To Fight Alongside Friends: The First World War Diaries of Charlie May - David Crane

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a regular hard-fighting lot, now down from Flanders resting. It looks as though with them we shall be ‘for it’, as the men say. At any rate we should see some fighting, a nice change from this messing about and continual strafing by the powers that be.

      Our own particular bête noir has been at it again, bullying Ramsbottom and threatening to send him to England, all because a C Coy man had lost a wire-cutter.xxi

      I think our friend is something short in his mental outfit. There is nothing else I can put his disgusting manners down to. Until I met him always cherished the idea that the name ‘English officer’ was synonymous with that of ‘gentleman’. I am reluctantly compelled now to admit that it can mean ‘bully and cad’ also. It has been somewhat of a shock to me, as a disillusionment always is, and I wish with all my heart that he would go away from us and make room for some decent, mannered gentleman whom we would look up to and follow.

      I cannot help feeling that an officer makes a fatal mistake in not endeavouring to win the respect and affection of those who serve under him. Men are so strange, all of us I mean. We are so ready to make a hero, and love him. Therein lies the secret of leadership, and I feel it in my bones that nothing will hold us so much when the time comes as the example of him whom we honour and love. Field punishments, CBs [Confined to Barracks] and other such minor irritants don’t help in the trenches. It is only the things that a man feels within him matter there. When you are right up alongside sudden death it is remarkable how one’s views alter and how you see what a man really is. And I know, I know, I know, that it is then that the man who has won respect and affection will triumph over him who has used his power as a bludgeon only. All of which sounds very dramatic and serious and not at all like me. But the truth, I suppose is seldom very humorous.

      19th December ’15

      Today we have had a regular old-time Sunday. With the exception that for church there has been no parade. And this morning Worthy and I took advantage of the leisure to ride out down the Doullens road. About two miles from here we turned into a wood with the idea of cutting across country till we found some other road to bring us back. It was pleasant in the wood. It smelt clean and fresh in there and the sunlight made a witching chequer on the brown floor of fallen leaves, which here and there was not brown at all but green, where the new grass peeped through.

      We followed a cart track at first but this ’ere long petered out and we were compelled to continue along a tiny, winding way that game, or chance wayfarers or both had made. And further on this too became ill-defined and difficult to see so that we had continually to stop and part the branches to decide which way it held. I said ‘This is like the rides one reads about, where men get lost in woods but follow some such slender track from instinct and are rewarded in the end by chancing on some fairy cottage where dwells a princess.’ Worthy laughed, no doubt thinking me the ass I am. But lo, a few yards further and the track widened slightly and there on its edge stood a tiny cottage wherein a little fire burned. And on its threshold stood two tiny children hand in hand looking up at us with wide, staring eyes.

      It was quite in keeping with the story, quite unreal, quite romantic, quite French. How the cottage comes there, how its owner lives and how he gets into contact with his fellows I do not know. He lives in a fairyland all his own. And I prefer to think of it like that.

       Chapter 3

       ‘Our past glorious Xmastides together’

      20 December 1915–13 January 1916

      20th December ’15i

      Eighteen miles march between the hours of 8 a.m. and 3 p.m., with an hour off of that for dinner, is not bad going without a man falling out save four with bad feet.ii

      The battn has done quite well today and now here we are at the end of it snugly billeted in Fourdrinoy. The change has taken place and we are now fully established members of the 7th Div, having bid goodbye to the old 30th for good and all.

      Our village is very tiny and slightly more dirty than usual but, as we are here for a spell, we’ll put the latter disqualification to rights before many days are past.

      We officers have struck the best billet we have seen so far. We are in the school-master’s house, which is well-furnished and most comfortable, and we have a piano. Fancy the joy of it! A piano, music and we have not heard a tune for six weeks. It has acted upon us like a tonic. You can scarcely imagine what pleasure there can be in even such a shop-soiled tune as Tipperary when you haven’t heard a note of music for nearly two months.

      21st December ’15

      It has rained today with a pitiless persistence worthy of a better cause. The streets are now ankle deep in mud in their worst places and the natural drains at their sides quite full with a swift running, malodorous and evil-coloured fluid, a mixture of rain, mud and the overflow from a host of ‘middens’.

      We have explored the village and find it half-deserted, much in ruins, extremely dirty, and altogether an uninviting spot. We are, however, here for about a month so we must set ourselves to work to tidy up and make the place as habitable as possible. And this good work we have started on today but with somewhat indifferent success so far on account of the inclement conditions.iii

      22nd December ’15

      One gets into a habit, quite unconsciously at first, of any hold it may subsequently get on one, or, even if consciously and quite realising what one is doing, with no heed but that you can break from it any time at will. Alas, for human frailty. For instance, here did I set out, gaily and with no foreboding, upon this diary, never thinking it could become a tyrant that would ’ere long rule me, and here I am reduced to impotence when evening comes round, unable to refuse the call of these pages to be scribbled in. And that irrespective of whether I have aught to say or whether I have naught as is my plight tonight.

      It is just the necessary but colourless routine here, and will be till after Xmas … Such days furnish nothing and one is forced to rack one’s brain to fill the required entry space. But fill it I must, this habit has me so in its grip.

      The Xmas parcels have been coming in tonight and the mess is in considerable excitement.

      Almonds and raisins, dried figs, Crême de Menthe jubes, fancy biscuits and all other such delicious and dainty things are strewn about the room so that it makes us feel strangely Xmasy.

      But also it causes us considerable homesickness. One always associates almonds and raisins with bonbons and paper caps and the flushed, rosy cheeks of the girl one loves. At least I do, and the memories of our past glorious Xmastides together are with me strongly tonight. My love, how I long that our next Yuletide we may see through together once more. How the lamps will gleam, the fire leap and the laughter ring. I can see the very smile in your eyes now. God, what fools we are. We never enjoy our happy moments until they are denied us. Yet, even while I so moralise, I feel I will know how to appreciate my next Xmas day with you, my own.

      23rd–25th December ’15

      All these three days I record in one since I have had no time at all in which to write them up separately. It has been a rush from morning to night, trying to arrange something for the men and here we are at the end of it with nothing done. There is no room for a concert. There is no beer for the men, nothing but a bar of chocolate apiece, some tinned fruit and a packet of Woodbines. It is pretty sickening and so unnecessary.iv

      By a little arrangement at HQ it could have all been so different and the battalion could have enjoyed a regular blow-out and appreciated it more than anything. Every other battalion in the brigade has done it except us. It is marvellous that the men can raise a smile at all. Yet

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