Letters From the Trenches: A Soldier of the Great War (6 page)

Note the difference between what he tells his brother and what he writes to Kate. ‘We have had a very rough time lately,’ as against ‘we have had a fine time this last
fortnight’.

Here we also have Harry’s first mention of the food at the front. It has been estimated that the soldiers’ bread would have taken a full eight days between baking and reaching the
front line; no surprise, then, that it took some ‘working down.’ I think, too, that Harry is saying that the extra victuals from home are welcome. Perhaps, very politely, he is also
hoping to prompt another package, this time from sister Kate.

Connie, who is seven years old by this time, is at school. That must be a milestone. With the cerebral palsy, and the resulting difficulty in walking, it would have been a major achievement.
From Mill Street in Ilkeston she would probably have gone to Chaucer Street School, as did Willie once he was old enough. Coincidentally, Willie’s wife, Nancy (my mother), was to teach there
many years later.

By the first week in June Harry has been with C Company, 9th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment, for around three weeks. From the battalion’s war diary we can work
out that he spent three or four days in the front line and a similar time in support. He would have experienced shelling and a gas attack, both of which caused casualties. Significantly, he would
have repeatedly practised the routine for an assault on the training-ground area at Boescheppe, behind the lines, which had been set up using flags to mimic the enemy’s positions on a part of
the Messines Ridge, a small rise in the ground known as Mount Sorrel.

By then, he had seen what shelling could do, as the war diary for 12 May records: ‘D’s Company Headquarters dugout had been blown in about 5.30 a.m. 2Lt [Second Lieutenant] Bunce
S.H. was wounded & 2Lt Proctor M. & 2Lt Breingen S.K. were killed.’ (The war diary only records the names of officers; casualties among other ranks are recorded just by their number.)
Following that, when in the reserve line, a 5.9-inch shell blew in the battalion orderly room and ‘records and papers were destroyed’. Any men hurt? Nothing is recorded.

The war diary goes on to log the total casualties for that tour in the front line: ‘Officers 1 wounded, 2 killed. O.R. [other ranks] 4 killed, 24 wounded.’ This was rather different
from working in a lace factory.

Also noted is the fact that for five days of that month, May, ‘The Bn [battalion] practised offensive for MT SORREL system on a flag course situated in the BOESCHEPE training area.’
From this and other indicators, the men of the 9th York and Lancasters would have known that they were to be involved in serious warfare in the very near future. Harry would be going ‘over
the top’ for the first time. That prospect must have been chilling.

CHAPTER 4

MESSINES RIDGE

T
HE FIRST WEEK OF
J
UNE
1917 was a significant one on the Flanders battlefields.

The Messines–Wytschaete (Mesen–Wijtschate) Ridge is nothing particularly special on the ground. Visit it today and there is simply a slightly higher area, largely
covered in trees, which extends from Messines in the south, to Zillebeke in the north.

Some of the names given to the hills during the campaign there illustrate the reality of the ‘high’ ground west and south-west of Ypres. ‘Hill 60’ and ‘Hill
62’ rise 60 metres and 62 metres (66 and 68 yards) above sea level respectively. The plain stretching towards Ypres, then occupied by the Allies, lies at between 50 and 55 metres (55 and 60
yards) above sea level. The flatness of the Flanders landscape means, however, that even the smallest rise dominates the surrounding country.

In 1917, the German Army occupied the whole ridge, forming a minor salient into the Allies’ territories. It became an important objective for the next offensive. Field Marshal Sir Douglas
Haig, Commander-in-Chief of the British armies on the Western Front, gave the task of taking the ridge to General Sir Herbert Plumer, commanding the Second Army in the Ypres Salient. His planning
and preparation, which lasted for months (hence the model of the ridge used for training during Harry’s time at Rugeley), were meticulous. The most significant element was the siting of huge
explosive mines deep underneath the German positions. Sappers (Royal Engineers), for once given a job true to their title, became tunnellers. (The word ‘sapper’ derives from the tunnels
and other earthworks which, in earlier centuries, were dug under fortifications to ‘sap’ their strength during a siege.) Men who were miners in civilian life were drafted in to dig
tunnels under no man’s land to reach a point beneath the German front line on the ridge. The whole undertaking spanned more than a year, but on completion the sappers had planted a total of
almost five hundred tons of high explosive in twenty-one mines across the six miles or so of the ridge.

The tunnelling was hazardous. There was always the possibility of collapse. Moreover, the Germans knew that the British were working underground, with the result that both sides were tunnelling
and counter-tunnelling at the same time and each maintained listening posts, trying to detect the enemy’s activities. There were occasions when one side would break into the other’s
tunnel, and in the darkness hand-to-hand fighting would often follow.

Eventually, by the end of May, all was in place on the ground, ready for the assault. The troops had been carefully trained. As we have seen, Harry’s battalion spent five days practising
on the Boescheppe training ground where their objective, Mount Sorrel, had been simulated with an arrangement of flags. Harry would already have gained an overview of the whole ridge from the
mock-up at the Cannock Chase training area before he even crossed the Channel.

The orders for the operation would have been passed down from General Plumer, via his staff, to the different levels of command. On receipt of these, Lieutenant-Colonel Bowes-Wilson, commanding
the 9th York and Lancasters, prepared written orders for his officers. (These may be seen at the National Archives at Kew, as may the battalion war diary.)

Responsibility for the operation was, for once in that war, in the correct hands. General Plumer, a skilful commander who did everything he could in the circumstances to minimize casualties
among his soldiers, and who was in consequence liked and admired by them, appreciated the problems that his troops would encounter and made sure that they were dealt with as effectively as
possible. He learned from the use of mines in the initial British assault at the Battle of the Somme, almost a year earlier. On that occasion, there had been a ten-minute pause between the firing
of the explosive charges and the signal to attack. That gave the defenders time to recover their composure, man their positions and take control of no man’s land. At Messines, by contrast,
there was to be only a minute’s gap between the blast and the start of the assault.

During the first few days of June, Harry’s battalion moved towards the launch point for the coming offensive. Still they were vulnerable, as the war diary records: ‘There were two
casualties on the way to camp owing to enemy shelling back areas with gas shells.’ Then, ‘On the evening of 6th Bn moved to assembly positions previous to the attack.’ The diary
adds, ‘There were no casualties whilst the Bn was assembling.’

For ten days and ten nights up to 6 June 1917, the lives of Harry and the other members of C Company had been dominated by the sight and sounds of the continuous artillery bombardment of the
German defensive positions (approximately 1 shell every 2 seconds, incessantly for 240 hours).