He died in 1989, aged 95, and left behind notes on scraps of paper that formed a sort of memoir. He didn't really talk about the war (he would very rarely, anyway, after a few glasses of sherry) but what little I heard was horrific, as were some of the details in his memoirs. His war started at Gallipoli, in 1915, and after that he fought in the trenches of Europe, mainly leading small teams across No Man's Land to capture documents, officers, and whatever else they could grab, assassinate officers, and destroy bridges and other installations -- their activities were pretty much what Special Forces types tend to do these days.
He didn't write in detail about Passchendaele, but here's what he wrote about his return to the front in 1917, after (under protest -- he didn't want to leave his men) a short time in England, in officer's school:
When I was returned to France, I was delighted to be put in charge of No 2 Platoon, ’B’ Company, in which I had been previously a Sergeant. Bullecourt was our first major Battle It was the 11th April, and bitterly cold because a lot of snow had fallen. The German Trenches, on the Hindenburg Line were protected with huge rolls of barbed wire interspersed with machine gun posts.
We went to our trenches and laid low while our huge cumbersome tanks sent barrage after barrage, of gunfire, onto the opposition trenches, and also onto the barbed wire, to try and slice through it. It wasn’t long though before the Germans crippled our tanks so we made a mad dash towards their lines. My Platoon was the first wave to go over, and we soon realised we not only had the wire to contend with but also two lines of enemy trenches to fight our way through.
I, with a handful of my men, managed to get through but when we saw a large contingent of German tanks with reinforcements coming our way, we bolted for some woods and hid there until nightfall. Once it was dark it was easy to see that few of our men had made it, and the Germans still held their lines. My fellow officers and I , realized our somewhat sticky predicament, and we knew it was our responsibility to try and get our men back over the lines to the Battalion. We split up into small groups and headed back towards the enemy lines.
The Germans, seemingly, thought everyone was back to where they should be and took little notice of the muddy individuals (us) wandering around in the dead of night, but there was no dodging the machine guns once we were in No Mans Land, and unfortunately I lost many of my men.
A number of my fellow officers went into the enemy trenches and only four of us Officers made it back! Later I was to learn hundreds of our soldiers lost their lives by being shot by the British! They arrived much later when the battle was in full swing and fired their guns at both friend and foe! ANOTHER BOTCHUP!
It still makes me very angry when I think about it.
After getting back into our trenches we fought on for another two weeks before being relieved.
This was followed; Messines; Pachendale and many other ghastly bloody battles too numerous to mention.
During October, I was hit in the knee with Shrapnel and also hurt my hand which unfortunately, went septic, so I was sent back to England on the Hospital ship, R.V. Wimereaux (sic) and put into the Southern General Hospital in Bristol .The wounds soon healed up and a month later I was back on the Front. Some of the shrapnel is still in my leg to this day.
Occasionally, I managed to get a little time away from the trenches, to have a spell at the La Touquet Machine Gun School in order to learn about the new weaponry being produced. I enjoyed these trips, away from the Front, because sometimes I managed to get a couple of rounds of golf at the famous La Touquet golf course. It was hard to imagine, when playing this delightful game, the dreadful slaughter that was still going on, not too far away from this quiet peaceful town.
He was awarded the Military Cross for his actions in France in April, 1917 -- here's the citation ("mention in despatches"):
For Gallant Conduct: On the night of the attack on the HINDENBURG LINE, to the east of QUEANT, 11-4-1917, this Officer led his platoon with great gallantry, and captured the first and second objectives. When the enemy counter-attacked, he showed great courage in the hand to hand fighting which ensued. When his platoon was decimated, and forced out, he was the last to leave, and made his way through a heavy machine gun bullet barrage, to Battalion Headquarters, where he rendered a clear and concise report with regard to the enemies defences.
In another action, for which he got another medal, he took out a machinegun nest singlehanded, Sergeant York style, with hand grenades (his platoon was down to five men and he killed ten Germans with those grenades)...all of this kind of blew my mind, after his death, because I knew he'd seen a lot of combat but he'd been an old man my whole life and it was so hard to believe that he was not only once a young man but was a pretty ferocious warrior (far better a soldier than a father, for sure).
And this, about the Somme in 1916 (one of history's great meatgrinders, a military disaster) -- my grandfather grew to hate, with the passion, the British officer class (and he was British landed gentry, from an old family with deep roots in the aristocracy that dated back to at least Canute). He came to enjoy the killing, with bayonet, as a hedge against going insane:
The 1st and 2nd battalions had preceded us to the front near Pozieres, and we were shocked at the hundreds of distorted, maggot ridden bodies, both Australian and German, lying around to greet us. It certainly was a sickening sight and one I will never forget! The barrage of heavy weaponry had made the whole area look like a ploughed field, and the ground rocked, with the concussion of the heavy shells being thrown at us.
Some trenches were hit and if a soldier was not killed outright he would be smothered with the oozing mud. Men were blown up all around me. Waves of Germans stormed our trenches, only to be bayoneted. We showed them no mercy and had a murderous lust for killing.
Most of the stretcher bearers were killed so bodies had to be left in the trenches while the battles raged. We had to walk over the remains of our dead Mates and Germans and I will never forget the ghastly noises they made when air, inside the bloated bodies, were expelled as we trod on them .It was unavoidable not to use them as bridges! It was an absolute hell on earth!
For five weeks we fought and died in this hell-hole and only managed to advance two miles to the edge of Mouquet Farm. At last the Canadians were sent to relieve us and the first terrible bloodbath was over for us. We lost a total of 22,826, men in this battle. The Somme wasn’t a fight but outright bloody murder, I cannot bring myself to blame the Germans, they were our foe, But I do blame the inept Commanders, of our Allied Army Divisions, who were supposed to protect our flank and didn’t! I was promoted, on the field, to Sergeant during this dreadful battle, and later my rank was confirmed officially. We were taken to Ypres, commonly known as Wipers amongst us, in the Comines area of Belgium.
War sure as hell is hell. :-(
Rest in peace, old soldiers.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
