L/16761 Pte Charles Edwin Painter, Middlesex Regiment

I met Charles Painter in January 1982. Then aged 81, he was an in-patient at The Royal Hospital, Chelsea. Born on the 13th July 1900 he had enlisted, under age in December 1916, signing up not just for the duration of the war but as a regukar, career soldier for a period of seven years with the colours and five years on the reserve. Although he lied about his age, he was soon found out and served as a boy until July 1918. By the time he was ready to sail for France, the Armistice had been signed and he and others set sail for Russia where they would spend the next eighteen months. His British War and Victory Medal roll entry notes that he was attached to the North Russia Expeditionary Force.

Charles was still serving in 1920 and was issued with a new regimental number: 6189311. His service reocrd presumably still survives with the MoD.

My transcription of the notes from that meeting in Chelsea are very brief and read as follows:

CEP:

Well we were a soldiering family.  My father was an RSM and my brother, he’d enlisted and I didn’t like to be the odd man left out so I run away.  I was apprenticed at the time and I run away from that and I enlisted, told them I was 17 and I was accepted. And my father heard about it and he said, “Oi, you stop there now.  You’ll have to go on boy service.” And I had to go on boy service until early in 1918.  And from then on I was soldiering and I had a life of it.

I was already to go to France and the Armistice was signed but that didn’t stop us from going, we went to north Russia instead and spent about eighteen months up in north Russia.  The going was easy as far as fighting was concerned, there were only skirmishes and we lost very few casualties – we inflicted more.  It was all marching, going through the forest, down a railway line, down towards Petrograd as it was, now Leningrad.  And we used to be living on hard tack or bully.  We didn’t have any fresh bread or fresh meat for about six months and one of our fellas found a bakery and he got some flour from the quartermaster and he decided to make some bread. We used them for cannon balls.

Well there as a big dump of article of war and rations etc that the British Government had given to the Russian Army, worth about a million pounds, this was at Murmansk.  And they wanted to evacuate this but eventually they couldn’t, they had to evacuate themselves. Once we got moving backwards we had to slip out fairly quickly and left all that stuff there but not before we’d had a dig in. I know I brought home half a kit bag full of tobacco for my father.

We were there until 1919 and we came home from there.

G/62175 James Townsend Simpson, 6th Middx Regt

Synopsis

I interviewed James Townsend Simpson in Chelmsford on the 27th October 1981. He was born in Chelmsford on 1st June 1900 and was working as a milkman when he was called up in 1918. Mr Simpson recalled that he had joined up in December 1917, although one of his two medal index cards at the National Archives indicates that he joined on 4th January 1918 and was discharged on the 5th March 1919 due to wounds.

The 1901 census shows James living with his parents and two year old sister at 5 Myrtle Cottages, Manor Road, Braintree. His father, Henry T (possibly also Townsend) Simpson, was American by birth but a naturalised British citizen by the time the census was taken. He is recorded as being a 27 year old assistant superintendent for a Life Insurance Company.

James Simpson sailed to France with The Buffs (East Kent Regiment, number 26673) and later transferred to the 6th Middlesex Regiment, where he was given the number G/62175. My interview with him was brief and I never met him again. He died in March 1996 aged 95.

Interview

I joined up at five o'clock in the afternoon at Great Scotland Yard. We trained at Maidstone for three weeks and then at Crowborough in Sussex for four weeks.

We went to France in February or March 1918 and we arrived at Boulogne it was pitch black. We marched up to Ypres and through the whole bloody lot in the dark. When we got there they gave us a machine-gun and shoved us in a trench half full of bloody water. You were up to your knees in water and mud.

They started shelling when we got there and kept it up the whole of the blasted time. They slaughtered thousands of them that way, simply by leaving them in the trench when there was a bombardment on. There were a lot of idiots in that war. You held on to a bit of swamp which was no good to anyone because you couldn’t use it. There wasn’t anyone with any bloody sense at that time. We were in a hollow when we could have been on the ridge behind. A couple of our men got shot by a sniper there when they went to the latrines.

I was on one of three machine-gun posts in front of the front-line trench and we’d been there about five days when Jerry dropped a shell on us. He had a spotter plane come over in the morning and he wiped the lot out. He dropped one on the middle one and then one on either side. I saw my number one sitting at the gun with half of his head blown away.

I stayed there the day and night, waiting for the barrage to lift before they could come and fetch me out. I had shrapnel injuries to the knees, chest and shoulder.

I was transferred to the 41st General Hospital at Bruges and was there for eight or nine months. One doctor wanted to take my legs off and one wanted to experiment, so I let him experiment. He told me straight that he might play about with my legs for a year and then still have them off, but it all turned out alright.

After Bruges I came home to Stepping Hill Military Hospital in Stockport and then had two months’ convalescence in Ponting.

James Townsend Simpson's records on Ancestry.co.uk include:

• Register of birth
• Entry on 1901 census
• Medal index card
• Register of death

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