Forgotten Voices of the Somme (25 page)

Corporal Jim Crow

110th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery

At one point, there were a number picked out of each battery to go to the seaside. We had a rest. There were no other duties at all – just to keep the camp clean. We got there by train, in open trucks, and as the train chugged slowly up a hill, we jumped off and picked apples, but – my God – we didn't do that after we'd reached the top, because the train did sixty downhill.

Corporal H. Tansley

9th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment

It was continual misery. We would come out of the trenches, out of the line, for a 'rest' at a place called
Hardecourt Wood
, behind the town of
Albert
. Our beds were chicken wire nailed on stakes. And there was more work for us

there – carrying parties up to the line, and working parties – than there was when we were manning the trenches.

Captain Maberly Esler

9th Battalion, Border Regiment

Out of the line, the mental condition was a condition varying between depression, and relief at being out of the thing. The men were frightened, they were timid; they didn't want to go back any more to war.

Lieutenant William Taylor

13th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers

During the rest period, out of the line, we stayed in farmhouses. There was a company mess. I shared a room with another officer. In some cases, there were real beds, in others, wooden and chicken-wire beds, with a straw mattress. The mess was an ordinary room in a farmhouse. The next room was the kitchen, where the cook would prepare the officers' food. There would be four platoon officers, the captain commanding the company, and sometimes a second in command. There was one mess waiter and a cook. Then, you had your own servant, but he wouldn't be in the mess. He would be with the other men.

The men were accommodated in barns. It was all farming country, and each platoon would have its own barn. They had bunk beds made of wood and chicken wire. That was the standard bed in France in those days.

The mood was very friendly. Entirely different to the mood in England. There was an association of officers, usually very friendly. One inspected men's kit. One inspected their rifles. They had plenty of time to clean themselves, and to clean their rifles. We used to go to divisional baths, and one generally got fit again. The baths might be in the next village, or quite a long way away.

A number of men would be detailed to return to the line for a day only, to do a particular fatigue or to carry out some trench stores. Occasionally, working parties had to return to the line during rest periods. We had parades during rest periods –
PT parades
. We always had those in the morning, to keep them fit. There would be physical exercises. Not much else apart from kit inspections and rifle inspections. There might be one of each during the rest period.

For the men,
football
was the main recreation. We used to play bridge, whilst the men played Housey Housey [bingo]. There was a divisional concert party, but we saw them very rarely. We never saw them during our usual six days out of the line. We only saw them when we went out for a longer period, between battles. One of our company commanders was
Captain Bliss
who, afterwards, became Master of the Queen's Musick, Sir Arthur Bliss, and he always tried to find a billet where there was a piano. I can remember sitting in his billet one day, listening to him playing.

Sergeant Frederick Goodman

1st London Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps

We had the Bow Bells Concert Party which became very well known in the division. And we had our own concert party. We'd find a hall, or a barn, out of the line, and we had large audiences. We had one chap who played all the women's parts. He'd take the part of
Ethel Levy
, and he was astonishingly good at it.

Corporal Tommy Keele

11th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment

People didn't always know I was a man dressed up as a woman. Some officers from one of the regiments came to see our show and they teased their colonel that one of the girls in the show was a real girl and the other one was a female impersonator and they bet him fifty francs that he couldn't pick out the real girl. Dolly Clair, the other 'girl' appeared first. He was much fatter than me. I didn't come on stage until the end of the show. I walked on in a very low-cut evening dress. Halfway down my chest I used to put a dark red line and then shade the line off so the side was a little pink. It looked like a cleavage and when he saw me the colonel said, 'That one is the female.' So I had to go along to his barracks to prove I was a little lance corporal in the Middlesex Regiment. He was disgusted.

Sergeant Charles Quinnell

9th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers

We always had at least one bath whilst we were out of the line. In pretty well every large-size French village, there was a brewery, a
brasserie
as they called it, and in these
brasseries
there were great vats, twelve feet in diameter and about

three feet deep. Well, in the boiler house there used to be some old soldiers, men in their fifties, and they'd been given the job of stoking up the boilers and filling these vats with hot water and then we, the infantry, would be marched up to this
brasserie
.

We would take off all our things in one room, and leave our dirty shirts in a heap there, and then we'd go into the room where these vats were. There was plenty of soap lying about, but before getting into these vats, there'd been another battalion in there before, and there was an inch of scum on top of the water, which you gently scooped off and flung on to the floor. The floor became like a skating rink so you had to walk very, very carefully or else you were down.

We'd get into these vats and you could actually swim in them. We used to lather ourselves and we used to really enjoy that. And then we'd get out of the vats, and go to the room to the other side and pick up a clean shirt. Well, the old soldier who was in charge there, he didn't have time to see what size you were, you had the first shirt that came to you.

Sergeant Frederick Goodman

1st London Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps

I had a chap in my section – a very fine stretcher-bearer – but he was renowned for giving an awful lot of trouble. Because he was such a nuisance, to make him take note that I wouldn't put up with his behaviour, I put him on latrine duties. And soon after that we played a football match, the men versus the NCOs. I was in goal for the NCOs, and this chap decided that he was going to get his own back on me. He ran the ball down the field on his own. They didn't attempt to get the ball off him, so it must have been prearranged. He got to my goal, and he shot the ball – and me – bang into the net. If I'd been in his place, I'd probably have done the same.

Private Reginald Glenn

12th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment

At
Colincamps
, in the rest areas, our billets were broken-down houses, in amongst the ruins. We got tarpaulins and pieces of corrugated iron. We never went right out of the line – we were always within shelling range. When we came out of the line, the first thing we had to do was to get all the mud out of our clothes and boots, with a scrubbing brush, before we were given a meal. It wasn't full spit and polish. Just tidy.

Sergeant A. S. Durrant

18th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry

Out of the line, about half a dozen of us were billeted in the loft of this farmhouse. It had a lovely soft 'bed' of hay, and we were very comfortable. We noticed a couple of rats in the rafters, and we became friendly with them. They used to come down, and we gave them morsels of food. They became our pets. There was a great box full of bully beef tins in the loft, and we helped ourselves to that. We were continually opening tins of the stuff, eating a bit, and throwing the rest away.

Corporal Tommy Keele

11th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment

I was asked by a bandmaster whether I had a spare billet for him. He had just come out of the trenches. I told him I hadn't but that I did have a very nice bedroom with a double bed, if he didn't mind sharing. So, the first couple of nights, quite good, yes, we shared it and slept quite comfortably but, on about the third night, I woke up with a funny little movement round my bottom. I thought, 'Oh, he's having a dream,' so I sort of brushed his hand away and dropped off again. A little later, the same thing again, I felt a hand around my bottom again and I pushed the hand away quickly and said, 'Don't you dare!' He sorted of muttered in his sleep, or so I thought, and I dropped off again. Then he went even further and he was almost raping me. So, I turned round and I hit him. I knocked him out of the bed. I stood him up and I punched him with my fist. I really battered his head and face for trying to bugger me. Anyway, he said to me, 'You know what you've done?' I said, 'Yes, I do. And you know what you've done?' He said, 'I haven't done anything.' I said, 'You tried to bugger me.' He said, 'I shall report this. You'll be court-martialled.' I said, 'Fine! You report it tomorrow morning and you see who wins. You're a top NCO, I'm a lower NCO.
Buggery
is a crime in the army and it carries the death penalty. You'd be shot if I opened my mouth because you tried to bugger me.'

And he never opened his mouth except to say that on his way to his billet, he'd slipped over and got gravel rash down one side of his face. I was sorry for him afterwards, because everybody was sex-starved. There was no such thing as real girls around. He was probably in that mood and anything was good enough. But if I was good enough, I didn't want to be . . .

Corporal Jack Critchley

Royal Artillery
attached to
Guards Division

One day, one of the drivers behind the lines, said, 'There's a prisoner-of-war camp just across the way, German prisoners they are.' Out of curiosity, several of us went along to see these German prisoners. We found them in a compound, with nowhere to shelter, just huddled up in a ball, diving on to each other for warmth. There were probably two or three hundred of them.

Of course, to us, it looked a bit inhuman. As we were watching, one of these Germans shouted across to us, 'Is anyone there from Birmingham?' We found a lad from Birmingham, and this German called out, 'Do you remember me? I had a barber's shop on Salter Street?' No, he didn't remember. Anyhow the German then said, 'One of our chaps here will give his Iron Cross if you've a French loaf.' So, of course, somebody found a French loaf. He must have gone miles behind the line to get it. The point was that this Iron Cross would be a nice souvenir to take home. So when we thought that the little French guard – who was about sixty, by the way – had got to the other end of the alley and couldn't see us, somebody threw this loaf over. There were two rows of barbed wire and, unluckily for this German, it hit the top wire and fell back into the mud on the other side. And the splash drew the attention of the guard.

Lieutenant Norman Collins

6th Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders

The night when the witches walk. Hallowe'en. We were in a barn behind the lines, and the pipers were piping, and there was a lot of heavy
drinking
, and the colonel asked the pipe major what he would like to drink, and the pipe major ordered crème de menthe. And a tankard of the stuff was brought to him, which he drank in one gulp. I wasn't a drinker at all, but that night I was breaking my rule, and I was thumping the table. There was a bit of broken glass around, and a very kind major restrained me in case I thumped on the glass. And later that night, I had to go up the line with a sergeant, to do a reconnaissance in front of the line at Beaumont Hamel.

Second Lieutenant W. J. Brockman

15th Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers

Ten miles behind the line, you wouldn't have thought there was a war on at all. The hotels stayed open. You could go into one of the hotels, or one of the

local
estaminets
, and have a jolly good meal. The French men were all gone, of course, but the women weren't . . .

Private Philip Cullen

4th Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry

The French
estaminet
was an ordinary house with a bar. Lots of
vin blanc, vin rouge
, and beer – but we never drank beer. That was kid's stuff. One night, we were marching off to the front in the morning, so we went there at night, and we boozed, and we ate, and we boozed until we faded away, drunk as lords. On champagne. I walked out of the back door and fell down the stairs, and lay there. I wasn't bothered. It started to pour with rain, but I still lay there. The night went on, and my platoon lads were missing me: 'Where's the sergeant? If he misses the morning, he's going to get shot!' They found me in the backyard, picked me up, dragged me back, covered me with blankets, took my clothes to the cookhouse and dried them off, and at six in the morning we fell in for a twenty-mile march. I found out that getting drunk off champagne's nothing too bad. I finished off at the front of the platoon, where I should be, and not only that, the last mile or so, I carried one of the men's rifles. I was feeling fine. Ever since, I've thought champagne's the drink to get drunk off.

Private Reginald Glenn

12th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment

The
estaminets
were very good – if you could afford them. They always had the coffee brewing on the stove.