Tommy's War: A First World War Diary 1913-1918

by Thomas Cairns Livingstone

  Friday, 9 August

  This is Tommy’s birthday. The cherub is now seven years old. Long may his lum reek.59 We had a dumpling to celebrate.

  Saturday, 10 August

  We bought Tommy a boat to sail at Rothesay for his birthday. Allies rapid advance. 24,000 prisoners taken. Montdidier taken.

  Sunday, 11 August

  We went down to Clydebank [in the] afternoon via Renfrew Ferry. Poor Jenny very far gone and low-spirited. I’m afraid the end is drawing near. She bade me ‘Good-bye’. The Allied advance continues. Thousands of prisoners and hundreds of guns captured.

  Wednesday, 14 August

  Working late at night. When I got home we had a wild time of packing bags. It was great. Victory at Amiens now complete. 30,344 prisoners in a week.

  Thursday, 15 August

  Saw my well-beloved and Tommy away by 10.40 a.m. train to Rothesay via Wemyss Bay. Sam also there seeing Nellie and John off. Felt sort of unsettled at night. Went up to Mr Cormack’s plot and helped with pea-pods. Then went up and had tea with him and his better half. Wish it was Saturday.

  Friday, 16 August

  Got a letter from Agnes, which pleased me greatly, showing she had arrived safely. She tells me to bring down a pot of jam. I go to the grocer. No jam. Here’s luck.

  Saturday, 17 August

  This is the day I get my holidays, so the weather is very dull. Met Sam at Central Station about 6 p.m. We got 6.15 p.m. train to Wemyss Bay and arrived at Rothesay 9 p.m. per the good ship Iona.60 Rained in buckets all the time.

  Sunday, 18 August

  Rained practically all day. We walked to Port Bannatyne before dinner. After dinner we went to Ascog and back by the country. After tea Agnes, Nellie and Isa out for a little. Sam, Jenny and I sat in. Looks as if I would get sunburnt.

  Monday, 19 August

  Nice forenoon. Sam and I saw Isa off by early boat before breakfast. After breakfast Sam and I walked to Craigmore. We went to the Empire at night.61 British advance south of Ypres. 900,000 British have been killed in the war so far.

  Tuesday, 20 August

  Poured all day. Sam and I fished out in the bay for a couple of hours. We got five wee fish. After dinner we all went to Port Bannatyne, took out a boat for an hour and a half, and fished. NBG. After tea we all adjourned to the Palace to see the pictures.62

  Wednesday, 21 August

  Dull sort of day, but dry. Before breakfast Sam and I walked to Ascog and back. After breakfast we all went to Ettrick Bay and had a picnic. Big crowd going back in the car. We had to wait in a queue. When we got home and had a decent tea we took a walk Craigmore way. New French advance between Oise and Aisne. 10,000 prisoners. British advance in wide front on Ancre.

  Thursday, 22 August

  Dull day. Very stormy and some rain. Before breakfast Sam and I climbed the Barone Hill. After breakfast Sam and I went up to the bowling green for a little. After dinner we all went to Loch Fad. Went out in a small boat. We landed and gathered brambles. At night Sam and I went to a very third-rate music hall and listened to some attempts at singing etc. British attack continues.

  Friday, 23 August

  Nice warm sunny day so we thought we would take a sail. We spent the day at Millport and made our tea on the rocks. We got back about 7 p.m.

  Saturday, 24 August

  Dull weather and heavy showers. Sam and I out fishing before breakfast. Coal men very independent here, so I had to go out myself and wheel a hundredweight of the precious stuff. The situation saved. I then took Tommy out for a little in a small boat. After dinner I walked to Ascog and back by the Loch. After tea we all went out in a boat and examined the submarine, mine-layers and other devilish instruments.63 14,000 prisoners taken by British in 3 days.

  Tuesday, 27 August

  Rain poured solid hard all day long. Sam and I played casino all forenoon and after dinner we went out in a boat fishing for two hours. We got soaked through, and had to change our garments. At 7 p.m. we saw Sam off in the boat (his holidays are up) then we returned to the ‘De Luxe’.64 British advance goes on. Great struggle on Somme. High Wood won. Anzacs reach Bapaume.

  Wednesday, 28 August

  Great rejoicings. Nice sunny day, but very breezy. In the forenoon I walked to Kerrycroy. Got lost in Knocknicol Wood and then struck into the Moor Road and got home by Loch Ascog. After dinner we all had a seat near Ascog. After tea we went up Canada Hill and home by Ascog.65 New British gains on Somme and Scarpe fronts.

  Thursday, 29 August

  Dull, windy, sunny, showery, and pouring wet night. Am not well today. Sort of sick and can eat nothing. Consternation. Took a small walk before breakfast then in forenoon Tommy and I went through the Skipper Wood and had a seat at Craigmore. After dinner we all took car to Port Bannatyne and had a seat about a mile past it.66 I was not well enough to enjoy it. At night I sat in. Agnes and Nellie went out for a walk and got a soaking. British push eastwards. The Hindenburg Line in peril.

  Friday, 30 August

  Fine forenoon. Blustery afternoon and heavy showers. I am feeling all right again and eating as a Christian man ought to. Went out by Ascog in the forenoon. In the afternoon we all went to Barone Hill but did not get up as heavy rain came on. We went to the Palace at night. Fresh British advance. Bullecourt and Combles won. French enter Noyon. Police strike in London.

  Saturday, 31 August

  Very windy and some heavy showers in the forenoon. After breakfast I took Tommy and John out in a boat. Could hardly row back it was so wild. After dinner I took a walk to Canada Hill and back by Craigmore. On my way back saw Agnes and Nellie waiting on Ina, then we all went up for tea. I loitered on the Esplanade towards evening. Very cold at night. Ina took Tommy to the ‘pictures’.

  * * *

  Entertainment

  Thomas was writing before the days of radio, which arrived in Scotland in the early 1920s, and all the entertainment in the Livingstone house had to be supplied by its inhabitants. Thomas and his family are keen singers, and Thomas himself plays the piano. His brother Sam leads a choir in Rutherglen, and Thomas often sits in public parks and listens to bands playing there. The family would also have heard the popular singers of the day in the music halls, and the silent films shown in the city’s early cinemas would at times have been accompanied by music. Many phrases used in the diary derive from hymns and popular songs or poems. In March 1916 Thomas writes, ‘To “keep the Home Fires burning” I broke some wood tonight’, quoting ‘Keep The Home Fires Burning’, a hugely popular wartime song written by Ivor Novello and Lena Ford in 1914. In September 1918, he recorded ‘a terrific downpour of rain from early morn till dewy night’. The last six words are from ‘The Nymph’s Song to Hylas’ by William Morris:

  I know a little garden-close Set thick with lily and red rose, Where I would wander if I might From dewy dawn to dewy night, And have one with me wandering.

  The theatres in Thomas’ day mainly offered variety or music hall programmes, mixing comedians, singers, jugglers, plate-spinners, stage magicians, escapologists, dancers and other performers in a show held together by a master of ceremonies. Among the singers popular in Scotland at the time were Harry Lauder, whose songs became Scottish staples for half a century or more, and Will Fyffe, who wrote the city’s national anthem, ‘I Belong to Glasgow’. The cinemas, or ‘picture theatres’ as they were called, showed short, silent, black and white films, often made by stars of the stage, including Charlie Chaplin, who is mentioned twice in the diaries.

  The reading room at the Anderston library in Macintyre Street.

  The range of theatrical entertainments still being offered at the height of the war can be seen from the advertisement columns of the Glasgow Herald on Wednesday 20 June 1917. Under the heading ‘popular entertainments’, there are four listings for the Glasgow Coliseum, the Alhambra, the Pavilion and the Empire. The Coliseum, twice nightly at 6.55 p.m. and 9 p.m., presented ‘the latest London Hippodrome revue’, Zig-Zag, with an ‘unprecedented
star cast’, a ‘superb beauty chorus of over 60’ and an ‘augmented orchestra’. The revue was described as ‘a gorgeous spectacle and musical feast for eye and ear’. The Alhambra, ‘the resort of the elite’ had two performances of a musical called Keep to the Right, while the Pavilion – billing itself as ‘Scotland’s premier vaudeville theatre’ – had a musical comedy called Blind Man’s Bluff. The Empire was presenting Joy-Land, which featured 60 ‘Joy-Belles’, presumably female dancers.

  Thomas is a keen visitor to the municipal libraries of Glasgow, and mentions the Langside, Gorbals, Pollokshields and other branches as well as the flagship Stirling’s Library in Miller Street, a few streets away from his place of work. He is coy about what books he borrows, referring to ‘religious literature’ and ‘improving literature’, but his ironic sense of humour is surely disguising a taste for a much wider selection of subjects, not all of which would please readers of only religious or improving works. Glasgow’s municipal library system began with an enabling parliamentary act in 1899, which empowered the Glasgow Corporation to borrow £100,000 and levy one penny on the rates to set up a free lending library service.67 The first city library opened in the working-class Gorbals district in 1901, and by 1907 there were 12 branch libraries. Andrew Carnegie, the Scots-born American industrialist and philanthropist, gave more than £100,000 to the city to support the library service. Stirling’s Library became part of the municipal system in 1912, after being set up in 1791 under the terms of the will of Walter Stirling, a Glasgow merchant, but never really thriving as a charitable concern. By 1914 the city had 21 public libraries.

  The Juvenile Reading Room at Govanhill Library.

  Thomas also visits the Art Galleries at Kelvingrove, another educational and entertaining facility provided by the Glasgow Corporation. There, he would have seen portraits of the royal family from the seventeenth century to his own day; a number of ‘Tassie medallions’, three-dimensional cameo portraits cast in a glass paste; oil paintings by many of the Old Masters of Europe and the leading painters of Scotland and England. Many of the paintings were bequeathed to Glasgow by the great and good of the city, the families who had made money from shipbuilding, locomotive construction, hewing coal and iron and smelting steel. Kelvingrove, fat upon the profits of its benefactors, was not a minority interest: more than two million people visited the galleries in 1921.

  Glasgow was once complimented as being ‘a very Tokyo for tea rooms’, in part reflecting the vigorous and determined temperance movement that swept the city in Victorian and Edwardian times. Tea rooms also provided a safe and respectable space for women to meet in the city centre. The grande dame of tea rooms in Glasgow was Catherine Cranston, sometimes called Katie Cranston but more usually Miss Cranston. Thomas and Agnes visited one of her tea rooms, probably the branch in Sauchiehall Street, before they were married. Miss Cranston employed George Walton and Charles Rennie Mackintosh, two of the most prominent architects and designers of the period, to design her tearooms both outside and in, right down to the last teaspoon. A menu board from 1911, hand painted by Mackintosh, lists ‘This day’s specialities’: Creamed sole and tomato, 10d; Fried filleted flounder and caper sauce, 9d; Two potted herring with salad, 6d; Wiltshire bacon and poached egg, 9d; Cold roast chicken and bacon, 1/-.

  For many people in Glasgow, then as now, football was more than just entertainment, it was a way of life, almost a religion. Thomas, who mentions going to Hampden Park stadium only once, does not seem to have been much of a football fan. But the sport, while not as commercialised and taking up far less media space than it does now, played a prominent part in Glasgow life. In the early twentieth century, the Glasgow teams – Queen’s Park, Clyde, Third Lanark, Partick Thistle, Rangers and Celtic – had recently invested large sums of money in improving and enlarging their grounds, and Hampden, home of Queen’s Park, was also the national stadium. The stadium, which was built in 1903, had a capacity of 125,000 in Thomas’ day. It was the largest stadium in the world until 1950, and still holds the record for the largest crowd for a football match in Europe, set in 1937 when 149,415 people watched Scotland play England in the British Home Championship. Now all-seated, its capacity is a paltry 52,000.

  Footballers were not excused military duties, of course, and many players were quick to enlist. Every member of Heart of Midlothian football club volunteered on 26 November 1914. Home International matches were suspended for the duration of the war, the Scottish Cup was shelved and, as fuel supplies became scarce, Scottish League matches were confined to clubs in the central belt of the country.

  Hampden Park, Glasgow during an international match between Scotland and England in 1910.

  * * *

  Sunday, 1 September

  Wet morning but turned out very nice day, but sort of stormy. Took a walk to Kerrycroy in forenoon and back by the road that winds by Loch Ascog. In the afternoon we all climbed the Barone Hill and then did the Loch Fad Walk. We got home about 8 p.m. Did some packing up. We go home tomorrow.

  Monday, 2 September

  Nice day. At an unearthly hour Ina and I boarded the old tub Benmore.68 She left at 6.50 a.m. Was in my work about 9.30 a.m. Went home at dinner time and opened up the house and sorted out the correspondence. No calling-up notice! Agnes and Tommy got home after 2 p.m. Hindenburg Line broken for two miles. Canadian success at Arras-Cambrai Road.

  Tuesday, 3 September

  Getting settled down now. Cleaned all the windows and washed the Rothesay dirt off my feet. Great British victory. Hindenburg Line broken for about six miles. Enemy retreat on whole front.

  Wednesday, 4 September

  Tommy resumed his scholastic duties today. Agnes went down at night to see Jenny. Poor Jenny far gone. British and French forging ahead. British nearing Lille and Cambrai. Germans completely defeated.

  Saturday, 7 September

  I went to the Stirling’s Library in afternoon. After tea we took a ‘hurl’ in the car to Cathcart and back. Agnes not well at all. I am very disappointed at the result of our holidays. The rain, long walks and bag lifting has done Agnes no good.

  Sunday, 8 September

  Agnes worse today. Seems to be her old trouble back again. French victory in the Somme. Five mile advance. St Quentin Canal crossed. British still pushing back the Germans. British captured 19,000 Germans last week.

  Monday, 9 September

  Coal position going to be very serious this winter. Wonder what we will keep in the bunker?

  Wednesday, 11 September

  Agnes not well this morning. Looks like the influenza. She improved later on in the day, in fact, she made plum jam tonight. The plums came from Kilcreggan.69 We got in another bag of coal today. Hoarding it in a mild sort of way. British lines pushed forward at Gouzancourt Ridge. French two miles from La Fère. Great Allied success in Siberia.

  Czar Nicholas II under arrest in Siberia, 1917.

  Thursday, 12 September

  Went down to Ibrox tonight, with the case we had on loan from them. Anarchy in Russia. Fire and murder in Petrograd. Ex-Czar’s family reported murdered. Great American attack launched at Verdun today. Germans falling back.

  Sunday, 15 September

  Very dull, cold and windy. In afternoon it developed into a wild wet day. We did not go out. Made ourselves comfortable and read good books etc. British advance at St Basle. New French advance south of St Quentin.

  Tuesday, 17 September

  Agnes ironed all my soft collars of divers colours. Offensive started in the Balkans by French, Serbs and Greeks in 12-mile front for a depth of five miles. 4,000 Bulgars captured.

  Wednesday, 18 September

  We had a woman to do the wash-house trick today. Great applause from Agnes. Govanhill coal men on strike. New British attack towards St Quentin.

  Thursday, 19 September

  Agnes went down to Clydebank at night. Owing to the coal shortage, we speculated today in some peat. I sawed the blocks in two at night to fit the grate. Terrific f
ighting, further big gains by British in new advance. 8,000 prisoners. Bulgarian rout. Allies gain 12 miles.

  Saturday, 21 September

  Tommy completely all out. No appetite, sick, headache, tired, sneezing, restless. Kept him in bed all day. I went for doctor about 9.30 but it was too late. Tommy feverish and delirious during the night, so we took turn about sitting up. I’ve got a dose of the cold myself. Great British victory in Palestine. 3,000 Turks captured.

  Sunday, 22 September

  Tommy not any better. He can’t eat yet. As the doctor did not come, I went out to his house in Cathcart at tea time. He thinks Tommy has influenza and will come tomorrow. He gave me a line for three powders, which I duly got in a chemist. A worrying sort of weekend. Allies advancing on all fronts.

  Monday, 23 September

  Doctor Gardiner up today. Tommy has got the influenza. To be kept in bed. Milk diet etc. His temperature is high. The great battle for Cambrai and St Quentin goes on. Serbs advance 40 miles. Great victory in Palestine. Entire Turkish army there captured. British cavalry reach Nazareth.