Second Lieutenant Barnett served in the same company as Hitchcock and had a soft spot for the Saxons, writing home about their cheerfulness and general bonhomie.
Yesterday evening we brought up a new machine gun and opened fire with it just after dark. The Germans shouted ‘try again’, ‘pretty good’ and ‘vot vos dat?’. It was quite amusing listening to them; they seem a very decent lot here (they’re Saxons) . . . They are always singing and doing ‘milk-o’ calls, especially when we fire volleys in the night.
Beyond the Leinsters’ trench stood a ruined farm that opposing sides visited in search of food. At night, when one of Barnett’s men went without permission to take chickens, he did not bother to go armed. ‘While so engaged he ran into a German [a Saxon] who was doing the same. As neither had a rifle, they nodded and passed on.’
Just as the British were keen to play on regional differences between the Germans, so were the Germans not averse to playing on fracture lines that might exist amongst the Allies. In the knowledge that the British were arriving on the Somme in the summer and autumn of 1915, the Germans were keen to sow discord, too. The only problem was that they were sometimes a little late: the French had gone, as Second Lieutenant Francis Smith discovered when his regiment, 1st Royal Scots, arrived in the line for the first time.
Yesterday the Huns fired some very funny looking little shells across into A Coys trenches. They didn’t explode but the nose cap of one came off and the cylinder was full of papers, giving the names of French prisoners taken, with the name and regiment of each man – page on page of names. There was also some printed matter, mostly stories and articles (all in French) showing Great Britain in a bad light. One was about Joan of Arc, telling how shockingly and treacherously and cruelly the English had behaved. Probably the Hun must have thought the French were occupying these trenches. The outside of the cylinder they fired them over in had ‘gazettes’ and also ‘news’ painted in white on the outside. We were very suspicious at first of some trick, and fired at the cylinders for some time (at a safe distance) to see if they would explode, but there was no explosive in them – just the papers.
When the British came to the Somme region, they found a front as quiet as any in which they had served. The Somme was a backwater; a place where the French and Germans indulged in short and sometimes intense spats, but nothing more. Private James Racine, 1/5th Seaforth Highlanders, arrived with his battalion in early September. At dawn on their first day in the line, the men discovered a welcome as cordial as any that could be imagined.
We found on our barbed wire entanglements a piece of paper on which was a written request that two or three of our men would, at a given time, proceed halfway across no-man’s-land and meet a similar number of Germans in order to exchange periodicals and souvenirs, as the French had been accustomed to doing. After a consultation, our interpreter and two men agreed and, at noon, met the enemy halfway; the heads of the troops on each side were above the parapets and no firing took place. Later, when we left the trenches, we were paraded before the Commanding Officer and severely reprimanded. He stated that ‘it was impossible to fight a man with one hand and give him chocolates with the other’. We were given to understand that any similar action in the future would be severely dealt with.
The level to which friendly relations developed could border on the preposterous, according to Captain John Laurie, 2nd Seaforth Highlanders, in a story that he heard and which he was inclined to believe. His battalion had come down from the Ypres Salient after suffering heavy casualties in the German offensive in April and May. The men had taken over the line east of Mailly-Maillet, a place where the former French occupants believed in neither raids nor shelling. Such was the rapport with the enemy that German officers came over nightly for a game of bridge, a game interrupted when, unaware of the relief, they arrived to find the British.
The British were there to stay. The real fun and games were about to begin.
There were men who wished for nothing better than to escape the war; men who looked forward to a wound serious enough to get them away from the fighting line, hopefully for good, but which did not mar their lives. One such man, a German, came to the attention of Private Frank Richards in March 1915. The German was using a trench mallet and, as he lifted the mallet, he deliberately left his hands and arms hanging in the air for a few seconds before bringing the mallet down. ‘We saw what his game was,’ wrote Richards. ‘To oblige him we started to take potshots at his hands or arms.’ Such a small target as an arm proved frustratingly easier to miss than to hit.
A small number of men not prepared to gamble on a light wound took their chances and deserted. They might be sick and tired of life in the line, their nerves frayed by continual danger, or they might be men whose allegiance to their country’s cause was tenuous at best. Men from the formerly French-owned regions of Alsace and Lorraine were commonly ambivalent about fighting for the Kaiser against the French. And then there were those who cared nothing for international disputes, but who had nevertheless been dragooned into the forces. Whatever the reason, these men were hardly welded to the common endeavour and, given the opportunity, would be willing to give up without a fight. When Sergeant Dawson, serving with the 7th Somerset Light Infantry, became hopelessly bogged down in Somme mud, he little cared who came to find him. In his memoirs, Commanding Officer, Colonel Cecil Troyte-Bullock, recalled what happened next.
He [Dawson] was found by a party of five Boches who proceeded to pull him out. He, of course, expected to be taken off to the Hun lines, but not a bit of it. They informed him that they were his prisoners and demanded to be taken across to our trenches. Sergeant Dawson had hopelessly lost his way and said so, but they said it was quite all right as they knew the way, and conducted him back to our advanced battalion headquarters. On the way back they picked up another of our men, also bogged, and took him along with them.
Deserters normally made their escape at night, slipping over the parapet to take their chances with a trigger-happy sentry on the other side. It was a risky policy. Lieutenant Andrew Buxton, 3rd Rifle Brigade, was present when one of his posts was approached by a German at night, calling quietly ‘Hi! Soldier!’ Buxton believed the man wished to surrender but equally it could be a ruse to locate the post in order to bomb it; such tricks had been used before, ‘so the only answer was a bomb,’ wrote Buxton, ‘though no harm was done him, I think’.
Lieutenant Gillespie was reading by a dim light in his dugout, when he heard a cheerful Scottish voice in the doorway announcing that he had a ‘wee souvenir’ for his officer.
I looked up and there was a German standing in the doorway, in grey cap and tunic, with red piping. He was a deserter, a young Prussian who had crawled across in the dark into our wire, and when challenged put his hands up; then Fraser, our enormous subaltern, reached out a brawny arm, and swung him into the trench. He was not a bit frightened; he knocked some papers off a chair, sat down and asked for a cigarette. He was very anxious to talk, and I did wish my German had been better. He said he had come over because it was ‘better over here’ . . . He told me a good deal about the officers and sergeants and their strenuous life in billets, more in fact than I could understand, but we sent him in to headquarters and they would get all this information. He was a miserable creature – I do despise a deserter.
The confidence of this deserter contrasted with the one seen by Captain T. I. Dunn, Adjutant of the 36th Field Ambulance, whose contempt was no less marked than Gillespie’s.
A German deserter with eyes bound was led in followed by a crowd of interested Tommies. The guard with fixed bayonets took him into a large shed and we went and saw him . . . The deserter was still carrying in his hand a small stick and a large white pocket handkerchief which the guard told us he waved energetically, shouting ‘no fire, no fire’ as he approached . . . He was in a great funk. On being searched he had some letters and postcards with his regiment written on them. He belonged to the Landsturm. He answered the
questions smartly and willingly.
Asked why he deserted he replied that he could not get sufficient to eat as his Saxon comrades called him a Polish pig and gave him only the leavings of their rations. Many more of his compatriots would have deserted with him, he stated, only they thought that our trenches were manned by black troops who killed their prisoners and then ate them, so they weren’t having that thank you. He stated that their troops had been officially told that peace would be declared on October 8th [1915] and on being asked the reason for this statement he said that they were reputedly informed that the Allies had no more men and were bankrupt. So you see peace is not far off!!
We left him talking with a sergeant and eating voraciously at smoked ham bread and butter that had been supplied to him while one of the officers gave him a cigar. It was amusing to see dozens of Tommies at the door looking in on the scene with the greatest curiosity and amusement muttering something about ‘the ruddy Hun’. Then he gave away a lot of military information about their troops and lives.
There was another kind of German soldier who used the cover of darkness to slip across, a German whose motivation to serve his country was in direct and inverse proportion to a deserter’s desire not to serve his. These men were spies, and in their chosen occupation they took an enormous risk of being shot on capture, for their capacity to cause mayhem in opposing trenches was very real.
Fear of spies percolating into British lines exercised the minds of senior officers to a disproportionate extent. In August 1914, Britain had given enemy aliens of military age a week-long open door to return home, and a number of Germans speaking perfect English had been met in no-man’s-land that Christmas. Senior officers were certainly aware of the fact that many Germans spoke excellent English and that a number could pass themselves off as British officers.
Suspicion had circulated since the autumn of 1914 that verbal messages contradicting existing orders were sent by German spies intermingling with British soldiers. During the desperate fighting around Ypres in late October 1914, Captain Smyth-Osbourne of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers recalled that the whole morning ‘messages in a perfectly correct form were passed along the line to me from the Officer Commanding A Company which was on my right; the order in every case was the same “You are to retire”.’ These messages continued to reach Smyth-Osbourne long after he discovered that the officer sending them was dead. Another officer captured around the same time claimed that he was even told by the enemy that greatcoats removed from his men after capture were being used for ‘spy work’.
Spy fever caused excessive and bizarre incidents of suspicion. The 1st Royal Scots had a number of spy scares in mid-1915 culminating in the discovery of a ‘wretched dog’ in no-man’s-land. ‘The dog was brought in and thoroughly tested by the men who had heard of cunning dogs who carried information to the enemy under false skins! This animal was clutched by its skin by many horny hands and hauled over the place to its sorrow,’ wrote an officer in the battalion. ‘It was proved to be quite innocent, but deserted soon after.’
There were fears that German spies were living behind the lines, watching and reporting on the movement of Allied troops, or that there were French and Belgian collaborators signalling from their homes. Windmill sails or clock hands sent semaphore messages; lights were seen flickering from upstairs windows, washing was laid out to dry in such a way as to signal to enemy aircraft.
Details could be remarkably specific. Two weeks after landing at Boulogne, the 9th East Surrey Regiment was involved in a spy hunt at the French town of Humbert. The battalion’s War Diary carries the following message:
Instruction received of case occurring of two civilians driving around in car endeavouring to obtain information from troops:- car shabby and old. Roi de Belge open touring probably Darracq but with Darracq badge removed from radiator. Colour dark, radiator brass. Car noisy. Individual I Oldish going white scrubby beard, appearance French, speaks French; last seen brown cap, dark suit. Individual II well built 5ft 10” 40 years, pasty face, fairly heavy, black moustache. Both seen driving. Units warned to instruct guards on roads to stop and arrest individuals (whether they have passes or not). Separate them and send to Div HQ under officers’ escort. If car seen and challenge disregarded, guards to fire at tyres. Duties detailed to Regimental Police, doubled at night. Police trap system. Guards Armed. Magazines charged. Guards warned that if these individuals are spies they will not hesitate to shoot.
In fact, far more British officers and men were summarily arrested than enemy spies, especially when rewards were offered for each captured spy.
‘The 109th Brigade are all suspicious of everyone,’ wrote Private Charles Heare of the 1/2nd Monmouthshire Regiment.
They are told that if they catch a spy they will get ten pounds and a leave to Ireland. It is agony to go out at night. ‘Halt, halt!’ everywhere you go. Coming back from the trenches one night, a sentry stopped me and said, ‘I’m off to Belfast.’ ‘What, sick?’ I said. He says, ‘No, I’ve got a spy a minute ago.’ ‘Let’s have a look.’ I did and nearly had a fit. It was our Colonel Bowen.
The presence of enemy spies was not entirely a figment of overimaginative minds. Harry Siepmann, the artillery captain of German descent, knew a little about spies, having almost been shot as one while walking on the Cornish cliffs in August 1914. Now in France and serving with a battery of guns, Siepmann found himself approached by two staff officers who were carrying out an inspection of battery positions. They asked to look around the guns, asking questions. When these were answered to their apparent satisfaction, they left, Siepmann, out of courtesy, walking them to the nearby road.
For a moment or two I stood looking after them as they set off down the road, and suddenly it dawned on me . . . I had not the slightest doubt then that the two men in British staff officers’ uniforms were German. A back view of the one who waddled might not have convinced me if I had not had in my mind a faint, indefinable uneasiness about the other one. He had asked, in faultless English, too many questions; but in matters of pronunciation I had a trained ear, and in German idiosyncrasies I had some experience.
The two ‘staff officers’ disappeared from view. Perhaps it had taken a German, albeit a half-German, to know a German, but in the end Siepmann let the matter go. ‘My reason for keeping my suspicions to myself were not so much a sneaking sympathy for the two masqueraders as the fear of being laughed at for causing a lot of fuss and bother about a cock-and-bull story.’
The military authorities were especially nervous about spies, for, on 25 September 1915, the British Army would engage in the first combined Allied offensive of the war, the British attacking the northern flank of German forces in France near the mining town of Loos, the French attacking the southern flank, in the region of the Artois. In that attack, the 9th East Surrey Regiment, part of the 24th Division, was to advance towards the German-held trenches near the village of Hulloch. In command of A Company was a middle-aged officer, Captain Wilfred Birt, and in leading his troops he was shot and badly wounded in the left thigh.
Captain Birt enlisted in October 1914 at the age of thirty-four. A former pupil of Harrow School and a graduate of Oriel College, Oxford, he had risen, by the outbreak of war, to become the managing director of the Australian Mutual Shipping Company. On being commissioned, he embarked for France with the battalion on the last day of August 1915.
In the same battalion was Corporal Alfred Felton, a fifty-year-old building contractor from Battersea, south London. In 1906 he had married Jenny, twenty years his junior, and the couple had set up home in Brentford. By 1914 they had three children, Ethel, Winnefred and Alfred, the youngest being five years old by then. Quite why their father had felt the need to enlist in such circumstances, and presumably to lie about his age, is not known but in August 1915 Felton sailed on the same ship as Captain Birt for France and, weeks later, he was involved in the same attack.
Birt was reported wounded and missing; Corporal Alfred Felton was simp
ly missing. The battalion had been cut to pieces and Birt and Felton were two of 452 casualties among the battalion’s officers and other ranks, just short of 50 per cent of those who had sailed for France. Of Felton nothing further was heard, and six months later his death was presumed to have occurred on the day of the assault. After the war, however, some of his personal belongings were returned from Germany under unusual circumstances. Birt was more fortunate. Weeks after the destruction of his battalion, he turned up as a prisoner of war, his wife receiving a card from him in mid-November stating that he was being held in Wahn POW camp on the outskirts of Cologne.
A botched operation by a French doctor, presumably in a battlefield hospital, had left Birt with one leg an astonishing 11½ centimetres shorter than the other. Afterwards, he was taken to Germany where he remained bedridden, in severe and continual pain, losing his appetite and smoking heavily. His weight dropped alarmingly.
Because of his condition, Birt was transferred to Cologne Fortress Hospital. The short night-time journey had been terrible, morphine injections failing to dull the pain. In hospital he underwent further surgery before being placed in a room with three other wounded British officers. The treatment he and the other men received was little short of exemplary, as Birt acknowledged. In return, the Germans admired Birt for his stoicism, and he quickly became a favourite among both fellow prisoners and German medical staff.
Slowly, Birt recovered his appetite and he began to put on weight, thanks in large part to the food parcels he started to receive from his family. His spirits rose, too, with the regular arrival of letters from home.
Meeting the Enemy Page 14