LOOKING NORTH FROM CASTEAU
The location of the first shots between British and Germans troops, 22nd August 1914.
As the action began, Ben led his and three other horses behind this wall.
The Dragoons fanned out on both sides of the road. Corporal Edward Thomas is credited with firing the first shot of the British Expeditionary Force from this spot.
LOOKING SOUTH FROM THE DIRECTION OF SOIGNIES
The Germans’ point of view: looking south towards British positions. It was here that the retiring German cavalry halted and opened fire.
LOOKING WEST
The charge of the 4th (Royal Irish) Dragoon Guards was driven to the right by heavy German fire (right).
LOOKING SOUTH
Under very heavy fire, and in increasing disarray, the Dragoons crossed the old Roman road.
CHAPTER SIX
Knee Deep in Mud
Ben
The Regiment remained in winter billets until January 1915 when Squadron and Troop training was begun again in earnest. The following month, training was stepped up as a move into the trenches in front of Ypres was expected at any time. As an officer’s orderly, I avoided much of this training. However, in early February I was detailed to attend a course in the use of trench mortars, to be given by the 1st Field Squadron, Royal Engineers.
Long before the advent of Stokes mortars, we were shown a primitive contraption, made of what appeared to be a four-inch drain pipe welded to a base. At the bottom of the pipe there was a touch hole like that of the old muzzle-loading rifle, and to the side a primitive ratchet system to lever the mortar tube up and down. As we crowded round this object, we wondered at its construction while a sergeant began to talk us through its use. Several canvas gunpowder bags were to be dropped to the bottom of the tube, one of the mortar team piercing a bag so that a little gun-powder appeared at the touch hole. A plug of putee-like stuff called lutin was pressed around the touch hole and a fuse added, cut to a length so as to allow the team time to take cover. The bomb itself was ten inches long and had a wooden nose cone and a screw eye into which we hooked a piece of wire, enabling us to lower the bomb into the tube. Another fuse was cut and attached to the underneath of the bomb, the length of which varied according to the time required before detonation. Only then was the bomb carefully lowered into the barrel, making sure the fuse wasn’t dislodged. The outside fuse which ran to the touch hole was lit by thick fusee matches, half-covered in phosphorous and developed to stay alight even in the windiest conditions. Once the fuse was lit, we were meant to clear off; the gunpowder both launching the missile and simultaneously lighting the fuse on the end of the bomb. The number of gun powder bags determined the distance the bomb was hurled, the maximum range being, I believe, no more than 200 yards.
The weather was quite good, and the ground dry, helping us to hone our skills for about a week before the Regiment took the trench mortar into the line, near Zillebeke. In the end I wasn’t part of the team that fired the weapon in action, although I was to see a couple of rounds fired, watching them turn over and over as they flew, the fuse clearly fizzing on the outside.
During our training, we had not sought much cover as dummy bombs had been used. With live firing the team was more cautious, nipping round the corner into the next trench traverse. This was a wise move, for after the first half-a-dozen rounds a bomb detonated in the mortar, and blew the whole thing up on the spot. It was a sudden and violent end to our week’s training, although thankfully no one was injured.
We remained in the line for a few days, when the principal danger was posed by snipers who killed at least one man while we were there and injured several others. After we were relieved, we were briefly employed digging trenches before a move to rest billets. A month before the German offensive at Ypres, Howell left the 4th Hussars,1 and, one week later, I was allowed to rejoin the 4th Dragoons who were billeted on a prominent hill, known as the Mont des Cats. I had no sooner returned than Carton de Wiart rejoined the Regiment, taking command of A squadron, and asking me to look after his horses. I had not seen him since his visits to the Brands’ stables, over two years before. In the meantime he had been sent to Somaliland at the outbreak of war, and in action had lost an eye, in place of which he now wore a patch.
Editor
After a period of recuperation, Captain de Wiart had left England for the Cavalry Base Depot at Rouen on March 31st 1915. However, eager to get to the front, he had travelled the same day to find the Regiment which was living, as de Wiart wrote, ‘a comparatively dull life within sound of the guns of Ypres’. The War Diary merely states that the troopers were primarily engaged in rifle practice at a newly-installed rifle range at a Trappist monastery.
Ben
As soon as I took over de Wiart’s horses, I joined up with the other orderlies billeted in a barn, close to the officers’ quarters. These were towards the bottom of the hill in a small farmhouse, while the rest of the Regiment lived nearer a Trappist monastery, on top of the Mont des Cats.
This area was almost unmarked by war, having been the scene of just one brief fight late the previous year, when the 4th Hussars had been one of the regiments used in its capture. As a result the local farmers had stayed on the land, and a fairly normal life had resumed. Every Thursday, the farmer we lived with built a terrific fire in a big oven to bake bread. One or two of us would muck in to help knead the dough before it was placed in large bread troughs to bake. The bread was rather different from ours: flat rather than wide, with a cross made on top of the loaf so that when it was ready, a chunk could be easily hacked out of it. Helping the farmer bake the bread was his saucy fifteen-year-old daughter. She’d been taught all manner of rude words by the soldiers living in the area, and was not embarrassed to use them. ‘Qu’est-ce que c’est, cock?’ she once took me aback with.
The farmers lived a traditional and to our minds, a primitive life. Like the urinals I had seen at Damousies, six months before, sanitation was basic. The farm on which we stayed had an open-air toilet cut into a rising footpath that led up to the farm barn, barely hidden for privacy by a canvas screen. This pathway was quite wide, into which a circular hole (about fifteen inches in diameter) had been dug to act as the toilet. In front were two foot marks, to guide the occupant to the perfect ‘gun site’ with droppings going straight into a pit underneath. Below the pathway, shuttered wooden doors had been built alongside the pit. These were opened once a year to allow the contents to flow or be shovelled into the midden. From there, the excrement would be carried away in carts and used as manure on the fields ploughed by the farmer’s four large bullocks.
All manner of things were put in the pit. I saw some kittens dropped into the midden, while on another occasion I watched an old woman carry a couple of young puppies up the pathway, before throwing them in. The dogs’ mother had followed the puppies up the path, but was shooed away by the old lady, who flapped her arms around aggressively, as she swore at the dog.
In France, the dog was an integral part of village and farm life and was not a luxury. Animals earned their keep, those that did not, or were surplus to requirements, had harsh and usually short lives. On the Mont des Cats, as with many villages we came to during the war, it was common to see the local milkman going round not with a pony but with a large dog as his main mode of transport. This dog would plod along, harnessed into a cart, on the back of which stood the village’s milk churn. When not pulling the milk, the dog worked the butter churn. To the encouragement of ‘Vite, Vite!’ the dog ran on a wheel like a treadmill, the motion of which turned the churn over and over, forming the butter.
While billeted in these towns and villages, we were paid in French or Belgian francs, lining up once a week to receive a five franc note, exchangeable anywhere and worth the equivalent of five shillings. Once this money was broken into, however, we received smaller ‘local’ currency, or tokens with face values as little as ten centimes. This currency was manufactured by the various Chambers of Commerce
such as existed in Amiens or Lille, and would be valid for a stated number of towns or communes and therefore of no value elsewhere. This meant we were forced either to spend our money before leaving the district or to keep it tucked into our haversacks in the hope that we would return a month or two later.
Paper money printed and distributed by the various Belgian and French Chambers of Commerce, such as existed at Lille and Amiens. Soldiers could spend the notes only in the area in which they were issued, ensuring that many troops carried unspent notes with them in the hope of returning later.
Editor
Like the Hussars, the Dragoons had had a fairly quiet time since the battles for Messines the previous October and November. They had spent a lot of time in the Bailleul area, refitting and training, during which time the winter monotony was broken up by inter-squadron and inter-troop sports. While the ranks had played football, some of the officers had hunted with the 2nd Cavalry Brigade Beagles, or had gone shooting with the Regiment’s Machine Gun Officer, Lieutenant Aizlewood. He had had the forethought to bring out his own sporting rifles to France at the back end of 1914, but then to his, and the Regiment’s, considerable frustration, the French banned hunting for the duration of the war, so the rifles and the beagles were reluctantly sent home. Beagling was exchanged for partridge chasing, and shooting for poaching, which provided the officers’ mess on several occasions with welcome food.
Ben
To local people, soldiers were an undoubted mixed blessing. Behind the lines, British soldiers brought much money into local economies, with estaminets in particular making healthy profit from the coffee and omelettes served up by the thousand. Yet there was an undoubted downside too, for British and Empire soldiers were trying to liberate French and Belgian soil and many therefore had few qualms about poaching or stealing food to supplement otherwise poor diets. Some men became experts at procuring food, not least a corporal in C Squadron, ‘Nasty’ Carter of 1st Troop. He became known as the best scrounger in the Corps of Cavalry, and stories abounded within the Regiment of his antics.
The best known concerned an occasion when he had led a group of troopers to a local river in search of fish. The water being too low, ‘Nasty’ suggested shutting off the sluices, before fishing could begin in earnest. His clever idea, however, resulted in localised flooding, the guard reporting during the night that the horse lines were under water, with several dozen fish flapping about everywhere. Local villagers were known to have made any number of informal complaints to the Regiment about over-active scrounging in the area, but as officers too were often involved, they received little sympathy. Shortly before I returned to the Regiment, a funny incident had occurred when local peasants armed with various agricultural implements were seen chasing the new Medical Officer, Ingram, and Lieutenant Gallaher across muddy fields, both officers handicapped by struggling salmon, stuffed down the front of their breeches.
This incident raised Gallaher’s stock even higher with the men. Gallaher was tremendously popular but particularly among those of his Troop, for he was a member of the famous tobacco family and his men never went short of a smoke. He was a brave man who was badly wounded on several occasions during the war. My abiding memory of him is of a scratch rugby game he organised, days after my return to the Regiment.
The game included both officers and men, something unthinkable before the war, and naturally included Gallaher, who by all accounts was a very good player. He produced a rugby ball and brought together two teams of anyone willing to have a go, although barely anyone knew the rules. Coming from the Sussex countryside, I could not recall having ever seen a game before, so I watched from the improvised touchline. Troopers went hurtling in all directions and tactics went west. In the midst of it all was Gallaher trying valiantly to bring about some sort of order. In one almighty scramble for the ball, however, he was heard to bellow, ‘For God’s sake, man, let go of my bloody ear!’ underlining how hopeless his task was, and sending all who had heard it into fits of laughter.
To stiffen the resolve of the men behind the lines, they attended church services, given by a padre, in our case the Reverend Gibb, a padre who had been attached to the Regiment from the earliest days of the war. Services were often impromptu affairs, held in some field where we sang hymns such as ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, and ‘Fight The Good Fight’, before listening to a moraleboosting sermon given by Gibb or perhaps a visiting padre. One particular padre, I recall, began his sermon with the words, ‘Put your minds at rest. To start with, I’m 6 foot 5 inches, now that will stop you wondering how tall I am and you’ll listen to what I’ve got to say.’
Padres to the cavalry were amiable men, but few were horsemen. Being in the cavalry, we could tell a horseman from the very moment he got on a horse, even in the way he got hold of the reins, or put his foot in the stirrup. One padre, I remember, was given the most docile horse the Regiment could find, and even then he had to be taught how to get on and off the old sheep. Later, I overheard this padre saying to Welch, our veterinary officer, that he’d seen his horse scratch his ear with his hind leg. Welch answered with apparent sincerity that this was a sure sign his horse had appendicitis. ‘Are you sure that’s what you saw?’ Welch asked again, giving me a quick wink. The padre became quite concerned, ‘Yes, yes, I’m sure.’ I wasn’t around for the conclusion of this enlightening discussion.
Throughout the war I tried to keep in touch with my family as regularly as possible, sending a note of how I was whenever we were out of the line. One of the quickest ways was on a printed Field Postcard, on which the soldier was only allowed to scrub out the official words, ‘I am well/not well’, ‘I have/have not heard from you lately’, that sort of thing. The soldier was only meant to date and sign it at the bottom, though some added the odd caustic word or two if they had not heard much for a while, one Irishman, I recall, writing ‘never’ when he came to ‘I have received your parcel dated ...’ These cards were issued to us, one each, at regular intervals and were posted with the quartermaster. He passed them on to the duty officer for checking, destroying any which broke the strict rules on adding anything other than permitted. Letters were also censored by our troop officers, who must have become bored rigid, reading personal letter after personal letter before initialling envelopes and sending them on. To help matters all round, we were issued once a month with a green envelope, in which we could seal a letter knowing that it wouldn’t be read by anyone in the Regiment. We were put on our honour not to reveal anything secret, signing the envelope to that effect. Most reached their destination sealed, although a sample was opened at the base to check soldiers were not abusing the trust. These envelopes were primarily aimed at married men, who felt they could not write anything personal to their wives when it would be read by others in the Regiment.
Receiving letters was more sporadic, mail being the last thing looked after when the Regiment was in the line. Letters arrived, but rumours abounded, both in France and back home, that parcels were robbed for chocolate and other foodstuffs. For this reason many troopers received disguised parcels. While we were in Nissen huts at Vlamertinge, a parcel arrived from my mother, on the outside of which was written ‘comics’. ‘Blimey,’ I thought, ‘who wants comics to read?’ only to discover that my mother had used the comics as wrapping for a blackberry and apple tart. As there were several men who never received anything while in France, men who came from orphanages and the like, it was only fair that those who received parcels from home shared out the contents, particularly food.
Vlamertinge was one of the villages regularly used for billeting when the Regiment was out of the line. The cavalry often stayed farther behind the line than the infantry, as we had the luxury of riding as close as possible to the line before dismounting and entering the communication trenches, which twisted their way towards the front line. Similarly, as the Regiment left the line, it was met by the horses ridden up from the back areas, a job I undertook on several occasions. It was not necessarily
an easy task. One frosty, moonlit evening we set out from Vlamertinge, each man riding one horse and leading three others. But no sooner had we hit the icy road than it became clear the horses were unable to keep their grip, so we were pulled up and told to put two frost cogs in the front two shoes of every horse.
Every horse shoe had nine holes for nails and four for variously-sized frost cogs, two cogs (size four) at the toe and two (size five) at the heel. As a matter of course, these holes had been filled with tow (strands of old rope, available from the farrier’s tool kit) and were packed in place by dirt once the horse had replaced its foot on the ground. Every hole was threaded so that each frost cog could easily be screwed in like a little bolt, giving horses a better footing on icy ground, in the same way studs give footballers grip on a bad pitch.
The frost cogs were arrow-shaped, and sharp when new. Each was an inch long, including the thread, and was carried in a separate compartment in the sword frog. The frog also held the frost cog spanner, the tool designed to fix the cogs in place. The spanner was pointed at one end, so as to clean the tow out of the screw holes, while at the other end, the tool was stubbed with a squareshaped hole used to tighten the cogs.
Despite the moonlight, the relative darkness and intense cold made fitting cogs no easy job. The chill began to affect my fingers, gradually making them numb. I managed to misthread one cog and as I strained to tighten it my hand slipped, slicing it open across my palm. There was nothing more I could do but pass my spanner to someone else and try and stem the blood with my red and white spotted handkerchief. The handkerchief was filthy, but I had no choice but to keep it wrapped around my hand while we remounted and rode on. I was lucky, for it bled badly enough that I didn’t catch an infection, before I had it seen to by the Medical Officer.
Teenage Tommy Page 13
