Yes. I was usually first because I was B.

[Ends]

33033 Sgt John Brett, 1st Bn, Essex Regiment

2010-06-20T04:42:00.007+01:00

Synopsis

John Brett was born in Southminster, Essex on the 22nd March 1891. I met him at an old people's home in Chelmsford in 1982 and conducted a brief interview with him. I later returned with the then curator of the Chelmsford and Essex Museum - David Jones - who conducted a fuller interview. The transcript below is my edited version of the one that is held by the Essex Regiment Museum in Chelmsford.

At no time during either interview, did John Brett reveal his army number and in all likelihood he had forgotten it. A search through birth and death registers confirms that he had no middle name, and this in turn narrows down the possibilities when it comes to looking at medal index cards. There are two John Bretts with Essex Regiment connections: one of these men also served with the Royal Engineers whilst the second man also served with the Labour Corps. There are two J Bretts but both of these men can be ruled out as their numbers do not fall in the range of numbers issued to Essex Regiment recruits in 1915.

My hunch is that John Brett was 33033 Sergeant John Brett, later 615465 Labour Corps. He says in the interview that he spent three Christmases at home. We know he was at home in 1918 and that he joined up in 1915. I think he attested under the Derby Scheme in November or December 1915 and received his notice to join the Essex Regiment in late 1916. His number, 33033, dates to around November that year. And so he spent Christmas 1915, 1916 and 1918 in England, and Christmas 1917 in France.

I took the photo above of John Brett when I first met him in 1982 and he died in Chelmsford in 1988 aged 97.

Interview

Could you tell me where and when you were born Mr Brett?

Southminster, 1891.

And what did your father do?

He worked with his father on a small farm; sort of labouring or doing anything – thatching or any kind of work with his father.

You presumably went to the village school, did you?

Yes

What was that like?

Alright yes, but I’m afraid I didn’t get on too well with the headmaster. He’d got his favourites. There was a family called Hoad. Their father used to train dogs for Sir Daniel Gooch who lived
In the Highlands and they were favourites of Mr Jonser my schoolmaster. I don’t know why he disliked me because I tried. He’d got his favourites and the Hoad family, there were three boys, they were his favourites.

When did you leave school, how old were you, do you remember?

Fourteen, fourteen years.

And did you go to work with your father then or did you go into another trade?

No, unfortunately my father died when I was only eight – so I don’t know. I forget really what I was doing ‘til the war came.

You would have been what, just over twenty, twenty three when war started?

That’s right, yes.

What was – how did you feel about the war? – You’d obviously seen in the papers about the war – what were your feelings about it? – Did you think it was a right war?

I’m against war myself. I don’t believe in wars. Why should we kill each other. If I were to shoot you Mr Jones, or your comrade, I’d be sent to prison – but when the war comes, they give you a rifle – you can shoot anybody, shoot you enemy. But why? Why can’t we all live happy together?

When did you join up and where did you join up?

1915 at Warley – I went to Warley Barracks – there for a day or two. Then I went to Etaples, in France and done my training there.

I see. When you joined up were you on your own or did you go with some friends?

If I remember, I had notice one morning by letter to attend Warley Barracks. I went by myself.

When you got to Warley do you remember, what was it like, what was your impression of the place? Do you remember anything of the uniform you were given or whatever? Did you have a uniform straight away?

Yes, we were given all our kit at Warley before we went overseas.

What Battalion were you in then?

I wasn’t posted at Warley what Battalion I was going to join – but when I was at Etaples. [It would appear that John Brett when to France as a draft for the Essex Regt, was posted to one of the Infantry Base Depots at Etaples, and then subsequently posted as part of a draft to the 1st Essex Regiment.]

Oh, I see. Were most of the men that joined with you at Warley, were they mostly from Essex?
Oh yes. One fellow from Bradwell–on- Sea, name of Copeland . I remember his name; and a lot of Southminster boys; local lads that I knew, got killed in the war. And you think about them now; all those years have passed, but you still think about them.

Do you remember any of their names?

Yes. Jimmy, Jim Thorogood , Harold Bishop, Mr Coote, seven or eight I remember their names, used to be pally with them before they joined up.

What were the conditions like at Warley? Was it a bit rough and ready?

Well it was new wasn’t it you see. If you hadn’t been a soldier it was all fresh, fresh surroundings. Get up early in the morning and you drill and break for dinner and break for tea, you didn’t get much spare time; not to call your own.You were generally on the go.

Was it generally drilling that you did at Warley?

No, as I said to you just now, I did most of my, of my drilling at Etaples, in France.

How did you get from Warley to Etaples?

By boat from Folkestone.

How did you get to Folkestone though? Did you go by train or did you march it?

We went by train.

Ah yes, and when you got to the other side, to France, what – how did you get to Etaples?

Went with hundreds more, by train. Out there the trains, you could get out of the train and run and catch it up before it got very far. Trains were very slow in France – very slow.

What was the morale of the men like? Were they all, you know, sort of ready to fight do you think?

It’s hard to say, hard to say. Individuals, you don’t know what an individual thinks, do you? I don’t know what you think about now.

So when you got to Etaples then, what happened then? What was the training like?

Oh, that was just hell, the training was terrible. ‘Come here! Come here! Go there! Fall in this lot! Fall in that lot! The sergeants and the instructors were very, very thorough, you know. What was their remark? ‘You won’t be able to play with your Grandmother, you’re here to soldier. Come on here! A lot of red tape. Then we, in the training, we used to, we had this rifle and we had a row of bags stuffed with straw, they represented a German. It was about so far, it was off and the sergeant said ‘Now charge’!. So you stick the bayonet into the bag of straw, pushing it in and out, and off you go again as if to say, ‘Well he’s dead.

So you learnt, did you learn, you learnt obviously, to shoot the rifle? You had practice in that too?

Oh yes, I was a very good marksman with a rifle. Sergeant said ‘You’re good, you’re good’. I used to get a bullseye.

Did you get a marksman’s badge in the end?

I don’t think so.

How long were you at Etaples?

It would take me ‘til tomorrow morning, this time, to tell you all my life of France, out in France.
You would really like to know what? Where I went or……

Well yes. Where did you go when you finished training? What happened then?

I was sent with the draft. I was made a Corporal and I went with seventeen other men and myself made eighteen. We were picked to join 1st Battalion, the Essex Regiment. Well we marched one night, it was dark, like a firework display from the enemy, were shelling and bombing. So we got to this, where the Essex were, they were up in the front line at that time. So we went to that place, had some food and went to bed. We hadn’t been to bed about ten minutes before the Sergeant Major said ‘Where’s that draft that just come in’? Fall in! Fall in! And we had to fall in . Our job was to take petrol, petrol cans full of water, up the line to the Essex Regiment. That night, a lot of firing going on.

What time of year would that have been? Was it summer or winter or what?

That would be about mid summer.

And what happened after that? You got into the line then, obviously?

Yes, we took that water up, the Sergeant major said ‘You don’t know the way Corporal?’ and I said ‘No, we’ve only just arrived’. So he says that another Corporal had just come from the front line and he’ll have to go back again and take you. So he took me and the seventeen men with the cans of water up to the front line where the Essex Battalion was – and they’d suffered a lot of losses the day before.

Do you remember where that was?

Somewhere on the Somme. We went passed Amiens and Abbeville. Went through those villages up to the line, the front line.

And when you got into the line what was the fighting like? What, trenches presumably?

After we took the water we come back and were there at the base several days and then we were ordered up to the front line again and we were going to relieve the Inniskillens and they’d suffered heavy loss. We relieved them and it was a case of getting in a shell hole or anywhere to get a bit of cover. You see – were shelling that particular spot. Well, were there about a week then we were relieved, relieved and the whole of the Essex Battalion came back to -–I can’t remember where it was – and the morning we were relieved we were going to Freshard [?] At a certain place, he had a machine gun on a corner and he knew we’d be returning that way and the order came along ‘Every man for himself’. ‘Down you go’. Went flat down on the ground because he was firing at that particular place and we lost a lot of men through that particular place. So same as you had to turn Corporation Road and turn into Broomfield Road on that corner, well he had the machine gun laid on that corner and you got to pass. You had to go on your hands and knees. Get past it somehow.

Conditions obviously were very bad then. What was the supply situation like? Did you get enough food and so on – water?

It reminded me the other day. We had lovely corned beef here, and chips and peas. Corned beef – I’d never seen so much corned beef wasted. It was piled up, boxes and boxes and boxes, lovely corned beef. That was a sort of home made trench to protect you from the bullets, these lovely, lovely tins of bully beef. They’d cost no end of money now to buy. But we was always glad to get a small loaf. That was perhaps about six men for a small loaf. So you got a little piece of bread, you didn’t get much. Then we always had the hard biscuits. Something like sort of dog biscuits. Hard, hard. But you used to be glad of anything if you were hungry.

Was the food supply better behind the line, when you were relieved? Was that reasonably good?

Oh yes, that was better then.

What, did they have canteens or mobile canteens or something?

Shall I join in? While I was up there I got a septic foot. So the doctor says ‘How long has it been like that?’ I said about six weeks. He says’ Alright’ he says, ‘Get out of it’. So he marked me further down the line, down to base. So there was a lot went down. Some were on stretchers, others were hobbling on one leg, and we went down and we stayed on a camp and during the night I heard a train – engine on a train. Choo-choo-choo-choo. I wished it had of stopped for us. That stopped and somebody shouted ‘Those that can get on the train, go across and get on. ‘Cos there were stretcher cases – they couldn’t go. They had to be took on the stretcher but I – sorry – I’d got the one bad foot but I hobbled on one leg and got on the train. When we all got on I said to the sister, only female we’ve seen for weeks and weeks. I said ‘Where we going?’ She sais ‘You’re going to Le Havre’. So we went to Le Havre, to the Le Havre hospital. I was there three weeks and got this leg, got it healed up. Hot formentations and it got better. After a time I was sent back to Etaples, where I had come from.

What were the hospitals like?

Ah, lovely. They got to heal well, then I was stopped for another week and help with the floors . We used to polish the floors. The hospital’s a lovely place there . Then after three weeks I was sent to a convalescent camp at Le Havre. That was another nice place . Where fellas got fit again after flu and gunshot wounds.

There was presumably no gas at that time ?

No gas, no. Really and truly I could go on telling you but it wouldn’t be interesting. I went back to Etaples so…so when we got back the Sergeant Major says ‘If you’ve got anything to report, report when you see the Medical Officer in the morning. So there was a lot of us – 20 or 30 -went in front of the doctor. He passed some and some he wouldn’t pass. He said ‘ You feeling all right?’ I said ‘Not too good’. The old ticker was not too good. He says ‘Alright you can stop here at Etaples for another week until you get better.

What happened to you after you, you were better again? What happened then?

I went to this convalescent camp and while I was there the Sergeant Major came along and said ‘Brett’ he says ‘I’ve got a job for you’. I said ‘Yes Sir?’ So he says ‘There’s about two or three thousand people want to get across to Blighty, to England – but it was so rough, the weather was so rough. And he said to me he said ‘I want you to go over to that marquee, pick what men you want and make up the bunks and get tea ready for them. But stop here the night’. Because it was so rough for them to come across the water to England. That’s where they were bound for. So prevention was better than cure. So they were there three or four days alright. So I went back again. I was still at Etaples. Sergeant Major said ‘Ah, Brett, I’ve been looking for you.’ He says, ‘Where you been to?’ Well I said ‘ I been here’. So he says ‘I’ve got another job for you’. So I says ‘Right Sir’. So he said ‘Corporal, somebody has done his time in the service’. He was an old soldier and after he’d done his time he would enlist again for the present war’. So he was due to go back to England and he was in charge of one of the dining huts, D Company. There was A,B,C and D – 4 dining huts. So he says ‘I want you to take charge of D Company dining hall. ‘Cos the other Corporal was going home I took his place.

What did that mean for you? What did you have to do?

Order the food or…… Sunday I take two men and go to the cook houses, draw our breakfast, perhaps rashers of bacon, and we used to cut the bread. Get the breakfast all ready, same like dinner, same like tea. I was there six months. I was fortunate.

So that would take you into 1916, wouldn’t it?

Oh yes, well beyond that.

What happened to you after you, after the dining …..?

While I was there I got to know the officer and the colonel.

Who were they? Do you remember?

I don’t know their names now. One was a Scots doctor and the Colonel, I don’t know what he was. They used to come round every Saturday morning inspection. Every man had to be on parade , or he used to come round and inspect the dining hall see if they were all right. The tables had to be scrubbed, soap and water, made look nice, place kept nice. He used to come round. I’ll blow my own trumpet, he said its very clean and neat. So while I was there I got pally with the young lad who worked in the Officers’ quarters, he used to do the Colonel’s cooking. He used to have flowers on the table so when I went they were nearly dead he used to throw away, he used to give them to me . So I used to have flowers ….. on the table. He used to come round and said ‘Very, very nice’

And, to cut a long story short one fella, I’m sorry to say , he got put in the glass house. I felt sorry for him but it was his own fault. See there was six men sit down to a table – 3 each side – had to be. There were six pieces of bread. Well you know what men are, they went for the biggest, biggest piece and there was one small piece left. One fella said ‘I ain’t gonna sit there’ he said ‘and have that lousy bit of bread’. I said ‘You’ll sit there. I tell you to sit there’. ‘I’m not going to sit there’. ‘Alright, I’ll get you another piece of bread’. He sit on another table. So when the officer come round – ‘Orderly Officer, any complaints’? So this fella got up and said ‘Yes Sir’, he said ‘I only had a small piece of bread’. So I explained to the Sergeant Major who was with the officer, I said ‘He refused to obey my instruction.’ I said ‘If he‘d stopped there I’d got another piece of bread’. I said ‘He wouldn’t stop, he sat on the next table what he shouldn’t have done and he got cross’. So the Sergeant Major said ‘Alright’ he said, ‘Fall in two men’. And they took him off and he got three months in the glass house. A silly thing to do , he could have took my advice and sit down at that table. See and he got rude to the Sergeant major, see and the Sergeant Major said ‘Alright, fall in two men’ and marched him off to the guardroom and the last I heard of him he had three months in the glass house. So I felt sorry but there you are. I’m afraid I’m not much help, am I?

Yes you are. What, do you remember what happened next? Where did you go from Etaples? What happened to you after that?

When I went to back to Etaples – before I left that camp – I saw a Scotch doctor and said ‘You ought to rest’ he said ‘You’ve been scrubbing them tables and made your heart bad’. He said ‘There’s thousands of little muscles all round there and you’ve strained them’ he said, ‘You’ve worked them too hard’. So he says ‘I’m going to put you in the rest centre for a fortnight’. So I went in a rest centre. Well the n after that I went back to Etaples. So I saw a Belgian doctor, I think he was. He said ‘ You feel alright?’ I said ‘ Excepting a pain here’. He said ‘ How much do you smoke?’ I said ‘ A packet a day’. He said ‘ You’re a bloody liar’, he says ‘ just look at you hands, you smoke more than your issue’. So to cut a long story short, I went on parade the next morning. I saw this doctor and he said ‘Come to me in a fortnight’s time. Leave off cigarettes, it’ll never get better’.

So I smoked not so much . So I went back again. He wouldn’t pass me. He put me down for the medical travelling board. That was we’ll say eight or nine would be at Chelmsford and we’d have to march say Maldon to Chelmsford for this exam. So there was one poor fella, he had to walk and had an old piece of wood for a walking stick, went in front of me, he could hardly walk. So he went in, so the doctor said ‘ What’s the matter with you? What have you got that stick for? And he kicked the stick away from him and he fell down. I don’t know what happened to him, but he was a sick man. Some used to play on it. See, the doctor didn’t know whether they were genuine cases or not. What you call ‘swinging the lead’. But to cut a long story short, the next morning we went back to the base at Etaples. So the Sergeant major, when we were on parade, so he says ‘ Corporal Brett, George Smith, Tommy brown and George – somebody else – four of us, out of about one hundred men were marked P.B. That was Permanent Base. Then I was transferred to a Prisoner of war Camp, where prisoners came in. I was sent to Abbeville. I was there about a year. I was made up a Sergeant there and the prisoners used to come, thousands used to come some days. Another day there was only a few. So you might as well say I was one of the lucky ones that didn’t see, that wasn’t in the trenches. I was fortunate in that way.

I went to ‘Abbeville’, that was the main cage for the prisoners. They were taken prisoner; the Germans were taken prisoners. We’d dealt with thousands there, and the interpreter was a German. I used to call him ‘Floose’ – Valouse, but I said ‘Floose, I want a thousand men on parade now and they have got to go to Le Havre’. So he used to parade all the men then he would be with me and we would count off a thousand. Then we used to have them at the main gate ready to march off. There was the guard, about twenty men, used to take them to the station to go by train to Le Havre. I must tell you about this ‘Floose’, he was German. ‘One night’, he said ‘ I was on reconnaissance work ‘ he said, ‘And somehow in mistake I got into one of your trenches. Yes’, he said ‘I was very nearly shot’ he says. ‘I got in – where am I? – I must be in the wrong trenches’. So he walked a little further and there was our fella on duty looking across ‘no man’s land’ so he had the presence of mind, he says ‘Wake up! Wake up! He hit him on the back. He says ‘Here comes the officer!’ and he turned round he says, and walked out the same way as I come in. That was his tale. It was true.

You said you were at the prison camp for about a year. Did that take you up to the end of the war?

Yes, yes.

When were you demobbed then?

In Southminster I was the first one to be demobbed.

Really?

Because I was home. I was lucky, I had three Christmas, Christmases at home.

Oh, you’d had leave then, you were able to get home?

Yes, yes. So I was on leave in nineteen hundred and eighteen. I was home….1918 on leave and the Armistice was signed. So the soldiers who were on leave like me, they grumbled, said why should we go back to France, then ship us back there, ship us back when we are already in England. So I used to see the paper and it came out one morning – all men that are home on leave-no need to go back to France.

So you were able to stay there, stay at home then?

At that time I knew a farmer in Kent, so I explained to him. So he said ‘I’ll give you a job’. Said ‘You don’t want to go back do you anymore’? So I said ‘No, I don’t want to go back, I’m already in England. Why go back to France then ship me back again’. See, so it came up in the daily paper, if you’d got a job to go to, report to the Crystal palace. So I borrowed a bicycle and cycled to the Crystal Palace and got me discharge.

One question you asked of me; while I was at the main cage with the prisoners of war the Americans wanted two thousand for Bordeaux. The Americans were putting up big warehouses. They’d come into the war and they wanted these big warehouses made. We’d lend them two thousand prisoners and we went up to Bordeaux. So I got up to Bordeaux and had several months up there. These prisoners, we used to post sentries all round where they were at work. The guard, the British guard, these prisoners would be putting these big warehouses up. The Americans were coming into the war.

3546 Cpl Donald Banks, 4th Lincs - Pt 3

2010-03-06T16:04:00.004Z

Donald Banks, back in England having been wounded in early 1915, is returning to France.

The photoshows soldiers of the 48th Division on a bombing course at Otley in March 1918. Donald Banks stands third from right at the back.

Narrative

DB:
I got back home and it didn’t take more than two or three hours from Clipstone Camp through Retford back to Lincoln and mother said, “What have you come home for?” I said, “Mother, I’m going back to France. I’m going to fight.”

“Oh,” she said, “you’ve done your bit.” I said, “Mother, I may as you say, have done my bit but I’m going because I feel it’s my duty to go and what’s more I’m coming back. I’ve got enough faith in God that he’ll bring me back for your sake.” Oh, mother wept.

They sent me this time to the 3rd battalion at Cork in Ireland; Victoria barracks up on the hill. They were the reserve battalion and I don’t think they were in any division. They put me on a Lewis gun course at Youghal, that is east of Cork, further along the south coast of Ireland. I was a beautiful little bay with a sugar lump loaf of an island, green island at the entrance to that bay. Beautiful place. I got on alright with the Irish people but I had to be careful because some fellas were deserting. You see when I first joined we were all volunteers. Since then, conscription had come and there were fellas who joined up who were not keen. And furthermore our pay had been raised. My first pay was a shilling a day and a clothing allowance of tuppence a day. I got up to one and six as lance corporal. First of all I was just acting lance corporal, then full lance-corporal then full corporal. Now I had some very good friends in Mansfield and I stayed out late one night. When I got back, the orderly corporal said, “Oh Corp, you’re for it. You’ve been reported.” So I went along - I was undressed - I pulled my trousers half up and staggered along to the guard room and said, “I’m reporting I’m in. I’ve not been feeling well.” Course, I was brought up before the captain the next day and I told him the same yarn and he looked at me and said, “you’re a fool corporal.” He as good as told me that he was going to make me a sergeant and I’d missed out on that.

I was not in Ireland for more than two or three weeks. As I say, they sent me on this Lewis gun course and I was also put on a funeral party and we were trained in reversing arms, funeral procedure and ceremonial. That was all useful experience and then they were going to send me on a musketry course but I said, “look here, I’ve got crossed guns, I don’t want a musketry course, I want to go out.” They all thought I was crackers.

They came to me and said, “Right, you’re down for musketry course.” I said, “Look, I’ve had enough. I came to join the war not to drill. You’d better get somebody else because I’m not going.” They gave me my draft leave and they sent us in the slowest train from Cork up to Dublin. We left Cork about half past nine in the morning and arrived in Dublin about five o’clock the following morning. Then across on The Leinster which was torpedoed a month later. Then I got the boat train to London, London up to Lincoln instead of going across through Crewe, Nottingham, Derby because it was quicker and more comfortable and I’d learned a few things. First time I tried it though, I got caught in a way.

I had a lady friend who was in the Wrens in London. She was a section leader, lived at Leicester and I knew her before the war and wanted to see her. When I left Clipstone Camp at Mansfield I should have gone to Nottingham, Derby, Crewe, Chester, Holyhead which was the direct route but meant a series of changes and so on. Instead I got a ticket home. I remembered they didn’t collect the tickets at Lincoln and I’d got a written warrant to Cork. The fella looked at it, “Cork? Where’s that?” I said, “Oh, it’s out in the west there. I’ve got to go round by London to get the boat train.” I got to Lincoln, had a day or two with mother and then got a train to London with no trouble. I met my lady friend and the following day departed. I went to the railway barrier at Euston and the ticket collector said, “Cork? What are you doing here?” I said, “ Well they said I was to come and catch the boat train.”
“Catch the boat train? You should have gone across...”
“Well,” I said, “I didn’t know.”

He called up the Military Police and said, “Take this fella to the RTO” (That’s Railway Transport Office. I was shaking in my shoes. I got to the railway transport officer and he said, “Well corporal, what’s all this? How do you come round here?” I said, “Well sir, I... I understood I had to catch the boat train and that I couldn’t get across country because there were no connections.” The ticket collector behind my shoulder said, “I think it’s a genuine case sir.” He countersigned my warrant and wrote me a chit, “Now take this up to the YMCA, you’ll get a bed there for the night and then off you go in the morning, eight o’clock.” I got my bed for the night, went to the station in the morning and there was nobody on the barrier, I walked straight onto the train. There was no trouble until I got to Holyhead, got on the boat and got across to Queenstown and by that time it was getting on. There was a train due in for Cork in about ten minutes but it didn’t actually get into Cork until two o’clock in the morning and I didn’t fancy another night journey so I walked round a bit. I found the RTO officer, showed him my warrant and told him I’d missed the train for Cork. He told me to take the warrant up to some barracks nearby where I could get a bed for the night and catch a train the following morning. I went up the barracks, reported in, got a meal, (didn’t have to pay anything) and got a train in the morning. Gosh it was a swift one, best train of the day, and I arrived at Cork at twelve o’clock. I walked up the hill to the barracks and reported at the guard room. Now this was where I was lucky. That transport officer at Euston hadn’t bothered to look at the date. That’s what I was afraid of but I got away with it and course, when I got to Dublin, well I’d just come on the boat, they didn’t know how long it took. And when I reported in at Cork they didn’t say, “You’ve been a long time on the way,” or anything. No trouble at all. I learned a few tricks and I’m not ashamed to say so.

While I was at Clipstone Camp I was given an escort duty twice. Well the first time was to fetch a fella out of Derby jail. Now my girlfriend lived at Leicester. From Clipstone I had to go to Nottingham, Leicester, Derby. There was another train that goes through Trent and avoided Leicester but I wasn’t going to avoid Leicester of course. Now although I hadn’t been told by the sergeant major or anybody else, I was given to understand that you were allowed twenty four hours for escort duties. I took my time, got to Leicester and visited my girlfriend, got a train to Derby and went to the jail. Closed. Closed at seven o’clock. Well what am I to do? I went to the police and they gave me a chit for a hotel. I stayed at a hotel that night and fetched the fella out next morning. I took him to the station and it was a one-ended station so you couldn’t get out the other way. I said, “Look here fella, can I trust you? I want to go and see a friend for an hour or two.” I did. I got back and he’d been having a nice time with the girls on the platform who served refreshments. I’d gauged him right, he was alright, he wasn’t one of those. You can usually tell if a chap’s going to play you. We got back in the afternoon and I was well within the twenty four hours. I took him along to the battalion orderly room and the sergeant said, “alright corporal, dismissed.” He never queried about how long I was away.

Then there was another time when I had to go and escort some men to Bulford camp on Salisbury Plain. I took these fellas on the first train I could catch to London, then to Salisbury and on to Bulford. I remember seeing a place “Trifle, sixpence” and oh, did I like trifle, I’d never seen it for years. Yes, I had my trifle and I caught the next train back to London and I was up at Leicester by early morning. Spent the day at Leicester and reported back that night, I was back within the twenty four hours. The sergeant said, “Alright corporal.” Old soldiers have their ways; you learn ways and means. Maybe it’s deceitful in a way but I feel I’d done no wrong, I’d fulfilled a duty within a specified time and that was my business.

We were leaving Cork to embark for France and we caught a very slow night train, reached Dublin and embarked for Holyhead and the train arrived somewhere about midday in London. We had to wait a good while before we entrained on the South-Eastern Chatham line I think it was. That’s when the railway lines were run by companies like the Great Northern, Great Central, Great Eastern, Great Western. We reached Dover, we had an uneventful crossing and an hour and a half on some form of transport I don’t remember and were then put into a camp just outside of Calais. There we were about a week when our draft was called and we were put on a train and set off. We didn’t know where we were going. Course, nobody ever was told where they were going to be, everything had to be kept secret; only those in command knew. We boarded these box waggons and the train puffed leisurely along. I have one vivid memory of the train going up an incline so slowly that some of the lads got off and helped themselves to apples in a neighbouring orchard as we passed and then rejoining the train. Except one fellow who evidently wanted more than he could manage and just as the train got to the top of the incline and started down I have a mental picture of him panting up on the railroad track trying to catch the train up, which he never did. He did arrive subsequently in another troop train. Course, I never saw any passenger trains. All trains going eastward were troop trains.

Well we rolled on through various countryside. I remember when we came to Achet-le-Grand, Achet-le-Petit, Peronne, Albert and all those places on the Somme. There was very little sign of any village, just rubble and piles of brick. This country had been fought over and over and there was no sound buildings to be seen, just a half wall here and there, otherwise piles of brick and shell holes. The train jolted along and stopped at intervals - we never knew why - in a most desultory fashion. Eventually it stopped, somewhere near Albert I think, and we got out of the train and we were lined up. A man arrived - known as a runner - to take us along. Now the weather deteriorated and it began to pour with rain. We were walking along, squelching in mud, and we acme to a series of little low mounds. These mounds contained dug-outs and we were glad to escape from the rain. Around us was Martinpuich Wood which consisted of a series of shattered stumps, not one whole tree left standing, but stumps from two to six feet all shattered by shellfire. This had been taken and re-taken by both sides several times. And there we slept for the night in these dug-outs. This would be July 1918.

The next morning we set off again, a long wearisome march, and I remember the officer was very strict. When some fellas attempted to avoid the puddles he called out not to break the ranks, keep on marching. It was a long wearisome journey.

We’d been issued this time with the SMLE rifle - short Lee Enfield - and they were much easier to carry with the slings. Of course, we carried enough ammunition. Every man had to carry at least sixty rounds in his pouches and clips. We also had our packs on our back - our haversacks - and course, our entrenching tools - and we stumbled along till at last we caught up with the regiment we were posted to - the 7th battalion of the Lincolnshire regiment. They were one of the new battalions formed, known as Kitchener’s army and were part of the 17th division. I remember one of the units was the Border regiment, I forget what other regiments there were now. It was a peculiar mix up to us. It didn’t seem to be on any regional basis. So there I was with the 7th battalion Lincolnshires and most of them were from the county of Lincoln. They’d just had a spell in the trenches and we had just started to push the Germans back. The Germans had exhausted themselves in their pushes forward and we were now pushing back.

I reported to the sergeant major - again I was in D Company - and he said to me, “You’ll have to take those stripes down.” I said, “Well sir, may I show you these certificates?” and I took out my AB64 - that’s your army pay book - and took out my certificates I’d gained as an instructor in musketry, general NCO and bombing - first class bombing certificate. He said, “Right, I’ll take those to the captain.” Later he came back and said, “alright, keep the stripes up.” And so I was re-appointed corporal but whether that ever went through in course I never knew because we got into a very confused condition. We were preparing for an attack and we were to be the third and final line of the offensive and were to reach the furthest point of our objective. Our objective was a wood, Gauche Wood, to the right of the line off Gouzeaucourt. Beyond that was Menancourt and Villers Guislain and they were in German hands, so was this wood. The NCOs were called together in a group and we were given a rough drawn map of the position. We had to cross a railway track and eventually up various trenches towards this wood. Well, having been primed we were given to understand that there was no desire to take prisoners in view of the fact that some of our folk had been taken prisoner by the Germans and lined up and shot and there was rather bitter feeling about that. I can’t vouch for the truth of it but our captain indicated to us that we’d no desire to take prisoners as they would be an encumbrance in the advance.

While I was with them I remember we had paraded and the boys had got busy with their button sticks and spit and polish, to my amazement. Under those conditions spit and polish seemed to us incongruous. I didn’t bother to clean my boots up, I just brushed the mud off and I certainly didn’t polish any buttons or anything. As a matter of fact I don’t think they did polish buttons then because they were apt to show up and this was the time we wore helmets. Steel helmets had come into use. We’d no helmets in 1915 we’d just the service caps and we were told after a while to take the wire out so that they were floppy. Then later on I acquired one of those caps with a broad band on which I could let down over my head.

Also at this time we were issued with better equipment than we’d had before.

The company paraded and a junior officer came along. I saluted him and he said, “Corporal, I want to inspect these men.” So I called this particular platoon he wanted to inspect to attention, opened ranks and he proceeded to pass along the line. He looked at one man and said, “Dirty boots. Take his name corporal.” In fact I had to take the names of three or four men whose boots were certainly in a better condition than my own but the officer never commented on my condition. After the parade, instead of reporting these men back I conveniently forgot all about them and never heard anything further fortunately because we were going into a big attack.

Well the evening came - I can’t remember the date now - and we all packed ready. Eventually we lined up, formed fours and marched in columns in the darkness, going we knew not where but somewhere towards the battle line. It was ominously quiet. After some two hours we stopped and we were supplied with tea laced with rum; the usual procedure of men going into action. When we’d all had a pretty good drink and were feeling happy enough, we started on the march again.

And then we stumbled into a sort of shallow valley and I was conscious of other people nearby when a whistle sounded and in that moment, hell was let loose. We were in the forward guns position and the barrage was starting and it was continuous, wheel to wheel. The smaller ones were in front, the bigger ones behind and the howitzers behind them, all belching forth shells at the rate of hundreds if not thousands a minute. Fortunately Lloyd George had got us the guns that we’d needed. I was never a real admirer of his and I was never a liberal but I was always grateful for the fact that he organized the war so that we had the guns to back us up and could outrange the Germans. I remember as each gun blazed the flame seared my face and I had to turn away as we went past.

Eventually we came to a gap in the line of the guns, passed through it in the direction they were firing, and soon it was just the whistle of shells over our heads. It was a continuous roar of noise, I’ve never heard the like of it. There were the gunners sweating away, loading as fast as they could and just blazing away. And that continued for at least twenty minutes or more. Where they got all the ammunition from I don’t know. It was wonderful organization to convey all that ammunition up, thousands of shells in one terrific barrage. I heard many barrages afterwards when we were out of the line and it just sounded like a roll of drums, so continuous was the noise: rumble, rumble, rumble. We said, “Now Jerry’s getting another dose.”

Well we went and eventually we reached the first aid post and met the first casualties coming back. One was a sergeant I remember who said, “I’ve got another blighty” and he was glad to be out of it. Now this regiment was of a different character to the territorials. These were men who’d been conscripted and I began to hear unusual words like scrounge and swinging the lead and various other synonyms which astounded me as an old volunteer. No, they were not so keen they’d had to go to war. There were some good fellas amongst them no doubt.

We pressed on in the darkness until we came to a trench. We got into this trench and spread out. On the right, a huge shell ploughed into the trench and there were casualties. The German counter fire was very sporadic. As our guns lifted their range, having shattered the front line pretty well, we got into the first line of the enemy. Then at the appointed time - I think that it was eight o’clock - the whistle sounded and we scrambled up as fast as we could out of the trenches and towards the wire because we had a timetable by which we were to go to various objectives. Some of the wire had been cut and there were gaps here and there but I have a vivid memory of bodies lying on the wire in grotesque attitudes, the casualties of this terrific bombardment.

Then we proceeded on till we came to a low ridge about three to four feet high. We crouched behind it and a fella next to me said, “Just look Corp” and there behind my heel were bullets digging into the ground, just within a couple of feet of my boots from some German concealed machine gun. Course, we crouched and none of us were hit just there. Meanwhile we had then to pass through a communication trench and we got part way when there was a halt and word came back for bombers. They didn’t call for me they just called for the bombs and eventually when we burst through we found ourselves in what was called a sunken road, a shallow valley about twelve yards across at the most. And on the other side of this valley were dug-outs and Germans emerging from them with their hands up surrendering, shouting “Kamerad”. Course, our tendency was to shoot them but I remember an officer waving his revolver saying, “any of you shoot your prisoners, I’ll shoot you.” But I never saw such a scene of bodies left and right. Evidently the Germans had gone down into these deep dug-outs when the barrage started and then emerged as the barrage lifted and passed beyond them to meet the oncoming enemy. And as our people emerged from the trench they were just mowed down one after another until somebody got the idea of bombs. And the regiment on our right - The Border regiment - came in and enfiladed them from the other end.

Then up through another trench we passed; a communication trench leading to this Gauche Wood. Course, it wasn’t continually straight, you can imagine all these trenches were zig-zagged to prevent enfilading fire, and we came eventually on the edge of the wood. And as I crouched on the edge of the wood there was a sharp crack overhead from a shrapnel burst and bullets scattered around. The man next to me got one in his right arm and one in his left leg near the knee and there were others who were also hit, I don’t know how many got wounded there.

We pushed on into the wood and there was a deep dug-out which we went down into and dressed this fella’s wounds till he could be taken back. Then we went along a trench in the right side of the wood until I came to a corner and one of our men said, “Jerry’s round the next corner.” I said, “alright, we’ll rest a moment.” The next moment, I saw some men on my right, way beyond there and my chap said, “What about it corporal? I said, “I’ll make them put their heads down” and fired a shot at them. They disappeared. Whether I hit them or not I don’t know. Well there we stayed and then we retreated back into the communication trench because on the left of us, about fifty yards from the wood, was an old British tank which the Germans were obviously using as a sniper post. One of our fellas happened to be passing a part of the trench where the parapet had been knocked away and he was shot in the head and died shortly afterwards. So after that when running the gauntlet we had to duck that particular point but there was no chance of reaching those fellas in the tank and I think they evacuated when darkness set in. Meanwhile we were told to stay in this communication trench and there we were.

Now A Company had gone in the lead and were on the left and had got part of the wood but we hadn’t got the whole wood. So later on there was a call for reinforcements and we withdrew temporarily while our artillery opened up again and our attack went forward. The next thing I remember was an officer shouting, “Look out here comes Jerry” and a whole body of Germans advancing down the trench. There was only one thing to do and that was to retreat. I retreated down the bottom of the trench, got mixed up with some other regiment and warned them that the Germans were coming through. I learned later that they were prisoners but there was no escort in front to indicate that they were not active combatants.

That night I got into a sort of artillery position. There were three or four slit trenches on the edge of a small copse and every now and then a shell would come and clip a branch off and fall unpleasantly near. I remember getting severe cramp. There were two or three other fellas - artillerymen and what have you - and we crouched there until daylight. Then I moved down the slope towards some trenches and came up with a regiment and they were just cooking their breakfast. They seemed to be alright and said they’d escort me back to my lines. I was escorted down a valley and up the lines and our boys were then also getting breakfast so all was serene and quiet after a very uncomfortable night.

We were there two or three days and things quietened down. Then word came through that we were to reinforce the front line at ten minutes to seven. I remember the time distinctly. We’d no sooner moved up into the wood along to our left when a terrific barrage opened by the Germans at seven o’clock. I dived into a dug-out where there was an officer and his batman and other fellas attempting to come in were warned off by the officer saying, “ If we’re hit there’s no good you all being killed. Find shelter somewhere else.” Where they did I don’t know but there I crouched as shells were bursting all around and fortunately one did not land on our dug-out. But it was a most terrific experience not knowing that the next one might be our last because the shells were coming down like hail all over the wood. That communication trench we later found absolutely shattered; limbs and bodies here and there.

Meanwhile, as the German barrage continued, eventually an orderly came running and said to the officer, “The SOS has gone up sir.” Now the SOS was signalled by Very lights. You fired a red, green, red light and when our artillery saw it they opened up. And did they open up! And there was nothing sweeter than to hear the sound of our artillery shells come swishing over and it so stopped the Germans.

Meanwhile I rushed down to the front of the wood and there we all fired as hard as we could go. I fired three rifles until they were too hot to hold, at the advancing enemy and he never reached our trenches. And then we settled down. Now I remember carrying two extra bandoliers of ammunition and a machine gunner calling out, “Any more ammo?” I said, “Yes, you can have this bandolier.” He stripped them off the clips and put them in the long clip leading to the machine gun and we certainly stopped the Germans re-taking the wood.

Then things settled down for a couple of days. Things were fairly quiet except for occasional gunfire in the distance and then blessed relief. I remember it was another battalion of the Leicesters that came quietly at midnight and relieved us. We were taken back into reserve about a mile back, into some trenches. The countryside around us was all bombed, shell holes, churned up fields and what have you and we lay down and slept for twenty four hours after a jolly good drink of tea from the dixies.

I never learned what our casualties were but I know that more than half the battalion was lost in that attack. I don’t remember it had any particular name but it was part of the general advance on the Somme when we started to drive the Germans back. It was the last battle of the Somme I should imagine. To right and left of us were various regiments advancing, some a few yards, some by half a mile or so. The thing was to keep coordinating with the people on your left and on your right to provide no gaps for the enemy and the runners were continually busy in that respect. And of course, by this time we had a system of telegraphy: hand microphones, wires all over the place - sometimes cut by gunfire or other reasons - but there were means of communicating with the rear apart from the Very lights.

We then slept for two or three days and then German heavy guns stared up and we had to move because they got unpleasantly close but I don’t think we had any casualties. I remember in our move we came across a dead German sergeant major and I remember that they took his name and all his papers, wrapped them up in a little parcel and sent them back to headquarters to be forwarded to the Red Cross so that they would forward them on to his relatives who would know that he had been killed and where he’d been killed and the date. We did inform one another in that respect.

Then came word that we were to go back into action. This time it was between the wood and Gouzeaucourt and the regiments on the left of us had taken half the St Quentin redoubt.

We had to cross a railway line which was an embankment built up on piles of stone and granite and our boots made a rare old clatter as we climbed up over this bank. The line of course, had been cut in various places and there were no trains running on it. It ran parallel to our trenches but it definitely came from Gouzeaucourt originally but where it led in the other direction I never knew. Well then we were guided up into a trench and there was another trench leading out of our new front line trench into the German trenches. I was instructed to take my bombing squad along and occupy this position ahead of our lines. There was one deep dug-out and a fire platform near it on the right and half a dozen boards set at angles across as a sort of barricade so I posted sentries, one on the fire step to keep an eye on the right and the other one to look down the communication trench. I got my entrenching tool and scooped out the side of the trench so that he could be half hidden with his rifle resting on the boards down the trench. And then I retired round the bend, hollowed out a place for myself and told the others to dig in. We all dug our own little shelter in the side of the trench and by that time I was very weary. I thought I’ll just take a few minutes rest and I squatted down and I was just dosing off when bang, bang, bang and I heard one boy say, “He’s got me Corp” as he dashed past me. The other fella I never found. I dashed out and I started picking up bombs and throwing. Now we had some new type of bombs called egg bombs. They were about the size of a duck’s egg and on one end was a stud which you banged on something hard and that set the fuse going before you threw it. I was throwing these as hard as I could and I looked round to find that I was alone. They’d all forsaken me and fled. I was pretty mad. I ran back down the trench to the front line and told them what exactly I thought about them and their ancestors and telling them to follow me, I led the way back to my position with my rifle at the ready.

Incidentally I had a small revolver my father had given me which I kept in my left hand pocket; so my rifle’s ready and I had to just dive into my pocket - and I kept it loaded. I got the revolver out and carried the rifle - with of course, the bayonet attached - and regained the position. Up came an officer and asked me what the trouble was. I said, “They’ve just shot the sentry sir. I’ve posted two more but something will have to be done.”
“Alright, we’ll see in the morning.”
Later on the chaplain came up and said, “I hear you had a bit of trouble here” I said “Yes sir”. He said, “You’ve done well to hold the position anyway.” Well I never thought anything else. I never thought of retreating. If the Germans had come on I’d have used my bayonet. But they’d evidently been reconnoitering in the dark and I think that those two sentries of mine had been talking and while talking had evidently moved and so they’d been shot. I warned the new sentries to keep a very low profile and keep their eyes properly skinned and we’d no further trouble that night.

In the morning the captain came up and I made my report. Then along came a junior officer and he said, “Corporal, let’s have a look, se what’s happening here.” We went over the barricade and along the trench and of course, he being the officer, I didn’t lead. He led and his batman behind him and then me. We turned three or four corners then all of a sudden he turned and bumped into me and said, “Run Corporal, we’ve run slap into Jerry.” I was carrying my revolver in my left hand, my rifle slung over my shoulder and a grenade in my right hand. I couldn’t do anything else, he was in front of me and I couldn’t fire and he’d knocked me over. I picked myself up and he and the batman and I ran back. Fortunately the Jerries had not set a watch. Being broad morning they hadn’t expected anybody to suddenly jump on them or I wouldn’t be here now. As we ran along we passed another trench on the left and the Germans were just beginning to file down that trench but we got back safely. Course, the officer reported to the captain and the captain brought along two Lewis gun teams and a team of orderlies proceeded to build up a sandbag barricade, knocked the bottom of an ammunition box out, put that in and sandbagged around as an aperture through which the Lewis gun team could fire up the trench. The other fired over the right bank and he also gave me a stokes gun team posted at the deep dug-out just behind us and things settled down.

Then the Germans began shelling and using gas shells and we were laying there for hours with our gas masks on. The folk on the left got a packet of it but we fortunately escaped that. Then things quietened down again but I can tell you it’s no fun lying there for hours with a gas mask on, the smell of these fumes around. Eventually when the order came “All clear” and we took our gas masks off we had to be pretty careful.

Time passed and eventually again we were relieved. This time it was a clear evening when the relief arrived and we’d been together about fifteen days in action then. The sky lit up, a clear starlit night, and we waited at midnight for our relief to come, all with our packs and equipment ready to go as soon as they came. In the distance we could hear a German band playing their troops up to the reserve line. Often our bands would play us up to within a mile or so of the trenches to cheer us up. Then the relief arrived. We filed down the communication trench, out into the open space behind, and then started to cross the railway track. And did our boots rattle in the still night. We hadn’t gone very far before swish, crack, swish, crack: shrapnel coming. The Germans had heard us alright and they sure let us have it.

Well we ran until we dropped - I managed to keep going - until eventually we turned right parallel to our trenches and out of range. Fortunately for us the German range was just too long. The shells bursting over our heads spread the shrapnel just beyond us. If it had burst short of us we’d have got the shrapnel. We were weary and worn, what was left of us, and we marched on and on and at last we met our field kitchen. And did tea ever taste sweeter? I gulped and gulped tea because our throats were parched with the fumes of the cordite and powder as well from running.

We started off again and eventually we arrived at a shattered place where boards lay against what were left of walls - there was no building sound - and we lay and slept for two or three days, just waking and having tea and going to sleep again, we were so weary.

Then we began to get organized again and I began to take my bombing squad in hand for more training in warfare; training in the warfare of trench bombing. There was rifleman number one and bomber number one. Bomber number one threw his bomb and the rifleman dashed round the traverse ready to bayonet anybody still alive. Number two then threw his bomb and number two rifleman followed up. There was a certain drill that I had learned and I had to practice this particular drill in taking trenches as well as developing their muscle power and their knowledge of explosives. We were using the number five or Mills grenade which proved a very satisfactory bomb.

We went into rest and then we started some football and there were boxing matches and then we started off again for the next attack. This time Gouzeaucourt had been taken and our big heavy guns were on the St Quentin redoubt. We’d heard during the night in fitful dreams the dull roll of drums. Really those were terrific barrages as series of attacks, one after the other, pushed the Germans back.

We went through Gouzeaucourt into country that was less spoilt because we were getting beyond our original positions that had been fought over and over. Then we ran into a trap and there were more casualties and I got one on the leg. I picked up a stick and could just hobble along but I couldn’t keep up with them and what happened then I don’t know. Whether it was a piece of shrapnel or what I don’t know but it messed my leg up on the thigh and I couldn’t walk. I tried to keep up with the lads but eventually I had to desist and they took me in an ambulance back to a rest camp and after some days, down to the railway. I was taken in the train this time near Boulogne. My leg began to improve but I couldn’t do much without a stick. I’d cut a stick out of a hedge and fastened a cross handle to it and staggered along.

Then I was sent to Cayeux convalescent camp at the mouth of the Somme not far from St Valery. The town was about five miles form the camp but there I was given a job as a librarian. Then, as my leg got worse, I decided I should report sick and that’s where I think I made a mistake. I was still pretty lame and yet acting as librarian at the church army hut, playing the organ for the services. A partition separated the little chancel from where we operated and there was a little fella named Cowie from Plaistow in London, a real cockney fella who was my companion and help. We didn’t get much news, letters began to come.

Meanwhile I figured I’d got to get better somehow and that I couldn’t go on like this so I reported sick and was taken to the sick bay. There I remained all day, wondering what was going to happen. The orderly kept saying that the ambulance would come soon then word came through that the war had stopped, it was armistice day. And everybody was in high jinks: there free drinks, free everything. All except me, stuck in that little stubby hole alone until in the evening an ambulance arrived driven by some WAACS. They put me on a stretcher and started off. After an hour they stopped, they got out and I heard them arguing. Eventually I called one of them and said, “Where are we?” They said, “We’re back where we started from, we got lost.” They’d been enjoying themselves evidently.

Well eventually I arrived at Abbeville and I was taken to Number One Australian Hospital this time. There I found things very lax. Occasionally they tended to me and a nurse came and said, “Well, I don’t know what to do about your leg.” We were allowed to keep our uniforms and after lights out we used to stroll down into town. I remember there were some very good films and that’s the first ones I saw of Charlie Chaplin; I saw some most laughable films. Usually the boys would say to me, “You going down? Bring us back a bottle. Here’s ten francs for champagne.” Well, I never saw anybody the worse for it. It was most irregular but apparently the Australian people had a different technique or understanding of things because you couldn’t possibly have done that in an English hospital. The doctor only came about once a week and things seemed very lax and then I was sent back to convalescent camp. Back on the train to Noyelles and then from there a little gauge line ran to Cayeux, a little narrow gauge with open carriages.

By the way, when I got to the hospital everybody was in bed. They’d had a fine old day, they whooped it up and I was too late. I went into hospital ion the wrong day alright, especially when they told me about the free chocolate. It wasn’t the free beer that attracted me, I was no boozer. I, by that time, was smoking a pipe and they issued us with a tobacco called White Cloud which I’ve never heard of since. I don’t know who made it but none of the other fellas seemed to want to smoke it so they passed it on to me and I acquired quite a few. When I went into Abbeville I took these with me and if I met a French soldier I asked him, “Desirez vous tabac Anglais?” “Ah, oui. Combien?” “Deux francs.” I made a little bit of money out of it, they were satisfied and so was I. The other fellas all smoked cigarettes and I never did like cigarettes. The money I spent on chocolates and sweets.

At this convalescent camp things began to move. Various units suddenly disappeared and I’m sorry to say that some men woke up to find all their money and possessions gone. We were in big long barrack rooms and during the night somebody had skipped through and rifled among possessions. Fortunately for me I wasn’t troubled because I slept in the little room attached to the chapel with Cowie on the floor, we’d not proper beds of course. But it was very unfortunate. I can’t mention any particular regiments but things sure disappeared and though there was consternation you could do nothing about it.

But I remember while I was in the barrack huts, before I got this job again, I met some very interesting characters there spinning yarns late at night before the lights went out. Lights out would be about ten o’clock to quarter past ten. The usual regulation would be first post - by which time we had to be in - at half past nine, last post at ten, lights out at quarter past ten. There were the usual jokes about fellas meeting the ladies with their dogs & being used.

Now the chaplain there was a very good chaplain and he’d bring in a pile of letters for me to frank. I didn’t have to read through them I just had to stamp them : “passed by censor”, and he’d come and just scribble his initials all over them when I’d done that and off they went. There was really no need for any further secrecy. Padre Heywood was his name he came from the North, from, from - I think - Darlington, somewhere in Durham, and he was a very good padre. I remember on one occasion he said, “Corporal, when’s that leg of yours going to get better?” And I was rather startled and surprised and stammered out, “Well I haven’t decided yet sir.” And he burst out laughing and all around him at my unusual reply. You see, if you got this post as a sort of orderly or at these various jobs you could be sure of staying at the convalescent camp for six weeks and people were glad to get hold of these various jobs as there were only a few going. Being able to play the organ was an advantage to me and being a churchman, I suppose, too. Anyway, the padre and I got on very very well together and I was sorry to see him go.

And then eventually the came when we were half empty, Christmas came and there were great festivities in the church hut. Meanwhile I’d been given a lovely pair of Canadian leather mitts and I remember that I was so busy serving, preparing, working that I hadn’t time even to eat myself; as these fellas came in and enjoyed themselves. And I left my mitts on the top of the piano and never saw them again. I regretted those lovely mitts, they really were warm.

After Christmas things settled down and various units began to appear and disappear and I still continued with my studies in Greek although my pal was taken away for evacuation. I don’t know how they decided who to take, whether it was by unit or division, but the time came for the rest of us to entrain and we had to march down to Noyelles, a five mile march. We rolled greatcoats, carrying them across our shoulders in the fashion, and it came on to snow; heavy, wet, thick snow , a real blizzard. We took our coats off but they got wet and sodden. Eventually we reached the little station and got on these carriages which had no windows and were open to the winds and the weather. After an hour the little train started and rattled on into Abbeville. We had to get out then because it was only single track and get into big forty men or eight horses vehicles, big vans. I crawled in wet, sodden, exhausted and got severe cramp. I got up and tried to stretch myself but it was agony. I also got terrific toothache but eventually the train started. Now we each had a batch of NCOs and officers on and eventually we arrived at Le Treport. The officers came along and said, “Now, you’ve got an hour here you fellas so you’d better get our and enjoy yourselves.” Course, we’d had no food or anything, no rations, and we were desperate for something to eat and drink. So the fellas disappeared and I went with the other NCOs when sergeant came round and said, “Say,, that train’s going in ten minutes and I can’t find the officers.” We never did find the officers. We rounded all the men up, got them back on the train and it started off.

In the darkness we arrived at Dieppe and reported to the railway transport officer. He didn’t know anything about us or our officers, he didn’t know anything about them. They’d missed the boat and so had we because he said he’d no word about any camp ready for us. After kicking around for an hour or two there was a funny little train - I’ve never seen the like before or since - a double-decker train. We climbed up steps at the end, sat on seats facing outwards, and this little old train set off for St Marie-Eglise. We arrived at St Marie-Eglise and I don’t know how long it took because it wasn’t an express by any means and it was pretty cold sitting up there. Some fellas managed to get in the carriage below with the civilians but I was stuck up at the top. We eventually arrived at this little station and it appears our officers had gone to St Marie-Eglise because they knew that was the camp we should go to. We’d gone past it into Dieppe and then we had to come back. Of course, the train stopped at the far end of the camp and we had to march right round two sides of this big camp before we could get in. Then we were billeted in bell tents on a very steep hillside and there was more than one man had a broken leg through sliding and falling down that hillside.

Well in that bell tent I suffered agonies. I woke up with blood streaming from my mouth from this tooth giving me trouble. For meals we had to line up and they dished up through a little sort of pigeon hole a bowl of hash into your billy tin. There was a little shop nearby and occasionally a little batch of biscuits might appear and you were lucky if you happened to get in on those. I never saw such a mess.

At intervals the officer or a sergeant would come out and call out a list of names, telling them to be ready in half an hour. Then they were lined up and marched off. I waited in vain for my name to be called. Another night set in, another day of starvation. But I do remember there were two fellas there and a piano and these fellas just rolled off operas and Beethoven’s sonatas when I suggested they play. They were absolute professional musicians those two and that was the one comfort of that camp.

Well, I got into such a condition that I reported to the orderly office and they sent me down to a dressing station where here they told me that I’d got an awful temperature and sent me to a little hospital for the Chinese coolies who were working around the camps. Our beds consisted of what were called biscuits: three padded slabs and a blanket. I begged the orderly to give me something and he got some carbolic acid and cotton wool and I jammed that into my hollow tooth. Then a day later an ambulance happened to come by and I was taken into the hospital at Dieppe.

When we got to Dieppe we were put on a funny little steamer and of course, there was no accommodation and you just lay on the deck. After an hour, the little vessels chugged out into the harbour and at the edge of the harbour she stopped and down went her mud hook as we called the anchor. Rumours: captain’s drunk, crew’s drunk, tide’s wrong, nobody knew and the only thing was to lay down and sleep. Eventually an hour or so later we started off. I was dead tired and when I woke up it was morning. And there were the white cliffs of Dover. Hooray, we’ll be there soon. But no, we didn’t go to Dover. We turned parallel to the coast and went round by Deal, Ramsgate, Margate and out into the North Sea and then we turned westward into the mouth of the Thames. What a sight. Sticking up all around were masts and funnels of ships that had been torpedoed and our vessel wound its way between them and up the Thames until in the afternoon we arrived at Tilbury. There the tenders came alongside and took us off. We were then escorted into a room and given a sandwich and a hot cup of tea. Oh wasn’t that wonderful! Back into another room; more sandwiches and tea and we were told that the train would be going in about an hour and we were shown to the train. Things moved smoothly once we were this side. Well the sandwiches were just wonderful: real ham, real bread. No more bully, no more biscuits, no this was the real stuff this was.

No more ration parties. When I used to think of when we were in the trenches hoping to be on the ration party which went out to back to meet the fellas bringing up the rum and rations. The Army Transport Corps brought them up the rear of the trenches and a squad was detailed to collect them and bring them to the quartermaster’s store where they were dished out. And no more Tickler’s jam. I’ve never understood how that firm started. I know it was based at Grimsby and folks since around there have told me that there were field s and fields of turnips put to use. Anyway, Ticklers’s jam provided something. There was machonochie as well and you were lucky if you got a tin of machonochie. Sometimes we were alright, other times it was in short supply. But you see, I was never a vegetarian. I wasn’t keen on the vegetable part and all I wanted was the meat. However, I survived.

There was a different attitude in 1918 to the one in 1915. I never heard talk about scrounging and swinging the lead and dodging the column and various things like that in the early days. We were all volunteers, keen to do our part and there was a camaraderie which wasn’t so evident at the last part. I met some good friends but I only kept in touch with one person form the last battalion after the war. There was a lot to be said for the territorials because coming from the same territory they were pals often before they went into the army. And coming from the same district they spoke the same language and had the same customs. It was very different.

Also see:

Donald Banks - Narrative - Part 1
Donald Banks - Narrative - Part 2

Donald Banks - Introduction and War Diary - England 1915
Donald Banks - War Diary - France 1915

And see too, my posts on my Army Service Numbers blog regarding the Lincolnshire Regiment:

3546 L/Cpl Donald Banks, 4th Lincs - Pt 2

2010-01-27T13:28:00.007Z

The continuing narrative of Donald Banks. Read Part 1 for the story so far. The photo above shows Donald (fourth from right, back row) and members of the 87th TRB at Clipstone Camp.

In Part 2 of his narrative, Donald is wounded and back in a hospital in England:

Narrative

At this hospital they issued the usual smokes. No, I didn’t want smokes. “Oh,” said Sister, “we’ll give him some chocolate.” They’d some lovely big blocks of chocolate which I surely enjoyed. Gradually I began to revive, able to eat and then a few days later, put on the train and arrived at Calais. We were taken off the beds of this ambulance train on stretchers to the quayside and the stretchers were placed four at a time on this big board which was hoisted up and swung over the dock onto a big private yacht. And there we lay on the top deck. Those that were able to walk were taken below and the yacht sped off across the channel to Dover. There we were put on the hospital train - I was back on my stretcher and then on the hospital bed - and we travelled all night and eventually arrived at Sheffield at what had been Wardsley Home for mental people but had been turned into a war hospital and was known as Whardale War Hospital number 4. I was beginning to recover then and in the middle of the ward - there’d be about eight beds, it was more like a large room and not a long hall - there was a small billiard table. A fellow was there and I was allowed to get up. He said to me, “Do you play billiards?” I said, “Oh no I never have.” “Well” he said, “come on” and he proceeded to teach me how to play billiards. Well eventually some well known people invited us out to their home, gave us a right good meal and they had a little billiard table and I could do nothing wrong. They were some kind folk, I wish I knew the names of those people who kindly took us. Then back to the hospital and then wonderful news came round; the king was coming. Oh were we excited.

Well by that time I was on my feet and we all had to assemble outside. Those in bed were placed on stretchers and taken down and spread around. And there stood the king within three or four feet of me. I’ll never forget the dignity he showed as he thanked us for what we were doing for the country and he shook hands with everybody in bed but we were standing up and well, it was a bit too much to expect. But I was proud of that, of our King George V. I was later to see his funeral in 1936 and I sat in the street outside Paddington station.

The King went and then all of a sudden in walked my father. He’d cycled over - it was only about fifty to sixty miles - an he walked in there. I can’t remember what he said but naturally we were pleased to see each other and then he cycled back home.

It came on wet and dreary and I took a walk outside at the back of the hospital, the first time except when the king had come, I’d been out. And there were three or four lime trees there and it was dank, dripping, leaves falling, Autumn. And a robin sang; such a lovely song, a lovely song after the guns.

Time came when they decided I should go home, so I was sent home, given a warrant and found my way down to the station. I had to walk, there was no ambulance or anything. I got to the station, found a train and got home to Wragby.

When I got home, of course my mother and people were glad to see me, I had five days leave. I don’t remember very much about it but I think I had five days’ leave. Before I went to France I had one weekend leave and one three day leave, that’s all the leave I had; they were very short periods of leave in those days.

However, this time it was five days at home, roaming the familiar fields and woods. And then I had to report to the 3/4th battalion at Belton Park camp near Grantham. I went to Belton Park camp and I was posted to D Company again. This time old Clacky had been wounded and he was there and one or two other folk I knew, and I was posted as a clerk in the office.

Well a short while after this, word came through, more reinforcements wanted and I didn’t feel I could face another ordeal for a while and so my father claimed me out of the army on the score of under age and I’ve got a certificate that I was under age. And the very next month I joined the RAMC at Lincoln hospital. I was accepted at 17 when my father made a special application because I wanted to be in the army. I didn’t want to be out of it but I didn’t feel ready to go back to fight just then, I’d been badly shaken.

PCN:
So when was this that you joined the RAMC?

DB:
January 1916. I was posted as an orderly to Ward 17b and my job was to scrub floors, to fetch the meals, to fetch the medicines and dressings and to prepare men for operation. I remember one of my first patients, he was due for an appendicitis, another for varicose veins, another for cartilage of the knees. We’d two famous doctors: Dr Brooks, Dr Brothers who were specialists in that. And I had to take these men, after preparing them, to the theatre, stand by while they were putting them under anaesthetic and hold them down if they reacted - as sometimes they did. Sometimes when they were coming round, certain chaps were violent, others would come round naturally. Course, there was the old gas mask of ether and chloroform business and see these operations performed. Also there’d be other operations held in the arched theatre of the grammar school at Lincoln. I was up there last week and I saw that building again and thought of what I’d seen there. I remember them sawing a man’s leg off at the thigh there. The fellow was sawing away, the leg eventually taken and thrown into the furnace of the boiler which supplied water to all the various wards. Huts had been built on the playing fields and there were twenty four wards. The officers’ section was in the building itself and I got on very well with all the nurse and sisters. It was a funny thing. I was in ward 17b and the orderly in the other half of the ward was also named Banks but no relation to me and he was not very popular.

Well after a year there it consisted of going down to the station, often in the night, with convoys due. We’d get word, “Convoy due”, a convoy of wounded coming and they always arrived in the middle of the night at the station and we had to be on duty at six o’clock the next morning just the same. In addition we had guard duties once a month, three hours on and three off, from six at night ‘til six in the morning and still carry on with our duties. They were a grand lot of chaps I worked with and we had a very good football team. The fellow who slept in the bunk under me - George Beal - was an exceptional fellow and when we played a team from Orient, one of the fellas asked if he’d go and play and he went and played for Arsenal. They wanted to keep him but the army wouldn’t release him. After the war he played for Burnley when Burnley won the division one championship two or three years running: 1921, 1922, 1923. He was a wonderful footballer that lad, I never saw anything like him. I played chiefly on the wing. I remember playing on Sincil Bank ground when word came through a convoy was coming and we couldn’t field our full team. The fellow we put in goal was cross-eyed. He let seventeen goals through and we were playing the Staffords of all people. Well we swallowed our pride but we won most of our matches.

Well eventually I was taken off this and put into the dispensary because I’d been keen on chemistry at school and had started an apprenticeship as a chemist. I was instructed in how to make and bottle up black jack and carol dakin solution and various other stock medicines. With the sergeant and the colonel’s daughter who was also acting as a dispenser, I was the third person.

Meanwhile I was itching to get back and then I put it off, I thought the only way I could do it was to apply for a commission. Word came through in June 1917, I’d been at the hospital then nearly eighteen months. Word came through that I was to report to the 87th Training Reserve Battalion at Catterick camp up in County Durham or North Yorkshire rather, so I said goodbye to my pals and comrades and I set of by train up through Doncaster right up to Darlington. Then there was a branch line ran to this Catterick camp.

Well there were really three camps. One was called California camp and ours was called Borden camp, I forget the name of the other one. At any rate, near the station in the centre was a big German prisoner compound surrounded by wire and they were surrounded by troops being trained. I remember the South African artillery had a camp near us.

It so happened I was called up before a board and questioned and sent back. A week or two later I was appointed lance-corporal. Now most of the fellas there were from the Durham Light Infantry so I adopted the Light Infantry badge though the rank and file were only allowed to wear a button. There was little Company Sergeant Major Hulha who’d been a jockey.

We had colonel Cheviot, he was a parson. ordained and the first thing you had to do was sit on a box while the clippers went over your head. You weren’t allowed a tuft of hair and there were frequent inspections. Oh we did chafe about this haircut business, we looked like convicts.

I attended course and I passed out on a musketry course and I also passed out on a general NCO course. And I remember too that the commandant of that course was an Irishman who’d been sergeant major at Lichfield barracks and had been appointed commissioned rank and captain and made commandant. And he was very much of the old order of sergeant majors. I remember him addressing us. “Now,” he said, “those leather pouches there. You’ll spend an hour at least over those.” Oh, spit and polish, spit and polish.

PCN:
Did you like army life in general?

DB:
Well, it’s not that I disliked it, I fitted in with it, I adapted to it. I expected to face up to all this kind of thing.

I’m going back for a minute to the RAMC. We had a bugler there his name was Swales. And I remember on the Order of the Day it said, “The Orderly Officer, The Orderly Sergeant, The Orderly Corporal, The Orderly Burgler.” Somebody had put an ‘r’ in: Orderly Burgler Swales. Course, we didn’t half tease him about that; he was the orderly burgler. But the old boy could certainly sound the half hour and quarter hour and the fall in. You see our duties in the morning were an hour and a half in the ward then back to our huts to make up our beds. We had bunk beds, palliases and two blankets and they were arranged in squares. Oh they were a grand lot. Old Kirky I remember and Brothwell. Brothwell became a good singer after the war, he became a printer. But there, I mustn’t digress, I could name various fells, Quartermaster Babbington, he was pretty good. We’d two sergeant majors: Sergeant Major Grey was one, quite a young regimental sergeant major whom I disliked, I got into trouble with him once when he ordered me to stand to attention to him and he’d never been out in the war. By that time we were wearing these stripes for wounds and I got seven days jankers for that although it didn’t amount to anything at all.

At Catterick we went through the usual drill and then we went out onto the ranges over the heather. There was a Scottish officer there I had a great admiration for and he seemed to have a soft spot for me, we got on fine. And there I fired my part three course and I recorded the highest score of a hundred and fifty two in part three. In the mad minute I got twelve bulls and three inners. In the ten rounds rapid I got ten bulls and I remember little Hulha lying beside me counting them as the disc came up, “another bull, another bull, two, three...” he got quite excited and I’ve still got my little book somewhere with the scores in.

PCN:
What was the mad minute?

DB:
The mad minute was load and fire fifteen rounds in one minute. The targets would pop up and down. Later I was to assist in the actual range work helping to place the targets in the trenches. There were two targets and the one went up as the other went down, like two screens. And when the one came down we’d got pots of brown and green paper strips to stick over the holes and put them up again. And after each session of firing they’d start at a hundred yards group and they used the round bull for that target, the familiar black round bull. But these other targets were a silhouette really of a man’s head and shoulders. Oh I remember marching over those Yorkshire moors, over the heather. I wish I could remember the name of that Scottish officer, he was a fine fella.

Well I was then sent on a bombing course to the Northern Command Bombing School at Otley; a three week bombing course. And I’ve got my handbook there now, full of notes and diagrams and what have you, still upstairs and showing the different types of grenade.

I perhaps should have said this. In 1915 when I was first out there we had no grenades. We used to fill the jam tins - Tickler’s jam; they’d hold about half a pound of jam, we’d fill them with powder, usually from some unexploded shell, and we’d stick a bit of fuse in. We had a brassard on the arm and a fusee which was a kind of match box with matches with extra long heads on that fizzed. You struck it on the brassard, attached it to the fuse and then threw. You’d have five inches of fuse, that would be the usual, and it burned at the rate of an inch a second so you’d five seconds to throw. We had a few stick grenades. The Germans then began to get their stick grenades - tater mashers we called them - and they were noisy things but they didn’t inflict the same damage as ours because the casing was thin sheet metal and ours was thicker - the jam tin bomb. Later the Mills was a big improvement. In fact I learned a lot more about explosives and things on this course and I’ve got a whole lot of pictures.

At any rate, I got a first class certificate. The previous NCOs that had been sent had never come out with a first class certificate for some time so I was put on the bombing squad.

PCN:
Were you still lance-corporal at this stage?

DB:
Yes, I was still lance corporal. It was in December that we entrained by the way. Before that there’s an incident I should record. Word came through of a terrible train disaster and on my period off I took a walk right down that line and I saw a sight I ‘d never like to see again: splintered wood carriages of the train that had got derailed. The train had been standing in the station and there was no engine attached to it. The troops, who were the Royal Scots Fusiliers, had entrained and their weight was just enough to set this train in motion and it started to move. Folk in the train didn’t realize there was no engine on and there was nobody to stop the jolly thing and it gathered speed going down the grade till it reached a bend and had then acquired such a momentum that it wouldn’t take the bend. It left the rails and the carriages smashed into one another and a lot of the fellows were killed, there were a lot of casualties. And they’d already been in the Gretna Green disaster, some of these fellas, where there was another smash some time previous, but my word that made a terrific impression on me.

Incidentally, we had some very good officers there. Iremeber seeing a diusplay of tent pegging that was wonderful to me. To see these fellas coming along with their lances and picking up these pegs and them twirling round in the air. Tent-pegging; real good old army stuff, very exciting to me.

One other thing I do remember. There were two churches there and at one we had a very good chaplain, Captain Canadine. He was a Canadian from Nova Scotia and I played the organ for him for his services. I remember playing the organ very nervously when colonel Cheviot was due to preach. I was a very nervous lad in those days. At any rate, Captain Canadine eventually got married - I’ve got a picture somewhere of him - and he arranged debates and I took part in them. And I remember the subject of one debate he was particularly pleased with me over and that was ‘Does death in war ensure salvation?’ And II chose the text ‘Not by works but by faith are ye saved’ and he commended me on that and the debate raged to and fro. It was very useful having these debates and Canadine was an excellent chaplain. We enjoyed the church parades.

PCN:
How did the church reconcile the war with Christianity?

DB:
We felt we were doing our duty in defending ourselves and that question I don’t remember arising then.

PCN:
But as a Christian, the first rule is thou shalt not kill isn’t it? And then you become a soldier but you’re still a Christian so how do you reconcile the two?

DB:
We felt justified and while the church took a sort of mutual attitude - we prayed for our enemies as well as for ourselves - but at the same time who was to be killed, us or them? We felt we were doing our duty in order to end hostilities. It was to be a war to end war we all hoped. I can’t go into a lot of detail on the theological side now but I met some fine chaplains and I was always ready to take part in the services. I remember taking a communion on the morning before I was wounded that first time, in the open, kneeling on that ridge along with the others. Yes, never thinking that that day I should be a casualty myself. We seemed far away from it all. However, that’s near Hellfire Corner as they called it.

Going back now to this matter of grenades. Yes, I learned a lot about this under the Chevin, that big hill overlooking Otley which I’ve meant to and never climbed. Anyway, I got a first class certificate and I was posted to the staff and I got a second stripe, a corporal. This was after our removal.

We had a clergyman and he was evidently from Leeds. I say evidently, I heard that he had been the vicar at Leeds who came and gave us some talks while I was at the NCO school at California camp church and he made a great impression upon us. I remember a fella saying, “I can’t listen to that fella for long enough.” He was away from the usual, he knew how to interest and talk to men. Yes, we paraded. The Church of England men fell in and marched to church. The others were in the minority and they went to their various churches. Church parade was, I suppose, compulsory.

PCN:
Were most men Christian?

DB:
No man liked to be though of as a heathen or a non-Christian. Some had little idea of it it’s true and I don’t remember much of those open air church parades of the theology of what was preached, it was a formal type of service.

At Catterick camp there was that particular clergyman and one other incident. The weather turned very cold. Now our ablution rooms were open at each end, there were no doors. There were long metal benches and pipes with taps running along and by Jove, you wanted to get out back as soon as you could. Anybody who tried to dodge it soon got told by his pals. No fella dodged his ablutions there but you were jolly glad to get in out of those moors. And the weather suddenly changed and we woke up to find snow; three or four inches of snow and the leaves were still on the trees. It was a grotesque appearance of them bent down under the weight of the wet snow. I’ve never seen the like since; an early snowstorm in September I guess. It might have been October but at any rate the leaves were on the trees and I can remember the branches bending under the weight of the snow.

Well that soon passed but my goodness we were glad when in the middle of December word came that we were to be moved,. We entrained and the train set off we knew not where. We got to Darlington and we went I guess, south somewhere but where I never knew except this: looking out of the window I looked down on my home from an embankment of a railway track that runs the south of Lincoln, designed for freight trains and goods trains. And it passes right by the school which my father had taken charge of at Boultham in South Lincoln. In fact to reach the school and the house they were right below this forty feet high embankment. And there was a road nearby that was bridged and a co-op store the other side. And then a twelve foot wide drain and beyond that, Roston and Proctor busy on manufacturing, Clayton and Shuttleworth, the industrial part of Lincoln. And further beyond up there were Robeys making the first tanks. The first tank was made at Lincoln by Robeys. And at the back of the school playground a high fence was built and my parents told me later they could hear weird sounds from the tank factory.

We were en route from Catterick camp to Clipstone camp near Mansfield in Nottinghamshire, that’s where we eventually arrived. Again there was a spur line running into the camp and a camp station and there were the 85th and 86th and 87th TRB regiments. The 86th were the Northumberland Fusiliers chiefly and I remember they had a drum and fife band. We had a good brass band there and Friday mornings during inspection, the band would be playing selections while a full inspection was being taken of the whole battalion.

By this time we had a change of colonel. Cheviot went and Grant came. He’d been taken prisoner by the Austrians and they’d released him on account of his age, making him promise he’d take no further part in hostilities. Well he couldn’t resist it and went to the War Office. They said, “all right, you go and take charge of that training camp.” Of course, he never went abroad, he was too old, too past it, but he was too useful to them. But he was so old fashioned. Now by this time we were issued with the new PL14 rifles; heavy brutes to carry about but they were pretty good and accurate in firing and I fired another course there.

What I remember about that particular camp was in the morning there’d be the bugle call of course fro reveille, the cookhouse and then eventually the half hour and the quarter hour. I stepped forward because I was right marker for A Company. I assembled with the five other markers from each company. We stood at ease with our rifles and the regimental sergeant major came along. “Ready. Atten...shun! Slope up!” and we sloped arms. “Markers, right and left turn.” I turned to the right, the others turned to the left so we were back to back, the others all facing the other way. The sergeant major moved round on my right and then gave the order “Quick March”. I stood still and the fella behind me would count fifty paces, tap the next fella, stop and turn round. The sergeant major would just motion him in line and each in turn stopped at intervals like that, turned round. The sergeant major, having got us all in line like that would then give the order, “Markers steady. Stand at... ease!” We stood there. We’d all turned left then of course and then the companies marched in on us and lined up with a marker for each company. There’d be the five minute, the fall-in, the quarter hour, half hour, five minute fall-in and they’d march in on us.

Now this Colonel Grant was one of the old school and determined he’d introduce some real physical training. First of all the whole battalion were given the order, “Right incline” so that I was at the peak. “Right Corporal Banks, fifteen paces, march”. I marched out fifteen paces in front and they had to take their time from me. Rifle drill consisted first in swinging your rifle up and catching it horizontally, then raising it up above your head then bending down. “Steady, steady” right down to the ground and then up again six or seven times. Then we were ordered to return tot he order and then swing over with the rifle horizontally from side to side. But the most exacting one was when we were given the order, “Standing, load”. You’d come up to the loading position then aim. Then, “Right arm extend” One, two, three “steady there”, you’d hear somebody fall crash. “Return, left arm extend.” Now you hold a heavy P14 rifle by the small and hang onto that for fifteen or twenty seconds and you’d soon know it. Well in the end they told me the medical officer got after him because too many men were falling out about it, but I had to endure it. I longed to let it go faster but no, not with Colonel Grant watching there. He came up to me once and struck me behind the shoulder, “Straighten up”. Oh he was a brute.

The soldiers there were bits and pieces from various battalions and what they were aiming at I just didn’t understand at the time. They were given instruction and parade drill, rifle drill, the rudiments of bombing and gas drill and then posted to a machine gun establishment. This was the formation of the Machine Gun Corps. We’d realized that the Germans had been very successful with machine guns so they got busy making these Maxims and what have you. Their badge was the crossed machine guns but they needed this infantry pre-training before they specialized in the machine gun training and tactics and we were the ones to give it to them.

There was a training programme set out and after the morning parade we were divided up and sent to our various training positions. Number one platoon bombing, number two rifle practice with the little target things; triangle of error. Another one would be bayonet work. There was a whole curriculum set out for training. Now I was attached to the bombing squad and we used to go over to some waste moorland in which there was a big dug-out and some trenches set up for live bombing practice. Well first of all these fellas came up by platoon with an officer or sergeant in charge and our officer would divide us into sectors, each instructor being given a squad to take. Well of course there were rudimentary throwing positions, practice them in dummy throwing. Course, there were a good many fells who turned to throw round arm instead of overhead and you had to teach them that the accurate way was overhead and you also had to teach them how to gauge the distance. I used to give points and praise up the fella who could throw the furthest and the fella who could throw the most accurately. And of course, they had to develop those muscles by continuous practice in throwing.

As a matter of fact, when I had charge of the Home Guard here I only ever once went live throwing and the other fellas shirked it. I took them out to Great Easton and did some live throwing.

So we instructed these fellas in bombing and I was on the specialist staff when the Germans started their big push in March and I got concerned. I sat down and thought the matter over and went to see the sergeant major. I said, “Sir, I want to see Captain Walker. I want a transfer.”
“What for?”
I said, “I want to get back to my regiment.”
“Why?”
“Well,” I said, “there’s a struggle going on out there, I feel I ought to be in it.”
“Well you’re a fool you know, you’ve got a good job here.”
I was with the 85th Training Reserve Battalion all this time, preparing them to go into the Machine Gun Corps and I could have stayed there.

By the way there were three Americans who joined us, three real nice fellas, I got quite friendly with them. They were not the ordinary kind of fella, they wanted to join in the war before America came in so they decided to come over and join the British army and they did. Well of course, unfortunately our fellas were not keen on the Americans staying out of the war and they were ostracized to some extent. I felt sorry for these fellas and one day they said to me, “Would you like to go to the United States and join the army there, you know you’d get good pay?” I said, “No, I don’t think so.” and looking back they were tempting me because they just suddenly disappeared, posted missing. I feel sure what they did was to beat it up to London, got to their US consul and say, “Look we tried to serve with the British army, get us back into the States” and that they went back to the States to become instructors. And if I’d gone with them I’d have been an instructor earning a lot more money, but I couldn’t be disloyal to my country. I wasn’t going to be a deserter, oh no, oh no. Deserters were shot anyway. No, looking back, had I been of a mercenary type wanting to make it, seize my chances, I could have gone with them and I’d have probably got to some good rank in the States, goodness knows. Anyway, that’s all supposition.

Anyway, I went to the Sergeant Major as I say and he took me before the captain. The captain thought I was crackers too. “However,” he said, “you can go before the colonel.” I appeared before the colonel and he was a new one, it wasn’t Grant. The colonel said, “Why is it corporal, you want to get back to your regiment?” I said, “Well sir, there’s trouble going on out there and I feel I ought to be with it; I want to have another bash at the enemy.”
“Well,” he said, “I commend you. You know if you transfer that you lose your rank and have to revert to the ranks but I’ll recommend that you be re-appointed.” And the old boy he gave me his blessing and I set off.

To be continued.

Also see:

Donald Banks - Narrative - Part 1

Donald Banks - Introduction and War Diary - England 1915
Donald Banks - War Diary - France 1915

And see too, my posts on my Army Service Numbers blog regarding the Lincolnshire Regiment:

The 1st & 2nd Battalions, The Lincolnshire Regiment
The 3rd (Special Reserve) Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment
The 4th Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment
The 5th Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment
The Lincolnshire Regiment - Service Battalions
The Lincolnshire Regiment - 10th Battalion - Grimsby Chums

And also: The Lincolnshire Yeomanry

3546 L/Cpl Donald Banks, 4th Lincs Regt - Pt 1

2010-01-25T14:51:00.006Z

Synopsis

I have already written here about Donald Banks, and published extracts of my interview with him. That interview runs to 62 pages of A4, and a fairly small typeface. To publish all of that in one chunk now would challenge even the most dedicated WW1 historian, and so I'm going to publish the interview with Mr Banks in stages.

I met Donald Banks many times and I enjoyed his company enormously. Reading these transcripts again, reminds me of pleasant mornings and afternoons spent with him in his house in Great Dunmow, Essex. He was an imposing man, an ex teacher and headmaster who commanded respect and affection in all those who were privileged to know him. He also had a beautiful Lincolnshire accent, which I remember well, but which unfortunately does not come across in these reminiscences. The interviews were conducted over four days in December 1986 and January 1987.

Interview - Part 1 (for Part 2 click HERE)

PCN:
What's your name please?

DB:
My name is Donald Banks.

PCN:
And when were you born?

DB:
On the 9th of January 1899 at Wragby, which is in county Lindsey, the north part of Lincolnshire where my father was headmaster of the school.

PCN:
And what was your trade before you joined up?

DB:
I had just left the Lincoln Technical School and started as an apprentice to a chemist - P.J. Watson, The Bail, Lincoln. I went with one or two others to the drill hall of the headquarters of the territorial army of the Lincolnshire Regiment and gave my age as nineteen - although I was only sixteen - and I was accepted. This was February the 7th 1915.

At the drill hall I was drilled with other recruits by Sergeant Thompson, a veteran of the South African wars and Egyptian and Sudan conflicts and a very fine instructor indeed. In a few days we were issued with a uniform: tunic, trousers, cap - the service cap with the wire round the rim - and puttees, (we were shown how to do them), and greatcoat and we were shown how to roll that up and wear it round our shoulders on the march. Foot drill was the first instruction and we were instructed in the drill hall and when the weather was fine, marched down the street to the south common. After a while, rifles were issued to us - old Lee Enfield, the long Lee Enfield of the Boer War type - and we were instructed in rifle drill.

Joining up with the 1/4th Lincolns

At that time there came a request from the 2/4th battalion, then stationed at Ongar in Essex, for those who'd had experience as scouts and I, having joined the boy scouts in 1910, volunteered along with several others. The four of us were given our instructions and railway warrants and proceeded by train from Lincoln down through Sleaford, Spalding, March, Ely, Cambridge to Liverpool Street where we changed and entrained to Ongar, arriving there in the evening. There we were billeted in private houses. Most of the local people had had to give up their living room - furniture being cleared - and we were issued with palliasses and we filled them with straw and that was our bedding. Rations were delivered each day from the Quartermaster's store, usually consisting of a quarter of a loaf for each man, a tin of jam, tin of bully beef and some of those big thick biscuits about six inches square. Also there was a ration of butter in those days, and bacon. Then we reported to the orderly room and I and my three comrades - Private Joyce - Bert Joyce - King and Morris - were posted to number sixteen platoon, D Company. We joined in the daily parade in the street each morning at eight o'clock and took part in the various drills and duties but were seconded to a small group headed by Major Low who proceeded to give us instructions on map reading and general scouting something on the lines of the old South African campaign.

After some weeks the whole battalion was entrained and transported to Luton. Again we were put in billets; I and my three companions in Paul Street, (a branch off the road which led up the hill to the London Road near the big water tower). We paraded in the street with the rest of D Company each morning and went through the usual drills: foot drill. In those days we lined up in two long columns and the order would be given after "Attention" to number. We numbered off and the odd numbers had to take a step back, a step to the right; the order being given, "Form fours". And then the whole battalion were ordered, "Right turn" and we marched off in fours - not threes as in this last war. Also, each company had four platoons and our four platoons in D Company each took part in separate drills under various instructors. There was platoon drill and squad drill and rifle drill and then we proceeded to bayonet work - dummy sacks placed in a trench, some hanging from a rope.

Every week on Friday was a route march - usually with full pack which varied according to each man but which was about 48 to 50 pounds. The routes would be over Dunstable Downs or through Luton Hoo park or various parks around and we usually arrived late in the afternoon after doing an average of 12 to 15 miles. That was to get us used to marching - an endurance test too. The captain, out Captain Hooper, I remember very well, rode ahead of the company on his horse and the other officers also were mostly on horseback.

At this stage I might as well explain what our equipment was. We had the old leather equipment consisting of the shoulder straps, two big pouches for ammunition, behind was a big leather case for holding our entrenching tool. On the right hand side was a haversack, on the left side our bayonet, and along side it, leather loops for holding the handle of the entrenching tool. The entrenching tool consisted of a metal blade in the form of a small spade coming almost to a point - round not flat - and the other part was a spike so you could use it both as a pick as well as a spade. We had no ammunition to carry then. Now our particular form of arms drill consisted in coming to the slope by canting the rifle forward at an angle of forty five degrees then swinging it up on the left shoulder and cutting the right hand away. In most other units one had to draw the rifle up on the right hand side, catching it at the shoulder. The reason we canted the rifle forward was to avoid catching it with the pouches which stuck out on each side of us, making it much easier to perform this drill. We had much reason to remember that later on when we found ourselves being drilled by some Royal Fusilier sergeants who objected to our particular form of sloping arms. And we objected to them trying to alter it, however that's another story.

We were issued with Japanese rifles. The Japanese government had presented, we understood, five hundred thousand rifles to the British government for use. They were rather large, a smaller bore than the 303. They had the V back-sight and piqued fore-sight and I found them very accurate and handy. When on the range I was able to perform creditably - at the Wardown ranges some miles away where we fired a course. The trouble was there were no slings issued and we found it pretty tiring carrying these rifles, some at the trail, some at the slope, until of course as we approached our destination or on the return to our billets we were always given the order to march to attention, that is at the slope in an orderly procedure. Well some of us got bits of rope or leather and made slings of a kind so that we could carry it over our shoulders more comfortably.

Now these rifles were of a light wood which we found would splinter rather easily, not so serviceable as the British wood that was used in our Lee Enfield rifles. And the bayonets were the long single edged type but very useful and easily fixed when we got the order to fix. I remember one occasion we marched to Harpenden and there in the street, given the order to pile arms, a thing I've never seen done since those days. The fashion's fallen out because rifles haven't the piling swivels now which are up near the muzzle. When we piled them there was a certain drill in doing that and also in undoing them.

To get us used to firing we were taken into a chalk pit and were issued with a Lee Enfield of the long type. I remember we climbed up on a rocky platform and there were two targets. We had to aim at the lower target in order to hit the top - they being placed at such a range as to allow for the trajectory difference because the range in that pit was only about thirty yards. We got used to the kick of the rifle, this was before we undertook the range firing with the Japanese rifles. Now our rifles were in short supply throughout the British army. I might add that we also did night exercises. I remember we did night manoeuvres in Wardown park and as we lay in the grass waiting for the order to advance by sections, a nightingale sang. It seemed most incongruous to hear this bird singing away in the dark as we lay there with our rifles in our hand.
However, to come back, we had on Sundays, church parade in which the whole brigade - the 132nd Brigade - took part.

PCN:
What division was that?

DB:
This was the 46th Division, the territorial army, also known as the North Midland Division. The division consisted of the 4th Lincolns and 5th Lincolns, the 4th and 5th Leicesters, the 5th and 6th battalions of the North Staffs and the 5th and 6th battalions of the South Staffordshire regiment.

After the church parade which was usually held in the park, our brigadier loved to indulge in a huge manoeuvre known as the left wheel, en masse the battalions in columns of companies. It is a very intricate manoeuvre and he was anxious that it should be done very carefully and we were always very glad when that procedure was over and we had Sunday afternoons to ourselves.

After the route march on Fridays we'd return to our billets and change our socks and boots and then the sergeant would come round on kit inspection to each billet - with an officer usually - and then we'd proceed out into the open streets to one of the houses where the window had been thrown open. Inside was a table at which sat an officer and the quartermaster. Our names were called in alphabetical order, we each stepped forward, stood smartly to attention, saluted and were presented with a huge sum of a shilling per day plus usually two pence for equipment, it was to supplement our equipment. By the way, I might have mentioned that in our equipment we were also equipped with a housewife which consisted of needles and thread for darning our own socks and sewing on buttons. Course, we all had brass buttons in those days and every morning using our brass stick we were polishing buttons and cap badges. Ours was the sphinx - that was the regimental badge for the Lincolnshire Regiment - and in the little place under the sphinx there was the word "Egypt" in what you would call romantic characters, such as the Daily Mail uses. This was for the regular army because they'd served so well in Egypt under General Gordon and General Kitchener and others. The Leicesters had a tiger because of their service in Bengal, the Staffordshires had the Staffordshire knot and the Notts and Derby's - nicknamed the Notts and Jocks - had a cross for their badge, the Maltese Cross. We gradually learned the badges of other regiments, all made of metal and to be polished up, though later on we had to have them blacked over because they reflected the light and gave positions away, just as the wire was eventually taken from our hats because that was apt to deflect the bullets and so on.

I forgot to mention, there were four brigades. Things worked out in fours. Starting from a small squad would be sixteen men. A platoon would usually consist of forty men, there would be four platoons to a company, four companies to a battalion, four battalions formed a brigade, three brigades formed a division. And that's the plan on which the army was built in those days. There were alterations later but I never went into details because we got very much mixed up in the latter part. You were put from one battalion to another in order to reinforce and I found myself mixed up with all kinds of folk.

We were parading as a company every morning. Sergeant Major Whalley was a very good company sergeant major and Captain Hooper was a fine captain who led us. Both were eventually killed.

We were left to ourselves in the evening and there were various concerts. The local people were very kind to us. I remember I used to go to the church there and there was a very fine curate named Eliot. I forget the vicar's name but I do remember that the organist was a very fine organist - Costello was his name - and I joined there the Church of England Men's Society and I was sponsored by a grocer in Cumberland Street. There was the social life and there were good concerts. I remember particularly when some of the Scottish troops came with their bagpipes and played, and on another occasion - I don't know the name of the musician -but there was a fine cellist.

There were evening duties as well - patrols to help to keep order. I've been on patrol and I remember on that occasion going down the main street of Luton and the Luton Red Cross Band - a very fine brass band - was entertaining people. There were usually four, sometimes six, per patrol, just for two or three hours while the troops were about but I never remember any disturbance or trouble being caused by our fellows at all. You see, all our people were volunteers who joined up to serve King and country because the appeal was made for all strong able-bodied men to serve their country in its hour of danger and save her from Germany and Austria. And we had a great sense of patriotism in those days. We were proud of our country and of our king and we were all led to believe that Germany was a threat to civilisation. And I still believe that the Kaiser wanted to dominate Europe just as Hitler in this last war also tried to dominate Europe. I never lost that sense of patriotism. It had been instilled in us at school. I distinctly remember seeing on the wall, pictures of King Edward the Seventh and Queen Alexandra. And on Empire Day - May 24th - which is still called Victoria Day in Canada and observed in Canada as a holiday, that day marked Queen Victoria's birthday and we used to parade in the playground at school. A flag was run up on a pole - the Union Jack of course - and we were taught to salute it and we learned various patriotic songs too. I think it was instilled in us all; a pride and love of our own country and a determination to work and serve in whatever position we were called. When I returned home on leave my father gave me the opportunity of drilling the schoolchildren - the older ones - on the school playground, much to their delight as it was a nice change from the three Rs to be out in the open being drilled and it gave me some opportunity to develop powers of leadership and command which proved useful later.

Then on May 1st the bugle sounded the fall in. We fell in in the street and our officer told us that reinforcements were required for the 1/4th battalion in France.

Volunteering for the 1/4th Lincolns

"All volunteers take three paces forward." And most of us did. Then the officer came along, "You, you, you..." pointing to each one and I was among those selected. The rest of the battalion was dismissed and we were instructed to proceed home on leave, that our warrants would be sent to us and that we were to report back on the following Monday morning. Now this was a Friday I remember very well because the only leave I was able to get was from Saturday to Sunday, just two days leave before we were to go abroad. We went to the Midland station at Luton - our instructions had been sent to allow us to board the train. We changed at Nottingham into the Lincoln train and we had no difficulty there but I remember there was no train home till next morning and I arrived at my home station on the eight o'clock train and my station master - Mr Saggers - said "where's your ticket?" I said, "The battalion said that it would be sent on to you." He laughed aloud and said, "alright, off you go."

So I went home and announced to my parents I was going to serve abroad. I took a walk with my mother along the old familiar paths through the fields, along by the beck and up to the woods. It was a lovely day. And then, on the Sunday, with my old bike which I was given second hand when I was ten years old, I cycled to Lincoln twelve miles away as there was no train on Sundays from Wragby station. On the way, I called to see a clergy widow whose son was also serving in the war - Mrs Maddon - and that’s the only time I felt the parting. My parents had shown no emotion, they were rather proud that I’d been selected, and so I cycled the twelve miles to Lincoln. What happened to the bike I don’t know, but I got to the Midland station and had no trouble getting back to Luton, arriving early Monday morning. We were then issued with new equipment - webbing equipment which consisted of five pouches on either side, each holding fifteen clips of ammunition. It was quite a load when we were really loaded up with ammunition but that was balanced by the pack on our backs. We were issued with the long Lee Enfield rifles and they were charger loading. My rifle had been a single loader with a full magazine that would hold ten rounds but had had the charger bridge built on; it had been the old Boer War type of rifle. The date on my rifle was 1897. It had been converted into charger loading so that the cartridges (which were clip-loading which was not a feature of the Boer war) could be pushed in. The short, two bladed bayonet with a black leather scabbard I wore by my side.

We were then entrained for Southampton. Arriving at Southampton we were marched to a camp on the outskirts. I can’t remember exactly the district, I think it was the Highfields District of Southampton, and there we were issued with the usual bully, biscuits and beef and just lay around waiting for the next order. But it wasn’t until the following day in the evening or late afternoon that we fell in along with other units from the various brigades and battalions of the division and marched through Southampton to the docks. There we embarked on a small steamer whose name I don’t remember. Of course, there were no bunks and no blankets. As dusk fell, our transport moved out into the Solent and on reaching opposite Portsmouth we were joined by a destroyer as escort to escort us across the channel. Darkness had fallen and we just lay on the deck as we were and slept as best we could. When I awoke in the morning I found we were anchored off Le Havre at the mouth of the Seine. Of course, the usual rumours went around as to why we were still there but around nine o’clock the vessel got underway and proceeded up the River Seine; a novel experience as we sat there watching the houses and the French countryside go by until we arrived at Rouen. There the vessel anchored in mid stream. We were taken in lighters and proceeded to march to a camp consisting of large , sandy gravely plain surrounded by fir trees and known as The Bull Ring.

Etaples - The Bull Ring

We were housed in tents and right next to us were the gurkhas with whom I soon made friends. I’ve got a picture here of myself with one of them which somebody took and which was sent to England and put in the paper. I proceeded to learn some of their language and they taught me very well, but what did strike me was when the ghurka sergeants came in they’d sit and be attended to by the privates. The privates had to undo their boots and take them off. I couldn’t see our sergeants doing that. But they were fine little fellows: quick, agile, friendly, I liked them immensely.

Then we were out on the bull ring. Reveille was five o’clock, breakfast was six o’clock and we were on the march before seven, out to the bull ring. There, divided into sections, we were drilled and re-drilled much to our disgust because we’d been looking forward to going into the fighting ranks. I remember we had these Royal Fusilier sergeants who proceeded to teach us their type of drill in spite of our protests that we had our own type of sloping arms. We were very soon snubbed and told what would happen.

We had a long session each day, returning about noon for lunch. Afternoons were free when we’d saunter down into the town and taste the local wine. We were paid five francs - or was it ten francs, I’m not sure - a week; not very much money but enough for our needs. And that’s where I first came across those games which became quite a feature of the camp life: housey housey, crown and anchor and other games. I was never keen on drink so I avoided the wet canteen as it was told, but I can’t say I witnessed any undue behaviour by our fellows by over drinking or any excesses at all.

PCN:
Did you play crown and anchor?

DB:
No, I did not play because I saw the futility of it and I could see no good coming of it. I never was inclined to gamble and I never have. Even now I don’t go in for pools or anything of that kind. Chance your money? No, it isn’t any pleasure for me. I just used it for buying chocolate - the French type - or sweets. I didn’t smoke either in those days, like most of them.

Now in our tents there would be sixteen to a tent. We were issued with a blanket but we mostly slept with our clothes on. There were of course the usual medical inspections too we had to undergo, as we had of course before we left our billets in Luton. we were all medically examined to make sure we were fit.

PCN
Did nobody question your age?

DB:
No, my age was not questioned at all and I was able to keep up with the best of them. I was very strong and tall for my age and I’d always taken part in sport at home. I’d also belonged to the rifle club of which my father was the secretary and founder. The club was in the first of five divisions in the county miniature rifle association and one of my sisters in fact was a crack shot and beat all the men in the Christmas competition. We’d an excellent team and all these boys joined up. Most of the lads with me joined the Yeomanry, being country lads.

While we were at Rouen the drill proceeded as usual and we got rather fed up with it. Then one morning I had stomach trouble and reported sick. I was given medicine and reported “M and D”, medicine and duty. When I got back and reported to the orderly room, my particular section had gone out and I was put with the Durham Light Infantry who consisted mostly of miners: small fellows and I stood up above them like Nelson’s column, I could see over all their heads. I later became associated with the Durham Light Infantry.

Entraining for the Front

Now the next step was we were embarked in wagons on which was printed 40 Hommes, 8 Chevaux - 40 men, eight horses. There were no seats, we just sat and dangled our legs and the train proceeded leisurely through St Omer where it stopped. That was a remount depot because there were a lot of horses used - particularly by the Army Service Corps and by the artillery for hauling guns. In fact our own artillery, as far as I knew, was hauled by horse power. We proceeded all day at a leisurely pace and arrived at Poperinghe in Belgium. This was in May 1915 and I was back with the Lincolns. Only that day did I encounter the Durham regiment. It was a huge camp and there were regiments from all parts of the country and this was a sort of holding place for reinforcements, Rouen being well back from the lines, well out of range and of course, planes didn’t get as far as there. The small German planes and our own planes were of the primitive type and I didn’t see anything of them until we got to Poperinghe.

At Poperinghe we detrained and marched out to a wood - I can’t remember the name of the wood now - and we and various other units were called the 2nd entrenching battalion. Our duties were to build up sandbag emplacements around the wood as a line of defence in case of retreat; somewhere for the troops, in case of assault, to fall back to positions that we were preparing for them. Trenches were dug and these sandbags filled, redoubts made and working in the woods now and again we’d hear the sound of a plane and glance up and then we were warned not to look up when a plane came over. On the approach of a plane a whistle sounded and everybody turned their heads down. We were told that faces looking upwards were very visible - the white faces turned upwards - to any planes that were reconnoitring. That’s all the planes were really used for then, just reconnoitring.

I saw my first ack-ack fire - puffs of white smoke - following the plane. The plane would eventually turn and while the gunners had to adjust it got away. I can’t say I saw one brought down. They hadn’t acquired yet the accuracy, that came later - nor the tactics to counter this.

While we were in this wood we built our own bivouacs. We were issued with groundsheets and we cut down branches and made our own little tents or bivouacs. Now my pal Bert Joyce and I shared one. He had been in service in the Dukeries as a footman and lived in Lincoln. His brother was a teacher. Bert was in service in the Dukeries in Nottinghamshire and we had formed a close friendship. During the day we worked and we were issued our bully beef and so on and when it rained the bivouac mostly held it off. But once when I was out working and came back I hadn’t noticed that somebody had been sick and I was summoned for having a dirty bivouac. And I still think I was unfairly treated when I was sentenced to three days CB as we called it - confined to barracks. Usually if a man misbehaved himself he had to report in the evening to the orderly sergeant who put him through a lot of drill along with the other fellas who’d got jankers as we called it. There were other names beside that but jankers was our familiar name.

But instead of putting me on the jankers drill I was put on duties of pumping water from a pond. Our water supplies were pumped up through a tube into a tank through cylinders loaded with some chemical; lime I think. It tasted horribly and in fact we couldn’t often see the bottom of our cups because of the colour of the water. We survived of course. We’d all got our own little billie tins and could make small little fires but we had to be very careful not to make much smoke so as not to give our position away.

One day there was a terrific bang and then a loud rising whine as a shell sped through the air and landed somewhere near Poperinghe with a terrific bang. We were all very startled and learned later that it was this German Big Bertha that had been run up to a railhead firing a huge twelve inch shell or something about that size. Well the range wasn’t accurate and it did very little damage and they usually fired about four or five rounds and then withdrew the gun out of sight. You’ll find mention of that big gun in the history books of the war. My word, it certainly was a terrific noise it made and the whistling of the shell through the air was like an express train rushing along. Fortunately we were well out of range, it was more destructive in noise than anything else. I did hear that a post office somewhere had been destroyed but there were rumours and rumours of course.

On another occasion I was put on night sentry guarding a tank, a big water tank. We could hear the sounds of our guns and the German guns firing intermittently and then there arose a great red glow in the sky. Eventually a fella came up, I challenged him, he said “Friend”, right. I said, “What’s that big glow?” “Oh,” he said, “The Germans are using liquid fire.” It transpired later that the Germans had sprayed either paraffin or petrol over on our trenches and set it on fire in an attempt to burn their way through and it was known as liquid fire. And also, very shortly within that time, chlorine gas was used. It was just outside our sector and we were issued with pads which we kept in a little pocket in the lower corner of our jackets. These pads had to be kept wet and we had to put them over our noses and mouths by tying them on in some way to counteract the effect of the gas. Later we were given masks of felt with glass eye pieces, and still later there was a mouth piece in which we could breathe out but not in. We breathed in the air coming through the hood being tied round our necks and those were the first primitive gas masks that we had. I remember the gas being used while \I was there and there were various devices for keeping the pads from drying out. Fortunately I never had to use them but later I did have to use my gas mask considerably.

We then, after some couple of weeks, were given orders to fall in and we marched to a place called Ouderdom where there was a square of trees with rectangular huts and floorboards. There we joined the 1/4th battalion of the Lincolns. The band was playing, I remember, a very popular tune of the time. We had a very good band and when they were in the trenches they acted as stretcher bearers. We were entertained. We were issued with tins of tobacco and cigarettes. Most of the fellows smoked cigarettes, chiefly Woodbines, but I didn’t smoke at all and tins were piled underneath the boards, there must have been a hoard of tobacco for someone eventually.

One night there was a yell from one fellow. He’d taken his boots off and the rats had nibbled his toes. There was a danger, they said, of rats biting and causing infection and that they were able to nibble at a fellow’s feet without him knowing. That’s just perhaps part of the yarn but I do know that these rats were a jolly nuisance to us.

Course, during the daytime, a favourite trick was to sit and pull your shirt off, going around the seams cracking the lice. You just couldn’t avoid them somehow. There were no public baths at all and it was difficult obtain water for washing.

Well then we fell in and proceeded by night up towards Ypres, the Menin Road where the railway crossed and into trenches, and for a couple of miles I should say, we were in trenches. Course, the ground being flat, it wasn’t possible to approach the trenches on the level.

The trenches had what was called duckboards - slatted boards to keep our feet dry when it was wet. There were places where they were broken by shell fire and you had to jump over wide puddles that formed.. The rain made things very unpleasant for us.

The Ypres Salient

Well then we found ourselves up by Sanctuary Wood and Maple Copse and we entered the trenches near Hill 60. This was my first time in trenches and this would be early July I guess. Well in the trenches they warned me to keep away from a certain bridge section because a fella had just been shot there by a sniper. However, I ducked over and fired a couple of shots and sat down. There was a fire platform of sandbags to stand on.

Now we had a bombing section and the bombing section was led by Corporal Claxton. ‘Clacky’ as we called him was very ingenious. He’d made a big catapult about five feet high; a board cut with a gap between and on each arm were fixed hooks with rubbers - four strands of half inch or more square strands of rubber. These were joined to a canvas basket on which was a hook fastened to a ratchet. There was a handle and the thing was wound up tight to get the tension, pulled back, and when the tension reaches a certain point, a catch released it and it flung the contents over the trench. How far it went depended on the amount of stuff you put in. Well Clacky was in the habit of collecting anything he could - usually empty biscuit tins which he then packed with clay, clips, spent cartridges, stones and anything like that. Then, in the cavity left, he’d defuse an unexploded shell, put the powder in and fix a Bickford’s number five fuse to it - which varied in length. Then he would place this thing on the bag, wind it up to the tension point, apply a match to the fuse and they’d just kick this ratchet and send it lolloping over to land somewhere, we hoped in the German or near the German trenches, and a moment later there’d be a terrific bang. It was a primitive kind of mortar.

Now the Germans had developed the minenwerfer; a plate with a spring on which threw a mortar or shell up to about a hundred yards, and they started replying with these. Well we always had a man on duty and it was one of my tasks for an hour, to stand and watch for them. You sometimes could hear the click from their minenwerfer as they fired it but you had to keep your eyes open and when you saw this thing come lolloping through the air, blow your whistle three times and everybody would duck for cover. And the same time, you’d shout “bottle” or “minnie”, we usually called them bottles. They were devastating things. I remember one landed near the dug-out of Lieutenant Reed and when we dug him out he was dead but not a scratch on him. The shock had killed him.

Well it affected me and I was apt to run to the latrines at the back - which was just a pole to sit on - and I had to hastily pull my pants up when the whistle sounded and slip into the side trench as best I could.

On one occasion he was firing these minenwerfers and we called back to our guns who started to fire shells and quietened it down. He did similarly and would try and quieten us down.

Our artillery was the old Field Artillery. Now in those days there was the Royal Field Artillery, The Royal Garrison Artillery, The Honourable Artillery Company and the Royal Horse Artillery. The Field Artillery used horses of course and although I don’t know much about the artillery side, I do remember that the Germans fired some pretty heavy stuff.

Well we were also sapping. We were undermining the Germans and we’d little fellas - miners - who dug holes down at an angle until eventually one would emerge and push a sandbag up which we pulled out of the way. The earth they removed they put into sandbags and they were a pretty hardy lot those fellas, I’ve every admiration for them. The job I hated was when I was put one evening on the big bellows and I had to just slowly pump air down to them and if I dozed off they’d soon suffocate and I was very strongly reminded and it was an awful job to keep awake.

I never went down a sap myself, none of us were allowed to, but I remember on one occasion standing there and the ground under me seemed to lift and there was a dull thud. We were all scared, thinking Jerry was undermining because he was mining too, but it happened that he’d blown one of his own trenches in on that occasion we heard. But it was a weird sensation feeling the ground heave under you and then we saw a column of smoke arising from his trenches.

On another occasion I was put on a listening post in advance of our trenches in a sandbagged emplacement and beyond that the wire. Course, we had patrols at night too and that was a risky business. On this listening patrol we had to lie and nobody was to fire a rifle or anything like that within twenty yards of the listening post, and we had to listen for the sounds of him sapping. I never detected any when I was on duty but the patrol that followed me suddenly found two or three Germans looking down on them. The Germans had sent a patrol out and our fellas just couldn’t fire back. Fortunately for them the Germans withdrew, too scared to fire themselves because they’d be a target you see.

And of course, every now and again you’d see what looked like a star going up. We all had these very pistols, a big pistol which fired a cartridge, and to fire this you had to lock your arm because of the terrific kick on this thing. It suddenly burst out and, gradually falling, it sure lit the scene up. If one fired you froze because any movement would give you away. If you just lay there you might be regarded as another log or boulder or something. Those very lights are very clear in my mind. If you suspected there was a German patrol and fired a very pistol you’d find out all right.

On another occasion I remember seeing Sergeant Joyce - Bert’s brother - getting up and taking a very careful look at the German trenches. We also had periscopes consisting of a long horizontal box - well, vertical I should say - rectangular in section, with a mirror at the top and a mirror at the bottom. By looking in the bottom one and pushing it over the top you got a view of the German trenches which were only about fifty or sixty yards away and I remember on one occasion taking a look and a moment later I saw the ground right in front of our trenches plough up. Somebody had spotted me and fired but fortunately the defences prevented it reaching through to me or I wouldn’t be here now. I wasn’t looking over the trench but I was looking through the bottom of the periscope. But I had to raise it up on the level - about a couple of feet from the top of the parapet - where a bullet could come through the parapet and catch you. But the parapet held firm and I was very careful after that that when I raised the periscope I raised it carefully. Later on we had tubular periscopes issued but these were primitive wooden ones with just an ordinary rectangular mirror at the top, set at an angle and reflecting on the one at the bottom. And one was constantly taking a quiet peep to find out what Jerry was up to. We were all watching one another like cats.

Part of the battalion occupied Hill 60 itself but we were on the fringe of it just where the sapping started. I always remember in 1916 I was then in the 4th Northern hospital at Lincoln when the news flashed that Hill 60 had been blown. And I said, “yes, I helped to work on that.” They perforated the hill through and through with saps, placed their explosives and blew up the Germans but they were never able to take full advantage of the gap they’d blown in the German lines - for some reason I never understood.

After five days we were relieved by the Leicester regiment and went back through the trenches to a place called Vlamertinghe. There were still some of the Belgian people there and there was an estaminet there where we could go for drinks. And then it was back to the trenches again. It was a case of five days in, five days in reserve and then withdraw fro five days rest.

At night we had to go up the line and repair any breaches in the defences at the rear of Sanctuary Wood or Maple Copse in the reserve lines. So we were kept busy at night and slept mostly during the daytime. Then on one occasion when we were doing our five days in reserve in daytime, we moved into this village. There were some children playing there and I heard a whistling sound and the kids suddenly ran. There was a sharp crack and then I saw the reason why the kiddies ran: they’d learned to know what a shrapnel shell really was. It was a peculiar whistling sound as it approached and then the sharp crack like a whip and bullets flew in all directions. Fortunately I was missed but I picked one up at my feet and saw several around me. I was lucky to get away with it and dived into the estaminet when I heard any more coming. Later on of course the Belgians were removed entirely.

Then, on another occasion we were assembled near our heavy artillery. We’d got some 9.2 guns between them and the four inch howitzers doing some work and every now and again there’d be a roar as one of the German Jack Johnsons or Coalboxes came over because they were doing counter battery fire. We called them coalboxes because they threw up a huge cloud of black smoke. They were trying to knock out our 9.2s and our big guns were also countering - mostly the big guns were countering one another in that way. We’d paraded and just been issued with shovels and we moved along the lane and into a field and just where we’d been standing a coalbox burst. It’s a matter of a minute that saved our lives. These little things, along with many others, live in one’s mind of how near one can be to being blown up.

PCN:
Were you a fatalist?

DB:
No, I was not a fatalist. I had very dear friend, a girl friend, who was a very convinced Christian and she taught me several texts. I was brought up a Christian because my father was a churchman and a reader and he was an organist in the local church and my mother made me read the bible each day and we had religious instruction at school.. One of the texts this girl taught me always stood in my mind when there was danger. That’s from Joshua, first chapter, ninth verse: “Be strong and of a good courage. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the LORD thy God is with thee withersoever thou goest.” And that has proved true to me. Those are the words of course spoken by God to Joshua who was instructed to take over the command of the children of Israel after Moses had gone; a very daunting task for a new leader after such an accomplished leader as Moses had proved himself. No wonder he trembled and God said to him, "Be strong, don’t be afraid, the lord thy God is with thee wherever you go.” There are other texts that came into my mind.

I carried a bible in my pocket and there was a certain lance-corporal Pygott with whom I formed a friendly association and he saw me take this out and said, “let me have a look at it” and he opened it at the text of one of St Paul’s epistles, “For I am persuaded that neither life nor death nor any other creature can separate us from God. ” It escapes me for the moment, I used to be able to quote the exact words. There were other texts too. Now in my boyhood I remember we had a church army visit the village and there was a certain Captain Jakes [or Jaques?] who gave some wonderful talks and we used to listen to him. They came and lived in a caravan on the school playground for a week and then moved on from village to village, evangelising. And he told the story of a young fellow who joined the army and his mother gave him a bible and he thrust it into his breast pocket. This young fellow joined the cavalry and he was in a charge when all of a sudden he was knocked off his horse. He got up and felt a slight pain in his chest and he looked and found that his bible had stopped a bullet which would have reached his heart if it had gone right through. I always remember that story and there were others.

PCN
Didn’t the war ever shake your belief?

DB:
No never, never. I had ultimate faith that God would look after me and I’ll come back again to that later.

I went into the trenches several times and then there came a time when we came out and were billeted in reserve in old dug-outs of the old railway line near lake Zillebeke. We were facing the other way and there was a battery of French pom-poms - seventy five’s - that had been firing away. And I also learned later from a fellow I met from the Derby artillery they were not far away. These pom-poms had been irritating the Germans and they’d sent up a balloon. Now we were due to go back into the firing line that night and I’d got my pack made up and ready to put on and I sat on it with Pygott beside me. The roof of the dug-out, which was in the embankment of the railway, consisted of an iron gate covered with sod, earthen sods, and we thought that looked pretty safe. Opposite to us, about thirty yards, was a rather large pond and there was a sort of hedge and ditch to the east of it which we used as latrines, and we were sitting awaiting orders and it was just getting dusk. About a hundred yards away was the Ypres-Menin Road and we were in the angle.

Now the railway beyond us ran into a cutting as it approached the road and there the Staffordshire regiment were billeted in their dug-outs. We were in our own in an exposed position on this ridge on which the railway ran, lake Zillebeke behind us, and a shell landed on the road. The next one landed on the edge of the pond, then one over our heads. Looking back now, he was obviously ranging because always when they fired they fired a shell beyond and one short and then get the distance between for the target. well sure enough, the next shell landed right on the trenches to our left and up went the call for stretcher bearers. I remember them carrying by the casualties and one man in particular who’d just his arm dangling by a thread covered with blood. They were taking them to the first aid post which was up beyond the Staffordshires, and our fellows from that end began running along towards the Staffs. Now there was a ridge and in the corner of this ridge with the railway embankment was our headquarters. The colonel came out and he said, “Get in with these others, stop running about, there’s an observation balloon up there” which we’d not noticed. This observation balloon had seen our activities when they were looking for the French pom-poms evidently. So two fellows crowded in in front of us and then two more, Sergeant Preston was one and the other, a fellow named West. And then the next moment there was a most terrific thump and crash, I can’t describe. All I knew was that my head was buzzing and singing and I was half buried. There was a groaning beside me and I was completely buried. PCN:
What's your name please?

DB:
My name is Donald Banks.

PCN:
And when were you born?

DB:
On the 9th of January 1899 at Wragby, which is in county Lindsey, the north part of Lincolnshire where my father was headmaster of the school.

PCN:
And what was your trade before you joined up?

DB:
I had just left the Lincoln Technical School and started as an apprentice to a chemist - P.J. Watson, The Bail, Lincoln. I went with one or two others to the drill hall of the headquarters of the territorial army of the Lincolnshire Regiment and gave my age as nineteen - although I was only sixteen - and I was accepted. This was February the 7th 1915.

At the drill hall I was drilled with other recruits by Sergeant Thompson, a veteran of the South African wars and Egyptian and Sudan conflicts and a very fine instructor indeed. In a few days we were issued with a uniform: tunic, trousers, cap - the service cap with the wire round the rim - and puttees, (we were shown how to do them), and greatcoat and we were shown how to roll that up and wear it round our shoulders on the march. Foot drill was the first instruction and we were instructed in the drill hall and when the weather was fine, marched down the street to the south common. After a while, rifles were issued to us - old Lee Enfield, the long Lee Enfield of the Boer War type - and we were instructed in rifle drill.

At that time there came a request from the 2/4th battalion, then stationed at Ongar in Essex, for those who'd had experience as scouts and I, having joined the boy scouts in 1910, volunteered along with several others. The four of us were given our instructions and railway warrants and proceeded by train from Lincoln down through Sleaford, Spalding, March, Ely, Cambridge to Liverpool Street where we changed and entrained to Ongar, arriving there in the evening. There we were billeted in private houses. Most of the local people had had to give up their living room - furniture being cleared - and we were issued with palliasses and we filled them with straw and that was our bedding. Rations were delivered each day from the Quartermaster's store, usually consisting of a quarter of a loaf for each man, a tin of jam, tin of bully beef and some of those big thick biscuits about six inches square. Also there was a ration of butter in those days, and bacon. Then we reported to the orderly room and I and my three comrades - Private Joyce - Bert Joyce - King and Morris - were posted to number sixteen platoon, D Company. We joined in the daily parade in the street each morning at eight o'clock and took part in the various drills and duties but were seconded to a small group headed by Major Low who proceeded to give us instructions on map reading and general scouting something on the lines of the old South African campaign.

After some weeks the whole battalion was entrained and transported to Luton. Again we were put in billets; I and my three companions in Paul Street, (a branch off the road which led up the hill to the London Road near the big water tower). We paraded in the street with the rest of D Company each morning and went through the usual drills: foot drill. In those days we lined up in two long columns and the order would be given after "Attention" to number. We numbered off and the odd numbers had to take a step back, a step to the right; the order being given, "Form fours". And then the whole battalion were ordered, "Right turn" and we marched off in fours - not threes as in this last war. Also, each company had four platoons and our four platoons in D Company each took part in separate drills under various instructors. There was platoon drill and squad drill and rifle drill and then we proceeded to bayonet work - dummy sacks placed in a trench, some hanging from a rope.

Every week on Friday was a route march - usually with full pack which varied according to each man but which was about 48 to 50 pounds. The routes would be over Dunstable Downs or through Luton Hoo park or various parks around and we usually arrived late in the afternoon after doing an average of 12 to 15 miles. That was to get us used to marching - an endurance test too. The captain, out Captain Hooper, I remember very well, rode ahead of the company on his horse and the other officers also were mostly on horseback.

At this stage I might as well explain what our equipment was. We had the old leather equipment consisting of the shoulder straps, two big pouches for ammunition, behind was a big leather case for holding our entrenching tool. On the right hand side was a haversack, on the left side our bayonet, and along side it, leather loops for holding the handle of the entrenching tool. The entrenching tool consisted of a metal blade in the form of a small spade coming almost to a point - round not flat - and the other part was a spike so you could use it both as a pick as well as a spade. We had no ammunition to carry then. Now our particular form of arms drill consisted in coming to the slope by canting the rifle forward at an angle of forty five degrees then swinging it up on the left shoulder and cutting the right hand away. In most other units one had to draw the rifle up on the right hand side, catching it at the shoulder. The reason we canted the rifle forward was to avoid catching it with the pouches which stuck out on each side of us, making it much easier to perform this drill. We had much reason to remember that later on when we found ourselves being drilled by some Royal Fusilier sergeants who objected to our particular form of sloping arms. And we objected to them trying to alter it, however that's another story.

We were issued with Japanese rifles. The Japanese government had presented, we understood, five hundred thousand rifles to the British government for use. They were rather large, a smaller bore than the 303. They had the V back-sight and piqued fore-sight and I found them very accurate and handy. When on the range I was able to perform creditably - at the Wardown ranges some miles away where we fired a course. The trouble was there were no slings issued and we found it pretty tiring carrying these rifles, some at the trail, some at the slope, until of course as we approached our destination or on the return to our billets we were always given the order to march to attention, that is at the slope in an orderly procedure. Well some of us got bits of rope or leather and made slings of a kind so that we could carry it over our shoulders more comfortably.

Now these rifles were of a light wood which we found would splinter rather easily, not so serviceable as the British wood that was used in our Lee Enfield rifles. And the bayonets were the long single edged type but very useful and easily fixed when we got the order to fix. I remember one occasion we marched to Harpenden and there in the street, given the order to pile arms, a thing I've never seen done since those days. The fashion's fallen out because rifles haven't the piling swivels now which are up near the muzzle. When we piled them there was a certain drill in doing that and also in undoing them.

To get us used to firing we were taken into a chalk pit and were issued with a Lee Enfield of the long type. I remember we climbed up on a rocky platform and there were two targets. We had to aim at the lower target in order to hit the top - they being placed at such a range as to allow for the trajectory difference because the range in that pit was only about thirty yards. We got used to the kick of the rifle, this was before we undertook the range firing with the Japanese rifles. Now our rifles were in short supply throughout the British army. I might add that we also did night exercises. I remember we did night manoeuvres in Wardown park and as we lay in the grass waiting for the order to advance by sections, a nightingale sang. It seemed most incongruous to hear this bird singing away in the dark as we lay there with our rifles in our hand.

However, to come back, we had on Sundays, church parade in which the whole brigade - the 132nd Brigade - took part.

PCN:
What division was that?

DB:
[1]This was the 45th Division, the territorial army, also known as the North Midland Division. The division consisted of the 4th Lincolns and 5th Lincolns, the 4th and 5th Leicesters, the 5th and 6th battalions of the North Staffs and the 5th and 6th battalions of the South Staffordshire regiment.

PCN:
That was the 46th Division. There wasn't a 45th Division.

DB:
No, the 46th was a London division. We were the 45th.

After the church parade which was usually held in the park, our brigadier loved to indulge in a huge manoeuvre known as the left wheel, en masse the battalions in columns of companies. It is a very intricate manoeuvre and he was anxious that it should be done very carefully and we were always very glad when that procedure was over and we had Sunday afternoons to ourselves.

After the route march on Fridays we'd return to our billets and change our socks and boots and then the sergeant would come round on kit inspection to each billet - with an officer usually - and then we'd proceed out into the open streets to one of the houses where the window had been thrown open. Inside was a table at which sat an officer and the quartermaster. Our names were called in alphabetical order, we each stepped forward, stood smartly to attention, saluted and were presented with a huge sum of a shilling per day plus usually two pence for equipment, it was to supplement our equipment. By the way, I might have mentioned that in our equipment we were also equipped with a housewife which consisted of needles and thread for darning our own socks and sewing on buttons. Course, we all had brass buttons in those days and every morning using our brass stick we were polishing buttons and cap badges. Ours was the sphinx - that was the regimental badge for the Lincolnshire Regiment - and in the little place under the sphinx there was the word "Egypt" in what you would call romantic characters, such as the Daily Mail uses. This was for the regular army because they'd served so well in Egypt under General Gordon and General Kitchener and others. The Leicesters had a tiger because of their service in Bengal, the Staffordshires had the Staffordshire knot and the Notts and Derby's - nicknamed the Notts and Jocks - had a cross for their badge, the Maltese Cross. We gradually learned the badges of other regiments, all made of metal and to be polished up, though later on we had to have them blacked over because they reflected the light and gave positions away, just as the wire was eventually taken from our hats because that was apt to deflect the bullets and so on.

I forgot to mention, there were four brigades. Things worked out in fours. Starting from a small squad would be sixteen men. A platoon would usually consist of forty men, there would be four platoons to a company, four companies to a battalion, four battalions formed a brigade, three brigades formed a division. And that's the plan on which the army was built in those days. There were alterations later but I never went into details because we got very much mixed up in the latter part. You were put from one battalion to another in order to reinforce and I found myself mixed up with all kinds of folk.

We were parading as a company every morning. Sergeant Major Whalley was a very good company sergeant major and Captain Hooper was a fine captain who led us. Both were eventually killed.

We were left to ourselves in the evening and there were various concerts. The local people were very kind to us. I remember I used to go to the church there and there was a very fine curate named Eliot. I forget the vicar's name but I do remember that the organist was a very fine organist - Costello was his name - and I joined there the Church of England Men's Society and I was sponsored by a grocer in Cumberland Street. There was the social life and there were good concerts. I remember particularly when some of the Scottish troops came with their bagpipes and played, and on another occasion - I don't know the name of the musician -but there was a fine cellist.

There were evening duties as well - patrols to help to keep order. I've been on patrol and I remember on that occasion going down the main street of Luton and the Luton Red Cross Band - a very fine brass band - was entertaining people. There were usually four, sometimes six, per patrol, just for two or three hours while the troops were about but I never remember any disturbance or trouble being caused by our fellows at all. You see, all our people were volunteers who joined up to serve King and country because the appeal was made for all strong able-bodied men to serve their country in its hour of danger and save her from Germany and Austria. And we had a great sense of patriotism in those days. We were proud of our country and of our king and we were all led to believe that Germany was a threat to civilisation. And I still believe that the Kaiser wanted to dominate Europe just as Hitler in this last war also tried to dominate Europe. I never lost that sense of patriotism. It had been instilled in us at school. I distinctly remember seeing on the wall, pictures of King Edward the Seventh and Queen Alexandra. And on Empire Day - May 24th - which is still called Victoria Day in Canada and observed in Canada as a holiday, that day marked Queen Victoria's birthday and we used to parade in the playground at school. A flag was run up on a pole - the Union Jack of course - and we were taught to salute it and we learned various patriotic songs too. I think it was instilled in us all; a pride and love of our own country and a determination to work and serve in whatever position we were called. When I returned home on leave my father gave me the opportunity of drilling the schoolchildren - the older ones - on the school playground, much to their delight as it was a nice change from the three Rs to be out in the open being drilled and it gave me some opportunity to develop powers of leadership and command which proved useful later.

Then on May 1st the bugle sounded the fall in. We fell in in the street and our officer told us that reinforcements were required for the 1/4th battalion in France.

"All volunteers take three paces forward." And most of us did. Then the officer came along, "You, you, you..." pointing to each one and I was among those selected. The rest of the battalion was dismissed and we were instructed to proceed home on leave, that our warrants would be sent to us and that we were to report back on the following Monday morning. Now this was a Friday I remember very well because the only leave I was able to get was from Saturday to Sunday, just two days leave before we were to go abroad. We went to the Midland station at Luton - our instructions had been sent to allow us to board the train. We changed at Nottingham into the Lincoln train and we had no difficulty there but I remember there was no train home till next morning and I arrived at my home station on the eight o'clock train and my station master - Mr Saggers - said "where's your ticket?" I said, "The battalion said that it would be sent on to you." He laughed aloud and said, "alright, off you go."

So I went home and announced to my parents I was going to serve abroad. I took a walk with my mother along the old familiar paths through the fields, along by the beck and up to the woods. It was a lovely day. And then, on the Sunday, with my old bike which I was given second hand when I was ten years old, I cycled to Lincoln twelve miles away as there was no train on Sundays from Wragby station. On the way, I called to see a clergy widow whose son was also serving in the war - Mrs Maddon - and that’s the only time I felt the parting. My parents had shown no emotion, they were rather proud that I’d been selected, and so I cycled the twelve miles to Lincoln. What happened to the bike I don’t know, but I got to the Midland station and had no trouble getting back to Luton, arriving early Monday morning. We were then issued with new equipment - webbing equipment which consisted of five pouches on either side, each holding fifteen clips of ammunition. It was quite a load when we were really loaded up with ammunition but that was balanced by the pack on our backs. We were issued with the long Lee Enfield rifles and they were charger loading. My rifle had been a single loader with a full magazine that would hold ten rounds but had had the charger bridge built on; it had been the old Boer War type of rifle. The date on my rifle was 1897. It had been converted into charger loading so that the cartridges (which were clip-loading which was not a feature of the Boer war) could be pushed in. The short, two bladed bayonet with a black leather scabbard I wore by my side.

We were then entrained for Southampton. Arriving at Southampton we were marched to a camp on the outskirts. I can’t remember exactly the district, I think it was the Highfields District of Southampton, and there we were issued with the usual bully, biscuits and beef and just lay around waiting for the next order. But it wasn’t until the following day in the evening or late afternoon that we fell in along with other units from the various brigades and battalions of the division and marched through Southampton to the docks. There we embarked on a small steamer whose name I don’t remember. Of course, there were no bunks and no blankets. As dusk fell, our transport moved out into the Solent and on reaching opposite Portsmouth we were joined by a destroyer as escort to escort us across the channel. Darkness had fallen and we just lay on the deck as we were and slept as best we could. When I awoke in the morning I found we were anchored off Le Havre at the mouth of the Seine. Of course, the usual rumours went around as to why we were still there but around nine o’clock the vessel got underway and proceeded up the River Seine; a novel experience as we sat there watching the houses and the French countryside go by until we arrived at Rouen. There the vessel anchored in mid stream. We were taken in lighters and proceeded to march to a camp consisting of large , sandy gravely plain surrounded by fir trees and known as The Bull Ring.[2]

We were housed in tents and right next to us were the gurkhas with whom I soon made friends. I’ve got a picture here of myself with one of them which somebody took and which was sent to England and put in the paper. I proceeded to learn some of their language and they taught me very well, but what did strike me was when the ghurka sergeants came in they’d sit and be attended to by the privates. The privates had to undo their boots and take them off. I couldn’t see our sergeants doing that. But they were fine little fellows: quick, agile, friendly, I liked them immensely.

Then we were out on the bull ring. Reveille was five o’clock, breakfast was six o’clock and we were on the march before seven, out to the bull ring. There, divided into sections, we were drilled and re-drilled much to our disgust because we’d been looking forward to going into the fighting ranks. I remember we had these Royal Fusilier sergeants who proceeded to teach us their type of drill in spite of our protests that we had our own type of sloping arms. We were very soon snubbed and told what would happen.

We had a long session each day, returning about noon for lunch. Afternoons were free when we’d saunter down into the town and taste the local wine. We were paid five francs - or was it ten francs, I’m not sure - a week; not very much money but enough for our needs. And that’s where I first came across those games which became quite a feature of the camp life: housey housey, crown and anchor and other games. I was never keen on drink so I avoided the wet canteen as it was told, but I can’t say I witnessed any undue behaviour by our fellows by over drinking or any excesses at all.

PCN:
Did you play crown and anchor?

DB:
No, I did not play because I saw the futility of it and I could see no good coming of it. I never was inclined to gamble and I never have. Even now I don’t go in for pools or anything of that kind. Chance your money? No, it isn’t any pleasure for me. I just used it for buying chocolate - the French type - or sweets. I didn’t smoke either in those days, like most of them.

Now in our tents there would be sixteen to a tent. We were issued with a blanket but we mostly slept with our clothes on. There were of course the usual medical inspections too we had to undergo, as we had of course before we left our billets in Luton. we were all medically examined to make sure we were fit.

PCN
Did nobody question your age?

DB:
No, my age was not questioned at all and I was able to keep up with the best of them. I was very strong and tall for my age and I’d always taken part in sport at home. I’d also belonged to the rifle club of which my father was the secretary and founder. The club was in the first of five divisions in the county miniature rifle association and one of my sisters in fact was a crack shot and beat all the men in the Christmas competition. We’d an excellent team and all these boys joined up. Most of the lads with me joined the Yeomanry, being country lads.

While we were at Rouen the drill proceeded as usual and we got rather fed up with it. Then one morning I had stomach trouble and reported sick. I was given medicine and reported “M and D”, medicine and duty. When I got back and reported to the orderly room, my particular section had gone out and I was put with the Durham Light Infantry who consisted mostly of miners: small fellows and I stood up above them like Nelson’s column, I could see over all their heads. I later became associated with the Durham Light Infantry.

Now the next step was we were embarked in wagons on which was printed 40 Hommes, 8 Chevaux - 40 men, eight horses. There were no seats, we just sat and dangled our legs and the train proceeded leisurely through St Omer where it stopped. That was a remount depot because there were a lot of horses used - particularly by the Army Service Corps and by the artillery for hauling guns. In fact our own artillery, as far as I knew, was hauled by horse power. We proceeded all day at a leisurely pace and arrived at Poperinghe in Belgium. This was in May 1915 and I was back with the Lincolns. Only that day did I encounter the Durham regiment. It was a huge camp and there were regiments from all parts of the country and this was a sort of holding place for reinforcements, Rouen being well back from the lines, well out of range and of course, planes didn’t get as far as there. The small German planes and our own planes were of the primitive type and I didn’t see anything of them until we got to Poperinghe.

At Poperinghe we detrained and marched out to a wood - I can’t remember the name of the wood now - and we and various other units were called the 2nd entrenching battalion. Our duties were to build up sandbag emplacements around the wood as a line of defence in case of retreat; somewhere for the troops, in case of assault, to fall back to positions that we were preparing for them. Trenches were dug and these sandbags filled, redoubts made and working in the woods now and again we’d hear the sound of a plane and glance up and then we were warned not to look up when a plane came over. On the approach of a plane a whistle sounded and everybody turned their heads down. We were told that faces looking upwards were very visible - the white faces turned upwards - to any planes that were reconnoitring. That’s all the planes were really used for then, just reconnoitring.

I saw my first ack-ack fire - puffs of white smoke - following the plane. The plane would eventually turn and while the gunners had to adjust it got away. I can’t say I saw one brought down. They hadn’t acquired yet the accuracy, that came later - nor the tactics to counter this.

While we were in this wood we built our own bivouacs. We were issued with groundsheets and we cut down branches and made our own little tents or bivouacs. Now my pal Bert Joyce and I shared one. He had been in service in the Dukeries as a footman and lived in Lincoln. His brother was a teacher. Bert was in service in the Dukeries in Nottinghamshire and we had formed a close friendship. During the day we worked and we were issued our bully beef and so on and when it rained the bivouac mostly held it off. But once when I was out working and came back I hadn’t noticed that somebody had been sick and I was summoned for having a dirty bivouac. And I still think I was unfairly treated when I was sentenced to three days CB as we called it - confined to barracks. Usually if a man misbehaved himself he had to report in the evening to the orderly sergeant who put him through a lot of drill along with the other fellas who’d got jankers as we called it. There were other names beside that but jankers was our familiar name.

But instead of putting me on the jankers drill I was put on duties of pumping water from a pond. Our water supplies were pumped up through a tube into a tank through cylinders loaded with some chemical; lime I think. It tasted horribly and in fact we couldn’t often see the bottom of our cups because of the colour of the water. We survived of course. We’d all got our own little billie tins and could make small little fires but we had to be very careful not to make much smoke so as not to give our position away.

One day there was a terrific bang and then a loud rising whine as a shell sped through the air and landed somewhere near Poperinghe with a terrific bang. We were all very startled and learned later that it was this German Big Bertha that had been run up to a railhead firing a huge twelve inch shell or something about that size. Well the range wasn’t accurate and it did very little damage and they usually fired about four or five rounds and then withdrew the gun out of sight. You’ll find mention of that big gun in the history books of the war. My word, it certainly was a terrific noise it made and the whistling of the shell through the air was like an express train rushing along. Fortunately we were well out of range, it was more destructive in noise than anything else. I did hear that a post office somewhere had been destroyed but there were rumours and rumours of course.

On another occasion I was put on night sentry guarding a tank, a big water tank. We could hear the sounds of our guns and the German guns firing intermittently and then there arose a great red glow in the sky. Eventually a fella came up, I challenged him, he said “Friend”, right. I said, “What’s that big glow?” “Oh,” he said, “The Germans are using liquid fire.” It transpired later that the Germans had sprayed either paraffin or petrol over on our trenches and set it on fire in an attempt to burn their way through and it was known as liquid fire. And also, very shortly within that time, chlorine gas was used. It was just outside our sector and we were issued with pads which we kept in a little pocket in the lower corner of our jackets. These pads had to be kept wet and we had to put them over our noses and mouths by tying them on in some way to counteract the effect of the gas. Later we were given masks of felt with glass eye pieces, and still later there was a mouth piece in which we could breathe out but not in. We breathed in the air coming through the hood being tied round our necks and those were the first primitive gas masks that we had. I remember the gas being used while I was there and there were various devices for keeping the pads from drying out. Fortunately I never had to use them but later I did have to use my gas mask considerably.

We then, after some couple of weeks, were given orders to fall in and we marched to a place called Ouderdom where there was a square of trees with rectangular huts and floorboards. There we joined the 1/4th battalion of the Lincolns. The band was playing, I remember, a very popular tune of the time. We had a very good band and when they were in the trenches they acted as stretcher bearers. We were entertained. We were issued with tins of tobacco and cigarettes. Most of the fellows smoked cigarettes, chiefly Woodbines, but I didn’t smoke at all and tins were piled underneath the boards, there must have been a hoard of tobacco for someone eventually.

One night there was a yell from one fellow. He’d taken his boots off and the rats had nibbled his toes. There was a danger, they said, of rats biting and causing infection and that they were able to nibble at a fellow’s feet without him knowing. That’s just perhaps part of the yarn but I do know that these rats were a jolly nuisance to us.

Course, during the daytime, a favourite trick was to sit and pull your shirt off, going around the seams cracking the lice. You just couldn’t avoid them somehow. There were no public baths at all and it was difficult obtain water for washing.

Well then we fell in and proceeded by night up towards Ypres, the Menin Road where the railway crossed and into trenches, and for a couple of miles I should say, we were in trenches. Course, the ground being flat, it wasn’t possible to approach the trenches on the level.

The trenches had what was called duckboards - slatted boards to keep our feet dry when it was wet. There were places where they were broken by shell fire and you had to jump over wide puddles that formed.. The rain made things very unpleasant for us.

Well then we found ourselves up by Sanctuary Wood and Maple Copse and we entered the trenches near Hill 60. This was my first time in trenches and this would be early July I guess. Well in the trenches they warned me to keep away from a certain bridge section because a fella had just been shot there by a sniper. However, I ducked over and fired a couple of shots and sat down. There was a fire platform of sandbags to stand on.

Now we had a bombing section and the bombing section was led by Corporal Claxton. ‘Clacky’ as we called him was very ingenious. He’d made a big catapult about five feet high; a board cut with a gap between and on each arm were fixed hooks with rubbers - four strands of half inch or more square strands of rubber. These were joined to a canvas basket on which was a hook fastened to a ratchet. There was a handle and the thing was wound up tight to get the tension, pulled back, and when the tension reaches a certain point, a catch released it and it flung the contents over the trench. How far it went depended on the amount of stuff you put in. Well Clacky was in the habit of collecting anything he could - usually empty biscuit tins which he then packed with clay, clips, spent cartridges, stones and anything like that. Then, in the cavity left, he’d defuse an unexploded shell, put the powder in and fix a Bickford’s number five fuse to it - which varied in length. Then he would place this thing on the bag, wind it up to the tension point, apply a match to the fuse and they’d just kick this ratchet and send it lolloping over to land somewhere, we hoped in the German or near the German trenches, and a moment later there’d be a terrific bang. It was a primitive kind of mortar.

Now the Germans had developed the minenwerfer; a plate with a spring on which threw a mortar or shell up to about a hundred yards, and they started replying with these. Well we always had a man on duty and it was one of my tasks for an hour, to stand and watch for them. You sometimes could hear the click from their minenwerfer as they fired it but you had to keep your eyes open and when you saw this thing come lolloping through the air, blow your whistle three times and everybody would duck for cover. And the same time, you’d shout “bottle” or “minnie”, we usually called them bottles. They were devastating things. I remember one landed near the dug-out of Lieutenant Reed and when we dug him out he was dead but not a scratch on him. The shock had killed him.

Well it affected me and I was apt to run to the latrines at the back - which was just a pole to sit on - and I had to hastily pull my pants up when the whistle sounded and slip into the side trench as best I could.

On one occasion he was firing these minenwerfers and we called back to our guns who started to fire shells and quietened it down. He did similarly and would try and quieten us down.

Our artillery was the old Field Artillery. Now in those days there was the Royal Field Artillery, The Royal Garrison Artillery, The Honourable Artillery Company and the Royal Horse Artillery. The Field Artillery used horses of course and although I don’t know much about the artillery side, I do remember that the Germans fired some pretty heavy stuff.

Well we were also sapping. We were undermining the Germans and we’d little fellas - miners - who dug holes down at an angle until eventually one would emerge and push a sandbag up which we pulled out of the way. The earth they removed they put into sandbags and they were a pretty hardy lot those fellas, I’ve every admiration for them. The job I hated was when I was put one evening on the big bellows and I had to just slowly pump air down to them and if I dozed off they’d soon suffocate and I was very strongly reminded and it was an awful job to keep awake.

I never went down a sap myself, none of us were allowed to, but I remember on one occasion standing there and the ground under me seemed to lift and there was a dull thud. We were all scared, thinking Jerry was undermining because he was mining too, but it happened that he’d blown one of his own trenches in on that occasion we heard. But it was a weird sensation feeling the ground heave under you and then we saw a column of smoke arising from his trenches.

On another occasion I was put on a listening post in advance of our trenches in a sandbagged emplacement and beyond that the wire. Course, we had patrols at night too and that was a risky business. On this listening patrol we had to lie and nobody was to fire a rifle or anything like that within twenty yards of the listening post, and we had to listen for the sounds of him sapping. I never detected any when I was on duty but the patrol that followed me suddenly found two or three Germans looking down on them. The Germans had sent a patrol out and our fellas just couldn’t fire back. Fortunately for them the Germans withdrew, too scared to fire themselves because they’d be a target you see.

And of course, every now and again you’d see what looked like a star going up. We all had these very pistols, a big pistol which fired a cartridge, and to fire this you had to lock your arm because of the terrific kick on this thing. It suddenly burst out and, gradually falling, it sure lit the scene up. If one fired you froze because any movement would give you away. If you just lay there you might be regarded as another log or boulder or something. Those very lights are very clear in my mind. If you suspected there was a German patrol and fired a very pistol you’d find out all right.

On another occasion I remember seeing Sergeant Joyce - Bert’s brother - getting up and taking a very careful look at the German trenches. We also had periscopes consisting of a long horizontal box - well, vertical I should say - rectangular in section, with a mirror at the top and a mirror at the bottom. By looking in the bottom one and pushing it over the top you got a view of the German trenches which were only about fifty or sixty yards away and I remember on one occasion taking a look and a moment later I saw the ground right in front of our trenches plough up. Somebody had spotted me and fired but fortunately the defences prevented it reaching through to me or I wouldn’t be here now. I wasn’t looking over the trench but I was looking through the bottom of the periscope. But I had to raise it up on the level - about a couple of feet from the top of the parapet - where a bullet could come through the parapet and catch you. But the parapet held firm and I was very careful after that that when I raised the periscope I raised it carefully. Later on we had tubular periscopes issued but these were primitive wooden ones with just an ordinary rectangular mirror at the top, set at an angle and reflecting on the one at the bottom. And one was constantly taking a quiet peep to find out what Jerry was up to. We were all watching one another like cats.

Part of the battalion occupied Hill 60 itself but we were on the fringe of it just where the sapping started. I always remember in 1916 I was then in the 4th Northern hospital at Lincoln when the news flashed that Hill 60 had been blown. And I said, “yes, I helped to work on that.” They perforated the hill through and through with saps, placed their explosives and blew up the Germans but they were never able to take full advantage of the gap they’d blown in the German lines - for some reason I never understood.

After five days we were relieved by the Leicester regiment and went back through the trenches to a place called Vlamertinghe. There were still some of the Belgian people there and there was an estaminet there where we could go for drinks. And then it was back to the trenches again. It was a case of five days in, five days in reserve and then withdraw fro five days rest.

At night we had to go up the line and repair any breaches in the defences at the rear of Sanctuary Wood or Maple Copse in the reserve lines. So we were kept busy at night and slept mostly during the daytime. Then on one occasion when we were doing our five days in reserve in daytime, we moved into this village. There were some children playing there and I heard a whistling sound and the kids suddenly ran. There was a sharp crack and then I saw the reason why the kiddies ran: they’d learned to know what a shrapnel shell really was. It was a peculiar whistling sound as it approached and then the sharp crack like a whip and bullets flew in all directions. Fortunately I was missed but I picked one up at my feet and saw several around me. I was lucky to get away with it and dived into the estaminet when I heard any more coming. Later on of course the Belgians were removed entirely.

Then, on another occasion we were assembled near our heavy artillery. We’d got some 9.2 guns between them and the four inch howitzers doing some work and every now and again there’d be a roar as one of the German Jack Johnsons or Coalboxes came over because they were doing counter battery fire. We called them coalboxes because they threw up a huge cloud of black smoke. They were trying to knock out our 9.2s and our big guns were also countering - mostly the big guns were countering one another in that way. We’d paraded and just been issued with shovels and we moved along the lane and into a field and just where we’d been standing a coalbox burst. It’s a matter of a minute that saved our lives. These little things, along with many others, live in one’s mind of how near one can be to being blown up.

PCN:
Were you a fatalist?

DB:
No, I was not a fatalist. I had very dear friend, a girl friend, who was a very convinced Christian and she taught me several texts. I was brought up a Christian because my father was a churchman and a reader and he was an organist in the local church and my mother made me read the bible each day and we had religious instruction at school.. One of the texts this girl taught me always stood in my mind when there was danger. That’s from Joshua, first chapter, ninth verse: “Be strong and of a good courage. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the LORD thy God is with thee withersoever thou goest.” And that has proved true to me. Those are the words of course spoken by God to Joshua who was instructed to take over the command of the children of Israel after Moses had gone; a very daunting task for a new leader after such an accomplished leader as Moses had proved himself. No wonder he trembled and God said to him, B” strong, don’t be afraid, the lord thy God is with thee wherever you go.” There are other texts that came into my mind.

I carried a bible in my pocket and there was a certain lance-corporal Pygott with whom I formed a friendly association and he saw me take this out and said, “let me have a look at it” and he opened it at the text of one of St Paul’s epistles, “For I am persuaded that neither life nor death nor any other creature can separate us from God.[3]” It escapes me for the moment, I used to be able to quote the exact words. There were other texts too. Now in my boyhood I remember we had a church army visit the village and there was a certain Captain Jakes who gave some wonderful talks and we used to listen to him. They came and lived in a caravan on the school playground for a week and then moved on from village to village, evangelising. And he told the story of a young fellow who joined the army and his mother gave him a bible and he thrust it into his breast pocket. This young fellow joined the cavalry and he was in a charge when all of a sudden he was knocked off his horse. He got up and felt a slight pain in his chest and he looked and found that his bible had stopped a bullet which would have reached his heart if it had gone right through. I always remember that story and there were others.

PCN
Didn’t the war ever shake your belief?

DB:
No never, never. I had ultimate faith that God would look after me and I’ll come back again to that later.

I went into the trenches several times and then there came a time when we came out and were billeted in reserve in old dug-outs of the old railway line near lake Zillebeke. We were facing the other way and there was a battery of French pom-poms - seventy five’s - that had been firing away. And I also learned later from a fellow I met from the Derby artillery they were not far away. These pom-poms had been irritating the Germans and they’d sent up a balloon. Now we were due to go back into the firing line that night and I’d got my pack made up and ready to put on and I sat on it with Pygott beside me. The roof of the dug-out, which was in the embankment of the railway, consisted of an iron gate covered with sod, earthen sods, and we thought that looked pretty safe. Opposite to us, about thirty yards, was a rather large pond and there was a sort of hedge and ditch to the east of it which we used as latrines, and we were sitting awaiting orders and it was just getting dusk. About a hundred yards away was the Ypres-Menin Road and we were in the angle.

Now the railway beyond us ran into a cutting as it approached the road and there the Staffordshire regiment were billeted in their dug-outs. We were in our own in an exposed position on this ridge on which the railway ran, lake Zillebeke behind us, and a shell landed on the road. The next one landed on the edge of the pond, then one over our heads. Looking back now, he was obviously ranging because always when they fired they fired a shell beyond and one short and then get the distance between for the target. well sure enough, the next shell landed right on the trenches to our left and up went the call for stretcher bearers. I remember them carrying by the casualties and one man in particular who’d just his arm dangling by a thread covered with blood. They were taking them to the first aid post which was up beyond the Staffordshires, and our fellows from that end began running along towards the Staffs. Now there was a ridge and in the corner of this ridge with the railway embankment was our headquarters. The colonel came out and he said, “Get in with these others, stop running about, there’s an observation balloon up there” which we’d not noticed. This observation balloon had seen our activities when they were looking for the French pom-poms evidently. So two fellows crowded in in front of us and then two more, Sergeant Preston was one and the other, a fellow named West. And then the next moment there was a most terrific thump and crash, I can’t describe. All I knew was that my head was buzzing and singing and I was half buried. There was a groaning beside me and I was completely buried. What happened to the gate which had been over the dug-out, I don’t know.

From what I can make out, I’m the only one left. They told me later the top of Pygott’s head was taken off. My head was bent down and the fellow in front of me must have taken the full blast, blown to pieces. Well, I started to run towards this ridge and then my sight went and I called out and one of the Staffordshire fellas came up and said, “alright chum, come on.” He led me to a dressing station. There they bandaged me and treated other casualties. After a while the shelling stopped and it had started to rain. They carried some on stretchers but they couldn’t get the ambulance up to this post because of the shell holes and we had to walk some hundreds of yards to where the ambulance was. I, by holding on behind one of the stretcher bearers - slipping and staggering along - we eventually reached the ambulance. There I was put on a stretcher and we were taken to the rest camp. We were left there all night.

Next morning the medical officer came round. He was a major, a specialist of some kind, and he looked at me and said, “what’s the trouble?” I said, “My eyes, I can’t see sir, they’re sore.” So he pried into my eyes. I tried to open them but the pain was too intense. He said to the orderly, “Wash his eyes out carefully, they should never have bandaged him like that he might have gone completely blind.” Later on he came to me again and I was beginning to glimmer a little bit of light. This persisted two or three days. I just lay on the stretcher and they brought food to me: soup, stew or something or other; I had to be fed by hand. And then the officer suddenly said to me, “How old are you son?” I hesitated for a moment and he said, “Now, tell me the truth.” I said, “sixteen sir.” “Yes,” he said, “I guessed it.” And then he turned to the orderly and said, “You see you can tell by the formation of the bones that he’s not nineteen. I bet you gave your age as nineteen.” I said, “Yes sir.” “Alright son,” he said, “we’ll see to you.”

Well after two days they sent me to Bailleul, the headquarters where they thought I might get my sight and act as a clerk or something since I’d been to high school. However, there was no position so I came back to the rest camp. Then they took me in an ambulance to Mont des Cats. There were three hills: Mont Rouge, Mont des Cats, Mont Kemmel and on Mont des Cats was a monastery , part of which was still occupied by monks, the rest being used as a sort of semi-hospital, clearing station. When I got there I was beginning to be able to just see a little bit and I sat on the hillside in the sunshine hearing the boom of guns in the distance. Someone came and said, “Look, can you do something son?” We’re having a concert tonight.” I said, “No, I can’t”.
“You can play can’t you?”
“Well,” I said, “a bit.”
“Alright, we’ll put you down. We’ve got a piano there, we’ll get you to play something.”
They wouldn’t take no and I just wanted to get rid of them because my head was buzzing and I was feeling very very tried and weary.

PCN:
When was this? When were you wounded?

DB:
I was wounded actually on the 3rd of September 1915[4].

PCN:
So those guns you heard firing were probably to do with the battle of Loos then?

DB:
This must have been a week or two later because I remember it being Autumn. They may have been, I don’t know. We didn’t get much information as to what was going on. We didn’t discuss war. The thing is we joked, we smoked, we de-loused.

I turned to go in and I said to a chap, “I’ve got a terrific headache, my head’s splitting.” He said, “look, go down to the dispensary down there, I’ll take you.” He took me down and the fella looked at me. I said, “I’ve got and awful headache.” He stuck a thermometer in my mouth, took it out a couple of minutes later and said, “You go and lie down, go to your bed.” The doctor was round in five minutes, took my pulse and in quarter of an hour I was on an ambulance. I was taken to a hospital, a marquee at Hazebrouck which was the furthest point the Uhlans - the German cavalry - had reached, and there were three or four other patients waiting there and an officer talking to them. This was in the reception and eventually, as each was called away, the officer came to me. He said, “What’s your regiment son?” I said, “Lincolnshires sir.” He said, “Are you from Lincolnshire?” I said, “Yes sir.” He said, “What part?” I said, “Wragby sir”
“Wragby? Do you know Mr H J Banks the schoolmaster there?” I said, “Yes sir, I’m his son.”
“You’re Donald. Well, well that’s interesting. I wonder if you remember Miss Smith?”
Did I remember Miss Smith! We all loved her. She was our infant school teacher and he’d married her. And I shall never forget the day when Jinny Musson, the lady who took her place, took us out into the fields and we watched the little three carriage train go by and a white handkerchief fluttering. And Jinny said, “there goes Miss Smith.” Oh did we miss her. “Well,” he said, “I’ll write to your father.”

Now it so happened that at that time my father had cycled from Wragby and up to London. He had some sisters living in Kent and he’d friends in London, and there was the clergyman from the next village to Wragby - Langton-by-Wragby - the reverend Arthur Wellington Carver who was incidentally my godfather and who got the names Arthur Wellington because his godfather was Arthur Wellington, the duke who won the battle of Waterloo. He went to visit him because he’d retired and lived in New Barnet. And while my father was there he said, “I want to go and visit a former member of my staff who lives not far from here.” So he went to see Mrs Watson (her name now was) and when he got back there was a letter from her husband that had been forwarded on to Barnet telling that he’d met me. And he was so interested that he made the journey back next day to Mrs Watson’s home, just as Captain Watson arrived home and was able to give him first hand news about me.

Well the next morning I was put on the train. Wonderful those trains, you never knew when they were starting or stopping they moved so smoothly and gently. And I was taken up towards Boulogne and put into Number 1 Canadian Hospital, a fine hospital, all marquees, at Etaples near Boulogne. There I lay in a semi-conscious condition, feverish, hardly able to eat or do anything. I don’t know whether it was the shock but all they marked on my chart was PUO. I forget what the P stands for but the others were “unknown origin”.[5] The doctor did tell me once what it was but it was really partly the delayed shock I suppose and the fact that the side of my face was skinned and my eyes filled with the blast. Had I had my head up at the time I suppose I would have gone. But I hadn’t. I must have been bending down and it caught me on that side. Later on I asked my friend Bert who was wounded in the shoulder by a machine gun bullet and invalided home and discharged. He told me, “I went to that dressing station and they told me you’d never get your sight back. I’m glad you did.”

[3] “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans VIII, 38-39
[4] Actually, 2nd September 1915
[5] Pyrexia of Unknown Origin

Wounded

what happened to the gate which had been over the dug-out, I don’t know.

From what I can make out, I’m the only one left. They told me later the top of Pygott’s head was taken off. My head was bent down and the fellow in front of me must have taken the full blast, blown to pieces. Well, I started to run towards this ridge and then my sight went and I called out and one of the Staffordshire fellas came up and said, “alright chum, come on.” He led me to a dressing station. There they bandaged me and treated other casualties. After a while the shelling stopped and it had started to rain. They carried some on stretchers but they couldn’t get the ambulance up to this post because of the shell holes and we had to walk some hundreds of yards to where the ambulance was. I, by holding on behind one of the stretcher bearers - slipping and staggering along - we eventually reached the ambulance. There I was put on a stretcher and we were taken to the rest camp. We were left there all night.

Next morning the medical officer came round. He was a major, a specialist of some kind, and he looked at me and said, “what’s the trouble?” I said, “My eyes, I can’t see sir, they’re sore.” So he pried into my eyes. I tried to open them but the pain was too intense. He said to the orderly, “Wash his eyes out carefully, they should never have bandaged him like that he might have gone completely blind.” Later on he came to me again and I was beginning to glimmer a little bit of light. This persisted two or three days. I just lay on the stretcher and they brought food to me: soup, stew or something or other; I had to be fed by hand. And then the officer suddenly said to me, “How old are you son?” I hesitated for a moment and he said, “Now, tell me the truth.” I said, “sixteen sir.” “Yes,” he said, “I guessed it.” And then he turned to the orderly and said, “You see you can tell by the formation of the bones that he’s not nineteen. I bet you gave your age as nineteen.” I said, “Yes sir.” “Alright son,” he said, “we’ll see to you.”

Well after two days they sent me to Bailleul, the headquarters where they thought I might get my sight and act as a clerk or something since I’d been to high school. However, there was no position so I came back to the rest camp. Then they took me in an ambulance to Mont des Cats. There were three hills: Mont Rouge, Mont des Cats, Mont Kemmel and on Mont des Cats was a monastery , part of which was still occupied by monks, the rest being used as a sort of semi-hospital, clearing station. When I got there I was beginning to be able to just see a little bit and I sat on the hillside in the sunshine hearing the boom of guns in the distance. Someone came and said, “Look, can you do something son?” We’re having a concert tonight.” I said, “No, I can’t”.
“You can play can’t you?”
“Well,” I said, “a bit.”
“Alright, we’ll put you down. We’ve got a piano there, we’ll get you to play something.”
They wouldn’t take no and I just wanted to get rid of them because my head was buzzing and I was feeling very very tried and weary.

PCN:
When was this? When were you wounded?

DB:
I was wounded actually on the 3rd of September 1915 .

PCN:
So those guns you heard firing were probably to do with the battle of Loos then?

DB:
This must have been a week or two later because I remember it being Autumn. They may have been, I don’t know. We didn’t get much information as to what was going on. We didn’t discuss war. The thing is we joked, we smoked, we de-loused.

I turned to go in and I said to a chap, “I’ve got a terrific headache, my head’s splitting.” He said, “look, go down to the dispensary down there, I’ll take you.” He took me down and the fella looked at me. I said, “I’ve got and awful headache.” He stuck a thermometer in my mouth, took it out a couple of minutes later and said, “You go and lie down, go to your bed.” The doctor was round in five minutes, took my pulse and in quarter of an hour I was on an ambulance. I was taken to a hospital, a marquee at Hazebrouck which was the furthest point the Uhlans - the German cavalry - had reached, and there were three or four other patients waiting there and an officer talking to them. This was in the reception and eventually, as each was called away, the officer came to me. He said, “What’s your regiment son?” I said, “Lincolnshires sir.” He said, “Are you from Lincolnshire?” I said, “Yes sir.” He said, “What part?” I said, “Wragby sir”
“Wragby? Do you know Mr H J Banks the schoolmaster there?” I said, “Yes sir, I’m his son.”
“You’re Donald. Well, well that’s interesting. I wonder if you remember Miss Smith?”
Did I remember Miss Smith! We all loved her. She was our infant school teacher and he’d married her. And I shall never forget the day when Jinny Musson, the lady who took her place, took us out into the fields and we watched the little three carriage train go by and a white handkerchief fluttering. And Jinny said, “there goes Miss Smith.” Oh did we miss her. “Well,” he said, “I’ll write to your father.”

Now it so happened that at that time my father had cycled from Wragby and up to London. He had some sisters living in Kent and he’d friends in London, and there was the clergyman from the next village to Wragby - Langton-by-Wragby - the reverend Arthur Wellington Carver who was incidentally my godfather and who got the names Arthur Wellington because his godfather was Arthur Wellington, the duke who won the battle of Waterloo. He went to visit him because he’d retired and lived in New Barnet. And while my father was there he said, “I want to go and visit a former member of my staff who lives not far from here.” So he went to see Mrs Watson (her name now was) and when he got back there was a letter from her husband that had been forwarded on to Barnet telling that he’d met me. And he was so interested that he made the journey back next day to Mrs Watson’s home, just as Captain Watson arrived home and was able to give him first hand news about me.

Well the next morning I was put on the train. Wonderful those trains, you never knew when they were starting or stopping they moved so smoothly and gently. And I was taken up towards Boulogne and put into Number 1 Canadian Hospital, a fine hospital, all marquees, at Etaples near Boulogne. There I lay in a semi-conscious condition, feverish, hardly able to eat or do anything. I don’t know whether it was the shock but all they marked on my chart was PUO. I forget what the P stands for but the others were “unknown origin”. The doctor did tell me once what it was but it was really partly the delayed shock I suppose and the fact that the side of my face was skinned and my eyes filled with the blast. Had I had my head up at the time I suppose I would have gone. But I hadn’t. I must have been bending down and it caught me on that side. Later on I asked my friend Bert who was wounded in the shoulder by a machine gun bullet and invalided home and discharged. He told me, “I went to that dressing station and they told me you’d never get your sight back. I’m glad you did.”

To be continued.

Also see:

Donald Banks - Introduction and War Diary - England 1915

Donald Banks - War Diary - France 1915

Donald Banks - Narrative Part 2

And see too, my posts on my Army Service Numbers blog regarding the Lincolnshire Regiment:

The 1st & 2nd Battalions, The Lincolnshire Regiment
The 3rd (Special Reserve) Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment
The 4th Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment
The 5th Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment
The Lincolnshire Regiment - Service Battalions
The Lincolnshire Regiment - 10th Battalion - Grimsby Chums

31769 Pte Harry Leeks, 9th Essex Regt

2010-01-18T10:42:00.013Z

Synopsis

I met Harry Leeks in September 1981. He was one of four WW1 veterans living in a retirement complex in Chelmsford. I conducted a brief interview with him at his home and then returned a couple of years later with the then curator of the Essex Regiment Museum - David Jones - who conducted a more detailed tape-recorded interview. I have a transcript of that subsequent interview and the original is with the museum.

This post is a combination of official information taken from Harry's service record in the WO 363 series at the National Archives (and also accessible via Ancestry.co.uk), and Harry's own reminiscences. I have also transcribed a letter from nineteen-year-old Eva Lancaster, written to Harry whilst he was in France in 1917.

Harry Leeks in WO 363

Harry Leeks was the son of Harry and Emma Leeks and was born at Sudbury, Suffolk, on the 18th July 1897. (The year 1887 is incorrectly recorded on some of his papers). He attested with the Essex Regiment on the 17th November 1915 and received an armlet showing that he was a Derby Scheme volunteer. He was then eighteen years and four months old.

The following September, Harry was called up and joined the 3rd Battalion at Warley on the 4th of that month. His papers indicate that he was a boot repairer by trade and living at 16 Park Road, Chelmsford. His next of kin is recorded as his father who was then living at 8 Anchor Street, Chelmsford. This address was later crossed out and a new one - Hope Villas, Rectory Road - written there at in its place. Hope Villas still survive in Chelmsford and in fact, when I interviewed Harry, he was living only a stone's throw away from his old address.

Harry was given the Essex Regiment number 31769 and remained in England until the 7th December 1916, sailing for France the following day as part of a draft for the 9th Battalion. He received a gunshot wound to his back at Arras on the 9th April 1917 but after a short spell at No 3 General Hospital at Le Treport returned for duty with his regiment and re-joined the battalion on the 24th May that year. He appears to have then remained in France until 27th January 1919 when he was demobilised at Purfleet.

Harry's father died whilst his son was overseas, and there is a letter in his file from his mother (dated 26th November 1917) requesting that her son be allowed home on compassionate leave as her husband only had a few hours to live. I can find no evidence in the file - and do not recall Mr Leeks mentioning it when I met him - that he ever saw his father, although it appears that permission was granted.

Harry Leeks in his own words

I joined up at the drill hall in Market Road, Chelmsford and spent three months training at Felixstowe before being sent to France. The trenches there were terrible; mud and sludge. I was lucky that I just missed the Battle of the Somme but we were there for Arras and I saw the Essex Yeomanry get cut up, and it was absolutely wicked to see it. That was the last time they used the cavalry.

We went over the top on Easter Monday, 9th April 1917. One of our shells dropped two or three yards short and killed three or four of our chaps. I was hit in the back by a piece of shrapnel and fell into a shell-hole. As I was laying there, Captain Brown come up and said to me, "Advance this way, you've got the bloody wind-up. I'll count to three and then I'll shoot."

He fired three shots at me and the last one hit my tin helmet and sent it spinning away into no-man's land before he himself suddenly fell wounded. Later on I was picked up by stretcher bearers and taken to a nearby dressing station and it was here that I met my pal Private Roberts. He told me that he'd seen the incident with Captain Brown and that he had shot him. Captain Brown, who was also a Sudbury man like me, survived the war but spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

I was taken to a Canadian hospital just behind the lines and they told me that the shrapnel had just missed my spine. I was supposed to go to England but for some reason that never happened.

Letter from Eva Lancaster to Harry Leeks

12 Manor Road
Chelmsford

July 16th 1917

Dear Harry

No doubt you will be very much surprised to hear from me, but I thought I would like to write to you, a few lines, and I hope you will not think I am putting myself forward in writing to you first.

Well in the first place, I hope you are feeling better. I was surprised to hear you had been wounded, but as time goes on let us hope you will regain your full strength. No doubt you were disappointed because you were not brought to England, but before long you may be coming home for good. When do you think that will be? I do not see much signs of the war ending, but very likely it will come when we least expect it. I have heard through your sister, Ethel, that you have a Lancaster in your company. My brother is a sergeant in the Machine Gun Corps so probably he may be attached to your regiment.

Have you seen any Chelmsford fellows since you have been out? It must be rather nice to come across some of those who you know, but it is not very often the case. I suppose you have heard about the air raid here last Saturday week. It is a sight I never want to see again. Of course, when we heard the siren we stopped work, and a few more girls and I rushed out and we counted twenty-three aeroplanes. I was struck, I thought perhaps there would be two or three, and they seemed to be up a fair good height. It seemed so dreadful to think that they come over to kill poor innocent people, and they seem to glide along so stately. I for my part would have liked to see some brought down, but they brought a few down on their way back.

I have a faint recollection that last year you told one your birthday was in July but I forget the date now, but I am taking the opportunity of wishing you a Happy Birthday. I cannot say Happy Returns for I am sure you do not wish that and let us hope that next year you may be spending it in England. Did you know Fred Monk is discharged from the army? He came home last Thursday. He looks so much better than he did. His heart is very weak and yesterday evening during the hymn he had to sit down.

Well I do not think that I have any more to write this time. I should be pleased to hear from you if you would care to write.

Now I must conclude, with kindest regards from

Eva (Lancaster)

Eva Lancaster's MGC brother was killed during the First World War and he has no known grave. Eva and Harry Leeks were married in 1927 and when I took this photograph of them both at their home on the 9th September 1981, they'd been married for 54 years. I saw the couple regularly until the winter of 1984. Eva Leeks died suddenly in December that year, and Harry died less than a month later. May they both rest in peace.

G/62175 James Townsend Simpson, 6th Middx Regt

2010-01-03T09:33:00.005Z

Synopsis

I interviewed James Townsend Simpson in Chelmsford on the 27th October 1981. He was born in Chelmsford on 1st June 1900 and was working as a milkman when he was called up in 1918. Mr Simpson recalled that he had joined up in December 1917, although one of his two medal index cards at the National Archives indicates that he joined on 4th January 1918 and was discharged on the 5th March 1919 due to wounds.

The 1901 census shows James living with his parents and two year old sister at 5 Myrtle Cottages, Manor Road, Braintree. His father, Henry T (possibly also Townsend) Simpson, was American by birth but a naturalised British citizen by the time the census was taken. He is recorded as being a 27 year old assistant superintendent for a Life Insurance Company.

James Simpson sailed to France with The Buffs (East Kent Regiment, number 26673) and later transferred to the 6th Middlesex Regiment, where he was given the number G/62175. My interview with him was brief and I never met him again. He died in March 1996 aged 95.

Interview

I joined up at five o'clock in the afternoon at Great Scotland Yard. We trained at Maidstone for three weeks and then at Crowborough in Sussex for four weeks.

We went to France in February or March 1918 and we arrived at Boulogne it was pitch black. We marched up to Ypres and through the whole bloody lot in the dark. When we got there they gave us a machine-gun and shoved us in a trench half full of bloody water. You were up to your knees in water and mud.

They started shelling when we got there and kept it up the whole of the blasted time. They slaughtered thousands of them that way, simply by leaving them in the trench when there was a bombardment on. There were a lot of idiots in that war. You held on to a bit of swamp which was no good to anyone because you couldn’t use it. There wasn’t anyone with any bloody sense at that time. We were in a hollow when we could have been on the ridge behind. A couple of our men got shot by a sniper there when they went to the latrines.

I was on one of three machine-gun posts in front of the front-line trench and we’d been there about five days when Jerry dropped a shell on us. He had a spotter plane come over in the morning and he wiped the lot out. He dropped one on the middle one and then one on either side. I saw my number one sitting at the gun with half of his head blown away.

I stayed there the day and night, waiting for the barrage to lift before they could come and fetch me out. I had shrapnel injuries to the knees, chest and shoulder.

I was transferred to the 41st General Hospital at Bruges and was there for eight or nine months. One doctor wanted to take my legs off and one wanted to experiment, so I let him experiment. He told me straight that he might play about with my legs for a year and then still have them off, but it all turned out alright.

After Bruges I came home to Stepping Hill Military Hospital in Stockport and then had two months’ convalescence in Ponting.

James Townsend Simpson's records on Ancestry.co.uk include:

Register of birth
Entry on 1901 census
Medal index card
Register of death

CLICK HERE for a FREE 14-day trial.

R/23703 L/Cpl Arnold Marshall, 8th KRRC

2009-12-13T07:50:00.004Z

Synopsis

Arnold Fitz George Marshall was born at Sowerby Bridge, Yorkshire, on the 16th August 1893. He was working in a cotton mill when Britain went to war in 1914 and he attested under the Derby Scheme on 11th December 1915. Four months later he was called up, and four months after that, he was in France.

I interviewed Arnold Marshall at his home in Chelmsford, Essex on 14th April 1984 and he died in Chelmsford in October 1991 at the grand old age of 98.

Interview

AM:
Yes well, I joined up because I was bound to do , in the spring of 1916 and I joined the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. We were trained at Blyth in Northumberland. The training only lasted three months and then I was out in France in August the same year. They were sending them out pretty fast then. They must have been getting short of soldiers.

We went across to Le Havre and from there we were trained and went to the front. September 15th was my first engagement, 1916. That was when the tanks were used for the first time. I shall never forget that as long as I live. There we were in the slit trenches at the back of the tanks all that night previous, waiting to advance behind the tanks the morning after, at dawn. I remember these things, there was one directly in front of me and well, the signal was given, I forget how. But we went over anyway at dawn behind the tanks. It was a shambles, a horrible shambles. That was the first time I saw a dead man, oh I saw scores of them.

Me, I had a friend and he lived in Elland not far from me and we’d become a bit pally. We both joined up, we went over together and as I say, we advanced, oh a thousand yards, no more and then of course we had to dig ourselves in at the finish. We saw a lot of the tanks knocked out. They were going to end the war with those tanks, so they told us but it didn’t of course. They were easily knocked out.

PN:
What part of the front were you on there, do you know?

AM:
It were the Somme part. It was the second battle of the Somme. The first was in July of that year – the first battle of the Somme - and I was in the second on September 15th.

PN:
Can you remember what your objective was?

AM:
It was the Somme front. I can’t remember any of the French [village] names now. I never got out of the Somme front, I were always in. We were pushing ahead all the time. I was in the Battle of Arras in 1917, the following Easter. Easter Monday was the Battle of Arras and I was in that. That was pushing a bit further still and that was the first time they had the Lancers, the horse cavalry. They were all wiped out practically, it was a shambles was that. We saw them pass us, we were in trenches waiting. I was in reserve just then, I wasn’t actually in the front line, not for the Battle of Arras. We were moved up afterwards, after a few days. And as I say, the Easter Monday the cavalry went over and they looked fine with their pennants and horses but I remember them coming back and what a shambles, very few came back that day. It was snowing by the way. It was white with snow that Easter Monday 1917.

We stayed there six days digging ourselves in after we’d gone through – Thiepval that was one place – all in front of Arras. We were brought away and I saw poor old chaplain killed. He was moving amongst the troops you know, helping us to dig in but he got hit. I saw that and it upset me a bit.

Eventually of course we kept going in and out of the line, six days or seven days at a time from the front line, then we’d come back in to reserve and occasionally [have leave]. I only ever came on leave once in 1917. I became engaged then to my wife. That was in the autumn of 1917 and I went back again and then it was on to Passchendaele Ridge where we eventually got, and a foot of mud about. Terrible. And that’s where I got it.

I was going up in the line, carrying a bag of bombs one night to serve the front line – these Mills bombs – and I felt a sharp pain and I ruptured myself because I slipped. Well when we got out they sent me down the line and the doctors fitted me up with a truss and a shocking thing it was: metal truss. I couldn’t walk with it, I couldn’t dig so I threw it into no-man’s land one night. I thought, here’s a present for you old Jerry. Fortunately or unfortunately, that Christmas day I was wounded, on Christmas night of 1917 on Passchendaele Ridge.

There was no trenches. One platoon would be in a big shell hole and to get to the next in another shell hole you’d to go over the top. There were no communication trenches. Each platoon were in its own big shell hole and this Christmas Eve I was detailed along with some more to go down to where they were going to be brought out of the line on Boxing Day and we had to practice going down the line which was about five miles of duckboards [or] what were left of them.

Well we did it alright on the Christmas Eve because it rained, rained and rained and there was a blackout. There was a sniper and he’d killed our captain. However, when we came back I was wet through and we got through Christmas Day. It snowed all day Christmas Day, everything was white and I had to go down the line again for another practice to bring the new lot up for the next night after.

As I say, I set out at ten o’clock at night to go over the top and I got a packet. I were hit three times by this sniper. The first time I just passed out with concussion. It hit me on me tin hat; a little hole there where it went in and a great big one where it came out – I could put my fist in where it came out. I tried to bring that back home but somebody pinched it from me when I was in hospital.

As I say, I was knocked out and I must have been out about an hour (I was told after). I came too again and I crawled on my tummy the way we’d been taught. I could see a great big shell hole and I got down and I got partially over into it when he fired again and hit me in the hip here.

Of course, I went down into the shell hole and they could see all this from where I’d come from being such a bright starry night with just occasional showers of snow. And they sent a couple of stretcher bearers down to fetch me out. They could see I was knocked out. They got down to me and [asked] “Can you walk?” So I said, “I’ll try and walk” and then we set off, the three of us down to company headquarters where we were supposed to be going. It was under a snow shower that and then suddenly the moon came out and all was bright again and the sniper hit all three of us.

I was hit again through the left hand there. I can’t bend that. I was shot straight through there, that’s the third time. One of the other stretcher bearers was shot in the calf and the other in the hip and he died. Well we lay there all night then right ‘til six o’clock the morning after. A sergeant from company headquarters saw us – we’d got nearly there seemingly – and he saw us and he brought us in to company headquarters, the three of us.

The doctor was there at company headquarters and he bandaged me up and the other one was a stretcher case. King had got it in the hip [but] the other one who got it in the calf, he could manage to walk a little bit. So we set out morning after, it was Boxing morning that, and the enemy were watching us and they had a truce for us to get out. There were three of us and some more who had been wounded during the night. I was in front holding me white flag on with me rifle.

We marched down, right down ‘til we got down to the ambulances. They came up as far as ever they could but there was still a couple of miles [we had] to go [because] they daren’t come any further. We got down there and that’s where I got out to England. I got to Glasgow, Bellahouston Hospital in Glasgow and just got [there] in time for their celebrations at New Year. I was there eight months in hospital and then I got my discharge. I had to come right down here. I’d never been to the south of England before in my life, except when I was in the army like, and I got to Queensbury and got my discharge from there. That was in August 1918 and I went working on munitions then at Lincolnshire until November the 11th, Armistice Day and of course everybody packed up and I went home and never went back again. That was my army service.

PN:
Can you explain to me again why you didn’t join up earlier; why you weren’t allowed to join earlier than you did?

AM:
Yes, because the work that I was doing was work for the army. We were making canvas. You know what bell tents were? Well it was the cotton for those. And it was very coarse cotton and they wouldn’t let me go.

It was what they called the Lord Derby Scheme that they had in those days. You could wear an armband showing that you were exempt you see. That’s the reason I didn’t go until I was required. I was called up [and] we had to go then. That was in the spring of 1916, about April it was, just about Easter.

PN:
And did you join up with a lot of friends?

AM:
No. I joined up by myself. There was an army barracks at Higher Road [unclear] as they called it, near Halifax. I had to go there to join up and as I say, I met this boy from Elland and we palled up together, we were together and he was killed by the way. That man was killed the morning after I left that dug-out. He was the company runner. He had to run messages you see. I later shook hands with him when I was in that dug-out at company headquarters and he was killed the day after. He was killed during the relief. It was my job you see, to fetch them in but I never did it because I was wounded. He must have taken over from me and he was killed on that morning, Boxing morning.

PN:
Can you tell me what it’s like going over the top?

AM:
Horrible. Mixed feelings. You’re sort of frightened but there you are, you’ve just got to go. Sometimes the lieutenants or the captain would be in front and sometimes they’d be behind. It was not always the same. We had an objective to go to, supposed to be, always. You’d got to go so far and on one occasion, that was in May 1917, we went over and we went too far. We were in a trough. The others at either side of us – it was a long defensive of miles – and our lot, the 8th Battalion, went too far and the result was we got enfilade fire, fire from both sides and we had to come back, retreat ‘til we got level again. I remember as well as anything, three of us in a bunch and the chap on either side of us got shot down and I managed to make it down to the trench where we’d come from. That was a rotten experience was that, that I had. Going over the top you don’t feel a right lot until you start seeing them falling around you.

PN:
Can you hear the shells and the bullets?

AM:
Oh yes. You can’t see them but you can hear them. We were supposed to go under cover of fire. Our artillery were supposed to keep the shells just in front of us in a creeping barrage and keep the enemy down. Well of course they did a good job but sometimes they didn’t lift the barrage soon enough and fired into us. That happened a few times. It wasn’t often that happened but it has happened.

PN:
Where do you think conditions were worse?

AM:
Passchendaele definitely, Passchendaele Ridge. That was the finish for me. I don’t know how far… because Christmas Day were ten months off the end of the war and I don’t know how far they got. I was in hospital [and] I didn’t know anything about what happened after then.

In hospital I joined a concert party. I was a pianist you see and I was in a concert party in France by the way, for a little while. We had a piano, we humped it around with us, and we had a bit of a concert party but that soon fizzled out. But in hospital we formed one there in Glasgow. We went touring all round Glasgow giving concerts. We made about £500 for the hospital. It wasn’t a military hospital it was a VAD, one of those kind built for the war. I had a good time there once my wounds were healing up and that. I had three operations and of course the knuckle has gone there, I’ve no knuckle at all.

PN:
Do you suffer with that now with arthritis?

AM:
Just a little, yes now that’s a funny thing. This winter it’s started aching. Arthritis I suppose it is.
PN:
Can you also tell me what it’s like to be in the trenches? What they look like, what the food’s like.
AM:
Well it depends. We were on a quiet front where it was all chalk and we were absolutely white. We always went in for about six days and it was a boring business, a case of Stand To at dawn and Stand To again at dusk for an hour in case there was an attack you see. I think that was Thiepval where it was all chalky, terribly chalky. But mostly it was mud: mud, mud depending on the weather and the time of the year. You just yawned your heads off most of the time. You had to Stand To on these kind of shelves that they made and look over the top and you were damned lucky if you didn’t get a sniper. That’s what they had the snipers for you know, catch anybody. You used to put a tin hat on the end of a rifle and put it up and get shot at.

It was mostly night duty. You had an hour on and stood on these shelves looking over the top; and then two off. Mostly we were hitting rats from the top you know, part of ‘us equipment was a shovel.

PN:
Did you ever go on any patrols or raiding parties into no-man’s land?

AM:
Yes, yes. I was only ever involved in one and nothing happened. We had to stand still if a verey light went up – which they did often of course. The sent these verey lights up you know and it showed all light. But as long as you stood still you weren’t spotted. I went cutting enemy wires on that patrol but we got back safely. That was the only one I was on, was that.

I wasn’t in the line a right long time: from September to Christmas. [I was] fifteen months on active service. After that Christmas night do, that finished me as regards active service.

PN:
What happened at Passchendaele? Did everybody go over the top and then dig in?

AM:
Yes, but we could never get far. It was a ridge and we were on the lower part of the ridge, we were going uphill and they were looking down onto us. That’s why it was such hard going, terrible. The time I was there it was Autumn and there’d been a lot of rain and it were as muddy as... Terrible, I shall never forget that as long as I live. I were real glad to be wounded in a way, to get out of it. We were all fed up. This patriotic business of joining up, it [was] soon knocked off you with the drills and the sergeants putting you through it. You soon get fed up with that and the conditions were pretty bad. You never got real comfortable billets unless you were taken out for a rest which you were occasionally.

Our lot were absolutely decimated. There would be a thousand in a battalion and we’d come out with a couple of hundred and we had to go back down the line to get fitted out with new recruits from England, and you had to wait while they were trained.

PN:
Did you have any brothers in the services?

AM:
My younger brother was at York mostly. I had only one brother and he was younger than I and he joined up later. He was in the Yorkshire Regiment and I went to see him at York when I came on leave from France. I don’t think he ever went out to France.

Mrs AM:
No he didn’t.

AM:
Well if he did, it were after the war.

Mrs AM:
It was the pioneers wasn’t it?

AM:
Yes I believe it was, in the Pioneer Corps. I were more interested in myself getting fit again.

PN:
How did you view the officers? Were they popular with the men?

AM:
It depends who they were. They were just human beings like everyone else, there were good ones and bad ones. They had to be strict. As I said, this patriotism was soon jolly well knocked out of you. You just had to do as you were told. It was drill, drill and being shouted out. That was part of the doings you know, being cursed and shouted out and made to do these things. You’d have been glad to be back home in a couple of months’ time if you could have done.

PN:
Did you opt to go into the King’s Royal Rifles?

AM:
Yes. As I said, they were making a farmer’s battalion. They were mostly from north Yorkshire – the farmers. They’d all been exempt you see because of growing the crops I suppose. Anyway, they made this farmer’s battalion and I joined it.

Mrs AM:
Well the women went into the Land Army didn’t they? They helped out. My second daughter went into the Land Army.

AM:
You’re talking about another war altogether. That was the Second War.

Yes I remember as part of us training at Blythe – that’s near Newcastle you know – we used to man the trenches there. There were trenches all down the coast and we used to spend nights there. That was part of our training.

PN:
Was it realistic training?

AM:
Well it was mostly marching. We used to go twenty mile a day all around Blythe, Ashington and the villages there. But we used to have these full nights down the trenches guarding the coastline. That was just part of the job. Then of course everybody had guard duty in the camps when you did two hours on and four hours off. Every soldier had that to do, what they called battalion camp duties. And then there was the usual potato peeling and all that. Jankers if you got into trouble at all. I never got into that. I was a lance-corporal.

I got my promotion I think because I had a good voice; I had a strong voice. I have yet. I was good at shouting at ‘em. I picked up the jargon and from the drill book and they put me as
A temporary lance-corporal and I used to drill them and march them around, you know, form fours, left turn right turn, that simple business more or less and eventually I got my stripe.

PN:
And that’s more pay as well isn’t it?

AM:
Just a little, nothing much. I forget how much, a shilling a day. Pay wasn’t much in those days.

Mrs AM:
Well a shilling was a shilling in those days.

AM:
Aye.

PN:
You must have been one of the few members of the battalion to have gone through the latter half of the Somme campaign and into Passchendaele. There can’t have been many people in your battalion who went through the Somme unscathed.

AM:
Well Passchendaele was just going forward through the Somme, it was a part of the Somme. It was going further through into Germany. The Somme had been left behind at Passchendaele. I was in the second battle of the Somme September 15th 1916.

PN:
What was it like at Arras?

AM:
We only went to Arras on a kind of rest. There were a lot of tunnels at Arras, underground passages. We were there the night before we were to go into the battle of Arras itself we were in these [and they were] giving us bars of chocolates and cigarettes ready for the jump off and that was when the lancers went over, the day after. Easter Monday that was.

I don’t remember much about Arras. We went forward.

PN:
You went over the top at Arras as well though?

AM:
Yes, I was in reserve really. They went over the top then we took over them with their first line casualties. They withdrew and we took over after them. Going forward a little bit it was only slow movement. You’d only go a hundred yards or so at a time and we had a terrible lot of casualties at each battle.

Passchendaele Ridge was terrible. I used to wake up at night shivering and living it all over again. It was no picnic. None of it was a picnic of course.

Them days is a long time ago. I was only twenty our when I was discharged.

PN:
Were they mainly youngsters in your battalion?

AM:
We’d got the eighteen year olders, yes, those that had been pulled in at eighteen years old. [They were] given three months training then out. One of them nearly shot me. I remember going over the top and he was beside of me and a bullet from him whizzed straight past my ear. He was only a young lad and he didn’t last so long. I remember him being killed, same lad.

Yes there were quite a lot of eighteen year olds. The officer in charge was only an eighteen year old. He was a brave lad was that second lieutenant. That do that I told you about when we had to come back, he was in front and he wouldn’t leave. We left him there. He must have got killed. He wouldn’t withdraw.

PN:
Were they all Londoners?

AM:
Yes, I was amongst the cockneys all the time. Not much Yorkshire twang about any of them. It was the 8th Battalion of the King’s Royal Rifles that I went over with and they were all cockneys. We were kind of merged into them. We did our training at Blythe then drafted into France and we joined the 8th there. What we were called at Blythe I forget, whether it was the 7th it was the King’s Royal Rifles just the same but what number I’ve no idea. But we went into France with the 8th and I was with the 8th all the time.

PN:
Do you know what division you were part of?

AM:
14th Light Division. We were quick marching; I think we did about 65 steps a minute on the march and on parade. They short stepped. We used to take 30 inches of a stride, no more, and you used to do 65 of them in a minute. That’s pretty quick going is that. That’s why they call them light infantry [because] they could get from one place to another quick. There was no lorries to take us in those days like they had in the Second World War. It was none of that, it was all march, march on your own feet in the First World War. We used to think nothing of doing twenty miles from one part to a different part of the line, taking over.

PN:
I suppose there was quite a lot of boredom in the trenches.

AM:
Oh aye, yes it is boredom if it’s quiet. Of course you can be just the opposite. It depends if they’d got the wind up. They used to send a lot of these whizzbangs over and then we’d be in a trench and they’d send a plane up and they’d spot us and signal their own whizzbangs. I’ve seen them wipe a whole trench out, you know, forty or fifty yards long. Start at one end with the whizzbangs and make us all run to the other end.

PN:
Weren’t there explosives called Jack Johnsons and coalboxes as well?

AM:
Yes coalboxes, whizzbangs they were called. They weren’t big shells, the five inch heavy artillery on those. They had them in their trenches, we had similar things in our trenches. We fired short eighteen pounder shells and these whizzbangs were the same. They got so as they could pretty near hit the trench [so] it were pretty lively. There were no boredom with those.

But many a time it was very, very quiet; nothing doing. Stand To at dawn and Stand To at dusk and the rest of the time you did what you liked.

PN:
De-lousing.

AM:
Oh yes, you’re telling me. Yes, we used to keep that until we came out of the line in the billets and then we’d have a candle lit and shirts off and then de-lousing, burn them out you know. Oh aye. Yes you were filthy when you come out of the line.

Ends

2630111 Pte Harold Shephard, 5th Leicestershire Regiment.

2009-11-22T08:58:00.003Z

Synposis

I met Harold Shephard whilst I was a student in Loughborough, and interviewed him on 19th June 1984 when he was 88 years old. Harold was born at Hathern, Leicestershire on the 18th December 1895 and told me that he had joined B Company of the 5th Leicesters (Territorials) in 1911. It was around this time that he had the Leicestershire Regiment badge, clearly visible in the photo above, tattooed on his left forearm. Harold was working for the Falcon Works (later, Brush) as a wood-cutting machinist when war was declared. He died in January 1988 aged 92.

Interview

PN:
So you joined up in 1911 with the Territorials?

HS:
Yes, and our first camp was Aberystwyth, in August [1912] for a fortnight. After we come back from that, disbanded, once every Wednesday I think it was, we used to go up to the Drill Hall and drill etc. Then the next camp was Denton, Denton Park in Grantham.

PN:
That’s the following year?

HS:
Yes, that’s the following year. After that we come back and went to work and the next camp was Bridlington [1914]. We went to camp at Bridlington on the Saturday, broke camp on the Saturday night and come back on the Sunday morning to the Midland station at Loughborough. And we come in and all the regiment, all the 5th, was disbanded to different [locations]: Rendle Street school and different schools, and us headquarters was in Granby Street at the drill hall.

After that we was mobilised and we got up and we went to Buxton - not Buxton but near enough – to get mobilised. And then out on the parade asking if you’d volunteer to go to France. Them as didn’t volunteer, such as married men with children and one thing or another, they stopped behind. Well then they got [the rest of us] up; disbanded that lot, kept them at home to look after people at home [and] we went from there to Derby. We stopped in Derby about two days, made a bit of a camp, and went from Derby to Ware [Herts]. From Ware we went to Sawbridgeworth [and] from there we was mobilised down to Southampton, ready for going abroad and we got on… I can’t tell you the name of the boat. I forget, but anyway we went straight across the Channel to Le Havre. From Le Havre we went up to Armentieres.

PN:
What time of year was this?

HS:
This was 1915, January 1915. We got rigged out with sheepskins and one thing or another, all ready for it, and then we started on the war. We went up to Armentieres and the first man to get killed in the 5th Leicesters was a chap named Bob Bacchus. He was holding the colonel’s horse and a shell come over and cleaned the horse up and him and all. After that I think we went to Douai.

PN:
What were the trenches like at Armentieres?

HS:
We never got in trenches. We were mobilised there to back [up]. I forget what regiment we backed up but on the backing up side.

I think we went to Douai from there and after that we was going nightly, day or two here and a day or two there, and eventually we got up to Ypres when the Second Battle of Ypres was on. The day before we got up, Jerry fired what we called a big John Bull and hit Ypres Cathedral and set it on fire. And it were the loveliest sight I ever seen in my life and it was on fire for three days. We were stationed at a place called Ouderdom [and] from there we went up to the firing line. We dropped back to Zillebeke Lake and all the regiment went down with dysentery. I don’t know what gave us it but we was in Ypres cathedral and big places like that – because they’d made hospitals – and the wounded and that were got down from there.

PN:
What was the town of Ypres like at this time, had it really been shelled to pieces?

HS:
Knocked about, properly knocked about.

PN:
It was a nice old town as well, wasn’t it?

HS:
Yes, it were very good, mind you we hadn’t got time to walk around and see. The last reunion I went to at Leicester – it was about six years ago – we got up to the colonel and we asked him if we could have a trip over there to see the old trenches. “Well,” he says, “look here my lad. When that war finished there were perhaps near four hundred of you. Now, you can count them on one hand.” He says, “now what’s the use of me putting a show on for eight or nine men, or let’s say twenty men at the outside? It’s too expensive, can’t do it.”

Well I got wounded at Ypres and I lay in Zillebeke Wood for two nights and two days.

PN:
Can you tell me how you were wounded.

HS:
Yes, in the buttock; shrapnel.

PN:
Were the Leicesters advancing then?

HS:
No, we’d stopped for the night and they opened fire on us and of course we were anywhere as you might say. That’s where the first man from Shepshed, a chap named Miller [was killed]. The first zeppelin to come over there, I think it was the R2 some’t… well this Miller was a bugler in our lot and he went out with us. And we said, what the devil is that in the sky? And it were like a big cigar and to be excited, he was on a machine gun. He stepped on the fire step and put his glasses up to see it and [a bullet] hit him straight here [in the middle of the forehead]. One of the Millers, from Shepshed. There’s some relations in Loughborough now.

PN:
What were the conditions like in Zillebeke?

HS:
We was back at the lake at Zillebeke. The lake was there and on the bank underneath we were stationed under it.

PN:
Was the weather wet or dry at the time?

HS:
Well it were anyhow as you might say.

PN:
Was this still 1915?

HS:
Yes, this was in 1915. Then I come home, I was wounded. We got to what we called Whizzbang Corner and we’d got to stop there in the ambulance, the Red Cross and that, and we had to stop there for about three or four hours because they were firing. It was four crossed roads you see, they’d got the guns trained on them.

PN:
Was that near Hellfire Corner?

HS:
Hellfire Corner, that’s the one. And I went down to Etaples Hospital to the 1st Canadian General Hospital and all the nurses and that had got the soldiers’ buttons down their uniforms.

I come away from there to England and I went to Sheffield, Wharncliffe War Hospital . I had an operation and everything there and then I come home to Loughborough, to my father’s. We went to a camp at Grantham, stopped there about a month and we were in hospital blues there. In fact I picked the missus up there to tell you the truth. She was a cook at Belvoir Castle, her parents lived in Grantham.

We went from there one Sunday night and went straight down to Southampton and across the water to Rouen.

PN:
When is this now?

HS:
1916.

PN:
Any idea which month? Was it before the Somme offensive?

HS:
Oh yes, it were a long while before the Somme offensive. Nobody knowed where the 5th was but they knowed where the Leicesters was supposed to be. We catched them up and went down to Marseilles to go to Egypt. And on the night before we went and loaded the QUIN-CA-QUI, the biggest French liner there was. And put all the guns and everything on top and [then] come back in the camp.

The next morning we were woke up about gunfire time, five o’clock in the morning, to march down to the ship to go to Alexandria. That’s where one of our sergeant instructors says to us, “now then, anybody wants to desert?” So we started laughing at him. So he says, “if you want to desert my lad, dive straight over the front of the ship and keep swimming, you’ll come to England.” We were three thousand mile away from it then.

We came back from Marseilles and went straight on the Somme. Well I got gassed on the Somme, I got clipped on the Somme, here it is from there through here, bit of a mark here [indicates entry scar on arm from shrapnel].

PN:
Whereabouts on the Somme, can you remember?

HS:
Oh Christ [laughs] it were like being on a desert. There were no villages about, all it was [was] chalk.

PN:
What was the actual fighting aspect like?

HS:
Well this is the time when Jerry was forcing us back. You see Jerry were on top of us as you would say; he were driving us back until we had to stop. And our general, General Stuart-Wortley , stopped us and he says, “We must fight back.” And he altered the artillery and everything and the guns, and stopped them.

PN:
Was this 1918 then?

HS:
No, 1917. Then I got clipped on there and I got gassed the same time and I went from there down to Etaples and from Etaples down to Rouen again to form the regiment up. We rejoined the regiment just as the war was finishing. We was on the attack at the time and we stopped at a place called Bouzieres. We was in a big chateau, was that. The Germans had been there [and] we had orders. We’d seen the white flags coming through on the roads because the Armistice was signed, but nobody knowed about it for another… it had been over for a day ‘afore we knowed about it. All we’d seen was the armoured cars and that going with the white flags up.

We started fetching the German army in and do you know what? There were some children in there, thirteen, fourteen and fifteen and that was the German Army.

After that, being time expired, we got called – I think there were about half a dozen of us that had been in it since the start of the war: “Parade at the M.O.’s office tomorrow, you’re going to England.”

We went in the M.O.’s office and he gave us a bit of a [once-over], no stethoscope or owt like that, just said,
“Are you alright?”
“Yes.”
“Have you been wounded?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
I said, “at Ypres in 1915.”
So he says, “and where else?”
I says, “on the Somme and I was gassed on the Somme.”
He says, “Are you claiming a pension?”
So I says, “I don’t know.”
He says - this is the captain – he says, “I want to know. On this paper it asks are you claiming a pension or are you not, because if you’re claiming a pension you’re going to Germany for another six months while the regular army comes out and takes over.”
I says, “You can cross that bugger out. I’m going to England.”

I wasn’t the only one. There were thousands done it and if you get the real old hand that was time expired at that time, if you can get him on tape you’ll hear the same thing.

Same as I was saying. Now I was in good health right up ‘til the missus died and she died just over six year ago. Then it hit me as you will say and I’ve been nothing but in and out of hospital almost ever since. This last three or four years I’m about done.

I’ve told the doctors the same as I’ve told our doctor, I says now doctor what do you think it is? We don’t know, we’re treating you for this, that and the other – they don’t say what they’re treating you for. So I says, well doctor, should I tell you what it is? I told them at General Hospital and at Royal at Leicester, I told them the same thing. I says, I was gassed on the Somme and I think this is the results of it. And he says, my lad you want to forget that, that’s sixty or seventy year ago. So I says, that’s alright doctor but I’ve got it and you’ve not.

PN:
Can you tell me what it would be like in the trenches when you’re not actually in an offensive?

HS:
Well I mean, when you’ve done your stint of, we’ll say a fortnight in the trenches, you come out for a rest. You’re perhaps out for a week or a fortnight, then you go back. You perhaps relieve another regiment or some’at. Well when you get in, I mean we was up to the knees in sludge etc and as you were going up, I mean, you went up on what we called duckboards. You see and they’d been down that long: “hole in the duckboard”, you know, and pass it right down. And when it got to about the twentieth man it were a different tale altogether. You try sending a message along a line with about twenty or thirty men.

It were the same at all different trenches, mind you on the Somme it was all chalk: white, lime, like a lime. That’s about all there is.

PN:
What about rations. Were you fed alright?

HS:
[Laughs]. Sometimes six and seven and eight in a loaf. You get your stuff come up in a sandbag. Meat, perhaps boiled or some’at, in a sandbag and you get a tin of possie – what we called possie: jam; or a Maconochie; bit of cheese, bit of jam etc. The sergeant dished it out and if you got a loaf: “four in a loaf today.” Six in a loaf tomorrow, perhaps eight in a loaf and you perhaps went two days without anything at all.

PN:
Then it changed to biscuits later on didn’t it? Loaves in the early stages and then biscuits.

HS:
Aye, well we used to make a pudding with them.

PN:
Did you? With the jam as well? It was Tom Tickler’s jam wasn’t it?

HS:
Yes. We used to get them on a stone floor – this was when we was out, you never got them in the trenches, the biscuits never come to you in the trenches – and you’d get your rifle and smash one or two biscuits up, put them in your billie tin all night in water, and they made like a dough. And then mix a bit of jam with it and stick it in there and boil it; make a rolly polly duff.

PN:
Did it taste alright?

HS:
Yes, you’d got to do it. Sometimes we’d have a tin of custard, perhaps between three or four of you, make a bit of custard. Oh yes, you’d got to live on what you could scrounge, as you would say. Mind you, when we went out at times we used to go down the estaminets. Deux oeuffs – that’s two eggs – and pommes de terre: eggs and chips; perhaps cost us two francs or three. You only got paid five francs or perhaps ten francs when you come out, you know. You could get a bottle of vin blanc or vin rouge then for about a franc.

PN:
You were saying earlier that you were made a corporal for about three days wasn’t it?

HS:
We went out and I’d seen Dennis, the lieutenant.

PN:
And you were on first name terms with him were you?

HS:
Yes. And I says, have you got any money on you? So he says, aye how much do you want? I said, I want something to take the lads out. He said have you got your AB64? (That’s your pay book). So I says, aye I’ve got it with me. Come here then, he says, and he gave us seventy five francs in hand.

We went down the village and knocked two or three bottles of vin blanc and we’d got to go through a bit of a spinney at night to come back into the billet where we were; well we were in a field in a bivouac. And do you know, we couldn’t get out of that bit of a wood. We stopped in there all night and they sent a patrol out for us. When we got back the next morning, down to the quartermaster sergeants, take them stripes off.

PN:
Weren’t you telling me the other day that you ran a crown and anchor board as well?

HS:
Well we had one between us selves.

PN:
Can you tell me how Crown and Anchor worked?

HS:
Well it’s only a sheet, such as that [indicates a newspaper]. You’ve a crown and an anchor, ace of spades, ace of diamonds, ace of hearts and ace of clubs and you’d got three dice. And you used to get them in a cup and shake them and turn them up. And we used to put on the board, the first three up – if there were three aces or three crowns of anything you’d pick the helmet up. But instead of taking the helmet we’d give them five francs, leave it. Here’s five francs, leave it. You see, to get it for the next day.

PN:
The chap I saw this morning said that everybody in the battalion used to look out for the crown and anchor man because if he was shot he’d have all the money on him and they’d go and take the money off him.

HS:
That’s quite right. The Canadians come out to us in 1917 and we was coming out the trenches as they was going in and they shouts, “where’s that bit of a bloody field where there’s a bit of fighting?” I says you’ll find it when you go up there. And by the next morning there were a few of them dead.

Well we were stationed at some field, I don’t know just exactly where. I mean, you’re taking me a long way back. But we were in one field and the Canadians was perhaps two hundred yards away from us and they got to know as we was running a crown and anchor board and they’d got rolls of money they had. So they says, can we come over. And we made a bit of a canteen on a table, you know, working the crown and anchor board, cause some of them in 11th Company could own two of the guys, you know, and fiddle the one. We were up to all them tricks.

And they come over one night. “Can we have a game of crown and anchor?” Aye, come on. We thought we was going to get some money out of them. Well we won, I should think, two or three hundred francs and then they started with all this lot, you know, handful of notes: “how much is there there?” I don’t know ‘til we count it. And they skinned us out one night. We went round the lads and collected I think about twenty francs or something like that. And the next day they come over again and we done them for about our or five hundred francs.

PN:
Well it’s a way to pas the time I suppose. I shouldn’t think there was much else to do.

HS:
Well I mean, they talk about this bingo now: lotto. We’d go nothing else to do; either that or play cards.

PN:
Or write letters home.

HS:
Well, you had the field post card then and it were al typed out: I am well / unwell. But we use to have a code with that cause I wrote home and told them. If I was in Arras I’d sign my name A Shephard, R Shephard E Shephard, S Shephard and when my dad got them he’d put them all together and say, he’s in Arras. We know where he is. One of them is from Arras [indicates a shell case in his house].

We transferred – George Taylor did the same thing – when we was out on a month’s rest or some’at at some village. They said step out all them as is tradesmen; you know, got us all in a square. And we stepped out and went down to a place called Audriques to pass a test. And the same test was done a thousand times. There was a door on there and the mortice and tenon was AA, BB, CC – you know, put the door together and then as soon as you’d done, oh you’ve passed alright. Well we transferred to the engineers to build a railway from Arras up to the front line to bring the wounded down.

[tape recorder turned off]

Well we was out one day, more souvenir hunting than anything at Arras, and in the middle of the field was a latrine – you know, a post and canvas round – there was, I think, three of us walking about, you know. There were a lot of dead soldiers and that and we were seeing if we could pick anything up. And I says to one or two of the lads, let’s go in here and see what’s in here. There were nobody about. When we went in we seen a post and a chair. So we went round and I picked a button up and I says to the lads, I wonder what the hell this place were. All at once the sergeant comes in and he says, what’s your lot doing in here? So I says, I don’t know, just walking about seeing if we can pick owt up. He says I’m going to tell you something. He says, you’re the only man as has been in here as will walk out. So I said, what do you mean? This is where we shoot the spies. And after that we never went there no more. But they shifted that and they shot them under Arras cathedral cellar, that’s where they shot the spies there.

Now before we went to Egypt we had reinforcements come up to us at Marseilles. Now we’d been using the Mills bomb for twelve months near enough in the trenches. All the instructions we’d got [were] pull the pin out, count three and throw it.

Now in the reinforcements that come out we’d got an instructor as had been instructing on this bomb in England and had never thrown one, not the live thing, he’d thrown the dummy. And he come out to us in Marseilles and we got in a bit of a ring such as A Company or B Company or C Company, whatever it were.

PN:
What company were you in?

HS:
I went out in H Company – Headquarters Company – and I finished up in B Company, the Melton Mowbray Company. But he got us in a bit of a ring. Now, he says, I’ve come out from England to give you instructions on this bomb. So we all said, well what instructions are there? So he said, I’m coming to that in a minute, let me describe what I’ve come out here for, I’m stationed with the regiment now. So he says, this is a Number 5 Mills’ Bomb – I think it were number 5. He says, you unscrew the bottom like this and take it off and at the top of that there’s a little detonator and it’s only like a bit of electric wire and it’s about an inch long like that and curled up and then goes into the bomb. Now he took it out – we didn’t know nowt about this – he took it out and he says, now look, I’m going to tell you what not to do. So I says, pulling us bloody leg, you know and all this that and the other. He gets this detonator out - and it weren’t only about that high - and he gets a little pocket knife and he says, now this is what I don’t want you soldiers to do. And he just touched the top of it and off went three fingers. It busted his hand. So I says, you’re a nice bloody man to come out here and instruct us on these. I said we’ve been using these for twelve months. All the instructions we’d got: pull the pin out, count three and throw it.

PN:
Why was he telling you not to do that then? Because surely if he knew what not to do he shouldn’t have done it and he wouldn’t have lost his fingers.

HS:
He’d come out as an instructor to us. He’d been instructing people in England and he’d come out and told us what not to do, not what to do.

PN:
He was forgetting it was a live one.

HS:
Aye, he’d been using the dummies here. Soon as he got out here he was playing with the live stuff. We all said, fancy a bloody man coming out like that and telling us this when we’d been using them for twelve months.

Z/1658 OS Alan McCartney Castle, Hawke Bn, RND

2009-11-13T02:30:00.003Z

Synopsis

I was introduced to Alan Castle in Chelmsford on 16th September 1981. I see by the date that I had just turned 19 and Alan Castle was 89. He lived in a bungalow in a quiet road close to the town centre. Just behind his home, in a sheltered housing complex, lived four other Great War veterans who I would also meet and interview: Harry Leeks (Essex Regt), Reginald Crane and Bill Minchin (4th Royal Berks) and Clifford Rust (Royal Engineers).

I only ever addressed the men as Mr Castle, Mr Crane etc, and it feels a little odd now, using their first names. I didn't have my tape recorder with me when I met Alan Castle and so our meeting is recorded in notes that I took at the time. I have augmented these with details from his service record which survives at the National Archives.We got as far as Gallipoli before Mrs Castle felt that her husband had done enough talking, and I took my leave with a promise to return and hear the rest of his story. That second meeting though, never happened. On a subsequent visit a few days later, Mrs Castle explained that her husband had felt distressed recalling the events of 1914-1918 and that he would prefer not to continue with his reminiscences. I never met him again, although I was pleased to see, several years later, that he had celebrated his 100th birthday at home. He died in June 1994 aged 102.

Interview

Alan McCartney Castle was born in Leyton, east London on 18th March 1892 and when Britain went to war with Germany he was working as a tailor for the Paris branch of Thomas and Sons. He decided to join the British Volunteer Corps (at least, that's what I have written down), but as the situation worsened, he returned to England. That was in September 1914 and he resumed employment at Thomas and Sons' Brook Street branch in London. He joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve on 3rd May 1915.

Alan Castle told me that it was the sinking of the Lusitania that prompted him to join up, but in fact the Lusitania was sunk four days after he enlisted. His service record notes that at the time of his enlistment he was living at 47 Effingham Road in Lee, south London. He was five feet five inches tall, had a fresh complexion, black hair and hazel eyes. Two scars were noted: one on his right elbow and one on his right ankle.

Alan Castle was posted to Hawke Battalion on 8th September 1915 and soon qualified as a trained bomb-thrower. He sailed for Gallipoli shortly afterwards aboard the Royal George, a converted Canadian Pacific liner. He would remain there until January 1916.

Of his time on Gallipoli, Alan Castle recalled:

"The trenches were not very deep and went down about five or six feet until they reached the sandstone. We were under fire the whole time and were as lousy as cuckoos. One day however, we were very much relieved to find that they came round with gas crystals from the South Metropolitan Gas Company to rub in our clothes and get rid of the lice. They didn't half burn and they didn't kill the lice either. Gradually we discarded our helmets and wore cap comforters instead. By the time we left Gallipoli we were in rags.

"During our time there we were relieved by another of our battalions and went out of the line for about ten days. We took the opportunity to go down to W Beach for a spot of bathing and took our clothes off with the idea that we'd wash them at the same time. We went out for a swim in what had been the landing area and no sooner were we out there than the Turkish guns opened fire on us. Well it was the quickest swim I ever made - and the last one. Fortunately there were no casualties.

"We were told in late December 1915 that we were going to be relieved. I remember having dates and a little piece of Queen Mary's Christmas pudding. I went down the line with the others and was told to pack up. Two or three days before we were actually evacuated though, a shell fell in the next traverse and killed the fellows there. The blast affected my hearing and one of may mates took me on his back down to the casualty clearing station."

History books tell us that Hawke Battalion was evacuated from Gallipoli on or around 8th January 1916. From there, the men were sent to Lemnos where they remained for three weeks before being sent to the island of Imbros on 26th January for garrison duty. Here they remained until May when, with Anson Battalion, they sailed for Marseilles and then headed north.

On 7th November 1916, Hawke Battalion took over trenches near Mesnil. Joseph Murray, who also served with the Royal Naval Division and later wrote about his experiences in A Call to Arms, describes the conditions:

"In several places there was no sign of a trench, only shell-holes filled with mud and slime which caused us to scramble about in the open... it was no easy matter getting out of the quagmire only to slide into an adjacent morass."

At 5.45am on Monday 13th November 1916, the Royal Naval Division, supported by a creeping barrage, advanced towards the German lines. Alan Murray again:

"Unfortunately the Hawke Battalion on our left had been held up by the devastating machine-gun fire from a redoubt which seemed to have been completely missed by our barrage and in turn, their supporting battalion Nelson went blindly on to the same fate. Both battalions suffered exceptionally heavy fates."

Alan Castle had told me that he was wounded at Beaumont Hamel and had then lain in no-man's land for two days before being rescued. His service record confirms this:

13.11.16 Wounded.
15.11.16 To 9th Casualty Clearing Station, France
16.11.16 Admitted to 5th General Hosp Rouen. "W" Frac. Knee. R.
21.11.16 Dangerously ill. GW Knee and Hand. NOK informed.

And then:

4.12.16 Dangerously ill.
9.12.16 Dangerously ill. Not doing well. NOK informed.
Week ending 10.12.16. Dangerously wounded in 5th Gen Hosp Rouen
Week ending 17.12.16. Dang ill. Not doing well. 5th GH Rouen.
Week ending 24.12.16. Dang ill. Not doing well. 5th GH Rouen.
Week ending 31.12.16. Dang ill. Not doing well. 5th GH Rouen.
7.01.1917. Dangerously ill in 5 GH Rouen

Then some hope:

11.1.17. Off dangerous list. NOK informed.

It is not explicitly stated in his service record, but it looks as though Alan Castle's right leg was amputated at the thigh whilst he was in the 5th General Hospital at Rouen. He returned to England aboard the Hospital Ship St Andrew and was admitted to the Lord Derby War Hospital in Warrington on the 13th January. He was granted furlough in July 1917 pending admission to Roehampton which finally took place in November 1917. His service record reads:

"Shrapnel wound right thigh and knee. Amputation of thigh in upper third. Wound of palm of left hand."

He was discharged from the army on 7th December 1917 and went back to his old employers, Thomas and Son, in Brook Street. It was to be a short-lived return. As Mr Castle told me, still getting used to his artificial leg, he had difficulty escorting customers to the door as quickly as he used to and this was not the kind of service that Thomas and Sons deemed to be acceptable. He was dismissed from their service. It sounds incredible now, but that was what he told me and I have no reason to doubt him.

Acknowledgements:

Newspaper clipping courtesy of The Chelmsford & Essex Chronicle.
A Call to Arms by Joseph Murray published 1980, William Kimber.

820437 Gunner Alfred Willis, Royal Field Artillery

2009-11-01T10:05:00.003Z

Synopsis

I met Alfred Willis at his home in Station Street when I was studying at Loughborough in the early nineteen eighties. He was a fascinating man to talk to and he'd also made a model of Loughborough's Carillon which is pictured above.

Alfred, a boot and shoe operator in civilian life, originally joined the 4th Leicestershire Regiment (Territorials) in 1913 but transferred to a Territorial Force artillery unit in 1914. His original number was 385 and when the TF was re-numbered in 1917 he was given the number 820437. This latter number belongs to the series used by the 46th (North Midland) and 59th (2nd North Midland) Divisional Artillery Columns.

Alfred died in 1993 aged 97.

Interview

AW:
Well when I first joined up was June the 20th 1913 and well the next month, August, we went to the annual camp which was at Aberystwyth. Well that camp was over and the next year the war broke out and I happened to be at the second camp then and we was at Bridlington.

I went with the advance party which was about a week before to get all the camp ready for them for the battalions coming in. Well they were supposed to have come in on the Saturday and they brought the news out to us they wasn’t coming because the war had broke out. That was in August.

Well then they didn’t come up so we had to come home. They sent us all home, left the camp there or them being called up and they took us back and put us in some chapel in Leicester. Well we’d got all three lots of uniform and eventually when they started sorting out they took all ‘us khaki off of us, just left us with this best uniform. Well then they started sorting all this and that out and then we got moved to a place called Braintree, Essex; quite close to the film studios. And from there they were asking for volunteers for the motor transport. Well I had always been for motors so I put in for it.

Well that was it, we heard nothing for months after till eventually on the notice board we see all these names, we knew who they was, and they moved us – the volunteers – from Braintree to Luton (where they made the hats), put us in private billets. And from there we had the orders we’d got to go down to the station, as we thought was the motors. But it wasn’t motors [laughs] it was horses: horses that they’d all commandeered from farmers and all that, never knew what riding on the back was. They sorted them all out into different teams and all that; well when we’d had a bit of training with the horses, riding and that, they sent us home on 14 days embarkation leave.

PN:
What year would this be, roughly?

AW:
That would be latter end of ’14 that would be.

PN:
How was your training in England?

AW:
Well you see we were all on the move all the while you see, being altered and fitted up for abroad and all that. We had the training with the horses and the guns.

Well then eventually when we had this embarkation leave, when we got back you see, we was all equipped with the stuff as we’d got to take. We’d got all the wagons and that, all packed up and then we went abroad, France. I think it was Rouen or Le Havre as we landed at. [Arrived in France on 1st March 1915]

Well we go all the horses and that out of the boats and so they fitted us all up in different convoys and we done about thirty mile a day travelling ‘cause we were a long way from the firing line then.

PN:
Were you still in the Leicesters at this stage?

AW:
No, in the artillery then. Because when I was Braintree that’s where they changed us into the artillery.

PN:
Why did they do that?

AW:
Well ‘cause we volunteered for it you see, because we didn’t want the infantry.

And so when we got to France we travelled and put up anywhere, side of the roads, until we got up to the place – and the place was, we found out, was the Somme. You know, what the Somme battle was.

We’d got no place to put the horses or ‘us tackle or anything, all the wagons and guns were put on the roadside, the wheels used to sink in the sludge, and they couldn’t get a field to put ‘us horses in and we had to muck in the Royal Engineers [who] had big, heavy draft horses. They were in this field and they were having such a rough time they was, up towards Ypres and that and they said we’d got to go up to such and such a gun, [giving] all the numbers and positions. Well we didn’t know the road, we had to have a guide to show us the way because it was all shell holes full of water, all stained with red blood where chaps had lost their lives.

We made towards Ypres which I could tell you to the inch now, the cloth hall and that and Hellfire Corner. That, I’ve helped to bury teams of horses there. This main road, what there was left of it, you could se into Ypres. Now all up there, the top of the road was all open and you could see the German balloons up. And we knew, while they was up there we should be alright. But if you ever seen them balloons go down and you didn’t get out the road, you’d had it. They used to shell that Hellfire Corner – that’s what they used to call it – and kill no ends. Well we didn’t mind when we got in, what was left of the town.

Well we got into Ypres pretty well under cover – all night moves it is – so when we’d supplied that and got all the stuff up for the guns, all the shells and that, we made ‘us way back with this guide [and] we had the biggest shock of ‘us lives when we got back. We’d gone so many weeks and months without any sleep you used to fall fast asleep on the horse’s back and the only times it could wake you up [was] if you’d got a slow team of horses. You see, to catch up they used to jog and it used to wake you.

Well when we got back to the lines there were a lot of people going off, we didn’t know what was up. And when we got into the field, this field where all these Engineers’ horses were, there were about twelve or more – eight – dead, killed. While we was away going up to Ypres they’d been over and dropped a bloomin’ bomb right in the centre of the line and killed ‘em.

The French – we used to call them Froggies then – there was three I think, civilians which had got private zoos and they’d got permission, and they was taking the harness off and cutting all the carcasses up.

Well after that we had to move out of it then, after a little while. And they moved us to a different place – Arras way this was where there was a lot of coal mines. Well that was where the trenches was. Well we went into the trenches, well then you couldn’t get no clothes, no boots or anything, you just had to wear ‘em ‘til they dropped off your feet and when we was going down this here trench, perhaps up to that in water and sludge, and on the trench side which were about six foot deep I see a pesky pair of soldier’s new boots. I thought, well the devil I’m going to have them ‘cause I hadn’t got a pair. And I pulled one on and a poor soldier’s bloomin’ foot was in it. He’d been killed and buried.

PN:
So he was actually part of the trench wall?

AW:
Yes, just his feet… You see he’d been killed and they couldn’t get him in and that was at Arras.

Well we wasn’t there too long and they was going to move us into a tunnel. A tunnel? I said what does the war want a tunnel for? Well we soon found out when we got there. We moved up, all the guns had gone and they had temporarily put me in with called what we Toc Emmas, that’s the trench mortars. The big boys was 104 pound and we used to call them the flying pigs. You could see them go through the air.

Well then they got us into this tunnel – all the movements had to be done at night time – and this tunnel was thirty foot underneath the ground. They run a light railway [which] the Australian tunnellers built and it went right up to the German lines and with their instruments you could hear the Germans talking.

Now our gun positioning was there. We was in the tunnel and all the ground had been dug like a funnel and our trench mortars were down there. Well they was alright, they used to do terrific damage. Well then, they used to have a sixty pounder and we used to nickname ‘em toffee apples ‘cause they was like a football with a steel tail. They was all packed away separate and in the nose was your fuse and all that.

Well they’d done away with them because it took such a lot [of] preparing to fire them; just like the trigger mechanism of a rifle with a big long lanyard. Well they brought a new gun out, a sixty pounder, but it was like an aerial bomb it was, and all it was, was just a bed with a barrel on it. There was no firing.

Now the different numbers on the jobs used to prepare all them: set all the fuses. Well number three - I shall always remember it - was the man detailed for dropping it in. He used to put it in the barrel, let go and as soon as you’d let go you used to have a parapet to get round for safety. And as soon as it struck the bottom, on which there was a spike, set the detonator off and out it come.

Well the orders was if there was any faulty fuse or anything like that… well we had limited times to keep away which was five minutes. So this chap, the number three, he’d only just come home from his first leave and he’d got married. He’d come back and he was with our team and he put it in it. So when the five minutes come, we had the order to go and investigate. Well what we had to do was to take the barrel off and slide it out. Well just as they were taking these barrel stays off, the damn thing exploded. He were blown to smithereens. Well I had part of the job to go and fetch the remains out.

And you see, as soon as anything like that happens it’s reported to whoever’s in charge of like the battalion and you see they’re supposed to take it back and let the next of kin know. Well the sergeant that was in charge of our teams, he gave the news to what they called the orderly officer then, that was come up from the back billets. It was his fault and he should have passed it on but he never did. All these parcels kept coming for him from his wife, mostly food and stuff, and we couldn’t make it out, and this were months after he’d been killed.

So we enquired, mentioned it to the sergeant and he said, well I reported it to so and so. And when it come to it, he hadn’t passed it on. His wife didn’t know that he’d been killed or anything. So we got the sergeant to get in touch with his wife to explain what had happened and all that and he asked what was to be done with all the parcels that’s been sent. So she said, well I should like all the stuff that could go perishable such as cakes and sweets to be shared out amongst some of his pals, but other stuffs such as shaving soap and such she would like it back. So we did, and that was the last of that, but as I say, it put the wind up me.

This Hulluch Tunnel where we had ‘us guns, every night there used to be a team of the infantry – same division – and [they] used to make a raid over the top, through the end of the tunnel. And we used to wait for them coming back to see what prisoners they’d got. And we had a little Irish chap, Pat Wills, I shall always remember him. He were only young but he were a jovial sort and one raid they’d made over, they brought three Germans back and they’d got something with ‘em which this little Irish chap, Pat Wills, wanted. He said [this] to the Germans, which they didn’t understand, so he does no more but collars his bloomin’ rifle. And this ‘ere German, in there language, was playing on with him…

Eventually, from Arras we moved a bit further on the La Bassee canal area and the Canadians had had front but they’d had such a smashing up there were hardly any on them left. So what there was left, they fetched ‘em out. Well we had to move up to a place called Bethune and civilians had been there only a few hours before and ‘course, all the fowls were running about and in the old houses part of the meals were on the table where they’d been eating.

There was a square at Bethune jus like the one in front of the town hall at Leicester and in there, all trees and that, they’d got an anti-aircraft battery. Very well camouflaged it was ‘til one night the Jerries come over. They put the searchlights on [and] spotted the area and started firing. That was alright, [but] I don’t know whether anything was brought down. But these Germans, they’d seen all the flashes from the gun. They turned round and done no more. They bombarded the whole square, smashed the old town hall up to smithereens.

Well they moved us up. Cause there was all pubs there you know, full of beer and that…

PN:
What year was this?

AW:
Oh, latter end that would be. About ’17 time. So we had the night. We’d got to go the next morning to relieve these Canadians. Well we all stopped in some big building’s cellar. We didn’t take much notice with all these bangs and that because we’d heard so much of it but we knew they’d been over. But, they’d been over, done a lot of damage, and it wasn’t found out until the next day [that] they’d dropped some gas bombs – mustard gas.

So the next morning, they detailed all of us who’d got to go up to such and such guns to relieve these Canadians and we got on the banks of the La Bassee canal and we had to trace that right up ‘til we got to the guns. When we were walking at the side of this canal I said to the sergeant who was in charge of the guns, “I don’t know sergeant, I feel about done. I don’t know what’s amiss with me, I can hardly walk.” So he says, well try and manage until we get up there and then you’ll have to report sick. I had the biggest job to get up there [because] the latter mile or two were dark for moving about.

The next morning I were about done. There were no such thing as sleep so I told the sergeant. Well they somehow got in touch with the advanced Field Ambulance doings and they sent some stretcher men for me and they got me down there, I shall always remember it. They just looked at me and tested so and so. “I don’t know,” I says, “my arms is like red hot fire just burning away.” They said, “aye, just keep quiet” and tied like a luggage label [on me and] off we went, shoved me in an ambulance.

I shall always remember it, they were all lady ambulance drivers with the old long skirts to the floor and every few miles they used to stop: “Are you alright, are we going too fast?” We didn’t know where we was, it seemed as if we were travelling for weeks and weeks until we got to one dressing place out of the zone and I said to this ambulance man – there were mostly big marquees there – I said to him, “I don’t know what’s the matter with my arm, it’s burning away.”

Well they took all my clothes off they did and I just looked down and I just happened to see, just about the size of a dried pea, two of them together, a bright yellow. And every day that was growing and growing and growing to about the size of an orange. And that was the mustard gas. I was burnt with it and it was eating and eating all my flesh away.

This mustard gas it was designed to so it goes to the lowest point and being in the cellar… they told me what it was and they dressed it at about every time.

PN:
Was it affecting your breathing at all, were you coughing away?

AW:
Oh aye, you’re in proper poor state when you’ve got it in your system. The burning takes place anywhere where you sweat. If you don’t sweat you don’t get it, and that had got us in the night. So they took us away and I said to one of the medical men, “Where are we?”
“Well,” he says, “I don’t really know but I know where you’re going. You’re going to Blighty.”

We kept travelling and travelling and I heard a ship’s hooter… and when we were on our boat which was all painted white we see rows and rows of soldiers through the porthole. I said, “look out of the porthole, it looks as though we’re in damned Germany.” And they were all German prisoners of war and they’d got them at the docks to unload all the ambulance doings. And in the docks there, they’d got all the ambulance trains and everything.

Well they loaded us on there and we travelled and travelled and eventually we got to London. I think it was the King Edward’s Hospital in London and from there they got me about right and I shall always remember it. There were about thirty of us and this little Irish chap who’d lost both his legs, and in this hospital ward they were trying to learn him how to walk with two artificial legs. I thought to myself, poor devil. He went a few yards – they was at the side of him – and down he’d go till eventually they did get him walking while I was there.

When they got me about right they said to me, “you’re doing very nice now Mr Willis, would you like to go home?” I said, “what do you think?”

PN:
How long were you in the hospital for?

AW:
Might have been a month or six weeks, I can’t just quite remember.

PN:
What was it like there, did they treat you well?

AW:
Oh yes, used to get no ends of people from outside to come and look after you and bring you different stuff. Oh aye, the public [were very good]. I got in a hospital at Devonport and you’ve heard of Edith Weston’s Homes well she were alive then [and] she come and visited me she did.

I think it was fourteen days’ sick leave they gave me so I though to myself they might discharge me but anyhow I wasn’t bad enough to be discharged. From London I went to High Wycombe and Ripon and from there you’d got a chance. I thought to myself, well it’s a devil if I’ve got to go back to France again with all this water, up to your knees in sludge, no clean shirts… it were over six months before you could ever get your uniform off. And shirts, you never had no clean ‘un. You used to be alive with vermin, couldn’t be avoided.

And when used to get ‘em they used to take us, now and then, in a big lorry – it belonged to the observation balloon section – down to a back billet where there were one of these great big fumigating machines, and the shirts and things used to come out there – not new ones, what had been took in. And you’d say, aye here’s one for you, leave all your old ‘uns. You used to be nearly walking away with vermin, couldn’t be avoided.

And to get a shave, when I were in that tunnel, all your drinking water and that for making a drop of tea used to come up in the old two gallon petrol cans you know. And so you’d got no water for that. So I thought, I don’t know, I want a shave as bad as this week’s growth and I didn’t know what to do [because] they wouldn’t let you have the water. So what I did, I got a candle from the back billets and I used to cut it in about three different sizes and you used to get three longish nails and knock them in a board and they used to give you your cigarette issue in a 50 cigarette tin. You used to put a drop of tea in there and light these candles to try to get something to try to have a shave and that. Then, you know, you had the old cut-throats that were like carving knives [laughs].

Then when I got back to High Wycombe and Ripon after the hospital treatment, that were when I began to think, well it’s a devil if I’ve got to go back to France again. So we had a choice. They was getting a draft up for India or France. So I thought to myself, well, I don’t want France again and India can’t be as bad as France – there’s no war in India – so I’d got a brother out there, well he’d died and he’s buried there. So I thought to myself, well I’m going to have a packet of India ‘cause I knew there was no war there. So when it come it come to going here they fitted us all out with the tropical stuff, you know the topis and the drill, and we set off. There was two liners. One was the MALWA[1] and one was the KAISAR I HIND, well I was on the KAISAR I HIND[2]. The MALWA was the other, both belonged to the P&O.

Then, when you’re on the water you never keep together you know, and we had seven Japanese destroyers as escort, all round, not close to you but you could always see them. And we got half way across in the water [and] it seemed very nice and peaceful - and we used to sleep in hammocks then you know. Well during one night we heard a “Boom!” We didn’t take much notice, we thought it was the engines down below because it was all steam then you know. So we got up the next morning, do what we had to do, clean all the decks and that and one of the crew belonging to the liner said, “Are you alright?”
I said, “What do you mean, are we alright?”
“Well didn’t you hear the bump in the night?”
“I heard a bump.” I says, “Well why, what’s the bump?”
The damn Jerries were after us. They’d hit the other liner – the MALWA – with a submarine.
I said, “it’s out there ain’t it?”
He says, “You look, you’ll find it’s not there.”
Well we looked, couldn’t see it and we noticed half the destroyers had gone. I thought to myself, well it’s a devil. You get out here and they won’t let you be.

So we carried on with us’selves – the other destroyers came back to us - they sunk it eventually they did[3] – and we carried on and we got there, we landed at Bombay. We went from one place to another up to Central Provinces, Jubbalpore it was.

When I got there, to see the soldiers that had been there all during the war, they thought all of these boat loads… they thought they were all recruits, never seen nothing. And all these Doolalli boats they were all soldiers that had been knocked about in France. There were no recruits. And they thought, these here that had been there all the while enjoying themselves, when there were a bit of trouble up in the Punjab they wanted to shoo themselves up there… it was then that the found out who we was and where we’d come from[4].

I thought to myself, well I wonder if I shall ever see my brother. When I’d been there a bit, well it were a proper toff’s life. The chaps that had been there had got all the best uniform, all these hard hats with red and navy blue, the best life that anybody could ever have. I thought to myself, well it’s the devil. They’ve had that life and we’ve had to rough it the other side.

I’d got my brother’s address so I wrote this letter and I had a reply and I had a month’s leave with him. I were the only one of the whole family that had ever seen him since he left home. He first joined up as the old Volunteers at Leicester and then he took on as regular and they sent him out there to Poona and Calcutta. He married out there and when he’d done his army time they asked him if he’d like to stop in the country to train some of their people, the natives, as the civilian police. Well he did, so he were under the Indian Government then till when he’d done that he took managers of big boot and shoe factories that was English-owned out there. And I had a month’s leave with him.

From that, when the war was finished, they used to send you home according to when you ‘listed up. Well I was one of the earliest like, should have been one of the first lot but I wasn’t. It took them from the beginning of 2nd January ‘til I got home and that’s when I was discharged: 2nd January 1920.

PN:
Didn’t you tell me the other day that you were wounded in France as well?

AW:
Not wounded, no; just gas and burning. That’s what fetched me. I didn’t think I should get home but I did do.

When they got me home, the boat, the liner that brought us back, that PRINCE HUBERTUS, it come in at Devonport or one of them. We said, “Where are we now? We’re not in London.”
“Oh, you’re going to hospital now.”
Well I was a bit on the groggy side and the reason why they put me in hospital then was they said I’d got slight touches of malaria and it was there that I come in contact with this Edith Weston and she was good. She come to me she did and she says, ”now do you think you’d be alright to do a little bit of needlework?”
So I says – in my kitbag which was put away and stored – “I’ve got a kitbag full of needlework” and I told her what I’d done. ‘Cause when I were out in India I’d such a good life there that I got onto the Garrison Military Police and we had such a lot of spare time during the day, we didn’t know what to do. Well we used to do that to cure the time away: used to make all the bedspreads out of old army socks and cardigans, pull them to bits you know. When I told this Edith Weston she said, you want something a little bit better than that and she brought me a pillowcase cover and all flower designs. I paid for it to be backed and everything but it never did get backed. I don’t know what happened to it eventually.

Another thing I didn’t like, while I were there there were a biggish ward [with] all kinds of cases and there was a chap who’d only been brought in two days before I went there and he were in a poor state. I think it was a tropical disease; I don’t know if it were malaria or what, but anyhow I could see some of the nurses standing there with a cylinder and a rubber tube and a funnel. I thought to myself, poor devil, he’s not here for long. He lay like that for two or three days and one of the nurses come to me and said, “Mr Willis would you like a little job?”

I said, “Don’t put me to work yet.” And it was to hold this cylinder, just to keep him alive until his next of kin come. [His wife came] and he didn’t last many minutes after that and that was that.

And then there was another chap in the same ward. He were there when I went there [and] I don’t know what was the matter; I couldn’t make out. Every morning as he woke up he used to stand up in his bed [and shout] “I’m still here, I’m still alive, I’ve not gone yet.” He seemed to be perfect and I began to think this bloke’s a bit wrong in the head. I never did find out till there was one morning eventually when we’ve seen the screens round and the poor devil he’d just gone he had.

So when I got in touch with the wife – I lived at Countesthorpe then, the other side of Leicester – the authorities let her know I was coming home and that and we lived in a little cottage. It was only temporary because we’d only just got married. One and ninepence a week it was, two up and two down. From there I couldn’t get a job because there were no reserving jobs and so I rode on my bike hundreds and hundreds of miles to get a job but I couldn’t get one. Every time I see the Mercury I used to write and there was one at Nanpantan and I had a reply from it. [A good deal of interview about job searching omitted here]

I got the job to live-in at Mother Farm, Nanpantan and I were there twenty one years and I’ve been this side ever since.

PN
Going back to when you were in France in the war. Where were the conditions worse do you think?

AW:
Well the worst was Arras and going up to the Some with these bomb holes full of water. We had to have a guide to take us all in and out, otherwise we should be down there.

PN:
You were taking the horses and guns up with you this time?

AW:
Yes, yes. Well the guns had gone in advance. We was taking loads of shells up. You see they’d only just, a couple of days before, gone and settled in. They’d sighted it in the centre of Ypres in an old building. That was one of the worst places for mess; or sludge and all that. Well then the other worse part was that Arras area – all water and sludge. There was trench boards there but there was nowhere for the water to get away and it was just the worse time of the year when it was.

PN:
Was that springtime or winter?

AW:
Getting on for wintertime that was.

PN:
So it was all very wet anyway.

AW:
Oh aye, yes. All like clay sludge it was. We had strict orders not to go wandering about because there were so many openings down into the pits. And that was the same area we come across an old station. We was on the move and we went by this station and there were three locomotives right in this station, been battered and bombed they was, smashed up just like a riddle. All the boilers full of holes and everything. I thought to myself, if that’s France I don’t want to see it again and that’s what made me put my name down for this India.

PN:
Were you at Arras when our troops went forward, when they were attacking?

AW:
We were pretty well on the move then ‘cause for some time you know, that’s when everybody was having such a bad time there. You’d perhaps pull in one place one day and if there was any advancing or retreating you were on the move again. You never knew really where you was.

PN:
Did you ever go in any of the German trenches?

AW:
No. Well I’d been in trenches where they’d been, where we’d shoved them back. This Hulluch Tunnel, they’d been in there part of it but they wasn’t there long ‘cause these Australian tunnellers they was down in this tunnel at the time ‘cause they used to have a light railway there. And these Australians that built ‘em, they used to have what they called the listening posts and they took us down into this place but before we went in they said to us, “keep quiet, don’t get talking, nothing whatever.” And then he says, “I’ll let you hear the Germans talking.” Cause you see they were on the same stunt as what we was; they’d got all the listening posts you see, and we put these things on and we could hear them jabbering and jabbering away. So that’s why they told us, don’t talk ‘cause if you talk they’ll pick it up the same as them.

It was in like a dug-out but it was separate where the ordinary people couldn’t go and all their movements had to be kept as quiet as anything. Well it wasn’t many yards away ‘cause them raiding parties used to go over every night and bring some of the Jerries back.

But the worst time as I ever witnessed – and I said never again – was that one as I was telling you when the chap come home and got married and then he got blowed to bits with that bomb exploding while he was there. That were my worst and that’s what turned me. At one time it didn’t matter what I’d seen, I’d help anybody. But after that I thought to myself, blood never again. Anything like that I could never tackle, not after that, ‘cause you see it was in such a mess. And then to make it worse they never even let his wife know.

PN:
And he’d only just been married as well?

AW:
He had yes. I got married, I did, on my first leave home.

PN:
When was your first leave?

AW:
My first leave was in 1916. This is my second wife this is. My first wife… 1916. Two years I had to wait to get my first leave and we decided we’d get married. We were married at St Barnabas Church, Leicester.

PN:
Were you pleased to come back on leave?

AW:
Well it was nice to get out the line.

PN:
What did you think of people’s attitude to the war here in England? Was it what the soldiers had expected?

AW:
You see the main trouble in this country were the rationing. I’ll give you one instance and it was when I come home on my first leave. I lived six mile the other side of Leicester at Countesthorpe. Well you see all the soldiers was rationed and all when they come home on leave. You used to have a ration card; only so many ounces of this and that. And they’d registered me – and that shop’s still there today it is, but I expect it’s the children that run it – I shall always remember it, the name was Shaw and it was in Charles Street and the shop’s still there now. They’d registered me for my bit of meat – six ounces of meat it was – to this place. So then it meant I’d come on with the rail, come down to Leicester and go down there for six ounces of meat. Well when I got there, there was miles of queues all queuing up for the bit of meat. I come down at nine o’clock in the morning with about the first train after breakfast and got into the queue. Do you know what time I got home? Half past six at night with six ounces of meat. I says to the wife, that’s done it Ede, I’m not going to bother about any other meat; they can do what they like with my coupon. So I never bothered to fetch any more meat, I didn’t, and the sweet coupons as they used to give you, I let the wife have that.

She were doing a man’s job all during the war. She were driving at Leicester, an old baker’s four wheel bread van.

PN:
When you went out to France you were in the horse artillery weren’t you?

AW:
Yes, when I went out.

PN:
And then you transferred to Field? When and why did you transfer to the Field Artillery?

AW:
Why did I? Well, because it was supposed to have been motor transport and I’ve always, all my life, been a motorist. So I put in for it but when it come to fitting them out with, as we thought these motors, they were horses. It were the artillery.

PN:
But you were already in the Horse Artillery in Braintree weren’t you?

AOW:
Braintree, that’s where they transferred us. Before that I were in the 1/4th Leicesters; infantry.

PN:
That’s right. And then you were transferred into the Field Artillery in France?

AOW:
No, transferred to that just as we left Braintree. Then we went to Luton and that’s where they fitted us out.

PN:
So by the time you went to France you’d been in three regiments: the Leicesters, the horse and then the field artillery?

AOW:
Yes, well the horse and the field it’s all classed as one. It tells you on the whatsit.
The horse artillery used to be similar to a lancers or a yeomanry; nearly all horse unit. Then later on they transferred the horse into what they called the heavy guns, the howitzers, the big guns: steam tractors and all of that.

PN:
What was your average daily routine on a quiet day with the artillery? Can you talk me through a normal day?

AOW:
Well when you are in what they called the back billets, that was your easy time out of action. We used to live and sleep in these big, round, steel Nissan huts. And you used to have to do daily parades, sick parades, and look after your harness, your guns, your horses and all stuff like that. It was supposed to be a rest from the line so they didn’t give you too much – mostly guards. Cause everything as you’d got all had to be guarded – the horses and guns and wagons and all the lot because there always used to be these French hooligans, as you might say.

When we was moved – mostly at the beginning – they used to put you in farmyards, these barn places, when we was living on what they called the iron rations: bully beef or perhaps a big dog biscuit you know, and all such things as that. Well you’d be lucky if you got an old biscuit and a dessert spoonful of jam.

PN:
Tom Ticklers jam.

AW:
Oh aye, used to be Tickler’s. And if you ever got one of Chivers’s you were highly honoured.

There was once – French people were in this farm and all that, we used to be billeted in these barns where there were all straw –their fowls used to be wandering about, you know, laid the eggs anywhere. Lots of times we found eggs in the barn and that when we couldn’t get nothing to eat. So one night we went into a field where they used to keep all the mangle clamps and all that. Well we knew they’d got some swedes so we used to go and raid this camp where the Swedes was, cut ‘em up and that. Then at night – all planned affair it was – we used to nobble a fowl over and we used to get an old oil drum that had been cleaned out, and cook it and have a damn good set-to. They missed ‘em, the farmers did but there was nothing as they could do about it. They used to complain to the colonel and that – perhaps his billet was in the farm, in the house – and he says, what can I do? They want something to eat and all that.

PN:
I think they probably turned a blind eye to it.

AW:
Well they had to because you see where they did benefit, they could claim onto the army and they used to get things like that made right and that.

There was a chap – in that same farm it was – and the authorities had had their eyes on him for a little while. There were a chap going about in English officer’s uniform. So we used to say, “look at that damned officer there, isn’t he a scruffy devil for an officer.” And it appears, but it were a week or two after - he were still knocking about - he wasn’t an Englishman at all, he were a damned German! Doing the work of a spy I expect. He’d got hold of this British officer’s uniform but they spotted him and collared him, court martialled him and that and about a week after, shot him.

‘Cause at the beginning of the war they was shooting even ‘us own chaps for deserting you know. ‘Cause they got out there and didn’t like what they seen and all that, so they absconded. They used to shoot them til’ there was so many desertin’ [that] they couldn’t shoot them all because they couldn’t get the men.

PN:
Were you actually working, firing on the guns or were you more the transport?

AW:
On the guns. On the guns. That was my rank – Gunner.

PN:
So when you were firing in a major offensive, what was it like then? What was your routine like then, just non-stop firing?

AW:
Oh aye. You’d perhaps had the order. You didn’t keep on continually, continually firing. You’d perhaps get the orders through the authorities [for] so many rounds and so many degrees. You’d set all your sights and then when all you sights was there there was a certain number that used to bring the shells up, you used to take ‘em of him, shove ‘em in, shove in the breech, pull the lanyard at the side up til’ that number had done.

You see the reason why they used to do that ‘cause if they kept on firing and firing, half of them were practically being fired in blank air. So when our observers in the balloons spotted so and so, perhaps a convoy or part of the Germans, they had instruments to get all the degrees and that’s passed on to the guns – so many rounds, so and so. Well then, if they got smashed up, your shells wasn’t going to waste as you might say. ‘Cause they must have cost some money, them shells because the cases were all solid brass you know.

PN:
How many men were on a gun?

AW:
Three.

PN:
They were the eighteen pounders?

AW:
The eighteen pounders, that’s what we had then, ‘til I got out onto them Toc Ms, the mortars.

PN:
And was one of the men known as a layer?

AW:
No, not a layer. The number three was the man who does the actual firing. Number two is the one that prepares the fuses, sets the fuses. You could get them to explode instantly or you could just delay them, whatever you liked, according to what it was. The number one, I just can’t remember what job he had. You see all the shells and that they’re not all kept round the guns because if you happen to get hit with a bomb drop, the whole lot’s going to go up. So there use to be special parapets where they were stored. And I’ve got an idea it was the number one’s job to bring them up to the number two to prepare the fuses.

PN:
What position were you?

AOW:
I was number two; the firer.

PN:
Do you remember seeing any other guns hit, because presumably you fired in lines did you?

AW:
Not all together, zig-zag. That’s how I was but the trench mortar, they were a different thing altogether. Flying pigs, I shall never forget them, 104 pounds they was.

Then there was another bit an’ all when we was guarding a big ammunition dump a little bit further back. Well we could always tell the German planes ‘cause they had a particular sound, a thrud. So we all just sat there, all camouflaged, thousands and thousands of shells, and we were guarding that for a certain time. We heard a Jerry gun [sic, AOW means “plane”] which we didn’t take much notice of because we’d heard such a lot. Well, a little while after we heard another one. I said, that don’t sound like a Jerry, that don’t. And it appears this first one was a German making towards England.

So this English one was a small scouting plane, only a young pilot, he were only eighteen. They must have trained him well at that age. Well he tried to chase him but he couldn’t do nothing about it because his were only a small machine and this German was a big’un. So he just carried on. But he thought, “I won’t be done, I’ll wait for him coming back.” So when he were coming back, this little scout plane of ours he got right up in the sky over the top of him and he peppered him from there, and fetched it down just in line with our dump. We went across to see what we could do and it crashed. We expected to see a ball of flame but it didn’t. It were all smashed up and we could see there were two in it: one were the pilot and I presume one were the pilot or the navigator, something like that.

The pilot were still alive but he didn’t live long. He’d been shot right through the wrist by this scout of ours so he lost control over it and crashed. But the other chap, he were dead. Must have been hit up in the air. We tried to get ‘em out – well we knew it were no good trying to get the one that was dead – we got the other one out eventually. The scout plane that was after him couldn’t come down because it was all barbed wire but about two or three fields away he come down and he come across. He says, thank God I’ve got him.

As soon as he’d come down, when there was nobody there, I thought to myself I’m going to see if I can get his camera. Well I didn’t know where they had the cameras. I couldn’t find it so I got into the remains of the cockpit and I thought, I’m going to have that clock. And I got the clock off the dashboard. They used to be in an aluminium case screwed to the dashboard. I got that off and the next day I heard rumours talking about that it was missing and nothing wasn’t to be touched. So it put the wind up me so I put it in an old tin and sealed it and buried it in the ground until things got quiet. I did get it home eventually but I can’t make out what happened to it; who had it. But it was a watch, specially made for the job.

This pilot who fetched him down, he knew where the camera was and he got it and took it away, and do you know when it was all developed there were all scenes all over London so you can see how things got about.

The ground and countryside use to be scattered with smashed planes. In the centre of Ypres, a place like that, there were two or three nearly in the one street that had been brought down by our ack-acks, our anti-aircraft guns.

I think Ypres was the worst area as I’ve ever seen during that war. There wasn’t even a wall as you could call complete. There was buildings which was a big massive place – it always reminded me of the houses of Parliament – and that main road, Hellfire Corner, it lay on the left. It used to be called the Cloth Hall and there wasn’t hardly a brick a standing. And the churches and that, it seemed as if somebody had just gone there and done what they wanted and left what they didn’t want. Churches. Perhaps just one wall left with a big crucifix there; not touched.

But that Bethune, where I got gassed, there was all the houses with parts of the food on the dining tables where they’d been eating it and just had to leave it. Dogs, cats and fowls running about, even pigs and all.

That was where the Canadians was and they moved us up to relieve them and we went up as the day I got here. There were about twelve of us got this gassing. I always say, if it’s intended you’re going to be hit, you will be hit and it don’t matter where you was ‘cause a shell… I’ve seen shell holes where you could get a complete house and drop it in and you wouldn’t see it if you stood back.

Them flying pigs, 104 pounds. You ought to see the craters they made; terrific. They were very slow, just like the aerial bombs with the fins on it and in between the centre of the fins, that’s where your flash cartridge used to go. You could watch them on a clear day, going through the air.

PN:
It was a mass of shell holes wasn’t it?

AW:
The Somme. I don’t think you could walk many yards in a straight line, that’s why we had to have guides to take us up into Ypres because everywhere was so smashed up. You couldn’t get horses because if you ever got a wagon stuck or owt like that, you’d never get ‘em out. ‘Cause there were only horses. There was some of these steam tractors that the heavies used for taking their guns. Half of the shell holes were all covered in red and you know what that was.

I tell you another thing and all. It was my first leave when I were in my Hulluch Tunnel at that time and all your rations and stuff, and bombs, used to be brought up on a light railway with mules, right up to the mouth of Bethune but only in the dead of night. Then if there were any relieving coming, they used to come up on these trucks.

They sent a chap up to relieve me because I were going on leave. I thought to myself, Thank God. So, he had to wait in the night before he could get out of this tunnel because they used to send their verey lights up and could see every mortal thing. And the other side, they used to just sweep the ground level with a machine gun.

Well this particular night they’d come to relieve me I’d got to find my own way back.. You didn’t know where you was. I got out on the top, weaving between the blooming shell holes and that and all of a sudden, all my bloomin’ length I went in one of these damn shell holes. You couldn’t see, only time you could perhaps spot any - but you didn’t want to be up above then – was when they sent their lights over. And I went down two or three damn shell holes I did. I thought to myself, I’m not going to get home, not going to get back. But eventually, I kept on going and going, I didn’t know where I was, so I come into a village where there were some Frenchmen. I thought to myself, I must be out of the danger zone. They could nearly always speak broken English and I said to them, “regiment… billeted… where?” And he told me, that road, and that’s how I found my way out. And by the time I got to what they called the back billets, oh I was in a mess.

Then they gave me the papers and all that and then they give me a new set of khaki they did because I were in such a damn mess.

That was just when we got to the Somme part was where they dropped a bomb in all that field of horses, the Royal Engineers. That’s them that lays all these communication lines and that. They had to risk their lives they did because they had to go as far as really anybody could go there, all to headquarters and everything. And if a bomb broke any of the line, they used to send the Engineers out to trace where it was and mend it.

PN:
How were you artillerymen regarded by the infantry? They thought you had a cushy life didn’t they?

AW:
The artillery was what I’d thought. You see I knew very well that if I were in the infantry – you see I knew with what my brother had told me – I were in for a rough time. So I were glad in one way that I did put in for this motor transport.

But when we got to one village when we was on the move – French village – some chap come to us. He said he’d just been to an estaminet for a drink in the next village, I forget the name of it now. He says, I’ve been down so and so and the remainders of the Leicesters have come out; that’s all ‘us old pals as we used to be with. So I says, I shall have to go and see who’s there and who ain’t. So we went and I’m not afraid to tell anybody, as old as I am, that’s the only time in my life that I’ve been what I call, proper drunk.

Well we went down and there’s so many kinds of drinks out there – vin blonks and all that – and we seen the remainder [of the Leicesters] what was left. We used to say, “Where’s so and so? Is he knocking about?” Oh no, gone. And I don’t think there were above twenty or thirty out of the whole battalion left that I used to be in. And them that were there used to say, “come on, you’ve got to have a drink Alf.” All that mixture and that. Well, we were alright while we were there and so when t come to coming home along the country lanes, I thought to myself, you devil, I’m having a job to walk.

Well I shall always remember falling into a dyke with water. My feet wouldn’t stand up. And do you know it was months and months and months before I found out how I got back to my billet. They dumped me, they did, in my billet, in the barn and all that. And I kept asking my pals how I got back and one n ‘em started laughing. It appears that two of my pals carried me shoulder high but there were only about twenty or thirty of them left out of the whole battalion.

When I were even in the artillery I were still in the same division as what I was in the Leicesters. And their flash was a triangle, dark green and a red. That was the 46th Division’s sign that they used to put on the wagons and that. And it seems funny, after all them years during this last war I used to be on the Barrow [unclear] Council with the wagons. I used to be the driver and had three men with me. We used to cover all Leicestershire pretty well and we were at Queenyborough one day and sitting there in the cabin having a bit of snack. And some little chap come [from the Midland Red bus company because it used to stop there at Queenyborough]. And I thought to myself, he’s a little ‘un for a driver. So he looked at me - I didn’t know him – and he said, is your name Willis? I looked at him and I said, aye but I don’t know you. He says, you do. So when he told me, I said oh I should think I do. His name was LILLAN. Now his brother was one that got done on the Somme. Albert his name was. Now his oldest brother was one of my oldest brothers’ – that was in India – one of his pals. And they both joined up. My brother Steve, he went to India. And that was when I was living at Leicester then, not a stone’s throw from the City General.

I could give anybody a history of the old Leicester and yet I’ve not lived there since the First War. I remember that City General being built. I were only a little kid then and they used to have steam locomotives to get the stuff up. Aye, it’s altered a lot it is.

[1] 10,986 tons. Launched 1908, Australia service. Capacity for 350 First Class and 160 Second Class passengers. Broken up in Japan in 1932.
[2] 11,430 tons. Launched 1914, India service. Capacity for 315 First Class passengers and 233 Second Class. Became troop transport in 1916, returned to passenger service 1919, scrapped at Blyth in 1938.
[3] Apparently not, see Note 4 above.
[4] I have listened to this portion of the interview many times but still can’t make much headway with it.

66774 Sgt Alfred Arthur Nixon, Bedfordshire Regiment

2009-10-16T03:48:00.007+01:00

Synopsis

My great uncle Alf was my grandfather's youngest brother. He was born on 18th January 1897 and almost as soon as he was able to, he joined the Essex Regiment Territorials. I first met Alfred Nixon at my grandfather's funeral in 1980 but it wasn't until a couple of years later that I got him next to a tape recorder at my parents' house in Essex.

Of all the Nixon brothers - and there were five of them - Alf was in khaki the longest. He joined the 6th Essex Regiment in February 1914 (and was given the army number 1716) and so was only 17 when Britain went to war with Germany. He was probably posted to the 2/6th Essex Regiment when it was formed in November 1914 and he was therefore spared a Gallipoli landing with the 1/6th. In any event, a bicycle accident in England left him in hospital with a smashed kneecap and it wasn't until late in 1916 or early 1917 (judging by his new Essex regiment number 34712) that he was posted either to a service battalion or to the 2nd Battalion.

The photograph above probably dates to 1914. Note the protector over his cap.

Alf's memory is at fault at various points during the interview. Mind you, he was trying to recall events from seventy years before and so he can be forgiven. He was not overseas until 1916 at the earliest. Had he been, he would have had a 1914-15 Star instead of the TF war medal. Also, as I mentioned earlier, the 347** Essex Regiment number was not issued until late 1916 at the earliest. Most of the events Alf recalls below, must have taken place in 1917 and 1918.

Alf Nixon died in June 1990 aged 93. He was the last of the Nixon brothers and I have written about his older brother, John Frederick Nixon on my WW1 Remembrance blog.

Interview
AAN:
Well, as I said to you, I was called up ‘cause I was in the Territorials when I was 17. I had a written notice to join the regiment, the 6th Battalion of the Essex Regiment, and I was paid five pounds in golden sovereigns; they all got that I think, that was blood money. In those days, five sovereigns was a lot of money wasn’t it; it was five weeks’ wages for a workman. Then they put us on a train, crowded of course, the train was crowded with troops; pushed them in, and we went down to Brentwood.

PCN:
Were you living in London at the time?

AAN:
I was living at Leyton. They took us to Brentwood at the start off; an old place like a warehouse, dirty it was. Well I and about two others didn’t like laying over where they’d put us and I spent the night in a coal cart out in the open in the yard at Brentwood. We weren’t too dirty though, funny enough. In the morning we shoved down a bit of breakfast and were put in the train again and we went to Shoeburyness where there was a regular barracks for regular troops. The regular troops had gone to France of course, and we took over although we only went in tents. We didn’t go inside the barracks proper but put bell tents there; about 18 used to go in one tent. Half the time I was allocated to do a job of sentry guard which meant on the gate you had to interrogate anybody going in or out; they had to show a pass to go in and out. I was 17 years of age with a rifle on me shoulder; fixed bayonet of course.

From there we went to Norwich. We only stayed there a couple of days then we stopped at a cavalry barracks and we slept in stables there on the floor where the horses used to go. I mean, they didn’t have the accommodation, they put you where they could. There was a thousand men in a battalion, about four companies.

PCN:
What company were you in?

AAN:
I don’t know what company. There was A, B, C and D. We spent about a week or two in there until they found private billets and put us in private houses where they put the rations into [recording is indistinct at this point] … so we had to cook and sleep on the floor of course; there was nowhere to sleep otherwise. The floor and blanket; for a pillow you generally had a kit bag which was full of boots and equipment; nice and soft you know! All the time we were doing drills during the daytime of course, and going on parade and this went on for some time.

Then we went to Cambridge; private billets again. When I say private billets I mean people’s houses and they brought the food rations round for us. I don’t know how much they paid them for it; don’t suppose it was a lot of money but they used to cook the food and the daytime we did the parades.

Eventually we went to Harrogate, in tents again about half a mile out of town in fields. And from there we went to France.

PCN:
What year was this?

AAN:
Fifteen; 1915. In the meantime they asked those who’d volunteer for active service. They didn’t force them to go but they sent us to France, those that volunteered, and eventually there was a medal cast for us for those that volunteered for the new adventure [My italics - PCN. Recording is indistinct at this point]. We was in tents again when we got to Calais. We went from Folkestone. We got to Calais and we were put in tents again: bell tents. We never had anywhere to go so we just had tents for about a dozen of you. You used to put your rifles up against the pole and you used to put your foot to the pole all the way round there. If the weather was alright then it was alright. If it was bad it was bad.

When we were in France we had to go up at night time. The fireworks were going like a fireworks’ display; the bangs and the lights, all this firing of verey lights to see if there was anyone moving about. I thought it was quite fun to start, it was so new. I thought, well this alright; bang, bang, bang, lights going up just like a fireworks display. After about five minutes I realised what was happening, you know, that shells were coming over and bursting and I though they were a fireworks carry-on!

We did that [recording is indistinct at this point]… Arras, a place called Arras.

PCN:
That’s where you went then was it, first of all?

AAN:
We spent a lot of time at Arras. They had a big cave there. When you came out on rest (it was after about a week) you went back about four or five miles from the front line. You had front line, second line and third line. We were in there some time. When you come out of the trenches you had about a week… well the first time I had four days there. When I came back we was in farmhouses and sleeping in the loft. I lay down with my rifle and equipment on and fell asleep, after four days’ no sleep. You had a nap in the trenches of course, but no rest and nowhere to sit really, only on the floor if it was dry. We spent some time in Arras, a long time.

PCN:
Was this still in 1915?

AAN:
Yes. That’s the place where they sent the cavalry to try and get through. They had cavalry in those days. The cavalry got cut up and there was dead horses everywhere. When the shells used to burst you could smell them. They used to call it ‘Dead Horse Corner’. There was a notice up saying ‘Dead Horse Corner’ where the cavalry got it. You couldn’t do the cavalry because there were so many trenches.

They had this great big cave at Arras about five miles wide where we used to go down; two battalions used to go down there for a rest. Night time you had to go out and dig trenches, re-enforce trenches and repair trenches behind the line and make more defences. You didn’t have a rest, you still had drills.

I don’t know the name of it. Two battalions used to stop down there. They could have shelled it but they wouldn’t have hurt anybody.

We were kept backward and forwards at Arras for a long time. There was no movement only for various raids.

PCN:
Did you go on any raids?

AAN:
Yes. The planes used to take photographs of the ground so you knew where all the trenches and dug-outs were. We used to have a fifteen pound canister of explosives to drop down the dug-outs because if you shelled anybody they’d go down a dug-out quick.

One time this Canadian battery was shelling and was supposed to be shelling the German line but they shelled us. The shells were coming right into our trench so we did all we could to get down the dug-out. There were always two entrances and they blocked one entrance up so we all had to scamper out quick out of the other one in case that got blocked. If you got blocked in there you’d never get out again. There was no fortifications underneath, only floor. No concrete steps or anything, just dug-out. It went down about the depth of a house I should think. Sometimes there were a few posts sticking up, but that’s all you had. If a big shell come and hit on the top of the trench it used to blow the candles out because we had an issue of candles. We always carried what they called iron rations. That was bully beef, tea and sugar in a packet in case you couldn’t get any food out there. So we stuck that for ages up there, just sticking there, backwards and forwards.

There was one occasion when they said we’d got to try and see what the positions of the German troops in front were. They told us what time the barrage was going to start. They were firing to see what was returned: sort of, throw your shells into them and see what response you get. If there was a rotten lot of troops in front they’d be a bit weak sort of thing. Anyway, we started. The batteries opened out and we soon got shells into their line. And I’ve never seen such a bombardment as we got back. We had ten times what they got. We shelled them for about half an hour and we got it for about five hours, all night long. It was terrible, cut us up shocking. Of course, when they shelled you had to go down the dug-out, it was no good standing up there.

On another occasion we went to Passchendaele in Belgium. You can’t dig a trench there, it was all water-logged, bogged. Soon as you dug a hole it was full of water so you only had shell-holes there. There we had three battles in nine days, you’ll probably find it in records. Passchendaele, Passchendaele.

When you moved up the line they used to put a white tape down in the daytime otherwise you wouldn’t know where to go. So you had this white line of tape taped quite a long way back - probably a couple of miles - to get into the front line because you couldn’t see the enemy and we were marching along, one behind the other, following this line. Mind you, it was pitch black of a night, there’s no lights in the open fields. A bunch of us got cut off and missed the lot in front so we got stranded, about thirty of us. Of course, we went marching on and we went right past their lines on the railway line. We went past them, past the Germans. They didn’t know it.

It wasn’t trenches it was shell-holes. You was just stuck in a shell-hole. We were lucky really because we were cut off from the main battles, we was behind them you see. Now and again there was Germans used to be walking back with their hands up. One occasion, I was with a fella and a German was walking up, and the fella got his rifle and fired at him. And I knocked it down. I mean, you couldn’t shoot a prisoner like that. So I knocked his rifle down. He was going to shoot him, point blank.

Of course, shells were dropping all over and flying about, and we were there for some days. We couldn’t get rations up, there was now way you could get any food up. So when it was getting dark you used to crawl out of your shell-hole and look for bodies, turn ‘em over and see what they’d got in their packs. I’m not making this up. I used to crawl out and get water. You always had candles in your pack and you used to put water in your army can, water from the shell-holes. You couldn’t get water otherwise, there were no taps. Well, I used to get this water and after about two hours with three candles underneath you make yourself a cup of tea. Mind you, you was there all day so it didn’t matter. At the finish I went down there and it was getting light and the shell-hole I was crawling to and getting the water from there was a German in it, torn inside. All his insides hanging out and I was getting the water for making the tea! Mind you it was boiled so it probably didn’t matter. He was lying at the bottom of the shell-hole covered in water. Most of the water had green stuff on it.

You couldn’t dig a trench. When you dug a hole it was full of water. It was only shell-holes.

PCN:
Were you aware at the time what you had to attack and what the Army's plans were?

AAN:
Well at that place there were about thirty of us cut off behind the lines. You used to pass the word along; everything was passed by mouth. There was a saying once that you passed the word along, “The Colonel’s going to advance, send reinforcements” and they said when it got to the other end of the line it said, “The Colonel’s going to a dance, send three and fourpence.” That was a joke at the time. You had to pass the word along when you were in the trenches. If you wanted a message to go anywhere you couldn’t just get up and write a letter and pass it on, you used to pass the word along. If you were walking along it was, “Mind the ole”.” You always went in the trenches of a night time when it was dark, you couldn’t go at daytime.

In the meantime you’d got planes flying over. I used to fire at them but I never hit one. Planes used to be flying down repeatedly all day long while you were in the trenches. I used to fire my rifle at them but I never knocked them down. I saw plenty of them brought down in fights. Course, the air force those days wasn’t what we’ve got now; those quaint old things.

My brother Edgar used to do the rigging because half of it was made of wood. He could never get a flight because there wasn’t any planes down. Well one day he got a flight ‘cause nobody was there to go in it. He gets in with all the equipment on and goes up with this Major. They had the same ranks as in the Army in those days. Now they’ve got Flight Lieutenants and Squadron Leaders, they wasn’t known as those in those days. He went up in this flight and the man started stunting. I mean, those planes weren’t meant to stunt. He was going up and down, turning over, and he thought, “Well I won’t be long, I’ll soon be dead.” Cause he sees the sky up there one minute and down the next. Of course, the reason he got a flight was because the other blokes knew the pilot as the Mad Major and they used to run away when they saw him coming. If you repaired a plane you had to go up with the pilot to make sure that what you’d done was safe. Not mechanical, not the engine. He used to do the woodwork: struts, all out in the open really, not covered in like they are now. That was his first flight with the Mad Major. Of course, they all laughed when he came down but he didn’t think he ever would come down alive. He was twisting his plane around and they weren’t made for that. He was known as the Mad Major and that was his experience of his first flight.

PCN:
Did you see the mines go up on Messines Ridge?

AAN:
No, I never saw the mines. As I say, we got cut off ‘cause the man in front broke and didn’t keep up to them and we walked through a German line, a railway line. Of course, it was all smashed up but we must have gone miles because the Germans, when they did come out, were this side of us; they worked through this railway line. Being all pitch black I mean they wouldn’t know us.

PCN:
When you first went out to France you said you went to Arras. That was 1915 so were you there right through 1916 or did you move?

AAN:
I was at Arras for ages. Various times we used to be brought out. If they wanted reinforcements they used to send out but I can’t remember the names of the places.

PCN:
Did you not take part in the battle of the Somme because that was in 1916.

AAN:
No, I wasn’t on the Somme.

PCN:
Whereabouts did you have trench fever?

AAN:
That was on the last one… [recording is indistinct at this point]

PCN:
Was that before you were wounded?

AAN:
Yes, before I was wounded. I can’t remember where the place was, I think it was Arras, somewhere like that. Winter time it was, trenches full of water, duckboards were up. Somebody had dug a little cubby hole in the side of the trench and I lay in there. I couldn’t sleep. I lay there two days and I thought, I can’t stand this. If you were sick you’d go down the First Aid which was about a mile behind the line that you’d got to walk. When I got down there I met one of the colonels. The colonel was walking in the line with another officer who I met as I was going down there. I spoke to him but I can’t remember what he said, I was too ill really. Well I got down this First Aid place which was only a dug-out and there was a doctor there attending to someone with frozen feet. When feet were frozen they cut the toes away because they went bad, black. The stench was shocking because it was all bad flesh; it was all like congealed and the smell was shocking. I was in the Army with a fella who’d got all his toes off and they had to teach him to walk afterwards because you can’t walk without toes properly. Anyway, I got down there and after a while this doctor who was attending to the bloke with frozen feet came up to me and took my temperature. He must have asked me what the matter was and how I felt. He said, how did you get here? I said I walked. There was no other way to get there, you had to walk. He said, Good God man, called the orderly over and put me down on a stretcher right away, blankets on top. Night time they come and carry you over the top of the line because they couldn’t move you until dark. They carried me over the trenches and they marked me PUO: Patient Under Observation [No. Pyrexia of Unknown Origin - PCN]. From there I went to hospital. I had no food for about three days. It was given me but I didn’t want any. They used to sponge me don in the morning with cold water because it was supposed to get the temperature down but I learned afterwards they said it was through lice.

The lice were worse than the Germans, you was alive with them, absolutely. You never had a bath or anything and you couldn’t get a change of clothes. You were laying in dirt and living in dirt. Not in your head. I know we had short hair but they weren’t head lice they were body lice and you’d see fellas killing them, cracking them. I used to take me shirt off and hold it in a coke brazier, make ‘em all run. The lice were terrible though, shocking - lice and rats.

Rats were another thing. You had droves of rats, swarms. We used to put a bit of cheese on the end of a bayonet, stick it over the top and when the rats used to come, press the trigger. Of course, you never found them, it blew them to pieces.

PCN:
Wasn’t that [practice] banned by the Army later on?

AAN:
No, not to my knowledge anyway. We used to do that for a bit of fun in the daytime.

I was always in the front line unfortunately and on the front line you’d sometimes have to go in what they called a sap and there you couldn’t peek. You know, you could hear them talking, you could hear them guttering. You’d go there of a night and the first time I went in they said [to] be careful [and] be alert because they took the lot last night. They come over and took the lot of them, they come creeping over and got ‘em. Well anyway, I was there with a fella - there were only two of you - and they gave you a box of Mills bombs. You pulled the pin out and the lever flies back and starts it off, about twenty seconds’ timing. Well I was on with this fella and he kept falling down asleep. Of course, it put the wind up me so I used to kick him to wake him up; [kick him with those] big army boots! And I was there all night for about a week.

You couldn’t do anything at daytime so we used to prime these bombs. Little device with a wick on the end of it and when you struck it it started. You used to do it with your teeth. You had to put it in your mouth and bite it to ready the primer. Otherwise, when you got ‘em, they weren’t all primed. You had all the wicks and cords to prime it but that was separate, otherwise boxes of bombs would be going up in the air. When you threw it you had about twenty seconds before it went off. There were several cases where men threw themselves on them to save the lives of the others. Sixteen pounds they weighed, Mills bombs they were; each bomb weighed a pound. You threw them and [of] course, when you threw them you had to take the pin out to start it off and when you took the pin off: [sound of a loud clap], the spring on it started. We had a fella and he used to let it go off in his hand for two or three seconds before he threw it. Of course, when he threw it it immediately exploded so they couldn’t throw it back at you, but he got charged for doing that.

PCN:
Did you see many men punished? There was Field Punishment Number One wasn’t there?

AAN:
Oh yes, you seen tons of that. [When] you was going on a place, you was moving, you’d see a barracks or something like a shelter and there’d be a poster on there: “The following people were shot at dawn today…” You know it was posted up outside these places where they’d been done. I didn’t see any cowardice but I saw the notices where they’d been shot and the names. I don’t think they ever sent home and said they were shot. I think they said they were killed in battle. They never did that, they never told the truth.

PCN:
Because men were tied to wagon wheels as well weren’t they? Field Punishment Number One.

AAN:
I don’t know. I never saw any but I’ve read of cases. You had to do it, you’d have set everybody alight and frightened the others wouldn’t you? I never saw any cowardice but I’ve seen people shell-shocked when I was in hospital. They lose all sense of people. His sweetheart used to come up and his parents, and he didn’t know them. I’ve seen them absolutely gone.

PCN:
Was that when you got back home and went into hospital?

AAN:
Yes, I come back, I was a stretcher case. I think I went to Nottingham.

PCN:
What year was that, was that 1916?

AAN:
Or 17, it must have been getting towards the end.

PCN:
What, after Passchendaele?

AAN:
Oh, it was after Passchendaele.

PCN:
Because you went to the Beds after Passchendaele didn’t you?

AAN:
Yes. What we used to talk about in the trenches was food: “How’d you like a steak pudding now?”, you know, “All that gravy…” Cor!

PCN:
You used to have the food parcels come up didn’t you?

AAN:
I never had a food parcel in my life. My sisters had plenty of money but I don’t think they realised what it was like.

When I first went to France we was in this place and it was near a farmhouse. The chickens were there roosting and if a chicken was laying, one of the girls or one of the youngsters would stand by it till it had laid the egg because the troops would have pinched it you see. When you came out of the trenches, if you got near the old farmhouse about five mile behind the line, you could get egg and chips. That was a good buy. The chickens laid the eggs and they could grow the potatoes. You couldn’t buy any meat or anything like that.

PCN:
And there used to be white wine in the cafes.

AAN:
Yes, but I wasn’t interested in wine in those days and I didn’t smoke.

We came out of the line one day and they said, “Right, we’re going to do some shooting now, practice shooting.” Well to my amazement I was the crack shot of the regiment. I put six bullets in the same hole, sort of thing, so I was made into a sniper. This meant of a night time, creeping out just before it got dark and going over the barbed wire. Sometimes it was only a hundred yards away from the Germans. There was three of us: a sergeant, me and another fella and we used to crawl and pick ‘em off. You’d see their hats, their tin hats, and you knew if you got a bullseye because their hats flew off; their helmets rather. We used to fire a few and then get in quick ‘cause once you killed anybody out there they’d be after you pretty sharp. They couldn’t come after you but they could throw the bombs.

That’s another thing we used to do when we were in the trenches. When we came out of the line we didn’t have a rest. Of a night time we used to pick up and carry shells up to the front; not to the front line but the front. The transport couldn’t get up the line, the transport could only get three or four miles behind. You had to go up and meet the transport and they had pack ponies in those days. They used to do a lot of the carrying. They had motors but most of them were done by mules. They used to tie the ammunition on either side and you had to go up there and take it off and carry it up to where it was wanted.

The artillery were behind and my brother Wally, Walter, was with the Garrison Artillery - heavy artillery - and they were behind farther still and that weren’t so bad.

PCN:
Did you meet any of your brothers out there?

AAN:
No, but two of them did meet. That was Jack who was killed and your grandfather [Walter] but I never met any of them.

AAN:
I was wounded in the neck during our last advance… final assault. We could see them coming over and I could hear a machine gun on my side: rattle, rattle and I felt this whack. It was like someone hitting me with a sledgehammer, a terrific bang. It wasn’t big, it was only a bullet, but the force… You’d have thought it would just touch you and you wouldn’t feel it but I felt it. There was a fella next to me who’d got one in the neck and every time his heart beat the blood was pumping out. I couldn’t do anything for him.

I [went] down the line and the first thing I saw was a bloke with his leg off. It was all torn off, ripped off, all the bare flesh like, all jagged. He was laying on his stomach and he just turned around. When he heard my footsteps he just turned around and looked, he could hear someone coming. I couldn’t do anything for him. That was the sort of thing you had to put up with. First thing I saw when I got to France I mean was a pair of legs. Putties up to here, just the legs. You had to get used to it and didn’t take any notice.

I saw several lots being buried. They used to bury them out in the fields. They put a blanket round them and just buried them, no service or anything. It was nowhere near war graves or anything like that. You took no notice of it because you saw so much of it. I mean, you’d be in a trench and if they dropped a shell sometimes you’d find half a body or a leg or a foot sticking out, or arm. There was a cook and he used to go round the dead bodies and pull their mouths open to see if they’d got any gold teeth. Horrible weren’t it? Just shows you how callous you can get, and he was a cook! I’ve turned the bodies over to see what they’ve got on them to eat. Mind you, you were out in the open and you were really hungry, and being young, you know…

You only carried biscuits about and I sent one of the biscuits home once when I was in England. They were so hard. I put a stamp on it and it got home.

PCN:
After you were wounded did you then go back to England again?

AAN:
I went to England because I was a stretcher case again. When I got to the First Aid Post mind you, there was a queue just like a queue at a food shop, you know lining up for bread or something. Some of them were dropping down because they’d got bad wounds and were bleeding badly but you had to [get] in the queue to get dressed. Out in the open there wasn’t no hospital or anything but I didn’t trouble about this, it wasn’t bleeding too much. I might have it still in my body, I don’t know, they never x-rayed me. Must have been a bullet but it was a terrific whack.

PCN:
How long did you spend in England?

AAN:
Only a matter of a few weeks, two or three weeks that’s all, then I went back again.

PCN:
What rank were you at this stage?

AAN:
I was corporal I think and I went back again as Sergeant Instructor.

PCN:
So when were you made up into corporal, was that about 1917?

AAN:
Something like that I suppose it was.

PCN:
I suppose that was because you were more experienced.

AAN:
Oh yes, I knew all the tricks of the trade, well I’d had five years of it.

PCN:
Did you ever play Crown & Anchor?

AAN:
No, but going over on the boat we played Housey Housey. Course, we had five pounds mind you, you got five gold sovereigns when you were called up. It was alright when you was in England, you didn’t want for anything much. I know I used to buy dates for three ha’pence a pound.

When I got back I was training and bringing up the youngsters then. The war was finished and we were part of the Army of Occupation. The [German] factories were being dismantled and we were on guard there. I was marching the troops through a factory once in Germany and felt this pulling on me. I thought, well what’s that, and it was a crane with a magnet attached which was picking up the shell cases. It was actually pulling me, I could feel it.

PCN:
You were saying you went to hospital with your knee, was that another time?

AAN:
That was in England, I didn’t go to France with that.

Anne:
The Armistice was in November 1918, did you stay out there quite a time after that into 1919?

AAN:
Oh yes, quite a time, I don’t know when the Peace was signed.

PCN:
… Passchendaele then. You had about 300 men left out of the battalion and so then you went to another regiment.

AAN:
That’s right, Bedfordshire, can’t remember what number it was. On my medals though, it’s got my name on it as Private in the Essex Regiment whereas I was a Sergeant Instructor.

PCN:
Did you go with the Bedfordshires right from 1917 until the end then or did you go back to the Essex?

AAN:
No, it was after the war was finished when I went back again. I was bringing up young officers. They had to be taught, same as the Army, and I used to shout at them just the same as the troops. In Germany it was a crime to talk to the people. If you were caught, the police would be after you although we used to talk to the girls. But if there were any police about you’d be for it.

They used to call you out in the middle of the night. You’d be back in your billets, wherever you were, and about two o’clock in the morning the alarm went and you’d got to get up and dress in the full marching order. Then you’d go for a march of about two miles and then back again. There was no rest; it was in case of an emergency should the war start again. But in Germany it was a fine life. I was a sergeant and I was waited on in the Sergeants’ Mess and had two batmen to make my bed and polish my buttons if I wanted them.

PCN:
Do you remember where it was in Germany?

AAN:
Bonn. There was sport in the morning and education. I used to take classes although an officer was supposed to. He asked me to take over though and I had six of them who couldn’t read or write: youngsters, eighteen years of age. I used to march them up and down and curse them. I said, you want to be taught English before you learn German.

PCN:
Did you ever shout out to the Germans when you were in the trenches?

AAN:
No, that was in the beginning in 1914. Never took the chance to stand up and call them either [laughs].

PCN:
Mind you, you could hear them couldn’t you?

AAN:
Hear them, yes. Couldn’t understand what they were saying, specially when you were in a sap, little bits jutting out, getting nearer, little bit nearer. The worst time was when I was on a patrol. That was near the end too because they sensed the Germans were going to get desperate and I was sent out on a patrol. That means going out when it’s dark, go out along the trench for about a mile. “Patrol going out”, password is so and so so they didn’t shoot you because otherwise you could have been coming back again and they’d get frightened and panicky and bang! So we crawled out and took two Mills bombs. We didn’t have a rifle because you can’t crawl with it. All you’d got was Mills bombs, one in each pocket, all ready to throw. You crawled and you crawled on all fours and it was a bit weird because sometimes you came across a body and didn’t know if he was alive or dead. You’re between the two lines then. You go through your own wires and there’s only a hundred yards between the two wires. You had to watch to see if there were any signs of the wire being cut because if they were going to come at you they’d cut the wire. Of course, the barbed wire was all along and it was thick. You couldn’t just shove over it, it was too wide and high and it was only put out there when it was dark.

Anyway, we gets between the wires and we’re creeping along - about three or four yards from each other, looking and listening - when they must have spotted us. A fella who’d only been out about a month got up to run and get to another hole and of course, he got shot. He was killed. That left us two and we got in a scamper because we didn’t know which was our line and which was the other line. There’s not a pure white line I mean the trouble is, which way are we going? This fella said, this way but I was right close to the wire and I could see it had a big sprong. Ours was a shorter wire so I thought, I’m near the German wire. The other chap would have gone in the German lines but I remembered that their wire had bigger prongs. The Germans was big prongs, ours was shorter. Anyway, I was right. Anyway, we got back and said so and so’s out there, so they sent out another patrol to fetch him in. We didn’t know where he was. We heard the machine guns going on him but while you were lying down, often in a shell-hole, you couldn’t move because they’d have seen you move. They fired lights up, verey lights; fired them like a pistol and it lights the sky for a little while so you can see, and we daren’t move because that would have given the game away, and there’s bullets flying around you. Eventually we got in anyway. It was only a couple of days after that that the war started to finish. Our people must have known because patrols went out every night. You’d have a raid and get some prisoners just to see what they’re like and the condition of them. Are they young, are they old, are they well fed?

PCN:
Did you go on many raids? [second time I asked this question! - PCN]

AAN:
Only about three or four. We used to black ourselves up but we was black already, it was a thing you got so used to. Sometimes you’d get downhearted but it was something you got used to. It was worse when you came out of the line. You had to dig trenches in the dark and they’d give you so much to dig an’ all. There was no larking about either. You had to dig a six foot trench in about four or five hours. You’d got the front line, the reserve line and another line behind that, all depends what they’re like. You never had a rest.

We had a rum ration and that used to save your life. After you’d been out all night, your hands would be blue and your rifle covered in frost. Then the rum used to come round and you’d be able to move again. Of course, some of them wouldn’t take it. Several died because they had too much rum and lay down and froze to death. You couldn’t give it to nobody else but if a fella didn’t drink, he’d give it to his mates. It was raw stuff, no dilution about it. The officer or sergeant used to come round with it in the morning before it got light and dish it up straight from the jar.

You imagine it out in that frost. Sometimes there’d be a week of rain and all you ‘d have was a rubber sheet to keep you dry. There wasn’t any dug-outs in the front line. Sometimes they used to light a fire down these dug-outs and the smoke used to choke you nearly. Mind you, some of the weather was bad; ’16[/17] was bad. We had to dig trenches in that and our pick axes would fly up because they couldn’t get into the ground; it was too hard.

I know I was going round with an officer in the trenches on a tour of them to see what they were like and a fella slipped into the water. I’ve never heard so much foul language in all my life. I think he knew every swear word there was and he let rip too. I said, are you done? Because the officer was there. He stepped to one side to let us walk by because there’s not much room on a duck-board. Under these duck-boards was about two foot of water and in the latter part of the war you had to put whale oil on. They thought it was more important about the whale oil than it was about any food. Clean socks used to come up from the transport and we were supposed to rub this whale oil into each others’ feet. It was a crime if you got trench feet but this stuff smelt terrible. I don’t think I did it ‘bout more than twice.

PCN:
Did you have the waders?

AAN:
No, never had any waders.

PCN:
Did you come up against any gas attacks?

AAN:
No. In the trenches you used to have a shell case hanging up and you hit it in case of any gas attack but we never had any. We had the masks on several times but in those days they weren’t like you’ve got today. They used to call them P helmets. It was only a bit of rag with a little rubber tube on it. You used to twist it round and stick it down your neck but it wasn’t a proper gas mask. It smelt of carbolic and they used to make you play football in them. You couldn’t breathe in them and you couldn’t fight in them really either because you couldn’t see properly.

When they started with this mustard gas they had a dug-out in the training areas to test the troops and prepare them for an attack. They take you down there and put your gas mask on and then switch this gas on just to show you what it was like.

Then they had tear gas which blinded you. It wasn’t poisonous, you couldn’t open your eyes. They used to take us down in there and then make you take your gas mask off. It didn’t hurt the eyes but you couldn’t open them. It was shocking stuff.

PCN:
Wasn’t that the one that smelt like pear drops?

AAN:
Yes, something like that. But I’m sure a lot of the chaps put a bullet through themselves. I know this fella did who I knew and he was a nice chap. We was on rest and we were going up the line to dig; generally there was always someone got shot because we were close to the front line. He said to me, if anything happens to me tonight you can have what’s in my kit. He never came back and I’m pretty sure he shot himself though I didn’t say so at the time.

PCN:
You said a shell landed near you didn’t you, a dud.

AAN:
Oh that was a good one that was. I was all alone in the trench and the shells were going over. You didn’t bother unless you heard them coming, whizzing near your ear and then you ducked automatically. I heard a thud and thought, blow me. About a foot away and about stomach height a shell had landed and stuck in the trench wall next to me. It never went off.

They reckoned on three tons of shells to kill one man. That was reckoned the number of shells, the waste of shells was thrown over during that war was three ton of shells to kill a man. I mean, a lot of them were killed by bullets, but it took that much. Of course, if you go over the top there’s shells all over the place.

PCN:
What’s it like advancing under all that then?

AAN:
Well, you’d have a creeping barrage where they’re gradually moving forward all the time so that you’re being protected providing they’ve got the range properly.

PCN:
You had quite a lot of equipment to carry as well didn’t you? Quite heavy wasn’t it?

AAN:
Full marching order was 120 pounds. That included about 100 rounds of ammunition. That wasn’t battle order. If you were having a raid they’d take off your identity discs because they said what regiment you were and what number. If you were in a raid you had to take them off. You mustn’t have anything on you in case the Germans caught you.

I was on a demonstration out there with all the big heads. I spoke to Robertson who was one of the chief Generals there. We was on parade once and he come up and spoke to me. Sometimes you’d have the big Generals come up and inspect you when you were behind the lines. Robertson was second in command of the whole lot. Being a sergeant I was in front of the others but I can’t remember what he said.

On another occasion I had a lot of Generals come up. The trouble was getting stuff into the trenches you see and they had a big square arrangement which you put the stuff on and could carry half a ton on your back. You had a stick to walk with. It was like a big square with hooks on it to hook petrol, bombs and what have you. It was supposed to be good enough for half a ton and you had a stick because you had to lean forward a little. But they never used them, you couldn’t hardly move. I gave the demonstration. They loaded me up but you couldn’t manage with it because in the trench you could only walk sideways with that on.

Well then they brought out soup[1] in like vacuum flasks with screw lids. It was Simonson’s soup; it was only water, like pea soup. You walked round the trench with these flasks on your back and I got fed up of keep screwing and unscrewing the lid. You had to walk a long way when you were seeing to a battalion. Well, I got fed up with these big screws, it didn’t half weigh something, whacking great cannister on the back of you. I thought, well I’ll just put the lid on there, and I wandered round dishing out this hot soup. All of a sudden a shell come over, wheeeeeeeee eeeup! Of course, I ducked and the soup went all over me. Half the soup went over me and I’d got to feed them with it. I was giving them a little tiny drop, a spoonful, “What do you call this?” with a few fine words in it, “What’s that?” I was all sticky down my neck with this Simonson’s soup. Well, naturally you ducked when you heard a shell but I shall never forget that. I only did it once. When they asked me why I was only dishing up a couple of spoonfuls I said, well you can have a lick of my shoulder. It was a funny thing.

[1] From, The War The Infantry New by Captain J C Dunn, Page 176

“Another innovation about this time [January 1916] was soup for issue during the night, sent up in thermos containers. It suited the New Armies but the Old Soldiers and the Drafts who adopted their ways denounced it blasphemously. The Old Soldier liked to cook and eat what he saved of his ration in his own way and time; he resented the diversion of any of it to this communal cooking, and he feared that broth might be substituted for rum; besides, to fetch it was another fatigue. (Soup was not issued during the next two winters.)

Corporal Bill Howell, 8th Londons - Loos 1915

2009-09-25T00:12:00.005+01:00

25th September 2009 marks the 94th anniversary of the Battle of Loos. I met a number of men who fought at Loos, and Bill Howell of the 8th (City of London) Battalion, the London Regiment (Post Office Rifles) was in the thick of the fighting on this day in 1915. This is an extract from an interview I conducted with Bill in the 1980s.

“After four days’ bombardment, the first lot went over; The Shiny 7th. That’s the 7th Londons and they were known as The Shiny 7th because they all wore brass buttons. They went over and they took this trench in front of them and they seemed to me to have got it very light because I only saw one bloke on the wire. We were laying in support and we were the next to go over. Well, The 7th captured theirs pretty cheap and so did we. I think it was a soft battle for us.”

“We had a creeping barrage, light shelling with the shells going over just in front of you. You had to let the artillery know how far you’d got and we had our haversacks painted yellow so they could see and there was a bloke with a disc, similar to those used to see children over the road with. As you go over and you go down you’re supposed to stick it in the ground so the artillery can raise their sights. The bloke who did this was always at the side of me and I said to him, “Blimey George, can’t you go with somebody else for a change?” I knew that would attract all the snipers in the world and it did. He got one through the neck and I got hit as well.. Something hit the rock in front of me and all up my forehead and in my hair were bits of cartridge casing, little bits of brass. I thought, I’ve only got a hundred yards to go, I may as well stick it.”

“We were on the right flank, The Double Crassier was our flank. We got in there and they expected a counter attack from a German bombing squad. The REs come up and put a bit of wire in front of us and me and two other snipers had to go up on top of this Double Crassier. They had like a little narrow gauge railway line where they put the trucks with the muck in and it made lovely cover. I made myself a little hole, lay down there and waited to pick off any Germans although I never saw any at all. What I did see was a panorama of the whole battlefield. The night before we’d been up with the cylinders of gas and now I could see the Seaforths advancing behind it.”

See also today's entry for WW1 Remembrance.