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

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