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 ONE
These
reminiscences constitute chiefly a record of quite incredible good luck,
I never deliberately dodged anything but just did as I was told; yet –
I never fired a shot towards the other side; I was never (as far as I
knew) a selected individual target of the enemy; I saw only once the
inside of a hospital (and that was when I visited one of our group who
had flu).
When
I myself caught ‘flu during the epidemic in 1918 my unit was in rest
and others of our party took my duties until I was well again; I doubt
whether I spent as many as half-a-dozen nights completely in the open; I
never did guard duty, nor a fire piquet, nor spent a night looking after
the horses; and it is probable that all the spuds I ever peeled would
hardly fill one bucket. Though I was often cold and wet I was rarely
uncomfortable hungry or thirsty, although at one period my macintosh
poncho was wet for so long without any break that it just rotted.. I
never had any serious spill on my motorbike and nobody ever ‘won’ it
when I had to leave it on the road side (or road end) and continue on
foot. I had great good fortune to have as my companions – in a small
group which underwent little change during the whole of my time –
friendly young men whose education, intelligence and social background
at least equalled my own and in several cases much exceeded it. Although
a participant in the war I was one of the half-dozen or more required in
the background to support each bayonet in front, and I had more than the
average soldiers opportunity to observe what went on outside his own
immediate locality.
Nevertheless,
as my story will show, I had my ups and downs, but I shall never cease
to sympathise with the infantry and the gunners and to admire and wonder
at the incredible bravery of those whose lot it was to leave the shelter
(such as it was) of a trench and face the near certain chance of death
or injury in No Mans Land whether in a little raid at night or in a mass
attack by day.
It
was on 4th August 1914 that Britain took up the challenge of
the German Kaiser and his gang and evoked from Sir Edward Grey the
historic comment "The lights are going out all over Europe and we
shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." How right he was.
Very
soon Pontefract, like other Garrison towns, was thronged with men –
not all of them yet in khaki, flooding the Town Hall, the Assembly Room,
some of the schools, the pubs, as well as, of course, the Barracks and
many tents on its sports fields as reservists and recruits flocked to
the colours.
And
in the middle of one early August night, from the wide-open window of my
bedroom high above Gillygate, I woke to hear long lines of heavily laden
and hard booted King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and men of the
York and Lancaster Regiment marching through the town to Baghill Station
lustily singing "Tipperary" – a song with a future which
no-one at that time had forseen. They were on the first stage of a
journey which led them straight to Mons – and for many of them ended
there
Soon
the reports of local men becoming casualties began to come in, the calls
for more men for the Army became more insistent, and fingers were
pointed with increasing directness at young men not in uniform. I was a
big lad for my 17 years and attracted a full share of these fingers –
and I did not like it.
Notwithstanding
the calls (by many who ought to have known better) that it would be
"All over by Christmas" and realising that according to
writers in the motor-cycling journals my motor cycling experience might
be useful in the Army, I made enquiries.
Thus
it came about that I presented myself at the Claypit Lane, Leeds,
barracks of the 1st West Riding Divisional Royal Engineers.
In unsullied youthful honesty I stated my true age and home I came, for
19 was then the lower limit for enlistment.
By
April 1915 the pointing fingers were too much for me and with nothing in
my appearance to suggest that it was my 18th and not my 19th
birthday which lay five weeks behind me, I found my way to Edenthorpe
Hall, near Doncaster, where Lieut. A.B. Glover, R.E., approved me for
enlistment as a motor-cycle despatch-rider. He directed me to the
Glossop Road, Sheffield, depot of the 2nd Line of the West
Riding Division R.E., whose 1st Line had turned me down at
Leeds.
This
1st Line was re-numbered 49th and had gone to
France on 13th April 1915 – the day before I enlisted at
Sheffield. On the other hand, my lot, re-numbered 62nd,
wandered round England for nearly a couple of years and when they went
out did not see Belgium until the Armistice, though the Division in due
course had troubles enough.
On
enlistment we DRs were paid 14s (70p) a week, I think it was, and in
addition we had another 14s as a billeting allowance, for we were still
in private houses at that time.
For
about five weeks we trained in Sheffield, marching daily to a place
called ‘The Tip’, a big quarry which had been partly filled and
levelled and served well enough for he teaching of simple drill
activities. But what an atmosphere! We used to make our bras buttons and
badges shine before we paraded (at 9, I think it was) at the Barracks,
but by mid-day they were a repulsive green.
Summer
soon came and off we were packed to Thoresby Park. There, having made
the journey on the private bike of one of our officers, I arrived before
the advance party of which I was theoretically a member, and I spent my
first night in a big Y.M.C.A. marquee, which soon became a canteen for
the several battalions which in a few days more were under canvas in the
park.
We
motor-cyclists number fourteen, plus a sergeant in charge of us and an
artificer to repair our machines, and these two took out messages only
in times of stress or shortage. In those days motor-cycling was young
and somewhat exclusive and it could have been in recognition of this,
plus the fact that none of the N.C.O.s were permitted to address an
officer – which soon became a commonplace feature of our routine –
which now brought us the two stripes which had been promised to us
before we enlisted. Our pay as corporals rose to a guineas a week, but
our billeting allowance ceased, of course.
About
this time our first motor-cycles arrived. They were Douglases, 350cc.
flat twin with outside flywheel, a simple two-speed gearbox, no clutch,
chain to gearbox, and belt to back wheel. Acetylene headlight. Most of
us had been well nourished and were not featherweights, but the roads
were good and we got along very well. I suppose there must have been
some rain, but I remember chiefly only sunshine and pleasant country
runs to our three infantry brigades 185, 186 and 187 and a few other
units. Until we became used to it, it was a little disconcerting, on
returning to camp during the night, to be stopped three or four times by
young sentries with bayonets fixed – sentries who generally did not
know what to do next when we had stopped and answered
"Friend." Incidentally, one of my wife’s distant relatives
was killed by a fidgety sentry somewhere in Scotland.
Presently,
two of us were sent to each of the infantry brigades and other units and
some to Divisional Headquarters at Edwinstowe Hall. At this place the
signal office was in the laundry, which also served as a quartermaster’s
store, and I have never slept more comfortably than I did there on a
pile of blankets a foot thick on a wooden table, awaiting distribution.
It
was there that I saw something of the skill of some ex Post Office
telegraphists. One in particular, would hear a call from one of the
morse instruments, and without breaking off his conversation would tap
out ‘g’, the signal for the message offered to be sent, continue his
conversation, send ‘RD’ indicating message received, and not until
his visitor had left would he write out the message. Was it mere
coincidence that most of these men were quite grey-haired though only
about thirty years old?
It
was at Edwinstowe Hall, later, whilst billeted in a private house, that
I for the first time suffered the indignity of sleeping in the same room
as a man so drunk as to be sick in the night. He was such a witty
fellow, though, that I could forgive him. Not much later he had a spill,
damaged an ankle, and was discharged. He lived in Leeds and died young.
We
lost another man too through an accident. He was Dick Crump, one of the
sons of the secretary of Brice Butler and Lee, wine merchants, Salter
Row (subsequently Muscrofts). He had a spill from his bike in Nottingham
and for the rest of his life had one leg shorter than the other. His
younger brother Ernest was one of our lot for all my time. The two
Crumps and two Groocock brothers, sons of the Vicar of Dronfield, after
the war set up the Pelican Engineering Co. in Dewsbury. The Groococks
dropped out, the Pelican moved to Sheffield and then to Leeds, and both
Crumps have since died. Ernest, the last, leaving £30,000 or so. A
pelican silhouette – head well up and one foot raised – had been 62nd
Div. Sign, very distinctive by comparison with the signs of some of the
other divisions.
The
autumn of 1915 saw the division moving into schools and such places in
Gainsborough, Newark, Southwell and district, with Division Headquarters
at Retford House – where the first arrivals (of which I happened to be
one) gathered most of a wonderful crop of walnuts from a fine old tree
in the garden. At this place (which was uninhabited when we took over)
we DRs had the use of the servants hall and it was my privilege (with
others) to sleep in a servant’s bedroom which had concrete floor –
and we had only the minimum of blankets.
Shortly,
however, we were required to change quarters with the Northumbrian
Division in Newcastle, where the men had been so close to their homes
that discipline had been difficult. To save transport each side had to
take over the equipment of the other, but whereas the Northumbrian
Signals Officer who came to us checked every nut, bolt and screwdriver,
our emissary signed for everything unseen and hopped off to the theatre.
Consequently we had to leave our light but well-maintained Douglases and
take over some 500cc Triumphs which, although more powerful than the
Douglases and had a three-speed gear and a hand-operated clutch, had
been almost battered to death and had no spares worth counting.
The
bike allotted to me, for instance, simply would not run straight ‘hands
off’ unless I leaned far over to one side. When I could put up with it
no longer and dismantled it I found that a part had been distorted
(probably in a bump) and when this had been replaced the machine gave no
trouble in this respect. By the way, I don’t think any of us ever came
within miles of the trick-cycling skill of the present-day Signals
motor-cyclists.
Incidentally,
in our early days in Newcastle it was ordained that we should use the
excellent tram system, but it was soon realised that this was not much
good as training for the work in the field for which we should be
required.
Near
the end of 1915 we were moved to Larkhill Camp, Salisbury Plain (which I
think we were almost the first to occupy). We entrained in Newcastle
cattle market early one morning and although before we left I had
learned from the driver of our train that we should pass through
Pontefract, it was not until we reached York that I was able to despatch
a telegram home to say so. Not surprisingly, it arrived too late to
bring anyone to the station – and if it had done it would have made
little difference for we sailed slowly but without pause straight
through Baghill Station almost in sight of my home. It was very late
when we ended the journey, and my outstanding recollection of my first
night at Larkhill was of the clammy dampness of the blankets issued to
me.
At
Bulford Camp, near Larkhill, I was one of the many innocents who were
disgusted to see lines of new lorries standing in the open with no
protection. It seemed recklessly wasteful but we little guessed what
waste and destruction we would shortly be witnessing. And that reminds
me of January 1917, when it was a routine duty all night of a team of
four men to go round running the engines of the A.S.C. lorries parked
with quilted canvas bonnet covers to keep them from freezing. One man
sat at the controls, another took the starting handle, and one on each
end pulled in turn on a rope attached to the starting handle. Larkhill
hsd its own theatre and we had some good shows by amateurs and visiting
professionals. On Sundays we had a church service and I remember some of
the soldiery were made uncomfortable by a sermon on gambling by our new
Chaplain, Capt. Chavasse. Later, in France, it was Capt. Chavasse who
found hanging in our officers mess a picture of the Vie Parisienne type.
Having discovered who had provided it he bought it from him with a
French bank note – which was promptly put in the frame in place of the
picture. It was this same Capt. Chavasse who, when our Division was in
the line, was known to lose himself for hours at a time amongst the
wounded in the advanced trenches – and even in front of them,
according to the stories which we heard. I am not sure but I think he
later became Bishop of Liverpool, was it?
We
had much mud at Larkhill and it had hardly begun to dry when we were
sent on a three-day trek as an exercise. In the middle of one night I
was sent with a message to a unit whose orderly room corporal I tracked
down asleep in a GS wagon in the middle of Devizes Market Place. His
words escape me, but I well remember the trend of his remarks when he
discovered that my despatch in the middle of a February night described
methods of keeping down horse-flies in hot weather.
Early
in 1916 we moved again, this time to the borders of Norfolk and Suffolk,
with Division HQ at Flixton Hall, near Bungay. We had units at
Somerleyton (near Lowestoft), Henham, near Southwold and elsewhere, and
three times a day (7,1 and 7) two DRs left Flixton with official letters
for the outlying units. We had a little time to wait at our terminal
points before we returned with the incoming despatches and on the
morning trips we usually managed to pick up an extra breakfast for the
runs were 20 or 25 each way and we were all young and heart of appetite.
Our
duties were far from arduous and soon after we arrived one of the
Divisional staff officers gave us a very wide order – When at liberty
go out and learn the lie of the land: Joy-rides unlimited!
We
had boating on the Waveney and much swimming. After the first parade of
the day, when the roll had been called and the parade state reported,
the first order was always "Fall motor-cyclist." This was
theoretically to enable us to service our machines but in practice all
of us who were not on specific duty had an hour or two to spare before
breakfast. Most of us then toddled off to the river, only a field or so
away, and I was generally one of the first in and usually the last out.
It
was during this period that we had our first air-raid when one night a
Zeppelin put a ring of bombs on Bungay Common – and frightened some
cows. I think it was about this time that we saw the ‘Pulham Pig’, a
dirigible balloon which lived nearby and used to go out submarine
spotting. Later of course, we had many air raids. I was travelling one
night on the road from Bapume towards Albert at a period when the
fighting had moved on beyond Bapume and the land on both sides of the
road was of the deserted tortured moonscape type so pitifully common in
those parts at that time. Not much short of Albert – with its statue
of the Virgin and Child still projecting horizontally from the tower of
the semi-ruined church below – I heard the drone of a plane and was
soon able to see its iron cross markings. I felt it unlikely that he was
looking for solitary me in this blank expanse but – just in case – I
dropped into a shell hole and soon heard explosions in poor battered
Albert. In the outskirts of the town I found a house ablaze and was met
at the end of a side street by a man who begged my first-aid packet for
his pal in a lorry near the blaze. I obliged but did not loiter. It was
not until the German advance of 1918 that the statue received the hit
which finally brought it down. Both church and tower have since been
rebuilt.
Flixton
Hall was a very fine mansion, probably well under a century old when we
moved in. When I re-visited it forty years later – what a change: The
Park had been ploughed, most trees were missing, the drive deteriorated,
the outbuildings flattened, pigs in the partoves, bullocks in the
ballroom, the gardens gone and a bulldozer loading bricks and rubble to
make farm roads. It did seem a shame – and it had not been done by the
Germans.
The
Signal Co. was a mounted unit and its horses and mules required daily
attention and exercise. At one period sickness and leave reduced the
number of their normal attendants and some of us who were not fully
occupied ‘volunteered’ to participate in an exercise outing.
About
horses I knew even less than my fellow motor-cyclists and when I saddled
and mounted the animal I was to ride the creature got the bit between
his teeth and set off at a mad gallop across the park. Fortunately, I
had given a little thought to the principles of horse riding – and
even more fortunately the animal kept a straight course and avoided the
trees with low branches. Nevertheless, we seemed to have travelled some
miles (though it could not possibly have been so far) before my mount
began to yield to my steady pull to the right, dropped to a canter, then
a trot, and finally walked calmly back to the horse lines. I overheard
some complimentary comment on my performance – but none seemed to have
guessed how great had been my luck and how very narrow my margin of
safety.
At
Flixton I performed what I feel was one of the silliest tricks ever done
with a horse. I had agreed to hold it for a few moments whilst its rider
made a call at Divisional HQ. As soon as he was out of sight I tried to
mount with a spring direct from the ground to the saddle – but
something went wrong and I went straight over on to my hands on the road
on the other side. Luckily, the horse was better trained than I and
stood quietly a few feet away and allowed me to lead him back to the
starting point.
For
lack of the spares we awaited, our Newcastle Triumphs were by now in a
very poor state and we could no longer keep one man to one machine. We
found that the handlebars were not difficult to bend cold to suit our
individual riding positions, but this did not do them much good. One day
on a run to Henham, where the signal office was in a tent at the top of
a steep bank, I was commencing my return when, on this bank my right
handlebar broke off. I took a tumble, but was unhurt, moved all controls
to the left and reached home, 20 miles away, without further trouble.
The
chief reason 62 Division stayed so long in England was that infantry
recruiting was much behind that for other branches whilst infantry
casualties were much higher. By this time however, conscription had come
in and the batallions were growing.
The
Division was nevertheless, counted in for home defence which one fine
day led to a huge laugh. An exercise had been planned, to include a mock
invasion and a defence, to be done without warning. Unfortunately, when
the starting order was given in the small hours one morning, the girl at
the local telephone exchange was asleep and nothing happened. What
disciplinary results or what changes were made I never learned, but no
exercise took place either then or later, as far as I knew.
With
the autumn the risk of invasion diminished and we were moved to Bedford,
Northampton, Wellingborough, Rushden, etc., but with the close of the
year our holiday (for it had been little more for us DRs) came to an
end.
On
9th January 1917 we arrived at Southampton where the
steamship Archimedes, a 10,000 tonner, absorbed what seemed to me an
impossible number of men, horses, wagons, cars, lorries and endless
quantities of stores.
We
had a naval escort and an uneventful crossing to Le Harve, but we DRs
had a shock on disembarking, for instead of the Triumphs we had brought
up to good condition but had had to leave behind us we now had to take
over some Douglases which, though new, had been standing in the open at
Southampton for some months.
We
were to have had one night only in a rest camp but had to stay two or
three days before we had our machines fit (or so we thought!) to take us
to the war. The motor industry before 1914 had relied almost entirely on
the German Bosch magneto but these Douglases had American Dixies (Splitdorfs
on the Triumphs we later had), and we blamed these very largely for our
necessity after only a very few miles to heave-to at Yvetot for the
night. Here we treated ourselves to a night at an hotel where our
assembled personal equipment was so heavy that it pulled the hall
hat-rack off the wall. We did little better the next day, and spent
another night at our own expense, this time in Neufchatel, where one of
our party surprised madame at the café by expressing our willingness to
sleep even "sur la plafond" (ceiling) when he should have said
"sur les planchettes".
Eventually,
we came within the sound of the rumbling of the guns and we realised we
were now really at the war when, as we settled for the night with other
troops in a big barn, the Company Sergeant Major read to us an order of
the day recording that some unfortunate individual had been shot for
desertion. (My school-days friend, my best man in 1921, once had to give
the order at one of these dreadful events).
Frank H.W. Holmes
Notes compiled July 1976
PAGE TWO |
PAGE THREE
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
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