Alone In The Trenches (8 page)

And as I finished reading I thought to myself, “
That means you, Michel. And you, Dad. And you too, Charlie. Rest in peace, all of you.
”

There’s a story you can find on the Internet which says a little girl really did find her way into the trenches early in the First World War. A soldier discovered her and
looked after her for a few days. When he was killed shortly afterwards, it’s said that his company sergeant major arranged for the girl to be sent to England. The story gives the
soldier’s name, but no one’s ever been able to find him in army records, or track down what happened to the girl in later life. Perhaps it’s a true story and the soldier’s
name was simply written down wrongly. On the other hand, since the first mention of the story is in an American newspaper, it may have been invented to help persuade America to join the war against
Germany.

The First World War became known for a while as “the war to end all wars”. Sad to say, it ended nothing at all. Wars still rage in many parts of the world today with results that are
just as terrible. And some people would say that the way the First World War finished led directly to the Second World War 21 years later.

It’s difficult to know the exact figures, but over ten million people were probably killed. Britain declared war on Germany on 4th August 1914, following the German invasion of Belgium the
previous day. The agreement to end the war was signed on 11th November 1918, which is why Services of Remembrance are held on that day each year. Of the ten million dead, nearly 900,000 were
British and Commonwealth soldiers. At first the British troops were made up of regular signed-up soldiers and part-time ‘territorials’. It was only in 1916 that the government decided
it needed to “call-up” or “conscript” men who weren’t soldiers at all. By then, despite the dreadful casualties, it was thought you were a coward if you didn’t
enlist to fight. Sometimes men who were believed to have avoided military service were handed white feathers in the street and abused. Even men who were doing necessary war work at home were
unfairly treated in this way. Conscription wasn’t always good for the army either. The conscripts were less effective as soldiers because they hadn’t been trained as well. They
weren’t as physically fit and they couldn’t fire their guns so rapidly.

My local village is probably typical. There were no more than six hundred people living there at the time of the First World War but eighteen of the village’s young men were killed.
Everyone would have felt the loss. If you live anywhere in Britain you’ll probably be able to find a local War Memorial that tells a similar story.

An important part of the War, perhaps
the
most important, was fought close to Ypres. For four years the two sides killed each other over the same few miles of land. Still every day at
eight o’clock in the evening by the Menin Gate in the rebuilt town of Ypres (or Ieper, as the Flemish signposts say today), there’s a ceremony to remember those terrible times. See if
you can find any paintings by Paul Nash in the library or on the Internet to understand what war did to the countryside in which the men fought.

The story I’ve written is set early in the first year of the War. It seems difficult to believe but at that time men on horses were still charging around among the foot-soldiers. But
technology was changing the way battles were fought, and these ‘cavalry’ as they were called became rapidly out of date. Guns became heavier. Ways of using explosives were changing. So
for instance, because the war in Belgium and France was fought from trenches, mortar bombs were developed to drop explosives down from a height onto the enemy, and soldier-engineers called
‘sappers’ dug under the enemy’s trenches to blow them up from underneath. Aeroplanes started to be used as ways of gathering information and to drop bombs. In 1915 both sides used
poison gas for the first time. The Germans developed flame-throwers. Armoured tanks began to appear on the battlefield.

With a teacher or parent’s help, you should now be able to find many diaries which tell about the experiences of soldiers during the First World War. They often make for difficult reading.
The conditions under which the soldiers lived for days on end were extreme. Here are a few sentences from the letter of an army chaplain to his local newspaper about life in a
‘dug-out’:

“
I sleep … with a Tommy underneath and another on top, so close that our bodies on the wire netting are touching. If I move or turn over the others get squashed, and if either of
them move, I get pushed up or down … We all grope around like the blind as candles flicker weakly and water splashes… Everything is greasy and sticky. This morning my servant
collected the drippings through the roof and I washed my neck. Greasy gas bags, greasy tin hats, leather jerkins to give us some warmth, sandbags full of filth are hung around the walls. Outside is
a maze of passages, all underground, all greasy and all wet…
”

Back home in England during the War, life was changing. Eventually, so many men were away fighting that women began to do the jobs that had always been seen as “men’s work”.
And when the soldiers came back, though they often wouldn’t talk about the War, their experiences had been so terrible many of them felt the world they returned to should be different. They
badly wanted to know they could live the rest of their lives in peace. They wanted better working conditions and more money. The right of women to work and vote became more and more important. In
some ways it feels as if the truly modern world began in 1918.

Why did the First World War happen? It’s a story for another time – and a very complicated one. But mistakes by politicians and generals are part of the sorry tale, and so is bad
luck. Greed and ambition are in there too. It all happened a hundred years ago, but one reason history is important is to make sure bad patterns of behaviour and mistakes are never repeated. Travel
around Europe seems so easy these days: it’s quite likely you’ve been to France, Belgium or Germany as well as other foreign countries. It seems impossible to think we could ever
declare war on a close European neighbour. But it wasn’t so different in 1914. An army officer could be fighting at the front in the early morning and having a drink in his London club in the
evening, thanks to the railways and a quick Channel crossing by boat. King George V of Britain and the German Kaiser Wilhelm were cousins. Britain traded widely with all the European countries.
Foreign art and music were much admired. The first football match between England and Germany took place in 1899. It won’t do to say such things could never happen again. Each generation
– and that means you and your classmates one day soon – has to take on the responsibility of making sure there’s never another war in Europe.

Battalions

Depending on where his home was, each soldier belonged to a ‘regiment’, in the case of Charlie, the ‘Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry’.
Each regiment was divided into ‘battalions’, and each battalion into (usually four) companies of over two hundred men.

Blighty

Soldiers sometimes called England ‘Blighty’. A ‘Blighty Wound’ was an injury serious enough to get you sent back home and away from the war. Perhaps the
soldier in the garden was trying to do this for himself. A self-inflicted wound might result in a court martial, and even a death sentence.

Communications Trenches (CTs)

These provided a safe-ish way to get supplies and men to and from the front line. Like most trenches, they zig-zagged so that enemy soldiers would never have a clear line of
fire down a long length of trench.

Duckboards

Keeping dry in the trenches was almost impossible, particularly in winter. However, the army knew it was hard for men to fight if they were wet and uncomfortable, so they did
whatever they could to protect them from the weather, by means of ‘dug-outs’ and making the floors of the trenches secure with hardwood planks which had gaps in them to let the water
through, known as duckboards.

Fire Trench

This was the trench nearest the enemy, from which the soldiers fired their guns.

Flare

A firework launched from a special gun to show that someone was in distress or to give light for a few moments on the battlefield. This was usually done so that enemy soldiers
could be spotted or fired at. Sometimes known as a ‘Verey light’ after the man who invented it.

Howitzers

Howitzers are field guns capable of firing shells a number of miles. The biggest German guns could reach targets over seven miles away.

Jerry

The British troops had all kinds of nicknames for German soldiers. One was ‘Jerry’, but the Germans were also called ‘Boches’ or ‘The Huns’
or ‘Fritz’.

Mortar

Mortar bombs are big close-range guns, fired from a steep angle. For that reason they were very effective in trench warfare.

No Man’s Land

This was the area between the Allied (meaning British, French and Belgian) and German trenches. It could be hundreds of metres in width or just a few. Both sides put up barbed
wire between the lines to prevent the enemy attacking, and sometimes landmines were laid for the same reason. It could often be very difficult to get bodies back from No Man’s Land when
soldiers had been killed there.

Oxfordshires

Six battalions of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry fought in Belgium and France during the First World War. The 2nd Battalion (which I am imagining Charlie and
Ginger belonged to) suffered 632 casualties before Christmas 1914.

Padre

There were army chaplains or ‘padres’ on both sides during the First World War. In the British army, chaplains didn’t carry weapons, but tried to comfort men
in times of great difficulty and sadness, as well as helping them with everyday things like writing letters home.

Stick bombs

A kind of hand grenade used by the Germans.

Swagger stick

A stick carried by officers as a way of showing rank.

Tommy

A nickname for an ordinary British soldier.

Zeppelin

Zeppelins were German passenger airships which were converted into bombers during the First World War. Airships were slow, but still dangerous enough to kill about 500 people in
Britain during First World War air-raids. Aeroplanes soon replaced Zeppelins, because they were faster and could turn more quickly.

Thank you

With thanks to Northampton Newspapers and Angela Scarsbrook and Penny Wythes of the Northamptonshire Family History Society.