by Harry Askin
The Gallipoli Monument, commemorating all those who lost their lives in the ill-fated campaign, including so many of Harry’s friends in the Royals. This photograph was taken by his granddaughter Jean Baker in 2014.
Chapter Eighteen
Monotony Sets In
The day following was Sunday 25 June, a lovely summer day. After getting the mud off and sprucing up a bit I went for a stroll with Billy and Charlie. The country round about was lovely, all pretty villages and thick woods. Fresnicourt was a pretty place and so was Ohlain, another small village nearby; Fresnicourt contained the church that does for both places. However, as Ohlain contained the estaminets and cafés we made our way there. We were just trying to decide a very important point; should we go in that estaminet for a vin rouge or should we go into that café for a tasse du fresh?
We had almost decided on the vin rouge when a vision of loveliness all in the black of France swept past us with a swish of silk and a very demure ‘Bonjour Messieurs’. We watched her with our mouths wide open. We couldn’t imagine the war had left things like that hanging round there. We watched her as she turned into a farmyard and, as she glanced round once, we decided to ask for a glass of milk. ‘Oh yes,’ they had milk, but perhaps we would sooner have bière, or wine or champagne at 15 francs a bottle?
We had vin rouge and grenadine several times. Jeanne was a charming girl and made us feel quite at home, even before she had taken her hat off. She had been to church at Fresnicourt and was in black for one of her brothers who had been killed in the fighting at Souchez. He may have been the poor devil we chopped up while making that communication trench. We decided to make that our café special for as long as we stopped at Fresnicourt.
We had five very uneventful days until 1 July. Monday the 26th saw a start with proper routine. Up at 6.00am for PT, then breakfast, then, from 9.15am to 11.30am, turnings and saluting by numbers, section and platoon drill, and company drill from 2.30pm to 4.30pm. The troops were absolutely fed up to the teeth. We didn’t know very much about drilling sections and platoons, but we did know our job up the line, and that’s more than our company officers did.
Captain Edwards was a dream. He knew very little about drill and up the line was about as lively as a dead horse. Lieutenant Torrens was a bit better down the line and up the trench he would come and mix with the men a bit. Surman, of course, was a washout both up and down the line. The remaining officer was Second Lieutenant Mitchell, ‘Wanky Mitchell’ we called him. He was as loony as anything I’ve seen in a Sam Browne, with perhaps the exception of Compton Domville of Gallipoli fame. None of our officers had seen active service before and now they’d had a taste they didn’t seem enamoured. Time would tell with them. Perhaps we wouldn’t have long to wait for a fresh lot of officers.
Billy and I shared sick corporal’s job, so that wasn’t so bad for us. The rain came down in plenty which didn’t help to cheer the men up much. The rats in the huts caused a little diversion at night as the whole camp was overrun by them; one night I was awakened by a brute as big as a rabbit sitting on my face. I knocked it off with my hand and it scampered off with a cry of rage, leaving three claw marks down one side of my face. It put the wind up me for the rest of the night and, in the morning, I organised a rat hunt in which we caught and killed eight. Great big brutes they were, quite capable almost of killing and eating a man. We had always plenty of dogs hanging around for a job of that description. Almost every time we went out for a march two or three mongrels would attach themselves to us and either follow us to camp or up the line, whichever way we were going. A dog never stayed up the trenches long, though. It would cringe and cower with every explosion until, its fear getting the better of it, it would set off for the nearest village again. Cats were just the opposite and so were birds, the latter not fluttering a wing even when a shell burst nearby.
The monotony of life was broken a bit on 1 July. Taubes came over in the morning and dropped several bombs on the countryside, but did no great damage. Then we could hear heavy gunfire from the south practically all day. Towards five o’clock orders were issued with news of the ‘Big Push’ on the Somme. III and IV Army Corps., in conjunction with the French, had advanced and had made good progress at practically all points. Another item of interest; we were paid, so Billy, Charlie and I went down to Jeanne’s and had a bottle of champagne to celebrate the victory. Heavy firing in the Vimy sector continued all night, but died down towards dawn. Good news continued to come through the next day: our troops had gained considerable ground and had captured more than 6,000 prisoners and over 100 guns.
I was strolling up from Ohlain about 6.00pm with Charlie, when we came across a queer-looking chap wandering aimlessly about on the road. He was dressed in a filthy suit of khaki with neither cap nor belt. All his buttons were tarnished through being exposed to poison gas, and he was muttering away to himself. I spoke to him but he took not the slightest notice of me, and then I could tell by the expression on his face and in his eyes that he was daft. I asked him a few questions. Where had he come from? What was his name and regiment? Had he a paybook on him? He just shook his head as though he didn’t understand my language.
I made for his pocket to see if he had a paybook but he fired up at once. ‘Don’t touch that,’ he said, ‘That’s my wife.’ He pulled a photograph from his pocket then and started kissing it and crying. He had a letter, too, and said someone had sent it to tell him that his wife had gone off with a black man. ‘I’ll kill ’em!’ he started shouting. Then he called his wife all the things that applied to a woman of that description and a few that didn’t apply but which added a bit of colour to it and then kissed the photo again and said he loved her. I induced him to go with me as far as the sick bay where I turned him over to Jimmy Ross. He wasn’t long before he turned him over to field ambulance.
Sergeant Jeffries found a site suitable for a rifle range, so on the 3rd we had to start firing a short musketry course. That man was rifle mad.
Ohlain was placed out of bounds. Joe Woods and a few more ‘birds’ caused a rough-house in the Army Service Corps canteen down there one night and half a dozen men had to receive medical attention. They spoil everything with their rotten old soldier moods.
The battalion was inoculated against typhoid on the 5th. That makes about the umpteenth time since joining up. We reckoned to have forty-eight hours stand-off after an affair like that, but we carried on with drill. A touch of typhoid more or less was nothing compared to acquiring a knowledge of the Drill Book. Joe Woods always said he could quote anything from either the Bible or infantry drill. That’s all he had to read when he did ‘cells’ in the Army before the war. He must have done some cells in his time to swallow that lot.
Chief item of interest during the next few days was the departure to England on leave of an officer who came out last October. Both Captains Eagle and Tetley were granted their majorities and Tetley was to leave to take over the command of Drake Battalion.
We gave in our blankets on 12 July. It was very evident that our stay in these parts was drawing to a close. Everybody was fed up and a change, wherever it might be for, would be welcome. Marched to Hersin on the 13th at 2.00pm and were billeted in the convent again overnight. Moved to the Bully Grenay sector next morning, our company being in general reserve for the start. Our trenches were about 500 yards in front of the little village of Corons d’Aix and, though the Bosch was always dropping shells in it, the French people were living there pretty much as usual. To our right rear was the white village of Aix Noulette.
We had some decent dry dugouts constructed in a valley behind the reserve trenches, so that we had plenty of freedom of movement, being quite unobserved by the Bosch, but liable to get plenty of shells as our artillery had a field-gun battery just behind us in the valley. We passed a lot of time watching the efforts of the Bosch to hit this battery, but he was never successful. When the Bosch, with the aid of his aeroplanes, thought he had got the range nicely, the gunners would
move in the night to an alternative position, and the next morning Jerry would waste a lot of ammunition on the deserted gunpits.
We lost our Mr Surman who volunteered to go to a mining company where he need never go up the line. I tried my hardest to persuade Kelly Clayton to go with him, but he wouldn’t. That man used to get more lousy every day. I think that when lice crawl out of a man’s lace holes, he must be lousy indeed. It was a sight to watch Kelly doing two hours on the fire-step. His body would keep undergoing various contortions. First one shoulder would go up, then the other, then his body would slew round, then he would shake first one leg and then the other. His hands were nearly always pushed through his tunic front and shirt and his thumbnails were always thick with the blood of murdered lice. ‘What the Hell are you wriggling about for Kelly?’ we would say to him at times. ‘Just turning t’owd b******s on the back to gie’ young uns a chance’ was usually the response.
We had another in the platoon almost as bad, George Hedley, who went out to Gallipoli with us on the Gloucester Castle. He was even lousy before we had been at sea seven days and was the cause of the whole battalion having our first ‘Scabie’ exam and a sulphur bath. He deserted from the trenches at Gaba Tepe and was found a week later wandering about on the beach. He was court martialled, did part of his sentence, and was sent back to us to try and make good but we could make nothing of him: the man was too damned lazy to scratch himself. There was only one thing he got enthusiastic about: jam. He’d thieve and scrounge jam from anybody and at all times. I’d seen on Gallipoli, when we couldn’t bear the sight of jam, the whole section would pass him the jam ration, and he would open and eat tin after tin. It’s a peculiar thing but neither Kelly nor Hedley would ‘pig’ in with the other. Hedley said Kelly was too lousy to live with and Kelly, who had a sense of humour, said he’d got a decent breed and wasn’t going to let them mix with Hedley’s. So much for the present about the lousy ones. I should say the extra lousy ones, because everybody was more or less lousy. The Colonel even kept having a quiet fake.
A Mr Wrangham took Surman’s place as platoon officer to No.1 and had every appearance of being a decent chap. He had seen service before, having been a corporal in the King’s Royal Rifles (KRRs).
Chapter Nineteen
July 1916 – We Relieve 47th Division
The 1st Royal Marines (1 RM) were holding the line and things were very quiet. A patrol of an officer, a sergeant and six men went out the first night. The sergeant, badly wounded, crawled in about dawn with the information that the others were all lying dead in a shell hole near the German wire. They had been spotted from the Bosch trench and a couple of stick bombs had been shared amongst them.
All the front line was prepared for a cloud-gas attack. In every fire-bay the special section of gas engineers had fixed huge cylinders of poison gas with pipes and nozzles extending over our parapet and pointing towards the German lines. The engineers were only waiting for suitable weather conditions to turn on the gas, the artillery would turn on the guns and a raid by the infantry would follow to ascertain the effects of the gas. Conditions were thought favourable on the night of the 16th and we manned the reserve trenches. The bombardment started at 1.00am on the 17th and carried on for twenty minutes, but the rain came pouring down and the gas attack was a washout. All excitement died away with the bombardment and we returned to our shelters.
Later in the day we were paid 15 francs, but what use it was I’m hanged if I could see. Some of the chaps managed to get back to Corons d’Aix and brought back some bottles of beer. Soon after that a brag and pontoon school started. They finished up with Jock Baird possessing most of the 15 francs paid out to each man.
Things were very quiet up the line all day and at 8.00pm we all went up the line, digging and improving the trenches until midnight. The most interesting event next day was the tossing up for the platoon dinner. The four section leaders tossed up and Bob Bayliss won the lot for his section. We did without dinner, and had to manage on biscuits. There was another, and more violent, bombardment at night, the gas was let off and a raid was carried out, but by the battalion on our right. We stood by in our dugouts to reinforce the line if necessary, but were not called upon.
Our division had now taken over the sector from 47th Division. Our ground lay between Lens and Vimy, through Calonne and Angres and across the Souchez river. We relieved 1 RM in the front line about midday on the 19th and found both the firing line and supports in a shocking state. The trenches had been battered in all along the front by the German shells during the night and 1 RM had left us to repair them. Burst sandbags were strewn all over the place, and over everything was the smell of decay and poison gas. I had a good look over the top when I got up the line and could see the German front line about 120 yards away with a belt of wire in front about twenty-five feet thick. It was a solid mass of thick barbed wire about two and a half feet high, sufficient to stop an express train.
Our platoon had one dugout allotted to it, a filthy affair about twenty feet down and simply overrun with great rats. One of the entrances had been battered in and the place stank of everything vile and rotten. I decided that, come over what may, I would live on the fire-step and set about at once making a grenade-proof shelter. I scrounged a sheet of corrugated iron and, with about twenty sandbags and a waterproof sheet, made myself a fairly decent weather and splinter-proof abode.
Jim Hearne was sent away to field ambulance with something or other while we were at Ohlain and a Sergeant Doran took charge of the platoon. He was quite new out and not used to any of us and our little ways. We told him not to expect the same routine here as he was used to on Pompey parade or on a big ship, but he was determined to have his way with the platoon.
The first night, as soon as it was fairly dark, Corporal Tolly took a party out to repair the wire, which was in a poor state. The Germans could have walked through it naked and blindfold without discomfort. Tolly took with him Rendall, Spencer and a new chap just to show him what it was like. Sergeant Doran said he would go with them just to get his hand in. They had been out about ten minutes when the new chap dashed in for stretcher-bearers. Doran had been hit. I knew it would be a long job if word was passed down the trench so I dashed along for them. I met Mr Wrangham on the way down and told him what was doing and he dashed straight over the top to help them. When I got back with the SBs they had just managed to get Doran out of the wire. A German bullet had got him through the thigh and he was losing a lot of blood. By the time we had got him in the trench and on the stretcher he was very weak and said he didn’t think he’d live long. They got him away after a bit more fuss and we carried on with our respective jobs, either repairing the trench or keeping watch. I kept throwing a Very light up and then having a shot into the Bosch wire. It’s all a matter of luck, though: you might hit something, even a mile off, and yet you might miss.
Writing of night firing reminds me of Gallipoli, when we were about four miles behind the line lying in holes in the ground. One night we had three men wounded with stray Turkish bullets from the line. It’s all luck, and so was Doran’s wound. When the stretcher-bearers got back they said he died half an hour after they got him to Jimmy Ross. That meant another good opening for a platoon sergeant. They buried Doran behind Brigade HQ next day, 21 July: Tolly and two men went to see him put away.
The Bosch sent over some 5.9s during the morning and smashed the trench up a bit. Things got so unpleasant I had to take shelter in the big dugout. Even while we were down there the rats were running about and half the men had had their rations eaten by the brutes. I didn’t stop down there long, but it’s a good job I went down, for when I went back to my shelter on the fire-step I found it smashed in. A trench mortar bomb had dropped on it. A bit of luck for me, but it meant more work getting it up again.
Our trench mortar squad got to work in the afternoon of the 22nd and we had a good view of the effects of our toffee apples. They were dropping in the Bosch wire and in his front line
, and great sections of wire and sandbags were flying up in the air every few minutes. Most of us had our heads stuck over the parapet during the strafe and we must have looked like a lot of Aunt Sallies to the Bosch, had he been looking, but I expect he was twenty feet below the ground waiting for the spasm to pass. They stuck it quietly until teatime then he started with his Rum Jars and Minenwerfers but I stuck in the trench. It was fairly easy to dodge one as you could follow the flight in the air and judge nicely the spot where it would drop.
The gas engineers were preparing for another discharge of gas from our front and a bombardment by Jerry made things distinctly dangerous from our point of view. The trenches were full of gas cylinders and we stood the double risk of being both blown up and gassed. However, nothing very exciting happened and the two days following were the same: the usual strafe and counter-strafe in the afternoon, ration and working parties during the turn off watch and the eternal ‘stand to’ at dawn and dusk when nothing ever happened.
I never used to sleep at night when up in the front line. If possible I got down to it just after ‘stand down’ in the morning and tried to get two hours’ sleep. That would satisfy me for the day, except if things were slack in the afternoon: if they were I would snatch another hour. I could keep on all night providing I found myself something to do, such as sniping, wiring or lying out in front of the wire in no man’s land acting as covering party for the wire menders.
We had a chap called Hobson in our platoon, only lately joined, and one of Lord Derby’s men. He didn’t like warfare and didn’t want to fight and if he had anything to do with it he wouldn’t fight. He swore he would give himself up at the first opportunity. And I swore I’d shoot him if I saw him attempt it. Billy and I used to get some fun out of him at night. We would wrangle it so that he was missed out of the ration parties etc. and get him on watch. I asked him once, when he was supposed to be on watch, why he kept his head below the parapet. ‘Well there’s a moon, Corporal,’ he replied, ‘and the Germans might see me.’ Then I asked him what he was afraid of. ‘It’s not me I’m frightened for, it’s my wife and two kiddies at home,’ he would wail. He used to make me sick with his cowardice, but no matter what we said or did to him he never got any better and we never turned him into a soldier.