The Trenches Read online

  March–April 1917

  On 15 March, Rob and I began our training at Blackhall Camp, which had been set up on the racecourse just outside Carlisle. We were given uniforms of a rough, grey material with the Lonsdale’s very own badge and shoulder flashes sewn on the sleeves. We were billeted in long wooden huts, with bunk-beds running along the two long walls. Rob grabbed the bottom bunk of our pair and I took the one on top.

  The huts were pretty basic, just light, timber buildings, but considering they’d been put up quickly, they weren’t too bad. The only thing really wrong with them was that they were cold. The walls seemed strong, but when the wind blew at night when we were asleep, it came in through the timber sheets and caused a terrible draught.

  During the day we did our marching drill using wooden poles instead of rifles because we were told the soldiers at the Front needed all the rifles.

  At the end of the first day, Rob looked at his pole and sniffed scornfully and said, “I hope I get a chance to practise with a real rifle before I go into battle. I don’t think a wooden pole will be much use against the Hun.”

  We dug trenches and then filled them in again for three days on the trot. By the end of those three days my back and arms were killing me! It seemed so stupid to me, digging a trench just to fill it in again. One of the boys in our hut, Jed Lowe, said we had to learn how to dig trenches because that’s what we’d be living in when we got to the Front. He reckoned he knew because his older brother was already out there in Flanders. He said we needed to fill the trenches in again so that the next lot of recruits would have somewhere to dig up, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to practise digging. I supposed Jed knew what he was talking about, having a brother at the Front, but it still seemed a big waste of effort to me. To my mind, we should have been spending our energy fighting the Hun.

  The weeks passed. We dug trenches. We filled them in again. We drilled. We marched. We drilled some more. I became an expert in handling a wooden pole and pretending it was a rifle.

  It was in the middle of the third week that I was sent for by our Commanding Officer. I was puzzled, as was Rob. What had I done wrong that I was being summoned in this way?

  An awful thought struck me. Had my mum gone to the authorities and complained about them taking me when I was under age? Was that what it was?

  I put this to Rob, and he frowned and said it was possible. “The only way to find out is to go and see what he wants,” he said. That was the way with Rob. Straightforward.

  Knowing he was right, but with a sinking feeling in my chest, I went to the Commanding Officer’s Quarters.

  Our Commanding Officer, Brigadier Reynolds, motioned me to stand at ease after I had saluted.

  “Private Stevens,” he said. “I understand that you worked as a trainee telegraph operator at the Citadel Railway Station in Carlisle. Is that correct?”

  I was surprised by the question. I couldn’t see what it had to do with my being in the army and going to fight the Huns.

  “Yes, sir!” I replied.

  “In that case, it looks like we’ll be losing you,” he said.

  I was shocked. Did that mean I was going to be thrown out of the army? I knew that some people had what they called “reserve occupation” jobs, which meant the authorities felt it was more important that that person stayed in England to do that job rather than go and fight, but I couldn’t see that a trainee telegraph operator came under that heading. How could they be losing me?

  “But I want to go to France, sir!” I blurted out.

  “Oh, you’ll be going to France all right,” said the Brigadier. “Only not with the Lonsdale Battalion. The Engineers are desperate for men with technical experience, especially in telegraphs and communications. So, you’re being assigned to the Royal Engineers, Signals.”

  For the first time since we were tiny nippers, Rob and I were split up. It was strange to be saying goodbye to him. We’d been together as best mates all our lives, living in the same area, in the same classes at school, and even working at the same place, the railway station.

  “Don’t worry,” grinned Rob as I packed my stuff up that evening, ready to go. “We’ll meet up again on the Front. While I’m shooting Huns and winning medals and you’re mending bits of broken wire.”

  I forced a grin back at this, but I had to admit that what he said rankled with me. I’d joined up to fight, not to work a telegraph key, or repair signalling equipment. I could have stayed behind in Carlisle and done that.

  “Huh! Don’t you worry,” I responded. “Once I get over there I won’t just be stuck working on the telegraph. As soon as the officers see how brave I am under fire I expect they’ll put me up at the Front as well. I’ll be shooting as many Huns as you, you can count on it.”

  “I’ll have a head start on you,” said Rob. “We’re off the week after next.”

  I thought of what lay before me then. More training. More things to learn. Meanwhile, Rob would be out there at the Front, getting all the glory.

  My face must have showed how miserable I felt about it, because Rob laughed and slapped me on the back.

  “Don’t put on such a long face, Billy,” he grinned. “I didn’t really mean it about getting more Hun than you. Come on, cheer up. We’re all in the War together.”

  “Yes, but you’ll be actually in the War,” I said gloomily. “Me, I’ll be on the edges, sending messages, just like you said.”

  Next morning I went off to a camp in Yorkshire for further training to be an Engineer, while Rob carried on at Blackhall Camp.

  If I thought Engineer training would be easier, I was wrong. It still meant lots of digging trenches and filling them in again, just the same as before. The difference was I had extra stuff to learn.

  I already knew quite a bit about Morse code and telegraph keys from my work at the Citadel Station, plus a bit about wireless. Now I had to go to lessons to learn even more. Most of it was practical stuff, how to repair a cable, fitting connections, that sort of thing.

  Most of the other blokes were like me, they’d joined up to fight and found themselves put into the Engineers because of the work they did in civilian life.

  One of my new pals was a fellow called Charlie Morgan. He was from Newcastle. He worked at the railway as a telegraph operator, but, being 21, he wasn’t a trainee any more but a fully trained-up operator.

  I liked Charlie because he was so confident about everything. He was sure we were going to win the War. He was sure he was going to be rich one day. He was going to have one of the biggest houses in Newcastle. All it took was time. It was good to have someone like Charlie as a mate, it sort of took the edge off Rob not being around any more to keep things cheerful.

  I spent four weeks at the Engineers Training Camp, by the end of which I could mend a telegraph cable, and dig a ditch (and fill it in again) in my sleep. During the training, six of us Engineers had palled up. As well as me and Charlie there was Ginger Smith, Wally Clarke, Danny MacDonald and Alf Tupper. Danny was just a year older than me at eighteen, Ginger was nineteen, Charlie, Wally and Alf were in their early twenties. We’d all been working on the telegraph, which gave us something in common. Plus, we’d all volunteered to go out and fight the Hun, but had all ended up in the Engineers learning how to repair telegraph and telephone cables instead, which had annoyed all of us. But, as we’d all learned during our training, orders are orders and you didn’t argue. As one of our sergeants had told us during training, “When I say ‘Jump!’ you don’t even ask how high – you just jump! You’re not in the army to ask questions!”

  I knew that by now Rob and the rest of the Lonsdale Battalion would have been in France for some time, and I wondered how he was. Had he managed to bag his first Hun?

  At the end of the four weeks, we were told that our training was over and at long last we were headed for the Front. I almost cheered when we got our sailing orders. At last, I was going to War!

  May 1917

  For someone like me who
’d never travelled much farther from Carlisle than the coast at Silloth, a distance of about 30 miles (unless you counted the journey from Carlisle to the Signals Unit in Yorkshire), the journey to Belgium was a really big adventure.

  Charlie put on the air that this journey was nothing to him. “I’ve been all over the place,” he told me. “Wales. Scotland. Cornwall. I’ve been everywhere.”

  “London?” asked Ginger.

  “Loads of times,” shrugged Charlie. “London’s nothing but another Newcastle, only maybe a bit bigger.”

  We took a train south to London, and then another train from London to Folkestone. There we were loaded on to a troopship, which took us across the Channel from Folkestone to Boulogne. I didn’t think the sea was too bad, although it was rough enough for Charlie and Alf to get seasick. At first Charlie tried to pretend that he was a seasoned traveller and it wasn’t seasickness, it must have been something he ate, but when other men got seasick as well he stopped pretending.

  During this long journey there was a sense of excitement among all of us. Not only were we going abroad, we were going to fight the Hun!

  The train from Boulogne took us to a town called St Omer. All the way along on the train I kept expecting to see signs of the War, but the only real signs were the large amount of soldiers everywhere all dressed in khaki. That, and big guns on wheels being hauled along.

  I saw a few tanks as well. I’d never seen tanks before. They were huge metal monsters with caterpillar tracks, and big guns poking out. It was said they could crawl over any sort of mud and just keep firing, the shots from the enemy would just bounce off the metal casing.

  “Not much sign of any fighting,” said Wally, looking disappointed.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll find it soon enough all right,” said another soldier who was pushing his way through the crowded train. “And if you don’t, it’ll find you.”

  When we reached St Omer we were transferred to buses taking us to a smaller town called Poperinghe.

  “How d’you spell that?” Danny asked an older soldier.

  “Why d’you want to know how to spell it?” asked the soldier. “This war’s about fighting, not about reading.”

  “I need to know so when I write home to my mum I can tell her where I am,” said Danny.

  The older soldier laughed out loud.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Danny, puzzled.

  “It’s a waste of time putting place names in any letters back home,” said the soldier. “They cross ’em out.”

  “Who do?” asked Alf.

  “The army censors,” replied the soldier. “It’s in case our letters fall into enemy hands. They don’t want the Hun knowing where our units are, or what we’re doing, do they?”

  I was a bit annoyed at the thought of someone else reading my letters home. Letters are supposed to be private. Mind, I could see that what the soldier said made sense.

  The village we were headed for, this Poperinghe, was in an area called Passchendaele. It was near a town they said was called Wipers (which I found out later was spelled Ypres and was actually pronounced Eepre).

  I kept my eyes on the landscape as our bus rolled along. It was flat country, really flat, made up of green fields with a small wood every now and then. I could see a few houses scattered about here and there in between the fields. It reminded me a bit of the flat part of Cumberland back home, up by the Solway Plain, but even that had more hills than this place.

  It was nightfall when we finally got to Poperinghe. There was no time to take a look at the town and get an idea of what it was like: as soon as we got off our bus we were lined up and marched off towards some fields just outside the town where the army had set up camp. Rows and rows of tents stretched for what looked like miles. The Union Jack flew on a flag-pole. In other fields further away I could see other flags flying.

  “Australians,” nodded Wally, pointing at one of the other flags, which seemed to be stars and a small Union Jack on a blue flag. “I recognize the flag ’cos I’ve got an uncle who lives out there.”

  “Maybe he’ll be over here with the Australian troops?” suggested Danny.

  “Unlikely,” said Wally. “He’s 70 years old.”

  We were assigned six men to a tent, and our group snaffled a tent quick so that we could all be together. We’d each grabbed a bunk and were starting to sort our gear out, when a soldier from another unit poked his head into our tent.

  “New arrivals?” he asked.

  “Aye,” said Charlie. “Just got here.”

  “Well, in a minute the bugle’s going to blow for food, so if you want to make sure you get there among the first, take my tip and head over to the mess tent right now.”

  With that he gave us a wink, then hurried off.

  “Food!” sighed Alf. “About time! Come on, lads, let’s get over there!”

  The six of us hurried towards the mess tent. Signs had been put up pointing out where it was. Also, the smell of food cooking was wafting over the camp, so we just followed our noses.

  Until I sat down at a long wooden trestle table with a plate of stew and mashed potato, I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. I hadn’t sat down to a proper meal since just before getting on the boat at Folkestone. We’d grabbed some food at Boulogne, and then again at St Omer while we were waiting for our bus, but this was our first proper meal since leaving England. I wolfed down my food in a state of excitement. I was in Belgium with my mates, ready to start winning the War!

  After mess, it was back to the tent and lights out, and sleep. Not that I could really get to sleep. After the long journey I’d had, all the way from Yorkshire, I thought I’d be worn out and ready to sleep, but my mind was in a whirl. All I could think of was that I was finally here, ready for battle. What would it be like at the Front? What would we be doing as Engineers?

  Next morning the six of us loaded up our packs and joined the column of men heading for the Front. Our column was about 100 men strong, and made up of men from different regiments, some going to fighting units in the trenches, others – like us – being sent to support units. The routine, our Sergeant told us, was seven days in the front-line trenches, followed by seven days back at our billets, then seven days in the trenches again, and so on. We were being thrown in at the deep end straight away, off for our first week at the very heart of the battle.

  We marched towards the Front along roads made of cobbles. The nearer we got to the Front, the worse the roads became, the cobbles sinking into mud and disappearing beneath the surface, until in the end we were marching as best we could on a potholed muddy track.

  We were lucky that our training back home had made us fit, because the weight we had to carry on our backs in our haversacks made the marching even more difficult. As Engineers, we didn’t have rifles and ammunition to weigh us down, but in their places we had bigger and heavier picks and shovels, as well as our mess tin and our water bottle. We also had our gas mask, which we’d been told might one day save our lives, so I made sure mine was within easy grabbing distance.

  We Engineers were near the back of the column, and I couldn’t help a feeling of envy when I looked at the fighting men marching in front of us. That was where I wanted to be. Armed and ready to fight. Not for the first time, I wondered how Rob was doing out here. Had he killed his first Hun yet?

  After miles of marching our legs and shoulders ached, but as we neared the Front we could hear the booming sounds of heavy guns in the distance, and even at this range we could feel the ground shuddering beneath our feet from the heavy shells.

  “Looks like we’ve found the War at last,” grinned Charlie, and me and Wally started to chuckle nervously, but we were soon cut short by a yell of, “No talking in the ranks!” from one of the Sergeants just behind us.

  We marched on in silence. So this was the Front. I had never seen anything so desolate before. Just a sea of mud as far as the eye could see. Mud and barbed wire, and deep craters. And miles and miles of trenches filled
with soldiers. I wondered where our trenches stopped and the German trenches began. Where was the enemy? I felt a knot of excitement in my belly as I craned my head, scanning the horizon for any sign of them.

  “Right turn!” came the order from the Sergeant at the front of our column, and we turned off the road and descended into a trench. I’d dug ditches back home but these trenches were deeper than any of them. This one was about 7 feet deep and about 3 feet wide, its stinking clay walls held back by anything that was available: bits of timber, strands of wire, pieces of corrugated iron, sandbags.

  Wooden duckboards formed a kind of walkway along the trench, but they were slippery with mud, and in many places they’d broken and sunk under the water. As we made our way along the trench, doing our best to keep our footing, we passed soldiers covered with mud. The holes were filled with freezing cold and stinking water.

  “More lambs for the slaughter!” commented one mud-covered soldier as we passed him.

  The other soldiers laughed, but their laughter was cut short with a shout from their Sergeant Major, who hollered, “Shut up in the ranks, you lot, or I’ll have you all shot for treasonous talk!”

  The Royal Engineers were among the first to be dispersed. There were a dozen of us, including Charlie and me, and as we stumbled down the rickety wooden steps into what appeared to be a hole in the ground lit by smoky kerosene lamps, a cheer went up from the grimy soldiers inside the hole.

  “Look, lads! Relief is here!” chuckled one.

  Charlie looked round at the wet clay walls held up by shafts of timber.

  “You’d need to be a rabbit to be able to live here,” he said.

  “Think yourself lucky we’ve got somewhere like this,” said one of the grimy soldiers. “It’s only because we’re Engineers. The fighting units don’t even have this luxury!”

  “Their officers do, Paddy,” commented another soldier. “Caves with proper chairs and tables in them. I’ve seen them.”