231789 Pte. Ernest William Marchant British Army 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards from:Freshford, Bath Recently a small parcel arrived in the post from England. In it was a box, well made of thick cardboard with metal reinforcement at its edges. It is a spectacle container designed to be sent, as is, through the post. On the top are Grandpas address and the senders details: F.I. Tovey, Optician, New Bond Street, Bath. It cost threepence to send and is postmarked 15th November 1920.
Within the box are several things, the most important being a small army-issue notebook. It is a diary written by my grandfather during the Great War of 1914-1918 and covers the period September 1917 to just after hostilities ceased. There are daily entries and, jotted on the last few pages, some little bits of soldiers philosophy written in the style of those times.
He enlisted on February 23rd, 1915; a married man aged 36 and five months, a master mason and father of five small children. I assume enlisted means what it says on his attestation form for it seems improbable that conscription could have gathered him up so early in the war.
However, the squire held a majority in the Coldstream Guards and had a company raised almost exclusively of men from the parish, so peer pressure probably accompanied the general euphoria of the day. That grandpa was military-minded is undoubted - his army papers show him as serving in the militia, 1st Volunteer Battalion, Wiltshire Regiment so I think the chance to go to war might well have been impossible to deny. His motives could have been patriotism, adventure or escape. Most likely it was a combination, or rationalisation, of all three.
The Guards being what they are, it would have taken most of the year to turn him into a proficient soldier despite his service in the reserve, for this was well before the tragedy of Haigs half-trained boys. The Coldstreamers were proud and a man had to prove himself before he was shown the enemy.
I look across the lush green lawn at the toddlers, screaming and dancing with delight as they push one another under the sprinkler then throw themselves, chubby arms linked, into the paddling pool. For today, Armistice Day, is seasonably warm. The barbie is nearly ready and I must feed my grandchildren and their parents.
Life at the front was the usual mixture of boredom, discomfort and terror. Of plum-and-apple [jam]; Pass the grease [margarine]; Stand to! then, all too often, Over the top!
Whatever it was really like he endured; fighting in the mud, on the firing step or crouched fearfully in a funkhole as enemy howitzers blasted his trench. He was in the front line for somewhat over six months. It probably felt like a lifetime.
- Life is a duty - bear it
- Life is a burden - bear it
- Life is a burden - wear it
Bond St, Rotten Row, St Julien, Metigny, Morlancourt were his battlegrounds, and Mealthe, Flers, Lavantic and Mailly.
A true countryman, he would have been comforted by the copses and undergrowth, before they were bombarded into water-filled craters, that formed the woods known as Magnet, Trony, Deville Pozieres and, with grim irony, Sanctuary. Side by side with his mates he defended trenches at Martinpuick, Coulitte, Les Boeufs and what he records as Ypres St Jean.
In the front line they learned the hard way to be philosophical about their predicament
- My belongings leave to my next of kin
- My purse is empty - theres nothing in
- My rifle, uniform, pack and kit
- I leave to the next poor devil itll fit
- But if this war I manage to clear
- Ill keep them all for a souvenir.
On rare occasions he was plucked from the front line and sent home to England to freshen up. No showers, no change of clothes. My grandmother would scrub him clean in the big tin bath in front of the fire then wash and press his uniform. The days off were a nicely calculated minimum to get him ready to return to battle.
- Life is a game of cricket
- Mans the player, tall and stout
- Standing to defend his wicket
- Lest misfortune bowl him out.
For Grandpa it was a minenwerfer shell, surely with each of their names upon it, that entombed his whole Section. His comrades were all killed, I hope instantaneously. It took two days to find Grandpa and dig him out of the collapsed trench.
A few years back, my Uncle Basil, at 78, made the journey to Australia to visit us. He told me that Leslie, his eldest brother and my father, was alone in the cottage in 1916 when the postman - their uncle - toiled up the steep incline of Staples Hill to deliver a War Office telegram. My whole remembrance of Dad clicked into a different perspective when Basil recalled that ten year old Les kept the dreaded Missing in Action to himself. The first my grandmother knew was when, three days later, a telegram of reassurance arrived to say her husband had been found alive.
The diary merely records that he was clouted out. This was at Le Transloy, on the banks of a gentle if muddy stream called The Somme. The official record is equally succinct: GSW Legs 20/11/16, in the Field. To the War Office, GSW [gun shot wounds] obviously covered a multitude of injuries.
November 1916 marked the end of the first great Somme battle, where nearly a million men were lost for an advance or retreat of a derisory few muddy yards. Grandpa had served the whole of the campaign
As a Blighty his wound was effective; for nine months he stayed in bed in a military hospital in the north of England. He lost no limb but, just as he had carved many a headstone before the war and many a trench on the Somme, so did France gouge his whole being.
From then, he says, 'it was all downhill.'
The garden is quiet now; the littlies have gone to bed, their parents are off to a party and grandpa is babysitting. On the patio I lean back in the old cane chair and think. So much about war. Yet my father was just too old for 39-45. As a Nasho I missed Korea by one training course. Vietnam was not applicable in UK.
Perhaps young people will start to judge for themselves when the recruiting sergeants start to sing their siren song. Perhaps the future for my grandchildren is looking better and better. Its certainly more secure than in the past, when people really did believe their leaders were, by definition, right.
He was eventually transferred to Windsor Castle on light duties. These comprised duty as usual (unspecified in the diary), haircut parades, blanket-shaking, coal-carrying, Church Parade on Sunday and, every fortnight, a visit to the MO for TMB. It seems this was a medical board to determine his progress, and thus his fitness to return to the front.
In the event, he remained B3 for eighteen months, enveloped in a tedium of convalescence.
- Mans ingress - naked and bare be
- Mans progress - trouble and care
- Mans egress the Devil know where.
The post, which was the only method of long distance communication available to private soldiers, provided some respite. Every day he wrote to my grandmother and every day he received a letter by return, sometimes folded within his local newspaper. On occasion the children, Marjorie, Les, Bill, Reg or Basil, would add a word or two or even send a card to the father they were beginning to forget.
Grandpa inevitably posted his letters at the Main Gate of the barracks. Then, if the evening were fine, he would continue his walk to Oakley Green to call in at the Nags Head.
The monotony was interspersed by occasional weekend visits home, each journey recorded in meticulous detail: left Windsor 2.40 p.m.; Paddington 4 p.m.; arrived Freshford 7.17 via Trowbridge. The children of course were all there, so seven in the tiny thatched cottage must have been a bit of a squeeze. I can just remember visiting my grandmother some thirty years on and recall in detail the tiny kitchen in which she cooked on a Primus stove making, endlessly it seemed, jams, cakes and pies, and the cramped surroundings where on four needles she knitted socks, always grey.
The weekend, therefore, would be taken up in strolls. By our standards they were all prodigious walkers, simply through necessity - cars or even horses were not for the working class. Around Freshford the Avon valley is extremely steep and destinations along level roads are very few.
Nevertheless, the diary records double three-mile trips to Westwood on Sundays for morning and evening chapel service. I think my Grandmother, the believer in the family, went to witness her unfailing gratitude. Grandpa, I suspect, just went.
There were walks to Iford with six year old Basil to stand on the little stone bridge that was adorned with the statue of Britannia (Boer War?) then perhaps another precipitous mile down to Avoncliffe where as a stonemason Grandpa had worked for Mr Jordan. He even made the six mile hike to Bradford-on-Avon to buy a new watch to replace that broken by a billiard ball in the Windsor Barracks YMCA. Then, when the children were bedded down, there would be a short stroll with Agnes before turning in.
But, come Monday morning, it was always back to barracks, the journey recorded, train time by train time.
If anything these weekends heightened his fear of being sent back to the Western Front. From Windsor Castle he was allowed home reasonably often but never is there any indication that the War Office was about to give him his freedom. In England the philosophy that God was on the side of the big battalions died hard. Get them well, get them back! was the cry. It doesn't go unrecorded in the diary:
Last night all men recalled off leave. Confined to barracks. Got the wind up.
He sees drafts of B1 men leaving for France at midnight and towards the end the diary entry is a stark regraded B2. Obviously there was nothing more to say. The constant and near tangible spectre of trenches, rats, lice, mud and the Hun bombardment hovered above him.
- The fortunes of war
- Be you ever so bold
- Is a mound of earth
- Or a stripe of gold
It didnt happen, though. Time and time again he was passed fit only for light duties and remained on the roster at Windsor Castle.
Presented arms to the Royal family. Opened the gate for Prince of Wales. King arrived castle by motor.
All this is noted, as is knocked out Bandsman Blake (but no explanation). More often now, Roll on or Roll on my three appears at the end of each days entry. The Hun, he says, is still on the run stuff to give them! He can sense the end of things - in a barracks the right information has a way of trickling through.
On October 13, 1918: The Huns shouting Kamerad. But on the first day of November yet another huge draft of men leaves for France. Then, suddenly it seems, its all over: 8/11 Hun peace envoys over lines. 10/11 Hohenzolleren abdicates.
The next day: ARMISTICE DAY - war over, town [Windsor] beflagged. Then, at the end of the page three years nine months service today.
But they still wouldnt let him go home. I dont know how my grandmother coped. Perhaps her gratitude to her God for her husbands survival overcame all hardship. He was kept on duty at the Castle throughout that Christmas:
Xmas Eve, Roll on. Napoo...
Indeed, il ny en plus.
At last, in February 1919, he was demobilised via the Dispersal Centre at Fovant, near Portsmouth. Here, apart from the administration of his release, they gave him very little - a suit, five pounds [$10] and a rail ticket home. He arrived in Freshford at 10.30 p.m. (train times diligently recorded, as usual) and for the next few days was able to record tres bon times as he enjoyed his furlough.
But all too soon it was back to Avoncliffe to work as a mason for ninepence an hour: went fairly well, very cold, hands not used to mallet and chisels. Then after work and at the weekends there was the cottage to whitewash, the garden to re-establish and a family to be cared for in a land fit for heroes.
- What is life?
- A little gush
- A little rush
- A little hush
Perhaps the light duties, standing guard at Windsor Castle, were easier for a man to take than what he perceived to be his future at home. Perhaps the mateship of the battalion and the sense of away-ness from the need to assume total responsibility for his growing family, in the most honourable manner of course, made life in uniform again appear more attractive.
I have been unable to discover any subsequent diary - he probably couldnt see any point in continuing to record his what, mundane? lifestyle - and the saddest part of the notebook comes at the very end, just over five months after peace broke out.
He has received one pound, seventeen shillings and sixpence (less than $5) for 55 hours work as a stonemason. In what little spare time available to him he has had to augment this paltry sum by looking after the schoolmasters garden.
Ding-dong existence no change same old routine miss the Old Brigade.
Slipped between the pages of the diary there are three snapshots. First is dated December 1915, when he became a trained Coldstreamer. It is a studio portrait, and he poses self-consciously. He is in full uniform, puttees, cheese-cutter cap and swagger stick. He looks very confident and his waxed moustache adds an air of arrogance.
The second tells me he must have recovered, to the extent possible, from his terrible injuries, for this photo sees him in uniform once more. But it is not the dashing, tailored, tight-fitting guardsmans outfit that he now wears. No; although its again a suit of khaki, the baggy trousers and a shapeless blouse signal the army surplus garb that in 1939 was handed out, with scant resort to measurement, to ex-soldiers. The Local Defence Volunteers they were called, a name as dull as its uniform. Churchill hated LDV so gave it some oomph as the much more newsworthy Home Guard. Its fame now rests with the TV program Dads Army, which depends for its humour on laughing at the antics of the old-timers. I note, though, that in this picture Grandpa is shouldering a Lee Enfield .303, the rifle that had been his friend.
Nevertheless, he looks as if hes well aware of the difference in his appearance.
The third picture has Grandpa in civvies. Here he once again stands straight and severe as befits a guardsman but now he is wearing a countrymans baggy tweeds and flat cap. Five years old in my new sailor suit, I am sitting on the carrier of his sit-up-and-beg bicycle. It is Easter 1940. He died at end of that the year, of cancer. With what we know now its not inconceivable that the seeds of his death were sown on the battlefields of France. Im sure, though, that he would have considered that notion in some way insulting to his dead comrades.
At the bottom of the spectacle box, tucked beneath the notebook and wrapped in ancient tissue paper, are his three service and campaign medals, one of them engraved:
The Great War For Civilisation 1914-1919.
These gewgaws were dismissed with contempt as Pip, Squeak and Wilfred by millions of unemployed veterans in the immediate postwar years, when the struggle for survival was almost as desperate as any spell in the front line.
At the end of the diary, written on the inside cover in a very continental hand perhaps in an estaminet quite late at night by who I like to imagine was a compassionate and pretty mademoiselle is Le Bon Temps Viendra. Alas, for Grandpa it was a brave but hollow hope.
Vale, 15544 Private Ernest William Marchant, Coldstream Guards, shelled in the front line at the very end of the disaster known as the First Somme campaign and buried beneath stinking mud, thence to return home to pain, hardship and poverty.
But Im sure he would deride all that. After all, he would have said, in just twenty weeks a million soldiers from both sides died in that battle - and I didnt.
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