Throughout the war, the Prince had been seen all across the front, meeting troops and generally getting involved. I had seen him around Christmas 1914, when with the 4th Hussars, and in January 1919, I saw him again when he came and visited Deutz Barracks. I was instructed to mount a double guard of twelve men, so that at the appropriate moment the men could be turned out of the guard room and lined up with swords at the slope. As the Prince passed, I was to give the order ‘Royal salute, carry swords!’, followed, once the Prince and his escort had passed, with ‘Slope swords, guard dismiss!’ His visits were always impeccably organised, and there was always something being done to which his attention could be drawn. When, a couple of months later, the Prince passed through again, he was given a display of whisping, whereby we massaged our horses’ flanks and backs with a twist of hay, looped into a figure eight and knotted. On cue, the Prince turned up to watch our work, stopping to stroke a horse before passing through the rest of the stables.
The last stables of the day was at 5pm, following which, time was our own. Like most, I would leave the barracks to make my way across the bridge into the city centre where, in the bustle of the early evening, we would pass among demobilised German soldiers, still in their army tunics, trousers and overcoats. Personally, I had no point of contact with these soldiers, although I felt no hostility towards them. We had entered a country in chaos, whose population was starving, and, bar the odd diehard, most Germans were just glad the war was all over. In all my time in Cologne there was, with the exception of the odd minor incident, no conflict between them and us, and on the whole the British troops were very well-behaved.
If anyone could be said to be resentful, it was some of the older civilians. One, a pub owner, a real ‘Hun’ with a short haircut on top of a bullet head, went out of his way to make it clear that he didn’t want to serve us. We were ‘Englishers’ and whenever we entered his pub he became surly and eyed us with great suspicion. Unluckily for him, his pub was close to the barracks, and so he had to get used to us. We made a point of sitting at the bar and talking to his two daughters who were at school and were learning English. Quite why he never stopped them talking to us, I never fathomed, for he certainly didn’t approve, and watched us all the time, clearly resenting our presence. But we were in charge and he had to muck in like everybody else. We were anxious to pick up some basic German and so spent several evenings trying to converse with these girls, drinking the mild beer served there and occasionally slipping the girls a couple of chocolate bars brought from the army canteen.
For the first time in my life, I had considerable freedom and I was intent on enjoying those evenings around the city. I watched English films at the Army Picture House, sat in the seats restricted to troops at the theatre, or retreated to the reserved circle at the opera. I acquired my first taste for opera in Cologne after I saw ‘Madame Butterfly’, performed by a sixteen-stone ‘Madame’. Her considerable bulk as a butterfly tickled me no end, though this probably helped enhance her singing, which was wonderful, and encouraged me to go to other performances, including ‘The Flying Dutchman’ and ‘The Mikado’.
Everything was cheap, for we were paid in German marks, and with their currency in a continual state of slow depreciation against the pound, we were able to buy luxuries we could never have afforded back home. On one of my regular shopping trips, I bought a fine pair of cut-throat razors in a case, which had been made in Solingen (the German equivalent to Sheffield), and which I used for many, many years afterwards.
There was a down-side to all this new-found wealth, for the mix of a hungry population and the huge influx of relatively wealthy soldiers created a prostitute, and subsequently a VD, problem that the authorities were at first unable to control. There were so many prostitutes among the street doorways that the main shopping street, the Hohe Strasse, became known as the Whore Strasse. We were warned about contact with prostitutes, and any soldier who became infected could have his wages docked, and certainly would have lost his extra sixpence good conduct pay. In Cologne we were regularly checked for early signs of VD, with the short-arm inspection, an afternoon indoor medical which all personnel were ordered to attend. We were formed up in two lines and told to drop our pants, pulling up our shirts as the medical officer walked by, so that he could have a peer at our private parts. These inspections had taken place pretty well every fortnight, but it was a ‘catch early’, not a preventative, treatment, and there was a period when we were losing a trooper a day through VD, far more than during the war.
The short arm parade was mildly embarrassing, but we got used to it, and common sense told us it was necessary. What I objected to was the introduction, in February, of the ‘catch all’ Early Treatment, or E.T. room. With VD rife, orders were given that any soldier returning to barracks after 6pm, irrespective of where he might have been, had to go for early treatment against any infection. This was easily enforced, as any soldier coming back had to pass through the guard room on his way to his barrack block. The sergeant of the guard’s job would be to direct each trooper into the E.T. room where observation screens ensured that soldiers didn’t cheat on the treatment. Whether or not anyone did watch I don’t know, but the screens proved enough of a deterrent on their own.
The E.T. room was sparsely furnished, containing three cubicles, any one of which a trooper entered. There he’d find a bowl of warm water to which disinfectant was added, and he washed himself and threw away the water so the bowl could be refilled for the next man. Following this, each man picked up a tube with a nozzle on the end, and injected the end of his privates with an anti-bacterial ointment. If there were two or three men using the cubicles there was plenty of tomfoolery, with troopers telling each other where to put the tube. The treatment finished, each trooper left by another door, signing a book as he went confirming he’d followed the procedures.
Not surprisingly, no one liked the E.T. room, and it annoyed me in particular that, having been to the Opera or for a drink, I was expected to go through this rigmarole. I decided to find a way around the E.T. room and found a solution by way of the forage bam doors. They were huge doors on hinges that opened on to the street, enabling wagons to enter the barracks during the day to deliver hay. Though always padlocked when not in use, one of the doors had a diamond-shaped hole cut into it at chest height, through which the guards could confirm deliveries as they arrived. Once in the bam, anyone could exit through a small personnel hatch built into the doors at the rear, and, as this door was never locked, it allowed anyone using it direct access on to the barrack square.
Toying with the idea of trying to climb through the hole, I waited until the next occasion I was due to act as corporal of the guard. I knew that if I climbed through and couldn’t get back, I could always walk round and come through the guardhouse again. No one would take any notice because I was on duty.
It was always going to be a tight squeeze, and I had to remove my bandolier and tunic to make it, putting my arms and head through first, then wriggling until I landed in a crumpled heap on the far side. There were no further problems returning and so I decided, ‘Right, that’s my way in when I’m back late at night, and to hell with the E.T. room’.
Flushed with my success, I told another corporal with whom I used to go around town. He was a lot smaller and had no trouble climbing through even with his bandolier on. As the guardroom never took a soldier’s name when he left the barracks, only when he returned, no one would realise we were missing. For a month to six weeks we successfully used the forage door as our means of entry back into barracks, but, as with all good things, this route was eventually blocked off. I made the mistake of letting on to our squadron cook how we were avoiding the E.T. room, never dreaming he’d try it himself, for he was considerably larger than I was. He, like everyone else, hated the E.T. room, and returning late one evening decided to have a go. After much straining, he apparently got his head and shoulders through with his feet off the floor, but couldn’t get any farther.
It was then that he discovered that he couldn’t get back, either; and jammed unceremoniously in the bam door, he was finally forced to call for the guard. I don’t know which way they got him out, but I do know that next day the hole was criss-crossed with barbed wire, firmly held in place by big staples. Common sense might have told the cook he couldn’t get through, but he tried and that was the end of our little trick.
In early March, as our time in Cologne was drawing to a close, I was sent for and interviewed by one of our Squadron leaders. He told me the Life Guards were losing all their war volunteers and were looking around for men to help rebuild the Regiment, and would I like to transfer, being of the right stature. I declined the offer, saying with all respect that I’d had ‘enough of wearing a tin hat, and didn’t want a tin waistcoat as well’. Asked to explain, I replied that I had joined the 4th Dragoon Guards and that I’d finish in it. He dismissed me with a ‘Fair enough’ and nothing further was said.
The Regiment left Cologne at the end of March. Some hundred of us left on horseback, three days before the main body of Dragoons. Our destination was to be the port of Antwerp, where the Regiment would embark for Kingstown in Ireland, but first we were to make for the Belgian town of Venders. At Verviers, we would rendezvous with the rest of the Regiment, due to make the trip down on the train.
Billeting officers went ahead of our party, so that on our arrival we were split up and put into pre-arranger! accommodation. I and another corporal were billeted in a house owned by the local cobbler. We slept there, but collected our own rations which the lady of the house cooked for us. The shoemaker interested us, as he made shoes with wooden nails, since metal nails were unobtainable by the end of the war. He claimed the wooden nails lasted nearly as long as the metal.
We stayed in Verviers for the best part of a month, during which time the Regiment slimmed to a skeleton force of around 250 men. Those who had joined for the duration of the war were demobbed, leaving a rump of old regular soldiers to occupy themselves, while veterinary officers chose the best horses to return to Ireland, disposing of the remainder to Belgian farmers for farm work.
To keep ourselves occupied, leisurely four-mile route marches were undertaken, carrying just belts and bayonets. We marched to attention through villages but otherwise walked at ease and sang, timing our arrival back in Verviers for 12.30pm, where we broke up to have a beer in the estaminets, and a meal in the mess room. Afternoons were free for us to do as we liked, with the usual inter-troop football matches to pass the time.
Just before the Regiment was due to leave for Antwerp, we returned from a route march and dispersed as normal for our mid-day drink. On leaving the estaminet half-an-hour later, I trotted down some steps when, out of the blue, a stab of pain caused me to bend double.
NOTES
1. It was a Regiment very different from that which had boarded HMT Winifredian on August 16th 1914. Precise casualty figures for the 4th Dragoon Guards are unobtainable; however, the following statistics should be taken as the minimum casualty figures for the Regiment. Of the 551 officers and men who went to France on the Winifredian, eighty four had been killed in action or had died of wounds or illness. A further 199 had been wounded, twenty seven of them on two or more occasions, while seventy six men were taken prisoners of war. A minimum of 359 men, or sixty five per cent of the men on that ship, had become casualties. These figures exclude those who were transferred to other regiments during the war, of whom an unknown number were subsequently wounded, and at least four were killed.
CHAPTER NINE
They think it’s all over . . .
Ben
At first I thought I had got bad wind, but as the day wore on I began to feel terrible and by night time I was in agony, hanging over the side of the bed in a desperate attempt to relieve the pain. The shoemaker and his wife finally called the doctor, who gave me a brief examination, promising he would see me again in the morning. This was of little comfort, but as there was nothing else to do, I stuck the night out until he reappeared to say that he had made arrangements for me to go to hospital as I had appendicitis. ‘I can’t go to hospital now! The Regiment’s due to go home tomorrow,’ I said. But the doctor replied, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve made enquiries and there is neither a suitable hospital in Antwerp, nor a doctor on the ship. Your Regiment is going to Ireland and I dare not take the chance. You must go into hospital’.
It was pointless arguing, for I could no longer stand and had to be carried from the house on a stretcher. As I left, the shoemaker’s wife who had been so charming, touchingly began to cry. However, I was the second soldier billeted at her house to be carried off in this way, so perhaps she thought she was cursed. The ambulance whisked me off to the town of Huy, to a former school, converted into a hospital for British troops.1
On the ward, I was left in the care of nurses who were instructed to do nothing but feed me periodically with warm milk. I continued to be in severe pain, yet saw no doctor and received no other treatment until an orderly came round the ward, checking medical details. The hospital was due to close and the orderly was looking to see who might be moved farther down the line. ‘Oh, we’ve been looking for you,’ he said cheerfully, ‘you’ve been put in the wrong ward.’
A doctor was sent for and, with another doctor in attendance, he gently proceeded to feel and prod me before announcing that they’d operate in the morning. Yet within minutes orderlies returned to shave and put long stockings on me before I was stretchered to the operating theatre. A chloroform-laced mask was placed over my face and I was told to start counting.
I woke to find myself back in the ward, with most of the pain gone, and feeling altogether much better. My general chirpiness returned to the extent that I posed for a picture the following day, a nurse and an orderly perched on the end of my bed. All in all it seemed a matter of swift recuperation and a fast ticket back to the Regiment. My optimism was misplaced. Within days pleurisy set in with a vengeance, reducing me to a physical wreck; filling my lungs with putrid liquid and leaving me gasping for breath.
My condition worsened, and gave such cause for alarm that I was placed on the critically ill list, unable either to talk or perform the merest exertion. Only the shallowest breathing kept me going, so that as my condition deteriorated, so did the doctor’s prognosis. I would become too weak to fight my condition and was therefore likely to die at any time. It was decided, therefore, to move me from the ward, so that my death would not have a detrimental effect on those remaining.
Four Germans, all POWs who worked at the hospital, came to the ward, picked up my bed and carried me off outside and across a courtyard to another building.2 As we ventured into the fresh air I became aware of a doctor crossing the yard in front of me when suddenly he stopped, turned, and snapped a photograph of our group.
The new ward was a converted classroom containing a dozen beds, all occupied by dangerously ill patients. On the first night, orderlies came to remove two soldiers who died on either side of me, and came back again and again over the next few days as nine of our number went the same way. My survival was due almost entirely to the devoted attention of a Scottish nurse, who came each evening to put her arm round my neck and feed me Brandy Mixture, a concoction of egg, cinnamon water and brandy. As she held a cup to my mouth she encouraged me to take just that bit more. ‘Come on, just a wee drop more for old Scottie,’ she would insist, and although I didn’t want it at the time, it gave me sufficient strength to pull through.
I suppose I had been there ten days when the doctor I had seen in the courtyard reappeared and ventured to my bed. ‘Here’s a little souvenir for you,’ he whispered, and deposited something on the small locker that stood by my side. Although fully conscious, it was a while before I troubled to take a look, but was delighted to find he had left the photograph taken in the courtyard. I discovered that this doctor was due to go home and had been taking pictures of the hospital and the staff for mementoes. He was on his way to the X-ray dark room to d
evelop the film, when he passed our party outside.3
With the hospital itself marked for closure, I had to be transferred by ambulance some eight or nine miles to Namur, accompanied by a nurse and an orderly. I had various tubes sticking out of me, and as I was loaded aboard, I heard a doctor instructing the driver that on no account should he jar me on the journey.
The new hospital was a large renovated house providing pleasant surroundings for the two months I remained at Namur. It was here that I underwent a further operation to drain an abscess, during which the surgeons came across a date stone, the root, they thought, of all the trouble. As if not in enough distress, I was also undergoing intermittent treatment to have liquid pumped from my lungs. This entailed freezing my back before one end of a rubber tube was fed into my chest with the aid of a long needle, the other end of the tube being connected to a glass cylinder. The needle removed, the air was systematically pumped from the cylinder, the vacuum sucking, drip by drip, about one and a half test tubes of the fluid from my lung. It was an experience likened to being sucked inside out, and, unable to face any more while conscious, I was put under ether during further treatment.
My ward was run by a sister whom nobody liked. Her name was Sister Hoyle, and she was super-efficient, a nurse to her very fingertips, but with the habit of being very snappy and sharp with people. Everything had to be straight, the beds perfectly aligned, the sheets flawlessly tucked in, even the bed wheels turned so that they all faced the same way. Nothing was to be out of place, and the other nurses lived in fear of making a mistake.
Teenage Tommy Page 22
