2352 SAPPER FRANK H.W. HOLMES

2nd/1st (West Riding) Divisional Signal Company Royal Engineers
Later 482323 62nd Division Signal Co.

Notes Compiled July 1976

PAGE THREE

Havrincourt fizzled out, trench war came back, with rain and the eternal mud. Occasionally we saw a plane battle, and now and then an observation balloon was shot down – the observer generally escaping by parachute. I once saw three of our balloons burn in not much more than as many minutes.

Troops in the line had to put up with not only mud and general discomfort as well as shells and shrapnel but also snipers. One of my family’s friends (a little younger than I so I never knew him as well as the others did) has told us how he used to go out before dawn with a day’s rations, climb a tree, and spend the day there doing the best he could against such targets as he could spot on the other side. ‘The other side’ of course, were doing the same.

Early in 1918 some of us came home on leave, two DRs at a time, but when the turn came up for Ernest Crump and me it was suddenly decided that only one of us might go. Crump won the toss and duly went and returned. It was then my turn, but Pontefract had just been shown in orders to be out of bounds because of measles in the town, so I had to miss my turn.

We were then at Roclincourt, a village a mile or two north of Arras, with the road thence to lens near us but on ground a little higher than where we were. There was a biggish theatre of black corrugated iron backing on to the main road above, the roof level being slightly higher than the road. We enjoyed a show or two there, but the Germans one day developed a hate on the place and the corrugated iron flew briskly in all directions.

At last, a day or so later, I got my pass and set out to walk over the main road to the railhead three or four miles away. I lost no time over this, for the hate had already spread to our camp in farm ruins at Roclincourt, which I had left no more than a few minutes earlier.

I could not know it at the time but Pontefract’s measles were a blessing to me, for on 21 March came the great German offensive which drove our whole front back and sent us nearly to the sea – and I was at home to read about it in the papers!

On my return from leave I found myself in a rest camp at Boulogne with thousands of others, leave men like me, men discharged early from hospitals, others released before their time from the ‘glasshouse’, men from probably every unit in the Army. The huts were already filled, and so were the supplementary bell tents. In fact, the tent to which I was allotted held so many men that I woke one morning to find I had lost the tail of my shirt because I had turned over whilst the man next to me had it under him.

We had some occasional entertainment when boisterous young airmen swooped over the dining hut and flew its length with a landing wheel running on each side of the roof ridge. No retractable under-carriages in those days.

Eventually my unit was located and I was sent on my way to them. When I reached them I found they had had a very busy time. We had lost Marshall, sent home with shell-shock (from which I am glad to say he recovered) At one of our post-war reunions by the way, he told us with glee how during the 1926 General Strike he had been entrusted with the driving of a passenger train "because I knew a little about steam." He became manager of Bawtry gasworks, set up his two sons in a haulage business and died two or three years ago.

Some of our fellows recounted with mixed feelings how they had been invited to help themselves to as much as they could carry from a Y.M.C.A. canteen before it was set on fire to prevent it from falling into German hands. Mostly, however, they told tales of up-and-away time after time. By the time I reached them a new line had been established, putting the Germans to make the best they could of the areas they had themselves devastated and had been fought over and still further devastated and now formed their back area, whilst we were in country comparatively undamaged where we had spent some months during mid-1917.

After rejoining the Division one of my morning runs I well remember. The direct route to my destination – a unit at one end of the straggling village of Fonquevillers – was a simple run over ground I knew well. On this occasion a field battery on my left was being made the subject of a morning hate by the Huns and the shells which burst near the guns were near enough for me to see the instant dull glow and black surround which once seen is not likely to be forgotten. Things seemed to get worse as I approached so I turned about, retraced my track to the next fork in the village and my destination area reasonably quiet, completed my business, and returned to breakfast without further incident. What happened to the battery I had seen in trouble I never learned.

There was a somewhat similar incident much later, when we were beginning what became our final advance. My route was through a village where I found that the bridge across the stream which split the village had been blown up. I discovered however, that from a nearby farmyard a plank had been thrown across the little rivulet to which the stream had at that time shrunk, and this I crossed – to mild cheers from the onlookers.

A day or so later I had the same run to make, but a somewhat officious traffic man stopped me at a village a mile or two back, told me that the bridge in the village ahead was down and I should have to go by a road a few miles to one side. I told him I did not believe him and asked to see his orders. No sooner had he stepped into his billet to fetch them than I was on my way at high speed towards the informal plank bridge. I made my return by an alternative route – and I laughed to myself as I pictured the traffic controller waiting in vain for me to return, baulked by the broken bridge, so that he could stop me and report me for breach of orders.

When the Division headquarters was at Henu it was found that a series of tunnels extended from the cellars of the chateau and it was decided to extend them and construct an emergency exit in a field. Here a windlass was set up and a hole sunk – but missed the tunnels by some feet.

Outside this chateau we DRs lay asleep in a tent when we woke to hear a plane overhead and then a bomb or two whistling down. Next morning we found that they had fallen in our horse-lines in a little wood a few score yards away. In this wood two men had dug themselves a shallow shelter and had lined the two long sides with corrugated iron with a little earth banked against it. The, for comfort, they added a couple of wire beds the legs of which brought their bodies just up to ground level. One of the bombs carried their corrugated iron into the tree tops but the only casualty was that one of them had a few scratches.

During 1918, as the Americans joined us – and what a burden some of them, surprisingly, seemed to find the French summer heat and the war began to swing in our favour, the 62 Division was one of four of ours which were sent to spend their turn of ‘rest’ from trench service south with the French, ready to make an opportunity if it arose, of joining in a heavy attack.

Early on the morning of 14 July 1918 we entrained at Doullens – and had our departure delayed considerably when a big fat Canadian- made locomotive came off thelines. Our train had the normal composition of a military train – three or four ordinary coaches for officers and some men, a dozen of more of the common four-wheeled box-cars (marked ‘Hommes 40, Chevaux (en long) 8"); then maybe ten or a dozen open flat wagons for cars and lorries, more box-cars, and a coach or two, but our train was a double one, with all that lot duplicated.

For this expedition, two DRs were allotted to the Divisional Field Artillery (310, 311 and 312 Brigades, each formerly of four batteries of four 18-pounders each but now of four six-gun batteries) With me, the other DR was Alf Squires, rather older than I, from Barnsley – a very steady, trustworthy fellow with whom I got on very well.

Many of these French box-cars had a little one-man cabin over the buffers high enough to permit a brakesman (their normal occupant) a view along the train roofs. Alf and I, though we knew nothing about operating the brakes and had no instructions either to use them or to leave them alone, set ourselves up where two consecutive wagons had their little cabins facing each other and made ourselves as comfortable as we could and looked forward to enjoying the ride and the scenery on both sides.

We had no idea where we were going nor of how long it would take, but the day wore on and we found ourselves in an enormous range of sidings in Paris. Why we stopped I don’t know but we were there long enough to hear the bursting of a shell fired from the famous Big Bertha which the Germans installed something like 30 miles away.

At one stage in our journey we made a long descent through a tunnel, and it was fortunate that at the end of it our engine was stopped for water, for whilst in the tunnel one of the horses fell down, brought down others, and endangered the man in charge of the animals in that particular wagon. During the stop these horses were all brought out, walked about a bit and pacified before they were returned to their wagon and the journey resumed.

The weather was very hot and when night came on Alf and I realising we could not very well sleep in our three-sided perches, took advantage of a stop to move to one of the open wagons, and spent that night lying between the edge of the wagon and the wheels of the General’s Daimler. And I do not think I have ever taken as much grit from my eyes as I did the next morning.

It was during this move that we had our most serious casualty. Our men who were still with the Signal Co. for service at Divisional HQ made the journey in a train of similar composition to that in which Alf and I had travelled. They were six or eight in number and had their bikes with them in one of the ordinary commonplace box-wagons. During the night one of them was seen standing at the open door in the side of the wagon but nobody thought anything of that. In the morning, however, one man, Fred Ward, a mining surveyor from Horbury, was missing.

It was several days later that we heard from his family he had dreamed he had been ordered to oil the brakes of the wagon and in his sleep had attempted to do so but he fell out on to the line and was run over so that he lost one foot and part of the other.

This happened in sparsely populated country, but unfortunately it was near a signal box, from which he was seen when morning came. He was taken to a French hospital, duly sent home, and eventually recovered sufficiently to be able to follow his occupation after the war and could even drive his car. He made a joke of the way in which he could use drawing pins as sock suspenders.

My lot de-trained at Chalons-sur-Marne, where I was sent ahead to warn the Town Major (at Mailly le Camp, I think it was) to prepare billets for men and horses. I was probably chosen for this because by this time I had learned some French, though when I arrived in France I didn’t know enough to be able to buy a bar of chocolate and couldn’t tell a boulangerie from a brasserie without going inside.

From the villagers I learned that the official I sought was "A la Peche", so to find him I had to wander along the river bank where he quickly packed up his rod and line and came back to duty. The river pool where I washed my hands and face seemed to change colour a little as I did so but it was much more muddy when the men and horses arrived and cleaned up after their journey and the clouds of thick dust through which they had marched for the last few miles.

We were now in unspoilt civilian France, though from the next place where we dropped anchor, on high ground, we could see Rheims which was then under fire, and also Epernay, the wine town. The Germans might have known we had arrived for one night we saw a big ammunition dump and store burned and blown up near Epernay. Another night they found an ammunition train in a siding in a wood, and that went up too. My billet in this big village was in the cellar of a house on such a slope that I could (and did) ride my bike from the lane at the side straight through a yard and into the cellar – which, by the way, was the only cellar I have ever known which had a little stream running steadily through it.

In another place, where the Artillery HQ was in a chateau, Alf and I shared a very commodious brick built dog kennel. At this period we took the runs alternately, first one of us and then the other. One night I went out with instructions to find a certain French General and put my despatch into his own hand.

I found him alright – in a cottage crammed with sleeping French soldiers, plus a guard at the cottage door and others at his bedroom door. M. le General was in bed but sat up and received me with great courtesy, which I returned as best I could despite his unexpected appearance as he sat up with a conical tasselled night-cap on his head.

It was on a daytime run in this French area that a guard turned out to greet me. We DRs usually wore a poncho over our ordinary uniform which included leggings or sometimes field boots (up to the knee), topped by the universal head-gear of tin hat (or steel helmet if you want to be formal). Thus our rank was not immediately obvious.

My despatch this time was for the Commandant of a French Colonial unit in a village where it was very unlikely that an English soldier had ever been seen and probably very few motor cycles of any kind. I duly found the unit and approached the sentry to ask to be directed to his office. I think these men were Annamites, and the sentry seemed to find the situation a bit too much for him, so he called his superior, who turned out the guard, and all promptly lined up and presented arms. This, of course, was putting me far above my station, but as I felt it would have been churlish not to make appropriate acknowledgement I gravely saluted, went inside, and left with another salute on my departure which I returned with unbroken gravity.

I hope these men were not disillusioned. On the other hand, we had a forward run to Rettemoy Farm which was sometimes rather exciting. The farm drive, a straight level approach, had a line of French 75s backed onto it with its ammunition stores on the other side of the drive. Apart from the racket these things made our trouble was that the gunners did not seem to know or care where their empty shell-cases fell when they threw them towards their mates at the other side of the drive. We had to watch what was going on and then dash past as each gun was being loaded.

It was during this spell in the French zone that I came across a Scottish piper in the most moving circumstances I have ever encountered. It was at the cemetery in the midst of a quiet village of trees and flowers, peaceful and untouched by war, and the solitary piper, in full dress, was playing a lament as a prelude to the internment of a Scottish C.O., greatly esteemed by his men, who had been killed a day or so earlier.

The Scots, by the way, made a great thing of their pipers and at one time even half a dozen men going to the bath house would have a piper to lead them.

As our stay with the French drew to a close Alf and I were called together by our officer, who said he had a French medal for one of us. As the luck of the draw had given me chiefly rearward runs and Alf had had most of the forward ones we had no difficulty in deciding that Alf should have the medal (though I forget quite what the medal was.)

Before we leave this area I should mention that I was one of many who enjoyed some excellent swimming in the Marne and a nearby canal – though the midges were terribly hungry. Some women who had been washing clothes on the bank of the river complained of our intrusion for none of us wore any costume, of course.

On July 31 the 62nd and the other three divisions returned to the British area. This time I was one of several people who crowded into the last vehicle in the train, an English guard’s van with a floor of cast iron slabs to weight it and give its brakes a better effect.

It may have been the local water, or perhaps some food, but my digestion had become very much upset, so much so that my plight eventually became apparent to the French railwaymen in charge of the van. Without a word he led me to a door at one end giving me access to a narrow platform next to the last wagon in the train. There he directed my attention to the casing of the buffers and I took his meaning at once – and with thankfulness, maintaining a continuous firm grip on a convenient handrail, I put a foot on one buffer of each wagon, made appropriate dispositions, and gratefully allowed nature to take its course.

Our return journey took us again through Paris, this time at night, and fortunately the train stopped long enough en route to permit me to give adequate attention to my digestive affairs, this time with both feet on the ground and one hand gripping the step back to the van.

The 62 Division was now back in its old familiar area, but a little further east than formerly. The ground lost in the March retreat had been largely recovered and the troops were now much thinner on the ground, for the war had become less static and everyone began to feel that it might really end some day.

From August 23 to September 8 our 310 and 312 Artillery Brigades were lent to the 38th (Welsh) Division and I went with them. By this time I had ‘won’ (men of the 1939 war would have said ‘liberated’) a wonderful collection of equipment. The official items included a Colt .45 revolver and a packet of ammunition never even opened (as far as I can remember) in leather holster with leather belt, the usual gas-mask (the haversack type, which had long displaced the clammy flannel bag first used), a standard flannel-covered enamel water bottle, a haversack with mess tin in which I kept one day ahead with some bread and bacon, knife, fork, spoon and mug, housewife and washing tackle. I succeeded in retaining from its day of issue well into civilian life my British Warm (which civilians would call an overcoat); and this and four blankets I carried in a bundle wrapped in a macintosh groundsheet tied on the bike carrier.

In addition to all this I had an infantryman’s valise with spare under-clothing, socks and the like, with letters and writing materials. The last named included besides the field postcards (bearing phrases to be crossed out where not applicable which were readily available, a few ‘green envelopes’. These were not green at all but had green stripes printed on them and a certificate which the sender could sign to indicate that he had included no forbidden material in his letter, which was liable to be selected for censorship only at the base, in contrast with ordinary letters which had to be censored by an officer of a mans unit. I remember finding some of these envelopes scattered round what was obviously the kit of a dead or perhaps wounded man, and I had others given me by a wounded man on his way to hospital, on whose behalf I dropped a line to his relatives.

In a second haversack I had a German acetylene lamp (as they used in dug-outs), and a Primus type stove, which I made myself from 18-pounder shell-case material, a couple of rifle oil-bottles, a motor cycle spoke and a bearing ball, a bit of wire gauze, and the conical protector of an 18-pounder shell. Strange to say, it actually worked – and what’s more, I managed to bring it home but it was stolen from the garage in which I had it.

Towards the end I even added my own tent. It was open at one end when I acquired it, having been intended to be placed with one like it, the pair then covering about twelve feet by four. The German groundsheet was of plain cotton, and from one of them I made an extension covering a space in front of my open end, so that two of us could easily sleep in it with our equipment stowed in the extension. This went on top of my blankets on the carrier (which I had strengthened) and its two four-foot poles I managed to tie to the side of my bike. A canvas water bucket hung from my handlebars.

Pigeon carrying was no longer called for, so I could carry my despatches in another infantryman’s valise slung on top of my personal one. I collected a map or two wherever we went, only the one in use being in my official map-case slung over my shoulder.

It was in these months of 1918 that I encountered some unforgettable sights. There was one wide expanse of torn-up earth which had been muddified into liquid and was now dried hard in the hot sun, sloping gently up in front of me and on both sides with not a shred of cover anywhere with a number of our men lying here and there just as they had fallen, their bodies now decomposing – with a smell never to be forgotten (but not as foul as that of a decaying horse). At the top of the rise was the other side of the picture; a dug-out with earth on a propped up corrugated cover and trenches round it, a machine gun overturned and a ring of grey uniformed corpses decaying like the others I had passed below.

Another sad sight I recall was that of a group of cavalrymen and their mounts scattered in a place where there had been an attempt to make a quick break through. It was another example of the miserable failure of some of those at the top who persisted in persuing systems which were already being proved useless in the Boer War some twenty years earlier.

No-one had time for funerals at that stage, except the Graves Registration Officer and his men, whose work went on steadily but as unobtrusively as possible.

The old trenches in these parts had been battered flat and when new ones were dug in 1918 autumn bones were turned up in all directions and none could tell from which side they had come.

On one of these occasions in a wide open area I came across the equipment left by some poor soul who had left the scene (though whether alive or dead I had no means of knowing), and amongst it I noticed a Webley revolver of Army issue type. This I felt might be useful if any of our party lost his own weapon so I salvaged it and handed it to our sergeant for safe keeping. It was ironic that when I had my wonderful collection of equipment stolen on the march through Belgium just after the Armistice I was ordered to pay for my missing Colt and in the meantime our sergeant had been demobilised (one of the early ones) and had taken with him the weapon I had salvaged. Fortunately for me a Staff Officer whose messages I had so often carried was himself preparing for demobilisation and gave me his revolver which was, I understood, his own property.

On September 8 we rejoined the 62 Division and I found my pal Alf (with many others) in a little wood a mile or tow from the nearest village. I arrived in the evening, in rain, and was thankful to squeeze in with Alf in a trench so small that we had to lie back to back with our noses rubbing the earth before us. Next morning we collected some German arched corrugated iron, some of their cotton groundsheets, borrowed a spade, raided by night an ammunition dump nearby for empty ammunition boxes, and within a day or two had a big enough shelter with a wooden floor and sides, a weatherproof roof, and a tiny table and two stools. Naturally, as soon as we had ourselves comfortable, we had to move on!

Our little shelter served us well, but it was absolutely insignificant by comparison with a German dugout I saw later set in a devastation of battlefield mud and wreckage. It was quite big – probably ten or twelve feet square, lined with beautiful oak panelling and complete with choice French furniture.

This brings to mind an occasion in mid-1917 when we had run to a Brigade headquarters in a well made dug-out with neat telephone lines running from it in different directions in tidy straight lines on posts of even height planted at regular intervals with uniform cross pieces set squarely upon them. But when we went there one morning we found that in the night the place had been blown to bits, with several casualties. Thereafter telephone lines were either buried or run in ragged short lines with no recognisable common terminal.

This reversion to 1917 brings back to me an incident in which I gathered some merit I did not deserve. We had run to a signal office in a bell tent on the side of a hill facing away from a village where a crossroads café was being used as an officer’s mess. I arrived there one evening to find that the traffic man had just been taken away and the café had had a direct hit and broken glass and bits of house lay all over the road. I felt I had better get on my way with the least possible delay, but I found the signal office tent empty – and I thought I detected some trace of shame-facedness as the crew made their way towards me from the ditch at the bottom of the slope.

We DRs could not easily tell the direction and distance of the bangs we heard, for the sound of our machines impaired recognition. One night I turned a corner and found a score or two of men clambering out of a roadside ditch when I heard nothing to alarm me. They seemed slightly surprised to see me.

It was back in summer 1917 that I first made personal acquaintance with those tiny beings to whom practically everybody sooner or later became host. The occasion quite shocked me, but like everybody else, I had to cope. The little grey ones, slow moving, were disposed of easily; but the brown ones jumped far away unless caught instantly, rubbed between finger and thumb to break their legs, after which they could be cracked without difficulty.

By the autumn of 1918 it had become obvious that the Germans were in trouble, but it wasn’t over yet, and I had one or two somewhat exciting runs not long before the Armistice. The Foret de Mormal was a big place, five or six miles each way with a number of roads through it and a straight line North South road on its east. Across this lay an East West road, but making a misaligned crossing. Both these roads were crammed with traffic, and as we knew they were badly broken up I set out by horse one evening to go to a unit on the East. It was a curious rule that a motor-cyclist transferring to a horse had to be accompanied by a regular horseman – though why either of us could not have done the run alone was never made clear to us. However, on this occasion there was a queue on three sides of this lop-sided crossroads and a field battery in the North-East angle of this junction was receiving some enemy attention. I found it not at all soothing to sit high on a horse in the dusk waiting for the queue to move; and again, as my companion and I swung right and then left on to the less busy road on the east I noticed once again the dull red instant glow in a little black cloud on the ground as shells fell near our battery. I don’t remember the return journey but I do recall that on the roadside was a driver taking the saddlery from his dead horse to salvage it according to his orders.

I think it may have been a distorted account of this little incident which formed the basis of the citation which announced the award to me of the Military Medal – an homour which any front line infantryman deserved a thousand times more than I did.

At last came the Armistice, 11am on 11 November 1918 – one day after what I felt was one of the saddest sights in my memory; half a dozen young bodies laid out side by side, on a grassy bank above a quiet road a few yards outside an undamaged village with an undisturbed civilian population – and it was little compensation to my feelings to observe that there were similarly still grey-clad figures on the other side of the road.

A scene of an entirely different character was of a rainy dull November afternoon and a long column of guns, wagons, horses, men, marching steadily across a village square on their way east followed by a farmers high wheeled trap drawn by a light horse driven by a sober faced khaki clad figure wearing a top hat and carrying an open umbrella.

There was rather sad satisfaction in seeing lorries load up with displaced villagers being taken ‘home’, though I doubt whether at that stage they knew whether their homes still existed. About this time motor-cycling was somewhat exciting for their was rain on the ice from earlier rain which covered the roads.

We had some quiet smiles at one chateau at which we stayed on our way to Germany, for we found that every door handle and every gas tap had been fashioned after a portion of the make human anatomy usually covered by at least a fig leaf.

Sights which gave everybody real satisfaction were the groups of German guns we now came across, surrendered in accordance with the terms of the Armistice – but not quite, for although it was a condition that guns should be handed over in working order all the surrendered guns I saw had their muzzles burst open like some monstrous flower. And there were miles of railway where alternate rail joints had been blasted so that every single rail had to be taken out and replaced. So we progressed steadily towards Germany, through Eupen and Malmedy, and the Ardennes – with a pause to let the Guards Division go by and be first to enter Germany. At Dinant we found a road roller with the familiar Flying Horse trademark on its front, presumably captured in March 1918 but eight months later tidily sheeted and parked on the roadside ready for its old owner.

The sanitary arrangements at Malmedy seemed a bit odd. A little river flowed through the village over a stony bed in a deep declivity with houses perched on its banks. It was not clear where the village water supply came from but it was obvious where much of it went, for from each house projected on beams a little cabin which appeared to be only part floored. Whatever its drawbacks, it was a system which could never freeze even though perhaps its users did!

I had to leave from Germany, making the journey to the port in a German train, and I shall never forget how our very cheerful almost riotous passengers quietened to a thoughtful silence as we approached and then crossed in steady comfort the stricken country which had seen such dreadful activity only a few months earlier.

And there was a similar change of attitude as our train passed by the almost endless lines of graves in the war cemetery at Etaples where there had been a base hospital. I made the return journey from this leave in an English hospital train, with real bunks and great comfort.

My six months in Germany passed very pleasantly, and on demobilisation in June 1919 I made the journey from Cologne to Rotterdam down the Rhine in a German pleasure steamer, with a break for one night in a Rhine barge (a 2,000 tonner) moored in the middle of the mile wide river at Emmerich on the Dutch border. From Rotterdam we had a 1600 tonner (with interior walls covered with the pencilled graffiti of German prisoners) to Harwich, with lines of surrendered German submarines to greet us; then rail to Richmond, on to Catterick, and back home at last. I had four years and sixty days in uniform, of which two years and 152 days had been in France, Belgium or Germany.

Frank H.W. Holmes
Notes compiled July 1976

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Further reading from Frank Holmes:

Recollections of Pontefract Part One
Recollections of Pontefract Part Two
Recollections of Pontefract Part Three
One Man in His Time - A Short Autobiography