William Holbrook

Born in 1892 and brought up in a poor family in Hornchurch, William was recruited underage into the Royal Fusiliers in 1908. He had begun serving with the Fourth Battalion, Royal Fusiliers on the western front in 1914.

Another member of the original BEF, Holbrook had been at the battle of Mons on 23 August 1914. Indeed, he was present when Maurice Dease and Sidney Godley won the first VCs of the war for defending the Nimy bridge over the Mons-Condé Canal.

Sooner or later, by the law of averages, I should ‘ have it’. Eventually, I would get badly wounded, or killed – the only thing I worried about was getting blinded. I thought it was just a matter of luck. You couldn’t get much sleep, you got tired and weary. Sometimes, I didn’t care one way or another. It seemed to drag on and on. You didn’t take risks so much. It seemed to be going on for ever.

As the troops continued their advance, they were fighting under conditions of open warfare, free from the tyranny of the trenches.

You had more freedom in open warfare. I preferred it! When you were in the trenches, you were in the same old spot time and time again, backwards and forwards – waiting for the attacks and that sort of business. But in the open, you cover more ground and it’s different altogether. You took what cover you could: hedges, ditches, houses – you ran from one to the other. You threw yourself to the ground a lot and didn’t expose yourself much!