1915: The Death of Innocence

by Lyn Macdonald

  The Battalion was being toughened up, and if route-marching was not to the men’s taste rifle-practice was another matter, and the new short Lee Enfield rifles were a vast improvement on the wooden weapons they had toted for almost ten months. They were heavy to carry on the march and not many of their owners were more than half proficient in using them but they were still a novelty. Marching along the rough country roads with their new rifles on their shoulders they felt like soldiers at last although there was no word of their going to the front. ‘We may train here for a month or two I hear,’ wrote Captain Pole, ‘route-marching, bomb-throwing, machine-gunning, etc’ Only if they listened very carefully when the wind was in the right direction could they hear the sound of the guns.

  The guns were never silent but although machine-gun bullets frequently came ripping over the trenches from the other side of No Man’s Land and snipers in concealed positions were lying in wait for the unwary, apart from an occasional flurry of shots when there was real or imagined cause for alarm, the eight miles of trench-line that stretched from Aubers Ridge across the coalfields around Loos and Lens was reasonably quiet. It was so quiet that one German sniper amused himself for several days in idle moments by training his rifle on the wall of a ruined cottage near the British front-line trench and ‘carving’ a cross in the bricks. It took shape over the course of several days and the soldiers of the Post Office Rifles whose trench ran through the cottage garden rather admired his artistry. It was chalky country and the deep chalk walls of the trenches were a positive invitation to bored Tommies manning the support lines and it was not long before the trench walls were covered with graffiti. There were cartoons: ‘Know Your Enemy’ was a favourite caption, usually under a lampoon laboriously carved out with a jack-knife, and representing some well-known pacifist hanging from a gallows; rough but recognisable. One trench displayed a show-piece that must have taken some patient earth-dweller many hours to carve. It had obviously been copied from the kind of picture post-card which was popular at home and were posted by the thousand to Tommies at the front. It showed a country cottage with roses round the door and a mesh of fine lines to indicate its thatched roof. There was a garden too, with a postman standing at the gate and an old lady rushing down the path to meet him. The outlines stood out boldly in charcoal and the carved caption read ‘A letter from Tommy’. But most offerings were less ambitious and the troops generally confined themselves to written slogans or lines of doggerel inscribed with a combination of indelible pencil and spit. ‘I have no pain, dear Mother, but blimey I am dry, so take me to a brewery and leave me there to die.’ Sometimes they were disgruntled – ‘A loaf in the trench is worth ten at the base’ – and some leaned towards romance with hearts and arrows and mysterious initials. There were also solitary arrows, usually pointing in an easterly direction and confidently announcing To Berlin’.

  From a military point of view the chalky ground put the Army at a considerable disadvantage for although the permanent trenches could be reasonably well camouflaged by sandbagged parapets the new trenches could not, and as the Army prepared for the coming battle the long lines of glistening white chalk in full view of the Germans were impossible to miss. Night after night the working parties went out digging. They dug assembly trenches behind the lines, they dug communication trenches, they dug saps that poked into No Man’s Land and they dug trenches in No Man’s Land itself. In the ten nights before the battle they dug twelve thousand yards of them. The Germans would have been blind if they had not realised that a major attack would soon be launched.

  Lt. A. Waterlow, 19th (County of London) Bn. (St Pancras), 5 London Brig., 47 (London) Div.

  Our job was a somewhat ticklish one. The whole battalion was to go up to the front line armed with picks and shovels, file out along the various saps which had been extended out into No Man’s Land and spread out along a line about two hundred and fifty yards in front of our front line, where patrols usually only crawled about on their stomachs. We were then to dig a new front line, which would be previously marked out in white tape by the Royal Engineers. It was to run from slightly in front of our present front line at the Béthune-Lens main road (where the British and Boche trenches were closest together) in a straight line to meet our present front line in front of South Maroc, so straightening out two re-entrants, taking in a considerable area of No Man’s Land and making a convenient jumping-off trench for the coming attack. We had instructions to carry on with the digging, no matter how heavy the casualties might be. They were expected to be fairly heavy because the London Irish had been digging the new line in front of the right-hand part of the sector on the previous night and, with the new trench running in a straight line and suddenly ending ‘in the air’, it should have been obvious to the Boche during the day what our game was and to get the exact range of the new line and have us taped at night.

  When the time came we filed out of the sap-heads like mice and spread out along the taped line. Every man had to take the utmost care not to jangle the picks and shovels against one another or against his equipment. Any slight noise might give us all away, and if the Boches chose to turn a machine-gun on to us they could have practically wiped us out. We were simply a line of men spread out across No Man’s Land with absolutely no cover. The men with the picks got to work at once, while the men with shovels lay at full length on the ground, with the shovel blade in front of them to protect their heads until their turn came. Never have I seen men dig at such a rate! They seemed to be two feet deep in no time.

  The policy was for each pair of men to dig a hole to give them both as much shelter as possible and, when this was the required depth, to join up the various holes into one continuous line of bays and traverses. By a marvellous piece of good fortune we only had desultory rifle fire from the Boches, in spite of the fact that they were sending up Very lights regularly which seemed to light us all up so plainly that we could not fail to be observed. In fact it gave one the impression of standing naked and unable to take cover in front of a vast throng of people. But it was two hours before they sent any shells over and by that time the men had dug some cover for themselves. We got a few salvoes at intervals but altogether only two men were wounded. The Boche knew where we were right enough, for all the shells landed only a few feet behind the new line we were digging, so that it passes comprehension of the Boche mentality why he did not turn on a machine-gun or even rifle fire, when he definitely knew that we were there! Our artillery had been given instructions to retaliate with compound interest on the Boche trenches if we got shelled at all but their reply was somewhat feeble. I heard they got ‘strafed’ by the higher powers.

  Dug-outs were being constructed as far forward as possible and although that was a specialised job for the Royal Engineers, hapless working parties of infantrymen were pressed into service to supply the unskilled labour.

  Cpl. F. Moylan.

  They wanted to reinforce a new big dug-out for Advanced Brigade Headquarters for this coming push so that Brigade Headquarters would be nearer up. There was a big cutting and there was a railway in it connected up with a coal mine, and the Engineers took those railway lines and loosened them and we carried them up. God! That was a working party! I forget now whether it was a hundred men, but it was a hell of a lot. We had to pad our shoulders with sandbags. How we lifted those rails on to our shoulders in the dark I don’t know! It took about twenty men to carry one rail. It was a hell of a job. Then you’d go back over this crossing and down into the communication trench.

  I was in 11 Platoon and my Platoon Officer, Lieutenant Flower, was in charge. Flower was a very nice chap because I broke a double tooth on an army biscuit when this railway business was going on and it gave me hell, and Flower sent me up to the Regimental Aid Post which was half-way down the communication trench, in a bit of a dug-out. The Medical Officer, Dr Bell, was there and the Medical Sergeant, Gilder. He’d got some empty bully-beef boxes there so he sat me on one and I remember Sergeant Gilder holding my sh
oulders and the MO – he’d got no anaesthetic or anything! – he just took my double tooth out. It was very painful and he said, ‘I’m not sending you back up the line; you get on a stretcher and have a night’s rest here.’ And I did, and Lieutenant Flower let me take it easy when I got back.

  It was peculiar because the same thing happened when I was a prisoner. I broke a double tooth on the opposite side. But there it was a civilian German dentist, who laughed and said, ‘I’m not going to give you an anaesthetic because I haven’t got one. If you want one write to Lloyd George and tell him to take off the blockade.’ That was in 1918. No sympathy then! But Flower was very kind to me the first time, just before Loos. He let me off the working party and that was one good thing anyway.

  Night after night the unfortunate troops who were out of the line in reserve or on supposed rest were marched off as soon as darkness fell to navvy through the night. But there were some compensations. After they woke from a long lie-in there was quite often the luxury of a bath parade to scour off the dirt of the night, for with so many mines in the area the men had more chance of a bath, and the pithead baths were equipped with hot water and real showers and the mine owners were happy to oblige the Army with the use of their facilities. There was a hot meal at mid-day and, since men told off for a working party were excused other drills and fatigues when a battalion was at rest, they had a few hours’ spare time before they had to parade to set off for the night’s work. With luck there might be a football match.

  The inter-battalion football matches of the 15th Scottish Division always drew a crowd, not only because their footballers were good but because fierce regimental rivalry guaranteed a lively game. The supporters were nothing if not partisan but the banter and insults they freely exchanged would have mystified a civilian football fan, for their origins lay deep in the mists of military history. They also baffled Kitchener’s Army. Few of them had the faintest idea why they were bellowing ‘HLI! HLI!’ – obligatory if a team which looked like winning narrowly kicked the ball over the touchline in the last minutes of the match – but bellow it they did. None but Regulars – and ancient ones at that! – could possibly have been present at the long-ago final of the Army Soccer Championship in India when the Highland Light Infantry maintained their lead and won the championship by this unsporting tactic. But the most thrilling matches were between any battalion of the Black Watch and any battalion of the Gordon Highlanders. The battalions of the Black Watch now in the 15th and 9th Divisions were service battalions. No member of either had been in France for more than four months, yet any doubtful move on the football field which remotely resembled a foul immediately brought down a bombardment of yells of ‘Kaiser’s bodyguard, you bastards. Kaiser’s bodyguard’, which was a reference to an unfortunate incident which befell the Black Watch at Mons. This insult invariably brought down howls of retaliation from the supporters of the Gordons: ‘Wha took the bite oot o’ yer spats?’ Not one man in a hundred was aware that this calumny referred to a long-ago battle against charging Dervishes when the military ancestors of the Black Watch had broken their square and caused the regiment to be disgraced in perpetuity by having a V-shaped incision in their spats. Not that anyone was wearing spats at the front, but this was a point of small importance and often the shindigs among rival supporters carried on for some time after the final whistle blew. But the Military Police were never far away, and the crowds were generally well behaved. The football fans had picked up a new slogan that incorporated their immediate ambition as well as their favourite pastime and it was frequently chanted at half-time. ‘Kaiser Bill we’re going to kill, I bet our score is twelve to nil.’

  Young Bill Worrell was also helping to prepare for the projected ‘killing’ of the Kaiser and he was not enjoying himself.

  Rfn. W. Worrell.

  In the line at Laventie, a number of us were sent for to go back to Battalion HQ. I went back in fear and trembling because I’d been in all sorts of trouble in my time, but I couldn’t imagine what I’d done. Anyhow, when I got back I was asked would I like to take a little job for just a few days. All I should have to do would be four hours’ duty a day. The rest of the time I’d be off and I’d be in the reserve – no trench work, no trench duties, no carrying parties. Well of course, when you had an offer like that the answer’s ‘Certainly!’ Well we moved up, then looking round I saw that the others were just as skinny as I was – I weighed 7 stone 6 pounds in those days, and they were all about the same size as me. There were six of us and we were told, ‘Righto, strip off here. Just keep your trousers on.’ We were wondering what on earth it was all about. Then we went into this sap. We were mining across to put a mine under the German trench in readiness for 25 September, you see. And we got in there, spaced out – there was hardly room to get in – you could just about get in and just sit down. And there we were a few feet back from the Welsh miner who was working on the face digging out, with a listener with him, filling up sandbags with earth as he cut it back, and we had to pass them along and carry them out. It was awfully hot and it was a good thing they told us to strip off because we were perspiring profusely. Four hours of that was a very hard day’s work. That was the only time I ever had anything to do with mining, and I wouldn’t want to do any more of it!

  The men who had volunteered to join the special gas brigades were even more fed up, for their job was no picnic and they failed to see how by any stretch of the imagination a ‘special knowledge of chemistry’ was of the slightest assistance in doing it. Muscle power would have been much more to the point for it seemed that the main requirement was for labour and it was no light task to unload the heavy gas cylinders from the trains at the railhead at Gorre and heave them on to the wagons that would take them to dumps behind the line. The only part of the job that demanded any degree of expertise was the task of unscrewing the boxes and removing the cylinders in order to loosen their dome covers with a long spanner so that the cylinders were ready for action and the gas could be speedily released. This was done on the station platform. It was perfectly safe and there was no possibility of any leakage, but this was not the view of one panicky senior staff officer who came to inspect their progress. He ordered them to stop doing it forthwith. There was no officer of the Royal Engineers of sufficient seniority to argue or to point out the difficulties of opening tightly screwed boxes and undoing the stiff tops of cylinders in trenches in the dark. The General had spoken, there was no more to be said and from then on the weighty boxes were carried straight from the train to the wagons.

  The wagon wheels were muffled, and even the hooves of the horses were thrust into partly filled sandbags so that the rumble of wheels and the sound of hooves striking the stone pavé of the roads would not be heard. Sound carried long distances at night, and well the infantry of the working parties knew it as they tramped cautiously humping the heavy gas cylinders from the dumps to the trenches. The cylinders themselves weighed sixty pounds and each contained another sixty pounds of liquid gas. With frequent and necessary halts to rest, it took two men carrying one between them as much as four hours to cover a mile and a half to the front line. They also had to carry other equipment – the seven-foot-long connecting pipes, the ten-foot parapet pipes that would carry the gas well away from the trench to drift towards the German lines and, in case something went wrong, the Vermorel sprayers to be placed at intervals along the trenches to clear them of gas if the need arose.

  It was not easy to carry the long pipes through narrow trenches and round traverses but somehow it was accomplished. By 20 September all the cylinders had been carried to the front line and installed by the Royal Engineers in specially dug emplacements, well sandbagged for protection. It had taken many hours of labour and much cursing and swearing to undo the tight domeheads which might easily have been untightened at Gorre. The special gas squads were in charge now and it would be their job to discharge the gas when the moment came. In the course of gas-mask drill officers passed on to the infantry some r
udimentary instruction on the effect of gas which they themselves had gleaned sketchily from demonstrations. In the weeks before the battle company officers were sent off in batches for instruction.

  Capt. W. G. Bagot-Chester, MC.

  Sept. 5. Today being a holiday, Company Commanders had to go to St Omer to see how to kill our fellow creature with gas. So four of us and some from other regiments started off in a motor bus at 8.45 a.m., arriving at the place of demonstration at 12 noon, where we were taken on to a heath where the gas apparatus had been prepared in a trench. Two cylinders were emptied for our benefit, and several smoke cartridges lit which gave forth volumes of smoke. After lunch in St Omer we started back at 4 p.m., and our driver took us hell for leather back, so that we took in returning about half the time as on our way onward previously.

  Walter Bagot-Chester’s ‘holiday’ had ended more happily than Lieutenant Waterlow’s. Several days later he was still suffering the effects.

  Lt A. Waterlow.

  I had instructions to attend a lecture on gas at Houchin in the afternoon and so I borrowed from battalion HQ one of the signaller’s bikes, which was a great deal too small for me, and made my way back through Noeux-les-Mines, past the bombing school on its western outskirts – where live bombs were bursting perilously near to the road – to the practice trenches at Houchin where the gas lecture took place. There was a large gathering there, including General Barter and members of his staff. After the lecture we all had to pass through the gas. They had a cylinder of gas on the edge of one of the trenches, hissing it out in our faces as we passed along the trench in single file. We only had the plain helmets on, with the piece of mica for a window, and my helmet was by no means gas proof. After getting a whiff of it which made me cough, I held my breath, but the queue in front was very slow in moving and I got held up with the cylinder blowing the stuff right into my face! But I wasn’t chancing a second breath of it, so my lungs were nearly bursting when eventually I got clear. General Barter carefully tied a gaily coloured silk handkerchief round his head before donning his helmet – a mirth-provoking sight.