Letters From the Trenches: A Soldier of the Great War Read Online Free Page A

the slice then eaten. It had the
merit of being full of flavour, cheap and quite nutritious, although probably not very healthy.
    In general, it would appear that the newly joined conscripts were not particularly well fed. The last line of the letter sums up Harry’s feelings with a touch of wry humour. We shall hear
more of his experiences of Army food – always a preoccupation of soldiers – as his service progresses.
    The War Office specified the period of training for volunteer infantrymen in 1914 and 1915 as eight months. By the time Harry, a conscript, started his training, the desperate need for soldiers
had reduced this period to around five months. Perhaps this reduction was not really a problem, as no amount of training could prepare these young men sent to the front line for what was to
follow.
    As an extra detail at Rugeley at this time, the Army had built a replica of the Messines–Wytschaete Ridge in Belgian Flanders on the camp’s training grounds on Cannock Chase. The
actual ridge lies a few miles to the south of the town of Ypres (Ieper), and in early 1917 was occupied by the Germans in well dug-in emplacements; Ypres itself was held by the British, who also
occupied a ‘salient’ jutting eastwards from the town into German-held territory. The ridge was only a few metres high, but it was sufficiently prominent to dominate the plain, giving
excellent views of the Allies’ movements and dispositions. For months, the British High Command had been making preparations to take this ridge, in order to deprive the Germans of their
commanding view over the Ypres Salient. The mock-up on Cannock Chase was just a small part of the meticulous planning that went into the operation. For Harry, the Messines Ridge was to be a
significant element of his experiences over the next month or so.
    By May 1917, with his basic training completed, Harry was in France with an infantry battalion to which he had been assigned, from where he wrote both to his brother and to one
of his sisters. Harry’s references in his letters to his location on the Western Front were always to France or, occasionally, Flanders (an area that in fact occupies parts of France, Belgium
and Holland). He would have actually spent most of his time in Belgium, but that small country, so important in the history of the Great War, never gets a mention.
    Shortly after crossing the Channel, Harry wrote to his brother Jack.
    May 1917
    Dear Jack
    Just a line to let you know I am alright and that I have landed in France. The weather here has been very hot. Not at all a bad sort of place. There is a pretty town
     about two miles away on the coast but it is out of bounds. This is my address we have got to put it in the middle of our letter. I don’t know why. 33502 Pt Lamin West York Reg [West
     Yorkshire Regiment] number lines 33rd IBDAPO section 17 BEF France. No doubt you have read about the Arcadian going down. Well the draft to Mesopotamia which I should’ve been on had it
     not been for my teeth, was on it. I have heard from one that was on it. he was in the same hut as me at Rugely. I think they were about all saved. Write as soon as you get this letter as I
     should be going up the line of next week and perhaps get to a different regiment so write soon.
    yours truly
    Harry.
    Is there some anticipation, perhaps even apprehension, at the prospect of ‘going up the line’? Nor do I know why, regarding the address, ‘we have got to put it in the middle of
our letter’. Clearly it was not an enduring instruction, for it rarely appeared there again in Harry’s letters.
    At that time, soldiers’ numbers were regimental numbers, so that, changing regiment meant being issued with a new number. (In the British Army today, an individual soldier’s number
is his unique Army number, and remains constant for the whole of his service.) Harry’s number, given in this first letter from France, didn’t last long, as he changed regiment –
having