I Was There: The Great War Interviews

In the early 1960s, the BBC broadcast a documentary series

that was unparalleled in its ambition and scope.

Over 26 episodes, the series told the story of a conflict that

affected virtually every family in Britain and most of the world.

Those who had lived through the Great War

remembered it as vividly as ever.

I've never seen so many dead man clumped together as what

I saw then and I thought to myself, "All the world's dead.

"They're all dead. They're all dead."

The first idea that sort of flitted through my mind was,

that the end of the world had come and this was the Day of Judgement.

More than 250 eyewitnesses were filmed for the Great War series,

but only a tiny fraction of the recorded interviews made it to air.

50 years after they were filmed, this programme presents

the very best of the original interview material.

Most of it is shown here for the very first time,

restored and digitised in high-definition.

This is the closest we'll ever get to what it was

really like for those who were there.

Wasn't no sanity in the business at all.

When the war was not very active,

it was really rather fun to be in the front line.

And I thought to myself, "Well, if this is death, it's not so bad."

What was it? That we soldiers stabbed each other,

strangled each other, went for each other like mad dogs.

We was very happily married.

Very, very happy.

Because we was very much in love,

and he thought the world of me and I thought the world of him.

And then it came to be that the war started.

Well, we had a friend over in Canada that had enlisted over there,

and he came over here and he came one night and asked us

would we go to the Palace?

He'd booked seats for the Palace and would we go?

We didn't know what was on, of course,

and it was a great treat for us, so we went.

When we got there, at the Palace, everything was lovely,

and Vesta Tilley was recruiting,

which we never knew till we got there.

I wouldn't have gone if I'd have known, of course.

Anyway, she was dressed on the stage, beautifully,

a beautiful gown, in either silver or gold, I'm not quite sure,

but it was an evening gown,

and she also had a big Union Jack wrapped around her,

and she introduced that song -

We Don't Want To Lose You But We Think You Ought To Go.

# We don't want to lose you

# But we think you ought to go

# For your King and your country

# Both need you so... #

I was walking down the Camden Town High Street

when two young ladies approached me,

and said to me, "Why aren't you in the Army with the boys?"

So I said, "Well, I'm sorry, but I'm only 17."

"Oh, we've heard that one before."

She put her hand in her bag and pulled out a feather.

I raised my hand, thinking she was going to strike me,

when this feather was pushed up my nose.

# Though we don't want to lose you... #

We were sat at the front and she walked down and she hesitated

a bit and she put her hand on my husband's shoulder and all the...

all the place was full of this,

boys following her down and they couldn't really

get on the stage, not all of them couldn't,

and he was with one of them.

He got up, and he went with her.

# We shall cheer you, thank you

# Kiss you when you come back again... #

A Sergeant came out of one of the shops and said to me,

"Did she call you a coward?"

I said, "Yes," and I felt very indignant at the time.

He says, "Well, come across the roadway to the drill hall

"and we'll soon prove that you're not a coward."

And then the Sergeant said to me,

"How old are you?" I said, "I'm 17." He said, "What did you say? 19?"

He took my height and he says, "Now,"

he says, "we'll go round to the doctor for a medical exam."

I got round to the doctor and I was told to take all my clothes off,

which embarrassed me very, very much.

Any rate, I got back to the drill hall and there were six of us

and the Sergeant called out "Mr Lang!" I walked forward

and I thought, "Oh, that's good. I'm not in." And he says,

"You're the only so-and-so that's passed out of this six,"

and to my amazement, I found that I was being called Private SC Lang.

I was terribly upset and I said I didn't want him to go

and be a soldier, because I didn't want to lose him.

I didn't want him to go at all.

But he said, "We have to go."

He said, "There has to be men to go and fight for the women,

"otherwise," he said, "where should we be?"

We were relieving men of the 28th Division and as they passed us,

they would ask where we were from.

And when we said we were from Somerset, they said,

"You'll soon be glad to be back there again, mate."

And when we would say, "What's it like up there?"

The reply invariably came back, "Bloody awful, mate."

On the whole, we found it more depressing,

and disillusioning rather than frightening,

first trip in the line, and as we weren't,

so much frightened of being killed or wounded

as we were depressed by the conditions,

as we'd thought we were going to fight a glorious war,

and the reality was something entirely different.

I can remember shortly after arriving in the front line

in the morning there was the what they used to call the pom-pom,

a German gun they used to bring up

to their trenches with a view to popping them into our trenches.

They used to go "pom" from their side,

and arrive into ours with a "pom".

And they used to enfilade us along, starting on the left-hand side,

and coming along and on this particular morning,

one reached right at the side of me,

and the fellow who was on sentry there,

or just watching the no-man's land to see there was no

movement by the Germans, and this shell from the pom-pom arrived,

and blew half his head off.

That was my initiation into death.

EXPLOSIONS

You'd hear in the distance quite a mild pop

as the gun fired five miles away and then, um,

a humming sound as it approached you through the air,

growing louder and louder until it was like the roar

of an aeroplane coming in to land on the tarmac.

EXPLOSIONS

There comes the moment when a shell is right on top of you,

and your nerve would break and you'd throw yourself down in the mud,

and cringe in the mud till it was past.

Some of the shells were passing over you probably three foot, four foot.

And the air was an inferno and your mind, of course,

was another inferno. You were completely...

reason was completely... blast out of it.

Our dugouts crumbled.

They fell upon us,

and we had to dig ourselves and our comrades out.

Sometimes we found them suffocated, sometimes smashed to pulp.

Soldiers in the bunkers became hysterical.

They wanted to run out and fights developed to keep them

in the comparative safety of our deep bunkers.

Even the rats became hysterical.

They came into our flimsy shelters to seek refuge

from this terrific artillery fire.

You were in a maze and you felt that at any time,

if you relaxed control, you went haywire.

And it was quite a common sight to see people

that had relaxed control get up, and run around in circles like sheep

and of course, they ran around for some time

until they met shellfire, which finally finished them.

There were ways in which you could maintain your self-control,

and there is some strange connection between small physical actions...

If you, um, hum little tune to yourself,

and feel that you can quietly get through this tune before the

next explosion, it gives you a sort of curious feeling of safety.

Or you started drumming with your fingers on your knee,

and have a quite irrational desire to complete this little ritual.

These minute things

protect you from the...

nervous collapse, which may come at any moment.

One had no sanity in the business at all,

because you got into this position where the inferno

was so blasting that you had no time to think,

and you could feel as you lay down on the ground, you could

literally feel your heart pounding against the ground,

and that was the sort of condition you found yourself,

and in the continuous bombardment, which lasted

sometimes for hours, the emotional strain was absolutely terrific -

until when you got the order to advance,

it seemed that it was a sort of a... a release from that bondage.

We stood there packed like sardines, unable to even stand up in comfort.

Men were fast asleep on their feet.

Others just stood staring into the cloudless sky.

The laddie next to me checked his rifle,

and his ammunition over and over again,

but apparently, still not satisfied.

Others just stood and stared, silent as the grave.

Maybe looking forward.

And we still had another hour to wait.

I remember those lads standing there.

Dead silent, couldn't make a noise.

The fellow next to you, he was your best friend, you loved him.

You perhaps didn't know him the day before.

And then, an hour to go, they were the longest, those hours,

and the shortest hours in life.

I never dreamt that even borrowed time could go so slowly.

I'd advanced before, many times. I wasn't afraid of the advance.

I didn't like it, but I wasn't afraid of it.

But I was afraid. I was afraid of myself.

I wondered if I would live long enough to get out of the trench,

and if I did, would I have enough puff left in me

to cover that 400 yards or so in one mad rush?

And if not, would I have enough courage left to rise again,

and face that rain of lead?

As soon as it was light,

we were issued out with a big ration of rum.

You could drink as much as you wanted of it.

And we were told that we were to be prepared to receive orders

to advance at any moment.

Lieutenant Commander Parsons, my company commander,

he had a most confident smile, turned round and said,

"Five minutes to go, men.

"Four minutes.

"Three minutes.

"Two minutes.

"One minute to go, men. Ready? Come on, boys. Off we go."

Then, five minutes to go and then zero hour and all hell lets loose.

There was our barrage, the Germans' barrage, and over the top we go.

I asked God to help me as I scrambled over the top

into that withering fire.

Many, many men were killed as soon as they showed their heads,

and fell back into the trench.

Poor old Lieutenant Commander Parsons only got a few yards.

As soon as you get over the top, fear has left you and it's terror.

You don't...look, you see.

You don't hear, you listen.

Your nose is filled with fumes and death.

You taste the top of your mouth.

Your weapon and you are one.

A hunter - you're back to the jungle.

The veneer of civilisation's dropped away.

The first two or three hundred yards,

there wasn't a great deal of machine-gun or any kind of fire,

but all of a sudden, they opened on us with terrific machine-gun fire.

GUNSHOTS

I felt someone had kicked me in the chest and down I went.

Later on, I found myself crawling about on the bottom of the trench

trying to find my rifle.

My face was stiff and I could only see out of one eye.

I eventually got to my rifle

and I realised that all my equipment had been torn to shreds.

Apparently a machine-gun sweep had caught me,

and blew the lot up and down I went.

The shells were falling left, right and centre.

On my left, there was one of our platoons - got a direct hit.

The next shell was to the back and I said,

"Here goes. It's ours next."

I was looking out in front and to this day yet,

I can remember seeing a 9.2 falling in front of me,

about...say about 20 yards.

I saw the end of that shell going into the ground,

and I just thought, "We've had it."

But after a pause,

all eyes were turned around and all we heard was a dud!

EXPLOSION

MACHINE-GUN FIRE

We all stopped and lay down, trying to get what shelter

we could from the tremendous rifle fire which was coming over.

And then a Sergeant just in front of me jumped up and said,

"Come on, then. Be British." We jumped up and followed him,

and he ran about six yards and he went down.

Well, we ran on about another 20 yards towards the German trenches.

The German trenches were literally packed.

They were standing about four deep, firing machine guns, rifles,

straight at us and, er, they were gradually picking us off,

and, er, there was only myself and one other chap that weren't hit.

As we withdrew over the ground that had been captured that day,

the sight was incredible.

It was just like a flock of sheep lying asleep in a field,

and it became evident that the regimental stretcher bearers,

who one time had been bandsmen,

had been unable to cope with such a huge number of casualties.

Quite a number of the men were still alive and they were crying out,

and begging for water. They plucked at our legs as we went by.

One hefty chap did grab me around both legs and held me,

and I was going to take the cork out of my water bottle to give him

a drink and I was immediately prodded on by...behind

by someone saying, "Get on, get on. We're going to lose touch with the

"column in front. We could get lost."

Er, in the years that have passed,

that man's pleadings have haunted me.

We had no sooner withdrawn ourselves from this shambles,

and got together what we could than we began to build up

the regiment again and get ready for the next time,

and it seems to me extremely difficult to explain.

Now, um, I had lost both my officers and all my sergeants,

and two thirds of my men and, um,

here I was - I was 20-years-old,

a young acting captain and I had to begin to form a new company.

Well, to begin with, I was in a state of complete physical,

and mental frustration and I think for a few days after the battle,

I was very near having a nervous breakdown.

But when one is young, physical rest very quickly puts that right,

and in quite a few days I was almost as good as ever.

This seems to be very strange.

Um, we got a draft of a hundred very good men up from the base

then we started all over again and had a new company,

and at the end of the month, we were ready to do it again.

And this seems to me the strangest thing of all when I look back on it.

During the time that he was away, I was very, very lonely,

as I didn't make friends very easily,

and all the thoughts I had was for my husband,

and, er, it was, times was very, very hard

and I only had 12/six a week,

and therefore, I couldn't go out and spend like anyone else.

And I used to stick at night, and try to do a bit of reading

or a bit of sewing with my hands to pass the time away like that.

But it was very, very hard and at times, would wonder,

wonder what he was doing and if he was thinking about me

and wondering how he was going on. And when I just...

when I should see him again and all things like that.

# Keep the home fires burning

# While your hearts are yearning

# Though your lads are far away they dream... #

My father and my brother were at the front and later my youngest brother.

And my mother worried very much and her only means of knowing

whether they were alive was reading the casualty lists.

And we children used to gather round and listen and watch,

and look over her shoulder even, while she read them,

and the tension was felt by us all. Were they alive?

Were they still with us?

And even when my mother would put the newspaper down,

none of us really knew, really knew, what my mother had read.

We didn't know what was happening at that very minute.

When I got home to my parents - my father was a soldier himself,

he didn't ask any questions -

but mother used to ask all kinds of questions.

"Why has the got to be a war?" And, "What are you doing there?"

And, "Can you have your bath regularly?"

And all those questions which a mother would ask

and I couldn't give any answers, so the answers I gave were very

short and not very satisfactory for mother.

When my father and my brothers, uncles, relatives,

different sorts and friends, when they came home on leave,

as they frequently did,

and they were either staying in our house or visiting our house,

I noticed a strange lack of ability to communicate with us,

to tell us what it was really like.

I think they would perhaps make a joke that you'd feel

sounded hollow, there was nothing to laugh about.

# And when they asked us

# How dangerous it was

# Oh, we'll never tell them... #

This world of the trenches was entirely a man's world.

Women had no part in it.

And when one went on leave,

what one did was to escape out of the man's world

into the woman's world.

And one found that however pleased one was to see one's girlfriend,

and I am speaking only of the light emotions of a boy,

not of the deeper feelings of a happily-married man,

erm...one could never

somehow quite get through, however nice and sympathetic they were.

The girl didn't quite say the right thing and one was curiously upset,

annoyed by attempts of well-meaning people to sympathise which

only reflected the fact that they didn't really understand at all.

MUSIC: "When They Asked Us"

# Oh, we'll never tell them

# No, we'll never tell them

# There was a front

# But damned if we knew where. #

There was a loud knocking on the door,

such a big knocking on the door.

And this voice shouted, "Open the door, the Jerries are here!"

You see...

And so my mother said, "Oh, it's Percy, I can tell his voice."

And in he came, you know, all mucky and what have you,

right from France.

He only got six days' leave, and he had two days' travelling out

of that had to be taken off the six days, so he didn't have very long.

And he said, "Now," he says, "Now, Kitty," - he called me Kitty -

he says, "Now, Kitty, what would you like for a present?

"I'm going to buy you a present while I'm home."

I said, "Oh, I don't know,"

I said, but I'm afraid I was rather vain in those days and I was

a rather attractive girl and I said, "You know, I've seen a beautiful hat

"down the street, oh, it is a lovely hat," I said, "I would like it."

And it was in a shop window,

and I'd looked at this hat several times, and it was a lovely hat.

And I'd have loved it.

But it was such a terrible dear hat.

And he said, "Well, come on, we'll go down and have a look at it."

And I'll never forget that hat.

It was white felt and it turned up all around,

and with me being dark, and

it had a big mauve feather all the way in the brim,

and it hung over - oh, it was gorgeous.

We got dressed up after I got this hat - he bought it me.

And I took him to the works,

Noblett's Leather Works, where I worked, and I introduced him

to Mr Noblett himself, and they all shook hands with him.

And how pleased and proud I was when he went in the leather works.

And everybody could see him.

A girl, I remember, she said -

"Why don't you stay on a little longer?

"They can very well do without you there".

And I said, "Don't you know that there is something like duty?"

"Oh, duty! That's not...

"There are so many people who never went to war,

"why have you got to go to war?"

They were restless at home, they didn't want to stay, they wanted to

get back to the front...

They always would express a desire to finish.

In the end, I only had the wish to go back.

It was as if I were going home to my soldiers.

He went back about the Thursday night,

I should think, no longer than that.

I didn't go with him to the tram,

because there was trams those days, you know,

there was no buses, there was trams.

I didn't go with him to the tram

but one of my brothers went with him...

and a friend of his.

And he told his friend, it seems, afterwards he told me,

He said, "I'm afraid I shall never come back again."

Anyway, he went. And then I found out that I was pregnant.

In the trenches, on the ground, one had the comradeship of men,

all about one.

One knew they were there, at a moment,

ready to support one.

They were a moral support, as well as a physical support.

In the air, things were different. We were far more individualistic.

Spiritually and emotionally, we were shut in,

we were self-contained individuals.

We did not have the feeling of a community spirit that we had

known on the ground and everything had to be thought,

and actioned on the part of the one individual.

He was entirely and inseparably alone.

You had to fight as if there was nothing but you and your guns.

You had nobody at your side, nobody who was cheering with you,

nobody who would look after you if you were hit, you were alone,

you know, and you fought alone and died alone.

There was, undoubtedly, a sense of chivalry in the air.

We did not feel that we were shooting at men.

We did not want to kill men.

We were really trying to shoot down the machines.

Our enemies were not the men in the machines.

Our enemies were the machines themselves.

The whole squadron would enter the fight in good formation,

but within half a minute the whole formation had gone to hell.

MACHINE-GUN FIRE

There was nothing left except just chaps wheeling and zooming

and diving and on each other's tails perhaps.

Or four in a row even, you know, a German going down, one of our

chaps on his tail, another German on his tail, another Hun behind that.

I mean...extraordinary glimpses one got of people approaching

head on, firing at each other as they came

and then just at the last moment turning and slipping away.

MACHINE-GUN FIRE

We flew like goldfish in a bowl, in all directions,

swimming around the sky, sometimes standing on our tails, sometimes

with our heads right down, sometimes over on our backs, sometimes

at right angles to the ground.

Of course, the dog-fight wasn't the only way of bringing down Huns,

and in fact, probably, the great aces of the war brought down more

Huns in other means than they did in actual dog-fights,

which was after all a dangerous operation, so to speak!

The favourite method was to stalk.

You would wander up and down the lines,

looking for a likely chap who was too preoccupied doing artillery

observation or photography to notice there was anybody else about

and you would be very cunning you would perhaps go a mile or two away

and stalk him slowly, coming up just under his tail where he couldn't see,

you see, there's a certain angle below the tail plane at which

you can stalk a man and he would not know you were there at all.

And then having got up close to that position or just within range,

then if your guns were well synchronised

and you held the machine steady, you were on for a certain kill.

MACHINE-GUN FIRE

I felt my machine lurch, and I turned and looked over at

my pilot and found that he had slumped on his controls.

And the next thing I remember was having a sledgehammer blow

on my head,

and I put my hand to my helmet and I found it all jagged and torn,

and a certain amount of blood...

And then I had a blackout...

And I fell through the air,

I think like a falling leaf or a wounded or injured bird.

And I think it was the upward rush of air

that brought me to my senses...

..and by the grace of God, I had the presence of mind to

pull on the joystick to break the fall...

and the machine staggered,

and stalled and fell on some trees.

And then I lost consciousness again.

And when I did wake up,

I found that I was lying in a little French church,

just behind the lines, on a little straw,

with many other wounded German prisoners.

The air was boiling with the turmoil of the shells flying through it.

We were thrown about, the aircraft rocking from side to side,

being thrown up and down.

Below us was mud, filth, smashed trenches, broken wire,

broken machine-gun posts,

broken limbers, rubbish, wreckage of aeroplanes,

bits of men, and then in the midst of it all, when we were flying

at 400 feet, I spotted a German machine-gun post and went down.

My companion came behind me

and as we dived we fired four machine guns straight into the post.

MACHINE-GUN FIRE

We saw the Germans throw themselves on the ground.

We dived at them, sprayed them,

and I felt that never at any time had I passed through such

an extraordinary experience and as we came out of it, I felt that

we had escaped from one of the most evil things that I had ever seen

at any time in any of the flying that occurred to me during that war.

MUSIC: "Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit-Bag" by George Henry Powell

# Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag

# And smile, smile, smile

# While you've a Lucifer to light your fag

# Smile, boys, that's the style... #

When the war was not very active it was really rather fun

to be in the front line.

It was not very exacting and indeed, it was not very dangerous.

One was having a sort of out-of-door camping holiday with the boys,

with a slight spice of danger, to make it interesting.

WHISTLING TO THE TUNE OF "Pack Up Your Troubles..."

We were billeted in Armentieres most of the summer,

a very pleasant summer. It was a quiet sector of the line...

and of an evening, if we were

not on duty in the trenches, we used to go out into the town and

go to the nearest estaminet, which is the equivalent of the English local.

And behind the bar would be "Madame",

and we hoped one or two of her daughters, very attractive, and when

we'd had our suppers, the omelettes were cleared away and the coffees were disposed of,

and other drinks put round, we used to sing the popular...

the popular song at the time of course was

Mademoiselle From Armentieres, with its six or eight verses.

MUSIC: "Mademoiselle From Armentieres"

# Mademoiselle from Armentieres parlez-vous

# Mademoiselle from Armentieres parlez-vous

# You didn't have to know her long

# To find the reason why men went wrong

# Inky-pinky parlez-vous... #

The girls used to ask us to translate them afterwards,

but we couldn't very well

do that, they weren't suitable for translation, the verses weren't.

# I had more fun with Mademoiselle

# Beneath the sheets with Mademoiselle

# Inky-pinky parlez-vous... #

Towards evening, we suddenly heard singing in the trenches.

Not a shot was fired anywhere, neither from the Russians

nor on the part of the Austrians and suddenly that singing...

HYMN SINGING

And soon after that,

our soldiers started singing too,

and to my greatest surprise those boys, who used to sing

all kinds of songs EXCEPT hymns, started to sing Easter hymns.

About 11 o'clock...

..I saw a Christmas tree going up on the German trenches,

and there was a light... and we stood still and watched this,

and we talked and then a German voice began to sing a song -

Heilige Nacht.

And...

after that, somebody said, "Come over, Tommy, come over."

Some of us went over at once and very soon we were exchanging gifts.

The whole of no-man's-land as far as we could see

was grey and khaki, there they were

smoking and talking, shaking hands, exchanging names

and addresses for after the war to write to one another.

One of my advanced posts

reported that the Russians had thrown something

into their hole, their dugout...

and I said, "Well, what is it, what was it?"

and they said, "We don't know, we don't know whether we can touch it".

"Well, of course, you've got to touch it,

"if it's hand grenades you've got to throw it out,

"but have a look and report again."

And one minute later they reported.

It was Easter eggs, real Easter eggs, gaudily painted,

which the Russians had rolled slowly into their hole.

A few minutes later, a few Russians came along and said,

"Got any vodka for us?

"Or any...any cigarettes?"

Well, the boys had a few cigarettes but they had no vodka.

That kind of Armistice lasted all Easter Sunday.

HYMN SINGING

The Germans started burying their dead, which had frozen out,

and we picked up ours and we buried them,

and little crosses of ration-box wood

were nailed together, quite small ones, and in indelible pencil,

they would put - the Germans - "Fur Vaterland und Freiheit".

"For Fatherland and Freedom". And I said to a German, "Excuse me,

"but how can you be fighting for freedom?

"You started the war, and we are fighting for freedom."

And he said "Excuse me English comrade, kamerad,

"but we are fighting for freedom for our country."

And I said, "You also put here rests in God 'ein unbekannter Held'.

"Here rests in God an unknown hero."

" 'In God!' "

"Oh, yes, God is on our side". But I said, "He is on our side".

"Well, English comrade, do not let us quarrel on Christmas Day."

As the war progressed and stunt followed stunt,

it required that we should live in animal conditions

and in doing so

it was inevitable that we developed

the animal characteristic of killing.

And apart from the short feeling of nervousness as you knew that

you were moving up to carry out another operation, there was

the feeling of exultation that once again you were going to be able to,

to extract retribution from the fellows that had killed your mates.

I was confronted by a French corporal...

..he with his bayonet at the ready and I with my bayonet at the ready.

For a moment...

I felt the fear of death.

And in a fraction of a second...

I realised that he was after my life

exactly as I was after his.

I was quicker than he was.

I tossed his rifle away and I ran my bayonet through his chest.

He fell...

put his hand on the place where I had hit him,

and then I thrust again.

Blood came out of his mouth and he died.

I suddenly felt physically ill, I nearly vomited.

My knees were shaking and I was, quite frankly, ashamed of myself.

My comrades

were absolutely undisturbed by what had happened.

One of them boasted that he had killed a French soldier

with the butt of his rifle, another one had strangled a captain,

a third one had hit somebody over the head

with his spade...

but I had in front of me...

the dead man,

the dead French soldier,

and how would I have liked him to have raised his hand.

I would have shaken his hand and we would have been the best of friends.

What was it, that we soldiers...

..stabbed each other,

strangled each other, went for each other like mad dogs?

What was it that we, who had nothing against them personally,

fought with them to the very end and death?

We were civilised people after all!

One evening I was warned that I had to go on a firing party,

six of us,

to shoot four men of another battalion who had

been accused of desertion.

Well, I was very worried about it because...

..I didn't think it was right

in the first place that Englishmen should be shooting other Englishmen.

I thought we were in France to fight the Germans.

I thought that I knew why these men had deserted, if they had deserted,

because I understood their feelings and what would make them desert.

The fact that they had probably been in trenches for

two or three months without a break...

absolutely broke their nerve.

When you hadn't had sleep for several nights,

and when you hadn't had rest, and sometimes hardly a meal,

it did get you and you reached a point where there was no beyond.

You just could not go any further.

And that's the point I'd reached.

I was tired of all the carnage, of all the sacrifice

we had there just to gain about 25 yards.

And then I began to think of those poor devils who had been

punished for self-inflicted wounds, some had even been shot,

and I began to wonder how I could get out of it.

An old soldier in our battalion told me

it was one thing in the Army which you could refuse.

So, I straightaway went back to the Sergeant and said, "I'm sorry,

"I'm not doing this." And I heard no more about it.

I think one reason why I felt so strong about it

was the fact that a week before,

a boy in our own battalion had been shot for desertion.

Well, I knew that boy, and I knew that he'd absolutely

lost his nerve, he couldn't have gone back into the line.

And he was shot.

And the tragedy of that

was that a few weeks later in our local paper,

I saw that

his father had joined up to avenge his son's death on the Germans.

In the distance I heard the rattle of harness.

I didn't hear much of the wheels but I knew there were

ammunition wagons coming up

and I thought to myself, "Well, here's a way out,

"when they get level with me I'll ease out

"and put my leg under the wheel.

"I should be bound to get away and I can plead it was an accident."

Well, I waited and the sound of the harness got nearer and nearer.

Eventually, I saw the leading horses' heads in front of me

and I thought, "This is it,"

and I began to ease my way out and eventually the

first wagon reached me and, do you know,

I never even had the guts to do that.

I found myself wishing to do it, but hadn't got the guts to do it.

After the Germans had stopped shelling a little while,

we heard one of their big ones coming over.

My pal shouted and threw himself down.

I was too damned tired even to fall down, I stood there...

Next, I had a terrific pain in the back and the chest

and I found myself face downwards in the mud.

My pal came to me, he tried to lift me up and I said to him,

"Don't touch me, leave me, I've had enough, just leave me."

Next thing, I found myself sinking down in the mud

and this time I didn't worry about the mud.

I didn't hate it any more, it seemed like a protective blanket

covering me, and I thought to myself,

"Well, if this is death, it's not so bad."

I heard the postman come.

And I knew it would be a letter for me.

So, I ran down in my nightdress and opened the door

and snatched the letter off the postman.

And I ran in and shut the door, in my nightdress and my bare feet,

and I opened the letter.

And it was from his Sergeant and it just said, "Dear Mrs Morter, I'm

"very sorry to tell you of the death of your husband."

Well, that was as far as I could read.

You see, I couldn't read anything else.

So... I didn't know for a few minutes what happened but I ran out,

I ran out of the house as I was, with my bare feet,

and I banged on the next door, the next door neighbour's.

It was a Mr and Mrs Hirst.

And they let me in and, "Whatever's the to-do?" she said.

I said, "Will you read this letter, Mrs Hirst?

"Read this letter." And she said, "Oh," she said, "you poor child."

I found myself being bumped about, and I realised that

I was on a stretcher, and I thought, "Poor devils,

"those stretcher bearers, I wouldn't be a stretcher bearer for anything."

And then something else happened.

I suddenly realised that I wasn't dead.

I realised that I was alive.

I realised that if these wounds didn't prove fatal,

that I should get back to my parents, to my sister, to the

girl that I was going to marry.

The girl that had sent me

a letter every day, practically, from the beginning of the war.

And then I must have had that sleep that I

so badly needed for I didn't recollect any more,

until I found myself in a bed with white sheets, and I heard

the lovely, wonderful voices of our nurses -

English, Scotch and Irish.

And I think then I completely broke down.

I thought, "Well, perhaps it's just an error?"

I wasn't sure what had happened, I thought,

"Perhaps, it's just an error?"

But later on, I wrote to the Sergeant, I wrote

and answered his letter.

I found out later on, I had another letter to say, that the man

who'd sent me word had also been killed.

Next, the padre was sitting beside the bedside.

He was trying to comfort me, he told me that I'd had an operation.

And he told me that he

had some relatives out there that had been out there right

from the beginning and by God's grace, they hadn't had a scratch.

He said, "They've been lucky, haven't they?"

I thought to myself, "Lucky?

"Poor devils!"

After I found that it was officially known he had been killed,

I used to pass me time away trying to make little

baby clothes for my baby,

and eventually the baby became to be born.

It was born at home, but I don't remember it being born at all.

I had a very bad time.

I had two doctors and I don't remember the baby being born.

And I felt I didn't want to live, I'd no wish to live at all,

because the world had come to an end then for me

because I'd lost all that I'd loved.

And an old lady came along,

and she called across and said, "Kaiser finish."

Well, it really didn't mean a thing to us.

Because the war had gone on so long and it seemed one couldn't accept

the fact that the war would ever finish.

I was sitting at a table with a major in the Scots Greys.

And he had a large old-fashioned hunting watch which he

put on the table, and he watched the minutes going round.

11 o'clock came and I remember he shut his watch up and said,

"I wonder what we are all going to do next?"

And that was very much the feeling of everyone.

What was one going to do next?

To some of us it was the end of four years, to some three years,

to some less.

To some of us, it was practically the only life we'd known.

No more Verey lights going up with their greenish, wavering flare.

No lilies of the dead in the night.

No flash of Howitzers on the horizon.

No droning of the shells.

No machine guns. No patrols going out.

Just nothing.

Silence.