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):

Lieutenant Arthur Edward Slater, Machine Gun Corps

 

I met Arthur Slater on 5th October 1981 after he responded to an appeal for First World War veterans to come forward and tell their stories to a somewhat naïve nineteen-year-old.

 

Arthur was born in Beckenham, Kent on the 27th November 1895 and was studying at King's College, London when duty called and he enlisted in the army. On the 1911 census for England and Wales he appears as a fifteen-year old living at 201 Mackenzie Road, Beckenham with his parents and 20-year-old sister, Mary Elizabeth Slater, an elementary school teacher for Beckenham County Council.  I believe that Arthur was already a member of the Officer Training Corps at King's College and he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Devonshire Regiment, arriving in France in July 1916 where he joined the 7th Battalion.

 

"On 20th September 1916 we boarded one of the London buses which had been brought into war service and travelled up to Mametz which was the British front line. Our objective was to march into the fortified village of Ginchy, and the Staff thought it would be a walk-over. They said the wire would all be cut by the artillery fire but as it turned out, the wire was still uncut and there were machine guns firing down on us from Delville Wood as we were advancing.

 

"We'd assembled at Mouquet Farm just as it was getting dusk, and spread out in a long thin line ready for the attack. We didn't have time for rum so we passed it from hand to hand over the battleground. The ground wasn't too uneven and the advance would have been relatively easy had it not been for the machine guns. I got a bullet in my left leg straight away and fell down into a shell-hole. I'd got what they called, "a Blighty" and I was sent home."

 

While he was recuperating, impressed by the machine guns he had seen in France, Arthur applied for a transfer to the Machine Gun Corps and this was duly sanctioned. He now found himself serving with the 9th Division and left Folkestone for France on the 28th May 1917. It was at Passchendaele though, later that year, that his war ended.

 

"We were waiting for relief somewhere between St Julien and Zonnebeke and came under artillery fire. I was sheltering with about a dozen other people in a part of a German trench when a shell landed about twenty yards away. A piece of shell case came flying in and smashed me in the left knee-cap. I was the only one injured. 

 

"They put me on a stretcher but I couldn't be taken down that night because the shelling was too bad. Instead, I spent the night in a pill-box which didn't do me much good. The next morning they tidied me up a bit at the Casualty Clearing Station near Ypres and removed the piece of shell case. They gave it to me later and I kept it in a bag for several years.

 

"I was put on a hospital train for Rouen and was unconscious for two days due to loss of blood and the morphine I'd been given. In fact after I'd recovered I had to undergo a course of treatment to cure me of my addiction to morphine.

 

"The terrible thing was that I had gangrene in my leg and because the arteries were absolutely rotted with it, it had to come off. A nurse had to press down hard on the pressure point in my groin to stop me from bleeding to death. In fact, matron thought I was going to die. They sealed up the arteries but didn't make a very good job of the stump which is why I've got a very uneven stump and practically no leg at all.

 

"By February 1918 I was recovered, but I didn't get my discharge until 1919 when I was given a job in the Civil Service as an air commissioner."

 

Arthur Slater died in 1982.

Need help with your own First World War research? Drop me a line. I offer a cost effective research service.

 

 

 

 

 



1615 Pte Horace Ham, 16th (Public Schools') Battalion, Middlesex Regiment

My notes tell me that I interviewed Horace Ham at the Royal Star & Garter Home in Richmond on 5th November 1988 when Horace was aged 93.

Horace Ham was born on the 20th July 1895 and was working as a footman for William Lehman Ashmead Bartlett Burdett-Coutts when war was declared. He takes up the story:

"I volunteered. They came around with a paper while we were working. Would we join? If so, sign the paper. We signed it and they called me up in January 1915 I think. That's when I joined the army. We had to report to Scotland Yard in Whitehall and when we got there there was a queue of people going in there, volunteering. You had to swear [an oath of allegiance] and they gave us the King's Shilling and they said, "Well look, there's three of four regiments: The Essex, The Guards, The West Kents or the 16th Middlesex Public Schools.

"I went to the 16th Middlesex because I went to a public school in Bournemouth. My parents had a small hotel in Bournemouth and I never wanted all my life; I always had a good home. I was a choirboy for seven years in my local church and my father was a church man who used to sing in the church choir and was secretary of the Westbourne Conservative Club.

"We were one of the lucky battalions. We used to go on route marches and come across batalions marching in their ordinary clothes with broomsticks. The idea of our battalion was that being public schoolboys and well educated men, they wanted our chaps  to go in for commissions. We were formed up and we were lucky. We had all our uniform and we had rifles too. We had the old fashioned long Lee Enfields which is a damn good rifle and very heavy. Of course, before we went to France they were all changed and we had the up-to-date modern short Lee Enfield Mark 3."

As his medal index card notes, Horace arrived in France in November 1915 and on 1st July 1916 he was opposite Hawthorn Ridge (picture above) as the British Army detonated 40,000 pounds of explosive underneath the German lines.

"We saw it go up at 7.20am and we were supposed to go over at 7.30. Of course, it was a big mistake. We should have gone over just after the mine went up. They lost a lot of men and there was a hell of a ,lot blown up but you see, it was a proper mess-up. We were told that all the barbed wire would be cut and all the Germans would be dead, all that sort of thing. Instead of that the Germans were very clever. They'd built marvellous dug-outs; I've been in them, I know what they're like. They made them properly, they were like houses underground; beds and everything in there. The Germans said they were going to stay and they built these wonderful dug-outs. When our people started shelling all the troops went down into their dug-outs. As soon as we stopped shelling and started to advance, they came up, put their machine guns up and mowed our fellas down like ninepins. I was lucky. I saw Hawthorn Ridge go up and while we were in the trenches I got hit in the hip with a bit of shrapnel just as we started. I didn't actually get over the trench. I was lucky, just kept my fingers crossed. All my pals got killed or wounded though; gone.

There was five of us sort of all joined up together. There was myself, a fella named Walker, a fella named Richardson and two brothers names Mellish who came from Wembley. We sort of palled up and all went around together in the army. Well on the 1st July I got wounded, Richardson got wounded, young Mellish got through it and Jerry Walker and the eldest Mellish we never heard of, they got killed. [The two men referred to are PS/1491 Alfred George Mellish and PS/1609 Alfred Walker. Alfred Mellish is buried in Hawthorn Ridge Cemetery No 1 at Auchonvillers whilst Alfred Walker has no known grave and is commemorated by name on the Thiepval Memorial].

Horace recalled a couple of incidents shortly after he arrived in France.

"We were up the line and I had to go the latrine. In the trenches your latrine was built off a communication trench and if you wanted to go and relieve yourself you had to go down there. It was a beautiful sunny morning, there was nothing going on, no shelling or nothing and I took my tin hat off and walked down there. When I was coming back a sniper just missed the top of my nut. You can always tell when it's a near one because you can hear the bang.

"On another occasion we were holding the line when the colonel came round to make an inspection. He came round with the adjutant, our company commander and the Regimental Sergeant Major. He got to our section and there was a corporal in charge, an older man than me. I was only a youngster then. He was only a little fella and the colonel came up and he's talking to us and he said to the corporal, "this trench isn't deep enough. I want it a bit deeper." He took three steps away from him, the corporal took his place and he got shot right through the head; took the top of his head clean off. Now what I can never understand is I was six inches taller than him and yet the shot hit the corporal. It went right through his time hat: went in the back and came out the front. You've never seen such a mess."

Horace was wounded again in 1917 and transferred to the Army Service Corps. He was finally discharged from the army in April 1919. He died in January 1995 at the ripe old age of 99.

R/23703 L/Cpl Arnold Marshall, 8th KRRC

Synopsis

Arnold Fitz George Marshall was born at Sowerby Bridge, Yorkshire, on the 16th August 1893. He was working in a cotton mill when Britain went to war in 1914 and he attested under the Derby Scheme on 11th December 1915. Four months later he was called up, and four months after that, he was in France.

I interviewed Arnold Marshall at his home in Chelmsford, Essex on 14th April 1984 and he died in Chelmsford in October 1991 at the grand old age of 98.

Interview

AM:
Yes well, I joined up because I was bound to do , in the spring of 1916 and I joined the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. We were trained at Blyth in Northumberland. The training only lasted three months and then I was out in France in August the same year. They were sending them out pretty fast then. They must have been getting short of soldiers.

We went across to Le Havre and from there we were trained and went to the front. September 15th was my first engagement, 1916. That was when the tanks were used for the first time. I shall never forget that as long as I live. There we were in the slit trenches at the back of the tanks all that night previous, waiting to advance behind the tanks the morning after, at dawn. I remember these things, there was one directly in front of me and well, the signal was given, I forget how. But we went over anyway at dawn behind the tanks. It was a shambles, a horrible shambles. That was the first time I saw a dead man, oh I saw scores of them.

Me, I had a friend and he lived in Elland not far from me and we’d become a bit pally. We both joined up, we went over together and as I say, we advanced, oh a thousand yards, no more and then of course we had to dig ourselves in at the finish. We saw a lot of the tanks knocked out. They were going to end the war with those tanks, so they told us but it didn’t of course. They were easily knocked out.

PN:
What part of the front were you on there, do you know?

AM:
It were the Somme part. It was the second battle of the Somme. The first was in July of that year – the first battle of the Somme - and I was in the second on September 15th.

PN:
Can you remember what your objective was?

AM:
It was the Somme front. I can’t remember any of the French [village] names now. I never got out of the Somme front, I were always in. We were pushing ahead all the time. I was in the Battle of Arras in 1917, the following Easter. Easter Monday was the Battle of Arras and I was in that. That was pushing a bit further still and that was the first time they had the Lancers, the horse cavalry. They were all wiped out practically, it was a shambles was that. We saw them pass us, we were in trenches waiting. I was in reserve just then, I wasn’t actually in the front line, not for the Battle of Arras. We were moved up afterwards, after a few days. And as I say, the Easter Monday the cavalry went over and they looked fine with their pennants and horses but I remember them coming back and what a shambles, very few came back that day. It was snowing by the way. It was white with snow that Easter Monday 1917.

We stayed there six days digging ourselves in after we’d gone through – Thiepval that was one place – all in front of Arras. We were brought away and I saw poor old chaplain killed. He was moving amongst the troops you know, helping us to dig in but he got hit. I saw that and it upset me a bit.

Eventually of course we kept going in and out of the line, six days or seven days at a time from the front line, then we’d come back in to reserve and occasionally [have leave]. I only ever came on leave once in 1917. I became engaged then to my wife. That was in the autumn of 1917 and I went back again and then it was on to Passchendaele Ridge where we eventually got, and a foot of mud about. Terrible. And that’s where I got it.

I was going up in the line, carrying a bag of bombs one night to serve the front line – these Mills bombs – and I felt a sharp pain and I ruptured myself because I slipped. Well when we got out they sent me down the line and the doctors fitted me up with a truss and a shocking thing it was: metal truss. I couldn’t walk with it, I couldn’t dig so I threw it into no-man’s land one night. I thought, here’s a present for you old Jerry. Fortunately or unfortunately, that Christmas day I was wounded, on Christmas night of 1917 on Passchendaele Ridge.

There was no trenches. One platoon would be in a big shell hole and to get to the next in another shell hole you’d to go over the top. There were no communication trenches. Each platoon were in its own big shell hole and this Christmas Eve I was detailed along with some more to go down to where they were going to be brought out of the line on Boxing Day and we had to practice going down the line which was about five miles of duckboards [or] what were left of them.

Well we did it alright on the Christmas Eve because it rained, rained and rained and there was a blackout. There was a sniper and he’d killed our captain. However, when we came back I was wet through and we got through Christmas Day. It snowed all day Christmas Day, everything was white and I had to go down the line again for another practice to bring the new lot up for the next night after.

As I say, I set out at ten o’clock at night to go over the top and I got a packet. I were hit three times by this sniper. The first time I just passed out with concussion. It hit me on me tin hat; a little hole there where it went in and a great big one where it came out – I could put my fist in where it came out. I tried to bring that back home but somebody pinched it from me when I was in hospital.

As I say, I was knocked out and I must have been out about an hour (I was told after). I came too again and I crawled on my tummy the way we’d been taught. I could see a great big shell hole and I got down and I got partially over into it when he fired again and hit me in the hip here.

Of course, I went down into the shell hole and they could see all this from where I’d come from being such a bright starry night with just occasional showers of snow. And they sent a couple of stretcher bearers down to fetch me out. They could see I was knocked out. They got down to me and [asked] “Can you walk?” So I said, “I’ll try and walk” and then we set off, the three of us down to company headquarters where we were supposed to be going. It was under a snow shower that and then suddenly the moon came out and all was bright again and the sniper hit all three of us.

I was hit again through the left hand there. I can’t bend that. I was shot straight through there, that’s the third time. One of the other stretcher bearers was shot in the calf and the other in the hip and he died. Well we lay there all night then right ‘til six o’clock the morning after. A sergeant from company headquarters saw us – we’d got nearly there seemingly – and he saw us and he brought us in to company headquarters, the three of us.

The doctor was there at company headquarters and he bandaged me up and the other one was a stretcher case. King had got it in the hip [but] the other one who got it in the calf, he could manage to walk a little bit. So we set out morning after, it was Boxing morning that, and the enemy were watching us and they had a truce for us to get out. There were three of us and some more who had been wounded during the night. I was in front holding me white flag on with me rifle.

We marched down, right down ‘til we got down to the ambulances. They came up as far as ever they could but there was still a couple of miles [we had] to go [because] they daren’t come any further. We got down there and that’s where I got out to England. I got to Glasgow, Bellahouston Hospital in Glasgow and just got [there] in time for their celebrations at New Year. I was there eight months in hospital and then I got my discharge. I had to come right down here. I’d never been to the south of England before in my life, except when I was in the army like, and I got to Queensbury and got my discharge from there. That was in August 1918 and I went working on munitions then at Lincolnshire until November the 11th, Armistice Day and of course everybody packed up and I went home and never went back again. That was my army service.

PN:
Can you explain to me again why you didn’t join up earlier; why you weren’t allowed to join earlier than you did?

AM:
Yes, because the work that I was doing was work for the army. We were making canvas. You know what bell tents were? Well it was the cotton for those. And it was very coarse cotton and they wouldn’t let me go.

It was what they called the Lord Derby Scheme that they had in those days. You could wear an armband showing that you were exempt you see. That’s the reason I didn’t go until I was required. I was called up [and] we had to go then. That was in the spring of 1916, about April it was, just about Easter.

PN:
And did you join up with a lot of friends?

AM:
No. I joined up by myself. There was an army barracks at Higher Road [unclear] as they called it, near Halifax. I had to go there to join up and as I say, I met this boy from Elland and we palled up together, we were together and he was killed by the way. That man was killed the morning after I left that dug-out. He was the company runner. He had to run messages you see. I later shook hands with him when I was in that dug-out at company headquarters and he was killed the day after. He was killed during the relief. It was my job you see, to fetch them in but I never did it because I was wounded. He must have taken over from me and he was killed on that morning, Boxing morning.

PN:
Can you tell me what it’s like going over the top?

AM:
Horrible. Mixed feelings. You’re sort of frightened but there you are, you’ve just got to go. Sometimes the lieutenants or the captain would be in front and sometimes they’d be behind. It was not always the same. We had an objective to go to, supposed to be, always. You’d got to go so far and on one occasion, that was in May 1917, we went over and we went too far. We were in a trough. The others at either side of us – it was a long defensive of miles – and our lot, the 8th Battalion, went too far and the result was we got enfilade fire, fire from both sides and we had to come back, retreat ‘til we got level again. I remember as well as anything, three of us in a bunch and the chap on either side of us got shot down and I managed to make it down to the trench where we’d come from. That was a rotten experience was that, that I had. Going over the top you don’t feel a right lot until you start seeing them falling around you.

PN:
Can you hear the shells and the bullets?

AM:
Oh yes. You can’t see them but you can hear them. We were supposed to go under cover of fire. Our artillery were supposed to keep the shells just in front of us in a creeping barrage and keep the enemy down. Well of course they did a good job but sometimes they didn’t lift the barrage soon enough and fired into us. That happened a few times. It wasn’t often that happened but it has happened.

PN:
Where do you think conditions were worse?

AM:
Passchendaele definitely, Passchendaele Ridge. That was the finish for me. I don’t know how far… because Christmas Day were ten months off the end of the war and I don’t know how far they got. I was in hospital [and] I didn’t know anything about what happened after then.

In hospital I joined a concert party. I was a pianist you see and I was in a concert party in France by the way, for a little while. We had a piano, we humped it around with us, and we had a bit of a concert party but that soon fizzled out. But in hospital we formed one there in Glasgow. We went touring all round Glasgow giving concerts. We made about £500 for the hospital. It wasn’t a military hospital it was a VAD, one of those kind built for the war. I had a good time there once my wounds were healing up and that. I had three operations and of course the knuckle has gone there, I’ve no knuckle at all.

PN:
Do you suffer with that now with arthritis?

AM:
Just a little, yes now that’s a funny thing. This winter it’s started aching. Arthritis I suppose it is.
PN:
Can you also tell me what it’s like to be in the trenches? What they look like, what the food’s like.
AM:
Well it depends. We were on a quiet front where it was all chalk and we were absolutely white. We always went in for about six days and it was a boring business, a case of Stand To at dawn and Stand To again at dusk for an hour in case there was an attack you see. I think that was Thiepval where it was all chalky, terribly chalky. But mostly it was mud: mud, mud depending on the weather and the time of the year. You just yawned your heads off most of the time. You had to Stand To on these kind of shelves that they made and look over the top and you were damned lucky if you didn’t get a sniper. That’s what they had the snipers for you know, catch anybody. You used to put a tin hat on the end of a rifle and put it up and get shot at.

It was mostly night duty. You had an hour on and stood on these shelves looking over the top; and then two off. Mostly we were hitting rats from the top you know, part of ‘us equipment was a shovel.

PN:
Did you ever go on any patrols or raiding parties into no-man’s land?

AM:
Yes, yes. I was only ever involved in one and nothing happened. We had to stand still if a verey light went up – which they did often of course. The sent these verey lights up you know and it showed all light. But as long as you stood still you weren’t spotted. I went cutting enemy wires on that patrol but we got back safely. That was the only one I was on, was that.

I wasn’t in the line a right long time: from September to Christmas. [I was] fifteen months on active service. After that Christmas night do, that finished me as regards active service.

PN:
What happened at Passchendaele? Did everybody go over the top and then dig in?

AM:
Yes, but we could never get far. It was a ridge and we were on the lower part of the ridge, we were going uphill and they were looking down onto us. That’s why it was such hard going, terrible. The time I was there it was Autumn and there’d been a lot of rain and it were as muddy as... Terrible, I shall never forget that as long as I live. I were real glad to be wounded in a way, to get out of it. We were all fed up. This patriotic business of joining up, it [was] soon knocked off you with the drills and the sergeants putting you through it. You soon get fed up with that and the conditions were pretty bad. You never got real comfortable billets unless you were taken out for a rest which you were occasionally.

Our lot were absolutely decimated. There would be a thousand in a battalion and we’d come out with a couple of hundred and we had to go back down the line to get fitted out with new recruits from England, and you had to wait while they were trained.

PN:
Did you have any brothers in the services?

AM:
My younger brother was at York mostly. I had only one brother and he was younger than I and he joined up later. He was in the Yorkshire Regiment and I went to see him at York when I came on leave from France. I don’t think he ever went out to France.

Mrs AM:
No he didn’t.

AM:
Well if he did, it were after the war.

Mrs AM:
It was the pioneers wasn’t it?

AM:
Yes I believe it was, in the Pioneer Corps. I were more interested in myself getting fit again.

PN:
How did you view the officers? Were they popular with the men?

AM:
It depends who they were. They were just human beings like everyone else, there were good ones and bad ones. They had to be strict. As I said, this patriotism was soon jolly well knocked out of you. You just had to do as you were told. It was drill, drill and being shouted out. That was part of the doings you know, being cursed and shouted out and made to do these things. You’d have been glad to be back home in a couple of months’ time if you could have done.

PN:
Did you opt to go into the King’s Royal Rifles?

AM:
Yes. As I said, they were making a farmer’s battalion. They were mostly from north Yorkshire – the farmers. They’d all been exempt you see because of growing the crops I suppose. Anyway, they made this farmer’s battalion and I joined it.

Mrs AM:
Well the women went into the Land Army didn’t they? They helped out. My second daughter went into the Land Army.

AM:
You’re talking about another war altogether. That was the Second War.

Yes I remember as part of us training at Blythe – that’s near Newcastle you know – we used to man the trenches there. There were trenches all down the coast and we used to spend nights there. That was part of our training.

PN:
Was it realistic training?

AM:
Well it was mostly marching. We used to go twenty mile a day all around Blythe, Ashington and the villages there. But we used to have these full nights down the trenches guarding the coastline. That was just part of the job. Then of course everybody had guard duty in the camps when you did two hours on and four hours off. Every soldier had that to do, what they called battalion camp duties. And then there was the usual potato peeling and all that. Jankers if you got into trouble at all. I never got into that. I was a lance-corporal.

I got my promotion I think because I had a good voice; I had a strong voice. I have yet. I was good at shouting at ‘em. I picked up the jargon and from the drill book and they put me as
A temporary lance-corporal and I used to drill them and march them around, you know, form fours, left turn right turn, that simple business more or less and eventually I got my stripe.

PN:
And that’s more pay as well isn’t it?

AM:
Just a little, nothing much. I forget how much, a shilling a day. Pay wasn’t much in those days.

Mrs AM:
Well a shilling was a shilling in those days.

AM:
Aye.

PN:
You must have been one of the few members of the battalion to have gone through the latter half of the Somme campaign and into Passchendaele. There can’t have been many people in your battalion who went through the Somme unscathed.

AM:
Well Passchendaele was just going forward through the Somme, it was a part of the Somme. It was going further through into Germany. The Somme had been left behind at Passchendaele. I was in the second battle of the Somme September 15th 1916.

PN:
What was it like at Arras?

AM:
We only went to Arras on a kind of rest. There were a lot of tunnels at Arras, underground passages. We were there the night before we were to go into the battle of Arras itself we were in these [and they were] giving us bars of chocolates and cigarettes ready for the jump off and that was when the lancers went over, the day after. Easter Monday that was.

I don’t remember much about Arras. We went forward.

PN:
You went over the top at Arras as well though?

AM:
Yes, I was in reserve really. They went over the top then we took over them with their first line casualties. They withdrew and we took over after them. Going forward a little bit it was only slow movement. You’d only go a hundred yards or so at a time and we had a terrible lot of casualties at each battle.

Passchendaele Ridge was terrible. I used to wake up at night shivering and living it all over again. It was no picnic. None of it was a picnic of course.

Them days is a long time ago. I was only twenty our when I was discharged.

PN:
Were they mainly youngsters in your battalion?

AM:
We’d got the eighteen year olders, yes, those that had been pulled in at eighteen years old. [They were] given three months training then out. One of them nearly shot me. I remember going over the top and he was beside of me and a bullet from him whizzed straight past my ear. He was only a young lad and he didn’t last so long. I remember him being killed, same lad.

Yes there were quite a lot of eighteen year olds. The officer in charge was only an eighteen year old. He was a brave lad was that second lieutenant. That do that I told you about when we had to come back, he was in front and he wouldn’t leave. We left him there. He must have got killed. He wouldn’t withdraw.

PN:
Were they all Londoners?

AM:
Yes, I was amongst the cockneys all the time. Not much Yorkshire twang about any of them. It was the 8th Battalion of the King’s Royal Rifles that I went over with and they were all cockneys. We were kind of merged into them. We did our training at Blythe then drafted into France and we joined the 8th there. What we were called at Blythe I forget, whether it was the 7th it was the King’s Royal Rifles just the same but what number I’ve no idea. But we went into France with the 8th and I was with the 8th all the time.

PN:
Do you know what division you were part of?

AM:
14th Light Division. We were quick marching; I think we did about 65 steps a minute on the march and on parade. They short stepped. We used to take 30 inches of a stride, no more, and you used to do 65 of them in a minute. That’s pretty quick going is that. That’s why they call them light infantry [because] they could get from one place to another quick. There was no lorries to take us in those days like they had in the Second World War. It was none of that, it was all march, march on your own feet in the First World War. We used to think nothing of doing twenty miles from one part to a different part of the line, taking over.

PN:
I suppose there was quite a lot of boredom in the trenches.

AM:
Oh aye, yes it is boredom if it’s quiet. Of course you can be just the opposite. It depends if they’d got the wind up. They used to send a lot of these whizzbangs over and then we’d be in a trench and they’d send a plane up and they’d spot us and signal their own whizzbangs. I’ve seen them wipe a whole trench out, you know, forty or fifty yards long. Start at one end with the whizzbangs and make us all run to the other end.

PN:
Weren’t there explosives called Jack Johnsons and coalboxes as well?

AM:
Yes coalboxes, whizzbangs they were called. They weren’t big shells, the five inch heavy artillery on those. They had them in their trenches, we had similar things in our trenches. We fired short eighteen pounder shells and these whizzbangs were the same. They got so as they could pretty near hit the trench [so] it were pretty lively. There were no boredom with those.

But many a time it was very, very quiet; nothing doing. Stand To at dawn and Stand To at dusk and the rest of the time you did what you liked.

PN:
De-lousing.

AM:
Oh yes, you’re telling me. Yes, we used to keep that until we came out of the line in the billets and then we’d have a candle lit and shirts off and then de-lousing, burn them out you know. Oh aye. Yes you were filthy when you come out of the line.

Ends

Z/1658 OS Alan McCartney Castle, Hawke Bn, RND

Synopsis

I was introduced to Alan Castle in Chelmsford on 16th September 1981. I see by the date that I had just turned 19 and Alan Castle was 89. He lived in a bungalow in a quiet road close to the town centre. Just behind his home, in a sheltered housing complex, lived four other Great War veterans who I would also meet and interview: Harry Leeks (Essex Regt), Reginald Crane and Bill Minchin (4th Royal Berks) and Clifford Rust (Royal Engineers).

I only ever addressed the men as Mr Castle, Mr Crane etc, and it feels a little odd now, using their first names. I didn't have my tape recorder with me when I met Alan Castle and so our meeting is recorded in notes that I took at the time. I have augmented these with details from his service record which survives at the National Archives.We got as far as Gallipoli before Mrs Castle felt that her husband had done enough talking, and I took my leave with a promise to return and hear the rest of his story. That second meeting though, never happened. On a subsequent visit a few days later, Mrs Castle explained that her husband had felt distressed recalling the events of 1914-1918 and that he would prefer not to continue with his reminiscences. I never met him again, although I was pleased to see, several years later, that he had celebrated his 100th birthday at home. He died in June 1994 aged 102.

Interview

Alan McCartney Castle was born in Leyton, east London on 18th March 1892 and when Britain went to war with Germany he was working as a tailor for the Paris branch of Thomas and Sons. He decided to join the British Volunteer Corps (at least, that's what I have written down), but as the situation worsened, he returned to England. That was in September 1914 and he resumed employment at Thomas and Sons' Brook Street branch in London. He joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve on 3rd May 1915.

Alan Castle told me that it was the sinking of the Lusitania that prompted him to join up, but in fact the Lusitania was sunk four days after he enlisted. His service record notes that at the time of his enlistment he was living at 47 Effingham Road in Lee, south London. He was five feet five inches tall, had a fresh complexion, black hair and hazel eyes. Two scars were noted: one on his right elbow and one on his right ankle.

Alan Castle was posted to Hawke Battalion on 8th September 1915 and soon qualified as a trained bomb-thrower. He sailed for Gallipoli shortly afterwards aboard the Royal George, a converted Canadian Pacific liner. He would remain there until January 1916.

Of his time on Gallipoli, Alan Castle recalled:

"The trenches were not very deep and went down about five or six feet until they reached the sandstone. We were under fire the whole time and were as lousy as cuckoos. One day however, we were very much relieved to find that they came round with gas crystals from the South Metropolitan Gas Company to rub in our clothes and get rid of the lice. They didn't half burn and they didn't kill the lice either. Gradually we discarded our helmets and wore cap comforters instead. By the time we left Gallipoli we were in rags.

"During our time there we were relieved by another of our battalions and went out of the line for about ten days. We took the opportunity to go down to W Beach for a spot of bathing and took our clothes off with the idea that we'd wash them at the same time. We went out for a swim in what had been the landing area and no sooner were we out there than the Turkish guns opened fire on us. Well it was the quickest swim I ever made - and the last one. Fortunately there were no casualties.

"We were told in late December 1915 that we were going to be relieved. I remember having dates and a little piece of Queen Mary's Christmas pudding. I went down the line with the others and was told to pack up. Two or three days before we were actually evacuated though, a shell fell in the next traverse and killed the fellows there. The blast affected my hearing and one of may mates took me on his back down to the casualty clearing station."

History books tell us that Hawke Battalion was evacuated from Gallipoli on or around 8th January 1916. From there, the men were sent to Lemnos where they remained for three weeks before being sent to the island of Imbros on 26th January for garrison duty. Here they remained until May when, with Anson Battalion, they sailed for Marseilles and then headed north.

On 7th November 1916, Hawke Battalion took over trenches near Mesnil. Joseph Murray, who also served with the Royal Naval Division and later wrote about his experiences in A Call to Arms, describes the conditions:

"In several places there was no sign of a trench, only shell-holes filled with mud and slime which caused us to scramble about in the open... it was no easy matter getting out of the quagmire only to slide into an adjacent morass."

At 5.45am on Monday 13th November 1916, the Royal Naval Division, supported by a creeping barrage, advanced towards the German lines. Alan Murray again:

"Unfortunately the Hawke Battalion on our left had been held up by the devastating machine-gun fire from a redoubt which seemed to have been completely missed by our barrage and in turn, their supporting battalion Nelson went blindly on to the same fate. Both battalions suffered exceptionally heavy fates."

Alan Castle had told me that he was wounded at Beaumont Hamel and had then lain in no-man's land for two days before being rescued. His service record confirms this:

13.11.16 Wounded.
15.11.16 To 9th Casualty Clearing Station, France
16.11.16 Admitted to 5th General Hosp Rouen. "W" Frac. Knee. R.
21.11.16 Dangerously ill. GW Knee and Hand. NOK informed.

And then:

4.12.16 Dangerously ill.
9.12.16 Dangerously ill. Not doing well. NOK informed.
Week ending 10.12.16. Dangerously wounded in 5th Gen Hosp Rouen
Week ending 17.12.16. Dang ill. Not doing well. 5th GH Rouen.
Week ending 24.12.16. Dang ill. Not doing well. 5th GH Rouen.
Week ending 31.12.16. Dang ill. Not doing well. 5th GH Rouen.
7.01.1917. Dangerously ill in 5 GH Rouen

Then some hope:

11.1.17. Off dangerous list. NOK informed.

It is not explicitly stated in his service record, but it looks as though Alan Castle's right leg was amputated at the thigh whilst he was in the 5th General Hospital at Rouen. He returned to England aboard the Hospital Ship St Andrew and was admitted to the Lord Derby War Hospital in Warrington on the 13th January. He was granted furlough in July 1917 pending admission to Roehampton which finally took place in November 1917. His service record reads:

"Shrapnel wound right thigh and knee. Amputation of thigh in upper third. Wound of palm of left hand."

He was discharged from the army on 7th December 1917 and went back to his old employers, Thomas and Son, in Brook Street. It was to be a short-lived return. As Mr Castle told me, still getting used to his artificial leg, he had difficulty escorting customers to the door as quickly as he used to and this was not the kind of service that Thomas and Sons deemed to be acceptable. He was dismissed from their service. It sounds incredible now, but that was what he told me and I have no reason to doubt him.

Acknowledgements:

Newspaper clipping courtesy of The Chelmsford & Essex Chronicle.
A Call to Arms by Joseph Murray published 1980, William Kimber.