Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front. Richard Holmes
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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.11
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’.12
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.13
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?’14
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!15
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.’16
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.’17
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.18
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