The Unknown Warrior (33 page)

The culinary tastes of the Gallic and Anglo-Saxon elements of the Allied armies on the Western Front differed somewhat. Laffin (2003: 215) quotes General Spears on the views of the ‘Tommy' and the
poilu
when it came to food:

They disliked each other's cuisine. When the French commissariat fed some of our men … complaints were endless … Our people could do nothing with the vegetables from which they were expected to devise soups and savoury messes. They hated the coffee and threw away in disgust the inordinate quantities of bread served up … In short Tommy Atkins, like his civilian counterpart, was rigidly hidebound in his tastes.

At least food was getting to the troops. The German spring offensive of 1918 was held up not simply by Allied troops, but also because advancing German troops had stopped to loot Allied supply depots, including food stores. By this time, Germany was badly affected by a blockade, resulting in much ersatz material and small rations. It would have been a most demoralising discovery for the front-line German troops to see the comparatively lavish lifestyle of their opponents. ‘Nearly all war memoirs make it clear that morale was heavily dependent on good rations. It is, in many ways, the central leitmotif of
All Quiet
[
on the Western Front –
Remarque, 1996]. The smell of bacon in the morning cheered men on both sides …' (Ferguson, 1998: 350).

Infantry, when not in the front line, could try to catch up on sleep, write letters to relatives, continue their relationship with alcohol or visit the many other ranks' brothels that sprang up to meet the demand. When not under attack in the trenches, time-honoured pastimes were more the order of the day. Mouth organs have been found in the archaeological work at Auchonvillers (Fraser, 2003: 11) and, in 1999, The Diggers retrieved a set of playing cards from one of the trenches (Aurel Sercu, pers. comm.).

Despite the squalor of the trenches, men fought what must surely have been a losing battle against personal hygiene; the remnants of toothbrushes, a comb, razors and even a shoe brush have been found in the excavations at Boezinge (Aurel Sercu, pers. comm.).

Accommodation

The men are quite wonderful, always cheerful under the most trying conditions; sleeping, when not in the trenches, crowded in such accommodation as can be got in a barn, or a cow-stall, or a loft.

(Fielding, 2001: 9)

For those at the front, accommodation meant the trenches. These were often elaborate, zig-zag or crenulated in plan to avoid blast from shell or bomb carrying too far along a single stretch, and with saps cut forward as advanced positions. These could have wooden planks or ‘duckboards' along the floor under which drainage sumps were to be cut. All this with a protective mantle of a deadly spider's web of barbed wire to the fore. ‘It would, I suppose, be an exaggeration to say that the parapets at this place [trenches opposite the Hohenzollern redoubt] are built up with dead bodies, but it is true to say that they are dovetailed with them, and everywhere arms, legs and heads protrude' (Fielding, 2001: 31).

Ideally the trenches would be strengthened and heightened with sandbags and revetted with iron, though the soldier often had to rebuild shell-damaged trenches while under fire and could use anything to improve his lot. At such times, the training manual was shelved and archaeology helps to reveal the ingenuity of those who fought.

In these ‘barracks' men could face the elements for many days, sharing their billets with lice and rats, the latter soon becoming very large, as carrion became plentiful. There have been few excavations of trench systems to date, other than the Auchonvillers communication trench. This trench was initially dug by the French, but was then occupied by the British when they took over the village in 1915. The unit that took over was from the 4th Division – a regular formation that had suffered heavy casualties at the 2nd Battle of Ypres (Fraser, n.d.: 4). Rather than the typical view of a trench with duckboards at the bottom, this system was floored, in places, with brick and had a drain running down the side. This trench was reinforced by angle-irons, sandbags and with rabbit wire – all of which were recovered in the excavation work. Two sumps were found: one containing animal bones and kit items, the other flouting standard procedures by being cut into the side of the trench. As project historian Alistair Fraser (2003: 11) wrote, this highlights the fact that ‘soldiers did not always follow the manuals', and thus the value of archaeology.

A further find from Auchonvillers highlights human nature in quite a powerful fashion. In the fill of the trench was a white tile on which, in chinagraph pencil, the legend ‘In case of Fire Only' was written. ‘This was presumably placed near the cellar [connected to the trench and used, in part to shelter troops] entrance and was intended to warn against improper use of fire buckets and their contents' (Fraser, n.d.: 16). Laffin describes the day-to-day conditions in the trenches in stark terms:

Life in the trenches was vile. True, in the better-disciplined units trench house-keeping was taken seriously. No rubbish was allowed and latrine buckets were situated down a short sap to the rear. Tools, bombs and ammunition were all neatly stacked. Mostly an officer would have a dugout into which he could crawl. The men would sprawl on the firestep shivering in the bitter cold, up to their knees in mud, with rain driving into their faces. In summer the heat in a trench was intense. Large rats ran over the men as they slept; everybody knew on what these rats fed. (Laffin, 2003: 212)

As we have seen, geological considerations are important in determining the extent to which artefacts survive. They were also fundamental in determining aspects of the Battle of the Somme. As Doyle (2001: 249) points out, British trenches were ‘mostly cut through the limon complex which cap the plateau top above the 130m contour (reported as “reddish earth” by Masefield, 1917). These trenches were often waterlogged during the heavy summer rain or later in the campaign when the good weather of summer 1916 had broken. This demonstrates their local penetration into the clay with flints overlying the chalk, beneath the limon complex.'

By contrast, the German trenches followed the line of Beaumont Valley and were cut into chalk. This ensured that ‘dry, deep dugouts were possible, and were constructed for maximum effect into the steep scarp slopes of the incised Y-Ravine. Masefield (1917) in his contemporary survey of the newly captured German ground reports that German dugouts were extensive, with long shafts, galleries, barrack rooms and other underground shelters, all supported by timber baulks, iron girders and concrete' (
ibid.
: 249). The well-drained chalk enabled sophisticated defensive systems to be created, allowing the German trenches to withstand the huge artillery bombardment that preceded the attacks on 1 July 1916.

Some of the most enduring images of the First World War are of the flooded battlefields of Flanders, especially from the 3rd Battle of Ypres, the hellish battle known as Passchendaele. It is this flooding that has ensured the remarkable survival of organic remains. The fact that the water-table is so high in this region means that The Diggers have been able to examine British and German front-line trenches with a remarkable degree of structural preservation, although under tricky excavation conditions. At Boezinge, the ‘Yorkshire' Trench (a name derived from the 1917 trench map) was seen to have been constructed with inverted ‘A-frames' of wood, which supported slatted wooden boarding (duckboards) on which the troops walked. Beneath this a drainage channel had been cut, hopefully alleviating to an extent the necessity of walking through liquid mud. The sides of the trench were reinforced with corrugated iron and the plan of the site was, as one would expect, zig-zag in layout to minimise blast risk. Other elements from this site included a wooden reel to hold telephone wire in the trench – so vital for communications – and even a wooden sledgehammer used in the construction of the trenches (Aurel Sercu, pers. comm.). Conditions in the trenches could, quite simply, be ghastly. As Ferguson (1998: 446) wrote: ‘In addition to the pain of being “hit”, men felt fear, horror, grief, fatigue and discomfort: the trenches were damper, dirtier, and more vermin-infested than the worst slum.'

As with the Somme, in the trenches of Flanders troops created dugouts as shelters to protect them from the bombardment of the enemy. These took the form of small scoops in the trench walls, or hollows covered with corrugated iron and then soil and sandbags, or the most desirable of all, the deep-mined dugout.

As Doyle
et al.
(2001) have shown, the methodology behind the construction of such shelters was heavily dependent on the geology of the region. The Association for Battlefield Archaeology in Flanders (ABAF) excavated the ‘Beecham' dugout (Bostyn, 1999). This dugout, which was perhaps occupied by the Germans in the early part of the war and, judging by the artefacts recovered, by the British in the final stage (Doyle
et al.
, 2001: 269), had 1.2–2m of overhead cover and an overall depth of 4m. The dugout was lined with timber throughout and seemingly the bunks within ‘provided accommodation for 66 men and three officers … Stepped, inclined entrances and gallery junctions were equipped with inclined frames enabling blankets to be rolled down and dampened as a precaution against gas attack' (
ibid.
: 269). Some of the bunks within these dugouts still hold traces of the chicken wire supports, which would have helped to keep the soldier in his bed (Barton
et al.
, 2004, 284). Even with these precautions, it is unlikely that the dugout would have withstood a direct hit from heavier forms of artillery such as howitzers.

Trench systems were not the only places that housed infantrymen. According to the archaeologist Alain Jacques, the British reused a series of Medieval stone quarries in Arras – an area known as ‘Thompson's Cave'. The ingenuity of British soldiers is shown by the fact that they converted these quarries into a ‘billet capable of accommodating more than 24,000 men – the equivalent of the population of Arras at the start of the Great War' (Alain Jacques, pers. comm.). In addition, houses behind the lines also served as barracks, and barns provided shelter, too.

Soldiers also slept in tents and, as these items were fairly portable, they were present close to the front. Indeed, traces of tents have been found in a couple of excavations; the mass grave of French troops at Saint-Rémy-la-Calonne, while not containing much by way of material culture, yielded the rivets from a canvas tent (Adam, 1999: 32). The excavations of the German mass grave of twelve soldiers in a shell hole at Gavrelle seemed to indicate that tent canvases might also have served as makeshift shrouds on occasion – with aluminium eyelets from such an item being recovered (Desfossés
et al.
, 2000: 35).

Away from the areas of conflict, large camps were required to house those troops being trained prior to being cast into the maelstrom. In Britain, Salisbury Plain performed this role to a major extent. Not only were British troops put through their paces here, but soldiers from New Zealand, Canada and Australia as well. Little remains of these camps today, but archaeological techniques can highlight the presence of former hut sites. A geophysical survey in the vicinity of the prehistoric henge monument of Durrington Walls, as part of the Stonehenge Rivers project, revealed the location of Camp 1 at Larkhill, home to, among others, the Australian 3rd Division. Although the corrugated iron and wood no longer remain extant above ground, the camp perimeters and hut footings can still be seen in traces in the soil.

Writings

By 1914 large numbers of infantrymen were able to read and write. Consequently, many letters from front-line soldiers survive. Of more interest to us in this study are the traces of literacy in the archaeological record and the information they can give us.

As shown in previous chapters, graffiti is something that the soldier often leaves behind. Carved into the walls of barracks or prisons, it offers hints as to an area's function or the units that were present. For example, a cellar connected to the trench excavated at Auchonvillers had a large amount of graffiti, comprising initials (such as J.C.) and names of individual soldiers, including that of Private John Edward Hargreaves of the 7th Border Regiment, 17th Division (present in this sector from 1917). Fraser (2003: 11) noted that these scribblings were ‘entirely done by infantrymen which seems to indicate that it was used to shelter part of the garrison of Auchonvillers'. Writing has also been found in a more utilitarian mode in First World War excavations in the form of signage denoting particular locations and room functions, such as in the Arras hospital (see page 197).

The limestone and chalk geology of the Somme region was of great significance to those who fought there. The presence of caves and quarries cut through the stone enabled soldiers to leave their own mark: to carve images into it, scratch their names over it and paint motifs onto it. Annette Becker, of the University of Lille, believes that the presence of initials, soldiers' names and their regiments, is significant beyond simply being a form of vandalism. For her, ‘Soldiers' trench graffiti and sculptures demonstrate a strong need to leave some trace before the attack, before death, to tell of experiences or dreams before disappearing' (Becker, 1999: 116). Soldiers also drew doodles or wrote verse when incarcerated (see page 202).

Writings that are visible in the caves of the Soissons and Noyon regions are frequently patriotic, proclaiming divine backing of the campaign of one side or the other. German writings were often ‘outlined with black paint and typically adorned with a black-painted cross, a date and the inevitable
Gott mit Uns
[“God with us”]' (Saunders, 2003: 122). The presence of troops in the French army who spoke Breton is also indicated by the writings of a soldier in the 262nd Infantry Regiment in one of the caves: ‘
doue hag er vro
, 262°
ri
,
nov
1916' (Becker, 1999: 125). Work in the dugouts of Flanders has also revealed traces of units that fought in the mud. In addition to the names of the Sappers of 227 Field Company Royal Engineers who constructed the dugout known as ‘Gordon House' – W. Spalding, D. Erwin, F. Lamb[..]y and F. McLaughan – there are carvings relating to the 117 and 118 Machine Gun Companies (Barton
et al.
, 2004: 270).