Amateur Gunners

The Great War Adventures, Letters and Observations of Alexander Douglas Thorburn

Ian Ronayne

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781783832019
• eBook ISBN: 9781473843035
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

After training at St John's Wood in London and in Exeter, Alexander Douglas Thorburn was posted to the BEF in France, joining the 2/22nd London (Howitzer) Battery, Royal Field Artillery as a subaltern officer. After service in the Vimy Ridge sector, with his division, the 60th (2/2nd London) Division, he crossed the Mediterranean to join the British Army in Salonika. Following a further move in mid-1917, Thorburn arrived in Palestine where he saw service with the 74th (Yeomanry) Division during the advance on Jerusalem. A final move in 1918 took the now Captain Thorburn back to the Western Front to take part in the Advance to Victory during the closing months of the war. After the war, Thorburn wrote an account of his military service between 1916 and 1918, recording his experiences in France, Greece and Palestine as well as his initial training in England. He also wrote a series of observations on life as a gunner during the First World War. Both the account and observations were published as a book, Amateur Gunners, in 1933 by William Potter of Liverpool. Today, the book is out of print. In addition to the book, of which a small number of copies still exist of course, there are an extensive series of private letters written by Thorburn while on active service to his mother, father and other relatives. The letters are in the possession of Thorburn's only grandson. Together, the book and letters offer a fascinating insight into the life of a First World War artillery officer. Lucidly written in a candid style, Thorburn shows excellent observation, description and narration skills. While Amateur Gunners itself is worthy of reprint, when combined with Thorburn's private letters and historical context from author Ian Ronayne, this book offers a unique look at a gunner's experience during the Great War.

Part 1: Adventures

CHAPTER 1

Training

A civilian in uniform

The general excellence of the training undergone in England by a candidate for a commission in the Royal Field Artillery during the Great War was beyond question. The material was remarkably uneven in character, in previous occupation, and in age.

I started my training in No.14 Barrack Room in the regular Royal Horse Artillery (RHA) barracks at St John’s Wood in London, where my colleagues were, probably, the most varied group of men ever assembled in one place together.

In one room were to be found a famous Australian barrister, a surgeon-captain of the Chilean Navy of Irish origin, an elephant hunter from East Africa, a Cambridge professor, a South African, three English ranchers from the Argentine, a missionary from China, a planter from Jamaica, an Australian sheep-farm manager, two boys about 19-years-old, a New Zealand barrister, who used to talk Maori with a New Zealand acquaintance, a Welsh farmer, a middle-aged dog-breeder, and others, like myself, Englishmen of ordinary occupation in this country.

The system, or lack of system, by which it was hoped to convert this collection of men of ages from nineteen to forty-five into competent officers of the artillery and first class fighting men, was utterly incredible.

The first two tasks set me, in company with ‘C’ (the Cambridge Professor) were washing our barrack room floor with mops and buckets, cleaning the windows, apparently for the first time for many years, whitewashing the inside of large iron tanks used as coal scuttles, and blackleading the lower halves of the iron posts in the stables and the old round cannon balls which decorated the barrack square. After a few days, I was promoted to the duty of burnishing the steel and brass mountings of the funeral gun carriage, an ancient 13-pounder used as a hearse whenever a general’s funeral procession takes place in London.

The rest of our daily life consisted of ‘physical jerks’ in the dark before breakfast, stables – cleaning out filthy stalls with our hands, no tools being provided – very elementary gun drill, grooming and feeding horses, riding school and lectures on field artillery training, delivered mostly to classes seated on the tan in the riding school by regular non-commissioned officers (NCOs) whose knowledge of the matters on which they lectured was pitifully inadequate.

The only officer-instructor, while I was at St John’s Wood Barracks, was the riding master, a captain who as a riding-master was far inferior to Sergeant ‘L’ as a horseman, and to Corporal ‘R’ as an instructor.

There was also some semaphore drill, endless polishing of spurs, boots, and buttons (we even had to black the part of the sole on the underside of our boots beneath the instep). In fact hours every day were wasted in the modern equivalents of the pipeclay fetich of the British Army of Wellington’s period.

The food was ample, but so abominably cooked in the perfectly equipped kitchens, that most of it was uneatable and wasted. Had our cooks on active service, cooking over damp wood with a hole in the ground for a kitchen, produced from rations far inferior both in quality and quantity, such uneatable food for the men, they would have been severely punished by the battery commander, half-murdered by the men, and treated by everyone as contemptible scoundrels.

Taking it all round a more inefficient school of instruction and a worse organised unit than St John’s Wood Barracks RHA I never saw in the whole of my army career. Of course, with our total lack of military experience, we did not realise how badly the whole show was run, or how a brigade which never saw an officer (except the orderly officer of the day) could ever be anything but a ‘comic unit’, as we later learned to call such dud affairs.

We learned naturally very little and it was only through the keenness of all the students that we learned anything whatever except terms of abuse. The instruction given in this department of military proficiency was incomparable and eventually most valuable

In every circumstance of life a lively sense of humour serves to make anything tolerable and the ability to see the funny side of St John’s Wood was always an asset.

In that region these incidents are worth recording. The Australian sheep farmer had originally been a trooper in a Queensland cavalry regiment, and possessed a very smart tunic evidently made by a first class tailor. The tunics issued to us were of all shapes and sizes, and had to be fitted at a cost of three shillings and sixpence paid by the individual to the regimental tailor, who also sold the globular RHA buttons without which a man was punished for being improperly dressed. One morning the Australian appeared on parade in his Australian tunic, which had a single collar instead of the regulation turnover collar, and black fiat buttons. Immediately every NCO on parade fired at him, and the sergeant major yelled at him to know what he thought he was wearing. After explanation, he was ordered to appear wearing his other issue tunic. He then remarked ‘You won’t like it sergeant-major.’ In the afternoon the Queenslander appeared in a green, woolly tunic (as issued) at least twenty inches too big round the waist, and so large in the neck that his shirt was visible. The buttons were flat, and made of bone. As soon as we fell in, all the NCOs again rushed at him, and the sergeant-major bellowed, ‘What the – have you got on now?’ The reply of ‘my maternity tunic, sir’, was so apt and unexpected that the entire party of critics turned their backs, and doubled up with uncontrollable laughter, and a soft answer had once more turned away wrath.

The China missionary had evidently not been warned, as I had, to conceal the fact that he was not a novice in the riding school. As well as the indoor riding school there was an outdoor manège floored with cinders, which had a small lake at one end, where the rain had collected, through which the horses plodded, and which had gradually reached a depth of two and a half or three feet of black cinder and water soup, about the consistency of whipped cream. On the first morning that we paraded for riding in the manège, the sergeant-instructor who was taking the riding school asked each man if he had ridden before. Obviously some, like two Canadians, had to admit it. Others, like myself, who had been warned what to say replied ‘Not for a long time’ or something inoffensive of that kind. The missionary, however, imprudently said ‘All my life’. The sergeant then uncoiling a long stock-whip, which he habitually carried, waited until the missionary’s horse was just about to plod into the black porridge; then, giving the sour-tempered animal a vicious cut across the hocks, he called out, ‘That man, that’s ridden all his life, he’s coming off now,’ and he did, head over heels, up to the ankles, head down, into the black slime, whence he forthwith extricated himself, dripping with what appeared to be liquid tar from every inch of his person.

The riding school itself was an arena of terror to the many beginners at riding. Our ride, ‘K-ride’, went in at 6.45 am to the light of one poor gas jet. The season of the year was midwinter. Many of the students were over forty, and, of these, some had never ‘forked’ a horse. The experience of riding a horse, that had had full corn and no exercise over the weekend, on a Monday morning, without reins or stirrups over a log jump in semi darkness under orders from a sergeant armed with an active stock-whip and suffering from a weekend of beer not yet worked off, was an experience not calculated to calm the nerves of an equestrian novice, especially when he had sat on Sunday through the service at St John’s Wood Church staring at a memorial slab in the wall inscribed, ‘Sacred to the memory of Driver ‘X’, killed in St John’s Wood riding school.’

Enough however, of the Wood as we called it. Eventually orders arrived for two dozen of us to go down to Topsham Barracks, Exeter, to start a new Royal Artillery (RA) cadet school. By the kindness of the regimental sergeant major (RSM) I was allowed to take the place of one man who had been detailed for Exeter without his brother, whom he did not want to leave, they being colonials.

So we transferred to Exeter, and it was just like being transferred from a lunatic asylum to a well-run public school.

So far, I have refrained from giving any names but now I must thank, by name Colonel King who was officer commanding (OC) RA Cadet School at Topsham Barracks, Exeter, Major Trussler, the Riding Master, Major Thornton, the chief instructor of gunnery, Lieutenant Moore, horsemastership and driving Lieutenant Uncle and Sergeant Finch and all the other instructors, both officers and sergeants, for their extraordinarily fine performance of tedious and trying duties.

If any body of men contributed more than the staff at the Exeter Cadet School towards the winning of the Great War on land – I shall be surprised. If any gunners of wartime training, in any army, knew more of their duties than the Exeter cadets, I never met them, although I worked with all varieties of gunners, professional Englishmen from Woolwich, French, Portuguese, Greek, Italian, French Naval, British Naval Colonial including New Zealand, Australian, South African, Hong Kong and Shanghai Mountain, garrison, and other varieties too numerous to mention in detail.

When we left Exeter to go to Larkhill, I think we had learned all the practical gunner needed to know of horsemanship, horsemastership, discipline, shooting and observation, director-work, gun-drill, parts of guns, and casualties to equipment, and general military methods. Instead of one orderly officer for a brigade, we had an officer instructor and three NCOs for each squad, in place of one NCO per squad. The work was hard, but interesting, the food was eatable, the discipline was stricter, but reasonable, gunnery was intelligibly taught by intelligent instructors, and one could be proud of being an Exeter cadet.

Humour, while valuable at Exeter, was not essential to existence, as it had been at St John’s Wood, so I will only relate two examples.

The first was in a lecture on ‘Minor ailments of the horse’, by the incomparable Lieutenant Moore, ex-Sergeant Moore. Arrayed in overalls, we were sitting on heaps of manure in the stables under instruction by Mr Moore. The veterinary knowledge imparted was first class, and the manner of it unforgettable.

‘Now we comes to worms. ‘Orses ‘as worms, most of ‘em. You might get into a battery where the commanding officer was crazy on worms, and ‘ad all the bombardiers collecting ‘em in empty match boxes. On the other ‘and, you might get into a battery like this ‘ere, where worms is treated reasonable. Wot I ses is, if a thin ‘orse passes a worm, make a note of it. It’s probably why ‘e’s thin. If a fat ‘orse passes a worm, damned ‘ard luck on the worm I calls it, ‘e’s lost a comfortable ‘ome.’ Ask any vet if that’s not the correct attitude to worms.

The other amusing incident I want to remember relates to the same Queensland sheep farmer as produced the tunic episode.

Church parade was a dreadful affair at Exeter. RA marching pace is about fifty per cent faster than infantry, and so the slow march behind the Salvation Army band to the cathedral at Exeter was most annoying after the eyewash parade inspection before church parade.

After we had been at Exeter for about six weeks somebody discovered that the Queenslander had never attended any church parade of any denomination. So, next Sunday, a search of the whole brigade camp took place, and the Queensland cadet was discovered in his usual Sunday morning refuge, smoking a pipe in his shirt sleeves with the sergeants’ bath man, while the rest of us were shining ourselves up like advertisements for popular brands of metal polish.

About this time, a senior officer from the War Office came to Exeter and, all the cadets being paraded in a hollow square, delivered a most serious address to all undergoing training. By that time, the original squad of about thirty had grown into a school of over four hundred, who, on occasion, were accustomed to describe themselves as ‘a fine body of men’. The substance of the excellently delivered appeal was that all of us should do our utmost to qualify ourselves as rapidly as possible for service in France, as the casualty lists kept growing so fast in the artillery that the speaker was at his wit’s end to find enough officers to replace casualties.

With so keen and enthusiastic a body as the cadets at Exeter, an appeal of this nature could not fail of its purpose, although such was already the spirit of enthusiasm that only the slightest evidence of increased keenness was possible to be noticed.

Physically we were already as fit as prizefighters, and we were working from about six in the morning until ten o’clock every night. Every bit of spare time, such as the half hour after dinner, and most of Saturday and Sunday afternoons, was being used for a little extra and much needed sleep, but we had all, by then, learned the lesson, so often driven home on service abroad, that a willing man, who is already doing his utmost, can, from somewhere or other, find resources to achieve even a little bit more. And, at Exeter, this was easier, as we were no longer treated as half-witted shirkers, but rather as what 99.9 per cent of us were, keen, well-educated, intelligent men of varied ages and previous occupations, who were prepared to devote every possession of body and mind to help our country through the greatest trial that ever confronted her.

After a test examination, the top five of us, of whom I had the honour to be one, were sent to Larkhill to show what Exeter could produce in the way of budding artillery officers.

The squad we formed – for the chief instructor, at my request, allowed us Exeter cadets to keep together – was completed to the necessary nine of a gun detachment, by the addition of a New Zealand sergeant major, a New Zealand sergeant, and two officers undergoing further training.

I think our performances at gun drill and gun parts caused some little astonishment, both to the instructor and the others undergoing instruction. Some of these feats were examples of genuine smartness, but others were low cunning carefully thought-out. Of the latter, the most successful was our scheme for ‘numbering-off’ the detachment. In battery gun drill, the order is shouted from a great distance, ‘detachments, tell off’. The front row is Nos. 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9, and the rear rank 2, 4, 6 and 8. The smartest gun team will, of course, number off the quickest, and ours was always numbered off before any of the other teams had half finished. The method, which I think was never spotted, was that we numbered 1 – ha – 9, ha being shouted in chorus by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. As we always occupied the same positions it went like clockwork.

Here I may interpolate what I believe to have been the two most useful exercises at Larkhill for gunners. First, the guessing of distances, most useful afterwards to me in country where map details were non-existent, and second, the miniature range, where the gun, an old 18-pounder, had the breech fitted with a block of wood with the business end of a morris-tube rifle sighted through it, the target a toy landscape, and the aiming points blocks of wood on a bench. I think the experiments we tried there were largely responsible for my later successfully passing the shooting test through which I was put by the eagle-eyed commander of D/303, the first battery I served with in France.

From Larkhill (where, to our surprise, we found the larks sing in chorus all day long) we went in a body to do actual firing with live rounds at Okehampton, in Devonshire, taking with us our excellent Larkhill instructor. I doubt if any RA amateur officer enjoyed any part of his service more than the Okehampton target practice.

After Okehampton, we went to our various homes for eight days’ leave to get our uniforms and other equipment, before proceeding (army people always ‘proceed’, when not with their unit) abroad, being warned that we must never be more than two hours away from the telegraph. In spite of all the urgency for officer reinforcements RA, the five of us were forgotten for over a month, until we wrote, and reminded the War Office of our continued existence. We then were commanded by telegraph to report at Topsham Barracks, Exeter, for orders to proceed to France.

We arrived next day, feeling extremely smart and self-conscious in our new uniforms, and, having spent two days in a good hotel in Exeter, about twenty of us proceeded to Southampton, and crossed the Channel together, and having landed in Le Havre, marched to the terribly uncomfortable base camp near Harfleur, where we spread out our new valises on wooden boxes in tents.

Then next day we had our first experience of troop-trains. We left Havre about 11.00 pm and arrived at Rouen at 7.00 am, less than forty miles in eight hours.

At Rouen, we were sorted out by various coloured signposts and tickets, and three of us were allotted brown signposts and tickets, having become, by magic, officers RA for reinforcements to, I think, the Third Army.

After some hours wait – by that time we had learned that, in the army, everybody below the rank of general always waits hours and hours on every possible occasion – the train started, and proceeded at about three miles an hour, apparently in a northward direction. Having, by this time, got used to expecting the worst, ‘T’, my sole remaining companion, and I, imagined we were bound for the Salient. But no, eventually the train stopped with the usual sudden jerk at a station marked Aubigny which, naturally, we had never heard of. An officer, with RTO (Railway Transport Officer) on his arm, came along, checked our names, and told us to decant ourselves, as a general service (GS) wagon was outside for us.

So far everything was as secret as possible. It is difficult to see in what way the chances of victory for the Allies would have been jeopardised if we had been told – two, more or less, meek one-pip wallahs (second lieutenants) where, and to what division we were being sent. But never until the Armistice was I permitted to know my destination beforehand, even when second-in-command of a battery. Which probably explains why almost everyone in the entire British Army lost himself on so very many occasions.

‘T’ and I then sat on the floor of the Army Service Corps GS wagon, which delivered us in a village (of which I never knew the name) to an infantry drummer-sergeant, who found us a billet in a farm, and bestowed upon us...

Table of contents

• Coverpage
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1: Adventures
• Part 2: Letters
• Part 3: Observations
• Glossary
• Acknowledgements and Further Reading
• Index