Gory and heroic accounts from the First World War
In part 17 of his personal testimony series, Peter Hart takes us to October 1915, when repetitive sequences of preparation, fighting and treating the injured began to merge into a dismal blur. Peter will be tracing the experiences of 20 people who lived t
George Wainford
George was born in 1897, the son of a regular soldier. He joined the Royal Navy as a boy seaman in 1912, and carried out his seagoing training aboard HMS Crescent in 1914. For the men of the Royal Navy, the war had settled down into a grim routine as they waited for the chance to face the German High Seas Fleet. By late 1915, George Wainford was no longer a boy and had been promoted to able seaman, though he was still serving aboard the predreadnought HMS Albemarle. We thought we were so much better than the Germans that it would have been a cakewalk. There was no question. The Grand Fleet was a good sight – to see all the great ships, mile after mile of them, perhaps in two columns, with the small ships guarding them all round.
But we were beginning to feel that we’d never go into action. So much routine – it was boring! One day was like another – it just went on and on.
Sister Kate Luard
Kate Luard was born in 1872. She volunteered to join the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service in 1914, and was dispatched to France, where she served on ambulance trains, then at a field ambulance behind the line. In mid-October Kate Luard took up a new post with No 6 Casualty Clearing Hospital at Lillers, France. She found many of the scenes she encountered daily deeply unsettling: some soldiers suffered bravely, while others were in agony, oblivious to their surroundings. A boy is lying, smiling all day, with his head, right hand and both legs wounded, and his left arm off. When asked: “Are you happy?” he said with a beam: “Trying to be!” Today he is humming ‘Sister Susie’s sewing shirts for soldiers.’
I happened to go into the [ward] this morning, in time to see a delirious boy, with a bad head wound and a large brain hernia, tear off his dressings and throw a handful of his brains on to the floor. This is literally true, and he was talking all the time we re-dressed the hole in his head. Then we picked up the handful of brains, and [he] was quiet for a little while. He is very delirious and will not get better.
A boy came in at 6pm with his right arm blown clean off in its sleeve. He was collapsed when he came in, but revived a bit later. “Mustn’t make a fuss about trifles,” he explained. “We’ve got to stick it!” What a trifle!
The boy who threw his brains on the floor died yesterday. The boy with the arm blown off would not survive. The nurses kept him in Lillers hospital as long as possible, fearful he would not last the 30-hour journey by ambulance train to Le Havre. They were right to be worried – he had a haemorrhage an hour before arriving, and died the next morning. When Kate was told the sad news she remarked that “He, of all people, one wanted to hear of being petted at his own home.”
John Palmer
John Palmer joined the army as a regular in 1910. He served as a signaller with the Royal Field Artillery on the western front. Bombardier John Palmer had been wounded at the battle of Loos on 25 September. He developed a fever, and was evacuated via Lillers – where Kate Luard was working – to Versailles hospital, which he reached on 15 October. Am now in hospital where everything is wonderful. To rest between real sheets and sleep and sleep and sleep was an experience I could hardly realise. One poor fellow here has both arms missing and is blind. How lucky I must consider myself. I do know one thing, however. I am like a little child as regards nerve now. A shell has only to explode within 500 yards of me to scare the life out of me. As I feel at the moment I shall never be capable of returning to my old job.
Palmer was suffering from shell shock: post-traumatic stress. But the war had not finished with him.
“On the ward this morning a delirious boy with a bad head wound and a large brain hernia tore off his dressings and threw a handful of his brains on to the floor”
Jack Dorgan
Northumberland-born Jack Dorgan took part in the attack on St Julien during the second battle of Ypres. After the battle he was promoted to sergeant and continued to serve on the western front throughout 1915. In October 1915, Sergeant Jack Dorgan was serving on the western front with the 1/7th Northumberland Fusiliers. The long nights of autumn cloaked activities that would not have been feasible in daylight. Working parties were often sent out to improve barbed wire defences. We had wooden posts with pointed ends, and a big wooden hammer. The posts had to be driven into the ground. Fellows used to wrap sandbags around the head of the hammer to deaden the sound... Even with the sandbags, the sound of that hammer would stretch out in the quiet night. You would hear the sniper’s bullet come winging across, or a machine gun. You only got a couple of blows or so to drive it in and then you had to duck down. Then, when the machine-gun bullets had passed by, you had another few strokes.
The barbed wire was single strand, wrapped on a pole carried by two men – very awkward in no man’s land in the dark. You’d stretch your wire between one post and another, back and forward to make an entanglement. Before the summer was over, that wooden post was abolished and we had a 3ft steel twisted bar with a loop at one end, and at the other end it was sharpened. All you had to do was put a piece of stick in the loop at the top and turn it down into the ground.
The single strand had been disregarded and barbed wire was in coils – about 2x6ft wide – that would stretch about 8 yards and could be compressed into a foot or so. One end could be attached to the steel bar and then stretched to the next bar. It made the erection of barbed wire entanglements a much easier job.
In front of each wiring party would be a covering party to protect them from German patrols in no man’s land. This was another dangerous task, as shown by one incident that Jack recalled:
I was out in no man’s land, and one of the companies had a covering party out in front of their own barbed wire.
As I approached them, one of the covering party – Private Somerville – received a sniper bullet right through the body. He began to make a lot of noise. Arriving on the spot I said to the corporal in charge: “Send your men back. Because with this noise the Germans are going to know something’s happened!”
The corporal and I were left with this man, out in no man’s land in front of three lines of barbed wire… We got a hold of Somerville and we flung him on top of the barbed wire, and we climbed over afterwards, Somerville shouting all the time and me clouting him to keep him quiet. It didn’t keep him quiet!
The Germans used a couple of machine guns sweeping back and forward along the length of the trench. Then an officer from the trench, Major Walsh, came out, and he says to the corporal: “You go back and the sergeant and I will bring the wounded man in!” We were then in between the second and third lines of barbed wire. We bent down to pick up Somerville and a bullet came and hit Walsh in the shoulder – it must have just passed my face.
He dropped the wounded man and left me... So I got a hold of Somerville, pulled him up, shoved him on top of the barbed wire, climbed up over him and rolled him off the wire. The machine guns were then firing to hit the exact top of our trench, which deterred anybody else coming out to help me.
This had all taken time, and my worry was that daylight would catch me out in no man’s land. I had about 8 or 9 yards to haul him to our trench. The fellows in the trench were shouting encouragement, but nobody could come out and help me... When I thought there were no machine-gun bullets striking the top of the trench, with my feet I rolled Somerville up the front of the parapet and soldiers inside the trench picked him up. Dorgan would be awarded the Military Medal for his courage. Later he was presented with a commemorative watch by his home town of Ashington. He proudly showed that watch to me when I interviewed him in 1986. It was a tangible link with his past.