Life and death on the front line - by a Manchester doctor

WHEN, after the end of the World War One, Dr Jim Fiddian, a very tall general practitioner based in Ashton-under-Lyne, was asked what he could recall of 1 July 1916, that terrible time when there were 57,000 casualties in one day, he said that he could never forget what he witnessed. It was ‘branded on his memory.’ He had been the medical officer attached to the 11th Battalion of the Suffolk regiment whose job it was to take the British front line south of the Somme village of La Boisselle.

Prior to the attack, the men in his unit were in a camp near Albert, the nearest town to the front line.

“From the hill beside our camp we could clearly see the bursting of the shells on Contalmaison (a Somme village behind the German front line) and the Boche reserve lines.

“The general feeling was that we were going to pulverise the Boche and walk straight through to our objectives. His captive balloons had been driven out of the sky, his artillery reply was weak and he had been putting out vainglorious notices from his front line that seemed to presage a retreat.”

The next hours passed as a bit of blur. There were some ‘last hand shakes’ as the troops moved up to their positions for the attack.

Fiddian remembered “moving my stretcher bearers up to my battalion aid post about 300 yards from the front line. The artillery fire was now working up to a thunderous crescendo, and our feelings during the hour’s intense bombardment (preceding the advance) were of wild elation and the certainty that nothing could live under that fire. There seemed to be no reply from the Boche.”

As the time for the attack – 7.30am – approached, Fiddian had his watch out. “We meant to step out of our aid post which was really a roofed in portion of a trench before the mines went up (mines were to be exploded under strongpoints in the German line at zero hour). The explosion was expected to be devastating and we expected the roof to come down.

“Of the explosion I heard no noise, but I saw a sudden spout of earth hundreds of feet into the air, and the earth swayed where we stood.

“From the back of my aid post, I could see to our left flank the men of our next brigade rise out of their lines of assembly trenches, and move speedily forward. Our artillery fire died away, but a new noise arose: a perfectly hellish hail of machine gun bullets from the Boche, gradually swelling, as fresh guns came into action, until it seemed a handkerchief thrown above the trench would have been riddled.

“I [also] glanced at the lines of men on our right as they passed over the wide depression that was the beginning of Sausage Valley.

“They were falling fast, yet they were still far from reaching even our own front line. I just had time to realize that there had been some miscalculation of the effect of our artillery fire on the Boche machine gunners before I was called away as casualties began to come in.

“By about 4pm, my stretcher bearers were dropping with fatigue and absolutely incapable of carrying any more.

“The Boche fire had died down considerably, but getting out of a trench brought a burst of machine gun fire. I took a walk round to find our trenches all knocked to pieces. The dead were lying pretty thickly wherever one looked.

“I promised myself that as soon as it was dark, we would start getting them in. But very little carrying was done that night. The battle was still ‘swaying’ over us: all trenches were blocked with fresh assaulting columns. When these had gone through, their own wounded began to come back. It was well on into the second day before we could really start clearing our own front line. We got our own lines pretty clear that night. It was only in the morning of 3 July that we finally started out in No Man’s Land.

“On first looking over the parapet that morning, the whole ground seemed to be covered with dead men. But presently, a feeble cry of ‘Stretcher bearer!’ was raised, as some wounded man caught sight of me, and gradually the cry was taken up by scores of others. As I stepped forward, I could see unwounded limbs were being waved in the air. Then, shockingly, mutilated forms began to crawl grotesquely and infinitely slowly towards me... Never shall I forget that appalling sight which was on our own battalion frontage.

“At first it was still difficult to work with stretcher bearers as sniping was still going on. But my orderly and I could get about carrying water in petrol tins.

“So many battalions had passed over the ground, that Suffolk wounded were in the minority.

“However, I noticed in passing the bodies of several I recognized. I noticed the high proportion of NCOs among the dead, and that amongst those nearest the Boche wire were two of our company sergeant-majors.

“One ghastly tragedy was marked out on the ground. There was a patch of burnt grass a few yards from the Boche wire, and from this, a trail of burned grass and shreds of burned clothing led back to where lay a scorched naked body. I was glad I could not recognize it. “I went about this field with pretty much of a lump in the throat. Three or four incidents stand out. I saw two men sitting in a shell hole, one with a badly damaged leg, the other with slight wounds only. I said to the latter, ‘Surely you could have got into our lines during the night?’ He looked a little shamefaced, and then jerked his thumb at the other: ‘I ‘listed along of this chap, and I thought I’d stay with him.’ Staying had meant three days and two nights without water! “...I found another sad case in a little sap running from our front line. There was a fellow sitting there with his back to the side of the sap, head well forward, blood and saliva dropping from horrible wounds of the lower part of the face. “He was dying for a drink, but could not drink from a cup or spoon on account of his shattered jaws, and he could not hold his head back or lie back because he immediately choked in either of these positions. “I was several minutes discovering a way of giving him a drink by tearing strips of a towel in his kit and pushing them, dripping wet upwards into his mouth on the point of a knife. His relief at the solution of the problem was expressed in what in other circumstances would have been a comic salute, and he finally went off, sitting bolt upright on a stretcher, again with that same comic salute.

“General Ingouville-Williams came over about this time.

“He stopped, and asked how we were getting on with the wounded. And made the valuable suggestion that we should try to get them into groups by daylight, so that we might miss none when the stretcher bearers came up at night.

“I was determined to get them cleared that night, and went down to the divisional dressing station in search of more bearers. It was nearly an hour’s carry, and each pair of bearers could only be reckoned on for three or four journeys.

“Fortunately at the dressing station, I met a sergeant with a party of fifty men. My guide and I led him back with us. One of the MOs of the Royal Scots with his bearers joined us, and by working together, we finally managed to get all the wounded away.”

After telling his story Dr Fiddian revealed what was his most poignant memory.

It was the march away from the front line with the remnants of his battalion, which mustered around 125 out of the 800 who had gone in.

“As I marched at the rear of the column, I could not trust myself to speak. My face was twitching in extraordinary ways, and my mind was filled with the feeling that if the potentates themselves had to take part in the wars they made, we should have no more of them.”