1915: The Death of Innocence Read online

  Lt. J. D. Pratt, U Coy., 4th Bn., Gordon Highlanders (TF), 8th Brig., 3rd Div.

  I had to send a platoon from my company into Ypres – a party of sergeant and seven men, and they went in and they were supposed to be relieved after twenty-four hours. But the sergeant came to me and he said, ‘Can we stay another twenty-four hours?’ And I said, ‘Why, Arthur,’ I said, ‘do you like it?’ ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘We’re having a wonderful time! You see, the population’s all fled and there’s any number of people from all sorts of regiments in there. They’re grabbing stuff like hell and we’re getting plenty of booze all over the place. We’re having a grand time!’

  I believe that lots of lads pinched quite a bit of valuable stuff from Ypres and they went and buried it and hid it away in various places where they thought they would find it later, and a lot of them – probably most of them – got killed. So it’s likely that for years to come people will be unearthing all sorts of caches of jewellery and other stuff, quite accidentally.

  The army called it ‘plunder’. The soldiers called it simple common-sense. Even though the first rich pickings had run out there was still a treasure trove of desirable booty going begging (as the Tommies saw it) in the ruined streets of Ypres, and if officers seldom overtly encouraged theft it was not in their interest to ask searching questions when a mattress, or an armchair or a much-needed table was found for a Headquarters billet, or even for some damp and smelly dug-out near the line. On the whole they shared the Tommies’ view that, when welcome creature-comforts were so easy to come by, only a fool would refuse to take advantage of it. Even senior officers found it convenient to turn a blind eye and were occasionally not above conniving to arrange a few unofficial acquisitions for themselves.

  Major Cowan, who was in charge of 175th Tunnelling Company and had just been forced to move from the pleasant village of Terdeghem to an undesirable dug-out in Vlamertinghe close to Ypres, was only too happy to take any opportunity of improving it.

  Major S. H. Cowan, 175th Tunnelling Coy., Royal Engineers.

  About 11 a.m. Hart and I set off. We called first of all at 171st Company to see my NCO in charge of stores and then on into Ypres to the HQ of the 7th Brigade which was established in some old casemates under the ancient ramparts of the town. Beds, tables, carpets even, had been salvaged from the ruins and the place was really very comfortable indeed. As we were coming up towards the square where the Cloth Hall was, Fritz began to unload some ‘hate’ and we turned off hurriedly into a more secluded route. Just as we had started along there was a deuce of a bang fifty yards away and a badly wounded horse rushed past us. I took refuge with Benskin who gave me tea, and I stayed till the row stopped and Hart reappeared for me. He had a tale to tell! He had just got a very nice stove out of a ruined house and into the lorry, and very luckily the tailboard was up, when round the corner came a Brigadier and a Provost Marshal. Now, looting was a crime of the first water, but Hart had a real flash of genius and he ordered the two Army Service Corps drivers to get under the lorry and start ‘tinkering’. ‘What is this lorry doing here?’ said the Provost Marshal. ‘We’re waiting for Major Cowan of 175th Company, RE,’ replied Hart, ‘but something has gone wrong with the lorry and the drivers are trying to find out what it is.’ And as soon as the Staff were round the corner, would you believe it, that lorry seemed to get better all at once and was off and away out of Ypres by another route. I got back to the car where my intelligent driver had found time to souvenir a coffee-mill for our mess! The stove was a great acquisition, and if we hadn’t got it, a shell would probably have damaged it beyond repair the next week.

  An ordinary soldier of the line whose duties did not take him into Ypres had little opportunity for souveniring expeditions. Off-duty, the town was strictly out of bounds and on their way to and from the trenches it was an unhealthy place for troops to linger.

  Sgt. A. Rule, U Coy., 4th Bn., Gordon Highlanders (TF), 8th Brig., 3rd Div.

  A party of us detailed for fatigue duty went through Ypres on our way to the front line. Brick dust from shell-shattered buildings lay thick in the streets, muffling our tread, and as we marched on in this silent, almost ghostly, fashion, we felt like mourners assisting at the funeral rites of a city of the dead. Tumbled masonry, and occasional street barricades, constantly slowed us up. In some cases the front of a house had been sheared off as if by a gigantic knife. Floors, precariously supported by splintered joists, looked as if they only needed a touch to topple them into the street. Even the foliage of the trees in the streets had been blighted by shell-fire, and there was a foul stench of corruption from neglected sewers. The great Cloth Hall with its magnificent facade had also suffered badly. Its square tower offered a splendid ranging mark for the German guns, and at the base of it lay the clock, a twisted maze of works. The interior was completely gutted.

  Near the Grand’ Place, we came on the Church of St Martin, where an altar among a tangled wreckage of oak pews had miraculously escaped destruction. In front of the church stood a vacant pedestal, and at its base, just as if it was in the act of taking cover, lay the stone statue of some civic dignitary – staff in hand and complete with robes and chains of office. To our irreverent minds it appeared as if the old boy had gone to earth, and must now be cursing the corpulent stomach that had doubtless been his pride in many a bygone civic function. That wonderful tummy alone prevented his lying flat.

  The sight of the statue so unceremoniously cast down caused many sniggers and ribald remarks in the ranks of U Company whose spirits were never cast down for long. They were a light-hearted lot. Although officially Territorials of the 4th Gordon Highlanders, ‘U’ stood for University and they were all undergraduates of Aberdeen whose studies had been abruptly interrupted by the war. Although they had been soldiering more or less in earnest for the best part of a year they still considered themselves to be students rather than soldiers and claimed licence accordingly whenever they could get away with it. The officers, all graduates who not so long ago had been students themselves, were remarkably tolerant.

  Lt. J. D. Pratt.

  On parade – discipline all the time – you addressed an officer as ‘Sir’. Off parade you could call him ‘Jimmy’ or ‘Jock’ or whatever his name was. There was no ceremony.

  The senior officer was Colonel Ogilvie, and Tommy Ogilvie was, I think, a solicitor. He was a very human individual, hail – fellow-well-met, and he was the life and soul of the party in the mess when we were at camp in peacetime. Freddie Bain, who later was Sir Frederick Bain and who died a good many years ago when he was chairman designate of ICI, he was sergeant of the guard, and Tommy Ogilvie was Captain of the Day. So Tommy went down to the guard tent and said, ‘Sergeant, anything to report?’ So Freddie said, ‘Yes, sir, I’ve got a prisoner.’ Oh, what’s the trouble?’ ‘Oh,’ he said ‘he’s drunk.’ Tommy said, ‘Let me see the prisoner.’ So he went into the tent and there was a fellow lying completely helpless, completely blotto. So Tommy stood swaying backwards and forwards, looking down at the fellow, and he said, ‘Sergeant, that man isn’t drunk. I saw him move!’ That gives you the idea of Tommy! But when we mobilised and he became Commanding Officer he cut the whisky bottle right out, and he cut down very heavily on his officers drinking in the mess. Complete change.

  Our own Company Commander who commanded U Company was Captain Lachlan McKinnon. He’d been a student – a law student – and he’d graduated about three or four years before. He was a tall, awkward-looking fellow, a little hunchbacked, but terribly conscientious, and he had absolutely no sense of humour whatsoever. That was his great weakness. Well, we did this joke on him. He issued an order that there was to be no smoking of cigarettes on parade. On the first morning after that we marched off from our billets and after a few hundred yards he said, ‘March at ease.’ So with one motion every member of U Company took out a clay pipe and lit it up. I was Company Sergeant-Major at the back. He came back to me and said, ‘Sergeant-Major, do you see that? Do you se
e that? Members of U Company smoking pipes like ordinary council workmen. What will people think about my university men if that’s how they behave?’ So I said, ‘Well, I’m terribly sorry but, after all, you know, you barred smoking of cigarettes on parade but you didn’t say anything about clay pipes.’ Anyhow the order was countermanded. Poor old Lachie!

  He was going round the cookhouse one day and there was a fellow called Chatty Donald – who I may say, when he died, was a Harley Street brain specialist and a Brigadier in the Territorials, and Lachie said to Chatty, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I’m cooking the spuds.’ ‘Well,’ Lachie said, ‘how do you know when they’re properly cooked?’ ‘Oh,’ said Chatty, ‘that’s easy. You take one up, you biff it against the wall and if it sticks it’s cooked and if it bounces back, it isn’t!’ The Company Commander didn’t know what the bloody hell to do, or whether his leg was being pulled or what. In fact, it’s a very good rough test!

  Looking back now, U Company should have been a reservoir – a first-class reservoir – for officers. Because when we mobilised, I myself, as Colour Sergeant, had two honours degrees and all my sergeants had degrees – some of them honours – and we had about a dozen fellows in the ranks who had degrees and had already got jobs and had come back to the company.

  But the Commanding Officer, Ogilvie, set his face against anybody applying for a commission. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘if I once start allowing members of U Company to go for commissions,’ he said, ‘I admit they’d make good officers, but we shall never get overseas because they are the backbone of the battalion.’ And, of course, you must remember that, at that time, the talk was that the war would be finished by Christmas – or would be finished early in 1915. And everybody was, naturally, anxious to get out to France. And for that reason nobody was allowed to apply for a commission.

  But nobody cared much. U Company was high on enthusiasm but, on the whole, distinctly short of military ambition, and few of them had any desire to be ‘temporary gentlemen’. They were perfectly content to be temporary soldiers, to rough it, to stick it out together and, on every possible occasion, to enjoy themselves as best they could. Their singing was renowned and their repertoire was wide. They knew every chorus in the Students’ Songbook by heart, they were well-versed in traditional Scottish airs, they could harmonise like angels, and their impromptu performances in estaminets at la Clytte were generally appreciated by their comrades-in-arms in the 8th Brigade, even if they were not always understood by the men of the Suffolks and Middlesex. For some reason which was hard to fathom, the Sassenachs were especially fond of one particular song in the dialect of U Company’s native Aberdeenshire which rejoiced in the title of The Muckin’ o’ Geordie’s Byre’. It had a catchy tune, it went fast and furious, and it had a long string of verses, not one word of which the English soldiers could possibly have understood, still less joined in. But they could stamp their feet in accompaniment, faster and faster as the pace quickened, and when it reached its thunderous climax and Geordie’s byre had been well and truly mucked, they raised the roof with cheers and applause. But the ‘language problem’ caused occasional misunderstandings. ‘Give us another one, Jock,’ a Suffolk man called out in the course of one jolly evening. ‘Give us “Where’s Me Fourpence Charlie?”’ This, after some puzzlement, was interpreted as a request for a plaintive Jacobite song, more familiar to U Company as ‘Wae’s Me for Prince Charlie’. The story quickly spread, U Company sportingly adopted the revised version, and if the song thereafter lost some of its Highland charm it was always good for a laugh.

  But since they had come to the front in February U Company’s sojourn had not been entirely carefree. They had had their share of discomfort in the trenches in bitter weather and pouring rain and out of them, on what the Army was pleased to describe as ‘rest’, they had spent weary hours on irksome fatigues, supplied scores of working parties, staggered up to the line with sacks of coke, with rolls of wire, with timber, with stakes and ammunition, and the thousand and one weighty loads of supplies that were needed in the trenches. They had dug and dug and dug. They had also had their share of excitement – going out with wiring parties into the shifting shadows beyond the parapet, when the ping of stretched wire released by a nervous hand or the muffled thud of a mallet, even the click of a rifle bolt, seemed loud enough to rouse the whole German Army, let alone a German sentry in the trenches across the way. And there had been patrols when men crept deep into No Man’s Land, fighting the instinct to run when the flares went up, freezing in the brilliant light in the mild hope of resembling a tree, or playing dead among the grisly scatter of corpses lying between the lines. They had buried their own dead too, and in early May, when U Company marched off from the ‘quiet’ sector in front of Kemmel on their way to the less desirable sector at Hill 60, they had left a dozen or so of their comrades behind in their own small cemetery. Many more had gone home wounded, and in such a small cohesive company the gaps were all too noticeable.

  Now U Company was on the move again and marching through Ypres towards the salient they had no illusions about what lay ahead and, for once, they marched in silence. Even if they had felt like it, it seemed inappropriate to sing in the awesome desolate streets of Ypres. But there was one light moment. Rounding a corner they passed the remains of a large building. It was roofless and the walls were battered, but the doorway was intact and above it, in letters of brass, was the inscription ‘English Ladies’ Seminary’. As U Company crunched morosely through the dust and rubble one man began to whistle. He was whistling ‘Gaudeamus Igitur…’, and he broke off after the first few bars, but it was enough to bring a smile to every face. There wasn’t a man among them who had not lingered after lights-out outside the women students’ hostel in Aberdeen whistling that well-known signal, guaranteed to bring girls to the window to indulge in a little banter and flirtation. Grinning broadly, U Company marched past the ladies’ seminary and on through Ypres.

  Sgt. A. Rule.

  Our route towards the Menin Gate was blocked at intervals by wrecked limbers and by the swollen dead bodies of horses, stinking to high heaven and covered with loathsome flies. We breathed more freely when we had passed through the city wall and crossed the moat.

  Near a water tower (it later became a well-known landmark) we dodged an enormous shell-hole flanked by an abandoned perambulator, and skirting the shelled cemetery we carried on across country on tracks which the German gunners seemed to know by heart. Finally, after many delays and a wearisome march, we reached the trenches south of the village of Hooge, and almost at the tip of the salient.

  They marched past Hell Fire Corner and moved into trenches on the right of the Menin Road at the place they called Birr Crossroads. The 8th Brigade was not to be in the forefront of the attack. But the 7th and 9th Brigades were, and for the past ten days they had been busily engaged in training and practising in fields behind the line – advancing wave by wave in ‘open order’, attacking imaginary trenches, represented by rows of sticks in the ground and ‘consolidating’ while the next wave passed through in their turn to attack the imaginary enemy with bombs and bayonets. It made a change from the monotony of weary stints in the trenches the weather was fine, the exercise was healthy, and although Bryden McKinnell, commanding Y Company, was pleasantly fatigued at the end of each strenuous day, he even managed to put in a little badly needed riding practice in the twilight of the long June evenings. Occasionally there were thunderstorms and it was then that Y Company blessed their company quartermaster – and not for the first time. QM McFie took good care of his company and, insofar as the limitations of active service allowed, he was solicitous for their comfort. He made sure that they were well fed and, returning damp and ravenous to their field outside Brandhoek, they discovered with joy that the Quartermaster had arranged to have tea dished out on their arrival to tide them over while they waited for the evening stew, and had thoughtfully arranged for tent and blanket bivouacs to be erected in their abs
ence. It was some compensation for the fact that it continued raining all night. Parading in damp uniforms in the morning, McKinnell’s men were only slightly cast down by the news that the leave they had been eagerly awaiting was indefinitely postponed. It was Sunday 13 June, and at least there was a day off to look forward to. That evening the colonel called the officers together for a conference.

  Capt. B. McKinnell.

  Sunday June 13th 10p.m. Our orders are definite now and we know what we are in for, though not in detail. I think we are all very glad now the suspense is over. It had to come sooner or later, and very much better that it has come as an honour, namely, to be among the chosen few to do a special job, than to be among a crush. Strange to think, will I see next Wednesday at 10 p.m.?

  Tuesday June 15th. We have got all our instructions. We have a trench to take, in fact the enemy’s second line, together with the help of the Lincolns. I’m afraid it’s going to be a very difficult job. The men are all cheery and we all rag each other as to how we will look with wooden legs, or tied up in an oil sheet for burial. All the plans have been explained today, Tuesday 15th, to all ranks.

  All stores have been issued and we are waiting to march off. Hope we win! Unfortunately the Huns must know almost everything, as it has been so widely discussed. I am beginning to suspect it is done with an object. Sacrifice a brigade here and push hard somewhere else. However we are going to justify our existence as Terriers and men – we middle-class businessmen! God Save the King!