Letters From the Trenches: A Soldier of the Great War
Page 19
With Best Love to all
Harry
address now 1st Garrison
40843/ Royal Munster Fusiliers
A. P.O. L1
IEF Italy
December 11/1919
Dear Jack
Just a line to let you know that I am alright and in good health. I don’t think it is any good writing about getting home as their is no chance of getting home for Christmas it looks like being more like the middle of April before I get home. I might manage it a bit before. all the prisoners are going home this month so it will make it a bit better after Christmas for us all. I am very pleased to here that all are going on alright at home & keeping in good health. I hope you and Agnes have a Happy Christmas & New Year. I am sorry that I shall not be at home for it but I am in good health so that is something. Write as often as you can and let me know all the news and send me a newspaper or two. I will write again soon.
With Best Love to you both
Harry
40843/1st Garr Batt, Royal Munster Fusiliers,
D. Coy. 17 Hut, A.P.O. L9 IEF, Italy
It is now exactly a year and a month since the armistice with Germany came into effect. The year 1919 is drawing to an end, and yet still there is no real sign of any progress towards Harry going home. When the fighting on the Italian Front ceased over a year ago, he would surely have expected to be back with his family before long.
He has also been very unfortunate with leave. I had assumed that he had been granted leave in the summer of 1917, but from his letters it’s clear that he went from his leave at the end of basic training, in the spring of 1917, right through to September 1918, without any other time away. Now he has completed another fifteen months without a break. So much for the entitlement of two weeks’ leave a year. If he had stayed with the 9th York and Lancasters, it seems that he would, at the least, have been granted leave by now.
CHAPTER 12
HOMEWARD BOUND
CHRISTMAS 1919 HAS JUST PASSED. As far as I have been able to work out, Harry is at a base a few miles to the south of Tortona, in the province of Alessandria, where he has been for some time.
On 27 December he writes this postcard to Jack, postmarked the 28th:
Dec 27/1919
Dear Jack
Just a line to let you know that I have received the tin of tobacco. I was very pleased with it. Do not write again till you here from me as I am moving from this place on the 29 Dec. will send post card as soon as possible.
Harry
While it isn’t clear from the card, leaving Tortona will be the first step in his journey home. At last . . .
Three days later, on the first day of the new year, he writes to Kate and to Jack from Marseilles, this time with definite news of his demobilization.
Jan 1st 1920
Dear Kate
Just a line to let you know that I have left Italy and have arrived in France at Marseilles. I dont think we shall be here more than a day or two. we got in today at 4 o clock. and we are not allowed out of camp so I expect we shall have to stay in. I hope to be in England this time next week that is with good luck. I have got my papers for demobilisation so I expect to get demobilised within this next fortnight so I hope to be seeing you before long. I hope you had a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year and I hope Connie enjoyed her holiday. I will write and let you know as soon as possible how I get on.
With Best Love
Harry
Jan 1st 1920
Dear Jack
Just a line to let you know that I have left Italy. I am at present at Marseilles how long I am here for I do not know but I don’t think it will be more than a day or two. We have just got here by train and we are not allowed in the place so I expect we shall have to stay in camp. We was on the train about twenty eight hours so we went well for a troop train. I received your tobacco alright it was very good. I hope you have both had a Merry Xmas. I expect you have been very busy. It is very cold here and wet I don’t know what it is like in England I expect to be there within another weeks time with a bit of luck. I will write and let you know if I am so you need not bother writing till you hear from me.
With Best Love to you both
Harry
The journey by rail from Italy to Marseilles would have been rather less than 250 miles (400km), so the speed was about normal for a troop train, averaging a little less than 10 miles an hour.
Five days later, Harry sends another postcard to Jack, this time from one of the YMCA establishments that were still providing facilities for troops serving abroad.
POST CARD
Jan 6/1920
Dear Jack
Just a line to let you know that I am alright. We have left Marseilles after having three days their. We were allowed out its a fine big city and you meet all sorts of people. At present I am in Calais and hope to be in England by Thursday at Ripon if good luck. Hope to be seeing you soon.
With Love Harry
Nearly home! I would think that his most likely means of travel would have been by train from Marseilles, retracing in reverse most of the route he had taken with the battalion in November 1917. The YMCA has put its own postmark on the card; Harry must have stayed in Hut 2.
Harry comes home – as the British stamp on the envelope of his letter to Jack shows.
Finally, we come to the letter that signifies the end of the war for Private Harry Lamin.
Jan 12th/ 1920
19 Mill Street, Ilkeston
Dear Jack
Just a line to let you know that I have got home at last for good. I got demobilised on Thursday, and got home at 9 o clock on Friday morning from Ripon. Ethel thanks you for the 10/- you sent. We are all in good health except for me I have just a bit of a sore throat but I hope it is well in a day or two. the weather is very wet just now. I dont know whether I shall start at Trumans or not, they seem to be quite busy just now. I will write again soon and let you know what I am going to do.
With best Love to you both
Harry
POSTSCRIPT
IT IS DIFFICULT TO WRITE the last chapter of this book. Ironically, it was relatively easy to chart the part of Harry’s life when he was in the Army. The course of his life and the events in it were indicated by his letters and the battalion’s war diary and, with a bit of detective work, it was quite possible to produce a reasonably full account.
For the period after the war had ended, however, I found that there was virtually no documentation available. I am in the situation in which many have found themselves as the years have passed: it is simply too late to ask, as there is no one left who knew Harry well. Sadly ‘Willie’, my father, no longer has a reliable memory, and so cannot really contribute much. I am left with the long-ago childhood memories of my sister Anita and myself, as well as any official documents that I can find, to paint some sort of picture of the remaining forty years of Harry’s life.
We have seen that he returned to the family home in Mill Street, Ilkeston. He left the Army with £61 2s 1d (£61.10), a substantial sum in 1920. It sounds rather less impressive, however, on recalling the three years of military service that he endured. In today’s terms it is worth about £3,000, so it was by no means a fortune. The final sum includes the back pay that he was owed of £33 19s 3d (£33.96; worth about £1,700 today) and a ‘War gratuity’ of the princely sum of £15 (£750). He also received four weeks’ leave, paid at 4s a day (£0.20, worth £10 today!), an allowance for rations and a clothing allowance of £2 12s 6d (£2.62), worth today around £130. And that was it. After three years in uniform, often in conditions of unimaginable hardship, danger and terror, the total payment to Harry came to about £3,000 at today’s values.
The £1 ‘deduction for overcoat’ shown on the certificate meant that Harry was allowed to keep his Army greatcoat for the journey home. If he were to hand it in to the local railway station, he would be reimbursed the £1 – about £50 today. The rest of his pay settlement was made in instalments, the final payment bei
ng made on 29 January 1920.
The official Army form notifying Harry of the pay due to him. It is not known whether he handed in the overcoat and reclaimed the £1 deposit.
Later, in the 1940s, Harry and Ethel moved from Mill Street to nearby Gordon Street, where they lived for the rest of their lives. There is a family legend that Harry could not accept the idea of moving house, even to a much pleasanter home, and so Ethel arranged the move one day while he was at work. He came home to find the job done.
Harry (in a dark suit, third from right in the second row) at Willie’s wedding in 1941; his older brother Jack, who officiated, is in the centre of the back row. Nancy sits in the centre of the front row with Willie behind her and her mother-in-law, Ethel, on her left. Kate, looking ‘formidable’, is second from left in the front row, and Annie is at far right. The photograph therefore brings together all the principal characters in this account except Connie.
A precious photograph shows Harry at Willie’s wedding to Nancy, my mother, in 1941. Modest to the last, he was the sort of man who tended to disappear when photographs were being taken, so very few survive.
As children, Anita and I would sometimes stay for weekends with our grandparents at Gordon Street. I remember those visits with great affection. Harry was working in a lace factory in Derby, travelling the ten miles or so to and from work by bus.
He was a quiet man. I can recall walking with him to the nearby gasworks with a wheelbarrow to pick up coke for the fire, perfectly companionably, but neither of us saying much. He would sometimes go for a day out to the races at Southwell, near Nottingham. At that time, the only legal way to gamble on horses was to use the on-course bookmakers, and my sister tells me that Ethel did not approve of his gambling. Apart from that, he was, apparently, very reluctant to go away from home, even for day trips, never mind for a holiday. Perhaps this was a product of his war experiences, but Anita recalls a more unhappy legacy. She remembers him sleeping in an armchair after Sunday lunch and waking screaming. ‘It’s the war,’ Grandma Ethel explained.
Connie died in 1929, aged nineteen, from complications following an operation – all linked to the cerebral palsy with which she had been afflicted as a baby. She was buried on Christmas Eve in the large municipal cemetery in Ilkeston. Having raised her as their own, one can imagine what a tragedy this must have been for Harry and Ethel, as well as Kate – Harry’s letters from the war often mention Connie in the fondest terms, and he is always solicitous of her welfare. Kate herself died in 1948 at the age of seventy-one, and was buried with the daughter whom she had never been able to acknowledge in life. Brother Jack died in 1945, aged seventy-five, a distinguished clergyman; I am told that there is a plaque to him in York Minster.
There is one other familiar name to account for. Like so many other units raised after August 1914, the 9th (Service) Battalion, the York and Lancaster Regiment was disbanded after the end of the Great War, as the hugely swollen armed services shrank back to peacetime levels. The regiment went on to raise more battalions for the Second World War, including a new 9th Battalion, and these too disappeared after that war ended in 1945. The regiment was disbanded in 1968 (although maintaining its regimental headquarters until 1987), so ending the history of a distinguished infantry formation whose two original components, the 65th and 84th Regiments of Foot, had begun life in 1758 and 1793, respectively. Of the men who served in the twenty-two battalions of the regiment that fought in the Great War, 8,814 were killed or died of wounds. Between them they won 1,190 awards for gallantry, including four Victoria Crosses.
Harry (back row, far right) and Ethel (directly in front of him), probably taken towards the end of the 1950s, when Harry would have been in his late sixties or early seventies. This is the last known photograph of him.
The only other photograph of Harry that I have been able to find would appear to have been taken at a family gathering, or perhaps a social-club outing. My guess is that it dates from the late 1950s.
Harry retired at sixty-five in 1952, and lived until 1961, when he died peacefully at home. My mother, telling me of his death, reported that he said, ‘I’ve had a good life.’
GLOSSARY
APO – Army Post Office; also known as a field post office
Bde – brigade; also ‘bgde’. A British infantry brigade in the Great War usually consisted of four infantry battalions, one of which often served as a Pioneer (q.v.) battalion, plus a machine-gun company (heavy – i.e. Vickers [q.v.] – machine guns) and a trench-mortar battery. The 9th York and Lancasters formed part of 70 Brigade, with the 11th Sherwood Foresters, the 8th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLI) and the 8th York and Lancasters; from October 1915 until February 1916 the brigade also included a Territorial battalion of the Middlesex Regiment. See also Division
BEF – British Expeditionary Force, the name generally used to refer to the British military forces – including Dominion and Imperial units – on the Western Front, 1914–18, and especially to the initial (small, by comparison to the French and German armies) force of two corps (q.v.) that arrived in France in August 1914. In fact there were several BEFs – e.g. in Palestine and other theatres – including the BEF Italy, the title first given to the British force of five divisions under General Plumer that was sent to Italy in November 1917, to assist the Italian forces after their heavy defeat at Caporetto in October. The title was changed to ‘Italian Expeditionary Force’ early in 1918, to reflect the involvement of the French and Americans in the Italian campaign
Bn – battalion; also written as ‘batt’ or ‘battn’. British regiments in 1914 consisted of at least two Regular battalions, at least one Reserve battalion and at least one and usually several more Territorial battalions. Under the various recruitment schemes instituted by Field Marshal Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, in August 1914, regiments raised many more battalions for the conflict, known as ‘New Army’ battalions and given the designation ‘(Service)’ in the battalion title; the 9th York and Lancasters was a New Army or Service battalion. A British infantry battalion of the Great War had a nominal strength of 30 officers and 977 other ranks (see OR), but on active service the effect of casualties often reduced battalions to far smaller numbers. Commanded by a lieutenant-colonel, each battalion comprised a battalion headquarters and four companies (see Coy).
Bomb, bomber – in the Great War, ‘bomb’ was often used to denote a hand grenade; ‘bombers’ were soldiers selected to attack the enemy with grenades. See also Mills bomb, P bomb, Rifle bomber.
Bully, bully beef – tinned corned beef, from French bouillé, boiled. A staple of British soldiers throughout the Great War
C–in–C – commander-in-chief, the overall commander of a military force or forces in a theatre or sector of war.
CO – commanding officer, also referred to as OC (see below). Usually a lieutenant-colonel, but because of casualties battalions sometimes ended up under the temporary command of a major, or even a captain.
Corps – Originally ‘Army Corps’, a military unit usually consisting of two divisions (q.v.) plus attached troops forming a sub-division of an army. The BEF in France and Belgium, initially just two corps, grew so large that it was divided into five armies (First, Second, Third, Fourth and Reserve, later renamed Fifth Army), each with its own corps; there were also a Cavalry Corps, an Indian Corps, a Canadian Corps, and an Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, the famous ANZACs. The word can be misleading, as the British Army applies it to other formations: the Royal Engineers and the Royal Army Medical Corps, among others, are designated ‘corps’, and at the time of the Great War there was a Machine Gun Corps, a Tank Corps, the Royal Flying Corps, and even an infantry regiment named the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. The 23rd Division, which included Harry’s battalion in its 70 Brigade, served in X Corps on the Western Front, and in XIV Corps in Italy.
Coy – company, the basic unit of an infantry battalion (see Bn). In the Great War, British battalions were generally divided
into five companies: a headquarters company (or ‘Company Headquarters’) and four rifle companies, usually designated ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’. Rifle companies were subdivided into four platoons (see Pln). Each company was commanded by a major or a captain, with (usually) a captain as second-in-command; there was a company HQ, as well as a company sergeant-major (CSM, q.v.) and a company quartermaster sergeant, and at full strength numbered over 220 officers, warrant officers (q.v.), NCOs and other ranks (see OR).
CSM – company sergeant-major; a warrant officer (q.v.), rather than an NCO.
DCM – Distinguished Conduct Medal, a gallantry award for ORs (q.v.) and ranked only one degree below the VC (q.v.).
Div, Divl, Divnl – abbreviations for division (q.v.) or divisional.
Division – military formation usually, in the British Army of the Great War, consisting of three brigades (Bde, q.v.) plus ‘divisional troops’ – artillery, engineers, mounted troops, medical and transport services, and so on. For the time that Harry was with the battalion, 70 Brigade (which included the 9th York and Lancasters) was part of the 23rd Division, together with 68 and 69 Brigades (for a time between 1915 and 1916, including the Battle of the Somme, 70 Brigade was detached to 8th Division, being replaced for the period by 24 Brigade from that division). The 23rd Division served in X Corps of Plumer’s Second Army in Flanders until November 1917, and then transferred to XIV Corps, also of Second Army, on moving to the Italian Front.