Letters From the Trenches: A Soldier of the Great War (12 page)

Harry mentions the action to Kate, giving away much more military information than he normally did in letters to his sister, although still much less detail than in the letter to Jack.

This letter shows the only clear evidence of censorship to be found in any of Harry’s letters. The casualty figures have been firmly and effectively obliterated with a
soft pencil and are unreadable.

Soldiers’ letters were censored usually by a company or battalion officer, a job that most officers loathed. Quite apart from the time it took, they disliked reading personal and sometimes
intimate details that they regarded as private to the sender. Military censors employed in rear areas at field post offices tended to be rather less sympathetic, however.

By great good fortune (and a good illustration of the power of the Internet), I have been able to obtain an account from the German viewpoint. One of the followers of Harry’s blog, Bob
Lembke, has a special interest in the German flamethrower detachments. His father had been a member of one of these units, and Bob has kindly sent me this short account:

From Bob Lembke’s detailed knowledge, it does seem certain that the flamethrower units were only used in circumstances where success was extremely likely (hence the 82 per cent success
rate). Harry and his comrades were fortunate to have come through this ordeal mainly unscathed.

A contemporary account of the day’s action almost certainly refers to the attack on Harry’s trenches:

This card (below) was included among the letters, although I don’t know to whom Harry sent it. It commemorates 23rd Division’s action. I can find a record of the artist, J.V.
Breffit, not as an artist, but as an Army officer. The date, 20 September, was the start of the Battle of the Menin Road – another step in the advance astride that road towards
Passchendaele.

The loss of Harry’s company commander in the action on 30 September – ‘the captain got killed’ – initiated some detective work. One of the purposes behind a visit I
made to the Flanders battlefields, with others, in the summer of 2008, was identifying this officer and locating his grave. Since searching the many cemeteries in the area appeared a daunting task,
it seemed sensible to start with the Bedford House Cemetery. There are more than a thousand graves in the cemetery, but luck was on our side. As soon as we located the date area for September 1917,
there he was: ‘Captain A. W. Sykes, York & Lancaster Regt., 30th September 1917 Age 42. The dearly loved husband of Mary Sykes, Netherleigh, Huddersfield’.

Whatever the event, or the casualties, the battalion, caught up in the huge war machine, carried on as usual. The war diary entry states that on 3 October ‘Battalion moved to METEREN area
by bus, embussing at 2pm and arriving in billets by 6pm.’ This was a return to the familiar training area west of Ypres. For the soldiers it meant relief from the trenches, with the
opportunity to write letters and perform many other tasks: wash themselves and their clothes, dry and clean weapons and other equipment, delouse themselves and their uniforms – even catch up
on some sleep, if drill and training permitted. In the end, the respite lasted a week. The war diary takes up the narrative:

There must be an explanation for the heavy casualties suffered between 11 and 14 October, but the battalion war diary merely records the losses in officers and men for the battalion’s
stint in the front line. There is absolutely no account of any action, or even of any notable events, on those days.

The casualties were heavy. Around 10 per cent of the notional strength were killed or wounded – over four times the losses in the action of 30 September–2 October, for which the war
diary provides a relatively detailed account.

On 12 October, while the battalion was in the front line, the next stage of the advance was launched, the main assault carried out this time by Australian and New Zealand troops. Their losses
were enormous, though they met with little success. The 9th York and Lancasters must have been incidental to the main attack, yet the battalion drew significant casualties from the fighting
resulting from it.

After the relatively dry September, the wet weather had emphatically returned. In the two days up to 9 October an inch (25mm) of rain had fallen, over half the normal rainfall for the month. The
whole battlefield became a sea of mud. October 1917 was thought to be the wettest October in Flanders that century.

Two extracts from contemporary accounts of the events may help us to understand something of this terrible time. The first, from a New Zealander, is recorded on the ‘Flanders 1917’
website:

Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig’s account of the battle paints a sorry picture of brave men engaged in a futile task:

Although not engaged in the main push, there was little respite for the 9th York and Lancasters, as the war diary records (the curious combinations of letters and figures, such as
‘J11a’, are map references):