A DEAD BODY WAS JUST THAT, A DEAD BODY, AND YOU WERE JUST GLAD IT WASN'T YOU. Apparent indifference by men to the fate of fellow soldiers should not be surprising. It is one of the commonest reactions a veteran of the First World War will give, when recalling the sight of bodies on the battlefield. Men quickly hardened to death because there was no opportunity to react differently. Such was the limited area in which battles on the Western Front were fought (it is possible to walk the entire breadth of the Somme Battlefield in a couple of hours), that to see a body was of little or no consequence unless there was something peculiar or unusual about it. One soldier remembered three dead men sitting upright apparently asleep together, another recalled the sight of two soldiers who had simultaneously bayonetted each other.
Some men chose to ignore the sight of bodies whenever possible; others happily looked over the dead for souvenirs. One man, searching a mutilated body, was shocked to find the photograph of a girl he knew in England. The body was that of her father, a man he had known well by sight back home. Another recalled how, to obtain one keepsake, he removed a dismembered hand still clutching a Véry light pistol, while another remembered how he'd searched the body of a dead German officer simply because he was bored.
The death of a close friend was entirely different. With the advent of hostilities, many men joined up together in twos and threes, choosing, as was their right as volunteers, to serve in the same regiment. Similarly, in the pals Battalions, whole groups of workmates from cotton mills, mines, and foundries enlisted and fought together. The bonds between these men were naturally extremely strong. Even if men were strangers to each other on joining a regiment, six months, or a year's training in Britain soon brought them close together. The loss of one or more of these friends would be a severe blow. Burying these dead, irrespective of whether death came in the destruction of a battalion in battle or the arbitrary explosion of a shell in the trench, was a traumatic experience and often haunted survivors.
There were, of course, a myriad reactions to the death of friends. Some men became fighting mad, bent on revenge against the enemy at the next possible opportunity; others became depressed, and cared little what happened to them personally. Many would find solace in the corner of a trench and have a weep before reappearing shortly afterwards to resume duties, apparently in a normal frame of mind. They carried on because there was no option, although most remained quiet and touchy for a couple of days afterwards.
The sense that everyone was in the same boat occasionally engendered sympathy for German soldiers occupying the trench opposite. Death was arbitrary, and often depersonalised – the majority of injuries were caused by exploding shrapnel, less than 1% from bayonet wounds – so that it was something inflicted upon, rather than done to, each other. Given the uniformity of risk, many men were fatalistic, accepting survival as mere chance and therefore death as simple ill luck; if your number was up, if your name was on the bullet, then there was nothing anyone could do. Not all soldiers accepted that life or death was pre-ordained, but the idea did help many men to come to terms with the sight and imminence of death.
Lists of casualties printed daily in the newspapers left no one at home in any doubt as to the numbers being lost at the Front. For the families in Britain, waiting for news of loved ones, the appearance of an official letter on the doormat struck dread into the heart. The letters, printed in their millions, would regret to inform the recipient that “a report has this day been received from the War Office to the effect that...” the following number, rank and name was dead, wounded, or a prisoner of war.
News of death and injury was not always accurate. Two interviewees were officially reported dead, when mistakes with their names were made. Errors apart, the army usually preferred to report a man missing until further news was received of his whereabouts. It gave families hope that a son might have been taken prisoner of war and that his name had yet to be released by the Germans to the Red Cross. One interviewee, unofficially reported killed in action in a letter by his platoon officer to his parents, in fact turned out to be a prisoner. But the joy at discovering a son was alive was rare. More often there was disappointment and heartbreak. Many other families clung vainly to the hope that a father, son or husband might one day turn up, when they had actually been killed.
For those left to cope with the loss, there was neighbourly sympathy and a meagre war pension, but little else. The death of the main bread-winner often haunted those who remained, forcing many older children to assume the role of a parent to other siblings while the mother went to work. Many families were too impoverished to visit the grave, if there was a grave. Many soldiers had no known grave. The only official recognition of their existence was a name on a memorial to the missing.
As far as Andrew was concerned, the attack on Passchendaele Ridge in October 1917 had been an unmitigated disaster. The offensive had already cost around 250,000 casualties, and in the latest attack almost everyone in Andrew's battalion had been killed or wounded, including Andrew's own Captain. Pinned down in a shell hole, Andrew and a friend survived by pretending to be stretcher bearers. However, the loss of so many men had left an indelible impression on Andrew's mind.
Walking back, we saw an old German pill box, and behind it lay a lot of our boys wounded there. The stretcher bearers were wiped out too, so the lads lay there and probably died there, and I would dare say a lot died in the mud as well. There was nothing we could do, we had no water. It was very, very sad to walk past them and do nothing for them.
We got out, and going down the duck boards we thought we would straighten up our kilts because they were heavy with mud. So we took them off but we couldn't get the things on again. We folded them up and slung them across our shoulders and walked down in our shirt tails. We got as far as Poperinge, and we were going down the main street when a big horse charged up to us, with a very efficient officer aboard, and he said, “Why haven't you got your kilts on? You are a disgrace to your regiment.” I swore at him, I think I told him to go to hell. It just about knocked him off his horse. I was beyond caring. I said, “As far as I know, we are the only two left of the battalion.” He said, “Oh, all right boys, go on.” I must have looked a mess because the top of my tunic was cut clean off by a piece of shrapnel, and was hanging loose. You would have thought it was cut by a razor, and it missed my throat by a fraction of an inch. I used to hear bullets fizz past, but this was the closest I came to death in the war and I didn't even know it had happened.
We found the remains of the battalion with the details, those are the cooks and tailors. We heard afterwards that when the roll call was taken, there were only 39 remained of those who had gone into action, and there wasn't a company officer left. The rest were killed or wounded. It was the worst experience I had in the war.
The number of close shaves Walter survived on the Western Front was marginally fewer than those he gave as a barber, the profession he took up for the rest of his working life. Joining up in 1916, Walter received just thirteen weeks' training before he was sent abroad into the chaos of the fighting in France and Belgium. He served at Messines and Third Ypres, before being taken prisoner of war the following year. He died peacefully in his sleep shortly after his hundredth birthday.
One of the best times for the Jerry trench mortars to bombard our trenches was as one regiment left the line and another took its place. For a short time, instead of one regiment in the line there are two, squeezing past each other in the communication trenches, and therefore more damage is likely to be done.
Very often we would have a senior NCO standing in the trench, so as a mortar would burst, and before another could be loaded, he'd say “Go!” and two of us would run out of the front line trench into the communication trench and then run down the line. On this occasion this fellow, Fred Fowler, and I had been told to “Go”, to run down a trench called Fleet Street, when there was an explosion just behind the parapet. I caught the blast and found myself lying on my back, wondering where I was. I started to feel round to see if I was hit and wasn't, so I jumped up and started running. I got ten or fifteen yards when I realised Fred wasn't behind me. I looked round but couldn't see him, so I went back and found him laid on his back, apparently dead. That was a big shock for me, that was. I checked him to make sure he was dead but struggled to find where he'd been hit, so I shouted for stretcher bearers. Fortunately, two were not far away and they came and picked him up and quickly got him out of the line of fire. When they examined him they found that a piece of shrapnel had gone right through his pack and coat and hit him at the base of the spine. There was hardly any blood at all.
I followed the stretcher bearers until we came to Brigade Headquarters, when one of the stretcher bearers said to me, “Can you take over because I think we'll be needed up the line again straight away?” I agreed, and went into the Brigade office and asked to see the Orderly Officer. The officer wasn't there, so I was asked what I wanted and I explained what had happened. “Well,” said one man, “the padre's here, he'll perhaps help you.” The padre followed me out and satisfied himself that the man was dead and he just turned to me and he asked “Are you going to help me bury him?” Just like that. I replied that I would do but that he'd have to verify that I was helping because I'd left my unit and I did not want to be charged with being absent. He agreed, and we went into this temporary cemetery, just near Headquarters, and started digging. We hadn't been digging very long when Jerry started shelling the cemetery and we had to run for cover. “Look, I'll get somebody to help me when it cools down a bit,” the padre said, “you get away.” I watched for an opportunity to get out and caught up with my unit.
About eight days later, we were going back into the line when I asked an unusual thing. This cemetery was close to the road along which we were to march, so I took the opportunity to ask a sergeant, “By the way, sergeant, that pal that was killed when I was coming out last time, I would like to go see what they've done, do you think I might slip off quick?” He said “You've got to let no one see you.” However, when we got near the place he said “Go on, nip across there quick.” I ran off and found the grave. Two pieces of wood had been nailed together to form a cross and pressed into the ground with the dead man's identification disc attached.
I was satisfied he was temporarily buried. I suppose it wasn't important, it was just I wanted to see the grave because I was there and I was involved, curiosity to know, really. It was a shock when you lost one of your pals, and Fred was a nice lad, although I didn't know him well. I mean if someone came along and said Jimmy Stanley has just been killed, well, unless Jimmy Stanley was very close to you, then you just accepted it as another casualty. It was a funny experience, how often you went up the line with a pal and came back with another one.
Men were very touchy for a day or two afterwards when a mate was killed, and it was nothing to see a man in a quiet part of the trench having a little weep. If a man did not cry, then often his voice broke down and he would not want to talk to anybody else, then he would perhaps take a quiet five minutes to pull himself together. You got over the upset by getting back to the job. Even if three or four chaps had been killed, you would still have to carry on.
The most poignant of all battlefield deaths were those of close friends. George Littlefair lost his mate Joe Coates when a piece of shrapnel struck Joe down in a moment of carelessness. It is a death that continued to pain George eighty years on.
It was the shrapnel wounds that were damned rough, you know. A bullet was often straight in and out, but shrapnel was ragged and it made a nasty wound. If it was your leg or your arm, the wound could be bound up but if it was your body you often had to lie there bleeding until the stretcher bearers got on to you. It was shrapnel which got poor Joe.
Joe Coates, he was a good friend. We had our ups and downs between us but still we were always good pals, we helped one another. If I was coming home on leave - “Call and tell our lot I'm all right”, or I'd say the same to him and he would call on my family as well as Jenny, my girlfriend. He'd come back and say he'd seen her, “She's all right, I think I'll hang on to her instead of you”. I said “You bugger, I'll shoot you if you do!” We were a pair of good pals. We shared everything down to the paper and pen we needed to write home with and the blacking to polish our buttons, we were like that.
It was long distance shelling that got him. Joe had one fault, he was too careless, he stood up instead of keeping down in the trench, he stood up and a lump of shrapnel got him. poor Joe. He moaned. I wanted to attend to him but I couldn't. I just said that the stretcher bearers were coming, they'd take him away. He'd already gone over when they came. I never touched anything he had, you know, to remember him by, I let it all go with him. That was me pal gone and I was too full to speak to anybody after that. I never palled up with anybody else, not after you got that feeling.
I've thought many a time about it. It might have been me instead of him. When you're sat by yourself, things come and go through your mind. All this, and it was for no bloody purpose after all's said and done. After the war I never went to see his parents again because I didn't want to upset them. They knew where I was if they wanted to talk to me. I finally saw his grave in 1997 and all the memories came back. And I'm not afraid to tell you, when I was looking at his grave the tears was running down my face. I'm not afraid to say it 'cos we were bosom pals and we never even said “so long” to one another. The last time I saw all the graves, they were little wooden crosses and now they are all nice white marble headstones and I thought what a big improvement, aye, it's there, age and everything. I was pleased.
After any attack, men would be detailed to bury the dead. For those of the 51st Highland Division who had taken part in the successful assault on Beaumont Hamel, it meant burying close mates and even relatives. Norman Collins was designated the burial officer. It was, perhaps, the most harrowing time of his life.
After the attack on Beaumont Hamel, I was told to collect the newly-killed and I took stretcher bearers, quite a number of whom were related to the ones who were dead, brothers, cousins, and they of course were very upset, very, very upset. We took the dead back to Mailly-Maillet Wood and dug a long trench and put the dead in there, wrapped in an army blanket, neatly packed in like sardines. We covered them up and we gave them a proper funeral with reversed arms; all the ceremonial of a proper funeral, blowing the Last post and so on. As an officer you needn't stand aloof, but the best way of comforting the living would be to give them a stroke on the head or a pat on the back or some gesture like that, without words, comfort them without words. But it was a horrible thing to do, to have to bury your own cousin or brother.
Afterwards, I was told to go back into what had been No Man's Land and bury the old dead of the Newfoundland Regiment, killed on 1st July. The flesh had gone mainly from the face but the hair had still grown, the beard to some extent. They looked very ragged, very ragged and the rats were running out of their chests. The rats were getting out of the rain, of course, because the cloth over the rib cage made quite a nice nest and when you touched a body the rats just poured out of the front. A dozen bodies would be touched simultaneously and there were rats tumbling everywhere. To a rat it was just a nest, but to think that a human being provided a nest for a rat was a pretty dreadful feeling. And when the flesh goes from under a puttee, there is just a bone and if you stand on it, it just squashes. For a young fellow like myself, nineteen, all I had to look forward to at the time was a similar fate. It still has an effect on me now, you never forget it. Nobody knew what to do, we were all fresh, all newcomers to the job. All we could do was remove the paybooks and leave one identity disc on so they could be identified later and put the personal items in a clean sandbag. Then, we shovelled the dead into shell holes, most half-filled with water, about thirty to a shell hole. There was no emotion then. There comes a time when emotion becomes a strange sort of word, you get so much of it that you become deadened to it, you're bound to. You didn't know men that had been dead for four and a half months and were strangers to you, you only knew them as young soldiers and officers who'd gone to war just as you had, and they'd died. You felt in a way horrified to think that there you had, in my case, probably nine hundred or so young men - they must have been an average age of nineteen or twenty, who had all come over to France to do what they thought no doubt would be a wonderful job of work and in one day - one day - they were destroyed. You thought then and you saw what happened and you realised what their aspirations and their ambitions were and what they were going to do to put the world right, and they were going to do this and that and all they did was to die in really a few minutes. Yet you couldn't weep for them any more than you could for any of the other 20,000 who died on 1st July, but it seemed to me to be such a terrible waste of life.
I took the sandbags down to Brigade Headquarters and handed them over in a deep dugout in the chalk, where I was amazed by the luxury of the officers who were down there. I was asked to have a cup of tea, which I did and in front of me was a box of cakes labelled Fortnum and Mason, Piccadilly. I've never forgotten that. The officers down there all had red tabs on and they were all spick and span, and I was very pleased to get out and get back to my men in the trenches. I was more at home with them. I didn't like the idea of leaving my survivors of my own men - they depended on me for things that other people couldn't give them.
Florence Billington was only 16 years old when she met Edward Felton, a handsome local boy two years her senior. When war broke out, Edward joined the Kings Liverpool Regiment, and went to France in early 1915. He was killed in action during the 2nd Battle of Ypres, leaving Florence to grieve alone. Without a photograph of her lost love, Florence had to rely on the accuracy of her mind's eye and the clarity of her memory, to recall the image and personality of the boy whom she had hoped to marry, over eighty years ago.
I was with a group of friends when I met Ted Felton. We met in a shop doorway in West Derby Road and I was introduced to him and he seemed to take a fancy to me straight away, and I liked him. We met again, started to see each other, and very quickly became very fond of each other. We had not been going out very long when war broke out. He'd been called up, being a territorial, so he had to go. But there was a rumour that the war would be over by Christmas, so we got in with the idea that as soon as it was over we would get engaged, it was like a promise.
We were entranced by each other, I should say, and I know that when he went to the Front I kept thinking of him all the time and he thought of me. He was very worried about going abroad and I tried to comfort him. I knew nothing about the war, so all I could say was for him to look on the bright side, that there were better days in store. I told him we would write regularly, which I did. Yet he was quite convinced he was going to be killed, that he knew in his heart he would not come back. I told him to shake off the depression by thinking of me, and that as soon as the war was over we would make a life together, but he took some convincing.
His regiment, the Kings Liverpools, were pushed over to France quite suddenly. On the morning they were sailing, I went all sort of haywire, hysterical. I had to do something, to get rid of the feeling of depression, so I went to a friend's house and we danced and danced, to try and get rid of the gloom.
I was ever so sad and I missed him terribly, but I couldn't show too much to mother because she was so down to earth, she'd only think I was love-sick. The letters I got from Ted told me how preoccupied they were, marching from one place to another. I would reply telling him that I missed him, missed him an awful lot, and I wished that he was a bit nearer so I could see more of him. I would promise him I would look at no one else while he was away, that I'd wait for him to eternity. I would have done, but I didn't get the chance, did I?
When I heard Ted had been killed, I was at work. I was working as a housemaid at the palace Hotel, Buxton, when one of the porters came up with a letter from the War Office, a long envelope, official-looking, and when I saw it my heart sank. I opened it and read that they regretted to tell me that Edward Felton had been killed. I told the other girls and they were sorry, but they were getting used to hearing that relatives and friends had been killed, so much was happening, including the sinking of the Lusitania, that had only just gone down. I went away from them, just to grieve quietly on my own.
I received a letter about the same time from one of Edward's officers. The officer told me that Ted had been hit in the back and that he'd been wounded and had died. This officer wrote because some of my letters to Ted had been found on his body. They didn't have my home address, just the one where I had written the letters from, the hotel address. I sat down and wrote a letter to his relatives. What could I say? Only that I was awfully sorry. I couldn't even say I'd come and see them because I didn't know their exact address. I knew the road name, but it was a long road.
I couldn't really imagine him not being around. I thought maybe one day the army would find out they had made a mistake and perhaps he might turn up. And over the years when missing soldiers did turn up, I thought wouldn't it be wonderful if it was Ted. I just wanted to go away and hide somewhere where it was quiet and not bother to talk to anybody. I cried a lot, and my life increasingly became a roller-coaster after Ted's death. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, I was always chopping and changing. I would get a job, then I would want to go home. I'd get homesick and I would go home and my parents thought, that's Flo, yeah, couldn't settle down. But I was thinking of him, that's what it was.
After the war, when I lived in Leeds, I met a man who was a spiritualist. He came to lunch with his wife, and while we were having a cup of tea, this man told me that he could see a very young boy in khaki standing behind me. “He says he was killed in the war - have you any idea who that is?” I said, “Yes, I know who it is.” He said “Well, this young man is showing an awful lot of love towards you.” I told him it was a boy I had been courting, who had been killed at Ypres. He told me, “He's here for you and he wants me to tell you that he loved you with all his heart and soul and had hoped to make his life with you, if he could have done.” On occasions since, I have felt his spirit visit me, that he was thinking of me and was somewhere near.
When Ellen Elston was not quite nine years old, her father was killed in action at the Front. Ellen was the eldest of six children, and her childhood was effectively terminated at that moment. She took on the role of housewife, while her mother went to work to bring in enough money to feed the family. “I think when you are young, you don't know the depth of sorrow, but in a way, I think, to grow up without a dad, more so for girls, I think it's a sad life actually.”
I remember going with my mother and brother on a visit to see my father at Dover Castle. As Company Sergeant Major, dad had to drill the men and it was exciting to see all the soldiers lined up and our own dad taking them through their paces. We thought that was marvellous, we were very proud of him. Afterwards all the men clustered round him and us: these were the sergeant major's kids. Dad was to me, of course, very nice-looking, fair curly hair, not too tall, a happy-looking man. That would have been 1915, when I was about eight years old.
In 1916 he was wounded on the Somme, not too badly. I remember him coming home on leave; we were delighted to see him and he spoiled us all. I remember him getting me on his knee and giving me a cuddle and singing a song “They'll Never Believe Me”, very popular in those days. We had a big gramophone with a great big blue horn and he put the record on and sang to me, “They'll never believe me, and when I tell them how beautiful you are, they'll never believe me, they'll never believe me, that from this great big world you've chosen me”. He ruffled my hair. I can remember that as plain as anything, and that song, it's still played today, and so of course I'm back on his knee, aren't I? Always.
A few days before my birthday he was killed at Ypres. He was 43 years old. Dad had had to go back to the war and I nearly forgot that I had a dad, until that morning in August, 6th August I think it was. The telegram boy, he rode on a red bicycle, with a pill box hat on, he notified us with a telegram. It was Sunday morning and my mother was getting the dinner ready. I can remember her hands being all floury, and all she could do was to sit down and we all gathered round. We didn't understand. All we knew was that the telegram boy had been, which was exciting to children, a message from dad.
It may sound funny, but my father's death meant a new dress to me. In no time at all, mother had made black and white check dresses with a black belt for all the girls, and I can see us now, all walking down the street together and people looking at us because father was well-known in the community. I don't think dad's death registered, somehow, as there was no funeral or anything like that because he was buried out there. The only thing that registered were the commiserations of everybody around us, the neighbours, then a letter from one of the regiment's officers. I do remember my father's brother coming round. He was a monk in a monastery and I can recall him coming to visit my mother, you know, to see her after father's death, and my mother ordered him out of the house, I can remember that quite plainly. She said “Please don't come telling me there's a God because I don't believe in him any more.”
You are upset for your mother, really, you are upset because your mother is upset. We had a beautiful picture on the wall that mums used to have in those days, in a gold frame, you know, a head and shoulders shot of dad. She turned it around the other way because when she went into that room she could not bear to look at it. I can hear her wandering around the house crying, although she tried to put a brave face on it in front of the children. I cried when I went to bed but I never cried in front of other people. You are too proud to let people see that things reach you. Yes, I can remember crying and crying – for my mother – not because my father was killed.
I was the eldest, nine years old then, and life changed. Mother was working at the nearby NAAFI, packing and sending food to the troops, to help make ends meet. I had to become the head of the family, cooking the dinner, great pots of stew and rice, making dresses for my younger sisters, bathing the kids, black leading the fire grate, running errands, making cups of tea, ironing, all sorts of things. My little brother used to cry when I made him scrub his knees; we often laughed about it later as we got older. I suppose being the eldest child, the others looked up to me, they come to you for everything and I just took it that it was part of my job. You learn from experience, I mean at nine or ten years old you have to cook, and you can only go by what your mother did, and copy. So I would go to the butchers and get sixpenny-worth of bones which I just put in a pot and threw all the vegetables in and thickened it up with barley - there's a meal!
My brother and I were wandering out on Christmas Eve. Mother was indoors making mince pies, but she wasn't looking forward to Christmas because dad had been killed only months before. We wandered down the road to where there was a big toy shop, and we stopped. We were looking in the shop window, which was dripping with condensation, admiring all the things we would like but which we knew we couldn't have. I can remember looking at a lovely doll all dressed in pale blue silk, when a lady came and started looking in the window as well and said “Now why don't you go inside and look, it's cold out here”. We just looked up at her. We went inside and she followed us in, and all the different things we liked she bought me and my brother. She had the assistant put them all in a bag, one big bag each for my brother and me, then she said “Now you go straight home and you tell your mother that you met Mrs Christmas”. She knew my father, her husband had been in the army with dad, but all my life I never forgot that woman's gesture on Christmas Eve. Although I was ninety this year, I still feel the thrill of that kindness.
It is often said that the real victims of war are less those who are killed than those who are left behind. At ten years old, Lucy Neale loved her father deeply and was profoundly traumatised by his death. An only child, she quickly became a lonely child, endlessly recalling the time she saw her father on leave for the last time. Lucy slowly came to terms with her loss and lived a full life, although even aged 91, the recollection of bereavement was both painful and remarkably detailed.
When war broke out on 4th August 1914, I remember my father coming into our little house in Cookleigh and saying he was going to enlist at once. I think my mother and he had a little argument about that, but anyway, the next day he didn't go to work at the carpet factory, instead he went off to Kidderminster, about two and a half miles away and enlisted, as quickly as that. I was sorry he'd joined up, I didn't want him to go. I missed him so much, I didn't think of anyone but myself, I suppose.
He must have had at least one leave before the last visit. He didn't know where he was going when he came that last day to say goodbye. I was in school, and I suppose it was about ten o'clock in the morning and there was a knock at the door. We couldn't see who was on the other side, as the teacher, Mrs Beeston, went to answer it. I heard her say “Oh Mr Neale, how lovely to see you, you're on leave then?” And then she closed the door, much to my annoyance, and I couldn't hear a thing. Then she opened the door and beckoned me and she said, “Come along, Lucy, you can go home now, you don't want to be in school any longer today, it's your father come for you.” It was my tenth birthday and we walked to the village, back to where we lived, and I was so proud, he was very handsome for one thing, my dad, and he looked lovely in the khaki uniform. We met one or two folk on the road going home and they shook hands with him and chatted and wished him well and then we went home to mother. I don't remember much about my birthday, really, it was April 4th and a nice sunny day and when the other girls came home from school I went out to play with them. I remember he bought me, for my birthday present, a lovely hymn and prayer book with a little case and a handle. I'd never seen one like it before, it was lovely. I was pleased with it, in a way, but I must say, to be truthful, I was disappointed also because I'd never had a doll and I was hoping somebody would give me a doll, but nobody ever did.
At about six o'clock in the evening, my father called me in and said he'd got to go back to Kidderminster, back to barracks. “Will you walk with me a little way, just up the hill, will you come with me?” Of course I would. He said goodbye to my mother, who was crying, and we went off down the road and then up this long hill. It was a ten-minute walk, I suppose, but we didn't hurry, we just walked slowly up the hill and I really can't remember what we talked about, we must have talked, I think, but I really can't remember. I held on to his hand so tight, and when we got to the top, he said “I won't take you any further, you must go back now and I'll stand here and watch you until you're out of sight”, and he put his arms round me and held me so close to him I remember feeling how rough that khaki uniform was, and he said “Now I want you to promise me three things. You'll look after your mother, and I want you to go to church because I bought you that nice new prayer book and I would like to think you were going to use it and go to church, and then the last thing I want you to promise me is that you'll grow up to be a good girl.” He said “You won't know what I mean now but you will as you grow older, and I do want you to be a good girl, will you promise?” and I said “Yes”.
He picked me up against him and put his arms round me and held me tight to him and he kissed my cheeks and put me down and he said “You must go now, wave to me at the bottom, won't you?” And I went, I left him standing there and I went down the hill and I kept looking back and waving and he was still there, just standing there. I got to the bottom and then I'd got to turn off to go to where we lived, so I stopped and waved to him and he gestured as much as to say “Go on, you must go home now”, sort of thing, ever so gently gestured, and then he waved and he was still waving when I went, and that was the last I ever saw of him.
He went back to Kidderminster and the next thing we heard he was sent off to German East Africa, Tanzania as it's now called. He wrote to me frequently from Africa, he wrote from Durban, he liked Durban, then he wrote from the loveliest place in all the world, he said, Dar-es-Salaam. I used to take his letters to school and Miss Bywater, the teacher, used to read them all to the class, I don't suppose the other girls were very interested.
I was getting ready for school one morning in October when the postman came and I picked up this registered letter. My mother opened it and it was from the Army and she just sat there and she said “Oh, he's dead”, and I can't begin to tell you how I felt. I couldn't take it in for a while, but she began to cry. I felt numb, absolutely numb, and my mother said “You are not going to school today, you'll have to stay at home with me”.
My mother said, you'd better take this letter up to your grandmother, because she was not on good terms with my Gran, and show her. My Gran was sitting there with one of my aunts who'd come to stay from Leamington, Jessie, her eldest daughter and my father's favourite sister. So I put the letter on the table and Gran, my grandmother, said “You open it, Jess,” and she opened it and said “Oh no, he's dead, Harry's dead”. My poor Gran, she could only say “Oh, not another one,” because she had already lost two sons in the war. Gran didn't cry, she sat there like someone made of stone, she didn't say anything, but Auntie Jess began to cry terribly. I seem to remember my aunt making a pot of tea and then I said something like “I'd better go back home now”, and left.
Back home, my mother and I went to see another aunt, Auntie Fanny, who lived on a nearby farm. Auntie Fanny cried and of course my mother cried again, but I don't remember crying. I was so stunned, I couldn't believe it – I'd never see him again. It is hard to realise tragedies when you're only ten years old.
I went back to school the next day and had to tell Miss Bywater, the headmistress, why I had not attended the previous day. School started, because we said prayers, all three classes together in one room and she said “Before we have our prayers, I just want to tell you that Lucy has lost her father, so I think we ought to pray this morning for Lucy and her mother”, but I couldn't take it in, I was in a dream. The Lord's Prayer was said, and the usual prayers and a little hymn we used to sing, but I just couldn't, or I wouldn't, perhaps, face the fact that I would never see him again. That day, that was the worst day, and then a day or two later another girl, she lost her father, and we said prayers again for her.
Every week our local paper, The Kidderminster Shuttle –being a carpet manufacturing town – every week, there was some boy, some son, some husband killed. And there was a lot of wounded, they used to come home on leave and you'd see them with their arms in slings or walking on two sticks in their khaki about town or wherever. I think for a long time I felt resentful, I did, I felt very resentful – I mean why my dad – and then in time of course common sense takes over, and you realise you were not the only one, there were many more in Kidderminster, let alone the country.
My father's acting officer sent a little parcel with my father's diary and odds and ends, you know, little things from Africa, including a little picture of his grave, and I remember thinking that one day I'd go to Africa and find my dad's grave, of course I never have. My father had been sent from Dar-es-Salaam down country to fight. He'd been wounded and taken to hospital and while he was there he'd caught dysentery and died. Those field hospitals in East Africa must have been pretty awful. Of course I didn't know what dysentery was, but it killed a terrific lot of men in the war.
I missed my father terribly, for years I missed him. I never cried when my mother read that telegram, I couldn't cry when I was with my grandmother nor when I went to see Aunt Fanny the same day, but oh dear, I did cry at night when I got into bed because it was my father who used to tuck me into bed. We would go up by candle light and kneel by the bed. It was my dad who taught me my prayers. We never hurried through them, and then he'd kiss me on my forehead, and say “Goodnight Lulu, God bless you”, every night, he never failed. So for years afterwards I'd got to say my prayers because my father asked me to, we'd said our prayers together and then I did the same when I was alone, when he'd gone.
Longevity appears to run in families, and Dick and Kathleen Barron were just one example. Sharing over 200 years between them, both brother and sister lived remarkably independent lives. Both retained cogent memories of the First World War, Dick as a soldier, Kathleen as an adoring sister worried, as all families were, that war might take a loved one away for ever.
Dick was a good bit older than me, and naturally, as a little girl I worshipped him. I looked up to him for everything. To think that he was going to war and might be killed was to me the most dreadful thing and it affected me very badly. It was terrible to see him go, heartbreaking. I sometimes lay awake at night thinking about him, and of course at school he came into my mind.
The headmaster, Mr Garside, would announce that such and such a boy, one of our old boys, had been killed. And do you know he actually cried, the tears rolled down his face. The sight amazed me really, yet it made me like him more, because of how he felt about the old boys. We would have a hymn and then there would be silence, and that would affect us all. Of course I was always afraid that Mr Garside might one day read out Dick's name.
At home we just waited and hoped Dick would be all right. In those days the postman knocked on the door when he delivered some letters, and my mother would say, “Go and fetch the letters”; she couldn't open them. And then one day there was a buff-coloured envelope, a long envelope, and it had OHMS on the outside, On His Majesty's Service, and this would mean that Dick had been killed, or wounded, or taken prisoner. It could only be bad news, and it was my business to open the letter. I looked at mother and saw her face absolutely ashen white. I didn't wait to get any paper knife, I just opened it and read it to her. Dick was in hospital, very ill with dysentery, and we would be informed as soon as he came back to England.
The letter was very businesslike, there was a sorry and all that, and we would be kept informed, but that is about all, I remember. I think in a way mother was a little relieved, because he wasn't killed. There was hope, wasn't there?
I was delighted to see Dick again, to have him back with us, but he looked very ill and very thin – as though he'd suffered a lot. He was rather a short man and he'd lost so much weight, I couldn't help feeling it was funny to see his great big pith helmet on his head. I noticed mum, too, and I've never seen her looking so beautiful as she did when she saw her son. She was a good-looking woman but she looked extra special that day.
Dick wasn't quite the happy-go-lucky person that he had been. He'd altered, I mean he'd suffered a lot, nearly died, and that alters people, doesn't it? He didn't talk about Gallipoli much, no, he tried to forget it I think. He was still far from well, really, but there you are, we had him back, we had him home.
Conscripted into the army, Harry turned out to be a crack shot in training and was sent to join a Lewis Gun team. He served four months in the Ypres Salient in 1917 before being wounded by shellfire and evacuated back to England. It was when he was receiving treatment that Harry discovered that three of the five-man team had been killed in the same explosion. Their deaths deeply affected him and for eighty-one years he avoided speaking about the war. A quiet, unassuming man, Harry lives in a residential home in Wells in Somerset.
You talked to your mates in the Lewis Gun team. There was always a certain amount of emotional chatter, nerves. Shall we get through tomorrow, or shall we get a packet? I am going up the line tonight and am I coming back? It's getting dark, okay, everything may be quiet, but are you going to see the sun come up in the morning? And when the sun comes up in the morning, wonder if I shall see it set at night. Sooner or later you showed your emotions. That was why the comradeship was so important because I know I was scared more or less the whole time I was out there.
There were five of them in the Lewis Gun team and we lost three of them. The battalion had been relieved at ten o' clock at night and we were going through to the support line, over a piece of open ground, when a whizz bang burst just behind me. Heavy shells made a whump sound but the light shells, the whizz bangs, they used to come over quickly with a Zupppppp, bang, flash, and that was it. The force of the explosion threw me to the floor but I didn't know that I'd been hit for two or three minutes; burning metal knocks the pain out of you at first. I saw blood, so I took a field dressing out and put it on the wound. Then the pain came.
I don't know how long I lay there, it may have been ten minutes, it may have been half an hour, but a stretcher came along and I was picked up and taken to the dressing station. There were a lot of seriously wounded there, so I had to wait. I lay there that night and all the next day and the next evening a doctor came and had a look at the wound. He could see shrapnel buried inside and said “Would you like me to take it out?” I said “Well, yes, it's very painful, sir.” He said “Got no anaesthetic. All that was used in the battle and we haven't been able to replace it. I shall have to take it out as you are.” I thought for a minute and said “How long will you be?” He said “Two minutes.” So I thought, well, two minutes of agony and I shall get rid of all the pain, so I said “Okay, go on, take it out”. Two orderlies got hold, one on each arm, and two got hold of my legs, and the doctor got busy.
In those two minutes I could have damn well killed him, the pain was terrific. I take it he must have cut his way around the metal and got hold of the shrapnel with his tweezers, so that he could drag it out. Anyway, he got it and asked “Do you want it as a souvenir?” The shrapnel was about two inches long, broad at one end, and about half-an-inch thick with a sharp edge. I said “I've had the bloody stuff too long already.” The doctor went over to the next table and the fellow in the next bed said to me “If he writes anything in the green book you're for Blighty”. Anyway, sure enough he wrote in the book and I thought well, that's it then. I was lucky, very lucky indeed, for the word Blighty meant everything to a soldier.
I didn't know what had happened to the others at first. But I was told afterwards that I had lost three good mates. The Lewis Gun team was a little team together and the last three who were the ammunition carriers were blown to pieces. My reaction was terrible, it was like losing a part of my life. Simply blown to pieces, there you are, but it upset me more than anything.
I'd taken an absolute liking to the men in the team, you could say almost love. You could talk to them about anything and everything. I mean these boys were with you night and day, you shared everything with them and you talked about everything. We each knew where the others came from and what their lives had been, where they were educated. You were one of them, we belonged to each other if you understand. It's a difficult thing to describe, the friendship between us. I never met any of their people or any of their parents but I knew all about them and they knew all about me. There was nothing that cropped up, don't matter what it was, that you couldn't discuss with them in one way or another. If you had anything pinched you could talk to them, and if you had anything scrounged, you always shared it with them. You could confide everything to them. They would understand. Letters from home, when we got them, any trouble in them, they would discuss it with you.
That day, 22nd September 1917 – that is my Remembrance Day, not Armistice Day. The cenotaph service is all right – the rest of it is simply a military show to me. I'm always very, very quiet on that day and I don't want anybody talking to me really. Eighty years after and I always remember it. I shall never forget the three I lost.