A Yankee in the Trenches

By Robert Derby Holmes.

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Dedication

To Marion A. Puttee, Southall, Middlesex, England, I dedicate this book as a token of appreciation for all the loving thoughts and deeds bestowed upon me when I was a stranger in a strange land

Foreword

I have tried as an American in writing this book to give the public a complete view of the trenches and life on the Western Front as it appeared to me, and also my impression of conditions and men as I found them. It has been a pleasure to write it, and now that I have finished I am genuinely sorry that I cannot go further. On the lecture tour I find that people ask me questions, and I have tried in this book to give in detail many things about the quieter side of war that to an audience would seem too tame. I feel that the public want to know how the soldiers live when not in the trenches, for all the time out there is not spent in killing and carnage. As in the case of all men in the trenches, I heard things and stories that especially impressed me, so I have written them as hearsay, not taking to myself credit as their originator. I trust that the reader will find as much joy in the cockney character as I did and which I have tried to show the public; let me say now that no finer body of men than those Bermondsey boys of my battalion could be found.

I think it fair to say that in compiling the trench terms at the end of this book I have not copied any war book, but I have given in each case my own version of the words, though I will confess that the idea and necessity of having such a list sprang from reading Sergeant Empey’s Over the Top. It would be impossible to write a book that the people would understand without the aid of such a glossary.

It is my sincere wish that after reading this book the reader may have a clearer conception of what this great world war means and what our soldiers are contending with, and that it may awaken the American people to the danger of Prussianism so that when in the future there is a call for funds for Liberty Loans, Red Cross work, or Y.M.C.A., there will be no slacking, for they form the real triangular sign to a successful termination of this terrible conflict.

A Yankee in the Trenches

Once, on the Somme in the fall of 1916, when I had been over the top and was being carried back somewhat disfigured but still in the ring, a cockney stretcher bearer shot this question at me:

“Hi sye, Yank. Wot th’ bloody ’ell are you in this bloomin’ row for? Ayen’t there no trouble t’ ’ome?”

And for the life of me I couldn’t answer. After more than a year in the British service I could not, on the spur of the moment, say exactly why I was there.

To be perfectly frank with myself and with the reader I had no very lofty motives when I took the King’s shilling. When the great war broke out, I was mildly sympathetic with England, and mighty sorry in an indefinite way for France and Belgium; but my sympathies were not strong enough in any direction to get me into uniform with a chance of being killed. Nor, at first, was I able to work up any compelling hate for Germany. The abstract idea of democracy did not figure in my calculations at all.

However, as the war went on, it became apparent to me, as I suppose it must have to everybody, that the world was going through one of its epochal upheavals; and I figured that with so much history in the making, any unattached young man would be missing it if he did not take a part in the big game.

I had the fondness for adventure usual in young men. I liked to see the wheels go round. And so it happened that, when the war was about a year and a half old, I decided to get in before it was too late.

On second thought I won’t say that it was purely love for adventure that took me across. There may have been in the back of my head a sneaking extra fondness for France, perhaps instinctive, for I was born in Paris, although my parents were American and I was brought to Boston as a baby and have lived here since.

Whatever my motives for joining the British army, they didn’t have time to crystallize until I had been wounded and sent to Blighty, which is trench slang for England. While recuperating in one of the pleasant places of the English countryside, I had time to acquire a perspective and to discover that I had been fighting for democracy and the future safety of the world. I think that my experience in this respect is like that of most of the young Americans who have volunteered for service under a foreign flag.

I decided to get into the big war game early in 1916. My first thought was to go into the ambulance service, as I knew several men in that work. One of them described the driver’s life about as follows. He said:

“The blessés curse you because you jolt them. The doctors curse you because you don’t get the blessés in fast enough. The Transport Service curse you because you get in the way. You eat standing up and don’t sleep at all. You’re as likely as anybody to get killed, and all the glory you get is the War Cross, if you’re lucky, and you don’t get a single chance to kill a Hun.”

That settled the ambulance for me. I hadn’t wanted particularly to kill a Hun until it was suggested that I mightn’t. Then I wanted to slaughter a whole division.

So I decided on something where there would be fighting. And having decided, I thought I would “go the whole hog” and work my way across to England on a horse transport.

One day in the first part of February I went, at what seemed an early hour, to an office on Commercial Street, Boston, where they were advertising for horse tenders for England. About three hundred men were earlier than I. It seemed as though every beachcomber and patriot in New England was trying to get across. I didn’t get the job, but filed my application and was lucky enough to be signed on for a sailing on February 22 on the steamship Cambrian, bound for London.

We spent the morning of Washington’s Birthday loading the horses. These government animals were selected stock and full of ginger. They seemed to know that they were going to France and resented it keenly. Those in my care seemed to regard my attentions as a personal affront.

We had a strenuous forenoon getting the horses aboard, and sailed at noon. After we had herded in the livestock, some of the officers herded up the herders. I drew a pink slip with two numbers on it, one showing the compartment where I was supposed to sleep, the other indicating my bunk.

That compartment certainly was a glory-hole. Most of the men had been drunk the night before, and the place had the rich, balmy fragrance of a waterfront saloon. Incidentally there was a good deal of unauthorized and undomesticated livestock. I made a limited acquaintance with that pretty, playful little creature, the “cootie,” who was to become so familiar in the trenches later on. He wasn’t called a cootie aboard ship, but he was the same bird.

Perhaps the less said about that trip across the better. It lasted twenty-one days. We fed the animals three times a day and cleaned the stalls once on the trip. I got chewed up some and stepped on a few times. Altogether the experience was good intensive training for the trench life to come; especially the bunks. Those sleeping quarters sure were close and crawly.

We landed in London on Saturday night about nine thirty. The immigration inspectors gave us a quick examination and we were turned back to the shipping people, who paid us off⁠—two pounds, equal to about ten dollars real change.

After that we rode on the train half an hour and then marched through the streets, darkened to fool the Zeps. Around one o’clock we brought up at Thrawl Street, at the lodgings where we were supposed to stop until we were started for home.

The place where we were quartered was a typical London doss house. There were forty beds in the room with mine, all of them occupied. All hands were snoring, and the fellow in the next cot was going it with the cutout wide open, breaking all records. Most of the beds sagged like a hammock. Mine humped up in the middle like a pile of bricks.

I was up early and was directed to the place across the way where we were to eat. It was labeled “Mother Wolf’s. The Universal Provider.” She provided just one meal of weak tea, moldy bread, and rancid bacon for me. After that I went to a hotel. I may remark in passing that horse tenders, going or coming or in between whiles, do not live on the fat of the land.

I spent the day⁠—it was Sunday⁠—seeing the sights of Whitechapel, Middlesex Street or Petticoat Lane, and some of the slums. Next morning it was pretty clear to me that two pounds don’t go far in the big town. I promptly boarded the first bus for Trafalgar Square. The recruiting office was just down the road in Whitehall at the old Scotland Yard office.

I had an idea when I entered that recruiting office that the sergeant would receive me with open arms. He didn’t. Instead he looked me over with unqualified scorn and spat out, “Yank, ayen’t ye?”

And I in my innocence briefly answered, “Yep.”

“We ayen’t tykin’ no nootrals,” he said, with a sneer. And then: “Better go back to Hamerika and ’elp Wilson write ’is blinkin’ notes.”

Well, I was mad enough to poke that sergeant in the eye. But I didn’t. I retired gracefully and with dignity.

At the door another sergeant hailed me, whispering behind his hand, “Hi sye, mytie. Come around in the mornin’. Hi’ll get ye in.” And so it happened.

Next day my man was waiting and marched me boldly up to the same chap who had refused me the day before.

“ ’Ere’s a recroot for ye, Jim,” says my friend.

Jim never batted an eye. He began to “awsk” questions and to fill out a blank. When he got to the birthplace, my guide cut in and said, “Canada.”

The only place I knew in Canada was Campobello Island, a place where we camped one summer, and I gave that. I don’t think that anything but rabbits was ever born on Campobello, but it went. For that matter anything went. I discovered afterward that the sergeant who had captured me on the street got five bob (shillings) for me.

The physical examination upstairs was elaborate. They told me to strip, weighed me, and said I was fit. After that I was taken in to an officer⁠—a real officer this time⁠—who made me put my hand on a Bible and say yes to an oath he rattled off. Then he told me I was a member of the Royal Fusiliers, gave me two shillings, sixpence and ordered me to report at the Horse Guards Parade next day. I was in the British army⁠—just like that!

I spent the balance of the day seeing the sights of London, and incidentally spending my coin. When I went around to the Horse Guards next morning, two hundred others, new rookies like myself, were waiting. An officer gave me another two shillings, sixpence. I began to think that if the money kept coming along at that rate the British army might turn out a good investment. It didn’t.

That morning I was sent out to Hounslow Barracks, and three days later was transferred to Dover with twenty others. I was at Dover a little more than two months and completed my training there.

Our barracks at Dover was on the heights of the cliffs, and on clear days we could look across the Channel and see the dim outlines of France. It was a fascination for all of us to look away over there and to wonder what fortunes were to come to us on the battle fields of Europe. It was perhaps as well that none of us had imagination enough to visualize the things that were ahead.

I found the rookies at Dover a jolly, companionable lot, and I never found the routine irksome. We were up at five thirty, had cocoa and biscuits, and then an hour of physical drill or bayonet practice. At eight came breakfast of tea, bacon, and bread, and then we drilled until twelve. Dinner. Out again on the parade ground until three thirty. After that we were free.

Nights we would go into Dover and sit around the “pubs” drinking ale, or “ayle” as the cockney says it.

After a few weeks, when we were hardened somewhat, they began to inflict us with the torture known as “night ’ops.” That means going out at ten o’clock under full pack, hiking several miles, and then “manning” the trenches around the town and returning to barracks at three a.m.

This wouldn’t have been so bad if we had been excused parades the following day. But no. We had the same old drills except the early one, but were allowed to “kip” until seven.

In the two months I completed the musketry course, was a good bayonet man, and was well grounded in bombing practice. Besides that I was as hard as nails and had learned thoroughly the system of British discipline.

I had supposed that it took at least six months to make a soldier⁠—in fact had been told that one could not be turned out who would be ten percent efficient in less than that time. That old theory is all wrong. Modern warfare changes so fast that the only thing that can be taught a man is the basic principles of discipline, bombing, trench warfare, and musketry. Give him those things, a well-conditioned body, and a baptism of fire, and he will be right there with the veterans, doing his bit.

Two months was all our crowd got at any rate, and they were as good as the best, if I do say it.

My training ended abruptly with a furlough of five days for Embarkation Leave, that is, leave before going to France. This is a sort of goodbye vacation. Most fellows realize fully that it may be their last look at Blighty, and they take it rather solemnly. To a stranger without friends in England I can imagine that this Embarkation Leave would be either a mighty lonesome, dismal affair, or a stretch of desperate, homesick dissipation. A chap does want to say goodbye to someone before he goes away, perhaps to die. He wants to be loved and to have someone sorry that he is going.

I was invited by one of my chums to spend the leave with him at his home in Southall, Middlesex. His father, mother and sister welcomed me in a way that made me know it was my home from the minute I entered the door. They took me into their hearts with a simple hospitality and whole-souled kindness that I can never forget. I was a stranger in a strange land and they made me one of their own. I shall never be able to repay all the loving thoughts and deeds of that family and shall remember them while I live. My chum’s mother I call Mother too. It is to her that I have dedicated this book.

After my delightful few days of leave, things moved fast. I was back in Dover just two days when I, with two hundred other men, was sent to Winchester. Here we were notified that we were transferred to the Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment.

This news brought a wild howl from the men. They wanted to stop with the Fusiliers. It is part of the British system that every man is taught the traditions and history of his regiment and to know that his is absolutely the best in the whole army. In a surprisingly short time they get so they swear by their own regiment and by their officers, and they protest bitterly at a transfer.

Personally I didn’t care a rap. I had early made up my mind that I was a very small pebble on the beach and that it was up to me to obey orders and keep my mouth shut.

On June 17, some eighteen hundred of us were moved down to Southampton and put aboard the transport for Havre. The next day we were in France, at Harfleur, the central training camp outside Havre.

We were supposed to undergo an intensive training at Harfleur in the various forms of gas and protection from it, barbed wire and methods of construction of entanglements, musketry, bombing, and bayonet fighting.

Harfleur was a miserable place. They refused to let us go in town after drill. Also I managed to let myself in for something that would have kept me in camp if town leave had been allowed.

The first day there was a call for a volunteer for musketry instructor. I had qualified and jumped at it. When I reported, an old Scotch sergeant told me to go to the quartermaster for equipment. I said I already had full equipment. Whereupon the sergeant laughed a rumbling Scotch laugh and told me I had to go into kilts, as I was assigned to a Highland contingent.

I protested with violence and enthusiasm, but it didn’t do any good. They gave me a dinky little pleated petticoat, and when I demanded breeks to wear underneath, I got the merry ha ha. Breeks on a Scotchman? Never!

Well, I got into the fool things, and I felt as though I was naked from ankle to wishbone. I couldn’t get used to the outfit. I am naturally a modest man. Besides, my architecture was never intended for bare-leg effects. I have no dimples in my knees.

So I began an immediate campaign for transfer back to the Surreys. I got it at the end of ten days, and with it came a hurry call from somewhere at the front for more troops.

The excitement of getting away from camp and the knowledge that we were soon to get into the thick of the big game pleased most of us. We were glad to go. At least we thought so.

Two hundred of us were loaded into side-door Pullmans, forty to the car. It was a kind of sardine or Boston Elevated effect, and by the time we reached Rouen, twenty-four hours later, we had kinks in our legs and corns on our elbows. Also we were hungry, having had nothing but bully beef and biscuits. We made “char,” which is trench slang for tea, in the station, and after two hours moved up the line again, this time in real coaches.

Next night we were billeted at Barlin⁠—don’t get that mixed up with Berlin, it’s not the same⁠—in an abandoned convent within range of the German guns. The roar of artillery was continuous and sounded pretty close.

Now and again a shell would burst near by with a kind of hollow spung, but for some reason we didn’t seem to mind. I had expected to get the shivers at the first sound of the guns and was surprised when I woke up in the morning after a solid night’s sleep.

A message came down from the front trenches at daybreak that we were wanted and wanted quick. We slung together a dixie of char and some bacon and bread for breakfast, and marched around to the “quarters,” where they issued “tin hats,” extra “ammo,” and a second gas helmet. A good many of the men had been out before, and they did the customary “grousing” over the added load.

The British Tommy growls or grouses over anything and everything. He’s never happy unless he’s unhappy. He resents especially having anything officially added to his pack, and you can’t blame him, for in full equipment he certainly is all dressed up like a pack horse.

After the issue we were split up into four lots for the four companies of the battalion, and after some “wangling” I got into Company C, where I stopped all the time I was in France. I was glad, because most of my chums were in that unit.

We got into our packs and started up the line immediately. As we neared the lines we were extended into artillery formation, that is, spread out so that a shell bursting in the road would inflict fewer casualties.

At Bully-Grenay, the point where we entered the communication trenches, guides met us and looked us over, commenting most frankly and freely on our appearance. They didn’t seem to think we would amount to much, and said so. They agreed that the “bloomin’ Yank” must be a “bloody fool” to come out there. There were times later when I agreed with them.

It began to rain as we entered the communication trench, and I had my first taste of mud. That is literal, for with mud knee-deep in a trench just wide enough for two men to pass you get smeared from head to foot.

Incidentally, as we approached nearer the front, I got my first smell of the dead. It is something you never get away from in the trenches. So many dead have been buried so hastily and so lightly that they are constantly being uncovered by shell bursts. The acrid stench pervades everything, and is so thick you can fairly taste it. It makes nearly everybody deathly sick at first, but one becomes used to it as to anything else.

This communication trench was over two miles long, and it seemed like twenty. We finally landed in a support trench called “Mechanics” (every trench has a name, like a street), and from there into the first-line trench.

I have to admit a feeling of disappointment in that first trench. I don’t know what I expected to see, but what I did see was just a long, crooked ditch with a low step running along one side, and with sandbags on top. Here and there was a muddy, bedraggled Tommy half asleep, nursing a dirty and muddy rifle on “sentry go.” Everything was very quiet at the moment⁠—no rifles popping, as I had expected, no bullets flying, and, as it happened, absolutely no shelling in the whole sector.

I forgot to say that we had come up by daylight. Ordinarily troops are moved at night, but the communication trench from Bully-Grenay was very deep and was protected at points by little hills, and it was possible to move men in the daytime.

Arrived in the front trench, the sergeant-major appeared, crawling out of his dugout⁠—the usual place for a sergeant-major⁠—and greeted us with,

“Keep your nappers down, you rooks. Don’t look over the top. It ayen’t ’ealthy.”

It is the regular warning to new men. For some reason the first emotion of the rookie is an overpowering curiosity. He wants to take a peep into No Man’s Land. It feels safe enough when things are quiet. But there’s always a Fritzie over yonder with a telescope-sighted rifle, and it’s about ten to one he’ll get you if you stick the old “napper” up in daylight.

The Germans, by the way, have had the “edge” on the Allies in the matter of sniping, as in almost all lines of artillery and musketry practice. The Boche sniper is nearly always armed with a periscope-telescope rifle. This is a specially built super-accurate rifle mounted on a periscope frame. It is thrust up over the parapet and the image of the opposing parapet is cast on a little ground-glass screen on which are two crossed lines. At one hundred fifty yards or less the image is brought up to touching distance seemingly. Fritz simply trains his piece on some low place or anywhere that a head may be expected. When one appears on the screen, he pulls the trigger⁠—and you “click it” if you happen to be on the other or receiving end. The shooter never shows himself.

I remember the first time I looked through a periscope I had no sooner thrust the thing up than a bullet crashed into the upper mirror, splintering it. Many times I have stuck up a cap on a stick and had it pierced.

The British sniper, on the other hand⁠—at least in my time⁠—had a plain telescope rifle and had to hide himself behind old masonry, tree trunks, or anything convenient, and camouflaged himself in all sorts of ways. At that he was constantly in danger.

I was assigned to Platoon 10 and found they were a good live bunch. Corporal Wells was the best of the lot, and we became fast friends. He helped me learn a lot of my new duties and the trench “lingo,” which is like a new language, especially to a Yank.

Wells started right in to make me feel at home and took me along with two others of the new men down to our “apartments,” a dugout built for about four, and housing ten.

My previous idea of a dugout had been a fairly roomy sort of cave, somewhat damp, but comparatively comfortable. Well, this hole was about four and a half feet high⁠—you had to get in doubled up on your hands and knees⁠—about five by six feet on the sides, and there was no floor, just muck. There was some sodden, dirty straw and a lot of old moldy sandbags. Seven men and their equipment were packed in here, and we made ten.

There was a charcoal brazier going in the middle with two or three mess tins of char boiling away. Everybody was smoking, and the place stunk to high heaven, or it would have if there hadn’t been a bit of burlap over the door.

I crowded up into a corner with my back against the mud wall and my knees under my chin. The men didn’t seem overglad to see us, and groused a good deal about the extra crowding. They regarded me with extra disfavor because I was a lance corporal, and they disapproved of any young whippersnapper just out from Blighty with no trench experience pitchforked in with even a slight superior rank. I had thought up to then that a lance corporal was pretty near as important as a brigadier.

“We’ll soon tyke that stripe off ye, me bold lad,” said one big cockney.

They were a decent lot after all. Since we were just out from Blighty, they showered us with questions as to how things looked “t’ ’ome.” And then somebody asked what was the latest song. Right here was where I made my hit and got in right. I sing a bit, and I piped up with the newest thing from the music halls, “Tyke Me Back to Blighty.” Here it is:

Tyke me back to dear old Blighty,
Put me on the tryne for London town,
Just tyke me over there
And drop me anywhere,
Manchester, Leeds, or Birmingham,
I don’t care.

I want to go see me best gal;
Cuddlin’ up soon we’ll be,
Hytey iddle de eyety.
Tyke me back to Blighty,
That’s the plyce for me.

It doesn’t look like much and I’m afraid my rendition of cockney dialect into print isn’t quite up to Kipling’s. But the song had a pretty little lilting melody, and it went big. They made me sing it about a dozen times and were all joining in at the end.

Then they got sentimental⁠—and gloomy.

“Gawd lumme!” says the big fellow who had threatened my beloved stripes. “Wot a life. Squattin’ ’ere in the bloody mud like a blinkin’ frog. Fightin’ fer wot? Wot, I arsks yer? Gawd lumme! I’d give me bloomin’ napper to stroll down the Strand agyne wif me swagger stick an’ drop in a private bar an’ ’ave me go of ’Aig an’ ’Aig.”

“Garn,” cuts in another Tommy. “Yer blinkin’ ’igh wif yer wants, ayen’t ye? An’ yer ’Aig an’ ’Aig. Drop me down in Great Lime Street (Liverpool) an’ it’s me fer the Golden Sheaf, and a pint of bitter, an’ me a ’oldin’ ’Arriet’s ’and over th’ bar. I’m a courtin’ ’er when,” etc., etc.

And then a fresh-faced lad chirps up: “T’ ’ell wif yer Lonnon an’ yer whuskey. Gimme a jug o’ cider on the sunny side of a ’ay rick in old Surrey. Gimme a happle tart to go wif it. Gawd, I’m fed up on bully beef.”

And so it went. All about pubs and barmaids and the things they’d eat and drink, and all of it Blighty.

They were in the midst of a discussion of what part of the body was most desirable to part with for a permanent Blighty wound when a young officer pushed aside the burlap and wedged in. He was a lieutenant and was in command of our platoon. His name was Blofeld.

Blofeld was most democratic. He shook hands with the new men and said he hoped we’d be live wires, and then he told us what he wanted. There was to be a raid the next night and he was looking for volunteers.

Nobody spoke for a long minute, and then I offered.

I think I spoke more to break the embarrassing silence than anything else. I think, too, that I was led a little by a kind of youthful curiosity, and it may be that I wanted to appear brave in the eyes of these men who so evidently held me more or less in contempt as a newcomer.

Blofeld accepted me, and one of the other new men offered. He was taken too.

It turned out that all the older men were married and that they were not expected to volunteer. At least there was no disgrace attaching to a refusal.

After Blofeld left, Sergeant Page told us we’d better get down to “kip” while we could. “Kip” in this case meant closing our eyes and dozing. I sat humped up in my original position through the night. There wasn’t room to stretch out.

Along toward morning I began to itch, and found I had made the acquaintance of that gay and festive little soldier’s enemy, the “cootie.” The cootie, or the “chat” as he is called by the officers, is the common body louse. Common is right. I never got rid of mine until I left the service. Sometimes when I get to thinking about it, I believe I haven’t yet.

In the morning the members of the raiding party were taken back a mile or so to the rear and were given instruction and rehearsal. This was the first raid that “Batt” had ever tried, and the staff was anxious to have it a success. There were fifty in the party, and Blofeld, who had organized the raid, beat our instructions into us until we knew them by heart.

The object of a raid is to get into the enemy’s trenches by stealth if possible, kill as many as possible, take prisoners if practicable, do a lot of damage, and get away with a whole hide.

We got back to the front trenches just before dark. I noticed a lot of metal cylinders arranged along the parapet. They were about as big as a stovepipe and four feet long, painted brown. They were the gas containers. They were arranged about four or five to a traverse, and were connected up by tubes and were covered with sandbags. This was the poison gas ready for release over the top through tubes.