1915: The Death of Innocence

by Lyn Macdonald

  Col. Sir Maurice Hankey.

  It was not without a pang of regret that I bade farewell to de Robeck, Ian Hamilton and my many friends at the Dardanelles. In leaving these brave men marooned on the desolate, sunbaked shores of the peninsula amid squalor, heat and the torment of innumerable flies, with death staring them in the face day and night, encompassed by difficulties, behind them failure, before them the haunting vision of a winter campaign, or the alternative of evacuation, which even the most sanguine anticipated must be a shambles, I felt no small compunction in returning to the comfort of England and home. I also felt a grave responsibility about the report I had to make to the Prime Minister.

  But the news had travelled ahead of him and, with the failure of the venture on which so much had depended, a strong body of opinion was already opposed to continuing operations in the Dardanelles. The dilemma that faced the Cabinet was how best to cut their losses without prejudicing British prestige and how best to help the Russians, staggering on the eastern front under the weight of a German army that was steadily pushing them back. The Dardanelles campaign had been partly designed to tempt Bulgaria into the camp of the allies, and now Bulgaria’s position haunted the deliberations of the Cabinet. It seemed more and more likely now that she would soon throw in her lot with their enemies. Serbia was already fighting Austria on one front. If Bulgaria went to war and attacked her by the back door Serbia would surely be crushed and men, guns and quantities of ammunition would soon be pouring along a through-route from Germany to Turkey. Even apart from the dire consequences this would have for Russia, the allies would then be ignominiously shelled off the peninsula. The political considerations that had given birth to the Dardanelles campaign were more important than ever, and few but Sir Ian Hamilton clung to a thread of hope that a victory on Gallipoli was still possible. Pending a final decision and in the face of some opposition Kitchener decided to dispatch the fifty thousand reinforcements Hamilton requested, with the thought at the back of his mind that, if necessary and as policy developed, they could be used elsewhere in the Mediterranean to assist Serbia.

  The slender hope that fortune might eventually smile on the allies at Gallipoli was slender indeed and, at best, a matter of ‘jam tomorrow’. The immediate and most urgent need was to relieve the pressure on Russia and this, in Kitchener’s view, could only be done by a new offensive in France on a scale large enough to force the Germans to weaken their army in the east by rushing large numbers of their troops to the western front. Reluctant though he had been to commit his troops to any major battles in the near future, there was now no alternative. Kitchener felt sure that the French would be only too happy to cooperate.

  The troops on Gallipoli knew nothing of these developments. The fighting had quietened down. August scorched on. But at last there was blessed relief for some – a whole month’s leave for part of the Anzac force when reinforcements from Egypt took over the line and they were whisked off to the islands to rest and recuperate. The rest camps bore little resemblance to holiday resorts. They were almost as arid and fly-ridden as the peninsula, but there was half-decent food, there was water in abundance, best of all there was beer, and although of necessity there were drills and parades they were kept to a minimum. The weary soldiers could sleep undisturbed in the furnace of mid-day, they could bathe in the blue waters of the Aegean without being shelled, they could play cricket or football when the heat lessened towards evening, and at the end of the day they could lounge yarning and singing in the starlight. But day after day the distant rumble of guns firing on the peninsula brought a grim reminder that this was a fleeting respite, and some soldier had time to compose the parody that summed up the general feeling. It was sung to the familiar tune of The Mountains of Mourne’ and soon it became their anthem:

  Oh, old Gallipoli’s a wonderful place,

  Where the boys in the trenches the foe have to face,

  But they never grumble, they smile through it all,

  Very soon they expect Achi Baba to fall.

  At least when I asked them, that’s what they told me

  In Constantinople quite soon we would be,

  But if war lasts till Doomsday I think we’ll still be

  Where the old Gallipoli sweeps down to the sea.

  Verse followed verse and since everyone had a go at adding one, soon almost as many versions as there were battalions were being sung at impromptu concerts. The Scots of the 6th HLI contributed the verse that expressed the basic, unsentimental longing at the forefront of every soldier’s mind.

  We don’t grow potatoes or barley or wheat,

  So we’re aye on the lookout for something to eat,

  We’re fed up with biscuits and bully and ham

  And we’re sick of the sight of yon parapet jam.

  Send out steak and onions and nice ham and eggs

  And a fine big fat chicken with five or six legs,

  And a drink of the stuff that begins with a ‘B’

  Where the old Gallipoli sweeps down to the sea.

  They had some hopes! Soon their holiday would be over, soon they would be returning to the peninsula, to the interminable diet of thirst-provoking bully beef and the sweat and grind of life – or death – in the trenches.

  Birds were seldom seen on Gallipoli, but towards the end of August, to the astonishment of the men, large flocks of birds swooped through the sky above the peninsula, migrating from the chilly steppes of Russia to winter in the south. The searing heat showed no signs of abating, but the birds brought a salutary reminder that time was passing, that another season was on the way and that, despite their valiant efforts, they had advanced very little since they had landed in the spring. But it had not been for want of trying.

  Part 7

  Loos: The Dawn of Hope

  The firefly haunts were lighted yet,

  As we scaled the top of the parapet,

  But the east grew pale to another fire,

  As our bayonets gleamed by the foeman’s wire,

  And the sky was tinged with gold and grey,

  And under our feet the dead men lay,

  Stiff by the loop-holed barricade

  Food of the bomb and the hand grenade,

  Still in the slushy pool and mud –

  Ah, the path we came was a path of blood,

  When we went to Loos in the morning.

  Patrick MacGill

  Chapter 31

  During the summer months, in towns all over the United Kingdom, photographers were making handsome profits. On the eve of their departure for the front the first contingent of Kitchener’s Army were being photographed in droves, proud and a little self-conscious, for the benefit of their admiring families. Some enterprising firms set up make-shift studios at the gates of army camps and the newly fledged soldiers queued up to be photographed against teetering canvas backdrops of tasteful classical scenes. The exposure in daylight was necessarily long, the sitters emerged stiff and serious, but the results were mostly thought to be satisfactory and tens of thousands of photographs were proudly dispatched through the post or distributed personally on embarkation leave.

  After the weary months of waiting, the impatient soldiers of Kitchener’s Army were only too glad to be marching out of camp, new rifles on their shoulders and slung beneath their packs the white linen bags of extra rations that marked them out as men bound for the front. The hour of departure was an ill-kept secret so there was always a good turn-out of well-wishers along the road, and even if civilians were not allowed into the railway station itself, the band that had played the departing warriors from camp was there on the platform to perform a farewell medley as they entrained for the journey. As the train got up steam the band invariably struck up the plaintive strains of ‘Home Sweet Home’ which, in the circumstances, was not an especially tactful choice, but the newly fledged Tommies, who had had quite enough of home sweet home during their long apprenticeship, were far too elated to observe the irony. Even officers renowned as martine
ts and drill-sergeants of terrifying mien succumbed to the excitement of the occasion and amazed their erstwhile victims by surging to the carriage windows to shake hands, to wish them luck and, wonder of wonders, to salute the cheering Tommies as the train moved off.

  Between July and September more than one hundred and fifty battalions of Kitchener’s Army left for France. Not many of them had any experience of foreign travel and it was all strange and exciting. A hundred thousand letters home began in the same way, ‘Dear Mother, I am living on a farm…’, but the homely picture this painted in the imaginations of families at home hardly fitted the reality, for the troops were not exactly living in comfort. But the farms of Flanders were ideally designed to house numbers of men and even if only the NCOs or occasionally the junior officers had the privilege of a room in the farmhouse itself, there was ample accommodation for the troops in the barns and pigsties that extended from both ends of the farmhouse and turned at right-angles to skirt a village road. In the middle of the square formed by the farm buildings there was invariably a muck-heap, an evil-smelling mixture of manure, rotting vegetation and the contents of crude privies which, over the course of the year, would mature to provide rich fertilizer for the fields in the spring. The Tommies skirted the middens with care and held their noses as they passed but after a time they got used to them.

  At first while the divisions grouped they were a good way behind the firing line with only the grumble of guns in the distance to hint at what lay ahead, and across a hundred miles of France and Flanders every available building had been pressed into service to provide accommodation for the burgeoning British Army. The northernmost billet was in the farm and out-buildings of a Trappist monastery some miles beyond Ypres. If the silent monks moving imperturbably about their business in their white habits were disturbed by the presence of the British Tommies they gave no sign of it, and the Tommies of the headquarters troops, intrigued though they were by these strange companions, were only too happy to be there. It was a cushy billet, if only because the Trappists supported themselves by brewing a sweet beer, dark and strong, and since the normal channels of distribution had been disrupted, they were only too happy to sell it to the troops. The word soon spread and the men trudged long distances to buy beer from a hatch in the buttery wall. It kept them happy. The Battalion Medical Officer who was billeted in the monastery itself was less happy. He did not object to the sale of beer, but he took strong exception to the insalubrious pond which abutted the walls of the monastery. It was filthy, an obvious breeding ground for disease, and he was fearful of an epidemic among the troops. The Royal Engineers were peremptorily ordered to drain the pond and to remove the danger of infection. A few days later a notice appeared on the buttery hatch, laboriously written in English: ‘There Is No More Beer.’ The officers, who had also acquired a taste for Trappist beer, confronted the abbot. Why had the beer run out? The Trappists were a silent order and the abbot the only monk in the monastery with a dispensation to speak, but he was not a brilliant conversationalist. Unclasping his hands from his voluminous white sleeves, spreading wide his arms in a gesture of despair, he looked like some lugubrious bird of prey. ‘You have drained the pond,’ he said simply. There is no water to make beer. Therefore there is none.’ The MO was aghast. The Commanding Officer was consulted and the Royal Engineers were ordered to refill the pond, but to keep a close eye on future cleanliness. The beer flowed again – but some of the troops were heard to remark that it had lost something of its flavour!

  After years of strict peacetime soldiering, some of the regular NCOs who had nurtured Kitchener’s battalions through their training and come with them to France brought with them ideas of disciplined cleanliness which were not entirely appropriate to the new circumstances. During one Battalion’s first tour of initiation in the trenches, one such sergeant went so far as to put a soldier on a charge for what he regarded as a heinous crime. The unfortunate Tommy was standing stiffly to attention when the Commanding Officer happened to come round the corner of the firing bay. ‘What’s the matter, Sergeant?’ he inquired. The sergeant was bursting with righteous indignation. There’s a fly in this man’s butter, sir!’ The Colonel peered into the tin of butter lying open on the fire-step. Sure enough, there was a fly. He gazed at it for some moments then, turning to the NCO, he bellowed, ‘Sergeant. Arrest that fly!’ The soldier did not dare to laugh, nor did he dare to catch the sergeant’s eye, but that was the end of the matter.

  The fledgling soldiers of Kitchener’s Army were sent into supposedly quiet sectors for their first initiation but there was still occasional shell-fire and there were unavoidable ‘wind-ups’ when machine-guns spattered and bullets whizzed past too close for comfort. In such moments the voice of a sergeant-major which had terrified them on the parade ground, and his gruff phlegmatic ‘Steady lads,’ was decidedly reassuring. But Kitchener’s Army was no stranger to trenches. They had dug trenches the length and breadth of the country until they were sick of the sight of spades and sandbags. But on the hills and meadows at home they had dug undisturbed by the presence of the enemy. Even now the enemy was invisible and despite repeated warnings it was easy to be overconfident.

  Pte. F. Bastable, 7th Bn., Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent Regt.), 55 Brig., 18 Div.

  Trench digging. That’s what we were trained for. If we didn’t know anything else, we knew about digging trenches. In fact we won a prize for it, two of my mates and me. When we were training on Salisbury Plain our Colonel offered prize money for digging a quick trench, and me and two mates of mine won it. I think we got five shillings each. But it was a different story when we got to France, and one of those mates of mine, Bill Beckington, was one of our first casualties. We went down to the Somme area, and the first two casualties in the whole battalion oddly enough were two brothers, and they weren’t even killed by the enemy. We had no proper baths or anything, so we used to go in a stream or a river and try to keep clean and have a swim at the same time, and these two brothers went out too far in the middle of the river and got caught in the reeds in the bottom and they both got drowned. After that the first casualty was my mate. It wasn’t very nice. The trenches had been fired on and they’d broke them all up and we had to go in there and make them up tidy again with sandbags. This was right in the firing line so we both went in there, Bill and me, and one had to hold the sandbag open while the other filled it up. We were just arranging it between us, and thought nothing of it – we were well used to digging trenches so either he said, or I said, ‘You hold the sandbag open while I put the earth in.’ Anyway, when we’d filled a few, Bill went up on the top with the sandbag to where the hole was all broke down to make it up. I was down below while he was standing up doing it and the bullets started coming over. I said to him, ‘Look out, Bill, they’ve got you spotted!’ Well, he didn’t bob down quick enough. The bullet just missed me and went to the back of the trench, made my ears whistle, the noise of it, and the next moment before Bill could say anything he got it right in the head. It blew his head open and his brains was all coming out. I was right next to him and his brains covered my tunic like the roe out of a herring.

  I didn’t know what to think. To think we’d got five bob for doing that job before, and now Bill was finished like that. I couldn’t believe it. We went up the same night with the padre and gave him a proper burial – all the mates went up to see him buried. It was the first burial in our battalion. The padre said the prayers and some lads let off a round over his grave, it was near la Boiselle, not far away, not far from where he was killed. I couldn’t get over it! The first man killed in the battalion and it was my own mate. And all we was doing was sorting out the trench.

  Bill Beckington was one of many casualties and there was sometimes panic at home when parents who had indulgently connived at young boys joining under-age were shattered by news from France. Young Ralph Langley was not quite eighteen when his brother Charlie died of wounds, and the first he knew of it was when he was called out by
the sergeant-major on the parade ground shortly before the Battalion was due to sail.

  Rfn. R. Langley, 16th Bn., King’s Royal Rifle Corps.

  I was in the 16th Battalion Kings Royal Rifle Corps – the Church Lads Brigade. We’d all joined up together in our local branch and after months of training I was dying to get to France. We were just on the point of going. Then this particular morning when we were on parade, the Sergeant-Major called out my name. ‘Langley! Step forward!’ The Sergeant was glaring at me. He had a paper in his hand and he said, ‘Langley.’ ‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘How old are you, Langley?’ I said, ‘Nineteen, sir.’ He said, ‘You’re a bloody liar! I’ve got a letter here from your mother. You’re under-age – and you’re out!’

  I was absolutely staggered. They didn’t send me home, but I can’t describe what it was like staying behind in the barracks and knowing the Battalion would be going without me! Of course I didn’t know at that moment my brother had been killed. My mother had got frightened, you see – realised I was in for it too, and she wasn’t going to have that. They gave me leave to go home, and then I had to go back to the barracks, and stay there. It was awful seeing the Battalion go off. I was miserable. Really fed up. Of course the time passed and I got older and I had to go in the end. I was lucky to get back to my original battalion, but so many of them had been knocked out on the Somme by the time I joined them that if I’d gone out when the others went I might not be here now.

  From the start of the war the Church Lads Brigade, like the Boys’ Brigade and the Boy Scouts, was a fruitful source of recruits and many local branches like Ralph Langley’s had joined up as a body. It was natural that the lads who had not yet reached the statutory age for military service had no desire to be left behind. They had been positively encouraged to lie their way into the Army for although all such organisations laid stress on the virtues of upright manly honesty, the ideal of service and patriotism was no less important. Even in peacetime they were trained in rifle-drill and marching, not as a means of inspiring a belligerent attitude but because the founders saw these activities as a means of banding boys together and inculcating the all-important virtues of ‘obedience, reverence, discipline and self-respect’. The Boy Scouts’ more adventurous pursuits of tracking and patrolling had not included formal military drill, but scouting was also intended to instil the spirit of patriotism and duty that would impel young men to spring to the defence of their country in time of need and it was more than a year since the War Scouts’ Defence Corps had been formed. Thousands of scouts had joined it and even twelve-year-olds were enthusiastically training in rifle shooting, signalling, entrenching, army-drill, first aid and camp cooking, and busily preparing for the day when they too would be tall enough and strong enough (if not officially old enough) to exchange the khaki drill of the Boy Scouts’ uniform for the khaki of soldier of the King. Their founder, Lieutenant-General Baden Powell, had inaugurated the scheme, with the words, ‘An efficient boy of sixteen in the event of invasion would be worth a dozen grown-up men trained to do nothing in particular.’