Forgotten Voices of the Somme (6 page)
Read Forgotten Voices of the Somme Online
Authors: Joshua Levine
Tags: #History, #Europe, #General, #Military, #World War I
Smiling German prisoners.
240th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery
We rode forward into the lines. The drill for a mounted officer was that if he turned his head, you came up on one side and took his rein. I saw the captain's head move, and I moved up, but he said, 'I didn't mean that. Listen!' And we heard the first rumble of guns. We were in the war.
4th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment
When I first got up to the front line, I was frightened out of my life. I saw a mangled body blown to bits on a sack. I was scared stiff.
8th Battalion, East Surrey Regiment
I was second in command of the battalion, and the commanding officer wanted to have some responsible person in charge of his advance party to come over and make arrangements. So I had been sent a few days before the battalion, to Dernancourt, where I had been able to get a
particularly
comfortable billet for the commanding officer, who appreciated it.
12th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment
As we were going up to the front line, we got to one corner of the communication trench, and everybody was held up. We waited for half an hour, and got fed up. I said, 'Give me a rifle – I will get around!' So I charged around – and my gumboots got stuck in the bottom of the mud and I just couldn't move them. I cut the straps on my braces and stepped out into my stockinged feet. The trench was six feet deep, of which two foot six was mud. There was no way out except to get out in your bare feet and leave your boots behind.
Private Frank Lindlay
14th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment
As we walked into the front line, one of the Germans shouted over, 'When are those Yorkshire bastards coming?'
Major Alfred Irwin
8th Battalion, East Surrey Regiment
Officers and NCOs from new battalions coming out were always given a run around the line by people who'd been there long enough to be able to teach them. We had the same experience, and I think we were all equally frightened. The first time I heard a machine gun, I fell flat on my face in the trench, as did everybody round me. That was a normal experience.
5th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers
A young company commander, only twenty-one, was taking over a trench from another commander, aged over forty. 'It's been awfully awkward,' said the older man, 'there've been two men buried here, and they've been groaning. But it's all right now. They've stopped.' When the younger man heard this, he got to work with his men, and they got the bodies out in ten minutes. Those men could have been saved. I told that story at divisional headquarters, and everybody roared with laughter.
Headquarters,
168th Infantry Brigade
Trench design
before the war would have been, generally speaking, considerably shallower than what we had to develop during the war. If ordered to dig in, before the war, you might make a trench three foot deep with a parapet outside eighteen inches high. Well, that wasn't good enough in the face of shelling, and what developed during the war were trenches over six foot deep with a fire-step to stand on, so as to be able to shoot over the parapet, and very deep, narrow communication trenches which would give you cover from shellfire and from air observation, and zigzagging trenches, so that you don't get enfiladed by fire. These were developments which hadn't been foreseen to any great extent before the war.
9th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers
It was a good thing we had a guide when we arrived at the front, because the trenches to the uninitiated were a maze, but the guide knew the way. Before you entered, you got the order 'Load'. You put nine in your magazine, one up
the spout, and put your safety catch on, prepared to use your rifle immediately without having to load. Then the guide took us into the communication trenches, which passed through the support line, the reserve line, and into the front line. These
communication trenches
were straight for a hundred yards, and then there would be a traverse of maybe five yards. That would be to break up the shellfire; if a shell fell in one stretch of trench, the traverse would stop it spreading right along the trench. And the same applied to the front line when we got there. The front line consisted of bays about ten yards in length, and then there would be a traverse and then another bay, and so on, right the way along on either side.
Each bay would hold three men. At night-time those three men would be close together, one standing up looking over the top – he was sentry. He had a box periscope, which was about two feet in height with a mirror at the bottom set at an angle of forty-five, and a mirror at the top facing outwards, so that one reflected on the other and he'd simply hold that up. The next man would be sitting next to him, close up to his leg, so that if anything was suspicious out in front, the sentry could just kick him, and they would both get up together and have another look. And the third man was allowed to lie out on the fire-step and sleep.
Life
in the trenches
was absolutely new to us, and the first impression that we got – at least I got – was they were very much lived in. You would see an overcoat hanging from a wooden peg on the side of the trench; you'd see a mess tin with some tea in it; a dugout which had an overcoat or a piece of blanket in it; a bed made of sandbags; and it looked very much lived in.
Major Alfred Irwin
8th Battalion, East Surrey Regiment
We took over from the French, who were a bit casual about their trenches, but they'd been there long enough to leave some fairly good ones. It was rolling chalk country, easy enough to dig, but very difficult to keep clean in wet weather, because chalk develops into a sticky mud that sticks everything together.
Private Reginald Glenn
12th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment
We had good, solid trenches, but the chalk that we threw up when we dug in showed the Germans where we were, because it was white. We had duckboard
to walk on, but if it was raining, the duckboards were under water, so we were walking in wet, and sleeping in wet. The trenches were tall enough for a sixfooter to stand up in, and they were three feet wide so you couldn't pass one another without scraping. There was a trench bottom, then a firing step on which sentries would stand, looking out with a periscope. There was a lot of barbed wire in front. Wiring parties would put it out at night. But it was made in sections, so that a section could be moved to the side for our troops to go through when we were making an attack.
Sergeant Charles Quinnell
9th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers
Our dugouts were simply holes in the side of the trench, about three feet in height from the floor, and about three or four feet in depth – and they were very primitive affairs. The Germans had dugouts that were thirty feet deep and you could shell them till the cows came home – and they would laugh at it.
16th Battalion, King's Royal Rifle Corps
When we went to sleep, we used to dig in, at the back of the trench. We called these
'funk holes'
, and they weren't very deep. Just person-sized. We would lie on a groundsheet.
1/4th Battalion, Gordon Highlanders
In
trench warfare
, it was important to have trench experience to survive. A young lad would come out, and, on his first day, he might find everything peaceful and quiet; not a shot being fired or anything. He'd start looking around, over the top of the trench and he'd think, 'This is all safe.' And the next thing, he'd have a bullet through his head. You had to keep under cover all the time – the Hun was always watching. For example, once I went round behind our support line, and found some fellows busy building a dugout and a fellow was on top of the dugout, putting down sandbags. I said, 'What the hell are you doing up there?' 'Making a machine-gun dugout,' he said. 'But you're in view of the
German trenches
!' I said. 'Yes,' he said, 'but nothing's happening.' I looked over the dugout and I could see three lines of German trenches
half a mile away. I said, 'Well, by God, the Germans are doing nothing at the moment but they've spotted you and you'll be for it later on! You'll have an artillery bombardment!' 'Anyhow,' he said, 'I'm going to finish the job.' So I left him. That evening they copped it. The first shell fell short and he remembered my warning and started to run. The next shell landed slap bang on top of the dugout.
13th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers
The general instruction, when you went into the line, was to keep your head down the whole time. In other words, if you wanted to see what was going on, on the other side, you got on to the fire-step, looked over the top and withdrew hastily. If you stood there, you would attract fire. We were under shellfire every day. There was always odd artillery burst from both sides. Occasionally just one single shot – one howitzer with shrapnel, other times four- or fiveminute bombardments. They could take place at any time of the day. We weren't very frightened, because it seemed to be very inaccurate. Dropping well beyond or well in front of our trench. Occasionally, there was a shrapnel burst above us.
Sergeant Charles Quinnell
9th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers
One of the very, very important things that you learned was you could tell by the sound whether a shell was going over you or whether it was meant for you. If that shell was coming for you, you'd flop down and, believe you me, a man lying down on the ground wants a lot of hitting, because a shell when it lands penetrates the soil, and the explosion goes like that, so if you're lying down it's got to be very, very adjacent to you before it hits you.
When a trench mortar came over, you heard a plop. Everybody's head would be up – and you could see it coming towards you. It was one of the sentry's jobs that if a trench mortar was active, he'd have a whistle and he would blow his whistle as soon as he heard the plop. In the daytime, we had very, very few casualties from
trench mortars
– but at night-time you couldn't judge where they were coming, and you just prayed.
1/9th Battalion, The Royal Scots
My pal Alec went down to HQ, and halfway down the communication trench, one of these blasted
minenwerfers
[heavy trench mortars
] dropped where he was. One or two of us ran down to see if he was all right. When we got there he was lying at the side of the trench; another chap was blown to bits, his kilt was hanging in the trees for weeks afterwards. Alec was very badly mutilated, and we had a bit of a pact between us that if I was wounded, he would tell my mother, and if he was wounded, I would tell his mother, a kind of a schoolboy pact.
So anyway he died. I will always remember when he was dying, he said to me, 'You will tell my mother – won't you?' And I said, 'I will.' I was devastated. I had lost my pal. I didn't care what happened to me then, whether I lived or died. If you lose somebody that is very close to you, you've lost something of yourself. It's not possible to describe what has happened to you. You're really not in your right senses.
Anyway I went home on leave to see his mother. She wasn't married and I told her about how Alec died, and she said, 'You're not telling me the truth!' I told her he was shot through the heart you see. I couldn't tell her he was . . . I said, 'I am telling you the truth!' I said I was with him when he died. So she accepted that, and she gave me a great big bag of cakes. She worked in a baker's shop. And she said, 'God bless you, son!' I thought it would be my luck next time round.
Private Frank Lindlay
14th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment
As a signaller, I had a phone in my little dugout in the front line. A
minenwerfer
dropped on the top and scattered everything. It threw me and the telephone about, and it damaged the tapping key. It also busted the wire, and I climbed on top of the parados [the bank of earth above the rear wall of the trench] to repair it. When I got up on to the parados, I was walking on a load of dead 'Froggies' – all decomposed. They'd just been covered with a bit of soil, and the shell had uncovered them. They were just like jam. My puttees were sodden. And I got in awful trouble over the whole thing – 'What do you have to say for yourself? Shut up!' You couldn't explain.
Corporal Harry Fellows
12th Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers
We were going into the line, and I was the corporal in charge of the two
Lewis guns
in the company, and I had four men on each gun, when I ought to have had six. I went to the company sergeant major, to ask him if I could have four more men. He said that I could have two. Anyway, we got into the front line, and one of the new lads found out that his mate was in the next fire bay, so he asked me if he could go and see him. I said yes, and as he went down the traverse, two shells fell on to the trench, one on the front and one on the back, and he was buried. All we could see of him were his legs kicking. I got hold of one leg, my mate got hold of the other, and we pulled as hard as we could, but we couldn't move him. We started scrabbling away with our hands, but by now, he'd stopped kicking. When we eventually got him out, he was dead. The strap of his steel helmet was under his chin, when it should have been on the chin. The helmet had trapped in the earth, and in pulling his legs we'd pulled his neck out. The lad who'd pulled the other leg said, 'My God, we've strangled him. We've murdered him.' We never even knew that lad's name.