Tommy

by Richard Holmes

  BASE DETAILS

  The term ‘rear’ was a relative one. To a man in a front-line trench, company headquarters, perhaps only a hundred yards away, was a safe haven where a runner would often loiter if he could, while to a company commander, battalion headquarters, three hundred yards further back, was a fretful place of sharp adjutants and busy commanding officers with an unyielding concern for ration parties, wire-pickets and leave rosters. The transport lines, with the gruff quartermaster and horsey transport officer, were as far back as a man might go without dropping out of the battalion’s orbit altogether. In the transport lines men rarely wore steel helmets, but they did polish their buttons, shoulder titles and cap badges daily, while front-line soldiers were not expected to polish in the trenches. There was a short-lived attempt to dull all brass fittings with acid, but the eventual policy was for brass to be allowed to tarnish in the line but to be shined when men came back from it. Charles Carrington reckoned that his men disliked outsiders in direct proportion to their distance from the wire. There was an elaborate hierarchy, starting with ‘the bloody munitions workers at home who were earning high wages and seducing your girlfriend; number four platoon in the next trench who made such a noise that they woke up the enemy gunners … and, of course, the staff who could conveniently be blamed for everything’.203

  A unit out of the line might be accommodated in a purpose-built camp, housed in a large building such as a factory, school or barracks, or billeted on French or Belgian civilians. Camps were a particular feature of the base – the army’s sprawling administrative area running up from Le Havre through Rouen to Etaples and its satellites. They initially consisted wholly of tents, but wooden huts quickly made their appearance, first for kitchens, cookhouses, latrines and messes but eventually for sleeping quarters too. The need for cheap and easily-built huts inspired Lieutenant Colonel Peter Nissen of the Royal Engineers to design an oblong hut with a half-round roof which bears his name. The Nissen hut could be assembled by infantry pioneers under engineer supervision, as Corporal George Ashurst of 16/Lancashire Fusiliers discovered early in 1917.

  One NCO and four men were detailed to go off to the next village and learn from the Engineers how to build these sectional huts. I was the NCO selected, and four men, one from each of the four companies, were the biggest duds in the battalion – the four company sergeant-majors, as usual, selecting the biggest dud as a soldier for a working party.

  I marched my four men off and we made our way to the next village, where I reported to the officer in charge of the Engineers. At once I was helping and learning how to build Nissen huts, but my men had been sent to a nearby wood and were busy cutting down trees, from the trunks of which were cut the foundations of the huts. The huts consisted of six wooden floor sections placed in position on legs driven into the ground. Then rainbow-shaped iron frames were bolted to the floors. Each end of the hut was then built up in one piece, one end being composed of the door and windows. The roof of the hut was sheets of corrugated iron bolted to the frames and then lined with tongued and grooved timber.

  A couple of days with the Engineers and I knew all there was to be known about the building of Nissen huts. On the other hand my men, who had made excellent lumbermen, knew absolutely nothing about the building of huts.

  The ignorance of his men led to a run-in with his commanding officer when Ashurst returned to the battalion, but once the unit’s pioneers were put at his disposal he quickly put up enough huts to house the battalion, and was rewarded with his third stripe.204

  Like barracks at home, camps provided social control as well as accommodation, with perimeter fences patrolled by the guard, a guardroom at the main gate and a camp commandant in overall charge, answering to the Lines of Communication staff. These ‘scarlet majors at the Base’ have had a rough ride from contemporaries and historians alike. Walter Nicholson is, however, right to suggest that most of them – dug-outs or officers worn out at the front – usually did their best with unpromising permanent staff, and were fatally handicapped because they were bound to lack any real bonds with the men passing through their camps. It was the army’s ‘us and them’ at its most extreme.

  Transit camps near docks and railheads housed formed units or drafts on their way to or from the front. Most incomers landed at Le Havre, though nearby Harfleur and the Channel ports of Boulogne and Calais were also used, the latter for individuals going to or returning from leave. Some vessels went up the Seine as far as Rouen, especially early in the war, as Corporal John Lucy recalled.

  We steamed in and up the river to Rouen. All who saw us on the way rushed cheering wildly to the river bank, and every flag, public or private, in sight came down at our passing …

  We had a most embarrassing disembarkation at Rouen. The French overwhelmed us, soldiers, blue-bloused civilians, women and children charged us en masse and barely gave us room to form up. They pressed chocolates and flowers on us, and the women kissed us with alarming freedom …

  Our first camp in France was a misery. We were crowded, thirteen to a tent, and the heavens poured rain on us for hours on end, until the ground became a quagmire, through which we sloshed ankle-deep in mud.205

  Frank Richards acknowledged that his comrades were not slow to take advantage of this ‘alarming freedom’, and when his battalion left Rouen the majority of its members ‘had given their cap and collar badges to the French ladies they had been walking out with, as souvenirs, and I expect in some cases had also left other souvenirs which would either be a blessing or a curse to the young ladies concerned’.206

  Brigadier General Count Gleichen (who later changed his name to the more publicly acceptable Lord Edward Gleichen) landed at Le Havre at much the same time. He found that his rank afforded him no protection from the weather, because:

  The ground where we were to encamp was mostly sopping. It was not easy to find in the dark, especially as the sketch-maps with which we had been provided lived up to their names … There was of course no baggage, nor anything to sleep on except the bare ground under the tents, with our saddles for pillows; and as a pleasant excitement all our horses stampeded at about 2.00 am, tore up their picketing-pegs from the soft ground, and disappeared into the darkness in different directions.207

  The Irish Guards did not know quite what to make of their enthusiastic welcome. Aubrey Herbert MP was accompanying the battalion in an unofficial status. His tailor had run him up an officer’s uniform without badges of rank, and he fell smartly into step as the battalion left its London barracks. On arrival at Le Havre he heard a Coldstream officer announce:

  ‘The French are our Allies; they are going to fight with us against the Germans.’ Whereupon one chap said: ‘Poor chaps, they deserve to be encouraged,’ and took off his cap and waved it and shouted ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ He was a bit behind the times. I believe that if the Germans beat us and invaded England they would still be laughed at in the villages as ridiculous foreigners.208

  Over the following months accommodation improved, though it remained relatively spartan. Immediately after he arrived in France with a draft, Corporal Clifford de Boltz marched up the infamous hill out of Le Havre: ‘When we reached the top completely exhausted we saw a huge camp composed of tents, 10 men were allocated to each tent which did not give much room for equipment, we lay down like sardines in a tin but being properly exhausted we went to sleep.’209 The nature of the French welcome had certainly changed by the time Private A. J. Abraham arrived in 1918:

  The natives took no notice of us until we moved off, then a number of children, carrying trays of chocolate, emerged from doorways and alleys, and bore down on us. A bright pretty little girl of about ten or eleven came prancing up to me with her tray … She quoted me one franc for a slab of a make unknown to me … and I was able to produce the correct amount. A man in front of me called to the same girl as she turned away from me and said that he would like a similar bar. She handed him one and he proffered half a crown which she snatched and i
mmediately skipped away without offering him any change. As a franc of that time was equivalent to ten pence she had got herself a dissatisfied customer and he called out to her ‘Here, what about my change?’ This sweet little girl replied ‘Garn you fuckin long barstid’ and galloped off to another part of the column … Of course we only met bloodsuckers but I soon learnt not to trust any French man, woman or child …210

  From Le Havre troops went forward by train, direct to railheads behind the front if they had arrived as formed units or trained drafts. Although officers could expect proper passenger carriages, soldiers travelled in:

  large covered trucks with sliding doors marked on both sides Hommes 40 – Chevaux 8! Although we had very little moving about with fifty hommes in one truck we wondered whether every cheval took up five times as much space as one homme and his kit … we trundled along very very slowly, we were side-tracked into shunting yards to allow more important traffic to pass through, there was no proper opportunity to have a proper kip down even when a journey of less than a hundred miles could take two and even three days. Waits at stations en route seemed interminable especially at night. The British RTOs [Railway Transport Officers] must have had a nightmare of a job especially as units to which reinforcements were due to arrive were often moved so quickly as to be unable to give notice of the change.211

  Private Abraham adds that:

  There were no facilities on the train, whenever we came to a halt men would jump down from the trucks and scramble up the embankments or make for bushes behind which to relieve themselves. Without warning the train would start to move and heads would pop up from bushes or long grass and men, hurriedly pulling up trousers, would come scrambling back into their trucks. I never saw anyone left behind.212

  Stuart Dolden found himself even worse off.

  There were ten of us in a truck, together with eight heavy draft horses. There were four horses at each end and we were in the middle. Things looked fairly promising – but oh, ‘What a night we had!’ Soon after the train started the horses became restive, and at every jolt of the train there was a commotion. Every now and then one of the animals would stretch out its neck and ‘playfully’ try to catch one of us by the ear, or anything handy. After one especially severe jolt one of the horses fell down, and as they were closely packed it was only with great difficulty that it was possible to get it on its feet again … Just as this horse was on its feet again, another animal fell over, and at this point the only candle alight in the truck was knocked over by another enterprising beast. Pandemonium ensued, and a stampede seemed inevitable. We, who were not in charge, took refuge on the footboard outside the truck. The drivers set about the animals and eventually restored quiet.213

  Drafts not destined to go straight to units – the majority of men arriving in France from mid-1916 – went instead to Etaples and its surroundings, the unwelcoming world of the base depots. Between June 1915 and September 1917 over a million officers and men passed through Etaples on their way to the front.214 Historians often write as if there was a single ‘Bullring’ at Etaples, but there was not. Instead, the area east of the River Canche was paved with a mosaic of numbered infantry base depots, general hospitals and convalescent camps, and the sandy area north of the depots themselves had a long line of training compounds. Charles Douie remembered ‘a great wilderness of tents and buildings. For mile on mile the camps stretched along the dunes. I was awed at the vast array which spoke of the growing might of the British Expeditionary Force.’215

  Dotted amongst huts and tents were numerous canteens which sold food, soft drink and necessities such as writing paper and soap, at near cost price, or even distributed them free. Many letters home, now nestling in archives, bear the red triangle of YMCA note-paper, testifying to its importance for young men deeply anxious to communicate with home. Bernard Livermore looked back on these canteens with enormous gratitude.

  How the various Red Cross, Salvation Army, YMCA and other organisations did their utmost to help us, as, indeed, they did through our long ‘Cook’s Tour’. They made Army life, on Active Service, more bearable; we were all deeply grateful for the comforts which they had provided for us. Their huts, sometimes situated uncomfortably near the fighting line, were always crowded. Food, drinks, free writing paper, games and recreation helped at all times to relieve our depression, to rest our weary bodies and improve morale.216

  The term ‘bullring’ originated in the troops’ suspicion that they were being goaded into performing their drills by the permanent staff (known as ‘Canaries’ because of their yellow armbands) for the amusement of onlookers. There were other bullrings too. Anthony French found himself based at a depot at Le Havre, known as ‘The Pimple’:

  The Pimple near that historic base camp was a pilgrim’s daily progress to a sort of Spartan battle school … The precise gradient ratio of the Pimple was a matter of conjecture. The men who marched up that slope at attention on fourteen successive mornings graded it in unscientific terms. It led to the land of the Canaries. These were regular instructors with yellow arm bands and penetrating voices.

  The Canaries were a thoroughgoing lot. They were not satisfied with the reports of home battalions on the quality of their drafts. They were there to prove all things. They did this by cutting their trenches uncommonly wide and profoundly deep, by withholding the order to remove gas masks until the wearers were obliged to eat, by studiously arranging for all running courses to be uphill, by loading the men with supplementary ammunition and by the effective use of extensive military vocabularies. Our evenings were spent recuperating in the camp canteen, in salving abrasions, repairing damage arising from misdirected bayonet thrusts and writing letters home …

  On the fourteenth day we were pronounced soldiers in the making and pronounced fit to reinforce our respective regiments in the line. At that stage I could have felled an ox with my rifle butt. Thanks were doubtless due to the Canaries but familiarity had bred contempt for both them and their Pimple. Never after that did the firing line seem so desirable as it did during that fortnight.217

  Bernard Livermore went through the bullring at Harfleur. He recalled it as:

  A vast expanse, covered with small parties of men performing various antics, all with the same end in view. We practised the most deadly, the most efficient methods of killing, or avoiding being killed. This tough finishing school was as near to the real thing as possible; stretcher-bearers stood by to cart off those unfortunates who were accidentally maimed. We rushed, with raucous yells, and stabbed straw-stuffed bodies. In … Out … On Guard. On we raced and jumped down 8ft trenches, scrambling out as speedily as possible to avoid the bayonets of the following wave. We chucked our Mills Bombs out of the trenches without mishap and learned how to fire rifle grenades and other weapons. We ran, as quickly as we could, through the dreaded Gas Chamber … Sheer luck saved some of us from these training hazards. On two days I was detailed for cookhouse fatigues, a tedious and boring job doing all the work for the Sergeant Cook. He ‘took a fancy’ to me and said that I was a good worker. He said that if I could produce a fiver he was willing to ‘use his influence’ to get me a permanent base job on his staff. Rather indignantly I tried to refuse this kind offer and mentioned that I had come to fight, not to peel his spuds for the duration. ‘Well, no offence meant and none taken I’m sure. But, marks my words, you’ll soon be wishing you had a nice cushy job down here. It ain’t too cosy up in the trenches, but there is no accounting for taste.’218

  Stuart Dolden was encamped on the racecourse at Rouen.

  The camp held about eighty thousand men, and included an Indian section and hospitals. We spent a month there during which the usual training was carried out. On the Cavalry parade ground about a mile from the camp, trenches and dugouts had been made with barbed wire entanglements in front, and there we carried out those weird and wonderful manoeuvres pertaining to Army warfare …

  Efforts had been made to beautify the camp, and in front of the officers�
� quarters little gardens had been planted with flowers and vegetables, and in some cases regimental crests and badges had been worked with various pieces of coloured glass to give an artistic touch.

  The water supply was somewhat erratic, a serious matter … because it meant that if one was absent at the proper time it would be hours before you could get a wash … A good deal of our spare moments were spent in the YMCA hut where we were able to obtain refreshments, play billiards and from time to time listen to concerts arranged by the various regiments and allies.219

  In 1915 the Reverend Pat Mc Cormick was a padre at the Rouen base camp; and, with two of his colleagues, was a regular feature in camp concerts singing his party piece ‘Three Jack Johnsons’ – Jack Johnson being a popular term for a heavy shell, named after the famous black heavyweight boxer. One hopes it was funnier then than it seems now.

  Three Jack Johnsons

  Hark how they bang!

  They went overhead with a terrible whine;

  They kicked up a dust and a terrible shine;

  They made the three parsons go cold in the spine;

  The three Jack Johnsons!

  Mc Cormick made a point of speaking to all drafts when their training was complete, before they set off to the front. He gave them ‘a short talk of encouragement, a prayer and a blessing – immediately after which the command to form fours was given and off they marched to the station’.220

  Although living conditions were better for officers, their training at the base camps was still tough. In August 1917 Joseph Maclean wrote:

  Today we had a hard time in the bull-ring. In the morning we were twice over their famous ‘final assault course’ in full equipment. It is a series of rushes from trench to trench, the intervening space being strewn with barbed wire, high wire, shell holes etc, and they have fellows throwing huge fir cones at you all the time to represent bombs.