The Unknown Warrior (31 page)

In Flanders, a group of amateur archaeologists known as The Diggers, in their excavations of the trench systems of Boezinge, have recovered a vast array of weaponry, including British rifles with bayonet still attached, British, French and German ammunition and various grenades and projectiles (ranging from British Mills bombs to German disc grenades, known as ‘toads'). Trench mortar projectiles (‘plum puddings') were recovered, and there was a large quantity of shrapnel. There was also the discovery of a battery of Livens projectors used to fire gas shells (Aurel Sercu, pers. comm.). Live grenades have also been excavated at Beaumont-Hamel by a Canadian and French team, ‘requiring the intervention of bomb disposal personnel' (Saunders, 2002: 106).

All these weapons, combined with strong dugouts, barbed wire and the fact that attacking troops were frequently burdened with large quantities of equipment, ensured that head-on daylight attacks often proved costly. British casualties amounted to around 57,000 on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, of which 19,000 were killed. When raids of enemy positions took place, or on the occasions that major assaults were successful, the rifle with fixed bayonet was often too cumbersome to be functional in the messy business of trench clearance. Grenades were far more practical, though the zig-zag or crenulated design of trenches meant that these had to be thrown at each bend.

As the infantry hero of
All Quiet on the Western Front
, Paul Bäumer, commented: ‘In any case, the bayonet isn't as important as it used to be. It is more normal now to go into the attack with hand-grenades and your entrenching tool. The sharpened spade is a lighter and more versatile weapon – not only can you get a man under the chin, but, more to the point, you can strike a blow with a lot more force behind it' (Remarque, 1996: 74).

For all the technical innovations and the mass-production that went with industrialisation, some of the most effective weapons for hand-to-hand combat would not have seemed out of place in earlier periods in history: knives, cudgels and clubs. This was certainly the case at Boezinge. Excavators on this site uncovered several clubs, one with a lead head and another that could almost have been a Medieval mace. This wooden club was around 50cm in length with a bulb at one end covered with iron studs with a spike at the top (Aurel Sercu, pers. comm.). Fighting at close quarters was still visceral.

ARMOUR AND UNIFORM

We were shot down like rabbits because you know for them we were a real target as we had red trousers on. When we were fired at we were like sitting ducks in the field, you see.

(Private Frank Dolbau, in Arthur, 2002: 25–6)

The French had not had the benefit of the British, whose bitter experiences in the Boer War had shown them the need to use a more sober colour scheme for their uniforms in combat – so, whereas the British soldier wore ‘khaki' and his German adversary
feldgrau
(field grey), the French
poilu
(hairy ones) went to war in bright red trousers and blue coat, a situation rectified only when front-line units were supposedly issued with the new ‘horizon blue' uniform in the spring of 1915. This was too late for the twenty-one soldiers of the 288th Infantry Regiment who were killed at Saint-Rémy-la-Calonne (see pages 199–200). When the bodies of the men were excavated, including that of the author Alain-Fournier, ‘tattered traces of red and blue material were recovered' (Boura, 2000: 30).

Bales of pre-1915 blue-dyed Belgian army uniforms were uncovered in excavations in Flanders (Hooge) in 2003. Here the preservation conditions had ensured the fabric's survival, although the cotton thread had decayed. Leather belts were also present, as were woollen socks and a Belgian army 1896 pattern rucksack (Rob Janaway, pers. comm.). The Belgian army also started with uniforms that would not have seemed too out of place on the battlefields of the nineteenth century – even wearing the shako as headgear, the type of tall, cylindrical, plumed hat that had been worn by Wellington's riflemen.

One particular item of uniform that is found more often than other elements in archaeological investigations and can often provide a striking image is the soldier's boot. On several excavation sites human skeletons have been uncovered, which, if given a cursory glance, could be thought to be from a Medieval hospital, plague pit or Victorian cemetery – that is until one sees the boots, still on the feet of the deceased and made of sturdy leather and steel-shod. The remains of the soldiers of the 288th Infantry Regiment at Saint-Rémy-la-Calonne are a case in point (see photo by F. Adam in Krumeich, 1999: 88–9; and photo by H. Paitier in Boura, 2000: 30).

Just as powerful were the results of the work of French archaeologists near the A26 Calais–Paris motorway at Le Point du Jour, Arras. Excavations here prior to the construction of a factory uncovered a mass burial of British soldiers. Twenty unknown troops were found lying on their backs with their elbows overlapping. As with the French soldiers, they were wearing their boots when they were buried, and these have survived. Although it wasn't possible to identify any of the men, regimental insignia were discovered, and it seems that these troops may have been from the Grimsby Chums – a ‘Pals' Battalion (10th Lincolns) that had lost half of its number of
c.
1,000 officers and men on the first day of the Somme, 1 July 1916. They had probably been killed in the spring of 1917 when the unit again experienced crushing losses (see, e.g., Briet, 2002: 20).

As with nineteenth-century sites, archaeologists have recovered insignia that are unit- or regiment-specific, denoting the presence of certain troops at a location. At the Auchonvillers trench excavations, items were retrieved relating to the uniforms of individuals and their webbing. These included a Royal Irish Fusiliers' cap badge, ‘probably dropped by a member of the 4th Division from July 1915 until early 1916' (Fraser, 2003: 11).

Then, as we looked further away we saw this green cloud come slowly across the terrain. It was the first gas that anybody had seen or heard of, and one of our boys, evidently a chemist, passed the word along that this was chlorine. And he said, ‘If you urinate on your handkerchiefs it will save your lungs anyway.' So most of us did that, and we tied handkerchiefs, plus pieces of putty or anything else we could find, around our faces, and it did save us from being gassed. (Private W. Underwood, 1st Canadian Division. 2nd Battle of Ypres, 1915, in Arthur, 2002: 79)

The First World War saw the first use of chemical weapons and their horrific effects. Poison gas (including phosgene, chlorine and ‘mustard' variants) was used by the Germans on the Ypres salient in 1915 to great effect. It could induce blindness, blistering and severe oedema of the lungs, which would lead to death through asphyxiation. One of the most moving depictions of the effects of this weapon occurs in Wilfred Owen's poem ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est' (Day Lewis, 1963: 55).

Poison gas was released through containers in the front line, or through shells and trench mortars. The British Livens projector battery found at Boezinge was one such method of weapon delivery (Aurel Sercu, pers. comm.). Although an effective countermeasure for mustard gas was not discovered in the First World War, many attempts were made to fight off the effects. An initial response, as seen above, was to place cloth soaked in urine across the nose and mouth. Soon, a gas hood was developed, which contained a small mica plate to enable the soldier to see while wearing it. One such plate from a first pattern British smoke hood was found by the excavators on the brick floor of the trench at Auchonvillers (Fraser, n.d.: 17).

Remnants of later gas mask types were found with the remains of two Royal Welch Fusiliers (see pages 207–8). A more striking example was uncovered in no man's land at Boezinge (see Plate 22). It was composed of rubber with two glass ocular pieces,
c.
8cm in diameter (Aurel Sercu, pers. comm.). Excavation work at the Beecham dugout, at the foot of the Passchendaele Ridge in Flanders, yielded a number of interesting artefacts, including a British small box respirator (Barton
et al.
, 2004: 286). By the end of the war, gas protection had become an important accessory to the infantryman's uniform.

For infantry, body armour appears to have been rendered obsolete by the use of firearms. Pikemen in the English Civil War ultimately stopped using the tasseted back- and breastplates, and by the nineteenth century armoured headgear was no longer worn by footsoldiers. This situation changed again in the First World War. In 1915, the French and Belgians adopted a steel helmet known as the ‘Adrian' helmet after its designer, while the British helmet, known by some as the ‘Brodie' after its designer, was patented in 1915 and adopted by Commonwealth troops in 1916. The latter helmets have been found in various excavations – their presence helping to provide a date for the deposits.

The Germans and Austrians also adopted a steel helmet – the ‘Stahlhelm', or M16 – in 1916, replacing the spiked helmet (
Pickelhaube
). This headgear could be painted in camouflage patterns and had ventilation lugs on the side, which would also allow the attachment of a further armoured plate (
Stirnpanzer
), possibly for use by snipers. One well-known German infantryman, Ernst Jünger, felt that, rather than the introduction of armour being a retrograde step, it heralded a new, modern phase in the war. On moving to the town of Combles during the Battle of the Somme in August 1916, he saw an infantryman using the Stahlhelm for the first time and wrote: ‘He was the first German soldier I saw in a steel helmet, and he straightaway struck me as the denizen of a new and far harsher world' (Jünger, 2003: 92).

In addition to the helmet, body protection was used. One extraordinary case from the Allied side was recounted by Captain Hugh Kinred of the 14th Gloucesters (Bristol Bantams). Kinred won the Military Cross following his actions on seeing a bomb drop beside seven sleeping comrades: ‘In a moment, I saw the danger they were in, and that no time could be lost in picking it up: so I decided to smother it by lying on it. No sooner had I lain on it than it exploded, blowing me from the corner of the trench at an angle of about 30 degrees on to its top, and I should doubtless have been killed but for the lucky chance that I was wearing a Whitfield Steel waistcoat' (
Daily Mirror,
22 August 1916; Bulmer, 1999: 29). The Germans also introduced full trench body armour (Fosten and Marrion, 1978: 21), not dissimilar to some of the plate armour from Visby (see
Chapter 4
) or the pikeman's protection from the 1640s – again for snipers or those in exposed positions. This was deemed to be very heavy and cumbersome and thus was soon discarded for similar reasons as it had been in the seventeenth century.

The construction of the A29 Amiens–Saint Quentin road and
tgv
Nord railway lines in northern France crossed the sites of much fighting of 1915–18, including the German spring offensive of 1918. Archaeologists working on the site of Gavrelle, Pas de Calais, uncovered a communal grave of twelve German soldiers. Although they lacked personal effects, some identity tags enabled the researchers to tell that these men were part of the 6th and 7th Companies of the 152nd Infantry Regiments, 48th Division, which had taken part in the great offensive of the Germans in March 1918 (Desfossés
et al.
, 2000: 35). The men had been hurriedly buried in a shell hole, and some were still wearing their steel helmets, which had been cracked and were not reusable. Steel helmets were not designed to protect against bullet strikes to the front or side of the helmet, though it was hoped they would afford some cover from shrapnel.

Another example of a German helmet, in this case a
Pickelhaube
, can be seen in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and serves to illustrate the distant forces on which the British Empire could call. At some point after the First World War, James Mills visited the Naga Hills in north-eastern India and returned with a dance trophy with a difference. Unlike the traditional headhunting trophies of the region – human skulls with horns attached to the sides – this was constructed from a German spiked helmet, which had undergone the same treatment of attaching horns to the side. Presumably this object was imbued with great significance beyond that of a casual souvenir, and had been brought home by a Chan member of the Naga Labour Corps (Pitt Rivers Museum Accession Number 1928.69.308). Indeed, Saunders (2003: 183) believes that this item, brought back from the Western Front, was a ‘symbolic substitute of a captured enemy head and proof of valour in battle'.

PRACTICE

Among the vast number of troops who took part in the First World War, many had little or no experience of combat or military life prior to 1914. An element of training for what they were about to do was essential if the infantryman was to have any chance of survival on the Western Front – and even then only with a great deal of fortune.

Men across the world in different armies cut practice trenches in an attempt to learn the basic necessities of this static form of warfare. Several examples of practice trenches in Britain have been recorded by the Council for British Archaeology's ‘Defence of Britain Project' (Lowry, 1995), a study of the monuments connected to warfare, including the Duke of York's School trench system (Kent Sites and Monuments Record Number TR 34 SW 521 – KE17128), which was constructed in 1916, but no longer exists; Archers Court Hill (Kent Sites and Monuments Record Number TR 34 SW 518 – KE17125), 1916; and Whinless Down (Kent Sites and Monuments Record Number TR 24 SE 65 – KE17116), dug in 1916 and with traces still surviving.

Some of the most complete surviving First World War practice trenches are located on Salisbury Plain, a region that is still the main training area of the British Army. Here, examples of front-line, communication and even reserve trenches can be found at Shrewton Folly, Market Lavington, Slay Down and Perham.