From ‘Happy Christmas, Tommy’ to the German attack on Verdun. Holding trenches at Verbranden Molen; rest at Reninghelst
21 November 1915. At last we have ceased ‘to rest’ in the military sense of the word. We marched out of our barns and stables yesterday and moved about ten miles nearer the front into what are probably our winter quarters. That is to say we come back here after each turn in the trenches, a week in and a week out.
We are in camp on the outskirts of a French village [Reninghelst], the camp is a quagmire pure and simple, mud everywhere inches deep. You can hardly realise what mud is at home, even when I tell you that every step you take you go in well above the ankle and in places up to the middle of the calf. The men are in tents & huts which cluster round a big windmill which stands, as all well conducted windmills do, on the top of a hill.
My home is rather apart from the rest; I have managed to procure a hut to myself in a field which still possesses some grass. In the same field, which is only small, are the tents and huts of our genial QM, our Transport Officer and our Interpreter; with us also are our servants, our horses, and our grooms – a happy self-contained little family.
My hut is quite a palace as huts go, some twenty feet long and half as broad. It is divided into two by a couple of Army blankets. In one half I sleep and live, in the other half which by the way is unlighted, live my servant and groom.
My half contains a table, a bed, a chair & a stove! All hand-made by the last occupant – a regular Quartermaster Sergeant of the Rifle Brigade.
The furniture really shows more signs of expert manufacture than does the hut itself which is made of boards & galvanised iron. It is a sort of patchwork only very open-work & the winds whistle through its myriad cracks – but even so it is many times better than a tent.
This I expect will be my headquarters during the winter & will be the centre from which I will sally forth like St Paul of old on my Missionary journeys, up to the trenches for a night or two, over to the Field Ambulance occasionally, back to the reserve billets from time to time. But after each journey coming back home here.
Thursday was quite a red letter day for it saw the arrival of my horse. I have had to wait a long time for it, while Brigades and Divisions and ADVS’s and Remounts and other people have signed and countersigned my original indent but it was worth it, for I have got a real beauty – a mare who behaves like a lady, and yet has spirit and pace and jumps like a flea. She belonged originally to a General Hoskins or some such name, and was cast for a skin disease. She is all right now & shows no sign of ever having had it.
Friday was so full that I must chronicle it hour by hour. In the morning I tried my mare by riding her round to my various Confirmation classes & in looking up men to play in a hockey match.
I had arranged this match between the officers of the Suffolks and our Mess. The Suffolks were very keen but our fellows kept crying off, so that an hour before the match was timed to begin I had only eight men! It was here that my mare came in, and we started punctually at 2.30 pm with twelve men!! The mistake was only discovered at half-time. However as the Suffolks were all in shorts and had played together before, & we were all in our ordinary breeches and puttees and had never played as a team before, they allowed us to play the extra man. Despite this, sad to relate, they beat us 4–3. It was a fast hard game & I am still horribly stiff from my unwonted exertions. After the match I went in for tea with them, and then rode over to a neighbouring town to see another Chaplain on matters connected with the forthcoming Confirmation. Then back to my billet for a bath & a change.
What a vision of comfort if not luxury the word ‘bath’ calls up; visions of glistening white walls and porcelain bath of gigantic proportions, and unlimited boiling water and warm towels and bathmats and scented soap and all the rest. My bath was in a canvas bucket, my water cold, my soap carbolic (necessary out here), my bath mat a piece of sacking. One of the supremest joys of leave must be baths, hot & cold running morning, noon and night.
In the evening I went to dinner with the Suffolks. They were having a farewell oyster supper & very kindly asked me to share in the fifty dozen deep sea beauties which they had procured.
I managed a humble two dozen and a seven-course dinner to follow, and felt pleasurably tired, well fed and warm with a nice cigar to enjoy, when the wilder spirits dragged me off to dance in the kitchen to sweet gramophone-made music.
Ladies being less easily procured out here than oysters we had perforce to dance with each other. It was great fun. The stone-flagged floor, unseen in the dim religious light cast by a single candle, beaten and caressed by the feet of a dozen young men tunic-less & heated, hugging each other & performing the latest steps from London. Foxtrots & Turtle Run etc etc. We kept it up until midnight when I tore myself away & went home for a few hours in bed before having to pack up for our move. We started early yesterday (Saturday), the Interpreter & I rode over à cheval & arranged about our billets and water supply and other similar details.
The day of arrival in a new place is always a day of fasting because the cookers and the cooks or the food invariably lose each other. So we made our own arrangements. Being a native he discovered a cosy little back parlour where we ate pork cutlets & drank bad red wine at one franc fifty the bottle. Madame is a dear old motherly soul who told me her whole history between the courses, and has invited me to have other meals there.
25 November 1915. Nothing very much has happened since my last. The time has been spent in making my hut more comfortable and less open to all the winds that blow. Among other improvements I have had the floor up and re-laid it, so I hope now not to lose quite so many things between the cracks!!
I haven’t been up in our new trenches yet [Verbranden Molen]. Half the Brigade went up on Sunday, and the other half, the King’s Own and Suffolks, relieve them on Saturday. I shall probably go up on Monday for a night, unless I am sent for before. But I don’t think that is very likely as we have fairly good and safe trenches. A Lance Corporal Carter came for a Confirmation instruction, which lasted nearly an hour; then a Private Fletcher who is in trouble because his father is dying and he cannot get leave. He wants me to argue with the powers-that-be and plead for him. I will do what I can, but I’m afraid it won’t be any good.
Next the Post-Corporal, who wants me to order a supply of envelopes for the men, and to get a censor stamp to save delay, so that I can stamp the letters instead of sending them all the way up to the Orderly Room. I don’t for one moment expect this will be possible, but I shall have to try, and so the day goes on.
30 November 1915. You must have been having as much frost as we have had lately. My word it has been cold, the ground like iron and a cutting wind withal, which has found no difficulty in getting through the walls of my little shack. In my spare moments I have been busy stuffing up the most persistent cracks, and have covered the walls inside with empty sandbags and sacking. It has certainly made me much more cosy though it still leaves something to be desired.
The last two days I have been feeling very cheap and seedy, a mild attack of flu, pains in my back and head and a lazy feeling which has made my work seem less of a pleasure than it usually is. Today I stayed in bed for breakfast and feel much better, in consequence. This evening I’m going up to the trenches to have a look around, bury one of two poor fellows, and make arrangements for my Confirmation candidates to get leave from the trenches for the Service on Thursday. It is going to be a great ‘do’, a regular fête day, two Bishops, 100 candidates, and tea for all in the YMCA tent. I have been busy the last week putting the final polish on those whom I hope to present. They are a mixed crowd, I mean their occupations are mixed, and their homes various – one is a cook, one is in the trenches, two are in rest billets, and five are in the Field Ambulance, so of course I can never get them all together at once.
The five in the RAMC came and had tea with me in my hut last Thursday. We all packed in somehow & had a very jolly meal tho’ primitive; we all had to share the same knife and spoon, and we dispensed entirely with plates. The mugs I borrowed from the YMCA, but the food was good and plentiful. You should have seen our smiling faces – it was quite a success. Three of them sat on the bed, two on orange boxes (which serve me as cupboard and washstand), and I as host sat on the one and only chair.
3 December 1915. If I don’t get a letter written tonight, I can’t see any chance of doing so until Monday, and I have a lot to tell you about. In my last I said I was going up to the trenches [at Verbranden Molen] in the evening, and go I did, and had the time of a lifetime. Every afternoon transport starts off from the Quartermaster’s stores here with rations for our men in the trenches. They take it out about seven miles to our ‘dump’ where ration parties come down from the trenches to collect their food & letters and either carry the stuff up in sandbags, or push it up in little trucks on a light narrow-gauge railway. I intended to go up with the transport this particular day in order that they might show me the way. However I was delayed by interviews and had to follow after them. All went well and I caught them up alright, but at the expense of overheating my mare, so I got off and walked for some time. When I essayed to remount, my saddle slipped round on me, and the last of the transport saw of me was trying to put it on again. Now for a little word painting! A narrow road, a constant stream of transport, a pitch-black night, and mud everywhere, and to crown it all a horse restive and nervous by reason of the gun flashes and reports. By the time I had got the saddle and saddle-blanket properly arranged once more, the transport was some way ahead. However nothing daunted I pushed past wagons and guns and men and ambulances and all the rest until I caught up with what I took for the tail of our transport column. This I followed for sometime until we were held up by a block in the road. Before I knew where I was I was surrounded by a heaving, struggling, pushing mob of strange men with strange wagons and stranger oaths. It was then I discovered my mistake – as it afterwards turned out, my little crowd had branched off down a side road. However, I didn’t know it at the time and spent hours wandering about this unknown land in the completest darkness, made darker still by the occasional flash of a bursting shell in the distance – asking everybody I met if they knew where the King’s Own dump was. Of course nobody did for it takes a man all his time to find his own.
I forgot to tell you that all this time my feet were being tortured by a new pair of boots I was wearing. Finally tired and sick I was all for giving up and going back to camp, but the bit of the old bulldog strain within me urged one more try, and by the supremest good fortune I chanced upon the transport of the 2nd Suffolks, who hold the adjoining trenches. From them I borrowed a guide and started up on foot to the front line. If my journey à cheval was bad, this was a thousand times worse – along a path across fields ploughed by shells far worse or more thoroughly than any farm plough; I call it path by courtesy, it was really a ditch of mud, beaten into a soft yielding consistency by the countless feet of ceaseless ration parties. Up this path I plunged in my new tight boots, falling down, sitting down, nearly taking involuntary headers into shell holes full of dirty water, slipping sideways or backwards every step, and nearly dislocating my hips every time I pulled my leg out of the holding mud. Had my boots been less tight I might have had to add ‘lost footwear’ to my list of misfortunes.
However at length I arrived and did my business, saw my pals and repeated once more the strenuous journey to the dump and my horse. The return to camp was uneventful except for periodic clutches at my mare’s neck to save myself falling off in my sleep.
Yesterday (Thursday) we had the Confirmation Service. As expected we had two Bishops – Taylor Smith and Khartoum, and ninety-eight candidates, many of them straight back from the trenches with mud caked upon them and their equipment, neither of which had they had time to remove. It was an impressive sight, impressive because of its simplicity and childlike reality. A large wooden hut used by the YMCA as a recreation room, with a platform at one end on which we erected a little altar. On the floor below, an ordinary cane-bottomed bedroom chair for the Bishop and a folded army blanket for the candidates to kneel on. Six chaplains formed a surpliced choir, another played the piano for the hymns, the candidates in rows on forms, the Bishop in his robes, and the Holy Spirit. After the Service and two inordinately long addresses by the CG we all had tea and buns together, and then back to work again, the trenches for some, hut-building for others, stretcher bearing for others, and for others road-making or cooking or camp fatigues.
While we were invoking the power of the Holy Spirit to help us live, poor Major Williams, our CO since the Colonel went sick, was solving the problem of death. He was hit by a fragment of a trench mortar in the morning and breathed his last at a few minutes to five. He is our first officer to be killed, and we shall miss him frightfully. He was always so cheerful and bright, and good-natured – one of the most hospitable men I have ever known. Poor old man we buried him here behind the line this afternoon in a little military cemetery. Young Bardsley too we have lost for a time; he was hit in three places on Tuesday, but not seriously, and is doing well, I believe. He is the son, you know, of the Vicar of Lancaster.
It is now quarter to one so I think I will turn in, but I will leave it open in case I have time tomorrow to add a word or two.
Saturday. I have been out all the morning in the pouring rain and wind trying to arrange Services tomorrow and have just got in. The leaden sky and cheerless mud and hopeless outlook was all forgotten or transformed into rosy sunshine by the sight of your letter dated the 30th November.
6 December 1915. The order has just come that we are to clear out of our snug little field; it is wanted for the Brigade to build standings for the horses, so we shall have to move, but the difficulty is where we can go. Nearly every square inch of land is already occupied by camps and hutments and transport.
If and when we find a site, I shall dismantle my hut and carry it with me and rebuild, for I don’t hanker after the discomfort of a tent. It is always the way in life, get a nice place and everybody wants to turn you out, get a rotten one and you can stay there as long as you like – or live. Well, it’s all part of the game I suppose, and something may yet turn up.
It’s 9:45 pm and we are just back from a most enjoyable trip. Les our Interpreter – a real white man and one of the best – and I rode over to [Poperinghe] and did some shopping, cigarettes and razor blades, and envelopes and so on. And then met Rowe our QM, and Clare our Signalling Officer and arranged to have tea together and go to the Fancies. The Fancies are a musical party of the Follies stamp, run by the 6th Division. The party consists of five officers, one private and two Flemish girls called Vaseline and Glycerine who sing English songs in broken English. They are the quaintest couple you ever saw. Very wooden and lifeless, and it is quite evident they don’t understand a word they are singing. They made me howl with laughter. The men are all excellent and everything they do is good. Quite one of the best and most enjoyable shows I’ve ever seen, despite the difficulties at every point. The hall is a big showroom, I think, lighted by acetylene motor lamps – for gas and electric light is all cut off so near the front. The stage effect is splendid – all home made so to speak. The first half of the programme is a pierrot entertainment, the stage & hangings all jet-black, the pierrots in white and black, and the stools on which they sit black and white check – very striking and novel, and the singing and fooling absolutely first-rate.
The second half of the show is a sort of review, screamingly funny and very topical. What was so refreshing was to see one man appear in faultless evening dress. I think that pleased and thrilled me as much as anything. Of course the place was packed out; it’s the same every night I believe, and the audience most appreciative. It is quite the best two francs’ worth I’ve ever had.
12 December 1915. The weather all last week has been atrocious, we are still up to our necks in Flanders mud, but as we all wear fishermen’s waders or ‘gumboots, thigh’ as the official name has it, we don’t mind how much mud we are asked to wade through.
Last Wednesday I had a Celebration at the Field Ambulance in order that my Confirmandi might make their first Communion; and the evening before I arranged a little Service of preparation. The only place available was a vaulted cellar. It reminded me of the catacombs. As each man came down the stone steps out of the gloom into the little circle of light thrown by a couple of candles, I felt that we had been transplanted back to the dawn of Christianity and were meeting in secret – ‘The door being shut for fear of the Jews’. The roof was too low for us to stand up, so we sang a hymn sitting and had the rest of the Service kneeling. Quite a number of fellows came, and to the Celebration next morning, which we had in the operating tent.
The Ambulance and I are lucky in possessing two priests in the ranks and a fine Quartermaster Sergeant, who is an excellent churchman and helps me in every way.
The same evening, the Suffolks invited me to form one of a party for a theatre and dinner. The idea was irresistible so once more I went to the Fancies arriving just at the end of the first half and found that they had kept me a seat in the front row. Afterwards we adjourned to a humble looking estaminet for dinner. It was a lesson in the folly of judging by exteriors, for they keep a prodigy of a cook there. Our menu was oysters, soup, lobster mayonnaise, asparagus and eggs, chicken, quails on toast, Camembert, coffee and liqueur brandy. And this is war! Not a bad little dinner for within sight and sound of the guns! On our way back it was raining hard and no moon or light of any kind, so dark in fact that we dared not trot along the muddy, broken, shell-torn road and so got soaked to the skin, but it was well worth the wetting.
The next day was notable for a wonderful hot bath – my third I think since I’ve been out here. An old brewery has been converted into baths for the troops. The officers’ bathroom is down in a sort of basement. Two pipes run overhead with a rose screwed in at intervals, and underneath each a washing tub. But the water is plentiful – as well it might be! – and boiling.
Imagine six healthy-looking young men sitting in six washing tubs, in a dimly lighted basement, full of steam and the smell of soap, and a shower of hot water splashing on the head and shoulders of each one, and you will almost hear the grunts and exclamations of joy which proceed from their six mouths as they see the white flesh appearing through the grimed-in mud of Flanders.
On Thursday I had a Celebration at the YMCA hut, chiefly for the Chaplains of the Division; followed after breakfast by a Chaplains’ Meeting in my hut – I being Senior Chaplain in the absence of Campbell our real SCF who went sick with a fever, but has since returned to duty. After the meeting I helped to censor the films of the Divisional Cinema. We’ve had the same programme for about a month until every frequenter knew every inch of every film by heart, and clamoured for a change. So at great expense and trouble we managed to get some French films – hence the need of the censor.
The next day (Friday) I went up to the trenches for twenty-four hours. My mare was a bit lame so I borrowed the Interpreter’s. What a dance it led me! It started by trying to have me off, but failing, set off as if possessed by seven devils. I couldn’t hold him in, although I nearly sawed his head off. All the brute did was to wag its head from side to side, but didn’t slacken speed. Finally I got it to trot, and what a trot! Its back legs felt as if they were a foot too long, and bumped me nearly out of the saddle, so in desperation I got off him, sent him home in disgrace by my groom and continued my journey on a limber. A ration limber is a springless affair, pulled by mules, and filled with bags of bully-beef tins and coke, and other hard and knobbly articles. Moreover, these roads are not noted for their surface, the middle portion is pavé & generally full of holes, the sides consist of deep mud, usually a good foot lower than the middle. Whenever two vehicles meet both have to get one wheel off the pavé in order to make room to pass. My journey therefore was not a bed of roses, as you may imagine, as we met several wagons and limbers en route. On arriving at the dump I called on the Brigade Headquarters, and they very kindly gave me tea. They live in a large old farmhouse which is the target of every German gun within miles, but which so far has escaped damage.
Then the weary grind through the mud up to the trenches. Before starting one is advised to write one’s will and fix on a lifebelt. But unfortunately I found the mud a trifle too thick for swimming, and as it is too deep for walking the only thing was to plunge and wallow through it as well as possible. That night I slept in my Burberry in a dugout, no blankets being allowed. Luckily it wasn’t a very cold night, or I don’t think I should have slept at all.
Next morning I made a complete tour of all the trenches [at Verbranden Molen] and found everybody very cheery and bright. They all seemed very pleased to see me, which was gratifying. Tommy is a wonderful fellow. How he manages to live and thrive and keep cheerful under such conditions is nothing short of wonderful. In the trenches he has to stand up to his knees in water, and under constant strain, always wet, generally cold, frequently hungry and often sleepy and yet, except for an occasional grouse which means nothing, he smiles, and whistles and jokes, as if he hadn’t a care or trouble in the world.
I was much amused at some sailors whom Jellicoe or the Admiralty have sent over here to see at first hand the conditions and work of the Sister Service. There were three of them in our trenches, three big burly Petty-Officers. When they arrived the Hun very kindly gave them a firework display, and before they left they were able to distinguish between trench mortars and rifle grenades; aerial torpedoes, and Jack Johnsons; Black Marias and Coal Boxes; Whizz Bangs and HE (high explosive); shrapnel and Archibalds and all the other devices for taking the life of poor Tommy.
They experienced too the joy of standing in muddy water well above the knee; and of sleeping in a muddy leaking dugout. They tasted trench-tea and found it wanting, and altogether got a thorough insight into the joys and sorrows of trench life. As they were leaving, they were asked how they had enjoyed the experience. One and all protested that he preferred the North Sea. You should have seen their eyes bulge when they saw the mud for the first time. They said they didn’t know mud grew like that anywhere!
As I was coming down yesterday evening (Saturday) I was trying to find the grave of two of our fellows who had been buried by a Sergeant in my absence, so that I might say a prayer over them and have their resting place registered. As I was peering about with my flash lamp I was mistaken for a spy. A Sergeant of the RAMC watched me for some time, and came up and asked me what I was doing. Quite evidently he didn’t believe my story, so put some leading questions, such as what trenches were we holding, what was my Brigade, and the name of my Divisional General and so on. I of course answered quite correctly for the most part, hugely enjoying myself, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember the number of our trenches. That was quite enough to him. Quite politely, he suggested that I had better see his Captain. I demurred and said I was in a hurry. Quite untrue but I wanted to egg him on and see his next move. He again suggested that his Captain might be able to help me; I said I didn’t think he could and that I wouldn’t worry him for the world. Poor fellow, by this time he was certain he’d caught a spy red-handed and sternly and firmly insisted that his Captain wished to see me and that I must see him. So reluctantly I went along deepening still more his conviction that I was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I wish you could have seen his face fall when I was ushered in before the Captain, with all exits carefully barred, and I found the Captain was an old friend of mine who greeted me effusively!
17 December 1915. Last Monday I kept as Sunday for one of my Battalions as they only came out of the trenches early Sunday morning. Poor fellows, they were wet, tired and dirty, so I couldn’t pull them out for Church Parade before they had had a night’s sleep, and after all, every day is the same out here and Monday seemed quite Sundayish with a Celebration and a Parade Service out of doors [at Ouderdom]. Luckily it was bright and sunny but nippy withal.
However I spoilt the illusion by going to the Divisional Cinema in the evening. The cinema is run in a large thatched barn which holds nearly 500 fellows, and is packed every night. I am now on the Executive Committee and so am very keen that it should go well. When the Customs and Post Office officials are kind, we try to have a change of programme twice a week but don’t always succeed. The profits go towards providing hot drinks in the trenches. Rather a sound idea, don’t you think?
On Wednesday I went up to the trenches again, this time to stay with the Suffolks and had quite an amusing time. The Suffolks are extraordinarily nice to me. While we were having dinner in the dugout, which by the way is quite palatial and possesses a sofa and a fireplace, to say nothing of a window and door, they had a bed knocked up for me and I spent a most comfortable if somewhat chilly night.
Nothing very exciting happened, except I got nearly strafed once by a shell which came over my head and burst 15 yards behind me. When I got back I had a hot bath. This time in a canvas bath borrowed from Rowe our Quartermaster, in my little hut in front of a nice red charcoal fire. It was priceless. As I bathed I had the gramophone playing all the latest waltz and gaiety music. Quite a sybarite.
Today (Friday) has been filled with small fry of various sorts. Celebration in the YMCA at 7.15 am [at Reninghelst], breakfast at 8.15 am, writing and sending in Returns, and various official work until 11 am. Then walked up to Headquarters and saw the Adjutant about various things and arranged a gramophone concert for this evening. Back to lunch at one o’clock. Then down to the cemetery with the Pioneers to put up a cross over Major Williams’ grave, then in to see the Senior Chaplain and help him with the censoring of the day’s mailbag. Then after ten, once more up to the King’s Own camp to arrange the hut for the concert, then the concert itself, which by the way was very cheery. Then a little sick visiting until dinner time, and now I’m back once more in my hut thinking it is nearly time for bed as my candle is flickering out and Mr Dream Man is throwing dust into my eyes.
20 December 1915. I have opened all the parcels and am perfectly charmed and delighted with their contents. How good you are to me. You have given me everything that I wanted and nothing that I didn’t.
Since I last wrote we have been treated to a real-life gas attack and a big artillery engagement. Luckily we were back resting, so played the onlooker, thank goodness. The gas attack was early Sunday morning, and even back here, eight miles behind the line, we could smell and taste and feel traces of it. The artillery display was deafening. One continuous roar like heavy thunder. The guns were firing so fast that you could not distinguish the separate reports. It sounded appalling; thank goodness I wasn’t the target at which they were all aiming.
Sunday was a beautiful frosty bright day. Coming out of our hut after breakfast we heard the sound of a machine gun hammering away above us somewhere. At first we could see nothing, but as our eyes became accustomed we saw the most thrilling fight among the clouds. It was hard to see quite what was happening, but we could see the aeroplanes circling round each other, and the whole time bursts of the murderous machine guns. We learnt afterwards that it was a fight between eight English Scouts, and two German armoured fighting machines. It sounds most unequal, but I believe the Germans managed to get away. We couldn’t see the result as they flew out of sight, still fighting hard, but we thought one of the German planes was on fire for it seemed to leave a line of smoke in its wake. If only you could have seen the blue sky and the white fleecy clouds, and the aeroplanes dancing and swooping and hovering round each other! It was a perfect picture: except for the tap tap tap of the Maxim it didn’t seem like war.
Since the death of poor Major Williams we have got a new CO – a Major Smith from the Gordons. He seems a fine fellow with a nice kind face, but firm withal.
On Saturday I had a row with Barnes, our Adjutant, over Church Parade. He had ordered a route march on Sunday morning, and said we couldn’t have a Church Service. However, I soon got the General on his track and he had to climb down, and we had the Services on the strength of it – a Parade Service followed by a late Celebration to which twenty-five stopped.
The order of eviction is still hanging over our head, but apparently somebody has issued a stay of execution for we are still here, though probably the next week will see us in new quarters. I shall be sorry to leave my little orange box and scrap-iron hut, for I have become quite attached to it, but if we must we must. There is a big gun firing as I write. It sounds as if it was in the next field for every time it belches forth a shell my shanty quivers and rattles like a palsied tinker.
I am thinking of giving a lecture one day on the psychology of Tommy’s headdress. It is as numerous and as various as the leaves in Val Ambrosia. First you have the official stiff round cap denoting smartness and NCO’s stripes as a rule. The same cap with the wire taken out looks like the bed cap of la jeune fille and is worn by those who prefer comfort to smartness and by the lately out who ape the veteran of fourteen months. Both these varieties are further disguised by covers, some with a flap behind, some without. The former transforms the wearer into an old sun-bonneted countrywoman, the latter is useful and is worn by the careful Beau Brummel.
Then come a gamut of Scotch caps, Glengarries, tam-o’-shanters large and small, close-fitting and wide of brim, some with bobs on top, some without. Some exposed to all the winds that blow, some swathed in mackintosh covers – and every man seems to wear that which is right in his own eyes. Then we have the steel helmet that looks like Patsy’s last year’s summer hat, what I believe is called a plain shape. This worn by bombers and snipers at a rakish angle is rather prepossessing and gives an Old World appearance to the trenches, which is further enhanced by the latest devices for taking life, modelled on the crossbow and catapult.
There may be other varieties of headgear sanctioned by the War Office which I have forgotten, but I must leave them to mention the unofficial coverings of Tommy’s brainbox –worn by the lazy, the unlucky, and the absent-minded. First the woollen stocking-cap in various shades of khaki & brown, then the knitted tam-o’-shanter, equally variegated, and lastly the Balaclava helmet. This also is worn in a rainbow collection of colours including scarlet – for this particular specimen is worn by my servant when off duty, as a constant reminder to me of the dangers of the scarlet lady. I may perhaps add that this atrocity is the work of Mother’s loving hands. At least I have always understood that she made it for Father to wear at the Nice Carnival; or was it for his trip to Spain – I forget which and my servant doesn’t care for it keeps his ears warm.
27 December 1915. You can judge how rushed I’ve been when I tell you that I never had a chance of opening my Christmas mail until this morning.
Christmas Eve I rode to all my billets to arrange time and place of Services. It is a long tour round and I had all my meals out. Christmas morning I was up betimes at 5.30. My first Celebration was at seven o’clock at the Field Ambulance in a small operating tent. It was packed out with officers and men. It was a ripping Service and had quite the Christmas spirit, and we had two Christmas hymns. Then back to my hut for a cup of coffee and off once more on my horse three or four miles to a Field Company of the RE. I gave them a Celebration in the Recreation Hut – and they very kindly gave me breakfast. Then back once more to my hut for fresh supplies of wine and wafers, and off at once four miles to the Royal Welsh Fusiliers. They too had a Celebration, though as they had just come in from the trenches only about twenty came to the Service.
Then back once more to my hut for Christmas dinner. This consisted of mutton cutlets and plum pudding. The former were a bit tough, but the latter was most succulent, and we concocted a rum sauce which gave the finishing touch. Dessert was chocolate and almond raisins, which you sent some time ago. Afterwards a Benedictine supplied by some friend of the Interpreter. After dinner I only had time for one of Father’s cigarettes before I again mounted my horse and rode the nine weary miles up to the trenches, arriving at the Brigade Headquarters in time for tea.
Christmas night I spent in the trenches; everything was very quiet, though there was no fraternising with the Hun this year. In fact a great bitter strafe had been arranged for the Birthday of the Prince of Peace, but better feeling prevailed and the day passed quietly.
Next morning after three hour’s sleep, I ploughed my way down the two muddy miles to Brigade HQ [at Woodcote House] and gave them a chance of making their Christmas Communion. Meanwhile an artillery engagement was beginning, so we worshipped the Babe of God, not to the accompanying voices of the Angel Host proclaiming their Hosannas of Peace, but to the loud raucous voice of the Heavies.
I had arranged to go back to the trenches for lunch, but the General advised me not to do so, for if I once got into them I might not be able to get out again if the bombardment developed into a regular strafe, so I set off instead on my way back here. I had arranged for my horse to meet me at 4 pm, but as there was no way of letting my groom know my changed plans, there was nothing to do but hoof the nine miles back to camp on my own flat feet. It is a tedious road, and the journey was not improved by the waders I was wearing. I got very hot and tired, and nothing passed me, so I couldn’t get a lift.
However I didn’t grumble as I was lucky not to be hit coming out. The Huns were shelling the road I was on, but funnily enough every shell fell about thirty yards behind me. They seemed to be following me at that distance, all down the road. Luckily for me it was oblique fire, and the splinters carried over the hedge instead of coming straight on down the road and catching me in the small of the back or the seat of my pants.
When I got back I had a sort of tea-lunch and then made off for my last Service – evensong at the Field Hospital in a big ward. Here, I found a Presbyterian Padre [Thomson] had also arranged for a Service half an hour after mine was timed to commence, so postponed mine and we had a joint Service. I took the prayers and lesson, and he gave an excellent address on the Wonder of Christ – ‘His name shall be called wonderful.’
I crawled back to my hut looking forward to a few restful hours in front of my fire with my Christmas mail but found instead an invitation to dinner from the Colonel of the 1st Gordons. It amounted to a command, so of course I had to go. It meant a tramp of a couple of miles each way, but they gave me a very nice little dinner and were very charming to me. At 11 pm I tore myself away and got back absolutely dog-tired and tumbled into bed more than half asleep, with my letters still unread.
This morning I made up for lost time and didn’t get up until 9.30 am. I sat in bed and smoked a cigarette and had a gorgeous time with my letters and parcels – so many I hardly know the exact number, but getting on into the twenties. Today has been pretty slack, and, except for a trip up to camp to make some arrangements for a ‘do’ we are giving the Battalion when they come out of the trenches, has been spent by me writing and smoking.
17 January 1916. Well here I am back again wallowing once more in the turgid mud of Flanders [Camp B, Rosinghill], surrounded by all the familiar landmarks and the same old muddy khaki. Those few blissful hours of leave seem now only a dream of surpassing wonder and beauty – a delightful fantasy, but grotesquely unreal. In fact I can hardly persuade myself that the long expected leave has come and gone. However, the memory of it is very sweet, and it was simply heavenly seeing you all again.
I have been busy starting a Coffee Bar for the men, buying in stores and stoves, and teaching the Bartender his business.
In addition, I have been building a new hut for myself up in the camp. I find it is really more convenient than my old one, and am more on the spot altogether. I have occupied my new hut since last Friday, but for the first two nights my only roof was a tarpaulin thrown over the top – a bit cool as you can imagine. Now, however, I am getting everything into shipshape and making quite a snug little home for myself.
On Monday I got up a concert for the Battalion. It was a strange event. All the pianos in Flanders are in the dugouts, I think, for I couldn’t borrow one for love nor money. However, the performers didn’t seem to mind the absence of an accompaniment but warbled away sweetly and keeping the time extraordinarily successfully. Tommy loves his emotions to be tickled. There are only two kinds of songs Tommy likes, the sentimental type which tells of the white-haired mother and her darling child, sitting by the fire or starving in the attic, and the vulgar comic. Nothing else goes down at all, but whether it’s sentimentality or vulgarity it’s got to be laid on thick, and the thicker it is, the more Tommy enjoys himself.
Luckily, for these two types of songs a piano is not indispensable; in fact it is apt to rob the performance of its full flavour and therefore to be a bit of a drawback.
On Monday, when I couldn’t stand any more caterwauling about the dear old home, I turned on the gramophone which was a welcome change. At half-time we dished out hot tea flavoured with rum, which was immensely popular and loosened their tongues in the choruses to such an extent that a Hun aeroplane was erroneously reported to be overhead.
The last few days we have had quite a lot of sunshine, and all the world seems young and gay; the camp is less muddy than it’s been for months and we have just heard a rumour that the Engineers are going to fit us all up with electric light! Another of the paradoxes of civilised warfare!
I’m just off now to hold a choir practice for the Suffolks. We’re going to try to sing the Responses and the Chants at the Church Parade next Sunday – rather ambitious at an open-air Service [at Ouderdom], but the Royal Welsh Fusiliers sing the whole Service regularly, and beautifully they do it too.
3rd Sunday after Epiphany 1916. The camp now is really looking quite well. My hut is right at the back of it, as I write I can see all the huts in front of me, partly hidden by the trees. Our camp is built in a thin sort of wood, chiefly to avoid the eagle eye of the Taube I believe. The ground of course is very soft and mushy, but now we have an elaborate network of ‘duck boards’ leading from everywhere to everywhere else.
A ‘duck board’ is a kind of ladder laid on the ground with the rungs fairly near together. They are in great demand out here and are now quite ubiquitous. They are an excellent invention but at night in damp weather the source of much bad language. In gumboots a walk along a duck board resembles a walk along a greasy pole, only there is no duck or leg of ham at the end!
During the last week or so we have managed to get the Coffee Bar in working order, and it is proving a great success and boon to the men who nightly fill the hut and munch slabs of cake washed down with tea, the while they read the week-old ‘dailies’ or month-old Tatlers and Bystanders. The organisation of even a simple thing like a Coffee Bar and Reading Room out here entails quite a lot of work, for it is making bricks without straw from the word ‘go’, and supplies of cake and chocolate and milk and everything else have to be horse-drawn from the town six good miles away. Even the water for the tea is brought from a distant main, first in water-carts and then by a water fatigue in old petrol tins.
The trip up to the trenches was quite uneventful. The Hun was amazingly quiet. I really thought that he was withdrawing to a second line some miles further back, but no sooner had I got back to camp than I got word through to say that the Germans had exploded a mine under our front line and blown several of the Suffolks up. It’s a rotten way of going out, but most of them were asleep at the time and would never have known what hit them.
Apart from the sorrow of losing so many good men and true, my hands will be full for some days writing to the bereaved parents and wives. It is a sad and difficult job but I think it is worth the trouble, and I hope brings a little comfort to their aching hearts.
Today – it is now 11:15 pm – has been a busy Sunday for me; three Celebrations with a total of seventy-four Communicants, two Church Parades and a voluntary evensong and sermon this evening. The Services are not so tiring in themselves, but it is the packing and unpacking of my Communion bag & robes, the long rides between each Service, and above all the constant strain of trying to keep up to time and avoiding or counteracting the unexpected, which is always a very present menace on active service.
We had rather an interesting air-duel this morning. A perfect cloudless sky and a bright sun. The Taubes were high up and hardly visible without glasses, but they caught the sunlight and looked like two brilliant diamonds. Our machines are painted a darker shade and don’t reflect the light so well. Even with glasses it was impossible to tell how the fight was going and they drifted out of sight until nothing could be seen, but still we heard faint tap tap tapping of their machine guns.
25 January 1916. Your letter dated the 22nd has just arrived much to my joy. I have received a letter from Hal [his brother] written in hospital on January 2nd. He says how weak he feels, and his temperature was still in the region of the 100’s, so I don’t suppose he was back with his Regiment when he sent the pc of January 6th. On a field postcard ‘I am quite well’ has to cover a multitude of meanings, generally it means nothing more than ‘I still exist’.
As I sit here trying to write, the famous Pipe Band of the 1st Gordon Highlanders is practising within twenty yards of my hut. I love them as a band, especially when I can see the swirl of the kilt and the swagger of the Pipe Major. But sitting here unable to see them, I fairly hate them. Each Piper is playing his own favourite lament regardless of the others, and the drums are practising ragtime, I think, so you must take that into consideration if my letter is more disconnected or futile than usual.
My new hut is now quite comfy and snug, I am sending you agrand plan of it. As huts go it is above the average, being commodious and airy – a little too much so sometimes! The great drawback is that it has only got one real window, rather low in the wall and rather minute at that. The other window is covered with canvas in default of glass, and doesn’t therefore add much to the gaiety of nations. However I shall be shortly nestling on Luxury’s Lap for the electric light is no mere rumour. Already the wires have been laid, and the green shade is hanging majestically from the centre beam, though as yet no globe has appeared and no current has been turned on.
The Coffee Bar is now a fait accompli and is doing well – much appreciated by Tommy and Jock – Jock has an insatiable appetite for cake which I am now buying by the case – fifty-six lbs to the case. In the busy time one case lasts about half an hour! In fact, one man does nothing else but cut up cake into penny and twopenny slices!
Our aeroplanes are very busy these days, and the Huns are not backward either. The air seems thick with them, and the sky is perpetually mottled with the smoke balls of bursting shrapnel.
There is rather a good aeroplane story going the rounds now, which I’m told ‘on the very best authority’ is quite true. One of our pilots went up at night to drop bombs on a German headquarters. Whether he succeeded or not is not known, nor does it affect the story, but as he was coming back his engine began to misfire or misbehave in some other way, and he was forced to come down. As soon as he landed he whipped out his revolver and emptied it into his petrol tank, smashed his wings and set the whole thing on fire in order to prevent it falling into the Germans’ hands. While he was thus engaged two other RFC men appeared on the scene and asked him in Expeditionary English (which I need hardly tell you is peculiarly lurid), what he thought he was doing. The poor fellow nearly died of fright. Feeling a little hero he had destroyed his machine within 100 yards of his own hangar under the impression that he had landed on German soil.
I had this from an RFC man who is at present attached to us for a rest. Rather a quaint conceit on the part of the authorities to send a nerve-shaken pilot into the trenches to recuperate!
The last flight he did before he joined us was to take a French Corporal, disguised as a German peasant, and drop him with a basket of carrier pigeons thirty miles in rear of the German lines. What a wealth of feeling the unfortunate Frenchman must have put into his ‘au revoir’ as he saw the aeroplane rise into the air and make off for home & safety, leaving him alone in a hostile land, dependent for his living and his life on his own wits.
My toothache I am glad to say is better but the ache has now descended and nestles beneath my belt. I must have eaten too heartily of the curried bully beef we had for lunch.
31 January 1916. The electric light has, contrary to all expectation, made its appearance. It is the last thing in modern warfare, absolutely le dernier cri, so now doubtless we shall be moved away within the next day or two. The camp has been brought to a high state of comfort and completeness, it might very properly be used as a model encampment. But nothing of the sort will happen. The proper army procedure is to turn the unfortunate Battalion out and allow the camp to grow moss and mildew while a new camp is sited in the middle of the thickest mud patch in the vicinity!! The idea, I believe, is to prevent us from becoming too attached to the fleshpots of Egypt!
I forget if I told you that I am the proud possessor of a dog. One of the men in the Field Ambulance brought out a terrier pup as a mascot, but now that the pup has increased in size and appetite he finds himself greatly embarrassed, and so has asked me to take it off his hands, which I have done. ‘Spot’ is the plebeian name to which the hound answers, but he is nevertheless an affectionate little beast, and will I hope protect me from mice and rats when in the trenches.
The irresistible connection between the cold and coal reminds me of a story against some of the King’s Own. Out in no man’s land there is a battered house, about halfway between us and the Germans. Nothing of the house remains except a heap of debris, and the cellar which a bold patrol discovered the other day. The cellar, like all well-trained cellars, was well stocked with coal which the patrol rightly coveted for their trench brazier. So next night out they crawled again, over the parapet, through the wire, to the treasure trove with sandbags in every pocket in which to bring back the coal. Then later in the evening they reappeared, covered with coal dust, and burdened to the ground. But it was a happy and warm little party which stood round the brazier for the rest of the night to the envy of all the poor cold fellows in the neighbouring bays.
Next night one of the most envious ones crawled out with his sandbags and repaired to the cellar where he proceeded to fill his bags to bursting point. On his return he proudly exhibited his bursting sandbags to his friends, but when the brazier was brought out and the bags were opened and everybody was cheering up with the idea of thawing his toes and fingers, instead of coal appeared very much battered and discoloured brick ends!
6 February 1916. In addition to my Coffee Bar and its accounts, I am now acting as PRI (President Regimental Institutes), which includes everything from the Beer Canteen to the Hairdressers Saloon. Every morning a queue of men come to my hut with vast sums of money which I have to book down and treasure, while others come for orders to buy stout or candles or chocolate at the neighbouring town. So far from being a spiritual pastor, it seems that I am being initiated into the mysteries of commerce. When the war is over, what I won’t know about feeding and lubricating a Battalion won’t be worth knowing. In my spare time I act as Caterer of the Officers’ Mess and have succeeded in improving the menu at the cost of increasing the mess bills. But after all it is a false economy to eat tinned butter when you can get fresh. Up to the present we seem to have lived out of tins, our whole existence has a tinny flavour. Everything in the BEF comes out of a tin – milk, butter, jam, cigarettes, fish, fruit, vegetables, meat, matches, coffee, biscuits, even our water for it is brought up in old petrol cans. Our very lives seem to be contained in tin, and death too for that matter, for it generally comes over from the Hun lines in the form of a jam pot filled with high explosive.
I remember in a recent letter I said that now that the electric light had really come and everything was going well, we should also have to go. And so it is, orders have come to move out – in fact half the Brigade have gone and we follow on Tuesday. We have been relieved by a new Division and we are going back to a spot near St Omer for a month’s rest. It sounds very nice, but rest is a misnomer in army circles and means just the reverse. There isn’t a single man who wouldn’t rather remain where he is than go back for a month’s constant fatigues and parades. It’s like exchanging the freedom of Oxford for the restraint and discipline of school.
The Gordons – our camp mates – marched off this morning just as I was going to my first Celebration. It is quite a relief not to have their pipers practising at my door. I had never realised before what a strange race Scottish pipers are – a peculiarly self-contained, introspective breed, placid volcanoes. They strut about detached from their surroundings, playing the mournful lament so dear to their hearts.
Each evening they tear themselves away from the dream world in which they habitually live, and assemble in a wide circle to play Tattoo. Even then, although they play in harmony with the others they still wear the vacant detached look of hermits. As a matter of fact the Band is really first class, and the drums particularly are excellent. Such a swing and dash and precision about them. They are quite a treat to watch but it is the pipers who hold me spellbound. Each one beats time with his right foot, but not with the toe as ordinary mortals do, but with the heel!
Yesterday we were invaded by a Labour Battalion. They came down upon us like locusts from the east, and have sent bar takings at the Beer Canteen to a dizzy height. Apart from that they don’t appear to be good for much, unless it be natting or chair-warming. The imagination fairly blinks at the picture they provide. All of them are hairy grandfathers, with swivel eyes, or drooping eyelids or club feet – a most weird collection. However, they find their sphere of usefulness on the roads and railways – both of which sadly require all the loving care these gentlemanly old ruffians can devote to them.