To Fight Alongside Friends

by Gerry Harrison

  I have taken over from Hobsonxii of the 21st, and all the Coy is in all right in support. It is jolly cold and our dug-out leaks in places but we’ll improve things tomorrow by getting a better roof on etc.

  Fritz has been pretty quiet as regards shelling but he keeps picking men off more or less successfully by sniping. His snipers are good and I have an idea that it is only by them that he mans his front line. Certainly I do not think he has many men in it.

  We hear today that the Division takes over another 400 yards of line on our right. This means a general shift up and a weakening, I believe, of our strength. It seems the fate of the 7th Division to hold abnormal frontages with the very minimum of men. I expect we will manage all right though, and that our weakness is more apparent than real.

  27th February ’16

  We have taken over the new line today, and some line it is being about half a mile in length and pretty bad in parts. At the moment it is a slippery way alternating between a trough of mud and a canal of snow water anything from two to twelve inches deep. A Coy is away on the right where the major seems to be taking his responsibilities very seriously. Ram is in the centre with C, and D and B remain in their old positions, which is now the left. It is a very long stretch of line for a single battalion to hold and I trust we may rise to the responsibility. I went on tour all round it with the CO this afternoon and afterwards we explored the support line and other etceteras. It was quite a journey and most interesting throughout, having to duck past enfiladed places and run like smoke down exposed slopes. When at last we got back the CO came to tea with us and we had quite a merry little party. He was most happy and natural, the best we have yet seen him. He tells me that when he goes on leave I am to stay at Head Quarters and leave the company to Murray. That is rather sad, for I had much sooner be an irresponsible, detached company commander than muck around at HQ with two doleful majors for company. Major Allfrey does occasionally smile but Merriman is unable even to raise a flicker. It is very sad. The more so because of the risk of affecting the men similarly. A laugh here is of such value.

  Bland has come on so through that. He grins from morn to eve, swears he is enjoying himself top-hole and, I believe, really is. Good luck to him.xiii

  At 10.30 a.m. an apparition appeared at the dug-out door. Prince and myself were just thinking of bed. ‘Gas,’ it cried, in muffled tones, ‘Gas.’ On with helmets and out we went, finding a jumble of men in all states of excitement. They soon got over that however, and we filed up and manned our parapet, quiet, coolly and somewhat bored. For an hour we stood to waiting for Fritz to give sign, a thing he refused to do, and in the end word came to stand down. No gas had come into our sector.

  The helmet, though stifling at first, one becomes quite used to after a while, breathing becoming easy.

  28th February ’16

  We have changed over tonight, moving up to the firing line to replace D. The trenches are parlous in the extreme, being thigh-deep in mud or knee deep in water according to the lie of the land. No one who has not experienced it can realise, what a fatiguing business movement under such conditions is. At home one asks, ‘Why does not the Army move?’ Out here one changes the query, with much more reason, to, ‘How can it?’ One’s progress is a laboured wallow through a shifting quag. Yet we carry on all right and are happy, more or less. And everything carries on just as usual. Snipers fire, guns crash and grenades come over into the trench with a vicious crack and kill men and wound others, and the stretcher bearers have to wade off with their stricken fellows through the morass which eventually leads them to the Aid Post and their burdens back to the Base and dear old ‘Blightie’. How the stretcher-bearers do their work I do not know. It can only be by terrible labour and a very high devotion to duty.

  I had a letter from you this evening. Delivered up here it was wonderfully cheering. How really near you are, my heart, and yet what immeasurable space separates you and Babs from the life we live here. With you all is order and cleanliness, most comforting to experience. How that idea of cleanliness associated with you adds to my hunger to be with you again! Here all is grime and mud and grittiness. We come in, our rubbers covered with running mud to above the knee. Too tired to care we pull sandbags over the slime, roll under our blanket and are asleep in a trice. But we do not like it. Indeed it is our one great trouble this enforced griminess and running mud. It permeates everywhere, food, drink, papers, indeed I verily believe our very insides are coated, armadillo-fashion, with a layer of brown, French clay.

  However, so be it. What can’t be cured must be endured and I doubt not but that we can stick it as long as Fritz, and longer.

  29th February ’16

  We are out again tonight. The Queen’s asked to be relieved so the Brigade has changed the both of us. I am glad. The trenches are really too awful, and, though we have worked at them continuously, appear to get worse. Our men are done and without doubt a fresh battalion can do more to keep the mud under.

  Water is thigh deep in places and the mud in others comes over one’s knees and grips and holds one till often it is impossible to move and the unfortunate man must be pulled or dug out by a relief party. The journey down this evening was quite memorable, almost a Brucamps affair except that it was not so extended.

  Men dropped by the road side exhausted. Others staggered pitifully along in bare feet, the mud having snatched both boots and socks from them. Others again went strong, chattering and laughing whilst among the lot the officers, those of us whose strength was equal to it, went in and out carrying a rifle for this man, giving a cigarette to another, helping a lame duck up on to his poor, swollen feet again and chaffing or cracking feeble jokes with them all. Over all hung a dull, wet sky. It was a dark night. Men were but shuffling shadows against the chalk mud of the roadway except when the lights went up from the lines all about us. Then you could see the huddled forms of tired, mud-caked Englishmen shuffling home from their labours. The war is a war of endurance. Of human bodies against machines and against the elements. It is an unlovely war in detail yet there is something grand and inspiring about it. I think it is the stolid, uncomplaining endurance of the men under the utter discomforts they are called upon to put up with, their sober pluck and quiet good-heartedness which contributes very largely to this. All the days of my life I shall thank God I am an Englishman.

  1st March ’16

  A month ago today we took over our line here. It seems like six. My leave I think it is has lengthened the time so for me. It seems such ages since I had it.

  Today the list has gone in for honours for the King’s birthday. I have put forward my Coy Sergeant-Major and young Bull, my runner, for a mention and I sincerely trust both may get it. They have performed their duty at all times zealously and with cheerfulness. Two of C Coy have been recommended for the DCM, both for care of the wounded under dangerous conditions. The one rescued three men from a blown-in mine shaft, the other bound up his wounded comrades, though five were hit by rifle grenades and these beastly things kept coming over whilst he carried on. One knocked him down but he remains unhurt.

  It has been an easy day, getting the men dry and cleaned up from their last excursion in the line.

  We now hear that the French hold Fritz well in hand at Verdun and that his casualties there have been extremely heavy.xiv I only trust it is true. He ‘Fritz’, or his higher commander, seems a pushful fellow, always ready to attack, and that with seemingly a total disregard for casualties. Really one wonders how he goes on. These losses must be replaced somehow and his resources cannot be any more inexhaustible than anyone else’s. It must tell in the end, of that there can be no shadow of doubt. And our growing Army will surely have a big lot to say when at length we make our next move. In the meantime the more Fritz attacks the better for us, so long as we can kill him in quantities at each attempt.

  I don’t think I have ever recorded a word picture of a dug-out. Yet I think I must, one so soon forgets otherwise. There are two which we fl
uctuate between, the one in the firing line, the other in support. That in the firing line we do not love. It leaks, and a leak is a thing guaranteed to damp the affection of the keenest man. Yet it is a big dug-out, roofed with the boles of trees and lined spasmodically with corrugated iron. It is about six yards long by two and a half wide. Corduroyxv trench boards run down one side, and along the other are two bed-frames whilst a third stands across the bottom wall. The beds are oblong frames on two feet legs with wire netting stretched across them. On these we spread sand-bags with our blanket over-all and thereon we woo Morpheus when our tour of duty is not. Just inside the entrance is a round, oak, gate-leg table, a relic no doubt from some farmhouse where a Bosche shell has found a home. On this is spread the most appalling litter of week-old Daily Mails, Bystanders of last month, muddy gloves, a Very pistol and some odd charges for some, a brown-covered trench diary, odd candle stumps and one or two empty whiskey bottles, all jumbled up in a sea of pink, service message forms. The table is made clear for meals with pleasing celerity. Daleyxvi merely thrusts all the litter back against the wall with a sweep of his arm and proceeds to set down our enamel ware in the space thus provided. We sit around for meals on up-ended, empty ammunition boxes.

  In the support HQ we are more happy. This locality revels in the somewhat inelegant name of the Rat Hole, presumably from the number of human burrows in its immediate vicinity. Our dug-out there is small but it only leaks in one place. I will leave further description of it till tomorrow when perhaps I will have more time.

  2nd March ’16

  I see I finished my entry yesterday by half promising a description of our abode in the Rat Hole and since nothing more worthy of note has happened today locally I think I will fulfil it. But, in passing, I must first record that we had today notification from Brigade that on the Ypres front our attack of 4.30 a.m. today was successful, that the Bluff was recaptured and all the objectives aimed at gained.xvii That is satisfactory news. But to return to the Rat Hole.

  I see I say that it only leaks in one place. That is an immense advantage and in this case is all the more to be made much of from the fact that the leak is in one corner where an empty ammunition tin can be placed unobtrusively to catch the drips, thus further localising the inconvenience and, at the same time, adding a tone of habitation to the abode in a similar manner to that in which the tick of the grandad clock in the hall adds a companionable note to the sounds of a household. The roof is the usual even layer of logs. A brazier hangs against the wall inside the door, a real door by the way – from a deceased fowl-run. But we have tacked sacking over the hole the chickens were wont to use and so draught and dampness are excluded. The brazier is worth a mention. It is the usual trench type. That is, it used to be an oil drum. It has now, however, been extensively perforated with the pick end of an entrenching tool and is gorged daily with coke and wood and any other odd, burnable revetting material which our servants can borrow unobserved. These braziers are supposed to glow but this is a height of ambition they only achieve when they belong to Sergeant-Majors. In officers’ dug-outs they merely smoke. But in fairness to them it must be said that they succeed in doing this remarkably well. One sticks it manfully until the candle is but a yellow flicker through the gloom and the fug quite unbearable and then one turfs the blessed thing out and protests to the servants. Later, when it has reached such a state of combustion in the trench that one is fearful lest Fritz, seeing the light, will commence to shell, it comes back again – and proceeds to smoke worse than before. Enough for the brazier. A small table fills the centre of our dug-out. There is a single seat at one end, a bench hewn out of the mother chalk along one side and a form, sand-bag covered, along the other. The table is seldom adorned with more than a rum jar for the reason that here we have shelves inserted in the walls wherein are thrust all odd papers. The sleeping accommodation in this case is somewhat different from the other. The bed construction is the same but they are situated further into mother earth and about two feet lower down than the floor of the main, or mess, room. It is dry and warm down there and one quite forgives it its colony of mice for that reason. So much for dug-outs.

  I had a letter from Barnardxviii today, who is now out here with the 23rd. He tells me poor Reidxix has been killed, bombed by a Fritz whilst out on patrol. He was badly wounded but died an hour or two afterwards. ‘He was game to the last,’ writes Barnard. He would be. He was that sort. Quiet, keen and reliable, I liked him from the start and it was me who got him his commission in the old days when [illegible] and I did such things. God rest his soul, he was a good lad!

  3rd March ’16

  All morning at the brigade office getting out a map of our battle positions and bearings from same to various points of vantage. In the afternoon Don Murray, who returned from leave this morning, and I rode all round the hills outside the town on a tour of combined inspection and pleasure. It rained slightly but was pleasant all the same. It is quite a picturesque district, with the Somme glistening in the valley and the patchwork uplands rising high either side of it and in the summer I should say would be a pleasing spot indeed. At the moment however all is sodden and overhung with a dull grey sky which threatens more rain, or snow, to come.

  We go in again tomorrow for, I am afraid, another very wet turn. The spring, however, must soon be with us now and until then we must just carry on with what resignation we can.

  4th March ’16

  In a dug-out that leaks badly. Time 1 a.m. Just in off my tour of duty. Trenches knee deep, everywhere. Snow and sleet with a biting gale the order of the night.

  Sentries cold but cheerful. Fritz very quiet. Hope he is as mucked up as we are.

  The dug-out drips incessantly. There is an inch of slush on the floor. I have arranged my oilskin so that it may splash the drips off the bed on to the floor. Bowly’s snoring peacefully on the bed at the bottom end. He has rigged an iron sheet in a very precarious manner on four pieces of stick over him. The water dropping on this makes a monotonous not to mention doleful sound. What a life!

  What a war! What a game it is! Bow-wow!

  5th March ’16

  The surprising thing about trenches is the persistent way in which they accumulate water. You clean a place quite dry and leave it happy yet when you return in an hour’s time there it is full as ever of slush. Where the water comes from the Lord alone knows, all we have time to be concerned with is the fact that it is there and that it has to be persuaded to leave there as quickly as possible. And that is what we have been doing all day. And now it has snowed again and we’ll have to redo the whole job tomorrow. What a life!!

  It is your birthday today. How I wish I could see you, my dearest, to wish you happy returns. Never mind, next year we’ll be all over it.

  6th March ’16

  1.05 a.m. and just in after a pretty long day. We are back in support, Murray having taken over the front line with D. That job was done with by 7.30 p.m. but at 9 o’clock the CO had arranged to call for me in order that we might prosecute a tour of inspection of the back of the line over the top and from here to the right. We started and have been on it ever since. It is extremely interesting up there. The trenches look so different from above. We found what we wanted and tomorrow night I am to try and stake a way over direct to the right. We came back to Minden Post and thence Bunting and I made our way to the Rat Hole where I now write. Minden Post is BHQ [Battalion Headquarters]. It is a most interesting spot and one I must try and find time to describe when I get back to Bray. Somehow it looks so like war, a thing which little else does here. For the most part we seem so unreal tucked away under ground.

  Dogs have suddenly appeared in the trenches. Good dogs, apparently sprung from nowhere. I have given orders for any seen to be shot. It is a pity, and one feels very sad about it but I am too suspicious of Fritz. I think him quite capable of inoculating the brutes with some beastly disease and then letting them loose on us. I may be wrong but in war one cannot take chances – especiall
y against Fritz.

  Bang. One has just been shot as I write. It is whimpering out its life outside my dug-out.

  Poor beast! It seems a dirty trick – but there you are!xx

  Chapter 7

  ‘Dry trenches mean happy men’

  7–26 March 1916

  7th March ’16

  In order that one may keep very wide awake at night one is compelled to live a more or less somnolescent life by day here. We have all been at it again tonight and have just come in – 11.30 p.m. Bowly has been out with a party cutting gaps in our wire in front of the support line, a precautionary measure of what may be called retaliatory offence. He has done well indeed. Prince has been on company duty but, I find, has also been wandering, on his own mystic missions bent, about on top. I have been out endeavouring to peg a way to [Trench] 55 but I have met with indifferent success up to now. Also I have had to pilot the Second in Command over those dim, mysterious ways which lead about the strange land on top. It has been inky dark but we have fluked our paths aright and only one man has become detached and lost and he is now found again. We are all quite happy and beginning to feel more sure of ourselves now we are becoming more familiar with the Way over the Top. Isn’t it strange, this reversal of things? To the newly initiated wayfarer it is the trenches which are full of confusion. To us who live in them it is the ordinary, above-ground paths where the snares and pitfalls lie. Especially the pitfalls. And such pitfalls! Thrice tonight I have been head over heels into shell holes. Sergt Hinsley,i who accompanied me, must have eyes like a cat. He dodged everything. It is quite a startling sensation, this sudden treading on nothing. Trench mortar bombs excepted, it brings one up shorter than anything I know. But I have not suffered even so much as a jar, not even a winding, and, as on one fall I found a splendid specimen of a whiz-bomb, I am quite happy and seek my couch in cheerful mood.