Forgotten Voices of the Great War: A History of World War I in the Words of the Men and Women Who Were There by Max Arthur

Author:Max Arthur [Arthur, Max]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781592285709
Google: B-8svgAACAAJ
Published: 2004-06-15T03:16:14+00:00

The three soldiers, show the depth of the crater at La Boisselle after the gigantic explosion

In the evening Noble and Robbins and myself went up to Trones Wood. There was no trees left intact at all, just stumps and treetops and barbed wire all mixed up together, and bodies all over the place. Jerries and ours.

Robbins pulled up some undergrowth and as we fished our way through there was this dead Jerry, his whole hip shot away and all his guts out and flies over it. Robbins just had to step back, and then this leg that was up in a tree became dislodged and fell on his head. He vomited on the spot. Good Lord, it was terrible.

Private Norman Demuth

1/5th Battalion, London Regiment

Sitting in the front line on a firing step was very uncomfortable, with nothing to do and not much to talk about. It made one sit and think much more deeply than one would have done otherwise. I think it made you consider life much more seriously, whatever age you were. I used to find myself sitting and thinking about God quite a lot, and I was never as afraid of dying, or being dead, as I was of being maimed. I was scared stiff of being maimed, but I didn’t mind dying because I knew something was going to happen afterwards. I didn’t know what it was properly, but I thought, well, we shall find out. I used to sit and think quite deeply about God and I felt perfectly certain that he existed, you see one very often felt something behind one. And I suppose my philosophy was that it was a very nice world to live in, and if we chose to muck it up it was our own fault.

From a practical point of view there was no religion in the front line, although our unit padre used to come and visit us quite a lot. But he was never allowed to stay in one place too long because he got in the way. Behind the line there were the usual church services and then there was a church parade on a Sunday, in which the whole battalion sang lusty hymns to a wheezy harmonium and the padre preached a sermon that you couldn’t hear anyhow.

Then when you were on rest, the padre would come round to the billets – ours was very good indeed. And when I was wounded and got to hospital I thanked heaven for the padres, they were wonderful. They came round and took down your name and address and wrote your casualty postcards and generally looked after you. They never ranted, they never told you what a sinner you were or anything like that, and if they said a prayer it was a very short one.

Captain Herbert Sulzbach

German Artillery

One summer evening soon after the battle of the Somme had started, the guns were rumbling and there was a terrible noise of battle in our ears. Yet where we lay, just thirty metres from the trenches, there were mountains and peace, and hardly any shooting.

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