ON SUNDAY 21 November 1915, the four companies of the 15th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment rose before dawn. They heaved their kit to Wylye Station and squeezed on to two trains which departed at 7.10am and 7.40am, bound for Folkestone.
Percy Jeeves was among 412 members of B and C Companies on the second train as it steamed towards the Kent coast. They reached Folkestone at 4.15pm.
Next morning they boarded the SS Invicta and watched England slowly disappear into the distance as the vast vessel, escorted by two destroyers, set out across the English Channel. The Invicta had made the journey many times, shuttling men to war, and this crossing was as quick and calm as any. She docked in Boulogne bang on time at quarter to four in the afternoon.
The Governor of Boulogne was there to offer the latest influx of English soldiers a warm welcome. But the first hours spent on mainland Europe by Jeeves and his comrades were anything but welcoming – and far from warm.
Once ashore, the men, headed by two drummers, marched two miles to camp at Ostrohove up on the bleak, windswept hills overlooking Boulogne. With men packed 12 to a tent, each with only a single blanket for cover, conditions were vile, as company commander Major Charles Bill (who reported to battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Harding) later recalled in his book, The 15th Battalion Royal Warwickshire Regiment in the Great War.
With the benefit of over a decade’s hindsight, the officer wrote an honest and detailed account of his experiences with the battalion and of their first night in France, he recalled: “It was about the most uncomfortable night we had experienced since our soldiering began. The place seemed inhospitable. No host would think of putting a guest into a damp bed. The blankets we drew were certainly not damp – they were wringing wet.
“When night fell it started to freeze. There was no hot food so we munched bully beef and biscuits and lay on the ground, two and three together, trying to retain the little warmth that remained in our bodies. It was too cold and damp to sleep and eventually we gave up trying and stamped round our bleak hill-top till morning, feeling that our welcome was not as warm as it might have been.”
Jeeves and his comrades had no time to dwell on their vile introduction to France. Reveille was at 6.30am. At 8.55am they left the miserable camp behind and, joined by interpreter Captain Louise Nozal, marched to Ostrohove Central Station. Ahead of them was a tortuous journey inland to Longpre, a camp just north of Amiens.
After the laborious process of loading up, the trains left Ostrohove at 10pm and spent hours inching through the dark countryside. Frequently, they ground to a halt to wait at signals, then chugged another few hundred yards before shuddering to a standstill again. Finally, the engines rolled into Conde Station, near Longpre, at half past three in the morning. Wearily, the men disembarked – and immediately marched nine and a half miles to Bellancourt.
There, at last, they rested and Jeeves had some luck. A, B and D Companies were billeted in barns but C Company were accommodated in the grounds of a château. Only the officers settled into the ornate rooms of the stately home, of course, the Other Ranks occupying outbuildings but they could at least enjoy handsome surroundings from their temporary home.
The day of 24 November was one of rest and inspections so, for the first time since leaving Codford, the men of the 15th Warwicks had some time to digest their situation. Their arrival in France brought them bodily much closer to combat but also impacted psychologically. The alien surroundings emphasised how far they were from the comfort and safety of home. Of what lay ahead, they knew nothing beyond the often chilling accounts picked up in snatched fragments of conversation with soldiers passing on the way back from the front.
Then 25 November brought more inspections but less rest as the companies were reintroduced to that bane of the soldier’s life – the route march; a pointless yomp from one point to another, designed to make the men fit but which, in practice, often exhausted them needlessly. Such marches helped fill time while the powers-that-be decided what to do with the men.
On 26 November, orders arrived for the 15th Warwicks to move, along with the 12th Gloucesters, to L’Etoile. The weather was turning now and, after a night cold enough to freeze the contents of the men’s water bottles, at 8.15am, C Company said farewell to the château grounds. The battalion set off on the ten-mile march to L’Etoile.
They arrived at noon to find the hospitality sparse. “Battalion dismissed to their billets which were very inferior,” noted the battalion diary. At least the men were only there for one night. Next morning they marched eight miles to Vignacourt, a town with a population of 20,000 some 30 miles from the front line. Again the welcome was underwhelming. The soldiers arrived in the town square at 1pm and were kept waiting for three hours while local dignitaries finished their lunch. Eventually the men were billeted in houses and barns.
The weather had taken a serious turn for the worse with the nights regularly freezing. On 29 November, rain fell all day to further dampen the spirits of men wondering what lay in store. An ominous clue came from a lecture on how to deal with a gas attack. After the talk, each man tested his helmet by passing through a gas-filled room. The equipment was rudimentary and Jeeves emerged spluttering and breathless like the rest.
December was christened by sustained heavy rain in which the battalion was soon on the move again. At 8.30am on 1 December, they left Vignacourt on a ten-mile march which properly introduced them to one of the biggest torments of soldiers on the Western Front. Every step of every mile was hampered by thick, cloying mud. The sustained marching, allied to increasingly hostile weather, was taking its toll. Eight men were deemed unfit to march so travelled by ambulance. Thirteen had their packs carried.
There was no respite in store as 2 December brought an eight-mile march through quagmires and 3 December another ten punishing miles. This time, ten men rode in the ambulance while 39 had their packs carried before camp was finally reached at Sailly Laurette, a village on the north bank of the River Somme. It is unlikely that Jeeves was among those needing help at this stage as he was such a fit man but Charlie Bridgman recalled that, as the months wore on, Jeeves did suffer badly from the dreaded trench foot.
He was not alone. Private William Bridgeman (no relation to Charlie), of the 15th Warwicks, kept a diary which was later printed in the Birmingham Evening Despatch and he recalled those grim days in early December. The discomfort was so intense, he reported, that it overshadowed even thoughts about mortal danger.
“Gradually, almost unconsciously, we became used to the prevailing conditions. The continuous downpour of the last few weeks is followed by intense cold. ‘Trench Feet’ and the waist-deep thick liquid-mud constitute our greatest menaces. If one happens to step from the centre of the trench without first plumbing its depth with the long ‘bean’ stick which we all carry, drowning will probably be the un-heroic fate of anyone less than 7ft tall. These awful sump holes are a source of dread and much profanity, especially after dark. The liquid mud tops even our thigh-length gum boots.
“Many of us suffer intense pain due to ‘trench feet’. The feet become sodden within the rubber casing and swelling makes the removal of the boots impossible without cutting. Frostbite is accounting for quite a number of casualties. Fighting is occupying our thoughts less and less. Our one desire is to be as comfortable as possible.”
At camp in Sailly Laurette, several days were spent simply filling time while orders were awaited. Arms and kit were inspected ad nauseam. A stream of inspections and drills were arranged to keep the men occupied. Spirits were lifted briefly by the arrival of letters from home. Edwin and Nancy, still living in Manuel Street, updated their sports-loving third son with news of his brothers Thomas and Alick, still in Goole working on the railways (a reserved occupation), and seven-year-old Harold. But after the joy of connection with family came the folding up and tucking away of letters and the heart-rending realisation that the people who wrote them were a long, long way away.
Thoughts inevitably turned towards Christmas, just three weeks distant, but on 7 December Jeeves and his comrades had something less pleasant to think about. They were to get their first taste of the front line. Orders came through that the following week they would move up to Suzanne, a small town eight miles to the east, to occupy reserve trenches where they would prepare to go into the front-line trenches at Maricourt a further three miles north.
B and D Companies went up to Suzanne on Monday, A and C Companies following on Thursday. By the time the latter two companies caught up, the former had sustained their first casualties. On their maiden visit to the trenches, for instruction from the Manchesters and Devons, they lost two Other Ranks killed while Second-Lieutenant EG Crisp died of wounds sustained on an “instructional bombing mission”.
At 5.15pm on 18 December, a dark, bitterly cold afternoon, the soldiers of C Company marched up to the reserve trenches for their first front-line training. They spent two days there before returning to Suzanne. All the men of the 15th Warwicks were now perceived as trained and ready for front-line duty. And the following day, for the first time, Percy Jeeves went into the thick of it.
At 3.15pm on 22 December, the 15th Warwicks began to move, company by company, in ten-minute intervals to take over billets vacated by the East Surreys at Maricourt. At 4.30pm the relief was completed and, for the first time, the 15th Warwicks took over a complete sector of trenches, A4, the Manchesters to their right, Queen Victoria’s Rifles to their left.
Their first taste of trench life was quiet. The German line was disconcertingly close, the two sides separated by No Man’s Land mostly measuring between 50 and 150 yards (at one point in Bois Francais, nearby to the west, it was down to five yards) but the opposing armies were content to leave each other alone. For now there was no action and the 15th Warwicks were relieved by the East Surreys on Christmas Eve without a single casualty.
They returned, unharmed, to occupy reserve trenches four miles behind the lines at Suzanne and there, in a barn, did Percy Jeeves wake on his last Christmas Day.