It would all change in 1916. Haig and Joffre, the French commander-in-chief, had agreed upon a joint offensive. Their German counterpart, Von Falkenhayn, pre-empted this by a mighty onslaught against the French bastion of Verdun. He wasn’t seeking breakthrough, just grinding attrition to strain French resources to breaking point.
A Conscientious Objector to Sports. (Plum & Apple, Tyne & Wear Archives)
With occasional eatin’ and drinkin’
An’ just forty winks now and then
An’ work on the trenches
Along o’ the Frenchies
We don’t get much time for thinking,
We men!
An’ what me an’ my company ain’t yet made out,
Is wot’s this ’ere culture they’re talkin’ about?
Though we don’t get no ‘Specials’ we’ve had a
Round dozen who tell the same tale
How Germans will pillage
A poor little village
And quiet the natives by murder
Wholesale.
An’ what me an’ my company ain’t yet made out,
Is wot’s this ’ere culture they’re talkin’ about?
They slash up the pictures with sabres,
Which seems a bit spiteful an’ odd,
Wi’ search lights they shows up,
The churches they blows up
An’ [Kaiser] Bill when they’ve ended their labours,
Thanks God!
An’ what me an’ my company ain’t yet made out,
Is wot’s this ’ere culture they’re talkin’ about?
Then the brave kindly men will strip lasses
An’ mothers and wives to their skin
And when they’re a-cryin’
An’ hopin’ they’re dyin’
Will jeer at each one as she passes
An’ grin!
An’ what me an’ my company ain’t yet made out,
Is wot’s this ’ere culture they’re talkin’ about?
I’m reckoned an ’ot argumenter
An’ fust-rate at waggin’ me chin
But sharp as a bay’nit
I can’t explain it
An’ shan’t till we’ve licked ’em an’ enter Berlin.
An’ what me an’ my company ain’t yet made out,
Is wot’s this ’ere culture they’re talkin’ about?
Anon.
Those who have heard anything about the Great War will probably have heard of the Somme. As with Verdun for the French, it symbolises the loss of a generation, a frightful gobbling up of blood and manhood for trifling gains.
Beef steaks when you are hungry,
Best beer when you are dry,
Fivers when you are hard up,
Heaven when you die!
Private M. Gill, 8th Battalion Leicesters
Along the otherwise insignificant ridge running from Thiepval to Ginchy, the Germans had turned sleepy hamlets into bristling fortresses. General Rawlinson, commanding the Fourth Army, was an advocate of ‘bite and hold’: a series of limited assaults, each quickly consolidated and then built up in readiness for the next. Haig needed rather more, he had to have breakthrough. His political masters demanded no less.
On 1st July 1916, the first day of the battle of the Somme, many thousands of Englishmen, mostly young Englishmen – were killed. That was a day of terrible, heavy casualties and it was our first experience on a great scale of the bloodiness of modern war. Two thousand men were killed trying to cross a piece of ground not as big as Orchard Field; trying, for they failed. It is no use trying to describe the conditions during a great attack for, since my own experience of them, I have always been convinced that no-one who had not been there could possibly even imagine the effect on body and mind of all that is heard and seen and felt by those who are taking part.
Sermon by Stanley Purvis MA, November 1943
The British would attack at zero hour (7.30 a.m.) on 1 July.
Now listen to my story
I won’t keep you long
It’s about the Tyneside Scottish
And the Battle of the Somme
It was on July the First
When the Scottish made to attack
The shells began to burst
But that didn’t keep them back
Oh, it was a terrible day,
They fought with all their might
Poor fellows, they were falling
Both on the left and right
And when all was over
I am sorry to relate
All that we could number was
One hundred and twenty-eight
Now my friends, remember
What the local lads have done –
They fought and died for their country’s sake,
At the Battle of the Somme
Private M. Woodhouse, 1st Battalion Tyneside Scottish
Casualty lists mounted steadily. The British crept forward, not in bounds but in blood-garnished yards. Still no sign of breakthrough.
There are several sorts of peaches,
But I find in you alone
The one that’s full; of sweetness
And without a heart of stone.
Private W.G. Glenn (wounded near Thiepval on 8 May 1916), 9th Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers
On taking over a billet in October, Charles Moss and the Durham Pals found this helpful ode written on the wall:
Harken all ye whom duty calls
To spend some time within these friendly walls,
Others will sojourn here when you have passed,
You were not the first and will not be the last,
Therefore take heed and do what ye may,
For safety or comfort while ye stay!
Just put a sandbag here, a picture there
To make a room more safe, a wall less bare,
Think as you tread the thorny path of duty,
Of comfort, of security, and beauty,
So your successors when they come shall say
‘A fine battalion we relieved today’.
The battle dragged on through the summer and into the autumn, with final gasps during November.
There’s many a private soldier,
Who walks his humble way
With no sounding name or title
Unknown to the world today,
In the eyes of God is a hero
As worthy of the days
As any mighty general,
To whom the world gives praise.
Private C. Wiles, 20th Battalion Middlesex Regiment
From Colonel MacEmfit, commanding the Umpteenth (Reserve) Battalion, County of London Regiment (the London Skittish):
1. Parades – tomorrow being the day after tonight, there will, of course, be no parades.
2. Medical – men who wake up during the night suffering from ‘Haggis Fever’ are warned against dipping their heads in the fire bucket as the contact with cold water is extremely apt to bring on the dreaded ‘Tartan Rush’ which would, in all probability, necessitate the immediate transfer of the sufferer to some other highland regiment as his face would, of course, clash with the hodden grey!
3. Plank beds – men are warned that they should be careful to see that the three planks making up the bed all bend evenly when lain upon, otherwise men may get nipped in the bud!
London Scottish Regimental Gazette, December 1916
Yorkshireman’s motto. (Drawing in autograph book, 1914–18, author’s own)
One who went through the Somme grinder was A.P. Herbert, the noted humorist, playwright, writer and law reform activist, perhaps best known for his Misleading Cases. He served in the Royal Naval Division (RND), an anachronistic unit which was very much Navy yet fought on land. Being Navy, the battalions had their own jealously guarded traditions which clashed with military practice. General Shute, a Regular Army martinet, was not well liked:
The General inspecting the trenches
exclaimed with a horrified shout,
‘I refuse to command a Division
Which leaves its excreta about.’
And certain responsible critics
Made haste to reply to his words
Observing that his Staff advisers
Consisted entirely of turds.
But nobody took any notice
No one was prepared to refute,
That the presence of shit was congenial
Compared with the presence of Shute.
For shit may be shot at odd corners
And paper supplied there to suit,
But a shit would be shot without mourners
If somebody shot that shit Shute.
A.P. Herbert
Furnishings by Torqueraca et Cie
Wiggins by C.O. Peppery
Lights by the ‘Maison Chef’
Accidental music by Private H. Arnold Smith
NOTICE: The attention of the audience is respectfully drawn to Section 3 of Chapter 101, Xi, Qeo III entitled ‘An Act to prohibit the infliction of bodily harm on Mummers or other Common Persons’:
‘It shall be a misdemeanour for anyone to fling at or towards any person giving or attempting to give a theatrical representation, any coins, oranges, bags containing confectionery, or other dangerous substances, with the object of inflicting bodily harm upon the aforesaid Mummer or Mimic unless it shall sufficiently appear that such throwing as aforesaid and the immediate obliteration of the hereinbefore mentioned Mummer or Mimic is urgently necessary in the interests of the Public safety.’
For the Lord Chamberlain at Buckingham Palace,
this 7th Day of December, 1916
For every jocular line penned by the wags, there were more like this:
Dear Madam,
I regret to have to break this sad news to you regarding your husband, whom I’m sorry to tell you was shot through the head this morning by a sniper; he was unconscious until he died. It has been a sad blow to me and all his chums for he was well respected by all with whom he came into contact with. We did the best we could for him when we saw there was no hope of recovery. His platoon sergeant and chums knelt and said the Rosary and De Profundas and a few acts of contrition as we were Roman Catholics like himself. He died the death of a hero, he was a soldier and a man. Please accept the sympathy of myself and all his comrades. Gone but not forgotten.
Yours truly, 12685 Sergeant Brammer and 9725 Sergeant Halpin
Private M. O’Donnell, 14th Battalion Durham Light Infantry, was killed on 26 February 1916. He was a shipyard worker and had been with Short’s for fifteen years prior to enlisting.
Arthur Lewis Jenkins (1892–1917) had hoped to join the Indian Civil Service and served there for a year before transferring to Aden. He learned to fly in Egypt, returning to England to join a home defence squadron of the Royal Flying Corps.
WHEN the moonlit shadows creep,
When the sun beats pitiless down,
Steadfast, vigilant they keep
Watch and ward about the town.
Guardians of an Empire’s gate,
In the sunshine and the dust
Still beside their guns they wait,
Faithful to their weary trust.
Not for them the hero’s cross,
Not for them the hero’s grave,
Thrill of victory, pain of loss,
Praise of those they fell to save.
Only days of monotone,
Sand and fever, flies and fret,
All unheeded and unknown,
Little thanks they’re like to get.
Yet mayhap in after-days
Distant eye the clearer sees
Gods apportioning the praise
Shall be kindly unto these.
A.L. Jenkins
Arthur Jenkins was killed in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve 1917.
All that glorious enthusiasm seemed a long way off. A generation had come of age with a terrible rite of passage. Kenneth Herbert Ashley (1887–?) was an English poet, novelist, journalist and farmer. He had a deep love of the English countryside and rural life; a passion reflected in Up Hill and Down Dale (1923), his experience forever marked by the war.
I wonder if Life is kind or callous
When it fails to warn us of final things —
When we make an End: and no revelation
Informs the heart with forebodings?
I remember a hazy day in August:
A hazy day with a smudge of sun:
When a score of fellows played at cricket —
Twenty and two, and I was one.
Harry, I know, was playing against me;
Fast off break, and he’d found a spot:
I flicked at one, and was caught at the wicket
The umpire said; but I thought not.
And I remember in the pavilion
I sat and talked the usual rot;
Then caught a train, and what happened else on
That casual day I have forgot.
But O’ how different a meaning
The day would have held if I had known!
I would have stayed to see the finish,
The last run made and the last ball thrown;
And when the umpires came slowly walking,
And the wickets no longer stood intact,
I would have made an end of talking,
Feeling the ritual of the act.
A wee hot Scotch. (Author’s own)
And Harry and I, as it befitted,
Would have waited to stand beside the ring,
Where only the swallows dived and twittered,
To hear the beat of another wing.
And we would have sat all night together,
Till nothing was left unsaid.
And we would have turned to greet the dawning,
Knowing our youth was dead.
But of these things we had no warning,
Never a hint at all:
That Harry had bowled his final over,
That I had finished with bat and ball.
Kenneth H. Ashley
Surrender! British Cavalry Beat and Cow the Hun. (War Illustrated, 28 April 1917, p.245)