A Marine at Gallipoli on the Western Front Read online

  I am going to skim quickly over my short period in hospital; there was very little pleasure attached to it. Our chief recreation was reading the newspapers, usually the articles dealing with the splendid time the wounded Tommies had in England. They drew pictures of these charming nurses, angels of mercy. They want to come out here to draw their pictures. The only way to fetch a smile to the surface is by doing most of the slushing in the ward and by doing everything for yourself by yourself.

  Two days in the 26th and I was agitating for a move to details, but got sent to No. 6 Convalescent Camp. Saw the doctor there and told him I was fit for the line again, so he passed me A.1 and told me I should have to go to the detail camp first and then to the base at Calais. Entrained at 7.00am on 4 May for Calais and arrived at about noon. Not exactly express but it got us there.

  Colonel Mullins (old Joe) was in charge of the base and there appeared to be more men there than we had up the line. Dropped across Rimmer and Coulter just out again from England. I tried all ways to draw some money but without success. I was absolutely stony broke. Saw Joe Mullins and told him I wanted to get back up the line as soon as possible. He said he was sending a batch away on Tuesday and I could go with them or I could stop there and take charge of a squad on the Bullring. I told him the line was good enough for me, got rigged out on the Monday and took train on the Tuesday for Étaples again and stayed there the night, then away to Pernes, to another detail camp, in the morning.

  There all Thursday and on the following morning set off on the march to Béthune. It was a blazing hot day, so hot in fact that the officer in charge (a HAC man), who happened to have a humane touch about him, begged a couple of limbers from someone, to carry our packs. A march to Mont St Éloi the next day and on the 13th joined up with my own battalion. It felt like being home again – almost.

  Chapter Thirty

  13 May 1917 – A Little Fighting and a Lot of Digging

  I found the boys in reserve just in front of Rochincourt and their time was pretty well occupied with working both up and down the line. Very few of the old boys were left and a new crowd of NCOs was out. I found out I had lost my lance stripe for the time being, but I wasn’t unduly distressed about that. A few weeks would soon thin down the ranks of the new NCOs; meanwhile I was a bona-fide corporal so I couldn’t dip those two. Billy was made full sergeant, so for once he was my senior. Dick Howarth was acting Company Sergeant Major and he had a job for me as soon as the working parties were out: digging and wiring in Renjal trench.

  We had rather a long rough walk to get to the trench and every now and again Jerry would send over a bit of shrapnel or a 5.9 or two. It was amusing to watch the antics of some of the new chaps, a lot of them out for the first time. I was with Billy bringing up the rear of the party, and every now and again we should have to fetch back one of two of the ‘windy’ souls. We were moving along at a fair pace but evidently not fast enough for them. One lad in particular, ‘Young Price’, a Welsh lad, with no heart or stomach for war, would gradually work his way forward from man to man until he was nearly leading the whole party. It was a kind of fear of the open and a desire to get to a trench as quickly as possible that urged them forward. Billy told me that a lot of the new lads had already gone back with ‘blighties’, most of them caused by the point of a pick during digging operations. Somehow, either intentional or otherwise, they had got in the way of their opposite number’s pick. It must want a hell of a lot of pluck though to willingly get into the path of a pick. I’m afraid I’d be a coward at that game. Two men were hit that night in our party but it was about the finish of that kind of work. A battalion order was issued the next day to the effect that any man being wounded by a pick-axe would be court martialled and treated in the same way as others with self-inflicted wounds.

  Back at 4.00 next morning and were allowed to turn in until 10.00am, then out for drill. The same routine carried on until the Saturday when we moved up to Maison Blanc, some old German trenches by the Arras-Gavrelle Road on top of the ridge. We relieved the West Yorks there (31st Division). The Bosch strafed the road both frequently and effectively and there was plenty of evidence about to prove it, in the shape of broken lorries, GS wagons and limbers. We were out digging all night and the brilliant officer in charge of the party lost his bearings coming back and kept us wandering about in the open until nearly dawn. All the next day the Bosch was banging our line with 5.9s and things got very unpleasant. One of our stretcher-bearers was killed and a few men wounded.

  We were very interested spectators of a splendid air fight during the afternoon. Six Bosch fighting planes came over our lines and, regardless of the anti-aircraft barrage, had reached a position above our reserve line. Dropping straight out of the blue came one of our Bristol fighters right into the midst of the Bosch formation and the prettiest fight I have ever seen took place right above us. In less than a minute two enemy planes were out of action, one to come crashing to earth, the other making a downward dive for his own lines with his tail a mass of flame. He was followed shortly after by another whose obvious desire was to get to ground as soon as possible. That left the odds at three to one, enormous odds still, but our chap still stuck it. Down came another Bosch, absolutely beyond all hope, and then we thought our man’s turn had come. Down he came in a terrific spiral nose dive and we all thought he was done; then, when still a couple of hundred feet above us, the cheeky blighter flattened out and made for home.

  The two Bosch planes that were left made straight for home; they had no more stomach left for the fight and two more of our planes coming along then made the Bosch put on speed. I really think the reason our man packed up was because he had no ammunition left. What a spirit! What a nerve! – without a second’s hesitation to plunge into a fight with odds of six to one against him. There was no room in the RAF for a man with a conscientious objection to fighting.

  We had a glorious night. It started raining hard about dusk and we were soon wading in about a foot of water and had to turn out and do a bit of digging. Our job usually happens to be getting down the first three feet from the top, but there is always an incentive for the fellows to dig. They get down as quickly as possible for cover, and it’s necessary; all sorts of things come over, shrapnel, 5.9s and crowds of machine-gun bullets, and even if you haven’t a very great fear of being in the open it’s nice to think there is a hole to drop into if anything heavy is coming anywhere near.

  The officer in charge was obviously at a loss about which way to get back home. I expect he had turned round about three times and didn’t which way our trench lay. Anyway, he started off in the wrong direction altogether, and about a dozen of us let the rest go on with him. I made straight for the Arras-Gavrelle road, just on our right, and straight up it to the ridge. We were home then and had turned in two hours when the others came cursing their way back.

  Each day to 29 May was a repetition; out every night from dusk until four the following morning on the infernal digging. During the day we did a bit of drill, just to make the troops realise that it wasn’t exactly a holiday we were on. I think I’m safe in saying that it rained on an average fourteen hours out of every twenty-four, so that it won’t be difficult for anyone to make a guess at our condition. We were filthy, we were lousy, and we were sore, but no one had a cold. True, one or two went back to Field Ambulance but only because they were worn out body and soul.

  Casualties? We had a few. One night when we were out digging B Company had nine men badly wounded. Two men were left in the trench because they were sick one night, but were both dead when we had dug them out of their funk hole. They had both turned in in one hole and the thing had collapsed on them when they were asleep. Owing to the continuous rain, most of the trench was in a similar condition and great chunks of it would gently subside into the quagmire at the bottom. The Bosch never failed to shell it and managed to register a few hits at least every day. And when he got the trench he usually got a man or two.

  The 29th (Whit T
uesday) brought a change. We were to move to the support line just behind the village of Gavrelle and relieve 1 RM. Set off at about 10.30pm and the relief was complete about midnight. Things had been pretty quiet but the 1st Royals told us the Bosch was always dropping heavy stuff in the trench. I could quite believe it too. The trench was in a shocking state, in parts nearly battered flat, and, for all its length, about knee deep in mud and water. It was an old German trench and had formed part of his third line of defence before the Battle of Arras.

  I hadn’t been in long before the platoon was warned off as water and ration party, and we had to go to a dump on the Arras road. Lieutenant Buckley was in charge of the party and Billy and I followed close behind. We had just reached the road where the trench ended when the Bosch opened up with terrific strafe. Every conceivable size and weight of shell was hurled at us and hundreds must have dropped within a space of a couple of minutes just around the road. Buckley had vanished, the carrying party had vanished and there was only Billy and me left, and we were both frantically striving to get our heads and as much of our bodies as possible into a small undercut in the trench bottom. We were almost smothered with the showers of earth and stones from the bursting shells and every second I expected would be my last, but the spasm died away and we stood up and prepared to look for our carrying party.

  Buckley came back from across the road where he had found a decent dugout, but the others were nowhere in sight. I had to go back to the support trench for them. Some of them said they felt sure we had all three been blown to bits. The trench we had sheltered in was blown in in about a dozen places. We got the water and managed to get back without further incident.

  Pretty quiet the following morning and we had orders to fill in all the funk holes as they were dangerous owing to the soft state of the ground. Billy and I set about making a fine shelter on the fire-step. We scrounged sandbags, corrugated iron and logs and had just managed to finish it when a thunderstorm came on and with it a downpour of rain that put two feet of water in the trench in less than ten minutes. The officers had a lovely deep dugout, but in a few minutes they had to dash out to save themselves from being drowned; the water reached the roof in those few minutes.

  Billy and I stuck it in our little shelter. Both of us had taken our packs off and we were watching huge lumps of trench as they slid with a squelch into the muddy liquid at the bottom. All at once I felt a movement in our shelter and I scrambled out and yelled to Billy to get out; we had only just got out when the whole affair collapsed in a heap. The fire-step had given way and our rifles, packs and food were hopelessly buried in the mass.

  Then we had a tottering time for three days clearing the trenches round about. Most of the time we were wading about up to the thighs in mud and water. One or two men were nearly drowned through dropping in sump holes. To make things better Jerry started slinging over 10-inch Minenwerfers and our only rations consisted of sodden biscuits, bully beef and water. The weather cleared and turned awfully hot.

  The Bosch was bluffing a bit, and our people didn’t know what his intentions were, whether he was going back to a new line, or going to counter-attack and push us back. We were all standing by to move forward at ten minutes’ notice, either to take up the chase or to repel an attack. We were in the support line until 9 June, twelve days, not a bad spell, when you consider the weather and the conditions in brigade reserve before that.

  Artillery on both sides had been very active and hits had been registered on our trench almost every day with the usual casualties. Ration parties had suffered badly and so had rations. I went one night with a party to the ration dump at the bottom of Thames trench and had just picked up the rations when the Bosch opened up with one of his terrific strafes. Hundreds of shells burst in about two minutes, then everything was still again and signs of life began to appear again on the face of the earth. My party were all right, but three of the men on the dump were lying in mutilated heaps on the trench bottom.

  The people on our right carried out a stunt about 8 o’clock on the night of 5 June and we were ‘standing to’ all night, and got badly shelled in the trench. On 8 June the people on our left made an attack on Oppy and the artillery put four barrages down on the place. The Bosch replied in a like manner and kept it up for two hours after our people had piped down.

  Our relief turned up about midnight on 9 June and we made our weary way down to the old German trenches of East Rochincourt. We set about getting ourselves clean as soon as we arrived, ready to move again.

  Left at 5.00pm on the Sunday, 10 June, and reached Maroeiul, a partly inhabited village just behind and to the right of Arras. We were duty platoon and I touched for corporal of the guard for the night. The next day was a stand-off and my twenty-fifth birthday and, thanks to the good, dear people from home, I had a good time.

  Started drill on 13 June; we mustn’t stand easy too long, we might get too contented, and contented troops are no good to anybody. Sports were arranged and we were paid, so could indulge a little with the fiery wines of pleasant France. Everybody cleaned up and hot baths were provided, so that in a day or two we were all looking like new soldiers.

  On 19 June we were inspected by Admiral Lord Charles Beresford. Paid again on 21 June and received orders to get ready to move up again, so, of course, everybody got as much beer or wine down him as possible. Money is no use up in the trenches except for play at brag or pontoon.

  Moved to East Rochincourt on 22 June. Being the first day of summer it poured with rain all day and, on arrival, we were shoved in bivouacs. Our clean, smart appearance had vanished and we were soon caked in mud and chalk. There was a big raid on at night on our front and forty-seven prisoners were brought in. Three companies went up digging in Thames trench at night – our turn tomorrow.

  We played cricket during the day amongst the old trenches and shell holes. Our company were crack cricketers and beat all the others. Dick Howarth, our Company Sergeant Major, was a good all-rounder and a new lad in my section, Brown, was a fine bowler and could do very near what he liked with the opposing side. I missed the night digging but had to go up to Thames trench at 5.30am for three mornings on a revetting job. And just at the murderous spot where Jerry dropped most of his stuff.

  We were expecting an attack to come off in a few days’ time but we were only to prepare the trenches for 31st Division and the 5th, who would attack from the left of the windmill to the left of Oppy Wood. My party had a pretty quiet time in Thames trench and only on the third morning were we shelled at all badly. We got it hot for about ten minutes but fortunately no one was hit.

  Wednesday 27 June was a stand-off as far as forward work was concerned, and on the 28th the 5th and 31st Divisions went over and took Jerry’s front line from him, thus making our position far more secure and comfortable. As far as we could gather neither division had many casualties and very few prisoners were brought back to the fold. XIII Corps’ commander came and said a few kind words to us about the Gavrelle stunt and the splendid way we had wielded the pick and shovel since. He was Lieutenant General Congreve VC and a fine fellow and made no fuss about coming. He just walked over to our company bivvies with the CO and had the company fall in just as we were. We looked proper veterans too.

  Up in the deep railway cutting for two days for a new kind of work, repairing the railway track and banks of the cutting. Meanwhile 190 Brigade had been practically washed out; 10th Dublins had gone north to provide reinforcements for 16th (Irish) Division, who had suffered heavily in the new scrap at Messines; the Artists Rifles were to take the place of the HAC who, I suppose, would join up with something more aristocratic than the RND.

  The 5th King’s Shropshire Light Infantry were to take the place of the Irishmen when they had all been fitted out with leave to Blighty. The Artists Rifles were short of active service training and would have to get a bit of instruction from the marines before being fit to take over a section on their own. They seemed a similar crowd to the HAC, what one might t
erm the ‘pampered of London’, but that won’t matter a hang so long as they could fight and not let the RND down. As a fighting division we gave place to no other on the whole front.

  On Monday 2 July we were paid and told to get ready for a three-week spell in the front line. We relieved the 18th West Yorks (31st Division) about midnight on the 3rd and went in support behind the windmill. Things were pretty quiet and we had a decent trench but it started raining as soon as we got in and things were soon in a filthy condition. We had fairly quiet conditions until the Saturday (the 7th) when we went up in front to relieve 1 RM. The poor souls had been a bit windy for the last three days, sending up needless SOSs at night. A Prussian regiment was holding the German line and were all as keen as mustard and always active; some of the new hands of 1 RM, seeing a wiring party or a patrol near our wire, would straightaway put up the SOS, thinking an attack was coming off. That would mean a bad ten minutes of strafing, for both sides’ artillery would put down a barrage.

  The Bosch was very active in the air and scores of his planes were over every day. We saw fights every day between their planes and ours and I am sorry to say the Bosch obviously came off best.

  As soon as the relief was complete, about 11.00pm, we had a terrible thunderstorm with a perfect deluge of rain that very soon swamped the trenches. We weren’t so badly off as the Ansons, as our trenches were on the slope of the high ground by the windmill and the water soon drained off into the Ansons’ trenches. We spent four fairly hectic days in the line round the windmill before we were relieved again by our 1st Battalion. We only had a few casualties in our company but, on the Tuesday night, just as we were going over for a wiring job, Jerry sent over a couple of nasty black shrapnels that burst on the parapet just where we were getting over. Two of my men were killed outright, and three more wounded. It was as near a thing as I’d had for some time. Needless to say, the wiring party was cancelled. Jerry was active all night and, when he wasn’t blazing away at us, he had strong patrols out in no man’s land.