Synopsis
I interviewed Horace Plattin at his home in Chelmsford, Essex on 17th September 1985. He was born on 25th September 1897 in Fakenham, Norfolk but moved to Chelmsford when he was six, and later joined the Royal Field Artillery in March 1916. I 'found' him as a result of the article in the Chelmsford & Essex Chronicle (re-produced above) which was published on Friday 13th September 1985. Mr Plattin died in March 1997, six months short of his 100th birthday.
Interview
HHP:
My father knew one of the majors at Number 4 Depot. I joined the signals’ section of the Royal Artillery early in 1916 at Number 4 Depot in Woolwich and after training I went over from there.
From Woolwich I went to the artillery barracks at Shoeburyness and from Shoeburyness I went to Bordon camp, Aldershot and then we went from there to Okehampton where we did a firing course on the moors. I think we came back to Bordon and from there we went overseas.
PN:
So when did you go overseas?
HHP:
That would be the beginning of 1917 although I can’t remember the date.
PN:
So were you training for about nine months or so?
HHP:
Yes. We went from Southampton to Le Havre and had an escort of destroyers because we had a whole brigade of artillery on board; that’s four batteries.
PN:
Can you remember the Brigade you were attached to and the battery you were with?
HHP:
Yes, I was in the 463rd Battery and the 179th Army Brigade, Royal Field Artillery and I was in the signals’ section of that.
We got over to France [and] I remember one of the first engagements was Vimy Ridge where we were attached to the 9th Canadian Division. We were there for some time and then we moved up further until we got to Cambrai. We were there in November 1917 and it was there that I was Mentioned in Dispatches for helping with the wounded under fire. Before the war I was in the British Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment for about two and a half years before I joined the army so I had a first rate knowledge of First Aid. I got my A Class certificate, British Red Cross, and that enabled me to do the First Aid work for the battery.
PN:
Can you explain the circumstances how you came to be Mentioned in Dispatches?
HHP:
I was Mentioned in Dispatches for helping to rescue wounded under shell-fire.
PN:
You were with your battery at this stage?
HHP:
Yes. We crawled out in front of the guns, got the wounded in and bandaged them up before they went to the dressing station, so they didn’t bleed too much.
Then we were on the front right from Cambrai, right through Villers Brettoneux where we were with the Australians and then we came down onto the Somme. We were right down and we joined some of the French forces, I think at Soissons. During that time we were at Amiens, Peronne [and] Lens which was the coal-mining district. We had an observation post in one of the [towers] just in front of the wheels where we used to overlook the German lines.
PN:
Can you tell me what was involved being a signaller with the artillery? What did you have to do?
HHP:
First of all we had to keep communications between the observation post in front and the battery in the rear. When we were at the observation post we used to run line out and have what we called a Don 3 telephone and we used to give the messages over the phone back to the battery to enable the battery to engage the machine gun post or whatever it was that was holding us up.
The observation posts were forward of the guns. Any on rising ground or high buildings we used to get in. At times we were mixed up with infantry but most of the work was transferring the messages back to the battery and brigade headquarters.
The same thing happened in July 1918 because in March 1918 the Germans had a tremendous push and drove us back over forty miles I think. During that time of course, everything got disorganised and we lost all our guns. We took out the breech blocks and the dial sights so they couldn’t use the guns, and took them back with us. We retreated for about three weeks I suppose and then we stood the line and eventually drove him back. That was when I was awarded the MSM, the Meritorious Service Medal.
There were two of our fellas in the battery got the Military Medal and I’m not certain but I have an idea the three of us were recommended for the same thing but two of them got the Military Medal and I was awarded the MSM which wasn’t usually awarded in the field. It used to be awarded to some of these men who’d been in the army about thirty years and had a very good character, that sort of thing. When they came out and joined the Chelsea Pensioners or one of those old concerns they were awarded the MSM. During the war it seemed to be as if it was awarded in place of the MM. With the DCM you had to do something very very special to get it and it was a higher rank of course. It was DCM and then the VC.
PN:
Why were you awarded the medal?
HHP:
For the same reason I was Mentioned in Dispatches, it was for doing First Aid work. The major got to know I knew First Aid having been in the British Red Cross and I had a big haversack of bandages and what have you and I was able to use them to give First Aid to the men who were wounded before they went back to the dressing station to be carried on further. Some were wounded a lot worse than others. Some had tremendous gashes and others got bullets in them. I was very fortunate. I got hit on the elbow with a piece of trench mortar shell which was very near where I was. I have an idea too that the same piece of the shell hit a man not far from me and went right under his tin hat, got in his skull and killed him. So in that respect I was very lucky.
PN:
Hadn’t you considered joining the [Royal Army] Medical Corps in the first instance?
HHP:
I had done but there weren’t any vacancies. I did think about joining the Royal Naval Sick Berth Reserve in the Navy, doing First Aid work aboard ship. However, my father knew one of the majors, Major Laird I think at Woolwich Number 4 Depot and he got in touch with him and he said, bring your son up, I’ll find him a place. And that’s how I joined the artillery.
When the Armistice was signed in November 1918 we were just outside Brussels at a place called Foret. We were out there for some months and then they split the battery up. Some of them went up to the Rhine but I didn’t want to go up there because I wanted to come home and carry on studying. Myself and my old pal Tim Reynolds who’d been with me right throughout the war and who was also a signaller in the battery got a job in an office in Rouen. We went from Brussels to Rouen and we were there for some months and then came over to Wimereux which is the big dispersal area, and from there we came over and were demobilised.
PN:
Taking you back to Vimy Ridge can you remember what your objectives were?
HHP:
We were supporting the 9th Canadian Division I think. Course, this is seventy years ago you know and my memory is not a good as it used to be. We were at the top of the ridge as far as I can remember, and at the bottom there was a big open plain. This was infested all the way across with German machine guns and every time we wet down to try and go over this plan, they opened up with the machine guns and killed quite a lot of people. I think we had an observation post somewhere at the side of the ridge and the whole brigade which was twenty four guns, opened up on these machine guns. We had to wipe these machine guns out as much as we could before we could get over the plain to get forward.
I can’t remember a lot what happened after that. So much happened in such a short time in those days that you just lived from day to day.
PN:
How would you spend a typical day when you weren’t involved in a major offensive?
HHP:
Well we’d just be in the dug-outs. We had dug-outs in the trench and you used to go down steps to some of them. Some of them, when we took the ground, were German dug-outs and they were quite good. Sometimes though, there used to be quite a lot of water and mud in these dug-outs. We put duckboards on the bottom and then we put duckboards up as bunks at the side to lay on.
At Cambrai in 1917 we had a very stiff time there. There as a tremendous amount of mud because it was the wet period. We had a sunken road beside our battery and the tanks came up there because there was a big tank attack. [Of] course, in those days the tanks hadn’t got the two-way radio on. They ran a white tape out and we wondered what this tape was for. Then up came the tanks and they were following this tape.
But the mud there was terrible. In the artillery we used to have those high boots with lace-up and two straps at the top. Then we used to wear leather breeches for riding. In the Second World War they were all taken round in lorries and that kind of thing but in our day the infantry had to walk and we rode horses in the artillery.
But the mud was very very bad at Cambrai in 1917. We used to have liquid mud half way up our boots.
We were also just south of Ypres at Hazebrouk and Cassel and all those places from the top of Ypres right down the line to the bottom of the French line.
Being an army brigade we used to support the various divisions. We were what they called a flying column. We went fro one place to another. As soon as the action was over in one place we moved somewhere else. We were very mobile. I was glad to get home from Wimereux and I think we were demobilised at Purfleet which was somewhere on the Essex coast. As I say, that’s nearly seventy years ago and my memory’s not so good. When you get to be about eighty you won’t remember an awful lot from your younger days.
PN:
Did you come home on leave?
HHP:
Yes, I came home about August or September 1918 because I had that MSM presented by the mayor at the Shire Hall. There wasn’t any public dos on at the time for me to have it presented so I went up to the Shire Hall and the mayor gave it to me. I forget his name now, little short man.
PN:
So you were living here before the war?
HHP:
Oh yes, I’ve been here since 1903.
PN:
So you must have moved from Fakenham when you were only about six then.
HHP:
I was six and my sister was 12 and she’s now 92. She is wonderfully mobile but she got bombed in 1940 up near the police headquarters at Springfield. Her home was bombed and destroyed. A lone plane came over and dropped six bombs and three out of the six went through three different houses and killed Sergeant Oakley’s wife and daughter, and once came through my sister’s house and demolished the house.
As soon as they heard these bombs they dived under the stairs. They had a place there with cushions and pillows and blankets all under the stairs and they tried to get under that and they got trapped by the legs and my sister as been a cripple ever since. She can’t get one foot in front of the other but above the waist she’s been wonderful.[1]
PN:
You didn’t have any brothers in the services then?
HHP:
No, my elder brother was a pharmacist and optician in Nottingham. He died in 1969 and he was about 87 I think when he died. My sister and I are the only two left out of six. All the others have gone.
[End]
Notes
[1] The air raid occurred on Monday 19th August 1940. Bombs landed on Gainsborough Crescent and Kingston Crescent, Chelmsford, demolishing two houses. The three people killed were Sergeant Albert Oakley’s sister Alice Louise Oakley (47) of Brentwood; his wife Ivy Beatrice Oakley (40) and his daughter Gwendoline Marjorie Oakley (10). Horace Plattin’s sister was Audrey East who, with her husband Herbert, was living at Glendros, 3 Kingston Crescent. According to Chelmsford at War 1939-1943, the couple was “badly injured and were to spend months in hospital. However both were to recover and reach good ages; Herbert lived to be 87, whilst Audrey died in 1992 aged 100.”
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