Forgotten Voices of the Somme (3 page)

When war was declared, I was a bit uneasy. I wanted to go but it was harvest time, and I was up to my neck in it. I suppose we were doing more benefit to the country by staying on the farm. Later in the year, the Germans came over in a ship and they shelled
Scarborough
. We were so incensed that five of us met in a public house, and arranged to go down to Lincoln and join up. The brother of one of the lads working on the farm with me was in the
Coldstream Guards
, and he'd been wounded. He went with us to Lincoln, and he said, 'Whatever you do, don't go in the infantry! Go in the artillery! You'll be on horses, and not on foot!'

Private William Chapman

3rd Stationary Hospital
, Royal Army Medical Corps

I was born in a mining village called Easington Lane in the county of Durham. We had a one-bedroomed cottage with only one other room. That was the

beginning of it. My parents met in a very singular way. When Mother was about fourteen, my father was seventeen, and at that time he was driving his father's pony trap. And the pony took fright at some paper that was on the road, and it ran over my mother's leg and broke it. That was their introduction. A few years after that they married and set up home.

And they had to take a very small cottage in order to get started. And the first three children were girls, two of whom had to be adopted so that the rest of the family could get in the cottage. One was adopted by Grandmother, and another by a doctor who lived nearby. They simply went out of the home, and visited when they could, of course.

My father became manager of a grocery business. But he died within a year and there was I at seventeen, head of the family. Mother had a small stationery shop but she knew nothing about business. She would sell exercise books and slate prints and that sort of thing, without replenishing, and things went down and we made very little out of that.

So I began to look out for another job and got one not three miles away. And while there, the war started. I had made my mind up to be a Methodist minister and it was confirmed one Sunday evening – I'd been to church, I'd been there all day long. And the minister was a real beautiful man, not very scholarly, but very mystic and a very charming personality. He came from the minister's vestry with his wife who had led the service, and he put his hand on my head and said to his wife, 'You know, William's going to be a minister one day.' That's just what I'd been thinking myself but he confirmed it. That was really my ordination.

I went to theological college when I was twenty-one. I remember news came through that Parliament had said that theological students were not going to be called up. And we were very delighted. But then one day, three of us – we called ourselves a clan – went into Manchester for what we called a 'fuddle'. We went into Lyons café for a good tea, and started back to college on the tram. And about half a dozen new recruits in their khaki got on. They were obviously just in the army, you could tell by their uniform and bearing. We were very frisky and happy. We'd just been out for tea and been joking. And one of these boys turned round and said, 'You fellows ought to join the army – and then you'd have something to joke about.' We didn't answer back. Within a few days we were allowed a half-term break, and most of the boys went home for a long weekend. I went home and joined the army. I couldn't

go back to college. Nobody else left the college, and I never gave any notice: I simply joined the army. I was told to report back in two days. And two of us were placed in the charge of a sergeant. We went by train as far as Sheffield and, strangely, also on the train was our village policeman. When I was a boy I was terrified to death of him. Twice he spanked me, once for playing in a haystack and making a mess of it. Another time I managed to dodge him. But he was in the same boat as we were now. He was going to Aldershot to join the
military police
. And I was as good as he was. He was a private and I was a private.

Anyway, we got out at Sheffield and went to
Hillsborough Barracks, a very o
ld barracks indeed, containing hundreds and hundreds of recruits. And we were there about a week, getting fitted up with a uniform and learning how to form fours and how to salute. The next day, a sergeant-major and a sergeant were in command. And their purpose was quite a noble one – to find out what we had been in civil life, so that we'd be fitted in if possible. 'And what were you in Civvy Street?' 'Oh, I was a butcher, sergeant-major.' 'Sergeant, send soand- so to the quartermaster's stores.' 'And what were you?' 'Well, I was a clerk in an office, sergeant-major.' 'Send him to the orderly room.' And so on.

The sergeant major came to me and he said, 'What were you in Civvy Street?' 'I was a theological student, sergeant-major.' 'What?' 'A theological student.' 'What's that?' he said. 'Well, I was just a theological student,' I said. He called his sergeant over. 'Sergeant, come and ask this fellow what he was.' I was beginning to enjoy it. 'What were you in Civvy Street?' 'I was a theological student, sergeant.' So they walked away and had a little conference. And I had to follow the sergeant to the operating theatre. They didn't know the difference between theological and biological.

This was a Sunday morning, and there was an operation taking place. And the sergeant put me in the scrubbing-up room and I just stood there waiting. Eventually a sergeant came from the operating theatre itself. 'What are you doing here?' so I told him, and he took me into the theatre. It was a strangulated hernia, and when I went in there, there were half the man's innards right out. I stood looking at this new sight, and I began to feel rather strange. The sergeant had his eye on me. He said, 'Get out, get out!' I went out for a breath of fresh air, and ducked my head to get my blood circulating, and went back into the theatre within three minutes. I never turned a hair after that. I've seen hundreds of operations, and the worse an operation was, the better I liked it.

My experience in the theatre was an important phase of my life. I saw all kinds of surgery and met all kinds of people. The surgeon was a
Major Ritson
from Sunderland. He was a brilliant surgeon but very asthmatic. There was a
Sister Brook
and a sergeant. The sergeant was a very lovely fellow, but he was too fat to be much use at the operating table. Once, when the Sister became faint, the sergeant had to take over. He couldn't do the retracting. It was an operation on the carotid artery, and there was a great deal of retracting to do. I have a thin arm and a thin hand, and I was put on to that job in place of the sergeant. I was thinner so I could do it and he couldn't. I gained a lot of experience in that theatre, and I realised what surgery was about. And many an amputated arm or a leg I used to cart away and put in an incinerator.

Private William Holmes

12th Battalion, London Regiment

When I was a little boy of seven, I was taken to St Thomas' Hospital, in a special carriage with rubber wheels – because they thought I was dying. I had peritonitis. My sister carried me in, and they took me up to the top of the building, where they gave me an enema – but not an ordinary enema. It was done with a stirrup pump! You can imagine the state I was in. For two nights, my life was in the balance. I got over it, but I spent the next six weeks on milk alone. I was as close to death as I could have been.

When I was fourteen, my father died. He'd been getting blind for some time, and he died at the age of sixty. In the latter part of his life, he'd worked at the
Army & Navy Stores
as their chief detective. And then the Army & Navy Stores wrote to my mother, and asked if she had any boys available for work. I was sent straight up for an interview with him, and he said, 'You can start here, on Monday morning, as a cashier.'

I started off in the department with the ladies' big clothes. I might only take three or four bills a day, but I might take a couple of thousand pounds. As I progressed, they sent me on to busier desks, so that after three years I was put in the dress department, at Christmastime, where I was so busy that I couldn't be relieved for half an hour to have my dinner. They'd fetch me twenty-five bills, and we didn't have time to write them down; we had to add them up as we turned them over.

After that, they sent me across the road to the offices, where they put me in charge of what they called 'the passenger train accounts'. In those days, I was

living on the Battersea Bridge Road, and I used to walk to the stores in Victoria.

I had no idea that the war was coming. It came as a bombshell to me when it started. No one was prepared. Everywhere, posters were put up telling us to fight for our country. It was a patriotic thing, so about fifteen of us from the Army & Navy Stores went to the Horticultural Hall in Vincent Square, where there was a notice asking for volunteers to relieve the regular troops in
Malta
. There were about 250 men there, and we all lined up in two ranks. They only wanted twenty, and they picked the tallest. The rest of us were sent home and told to wait for another chance. When I got home, I found out that my young brother had joined up under age. Another brother, John, had signed up for ten years, before the war, and was in the
17th Lancers
, in
India
. My eldest brother was a taxi driver, and he joined up and was sent to the Australian supply column – because he could drive cars. The other brother, Alf, wasn't fit for the army, but he was married. My mother was a widow, and my other brothers said to me, 'Bill, you stop at home and look after Mum as long as you can.' I felt it was my responsibility. I wasn't given a white feather. Right down my road, everybody knew the situation.

Private Basil Farrer

3rd Battalion, Green Howards

You have heard of
Nancy Mitford
? One of her characters is referred to as 'the bolter'. That was in my nature. I had run away from home as a small child – as children do. Then, when I was fourteen, I ran away to London. I had my train fare down to London, but not my fare back home to Bradford. I finished up in some doss-house somewhere in London, but the next morning I looked around and noticed I was at York Road station. I thought I had better go back home, but I hadn't my fare so I decided to walk. I started walking – and I did walk as far as Leicester, where I was picked up by a gentleman. He had seen me in the morning, and then again at night, coming back in his trap. He asked me what I was doing. I told him I was walking home and he took me home, and gave me a meal. He said, 'Why don't you stay for a drink?' I said I hadn't got enough money, and I was using what little I had for food. So he took my money, added to it, and put me on the train for Bradford and home. I was always a bolter, and people said I would make a good soldier.

Sergeant Jim Davies

12th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers

People used to
pawn
everything in those days, and I was a warehouseman for a pawn shop in Ladbroke Grove. I slept over the top of the warehouse.

Everything that had been pawned was kept in the warehouse. I worked twelve hours a day and fifteen hours on Saturday, and half a day off a week. For five shillings a week. We used to take five hundred pledges on Monday alone. You would come in there with a suit, say, and ask for ten shillings. I'd look at it and see it was a bit worn and offer five and we'd agree on six. So then, you'd get a 'low ticket' for which you'd pay a ha'penny and you'd get your six shillings. The interest was a ha'penny on every two shillings per month. So if you redeemed it on Saturday, that would be three ha'pence interest and you'd pay back five shillings and three ha'pence and you'd take your pledge. If it was over a pound, generally jewellery, you paid a penny for a ticket instead of a ha'penny. After a year and seven days, if it hadn't been redeemed, it became the property of the pawnbroker. But it was kept for another month after that and it was still redeemable. After that, the pawnbroker could do what he liked with it.

Then, I moved to a pawnshop on the Fulham Road near South Kensington where I became a ticket writer. Whilst a manager and a 'second' were busy taking in the pledges, I would be busy writing out the tickets. All types of people used to come in. People working in the museums, the school of mines, drunkards,
actors
, artists and the usual clothes from the poorer people. Whilst I was there, I met an actor and we used to talk about it. He told me that he knew the man who was running a particular show and that I could go in as 'utility' and learn the acting trade. So I gave a fortnight's notice in and I went and became an actor.

I started work in a 'fit-up' company which was almost the lowest form of company. It played anywhere – institutes, halls and the lower-class theatres. The scenery we travelled with was only twelve feet instead of eighteen feet, which was normal theatre size. We used to play 'stock'. That meant that we had a stock of plays that we performed. It wasn't called repertory in those days. We spent all our time rehearsing for the next play. I did props, played parts when necessary. I was the general help. We had about ten members. A juvenile lead, lady juvenile, heavy man, heavy woman, two comedy actors, a manager. People would always play similar roles. These people taught me quite a

lot. I used to study them. We performed all the old standard melodramas. We never played anything high class because we had to pay licences to Samuel
French. At tha
t time, I was only playing walk-on parts. I was getting £1 a week but I could get full board and lodgings for ten shillings. We dried up in Dorchester when the manager disappeared. He couldn't meet his obligations so we had no money. So we paid a guinea for a hall and we did a concert to raise money. I got three and sixpence for my share – having been out selling tickets all day.

After that, I walked to London and I met a clown called Bonzo and he took me on at five shillings a week. That's how I joined
Lord John's Circus
. I used to march round the town in the parade and I was an 'Auguste' – a white-faced clown. I did a lot of little routines with the team – I used to be slapped up the backside with the slapstick. Circus life was a bit rough but I managed to get myself another five shillings a week by helping with the seating and loading up.