Teenage Tommy

by Richard van Emden

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  1918: From Cayeux to Cologne

  Ben

  In November 1917, de Wiart was wounded again. This time he had been hit by a shell splinter in the hip, the wound subsequently turning septic. He had been sent back to England, and had therefore been forced to give up command of the Brigade. Whenever de Wiart had been absent before, I had remained with the transport of whichever unit I was with. This time he was likely to be away for a long time, so it was decided that I should return to the Regiment.

  No sooner had I got back, than I was ‘claimed’ by Captain lackie Aylmer. He was due to be sent as an instructor to the Cavalry School of Equitation at Cayeux-sur-Mer, a small, undistinguished town, where the mouth of the River Somme meets the sea. ‘I want you to take over my two horses at the school,’ he had ordered. He had been out with the Regiment since 1914 and even now was still absolutely mustard. Nicknamed Foxy because of his sharp features, Aylmer was a consummate soldier and an excellent horseman, which went a long way in a cavalry regiment. Very popular with the other officers, Aylmer came from a wealthy family where he only had to hold his finger up and everybody bowed. He had a sharp temper, and had always expected the impossible from us. He was, suffice to say, not very popular with the troops.

  Aylmer was not a big strapping man, whereas men like Hornby and Bridges really stood out. When officers were in uniform, some of them really looked the part and others did not. The uniform did not make the man, nor was it necessarily even the way an officer commanded his men; there was something else, almost indefinable, a certain stature: Hornby and Bridges walked and looked like soldiers. In the cavalry, more than anywhere, skills such as horsemanship were important, and there were officers, we would say, who could not ride a hoof pick, an instrument used to clear dirt and stones from a horse’s hoof. The pre-war gulf between officers and men still existed among surviving officers like Aylmer and Bridges, but the war had forced a change, in that those who came along afterwards, the new officers, the civilian businessmen, lawyers, those who would never have joined the army but for war, dealt with everyday practicalities differently from pre-war officers.

  Many orderlies whose officers had been wounded were sent down to Cayeux, taking their horses with them to be used at the school. However, I would look after Aylmer’s and therefore had to say a fond farewell to de Wiart’s two mares, and especially Nancy, before I got on my way. At Cayeux I soon found that I was to be billeted, along with three other cavalrymen, at an estaminet belonging to a pleasant couple, Monsieur and Madame Daye. Monsieur Daye was in the artillery but lived at home while serving Cayeux’s local shore battery. He had at one time been at the front but had been gassed, as a result of which he suffered from bronchial trouble and was now seeing out the war protecting the town’s lighthouse. Each evening, he left the estaminet to join his battery of 75s down near the beach, although why it should have been necessary to guard a lighthouse which wasn’t actually working, appeared to us a curious waste of resources. Quite what that battery was expected to do to repel a naval attack was, in any case, even more obscure.

  Not that this was any of my concern. I was at Cayeux to groom Aylmer’s horses, turning them out each day for officers to ride at the equitation school. The stalls in which the grooms worked were very modem by the standards of the day, and were situated in the grounds of a large private house. I was given two stalls in which to look after the horses before I took them over to the outdoor school for the morning’s lessons. After the ride I collected the horses, fed, watered and groomed them, before turning them out again in the afternoon, if they were needed. I never taught the officers to ride, and only occasionally was I expected to do any guard duties; otherwise I was free to do what I liked.

  At the school there was a very unruly horse that no one would ride. She was a large black horse, and frightened many of the inexperienced officers by rearing up and walking two or three paces forward in an attempt to throw her rider. As a result this horse was passed on to the grooms to be dealt with, and I quickly took it upon myself to straighten her out. There were one or two old tricks used in the army to ‘cure’ an unruly horse. One was to give the horse a thwack on the top of the head with a bottle of water. The idea was that as the bottle broke, the horse sensed blood running down its neck, and generally decided it was not worth giving the rider any more trouble.

  In dealing with a rearing horse, my father had taught me that it was best to pull the animal right over as it stood up on its hind legs. The art was to slip one’s feet out of the stirrups while giving the reins a sharp pull, helping the horse to fall on to its back. When any horse falls to the ground, the first thing it must do in order to stand up is to raise its head. This is different, for example, from a cow, which always gets up back feet first, and means that if the rider is quick and sits on the horse’s head, the animal is effectively immobilised. This is exactly what I did, handing out a hiding on her flank, before showing her the whip that I had used. It was a very effective solution and I subsequently had no further problems.

  Life was quite easy. As far as possible I kept out of Aylmer’s way, getting on extremely well with my co-billeters, a Jock from the Scots Greys, a Corporal from the 16th Lancers, and another man from the 3rd Dragoons, all, like myself, servants to instructors at the school. We all worked together and were quite competitive to see who could turn out the best horses. Occasionally we took the horses down to the sea for a swim, or, as the tide went out a long way and the sand was firm, exercised them along the beach.

  We whiled away many hours at the estaminet which Madame Daye ran with her cousin, Jeanne, an elderly spinster who helped her out. Both were very kind and helpful, and, although they were under no obligation to feed us, took our rations, which they cooked and supplemented with extra food, very often horse meat. To many cavalrymen, the idea of eating horse meat was inconceivable. In the cavalry, horses were branded to show to which Regiment they belonged. In my Regiment, 4DG appeared on the right shoulder, while a number and a single letter A, B or C was burnt into a horse’s hind hoof denoting the Squadron. These horses not only belonged to the Regiment but almost became an extension of the cavalryman himself. Eating horse meat was therefore almost a form of cannibalism.

  Early in the war, we had had a horse which got five bullet wounds in the backside from a machine gun. These wounds were not fatal, and as trained horses were a valuable commodity, a twitch was used to steady the horse, as our veterinary officer attempted to dig the bullets out with large tweezers. In the end four were removed but the fifth could not be budged, so it was decided that, as French troops were in the same field as ourselves, the horse would be poleaxed and handed over to them to eat. The French were happy to have this unexpected gift and, as a friendly gesture, gave our cook the liver, which had gone down a treat until one trooper asked, ‘By God, this liver’s good, bobajig [Hindustani for cook], where did you get it?’ ‘It’s C40’s’ cook replied. This trooper immediately retched and brought the whole lot up. ‘You dirty bastard, that was my horse!’ Other troopers were also unhappy about what they had eaten, but it didn’t bother me one little bit, in fact I quite enjoyed it.

  At the estaminet Madame Daye, in particular, tried to get us to speak our pidgin French, while she replied in English. Her English was quite good, and in the end she even began writing to my mother to tell her how we were all getting on, and indeed my mother replied, thanking her for looking after us. Her husband, when we saw him, was a lively man who turned out to have been something of a local comedian before the war. When home, he ran the next best thing to a local cinema, a drill hall with wooden benches in which he would show silent French films to anyone who was interested. As the compère, he would dress up as a clown and tell a few jokes before the show, all of which were beyond our French. He knew that I could sing, and now and again got me to peal off a few impromptu songs to the accompaniment of a pianist who failed, with aplomb, ever to get in the right key. If there were no other would-be stars,
the show began, and he would come and sit next to me and try to translate the captions which ran with the film.

  Besides the ‘cinema’, the only other place of note was a brothel about two miles outside the town. This was a very large house which served as an exclusive all-round entertainment club for all other ranks, and had official sanction. It was properly run, with roulette tables, and Crown and Anchor games, while there were anything up to ten girls working there under the management of a madame. If not actually working, these girls would wander round the room and talk to the troops; there was no obligation for soldiers to jump into bed with them.

  Troops from the riding school were free to do as they wished after work, and most made their way down to the brothel, although by no means were they the only ones there. Farther up the road was a large convalescent camp, but while the Military Police stopped the camp patients coming into the town, the same restriction didn’t apply to the brothel, which consequently was always full. On pay days it would be packed, and at times it would be a job to get to the gambling tables to lay a bet. There was a great atmosphere on these nights, and with so much money flying about, it was very exciting.

  The girls were examined every day by an elderly doctor who often popped into the café in which I was billeted for a Cognac coffee and a chat. We would pull his leg about his job, and as he spoke fairly good English, he joked with us and let us in on all the latest goings on. His talk to us about his work at the brothel was an absolute eye-opener for me as he relayed his daily anecdotes to us: ‘I said to one of the young girls, “You look a bit sore, how many soldiers did you have last night?” She made a quick tally and told me “fifty-six”. “You had better have three or four days off,“ and I put her on the sick list.’

  In March, the Germans launched what turned out to be their final fling on the Western front, against Gough’s Fifth Army. Despite the tremendous events that unfolded at this time, I remained with the other grooms at Cayeux, when many other non-combatant soldiers, such as cooks, transport men and labourers were being combed out of the back areas to bolster the crumbling front line.

  The fighting at the front was ferocious, although we didn’t know how close to a complete breakthrough the Germans came, as they regained all the land that they had lost over the previous twenty months. At Cayeux, my co-billeters were glad to be well out of it, but I was becoming restless. I considered myself a fighting soldier, and I was bored with being everybody’s servant. Being at Cayeux felt like being in the peacetime army again, and I increasingly became tired of the school, and in the end asked if I could be returned to my Regiment. When I got back to the billet I told the others, and they all pronounced me mad for giving up such an easy job. They were all content to see out the war in luxury. The corporal in particular had had three days’ leave to get married in England, and had no intention of going anywhere near the front again, if he had any say in the matter.

  My decision was partly prompted by an incident which had hurt my pride. During the war, those soldiers who were orderlies, or those considered ‘too familiar’ with officers, were sometimes shunned, or made to feel they were having an easy time. I had nearly come to blows with one man, over a slight, while in the trenches in 1915; on another occasion, in 1917, I had again been upset by an underhand remark. I had been out exercising de Wiart’s horses. Both were fine, thoroughbred horses and as such were a sure sign of ‘familiarity’ with officers. I was riding one and leading the other, when I happened to pass a stationary battery of artillery, and as I passed, one of the drivers turned to his mate and shouted, ‘And what did you do in the war, Daddy?’ We were all miles behind the line, but he, at least, would probably be heading towards it, and that was enough for him to feel I was having a cushy number. I rode on because it was my business to ride on, but it stung me. On my left sleeve I had two wound stripes, and on my right, a red and three blue chevrons, denoting how many years I had served in France. The red signified that I was an Old Contemptible and I would dearly have loved to have offered him my sleeve with a ‘Wipe your nose on that!’ Within the Regiment, I was considered close to de Wiart because he knew my father, but it was his personal servant, Holmes, whom de Wiart picked up in 1916, who was his great favourite. When I gave up being an orderly, the atmosphere changed, for I had returned to the fold; I was one of them again.

  The only people I felt I would miss were Madame Daye and her husband. They had been so kind, that years after the war I attempted to get in touch with them. They had moved to Amiens to set up a cinema in the 1920s, but both had died quite young, the husband no doubt from the gas poisoning.

  Just before I was due to return to the Regiment, I paid a final visit to the brothel. The place was humming as usual when, all of a sudden, the house was raided by five officers. All had been drinking and had come, we assumed, from the officers’ convalescent home a little farther out of the town. Officers never came into the place, and as they arrived everyone fell silent. I’m not sure what they thought they were going to find, and I supposed that they had come out of curiosity or boredom, but as they began to push their rank around, a big Australian, who ran a Crown and Anchor game, took charge of the situation. Making his way to the biggest of the officers, he said, ‘Sir, if you are a man you will take your jacket off and fight me. If you are a gentleman you will take the others and leave’. It was the perfect line to take, for the officers had no option but to go.

  Leaving the school, I received a rail warrant and headed back towards the front. It was July and the German attacks had mostly petered out, and now there was a temporary lull while both sides caught their breath. Back with the Regiment, I discovered de Wiart had returned to France in April and had been given command of another brigade, in the Bantam Division. But with his uncanny ability to attract enemy fire, he had been badly wounded, this time in the left leg, and had returned to England. To all intents and purposes this finished his war, although he managed to scrape back to France just in time to see the Armistice.

  The Regiment had just received a new draft of men and had gone into training, principally musketry. However, in case we were required to act as infantry, we practised advancing in a line with bayonets fixed. At this time it was late summer and we were bivouacked in a large field, the men taking cover under a thick hedge that ran all the way around the field. My own billet was in a small gap in a hedge, where I and another man had rigged up a little cover using a ground sheet.

  One morning, the order came round that the following day we were due for a special parade, and that we were to turn out in pre-war kit. Many of us had collected various bits of excess baggage along the way; I, for example, had a French cook’s knife, while, carefully folded on the back of my saddle, I had a marvellous blanket that had once belonged to a German officer. Like everyone else, I had also picked up various pots and pans, and the odd souvenir. Before the parade began, all these personal belongings were to be left at the side of the field, and just to make sure, we were warned that our troop sergeants would be making a thorough inspection of our saddlery.

  The following morning we stood by our horses in preparation for the special parade. Behind us the hedgerow appeared as if ready to host a giant jumble sale, only there were to be no buyers or sellers. For we were given the order to mount and the Regiment promptly moved out, riding to an identical field, perhaps ten miles from where we had been. The Regiment had pulled a fast one to shake each squadron out of all its excess baggage. Everyone was very annoyed, but our officers were eager to cut down all superfluous weight on the horses, as the Germans had begun to retreat and the cavalry might come into its own.

  The casualty rate among officers during the war, especially junior ones, had ensured that even in the rarefied atmosphere of the regular cavalry, where breeding and money had meant so much, one or two ex-rankers had been made up to officers while I had been away. It was for this reason that, on my 21st birthday, I decided to put in for a commission. At the time, we were still billeted out in the open, and I went
to find the orderly sergeant to fill in the appropriate form. When it came to which school I had gone to, I wrote ‘National Church School’ and in the end it was this that proved my undoing. My application was refused. When I asked one of the clerical orderlies why, he told me it was the village school I had gone to. ‘The old school tie, boy,’ he said. It was one of those things. I had had enough of being an orderly and this was a chance, or so it had seemed, to get on. By putting in for a commission, I was accepting that, if it was granted, I would eventually have been moved to another regiment, but I was willing to accept the change.

  That I should have considered a commission showed how times had changed; that it was refused, proved that not every rule could be broken. I was somewhat peeved, but in time I realised I would not have been able to carry myself as an officer; I simply didn’t have the language or the words. Sergeant Dusty Miller, perhaps in an attempt to lift my spirits, received permission to make me up to a lance-corporal. Throwing two lance-corporal stripes at me, he said, ‘Put those on your sleeves and mount the guard tonight, and that’s an order’.

  Increasing numbers of German prisoners could be seen, trudging back to our makeshift prison cages. Many were ridiculously young and looked as if their world had fallen to pieces. They looked dishevelled, their equipment dilapidated, for their lines of supply were finally breaking down, and many soldiers were left to scrounge around for their food. Right at the end of the war, I stopped at a farmhouse to find the owners in tears: the Germans had passed through the previous night, and had eaten their old guard dog, cooking it at the farm before moving on. Passing one hastily-erected POW cage, holding sixty or seventy newly-captured Germans, our curiosity was sufficiently aroused that we went over and had a look. Most of the Germans appeared very hungry and tired, and only seemed interested in swapping what bits and pieces they still owned for food. Several Germans passed over various trinkets, but one in particular caught my eye. He looked exhausted and was offering a watch for a tin of corned beef. The exchange agreed, the watch was flipped over the fence as the three-quarter pound tin sailed in the opposite direction. The German was so worn out that he completely missed the tin, which thudded into his eye leaving him with a bad swelling to add to his general misery.