Tommy's Ark: Soldiers and Their Animals in the Great War. Richard Van Emden (38 page)

Lt Cyril Walker, 18th Div., Signal Coy, RE

We remained for a month holding the line between Albert and the Ancre. Not a strenuous front on these midsummer days – no worries beyond occasional shelling near the main road and by the batteries. The poppies have taken a new lease of life and flourish in tangled tracts with vetch, cornflowers and blue masses of suckory; great yellow swallowtails flit everywhere, and fritillaries and little blues and browns. All the country is open and chalky under a baking sun. The grasshoppers’ chirp becomes unsupportably insistent, and little coveys of quail whistle by your feet in the ripening corn, or get up and fly when flushed by a dog.

Pte Wilfrid Edwards, 15th London Rgt (Civil Service Rifles)

The front lay west of the old Somme battlefields, in more or less undevastated country, and a period of relative quiet supervened. There was a front-line trench on the slopes above Albert, in standing corn over the chalk, which was memorable in a number of ways. A typical sequence of events on quiet days was as follows: at ‘stand-to’ an hour before dawn, the darkness of no-man’s-land would become musical with the songs of skylarks, which continued until sunrise. When the sun was well up, a bevy of swallowtail butterflies would appear, fluttering over the trench and perching on the wild carrot that was flowering on the chalky rubble of the parapet. We had ample opportunities for observing these lovely insects: we could almost rub noses with them! Curiously, I do not remember seeing any other butterflies here, though white admirals and marbled whites were common elsewhere. Despite bursts of shelling and small-arms fire, and a nasty smell of phosgene among the corn, they all appeared in mint condition. They ignored us, and we them for the most part, though one or two went home to younger brothers, folded up in green envelopes.

Lt Cyril Walker, 18th Div., Signal Coy, RE

The 12th Division relieved us in the line and we went to Querrieu on the Ancre to prepare for active battle on the Somme. The weather began wet but became hot again. The lazy Somme tempted with its cool, reedy backwater and shady poplars. The hills by it are hot and chalky with scattered juniper bushes and gay wild flowers where great swallowtails flit and settle. Golden orioles call and fly in packs about the high woods and Australian soldiers battle or bomb for fun in the cool river while their mules graze in the deep watermeadows.

Even where the trenches ran through the old Somme battlefield to the north, there was a poignant beauty to be appreciated when the all-too-evident scars of the land were softened by a new natural growth.

Cpl Fred Hodges, 10th Lancashire Fusiliers

One day I picked a bunch of red field poppies from the old grassy trench and put them in the metal cup attached to my rifle. They quickly wilted in the hot sun, but in any case I don’t think the idea would have appealed to my officer if he had seen them. Most of the boys and men I was with apparently found no pleasure in flowers, but I was acutely conscious of them growing there in the midst of all that man-made destruction. Only field poppies and a few other wild flowers, but the persistent charm of nature in such conditions during that period of May, June and July 1918 was more poignant than it had ever been before in my life, or since.

That spring and early summer, I was often conscious of the great contrast between the man-made ugliness and horrors of the war-torn countryside, and the fresh, unchanging harmony and beauty of nature. Certainly I have never lived so close to nature since, nor been so acutely aware of life. Between wrecked villages, the crops lay ungathered, and nature, uncontrolled by man, was a riot of scent and colour; oats and barley mingled with blue cornflowers and red poppies, with the song of a lark in a blue sky. This contrast was almost too much to be borne.

In our daily lives in towns and cities, we live with our senses half asleep, but in those fields near Albert, where for nearly four years death reigned, I was never more alive. Even at night, when on sentry duty under the stars, which I seldom noticed when living in a town, I was intensely aware of the orderly arrangement of the stars compared with the disorderly scene all around.

L/Cpl Frank Earley, 1/5th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry

I am in a narrow trench about four feet deep, and my dugout is a hole scooped out of the trench side and roofed over with a piece of corrugated iron. When, at night, we settle to rest, and hang up the oil sheets at the openings, and light our candle, we are comfortable and happy. You must know that we have good companions – fine big earwigs, who run about the walls all day and night. They are much bigger than those you know at home, and look very fierce. I like to watch them crawling about and running out of the way of the big field spiders. See what grand amusement I have!

For all its evident beauty and variety, the natural world brought its own complications and dangers. It had been two years since men held trenches that were within a stone’s throw of abandoned farm animals and most of the men serving in 1918 would simply not have had the length of service to remember how strange cracks and rustlings put the hairs up on the neck.

Pte Christopher Haworth, 14th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

Two men are standing on sentry at each end of the bay, while Scott is resting, too cold to sleep, on the fire step. The other members of the section are in dugouts at the rear of the trench. It is uncomfortably quiet; a cloud passes over the moon, and our small world is plunged into darkness, but the blackout is momentary, as a high wind speedily moves the small cloud onwards, leaving the moon to shed its silver-green light on us. A cock crows in the distance.

‘Kick me, Chris,’ says MacDonnell, full of surprise. ‘Am I standing in a trench or in a country farmyard?’

Another cock answers the call, and one of the sentries, half turning so as to see into the trench, is much perturbed and calls to me, ‘Those blasted birds’ll give our position away if they keep on screeching like that.’

I do not reply to his remark, as I believe it myself; not that a feathered rooster will inform the enemy of our whereabouts, but it is making a noise, a clarion call, and our tired, frightened and nervy minds hang on to the idea that the cock will arouse the sleeping enemy and cause him to blow us to the moon.

Now a dog barks, the echo ringing across the sleepy and frosty air. The cock crows again, the other bird answers, and another cloud – a much bigger one this time – completely obscures the moon. Silence once again, and MacDonnell and I resume our walking.

A whitish-grey light is gradually appearing in the sky: the moon now is entirely blotted out, heralding the approach of dawn and once again the call of the cock pierces the air. Suddenly the quietness is broken by a screeching whistle, and a heavy shell lands
Crump! Bang! Wallop!
behind our trench, followed immediately by four more. The sentry turns and stares at me, but says not a word about the cock, although he has his suspicions that the old bird has brought this trouble upon us.

Pte Henry Irving, 2/4th Gloucestershire Rgt

Twenty paces away, slightly to our left, was part of a building with a small farm with a wooden lean-to on the nearest half wall end. We creep, listen, creep, listen and so on like stalking cats. The only terrifying thing now was broken tiles over which we had to creep. Soon all three of us were lifting the largest pieces of tile out of the creeping line. More creeping and listening. It seemed like a lifetime getting to that wooden lean-to but we did, stood up and prepared for any sudden intrusion but none came, that is probably why I am writing this . . .

A few more Jerry parachute flares, he was getting the wind up, then in the distance we could hear a cock crow, and to really put us on the alert and ready, we could hear something moving about and cracking the tiles which littered the ground. The safety catch is off and bayonet is on to surprise anyone who might be snooping for a take over. In a case like this, surprise attack at close quarters is the best, especially in the dark. The tile cracking came nearer and came round the corner of this half-demolished small farm when, all of a sudden, grunt and another grunt and the sound of four or five piglets out for an early day with mamma. Thoughts turned to gammon rashers but the mother would squeal blue murder especially as she had some offspring and so we waited for the lot to get out of our way.

Thoughts of gammon rashers: no matter where he was, no soldier ever felt he was fed enough by the army. Civilian-run estaminets had traditionally been the place for a Tommy to buy his egg and chips, often at inflated prices. After four years of war, civilians were hard-nosed and savvy as to the laws of commerce and savvy too as to the ways of British troops and their capacity to help themselves.

Pte Christopher Haworth, 14th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders

Milk can be obtained from the one cow on the farm, but no free issue. Having purchased
du lait
, my section scouts around the farm in the hope of locating chicken or other treasures which might be put to good use when darkness falls. We are like primitive man now, and if we are unable to purchase necessities, we ‘scrounge’ them, which to the mind of the serving soldier is quite legitimate as it often happens that money is worthless. On this farm, however, there is nothing to scrounge: troops have been here before, and Madame understands the psychology of the British soldier, and locks the cow up at night in case she strays. This is a wise precaution, for if Madame left it in the field at night it would be cooked meat by the morning. When a fellow has not tasted meat since he left England, and is hungry – and we are always hungry – it becomes a natural instinct to kill the cow . . .

We enter a house for a meal of
pommes de terre frites
and
oeuf frite
– a plate of chips and one egg – one franc. The dining room is dirty – we are repelled by the sight of big black gluttonous flies, a solid mass covering the plates which had been used by others.

‘Hell!’ exclaims Fraser. ‘We can’t eat here.’

‘It’s the best you will get in this godforsaken place, Jock,’ says a man who is finishing a meal. ‘All the other places are the same – covered with flies – they breed quicker here than lice on a soldier’s shirt – and that’s saying something!’

We do not like the idea but must feed, and having dined we get out quickly.

The quality of food for officers was incomparably better than for other ranks. Not that officers were less willing to ‘scrounge’ when the opportunity presented itself, though some were a little less capable than others.

Capt. John Marshall, 468th Field Coy, RE

Crawling through the rhododendrons bordering the moat, I disturbed a pair of roosting swans. Remembering books of the Middle Ages which speak of the swan as an edibility, it occurred to me that I might introduce one to the menu of the mess, so I went in search of a weapon and found a pick helve. Cautiously approaching one of the gabblers, I caught him two strong blows on the neck, but he seemed none the worse for them, and escaped me. Men: in future hit swans on the top of the head.

In July 1918, the Allies launched a series of small actions designed to pave the way for greater success. Tanks were used in great numbers and, with the ground ahead less broken up than in the great battles of attrition of 1917, their progress was often spectacular. For those surviving farm animals out grazing, the appearance of so many tanks must have been terrifying.

2/Lt Frank Mitchell, Tank Corps

As I was walking in front of a tank I heard a strange noise immediately ahead, and suddenly a huge form charged down on me out of the night. As I recoiled, it rushed past me, missing me by inches, and then pulled up abruptly, heaving and panting. Greatly startled, I flashed my torch in its direction, and discovered that it was a poor inoffensive cow, shuddering with fear! Hastily I rushed to the driver’s flap, yelling to him to stop, and he pulled up just in time. The cow was tethered to a peg in the ground, and the rope, becoming entangled in the track, had dragged the terrified animal nearer and nearer, in spite of its frantic efforts to escape.

At length the dim outlines of the wood came into sight, and the tanks, like huge toads, crawled into the undergrowth to find hiding places. To enter the pitch-black depths of a wood at night is a weird experience. Branches are cracking and snapping on every side, occasionally a young tree falls heavily to the ground, startled birds flutter by, squawking and crying, the muffled light of a torch sweeps to and fro revealing great trunks standing like pillars in the night.