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

August/September 1916

After the first terrible day on the Somme, the British army’s offensive continued throughout the summer months of 1916. Successive assaults were made on the German positions along the Front with troops from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India taking part. In September, the 16th (Irish) Division launched attacks on the villages of Guillemont and Ginchy. More than 4,000 men fell in these assaults. Elsewhere the major Russian offensive in the East ground to a halt and in the south the Italian army launched successful attacks on Austro-Hungarian positions on the Isonzo line at Gorizia.

Letter 1: D3503/5/1 – Letter to Corporal George Hackney of Belfast, serving with the Royal Irish Rifles, from Reverend John Pollock, of St Enoch’s Presbyterian Church, concerning his son Paul’s death at the Somme on 1st July 1916.

3rd August 1916.

My dear George,

Since leaving home three weeks ago I have had no heart to write to anyone, so that you are not an exception. We feel that there is now nothing but the very faintest likelihood of our dear boy turning up, and the suspense has given place to a sense of bitter bereavement. At the same time we do not forget that we gave Paul for the noblest of causes, and he most enthusiastically gave himself. The present war is, on our part, ‘for the defence of the gospel’, the protection, advancement and consolidation of the kingdom of God. That being so, I would rather have my son’s body in an unmarked grave, having done his duty, than sitting beside me here, having shirked it. I never honoured you and your comrades at the front so much as I do now. And God will richly reward you. There is no heresy in that conviction!

Accept of our united thanks for your great kindness. Your letter was just like you. Though it was not answered promptly, it was acted upon without delay. Mr Smith and

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Elsie called each of them on part of your list. The addresses were all visited, but no definite information was gained. From information received through my notice in the press, we have reason to believe that Paul was so seriously wounded by shrapnel that he must have died before he could be attended to, and not more than fifty yards from our lines but away from the Y.C.V position. His body has not been found, the entire ground having been ploughed up by explosives. Of course we still cling to the hope that his may be one of the wonderful cases of reappearance after long suspense.

Mother was bearing up wonderfully when I saw her last, which was very shortly before leaving home. May you be spared to see her, and she to see you!

With united affectionate regards,

Ever yours,

John Pollock

Letter 2: D/3503/5/4/2 – Letter to George Hackney from Nellie McCotter, from London, who was serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps.

30th August 1916

My Dear George,

I was very pleased to get your letter this morning (at present I am at Hale Common, Farnham, nr Aldershot, so your letter went from Mortimer House to Charlwood St & on here. I often wondered where you were & how you were getting along since the great & glorious charge of the Ulster Division, you bet your boot I felt as proud as a peacock when I read all about it later. I would have been at hand to help the boys who were bowled out, but only the young & fresh are allowed the privilege of going on active service. Wish I was 20 years younger, I’d be near the firing line. Our Div. Got an awful slaughtering, but not a man showed the white feather, ‘Carson’s goose steppers’ made a name for themselves which any regt. might be proud of. A friend wrote me that the Nationalist papers were dumb on the subject. The enclosed cutting I cut from the Post &

- 3 - had it sent in to Arthur on the 6th not knowing then that he had been put out of action on the way up, bit of shrapnel through the shoulder & me of the R.A.M.C me turned him, the letter was returned to me last week; so the cutting may interest you or some of the boys. Arthur was in a number of Hospitals before going to a Convalescent Camp at Eastbourne & on the 15th inst he & a number of the Ulster Division boys crossed to Belfast on leave. I saw Y.C.V. on the shoulder of one of the boys. All seemed in good form, I had a couple of hrs with Arthur, he expected to be sent back to the Ulster Div base at Ballykinlar until further orders. A big number suffer from shell shock. Lieut. A. Wallace was sent home, has got another mths leave & is at some Eng. Sea port. It wd do you good to get sent over to Eng. or Ireland for a while not much chance of a cure within sound of the guns.....Letters just in from Steele, the boy I thought had been done for. I nursed him at Fring 1914 & have been writing & sending an odd paper since he went to the Front last year, he has been attached to another Batt. & so did not get the papers but said the boys had maybe more need of them that he had. I do hope to hear a good account of your mother from your Aunt, I expect she is longing for a sight of you and surely they will send you home for a wee rest soon. Have just heard Arthur is at Ballykinlar, he will probably be sent out with a draft soon. I pity all you boys when I turn into my comfy bed every night, we do not half realise all our men are doing to keep us safe here in Eng. The Rumanians joining the Allies has given the enemy a bad turn & it looks jolly like as if Tino will have to follow suit, the Bulgars & Turks must feel jolly sick now that they ever trusted the gentle Hun & Austria. Well we have got the whip hand now & must keep it up until Germany is stripped bare, no peace until they have paid for all their deeds of destruction. Unfortunately we cannot take a Hun life for every foul murder done by them, but they must be made to pay in some way. I am scribbling this in my pts room & feel very ashamed when I look at your copperplate writing from the trenches at 11pm.

With many good wishes & most sincerely hoping that you will get home for a spell.

Yours sincerely,

Nellie McCotter

I have two nephews at the front somewhere, one is in the R.A.M.C Dr Norman Davidson & the other Chaplain R.C. Mackeown you may have come across them sometime.

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Letter 3: D3835/E/2/10/23 – General Oliver Nugent to his wife. 2nd August 1916. Nugent continued to correspond with his wife on a daily basis throughout the war and we have more than 40 letters between the two for the period August and September 1916. The letters cover all aspects of his service commanding the 36th (Ulster) Division and in them we can see the frustrations and satisfactions that he experienced during this stage of the War.

Dearest,

Just as I was sitting down in my shirtsleeves to write to you yesterday evening the Corps Commander came along and kept me till the post had gone, hence no letter.

The heat is overpowering. We have to shut up the house by closing all the shutters during the day to keep the heat and glare out. The dust is very bad and the trenches are simply overpowering. I spent a long day there yesterday and did not get back to nearly 5 p.m.

I am staying in this...to get some letters done. I have just said goodbye to Arthur. I feel very lonely without him. I shall miss him terribly. We shall all miss him on the HQ staff. He was a perfect Camp Commandant and everybody liked him....Arthur was very sorry to leave but we agreed that he could not remain as an ADC when his regiment was finished as a complete unit out here.

I think we are at a deadlock at the present on the Somme. It is just a question of who can afford the losses longest. It is....a question of killing now. The Germans are probably killing more of us than we are killing of them, though from all accounts we are killing lots of Germans. I hear Delville Wood is simply covered with dead Germans and the conditions in it are beyond imagination....

I feel that if we had failed in our duty 2 years ago we could never have held our head up again amongst the nations and we should have reaped the first record of our treachery before losing. Germany would have finished France and Russia by now and after a period of preparation would have turned on us.

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StG sent me a copy of the Eton OTC Orders in which Corporal Nugent to Company Sergt...appears. He has done very well and I hope too he has got his Certificate. His exam paper would have defeated me entirely, even in English history. I had a letter from Mrs. Clements of Ashford asking after one of her people, but I could get no information except that he is missing. He may be a prisoner, but if he is, they will hear soon through the U.S. Ambassador.

Love to you all.....

Ever yours,

O.

Letter 4: D3835/E/2/10/24 – General Oliver Nugent to his wife. 3rd August 1916. In this letter Nugent expresses his exasperation at a letter he received from the Grand Master of the Orange Order in Belfast saying he would rather have more brethren joining up than their regards. Already, so soon after the Division went into battle and suffering such grevious losses, Nugent is expressing his concerns that the ‘Irishness’ of the Division will be diluted with replacements from Britain. This is a recurring theme in Nugent’s correspondence in the weeks and months following the attack on July 1st.

Dearest,

I got a letter from the Grand Master of Belfast Orangemen saying the Brethren were proud of the Division and that their hearts went out to them. I thought this was about the limit, considering that none of them are enlisting, so I replied that if their bodies accompanied their hearts, it would be much more to the point. I think it is sheer impertinence to write flapdoodle of that kind at the present time.

I did not visit the trenches today but went to the 2nd Army School of instruction near St. Omer instead to see what I could pick up in the way of hints for my school. I have got Colonel Pakenham staying here for a couple of days which I think is very nice of me, but

- 6 - he has not been well and may have to go home at any rate for a time. He is a really nice man and I like him and he is a great friend of Somerset’s.

It isn’t quite so bad today but very sultry but not the fearful sun of yesterday.

Kennerley Romford is working in a Motor Ambulance close to here. I shall ask him to sing at my Follies one night. We have quite a good troupe now who perform nightly to appreciative audiences.

The Italians have got over the Isonzo at last after battering at Gorizia for over a year. This is a good stroke and they may get Trieste now. The Russians seem to have to have gained in the south where they are opposed to the Austrians. Only where the Germans hold the trenches we make no progress. One must give the brutes the credit for being determined fighters.

Nevertheless William (Kaiser Wilhelm) and his little boys should be paraded in chains around every capital in Europe branded for what they are.

Good luck and Love to you all.

Ever yours,

O.

Letter 5: D3835/E/2/10/37 – General Oliver Nugent to his wife. 21st August 1916.

Dearest,

No news today, except that as you will have seen for yourself we seem to have had a setback at the Somme.

The weather has taken up again and is bright and warm. Nothing doing on this side. No post today or at any rate nothing for me.

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My institution of CO’s visits is quite a success. They all seem to enjoy themselves and like the peace and surroundings. I get a chance of knowing them too better than if only I see them in the trenches.

The Corps Commander, Hamilton Gordon, came to lunch. Food is wasted on him I fear he has no taste and can’t tell any difference between bootlaces and macaroni.

I wonder if St G. has got his gun stock back yet. I wrote to my mother and told her all about the King’s visit and my conversation with him and how he looked and what he eat and how the Prince of Wales looked. She will be thrilled to the very marrow, and how she will love telling everyone that the King is very fond of her son – He commands the Ulstermen – They were in the battle – They won’t have Home Rule.

The hardest thing I have to do now is to apportion the recommendations for rewards. There are only a limited number they will allot to each Division and there are 3 times as many cases deserving reward as there are decorations. So much depends on how Cos word their accounts. Some who can’t write grammatical English would never get a reward for their men because they can’t describe the occurrences. Others write vivid stories which are too picturesque to be entirely true and then one has to sort them so each battalion gets its fair share. I’m still at it.

Ever yours,

O.

Letter 6: D 3835/E/2/10/38. General Oliver Nugent to his wife. August 22nd 1916.

Dearest,

We had the devil of a thunderstorm last night. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking the Boche were on us.

I went to the trenches today by a shorter road than I usually travel but which unfortunately was in view of the German lines in places. The Boche evidently spotted us

- 8 - and shelled the road for half an hour for where they must have thought the car was. We were not there but on the way back the road was pitted with shell holes and broken branches where he had sent his affectionate love and best wishes. I don’t think I will use that road again. It isn’t good enough...

I think we shall not get much more hot weather. We are slowly creeping up to Thiepval after nearly 2 months fighting and we thought we were going to get it in the 1st day’s attack. We are strategically optimistic and were very ignorant.

I wish they would make us up again to strength. We shall not get another chance again until we are made up. The recruiting in Ulster is an utter frost. No one took any trouble to give the party I sent home a welcome and in Belfast they did not even know we had sent a party. The people we wrote to had done nothing.

Such a shame and I am so angry about it. I loathe the people of Belfast.

Love to you all

Ever yours,

O.

Letter 7: D3835/E/2/11/5. Nugent to his wife. 10th September 1916. In this letter we see again Nugent’s concerns regarding manpower in the British Army and the effect the War is having on individual officers’ state of mind.

Dearest,

It seems to me that events may so shape themselves within the next two months as to induce the Germans to ask for terms before Xmas. If it doesn’t we are pretty sure to have another year of war.

I sincerely hope we shall refuse to discuss any terms which will give Germany a chance of making another war for long years to come. I would rather leave my bones in France

- 9 - than see a peace which will be no peace. Moreover I want to see all the conscripts of Britain drilled and disciplined and I want to see a number of them out here in the field. There will be nothing like it to train the men of Great Britain to be good men and to purge them of the vices and excrescences of centuries of taking no part in the wars of the Empire. When one thinks of France with practically none left of her able bodied men, except those in the trenches, one feels we have not yet done our full share.

One also realises how many there are amongst compulsory service men who are temperamentally unfit for service in the field. I have more cases than one would like of having to recommend officers to be dismissed the service because their nerves won’t stand the shocks. I feel sorry for them sometimes because I have to see them all before I recommend their discharge. Some are overwhelmed with shame, others seem only too thankful to get out of it. Some implore me for the sake of their wives or fathers and mothers not to recommend them to be sent home. One has to harden one’s heart and think only of the service.

I hope if St G. goes into the Army and sees service that he won’t be too highly strung. Wouldn’t it be awful. However it’s not the highly strung ones that fail. It’s the ones with no strings at all....Goodnight my dearest,

Ever yours

O.

Letter 8: D3835/E/2/10. Nugent to his wife. 17th September 1916

....’ We made 2 raids the night before last on the Germans, both very successful. We killed a lot and took prisoners and only lost 2 men. Audley Pratt’s battalion did one of them. The men are very pleased in consequence. I must write to St G. and give him more particulars of them.

Yesterday I gave a part of the German trenches from which they have been giving me great annoyance a real doing, 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon. I had every big gun I could borrow 9’’, 6’’ and 4.7’’. I looked on and it was most pleasing to see

- 10 - the German trenches and dugouts going up into the air, trenches and beams and corrugated iron and one German who went up like a Catherine wheel and came down more or less in pieces onto their wire where he was hanging all day yesterday. The Boche made no response which is most unusual and I can’t think what they are up to. I fully expect something awful in a day or two.’

Letter 9: D3809. Tom Kettle. 7 August 1916.

Thomas Michael "Tom" Kettle was an Irish economist, journalist, barrister, writer, poet, soldier and Home Rule politician. As a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, he was MP for East Tyrone from 1906 to 1910 at Westminster. In 1913, Kettle joined the Irish Volunteers. On the outbreak of the First World War, Kettle enlisted and joined the 9th Royal Dublin Fusiliers, of the 16th Irish Division. He took part in the Division’s attack on Ginchy and was killed in action on 9th September 1916.

My dear McLaughlin

What a kind thought of you to write, and what an awfully kind letter, and what super excellent cigars! I am now smoking one of them in a great ease in a reserve line dug-out which is a model of luxury, we actually have a real straw mattress instead of the empty ammunition boxes on which we last rested. We moved out of the front line yesterday, alas! to return too soon. On the whole, however, we had very few losses and an easy time. Except for heat, grime, insects, and rats, that is to say. I have arranged, or am arranging, to write some article for the Daily Mail (E.A.A. is looking after it for me) and I want you to take the descriptive part of them in lieu in a long personal letter. You cannot imagine two things: first, the extraordinary pleasure of getting a letter from home, redolent of Dublin, and second the awful labour of writing one back. One is really quite disgraceful tired. It is, I fancy, the result of so much night-work.

About things in Ireland I agree lots to [] until the whole drift of your letter. You may be entirely happy in the consciousness that you and I did the exactly right thing. The Sinn

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Fein nightmare upset me a little, but then if you tickle the ear of a short –tempered elephant with a pop gun, and he walks on you that is a natural concatenation of events. We took the side of justice, we did the right thing, we helped to bring North and South together. You made your sacrifices and I mine, and our work remains. If I return I count in doing same little work in exactly the direction you have in mind. The superb work of the Ulster Division and the changed attitude of Sir Edward C.[arson] fill me with cheerfulness. Does it not seem exactly as if the right thing happened at last, as if English statesmanship had thrown down its cards, and left the two great Irish parties to come to a settlement? Of course I must rebuke your strain of writing about yourself. Your brother’s blood is heavy sacrifice enough, and I meet here at every turn men who would not be here but for the labours of you and the organisation you created I myself am quite extraordinarily happy. If it should come my way to die I shall sleep well in the France I always loved, and shall know that I have done something towards bringing to birth the Ireland one has dreamed of. I must close now with the very sincerest thanks and good wishes. Ever yours T.M. Kettle. 9/R. Dub. Fus. B.E.F.

Letter 10: D2794. William Montgomery. 26 September 1916

In the Field. "... I seem to have been drawing, drawing, drawing and writing, writing, writing for weeks. Some of drawing was very interesting - enlargement from Aeroplane Photographs to scale of enemy defences and laying same out full size on field for purpose of practising a projected operation. You will be glad to hear the operation came off and was a complete success thereby bringing this Battalion further honour and I think at least 3 more M.C.s and 2 D.C.M.s. The 'Operators' told me subsequent to their success that my dummy trenches were almost uncanly accurate. I become, as time goes on, more certain that my pen (which I hate) is more powerful than my sword. I think it must always be so. ... I am quite near a fairly large town which contains several really

- 12 - good enterprising shops who cater especially for us. I attended a lecture there a few days ago - a 'Causes of War' lecture - (that is not what it is called but it is what it was). It was attended by officers and N.C.O.s of 3 Corps and was given by a famous professor of History from one of our best known Varsities. Marvellous lecture to a very much more marvellous audience. Afterwards 10 of us dined in a new restaurant just opened by a French gentlewoman who has a thorough and refined knowledge of the best uses of both French and English Society. Consequently the place has already come to be known as a Home from Home amongst us. Brave plucky woman, she has not heard of her husband for 3 months except the dread 'missing'. We all agreed as we rode the 8 miles back to our billets that we had had the best evening we have had in this [? line] since we came to the war. I am sending you the corks from the containers of the 2 libations which were pored - one to the success of your new Coy, and the other - 'miscellaneous' - To the health of our brother Captain of the French Infantry wearing the Cross of the Legion of Honour. (They always wear their orders). We are supposed to when we enter French Areas but don't. To the health of a good friend of mine - a famous Chief of Staff. (I heard from my C.O. next day that he was unwell that morning). To Major Woods because he said it was his birthday and so on and so on. Don't for a moment think it was a party in the nature of what one of our newly joined subalterns gave as a reason for asking for a day's leave - our 'debauch' - fact - that's the kind we are getting now. All long words and little of either knowledge or wisdom. It wasn't that. It was merely quite a natural joyous party the day after we came out and had bathed and fed and got our clothes off and slept without having one eye opened and both nostrils keenly alerted for a certain smell. On 23rd inst the recipients of Immediate honours in our Division were paraded and their ribbons were pinned on by our Corps Commander literally 'in the Field'. Emmie has or should have my ribbon by now. You, who have in your time seen such gorgeous scenes of colours and light and differences in dress and race and politics and creeds and morals would have loved to have added this to your memories apart altogether from your personal feeling and interest - only colours here were the Union Jack - Staff Red - Green Grass - Khaki - and leather - and the flicker of bayonets as they sloped, presented and ordered. All Arms of the Service were represented and about 100 Staff Officers accompanied or followed the G.O.C. on to the Field. Each reason for the Award was read out in a loud voice after the recipient's name. The victim, on his name being called, started to march from one side of a hollow square across the open side past the table at

- 13 - which he was halted, saluted, and stood fast salute in each case was punctiliously returned by the G.O.C. who stepped forward and pinned the ribbon on, at the same time, saying a word or two to each recipient and subsequently shaking hands. Recipient saluted and marched across to right. When all had been decorated, the parade headed by our V.C. (a rifle man, Quigg) D.S.O.s, M.C.s, Military Medals marched past the G.O.C. and Staff being led past by a gorgeous brass band. It doesn't look much when committed to paper, but anyone who has seen one in the Field never never forgets it. There is of course no cheering or any demonstration of any kind, which makes it very much more effective. The Record of the Award is very much fuller (quite lengthy in fact) than the abbreviated wording in the Gazette. The Record is filed in the Case of an officer with his other papers at the War Office and as far as I know is not available during his life and seldom otherwise. Mine was awful. You wouldn't have known your son if you had heard it, neither would mother. When about the 3rd paragraph had been read out my Brigadier shifted his ground so that he got right opposite to me to see my face. I fear he so far forgot the dignity of their occasion as to make faces at me whilst I was giving quite a good imitation of our New Army standing at attention, all this whilst the ribbon pin was in eminent danger of getting pushed into my heart by the Corps Commander. My Brigadier is a great soldier and also possesses absolute recklessness and more than a strong sense of humour. My trench duty roster cards haven't turned up yet. I expect them almost any day now. I enclose herewith a band programme I heard yesterday sitting comfortably on our parade ground quite like home it was except that as an additional attraction 7 or 8 of our planes were up and were being shelled by the HUN. Extraordinary war this. ... Berry's letter contained some very interesting news as to how another of my glorious Lewis Gunners went out - Died of wounds in a HUN Dressing Station as Berry says talking of the dependance Captain Montgomery put in him making good with his gun. Berry ascertained (he doesn't say how) that this chap Williamson after both he and his gun were severely wounded, started back for our line with the remains of his gun. His No. 2 was killed. He didn't make it however. It is wonderful what a word on just the right note if one can find will do with these fellows. That Gun Section 1 N.C.O. and 12 men are fixed as follows - 2 D.C.M.s 1 Cross of St George 4th Class of Russia (the Russian V.C.) already bestowed and another D.C.M. coming in next list. 3 certain killed, 3 missing, 3 wounded since rejoined. And I have quite as good a crowd again now, if not better I am very particular about my Gun Teams. I threw a regular

- 14 - soldier out yesterday with 13 years service, because he flinched when a trench mortar burst near him. That wasn't what he lost his stripe for but it was the reason he lost it. One Lewis Gun if really determinedly well fought can hold up anything up to 7,000 troops. I have seen it only with the HUN Machine Gun. My C.O. is in command of the Brigade at present during the Brigadier's absence on leave. I think it is a case of 'coming events'. I hope so, if he will take me with him, not otherwise. I would like a Staff Captain's job for the winter. I won't get it as our C.O. as his Battalion Company Commanders who have survived almost 12 months continuously in the front line (in and out) don't get away easily. I am now not only the only Company Commander who has done it but the only office in the Battalion. The other survivors didn't have to get their sleep there which just makes all the difference. I haven't even had a course. I asked the C.O. the other day when I was going on one a he said - go on a course indeed! go to hell - nice polite friendly person he is, but Soldier - he did end up by telling me that any time I really needed a course I could go on any one I liked for just the asking. Mother will know this C.O. knows men because that 'just for the asking' is a perfect masterpiece. The little ugly devil just plays with the inside of us and that is what has made this Battalion what it is. Those that cannot play on he doesn't keep - voila tout. ...". Letter concludes with family messages.

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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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