I think that a wrong attitude. Navy or not, I think the Bosche is too well organised to be foolish enough to waste that which he knows he will only have to pay for again.
Last evening I had the joy of two letters from you. The latter one full of brimming excitement about my leave. My darling, what happiness it is to look forward to. Your letters have put me all in the height of expectation, and I am all aflutter with eager anticipation. I am more than fortunate to get away so early and to have the sweet wife and child I have waiting for me. My God, how I long to see you both and to hear Baby talk. What a glory that child is, what an anchor for a fellow to have.
28th January ’16
This is indeed a life where one must accustom oneself to sudden change. Last night, we had retired to bed, indeed both Donald and myself were asleep when there came a banging on the door and, getting up, I found Sgt Nuttall,v from the Orderly Room, waiting for me with orders. We were to leave Le Quesnoy in the morning for Fourdrinoy – our old billet – and on from there the next day for the region of Albert and the trenches.
Some change from the ordered life of ease we have lately dropped into, and some excitement. But we left Le Quesnoy quite happily this morning and are now back in our old billets of Fourdrinoy with orders just to hand for a further sixteen miles march tomorrow. I think we will be in the trenches again by Sunday night. It is quite cheering, quite exciting – but I do hope it will not crab my leave. That is my one fear at the moment. Of course outward mail has ceased so I do not know when I will next be able to write to you. Not that I greatly desire to until I can advise you definitely because I know the uncertainty must be more trying to you than it is to me.
I am told disturbing rumours about a big German offensive which has resulted in loss of trenches and heavy casualties.vi These I trust, however, are only rumours and merely the outcome of a fertile brain working for reasons for our sudden move. If only I can do one more tour in the trenches and then get back on my leave I shall be happy indeed. For then I shall feel more as though I have really done something than it has been my fortune to feel up to now. The fact that the old regiment has its own, its very own, piece of the line to hold will make a great deal of difference to us all.
29th January ’16
Cardonettevii
It is now 9.50 p.m., and a very dark night. But in our humble billet we have a hanging lamp dispensing light and cheer, a table on which to write and a bed-form on which to sleep. It is moderately dirty, more like la guerre. Yet we occupy it for one night only and no doubt tomorrow it will appear to us as a palace of comfort far out of reach. For tomorrow we move on again, another twelve miles. Today we did 16 – through Breilly, Ailly-sur-Somme and Saint-Sauveur. A slow march it was, slogging over heavy roads.
This village is full of troops, absolutely packed out. There are Scotch, Irish and English, all on the move upwards and only resting here en route. It is a regular bustle all around, laughing, chattering men, stamping horses, clattering carts, hoarse words of command coming out of the darkness and sharp batches of cursing from unlucky drivers hard put to it to feel their way with restive horses on treacherous roads.
Tomorrow we leave it and move on to another unknown halting-place. Monday is spoken of as our day for taking over in the trenches. I hope it turns out so, for that would allow me a first tour of duty before my leave becomes due. Really I suppose, I should not think such things at such a juncture. One is supposed to have, as a soldier going into action, no other desire than some high-souled ambition to do or die for one’s country. Reality I am afraid falls far short. We go because it is right and proper that we should. But I do not think there is one high-souled one amongst us. On the contrary we are all rather bored with the job, the thought of the bally mud and water is quite sufficient to extinguish keenness, and we are all so painfully ordinary that we think of leave a great deal more than we do of the nobleness of our present calling. When one is tired and unwashed I think one is legitimately entitled to refuse to feel noble, if one so desires.
We hear tonight of a new gas the Bosches have been using. It does not affect you at the time provided you wear your helmet, but some eight hours later it produces chronic prostration which culminates, if exercise is indulged in, in death. Truly this is a cheery business. If only the dirty blackguard who devised such a thing could have his nose held to a tube of his infernal production, I think the world would be the better for being rid of a hateful personality.
What with gas helmets, tin hats and woolly waistcoats le soldat Anglais will soon be like nothing on earth. If only we could be clothed in rubber all over and fed through a tube I think some real progress in our equipment might have been made.
30th January ’16
Another twelve miles today and now here we are in the substantial town of Corbie,viii quite the most important place we have billeted in up to now. Again it is full of troops, full to overflowing – all sorts and conditions, both French and British. The streets are alive with bustle and activity, the roads blocked with transport, horsed wagons, motor-lorries, motor ambulances – these last much in evidence and each one full of shattered humanity – cookers stacked with bundles of wood and tended by dirty men, mules laden with ammunition and limbered wagons loaded high with picks and shovels, barbed wire and boots, in fact all the vast paraphernalia of an Army on the move. And in among all the press the civil population rush and jostle, shrieking shrill cries, laughing, shouting, excitedly jabbering. It is a pandemonium out there in the streets so that one might wonder however order will be restored to the mass again.
The men are enjoying the place immensely. It is the first time the most of them have seen a French town and they are now out and about and all over it, buying the shops out of foodstuff and purchasing all their little desires. I am afraid when next the post leaves we shall have a sorry pile of mail to censor.
We move up to the firing line tomorrow, to a sector round about Fricourt. Life is somewhat uncertain there, I believe, and in some cases the trenches are not five yards apart. It is quite a lively part altogether, quite the real thing, quite a change from Le Fayel and the easy, joyous time we had there. It will be a new experience for us and one we all keenly look forward to, partly on account of the fact that to put us there shows faith in the battn and also that there it will be given a chance to earn its spurs.
I do, however, trust that the battn motors part of the way tomorrow. There is, however, no word of this yet. It will be most unfair on the men if they are shoved on to such arduous duties as trench work after a slog in full pack of fourteen miles. Yet I am afraid that it would be quite like the Staff to do this for us. It is easy to order men here, there and everywhere whilst you sit in an easy chair in a warm château. But fully half a hundred of my men have holes through their soles already. It is just such minor little things as this that make all the difference. So often, however, they are not taken into consideration by the ‘gentlemen wot gives the orders’.
Later: We have now heard that we only move as far as Bray tomorrow, and into the trenches on Tuesday evening. That is good. Also I have seen the CO and have arranged that the Battalion’s spare boots are issued tomorrow morning. This should do away with the worst cases. The outlook is much better. And so the world wags on.
31st January ’16
Here I am again in a dug-out at long last. A good dug-out with a coke fire and wire-netting bed. It is dry and roomy and I am told remains so even though it may rain. It has been a long day, but so full of interest as not to have appeared so at all.
There was a ten-mile ride this morning, in company with the CO and other OC companies, along the Parcy road, a road full of traffic and with a most deplorable surface. Motor-wagons, horsed-transport, guns, ammunition trains crowded along it whilst here and there ramshackle country carts led back towards Corbie laden with the household goods of the refugees from Suzanne.ix The Bosche gassed this place yesterday and shelled it heavily and the civil population have now been evacuated. Mud was ever
ywhere, horses splashed with it, mules caked all over with it and men smothered in a positive armour of it. The original grey of the wagons was indistinguishable for dry slush. Great holes occur in the road, some from shells, others from the hard usage the surface has been put to. It was all dirty and strenuous and like the war one reads about but seldom sees.
Bray-sur-Somme is quite a substantial village, now very full of mud and just bulging with troops.x We saw the Brigade there and bumped into General Fry who stopped and asked me what we were doing. His division is in on our right. Afterwards we walked the three miles uphill to these trenches, the Bosches treating us to a burst of H.E. shrapnel en route, so adding to the interest but not to the risk, the burst taking place some hundred yards to our right.
These trenches are quite close – about 100 yards on my sector, but closing in to thirty and even to five yards on the left. Also the region is quite lively, artillery playing up on both sides no end.
We are really at the head of a salient which friend Fritz is trying to nip at the base. He has had quite a little push against the French at Frise on our right, and is now strafing Fricourt on our left. He has made no progress at the latter place, but we hear very conflicting news about the right. I trust, however, that the French hold him safely.
Our trenches are good, but open to improvement and I hope to start the company on something tomorrow night or Wednesday at latest. They are still at Bray, only the four OC Companies being in tonight with the object of getting fully conversant with the local geography before our men come along.
1st February ’16
A day of explorations, spent in familiarising myself with the very intricate sector we take over this evening. I think I have got the hang of it fairly well by now but it has been quite a job.
Worthy has been kicking about with me a good deal on the same errand. His company is supporting mine. The weather keeps fine and the trenches good and I sincerely trust both may remain so.
The Norfolks go out tonight, away to rest billets.xi I don’t suppose we will see anything of them again, I think it one of the worst features of this game that one should be thrown in contact with such top-hole fellows from time to time only to lose touch with them right away. The lad, Burlton,xii commanding the company I relieve, is a splendid young fellow. He wears the Military Cross, has been out fourteen months, has a splendid way with the men and yet cannot be more than twenty-four. He is slim and small and fair and the others call him ‘Boy Blue’, partly no doubt from the colour of his eyes. He is a plucky young beggar, yet looks more like a girl than a man. I should like to write a story about him.
The company is now all in. We have taken over from the Norfolks and the men are now in full possession of our really own little bit of line. It is quite an event, the best we have yet experienced.
2nd February ’16
Some day! For the most of us it began by the night before merging into it, for all it commenced at 6 a.m. The company went through the night like veterans so that with daylight sentries posted we were able to get some sleep. Personally I had quite a stroke of luck in the morning. Gazing through my glasses at Fritz’s line I saw a suspicious looking kind of erection, took bearings of it and asked the Gunners to strafe it. This they did with 6" How[itzer]s this afternoon to the huge delight of my company, who appear, against orders, to have climbed the parapet en masse to watch, and to friend Fritz’s considerable discomfiture. The shooting was excellent, shells dropping all round till at last one lit right on the beastly thing, flinging mud and splinters sky high. The company cheer like schoolboys when a goal is scored.
The emplacement – for so it now is shown to be – is not yet done with however. Friend Fritz is a wily man and likes to feel safe. In this case he has covered himself with concrete blocks and steel plates. The latter however are now split in twain at one spot and no doubt tomorrow will be demolished.
At 5.35 p.m. I got a telephone message to say I was to proceed on leave at once, take the men with me and report in Bray at 8 p.m. Owing, however, to many minor difficulties, not altogether unconnected with mud, we did not start till 7.50. But then we ventured on a short cut across country on slender information supplied by the doctor. The result was rather disastrous. If I had not done it I could not have believed such a thing possible. Partly due to the blackness of the night and partly to the directions of a gunner officer, who had wind up to a most distressful extent, we marched a complete circle, finishing off the end of an hour just where we had started from. Thereafter I decided to risk the communication trench and this we stuck to manfully for about a mile. The mud however then became so awful that I personally decided to risk the job and walk along on top. I told the men they could do as they wished in the matter, and one and all climbed out after me.
I think the sniper must have known about the state of the trench and counted on us getting fed up about there. Anyway he put four shots past us in about as many seconds, the last whipping off a man’s cap and causing him to cry out in affright. I had to order them all back in the trench and we resumed our struggle through the morass. And eventually it ended and we came out on top. And there the blighting Germans shelled us, shelled us all the way for a mile, bursting shrapnel all round the place. But we were too tired by then to worry much and by the mercy of God no one was hit.
In the end we straggled, through mud and shell-holes, into Bray at 11 p.m.
Everyone had gone to bed but Maidenxiii had a limbered wagon ready to take the men on to Maricourt. I routed out some of the other lazy devils and made them make tea for my party. That warmed them up a bit and at length they set off. Finch was also waiting with my horse but I refused to budge another inch. I am just about beaten, for the first and, I hope, the last time. However, here goes for a sleep on the Orderly Room floor and an early start in the morning.
3rd February ’16
A long day. I was up off the Orderly Room floor at 6 a.m., had a sluice in a bucket, a shave in a mess tin and breakfast off a slice of ration bacon. Finch had my horse round at 7.15 a.m. and just as I was mounting up came Taylor of the 21st. I was surprised to see him. They came in it appears last night just in time to miss the shelling the Bosches treated the town to yesterday. And they take over from us in three days’ time.
The ride from Bray to Maricourt was most enjoyable. It was a beautiful morning. We got the train there and it left at 9.30, commencing a solid meander round northern France which lasted till we were finally deposited in Havre at 9.15 tonight.
It is blowing now, hard. I think we are in for a rough crossing and I expect all the Tommys aboard will be very sick, myself no doubt among the number. But I am going to turn in in my bunk, try for some sleep and chance it. Tomorrow, my soul, I hope to see you – at long last. What joy!
4th February ’16
We did not get away after all last night. Why, I do not know. But when we woke up this morning we were still fast to the Havre quayside. We got some breakfast after a great struggle, the Caesaraea not being fitted for meals at all, and were mooching rather aimlessly round the deck when the AMLO [Assistant Military Landing Officer] suddenly arrived and told us we were all to clear out and go up to the Rest Camp, the which we accordingly did. We signed our names and then went down town to lunch at the Hôtel Normandie. I can recommend that hostelry to anyone. They did young [Stapylton-]Smith and myself awfully well. The Rest Camp I cannot recommend. It is very well got up but one resents being treated like a convict by a lot of top-men who never do any fighting, who never get dirty and whose two main objects in life appear to be, firstly, to look pretty and secondly, to make things as uncomfortable as possible for a lot of dirty, tired people who have escaped from the trenches for a few days. There are some top-hole fellows going back with this draft, men who have really been through the devil of a time but who have not lost in the slightest degree their innate, glorious cheeriness.
Young Smith, Stapylton-Smithxiv as you were, is an awfully decent boy in the Motor Transport. He supplies the heav
ies up Bray way with shells and was in the late big strafe at Suzanne, where he had a thin time indeed. Young Hickey,xv of the Norfolks, is also a jolly smart fellow. He tells me I can claim 15/- detention money for having been delayed here a day. That is very good. I am all over such things.
We have now come back to the quay and are shipped aboard the Connaught – the old Irish Mail boat I have travelled on a good many times before between Dublin and Holyhead. She is now coated in grey and fitted throughout with bunks and rifle-racks. We have spring-mattresses to sleep on – nothing else, but consider ourselves lucky. Yet I cannot help contrasting it with former journeys in the same cabin. What luxury was mine then. Yet was I not near so content. How wonderfully this job teaches one how little a man can rub along on! It is marvellous. And it is most good for us all. Of that I am sure, even though I do not always find myself particularly grateful at the actual moment of benefit.xvi
To Fight Alongside Friends Page 10