Forgotten Voices of the Somme (2 page)

Many events in British history have come down to us with receivedwisdom firmly attached. The signing of the
Magna Carta
embodies the birth of liberty, the
Battle of Agincourt
represents the flowering of patriotism, and the Battle of the Somme evokes futility, flawed leadership, and the snuffing-out of public innocence. Yet received wisdom can owe a great deal to the tastes and prejudices of those who come after. Where the opportunity exists to view events through the eyes of those who experienced them – as it does here – the opportunity should be taken. The men who fought the Battle of the Somme may have their own prejudices, and their observations limited perhaps to a single corner of a foreign field, but they are first-hand witnesses to the facts. They return us to a point before legend and received wisdom took hold. We are fortunate that their voices can still be heard above all the ensuing noise.

The battle in which these men fought arose out of a desire to break the existing deadlock. Since the winter of 1914, a continuous line of trenches had stretched from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border, creating a war of attrition amid the wire, mud and trenches. The
Gallipoli campaign
of 1915 had been an attempt to outflank the Western Front, but it had failed. At the
Chantilly conference
of December 6, 1915, Allied strategy for the coming year was agreed upon: large-scale
offensives
would be carried out on every front.

This plan pleased the
British Imperial General Staff
, eager to mount a push to break through on the Western Front. The Imperial General Staff feared that a defensive strategy would ultimately weaken the Allies, allowing the Germans – who were already in possession of economically valuable

swathes of
France
and
Belgium
– to make peace on their own terms. Such a strategy would also increase the vulnerability of the Allied-held Channel ports, exposing Britain to the threat of invasion. A decisive attack was considered necessary.

The next question was where the attack should take place. On December 19,
Sir Douglas
Haig took over from
Sir John French
as Commander-in-Chief of the
British Expeditionary Force
. Haig believed that the British should attack in the Belgian
Ypres salient
. Britain had, after all, entered the war to protect Belgium, the majority of her troops were in the northern part of the line, and clear strategic goals existed in the region. Britain was France's junior partner, however, and Joseph Joffre – the French Commander-in-Chief – was adamant that a combined attack should be mounted in
Picardy
, to the south. Haig had little say in the matter, and a plan was formulated: a joint British and French offensive against German positions on both sides of the
River Somme
.

The area had already seen fighting in August 1914, during the initial advance of the German army, and again in September, as the Germans fell back in the face of resistance. The subsequently formed line of trenches passed through the region, where it was defended by troops from Brittany. In August 1915, they were replaced along a fourteen-mile sector by British troops.

And so, in early 1916, preparations began for an Allied push along the Somme front. These preparations did not, however, take into account the possibility that the Germans might be making plans of their own.

Young Lions

I couldn't get into the army quick enough.

The British Expeditionary Force that sailed for France at the outbreak of the Great War was made up of four infantry divisions, a cavalry division and an independent brigade. This was a meagre force with which to confront the
German army
of a hundred infantry divisions. The British Army had long been little more than a means of policing the Empire and deterring potential aggressors. Britain's world supremacy depended not on its army, but on its navy, which continued to rule the waves. A European war presented quite different challenges, and although men of the
Territorial Army
and soldiers from the dominions and colonies were available to fight, a call to arms was urgently needed.

The problem was addressed promptly by
Lord Kitchener
, the Secretary of State for War, who set about creating a 'new army'. Adhering to the idea that men would be more willing to enlist if they knew those with whom they would be serving, he mounted a nationwide drive to encourage cities, towns, villages, factories and groups with shared interests to raise their own battalions, which would then be attached to existing regiments. They would consist of men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-nine, who would join up for three years, or the duration of the war, whichever proved the longer. Posters of Kitchener with his steady gaze and pointed finger went up across the country, and patriotic fervour ensured that half a million men had enlisted by the end of 1914. These were men with no experience of soldiering, who were joining the army in a spirit of adventure.

Regular soldiers, Territorials, dominion soldiers and men of the 'Pals battalions' were to fight in close proximity on the Somme. As members of

the
British Army
they shared an enemy, but as individuals they might have little else in common.

Corporal Don Murray

8th Battalion,
King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry

I remember my first day at
school
. It was a terrifying experience. My sister took me, and we had to walk through the door into this big building – but I dug my heels in and refused to go in. So my sister went into the school alone, and she came out with the headmistress, Miss Phillips, who took me by the scruff of the neck and the seat of my pants. I was jet-propelled into the school. The lady who took me into her class was Miss Kane. I thought she was very, very beautiful. She smelt very strongly of carbolic soap – it's always stuck in my memory.

I can remember the end of the
Boer War
. We were all allowed to go out into the playground, line the railings round the school, and we all waved little Union Jacks as the soldiers were marching back from the war, to the barracks at the top of the road. I remember one soldier in particular, who had a bandage round his head. We cheered him madly. I expect he had a boil or something; still, we thought he was a hero.

And I remember, we used to go round by the girls' school, and watch them come out and make fun of them. But the girls had a way of joining together, and instead of going home separately, they used to go home in groups, singing a song that's quite popular now, 'Strawberry Fair', and they used to do a little dance with it, and each lot branched off as they got to their home.

After that, I went to Usher Street School, where I did very well. I did what became known as the 'Eleven Plus' and failed it purposefully, because I didn't want to leave the school. I was wrong – but that's what I did. Whilst I was there, I joined the church choir. My father and brother were also in the choir, and we used to go two nights a week and three times on a Sunday. And at the end of the morning service, all the choir men would march out, straight across to the pub, and they'd all go in together. It seemed so
wrong
. But that's what they did. And there was a big, roaring fire in one of the rooms of the pub, and the wall on the street outside was hot. I used to stand there, and warm my hands in the winter. It always seemed to be winter – I don't know why.

There was no television, or radio, in those days, and we used to make our

own fun. We all used to get round the piano and sing; but there was a queer custom that Sunday was a day when you couldn't enjoy yourself in any way whatsoever. You couldn't sing, unless it was a hymn. If you were whistling, you were reprimanded: 'Do you know what day it is?' There were no toys on a Sunday; it was a miserable blooming day.

My dad was very funny. He was always in trouble. No matter what he did, it went wrong. If he went into a public lavatory, he'd lock himself in and somebody would have to let him out. He was too fond of his booze; that was his biggest fault. In those days you could get nicely drunk on a shilling. He was a very good singer. He used to sing in the pubs on a Saturday night, and mum would go down there to listen. That was the night when they used to come home and quarrel. I used to lay in my bed, shivering, dreading them coming home. One weekend, he went to a cricket match with the choir men. He wasn't to play, but they were a man short, so they decided that he should keep wicket. He had no flannels, and he was wearing his bowler hat. As the ball went past, he stuck the hat out, and the ball went right through it. He came home that night, and he'd bought some sausages, as a gift offering to keep mum sweet. He was as drunk as ever he could be, and he stood in the doorway with these sausages hanging out of his coat pocket, and a little lid sticking up on top of his hat, and he was saying, 'What have I done wrong now, my dear?'

There was a scheme in those days called the
half-time system
, so you could work in the morning, go to school in the afternoon, and the following week it would be reversed. It didn't matter which you did, you couldn't win – if you worked in the morning, you fell asleep at your school desk in the afternoon, and got a clout from the teacher; if you went to school in the morning, you got a clout in the afternoon from the overlooker. And in those days, every class had at least three or four children who were either knock-kneed, bow-legged, or hump-backed. There was something physically wrong with them.

When I was fourteen, I left school. I went to work in the office, at the dye works. I was nearly bored stiff with the job. I wanted to be apprenticed to something that would give me a trade. I eventually went to a seven years' apprenticeship, at a firm of printers called Woodits. I was there when the war started. Everywhere you went, there were huge posters – 'Your King and Country want you!' There were patriotic slogans, pictures showing German soldiers marching through Belgium with babies on the end of their bayonets.

We were young, impressionable, and we hadn't had a war since the Boer War,

when we were children, and every apprentice went straight to the recruiting office and joined up. We thought we'd have to be sworn in, individually, but they just lined us up, told us to lift our shirts, drop our trousers, and that was it. Then we all swore obedience to the King, with our hands up. They gave us a shilling, one-and-six ration money, and we were soldiers.

Corporal Jim Crow

110th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery

I was born in Hardwicke, Manchester, on November 5, 1893. My father moved to Manchester from Lincolnshire, because the money was better. He'd started as a drayman on the railway, and then worked as a greengrocer in Salford. On his first day in the shop he only took seven and sixpence, but by the time Mother died in 1906, he was taking more money than that in a minute. By then, there were five people working in the shop: my father, my elder brother, two ladies, and the man who used to deliver stuff with his horse and lorry.

I was delicate when I was born. I had scarlet fever, and the doctor said that if they could send me into the country, it would be an advantage to me, so I moved down to live with my grandparents in Lincolnshire, where my grandfather had a smallholding. They were very good workers, and they taught me how to do things as they should be done. When I do things, they should be
exact
– or else I have to do them over again.

I was at a very small school with thirteen of us in one class. We were all ages, from the children starting school, to the thirteen-year-olds who were leaving. I only remember having one lesson in grammar, and none in algebra. When my mother died, my father got married again. That was disastrous. The second wife drank like a fish, and he came up to Lincolnshire, bringing her with him. We were in the sitting room, having lunch, and my grandfather said to my father, 'Jack! I don't think much of your choice!' They had one child, but my father ran out and left her in the end.

When I left school, I started work for a blacksmith in the village. I would milk four cows at six in the morning, then go in the shop, and then at night time we'd go back in the shop, and, many a time, my grandmother would fetch me home at nine o'clock. The waggoners from the local farms would congregate in the shop, and we used to lay the implements for them. It was a nice warm place for them to meet. When I had flu I was off for a week, and

when I went back to the shop I'd barely taken my jacket and waistcoat off, when they had me swinging a ten-pound hammer. My grandfather came in, saw this, played merry hell and he sent me home. That was the end of my
blacksmithing
. I was very sorry. He was a wonderful blacksmith. He taught me a lot in the eleven months I was with him.

After that I worked on various farms in the village, and in 1910, a cousin of mine, who'd been helping my grandmother in the house, got married – and my grandfather told me to clear out too. I took him at his word and went to the May Fair, and I took a situation at Waterloo Farm with a man called
William Busby
. I was there for a year, and then I went to a farm in the village at home. My duties were ploughing, looking after the horses, and anything else that was required.

At Christmas 1911, I went with a lad from the next farm to join the armed services, the Lincolns. We never thought anything of war: we were just a bit browned off with farm work, working four o'clock in the morning to seven o'clock at night. It was a bit deadly. We made an agreement that if one of us didn't pass, the other wouldn't stay. We spent the night in
Lincoln Barracks
, and he didn't pass, so we both came home. I carried on as a labourer and I moved to a farm where my boss was deaf, with a short tongue, and his brother was deaf and dumb, and there was only the three of us on the farm. I don't know how I stuck it. Between Sunday night and Saturday night, I never spoke to a soul.