Tales from the trenches

10:46am Monday 3rd December 2007

November is the month when we recall those servicemen and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice in conflicts around the globe. Each year, veterans of earlier conflicts become fewer. So how do we ensure that the stories of ordinary soliders are recorded and saved for posterity?

The most obvious way is to talk to the soldiers and write down their tales - but many veterans, particularly those of the First World War, found it difficult to relate their harrowing experiences in the trenches.

�The trenches were on the fringe of the wood, the Germans being quite close. One of our officers, possessing a megaphone voice, delighted in shouting out rather impolite messages; back came the answer one day in English, asking, to our surprise, if we knew Bouls of Cornmarket!�

Ernest Harry Martin of Grandpont, Oxford, recorded his wartime experiences in a beautifully written account, discovered by his family sometime after his death, aged 72, in 1966.

Along with it were treasured postcards, photographs, memorabilia and military documents. The manuscript was probably written in 1929-30, as the title page also bears a dedication to his eight children born to him and his wife, Phyllis.

In 1990, the Martin family decided to publish Ernest's story, called What Did You Do in the Great War, Dad?

Ernest enlisted in the the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry on September 4, 1914.

He wrote: "We presented ourselves at Holywell, the headquarters. Here confusion reigned. Dr Sankey (a squat dwarf-like fellow in khaki) marched a party of us to Keble College for medical examinations. It was simple: the requirements being five feet high, a sound heart and good eyesight.

"Further signing on and swearing in, finally taking the King's Shilling, found your dad before night as Private 2778 of the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry: and proud of it. For the first time - and the last - I became a nominal member of the University, our billet being Keble College. Here were quartered some one hundred fellows and I was most fortunate in being in the same company as the Witney Methodists."

Some weeks later, he described his experiences while training.

"Being a foot soldier had its sorrows as well as joys (which weren't many). Quickly we were tamed down and knuckled under to what the army really was.

"From morning to night it was training and yet more training, marching and yet more marching: all very necessary we found out afterwards: but at the time anything but pleasant.

"To undergo a 30-mile route march loaded up in full harness along uninteresting Essex roads took the gilt off being a foot soldier. Christmas came along and we began to wonder if ever we were going to go to France - in fact if we wanted to go."

Once in France, Ernest relates the slow journey to the front in cattle trucks and life in the trenches, including his sleeping quarters: "Not a feather bed, oh no, merely a hole scooped out of the wall of the trench, large enough to creep into: down came a curtain (a piece of sacking): a candle lit up the interior. Cosy?"

He also describes the unwanted visitors he encountered - fleas, lice and rats.

"Not little beggars, but as large as small size cats, and brimful of wartime bravado. One might be lying down, haversack for a pillow, containing reserve biscuits: and on waking, a nice hole and the biscuits-gone!"

Then there was the mud.

"Many a fellow owes his life to the mud killing the effect of shells: and they were frequent and fearful. For an explanation of fear, imprisoned in a muddy post, with no hope whatever of escape, and being peppered with 5.9 high explosives was it to the full.

It was like being tied to the railway lines waiting for the express. The approach of a 5.9 was just like an oncoming train, you yourself shrivelling up to the size of an ant and waiting."

Postcards were the way troops kept in touch with their families back home. Ernest was no exception. One of Ernest's postcards shows how important it was to receive news from home.

"We're spending a quiet Sunday afternoon. Today's post hasn't arrived yet - I'm hoping for something. Bit rotten your 24th letter hasn't arrived . . ."

Ernest survived the Battle of the Somme but was wounded during an attack on a German postion in August 1917, in which 65 of his fellow soldiers died. He returned to the UK after spending more than two years in France.

Ernest penned his record of events some years afterwards in 1929, during a period of convalescence following operations to improve his injured arm.

Some of the more memorable stories from the Great War have been uncovered by Clive Farahar, the book and ephemera expert on BBC TV's Antiques Roadshow, which this year celebrates its 30th series.

According to Clive: "Neatly written diaries do not come from the trenches, but were usually written up later. Letters that do survive, often written in pencil, say little to relatives as the writer does not want to alarm or be in breach of censorship laws. The last war where soldiers seemed to express themselves freely in letters was the Boer War."

Most families who had releatives who served during the two world wars have some objects of sentimental value.

Wynne Mackay's father, Richard Jarvis, served with the Queen Bays Second Dragoon Guards and was wounded at one of the first battles of the Great War at Messines on October 31, 1914.

When a doctor gave him a piece of shrapnel he removed from his arm, he decided to keep it and had the piece of lead gold-plated and used it as a fob on the end of his watch chain. Wynne now has the piece of shrapnel on a gold chain, and often wears it.

In wars, as well as times of intense action, there are times of waiting. In those periods, soldiers often made objects out of shell cases and bullets.

These pieces of paper and crafted memorabilia from the debris of battle are the stuff of history.

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