They Called it Passchendaele

by Lyn Macdonald

  Dranoutre and the nearby village of Locre did not offer the legendary delights of Poperinghe, but in the rear of the salient there were worse places to be. There was the Frontier Cafe in Locre, which sold vin blanc at one franc a bottle, with the added attraction of a resident pianist. Paula was just seventeen, a cousin of the proprietor, and she was only too happy to entertain the soldiers who packed the cafe night after night. The snag was that her mother was there too. The piano was in a back parlour, and when the merry drinkers persuaded ‘Mademoiselle’ to play and crowded round the piano, Maman insisted that the door should always be kept open so that, between serving the drinks, she could keep an eagle eye on her daughter’s virtue. Paula, with her short schoolgirl’s skirt and her long hair tied back with a black satin bow, was in demand by everyone.

  Less welcome was the presence of Marguerite, the six-year-old daughter of the house, who was everywhere in the cafe – clinging to khaki legs, sitting on khaki knees, begging illicit sips from the glasses of regiments of indulgent ‘uncles’ and picking up, parrotwise, some highly unsuitable English phrases. On the whole, Marguerite was an inhibiting presence and as the war went on she waxed and grew fat on the bars of chocolate which she was given as bribes to go away.*

  The belle of Dranoutre was Victoria, who served in the local cafe and cut sandwiches in the YMCA on concert nights. The soldiers ragged and flirted with her mercilessly. At sixteen, Victoria blushed and giggled and didn’t mind a bit. She had a soft spot for all the soldiers, but her particular favourites were the men of the balloons. The balloonists were regular habitues of the cafes at Locre and Dranoutre and their exploits were legion. If the Royal Flying Corps, buzzing in their fast, flimsy machines all over the sky above the salient, were the lords of the air, then the balloon boys swinging high in their baskets 600 feet above the earth were not far behind them in the glamour stakes. Time after time, the high crackle of machine-gun fire would draw the eyes of civilians upwards to the clouds in time to see a German aeroplane streaking off into the blue; the grey bubble of the balloon collapse and crumple; and two tiny white specks appear high above as the observers floated down under the canopies of their parachutes. The balloon boys basked in universal admiration and enjoyed not only office hours (for observations could not be made in the dark) which enabled them to lead a satisfactory social life, but during their working hours, from their vantage-points in the sky, they also enjoyed a grandstand view of the salient below.

  Naturally they had to spend most of their time looking towards the east, where the flashes of gunfire and the smudges of black smoke thrown up by exploding shells marked the semi-circle of the front line. It was the job of the balloon observers to plot the explosions and, if they could, to pin-point the location of the enemy batteries. But on quiet days there was time to look around. Away to the left a narrow ribbon of yellow beaches bordered the sea, but from the coastline in the west to the guns in the east the countryside had almost disappeared beneath the paraphernalia of the armies. Wherever you looked, there were crawling khaki columns, and great clouds of dust thrown up by the wheels of the limbers and wagons that moved in endless convoys along the roads. Camouflaged tents stretched as far as the eye could see across the meadows, among grey patches of huts that seemed to spring up overnight like mushrooms. The balloon observers saw the brown churned-up fields full of horses and transport lines; the fields of glistening white marquees – each marked with a red cross – which were the casualty clearing stations; great dumps of stores; aerodromes; wagon parks; and everywhere, on almost every open space, ant-like battalions of men swarming across the earth, training and practising, parading and exercising, as busy and disciplined as their hard-pressed officers could contrive. Looking down on the salient from 600 feet at the press of activity below, there seemed hardly room to place a pinhead between the swarming armies.

  Yet, here and there, there was a cluster of green, a yard of hops, a field or so of crops or grazing land around a battered farmhouse that some long-suffering peasant farmer tilled and cursed and hung on to like grim death. Life had to go on, livelihood had to be won somehow, but it was not always easy. The civilians and the military, pursuing their very different objectives, did not always see eye to eye. Pastor van Walleghem committed his complaints to his diary:

  15 June. It is truly painful to see how the English destroy the crops. There are so many bare fields around the village, and still it often happens that they set up camp on the cultivated fields, ignoring the abandoned ones adjoining. Many farmers have had their meadows taken away from them quite suddenly. I have thus known farmers who one day had sufficient fodder for a stable full of animals, and the next day not even enough for one goat…. If the farmer dares to complain, they only laugh at him and say he should not remain on his farm. Requests for compensation prove quite impossible, for if the complainant cannot indicate the unit to which the offenders belong, his claim cannot be considered. However, if he attempts to obtain the identity of the unit, he is accused of spying and told he has no right to go into such matters. Either way, he cannot win!… It is shocking the way the potato fields have been pilfered by the soldiers. Two farmers have lost the whole crop. A third apprehends a soldier in the process of digging up some potatoes. The latter tells him that he has been sent by his officer. The farmer then seeks out the officer, who admits to this and simply adds, ‘to pay after the war’. All the farmers of Dickebusch who have planted crops this year bitterly regret it.… Fresh troops have arrived on the farm of Cyriel Lamerant and have occupied the last remaining corner of grass, although there was ample space just beyond, where two batteries had just left. Also troops in the meadow of Remi Onraet…. Owing to the large number of horses and soldiers (and an Englishman is not happy with just a few drops), much water is consumed and has now become very scarce, in spite of the numerous basins and wells laid on by the Army.

  The soldiers had their side of the story. Coming out of the line, or coming into the salient after many days’ march on dusty roads, they badly wanted a bath. Hot baths were hard to come by in the salient, but it did not seem to the soldiers that an all-over wash, a shave, a clean-up in cold water ought to be classed as the height of unattainable luxury. Water (of which a little later there would be all too much) in the summer of 1917 was scarce. There had been a low rainfall and the Belgian owners of the wells were anxious to conserve what they had. The Tommies wanted water by the bucket, by the hundred buckets, and a couple of companies could drain a well dry in a scant hour of merry ablutions. So, with what they regarded as simple providence, a substantial number of Belgian farmers chained and padlocked the wells in the yards of their farms.

  The Tommies were livid. They were dirty, they were lousy, they were uncomfortable; furthermore, they were here, in this benighted spot, risking, their lives (or about to risk them) to save ‘plucky little Belgium’. If the ‘plucky little Belgians’ thought they could make a profit by charging them for a few splashes of water, they were very much mistaken. Convinced of the justice of their cause, the troops invariably resolved such disputes by simply shooting away the padlock and helping themselves. The only resort the Belgian farmer then had was to apply to ‘Monsieur le Clams’. The lot of ‘Monsieur le Clams’, as the Belgians referred to the Army Claims Officer, was not an enviable one.

  There were a dozen or so ‘Messieurs le Clams’ in Belgium, usually officers who were also linguists and had, therefore, been allocated the task of mediating between the sitting tenants of the salient and its unenthusiastic defenders.

  Since 1877 it had been laid down by law that any damage done by the British Army in billets should be made good. It was almost impossible not to do damage in billets, for the troops were not only accommodated in camps but in farmhouses, barns, outbuildings and homes the length and breadth of the back areas.

  The sympathy of ‘Monsieur le Clams’ tended to lie with the troops. After all, the civilians were being paid rent by the Army, not just for the billets but for the land which had been
appropriated, and while the rent was not lavish it had been fixed high enough to cover at least some of the incidental and unavoidable damage. Of course, there were Tommies who, lurching back from a jolly post-pay-parade evening at the local estaminet, accidentally broke a bar of a farm gate, or a few window panes. There were Tommies who laid siege to the virtue of young daughters of the house. There was the odd one who felt sure that no one could possibly grudge him a few potatoes, dug up illicitly after dark, to supplement his ration of Maconochie’s stew. There were Tommies who, believing that Madame was charging an extortionate price for the carefully-measured glasses of wine or cider that she would supply on application, awarded themselves their money’s worth by drinking the barrel dry when her back was turned.

  As almost every farmhouse did a brisk trade supplying coffee and fried eggs and chips to the men, and chickens, eggs and cream to the officers, the soldiers were convinced that the Belgians were making a huge profit out of the war. The Belgians themselves, looking gloomily at their spoiled crops, their trampled land, their ever-diminishing shell-pocked acreage of fields, doubtless considered that if they could make a few francs on the side it was no more than their due.

  Day by day, the padre at Dickebusch passed judgement on the behaviour of the troops and recorded the verdict severely in his diary. One thing puzzled him. He could understand the disputes and even, on occasions, see both sides of an argument, but what he couldn’t understand was the meaning of a certain two-syllable word which he heard hourly on the lips of soldiers wherever he met them:

  I have looked it up phonetically in my little English dictionary (fah-ke) and I find, to my surprise, that the word ‘fake’ means ‘false, unreal or not true to life’. Why the soldiers should refer to us in this way is difficult to understand, and yet everywhere one hears them talk of’fake Belgium’ and ‘fake Belgians’.

  Meanwhile, across the length and breadth of the churned-up fields of ‘fake Belgium’, the soldiers worked and trained, grumbled and waited and, off duty, applied themselves to the business of enjoying themselves as best they could.

  Chapter 8

  Those who had a few francs to spare and were fortunate enough to get a pass would make for the nearest village. Even a few centimes to spend in an estaminet would buy a cup of coffee that you could nurse all evening, enjoying the sing-songs and the company. But there were always huddled groups left behind at camp whether they had money or not. They were the card players and the gamblers. Day after day, week after week, month after month, in and out of the line, whenever there was a moment to spare, the card players set up their schools. They played nap and pontoon, whist, bridge, poker and brag. The greasy, dog-eared rectangles of pasteboard were scrutinised, breathed over, dealt and redealt far into the night. The stakes were astronomical, and some lucky players were millionaires several times over. But no one ever expected to be paid. To the card players, the game was the thing. Card playing was officially discouraged; most officers turned a blind eye to it. In any case, the really serious gamblers preferred Crown and Anchor, and that was strictly forbidden.

  Rifleman W. Worrell, No. 6905960 12th Bin., Rifle Brigade

  The Crown and Anchor men were the kings. They were the men who sat with their bottles of vin blanc and treated the people around them. They were the men with the money. We were in bivouacs at Dawson’s Corner, near Elverdinghe, and the 12th Battalion Crown and Anchor king there was a Pioneer Corporal. These blokes were usually chaps who were at Battalion Headquarters. Very few of the fighting troops ran the boards. The troops were there to be mugged. This Pioneer Corporal was a Lancashire man with an immense nose. He had two boards running when we were out of the line, and he would run one himself and he would employ somebody to run another. If one board lost its money, that was shut down immediately. Not that it often happened like that! Now and again we had a lucky streak – but not too often.

  If you were unlucky at Crown and Anchor there was always the chance of winning a franc or so on a louse race, for lice were in plentiful supply. With thousands of men living in close and insanitary proximity, it was almost impossible to avoid becoming infested. ‘Chatting’ was an interminable occupation. All over the salient, in quiet periods, in the trenches and out of them, bare-torsoed soldiers could be seen sitting in the sunshine minutely examining their khaki shirts. The trouble was that the lice laid their eggs in the seams, so that no matter how hard you shook the shirt, no matter how many of the irritating pests you plucked off and cracked on your thumbnail, no matter how meticulously you washed, there was always a new generation ready to hatch out with the heat of your body as soon as you put the shirt back on again. The ‘remedies’ were almost as numerous as the pests themselves. Some soldiers favoured running a lighted candle up the seams, others turned their shirts outside in, in the hope of getting a few minutes’ peace before the lice managed to penetrate to the other side of the coarse material. Disinfectant powder arrived by the hundredweight in parcels from home. Some methods were more drastic.

  Rifleman W. Worrell, No. 6905960 12th Btn., Rifle Brigade

  Every company had a sanitary man, and ours was called Dan. Dan, Dan, the sanitary man. Every sanitary man was called Dan, regardless of what his proper name was. We were in the reserve line at Ypres and it was fine warm weather and we were all very ‘chatty’. Somebody had a brilliant idea. Dan was coming along as he always did with a can of creosote spray on his back, pumping it up and spraying the trenches and making them smell beautifully antiseptic. Why shouldn’t we get our shirts sprayed as well? We wondered that nobody had thought of it before! So we pegged our shirts up and when Dan came along we asked him would he please spray our shirts, thinking that this would kill the nits. The whole of my section had our shirts beautifully sprayed. We left them in the sun to dry off and then later, of course, we had to put them on again, because we were on a carrying party up the line. They were very long, these army shirts, great long tails to them that you tucked well down into your trousers and between your legs.

  Well, off we went on the carrying party at dusk. It was still a very warm evening, although it was dark, and we were carrying loads of wire stakes miles up the duckboards, sweating and straining all the way. It was a lively night for shelling, but it wasn’t the shelling that worried us because, as we sweated, the creosote got into the pores under our arms and in all the tender parts of our bodies. Were we uncomfortable! We were on fire! When we got back, the whole of my section were walking bow-legged with our legs wide apart and our arms held up, we were so very, very sore. We got back to the reserve line and showed our Sergeant. ‘We’ll have to go sick,’ we said. ‘Look at us, blisters here and blisters there. You can’t put a pinhead on us for blisters!’

  We didn’t get a bit of sympathy, and no chance of going sick either! The Sergeant had a good laugh. ‘It serves you right,’ he said, ‘it serves you right for trying to be clean. You ought to be “chatty” like the rest of us.’ And after that we were.

  Lance-Corporal J. Wilson, No. 52764, 12th Btn., Durham Light Infantry

  There were baths at Poperinghe and one or two other places, but with so many troops there it could be weeks before your turn came. So, when we were out of the line, one of our officers thought he’d fix things for us. He got a working party to dig a big hole in a meadow and filled it with water, just two or three inches of water, and we all stripped off and got in naked. Well, we didn’t half jump about! He’d told the orderlies to tip disinfectant into the water. One minute we were sitting down in the ‘bath’ and the next we were all out dancing around like a bunch of naked dervishes. He fixed it all right. He nearly fixed us for good!

  In Poperinghe the sugar refinery had been taken over and the legend delousing station painted on the wall in letters two feet high, and there were also baths in the brewery.

  Rifleman W. Worrell, No. 6905960, 12th Btn., Rifle Brigade

  There were three huge vats in the brewery and between them there were planks. The first vat was full of hot, di
rty, soapy water. The next one had hot water, not quite so dirty. The last one had cold water, fairly clean. You started at one end and you stripped off. You tied your khaki uniform up in a bundle and tied your boots to it and your cap. Your underclothes were taken away to the fumigator. Your khaki was also supposed to go in the fumigator, but it didn’t usually do so. You went up and there were ropes across the vat, so you pulled yourself across on the rope to the other side, climbed out on to the next plank into the next vat, jumped in there, washed the worst of the dirt off, and then into the last vat. When you got out at the other end, you picked up a towel, wiped down and then looked around.‘Where’s my hat?’ It was the only way you could find your own bundle, with your hat and identity disc attached to it. Then you were issued with underclothes. If you were lucky you got some that nearly fitted you, but, of course, I was the wrong size for that and it would always happen to me that I got huge underwear. They were all Long Johns in those days and by the time I’d done them up they were right around my chest, and I’d also have to take about three folds in the bottom of the legs. That would be topped by a vest hanging down below my knees. On the other hand, a fellow who was a six-footer would be issued with a set so small that he could hardly get into it at all, so we had to swop around as best we could. Sometimes the language got pretty fruity. We had some laughs. The odd thing is that you forget the bad times. It’s the happy memories, the silly things that stick with you – like prancing about in that ridiculous underwear.

  Poperinghe was the Metropolis – the nearest thing to the bright lights that the blacked-out salient offered, and to the troops it seemed to offer everything. Affectionately they called it ‘Pop’. Admittedly the long-range shells did fall there, but they fell mostly around the station, often just when troop trains were arriving or leaving. Irregular though the trains were, you could almost believe that Jerry had a time-table and sent his shells over accordingly. Sometimes a stray would fall on the town, but this did not happen often enough to scare away either the civilian population or the soldiers who flocked along the streets enjoying the varied delights of ‘Pop’.