EXISTENCE IN THE TRENCHES of the Somme could be a short and brutish experience. Within the range of the roaring guns there was no safety in numbers, no genuine shelter from the storm, no real peace of mind. The stresses imposed would be unbearable to the modern mind—yet the vast majority of men endured everything that was thrown at them. Every time the men went forward into the front line they knew that there was a fair chance that they might never return. Whether they were holding the line or about to make an attack, they knew that their lives had reached a distinct crossroads. They hoped to survive unscathed, but they naturally feared death or the type of wound that would leave them crippled for life.
The approach of the infantry was usually made through the dark claustrophobia of the cramped communication and support trenches that criss-crossed the battlefield like a maze. On they plodded led by guides—usually they had no idea of where they were going or what they would be doing. When they got to the front line they found it a far cry from the neatly regimented trenches they had hitherto encountered in training. The carefully constructed parapet, revetting, firestep, duckboards, regular bays and parados were almost entirely absent. Here the trenches were often little more than crude muddy ditches, or shell holes chained together to make a rough line. Often they had been hewn out by desperate men who knew that they had to get under cover fast or die. Only if left undisturbed would the more sophisticated elements of trench warfare gradually be added. But the trenches were rarely left undisturbed for long.
German shell fire was the bane of the infantry’s lives. If they survived for a few days, the men soon began to learn how to identify by sound the various types of shells. One common light shell fired by the 77-mm gun, equivalent to the British 18-pounder, was known as the ‘whizz-bang’—which perfectly described what it did.
‘Whizz-bangs’ are not very jolly when fired exactly at you, as they were at the company headquarters; as Ethel says, ‘It is not the bullet I mind, it is the bang!’ So with the ‘Whizz-Bangs’—when fired at you, the ‘Whizz’ part is almost absent, only lasts a fraction of a second and then there comes the sharp ‘Bang’. It is quite startling, but is over so soon that it is really not so bad as the larger shells which one hears coming some time before. In their case the agony is prolonged.1
Major Walter Vignoles, 10th Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment, 101st Brigade, 34th Division
The most common large shells were the 5.9-ins which exploded with a large black cloud of smoke. They were nicknamed ‘coal boxes’ or ‘Jack Johnsons’ after a well-known pre-war American boxer.
Another menacing type of shell was fired by the German minenwerfers. These short range German trench mortars would be brought forward to pound the British front line whenever the situation was static enough to give them the chance.
A form of Boche frightfulness called by us ‘oil cans’ from their resemblance to a small oil drum. These drums are about a foot in diameter and about 18 inches high and are filled with explosive containing very little shrapnel, the result is that they make a tremendous explosion with violent concussion, so that if they drop in the bay in which a man chances to be, they knock him very queer. The effect, however, is very local, and one can see them coming, so that the men very soon got in the way of watching for them and dodging them. As a matter of fact, most of them fall outside the trench and burst quite harmlessly. One night I was out and saw five ‘oil cans’ in the air together; the fuse makes a streak in the sky as it burns going through the air. None dropped very near me; the sergeants with me and I stood watching them to see which way they were going, before making a move, it is the only thing to do, and if a man keeps his head he can usually get away.2
Major Walter Vignoles, 10th Battalion, Lincolnshire Regiment, 101st Brigade, 34th Division
Gas was a weapon that still had the power to cause panic amongst the men. The cloud attacks of 1915 were now largely replaced by artillery gas shells that landed with an insignificantly unthreatening ‘plop’ before releasing their contents into the atmosphere. Essentially the various forms of gas were designed to render victims incapable of functioning as soldiers. A small dose would cause breathing difficulties, uncontrollable crying but too much and it could kill or cause life-long chest problems. There was something primordial in the fear of not being able to breath in safety. There was also the very real lurking fear that the Germans could at any moment unleash new and ever more deadly forms of gas.
Jerry started to shell with gas shells a village to our rear in the valley. He plastered this place and soon our eyes began to water copiously. We thought it was only tear gas, but as we began to splutter, cough and squirm, we found we had been too optimistic. I thought my heart would lose itself, as I was very sick, but as the shelling ceased, about an hour later I began to be more composed. We were all a little windy, as we had been told some time before that the Huns had invented a new gas which was fatal if the victim had any exercise within half an hour. This proved to be untrue, as we took an 8 mile march to the rear with no ill effects.3
Lieutenant Edgar Lord, 15th Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers, 96th Brigade, 32nd Division
By the middle of August 1916 a new gas mask had begun to make its appearance. It was not initially popular with the men for although it allowed them to function in gas and preserved their lives, they were awful to wear, combining discomfort with a strange futuristic appearance.
An instrument of torture! A muzzle covered the face from below the eyes and fitted tightly under the chin. This was connected to a tin container, not unlike a regulation water bottle, lodged on the chest, by a reinforced, concertinaed rubber tube, from which a ‘flipper’ through which one exhaled protruded. A pair of large, metal-rimmed goggles was pulled over the eyes and required constant attention to keep it in place. After a while the padded interior of the muzzle became very soggy and the ‘flipper’ dripped saliva. However, though most unpleasant and uncomfortable, it proved efficient and saved us from the horrible effect of the gas.4
Signaller Dudley Menaud-Lissenburg, 97th Battery, 147th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 29th Division
The British Army never properly mastered the art of digging reinforced dugouts to shelter their men while they were occupying the trenches—certainly not by 1916. The biggest and best dugouts in the front lines were reserved for the company headquarters where the company commander and his officers would be housed along with the senior NCOs and signallers—if there was room. The men usually had to make do with individual cubby holes scraped out of the side of the trench. In some sectors the men were able to occupy dugouts that had been captured from the Germans. These were magnificent efforts in comparison to the shallow scrapings of the British troops. They offered an illusion of security although the very fact they had been captured illustrated that there was nowhere actually safe.
The old German trenches occupied by us on Pozières Ridge—between Pozières village and the farm—contained a number of commodious dugouts, 20 feet and more in depth, floored, and in some cases partitioned into several rooms. One, in particular, which was occupied by B Company headquarters, was lit by electricity, generated by a sort of bicycle peddled by a man. The only drawback was that the mouths of the dugouts faced the enemy line. More than once a German shell blew in an entrance, inflicting loss on the occupants below. On one occasion I was sheltering with others in the dugout when a shell exploded just above its mouth. Although none of us was hurt, we had visions of being trapped alive; but when the smoke cleared, we glimpsed daylight up the stairway, and were able to scratch a hole large enough to enable us to crawl out on our hands and knees.5
Sergeant H. Preston, 9th Battalion (Queensland), 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, Australian Imperial Force
The underground bunkers had only recently been home to the evicted German tenants. A few had left their mark during their long occupation; a collection of possessions that revealed some inkling of their interests and personality. Not all the Germans were the uncultured boors of propaganda.
I write this within 200 yards of our most advanced line, sitting in a German dugout, which has very lately been the headquarters of an artillery officer. He has left behind all his belongings and most of his books. The latter are really of an extraordinary variety. There are books on optics and on philosophy, novels and poetry, Nietzsche and Balzac. I am sure there are several hundred volumes altogether. The fact that we are here seems to annoy the Hun intensely and we are under constant fire. As the roof is thick and the walls are strong, one can treat his exuberance with contempt. It must be very annoying for the one-time owner to watch his chimney smoking from afar, and to know that some barbarian is enjoying his coffee.6
Medical Officer Captain Charles McKerrow, 10th Battalion, Northumberland Fusiliers, 68th Brigade, 23rd Division
Such a refined dugout was certainly the exception. By their very nature most of the underground bunkers were dank, gloomy and unwelcoming places that offered very little in the way of home comforts.
Most men had to make do with the open trenches. Their uniforms soon became filthy, copiously bespattered with mud and nameless horrors. with no fresh water available for a proper wash and shave, here was a real life of grime.
When an occasional opportunity arose in the early dawn hours, I stripped, and my batman threw dirty water taken from shell holes in a canvas bucket all over me much to the amusement of nearby onlookers. Short periods of sleep were snatched in various locations, sometimes in shell holes, reminding me of Bruce Bairnsfather’s famous cartoon, ‘If you know of a better ’ole go to it’. One night I slept in the remains of a tomb belonging to the Waterlot family in Guillemont churchyard, and another in a recently captured German dugout. Removing blankets lying on the wire bunks, and casting them aside on the ground, I began to wonder if I was developing delusions. The blankets were moving in all directions, and on closer examination, I realised that this was caused by the infestation of millions of lice. My machine gunners also became infested, and whenever possible, removed their shirts to pick off any visible lice. On one occasion, I heard one say to another, ‘There goes another Arsenal supporter!’ as he threw it away. I gathered that the remark was made on account of its colour.7
Lieutenant Horace Paviere, 61st Company, Machine Gun Corps, 20th Division
In such dirty, cramped living conditions, lice were almost inevitable. They soon spread from man to man, till they became a near universal irritation. When men first arrived with new drafts to the front they were often shocked at the sight of men openly delousing or ‘chatting’, as it was often called. These lice were not fleas, but a creeping parasite that was a light fawn colour and left irritating blotchy red bites. In the German dugouts an entirely different louse seemed to be endemic, which was smaller and red in colour. Various powders were commercially available but their efficacy was often in doubt and the men swore that the lice thrived on them. The best way to deal with them was to get the lice one by one in a ceaseless battle of attrition that mirrored the war itself.
In the light of a few candles I made out half a dozen fellows with their shirts off. I soon found out it was a delousing session and they were cracking big body lice between their thumbnails. Lice lay in the seams of trousers and in the deep furrows of long woollen underpants. A lighted candle applied where they were thickest made them pop and splatter small blood spots onto one’s face and hands. A delousing session could take a couple of hours. I felt downright sick and I left the dugout to go into the sunlight.8
Private Thomas Jennings, 6th Battalion, Royal Berkshire Regiment, 53rd Brigade, 18th Division
Far worse than the lice were the rats. The men were acutely aware of the rats’ predilection for feasting on the plentiful corpses lying out in No Man’s Land, and the thought of being eaten alive or dead was enough to give most of them the horrors.
I found out last night where a rat starts eating when he finds a corpse. I was just dozing off in my hammock when I felt a sharp pain in the knuckle of my middle finger, right hand. Evidently a rat had mistaken me for a dead man. Two nights ago, I found a similar cut on the knuckle of the same finger on the other hand. It is badly swollen now. Why the rats should start here I cannot imagine—unless it is that the bone is near the skin here and he uses his tooth against the bone!9
Lieutenant Leonard Pratt, 1/4th Battalion, Duke of Wellington’s Regiment, 147th Brigade, 49th Division
From the lowly private to the highest regimental officer one enemy was common to them all—the mud—it soon began to dominate their lives. The Somme mud seemed to be a demonic elemental force intent on slowly sucking the life out of them.
How we cursed that mud! We cursed it sleeping, we cursed it waking, we cursed it riding, we cursed it walking. We ate it and cursed; we drank it and cursed; we swallowed it and spat it; we snuffed it and wept it; it filled our nails and our ears; it caked and lined our clothing; we wallowed in it, we waded through it, we swam in it, and splashed it about—it stuck our helmets to our hair, it plastered our wounds, and there were men drowned in it. Oh, mud, thou daughter of the devil, thou offspring of evil, back to your infernal regions, and invade the lower circle of the inferno that you may make a fit abiding-place for the slacker and the pacifist.10
Captain R. Hugh Knyvett, 15th (Queensland) Battalion, 4th Brigade, 4th Division, Australian Imperial Force
For the most part the officers suffered alongside their men, but at least their rank brought them sources of solace denied to the ordinary soldier.
I found the battalion a huddled mass of soaked humanity. I was more tired than I liked to admit but I called a meeting of officers, explained the situation as best I could, and then lay down in the mud under a GS wagon and slept for an hour and a half. It was dark when Cyril Illingworth woke and told me it was time to move, and I must confess that I never felt more like, ‘Shamefully throwing away my arms in the face of the enemy.’ However, whisky and hot water made of the a hero again and I blessed the inventor of this life-giving liquor and wondered what the Germans drank instead.11
Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Bodley, 10th Battalion, Rifle Brigade, 59th Brigade, 20th Division
The men had to make do with a rum ration. Contrary to popular mythology this was not administered to get the ‘Tommies’ roaring drunk before they went over the top. It was a tightly controlled ration meant primarily to help keep out the cold and generally invigorate the men.
Armies of men cannot exist on their own. The amount of supplies needed every day would have fed a teeming city and thousands of tons of food and water had to be got forward every night. Munitions, too, had to be brought up; the guns were voracious beasts in their ceaseless demands for shells. The logistical demands of creating and maintaining the infrastructure of war were simply phenomenal: the trenches alone sucked in incredible quantities of wood, sandbags, corrugated iron and barbed wire. General Service wagons rumbled constantly through the night and their drivers from the Army Service Corps, Royal Engineers and Royal Artillery had an absolutely vital role. Although they were not ‘at the sharp end’ in the front line they, too, were risking their lives. The German artillery had registered the range of many of the main roads and junctions and at night they would open up randomly to wreak havoc on any convoy of wagons unlucky enough to be passing at the time. It was a strange game of chance that the drivers had no option but to play night after night. The only prize was survival and the knowledge that the men or the guns were being fed.
That crossroad was shelled over and over again. A great hole appeared in the middle, perhaps 12 feet deep, and the pioneers would contrive to fill it up again, carrying stones or sandbags, and always ready to dodge away when German artillery would blast it away again. The strange thing was that there was nowhere to drive into, and we horsemen had to make a bolt, under fire, diving straight into a heavy crater filled with stinking water. Our horses were up to their bellies and even higher in mud and water. How we ever got them out was a mystery. If they had received shell fragments, we cut their traces and many received a bullet to end their suffering and agony.12
Driver Rowland Luthor, C Battery, 92nd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 20th Division
The infantry held in reserve and support trenches alongside the main roads watched the nightly carnage with horror.
Our trench ran parallel with the main road to Mametz in which direction all our transports came. I believe the ‘Boche’ knew every inch of the road. Daily and hourly we witnessed almost indescribable scenes on the roadside, our transports being hurled into the air like pieces of paper blown by the wind. The groans and cries of the wounded and dying pierced us through and through and made our blood run cold. I never slept a single moment in this position.13
Private John Lawton, 1/5th Battalion, King’s Liverpool Regiment, 165th Brigade, 55th Division
The teams of horses pulling the wagons couldn’t take cover even if they had had the time or a comprehension of what was happening around them. They were a big target for the shrapnel and shell splinters to hit.
Three men were wounded and seven horses hit. This morning at 12.30 to 1 a.m., I was coming back from a dressing station and I came through the transport lines. I had a flashlight and I turned it on some of the dear horses and patted them. I went on to the next. The light showed a great hole all stopped up with wadding. I thought, ‘This is one of the wounded horses’. I went on and the next one had a hole in the head, the next in the legs and body, and so it went on. The flashlight showed up enough to tell the how terribly they had been wounded in taking food up to our men. Indeed, so bad were they that the transport officer said he might lose the lot. But all was silent. Only one was breathing a little heavily, that was all. I had just come from a dressing station. Our men suffer very bravely. But if you went into a dressing station after a battle blindfolded you would know at once from the occasional groans, expressions and movements, that man were there in pain. If you went through our transport lines blindfolded you would not have known that several of our horses were wounded, for they suffer in absolute silence.14
Chaplain David Railton, 1/19th Battalion (St Pancras), London Regiment, 141st Brigade, 47th Division
The wagons could only get so far forward and they would drop off the supplies at dumps behind the front line. The food was divided up by the company sergeant majors and then carried up the last few hundred yards in sandbags slung over the shoulders of the ration parties sent back by the battalion in the front line. Given the problems in getting the food forward it was of necessity fairly basic fare. Tinned food was the staple with corned beef—the dreaded ‘bully beef’ of legend—predominating alongside the Machonachies meat and vegetable stew. Dry ‘dog’ biscuits, or if they were lucky bread, helped the men fill up along with bacon, cheese and jam. One staple of the diet was tea. The British Army had its own recipe for tea, which seemed to involve far too much of everything being stewed until it was unrecognisable by anyone with functioning taste buds.
The tea, corrosively strong and sweet as a concentrated syrup, served in mugs with the enamel chipped off just where you put your lips. Contact with the naked tin can be avoided by drinking from the segment immediately above the handle. The state of the mugs can’t be helped because they get such a bashing about, but there’s no excuse for the ghastly brew.15
Medical Officer Lieutenant Lawrence Gameson, 45th Field Ambulance, Royal Army Medical Corps, 15th Division
Yet most men loved it. Tea was for many a panacea for almost all ills. The potent combination of sugar and caffeine gave a temporary, but comforting ‘high’.
What goes in must come out. Latrine discipline had to be maintained by the men at the front. If the men ‘went’ anywhere they pleased then the trenches would soon have been uninhabitable. Sanitation was hugely important and the presence of swarms of flies coupled with open latrines held a very real threat of dysentery. Rough latrines were dug in side trenches, mere holes in the ground occasionally boxed in or with a pole as a seat. They were liberally doused in quicklime to try and keep back the threat of disease.
Living conditions naturally improved further back from the line. Of course, the generals and their teams of staff officers did not share the privations and risks faced by the men in the front line. They needed to be at the centre of a communications hub that stretched forward to the battalions in the line and back to the High Command. The staff needed somewhere to work in reasonable safety, to draw up their detailed plans and from which they could disseminate their orders. They either occupied former German dugouts, or purpose built headquarters dug by the Royal Engineers.
For the British infantry all hopes were centred on the time when they would be relieved at the end of their tour of duty in the front line. Nobody could stand it for long under these conditions and five days was about the norm. The relief rarely went entirely smoothly as the new troops often had trouble finding their way to the right spot in the wasteland that surrounded them. Then the officers and NCOs had to ensure that the new garrison understood the local situation, the strength and weaknesses of the trenches, the locations of the trench stores and the linking points with neighbouring units. It was often a long, drawn-out process. The combination of fear, exhaustion, stress, extreme physical discomfort and illness was a potent brew. Officers, NCOs and men were all ground down and at the end of their physical and mental tether by the time their tour in the line came to an end.
I collected the remnants of my section and began to struggle back through countless mud-holes. I was so weak that I kept falling down, and in the process getting muddier and muddier. Stretcher bearers came running up to help, imagining that I had been wounded. With hindsight, I now feel that I refused their offer ungraciously. The main contributory cause of the weakness was an acute attack of dysentery from which I had been suffering for some days and at that time I would rather have died than reported sick. No latrines were available, and I was forced to evacuate in numerous shell holes.16
Lieutenant Horace Paviere, 61st Company, Machine Gun Corps, 20th Division
Next morning they would slowly begin to recover their natural vigour. However bad they may have felt, once they were removed from the source of the danger and privation the natural elastic resilience of youth served them well.
It is queer by what stages one recovers from a whirl like that of the last few days, and they are invariably the same. During the worst rush one does not sleep, wash, or shave, and only eats haphazardly, a scrap here and there. The way these strains take me is that I can’t speak quickly or loudly. My voice dwindles to a sort of whisper and the words follow the brain in a slow and halting way. Sometimes I can’t think of even the simplest words in which to give an order. The first step to recovery is sleep. Then follows the first shave and a consequent feeling of increased morale and self-respect, then a wash and perhaps clean clothes, regular meals and the old order starts again.17
Captain Philip Pilditch, C Battery, 235th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, 47th Division