Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front

Nor was this sense of identity confined to the officers. There were Grenadier families amongst the rank and file, and the warrant officers’ and sergeants’ mess was held together by bonds no less powerful than those which linked members of the officers’ mess. It might take a guardsman two years to get his first promotion, and he would be lucky to make sergeant in less than ten. A regimental sergeant major’s tour of duty was five years, and it was not unknown for Guards RSMs to ask for extensions, arguing that there was still more to be done with the battalion.

(#litres_trial_promo)

The Grenadiers had a tangible quality, even to its rivals. Its soldiers were nicknamed Bill-Browns, as opposed to the Coalies, Jocks, Micks and Taffs of the other foot guards regiments. Private Stephen Graham, an educated man serving in the ranks of the Scots Guards, saw the Grenadiers assault stoutly-held German defences at the very end of the war.

There were heavy losses suffered there by the attackers, especially by the Bill-Browns, whose discipline, courage and fame committed them then, as ever, to doing the impossible in human heroism and endurance. I lost a whole series of comrades or friends wounded or killed. C—, who had filled up a blank file with me in Little Sparta, was killed; S—, recruited from the S.E. Railway, a jolly, happy middle-aged man, who always hailed me as Steve and had a cheery word, was killed. H—, the American boy who used to dance all night at New York was wounded.

(#litres_trial_promo)

In contrast, 4/Queen’s was a territorial battalion of the Queen’s Regiment, with a regular adjutant, regimental sergeant major and small permanent staff of regular NCOs: its other members were civilians, who soldiered in their spare time. It originated in a company of rifle volunteers formed at Croydon in 1859 in response to the threat of French invasion which had Tennyson earnestly declaiming ‘Form, riflemen: riflemen, form …’. A second company was added in 1860 to form the 1st Surrey Administrative Battalion; this became the 2nd Surrey Rifle Volunteers seven years later and the 1st Volunteer Battalion the Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment in 1881. It sent a company of five officers and 200 men to the Boer War, and in 1908 it was swept up in R. B. Haldane’s creation of the Territorial Force to become 4th (Territorial) Battalion The Queen’s Regiment, swapping its rifle-green uniforms for the scarlet of the line. Its historian suggested that it was the first territorial battalion to receive colours, presented by Lady Eldridge and Mrs Frank Watney, the wife of the commanding officer – a prominent local brewer when not engaged in his military duties.

Its men trained on weekday drill nights, one weekend each month and at a fortnight’s annual camp. There were perennial problems in ensuring that employers gave men time off for camp, and compromises between day job and military identity meant that in the battalion’s first year, 22 officers and 418 men attended the first week of camp at Brighton but only 13 officers and 241 men the second. In 1914 it found itself at camp, marching from Bordon to Salisbury Plain as part of a large territorial exercise, when war broke out. Mobilised on 5 August, it was sent to Chattenden, near Chatham. Like other territorial battalions it split, forming a first-line battalion, 1/4th, which rapidly departed for India, where it spent the whole war, seeing active service on the North-West Frontier. A second line, 2/4th, which included some men from the 1st Battalion who had not volunteered for foreign service and some wartime volunteers, eventually fought on the Western Front in 1918.

The third-line, 3/4th Queen’s, containing officers and men from the other two battalions as well as wartime recruits, spent much of its war in southern England. In December 1914, D Company was billeted on the premises of Caleys, the court dressmakers, in Windsor High Street when a fire broke out: the lights failed, but men of the company escorted the seamstresses out of the dark and smoke-filled building, earning a fulsome letter of thanks from Mr Hugh Caley, the managing director, and less formal expressions of gratitude from the ladies. The battalion always had an easy style. When it was billeted in Reigate in January 1916 an earnest (though wisely anonymous) well-wisher told his commanding officer that:

Refering (sic) to the health and cleanliness of this Battalion which has been very well kept up in the past, I must add that a certain Company are allowed to get dirty owing to the inconveniences of Local Baths going wrong. This Company has a bath room and are not allowed to use it. Trusting that this will soon be remedied.

I remain

Yours obediently

(#litres_trial_promo)

Private Richard Whatley persuaded his brother, a driver in the Army Service Corps, to apply to join the battalion, whether because of a genuine desire for life in the infantry or because he was in France and 3/4th was in Reigate it is impossible to say. Driver Whatley’s letter was written in pencil and sent in a green official envelope which meant that it was not subject to censorship within his unit – a wise precaution as its contents might not have been regarded as a vote of confidence in his current management.

5/6/16

Dear Sir

I, Driver J. Whatley (T/94354) No 1 Company 4th Divisional Train A.S.C. British Expeditionary Force, France, take the great liberty of writing these lines to you in reference of my brother Private Richard Whatley (23729) B Company of your most noble regiment. I take the liberty of asking you if you could transfer me to the same regiment as that of what my brother belongs & also to the Same Company as I wish to soldier with him if it is at all possible as I think that it would be to our own advantage as well as that of the most noble Country we are fighting for. My enlistment age is 25 7/12 years but my proper age is 18 7/12 years. I enlisted in May 1915, & my height about 5:6 or 7 inches & chest measurement just over 30 inches. Any more details I would be very pleased to send you, & hoping that I am not trespassing on your valuable time I close my short letter & remain

Your Umble Servant

Driver J Whatley

(#litres_trial_promo)

The battalion at last went to the Western Front in 1917. It fought its one major battle at Zonnebeke in the Ypres salient on 4 October: all the twenty officers who attacked that day were killed or wounded, and so much of the fabric so carefully nurtured over two years was torn apart for ever. The commanding officer’s typewritten list of officers and their next of kin bears repeated manuscript annotations showing killed and wounded. The same list reveals that by the time it went to France the battalion was already losing its regional character: only fifteen of its forty-four officers actually had next of kin in Surrey although there was a clear majority from south London and the Home Counties. There were two Irishmen, a Cornishman, and the padre (who already had a MC and was to add a DSO at Zonnebeke) hailed from Newcastle. Most of the Surrey contingent came, like the commanding officer, from Croydon, and 3/4th Queen’s enjoyed a warm relationship with the borough, whose citizens ‘continued, as in the past, to take a great interest in the doings of this battalion … and among other benefits given, the receipt each Christmas in England and abroad of puddings and tobacco was much appreciated by the battalion’. Christmas 1917 was the battalion’s last. It had turned over in killed, wounded and missing almost as many officers and men as had arrived in France seven months before (a worse casualty rate over such a short time than was sustained by some regular battalions), and was disbanded in February 1918, its soldiers posted off to other battalions.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Lastly, 11/East Lancashire, proudly known as the Accrington Pals, was a New Army (properly ‘Service’) battalion, raised in late August and early September 1914 as a result of the mayor of Accrington’s communication with the War Office, which accepted his offer of a locally-raised battalion. Recruiters set to work in Accrington, Burnley, Blackburn and Chorley, and all the powerful links within these bustling communities accelerated the process. For instance, H. D. Riley of Hawks House, Brierfield, Burnley, mill-owner and justice of the peace, had founded the Burnley Lads’ Club for working-class boys in 1905: it had a library and reading room, and offered wide sporting opportunities. On 19 September Riley placed an advertisement in the Burnley Express, announcing that a Lads’ Club Company was to be formed. Riley and seventy ex-members of the club enlisted the following Wednesday. There were not enough to form a full company, but the club members became part of D (Burnley and Blackburn) Company.

At this stage officers were nominated by the mayor, and Riley (hitherto without military experience) first became a lieutenant and the company’s second in command, rising to captain and company commander a few days later. An eyewitness described how the company first formed.

Miners, mill-hands, office-boys, black-coats, bosses, schoolboys and masters, found themselves appearing before Mr Ross and the medical officer. Young men who should have been tied to their mother’s apron-strings took home their first service pay – 1/9d in coppers – and nearly broke their mothers’ hearts. Men of mature age, patriotic or sensing adventure or to escape from monotony were ready to have a go at anyone who should pull the lion’s tail. The thing was done! 350 men of good spirit and willing in body assembled in the Drill Hall to be patiently told how to ‘form fours’.

(#litres_trial_promo)

There were few trained officers or NCOs. Colonel Sharpies, the commanding officer, was sixty-four, and had joined the Rifle Volunteers over forty years before. RSM Stanton was sixty years old, had once chased the Sioux with George Custer, fought the Zulus and the Boers, and left the army in 1905; in 1914 this old soldier answered the call for trained men, and he was to die of natural causes the following year. Most of the officers were the sons of prominent citizens, and included one of the mayor of Accrington’s grandsons. There was a sprinkling of ex-regulars among the NCOs, but most had no military experience, and many were promoted before they even had uniforms to sew their stripes to.

A. S. Durrant, who joined a New Army battalion of the Durham Light Infantry at just this time, recalled that:

I was sergeant six weeks after I joined up. You see, Kitchener’s Army was being built up, anybody with half a brain of common sense could get one stripe in no time. Your 2 stripes, 3 stripes. I tell you I was first a private and then a sergeant and I was put in charge of a hut.

(#litres_trial_promo)

To the inexperienced young were added the all-too-veteran old, as Lancelot Spicer discovered when he joined a New Army battalion of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry. He found that:

All the men were in civilian clothes and all we had for training were wooden rifles. Apart from the officers, the only ones in uniform were a few non-commissioned officers who were regulars. The Commanding Officer was Lt. Col. Holland, a retired Indian Army officer … a pleasant enough old boy, but his soldiering appeared to us young raw recruits to be of the Indian Mutiny — in battalion parades he would ask in a loud voice. ‘Mr Butler [the adjutant], how many white officers on parade?’

(#litres_trial_promo)

The Accringtons were sent to Carnarvon in early 1915, and Colonel Sharpies was quickly replaced as commanding officer by a regular, Major (temporary Lieutenant Colonel) A. W. Rickman of the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers. Rickman immediately made a good impression, as Lieutenant Rawcliffe observed:

We were brought up to attention as Colonel Rickman rode up the street towards us. He had to pass a motor-lorry parked outside a shop. This narrowed the street and his horse shied. We all thought it was going through the shop window. Colonel Rickman beat the horse hard with his stick … to make it pass the motor-lorry. What a real display of strength and will-power. What an entrance! I thought, we’re in for it now!

(#litres_trial_promo)

Private Pollard agreed. ‘He was very smart, a true professional,’ he declared. ‘We were looking at a real soldier for the first time. We knew he would sort us out.’

(#litres_trial_promo)

The battalion, in khaki uniforms which had replaced its original blue melton, spent much of 1915 on the move, from Rugely to Ripon, from Ripon to Larkhill and then, in December, to Devonport for the voyage to Egypt. It spent three undemanding months guarding the Suez canal before being sent to Marseilles for its railway journey to the Western Front. Part of 31st Division, it was allocated a leading role on the first day of the Somme, assaulting the village of Serre at the northern end of 4th Army’s line.

What happened to the Accringtons that morning was to be matched in so many other places further down the front. The men went over the top, after shaking hands and wishing each other good luck, to find uncut wire, intact machine guns and a creeping barrage which they could never catch. Lance Corporal Marshall watched the destruction of his battalion and the changing of his world:

I saw many men fall back into the trench as they attempted to climb out. Those of us who managed had to walk two yards apart, very slowly, then stop, then walk again, and so on. We all had to keep in a line. Machine-gun bullets were sweeping backwards and forwards and hitting the ground around our feet. Shells were bursting everywhere. I had no special feeling of fear and I knew that we must all go forward until wounded or killed. There was no going back. Captain Riley fell after thirty yards … the message passed down the line, from man to man – ‘Captain Riley has been killed.’

(#litres_trial_promo)

The Official History, its prose rising nobly to meet the occasion, reported that the attackers in this sector, pals’ battalions from Hull, Leeds, Bradford, Barnsley, Durham and Sheffield, continued to advance even after the German SOS barrage crashed down.

There was no wavering or attempting to come back. The men fell in their ranks, mostly before the first hundred yards of No Man’s Land had been crossed. The magnificent gallantry, discipline and determination shown by all ranks of this North Country division were of no avail against the concentrated fire effect of the enemy’s unshaken infantry and artillery, whose barrage has been described as so consistent and severe that the cones of the explosions gave the impression of a thick belt of poplar trees.

(#litres_trial_promo)

The German defensive barrage briefly switched to Serre itself. This may have been because the gunners knew some of the attackers had actually got that far. Skeletons in khaki rags were found there when the Germans pulled back from the village in 1917: some bore tarnished brass shoulder titles which read ‘EAST LANCASHIRE’. The Accringtons lost 7 officers and 139 men killed, 2 officers and 88 men missing, believed killed, and 12 officers and 336 men wounded.

(#litres_trial_promo) The battalion remained on the Western Front for the rest of the war, and while avoiding the disbandments of early 1918, and the fate which befell 3/4th Queen’s, it was never the same as it had been at 7.30 on the morning of 1 July 1916. And neither, for that matter, was Accrington, which had lost too many of its dearest and its best that day.

These three battalions were not simply different in origin, tradition and composition. They behaved differently, in the line and out of it. The relations between their officers and men were different, and their approach to the war was different too. Second Lieutenant P. J. Campbell was appointed artillery liaison officer to a Grenadier battalion in 1917 and joined it in the trenches. Its commanding officer asked whether he had been to Eton and whether he was a regular: on receiving a negative answer to both questions:

He appeared to take no further interest in me as a person, but I was impressed by him and what I saw that night. The discipline of the Guards was very strict and their behaviour even in the line very formal … The Grenadier Guards went out, an English county regiment came in, and the difference was perceptible immediately. There was an atmosphere of warm-hearted banter, cheerful inefficiency; packs and gas-masks, revolvers and field-glasses were thrown about anyhow. Now we were all civilians who hated war, but knew that it had to be fought and would go on fighting until it was won.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Major Charles Ward Jackson, an Etonian and Yeomanry officer serving on the staff, made the same point in a letter to his wife in June 1916. Some battalions seemed good enough.