To Fight Alongside Friends: The First World War Diaries of Charlie May

Tonight I have had officers and NCOs out on a little cross-country march on compass bearings. Murray brought his team in all right, Prince was out a bit and Bowly became quite lost. I find these sudden reversions back to long untouched work most instructive as showing how soon men forget the little essentials which make so for success. Poor Bowly was pretty sick with himself but passed if off by soundly cursing the map.

We have the report in today from the 4th Division of the battalion’s behaviour in the trenches. It was excellent, the best in the Brigade. We are very pleased about it though not unduly elated. I think we all expected it would be quite all right. Those of us who have known it from the start have such utter faith in the battalion. I feel certain it will always do well. With officers such as we have I cannot see how it can do otherwise. They are a good lot, good boys all.

18th December ’15

We went route-marching this morning, that is B, C and D Coys did. I took them and quite a little jaunt it was, the morning having cleared and the sun came out to glisten things up a bit. Especially the fog beads on the spider webs which hang about the trees on the hill between Bonneville and Montrelet.

Worthy rode with me and we chatted of home and the early days and such things and were very happy. And this afternoon his Coy played mine at football and beat them. We had a very poor team up and I must look into it before we play again.

The post has stopped once more for three or four days. We move on Monday down south another sixteen miles, to Fourdrinoy I believe. And there we become really members of 7th Division, Capper’s Division,

a regular hard-fighting lot, now down from Flanders resting. It looks as though with them we shall be ‘for it’, as the men say. At any rate we should see some fighting, a nice change from this messing about and continual strafing by the powers that be.

Our own particular bête noir has been at it again, bullying Ramsbottom and threatening to send him to England, all because a C Coy man had lost a wire-cutter.

I think our friend is something short in his mental outfit. There is nothing else I can put his disgusting manners down to. Until I met him always cherished the idea that the name ‘English officer’ was synonymous with that of ‘gentleman’. I am reluctantly compelled now to admit that it can mean ‘bully and cad’ also. It has been somewhat of a shock to me, as a disillusionment always is, and I wish with all my heart that he would go away from us and make room for some decent, mannered gentleman whom we would look up to and follow.

I cannot help feeling that an officer makes a fatal mistake in not endeavouring to win the respect and affection of those who serve under him. Men are so strange, all of us I mean. We are so ready to make a hero, and love him. Therein lies the secret of leadership, and I feel it in my bones that nothing will hold us so much when the time comes as the example of him whom we honour and love. Field punishments, CBs [Confined to Barracks] and other such minor irritants don’t help in the trenches. It is only the things that a man feels within him matter there. When you are right up alongside sudden death it is remarkable how one’s views alter and how you see what a man really is. And I know, I know, I know, that it is then that the man who has won respect and affection will triumph over him who has used his power as a bludgeon only. All of which sounds very dramatic and serious and not at all like me. But the truth, I suppose is seldom very humorous.

19th December ’15

Today we have had a regular old-time Sunday. With the exception that for church there has been no parade. And this morning Worthy and I took advantage of the leisure to ride out down the Doullens road. About two miles from here we turned into a wood with the idea of cutting across country till we found some other road to bring us back. It was pleasant in the wood. It smelt clean and fresh in there and the sunlight made a witching chequer on the brown floor of fallen leaves, which here and there was not brown at all but green, where the new grass peeped through.

We followed a cart track at first but this ’ere long petered out and we were compelled to continue along a tiny, winding way that game, or chance wayfarers or both had made. And further on this too became ill-defined and difficult to see so that we had continually to stop and part the branches to decide which way it held. I said ‘This is like the rides one reads about, where men get lost in woods but follow some such slender track from instinct and are rewarded in the end by chancing on some fairy cottage where dwells a princess.’ Worthy laughed, no doubt thinking me the ass I am. But lo, a few yards further and the track widened slightly and there on its edge stood a tiny cottage wherein a little fire burned. And on its threshold stood two tiny children hand in hand looking up at us with wide, staring eyes.

It was quite in keeping with the story, quite unreal, quite romantic, quite French. How the cottage comes there, how its owner lives and how he gets into contact with his fellows I do not know. He lives in a fairyland all his own. And I prefer to think of it like that.

Chapter 3 (#ulink_6ee5567d-64e8-559f-a693-437fe88223f6)

‘Our past glorious Xmastides together’ (#ulink_6ee5567d-64e8-559f-a693-437fe88223f6)

20 December 1915–13 January 1916

20th December ’15

Eighteen miles march between the hours of 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., with an hour off of that for dinner, is not bad going without a man falling out save four with bad feet.

The battn has done quite well today and now here we are at the end of it snugly billeted in Fourdrinoy. The change has taken place and we are now fully established members of the 7th Div, having bid goodbye to the old 30th for good and all.

Our village is very tiny and slightly more dirty than usual but, as we are here for a spell, we’ll put the latter disqualification to rights before many days are past.

We officers have struck the best billet we have seen so far. We are in the school-master’s house, which is well-furnished and most comfortable, and we have a piano. Fancy the joy of it! A piano, music and we have not heard a tune for six weeks. It has acted upon us like a tonic. You can scarcely imagine what pleasure there can be in even such a shop-soiled tune as Tipperary when you haven’t heard a note of music for nearly two months.

21st December ’15

It has rained today with a pitiless persistence worthy of a better cause. The streets are now ankle deep in mud in their worst places and the natural drains at their sides quite full with a swift running, malodorous and evil-coloured fluid, a mixture of rain, mud and the overflow from a host of ‘middens’.

We have explored the village and find it half-deserted, much in ruins, extremely dirty, and altogether an uninviting spot. We are, however, here for about a month so we must set ourselves to work to tidy up and make the place as habitable as possible. And this good work we have started on today but with somewhat indifferent success so far on account of the inclement conditions.

22nd December ’15

One gets into a habit, quite unconsciously at first, of any hold it may subsequently get on one, or, even if consciously and quite realising what one is doing, with no heed but that you can break from it any time at will. Alas, for human frailty. For instance, here did I set out, gaily and with no foreboding, upon this diary, never thinking it could become a tyrant that would ’ere long rule me, and here I am reduced to impotence when evening comes round, unable to refuse the call of these pages to be scribbled in. And that irrespective of whether I have aught to say or whether I have naught as is my plight tonight.

It is just the necessary but colourless routine here, and will be till after Xmas … Such days furnish nothing and one is forced to rack one’s brain to fill the required entry space. But fill it I must, this habit has me so in its grip.

The Xmas parcels have been coming in tonight and the mess is in considerable excitement.

Almonds and raisins, dried figs, Crême de Menthe jubes, fancy biscuits and all other such delicious and dainty things are strewn about the room so that it makes us feel strangely Xmasy.

But also it causes us considerable homesickness. One always associates almonds and raisins with bonbons and paper caps and the flushed, rosy cheeks of the girl one loves. At least I do, and the memories of our past glorious Xmastides together are with me strongly tonight. My love, how I long that our next Yuletide we may see through together once more. How the lamps will gleam, the fire leap and the laughter ring. I can see the very smile in your eyes now. God, what fools we are. We never enjoy our happy moments until they are denied us. Yet, even while I so moralise, I feel I will know how to appreciate my next Xmas day with you, my own.

23rd–25th December ’15

All these three days I record in one since I have had no time at all in which to write them up separately. It has been a rush from morning to night, trying to arrange something for the men and here we are at the end of it with nothing done. There is no room for a concert. There is no beer for the men, nothing but a bar of chocolate apiece, some tinned fruit and a packet of Woodbines. It is pretty sickening and so unnecessary.

By a little arrangement at HQ it could have all been so different and the battalion could have enjoyed a regular blow-out and appreciated it more than anything. Every other battalion in the brigade has done it except us. It is marvellous that the men can raise a smile at all. Yet they can and do. They are always cheery.

We officers had quite a decent Christmas Eve. I think every company in the battalion came in to see us and we sat up till midnight to see the 25th in. Then we drank to absent friends and thought pretty hard. We did the same at Dinner today. What a Christmas Dinner it was! How different from the old time-honoured institution at home. Yet we ate it with due solemnity, thinking all the while of our own, dear, clean, rosy-cheeked women across the water.

One good feature of this war is that it will cause many a thousand men to appreciate our England. For myself, I have groused at her and called her hard names but, when I return, if I am discontent at any time and feel inclined to rail at her I shall think of this filthy, malodorous country and call myself a fool.

The post has just come in bringing me a parcel from your mother full of almonds and raisins and dried fruits galore.

Good egg. We will gorge ourselves upon them this evening and have a snap-dragon and lots of fun. A tune strummed out on the piano, a dish of snap-dragon and a jolly lot of pals around him and what more can a man want? Only one thing. The girl he loves. But never mind next Christmas will come in its time and then we shall know how to appreciate it the more.

Diversity is the spice of one’s life I believe. If so I have just had an extra hamper. There was a crash in the kitchen. The three girls came running into me in a very excited and frightened state. ‘Les soldats sont très malharde, [malade] m’sieur!’ I go forth. Smith,

our cook, I find sitting on the range, our potatoes on the floor before him, an inane grin on his face the while he declares with somewhat blurred emphasis the fact that ‘he doesn’t believe there’s a … German this side of the Rhine at all’.

I ordered him out to bed. He saluted, said, ‘And ’bout time too, Capton’, and promptly subsided in the hearth where he gave way to uncontrollable laughter. I shout for Bunting, my trusty henchman, but remain unanswered. I shout, again. The reply is a most appalling crash. I rush into the scullery and find Bunting, my trusted man, the husband of a wife and father of a family, on hands and knees in the midst of a paralysing tangle of unwashed debris. With his head beneath the drip-board, he commenced ‘’pologising for disgrashfell ’dition’. I cursed him for a low beast, and returned to Smith. The latter was already preparing for slumber ’mongst the cinders. With my own hands I pulled them up and kicked their posteriors out of the back-door.

Later I heard from Oldham

that both the delinquents had fallen in the duck-pond. C’est très triste. I am afraid they will smell most atrociously tomorrow.

The British Tommy is something of a gross animal. I think he is drunk en masse tonight. It is terrible. Yet I cannot find it in my heart to blame him. God knows he has enough to put up with. And I cannot help but love him, even though he sits on the range and desires to slumber in the ash-pan.

26th December ’15, Boxing Day

A rather farcical marching [drill] competition marked the morning. The CO had ordered it, but neither B nor D Companies competed. It is likely there will be trouble for Worthy and myself. Noblesse oblige. Bow-wow!

The rest of the day I have spent writing, working off great arrears of correspondence and feeling much refreshed thereby. It has been quite a treat to have a slack day and we all feel twice as fit for work tomorrow. The fresh programme is out. Yet it is fresh in nothing. Only the old, well-worn routine. I must add a prayer to the soldier’s Litany. It will run something like this: ‘From all Routine and such like plagues, Good Lord deliver us.’

27th December ’15

We have had a really useful day in the open as the first of our new Routine. We have been on an improvised range and have run a competition in rapid fire which 5 Platoon won.

It was quite a lovely day, though cold, and lunch out there on the hill-side, with the wood to shield us from the wind and with no sign of house or man in all the landscape to disturb our sense of isolation, was most enjoyable. It was quite like one of the old days on the Plain and one felt it hard indeed to realise that only a few miles off there was real war.