Mentioned in Dispatches ...

[Hornspieler]

Back to England ...

Well, having been discharged from the hospital and in the opinion of the Medical Authorities 100% fit -they were still short of cannon fodder -after a usual spot of leave, I was posted to Winchester to join the 38th Welsh Division which was concentrated around Winchester on being formed. The Division was formed by a miner's leader named Dai Watts Morgan and was composed practically 100% of miners or men employed by mines. Dai Watts Morgan was made a Colonel and I was told that when they were first collecting volunteers he used to take all those who had enlisted for route marches. He knew as much about soldiering as next door's cat and when he wanted them to "Mark Time" he used to raise his feet and stamp and say "Now stamp your feet like this boys." or when he wanted them to wheel left or right he used to say "Now come round a bit on the left/right boys".
In spite of his lack of soldierly qualities he was eventually made a Colonel in charge of a Pioneer Battalion and one day during a battle in France when the Germans had broken through our lines he formed his Pioneers up where they had been building roads and ordered them to charge the Germans even though they only had Picks and Shovels and strangely enough they did and the Germans ran for their lives. This enabled reinforcements to come up and seal the breech in our line. It was foolhardy but brave.

Well, having joined the 38th Welsh Division I was posted to the Divisional Ammunition Column and was rather surprised to find I was the only Regular Soldier in the Unit.
As I was the Senior Sergeant I was made Acting Sergeant Major and more or less took charge of the whole unit as the officers were only temporary soldiers and didn’t have very much idea of soldiers' duties or discipline. I think this would be about the first week in December and you can guess how comfortable we were when I say we were living in tents and the ground was one huge swamp of mud and water.
Anyhow, I managed to introduce some sort of discipline into the troop and as we were busy drawing equipment and horses ready to go over to France, time passed fairly quickly.

We received orders to proceed to Southampton on Christmas Eve 1915 and embark for France and can see now the civilians walking about Southampton with their Xmas trees and parcels and remember thinking "What a life! Here are families preparing for tomorrow, Xmas parties etc and here am I; on my way to be shot at again."

We embarked on Xmas Eve at night and set sail for le Havre. On the way over I was about the only one on board (except the crew) who was not seasick and all my troops were lying about half dead and wishing the other half was. I had six hundred horses and mules on board and so I gathered half a dozen men who were not totally out and went below decks to feed and water them.

We arrived at Le Havre sometime in the early hours of Boxing Day if I remember rightly and so we saw no Christmas Fare that year. When I look and compare the 1914-18 War and the 1939 War it is amazing the different attitude adopted for the soldiers' welfare in the two wars. I believe I am right in saying that in the 1939 war even with men out in the desert arrangements were made for them to have Turkey, Xmas pudding etc whereas here we were on the doorstep of our own country and nobody thought about the troops even having Xmas pudding. I was in France for the Christmases of 1916 and 1917 but I don't remember any effort being made to issue our troops with Xmas fare at Xmas in either year. However, to get on: (end of Episode X)

HS

BTW Surely there must be other forumites with interesting memoires of their own ancestors who were involved during those dreadful years?

I'm sure that we would all like to know what others were told about their own families were affected by those "Great War" experiences

[Hornspieler]

Episode XI France and The Somme

Having disembarked our guns, wagons and animals at Le Havre we then boarded a troop train of cattle trucks (labelled 10 Cheveaux ou 20 Hommes) and spent an uncomfortable journey towards the Battle-front. We arrived at a town called .MERVILLE, about ten miles behind the actual fighting area and were distributed around the farms in the district and of course, due to the state of the weather, the horses were up to their hocks in mud in no time. We stayed there for about two weeks; sorting ourselves out and checking over the equipment and then we were moved somewhere nearer to the front line.

I can’t remember exactly where we landed up but it was somewhere in the vicinity of YPRES and one night, after we had been there a few days, I remember my CO calling at my tent at about 1am and telling me that he had been dining with the Brigadier in charge of our Divisional Artillery and had mentioned my name to him and asked if he could do anything about a promotion for me. The result was that the Brigadier said that I should report to ‘B’ Battery 121st Brigade RFA the next day to take over as Battery Sergeant Major (Warrant Officer Class 2).
As they were only a short distance away, I joined them the next morning and to my surprise, I was told by their CO that as all of his officers were away sick or wounded and the Battery had to occupy a position at a village called “ELVERDIN”, he would have to go up and take over the Battery and take over the position from the outgoing Battery and I would have to move the Battery up to the position that night. Luckily, I could read a map, as I had taken Map Reading as one of my subjects when I got my First Class Certificate of Education in India before we came home for the War and I managed to get everyone on the position without any problems and was congratulated for a smart piece of work.

"Elverdin" must have been a very pretty village before the war came and was in Belgium. We were immediately joining the Belgian occupied front and were thus on the extreme left of the British front. The Belgians passed a fairly quiet time as when their country had been invaded by the Germans they flooded this part of the country by opening the dykes and lochs from the North Sea and the front was therefore flooded right across to the North Sea and there was no possibility of Germans being able to attack them by a frontal advance.

From what I could see of it they spent most of their time engraving shell cases with images of their King and Queen and making War Souvenirs of rifle cartridges and bullets. I had a couple of souvenirs made by them, actually cartridge cases of shells I fired myself at the Germans but they were left behind when I was wounded for a fourth time.
(Episode XI -sent 21st July 1964

[Richard Tarleton]

[B][COLOR="#FF0000"] Surely there must be other forumites with interesting memoires of their own ancestors who were involved during those dreadful years?

I'm sure that we would all like to know what others were told about their own families were affected by those "Great War" experiences

I've just caught up with the latest instalments HS. An amazing saga. You're lucky to have such a record from a family member - so many were reluctant to talk about their experiences. My paternal grandfather never spoke about it, although I think he was deeply scarred by his wartime experiences. I only recently learnt of the existence of his wartime poetry - he poured out his feelings in poems which only exist in a single handwritten leather-bound notebook which is in the possession of his daughter in, er, Tasmania. I'm hoping they'll scan it for me - they're reluctant to entrust it to the post, even though I'm the official family archivist. My maternal grandfather - the one who suffered from shellshock - kept a scrapbook full of photographs and cuttings, a priceless document which - tragically - my grandmother burnt on the fire when he died in 1958. She never recovered from the loss of her son in WW2.

As for Forumites - in my case it's my grandfathers' generation, but for many not much younger we're already looking at great grandfathers - and grandmothers, and other female relatives. My maternal grandmother was a nurse looking after soldiers. My paternal grandmother got her School Certificate in 1918 and joined the Women's Land Army (Forestry Division) and spent the remainder of the war chopping down trees. She also caught the Spanish Flu which swept Europe after the war, but survived, otherwise I would not exist.

The other family member for whom I have a detailed record is another first cousin three times removed (from the Scottish branch of the family), who had already served in the Boer War and emigrated to Canada where he became a fur trapper. He signed up for Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in November 1914, and was decorated with the Distinguished Conduct Medal for rescuing all of the unit's horses from burning stables that had been hit by German shellfire - returning four times, according to the citation. He started the war as a colour sergeant and ended it as a Lt. Colonel. In researching his regiment I came upon his regiment's daily log from the trenches - they took part in the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Paaschendale etc. - it makes extraordinary reading. At the end of the war he took part in a little known episode, a 4,000-strong Canadian Expeditionary Force mission to Vladivostok to help the White Russians against the Bolsheviks. This came to nothing, and they returned without having had any contact with the enemy. He finally retired to Los Angeles, even having a bit part in an early Hollywood musical (I have the DVD, and a copy of his contract from Warner Bros.). Amazing what you can find out, but it does require time and dedication.

[Petrushka]

Surely there must be other forumites with interesting memoires of their own ancestors who were involved during those dreadful years?

I'm sure that we would all like to know what others were told about their own families were affected by those "Great War" experiences

I wonder if it could be that other forumites of my own age group (mid 60s), which I daresay constitutes the majority on here, had grandfathers who were too young for the First World War and too old for the Second? This was certainly the case with my maternal grandfather, while my paternal grandfather was already too old in 1914.

[antongould]

Some regular soldiers, of course, served with distinction in both World Wars .......

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Wilkinson

[french frank]

BTW Surely there must be other forumites with interesting memoires of their own ancestors who were involved during those dreadful years?

I'm sure that we would all like to know what others were told about their own families were affected by those "Great War" experiences

My father didn't talk about the war, though he was mentioned in dispatches for his involvement as a flotilla officer during the D-Day landings, when his ship, an LCT, got stranded on Sword beach. And he was miraculously rescued when his ship went down in a storm, 30 miles off the north coast of Africa. I can understand him not wanting to relive it. His brother-in-law who had a desk job with the RAF in England loved chatting about it.

[Hornspieler]

I wonder if it could be that other forumites of my own age group (mid 60s), which I daresay constitutes the majority on here, had grandfathers who were too young for the First World War and too old for the Second? This was certainly the case with my maternal grandfather, while my paternal grandfather was already too old in 1914.

You will find something more on that inter-war period when you read my final summary of Fred's dispatches. (But thereare a lot more yet to come.

My uncle Ernie Beech was captured by the Japanese in WWII and set to work on the Burma Railway.

Under sentence of death, for running a secret camp newspaper, he was released when the Japanese surrenderd.

Over six feet in height and heavy with it, he weighed only 6 stone when rescued.
My mother's maiden name was "Beech" and Fred's mother's was "Vinsun" which I have chosen as the nom-de-plume for my stories and poetry.

HS

[un barbu]

These extracts have made fascinating and moving reading. Thank you for posting them, HS. I agree with FF that many of those who went through it did not want to talk about their experiences. My paternal grandfather enlisted in the Royal Scots (aka Pontius Pilate's Bodyguard) in January 1915 on his sixteenth birthday. He was honourably discharged as disabled in June 1918. My maternal grandfather was 21 when he enlisted and he survived his decidedly risky time first in the Machine Gun Corps and later in the Tank Regiment. When I was at school as a 15 year old in 1964 we were encouraged by our history teacher to seek out memories of war from our grandfathers, assuming they had survived. Neither of mine would talk. The details I have listed here I discovered while undertaking family history research.

[Hornspieler]

Some regular soldiers, of course, served with distinction in both World Wars .......

Including, of course Lord Alanbrooke who' as Brigadeer Alan Brooke was my father's commanding officer during Fred's period as RSM at Larkhill Camp.

Where I was born - less than a mile from Stonehenge; which makes me both a Druid and also a Wiltshire Moonraker.

Time for another dispatch:

Having disembarked our guns, wagons and animals at Le Havre we then boarded a troop train of cattle trucks (labelled 10 Cheveaux ou 20 Hommes) and spent an uncomfortable journey towards the Battle-front. We arrived at a town called .MERVILLE, about ten miles behind the actual fighting area and were distributed around the farms in the district and of course, due to the state of the weather, the horses were up to their hocks in mud in no time. We stayed there for about two weeks; sorting ourselves out and checking over the equipment and then we were moved somewhere nearer to the front line.
I can’t remember exactly where we landed up but it was somewhere in the vicinity of YPRES and one night, after we had been there a few days, I remember my CO calling at my tent at about 1am and telling me that he had been dining with the Brigadier in charge of our Divisional Artillery and had mentioned my name to him and asked if he could do anything about a promotion for me. The result was that the Brigadier said that I should report to ‘B’ Battery 121st Brigade RFA the next day to take over as Battery Sergeant Major (Warrant Officer Class 2).
As they were only a short distance away, I joined them the next morning and to my surprise, I was told by their CO that as all of his officers were away sick or wounded and the Battery had to occupy a position at a village called “ELVERDIN”, he would have to go up and take over the Battery and take over the position from the outgoing Battery and I would have to move the Battery up to the position that night. Luckily, I could read a map, as I had taken Map Reading as one of my subjects when I got my First Class Certificate of Education in India before we came home for the War and I managed to get everyone on the position without any problems and was congratulated for a smart piece of work.
"Elverdin" must have been a very pretty village before the war came and was in Belgium. We were immediately joining the Belgian occupied front and were thus on the extreme left of the British front. The Belgians passed a fairly quiet time as when their country had been invaded by the Germans they flooded this part of the country by opening the dykes and lochs from the North Sea and the front was therefore flooded right across to the North Sea and there was no possibility of Germans being able to attack them by a frontal advance.

From what I could see of it they spent most of their time engraving shell cases with images of their King and Queen and making War Souvenirs of rifle cartridges and bullets. I had a couple of souvenirs made by them, actually cartridge cases of shells I fired myself at the Germans but they were left behind when I was wounded for a fourth time.
(Episode IX -sent 21st July 1964

[Hornspieler]

French Lessons ...

The Battery had a fairly easy time at Elverdin and I was staying further back in what we
call the Wagon line where the horses, ammunition wagons, gun limbers, drivers, spare
gunners and equipment and stores are kept while the guns are in action. It was one of the
few places where we had huts to sleep in and I got Rambler roses from ruined houses in
Ypres and had them trained over the huts to make it look more like home.
In the huts, we built on each side a framework of timber and wire netting which made beds for the men. I remember well one of our Sergeants named "Dai Cork" and his favourite expression for pinching things was "Winning them". This expression for pinching became fairly general in the Army in later days. He had found it extremely difficult to find sufficient rubble and material for protecting his gun but he found a way to do so by his "winning ways" .

The Royal Engineers had started to build a wall in front of our guns, chiefly for camouflage for the village crossroads and at night when it was half finished they had left an armed Sentry to watch over the stores and half finished wall (the CO apparently was wise to the Welsh habit of pinching things or so the Nursery rhyme runs). As soon as it got dark Dai Cork suggested to the Sentry that he came along to their gun position and had a hot rum. (He’d already told his gunners what they had to do). The Sentry duly fell for the bait and Cork kept on priming him with hot rum while the gunners did what they were told to do. While he was enjoying the hot rum the gunners had knocked down the unfinished wall and had the rubble in sandbags and used any other materials that were lying around and got on with strengthening the gun positions.

When the Sentry got back there was practically nothing left on the site. Our Battery Commander heard about it next day and felt that the RE Sentry should not be punished and asked the Engineer Officer to come round to see him. He admitted to the Engineer Officer what had happened and invited him around to have dinner, explaining that he had just received a brace of pheasants from home. The Officer accepted the explanation in good humour and had dinner with our CO that night and so the incident was smoothed over with no dire results for the sentry. This may seem a far-fetched story but I can assure you it is true and is vouched for by a book published by our Battery Commander under the title "Gunner" and I actually read the book quoting this incident.

After three or four months covering the YPRES front, we pulled out for a rest and re-equipping. This took about 2 weeks and we were then transferred further south to the Somme front. We were registering targets for about 2 weeks and then on the morning of 1st July 1916 all guns on our front opened up a heavy barrage and we knew another attack was about to begin.
This was the battle in which the first tanks were used and although the appearance of these monsters put the wind up the Germans who first saw them, they had very little success and were soon rendered useless. In this battle the infantry suffered appalling casualties and one Regiment of our Division, the Cardiff City Battalion of the Welsh Regiment went into attack 800 strong and came out with 150 effective men. It was the same with all the other Regiments. They all suffered enormous casualties and the maximum advance was about one mile. The cause of this disaster was that while the Artillery Barrage was on, the main German force had retired into deep dugouts they had been preparing for months and as soon as the barrage dropped off or was switched to points further in from the original trenches they came up from their dugouts and were waiting for our infantry to advance. As I said the .'Brass Hats" had the idea the tanks would get the Germans on the run and the infantry would have an easy job to mop up and break through but they had not allowed for the Germans' forethought or the depth of the German defences which our chaps did not succeed in breaking through. After some weeks our troops had to withdraw to a line more or less where they had started from and thus another slaughter of British manpower had produced no satisfactory results.

Strangely our Battery casualties in this particular operation were surprisingly light and we were pulled out for rest and re-fit and after our usual fortnight we went back into action on the "YPRES" front but not exactly the same spot. We were there for months with desultory fighting all along the front but the winter of 1916/17 was as severe as any we had while I was in France. (Episode X -sent 31- 7-64)

[Hornspieler]

Episode XI
In February 1917 the snow was two feet deep everywhere and although it was severe for us with our horsed vehicles you can imagine how severe the conditions were for the poor Infantry who had to stand in it up to their waists in some trenches and when you throw in the freezing conditions as well you can guess how bad it was. The Infantry were issued with Rubber Boots reaching up to their waists and called "Waders" and thousands of them were casualties with frostbite. When you also remember that once they were in the trenches it was a continual watch around the clock as the Germans would have raided them at the slightest sign of any relaxation. We were issued with what were called "Canadian Field Boots" which laced all the way up to the knee and were fastened with three buckles at the top. They fitted your ankles and legs like a glove and after a day or two of the awful weather pinched you terribly. You could not take your boots off while you were in action as you might have to move at a moment's notice and once you had taken them off, your feet sweated. so much that you could not get them on again for a couple of hours.

The first day of the battle was successful and our Infantry advanced all along the line and captured a ridge called PILKEM RIDGE about a mile from our starting point. I remember one of our Welsh Battalions at the start was facing the Kaiser's famous body-guards
known as the "Cock-chafers" and they brought in hundreds of them as prisoners, so old "Kaiser Bin" as he was called by the troops lost his body-guard in one swoop. After the first couple of days things slowed down a bit as we had to move the Artillery forward to support the Infantry and bombard the ground further back. It was during one of the
moves that I got wounded for the third time. To explain how it happened it would be just as well to ten you what the Battery Sergeant Major's duties are. Normally he remains some distance behind the guns in charge of the horses, spare vehicles and drivers and sees that supplies of ammunition and rations are taken up to the guns as regularly as required, usually at night. I was getting a bit bored with this and thought I might get a bit more excitement up with the guns and one day asked the CO whether I could have a spell up with the guns and let a Sergeant take charge of the wagon line in my place. He did not fall in with the idea at first and reminded me that I had already been wounded twice and thought that was enough for one war, but if I really wanted to go it was alright by him so next day I planted myself with the guns looking forward to a bit more excitement. We had just arrived at a hold-up in our advance at this time and our usual job was carrying out what we called our "Hate" programme. This meant a fierce bombardment of an
allotted area of the enemy positions and guns every morning and evening, usually firing about 100 rounds per Battery at each session. While we were firing the enemy Artillery usually remained quiet, probably because under this hail of shells from the British Batteries they decided it was safer to retire to deep dugouts. We found later that they had spent
the previous winter preparing them. When we had finished our "Hate" sessions, we
vacated our gun positions and took shelter in some puny dugouts we had also prepared as the Germans replied with a Hate programme similar to ours. We must have wasted thousands of rounds of ammunition between us on both sides. We suffered hardly any casualties and I expect the Germans were just as lucky but what we did do was something we found out later when we started advancing again and it was certainly something the Higher Command had not allowed for. If you fire thousands of shells at some area you are going to leave thousands of shell holes and when it is swampy and low lying ground like it was in this area plus the rainy season, these thousands of holes are going to fill with water.
Well that's exactly what happened but that will show up later and how it affected us in the Artillery.
While we were carrying on, as I have said previously, firing "hate" sessions and evacuating ourselves to dugouts was standing one evening at the guns having given the order to scram before retiring myself, when a young officer of the Infantry was leading a company of his men past our guns. I believe they belonged to a Yorkshire Regiment but am not sure now.
I told him he was asking for trouble as when we had finished our "hate" session the Germans started up and he would be in the thick of it in seconds.

He said "I can't help that Sergeant Major, I have to get my company into the line before dark and this seems the shortest way."

I said "So be it." or something like that and was preparing to dash for our dugouts when Zoom! Crash! and an 8 inch shell landed where he and his troops were. I don't know how many were killed and wounded, but once again,
I was wounded.
Luckily I had moved and I only got several small wounds from pieces of shell case but as they looked bloody and nobody could tell how badly wounded I was, I was rushed off to the Advanced First Aid station for treatment and they put me on a hospital train for the base hospital. It turned out there was nothing serious really, about four or five small wounds, some deeper than others. One lucky one was under my chin just above the "frog" in your throat.
If that had gone in any further it might have slit my gullet. Well, here I was back in hospital again through trying to be a "smart Alec" and volunteering for excitement and trying to do a party of comrades a good turn with what I thought was good advice .(Episode XI -sent 13.8.64)

[Hornspieler]

Passchendaele
1 had been at the Base hospital (Rouen think it was) for about 2 weeks, when one night at about 12 o'clock Midnight we were all woken up and told to parade in front of the MO. Apparently the casualties had been so heavy at further fighting going on at that orders had been issued to clear all Base Hospitals, either by sending the wounded to England or marking them out for convalescent treatment at a Base Camp and thus the Midnight parade. Fellows with just simple cuts on their hands and legs were being marked for England and when I got to the MO he looked at my wounds and asked whether I had been wounded before and J told him this was my third dose of wounds.
His reply was "As you are a regular soldier I can't send you back to England." and I said "So that's it - I can be like the pitcher that went to the well once too often." and he said
" I can't help it Sergeant Major, Orders from England are to keep all Regular Soldiers out here as far as is possible."
I must have felt a bit annoyed as I remember saying "Thank God we've got a Navy.” That was a comic expression we used during the 14-18 War when things did not seem to be going right.

There was no mention in any of Fred's dispatches about moving from France into Belgium, but my next post will be worth waiting for, whilst I assemble the relevant details.

HS

[Hornspieler]

Episode XII

Anyhow in a day or two I was marked for Convalescent Camp and finished up at the Artillery Base Camp at Harfleur near Le Havre. The one redeeming feature about this camp was that it had a Sergeants' Mess, but as far as convalescence was concerned they couldn't care less. The fellows in the camp (they were not all ex-wounded men but some waiting to be posted as reinforcements to Batteries in action) were detailed in squads daily to parade at 7.0 am and march to the Docks at Le Havre and unload stores for the army. Of course Sergeants and above were not supposed to hump stores about but they were detailed in turn to take charge of the parties. I wondered why these NCOs and WOs took this detailing for fatigue parties so easily without objecting and realised that of course the reason was the majority of them were scared stiff of being detailed for Batteries in the front line and preferred to spend their time doing coolie jobs down at the Base.
Having been detailed and done my turn at taking charge of the fatigue parties, I thought that's the only one I shall do before going back up the line to my Battery, but again I got a shock. The next morning a Bombardier came to my tent and said "You're for Dock fatigues today. Sir. " I told him he wanted to look again at his Roster as I had done Dock fatigues the day before. He replied that he did not keep a Roster of Sergeant Majors for duty. but that they were detailed from the Adjutant's Office. I knew it was no good blaming him and as we had to be off by 7.0 am it was no good registering a complaint at the Adjutant's Office then. So I decided that it would have to wait until I got back.
When I returned about 7.0 pm I went straight to the Adjutant's Office and asked to see the Adjutant. I was told he was in the Officers Mess and I replied that I wanted to see him there and then or I wou1d lodge a General's complaint the next morning. He arrived alright and I told him my complaint.
He said "I am sorry there must have been a mistake -these mistakes happen in wartime you know. " As I was not being talked down to by a whippersnapper of a Temporary Officer I told him they didn't know there was a war on in Harfleur. I then asked him when the next draft of reinforcements was due up the line for the 38th Welsh Divisional Artillery and he said "As a matter of fact there is a draft due to go tomorrow night."
So I replied "Then put me in charge of it." I think he realised I was not the type who would stand being played around with and I was in charge of the party next night as requested.
We arrived at "Poperinghe" which was the rail-head for the "Ypres" sector and was the town where a Parson named "Tubby Clayton" started a Club for Servicemen in a house which was given the name of "Ialbot House" .This started an organisation which took the initials "Toc H" -"Ioc" for "T" in Army signalling and "H" for house and it has since spread all over the world.

[Hornspieler]

It was in the early hours of the morning and I had to see whether there was any place where the troops could get a bite and a cup of tea before finding the Divisional Artillery Head- quarters. I have a vague memory that we found a Canteen run by the YMCA, Salvation Army, Church Army or one of those organisations. They were very good at organising these canteens during the 1914-18 War and fixed them up as near to the fighting area as they were allowed. Next day I handed my draft over to the Artillery Headquarters and enquired where my Brigade was now in action. Having had the position shown me on the map J tracked off and having found them, reported to the Lieutenant-Colonel Commanding my Brigade and asked him if he would give me a letter for the Base Commandant asking for me to be posted back to my Battery. Having handed the letter in when I got back I was on the train for my Battery the next night.

I expect the people at Base were glad to see the back of me and I was certainly glad to kiss my hand goodbye to the only Base Camp I saw throughout the War. When I reached my Battery the CO said he was pleased to see me and said "Now you stop in the Wagon line with no more nonsense about being with the guns. "

I found the Battery had moved forward during my absence and now the Wagon line (horses etc) were where the guns had been when I was wounded. Also now we began to experience the unfortunate result of our "Daily Hate" shelling which I mentioned earlier. In one position we were in, the guns were scattered about all over the place and in some cases had their wheels in shell holes as there was not enough level ground between the shell -holes. Apart from the appalling conditions. to have to fire under them also meant that each gun had to be registered on targets separately, whereas under normal conditions of the guns in line at 20 yard intervals a Battery of guns could find the target accurately (with a little adjustment for intervals) when only one gun had registered the target. What the gunners had to put up with was nothing to what the Drivers had to, from the inconvenience and labour angle, although the gunners could make no forms of shelters on these sites and therefore suffered more casualties than normally. (Episode XIII -sent 20/8/64)

Episode XIV
The Drivers had to take their Wagons about 10 miles during the day to collect ammunition and when they returned it all had to be transferred to Pack Carriers; one on each horse or mule and each Carrier holding 8 Rounds and take it up to the Guns at night, wading through the seas of mud. You can guess the trouble the poor Drivers had, leading 2 horses by their Head collars in the dark (no lights allowed) over ground covered with shell holes fined with water or mud. The poor blighters often had to swing on the Head collars to get over the holes and mud and altogether they spent a 14 or 16 hour day just on ammunition supplies alone. The remaining 8 or 10 hours they had to feed themse1ves and the animals, make some effort to keep themselves and the animals clean and get their sleep. This went on for day after day and with all this they were cheerful and wining and grumbled very little. In my opinion they were heroes.
Eventually when Haig had lost too many men to be able to batter a way through the German lines he had to admit defeat and we were withdrawn from the line for a rest.
After the usual period of rest and re-fit of about three weeks we were transferred to what proved for about six months a quiet part of the line.

But then we were transferred to the front line at a place called " ARMENTIERRES" about October 1917.
You may have heard the 1914-18 War Song "Madamoiselle from Armentierres" -well that was about this place; but there were no Madamoiselles or Madames there when we arrived. As a matter of fact it was like a Ghost Town of the old Wild and Woolly West.

Most of the houses still stood more or less intact but not a soul lived there. I remember going into one of the houses and looking around -there were plates and utensils on the table and children's toys still scattered around .
The house that seemed most damaged was the Mayor's house and we had a gun in what had been his parlour.
Apparently before the war he had been a tile manufacturer and his factory was just near his house. There was a considerable number of decorated tiles lying around there and I got some of my chaps to 'collect some and bring them down to the wagon line.
I had already had a corrugated iron building put up for a Cook-house and then had the idea to build an oven and tile the floor of the Cook-house.
The oven had five baking compartments made out of 5-gallon oil drums which we had burned out to clean them and the finished product looked like the diagram enclosed . (Not included in this narrative)

We cut off the tops of the oil drums and used them for doors on the ovens and the troops had some excellently cooked meals. We cooked with wood which was issued with the rations and all the heat ran under the five ovens before going up the chimney. Covering the top of the oven with tiles also allowed us to keep food hot when some of the troops were away on duty at meal-times, as the tiles acted as a hotplate.
Having had a Hairdresser posted to us in the recently arrived reinforcements, I also opened a Barber's shop and had it equipped with a wash-basin salvaged from a damaged house and a large mirror fixed to the wall. For the first time since my battery landed in France the troops could get a decent haircut. Until then when their hair wanted cutting the clippers we used for clipping horse's coats was the only method available.

The horses had brick standings and a corrugated iron roof over them but were exposed to all the vile weather driving through their stables and after the severe weather we had had the previous winter (1916-17) I thought out a scheme to give them more protection for the forthcoming winter. It was simple really and I cannot understand why it had not been thought of before either by myself or somebody else. It meant getting hold of a few rolls of wire netting, which I wangled from the Royal Engineers and nailing it to the inside of the posts supporting the roof of the stables and then nailing sacking, (another scrounge) from the REs, to the outside of the posts. We then took a portion of the horses' daily straw ration and put it between the wire netting and sacking which made an excellent wind break for the animals. We made a door of canvas each side so that we could get the horses in and out and the Drivers could get in to feed and groom them. I don't know whether the horses appreciated it but as I got less kicks that winter than previously it must have calmed down their tempers at least and I know the troops who had to look after the horses appreciated working under warmer conditions.

It was here that I first discovered how Haricot Beans (you know the kind you get in Heinz Tinned Beans) grow. A field just in front of our horse lines had rows of them growing. They grow just like runner beans on a small plant 9-12 inches high and are left to dry on the plant. This field had probably been planted by a farmer who had left the area and I put my chaps on gathering the crop and the troops were on Haricot Beans as an extra vegetable for days. As I have said it was so quiet on this front that except for the sound of gun-fire and the Verey lights being fired at night you did not know there was a war on.
Verey lights as you may know were fired at night by troops in the front line to light up the area in front of them so that they could see whether the enemy were coming over to cut their wire or plan a trench raid. A lot of trench raiding at night went on all over the front, the idea being to capture a couple of prisoners.a couple of prisoners so that the opposite side could find out who was in front of them. (Episode XIV, sent 5/9/64) .



NB There is still more to come of Grandad's memoires - Right up to the day when Armistice was declared.

All of your comments are welcome.

HS

[Richard Tarleton]

Episode XII
We arrived at "Poperinghe" which was the rail-head for the "Ypres" sector and was the town where a Parson named "Tubby Talbot" started a Club for Servicemen in a house which was given the name of "Ialbot House" .This started an organisation which took the initials "Toc H" -"Ioc" for "T" in Army signalling and "H" for house and it has since spread all over the world.

Tubby Clayton I think - by coincidence something about him on the letters page in today's Times. The Rev Tubby Clayton represented men accused of cowardice and achieved over 200 acquittals. Apparently "other ranks" had to be represented by officers at courts martial, but officers were not allowed to represent those accused of cowardice. Normally a court martial lasted 5 minutes and they were shot the next morning. Exception was made for the parson.