533 Sgt Charles Robert Quinnell MM, 9th Royal Fusiliers

I interviewed Charles Quinnell at The Royal Hospital, Chelsea on the 25th January 1982. He was oft quoted and appeared in a number of TV documentaries. The photograph above shows Charles and Alf Worrell in their Chelsea Pensioner uniforms along with other WW1 veterans at the Menin Gate, Ypres. This photograph was published in Rose Coombs' Before Endeavours Fade.

This is what Charles Quinnell told me.

"Sixty men were taken out of our battalion in December 1915 and we acted as labourers to professional miners who were sapping and mining under the German lines to counter the German mining. All you saw as you walked along the trench was a square opening which was four feet high and two feet wide: a doorway. That was the top of a staircase. Each stair was one foot deep and that went down thirty feet into the ground. When you were down at the bottom there it opened out into a room ten feet square which was propped up with tree trunks, and in the centre of that room was the shaft. That went down fifteen or sixteen feet and then they used to start tunneling. As this professional miner tunneled so his one and only tool was an ordinary bayonet, an ordinary soldier’s bayonet. And he used to stick that in and he’d go like that, whip it round and out would come like a big cheese. Those cheeses were loaded into sandbags and each sandbag took three or four of these cheeses. Then the man next to the miner, an infantryman – he was an RE, Royal Engineer, the miner was – then the chain of men along the tunnel and then at the bottom of the shaft a windlass and they were hauled up into the room and then up the staircase into the trench and you used to have a man up the top of the trench and he used to sling ‘em over the top. 

"Now the job was alright but it was very very wet. In the tunnel, right at the bottom of the mine it was drip, drip, drip all the time and being only four foot high you was crouched down all the time and so in consequence the back of your back got sopping wet. 

"Well that was the job and the theory of it was eight hours on and sixteen hours off. Well in that sixteen hours we were billeted in the town of Bethune in French barracks and there was no comfort there at all, just plain barracks and not a stick of furniture: no tables, no chairs. The traveling back to Bethune and also traveling back to the mine was all taken out of your sixteen hours. And sometimes, if you were held up with the shellfire that would take three or four hours out of your sixteen. 

"Well, on one occasion when we arrived at the mine, the three mines – this is at Givenchy – were known as Duckbill One, Duckbill Two and Duckbill Three. When we arrived at this Ducksbill were told that there was no mining going on because they expected the Germans to blow. See the theory of it was, the Germans mined and our people mined and we used to try and catch the Germans and blow their shaft in, and they used to do the same to us you see. Well when we got there on this particular day, we got the news that the Germans were going to blow – or they were expected to blow – and there was only a man, one of these miners, right at the end of the shaft, right at the end of the tunnel, and he had a stethoscope – like a doctor’s stethoscope – and he held it up against the wall of the tunnel. And you could hear if the Germans were working, well you could hear them talking. 

"At any rate, on this particular day when I got there I went down into the mine and right up the end of the tunnel there was this RE man on a sandbag and he was sitting there and he’d got this stethoscope right against the wall. Well you spoke in whispers in case the Germans were listening. And I said, [whispering] “Are they going to blow?” And he didn’t know, he said, [whispering] “you get out of it.” 

"So I was coming back away from him and I’m damned if the Germans didn’t blow. Now you’ve heard of brave men who have never been afraid. Boy, I was absolutely scared stiff. This tunnel we were in, the framework went up like that and then like that and you were thrown from one side to the other. But the timber held and the Germans didn’t blow our tunnel in. Boy, I was scared stiff. He spoke in a normal voice now, he said, “it’s alright, they’ve blown, it’s quite safe now.” At any rate, we carried on with the work and that was that. 

"We went over the top on the Somme on the 7th July and we got absolutely cut to pieces. We had two machine guns on us and I was a platoon sergeant. I went in with 43 men, I came out with one private, one lance corporal and myself. It was a heartbreaking job because we didn’t get what we went after at the village of Ovillers. Incidentally, we were the third lot to have a go at it. The 3rd Division had had a go at it, another lot had had a go at it but it was a wonderful position and the trouble was our artillery gave four hours bombardment before we went over but there were two machine guns placed about six or seven hundred yards behind the German lines and they were the boys who did the killing. 

"They smashed up the German front line – there was little or no infantry rifle shot against us but these two machine guns they had the range right to an inch and they just mowed our boys down when they went over. 

"Anyway, we came out, we got made up with a draft and we went over the top again on the 4th August, the second anniversary of the war, on a night attack. Now this will emphasize the luck of the game. These boys had only had three months’ training and when I heard that we were going over my first reaction was, “Oh Christ, not with this lot.” But give credit where it’s due, these boys went over like veterans and we took two lines. We only lost eleven men and we took lines. We had 128 prisoners. That just shows the luck of the game; we caught the Jerries on the hop. We went over behind curtain fire and that was one of the first times that the curtain fire had been used. Now curtain fire is shrapnel fire: one bursts here, another bursts there, another bursts there you see. And then they travel; you’re attacking the trench over there, you start from here and as we advanced so they altered their guns. Creeping barrage. It was a wonderful experience and when we got to the German lines they were all kneeling on the bottom of the trench with their hands up. We took more prisoners than what our strength was. It was just the luck of the game. You see on the 7th July we went over and we got cut to pieces and took nothing, only three men left out of forty three and that was pretty general right throughout the battalion. And yet on the 4th August we went over with a lot of rookies and we took all those prisoners. It was just the luck."

Charles Quinnell died in 1984. 

L/16490 Pte Henry Tomkins, 2nd Royal Fusiliers

I never met Henry Tomkins but I did write to him in July 1987 and received a long and interesting reply from him many months later in January 1988.

Henry joined the Royal Fusiliers as a career soldier in late 1914. Born in September 1899, he would only have been 15-years-old but nevertheless found himself in Gallipoli by September 1915, surrounded by hardened veterans not only in his own battalion, the 2nd Royal Fusiliers, but also men from other regular battalions who had been shipped from their overseas' stations and who now formed the regular 29th Division. I will let Henry take up the story:

My first experience of trench warfare was at Gallipoli, which I survived, and after a rest on the Arabian War Front to prevent Johnny Turk obtaining possession of the Suez Canal and preventing reinforcements getting easy passage through the canal to the Western Front, the 'Incomparable 29th Division' was sent to build up for the Battle of the Somme.

Exact dates I cannot remember. We evacuated Gallipoli about Christmas 1915 without any casualties and went, as I have said, to the Arabian Front. In approximately March 1916 we embarked from Port Said and disembarked at Marseilles and from there, onward by goods wagon train to Beaumont Hamel where we detrained for a week's forced march 'padding the hoof' to Pont Remy on the Somme, arriving in trenches on a Sunday night, approximately 10th March 1916. That same night we heard some heavy firing on our right where we heard on the grapevine that the King's Royal Rifle Corps, my twin brother's regiment, was having a ding-dong with Jerry, and where he received severe wounds and was sent back to Cheltenham hospital where he died for his King and Country aged sixteen years old. Like a lot of us youngsters he volunteered and gave a false age and was accepted. If we had been made to produce our birth certificates this country would not have had the contemptible little army of 1914. We would not have been able to join the army for the adventure of war.

My twin brother's death prompted my mother to claim me out of the army because I was under age. She told my brothers and sisters, all under 15 years of age, that she had lost one son and she was not going to lose the other (me). I was hoping to meet my brother when my regiment, 2nd Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, was relieved from the Somme trenches. I was a fully promoted lance-jack (ie, nickname for lance-corporal) and during the relieving of my regiment from the trenches for a rest period I was in charge of three privates keeping watch on Jerry trenches while the main relief was taking place by another regiment. 

When I and my party was relieved, we left our post and rejoined our regiment by going over the top back to the support trench in the rear instead of through the communication trenches which were zig-zagged for safety [and to prevent] enfilade fire. On reporting to my company sergeant on joining up with my regiment I was told that I was to be up before the Company officer in the morning, which nearly always meant trouble, because I had broken trench rules. Instead of trouble, however, when I was brought before my company officer in his office (part of a French farm barn), I was told my mother had claimed me out and he couldn't hold me. I was under age and I would have to go back to base. I was to get my identity [papers] next morning and proceed back to base by divisional train which was comprised in those days of horse-drawn wagons supplying us with food and ammunition.

I eventually arrived at regimental headquarters in Hounslow with a number of us under-age [boys] and was promptly demoted to private although [I had been] promoted on the battlefield. A week later I was dismissed from the Royal Fusiliers and became a fully fledged civilian until September 1917 when I would be of age to be conscripted and recalled back to my regiment. I beat them to it by volunteering for boy-service in the Royal Navy just before reaching 18 years of age. I carried on serving ion the Royal Navy in the engine room department as a stoker and finally finished my twelve years' service as a stoker petty officer.

On the occasions when I went over the top in my army time I had no fear of getting wounded, however sever the engagement, although Tommies were dropping all around me either dead or severely wounded, but I did have consideration for those who did lose strength and collapsed and passed out and were branded as cowards. I swore that I would shoot anyone I saw shoot at them, be he either officer or army police because they had no idea of the mental strain that that supposed coward had collapsed under. 

I heard similar remarks several times when in the trenches and so I was not surprised that there was a mutiny by conscripts objecting to the treatment meted out to them at the Bull Ring [in Etaples] by bullying NCOs. Discipline was necessary but ridicule was not.

Henry Tomkins died in November 1991 having outlived his twin brother, William, by close to seventy-five years. His partial British army service record survives in WO 364, and his naval service record has also been digitised and can be viewed on the National Archives' site or on Findmypast. 

Henry's military record is fascinating and as well as containing his attestation paper, also has correspondence from his mother requesting his release from the army. The letter below is one of several in his file (image Crown Copyright the National Archives):

Christopher Eric Pleydell Wilton - Essex Regt and Indian Army

 

I met and interviewed Christopher Wilton in Great Dunmow, Essex in April 1984. He was born on the Isle of Wight on the 12th December 1897 and enlisted, aged 18, in May 1916. This is what he told me. My comments in square brackets.



"I joined the Gloucesters because my parents, on the male side, came from Gloucester and we can trace the family back to 1310.

"My first experience as a rookie in the 3rd Gloucesters was having to peel a whole bag of potatoes and then the next day to cut up a whole bag of onions and to be yelled at by the local sergeant in charge of recruits. After that I was sent with a platoon that had about two weeks training, to Seaford where we were encamped. There I had my first experience of life in a hut with a sergeant who was very fond of showing how great he was. And it’s very interesting at this point, because many may not believe this, that I used to hear some of the older men say, “You wait till you get out to France my laddie, you’ll have one in your back.” And I understand that this quite often did happen.

"At college I had been in the Officers’ Training Corps so at least I did know something about squad drill and how to shoulder arms etc. Consequently there were a number of privates who had similar experience and we and they were selected for special training in the evening. Eventually I was sent to Keble College, Oxford to train as an officer cadet and we lived there just like the university students, of which there were a number still in college. I’ve no idea why I was chosen for Keble College; presumably because I could manipulate my rifle but maybe – and let’s be quite frank about this – maybe because my father who had been a major in the Isle of Wight Rifles, pulled a few strings. When the war broke out he was transferred to the Essex Regiment as a regular officer.

"Anyway, I passed out. I think there must have been a whole battalion there. There were a thousand of us. I was sent to Colchester where I joined the 3rd Essex, and then went on to Felixstowe. I know my first experience was having to go to the sergeants’ mess to taste the beer. I knew damn well I was looked at by the sergeants in a queer way as much as to say, “what the hell does he know about beer?” and it was quite true, I’d never had beer in my life before.

"Eventually I was posted with a draft to France. Mind you, this was after a total of nine months’ training in the army. We went to Boulogne and from there my first experience of French railway trucks was “Chevaux 8, Hommes 40”. We were sent up the line to a place called Mazingarbe and went straight into the trenches as far as I can remember. If you want to know where Mazingarbe is it’s near La Bassee and Bethune which is in Flanders, the west of the line. I remember walking from Mazingarbe to Bethune and literally not meeting a soul. I was allowed a day off to go and have a bath and I went to Bethune where there was a place which was an officers’ rest house and you could have a hot bath. I remember sort of living in that hot bath for two hours.

"Now I want to get away from the idea that life was awful. It wasn’t. As a youngster of eighteen, only recently out of school and some six months’ training as an apprentice in the Coventry Ordnance Works, I felt thrilled. This was a completely new life and I’ve often wondered what would have happened to me if there’d been no war and I’d just carried on with my apprenticeship. I don’t think I’d have made a very good engineer. Yes, down in the trenches life was not all that pleasant. Nevertheless, there was a certain air of expectancy.

"What I hated most was claustrophobia when living down in dug-outs. I was always scared that a bomb would drop in front of the dug-out and bury me alive. Now this nearly happened once in the trenches. I was a second lieutenant and was walking along with another officer and there was a blast. He had his head blown off and I was partially buried in a mound of dust and earth. But I recovered out of that.

"Of course one was scared, but not to the extent you might imagine. The one thing I was really scared of was the midnight patrol in between the lines in No-Man’s land. Everything’s dead quiet and you suddenly find this verey light which comes right over you and you’re all exposed unless you’re down in a shell-hole.  Those were my worst moments: going out on patrol at night time between our front line and the German front line and just getting into a shell-hole, trying to listen and see if there was anyone about. That was terrible. Living day in and day out, sometimes for about ten days before one took one’s boots off, and as a consequence of that, and later on wearing puttees, I have had osteo arthritis. It was all mud, thick mud.

"After I don’t know how many months I was eventually invalided out from the front line. It was called PUO: Pyrexia of Unknown Origin. What I was I still don’t know today, but I had to go down to Etaples where the hospital was situated and then I was returned to England to an officers’ hospital in Wimbledon. All of them had this PUO which was a temperature which would not come down, and aches and pains all over the body. Anyway, I was sent on a month’s holiday and then I returned to the Essex Regiment at Felixstowe and was sent out with a whole platoon to Palestine.

[Palestine account not transcribed here]

"Whilst I was in the trenches in France a brochure came round saying, “Why not join the Indian Army?” It showed animals and tigers and all sorts of things and seemed awfully pleasant. I thought, well anything rather than this, and I put my name down and then forgot all about it. Then, all of a sudden, one day in March, the adjutant called out, “Wilton, you’re due in Suez tomorrow. Get cracking, you’re joining the Indian Army.” In those days we were running a kind of night express to Port Said and on to Suez and so I went and joined the boat from there.

"In France, on our right, was the Loos offensive. We had the Portuguese on our right and they suddenly disappeared. All I can remember of that is one mad rattle which never seemed to stop; machine guns and heavy artillery fire. It went on, as far as I can remember, for about three days. This is only hearsay but I’m told the Portuguese disappeared; they retreated. You can find that out from the archives, it’s well known. [This cannot have been the Battle of Loos as this took place in September 1915 and Christopher Wilton did not arrive overseas until April 1917.]

"I don’t think I was ever in a line that went right over the top and into the German line. I think at that time the sector was fairly quiet. We used to watch our planes go over quite a lot. In those days they were small bi-planes with an open cockpit.

"There was no boredom in the trenches. Nobody could be bored, there was too much going on all the time. It was very much a war of attrition. You had to go round inspecting and talking to the fellows. You see, we were always on the qui vivre. After all, you only had to show your head just a bit over the trenches and you’d probably get shot straight away.

"... the war made a man of me. I think it did a lot of good to us."

"Our trenches were quite good compared to some I’ve seen. Obviously if you were there you were continually keeping the trenches in good form, especially your places of look-out. The people who suffered the most were the married men who had wives and children, but for young fellas like me it was an experience. Quite frankly the war made a man of me. I think it did a lot of good to us to tell you the honest truth because we suddenly realised we were all the same. If that shell had your name on it, you’d had it, and that shell could also Tom, Dick and Harry next door.

"We were on parade in India on Armistice Day and General Rawlinson was inspecting us. Being adjutant I had a horse and I was in front. He came to me and said, “Well, Wilton, how did you get into the Indian Army?” I replied, “through the back door sir.” You see, unless you’d been to Sandhurst you weren’t considered fit for the Indian Army and that’s when things changed in the India Army. New gentlemen came out."

Christopher Wilton remained in the Indian Army at least until 1923 and possibly a good deal later. He married Marion Cooper in Bengal on the 8th April 1922. Christopher Wilton died in September 1984, just five months after I had recorded his First World War testimony.


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222179 A/Cpl Jack Edward Rose, Royal Engineers

I met and interviewed Jack Rose at his home in Chelmsford on the 9th December 1981. Born in July 1897 at Ryde on the Isle of Wight, by the time he attested as an 18-year-old under the provisions of the Derby Scheme in December 1915, Jack was living in Thetford, Norfolk and working as a telegraphist for the Post Office. I also found him on the 1911 census staying with his father (a licensed victualler), mother and sister at the Ship Hotel, Burnham on Crouch.

Thankfully, Jack's papers survive in WO 364 and in answer to question 9 on his attestation paper (Are you willing to be enlisted for General Service?) the following response was written: "Not joining under Group Scheme by command of Postmaster General, but coming under Director of Army Signals for Home Defence." The response was obviously not heeded as Jack was in France by 1917.

The transcript below is all that survives from my meeting with Jack Rose and I have added to this (in square parantheses) where additional information from his surviving papers adds to the picture. Jack Rose died on the 10th October 1985 aged 88. His two brothers, who joined the army in 1914, both survived the Great War.

"After I enlisted I reported at Norwich barracks and was sent to train with the wireless section at the Signals regiment at Worcester. [His attestation was approved at Worcester on the 2nd February 1917 and he was assigned to the Wireless Training Centre for the Royal Engineers]. We trained at Worcester and Morton on British field sets with a cat’s whisker receiver. There were no amplifiers in those days. The riding school section as also there and I could see that it was rough house and knew that if I joined that I’d be sent ot Mesopotamia or German East Africa, and I wanted to go to France.

"We went to France in November 1916 and I ended up on a trench wireless on the Nieuport Front in Belgium. [Jack's papers note that he disembarked in France on the 20th August 1917].

"It was while I was at Nieuport in 1917 that I got gassed. We were in a dug-out under an old café in the town of Nieuport which was used as an infantry observation post and one chap failed to pull the gas blanket over the entrance. Well, we all got a dose of mustard gas that burnt all the skin off your fingers and affected your eyes. I was blind for three days and spent pounds on my eyes when I came out of the army but they’ve never been the same.

[Jack's papers note a spell in hospital between the 26th October 1917 and 3rd November 1917. In 1921, by now living at the Lion and Lamb Hotel at 25 Duke Street, Chelmsford, he submitted a claim for a pension as a result of conjunctivitis resulting from his gassing. He gave his regiment as "Royal Engineers, 2nd Army Signal Company. The claim was rejected. The watermarked but undated photo, copyright of The Francis Frith Collection, shows the Lion and Lamb Commercial Hotel in Duke Street, Chelmsford.]

 

"We used to do ten days in the front line, ten days in the second line, ten days with the heavy artillery and then ten days rest.

"After I’d been gassed we were sent back to base at Abbeville and it was while I was waiting to be re-drafted that I saw a wireless lorry in the yard. It had two eighty-foot masts made of steel which had a radius of eighty miles. It was a new thing to me and I asked the sergeant in charge if there was any chance of getting on the lorry because I was fed up with trench warfare. He asked me who I was, where I came from, gave me a test and then took me on. The trenches were jolly rough and I was glad to get out of it, I don’t mind telling you. It was much better when I got on the motors. You had long hours and all that, but it was altogether a different life.

"The weather though, didn’t change. At Nieuport it was all sand and at Arras it was mud. They were damned high trenches at Arras and you had to use a step ladder to get over the top.

"Christmas 1917 saw me and three German-speaking Poles in the Arras sector. We used to run out lines with a bayonet on the end to try and pick up conversations from the German trenches. It was a failure. They hoped to get a lot of new information but they didn’t get it.

"The Eiffel Tower used to broadcast news of the war in the early evening and we always used to stop our broadcasting and tune in to Paris. Then I’d make my way down to the sergeant-major and give him the war news for which I’d get an extra tot of rum and extra candles. At Christmas 1917 I was coming back from seeing this sergeant-major, making my way along the slippery duckboards, whena  blooming shell burst above and made me jump. I lost the pipe which my father had sent me and landed up in a shell-hole, waist-deep in water."

[Jack Rose’s two brothers who had joined up in 1914, both survived the war.]


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Veterans re-live life in the trenches

I thought it might be an idea to start integrating surviving video and audio of Great War Veterans and so here's the first such link courtesy of YouTube.



This link will take you to a 49 minute clip of veterans re-living their time during the First World War. Featured veterans in this programme are:



Norman Collins 1897-1998 (pictured above)
Jack Rogers 1894-2000
Dick Barron 1895-1999
Albert "Smiler" Marshall 1897-2005
George Louth 1895-2000
Robert Burns 1897-2000
George Littlefair 1896-1998
Arthur Wagstaff 1897-2000
Fred Francis 1894-1999
Tommy Gay 1898-1999


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22859 Sapper William George Pink, 26th Field Coy, Royal Engineers

I met William Pink on 1st October 1981. At the time, he was one of a dwindling band of Chelmsford Old Contemptibles although he was originally from Hampshire and had been born in Southampton on the 10th December 1895. Prior to enlisting on 10th May 1912, he had worked as a groom. This is what he told me.

"When war was declared we were immediately shipped over to Boulogne and went straight to Mons from there. There was a lot of troop movement all sorting themselves out because the Germans were heading straight for the Belgian Front. I fought at First Ypres and then la Bassee and there was no sign of an armistice although everyone expected the war to be over within a few weeks.

"The conditions were awful of course and the trenches full of water. In some of them we didn't know whether we were going to be drowned or whether we'd get out. We were filthy. The lice were embedded under your armpits and around your crotch.

"All of a sudden we were retreating and the might of the German Army was just behind us. We were impeded by the Belgian refugees fleeing in front of us; families and children all mixed up with the troops. Such was their hurry that meals were left in the oven still cooking, or on the tables. We released all the animals to try and get them away before we were overrun by the Germans.

"We were retreating through La Bassee and a shell exploded above us showering us with shrapnel. A piece the size of a walnut hit me at the base of my spine and laid me out. I lay where I fell until the stretcher bearers picked me up and took me to a casualty clearing station. From there I was transferred to the General Hospital and then shipped back to a VAD hospital at Oxford. My injury meant that I couldn't walk until 1917 and even after then I still had to use a stick. For me, the war was over."

William Pink has a surviving service record in WO 364 and this tells a somewhat different story. He enlisted in May 1912 at Chatham and was wounded on the 24th January 1915. He was taken to No 3 Field Ambulance the following day and admitted to the Duchess of Westminster's Hospital on the 26th January. On the 6th February he was transferred to England where he was admitted to a London hospital the same day. He subsequently spent time at a hospital in Oxford and then VAD hospitals first in Slough and finally in Wantage. He remained in England until 1916 but was well enough to resume service with the Colours and sailed for Basra in June 1916 and served in Mesopotamia and India until April 1919.

William Pink died in 1982.


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370395 A/Sgt Francis G Seddon, 8th London Regt

 

When I interviewed Frank Seddon it was 1986 and he was aged 89 and living on his own in Portslade, Sussex. No service record survives for him but I did record his experiences on my tape recorder.

 

I'm Francis George Seddon, but they always know me as Frank. I was born in June 1897 in Bethnal Green, East London. It's all knocked down now. Before the war I was a telegraph messenger delivering telegrams. I started at the age of fourteen, but of course that's not allowed now.

 

I joined the Territorials on 4th June 1914, seven days before my birthday, and when I finished the war I was a sergeant-instructor when I was an instructor to young soldiers aged eighteen. The reason for that was that over the years the casualties was terrific and we had no fit and able-bodied men to send to France any more and so they had to rely on eighteen year-olds. They were being called up when they were eighteen and there were special battalions throughout the country for them only. Of course, I was only twenty-one myself at the time.

 

I joined the Territorials in the first place because there was one ot two doing it who had that sort of encouragement and some of our inspectors belonged to the Territorials as well. I was young and active then and full of adventure and I fancied the Territorials to go camping you know; there was no signs of war.

 

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

 

I was with several friends: William Harfleet, Johnny Harris, Greig Haynes; I can't remember them all now. We was all about the same age and came from the same office as you might say, West Central London.

 

I think I was in number three company and we were a happy crowd, all part-time soldiers who'd joined for a holiday really. We had a big shock when we got to France although the shock don't come till you get to the trenches. Till then, you're singing and marching and full of life."

 

Frank volunteered for service overseas but was held back because he was too young:

 

Like a few others I went to Cuckfield which is near Haywards Heath in Sussex.I was there four or five months and a nice billet it was. I spent Christmas there and blow me, my mother and sister came down to see me, all that way. They was more worried than what I was. We eventually went to France in 1916, about May I think it was.

 

Frank's entry on the British War and Victory medal roll notes that he was overseas between the 27th May 1916 and the 13th October 1916. He remembers that he was wounded on the 7th October and that it was nearly twelve months before he recovered from his wound:

 

I had electric treatment and exercise, all kinds of things. Of course, the nerves were severed in my leg which never really got well. I went back to my battalion and they reckoned I was fit to go out to France again. I didn't go back though because a notice appeared saying they wanted men who would like to go in for drill instructors.

 

Frank never went back to the trenches. He received the British War and Victory Medals and the Territorial Force War Medal. He died in November 1990 at the age of 93.

 

 

 

 

 



375232 Pte George A Douglas, 8th London Regiment

I never met George Armet Douglas but I did contact him in November 1986 when I was trying - fruitlessly and unsurprisingly, as it turned out - to find men who may have served with my Great Uncle John (Jack) Frederick Nixon.  This was Mr Armet's response to my letter of enquiry.

Dear Mr Nixon

Your letter about your great uncle has certainly come when our memories become numerous and very vivid. Nevertheless I am sorry that I cannot say that I made contact with him before he was unfortunately killed in action. As we were under 19 years of age we were barred from active service, but once the casualties multiplied during the March 1918 German advance and then the Allies went over the top in August 1918, the A4s or under 19s were drafted out to France.

I survived the German offensive of March 1918 and then we had a spell of trench warfare in front of Albert-sur-Somme. We went over the top on the 8th August and again on the evening of 9th August, suffering heavy casualties. That return to Round Wood to be made up to strength again would most likely be your uncle's debut.

Within the trenches we ate bread, bully-beef, pork and beans, bully stew and machonochies (a tinned stew) that was heated up on our own personal improvised stove: an oily candle rag inside a ventilated bully tin (bully meaning corned beef). But as a special treat our cooks made bully rissoles and they were kept HOT in a hay-box by the quartermaster sergeant who came up with the rations in the middle of the night.

We advanced solidly after that, obtaining food when we were lucky. There was no trench life after September and it is most likely, since we moved north after breaking the Hindenburg Line to the area of Lens and Lille, that your relative was killed during the fighting in the suburbs of Lens. His name does not appear in the roll of honour published in the Battalion's history. He was so unlucky not to survive until the 11th November.

Strange to say I came home in a hospital ship in March 1919 with the flu and after sick leave was transferred to the Rifle Brigade.

Yours sincerely, George A Douglas

Jack Nixon was attached to the Post Office Rifles from the Rifle Brigade and he was killed on 3rd October 1918. He has no known grave and is commemorated on the Vis-en-Artois memorial.

George Douglas's medal index card, courtesy of Ancestry, is posted above. He also has a badly damaged service record available on both Ancestry and findmypast but easier to find on the latter. It shows that his original number with the 8th Londons was 63885 and that he attested at Edinburgh on the 10th January 1918 aged 17 years and 318 days. At the time he joined up he was working as an assistant postman and living at 55 Ashley Terrace, Edinburgh.

George's attestation was approved on the 20th March 1918 (he was now 18 years old) and he was posted to G Company of the 2/8th London Regiment and then embarked for France shortly thereafter. The date of embarkation is faded but he was certainly with B Company of the 1/8th Battalion by 7th April 1918 and thus survived the German offensive the previous month because he was too young and still in the UK.

George was admitted to a casualty clearing station with influenza in September 1918 and was still sick when the armistice was declared. Posted back to base depot on the 15th November and then back to the Post Office Rifles four days later, he served with his regiment until 13th February 1919 when he was transferred to the 2/17th London Regiment. He was admitted to hospital in Boulogne five days later with a recurrent bout of influenza (in all probability he had probably not recovered from his initial bout) and by 1st March 1919 he was on a hospital ship back to the UK. On 27th June 1919 he was transferred again, this time - as he remembers - to the 5th Rifle Brigade. He was finally discharged from the army on 22nd October 1919.

52569 Pte George Henry Bailey- RAMC

 

I first met 'Bob' Bailey in September 1981 and interviewed him on the 15th of that month.  Over the next few years I saw him on and off; usually in The Ship which was his local and the place he met a couple of other Great war veterans that I befriended: Reg Crane of the 4th Royal Berkshire Regiment, and Paddy O'Sullivan of the Royal Field Artillery.  Bob lived in Coval Lane, just around the corner from another veteran, Stan Brown of the Leicestershire Regiment.  Looking back now, forty-odd years later, it seems as if there was a veritable glut of First World War veterans back then, but I remember how difficult it was, even then, to track them down and interview them.  They were all in their eighties and over, and they were all dying off fast.

 

I never knew Bob Bailey as George Bailey; he was always called Bob.  Yet he was born George Henry Bailey in Chlemsford on 28th December 1985 and his medal index card notes George H Bailey.  For me, 19 years old, he was always simply Mr Bailey.

 

Bob Bailey was an apprentice with the National Steam Car Company when he enlisted with the RAMC on 2nd February 1915.  He served overseas from June 1915, working on hospital barges and hospital trains. He preferred to recall that RAMC was an acronym for Run Away, Mother's Coming, rather than Rob All My Comrades.  What follows are notes from Bob Bailey's diary kept, against regulations, between February and November 1915. 

February 2nd: Enlisted

February 5th: Left Chelmsford for Aldershot

February 13th : Left Aldershot for Chatham

June 7th: Left Chatham for Aldershot

June 14th: Left Aldershot for Southampton.  Load 600 tons of hospital equipment on the City of Chester.  Stopped at rest camp for the main body to join us.

June 15th: Left Southampton at 5pm

June 16th: Arrived at Boulogne at 4am.  Landed 11:15am.  Stopped on boat for another night and went to the rest camp for another night

June 18th: Left Boulogne at 12 for Dammes Camiers.  Arrived 1:30pm Friday

July 6th: Started to put our first HP tent up.  The tents were used in the 1911 Delhi Durbar

July 13th: We are about two miles off the sea and we had a bathing parade

July 15th: We had 20 tents up

July 16th: Put the mattress covers on

July 17th & 18th: Garrison Guard 24 hours

July 18th: Sisters arrived

July 20th: Equipping ward ready for wounded

July 21st: Ditto.  Bathing parade

July 22nd: Ditto

July 23rd: Equipping and night guard equipment

July 24th: Equipping

July 25th: Church Parade and fatigue up to 8

July 26th: Taking tents

July 27th: Pitching tents

July 28th: Pitching tents.  Played football game v Canadians No 3 Gen. “25” won 3-2

July 29th: Equipping wards

July 30th: Equipping and detailed for Nursing Orderly of ward. 28 beds

July 31st: Getting ward ready for wounded

August 1st: Church parade and getting ready for wounded

August 2nd :  Ditto

August 3rd: Preparing ward.  Sports.  Canadian got 93 pts, 20th Gen 32[1], 22 Gen 13[2], 25 Gen 8.  Concert in __________ of Hut by Princess Victoria troop

August 4th: Preparing ward on convoy duty

August 5th: Preparing ward.  Convoy arrived at 11:30.  On equipment guard

August 6th: Ward duties

August 7th: Ward duties.  2nd convoy of 70 arrived 8pm

August 8th: Ward duties

August 9th: 3rd Convoy arrived.  90 at 10:30pm

August 10th: 4h convoy of 120 arrived.  26 went to my ward (15 12) at 9am

August 11th:Ward duties

August 12th-14th : Ditto

August 15th:Ward duties and football match with ASC (Army Service Corps) 25th won 6-1

August 16th: Ward duties

August 17th: Ward duties and football match with 18th General at Etaples.  25th won 5-0.  5th convoy arrived at 10:30pm (50)

August 18th: Ward duties

August 19th:Ward duties convoy arrived 1:30am – 20 of 100

August 20th: Ward duties

August 21st: Football match return with 3rd Canadian.  25th won 5-2

August 22nd: Convoy arrived at 12. 100

August 23rd: Ward duties.  Princess Victoria concert

August 24th: Convoy a 3 in the early hours of the morning.  100

August 25th: Play 3rd Canadian at cricket.  Won by 5 wickets and 15 runs

August 27th: Convoy of 70 arrived at 4:30am

August 28th:Played 3rd Canadians and won 1-0

August 30th: Play No 7 convalescents and won 12-2

September 3rd: Convoy of 80 B

September 12th: Convoy of 83 B

September 15th: Convoy of 186 B

September 24th : Convoy of 164 B

September 26th: Convoy of 218 A

September 27th: Convoy of 181

September 28th: Convoy of 155

September 29th: Convoy of 164

September 30th: Convoy of 232

October 1st: Convoy of 175

October 3rd: Convoy of 145

October 7th: Convoy of 167

October 10th: Convoy of 140 9:30pm

October 15th: Convoy of 104

October 23rd: Convoy of 209

October 29th: Convoy of 164

October 31st : Convoy of 197

November 21st : Evacuation of hospital

November 24th: Left 25th General for No 4 Ambulance Flotilla

 

Bob Bailey died in August 1986 aged 90.  His home and those other side of it, were demolished shortly afterwards to make way for a new road.

 

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[1] Located at Camiers 15th May 1915 to 14th April 1919

[2] Located at Camiers 21st June 1915 to 8th January 1919