Fighter Heroes of WWI

So she became, in a way, my foster mother. We lived on a farm, very isolated. I had no contact with any other children excepting when I later went to a village school at St Neot. So I was mixing very freely with grown-ups, all of them occupied in agricultural work. My only playmate, as a matter of fact, was a sporting dog. And I became rather self contained, independent, perhaps a little bit difficult, being alone in that way. I developed into rather an interesting child, in that I insisted that I would set my own way of life, and form my own ideas. I had quite strong ideas as a child. When I reached the age of ten, the dear lady who had been looking after me decided to go to America with her husband, and my father felt it necessary that a home should be provided for me, so he decided to marry. And he did. He just married, not for any romantic reason. Just to make a home.

I was independent minded and I refused to accept my stepmother. And it wasn’t long before, on the excuse of going to spend a holiday with some friends in another part of Cornwall, I left home and refused to return. And from then on, I continued from one thing to another, living in different places, lodging with different persons, being employed in different things. I worked in the tin mines, and because I’d developed an interest in machinery, I was given some responsibility, even at a very young age. I was looking after power equipment, and doing survey work along the valleys for tin.

In the meantime, I took an interest in politics. At the age of eighteen, I stood with Isaac Foot, the father of Michael Foot, on his platform in Bolventor. I wrote letters for people in the farms who were scarcely literate. I had educated myself entirely – I was never coached, assisted or guided. I don’t think I was helped at any time. I just pursued my own way. I was good tempered, bright, inquisitive and well inclined to learn anything and everything from observation and experience. I gained a lot of experience.

It started to appear to me that I had a purpose in life. I was at that age, in my later teens, when a teenager develops this disposition. And I thought that my purpose could well be served if I were to adopt a religious career. I came under the influence of a book that was published at that time by the minister of the City Temple, Archie Campbell, The New Theology, which suited my ideas of religion. I was old enough to draw certain conclusions about the difference between fundamental religion, evangelical religion, and the more liberal attitude to religious dogma and doctrine. In that connection, I spoke in public on many occasions. And the local stewards of the Church nominated me for the ministry.

I accepted the nomination and acted on it. I went to London, where I was examined by a committee with the purpose of going to theological college, but I was turned down because my self-education had only equipped me for certain things. For example, they asked what books I had read. I couldn’t answer. I just hadn’t had books, the classics, and that kind of thing. I was just so completely self-educated, in a rag-tag fashion, quite uncontrolled, without direction. The committee put me back for a year, as a result of my inability to quote Shakespeare. My attitude of mind was, whilst religious to a degree, critical of a number of things that I could not accept, and I decided that my future would be secular and not religious. I turned immediately to earning my living in a commercial or engineering way, and dropped any idea of pursuing a religious life.

So I went to London with £5 in my pocket, knowing nothing more than that the streets of London were paved with gold, and my future was what I could make of it. I booked in at the YMCA in Tottenham Court Road, and within twenty-four hours I had a job at the London County Council as a temporary assistant.

By then, I had studied electricity and magnetism in books, and I’d given myself a fairly good grounding. And at the time, the big trans-continental wireless stations, Poldhu, Eiffel Tower and Nauen, were operating, and it was possible with a simple piece of apparatus – a crystal and a pair of headphones – to pick up those signals, and if you knew Morse code, you could read what they were saying. So I learnt the Morse code, and followed these transmissions as a kind of hobby. And in that way, wireless became my forte.

At the outbreak of war, I was fired with the idea, and I walked into a recruiting station and offered myself. They examined me as to who I was, and what I could do, and it came out that I knew Morse, and I was booked as one of the very, very few wireless operators for the Royal Flying Corps. One thing followed another. I was sent to study under Professor Price at the London Polytechnic for two months, and then I was handed a New Testament, a revolver, and I was told to proceed to 4 Squadron in France.

Archibald James began the war as a well-connected young subaltern in the 3rd Hussars:

My primary recollection of the first winter of the war is of mud, Flanders clay, our wretched horses standing on long picket lines, hock-deep in mud, misery, living on bully beef and biscuit, and great discomfort. We were employed as dismounted cavalry to take over trench lines, usually for a short time before infantry became available. The British front had been extended to the north. And the line in the north of Flanders was held mainly by old French Territorials. The trenches were very sketchy. And we were quite ill-adapted to this sort of work and quite unsuitably clothed for it, as indeed, at that stage of the war, were the infantry for trench warfare.

The worst episode of this period was three miserable days when we stood to in the afternoon, then rode about ten miles. On the way it came on to pour with rain. And by the time we got to about a mile and a half from the trenches we were to take over, we were all absolutely soaked to the skin. My trench was an isolated length, with no idea how far away the German trenches were. In the night, it stopped raining and started to freeze hard. We had three days in these wretched little trenches, frozen miserable. And we had the greatest difficulty getting rations up because, from one flank, the Germans overlooked our rear. And when we got back to billets after three nights in these trenches, we had without exception what became known as trench feet. We had one-third of the regiment out of action for a week while their wretched feet thawed out. My feet were throbbing with pain for at least a week.

We were then sent to take over from another cavalry regiment who had been occupying a trench line in Sanctuary Wood for three days. Our period was to be three days also. The wood was still composed of young larch trees which had been fairly heavily knocked about by rifle fire. The trench had been constructed shortly before by French Territorials. It had been too wet to dig down and the parapet consisted largely of dead French bodies covered over with a superficial covering of earth. There was no wire in front of us. And the German trenches were about thirty yards away. It was here that I received my first utterly trivial wound.

Opposite my troop front – as I say at thirty yards’ range – were the German trenches. And I quickly noticed, looking through a loophole, that opposite me was a place where the German trenches, for some reason, were shallower. And when a man walked along them, he appeared up to about the middle of his upper arm. This seemed to me to offer an opportunity. So I took a rifle from one of my troopers and posted myself at a loophole waiting for the next German to come along.

In due course, the German appeared. I’m a good rifle shot and it was no question that I’d got him. But what I hadn’t realized was that a German was watching the end of my rifle and had a shot at me. And as our trench wall was in no way bulletproof, the bullet hit me under my left arm and merely grazed the skin. But it certainly discouraged me from any further sniping.

We were relieved by the 16th Lancers. I had been convinced from what I’d heard while I was listening in the watches of the night, that the Germans were sapping under our trenches and so I reported to my commanding officer. He reported to brigade and nothing happened. The night after we left, the Germans blew a mine under the very trenches we had been in. And it cost the lives of five or six 16th Lancer officers and about twenty men, partly in a futile counter-attack which ensued from this episode.

Shortly after this, a circular came round all cavalry divisions asking for lightweight – specified lightweight – officers to become observers in the Royal Flying Corps. It came at a very opportune moment for me.

For Walter Ostler, the flying services offered an alternative to the trenches:

I well remember, one night, I was in a very crowded tramcar, going home from Finsbury Park to Wood Green. This lady – if I may call her so – simply pushed up alongside me and stuck this white feather in my buttonhole, much to my embarrassment. It was time to think about service in one of the Forces. For me, it was the Royal Flying Corps because the thing I wanted to avoid most of all was the Army and trench life in France. I’d spoken to soldiers returning from France during the winter of 1914 and they had two words for life out there: ‘Bloody awful.’

T. E. Rogers was an officer who had spent too long in the trenches:

I knew what war was like. I had seen death – too much of it. When I left the trenches, my brother officers said ‘Good heavens, haven’t you seen enough planes come down in flames?’ I said, ‘Yes, but haven’t you seen enough death in trenches?’ With flying, it would soon be over if you’d come to the end of your life. You didn’t have to sleep in mud, night after night, day after day, in mud and water.

When R. J. Duce’s wounds prevented him from continuing in the infantry, he saw the Flying Corps as an opportunity to continue the fight. The path that led him to the RFC began many thousands of miles from France:

I had been in India with one of the merchant banks before the war, and during my five years there, I had joined the equivalent of the territorial force. We were fully trained, to the extent that we were better armed with the Lee Enfields rifle than the British army in England. When the war started, after a little while, a notice came in the clubs, from the Inns of Court Officers Training Corps, asking if we would come home and join, and be commissioned into the British army. I asked the bank if I could go, and they told me that there were other people, senior to me, who should have the choice before me. I pointed out that these people weren’t going. They said that I couldn’t go, but I was going to go, anyway.

I didn’t expect to come out of the war alive. I had been living on the North-West Frontier, up near the Khyber Pass, and I had a lot of nice books and various other things, and I gave them all away, I had the idea, as did a lot of my friends, that I shouldn’t come through it, but I was of a very religious turn of mind, so it didn’t bother me.

I went down to Karachi, and I shipped on board a Japanese boat as a purser. There were forty-nine Chinese crew, six Japanese officers, and an English captain. I paid the captain six shillings a day for my food, and I got one shilling pay when I got to England. The bank sent my resignation after me. Just after I arrived in England, I was stopped, and asked, ‘What about joining up, young man?’ I said, ‘I’ve just come six thousand miles! Give me a chance!’

In the end, I didn’t join the Inns of Court, I joined the Artists Rifles. I was fully trained, so myself and three others, one from India and two from South Africa, were put on as orderlies in the sergeants’ mess. We waited so well on the sergeants that they were delighted. But we wouldn’t take that on permanently. Next, I was made an officer’s servant. Considering that I’d come from India where I’d had eleven servants, it was rather amusing. But then, I was commissioned into the 20th London, Royal West Kent Regiment. In due course, I went out to France.

On my first day in the line, I was on duty – and I remember looking over and seeing that the Germans were shelling from an armoured train that ran along a track. I was so interested to watch the shells suddenly appear like a panther approaching. You could see the shells coming over the last five yards. There was a young fellow there, named Atkins, and I chatted to him for some time. He said to me, ‘Yes, sir, this is my first time in the line.’ And then I walked about twenty yards away from him, to our company dugout, and I looked round, and in that second, a shell came over right on top of him, and the blast blew me down into the dugout. It was quite a first experience.

A while later, we sent over a party of twenty men, their faces blacked, to do a raid. A couple were officers, a few were NCOs and the rest were Tommies. I was in the front line, and a heavy barrage opened up, from behind our second line. We had to keep our heads down in the trench. Then, suddenly the Germans started shelling as well, for all they were worth. Something came down and hit my tin helmet, knocking it off. I picked up the helmet, put it back on, and one second later, something else hit it, and knocked it off again. It showed the value of these helmets. Once the shelling had stopped, we found a strange thing in the back of the trench: one of our own shells had hit a German shell in mid-air, and come down straight behind us in the trench. It should have burst – but it hadn’t.

I don’t know that I ever felt frightened – because I was too dedicated a patriot. And the finest patriot you can get is the Englishman living abroad. Having said that, I remember one incident – we were in France and I was in billets. I had a room by myself, and I woke up in the night to find that I was half hanging out of a dormer window. In my sleep, with the nerves that I must have had, I had thought that I’d been climbing out of the dugout.

At the end of June 1916, we marched down to the Somme. We were detailed to go over the top, in an attack on High Wood. I had No. 5 Platoon, B Company, and we were detailed to go all the way through. I was darned annoyed because I was going over first. We were to go over at 3.15 on Sunday afternoon, and while I was waiting, there was nothing to do but go to sleep, and I found that I was able to sleep at the side of the trench. When we went over, I was quite fortunate. Of the three officers of my company, two were killed and I was only wounded. Out of 480 men, 160 were killed, 160 were wounded and 160 got through. It was rather extraordinary. As I was stepping over the wire, I was shot straight through the foot, which knocked me down. If I’d put my foot down before, I’d have got it right through the knee. I laid out there for some hours, and then as I started to crawl back, parallel to the German line, a German came over the top, and stood, looking out, holding his machine gun. I just had to freeze. I can tell you, it’s quite a nervous tension to lie there for ten minutes, without moving, so that he thinks you’re a dead body. Gradually, I turned my head round to look, and saw that he had gone, and I crawled back. As I was crawling back, I followed a small trench, in which I came across a dead man. All I could do was crawl straight over him. It wasn’t a pleasant thing.

When I got back to the UK, I was on crutches, and I realized that I would be lame for a while, so I went into the Royal Flying Corps headquarters, and saw them. I said that I wanted to transfer to the Royal Flying Corps, and I was abruptly told to clear off, and come back when I hadn’t got crutches. I was then offered a job with Motor Transport, but I said no. I’d come all the way from India, and I didn’t want to take on a non-combatant role. So I put in again for the Royal Flying Corps and this time, I was accepted pretty quickly. I was given instructions to report to Edin, near St Pol, and I was sent to 98 Squadron.

William Berry, some way down the social order, was so keen to join the Flying Corps, that he accepted the only job available:

I didn’t think about volunteering straight away when war broke out. I rather fancy my parents were against it. They didn’t want me going out and getting killed. There were lots of posters up. Kitchener with a finger pointing, Kitchener wants you. There were all the recruiting meetings in Trafalgar Square with Horatio Bottomley very much to the fore. There were also recruiting sergeants who stopped you in the street and I was quite frequently stopped: ‘A young fellow like you, why aren’t you in the army?’ sort of thing. That was the general line, which was quite true, and I resented it very much because I really wanted to volunteer, but my parents weren’t very amenable. They were very patriotic, but in those days you obeyed what your parents told you, and I wasn’t twenty-one years old.

Then one day, I happened to go to the cinema in Croydon, and one of the newsreels showed a house in Belgium. There were German soldiers knocking in all the windows with the butts of their rifles. They then set the house on fire because it was in the way of their guns. I was very upset at this. I sympathized, and I thought, ‘Right! I am going to do something about it!’ So I wrote to the Royal Flying Corps at Farnborough.

I had had a pre-war interest in going to Hendon and seeing all the early pioneers. If you saw an aeroplane in those days, it was quite something. Flying, I thought, was the coming thing, and the RFC was open again for recruits. Directly the Flying Corps was opened, in about five minutes, it was full up, as they’d got all the recruits they wanted. They had no difficulty getting recruits of a good calibre who knew their trades and knew what they were doing. I wrote and said I wanted to enlist and I got a letter back immediately, saying that they would welcome me as a wireless operator, and would I go to the recruiting centre in Farnborough?

So I went to the recruiting centre and they said, ‘I’m sorry, you can’t join the Royal Flying Corps, it’s closed.’ I said, ‘That’s impossible, I’ve got this letter from them!’ and they said, ‘It closed this morning! You’re too late! Why don’t you join the local regiment, the Seventh King’s Royal Rifles?’ As my father had been in the ‘Shiny 7th’, I thought, ‘Well, that’s an idea.’ So I got the recruiting form and got three-quarters of the way through it when I thought, ‘No! I’m going to join the Flying Corps!’ I tore up the form and put it in the wastepaper basket.

I told the Recruiting Major that I was very disappointed that I’d got his letter but that now I couldn’t join, and he was very much impressed with the trouble I’d taken to get all that way from London to Farnborough. He said, ‘We are short of cooks. Have you ever done any cooking?’ I said, ‘I really can’t say I’m a cook, but to get into the Flying Corps, I’m willing to take it on.’ He said, ‘Right! Hold up your hand!’ I was sworn in, and I was a recruit and I spent that night at the recruits’ barracks at Farnborough.

Leslie Murton joined out of a desire to exact revenge:

I was born in Magdalen Street, Norwich, in my grandfather’s shop. My father was one of the finest turned shoemakers there ever was. One of the fastest. My eldest brother was a printer at the Eastern Daily Press. The next brother to him, Bertie, was training to be a hotel manager in London. Another brother, Sidney, was a motor mechanic.

I left school at fourteen, in the year that war broke out. At the time, it didn’t mean much to me. But one day I came home from school, and my mum told me to read this letter. She could never read or write. It was from my brother in London. He said the girls were putting white feathers in his cap as he walked through the streets. He said he couldn’t stand it, so he’d enlisted in the King’s Royal Rifles. At the same time, my eldest brother had enlisted in the 7th Norfolks. Well, after a period, my brother in London said he couldn’t stand the London people, they were rough to him, and in those days, you could transfer from one regiment to another, provided you had relations in the new regiment. So he transferred to the 7th Norfolks to be with his brother.

A little later, Sidney was sent straight to France as a transport driver. When he was there, he was sent down to the docks, where he met the regiments coming in, and he ran into my two brothers in the 7th Norfolks. He told me later that he’d said to them, ‘Thing is, I won’t see either of you two again.’ And he was true to his word. On 13 October 1915, the two of them were killed side by side.

When we got the news from the War Office, I had to go to my father’s place of business. I told him. He took his apron off, threw it down. I can see him now. He’d been a teetotaller for years but he said, ‘I’ll never come back till I’ve spent every penny.’ And my dad never came back to work again, until he’d drank his money away. And after that, my poor old mother tried to do something to herself, but she was saved. You can understand it, can’t you, when you lose two young boys of that age? It affected me as well. When I was old enough, I was going to get my own back.

From the time my brothers died, my mother put a memorial, every year, in the Eastern Evening News, where my brother had been a printer. One day, a man came to my office, where I was working, and said, ‘Excuse me, Mr Murton. Could I ask you a question?’ ‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘I see in the paper, last night, there was a memorial to the Murton brothers.’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I would like to know whether you’re a relation,’ he asked. ‘Matter of fact,’ I said, ‘they’re my two brothers, who were killed.’ ‘What I want you to know,’ he said, ‘is that I buried one of them. I was a stretcher bearer at the time, in France, in the 7th Norfolks, and I buried him, but the other one, his brother, was blown to pieces.’ And that’s the tragedy of my two brothers.

In the later part of 1915, the Royal Flying Corps formed a boys’ section. I was sixteen, and I forged my mother’s signature, and went up to Britannia barracks, where I was sworn in, and they told me that a month before I was seventeen, I would hear from them. And I did.

When I got called up, one evening, two military policemen came to my house with a warrant and said, ‘Leslie Murton?’ and my mother said, ‘Yes!’ because I was out with the boys. They said that I had to catch such and such a train tomorrow to London and then another to Aldershot, for the Royal Flying Corps. Next day, I took the train to Liverpool Street Station. I’d never been further than Yarmouth in my lifetime!

So at Liverpool Street, I got off the train and there was a policeman, and I said, ‘Excuse me, old chap, how do I get on the Underground?’ So he told me where to go. I followed his directions, until I saw a dustman, who was sweeping up the horse manure. I said to him, ‘Excuse me, where’s the Underground?’ ‘Down there!’ he said, pointing down some steps. ‘Look, old chap,’ I said, ‘I may have just come from the country, but I’m not daft enough to go down there! You’re trying to send me down the toilet!’ I thought he was. I’d never seen the Underground before. So he took me down and I got the train and went off to Aldershot. When I got there, I was really hungry, so I went out into the street, to a fried fish shop. I got some fish and chips, and just as I opened the paper to eat some, I saw my fish and chips going up in the air. Two military police had kicked it out of my hands. ‘You don’t do that here!’ one of them said. I was in the services now.

Those who joined the other ranks of the Royal Flying Corps often considered themselves a cut above the humble infantryman. Cecil King:

Everyone who joined the Royal Flying Corps in the other ranks held some trade or other, whereas the men in the general regiments – they might be anyone. All us recruits in the RFC had some kind of training or apprenticeship; we actually had to pass a trade test before we got in. And therefore we considered ourselves a bit superior to the infantry and cavalry who may have come from any walk of life. We also got more pay than they did and when they found that out, they were a little bit jealous.

George Eddington was not a born soldier:

The Flying Corps interested me because the army was rather a brutal affair full of big hefty Irishmen and that type of person. I was neither that way disposed nor that way built. It didn’t attract me a bit. I was a tradesman rather than a soldier, so the Flying Corps sounded attractive.