They are swine, I hate them

Berlin I expect we shall refuse to take prisoners and kill them all. The soldiers are all for it.

In Peronne they have smashed every house, the furniture is all burnt.

In my billet the last occupant pushed a hammer through a looking glass, the bath, the stove and covered everything with the down of his eiderdown.

It took a long time to clean it out. They can’t have done it for that reason – we can sleep in the open if necessary. They are swine. I hate them, not because I am fighting them, because I admire their love of method and detail.

But their disrespect for property and other people’s feelings is so horrible. I suppose they say you can’t go to war and be a gentleman but they never were gentlemen so that doesn’t apply. A Bosch aeroplane has just flown over – very low nowadays. Nothing to stop him except our rifles and machine guns.

Lt BL Lawrence 1st Grenadier Guards Letters written to CK Ogden, The Cambridge Magazine, March 1917 We got orders to move up to Combles again and wait there ready to pursue the Bosch when ordered.

There was a fearful hurry and bustle, cutting down the weight of kits, making plans as to our exact formation for pursuit and so on…

There was absolute silence, just as if the war had suddenly stopped and all the country looked deserted and neglected as if no human being had been near it for years… The advance the next day

There were plenty of dugouts in the trench we occupied but everyone was rather chary of entering them.

All sorts of stories of booby traps, explosive dugouts, and so on, were in circulation and some of them were only too true. The battalion we relieved had had several casualties, in one case a man found a full rum jar, which, on being uncorked, exploded.

In another case a man picked up a spade which set off a mine. And of course there were several cases of souvenirs, such as helmets, which detonated bombs when you touched them. We therefore had good reason to be careful.

When it got colder and we became more sleepy, we decided to explore one of the dugouts and chance it.

Everything looked all right, so we descended and made ourselves comfortable. I know I found a large lump in my bed, which on investigation next morning turned out to be a bomb which was partially buried in the floor. Whether this was a booby trap that failed to go off or whether its makers had to leave before they had completed the trap, I don’t know. Anyway, it proved quite harmless.

I must say we all felt rather lost at open warfare having sat in trenches for so long and never having done any of these free and easy advances before except on a field day…

Vincent Bayne, NCO 2/5th Londons Letter to his mother March 24, 1917

I have not had much chance of writing a letter for some days. Events have been moving at some speed as you may have seen in the papers.

Fritz has gone back in front of us about and we are now following him up and are in touch with him.

The villages he has left are no longer standing and a few walls remain but for the most part are a mere heap of bricks and mortar.

The Boche has most systematically done all he could to hamper our pursuit, mining and blowing up all crossroads etc.

But this does not count for much because you simply cut a road around a crater. We are at present housed or rather hutted in small huts built against the banks of a sunken road.

The huts are built with any material that could be found amongst the ruins and are very crowded but we manage to keep warm o’nights. Letter to Cora, March 26, 1917

You’ll be pleased to hear that things are improving. The Hun has gone back some miles and we are following, somewhat uneventfully so far, ’tis true.

On Monday, I went for a stroll around the front with our platoon officer and we had a most enjoyable time.

Could see the Hun plainly through glasses. Someone took a prisoner the same morning who had kindly sniped one of our chaps in the shoulder.

I saw him (our chap) going back to the aid post and he seemed overjoyed at the prospect of Blighty.

VISITORS to the Imperial War Museum’s First World War Galleries can discover the events behind the film 1917 and explore the story of the war through the eyes of people in Britain and its empire, both on the home front and in the trenches.