Welcome to the New Year ... 2013 and 1918

Happy New Year everyone and may your 2013 be a good one.

Before I turn the clocks back to the First World War, here's a bit of festive whimsy from this century which I hope you enjoy - just click the arrow. What did your decorations get up to when your back was turned? 

And so to the Great War and below is a card - with ribbon still attached - sent home from Europe by an Australian soldier in 1918, the year that finally saw the end to a war so terrible that it's hard to imagine how anyone could have lived through it. The card is from a marvellous collection belonging to Lorraine Judge, an Australian family historian. I look forward to bringing you lots more interesting bits and pieces from my research during the coming 12 months, and I will also let you know how my book is progressing now that the writing stage has just begun. Happy New Year.

 

 

 

'Remembering absent friends at Christmas'

This week here's another of the Christmas letters George Lamb sent home to his family in Canada. The year is now 1917 and at last he's arrived in France, enjoying Christmas in fine style but also remembering absent friends. Tragically, this was to be his final Christmas. George Lamb was killed in action the following March, aged 22. His-larger-than-life personality comes alive in the letters he wrote home, though, and George will be one of the stars of my book. (For his 1916 Christmas letter, see last week's post.)


'Our menu was everything
that could be expected'

December 26, 1917

My Dear Mother,

As you will see by the date Xmas is over and although it was my first one in France, I hope I shall enjoy my next one as well in Canada. Our menu was everything that could be expected and the quantity was plenty, I wished I had one of the menus, in fact I remember now I have it, so will enclose it. You could not imagine the good time we had, several of the old faces were absent, but at the same time we have to expect casualties, and perhaps a greater percentage next year when our smashing will begin for a clean sweep.

The officers and sergeants acted mess orderlies and of course we made them all reply with speeches, which they did. In the evening a couple or so of us journeyed out to a little estaminet [cafe] where there are two of the nicest girls I have seen in France. They were driven from some Belgian city, have plenty of money, well educated and so obliging and different from most of the French over here. It was a fine finish after such a good day as we had.

Winter has settled in for good alright now, snow has fallen about four to six inches and although it is not so cold, the melting and snowing again make it disagreeable for the feet. One thing I felt glad about is when the 22nd of December, the shortest day, had finished and from now on we shall be getting longer days although it won't have much effect for awhile.

I suppose you received my card by now, it was kind of late coming. I only had two, it was all I could get, I sent the other to Cassie [his fiancee]. I haven't had any Xmas parcels from anyone. I suppose the mail will be tied up for a while, so much to handle. I had one from Aunt Alice in England, also several letters, she has been very good indeed to me and I wished you would write her once in awhile.

I am helping fix up cars to-day so must get back to work or I'll get fired. Very little news these days only that the war is still going on and glad that conscription passed in Canada.

With fond love to all, I am as ever your loving son George.

'Mud, booze and a bawling-out at Christmas'

Christmas was a testing time for soldiers and nurses during the First World War, especially if they had never been away from home before, and particularly if 'home' was thousands of miles away.

This week's post features a letter written by a Canadian soldier, 21-year-old George Lamb, at Christmas 1916 when he was in Kent, England, waiting to be posted to the front. Although he was missing home, he certainly wasn't feeling sorry for himself and his letter gives a peep at what Christmas was like in a camp full of men. 
Lamb was a larger-than-life character and his letters were always colourful and interesting. You'll be able to read more in my book.

Next week I'll post a letter Lamb sent to his mother a year later, Christmas 1917, when he'd been at the front for eight months.


December 27, 1916

My Dear Father,

Xmas has just passed and a very poor one it was for me, although under the circumstances as good as could be expected. Things were not realistic, the weather conditions were not as usual, the environment and surroundings were entirely different from my previous Xmas. Where I was always looking for a nice skate in the afternoon at home here we were trailing around in the mud.


I was on duty as Cpl of the Guards the day before, and was glad my turn had come that day instead of yesterday, when about 90% were extremely happy, in fact they were too saturated with booze to be anything else, it flowed around like water and officers and all were in the swim making it one jolly glorification of their first and perhaps last Xmas in khaki.


I got into a jackpot the day before, a sergeant bawled me out without reason in a rough shod manner and I told him in exchange that he wasn’t dealing with convicts now, as he was previous to enlisting employed as jail warden. This made him mad and he told a man off to put me under arrest, but as I studied what crime I was up against I prepared my defense and he knew I was right and he was wrong, so at the last minute before I was to come up before the OC [officer in charge] he withdrew the charge.

I have not got to France as yet, am earnestly waiting my chance. Fifty more of our boys went across the day before Xmas. I am beginning to think the war is very nearly over, as Germany is getting quite strong for peace, and by this morning’s paper, I see where neutrals have also butted in proclaiming that it should come soon.


I had a lovely parcel from Doris yesterday full of all nice things which are impossible to get over here. I have had seven in all, and they were all full of eatables and useful soldiers articles, its so nice to have friends and I will sure repay them if I get back to the old sod.

We are still getting lots of physical drill to keep us in trim, its great dope and I like it the best of any work we have. I still hear from Uncle Will and Flora and twice a week from Cassie & mother & sister, so I am pretty well informed.  I wrote a letter to the Plumas Standard [Canadian newspaper] a while ago. I don’t know whether he would publish it or not. I struck the slackers [Canadians who hadn't joined up] pretty hard. 

Wishing you a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

Canadian winters were a thing of the past for George Lamb
'In England we are trailing around in the mud,' he wrote

 



Read all about it, my top reads of the year!

Cramming 10 years' worth of reading into one!

I've been researching my book for around six months now, and in that time I've probably crammed in more reading than I have during the last 10 years!

A great deal of it has been original letters and diaries from 1914 to 1918 of course. But I've also done a fair amount of background reading, which has meant putting on hold my (slow) progress through the works of Dickens. I'm pleased to say, though, that the First World War has proved just as engrossing.

Now that the year is drawing to a close, I thought it would be interesting to list some of the titles that I have enjoyed most. Please feel free to leave your own favourites in the comments section at the end.



• FISHER'S FACE by Jan Morris - a portrait of Lord 'Jacky' Fisher, Admiral of the Fleet and a huge figure at the turn of the century, by an author who has always been transfixed by his face.

• NOW ALL ROADS LEAD TO FRANCE, The Last Years of Edward Thomas, by Matthew Hollis - a beautifully crafted biography about a poet often overshadowed by Sassoon and Owen.

• THE FIRST DAY OF THE SOMME, by Martin Middlebrook - military history at its best, the story of July 1 1916, when Britain suffered 60,000 casualties on the Western Front.

• TRENCHES TO TRAMS, The Life of a Bristol Tommy, by Clive Burlton - local history is brought to life in this informative and well-illustrated book based on the memories of soldier George Pine.

• UP THE LINE TO DEATH, The War Poets 1914-1918, selected by Brian Gardener - an anthology of haunting and memorable poems arranged in sections which follow the progress of the conflict.

Soldiers' First Noel on the Western Front

We all stand together: soldiers at the 1914 Christmas Truce

This week's post looks at the the heartwarming tale of two sides who lay down their weapons, climbed from their trenches, and greeted each other on No Man's Land with smiles, cigarettes and a game of football. Yes, it's the 1914 Christmas Truce, and however sentimental or unlikely it may sound, it really happened - although perhaps not in quite such a film director-friendly way that folklore suggests.

In December 1914 the Great War was four months old and exhausted troops were digging in for the winter. The volunteers of Kitchener's Army had yet to arrive and those at the front were mostly British soldiers of the Regular Army, professional soldiers who were doing their jobs and had no personal axe to grind against the Germans.

Christmas Truces were springing up all along the front, at different times and up in various forms and for those interested in finding out more, there is a link to a very informative article at the end of this post.

Sceptics may say that troops simply used the truce as an opportunity to spy on the other side, but having spent months reading soldiers' letters and diaries, I don't believe that - fellow feeling towards the enemy is not an uncommon theme.

In December 1914, Sgt George Fairclough wrote: 'I came down with 94 prisoners and a young officer of the German artillery - he had only been fighting for a fortnight when he got captured. I never met a nicer chap. I asked him, for a joke: what about knocking off for three days at Christmas?' He laughed and asked his men. They all said: 'Yah yah bong, bong, good, good'. He turned and said: 'These men don't like fighting; they would sooner be with their wives and children.'

Sgt Major Alfred Dowling was less fortunate than Fairclough, by December 1914 he was a prisoner of war. But he had no complaints about his captors: 'We feel properly out of the world here but the Germans are treating us very decently. They gave us cigars etc on Christmas Day,' he wrote to his wife.

There was fellow feeling towards the 'enemy' elsewhere on the battlefields, not just France. An Australian soldier, Ernie Hough, wrote home from Gallipoli in 1915: 'The Turks have fought a good clean fight and are still fighting that way. I know several instances wherein our wounded have been treated kindly by the Turks, and in no case to my knowledge has one case been proved where they have done anything offside. I think in justice to our enemies that this should be said of them.'

For those interested in reading more about the 1914 Christmas Truce, see: http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/christmastruce.htm

Always look on the bright side of life

A pack horse is led through the mud at Beaumont Hamel
in Northern France, November 1916

Yes, that's what researching the First World War has taught me, always look on the bright side of life. Sitting in a steamed-up bus last week in a long queue of traffic which had ground to a halt on flooded roads in South West England, my feet were sodden and I still had a long walk still ahead of me. But did I mind? How could I.
I was warm and I was safe, unlike those poor souls in France 100 years ago who found themselves soaked to the skin not just by rain but mud and blood too - and with no end in sight, except perhaps their own (always a possibility too close for comfort).

It wasn't just the rain. Once winter set in on the Continent, there was freezing weather to contend with too. January 1917: 'We are having real winter weather snow, colder than anything we experienced last year.' wrote one soldier. 'There has been quite a depth of snow lying for the past 10 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 10 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 the horses.'

In such conditions, animals were often the only way to get stores up the front, as this soldier explains in October 1917: 'The last stunt we was in was one of the toughest jobs we have had since coming to France. As we had the wet weather and mud to contend with one would bog [sink] almost waist deep in the mud, and we had to use all pack animals in getting the supplies up to the boys as the wagons were out of the question and the pack mules would even bog at times and fall into a shell hole ...'

There then follows a story which would melt even the hardest of hearts, but I shall give no more away. You will be able to read the letter in full in my book.

 

Top five topics in soldiers' letters home

'I must tell you how delighted I was to
receive the Oxo' - a WW1 poster
from the stock cube company

The average serviceman in the Great War preferred to keep his letters home as ordinary as possible, steering clear of things that could worry his family. If trenches and warfare had to be mentioned it was usually in a matter-of-fact way, but many correspondents stuck to the more mundane things in life. So what were the most popular topics? Here are five of the most common that I have come across.

The weather nearly always got a mention, whether it was sweltering, drenching or freezing. 'It's snowing pretty thick and the ground is already white,' wrote Private Tom Fake from France to his young son in England in 1917. 'You will notice that some of the letters have traces of the pencil getting wetted, that is where the snow is falling on the paper as I write.'

Tiredness was another frequent theme, with servicemen sometimes having to go for days without proper sleep. One exhausted cavalryman wrote: 'The men and horses are busted, it's been a very hot day and I've only had about 15 hours sleep in the last eight or nine nights.'

Letters themslves were often a topic for discussion: how wonderful it was to receive them, who had written, who hadn't, who was owed letters. Most soldiers tried to their best to keep correspondence going, but it wasn't always easy. In a letter to his wife, Private Fake complained: 'I have felt like swearing whilst writing this letter, twice since I started a shell has burst close by somewhere and I think it's like his impudence to disturb me when I am trying to feel I am at home talking to you.'

Teeth problems were often complained about and so too were army dentists: 'I had nine pulled in the cruellest fashion imaginable,' fumed one Canadian soldier. 'I had five filled and that was even worse as he never killed any nerves but hurried it through and slapped in the filling as if he were using a schoopshovel.'

And finally, the deafening noise of artillery, which could sometimes be heard as far away as southern England, was often described in letters by newly-arrived troops in France. One young officer gasped: 'Guns were booming all around us, the sky was vivid with flashes - and the noise!'

This is an abridged version of an article that appears in November's Down Your Way - Yorkshire's nostalgic magazine.