Army service with a smile!

Humorous hymn sheets kept the soldiers smiling 

Following my previous post's theme of faith at the Front, here's a hymn sheet that must have raised a few chuckles among the troops.

Entitled 'Daily routine of a soldier's life told by a few well-known hymns', it belonged to Stanley Goodhead, a Manchester soldier whose vivid letters from France and Belgium are included in my book.

Most men would have known these hymns well, but even in today's more secular times when they may not be as familiar, they still make an amusing read:

3.30am Reveille - 'Christians Awake'

6.45am Rouse Parade - 'Art Thou Weary, Art Thou Languid'

7am Breakfast - 'Weekly Wait and Murmur Not'

8.15am Company Parade - 'When He Cometh'

8.45am Manoevres - 'Fight the Good Fight'

11.15am Swedish Drill - 'Here We Suffer Grief and Pain'

1pm Dinner - 'Come Ye Thankful People Come'

2.15pm Rifle Drill - 'Go Labour On'

3.15pm Lecture by Officer - 'Abide With Me'

4.30pm Dismiss - 'Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow'

5pm Tea - 'What Means This Eager Anxious Throng'

6pm Free for the night - 'O Lord How Happy We Shall Be'

6.30pm Out of bounds - 'We May Not Know, We Cannot Tell'

10pm Last Post - 'All Are Safely Gathered In'

10.15pm Lights out - 'Peace, Perfect Peace'

10.30pm Inspection of guards - 'Sleep On Beloved'

A rather different mood was struck by this hymn that was written specially for men at the Front. The words certainly pulled no punches, for example: 'For those who weak and broken lie in weariness and agony'. But at least the truth of war was confronted, and support was offered in the form of faith.

Lord God of hosts, Whose Mighty Hand

Dominion holds on sea and land,

In Peace and War Thy Will we see

Shaping the larger liberty.

Nations may rise and nations fall,

Thy Changeless Purpose rules them all.

When death flies swift on wave and field,

Be Thou and sure defence and shield!

Console and succour those who fall,

And help and hearten each and all!

O, hear a people's prayers for those

Who fearless face their country's foes!

For those who weak and broken lie

In weariness and agony -

Great Healer, to their beds of pain

Come, touch, and make them whole again!

O, hear a people's prayers and bless

Thy servants in their hour of stress!

For those to whom the call shall come

We pray Thy tender welcome home.

The toil, the bitterness, all past,

We trust them to Thy Love at last.

O, hear a people's prayer for all

Who, nobly striving, nobly fall!

For those who minister and heal,

And spend themselves, their skill, their zeal -

Renew their hearts with Christ-like faith,

And guard them from disease and death.

And in Thine own good time, Lord, send,

Thy Peace on earth till Time shall end!

With thanks to Barbara Rosser for the hymn sheet, and Jackie Carpenter for the hymn.

'The guns were firing all through the service'

'Church service before the battle'

'God' is a words that crops up frequently in WW1 soldier's letters, which is not surprising for men who grew up in a world in which Christianity was part of everyday life. Some were more devout than others and one particularly moving letter was written by 19-year-old Private Ernest Adams of Leeds, to be read by his mother and father in the event of his death. (He was killed in action near Ypres in September 1917):

'Dear Parents, I know how you will grieve and my heart aches for you, but I beseech you to think not of me as dead, but just gone home to God, there to dwell in peace and rest, freed from all earthly strife. Think too of how much pain and sin might have been mine had I lived. But now I am pure and white in God's own house. Well, goodbye, and may you find peace and joy that comes from God alone.'

Not all were quite as religious, but faith gave strength to far more men than is probably the case today. 'Thank God he has brought me through,' wrote Private Tom Fake, of Bristol, to his wife on Armistice Day. During two years in the trenches he had ended every letter to her with 'God bless you'.

Services were often held in the trenches, frequently before battle, and many found great comfort in hymns they would have sung in church at home with their families. This diary entry was written by Sergeant George Fairclough during fierce fighting on the Western Front in September 1914:

'The big guns were firing all night. We had a regimental service with the hymns: 'O God Our Help in Ages Past', 'Fight the Good Fight', 'Heavenly Father in the Mercy', and 'Lead Kindly Light', the guns were firing all through the service.'

Very often prayer books and bibles are found tucked away amongst soldiers' letters, and inside a prayer book belonging to Private Edwin Wood, a signaller with the Gloucestershire Regiment, are printed notes about the way to conduct services for troops:

The Lessons selected should be very short.

Hymns may be sung at the commencement and end of the Service,

and after the Sermon.

The Sermon should also be short.

'God save the King' should be sung before the Blessing at the end

of the Service.

Special Prayers may be added at discretion.

On the facing page is a Morning Prayer which begins:

'We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done.'

The prayer then asks God for forgiveness and for help in following a more 'righteous, godly and sober life'. Let's hope someone passed on the message to the politicans and generals.

(With thanks to Sandra Lambert, Jackie Carpenter and Andy Goodenough for the letter extracts; the Wood family for prayer book extracts; and Bob Griffin for the postcard illustration.)

Write fifteen chapters? That's the easy bit!

Sorry, no time for blogging!

Ever since July 2012, when I began this blog, the column on the right has confidently talked about 'Letters from the Trenches' being finished by January 2014. However, the more observant readers may have noticed that this deadline has now come and gone!

Let me assure you that the book has been finished (bar a few loose ends) and allow me to explain why I haven't proudly announced the fact....I'm afraid I simply haven't had time.

I had no idea that completing this, my first book, would involve so many small but time-consuming tasks that have kept me working - with no time for blogging - like a hamster on a wheel. Take the Introduction, for example, something I had thought would be a pleasure to compose after writing fifteen chapters that demanded discipline, accuracy and a lot of research. But without soldiers' letters to talk about I was bereft of ideas and it took me far longer than I had expected to marshal my own thoughts for the book's opening.

Meanwhile, I've been sorting out my bibliography and assembling credits for all the letters and pictures I've used in the book, a task made doubly difficult by my decision to list alphabetically every man and woman whose letters or diaries I've mentioned, along with their relatives who are letting me use them. It's a way of saying thankyou, and also a small tribute to the people who lived through the war or gave their lives. But boy, does it take a lot of checking!

I've also had two longstanding gaps in my text which were waiting to be filled by letters held at the Imperial War Museum in London. Only last week did I finally manage to get up there and copy them out (yes, I'm sure I could have had them sent to me, but I wanted to see the real things for myself). Were they were worth the long journey from Bristol? Certainly. One describes the final moments of the famous German pilot Baron von Richthofen before he crashed to earth; the other is a poignant letter written to a British family by a German soldier who comforted their dying son on the battlefield.

Whilst in London I also met up with my editor from Pen and Sword Books to discuss images for the book - another wearying matter! I have so many lovely pictures - all kindly lent by those who also shared their relatives' letters - that it's been an awful job deciding which to use, and one that is still ongoing.

So you see, writing the book was the easy bit. Tying up the loose ends has been far harder and...oh dear...I haven't even thought about the index yet. But none of this need worry you. I shall keep blogging even after 'Letters from the Trenches' is published - so keep watching this space!

'We are having real winter weather now'

French troops man a listening post on the Western Front, winter 1917 

Continued from previous post...
Christmas celebrations were soon forgotten when the weather turned bad on the Western Front in January 1917. It wasn't long before growling guns, frozen slush, and freezing 5.30am starts became the main talking points in this Canadian officer's letters home:

'We are having real winter weather now, colder than anything we experienced last year. There has been quite a depth of snow lying for the past ten days and the ground is frozen hard. The temperature could not have been much above zero this morning which is very cold for this country. Fortunately we are not in the trenches but in billets in a village behind the lines. It is none too comfortable in billets but I hate to think of what it must be like in the trenches.

'The day the snow started we marched ten miles in a thick storm. A very hard wind was blowing and the storm at times looked almost like a blizzard. The roads are now covered with ice and frozen slush. This mess makes very bad going for hosrses.

'I have sick parade now at 6.30am and this means getting up at 5.30am. My washing is frozen in the room every morning. I used to think that Canada was a cold coutnry. Our men are sleeping in barns without fires. The most of them are keeping in very good health in spite of the severity of the weather.

'The guns are growling away every night and day but we are just now pretty well out of the area of shelling. The shells should detonate well on the frozen ground.'

'The French know how to raise good turkeys!'

Christmas celebrations on the Western Front
Source: Nationaal Archief, Netherlands

The traditions of Christmas were always appreciated by troops fighting at the Front, and New Year letters home were full of the celebrations they had enjoyed. Festive meals were often elaborate and well thought-out and lots of planning obviously went into this repast, described by a Canadian medical officer at the beginning of 1917:

8 January, France

'We had a much better Christmas this season than last. Fortunately we were out of the trenches in resreve and billeted in huts. The weather was fairly well behaved although we had some rain. All the men has a good Christmas dinner including turkey, plum pudding, beer, nuts, candy etc. We had previously ordred 500 kilos of turkey. We made a contract for them and the dealer shipped them in from Normandy. I must say the French know how to raise good turkeys.

'The tables were set in the YMCA hut and we hired dishes from the French civilians. We had to divide the dinner into four sections, one for each company. Two were held on Christmas day and two the day after. The band rendered musical programs during the dinners and each night put on a minstrel show which was really not at all bad. We had  good dinner in battalion HQ mess, but most of our pleas ure was derived from seeing the men have a good feed and enjoy themselves for once.'

But it wasn't long before Christmas was forgotten and the officer's next letter was more concerned with growling guns, frozen slush, and freezing 5.30am starts. Extracts will be published in the next post, so watch this space.

'A pretty sight, all the trees glistening white'

An embroidered card sent from France

A letter-writer who pops up frequently in my book is an unassuming soldier from Bristol called Tom Fake. He served on the Western Front (and survived) for two years and wrote regularly to his wife in a style that was plain and simple - he told it as it was. His letters have been beautifully kept by his family and below is a rather poignant one to his wife and young son written at Christmas 1917. It begins with some disappointing news...

Friday, 21st December 1917

'Well my dear I am not in the running for a leave this Christmas, just missed it, but I shall be in the next lot and that will probably be next week, so when you answer this letter, you need not write again till after I have been home.

'Well my dear, it won't be so bad if I am home for the new year will it? All the same I should liked to have been home for Christmas. I hope you will have a pleasant time, but I know it is no good to wish you a merry Christmas, make the best of it won't you, and all being well I shall be home to cheer you up for the new year.'

He goes on to describe the crisp weather they've been having in France, and explains plans for some early festive celebrations because his unit will be back in the trenches on Christmas Day.

'We have had some very hard weather ever since I wrote you last, it must be cruel for the men up the line, but where we are to it's is a pretty sight, all the trees are glistening white or at least it has been up to this evening, but since dark it has started thawing. We are keeping up Christmas Day on Sunday (as we are going up the line again) and I think we shall have a fine time by what I can hear.

'I had a small parcel from the Dowsetts a few days ago, it consisted of a handkerchief khaki colour, and an ounce of tobacco, very good of them wasn't it.'

A HAPPY AND PEACEFUL CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL

'Every day the garrison became weaker'

Kut-al-Amarah in ruins at the end of the siege

Mesopotamia might not rank as one of the best-known campaigns of the First World War, but the stories and letters to emerge from it are every bit as gripping as those from the Western Front or Gallipoli.

I've been lucky enough to discover for use in my book a vivid account of the siege of Kut-al-Amarah, on the River Tigirs, which began on December 7th 1915 when the Turkish Army besieged soldiers of the 6th Indian Division.
 
It lasted five months, during which those inside held out in freezing temperatures and heavy rain against infantry assault, sniper fire, shelling and bombing. Hundreds died of wounds and disease and food quickly began to run short - especially as 6,000 Arabs who lived in the town also needed to be fed. The division's livestock was gradually slaughtered, but hunger was still rife among Indian soldiers whose beliefs stopped them eating horsemeat.

Three attempts were made to relieve Kut but they all failed and at the end of April 1916, on the brink of starvation, the men surrendered and were taken prisoner.

Besieged: Capt Sandes

Among those trapped in Kut was Captain Edward Sandes, a Royal Engineer who wrote a long, journal-style letter which he hoped to send to his mother but was never able to. Extracts from this letter will be used in my book. After the war, Sandes wrote a personal memoir which included a description of his time in Kut, and below is an extract which shows how food came to dominate the men's waking hours.

'Every day, as rations were gradually reduced, the garrison became weaker and less able to take the field. We were now getting only twelve ounces of bread instead of a pound, no vegetables or sugar, two ounces of jam or one ounce of butter, and half an ounce of tea. On the other hand, we received one and a quarter pounds of horseflesh instead of a pound of beef or mutton. Now that the weather was gettiing warmer I found horseflesh more repulsive than before and could never eat the whole of my ration.

'Three camels, the only ones in Kut, were slaughtered one day, and as my 23 men [Indians] still refused to eat horseflesh I indented for camel meat and received 29 pounds as their ration. They roasted it in the couryard below my room and had a great feast; but the smell nearly made me sick and I had to refuse some tit-bits they generously offered me.

'Only the coarsest type of tobcco could now be bought from the Supply and Transport Corps. European cigarettes had vanished, so cigarette smokers bought the Arab variety from a few small shops still open in the bazaar. This consisted of a narrow paper bag filled with tobacco dust and was provided with a tube as a mouthpiece. It was a dangerous contraption and unpleasant to smoke. Burning tobacco dust fell onto one's tunic, and the acrid taste made one's throat sore. Even before the price became prohibitive, I smoked very few.'

Captain Sandes went on to become a well-respected writer of military history and his excellent book 'In Kut and Captivity' can still be found in secondhand bookshops.