Synopsis
I have already written here about Donald Banks, and published extracts of my interview with him. That interview runs to 62 pages of A4, and a fairly small typeface. To publish all of that in one chunk now would challenge even the most dedicated WW1 historian, and so I'm going to publish the interview with Mr Banks in stages.
I met Donald Banks many times and I enjoyed his company enormously. Reading these transcripts again, reminds me of pleasant mornings and afternoons spent with him in his house in Great Dunmow, Essex. He was an imposing man, an ex teacher and headmaster who commanded respect and affection in all those who were privileged to know him. He also had a beautiful Lincolnshire accent, which I remember well, but which unfortunately does not come across in these reminiscences. The interviews were conducted over four days in December 1986 and January 1987.
Interview - Part 1 (for Part 2 click HERE)
PCN:
What's your name please?
DB:
My name is Donald Banks.
PCN:
And when were you born?
DB:
On the 9th of January 1899 at Wragby, which is in county Lindsey, the north part of Lincolnshire where my father was headmaster of the school.
PCN:
And what was your trade before you joined up?
DB:
I had just left the Lincoln Technical School and started as an apprentice to a chemist - P.J. Watson, The Bail, Lincoln. I went with one or two others to the drill hall of the headquarters of the territorial army of the Lincolnshire Regiment and gave my age as nineteen - although I was only sixteen - and I was accepted. This was February the 7th 1915.
At the drill hall I was drilled with other recruits by Sergeant Thompson, a veteran of the South African wars and Egyptian and Sudan conflicts and a very fine instructor indeed. In a few days we were issued with a uniform: tunic, trousers, cap - the service cap with the wire round the rim - and puttees, (we were shown how to do them), and greatcoat and we were shown how to roll that up and wear it round our shoulders on the march. Foot drill was the first instruction and we were instructed in the drill hall and when the weather was fine, marched down the street to the south common. After a while, rifles were issued to us - old Lee Enfield, the long Lee Enfield of the Boer War type - and we were instructed in rifle drill.
Joining up with the 1/4th Lincolns
At that time there came a request from the 2/4th battalion, then stationed at Ongar in Essex, for those who'd had experience as scouts and I, having joined the boy scouts in 1910, volunteered along with several others. The four of us were given our instructions and railway warrants and proceeded by train from Lincoln down through Sleaford, Spalding, March, Ely, Cambridge to Liverpool Street where we changed and entrained to Ongar, arriving there in the evening. There we were billeted in private houses. Most of the local people had had to give up their living room - furniture being cleared - and we were issued with palliasses and we filled them with straw and that was our bedding. Rations were delivered each day from the Quartermaster's store, usually consisting of a quarter of a loaf for each man, a tin of jam, tin of bully beef and some of those big thick biscuits about six inches square. Also there was a ration of butter in those days, and bacon. Then we reported to the orderly room and I and my three comrades - Private Joyce - Bert Joyce - King and Morris - were posted to number sixteen platoon, D Company. We joined in the daily parade in the street each morning at eight o'clock and took part in the various drills and duties but were seconded to a small group headed by Major Low who proceeded to give us instructions on map reading and general scouting something on the lines of the old South African campaign.
After some weeks the whole battalion was entrained and transported to Luton. Again we were put in billets; I and my three companions in Paul Street, (a branch off the road which led up the hill to the London Road near the big water tower). We paraded in the street with the rest of D Company each morning and went through the usual drills: foot drill. In those days we lined up in two long columns and the order would be given after "Attention" to number. We numbered off and the odd numbers had to take a step back, a step to the right; the order being given, "Form fours". And then the whole battalion were ordered, "Right turn" and we marched off in fours - not threes as in this last war. Also, each company had four platoons and our four platoons in D Company each took part in separate drills under various instructors. There was platoon drill and squad drill and rifle drill and then we proceeded to bayonet work - dummy sacks placed in a trench, some hanging from a rope.
Every week on Friday was a route march - usually with full pack which varied according to each man but which was about 48 to 50 pounds. The routes would be over Dunstable Downs or through Luton Hoo park or various parks around and we usually arrived late in the afternoon after doing an average of 12 to 15 miles. That was to get us used to marching - an endurance test too. The captain, out Captain Hooper, I remember very well, rode ahead of the company on his horse and the other officers also were mostly on horseback.
At this stage I might as well explain what our equipment was. We had the old leather equipment consisting of the shoulder straps, two big pouches for ammunition, behind was a big leather case for holding our entrenching tool. On the right hand side was a haversack, on the left side our bayonet, and along side it, leather loops for holding the handle of the entrenching tool. The entrenching tool consisted of a metal blade in the form of a small spade coming almost to a point - round not flat - and the other part was a spike so you could use it both as a pick as well as a spade. We had no ammunition to carry then. Now our particular form of arms drill consisted in coming to the slope by canting the rifle forward at an angle of forty five degrees then swinging it up on the left shoulder and cutting the right hand away. In most other units one had to draw the rifle up on the right hand side, catching it at the shoulder. The reason we canted the rifle forward was to avoid catching it with the pouches which stuck out on each side of us, making it much easier to perform this drill. We had much reason to remember that later on when we found ourselves being drilled by some Royal Fusilier sergeants who objected to our particular form of sloping arms. And we objected to them trying to alter it, however that's another story.
We were issued with Japanese rifles. The Japanese government had presented, we understood, five hundred thousand rifles to the British government for use. They were rather large, a smaller bore than the 303. They had the V back-sight and piqued fore-sight and I found them very accurate and handy. When on the range I was able to perform creditably - at the Wardown ranges some miles away where we fired a course. The trouble was there were no slings issued and we found it pretty tiring carrying these rifles, some at the trail, some at the slope, until of course as we approached our destination or on the return to our billets we were always given the order to march to attention, that is at the slope in an orderly procedure. Well some of us got bits of rope or leather and made slings of a kind so that we could carry it over our shoulders more comfortably.
Now these rifles were of a light wood which we found would splinter rather easily, not so serviceable as the British wood that was used in our Lee Enfield rifles. And the bayonets were the long single edged type but very useful and easily fixed when we got the order to fix. I remember one occasion we marched to Harpenden and there in the street, given the order to pile arms, a thing I've never seen done since those days. The fashion's fallen out because rifles haven't the piling swivels now which are up near the muzzle. When we piled them there was a certain drill in doing that and also in undoing them.
To get us used to firing we were taken into a chalk pit and were issued with a Lee Enfield of the long type. I remember we climbed up on a rocky platform and there were two targets. We had to aim at the lower target in order to hit the top - they being placed at such a range as to allow for the trajectory difference because the range in that pit was only about thirty yards. We got used to the kick of the rifle, this was before we undertook the range firing with the Japanese rifles. Now our rifles were in short supply throughout the British army. I might add that we also did night exercises. I remember we did night manoeuvres in Wardown park and as we lay in the grass waiting for the order to advance by sections, a nightingale sang. It seemed most incongruous to hear this bird singing away in the dark as we lay there with our rifles in our hand.
However, to come back, we had on Sundays, church parade in which the whole brigade - the 132nd Brigade - took part.
PCN:
What division was that?
DB:
This was the 46th Division, the territorial army, also known as the North Midland Division. The division consisted of the 4th Lincolns and 5th Lincolns, the 4th and 5th Leicesters, the 5th and 6th battalions of the North Staffs and the 5th and 6th battalions of the South Staffordshire regiment.
After the church parade which was usually held in the park, our brigadier loved to indulge in a huge manoeuvre known as the left wheel, en masse the battalions in columns of companies. It is a very intricate manoeuvre and he was anxious that it should be done very carefully and we were always very glad when that procedure was over and we had Sunday afternoons to ourselves.
After the route march on Fridays we'd return to our billets and change our socks and boots and then the sergeant would come round on kit inspection to each billet - with an officer usually - and then we'd proceed out into the open streets to one of the houses where the window had been thrown open. Inside was a table at which sat an officer and the quartermaster. Our names were called in alphabetical order, we each stepped forward, stood smartly to attention, saluted and were presented with a huge sum of a shilling per day plus usually two pence for equipment, it was to supplement our equipment. By the way, I might have mentioned that in our equipment we were also equipped with a housewife which consisted of needles and thread for darning our own socks and sewing on buttons. Course, we all had brass buttons in those days and every morning using our brass stick we were polishing buttons and cap badges. Ours was the sphinx - that was the regimental badge for the Lincolnshire Regiment - and in the little place under the sphinx there was the word "Egypt" in what you would call romantic characters, such as the Daily Mail uses. This was for the regular army because they'd served so well in Egypt under General Gordon and General Kitchener and others. The Leicesters had a tiger because of their service in Bengal, the Staffordshires had the Staffordshire knot and the Notts and Derby's - nicknamed the Notts and Jocks - had a cross for their badge, the Maltese Cross. We gradually learned the badges of other regiments, all made of metal and to be polished up, though later on we had to have them blacked over because they reflected the light and gave positions away, just as the wire was eventually taken from our hats because that was apt to deflect the bullets and so on.
I forgot to mention, there were four brigades. Things worked out in fours. Starting from a small squad would be sixteen men. A platoon would usually consist of forty men, there would be four platoons to a company, four companies to a battalion, four battalions formed a brigade, three brigades formed a division. And that's the plan on which the army was built in those days. There were alterations later but I never went into details because we got very much mixed up in the latter part. You were put from one battalion to another in order to reinforce and I found myself mixed up with all kinds of folk.
We were parading as a company every morning. Sergeant Major Whalley was a very good company sergeant major and Captain Hooper was a fine captain who led us. Both were eventually killed.
We were left to ourselves in the evening and there were various concerts. The local people were very kind to us. I remember I used to go to the church there and there was a very fine curate named Eliot. I forget the vicar's name but I do remember that the organist was a very fine organist - Costello was his name - and I joined there the Church of England Men's Society and I was sponsored by a grocer in Cumberland Street. There was the social life and there were good concerts. I remember particularly when some of the Scottish troops came with their bagpipes and played, and on another occasion - I don't know the name of the musician -but there was a fine cellist.
There were evening duties as well - patrols to help to keep order. I've been on patrol and I remember on that occasion going down the main street of Luton and the Luton Red Cross Band - a very fine brass band - was entertaining people. There were usually four, sometimes six, per patrol, just for two or three hours while the troops were about but I never remember any disturbance or trouble being caused by our fellows at all. You see, all our people were volunteers who joined up to serve King and country because the appeal was made for all strong able-bodied men to serve their country in its hour of danger and save her from Germany and Austria. And we had a great sense of patriotism in those days. We were proud of our country and of our king and we were all led to believe that Germany was a threat to civilisation. And I still believe that the Kaiser wanted to dominate Europe just as Hitler in this last war also tried to dominate Europe. I never lost that sense of patriotism. It had been instilled in us at school. I distinctly remember seeing on the wall, pictures of King Edward the Seventh and Queen Alexandra. And on Empire Day - May 24th - which is still called Victoria Day in Canada and observed in Canada as a holiday, that day marked Queen Victoria's birthday and we used to parade in the playground at school. A flag was run up on a pole - the Union Jack of course - and we were taught to salute it and we learned various patriotic songs too. I think it was instilled in us all; a pride and love of our own country and a determination to work and serve in whatever position we were called. When I returned home on leave my father gave me the opportunity of drilling the schoolchildren - the older ones - on the school playground, much to their delight as it was a nice change from the three Rs to be out in the open being drilled and it gave me some opportunity to develop powers of leadership and command which proved useful later.
Then on May 1st the bugle sounded the fall in. We fell in in the street and our officer told us that reinforcements were required for the 1/4th battalion in France.
Volunteering for the 1/4th Lincolns
"All volunteers take three paces forward." And most of us did. Then the officer came along, "You, you, you..." pointing to each one and I was among those selected. The rest of the battalion was dismissed and we were instructed to proceed home on leave, that our warrants would be sent to us and that we were to report back on the following Monday morning. Now this was a Friday I remember very well because the only leave I was able to get was from Saturday to Sunday, just two days leave before we were to go abroad. We went to the Midland station at Luton - our instructions had been sent to allow us to board the train. We changed at Nottingham into the Lincoln train and we had no difficulty there but I remember there was no train home till next morning and I arrived at my home station on the eight o'clock train and my station master - Mr Saggers - said "where's your ticket?" I said, "The battalion said that it would be sent on to you." He laughed aloud and said, "alright, off you go."
So I went home and announced to my parents I was going to serve abroad. I took a walk with my mother along the old familiar paths through the fields, along by the beck and up to the woods. It was a lovely day. And then, on the Sunday, with my old bike which I was given second hand when I was ten years old, I cycled to Lincoln twelve miles away as there was no train on Sundays from Wragby station. On the way, I called to see a clergy widow whose son was also serving in the war - Mrs Maddon - and that’s the only time I felt the parting. My parents had shown no emotion, they were rather proud that I’d been selected, and so I cycled the twelve miles to Lincoln. What happened to the bike I don’t know, but I got to the Midland station and had no trouble getting back to Luton, arriving early Monday morning. We were then issued with new equipment - webbing equipment which consisted of five pouches on either side, each holding fifteen clips of ammunition. It was quite a load when we were really loaded up with ammunition but that was balanced by the pack on our backs. We were issued with the long Lee Enfield rifles and they were charger loading. My rifle had been a single loader with a full magazine that would hold ten rounds but had had the charger bridge built on; it had been the old Boer War type of rifle. The date on my rifle was 1897. It had been converted into charger loading so that the cartridges (which were clip-loading which was not a feature of the Boer war) could be pushed in. The short, two bladed bayonet with a black leather scabbard I wore by my side.
We were then entrained for Southampton. Arriving at Southampton we were marched to a camp on the outskirts. I can’t remember exactly the district, I think it was the Highfields District of Southampton, and there we were issued with the usual bully, biscuits and beef and just lay around waiting for the next order. But it wasn’t until the following day in the evening or late afternoon that we fell in along with other units from the various brigades and battalions of the division and marched through Southampton to the docks. There we embarked on a small steamer whose name I don’t remember. Of course, there were no bunks and no blankets. As dusk fell, our transport moved out into the Solent and on reaching opposite Portsmouth we were joined by a destroyer as escort to escort us across the channel. Darkness had fallen and we just lay on the deck as we were and slept as best we could. When I awoke in the morning I found we were anchored off Le Havre at the mouth of the Seine. Of course, the usual rumours went around as to why we were still there but around nine o’clock the vessel got underway and proceeded up the River Seine; a novel experience as we sat there watching the houses and the French countryside go by until we arrived at Rouen. There the vessel anchored in mid stream. We were taken in lighters and proceeded to march to a camp consisting of large , sandy gravely plain surrounded by fir trees and known as The Bull Ring.
Etaples - The Bull Ring
We were housed in tents and right next to us were the gurkhas with whom I soon made friends. I’ve got a picture here of myself with one of them which somebody took and which was sent to England and put in the paper. I proceeded to learn some of their language and they taught me very well, but what did strike me was when the ghurka sergeants came in they’d sit and be attended to by the privates. The privates had to undo their boots and take them off. I couldn’t see our sergeants doing that. But they were fine little fellows: quick, agile, friendly, I liked them immensely.
Then we were out on the bull ring. Reveille was five o’clock, breakfast was six o’clock and we were on the march before seven, out to the bull ring. There, divided into sections, we were drilled and re-drilled much to our disgust because we’d been looking forward to going into the fighting ranks. I remember we had these Royal Fusilier sergeants who proceeded to teach us their type of drill in spite of our protests that we had our own type of sloping arms. We were very soon snubbed and told what would happen.
We had a long session each day, returning about noon for lunch. Afternoons were free when we’d saunter down into the town and taste the local wine. We were paid five francs - or was it ten francs, I’m not sure - a week; not very much money but enough for our needs. And that’s where I first came across those games which became quite a feature of the camp life: housey housey, crown and anchor and other games. I was never keen on drink so I avoided the wet canteen as it was told, but I can’t say I witnessed any undue behaviour by our fellows by over drinking or any excesses at all.
PCN:
Did you play crown and anchor?
DB:
No, I did not play because I saw the futility of it and I could see no good coming of it. I never was inclined to gamble and I never have. Even now I don’t go in for pools or anything of that kind. Chance your money? No, it isn’t any pleasure for me. I just used it for buying chocolate - the French type - or sweets. I didn’t smoke either in those days, like most of them.
Now in our tents there would be sixteen to a tent. We were issued with a blanket but we mostly slept with our clothes on. There were of course the usual medical inspections too we had to undergo, as we had of course before we left our billets in Luton. we were all medically examined to make sure we were fit.
PCN
Did nobody question your age?
DB:
No, my age was not questioned at all and I was able to keep up with the best of them. I was very strong and tall for my age and I’d always taken part in sport at home. I’d also belonged to the rifle club of which my father was the secretary and founder. The club was in the first of five divisions in the county miniature rifle association and one of my sisters in fact was a crack shot and beat all the men in the Christmas competition. We’d an excellent team and all these boys joined up. Most of the lads with me joined the Yeomanry, being country lads.
While we were at Rouen the drill proceeded as usual and we got rather fed up with it. Then one morning I had stomach trouble and reported sick. I was given medicine and reported “M and D”, medicine and duty. When I got back and reported to the orderly room, my particular section had gone out and I was put with the Durham Light Infantry who consisted mostly of miners: small fellows and I stood up above them like Nelson’s column, I could see over all their heads. I later became associated with the Durham Light Infantry.
Entraining for the Front
Now the next step was we were embarked in wagons on which was printed 40 Hommes, 8 Chevaux - 40 men, eight horses. There were no seats, we just sat and dangled our legs and the train proceeded leisurely through St Omer where it stopped. That was a remount depot because there were a lot of horses used - particularly by the Army Service Corps and by the artillery for hauling guns. In fact our own artillery, as far as I knew, was hauled by horse power. We proceeded all day at a leisurely pace and arrived at Poperinghe in Belgium. This was in May 1915 and I was back with the Lincolns. Only that day did I encounter the Durham regiment. It was a huge camp and there were regiments from all parts of the country and this was a sort of holding place for reinforcements, Rouen being well back from the lines, well out of range and of course, planes didn’t get as far as there. The small German planes and our own planes were of the primitive type and I didn’t see anything of them until we got to Poperinghe.
At Poperinghe we detrained and marched out to a wood - I can’t remember the name of the wood now - and we and various other units were called the 2nd entrenching battalion. Our duties were to build up sandbag emplacements around the wood as a line of defence in case of retreat; somewhere for the troops, in case of assault, to fall back to positions that we were preparing for them. Trenches were dug and these sandbags filled, redoubts made and working in the woods now and again we’d hear the sound of a plane and glance up and then we were warned not to look up when a plane came over. On the approach of a plane a whistle sounded and everybody turned their heads down. We were told that faces looking upwards were very visible - the white faces turned upwards - to any planes that were reconnoitring. That’s all the planes were really used for then, just reconnoitring.
I saw my first ack-ack fire - puffs of white smoke - following the plane. The plane would eventually turn and while the gunners had to adjust it got away. I can’t say I saw one brought down. They hadn’t acquired yet the accuracy, that came later - nor the tactics to counter this.
While we were in this wood we built our own bivouacs. We were issued with groundsheets and we cut down branches and made our own little tents or bivouacs. Now my pal Bert Joyce and I shared one. He had been in service in the Dukeries as a footman and lived in Lincoln. His brother was a teacher. Bert was in service in the Dukeries in Nottinghamshire and we had formed a close friendship. During the day we worked and we were issued our bully beef and so on and when it rained the bivouac mostly held it off. But once when I was out working and came back I hadn’t noticed that somebody had been sick and I was summoned for having a dirty bivouac. And I still think I was unfairly treated when I was sentenced to three days CB as we called it - confined to barracks. Usually if a man misbehaved himself he had to report in the evening to the orderly sergeant who put him through a lot of drill along with the other fellas who’d got jankers as we called it. There were other names beside that but jankers was our familiar name.
But instead of putting me on the jankers drill I was put on duties of pumping water from a pond. Our water supplies were pumped up through a tube into a tank through cylinders loaded with some chemical; lime I think. It tasted horribly and in fact we couldn’t often see the bottom of our cups because of the colour of the water. We survived of course. We’d all got our own little billie tins and could make small little fires but we had to be very careful not to make much smoke so as not to give our position away.
One day there was a terrific bang and then a loud rising whine as a shell sped through the air and landed somewhere near Poperinghe with a terrific bang. We were all very startled and learned later that it was this German Big Bertha that had been run up to a railhead firing a huge twelve inch shell or something about that size. Well the range wasn’t accurate and it did very little damage and they usually fired about four or five rounds and then withdrew the gun out of sight. You’ll find mention of that big gun in the history books of the war. My word, it certainly was a terrific noise it made and the whistling of the shell through the air was like an express train rushing along. Fortunately we were well out of range, it was more destructive in noise than anything else. I did hear that a post office somewhere had been destroyed but there were rumours and rumours of course.
On another occasion I was put on night sentry guarding a tank, a big water tank. We could hear the sounds of our guns and the German guns firing intermittently and then there arose a great red glow in the sky. Eventually a fella came up, I challenged him, he said “Friend”, right. I said, “What’s that big glow?” “Oh,” he said, “The Germans are using liquid fire.” It transpired later that the Germans had sprayed either paraffin or petrol over on our trenches and set it on fire in an attempt to burn their way through and it was known as liquid fire. And also, very shortly within that time, chlorine gas was used. It was just outside our sector and we were issued with pads which we kept in a little pocket in the lower corner of our jackets. These pads had to be kept wet and we had to put them over our noses and mouths by tying them on in some way to counteract the effect of the gas. Later we were given masks of felt with glass eye pieces, and still later there was a mouth piece in which we could breathe out but not in. We breathed in the air coming through the hood being tied round our necks and those were the first primitive gas masks that we had. I remember the gas being used while \I was there and there were various devices for keeping the pads from drying out. Fortunately I never had to use them but later I did have to use my gas mask considerably.
We then, after some couple of weeks, were given orders to fall in and we marched to a place called Ouderdom where there was a square of trees with rectangular huts and floorboards. There we joined the 1/4th battalion of the Lincolns. The band was playing, I remember, a very popular tune of the time. We had a very good band and when they were in the trenches they acted as stretcher bearers. We were entertained. We were issued with tins of tobacco and cigarettes. Most of the fellows smoked cigarettes, chiefly Woodbines, but I didn’t smoke at all and tins were piled underneath the boards, there must have been a hoard of tobacco for someone eventually.
One night there was a yell from one fellow. He’d taken his boots off and the rats had nibbled his toes. There was a danger, they said, of rats biting and causing infection and that they were able to nibble at a fellow’s feet without him knowing. That’s just perhaps part of the yarn but I do know that these rats were a jolly nuisance to us.
Course, during the daytime, a favourite trick was to sit and pull your shirt off, going around the seams cracking the lice. You just couldn’t avoid them somehow. There were no public baths at all and it was difficult obtain water for washing.
Well then we fell in and proceeded by night up towards Ypres, the Menin Road where the railway crossed and into trenches, and for a couple of miles I should say, we were in trenches. Course, the ground being flat, it wasn’t possible to approach the trenches on the level.
The trenches had what was called duckboards - slatted boards to keep our feet dry when it was wet. There were places where they were broken by shell fire and you had to jump over wide puddles that formed.. The rain made things very unpleasant for us.
The Ypres Salient
Well then we found ourselves up by Sanctuary Wood and Maple Copse and we entered the trenches near Hill 60. This was my first time in trenches and this would be early July I guess. Well in the trenches they warned me to keep away from a certain bridge section because a fella had just been shot there by a sniper. However, I ducked over and fired a couple of shots and sat down. There was a fire platform of sandbags to stand on.
Now we had a bombing section and the bombing section was led by Corporal Claxton. ‘Clacky’ as we called him was very ingenious. He’d made a big catapult about five feet high; a board cut with a gap between and on each arm were fixed hooks with rubbers - four strands of half inch or more square strands of rubber. These were joined to a canvas basket on which was a hook fastened to a ratchet. There was a handle and the thing was wound up tight to get the tension, pulled back, and when the tension reaches a certain point, a catch released it and it flung the contents over the trench. How far it went depended on the amount of stuff you put in. Well Clacky was in the habit of collecting anything he could - usually empty biscuit tins which he then packed with clay, clips, spent cartridges, stones and anything like that. Then, in the cavity left, he’d defuse an unexploded shell, put the powder in and fix a Bickford’s number five fuse to it - which varied in length. Then he would place this thing on the bag, wind it up to the tension point, apply a match to the fuse and they’d just kick this ratchet and send it lolloping over to land somewhere, we hoped in the German or near the German trenches, and a moment later there’d be a terrific bang. It was a primitive kind of mortar.
Now the Germans had developed the minenwerfer; a plate with a spring on which threw a mortar or shell up to about a hundred yards, and they started replying with these. Well we always had a man on duty and it was one of my tasks for an hour, to stand and watch for them. You sometimes could hear the click from their minenwerfer as they fired it but you had to keep your eyes open and when you saw this thing come lolloping through the air, blow your whistle three times and everybody would duck for cover. And the same time, you’d shout “bottle” or “minnie”, we usually called them bottles. They were devastating things. I remember one landed near the dug-out of Lieutenant Reed and when we dug him out he was dead but not a scratch on him. The shock had killed him.
Well it affected me and I was apt to run to the latrines at the back - which was just a pole to sit on - and I had to hastily pull my pants up when the whistle sounded and slip into the side trench as best I could.
On one occasion he was firing these minenwerfers and we called back to our guns who started to fire shells and quietened it down. He did similarly and would try and quieten us down.
Our artillery was the old Field Artillery. Now in those days there was the Royal Field Artillery, The Royal Garrison Artillery, The Honourable Artillery Company and the Royal Horse Artillery. The Field Artillery used horses of course and although I don’t know much about the artillery side, I do remember that the Germans fired some pretty heavy stuff.
Well we were also sapping. We were undermining the Germans and we’d little fellas - miners - who dug holes down at an angle until eventually one would emerge and push a sandbag up which we pulled out of the way. The earth they removed they put into sandbags and they were a pretty hardy lot those fellas, I’ve every admiration for them. The job I hated was when I was put one evening on the big bellows and I had to just slowly pump air down to them and if I dozed off they’d soon suffocate and I was very strongly reminded and it was an awful job to keep awake.
I never went down a sap myself, none of us were allowed to, but I remember on one occasion standing there and the ground under me seemed to lift and there was a dull thud. We were all scared, thinking Jerry was undermining because he was mining too, but it happened that he’d blown one of his own trenches in on that occasion we heard. But it was a weird sensation feeling the ground heave under you and then we saw a column of smoke arising from his trenches.
On another occasion I was put on a listening post in advance of our trenches in a sandbagged emplacement and beyond that the wire. Course, we had patrols at night too and that was a risky business. On this listening patrol we had to lie and nobody was to fire a rifle or anything like that within twenty yards of the listening post, and we had to listen for the sounds of him sapping. I never detected any when I was on duty but the patrol that followed me suddenly found two or three Germans looking down on them. The Germans had sent a patrol out and our fellas just couldn’t fire back. Fortunately for them the Germans withdrew, too scared to fire themselves because they’d be a target you see.
And of course, every now and again you’d see what looked like a star going up. We all had these very pistols, a big pistol which fired a cartridge, and to fire this you had to lock your arm because of the terrific kick on this thing. It suddenly burst out and, gradually falling, it sure lit the scene up. If one fired you froze because any movement would give you away. If you just lay there you might be regarded as another log or boulder or something. Those very lights are very clear in my mind. If you suspected there was a German patrol and fired a very pistol you’d find out all right.
On another occasion I remember seeing Sergeant Joyce - Bert’s brother - getting up and taking a very careful look at the German trenches. We also had periscopes consisting of a long horizontal box - well, vertical I should say - rectangular in section, with a mirror at the top and a mirror at the bottom. By looking in the bottom one and pushing it over the top you got a view of the German trenches which were only about fifty or sixty yards away and I remember on one occasion taking a look and a moment later I saw the ground right in front of our trenches plough up. Somebody had spotted me and fired but fortunately the defences prevented it reaching through to me or I wouldn’t be here now. I wasn’t looking over the trench but I was looking through the bottom of the periscope. But I had to raise it up on the level - about a couple of feet from the top of the parapet - where a bullet could come through the parapet and catch you. But the parapet held firm and I was very careful after that that when I raised the periscope I raised it carefully. Later on we had tubular periscopes issued but these were primitive wooden ones with just an ordinary rectangular mirror at the top, set at an angle and reflecting on the one at the bottom. And one was constantly taking a quiet peep to find out what Jerry was up to. We were all watching one another like cats.
Part of the battalion occupied Hill 60 itself but we were on the fringe of it just where the sapping started. I always remember in 1916 I was then in the 4th Northern hospital at Lincoln when the news flashed that Hill 60 had been blown. And I said, “yes, I helped to work on that.” They perforated the hill through and through with saps, placed their explosives and blew up the Germans but they were never able to take full advantage of the gap they’d blown in the German lines - for some reason I never understood.
After five days we were relieved by the Leicester regiment and went back through the trenches to a place called Vlamertinghe. There were still some of the Belgian people there and there was an estaminet there where we could go for drinks. And then it was back to the trenches again. It was a case of five days in, five days in reserve and then withdraw fro five days rest.
At night we had to go up the line and repair any breaches in the defences at the rear of Sanctuary Wood or Maple Copse in the reserve lines. So we were kept busy at night and slept mostly during the daytime. Then on one occasion when we were doing our five days in reserve in daytime, we moved into this village. There were some children playing there and I heard a whistling sound and the kids suddenly ran. There was a sharp crack and then I saw the reason why the kiddies ran: they’d learned to know what a shrapnel shell really was. It was a peculiar whistling sound as it approached and then the sharp crack like a whip and bullets flew in all directions. Fortunately I was missed but I picked one up at my feet and saw several around me. I was lucky to get away with it and dived into the estaminet when I heard any more coming. Later on of course the Belgians were removed entirely.
Then, on another occasion we were assembled near our heavy artillery. We’d got some 9.2 guns between them and the four inch howitzers doing some work and every now and again there’d be a roar as one of the German Jack Johnsons or Coalboxes came over because they were doing counter battery fire. We called them coalboxes because they threw up a huge cloud of black smoke. They were trying to knock out our 9.2s and our big guns were also countering - mostly the big guns were countering one another in that way. We’d paraded and just been issued with shovels and we moved along the lane and into a field and just where we’d been standing a coalbox burst. It’s a matter of a minute that saved our lives. These little things, along with many others, live in one’s mind of how near one can be to being blown up.
PCN:
Were you a fatalist?
DB:
No, I was not a fatalist. I had very dear friend, a girl friend, who was a very convinced Christian and she taught me several texts. I was brought up a Christian because my father was a churchman and a reader and he was an organist in the local church and my mother made me read the bible each day and we had religious instruction at school.. One of the texts this girl taught me always stood in my mind when there was danger. That’s from Joshua, first chapter, ninth verse: “Be strong and of a good courage. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the LORD thy God is with thee withersoever thou goest.” And that has proved true to me. Those are the words of course spoken by God to Joshua who was instructed to take over the command of the children of Israel after Moses had gone; a very daunting task for a new leader after such an accomplished leader as Moses had proved himself. No wonder he trembled and God said to him, "Be strong, don’t be afraid, the lord thy God is with thee wherever you go.” There are other texts that came into my mind.
I carried a bible in my pocket and there was a certain lance-corporal Pygott with whom I formed a friendly association and he saw me take this out and said, “let me have a look at it” and he opened it at the text of one of St Paul’s epistles, “For I am persuaded that neither life nor death nor any other creature can separate us from God. ” It escapes me for the moment, I used to be able to quote the exact words. There were other texts too. Now in my boyhood I remember we had a church army visit the village and there was a certain Captain Jakes [or Jaques?] who gave some wonderful talks and we used to listen to him. They came and lived in a caravan on the school playground for a week and then moved on from village to village, evangelising. And he told the story of a young fellow who joined the army and his mother gave him a bible and he thrust it into his breast pocket. This young fellow joined the cavalry and he was in a charge when all of a sudden he was knocked off his horse. He got up and felt a slight pain in his chest and he looked and found that his bible had stopped a bullet which would have reached his heart if it had gone right through. I always remember that story and there were others.
PCN
Didn’t the war ever shake your belief?
DB:
No never, never. I had ultimate faith that God would look after me and I’ll come back again to that later.
I went into the trenches several times and then there came a time when we came out and were billeted in reserve in old dug-outs of the old railway line near lake Zillebeke. We were facing the other way and there was a battery of French pom-poms - seventy five’s - that had been firing away. And I also learned later from a fellow I met from the Derby artillery they were not far away. These pom-poms had been irritating the Germans and they’d sent up a balloon. Now we were due to go back into the firing line that night and I’d got my pack made up and ready to put on and I sat on it with Pygott beside me. The roof of the dug-out, which was in the embankment of the railway, consisted of an iron gate covered with sod, earthen sods, and we thought that looked pretty safe. Opposite to us, about thirty yards, was a rather large pond and there was a sort of hedge and ditch to the east of it which we used as latrines, and we were sitting awaiting orders and it was just getting dusk. About a hundred yards away was the Ypres-Menin Road and we were in the angle.
Now the railway beyond us ran into a cutting as it approached the road and there the Staffordshire regiment were billeted in their dug-outs. We were in our own in an exposed position on this ridge on which the railway ran, lake Zillebeke behind us, and a shell landed on the road. The next one landed on the edge of the pond, then one over our heads. Looking back now, he was obviously ranging because always when they fired they fired a shell beyond and one short and then get the distance between for the target. well sure enough, the next shell landed right on the trenches to our left and up went the call for stretcher bearers. I remember them carrying by the casualties and one man in particular who’d just his arm dangling by a thread covered with blood. They were taking them to the first aid post which was up beyond the Staffordshires, and our fellows from that end began running along towards the Staffs. Now there was a ridge and in the corner of this ridge with the railway embankment was our headquarters. The colonel came out and he said, “Get in with these others, stop running about, there’s an observation balloon up there” which we’d not noticed. This observation balloon had seen our activities when they were looking for the French pom-poms evidently. So two fellows crowded in in front of us and then two more, Sergeant Preston was one and the other, a fellow named West. And then the next moment there was a most terrific thump and crash, I can’t describe. All I knew was that my head was buzzing and singing and I was half buried. There was a groaning beside me and I was completely buried. PCN:
What's your name please?
DB:
My name is Donald Banks.
PCN:
And when were you born?
DB:
On the 9th of January 1899 at Wragby, which is in county Lindsey, the north part of Lincolnshire where my father was headmaster of the school.
PCN:
And what was your trade before you joined up?
DB:
I had just left the Lincoln Technical School and started as an apprentice to a chemist - P.J. Watson, The Bail, Lincoln. I went with one or two others to the drill hall of the headquarters of the territorial army of the Lincolnshire Regiment and gave my age as nineteen - although I was only sixteen - and I was accepted. This was February the 7th 1915.
At the drill hall I was drilled with other recruits by Sergeant Thompson, a veteran of the South African wars and Egyptian and Sudan conflicts and a very fine instructor indeed. In a few days we were issued with a uniform: tunic, trousers, cap - the service cap with the wire round the rim - and puttees, (we were shown how to do them), and greatcoat and we were shown how to roll that up and wear it round our shoulders on the march. Foot drill was the first instruction and we were instructed in the drill hall and when the weather was fine, marched down the street to the south common. After a while, rifles were issued to us - old Lee Enfield, the long Lee Enfield of the Boer War type - and we were instructed in rifle drill.
At that time there came a request from the 2/4th battalion, then stationed at Ongar in Essex, for those who'd had experience as scouts and I, having joined the boy scouts in 1910, volunteered along with several others. The four of us were given our instructions and railway warrants and proceeded by train from Lincoln down through Sleaford, Spalding, March, Ely, Cambridge to Liverpool Street where we changed and entrained to Ongar, arriving there in the evening. There we were billeted in private houses. Most of the local people had had to give up their living room - furniture being cleared - and we were issued with palliasses and we filled them with straw and that was our bedding. Rations were delivered each day from the Quartermaster's store, usually consisting of a quarter of a loaf for each man, a tin of jam, tin of bully beef and some of those big thick biscuits about six inches square. Also there was a ration of butter in those days, and bacon. Then we reported to the orderly room and I and my three comrades - Private Joyce - Bert Joyce - King and Morris - were posted to number sixteen platoon, D Company. We joined in the daily parade in the street each morning at eight o'clock and took part in the various drills and duties but were seconded to a small group headed by Major Low who proceeded to give us instructions on map reading and general scouting something on the lines of the old South African campaign.
After some weeks the whole battalion was entrained and transported to Luton. Again we were put in billets; I and my three companions in Paul Street, (a branch off the road which led up the hill to the London Road near the big water tower). We paraded in the street with the rest of D Company each morning and went through the usual drills: foot drill. In those days we lined up in two long columns and the order would be given after "Attention" to number. We numbered off and the odd numbers had to take a step back, a step to the right; the order being given, "Form fours". And then the whole battalion were ordered, "Right turn" and we marched off in fours - not threes as in this last war. Also, each company had four platoons and our four platoons in D Company each took part in separate drills under various instructors. There was platoon drill and squad drill and rifle drill and then we proceeded to bayonet work - dummy sacks placed in a trench, some hanging from a rope.
Every week on Friday was a route march - usually with full pack which varied according to each man but which was about 48 to 50 pounds. The routes would be over Dunstable Downs or through Luton Hoo park or various parks around and we usually arrived late in the afternoon after doing an average of 12 to 15 miles. That was to get us used to marching - an endurance test too. The captain, out Captain Hooper, I remember very well, rode ahead of the company on his horse and the other officers also were mostly on horseback.
At this stage I might as well explain what our equipment was. We had the old leather equipment consisting of the shoulder straps, two big pouches for ammunition, behind was a big leather case for holding our entrenching tool. On the right hand side was a haversack, on the left side our bayonet, and along side it, leather loops for holding the handle of the entrenching tool. The entrenching tool consisted of a metal blade in the form of a small spade coming almost to a point - round not flat - and the other part was a spike so you could use it both as a pick as well as a spade. We had no ammunition to carry then. Now our particular form of arms drill consisted in coming to the slope by canting the rifle forward at an angle of forty five degrees then swinging it up on the left shoulder and cutting the right hand away. In most other units one had to draw the rifle up on the right hand side, catching it at the shoulder. The reason we canted the rifle forward was to avoid catching it with the pouches which stuck out on each side of us, making it much easier to perform this drill. We had much reason to remember that later on when we found ourselves being drilled by some Royal Fusilier sergeants who objected to our particular form of sloping arms. And we objected to them trying to alter it, however that's another story.
We were issued with Japanese rifles. The Japanese government had presented, we understood, five hundred thousand rifles to the British government for use. They were rather large, a smaller bore than the 303. They had the V back-sight and piqued fore-sight and I found them very accurate and handy. When on the range I was able to perform creditably - at the Wardown ranges some miles away where we fired a course. The trouble was there were no slings issued and we found it pretty tiring carrying these rifles, some at the trail, some at the slope, until of course as we approached our destination or on the return to our billets we were always given the order to march to attention, that is at the slope in an orderly procedure. Well some of us got bits of rope or leather and made slings of a kind so that we could carry it over our shoulders more comfortably.
Now these rifles were of a light wood which we found would splinter rather easily, not so serviceable as the British wood that was used in our Lee Enfield rifles. And the bayonets were the long single edged type but very useful and easily fixed when we got the order to fix. I remember one occasion we marched to Harpenden and there in the street, given the order to pile arms, a thing I've never seen done since those days. The fashion's fallen out because rifles haven't the piling swivels now which are up near the muzzle. When we piled them there was a certain drill in doing that and also in undoing them.
To get us used to firing we were taken into a chalk pit and were issued with a Lee Enfield of the long type. I remember we climbed up on a rocky platform and there were two targets. We had to aim at the lower target in order to hit the top - they being placed at such a range as to allow for the trajectory difference because the range in that pit was only about thirty yards. We got used to the kick of the rifle, this was before we undertook the range firing with the Japanese rifles. Now our rifles were in short supply throughout the British army. I might add that we also did night exercises. I remember we did night manoeuvres in Wardown park and as we lay in the grass waiting for the order to advance by sections, a nightingale sang. It seemed most incongruous to hear this bird singing away in the dark as we lay there with our rifles in our hand.
However, to come back, we had on Sundays, church parade in which the whole brigade - the 132nd Brigade - took part.
PCN:
What division was that?
DB:
[1]This was the 45th Division, the territorial army, also known as the North Midland Division. The division consisted of the 4th Lincolns and 5th Lincolns, the 4th and 5th Leicesters, the 5th and 6th battalions of the North Staffs and the 5th and 6th battalions of the South Staffordshire regiment.
PCN:
That was the 46th Division. There wasn't a 45th Division.
DB:
No, the 46th was a London division. We were the 45th.
After the church parade which was usually held in the park, our brigadier loved to indulge in a huge manoeuvre known as the left wheel, en masse the battalions in columns of companies. It is a very intricate manoeuvre and he was anxious that it should be done very carefully and we were always very glad when that procedure was over and we had Sunday afternoons to ourselves.
After the route march on Fridays we'd return to our billets and change our socks and boots and then the sergeant would come round on kit inspection to each billet - with an officer usually - and then we'd proceed out into the open streets to one of the houses where the window had been thrown open. Inside was a table at which sat an officer and the quartermaster. Our names were called in alphabetical order, we each stepped forward, stood smartly to attention, saluted and were presented with a huge sum of a shilling per day plus usually two pence for equipment, it was to supplement our equipment. By the way, I might have mentioned that in our equipment we were also equipped with a housewife which consisted of needles and thread for darning our own socks and sewing on buttons. Course, we all had brass buttons in those days and every morning using our brass stick we were polishing buttons and cap badges. Ours was the sphinx - that was the regimental badge for the Lincolnshire Regiment - and in the little place under the sphinx there was the word "Egypt" in what you would call romantic characters, such as the Daily Mail uses. This was for the regular army because they'd served so well in Egypt under General Gordon and General Kitchener and others. The Leicesters had a tiger because of their service in Bengal, the Staffordshires had the Staffordshire knot and the Notts and Derby's - nicknamed the Notts and Jocks - had a cross for their badge, the Maltese Cross. We gradually learned the badges of other regiments, all made of metal and to be polished up, though later on we had to have them blacked over because they reflected the light and gave positions away, just as the wire was eventually taken from our hats because that was apt to deflect the bullets and so on.
I forgot to mention, there were four brigades. Things worked out in fours. Starting from a small squad would be sixteen men. A platoon would usually consist of forty men, there would be four platoons to a company, four companies to a battalion, four battalions formed a brigade, three brigades formed a division. And that's the plan on which the army was built in those days. There were alterations later but I never went into details because we got very much mixed up in the latter part. You were put from one battalion to another in order to reinforce and I found myself mixed up with all kinds of folk.
We were parading as a company every morning. Sergeant Major Whalley was a very good company sergeant major and Captain Hooper was a fine captain who led us. Both were eventually killed.
We were left to ourselves in the evening and there were various concerts. The local people were very kind to us. I remember I used to go to the church there and there was a very fine curate named Eliot. I forget the vicar's name but I do remember that the organist was a very fine organist - Costello was his name - and I joined there the Church of England Men's Society and I was sponsored by a grocer in Cumberland Street. There was the social life and there were good concerts. I remember particularly when some of the Scottish troops came with their bagpipes and played, and on another occasion - I don't know the name of the musician -but there was a fine cellist.
There were evening duties as well - patrols to help to keep order. I've been on patrol and I remember on that occasion going down the main street of Luton and the Luton Red Cross Band - a very fine brass band - was entertaining people. There were usually four, sometimes six, per patrol, just for two or three hours while the troops were about but I never remember any disturbance or trouble being caused by our fellows at all. You see, all our people were volunteers who joined up to serve King and country because the appeal was made for all strong able-bodied men to serve their country in its hour of danger and save her from Germany and Austria. And we had a great sense of patriotism in those days. We were proud of our country and of our king and we were all led to believe that Germany was a threat to civilisation. And I still believe that the Kaiser wanted to dominate Europe just as Hitler in this last war also tried to dominate Europe. I never lost that sense of patriotism. It had been instilled in us at school. I distinctly remember seeing on the wall, pictures of King Edward the Seventh and Queen Alexandra. And on Empire Day - May 24th - which is still called Victoria Day in Canada and observed in Canada as a holiday, that day marked Queen Victoria's birthday and we used to parade in the playground at school. A flag was run up on a pole - the Union Jack of course - and we were taught to salute it and we learned various patriotic songs too. I think it was instilled in us all; a pride and love of our own country and a determination to work and serve in whatever position we were called. When I returned home on leave my father gave me the opportunity of drilling the schoolchildren - the older ones - on the school playground, much to their delight as it was a nice change from the three Rs to be out in the open being drilled and it gave me some opportunity to develop powers of leadership and command which proved useful later.
Then on May 1st the bugle sounded the fall in. We fell in in the street and our officer told us that reinforcements were required for the 1/4th battalion in France.
"All volunteers take three paces forward." And most of us did. Then the officer came along, "You, you, you..." pointing to each one and I was among those selected. The rest of the battalion was dismissed and we were instructed to proceed home on leave, that our warrants would be sent to us and that we were to report back on the following Monday morning. Now this was a Friday I remember very well because the only leave I was able to get was from Saturday to Sunday, just two days leave before we were to go abroad. We went to the Midland station at Luton - our instructions had been sent to allow us to board the train. We changed at Nottingham into the Lincoln train and we had no difficulty there but I remember there was no train home till next morning and I arrived at my home station on the eight o'clock train and my station master - Mr Saggers - said "where's your ticket?" I said, "The battalion said that it would be sent on to you." He laughed aloud and said, "alright, off you go."
So I went home and announced to my parents I was going to serve abroad. I took a walk with my mother along the old familiar paths through the fields, along by the beck and up to the woods. It was a lovely day. And then, on the Sunday, with my old bike which I was given second hand when I was ten years old, I cycled to Lincoln twelve miles away as there was no train on Sundays from Wragby station. On the way, I called to see a clergy widow whose son was also serving in the war - Mrs Maddon - and that’s the only time I felt the parting. My parents had shown no emotion, they were rather proud that I’d been selected, and so I cycled the twelve miles to Lincoln. What happened to the bike I don’t know, but I got to the Midland station and had no trouble getting back to Luton, arriving early Monday morning. We were then issued with new equipment - webbing equipment which consisted of five pouches on either side, each holding fifteen clips of ammunition. It was quite a load when we were really loaded up with ammunition but that was balanced by the pack on our backs. We were issued with the long Lee Enfield rifles and they were charger loading. My rifle had been a single loader with a full magazine that would hold ten rounds but had had the charger bridge built on; it had been the old Boer War type of rifle. The date on my rifle was 1897. It had been converted into charger loading so that the cartridges (which were clip-loading which was not a feature of the Boer war) could be pushed in. The short, two bladed bayonet with a black leather scabbard I wore by my side.
We were then entrained for Southampton. Arriving at Southampton we were marched to a camp on the outskirts. I can’t remember exactly the district, I think it was the Highfields District of Southampton, and there we were issued with the usual bully, biscuits and beef and just lay around waiting for the next order. But it wasn’t until the following day in the evening or late afternoon that we fell in along with other units from the various brigades and battalions of the division and marched through Southampton to the docks. There we embarked on a small steamer whose name I don’t remember. Of course, there were no bunks and no blankets. As dusk fell, our transport moved out into the Solent and on reaching opposite Portsmouth we were joined by a destroyer as escort to escort us across the channel. Darkness had fallen and we just lay on the deck as we were and slept as best we could. When I awoke in the morning I found we were anchored off Le Havre at the mouth of the Seine. Of course, the usual rumours went around as to why we were still there but around nine o’clock the vessel got underway and proceeded up the River Seine; a novel experience as we sat there watching the houses and the French countryside go by until we arrived at Rouen. There the vessel anchored in mid stream. We were taken in lighters and proceeded to march to a camp consisting of large , sandy gravely plain surrounded by fir trees and known as The Bull Ring.[2]
We were housed in tents and right next to us were the gurkhas with whom I soon made friends. I’ve got a picture here of myself with one of them which somebody took and which was sent to England and put in the paper. I proceeded to learn some of their language and they taught me very well, but what did strike me was when the ghurka sergeants came in they’d sit and be attended to by the privates. The privates had to undo their boots and take them off. I couldn’t see our sergeants doing that. But they were fine little fellows: quick, agile, friendly, I liked them immensely.
Then we were out on the bull ring. Reveille was five o’clock, breakfast was six o’clock and we were on the march before seven, out to the bull ring. There, divided into sections, we were drilled and re-drilled much to our disgust because we’d been looking forward to going into the fighting ranks. I remember we had these Royal Fusilier sergeants who proceeded to teach us their type of drill in spite of our protests that we had our own type of sloping arms. We were very soon snubbed and told what would happen.
We had a long session each day, returning about noon for lunch. Afternoons were free when we’d saunter down into the town and taste the local wine. We were paid five francs - or was it ten francs, I’m not sure - a week; not very much money but enough for our needs. And that’s where I first came across those games which became quite a feature of the camp life: housey housey, crown and anchor and other games. I was never keen on drink so I avoided the wet canteen as it was told, but I can’t say I witnessed any undue behaviour by our fellows by over drinking or any excesses at all.
PCN:
Did you play crown and anchor?
DB:
No, I did not play because I saw the futility of it and I could see no good coming of it. I never was inclined to gamble and I never have. Even now I don’t go in for pools or anything of that kind. Chance your money? No, it isn’t any pleasure for me. I just used it for buying chocolate - the French type - or sweets. I didn’t smoke either in those days, like most of them.
Now in our tents there would be sixteen to a tent. We were issued with a blanket but we mostly slept with our clothes on. There were of course the usual medical inspections too we had to undergo, as we had of course before we left our billets in Luton. we were all medically examined to make sure we were fit.
PCN
Did nobody question your age?
DB:
No, my age was not questioned at all and I was able to keep up with the best of them. I was very strong and tall for my age and I’d always taken part in sport at home. I’d also belonged to the rifle club of which my father was the secretary and founder. The club was in the first of five divisions in the county miniature rifle association and one of my sisters in fact was a crack shot and beat all the men in the Christmas competition. We’d an excellent team and all these boys joined up. Most of the lads with me joined the Yeomanry, being country lads.
While we were at Rouen the drill proceeded as usual and we got rather fed up with it. Then one morning I had stomach trouble and reported sick. I was given medicine and reported “M and D”, medicine and duty. When I got back and reported to the orderly room, my particular section had gone out and I was put with the Durham Light Infantry who consisted mostly of miners: small fellows and I stood up above them like Nelson’s column, I could see over all their heads. I later became associated with the Durham Light Infantry.
Now the next step was we were embarked in wagons on which was printed 40 Hommes, 8 Chevaux - 40 men, eight horses. There were no seats, we just sat and dangled our legs and the train proceeded leisurely through St Omer where it stopped. That was a remount depot because there were a lot of horses used - particularly by the Army Service Corps and by the artillery for hauling guns. In fact our own artillery, as far as I knew, was hauled by horse power. We proceeded all day at a leisurely pace and arrived at Poperinghe in Belgium. This was in May 1915 and I was back with the Lincolns. Only that day did I encounter the Durham regiment. It was a huge camp and there were regiments from all parts of the country and this was a sort of holding place for reinforcements, Rouen being well back from the lines, well out of range and of course, planes didn’t get as far as there. The small German planes and our own planes were of the primitive type and I didn’t see anything of them until we got to Poperinghe.
At Poperinghe we detrained and marched out to a wood - I can’t remember the name of the wood now - and we and various other units were called the 2nd entrenching battalion. Our duties were to build up sandbag emplacements around the wood as a line of defence in case of retreat; somewhere for the troops, in case of assault, to fall back to positions that we were preparing for them. Trenches were dug and these sandbags filled, redoubts made and working in the woods now and again we’d hear the sound of a plane and glance up and then we were warned not to look up when a plane came over. On the approach of a plane a whistle sounded and everybody turned their heads down. We were told that faces looking upwards were very visible - the white faces turned upwards - to any planes that were reconnoitring. That’s all the planes were really used for then, just reconnoitring.
I saw my first ack-ack fire - puffs of white smoke - following the plane. The plane would eventually turn and while the gunners had to adjust it got away. I can’t say I saw one brought down. They hadn’t acquired yet the accuracy, that came later - nor the tactics to counter this.
While we were in this wood we built our own bivouacs. We were issued with groundsheets and we cut down branches and made our own little tents or bivouacs. Now my pal Bert Joyce and I shared one. He had been in service in the Dukeries as a footman and lived in Lincoln. His brother was a teacher. Bert was in service in the Dukeries in Nottinghamshire and we had formed a close friendship. During the day we worked and we were issued our bully beef and so on and when it rained the bivouac mostly held it off. But once when I was out working and came back I hadn’t noticed that somebody had been sick and I was summoned for having a dirty bivouac. And I still think I was unfairly treated when I was sentenced to three days CB as we called it - confined to barracks. Usually if a man misbehaved himself he had to report in the evening to the orderly sergeant who put him through a lot of drill along with the other fellas who’d got jankers as we called it. There were other names beside that but jankers was our familiar name.
But instead of putting me on the jankers drill I was put on duties of pumping water from a pond. Our water supplies were pumped up through a tube into a tank through cylinders loaded with some chemical; lime I think. It tasted horribly and in fact we couldn’t often see the bottom of our cups because of the colour of the water. We survived of course. We’d all got our own little billie tins and could make small little fires but we had to be very careful not to make much smoke so as not to give our position away.
One day there was a terrific bang and then a loud rising whine as a shell sped through the air and landed somewhere near Poperinghe with a terrific bang. We were all very startled and learned later that it was this German Big Bertha that had been run up to a railhead firing a huge twelve inch shell or something about that size. Well the range wasn’t accurate and it did very little damage and they usually fired about four or five rounds and then withdrew the gun out of sight. You’ll find mention of that big gun in the history books of the war. My word, it certainly was a terrific noise it made and the whistling of the shell through the air was like an express train rushing along. Fortunately we were well out of range, it was more destructive in noise than anything else. I did hear that a post office somewhere had been destroyed but there were rumours and rumours of course.
On another occasion I was put on night sentry guarding a tank, a big water tank. We could hear the sounds of our guns and the German guns firing intermittently and then there arose a great red glow in the sky. Eventually a fella came up, I challenged him, he said “Friend”, right. I said, “What’s that big glow?” “Oh,” he said, “The Germans are using liquid fire.” It transpired later that the Germans had sprayed either paraffin or petrol over on our trenches and set it on fire in an attempt to burn their way through and it was known as liquid fire. And also, very shortly within that time, chlorine gas was used. It was just outside our sector and we were issued with pads which we kept in a little pocket in the lower corner of our jackets. These pads had to be kept wet and we had to put them over our noses and mouths by tying them on in some way to counteract the effect of the gas. Later we were given masks of felt with glass eye pieces, and still later there was a mouth piece in which we could breathe out but not in. We breathed in the air coming through the hood being tied round our necks and those were the first primitive gas masks that we had. I remember the gas being used while I was there and there were various devices for keeping the pads from drying out. Fortunately I never had to use them but later I did have to use my gas mask considerably.
We then, after some couple of weeks, were given orders to fall in and we marched to a place called Ouderdom where there was a square of trees with rectangular huts and floorboards. There we joined the 1/4th battalion of the Lincolns. The band was playing, I remember, a very popular tune of the time. We had a very good band and when they were in the trenches they acted as stretcher bearers. We were entertained. We were issued with tins of tobacco and cigarettes. Most of the fellows smoked cigarettes, chiefly Woodbines, but I didn’t smoke at all and tins were piled underneath the boards, there must have been a hoard of tobacco for someone eventually.
One night there was a yell from one fellow. He’d taken his boots off and the rats had nibbled his toes. There was a danger, they said, of rats biting and causing infection and that they were able to nibble at a fellow’s feet without him knowing. That’s just perhaps part of the yarn but I do know that these rats were a jolly nuisance to us.
Course, during the daytime, a favourite trick was to sit and pull your shirt off, going around the seams cracking the lice. You just couldn’t avoid them somehow. There were no public baths at all and it was difficult obtain water for washing.
Well then we fell in and proceeded by night up towards Ypres, the Menin Road where the railway crossed and into trenches, and for a couple of miles I should say, we were in trenches. Course, the ground being flat, it wasn’t possible to approach the trenches on the level.
The trenches had what was called duckboards - slatted boards to keep our feet dry when it was wet. There were places where they were broken by shell fire and you had to jump over wide puddles that formed.. The rain made things very unpleasant for us.
Well then we found ourselves up by Sanctuary Wood and Maple Copse and we entered the trenches near Hill 60. This was my first time in trenches and this would be early July I guess. Well in the trenches they warned me to keep away from a certain bridge section because a fella had just been shot there by a sniper. However, I ducked over and fired a couple of shots and sat down. There was a fire platform of sandbags to stand on.
Now we had a bombing section and the bombing section was led by Corporal Claxton. ‘Clacky’ as we called him was very ingenious. He’d made a big catapult about five feet high; a board cut with a gap between and on each arm were fixed hooks with rubbers - four strands of half inch or more square strands of rubber. These were joined to a canvas basket on which was a hook fastened to a ratchet. There was a handle and the thing was wound up tight to get the tension, pulled back, and when the tension reaches a certain point, a catch released it and it flung the contents over the trench. How far it went depended on the amount of stuff you put in. Well Clacky was in the habit of collecting anything he could - usually empty biscuit tins which he then packed with clay, clips, spent cartridges, stones and anything like that. Then, in the cavity left, he’d defuse an unexploded shell, put the powder in and fix a Bickford’s number five fuse to it - which varied in length. Then he would place this thing on the bag, wind it up to the tension point, apply a match to the fuse and they’d just kick this ratchet and send it lolloping over to land somewhere, we hoped in the German or near the German trenches, and a moment later there’d be a terrific bang. It was a primitive kind of mortar.
Now the Germans had developed the minenwerfer; a plate with a spring on which threw a mortar or shell up to about a hundred yards, and they started replying with these. Well we always had a man on duty and it was one of my tasks for an hour, to stand and watch for them. You sometimes could hear the click from their minenwerfer as they fired it but you had to keep your eyes open and when you saw this thing come lolloping through the air, blow your whistle three times and everybody would duck for cover. And the same time, you’d shout “bottle” or “minnie”, we usually called them bottles. They were devastating things. I remember one landed near the dug-out of Lieutenant Reed and when we dug him out he was dead but not a scratch on him. The shock had killed him.
Well it affected me and I was apt to run to the latrines at the back - which was just a pole to sit on - and I had to hastily pull my pants up when the whistle sounded and slip into the side trench as best I could.
On one occasion he was firing these minenwerfers and we called back to our guns who started to fire shells and quietened it down. He did similarly and would try and quieten us down.
Our artillery was the old Field Artillery. Now in those days there was the Royal Field Artillery, The Royal Garrison Artillery, The Honourable Artillery Company and the Royal Horse Artillery. The Field Artillery used horses of course and although I don’t know much about the artillery side, I do remember that the Germans fired some pretty heavy stuff.
Well we were also sapping. We were undermining the Germans and we’d little fellas - miners - who dug holes down at an angle until eventually one would emerge and push a sandbag up which we pulled out of the way. The earth they removed they put into sandbags and they were a pretty hardy lot those fellas, I’ve every admiration for them. The job I hated was when I was put one evening on the big bellows and I had to just slowly pump air down to them and if I dozed off they’d soon suffocate and I was very strongly reminded and it was an awful job to keep awake.
I never went down a sap myself, none of us were allowed to, but I remember on one occasion standing there and the ground under me seemed to lift and there was a dull thud. We were all scared, thinking Jerry was undermining because he was mining too, but it happened that he’d blown one of his own trenches in on that occasion we heard. But it was a weird sensation feeling the ground heave under you and then we saw a column of smoke arising from his trenches.
On another occasion I was put on a listening post in advance of our trenches in a sandbagged emplacement and beyond that the wire. Course, we had patrols at night too and that was a risky business. On this listening patrol we had to lie and nobody was to fire a rifle or anything like that within twenty yards of the listening post, and we had to listen for the sounds of him sapping. I never detected any when I was on duty but the patrol that followed me suddenly found two or three Germans looking down on them. The Germans had sent a patrol out and our fellas just couldn’t fire back. Fortunately for them the Germans withdrew, too scared to fire themselves because they’d be a target you see.
And of course, every now and again you’d see what looked like a star going up. We all had these very pistols, a big pistol which fired a cartridge, and to fire this you had to lock your arm because of the terrific kick on this thing. It suddenly burst out and, gradually falling, it sure lit the scene up. If one fired you froze because any movement would give you away. If you just lay there you might be regarded as another log or boulder or something. Those very lights are very clear in my mind. If you suspected there was a German patrol and fired a very pistol you’d find out all right.
On another occasion I remember seeing Sergeant Joyce - Bert’s brother - getting up and taking a very careful look at the German trenches. We also had periscopes consisting of a long horizontal box - well, vertical I should say - rectangular in section, with a mirror at the top and a mirror at the bottom. By looking in the bottom one and pushing it over the top you got a view of the German trenches which were only about fifty or sixty yards away and I remember on one occasion taking a look and a moment later I saw the ground right in front of our trenches plough up. Somebody had spotted me and fired but fortunately the defences prevented it reaching through to me or I wouldn’t be here now. I wasn’t looking over the trench but I was looking through the bottom of the periscope. But I had to raise it up on the level - about a couple of feet from the top of the parapet - where a bullet could come through the parapet and catch you. But the parapet held firm and I was very careful after that that when I raised the periscope I raised it carefully. Later on we had tubular periscopes issued but these were primitive wooden ones with just an ordinary rectangular mirror at the top, set at an angle and reflecting on the one at the bottom. And one was constantly taking a quiet peep to find out what Jerry was up to. We were all watching one another like cats.
Part of the battalion occupied Hill 60 itself but we were on the fringe of it just where the sapping started. I always remember in 1916 I was then in the 4th Northern hospital at Lincoln when the news flashed that Hill 60 had been blown. And I said, “yes, I helped to work on that.” They perforated the hill through and through with saps, placed their explosives and blew up the Germans but they were never able to take full advantage of the gap they’d blown in the German lines - for some reason I never understood.
After five days we were relieved by the Leicester regiment and went back through the trenches to a place called Vlamertinghe. There were still some of the Belgian people there and there was an estaminet there where we could go for drinks. And then it was back to the trenches again. It was a case of five days in, five days in reserve and then withdraw fro five days rest.
At night we had to go up the line and repair any breaches in the defences at the rear of Sanctuary Wood or Maple Copse in the reserve lines. So we were kept busy at night and slept mostly during the daytime. Then on one occasion when we were doing our five days in reserve in daytime, we moved into this village. There were some children playing there and I heard a whistling sound and the kids suddenly ran. There was a sharp crack and then I saw the reason why the kiddies ran: they’d learned to know what a shrapnel shell really was. It was a peculiar whistling sound as it approached and then the sharp crack like a whip and bullets flew in all directions. Fortunately I was missed but I picked one up at my feet and saw several around me. I was lucky to get away with it and dived into the estaminet when I heard any more coming. Later on of course the Belgians were removed entirely.
Then, on another occasion we were assembled near our heavy artillery. We’d got some 9.2 guns between them and the four inch howitzers doing some work and every now and again there’d be a roar as one of the German Jack Johnsons or Coalboxes came over because they were doing counter battery fire. We called them coalboxes because they threw up a huge cloud of black smoke. They were trying to knock out our 9.2s and our big guns were also countering - mostly the big guns were countering one another in that way. We’d paraded and just been issued with shovels and we moved along the lane and into a field and just where we’d been standing a coalbox burst. It’s a matter of a minute that saved our lives. These little things, along with many others, live in one’s mind of how near one can be to being blown up.
PCN:
Were you a fatalist?
DB:
No, I was not a fatalist. I had very dear friend, a girl friend, who was a very convinced Christian and she taught me several texts. I was brought up a Christian because my father was a churchman and a reader and he was an organist in the local church and my mother made me read the bible each day and we had religious instruction at school.. One of the texts this girl taught me always stood in my mind when there was danger. That’s from Joshua, first chapter, ninth verse: “Be strong and of a good courage. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the LORD thy God is with thee withersoever thou goest.” And that has proved true to me. Those are the words of course spoken by God to Joshua who was instructed to take over the command of the children of Israel after Moses had gone; a very daunting task for a new leader after such an accomplished leader as Moses had proved himself. No wonder he trembled and God said to him, B” strong, don’t be afraid, the lord thy God is with thee wherever you go.” There are other texts that came into my mind.
I carried a bible in my pocket and there was a certain lance-corporal Pygott with whom I formed a friendly association and he saw me take this out and said, “let me have a look at it” and he opened it at the text of one of St Paul’s epistles, “For I am persuaded that neither life nor death nor any other creature can separate us from God.[3]” It escapes me for the moment, I used to be able to quote the exact words. There were other texts too. Now in my boyhood I remember we had a church army visit the village and there was a certain Captain Jakes who gave some wonderful talks and we used to listen to him. They came and lived in a caravan on the school playground for a week and then moved on from village to village, evangelising. And he told the story of a young fellow who joined the army and his mother gave him a bible and he thrust it into his breast pocket. This young fellow joined the cavalry and he was in a charge when all of a sudden he was knocked off his horse. He got up and felt a slight pain in his chest and he looked and found that his bible had stopped a bullet which would have reached his heart if it had gone right through. I always remember that story and there were others.
PCN
Didn’t the war ever shake your belief?
DB:
No never, never. I had ultimate faith that God would look after me and I’ll come back again to that later.
I went into the trenches several times and then there came a time when we came out and were billeted in reserve in old dug-outs of the old railway line near lake Zillebeke. We were facing the other way and there was a battery of French pom-poms - seventy five’s - that had been firing away. And I also learned later from a fellow I met from the Derby artillery they were not far away. These pom-poms had been irritating the Germans and they’d sent up a balloon. Now we were due to go back into the firing line that night and I’d got my pack made up and ready to put on and I sat on it with Pygott beside me. The roof of the dug-out, which was in the embankment of the railway, consisted of an iron gate covered with sod, earthen sods, and we thought that looked pretty safe. Opposite to us, about thirty yards, was a rather large pond and there was a sort of hedge and ditch to the east of it which we used as latrines, and we were sitting awaiting orders and it was just getting dusk. About a hundred yards away was the Ypres-Menin Road and we were in the angle.
Now the railway beyond us ran into a cutting as it approached the road and there the Staffordshire regiment were billeted in their dug-outs. We were in our own in an exposed position on this ridge on which the railway ran, lake Zillebeke behind us, and a shell landed on the road. The next one landed on the edge of the pond, then one over our heads. Looking back now, he was obviously ranging because always when they fired they fired a shell beyond and one short and then get the distance between for the target. well sure enough, the next shell landed right on the trenches to our left and up went the call for stretcher bearers. I remember them carrying by the casualties and one man in particular who’d just his arm dangling by a thread covered with blood. They were taking them to the first aid post which was up beyond the Staffordshires, and our fellows from that end began running along towards the Staffs. Now there was a ridge and in the corner of this ridge with the railway embankment was our headquarters. The colonel came out and he said, “Get in with these others, stop running about, there’s an observation balloon up there” which we’d not noticed. This observation balloon had seen our activities when they were looking for the French pom-poms evidently. So two fellows crowded in in front of us and then two more, Sergeant Preston was one and the other, a fellow named West. And then the next moment there was a most terrific thump and crash, I can’t describe. All I knew was that my head was buzzing and singing and I was half buried. There was a groaning beside me and I was completely buried. What happened to the gate which had been over the dug-out, I don’t know.
From what I can make out, I’m the only one left. They told me later the top of Pygott’s head was taken off. My head was bent down and the fellow in front of me must have taken the full blast, blown to pieces. Well, I started to run towards this ridge and then my sight went and I called out and one of the Staffordshire fellas came up and said, “alright chum, come on.” He led me to a dressing station. There they bandaged me and treated other casualties. After a while the shelling stopped and it had started to rain. They carried some on stretchers but they couldn’t get the ambulance up to this post because of the shell holes and we had to walk some hundreds of yards to where the ambulance was. I, by holding on behind one of the stretcher bearers - slipping and staggering along - we eventually reached the ambulance. There I was put on a stretcher and we were taken to the rest camp. We were left there all night.
Next morning the medical officer came round. He was a major, a specialist of some kind, and he looked at me and said, “what’s the trouble?” I said, “My eyes, I can’t see sir, they’re sore.” So he pried into my eyes. I tried to open them but the pain was too intense. He said to the orderly, “Wash his eyes out carefully, they should never have bandaged him like that he might have gone completely blind.” Later on he came to me again and I was beginning to glimmer a little bit of light. This persisted two or three days. I just lay on the stretcher and they brought food to me: soup, stew or something or other; I had to be fed by hand. And then the officer suddenly said to me, “How old are you son?” I hesitated for a moment and he said, “Now, tell me the truth.” I said, “sixteen sir.” “Yes,” he said, “I guessed it.” And then he turned to the orderly and said, “You see you can tell by the formation of the bones that he’s not nineteen. I bet you gave your age as nineteen.” I said, “Yes sir.” “Alright son,” he said, “we’ll see to you.”
Well after two days they sent me to Bailleul, the headquarters where they thought I might get my sight and act as a clerk or something since I’d been to high school. However, there was no position so I came back to the rest camp. Then they took me in an ambulance to Mont des Cats. There were three hills: Mont Rouge, Mont des Cats, Mont Kemmel and on Mont des Cats was a monastery , part of which was still occupied by monks, the rest being used as a sort of semi-hospital, clearing station. When I got there I was beginning to be able to just see a little bit and I sat on the hillside in the sunshine hearing the boom of guns in the distance. Someone came and said, “Look, can you do something son?” We’re having a concert tonight.” I said, “No, I can’t”.
“You can play can’t you?”
“Well,” I said, “a bit.”
“Alright, we’ll put you down. We’ve got a piano there, we’ll get you to play something.”
They wouldn’t take no and I just wanted to get rid of them because my head was buzzing and I was feeling very very tried and weary.
PCN:
When was this? When were you wounded?
DB:
I was wounded actually on the 3rd of September 1915[4].
PCN:
So those guns you heard firing were probably to do with the battle of Loos then?
DB:
This must have been a week or two later because I remember it being Autumn. They may have been, I don’t know. We didn’t get much information as to what was going on. We didn’t discuss war. The thing is we joked, we smoked, we de-loused.
I turned to go in and I said to a chap, “I’ve got a terrific headache, my head’s splitting.” He said, “look, go down to the dispensary down there, I’ll take you.” He took me down and the fella looked at me. I said, “I’ve got and awful headache.” He stuck a thermometer in my mouth, took it out a couple of minutes later and said, “You go and lie down, go to your bed.” The doctor was round in five minutes, took my pulse and in quarter of an hour I was on an ambulance. I was taken to a hospital, a marquee at Hazebrouck which was the furthest point the Uhlans - the German cavalry - had reached, and there were three or four other patients waiting there and an officer talking to them. This was in the reception and eventually, as each was called away, the officer came to me. He said, “What’s your regiment son?” I said, “Lincolnshires sir.” He said, “Are you from Lincolnshire?” I said, “Yes sir.” He said, “What part?” I said, “Wragby sir”
“Wragby? Do you know Mr H J Banks the schoolmaster there?” I said, “Yes sir, I’m his son.”
“You’re Donald. Well, well that’s interesting. I wonder if you remember Miss Smith?”
Did I remember Miss Smith! We all loved her. She was our infant school teacher and he’d married her. And I shall never forget the day when Jinny Musson, the lady who took her place, took us out into the fields and we watched the little three carriage train go by and a white handkerchief fluttering. And Jinny said, “there goes Miss Smith.” Oh did we miss her. “Well,” he said, “I’ll write to your father.”
Now it so happened that at that time my father had cycled from Wragby and up to London. He had some sisters living in Kent and he’d friends in London, and there was the clergyman from the next village to Wragby - Langton-by-Wragby - the reverend Arthur Wellington Carver who was incidentally my godfather and who got the names Arthur Wellington because his godfather was Arthur Wellington, the duke who won the battle of Waterloo. He went to visit him because he’d retired and lived in New Barnet. And while my father was there he said, “I want to go and visit a former member of my staff who lives not far from here.” So he went to see Mrs Watson (her name now was) and when he got back there was a letter from her husband that had been forwarded on to Barnet telling that he’d met me. And he was so interested that he made the journey back next day to Mrs Watson’s home, just as Captain Watson arrived home and was able to give him first hand news about me.
Well the next morning I was put on the train. Wonderful those trains, you never knew when they were starting or stopping they moved so smoothly and gently. And I was taken up towards Boulogne and put into Number 1 Canadian Hospital, a fine hospital, all marquees, at Etaples near Boulogne. There I lay in a semi-conscious condition, feverish, hardly able to eat or do anything. I don’t know whether it was the shock but all they marked on my chart was PUO. I forget what the P stands for but the others were “unknown origin”.[5] The doctor did tell me once what it was but it was really partly the delayed shock I suppose and the fact that the side of my face was skinned and my eyes filled with the blast. Had I had my head up at the time I suppose I would have gone. But I hadn’t. I must have been bending down and it caught me on that side. Later on I asked my friend Bert who was wounded in the shoulder by a machine gun bullet and invalided home and discharged. He told me, “I went to that dressing station and they told me you’d never get your sight back. I’m glad you did.”
[3] “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans VIII, 38-39
[4] Actually, 2nd September 1915
[5] Pyrexia of Unknown Origin
Wounded
what happened to the gate which had been over the dug-out, I don’t know.
From what I can make out, I’m the only one left. They told me later the top of Pygott’s head was taken off. My head was bent down and the fellow in front of me must have taken the full blast, blown to pieces. Well, I started to run towards this ridge and then my sight went and I called out and one of the Staffordshire fellas came up and said, “alright chum, come on.” He led me to a dressing station. There they bandaged me and treated other casualties. After a while the shelling stopped and it had started to rain. They carried some on stretchers but they couldn’t get the ambulance up to this post because of the shell holes and we had to walk some hundreds of yards to where the ambulance was. I, by holding on behind one of the stretcher bearers - slipping and staggering along - we eventually reached the ambulance. There I was put on a stretcher and we were taken to the rest camp. We were left there all night.
Next morning the medical officer came round. He was a major, a specialist of some kind, and he looked at me and said, “what’s the trouble?” I said, “My eyes, I can’t see sir, they’re sore.” So he pried into my eyes. I tried to open them but the pain was too intense. He said to the orderly, “Wash his eyes out carefully, they should never have bandaged him like that he might have gone completely blind.” Later on he came to me again and I was beginning to glimmer a little bit of light. This persisted two or three days. I just lay on the stretcher and they brought food to me: soup, stew or something or other; I had to be fed by hand. And then the officer suddenly said to me, “How old are you son?” I hesitated for a moment and he said, “Now, tell me the truth.” I said, “sixteen sir.” “Yes,” he said, “I guessed it.” And then he turned to the orderly and said, “You see you can tell by the formation of the bones that he’s not nineteen. I bet you gave your age as nineteen.” I said, “Yes sir.” “Alright son,” he said, “we’ll see to you.”
Well after two days they sent me to Bailleul, the headquarters where they thought I might get my sight and act as a clerk or something since I’d been to high school. However, there was no position so I came back to the rest camp. Then they took me in an ambulance to Mont des Cats. There were three hills: Mont Rouge, Mont des Cats, Mont Kemmel and on Mont des Cats was a monastery , part of which was still occupied by monks, the rest being used as a sort of semi-hospital, clearing station. When I got there I was beginning to be able to just see a little bit and I sat on the hillside in the sunshine hearing the boom of guns in the distance. Someone came and said, “Look, can you do something son?” We’re having a concert tonight.” I said, “No, I can’t”.
“You can play can’t you?”
“Well,” I said, “a bit.”
“Alright, we’ll put you down. We’ve got a piano there, we’ll get you to play something.”
They wouldn’t take no and I just wanted to get rid of them because my head was buzzing and I was feeling very very tried and weary.
PCN:
When was this? When were you wounded?
DB:
I was wounded actually on the 3rd of September 1915 .
PCN:
So those guns you heard firing were probably to do with the battle of Loos then?
DB:
This must have been a week or two later because I remember it being Autumn. They may have been, I don’t know. We didn’t get much information as to what was going on. We didn’t discuss war. The thing is we joked, we smoked, we de-loused.
I turned to go in and I said to a chap, “I’ve got a terrific headache, my head’s splitting.” He said, “look, go down to the dispensary down there, I’ll take you.” He took me down and the fella looked at me. I said, “I’ve got and awful headache.” He stuck a thermometer in my mouth, took it out a couple of minutes later and said, “You go and lie down, go to your bed.” The doctor was round in five minutes, took my pulse and in quarter of an hour I was on an ambulance. I was taken to a hospital, a marquee at Hazebrouck which was the furthest point the Uhlans - the German cavalry - had reached, and there were three or four other patients waiting there and an officer talking to them. This was in the reception and eventually, as each was called away, the officer came to me. He said, “What’s your regiment son?” I said, “Lincolnshires sir.” He said, “Are you from Lincolnshire?” I said, “Yes sir.” He said, “What part?” I said, “Wragby sir”
“Wragby? Do you know Mr H J Banks the schoolmaster there?” I said, “Yes sir, I’m his son.”
“You’re Donald. Well, well that’s interesting. I wonder if you remember Miss Smith?”
Did I remember Miss Smith! We all loved her. She was our infant school teacher and he’d married her. And I shall never forget the day when Jinny Musson, the lady who took her place, took us out into the fields and we watched the little three carriage train go by and a white handkerchief fluttering. And Jinny said, “there goes Miss Smith.” Oh did we miss her. “Well,” he said, “I’ll write to your father.”
Now it so happened that at that time my father had cycled from Wragby and up to London. He had some sisters living in Kent and he’d friends in London, and there was the clergyman from the next village to Wragby - Langton-by-Wragby - the reverend Arthur Wellington Carver who was incidentally my godfather and who got the names Arthur Wellington because his godfather was Arthur Wellington, the duke who won the battle of Waterloo. He went to visit him because he’d retired and lived in New Barnet. And while my father was there he said, “I want to go and visit a former member of my staff who lives not far from here.” So he went to see Mrs Watson (her name now was) and when he got back there was a letter from her husband that had been forwarded on to Barnet telling that he’d met me. And he was so interested that he made the journey back next day to Mrs Watson’s home, just as Captain Watson arrived home and was able to give him first hand news about me.
Well the next morning I was put on the train. Wonderful those trains, you never knew when they were starting or stopping they moved so smoothly and gently. And I was taken up towards Boulogne and put into Number 1 Canadian Hospital, a fine hospital, all marquees, at Etaples near Boulogne. There I lay in a semi-conscious condition, feverish, hardly able to eat or do anything. I don’t know whether it was the shock but all they marked on my chart was PUO. I forget what the P stands for but the others were “unknown origin”. The doctor did tell me once what it was but it was really partly the delayed shock I suppose and the fact that the side of my face was skinned and my eyes filled with the blast. Had I had my head up at the time I suppose I would have gone. But I hadn’t. I must have been bending down and it caught me on that side. Later on I asked my friend Bert who was wounded in the shoulder by a machine gun bullet and invalided home and discharged. He told me, “I went to that dressing station and they told me you’d never get your sight back. I’m glad you did.”
To be continued.
I have already written here about Donald Banks, and published extracts of my interview with him. That interview runs to 62 pages of A4, and a fairly small typeface. To publish all of that in one chunk now would challenge even the most dedicated WW1 historian, and so I'm going to publish the interview with Mr Banks in stages.
I met Donald Banks many times and I enjoyed his company enormously. Reading these transcripts again, reminds me of pleasant mornings and afternoons spent with him in his house in Great Dunmow, Essex. He was an imposing man, an ex teacher and headmaster who commanded respect and affection in all those who were privileged to know him. He also had a beautiful Lincolnshire accent, which I remember well, but which unfortunately does not come across in these reminiscences. The interviews were conducted over four days in December 1986 and January 1987.
Interview - Part 1 (for Part 2 click HERE)
PCN:
What's your name please?
DB:
My name is Donald Banks.
PCN:
And when were you born?
DB:
On the 9th of January 1899 at Wragby, which is in county Lindsey, the north part of Lincolnshire where my father was headmaster of the school.
PCN:
And what was your trade before you joined up?
DB:
I had just left the Lincoln Technical School and started as an apprentice to a chemist - P.J. Watson, The Bail, Lincoln. I went with one or two others to the drill hall of the headquarters of the territorial army of the Lincolnshire Regiment and gave my age as nineteen - although I was only sixteen - and I was accepted. This was February the 7th 1915.
At the drill hall I was drilled with other recruits by Sergeant Thompson, a veteran of the South African wars and Egyptian and Sudan conflicts and a very fine instructor indeed. In a few days we were issued with a uniform: tunic, trousers, cap - the service cap with the wire round the rim - and puttees, (we were shown how to do them), and greatcoat and we were shown how to roll that up and wear it round our shoulders on the march. Foot drill was the first instruction and we were instructed in the drill hall and when the weather was fine, marched down the street to the south common. After a while, rifles were issued to us - old Lee Enfield, the long Lee Enfield of the Boer War type - and we were instructed in rifle drill.
Joining up with the 1/4th Lincolns
At that time there came a request from the 2/4th battalion, then stationed at Ongar in Essex, for those who'd had experience as scouts and I, having joined the boy scouts in 1910, volunteered along with several others. The four of us were given our instructions and railway warrants and proceeded by train from Lincoln down through Sleaford, Spalding, March, Ely, Cambridge to Liverpool Street where we changed and entrained to Ongar, arriving there in the evening. There we were billeted in private houses. Most of the local people had had to give up their living room - furniture being cleared - and we were issued with palliasses and we filled them with straw and that was our bedding. Rations were delivered each day from the Quartermaster's store, usually consisting of a quarter of a loaf for each man, a tin of jam, tin of bully beef and some of those big thick biscuits about six inches square. Also there was a ration of butter in those days, and bacon. Then we reported to the orderly room and I and my three comrades - Private Joyce - Bert Joyce - King and Morris - were posted to number sixteen platoon, D Company. We joined in the daily parade in the street each morning at eight o'clock and took part in the various drills and duties but were seconded to a small group headed by Major Low who proceeded to give us instructions on map reading and general scouting something on the lines of the old South African campaign.
After some weeks the whole battalion was entrained and transported to Luton. Again we were put in billets; I and my three companions in Paul Street, (a branch off the road which led up the hill to the London Road near the big water tower). We paraded in the street with the rest of D Company each morning and went through the usual drills: foot drill. In those days we lined up in two long columns and the order would be given after "Attention" to number. We numbered off and the odd numbers had to take a step back, a step to the right; the order being given, "Form fours". And then the whole battalion were ordered, "Right turn" and we marched off in fours - not threes as in this last war. Also, each company had four platoons and our four platoons in D Company each took part in separate drills under various instructors. There was platoon drill and squad drill and rifle drill and then we proceeded to bayonet work - dummy sacks placed in a trench, some hanging from a rope.
Every week on Friday was a route march - usually with full pack which varied according to each man but which was about 48 to 50 pounds. The routes would be over Dunstable Downs or through Luton Hoo park or various parks around and we usually arrived late in the afternoon after doing an average of 12 to 15 miles. That was to get us used to marching - an endurance test too. The captain, out Captain Hooper, I remember very well, rode ahead of the company on his horse and the other officers also were mostly on horseback.
At this stage I might as well explain what our equipment was. We had the old leather equipment consisting of the shoulder straps, two big pouches for ammunition, behind was a big leather case for holding our entrenching tool. On the right hand side was a haversack, on the left side our bayonet, and along side it, leather loops for holding the handle of the entrenching tool. The entrenching tool consisted of a metal blade in the form of a small spade coming almost to a point - round not flat - and the other part was a spike so you could use it both as a pick as well as a spade. We had no ammunition to carry then. Now our particular form of arms drill consisted in coming to the slope by canting the rifle forward at an angle of forty five degrees then swinging it up on the left shoulder and cutting the right hand away. In most other units one had to draw the rifle up on the right hand side, catching it at the shoulder. The reason we canted the rifle forward was to avoid catching it with the pouches which stuck out on each side of us, making it much easier to perform this drill. We had much reason to remember that later on when we found ourselves being drilled by some Royal Fusilier sergeants who objected to our particular form of sloping arms. And we objected to them trying to alter it, however that's another story.
We were issued with Japanese rifles. The Japanese government had presented, we understood, five hundred thousand rifles to the British government for use. They were rather large, a smaller bore than the 303. They had the V back-sight and piqued fore-sight and I found them very accurate and handy. When on the range I was able to perform creditably - at the Wardown ranges some miles away where we fired a course. The trouble was there were no slings issued and we found it pretty tiring carrying these rifles, some at the trail, some at the slope, until of course as we approached our destination or on the return to our billets we were always given the order to march to attention, that is at the slope in an orderly procedure. Well some of us got bits of rope or leather and made slings of a kind so that we could carry it over our shoulders more comfortably.
Now these rifles were of a light wood which we found would splinter rather easily, not so serviceable as the British wood that was used in our Lee Enfield rifles. And the bayonets were the long single edged type but very useful and easily fixed when we got the order to fix. I remember one occasion we marched to Harpenden and there in the street, given the order to pile arms, a thing I've never seen done since those days. The fashion's fallen out because rifles haven't the piling swivels now which are up near the muzzle. When we piled them there was a certain drill in doing that and also in undoing them.
To get us used to firing we were taken into a chalk pit and were issued with a Lee Enfield of the long type. I remember we climbed up on a rocky platform and there were two targets. We had to aim at the lower target in order to hit the top - they being placed at such a range as to allow for the trajectory difference because the range in that pit was only about thirty yards. We got used to the kick of the rifle, this was before we undertook the range firing with the Japanese rifles. Now our rifles were in short supply throughout the British army. I might add that we also did night exercises. I remember we did night manoeuvres in Wardown park and as we lay in the grass waiting for the order to advance by sections, a nightingale sang. It seemed most incongruous to hear this bird singing away in the dark as we lay there with our rifles in our hand.
However, to come back, we had on Sundays, church parade in which the whole brigade - the 132nd Brigade - took part.
PCN:
What division was that?
DB:
This was the 46th Division, the territorial army, also known as the North Midland Division. The division consisted of the 4th Lincolns and 5th Lincolns, the 4th and 5th Leicesters, the 5th and 6th battalions of the North Staffs and the 5th and 6th battalions of the South Staffordshire regiment.
After the church parade which was usually held in the park, our brigadier loved to indulge in a huge manoeuvre known as the left wheel, en masse the battalions in columns of companies. It is a very intricate manoeuvre and he was anxious that it should be done very carefully and we were always very glad when that procedure was over and we had Sunday afternoons to ourselves.
After the route march on Fridays we'd return to our billets and change our socks and boots and then the sergeant would come round on kit inspection to each billet - with an officer usually - and then we'd proceed out into the open streets to one of the houses where the window had been thrown open. Inside was a table at which sat an officer and the quartermaster. Our names were called in alphabetical order, we each stepped forward, stood smartly to attention, saluted and were presented with a huge sum of a shilling per day plus usually two pence for equipment, it was to supplement our equipment. By the way, I might have mentioned that in our equipment we were also equipped with a housewife which consisted of needles and thread for darning our own socks and sewing on buttons. Course, we all had brass buttons in those days and every morning using our brass stick we were polishing buttons and cap badges. Ours was the sphinx - that was the regimental badge for the Lincolnshire Regiment - and in the little place under the sphinx there was the word "Egypt" in what you would call romantic characters, such as the Daily Mail uses. This was for the regular army because they'd served so well in Egypt under General Gordon and General Kitchener and others. The Leicesters had a tiger because of their service in Bengal, the Staffordshires had the Staffordshire knot and the Notts and Derby's - nicknamed the Notts and Jocks - had a cross for their badge, the Maltese Cross. We gradually learned the badges of other regiments, all made of metal and to be polished up, though later on we had to have them blacked over because they reflected the light and gave positions away, just as the wire was eventually taken from our hats because that was apt to deflect the bullets and so on.
I forgot to mention, there were four brigades. Things worked out in fours. Starting from a small squad would be sixteen men. A platoon would usually consist of forty men, there would be four platoons to a company, four companies to a battalion, four battalions formed a brigade, three brigades formed a division. And that's the plan on which the army was built in those days. There were alterations later but I never went into details because we got very much mixed up in the latter part. You were put from one battalion to another in order to reinforce and I found myself mixed up with all kinds of folk.
We were parading as a company every morning. Sergeant Major Whalley was a very good company sergeant major and Captain Hooper was a fine captain who led us. Both were eventually killed.
We were left to ourselves in the evening and there were various concerts. The local people were very kind to us. I remember I used to go to the church there and there was a very fine curate named Eliot. I forget the vicar's name but I do remember that the organist was a very fine organist - Costello was his name - and I joined there the Church of England Men's Society and I was sponsored by a grocer in Cumberland Street. There was the social life and there were good concerts. I remember particularly when some of the Scottish troops came with their bagpipes and played, and on another occasion - I don't know the name of the musician -but there was a fine cellist.
There were evening duties as well - patrols to help to keep order. I've been on patrol and I remember on that occasion going down the main street of Luton and the Luton Red Cross Band - a very fine brass band - was entertaining people. There were usually four, sometimes six, per patrol, just for two or three hours while the troops were about but I never remember any disturbance or trouble being caused by our fellows at all. You see, all our people were volunteers who joined up to serve King and country because the appeal was made for all strong able-bodied men to serve their country in its hour of danger and save her from Germany and Austria. And we had a great sense of patriotism in those days. We were proud of our country and of our king and we were all led to believe that Germany was a threat to civilisation. And I still believe that the Kaiser wanted to dominate Europe just as Hitler in this last war also tried to dominate Europe. I never lost that sense of patriotism. It had been instilled in us at school. I distinctly remember seeing on the wall, pictures of King Edward the Seventh and Queen Alexandra. And on Empire Day - May 24th - which is still called Victoria Day in Canada and observed in Canada as a holiday, that day marked Queen Victoria's birthday and we used to parade in the playground at school. A flag was run up on a pole - the Union Jack of course - and we were taught to salute it and we learned various patriotic songs too. I think it was instilled in us all; a pride and love of our own country and a determination to work and serve in whatever position we were called. When I returned home on leave my father gave me the opportunity of drilling the schoolchildren - the older ones - on the school playground, much to their delight as it was a nice change from the three Rs to be out in the open being drilled and it gave me some opportunity to develop powers of leadership and command which proved useful later.
Then on May 1st the bugle sounded the fall in. We fell in in the street and our officer told us that reinforcements were required for the 1/4th battalion in France.
Volunteering for the 1/4th Lincolns
"All volunteers take three paces forward." And most of us did. Then the officer came along, "You, you, you..." pointing to each one and I was among those selected. The rest of the battalion was dismissed and we were instructed to proceed home on leave, that our warrants would be sent to us and that we were to report back on the following Monday morning. Now this was a Friday I remember very well because the only leave I was able to get was from Saturday to Sunday, just two days leave before we were to go abroad. We went to the Midland station at Luton - our instructions had been sent to allow us to board the train. We changed at Nottingham into the Lincoln train and we had no difficulty there but I remember there was no train home till next morning and I arrived at my home station on the eight o'clock train and my station master - Mr Saggers - said "where's your ticket?" I said, "The battalion said that it would be sent on to you." He laughed aloud and said, "alright, off you go."
So I went home and announced to my parents I was going to serve abroad. I took a walk with my mother along the old familiar paths through the fields, along by the beck and up to the woods. It was a lovely day. And then, on the Sunday, with my old bike which I was given second hand when I was ten years old, I cycled to Lincoln twelve miles away as there was no train on Sundays from Wragby station. On the way, I called to see a clergy widow whose son was also serving in the war - Mrs Maddon - and that’s the only time I felt the parting. My parents had shown no emotion, they were rather proud that I’d been selected, and so I cycled the twelve miles to Lincoln. What happened to the bike I don’t know, but I got to the Midland station and had no trouble getting back to Luton, arriving early Monday morning. We were then issued with new equipment - webbing equipment which consisted of five pouches on either side, each holding fifteen clips of ammunition. It was quite a load when we were really loaded up with ammunition but that was balanced by the pack on our backs. We were issued with the long Lee Enfield rifles and they were charger loading. My rifle had been a single loader with a full magazine that would hold ten rounds but had had the charger bridge built on; it had been the old Boer War type of rifle. The date on my rifle was 1897. It had been converted into charger loading so that the cartridges (which were clip-loading which was not a feature of the Boer war) could be pushed in. The short, two bladed bayonet with a black leather scabbard I wore by my side.
We were then entrained for Southampton. Arriving at Southampton we were marched to a camp on the outskirts. I can’t remember exactly the district, I think it was the Highfields District of Southampton, and there we were issued with the usual bully, biscuits and beef and just lay around waiting for the next order. But it wasn’t until the following day in the evening or late afternoon that we fell in along with other units from the various brigades and battalions of the division and marched through Southampton to the docks. There we embarked on a small steamer whose name I don’t remember. Of course, there were no bunks and no blankets. As dusk fell, our transport moved out into the Solent and on reaching opposite Portsmouth we were joined by a destroyer as escort to escort us across the channel. Darkness had fallen and we just lay on the deck as we were and slept as best we could. When I awoke in the morning I found we were anchored off Le Havre at the mouth of the Seine. Of course, the usual rumours went around as to why we were still there but around nine o’clock the vessel got underway and proceeded up the River Seine; a novel experience as we sat there watching the houses and the French countryside go by until we arrived at Rouen. There the vessel anchored in mid stream. We were taken in lighters and proceeded to march to a camp consisting of large , sandy gravely plain surrounded by fir trees and known as The Bull Ring.
Etaples - The Bull Ring
We were housed in tents and right next to us were the gurkhas with whom I soon made friends. I’ve got a picture here of myself with one of them which somebody took and which was sent to England and put in the paper. I proceeded to learn some of their language and they taught me very well, but what did strike me was when the ghurka sergeants came in they’d sit and be attended to by the privates. The privates had to undo their boots and take them off. I couldn’t see our sergeants doing that. But they were fine little fellows: quick, agile, friendly, I liked them immensely.
Then we were out on the bull ring. Reveille was five o’clock, breakfast was six o’clock and we were on the march before seven, out to the bull ring. There, divided into sections, we were drilled and re-drilled much to our disgust because we’d been looking forward to going into the fighting ranks. I remember we had these Royal Fusilier sergeants who proceeded to teach us their type of drill in spite of our protests that we had our own type of sloping arms. We were very soon snubbed and told what would happen.
We had a long session each day, returning about noon for lunch. Afternoons were free when we’d saunter down into the town and taste the local wine. We were paid five francs - or was it ten francs, I’m not sure - a week; not very much money but enough for our needs. And that’s where I first came across those games which became quite a feature of the camp life: housey housey, crown and anchor and other games. I was never keen on drink so I avoided the wet canteen as it was told, but I can’t say I witnessed any undue behaviour by our fellows by over drinking or any excesses at all.
PCN:
Did you play crown and anchor?
DB:
No, I did not play because I saw the futility of it and I could see no good coming of it. I never was inclined to gamble and I never have. Even now I don’t go in for pools or anything of that kind. Chance your money? No, it isn’t any pleasure for me. I just used it for buying chocolate - the French type - or sweets. I didn’t smoke either in those days, like most of them.
Now in our tents there would be sixteen to a tent. We were issued with a blanket but we mostly slept with our clothes on. There were of course the usual medical inspections too we had to undergo, as we had of course before we left our billets in Luton. we were all medically examined to make sure we were fit.
PCN
Did nobody question your age?
DB:
No, my age was not questioned at all and I was able to keep up with the best of them. I was very strong and tall for my age and I’d always taken part in sport at home. I’d also belonged to the rifle club of which my father was the secretary and founder. The club was in the first of five divisions in the county miniature rifle association and one of my sisters in fact was a crack shot and beat all the men in the Christmas competition. We’d an excellent team and all these boys joined up. Most of the lads with me joined the Yeomanry, being country lads.
While we were at Rouen the drill proceeded as usual and we got rather fed up with it. Then one morning I had stomach trouble and reported sick. I was given medicine and reported “M and D”, medicine and duty. When I got back and reported to the orderly room, my particular section had gone out and I was put with the Durham Light Infantry who consisted mostly of miners: small fellows and I stood up above them like Nelson’s column, I could see over all their heads. I later became associated with the Durham Light Infantry.
Entraining for the Front
Now the next step was we were embarked in wagons on which was printed 40 Hommes, 8 Chevaux - 40 men, eight horses. There were no seats, we just sat and dangled our legs and the train proceeded leisurely through St Omer where it stopped. That was a remount depot because there were a lot of horses used - particularly by the Army Service Corps and by the artillery for hauling guns. In fact our own artillery, as far as I knew, was hauled by horse power. We proceeded all day at a leisurely pace and arrived at Poperinghe in Belgium. This was in May 1915 and I was back with the Lincolns. Only that day did I encounter the Durham regiment. It was a huge camp and there were regiments from all parts of the country and this was a sort of holding place for reinforcements, Rouen being well back from the lines, well out of range and of course, planes didn’t get as far as there. The small German planes and our own planes were of the primitive type and I didn’t see anything of them until we got to Poperinghe.
At Poperinghe we detrained and marched out to a wood - I can’t remember the name of the wood now - and we and various other units were called the 2nd entrenching battalion. Our duties were to build up sandbag emplacements around the wood as a line of defence in case of retreat; somewhere for the troops, in case of assault, to fall back to positions that we were preparing for them. Trenches were dug and these sandbags filled, redoubts made and working in the woods now and again we’d hear the sound of a plane and glance up and then we were warned not to look up when a plane came over. On the approach of a plane a whistle sounded and everybody turned their heads down. We were told that faces looking upwards were very visible - the white faces turned upwards - to any planes that were reconnoitring. That’s all the planes were really used for then, just reconnoitring.
I saw my first ack-ack fire - puffs of white smoke - following the plane. The plane would eventually turn and while the gunners had to adjust it got away. I can’t say I saw one brought down. They hadn’t acquired yet the accuracy, that came later - nor the tactics to counter this.
While we were in this wood we built our own bivouacs. We were issued with groundsheets and we cut down branches and made our own little tents or bivouacs. Now my pal Bert Joyce and I shared one. He had been in service in the Dukeries as a footman and lived in Lincoln. His brother was a teacher. Bert was in service in the Dukeries in Nottinghamshire and we had formed a close friendship. During the day we worked and we were issued our bully beef and so on and when it rained the bivouac mostly held it off. But once when I was out working and came back I hadn’t noticed that somebody had been sick and I was summoned for having a dirty bivouac. And I still think I was unfairly treated when I was sentenced to three days CB as we called it - confined to barracks. Usually if a man misbehaved himself he had to report in the evening to the orderly sergeant who put him through a lot of drill along with the other fellas who’d got jankers as we called it. There were other names beside that but jankers was our familiar name.
But instead of putting me on the jankers drill I was put on duties of pumping water from a pond. Our water supplies were pumped up through a tube into a tank through cylinders loaded with some chemical; lime I think. It tasted horribly and in fact we couldn’t often see the bottom of our cups because of the colour of the water. We survived of course. We’d all got our own little billie tins and could make small little fires but we had to be very careful not to make much smoke so as not to give our position away.
One day there was a terrific bang and then a loud rising whine as a shell sped through the air and landed somewhere near Poperinghe with a terrific bang. We were all very startled and learned later that it was this German Big Bertha that had been run up to a railhead firing a huge twelve inch shell or something about that size. Well the range wasn’t accurate and it did very little damage and they usually fired about four or five rounds and then withdrew the gun out of sight. You’ll find mention of that big gun in the history books of the war. My word, it certainly was a terrific noise it made and the whistling of the shell through the air was like an express train rushing along. Fortunately we were well out of range, it was more destructive in noise than anything else. I did hear that a post office somewhere had been destroyed but there were rumours and rumours of course.
On another occasion I was put on night sentry guarding a tank, a big water tank. We could hear the sounds of our guns and the German guns firing intermittently and then there arose a great red glow in the sky. Eventually a fella came up, I challenged him, he said “Friend”, right. I said, “What’s that big glow?” “Oh,” he said, “The Germans are using liquid fire.” It transpired later that the Germans had sprayed either paraffin or petrol over on our trenches and set it on fire in an attempt to burn their way through and it was known as liquid fire. And also, very shortly within that time, chlorine gas was used. It was just outside our sector and we were issued with pads which we kept in a little pocket in the lower corner of our jackets. These pads had to be kept wet and we had to put them over our noses and mouths by tying them on in some way to counteract the effect of the gas. Later we were given masks of felt with glass eye pieces, and still later there was a mouth piece in which we could breathe out but not in. We breathed in the air coming through the hood being tied round our necks and those were the first primitive gas masks that we had. I remember the gas being used while \I was there and there were various devices for keeping the pads from drying out. Fortunately I never had to use them but later I did have to use my gas mask considerably.
We then, after some couple of weeks, were given orders to fall in and we marched to a place called Ouderdom where there was a square of trees with rectangular huts and floorboards. There we joined the 1/4th battalion of the Lincolns. The band was playing, I remember, a very popular tune of the time. We had a very good band and when they were in the trenches they acted as stretcher bearers. We were entertained. We were issued with tins of tobacco and cigarettes. Most of the fellows smoked cigarettes, chiefly Woodbines, but I didn’t smoke at all and tins were piled underneath the boards, there must have been a hoard of tobacco for someone eventually.
One night there was a yell from one fellow. He’d taken his boots off and the rats had nibbled his toes. There was a danger, they said, of rats biting and causing infection and that they were able to nibble at a fellow’s feet without him knowing. That’s just perhaps part of the yarn but I do know that these rats were a jolly nuisance to us.
Course, during the daytime, a favourite trick was to sit and pull your shirt off, going around the seams cracking the lice. You just couldn’t avoid them somehow. There were no public baths at all and it was difficult obtain water for washing.
Well then we fell in and proceeded by night up towards Ypres, the Menin Road where the railway crossed and into trenches, and for a couple of miles I should say, we were in trenches. Course, the ground being flat, it wasn’t possible to approach the trenches on the level.
The trenches had what was called duckboards - slatted boards to keep our feet dry when it was wet. There were places where they were broken by shell fire and you had to jump over wide puddles that formed.. The rain made things very unpleasant for us.
The Ypres Salient
Well then we found ourselves up by Sanctuary Wood and Maple Copse and we entered the trenches near Hill 60. This was my first time in trenches and this would be early July I guess. Well in the trenches they warned me to keep away from a certain bridge section because a fella had just been shot there by a sniper. However, I ducked over and fired a couple of shots and sat down. There was a fire platform of sandbags to stand on.
Now we had a bombing section and the bombing section was led by Corporal Claxton. ‘Clacky’ as we called him was very ingenious. He’d made a big catapult about five feet high; a board cut with a gap between and on each arm were fixed hooks with rubbers - four strands of half inch or more square strands of rubber. These were joined to a canvas basket on which was a hook fastened to a ratchet. There was a handle and the thing was wound up tight to get the tension, pulled back, and when the tension reaches a certain point, a catch released it and it flung the contents over the trench. How far it went depended on the amount of stuff you put in. Well Clacky was in the habit of collecting anything he could - usually empty biscuit tins which he then packed with clay, clips, spent cartridges, stones and anything like that. Then, in the cavity left, he’d defuse an unexploded shell, put the powder in and fix a Bickford’s number five fuse to it - which varied in length. Then he would place this thing on the bag, wind it up to the tension point, apply a match to the fuse and they’d just kick this ratchet and send it lolloping over to land somewhere, we hoped in the German or near the German trenches, and a moment later there’d be a terrific bang. It was a primitive kind of mortar.
Now the Germans had developed the minenwerfer; a plate with a spring on which threw a mortar or shell up to about a hundred yards, and they started replying with these. Well we always had a man on duty and it was one of my tasks for an hour, to stand and watch for them. You sometimes could hear the click from their minenwerfer as they fired it but you had to keep your eyes open and when you saw this thing come lolloping through the air, blow your whistle three times and everybody would duck for cover. And the same time, you’d shout “bottle” or “minnie”, we usually called them bottles. They were devastating things. I remember one landed near the dug-out of Lieutenant Reed and when we dug him out he was dead but not a scratch on him. The shock had killed him.
Well it affected me and I was apt to run to the latrines at the back - which was just a pole to sit on - and I had to hastily pull my pants up when the whistle sounded and slip into the side trench as best I could.
On one occasion he was firing these minenwerfers and we called back to our guns who started to fire shells and quietened it down. He did similarly and would try and quieten us down.
Our artillery was the old Field Artillery. Now in those days there was the Royal Field Artillery, The Royal Garrison Artillery, The Honourable Artillery Company and the Royal Horse Artillery. The Field Artillery used horses of course and although I don’t know much about the artillery side, I do remember that the Germans fired some pretty heavy stuff.
Well we were also sapping. We were undermining the Germans and we’d little fellas - miners - who dug holes down at an angle until eventually one would emerge and push a sandbag up which we pulled out of the way. The earth they removed they put into sandbags and they were a pretty hardy lot those fellas, I’ve every admiration for them. The job I hated was when I was put one evening on the big bellows and I had to just slowly pump air down to them and if I dozed off they’d soon suffocate and I was very strongly reminded and it was an awful job to keep awake.
I never went down a sap myself, none of us were allowed to, but I remember on one occasion standing there and the ground under me seemed to lift and there was a dull thud. We were all scared, thinking Jerry was undermining because he was mining too, but it happened that he’d blown one of his own trenches in on that occasion we heard. But it was a weird sensation feeling the ground heave under you and then we saw a column of smoke arising from his trenches.
On another occasion I was put on a listening post in advance of our trenches in a sandbagged emplacement and beyond that the wire. Course, we had patrols at night too and that was a risky business. On this listening patrol we had to lie and nobody was to fire a rifle or anything like that within twenty yards of the listening post, and we had to listen for the sounds of him sapping. I never detected any when I was on duty but the patrol that followed me suddenly found two or three Germans looking down on them. The Germans had sent a patrol out and our fellas just couldn’t fire back. Fortunately for them the Germans withdrew, too scared to fire themselves because they’d be a target you see.
And of course, every now and again you’d see what looked like a star going up. We all had these very pistols, a big pistol which fired a cartridge, and to fire this you had to lock your arm because of the terrific kick on this thing. It suddenly burst out and, gradually falling, it sure lit the scene up. If one fired you froze because any movement would give you away. If you just lay there you might be regarded as another log or boulder or something. Those very lights are very clear in my mind. If you suspected there was a German patrol and fired a very pistol you’d find out all right.
On another occasion I remember seeing Sergeant Joyce - Bert’s brother - getting up and taking a very careful look at the German trenches. We also had periscopes consisting of a long horizontal box - well, vertical I should say - rectangular in section, with a mirror at the top and a mirror at the bottom. By looking in the bottom one and pushing it over the top you got a view of the German trenches which were only about fifty or sixty yards away and I remember on one occasion taking a look and a moment later I saw the ground right in front of our trenches plough up. Somebody had spotted me and fired but fortunately the defences prevented it reaching through to me or I wouldn’t be here now. I wasn’t looking over the trench but I was looking through the bottom of the periscope. But I had to raise it up on the level - about a couple of feet from the top of the parapet - where a bullet could come through the parapet and catch you. But the parapet held firm and I was very careful after that that when I raised the periscope I raised it carefully. Later on we had tubular periscopes issued but these were primitive wooden ones with just an ordinary rectangular mirror at the top, set at an angle and reflecting on the one at the bottom. And one was constantly taking a quiet peep to find out what Jerry was up to. We were all watching one another like cats.
Part of the battalion occupied Hill 60 itself but we were on the fringe of it just where the sapping started. I always remember in 1916 I was then in the 4th Northern hospital at Lincoln when the news flashed that Hill 60 had been blown. And I said, “yes, I helped to work on that.” They perforated the hill through and through with saps, placed their explosives and blew up the Germans but they were never able to take full advantage of the gap they’d blown in the German lines - for some reason I never understood.
After five days we were relieved by the Leicester regiment and went back through the trenches to a place called Vlamertinghe. There were still some of the Belgian people there and there was an estaminet there where we could go for drinks. And then it was back to the trenches again. It was a case of five days in, five days in reserve and then withdraw fro five days rest.
At night we had to go up the line and repair any breaches in the defences at the rear of Sanctuary Wood or Maple Copse in the reserve lines. So we were kept busy at night and slept mostly during the daytime. Then on one occasion when we were doing our five days in reserve in daytime, we moved into this village. There were some children playing there and I heard a whistling sound and the kids suddenly ran. There was a sharp crack and then I saw the reason why the kiddies ran: they’d learned to know what a shrapnel shell really was. It was a peculiar whistling sound as it approached and then the sharp crack like a whip and bullets flew in all directions. Fortunately I was missed but I picked one up at my feet and saw several around me. I was lucky to get away with it and dived into the estaminet when I heard any more coming. Later on of course the Belgians were removed entirely.
Then, on another occasion we were assembled near our heavy artillery. We’d got some 9.2 guns between them and the four inch howitzers doing some work and every now and again there’d be a roar as one of the German Jack Johnsons or Coalboxes came over because they were doing counter battery fire. We called them coalboxes because they threw up a huge cloud of black smoke. They were trying to knock out our 9.2s and our big guns were also countering - mostly the big guns were countering one another in that way. We’d paraded and just been issued with shovels and we moved along the lane and into a field and just where we’d been standing a coalbox burst. It’s a matter of a minute that saved our lives. These little things, along with many others, live in one’s mind of how near one can be to being blown up.
PCN:
Were you a fatalist?
DB:
No, I was not a fatalist. I had very dear friend, a girl friend, who was a very convinced Christian and she taught me several texts. I was brought up a Christian because my father was a churchman and a reader and he was an organist in the local church and my mother made me read the bible each day and we had religious instruction at school.. One of the texts this girl taught me always stood in my mind when there was danger. That’s from Joshua, first chapter, ninth verse: “Be strong and of a good courage. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the LORD thy God is with thee withersoever thou goest.” And that has proved true to me. Those are the words of course spoken by God to Joshua who was instructed to take over the command of the children of Israel after Moses had gone; a very daunting task for a new leader after such an accomplished leader as Moses had proved himself. No wonder he trembled and God said to him, "Be strong, don’t be afraid, the lord thy God is with thee wherever you go.” There are other texts that came into my mind.
I carried a bible in my pocket and there was a certain lance-corporal Pygott with whom I formed a friendly association and he saw me take this out and said, “let me have a look at it” and he opened it at the text of one of St Paul’s epistles, “For I am persuaded that neither life nor death nor any other creature can separate us from God. ” It escapes me for the moment, I used to be able to quote the exact words. There were other texts too. Now in my boyhood I remember we had a church army visit the village and there was a certain Captain Jakes [or Jaques?] who gave some wonderful talks and we used to listen to him. They came and lived in a caravan on the school playground for a week and then moved on from village to village, evangelising. And he told the story of a young fellow who joined the army and his mother gave him a bible and he thrust it into his breast pocket. This young fellow joined the cavalry and he was in a charge when all of a sudden he was knocked off his horse. He got up and felt a slight pain in his chest and he looked and found that his bible had stopped a bullet which would have reached his heart if it had gone right through. I always remember that story and there were others.
PCN
Didn’t the war ever shake your belief?
DB:
No never, never. I had ultimate faith that God would look after me and I’ll come back again to that later.
I went into the trenches several times and then there came a time when we came out and were billeted in reserve in old dug-outs of the old railway line near lake Zillebeke. We were facing the other way and there was a battery of French pom-poms - seventy five’s - that had been firing away. And I also learned later from a fellow I met from the Derby artillery they were not far away. These pom-poms had been irritating the Germans and they’d sent up a balloon. Now we were due to go back into the firing line that night and I’d got my pack made up and ready to put on and I sat on it with Pygott beside me. The roof of the dug-out, which was in the embankment of the railway, consisted of an iron gate covered with sod, earthen sods, and we thought that looked pretty safe. Opposite to us, about thirty yards, was a rather large pond and there was a sort of hedge and ditch to the east of it which we used as latrines, and we were sitting awaiting orders and it was just getting dusk. About a hundred yards away was the Ypres-Menin Road and we were in the angle.
Now the railway beyond us ran into a cutting as it approached the road and there the Staffordshire regiment were billeted in their dug-outs. We were in our own in an exposed position on this ridge on which the railway ran, lake Zillebeke behind us, and a shell landed on the road. The next one landed on the edge of the pond, then one over our heads. Looking back now, he was obviously ranging because always when they fired they fired a shell beyond and one short and then get the distance between for the target. well sure enough, the next shell landed right on the trenches to our left and up went the call for stretcher bearers. I remember them carrying by the casualties and one man in particular who’d just his arm dangling by a thread covered with blood. They were taking them to the first aid post which was up beyond the Staffordshires, and our fellows from that end began running along towards the Staffs. Now there was a ridge and in the corner of this ridge with the railway embankment was our headquarters. The colonel came out and he said, “Get in with these others, stop running about, there’s an observation balloon up there” which we’d not noticed. This observation balloon had seen our activities when they were looking for the French pom-poms evidently. So two fellows crowded in in front of us and then two more, Sergeant Preston was one and the other, a fellow named West. And then the next moment there was a most terrific thump and crash, I can’t describe. All I knew was that my head was buzzing and singing and I was half buried. There was a groaning beside me and I was completely buried. PCN:
What's your name please?
DB:
My name is Donald Banks.
PCN:
And when were you born?
DB:
On the 9th of January 1899 at Wragby, which is in county Lindsey, the north part of Lincolnshire where my father was headmaster of the school.
PCN:
And what was your trade before you joined up?
DB:
I had just left the Lincoln Technical School and started as an apprentice to a chemist - P.J. Watson, The Bail, Lincoln. I went with one or two others to the drill hall of the headquarters of the territorial army of the Lincolnshire Regiment and gave my age as nineteen - although I was only sixteen - and I was accepted. This was February the 7th 1915.
At the drill hall I was drilled with other recruits by Sergeant Thompson, a veteran of the South African wars and Egyptian and Sudan conflicts and a very fine instructor indeed. In a few days we were issued with a uniform: tunic, trousers, cap - the service cap with the wire round the rim - and puttees, (we were shown how to do them), and greatcoat and we were shown how to roll that up and wear it round our shoulders on the march. Foot drill was the first instruction and we were instructed in the drill hall and when the weather was fine, marched down the street to the south common. After a while, rifles were issued to us - old Lee Enfield, the long Lee Enfield of the Boer War type - and we were instructed in rifle drill.
At that time there came a request from the 2/4th battalion, then stationed at Ongar in Essex, for those who'd had experience as scouts and I, having joined the boy scouts in 1910, volunteered along with several others. The four of us were given our instructions and railway warrants and proceeded by train from Lincoln down through Sleaford, Spalding, March, Ely, Cambridge to Liverpool Street where we changed and entrained to Ongar, arriving there in the evening. There we were billeted in private houses. Most of the local people had had to give up their living room - furniture being cleared - and we were issued with palliasses and we filled them with straw and that was our bedding. Rations were delivered each day from the Quartermaster's store, usually consisting of a quarter of a loaf for each man, a tin of jam, tin of bully beef and some of those big thick biscuits about six inches square. Also there was a ration of butter in those days, and bacon. Then we reported to the orderly room and I and my three comrades - Private Joyce - Bert Joyce - King and Morris - were posted to number sixteen platoon, D Company. We joined in the daily parade in the street each morning at eight o'clock and took part in the various drills and duties but were seconded to a small group headed by Major Low who proceeded to give us instructions on map reading and general scouting something on the lines of the old South African campaign.
After some weeks the whole battalion was entrained and transported to Luton. Again we were put in billets; I and my three companions in Paul Street, (a branch off the road which led up the hill to the London Road near the big water tower). We paraded in the street with the rest of D Company each morning and went through the usual drills: foot drill. In those days we lined up in two long columns and the order would be given after "Attention" to number. We numbered off and the odd numbers had to take a step back, a step to the right; the order being given, "Form fours". And then the whole battalion were ordered, "Right turn" and we marched off in fours - not threes as in this last war. Also, each company had four platoons and our four platoons in D Company each took part in separate drills under various instructors. There was platoon drill and squad drill and rifle drill and then we proceeded to bayonet work - dummy sacks placed in a trench, some hanging from a rope.
Every week on Friday was a route march - usually with full pack which varied according to each man but which was about 48 to 50 pounds. The routes would be over Dunstable Downs or through Luton Hoo park or various parks around and we usually arrived late in the afternoon after doing an average of 12 to 15 miles. That was to get us used to marching - an endurance test too. The captain, out Captain Hooper, I remember very well, rode ahead of the company on his horse and the other officers also were mostly on horseback.
At this stage I might as well explain what our equipment was. We had the old leather equipment consisting of the shoulder straps, two big pouches for ammunition, behind was a big leather case for holding our entrenching tool. On the right hand side was a haversack, on the left side our bayonet, and along side it, leather loops for holding the handle of the entrenching tool. The entrenching tool consisted of a metal blade in the form of a small spade coming almost to a point - round not flat - and the other part was a spike so you could use it both as a pick as well as a spade. We had no ammunition to carry then. Now our particular form of arms drill consisted in coming to the slope by canting the rifle forward at an angle of forty five degrees then swinging it up on the left shoulder and cutting the right hand away. In most other units one had to draw the rifle up on the right hand side, catching it at the shoulder. The reason we canted the rifle forward was to avoid catching it with the pouches which stuck out on each side of us, making it much easier to perform this drill. We had much reason to remember that later on when we found ourselves being drilled by some Royal Fusilier sergeants who objected to our particular form of sloping arms. And we objected to them trying to alter it, however that's another story.
We were issued with Japanese rifles. The Japanese government had presented, we understood, five hundred thousand rifles to the British government for use. They were rather large, a smaller bore than the 303. They had the V back-sight and piqued fore-sight and I found them very accurate and handy. When on the range I was able to perform creditably - at the Wardown ranges some miles away where we fired a course. The trouble was there were no slings issued and we found it pretty tiring carrying these rifles, some at the trail, some at the slope, until of course as we approached our destination or on the return to our billets we were always given the order to march to attention, that is at the slope in an orderly procedure. Well some of us got bits of rope or leather and made slings of a kind so that we could carry it over our shoulders more comfortably.
Now these rifles were of a light wood which we found would splinter rather easily, not so serviceable as the British wood that was used in our Lee Enfield rifles. And the bayonets were the long single edged type but very useful and easily fixed when we got the order to fix. I remember one occasion we marched to Harpenden and there in the street, given the order to pile arms, a thing I've never seen done since those days. The fashion's fallen out because rifles haven't the piling swivels now which are up near the muzzle. When we piled them there was a certain drill in doing that and also in undoing them.
To get us used to firing we were taken into a chalk pit and were issued with a Lee Enfield of the long type. I remember we climbed up on a rocky platform and there were two targets. We had to aim at the lower target in order to hit the top - they being placed at such a range as to allow for the trajectory difference because the range in that pit was only about thirty yards. We got used to the kick of the rifle, this was before we undertook the range firing with the Japanese rifles. Now our rifles were in short supply throughout the British army. I might add that we also did night exercises. I remember we did night manoeuvres in Wardown park and as we lay in the grass waiting for the order to advance by sections, a nightingale sang. It seemed most incongruous to hear this bird singing away in the dark as we lay there with our rifles in our hand.
However, to come back, we had on Sundays, church parade in which the whole brigade - the 132nd Brigade - took part.
PCN:
What division was that?
DB:
[1]This was the 45th Division, the territorial army, also known as the North Midland Division. The division consisted of the 4th Lincolns and 5th Lincolns, the 4th and 5th Leicesters, the 5th and 6th battalions of the North Staffs and the 5th and 6th battalions of the South Staffordshire regiment.
PCN:
That was the 46th Division. There wasn't a 45th Division.
DB:
No, the 46th was a London division. We were the 45th.
After the church parade which was usually held in the park, our brigadier loved to indulge in a huge manoeuvre known as the left wheel, en masse the battalions in columns of companies. It is a very intricate manoeuvre and he was anxious that it should be done very carefully and we were always very glad when that procedure was over and we had Sunday afternoons to ourselves.
After the route march on Fridays we'd return to our billets and change our socks and boots and then the sergeant would come round on kit inspection to each billet - with an officer usually - and then we'd proceed out into the open streets to one of the houses where the window had been thrown open. Inside was a table at which sat an officer and the quartermaster. Our names were called in alphabetical order, we each stepped forward, stood smartly to attention, saluted and were presented with a huge sum of a shilling per day plus usually two pence for equipment, it was to supplement our equipment. By the way, I might have mentioned that in our equipment we were also equipped with a housewife which consisted of needles and thread for darning our own socks and sewing on buttons. Course, we all had brass buttons in those days and every morning using our brass stick we were polishing buttons and cap badges. Ours was the sphinx - that was the regimental badge for the Lincolnshire Regiment - and in the little place under the sphinx there was the word "Egypt" in what you would call romantic characters, such as the Daily Mail uses. This was for the regular army because they'd served so well in Egypt under General Gordon and General Kitchener and others. The Leicesters had a tiger because of their service in Bengal, the Staffordshires had the Staffordshire knot and the Notts and Derby's - nicknamed the Notts and Jocks - had a cross for their badge, the Maltese Cross. We gradually learned the badges of other regiments, all made of metal and to be polished up, though later on we had to have them blacked over because they reflected the light and gave positions away, just as the wire was eventually taken from our hats because that was apt to deflect the bullets and so on.
I forgot to mention, there were four brigades. Things worked out in fours. Starting from a small squad would be sixteen men. A platoon would usually consist of forty men, there would be four platoons to a company, four companies to a battalion, four battalions formed a brigade, three brigades formed a division. And that's the plan on which the army was built in those days. There were alterations later but I never went into details because we got very much mixed up in the latter part. You were put from one battalion to another in order to reinforce and I found myself mixed up with all kinds of folk.
We were parading as a company every morning. Sergeant Major Whalley was a very good company sergeant major and Captain Hooper was a fine captain who led us. Both were eventually killed.
We were left to ourselves in the evening and there were various concerts. The local people were very kind to us. I remember I used to go to the church there and there was a very fine curate named Eliot. I forget the vicar's name but I do remember that the organist was a very fine organist - Costello was his name - and I joined there the Church of England Men's Society and I was sponsored by a grocer in Cumberland Street. There was the social life and there were good concerts. I remember particularly when some of the Scottish troops came with their bagpipes and played, and on another occasion - I don't know the name of the musician -but there was a fine cellist.
There were evening duties as well - patrols to help to keep order. I've been on patrol and I remember on that occasion going down the main street of Luton and the Luton Red Cross Band - a very fine brass band - was entertaining people. There were usually four, sometimes six, per patrol, just for two or three hours while the troops were about but I never remember any disturbance or trouble being caused by our fellows at all. You see, all our people were volunteers who joined up to serve King and country because the appeal was made for all strong able-bodied men to serve their country in its hour of danger and save her from Germany and Austria. And we had a great sense of patriotism in those days. We were proud of our country and of our king and we were all led to believe that Germany was a threat to civilisation. And I still believe that the Kaiser wanted to dominate Europe just as Hitler in this last war also tried to dominate Europe. I never lost that sense of patriotism. It had been instilled in us at school. I distinctly remember seeing on the wall, pictures of King Edward the Seventh and Queen Alexandra. And on Empire Day - May 24th - which is still called Victoria Day in Canada and observed in Canada as a holiday, that day marked Queen Victoria's birthday and we used to parade in the playground at school. A flag was run up on a pole - the Union Jack of course - and we were taught to salute it and we learned various patriotic songs too. I think it was instilled in us all; a pride and love of our own country and a determination to work and serve in whatever position we were called. When I returned home on leave my father gave me the opportunity of drilling the schoolchildren - the older ones - on the school playground, much to their delight as it was a nice change from the three Rs to be out in the open being drilled and it gave me some opportunity to develop powers of leadership and command which proved useful later.
Then on May 1st the bugle sounded the fall in. We fell in in the street and our officer told us that reinforcements were required for the 1/4th battalion in France.
"All volunteers take three paces forward." And most of us did. Then the officer came along, "You, you, you..." pointing to each one and I was among those selected. The rest of the battalion was dismissed and we were instructed to proceed home on leave, that our warrants would be sent to us and that we were to report back on the following Monday morning. Now this was a Friday I remember very well because the only leave I was able to get was from Saturday to Sunday, just two days leave before we were to go abroad. We went to the Midland station at Luton - our instructions had been sent to allow us to board the train. We changed at Nottingham into the Lincoln train and we had no difficulty there but I remember there was no train home till next morning and I arrived at my home station on the eight o'clock train and my station master - Mr Saggers - said "where's your ticket?" I said, "The battalion said that it would be sent on to you." He laughed aloud and said, "alright, off you go."
So I went home and announced to my parents I was going to serve abroad. I took a walk with my mother along the old familiar paths through the fields, along by the beck and up to the woods. It was a lovely day. And then, on the Sunday, with my old bike which I was given second hand when I was ten years old, I cycled to Lincoln twelve miles away as there was no train on Sundays from Wragby station. On the way, I called to see a clergy widow whose son was also serving in the war - Mrs Maddon - and that’s the only time I felt the parting. My parents had shown no emotion, they were rather proud that I’d been selected, and so I cycled the twelve miles to Lincoln. What happened to the bike I don’t know, but I got to the Midland station and had no trouble getting back to Luton, arriving early Monday morning. We were then issued with new equipment - webbing equipment which consisted of five pouches on either side, each holding fifteen clips of ammunition. It was quite a load when we were really loaded up with ammunition but that was balanced by the pack on our backs. We were issued with the long Lee Enfield rifles and they were charger loading. My rifle had been a single loader with a full magazine that would hold ten rounds but had had the charger bridge built on; it had been the old Boer War type of rifle. The date on my rifle was 1897. It had been converted into charger loading so that the cartridges (which were clip-loading which was not a feature of the Boer war) could be pushed in. The short, two bladed bayonet with a black leather scabbard I wore by my side.
We were then entrained for Southampton. Arriving at Southampton we were marched to a camp on the outskirts. I can’t remember exactly the district, I think it was the Highfields District of Southampton, and there we were issued with the usual bully, biscuits and beef and just lay around waiting for the next order. But it wasn’t until the following day in the evening or late afternoon that we fell in along with other units from the various brigades and battalions of the division and marched through Southampton to the docks. There we embarked on a small steamer whose name I don’t remember. Of course, there were no bunks and no blankets. As dusk fell, our transport moved out into the Solent and on reaching opposite Portsmouth we were joined by a destroyer as escort to escort us across the channel. Darkness had fallen and we just lay on the deck as we were and slept as best we could. When I awoke in the morning I found we were anchored off Le Havre at the mouth of the Seine. Of course, the usual rumours went around as to why we were still there but around nine o’clock the vessel got underway and proceeded up the River Seine; a novel experience as we sat there watching the houses and the French countryside go by until we arrived at Rouen. There the vessel anchored in mid stream. We were taken in lighters and proceeded to march to a camp consisting of large , sandy gravely plain surrounded by fir trees and known as The Bull Ring.[2]
We were housed in tents and right next to us were the gurkhas with whom I soon made friends. I’ve got a picture here of myself with one of them which somebody took and which was sent to England and put in the paper. I proceeded to learn some of their language and they taught me very well, but what did strike me was when the ghurka sergeants came in they’d sit and be attended to by the privates. The privates had to undo their boots and take them off. I couldn’t see our sergeants doing that. But they were fine little fellows: quick, agile, friendly, I liked them immensely.
Then we were out on the bull ring. Reveille was five o’clock, breakfast was six o’clock and we were on the march before seven, out to the bull ring. There, divided into sections, we were drilled and re-drilled much to our disgust because we’d been looking forward to going into the fighting ranks. I remember we had these Royal Fusilier sergeants who proceeded to teach us their type of drill in spite of our protests that we had our own type of sloping arms. We were very soon snubbed and told what would happen.
We had a long session each day, returning about noon for lunch. Afternoons were free when we’d saunter down into the town and taste the local wine. We were paid five francs - or was it ten francs, I’m not sure - a week; not very much money but enough for our needs. And that’s where I first came across those games which became quite a feature of the camp life: housey housey, crown and anchor and other games. I was never keen on drink so I avoided the wet canteen as it was told, but I can’t say I witnessed any undue behaviour by our fellows by over drinking or any excesses at all.
PCN:
Did you play crown and anchor?
DB:
No, I did not play because I saw the futility of it and I could see no good coming of it. I never was inclined to gamble and I never have. Even now I don’t go in for pools or anything of that kind. Chance your money? No, it isn’t any pleasure for me. I just used it for buying chocolate - the French type - or sweets. I didn’t smoke either in those days, like most of them.
Now in our tents there would be sixteen to a tent. We were issued with a blanket but we mostly slept with our clothes on. There were of course the usual medical inspections too we had to undergo, as we had of course before we left our billets in Luton. we were all medically examined to make sure we were fit.
PCN
Did nobody question your age?
DB:
No, my age was not questioned at all and I was able to keep up with the best of them. I was very strong and tall for my age and I’d always taken part in sport at home. I’d also belonged to the rifle club of which my father was the secretary and founder. The club was in the first of five divisions in the county miniature rifle association and one of my sisters in fact was a crack shot and beat all the men in the Christmas competition. We’d an excellent team and all these boys joined up. Most of the lads with me joined the Yeomanry, being country lads.
While we were at Rouen the drill proceeded as usual and we got rather fed up with it. Then one morning I had stomach trouble and reported sick. I was given medicine and reported “M and D”, medicine and duty. When I got back and reported to the orderly room, my particular section had gone out and I was put with the Durham Light Infantry who consisted mostly of miners: small fellows and I stood up above them like Nelson’s column, I could see over all their heads. I later became associated with the Durham Light Infantry.
Now the next step was we were embarked in wagons on which was printed 40 Hommes, 8 Chevaux - 40 men, eight horses. There were no seats, we just sat and dangled our legs and the train proceeded leisurely through St Omer where it stopped. That was a remount depot because there were a lot of horses used - particularly by the Army Service Corps and by the artillery for hauling guns. In fact our own artillery, as far as I knew, was hauled by horse power. We proceeded all day at a leisurely pace and arrived at Poperinghe in Belgium. This was in May 1915 and I was back with the Lincolns. Only that day did I encounter the Durham regiment. It was a huge camp and there were regiments from all parts of the country and this was a sort of holding place for reinforcements, Rouen being well back from the lines, well out of range and of course, planes didn’t get as far as there. The small German planes and our own planes were of the primitive type and I didn’t see anything of them until we got to Poperinghe.
At Poperinghe we detrained and marched out to a wood - I can’t remember the name of the wood now - and we and various other units were called the 2nd entrenching battalion. Our duties were to build up sandbag emplacements around the wood as a line of defence in case of retreat; somewhere for the troops, in case of assault, to fall back to positions that we were preparing for them. Trenches were dug and these sandbags filled, redoubts made and working in the woods now and again we’d hear the sound of a plane and glance up and then we were warned not to look up when a plane came over. On the approach of a plane a whistle sounded and everybody turned their heads down. We were told that faces looking upwards were very visible - the white faces turned upwards - to any planes that were reconnoitring. That’s all the planes were really used for then, just reconnoitring.
I saw my first ack-ack fire - puffs of white smoke - following the plane. The plane would eventually turn and while the gunners had to adjust it got away. I can’t say I saw one brought down. They hadn’t acquired yet the accuracy, that came later - nor the tactics to counter this.
While we were in this wood we built our own bivouacs. We were issued with groundsheets and we cut down branches and made our own little tents or bivouacs. Now my pal Bert Joyce and I shared one. He had been in service in the Dukeries as a footman and lived in Lincoln. His brother was a teacher. Bert was in service in the Dukeries in Nottinghamshire and we had formed a close friendship. During the day we worked and we were issued our bully beef and so on and when it rained the bivouac mostly held it off. But once when I was out working and came back I hadn’t noticed that somebody had been sick and I was summoned for having a dirty bivouac. And I still think I was unfairly treated when I was sentenced to three days CB as we called it - confined to barracks. Usually if a man misbehaved himself he had to report in the evening to the orderly sergeant who put him through a lot of drill along with the other fellas who’d got jankers as we called it. There were other names beside that but jankers was our familiar name.
But instead of putting me on the jankers drill I was put on duties of pumping water from a pond. Our water supplies were pumped up through a tube into a tank through cylinders loaded with some chemical; lime I think. It tasted horribly and in fact we couldn’t often see the bottom of our cups because of the colour of the water. We survived of course. We’d all got our own little billie tins and could make small little fires but we had to be very careful not to make much smoke so as not to give our position away.
One day there was a terrific bang and then a loud rising whine as a shell sped through the air and landed somewhere near Poperinghe with a terrific bang. We were all very startled and learned later that it was this German Big Bertha that had been run up to a railhead firing a huge twelve inch shell or something about that size. Well the range wasn’t accurate and it did very little damage and they usually fired about four or five rounds and then withdrew the gun out of sight. You’ll find mention of that big gun in the history books of the war. My word, it certainly was a terrific noise it made and the whistling of the shell through the air was like an express train rushing along. Fortunately we were well out of range, it was more destructive in noise than anything else. I did hear that a post office somewhere had been destroyed but there were rumours and rumours of course.
On another occasion I was put on night sentry guarding a tank, a big water tank. We could hear the sounds of our guns and the German guns firing intermittently and then there arose a great red glow in the sky. Eventually a fella came up, I challenged him, he said “Friend”, right. I said, “What’s that big glow?” “Oh,” he said, “The Germans are using liquid fire.” It transpired later that the Germans had sprayed either paraffin or petrol over on our trenches and set it on fire in an attempt to burn their way through and it was known as liquid fire. And also, very shortly within that time, chlorine gas was used. It was just outside our sector and we were issued with pads which we kept in a little pocket in the lower corner of our jackets. These pads had to be kept wet and we had to put them over our noses and mouths by tying them on in some way to counteract the effect of the gas. Later we were given masks of felt with glass eye pieces, and still later there was a mouth piece in which we could breathe out but not in. We breathed in the air coming through the hood being tied round our necks and those were the first primitive gas masks that we had. I remember the gas being used while I was there and there were various devices for keeping the pads from drying out. Fortunately I never had to use them but later I did have to use my gas mask considerably.
We then, after some couple of weeks, were given orders to fall in and we marched to a place called Ouderdom where there was a square of trees with rectangular huts and floorboards. There we joined the 1/4th battalion of the Lincolns. The band was playing, I remember, a very popular tune of the time. We had a very good band and when they were in the trenches they acted as stretcher bearers. We were entertained. We were issued with tins of tobacco and cigarettes. Most of the fellows smoked cigarettes, chiefly Woodbines, but I didn’t smoke at all and tins were piled underneath the boards, there must have been a hoard of tobacco for someone eventually.
One night there was a yell from one fellow. He’d taken his boots off and the rats had nibbled his toes. There was a danger, they said, of rats biting and causing infection and that they were able to nibble at a fellow’s feet without him knowing. That’s just perhaps part of the yarn but I do know that these rats were a jolly nuisance to us.
Course, during the daytime, a favourite trick was to sit and pull your shirt off, going around the seams cracking the lice. You just couldn’t avoid them somehow. There were no public baths at all and it was difficult obtain water for washing.
Well then we fell in and proceeded by night up towards Ypres, the Menin Road where the railway crossed and into trenches, and for a couple of miles I should say, we were in trenches. Course, the ground being flat, it wasn’t possible to approach the trenches on the level.
The trenches had what was called duckboards - slatted boards to keep our feet dry when it was wet. There were places where they were broken by shell fire and you had to jump over wide puddles that formed.. The rain made things very unpleasant for us.
Well then we found ourselves up by Sanctuary Wood and Maple Copse and we entered the trenches near Hill 60. This was my first time in trenches and this would be early July I guess. Well in the trenches they warned me to keep away from a certain bridge section because a fella had just been shot there by a sniper. However, I ducked over and fired a couple of shots and sat down. There was a fire platform of sandbags to stand on.
Now we had a bombing section and the bombing section was led by Corporal Claxton. ‘Clacky’ as we called him was very ingenious. He’d made a big catapult about five feet high; a board cut with a gap between and on each arm were fixed hooks with rubbers - four strands of half inch or more square strands of rubber. These were joined to a canvas basket on which was a hook fastened to a ratchet. There was a handle and the thing was wound up tight to get the tension, pulled back, and when the tension reaches a certain point, a catch released it and it flung the contents over the trench. How far it went depended on the amount of stuff you put in. Well Clacky was in the habit of collecting anything he could - usually empty biscuit tins which he then packed with clay, clips, spent cartridges, stones and anything like that. Then, in the cavity left, he’d defuse an unexploded shell, put the powder in and fix a Bickford’s number five fuse to it - which varied in length. Then he would place this thing on the bag, wind it up to the tension point, apply a match to the fuse and they’d just kick this ratchet and send it lolloping over to land somewhere, we hoped in the German or near the German trenches, and a moment later there’d be a terrific bang. It was a primitive kind of mortar.
Now the Germans had developed the minenwerfer; a plate with a spring on which threw a mortar or shell up to about a hundred yards, and they started replying with these. Well we always had a man on duty and it was one of my tasks for an hour, to stand and watch for them. You sometimes could hear the click from their minenwerfer as they fired it but you had to keep your eyes open and when you saw this thing come lolloping through the air, blow your whistle three times and everybody would duck for cover. And the same time, you’d shout “bottle” or “minnie”, we usually called them bottles. They were devastating things. I remember one landed near the dug-out of Lieutenant Reed and when we dug him out he was dead but not a scratch on him. The shock had killed him.
Well it affected me and I was apt to run to the latrines at the back - which was just a pole to sit on - and I had to hastily pull my pants up when the whistle sounded and slip into the side trench as best I could.
On one occasion he was firing these minenwerfers and we called back to our guns who started to fire shells and quietened it down. He did similarly and would try and quieten us down.
Our artillery was the old Field Artillery. Now in those days there was the Royal Field Artillery, The Royal Garrison Artillery, The Honourable Artillery Company and the Royal Horse Artillery. The Field Artillery used horses of course and although I don’t know much about the artillery side, I do remember that the Germans fired some pretty heavy stuff.
Well we were also sapping. We were undermining the Germans and we’d little fellas - miners - who dug holes down at an angle until eventually one would emerge and push a sandbag up which we pulled out of the way. The earth they removed they put into sandbags and they were a pretty hardy lot those fellas, I’ve every admiration for them. The job I hated was when I was put one evening on the big bellows and I had to just slowly pump air down to them and if I dozed off they’d soon suffocate and I was very strongly reminded and it was an awful job to keep awake.
I never went down a sap myself, none of us were allowed to, but I remember on one occasion standing there and the ground under me seemed to lift and there was a dull thud. We were all scared, thinking Jerry was undermining because he was mining too, but it happened that he’d blown one of his own trenches in on that occasion we heard. But it was a weird sensation feeling the ground heave under you and then we saw a column of smoke arising from his trenches.
On another occasion I was put on a listening post in advance of our trenches in a sandbagged emplacement and beyond that the wire. Course, we had patrols at night too and that was a risky business. On this listening patrol we had to lie and nobody was to fire a rifle or anything like that within twenty yards of the listening post, and we had to listen for the sounds of him sapping. I never detected any when I was on duty but the patrol that followed me suddenly found two or three Germans looking down on them. The Germans had sent a patrol out and our fellas just couldn’t fire back. Fortunately for them the Germans withdrew, too scared to fire themselves because they’d be a target you see.
And of course, every now and again you’d see what looked like a star going up. We all had these very pistols, a big pistol which fired a cartridge, and to fire this you had to lock your arm because of the terrific kick on this thing. It suddenly burst out and, gradually falling, it sure lit the scene up. If one fired you froze because any movement would give you away. If you just lay there you might be regarded as another log or boulder or something. Those very lights are very clear in my mind. If you suspected there was a German patrol and fired a very pistol you’d find out all right.
On another occasion I remember seeing Sergeant Joyce - Bert’s brother - getting up and taking a very careful look at the German trenches. We also had periscopes consisting of a long horizontal box - well, vertical I should say - rectangular in section, with a mirror at the top and a mirror at the bottom. By looking in the bottom one and pushing it over the top you got a view of the German trenches which were only about fifty or sixty yards away and I remember on one occasion taking a look and a moment later I saw the ground right in front of our trenches plough up. Somebody had spotted me and fired but fortunately the defences prevented it reaching through to me or I wouldn’t be here now. I wasn’t looking over the trench but I was looking through the bottom of the periscope. But I had to raise it up on the level - about a couple of feet from the top of the parapet - where a bullet could come through the parapet and catch you. But the parapet held firm and I was very careful after that that when I raised the periscope I raised it carefully. Later on we had tubular periscopes issued but these were primitive wooden ones with just an ordinary rectangular mirror at the top, set at an angle and reflecting on the one at the bottom. And one was constantly taking a quiet peep to find out what Jerry was up to. We were all watching one another like cats.
Part of the battalion occupied Hill 60 itself but we were on the fringe of it just where the sapping started. I always remember in 1916 I was then in the 4th Northern hospital at Lincoln when the news flashed that Hill 60 had been blown. And I said, “yes, I helped to work on that.” They perforated the hill through and through with saps, placed their explosives and blew up the Germans but they were never able to take full advantage of the gap they’d blown in the German lines - for some reason I never understood.
After five days we were relieved by the Leicester regiment and went back through the trenches to a place called Vlamertinghe. There were still some of the Belgian people there and there was an estaminet there where we could go for drinks. And then it was back to the trenches again. It was a case of five days in, five days in reserve and then withdraw fro five days rest.
At night we had to go up the line and repair any breaches in the defences at the rear of Sanctuary Wood or Maple Copse in the reserve lines. So we were kept busy at night and slept mostly during the daytime. Then on one occasion when we were doing our five days in reserve in daytime, we moved into this village. There were some children playing there and I heard a whistling sound and the kids suddenly ran. There was a sharp crack and then I saw the reason why the kiddies ran: they’d learned to know what a shrapnel shell really was. It was a peculiar whistling sound as it approached and then the sharp crack like a whip and bullets flew in all directions. Fortunately I was missed but I picked one up at my feet and saw several around me. I was lucky to get away with it and dived into the estaminet when I heard any more coming. Later on of course the Belgians were removed entirely.
Then, on another occasion we were assembled near our heavy artillery. We’d got some 9.2 guns between them and the four inch howitzers doing some work and every now and again there’d be a roar as one of the German Jack Johnsons or Coalboxes came over because they were doing counter battery fire. We called them coalboxes because they threw up a huge cloud of black smoke. They were trying to knock out our 9.2s and our big guns were also countering - mostly the big guns were countering one another in that way. We’d paraded and just been issued with shovels and we moved along the lane and into a field and just where we’d been standing a coalbox burst. It’s a matter of a minute that saved our lives. These little things, along with many others, live in one’s mind of how near one can be to being blown up.
PCN:
Were you a fatalist?
DB:
No, I was not a fatalist. I had very dear friend, a girl friend, who was a very convinced Christian and she taught me several texts. I was brought up a Christian because my father was a churchman and a reader and he was an organist in the local church and my mother made me read the bible each day and we had religious instruction at school.. One of the texts this girl taught me always stood in my mind when there was danger. That’s from Joshua, first chapter, ninth verse: “Be strong and of a good courage. Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the LORD thy God is with thee withersoever thou goest.” And that has proved true to me. Those are the words of course spoken by God to Joshua who was instructed to take over the command of the children of Israel after Moses had gone; a very daunting task for a new leader after such an accomplished leader as Moses had proved himself. No wonder he trembled and God said to him, B” strong, don’t be afraid, the lord thy God is with thee wherever you go.” There are other texts that came into my mind.
I carried a bible in my pocket and there was a certain lance-corporal Pygott with whom I formed a friendly association and he saw me take this out and said, “let me have a look at it” and he opened it at the text of one of St Paul’s epistles, “For I am persuaded that neither life nor death nor any other creature can separate us from God.[3]” It escapes me for the moment, I used to be able to quote the exact words. There were other texts too. Now in my boyhood I remember we had a church army visit the village and there was a certain Captain Jakes who gave some wonderful talks and we used to listen to him. They came and lived in a caravan on the school playground for a week and then moved on from village to village, evangelising. And he told the story of a young fellow who joined the army and his mother gave him a bible and he thrust it into his breast pocket. This young fellow joined the cavalry and he was in a charge when all of a sudden he was knocked off his horse. He got up and felt a slight pain in his chest and he looked and found that his bible had stopped a bullet which would have reached his heart if it had gone right through. I always remember that story and there were others.
PCN
Didn’t the war ever shake your belief?
DB:
No never, never. I had ultimate faith that God would look after me and I’ll come back again to that later.
I went into the trenches several times and then there came a time when we came out and were billeted in reserve in old dug-outs of the old railway line near lake Zillebeke. We were facing the other way and there was a battery of French pom-poms - seventy five’s - that had been firing away. And I also learned later from a fellow I met from the Derby artillery they were not far away. These pom-poms had been irritating the Germans and they’d sent up a balloon. Now we were due to go back into the firing line that night and I’d got my pack made up and ready to put on and I sat on it with Pygott beside me. The roof of the dug-out, which was in the embankment of the railway, consisted of an iron gate covered with sod, earthen sods, and we thought that looked pretty safe. Opposite to us, about thirty yards, was a rather large pond and there was a sort of hedge and ditch to the east of it which we used as latrines, and we were sitting awaiting orders and it was just getting dusk. About a hundred yards away was the Ypres-Menin Road and we were in the angle.
Now the railway beyond us ran into a cutting as it approached the road and there the Staffordshire regiment were billeted in their dug-outs. We were in our own in an exposed position on this ridge on which the railway ran, lake Zillebeke behind us, and a shell landed on the road. The next one landed on the edge of the pond, then one over our heads. Looking back now, he was obviously ranging because always when they fired they fired a shell beyond and one short and then get the distance between for the target. well sure enough, the next shell landed right on the trenches to our left and up went the call for stretcher bearers. I remember them carrying by the casualties and one man in particular who’d just his arm dangling by a thread covered with blood. They were taking them to the first aid post which was up beyond the Staffordshires, and our fellows from that end began running along towards the Staffs. Now there was a ridge and in the corner of this ridge with the railway embankment was our headquarters. The colonel came out and he said, “Get in with these others, stop running about, there’s an observation balloon up there” which we’d not noticed. This observation balloon had seen our activities when they were looking for the French pom-poms evidently. So two fellows crowded in in front of us and then two more, Sergeant Preston was one and the other, a fellow named West. And then the next moment there was a most terrific thump and crash, I can’t describe. All I knew was that my head was buzzing and singing and I was half buried. There was a groaning beside me and I was completely buried. What happened to the gate which had been over the dug-out, I don’t know.
From what I can make out, I’m the only one left. They told me later the top of Pygott’s head was taken off. My head was bent down and the fellow in front of me must have taken the full blast, blown to pieces. Well, I started to run towards this ridge and then my sight went and I called out and one of the Staffordshire fellas came up and said, “alright chum, come on.” He led me to a dressing station. There they bandaged me and treated other casualties. After a while the shelling stopped and it had started to rain. They carried some on stretchers but they couldn’t get the ambulance up to this post because of the shell holes and we had to walk some hundreds of yards to where the ambulance was. I, by holding on behind one of the stretcher bearers - slipping and staggering along - we eventually reached the ambulance. There I was put on a stretcher and we were taken to the rest camp. We were left there all night.
Next morning the medical officer came round. He was a major, a specialist of some kind, and he looked at me and said, “what’s the trouble?” I said, “My eyes, I can’t see sir, they’re sore.” So he pried into my eyes. I tried to open them but the pain was too intense. He said to the orderly, “Wash his eyes out carefully, they should never have bandaged him like that he might have gone completely blind.” Later on he came to me again and I was beginning to glimmer a little bit of light. This persisted two or three days. I just lay on the stretcher and they brought food to me: soup, stew or something or other; I had to be fed by hand. And then the officer suddenly said to me, “How old are you son?” I hesitated for a moment and he said, “Now, tell me the truth.” I said, “sixteen sir.” “Yes,” he said, “I guessed it.” And then he turned to the orderly and said, “You see you can tell by the formation of the bones that he’s not nineteen. I bet you gave your age as nineteen.” I said, “Yes sir.” “Alright son,” he said, “we’ll see to you.”
Well after two days they sent me to Bailleul, the headquarters where they thought I might get my sight and act as a clerk or something since I’d been to high school. However, there was no position so I came back to the rest camp. Then they took me in an ambulance to Mont des Cats. There were three hills: Mont Rouge, Mont des Cats, Mont Kemmel and on Mont des Cats was a monastery , part of which was still occupied by monks, the rest being used as a sort of semi-hospital, clearing station. When I got there I was beginning to be able to just see a little bit and I sat on the hillside in the sunshine hearing the boom of guns in the distance. Someone came and said, “Look, can you do something son?” We’re having a concert tonight.” I said, “No, I can’t”.
“You can play can’t you?”
“Well,” I said, “a bit.”
“Alright, we’ll put you down. We’ve got a piano there, we’ll get you to play something.”
They wouldn’t take no and I just wanted to get rid of them because my head was buzzing and I was feeling very very tried and weary.
PCN:
When was this? When were you wounded?
DB:
I was wounded actually on the 3rd of September 1915[4].
PCN:
So those guns you heard firing were probably to do with the battle of Loos then?
DB:
This must have been a week or two later because I remember it being Autumn. They may have been, I don’t know. We didn’t get much information as to what was going on. We didn’t discuss war. The thing is we joked, we smoked, we de-loused.
I turned to go in and I said to a chap, “I’ve got a terrific headache, my head’s splitting.” He said, “look, go down to the dispensary down there, I’ll take you.” He took me down and the fella looked at me. I said, “I’ve got and awful headache.” He stuck a thermometer in my mouth, took it out a couple of minutes later and said, “You go and lie down, go to your bed.” The doctor was round in five minutes, took my pulse and in quarter of an hour I was on an ambulance. I was taken to a hospital, a marquee at Hazebrouck which was the furthest point the Uhlans - the German cavalry - had reached, and there were three or four other patients waiting there and an officer talking to them. This was in the reception and eventually, as each was called away, the officer came to me. He said, “What’s your regiment son?” I said, “Lincolnshires sir.” He said, “Are you from Lincolnshire?” I said, “Yes sir.” He said, “What part?” I said, “Wragby sir”
“Wragby? Do you know Mr H J Banks the schoolmaster there?” I said, “Yes sir, I’m his son.”
“You’re Donald. Well, well that’s interesting. I wonder if you remember Miss Smith?”
Did I remember Miss Smith! We all loved her. She was our infant school teacher and he’d married her. And I shall never forget the day when Jinny Musson, the lady who took her place, took us out into the fields and we watched the little three carriage train go by and a white handkerchief fluttering. And Jinny said, “there goes Miss Smith.” Oh did we miss her. “Well,” he said, “I’ll write to your father.”
Now it so happened that at that time my father had cycled from Wragby and up to London. He had some sisters living in Kent and he’d friends in London, and there was the clergyman from the next village to Wragby - Langton-by-Wragby - the reverend Arthur Wellington Carver who was incidentally my godfather and who got the names Arthur Wellington because his godfather was Arthur Wellington, the duke who won the battle of Waterloo. He went to visit him because he’d retired and lived in New Barnet. And while my father was there he said, “I want to go and visit a former member of my staff who lives not far from here.” So he went to see Mrs Watson (her name now was) and when he got back there was a letter from her husband that had been forwarded on to Barnet telling that he’d met me. And he was so interested that he made the journey back next day to Mrs Watson’s home, just as Captain Watson arrived home and was able to give him first hand news about me.
Well the next morning I was put on the train. Wonderful those trains, you never knew when they were starting or stopping they moved so smoothly and gently. And I was taken up towards Boulogne and put into Number 1 Canadian Hospital, a fine hospital, all marquees, at Etaples near Boulogne. There I lay in a semi-conscious condition, feverish, hardly able to eat or do anything. I don’t know whether it was the shock but all they marked on my chart was PUO. I forget what the P stands for but the others were “unknown origin”.[5] The doctor did tell me once what it was but it was really partly the delayed shock I suppose and the fact that the side of my face was skinned and my eyes filled with the blast. Had I had my head up at the time I suppose I would have gone. But I hadn’t. I must have been bending down and it caught me on that side. Later on I asked my friend Bert who was wounded in the shoulder by a machine gun bullet and invalided home and discharged. He told me, “I went to that dressing station and they told me you’d never get your sight back. I’m glad you did.”
[3] “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans VIII, 38-39
[4] Actually, 2nd September 1915
[5] Pyrexia of Unknown Origin
Wounded
what happened to the gate which had been over the dug-out, I don’t know.
From what I can make out, I’m the only one left. They told me later the top of Pygott’s head was taken off. My head was bent down and the fellow in front of me must have taken the full blast, blown to pieces. Well, I started to run towards this ridge and then my sight went and I called out and one of the Staffordshire fellas came up and said, “alright chum, come on.” He led me to a dressing station. There they bandaged me and treated other casualties. After a while the shelling stopped and it had started to rain. They carried some on stretchers but they couldn’t get the ambulance up to this post because of the shell holes and we had to walk some hundreds of yards to where the ambulance was. I, by holding on behind one of the stretcher bearers - slipping and staggering along - we eventually reached the ambulance. There I was put on a stretcher and we were taken to the rest camp. We were left there all night.
Next morning the medical officer came round. He was a major, a specialist of some kind, and he looked at me and said, “what’s the trouble?” I said, “My eyes, I can’t see sir, they’re sore.” So he pried into my eyes. I tried to open them but the pain was too intense. He said to the orderly, “Wash his eyes out carefully, they should never have bandaged him like that he might have gone completely blind.” Later on he came to me again and I was beginning to glimmer a little bit of light. This persisted two or three days. I just lay on the stretcher and they brought food to me: soup, stew or something or other; I had to be fed by hand. And then the officer suddenly said to me, “How old are you son?” I hesitated for a moment and he said, “Now, tell me the truth.” I said, “sixteen sir.” “Yes,” he said, “I guessed it.” And then he turned to the orderly and said, “You see you can tell by the formation of the bones that he’s not nineteen. I bet you gave your age as nineteen.” I said, “Yes sir.” “Alright son,” he said, “we’ll see to you.”
Well after two days they sent me to Bailleul, the headquarters where they thought I might get my sight and act as a clerk or something since I’d been to high school. However, there was no position so I came back to the rest camp. Then they took me in an ambulance to Mont des Cats. There were three hills: Mont Rouge, Mont des Cats, Mont Kemmel and on Mont des Cats was a monastery , part of which was still occupied by monks, the rest being used as a sort of semi-hospital, clearing station. When I got there I was beginning to be able to just see a little bit and I sat on the hillside in the sunshine hearing the boom of guns in the distance. Someone came and said, “Look, can you do something son?” We’re having a concert tonight.” I said, “No, I can’t”.
“You can play can’t you?”
“Well,” I said, “a bit.”
“Alright, we’ll put you down. We’ve got a piano there, we’ll get you to play something.”
They wouldn’t take no and I just wanted to get rid of them because my head was buzzing and I was feeling very very tried and weary.
PCN:
When was this? When were you wounded?
DB:
I was wounded actually on the 3rd of September 1915 .
PCN:
So those guns you heard firing were probably to do with the battle of Loos then?
DB:
This must have been a week or two later because I remember it being Autumn. They may have been, I don’t know. We didn’t get much information as to what was going on. We didn’t discuss war. The thing is we joked, we smoked, we de-loused.
I turned to go in and I said to a chap, “I’ve got a terrific headache, my head’s splitting.” He said, “look, go down to the dispensary down there, I’ll take you.” He took me down and the fella looked at me. I said, “I’ve got and awful headache.” He stuck a thermometer in my mouth, took it out a couple of minutes later and said, “You go and lie down, go to your bed.” The doctor was round in five minutes, took my pulse and in quarter of an hour I was on an ambulance. I was taken to a hospital, a marquee at Hazebrouck which was the furthest point the Uhlans - the German cavalry - had reached, and there were three or four other patients waiting there and an officer talking to them. This was in the reception and eventually, as each was called away, the officer came to me. He said, “What’s your regiment son?” I said, “Lincolnshires sir.” He said, “Are you from Lincolnshire?” I said, “Yes sir.” He said, “What part?” I said, “Wragby sir”
“Wragby? Do you know Mr H J Banks the schoolmaster there?” I said, “Yes sir, I’m his son.”
“You’re Donald. Well, well that’s interesting. I wonder if you remember Miss Smith?”
Did I remember Miss Smith! We all loved her. She was our infant school teacher and he’d married her. And I shall never forget the day when Jinny Musson, the lady who took her place, took us out into the fields and we watched the little three carriage train go by and a white handkerchief fluttering. And Jinny said, “there goes Miss Smith.” Oh did we miss her. “Well,” he said, “I’ll write to your father.”
Now it so happened that at that time my father had cycled from Wragby and up to London. He had some sisters living in Kent and he’d friends in London, and there was the clergyman from the next village to Wragby - Langton-by-Wragby - the reverend Arthur Wellington Carver who was incidentally my godfather and who got the names Arthur Wellington because his godfather was Arthur Wellington, the duke who won the battle of Waterloo. He went to visit him because he’d retired and lived in New Barnet. And while my father was there he said, “I want to go and visit a former member of my staff who lives not far from here.” So he went to see Mrs Watson (her name now was) and when he got back there was a letter from her husband that had been forwarded on to Barnet telling that he’d met me. And he was so interested that he made the journey back next day to Mrs Watson’s home, just as Captain Watson arrived home and was able to give him first hand news about me.
Well the next morning I was put on the train. Wonderful those trains, you never knew when they were starting or stopping they moved so smoothly and gently. And I was taken up towards Boulogne and put into Number 1 Canadian Hospital, a fine hospital, all marquees, at Etaples near Boulogne. There I lay in a semi-conscious condition, feverish, hardly able to eat or do anything. I don’t know whether it was the shock but all they marked on my chart was PUO. I forget what the P stands for but the others were “unknown origin”. The doctor did tell me once what it was but it was really partly the delayed shock I suppose and the fact that the side of my face was skinned and my eyes filled with the blast. Had I had my head up at the time I suppose I would have gone. But I hadn’t. I must have been bending down and it caught me on that side. Later on I asked my friend Bert who was wounded in the shoulder by a machine gun bullet and invalided home and discharged. He told me, “I went to that dressing station and they told me you’d never get your sight back. I’m glad you did.”
To be continued.
Also see:
And see too, my posts on my Army Service Numbers blog regarding the Lincolnshire Regiment:
The 1st & 2nd Battalions, The Lincolnshire Regiment
The 3rd (Special Reserve) Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment
The 4th Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment
The 5th Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment
The Lincolnshire Regiment - Service Battalions
The Lincolnshire Regiment - 10th Battalion - Grimsby Chums
The 1st & 2nd Battalions, The Lincolnshire Regiment
The 3rd (Special Reserve) Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment
The 4th Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment
The 5th Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment
The Lincolnshire Regiment - Service Battalions
The Lincolnshire Regiment - 10th Battalion - Grimsby Chums
Hi Paul,I have read all your interviews with granddad! very interesting,I have been trying to research more about him and would be very interested to learn more. regards Paul Banks.
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ReplyDeleteI'd love to speak to you Paul, he was a great character and he had the most beautiful Lincolnshire brogue. I have several hours of recorded material with him. Please do contact me at paulcanixon@yahoo.co.uk
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