1914 by James Farner

Author:James Farner [Farner, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: World War I, First World War, Historical, Family Saga, War, 20th Century
Publisher: James Farner
Published: 2015-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

After the tram, a detachment took them into Leeds, where they got the train up to Whitley Bay in Tyneside, close to Newcastle. It was the first time any of them had travelled on a train. The soot and the steam billowing from the top made them cough and cover their eyes from the fumes.

Whitley Bay was a seaside resort usually, but now the outskirts served as a place for infantry training. They thought they would end up at a training camp in Yorkshire, but when they saw the sea they knew something had changed. Nobody ever told them the reason their training took place in Newcastle.

None of them had ever seen the sea before. Young people from the inner cities never went on holidays to the coast, at least not in Holbeck. The great blue carpet seemed to become part of the sky from a distance. Danny imagined on an overcast day it was difficult to find where the sea ended and the sky began.

He had no time to see anything more than a blue glimmer. He and the rest of the men recruited from Leeds hustled inland towards their training camp.

Everything smelled of salt here. The air breathed thinner on him, as if the oppressive industrial units of the cities hadn’t reached this part of the world. The cawing of the gulls replaced trains and grinding gears. In some ways, it was a peace he’d only experienced in the books they used to read in school.

Danny soon found the camp wasn’t much different from the regimented lifestyle of back home. Rather than terraced housing, huts and tents aligned perfectly. Everyone stood in lines. Rather than standing in lines as they left the mill, they stood in lines to begin an assault course. Instead of standing in lines in Mr. Carter’s shop, they stood in lines to present themselves to the officer corps.

Everyone received a full khaki uniform, black infantry boots, and a bed in one of the makeshift huts. Almost nobody received the correct size uniform, but after some clever swaps they had clothes that sort of fitted them.

Charlie said nothing that first night.

Basic training in 1914 boiled down to the simplicities of digging trenches, standing to attention, running up hills, standing to attention, running down hills, bayoneting sandbags, standing to attention, and live firing exercises, whenever they could pick up enough rifles. This happened over and over again, day after day. It was all a laugh really. Even Jacob couldn’t stay miserable long enough.

Danny made a point of staying out of Charlie’s way. Whenever they stood to attention he always placed Jack and Jacob between him, and that was how Charlie seemed to like it. Charlie rarely looked his way.

Whitley Bay had a strange allure to him, but he never got to see it. They weren’t allowed to leave the camp. An officer let slip that they wanted to ship new recruits out as quickly as possible. Was the war going badly? In the guarded conditions of the training camp, it was much harder to find out news from the front.

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