Tommy (41 page)
Authors: Richard Holmes
That night we lit candles and brewed strong tea from chlorinated water poured from an old petrol can (the heat came from a strange concoction in a can labelled âTommy's Cooker') and the fumes from this emergency fuel mingled with chloride, petrol, and the smell of decaying flesh wafting from Nomansland through the blanket door of the dugout. Those famous roses of Picardy seemed a long way away, and probably stank.
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The presence of unburied dead and discarded food encouraged rats. They scuttled along trenches and down dugout steps, crouched expectantly on timbers and rifled men's kit like the most experienced and persistent of looters. Their familiarity with human beings produced contempt. In a billet, Lieutenant Roe discovered:
Corporal Arthur Major [who had been asleep] was sitting up in the straw with a fully grown rat swinging from his nose with his teeth in the cartilage. We had already experienced rats nibbling away at the back of our hair â¦Â The lighting was elementary, a couple of hurricane âbutties' and a torch or two and I was momentarily taken aback. Clearly I could not shoot the rat with my 0.45 inch revolver in such a confined space and equally clearly I could only open the teeth and free them from the cartilage if the rat was first killed. There was only one solution, so I borrowed [Sergeant] Appleford's bayonet and got on with the job.
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They were cunning: when men took to hanging their food from stout cord attached to dugout beams the rats âsoon learned to walk along the cord and pull up the food with one of their front paws'. Stuart Dolden described their depredations in the Armentières sector in 1917.
At the rear of the trenches there were huge holes from which earth had been taken to fill the sandbags which formed the parapets. These holes filled up with water, and at night one could see the snouts of rats as they pushed their way across. They grew fat on the food they pilfered from us, and anything they could pick up in and around the trenches; they were bloated and loathsome to look on. We were filled with an instinctive hatred of them, because however one tried to put the thought out of one's mind, one could not help feeling that they fed on the dead. We waged ceaseless war on them and, indeed, they were very easy prey because owing to their nauseating plumpness they were slow of foot. We would wait and watch for them as they left the water and climbed awkwardly to the bottom of the trench. Then with a run we would catch them squarely with a mighty kick and there would be one less to batten on us.
The officers on their nightly rounds would fire on them with their revolvers and in the morning it would be a common sight to see disembowelled rats lying amongst our barbed wire.
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A gunner forward observation officer found a monstrous rat blocking his view.
It sat just out of arm's reach and washed. I shouted at it, flicked mud at it, threw pebbles at it and not the slightest heed was taken. Eventually in desperation I fetched my stick and, measuring the distance carefully, was able to give it a very violent jab in the middle. It then moved to one side and continued to wash.
Eventually he shot it with his revolver.
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But such is the whimsical perversity of the British soldier that even the much-reviled rat could sometimes touch his heart. One platoon found a three-legged, one-eyed rat, so obviously a companion in adversity that, christened Albert, it became their pet.
On that first day in the line, Rogerson had to dissuade one of his officers from going to look for his brother, killed three weeks before in nearby Dewdrop Trench: even if his body was found, it would probably have been terribly mangled. While looking across the parapet Rogerson was narrowly missed by a sniper: âa deafening clop' in his right ear showed just how good the man's aim had been. An artillery forward observation officer with a signaller and drum of cable arrived to spot for a 6-inch battery shelling a nearby German position. âI was not disposed very charitably for him,' admitted Rogerson, âas so far we had gone almost unmolested, and experience had taught us that any form of artillery offensiveness promptly evoked retaliation which as often as not fell on the PBI.'
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The British shelling induced some Germans to bolt, and the newly-arrived Second Lieutenant Cropper, shooting fast with a soldier acting as his loader, hit four or five of them. Cropper had been commissioned from Sandhurst the year before, showed âa surprising confidence in one so young (he was not more than twenty)' and was to be killed as the battalion's adjutant in March 1918. Surprisingly, there was no retaliation. Buggy Robinson formed up to ask permission to loot German dead behind the position (he made a tidy living out of selling souvenirs to the Army Service Corps) and Rogerson agreed to turn a blind eye provided he agreed to bring back paybooks and identity discs from British dead.
A ration party arrived, carrying sandbags full of bread, tinned bully beef, jam, biscuits, water and rum. They had lost two men killed on the way up. âThe ration carriers' was a most unenviable task, as thankless as it was dangerous', thought Rogerson. âRarely in those days did they complete their double journey without casualties. Occasionally the whole party was wiped out while their company waited, parched and famished, for the water and food scattered about the shell holes.'
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In 1915 Frank Richards had been carrying rations up to the front with a ration party which included Private Bolton. One of Bolton's puttees came undone and they paused while he did it up and the rest of the party went on. No sooner had they moved off than there was heavy shelling just ahead: they saved themselves by taking cover in what they soon discovered was a latrine trench. When the shelling stopped they found their way forward to their own company and reported to Lieutenant Richardson.
We met Mr Richardson, who was pleased to see us: the majority of our ration party had been killed by the barrage on the road. Bolton's puttees had undoubtedly saved us. Mr Richardson was holding his nose and inquiring what was the matter with us, as we smelt like polecats. We explained to him what had happened, but that anyway we had saved the bread.
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It was typical of the caprice of front-line life that Bolton was killed six weeks later trying to dismantle German shells âwhich we used to sell to men in the Back Areas who were not coming in the line'.
Occasionally men made dangerous trips like this of their own volition. Private Edge of B Company 2/Royal Welch Fusiliers â Sunny Jim to his mates â âwas a bit on the weak side,' recalled Regimental Sergeant Major Boreham, âalthough he had stuck all the marching of the Retreat [from Mons], and ordinary duty afterwards until the MO [medical officer] gave him a job on the canteen staff. On 21 August he materialised in the front line, with no personal equipment but a full pack slung by its supporting straps. He had a slight impediment in his speech, and when his RSM asked him what he wanted he replied: â“I fort the boys would want some cigawettes, so I've bwought some up.” He had come about 7 miles because he “fort the boys wanted cigawettes.” He went round the Companies, sold his stock, and went off again as if it were nothing out of the ordinary.'
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On the evening of 12 November there was a sudden and unexpected bombardment, and Rogerson fired German signal rockets (tested in the latrine) to confuse the enemy gunners. The shelling stopped and no casualties were caused. A chastened Corporal Robinson returned, having got lost on the way back from his corpses. Rogerson then slept for four hours, his first rest since leaving Camp 34 some thirty-six hours before, lying in the bottom of the trench. He awoke to find that Maclaren was out with two helpers issuing rum and cigarettes to the covering party â a thin line of soldiers lying out in No Man's Land to protect men working on the trench. âThe value of such apparently dare-devil gestures,' he wrote, âwas evident from the fact that the news had travelled with chuckles down the sap and into the trench long before the three had returned safely back again.'
By dawn on the 13th the trench was in good order:
Clear of mud, fire-stepped, deep, and continuous along the two-company front â¦Â Most of all I was proud of the men â¦Â At no other time in the war did I meet a better, keener or more reliable set of men than that mixed Yorkshire-Northumbrian contingent in front of Le Transloy.
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The company stood to at dawn, both sides of the front remaining quiet for a while afterwards.
For a few minutes the sun and dew distilled a faint fragrance even from the freshly turned earth or the coarse weeds buried by the night's shelling, before the nurture evaporated and allowed the normal odours of trench life to assert themselves. Even then the all-pervading reek of chloride of lime would be overcome for a while by the homely acrid smell of the cook's wood fire and â oh, most welcome! â of bacon.
Company Quartermaster Sergeant Carlton arrived with the ration party and the news that they were to be relieved the following night by 1/Worcesters of their own 24th Brigade. The 13th passed with men focused on domestic concerns although they could hear, only a few miles away to the north, the sound of battle. We now know (though they did not) that it was 51st Highland Division's successful attack on Beaumont Hamel. âAt the time the assault was being delivered,' admitted Rogerson, âwe drank, smoke and sang with never a thought for the thousands of lives being choked out by bullet, bayonet or bomb within a few miles of us. We were content to know that someone else was “for it”.'
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The men became restless after dark as they waited for relief, and the Worcesters arrived at 11.00. Rogerson sent the company on under Maclaren and went to report to his battalion's adjutant that relief was complete, but got lost and eventually found himself back with the company: it had lost no men on the way out.
It was a terrible march back to La Briqueterie camp.
Some of the younger men could hardly walk. Officers and fresher NCOs took over rifles and packs from the most fatigued without avail. The querulous, half-mutinous demands for rest grew more insistent. They were the cries of minds tortured by over-exertion and lack of sleep.
Siegfried Sassoon had watched just such a scene, standing beside the quartermaster (the old warrior was in âa state of subdued anxiety' about his battalion) in much the same place three months earlier. This time it was a whole division coming out of the line:
The field guns came first, with nodding men sitting stiffly on weary horses, followed by wagons and limbers and field-kitchens. After this rumble of wheels came the infantry, shambling, limping, straggling and out of step. If anyone spoke it was only a muttered word, and the mounted officers rode as if asleep. The men had carried their emergency water in petrol-cans, against which the bayonets made a hollow clink; except for the shuffling of feet, this was the only sound. Thus, with an almost spectral appearance, the lurching brown figures flitted past with slung rifles and heads bent forward under basin-helmets.
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Rogerson eventually halted the exhausted company only to find they were just too yards from camp. It was only 3½ miles from Ginchy crossroads to camp, and five miles in all to the front line: less than two hours at normal marching pace. âThere is no doubt that the Somme taught us that distance is a relative term,' reflected Rogerson, ânot to be measured in yards and feet.'
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âDear old Hinchcliffe, the Quartermaster' had the tents organised as if it was Salisbury Plain, and the tireless James Jack rebuked Rogerson for removing his equipment before the men had been fed. He chatted to the adjutant: âSince we had last met two of our friends had gone west, but except for a passing reference â “rotten luck” â their names were not mentioned. We were glad to be out, to be alive, and to be together again.' He drank two mugs of whisky and soda, fell over on hitting the cold night air as he left the mess tent, and crawled back to his own tent, where he fell into a dreamless sleep until 9.00 on the morning of the 14th. It was just over four days since he had gone up the line.
Rogerson's vignette of trench warfare is studded with truths which front-line soldiers would have recognised, however much individual details might have varied. The approach march was better than many. When Second Lieutenant Joseph Maclean first went up the line with 1/Cameronians in the unseasonable spring of 1917 he reported that:
It was raining and blowing, and very cold, and the march up to the trenches was the final limit. We had to go along miles (literally) of communication trenches in the dark, and every now and then we struck a shell hole, or a bit that had been blown in and had to be climbed over, and as everywhere except the âduckboard' was deep in slime and mud you can imagine what we were all like. The last 300 yards or so had to be done over the open across clayey ground: it was a regular acrobatic performance getting across â¦Â I fell into the half-frozen shell holes three or four times, and soon exhausted all the swear words I ever heard, and was reduced to vulgar blasphemy. We took five hours to get up, and arrived soaking wet, covered with filthy mud and perfectly miserable.
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Lieutenant Colonel Alan Hanbury-Sparrow's 2/Royal Berkshires went up the line in single file across the moonscape of the Ypres battlefield in mid-1917. Half the men got lost, and it took hours to find them again. It later materialised that Private Ailey had wearily drifted off in the wrong direction with two companies mutely following him. âThis Ailey had been the curse of the battalion for the past year,' wrote Hanbury-Sparrow bitterly. âFeeble in body, he was feebler still in mind.'
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The fact that Rogerson's trench was in an unusually poor state and his front-line tour shorter than many meant that the full daily routine never had time to develop. More usual was the kind of pattern (echoing watches on a warship) that C. P. Blacker remembered.