I need not have gone back so soon, but the Colonel wrote a letter to the depot asking for as many of the original Regiment to be sent back as soon as possible, and I wanted to go. Before I left, I had to go in front of a Medical Board consisting of an RAMC officer whose job it was to check the fitness of all those who were going back on a draft. ‘Let me see you walk,’ he asked. I tried very hard to hide my limp, but he spotted it and said. ‘You’re still lame. You needn’t go back on this draft.’ The role of the cavalry had been undermined since trench warfare began and many cavalrymen were going to be pushed into the Labour Corps, the infantry, or the newly formed Machine Gun Corps. This draft, however, was definitely going back to the 4th DG, and I wasn’t going to miss that chance.
There were between fifty and sixty of us going back to France from Southampton to Boulogne, on another overnight journey. I can remember playing cards all through the darkness as we made our way across, and for once I did extremely well. From the port, we went by train straight back to the Regiment. I was quite happy going back; we were all regular soldiers and it was our life, our job.
It was late October, and I had only been back a matter of days when I found myself back in hospital once again, this time with impetigo. It had broken out around all my joints and on my hands, and on going sick I was immediately sent to a small isolation hospital. There were no wounded there, just sickness cases, impetigo, eczema, that sort of thing. The hospital was situated in a field. It was simply two marquees joined together, with a boarded floor, in the middle of which was a slow combustion stove, with a tall chimney which both took the fumes out of the tent and acted as a heater as well. This was the only heating in the marquee, and, it being the middle of winter, we all kept ourselves well snuggled down under the extra issue of blankets. The hospital was staffed by just male orderlies who were noticeably less sympathetic than the female nurses at Graylingwell, perfunctorily carrying out their duties. During the five weeks I was there my arms were kept plastered in ointment and wrapped in bandages; all I had to do was rest, my arms in slings so that I wasn’t tempted to use them. Christmas came and went without much memorable cheer before I was released from hospital on the last day of 1915.
NOTES
1. Howell later served in Gallipoli and then with II Corps in France, where he was killed in October 1916 while making a reconnaissance of the front line near Poziers on the Somme.
2. Every year until his death in 1990, Ben would wear his Regimental tie on Armistice Day, and drink a single glass of sherry as a salute to the Regiment, but in particular to the memory of Mickey Lowe.
3. 7218 Private George Eric Galtress was bom at Stantonbury in Buckinghamshire, and joined up at nearby Bletchley. He went out with the Dragoons in August 1914, but what happened after he broke down in the trenches is not clear. He is recorded as serving in the later battles of Loos and the Somme and it is known that he briefly served with ¿he North Somerset Yeomanry before transferring to the 15th Warwickshires (2nd City of Birmingham Battalion) on September 23rd 1917. A brother, serving in the 12th Royal Fusiliers had already been killed in June 1916, and George too was not to survive the war. He was killed in action on October 25th 1917, his name now being commemorated on the Tyne Cot Memorial, in the Ypres Salient.
4. His name appears in the Admission and Discharge Book for Field Service No 3 CCS at Bailleul, May 24th 1915-June 3rd 1915. It is interesting to note that Ben was the only 4th Dragoon Guardsman admitted to this CCS on May 24th.
5. The diary shows that in merely holding the line, the Dragoons lost thirty four men killed and 141 wounded in May. Comparative figures for the rest of the Brigade show that the 9th Lancers lost fifty five men killed, including the hero at Audregnies, Captain Francis Grenfell VC. The 18th Hussars lost seventy six men killed.
6. Lieutenant Swallow, then twenty three years old, remained with the 6th Reserve Regiment of Cavalry for the rest of the war, resigning his commission in July 1919. After the war, ht returned to the rich lifestyle he had always known. He married, but had no children, dying of tuberculosis, a family illness, in 1940, aged forty nine.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A Different Life
Editor
Ben’s release from hospital coincided with de Wiart’s return to France, Ben quickly resuming his job as horse orderly. In March 1916 de Wiart left the Dragoons to be appointed second in command of the 7th Loyal North Lancs, and Ben went with him. It was the start of a string of commands as de Wiart quickly rose in seniority, taking command of the 8th Gloucesters, the 8th North Staffordshires, and, within a year, the 12th Infantry Brigade. Throughout this time Ben remained with de Wiart. However, owing to the restricted nature of Ben’s job, looking after de Wiart’s two horses, his memories leant more towards a series of cameos, than to a chronological recounting of events.
Ben
De Wiart rejoined the Regiment in January 1916 after a prolonged stay in England recovering from the injury he had received on the Zonnebeke road. The doctors had made several valiant attempts to save what was left of his hand but, as I read years later, de Wiart had finally given up, pulling the remaining two fingers off himself, forcing the doctors to reduce the hand to a stump. It was while he was in hospital that Bridges, then in command of the 19th Division, came into his hospital room and asked if he wished to return to France as second in command of the 7th Loyal North Lancashire Regiment, a battalion in Bridges’ Division. De Wiart was more than happy to accept, and I resumed work as his horse orderly.
It was early on in the year when de Wiart took me to join the Loyal North Lancs, where, almost as soon as we arrived, I received a letter from my mother telling me dad had had a serious accident and was in hospital. My mother had been hankering after a change of lifestyle, and now that the estate had been run down in the years since Charlie Brand’s death, my father had decided to leave Little Dene to take a post in Derby. My parents had been there for over twenty years and it was a wrench to leave, but my father had found a job teaching the daughter of a wealthy businessman to ride, and it seemed a good opportunity. One morning, he had been out alone exercising the horses when he passed a steamroller just as its safety valve blew. My father’s horse jumped forward in surprise, while the other, a pony he was leading, backed up. As it did so, the pony’s lead rein became caught round my dad’s leg, pulling him over the flank of his horse, which kicked out with both feet. My father was hit in the chest, and was taken to hospital on a two-wheeled butcher’s cart with several broken ribs and coughing blood. Keen to get a three-day special leave to visit him, I went to see de Wiart to explain what had happened. ‘Oh, that’s bad news,’ said de Wiart, sympathetically. But much as I hoped de Wiart would let me go, sympathy was all I got.
When we arrived, there had been some disorder in the Battalion; up to twenty men were in clink for minor things such as insubordination or dumb insolence. The first thing de Wiart did was to have them lined up before he walked up and down looking closely into each man’s face. He said nothing until he had finished his inspection, then said, ‘I now know all your faces. Return to your companies and do not come up before me again’.
He took the attitude that he should stamp his authority quickly on the Battalion, and although he could be tough, he was fair to both officers and men, and was respected for it. He could never suffer fools and expected an order to be carried out to the full. ‘All out for physical training tomorrow morning,’ meant ‘all out’ and not just the duty officer and men. When, the morning after this order was given, the Battalion’s officers failed to appear, he gave all of them a real dressing down. This would never have occurred in front of any of the men, but we knew it had happened because, by God, they were all present the following morning.
De Wiart was a stickler for physical fitness, though not in the conventional sense of routine route marches. Rather, he would organise football matches, one platoon against another, the men playing in gas masks, with cigarettes for the winners. There were also cross-country runs, abo
ut seven miles long, some in full kit – haversack, waterbottle, 120 rounds of ammunition. As always, the whole Battalion ran, for he fervently believed that officers could not expect to lead their men if they weren’t fit themselves. With his one eye, de Wiart could not run; instead he led the way on one of his mares, riding with just a blanket on the horse’s back. Only occasionally would the Battalion go on route marches for fitness, in which case de Wiart got the men to sing. ‘I don’t care what they sing, so long as they sing!’ I once heard him say.
Editor
Adrian Carton de Wiart was a remarkable man. The son of a Belgian lawyer, he was educated in England, going on to Oxford University to study law. He was there only a short time before he impulsively joined up to see some action in the Boer War, but was shot almost on arrival in South Africa and returned to England, college and a hero’s welcome. It was during the First World War that he showed apparent fearlessness in action. By the time Ben became his horse orderly, de Wiart had already lost an eye with the Camel Corps in Somaliland, and soon lost his hand at Ypres. Later, on the Somme, he survived a bullet wound to the back of the head, returning to suffer a serious wound in the leg, in 1918.
In total, he was wounded eleven times in action. Among his many honours (including a DSO with bar and the Croix de Guerre) he won the Victoria Cross at La Boisselle on July 3rd 1916, the only man to win the honour having neither British nor Commonwealth citizenship. The fact that he was Belgian had been overlooked when he was awarded the medal for ‘conspicuous bravery, coolness and determination, during severe operations of a prolonged nature’.
As a person, de Wiart appears to have won the admiration, respect, even awe, of those around him. He was disciplined, dependable and supremely determined, and, perhaps unreasonably, expected those around him to behave likewise. In many ways he lived a ‘Boy’s Own Paper’ lifestyle. His autobiography Happy Odyssey gives the impression of a consummate professional soldier. How many people could have written, ‘To me war and politics seem bad mixers, like port and champagne. But if it wasn’t for the politicians we wouldn’t have wars, and I, for one, should have been done out of what is for me a very agreeable life’.
On June 15th, Major Carton de Wiart became acting Commanding Officer of the 8th Gloucesters, formally taking command one week later when he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel. It was with this battalion that de Wiart picked up a new servant, Holmes, with whom he formed a close bond.
Ben
Holmes looked after de Wiart’s personal requirements and was absolutely devoted to him, never failing to turn him out marvellously. De Wiart had a parcel specially sent out from England every week with various goodies which kept him at the peak of physical condition. Nevertheless, missing a hand and an eye, he relied heavily on his personal servant, particularly when getting dressed in the morning and having his boots laced up. It inevitably brought the two in close contact.
Very few officers in an infantry regiment had horses, and consequently there were few other grooms around. The first and second in command, with perhaps one or two others such as the adjutant, would have a horse, but that was about all. De Wiart’s horses were a light and a dark mare, the dark mare being my favourite by far. She was a pre-war horse, branded 4DG on her shoulder, and was given to me to look after when de Wiart first went to the North Lancs. She was remarkably tame and of all the horses I had during the war, probably ten in all, she was the most intelligent. I called her Nancy after a girlfriend I had met at Newport the previous autumn, and with whom I regularly corresponded. De Wiart referred to the horse simply as ‘the brown mare’ although she had a white muzzle in the centre of which was a pink diamond-shaped mark, about the size of a postage stamp, and so perfect it was almost as though it had been tattooed. She was the horse de Wiart rode with just a blanket for a saddle, yet, because I looked after her, she responded best of all to me.
Each morning, Holmes would come and tell me what de Wiart required that day. Most of the time I stayed amongst the men who drove the General Service wagons, looking after de Wiart’s horses in the lines, where I fed and watered them three times a day. It was an easy life, for these horses were my sole concern, although de Wiart expected both to look absolutely spick and span and the saddlery to be in first class order. Occasionally I would get the farrier to look at the shoes, replacing those nails that had worn, but I was my own boss, you might say, because de Wiart was my boss and when he was not there I could do almost as I pleased. Occasionally I rode with him to Brigade or Divisional Headquarters, often going through Albert, the town through which most men passed on the way to the front. The town was famous for a figure of the Madonna holding her Baby aloft at the top of a Basilica. Since 1915, this golden statue had hung at right angles, seemingly ready to fall at any time. It began a rumour that if she did, we would lose the war.
By this time, preparations for the battle of the Somme were in over-drive. The ASC were working day and night to bring supplies of every description closer to the front line, while huge numbers of troops were moving up to be billeted in villages close by. Our new Battalion, the 8th Gloucesters, had been undergoing intensive preparation for their part in the battle, practising their attack over the rolling chalk countryside, with fields taped out with known trench lines, so the soldiers could get an idea of the positions they were to take.
Every impression that this would be the decisive attack was maintained by the opening of the Somme bombardment. How long it lasted, I do not know, but it went on and on, day and night, with devastating ferocity, just as if half a dozen thunderstorms had been unleashed together. It was simply awesome. Even well behind the lines it seemed inconceivable that any Germans could survive such a pounding, although in the event most of them did.
Editor
The ‘Big Push’, as the Somme offensive became known, was meant decisively to break open the German defences, allowing the cavalry through to seize the town of Bapaume, some ten miles north east of Albert. However, in the wider, strategic sense, the attack was intended to open up the whole front, creating a mobile war. The cavalry would exploit the resulting ‘gap’, roll up the German flanks and drive them all the way back to Berlin. Among those who were to take part in the ‘Push’ were the 4th Dragoon Guards. Days before the attack, the Dragoons had been stationed at Querrier, some seventeen miles behind the lines, and it was here that they were given their plan of attack. On June 29th, de Wiart, possibly accompanied by Ben, rode to Querrier, where he joined Solly Flood, by then in charge of an infantry brigade, and other 4th Dragoon officers for dinner, and a ‘good luck’ for the days to come. As the great day approached, the Dragoons moved up with the rest of the Cavalry Brigade to Brisle, three miles from the trenches, but in the event July 1st was a disaster. In his personal diary, Lieutenant Wright of the 4th Dragoon Guards wrote, ‘Twenty of our balloons are well up over the front line watching the progress of our infantry, and sending back information by wireless. We got news of our progress at 8.25am …There is nothing doing for the cavalry today and we are sent back to Querrier. We hear that our casualties are 15,000’. In the event, some 60,000 men had been killed or wounded on that day.
Ben
Throughout the initial stages, I remained with the transport, and consequently saw little of the battle. The Gloucesters were not used in the first attacks, but were held back in support, waiting for the order to move forward. The noise of the battle was tremendous and I felt for the men in the Battalion, who knew they would soon be headed into it.
On July 3rd, the 57th Brigade, of which the 8th Gloucesters were part, made an attack on La Boisselle, one of a number of heavily defended villages which had been a first day objective, but remained in German hands. The Brigade had gone in early that morning and fought all day, suffering a great number of casualties, de Wiart becoming the only senior officer left. He took charge, and typically displayed great courage, fighting off several German counter-attacks. It was for this action that he was awarded the Victoria Cross.
The 8th Gloucesters were withdrawn from the line shortly afterwards, hollow-eyed and utterly worn out. They looked shattered. However, within two or three weeks they were back, this time attacking High Wood, small, densely packed with trees, and strongly defended by the Germans who had constructed a trench line through one comer.
Just before this attack, de Wiart was wounded again, this time shot through the back of his head, ensuring he was soon on his way back to England again, and myself back to virtual selfemployment. As a rule, de Wiart much preferred to wear his soft cap, and would only wear a steel helmet when extreme danger forced him to. Going into action he had, for some reason, left his cap on his horse and, because he was subsequently injured, it came into my possession. On his return to the Battalion a couple of months later, he had a new cap and never sought out his old one. Although I later jettisoned the cap, I kept the cap badge as a souvenir, which I still own.
During the summer of 1916, virtually everyone living around the transport lines came down with flu, one victim after another retiring to hastily-erected bivouacs for two or three days. The bivouacs had been made from our groundsheets, roped together through the eye holes and made into a sort of tent, with stacks of com used to fill the area where tent flaps normally are.
Inside, the men lay in twos fully dressed under a pile of coats to sweat it out. The strain of flu was particularly virulent, and when I caught it, it knocked me out, leaving my head going round and round. We had a Transport Sergeant named Dredge, and throughout, he was like an old mother, crawling into the bivouacs to ply his patients with gruel – bread and milk – heavily laced with rum. It was his job to get his men back on the map and he took personal charge of ‘medication’, coming round with a friendly ‘Get that down you, boy,’ spoon-feeding us his concoctions from a little old saucepan.
Teenage Tommy Page 17