The British soldier

by E. J. Hardy

An officer wrote: "We did seventy-eight hours on end in the trenches last spell. This morning we had a football match. Football is the only thing that takes the stiffness out of the men after being long in the trenches. They are such sportsmen."

A Scottish Borderer described life in the trenches in the following extract from a letter: "To kill time we played banker with cigarette cards. We become rather like schoolboys over food. One of our mess had a small tin of biscuits sent through the post yesterday; we all crowed over it just like youngsters. One's joys are of the primitive type when, like our ancestors, we turn to live in the fields and woods again. A padre turned up yesterday, and at night (it was not safe to begin earlier) we held a service at which a great number of our men attended. We are a light-hearted lot and so are our officers. We dug out for them a kind of a subterranean mess-room where they took their meals. One fellow decorated it with a few cigarette cards and some pictures he had cut out of a French paper. Their grub was not exactly what they would get at the Cecil. A jollier and kinder lot of officers you would not meet in a day's march. One officer who was well stocked with cigarettes divided them among his men, and we were able to repay him for his kindness by digging him out from his mess-room. A number of shells tore up the turf, and the roof and sides collapsed like a castle built of cards, burying him and two others. They were in a nice pickle, but we got them out safe and sound. There are apple trees over our trench, and we have to wait till the Germans knock them down for us. You ought to see us scramble down our holes when we hear a shell coming."

The experience of ten days in the trenches was thus described: "We dig ourselves deeper and deeper into the earth, till we are completely sheltered from above, coming out now and then, when things are quiet, to cook and eat, making any moves that may be necessary under cover of darkness. Ammunition, food, and drinking water are brought in by night; the wounded are sent away to the hospital. We do not wash, we do not change our clothes; we sleep at odd intervals whenever we can get the chance, and daily we get more accustomed to our lot. It is rather an odd existence. Little holes dug beneath the parapet just big enough to sit in are our homes, with straw and perhaps a sack or two for warmth. The cold is intense at night, and those good ladies who have made us woollen caps and comforters have earned our thanks; also, we are getting used to it. The coldest moments are those when there is an alarm of a night attack, and we spring from our sleep to stand shivering behind the parapet peering over the wall to see our enemies, and firing at the flashes of their rifles. It is exciting. Every time you put as much as your little finger over a trench there is a hail of bullets."

A regiment was in trenches under fire and returning it. Two privates noticed that the French interpreter was placed at a spot where the trench was not wide enough to enable him to make proper use of his rifle. "The Frenchman isn't comfortable," said one, and both left the trench, spade in hand, knowing well that they were serving the enemy as targets, dug out the trench in front of their French comrade, and returned with unbroken calm to their own places and their rifles.

There was a humorous attempt to be homelike. A sergeant-major by the name of Kenilworth put outside his bivouac "Kenilworth Lodge. Tradesmen's entrance at the back. Beware of the dog." The dog was picked up at Rouen.

Other shelters were named Hotel Cecil, Ritz Hotel, Billet Doux, Villa De Dug Out, etc. Soldiers called the ordinary trenches, "Little wet homes in a sewer."

Lieut. H.J.S. Shields, R.A.M.C., described his experiences in the trenches in a letter to his father. "The Germans have a battery of four guns six miles off, firing a 90lb. shell very accurately. It makes a terrible bang, a miniature earthquake, and leaves a hole 4ft. deep and 20ft. in circumference. We had about 40 within 100 yards of us this afternoon, the nearest about five yards off. Two of them have been christened 'Weeping Willy' and 'Calamity Jane.' You can hear the shell screaming towards you. With a cry of 'Here comes Jane!' all dive into their respective holes. As a matter of fact, except for two occasions, when it killed and wounded about eighty men altogether, it is less dangerous than the shrapnel, which hails once or twice an hour. Two medical officers have been killed up here, and two wounded; one had his leg blown off by 'Jane.' I make a point of entirely disregarding fire when it comes to the point of seeing to a wounded man, and pay no attention to it. I don't believe precautions, beyond the ordinary one of not exposing yourself more than can be helped, do any good, and I am rather a fatalist. After all, I always think if one is killed doing one's duty one can't help it, and it is the best way of coming to an end. I mentally repeat that to myself when I am getting plugged at. Somehow, I don't feel that God means me to get killed, though before I came out I had a conviction I should not come back alive."

Quartermaster-Sergeant A.W. Harrison, 1st Battalion King's Liverpool Regiment, wrote: "Of course we are ready to move forward at short notice, but I am afraid the first three months have played havoc with one's nerves. No description of mine could give you even a faint impression of the present war. Can you imagine one living, day in day out, for three or four weeks in a trench 6ft. deep by 3ft. wide, with such cover as one can make with a few branches and a little straw, not daring to leave it except for counter-attack, smuggling in your food and ammunition under cover of darkness, and perhaps being shelled hours at a time without seeing a single foe? Fancy not shaving nor even washing for this length of time! If you can imagine all that you will have just an inkling of what not only the private but the officer as well has to undergo. Certainly there has never been less than three to one against us. Yet, thank God! the Liverpools' line has never been broken. Compliments from our General have been showered on us, but I have seen very little mention of us in the British Press. Our men laugh and say, 'What! Do you want jam on it?' They refer to the way some of the favourite battalions have been lauded for events which have been almost everyday occurrences with us."

A private of the Royal Scots wrote to his wife: "We were thirteen days in the trenches at one place, where we only had to stand up a minute to bring a battery of German artillery on the top of us, and for hours we had to lie still or be blown to atoms. But never mind, the sun will shine again."

A British soldier described in a letter a curious Sunday morning occurrence: "While the shells were flying we heard the most impressive music. There were strains like hymns, several hundred voices evidently taking part. We listened, missing not a bar except when a shell fell and deafened us for a moment, and then we discovered that it was a big body of Germans holding some sort of Sabbath festival at the other side of the little village, hardly two hundred yards away. One section of them was firing shells; the other was singing hymns; and we were playing nap!"