Walk a War in My Shoes

by Murray Ernest Hall

  It’s times like this when I’m curled up like a child, my back pushed into the dugout wall as hard as I can, the dark, the cold and the rain, that I long to be back home. I’m not dreaming because the cold forbids me sleep, I am thinking with my eyes closed.

  Wishing and longing to walk through the front gate of Cloverdale farm. I can see the long line of pine trees that Dad and I planted years earlier running parallel to the road along the front of the property. I look to Mum, Dad, Frank & Wal standing on the front veranda. As I march on down the driveway, the cow bell’s tinkering and old “Jessie” the horse has mellowed since I last saw her (I hope) and she will walk over to the fence to greet me.

  I think about a lot of things, some good, some not so good.

  When I last saw Stan Tulloch a month or so back we had a good evening together. A decent laugh, talking about home, the farm, the people we both knew and lots of topics that made us both feel good. We spoke a bit about the war and where it is heading, but not too much on that subject.

  I really liked Stan, a friendly chap with a big smile and a warm hand shake, big hands too, they could nearly wrap around mine. We have known each other from when we were young children. He was four or five years older than me, but we had gone through school together and our parents are quite close. Stan and his father have worked as carpenters in Beech Forest for years. I remember him being on the farm a few times with us. He got on well with Frank and Wal also.

  When we last shook hands, standing in the remains of the main road running through camp, I looked him in the eye and thought, “I hope I see you again Stan”. The thought was as much about his future in this war as it was about mine. We can never know what the next day will bring for either of us. I’m sure he was thinking the same thing about me, but the words were not spoken, they just hang in your head.

  And now he’s dead.

  The message I received back down the line is short & cruel. “You’re mate Stan got knocked a couple of days back”. I don’t know where he’s buried or even if he is buried. The news sets me back a bit and I lose sleep worrying about how his family will handle their terrible loss. When I get home, I’ll visit his parents and tell them Stan was doing just fine when I last saw him.

  I think about silly things. There was a cousin of mine that I berated at school once for upsetting Wal. I would have only been eleven or twelve years old at the time. It was only child’s play, not a serious blue. I’ll apologise to him one day for acting out of line.

  Funny how such little details like that stick in your memory.

  I need to clear up a couple of other things in my mind that are a bit closer to the heart. Issues that have bothered me for as long as I can remember.

  When I left the farm and signed up, I was only 19 years old. There were things that happened around Cloverdale that were never discussed between my parents and me. When I return from this war, I won’t be a boy any more, I’ve aged a bit, I’ve matured a lot and I’ll walk back in the front door as a grown man. I’ve got it all worked out, I won’t rush into it as soon as I get back, I’ll wait a week or two for the dust to settle.

  In my mind, I see Mother and I sitting on the front porch sharing a cup of tea. I need to ask her about the six children she lost, the twins and the other four girls. I don’t want to upset her. I want to know how she is, how she feels and most importantly to me is that I can offer to share her grief and hope in some way I can take some of it off her shoulders.

  Starting the conversation off will be the difficult part, how do I say, “Mother, can we talk?”, what happens after that? “I’ve always felt sad about the babies you lost.” That’s a bit tough, I could be a bit more respectful than that. Maybe, “While I was away Mother, I often thought of home and our upbringing”. That sounds like a softer approach, I’ll work on that.

  I’ve seen death, I’ve felt it, I’ve smelt it in this terrible war and its hard, harsh and evil at its best. The demise of my siblings is quiet, soft and thoughtful, it’s a different death. I wonder if mother would understand the difference? When she looked into their dear faces was she happy to have met them and loved them for those precious minutes, relaxed and calm that their life wasn’t to be? Or has she been tortured and full of resentment that God would take these beautiful children from her? How could our God be so cruel to one woman, one family? I really struggle with that.

  The war I am in is not hers, the babies were. Are her feelings hard and hateful like a soldier or soft and controlled like a mother? Will she ever breathe properly again, move on, see light at the end of the tunnel, not think about it every day? If I were in her shoes, I’m not sure I could. I need to have that conversation with my mother.

  The other piece of family business I must attend to is to walk to the north-west perimeter of Cloverdale farm with my father. Just the two of us. Down into the gully between the tree ferns where the water trickles through the forest floor on its way to the creek a thousand yards further downhill. We will walk up to the base of the largest Mountain Ash tree that looks back up through the valley towards the house.

  “Father, please show me the Holy ground where my baby sisters are buried. I need to know”.

  I become conscious of my surroundings again and clear away the tears from my cheeks. I realise I have drifted off enough in my thoughts for them to have taken the cold away for a while. I wasn’t asleep, I was just somewhere else more important.

  10th Feb 1917

  1st Pioneers

  1st Division AIF

  O.A.S France (On active service)

  Dear Wal,

  Your welcome letter dated Xmas Day arrived safely to hand this evening, along with ½ doz others. There’s not much news to tell, things are going on just the same as ever. We are bombarding very heavily tonight. I’ll bet Fritz is getting a lively time of it. By the way I received the parcel about a week back – have since written to the sender.

  We are still getting frosty weather – the ground is as hard as iron even to a depth of over a foot down – this morning was a white frost (all the trees were as if covered in snow) & those that know this part of the globe say three of these & then rain, so I suppose we’ll have mud again shortly. The ground is that hard that shells will skid if they happen to strike on a bit of a slope – the other evening one went right through three of our dug outs & hit the ground once in doing so, and it looked as if it had hit the ground before it came near us, luckily it was a dud and no one got hit, but some had narrow squeaks, and you can bet we had a rather uncanny feeling in the expectation of more to follow.

  Things are very quiet so far as Fritz is concerned. He does not send many over, but our artillery is everlastingly tickling him up.

  No more for the present, hoping you are well, as I am.

  Kind regards to all,

  Your Aff. [Affectionate] Bro. [Brother],

  Ern.

  P.S Gertie and Ethel - are these the people you are staying with?

  11th

  I did not post these yesterday and I received a few letters again today add. [added?] to the Tunneling Company's, one was from you dated 26.11.16, a couple were October letters. It is a bit warmer today, the frost is beginning to thaw, making things pretty sloppy again.

  Au revoir, EAH

  CHAPTER 12

  TWELVE MONTHS IN – THE HARD YARDS

  March – April - May 1917

  “I suppose you've heard by this of Fritz's retirement, it's good to get out in the open country which has not been shelled to any extent. By the look of his old front line I reckon it was a forced retirement - it is one mass of shell holes and the ground has been turned times out of number.

  Fritz has blown up a lot of his roads & shifted his railways to hamper our progress, also laid a good many mines so one has to be pretty careful in fiddling about his deep dugouts etc.

  I reckon I'll be back for Xmas dinner by the way things are going at present & I have luck. Fritz seems to be well up the pole.”

  THE NOISE AND perc
ussion are the worst part, if one is near a big gun when it goes off it gives one devil of a shock and can knock you over. Shell percussion is the most frightening experience I’ve encountered, and the sensation is near enough the same for a shell of ours going out or a Fritz shell landing a few yards away.

  Before I arrived in France I believed that I would have half a second or a second to duck or dive, cover my ears or turn away. It doesn’t work like that. You have no knowledge or awareness that it is about to happen, no warning, no noise, no tap on the shoulder to keep your head down, nothing.

  In a time frame that is immeasurable, a shell is fired or lands. The explosive noise combined with the instantaneous force of the air attacks your nervous system at the same speed as a bullet between your eyes. You don’t fall to the ground, you are thrown there as if a giant hand has swiped you violently off your feet. You lay there still, like a dead man, unable to move. It takes some time for your senses to readjust, you slowly become aware that you are on your back. You then comprehend how you got there. A mind to limb check that everything is still attached then the effort to roll over and stand up. The process might take ten seconds, it might take ten minutes. One of our shells going out will drop you but it won’t kill you. A Fritz one coming in has the added threat of shrapnel tearing through you at the speed of light. The percussion of a landing shell alone can kill you.

  If you have been caught out as I have been on quite a few occasions you appreciate the term “dead before you hit the ground”. To cop the noise, shock and shrapnel in the same hit, it’s all over before you would blink. But I’ve also seen some of our chap’s stone-cold dead without a mark on them, killed outright by the percussion.

  There is mild improvement in the weather by March, however the mud is knee to waist deep in many places. The front line and support trenches are almost impossible to move in. Men become exhausted very quickly dragging their body and equipment along. The poor horses that get caught up in the mud, some up to their necks, are a terrible sight. On a couple of occasions, I’ve assisted digging pack horses out, sometimes taking hours. The poor things cannot walk by the time they get pulled out they are so spent.

  I suppose the Aussie papers are full of Fritz’s present retirement. We are pretty close on his heels at present, so he is not getting much peace.

  The town of Bapaume fell to us quite easily, but it is in a very sad mess, almost as bad as Ypres in Belgium. Fritz even set it alight when retreating. He also laid heaps of mines which has been the death of a good many of our chaps. The town is netted in with barb wire entanglements, so it doesn’t look as if Fritz intended to evacuate. He still shells Bapaume but not to any great extent.

  Following up behind Fritz is not as easy as it sounds, road bridges and railways need to be rebuilt as we go forward, and the process is made more difficult by the very long, savage winter we had. I saw a couple of motor lorries and caterpillars get bogged recently which held up two to three miles of transports loaded with ammunition and rations for a whole day.

  I worked a couple of days moving supplies forward through the old no-man’s land. I can say it was the most horrendous experience I have had. The area is full of dead bodies thawing out, mostly Fritz ones, ours have been buried. The stench is unimaginable. The smell of rotting meat burns the back of your throat and it’s hard not to gag on it. It seems to get into your clothes and lingers on. You can smell your sleeve a day later and still reel back with the smell. The rain dampens the stench a little but it’s no honey pot out there. It will be horrific when the sun finally arrives.

  We lost a few huts the other evening. It was cloudy, and two Fritz came over unobserved in an observation balloon. They had been hidden in the clouds and came swooping down firing petrol bullets all over the place which set the huts on fire. Our chaps fired up at them and what a sight it was to see the balloon catch fire and blaze in the sky. The observers hopped out in parachutes and escaped.

  I haven’t had much time to write lately, time is short, camp huts are unlit, and I get tired of writing on my lap. The standard supply of “Field Service Post Cards” come in handy. I can fill out ten of them in ten minutes, ticking the “I am quite well” sentence, put an address on the front and away it goes. You are not allowed to write anything on the card except the address or the censors will tear it up. It doesn’t allow much detail to go home but at least it’s letting them know I’m still kicking.

  It is good-o to be away from the river Somme, away from the ground which had been turned and turned again by shell fire and the endless sea of mud.

  I spend six weeks working on a light rail supply line from Bapaume up to the front line. Out the back of Bapaume, very few shells have fallen, the snow has gone, and green grass can be seen again for the first time in six months.

  I’ve developed a medical condition that had me worried for a while. Many months ago, I developed a pain in my chest, about where my heart is. When it first came on it was quite severe, what I imagine a knife wound would feel like. It was real, not imaginary. After a while it settled down a little, but I constantly felt as if someone was pushing the pointy end of a pencil into my chest and holding it there, the skin wasn’t broken but the constant, unrelenting pressure was aggravating. I could rub it firmly and the pain would ease but not go away. I was deeply concerned that I had a heart disease or was having some form of heart attack. Before I would fall asleep it would be there, when I’d awake, it would be just as severe, maybe worse. Over a period, the pencil pressure would slowly back off but then as quick as a gunshot it would return with vengeance.

  It probably took me ten months to self-analyse the ailment.

  Grief.

  The pain associated with grieving.

  It started about the time I heard of Stan Tulloch’s death, then Ben Rawle, then Victor Quinn and a hundred or more men since who I knew and whose company I have enjoyed. It is hard to comprehend pain coming from within without any obvious injury to be seen on the outside.

  The hardest part of this ailment is that I cannot talk about it with anyone around here. Everyone standing is carrying the same pain, or they choose not to admit to it. I’m certainly not prepared to discuss it with any doctor or nurse in a dressing station. They have far bigger issues to deal with around here than Ern Hall having a pain in his chest.

  The first week of April the Battalion is on the move again, around two miles east to a very small village named Bancourt. The place has been completely blown to smithereens, there isn’t a building intact. Our own living conditions remain unchanged though, still sleeping in dugouts.

  Fritz has been pushed back but he’s stubborn, he won’t go away.

  While the majority of the 1st Pioneer Battalion are assigned to road repair work around Bancourt, “D” company remain with the light railroad construction gang doing our best to keep supplies up to our front-line chaps. For me, rail work is a far better role than deep trench or tunnelling work. My shift is mainly daylight to dark, levelling ground, laying sleepers and rails to enable the much smaller, light gauge locomotives and supply trucks to travel right up to the front line. A service trench is dug alongside the railroad and lined with corrugated iron and duckboards. The trench is only required to be four feet six inches deep. We are still working out in wide open areas in broad daylight which can be of some concern with Fritz’s long-range artillery and his aeroplanes observing us, but it’s a far better existence than being in a trench under bombardment in the middle of the night.

  The night shift chaps spend time running out high hessian “fences” so that old Fritz cannot see what’s going on over our side. It works fairly well during the day but on a good night it’s possible to see the shadows of shady characters wandering around out there trying to sneak a peek at our good work. A couple of rifle shots or a machine gun sweep clears them off like cockroaches.

  We still have casualties every day in the Battalion. It’s all about luck, or bad luck, whatever way you want to look at it. If you are in the wrong plac
e at the wrong time and a stray shell lands at your feet then so be it, that’s how it goes, nothing you can do about it.

  Working on the light railway has been a blessing to “D” Company, our casualties have been a darn sight less than they were previously.

  An artillery shell is full of half inch diameter lead balls (shrapnel). When the shell explodes, hundreds of these lead balls are blasted out at the speed of sound. That’s what does the damage to a man who stands in front of one. The lead pellets can be found everywhere there has been shelling. They are easy to spot and can be found just laying around on the ground. In a couple of villages, I’ve seen the locals melting the lead down and making souvenirs to sell to the troops.

  I have my own souvenir, a single pellet, damaged, chipped, and out of round. The little indents are full of mud or clay that seem to be burnt on, I cannot scratch it clean. I picked it up about a week after I arrived in France and have carried it around as a good luck charm ever since.

  I’m fascinated watching our pilots at work during the day. Such brave and skilful men controlling those magnificent pieces of machinery. Most of our aeroplanes are two seaters and the chap behind the pilot acts as spotter and machine gunner. The pilot has his hands full, aiming the machine where it needs to be or dodging Fritz. They can turn those machines on a penny at incredible speeds.