Tommy (81 page)

Then there were the bigger YMCA canteens, well stocked with provisions of all sorts for those who could afford them. In the autumn of 1916 a huge marquee appeared in Bazentin Wood, literally on the Somme battlefield:

And right at the other extreme were tiny, one-man establishments, often run by clergymen charging only cost price for their wares, in the very shadow of the front line. Rowland Feilding found one in an emplacement on the recently-taken Messines Ridge, run by a ‘fine sportsman' who was ‘a Nonconformist minister. We shook hands and I congratulated him on his effort. For his cash-box he had a German machine-gun belt box.'
³¹⁵

If some pleasures, like sex and gambling, were either private or forbidden, others were officially organised, and it was here that the rich variety of the regimental system made itself felt. Regiments took pride in pushing the boat out on key anniversaries or national saints' days, and particularly on Christmas Day, when it was an army tradition that the officers waited on the men. On Christmas Day 1917 the NCOs and men of 1/1st South Midland Field Ambulance sat down to a Christmas dinner of roast pork, cabbage, onions, potatoes, apple sauce, plum pudding, apples, oranges, wine and cigarettes. The printed menu proudly announced that the chef was ‘Lance Corporal Draycott', and his assistants ‘Privates Hood and Raybould'.
³¹⁶
The year before the junior ranks of 2/Royal Welch Fusiliers had enjoyed soup, roast meat with potatoes, carrots, turnips and onions, plum pudding, with an apple or orange, and nuts. The sergeants had whisky, port and cigars in addition, and at 5.00 pm there was tea with cake, candied fruit and sweets, and a canteen-full of beer for every man. The officers, dining in company messes, did even better, with
pâté de foie gras,
curried prawns, roast goose, potatoes, cauliflower, plum pudding, anchovies on toast, and dessert, the whole lubricated with Veuve Cliquot, port, cognac, Benedictine and coffee. The Royal Welch made much of St David's Day, Irish regiments paid vinous tribute to St Patrick, and the Scots duly celebrated St Andrew. On Minden Day, 1 August, the six Minden regiments celebrated the bravery of their forefathers, who had attacked a superior body of French cavalry in 1759. New traditions sat alongside old. In 1915 the London Scottish held an all-ranks lunch in a ruined factory in French Flanders to mark the anniversary of the regiment's first battle at Messines the year before, and there was ‘Soup, Roast Beef, Plum Duff … also whisky for those that were inclined'.
³¹⁷

Etonians celebrated 4 June in proper style. Lieutenant C. P. Blacker went to the 1917 dinner with fellow Old Etonians in his battalion, and found 300 guests seated, not by army seniority, but according to the dates when they had been at school. Sadly, the evening got out of control with the sort of high spirits which would have been vandalism (with sore heads and field punishment to follow) had it occurred in a canteen. A speech by Lord Cavan was inaudible; a group climbed onto the table, ‘forming a ram as in Eton football', and the table collapsed. Eventually ‘everything breakable in and around the room – tables, chairs, bottles, glasses, windows – was systematically smashed'. Blacker's disgust with the performance made him feel ‘out of gear with my old school'.
³¹⁸

Music halls played such an important part in pre-war popular culture that it is hardly surprising that they were quickly replicated on the Western Front in the form of divisional concert parties. Some actors were professional, others talented amateurs. The 4th Division's Follies led the way in December 1914, and soon there were dozens of others, with names like The Volatiles, The Snipers, The Duds, The Pipsqueaks, The Whizzbangs, The Lads and The Verey Lights. Their repertoire was a mixture of songs and sketches, part cribbed from the London music hall and part extemporised to reflect life at the front: men relished sentimentality, popular songs and, of course, actors in drag. Soldiers remarked that some of these were very convincing indeed, although it was acknowledged that getting the shoulders quite right was never easy. In 25/Royal Fusiliers the quartermaster, against all the odds, was transformed into a convincing woman, and had his audience ‘indulging in delightful fantasies that brought them substantial memories of the girls they had left behind in London, Manchester, Glasgow, wherever.'
³¹⁹

Really good ‘female' leads were so important that divisional staffs became involved in finding them. Lieutenant Colonel Walter Nicholson, then in 51st Highland Division, tried to swap Private Connell of the Highland Light Infantry, star of the 32nd Division concert party, for two radial machine-gun mountings, and when negotiations broke down, promptly ‘kidnapped' him, with the army commander's approval, and transferred him to the divisional artillery. Nicholson thought that The Duds of 17th Division were ‘perhaps the best in the country'. It was his policy to have a show every night, and a new one would open just a day after a divisional move. He noted sadly that his star, Isabelle de Holstuff – alias Private Plumstead – went the way of so many leading ladies, by first showing ‘a tendency to slovenliness' and then growing conceited. The best of the concert parties ‘reached a high level, thanks to the talent available … But perhaps the standard of the shows and their popularity could be counted as a measure of our mentality under strain; they might have bored us in the piping times of peace.'
³²⁰
Some officers found the material rather too near the knuckle, but John Reith, who saw The Follies in 1915, thought it ‘quite elaborately done, clever, and thoroughly enjoyable'.
³²¹

Concert parties were more than just a cheap way to entertain the troops. Like songs on the march, they provided an outlet for resentments, and enabled soldiers to take a gentle poke at authority. Private Walkey, a machine-gunner in 1/20th London and talented lyricist until his death at Loos, set new words to a popular song.

But though flag-waving patriotism was unpopular, there was plenty of room for divisional pride; 29th Division's party would sing:

So many of the habits of peace slipped easily into war. There were divisional horse shows and race meetings, both popular and well attended. This was partly because they gave drivers and transport men the chance to show their animals off to advantage, and partly because they offered the opportunity of seeing great men in the spotlight, with sturdy quartermasters bumping along in the ‘Stores Stakes', and rather more horsey officers cracking round with their battalion's hopes (and a good deal of money) riding with them. In July 1917 Rowland Feilding finished up in hospital, telling his wife that:

Transport was provided to give men days at the beach, and when the demands of the front permitted, leave centres on the coast could accommodate parties for up to two weeks: Stuart Dolden remembered ‘twelve perfectly glorious days' at 5th Army Rest Camp near Equihen, Boulogne.
³²⁴

But it was the army's passion for football that chimed most eloquently with the old life. James Jack complained that however tired men claimed to be, they would play football whenever the opportunity arose. Bernard Martin agreed that:

Edward Underhill admitted that a football match was ‘quite good fun', even if the ball was an odd shape: ‘Soccer, of course, the men only play that.'
³²⁶

And there were quieter amusements. Men read voraciously across a literary spectrum of extraordinary breadth. There were the classics: Alan Hanbury Sparrow read Francis Bacon's
Essays
at Passchendaele, preferring it to
Handley Cross
or
The Pickwick Papers
which he normally carried. Private Norman Gladden enjoyed sentimentality, noting that authors like Charles Garvie and Elinor Glyn were always snapped up from bookshops. Lieutenant Charles Douie carried
The Dolly Dialogues,
Rider Haggard novels and
The Oxford Book of English Verse,
C. P. Blacker, who went to war with the two-volume
Principles of Psychology,
was absorbed, by August 1918, in Thomas Hardy's
Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
Blacker, spotted reading a book by Bertrand Russell while waiting for a train, was at once befriended by the railway transport officer, ‘a distinguished linguist and scholar' who was working on the proofs of a book by Israel Zangwill. Private Groom ‘found poetry helped … I took my school
Golden Treasury [of English Verse]
to France. Actually it became invaluable – it was my talisman – so much that when a whiz bang blew my haversack and its contents to smithereens I was windy for weeks until another
Golden Treasury
arrived from England.'
³²⁷
P. J. Campbell enjoyed
Framley Parsonage
because it described such a peaceful existence where getting into financial trouble was the worst thing that could possibly happen: ‘that could not be so bad, I thought, as being FOO on the day of an attack'.
³²⁸
Stephen Graham saw his comrades read newspapers like the
London Mail
and
London Opinion,
and ‘voraciously devour' the tub-thumping
John Bull,
while
The Times
and
Morning Post
remained ‘comparatively untouched'.
³²⁹
And against all the odds, the adventure stories of Nat Gould, Jack London and Rudyard Kipling were the three most popular authors in military hospital libraries.

The army also generated literature of its own. ‘Trench journals' or ‘trench newspapers' appeared in ever-increasing numbers from early 1915. They generally started as newssheets published by individual units or formations and often became sophisticated productions containing announcements, news, a variety of humour, sketches and cartoons.
The Fifth Gloster Gazette,
for instance, was the journal of 5/Gloucesters, a territorial battalion which served in France in 1915–17, and fought in Italy from November 1917 to September 1918 when it returned to take part in the Hundred Days. The gazette was initially edited by the padre, the Reverend G.F. Helm MC, and one of its most notable contributors was Will Harvey, a talented poet who had joined as a private in 1914 and was commissioned after winning the DCM. Private K. A. Robertson, also later commissioned and awarded the MC, designed the cover and provided much of the artwork. Other contributors, writing under initials or pseudonyms, included Captain R. F. Rubinstein (‘Fibulous') and Second Lieutenant Cyril Winterbotham (‘C.W.W.'), who was killed the day after submitting his poem
The Wooden Cross.
Not all contributors were Glosters: Captain W. O. Downs MC, a promising playwright, killed in action, served in 4/Royal Berkshire, and the contributor ‘Emma Kew' was Lieutenant Gedye of the Bristol Royal Field Artillery, also killed in action.
³³⁰

Although
The Fifth Gloster Gazette
was produced in France till mid-1917, thereafter it was printed in Bristol and shipped to the front. In contrast,
The Wipers Times,
journal of the 24th Division, was generally printed ‘in a rat infested cellar at Ypres'. Except for the final edition of December 1918 it was never produced outside the front-line area, and ‘at one time the printing press was within 700 yards of the front line and above ground'.
³³¹
It was edited by Captain F.J. Roberts of 12/Sherwood Foresters, and its contributors included the poet Gilbert Frankau, an officer in the divisional artillery. The printing press was rescued from a wrecked works in Ypres, and a sergeant in the Foresters, a printer in civilian life, soon restored it to working order, though the third edition was delayed because of ‘the jealousy of our local competitors, Messrs. Hun and Co.' who ‘brought some of the wall down on our machine' with a shell.
The Wipers Times
was unusual in that it was written, edited and printed so close to the front. Most other ‘trench' journals were actually printed well behind the lines or, indeed, in Britain, and enjoyed a wide circulation amongst families and friends in the unit's recruiting area as well as in the units themselves.