1756 Cpl Henry Thirlby Hack MM - Leicestershire Yeomanry

The photograph above (click on it to enlarge) shows men from C Squadron, Leicestershire Yeomanry, photographed in the Bull's Head Stable Yard, Loughborough on 6th August 1914. Private Thirlby Hack, second from left on the third row from the front, looks at the camera. Sergeant Major Diggle, with five TF efficiency stars on his right arm, stands at the end of the second row. His son, 1760 Lance-Corporal Bertie Diggle (who must have joined up at about the same time as Thirlby) was killed in action on 13th May 1915 and is commemorated on panel 5 of the Menin Gate.

Thirlby Hack - synopsis

Between 1982 and 1985, and by now already a veteran of old soldier interviews, I was studying at Loughborough University. Whilst there, I picked up from where I'd left off in Essex and started trying to track down WW1 veterans in Loughborough. A local newspaper published an appeal for me in June 1985 and a few days later I received the following letter from a man in nearby Sutton Bonington.

I see by the notice in the Lobro Trader that you wish to contact old soldiers of the 1914-1918 war.

I am 93 and served with the Leicestershire Yeomanry in France and Belgium from Nov 14 to Feb 19 except for a short period when I had to come home wounded.

I used to live in Loughborough and if you come and see me, if I have any information you are welcome to it.

H T Hack

A few days later I visited Mr Hack at his home, took my tape recorder out and listened to his story. Thirlby (as he was known), had joined the Leicestershire Yeomanry in 1910 and by 2nd November 1914 he was in France. So, like Stan Brown, Leslie Hase and Alf Worrell he was an early arrival on the Western Front.

He served throughout the war, picking up promotions (he finished the war as a sergeant), a bullet in his thigh and a Military Medal along the way. He died in June 1986 at the age of 94.

The interview

TH:
We were mobilised on August 5th 1914 and after about a fortnight in Loughborough we marched to Grantham and got on a train and went down to Bishops Stortford [Hertfordshire], I’ve forgotten the exact place now. We trained and moved to different places in the eastern counties before finally finishing up at Diss [Norfolk].

C Squadron [Loughborough Squadron] was at the village of Palgrave [Suffolk] and we were there, billeted in in farm buildings till November 1st 1914. We were put on a train, horses, men and the lot, and went down to Southampton and got ona steamer, on a boat, to Le Havre and landed on November 2nd. From Le Havre we marched up to Ypres; took us about two days I think to get there.

We took part in the First Battle of Ypres and were in reserve to some other units; I forget which ones now. We took over some trenches for a while.

We were in the 3rd Cavalry Division and I can tell you, the conditions at Ypres were very, very bad. The weather was bad with mud everywhere. The trenches were poor and very very muddy and the tracks up to the trenches were bad. But we didn’t stay long because the battle was coming to an end then. And we marched back to Ypres and we were billeted one night just outside the moat. We were shelled badly that night and we lost a lot of horses; the horses were tethered by the side of the moat.

From there we marched back again to billets round about Hazebrouck. We were billeted in different farm houses and farm buildings.

PN:
Did you go out to France with a lot of friends from Loughborough?

TH:
I lived at Quorn in those days and there were about eight of us who joined up at the same time. I think I’m the only survivor now certainly.

PN:
I’ve got written down from a newspaper cutting that at Ypres you had two men killed and seven wounded.

TH:
That was the early part of the war. We had a number of casualties afterwards, a bad lot of casualties. We took part in the Second Battle of Ypres too and suffered quite a few casualties, particularly on May 13th 1915. But before then we’d been into the trenches several times. We used to go up in buses. We’d take over the trenches for a while, dismounted of course, and then go back to billets where the horses were. We were kept as a sort of mobile reserve really.

I joined the yeomanry in February 1910 when I was eighteen and we joined up for Home Service only. When war came we had to volunteer to go before we could be taken abroad and I think about ninety eight per cent did volunteer.

PN:
Can you tell me about Frezenberg in May 1915?

TH:
We’d been in reserve before Ypres for about two or three days and then we were called into the line. We marched through Ypres and we took over the trenches on the night of the 12th/13th of May. We relieved some infantry and it was fairly quiet then. The trenches were in poor condition and they weren’t very deep. When I stood up my head and shoulders was above the top of the trench because the trenches hadn’t been dug very long. It was the second battle of Ypres and before that, the French and the Canadians had been gassed and they’d had to retire and the battle had ebbed backwards.

We took over the trenches and about four o’clock in the morning the first two shells came over. One dropped in front and one dropped at the back and that was followed by a terrific bombardment all the way along the front. A lot of damage was done to the trenches and we had a lot of casualties.

PN:
What was it like being under shell fire?

TH:
Very noisy and rather alarming. We had to try and crouch down under the front of the trench and try and keep our rifles clean because we were showered in dirt and filth. The next bay to me had the front blown in and I ran round to pull one or two of them out. One was shot through the wrist and one or two of the others was wounded but they managed to get away over the back of the trench. Where I was it didn’t hurt us. You know how trenches are made don’t you – zig-zag.

PN:
And did the Germans launch an attack after that?

TH:
Yes, over to the left. They came over in mass formation. The Lifeguards were on our left, then there was us and then the Dragoons. We were in the 7th Cavalry Brigade which was formed by the 1st and 2nd Lifeguards and the Leicester Yeomanry and the Brigade was part of the 3rd Cavalry Division.

PN:
[Reading] Do you remember any of these names: Frank White and Henry Hickling?[1]

TH:
Oh yes, I went to school with most of them.

PN:
So after this incident you went back to billets did you?

TH:
No I was wounded, I came back to England.

PN:
Where were you wounded?

TH:
Shot in the left thigh. I was corporal then and the sergeant was laying a little way in front of me. He was shot through the knee and the wrist and he couldn’t move and I crawled up to him and he says, “Go on, don’t bother about me, you look after yourself.” But I said, “I’m not going without you,” and I lay down beside him. I says, “Get on my back, I’ll see if we can’t get you back somehow or the other.” He did, he got on my back and I managed to crawl for some little while until I could move a bit better. Then I stood up and I carried him nearly all the way. Then we came across an infantry patrol and the officer in charge told off two men to take him from me. We were near to a dressing station then and we both went to it. From there we gradually got back down the line, got an ambulance through Ypres and eventually came back home to England.


[Above, 1756 Corporal Thirlby Hack, Leicestershire Yeomanry, sits in his bath chair somewhere in England]

PN:
How long were you in England for?

TH:
I was wounded on the 13th so I was probably back in England for the 17th. I went to Colchester Military Hospital first and I was there a while. Then I was sent to Cromer, a Voluntary Aid Hospital. I stayed there until I was convalescent and came back to Leicester at the end of September I think it was and joined the depot in Leicester and after about three weeks I got fed up with it and told them to put me on the next draft. They kept sending a few out to the regiment and I got back to the regiment in October of that year and joined up again.

PN:
You were in reserve for the battle of Loos then?

TH:
Yes, and then we moved south, marching about. We were a mobile reserve you see. We marched up to the battle of Arras and that was an awful day. It snowed and rained and it was terrible conditions. We thought we were going to get through you see. They’d made a gap but they hadn’t got sufficient forward to let the cavalry get through. The Essex Yeomanry made an attempt on the village of Monchy. They got into the village but then they had to dismount and take over the front dismounted. Well we could see they were going into the village and thought we should have to follow on but ultimately we didn’t, we had to come back again. The weather was too bad and the cavalry could hardly get about: mud and filth.

PN:
Were you in the trenches over Christmas 1914?

TH:
No, we were back in billets Christmas ’14. I think I spent two Christmases in the line. I’m not sure if it was ‘16/’17 or ‘17/’18.

Once we were holding a line of outposts in front of the Hindenburg Line. That was before the Germans broke through in March 1918, the last big offensive and we’d been dismounted then. They were going to turn us into a machine gun brigade. But hen the cavalry had been in action, I think it was the 1st Division, when the Germans broke through in March 1918. They’d had a lot of casualties and they wanted reinforcements. We were trained cavalrymen so we went to reinforce them and we went to the 4th Hussars. We finished the war in the 4th Hussars, B Squadron 4th Hussars. I stayed with them until February ’19.

In January 1916 the Yeomanry were in The Hohenzollern Redoubt but I was on a month’s leave then. I’d finished my time then of four years and one in reserve and they gave those that had done that a month’s leave because we had to volunteer again.

PN:
When you came back after your leave where were you then?

TH:
I must have been in the Somme region although I don’t remember it. The cavalry was all mobilised for the battle of the Somme because they were hoping to make a gap for the cavalry but hey never did anything. We had three night marches. All we did was send dismounted parties up to do fatigue work behind the lines, just behind the front. We were filling in shell holes so the artillery could get up and all sorts of business.

I remember once we went up, the night the tanks went over at the battle of Fleurs. We wondered what these things were under a big tarpaulin and then the next morning we saw them moving. But we didn’t go into action at all, we were doing fatigue work.

I remember helping to carry a wounded man back to the dressing station and they shelled us all the way down pretty well. There were two men to a stretcher and when we got there we handed him over to the first aid men. He was badly injured about the knee. His bandage was pinned to his flesh. His stretcher bearers I expect were in a hurry to get him bandaged up and they stuck the pin through his leg.

PN:
When were you awarded the Military Medal?

TH:
May 13th 1915. We had a brigade parade and the General was giving out the awards to all the men; different men in each regiment in the brigade. We had the medal ribbon and had the medal after the war finished. They sent word to me telling me they were sending the Military Medal and did I want it given publicly or whether to send it by post. I said, “Oh, send it through the post.”

PN:
Now in 1917 you were at Arras weren’t you?

TH:
Yes, in reserve as usual, hoping that they’d be able to use the cavalry to get through. We were in shell holes and the horses were tethered round us. As I say, we saw The Essex Yeomanry going into the village and they weren’t able to get any further and that night we came back onto Arras race course, mounted of course, through the mud and snow. It snowed too, quite a lot and we lost quite a few horses from exposure. A friend of mine had to stop behind and help bury these dead horses. Then we marched away again.

PN:
It says horse casualties were very heavy and you had to remain there until the re-mounts arrived.

TH:
Yes, we were always getting re-mounts. We were often getting horse casualties. It kept us up to strength and we used to get the occasional drafts of men who came up with the horses to make up for casualties.

PN:
It says that in October you moved from that area in support of the Portuguese Division.

TH:
Yes, the Forest of Nieppe that was. The Portuguese had lost their position and had had to retire so they sent us up again in reserve. We didn’t have to go into action.

PN:
As you said earlier, they were considering turning you into a machine gun battalion and you went to the 4th Hussars.

TH:
Yes, B Squadron, 4th Hussars.

PN:
Were you disappointed when the regiment broke up like that?

TH:
Disappointed when they took the horses away and very pleased when we got back to the 4th Hussars. We were still Leicester Yeomanry attached to the 4th Hussars. We never gave up our proper names but we stayed with them until the end of the war.

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

TH:
Because I always liked horses. I could ride a horse, my father was a market gardener and he kept a horse. When I joined up we were supposed to do 20 hard drills in the year and a fortnight’s camp, mounted under canvas. The drills we did partly at Mountsorrel and partly at Loughborough; evening drills of course, learning the ordinary things. Then about May time – we always went away at Whitsuntide for the camp – we had to hire horses and we were allowed five pounds to get a horse for the fortnight. There were plenty of horses in those days; hunting stables galore in Quorn, and everyone had got horses because motor cars had hardly come. I remember the first horse I got which was from a hunting stable in Quorn. The camp was in Garendon Park and I was riding over the central railway bride on the Loughborough Road and a train went under just at the same time as we were riding over. My horse threw me into the middle of the road. It jumped right under me; the steam and smoke frightened it. I wasn’t hurt at all but I got on again.

PN:
What were your rations like? Did you always have those on time?

TH:
Sometimes the rations were a bit behind hand, especially in the line, but somehow we always managed to get fed. We used to have bully beef and biscuits when we were short of other stuff. Every man was issued with an iron ration and it was in a canvas bag, nothing like they had in the last war. It had got a small tin of tea and sugar, two biscuits – big dog biscuits – and a tin of bully beef. That was your iron ration and you had strict orders not to eat it until you were ordered to.

PN:
You had Tickler’s jam as well didn’t you?

TH:
Oh yes but that weren’t in the iron rations. Have you met any Yeomen besides me?

PN:
No, you’re the first. [Actually I'd met an Essex Yeomanry man in 1981 but Thirlby Hack was the first and only Leicestershire Yeomanry man I met.]

TH:
I only know one in Loughborough and I only know two in the regiment that are left besides me. We have an Old Comrades’ Association. We formed one directly after the war finished and we’ve carried on ever since. And of course as the men have joined [the regiment] they’ve joined the Old Comrades’ Association as the years have gone by. Now they’re infantry you know. What are they called – The Leicestershire Yeomanry Company? Is it the 1st Battalion, The Anglian Regiment?

PN:
Tell me, how do you come to be in the trenches if you are Yeomen with horses?

TH:
We had to leave the horses behind, we had to go dismounted. There was so many taken from each brigade. On 13th May we went in two hundred and some odd strong. Then there was the 1st and 2nd Lifeguards on our left and they’d be about the same strength. On our right was the Dragoons, also the cavalry and they’d be about the same strength.

PN:
Did you go into battle ever on the horses?

TH:
Never. Oh, the latter part of the war when the Germans were retiring we did some patrolling in front of the infantry. I had a pal, his horse was shot under him. It fell down and broke his leg and the Germans grabbed him and he was prisoner for some weeks before he was released at the end of the war. That was getting towards the end of 1918. It finished on the 11th. We used to patrol in front of the infantry and then at night we’d come back and the infantry would take over the front. The next morning we’d go out again, trying to find where the enemy had got to.

PN:
What was Loughborough like when you left for France? Was everybody patriotic and waving flags?

TH:
No, no, no. We went off quietly, no bother. We just paraded in Loughborough market and marched away. There may have been a few people around but I don’t remember any particular goings on.

I only had four leaves altogether except when I came home wounded. The first one was seventy two hours. That was in 1915. I think I crossed the Channel ten times. I lived at Quorn then.

PN:
Did you ever play Crown and Anchor?

TH:
No, I never did because I didn’t gamble, but lots of my pals did. It was a ridiculous game. There were just one or two Jew boys that ran it. They were the only people who got any benefit I’m sure. They weren’t having me on that game.

PN:
How did you spend your money?

TH:
We hadn’t got much money to spend, we only got a shilling a day. I’ve got my pay book somewhere. When you were in billets you’d perhaps go back into the village. The French beer wasn’t that much cop and I was never a beer drinker. You got eggs and got them to fry them for you but we never had much money to spend and not many places to spend it.

[1] From Soldiers Died: Private 2081 Frank Cuthbert White, B Squadron [Leicester], son of George and Mary Ann White of Rose Cottage, Quorn, Loughborough and Private 2589 Matthew Henry Hickling, C Squadron son of the late Matthew and Mary Blanche Hickling of Syston, Leicester. Both killed on 13th May 1915 and both commemorated on panel 5 of the Menin Gate.

Chelmsford's Old Contemptibles

Chelmsford in Essex, England, is my home town. I was born there and spent most of my life there, and it was in Chelmsford and its surrounding villages that I conducted the majority of my interviews with the veterans of WW1.

The photograph above originally appeared with an article headlined, The Last of the Few, in the Chelmsford & Essex Chronicle on Friday 19th November 1971. The seven Great War veterans, photographed on Remembrance Sunday that year, had just paraded their Old Contemptibles' standard for the last time. The men stressed that they were not disbanding, but with their numbers down to ten, they felt that it was the right time to call time on parading.

I met Stan Brown, pictured far right, ten years after this photograph was taken, and when I met him he was one of two surviving members of the Chelmsford Old Contemptibles' Association. Formed in 1928, at its peak the branch could count over 300. The men of 1914-1918 appearing in this photograph are, from left to right:

Charles (Charlie) Brand, Secretary OCA Chelmsford Branch, aged 82 (formerly M/29770 Army Service Corps)
George Balaam, aged 85 (formerly 8634, 2nd Essex Regiment)
Henry (Harry) A May, President OCA Chelmsford Branch (formerly 967, later 534022, 10th Royal Hussars)
Guy Hobday, aged 77 (formerly 16700 2nd Grenadier Guards)
Arthur Diggens, aged 78 (WW1 service unknown)
Albert George Cass, aged 86 (formerly T/20548 Army Service Corps)
David Stanley Brown, aged 75 (formerly 9732 1st Leicestershire Regiment and 32526 2nd South Staffordshire Regiment)

Service records for Stan Brown (who joined up in 1913) and Albert Cass (who joined up in 1903), survive in the WO 364 (Pension) series at the National Archives. Their records can also be viewed on line via Ancestry.co.uk which is currently offering a FREE 14 day trial.

The Chelmsford OCA wound up as a branch in 1977 and Stan Brown, of whom you can read more by clicking on his name, was the last of the Chelmsford Old Contemptibles to fade away. He died in 1987.

4966 Sgt Alfred E Worrell, 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards

In January 1982 I interviewed six First World War veterans at the Royal Hospital Chelsea. Alf Worrell was the first man I was introduced to. A regular soldier who had joined the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards in the autumn of 1910, Alfred was on horseback in France within a few days of the 1914-1918 war being declared. This is his description of those early days.

"On August 4th 1914 until 24th August 1914, an army of 75,000 men, with all their equipment was shipped from England over to Belgium and they actually started fighting on the 22nd August 1914. That was when the first shot was fired and that shot was fired by the big drummer of my regiment.

"He was the man who fired the first shot and I was in one of the scouting parties that helped to find the advance guard of the German Army at a little place called Casteau about three miles to the north east of Mons. That was on the 22nd August.

"We then had the 5th Division which consisted of all these infantry battalions. Between the 22nd and the 24th they’d come up from down country by train most of them, and marching, and they’d got in position by the morning of the 24th. But by that time, where we’d got somewhere around the region of about 50,000 up along the front, the Jerry had got there with 400,000 and he had got everything right up in the front; big guns and everything. And also he’d got nearly another civilian army at the back of us which was known as the 5th Army; the German 5th Army, all civilians. Well as we moved they moved and within twenty four hours he got us moving, driving us back.

"But, as British soldiers there was one god that we had and that was the Sam Browne belt which was worn by officers only. And where we saw a Sam Browne belt we rallied round him and there wasn’t one English officer that had got a full complete unit of his own men.

"We retired and we fell back and we had our first real rest around St Quentin because the Jerry was running around. But we retired back again from St Quentin to within eighteen kilometres of Paris. Then we had our first wash since we started. Some of the poor old infantry had got no boots on their feet but we equipped and in six days we turned around and fought him back. It took him five weeks to send us but we sent him back in six."

The photograph at the head of this post shows Alfred Worrell, right, in his Chelsea Penisoner scarlet coat, standing next to fellow Chelsea Pensioner Charles Quinnell at the Menin Gate. The photo appears in Before Endeavours Fade by Rose Coombs.

36061 Bombardier Leonard Sadler Gifford, Royal Horse Artillery

Leonard Sadler Gifford - synopsis

When I interviewed him in October 1981, Len Gifford was a lively 93 year old, living quietly in Essex with his wife. Born in Chelmsford, Essex on 27th April 1888, Len had joined the Royal Horse Artilley on 14th February 1905 and was serving overseas when Britain went to war in 1914.

He was a founder member of the RHA Association in the 1920s and at the time I met him, was its oldest member. He died on 30th July 1986 at the age of 98.


The interview

LSG:
At the outbreak of the First World War, I was serving in the Royal Horse Artillery in Aby…[unclear], Cairo and of course, naturally enough, we was all bursting to go to the war, but we had to wait to be relieved by the Territorials and we was not got to France until the first week of December 1914.

So we missed the first three months but we carried on and our first attack was at Neuve Chapelle on March the 10th 1915 when we was told that [it] would soon be over. We kept on from there, to Aubers Ridge, two battles at Festubert 1915, then we went to Loos which was a disaster. We was galloped into action – the only battery that was galloped into action in the 1914 war. We had rather a lot of casualties. My friend alongside me got knocked out, my horse was wounded but carried us into action. But that turned out a disaster, Loos did. It was just like the footballers coming out… down Hulloch Road was like coming out of White Hart Lane and they had a machine gun on Tower Bridge; a machine gun as we was coming down. That was Loos.

Well from there we went out to rest for the Christmas and then we went up on the Somme in March and we stuck there practising firing, firing everywhere. And that was going to be the end of the war we was led to [believe]. But that turned out not very successful.

And then we kept on. We lost ever so many casualties. I can’t tell you how many because they was soon news. We went out of action and went again in action. When the tanks first went over they were alongside of our guns to go further over. That was in September 1916.

Well then the South African Division came up. I never see a more smart lot of men in all my life: a whole division; all new clothes [and] had never been in action before. And they was practically wiped out at Devil Wood because we went up in Devil Wood, in front of Devil Wood. And the rain come on, and that did rain and no wheeled traffic could get up. They used to bring our rations up on pack horses. It was absolutely awful. It took six men to carry [a wounded man] a couple of miles through Devil Wood to the dressing station. That’s the truth, that was very bad.

Well we come out, had rest and we went back to action again, two days before Christmas. And we stuck it and we made a big attack in 1917. They took Beaumont Hamel.

Well we kept on from there. 1917 we went on Hill 60. They blew that up and we fired more rounds there than ever we did anywhere. Our guns were so hot you couldn’t open the breech. You couldn’t hold them. You used to pour water down the muzzle. And our drivers, we had a lot of them killed. They was bringing up ammunition because we kept firing every night, using hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and they had to be replaced and they come up in the dark. Well Jerry used to shell all these roads and there was a lot killed. We use to go out in the morning and see horses laying there… lovely day in June, beautiful weather. And the day that was blowed up [before] the attack, you thought the world had come to an end, when they blew up Hill 60.

Then we went to Arras. Arras before that, yes. Hill 60, then Arras with the Easter, that’s right. Arras was on the Easter 1917. They brought the cavalry up, then the rain come on, the snow come on.

Well then after that we went up to Pilkelm Ridge in Belgium, Passchendaele. That was a worse disaster still. They was up knee deep in water to make that attack at Passchendaele and he knocked out every battery we could see. He knocked ours out. And when he started shelling, our major says, “Go either the front or the back and let him shell the battery” which he did do. He put in two or three hundred rounds and then leave off. Well night time we took them out, took them down to the ordnance workshop and they was all repaired. Come back, stuck it there for some time, terrible weather, had an order to move. We went to Italy. We had Christmas in Italy up on the Piave.

Well it was practically finished, there was no fighting there. They got to come over the Piave or we got to go over the Piave. Well we stuck it there until the Germans broke through in March 1918. Course we heard all about that and then, “Come on, we all got to go back to France again.”

And see what we’d lost. You know, what we’d fought hard for was got easy. Of course then we got lectures again, we’re going to make a final attack. Blokes said the same old story I expect. Well that was the last and we kept on and we never stopped. We kept going up, right up into Mons, everywhere. They sent for me one day, one morning. “Gifford, I want you to go down to the Third Army School of Artillery. You’ve got to be there and learn what we’re going to do in the spring. If you don’t want to go, say so.” Well I said, I could with a rest and the bloke said well if you leave the battery the war will end and it did in a fortnight’s time. They was going to give me a commission but I didn’t want it.

The war ended and I come back and marched right into Germany. Yes, that’s all I can say about the end of the war. And I stuck it ‘til 1919. We was right up the other side of Cologne, thirty two miles from Cologne, in the forest. We used to go out shooting. Our officers used to send their beaters out. [Laughs]. Yes, deer and wild pig we got up there. Course, all I was worried about, I wanted to come and get married and they said, “No, no, it ain’t your turn yet, ain’t your turn yet.” I wasn’t demobilized until 1919.

The infantry suffered more in the war than anybody. The casualties, we was informed, when they went over the top, fifty per cent was not heavy casualties. I guarantee you, I can say now, I don’t believe you can a find a man who went over the top more than three times. I don’t expect you can find one. Regiments went down… at Loos they laid on the barbed wire like washing on the line and on The Somme, just like washing on the line. At Devil Wood the South Africans laid in their thousands.

A lot of people don’t know that the South African Division was practically wiped out and they never made them up no more. But the trenches in the winter was worse. Well we know this, that the other side was just as bad as ours. Got me? Cause the first Christmas, we was there when the Germans come over the top and shook hands with us, on the Christmas 1914. On the next Christmas they said there would be no fraternizing so on Christmas morning we had to fire rounds. Yes, we was in action, we had to fire rounds.

The infantryman suffered more than anybody else in the army. That was terrible. I remember reading in the paper that one regiment - I think it was the East Yorks – that in one road, every house had lost a man. That’s the truth and I guarantee you that thousands on the Somme, the cream of England, I can tell you the cream of England was killed. They’d been trained when the war broke out, trained to do all this, never went in action before. They went straight there and regiments was wiped out completely. Take the Middlesex Regiment; I see their memorial the other day. Nine hundred and some other officers killed. You take that. Nine hundred and some officers! Nothing to do with men. People don’t realise it. I’ll say this, London in the next war suffered bad. You know, the Blitz in London. That was worse than being in the trenches.

The first Christmas dinner we had bully beef. We had a bit of pudding and that’s the cigarettes from Princess [Alexandra]. I expect you’ve seen plenty of them aint you? Well the next Christmas, 1915, we come out of action from Loos and the next one on the Somme. 1917 we was in Italy and that Christmas Day, we was in action and their aircraft raided us. They dropped bombs all round us. But otherwise we never had many casualties in Italy. We never done nothing. We had to come back to France. The Piave stopped them. They thought they was coming right through but we went out there and that held them.

1914 Christmas morning we was in action at a place called Sailly le Seine [?] and our trenches was not a mile away. Our observing party – our officers who observed the guns – told us about these Germans coming over and fraternizing and they was quite jolly, and they could speak English, a lot of these Germans. They told them that they was waiters in London, some of them. Course, they was called up on the Reserve, same as our people. But after that they allowed no more fraternizing on Christmas, they said that wasn’t fair.

Well when we marched into Germany, the first place I went into Germany after the war, the first house there was a man and his wife and four children and they had to take the carpets up. I said, roll the carpets up. We stuck there and that was on Christmas Eve 1918. Course we come out and our major said our Christmas dinner is on the way, on the rail. We stuck there for a week. What about the Christmas dinners? No, we never had one. Well they said that the train drivers went on strike. They said they enlisted during the war to fight the war and they wanted their discharge and we never got hardly any rations up there in Germany for the simple reason of getting the stuff up there. They said that they wanted their tickets, to get out of the army. Whether that was the truth or not I don’t know but that’s what we was told. That’s what our officers told us and we went short of rations and everything for a long while. We was right up in the front as far as we could get and we stuck it there. So we never did have a Christmas dinner. That’s the worse Christmas we ever had, the 1918 one. The others were pretty good. The one in 1917 we had plenty of poultry we had in Italy. Cor, thousands. We paid for them.

I turned out, we had arguments before we left, when war broke out. We’d been soldiering together for years and I said well I’m going to stop with Number 6 gun. I’d been eight years service in India and Egypt with it and I knew it. They said oh no and I said well I’m going to stick it. Other chaps left, got promotion, killed, everything. I still stuck it and I stuck it right through the war. I said I was a fatalist, I don’t know if it was right or not but there it is. Whether there’s anything in it, I’m here. The gun, a couple of times, was hit but we got away with it. The chap sitting behind me, number four, was killed behind me. A shell burst and knocked him out and killed the number one, the sergeant. Two sergeants I had killed, number ones, alongside of me, as close as this. Shell come over, hit him, he died with loss of blood. Well I was lucky. I got fed up seeing these people go and wondering when it was going to be your turn. You don’t get better.

The longer the war lasted, the worse you got with fear. So I had people saying I was brave, I don’t mind saying I was wind up; got wind up [and] every year got worse for the simple reason what you’ve seen done. That’s all it is, not bravery or anything in it.

2120 Pte Leslie Andrew Hase, 9th (County of London) Battalion, The London Regiment (Queen Victoria's Rifles)

Leslie Andrew Hase - synopsis

Leslie Hase volunteered with the 9th (County of London) Battalion, The London Regiment, (Queen Victoria's Rifles) on 8th August 1914 and by November of that year he was in France. He served with the 9th Londons until severely wounded on the Somme on 1st July 1916

I interviewed Leslie Hase at The Royal Star & Garter Home in Richmond on 6th November 1988 and although we corresponded after that date, I never met him again. He died in Richmond in January 1990 aged 95.

Four pages of Leslie Hase's army service record survive in the pension series - WO 364 - at The National Archives in Kew, West London. They are also on-line via the Ancestry website. For further information on army service numbers in the 9th Londons, visit my Army Service Numbers 1881-1918 blog.



The interview

PN:
[What is] your name please?

LAH:
Leslie Andrew Hase. Well that’s a very unusual name because nearly everybody else with that name spells it H A Y E S. My name is spelt H A S E and we all come from East Dereham, Norfolk.

PN:
When were you born Mr Hase?

LAH:
1895. That was the year when the Thames froze over for the first time. They had wagons and [unclear] on the Thames at London Bridge. Did you know that? January 1895. That was the year I was born and I’ve been cold ever since.

PN:
You weren’t born in the January though were you?

LAH:
Yes I was born in the January and there was thirteen or fourteen feet of snow.

PN:
Were you born in Norfolk?

LAH:
No, I was born in Blackheath.

PN:
Oh yes, it’s still a nice area.

LAH:
Very nice area and of course, my father had a big house. We had servants and he was an accountant. He had a big house alright and of course he needed it with seven boys and three girls. That’s twelve sitting down for a meal each day. I’ve only just lost my young brother who was in the Queen Victoria Rifles same as mine[1]. QVRs.

PN:
When did you join the army then Mr Hase?

LAH:
War broke out on the 4th August and I joined up on the 8th, four days after.

PN:
Were you in the Territorials?

LAH:
No I wasn’t, I wasn’t at all. We were just nuts all of us, of course.

PN:
Why did you join up?

LAH:
Well because everybody else was joining up. We all thought it was going to be over next Christmas.

PN:
Did you join up with some pals?

LAH:
Well of course we all had friends. I really wanted to join the HAC. I tried them first, they were the nearest to me, but they were full up. I couldn’t wait four days, couldn’t wait, I thought it might be over. How ridiculous you can be.

PN:
So then you joined the Queen Victoria Rifles.

LAH:
Yes that’s right.

PN:
Which battalion?

LAH:
The 1st Battalion. They were all trained practically when war broke out. They had a few vacancies, just a few, and I got into them and I got shipped out to Ypres before Christmas. I am entitled to that medal.[2]

PN:
Which division were you part of then?

LAH:
5th Division.

PN:
Which brigade?

LAH:
13th Brigade.

PN:
So who else did you have in your brigade? Was it other rifle battalions?

LAH:
Oh yes, there was the Duke of Wellingtons, King’s Own Scottish Borderers, and then Royal West Kent.

PN:
You were shoved out there pretty quickly then weren’t you?

LAH:
Yes absolutely. I hadn’t fired a rifle in England because I was taken down with scarlet fever to my astonishment. I was as fit as a fiddle, absolutely, and yet by putting somebody’s uniform on I got scarlet fever. It came from that you see. And of course, they put me in hospital for six or eight weeks and then on top of that I went back to join the regiment and I didn’t have time to fire a rifle. First time I fired a rifle was in Havre once we got out there.

PN:
So did you go out there with a draft?

LAH:
No, I went out with the whole battalion, not a draft, the original battalion.

PN:
Whereabouts did you train in England?

LAH:
Well I didn’t have time for any training at all. I think once we fired a rifle on the course but that was only one day and the next thing we were in action.

PN:
Where did you first go into the line?

LAH:
Ypres. Messines. I was at Hill 60 and over the Yser Canal. I was in the first gas attack in 1915. By that time I’d done all the fighting at Messines there was going on.

PN:
What was your rank?

LAH:
Rifleman.

PN:
Do you remember your number still?

LAH:
2120.

PN:
On Christmas Day 1914…

LAH:
Oh yes, I was in that[3].

PN:
Were you?

LAH:
Yes, I was in that show. I tell you what actually happened. They started with the people in this regiment. They weren’t ordinary Prussian Guards they were just Silesian troops I think and being Christmas they started singing carols; very, very nicely indeed. And so of course we said, [clapping his hands], bravo, bravo, well done Fritz and all that sort of thing. And before you know where you were somebody was half out and it didn’t want much encouragement. And then we showed each other photographs of our various sweethearts and one thing or the other. And somebody brought a football out and then we got on with this talking and then we gave some concert, singing, but it wasn’t so well as the Germans. They were very, very good. They did Silent Night.

PN:
Which part of the line were you in then on Christmas Day?

LAH:
Well the trenches were absolutely half full of water. Terrible really. And just after Christmas I got frostbite on the corners of my ears and I couldn’t get my shoes off. I had to go sick for a few days because of this. It really, really was terrible.

PN:
How long did the truce last?

LAH:
Well you see in no time at all it was broken up by a battery. Somebody said, “Oh, they’re shaking hands with each other, we’ve got to stop all this.” So they blew down the line to the artillery to [send over] a few rounds of shells and everybody scattered back in.

PN:
And you actually had a football match with them did you?

LAH:
Well, kicking the ball around.

PN:
Don’t you think that’s amazing, thinking back?

LAH:
Well I think it was absolutely amazing but of course you wouldn’t have got that from Prussian Guards. The German soldier was almost as good as the British soldier. For training, ‘course we were all better trained. But they had to be about ten to one laden in their favour. Course they were well backed up all the time but if it came to a hand to hand fight you needn’t think the Prussian Guard would run away. He wouldn’t, nor would our chap.

PN:
No, I think our regular army was possibly the best in the world but as you say it was only a small army.

LAH:
Contemptible Little Army.

PN:
Did you exchange cigars or cigarettes with the Silesians?

LAH:
Well I don’t think that we had much at the time to exchange with. Whatever we had we’d give them, cigarettes or something like that but not cigars. No, we hadn’t got to that stage. This was the very first year you know.

LAH:
Have a look at that [showing PN his leg].

PN:
Yes, that’s nasty isn’t it?

LAH:
Well that was a 1916 wound and I had gas gangrene. When I was taken away on the stretcher, number one they dropped me from the stretcher down below onto the ground and I called them all… well, you can imagine. But poor devils, we’d been shelled all the way back ad I had to crawl back a mile and a half to find a stretcher and it was full of people going up! I was going back and they were coming forward.

PN:
You were lucky not to lose your leg weren’t you, if you had gas gangrene?

LAH:
My dear boy I owe my life to this doctor and I never found out his name. He was a Canadian major and that’s all I know. He would have been older than me of course. But there were four doctors round my bed and I could hear them talking. They wanted to amputate, four out of five. And the fifth one who was the senior major, I owe my leg to him. Marvellous, look what I’ve done on it since all those years. I mean, you wouldn’t be alive today – my age, 93 – if you’d had an amputation. Gradually go down hill, but look what I’ve been able to do. I’ve been a great swimmer, been swimming all my life.

PN:
Which part of the Somme was that?

LAH:
Gommecourt. That’s where I got actually wounded, there.

PN:
Has it given you trouble since then?

LAH:
Well, odd times yes but on the whole, marvellous. Even my doctors think I’m incredible. I’ve been living alone; I married again when I was 78 having lost my wife, because I didn’t want to be alone. My dearest friend died and I married his widow. Anyhow, she died after two years. She lost her memory unfortunately. That’s pretty sad. It was awful really.

PN:
Did you never apply for a commission in the army?

LAH:
I did my boy, I was granted commission in those early years. Colonel Dickins – who was Dickins and Jones – who was the colonel of the Queen Victoria Rifles, called me into his hut one day because he thought I had the raw materials. Course, we were all from the City you know, I was really an importer and I had qualifications. Pretty well he could have let the whole regiment go. He couldn’t let everybody go but he did what he could. Anyhow, I was supposed to be sent home to get my commission and then leave was stopped just because of this battle of the Somme. So I was knocked out as a Tommy.

PN:
Was that the end of your war after you were wounded on the Somme?

LAH:
Oh yes, I didn’t go back. It was too long clearing up unfortunately. I had an awful time with my leg.

PN:
Were you wounded going over the top? Advancing?

LAH:
I hadn’t really started off. A shell came over and hit about half a dozen in one little clump and a great friend of mine got a piece that went straight into his guts and I knew that with all that iron mongery inside him it was hopeless. But mine was a cushy one embedded in the bone.

PN:
It’s a painful place to be hit isn’t it, in the shin?

LAH:
Shocking, and then the go and drop you from a bloody stretcher. I know they were being shelled and they’d all got the wind up.

PN:
Was that the 1st of July?

LAH:
1st of July. I got in that field and one thing I cannot stand is the heat. And it was a hot day from the time we got up. The sun came out and we were all dumped in this damn great big field, Germans as well. Once the battle started you soon got casualties coming in from all over the show. I had a German laying alongside me and he was knocking me and saying could I give him a drink of water. Poor devil of course I gave him a drink of water, I’d got a bottle full, and he was terribly thirsty. After that, it was awful. I’d just got a field dressing on and eventually, until they took me away I had gone right the way from dawn - three or four o’clock in the morning, that time, right ‘til the evening before they came to take me away on stretcher and put me into a train.

[We] went to the coast to Le Treport and the engine was shunting and shunting and every time it moved it was murder, agony with this piece of metal inside shifting out of this hole. That’s when they got me into this thing [ward] and there were the four of them [the doctors] in this hall. They didn’t think I could hear them, but I knew. I was very conscious of everything that was going on around me and I listened carefully and heard them say. I didn’t know what they meant by making incisions in my leg, but they did[4].

PN:
Did you take part in the Battle of Loos as well?

LAH:
No. I had a brother that was wounded. As a matter of fact there were three[5]. One brother in the Queen Victoria Rifles, they asked him to join up about a year after me and he joined our regiment so as that we might possibly meet up at some time or other but we never did. He was badly wounded but it was only two years ago he died. He was the last of my brothers but we did pretty well; good stock. We lived in moderation. I like everything; very good food and wine and I’ve smoked a pipe for 72 years, what about that? That can’t be bad. But everything in moderation. I’ve been in the hotel business and had plenty of good food and enjoyed it all.

PN:
I know you’re anxious to get away but could you tell me briefly about the gas attack in 1915.

LAH:
Yes I can tell you briefly about that because you’ve got to remember this: we hadn’t a respirator of any kind. Once you’d got a good dose of that boy, it was curtains. I was lucky again I think because… I’d only got an ordinary pocket handkerchief and you wetted that and had that, well it couldn’t have been any strength at all. It’s a horrible thing it’s phosgene gas – green and all sorts of things. I can only put it down to the fact that I didn’t get a very heavy dose. I’m sure of it, I know it.

PN:
There’s a chap in the home who was on the gas squad in the Engineers. And he was gassed quite badly himself by mustard gas.

LAH: I didn’t think I got my due desserts from the war office over the gas attack but I didn’t pursue it because I couldn’t prove it.

PN:
Did you find employment easily enough after you came back from the war?

LAH:
Well fortunately no, on neither occasion, but I’ve always been a director of something or other. No, but what annoyed me I was ruined with my particular business which was an importer. And on each occasion I’ve had to buy something to tied me over, like a hotel.

PN:
Which company were you in in the QVR?

LAH:
C Company.

PN:
Do you remember the name of your commanding officer or any officers in your company?

LAH:
I think I’ve forgotten them now. I could if I thought about it a bit.

Interview End


[1] Percy Cameron Hase, born 9 Mar 1896, died Apr 1984 in Thanet, Kent. Served as 6047 Pte in QVR. Service record survives in WO 363.
[2] The 1914 Star and clasp.
[3] I have found no reference elsewhere to the QVRs being involved in the famous Christmas truce.
[4] From service record, LAH remained in France until 5th July 1916 but is then recorded as being at Home from the 6th. GSW leg 1st July 1916 is noted.
[5] Besides Percy Cameron Hase, 10315 Leonard Algernon Hase joined the Royal Fusiliers on 5th December 1914 and was discharged on 19th June 1917. His service record survives in WO 364. There is also a Reginald Hase who joined the ASC in November 1915 (probably under the Derby Scheme) and this may or may not be another brother. Remarkably, his service record also survives in WO 363.

9814 Pte Harry Toplis Bardsley, 18th Manchester Regiment

Harry Bardsley - synopsis

9814 Private Harry Toplis Bardsley served with the 18th (3rd City) Battalion, The Manchester Regiment. He was born on 16th December 1893 and was working as a salesman for William Briggs and Co in Manchester when was was declared. He attested on 4th September 1914 and served virtually throughout the First World War until a bullet in his thigh finished his service in October 1918. By then he'd transferred to the 21st Manchesters and must have been one of only a few original Manchester Pals still in khaki. The photo of him (above), was taken shortly after he joined up in 1914.

Harry was one of the first Great War veterans that I interviewed. I met him in September 1981 and visited him regularly until his death in November 1982. The transcript below is taken from the recording I made in 1981.

1914-1915
I went to The White City; a pleasure ground which they called The White City. It were all in white and they’d got a boating lake and a ballroom and all these kind of things and we were stationed there. The ballroom was partitioned into sections of sixteen, that was a platoon. In this ballroom there was a company there and the sergeant-major, he had his place in the centre by our lights, you see lights was off at half past ten. The sergeant-major used to walk round shouting out to be quiet because some used to snore very loud.

For supper we got meat pies. Well, a lot of us didn’t eat them and over the sergeant-major’s sleeping quarters there was a rack where we used to throw these meat pies. He put wire netting over but that didn’t keep them out so he had to have it boarded up.

So we were there and it was quite good training. Of course, we were all raw. The regimental sergeant-major and all the sergeants and sergeant-jajors were Boer War veterans and had been in the army because it wasn’t that long after the Boer War really. You’d be drilling, the sixteen of you, and he’d come round and he had a terrific voice. If he shouted, you could hear him a couple of hundred yards away. He’d come out behind some trees and scare the life out of us. Anyway, it knocked us into shape.

There was a kind of winter gardens which was used as a lecture hall; it was a huge place. Well at night, chaps would be sitting there with girls in this place in darkness and one night the colonel and regimental sergeant-major came in and switched all the lights on. Of course, there was a bit of trouble about that.

Anyway, we moved from there to Grantham, to Belton Park which was the home of Lord Brownlow. It was a huge park. Well, there were four thousand of us there in huts. [1] It was a huge place and it was quite pleasant there. I got in trouble there with the sergeant-major. He said something and I made a rude noise and he had me up in the Company Office. Well the captain asked the sergeant what the charge was. He replied that I’d made a rude noise. He said, well what was the noise? Well he couldn’t do it, he kept trying but he couldn’t. Anyway they didn’t proceed and I got let off but the sergeant-major had it in for me after that.

Well then they asked if there was anyone that could ride as they were forming a transport section. Well I could ride; I used to go to a farm so I put in for this transport. So we had to go to Grantham station to collect these mules which were coming direct from the Argentine; they were wild. We were supposed to get two alike to form a pair and bring them back. Well, you couldn’t get these things. They were running wild round Belton Park. So for a fortnight we had rodeos, going round after these things, rounding them up. Well I got two and you had to get one that would ride., you had to train it. None of them would ride. If you got close to they’d kick. Anyway, after about ten days I could sit on it and shortly after that, after we got these things, we went on a journey of about seven miles, not with a saddle but a saddle blanket. Well imagine. Fourteen miles! When I got back I couldn’t walk, I was so sore. Well I managed to get down to Grantham and I went to a chemist’s shop and bought a tin of Vaseline and borrasic powder. Eventually you hardened up. For years and years you were riding about four to six hours a day so you got very hard and you could sit on a razor and not feel it.

And then from there we did a lot of training there. We went round about meeting other battalions and brigades and then we went to Salisbury Plain. I was stationed near Stonehenge; I could see Stonehenge from my hut.

We went out one night [and] you had to follow your way by stars. You were taken so far away and I’d got a half a limber, two mules (riding one) and a brakesman and you had to follow these stars to get back to where you’d started from you see. Well, I took the wrong turn and when it came dawn I was miles away. Anyway, I managed to get back. We also had mock battles there. You took your mules out of the limber and you gave one to your brakesman to lead; they were carrying ammunition. I gave him the one that could have a pack saddle and the one I took which was the one that was carrying the empty cartridge cases, started bucking and took off. I had it on a rein you know. I wasn’t riding, it took off. I went right through the front line to the enemy and still holding on. Anyway, I got in a bit of bother about that. I should have let it go. Anyway, we trained quite well there and eventually we went to France in November 1915.

On the 8th November 1915 we went to Boulogne and were there a day or two and then went up the line the following day to Pont Remy. We got up there and we were in tents when they started shelling and we took refuge in the tents! [Laughs]. You know, we were rookies.

And then we spent the 11th December up until the 22nd in the line and the mud it came up to your knees. To mount, to get on the mule you had to walk along the pole between the mules, the pole attached to the limber. Otherwise you couldn’t mount, your feet sank down. The mud was terrible, gluey mud. ‘Course, they’d had a lot of rain and it was a very very wet winter.

At Christmas time we were at a place called Canaples. We went there on 22nd December and were there till the 2nd of January. Well, I managed to get an out-building to put the mules in. It had a roof but the walls were wattle, wattle and straw. Well, I put them in, it was dark when we got there and I went in the morning to see them - feed them - and when I got up they’d eaten a big hole in the wall. Of course, they’d eat anything you see. I had to pay for that. I had it docked out of my pay which wasn’t so damned much.

We moved on the 2nd of January and the trouble was our Christmas parcels hadn’t arrived. They arrived the day we were moving. Well I was alright, I’d had a lot of parcels for the chaps in the infantry. I’d carried a lot for them but it was terrible mis-management. Anyway, we moved from there up the line to the Somme on the 4th of January. The Somme was wide but a lot of swamps and the natives there could work their way across these swamps to get to the other side where the Germans were. We were there from the 4th until March 1916 and then we came down the line and were back there by May.

We were at a place called Bray and to pull the cookers they had big draught shire horses. Well one of the drivers got killed by a shell and this pair of horses hadn’t been out for about a fortnight. Well they needed a lot of work so I said I’d go up the line when it was dark. There were seven bodies put in sacks who’d been killed by mortar fire so I went up with half a limber weighing a few hundred weight with these two big horses which weighed about a ton each. Well, it was only about four miles. I went up and got these [bodies] and coming back it was downhill. Well a shell dropped and they set off. I couldn’t stop them, a couple of tons and I was bringing these bodies back. Anyway, I managed to get them under control. Well they got another chap to drive this cooker with these horses but it was a shame having beautiful shire horses out there.

Another time we were up there we fixed up a water pump to have a shower. Anyway, we’d just started when the Germans spotted us and started up a machine-gun on us. We left all our clothes there and started running. It was just a sideline; you didn’t think much about it at the time.

The Battle of the Somme – July 1916
After a month there we came out to practice for the Battle of the Somme. We had rehearsals for and we linked up with the French. We were on the right hand side of the British Army. Our objective was about a thousand yards, that was all. Well they knew we were coming and our guns were wheel to wheel, you never heard such a bombardment. The small eighteen-pounders and then back to the big ones and they were wheel to wheel. And the French didn’t go the same time we did. Our chaps went over and of course they lost hundreds in the first hour. It was no gain really, a thousand yards was nothing at all. [2]

I didn’t go over the top on 1st July because I was with the transport, taking bombs and ammunition up. What we used to do with the transport was you had a brakesman because you daren’t get off your mules because if you did, with the gun-fire they’d have turned back. So you sat on and you were right up there with everyone taking cover.

In August we came down the line to get a full complement again and to train and then we went up in the line again to a place called La Bassee where the famous canal is. We were up in there for a month and then we came out for a rest and we went up the line again to Fricourt and Albert. This was the 15th of October, another battle.

Now when I first went out, this is going back, for the first few months there was one tin hat between ten men. And the guns, they were in fours, the sixty-pounders, they used to fire one shell each in the morning at dawn and one each at dusk. That was 1915. Then of course it was Lloyd George who saw about sorting that out. They got it all ready for the battle of the Somme. We were well equipped, well trained men and intelligent men. They were all volunteers, there were no conscripts in 1916. They were well trained young chaps and they just slaughtered them, hundreds and hundreds of thousands for nothing at all. They’d got machine-guns, all the emplacements, and they just mowed them down.

They had a raw deal. It used to break your heart to see those young schoolboys. They were so eager and then they put them in the trenches. My brother was out a fortnight. He was seventeen and a half, he had a month’s training and in a month he was killed. Just imagine sending them out like that.”[3]

In my lot there were two young chaps, one was 19 and the other was 20. They were both well educated and came from good homes. After the Battle of the Somme where we lost eight out of ten chaps, they came back shell-shocked behind the lines and were charged with desertion. Our Regimental Sergeant Major tried to get them off but it were no good. He was a hardened veteran from the Boer War but he broke down and cried when they were shot… I was a fatalist, you knew it would be your turn soon. I lost all my friends, I didn’t have one, which was the same with most people.

Well I went up one night with a load of bombs and had to wait in a big field until morning. Well, what happened was they started shelling and I got underneath my bombs and they killed both the mules. They didn’t damage the Mills bombs but anyway I was there until they came for me next morning. In the meantime of course, our chaps had come back about five hundred yards. You never saw any Generals. They were well back in palatial headquarters like St Omer and places like that where they had dinner and all the rest of it.

I saw this chap one day; he wasn’t in our lot but I’d met him and we said we’d go for a drink. I said I’d meet him and he was about as far from me as those houses [about fifty to one hundred yards] when a shell came down where he. There was nothing left of him. These kind of things made you a fatalist; you know, you thought if I’d been there.

On our second Christmas out there the forty eight of us in the transport had got our parcels and we said we’d have a party. We’d got a barn with a tiled roof and Christmas Eve we’d got drinks in and we were just sitting down when a very heavy shelling took place so we had to get all the animals out up on the hills. Well the Royal Scots were in the same village, they’d just come back from India[4], and they were a real wild lot, regular soldiers. Well we got there and thought well someone better go back ‘ cause this thing will be raided with the Scots there. So some of us went back and our roof was gone but we were all right and we got no more shelling. So we had our Christmas dinner with the parcels; we all mucked in you see. We put them on the table and everybody shared them and we’d got wine which was only the equivalent of ten pence a bottle.; ten pence a bottle in those days. So we had quite a nice dinner but Christmas Day we were on duty just the same.

1917

I went on a course for skinning horses and mules as we were getting short of leather. Well there were hundreds and hundreds, well thousands of animals with shrapnel and so on and we used to skin them and get the hides if they weren’t too badly [damaged/mutilated] but it was a terrible job. Some of these had perhaps been dead for a week. So I was on that course for six weeks.

Another course I went on was a veterinary course. That was quite interesting, just for about six weeks.

Another thing we used to indulge in was wrestling on horseback. We went in for a competition and we did all right the first time but in the second round we got pitted against the Military police. I weighed just over nine stone but my opponent weighed fourteen stone. As soon as any portion of you touched the ground you were out. Well he got hold of me and I was out in no time. But it was a bit of fun, it all added to the spice you know. ‘Course, it was a miserable existence with the conditions. Food was very scarce and I never slept in a bed except when I came home on leave. Most times you were out in the open and you’d put up a bit of what they called a bivvie sheet and you’d have a groundsheet in the mud and you’d lie in there. Oh the conditions were terrible.

The German dug-outs were very good. They were well constructed and well drained. Well ours had got duckboards but very often the duckboards were afloat. Sometimes you’d go up the line with rations or bombs and such like and you’d bring wounded back. You’d get perhaps eight chaps who couldn’t walk and bring them back out of the line. But it was pitiful to see these young chaps you know. Slaughtered, absolutely slaughtered. ‘Course, we’d no proper Generals, it was just man-power. Not like Montgomery. He went into battle and he saved his men didn’t he, but these chaps, it was just slaughter.

In 1917 we had the Battle of Arras, that was in March. The Germans let us go because the place was a morass. It was very cold and there was a lot of snow and rain that winter and in March. They let us advance about twenty miles through all this mud and our generals fell for it. We were there from the 22nd March till the 23rd April. We were there a month. Then we came back again for a bit of a rest and to be made up again before moving up to Poperinghe, Dickebusche and Ypres on the 4th June.

We were training for the Third Battle of Ypres and the town itself was an absolute shambles, it was just rubble. We were there from 26th July until the 8th August. It was a terrible place there. The ground must have been eight or ten feet deep in mud and the transport used to go up on corduroy roads made from sleepers. We used to go to a place called Hellfire Corner and they’d got it all lined out to an inch for shelling. We used to stop about two hundred yards away ready for a dash and very often you used to get in between the mules on the pole and go up that way, riding at full gallop. If you got off this track there was no hope; wagons and horses just sank. It had been churned up for months and months by shell-fire and the heavy rain and the place was already very low-lying. I used to go up every other night and take it in turns with my pal. I’d go up and I’d leave him my pay book and all my things in case I didn’t come back and he’d do the same and get it all back in the morning. Anyway, we both came through it but it was a hell of a time up there up at Ypres. We kept coming out for rest and then went up there again from September until January and all that time under constant shell-fire.

I saw the first tanks come out in 1917 but they all got bogged down. This was somewhere on the Somme, in the Autumn of 1917. The ground was feet in mud. They couldn’t manage, it were no use at all. To give you an example of how deep the mud was, we were getting some bombs and ammunition because they were short and it took three pairs of mules to pull half a limber weighing eight hundred weight. Normally a man could have done it but it was sunk down so much and it took us a long time to get through. But fancy, six mules to pull a little box like that. That gives you an idea of the mud. They issued gum boots, thigh-length gum boots. Well, if you wanted to mount you left one stuck in the mud; it was very gluey mud.

1918

In 1918 the Germans attacked on the 21st March. It was a very misty morning and they came through. They came between our horse lines and our headquarters. They captured a lot of prisoners and must have come about fifteen miles I suppose. They broke right through and our only thought was about getting the last boat to England. There were a lot of stragglers and people throwing their rifles away but a few miles back there were Staff Officers and MPs with revolvers making everybody go back and line up again. They’d got fields where these chaps were trying to get some semblance of order.

After the retreat I got in a signals school with the 30th Division and I was acting Quartermaster. It was a few miles behind the line and I went there straight away, I didn’t think they’d get that far. There were about ninety men there and I went off to get the rations. On the way back we get to some bushes and the Machine Gun Corps were there. They said, where are you going and I explained and they said, the Germans are there; you could see them. So I’d got this load of rations with me for four days for ninety men and I’d got the bacon with me and we turned round and didn’t know where the hell to go. So we went on a bit and I said, we’ll have some food now. So we sat down at the roadside where it was quiet and had bacon and fried onions. We had all this grub and didn’t know what the devil to do with it, nobody wanted us.

So I wandered about there until the 2nd April when I was transferred to the Americans to help with the fitting up of the transport. They didn’t know anything about the transport and we used to go to Rouen and pick up the animals and the wagons before returning to the line. Then we’d go up the line with the Americans and they’d be there in a very quiet sector for a couple of days and come back covered in mud. They never thought about washing themselves. They’d sit about in this mud and filth for days just to show they’d been up the line.

Another course I went on was for chaps who’d done a bit of service and who the CO thought deserved a bit of a break. I got down to Etaples and there was a Major there from the Dragoon Guards in charge. He had thirty men there and as you got down, the first thing he said was, ‘take your clothes off I’m going to burn them.’ And you got new underclothing because you were lousy you see. And you had a great big feed and then you started riding then over jumps. You could take three horses over jumps and I was there a month, it was like a holiday. He was a wonderful chap this major.

Then I had a month on a shoeing course which was hard work, and then Sunday afternoons behind the lines we’d have a bit of a rodeo. We’d all got mules, one that wouldn’t ride and we used to have a kitty. There was a chap with a stop-watch and the one who stayed on longest, well he’d scooped the prize. There’d be twenty of you and you’d all chip in with two or three francs. Some of these you’d be off before you got on.

I was with the Americans from 8th May until the end of September and in the meantime I’d put in for my commission. I’d been home on leave and got one or two people – a major and a colonel who’d been invalided out – to get my references. Well then I came back and you had to join a battalion for a month. I wasn’t attached to a battalion so I said I’d join the 21st Manchesters; they were in Italy. I thought I’d have a quiet month but I got to Marseilles when they said they were coming back to France. I joined them on the 29th September and got wounded in the October. Another fortnight I’d have been home for the Inns of Court.

I was wounded in the thigh at a place called Beaurevoir and was taken then to Peronne, Rouen, Havre and then home to England.

After the Armistice had been signed I went to the regimental doctor for an examination. When I went into the army I had been 9 stone 4 pounds. By 1918 I was 7 stone. The army doctor said I was fitter than I’d ever been and I told him he was talking out of his hat. I lost my army pension because of it.

[1] “…there were four thousand of us…” There were roughly 1000 men to a Battalion. By the time the 18th Manchesters (The 3rd City Battalion; colloquially known as The 3rd Manchester Pals) had arrived at Belton Park, it was part of the 90th Brigade, 30th Division; along with the 16th, 17th and 19th Manchesters (1st, 2nd and 4th City respectively). The combined battalions totalled approximately 4,000 men. The Division itself was the first of the Pals Divisions. Seven battalions were comprised of men from Manchester, four from Liverpool (89th Brigade)and one from Oldham.

[2] On 1st July 1916, the 30th Division was holding the line just north of Maricourt and took all of its objectives, including the village of Montauban which was the first village to be captured in the battle.

[3] Colin Bardsley is buried in Doullens Communal Cemetery, extension number 2; plot 11, row 15, grave number 21. Mr Bardsley paid many visits to this site and to the old battlefields during his lifetime. I also visited the cemetery in the 1990s and laid a cross on his grave.

[4] 2nd Battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers was a Regular Army battalion which joined the 90th Brigade from the 21st Brigade (7th Division) in exchange for the 19th Manchesters in December 1915. Battalion moved to the 9th (Scottish) Division in April 1918.


Need help with your own First World War research? Drop me a line. I offer a cost effective research service.