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by Jon E. Lewis

  The credit for all this must go to the editor of the book, C. B. Purdom. Essentially he wanted no fine writing, no show-off from his contributors, he wanted them to write in a clear, straightforward manner about what they had seen and experienced and to do so at minimal length. The result is a book which is of such overall quality that it cries out for a reprint. There is much talk these days of ‘forgotten voices’ when it comes to war subjects. Here we have sixty too-long-ignored voices which deserve to be remembered. I cannot recommend this book too highly. In fact, in view of its virtual disappearance for almost eighty years after its original printing, I believe it might fairly be described as a rediscovered classic, worthy of joining the rich ranks of books of permanent value in relation to the Great War of 1914–1918.

  Who was C. B. Purdom? He was Charles Benjamin Purdom, born in 1883, died 1965. Perhaps his principal legacy relates to the founding of new towns such as, first, Letchworth Garden City and, subsequently, Welwyn Garden City, a subject in which was interested from 1902 onwards, championing the concept of this revolutionary style of communal living in a number of books written over several decades. Married in 1913, he appears not to have served in the First World War, though in the Second World War he held posts in the Ministry of Food, the Ministry of Supply and the Ministry of Information. He subsequently interested himself in the problems left by the Luftwaffe’s bombing campaign, publishing in 1945 a book under the title How Shall We Rebuild London? A lifelong passion was the theatre. At one time he was general secretary of British Equity, at another he edited a magazine entitled Theatregoer, and over the years he poured out a spate of books on the subject, including such titles as Producing Plays, The Pleasures of the Theatre, Producing Shakespeare, a biography of the dramatist and producer Harley Granville Barker, and A Guide to the Plays of Bernard Shaw. It was his period as editor of the magazine Everyman, between 1928 and 1932, which led to the production of the present work. It was his idea, presumably launched in 1929, to invite readers of the magazine to send in brief personal accounts of their experiences in the war which had involved so many of his juniors and contemporaries, with a view to including the best of them in a new anthology.

  But it is time for him to tell his own story, and I now hand the baton to him, inviting the reader to turn to his excellent and illuminating Introduction.

  Malcolm Brown

  January 2009

  INTRODUCTION

  These narratives of the War are not the work of practised writers but of soldiers telling their personal experiences. They have therefore an interest that War novels or stories or official records do not possess. A few of them are by sailors and by men in the Air Force, and by women; but the greater number are by men of various ranks who served on the different Fronts, most of them as privates in France and Flanders. They show what War is from the soldier’s point of view. It is a restricted point of view, of course, but it is concerned with realities, and for that reason important.

  The narratives came to be written in this way. A few months ago a friend was talking to me with admiration of Barbusse’s Le Feu, and remarked incidentally that he had not yet written his own story of the War, though he intended to do so before he got too old. He served in the ranks in Flanders during practically the whole period of the War, and had, he thought, something to tell that had not yet been told. I urged him to sit down and write his account before it had gone from his mind, and he went away declaring that he would start upon it that very day. But he has not done it and I do not think he ever will.

  There are many men in the same position. They have something to tell about the War, but have never been induced to put it on record. There is a deep reluctance in most men to write of things with which they were so closely concerned. To most of them the War was not an event: it was their lives stretched to the most painful degree of tension and desperate effort of which they were capable. Many men have never recovered from the numbing effect of the War upon their senses, and do not wish to recall all that happened in those dreadful years. Yet the world loses by the silence of those who have knowledge, and, for the full lesson of the War to be learned, as many as possible of those who know what it meant should put their experiences on record.

  With that in mind I invited the readers of ‘Everyman’ to send me accounts of their actual War experiences, in not more than three thousand words, offering a small prize for the best narrative received. In the course of a few weeks I received over three hundred narratives, of which two hundred and eighty-nine were worth serious consideration. I did not expect so remarkable a result. At least half of them deserved to be printed, and I finally came to the conclusion that a selection of the very best should be made into a book.

  The writers had been asked to relate their experiences straightforwardly and simply. ‘Good writing’ was not expected. The result was that the bulk of the manuscripts were plain statements of fact recording experiences that were deeply felt. The amount of ‘literary’ effort was remarkably small. A certain number adopted the short story form, but these were mostly rejected, and only a few are included in this volume. Most of the manuscripts were hand-written. Some of them were substantiated by diaries and other papers. On the whole the narratives did not seem to suffer from exaggeration. I ask the reader to judge that for himself from the selection in the following pages. Indeed, understatement was characteristic of many of them, they were very English in that respect. Some made comments on the War, deeply resenting its effects on themselves, or its social and political results. I have not included much comment of the sort. Here and there a tendency to overdo the ‘horrors’ was shown; but there was remarkably little bad language.

  The narratives are of various kinds. Some relate to single incidents, others give a general impression of War experience. Some, as I have indicated, were written from diaries, others from deeply engraved memory. Some of them are human documents of the first order. Major events in the history of the War are referred to from time to time, but generally the narratives present personal experience. It is noticeable that hardly any feeling against the enemy is expressed. Only two writers referred to the Germans as ‘Huns,’ for ‘Jerry’ is the usual epithet. I have interfered with the narratives as little as possible in editing them, checking names of places as far as I could, and clearing up doubtful points, but the writers speak with their own natural rhythm and style.

  The cumulative effect of these narratives is impressive. They seem to me to give a more convincing sense of the War than any War book that I have yet seen. They are best read, I venture to think, so as to get this cumulative effect. I have arranged them in the order of events as far as possible. I regret that there are so few from the Navy, but one of them by a seaman is an extremely vivid piece of writing.

  The impression that I get from reading them is not that of suffering or horror, but of the senselessness of war. No one who served in it but was oppressed more or less constantly by its futility. Its political effects were far-reaching; but as a method of State action we discovered it to be without any redeeming features. In the narratives printed here the War is looked at from the point of view of individual men engaged in it. These men do not lose their human qualities, their courage, honesty, chivalry, and spirit of self-sacrifice, but those qualities themselves are seen to lose their value, for man surrenders himself to the machine, and all that makes life worth living is gone. The truth about war is that it is an evil, not only because men suffer and die in it, but because it destroys the meaning of life.

  For that reason wars must be made to cease, and the lesson of the Great War is that war must be prevented in the future. War is not an adventure, but a disaster; it has no glamour or romance or nobility. But wars can be prevented only in times of peace, and if the lesson of the last War is learned now, we shall see that the relations between States make wars unnecessary.

  When war comes there is nothing left but to do one’s duty in it as these men did whose stories are printed here.

  C. B. Purdom />
  London, February 1930

  THE RETREAT FROM MONS

  August 23rd–September 5th, 1914

  Bernard John Denore

  August 23rd – We had been marching since 2.30 a.m. and about 11.15 a.m., an order was passed down for ‘A’ Company (my company) to deploy to the right and dig in on the south bank of a railway cutting.

  We deployed and started digging-in, but as the soil was mostly chalk, we were able to make only shallow holes. While we were digging the German artillery opened fire. The range was perfect, about six shells at a time bursting in line directly over our heads. All of us except the company commander fell flat on our faces, frightened, and surprised; but after a while we got up, and looked over the rough parapet we had thrown up; and could not see much. One or two men had been wounded, and one was killed.

  There was a town about one mile away on our left front, and a lot of movement was going on round about it; and there was a small village called Binche on our right, where there was a lot of heavy firing going on – rifle and artillery.

  We saw the Germans attack on our left in great masses, but they were beaten back by the Coldstream Guards.

  A squadron of German cavalry crossed our front about 800 yards distant, and we opened fire on them. We hit a few and the fact that we were doing something definite improved our moral immensely, and took away a lot of our nervousness.

  The artillery fire from the Germans was very heavy, but was dropping behind us on a British battery. The company officer, who had stayed in the open all the time, had taken a couple of men to help get the wounded away from the battery behind us. He returned about 6.30 p.m., when the firing had died down a bit, and told us the battery had been blown to bits.

  I was then sent with four men on outpost to a signal box at a level crossing, and found it was being used as a clearing station for wounded. After dark more wounded were brought in from the 9th Battery R.F.A. (the battery that was cut up). One man was in a very bad way, and kept shrieking out for somebody to bring a razor and cut his throat, and two others died almost immediately.

  I was going to move a bundle of hay when someone called out, ‘Look out, chum. There’s a bloke in there.’ I saw a leg completely severed from its body, and suddenly felt very sick and tired.

  The German rifle-fire started again and an artillery-man to whom I was talking was shot dead. I was sick then. Nothing much happened during the night, except that one man spent the time kissing a string of rosary beads, and another swore practically the whole night.

  August 24th – Just about dawn a party of Germans came near and we opened fire on them and hit quite a number. We thought of following them up, but a corporal brought an order to retire. We joined the company again behind the trenches, and learnt that the town we could see was Mons.

  After a while we joined up with the rest of the battalion on the road and went back the same route we covered coming up. All the time there was plenty of firing going on by Givry, and about midday we deployed, and opened fire on a regiment of German cavalry. They dismounted and returned our fire, which was all ‘rapid’) and was telling on them. Then suddenly they mounted and disappeared out of range. We continued marching back for about four hours. Then again we deployed and opened fire on more German cavalry, but this time they kept out of range and eventually moved off altogether.

  My platoon was sent forward to a small village, where we stayed all night firing occasionally at what we hoped were German cavalry.

  August 25th – We started off about 5 a.m., still retiring, and so far we had had no food since Sunday the 23rd. All day long we marched, and although a lot of firing was going on, we did none of it. About 6.30 p.m. we got to a place called Maroilles, and my platoon spent the night guarding a bridge over a stream. The Germans attacked about 9 p.m. and kept it up all night, but didn’t get into Maroilles.

  About forty-five of the company were killed or wounded, including the company officer. A voice had called out in English, ‘Has anybody got a map?’ and when our C.O. stood up with his map, a German walked up, and shot him with a revolver. The German was killed by a bayonet stab from a private.

  August 26th – The Germans withdrew at dawn, and soon after we continued retiring, and had not been on the march very long before we saw a French regiment, which showed that all of them had not deserted us.

  We marched all day long, miles and miles it seemed, probably owing to the fact that we had had no sleep at all since Saturday the 22nd, and had had very little food to eat, and. the marching discipline was not good. I myself frequently felt very sick.

  We had a bit of a fight at night, and what made matters worse was that it happened at Venerolles, the village we were billeted in before we went up to Mons. Anyway, the Germans retired from the fight.

  August 27th – At dawn we started on the march again. I noticed that the curé and one old fellow stayed in Venerolles, but all the other inhabitants went the previous night.

  A lot of our men threw away their overcoats while we were on the road to-day, but I kept mine.

  The marching was getting quite disorderly; numbers of men from other regiments were mixed up with us.

  We reached St. Quentin, a nice town, just before dark, but marched straight through, and dug ourselves in on some high ground, with a battery of artillery in line with us. Although we saw plenty of movement in the town the Germans didn’t attack us, neither did we fire on them. During the night a man near me quite suddenly started squealing like a pig, and then jumped out of the trench, ran straight down the hill towards the town, and shot himself through the foot. He was brought in by some artillery-men.

  August 28th – Again at dawn we started on the march, and during the first halt another fellow shot himself through the foot.

  The roads were in a terrible state, the heat was terrific; there seemed to be very little order about anything, and mixed up with us and wandering about all over the road were refugees, with all sorts of conveyances – prams, trucks, wheelbarrows, and tiny little carts drawn by dogs. They were piled up, with what looked like beds and bedding, and all of them asked us for food, which we could not give them, as we had none ourselves.

  The men were discarding their equipment in a wholesale fashion, in spite of orders to the contrary; also many of them fell out, and rejoined again towards dusk. They had been riding on limbers and wagons, and officers’ chargers, and generally looked worse than those of us who kept going all day. That night I went on outpost, but I did not know where exactly, as things were getting hazy in my mind. I tried to keep a diary, although it was against orders. Anyway, I couldn’t realize all that was happening, and only knew that I was always tired, hungry, unshaven, and dirty. My feet were sore, water was scarce: in fact, it was issued in half-pints, as we were not allowed to touch the native water. The regulations were kept in force in that respect so much so that two men were put under arrest and sentenced to field punishment for stealing bread from an empty house.

  Then, again, it wasn’t straight marching. For every few hours we had to deploy, and beat off an attack, and every time somebody I knew was killed or wounded. And after we had beaten off the attacking force, on we went again retiring.

  August 29th – A despatch was read to us, from General French, explaining that the B.E.F. was on the west of a sort of horseshoe, and that the retirement was to draw the Germans right into it, when they would be nipped off. That afternoon we went to a place called Chauny to guard the river while some R.E.’s blew up the bridges. It was a change from the everlasting marching, and we managed to get some vegetables out of the gardens and cook them. A few Uhlans appeared, but got away again in spite of our fire. So far as I could tell there wasn’t a single civilian in the town, and all the houses were barricaded; while outside of them were buckets of wine-pink, blue, red, whitish, and other colours. We were not allowed to drink any.

  August 30th – Just as we were leaving Chauny – about 4 a.m. – two girls were found and were taken along with us.

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nbsp; Although all the bridges were blown up, the Germans were after us almost immediately. God only knew how they got over so soon. Their fire was heavy but high; the few we saw were firing from their hips as they advanced. We fired for about half an hour. Then the artillery came into action, and we retired about two or three miles under cover of their fire. Then we waited till the Germans came up, and we began all over again, and then again, and then again, all day long. It was terribly tiring, heart-breaking work, as we seemed to have the measure of the Germans, and yet we retired.

  During the evening the Guards Brigade took over the rearguard work while our Brigade went on to Castle Isoy, and bivouacked and slept for about six hours.

  August 31st – Again we were rearguard, but did little fighting. We marched instead, staggering about the road like a crowd of gipsies. Some of the fellows had puttees wrapped round their feet instead of boots; others had soft shoes they had picked up somewhere; others walked in their socks, with their feet all bleeding. My own boots would have disgraced a tramp, but I was too frightened to take them off, and look at my feet. Yet they marched until they dropped, and then somehow got up and marched again.

  One man (Ginger Gilmore) found a mouth-organ, and, despite the fact that his feet were bound in blood-soaked rags, he staggered along at the head of the company playing tunes all day. Mostly he played ‘The Irish Emigrant,’ which is a good marching tune. He reminded me of Captain Oates.