1915: The Death of Innocence

by Lyn Macdonald

  In the first chill light of Christmas morning the guns boomed out.

  Cpl. D. A. Pankhurst, Royal Field Artillery, 56 Div.

  We hailed the smiling morn with five rounds fired fast, and we kept up slow fire all day. Those were our orders. Some batteries sent over as many as three hundred shells. It was a Christmas present to Fritz, they said. But I do believe myself that it was intended to discourage fraternising.

  The 7th Green Howards did not parade until ten o’clock on Christmas morning, and they richly deserved a lie-in for the whole battalion had been out until the early hours working in the rain and the dark filling sandbags with liquid mud and had returned dead beat and chilled to the marrow. A rum ration on their return and a hot breakfast when they woke up restored their spirits and they looked forward to a lazy day with a few festivities to enliven it. Later the Chaplain came over to hold a Christmas carol service in a field near the camp – the third he had conducted that morning – and it was lustily enjoyed by everyone but the Sergeant-Major. There was no music, but the Sergeant-Major was the proud possessor of a fine tenor voice and he volunteered to act as precentor and lead the singing. It was very cold so the service was a short one, but there was time for a number of old favourites before disaster struck. The Colonel saw it coming.

  Lt. Col. R. Fife, DSO, 7th Bn., Green Howards.

  It went pretty well until the Sergeant-Major started the hymn, ‘Once in Royal David’s City’, to the tune of ‘Hark, the Herald Angels’. I saw the awful pitfall yawning at the end of the first verse – and so did the Sergeant-Major when it was too late. The cold beads broke out on his brow. When the last two lines of the verse had been sung and the tune required them to be sung again, there was a brave effort, but it failed, and for the remaining verses the congregation sang any tune each happened to know, with remarkable effect!

  We celebrate the glad Yule Tide by moving this evening to the ramparts for three days’ cave life before returning to the trenches, also by getting no letters, parcels or newspapers for days.

  The fact that it was Christmas scarcely disturbed the routine business of the war. It was a ‘normal’ day in the trenches, with the normal amount of sniping and shelling, but the ‘normal’ casualties that were usually accepted with stoic resignation seemed especially poignant in the season of peace on earth and goodwill to men.

  2nd Lt. W. Cushing.

  Private Wilkerson was killed on Christmas Day. A shell fragment severed the femoral artery. Stretcher-bearers attempted to deal with this mortal wound by using a tourniquet but this caused the poor chap pain, and the MO told us on the field telephone to remove it and let him die in peace. Only immediate surgical intervention could have saved him and that was impossible. All the same, the MO was about to risk his own life by coming to us across the open – there were no communications trenches left – but the C.O. ordered him to stay where he was at battalion HQ. It was just as well. We couldn’t afford to lose a Medical Officer in a fruitless effort to save life. He couldn’t possibly have arrived in time.

  The soldiers who were out of danger and lucky enough to be out of the line and off duty kept Christmas as far as possible in traditional style. Regimental funds had been ransacked and in many battalions they were subsidised by officers to ensure that the Tommies had a good Christmas dinner. Turkeys were scarce and only for the fortunate few, but pigs were slaughtered wholesale and they were more than happy with roast pork. There were nuts and sweets and apples and almost a surfeit of plum pudding. So many had been sent by public benefactors as well as families and friends that some soldiers were eating them for days. In some quiet sectors quarter-masters even managed to send Christmas pudding with the rations to the trenches (one actually managed brandy butter) and even if it was none too warm and a touch dry without the traditional custard sauce, there was rum at hand to set it alight – and a sergeant-major might be sufficiently moved by the Christmas spirit to issue enough of it to flame each individual portion.

  Even cold Christmas pudding would have been welcomed by the 6th South Staffs, munching the eternal bully beef and washing it down with water in a train chugging towards Marseilles. Conversation was desultory for they had speculated on their ultimate destination until there was no more to be said and most of them were thinking back rather than looking forward. Occasionally someone would say, ‘Remember this time last year?’ How could they forget it! Last year at Saffron Walden they had wined and dined like kings, for due to a fortunate accident, the battalion had received a double allocation of turkeys. The birds ordered by the comforts fund were delayed in transit and were finally delivered on Christmas Eve just as the quartermaster returned from Smithfield Market with a fresh consignment to replace them. Seated on the floor of the railway wagons, jolting and shuddering to the south, they thought longingly of Christmas past.

  The soldiers nearing the end of their training at home were having a whale of a time.

  Pte. J. Bowles, 2/16th Queen’s Westminster Rifles.

  Our grand dinner came off at four o’clock. And it was a spread too! Turkey and ham, sprouts and potatoes. Christmas pudding of first-class quality – beer, ginger beer, and port wine ad lib, oranges, nuts, bananas and smokes – and all provided by the Colonel. It was a glorious feast and one that I shall never forget. The King’s Christmas greeting was then read and we all drank his health amidst a terrific din. Then the Brigadier spoke a few words, and told us what the future held in store for us. He himself was going to France on Tuesday with the Colonels of our Brigade to learn a little of the work we should soon be called upon to undertake. On their return we were going off –probably to Salisbury Plain for a few weeks’ final training, and then off for France. The cheering when he told us we were going was enough to loosen the rafters. He paid very high tribute to our Brigade, and although I am in it myself and perhaps should not say so, I do not think that any finer body of men exists. The pity of it is that men of such physique and training should go to this human slaughter-house, and leave beneath the soil of France the product of so many years of toil. Is what they are fighting for worth it? I’m sure the answer is yes.

  The Brigadier left amid cheers, and we set to work upon the remaining turkey. Beer was brought round in buckets and some drank more than was good for them and consequently there was a great deal of merriment. One fellow, noted for his camel-like propensities, was about full when he started, and before dinner was over, he insisted on standing on the table and making a speech. He was not very firm on his feet and several times subsided into the arms of those sitting near him. When he did get up he was met with a regular fusillade of bread, potatoes and bones, but somehow they all missed him and did damage to the innocent. His speech was not a success, but he caused great sport.

  Not being fond of beer, I specialised in port. To one unused to it, port plays havoc and for the rest of the evening I was quite happy. After dinner we had a concert given entirely by our own fellows and it was jolly good. I left at nine o’clock and spent the rest of the night at the billet where we again made merry.

  There was another concert many hundreds of miles away in the heart of Germany at the prisoner of war camp where Harry Crask had been imprisoned since his capture on the Westhoek Ridge on 8 May. Christmas there was an abstemious affair but, with the help of Red Cross parcels and many parcels from home, there was plenty to eat and even a few luxuries, for the five shilling parcels that relatives were able to send through the good offices of the Daily Mail contained plum cake and sardines and potted meat and chocolate, as well as tea, milk powder and sixty cigarettes. A few braver souls had attempted to make a vicious alcoholic brew from fermented potato peelings, others had managed to bribe a guard to smuggle in a bottle or two of beer, but most were content to munch on chocolate as they watched the entertainment and the mess hall was thick with the fumes of precious cigarettes recklessly chain-smoked in honour of Christmas. It was a good concert and it was a pleasant break in the frustrating monotony of life as a prisoner in Germany. />
  Life as a prisoner in Holland where a brigade of the Royal Naval Division was interned was hardly less monotonous, but in the camp at Groeningen they did better than prisoners in Germany. The Dutch were more kindly, food was more plentiful and there was no shortage of beer on Christmas Day. News was still scarce for Holland was meticulous in observing the rules of neutrality and there was strict censorship, but Arthus Agius had found a way of getting round it. He was spending his own Christmas on a Greek island, having arrived on Gallipoli as a newly commissioned officer of the Royal Naval Division just in time for the evacuation, but before his departure he had organised a dinner in London for sixteen escapees from Groeningen. There was an embargo on news of those who had succeeded in reaching home, but the Dutch authorities had not thought to censor a formal report of the dinner which Agius sent to the editor of the camp magazine. It appeared in the Christmas edition and, since it concluded with a list of the guests who attended the ‘escapees dinner’, it was of great interest to the men who were left behind.

  In Great Britain, since Christmas Day happened to fall on Saturday, Boxing Day was officially postponed until Monday. On Sunday it was business as usual, and business as usual meant Church Parade. The Padre had recently returned from the front, where volunteer clergymen often did a three-month stint, and he undoubtedly meant well, but although the topic he chose for his address was close to his own heart it did not do much for soldiers on the point of embarking for France.

  Pte. J. Bowles.

  He was a cheerful brute. He told us of the sufferings of the wounded, and the administering of the last sacrament. He went on to show us how difficult a task he had when men who were past all earthly aid were brought to him and confessed that they were not communicants. He was in a painful position and was seeking a solution from a higher source. He also spoke of men too ill to receive the sacrament. What could he do for them? In the Epistle of St James he has discovered that the pouring of oil on the heads of the sick would cleanse them of their sins. It would make them await death without fear, and would give them strength to withstand pain. Such a thing had not been done yet, but would the men think it over, and then when the time came they would know what to ask of the priest who attended them, or know the meaning of it if it were done without their being able to ask for it.

  I wonder what Christ thinks of it all, and whether his death has accomplished all he thought it would accomplish. But I am wading out of my depth so will return to things of the moment. One of them is – dinner today. Our landlady has given us a pressing invitation to dinner, so we are getting off dinner parade and going to enjoy Christmas dinner number two.

  The Boxing Day festivities and the hospitality of more than one generous landlady quickly dissipated the gloom cast by the sermon of the day before. Everyone was determined to give the Tommies a good time on their last Christmas, before they went off to the front, and even more anxious to spoil the thousands of men in hospitals who had come back maimed or wounded.

  In the War Hospital at Epsom Bill Worrell had difficulty in eating his Christmas dinner. He had lost most of his teeth and those that remained were so damaged that as soon as his jaw healed and he was able to ‘open wide’ they would have to come out. Meanwhile a kindly nurse minced his share of the turkey and mixed it into a slop with gravy and mashed potato. He was able to eat a good deal of it and when the pudding came round he was given a taste of the brandy sauce with a jelly set in a cup to give it the shape of a small Christmas pudding. Someone had popped a sprig of holly on top and Sister herself brought him a glass of champagne.

  Every wounded soldier found a stocking at the foot of his bed, which the nurses had filled with sweets, cigarettes, even small toys, purchased from the hospital comforts fund. There was a bottle of beer or stout for each man to drink with his Christmas dinner, and sometimes a glass of wine. Hospitals were showered with gifts of claret and port and champagne, often by the case, and although strictly speaking they were intended for medicinal purposes to build up the strength of the most feeble invalids, in the glow of the festive spirit all but the starchiest of matrons generally decreed that all the patients should be given a Christmas drink. Every ward was decorated, every ward had its Christmas tree, often groaning under the weight of gifts sent by local civilians. There were seldom personal visitors, for not many soldiers were lucky enough to be sent to a hospital near their homes, but the locals came in droves. Carol singers toured the wards, there were lavish teas with Christmas cake and cream buns provided by generous bakery shops, there were concerts got up by school children and plays performed by amateur dramatic societies, there were games and sing-songs. A good time was had by all – except in wards where celebration was necessarily low-key and the nurses serving the turkey placed the plates in front of their patients with particular care, for men stunned by shell-shock would start at the slightest noise. They too had their Christmas tree and presents, but the worst cases lying dumb or staring blankly at the wall paid no attention.

  There had been over a quarter of a million casualties on the western front alone and for every two men who had been wounded, one was killed or reported missing (which amounted in most.instances to much the same thing). There were half as many again in Gallipoli. In the streets of Edinburgh and Oldham, Toronto and Montreal, Sidney and Melbourne, black ties, black armbands and the sweeping black garb of sad women were becoming a common-place sight. It had been a bad year, and as it drew to a close everyone was sadder. Some were wiser.

  A letter from Lord Sydenham was published prominently in The Times and if its message hardly rated applause in Government circles it struck a chord in the minds of many others.

  The immense efforts and sacrifices of the Allies have not been in vain, and must tell heavily in the coming year.

  It is when we reflect upon the conduct of the war in all its branches that we find subject for regret and lessons to be learned. We were forced into conflict, not only with armed nations, but with the most powerful machine of government that the world has ever known. Government had become dependent upon the electorate, which was not interested in preparations for war. We had none of the memories which crowded darkly upon the French nation in August, 1914, and served to unloose a flood of burning patriotism by which France was transfigured. The British people, when at length ‘the day’ dawned, had the direst need of leadership and found it not. To political conditions, methods, and habits of thought we owe the mistakes and the delays, the wavering and the incertitude which have marked the conduct of affairs in the greatest crisis the country has ever known.

  Decisions waited until outside pressure was brought to bear, and the coordination of the work of departments accustomed to independence was slowly and imperfectly effected. Even in the case of far-reaching military operations, our methods of arriving at conclusions, judging from the revelations made public, were ill-conceived and unlikely to result in wise counsels.

  The main sources of past weakness are plain, and they can be removed if we earnestly undertake the task. For the whole nation there is only one object, compared with which all others are trivial and irrelevant. For the sake of the many thousands of gallant lives that have fallen, and of the bitter sorrows and suffering that remains, we must enter on the New Year with resolutions strongly forged in the fierce fires of war. Heavy sacrifices have come to us in 1915, but also inspiring memories of devotion, cheerful endurance, and true patriotism. If only real organised methods are forthcoming in 1916, we and our true Allies, in growing strength, may fight on with calm confidence ‘until the day break and the shadows flee away’ in the light of victory and peace.

  Hard questions were beginning to be asked and it was not always easy to come up with the answers.

  Questions were also being asked in France and, of all people, Lord Cavan was on the mat. GHQ was up in arms. In defiance of the stern edict which forbade any contact with the enemy, fraternisation had occurred and it was the Guards themselves who had flouted the order. Only a few guardsmen le
ft the trenches and in less than forty minutes a horrified senior officer ordered the soldiers back. The junior officer who condoned the meeting in No Man’s Land was sent home in disgrace, Lord Cavan grovelled in apology, but still First Army headquarters thundered its determination to get the to bottom of the sorry episode and threatened dire retribution.

  URGENT

  = = = = = =

  Headquarters,

  Xlth Corps.

  1st Army No. C/497. 28/12/15

  1. With reference to your C/197, dated 10.15 p.m. 26/12/15, regarding the fraternising with the enemy on Xmas day, will you please forward at once, for the information of the Army Commander, evidence on the following points:

  (a) (i) What exactly were the orders issued by Lord Cavan?

  (a) (ii) How were they made known to the Brigades?

  (b) (i) What exactly were the orders issued by the Brigadiers of the 2nd and 3rd Guards Brigades?

  (b) (ii) How were they made known to the Battalions?

  (c) (i) What exactly were the orders issued by the Officers Commanding 1st Scots Guards, 2nd Scots Guards, and 1st Coldstream Guards?

  (c) (ii) How were they made known to the Companies and by them to the men?