The following is a series of documents written by
26/324, Crosbie Claude [aka John or Jack Crosbie] TAYLOR of D Company,
4th Battalion, NZ Rifle Brigade.
He was born in Christchurch 20/12/1895 and registered as Crosbie Claude TAYLOR.
He was a son of Laura Ann and Francis William Taylor and married Iris M Gumbley in 1923.
His younger brother
51926, Rifleman Herbert Francis TAYLOR
also served but was not mentioned in the memoirs.
Sadly he was KiA August 1918.
The documents have been transcribed by his family with some later work by
Robert Cameron of Wellington with the family wish that the material it be included in his website
and remains copyright to his family.
Robert Cameron’s explanatory notes are enclosed in brackets [thus].
The family notation is shown in italics.
The transcribed documents by his family include this forward.
FORWARD
We believe Millie was a nurse from the Christchurch sanitorium. Pip was Jack's older brother
Reginald. I have attached a copy of the frontispiece which briefly touches on this as well as the
preparation of the text by my father Dr Robert C Taylor (pathologist, Napier) with some assistance
from his younger brother John O Taylor (horticulturalist Christchurch).
Perhaps the compilation of his personal account of the First World War, to end all wars, as
Rifleman Jack Taylor saw it were eventually completed by his sons, Bob and John. The original
was written in the mid 30s partly by hand writing and partly with a non-electric type writer on now
lightly tanned un-ruled octavo paper in the years 2003 and 2004.
FRONTPIECE and EXPLANATORY NOTES
A Kiwi soldier’s notes of personal experiences prior to and while in service with the New Zealand
Rifle Brigade during the Great War 1914 to 1918.
Many accounts of World War One have been written by survivors who witnessed the carnage who
were educated enough to comment on military matters and important strategies.
Jack Taylor’s memoirs are those of an unsophisticated New Zealander who celebrated his 21 st
birthday whilst on leave in Paris. Even then, he (and others) were aware of shortcomings in
military thinking but at that time were too close to the flying hardware to have the luxury of
contemplation of Haig’s intellectual gifts except that he dined in state in a railway carriage a long,
long way from any busy action and was composed of solid concrete from the ankles up.
Memoirs of Corporal Jack Taylor; aged 21 (“Somewhere in France”)
Written at 155 Beach Road, Christchurch
Hand written in “Alpha” exercise book and digitized by RCT mainly in week ending 31/3/2002
On page 133 in top margin space CCT has written 19/6/36
Another numbering system starts “84 crossed out” and continues to “99 crossed out” at Page 150
for some reason
Very first page of exercise book starts pencil free-hand top L and top right “119”
[The numbering of pages is rather confusing but to avoid confusion the text has been arranged in
as near to chronological order as possible.
The Page No 1, 2, 3 etc which appear on the top left of various paragraphs refer to the page
numbers on the original documents]
Page No
2
Subject
Page No
Subject
Outbreak of First World War.
36
Pre-judged and Found Wanting.
6
Incidents and Personalities.
37
Raided at Ploegsteert.
5
North Canterbury Hospital Board.
39
Ten Days in Paris.
7
Cashmere Sanatorium.
39
Relief and the Red Trample.
1
Discharge -to Farming.
40
Where's Your Bivvy. Where's your Bivvy
10
8
Enlistment.
40
A Stray Whiz-bang.
11
Army Life.
41
Flare Up in the Loft.
14
Final Leave.
42
A Burial Party .
15
Farewell from Auckland.
43
A Cheerless and Cold Winter.
17
Not a Happy Ship.
44
A Cold Ride.
19
Ashore in Colombo, Ceylon
45
A Dedicated Soldier.
21
Sea Journey Ends at Suez.
45
A Fatal Tot of Rum.
22
Army Drill and Incidents on Leave.
46
An Un-exciting Leave.
25
En-route to Marseilles.
47
Bogged Down.
26
Four Miserable Days by Train.
48
Blowfly Appraisal.
27
Body Lice.
50
Messines Memories.
28
Scarlet Fever Alert.
51
Chamber Music.
28
Rumble of Distant Guns.
52
A Christmas Dinner 1917.
30
Front Line Action Begins.
52
Draffm and the Red Hun.
32
Marching to the Somme.
53
Memory Lane - England 1917.
32
Follow that Creeping Barrage.
54
Homchurch.
34
Death Well at Flers.
55
A Brigade Reunion.
34
No Retreat if Counter Attacked.
56
CC Taylor’s Final Comments
35
Polderhoek Chateau.
OUTBREAK OF FIRST WORLD WAR
Page 1 of 9
At the outbreak of the first world war in August 1914, I was a patient in the Cashmere
Sanatorium allegedly suffering from tuberculosis or more widely known to patients and their
friends in those far off days as the "bot''.
At the time of my admission to this institution I was employed as a junior clerk in the office of
the Canterbury Hospital and Charitable Aid Board and every four weeks was handed a take
home pay of five golden and gleaming sovereigns. There were no deductions for any present or
future emergencies and life was, in the main, uncomplicated. And for that matter, financial
matters were not very involved. My mother kept three of the sovereigns. I retained two, out of
which I had to clothe myself, pay half a crown a week off a bike and treat myself to a bob's [one
shilling] worth of skating rink on odd nights and, now and again, a sixpenny picture show.
For two and a half years before starting with the hospital board I was employed by a
Christchurch firm of Mason Struthers where I started as a parcel boy at 7/6 [seven shillings and
six pence] a week. The hardware firm of Mason Struthers and Co handled a very large range of
hardware and we three parcels boys were kept busy in all weathers and pretty long hours
delivering pots of paint, part rolls of wire netting, lawn mowers, rakes, hockey sticks, horse
covers, ploughshares.
Page 2
You name it and we delivered it over gravel, potholed and rutted roads from eight in the
2
morning to six at night. On Fridays we worked from 8 am to 9 pm and on Saturdays from eight
to midday. Yes, we were parcel peddlers and developed legs with quite a good measure of
push in them . Moreover, we were operational in all weathers as the firm kept us supplied with
oilskin hat, trousers and coat. There was general agreement among the parcel boys that the
future for their labour of 'shove' was somewhat dim. At best it could only lead to becoming a
junior assistant at one of the counters where teething troubles usually started weighing pounds
of nails from the nail bins and keeping them replenished. And the first rung of the ladder
involved a lot of sweeping including the wide footpaths surrounding the shop's two street
display windows. The peddler's job turnover in the 'parcels' was pretty rapid and I do not
remember any bosses or director's sons electing to learn the business from the bottom up via
the handle bars and oilskins.
But doors to the many other variations of the firm’s activities Such as the Alfa Laval Separator
Department, the saddlery, general office, indent, wholesale, sports, jewellery, oil and paint, iron
stores, tiled grate and bathroom fitment, plumbers supplies and so on were never entirely
closed. The general office had a strong attraction for me and to further this desire I formally
lodged an application …
Page 3
… for consideration when the first vacancy occurred. It was not long before I was summoned
before the big chief, the managing director, Bill Morley, who turned on the green light for my
transfer to the main office with an increase in salary of 2/6 [two shillings and six pence] weekly.
Here the hours were shorter and there was no Friday night or Saturday morning work.
Moreover, the associate company was not so oppressively ironmongery and to find myself
taking orders from ankle skirted typists was quite tolerable. One of my tasks was the copying of
typed letters into large bound books of very fine tissue paper. The modus operandi was by
today's standards crude and time consuming and the end product often blurry and frustrating.
First operation was to insert a sheet of oiled paper. On this the letter to be copied was placed
and covered with one of the book' s blank pages. Having done this, a wide brush was dipped in
water, shaken and used to dampen the 'sandwich'. Blotting paper was then inserted, the book
closed and put in the press - a kind of geared squeezer with two brass knobs at either end of
the parallel handle. And thus all letters were squeezed and copied and posted to their various
destinations. Never an evening went by without me scorching to the railway station, not even
with minutes to spare with letters to be posted late fee on the guard's van, enough to set up an
early …
Page 4
… neurosis in one so young. I had now been in M&S and Co for a year when I was transferred
as a junior to the wholesale warehouse and my place was taken by a six foot tall office boy
who towered over most of the clerks. He, Godfrey Chattaway, was never addressed as other
than Chat and he was something of an incongruous figure in his knickerbockers fixed with a
metal buckle just below the knee. It was relief to know that from now on it was his job to
chase the late fee van.
Wrapping all manner of things into neat parcels was one of the first things to learn in my new
job and string from fine white up to binder twine was used by the mile. Towards closing time
each day the two warehouse travelers would be heard chugging up the right of way their King
Dick motor cycles. With their arrival the warehouse, staff blinked their eye dullness off and
entered into the spirit of making up their orders. Often the travelers arrived back half frozen
having visited such far away towns (those days) as Akaroa, Ashburton, Rangiora and other
smaller Canterbury towns. And rarely a day went by but they had their full share of the
mechanical failures of the early motor bikes.
To take off in the morning they had to run with the machine until it started and then fling their
torso over the saddle and settle in. Page 5
In retrospect, the managerial vigilance of those early days was penetrating and positive in
action. The board of directors met once a month to see how much lolly was made. There was
keen rivalry between the various hardware firms prior to the First World War and their
respective buyers to some extent became spies with their ears to the ground. Word would leak
out that the city council would be reticulating a certain area with water mains.
Later, the council would tender for 500 two inch stop cocks. Speculation would then arise as to
how one firm had all the stopcocks cornered. The roving buyers probed all the soft spots of
rival firms and no placed order was above suspicion.
Friday was always pay day and often an anxious day for many employees who were
summoned before departmental managers and fired with a week's pay. The sustained
3
sackings were designed to keep the staff dynamic and one could not blame the key men of
those days for exploiting a state of over employment.
INCIDENTS AND PERSONALITIES
Page 6
To recall a few events concurrent with my warehouse period. All wholesale orders were
delivered per medium of two four-wheeled smartly painted carrier carts, the respective horses
with mains and tails plaited and be-ribboned. One of the drivers, a Bill Minchin was an
unusually strong man and could lift a hundredweight keg of nails above his head with no
apparent effort. And this he often did, just for the hell of it and always with a small audience.
But it wasn't only the beefing act. Bill had six fingers on each hand and the sight of these stole
all the excitement of the big lift. Silly fingers they were too. The sixth finger in each case was an
additional little finger without articulation and always drooped downwards.
In the bulk storage area was a parcels office, operated and lorded over by a Dickensian
character, a tall bearded swarthy man known as Joe Ward, or just Joe. Joe was a perfectionist
to the extent that he became a natural for those he irritated. He had a desk and a four legged
stool. Every now and again someone would cut an inch or so off one leg - his inkpot would be
filled with oil; another time with wadding. For some days everyone going near Joe's office
would come away holding their nose and wondering where the pong came from and it wasn't
imagination either. The atmosphere was becoming very strained especially when it was subtly
inferred that Joe …
Page 7
… himself might be the source of the unusual nose-wrinkler. His office was a conglomeration of
cupboards, fixtures, bins, shelves and drawers. When time permitted between orders Joe was
seen to be diligently unpacking all these cluttered up places and searching for something
pungent, invisible but manifestly there. Eventually, at the rainbow’s end, Joe located not a pot of
gold but a very stinking eel. One Ayhner Biltcliff [this is probably a transcription error for 37101,
Trooper Arthur Edward BILLCLIFF] was strongly suspected for having done the planting but
Joe never got beyond fixing Bill with a very jaundiced eye every time he saw him.
Many years after in a gun pit at the Somme I can remember asking Bill if he remembered the
eel. Bill remembered alright and added - at a bit of a staff sendoff they gave me, old Joe did
the honours and handing me a small present said I can forgive you Billy Boy for putting that eel
in my desk but I should have wrung your neck all the same.
Beneath the warehouse was a large cellar, dimly lit and with long rows of ceiling high fixtures
filled with cart springs, swingletrees [a horse and cart accessory], chains, pipe fittings and the
general heavier type of hardware. This sub-department was the sole charge of one Adam
Jackson, a genial and capable cellar man and later to become head of a rival firm. The
obscurity of the cellar somehow lent itself to surreptitious small gatherings with the accent on
mid morning or mid afternoon. Often it was my turn to sneak down a back right-of-way to a bake
shop in Manchester Street known as Bloodorns and noted for its hot and flavoured meat pies.
I would collect four or six hot gravy filled pies at 3d a time and get them back to the cellar
before they cooled off. On one of these pie-bolting …
Page 8
… occasions who should suddenly appear but the GM - Morley himself. Pies were magically
switched and replaced with packets of bolts and anything handy. Busy people alright but on this
occasion I was too far away from a fixture to grab something and having taken a bite out of the
pie had no alternative but to shove it up my jersey at the back and with my elbows keep it there.
The boss addressed me as he always did , and how I hated it.
“Jackie, I want you to pick up my two razors from Whites, the barbers and leave them in my
office”. They were two cut-throats which he periodically had honed. He groped in his pocket
for two shillings and me, standing immobilized with hot gravy from a pie running down my
backside.
Those days there were no safety razors and a leather and canvas strop hung in practically all
bathrooms.
About this time thermos bottles made their first and somewhat sensational appearance in
Christchurch. They were a novelty of some prominence and sold well under the widely
acclaimed name of ‘icy-hot bottles’.
Another pink complexioned and knicker-bockered office boy arrived on the scene about this
time. He also chased the late fee van. I mention him, Dave McGill, who later became one of
4
New Zealand's finest tenor singers, toured with the JC Williamson Companies and amused me
some time later telling me how he sang his way out of the clink at Codford and into the officers'
mess.
Page 9
As near as I can remember, the year was 1909 and a vacancy occurred in the indent
department in some newly acquired offices upstairs. A few formalities and I inherit a tall desk
with two drawers and a four legged stool and the inevitable broom which was all mine; every
morning during my two and a half years with Mason Struthers. Not once during my appointment
did I miss starting the day sweeping floors somewhere and emptying waste paper baskets,
always between eight and nine in the mornings.
One basket which I approached with a good measure of revulsion was one in the birdcage type
of office of a departmental head who was always wheezy and used it as a spittoon. I may have
been a bright lad with prospects but the early morning broom session kept my ego down to
size. About nine in the morning the mature office staff would arrive and reach for their working
clothes , ie, rusty elbow-less coats and black dust- jackets.
My main occupation at the time was compiling a leather-bound and indexed book with the cost wholesale and retail price - of every item handles by the firm. All figures were in code and just
as well. It would never do for a customer to see the label and realize what the article had cost
and what he had to pay for it.
Another of my activities was frequent visits to the 'marking off room' where indented cases of
watches, silver plate ware, cutlery, pocket knives, sports gear and the …
Page 10
… numerous costly lines of hardware laid out for me to mark with three prices from the ship's
manifest. My over the year, just, was pleasant enough despite the fact that every day started
off with a broom. My immediate seniors, Percy Quartermain and Bill Smith often went beyond
the line of duty in showing me shortcuts through masses of figures and explaining the
ramifications of cost, insurance and freight. I remember them with a feeling of warmth and
gratitude. At the time everybody in their teens were just youngsters with the term 'teenager'
yet to be coined many years later. I was sixteen and the job harmony became a bit disrupted
when one night I was told not to go home with the others as there would be late cables to be
taken to the telegraph office. I had a feeling, increasing awareness of being exploited and by
today's ethics that is just what it amounted to. Why did the head indent man leave it so late in
the day to work out his lengthy coded tables to Alpha Laval Separator, Stockholm, Sweden and
involve a typist and myself in late hours night after night. It unsettled me. Beginning each day
with a broom after two and a half years and ending it at the inconsiderate dictate of an over
dedicated boss. Distant fields began to look green and attractive.
NORTH CANTERBURY HOSPITAL BOARD
Page 11
I decided to raise my sights and applied for a vacancy which was advertised in the
newspaper of the times for a junior with clerical experience, with prospects of
advancement etc, at a commencing salary of 30/- a week which was 12/6 a week above
what I was now getting. Apply in writing to the Secretary, North Canterbury Hospital and
Charitable Aid Board. Watch that writing, be respectful and request an interview. This I did and
in due course an embossed envelope with my home address, 509 Tuam Street arrived. The
letter advised me that my application had been received and requested me to attend the office
of the Secretary, Mr WS Wharton at a specified time. The indent department gave me the
thumbs up for two hours to see the 'dentist'; sharp practice admittedly but I had a credit
balance of hundreds of hours to sooth an untroubled conscience.
At the interview I was thoroughly conned over visually and introspectively. Mr Wharton put
me at ease at once and now, almost sixty years later I still cherish the courtesy and
friendliness extended to me by this widely respected man. After a ten minute interview I was
dismissed with “We will let you know, Mr Taylor." Next please.” and there were still some of
fourteen applicants to be herded into the inner office. Two days later, with pulse in top gear I
opened another embossed envelope expecting the "We regret to inform you that" but
instead it was a letter which made me …
Page 12
… bawl out Mum ....mum, ...come and look at this.” My withdrawal from MS & Coy was routine
and some surprise expressed at my decision. Two weeks later I went back to my old desk to
5
collect something I had left behind and was introduced to my successor whom I was told
earlier had quite a personality, was quick on the uptake and handled my job as a natural. At
the time I experienced a mild degree of jealous y and sour grapes towards the slick young
fellow who had stepped into my shoes; one Sid Holland, who years later became Sir
Sydney and a notable New Zealand Prime Minister. Young Sid did not stay with the firm long
and left to help his father with his secretarial work to his parliamentary work for the
Fendalton constituency.
At the hospital board office I shared a corner portion with a low desk and more importantly,
a low chair with back and sides to it. Luxury indeed after the bottom aching leather topped
four legged stools. To find my paper basket emptied and the floor swept on my arrival at the
office was for a while unbelievable. There was even a large heated steam pipe running under
the desks to put your feet on, a super luxury in Christchurch winters.
Another surprise in store was to discover that I did not have to clear the letterbox twice a day,
post any mail, or sneak out to get hot pies. Twice daily a young fellow about my own age and
known as 'Buttons’ came …
Page 13
… and collected the mail. He wore some sort of porter’s uniform with about a 100 buttons
distributed vertically and horizontally and carried a very large leather bag slung over the
shoulder. He, Arthur Doig, later served a plumbing apprenticeship. We lost touch with each
other for a few short years, until surprisingly enough we met again on the troopship ‘Ionic’
returning from the war with mobile sick and wounded. We with four others shared a six berth
cabin. [Arthur Doig was 16841, Private (later Corporal) Arthur DOIG]
Adjusting myself to the new job was exciting and incredibly soothing and due no doubt to the
harmony so evident when people give of the best without being forced to do so by the lash of
the profit motive. Here, at the NCHB [North Canterbury Hospital Board] everyone seemed to be
part of a large and friendly family, the office of the rendezvous of the secretary, Mr Wharton; the
chairman of the board, Mr Sorenson, Dr Scott, the medical superintendent, the accountant Miss
Norris, head-bookkeeper Mr Edwards - a paraplegic who never left his wheelchair, head porter
- the mop-haired Tyler, ward sisters, health inspector Nicholls and his colleagues who were
always disinfecting some place or other and often smelled of the stuff they used, the chief
engineer, the gardeners, the head of the large grocery store Mr Russell. Important as these
people were in their respective departments, the occasional appearance of a little lady in white
stopped more pens and the rustling of paper …
Page 14
… than all of them, singly or collectively. The little lady in white was the Matron-in -Chief Miss
Thurston whose presence commanded respect from patients and staff alike. My meeting with
her in London in 1917 is mentioned later.
The 12 pages finish here discontinuously and are clipped together with four, now rusty paper
staples but no papers appear to have been torn out of the back - perhaps they may turn up
somewhere else.
[Some more family notation]
This following is from a number of pale un-ruled manila paper sheets,
22.5 x 17.5 mm, typed and corrected - and stapled as follows numbering 18 to 31, 32 to 40, 41
to 48, 49 to 55, 56 to 73, 74 to 87 and 88 to 98 (loose)
A good deal of my time was taken up dealing with charitable aid applicants. Almost without
exception they were mothers with children to be cared for and through no fault of their own
were suffering "The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" brought about mainly by illness
and defaulting husbands. Some of the cases were pathetic in the extreme. Applicants were
given a form to fill in and nine out of every ten just couldn't cope with the searching questions,
age of children and when born, husband's occupation and wages, rent and other commitments,
money
6
in savings bank or elsewhere, help from any other organization. Each form was virtually a
means test and concluded with the usual warning about what would happen if any false
answers were given. The charitable aid board met once a month. The applicant had to appear
in person before them, no small ordeal for a harassed and worried mother.
After due consideration the secretary would announce the board's decision ''You will be given
groceries to the value of ........ for a period of....... by presenting this voucher at the Board's
grocery store". The validity of the voucher generally was for a month, to three, and the amounts
were …
Page 15
.as low as 2/6 a week up to 17/6, which was generally the ceiling limit. Mr Russell and his
assistant were kept busy on hand-out days as the mums filled their prams with oatmeal, sugar,
salt, rice, lentils, sago, tapioca, prunes, flour, beans, soap, and other lines in common use. It
was to be some years yet before the instant breakfast foods came into vogue.
Institutions under the board's control at this time were the Turangi Old Men's Home at
Ashburton, the Rhodes Convalescent Home and Sanatorium, both on the Cashmere Hills, a TB
clinic in Gloucester St and the Female Refuge in Linwood. The latter place was a large wooden
building indelicately named. Wayward girls went t-here to have their babies and, if I remember
rightly, the refuge also catered for mothers who through expediency found it necessary to go
there. Verily, the office staff had a very large clientele to keep record of and the bookkeeping
was pretty extensive,
Part of my duties was documenting the discharge cards from over every patient’s bed. These
were brought to me daily by 'Buttons'. On these cards was the patient's name, address, age,
religion, attending doctor, ward number, with one line devoted to "Result.” Always one of two
words were written on this line ie discharged or death. Happily the former outnumbered the
latter.
Page 16
On a line stating the cause of death one word occurred with sinister regularity, the word
'carcinoma'. At the time I was not aware of the full significance of the meaning of the word apart
from it being tenable with death in every case. All these patient cards were processed by the
accounts department and accounts were sent out accordingly. The therapeutic value of expatients receiving these very positive reminders of what they owed and moreover must pay, or
else, was un-helpful comment from those now living who can remember those pre-social
security days is without exception ''We were born too soon". If, as believed by many, coming
events cast shadows before, the shadows in my case would normally then have been a routine
promotion and steps to pursue the academic side of secretarial work, a class of work I liked
best and which I have been associated with all my life mostly in an honorary capacity. In my
case however, the shadows cast before were well off beam, or to be more exact, nonexistent.
Very soon I was to become a hospital board statistic, an institutional postman, a cleaner and
brass polisher of one of the few ornate cars which made people stop and stare when it made its
occasional visit to the city. This profound change in my way of life was triggered off through
swimming in the Avon River in its lower reaches when the coldness of the water left a legacy of
chattering teeth and shivering flesh.
CASHMERE SANITORIUM
Page 17
About three days later I was in a hospital bed with one of the cards I knew so well in a
conspicuous place proclaiming to all my name, address, religion, age and so on. Being a staff
patient resulted in me getting a generous measure of medical and visiting attention. It was not
long before my feverishness, lung congestion and touch of pleurisy subsided and I looked
forward to a short convalescence and a return to work. But such was not to be. The hospital
doctors suspected incipient TB and arranged for me to be examined by the TB specialist, Dr
Blackmore, of the [Cashmere] Sanatorium. By means of his stethoscope and percussion (there
were no X-Rays then) he confirmed the earlier diagnosis and my admission to the Cashmere
Sanatorium was arranged. I was never a cot case and after a few weeks was given one hours
work a day. That's how I became the postman with a big leather bag. I had to walk to the foot of
the hill each day, collect the mail and distribute it to the patients and/or whoever it was
addressed to. Later, the one hours work was increased to two and this second hour daily was
7
spent cleaning and polishing the doctor's car which would have been of 1912 vintage with large
brass oil lamps, horn and brass trimmings liberally imposed everywhere. The car was only used
about once a week but the cleaning and brass polishing was done every week day regardless.
The doctor and his wife employed two very attractive maids who brought me afternoon tea
each day. I stopped polishing while they were there. Their perfume was much nicer than the
‘Brasso’ [brass polishing fluid].
Page 18
I won't dwell unduly about life at the Sanatorium other than to say, that to do it justice would
take up many chapters. With both sexes mingling socially at set hours a number of romances
got under way with recovering patients. Treatment for TB more than 50 years ago was fresh air,
sunshine and rich food. The late Dr Blackmore practiced some sort of mystique by giving us an
injection once a week of 'Spahlinger serum'. A Swedish [probably Swiss] doctor was
responsible for this alleged tuberculosis cure per medium of TB germs injected into horses. The
effect it had on most patients was to send them to bed with high temperatures. At the time
however, the Spahlinger treatment received a lot of publicity and if had any benefit it was due to
the patients trust and faith in it. At bedtime each night a nursing sister would visit each shelter,
all open air and looking down on the lights of Christchurch, enquire how each patient was and if
they had had any chest pains. If they did, the area they indicated was liberally painted with
iodine. The social life at the 'San' left nothing to be desired. We had organized outings, fancy
dress balls, concerts, lectures, billiard tournaments and published a monthly ‘Sanatorium
Chronicle’ of which I was editor. We were all very remote from the war which broke out in 1914
knowing of course that nobody would be interested in lung cripples male or female. One of the
patients who later married one of the nurses managed to get an early copy of …
Page 19
… ‘Tipperary’ and flogged it up to mighty London until we got sick of Paddy shouting. We had
some fierce arguments about the war and what we would do to the Kaiser. Always at the head
of our table sat one "Ruddy" Owen, an ex patient and now on the staff. Each day he yoked up a
horse to a carrier cart and took the San's soiled linen to the hospital laundry and brought a
similar load back cleaned and ironed. "Ruddy", due to his exposure to all weathers was our
chief communicant and brought us our newspapers, our only news medium those days.
DISCHARGE-TO FARMING
Christmas came and I was marked tor discharge after being out of circulation for fourteen
months. Physically I felt no different to when I was admitted apart from having put on some
weight, and was now over ten stone. A condition of my discharge was that I took on only an
outdoor occupation, preferably farming of some sort. Must keep in the fresh air. So for me it
was the great open spaces, the outback where never was heard a discouragin' word and drink
plenty of milk. For me it was the crossroads and I found myself committed to a way of life I
knew nothing whatever about and cared less. How to become a farm hand was a poser. At the
time I had an uncle, Alf Wood, more widely known as "Brusher" Wood who was the starter for
the Canterbury Jockey Club. "Brusher" knew his horses and a farmer or two as well. He
arranged for me to go north where a friend of his would …
Page 20
… give me a job as a cowboy - starting off point anyway.
I packed my bag and boarded the ferry at Lyttelton, a lonely traveller headed for Hawkes Bay
and a sheep station known as Rosemount some twenty miles from Napier. The train journey
from Wellington was dreary with the odd bell clanging, the guard's whistle, the hot pie here and
there and tea in thick cups, all tickets please, clickety click, clickety click, clickety click end
finally Napier. Here I caught a bus which would drop me at the nearest stop to ‘Rosemount’, a
mini village called Puketapu. I had notified my arrival and was given to understand that I would
be met there. But it was not to be. The storekeeper showed me the road which went past the
MacDonald homestead some three miles away. He was sure I would get a lift before I had gone
far. The road was flat, bounded on one side by tall poplars. A little beyond these I could see
and hear a river rippling. It was autumn and the sheep tracks on the sides of the road were
covered with spent poplar leaves which crackled as I trod on them. The road was two tracks
through loose and dusty gravel. My spirits were at, a very low ebb. It was getting dark. A dog
barked in the distance and was answered by another. A mile or so away a farm house emerged
from the gathering gloom as its oil lamps illuminated its windows. As I have said, my spirits
8
were at an all time low and never before or since, had I felt so …
Page 21
… dejected, utterly lonely, each crackly footstep taking me nearer to some medieval slavery
about to absorb me as a cowboy at a pound a week and kept. An approaching car ended my
gloomy thoughts. The sound of an approaching car in 1914 on a gravelly road, amid a swirl of
dust at twenty miles an hour, penetrated the farmlands for miles. The car stopped and I was
beckoned over – “Was my name Taylor and was I on my way to the MacDonald’s? They, and a
Mr and Mrs Bignell whose farm adjoined Rosemount, had been given a message at the
Puketapu Pub to pick me up. A relief indeed to have someone to talk to at the end of such a
dreary day. I and my bag were deposited at the MacDonald gate. Another half mile walk and I
was at the house. There were two in fact, one that had recently been built and a ghost like two
storey shack amid some blue-gum trees which appeared to be holding it up. After the mutual
introductions with the Mac family and some preamble small talk I was handed over to a middleaged feeble minded, mentally handicapped individual whose job I was to have. A little later I
was given some tea in a curtained off portion of the farm kitchen. My bed was a chaff mattress
on a kind of stretcher made of opened sacks, two blankets and a blue striped chaff pillow. My
surroundings, an upturned box with a candle in a bottle, horse collars on wall brackets, a grit
grinding machine, a disused separator, a heap of pumpkins, a small heap …
Page 22
… of some made soap and some bags of spuds. I didn't see any rats or mice but the dismal
place was not without their odour.
Philmarnock, my cowboy colleague, had a room upstairs and when he used the rickety stairs
the whole shack shook as though it was about to collapse. There were four house cows to milk
and the unfortunate Phil showed me how to leg rope a cow and how to milk same as though he
had invented both operations. A few days and he went down the poplar road hoping to pet
picked up and taken to the bus stop.
The MacDonald family had two sons aged about ten and twelve. The family dined in the same
kitchen as me but that offensive class distinction curtain was always drawn close once my food
was put on the table. I ate in silence. They talked. I listened because there was no alternative.
Occasionally there was mention of the war but in the main their conversation accented such
happenings as stock sales and cropping and ploughing, and animals such as stallions, boars,
barrows, bulls, heifers, ewes, hoggets, geldings, rams, steers hacks, ponies, dogs, bitches and
pups.
My main chores were butter making in a hand turned wooden churn, milking the four cows night
and morning and riding miles, horseback, every day, cutting free sheep which had become
hopelessly entangled in blackberry bushes which abounded on the property. And of course
there was always the wood …
Page 23
… heap with blocks to be split and carted to the house. Apart from the main jobs I was a
general rouse-a-bout, catching and saddling ponies for the kids. A trick I learned was the killing
and skinning of dog-tucker sheep, always a skinny no-hoper which kept the dogs going for a
week or so. The ploughman, a Billy Weddell [2nd Reserves William WEDDELL], killed the
sheep for the house in a very efficient manner even to the fern-like patterns adroitly done with a
knife and adorning the flanks. The ploughman and I, he some fifteen years older, enjoyed each
other’s company and a friendship developed which endured until his death in 1966. Bill lived in
a cottage away from the station and rode over on his horse every morning. By seven o'clock he
had his four horses groomed, fed and harnessed ready for the days ploughing. He arrived back
at his cottage and a loving wife at seven each night. His take home wage was thirty shillings a
week plus a perk of half a sheep and some vegetables. Never was there a more conscientious
or skilled worker, hence little surprise when he was nominated by a friend high up in the
freezing industry as a manager for a rich grazing farm near Long burn in the Manawatu and
only a short distance from Rangiotu on the Palmerston-Foxton line. Bill got this appointment,
which lasted a lifetime towards the end of which, and as a recognition of his devoted and
valued services, this rich grazing area was bequeathed to him under the will of its owner, a Mrs
Holden of Iwiroa, Longburn [?]
Page 24
It was a sad day when my friend left his ploughman job at Rosemount and left for ‘Iwiroa’ in the
Manawatu. It appeared that our paths were to grow wider "As the seasons creep along the
years" but such was not to be. A month or so later I find myself under canvas at Rangiotu and
9
only a few scant miles from Bill's new pastoral empire. Here the New Zealand Rifle Brigade did
most of its training. But back to Rosemount; Bill's departure left a complete void in my life. We
spent many hours working together and days down on the river bed loading a dray with
firewood for domestic purposes. The days were long and while working we talked about the
war, politics, world affairs, our past and future ambitions, human behaviour, literature and
economics within our limited range. More than anything I missed the delicious mental
stimulation. As already mentioned, the conversation that went on behind the kitchen curtain at
all meal times and at other meeting points with the family left me completely detached apart
from being courteous.
That curtain, the memory of it is with me yet some fifty years later. It might have been tolerable
if there had been three or four other hands they did not want to eat with cafeteria style. That
could be understood but where a young man of nineteen, clean in habit and conversation …
Page 25a
… had to eat behind a curtain like some kind of undesirable was something beyond my
understanding. The segregation gave Mrs Mac more work in as much as she had to lay my
table, bring my meals to it and clear the dishes after. The food was plentiful and good and Mrs
Macdonald was kind enough in a motherly way …
Page 25b
My employer, Hughie MacDonald and always Hughie to his equals, was vera, vera Scottish in
manner, looks and speech. He was a good sheep man but his liking for the Scottish nectar took
him away from the farm at times when he should never have been away; sometimes for days at
a time and always to the embarrassment of his family. He was a big man, sandy whiskered,
and on rare occasions when he was in the mood, not only did a good days work himself but
took good care to see that all others on his payroll did likewise. I often accompanied him on odd
jobs around the homestead and home paddocks. Sometimes we would walk to repair a broken
fence carrying a coil of wire, wire strainer staples and a few batons and always a couple of
hammers. On the way going or coming, sometimes both, Hughie would shift whatever he was
carrying to one side, unbutton his fly and piddle while he kept walking without getting out of
step, Anybody's guess what the union secretary would have thought. I grinned and slightly
altered direction if there was any breeze at all. The boss kept his eyes straight ahead and
talked as usual until fully drained. I have yet to see an animal, any animal, that would not stand
still to perform this natural act. It could be otherwise of course if the animal was disturbed but
under normal quiet conditions, no. But man is considered a superior creation to the animals.
As the days went by, and the long lonely nights in the rickety shack became depressing my
thoughts were never far from one theme, why was I here ? I could answer that one, what would
this cow hand occupation lead to ? what prospects had I ? with little or no money, of eventually
getting some land of my own. Was I still a latent TB?
An occasional companion in my abode, the sub-sub standard flop house, was a swagger who
came in from the road. Some of these wanderers were intelligent men but generally off balance
with some idiosyncrasy or other. All, however, were colourful and, having met the type, I
enjoyed reading about their kind in John A Lee's book "The Shiner" But not with any of these
colourful characters could I discuss my personal problems. I felt it was my duty to enlist, not
that I had the slightest hope of being accepted with my past medical history. To enlist and be
rejected would at least classify me and give me an honourable understanding with my fellow
citizens. Yes. I would enlist, be rejected and classified, then revert back to my occupational …
Page 26
… future never unaware of the fact that whatever it was, it had to be outdoors and always in
the fresh air. My fourteen months in the sanatorium and the TB complex it gave birth to,
completely dominated my thoughts and actions. I felt I was something apart. The farming
grapevine had done its insidious work mainly per the party line and cups of tea. To the farming
community for miles around it was known that an ex-consumptive was working for the
MacDonald’s. It was something I had to live with and endeavour to live down. I would at least
show them my rejection from the army. Came the day when I rode into Napier on a horse,
stabled it and asked where the recruiting office was. It wasn't hard to find and in fact was a
pretty busy place. I was asked my name, age, religion and next of kin. - Told to go into the next
room and strip. A sergeant bawled out “Taylor next sir” to a medical officer with the rank of
major. I think his name was Natusch. Before being examined I made it clear to him that only six
months ago I was discharged from the Cashmere Sanatorium where I had been a patient for
fourteen months and was now working on a farm as advised. The doctor noted what I had said
and proceeded with the examination. At the conclusion, and to my complete amazement and
10
joy, he said "Nothing the matter with your lungs now, you're in good physical shape.” - There
was a shuffling of papers and “Who's next?”
Page 27
I left that recruiting office with a vague idea that something had been restored to me. I wanted
to share the news, talk it over with somebody. As usual I was lonely. However, some of the
pent up feelings were relieved by sending a telegram to my parents in Christchurch. It would
give them a surprise pleasurable talking point. And I wanted my brothers to know, one seven
years younger, and one two years older. The older one is among others in the Favreuil Military
Cemetery near Bapaume. I will mention him later. - So, back to the farm. They of course knew
the reason for my trip into Napier but neither I nor they had any idea the army could be so quick
in its medical examination coupled with its parting injunction "Just go back and wait till you get
your call up
notice". Their demeanour toward me, on learning that I was now awaiting a call up changed
completely. I now only had to ask for the top brick off the chimney to get it. And I believe, had I
asked for the use of the guest room and bathroom both would have been considered.
My enlistment gave them a "With it" lift, inasmuch that they too were making a sacrifice for the
war effort. The cows had to be milked, the butter made, the wood heap topped up, the odd jobs
done. Who, indeed was to do these jobs? Cowboys were no longer two a penny - and...
CC TAYLOR ENLISTS
Page 28
… on the party line [telephone] "I see the MacDonald’s are losing their man. Can you imagine
it? - that's five enlistments in the district this month - we've all got to make some sacrifice you
know- let's hope the wretched war's soon over. Everything will be going up in price - there's
bound to be shortages?
For me, however, life had become purposeful again. No longer was I an un-person. The
postulation that I might still be the medium for some TB infection was no longer tenable. I
whistled and sang as I churned the butter - swallowed large dollops of cream and washed it
down with buttermilk. From the house, via a cylindrical wax record and a long brass funnel and
with monotonous regularity came "We don t want to lose you but we think you ought to go" and
"There's a long, long trail a-winding."
As from now, my social acceptance was complete. The wheel had turned the full circle but it
took a worldwide war to do it, not the least of which was assuring me of a place laid at the
family dining table. How normal and exciting life had become. Had I been physically fit when
war was declared I would have enlisted then, at any rate within the first six months. At eighteen
years of age as I was in November 1914, I had left behind the impressionable age and entered
the stage where unequivocal opinions were formed sometimes right, sometimes wrong but
always very personal and very positive.
Page 29
I was conscious of the fact that our way of life was threatened by a pickle-haubered [a
German spiked helmet], goose-stepping and powerfully armed nation and something had to
be done to keep it in the clear. To resist the threat was not something I wanted others to do.
From the start I felt the urge to be paramount, the urge to volunteer. However, as explained,
my induction came in a roundabout way and was none the less welcome and early enough
anyway to get a bar to my regimental number which then, and through the ensuing years
always carried a slight margin of prestige. in due course, my call up notice arrived. It gave
me sufficient time to clear up any loose ends in the civil life I was about to leave. I and four
other volunteers were invited to a patriotic farewell dance at the Puketapu hall, wished good
luck, God speed and a safe return and presented with a set of hair brushes in a leather
case. Quite appropriate, as those days, I had enough hair to part either side or down the
middle. The call up notice said "You will report to the entraining officer at the Napier Railway
Station at 9.15 am and proceed to Trentham. Personal gear such as toothbrush and shaving
gear is advised. Refreshments will be served en route,
The railway platform was all animation. All bound for the one place, all together for one
purpose, all about to become comrades in arms but completely strangers to each other.
Again that sense of loneliness I not so long ago felt as the poplar leaves crackled underfoot
on my way to Rosemount.
11
ARMY LIFE
Early in the day though it was, the inevitable life-of-the-party wag as usual always prominent
and among the hundred or so men gathered there coul d have been five or six of these
individuals drinking beer, trying to sing and generally making themselves objectionable to
the women and families present and bidding farewell to their men-folk. The beer supply was
taken care of at convenient hotels along the line when the train stopped long enough. In the
late evening we detrained at Trentham where the line ran close to some occupied huts men everywhere in du ngaree trousers and flannel shirts. One group greeted us with "Are
you downhearted" we replied with an emphatic "No" - then came the reply from the first
group and others who joined in “Well you bloody well soon will be.” We were told to keep
together and stop where indicated. We did that. Some NCO's appeared from nowhere, lined
us up, numbered us off and from that moment freedom and civilian life as we understood it
came to an abrupt end. We spent some hours at the quartermaster stores gathering up and
signing for a palliasse to be stuffed with straw, a pillow case, pay book, hat, mess tin, knife
fork and spoon, flannel shirt, boots, sox, woollen underpants, denim jacket and trousers,
overcoat, two blankets and a 'hussif’ which I think was an abbreviation of housewife, a sort of
cloth fold-up containing cotton, needles, some buttons, thimble, darning wool and safety pins. A do-ityourself kit.
Page 31
There was quite a non-hilarious ceremony in one hut where the oath of allegiance was taken.
We were ushered into the presence of some brass and with hand on bible solemnly repeated
the oath of allegiance, concluding with “So help me God'. A pay book was issued containing
name, age, religion, next of kin etc and of great significance to us, our regimental number and
the unit to which we were assigned. I thus became Rifleman CC Taylor, 26/324, 4th Battalion,
NZ Rifle Brigade. I then was, and ever since, have always been extremely sensitive and
resentful of Christian names thoughtlessly inflicted on children. I was christened Claude
Crosbie which almost amounted to a left foot start right from the cradle. More so as my parents
tagged me 'Jack', a name I have lived with all my life, and not resented.
Rifleman CC [the author] and about thirty others from Hawkes Bay were bedded in a numbered
hut in which the noise and smoke before lights out was unbelievable. Everybody seemed to be
shouting and now and again the thin wailing notes of mouth organs could be heard. We soon got
to know the reveille, the long ablution benches with their stacks of tin basins and cold water taps
and the pre-breakfast physical jerks. Breakfast was invariably lumpy porridge, a small portion of
boiled bacon topped off with tea, bread and butter.
Page 32
We were learning the army way of life and learning it fast. A masculinity with heavy overtones
dominated every activity from reveille to lights out. At the conclusion of a physical jerks session
our platoon was dismissed by the CSM with two words, one being major four letter one. The
same CSM was killed scaling a ladder at le Quesnoy, thus history was in the making from the
time the Rifle Brigade was formed, history as it was related to its four battalions, the 1 st , 2nd, 3rd
and 4th; each with its distinctive black shoulder blaze. A few days at Trentham before the 4th
battalion entrained and alighted at a wayside station signposted as Maymorn [a WW1 military
camp north of Upper Hutt]. Here, all that could be seen were some acres of flat land thickly
spotted with roundish river boulders with a background of bush covered hills. On alighting,
bugles and whistles blew and quickly we were organized into working gangs - about a thousand
of us. The ploy was clearing a large area of stones ready for tents to be pitched. A few days
and a fully functioning canvas camp was established with a hundred or so tents procured from
India, cookhouse, first aid, entertainment marquees and canvas churches for all denominations.
The sanitation unit lost no time preparing latrines. Theirs was always the first and last jobs at
any new camping site. They had no complicated engineering problems. Their stock in trade
was a bolt of scrim …
Page 33
… a fatigue party from the ranks, some picks and shovels and a fair quantity of 4x2 timber.
There was no overhead cover. If the stay at one place was long enough to warrant it, the
sanitary engineers with the aid of some volunteer carpenters built a galvanized iron shelter with
a long water sluiced metal trough running from end to end. Here we sat on the usual scantling,
money belts round our necks, reading scraps of newspapers. This was the place supreme
where all the rumours were given birth to, whether in NZ or overseas. It was a place where
inhibitions were cast to the wind. Some army conveniences had no need for the sign - "Men
12
only". The only signs were "Officers only" and "Other ranks". These army mod-cons with their
long troughs of running water, were not by any imagination refreshment stalls yet on one
memorable occasion I was stunned to see a soldier sitting in line with others and eating a hot
pie - something I would not have believed had I not seen it. An unwritten law in the army was
not to be surprised at anything.
The tents were provided with wooden floors and from memory, I believe there were twelve of us
in each. Once, after heavy rain the wooden floors became buoyant rafts - our first contact with
similar and much worse conditions we were to meet up with in France.
Page 34
At Maymorn, and for some hypothetical belief, but nevertheless a very real one, it was firmly
believed that the medical welfare section was doping the soldier's tea with some concoction
which in no way bore any resemblance to an aphrodisiac. And that, in the gossip of the day,
was why May Mourned [pun on Maymorn Camp]. The entertainment tents were always
crowded at night. Two of the most popular songs were "Where are the lads of the village
tonight" and "Little Grey home in the west''. A Bob somebody or other, a sort of pannikin boss of
the sanitary squad with a large and somewhat vacuous face, fancied himself as a vocal soloist.
His repertoire consisted of one song only - "Don't go down the mine dad". But Dad went down
the mine every night amid explosive whistles, shouts and catcalls. And from the not so bright
sanitary man, when and if he could make himself heard, "If you don't bloody well shut up I won't
sing at all to you", followed by a drawn out wailing and moaning from the audience.
A sprinkling of trained brass and NCO's from an earlier enlistment strained their blood pressure,
and ours, all day and every day, perfecting us in the art of squad drill, saluting, numbering off,
and springing to it whatever it was. It taught us to obey, made us bone weary and resentful of
the faceless top brass with their stunted vision; but we put up with it. For the few who mildly
rebelled there was always the confined …
Page 35
… to barracks with its punishing defaulters call... and worse. Life was never dull. One morning
on the way from the cookhouse with a large dixie of porridge for distribution I, among others,
stretched my neck at the entrance to a tent on the way to see what was causing the gathering.
It was a soldier who had just cut his throat, a sad sight and a poor reward for inquisitiveness.
About the second week at Maymorn I paraded sick with an itch between the fingers and other
tender parts of the body. What with squad drill and scratching all through the brief 'at ease'
periods, and at night in bed, became too exhausting. Most of those parading sick were fobbed
off with a strong laxative known by a number and given 24 hours excused duty. After listening
to my complaint, the medical officer diagnosed my case as 'um, um' and told me to stand aside
and not to leave the tent. At the conclusion of the sick parade another doctor appeared and
there were more 'um's. I heard a word that sounded like 'impedicta' [pediculosis]. Where and
how I picked up a scabies infection confounded everyone concerned at the time. I believe it
was my lot, my dubious lot, to have the distinction of being the first recorded case of scabies in
the NZ Division. My clothes, bedding and personal gear was disinfected or burnt. I spent three
weeks in a camp isolation hospital. Luxury indeed - undreamed of luxury. A medical orderly
was assigned to me to see that I had two hot baths a day after …
Page 36
… which I was liberally smeared with sulphur ointment. My meals were brought regularly and
all I had to do was read and lounge about all day. I was under medical scrutiny each day and
evidently a subject of more than ordinary interest. Through a window I could see my fellow
riflemen doing their squad drill and returning from long route marches. Let them: I had plenty to
read and my pay of 2/- a day was mounting up. But all good things come to an end. The
scratching got less and less and after three weeks in paradise I was returned to my unit. Three
years were to pass before I was to hear the word scabies mentioned again and that was after
Passchendaele when the NZEF became widely infected with it.
We were granted leave to Wellington on two or three occasions. It was the home town for very
few of us as the NZRB was drawn from every part of NZ. In the capital city we seemed to
wander aimlessly round in small groups and as a rule ended up in a pub somewhere. Dressed
as we were in handed out dungarees the few stray and unattached girls to be seen on Saturday
afternoons could not be blamed for remaining unattached so far as we were concerned. After a
month or so, partly at Trentham, but mainly at Maymorn, we entrained for our next and main
training ground. Rangiotu became our main training ground.
Page 37
There was plenty of open country for skirmishing, particularly near the Foxton beaches where
13
the in-swept sand was stabilized with lupin, broom and gorse. We spent some nights amongst
this. The sand was cold yet not nearly so cold as it was in Egypt some months later. The Oroua
River ran close to the amp and became a one sex nudist colony on bathing parade days We
slept in bell tents, ten to a tent, all feet to the center pole.
All meals were taken sitting on the ground, no tables, no chairs. Every day in the army we
seemed to get closer to the earth and in France we learned to live not only on it but partly in it
with the enemy continually stirring it with explosives. The country lanes in and around Rangiotu
served well for route marching and toughening up our feet in our hobnailed Bill Massey boots.
Now we began to look like soldiers. We could, 'at the halt on the left form platoons', ‘present
arms’, do fierce bayonet charges finishing up yelling and bawling and thrusting raw steel
through cattle fences. Sartorially we looked a lot smarter in khaki uniforms complete with black
buttons, badges and cheese cutter hats. Our motto SOYEZ FERMl or 'stand firm' below a lion
in the rampant position. We liked our badge and motto but were not a bit impressed when the
faceless defenders of the realm, for good measure, officially dubbed us ‘The Earl of Liverpool’s
Own’, ELO for short, which we pronto converted to 'England’s Last ‘Ope' and 'Every Ladies
Opportunity'.
Page 38
Leave to Palmerston North was a short train journey. The last train back to camp usually had
more blottoed [intoxicated] men than the military police or red caps could cope with. There was
a lot of horse play, broken bottles and carriage windows. The orderly room was kept busy and
the defaulters bugle with its 'you can default just as much as you like so long as you answer the
call' became as overpowering as the present day pop music. On one occasion I was detailed as
part of an armed escort for odd defaulters. One so charged with insolence to the company SM
was an intelligent looking man named Callahan whom I later learned had some legal standing
before joining the army. It transpired that the CSM, apparently just for the hell of it, persisted in
calling Callahan 'Calligan' to the amusement and suppressed sniggers of the other ranks. At
one roll call Callahan refused to answer the SM's distortion of his name. The SM strode over
and confronted him with "Are you deaf, didn't you hear me call your name?" "Yes, I heard
alright and I'll answer when you get it into your thick head that I’m not Calligan." More sniggers
from the other ranks and not unsuppressed - hence the orderly room. The OC Company,
Captain MHR Jones reserved judgment. He gave each party a pep talk on ethical behaviour
separately which ended the name bawling [bullying?] which should never have developed. [It
appears that the man was actually named Callanan – 26/981 Private (later Corporal John
Francis CALLANAN]
Page 39
The camp was thrown open to visitors on Sundays and my friends the Weddells of
"Rosemount" days always came laden with a large cake, ajar of cream and a jar of jam. I was
always popular in our tent, Sundays anyway. Inter platoon and intercompany boxing matches
developed and had big followings. We of fourteen platoon took a measure of pride in our
corporal, Corporal Bob Campbell, [26/296, Corporal Robert CAMPBELL] a one-time holder of
the Hawkes Bay heavyweight championship. He stayed with us up to the 1916 Somme and
was our spokesman at the food rioting which subsequently arose at sea. Other pugilists of note
I can remember were Pukka Stanley [probably 26/1078, Rifleman Francis George STANLEY],
a university student named Fletcher [probably 26/781, Signaller Henry Joseph FLETCHER], a
Jimmy Penrose [26/200, Corporal James PENROSE] and a tall rangy individual who answered
to Gotha or Gott for short, [26/75 Private (later Lieutenant) Karl Basil GOTHARD].
Most tents had miscellaneous collections of meal accessories such as salt and pepper pots,
spoons, knives, forks and odd crockery marked Grand, Commercial and Family. Needless to
say where these came from.
The camp barbers became experts at cutting hair a la crew. in other words, the clippers all
over. [No 1 crew-cut of late 20th century!]. Not just short back and sides. One afternoon in the
hour before bathing parade some press gangs were set up to grab anyone anywhere with hair
that looked a bit long. These individuals were manhandled into a tent and forcibly held while a
barber ran the clippers from front to back thus leaving a white ploughed strip.
Page 40
He victim was then released - not long, however, before he joined the queue to get the rest off.
Company by company we were detailed to do our live shooting practice at the Putiki Rifle
Range, a few miles out of Wanganui. This entailed another train journey and was a rather
pleasant break in the never ending drill monotony. Back to Rangiotu, final leave, a dress
parade in the Palmerston Show-grounds, break camp and entrain for Auckland. Breaking camp
14
was a night to be remembered and in a colourful way. It was a night of deliberate arson. Fire
was applied to everything flammable in the nature of marquees, canteens, recreation halls and
the blaze could be seen for miles - men everywhere waving, cheering, dashing through the
billowing smoke with looted bottles of soft drinks, pies, cakes, tins of biscuits and anything that
could be swiped from the advancing flames. A similar scene but on a much larger scale
happened at Moascar in Egypt later, just before the division left for France.
I cannot account for the mass hysteria which gives rise to these uncontrollable outbursts.
Personally my only reaction was one of aloofness and surprise. I leave it to the psychiatrists to
explain the origins of such disregard for law and order and the satisfaction, if any, of those who
indulge in it. But there's one thing for sure. In every case all damage was paid for from our
regimental canteen funds.
FINAL LEAVE
Page 41
Final leave coincided with Christmas at home. Those for the South Island crowded into the
Arahura, a small ship which pitched and tossed on its way to Lyttelton. Quite a number of the
lads were pretty tight before they got aboard and almost all of us were thoroughly seasick. We
were a sorry looking lot as we boarded the train and headed for the smoky tunnel in which the
sulphur fumes started us coughing. En route some had lost their hats, a few their tunics. Some
had odd boots. But not to worry. Soyez Ferme. The Earl of Liverpool’s Own would stand firm
and take care of everything, including Christmas pudding.
After months of squatting on the ground to eat all meals, sitting at a table gracefully set with
flowers, real crockery and bright silverware and a choice of foods, seemed like some kind of
fairyland. In camp it was “Hey, sling over the uncle Ned”, “Go easy on the roll-me-in-the-gutter.”
“Our babbling brook couldn't cook (a four letter word) “Coming on the wing.” as a tin of plum
and apple with jagged lid came hurtling through the air. Surprising how quickly and easily we
adapted ourselves from one set of conditions to another. And just as well, for later, on active
service, we had to adapt ourselves almost instantaneously to the gnawing of hunger and thirst,
lice, extreme fatigue, rats, wounds, bitter cold, desert heat, trench feet and often, for days and
nights and weeks on end, the fear of immediate death. We made the most of our 1915
Christmas.
Page 42
We only had a vague idea of how the future would unfold. The days passed quickly. I spent
some pleasant hours at the sanatorium renewing friendships with the staff and the patients I
knew and still in residence. There was much warmth and goodwill for me at the Hospital Board
's office. The house phones were reached for..... “Come and see who's here”. They came, and
I became the guest of honour in the secretary's office. The final farewells on this occasion were
by no means superficial. Each farewell after final leave could be forever and always there was
some unconcealed emotion. Who was to know. I spent a lovely day on the Avon leisurely
rowing and drifting through the Christchurch botanic gardens where the weeping willows
billowed and festooned to the surface of the clear water in which trout could frequently be seen.
There was a trip to Timaru to say goodbye to an uncle and aunt. [Uncle Em and Aunt Emily]
The uncle was manager of the Timaru branch of the Shaw Saville Shipping Company. We went
aboard one of their ships which was in port at the time and had a few drinks with the officers. In
an abstract way I began to associate the ship with a troop transport. It must have been the
drinks. Rarely have I been so disillusioned. Home again and the final meal at ‘Osborne’, our
home at the comer of Tuam and Rolleston Street in Linwood where relatives and friends kept
dropping in. My mother's mother (my maternal grandmother) had married three times in
Hawkes Bay and in her early days, along with others had to move to stockades when the Maori
wars waxed and waned.
Page 43
She reared two families. My mother and a sister were the only ones who came south. My father
was one of a family of ten - eight boys and two girls. Grandpa Hugh and his wife Jane arrived in
NZ close on the heels of the first four ships. My father [Frank] was a toddler and had to be
carried and led by the hand. They walked over the Port Hills and were ferried across the
15
Heathcote River at Ferrymead, a site in Woollston now under the control of the Historic Places
Trust. On a bank of the tidal and sluggish river [Heathcote?] they and all the possessions they
had brought from Ireland with them were in a tent which caught fire at night. Valuable linen and
clothes went up in smoke. The establishment of the Taylor family, interesting as it proved to be,
has no direct bearing on how I became 26/324. Suffice to say that my father was apprenticed to
the boot-making trade, an occupation he always found to be distasteful. He bought himself a
comet and learned to play it, and with some success. Music, and not boot-making, became his
living. He spent many years travelling New Zealand with visiting JC Williamson Companies. He
was a noted comet soloist with the Pathè Hayward pictures and Fullers vaudeville circuit. He
played in bands and was a bandmaster of some.
I have a gold medal presented to him by the members of the Christchurch Professional Band.
[anybody know about this?]
Page 44
I do hope, mentioning briefly some family history at this stage, is not out of character with the
unfolding of events which took place in my prime of youth. If it is so, it arises from some past
nostalgic sentiment which still remains somewhat green - "When to the sessions of sweet silent
thought"
Final leave drew to a close and we embarked once again on the Arahura. It was a memorable
send off from Lyttelton. Parents, brothers, sisters, relatives friends were packed on the wharf.
There may have been a few wives and children to see their husbands off but most of those
departing were single and unattached. It was so in my case but not because I preferred it that
way. My attraction to the opposite sex has been consistently healthy and normal. There are
four sons and fifteen grandchildren as living proof. But, as mentioned, when I went away on
active service I was still upholding the best traditions of ‘Every Ladies Opportunity’.
FAREWELL FROM AUCKLAND
In Auckland, the fourth battalion of the NZRB, rifles carried at the trail, marched up Queen
Street to the Town Hall. We felt a measure of pride in having our own regimental band. At the
Town Hall, the Mayor and other civic dignitaries gave vent to the virtues of those about to leave
our shores with such dramatics that we sometimes looked at each other wondering if they
meant us. They were sincere however. The war was flaring and its heat could be felt here.
Page 45
The Gallipoli casualty lists put an end to any loose or frivolous thinking. Sated with cakes and
soft drinks we returned via Queen Street to the wharf where our two transports were ready for
us to go aboard. We had a rousing sendoff. A rifleman with a good voice sang "Keep the Home
Fires Burning" from high up one of the masts. Our transport No 52, the ‘Mokoia’, took care of A,
B and D. Companies and a small section of a NZ Medical unit. The other transport, the ‘Navua’
had C Company and some Niue Islanders aboard. At last, we were on active service, a status
achieved only through months of discipline, regimentation and hard work. And being on active
service gave the army unlimited authority - like the power to have us court-martialled for certain
offences and, if necessary, brought before a firing squad. What they could do was all there in
the fine print. The days of "Sorry about that Chief." were over.
The ‘Mokoia’ was a slow and smallish vessel which had been fitted out as a transport at Port
Chalmers for officers and other ranks. Devilish ingenuity had been used to pack as many
troops below deck without danger of bursting at the seams. We were a tightly packed
community and seasickness struck with full force when we were in the vicinity of the Three
Kings. For three days the nauseating distress raged. Most people are familiar with seasickness
in some form or other with adequate …
Page 46
… facilities for coping with the hygiene associated with it. For us there was a large bucket
under a canvas air vent which gathered fresh air from high up the mast and sent it down to our
humanity-packed hold. As the vomiting got out of control there was little point in trying to get to
the bucket in time. The few who did manage succeeded by groaning their way on hands and
knees. Can you imagine it? - someone trying to stand up. The ship gives another pitch and
crash. Down he goes - no sawdust to cover the slippery vomit-covered floor. We were all
16
agreed that the war itself couldn't possibly make us more miserable.
About the third day out from Auckland the greenness and groaning began to diminish. Hosing
and scrubbing neutralized the acrid stench which was pretty unpleasant to live with. In any
circumstances seasickness is an unpleasant subject to write about. This particular visitation
however, was unusual inasmuch that it struck some six hundred cooped up men, many of
whom had never been on a ship before in an unusually vicious manner. The smallness of the
ship and turbulent seas combined to associate any present day mention of the Three Kings
with "Mal De Mer" and the last sight of Aotearoa and Auckland of which Kipling thought well
enough of to describe as "Last, Loveliest Loneliest.” We were many years ahead of stabilizers
and Dramamine tablets.
Page 47
At last - February 9th and three days out from Auckland, on the high seas and on active service
after five months training in New Zealand. Blue seas, blue sky and quickly recovering from
seasickness. Arising from the beneficial effects of prescribed, regular hours, manual training,
food supervision and so on, we were in fine physical shape. We were indeed in the pink of
condition, in the prime of our youth and as the ship's engines throbbed there was a song in our
hearts as we adjusted ourselves to life at sea, resumed ‘physical jerks’ and rifle drill.
Each evening we slowed up to allow our co-transport to catch up. Our ship was slow but the
‘Navua’ was slower. At intervals throughout each day we became sitting shots for lectures from
NCOs to the top brass. The most abortive ones were the ones purporting to give us some idea
of how things would be when we were face to face with the enemy. With the passage of time
and the benefit of hindsight it is so easy to point the finger of derision at the Great War
strategists. Those who lectured us had done their homework well and made most of the scant
battle conditions available. We had no idea whether we were being prepared for garrison duty
in India, trench warfare in France or just to defend the Suez Canal. But we were to find out the
hard way, given time. The two small ships sailed on, lonely and unaccompanied.
Page 48
It was rather pleasant in our at ease periods to watch the porpoises, the odd whale spouting
and the flying fish skimming the waves. The latter always symbolic of sparkling sunshine. There
was much to interest us, concerts, games, music, unofficial gambling, yet some undertones of
discontent were becoming apparent. Our first port of call was Albany. Putting foot on Australian
soil meant something historically. Apart from that, and a fairly exhausting route march along
uninteresting roads, there was little to mention about Albany in our strictly censored letters. The
ship's fresh water tanks were topped up - tanks with a very limited capacity for the number of
men aboard.
Adieu Australia and now in the Indian Ocean we became aware of the increasing heat. Each
morning we were assembled on the deck in front of, and below, the bridge. In itself: such an
event wouldn't be worth mentioning except that some hundreds of us were entirely naked and
close enough to be touching each other, each clutching a small cake of blackish coloured soap
reputed to lather in salt water. So poised, we nudists copped a deluge of salt water from the
Bosun's hose. The end result caused us to feel a little cooler and stickier than before the hosing
as the salt water and treacly soap could only be removed with fresh water and of that precious
commodity we were allowed a tin cupful a day to shave with or use in any other way we thought
fit. After shaving and teeth cleaning not much thought was required.
Page 49
There were a few nurses aboard with the medical group. None would blame them for taking a
surreptitious peep through portholes at the salty hosing and salty antics going on below. For
them the deck was a stage. We had our ‘Entrances’ and our ‘Exit.’ and some of the exits
restored a measure of well being when a timely and welcome tropical shower took over from
the bosun's hose. Not so relaxing was when in a drenching shower we lathered up and
emerged the other side of it suddenly into bright sunlight and still soaped up.
Daily we had our fresh bread. In a small compartment off the main deck two bakers were to be
seen leaning over a large tub kneading a mass of bulbous dough. It was hot and they were
stripped to the waist. We often lathered in small groups and watched if we were off duty.
Always, men at work had some sort of an audience. These two, like lots of bakers, were not of
the skinny type and as they leaned over their tummies overlapped the edge of the tub. As
17
mentioned, it was sultry and hot. Beads of perspiration dripped from the bakers' chins onto their
hirsute chests, down their tummies and into the dough. We grinned. There was no special
flavour claimed for the bread.
This year, 1967, in a feature article ‘Ships and Sailormen’ which appears in the Auckland Star,
the transport ‘Mokoia’ with its portion of the Rifle Brigade aboard was mentioned as a happy
ship. What the article didn't mention however …
NOT A HAPPY SHIP
Page 50
… was, that to become one, it had to undergo a major convulsion. The article honourably
mentions two Aucklanders alive who made that trip. Brigadier WW Dove, [26/5 Captain (later
Brigadier?) William Walter DOVE] whom I remember well as a lieutenant in the camps at
Maymorn and Rangiotu, and an NCO at the time, Mr WF Foulds, [26/4 Captain William Forrest
FOWLDS] a well known Auckland business man. In the youthful and formative days they were
intimately known to us, and no disrespect, as Dovey and Chooky. I mention them because both
would remember the critical and tense morning tea at sea when all ranks below commissioned
rank refused sullenly and positively to go on parade when ordered to do so. I well remember
the words of Captain MHR Jones [26/12 Captain (later Major) Major Howard Ruru JONES (his
first name was Major)] when tension was at its highest "Men, this is tantamount to mutiny, a
very serious thing indeed".
Here, before describing the "Mutiny" - a brief mention of Captain Jones, later Major, whose
military career ended when he was wounded at the Somme. At a reunion of the "Dinks", or Rifle
Brigade, in Christchurch in 1955, I was directed to a table set aside for members of the 4th
Battalion. A dozen or so were present all looking intently at one another and wondering who
might that be. By way of conversation I asked a man alongside me if he had ever heard of a
Captain Jones who used to be OC D Company? His reply 'You're talking to him, - evoked my
reply in the only phrase I could think of -"I'll be damned, fifty years, long time no see”, which
started off three hours of memory-lane conversation.
Page 51
He clearly remembered the orderly room scene, mentioned when he had to straighten out the
Callahan/Calligan episode and the many others we mutually discussed.
Now back to the several events which gathered weight and speed and led up to the rebellion.
They were many, some perhaps minor and exaggerated. The major sour fixation within us was
the extreme class distinction so evident between the officer class and the other ranks. The
officers dining saloon towards evening became a scene of luxurious living. Soft music was
provided by other ranks. White-coated waiters moved among the tables. There was a choice of
food, something we never had. The privileged ones certainly were living it up. There was a
sustained conviction that some lines put aboard for the comfort of the troops were wholly side
tracked for use in the first class quarters. Luxury lines formerly available at the canteen
suddenly became unavailable yet were still circulating among the music and bright lights.
Confirmation that some skullduggery was going on came from fatigue parties assigned to
cleaning, polishing and handling food from the ships stores. Our mess room was down below,
poorly lit, poorly ventilated, overcrowded and always unpleasantly stuffy. The food daily
became more dull and tasteless and distinctly offbeat so far as its smell was concerned.
Page 52
We sniffed our crude knives and forks, our tin plates and tin muffs. "Here, smell this. Whew...
and this." It soon became evident that the smell came from our eating gear. The tin-ware felt
slightly greasy to the touch due to its having been washed in soap-less salt water, warm of
course, and then wiped with towels which also got the salt water treatment so far as washing
was concerned. Daily, the orderly officer put in an appearance with the company SM and
shunned us to attention. The parrot cry followed - "Any complaints men?”
Always someone stood up... "Yes sir, smell this, taste that, and this, and this Sir." - The SM
"Alright, one at a time, sit down the rest of you sit down I said." The orderly officer went through
the motions of sniffing and declared he couldn't detect anything wrong. Complaints were always
fobbed off with the usual platitude "The matter will be investigated". From one of the
complainants after the orderly officer had gone, "The bastard should have been crowned with a
18
plateful of the bloody muck". A deck above, the hierarchy was dining to the sound of soft music
at tables agleam with silver and white linen. Below, three companies of other ranks' united with
a singleness of purpose.
Our reiterated and just complaints were unheeded. We were not getting a fair deal and we
knew it. Something must be done.
Page 53
Word was quickly passed around that tomorrow morning we would not parade on deck at the
usual time. Everyone was to remain below and refuse to obey any orders. Just who or what
group was responsible for this decision we never found out. It was something to be obeyed and
we were receptive to any move, however rebellious, that would bring us face to face with
authority. The following morning, no complaints were offered during the breakfast meal. The
quietness was unusual. Our minds were made up. We had reached a point of no return - the
short changing those below deck had put up with since leaving New Zealand was about to
reach flash point.
The bugles blew as usual for the daily parade on deck. There was no response. A sergeant
major appeared at the top of the gangway looking amazed. "What's this all about, why aren't
you men up on-deck?” He pointed to certain ones - named them - ''You, you and you, get up on
deck at once."
There was no response. He disappeared. A minute later an officer appeared with the SM. He
pointed to a corporal, named him, and demanded an explanation of the refusal to go on deck.
The corporal named slowly rose to his feet and said he alone was not responsible for what was
happening but he understood the men had a number of grievances they wanted to discuss with
the commanding officers and the men had unanimously agreed not to obey any orders until this
was brought about.
Page 54
The officer and the SM did another retreat. In a tense atmosphere we waited, knowing full well that
we and the top brass were on a collision course. Next to appear was Captain Jones, the SM and
some additional officers
Now some fifty years later I can well remember his opening words - "I must remind you men that
your refusal to obey orders amounts to mutiny on the high seas, a very serious matter and one that
is extremely punishable. That warning stands whatever may be the outcome. However, if you will
appoint a spokesman, your complaints, whatever they may be, will be heard here in ten minutes
from now''. With that, they again retreated and it was now over to us to appoint a spokesman. First
name mentioned was Corporal Campbell and his nomination was fully endorsed. We knew not
whether his views were aggressive or if he would only render lip service to our cause. But we did
know that he knew his King's English and was a forceful speaker. The fact that he had been, as
mentioned earlier, a notable Hawkes Bay boxer may, or may not have influenced our choice.
Anyway time was short. No time to dilly dally.
We can dispense with the corporal rank at this juncture. Our 'Bob' stepped to the front, confronted
the larger group of officers and the stage was set for the ‘Mokoia’ convulsion; “The winter of our
discontent". We, the tense listeners were expecting to hear something akin to "Sir, in response to
your request to hear our complaints. I will list them in order - One" and so on.
Page 55
What we didn't expect was a devastating attack on the ill created class distinction which had arisen
between the officer class and the other ranks. Spokesman Bob, never at a loss for the right word,
made it clear that he was not the instigator of the riot and followed up with although we were all
volunteers aboard this ship and bound together for a common purpose, the officer class was living
in a state better than they could understand or afford in civilian life while the men were living in a
state infinitely worse than anything they had to put up with before joining the army. He went so far
as to say that some of those enjoying the ultra plus conditions were underlings before joining up
and that many of the men below deck could buy and sell them many times over. The social or snob
gulf that was now so established was not tolerable and mainly responsible for this so called
mutiny. The officer group for once was on the listening end. We looked at them and they at each
other. They were under considerable strain as our spokesman lashed at their purblind behaviour
and disregard of living standards for the other ranks. They were left in no doubt about the need to
do a lot of homework when they got back to their cabins and meals with music. The pressure all
19
were under eased somewhat when the personal attack merged into a listing of specific complaints
such as the greasy and ill-smelling utensils, the daily mug of fresh water, the deteriorating food etc.
ASHORE IN COLOMBO, CEYLON
Page 56
It was indeed a dramatic morning and one long to be remembered. Arising from it all, we were
instructed to appoint a select committee to meet and iron out the causes of the unrest. This was
done and satisfactory progress reports began to appear in routine orders and on notice boards.
Fresh water was made available for dishwashing, the daily personal allowance was increased and
the food became more palatable and varied. The wheel turned the full circle. Harmony was
restored. The convulsion was over. Back to the bosun's hose, the flying fishes, foam tipped waves,
blue skies, tropical downpours, lecture and rifle drill in a ship at peace again as it steamed on its
way to our next port of call, Colombo.
The Gateway to India, Ceylon, as it is termed in today's brochures promised excitement and a trip
ashore, for the ship had to take aboard coal, water and stores. It loomed up through the early
morning mist and the palm trees contiguous with its white sandy beaches and inlets bathed in
brilliant sunshine made a breath taking picture. [A few years ago the late William Connor
(Cassandra of the Daily Mirror) rated an early morning approach to Colombo as one of the world's
greatest sights]. With the aid of a tug we anchored to a buoy in the almost filled harbour. Two sleek
British Cruisers anchored nearer shore seemed to cast a spell of strength and security over the
scene.
Page 57
Their presence and readiness brought the war closer and the sobering thought that our days of
make-believe soldiering were about over. With coal barges alongside we were given a briefing
about activities for the rest of the day. It was to be a route march followed by leave in a confined
area, some sort of barracks and woe-betide anyone caught out of bounds. - The Earl of Liverpool's
Own, here we come, about to impress our Bill Massey hobnails into Oriental soil.
We went ashore in barges. Colombo is almost on the equator and dressed as we were, with
flannel and woolly underwear, khaki uniform, and legs wound round with puttees, the heat was
oppressive. The route was close to beaches and the sealed road wound pleasantly through
towering and shady palm trees. The bird life was plentiful and richly coloured. We looked goggle
eyed at elephants, the teeming natives and the queer carts drawn by all kinds of animals except
horses. The march was somewhat leisurely and we appreciated our regimental band which
boosted our prestige. About midday we were marched through guarded gates into the compound
and given about four hours freedom. A reason was given for our confinement in the compound. It
was to the effect that the reinforcement before us had taken charge of the town and played merry
hell generally. Those following us would be told that the Rifle Brigade went on the rampage. Sorry,
but there you are. The canteen and native stall-keepers in the sprawling birdcage had never had it
so good with their overflowing stalls with cash spending soldiers laid on.
Page 58
Allah is good. The compound, despite its military regimentation, was not lacking in variety. You
had a choice. There was foaming and cool beer, tea, coffee, soft drinks, cakes, pastries, pies and
ice cream and an abundance of ripe fruit by way of bananas, oranges and pineapples, reasonably
priced. Fakirs and snake charmers took care of our diminishing cash which at 2/- a day after a
month at sea was just a little over two pounds.
After some six hours ashore we assembled at a quayside and boarded some barge-like things
which took us back to the ship. Many of us had a branch of bananas, on our shoulders and when
the barges got close enough operation banana bombardment began with bananas flying in all
directions.
Coaling had finished and there was much black dust everywhere. The method of coaling those
days was via the sweat track. Slightly built natives, men and women, each with a well filled basket
of coal set up a shuttle service from barge to ship up a fairly steep and narrow gangway. It was
heavy and sustained work and once started the pace never slackened. They, the natives, played
the game according to the rules they knew, rules which to us idly watching had strong overtones of
exploitation and ruthlessness. The barked orders of their black overlords cancelled out any
slacking.
Page 59
20
In an adventure like the one we were so firmly embarked on one's fate often was dependent on
being in the right place at the right time, for instance being in the right shell-hole or part of a trench
when the chips were all in. On this warm and calm night when the shore lights had an
overpowering appeal the right place at the right time on transport number 52 was on deck at the
stem where a native sampan was stationed touching the ship's mooring line. In the subdued light a
native was pointing to the mooring line and beckoning us to slide down it - presumably to go
ashore or somewhere. It looked like pennies from heaven but it cost a bit more to get standing
room on the sluggish craft. Two shillings in fact.
The first down the rope had wiped it clean with their uniforms. The clouds of coal dust which arose
from the coaling had settled on everything touched and had some affinity with wet paint. The early
Tarzans had copped the lot and were branded with a smeary black line from chin to crutch and
their language was in keeping - something to go ashore with anyway. Ashore we kept together in
small groups and explored the native out of bounds area. It was not that exciting mainly because
our spending money, the little there was of it, had already gone down the drain. The ploy was
dodging red caps and getting back to the ship.
Page 60
We managed both, but there's always the odds-on chance of standing up and being counted and
that's just what happened. As we climbed the rope and landed on deck we were arrested with "The bloody guard room is already full, what the hell do we do now"? The answer came from the
officer of the watch, "Take their names and let them go to their quarters. They'll get their due
tomorrow". On the morrow the CO threw the book at us and fined us two dollars - those days a
quid each [one pound]. It was a blanket fine for the law breakers were too numerous to deal with
individually. Summing up the event in retrospect it resolved itself into a typical case of where the
cause of the event proved to be more interesting than the event itself
We were not long at sea again before being rounded up for the regular and very strict ‘dangle
parades’. We knew these medical inspections by no other name and what other more euphonious
description could there possibly be? There was, of course, a sustained vigilance by the medical
corps ever on the alert to diagnose any venereal disease so that it could be isolated and treated.
These parades appearing before a doctor complete with his rubber gloves were something of an
ordeal for those of a sensitive nature but to most it was a session of wisecracking after the event
anyway.
Family footnote
Those days syphilis was endemic and treated, I think, with mercurial drugs which would be
relatively ineffective, and somewhat dangerous. Early diagnosis would be by recognition of the
typical syphilitic penile 'chancre' - a flat circular painless ulcer from which fluid could be expressed
and examined microscopically 'dark field'. Gonorrhea, or 'clap' would be diagnosed by clinical
history, presence of a purulent urethral discharge and microscopic examination and for culture of
the pus. I am not aware of the availability of these techniques to the army medical services at that
time but even clinical recognition of these serious venereal infections and their isolation and
management would have been a most valuable contribution to army health.]
[A short section of text was deleted here by the family]
Page 61
A day or so before entering the Red Sea a full dress court martial was taking place behind closed
doors. A rifleman had been found guilty of theft of a comrade's property by way of a well filled
money belt. The army dealt drastically with offences of this nature. Justice not only had to be done
but had to be seen to be done, particularly as it related to the promulgation of the sentence. All
troops aboard were ordered to assemble in the largest viewable area on the ship. The prisoner
was marched into the centre under armed guard and became the target for some five hundred
pairs of eyes. His name, number, platoon, company was announced followed by the findings of the
court martial and the sentence - for theft of a comrade's property, to be stripped of all insignia at a
mass parade and to be handed over to the appropriate authorities on arrival at the next port.
Page 62
Absolute silence and an extremely tense atmosphere descended upon us all as a senior sergeantmajor stepped up to the prisoner and with a business-like pair of scissors commenced to remove
the regiment's honourable badges and buttons. Justice was seen to be done alright and the
compulsion which made us witness the eclipse of a former 'other rank' lingered for quite a while
21
and its immediate effect was to hasten the full adulthood we were so quickly attaining. It left us in
some awe as to what the army could do and that the earlier near mutiny could have involved us in
serious trouble.
Author’s footnote
[As recently as 1967 I was a patient in Green Lane Hospital in Auckland and my bedmate
happened to be a Mons Veteran, a Mr Jock Elliott, who became a prisoner of war. To my enquiry
as to the authenticity of the Angels of Mons story he confirmed the belief that it was mythical. In
our discussions of historical events early in the First War I recalled the sentence inflicted for
pinching another's property. The 'Old Contemptible' recalled witnessing a similar happening in
his regiment somewhere in Flanders fields; not only was the convicted one stripped of all insignia
but insult was added to injury by getting the smallest man in the regiment to give him a sound kick
in the backside as he was marched off the parade ground. Thus justice was seen to be done.
SEA JOURNEY ENDS AT SUEZ
Page 63
We were nearing the end of our first sea journey which, thanks to the Royal Navy, although we
never saw any single unit of it was evidently in sufficient strength to guarantee us a safe journey in
the southern hemisphere. Here we were about to disembark at Suez and in my brief association
with the army I had added considerably to my skills inasmuch that I could now write letters by
striking out phrases I didn't want, blow smoke rings, play chess, two-up, pontoon, poker, explain
the culminating point of a bullet in flight, manipulate a defused mills bomb, slide down a ship's
mooring line and shave with the army issue cut-throat razor and cold water. Apart from these very
questionable attributes the army life was having a marked effect in character building, particularly
as it related to immediate obeyance to orders. Of no less importance was our increasing tolerance
of waiting our turn for everything.
Our landing at Suez was not exciting and leaving the ‘Mokoia’ empty and tied up in a foreign port
gave rise to some feeling of neglect and abandon on our part. Old faithful, however, returned to
New Zealand safely and her next trooping voyage was to Plymouth in Britain where she saw some
shots fired in anger. Now, a short march in the direction of the railway sidings in Suez where we
were directed to climb into a long rake of predominantly iron trucks. Squatted on the hard floor of
these trucks all we could see was the star-studded sky above and we somehow got the impression
that the northern sky held more stars than the southern one we had been brought up under.
Page 64
Some talk arose as to whether if, and when, we would be able to look up and see the Iron Pot and
the Southern Cross again. This train of thought arose while we chewed bully beef and ate some
bread, cheese and jam and wondered where our next stop was to be. The established pattern of
wondering ‘where next' remained consistently with us throughout the war. One thing was certain
however, we always knew the place we had left and what had happened there. We knew we were
in Egypt and more than likely heading for some troop centre near the Canal.
The air was chilly and the truck-bottom anything but accommodating, after the soothing movement
of the ship we had left a few hours ago. But all journeys end somewhere and this, our first one on
foreign soil, ended in another shunting yard about midnight. Pale moonlight limited our visibility to
a dim view of some indeterminate buildings and tall palm trees as we route marched through the
outskirts of this apparently deserted town which as we soon found out, was Ismalia. Every now
and then as we marched someone would tread on something soft followed by a short burst of
profanity. The smell of human excrement in the narrow streets we passed through was quite
unpleasant after the pure sea air we had become accustomed to. But not to worry, our noses had
to adapt themselves to a variety of smells, many never suspected nor encountered before - the
smell of the battlefield, phosgene and other disabling gases and the penetrating, acrid and sinister
smell associated with the bursting of large Howitzer shells.
ARMY DRILL AND INCIDENTS ON LEAVE
Page 65
Our midnight march ended in a sandy area and, weary and cold, we were told to bed down until
daylight. That the sands of the desert could be so cold came as a startling surprise and we spent a
few miserable hours on our oil sheets plus a blanket and an overcoat. The coming of daylight
22
revealed the most impressive sight I can remember. As the sun rose all manner of recumbent
activity became alive and moving. In every direction and as far as the eye could see the desert
appeared to have reached saturation point in its absorption of soldiers of various nationalities,
horses, mules, tents, marquees guns and limbers. Bugles were blowing, regimental bands
marching and practicing, NCOs shouting commands to physical drill squads. In the distance there
was route marching and to remind us that we were in biblical and historic land of Egypt a mile or
so away, some camels were being taken from A to B for some purpose or other. It only wanted the
pyramids and the Sphinx to show up to complete the magic and wonder of our first morning in the
land of Cleopatra and the Pharaohs. But more wonder, and some disillusionment, unfolded as the
sun became something that intruded too close for comfort and flies that became a continual pest in
their personal inspection.
As we adjusted to these two inflictions we were lined up for a roll call and given a resume of the
day’s activities which included …
Page 66
… pitching tents, squad drill, the most detestable filler-in of all, fatigues, latrines, cookhouse
locality, company and battalion headquarters and our parade ground which was sandy and of
generous size. No water could be seen but in the distance the upper part of a ship could be seen
as it apparently sailed through the sand - a sight to be remembered. We were not
far from the canal and became obsessed with some vague fixation that we were to defend it or
help those already there to repel the Turks or whoever emerged from the never- never.
Our first and second battalion, with their diamond and square black badges, who had arrived in
Egypt before us, had already had a skirmish with some desert wanderers known as Senussis .
Now with the four battalions united, the brigade was complete and came under the command of an
ex Indian Army brigadier, Brigadier General HL Fulton. Our battalion, the fourth, came under the
command of Colonel Melville and as a result we kept our chins a fraction higher and on parade
took some pride in our soldierly image. On the first parade that took place under his command he
and his adjutant rode to a central position. The battalion was called to attention. The Colonel
glanced around, stood up in his stirrups and in angry and very loud voice shouted, "Company
commanders will dismount immediately and have their horses taken back to stables".
Page 67
This was an almost incredible happening. We could only stand and stare and wonder if we had
heard right. To see our company commanders cut down to size on a battalion parade by a new
commander left no doubt as to who was the big chief from now on. Altogether it was an amazing
morning and the respective four captains, even if they didn't show it, must have felt a bit washed
up as they climbed down off their chargers as we stood at ease. Once the position became
stabilized again the Colonel gave orders to break ranks and gather round and in some well chosen
words introduced himself to us and made it brutally plain what he expected of us. He told us of the
conditions existing in France, how we would be sorely tried and that if we got four hours sleep out
of each twenty four we would be dam lucky. That alone was an immediate thinking and talking
point. Somehow we felt transformed under the new command, felt that at last we really belonged.
Later in France, promotion took our leader to higher commands very much to our regrets.
Author’s footnote:
[After serving with distinction in the war he returned to New Zealand and became GOC NZ Forces
Many who served in the Great War, and particularly those of the Rifle Brigade, learned with sorrow
and pride of his death a few years after hostilities ceased.]
·
The Division was regrouping in and around Moascar prior to embarkation for Europe.
Page 68
There were no dull moments for us in this land of Cairo and the Nile. Top brass seemed to have a
one track mind which was to get us fighting fit and to face up to any unforeseen emergency with
fortitude and without question. No question about top brass's ideals being on target. War
demanded these qualities but the pursuit of these ideals left us wondering at some of the off-beat
methods of attaining them. For instance - thirst temptation must be resisted. To this purpose we
were lined up under a hot sun in full marching kit in our hot uniforms with their ankle length
trousers and ventilation closed top and bottom by means of coat collar and puttees. Web
equipment kept the uniform tight to the body. We were briefed about the next four hours which was
to take the form of a route march into the desert with full water bottles. To make sure they were
filled they were inspected by the sergeant before setting out. However, before taking off we were
solemnly told that the bottles would be inspected on return and the owner of any found not to be
23
full would be crimed and punished. We were marched through undulating soft sand hills and to say
that we were not tempted to drink all the water in our bottles and then some, would be, to put it
mildly, a top echelon under- statement. The irony of course was that when we did get to France we
mainly existed on duckboard gratings to keep us out of the water. These thirst resisting marches
away …
Page 69
… out in the scorching un-shaded soft sand areas of the desert were exhausting but not without
some rewarding compensation by way of some hours off in the afternoon nearly all of which was
given over to swimming in Lake Timsah, the shores of which were shaded with tall palm trees and
buildings to the water’s edge. Here where we got sunburnt and bathed we were good marks for the
Gippo orange sellers. The trick was to lure one of these swarthy individuals to the water’s edge
and engage him in a piaster [per] orange - bargaining session. In the midst of this a sun-bather
would quietly disengage himself from the sand, creep up behind Kernel or whoever he was and
'accidently' heave him into the water, oranges and all, which he kept in the long nightgown affair
which he wore. The Gippos didn't always appreciate our idea of extroverted horseplay as we
grabbed whatever oranges we could, swam out further and ate them - and they were sweet but not
because stolen fruit is supposed to be sweeter. They were naturally that way. Basically however,
we civilians, turned soldiers, had a conscience and a sense of fair play and Abdul was rarely if
ever out of pocket arising from these precipitate and undignified bargain sales - a whip around took
care of the pathetic moaning. It was fun at the water’s edge where another of our caprices was to
climb aboard a Gippo motor boat going from one part of the lake to another and when a quarter of
a mile or so out, dive overboard and swim back.
Page 70
Other undimmed memories of Egypt were the 'Eggs a cook', the everlasting queuing up for
meagre supplies of water, the continually raided gambling dens, the headline news bawled out by
newspaper sellers, moral exhibitionism, the father of all parades and the burning of the camp on
departure night. Known as the 'Eggs a cook' joints and always well patronized, these places were
large tents and other non-descript buildings where the natives sold fried eggs on, or with, bread
and with a cup of tea. The eggs usually came in fours and struck us as small models of what eggs
should be. Nevertheless they satisfied our demand for something over and above the strictly
monitored army rations. You collected your plateful from a counter, the inevitable tin plate of
course, and weaved your way to a table if one was available. You avoided stepping on crown and
anchor boards and there was no escaping the ear bashing jargon of the owners, the rattle of their
dice and the ''You come here in a wheelbarrow and go away in a limousine" or much more
picturesque and vulgar conveyances. Frequently when eating and gambling was at its height, a
shout, “Red Caps” would be heard above the din. This had an electrifying effect inasmuch that all
lights were doused and in the rough and tumble that followed, chairs, tables went flying and
everyone felt it was his inherited right to grab whatever money he could regardless of whom may
have owned it.
Page 71
Some quick work went on in the dark and next morning at daybreak there were always the hopeful
fossickers combing the sand with their fingers and quite often with some reward, The gambling as
we knew it was illegal, hence the periodical raids with now and then a false one staged by some
dissident just for the hell of it. The 'joints' took care of our off duty periods, especially after dark.
Certified water for drinking, shaving and teeth brushing had to be carted for long distances and
was very strictly rationed, so much per tent of eight men. The ration for such a unit was about a
gallon per tent. Getting it often meant a long walk and a long wait. The water was carried back to
the tent in a canvas bucket and then equally divided into our mess tins, an oval shaped affair with
a sort of frying pan lid and handle The flies plagued us and we were continually swishing them off
our faces. It rather amazed us to see the amount of fly toleration the natives had. Regardless of
the number and persistency of the flies on their faces and in their eyes they evidently thought it a
waste of time flicking them off. By custom their motto seemed to be what cannot be cured must be
endured. The filthy things kept our hands busy waving them off our bodies and food.
The Gippo paper sellers came to the opening in our tents early each morning. I cannot for certain
remember the name of …
Page 72
… the paper they were peddling. It may have been the ‘Egyptian News’ or one of the many names
newspapers are known by. I don't remember and it doesn't matter anyway but what I do remember
is the vendor bawling out at each tent "Velly good the news, Lieutenant [name] got the syphilis,
24
velly good the news Lieutenant [name] got the syphilis." Most of our junior officers, all named, got
the newspaper social disease from time to time. It was a laugh although a bit unorthodox as
headline news. These newsboys were well versed in two specific things. One was to handle
money quickly and to short change if possible. The other was the expressive way they mastered
and used our four and more letter words. We in our turn had no trouble finding out what a 'big
zoubrik' was. Often we were called just that which meant that for the moment we were transformed
into a male Gippo breeding organ. There were times when departing from the tent door a lower
form of these Gippo purveyors would pull up his grubby white nightgown with "look, big zoubrik"
followed by, from one or more of us, "Get out you dirty bastard." The departing shot was "Not me.
You dirty bastard – you big zoubrik - Egyptian news, Egyptian News." The Australians were always
blamed for teaching these boys the various immoral acts they would perform for a few piastres and
some were revolting. It should be remembered that the Egyptians we came in contact with did not
represent a normal cross section of that nationality.
Page 73
Camp-followers as we saw them, and indeed throughout history and of both sexes, could never,
be classed as other than the vulture or jackal type. During our comparatively short stay in Egypt
we did meet up with a number of Egyptian officials, mainly those servicing the railways and other
government amenities but always we looked at them with a jaundiced eye and they regarded us
with a slightly veiled malevolence and, understandably, for we were in their country, not at their
invitation and using it as an incidental as a means of pursuing the war. In the years since, often I
have wondered how Lawrence of Arabia got along so harmoniously with the Arabs - the golden
coins he handed over and the plunder which arose from various forays could have been the main
stimulus. Leave that to the historians.
For us and for the whole of the 1st NZEF, time was running out as it related to our geographic
position. Up to now we had been in khaki for seven months. Little wonder the Gallipoli boys
sometimes dubbed us 'Bill Massey's Tourists'.
A mass parade was looming up, by far the largest I ever took part in. It was to be the final march
past before the division left for France. It took place under a burning sun in full marching kit and
the blare of regimental bands, We sweated and cursed as we marched past the saluting base with
its backroom staff officer boys with General Godley and some lesser Gods …
Page 74
… all adorned with brass and red tabs looking like some Gilbert and Sullivan Rajahs Of Bhong.
Altogether it was an exhausting day and did nothing whatever in conditioning us for the years
ahead. It satisfied the ego of the upper brass with their Indian Mutiny complex, Boer War and river
gunboat strategy.
A matter of days now before entraining and embarkation at Port Said for the Mediterranean. Our
slap-happy days were about over and in less than a fortnight we were to hear the continuous
rumbling of gunfire. The night before leaving Egypt and consistent with the need for an outlet for
pent up emotions the safety valve was to bum the camp down and it was done in a complete and
spectacular manner. No one knew who started the fires or spread them from one building to
another. Canteens, gambling dens, souvenir shops and ‘Eggs a cook’ joints lit the skies with red
reflections and choking smoke rolled across the parade grounds in great clouds. 'Tis said the
lookers on see most of the game and for us that was the way it was.
From a safe distance, Gippos could be seen emerging from one smoke cloud and becoming
swallowed up in another and saving whatever they could and certainly at great personal risk.
Some shots could be heard above the crackle of the fires and next morning rumour had it that a
couple of Gippos were shot and a few wounded. No more was heard of the dramatics so the
alleged shooting evidently was another postulation.
EN-ROUTE TO MARSEILLES
Page 75
Full compensation as in the Rangiotu fire was made good from canteen funds. Camp burning was
not a way of life with New Zealanders and to most was repugnant. Wherever men are to be found
in numbers there will always be a small percentage of rat-bags. And with the wild night and
conflagration it was the end of our grind under the hot desert sun. Tents were struck folded and
with full kit we were on the march again to the open trucks and on the way to Port Said.
The journey was not long, some forty miles and we stood up most of the way rather enjoying the
25
cool air. After the usual clanging and banging of a long line of iron clad trucks and the usual - line
up and number off - routine we marched through deserted streets and finally on to a wharf
alongside of which the outline of a very large vessel could be seen. Daybreak was yet an hour or
so away and with its arrival we trekked up the gangway and became absorbed in the bowels of the
Cunard's ‘Alaunia’, some two thousand of us plus a lot of horses. [The ‘Alaunia’ was torpedoed not
long after disembarking us at Marseilles.] Shortly after leaving Port Said an escort of two
destroyers took up positions on either side - (port and starboard to the men who go down to sea.)
Our vessel steered a zigzag course and the much faster destroyers did the same. Looking through
a porthole in the daytime seemed to convey the impression that all three vessels were …
Page 76
… playing some kind of a ring a ring of roses and creating the kind of pattern ice skaters leave in
their wake. Maybe the bad weather we had during our Mediterranean voyage highlighted the
weaving, converging, and near missing of the very large and the two very small vessels. There
were times when only the mast tips of the destroyers could be seen and conversely times when a
giant wave hoisted a destroyer on its crest and exposed its propeller and rudder. The novelty of all
that was happening, the storm and the rough seas, the almost suffocating heat in our overcrowded
cabin three or four decks below, the Royal Navy escort, all served to keep our minds off the very
real danger which threatened every mile of our journey for indeed we would have been a prime
and highly vulnerable target for an enemy submarine of which there were many in the
Mediterranean at the time. In Egypt volunteers had been called for the setting up of Lewis Machine
Gun sections and I for one poked my neck out but, just why, I've never quite been able to fathom.
None of us who elected to join this semi-specialist outfit had any idea what it would mean later in
battle. At the time it presented novelty and a course of instruction, a diversion from the tedious
infantry routine. I remained a Lewis gunner for almost two years. I and others fired some
thousands of rounds into the 'Med' at imaginary periscopes by way of floating boxes, bottles etc.
Page 77
It was cool enough on deck in the storm which lashed the ship for three days but in our cabin, as
mentioned, three or four decks below, we suffered near suffocation as the normal means of
ventilation those days, the portholes were iron-plated and sealed for obvious reason. The air
seemed to be emasculated as we lay, completely naked, on the cabin floor, tossing and turning..
Smoking didn't help. “Sail on ship, land us some- where and get us out of your bowels, ”and the ill
fated ‘Alaunia’ did just that. It disembarked us safely at Marseilles. Goodbye to lifejackets and
lifeboat drill. Our mobile home took the place of the lifejacket and from now on our home was what
we stood up in and could carry on our backs. Our first impression of France was rather a dim one
and it remained that way right through the campaign. Heavily engaged in total war it could not be
otherwise. We got to know it very intimately from the surface downwards.
At the moment we were tramping its cobblestone surface amid dreary railway sidings and drab
looking buildings. A cold wind was blowing and the sunshine, what there was of it, seemed to be
severely rationed. Four short days ago it was sand, sun, palm trees, heat and flies, sunny blue
skies. The climatic and visual change was significant. The visual change was very evident in the
few people to be seen, their age group, and what they were doing, and their dress. Most prominent
were small groups of German prisoners performing railway work under the …
FOUR MISERABLE DAYS BY TRAIN
Page 78
… watchful eyes of elderly French guards - guards with their fixed bayonets and uniforms that
looked as if they slept in them . Elderly women and children made up the rest of the thinly
dispersed population. There was an almost complete absence of men of our own age and we
understood why.
They had gone from the south of France to the north. We were about to do the same by means of
a long and tedious train journey under conditions created mainly for shifting animals,, mainly
horses from one place to another, hence the writing on the closed in trucks, hommes 40, chevaux
15. But before entering these claustrophobic boxes we spent some hours on a bleak platform
wondering why we ever left home and some who had left New Zealand with us were already on
the way back there through hospitalisation of one sort or another and always someone was being
transferred to some other unit for specialist training such as signaling, bombing, tunneling, trench
mortaring etc. Change was already with us and decay was beginning to loom up. Before
entraining we had our midday meal of bully beef, bread jam and tea without milk and such food
26
was to be our lot for breakfast, dinner and tea for the next four days. I don't remember how many
of us were packed into each wagon other, than too many. There were no seats. We sat on the
floor back to back with knees up and ate and slept that way for four days and nights. We neither
shaved nor washed and twice a day the …
Page 79
… twenty mile or less an hour train would pull up between scrub covered embankments. These ten
minute breaks welcome in that they allowed us to stretch our cramped legs and by squatting
amongst the available shelter make ourselves more physically comfortable. The slow speed of the
train was appalling. There were times when for miles on end we could have run as fast or faster.
Those fortunate enough to be near the sliding doors sat with their feet dangling out and bought
chocolate bars and cartwheel shaped bread from boys running alongside the train. We stopped at
various railway stations which lent some small variety to the monotonous journey. At Amiens I saw
my first breach of our accepted modesty code. A French officer and his lady friend clinging to his
arm walked to the edge of the platform, fumbled with some buttons and pissed on the line.
Upon reflection my summation was that from a moral angle there was not much to be disturbed at.
The hygiene however, if such was common practice must surely contravene all sanitary laws. The
officer's motive may have been urgency. It may have been a way of life. Anyway, it was one of
those rare occasions when a small cluster of us kept our eyes on the man at a time when the sight
of any woman would stop us dead in our tracks. Just what the couple may have thought of us
rubberneckers staring so rudely is anybody's guess.
Page 80
Almost hourly signs were not wanting that we were getting near the front line. French troop trains
were frequently seen and we had our first visual introduction to thickets of barbed wire and, on
some of the stations we stopped at, we saw many women wearing mourning. Our first week in
France taxed our resources in adjusting to unfamiliar conditions both human and geographical. It
was early spring and the mornings were frosty and we had seen enough of dreary railways and
sidings to last a lifetime. Apart from the rainstorms at sea we were, in the shelter of our box trucks,
passing through the kind of rain we were to see plenty of in the months ahead. On the fourth day
of the long drag, cold and hungry and with about seventy pounds weight of gear on our backs, we
and the train parted. We had no idea where the train went and cared less, nor had we any idea
where we were going as we snaked along winding cobblestone sunken roads. What we walked on
was also extremely unfamiliar.
Walking, on cobblestones was after the first few kilometers stingingly painful as blisters developed
on our sorely tried feet - feet that had been accustomed to walking on sand and, in the main, level
places. In the gathering dusk our advance billeting officers directed us to our billets, u-shaped
animal barns with doors opening on to a sunken area about the size of a half sized swimming bath
three parts filled with …
BODY LICE
Page 81
… fermenting animal manure. It being early spring the animals were evicted in our favour - at a
negotiated price.
We spread fresh hay over the clay floor, lit some candle stumps and
answered the call for mess orderlies. These arrived back from the field kitchen with dixies of hot
stew, our first hot meal in France. We all agreed the 'babbling brooks' had done a good job. They
had been trained by the battalion sergeant cook who fell from grace in Egypt. He
had
been
reported for washing his sox in a tea dixie. For this he was court martialled and reduced to the
ranks. Our billet in this French village of Thiennes was not exactly a five star hotel but it was the
first building we had slept in since leaving New Zealand. We were not to see tents again for some
considerable time. This, our first ex-animal billet, could claim some dubious distinction inasmuch
as it gave us our baptism of body lice, an infliction of filth and revulsion we were never free from all
the time we were in France. Here at the start of the infestation - may be as good as any to amplify
and describe in some detail our lousy inheritance.
My first awareness of the new pestilence came when I found something crawling up my neck and
into my hair. Naturally my fingers groped for whatever it was and caught it. It showed some
reluctance to leave my flesh and the sight of this loathsome, leggy and soft-bellied louse …
Page 82
… was not pleasant to look at nor contemplate as a body companion for the next two years. The
27
authorities responsible for our well being took whatever measures they could to minimize the
infestation. The delousing of our clothing was a routine procedure whenever we visited a divisional
or brigade bath house. We stripped in a room partitioned off with scrim. We tied a label with our
name on our trousers and tunic and handed them through named holes in 'the wall to waiting
French women who passed them on to more French women at long ironing tables who ran hot
irons over all the seams to kill the hatched lice and the myriads of eggs they had deposited.
What a job for women. Imagine it. It certainly had no future. No wonder they peeked at us through
slits in the scrim, at us who were naked and waiting our turn to get into the one time beer vats
already crowded with squirming bodies and soupy water. On the way in we handed our sox into
one cubby-hole, our flannel singlets into another. Underpants, shirt, towels, all went the same way.
All was quiet and orderly when the various items of clothing were handed in. The handout or
collecting end gave rise to indignation, swearing and shouts of laughter as the laundered items of
underwear were handed out. Complaining was useless. If you got half a towel you were stuck with
it until the next clean up when you handed in the half and some other poor …
Page 83
… devil handed in his full towel and was handed your half - "Look what the bastards have given
me, half a bloody towel not big enough to wipe your tits with.” Often a good pair of sox from a NZ
parcel was handed in and the pair handed out was army issue. That alone would have been good
enough for a gripe but when the pair poked at you through the cubby hole turned out to be odd in
colour and size you cried out aloud and when offered sympathy of the backhander kind or just
laughed at you used the soldiers most expressive word which ended everything he wanted ending.
“balls”. And that's the way it went at bathing parades. Always someone who handed in long
underpants got shorts in return and often it was the other way round. Although getting shortchanged was unfunny for the victim it was good for a laugh.
On leaving the baths in any area behind the line we felt cleaner for two or three days when the lice
gradually asserted themselves and made us crummy again. The hot irons wielded by the French
women always left some lice eggs in inaccessible places and consequently the life cycle of the
loathsome pests was never broken. A familiar sight behind the firing line at the time was seeing
soldiers squatting in some convenient place 'reading' their shirts as though they were newspapers.
Thumbnails were almost as good at squashing lice and eggs as the hot irons. I clearly remember
an incident relative to one of these delousing periods. It was a warm spring day. We were billeted
in the …
Page 84
… now familiar animal barn in a town only about five miles from the trenches, a place called
Estaires. We had just eaten our midday meal of Simcoe Brand Beans, bread, cheese and jam after
a morning mainly devoted to learning the technicalities of the Mills bomb and gas helmets. The
atmosphere in the barn was thick and a bit, irritating from the powder arising from our daily
diminishing straw beds with so many men moving about in and on them. In the hour before, the
afternoon lectures began we trickled out of the dusty barn into a small orchard at the- back,
squatted under some fruit trees, took off our shirts and began delousing. Ten minutes or so went
by broken only by scrappy conversation such as “Eggs everywhere, got you, did you hear that one
squash, the air's better out here”. A peaceful scene with about fifty men dedicated to body
cleanliness in the only way they knew how when into our midst came an arm waving, shouting,
angry looking Frenchman evidently telling us in language we didn't understand to get back into the
billet. In response he was told to get the hell out of it, not to do his block and mainly to, bugger off and we went on delousing. In a few minutes he returned, still waving and shouting with one of our
senior officers who explained that the barn did not include the use of the ground 'at the back'. We
donned our shirts and with very mixed feelings went back to the building.
SCARLET FEVER ALERT
Page 85
Our mixed feelings arose from the fact that we could not reconcile such behaviour in an area
where in front of our billet there passed, night and day, ambulances, field guns and howitzers,
shell- packed limbers, field kitchens, lorries laden with barbed wire, more guns, more ambulances,
London buses filled with Tommies, companies of foot weary Australians, staff cars with
moustaches and red tabs, dispatch riders weaving their way in and out of the congestion. All this
and more, for the continual firing of the guns was close and ominous and the night sky reddened
with their glare. To us, it didn't make sense to be ordered off the grass, what there was of it, in a
place that was virtually adjoining a battlefield. And now, having exposed our silent, persistent and
28
much too sociable enemy [lice] no further reference will be made to it. We scratched and rubbed
our backs against the comer of buildings or anything of a like nature that offered whenever the
need and opportunity arose while we were on French soil. Occasionally we scratched each other’s
backs, by request.
At Thiennes, our first billet in France I became a victim of a lance corporal's confusion which
turned out to be quite pleasant for ten days. It happened thus. Scarlet fever had struck a French
family in their cottage facing the Thiennes square which contained the usual estaminets, church
and a shop or two with shutters up.
Page 86
L/C [Lance-Corporal] McAllen [probably 63175, Private (later Lance Corporal Simeon Joseph
McALLEN]) was detailed to take our section, six of us, to the quarantined cottage, to mount guard
there and see that no one left or entered the infected area. Our medical officer had told our CO
what had to be done, all duly documented and verbally passed on to the L/C of the guard who in
the line of duty lined us up, numbered us off, marched us along a street to the square, checked the
house number, directed us up the garden path end into the house through its open door. We were
just settling in unbuckling our equipment when who should show up at the front door but the
medical officer in a hell of a rage demanding to see the non commissioned officer in charge of this
lunatic group who were supposed to stop at the front gate, mount a guard of two men and return
the rest to billets for relieving at the regular periods of four hours on and eight off. The MO took off
in a fury after making it quite clear that we were now contacts and must on no account leave the
premises. Our meals and rations would be left at the front gate. We took over one room and as
usual slept on the floor. A one armed Frenchman, his wife and two daughters, one of whom had
the scarlet 'don't come near me rash', and a grandmother who lived up in an attic somewhere,
occupied the rest of the house.
We did our guard out front and daily saw our colleagues setting out and returning from tiring route
marches, poor devils. Twice a day or more we inspected our bellies for signs of a …
RUMBLE OF DISTANT GUNS
Page 87
…pink sunset but no luck. The L/C who got his wires crossed was severely reprimanded. Our view
was that he should have got another stripe for giving us ten days of the best. The rumble of the
distant guns never let up. There was to be plenty of war for all of us. Training was intensified and
at all hours. We were taught how to wear and use our gas helmets, to throw bombs, fill sandbags,
apply field dressings, erect barbed entanglements, the use of passwords, how to kill a Bosche with
a rifle butt as well as the bayonet and if the bayonet got stuck in some bones and was hard to
withdraw, to fire a bullet alongside it, the use of the entrenching tool, and how to become statues
when caught in the brilliance of a star-shell. What we were not taught was how to cope with the
weak and cheap French beer available in the numerous estaminets every evening. We regarded it
as some kind of a near beer which had to be pepped up to have any effect at all. A normal sort of
bottled beer known as 'bock' could be got at a franc a bottle which at the time was about ten pence
of our money and as our pay in the field was two bob a day or twenty cents in today's currency we
didn't over indulge in Bock beer. We used it sparingly to top up the cheap draught concoction and
then plunged a heated poker into it which never failed to give it a good frothy top which if not quite
the real thing was rather pleasant to lick off the lips. Champagne could be got for …
Page 88
… five francs a "bottle and of quality not to" be despised but two and a half day's pay for a bottle of
bubbly was a bit steep for all except a few successful gamblers. We had many evenings in noisy
smoke filled estaminets but they were by no means 'enchanted' or patterned on the South Pacific
Musical. Nor was Mademoiselle of the come hither type. Nevertheless an immortal song with
mademoiselle as the central theme had been composed by I believe two serving British soldiers
and at times when it is heard fifty years later, mostly at reunions, it brings back wonderful
memories. Every war produces its own special and enduring melodies the typical one of the
second war being Lili Marlene. In all areas close to the front where French civilians were permitted
to conduct normal activities the women were heavily outnumbered by the tremendous influx of
soldiers of many nationalities. They had to cope with the thirst of the crowds which packed the
estaminets night after night, and their daily demand for the tasty French bread which we queued
up for and bought - along with the always sought after evening meals of four fried eggs on bread,
always four eggs. The egg-meal eateries in the villages behind the lines were mostly rooms of, or
29
attached to, houses with a notice in a window proclaiming their purpose, the notices never two
alike and usually chalked on a piece of cardboard. Their meaning however was unmistakable and,
once inside, and if finding a table, one was …
Page 89
… approached by M'selle, bon jour soldat, quatre oeufs, oui avec du pain et une tasse de cafe
which of course was four eggs, bread and a cup of coffee. In our platoon we had a big blond
Swede named Schroeder with a capricious sense of humour, always good for a laugh and liked by
all. Perhaps his most classical grin-spinner was, - "l go for feed to egg-joint an de lady she say
you want cats erfs. I say no no, I doan wan anythinks off cats an she say wee wee.” I say no I
doan wan dat eider. “You give me four cackle berries [eggs] on de bread. She did dat. I make her
understand.”
Some weeks later, and arising from the defection of one of the NZEF to the Germans word got
around that a security check had resulted in our genial friend being transferred to some base job.
In any case he was with us one day and gone the next and no one knew why at the time. When
the truth dawned on us we were convinced that 'security' had bent much beyond the line of duty
and that Schroeder, along with others of foreign extraction and with names somewhat un-English,
had been badly treated. Maybe it resulted in his survival. We never got to know. With the continual
rumbling of the guns and the certain knowledge that we were to go where they were, and beyond,
filled us with some apprehension. All that was going on around us was too big to understand and
we were fast learning to live for the hour and to firmly grasp any small creature-comforts that came
our way.
Page 90
Our next billet at Armentieres differed in many ways from the barn-type one we had at Thiennes. It
differed in two very marked ways. One was that it was well ventilated as many tiles were missing
from the roof, and the other, in that it had a concrete floor. In peace time it was a room forming part
of a large school in accordance with the partly disfigured gate sign 'Lecole Proffessionale.' The
layout of the seat of learning was in the form of a large square U with mature and shady trees a
few feet from each classroom. Under the tree in front of the room we were assigned to was a heap
of bloodstained khaki uniforms, a grim reminder of the soldiers we relieved. More grim perhaps by
the fact that the shell that had caused the slaughter had come through the window, now just a
gaping hole in the brickwork, and burst in the room which was to be our shelter for some weeks.
Little wonder that tiles were missing and that the brick and plaster walls were widely pitted with
shell fragments. The sight of the bloodstained clothing and now being able to clearly hear bursts of
machine gun fire in addition to the artillery, brought the war close enough for us to now regard it as
a way of life.
Armentieres itself was an almost deserted town except for soldiery and was situated in a large
salient. Gaunt buildings, some with doors and windows boarded up, others with gaping shell holes
in walls and roofs were in every street and I remember the odd …
Page 91
… experience of hearing glass crack and crunch after almost every footstep I took along these
deserted streets. Every now and then a shell would come whining over and burst
with a loud bang
,
followed by the sound of falling masonry. The shell that burst in our schoolroom billet the day
before our occupancy was one of these odd shots aimed at no specific object. They were of
various types from the high velocity whizz-bang, the 'Jack Johnson ' shrapnel, to the 5.9 and
heavier, howitzers. These random and 'share it among you shells' had a high nuisance and nerve
destroying value. Our first meeting with these murderous greetings from Germany was unpleasant.
At this time, according to newspaper reports, the German Kaiser knowing of the Anzac presence in
Armentieres had stated that he would make its streets and gutters run red with the blood of the
sons of the convicts and criminals of England's riff-raff. We looked at the stone gutters and
wondered. It was our first face to face with propaganda of which much more was to follow. This
area of the battlefront, the Armentieres salient, until our arrival, was regarded as a quiet sector.
The historians have amply dealt with how it barred its teeth, snapped and snarled during our
presence. The regiments that halted the German advance and dug themselves in, thus creating
the front, support, and subsidiary lines we were to become so familiar with, at a considerable cost
of dead and wounded.
Page 92
The distribution of mail from New Zealand was always exciting. To be on the receiving end we
were usually somehow bunched together in mobs, a sort of gather round in dugouts or billets at
company headquarters - anywhere convenient. A name would be called, a hand would shoot up.
30
Some letters and perhaps a parcel would be handed over accompanied by audience undertones of
lucky bugger. Not long however, before the mail stimulus dissolved into single privacy to absorb
the home and very personal news. Not all got mail. Everyone had his own reason for having joined
up and we had our sprinkling of introverts who seemed to have enlisted for the same reason
ascribed to those who joined the Foreign Legion - to get away from it all. In our ranks we not only
had a cross section of New Zealanders but a cross section of the world. We had a slight collection
of men who had served in the Royal Navy and were now riflemen. From them we got some vivid
pictures of what happened in Kowloon Hong Kong, Malta, Singapore. The vividness had to do
mainly with sex prowess and its price and availability and the methods.
One of these individuals, mainly when half tight would put his finger on his temple and draw
attention to a sizeable scar with stitch-marks - "See that? know how I got it?" "No." "Well I'll tell you
- on leave in Liverpool, sozzled and in bed with a …
Page 93
… flossie I'd picked up, I let one go and it was a beaut - it had to be after the Guinness I'd boozed
so just for the hell of it I pulled the bedclothes over her head which started the struggle - she came
out gasping - grabbed the po and crowned me good and proper - now you know." - Scars have
always got a background. The teller of this story had a habit of telling all and sundry when in billets
that he was James Alexander Denny. He was the kind of character one remembers and I think he
phased out of our midst at about the beginning of the Somme offensive. Our days above ground
were nearing an end. At times they were of a pretty hard and concrete nature, for instance,
sleeping on that commodity [concrete] with a rolled pair of sox under one's hip. Our bed in the
Armentieres billet was the stone floor, an overcoat, a blanket and a pillow of a somewhat novel
nature - a steel helmet filled with unwound puttees. But sleeping under such un-luxury conditions
was no great hardship. We were always exhausted and ready for sleep, and slept soundly when
conditions permitted it. Our metabolism was always in top gear. The few hours devoted to sleep
were always subject to a violent awakening such as a shell bursting near and bringing down a
shower of masonry, some tiles crashing from the skeleton roof, a rat creeping over ones feet, an
outburst of heavy shelling on a part of the front line nearest us, our own artillery responding …
FRONT LINE ACTION BEGINS
Page 94
… the order to stand-to in case the flare up resolved itself into a planned attack on our lines. Each
day since we left Egypt became markedly grayer and some very dark shades were beginning to
loom up. One such night when we were bedded down in our stone billet a part of our front line
known as the ‘Mushroom' came under heavy and almost immediate bombardment.
Part of our Division was in the forward areas which were glowing red from bursting minniewerfer,
rifle grenades, the no-warning high velocity shells from the German whiz-bang guns and the
heavier high explosive shells from the enemy guns some miles behind their lines. The Germans
were evidently staging a major raid or possibly something more ambitious. All we knew was that
heavy shells were bursting in front of us, behind us, on both sides of us and at any moment in our
midst. Violent blasts were turning buildings into roofless and wall-less skeletons - a night of fear
and extreme anxiety which eased off as daylight approached. Our second in command, a Major
Wolstenholme [26/1 Major Albert Edward WOLSTENHOLME], with his battalion runners and
attached NCO's were billeted on the ground floor of a four story brick structure which was
demolished with a direct hit.
Fatigue parties spent many hours recovering bodies and records from the rubble which blocked
two streets. A night to remember, and the end result - a small upsurge of telegrams to New
Zealand …
Page 95
… homes from the Minister of Defence expressing his deep regret "in your sad loss" and brief
mention in the English papers "Enemy artillery was active in the Armentieres sector for a short
period last night.”
Never a night went by but we were on risky and back- breaking fatigues of some sort. In full battle
kit we were usually at some dump shortly after dark limbering up for the nightly 'pushing parties'
Light trucks on light rails were loaded with coils of barbed wire, iron corkscrew standards to string
the wire on, tins of chlorinated water, bundles of sandbags, tinned food (mostly bully beef)
31
trenching timber, sheets of corrugated iron, boxes of 303 ammunition, mills bombs, shovels, picks
and often boxes or something or other to do with war, marked 'urgent'. These trucks clanged and
rattled. Creaked might be a better word. The rails they ran on were laid under stress and wound
their way through one-time orchards, skeletons of farm houses, across Rue this and Rue that
which were once streets, over filled shell holes, past crosses marking graves and over rat infested
and smelly sluggish streams. All this horrible scenery was visible to us only in moonlight and the
brilliance of the star shells always gracefully and silently arcing over No Man’s Land. These laden
trucks often fully extended six of us to keep them moving over the slightest incline and we groaned
and sweated when a burst …
Page 96
… of machine gun fire swept the exposed parts of the rail track sometimes seconds before or
seconds after we had shoved the burden over such vulnerable areas. Parapet Joe, as we called
the-front line enemy machine gunners, were well aware of our 'pushing routes' and at intervals
throughout each night made 'the labour of shove' somewhat exciting. Hardly a night went by but
some of the 'pushers' were put out of action.
We would be halted for a breather behind some protection from machine gun bullets when a
runner would bring a message from the NCO in charge of the truck perhaps a hundred yards
ahead "Three of our blokes have copped it" followed by "Hey, you and you and you" from our own
lance-jack -"Up the line toute suite and help shove the truck ahead." Alongside the truck ahead
some groaning came from a small group, the ones bending and standing over being stretcher
bearers. Not for us to give vent to any morbid curiosity -"Come on, shove, let's get the hell out of
here." And so it went on night after night. Tired and back to billets just before daylight, hungry and
craving for a smoke. Light your small stub of candle, unwind you torn puttees, remove your iron
shod boots, gas helmet, web equipment, bandoliers of 303's, tin hat and undo any buttons that
were under strain, exhale a cloud of tobacco
smoke and with the same breath "Thank Christ for another bloody night over.” And a word about
the tobacco. We had a …
Page 97
… pine or tobacco of army issue twice a week - occasionally Woodbine cigarettes- thin emaciated
things, five in a packet and with a kick like kissing a sparking plug. The tobacco for roll your own
was about on a par with teased sandbags and now and then evidence conclusively dated its prewar vintage - about midway between the Boer War and this one, ie ours.
All that was known about the harmful effects of smoking in our youth was some sort of a
postulation about smoking stopping you growing - you'd never be tall - surely some old wives tale,
for there were some shorties in our ranks who found no need for the weed and many six footers,
plus, who had smoked ever since they were three feet nothing. In the forward areas however it
wasn't what you smoked or how you smoked, but after dark- where you smoked, for some sort of a
fixation became endemic that a glowing fag always brought a salvo of shells from some German
battery miles away or a sweep of machine gun fire from parapet Joe not so far away.
Our activities in the battered Armentieres salient quickly and effectively eroded the hitherto and
loathsome officer and other rank distinction which had weighed heavily upon us in all areas where
there was no immediate danger. Now we were all lousy together, ate the same food comprising
stew and tea made from water dipped from polluted sluggish streams, wore the same steel
helmets and gas helmets and ducked from the same shrapnel bursts.
Page 98
We had volunteered our services fully aware that we could and would be shot at and that's how it
was unfolding. The only way out was to be wounded, to be killed, to be invalided sick or to endure
till the fighting stopped. No such thing as chucking the job or resigning or just walking away from it
all in which case you would be shot for sure for desertion in the face of the enemy. From time to
time when resting from the front line we had battalion assemblies in which the top brass
announced that Private so and so, rank and number, was shot at dawn by firing squad for
desertion in the face of the enemy; that Private of such and such a regiment was also shot for
striking an officer. For lesser crimes corrective measures were almost sadistically severe.
Offenders were sent to base punishment prisons where it was the policy to break the spirits of all
offenders and send them back to their units with the former fire in their bellies completely
extinguished. A bullying type of NCO of the bouncer type, ex boxers and musclemen comprised
the main staff of these corrective institutions. It was easy enough to keep clear of these places. We
almost all did that but we did talk and listened sympathetically with some who had undergone the
32
bone and flesh crushing and returned fully subdued. Much as these 'coolers' were repugnant we
were mature enough in our earthy philosophy that they were valid in time of total war.
[The following use a different numbering system]
MARCHING TO THE SOMME
Page 1 of 2
The Somme; [We were] on our way and a long march in our Bill Massey boots and full pack.
Green countryside and the distant rumble of artillery fire becoming not so distant. In today's
language we would be following the 'guidelines' with an eye on the alert for any 'fringe benefits' like making a dash from the ranks and flogging turnips the Froggies had planted a little close to the
road. Ten minutes in every hour's march - a march of about 100 kilometres give or take a few
kilometres. Shoulders and feet becoming tender and painful. The ten minute spell was arranged
when possible at suitable places, preferably near a roadside ditch of running water. Boots and
socks off at the double. The stimulus of ….
Page 2
…. cold water on blistered feet. At one such spell our brigadier, 'Bully' Fulton emerged from
somewhere with his red tabs, gold braided dolled up charger and a clique of minor gold braiders. A
whistle blew for "pay attention". Silence fell. The Brigadier stood up in his stirrups - us all ears to
hear something about where we were heading into in the inferno ahead. But not to be, he settled in
his saddle and gave us a five minute man to man talk on the need to thoroughly dry between our
toes. Failure to do this often led to non-battle casualties when every man was needed. "Make sure
between the toes, men. Alright, socks and boots on and get ready to fall in".
Another fifteen kilometres, another stop, no ditch, no shady trees, just a dusky side road and
nearer the Somme battle field.
FOLLOW THAT CREEPING BARRAGE
15/9/1916
Page 1 of 6
[At the date above we were in] the battered village of Flers a mile or so to our right. Mid-night and
a clear sky as we weaved our way along communication trenches to prearranged assembly
trenches in a very forward area. At a temporary hold-up on the way two of our men appeared to
me to be lying belly downwards in a dangerous position on the protective trench shoulder. My
natural impulse, and one I put into effect, was to grab one by the ankle with a “hey, it’s much safer
down here. There was no response nor from the warm and lifelike body alongside. They had been
lifted to where they were to avoid obstructing the communication trench - victims of shrapnel
evidently as there was no damage to the trench where they were. Just a prelude to death which
loomed up heavily for many of us – some four hours away. We were told earlier, and before
moving to assembly, that our side had a big surprise in store for the Huns – you’ll see when
daylight comes. We wondered, we guessed, we speculated on all manner of horrific ideas. All, of
course well off target. Some distance, during quiet intervals we could hear engine noises different
to any previously heard. But we hadn’t a clue.
The few hours left before daybreak and zero hour before the up and over seemed to have some
common denominator with a condemned prisoner in a death alley. We were heavily burdened with
the lethal means of killing anything that moved and to a lesser degree with some food and field
dressings to help survival if such was to be our lot. We talked, we dozed, we checked our Lewis
gun. Watches were synchronized. Half an hour before zero we were briefed about the opening of
the creeping barrage – one that would smash the German defences so thoroughly that our main
task would be to mop up any resistant pockets ….
Page 2
….. occupy and consolidate our given objectives.
Theoretically we were brainwashed about our puppets on strings roles. Such planning in detail
was a slight measure of assurance in as much as we felt that we were part of the plan – needed
and indispensable. Vitality was low in the chill hours before dawn. Nerves on edge we had to play
the game according to the rules, a deadly game blue-printed by some faceless brass living in
comfort in chateaux (s) in safe areas and the higher rank the further they were away from the
battlefields.
33
With the first glimmer of daylight we were over the top and away. Our objective - ‘Brown line’.
Prelude to the artillery drumfire came by way of heavy machine gun fire. Aucklanders and an
Otago regiment spearheaded the attack; we of the 4th Battalion Rifle Brigade were deployed to
pass them after they had captured the German Switch trench, their present front line.
Page 3
On the way over we walked single file, not as we had been taught to attack in the sand hills at
Rangiotu (NZ) days and days of running as fast as we could in the hot sun, with the Colonel’s
directive to yell as loud as we could and finish such mad stampede by stabbing our bayonets into
a wire sheep fence. What a laugh. And in our single file progress, me at the time being No 2 in the
team, my shoulder was made use of to support our gun while No 1 sprayed and brought to earth
several of the enemy heading overland for trenches further back. I had a dress circle view of
something dramatically repugnant which very few would care to see. On the way and now in full
daylight we pressed forward over newly formed shell holes, dead bodies of both sides; wounded
crawling and being carried, captured machine guns with dead crews and spent cartridges. A short
distance on our left six Germans came out of a dugout in a slightly raised embankment …
Page 4
… unarmed and with hands up. Surrendering and hoping to become a POW was a slightly better
bet than being bombed underground. One of our riflemen shot all six. A poor show. The Golden
Rule meant nothing to him. A little further on I met up with a wounded German on his hands and
knees. He flung his arms around my legs and never have I seen such a plea for compassion as
was in his eyes. A bullet had passed through both cheeks shattering some teeth and part of his
tongue. I used my only field dressing in the best way I could hoping it would help to check the flow
of blood which was all over my hands and sleeves. Maybe I spent two to three minutes with him
before the need for urgency impelled me to catch up with the mob in front. They, our section of
seven, were miraculously intact and unwounded in the famous Switch Trench already …
Page 5
… captured and its deep dugouts bombed.
In this former enemy front line another distressing sight. One of our men slumped in a squatting
position against a bank, his face drained of all colour. He held one hand in the other, the one held
was attached to his wrist by a few tendons and some skin. In addition to the almost severed hand
he had been shot through the stomach. He was in a state of complete shock and implored me to
shoot him – in his own words – “shoot me mate, shoot me, for God’s sake have a bit of mercy –
shoot me.” I told him the stretcher bearers were on their way and moved on, up and over the rear
of the Switch Trench
with a bullet swept area some fifty yards from a stranded and deserted tank, one of the first ever
used in warfare. Flat on our tummies with darkness approaching, we …
Page 6
… used our entrenching tools to gradually lower ourselves into some new ground. There we were
at the end of a very memorable day. Officer-less, our seven man section now four, exhausted,
hungry and thirsty, almost without ammunition and told there was an expected counterattack
within the next few hours.
Certainly the end of a memorable day and some introspection arose there-from - I resolved that if
I ever got free of this ‘death any moment horror’, I would not for the rest of my life complain in any
way no matter what the circumstances. The passage of time, however, has dimmed a wonderful
resolution made at the time under severe duress and on unsafe ground between two determined
and angry enemies.
DEATH-WELL AT FLERS
September 1916
Page 1 of 2
Any part of the front line during the great Somme battles was an awful place to be in. Our small
but always up to strength Lewis Gun team was assigned to a strongpoint in the shell hole linked
front opposite and close to the newly captured village of Flers or rather what was left of it. Getting
drinking water to the forward areas became acute. Water carrying parties from the back had failed
to get through and our craving for water became insufferable under the sustained gunfire and
stress of attack and counter attack.
It was known that there was a well in the centre of the Flers village still capable of supplying water
suitable for drinking. Water just had to be got from somewhere, somehow. I and another
volunteered to visit the well regardless of the enheightened danger it incurred. We set out for the
34
well some three or four hundred yards away. Our equipment comprised rifle and fixed bayonet,
gas helmet and steel helmet, a one gallon water tin and some twenty feet of signal wire. The
going was anything but increasing fear as we made for the well via shell holes, piles of rubble,
barbed wire, unburied bodies, tree stumps and shrapnel bursting overhead. Near the well we
crouched under the part protection of a not completely destroyed brick wall. This, to allow two
soldiers ahead of us to get their tins full of the life giving fluid. God; How much longer would they
take. We were sweating it out as a shell screamed and burst between us and the well sending
building debris and cobble stones in all directions. The well and its environs was a fruitful target
for the German guns. At its edge were half a dozen or more dead bodies. From one, blood was
trickling down the side of the well towards the water. For us it was not what was taking place
around. The thing was to get that water quickly and to get out of it more quickly. The tins were
lowered and they just floated. An emergency which had to be overcome somehow.
Page 2
The answer was to keep jerking the container this way and that until sufficient water made its way
in to keep it upright and allow itself to fill. Once it had gurgled itself full no tin has ever since been
whisked out of a well so quickly. No time was lost getting back to the trench and for once never
was plain water so welcome. Not many of the first NZEF, if any, would be alive today to remember
the historical Flers Well.
Getting its cool water to where it was sorely needed settled a rising crisis and was rewarding. It
made me feel eight feet tall at the time but this was short lived as water and rations reached us
through the usual channels some forty eight hours later. Anyway, no one wanted to be eight feet
tall in the trenches. Even three feet was far too tall sometimes.
NO RETREAT IF COUNTER ATTACKED
September 1916
Page 1 of 2
Seven of us and a Lewis Gun in a part of the front line at the Somme, just to the right of High
Wood, or what once was High Wood, September 1916. Eight days and nights in connected shell
holes which we sandbagged and deepened as the off watch hours permitted. In the soggy clay we
carved out sitting comforts known as funk holes which were places to squat. These luxuries gave
a small measure of overhead protection from shrapnel and to some extent conformed to the body
shape. In a whimsical kind of way we intruded into the sculptural art as well as being widely
known as just plain diggers. If the sit on part of these funk holes was not graded and it rained,
which it so often did, one got a very wet backside. This gave rise at the time to the chuckles
purported to have arisen from a letter from a Tommy to his mother saying "Bah goom Moom.
booms noomb. These funk holes did however have some affinity with comfort especially when
one’s feet were planted on an empty cartridge case. Shellfire in this newly captured part of the
Somme Battlefield was sustained by the enemy during all daylight hours. Salvoes of three HE's
arrived at intervals ten minutes apart. And they kept screaming in to burst out front, behind us and
in our immediate vicinity. We were sitting shots and the tension was insufferable. The only slight
relief was chewing on a hard biscuit or digging the trench a little deeper. Just being there was on a
par with playing Russian Roulette in a ratio of one in twelve four times a day for real. When one of
these big shells burst dangerously near there was a tendency to scream, run, pray, the while
trying to behave as if such violence was a fact of everyday life. Some reacted with a far …
Page 2
… away glaze in their eyes. Others stuttered in their speech. Near concussion for my part set my
bottom jaw trembling as if smitten with bitter cold. My teeth chattered uncontrollably. It was
unpleasant.
One mid afternoon one of the salvo shells landed and burst close enough to ruin our 'Better Ole'.
Our machine gun, rifles rations, ammunition and personal gear such as knife, fork, spoon, spare
pair of sox, tea dixie, spades, ground sheets and so on lay under about six feet of earth. I and a
gun crew member from Harihari were buried up to our necks. The shell that caved-in our 'better
ole' was as close as anyone would ever want an explosive monster. The earth pressure from the
earth wall was severe and more so in my case as Hansen’s iron-shod heel with his attempts to
move it was grinding into my ankle. Some members of the team who quickly freed themselves
rushed for some spades from a nearby strongpoint and not long before we, limb by limb, dragged
ourselves out of our premature graves badly shaken but still able to carry on. We dug the gun out
and where possible, some ammunition and personal belongings and after an hour or two were
again back in business in another nearby shell hole with its dirty stinking earth. It offered a
35
modicum of shelter, barely tenable but the next best thing in the horrible place we were in until we
were relieved.
POLDERHOEK CHATEAU
Page 1 of 4
Our home base; the Railway Dugouts, were quite close to the Menin Road, Ypres and the Cloth
Hall. These dugouts were dry and habitable having been built under a raised railway embankment.
On the roof of it were jagged and twisted iron rails that once carried French trains when viewed
against the sky background might well have been the inspiration for, and set the background for
today’s abstract art. At this base how we dreaded "Fall in - in full battledress." That meant some
three hours slogging along the Menin Road, crossing Polygon Wood to the Polderhoek Chateau
area. Plod, plod, plod, and heavily laden, the Menin Road lost its identity, became duck-boarded
and fanned out into shell-blasted tracks and corduroy roads over a vast expanse of foul stinking
mud. The logs and corduroy roads were made by a Canadian unit. The one we used on the way
to Polderhoek was heavily margined each side with dead mules, broken artillery, shell limbers and
all manner of vital war equipment never meant for the shortfall it got. The one time wood itself was
a laugh if it hadn't been so tragic and grim. No tree with any semblance of leaves or branches
could be seen, nothing other than ugly rooted stumps heavily pitted with bullets and steel from
shells and shrapnel. In single file we progressed through this rapidly …
Page 2
… disintegrating log road into trenches which led to various parts of the critical positions held by
our side. We were met by a guide who led us to a captured pill box - a smelly, shell proof, ill
ventilated concrete structure into which we crept one by one on all fours. In its confines, to say we
were cramped was a classical understatement. We were knee to knee, back to back, hard
enough to scratch each other's lice; by rubbing.
When rations came in they had to be handed here there and yonder overhead with a “Hey
there, they’re, coming up on the wing."
The cramped conditions, the foul air and the rations of bully beef, bread and milk-less tea posed no
hardship we couldn’t readily absorb cheerfully. We were used to that. What did mean something
very real to us was the fact that we were housed in a structure that would survive a direct shell hit
and was made by the Germans who knew their engineering. Quite often we heard shells bursting
near. We marvelled and we wondered what would happen if we got a direct hit. Fritz put an end to
that by landing on us with a 5.9 [shell] bang on. Our pill box rode the blow without cracking. We
suffered a nerve and eardrum shock which baffles description. Out went the candles. Particles of
concrete flew with stinging force. Rifles, gas helmets, steel hats, tins of bully and everything loose
was pitched into the general melee. Our officer in charge chickened out when some candles …
Page 3
… were lit. His attention was drawn to the fact that there was some blood on his forehead which
caused the odd drip from his chin. A fragment of concrete had cut his eyebrow - a very superficial
wound. I applied his first aid bandage the while he gave orders re being escorted to the first aid
post. No concern for those in his charge some of whom had suffered more severe cuts and
bruises than he had. One direct hit huddled in a captured pill box was a pretty grim experience.
Each night we single-filed out of our concrete stronghold to dig shallow trenches in which cables
were laid and buried. In the dark and in an area yet un-trenched, getting confused and lost was a
nightly occurrence.
There was no distinctive front line. One early am whilst still dark and in this No Man's Land, a
figure loomed up and came towards me. In the light of a star-shell I could see by the shape of his
steel helmet that he was a German, heavily laden with something or other and with a rifle slung
across his back. He appeared to be dazed and wandering aimlessly. He was an easy capture. His
hands were above his head and my bayonet a few inches from his navel. My capture (live) was a
German orderly of some sort with a four gallon urn of hot tea strapped to his back. He had taken a
wrong turning somewhere. Thirsty as we were; the tea warm but milk-less and coming from the
enemy seemed to be too fantastic or was it a trick? The cup with …
Page 4
… the urn was filled with the liquid and handed to the prisoner. He gestured with it as though
drinking our health and down it went. On this small part of some Flanders Field under a starlit-sky
a small group of us gathered and toasted Fritz for donating four gallons of very acceptable tea to
the British Army. Our confused benefactor, and in our estimation not a very bright one, became
just another POW.
36
PRE-JUDGED AND FOUND WANTING
Page 1 of 5
At Trentham, training as a platoon with the war in its infancy we all, some thirty of us, were
unanimous in our belief that the 2nd Lieutenant assigned to us was more than normally endowed
with the characteristics of strong leadership. Thus a mutual understanding and loyalty arose
between us which amounted to a kind of family affair and at times became almost emotive. We
would follow our officer to Hell and back if necessary. This belief was sustained and strengthened
as we drilled and absorbed lectures at Maymorn, Rangiotu, on the transport ‘Mokoia’, Ferry Post,
Ismalia, and up to the trenches at Armentieres. Our OC would be about thirty five, with a clipped
military moustache, had a low pleasant voice and a quality of manner almost apologetic, a quality
rare indeed for an officer. These qualities however were offset to some extent in that he never
looked smart in his uniform. His sleeves always seemed too long and his overcoat, when he wore
one never had enough space between it and the ground. I recall an occasion in our early camp
days when we were returning from a night's leave in Palmerston North back to Rangiotu. Our
platoon had most of the railway carriage. We all were a bit shickered and in the midst of singing
and horsing around was our platoon commander drinking from a bottle and trying to keep on his
feet. 'Twas then we called him 'Bill' as the glass from some broken windows crunched underfoot.
Page 2
Even in those far off days, and mature as we were, there were times when some of our behaviour
in groups was not entirely divorced from what today is termed vandalism. But the carriage windows
were not broken for the sake of breaking them. Empty bottles were tossed through what were
believed to be open windows. Such openings were frequently used for urinating through.
On longer train trips like the one from Rangiotu to Wanganui for shooting practice, and to
Auckland for departure, when no liquor was available, decency and good behaviour was cared for
with regimental pride. On such occasions, Bill was no longer Bill to us, always Sir. Bill's fellow
officers regarded him as of plebian birth and looked upon him with a jaundiced eye. They were
loyal however when it came to upholding the prestige of the officer class and our Bill was swept
along as a kind of split personality never sure whether he was more relaxed dining at the officer’s
mess or having an odd meal in a tent with the rank and file. But given time the attachments would
clarify themselves. Our faith in our leader never faltered.
The testing time came when our company took over the defence of a section of trenches at
Armentieres. Here in this sector our Division and the opposing enemy clashed in trench warfare
which flared angrily at any time of …
Page 3
… the day or night. One morning at about 10.00 am our GOC Colonel Melville, his adjutant
Captain Kennedy and a staff officer appeared on the daily inspection of the front line. The
Colonel's only war insignia were his steel helmet, gas helmet and a cane walking stick. He
exchanged a few words with our senior NCO and followed up with "Where's your platoon
commander"? “He's in the dugout Sir, I’ll get him for you". Impatience arose as some minutes
passed before Lieutenant 'Bill' showed up at the dugout entrance. He was red-eyed, no tunic, no
puttees, with his feet in unlaced boots. A sorry sight which took place within a few yards of where
I was on duty. Our Bill stood and blinked in the bright sunlight and managed to get out a ' Yes Sir"
to Colonel Melville's incisive command “Report to my headquarters at midday properly dressed
and with full equipment.” The group, talking among themselves then left for further trench
inspection. Our Bill was caught on the left foot alright and was for it. His behaviour as a leader up
front had us all thoroughly bewildered. Our four section platoon had been virtually leaderless for
days and the position was deteriorating. Our NCO's did their work well and loyally covered up for
dugout Bill. There was a sequel to all this in which I became involuntarily a proponent for helping
our once respected platoon boss to ride the blow. A matter of hours after the poor showing we had
a new officer. We had no delusions about what had happened.
Page 4
Four days after the climax I was summoned by runner – “Rifleman Taylor.” Taylor “Yes” “You're
to come with me. Mr [no name given] wants to see you. It's OK with your OC.” I slung my rifle and
followed the runner to a dugout somewhere in the subsidiary line and, ducking my head, went in.
There sitting on the edge of a bunk and barely visible in the light of a candle was our former
officer. He was thoroughly crestfallen and never have I seen a man so subdued. His greeting was
"Glad you got along Taylor...sit down...have a cigarette...thanks....as you probably know I’m due
37
for a change. I’ve had a bit of a roasting. Maybe you've heard of it." ''Yes Sir and we're all very
sorry." "I've got a favour to ask of you Taylor, you're one of the originals and I’ve censored a lot of
your letters. They called for no use of the blue pencil. I'm wondering if you would write a letter to
my wife?” “I’ll be pleased to do that Sir." “Good, you'll know what to say to my wife about the spirit
of comradeship that has always existed between the men and myself in New Zealand and up to
now. Many thanks Taylor and I hope when we meet again it will be under happier circumstances."
"I hope so too Sir." He gave me his wife's address and I rejoined my unit in a thoughtful mood. In
the letter I made no reference to the dramatic events which led up to the need for writing the
letter.
Page 5
I and others closely associated with the found-wanting leadership were only vaguely aware of
what took place at the Battalion HQ. Of one thing we sure - that our former officer had been
declared 'un this', 'un that' and almost 'un' everything.
In my letter I stressed the fact that Mr H's consideration for the welfare of his men was always
paramount. He jealously saw to it that we got our share of parcels from NZ. In Egypt he stretched
the stand-easy periods beyond the call of duty and always sought shady spots for lectures and
squad drill. He was never guilty of 'criming' a man for petty misdemeanours. I mentioned some
other activities that had endeared him to us and concluded by hoping that this letter would be a
measure of comfort to you, coming as it does on behalf of those who served under him and knew
him well.
Our new officer who censored the letter later told me it was a good show. I never heard what
happened to the unfortunate officer but the general belief was that he was sent back to NZ.
The main thing arising from this regrettable wartime event is that under no circumstances should
any man's behaviour be prejudged under unforeseen conditions and if so judged, and as in this
case be found wanting, the final verdict justly calls for a good measure of compassion.
Footnote by the author’s son:
My opinion, as a medico, is that the affable personality, his general deterioration, and other details
supplied about this officer, are typical of chronic alcoholism (Bob).
RAIDED AT PLOEGSTEERT
To raid or be raided was always a possibility where the opposing front lines were not far apart.
The main purpose of raids was, of course to establish the identity of opposing forces and the
grilling of any prisoners taken to trick them into, if possible, divulging useful information. During
my active service I and my team were assigned, well out in No Man's Land, the ploy of protecting
the flank of raiding parties on two occasions. The job called for extreme alertness and sweeping
pre-arranged areas with bursts of fire from our Lewis gun. It was always a relief to get back to the
protection of our trenches. One always felt terribly exposed out in that narrow belt of land that
separated the vast armies. That long and tortuous strip of land was for mutilation, death, the birds,
poppies, dead bodies, rats, star shells, bricks and rubble.
My worst involvement in a raid occurred in a miserably constructed front trench in the Ploegsteert
sector. Here the trench wound its way through swampland which produced almost continuous fog.
Along a winding and much damaged trench we made our way to the front line, a thoroughly
wretched place with its low parapets and treacherous half floating duckboards. Our platoon was
detailed to restore to some kind of order a part of this front line which was thoroughly substandard.
Page 2
Visibility was no more than a dozen yards in the fog and night was fast approaching. Our gun
team was on high alert as our other three platoon sections got to work on the damaged trench.
As the night wore on the Germans kept smashing at an area a little to our right with rifle
grenades, minnies, and at one stage of the sustained fury, they enveloped the area with
shrapnel. We were in a pretty tight spot. Our protective wire entanglements and token trench in
the blitzed part ceased to exist.
Here follows a quote from the official History of the NZEF regarding this raid:
"Nor was the welcome given to the Rifle Brigade in these miserable trenches an enviable one
for on the very night (22 nd / 23rd February) on which they entered the line, they were raided by
the enemy". We were raided by the enemy alright, about two hundred of them. Our working
party was given the order to withdraw. There was no dawdling with those who were able to do
so. At the height of the crisis I was firing blasts from our gun, the rest of the team loading
38
empty panniers as fast as they could and handing them up. We were in the midst of some
violent enemy activity that had us confused and bewildered. Only when one of the last of the
working party shouted "Get back, blokes, they're in our trench, get back, get back! " did we
realize that we were about to be stood up and counted in the broil of some hand to hand
fighting. We, not part of ….
Page 3
… the working party, had no instructions to fall back. The raiders got very close to the bay we
were defending while I'm sending sweeping blasts from the gun into the fog and, possibly
unknown to me at the time, giving the hurry up and duck to some of the two hundred raiders
returning to their own trenches . The raid ended rather abruptly at some pre-arranged signal.
One of the foremost Germans lay dead around a slight bend in our trench some six yards from
the fire-step [firing platform] I was using. One of our team had lobbed a Mills bomb into the bend
just in case. This we found out later had embedded itself in the wet clay of the bank and
exploded, making a shocking wound in the grey uniformed German's back.
The end of the raid, as mentioned, came with dramatic suddenness. The box barrage which the
enemy had hemmed in the attacked area ceased and resolved itself into normal machine gun
fire. Our company commander, Captain EC McDowell [cannot identify], came up from the
support line to appraise the situation. A good and respected officer, he was visibly in a state of
tension. Although not in the assaulted area he carried a heavy responsibility to cope with
emergencies, particularly so as his communication links with the front and rear had been
destroyed. I told him what had happened as far as our section was concerned and gave him
the pay book, letters, etc. I had taken from the dead German whom we were looking ...
Page 5
… down on at the time. He departed with "Dam good work Taylor - I'll see you get a medal for
this". He promptly forgot his "I'll see" and, in any case, what I and my small section had done
was done in the line of duty, done as we were trained to do, and warrante d no special
mention.
Identification of the dead German established the presence on the Western Front of a
division last known to have been in Roumania [also known as Romania]. Our company
losses, again quoting from the Official History of the NZEF, were “three prisoners taken, six
riflemen killed, an officer and twenty other ranks wounded.”
In retrospect, I would rate this night under heavy fire in fog and battered trenches as the
worst few hours of my active service. If the tension and strain of that night could be measured
in terms of money by those hemmed in, in the box barrage on the occasion of this raid, one
hour of it would have justified a military pension for the rest of their lives.
TEN DAYS IN PARIS
Leave to the French Capital for a soldier from the line had all the allure of a leave to England,
plus. Plus because it bore overtones of being gay and not overmodest when soldier and
Mademoiselle met on bargaining grounds.
On arrival in Paris in midwinter and snow covered we were herded into a bus and taken to a
small theatrette. Here, a Miss Ettie Rout extended a welcome to us. She is still remembered
by many as a proponent of sexual understanding and her publications at a period when such
matters were hush and frowned upon. We were told of the sexual temptations we were about
to be confronted with but the main theme of the address was how to avoid contracting
venereal disease. Questions were invited but none were asked. Had the lecturer been a man
rather than a rather attractive woman he would have had a few curly questions to answer. On
the way out we were each given a supply of condoms and something done up in tubes. From
now on we were on our own. We were also given a short list of inspected and approved
hotels offering good service and moderate prices.
I settled for one called Hotel de Ostend and shared a bedroom with two single beds. My
roommate showed up and settled in - An Australian sergeant, a friendly fellow. Each morning
he would sit up in bed, rub the sleep from his eyes, and in a falsetto voice imitate two Cockney
girls "What yer got Lize? - Oh, a fever - where did you get it -off an Aussie - ooh –yer lucky
bastard.
39
RELIEF AND THE RED TRAMPLE
(3 octavo ruled handwriting)
What promised to be an ordinary relief from a forward area near Flers on the Somme
resolved itself by becoming the worst stampede ever to involve our portion of the Rifle
Brigade. A bright sunny day about eleven in the morning when our officer made known that
we were to be relieved at approximately 11 am. (The pm known then as Pip Emma.) Being
the relieving infantry by an established communication trench we followed the guide lines
which led us into a CT [probably refers to a communication trench], a winding embryo trench
only some three feet deep and on the bottom of which lay dead bodies spaced at various
intervals. Why we were herded into this waist high trench in full view of German sausage
balloons in the best visible conditions was beyond our understanding. And we copped it as
the German guns filled the air with screaming and loud bursting coal-box shrapnel.
Our hurried walk became whipped up into a "Hey get a bloody move on up there". We broke
out into a sweat as the bursting shrapnel added to the dead and wounded over which we had
to get by somehow – or join them. The first "Jack Johnsons" [big guns named after former
world heavy weight black boxer] were like the warning of an avalanche to come, and it came.
The wounded were trampled on regardless as voices from behind spurred the mobile ones
on to superhuman effort "For Christ's sake get moving up front." Whether I was pushed over
or just tripped I wasn't sure. I found myself spread-eagled over a trampled body. Not having
been hit I somehow managed to get up again and rejoin the mad stampede. I was covered in
blood from another's wounds, fatal wounds. My boots, puttees and hands were blood
smeared and I was minus rifle, machine gun panniers and gas helmets. A lot of gear was
discarded in the 'death half trench' on the way out - something we would not have done had
we been on the way in.
Page 2
There are no overtones in the brief mention of this particular relief from a very forward area.
Virtually, we were swept along with Krupp shrapnel which had no respect for the part of the
body it hit and in doing so instantly exposed the most revolting butchery. As a civilian, the
sight of blood gave me a sick throat. In Cathedral Square [Christchurch NZ] in the vintage
tram days I joined a group of rubber necks around a man whose foot had been severed by
the tram's iron wheels.
Here on the battle field such sights, and very much worse, only emphasised the axiom that
familiarity breeds indifference and conditions one to a state of non-shock and callousness, no
matter what. As we reached the comparative safety of the subsidiary line we survivors
collapsed on fire steps, funk holes, any support with "My God, I don't want another bellyful of
that".
This quarter mile red trail with its dead and dying, measured in the total background of the
war was of no consequence. It just meant a little extra divisional paper work and a few more
regret telegrams to some NZ homes, and in the half dug trench where it happened, urgent
work almost beyond the call of duty, for the stretcher bearers and advanced dressing
stations.
WHERE'S YOUR BIVVY? WHERE'S YOUR BIVVY?
Being stationed in the front line on a quiet sector in well constructed trenches, with a two to
three hundred yard wide No Man's Land and protective belts of wire was tolerable. It could
however, become very highly intolerable at any time but mainly during daylight if the enemy
selected the area we were holding for a Minnie strafe. This happened often enough and when
it did three urgent priorities arose, namely, listen, look and be prepared to run and run fast.
By listening, the click of the minnie gun could be heard. By looking into the high up space
above the two lines the missile could be seen heading our way with its whizzing scream that
only lacked the words "Where's your bivvy, where's your bivvy?" Spotting the descending
horror and deciding which way to run became a matter of seconds. Our ears were attuned to
one of fear - one of a kind of fear like looking into one's own grave. By running away from
where the thing was picked to explode - providing the picking had a degree of accuracy, gave
one a greater chance of survival. There was no running backwards or forwards; only
sideways along a path of duckboards …
40
Page 2
… at the back of the parados designed to permit movement in an emergency. I recall an
occasion when a dozen or so of us having spotted a tumbling Minnie coming our way, took
off along the travel trench in a direction we believed was away from where it would land. In
our frantic fear-filled dash for survival we collided with a similar group, heads present
ponderables in a precarious existence.
Fate alright; it was my lot to spend two years in the battle areas and to survive. And fate
down running our way. The running stopped in a mix up not unlike a football ruck. Had this
not occurred we would have reached a point of no return. We took a close look after the
strafe ended at the place where this particular missile exploded after it hit the ground, and
having looked, indulged in some silent thought as to why, why, time after time, I was being
spared from wounds or death. Fate, Guardian Angels, destiny, call it what you may, were
ever decreed that my brother [Herbert Francis] who joined my Company near the end of the
war was killed on the first night in the trenches and in a trench some distant back from the
front line. His grave, quoting Rupert Brooke (with a slight liberty)," Is in some corner of a
foreign field that is forever New Zealand".
Footnote;- ‘bivvy’ from French 'bivouac; 'parados' military term for raised cover along the
back of the trench
A STRAY WHIZ-BANG
Night closing in, drizzling. The usual whine of big shells high overhead. Clouds scurrying past
the moon giving the impression that it was the moon that was moving. We, our small group
with our machine gun holding a strongpoint near Mamitz Wood on the Somme. Disillusioned,
war-weary and thirsty. Under continued stress the body metabolism was always in top Gear
giving rise to a nagging thirst all the time.
Seven of us, three originals and four reinforcements manning this rat- free outpost. Rat- free
because of no dugouts, just freshly turned earth stabilized with filled sandbags. I was No 2 on
the gun. The first hour watch alongside the gun was decided by the toss of a coin. I and a fellow
named Reddaway 26/250, Rifleman Philip Ernest REDDAWAY of Hikurangi, Whangarei] drew
the second shift. Too long ago to remember whether I called head or tail. Whatever it was had a
high significance. Read on. The dreary night routine was under way. Those not on alert duty.
settled into their squat holes in the bank or parapet. We were time tabled for the next twenty
four hours hoping the Hindenberg mob out yonder would mind his own business for a while,
'twas not to be however. Our strong point got a direct hit with a German Whiz-bang. A red
glare, flying sandbags, a shock to the ears and worse. The two who were manning the gun were
killed Instantly.
Page 2
One was Teddy Thorne [Probably 26/938, Rifleman Edward John THORNE aka Clifford Bertram
THOMAS of Wellington KiA Somme 24/9/1916] whom I had been talking to a minute or so before
the lone stray shell had arrived. His head was blown completely off his body. A horrible sight. His
mate, half buried had also died as suddenly but with less mutilation. Both were at my feet which
were now covered with loose earth up to my knees. God knows where the Lewis gun was. Nor
did I care. A rifleman from a neighbouring post was filling his water bottle very close to where a
carrying party had left some water in gallon tins. A piece of the shell had hit him in the face and
what was left of his eye was on his cheek. He was groaning and in pain. I was quickly at his side
and applied a field dressing to the wound. Not an easy wound to deal with in the dark and
thoroughly shaken as we survivors were. I said to him as I put my arm around him . "Come on,
I'm going to get you to the nearest first aid post" which was some two miles back and reached
via winding and tortuous communication trench.
Through the difficult parts of this trench, where progress could only be made by single file, he
hung on to my web equipment as we made slow progress helped by the light from star-shells,
particularly those of the enemy of the parachute type. Every few chains we had to negotiate shelldamaged and unrepaired parts of the trench and flounder through knee deep water where
duckboards were missing. My 'casualty', apart from occasional and subdued expression of pain
and …
Page 3
… "How much further" was behaving in an admirable manner despite his severe wound. His
strength was very low and so was mine as I handed him over to the OC at the aid post. What a
41
relief. A cup of cocoa and some biscuits at the dressing station at 2 am gave me sufficient lift to
rejoin what was left of my unit just before daybreak. And what was left of the unit repaired the
blood soaked parapet and settled for defending it, if the necessity arose, with rifles, bayonets and
bombs.
Author’s footnote:
Forty four years after I had escorted the eye-injured soldier to the first aid post I met him again
under happier circumstances; his name Bert Idle. We were at the same table at a Dinks reunion in
Christchurch. He remembered the night, but not the bloke, who applied a bandage and helped
him out. In the state he was in at the time he could well be pardoned for not remembering how
he got to the dressing station or by whom he was helped. In February 1963 with a well matched
glass eye, he was self employed growing early spring flowers at Monck's Spur, a frost free area, on
the way to Sumner a few miles from Christchurch.
JO Taylor footnote:
In 2003, by coincidence I was able to make contact with one of Bert Idle's daughters, Mrs Veronica
Zonnevylle. Living in Monck 's Spur (Bay) Redclifft, Christchurch, the family had never known how their
father had lost his eye. They were pleased but humbled to read my father's account.
FLARE UP IN THE LOFT
A platoon of us, some thirty of us billeted in a loft above a French barn. Fairly comfortable and
access to same by means of battens nailed to a wall. Getting up and down like some sort of monkey
business. Yes. The loft with its wooden floor, end window and no tiles missing, was quite
acceptable. In it, after some calls at French estaminets, we chatted, played poker, wrote the odd
letter, had some bets on crown and anchor in the flickering light from our candle stumps. There was
some pleasant music from a well
played mouth organ. Only the distant rumble of guns to
remind us we were in a foreign country taking part in a world war, the ramifications of which we
knew little about. Not often did we see a newspaper.
We settled down in our comfortable loft "To sleep, perchance to dream" on our once puffed up
palliasses but now almost pancake flattened. It was a relief to settle down for the night and sleep
in our long woolly underpants using our rolled up trousers as a pillow. In arranging my
bunk I finished up with a rubber ground sheet on top instead of somewhere underneath me. I
flicked it over like a quilt and lay me down . "OK lights out" from the sergeant and the few
flickering candles were doused. Quietness set in for about two hours then something like all hell
let loose and flared up and me an innocent party to it.
From a state in which I was getting my share of that precious restorer …
Page 2
… which knits up the raveled sleeve of care, I was instantaneously awakened by a very marked
splashing on and around me. There at the foot of my bed, outlined in the dim light stood a soldier
piddling on me, well, vigorously. Never before or since then have I got to my feet so quickly and
as quickly hurled someone to the floor. He bumped his head on a rafter going down and landed
lengthwise on two sleepers either side of him. They struggled from under, sat up, rubbed their
eyes; yelled "What the hell". A chain reaction had set in and in less than a minute the whole loft
was in an uproar. "Someone gone daft or what? - Jesus can't they let a bloke sleep!” Some
candles were lit. The hubbub died down a bit when it became known in army parlance. "Some
poor bastard near the window got pissed on. The sergeant came into the picture to sort things out,
didn't know where he was standing, got his feet wet and expressed his distaste in four letter
words. The disturbance, happening as it did close to midnight, caused a mild rush on the wall
ladder and thence to the latrine. There was a lot of shouting – “Keep off the ladder till I get down keep off the bloody ladder till I get up. “The culprit, the cause of the flare up was our ex-naval
Liverpool fireman, one James Alexander Denny [26/752, Rifleman, James Alexander DENNY]
now Rifleman Denny. His version of how it all happened. "I had a good load of French beer I had
to get rid of I couldn't find a hole at the ladder top …
Page 3
… must have had the lid on for safety. I headed for the window careful not to tread on blokes' feet
got there and let drive on what looked like a frosty patch down below. Didn't know it was your oilsheet that looked like frosty grass. Sorry and all that and you certainly floored me good and hard.
No hard feelings I hope. It was merry hell while it was on, it’s that gut-rot French beer". I agreed
with him on that and my parting shot. "Don't pick on me next time".
BURIAL PARTY
42
"All got your rifles, gas helmets and shovels?” “Yes Serge" (from a dozen of us). "Right, for the
next four hours you 'll be searching for bodies between our support and front line and those you
find, bury 'em. You'll work in pairs. When possible collect pay books and any paper matter,
photos etc from the pocket of dead bodies. Now you all know the password for getting back. Any
questions?” "Yes Serge, what if we come across any souvenirs?" "If you do - stick 'em. Now
you know the gaps through the wire ...pair off and be back here by midnight" .
Author’s note:
The foregoing is word for word the way in which Sergeant Bathurst, who died some years ago,
used to address us prior to fatigue and other non - combat duties. On active service he was well
liked. A first class soldier.
Author’s son’s note
He, and Mrs Bathurst, known a nd respected by me, Bob, and John, who also were pupils al
BHS Christchurch with their sons, Ivan and Noel.
For our search and burying, insufficient light posed a problem. Starlight only. No moon. Gracefully
arching man made star-lights soaring over No Man’s Land enabled us to locate exposed corpses.
When these star shells suddenly fizzled out or when they hit the ground, we, the burial parties,
were plunged into a blackness which for twenty or thirty seconds was blacker than black if there
is such a condition. Until eye adjustment crept back to normal we hugged the ground rather
closely. We were well within range of enemy machine guns.
Page 2
We were very exposed in the area between the front and support lines and the danger from
bullets kept us in any hollows consistent with assembling our gruesome cargo. Our hunting,
dragging, and carrying, cleaned up an area of about a quarter acre and yielded ten or a dozen
bodies. I remember picking up the torso of a German, dehydrated completely to skin and bones,
and carrying it without effort to the nearest crater. The skull was hideous and made more so by its
hair and moustache, still in a state of preservation, adhering firmly to the skull.
Here in a foreign land we were given the full status of undertakers. No clergy, no flowers, no
burial rites, no hearses, no mourners, no tears. Us, starlight, and short handled shovels. Yet,
while engaged in this grim work we were well aware that we were at grips with something which
was dramatic in the extreme and caused plenty of tears to flow. The smell was revolting. More
so was the siren-like hiss of escaping gas from bodies swelled to double their size. With our area
cleaned up we huddled in a shell hole for the last hour of our four hour duty - only a matter of a
day or so before the tidying up we had done would all be undone by the never ending shelling.
Author’s son’s footnote.
“The foregoing sentence modified a little to clarify, RCT”
This was the only organized burial party I took part in. We handed in the pay books we had
collected together with any other relevant matter, returned to our respective dugouts after giving
a brief report, managed to get a warm cup of tea, some …
Page 3
… tinned beans and some bread. Then into bed, fully dressed, boots and all, tired as hell and
squirming in this and that position to slow up the crawling lice until the overpowering need for
sleep induced victory for them. All yours.
A CHEERLESS AND COLD WINTER
France 1917
The winter of 1917 was the coldest recorded in France for fifty years. For part of it we were
living in tents some miles from the front. A screaming wind never eased up as it tore through
the branches of leafless trees and for good measure brought intermittent storms of snow and
sleet from Siberia - from that direction anyway. The area we were in, like most of France, was
flat and in all directions white within viewing distance. The cheerless landscape was pierced
here and there by church steeples, farm houses and outbuildings giving the impression that
they had failed to support the white mantle.
Our brigade was spread over a wide area and purported to be resting. When this situation
arose drill book routine got the accent and became irritating - boring in fact - as if the bitter
cold
wasn't enough to put up with. Tension reached an exciting sideline when stray bullets whined
and ricocheted too close for comfort. We quickly solved the why and wherefore. The snow-
43
bound earth had deprived hares, rabbits, foxes and other rodents of their natural growth cover
and availability of food. Their survival urge made them prime targets for some trigger-happy
extroverts and hence the surge of stray bullets from the pot-shotters and the rising danger to
those going about their duties. Headquarters however, soon put an end to this indiscriminate
animal sniping.
Page 2
To help us with the cold, each morning we got the 'arise and shine' each morning at 6 am.
We pulled our Bill Massey boots on, laced them with their heavy leather laces and fell in on the
nearest frozen road. Then for the next half hour we legged-it along at a dog trot with every
breath becoming a white cloud. Getting back we were ready for our porridge, small bit of
boiled bacon, bread, jam and cheese. In off duty hours groups of us, hanging on to each
other’s coat tails, gathered some speed and snaked over frozen ponds - an escape from
inactivity. Too cold to squat in a tent playing pontoon, poker, writing, or just talking.
The pond skating diversion ended abruptly with a notice on the company notice board 'Due to
Rifleman Miller having broken his leg whilst pond skating and other minor accidents having been
reported and attributed to this activity, take notice that all pond skating will cease as from' ....
A notice on the same board said it was our Company's turn for a bath and change of
underclothes. Our platoon's departure was timed for 1 pm. We lined up at that time and, with
towels around our necks, we set out for the bath house six miles away with a swing in our walk
and a song in our hearts. The six miles minus packs, rifles and other equipment after some of the
route marches we had done was almost levitation. Just peanuts. No more, no less than a pleasant
warm up. At the bath house, a onetime barn; we stripped and handed in our lice-alive undies …
Page 3
… and uniforms where directed. Naked and getting chilled, we entered the ablution room. No
tiled walls. No sauna-bath this. On a clay floor some thirty half barrel tubs, one for each [man].
Step in and wait with knees under chin. Most of us got nested down. A few of the larger and fatter
men could only get their bottoms in and hang their legs over the side. Wit, humour, sarcasm, bad
language and honeyed words filled the air as we ludicrous figures squatted and waited in the silly
little tubs. Some subdued cheering and facetious remarks greeted a Tommy bath orderly who
come in a back door with a rubber hose dragging behind him. Someone further out back turned a
tap on and out of the hose with its inch bore came a droopy flow of water. Droopy enough to wet
everything within two feet if properly aimed. By the time each got his two inches of bath water
which rapidly cooled to the point of discomfort it was "Hey you, me next. Have I got to sit here all
bloody day, get a wriggle on mate, tell the bloke at the boiler or what the hell ever it is to tum the
blasted tap on fuller, I'm beginning to freeze".
The case hardened orderly with the hose was addressed with a variety of titles from colonel to
bastard. He was used to it. After some two hours of waiting and washing we set out on the six mile
journey back and in laundered underwear. The hot iron attack on our uniforms subdued the ever
irritating lice but always left a few, always enough for future proliferation.
Page 4
During part of the cold spell we were stationed in a subsidiary line of trenches with habitable
dugouts. Daily from these we went up front with picks, shovels and sandbags. Trying to fill
sandbags was a laugh. The ground was frozen rock hard. Belting it with picks produced only bang
and bounce. We blunted the picks, smoked, joked and kept moving to counter the penetrating
cold. Shells exploding without penetrating the rocklike ground had double the violence of similar
shells landing on unfrozen areas. After an hour or so of getting nowhere with trench repair an
officer showed up. He looked in amazement at the unrepaired parapet and followed with "What
the hell have you men been doing"? We soon convinced him with what the hell we had been
doing. Our sergeant handed him a pick and said perhaps you would show us how, Sir. He struck a
few blows then discretely withdrew with "Back to your billets, I'll explain to HQ". He probably did,
but top brass had decided certain action and that was that.
On the way to dugouts, with bayonets and army issue pocket knives we gouged chips of the
trench frames and stuffed our pockets with them. Poor crops really for those who had been here
weeks before had stripped most of the flesh from the bones. In our subsidiary line and some
distance from the enemy we made small fires of the chips and warmed our hands. The smell of
wood smoke in itself was soothing after the …
Page 5
… offensive smell of battle fields. My bunk in the dugout was of wire netting nailed to a wooden
frame. I covered the netting with an inch thick layer of new sandbags. On this I lay me down. For
top warmth, an oil sheet, overcoat and a folded blanket. Boots and puttees were removed. Tunic
44
and trousers were not removed but braces and buttons were undone.
My contrived bunk with its unders and overs was very inviting to a tired soldier. It had, however,
just nothing to offer by way of warmth so on went more sandbags which were available for the
taking. These were piled on layer after layer until they started slithering onto the dirt floor. Sleep,
apart from short spells, was impossible. My moment of truth dawned on me when I came aware of
the fact that the cold first assailed my body closest to the wire netting and its thin mattress of
sandbags. Thickening the underneath at the expense of the top was magical in its warmth effect.
My sleep and warmth problem was solved. A few more days of this comparative recuperative
period and we were on our way back to the forward areas so aptly described as the mincing
machine. A thaw was setting in and as it increased our unease increased with it and reached its
maximum in the wet trenches opposite the sugar refinery at Warneton.
A COLD RIDE
At a stop on the long aching train ride from Marseilles to the Armentieres area, I and some others
left our horse box to do some fossicking. That is to take a peak under the tarpaulins of freight
trucks lined up to go somewhere. Back down the line a bit some prowlers from a horse box in front
of us had flogged a case of wine. It was dark. Just enough light to prowl while keeping an eye on
our train and our small bone grinding part of it, the sliding doors of which were fully open. We
knew not when our train would get under way - one minute, five, thirty, an hour? So far, my
peeping had revealed only war hardware such as barbed wire and cased ammunition. About three
trucks away I glanced back and became immediately aware of an emergency. My train was
moving and the sliding doors closing. Its take off was neither swift nor noiseless, and here am I in
record time, locked out, running beside it and both gathering speed. In a state near panic as the
train was remorselessly ignoring my sprinting I seized an iron bracket holding a narrow running
board and by some adroit manoeuvring managed to get a precarious support for my body on the
six inch wide step. At least I was with the train again, having rejoined it in an undignified manner
and again back to passenger status in a ridiculous hang on, or else position. I managed to get one
leg around another …
Page 2
… convenient bracket which gave me a feeling of being attached fore and aft. I was cold, and
getting colder, as the train dragged itself along at its customary speed of about twenty miles an
hour through rain and driving sleet. I was shut out and alone with my thoughts. How long could I
hang on like this and how long before the next stop, two very urgent thoughts, and both
unanswerable as the train clanged and clattered over and under bridges and uncomfortably close
to trains passing in the opposite direction. My arms ached with the strain they were increasingly
being subjected to. It was getting a bit grim. Oh how many more miles of this agony? If only this
narrow running-board or whatever it was, was a few inches wider. There was a limit to my aching
arms.
Their failure would result in me pitching into loose gravel, perhaps doing a few rolls down a bank
and ultimately, I hoped, result in me rejoining my unit per media of RTO's (railway returning
officers) [or Rail Transport Officers], military police, or both. But something had to happen and it
did. At the height of the looming crisis I felt the train being involved in a jerky action of which I
sensed to be brakes being applied. I was right. It slowed to a walking pace; then stopped. I didn't
get off. I fell off, and was on my hands and knees as the sliding doors opened. My mates stared at
me incredulously and "Good God its Taylor. We said goodbye to you at the last stop - how the hell
did you get here? We've come thirty or forty miles since we missed you".
Page 3
At no time in my life, before or after this event have I felt so utterly ridiculous as I slowly rose to my
feet, flexed my muscles and told the guffawing clique that I always travelled on the outside of
trains whenever possible. The train had of course stopped in a convenient cutting for a ‘men’s
only’ - a pressing demand which for me ended in a unique ride I would never wish to repeat.
A DEDICATED SOLDIER
Transcribed 17/2/2002 by RCT from old fashioned typewriter notes written by my father, CC
Taylor
In linked shell holes out in front of newly captured Messines I was given a message to deliver to
the section consolidating a shell hole a dozen yards away. The area which a few hours ago was
45
wrested from the Germans was now under sustained shellfire from their repositioned artillery. We
were warned to expect a counter attack and to take every known method to repel it. Just short of
the group I was taking the message to, was a lone soldier, a very big man who gave me the
impression that he could have picked me up with one hand. I spoke to him. He turned in my
direction, nodded and immediately assumed the position he had been holding since daylight
broke. Just a lone rifleman with rifle, ready to deal with anything that moved out front and giving
the impression that he alone was keeping the enemy at bay.
With a shovel he had made his own little strongpoint and his rest for his rifle between two
sandbags. Having given my message to the NCO in charge I asked him who the big bloke
was."Oh that's Tiny - Tiny to us. His brother is a top brass in some British regiment I think. Maybe
a colonel or even a general. Tiny is a damned good soldier but not over social but we get along
well. He writes a lot of stuff for some British papers, all censored of course."
Page 2
On my way back I again intruded on his privacy with who was on our left, on our right and behind
us. He side tracked all conversational leads other than those strictly to defense and attack in our
immediate area. And during it he never took his eyes off his rifle sights. I left the lone soldier with
the evergreen parting phrase "Well, I'll be on my way". He nodded.
In less than a minute the crunch came. A direct hit less than six yards from where we were talking.
The lone soldier was killed and half of the small section he was attached to were put out of action.
For me to have again side - stepped the fatal shell was just another of war's miracles.
A sequel to this event of June 8th 1917 is the following letter, which I still have and value, from the
late General Freyberg who became Baron Freyberg and a Governor General of New Zealand.
The letter dated 4th Jan 1940 is as follows:
Army Headquarters Wellington C1
Dear Mr Taylor,
I was very pleased and touched to get your letter dealing with my brother, Paul. I am sorry that I
was not in Christchurch longer. Had I been I would have looked you up and had a conversation.
Best wishes to you.
A FATAL TOT OF RUM
A chilly, miserable and foggy night in the Ploegsteert area. In the front line as usual, an NCO and
six of us manning our Lewis gun which never enjoyed a high rating for reliability. We knew its
temperament. It took very little mud to make it stop firing in protest. Slightly imperfect ammunition
often sent it into a tailspin. Yet, with all its imperfections, it was easy and light to manœuvre and a
comfort to those with it and around it. It received all our loving care when it was not mounted for
instant action, that is, below the parapet. During the night it had fired its usual quota of about a
thousand rounds of 303s through the swirling fog at the German parapet and wire entanglements.
Night firing under normal conditions used up a box of ammunition and emptied some twenty
panniers each holding twenty-seven bullets. Always the empty panniers were reloaded without
delay whenever light and other conditions permitted. This we were doing as the daylight
increased with the gun back in the trench from its night mounting. Now in its place was a
camouflaged periscope which we used for surveillance into the fog and glimpse our own wire
when it could be seen. The periscope was not constantly manned. A glimpse through it at five
minute intervals was about the usual norm.
The cheerless dawn was just another cheerless dawn, we all secretly wishing we were a
thousand miles away from it all.
Page 2
We were chilled, all with empty tummies and smoking roll your own cigarettes with army issue
tobacco which was never more than a throat stinger and stinker as well. I n those far off days
smoking was regarded as a virtue in as much that it was publicized as an aid to digestion and
thinking and beneficial for the nerves. So we smoked and smoked whenever we could in the
encouraged euphoria, cigarettes from food parcels, bought in canteens and supplied as a ration
issue by the army.
Some voices along the trench alerted us to the fact that we were about due for our rum issue and
true enough, a sergeant and an orderly arrived from a back trench somewhere with the usual
46
stone jar labeled SRD. What that meant we never knew but our interpretation was "seldom
reached destination". We did know, however, that what did reach us would warm us up a bit. The
rum gave us a slight feeling of belonging and a fleeting idea that the top brass knew we were out
front somewhere. It no doubt had some psychological value, in my opinion, very little.
Nevertheless, I always drank my tot always with some spluttering whenever it was available. The
sergeant had a small measure which his orderly filled and tipped into our held out pannikins.
During the handout I heard a voice say “Give him half of mine!” Whereupon a member of our
Section, one we knew as Scotty Hill [cannot identify] got an …
Page 3
… OS [out sized] tot of the firewater which he lovingly downed while we were staring starry eyed
at ours. With our vitality at near zero the reaction from the 'boost' was not long delayed. Scotty
startled with "I've had a guts-full of doing nothing all night, time they were shook up a bit."
Whereupon he grabbed a rifle, stepped up onto the fire-step, exposed himself where the gun had
been mounted but before he got a shot away into the fog and fell heavily back into the trench. A
bullet had found its mark in the centre of his forehead.
Our eyes were riveted on the bullet hole and the brain matter oozing there-from. Not a pretty
sight.
fog. Our platoon officer arrived for a brief fact finding mission. We told him what had happened. It
was our belief that the fatal bullet had been fired at a visible target by an enemy sniper taking
advantage of a thinning phase in the variable fog. He could have been out on a listening post and
not far from our trench. Had the rum not reached, accustomed as we were to death by mutilation
in the heat of conflict, this happening in the cold foggy dawn instantly cancelled out the insidious
effects of the rum legacy. We were at once sobered and shocked. It seemed to us that Hill had
become the victim of some sneak murderer - alive one minute, dead the next. We covered him
with a groundsheet and sent word to the stretcher bearers.
I took a searching spell at the periscope. There was no life or movement to be seen in the
thinning its destination that morning we would have been spared the loss of a valued team mate
and a very unpleasant sight. If a moral could be drawn from this depressing event it might be to
sip the rum issue and never exceed the amount issued. More important, perhaps if in the front
trench to keep your head down below the parapet.
AN UN-EXITING LEAVE
Page 1 of 3
Periodical leave, usually ten to fourteen days in England, or to Paris, was the army's reward to
balance out long periods spent in the mud, blood and gas areas. Another divisional rest camp was
at a place called Ambleuteuse on the French coast. It was my lot to enjoy leave to all three. At the
latter place which I cannot locate on today's map we were shown a large hollow rock, accessible
at low tide, where Napoleon allegedly made more than one trip to gaze across the channel at
England.
Memories of French coast map have not dimmed over the years. We played billiards on a French
version of billiard tables which had no pockets - all cannons, and liquid refreshment came by way
of a syrupy mixture known as Citron.
A companion and I, walking along the sandy beach on a bleak, cloudy and rather cold morning
hastened towards a group of men hauling something out of the surf. It would of course have to be
a dead body. We joined the group but not for the sake of looking at a corpse. Of these we had
seen plenty before coming here and would see many more when our brief leave was over. Our
reason for getting a close look was to see if we knew the unfortunate victim. He was a stranger to
us. Those who had removed him from the sea were applying the limited knowledge of
resuscitation extant at the time.
Page 2
‘The Kiss of Life’ was unknown. As already mentioned, the sight of a dead body was just another
dead body to us yet this one looked like one from a waxworks awaiting attention from a tinting
expert.
It was death of a kind we were not familiar with - where only the smell of the dead and cordite
usually abounded. And the noise background, the sound of a gentle breaking surf, so different
from the angry snarl of a battlefield. On the sand a colourless body clad only in a small V - shaped
swim trunk. No wounds, no blood, no visible sign of death. One noted on the accidentally drowned
soldier a hirsute chest in which lay half hidden a Madonna and an identity disc.
Page 3
47
We left as small waves from the incoming tide crept around our feet and the arrival of some
stretcher bearers.
Window gazing helped to lend a mild interest to the dragging hours. There was little enough to
see in the few shop windows - shelves where goods had once been, drawn curtains, a cafe, some
empty shop, another cafe and a shop with a glass case fixed to its front showing post card sized
photos of soldiers in uniform.
The price of these seemed reasonable and having a few francs to spare, in I went. In the drab
shop cum studio, faded drapes and threadbare carpet I'm being adroitly worked over in laboured
English to take a dozen photos instead of half a dozen by an ageing almost bald Frenchman
peering at me through his steel rimmed spectacles. I settled for the half dozen and paid for them.
He proffered me a small pad in which to write my name and regimental address so that the photos
could be posted in a few days time. Another couple of days at this impersonal rest camp from
which all desirable femmes seem to have been removed and we were headed back to the battle
zone. The photos duly arrived well packed between cardboard. The photographer, despite his
dismal studio was a good technician. The photos were sharp and clear. But all six were of some
Australian sergeant.
BOGGED DOWN
Our move to a low lying area opposite a partly demolished sugar refinery in the Warneton area
was pressed with some urgency. Long marches, often in heavy rain with no idea where we were
going or why. If there were no billets or other amenities on the way, then that was too bad. Make
the most of whatever turns up. Improvise. Sleep when you can get an hour or so, or a little more,
on the side of the road, in the rain, in a paddock. It’s an emergency so keep moving up to the front
helped along with the company cooker which rarely failed to sustain us with hot tea and stew. The
‘babbling brooks’ [cooks] usually were the butt of biting sarcasm, almost all of it undeserved. We
envied them when we approached the trenches. For them and their coffee pot two wheeler it was
here and no further. Not so for us. In the dark and in the rain we arrived at the beginning of a so
called trench leading to the front line. One glimpse of it left us with no delusions about coming
events. At a dump on the way we had de-booted, tied their laces together and slung them over
our shoulders. In their place we dragged on not gumboots but thigh boots which evoked
wisecracks such as we’re going duck shooting, trout fishing. Highly trained as we were in adapting
ourselves to anything that arose, getting into this moonlit slimy waterlogged ditch hampered as we
were with gear without slipping and flopping …
Page 2
…. into the stinking water strained our dexterity to the limit. Once in, keeping upright and
steadying ourselves with our hands against the slimy banks as we cautiously moved forward was
priority number one. Each had his own little self made wave in front of him. The hiss of machine
gun bullets made our watery ditch a safer place than in the open. In the trench there were some
duckboards attached to their ‘A’ frames. Odd ones were floating. After some hours of slithering,
groping, passing orders backwards and forwards and swearing we arrived at the section of front
line that became our home for seven days. Here we had the benefit of duckboards below two feet
of fouled water. The duckboards could be felt but not seen. In this miserable trench we were
unshaven (which didn’t matter), rain kept beating down and kept us adjusting our oil sheets
around our necks to ward off the water which ran down in a tiny stream from our scrim covered ‘tin
hats’. Time dragged as we sat on slippery fire steps with the tops of our waders, mere inches
above the stagnant water. Shrapnel and shell bursts and the whine of bullets added to the unease
which filled our unease cups to the brim. When possible we kept the enemy lines under
surveillance by means of periscopes, mainly of the kind made to fit onto our bayonets. Our thigh
boots, constantly worn, caused our feet to become swollen, tender and sweaty. Their removal
when we were finally relieved called for some gentle handling as …
Page 3
… some patches of tender skin adhered to them and what was left of our rotting socks. Time
certainly dragged in that sub-standard front line opposite the sugar refinery in which the enemy
had a good measure of very active artillery. And as the time dragged, and for an escape
diversion from the depressing grind, we betted very modestly a franc, two francs, 10 cigarettes on
a floating rat, the time it took as it floated slowly by out of sight around a bend in the trench and
float back again twenty minutes or half an hour later. The start and finish of the slow rat float was
marked with a cartridge stuck in the bank. Surprising were the odds and ends that floated by and
later returned as the water drifted one way for an hour or so then reversed. We assumed some
48
small outposts like ourselves must have been bailing to keep the water so moving. We did our
share of it but the outcome was completely unrewarding. Occasionally a waterborne empty
cartridge case showed up. The first one to spot it claimed it and put it to good use. It was filled
with clay, positioned below the murky water and used as a foot stool as its owner sat on the fire
step or in his earth-shaped squat under the parapet. Company Headquarters was established in
something resembling a dugout. At least it had overhead cover which kept the rain out. Its
entrance was sandbagged a few inches above the trench water level. Anyone approaching HQ
was bawled at “go slow, don’t bring a bloody …
Page 4
… tidal wave with you”. Always there was the odd one with a distaste for authority or for sheer
devilment raised a wave big enough to flow over the sandbags at the entrance. To have raised the
barricade would have made the entrance too small for emergency exit. It was in this semi-canal
trench that I became a close friend of the late All Black footballer, Jockey Ford. [probably 26/173,
Rifleman William August FORD] He was a company runner officially but in the present
circumstances more of a company wader between Coy HQ and the Battalion HQ, Jockey was
clear eyed and muscular. At the end of the war he toured with the distinguished army team. [beat
Wales six points to three 21/4/1919] Today, his name is in the hall of past rugby greats as having
scored the winning try against the touring Springboks at Christchurch in, I believe, the mid
twenties. We met on occasions after the war and the conversation usually got around to the days
opposite the sugar refinery.
Our departure from this wretched area took place overland and in daylight. Our relief came over in
single file up the water logged communication trench in their waders as we had done. There was
no room for us all in the trench so at a given signal we were told to up and out backwards and the
best of luck. There was some distance to go in and through shell holes and irregular clumps of
barbed wire with increasing machine gun fire and shrapnel. The Germans had properly assessed
the relief operation from their observation points and were giving us the lethal hurry along. We had
our …
Page 5
… measure of killed and wounded. The only evidence I bore of the frantic rush was a badly torn
uniform which arose from getting snagged and un-snagged from the vicious wire entanglements
some clumps of which had bodies in their permanent grip. Our pace eased up as we moved back.
Sheer exhaustion and low vitality took care of this.
Back at the dump we slung our waders on to a heap, got back into our leather boots (our Bill
Massey’s) had some warm tea, some stew, some rice and, with the comforting thought that we
had earned our five bob a day, slept and slept and slept, under the sky in some Flanders Field.
BLOWFLY APPRAISAL
earlier named
THE DRUGGED BLOWFLIES
A slightly less dangerous part of the Somme front line but the front line nevertheless. Some wire
entanglements of a haphazard nature. A zigzagging upcoming front line. A yet to be sandbagged bay with a wooden fire-step for our Lewis Gun team. We settled in and inherited odds
and ends left by those we had relieved, a tin of Maconochie’s, some tinned beans and bully,
some ammunition (rifle) a few mills bombs, a rifle or two, a holed groundsheet, a blood stained
tunic.
From our fire step looking through a periscope we could see large areas of enemy held territory,
their captive balloons, their planes, and their flashing artillery after dark. Viewed through a
periscope, the close and distant scene was flat, lifeless, devoid of animal life and any movement
whatsoever. In short, it was dull and boring. Never a German to be seen. A mile or so to our
rear, and a few short weeks ago, they had been ejected from their deep, chalk, almost
impregnable dugouts in what the British had named King George's Hill.
A sustained and exceptionally heavy bombardment by British Artillery had sealed the exits and
entrances to these luxury defences often thirty to forty feet below ground and the inmates were
trapped, had to surrender and hope for the best in doing so. Before entering the line very few of
49
our Battalion had not been inside these dry, safe and comfortable defences deep in the chalk.
Times when in our …
Page 2
… off duty hours when in reserve these ramblings in the labyrinthine chalk hills were not
altogether unassociated with something akin to sightseeing tours. But as mentioned, from the
front line, the periscopic view ahead was dull and boring. No ‘Allemandes’ to be seen, yet they
were there in great numbers. We knew that, and often we could hear them hammering and
trundling their war paraphernalia over their light mobile railways. Always, their dugouts were more
secure and better designed than ours. Ours, however, never had that stale almost sickly stink of
garlic - which was something. The part of the front line we were in may have changed hands more
than once. We couldn't be sure, and if we had been sure, it would have made no difference. Our
job was to hold it. No more, no less.
The whine and drone of howitzer shells high overhead was continuous night and day searching
for our battery positions and smashing access roads and transport. Occasionally in the front line
there were quiet spells sometimes lasting two or three hours when only guard duty was
necessary. These were precious hours indeed and on a fluid battlefield occurred only in or about
topography areas of secondary importance. In such places four hours on and eight off was
adhered to.
On one of these off duty spells, I was resting against the parapet and looking at the trench wall
opposite. There I …
Page 3
… noticed a large fat blowfly coming out of a small tunnel­like hole. It didn't fly away as blowflies
usually do. It fell to the ground and more or less dragged Itself away. Others followed. About half
of them became airborne and the rest built up to a small squirming heap on the floor of the trench.
Something strange about this and it called for an investigation. A few stabs into the hole the
blowflies were emerging from with a bayonet, a splintering through some case-wood, and out
came a very strong vile smell of a decaying body. The hole I had made let in sufficient light to let
me get a glimpse of the cloth covering the inmate. It was the smoky grey of the German uniform. I
had seen enough and my curiosity was fully satisfied. Whoever it was in the wooden box must
have towered above the other ranks to have warranted being encased. With a handful of mud I
sealed the hole up and put a shovel full of dirt on the remaining blowflies.
My hypothesis of the ones which failed to take wing was, and still is, that they were temporarily
overcome by the fumes. Such an assumption may be tenable. An entomologist might know.
MESSINES MEMORIES
The mine explosions preceding the battle of Messines are now historical. By today’s potential in
the nuclear field they would be insignificant. When the Messines mines were triggered off I was
halfway up a ladder, one of so many placed for us to get into No Man’s Land and follow the
intense creeping artillery barrage. It was just after daybreak. I was heavily laden with a rifle,
machine gun spares, bombs, rations and a blank cheque to kill as many Germans as I could. As
mentioned, when half way up the ladder I had to hang on firmly to avoid being shaken back into
the trench as the first lot of aminal? [ammonal] exploded under the village ahead - or what was left
of it after the bombarding it had had for days. The earth shook as if convulsed by an earthquake.
In following the barrage across No Man’s Land we automatically knew the contour and
undulations of the land it swept and what we had to do. We had practiced on a similar area behind
our lines for weeks and weeks in accord with a grand offensive plan masterfully conceived by and
put into operation by our Father Christmas-like, white whiskered, pot bellied, GOC, General
Plumer. [General later Field Marshal Herbert Charles Onslow Plumer, 1st Viscount Plumer,
GCB GCMG GCVO GBE (13 March 1857 – 16 July 1932)
Following the barrage across No Man’s Land was the start of an exciting day, June 6th 1917. The
smell of cordite, the whine of bullets, seeing unlucky fellow soldiers smashed to the ground, the
need to avoid trampling them, the need to keep in touch and not get scattered.
50
On the way I saw a sample of Christianity at its best - …
Page 2
…. an act far beyond the call of duty. It was our Padre, the Rev Walker, [so far only identified as
Reverend William “Willie” WALKER] on a bent knee giving a drink to a wounded digger from his
water bottle. The padre, unarmed of course, was equipped only with a haversack, gas helmet, a
scrim covered steel helmet the same as we wore, and two water bottles. This minister of the
Presbyterian Church [now known to be the Methodist Church], now approaching his ninetieth year
is still living in Auckland - a dedicated man and one whom I hold in high esteem.
Tending to the wounded in that inferno when he could have remained safely behind the battlefront
was not without its influence on our religious attitudes on those who were spared to attend future
church parades.
As the barrage lifted in speeding the enemy retreat we reached our objective, the rim of the giant
craters which were slowly filling with water. What a sight. We had a dress circle of the biggest hole
yet created in battle. Many bodies mixed with the newly disturbed soil vanished from sight as the
rising water engulfed them. After some two hours digging at the crater rim by way of consolidation
we were withdrawn to platoon HQ which was a captured dugout under a shell-flattened church. In
the attack some bombs had been thrown at the entrance. There was no resistance. The bombs
had done their deadly work. Some half dozen of the enemy lay dead amongst the havoc created
by the bombs.
Page 3
On odd benches and bunks, groaning with pain, were another six to eight Germans who had
suffered grievous wounds. There was blood on the wall and floor. I and another were detailed to
get the dead bodies out of the dugout without delay and to dispose of them somehow.
My assistant was a Wanganui plumber, a grand fellow named Wemo Halligan [28469 Lance
Corporal William HALLIGAN KiA 12/10/1917] who was later killed at Passchendaele. We had to
get the bodies up a fairly steep flight of steps. Luckily Wemo fossicked out a piece of rope from
somewhere. This we tied to the feet of the corpses and he went up the steps backwards taking a
good share of the weight. My part of the repugnant job was part lifting the head and shoulders to
ease the bump, bump, bump on each step - my uniform soggy with warm blood to the elbows.
After an exhaustive half hour we had the bodies out in the open. We carried them to a shell crater
a chain or so away, swung them three times to the count of one, two, three and heaved them into
the hole. We covered them, partially, anyway, with bricks, broken timber, lumps of concrete,
plaster and anything liftable. Only a few minutes devoted to the burial – no graveside reverence
from us. Only a passing thought relevant to the why and stupidity of it all. My end of the disposal
party amounted to identification matter, pay books, some postcards and photos, which I still have,
pair of Mark VII Zeiss binoculars, a palm sized revolver and scabbard and a couple of wrist
watches. All were posted home and arrived as posted with the exception of the revolver. It was
flogged somewhere …
Page 4
… along the line. For many years I have used the dagger to weed the garden.
In concluding these events of a very memorable day, worthy of mention, is my capture of a
conscious? [uncertain what word dad was looking for here] ranked German captain. It was not
funny when it happened, but with hindsight over the years my thoughts occasionally turn to the
incident and it seems to have some affinity with things that happen at Christmas - like Santa
coming down the chimney.
In one wall of our underground HQ was an open brick fireplace of generous size. As I was slitting
the sleeve of one of the wounded Germans for the purpose of stopping some bleeding, out of the
corner of my eye and to my amazement, a pair of legs encased in shiny jackboots suddenly
appeared in the fireplace. No Father Christmas this. I dropped what I was doing, grabbed the
nearest rifle with fixed bayonet and braced myself ready to deal with whatever was groping for a
footing in the shiny boots. What emerged once his feet reached the hearth was a soot spattered
enemy officer gabbling in his guttural language as he freed himself from a mass of signal wires he
had become entangled with. He was a confused and comical sight. I had him well covered and
could have shot him, used the bayonet, or both, and he knew it. Had he shown the slightest sign
of reaching for his revolver his quickness on the draw would never have matched my trigger
happiness. Our platoon officer, a Lieutenant Lewer came from somewhere and took the ….
Page 5
… German revolver. The chimney had been used as a lookout and as the tide of battle swept
51
through the Messines village. He would see that he had no choice other than to give himself up.
His demeanor in accord with his three-star rank, was unmistakably arrogant. I instinctively knew
that anyone under his command would have applied for transfer to another unit if such was
possible.
From Lieutenant Lewer “He’s yours Taylor, you bagged him so you can take him to Battalion HQ
and hand him over”. This I did with a ‘Hey you, get moving and away we went via shell holes,
rubble and what was left of entanglements, he with his hands up and heavily armed me, some
four paces behind. I duly handed him over with a “Here’s Father Christmas. I bagged him when he
came down a chimney…all yours”.
CHAMBER MUSIC
New Zealand House in Russell Square, London, will still be remembered by veterans of World
War 1 with pleasant memories. Most members of the 1st NZEF when on leave made it their first
stop to have a moderately priced meal, a shower, use of laundry, mail facilities, visiting theatrical
entertainment, care of personal properly and down below, in a stone basement a medical corporal
whose job was to administer anti – VD treatment to any who feared the onset of infection after
sexual indulgence. The establishment was well managed. Despite this, those using the dormitory
beds usually put the legs of their beds in their boots. Their boots were safer that way.
It was from New Zealand House that I set out from to call on a gracious lady whom I got to know
well during my pre war employment with the North Canterbury Hospital Board. A Miss Thurston,
then Matron in Chief of the Christchurch Hospital. Now she was in charge of the New Zealand
War Contingents Association with an office in Southampton Row. I made myself known to a
receptionist and was ushered into her presence. Miss Thurston was seated behind a large desk
and made me very welcome. We discussed hospital associates at home with the Board and the
ones we knew to be overseas whilst indulging in afternoon tea. She was interested in my service
and before leaving I was given two Rounds and two tickets for a concert. A rewarding visit indeed.
Back at Russell Square, a room-mate, George Hoare, a school teacher from the Canal Reserve
Christchurch, (now Linwood Avenue) said he would be happy to accompany me to the concert.
The two tickets were for a chamber music concert in the Aeolian Hall. We looked it up in the guide
book and set out on foot to be there at 2.30 on a sunny afternoon. The doorkeeper as he took our
tickets seemed rather surprised to see two New Zealand soldiers presenting themselves for their
share of chamber music.
Page 2
We too, were a bit apprehensive as we strode up a hall to the concert chamber and were directed
to two cane chairs in a rather prominent position. We each were given a printed programme listing
coming events which looked anything but exciting. The rest of the audience amounted to about
twenty dedicated patrons, some with spade beards, most of them balding, a few with clawhammer boots and an elderly woman or two. On time, four solemn faced musicians arrived,
bowed appropriately, lifted their tail coats, sat down and tuned up. From memory I think the set-up
comprised a violin, cello, viola and base. After a quarter of an hour of Brahms or whatever it was
George and I had only one thought. How could we get out without disrupting the magic spell. We
just couldn't, we sat and fidgeted for an hour on the cold cane chairs and clapped each item
politely as the others did. At the brief halfway interval and amid some shuffling as the musicians
sipped their tumblers of water, we escaped to the street where we took a deep breath and made
for the nearest pub.
A CHRISTMAS DINNER 1917
Fleur Baix, Flanders
Note lost two lines
… in a French Billet. Cold and snowing. For the occasion - the usual stew - a fried chop and
mashed spuds and as a stand in for Xmas pud - rice and sultanas. We line up with our mess tin
lids and the Sergeant dips and pours.
In about one minute the first course is over. With some thirty stew served the sergeant bawls out "a bit left over - a merry Christmas paupers.” First served are round the dixie. In go some arms up
to elbows groping in the soup for any stray spuds. Some were lucky. In the not quite so chilly billet
and around a large farm table prepare for the next course. The 'Babbling Brook' arrives with a
fried chop and spoonful of mashed spuds for each of us. A fried chop and its lovely smell.
Mingling with this nostalgic NZ aroma was the hop aromatic smell of freshly uncorked ? bock beer
52
procured from some French estaminets.
In accord with the urge to do something unusual, one of our gang, an ex Liverpool fireman,
challenged anyone to beat him eating his chop Standing on his head. Bets were laid and the two
contestants upended themselves on the table with feet against a wall for support. The chops were
handed over and the starter fired a 303 through the roof. More than half the tiles were missing. An
extra two or three now, just peanuts. Let chop eating begin. It did and was quickly over. The time
winner was disqualified for having one or two odd eatable pieces on his bone. Bets were paid.
The orderly sergeant. appeared - silence everybody - in two hour's time it will be Boxing Day and
at 6 am you will appear at the usual dump to carry duckboards and sandbags to the front support
lines.
All candles out in half an hour. Singly, but usually in pairs, we paid our pre doss visit to the latrine.
The snow had stopped. A clear starry sky - a strange sky. No Southern Cross and familiar stars.
Our front line, and for very many miles right and left of it, was clearly defined by Very lights or star
shells .
Page 2
… gracefully soaring from the front trenches above No Man's Land. Bursts of machine gun fire
never ceased and a flare up of artillery with its red sky reflection was always apparent. Close to,
or in our vicinity, it raised our blood pressure (or something similar).
The distant flare ups aroused our common sympathetic remark "Some poor bugger's getting it.”
And such a remark was not funny. French soil [then] half a century ago was undergoing pollution
from chop bones, lice, rats, human excrement, poisonous gas, shell and gun fumes, decaying
mules and horses. The major pollution from decaying human bodies gave rise to, in my opinion,
the most revolting, penetrating, lingering smell on earth. It offended the nostrils on a battle field
and for miles around. Yes, French soil was undergoing pollution by millions of men and for long
periods we became part of it - very intimately. Crunch, crunch, through the snow to our billet. Bed
down, ground sheet, one blanket, overcoat and the filthy, ever present lice.
Author’s note:
Five days previous to this Christmas Day in Flanders in 1917, I had my 20 th birthday in a front line
dugout at Fleur Baix - my 21st a year later on a well earned 10 days leave to Paris.
DRAFFIN and THE RED HUN
Recently at the time of retesting the over 70 car drivers over the air came a news item that
General Puttick [probably 23/5, Major Edward PUTTICK], now well into his 80' s and living near
Hamilton, had successfully passed his driving test. The name brought back vivid memories of a
startling event of over 50 years ago at a time when Major Puttick was temporarily CO of the 4th
Battalion.
We were on the march along a pleasant tree lined French country road. At a halt the CO, adjutant
and some minor big wheels mounted on horses rode slowly by giving us footsloggers, in the
manner they conned us over, the feeling that we belonged to some inferior race altogether. When
the inspecting hierarchy reached the company just rear of us, a raised and angry voice could be
heard by all Hey you, you red Hun, get off that horse and stop playing the red Hun or you're not fit
to.” But whatever he intended to say was drowned out with Major Puttick's louder voice – “Military
Police - arrest that man, handcuff him and gag him. Take him away". In the tense atmosphere at
the time we concluded that the mutinous outburst would almost be on a par with the kiss of death
by way of punishment. The protester, a rifleman named Draffin [probably 26/764, Rifleman
Eugene Alfred John DRAFFIN], disappeared from our midst. We never found out what happened
to him but presumed he was taught to keep his cool on the treadmill of an army punishment camp
- places we were given to understand were grim places to keep clear of at all times. A few years
ago at a Rifle Brigade or Dink's reunion in Christchurch I asked an ex officer sitting next to me at
our table if he remembered the Draffin affair. "Quite well" he replied – “although it was a long time
ago - what an outburst it was." I asked him if he had ever heard of Draffin since. "Oh yes", he said,
"He lives in Auckland and is a practicing architect there".
MEMORY LANE - ENGLAND 1917
Page 1
Not many would be alive today who had the privilege, as I had, of seeing two of England's great
men in their respective fields greet, shake hands and bow to a full house in a London theatre.
The greats were Sir Rudyard Kipling and Sir Edward Elgar. Their appearance before the public
53
came at a time when the war was at its height with emotion and patriotism in full flood. On stage
the meeting of the celebrities was preceded by appropriate songs and music of the day by the
best artists available. The main theme however, was Kipling's latest creation "Songs of the Fleet"
for which Elgar had composed the music. Sustained applause broke out after Kipling's musically
adapted...
Then welcome fate's discourtesy
Whereby it is made clear
That in this day of our distress,
As in our triumph too
The game is more than the player of the game
And the ship is more than the crew.
This was followed by.
Stand by to reckon up your battleships
Ten. twenty, there they go
Brag about your cruisers like leviathans
With a thousand men apiece down below.
Page 2
Elgar’s music was also set to Kipling's tribute to trawlers' crews which had found their way into
destroyers and small units of the navy. Time has dimmed the memory of this delightful and
historical evening but one or two phrases and music still come to light at odd times.
Her mate was the skipper of a Bucko ship
Which always killed one man per trip
Her captain hailed from a chapel in Wales
And always fought in topper and tails.
And they all went a rovin' rovin a' roarin and a' rovin
The Lord knows where.
Other happy memories of a fourteen days leave to England were the hospitality extended to us
New Zealanders by British families. There were lists of addresses in all parts of the country where
we were welcome to stay. I, and the son of a Palmerston North bookseller, I think his name was
Bennett, became guests of a Mr and Mrs Royal whose well appointed home in Kent had a
commanding view of the English Channel. Its lawns ran down to the water's edge. Our host, Mr
Royal, was a partner in the shipping firm of Jesse Royal and Willan. As we enjoyed our
refreshments like a nip of this and a nip of that and cups of tea under a sunshade on the lawn, Mr
Royal would …
Page 3
… pass the binoculars on to us with the comment, that's another of our ships - I know its
distinctive style despite its camouflage.
Interest in watching the ships that passed in the channel never waned. There were cruisers,
destroyers, liners, freighters, tramps down to the miscellaneous small craft closer to the shore, a
scene somewhat more. soothing and relaxing than the ones we were only a few days ago
watching in Flanders. Our host's hobby was the collecting of rare china. His private collection was
housed in a two storey house he owned a mile or so from his own home.
There I spent an hour or so murmuring polite approval of bone china, Doulton, Spode and other
rare and costly pieces I knew nothing about. The two storied house was used solely for the
purpose of housing newly gathered rare china. It surprised me to know that at a time when Britain
was struggling for survival, a modem home could be used as a private museum.
HORNCHURCH
Page 1 of 4
Hornchurch Convalescent Camp, near London, with its two stone tower entrance where no one
got in or out without a pass functioned in a manner not unlike 'Checkpoint Charlie' operates today
at the Berlin Wall. But the officials at the Hornchurch entrance were more human, gentle, flexible
and understanding.
The camp served New Zealand well. It functioned as a clearing house for soldiers whose destiny
was back to training base, thence to France or to be declared medically unfit and sent back to
54
New Zealand. To keep its inmates under control and their hundreds of girl friends apart except on
visiting days it was surrounded by a tall hard to climb iron fence. At night, on the inner side this
barricade was patrolled by the camp's military police. Their vigilance was time and again made
unrewarding by small groups with time expired passes. To avoid being lumbered at the check
point somewhere at the back of the camp these AWOL's would rattle the corrugated iron fence
and the guards would move to that spot for the kill. Meanwhile, those about to break in would
streak along the fence some distance from the rattled area, throw coats over the top of the iron to
save cuts and help each other to scramble over. This ploy of getting back into the camp on time
expired passes never let up and was almost academic in its ramifications. Perhaps the main
architectural feature in the enclosure was its rows and rows of huts each with its twenty neatly
made beds and lockers.
I was in charge of one of these huts which were inspected each morning. To be included with the
fact finding trio and be consulted by its leader, a three star officer, gave my ego a mild boost. This
mild ego became well deflated on an occasion when at lights out one night I checked the role,
marked all present and correct. I knew one of my charges …
Page 2
… was absent despite his bed having been made up to look occupied. I believed he would get
back into the camp; that he would sneak in somehow.
But it didn't work that way. He was arrested in London with a time-expired pass and I was for it "Corporal Taylor, report to the orderly room at 9 am". I reported and found myself confronted by a
stem looking Captain Natusch [6/109, Captain Stanley NATUSCH] who hailed from Napier. The
charge was read and I pleaded guilty. The captain put me through a fiery hoop with "Lack of
discipline - taking a line of least resistance – poor showing for an NCO - the camp would be in a
hell of a state if others in a position of responsibility behaved like you." I had to take a withering
blast on the chin with "yes sir, yes sir" as he cut me down to size. I became detached from the
orderly room with a severe warning.
Justice had been done and was heard to have been done by those present at the time. Inwardly
however, I felt and knew that my evaluation of fair play and human rights would survive the ordeal.
They did.
From then on my hut duties became a little more responsible. The individual who caused the
disturbance, a fellow named Tate [cannot identify], was of good character, the son of a Canterbury
sheep farmer and give time would possibly be rejoining his regiment in France. His only default in
my opinion was having been caught on the left foot by the cops. I didn't suffer from a conscience
hangover. Remembering the incident in the clarity of hindsight, I don't think the captain could have
behaved other than he did.
The food situation in Britain due to the U-boat intensity was acute at the time I was in Hornchurch
awaiting my medical boarding. There were times when we were served horse flesh.
Page 3
It aroused some revulsion. One look at it and my thoughts conjured up visions of dogs and cats.
Most of this reddish coloured, fatless meat found its way out to the pig buckets. Another evening
meal dish a little more appealing was strictly vegetarian in as much as it was half a cucumber on a
tin plate. But there always was plenty of salt. This symbol of belt-tightening gave rise to the usual
crop of humour - "I've only got half a one (burp) what am I supposed to do with it? Skin it, dip it in
salt, close your eyes and kid yourself you're eating a banana. These are to keep you cool under
fire so eat a whole one - you need it."
In the mess huts we sat back to back at tables one end of which ended at a wall. Those at the wall
end who finished their meal first waited not for the slow eaters. They wanted out and out they
went along the table in their big boots careful not to step on mugs of tea and eating gear that was
spread in disarray on the long board table. Tapioca and sago were always good for a laugh.
A VAD nurse came up the aisle with a wheel trolley and at each table started tipping a ladleful of
the goo on to a pile of plates which was passed along hand by hand. At each sitting about half the
hungry convalescents were eating sago or tapioca from a plate in front of them before starting on
the second plateful, carefully balanced on their knees under the table. At these sessions
everybody was goo'ed up with sticky trousers, fingers and plate bottoms and it was quite usual to
hear “Hey, watch what you're doing, I'm getting this bloody stuff all over me.”
Each of us, to indicate our particular mess hut wore a coloured arm band on his hospital blue
tunic. Those with outsize appetites queued up first at their hut door, quickly bolted a meal, lost no
time getting out, changing uniform and doubling up for another feed. In closing this brief 'recap' …
Page 4
…of some Hornchurch happenings, I recall that in my hut there was a very friendly Maori. Now,
55
fifty years later I still remember his name, Matiu Witana [20661, Private Matiu WITANA]. His hand
writing was by far the most beautiful I have ever seen. And in the years between I’ve seen plenty.
I would sit on his bed and persuade him to write. It was fascinating to see the speed and exquisite
lettering so effortlessly flowing from his fountain pen. At almost every writing 'look-in' Matiu would
put the pen down, show me the palm of his hand and say "look, same colour as yours". I had to
agree when our two palms were side by side. Race consciousness and colour awareness is not
something that has just emerged in our present day society. It has been with us in a less eruptive
and less vicious manner since - well, who can say?
A BRIGADE REUNION
Page 1 of 2
Regardless of a belief that old soldiers never die despite the young ones wishing they would,
many surviving Dinks from all parts of the Dominion gathered for a reunion at the Winter Gardens
in Christchurch in 1963. We were warmly welcomed by the Christchurch Executive and on
entering the building each was given a miniature "Soyez Ferrne" regimental badge which could be
worn with modest pride on any occasion.
Inside the tables were marked first, second, third and fourth battalions and thence into the
respective companies. Locating my company and battalion I became seated between two
strangers, shook hands and melted into a stilted impersonal conversation such as “Christchurch is
out to do us well, Quite a mob here tonight. Did you fly down? Did they give you a badge?”
There's Captain Upham on the stage, they're going to make him an honorary member of our
brigade. That's really something. After a drink or two, I, and we all for that matter, became less
inhibited. I asked my friend on my right if he had ever heard of or what became of Captain MHR
Jones, our first Company Commander. I blinked when he replied, “You're speaking to him now.”
“So, you're MHR himself.” Thus a gap of little short of fifty years was bridged. Conversation got
into top gear as we talked about the early events of the Rifle Brigade and its colourful origins. The
Captain had risen to the rank of Major and certainly would have attained high rank had a bullet
wound not ended his military career near High Wood on the Somme.
Page 2
Our conversation became harder to sustain as the noise from glasses and cutlery became louder.
Various ones left their seats as they spotted someone they knew in days gone by. Greetings such
as "Surely you're not Bill Dwyer of "C" Company.” [26/1034 Rifleman (later Sergeant) William
DWYER], “That's me, no less.” “Well, look at you now, bald, fat bellied and with a swarm of
grandkids I suppose.”, “And you are the Jack Taylor of ninth platoon - .skinny as you were then.
Remember we used to call you "cherub" because you looked like one. Get your Mrs to feed you
properly you little runt””, “How about you telling her, she's here somewhere.” “No thanks, leave
that part to you.” Such exchanges polite and impolite were always made with a grin, a night to
remember.
An item up on the stage was a humorous one based on a bayonet instructor's briefing to raw
recruits on how to use the raw steel. “On guard, lunge, in, out and if the bayonet is too hard to
withdraw fire a bullet alongside and that will loosen it.”
Shortly after the war this item earned a good measure of applause but on this evening it proved to
be completely out of place and a bore. It faded out amid catcalls, noise and disinterest. While the
general mingling was taking place, our wives were in an adjoining room being entertained with
and taking part in songs from My Fair Lady.
An announcement from the stage, “Your attention please” evoked the usual response, quietness,
followed with an amplified voice. “It is now my pleasure to ask Captain Upham, VC and bar to
come to the microphone.” A tribute was made to our distinguished guest who in responding
graciously accepted our invitation to becoming an honorary member of the Rifle Brigade.
Page 3
He was warmly applauded, and rightly so.
Our wives from the adjoining room now joined us and the general noise became noisier. My wife,
and no doubt others, took a look at their husbands and concluded that a cup of coffee might halt a
deterioration in the partly stoned state they found them in. Mine was away for some time. How she
elbowed her way to the coffee place and came back with two cups of coffee through the animated
crowd was admirable and proves that men are good talkers but it's women who get things done.
Much as I wanted and needed the coffee I never got it. A one armed Dink somehow got his feet
under our table. His barging in posed us a minor problem. He made short work of my 'cuppa' and
upset the other one whilst telling my wife that she was the most beautiful lady here - then to me –
56
“Isn't that right cobber” as his remaining arm swiped a half glass of beer to the floor. His friends of
the old brigade took care of him.
[at this point there is a gap in page numbers but due to the confusion in numbers it is assumed
that this next series of numbers follows the above.
The following text is written by the family]
These were hand written in "Alpha" exercise book by CCT in the year 1936 (pI33,crossed out 93 is enscribed 19/3/36) and copy typed and digitized by eldest son Bob, RCT, mainly in week ending
31/3/2002, he then being in his 78th year. On page 133 in top margin space CCT has written
19/6/36. Another numbering system starts "84 crossed out" and continues to "99 crossed out'?
at 150 for some reason
Very first page of exercise book starts pencil free hand top Land top right "119"
CC TAYLOR’S EXERCISE BOOK TEXT
Page 119
Breakfast consisted of a streak (I nearly wrote steak, but I don’t think the reader would have been
mislead) of bacon boiled in the lid of our mess tin (which was a sort of frying pan arrangement) the
remainder of our bread and some piping hot tea. Our candles had petered out and the dugout
was as dark as the inside of a tunnel.
Some idea of the extent of my breakfast can be gauged from the fact that I ate it on my way out.
Still I had the pleasure of drinking my tea al fresco. The trenches boasted lavatories of an
architectural type that discouraged loitering. ‘Don’t go down in the mine dad’ who was still with us
took supreme charge of this department. The next question was a wash, but how? There was any
amount of water under the duckboards but we didn’t want a wash that bad. Enquiry elicited …
Page 120
… the fact that washing water was available in the front line. So Teddy and myself set out in
search with two gallon petrol tins. The going was comparatively easy in daylight. Two more notice
boards, close enough to be read in conjunction with the ‘dirty dozen’ one. They leaned towards
each other as though their messages were inter related – which they were. One read ‘Here lies an
unknown British soldier’ the other – ‘Fill no sandbags here.’ There was no need for the two –
either would have been sufficient. Some empty tins and other litter scattered around this plot
proclaimed the fact that only the living mattered.
More notice boards indicating the way to the front line saved us from taking the wrong turning.
Other notice boards warned us not to loiter and where to keep low. We kept low alright, probably
twice as low as was necessary. If we …
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… met with any mishap the other fellows wouldn’t get their much needed wash. At last we
reached the spot where our folks at home stabbed a miniature NZ flag into their war maps. The
extreme ends of our long, eventful journey had very different settings.
We were launched in an atmosphere of patriotic fervour and glory and reached our destination in
search of the wherewithal for a wash, or another wash. There was some majestic and awesome
quality about the ‘front line’. It was more substantial and strongly built than the subsidiary lines
and the troops occupying it were grim and grave. They looked as though they were carrying the
world’s troubles on their shoulders and – who can say they were not! The only signboard lacking
seemed to be one indicating that anyone …
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… venturing beyond this spot would be shot on sight. To go beyond that protective bank in
daylight would have been on a par with stepping over a high cliff - both endings would have been
identical. Fire steps, (narrow wooden platforms) were set into the bank in each bay and small
groups of men were using them as seats. The greater part of the garrison was sleeping in their
earthy bivvies. Here and there a man was peering into a periscope which projected above the
parapet, its top camouflaged with a piece weathered sand bag and some dried grass. It was
merely a wooden shute about three feet long with a small mirror in each end. (To be in charge of
one when Fritz smashed the top mirror was considered to be a lucky omen for no one expected
the war to last for seven years.)
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We were soon directed to the small creek which flowed through a tunnel in our parapet, thence
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across No Man’s Land and through the German lines. We were not usually concerned which way
the streams flowed but the thought struck us that it was handy to have this particular one flowing
from and not to. Another board warned us ‘not to expose any part of our body while getting water.
Use a piece of string for lowering and raising purposes.’ None being available we doubled our
puttie tapes and used them.
We were a bit cynical about this last notice until a Fritz sniper had a pot at the last tin as it was
being hauled out. He made no bones about hitting it. Teddy signaled a hit by waving his bayonet
above the parapet while I plugged the holes with my fingers and later a piece ….
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… of stick and a piece of sandbag. It was no trouble for Fritz with his telescopic sights to hit a
gallon tin. Empty milk tins set on top of the parapet (only) remained for a few seconds. On the way
back we asked to have a look through a periscope. We were told there was nothing to see. The
periscopist didn’t mind but he didn’t want his officer to see us butting in. A tailor-made cigarette
closed the deal and put us all on a friendly footing and moreover we recounted our experience of
psyche at the well.
The enemy breastwork was about two hundred yards away and was not unlike stop-banks we
have alongside some of our NZ rivers. The German entanglements were thick and uniform - ours
higgle–de-piggledy. Sheep could have wandered through them in places but whether good or
bad…
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.. we guessed it was a pretty risky job putting it there. The periscopic view was indeed a study in
still life – the only exception being some birds which rose and settled on weird looking tree stumps
and clumps of scraggy bush. Away in the distance, trees, partly ruined buildings, three sausage
balloons and an old church spire were visible.
Teddy had only started on his study of still life when two ear splitting crashes occurred not far to
our right. I told him, as we had been told, there was nothing to see and reminded him that the
other fellows were waiting for the water. During our absence they had not been idle judging by the
amount of muck lying at the entrance to our dugout. Mildewed periodicals and rotten sandbags
predominated. In addition there were three gas helmets, a rusty …
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… bayonet, many empty tobacco, beef and jam tins, clips of cartridges, dirty socks and
underclothes galore and a liberal sprinkling of all the impediments one finds in the bathroom of a
third rate boarding house, even to ubiquitous cracked mirror. A piece of rag trimmed with lace was
the only article to cause any comment. We could only guess at its history but it was soon given
several rich and romantic ones. It was irreverently pinned to the ‘dirty dozen board’.
From now on our abode would be more habitable. All the rat holes were plugged and the earth
floor thoroughly scraped. If it was to be blown in on top of us there was no harm in it being
sanitary.
The next job was to punch a hole through the roof which was composed of alternate layers of
earth and broken bricks. No two dugouts were the alike.
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Some were designed for protection from all but a direct hit by the largest of shells, the roof were
composed of railway irons, earth, logs and broken bricks with anti- concussion air spaces in
between. Others were decrepit crazy affairs in which it was hardly safe to sneeze. They could be
divided into two classes – saloon and steerage or sag or non sag. If directed into one of the latter
type It was a fair indication that you were not very important.
Our bayonets and entrenching tools proved useful in chimney building. After a deal of conniving
(we could only work from the inside) the hole was made and the opening at ceiling level fitted with
a tin slide to shut off the draught if the sparks got too thick. It was pure delight to exercise our long
suppressed resourcefulness - to suggest and do things.
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This freedom from restraint made the time fly and helped in the preservation of our mental
balance. Trench warfare had no use for cant or humbug. That offensive remark ‘I’ll do all
thethinking ‘ere’’ made a shame faced exit and remained in exile. The search for pinpricking
breaches of discipline also went overboard and with it the antipathy towards our officers. The
lifting of the restraint had a wholesome and healthy effect all round. We now accepted authority as
a matter of course – not force – and in this attitude of reasonable tolerance we never failed ‘to
measure up’ to the extent that it was always a source of comfort for other regiments to know that
the New Zealanders were in the vicinity.
Our first job was to repair the blown in trench. The sergeant came along and said ‘follow me you
58
fellows, we’ve got to mend the CT [possibly means communication trench].
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There was no preamble such as ‘each man will grasp a shovel at the point of balance with the L
hand etc.’ The trench was duly repaired but our progress was slow. Every few minutes the work
was suspended to allow groups of men to pass by.
We became pretty adept at filling sandbags. They were about two thirds the size of an ordinary
sugar bag and were quite nugget, enough for one man to hoist into position. They were flattened,
shaped and bonded with a short flat wooden club and the space behind them was filled with loose
earth. An important thing to remember was to unite the new work to the existing portion with as
little contrast as possible. Occasionally bullets whined savagely by from seemingly impossible
directions. They had been deflected in their course and were known as ricochets.
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It was possible to get used to bullets coming near but shells – never. Some of the whizzy-bang
variety burst close enough to make us hug the bank pretty close. They didn’t come whining out of
the sky like the howitzer shells but took the shortest route between two points. They were vicious
and their swift arrival and explosion made them very unwelcome.
The following night we were given a job wiring in No Man’s Land. At the appointed time we were
marshaled in the front line. It was considered to be a very good night for wiring - no moon and a
light breeze blowing from the enemy emplacements. There was no untoward activity from either
side - just a typical ‘all quiet night’. The darkness helped up to a point - it minimized the chance of
being discovered - we couldn’t be seen but on the other hand we couldn’t see ….
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… what we were doing. At a given signal we crept over the parapet. The first sensation was one
of absolute exposure, notwithstanding the enveloping darkness. The second, that of a burglar, the
third that the rest of the party were giving the show away by trundling empty tanks in front of them.
Teddy and I carried a hundred weight coil of wire between us by means of a stick poked through
the center. Every time he went down the wire did likewise – slithered down the stick and jammed
his fingers. I shared this painful experience several times and we cursed in a subdued but very
earnest manner. Progress was mostly up and down. Each forward movement the result of tripping
over stumps, hedge roots, over grown wires, lumps of masonry, and shell holes. A sudden burst
of machinegun fire sent us to earth a good deal quicker …
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… than we tripped and no time was lost in streamlining our bodies to the line of fire. The bullets
swished by at about knee height. Those which hit the iron supports in our scanty entanglements
sparked with the impact and went whining on their way as ricochets. We were half risen when the
same gun suddenly swept back on its previous line of fire. Someone started to groan and muffled
voices from the same vicinity told us that the unfortunate one was receiving attention. We longed
to get back to the friendly shelter of our front line. Our idea of the time we had been out was very
distorted. Every minute seemed an hour. Another spray of bullets sent us into a shell hole partly
filled with water and the coil of wire came tumbling after and buried itself in the muddy bottom.
Other members of the party were faring no …
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… better than we were. Very few arrived at the given spot with the gear or mates they set out with.
No one knew who had been hurt and the whole operation developed into a large jigsaw puzzle,
played in the dark. A few of the apron wire anchors had been screwed into the ground into places
that were quite useless.
We finished our part of the puzzle just as the sergeant came along to enquire if we had a pair of
wire cutters. We hadn’t, we were wirers. “Alright, shake a leg and get it up,” “Yes, but we can’t find
anything to hook it onto.” “Never mind, get it up” was his parting shot as he vanished in search of
the cutters. That gave us the gapes? [assume he means stares?]. Having got that off his chest his
conscience was clean. He could tell the officer that he had given orders to get it up, who in turn
could make his ally good with the Captain and so on to the …
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… Adjutant, Major, Colonel, and Brigadier if necessary. This incident typically qualifies my earlier
remark about the infantry being the chopping block.
We were still stupefied when the sergeant who had scarcely vanished, signaled his return by
imitating a foundry. He had run afoul of two bundles of standards. A German sentry sent up a starshell which transformed the scene into one of great brilliance. That burglar feeling again gripped
us and we were sure the whole German army was taking aim at us. According to orders we
remained perfectly still in whatever attitude we were caught up in. The sergeant looked as if he
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were looking for a lost collar stud. Teddy appeared to be picking flowers while I was braced for a
sprint and waiting for the pistol. We remained …
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… petrified until the rocket sizzled out almost at our feet. It was only a matter of a few seconds
and the ensuing darkness blotted everything out and left us with a vanishing picture of our
bearings.
The anticipated hymn of hate failed to develop. We had not been seen or been mistaken for tree
stumps. The latter presumption was probably correct because nothing had been done that anyone
could notice. Two more shadowy figures emerged. For a moment we had thought it might be a
German patrol that had evaded our listening post. We un-slung our rifles but it turned out to be
two men uncoiling wire. They faded out still paying out the wire while we set to and screwed in the
standards. At last something was done, not much certainly but we were getting into …
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… our stride a little. Proceedings were interspersed by bullets and star-shells and we became
statues or streamlined according to the fashion of the moment. God only knows what we were
supposed to do in the event of two arriving at once. The lecture prior to leaving the trench failed to
enlighten us on this point but the instinct of self preservation would have overwhelmed all others.
We were now ready for the apron wires but the wire somehow didn’t (somehow or other) seem to
be where we put it. Finding parts of the puzzle in the dark was becoming second nature to us
now. We used our feet as if learning to skate. How to cut the wire was our first problem. I got in
touch with the next group to borrow their cutters but their own pair had been lent and not returned.
The pair they were using had been borrowed and they refused point blank to let them out of their
possession. The promise to return them immediately only evoked the retort to ‘hook it’ and try
biting it. We were in a bit of a dilemma. Ordinary barbed or hog wire can be broken by bending it
to and fro but the particular type we were dealing with had a bunch of inch and a half long spikes
about every two inches. Our problem was solved for us. In any case our teeth couldn’t manage
the biscuits let alone wire. About a quarter mile to our left the spasmodic rifle fire suddenly grew to
a sustained volume. Machine guns with their staccato bark joined in. The wiring party downed
tools and disappeared into shell holes. Rifles were un-slung and their safety catches released.
Bullets were winding in all directions. A rocket was fired from the opposite trenches and burst into
a grim spray – fascinating to watch …
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… but very sinister in meaning. It was relayed back to their artillery observers and in less than a
minute their guns were flashing. There was an immediate glut in wire cutters – no reference was
required to borrow them. Shells of all calibre were bursting on our trench system and our own
guns were rapidly joining in. In the general excitement we seemed to have been forgotten. Our
torn hands didn’t matter. We were no longer dejected but galvanized into action. A raid or an
attack might develop. Word to get back to the front line was speedily acted on. We were sharply
challenged by our sentries. They were keyed to a very high pitch and were taking no risks. It was
good to be on the right side of the parapet while the bombardment was raging. We instinctively
herded together for mutual protection – the worst thing we could have done, but humans are like
…
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… sheep when a common danger threatens. We were frequently warned against congregating but
it had about as much effect as a ‘DON’T’ has on a healthy child.
The ‘strafe’ lasted about twenty minutes and then subsided. What a relief! We manned the
parapet for an hour and then thankfully went back to our dugout. The communication trench was
blown-in in places but we were fast acquiring the ability to negotiate all obstacles with less
floundering than hitherto.
The saddest part of these sudden and blasting bombardments was not really uppermost until they
had died down. Then came the evacuation of the wounded, dying and dead, preceded by that
imperious command “make way for the stretcher bearers.” The member of our party who groaned
had been shot through the stomach and went out horizontally with other victims of the
bombardment.
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He died in the dressing station at Houplines [2 km east of Armentieres] of very near to the spot
where we ‘ran the gauntlet’ the night we took over for the first time. As for the wiring, we thought
we had done fairly well but the colonel didn’t see eye to eye with us. The next day he had a look
at it through a periscope – his intention was to look ‘AT’ it but he finished up putting an extra arch
in his back (he was a tall man) and looking ‘FOR’ it. He said ‘Good God’ into the periscope and
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then like the ‘bosun in the admirals yarn’ rounded quick. “Didn’t they go out?” “Yes sir, but!” “Well,
what the!! (unprintable), send the party out again tonight and keep them out “till the job’s done”.
He wasn’t very pleased about it, nor were we. He relented somewhat and did not insist on the job
being done in situ. That day we made large wooden X shaped frames joined together
longitudinally and filled the intervening space with …
Page 141
… a thick and tangled mass of wire. These were duly set in position without mishap. That was the
second to last time I was ever called upon to go wiring in No Man’s Land. Wiring called for a good
measure of initiative and the only compensation attached to it was an extra tot of rum and
reasonable security from a surprise attack – and we slept all the better in the front line, knowing
that there was a good belt of entanglements ten to twenty yards away. Carrying bombs and
ammunition took up the best part of the next three days.
Not very far from a dump which we frequently visited, grew a cherry tree. Its branches above a
point that could be reached from the ground were thickly dotted with ripe fruit. Believe it or not,
that cherry tree could speak. Every time we passed a melodious and timbreury? voice said
“You’re not game”.
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We were game alright – not that we needed the cherries so much as to prove we still young ideas.
We happened to be near that spot one morning at daybreak – carrying the inevitable sand bags. It
was an easy matter to drop behind the party and make our way cherry-wards. Under normal
conditions we should have had guilty consciences but army life had worn them to vanishing point.
Visibility was sufficiently clear to add the spice of danger necessary to make the stunt worthwhile.
The impetus of our approach carried us right among the branches and robbery under arms was
under way. Those cherries were picked quicker than a hungry hen can pick up wheat when
‘swish, swish, swish, swish’ was followed by ‘Crash! crash! We just let go and fell to the ground –
there was no quicker way. Ted spat out some cherry stones and said he was shot in the …
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Page missing! Torn out.
Page 144
…. words such as asteroid stellar, Sirius, Neptune and constellations all had their premiere and
severely strained our mental capacity failing to remember the password and mumbling “I’m Joe”
from the 9th platoon when suddenly challenged and halted by a bayonet uncomfortably close to
the diaphragm simply wasn’t done. Every sentry was a potential spy catcher and followed up the
slenderest clue with the utmost rigor. Later, the component part password was introduced. It
served to identify the halted as well as the halter - a sort of mutual introduction and when it was
teapot it would operate thus – “Halt – who goes there?” The halted party says “tea” and the sentry
says “Pot - pass tea!” Wooden leg, post card, fish chips, and others of that variety were easy to
remember, but asteroid and the rest of the stratosphere type (astronomical) type – unless they
were noted on the palm of the hand with ink …
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… pencil and read in the light of a star-shell and thoroughly committed to memory were extremely
elusive. The night ‘asteroid’ became the key it was only a matter of minutes before one was
asking the other what the password was. One said it was adenoid. Another was sure that it was
elliptical while a man who was engaged filling an empty gun drum said we were all wrong, it was
Mercury. Even the corporal was a bit vague about the matter and ventured the opinion that it was
celluloid or something like that.
The only way to make sure was to sit tight and wait for someone to come along. We found out that
way and after the officer had given his instructions and passed on ‘adenoid’ said that although he
couldn’t quite remember it, all the time he knew dam well it was ‘analyse’. When the corporal told
him he was still wrong …
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... and to go and see that bloke Pelman’ [Pelmanism = proprietry (American) memory system] he
was properly dumbfounded. As I went back to the gun I could hear the corporal saying “Ass’ man,
think of ass, then Troy – Helen of Troy – the wench who rode naked on a horse. You’ve heard
about her haven’t you?” What a relief when the academic passwords were withdrawn from
circulation.
Passwords may have perturbed others besides the PBI [unidentified acronym]. Think of the case
of a peppery and popeyed fury of a major doing the rounds to test the efficiency of his men. When
ordered to halt he had, perforce, to announce that he was merely fish and told to continue his
journey as such. All manner of thoughts entered our minds as we stood, or rather leaned, at our
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posts through the interminable hours of night. We smoked and talked in under-tones, fired a few
rounds, our ears and eyes ever on the alert.
Page 147
The wind, the stars, the mist which might develop into a fog, the rats, the listening post, the next
mail, conjectures as to when we would be relieved, and by whom, the prospect of a raid and leave
to England and the more important question of what might come up in the rations for tomorrow
were all general topics of discussion.
The weather was congenial, the days long and the nights short – in fact our instincts warned us
that Christmas must be pretty near or else it had gone by unnoticed. According to our ideas the
month should have been December instead of June. Our sleeping comrades could be called to
the parapet at a moment’s notice and one the time the screen over the door was pulled aside with
a “Hey, get out quick, look slippy, there’s something doing.” These rude and alarming awakenings
ranked high …
Page 148
… in the list of war horrors. Other and equally unpleasant events occurred, but these sudden
awakenings with consciousness returning and the realization that one was in great personal
danger and in the front line to book, caused shocks which endured and recurred long after the war
ended. The listening posts mentioned in the wiring episode were a source of great comfort to
those in the front line. They were manned for two to four hours according to the weather. Two
hours was quite enough to lie perfectly still in the rain listening for any suspicious noise. The
listeners signaled to those in the trench by means of a wire, one end of which was attached to a
tin or any other device that would register the pre-arranged signals. They were armed with bombs
in addition to rifles. Their presence ‘out in front’ …
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… was indeed comforting. They were watch dogs in the truest sense and allowed us to slacken
our vigilance to some degree.
The number of rounds we fired each night was usually left to our discretion. Every now and then,
or, when one felt inclined we would open fire on the enemy lines hoping that he might be out
wiring as we had been. Immediately after such a burst, Fritz, seeing the red flame belching from
our gun, would retaliate but we were always below the danger line when his bullets went swishing
past. After a lapse of a few seconds we would regain command of the situation and would send a
burst of traverse fire at an enemy gun in action on our right or left sector. At times the enemy,
evidently to show that he was in a friendly mood, would manipulate his gun in such a manner that
only sufficient bullets were fired to sound like ‘Om, tiddely, om, pom, pom, pom, pom, pom. We
practiced this …
Page 150
… but it took much practice and an extremely light touch to produce the last two pom- poms, or
singletons. The ability to get away a single shot from a machine gun proclaimed that the gunner
had a most sensitive trigger finger. These exchanges may have been a desire to infer that we
were all the victims of circumstances and had something in common or perhaps merely to show
off, as it were, our efficiency as gunners. For our part we preferred it to be termed playfulness certainly a queer sort of pastime to be called playfulness but it caused a diversion and side
tracked our thoughts.
Another form of light entertainment often indulged in was to fix a piece of cheese to our bayonets
and when Mr rat came along to nibble to pull the trigger. Many of these rodents had their quivering
noses shocked in this manner. It was at this stage of our journey that the battalion suffered a
casualty of a rather unusual nature.
Before leaving New Zealand some kind donor had presented us with a particularly handsome
bulldog. Handsome, when associated with a dog of this type has rather an ambiguous meaning
and it can well be imagined that ‘Caesar’ in his full dress uniform, to wit, a massive brass studded
collar was a forbidding and savage looking creature. His looks, however, belied him, for at heart
he was friendly and a general favourite with all hands. Caesar, in an unguarded moment, decided
to have a look at the surrounding country from the parapet, and a well-aimed bullet brought him to
an untimely end. We were all pretty indignant over the matter but the enemy had to be conceded
his right to shoot on sight anything of the bulldog breed. Is it not possible that …
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… the sniper responsible for his demise, reported that he had shot an officer of high rank, judging
by his brass hat and ‘John Bull’ appearance? This was merely conjecture in the same vein as the
report reputed to have been delivered to the German High Command by one of their listening
posts , the remark being presented as - “We gave ‘M WOT 4 NOT, NOT ½” [we gave him what-
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for, not half]
An accompanying cartoon depicted their intelligence staff trying to unravel the formula of this new
explosive. Minenwerfers and pineapples shaped bombs were the two most dreaded of all mortar
bombs. Even the best of our dugouts were no protection against these penetrating horrors. Their
impact shook …
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… the ground in a sickening manner and a second later a terrific and ear-blasting explosion would
send us diving under cover for protection from the great masses of falling earth. The click of the
“minnie’ gun set us all gazing skywards with fear stricken eyes to find out which way to run. These
missiles were large enough to be seen coming across and this hideous fact increased our anxiety
a hundred fold. To see death hurtling through the air and knowing that you had three seconds to
decide which way to run was quite the reverse from marking a football. There was no forwards or
backwards – only sideways – so up and down we went – nerves strained almost to the point
where they collapse and leave the afflicted one a raving lunatic. These periods of frightfulness can
never be imagined by any except the soldiers who suffered from them. The written word can
never convey the …
[This is where the exercise book ends]
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