War story

[Undried Plum]

Like so many of us babyboomers, my grandfather fought in the trenches of the Western Front. Like so many hundreds of thousands on each side of the Third Battle of Ypres, he was gravely wounded at Passchendael. He died a few years before I was born, so I never knew him, but I have a great deal of documentation from his lifetime.

He was simultaneously gassed and blasted, which is a little odd. Gas shells contained only a very small explosive charge, little more than a squib to perforate the canister and release the noxious contents. HE barrages were not used in conjunction with gas barrages because the blast of an exploding HE shell would blow the gas cloud outward and upward which would dissipate and a disperse the cloud, thus reducing its effectiveness.

He lay unconscious, face down in the fluffed up soil, "between the lines". He was the only survivor of his squad. He was found by accident, either 18 or 36 hours later, by a stretcher party who were looking for survivors of a subsequent failed 'push'. An alert stretcherman, who was a Consciencious Objector, noticed that one of corpses was actually breathing, albeit very shallowly. The deep coma saved his life, His eyes were closed so the gas did not blind him. He was breathing very shallowly, so the gas did not penetrate deeply into the lungs beyond the trachea and bronchial pipes.

He started to regain consciousness nine days after being sent to a military hospital 100 miles South of the Front. Then something very odd happened. Over the course of five or seven days he was interviewed on a twice daily basis by an 'officer' of Military Intelligence. That makes no sense at all. He was a lowly Private soldier, just one of hundreds of thousands of wounded casualties in the charnel plains of Picardy and Flanders. Why would Mil Int give a toss? Why would they invest so much as five minutes in trying to hear his story? That doesn't make sense.

Something that was also rather unusual was that the interviewing 'officer' was a woman. In WW1 the British Army didn't commission women, but leaders in the Womens Army Auxiliary Corps were given honorary officer status in order to help them in their work, such as when requisitioning resources such as transport, comms and labour. She was attached to Military Intelligence in France in an administrative capacity.

He thought she was very dishy and he was smitten, but he had absolutely no possibility of asking her out to a cafe or a dance or a cinema. For one thing, he was still bed-ridden and very ill. Much more of an obstacle was that he was lowly Private soldier and she was officer class. Even today it would be frowned upon for a Major to consort with a Private, or a Squadron Leader with an Aircraftsman or a Lieutenant Commander to dally with a Rating. Perhaps worst of all: he was a working class lad, son of a Scandiwegian immigrant seafaring father and a Danish mother. She was upper middle class, with extensive landholdings in Southern Sussex. In the early 20th century class divisions were very strict and seldom breached.

When fit to travel, he was repatriated on a military hospital train to Dieppe and back to Blighty. He was given an honourable discharge and declared to be unfit for further service.

To my amazement, I found that he rapidly re-enlisted, this time as clerk in the Pay Corps. Still a Private soldier, so no advancement there. His motivation was that he knew he would have access to the personnel files and that he would be able to trace the next of kin of that dishy woman and therefore discover her address and perhaps try his luck after the war.

He learned that she was from Littlehampton, Sussex and after he was demobbed at the end of the War he made his way from Hull to her home town to look her up and chance his arm.

He seems to have been quite successful. She's my grandmother.

In a subsequent post which I've yet to write, I'll tell how I discovered the answer to the mystery of why the circumstance of his wounding was of interest. I'll also tell of other aspects of the mystery.

[boing]

Great story Plum and well told!

[Sisemen]

Terrific!

[Stoneboat]

Great story Plum.

[ricardian]

More, please!

[ian16th]

Great story, I look forward to the next chapter.

Both of my Grandfathers died before I was born, so I know little of them. The maternal one had a grocers shop, I never heard of any war experience.

My paternal GF was involved in both the Boer War and WWII, and I have his medals.
According to his Queen's South Africa Medal In the Boer War he was a Private in the 1st Dragoons and has the clasps:

Relief of Ladysmith
Cape Colony
Tugella Heights
Orange Free State
Transvaal

On his King's South Africa Medal his Unit is 'RL Dragoons'
So he got about a bit, I assume on horseback.

There were no stories of him being a career soldier, so I assume he signed up for the Boer War and then got demobbed.

His WWI medals are the usual Pip, Squeak & Wilfred, he was promoted as his rank is L/Cpl but his unit is M.M.P., I believe that this was the Military Mounted Police. Making use of his riding skills?

[Fliegenmong]

Fabulous story Plum! .... look forward to further installments!

[llondel]

My mother told me the tale of her uncle, who was with his platoon in the trenches. One day he upset the sergeant and, along with a fellow private, got assigned to drag the platoon water carrier back through the muddy trenches to be filled, before hauling the much heavier thing back to the front. This they duly did, while questioning the sergeant's parentage, only to find when they got back to their trench that a shell had hit it and everyone was dead. The other tales was of him in WW2, making a cup of cocoa when the air raid siren started. Everyone else in the house went down to the shelter at the end of the garden but he stayed to finish making his cocoa, presumably because he didn't want to waste it. A stick of bombs came down very close and everyone in the shelter feared the worst for him, but he came down the garden path, covered in plaster, swearing at what the Germans had done to his cocoa. I guess he just wasn't destined to die in war, I think he lived to about 1965.

[OFSO]

Mr Plum, utterly brilliant post. Just read it to Mrs OFSO, herself ex-MI, she's intrigued. Thank you - past, and for the next installment, in advance.

[Rwy in Sight]

A magnificent post. So nicely written and hosting a unique determination to earn the heart of a lady

[Smeagol]

I eagerly await the next instalment!
My own family has few military connections, neither grandfather served in WWI. Maternal grandpa was a shipwright and worked in various dockyards including Invergordon despite being from Devonshire. Paternal grandpa was a carpenter so maybe in a 'reserved' occupation but possibly medically unfit as I know he suffered from rickets as a child.
My mother was the only person to serve in the armed forces and was a Wren in WWII serving in the Fleet Air Arm as a bomb range marker on various naval air stations across the UK and finished her service as a Chief Wren (CPO). She got to fly in numerous aircraft; Swordfish, Albacore, Barrracuda and apparently a Wildcat (sitting on the pilot's lap!). She used to tell me stories about her service when I was young but have forgotten many of the details. She lived to the age of 97.

[Undried Plum]

After the Great War my Grandfather returned to the provincial newspaper where he had worked initially as an office boy and later as a very junior Reporter. His Editor reckoned the lad had a talent for writing and very generously gave him good references and made personal recommendations to Odhams Press in Fleet Street that he be taken on as either a part timer or a freelance. He did both.

There wasn't much of an appetite for war stories in the 1920s, but he specialised in reporting on what nowadays we call Tech and earned a meagre but respectable crust.

He won the respect of several other publishers and was specially commissioned by The Royal British Legion to write a three page spread in their newspaper about the reburial parties that the then named Imperial War Graves Commission were deploying all across the battlefields of the Western front to create the formal military cemeteries which are now in such well ordered profusion.

He was given full access, with a car and driver, to travel wherever he wanted in France and Belgium and given full access to the activities of the IWGC teams on order to aquire sufficient information and ambience to write the article.

I'm unsurprised that he made a special point of using his special access to visit Passchendael. Post #1 in this thread indicates why he would do that.

A week before he was wounded, his best friend whom he'd known since boyhood as they lived in the same street and went to the same school and joined up together, was killed instantly by two bullets from a German machine gun. One between the eyebows and one through the left clavicle. This happened right next to my grandfather who, barely four feet away, was unscathed by that gunfire.

My grandfather buried his best friend where he fell, marking the head of the grave in the then traditional manner of stabbing the fallen soldier's rifle muzzle into the ground.

When with one of the reburial parties at Passchendael on that assignment he asked them to come with him to a particular spot and explained what I have just said. He asked to be allowed the do the spadework to uncover the body of his friend and he did so.

In WW1 British soldiers did not carry dogtags. The Yanks did, but Tommies did not. Their ID was their paybook, usually carried in the breast pocket of the tunic. A decade later, when most of the IWGC reburials were done, many of those documents had rotted. That's why so many of those gravestones bear the inscription "A soldier known unto God".

My Grandfather took a disinterrment party to the exact spot where he himself had buried his best friend. He had already told them what Regimental buttons would be on that corpse and that there would be bullet holes through the front centre of the skull and through the left collar bone. He asked them to allow him to do the initial spadework of the disinterrment himself.

They recovered the remains of his best friend, exactly where, and in exactly the condition, he had indicated.

There, right there, is the third puzzle I had to solve.

How the hell was he able to do that? We've all seen the photos of the utter devastation of the shell-pocked mud around Passchendael. How was he able, never mind that it was a decade later, to navigate them to that spot. He quite certainly did. That's for sure. It's well document and attested. But how the hell could an ordinary Private soldier have done that?

The IWGC teams were constructing and 'populating' (if that's the right word) Tyne Cot Cemetery, one of the larger graveyards of its type in that Project, and my Grandfather's best friend's remains were taken there, as were thousands of others.

This next bit makes me cry when I tell it. My Grandfather personally laid to final rest the bones and other physical remains of his lifelong friend in the base of that pre-dug grave.

I cannot imagine the emotion of feeling that you have to do that, twice, for your best friend.

I've been there, in the 21st century at Tyne Cot. I've stood at the feet end of that grave. I didn't know that man, but I cried.

In another post, which I will write in a few days, I'll tell you how I solved the three puzzles.

[G-CPTN]

Although I knew none of those mentioned, the story caused me to tear up.
As you say, burying your best mate, not once but twice is beyond love and devotion.

[Hydromet]

You've obviously inherited your grandfather's talent for writing, please don't delay with this riveting and heart-rending story.

[Slasher]

Excellent posts Plum.

[OFSO]

Amazing story. We are hanging on your words.

My grandfather, George William Fell, was there. Being in the GPO before the war he wasn't conscripted (reserve occupation) but was sent out to deliver mail to the troops in the trenches, driving round the lines where possible in an old London bus but mostly on foot, for months on end. My mother said he was a sensitive man and one can imagine his feelings carrying letters from mothers, wives, and sweethearts and finding the recipients dead or dying or mutilated. Over and over again, and trying to find people and give them their letters. He survived the war but died in the 1940s.

[Cacophonix]

Good stuff Undried Plum. I look forward to tuning in for the uncovering of each of the thee puzzles.


Caco

[Ex-Ascot]

Brilliant UP.