The Last Fighting Tommy by Harry Patch & Richard van Emden

Author:Harry Patch & Richard van Emden [Patch, H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: [2012.01.29]
Publisher: [Côte d’Azur]
Published: 2006-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

∨ The Last Fighting Tommy ∧

7

Mutiny

The injury in my chest may well have saved my life. Had I not had the problem there, and it was a mild injury by any measure, I would undoubtedly have been back in France by the late summer of 1918. As it was, in early November I was in billets at Golden Hill Fort. The Fort was a huge Victorian building, hexagonal in design, built to defend the Isle of Wight, and so had superb views over the Solent. In the centre was a parade ground, and heaven help anyone the sergeant major caught walking across that hallowed gravel; you had to double across every time. Hundreds of men were billeted in barrack rooms inside the Fort, but there were so many people training there that the overflow was billeted just outside the Fort’s main entrance, in huts.

By this time I was marked down as Ai, and had been placed on the next draft to go back and rejoin the regiment in Belgium. It was common knowledge that the Germans were being pushed back all along the line, but we didn’t dare believe that the war might actually end, but end it did. On the morning of 11 November we were on the firing range and were told that, if a ceasefire was signed, they’d send up a rocket. We watched for the rocket and about eleven o’clock we saw it go up and we all cheered. I remember the feelings of joy to think that I would not have to go back and relief that the war was over. We were using a lot of spare ammunition, so the officer said, “Get rid of it, fire it out to sea, we don’t want to carry it back.” The fellow next to me had started blazing away when I noticed that his rifle was pointing across mine and I said, “What the hell are you firing at?” He said, “That bloody hut up there.” I said, “That’s where the markers are!” The markers registered our shots on the targets, but at that moment they were inside, taking refuge on the floor as this lad pumped ammunition through their hut. Far from being the last casualties of the war, they were inches away from being the first victims of the peace.

The sergeant got us together and we marched back to camp, and, while still carrying our rifles, we went to church for a service of thanksgiving, after which we were told we would not be allowed out of camp. The men didn’t like this, and later that day they chased this same sergeant along the long pier at Yarmouth, and when he got to the end they chucked him into the sea, and that night we had hell’s delight, a real party. At the Fort there was Hurst Castle Lighthouse on one side of us and the Needles on the other, and that evening, on the night of the Armistice, the lighthouse sounded its fog horns for the first time in four years in celebration.

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