World War I

by Allan Burnett

  Night began to fall and, with it, heavy rain. It grew intensely cold.

  Wilcock hugged the top of the trench. With water running off his tin hat, he squinted down the barrel of his replacement rifle, aiming for any Germans he could see through the smoke and rain. Shellfire stung his eardrums, and bullets and shrapnel pitter-pattered all around him, but he was determined not to let his comrades down.

  ‘If we can just hold on until tomorrow,’ he told himself as he scanned the murky ridgelines up ahead, ‘the reinforcements will get here and we will be able to retire with our heads held high.’ After all they had been through, he thought, it would be a dreadful blow if they could not hold their ground for just a few more hours.

  Suddenly Wilcock’s attention was grabbed by something moving ahead.

  ‘Don’t move, Bosche!’ he hissed under his breath.

  He aimed, squeezed his trigger and the rifle fired, recoiling against his shoulder and spitting out a spent bullet casing with a tiny puff of smoke as he pulled back the loading bolt. Then he thrust the bolt forward again and the spring-loaded magazine pumped another bullet into the chamber, ready to fire.

  He loosed off another shot, the ejected bullet casing glancing off his knuckle as he reloaded, and then he fired a few more for good measure. He was as sure as he could be that he had hit a live target, but it was impossible to tell. The air between him and the Germans was a ghoulish, dark broth. You could hardly see a thing.

  Somehow Wilcock and his comrades held their position throughout the night. In the morning, just as they had been promised, the reinforcements began arriving.

  But it wasn’t over yet. A tense day followed as the men waited for the order to vacate the freshly dug front-line trench and hand it over to the incoming troops. Wilcock was beyond tired, his nerves were shattered and his stomach cramped with hunger – they had gone almost two days now without sleep or food.

  Eventually Wilcock’s platoon was ordered to return to their starting position, leaving others to try to hold the ground that had been gained. They were relieved, but far from safe. Enemy snipers and artillery gunners had no intention of holding their fire so that their exhausted foes could leave unharmed.

  Wilcock bent his back and hung his head, trying to make himself less of a target as the bullets whizzed by, and hauled himself out of the trench. His comrades did the same and, one by one, they began streaming back towards Loos.

  As they staggered back down the hill under constant enemy fire, several men fell. A soldier near Wilcock was struck by shrapnel and collapsed. He lay prostrate on the muddy ground, unable to move. Wilcock beckoned to another soldier, and together they hauled their wounded comrade to his feet and dragged him to safety – or at least somewhere slightly less hazardous.

  Again they passed through the streets of Loos. ‘This must be what the streets of Hell look like!’ said the wounded man to his saviours, his speech slurred by pain and exhaustion.

  Wilcock had to agree. Loos was a scene of carnage, with its twisted ruins and bloody corpses. And yet Wilcock felt a glimmer of hope that if they could just keep gaining ground against the enemy then eventually this terrible war would be won, and villages like Loos would return to peace and normality once more.

  At length they returned to where they had come from, mission accomplished. The men of Wilcock’s regiment were exhausted. But still they slapped each other on the back, they embraced, they joked and wiped away tears of laughter. They wore their torn and bloodied uniforms and muddy kilts with pride. Everyone knew what they had achieved.

  ‘Let me shake you by the hand,’ said a corporal to Wilcock. ‘That was bloody well done!’

  Even though the big guns still boomed loudly nearby, the men felt comparatively relaxed now and they sat down to eat.

  Wilcock dug in to a mess tin filled with meat and potatoes. He felt like a conquering hero returning to a victory feast. He had done his bit to help take a lot of ground from the enemy in the past two days – but his regiment had also paid an extremely high price.

  After the meal, Wilcock trooped out of his dugout with the others and they all lined up in the evening light. It was time for the roll call. This was the moment of reckoning, when they found out exactly who had made it and who had not.

  There was a pause as the men formed rows. They could all see that their numbers were vastly reduced. Wilcock swallowed hard and braced himself.

  A name was called out.

  ‘He’s dead, sir!’ someone replied, their voice breaking a little.

  Another name.

  Another trembling response: ‘He’s dead, sir!’

  A third name.

  ‘Missing,’ the reply was interrupted by a sob, ‘sir!’

  And so it went on. Those who had survived unscathed were few and far between. Wilcock grew tearful and saw tears welling in the other soldiers’ eyes, too.

  The company was inspected by a senior officer. ‘Today I want to praise you men for what you have done. You are a credit to the British Empire and to His Majesty the King. And through your gallantry and courage, you have maintained the great name of this fine Scottish regiment.’

  A sense of achievement and pride swelled in Wilcock’s breast. The officer’s words made him feel a little better about the sacrifice of all those who had died. That night, he hunkered down in his dugout and lit a candle. He watched the flame flicker and glow as he reflected on the horror and heroism of war.

  WAR REPORT

  Personnel: William Raynor Wilcock was a Private in the Gordon Highlanders. During the war he kept a personal memoir in which he charted his experiences, including his arrival in France in the summer of 1915 and his part in the Battle of Loos. He was invalided out of the army in April 1917.

  Wilcock came from Leigh, an industrial town in Lancashire, England. It was not unusual for men living outside Scotland to enlist in a Scottish regiment, especially if they had been born in Scotland or had a Scottish parent, or some other connection to the part of Scotland where the regiment traditionally recruited.

  Wilcock’s Gordon Highlanders were among several Scottish regiments to take part in the Battle of Loos. The others included the Black Watch, the Cameron Highlanders, the Highland Light Infantry, the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Scots Guards, the Seaforth Highlanders, the Scottish Rifles, and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

  Event Log: The Battle of Loos was fought between 25 September and 18 October 1915. The battle was named after a small mining village in the north of France called Loos – pronounced ‘Loss’. This battle was the first time the British used poisonous chlorine gas.

  Loos is in an area called Artois, about 20 miles south of the French border with Belgium. The battle was part of a bigger plan of attack by the British and French against the Germans. The plan was called ‘the Artois offensive’.

  At the start of the battle the Germans occupied Loos and the land to the east of it. The British were stationed to the west. So the British objective was to advance east, capture Loos and break through the German lines beyond.

  The British had bombarded the Germans with heavy artillery for four days before the actual battle began. Around 250,000 British artillery shells were fired during that time.

  Wilcock was part of an advance by Scottish regiments through Loos, which was successfully taken from the Germans, and then on to a bit of higher ground to the east known as Hill 70. The Germans bombarded them while they advanced to Loos and then counter-attacked fiercely when they got to Hill 70. Wilcock’s company was eventually relieved by reserves.

  The British released 140 tons of gas from canisters on the battlefield. It was supposed to blow towards the Germans but the wind changed strength and direction, and as a result much of it ended up swirling around the British troops. Wilcock was among the many Tommies to be gassed by his own side.

  The British were unable to hold the ground gained at Hill 70, so on 28 September they retreated. They tried the attack again in October
, but that was unsuccessful too.

  In total around 60,000 British soldiers were either killed, wounded or missing as a result of the battle, and a very high proportion of them were Scots. The German losses were far fewer.

  Inventory: The Lee Enfield rifle was the British soldier’s main weapon during the First World War. It was created in the late nineteenth century by a Scots-Canadian inventor, originally from Hawick in the Scottish Borders, called James Lee.

  The Lee Enfield entered service with the British Army in 1895 and was used until 1957. The type used during the First World War was the .303 Short Magazine Lee Enfield, or SMLE, and its nickname was ‘the smelly’.

  The Lee Enfield was a sturdy and reliable bolt-action rifle. The bolt was a bar with a handle which the gunner slid forward to load the weapon with a bullet and then slid backwards to discharge the spent bullet casing after the gun was fired. The empty bullet casings flew out from the right-hand side of the gun and onto the ground, littering the floors of trenches and dugouts.

  In the hands of a skilled infantryman the Lee Enfield could accurately fire up to 15 bullets per minute at a range of up to 600 metres. The rifle had a detachable bayonet, or short sword, for attacking the enemy in hand-to-hand combat.

  More than 15 million Lee Enfields are thought to have been manufactured. The gun is still used by some armies and sports shooters today.

  A Hasty Retreat

  A red glow on the skyline confirmed that the enemy would soon be upon them. Villages just a few miles away were on fire. Every now and then there was a flash, each one seeming closer than the last, followed by louder and louder booms as the big German field guns launched their missiles before being hauled ever nearer.

  ‘Attention please! The order has been given to retreat! The tents and equipment must be packed away immediately!’

  The announcement startled Mary Milne, whose mind had been full of meat and vegetables. As the field hospital’s cook, she was contemplating the next day’s menu for the hard-working and hungry staff. She had become quite used to the distant noise of battle.

  ‘Everybody must be ready to leave in the morning!’ There was no mistaking the commanding tone of Dr Inglis. She was the founder of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals and leader of this particular mobile unit treating wounded soldiers in Romania, on the war’s eastern front.

  For the past few weeks the hospital unit had been camped on a relatively tranquil hillside overlooking the pretty medieval town of Medgidia. Now that tranquillity was shattered.

  Milne was soon working feverishly with the other women, helping to pack up the whole camp so that it could be transported to a safer place further north.

  Very soon there would be no Allied soldiers left to treat here anyway. The combined army of Russian, Romanian and Serbian troops was retreating. They were being pushed back by an enemy force of Bulgarians and Germans.

  Even the weather had turned nasty. Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled around the hills. As Milne and the others worked in the dark to uproot tent pegs, crate up medicines and surgical instruments, and fold away stretchers and bedding, they were drenched by lashing rain. Women scurried to and fro, splashing through muddy puddles, working in the glow of hurricane lanterns.

  ‘You’d think we weren’t welcome here any more,’ said a medical assistant with a grim smile as Milne helped her take down a tent, rainwater running into their sleeves and along their shivering arms.

  ‘Yes, it’s become rather a weird scene,’ replied Milne. She pushed her soaking hair out of her face as another flash from the heavens bathed the emptying campsite in electric-blue light while thunder and cannons boomed. On she worked, through the night.

  In the morning, the sun rose from the Black Sea to the east. The storm had passed and the day dawned clear and bright, but still the guns boomed louder.

  While the women waited to leave, they sat or lay on the stone steps of the old Romanian military barracks next to which their tents had been pitched, looking out on the remains of their camp. Some were reading scraps of newspaper, others flicked through photographs of friends and family.

  Some wrote entries in their diaries: ‘Sunday, 22 October 1916 – time to leave our beautiful camp on the hillside …’

  ‘The enemy must be in the garden by now,’ said Milne, only half joking, to a nurse who was standing next to her looking through a pair of binoculars.

  ‘Yes, someone ought to go over there and tell them to kindly be quiet since Dr Inglis is sleeping,’ came the reply.

  Suddenly an aeroplane appeared in the sky, followed by two more. ‘They’re not friendly,’ said the nurse with the binoculars. ‘Quick, everyone inside!’

  They took shelter just as the enemy aircrews began dropping their bombs. The missiles came whistling down and exploded, embedding chunks of shrapnel in walls and trees.

  The building rumbled and shook, glass windows shattered. For about ten minutes – it seemed like ten hours – all Milne and the others could do was to pray they would survive the attack. They cheered when Russian and Romanian planes appeared in the sky and chased the marauders away.

  At last the evacuation began. At 11.30am a large group of staff, including several sick or injured nurses and assistants, was taken away on a hospital train, which had already been loaded with baggage and equipment.

  The ultimate destination for the whole unit was a city called Galati, 120 miles north at the delta of the River Danube. To get there, it was decided that they would have to make the journey in stages, travelling independently in groups.

  While several groups made an early departure, Milne and some others waited behind with Dr Inglis. They would travel to Galati via places where they could provide some help for wounded soldiers. Dr Inglis had decided that their first stop would be Karamurat, to the north-east of Medgidia. She expected that retreating Allied soldiers there would be in need of medical attention.

  While they waited for their transport, Milne prepared a meal for her colleagues consisting of black bread and cold meat, with tea made on a Tommy Cooker – a portable stove.

  Finally, a lorry arrived to take the remaining crates of equipment. This meant the last few staff could get going too, before the place was overrun by enemy troops.

  The lorry, driven by a local guide, was loaded up with the medical equipment plus seven hospital staff and then set off. Behind it drove a Scottish Women’s Hospitals staff car containing Milne, Dr Inglis and a couple of others. Taking up the rear was a hospital ambulance containing the last few staff and what little food they had left.

  Just as they were leaving the deserted streets of Medgidia, the lorry tore around a sharp corner and a stretcher fell off. Milne’s car stopped to pick it up and the ambulance halted too.

  ‘Oh, blast it!’ exclaimed Dr Inglis, as the lorry disappeared in a cloud of dust, unaware that it had shed some of its precious load. ‘We’ve lost sight of our guide.’

  It was impossible to tell which turning the lorry had taken so they stopped to ask directions to Karamurat from some retreating Allied soldiers. Some of them spoke English, but with others it was better to try German – even though that was the language of the enemy. It soon became clear that they were heading in the wrong direction.

  Just as they were setting off again, a boy hopped aboard the footplate of the car. He gestured that he would show the way.

  ‘Karamurat!’ he shouted, tapping his chest then pointing at the road ahead.

  The women gratefully accepted his offer. With the boy hanging onto the side of the car and pointing the driver this way and that, along shortcuts that took them through gorgeous scenery bathed in a red and gold sunset, they made their way slowly towards their destination.

  Just before they turned on to the mountain road that would take them into Karamurat, the boy hopped off the footplate with a wave. Milne watched him disappear in a cloud of dust. They drove on as night fell and the rain began, but the road was good.

  After a while their headlights revealed grou
ps of people and what looked like vehicles coming towards them. There was a steady stream at first, but soon the numbers increased until the anxious travellers clogged up the road.

  The hospital car and ambulance squeezed past enormous horse-drawn carts and caravans. They looked like small mobile houses, piled high with people, their possessions and their caged farm animals – including pigs, sheep and hens. Most of the carts were pulled by cream-coloured oxen.

  ‘These poor people look thoroughly miserable,’ said Milne as she looked out into the wet night.

  Peering back at her from where they lay on mattresses in the carts were elderly people too sick or frail to walk. Huddled next to them were terrified-looking children.

  Men accompanied their families on foot. They shouted, pushed and shoved at each other as they jostled to make way for the motor vehicles.

  On the heels of the civilians came waves of Romanian soldiers. Some were marching, many were walking wounded, and a number were on horseback. Some horses towed cannons or military wagons, others pulled Red Cross carts containing the more severely wounded soldiers.

  Eventually the car and ambulance were forced to halt, and Milne and the others took the opportunity to get out and ask directions.

  ‘How far to Karamurat?’ Milne asked one of the passing Romanian officers.

  He looked her up and down, baffled by her uniform and tartan tie. But he was in a hurry, so he simply pointed over his shoulder. Behind him in the distance Milne could see the glow of a burning village.

  ‘You see that?’ he said grimly. ‘That is what awaits you if you do not turn back.’

  He was about to leave when Milne caught his arm and explained that they were nurses, and that there might be wounded soldiers at Karamurat in need of treatment.

  The officer shook his head sadly. ‘Karamurat is over there,’ he said, pointing now in a slightly different direction at some twinkling lights in the distance. ‘Follow the road and it will take you. But just look around,’ he added, opening his arms wide. ‘Everyone is fleeing from the Germans and the Bulgars, even the soldiers. Turn back while you still can.’ And with that, he left.