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by Jon E. Lewis

  A draft of returned wounded men joined us and we left Nieppe to take up a position in front of Ploegsteert Wood. We spent the winter there doing good work, barbed wiring, and strengthening the position. The First Battle of Ypres was raging on our left. Four days front line, four reserve, and four in billets, until in April 1915 we were pitched into that awful hell, Ypres, when the battalion was wiped out time after time.

  I lasted until Arras 1917, the only real victory I saw, when I received a longed-for Blighty one and got discharged.

  Private R. G. Hill. Went to France on August 22nd, 1914, with the 1st Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regt., in the 10th Brigade of the 4th Division. Except for a few days in hospital in 1915, he served with this battalion until April 11th, 1917, when he was wounded in the face, and was discharged medically unfit in March 1918. In Action at Le Cateau, Marne, Aisne, Meteren (a little-known, but gallant fight), Armentières, Ploegsteert, Ypres (1915), the Somme, and Arras (1917).

  THE FIRST BATTLE OF YPRES

  October 1914

  J. F. Bell

  I bade farewell to my right leg, and to my career as a soldier, outside a trench at Gheluvelt, near Ypres, on October 29th, 1914. In the First Battle of Ypres the British were outnumbered by seven to one. On the previous evening we took over trenches – not deep or elaborate ones – from an English regiment. I cannot say which regiment we relieved. Our sergeant on entering the trench heard the last man, as he was doing a hurried exit, say, ‘So long, Jock – not ‘arf a nice place, Jack Johnson all bleeding day.’

  On that night there was no sleep, as we had to dig and dig to improve the trench, and were being fired at all night. At 5 a.m. a group of us were standing in the open – everything had turned peaceful – admiring our now almost perfect trench when hell seemed let loose. All the guns in Flanders seemed to have suddenly concentrated on our particular sector of the British front. When the artillery fire subsided, Germans sprang from everywhere and attacked us. My platoon held fast; we lost some good comrades. Then we were ordered to evacuate the trench, and assist to hold a trench on the flank where the fighting was fiercest. I was a sergeant, and was told to take and hold a certain part of the trench where the occupants had just been driven out. On rushing the trench, and leaping into it, 1 found that the dead were lying three deep in it. After taking bearings, I told the men to keep under cover and detailed one man, Ginger Bain, as ‘look out.’ After what seemed ages Ginger excitedly asked, ‘How strong is the German army?’ I replied, ‘Seven million.’ ‘Well,’ said Ginger, ‘here is the whole bloody lot of them making for us.’

  We were driven from the trench, and those of us who were unscathed joined Lieutenant Brook, who had come up with cooks, transport men, and men who had been wounded but could still use a rifle. Lieutenant Brook was (outwardly) quite unperturbed, walking about the firing line issuing orders as if on the barrack square. I had served under him for nine years, and seeing him such a target for the enemy riflemen, I asked him to lie down as I felt if he was hit his loss at that particular time would be disastrous. He told me we must retake the trench I had been, driven from, and to pick twenty men to do so. All the men were alike to me – men I had known for years – so I told ten men on my right and ten on my left to get ready to rush the trench. We succeeded in this. No artist or poet can depict a trench after fighting in its stark hellishness.

  If we could not be driven out of the trench, it seemed certain that we would be blown out of it. Shells kept landing near enough in front of or behind the trench to shake us almost out of it. Many got killed by rifle-fire, Ginger Bain being the first, then Big Bruce whom I boxed in a competition before going to France. I passed a message to Lieutenant Brook, informing him our numbers were so reduced that if attacked we could not hold the trench, and received back word that he had just been killed. (The V.C. was posthumously awarded him.) A message was then sent to me to retire and join a platoon entrenched near us. I gave instructions to the few men (eight I think) to retire along the communication trench, and I would join them at the head of it, and lead them to our new position. I slipped over the rear of the trench, to cut across and meet the lads as they emerged from the communication trench, but had only gone about six yards when I received what in the regiment was called the ‘dull thud.’ I thought I had been violently knocked on the head, but, feeling I was not running properly, I looked down and discovered that my right foot was missing. Somehow, I stood watching men running along the communication trench. My power of speech had left me, so I could speak to none of them, then I swooned into the trench. No one had seen me being wounded, but one of the men, ‘Pipe’ Adams, on missing me, returned to look for me.

  On seeing me lying quite helpless, he prepared to lift and carry me out of the trench. I told him I was too heavy: that it was too dangerous, and that in time our regiment would retake all the ground lost, when I would be safe. When I think of the War comradeship, of unaffected and unknown bravery, I think of ‘Pipe’ Adams (killed later) telling me, ‘Christ, Jerry [my nickname], I could not leave you here.’ However, confident that our people would return, I persuaded him to go. I then put a field dressing and a shirt from my pack over my stump and lay down to wait further developments. In this trench there would be about sixty badly wounded British soldiers (mostly Gordons) of all ranks. The soldier nearest me was a sergeant of the Grenadiers who was severely wounded in both arms and both legs. I noticed a watch quite close to me; on looking at it I found the time was 9 a.m.

  I must have dropped into a kind of stupor, and I woke suddenly with the noise of great shouting. I thought it was our fellows returned to their old position, imagined I heard voices I knew, also that of my company officer, Captain Burnett, shouting, ‘Where are you, Sergeant Bell?’ I tried to rise, failed, but kept shouting, ‘Here I am, in this trench, sir.’ Judge my surprise when two German infantrymen jumped into the trench. One of them got quite excited, raised his rifle, levelled at and within a yard of me, but the other knocked his mate’s rifle up and asked me when and where I was wounded. I asked them to try and do something for the wounded Grenadier, but they seemed in great haste as they jumped out of the trench. It was then twelve noon. So ended one morning in Flanders.

  I pass over the afternoon with its incessant artillery fire, and the long night. There were periods of heavy gun fire, periods of silence, periods when all the wounded – those still alive – were shouting for stretcher bearers, praying for death, moaning noisily and quietly with pain. Strange the thoughts that pass through one under such circumstances. I thought of a great-grandfather of mine who fought in the Peninsular War, and was badly wounded at the Battle of Waterloo. Then I would think of a picture I once saw of a trench during the Balkan War. I had considered the picture was overdrawn, and now I knew that it was not horrible enough for the real thing.

  The Germans had taken a lot of ground, were busily consolidating their new position, and all morning (the 30th) groups of them and individuals kept looking into the trench.

  Two German officers slowly and quietly walked along the trench, and when they saw me still alive they appeared greatly surprised. Each of them spoke to me in English, enquiring how long I had been lying there. They informed me that there were fifty-seven of my comrades dead in the trench, and that I was one of three still alive. One of them promised to send someone to pick me up, but I had doubts about him doing so. However, about an hour later, four German private soldiers arrived, bringing a waterproof sheet to carry me off.

  They gave me a drink of cold coffee, and when I pointed out the Grenadier, one of them went back into the trench and gave the Grenadier a drink and made him comfortable before rejoining us. One of the Germans could speak English, and in his deep-spoken voice said, ‘Ah! Scotlander, you lucky man. Get out of this damned war. It last long time. What we fight for? Ah! German Army and English Navy, both damned nuisance.’ They carried me with great care to a barn about half a mile away that was being used as a dressing station. All the way from the trench to
the barn I saw British dead, mostly Highlanders – Black Watch, Camerons, and Gordons – and as they lay there in their uniforms, I thought how young and lonely they looked.

  My arrival at the barn caused a mild sensation, all the soldiers on duty near and in the ‘barn coming to the door to see me being carried in. ‘Scotlander!’ ‘Sarjant!’ ‘Nae Helmet!’ (I was bareheaded) being remarks made to me. The officer in charge of the barn excitedly asked me, ‘Knives and revolvers you got?’ Replying, with a smile, in the negative, he gave me a cigarette and told some men to lift me and lay me on top of some straw. I asked for a drink and was given more cold coffee. I looked at a wristlet watch the man who gave me the drink was wearing, it was then 1 p.m., so another morning in Flanders had gone.

  Sergeant J. F. Bell, 2nd Gordon Highlanders. Proceeded with 7th Division to Zeebrugge, took part in the fighting round Ypres in October 1914. Wounded and taken prisoner of war, October 29th, 1914. Leg amputated (below knee). Exchanged with disabled prisoner of war, February 1915. Discharged April 1st, 1915. Re-enlisted and commissioned as T. Officer in Labour Corps, 1917, and served till the Armistice.

  A TERRITORIAL IN THE SALIENT

  Frank L. Watson, M.C.

  August 1914 found me turned forty, engaged in an engineering business, and a Captain of Territorial Infantry. I expected the War, but I did not expect it so soon. The Territorial Force was nominally for Home service only, our training was inadequate, and our armament obsolete. Yet we were more than half-way to being soldiers, and understood the position too well to hold back. Why did the twelve Territorial Divisions volunteer immediately for foreign service? The motive was quite simple: the Germans were in Belgium, their presence there threatened England, and no one suggested any other way of getting them out except by force.

  Before mobilization, we were greatly below establishment. Leeds was a very unmilitary city, and we had to face a good deal of veiled hostility from various quarters: partly genuine pacifism – that is, opposition to war in any circumstances, partly an ancient prejudice connecting soldiers with immorality and drink, and partly, a strong objection felt by Trade Union leaders to their young members coming under the personal influence of the ‘boss class’ to which they conceived the officers to belong.

  However, the first few days of August 1914 proved that we could have filled the battalion twice over with likely fellows, many who had served a short term with us and dropped out, many who had no previous thought of serving. Our headquarters were besieged by them.

  So we completed our mobilization, which was done well and strictly according to plan, and we pushed off to Selby and York for war training.

  From the first day our men were well fed, well billeted, and well looked after. We had none of those deplorable scenes of incompetence and neglect which disgraced the raising and training of the New Armies. We had the esprit de corps of a very old Volunteer battalion, with a long-established character for discipline, shooting, and good fellowship; and if some of us had not previously taken the question of war very seriously we had a high average of education and intelligence, and all a Yorkshireman’s determination to make a job of anything he takes on.

  All that winter there was an idea that they were going to send the New Armies to France before us – in fact, that was the official intention, although by Christmas our Division was equal to anything short of first-class regular troops.

  However, the fight between G.H.Q. in France, who wanted us, and the ‘dug-out’ Staff in Whitehall, who wanted to keep us back, ended in our favour, and after two or three months on the Lincolnshire coast we actually went. That time on the coast was the most peaceful and interesting part of our training. At York, we had continual alarms and were constantly being ordered to stand by ready for a move. On the coast we were let alone, and we had priceless practice in occupying and relieving trenches and moving in the dark, and the companies, living and working independently, learnt to take care of themselves.

  In April 1915 we concentrated at Gainsboro’ and completed our war equipment, which did not include either up-to-date rifles or modem field guns. The new 18-pounders and the new rifles were reserved for the New Army, and in that respect the victory of G.H.Q. over Whitehall was incomplete.

  We got into a train in the afternoon, neither knowing nor caring to which port we were going, and about midnight stepped out on Folkestone quay. Day was breaking as we landed at Boulogne and marched through the town and up the long hill to the rest camp, where we stayed until the following afternoon. I had some splendid whistlers, and between these and the usual songs we were never short of music on the march. Going down to La Brique station they whistled the ‘Ça Ira’ alternately with the ‘Marseillaise’ faultlessly, to the no small joy of the villagers.

  All through the spring night we rumbled along in the wagons and, after stopping at every signal post in the Pas de Calais, we pulled up in Hazebrouck. Here a sergeant reported that one of my men had got up and dived out of the window somewhere en-route, and that the man was known to be an occasional sleepwalker. I wrote him down as our first casualty. The guns told us we were nearly there, at last.

  About 2 a.m. we turned out at Merville, and the next day we moved into farms in the Forest of Nieppe, and here my somnambulist rejoined. He woke up to find himself on the line, somehow reached a British police post, and was passed on to his unit. He served creditably all through the War and when I met him the other day he told me he had never walked in his sleep since that night.

  We went up in parties for trench experience, in the line between Armentieres and Neuve-Chapelle. La Gorgue, Estaires, and Laventie were still inhabited, but all frequently shelled. They had been looted by the Germans in 1914, and the Maire of Estaires had been shot for failing to produce the demanded ransom. The farms here were still cultivated, and old men, women, and children were at work in the fields within range not only of shells, but of stray bullets. The old breastworks below the Aubers Ridge have been often described; my fortune led me to the point where Fauquissart Church lay in ruins in the trench line, and my instructors were the best possible, the 1st Grenadier Guards.

  In a week or so our Division took over a line between Neuve-Chapelle and Fleurbaix. A country of little fields, innumerable roads and water-courses, hedges, woods, and thickly dotted with farms and houses. A country of deep soil, with water a foot below the surface, where (on our side) trenches were non-existent, and we held a continuous sandbag breastwork with sand-bagged avenues leading up to it from the nearest hedge.

  On the German side, a similar parapet in front, but behind it the long slope of the Aubers Ridge, dug all over with communication trenches, and looking into every inch of our positions. There was very little shelling, but continual rifle fire and sniping, day and night. More than one German sniper fell a victim to some of my crack shots, so they did not have it all their own way.

  There was a shelter in the support line that we used as a mess. Its top was visible from the German lines, and they had a fixed rifle trained on it. Someone had put an iron plate up where the bullets struck, and regularly every two minutes a bullet rang on the plate.

  This damnable and maddening iteration went on day and night, like the old torture of the regular drop of water on the victim’s head. I was in this place when the usual ‘ping’ was replaced by a dull thud. I ran out to the front line, and found, as I expected, that someone had got in the way. A fine young fellow was lying in the trench with a hole in his forehead and the back blown out of his head. He must have died instantly, but he was making that awful throaty gurgle which follows brain wounds.

  Shortly afterwards my second captain, a very promising young engineer, went the same way. These cases made one think of the damnable cry of 1914, ‘Single men first.’ Who would have been the greatest loss to England, a man like myself, with half his life’s work done and a family growing up, or these splendid lads just starting their careers, whose unbegotten offspring was cut off with them and lost to the nation for ever?

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p; Here also we took part in our first battle, the attack on the Aubers Ridge, on May 9th. We were to support by fire an attack straight up the Ridge, and afterwards to join in the advance. The usual notice was given by a feeble bombardment, the Germans were well wired in and quite ready, and the attack achieved nothing but the destruction of several good battalions and a very few Germans. Assembly trenches had been dug for a brigade in a ten-acre field just behind the line and in full sight from the Ridge. If you had not known they were assembly trenches, you would have thought the field had been ridged up for potatoes. This may have been an early effort at camouflage, or pure stupidity – the result was the same.

  The next day I re-armed my company from those assembly trenches with short rifles and bayonets and handed our obsolete rifles into store. It was watching this tragic performance from the tower of Laventie Church which convinced Sir John French of the obvious fact that he had not enough guns or shells, and started that famous agitation which resulted in his losing his command, in the replacement of Asquith by Lloyd George, and in the all-too-successful search for some place to send Kitchener whence he would not come back.

  In those days generals used to visit us on blood horses, with an orderly carrying a lance with a little flag, in case the troops should fail to appreciate the extreme salutability of these high personages. But Rawlinson, who was our Corps Commander, would go about with one A.D.C. for company, and have a friendly chat and pass on the latest news of the capture of three Germans, six yards of trench, and a sanitary bucket to any humble officer he might meet. He even came up into the front line, where his red hat stuck up over the breastwork. We believed that the Germans would never intentionally shoot a British general, for fear his successor might do something unexpected. But it was a good thing that they did not shoot ‘Rawly.’