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):