John Willis Palmer The Great War Interviews

After advancing several days

into Belgium and passing these

refugees, many of them with

their little dogcarts and piled with

their pitiful possessions - prams,

children and one thing and another -

we found ourselves eventually going

the same way as the refugees.

So therefore we knew very well

we were no longer

advancing into Belgium.

And, of course, our road got

more

congested with refugees

and we got mixed up with

the infantry who in turn were

getting more and more tired.

These infantry, unfortunately,

began to suffer with feet trouble.

I've seen infantry there

with their feet bleeding.

I've seen infantry with their boots

off and puttees wrapped round them.

I've seen men sobbing and turning

around asking our officers,

"Why the hell can't we fight?

"Why won't you let us fight?"

We used to, as artillery,

give them a lift

whenever we could on the guns,

or even on our officer's horse.

Our officers have let

infantry ride there,

but eventually the day came

when no longer could we let them

ride on our horses, because our own

horses were getting chafed.

Now, in peacetime, they had a rest,

but here there was no rest.

No respite whatsoever, no let-up,

the Germans were on our tail

the whole time and so, therefore,

we had to conserve the energy

of the horses as well as the men.

So the order was given,

all gunners must walk

and wherever

possible,

a driver was taken

off his horse

to lead his horse.

So, therefore, the infantry

didn't get their lift.

And we mustn't forget they were

carrying somewhere in the region

of 100lbs on their back, the infantry,

which we did not have.

And so, therefore, their feet got

worse and worse.

A lot of it was due to the fact that

a number of them were

reservists and had been called up

just prior to the outbreak of war.

And, of course, the first thing

that happened to them,

they were fitted out with kit,

including ammos.

We called them ammos,

but it's the old Army word for boots

and they were very heavy.

Well, before the war,

we were able to break them in,

but they didn't get time.

They were put straight on a march

which lasted for 150,

160 miles with only

a very,

very few rests

and if they got those boots

off,

they couldn't get them

back on again. Consequently, their

feet were bleeding and, of course,

they had to either throw boots away

or wrap them round with puttees.

And that was the cause.

But most of their trouble was frustration.

Frustration.

They just could not fight.

They wouldn't care a damn

about the pain, about the fatigue,

about anything

if they'd been allowed to fight.

And it was only exceptional cases

where perhaps there was

a little rearguard action where

they were allowed to get into action

and have a real fight.

And that bucked them up no end.

But this went on and went on

and, of course, all the time

we were retiring,

the Germans

were coming on

and having all the food and

that

imaginable from the houses

and we were told then

that we must

live off the land.

We must get everything

we can from empty houses,

otherwise the Germans would have it.

Well, I remember seeing

the Munsters once.

They'd got, I think,

about five cows in front of them

and they tried to drive them

along the road in front of them

and I think they were going to

kill them at night.

That was only my surmise, but those

cows knew more than the Munsters.

First of all

one would

go in a field one side

and one would go in a field

the other side.

I don't know how many they got away

with, but I was very lucky

because I was on a telephone cart

and I was able to get quite

a bit of provisions to put in that

telephone cart to share out

amongst the others.

I remember we went once to a house

which we thought was empty

and a pal of mine said, "Look,"

he said, "There's some lovely

rabbits there in those hutches.

"Let's have some of them."

I said, "Right-oh, we'll have them."

So in we went and he pulled one out

and killed it.

I said, "How do you kill them, then?"

"Well," he said, "just like this.

"Hold the hind legs and smack them

on the back of the neck."

OK.

I'd just completed that and the door

opened and a Damesoille came

out,

my God, didn't we go through

that hedge absolutely head first.

Then again we got some

chickens at one time

and we thought we'd wrung their necks

nicely, we put them in a sack,

they went on the telephone cart.

We hadn't gone, I suppose,

a quarter of a mile,

the sack had jumped off the cart.

That was them gone west.

But I think our greatest day came

on September 5th, when we were

told that tomorrow we might be able

to advance, or we should advance.

And then that was the time when you

should have seen those infantrymen.

Not only the artillerymen,

but the infantry.

You should have seen their faces.

I mean, they were absolutely

as

though they were going to a football match.

At last, they were going to get

what they wanted.

They were going to fight the Germans

and that's what they'd come

out there for.

Oh, we had some Germans

fetched in

in an ambulance once

and they were talking to us

in broken English and one of them

said, "Oh," he

said,

"Belgian no good shot.

"French no good shot.

British, he too damn good shot."

Now, what these Germans thought

when our boys had opened up,

our infantry opened

up,

that they were opposing

nests of machine guns,

but they weren't.

All they were opposing

was their rifles

and all these boys were firing at 15

rounds a minute, which misled

the Germans to think that they'd got

big batteries of machine guns,

and I believe the complement of a

battalion was two machine guns only.

That September, 1915,

that September morning

when we were planning

the attack on Loos,

it turned out a lovely morning,

but we'd been up the trenches,

my pal and I, getting the wire ready

to lay out behind the infantry.

The plan was to take Loos.

We were almost in front of Hulluch

and our objective was Hulluch.

And right in front of our trench,

the ground sloped upwards to

the

German's strong point,

which was

a rather terrifying sight from

the front line because

going away

in front of us

up for a sheer almost

800 yards

and an incline all the

way,

right to the German trenches.

And that's what

the

infantrymen had to face.

Well, we opened up with

a terrific

bombardment to try

and break through the wire

and then the gas was let loose.

And our infantrymen, all

clad

in these Ku Klux Klan helmets

just with a little thing to

put in their mouth, went off.

Well, they had this 800 yards

with fixed bayonets

and they had to charge.

There was no loitering with

those things.

And what happened

was

that a lot of them

thought that they were suffocating

and they pulled their helmets off.

Unfortunately, just at that moment,

the wind saw fit to change,

not only change,

but to start to blow back

and the gas came

back

on our infantry and it caused

terrible execution because I saw

all

the bodies thereafter.

But not only the gas on our front

caused execution.

As I went over some time later,

we got to a sap that led straight

up into the German trenches and at

the head of that sap there was

a German machine gunner

handcuffed

to his machine gun.

Now, round by the side of him

there seemed to be thousands

and thousands of cartridge cases

and in front of him,

all the way up that sap,

I saw our dead fellows.

He caused terrible execution,

but all I saw of him was his head

bowed down on a machine gun

and split open where one of our lads

had caught him, probably caught him

with the butt end of the rifle.

Of course, those lads weren't

moved for some days,

the dead weren't moved -

the wounded were - and for days after,

when I was laying that wire out,

I had to pass over those bodies

whose faces were turning more and

more blue and green, their buttons

were blue and green, as a matter of

fact, it was a terrible sight and we

had one or two frosts those evenings,

which made things much worse.

Well, on the left of us there was

the Hohenzollern Redoubt,

one of the most... They called it

one of the most strong

points

of the war at that time

and I know our guards

had two or three attempts

to do it without

any luck at all.

I was told to lay a wire up

to the

Hulluch crossroads.

Well, I went over the first

and second line of trenches

and I got right up to where there

were some German trenches had

been captured and an officer came

down, he said, "Where are you going?"

I said, "Well,"

I said, "I've got to

lay

a wire to the crossroads,

"Hulluch." He said, "You'd better bugger off.

"You'd better get off back," he said,

"we haven't captured it yet."

So back we had to go

and I wasn't sorry, either.

- MAN: And cut. - Yes.

Well, I suppose there's a limit

to everything,

but what with the mud of the Somme

and the mud of Passchendaele,

to see

men keep on sinking into

the slime, dying in the slime,

I think

it absolutely finished me off.

Because I knew for three

months

before I was wounded that

I was going to get it. I knew jolly well.

The only thing was I thought

I was going to get killed

and every time I went

out

to mend a wire, I think

I was the biggest

coward

on God's earth.

Of course, there were no

times

of duty regarding mending

telephone wires.

Nobody knew when a wire would go,

but we knew

it had to be mended.

The infantrymen's lives depended

on these wires working and it didn't

matter whether we'd had sleep,

or whether we hadn't had sleep.

We just had to keep those

wires through.

And there were many days

when,

actually, I don't remember them.

I don't remember what happened

because I was so damned tired

and there was mud, mud everywhere.

Mud in the trenches,

mud in front of

the trenches,

behind the trenches.

Every shell hole was

a sea of filthy, oozing mud.

And the fatigue in that mud

was

something terrible.

The very fact of having to go eight

and ten miles round those wires

and try and pull your feet out.

And as I say, as you pulled one foot

out, the other one would sink down.

And 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.

It was somewhere

near midnight, I think.

I'd been out on the wires all day,

all night.

I hadn't had any sleep, it

seemed,

for weeks and no rest

and it was very, very difficult to

mend a telephone wire in this mud.

You'd find one end

and then you'd try

and trudge through the

mud

to find the other end

and as you got one foot out,

the other one would go down.

I was tired of seeing infantry

sinking back in that morass

never to come out alive again.

I was tired of all the carnage,

of all the sacrifice that we had

there, just to gain about 25 yards.

And this night, I think I'd

reached my lowest ebb.

The Germans were sending over

quite

a barrage and I crouched

down in one of these dirty shell

holes 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.

And I sat there and kept thinking,

and it's very lonely

when you're on your own.

And then 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 shall 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.

Well, I went on, I finished my wire,

I found the other end and mended it.

I was out twice more that night. I was out the next day.

And the next night,

my pal

came out with me,

he wasn't busy on the other wires.

And after the Germans had stopped

shelling a little

while,

we heard one of their big ones

coming over

and normally, within

reason, you

could tell if one was

going to land

anywhere near or not.

If it was, the normal procedure

was

to throw yourself down

and avoid the shell fragments.

This one we knew was going

to drop near.

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."

The 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".

And then I found myself

being bumped about.

And I realised that

I was on a stretcher

and I thought, "Poor devils,

these

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.

Then...the dressing station.

Morphia.

And I must then 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.

Next, the padre was

sitting

beside the bedside.

He was trying to comfort me,

he told

me 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."