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.

O/242 Rifleman Albert Edward Foot, 7th Rifle Brigade

Synopsis

Albert Edward Foot was born in Bethnal Green, London on 18th December 1898 and I interviewed him a couple of days after his 85th birthday at a residential care home in Essex.

Albert's medal index card for his silver war badge gives his date of enlistment as 2nd December 1916 and his date of discharge as 20th September 1919. I have not found a card showing his entitlement to the British War & Victory Medals.

The Interview

We trained at Northampton and Yorkshire and went to France the following November or December while the Battle of Cambrai was on [1917]. Shortly after arriving in France I won a prize for hitting the targets on the rifle range. However, when I first joined the detachment, our officer was dismayed. He said, “I ask for men and look what they send me!” We were all only about nineteen.

When we arrived in France we went straight up the line and took over the trenches from the French. They were in a terrible condition. There was snow on the ground and they were water-logged.

We were holding these trenches and I was in an outpost when they started shelling. They carried on for a couple of nights and then they attacked. Our men were being shot down but I managed to scramble out before I was hit in the leg.

I lay out there for two nights before I was picked up. That’s when I heard a squad of Germans singing and I managed to drag myself over to them. They were a platoon out with their officer and I pulled them up and asked one of them for a drink of water. Towards evening a couple of Germans arrived with a hastily-made stretcher which had been constructed from two poles and sack cloth. They took me down to their casualty clearing station and every few seconds they chucked me off because the ground was so uneven. When we arrived there I was operated on by candle-light and given an injection for tetanus.

The following day the Germans came along with a field cart and bunged us in that. We were then wheeled along to trains but on the way came across a trench which was too deep and wide to get over. They just piled it up with dead bodies and made a bridge, and over we went. That’s what happened to “The Missing”.

Then we were taken by train to Soltau. Nuns came into the carriages to see how we were but when we were taken off at stations, the Germans came along and spat at us. When we finally got to Soltau we were stripped and I was operated on again. There were no field dressings, only paper bandages, and I remember a chap with a pickelhaube and sabre lifting me onto the table.

There was very little food at Soltau and I saw Russians eating the axle grease from truck wheels. We were given meat and water which caused dysentery, and thick bread which would last you all day but which had already been partially eaten by rats. When I complained I was whipped with a cane and had no bread for two days.

We were there for ten months and I saw men die of starvation. Towards the end we got Red Cross food parcels and when the war ended and I was interviewed by our officers, they accused me of telling a pack of lies. I went straight into hospital in England and of course I was visited by my father and mother. I was in there for a while and then I went in front of a Medical Board and was discharged. They gave me a silver war badge.

When I went back to the brewery where I’d been working before the war, they didn’t want to know. When I joined up they’d shaken hands with me but now they said they wanted fit men, not disabled men. We were badly treated after the war. The Medical Boards sliced you off and on one occasion I even went on a demonstration in Hyde Park with other ex-servicemen until they called the police in.