Original subtitles

I gave every part of my youth to do a job and to go through a

savage war.

It was a different war from year to year and one's reactions were completely

different. The intensity changed so much that anybody who'd been out in 1914 and

went home and then came back in 1917 wouldn't recognise it as the same war.

Well, I can only say one thing, I wouldn't have missed it. It was terrible

at times and I wouldn't have missed it.

Oh, yes.

If I could have my time again, I'd go through it all over again because I

enjoyed the service life.

And I can only say that I have never been so excited in my life. This was

like a boy going to the play the first time.

I never realised there was anything unusual about it. There was a job to be

done and you'd just go on and did it.

We were all instilled with that idea that this was war and that we've got to

kill the Germans and this is how we looked at the thing.

I don't regret having experienced it. I wish I hadn't, but I don't regret it

because I'm safe.

There were good times and bad times in France.

You took the rough with the smooth.

I was twice wounded and gassed, but it just didn't worry me. I just made the

best of it.

Just took it in its stride like everybody else. We were glad to be in it

and we expected it to be rough. And it was rough, but we didn't complain.

There was no real excitement about it. You'd seen death so many times, you'd

seen wounded so many times, blood didn't excite you. We were professionals, and

to us it was just a job of work.

It would be a fallacy to say that one enjoyed it, but one got afterwards a

nice warm inner feeling that one had been of some use.

It didn't affect me very much because I wasn't sufficiently up in the ways of

the world. I was only a kid, like other blokes there.

It was more like a great big game to be enjoyed, apart from the actual selling

and all that sort of thing.

It made me a man.

Yes, it did.

I don't think I should have ever been the man I am if it hadn't been for

having to serve.

You'd learn to look after yourself, whereas in your civilian life, your

mother did all the chores.

You've got to learn how to cook for yourself, darn your own socks, sew on

your own buttons and all the things like that.

It was just a day's work. I knew that I was not alone.

I knew that I wasn't fighting a war by myself.

And what happened to other people might happen to me.

I had no regrets at all. You see, I had no wife, no girl, no nothing.

No regrets and no horrors.

Because if you survive that, you can survive anything.

We were aware that there was sort of a nasty feeling between England and

Germany. We knew of the Kaiser's ambitions to expand his empire and all

that sort of thing.

During that summer, there was a lot of talk about trouble going on in the

Balkans. But we were a long way from the Balkans and it didn't worry us at all.

It was that Serbia business, wasn't it? Serbia, when that shot was shot.

I was paying attention to politics and I realised that there was going to be

trouble between England and Germany.

Well, it was a lovely August the 4th morning.

We were all seated round the table and we were starting the rugby football

dinner with the German team. There was a German here and next to him was an

Englishman and next to him was a German and so on and so on. And a runner

arrived into the middle of this dinner with extraordinary news of outbreak of

war. There was a big placard.

War declared on Germany.

We didn't know what we ought to do, whether we ought to seize a knife off

the table and plunge it into the German hip or what.

But after a little bit of discussion, we decided that as far as we were

concerned, the war was going to start tomorrow and the party proceeded.

I'm proud of being a British. I mean, I think we're as good a country as any in

the world and you've got to be prepared to fight for that.

There's no doubt about it. In the First World War, we prepared for war.

The Empire was strong.

We weren't afraid of anyone.

Everybody bought little buttons and waved flags and sang songs.

There was no feeling of despair about it at all.

England couldn't possibly lose.

No matter how many Germans pushed how many Englishmen into the Channel, they'd

get no further. We couldn't possibly lose.

We were brought up to think that one Englishman is worth ten Germans.

I thought that any enemy of England was an enemy of mine and I wanted to be in

it. Oh, six months or 12 months and it'll be all over and Bob's your uncle.

I went with a friend of mine into Shepherd's Bush Empire to see the

picture show there and they showed the fleet sailing the high seas and played

Britain's Never Shall Be Slaves and you know one feels that little shiver run up

their back and you know you've got to do something.

A friend of mine said to me, we're going to join up.

It was from the patriotic point of view.

and from the general excitement of the whole affair, I suppose.

I didn't believe in war to that extent, but I was prepared to do my part.

You see, in those days, men weren't to think for themselves. They just had to

do what they were told, and that's all there was to it.

Oh, my mother was very aggrieved about it. But, you know, a young man, you

decide you're going to go.

At lunchtime, I left the office.

went along to Armory House, and there was a queue of about 1,000 people trying

to enlist.

Everybody thought that it would be a civilised war and wanted to be fit

enough to go.

Two of us decided to join up together, and when we told the boss we were going

to start training on Monday, he was very annoyed.

He didn't make any promise at all that our jobs would be there when we got

back. My mother, she said, you wait until you're 19. See, that was the age

in those days, 19 to 35.

Well, it was supposed to be.

We were all lads together, you know, full of excitement and all this kind of

thing. I mean, I just wanted to have a go at Gerry.

I just thought that I'd like to go and fight for the country. This was the

thing. You were proud of your country and you'd do the best you could for it.

And this was what most of the young people thought of doing in those days.

My mother, she said to me, look, we could stop you doing this because of

your age.

I said, yes, I know you could, Mother, but I'm sure you won't, which they never

did. I just felt that all the young fellows of that age were volunteering,

and I thought it was my job to do the same.

I was desperately keen, and a whole heap of us were. I said, direct enlistment,

please. They were highly delighted and pushed me in as quick as lightning.

Lots of the lads were joining the local regiments, like the Bucks and the middle

section. Lads that I knew and been to school with, played football and cricket

with, we joined up, hoping for the best.

We were good friends, comrades, and it was a relief from rather boring jobs at

home, you see.

I was walking down the Camden Town High Street when two young ladies approached

me. Why aren't you in the army? I said, I'm only 17.

Oh, they all say that here.

And to my amazement, she put her hand in a bag, and I put my hand up to sort of

safeguard myself when this white feather finished up my nose.

As we marched to the station, some of the chaps had bowler hats, some had

straw hats, some had the regulation army cap.

Some would have tunics, some would be dressed with their ordinary jackets,

with a pair of army trousers.

Some had army boots, some didn't. And we really were a motley throng.

Some of them were obviously chaps who hoped to live in some comfort and

brought suitcases with clothes with them, which they never saw again.

We had to all get our hair cut.

how would you like it sir and you'd say short beck and sides but the answer was

straight over the top with horse clippers and we looked more like

convicts than soldiers as soon as war broke out there was a call made for all

ex-soldiers to rejoin and they made them sergeants straight away so you got a lot

of instructors that way the people who really carried us through was the old

sweats who'd had previous war experience and gave us a lot of wise advice as to

what to look for and what to dodge.

We were ordered down onto the parade ground and then we were allotted to

different platoons.

When they came to us, they were weedy, sallow, skinny, frightened children.

The refuse of our industrial system and they were in very poor condition and had

to be made into soldiers.

Many of us had given our own ages to join the army.

The adjutant walked down the lines and gave an order that every man under the

age of 19 should take two places forward.

Nobody moved.

I was a lad of 17, and they'd probably say I wasn't 19, which you had to be to

join up.

But he says, how long do you want to sign on for?

Everybody else was joined up, so I went into the recruiting office. He said to

me, how old are you? I said, 17.

Well, he said...

The sergeant said, how old are you? I said, I'm 18 and one month.

He said, do you mean 19 and one month? So I thought a moment, I said, yes, sir.

He said, write a sign here, please.

He asked me how old I was, and I said I was 16 in March. Oh, he said, you're too

young. You'd better go outside and have a birthday.

I was 16 years old in 1917, and I was six foot two tall, and my father

allowed me to go.

So I entered my age as 19 years old, three years older than what I really

was. I was 15 years, just two and a half years short of 18.

And I got before this medical officer who said, all right, you pass.

I was just turned 17 at the time.

And I went up to Whitehall and enlisted in the 16th Lancers.

I was 15 and I thought I'd have a better chance than when I was 14.

So I walked into the barracks and just said, I'm 18 and that was it.

My parents wrote to the commanding officer and asked for me as I was

underage to be released.

And he said, your parents want you back.

Do you want to go?

I said, no.

The chaplain asked me my age and I said I was 16.

He said, much too young.

Would you like me to pray for you?

The clothing came piecemeal into the quartermaster's stores.

One lad said, these boots don't fit me.

And the quartermaster said, there isn't such a thing as boots that don't fit in

the army. It's your fate, they don't fit the boots.

Some men would find a tunic to fit them, or perhaps a pair of trousers.

And so it went on for nearly a fortnight.

Just one uniform.

I was in the army nearly four years. I only had one uniform.

We were all issued with these famous puttees, which were news to all of us.

And I personally could never quite master the putting on of puttees. The

main reason for puttees were to support the legs in marching.

i was issued with a kilt put nothing to wear underneath it and i was given a

slip of paper to say this man has not been issued with underpants i was given

strict instructions that i couldn't ride on top of a tram car i had to ride

downstairs now the pack was for everything that you owned

the overcoat had to be folded very very neatly and tightly There was a needle,

thread, spare buttons, knife, fork, spoon, razor, shaving brush, toothbrush,

and also a half-pint mug.

One spare shirt and one spare pair of socks, and that was your kit. The army

razor with which we were issued was absolutely useless, but it came in handy

for cutting up meat and so forth.

The toothbrush, that came in handy for cleaning buttons.

One of the peculiarities about the army was, though it was a crime to have dirty

buttons, you were never issued with the materials to clean the buttons with. You

had to buy them yourself.

We were awakened by the bugle, which sounded rivalli.

Wash, shave, pack your bed up and pack your kit.

About half past six and you would have an hour PT before breakfast.

Press-ups and physical exercises, arms upwards stretch.

They knew you were fresh, and they tried to take you by stages. There wasn't any

bullying or anything like that.

Breakfast consisted of bread, butter, one rusher of Lance Corporal bacon.

It was streaky bacon. It had one stripe in it.

Well, it was jammed, and they seemed to make nothing but plum and apple, you

know. If you got any other kind, it was a celebration event.

One of Bruce Barnfather's cartoons depicted that. They had him a tin of

plum and apple jam. When the hell is he going to be strawberry?

Oh, he was wonderful, that chap.

Ticklers, the jam manufacturers, they must have made millions of tins of P&A,

plum and apple.

Oh, oh, oh, it's a lovely war What do we want with eggs and ham

When we've got bags of ticklers jam?

And then it would be parade time, and the sergeant would take over, and you

would have a whole morning of marching, and you would learn all commands such as

about turn and all that sort of thing.

Having been in the Boy Scouts, it was dead easy to me.

When you get the order, right dress, you turn your head only to the right.

But some of them managed to turn left, which didn't exactly please the law

sergeant. We were all youngsters.

We'd come from fairly sheltered lives and so forth.

This sergeant of ours was the loudmouth shouting type.

Coming up against military discipline was a shock, being chased around from

pillar to post by disciplinarian NCOs. Some of the sergeants were shockers.

They would cause a lot of trouble if you were out of step or if you didn't keep

time or if you didn't handle your rifle properly.

They were always having a go at you.

Most of them were all right. Their shouting meant nothing, but some of them

never lost it.

One night I'd gone to bed, and this pot was brought round to my bed, and they

said, oh, you want to do a piss.

So I did the business in the pot.

They'd rested this big, huge pot, which contained gallons, on the door.

And when this sergeant came along to see that everybody was in bed, this thing

turned up and he was drenched from top to bottom in fluid.

First of all, I was full of enthusiasm.

But after about the first week, I wish I hadn't done it because the discipline

was so strict that I was beginning to get a little bit nervous as to what was

in store.

We weren't out dancing or anything like that. We'd been ready for a war.

The thing was, you were in the army, you had to do as you're told.

You had one master, or dozens, but you just had to get on with it, and that was

it. I did find that right through the army. If you behaved yourself, you had

nothing much to fear.

This was quite a new world to us. I mean, you can imagine, I came out of

civilian life like all the others did, and we weren't in a position to argue or

object. It was just a matter of doing what we were told.

I liked it. I liked to be told.

what I had to do because there was a reason for doing it. And later on I

realised that was the best training you could have.

The first week our route march would be 10 miles, the second week it would be 12

and so on and so on. It intensified because it's of the utmost importance

that the infantry soldier could march with a full kit.

What you had to carry was 109 pounds.

The marching...

It was easy for me, but quite a lot of chaps who were in sedentary jobs found

it pretty hard.

It numbed and cramped my muscles on my thighs and calves until they hurt very

much indeed.

Oh, those army boots.

I could have cried my feet and ankles with those heavy army boots after

civilian shoes.

So to get your boots made pliable, you're used to urinating them and leave

it overnight.

Quite a lot of men were clerks or they worked in shops and the very nature of

their calling didn't make for fitness.

Well, they sent me to hospital and they gave me the cure for hookworm and I

found that I could stand the drill after that.

They used to march us all round the West End.

Crowds used to foregather and some of the poor deluded ones fell for the con

trick and lined up behind us.

And we used to march them all down to Chelsea Barracks where they got signed

up.

Lunch would consist of inevitable stew.

Now, we used to remember that the chaps in the cookhouse were by no means

experienced cooks, but anybody can make a stew and that's what they did.

Sometimes you got a bit of plum duff and milk puddings and tabioca rice.

It was good old-fashioned plain stuff that I was brought up on. I had no

complaint about it.

In the afternoon, it could be a lecture on Vickers machine guns.

He used to strip the machine gun right down and put it together again.

And luckily, I seemed to get cotton under that quite quickly.

We were always told the man's best friend is his rifle.

And it was.

Our rifle was a Shortley Enfield. A very good rifle indeed.

A real sturdy rifle.

You had your ammunition pouches.

on both sides of the chest to counterbalance the weight of the pack,

and those pouches carried 150 rounds of .303 ammunition.

We were supposed to hold a rifle up with one hand, but I could never hold a rifle

properly. My right wrist wouldn't hold it up.

I'd never fired a rifle in my life, but on the first day, we went onto the rifle

range, and it was amazing the bullseyes I was getting.

So the next thing I was made a first-class rifleman.

Above all, we learned rapid fire. Ten rounds, and get those ten rounds onto

the target in one minute. It was known as the mad minute.

I'd never seen a dead man on that kind, and I wondered if it came to my shooting

a man, whether I would be able to do this.

Plunge the bayonet into the sack, shout like hell.

And it would tell you where to put your bayonet. Either into his left shoulder,

his right shoulder, in the chest, or in the body.

We were told to make as much noise as we could.

I think that was sort of to frighten the enemy.

Didn't seem to be a likely thing to do, but we used to shout.

When you train as a division, there's 12 battalions, there's roughly 12,000 men,

are on the move, and you're a very small cog in a big wheel.

Saturday mornings, we were let off, but we had to do sometimes barrack duties,

and then on Sundays, we were all marched down to church.

Didn't matter what religion you were, you all had to go, and that was it.

Hardly a day passed without the shout around the barrack room, has anybody

here had any experience with horses?

Can anybody here play any musical instruments?

Anybody had any experience at so-and-so?

So gradually, the thousand men who joined up as a motley throng now became

a transport man, a bandsman, signalman, and so on.

He didn't want to mess about the parade ground with heavy packs on the route

marches. Most of us wanted to go across and do some scrapping.

After good food, fresh air and physical exercise, they changed so that their

mothers wouldn't have recognised them. They put on an average of one stone in

weight and one inch in height.

Although we hated the sight and sound of our disciplinary sergeants, this

reflects greatly to their credit because they knocked us into shape as regards to

marching and foot drills.

But far more than that. They were handsome, ruddy, upstanding, square

-shouldered young men who were afraid of nobody.

Not even the Sergeant Major.

After six weeks, we were informed that they were going to be posted overseas.

They said, you're leaving tomorrow morning for an unknown destination.

You were never told where you were heading for.

I just wanted to fight the Germans, and as far as that was concerned, it didn't

matter. It happens to me where we went.

And when we pushed them through this crash program of military training, they

were pushed off to France in batches.

Before we left, the officer said, well, you haven't had time to be made

sergeants, so we'll give you a couple of stripes.

So they made us corporals, and in less than no time, we were marched down to

the station.

In my mind, I wondered, shall I ever come back?

I didn't think I would at the time. I didn't worry about it.

Oh, they were all full of euphoria. They were all glad they were going.

Nobody was crying.

I wrote a postcard when I was in the train and chucked it out of the window,

hoping that it would be delivered to my family.

We arrived at Folkestone in the evening.

We embarked on one of the old Thames pleasure boats.

Well, pretty crowded.

But, of course, it's only 21 miles from Dover to Calais on the boat.

There were talks by officers to us as to how to behave ourselves on foreign soil

and that we've got to respect other people's modes of conduct.

The biggest number of casualties were NCOs, and we weren't all too keen about

this. So I went into the lavatory, and my stripes came off, and they

disappeared through the porthole. And with that, I went back on deck as a

private.

As our horses were brought down the gangways, I noticed the expression on

the men's faces.

There were no cheerful, smiling faces coming down that gangway at all.

It was a beautiful weather, very warm in every village and town we went through.

People rushed out, bottles of wine, yards of French bread, flowers.

The land flowed in every single aspect.

There were farmers going about their business, the most lovely country.

If we passed in a field of carrots, we used to raid the field and walk along

munching the carrots and turnips.

I was dead scared that the war would be over before I got out to it.

When I got out to France, I was terribly pleased, really keen.

You just marched and marched until roughly 20 miles from the trenches.

We knew we were getting close to the line because the gunfire was becoming

more noisy.

I remember the first shell, I was delighted.

We went through towns, villages that were absolutely derelict.

So we never knew where we were, except that we were in Belgium.

The devastation was something I never could have imagined.

The whole place gave one a most eerie sensation.

There was stunted trees, torn to shreds with shofar, and there was shell holes

all over the place.

We were relieving men of the 28th Division, and as they passed us, we

would say, what's it like up there? The reply invariably came back, bloody

awful, mate.

The old sweats coming back got their tails up all right, but I didn't know

what to expect, just hadn't a clue.

It was deadly warfare.

You were facing the Germans.

Follow me!

You got the order, load.

You put nine in your magazine and one up the spout. And you put your safety catch

on and you always went into the line prepared to use your rifle immediately.

That's when the rigid orders, no talking whatsoever, keep your head down, single

file, no smoking.

The captain would then direct you right to the front trenches.

When a man goes in the trenches, he usually carries a roll of barbed wire or

a bag of bonds, besides his own equipment.

That's the way to get the stuff up to the front line.

Now, a guide would always be sent out.

Extend this part of the trench over there.

That's it. The trenches in France were a maze.

If you didn't have a guide, you could very soon get lost.

The trenches weren't in one straight line.

They were built on what they call a traverse system.

The traverse would break up the shell fire and stop it spreading right along

the trench.

There was a front line of trenches and then there was a second line of

trenches. The support line would be about 50 yards or more behind the front

line. In between there would be communication trenches so that they

could move troops forward if the front line was under jeopardy.

First impression I got of the trenches was they were very much lived in.

We had to take them as we found them.

You would see an overcoat hanging from a wooden peg.

You would see a mess tin with some tea in it. A dugout which had a piece of

blanket in it. A bed made of sandbags.

Our world was divided by no man's land.

A sort of iron curtain beyond which were bogeymen who would kill you if they ever

saw you.

As you looked through your periscope, all you could see were hundreds of shell

holes. Your barbed wire and the German barbed wire.

You could see dead bodies hanging on the barbed wire, and they may have been

there for a long, long time.

It was one of the most desolate-looking places in the world. You never saw a

sign of life. And yet, you knew very well that within shouting range, there

were hundreds and hundreds of men.

A platoon of about 50 men would have about 100 yards of frontline French as

their responsibility.

There were signs all over the trenches, Piccadilly Circus and Regent Street and

all that sort of thing, telling them where the water points were and which

was the most dangerous part of the line with regard to snipers.

You had to be extremely careful because a bullet would go through one layer of

sandbags quite easily.

I was talking to a bloke one day, and pop!

His head was busting like an egg. He just happened to be in a place where a

sniper could get an aimling.

We used to do a four-day stunt in the line. We took with us sufficient food to

last the four days.

Your day would start before dawn when them swords would go round this 100

yards and make sure everybody was alive.

I would die in the trenches. You had two hours on, four off.

A third of the people on centre duty, a third working and a third sleeping.

We just slept where we were. No beds, just flopped down on the ground.

The trench was very wet and wherever possible we would try and get above the

water. We were able to dig out the side of the trench and that was when we used

to still our sleep on the 204 off stretch.

And then you'd have your couple of hours on the parapet and then rest again.

If nothing untoward happened, there would be perhaps two or three sentry

groups in the whole company's front.

It's a job to keep awake.

The world would have tired you if you'd caught to sleep.

If you are so tired, you can sleep standing up, which I've done many times.

Now, the first thing you did when you got into the line was to have a brew up.

There was one thing about the Vickers gun.

It being a water-cooled weapon, if you were continuously firing, you'd find

that the water would be boiling.

You could disconnect the tube and make a cup of tea.

The water came up in two-gallon petrol cans.

And we could taste the petrol in it, because I couldn't wash it completely

out. That's it.

In every bay was a little fireplace.

You used tiny slivers of wood. Because if you made smoke in the front line,

over would come a shed.

Save a drop of that tea to shed with.

Because we had to shave in the front line.

We used to put a lot of tins out on the parapet if it rained.

It didn't touch any of the other water.

We were scooping water off shell holes.

It might have been dead bodies underneath.

We thought as long as we boiled it for a long time, all the green stuff would

come off the top.

I said, gentle.

Anyway, we'd made tea with it.

That's how I got my dose of dysentery.

Of course, there were no sanitary arrangements.

They'd dig a trench and stick a pole across.

You'd get about seven or eight chaps on the pole.

God, to have them cleared out was terrible.

People used to go to the toilet with no privacy.

Being rather a shy nature, if I had pissed with somebody, I felt a bit

nervous. But when you're in the army, you got quite used to it. And of course

it didn't matter a damn because there's no women or anything like that.

But the flies used to crawl over your bottom. Most unpleasant.

And those are seen as toilet rolls.

You had to wipe it behind with your hand.

Your hands might have been in all sorts of things, but you never washed.

Well, you heard a terrific shout.

And the pole had snapped and four men who were sitting on the bar fell down in

the muck.

They were all to the humor side of the war.

We had to put rifles down for them to hang on to, and they came out like slimy

rabbits, and nobody wanted to go near them.

We had no spare clothes at all, and you were living for weeks without washing or

getting a bath.

And I personally became really badly infested and chatty, as we used to call

it, with these lice.

Oh, lice was a dreadful problem.

They were funny little things, like little lobsters sort of things, with six

legs and they used to feed ten times a day.

You had to kill the bloody things. My favourite way was burning them.

You would run the seams over the lighted candle and you could hear the eggs going

pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

The sooner you got your shirt back again, the heat of the body patched the

eggs that you'd missed.

And we were just as lousy next day.

Each man prepared his own breakfast.

Bread and jam, mostly. About 16 men to a loaf of bread.

Then there'd be a little bit of bacon, which would suffice for half a dozen

men.

You'd put your rasher of bacon in your mess tin lid, put a few more sticks on

your fire, and you would fry your bacon.

And then soak up the fat with a piece of biscuit.

And then there you are with the breakfast.

Dinner time was mostly bully beef cut up and stewed along with all sorts of

vegetables from tins.

My God, it is tin stew but it's mixed up with the bully beef.

I've gone into French dugouts and eaten biscuits which had been left by the

troops two years previously and tasted the green mould in them, but it didn't

do me any harm.

This is how it was and anything's good, you know, when you're hungry.

And you're always hungry.

But I need to give them more than we can expect to be shelled.

And you've got very little protection against that.

You'd hear a mild pop as the gun fired five miles away.

And in five or six seconds it took for him to come. You can pass through quite

a number of psychological changes.

I can't remember anything more nerve-wracking than the continuous

shelling that adds up day and night.

Well, we were always told that you never heard the shell that hit you, because

most of them travelled faster than sound.

You could literally feel your heart pounding against the ground.

The emotional strain was actually terrific.

Although a shell might burst 50 yards away, you might find a fragment of

jagged iron, nearly red-hot, weighing half a pound, arriving in your trench.

You see people flaunt a little bit of axolotl to put them on in a sandbug.

Every now and again there would be a great roar like an airplane coming into

land.

And in a fifth of a second your resolution would break and you'd throw

yourself down into the mud and the other ones laugh at you. The shotgun shell

would burst in the air and spray bullets on the troops below.

As if they're from a shotgun.

The bullets came down whistling like all the hobs of hell.

Another one of the annoyances we had was that the Germans were very active with

mining.

We crouched down underneath the front parapet to dodge the debris falling, and

I got them in to open up rapid fire to prevent the Germans from getting into

that crater where they could bomb us.

Well, if that front line gets damaged, it's got to be repaired.

Well, the people who were in the line, they got to get on with it.

I had in my mind that we expected big gunfire to light amongst all us cavalry

and absolutely swipe us off the face of the earth.

I shouted, Gallop!

And they dropped them all amongst the horses.

Oh, the hang of a mess.

The horses were laying down there with their intestines hanging out and men

with matter hanging out their heads.

And that, boys, he said, bloody Germans.

To lose a horse was like losing a friend.

The brigadier turned to our captain, he said, see, the boy has two or three days

rest. When a boy likes an animal like that, there's not a lot wrong with him.

Over the whole of the front line, there was a smell.

It wasn't a complicated smell.

It was the smell of decaying corpses.

Nasty, sickly smell.

You never forgot that smell.

It was the smell of death.

If you've ever smelt a dead mouse, it was like that, but hundreds and hundreds

of times worse.

It seemed to cling to everything. When you was having your food, you could

taste it.

The awful stench and bits of human bodies lying about, it became an

everyday thing.

You thought, well, it'll be your turn next. What does it matter?

Wherever there was a grave or a body, there were rats.

They were all big fat ones and we knew where they got the fat from.

Unpleasant animals because of the filtration into the graves.

They used to feed on the dead and come in the dugouts, pick up scraps in there.

I woke up in the bottom of the trench and felt something warm on my face and a

little heart went bang bang bang bang bang.

The devil scratched my face with the claws of his own feet as he took off. We

used to try and shoot them, hit them, kill them, chase them, do anything.

Then you've got gas.

We saw this green cloud coming toward us, just rolling slowly along the

ground. They felt gas.

We had to take our musket and stick it on in two or three seconds.

Yes, it was phosgene gas.

Later on, there was mustard gas.

That was very effective.

I never saw a slightly gassed man.

If you couldn't get your gas mask, you were to pee on your handkerchief and

stuff this round your nose and mouth.

I don't mind admitting that I didn't think much of the urinating on the

handkerchiefs, so I went into one of the trench latrines and I stuck my head in

the bucket. I'll tell you, I couldn't hold my breath anymore.

Came up, took a good breath of air.

Down again.

We were very soon enveloped in this thick, yellow, filthy cloud.

The more we tried to get rid of this sting in our eyes, the worse it got.

I thought deeply of what the effect of blindness was going to be.

The extraction of clotted blood and the injection of saline could alleviate a

lot of the trouble.

And as I was gassed myself, I can speak from experience.

In the wintertime, as the weather deteriorated, so the trenches got more

and more sodden with water until they just became ditches.

The water was swelling about our feet and rising higher and higher until it

reached our chests.

Our difficulty was frostbite.

Our gumboots filled with water and in the mornings we could not strip them off

because they were frozen to our feet.

When you're talking about trench feet, you're talking about gun cream.

Send him straight down the line.

Hack the legs off.

When the water had soaked into the earth, the floors of the trenches were

just paved with liquid mud, and that became like glue.

It was a curious, sucking kind of mud.

Very viscous indeed, very tenacious.

It stuck to you.

If one had to go to the rear for Russians, well, that was just a

nightmare journey, slithering about.

When it was pouring with rain and on slippery duckboards, the language was

really edifying.

You heard words that you never dreamed existed.

And if you slipped off the duckboards, you just sank into the mud of decomposed

bodies of humans and mules, and that was the end of you.

The boy was in the middle of this huge sea of mud.

struggling, and we couldn't do a thing. There was no hope of getting to him. The

look on the lad's face, and he was a mere boy, was really pathetic.

To see men sinking into the mud and dying in the slime, I think it

absolutely finished me off.

It was supposed to be quiet, and then you might get some drunken German who

said, oh, I'm going to give him hell today and open it with all these

batteries and catch hundreds of people on the way up. That was what they called

holding along.

We were in conditions that isolated us completely from civilization.

We got so degenerate, so isolated, living in this mud.

And you could sympathize with how a rabbit must feel, because we were hunted

by mankind just the same as a rabbit.

You knew your lives were in one another's hands, and it united you very

closely, and you didn't let anything interfere with that. You knew what was

going on within your vision.

Beyond that, you hadn't got a clue.

You didn't care how the war was going, whether you were winning.

You weren't bothered with that at all.

You lived like tramps.

You didn't polish any buttons.

You wore any uniform, bits that you liked, and nobody worried. All they were

concerned with was that you were fit to fight.

If nothing's happened, you'd chat about life, where he came from, where you came

from. Everything was friendly.

There was a terrific lot of kindness in the way to each person.

When the war was not very active, it was really rather fun to be in the front

line. It was not very dangerous.

A sort of out-of-door camping holiday with the boys, with a slight spice of

danger to make it interesting.

We used to raid the trenches and get a prisoner if possible.

On a typical trench raid, there'd be perhaps eight in a pile.

If he was going to make a raid, somebody would cut a posse through the wire at

night.

The only way to do it was silently.

to rush it, and that was the arrangement.

Then we would bomb and bayonet the Germans coming out on their hands and

knees out of the dugout. We'd smack them over the head and throw in a couple of

bombs.

And there were three ways of getting rid of them. One was to knife him, garrot

him, or to bayonet him. The quietest was a quick wrap-around, throw the knife

into the back.

I threw a revolver at poor little Rudolph. He was about 18.

I hit him in the face with it. He screamed and came back at me, and that's

when I got him.

I got him with a fairy pistol.

I always had a full flask, and I gave him a drink.

I felt very sorry for him.

He said, and died.

And it was a very successful little raid, and they got two prisoners, I

think, which was all they wanted.

By the way, the men who were captured on the trench raids were the first Germans

I saw on the Western Front.

A lot of the German troops, they were very good and very friendly.

In fact, some of those Bavarians were damn good, decent people.

The snipers who would fire would not hit anybody.

You know what I mean?

They put up a sign, Gott mit uns, the Germans.

God is with us.

And we put a sign up in English. We got mittens too.

We don't know if the Germans enjoyed that joke or not.

There was a wounded German. He was a Württemberger, I think. We did what we

could for him. We gave him a bit of food and that sort of thing. And he was

cursing the Prussians like anything.

The Saxons were in front of us and they gave us the warning that they were going

to be relieved by the Prussians.

And they said to us, give them hell.

They hated the Prussians.

Because the Prussians were crude bastards.

The Bavarians are the Saturnians.

They want to be more civilized of the Germans.

Pat English, if anything.

After a four-day spell in the front line, we were relieved.

And we had to march back to Billets somewhere, a few miles behind the line.

We were going for a supposed one week's rest.

Everybody was dead wet.

We were all pretty knocked up.

We extricated ourselves from the mud to what was somewhat ironically called

rest.

In the front line itself, you didn't criticise people.

And if you had a chap who was a bit dicky, you would keep an eye on him.

Just like in a family.

But when you got out of the line, you'd want nothing to do with those people at

all. I mean, you can't call it comradeship exactly.

It was the way you did it.

The thing which always struck me as being absolutely stupid was that the

next morning, every man had to be spick and span, not a trace of mud on him.

You'd brush your clothes or dry them off the best way you could and clean your

boots. In other words, smarten yourself up.

The men would always appear the same, cheerful under the circumstances, happy

as they could be and making the best of everything, you know, in true British

fashion.

What? The cockney whip was prevalent and we were all lads together, you know. We

didn't care a bugger.

We'd make a fuss about nothing, the little things that didn't matter really

because it was something to fill the time in.

We used to have to make our own amusements.

You laughed at the slightest things.

I think probably it was the general tension of the atmosphere that used to

make us like that, you know.

My mother sent me a parcel with a trump card and all things, and I had no

thought of being able to cook it. So we used it as a rugby ball.

We had this regimental sports day, and I won't say I was the only sober one, but

most of them got merry about it.

I mean, you took part in everything because you had to fill your time in,

you know.

Otherwise, all you did was sit about and smoke.

The only time we saw the artillery members was when we were out at rest.

They would be, say, two miles behind the line.

We wanted to neutralize enemy batteries, so we were registering our batteries on

his We used to know the line and elevation because it was done

by aircraft It's pretty ghastly, but the idea was to kill as many German gunners

as you could

There was no motorised transport then for guns. The guns used to be brought up

by horses.

Eight horses to each gun team. Four horses to each wagon team. About 60

horses.

The gunners made a filthy noise.

Jingling and jingling and horses making noises both ends. And it was also a

great concern for those of us who were going to battle.

Each company officer paid his own company. Now, it was generally the first

morning after we were out of the line, you got five francs. A franc was worth

10 pence, so 50 pence was your pay for a fortnight, 50 pence. Now, that's a week

of riotous living.

Every town of any size at all had a brothel, and that was where most of

these boys learnt a little more about life than they would ever have done in

normal civil life.

So although they were young in years, it wasn't long before they were quite

worldly men.

One of the lads said, well, let's go and have a look in the White Star.

It's like a pub.

I've had a very short life.

And they were beautiful girls with just a piece of lace on.

And, oh, my word, I've never seen anything like it before.

There was I, you're not knowing nothing about this. Off we go.

And these men were going up regularly to see the girls. I was very keen. I said

to one of these fellas, when he got a sixpence, he said, that's not good. He

said, it's a shilling.

That was my first experience of a brothel.

Anyway, we looked in there for a couple of minutes.

One, four, five naked girls came running down the corridor.

We turned tail and ran.

It was an eye-opener to me.

There she stood, a great big woman, with this little cane in her hand, and she

belted my backside as if I was a little schoolboy.

Paddy Sargent this and Paddy Sargent the other. Thump, thump, thump, thump,

thump.

Oh, gambling, couldn't you know? People were gambling all day long.

The Canadians and Australians used to gamble terrific amounts of money. More

money than I'd ever seen.

The beer was very thin indeed.

It was one and nine stuff.

1.9 piddles.

Friday was always the issue day for cigarettes.

And the cigarettes were Three Witches, which soon became Three Bitches, or Red

Hussars, and I think they were made from stable returns.

But generally, in good-sized villages, you could get woodbines and players, and

they were far preferable to the issue cigarettes.

Of course, we were always bartering with the Frenchmen. We used to barter

somewhere under clothing and get a loaf of bread with it.

We used to swap our British cigarettes for their French wine.

It could be just as tiring out of the line as in the line, and it was

sometimes worse.

If you were chosen for fatigue, you'd have to go on the working party.

You collected stores from a big dump three or four miles back.

Enormous bundles of sandbags, ready-made-up duck boards, and worst of

all, barbed wire.

It was always hard work.

You were a funny labouring boy more than you were a fighter.

All the chaps were very tired, but it made no difference.

And they were mentally tired out.

They'd just come out of a trench tour for a rest, and this was the kind of

rest they were getting.

You would be carrying stuff up on a light railway.

Yes, they made a narrow-gauge light railway truck.

It was the simplest of things, just platforms on wheels, driven by light

locomotives.

Light railways, well, they were always a blooming nuisance because they were

always coming off the track.

And they lost control of this truck going down a slight incline and it

barged into the one in front. It scattered the duckboards all over the

place.

We used to take our mess tins up to the engine driver and get some boiling water

for our brew up of tea.

The Germans could see the steam and smoke from the steam engine.

So then it was mostly petrol engines which used to run up to the trenches.

The light rail only went as far as the communication trench and then we had to

push the thing along by hand.

Somebody came along and said, oh, this is it, we're going to be home by

Christmas. Oh, well, just go down the road and look in the field there, you'll

see. wouldn't tell us why anyhow we went down and they were on the roadside

covered with tarpaulin sheets you could see nothing except a square outline and

then the officer said these were supposed to be our shots when we asked

what it was the simple reply was tanks knowing the shortage of water we

naturally assumed water tanks and thought that we were getting reserve

supplies it was one of the best kept secrets we were delighted because these

wonderful machines were going to win the war

And soon everybody'd be home again.

Of course, that didn't happen like that.

We were taken out of the line and had intensive training.

We plunged the bayonet into the sack, shelled like hell.

It was to get used to plunging them into somebody's body.

Then we fired our rifles on the rifle range.

They were clumsy.

I didn't like them much.

Force marching, marching without arrest, and also frontal attack, right flank

attack, left flank attack, both flanks attack, night attack, and we wondered

what the devil all this training was for.

to go ahead with an operation to break through the German lines.

Suddenly, we were told to parade, full marching order.

We had to go back up the front, and we had only been out of the line a couple

of days.

We could see streams of supplies, mostly ammunition columns, going up towards the

front.

We didn't have a lot of notice, but we knew it was going to be a big advance.

So, batteries pushed forward, forward positions filled up with ammunition.

As a great push, soon nearer, the line livened up. It began to get much more

dangerous and not nearly so much fun.

And we learned that a bayonet charge was to be made on German machine guns.

I wish it to be impressed on all ranks the importance of the operations about

to commence.

The Germans are now outnumbered and outgunned. and will soon go to pieces if

every man goes into the fight determined to get through whatever the local

difficulties may be.

I am confident that the brigade will distinguish itself in this, its first

battle. Let every man remember that all England is watching him.

We marched all through the night and it got so bad that there were officers at

the side pushing men back into line who were struggling out and your legs just

seemed to go automatically forward.

I had a feeling that we were walking in our sleep.

More men were brought into the line and regiments were crowded up closer

together.

We were filling up the trenches, packed in like sardines.

Our captain was a splendid man.

He would never bark an order at you. He would give an order in a conversational

way. We don't know exactly how far this trench is, but it's between 200 and 300

yards. I will go over with the first wave and you'll be in the second wave.

And as soon as the curtain fire starts, we move.

Now go along and tell your men to be ready.

And this is the sort of warning we got.

Our two assaulting companies were ignorant of what their conduct would be

when they got into action. So Captain Neville thought it might be helpful if

he could furnish each platoon with a football and allow them to kick it

forward and follow it. And I think myself that it did help them enormously.

It took their minds away.

We had an extra bandolier of ammunition around their necks. And if you didn't

have a shovel, you had a pick.

We got in the trenches and we waited for zero hour. All the watches were

synchronised.

I was what was called the first bayonet man, which meant that I carried the

rifle with the bayonet in the attacking position and the rest of the men carried

bags of bombs.

And we were warned to be ready to advance at any moment.

The any moment was quite a long time coming and of course that added to the

tension that we were feeling.

My platoon had been told to go out and test the fire, but we had to get out and

walk towards the enemy, and we went about 200 yards, and then they called us

back again.

There was to be no preliminary bombardment for days beforehand.

There was only one short, sharp barrage just before the battle.

You've got to have the artillery preparation to smash their wire down.

I ordered fire on possible enemy assembly and forming up positions.

The bombardment started and the ground shook.

And we could see the hundreds and hundreds of gun flashes.

As soon as the bombardment started, the Germans' retaliation came.

And for four hours we had to sit there and take everything he slung at us.

And first of all, a large number of tanks went in. We could hear them

rumbling and rattling.

320 tanks crawling along.

We waited for the signal to move off.

Already, everybody was anxious to go.

But we waited and waited.

We got no sleep at all that night owing to the noise of our artillery barracks,

which was continuous the whole time.

We was asked to hand over any personal belongings to our company officer, such

as photographs and letters that we valued.

I heard soft voices talking to one another quietly, and I wondered how many

are going to live to see the sun rise.

In a month's paybook, there was provision for making a valid will if

they were going into auction for the first time, but I didn't bother with it.

I had nothing to leave anybody.

The fellow next to you, he was your best friend. You probably didn't know him the

day before.

And then, an hour to go, they were the longest and the shortest hours in life.

We had unlimited time for thinking, and I know I found myself thinking much more

deeply than I had ever thought before.

Some people might be incapable of thinking. They might have regarded the

situation as being such that they were incapable of thought.

I don't think there was any feeling of fear.

It was just that, you know, we were doing a job and if it came, it came.

We realised that sooner or later we were going to get the chop.

You're either going to be killed or wounded.

I was not in the least frightened of being killed, but I was terrified lest I

should lose an arm or a leg.

Waiting for an hour for an attack is not a very pleasant thing.

We'd sort of chatted away, trying to keep the spirits up, you see. We told

dirty stories and made crude remarks.

We had a thousand guns massed on a mile front behind us. Well, you imagine all

this stuff coming over you. The German stuff coming the other way. The noise

rose to a crescendo such as I'd never heard before.

You wouldn't hear a word.

The shells were passing over you, probably three foot, four foot. And the

air was an inferno. And your mind was another inferno. Reason was completely

blast out of it. The bombardment created a sort of hysterical feeling.

All of a sudden, one of our fellows started crying, really screaming and

crying. And the officer in charge telling the sergeant, find that man and

shoot him! Shoot him!

It's difficult to explain the reaction of a man when he is in a big

bombardment. He thought that this man's screaming and crying would be a danger

to the rest of the men.

As soon as it was light, we were given a ration of rum, any amount of it, as much

as you could drink.

And we got the order to fix bayonets.

Fix bayonets! Fix bayonets!

It was a beautiful day the way it dawned after a rainy night. A beautiful day.

Then five minutes ago...

I remember those lads standing there, dead silent, couldn't make a noise.

I was more frightened sitting waiting to start.

I was very frightened then, very frightened indeed.

And an officer shouted along the line, is everybody ready? And I called out, I

can't get my bayonet on my rifle, sir. And he said, damn you, mate, well, hurry

up. I sent back a message to brigade headquarters to say we were all ready.

But unfortunately, a slight mistake occurred.

The first thing we knew was terrific tremor of the ground.

We blew a mile.

which should have been under the German trenches, but lost.

It was in no matter.

And that gave the Germans five minutes to occupy the crater, which they did.

Sergeant Moore, he was standing behind the trench. He got a revolver in his

hand and he said, anybody goes back, I'll shoot them.

So that if we didn't go one way, we wouldn't go the other.

There wasn't a reluctance to go over the top, not with the people I were with.

Fire!

They put a curtain of shells over you and you advance.

That was the theory of the thing.

I realised that this was the moment of the assault.

And then zero hour.

Somebody shouted, there they go. To the left were the London Scottish running

forward. I gave the order, up the ladders, over the top.

And after this, we lived in a world of noise.

Simply noise for hours.

As soon as you get over the top, fear has left you.

We didn't run. There was no shouting, no cheering.

Everybody was deadly quiet.

Just as I stepped into no man's land, somebody was shot through the head. This

skull was splintered. It wasn't a good send-off, I can assure you.

The barrage proceeded into the enemy lines in steps of 100 yards at a time.

The line of British troops, Vicksburg, is walking quite steadily behind the

barrage. There's a sight I should never forget.

To start with, we'd had the odd machine gun firing, but remarkably little, and

it seemed almost too good to be true.

And we then realized that the Germans had been retaining that fire until they

saw how far the attack was developing.

Unknown to us, there was 10 to 20 German machine guns.

They're all hell broke loose.

And my God, he really opened up and he let us have it. He just swept us.

Machine gun bullets came at us like hour stones.

I didn't realise that, the swish swish were bullets.

I look round and people are dropping you all round you. I mean they just faded

away, you know, on either side of you.

And I thought, well what was shooting at me for?

And I hadn't gone more than a few yards before I was shot in the thigh.

There was a captain alongside me with his revolver out and all of a sudden he

dropped. And then another chap, he was hitting the leg, but he continued with

great bounds, hopping on one leg.

When the bullets hit the tank, the metal flakes were whirling around like razor

blades inside the tank.

You could see men dropping, but you didn't take any notice. If you didn't

get hit, you just carried on.

I suddenly found myself a terrible pain in my left hand, as if somebody had

caned me, and I found a big hole in it.

A man was running across the front of me, and he was shot through the body

because the contents of his wallet were flung out forward of me.

I felt a terrific bang on my right arm, and the blood started running off the

end of my hand.

I just didn't think that this German machine gunner would trouble to fire at

me, but the next thing I felt was a shot of quite a number of bullets hitting the

right side of my body.

A hair crossed my path, with eyes bulging in fear, but I felt that it

couldn't have been half as frightening as I was.

You could see your mate going down right and left, and you were face to face with

a stark realisation that this is the end of it.

The two in front of me went down wounded in the head and chest.

These bloody bullets got me in the leg and blew a great big hole in the back.

It didn't hurt.

Well, life was very, very hazardous indeed, and we proceeded in this

fashion, some getting hit and others carrying along.

You haven't got time to deliberate upon things.

Machine gun bullets might be coming over, but they weren't hitting you, and

you'd just go on.

They say your past comes up when you think you were going to die, but I

hadn't got very much past at 19.

And when I saw these bullets coming along, all I thought was, am I going to

live? Of course, if a thing hits you fair and square and you die immediately,

you don't feel anything at all, nothing to it.

First wave for all, absolutely wiped out. Everybody was either killed or

wounded. There were so many dead laying about, it was hard to avoid treading on

them. I was trying to step over, and the sergeant behind me said, Go on, you

mustn't take any notes of that. You keep going.

And we were literally walking over the dead bodies of our cobbers. The carnage

is just indescribable.

I had in my path about 2,000 dead, British and German. An attempt to clear

any dead man from our path was impossible because of the shelling, and

we ploughed over the lot.

Any shell bursting within a few yards of the tank.

seemed to lift it up in the air, and you felt a tremendous pressure.

The noise of the battle when you're right in the middle of it is so terrific

that you don't hear any individual shots even.

And we had to stop in front of the German wire.

It was quite impossible to advance any further because of the barbed wire in

the machine down post, which was about 50 yards further on.

The wire in front of us was quite uncut despite the intense bombardment.

I couldn't see anything but this wire.

It seemed to be acres and acres of it. And it was just black with rust.

And I don't think a rabbit could have got through it.

Then our own artillery started dropping shells amongst us.

Obviously they hadn't got the range or they didn't know where we were.

I heard the first shrapnel shell burst above my head.

There was a terrific whiz. That was the disappearance of my steel helmet. I

never found it again.

I got a bit off the cheek of my backside, a piece in my hip, a piece in

my leg, then a piece right through my leg.

The fellow to my left took the full blast of the shell and had half his head

blown away.

Bullets were catching us and shrapnel was coming down over the head and we had

all the German artillery tagging away at us and our own artillery going over.

The shells were exploding all around you, and it was a real good old battle.

And it got old of you, sort of.

One had no sanity at all, because the Inferno was so blasting that you had no

time to think.

That din, that numbing din, seemed to stop one doing the things that one would

normally do, no matter how well-intentioned one was.

You don't look, you see. You don't hear, you listen.

You taste the top of your mouth. Your nose is filled with fumes and death.

The veneer of civilization has dropped away.

I was literally blown about 12 or 14 yards.

And all that I could hear was the cries and screams of the survivors.

Sometimes in two, sometimes in three parts. Legs, arms, all were strewn all

over the place.

And that arid smell of explosion.

Well, all my romantic ideals of war completely vanished.

A shell had hit this man.

He knocked off his left arm, he knocked off his left leg, his left eye was

hanging on his cheek, and he's calling out for Nanny.

His bleeding eye was hanging on pulsing.

So I shot him.

I had to. I had to shoot him.

He'd have died in any case, and it would have put him out of his misery.

But it hurt me.

You know, I knew there was no hope of getting any orders, because there was

nobody to give any.

All officers was killed and wounded, and most of the NGOs.

I jumped into this big shell hole.

You drop down anywhere, shell holes anywhere at all, just to take cover

until the barrage lifted.

I'm not one of those heroes who want to take the German army on me own, so I

went to earth. I got down behind the lip of a big shell hole.

Fortunately, I was able to drop into a shell hole.

Used to call them shell hole droppers. I would drop down into a shell hole

because of the barrage and seeing a few women killed.

Oh, it's a pity they didn't all drop into shell holes. Before the barrage

lifted, they were dead.

And the bullets were hitting the back of the shell hole where I was. It was

raining bullets.

I don't know how I got missed.

I'm behind the lip of this shell hole, and the dirt was spraying down the back

of my lip.

There were three chaps in the shell hole, and one of them said, they were

firing at your bloody shovel.

And we looked round and said, bullets are coming right through his head.

So that was the end of that.

A sergeant came down into the shell hole on top of us, and he was dead. He'd gone

through the neck. Anyway, he had a lovely pair of fill glasses around his

neck, and I nabbed them, because things were so scarce. If there was anything

like that, you'd collar it.

Jerry slapped shell after shell into us until one shell penetrated the forward

part of the tank. What happened then, I cannot tell you, but I believe there was

an explosion.

Being fully trained soldiers, we always had the rifle loaded, but we stuck in

the extra fire rounds to make it a ten for rapid fire.

The Germans got up in their own trenches and fired at us. In my opinion, they

were very brave, very brave men indeed.

There was a German standing up on his parapet and flinging bombs, so I shot

him. They also gave us orders, open immediate rapid fire.

We all opened up as fast as we could go, continually firing. It was a real mad

minute, I'll tell you.

They stood up, and I was picking the Germans off, because I was a sniper.

I was trying to pick the shot, and something hit me between the eyes, like

a sledgehammer.

I dissolved into unconsciousness with no pain, but with millions of golden stars

in a dark blue heaven.

After I'd used up a whole lot of bullets, I got out. I said, you have a

cold, Bill. He didn't even fire a shot.

He was killed immediately.

And that's how things were.

You felt greed. It was a pal of yours.

But you took it casually until I suppose you become battle-hardened.

We kept up rapid fire there as long as our rifles would work. They got too hot

to fire anymore.

Fat was pouring out the woodwork of the rifles.

The muzzles were beginning to extend.

Then we got an order from the captain. We must make a barricade of the dead,

the German dead and our own dead.

My captain at that time was anxious to go on and he got up, but I'm afraid he

died.

I had three men loading up these rifle grenades, and I peppered the whole lot.

And judging by the shouts and the screams, I'd taken very good toll.

There was a machine gun strained on the lip of our shell hole. I waited until

the belt of that gun had expired, and immediately carried on the advance.

The sergeant was just following me.

I managed to crawl under the wire. A lot of us got through in that way, and

gathered together on the German side of the wire.

All the shells screamed over our heads onto the German post and then suddenly

stopped. Come on, lads, give them hell.

And we just got up and rushed forward.

In being at charge, the majority of us always held around up the spoke beside

the magazine.

There was a feeling of exultation that we'd rifled bayonets and a couple of

mils of bombs in your pocket. We were going to be able to get stuck into the

bastards that had been killing our mates.

And we went like hell, straight into the Germans.

And we fired at anything that moved.

I dropped down on my knees and the sergeant fired over my shoulder and hit

the German.

He was on the ground but still firing, so I went up and killed him.

There's only one method of bayonet fighting.

That is to shove your bayonet in as high as you could.

There was this German on the floor of the trench and poor bugger was dead

scared. So while I'm wondering whether to stick him or shoot him, the German

jumped out away to my left, another one on the right, so I pinned this German

down and then shot the German on the left.

Worked my bolt, put another one up the spout, and shot the German who was

running away on the back.

Quite a number of Germans came in a rush, and we shot them one by one.

We probably killed them all.

Sir Chuck said, poor old Dick got it, and there looked round and saw him lying

to the top of his head on.

On their right flank came a German with a canister on his back squirting this

liquid fire out of the house. I looked towards, jets of flame.

Coming across the trench.

We'd never heard of flamethrowers.

Don't 23 of our chaps to death. I plonked one into his chest, but it

didn't stop him. He must have had an armour-plated waistcoat on. I got a bang

in the arm, and found I was bleeding.

I could bomb pretty well with my left arm, because I couldn't right.

Somebody threw a news bomb, and it burst behind him. He wasn't armour-plated

behind, he went down. One German came running out of his trench, screaming his

head off. He nearly knocked me over.

Three Germans came out with their hands up, and they were young chaps about our

own age, about 19 or 20.

If Jerrys came out with their hands up, we just waved them off. We didn't fire

at them, obviously.

Prisoners were no nuisance.

We were shooing them back, and they'd get rid of them.

The only Germans who were really fighting were the machine gunners.

They were firing belt after belt at us, and they never stopped firing. The

bloody cartridge cases were piled up in the heat.

They've got all their best men on machine guns, and they fought to the

death. I'll go, and there was three jerrys there in front of the machine

gun. And, of course, the bloody gun was pointing at me.

And I just swung the Lewis gun away and pulled up first.

It was split-second stuff.

Thankfully, I moved on.

As the war progressed, it was inevitable that we developed the animal

characteristic of killing.

Well, we've got some young Lincolnville lads, you know, the 18-year-olds. The

machine gunners would put in their hands up, didn't make any difference.

They were killed.

And I'm afraid there was a little bit of slaughter going on until we got in some

sort of order.

Everybody was screaming, laying down, moaning and groaning, and eventually

there was silence.

I found a German officer with his lung hanging out. He was still alive, but he

wasn't conscious. You could see his lung was expanding and contracting as he was

breathing. That was the nearest I came to ever shooting a man point blank.

We had to go on.

One dead German leaning against the shell wall.

He was a handsome bloke. He reminded me of my father.

A shell had dissected him nicely.

They had taken the whole of his front of his chest and down to his stomach.

Neatly cut aside.

What a fantastic exhibition of anatomy.

The rail shooting was over in about 10 minutes.

There was about 100 of us coming out instead of 600 who'd gone over.

And the band came to meet us.

It was a wonderful feeling.

I'd been in a battle and I felt very proud about it.

Hang on.

You got it? Yeah.

And if you'd anybody wounded,

or killed, if you didn't get them out straight away, they went down in the

soil and disappeared.

It was so bad.

Well,

you had to ascertain whether a man was alive or not.

If he was dead, then he was no trouble, medically.

I can't put that any clearer.

Give us some room.

I felt some pain, I suppose about an hour later.

I'd got these thigh boots on, and the bullet had gone in sideways, all the way

down the leg, in, out, in, out, and hit the ankle bone, and turned upside down.

The sergeant major bought me

a Dixie of hot tea, which was just what I needed. It went down beautifully.

And casually started coming back, walking casually. Men with their arms

smashed up, legs crawling, and they'd gotten back to different dressing

stations the best way they could.

Walking wounded, they were coming down in droves.

Some were holding one another, and some were walking on their own. A light wound

in the hand or arm, but some were hobbling along, and some were looking

quite cheerful as they'd been free of something.

Hello, Mum!

My officer had said, are you all right, Payne? And I said, oh, yes, I'm still

all. He said, but you've been hit in the back of the head.

And he handed me quite a dose of rum.

The worst cases were those who were shot through the chest.

Well, the difficulty of breathing.

You only had filled dressings, which every man carried.

He got a bottle of iodine and he tapped it in the hole. Hole.

Pain was terrific.

Well done.

How about that for luck, chum?

Shot right through it.

I was not in very good shape at all, and I was getting somewhere near the end of

my tether. I don't think I could go on much longer.

Every soldier, I suppose, had this breaking strain.

The medics will be waiting for you.

Well done, lad. Well done.

That's it.

Chin up. We had some remarkable doctors who worked day and night in various

stations on the British front looking after the wounded.

Nice cup of roast, isn't it? You all right, Jack?

They seemed never to need any sleep, so what they hadn't got in numbers, they

made up in effort.

Well done.

We need a shell dressing.

Both my officers, all my sergeants, and three-quarters of my men were killed or

wounded.

Their ranks were made up with lads of 18 from England who'd been pushed out of

factories.

My

mob

were helping the battalion to bury these only little kids who were 17 or 18 years

of age.

in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our

lord jesus christ look at those kids

there was a first action and they never knew anymore so we dropped them up in

blankets took a little shallow gray and put them in there i was putting a

dressing on a german and he was very very shaky and fearful of what we were

going to do to him But they were more frightened than we were. We were

frightened, I don't mind telling you.

Mostly they were just boys as we were. They seemed glad to be captured. They

were out of it.

Is this yours? Mine.

Ah, it's yours.

Put it in your pocket.

There was a little German fella.

I gave him a cigarette and he was terrified.

And I was very, very sorry for him, really, you know.

He was only about 60, and we had a teamwork, and I just took his pocket

watch. You know, it was an old thing. We used to rob them, you see.

Yes, they were underfed, and they were in very poor shape.

And funny enough, five or six German prisoners came along, and they helped

carry me.

And I got another six watches, because I robbed these fellows who helped me down.

Every time...

We captured prisoners.

A number of German prisoners would immediately take up stretcher duty.

Now I'm sure the Geneva Convention never required them to do that.

I took about a dozen prisoners back with

me. They were all unarmed and I just had an old gun.

In some cases there were a whole lot of Germans without even a Tommy with them.

Oh, they were really cowed, they were.

Yes, they were very subdued.

I sat next to a German man who'd been wounded in the arm.

And to my amazement, he started talking to me in English.

And he said he'd been a waiter at the Savoy.

I mean, I don't think the average British soldier ever had any deep

feelings regarding revenge against the German. He admired him and respected

him.

As the war went on, I felt as much sympathy for them as I did for myself.

The German, I always thought, was a good fighter.

I didn't have him on my side and on the opposite side.

I think some of the Germans thought we ought to be fighting with them against

the French and the Russians, but none of them thought we ought to be fighting

each other.

You see, the Germans had been an unknown horde with their colt scuttle helmets,

and then we met them.

Well, the German soldier, he was a very nice fellow as a rule. You know, I think

he was really a barber or a shopkeeper or something, and same as us, he was

stuck in uniform.

Get you next time, Jerry.

We got on very well together actually, and they used to mix in with us.

They were decent sort of family people and thought a great deal of their

children.

They didn't seem to bear any mollusks against us.

They had to do what they were told, like us.

I couldn't speak German, but Samba could.

And the Germans, some of them could speak English.

Anyhow, we could understand each other. The general agreement when we were

talking to Germans is how useless war was and why did it have to happen.

When you're passing bodies all day long, it's bound to have an effect on whoever

it is, isn't it?

This big, fussed German was lying in the street, you know. His stomach was all

gassed up. His intestines were lying out on his belly.

and somebody stuck a pipe in his mouth.

Yeah, we all told him to get up.

German troops were very brave and very stubborn.

The Germans fought rearguard actions almost back to the Rhine, and Richmond

after Richmond was smashed up and cut about.

We had an idea that they were beginning to crack.

I would say that they were, if anything, rather despondent. They knew they had

lost the war.

We, as frontline soldiers, knew they were giving up.

Quite frankly, the Germans were fed up with the whole thing.

And gradually, that is how the war itself came to an end.

I got the impression that most of the German soldiers couldn't care less who

won as long as the war finished.

Because that's what everybody was thinking about then.

We'd had enough.

And after a time, perhaps nobody cared.

All right, boys, here it comes.

We're in the pictures.

There's a fellow in the war called Rumer. He knows everything, you see. And

Mr Rumer told us that the Germans were also negotiating for an armistice.

There was a huge poster.

All hostilities will cease on the Western Front at 11 o'clock on the 11th

of November 1918.

So we said to each other, what day is it? Somebody discovered it was November

the 11th.

And then we had to shine our boots and clean our buttons.

We knew the war was over then, and we were quite confident that we would be

there when it ended.

This proclamation was read out stating that the hostilities were ceased from 11

that morning, and actually there wasn't a cheer of any kind raised when that was

read out.

At 11 o'clock, the noise of the gunfire just rolled away like the peal of

thunder in the distance.

Never heard it being quiet.

No, it's dead silent.

You were so dazed that you could stand up straight and not be shot.

It was eerie.

There was a feeling of relief and gladness, I suppose, but no celebration.

The staff officer shut his watch up and said, I wonder what we're all going to

do next.

There was no demonstration of any kind. Nobody said a word. Everybody just

slumped away.

The only way we could have celebrated with regards to a liquid would have been

tea, that's all.

It was one of the flattest moments of our lives. We just couldn't comprehend

it.

We had that sort of feeling that we'd been kicked out of a job.

To some of us it was practically the only life we'd known.

What was one going to do next?

It was just like being made redundant.

That was very much the feeling of everyone.

We were thoroughly upset.

We've all got no work to go to. I don't want to go back.

There was no cheering, no singing.

We were drained of all emotion.

We were too far gone, too exhausted to enjoy it.

All things come to an end and even a drama can go on too long.

It didn't end with a whimper, but something very much like one.

I was very happy to leave.

I'd had enough. You know, after a time, it begins to wear on one, you know.

Thank goodness this bloody thing's over, that was all.

But so far as I was concerned, I was out of it. And now the next step in life.

First thing we did was write home, say we were all right, making sure we got

the date on the envelope right.

To someone like myself who was interested in nature after the horrors

that man had made of the battlefront, I was immensely delighted to find shell

holes in which I picked lilies of the valley and larkspur, and I pursued

camberwell beauties and swallowtail butterflies along the banks of the Eime

River. We went to Boulogne. By the way, we came home with full pack. The only

thing we left behind was the bullets. We had to discard those.

But we still kept our rifle. We went... over to Folkestone and there were long

trestled tables with very kind ladies and they give you a sausage roll or a

bun and a cup of tea and that was very welcome.

We entrained to Victoria and there we broke up.

You went into the barracks and you just dumped rifles, bayonets and everything

and there were a lot of suits on display, hats, shoes and you could tell

them which one you wanted, style and colour and they measured you.

I was horrified by what I saw when I came back here and when one tried to get

a job.

It was mass unemployment and I thought this isn't much of a life. It was a most

difficult thing to realise you're of no commercial value.

It was a shame the way ex-servicemen were treated.

You weren't wanted.

Some places said no ex-servicemen need apply and that was the sort of attitude

you were up against.

One of my pals was killed and when I went home the very first thing that I

did was go to his mother.

Ooh, I've never had a friend want you to vet me. Her son had been killed and I'd

come back alive.

She was very bitter.

The first night I came home, I got into my old bed.

It was the first bed I'd laid in since I joined the army.

When Mother brought my cup of tea up in the morning, she found me fast asleep on

the floor.

People never talked about the war.

It was a thing that had no conversational value at all.

Most people were absolutely disinterested.

When I got home, My father and my mother didn't seem at least interested in what

had happened. They hadn't any conception of what it was like.

And there was no reason why any one of us millions could have been favoured

with a thank you very much for having got a little bit muddier and more out of

touch with good manners.

And on occasions when I did talk about it, my father would argue points of fact

that he couldn't possibly have known about because he wasn't there.

Every soldier I've spoken to experienced the same thing. We were a race apart

from the civilians.

and you could speak to your comrades and they understood, but the civilians, it

was just a waste of time.

However nice and sympathetic they were, attempts of well-meaning people to

sympathise reflected the fact that they didn't really understand at all.

I think the magnitude was just beyond their comprehension.

They didn't understand that people that you'd known and played football with

were just killed beside you. My friend who enlisted with me, he just laid there

like a sack of rags until he went black before anybody troubled to bury him.

They knew that people came back covered with mud and lice, but they had no idea

of the strain of sitting in a trench and waiting for something to drop on one's

head. You couldn't convey the awful state of things where you live like

animals and behave like animals.

People didn't seem to realise what a terrible thing war was.

I think they felt that war was one continual cavalry charge.

They hadn't any conception.

How could they?

Well, it started off in a reasonable manner. It was people fighting on

horseback with swords, but it developed into something ghastly. People don't

realise the potential of military equipment.

A man's life wasn't worth anything at the end of the war.

We're none of us heroes, you know. We didn't like this business of being

killed at all.

When we were talking among ourselves, we used to say, Christ, there won't have

any more wars like this.

How did we endure it? The answer must be partly the fear of fear, the fear of

being found afraid.

Another is belief in human beings, your colleague, and there's no letting him

down.

There may be right on both sides, but I think war is horrible. Everything should

be done to avoid war.

I still can't see the justification for it. It was all really rather horrible.

I think history will decide in the end that it was not worthwhile.

The only thing that really did annoy me was when I went back to work after I'd

got demobilised, I went down the stores and the bloke behind the counter was a

bloke who I knew.

He said, where have you been?

On nights?

Mademoiselle from Armitage, parlez-vous.

Mademoiselle from Armitage, parlez-vous.

Mademoiselle from Armitage, she hasn't been kissed in 40 years. Inky, dinky,

parlez-vous.

Mademoiselle from Armitage, parlez-vous.

Mademoiselle from Armitage, parlez-vous.

Our topic in Armenteers Broke the spell at forty years Zinky dinky parley-voo

Mademoiselle from Armenteers Parley-voo Mademoiselle from

Armenteers Parley-voo You didn't have to know her long To know the reason then go

on Zinky dinky parley-voo Mademoiselle from Armenteers

Parley-voo Mademoiselle from Armentiers Parlez-vous She's always

working good in town She makes a living upside down Inky, inky, parlez-vous

Mademoiselle from

Armentiers Parlez-vous Mademoiselle from Armentiers Parlez-vous

She sold her kisses for ten francs each, soft and juicy and sweet as a peach.

Inky, inky, parley-boo.

Mademoiselle from Armentiers, parley-boo.

Mademoiselle from Armentiers, parley-boo.

Madam, you've got a daughter fair to wash the soldiers' underwear.

Inky, inky, parley-boo.

I didn't care what came of me, parley-boo.

I didn't care what came of me, I didn't care what came of me, so I went and

joined the infantry.

Mademoiselle from Armentiers-Pas-les-Vous Mademoiselle

from Armentiers-Pas-les-Vous Went into bed, she sure was fun Working her ass

like a maxing gun Dinky dinky, Pas-les-Vous Mademoiselle from

Armentiers-Pas-les-Vous Mademoiselle from Armentiers-Pas-les-Vous

I had more fun than I could tell beneath the sheets with Mademoiselle. Hinky

dinky, parley-boo.

Mademoiselle from Armitage, parley-boo.

Mademoiselle from Armitage, parley-boo.

She did a wicked cry-wee-wee. Let's see what you can do with me.

Hinky dinky, parley-boo.

They say they mechanise the war, parley-boo.

They say they mechanise the war. Bah they do. They say they mechanise the

war. So what the hell are we marching for?

Inky, inky, bah they do.

Mademoiselle from Armentiers, parlez-vous.

Mademoiselle from Armentiers, parlez-vous.

Mademoiselle from Armentiers, she hasn't been kissed for forty years. Dinky,

dinky, parlez-vous.

The officers get all the steak, parlez-vous. The officers get all the

steak, parlez-vous. The officers get all the steak, and all we get is a

bellyache. Inky dinky, parley boo.

You might forget the gas and shells, parley boo.

You might forget the gas and shells, parley boo.

You might forget the groans and yells, but you'll never forget the

mademoiselles. Inky dinky, parley boo.

Mademoiselle from Armentiers, parlez-vous.

Mademoiselle from Armentiers, parlez-vous.

Benny and Benny are very bad.

Watch them go back to France again. Yinky dinky, parlez-vous.

Mademoiselle from Armentiers, parlez-vous.

Mademoiselle from Armentiers, parlez-vous.

Just blow your nose and dry your tears. We'll all be back in a few short years.

Dinky, dinky, parley-boo.

Mademoiselle from Armitage, parley-boo.

Mademoiselle from Armitage, parley-boo.

I fell in love with her at sight. Awake myself for half the night.

Dinky, dinky, parley-boo.

Mademoiselle from Armitage, parley-boo.

Mademoiselle from Armistead's parley-boo You might forget the gas and shell

You'll never forget the mademoiselle Inky dinky parley-boo You might

forget the gas and shell But you'll never forget the mademoiselle Inky dinky

parley-boo