He shook hands with me solemnly and said, ‘Goodbye, old man.’ I said, ‘Don’t be such a damn fool. I’ll be back all right.’ I got back to my platoon and said to them, ‘Get a bomb in your hand, pull out the pin and hold it tight. As soon as I yell “charge”, stand up, run two or three yards and throw it. And I think we’ll get into that trench, there’s practically no wire in front of it.’
And they did. They all got up and ran, and we got into our bit of trench. In it, we found bags of German bombs that looked like condensed milk cans on the top of sticks. On them was written ‘5 secs’, so I experimented with one. I pulled the string and said, ‘I’m going to count one, two, three, before I throw it.’ My servant was beside me looking over the top of the trench and he said, ‘Bloody good shot, sir, hit the bugger in the chest.’ I think when the Germans found their own bombs coming back at them it rather put the wind up them.
So the men brought armfuls of these bombs along, and I just went gaily along, throwing these bombs and shouting, ‘one, two, three’ each time. It was most effective. Then we got close to where the machine-gun was, and got a whole lot of bombs ready. I started throwing as fast as I could until my servant said, ‘They’re going, sir, they’re going.’ So I yelled, ‘Come on, chaps, run in,’ and we charged up the trench. We never caught the Germans, but we drove them out.
Eventually we got to a certain point and the CO saw two trenches leading up towards Schwaben Redoubt. And he said, ‘It would be a good idea to get an advance post up there.’ So they started off and a man got killed straight away. I said, ‘Oh, damn it. Let me go, I can do it.’ So I went on with some men and we bombed up the trench. We took more prisoners in dugouts and got our advance point out towards the enemy.
Then we went back for the night. Some grub came up and we sat down and had a meal. Then another company came up and took over from us, and we moved a quarter of a mile back. We were able to rest, then lined up again next morning. The attack on Schwaben Redoubt was going to be at one o’clock, and as our company had done most of the fighting the day before they put us in the last line of the attack, with three other companies in front. We got in position at twelve, and chatted away to keep our spirits up. Told dirty stories and made crude remarks. There was a nasty smell about and of course we all suggested somebody had had an accident. But it wasn’t that, it was a dead body I think.
Then the shelling started and we went forward. You wouldn’t think anything could have lived through the bombing that went on at Schwaben Redoubt. By the time we got close to it there was a huge mine crater there about fifty feet across. It was lined with Germans popping away at us. So I got hold of the old bombs again and started bombing them out. After a bit we got them out and started charging the trench, all my men coming on behind very gallantly. We’d got right to within striking distance of Schwaben Redoubt itself when I got a bang in my right arm and found I was bleeding. But having been a bombing officer who could throw with both arms I was able to use my left one for a time. I found I could bomb pretty well with it.
We went on for some time, holding this position and working our way up the trenches as far as we could. Then my CO came up and said, ‘You’re hurt, Tom.’ I said, ‘Only a snick in the arm.’ He said, ‘Let’s have a look at it,’ and he put a field dressing on it. He said, ‘You go back, you’ve done enough.’ So I sat down for a time, and the fighting went on.
It was a surprise when I got the VC for my actions, because I just did a job out there, I’d never realised there was anything unusual about it.
FORD MADOX FORD, formerly Ford Hermann Hueffer (1873–1939), was born in Surrey to a German father and an English mother. He was a writer, a novelist, and one of the most important contributors to literary Modernism. His best-known pre-war novel is The Good Soldier (1915). He enlisted in 1915 and served as an officer on the Western Front, where he suffered concussion and consequent memory loss. His tetralogy Parade’s End drew on many of his experiences, including one of the incidents described below in a letter to the writer Joseph Conrad.
9/Welch
19th Div., B. E. F.
6. 9. 16
My dear,
I will continue, ‘for yr information and necessary action, please,’ my notes upon sounds.
In woody country heavy artillery makes most noise, because of the echoes – and most prolonged in a diluted way.
On marshland – like the Romney Marsh – the sound seems alarmingly close: I have seldom heard the Hun artillery in the middle of a strafe except on marshy land. The sound, not the diluted sound, is also at its longest in the air. [An arrow is drawn from the ‘e’ in the following paragraph to the ‘e’ in this paragraph.]
On dry down land the sound is much sharper; it hits you & shakes you. On clay land it shakes the ground & shakes you thro’ the ground. A big naval (let us say) gun, fired, unsuspected by us out of what resembled (let us say) a dead mule produced the ‘e’ that I have marked with an arrow.
In hot, dry weather, sounds give me a headache – over the brows & across the skull, inside, like migraine. In wet weather one minds them less, tho’ dampness of the air makes them seem nearer.
Shells falling on a church: these make a huge ‘corump’ sound, followed by a noise like crockery falling off a tray – as the roof tiles fall off. If the roof is not tiled you can hear the stained glass, sifting mechanically until the next shell. (Heard in a church square, on each occasion, about 90 yds away.) Screams of women penetrate all these sounds – but I do not find that they agitate me as they have done at home. (Women in cellars round the square. Oneself running thro’ fast.)
Emotions again: I saw two men and three mules (the first time I saw a casualty) killed by one shell. A piece the size of a pair of corsets went clear thro’ one man, the other just fell – the mules hardly any visible mark. These things gave me no emotion at all – they seemed obvious; rather as it wd. be. A great many patients on stretchers – a thousand or so in a long stream is very depressing – but, I fancy, mostly because one thinks one will be going back into it.
When I was in hospital a man three beds from me died very hard, blood passing thro’ bandages and he himself crying perpetually, ‘Faith! Faith! Faith!’ It was very disagreeable as long as he had a chance of life – but one lost all interest and forgot him when one heard he had none.
Fear;
This of course is the devil – & worst because it is so very capricious. Yesterday I was buying – or rather not buying – flypapers in a shop under a heap of rubbish. The woman was laughing & saying that all the flies came from England. A shell landed in the chateau into whose wall the shop was built. One Tommie said, ‘Crump!’ Another: ‘Bugger the flies’ & slapped himself. The woman – about thirty, quick, & rather jewish – went on laughing. I said, ‘Mais je vous assure, Madame, qu’il n’y a plus comme ça de mouches chez nous.’ No interruption, emotion, vexed at getting no flypapers. Subconscious emotion, ‘thank God the damn thing’s burst.’
Yet today, passing the place, I wanted to gallop past it & positively trembled on my horse. Of course I cdnt. gallop because there were Tommies in the street.
Yrs,
RONALD SKIRTH (1897–1977) was born in Chelmsford and grew up in Bexhill-on-Sea. He volunteered for service and was a bombardier in the Royal Garrison Artillery. He became disillusioned with the war and with his commanding officer. After the Battle of Passchendaele, in which he suffered concussion and shell-shock, he was moved to the Italian Front. Here he made deliberate miscalculations in setting British guns so that the enemy should have a chance to evacuate an area. He left a notoriously contrary set of papers to the Imperial War Museum, some contemporaneous, some written later. A selection was edited by Duncan Barrett and published in book form under the title The Reluctant Tommy (2010).
Just then the Old Man [Skirth’s commanding officer, Major Snow] appeared from behind his partition. He almost froze me with a frown. But again the silence was broken by a roaring low overhead and before he could
speak a salvo of shells all burst together. The combined crashes were followed by a series of rapid crumps and muffled explosions and then one vast crack that made the pill-Box quiver.
‘My God!’ I called to Jock. ‘That’s our ammo gone up, Harry’s there with—’ I didn’t finish for I was watching Snow’s face. Shelling or not, the showdown was coming. Jock was depending on me.
More shells burst close outside, making the Pill Box floor tremble. Fritz was making up for lost time now.
Our Commander had been taken aback by the suddenness of the outburst. Now he stepped towards me, glowering. I must let him make the first move. Desperation, or near-madness, dispelled all my fear of the madman I was facing. I felt no anger now, only a chilly contempt for this monster who for eight months had intimidated and humiliated me. I steeled myself, determined to make the stand I knew was necessary. I turned myself into a sort of spectator, watching and listening to another nineteen-year-old youth defy his Commanding Officer.
‘Bombardier, why did you leave your post without permission?’
‘I thought it necessary, sir.’
‘That is an insolent remark.’
More shells were flying over. They were falling and bursting nearer.
‘Sorry sir, I can’t hear with that damn noise going on. I wish to make a report.’
‘This is insolence. If I want a report from you I’ll ask for it. Get up, Gunner Shiels, the bombardier will take over.’
‘Do as the O.C. orders, Jock.’
Jock left the table and moved towards our sleeping area.
‘Sit down.’
From sheer force of habit I obeyed, removing my helmet and placing it on my end of the table. Then, suddenly realising I was faltering in my intentions, I pushed the chair back and stood up defiantly.
‘I said sit down! That is an order.’
(Standing) ‘I said I wish to report to you that—’
‘Damn it, man. This is insubordination! Have you taken leave of your senses?’
‘Perhaps, sir.’
‘That is insolence!’
Snow thrust himself into the chair, picked up the dead telephone to No. 1 Gun and buzzed. No reply, of course. I remained standing. Snow, now fuming, turned to Jock and shouted, ‘This line is cut. Get outside, trace the fault and repair it.’
‘Better obey orders, Jock.’ (He picked up his box of repair gear.) ‘Wait for me, I’m coming too, in a moment.’
‘You will not leave your post, Bombardier. I am giving you an order: SIT DOWN.’
(Still standing.) ‘Gunner Shiels will not repair the dead line, sir. It is unnecessary. There are no men at No. 1 Gun. Repeat. NO MEN. That is what I am reporting.’
‘I am placing you under arrest.’
‘No sir. You can’t, sir. There are not enough men present for you to arrest anybody.’
Outside there came more roaring and more deafening crashes. I was amazed at my temerity. I still felt like an onlooker, not a participant.
Snow rose from his chair, his face paler than I had ever seen it. I lifted my helmet from the table and put it on. Jock reappeared. He had been listening between the gas curtains. Over the din we could hear Snow raving – ‘Disobeying orders … death penalty’ etc., – none of which threats meant anything to me then. My eyes were following the movement of his hand towards the holster at his hip. This was a development I hadn’t foreseen. So we’d not only got a lunatic but a homicidal one. Jock had seen the danger, pulled the candle out of the nearest bottle and grasped it by its neck. (I remembered a demonstration of unarmed combat we had seen at Aldershot; I knew exactly where to put the boot in if Snow drew his pistol.) Jock and I backed to the doorway. His tinhat and respirator were on, the bottle ready for hurling. I gestured to him to get out. Then I stepped back.
At the gas curtain I shouted; ‘My pal and I have had enough of you, and your bloody war. We’re getting out of it. Understand? We’re getting out.’
I don’t think he was able to grasp the full significance of the words he heard or the evidence of his eyes. I am certain it was the first time in his military career he had encountered open defiance from his men.
My final words to him were, ‘Call it desertion, if you like. Call it cowardice if you like. Call it any bloody thing. Jock and I are off.’
Jock’s final message to him was, ‘And go to bloody hell!’
Snow’s hand was still on the holster when we left.
FREDERICK WALTER NOYES was in the Fifth Canadian Field Ambulance. This is an excerpt from his book Stretcher Bearers…at the Double! (1937).
[July 1916]
‘We Summer at Boeschepe’
Boeschepe is a French town of 2,500 souls. It lies about one mile from the Belgian frontier and approximately the same distance northeast of Mont des Cats. Here the men had a real home and it remained our headquarters until late in August.
The Fifth’s job was to run a rest camp, consisting of a marquee and about a dozen bell tents and a ‘self-inflicted hospital’ in the local school house, where those men who had deliberately wounded themselves received treatment.
Opposite the schoolhouse was an orderly room where courts-martial were held and we regretfully record that some of the scenes therein enacted left us stunned with horror and sickened with disgust. It seemed to us that many of the poor lads who came before their military judges in this place received very unsympathetic hearings from the officers appointed to try them. We wondered whether any consideration ever was given to the fact that a prisoner was a volunteer soldier, had borne himself bravely in many battles and was no longer in control of his mental and physical reactions – that he was merely a physical and mental wreck because of many terrible months of exhausting trench life. We used to wonder (and still do!) what some of those well-fed, comfortably-billeted, all-powerful trail officers would have done had they been through the same tragic circumstances their prisoner had experienced – had been obliged to eat the same food; undergo the laborious work of digging trenches, dugouts, etc; carry the same weight on long marches and in the Line; depend on the occasional issue of rum, instead of having the ever-available bottle of Scotch from the Officers’ Supplies Stores, and go through in general all the innumerable dispiriting ordeals reserved for the common soldier only.
All too often were the medical officers called upon to officiate at the post-mortem of some young lad who had been shot for ‘desertion’ – some mother’s son who had enlisted with the ideal to uphold all that was good and noble and righteous, and had carried on until his brain and body had reached the breaking point. Surely there must have been some other way out, than by having him shot down in cold blood by his own comrades. ‘Shot for desertion’ was the way the court records closed such a case, but we wonder if the correct entry should not have read ‘MURDERED, by the Prussianism in our own army!’
We have in mind one young infantryman, under twenty, who was shot for desertion. A Field Ambulance lad who was waiting to bring the boy’s body away, became sick to his stomach and attempted to avoid witnessing the actual execution. The officer in charge of the shooting party forced him, under threat of severe punishment, to remain and watch the poor victim’s frightful death. The padre who was with the infantryman during his final few hours was hysterical for many hours afterwards. A brother of the executed lad was a member of the same unit. His reaction to the trial and execution of his unfortunate brother must have been terrible.
It might be said that these officer judges were, themselves, victims of the military machine. To a great extent they were – but their very rank implied a certain amount of willingness to act as trial officers and acquiesce in the verdicts of courts-martial.
Humphrey Cobb has stated that a soldier always looks through lenses made of the insignia of his own rank. We are trying to present the case for the victims of such courts as seen through our lenses – even though those lenses showed us a distorted picture. Surely similar injustices should not be permitted to take place in any future war!<
br />
[…]
Do you remember how one of our Horse Transport men served first field punishment at this place, being tied to a wheel and undergoing all the other indignities of this manifestation of so-called army justice? Were you there the day Solley showed his rations to Captain Silcox, complaining that there was not sufficient for a man to live on – and the Captain remarked, ‘I would consider that ample ration for myself.’? Solley looked his disgust. ‘There might be enough for you, sir, but not for a man!’ Solley, of course, meant that there wasn’t sufficient for one who had to work as hard as he was working just then.
Were you there that dark night at Zillebeke when our bearers were busy collecting wounded from the Maple Copse area? Happy Carlisle was stumbling about in the inky blackness when an infantryman told him to stop walking on the bodies of the dead! ‘What do you mean?’ retorted Happy, stepping gingerly off what he took to be some bundles of sandbags. ‘Why, that’s our corporal in one sack and our sergeant in the other,’ complained the infantryman ‘and you’ve been walking all over them!’.
ELLEN N. LA MOTTE (1873–1961) was born in Kentucky, and trained as a nurse at John Hopkins Hospital. She worked in a field hospital in Belgium from 1915 onwards. The Backwash of War: The Human Wreckage of the Battlefield as Witnessed by an American Hospital Nurse was first published in 1916. Below is the introduction and first section, ‘Heroes’.
This war has been described as ‘Months of boredom, punctuated by moments of intense fright.’ The writer of these sketches has experienced many ‘months of boredom,’ in a French military field hospital, situated ten kilometres behind the lines, in Belgium. During these months, the lines have not moved, either forward or backward, but have remained dead-locked, in one position. Undoubtedly, up and down the long-reaching kilometres of ‘Front’ there has been action, and ‘moments of intense fright’ have produced glorious deeds of valour, courage, devotion, and nobility. But when there is little or no action, there is a stagnant place, and in a stagnant place there is much ugliness. Much ugliness is churned up in the wake of mighty, moving forces. We are witnessing a phase in the evolution of humanity, a phase called War – and the slow, onward progress stirs up the slime in the shallows, and this is the Backwash of War. It is very ugly. There are many little lives foaming up in the backwash. They are loosened by the sweeping current, and float to the surface, detached from their environment, and one glimpses them, weak, hideous, repellent. After the war, they will consolidate again into the condition called Peace.
A Broken World: Letters, Diaries and Memories of the Great War Page 10