Irish Voices from the First World War a blog based on PRONI sources

January 1916

The final withdrawal of French and British troops from the Peninsula was completed without casualties and the remains of the Serbian army were evacuated to Corfu. Fighting continued on the other fronts. In Britain, was introduced for unmarried men, however Ireland was exempted from the legislation.

Document 1: Journal of Constance Masefield [T2948/2/2]

Constance Masefield and her husband the poet John Masefield had returned to from the county with their family.

A new year has begun and already we see the light beginning to lengthen, but there is no hope anywhere of the War ending. In the West we hold almost the same position as in . In the East – – we are worse off. The Germans hold a line from Riga down and away to the Bukcovina. Serbia is gone and in Gallipoli we have evacuated Suvla and Anzac, so the record of success is not great for 1915. On the sea we know we have done well, but there are still unquelled submarines everywhere about in the Mediterranean. One large P & O liner, the Persia, has just been torpedoed. Still we must realise the vast effort and intelligence being daily expended in keeping things as they are.

... we saw Violet Asquith married -such a gloomy dark ceremony. We didn't go to the house afterward; we didn't much want to but we hear she had a gorgeous vulgar set of presents. Her father gave her a diamond tiara, yet next day he admonished working men not to give presents to their wives or daughters but to think of 's need. I never can quite forgive people for systematic extravagance. I never can forgive them for taking the labour of others as a matter of course.... (4 January 1916)

Document 2: Shaw family letters [D1962]

Sammie Shaw from Portstewart was serving with the 10th Royal Inniskillen Fusiliers in . His brother Willie was in the .

My Dear Dad

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I received your letter all right. You wanted to know if we were in the fun on Xmas Day but I am sorry to say we were not. It was the Division that relieved us. I am glad to know that all the boys went to sea together. They will always be able to chum it the same as we out here.

There is one thing we may all look forward too that is the war will be over this spring. We will put them back into their own country quicker than they left it. You said in your letter that Ireland was not included in the Conscription Bill, but as far as Home Rule goes its knocked on the head for ever. When the Tommies out here see what Ulster has done for Britain they say that Home Rule is and will always be a thing of the past.

Tell mother not to send me any more parcels as were getting pretty decent grub now. When this is over we will get a family photo taken with Willie and me in the uniform ... (15 January 1916).

My Dear Dad

Just a few lines to let you know I received your letter all right. I would be much obliged to you if you would send me some fags. They are very scarce out here just now and the French fags would kill you at 500 yards. I am glad to hear that the fishing is still keeping good. I suppose the harbour is dull now with all the boys away. I believe there is a lot of the Port boys coming out here in a draft from the 12th Battalion. Tell Mr McAuley I was asking for him. Tell him there are no halls out here like the Institute. ... (23 January 1916)

Document 3: Correspondence of Captain William Montgomery [D2794/1/1]

Captain William Montgomery was commanding A Company, 9th Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles, with the 36th (Ulster) Division in France.

... The man who tells you he has had a month or two of this like we have had and adds that he wants to come back to it not through a sense of duty but as a matter of hungry personal preference is a liar - no less. He is a liar either way. He never suffered the real thing or if he did he quit and is trying to persuade himself he hasn't lost his self-respect. No sane normal human could go through our last month and develop an affection for the life. I have no affection for it. I hate keeping on cursing a hard bitten Company to do this,

- 3 - that and the other and not to do other things. I stand it physically I am thankful to say better than most. But the strain of always flogging on and on tired men is distasteful to me, but I wouldn't quit it. No, not for anything but I shall be glad when finis is written. I learnt a lot about the grimness of the thing called war during one long long night lately. I don't believe we are innately brutal enough to compete with the Hun on scientific lines. We 'thro' the stuff much the same way as they do but I doubt much if the same spirit of grim hate is behind ours as it is behind theirs. ... (14 January 1916)

... an incident occurred today which would perhaps be of interest to some of my many friends in the Institute. Today (we are particular about it having no date) I was due for relief after five very 'windy' days in the trenches. I was to be relieved by a unit who had never 'taken over' my line before. Reliefs, of course, always are affected in the gloaming and as quietly as possible, but during the day preceding relief, Company second in Command generally come up to the trenches and 'take over', bringing with them so many NCOs from each platoon who also 'take over'. Taking over and handing over are very serious performances. They consist of the outgoing Company Commander and Battalion Commander handing over everything tangible or intangible to the

- 4 - representative of the equivalent incoming officer. It includes trench stores, such as bombs, grenades, sniper scope rifles, very lights and pistols, scoops, buckets, periscopes, fireproof suits and about a thousand other odds and ends which mustn't be lost. Well, who should turn up with a healthy appetite in plenty of time for lunch to relieve me but Chiplin. I haven't seen him for over two months.

We have decided that we have encountered one thing here which is just one worse than incurring the displeasure of Mr W J Jefferson and that is that the moral TRENCH MORTAR. The 'morrow effect' is damnable, much worse than the physical effect unless they actually exploded in the midst of a crowd of men. Crowds of men don't happen with us now in trenches. The day before yesterday my Company had to put up with a very unwelcome arrival of no less than 26 of the things, all of which exploded except two. They are quite visible both by day and night as they come sailing through the air and if sentries do their duty properly they can be dodged by all but the unlucky few. I only had one man knocked out as a result of the whole arrival and very little damage to my line. But fright -. The first one or two that arrived made me feel like as if I had paid 'a poor unfortunate client' of a fellow member twice for some item and was trying to explain the incident to John Boddel. (Just about here is where R.N.K. will laugh out loud). 'My minenwerfer’ the Bosches call the things, our men call them 'Bloody Motors'. To give you an idea of the effect they have one which landed 150 yards away from a dug out in which I was sitting blew out both a candle and an oil lamp and one of my officers sitting with me across the dug out and against the wall. The same one extinguished all the lights in one of our mine tunnels 55 feet underground.

Our people don't seem to be able to discover what sort of a thing they fire them from. They are not fired or propelled by a driving charge, as there is no report or sound of any kind until they go off. I have seen them travelling through the air for a distance across my front of at least 500 plus. I have also seen my Company Sergeant Major carrying an unexploded one in his arm. They are exactly similar to White lead drums about two feet high and 12 inches in diameter. They contain nothing but high explosive no bullets. We have got nothing which makes anything approaching adequate retaliation for these horrors where trenches are so close together as ours (in one place in my command the same wire does both of us and the trenches are only 24 yards apart). The game of course is to retaliate and I always call for it from Artillery when I get mortared. The field

- 5 - gun battery fellow who takes care of my particular sector, as my big trench mortar day progressed, evidently felt his impotence, because he telephoned me saying he thought I might get a few rounds out of a heavy howitzer battery if I approached them nicely and told them his beloved pop-guns were not making much impression. I of course acted on the rather unusual tip and in due course in the way 'Hows' do. They sent a salvo of six beauties. They blew up about half the village, but it was quite two miles away from where the Mortar was that was worrying me. It was very like beating the wrong dog.

It is astonishing how men can live in trenches under heavy fire. On Xmas Eve we strafed the Bosch very severely with bombs and grenades and machine guns, rifles and artillery. We also exploded a mine and the tunnelling officer thought we had got a few of them and that we certainly destroyed several of their galleries. On New Year's Eve (Central European time to the minute) they turned on to three whole battalions of ours a perfectly hellish bombardment of all kinds of stuff. Everybody was 'Standing To' (Arms) fingering rifles and gas helmets waiting to see the Hun come over his parapet the fire was so intense. Instead of that the fire died down and resumed its normal condition and those of us not on duty turned in again. Next day it was ascertained that we hadn't had a single casualty in the three battalions. The Bosch must have sent over at least a couple of thousand pounds sterling worth of stuff.

They are very good fighters - The Hun - I take my hat off to him when it comes to organisation of snipers or fixed rifles or indirect fire from rifle batteries. Your Hun Sniper goes out into the open 'tween wire' before dawn and takes his day's rations with him and a rifle fitted with telescopic sight such as we don't know anything of and a fancy telescope and there he stays and studies and shoots until dark. Chiplin and I, this afternoon, when touring round on business met a fellow who had momentarily forgotten the Bosch sniper and stuck his head above the parapet at a bad place for about 30 seconds. It was long enough to cost him his life, although he wasn't all in when we met him, but I expect he is finished with it by now. Good soldier he was too, hard to replace in less than 12 months.

This life eats men. I came out 246 strong three months ago today. I have been reinforced once by a draft of 18 and my strength today is less than 200 and my trench strength only 135. And that does not include anything but loss in defence. When the 'Big Push'

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(and the Millennium) come loss of course will very considerably increase. Still for just jogging along and taking every possible care of the men and their health. Bathing them and inspecting them for skin trouble and changing their underclothing and treating their feet and making them wear their shrapnel helmets and seeing their food cooked properly and getting it up to them and shared properly. It is serious enough when one considers that a Company is a mere bagatelle and that each man I have lost, it is calculated, costs or has cost the country about £300. This figure is about right in the big average when one includes Separation Allowance, Hutage, pay, rations, equipment, transport, staff, etc etc.

You may blame Chiplin for the rambling length of this because his people are not giving me a quick relief and I am writing it whilst I await their arrival and the report from my Company Sergeant Major - The joyous report ‘Relief Complete Sir’ on no account must he forget the 'Sir'. Mine never does but that is not my fault. He knows he is a better man than I am (and so do I) but he also knows that I must be addressed as 'Sir' (and so do I) and there it is. I will then 'phone the same glad tidings to Battalion HQ and Hook it being of course last to leave. Battalion HQ will do the same when they receive similar tidings from the other three Companies to their Brigade HQ and they will do the same to Divisional HQ. I have been relieved. I depart now to a place which is misnamed Rest Billet. It is a billet all right but the rest part of it I am still looking for.

In fact the lack of rest for a long period is one of the things which cause men to congratulate their comrades when they get what is known here as a Blighty Wound. That is one which is sufficiently serious to ensure that a man goes back to England. 'Blighty' is the slang name commonly used over the whole British front for Brighton and other South Coast places where wounded go. Therefore a Blighty one means one which takes a man to Blighty. Another expression commonly used by NCOs when checking men for undue and unsafe exposure is - Now then - 'you know you have been ordered not to look for souvenirs here'. The men's passion for souvenirs is extraordinary. I have seen seven or eight men with shovels digging like mad for splinters and nose caps in ground that is still being shelled. And very unwilling they were to obey me when I ordered them away too. I have also seen a scrimshanker who has been stretcher borne to Hospital jump off the stretcher and hook it for the cellar when the Hospital was hit by a shell.

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I wish you all the best of luck in this New Year and I sincerely hope it will end more peacefully than it opened for me. Please do not communicate the contents of this to Press or Public or reproduce it. These Censor people are so erratic that one never knows now what one may write or not. We had one man's letter returned to us by the Censor for 'Disciplinary Action please'. The only phrase in it to which exception might be taken was 'I am just out of the trenches and have got the hell of a bad cold'. I can't see what that contains which might be described as 'information likely to be of use to the enemy', in view of the fact that we can hear each other wading in water and sneezing and coughing they must know we come out of the trenches some time and in fact they know and we know pretty well when those opposing us are relieved, because there are minute differences in conduct of different units. For instance, they probably know when I come in that I never send up Very lights. Ours are not nearly as good as theirs and of course if I send the things up it is a declaration that I have no patrols out and so if they go up the Bosch knows I have no one out and if I don't send them up he probably would send out a strong patrol to lie and wait for mine and start a damnable war between lines which always results in loss and no gain. Whereas, if I never send things it keeps them uneasy all the time and they do the sending up themselves which of course tells me that they have no one out and then when they cease sending up and have no machine guns going I know they have someone out in front and I sweep my front with machine gun fire. A careful study of the foregoing will give you an idea of what keeping the enemy under observation means. Anything they do has to be noted and reported and thought over. One theorises and thinks and tries to meet and check and counteract every move all the time. It really is a most exciting and interesting study if it did not carry with it the routine work of company running. A Subaltern has a most enviable time if he is keen. ... (January 1916)

Document 4: Journal of Julius Woods [D2238/1]

Corporal Julius Woods, 1/5 Battalion, The King’s Regiment, was still on the southern end of the British line in the Bethune area.

Today, New Year's day!! Though we are all joking and exchanging the season's compliments as we get dressed for 'physical' a casual prophecy by one of the boys causes a temporary halt in our hilarity !! Following on after breakfast the customary

- 8 - rifle inspection completes the day's parades - this out of compliment to it being New Year's Day. The day itself is raw and coldish but this rather adds to our pleasure in the game of football between sides out of our own company.

My afternoon programme - a visit to Bethune -had to be cut out owing to my being 'warned' for Quarter Guard next day. This meant of course spending the rest of the day cleaning and polishing up. Preparing for 'Quarter Guard' is a job which licks into a frazzle any other sort of 'cleaning up' known in army life. No bride could extend more care on her trousseau than does a soldier, so warned, on his gear, rifle, clothes, hair and boots. This Quarter Guard business, especially the thought of CSM's inspection and the RSM's half-hour drilling of us to follow, put years on me. That night I put my gear etc. away almost as carefully as a jeweller puts his valuable stock away. (1 January 1916)

Rose at 6.00am viz one hour before reveille and put the finishing touches to my gear. By now I am in a high state of the fidgets. Breakfast and then parade at 8.30 am to the courtyard where the Guard is mounted and the Old Guard dismounted. Our CSM inspects and readjusts little straps here and there about us for in fact no man entering an exhibit at a dog show could have shown more care over us than did our CSM.

9 .15 am signified the arrival of the 'Lord High Admiral' the RSM himself, as the music hall bills put it when referring to some particularly important turn. What are we in the eyes of an RSM? Victims! Nothing more or less than hapless victims awaiting to be put on the rack. No eastern potentate even with all his majesty and power ever wielded the authority, as understood by us, that an RSM holds. A sharp biting command and the ball, to be kept rolling for a full half-hour, started. We did 'presents' .... too slow! too fast!! too anything but the right one. The terrors of the 'line' were as nothing compared to this half hour, at the end of which we felt we were just about ripe for the lunatic asylum.

The arrival of his 'Serene Highness' in the person of the Adjutant was really looked upon by us as a happy release. We passed the inspection and customary drill associated with Guard Mounting with - well nearly eulogies from the adjutant. 10.15 am saw us through - and still living.

Our post, on the main road leading into Bethune, seemed that day to be infested with 'armed parties' passing and repassing. Colonels (including the customary turning out of the full guard for our own colonel's inspection) roamed to and fro with disquieting

- 9 - frequency. We did two hours on with four off and as we had but a poor Guard room (a too well ventilated stable) our well stocked brazier in view of it raining proved very welcome both to us and the boys 'doing time'. Hereon though, unless very bad cases, the occupants of the clink had in the past on New Year's Day been pardoned and released by the CO. Today however there were two occupants 'in the Jug’. The day passed as all days do and will. The night though wet and disagreeable was easy. One of the boys doing Field Punishment No 1 had the 'irons' put on him prior to bedding down for the night. (2 January 1916)

The getting cleaned up ready to parade for 'Guard Dismounting' was easy in view of the fact that our gear was of course already clean and furthermore, as with most 'Quarter Guards', most of our four hours offs had been spent, to fill in time, touching matters up. Dismounted and dismissed without a flaw. The morning was inclined to be wet which fact helped and quickened the 'Guard Dismounting' business. Later in the day the weather cleared. Of course as is the battalion custom the recently dismounted men were free of all morning parades and as no parades are ordered for the afternoon we really were off for the day.

Today on the strength of one of our 'clique' proceeding at midnight on 'leave' we have a couple of buckshee feeds of chips and eggs. These feeds now pan out at 1.40 francs, in fact chocolates too are going up in price and the chocs are more dry cocoa than those made by British firms. We give the departing B Company 'leave men' a rally when at 1O.30pm they leave the billet to go to the appointed rendezvous somewhere in Bethune. How they carry our minds away with them. (3 January 1916)

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Please note all the documents used in this blog have been edited for clarity and, in some cases abridged. For more information on the documents and PRONI’s sources relating to the First World War see our Guide to First World War Sources.

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