In the opinion of the front-line infantry, the ASC led the life of Riley behind the lines. They firmly believed that they had first pick of the rations, unlimited perks, total protection from the attentions of the enemy and, altogether, led a cushy life. But, without the often gruelling labour of Ally Sloper’s Cavalry, the infantry could not have been maintained in the trenches for as much as twenty-four hours. It was the ASC who unloaded the supply ships and loaded the provisions on to divisional trains. Behind the lines it was the ASC who came in for most of the dirty jobs and a great deal of very hard work. At the front, delivering supplies to the line, they were exposed to quite as much dangerous shelling and had rather less protection than the infantry in the trenches. Their tasks were manifold, if humble. They were the underdogs of the Army and their theme song was not only plaintive but pathetic:
We are the little ASC
We work all night, we work all day.
The more we work, the more we may,
It makes no difference to our pay.
The tune, like a thousand other Army parodies, was a hymn tune, but unlike many of the others it did not have much of a lilt to it. We are but little children weak, possibly had a certain charm when warbled by infant Sunday School voices, but rendered in the deeper tones of Ally Sloper’s Cavalry, it was distinctly dirge-like. It hardly mattered that it was not a tune that encouraged men to stride out on the march. The ASC did very little marching and many of them hardly knew how. Like Jim Dwelly, the vast majority had been shipped out to France after a mere three weeks in the Army and, with a hundred thousand infantry to be trained, they had been left largely to their own devices. They had mastered the rudiments of saluting, and very little more.
Private J. C. Dwelly, No. 274, Army Service Corps
The most exciting thing that happened to me during the Battle of the Somme was when a sentry-box blew over on the quayside at Boulogne and broke a man’s leg. We were down there loading. That was my job at the time, loading up meat – or, rather, supervising the blokes who were loading it, because I couldn’t even have lifted one of these huge sides of meat. It was all frozen and it came over by the boat-load, was brought off the ship and dumped on a siding. I had the job of working out the quantities for each division to send it up the line. It would be two thousand pounds of meat for one division and maybe one thousand four hundred and twenty for another, and the quantities were changed every day or two when the divisions were in the line because, of course, they were suffering casualties.
Being there on the Maritime Station we saw a tremendous number of casualties. All that coastline was full of hospitals and there were ambulances driving non-stop past the siding where we were working, taking the wounded to the hospital ships. I felt a bit badly about having a good time in Boulogne. We used to start work at four o’clock in the morning and we were finished by lunchtime and didn’t do anything at all for the rest of the day.
I got fed up. I’d only joined the ASC to please my mother and I didn’t want to be in it, so I decided to apply for a transfer. So many blokes had been killed that they were asking round all the camps for people who wanted to transfer to a line regiment, so I took my chance.
Jim Dwelly set his sights high. He requested an interview with the Regimental Sergeant-Major at the base camp and announced that he wished to transfer to the Guards. The RSM could hardly conceal his astonishment. He stared at Dwelly in disbelief and said, ‘You must be bloody mad!’ It was an understandable reaction for the only outward attribute possessed by Dwelly which might remotely qualify him to join the élite of the Army was that he was six feet tall. But quiet persistence had its way. Still marvelling at the very nerve of it, the RSM forwarded Jim’s application and it was a moot point which of them was the more astonished when he was accepted by the Grenadier Guards. By the time she found out, his transfer was an accomplished fact, and his mother was slightly mollified by the knowledge that he would spend three months in safety while he trained in England. But, while Jim was waiting for orders to report to the Guards Depot at Caterham, they sent him to the Somme, and to his immense delight they sent him to join up with the Guards.
Private J. C. Dwelly, No. 274, Army Service Corps
I had to report to the Guards Divisional Headquarters at Maricourt. Of course, I wasn’t yet in the Guards officially, but they knew I was going to be transferred, so they thought I might as well be with the Division while I waited for my training. The first night I got there, I was put into a room with no roof to it or anything. It was open to the world, all smashed up with bombs and shells. There were a few other blokes in there and I told one of them I was waiting for a transfer into the Grenadier Guards. He said, ‘You must be mad! Why didn’t you stop where you were?’ I said, ‘Well, I got a bit fed up with being in the same place and I just thought it would be a change.’ He said, ‘You’re crackers, mate, you really are!’ Looking around me, hearing those shells booming away not so far off, I began to think I must be.
They made me clerk to the Veterinary Officer. They had all their horse lines there and the Veterinary Officer was in charge of any that were sick and I had to keep a record of all the things that went wrong with then, stiff legs, wounds, all sorts of things. And I had to keep a record of the horses that were sent away sick and the new horses that were examined when they came in. I was there all the rest of the time the battle was on and even long after. I didn’t get to Caterham until April 1917.1
The health of horses was of prime importance and every division had its veterinary officer. The Army depended on horses and by 1916 there were more than half a million on military service in France. They came from America, from South America, and the vast numbers that had been requisitioned in 1914 from farmers and stables in Britain were constantly being augmented by fresh ‘drafts’ from home. They came in a variety of sizes, shapes and breeds from the magnificent charger ridden by the Commmander-in-Chief, to the humble mule teams pulling field kitchens along the cobbled roads in front of the marching battalions. There were huge draught horses, Clydesdales and Shires, to drag the heavy guns and ammunition wagons. There were fast-moving steeds for the Cavalry and Hussars, good mounts for colonels and senior officers and less refined beasts for other officers who needed transport to get around the countryside in a scattered command. There were humbler but powerful teams of hacks and mules to draw the horse-drawn limbers that were part of the transport column of every battalion. They ran into thousands, for the mountain of supplies which was required to keep the Army in the line was gargantuan.
Ammunition, rations and equipment could be taken as far as the nearest railhead; from there they were transported by motor columns to divisional dumps, but it was then up to the humble horse transport of brigades and battalions to make long cross-country journeys to fetch and carry back their own supplies of ammunition and rations for men and for horses. Forage was bulky and it caused the officer in charge of horse transport a good deal more trouble to ensure that his horses were well fed than any battalion quartermaster encountered in supplying rations to the men. A soldier could get by on a tin of bully beef, half a loaf and sufficient tea and sugar for a few brew-ups. Depending on its size and the work expected of it, a horse required between sixteen and thirty pounds of forage a day. The daily requirement of each division was thirty tons.
All over northern France blind horses were being put to the plough, for horses were too badly needed to be shot when they became casualties if there was the slightest chance that they would recover and, even if they were no longer of use for Army purposes, a useful deal could be made with French farmers in return for food or forage. Now that it was harvest time on the Somme, the troops as well as the horses were working in the fields, but on a strictly unofficial basis. There were certain commanding officers who, having marched the remnant of a battalion out of the battle to rest and absorb fresh drafts before going in to the fight again, considered that a day spent in a sunny cornfield engaged in healthy and useful activity in the congenial compan
y of civilians, would do his men as much good as the long periods of drill or route marching laid down by the Army.
The troops and the French civilians got on amazingly well and although neither the French peasantry nor the Tommies, on the whole, were skilled linguists most of the soldiers had picked up enough fractured French to make themselves understood after a fashion, although ‘No compree’ was probably the most frequently used expression in the pidgin French that served as the lingua franca.
The French themselves astutely appreciated the convenience of adopting the Tommies’ bowdlerized version of their native tongue and had quickly come to understand that a soldier who might be confused by the polite refusal, ‘Il n’y a plus, Monsieur’, would certainly get the message of a blunt ‘Napoo!’ and reply with a resigned ‘San fairy ann’, whose meaning he plainly understood as ‘it doesn’t matter’ and which came close enough to ‘ça ne fait rien’, to be equally understood by the French. It was more practical, too, when a farm had been cleaned out of produce by some ravenous battalion, to scrawl regretfully on the archway of its courtyard ‘Napoo doolay. Napoo oofs,’ which was understood by all to mean ‘No more eggs. No more milk,’ rather than ‘Il n’y a plus d’oeufs. Il n’y a plus de lait,’ which would be understood by few. There were occasional misunderstandings. One soldier, anxious to convey his urgent desire to purchase eggs, squatted and strained in elaborate pantomime of a laying hen, and was astonished and embarrassed to find himself conducted to the outside privy.
On the whole, given their limited vocabulary, the troops managed to communicate exceedingly well with their allies. One farmer’s wife, hearing the shout, ‘Doolay promenade, Madame!’ had no difficulty in understanding that her errant cow had wandered off. More sophisticated attempts at French construction often resulted in blank incomprehension and the soldier who had taken the trouble to study a booklet entitled What you want to say and How to say it in French (kindly supplied free of charge by the manufacturers of Wincarnis who also recommended their tonic wine ‘… for the relief of nerves in the trenches’!) occasionally found it more difficult to make himself understood than if he had left well alone and stuck to ‘Tommies’ French’. One was a soldier of the 51st Division whose uncompromisingly Scottish mind had vaguely registered that the complexities of the French language contained both masculine and feminine nouns. It was the Medical Officer, Major Rory, who overheard him exchanging pleasantries with the lady of the house in the yard of a farm not far behind the lines. She was admiring his kilt and fingering the pleats with a Frenchwoman’s appreciation of quality. The Jock, a little unsure of her intentions, was anxious to change the subject and, gazing upwards for inspiration, caught sight of an observation balloon climbing slowly into the sky.
‘Voilà, Madame! Voilà le sausage!’
Madame did not follow his meaning. The Jock racked his brains.
‘Well, voilá la sausage then!’
The Labour Battalions, recruited from all over the world, added an exotic touch to the cosmopolitan population which inhabited the French hinterland behind the lines. At the peak of their strength, in late 1916, they numbered three hundred and eighty-seven thousand and, although it was chauvinistically reckoned that it took three foreign labourers to do the work of one European, by undertaking the navvying, road-building and mending, tree-felling and work on the railways – all essential to keep the ever-growing Army in the field – they released several thousand fighting soldiers for service at the front. There were battalions of huge Fijians and Maoris; there were black labourers from South Africa and, strictly segregated from them, a Cape Coloured battalion. There was a battalion of Egyptian labourers and there was the Indian Labour Corps which had been kept in Europe when the main body of the Indian contingent had been sent to the Middle East, and were dying like flies in the harsh northern climate. There were certain Canadian Labour Battalions, chiefly working in the forests, where the lumberjacks could hardly keep up with the demand for wood for the trenches, huts and dugouts, for plank roads that could be quickly laid across the mutilated battlefields and for sleepers for the ever-lengthening miles of railway track that carried ever-larger quantities of supplies to the front. There was the Middlesex Labour Company, British in name only, composed of naturalized British subjects, many of German origin, who were not eligible to serve in the fighting ranks of the Army. Most numerous, and most exotic of all, were the Chinese Labour Battalions. They were also the most troublesome, for the large majority of the labourers had been recruited from Chinese prisons, induced by the promise that their sentences would be remitted and that they would be rewarded by untold riches in return for labour on the other side of the world. ‘Untold riches’ amounted to payment of a franc a day but, by the exercise of oriental wiliness, some of the coolies amassed considerable sums. Thieving and gambling were the most lucrative pursuits and the ones that caused the Provost-Marshal’s biggest headache.
Like the other Labour Battalions the Chinese were clustered in camps around Montreuil, and among the camps, the hospitals, the training grounds and Army camps that filled the narrow strip of coastline that ran from Calais to le Havre. The Chinese knew nothing of the war and cared even less. What they did know was that, by the terms of their contract, they were not to be exposed to shellfire, a clause they were apt to cite when occasionally there was an air raid, demanding extra pay as ‘danger money’.
By 1916 there had been so few air raids in the region of Montreuil that it was generally believed an agreement existed. The Germans, it was said, would refrain from bombing the British General Staff, if the British refrained from bombing the German Staff – a deal, cynics remarked, in which the Germans came off best both ways. The cynics, however, were mostly to be found in the ranks of the Headquarters troops and Pioneer Battalions attached to them and among the Tommies who, having been fortunate enough to be transferred to the Chinese Labour Corps, found themselves suddenly elevated from underdogs in the eyes of the Army, to divine personages in the eyes of the Chinese.
Sergeant John Ward, No. 49747, 12th Btn., King’s Royal Rifle Corps, and 53rd Company Chinese Labour Corps
After I was wounded I was reclassified C.3., and sent to a base camp at Etaples, doing office work. One day we were paraded and the officer called out, ‘Anybody speak Chinese?’ I stepped out of the ranks and he said, ‘Right, you can come to my office after you dismiss.’ When I got there, he said, ‘Is it true you can speak Chinese?’ Well, of course, I couldn’t speak a word of it, but I was fed up with my job and I thought it would be a change so I said, ‘No, sir, to be honest, I can’t. But I like languages and Chinese is really one I’d like to master.’ He said, ‘Bloody sauce!’ But after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing he said, ‘Well, just for your cheek, I’ll transfer you.’
They sent me to a big Chinese camp at Crècy, where there were about seven hundred of them. I was in clover! For every twenty labourers there was a Chinese ganger who really did all the work so far as organizing the coolies was concerned, and of course there were interpreters and one or two head-men. And there was quite a number of English NCOs, like myself. We all had batmen! Mine was called Yat-shay-bat-chipa. That wasn’t his name. It was his number (14870). None of the Chinese had names, only a brass bracelet with a number on it. The first thing I did was to learn the Chinese for one to ten and it went something like this:
Yat, Ye, Sam, Shay, Ng, Lok, Chat, Bat, Gow, Sap and Pa, which was a hundred. After only about a couple of days I was able to call out a dozen men just by using their number. It falls off your tongue when you know it.
This camp was a convalescent camp for Chinese who had been sick or wounded accidentally and they nearly all suffered from Trachoma – weeping red eyes. But that didn’t prevent them from working and we used to send them out in gangs on different jobs every morning – light jobs, mostly, until they had fully recovered.
Private Norman Mellor, No. 41728, 4th Bedfordshire Regiment
I had a good time with the Chinese Labour Corps. The
only Chinese I ever learned was ‘Koydy fidee!’ – and that means ‘come on, quick!’ They were damned good, hard-working and faithful, if they took to you. But, if they didn’t, they could slit your throat or do anything. Across from our camp was the 186th Company which was a Prison Company, and all the men in it were under punishment for some crime. They had their own Military Police and they all carried a truncheon.
I was in charge of the Chinese Pay Roll. It was my job to pay them out – a franc a day, but we paid it once a month, so they got thirty francs. That’s when there was trouble, when they got all that money. It was a fortune to them! One time we had the office safe broken into and all the money went. No one knew who had done it but of course the Chinese in my own camp had to take the rap for it and I had the unpleasant job of getting all the money back off them. They didn’t like it a single bit! Everyone had to pay so much in, because several thousand francs were taken and they all had to contribute to pay it back.
The Chinese were terrible thieves. If I wanted anything at all I just had to mention it to my servant, who spoke a bit of pidgin English, and he’d get it. I never enquired where it came from. But he would never pinch a thing from me. I’d go down in the village the odd time and get tight. Go back to my hut – I’d got a hut of my own – and sling my things off and my money would be lying all over the place and I’d get into bed. Next morning, there he’d be with a cup of tea and the hut all tidied and not a thing touched. And then he’d shave me in bed! He’d do anything for me. It was a life of luxury, and no mistake!
One thing I never ever saw was a drunk Chinaman. Everything else they’d do, but not drink. They liked money, but they didn’t like spending it. They’d save it all up, and then someone else would pinch it from them and there’d be trouble over that. Even murder! The only murder we had in our lot was over a girl. One of these coolies had taken a fancy to a French girl who served in some estaminet, and he thought one of our Sergeants was just a bit too friendly with her. So one night he went round when everybody was asleep and slit open the NCOs’ tents until he found this Sergeant and he bashed his head in. Then he took off! I never heard whether they caught him for it.
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