A Marine at Gallipoli on the Western Front

by Harry Askin

  After a wash and clean-up, Billy and I had a stroll in the village and weighed things up a bit. Rum could be got, quietly, and plenty of the red and white kinds of wine. The bread shops were soon doing a roaring trade, and an hour after the battalion’s arrival there wasn’t a loaf to be bought. Some loaves were about a yard long, others had the appearance of grinding stones, both varieties eating more like a sponge than bread. However, it was a change from the eternal biscuit.1 There were two fair-sized spinning mills in the village and just outside was a huge modern basket factory, making carriers for great French shells. Billy and I decided to learn the language as we realized the possibility of staying in this country for the duration and a little knowledge of the language would be very useful.

  It appeared that our pleasant stay in Longpré, which extended until 28 May, was for the purpose of getting us acclimatised and fitting the division out according to the ideas of the General Staff. We changed our rifles for the high velocity kind, Mark VI, and received the latest thing in gas-bags. We did very little drill and only about three short route marches, so that discipline was a bit slack. The men behaved extremely well though and the standard of health was good throughout the division.

  The War Office had decided to take us under their wing but, the Navy having need of certain classes of reservists, the division was soon cleared of a lot of its real fighting strength. Reinforcements came out from England to bring up the total but still, although the numbers were there, fighting efficiency was reduced greatly. We heard that all sorts of changes were to take place. Senior officers of the Brigade of Guards and other crack regiments were to be drafted to the various Naval battalions to shake them up and discipline was to be very severe. The Naval manner of saluting was to be done away with and the brass were not at all satisfied with the naval slang. None of these reforms applied to the Royal Marines as, of course, we were equal in all respects to any crack regiment in the Army.2 The War Office might have saved itself a lot of trouble. None of the reforms ever took root and the Army officers from the crack regiments soon had gone. Those who escaped the shells and bullets of the Bosch went sick or drifted back to their own regiments, leaving management of the Naval Division in such hands as Freyberg, Asquith and several other equally fine leaders.

  It’s very amusing when you come to think how those rough, pig-headed Tynesiders came to take on the traditions and customs of the Navy. Some had never seen a ship before joining the Royal Naval Division (RND); then it was only a matter of one transport after another. However, stick to the traditions they did and even after the Armistice they were saluting in the approved Naval manner.

  Up at 5.00am on 28 May, with everything ready for moving. Moved off to Pont-Remy after saying farewell to all the friends we had made in Longpré. There were some wet eyes behind when we marched at 7.30am, but none in the ranks: we were all pretty eager to see how France compared with Gallipoli.

  We only had a train of cattle trucks this time and about thirty-five men were pushed in each truck which, considering the gear each man carried and the bundles of blankets, was quite enough. Moving off at noon, we had a fairly decent journey considering the discomforts, with several long stops on the way. Once the train stopped in the middle of a large orchard and, of course, half the battalion got off to pick apples and pears, but the train started straightaway without even giving the warning whistle. About fifty men were left behind. Only Joe Woods and young Nicholson were adrift out of my truck. Of course, if anybody was adrift at all it would be Joe Woods.

  We passed a large German prisoners’ camp at Acheux and all the prisoners were at work on the line. As the train passed through they all dashed up to us yelling for bully and biscuits and we threw out what we could spare. It was a sight to see the Jerries as they fought and fell over one another for the stuff. They must have been hungry to fight for muck like that.

  Some of our chaps started throwing biscuits out of spite and one hit a starved-looking young German on the cheek, cutting it open and making a horrible gash. It made my blood boil to see it and I could have shot the chap who did it without any compunction. I don’t believe in hitting a chap when he’s down and certainly these poor devils were down and, hang it all, they were only fighting job for the same reason that we are: it’s a question of the politicians laying down our lives for their country.

  In my opinion one German who fights for his country is worth a dozen Englishmen who refuse to fight for theirs. In fact, some of the devils won’t even work for their country.

  Chapter Fifteen

  28 May 1916 – Action in France – With Pick and Shovel

  We detrained at Barlin, the railhead, during daylight at about 8.00pm and, as we got out of the train, stiff and cramped, the sound of gunfire very near at hand and the sight of Very lights going up from the line ahead, helped to cheer our tired spirits and ease our aching bones.

  Having marched about three miles to a mining village called Hersin, the whole battalion was shown into a convent and school where we turned in for the night after drawing our blankets. There were signs of the convent having been occupied by troops before. Every available inch of plaster on the walls was covered with rough and sometimes good drawings, nude, rude and otherwise, beside copies of regimental badges, mottoes, names of posterity-desiring Tommies and some very unflattering remarks about the Kaiser.

  King’s Royal Rifle Corps (KRRs), London Irish, King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (KOYLIs), East and West Yorkshires, and numerous other regiments were represented artistically, and it wasn’t long before our artists and would-be artists were busy. It wasn’t long after satisfying the inner man before I turned in and was soon lulled off to sleep by the sound of gunfire.

  The Turks must have sent on a recommend about our prowess with the pick and shovel. We were up at 7.00 next morning and on the way by half-past with pick and shovel for digging just behind the support trenches. We dug our way on Gallipoli, we dug all the time we were there and we dug our way off. Then we dug the tops off several mountains in Macedonia and now we were to start and till the soil in France. I expected that we’d finish by digging a fresh channel for the Rhine. However, we had to learn the Army method of doing things and they may have had another way of digging to what we had been used to.

  We marched to the outskirts of Aix-Noulette, once I suppose a lovely little village with a fine château, but reduced to a heap of skeleton houses and piles of brick dust. What was once a pretty church was nothing but a battered heap of white stone. Lying near to the remains of the main porch was the broken crucifix with the shattered image of Christ still hanging to it. Our job consisted of widening the road but we had instructions from the engineers in charge to stop work immediately the Bosch put up an observation balloon. He had several balloons up but apparently not one watching our sector.

  The engineers told us that this was a road the Bosch had no idea about and it was a big help to our chaps at night for getting rations and ammunition up to the line. Knowledge of the road or not, it wasn’t long before Jerry started searching the sector with 5.9s, great black things that burst like the crack of doom, some of them dropping very near the road. Two or three of our party were hit with splinters of shrapnel and had to be dressed.

  Our platoon officer, Mr Surman, was soon a pitiable object, dashing about from group to group, just like a two-bob horse, and all of a sweat. Granted it was his first time under fire, but there was no need to show off in that manner, especially to chaps like us who weren’t even bothering to duck for cover. It only proved our opinion of him though, an absolute funk who would never weather it.

  Back again in Hersin by 4.00pm, pretty well fagged out, but after tea and a spruce up I went with Billy and Charlie Hamilton on a voyage of discovery down the village. The people appeared to be carrying on pretty much as prewar, although there was plenty of evidence to show how the place had been shelled badly. Just on the right of our billet, only a matter of fifty yards away was a colliery with a huge chimney stack that th
e Bosch had cut in two with a shell. The mine was still worked at night and the railhead was moved up to there at night from Barlin.

  I watched one of our aeroplanes over the German lines doing thrilling stunts to avoid the anti-aircraft shells which were bursting round him by dozens, nasty wicked-looking red flashes of fire turning afterwards into a puffy ball of very white smoke. The effect of all these scores of fluffy white balls was certainly pretty against such a background of lovely blue sky, but what about the feelings of the poor devil up there amongst them, and those of the German gunners as time after time they missed. During the whole course of the war, in which I saw millions of shells fired at aeroplanes, I only saw one plane hit: that was a direct hit on one of our planes which came fluttering down in several parts.

  The last day of May and 1 and 2 June were very quiet days for me with nothing to do but march the sick up to Jimmy Ross in the morning and write letters in the afternoon. The evenings I spent scrounging down the village with Charlie. Whenever we went down the village, which was full of troops, we were always the object of much comment, especially Charlie, who still wore his shorts from Stavros. Charlie had a fine well-made figure and his bare knees were a picture. We always took a pride in our appearance and whenever possible had everything cleaned and bright that would clean. I expect other troops were thinking we had just come out of the box.

  On 3 June names were taken for English leave, but I got a miss. They were obviously working leave on the system that the first shall be last, etc. After tea, Charlie and I had a stroll for about two miles beyond Hersin, through Coupigny (where the houses had suffered badly from shells and bombs) then to the top of the Lorrette ridge, where we had a splendid view of the whole front from Loos to Vimy. It was a beautiful evening, the air was clear and one could almost feel the quietness. Objects stood out clear and distinct. We could see plainly the twin towers of Loos, the Fosse at Caloune, and the great town of Lens along the nearside of which ran both the German and our own trenches. Lens itself looked almost untouched by the war: the number of church towers and steeples was astonishing.

  We had heard that our artillery only sent shrapnel over the place occasionally. The trenches were easily discernible owing to the white state of the ground where the chalk had been thrown out. There appeared to be little activity apart from trench mortar strafes: every few minutes we could observe a great upheaval of earth amongst the trenches, followed by a huge column of smoke rising in a dense mass to about thirty or fifty feet. Of course, we were guessing whose trenches were going up and how many poor devils had gone to Glory with such explosion. Very likely there would be no one hit. It took a lot of bullets, bombs and shells to kill a man, such was this war. We stayed on the ridge until it was nearly dark, then called and cheered our spirits up with a few vin blancs and rouges. Eggs and chips at a quiet little establishment; after that and we were both ready for bed.

  A party went up the line at night in motor lorries for digging and we heard the next morning that they had dropped in for it nicely; a shrapnel burst over one of the lorries killing and wounding eight. The doctor at the Field Ambulance went off alarming about it and said that had they had steel helmets most of the casualties would have been avoided.

  Set off to go digging at 7.00am on the 5th. We had to move up in artillery formation, that is, sections in file at fifty paces interval. As we approached a small village between Hersin and Aix-Noulette the Bosch started shelling it and the road with 5.9s and one dropped in the centre of the village. As we passed through we could see where the shell had dropped. It had blown the front of a house down and we could see the old couple who lived there busy clearing away the debris from the table where they had evidently been at breakfast.

  Our job was deepening the communication trench just off the Arras- Lens road to lay an artillery cable. All the time we were there the Germans were sending over trench mortar bombs (Minenwerfer) weighing something like a hundredweight (112lb/50kg). The sound of the explosions was frightful, just as though some mighty giant had ripped open the earth and thrown a row of houses into the crack. Some burst unpleasantly close to us too, bits of casing whizzing down amongst us with a wicked zip. We were up there till 5.00pm. Not bad for a day’s work: three to four miles walk, ten hours digging in a shelled trench and then the march back. Nothing to eat but a half tin of bully and a couple of biscuits, and only water to drink. This life would soon sicken a pig!

  Every day up to the 12th (Whit Monday) was a repetition of the 5th. The weather was simply terrible, nothing but torrents of rain and we were caked in mud. We finished digging on the Monday night; our job was a six-foot cable trench just on the left of Aix-Noulette and we were told when that was done we could go home. Easy! We were in a cornfield and after getting about two feet of muck out we struck solid chalk. It poured with rain the whole time. We finished the job about 2.00 in the morning and got back to the convent where we had two hours’ undisturbed rest.

  Chapter Sixteen

  13 June 1916 – Instruction in Trench Warfare

  Fell in at 7.45am with everything we possessed and marched to the trenches, everybody looking more or less like Christmas trees. We arrived in the firing line at 12.30pm and found everything thick with mud. There were some decent dugouts, some going down as much as twenty feet, but most were occupied by officers, sergeant majors and sergeants of the London Irish who were doing a turn in the line. It transpired that we were only up for a few days for instructional purposes and our tutors were the 18th Battalion London Irish, part of 47th Division.

  We found very little to do once we were allotted to our respective companies and platoons, except dodging rifle grenades which the Bosch were sending over with far too much accuracy to suit us. Our tutors were doing pretty much as they liked, one man being on watch in about every third fire-bay. I was warned off to go with the ration party at night so that on future occasions I could act as guide. The ration party set off in pouring rain for the dump somewhere on the Arras road, where we had to wait for about two hours. The road had been shelled and somebody’s rations had gone west. As our rations came up each man was given full sandbags, some of meat, bully, bread, jam, biscuits etc., all the bags being tied in pairs so that each man could sling two bags over each shoulder

  We set off back, a lance corporal of the Londons acting as guide with two jars of rum, me following with the company mail. It struck me after a time that our guide was more or less at sea. By the time we had reached the reserves he was hopelessly lost. We were all drenched to the skin, the rations were soaked and the men were in a frightful mood. They were cursing and swearing the whole way and time after time would come along ‘so and so’ has dropped behind, his strings broken. Then we’d halt until ‘so and so’ had tied his ‘so-and-so’ bags together again. We were wandering about for hours, more often than not up to the knees in water and mud. The men got so fed up that they dumped the rations in a battered dugout and made their own way back to the firing line.

  I got back myself after a time and found the London Irish even more minus than during the day. I am afraid it was very little these chaps could teach us about trench warfare. The only things they were likely to teach us were: how to make ‘meself’ scarce and how to dodge the issue. I believe some big general said that ‘The first duty of a soldier is to sleep’ and these chaps were carrying it out to the letter. No working parties were about, no one wiring and even the ration party failed to deliver the goods.

  The London lance corporal managed to stick to his rum and an officer and sergeant major of the regiment came round as we ‘stood to’ on the fire-step and served every man out with a good ‘tot’. It was like new life to me after the wretched night I had had and, after stand down, Billy and I set off in search of some of our rations. After about an hour we found a few bags that were marked No. 1 Platoon A Company. So we lugged them back. Just as we got by company HQ in the support line we met Mr Surman, who was trying to find his way to the front line to do his turn on watch. He was qui
te at sea as to his direction so we suggested that he should go with us. We were in a good piece of trench quite six feet deep and Surman was in front. All at once we were surprised to see our worthy officer fall flat in the bottom of the trench. ‘That’s the worst of being so damned tall,’ he said, ‘I’m sure their snipers can see me.’ Somebody had fired a rifle away up by Vimy and the idiot thought they were firing at him. He postponed his visit to the line. The rations weren’t much use when we got them opened, all the bread and biscuits being nothing but pulp. However, as most of the men had brought parcels and food up the line in their packs, we managed for the day.

  The London Irish had an idea that we were just out from England and were trying to stuff us up with all manner of tales, what they had done at Loos, Hulluch, tales of la Bassée Road, etc., but keeping very quiet about Vimy Ridge and how they lost it after the French had taken it and handed it over. We listened to all their tales of war, then told them quietly that most of our chaps had been wounded, a lot of them twice, before they ever saw a trench.

  That old soldiers’ song fitted very well in their case:

  Who are the lads that fighting’s for?

  Who are the lads to win the war?

  It’s good old Kitchener’s Army

  And every man of them’s tres bon,

  They never lost a trench since Mons,

  Because they never saw one.

  I had a walk down the trench to see Charlie after dinner. I got to where a listening sap went out towards the Bosch trench when I heard the pop of a rifle from across the way and knew that a rifle grenade was coming over. I ducked of course when I heard the whizz and the thing dropped in the next bay. No sooner the explosion than the cry for ‘Stretcher-bearers’.

  I dashed round the traverse and found two men dead, one of the London Irish, a big jovial Irishman, and the other a young lad from my own company. The grenade hit our chap on his steel helmet, because it was ripped and torn like brown paper and the poor kid’s head was completely blown to bits. The Irishman’s head and face had suffered terribly too, besides having his body riddled. There was another chap in the bay and he said they were all three on the fire-step talking. He wasn’t even scratched. Our bombing section under Grindy and Pilgrim, both Conspicuous Gallantry Medal (CGM) men from Gallipoli, got busy after that and sent over about fifty grenades in quick time, piping down the Bosch for the day.