Tommy and his fellow volunteers Mick, Vinny and Nat feel much more like real soldiers and much less like the Boy Scouts they were accused of being in November. The taunts that greeted them from less than generous observers as they marched past have stopped.
Uniforms of Kitchener’s melton blue, rather than khaki, arrived early in December and the volunteers thought they looked very smart, positively handsome, in their matching side caps worn at a jaunty angle. Some young girls even wolf-whistled as they passed. Rifles arrived two weeks later, as did horses for the officers, most of whom had to learn how to ride them and also find somewhere to stable them.
With appropriate military paraphernalia came proper training. Range practice began on Hambledon Moor, as well as proper military exercises, including manning outposts and picketing. Lectures and demonstrations were given in rifle maintenance and map reading; in many instances, lessons in the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic were needed. Route marches became longer and more arduous, the worst being what the lads called the ‘Witches’ Marathon’ – thirty-five miles over the Nick O’ Pendle and back through the haunts of Pendle’s famous witches, Old Mother Demdike, Anne Chattox and Alice Nutter.
The route took them past Nat Haythornthwaite’s front door, in Sabden, where ‘Mrs Twaites’ invited Nat and his mates in for a cup of tea and a rest. They managed to drop out without being seen and rejoined the column on its return. However, someone must have snitched on them and they each got one week’s field punishment, which was ordered to be a timed, six-mile march every morning at 6 a.m., including Sunday.
The excursions of C Company on the moors above the town have led to some amusing incidents.
During one exercise, Tommy’s platoon was high on a moorland road, doing a picketing exercise. He and Mick, who were acting corporals, sent Nat and Vinny to a remote spot miles from anywhere, where they were told to close the road to anyone unless they used a password. They saw no one all morning and were freezing cold as biting Pennine winds blew sleet and snow all around them. Then, early in the afternoon, an old farmer appeared through the snow with his sheepdog. Vinny asked him where he was going.
‘None o’ thy business,’ was the abrupt reply.
Vinny tried to assert his authority.
‘Well, tha’ll need t’password when tha comes back, old fella.’
‘Will I now?’
‘Aye.’
‘So what’s t’password?’
Vinny realized that Tommy hadn’t told them what password to use, but Nat came to his rescue and made one up.
‘Dirty Gertie!’
Vinny could not believe the name Nat had chosen. The old farmer looked stunned.
‘Don’t be bloody soft, I’m not sayin’ that,’ he muttered, and wandered on his way.
Two hours later, the old man returned, bow-legged and wizened, with his white muffler wound tightly around his neck and his clogs jangling along the road. When he was challenged, he ignored the two men in blue and walked past.
‘What do we do now?’
‘I think we’re s’posed to shoot ’im.’
‘We can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Cos all our bullets are blanks!’
‘Well, should we at least tell ’im ’e’s been shot?’
‘Might as well.’
Vinny shouts after the old farmer, who has, by now, almost disappeared in the swirling snow.
‘Eh, old fella; tha’s been shot!’
‘Nay, lad; tha’s missed!’
On another occasion, a platoon would not let a delivery lad from Oddies’ Pies pass their checkpoint unless he handed over a tray of pies ‘for t’ungry lads defendin’ King and country’, or so they said.
Oddies complained to Captain Slinger, the battalion adjutant, and the miscreants all received one week of field punishments. The price of the pies was deducted from their pay.
As well as the four ‘Accrington Pals’, several others in Burnley’s Keighley Green Club are in uniform. Because John-Tommy Crabtree, the former steward at the club, is a Pal, the Club has become D Company’s main watering hole. John-Tommy is there with some older men. Cath and Mary are also there; it is their night off from washing pots. Cath is huge; she has still not given birth, although the midwife thinks she is at least two weeks’ overdue.
They had invited their Burnley officers to join them, but army protocol demands that officers and men do not fraternize openly. The Thorn Hotel, only 200 yards from Keighley Green, Burnley’s oldest tavern, and situated in the middle of the town amidst its better shops, has become D Company’s unofficial officers’ mess. The Thorn has several luxuries not typical of most of the town’s public houses. One of them is fitted carpets, even in the bar, another is bar food and a third, perhaps the most radical, is no spittoons.
Tomorrow will be Christmas Eve and everyone in the Keighley Green Working Men’s Club is in festive mood.
The Pals are having a late drink, having been at Accrington Town Hall for a battalion Christmas concert. It was a great success, and all the acts were performed by the officers and men. There was good humour between the battalion’s companies from different towns: A Company (Accrington lads), chided D Company (Burnley lads), while B Company (from Blackburn) did the same to C Company (from Chorley).
John Harwood, Mayor of Accrington and founder of the battalion, gave a speech before the concert. He spoke well and with considerable East Lancs pride in what has been achieved. He also talked with some pathos about the casualty figures from France and about the plight of men at the Front shivering in their trenches. He knew that none of it would discourage the 900 men in front of him; quite the reverse, they are made of sterner stuff.
C Company’s contributions to the concert included Captain Raymond Ross and Lieutenants Riley, Heys and Tough singing – reasonably melodiously – extracts from HMS Pinafore by Gilbert and Sullivan, although Fred Heys clearly had a much better voice than the other three. CSMs Severn, Muir and Lee played the spoons and brought the house down. Not only were they dressed in Egyptian fezzes and caftans, which seemed to have no relevance to a rendition of spoon harmonies, but their playing was neither tuneful nor in unison.
Hoots of laughter rolled around the town hall as the three hard men, a Cockney, a Scot and a Devonian, who had spent the previous two months berating the inadequacies of their Lancastrian charges, turned a musical routine into a comedy act. It was hilarious and convinced those present, who had begun to wonder, that their company serjeant majors were human after all.
During the concert interval, presents were distributed. Each man went onstage to collect a neatly parcelled gift of two pairs of socks from the officers’ wives and from Elizabeth Sharples, the wife of Battalion CO Colonel Sharples. A boxed, initialled silk handkerchief was also given to each of the officers, including the colonel, who looked more delighted than anyone else, leading everyone to the conclusion that he was not used to receiving presents from his somewhat severe-looking wife.
At the end of the evening, Colonel Richard Sharples addressed the men. He droned on a little but, right at the last, produced the biggest cheer of the night.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted to be able to tell you this evening that, two days ago, we heard from the Ministry of War that the 11th Battalion East Lancashire Regiment will go to barracks in Caernarvon, North Wales, to complete their military training in early February next.’
At long last, the tedium and discomfiture of playing at soldiers in their own backyard will be coming to a definite end. The men had begun to think that they would never leave their hometowns and that the war would be over before they had a chance to prove their mettle.
John-Tommy Crabtree comes over to Tommy and Mick’s group.
‘Alreet, Mary; Cath, that’s a reet lump tha’s got there, when it’s due?’
‘Dunno, John-Tommy, feels like it shoulda been born a week last Christmas!’
‘So what are you two gonna do while these daft apeths laik at soldiers in Caernarvon?’
‘Mary an’ I reckon we’re gonna go down south an’ drive ambulances.’
‘No, but one o’ t’lads at Trafalgar Mill said he’d teach us on mill’s lorry.’
‘But how will yer find a job?’
‘Easy, Henry Hyndman said he get us sorted. Mary winked at ’im. He fancies Mary does old Henry.’
‘What about t’child?’
‘I’ll take it wi’ me.’
John-Tommy then turns to the quartet in blue.
‘Hey up, Tommy, an’ what dost reckon to thy lasses runnin’ off down south?’
Mick smiles mischievously.
‘They can suit th’sels, they ollus do. Me an’ t’lads’ll be chasin’ them Caernarvon lasses around.’
Cath clips Mick around his ear.
‘If you go anywhere near ’em, I’ll ’ave yer knackers off an’ I’ll put ’em in a jam jar on t’mantelpiece. So think on!’
John-Tommy quickly changes the subject and turns to Nat and Vinny.
‘So it’s off to Caernarvon fer us. Yer know they ’ave a different language yonder?’
Nat is perplexed.
‘But it’s in England, in’t it?’
‘Nah, lad, it’s in Wales; they’re Welsh.’
‘So what do they speak, John-Tommy?’
‘Welsh, Nat.’
‘Are they on our side?’
There is laughter all round, but Cath’s swipe at Mick has stirred her loins. She suddenly grasps her abdomen and lets out a moan of pain.
John-Tommy is the first to react and tells Mick and Tommy to help Mary get Cath to the club office. He looks at the big clock above the bar. It’s almost midnight. He smiles at Cath reassuringly.
‘Looks like tha’s gonna ’ave a Christmas Eve baby, our Cath.’
Cath is too preoccupied to notice John-Tommy’s words. By the time she is helped into the office she has almost given birth. John-Tommy pushes Mick into the office with his wife and Mary and gets everybody else out. He then grabs Vinny.
‘Go an’ get old Ma Murgatroyd! Number 8, Parker Street, just round t’corner. Run, lad!’
Ma Murgatroyd, who used to be a midwife, is fast asleep when Vinny hammers on her door, and she takes a while to get dressed. By the time they get to the club, they are too late.
The baby, a boy, has been born.
But there are no celebrations, no cries from the little infant. The lad is stillborn and nothing can be done to help him.
Ma Murgatroyd confirms that he is dead and that he almost certainly died some time ago in the womb.
Cath and Mick are inconsolable; it will be a very sad Christmas for the Burnley Pals.