The Trenches (3 page)

I knew that by now Rob and the rest of the Lonsdale Battalion would have been in France for some time, and I wondered how he was. Had he managed to bag his first Hun?

At
the end of the four weeks, we were told that our training was over and at long last we were headed for the Front. I almost cheered when we got our sailing orders. At last, I was going to War!

May
1917

For someone like me who'd never travelled much farther from Carlisle than the coast at Silloth, a distance of about 30 miles (unless you counted the journey from Carlisle to the Signals Unit in Yorkshire), the journey to Belgium was a really big adventure.

Charlie put on the air that this journey was nothing to him. “I've been all over the place,” he told me. “Wales. Scotland. Cornwall. I've been everywhere.”

“London?” asked Ginger.

“Loads of times,” shrugged Charlie. “London's nothing but another Newcastle, only maybe a bit bigger.”

We took a train south to London, and then another train from London to Folkestone. There we were loaded on to a troopship, which took us across the Channel from Folkestone to Boulogne. I didn't think the sea was too bad, although it was rough enough for Charlie and Alf to get seasick. At first Charlie tried to pretend that he was a seasoned traveller and it wasn't seasickness, it must have been something he ate, but when other men got seasick as well he stopped pretending.

During
this long journey there was a sense of excitement among all of us. Not only were we going abroad, we were going to fight the Hun!

The train from Boulogne took us to a town called St Omer. All the way along on the train I kept expecting to see signs of the War, but the only real signs were the large amount of soldiers everywhere all dressed in khaki. That, and big guns on wheels being hauled along.

I saw a few tanks as well. I'd never seen tanks before. They were huge metal monsters with caterpillar tracks, and big guns poking out. It was said they could crawl over any sort of mud and just keep firing, the shots from the enemy would just bounce off the metal casing.

“Not much sign of any fighting,” said Wally, looking disappointed.

“Don't worry, you'll find it soon enough all right,” said another soldier who was pushing his way through the crowded train. “And if you don't, it'll find you.”

When we reached St Omer we were transferred to buses taking us to a smaller town called Poperinghe.

“How d'you spell that?” Danny asked an older soldier.

“Why d'you want to know how to spell it?” asked the soldier. “This war's about fighting, not about reading.”

“I need to know so when I write home to my mum I can tell her where I am,” said Danny.

The older soldier laughed out loud.

“
What's so funny?” asked Danny, puzzled.

“It's a waste of time putting place names in any letters back home,” said the soldier. “They cross 'em out.”

“Who do?” asked Alf.

“The army censors,” replied the soldier. “It's in case our letters fall into enemy hands. They don't want the Hun knowing where our units are, or what we're doing, do they?”

I was a bit annoyed at the thought of someone else reading my letters home. Letters are supposed to be private. Mind, I could see that what the soldier said made sense.

The village we were headed for, this Poperinghe, was in an area called Passchendaele. It was near a town they said was called Wipers (which I found out later was spelled Ypres and was actually pronounced Eepre).

I kept my eyes on the landscape as our bus rolled along. It was flat country, really flat, made up of green fields with a small wood every now and then. I could see a few houses scattered about here and there in between the fields. It reminded me a bit of the flat part of Cumberland back home, up by the Solway Plain, but even that had more hills than this place.

It was nightfall when we finally got to Poperinghe. There was no time to take a look at the town and get an idea of what it was like: as soon as we got off our bus we were lined up and marched off towards some fields just outside the town where the army had set up camp. Rows and rows of
tents
stretched for what looked like miles. The Union Jack flew on a flag-pole. In other fields further away I could see other flags flying.

“Australians,” nodded Wally, pointing at one of the other flags, which seemed to be stars and a small Union Jack on a blue flag. “I recognize the flag 'cos I've got an uncle who lives out there.”

“Maybe he'll be over here with the Australian troops?” suggested Danny.

“Unlikely,” said Wally. “He's 70 years old.”

We were assigned six men to a tent, and our group snaffled a tent quick so that we could all be together. We'd each grabbed a bunk and were starting to sort our gear out, when a soldier from another unit poked his head into our tent.

“New arrivals?” he asked.

“Aye,” said Charlie. “Just got here.”

“Well, in a minute the bugle's going to blow for food, so if you want to make sure you get there among the first, take my tip and head over to the mess tent right now.”

With that he gave us a wink, then hurried off.

“Food!” sighed Alf. “About time! Come on, lads, let's get over there!”

The six of us hurried towards the mess tent. Signs had been put up pointing out where it was. Also, the smell of food cooking was wafting over the camp, so we just followed our noses.

Until
I sat down at a long wooden trestle table with a plate of stew and mashed potato, I hadn't realized how hungry I was. I hadn't sat down to a proper meal since just before getting on the boat at Folkestone. We'd grabbed some food at Boulogne, and then again at St Omer while we were waiting for our bus, but this was our first proper meal since leaving England. I wolfed down my food in a state of excitement. I was in Belgium with my mates, ready to start winning the War!

After mess, it was back to the tent and lights out, and sleep. Not that I could really get to sleep. After the long journey I'd had, all the way from Yorkshire, I thought I'd be worn out and ready to sleep, but my mind was in a whirl. All I could think of was that I was finally here, ready for battle. What would it be like at the Front? What would we be doing as Engineers?

Next morning the six of us loaded up our packs and joined the column of men heading for the Front. Our column was about 100 men strong, and made up of men from different regiments, some going to fighting units in the trenches, others – like us – being sent to support units. The routine, our Sergeant told us, was seven days in the front-line trenches, followed by seven days back at our billets, then seven days in the trenches again, and so on. We were being thrown in at the deep end straight away, off for our first week at the very heart of the battle.

We
marched towards the Front along roads made of cobbles. The nearer we got to the Front, the worse the roads became, the cobbles sinking into mud and disappearing beneath the surface, until in the end we were marching as best we could on a potholed muddy track.

We were lucky that our training back home had made us fit, because the weight we had to carry on our backs in our haversacks made the marching even more difficult. As Engineers, we didn't have rifles and ammunition to weigh us down, but in their places we had bigger and heavier picks and shovels, as well as our mess tin and our water bottle. We also had our gas mask, which we'd been told might one day save our lives, so I made sure mine was within easy grabbing distance.

We Engineers were near the back of the column, and I couldn't help a feeling of envy when I looked at the fighting men marching in front of us. That was where I wanted to be. Armed and ready to fight. Not for the first time, I wondered how Rob was doing out here. Had he killed his first Hun yet?

After miles of marching our legs and shoulders ached, but as we neared the Front we could hear the booming sounds of heavy guns in the distance, and even at this range we could feel the ground shuddering beneath our feet from the heavy shells.

“Looks like we've found the War at last,” grinned Charlie,
and
me and Wally started to chuckle nervously, but we were soon cut short by a yell of, “No talking in the ranks!” from one of the Sergeants just behind us.

We marched on in silence. So this was the Front. I had never seen anything so desolate before. Just a sea of mud as far as the eye could see. Mud and barbed wire, and deep craters. And miles and miles of trenches filled with soldiers. I wondered where our trenches stopped and the German trenches began. Where was the enemy? I felt a knot of excitement in my belly as I craned my head, scanning the horizon for any sign of them.

“Right turn!” came the order from the Sergeant at the front of our column, and we turned off the road and descended into a trench. I'd dug ditches back home but these trenches were deeper than any of them. This one was about 7 feet deep and about 3 feet wide, its stinking clay walls held back by anything that was available: bits of timber, strands of wire, pieces of corrugated iron, sandbags.

Wooden duckboards formed a kind of walkway along the trench, but they were slippery with mud, and in many places they'd broken and sunk under the water. As we made our way along the trench, doing our best to keep our footing, we passed soldiers covered with mud. The holes were filled with freezing cold and stinking water.

“More lambs for the slaughter!” commented one mud-covered soldier as we passed him.

The
other soldiers laughed, but their laughter was cut short with a shout from their Sergeant Major, who hollered, “Shut up in the ranks, you lot, or I'll have you all shot for treasonous talk!”

The Royal Engineers were among the first to be dispersed. There were a dozen of us, including Charlie and me, and as we stumbled down the rickety wooden steps into what appeared to be a hole in the ground lit by smoky kerosene lamps, a cheer went up from the grimy soldiers inside the hole.

“Look, lads! Relief is here!” chuckled one.

Charlie looked round at the wet clay walls held up by shafts of timber.

“You'd need to be a rabbit to be able to live here,” he said.

“Think yourself lucky we've got somewhere like this,” said one of the grimy soldiers. “It's only because we're Engineers. The fighting units don't even have this luxury!”

“Their officers do, Paddy,” commented another soldier. “Caves with proper chairs and tables in them. I've seen them.”

“Don't mind him, he's just jealous,” grinned the soldier called Paddy. “He can't get used to sleeping in muddy water. Anyway, let's get you lot sorted out. Believe me, you're going to be busy!”

Paddy was right. During those first weeks I was busier than I'd ever been in my life.

At
the Front there was a complicated system of trenches. Each Infantry trench had two others behind it: a support trench, and then a reserve trench behind that. They were all connected by a communications trench, along which supplies and relief operations were carried out. The telegraph cables were laid along the reserve trench, so the Infantry wouldn't get caught up in them when they went over the top. The whole thing was a bit like a maze, except made out of mud.

Most of our work consisted of repairing lengths of telegraph cables that had been broken during German artillery attacks. The cables were supposed to have been buried at least 6 feet below ground level so they didn't get broken when bombs came down, but the shells the Hun had been using of late were so big they were churning up holes in the mud 10 feet deep. There was only one way to repair a smashed cable when that happened and that was to run new lengths and join them on to the last good bit.

We went out on repair missions and worked in teams of two. My team was Charlie and me. Ginger and Wally were a team, and Danny and Alf were the third. The work was tough. You had to cut through the damaged cable, which was hard because it was covered in steel, lead or brass for added protection, and then make the connections. And all the time you were knee-deep in mud, sometimes waist-deep, and waiting for the Hun to launch another artillery attack, or send over a wave of troops armed with guns with bayonets.

The
cables were vital for HQ to keep in contact with the troops at the Front. They'd tried using wireless, but it only really worked between aeroplanes and a ground station. Here in the trenches it was almost impossible. Our side had tried it. There was a thing called the British Field Trench Set, which you were supposed to be able to carry about and pick up and transmit messages. The trouble was it needed at least three men to carry it, and another six to carry the batteries needed to work it.

The Engineers had also recently tried a newer wireless set, the Loop Set. This was a bit more efficient. For one thing its aerial could be attached to a bayonet stuck in the ground, and it didn't need as many men to lug it around. The problem was it only had a range of about 2,000 yards, and lots of the time it just packed up and didn't work. Which meant we Engineers were always busy laying miles and miles of cables to keep communications going.

During my first few days in the trenches I discovered that what Paddy had said about us “living in luxury” in our hole in the ground was right. In our trench a cave had been dug out of the walls to store our equipment and we could use it as a shelter. For the soldiers of the fighting units, only officers had dugouts, ordinary soldiers had to make do with a waterproof sheet for shelter. Some of them had scraped small holes in the walls of the trench themselves, just large enough to fit in one man sitting down, but it didn't give much
protection
either from the elements or from shrapnel. These were known as “funk holes” and the only advantage they offered was that a soldier had a clay seat to sit on and a bit of muddy cover when waiting for action, rather than squatting in a deep puddle of icy muddy water in the open.