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

previously been assigned to two others, from which he had rapidly been moved. I have not been able to discover what process was involved in assigning new recruits once they arrived in
France. I suspect that, at the depots to which these men were sent, there would have been a list of regiments with a shortage of men, and that some clerical exercise would have taken place to fill
the gaps. In the early days of the war, the policy had been to keep recruits that had joined together from the same location in the same units. The flaw in that initial policy was that whole towns
could lose their supply of young men in a single action, as had been tragically demonstrated by the disaster that overtook some of the ‘Pals’ battalions on the Somme in July 1916.
    The Arcadian was a Royal Mail steamer that was employed as a troopship and ammunition carrier. She was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine in the Mediterranean on 15 April 1917; of
the 601 troops on board, 75 perished. If Harry had not suffered from bad teeth, obviously requiring attention, at Rugeley, this story might have been very different.
    A few days later, Harry wrote to Kate. Things have moved on a little, since his letter to Jack.
    13th May, 1917
    Dear Kate
    Sorry I have not written to you for such a long time no doubt you’re being wondering how I am getting on. I should have wrote to you only have been so busy always
     something to do never any time to spare. I am in the best of health at present the weather here is very hot. We had a good voyage across the channel it was very calm. I think we are going
     further up the line tomorrow so can’t send you my proper address. I shall send it on to Ethel as soon as I get it so you can write for it. I have had some moving about what bit I have
     been in the army. First I was attached the York’s then the South Staffords and West Yorks now I think I am settled in the ninth Batt York & Lancaster so you see I have had some moves.
     Write as soon as you get my address and let me know how you are getting on. I wrote to Jack and he seems to be getting on alright. I will write again as soon as I can.
    With Best Love from
    Harry
    For whatever reason, at the fourth attempt to find a regiment, Harry joined the 9th (Service) Battalion, the York and Lancaster Regiment, having previously been attached to the Yorkshire
Regiment (Green Howards), the South Staffordshire Regiment and the West Yorkshire Regiment.
    I can only estimate the date on which he joined the York and Lancasters. Working backwards from his letter to Kate, which is dated, I would guess that the first letter to Jack, when Harry was
still with the West Yorkshires, must have been written in the first week in May, which would indicate that he joined the 9th York and Lancasters between the 7th and the 10th.
    Referring to the battalion war diary for that month, from 3 to 9 May the 9th was out of the line, undergoing training on the Boescheppe (Boeschepe) training ground, about ten miles (16km) west
and slightly south of Ypres, just over the border into France. That would have been a logical time to take in new recruits. On the 10th, the battalion moved to a new camp and on the night of 11th
it relieved another unit, taking its place in the front line.
    Harry is, at last, ‘in the line’, in a proper fighting unit, experiencing his first taste of a battlefield on the Western Front. His letter to Kate of 13 May must have been written
when he was actually in the front line, for the battalion had been relieved in the trenches by 14 May, and sent by train to Poperinghe (Poperinge), the main British administration and rest centre
for the Ypres sector, some six miles (10km) west of the city and well away from the front.
    As May progressed, Harry’s battalion would be charged with the task of preparing for the major assault on the crucial objective of the Messines Ridge, as a prelude to the coming great
offensive, in which the British were to attempt to drive the