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

September 1915

Fighting continued on the Eastern Front, where the Germans and Austrian made significant advances, and in . In the West, the Allies launched major offensives in the Artois and Champagne regions. The main British operation, the , began on 25th September and lasted until mid October.

Document 1: Letters of Captain Arthur Herdman [T2510/1]

Arthur Herdman, from Bangor, County Down, was an officer with 13th Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles, part of 36th (Ulster) Division, which was training in the south of .

Dearest Mother

We are back here again testing a new optical sight of S D Neills, very hard to adjust. I fired about 60 rounds yesterday and my shoulder was sore. Nana sent me the housewife and a gunmetal cigarette case. I stayed in camp Monday and Tuesday and on Wednesday I went to Liphook to see Mr Triggs and Mr Ricardo as Aunty Crow asked me to. They have a very nice house like R/E’s only bigger/ I am to go for anything I like, a bath or dinner, just to go. I hear cameras are absolutely forbidden at the front and I am going to risk it but I can’t send the films back till someone takes them out of . I shall write for new ones to you under the name of ------and put it in a sock or something. I shall let you know where I am by your tip of a dot over the letters. All we know is we go to the new part of the line the British have taken over, South West of Ypres. The King is to inspect us on Tuesday. We have to march nine miles to Review Ground and back. I have had to run up to Camp five times on the bike today. On Thursday, I wanted to go to town for 20 mile ride but the Colonel refused. After a 12 mile march I asked for the afternoon and he agreed. I took the bike to Aldershot, 12 miles in 20 minutes. To find my way to the station, I stopped to ask the way and William Hurst came up. No time to talk, he was going out 4.30. Went to Cordings got a heavy waterproof for trenches with detachable fleece lining to be made and sent for from France. It cost £7-10-0/ Then boots, I ended up in Faulkner’s, their trench boots a copy of ------fishing ones; I ordered a pair £5-5-0. Then to Stores and got sou’wester, putties, revolver lanyard. I started to find Gladys Smythe. By the way I got a nice letter

- 2 - from R.E. in reply to mine saying he would do all he could for me upon his return. Got to Earls Court for Sinclair Road. I forgot the number of the house. I spent half an hour and had three boys, a Tommy and a hotel proprietor working for me. I at last found it. They were very nice. I asked for the girls to dine but Doris was too tired so Gladys and I went off 7.45 (no tea) and dinner out of the question if we wanted to see anything. Got a tap for The Man who Stayed at Home. Denis Eadie was fine. A good supper at the ---- and I caught the 12.15 for Aldershot. 1.30 got the bike and got back 2.15. On Friday Robin arrived while I was paying the boy. I asked him to dine later and he stayed and cracked. I got to bed fairly early. Expect to write tomorrow. [27 September 1915]

Document 2: Diary of Lillian Spender [D1633/2/20]

Lillian Spender and her husband Captain Wilfrid Spender were still in the south of England where the 36th (Ulster) Division was completing its training prior to deployment to France in .

Last Friday W. got home quite early in the afternoon and took Ivy and me out on to the Downs in the car to see the entrenching the Division has been doing on Hobbs' Hawth. We went quite a long way on the grass and then got out and walked across the valley and up on to Hobbs' Hawth and explored the trenches. They are all 7 feet deep or more, and the Sappers' trenches are most elaborate and contain spacious dugouts roofed with planks and heather and furze and furnished with broad turf seats. Of course one met chalked up everywhere the familiar legends. ‘No Popery’, ‘No Pope here’, ‘No Home Rule for Ireland’, &c/, &c! The whole hill is covered with a maze of trenches, and it was most fascinating wandering through them and seeing mock machine-gun emplacements with the real thing close by, and carefully concealed/ 0 [10 September 1915\

On Thursday, 30 September 1915, the King came down to review the Ulster Division, and the day the day before Sir George Richardson, who commanded the original Ulster Volunteers and still commands what is left of them, came to stay with us for it. He and Wolf were delighted to meet again and had much to talk over of old days, and the ‘rebellion’/ Next morning Wolf had to go off very early to the Parade Ground, which was about seven miles away, and Sir George and I followed later in one of Captain Richardson's cars. We had a rather adventurous ride, as the man did not know the way and took us right over the moor, where there was hardly even a cart tract, and we got

- 3 - mixed up with the mules and ammunition carts and had to go lunging over the heather to avoid them. We stuck in the thick peaty mud and were nearly bounced out of the car altogether. However, eventually we reached the place were Sir George's horse was waiting for him, and there he mounted, and I drove on to the ground. The King's horse was waiting there too, a beautiful nearly black charger, stepping proudly round under the Royal Standard, which the groom who was leading him held above him. I found lots of people I knew on the ground and joined Miss Scott-Kerr, a most delightful Scotchwoman who lives here, a friend of Ivy's, and by now of mine also.

The Division was drawn up in Review Order on a stretch of open moor forming a natural amphitheatre, sloping slightly down from where we stood; quite ideal for its purpose and very beautiful too. Wolf chose it, of course! and was much complimented on his choice. We got splendid places exactly at the point where the King and his suite rode on to the ground, and I could have stroked his horse, he passed so close to where I stood. He looked very well and extremely cheerful, very different from when I saw him at Chatham this time last year. Kitchener was with him, which was a great compliment to the Division, as he had already inspected them at Seaford. The last Division that was here he never inspected at all.

They all rode round inspecting the lines, and then drew up at the Saluting Base and watched the Division march past in half companies. It was the best march past I've ever seen, not one check, and not one gap. Colonel Fitzgerald, the King's Private Secretary, said they marched past ‘like the Guards on parade’/ Wolf was away at one end marshalling the troops, so it was mainly due to him and to the excellence of his previous arrangements. Everybody was congratulating him, both to me and to him, afterwards. Colonel Russell said to me it was the best march past he'd ever seen, and that all the King's suite were saying the same thing, and added, pointing to Wolf, ‘the credit is all due to him’, which of course was true, but it was nice of him to say so/

During the march past the King sent for Sir George and had quite a long talk with him. He said the Division was splendid, and that he was delighted with them, and when Sir George asked if he might put that in Orders he said, ‘Yes, certainly- do so by all means’/ At the end you should have heard the cheer the Ulstermen gave H.M. Wolf, at the far end of the ground, had some difficulty in stopping them once they'd begun! Altogether it was

- 4 - a most glorious success, and the weather was fine too, though not sunny. Sir George came back to lunch with us and left soon after. I was so delighted that the King sent for him, and it was most edifying to see H/M/ and the ‘rebel Chief’ gravely conversing together! Everyone who talked to the King said he seemed extraordinarily cheerful about the War and appeared to think that the Germans are pretty nearly ready to ask for peace and that their men won't face another winter campaign. I wonder. [30 September 1915].

Ambulance presented by the Ulster Women's Unionist Council for use in France [D1098/2/7/1]

Document 3: : Journal of Julius Woods

Corporal Julius Woods from Birkenhead in Cheshire served throughout the War with 1/5 Battalion, The King’s Liverpool Regiment. In the autumn of 1915 his unit was stationed in the Givenchy sector on the southern end of the British line.

Givenchy Maddox Street-Givenchy Reserve-Oxford Street-Conduit Street

Fritz 'lobbed them over' right through the 'stand-to' period (2.45/4.00 am). Being able to see the trench mortars in the dawn light and being able to take precautions

- 5 - accordingly we, after the experience of dodging them or rather fancying we were dodging them through the darkness of the past night, were able to laugh at them. Breakfast, which was heartily enjoyed, was a meal most of us had never expected we would be spared to enjoy.

At 2 pm we were relieved (in more ways than one) and moved across into a reserve line (Oxford Street and Conduit Street). The dugouts here were a welcome surprise to the dog-holes we had got used to. Life here in comparison to 'Maddox Street' was a picnic. At night we were able to have fires going in the dugout without fear of molestation from Jerry other than the usual night 'bumping'. To celebrate the change of quarters we had a nice little supper of our own making of toast, tea and numerous cigarettes. Having no candles entertainment was provided in the form of exchanging rumours and yarns, also talking about the progress of 'leave' - the latter always sure of everybody's attention. Furnishing only gas and cross-communication-trench sentry posts almost worked out to a full night's sleep. Of course, we had as a mere matter of routine, the am 'stand-to'. [Thursday, 9 September 1915]

Givenchy Reserve Trench-Oxford Street-Conduit Street-Marylebone Road

Selected for breakfast and ration fatigue always carried with it, as a sort of perquisite, a drink of tea from the company's cooker - situated a few yards from the exit of the communication trench and sheltered from old Fritz's view by being conveniently placed close up behind one of the numerous deserted houses.

Also we could and did work-in a wash. Though the footing in the trenches was often rough and insecure and, in wet weather, very treacherous, seldom, if at all, did it happen that the couples carrying the box dixies of tea or dinner-stew would 'come down'. There would have been murder done if anybody had come back with the information that through a spill in the trench the platoon's grub had 'gone west'. Again at 2.00 pm today we are relieved and take over ‘Marylebone Road'/ We are here doing ordinary trench duties until Sunday morning September 12th using 'mine' dugouts. Bread here has proved very scarce but we have been able to supplement the army issue by sending out and buying French bread in Beuvry. Against this, it is a long way to have to go for drinking water, viz Harley Street, a matter of 3 km there and back. [Friday 10 September 1915] ...

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Givenchy Marylebone Road-Cuinchy-Cuinchy Fortress

At 10.30 am today Sunday, we are relieved and move to Cuincy Fortress, which is more of an abandoned farm than a fortress as the name infers. These last few days has seen us have it quite cushy as this new position is only a 'support point'. The papers just to hand in the mail point to football going on at home almost as if there were no war on - well there isn't a war on for some people. We also read of fabulous weekly wages being paid to people working in comparative safety on munitions which has given birth to the new and fitting phrase of 'they get a £1 per day for making shells and we get a bob a day for stopping them.' I suppose this though is all in the game. There will be quite a host of newly rich if only the war lasts long enough. But to cheer us up we have it in the same paper that a deaf and dumb girl, suddenly recovering the full use of her faculties, has prophesied in her very first use of her speech that the war will come to a sudden unexpected termination on 17th September this year. This piece of Old Moore-ism is received by some of the boys as ‘gospel truth', on the other hand it is ridiculed as being too great a blow against the hefty well paid munitions workers. However, we will await with interest the dawning of the 17th - if we are alive. One cannot go with safety too far ahead in the calendar these days.

Tonight sees us humping bales, each of 750 sand bags, from Harley Street to 'Machinegun House' a little shack close up in front of the fortress. We use the trolley mono railway to yank these down. As a whole this job puts us past midnight by when we are so bone weary that, taking off only our boots, we sort of fall on our bedding and are 'down-to-it'. But I am out of luck. As if in a nightmare I hear, in sharpest army- sergeant vernacular, a volunteer being called for, 'you there!' and I am on my way back to Harley Street for one more bale to cover-up someone's bad checking. Going up along the long quiet and now deserted communication trench (Glasgow Road) gives me the 'creeps'. I imagine all kinds of fates overtaking me. I wish a mate had been 'volunteered' to come along with me. It is quite feasible that a Jerry in this long deserted trench (for it is quite 2 km from Cuinchy Fortress to the Royal Engineers dump Harley St) could lie in wait on the top of the trench and club me 'one' as I pass below. How, in the first case, he was to get through our front system of trenches I didn't bother to reason out, the fact that 'he might' was sufficient to put me all eyes, ears and spikes for any unusual sounds on top.

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It turned out just as I had anticipated. Somebody was keeping pace upon the top with me. Thank goodness I had my rifle and bandolier with me. Stopping to shove a round in the breech, I was nearly petrified to see a pair of eyes fixing me from right above. Boxers when having received the 'goods' on the 'mark' often go at the knees. This about places my state at that moment. Standing petrified evidently awaiting the 'medicine' to be applied in the form of a clout by a bill hook from Fritz, the prophesy of the war being over on the 17th flashed across my benumbed brain while simultaneously from the direction of the eyes above came, no German exclamation of hate but, the friendly whinny of a dog. I have heard of men's hair being on end ... mine was frozen spikes. Pushing my hair down to it's normal lie - out of respect to the traditions of the - I lifted the dog down and, with this reinforcement of numbers, I now felt equal to tackling half a dozen Jerries or a couple of loads of sandbags. A short time saw me successfully land back with the bale, and also to a mess-tin of eggs, chips and bacon produced by a ‘remorseful’ sergeant/

The dog and I bedded down together. Waking to reveille and hungry for Breakfast yet my first thought was for the dog ... but the dog had left ... leaving no trace. [Sunday 12 September 1915]

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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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