Ypres and my grandpa

[bmpf]

My brother was today helping my dad sort out a few old documents lying around the house. He came across an old exercise book where my mum’s father had written down some memories of his service in WW1 at Ypres. I’d never heard any of this from my grandpa…he died when I was quite young and as you can see from the text he didn’t really want to talk about it.

Of course we’ve all seen stuff like this in countless films and documentaries but it really brought it home reading it written in his hand and thinking how I might never have been here if he’d been in the first wave instead of the second. Horrific. It does help with bringing into perspective some of the things we moan about these days.

Here is a small extract.





Here’s the text in more legible form (and in the right order ion case it was mixed up when posting)…


“The weather was warm and we found it rather exhausting getting up to the trenches from which the attack was to be launched. The attack was to be in two lines - our platoon was to be the second “wave”. We relaxed as best we could in the trench.

Our artillery were putting down a tremendous bombardement that lasted for many days. We were told that with such a bombardment no Germans would be able to resist and that it was going to be a question of going over to occupy the trenches that were our objective and mopping up the demoralised surviving enemy as prisoners. Some of us even felt sorry for the enemy having to sustain such a shattering bombardment. We were soon to feel sorry for ourselves.

It was a glorious summer morning. We had been given several warnings to keep a straight line and to keep in touch with the men either side of us; not to stop to give aid to the wounded but to press on steadily and to follow behind the creeping artillery barrage.

Somehow we did not seem to think about our sustaining casualties: I suppose we had been too conditioned to expect easy victory; we got no warning of what we might expect.

The first line went over at 0730 and we followed shortly after. The rattle of German machine-guns could be heard above the noise of our bombardment. Several things happened that were quite unexpected.

The front line was being mown down and the field was already dotted with dead and badly-wounded men. We found that our bombardment had covered the ground with shell holes, and some of them were apparently occupied by German machine-gunners.

We reached two lines of trenches - badly damaged - and some of us reached a trench that we hoped was our objective. When we tried to go forward again we were met with devastating German machine-gun fire and the survivors among us occupied shell holes and kept firing away in the direction of the Germans.

What I remember is the heat of the day, the tiring weight of our our equipment and the difficulty of firing a rifle with a fixed bayonet. Above all was the depressing fear that the attack was not going to successful plan. It is difficult to feel of good morale in the midst of dead and wounded men, especially when one is tired and exhausted, and now fearful of being seriously wounded.

The “straight line” we had been enjoined to keep no longer existed and we could not keep up with our artillery “creeping barrage”; we could not move as steadily as the barrage.

Somehow we were relieved. We knew only what was happening on our limited but of front, but our feeling was that the whole attack was a shattering failure. It was rumoured that casualties had been so heavy along the whole line that we were to go again into action, but for some reason that did not happen.

I cannot remember details but my next memory is that we got billeted in a barn covered with dirty straw - at Lillers near Béthune, where we waited for a fresh contingent to make up our numbers.

Soon after that we were moved into dug-outs on Canal Bank near Ypres. From there we used to travel every night through Ypres and up the Menin Road, carrying duck boards, corrugated iron, machine-gun ammunition and other burdens - a dangerous and burdensome business. Occasionally we took a turn in the front line, doing the routine trench-duty, night patrols around no-man’s land, repairing and laying barbed wire, etc, then in November.

My memory, rather vague after so long, is of heat, fatigue, shaken nerves, the smell of cordite and death, rats and lice. I do not like to recall it. I have never attempted a reunion and never shall.


Beaumont-Hamel another shambles in weather so bad that…



I remember the sound of the machine-gun bullets whistling past my ears - fritz, fritz, fritz. I expected every moment to be killed, but began to dread being severely wounded. Why I was not hit can only be ascribed to a miracle - but in the course of my service in France and Belgium I had so many miraculous escapes that people would not believe - so I never talk about them.”









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[Sinnlover]

Thank you for sharing, any first hand account of the First World War is truly harrowing.
A sobering read.

[tommyboy]

Amazing to read firsthand what these guys went through, thank you for sharing.

[Jimmcb]

Thank you for sharing. It reads ever so sadly and I can’t imagine what the reality of it was like.

I’ve been blessed to meet a few who served in WW1 and listen to what they would share. But it became tangibly painful for them to continue.

The modern soldier has the same base principles but in a different tech laden battle ground.

We thank the old soldiers who gave us what we now have, even if much is now destroyed or broken.

Lest we forget.

“When you go home, tell them of us and say. For your tomorrow, we gave our today.
Went the day well? We died and never knew. When you go home, tell them of us….”

Jim

[Pitch3110]

I cannot begin to imagine.

Thank you for sharing

Paul

[Wolfie]

A sobering read…. A brave man

I would recommend to anyone thr books or Lyn Macdonald on Paschendale and the Somme…. First hand accounts that make the first world war brutally real

[Wimm]

Thank you for sharing that. Reading that it is no wonder that those that survived such horrors didn't want to talk about what they experienced.

I am in the process of transcribing my paternal granfather's WW1 diaries. However he was on a ship in Gibraltar so had a very different war.

[BillyCasper]

For those interested in more first hand accounts of WW1, I recommend this series of interviews made in the 1960s.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/group/p01tbj6p

All compelling.


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[tixntox]

My grandfather enlisted at 14 years and 8 months old and was put into the Machine Gun Corps and trained at Belton Park Camp in Lincolnshire before having several "winters of it"! (Wipers and Wimeroo!) He didn't speak about it until his late seventies, just before he died. Even then, it was only occasionally. He spoke of one incident of jumping into a shell hole, (after taking a piece of shrapnel to the knee) and finding himself with a shot German soldier, who was dying. He gave him a drink of water and it literally ran straight in and out. He died moments later and grandad had to sit there for several hours until it was dark enough to crawl out and back to the lines in relative safety (almost being shot by his own side ).

Thanks for sharing. Reading it brought tingles and tears. RIP grandad.

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/vis...irst-world-war

[JGJG]

Unbelievable, remarkable. Hopefully writing it allowed him to exorcise some of the horror.

[Rod]

Selfless heroes who gave everything for our freedom, never to be forgotten.

[Tatters]

...it really brought it home reading it written in his hand and thinking how I might never have been here if he’d been in the first wave instead of the second.

...and conversely, the countless unborn who never were because their father, grandfather or great-grandfather died in the mud of Ypres.