The Unknown Warrior (32 page)

Shrewton Folly, used by the Australian 3rd Division from 1916 onwards, prior to moving to northern France and Belgium, emphasised the importance of redigging existing areas of trenches, rather than creating new systems, and of creating proper machine-gun emplacements. Aerial photography by O.G.S. Crawford in the 1920s reveals that some trenches were, at that point, still extant, but were later filled in. Today, they can be picked up by geophysics and excavation.

At Beacon Hill, on Salisbury Plain, training trenches are still extant and have been the subject of several archaeological recording techniques: plotted from aerial photographs, surveyed by English Heritage, and laser-plotted by Wessex Archaeology. With island traverses, communication trenches, bombing pits and reserve trenches, this extensive system would have provided valuable practice. It also made use of existing monuments, such as round barrows and Bronze Age linear ditches, as happened in actuality in the trench systems of the Western Front, such as the Butte de Warlencourt.

An admirable survey of the region (McOmish
et al.
, 2002) identified sites at Compton Down and New Copse Down, which still retained ‘obstacles such as wire entanglements secured by screw pickets' (
ibid.
: 140). Other training elements can still be traced on land owned by the Ministry of Defence – these include tunnel systems below trenches in Colchester and North Wales. Archaeological work at Colchester revealed evidence for bombing practice – however the artefacts included champagne bottles as well as grenades (Brown, 2004: 58).

Practice trenches have also been located at Silloans in Northumberland (Hammond, 2004: 24), Clipstone Forest in Nottinghamshire (Grid Reference SK 615 635), Shipton Bellinger in Hampshire (Grid Reference SU 245 462), the Downs south of Blatchington in Sussex (Grid Reference TV 498983) and those connected to Stobs Camp at Penchrise Pen in the Scottish Borders (Grid Reference NT 4890 0650). Several good extant trench systems survive in Wales, of which those in the park of Bodelwyddam Castle and at Penally are especially impressive. The latter was the subject of an archaeological study, which revealed the presence of saps, extensive trenches with both parapet and parados, and communication trenches (Wessex Archaeology, 2004a).

Rifle practice formed part of the training, and the remains of First World War rifle ranges are still extant at Maelor Saesneg, near Wrexham, and at Cannock Chase, Staffordshire. The latter is close to a First World War hospital, German prisoner-of-war camps and a subsequent German war cemetery. Bayonet practice was also instilled and areas were set up in France to expose new troops to such fighting techniques. Among the most infamous of these was the so-called Bull-ring at Étaples in France, where men trained in sand dunes and woodland close to the town.

Recent archaeological field recording by the Institute of Lifelong Learning at Sheffield University has examined a series of zig-zag regular depressions associated with earthen banks around Redmires and Ash Cabin Flat on Hallam Moors to the west of Sheffield. These were the training areas of the Sheffield City Battalion, known as ‘Hill 60'. ‘Training here lasted only eight or nine months before the Battalion left for overseas service as part of the Yorks. and Lancs. Regiment. Several [men] died in the process of training and approximately two-thirds of the men eventually lost their lives at the Battle of the Somme' (Sidebottom, n.d.: 1).

The survey located ‘sinuous depressions running around the top of the hills to the south, west and north. Some small mounds and dugouts were located on the eastern side of the hill and there appeared to be a possible machine-gun emplacement near the summit' (
ibid.
: 1). Oxford Archaeology has also carried out fieldwork on practice trenches at Whiteleaf Hill in Buckinghamshire. At the point examined, the trench was only around 0.6m deep and around 1m wide – perhaps indicating the practice of digging the specific shapes of trenches; there were also covering banks and the possibility of ‘firing steps'. The overall layout was zig-zag (Edmund Simons, pers. comm.).

The Sites and Monuments Record for the former county of Avon in the south-west of Britain noted the presence of such workings at Lansdown, just to the north of the city of Bath (
smr
refs. 9646 + 1991). These were cut through Roman and Saxon remains in 1915 by parties of around 100 men of the North Somerset Yeomanry, under Major A.H. Gibbs. The workings occurred within a relatively short distance of the monument commemorating the death of the Royalist infantry commander, Sir Bevil Grenville, who had been killed in the 1643 Battle of Lansdown. In cutting these practice trenches, the soldiers were accidentally undertaking their own archaeological work with several stone columns – presumed to be Roman – being found.

On this side of the road are many mounds, extending over a considerable area, that had evidently been thrown up at a remote period when quarrying to obtain stone for building the many walls on the Down. Here the work consisted of making a bomb-proof shelter with trenches leading up to it, outer trenches and dugout. On September 9th, when digging to construct one of the last named, at 3½ feet below the surface, was discovered two parts of columns, each about 18 inches high … (Bush, 1914–18: 127–8)

Photographs of these columns were sent to Professor Haverfield at Oxford University, who declared them to be ‘Tuscan-Doric' style and Roman, if they were not from one of the many Georgian buildings of Bath (
ibid.
: 128). Initial recruits into the North Somerset Yeomanry were trained in musketry at the nearby Box rifle range and the 1/1st saw tough action at Ypres in 1915 in the ‘never-to-be-forgotten defence of the shattered trenches' (Fisher, 1924: 168) – the trenches at Lansdown were clearly cut later than this event.

With so much soil disturbance on the Western Front, much of it in archaeologically rich areas, it is not surprising that many monuments and artefacts were uncovered by troops. Modern aerial photography serves to highlight this with some striking images of zig-zag trench systems crossing circular marks and complex circles attributable to Bronze Age monuments at Berry-au-Bac (Delétang, 1999: 137). A prehistoric burial mound, the Butte de Warlencourt, was incorporated into defences on the Somme, commanding the road to Bapaume. The mound was covered in barbed wire and honeycombed with dugouts, which saw much heavy fighting. In advance of the construction of the A29
autoroute
, excavations at Ablaincourt-Pressoir (Le Chemin Blanc de Bouvent) found the remains of two Prussian soldiers alongside separate Iron Age deposits, including a brooch and coins (Lemaire, 1998), while the site at Villeneuve-Saint-Germain (les Etomelles) was of Bronze Age, Iron Age and Gallo-Roman deposits cut by First World War trench systems (Boulen, 1998).

Although soldiers have long been known for collecting items (Talbot-Rice and Harding, 1989), it seems that the infantry themselves were interested in archaeology. Evidence for this was provided by recent excavations at the corner of the Heidenkopf (Quadrilateral) at Serre on the Somme, where the remains of a German soldier with a prehistoric flint scraper in his bread bag have been discovered (Brown, 2005: 31). A Neolithic axe was also recovered by troops digging trenches at Harponville on the Somme (Saunders, 2002: 102).

For the infantryman interested in geology, sectors of the Western Front provided ample opportunity for obtaining samples for the collection – Jünger (2003: 181) noted that the rock at Côte Lorraine was ‘full of fossils, especially of a flattish, bun-shaped sea urchin, which one could see literally thousands of along the trench walls. Each time I walked along the sector, I returned to my dugout with pockets full of shells, sea urchins and ammonites.'

In terms of practice digging, soldiers quickly learned that no training manual could fully prepare them for trench warfare – much had to be ‘unlearnt' and their adaptability under pressure was put to the test. Methods to strengthen trenches were experimented with and ‘new' modes of close-quarter combat were adopted. As an officer in the Coldstream Guards on the Western Front wrote: ‘I suppose there is nothing in the world where theory differs from practice so much as in war. Contrast the practice trenches in Windsor Park with the trenches here' (Fielding, 2001: 31). By necessity war becomes the ‘mother of invention', and indeed improvisation.

Training for Commonwealth troops also took place far from theatres of conflict around the world; the largest of the Canadian training areas was at Valcartier, a site with huge numbers of tents and rifle ranges, about 16 miles to the west of Quebec City. A fine example of training in Australia is shown by the image of trenches being cut at Broadmeadows (see Plate 23).

The experience of soldiers was hugely important for them to adapt to the battlefield conditions of the First World War. One of the most interesting finds at Saint-Rémy-la-Calonne was a purse containing numerous coins. These coins had been separated from one another by pieces of cardboard so that they would not jingle around in the pocket (Adam, 1999: 32).

THE LIFE OF THE SOLDIER

The Zeitgeist of the Western soldier, probably from the time it arrived in Europe, was tobacco, in an enduring partnership with alcohol. As we have seen from excavations of sites of the English Civil War onwards, pipes and bottles are far from rare on sites that had witnessed the marching of soldiers' feet. This holds, of course, for the First World War. Ferguson (1998: 351) went so far as to state that,

without alcohol, and perhaps also without tobacco, the First World War could not have been fought. When Sergeant Harry Finch of the Royal Sussex Regiment advanced into no man's land on the eve of the Passchendaele offensive (31st July 1917), he was struck by the fact that most of the men in his section ‘fell fast asleep' as they lay waiting to attack. That was the effect of the rum issue as much as tiredness.

The provision of ‘Dutch courage' was perhaps not always conducive to instilling optimum fighting condition in the men, though it might have helped to take the edge off some of the fear.

we went back rejoicing to have our rum ration … but one poor chap with us, he took a first sip of the rum and gave a shriek and dropped the jar because some fellow back in the rear had stolen the rum and filled the jar with brown Condy's fluid, a powerful disinfectant. This poor fellow had taken a mouthful and it went down into his stomach. We heard he died later. (Rifleman Henry Williamson, London Rifle Brigade, in Arthur, 2002: 54)

Rum jars have been recovered from several excavations on the Western Front, in addition to being found as fragments in plough soil. One such jar was found by the archaeologists working at Auchonvillers and they also retrieved beer bottles manufactured in Leeds (Fraser, 2003: 11). Others have been found in Flanders in the work of The Diggers around Boezinge (Aurel Sercu, pers. comm.).

But beyond the last entanglement,
Out of it all, on the firm road,
Met together, with no delays,
In the glow of the first pipes lit,
Then, mates, O lucky winners,

Then what stumbling voluble joy!

(Charles Vildrac, from ‘Relief ' in Silkin, 1979: 234)

Uniquely in our study we have the surviving remnants of some of the tobacco of the period in archaeological contexts. Excavations in Flanders in 1999 by The Diggers recovered several pipe bowls, but most poignant was a small tin box filled with tobacco found with the body of a Royal Welch Fusilier and a series of matches in a rubber cloth stamped 1915 (Aurel Sercu, pers. comm.). Pipes have been found during fieldwork associated with the armies of the Central Powers, too, such as in the mass grave of the twelve German soldiers in a shell hole at Gavrelle, Pas de Calais (Desfossés
et al.
, 2000, 35). A pipe and box of matches were also present with the burials of three Germans found during rescue excavations at Thélus (Vimy), to the north of Arras (Nils Fabiansson, pers. comm.; see Archaeology of the Western Front, 2003). As far as the French correspondent of
L'Independence
was concerned in late 1914, smoking was one of the characteristics of the British soldier: ‘Tommy loves to laugh, he has clear eyes and smokes almost continuously a cigarette or pipe' (Laffin, 2003: 205). Richard Holmes (2004: 326) went as far as to say: ‘The British army marched less on its stomach than in a haze of smoke.'

Eating

And then they brought us ‘Princess Mary's gift box'. And in this box was cigarettes, tobacco and a bar of chocolate, which was very much appreciated. And then we had what the English newspapers called Christmas Dinner. This consisted of cold bully beef and a cold lump of Christmas pudding, that was our Christmas dinner. The English newspapers said that the British troops in the front ‘enjoyed' their Christmas dinner.

(Private Clifford Lane, 1st Battalion Hertfordshire Regiment, in Arthur, 2002: 55)

The Auchonvillers work has recovered items relating to the food consumed by the soldiers, including a ‘bully beef ' tin (from the French
boeuf bouilli
, meaning boiled beef), butchered animal bones, which were found in the sump cut into the trench, and a 1lb tin of butterscotch made by Parkins of Doncaster. Cutlery has also been excavated – vital for consuming hot food from a mess tin (Fraser, 2003: 11). After the war, the trench was backfilled with the surrounding detritus of conflict, including food and mess tins and latrine buckets.

‘Bully' tins have been excavated at Boezinge in Flanders, where it appears that additional flavouring for the meat was considered important by the men in these trenches as a bottle of HP Sauce was also found (Aurel Sercu, pers. comm.). The ability to eat canned food was vital for the front-line troops, enabling longer preservation of foodstuffs and easier storage. The provision of bully seems to have been in some ways comforting to the troops, judging by the comments of relatives of the author, who served in the First or Second World War and who were fond of eating it in peacetime.