Old Soldiers Never Die

Frank Richards

• Publisher: Rare Treasure Editions
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781774643440
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

The author had enlisted in 1901 in the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and was a reservist when the First World War broke out. He rejoined his old, 2nd Battalion and landed in France with them on 11 August 1914. He went right through the war with the battalion, never missing a battle, winning the D.C.M. and M.M. Here is a typical soldier of the pre-1914 regular army, and this book is a delight, written in his own unpolished manner. Fighting, scrounging, gambling, drinking, dodging fatigues, stolidly enduring bombardment and the hardships of trench warfare, always getting his job done.This is one of the finest of all published memoirs of the Great War, truly a classic of its kind. A tribute to the army that died on the Western Front.

CHAPTER I
THE START

I was a reservist belonging to the Royal Welch Fusiliers whom I had first joined in the year that Queen Victoria died. I had served eight years with the Colours, very nearly seven of them in India and Burmah, and had been back in civil life for another five years and a half, when all this commenced. My job now was coal-mining; I was a timberman’s assistant.

On the fourth of August, 1914, I was at Blaina, Mon., having a drink in the Castle Hotel with a few of my cronies, all old soldiers and the majority of them reservists. One had took us around South Africa; there wasn’t a Boer left in South Africa by the time he had finished his yarn. Next I had took them around India and Burmah, and there wasn’t a Pathan or Dacoit left in the world by the time I had finished mine. Now another was taking us through North China in the Boxer Rising of 1900; and he had already got hundreds of Chinks hanging on the gas brackets when someone happened to come in with a piece of news. He said that war had broken out with Germany and that the Sergeant of Police was hanging up a notice by the post office, calling all reservists to the Colours. This caused a bit of excitement and language, but it was too late in the evening for any of us to proceed to our depots so we kept on drinking and yarning until stop-tap. By that time we were getting a little top-heavy, and an old artilleryman wound up the evening by dropping howitzer shells over the mountain and destroying a mining village in the valley beyond.

The next day I proceeded to the Regimental Depot at Wrexham, arriving there about 9 p.m. On my way to barracks I called at a pub which I used to frequent very often when I was a recruit, and found it full of Royal Welch reservists. We hadn’t seen one another for years, and the landlord had a tough job to get rid of us at stop-tap. We arrived at barracks in a jovial state and found that the barrack rooms were full, so about thirty of us had to sleep on the square that night. I was medically examined next morning, and afterwards got my equipment and kit out of stores. On the evening of the 5th a draft of reservists who had arrived early in the day had left the Depot to join the Second Battalion which was stationed at Portland. The Second was the battalion I had served with abroad and had arrived back in England about March 1914, after eighteen years absence. The First Battalion was stationed at Malta, just beginning its tour overseas. On the evening of August 7th the Depot Sergeant-Major called for ten volunteers to join the Second Battalion. Every man volunteered and I was one of the selected ten. We went by train to Dorchester, where the Battalion, which had left Portland, was now billeted in the Town Hall. Two old chums of mine, Stevens and Billy, who were Section D reservists like myself, were posted to the same platoon in A Company. When I went on reserve there were eight companies in a battalion, and four sections in each company; now there were four companies in the battalion, four platoons in each company, and four sections in each platoon. We reservists were a little muddled at first by all this. A battalion at full strength consisted of twelve hundred, officers and men, which roughly meant about a thousand bayonets. All bandsmen became stretcher-bearers. We sailed from Southampton about 2 a.m. on August 10th, and arrived about 3 p.m. in the afternoon at Rouen, where we were billeted in a convent. I had never visited France before. I believe we were the first infantry battalion to enter Rouen, and the inhabitants gave us a wonderful reception, and cheered us loudly all the way from the docks to our billets in a convent. On arrival at a new station we pre-War soldiers always made enquiries as to what sort of a place it was for booze and fillies. If both were in abundance it was a glorious place from our point of view. We soon found out that we had nothing to grumble about as regards Rouen. Each man had been issued with a pamphlet signed by Lord Kitchener warning him about the dangers of French wine and women; they may as well have not been issued for all the notice we took of them. Billy and I went out the following evening and called in a café. The landlord was very busy, the place being full of our chaps. Billy used to boast that no matter what new country he went to he could always make the natives understand what he required. He ordered a bottle of red wine, speaking in English, Hindustani and Chinese, with one French word to help him out. The landlord did not understand him and Billy cursed him in good Hindustani and told him he did not understand his own language, threatening to knock hell out of him if he did not hurry up with the wine. One of our chaps who spoke a little French told the landlord what Billy required. The wine was brought but we did not care for it very much, so we left for another café. I remonstrated with Billy and told him we could not treat the French who were our allies the same as we treated the Eastern races. He said: “Look here, Dick, there is only one way to treat foreigners from Hong Kong to France, and that is to knock hell out of them.” Billy and I spent a very enjoyable evening and the two young ladies who we picked up with proved true daughters of France. Billy said that Rouen was a damned fine place and he hoped that we would be stationed there until the War finished. I went out by myself the following evening, Billy being on guard. Going by the cathedral I struck up an acquaintance with a young English lady who informed me that she was an English governess to a well-to-do French family in Rouen. She took me around Rouen, showing me the places of interest and informed me that the opinion of the upper and middle classes of Rouen was that Great Britain had only come into the War for what she could make out of it, and that if she could see there was nothing to be gained she would soon withdraw her army that she was now sending over.

On the evening of the 13th my company was ordered to Amiens, the other three companies remaining at Rouen. At every railway station on the way the villagers turned up with bottles of wine and flowers. Duffy, a time-serving soldier with six years service, said it was a glorious country. In those early days British soldiers could get anything they wanted and were welcomed everywhere, but as the War progressed they were only welcomed if they had plenty of money to spend, and even then they were made to pay through the nose for everything they bought. We billeted in a school outside Amiens and were allowed out in the afternoon when not on duty. It was no uncommon sight for the first few evenings we were there to see about fifty young ladies lined up outside the school. A man simply had to hitch his arm around one of them and everything was plain sailing. Amiens proved an excellent place and we were sorry to leave it. General French had his Headquarters at the Hotel Moderne and we found a guard for him there. About the 16th August we attended a funeral of two of our airmen who had crashed; all the notabilities of the town were present. We also brought General Grierson’s body from the railway station to the Town Hall. He was Chief-of-Staff to General French. All sorts of stories were going around regarding his death. One was that he had been poisoned when eating his lunch on the train, but I believe now it was just heart failure from the strain and excitement. We took his body back to the railway station where a detachment of Cameron Highlanders took it down-country. Stevens and I visited the cathedral and we were very much taken up with the beautiful oil paintings and other objects of art inside. One old soldier who paid it a visit said it would be a fine place to loot. Nothing had been removed from the cathedral at this time. On the evening of the 22nd August we entrained with the remainder of the Battalion who had came up from Rouen that day, and early next morning detrained at Valenciennes and marched to a little village named Vicq. We, with the 1st Middlesex, 1st Cameronians, and the 2nd Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders formed the 19th Brigade. We did not belong to any division: we were a spare brigade. The majority of men in my battalion had given their cap and collar badges to the French ladies they had been walking out with, as souvenirs, and I expect in some cases had also left other souvenirs which would either be a blessing or curse to the ladies concerned.

CHAPTER II
LE CATEAU: THE RETIREMENT

It was at Vicq that we first realized that there was a war in progress. We advanced out of the village across open country. High shrapnel was exploding in the air some miles in front of us, and an officer and twelve of us were sent out about half a mile in front of the company and took up an outpost position at some crossroads. About midnight orders came for us to rejoin our company which was now lined up on a railway. Rations for the next day were issued out. The bread ration was a two-pound loaf between four men. It was the last bread ration we were to get for many a day, for our service had now begun in earnest. We marched all that night and the greater part of the next day and dug trenches on the evening of the 24th August, outside a little village, the name of which I never heard, or else I have forgotten it. Old men and women from the village gave a hand in the digging. Whilst visiting outposts that evening Major Walwyn was shot through the foot with a spent bullet—the Battalion’s first casualty in the War.

We were only in those trenches a few hours before we were on the march again; we didn’t know where to, or why. We were issued out with an extra fifty rounds of ammunition, making in all two hundred rounds to carry. We marched all night again and all next day, halting a few times to fire at German scouting aeroplanes but not hitting one. At one halt of about twenty minutes we realized that the Germans were still not far away, some field-artillery shells bursting a few yards from my platoon, but nobody was damaged. We reservists fetched straight out of civil life were suffering the worst on this non-stop march, which would have been exhausting enough if we had not been carrying fifty pounds weight or so of stuff on our backs. And yet these two days and nights were only the start of our troubles.

We arrived in Le Cateau about midnight, dead-beat to the world. I don’t believe any one of us at this time realized that we were retiring, though it was clear that we were not going in the direction of Germany. Of course the officers knew, but they were telling us that we were drawing the enemy into a trap. Le Cateau that night presented a strange sight. Everyone was in a panic, packing up their stuff on carts and barrows to get away south in time. The Royal Welch camped on the square in the centre of the town. We were told to get as much rest as we could. The majority sank down where they were and fell straight asleep. Although dead-beat, Billy, Stevens and I went on the scrounge for food and drink. We entered a café, where there were a lot of officers of other battalions, besides a couple of staff-officers, mixed up with ordinary troops, all buying food and drink. For three days officers and men had been on short rations. This was the only time during the whole of the War that I saw officers and men buying food and drink in the same café. I slept the sleep of the just that night, for about three hours. I could have done with forty-three, but we were roused up at 4 a.m. and ordered to leave our packs and greatcoats on the square.

Everyone was glad when that order was issued; the only things we had to carry now, besides rifle and ammunition, were an extra pair of socks and our iron rations which consisted of four army biscuits, a pound tin of bully beef, and a small quantity of tea and sugar. Iron rations were carried in case of emergency but were never supposed to be used unless orders came from our superior officers. Haversacks were now strapped on our shoulders and each man was issued with another fifty rounds of ammunition, which made two hundred and fifty rounds to carry. At dawn we marched out of Le Cateau with fixed bayonets. Duffy said: “We’ll have a bang at the bastards to-day.” We all hoped the same. We were all fed up with the marching and would have welcomed a scrap to relieve the monotony. But we were more fed up before the day was over. The Second Argyles who went to the assistance of the East Yorks lost half of their battalion during the day, but we simply marched and countermarched during the whole time that this was going on.

We kept on meeting people who had left their homes and were making their way south with the few belongings they could carry. One little lad about twelve years of age was wheeling his old grandmother in a wheelbarrow. They all seemed to be terror-stricken. In every village we marched through the church had been converted into a field-hospital and was generally full of our wounded. At about twilight we lined up in a sunken road. I was the extreme left-hand man of the Battalion, Billy and Stevens being on my right. Our Colonel was speaking to our Company Commander just behind us when up the road came a man wheeling a pram with a baby in it and two women walking alongside. They stopped close by me and the man, speaking in English, told me that the two women were his wife and mother-in-law, and that his only child was in the pram. He was an Englishman, the manager of some works in a small town nearby, but his wife was French. They had been travelling all day. If they had delayed their departure another hour they would have been in the enemy’s hands.

Just at this moment a staff-officer came along and informed our Colonel that all our cavalry patrols were in and that any cavalry or troops who now appeared on our front would be the enemy. He had hardly finished speaking when over a ridge in front of us appeared a body of horsemen galloping towards us. We immediately got out of the sunken road, and standing up opened out with rapid fire at six hundred yards. I had only fired two rounds when a bugle blew the cease-fire. This, I may say, was the only time during the whole of the War with the exception of the German bugle at Bois Grenier, that I heard a bugle in action. The light was very bad, and the majority of the bullets had been falling short because we couldn’t clearly see the sights of our rifles, but several horses fell. The horsemen stopped and waved their arms. We had been firing on our own cavalry who, I was told later, belonged to the 19th Hussars: I never heard whether any of them had been killed.

When we got back down in the sunken road the women were crying and the child was bawling, but the man seemed to have vanished. Stevens said: “Where has he got to?” I asked the women but couldn’t get a word out of them, only crying, when out from under the cover of the pram crawled the man. He commenced to storm and rave and wanted to know what we meant by all that firing which had terrified his wife and child. (He didn’t say a word about his mother-in-law.) He said that he would report us. Billy got hold of him and said: “Call yourself an Englishman! What the hell do you reckon you were going to do under that pram? For two pins I’d bayonet you, you bloody swine!”

“Fall in!” came the order, and we were on the march again. It was now dusk and I expect that family fell into the hands of the enemy during the night.

We retired all night with fixed bayonets, many sleeping as they were marching along. If any angels were seen on the Retirement, as the newspaper accounts said they were, they were seen that night. March, march, for hour after hour, without no halt: we were now breaking into the fifth day of continuous marching with practically no sleep in between. We were carrying our rifles all shapes and it was only by luck that many a man didn’t receive a severe bayonet wound during the night. Stevens said: “There’s a fine castle there, see?” pointing to one side of the road. But there was nothing there. Very nearly everyone were seeing things, we were all so dead-beat.

At last we were halted and told that we would rest for a couple of hours. Outposts and sentries were posted and we sank down just off the road and were soon fast asleep. Fifteen minutes later we were woke up, and on the march again. We had great difficulty in waking some of the men. About ten yards from the side of the road was a straw-rick, and about half a dozen men had got down the other side of it. I slipped over and woke them up. One man we had a job with but we got him going at last. By this time the Company had moved off, so we were stragglers. We came to some crossroads and didn’t know which way to go. Somehow we decided to take the road to the right.

Dawn was now breaking. Along the road we took were broken-down motor lorries, motor cycles, dead horses and broken wagons. In a field were dumped a lot of rations. We had a feed, crammed some biscuits into our haversacks and moved along again. After a few minutes, by picking up more stragglers, we were twenty strong, men of several different battalions. I inquired if anyone had seen the 2nd Royal Welch Fusiliers, but nobody had. By the time that it was full daylight there were thirty-five of us marching along, including two sergeants. We got into a small village—I had long since lost interest in the names of the places we came to, so I don’t know where it was—where we met a staff-officer who took charge of us. He marched us out of the village and up a hill and told us to extend ourselves in skirmishing order at two paces interval and lie down and be prepared to stop an attack at any moment. About five hundred yards in front of us was a wood, and the attack would come from that direction. The enemy commenced shelling our position, but the shells were falling about fifteen yards short. The man on my left was sleeping: he was so dead-beat that the shelling didn’t worry him in the least and the majority of us were not much better. We lay there for about half an hour but saw no signs of the enemy. The staff-officer then lined us up and told us to attach ourselves to the first battalion we came across. I had to shake and thump the man on my left before I could wake him up. We marched off again and came across lots of people who had left their homes. Four ladies in an open carriage insisted on getting out to let some of our crippled and dead-beat men have a ride. We packed as many as we could into the carriage and moved along, the ladies marching with us. Late in the afternoon we took leave of the ladies. The men who had been riding had a good day’s rest and sleep. If the ladies had all our wishes they would be riding in a Rolls-Royce for the rest of their lives.

During the evening when passing through a village I got news that the Battalion had passed through it an hour before. I and a man named Rhodes decided to leave the band and try and catch them up. During the next few days we attached ourselves to three different battalions, but immediately left them when we got news of our own. We wandered on for days, living on anything we could scrounge. It seemed to us that trying to find the Battalion was like trying to chase a will-o’-the-wisp. But we were going the right way. All roads seemed to lead to Paris. One day, when we were on our own, not attached to any unit, Rhodes and I came across a band of gypsies in a wood and made them understand that we were very hungry. They invited us to the meal they were about to have, and I think we surprised them by our eating abilities. We thanked them heartily, and with bellies like poisoned pups staggered along again. It was the first square meal we had had since we left Amiens. The following day we came to a railhead. A train was in and an officer inquired if we had lost our unit. We said that we had, so he ordered us to get into the train which was full of troops who were in the same fix as ourselves.

No one knew where we were going to, but we all believed that we were going to Paris. One battalion that we had been with had been told by their officers that they were going to Paris for a rest. Everybody seemed to have Paris on the brain. We had a long train journey and I slept the greater part of the way. We detrained at a place called Le Mans. The only thing I can remember about this place was a large French barracks where we stayed and a street named after one of the Wright brothers of aeroplane fame. I expect I was too dulled with marching to notice anything more. We were there about a week and then got sent up country again. We picked the Battalion up just after they had passed through Coulommiers. I could not find Billy or Stevens; when I asked what had become of them I was told that Stevens had been missing after the Battalion left St. Quentin. Then a man named Slavin said that Billy and himself had left the Battalion about fifteen miles from Paris. Billy had a touch of fever. They had got a lift in a motor lorry into Paris where Billy was admitted into hospital. Slavin said that he had stayed in Paris for four days and the last day he was there he saw Billy riding in a grand motor car with two French ladies; the way Billy waved his hand to him, anyone would have thought he was a bloody lord. Billy was lucky enough to be sent home, and I never saw him again.

CHAPTER III
THE MARNE TO THE AISNE

We had finished with our retirement and were facing in the right direction. We marched up some rising ground. Down in the valley in front of us ran the River Marne. On each side of the river was a village. A fine bridge had spanned the river but it was now in a half, the enemy having blown it up. We advanced down the hill in extended order. The enemy were supposed to be holding the two villages, and we had to take them. We were met by a hail of bullets. The men on the right and left of me fell with bullet-wounds in the legs, and a sergeant just behind me fell with one through the belly. We were having heavy casualties, but couldn’t see one of the enemy. We lined the edge of a little copse and opened fire on the villages, aiming at the windows of the houses. But the hidden enemy were still keeping up an intense rifle-fire, so we doubled back up the hill and under cover. Some of the men had remarkable escapes, several having their water-bottles pierced. A man named Berry happened to ask me to undo his haversack from his shoulders, saying that he had a spare tin of bully and some biscuits in it. When I did so he found that whilst lying on the slope of the hill his haversack must have flopped up and a bullet must have just missed his head, gone through his haversack, right through the tin of bully, and through one of his folded socks; because here it was now, reposing in the other sock. No, Berry didn’t know what a nar...