OSE WWI Transcriptions from the Archives

26: L. Y. Seymour – Hylton Castle – 5 Aug 1915 Dear Mr Sing,

I thought perhaps you might be interested to know on what sort of things I have been engaged since the outbreak of war. There has been a great difference between my expectation at the beginning and actual events. After going down for the Long Vacation last June and coming up a week or so later for my Dirmit Schools Viva, I went down to Winchelsea on the coast of Sussex, and from a small cottage right on the beach with three other fellows from Wadham who were reading the same schools. There we stopped for a few weeks, doing all our own household work, bathing, and getting in several hours work a day! About the 25 th of July I went to camp at Canterbury with King Edward’s Horse for the annual training. On the 7 th August, I think it was, we sent back all the horse we had, and proceeded to Alexandra Palace, N. London, to mobilise. While there, we received equipment with quite unmilitary speed, and collected, commandeered, or otherwise secured a very fine lot of horses from Epsom, Brentwood, Epping Forest, and other places. Our equipment was then absolutely complete down to the last button and identity disc. So, we moved north into Hertfordshire, just outside Watford, and were billeted on the inhabitants or in barns. My particular troop had the large hunting stables at the back of the Earl of Clarendon’s house, and after a little while were given the use of a very large room in the house itself for a common room and a couple of bathrooms. There we stayed and eventually settled down for the winter. Rumours of every description floated through the regiment, and once came so near to being true that trains were waiting in the station for us, and we were standing by saddled up and in full marching order. However, in December, as the War Office was asking for officers and my prospective career in the Ludian Civil was cut short, I decided to go to Sandhurst. Nothing of interest took place during the training there. I was promoted to Sergeant fairly soon and enjoyed the rather doubtful privileges of that rank until I left. On May 11 th I was gazetted to the York and Lancaster Regt, and I came up to Sunderland next day. The Battalion was all in billets, and at the time was rather weak in strength, because so many drafts had just been sent off to the front. I found myself second in command of a company in a few days. About the beginning of June, we went out to camp; and at the end of the same month, I was sent down to Strensall, near York, to go through a machine gun course at the school of musketry there. At last, I thought I had come to the limit. I could not be sent for any more courses, and in the ordinary way I should have been away some time ago. But unfortunately, I was rash enough to get ‘Distinguished’ in the mach. gun course and that sealed my fate. I am now engaged in training machine gun sections of men, and when they go, I start again with a fresh lot. In addition to men, every subaltern in the Battalion has to be given instruction each day by me in the gun; and what generally happens is that one of [the] Majors rolls up after I have just finished and requests to be shown “how exactly the damn thing works”. The camp here is in an excellent situation, looking over the valley of the R[iver] Wear. Actual headquarters are in Hylton Castle which stands at one end of the camp and is supposed to date back to twelve hundred and something. Sunderland is 3 miles off and Newcastle about 16. We are responsible for a stretch of coast in the scheme of coast defence and on our left the Sherwood Foresters keep guard. This latter Battalion seems to spend all its time in ‘Alarms’. At the slightest provocation they have a ‘stand-to’, stick notices in the trams and generally create quite a disturbance. Not so long ago they were the cause of the whole brigade being turned out. Sometime ago we did actually have a Zeppelin over. You may have seen in the papers – ‘Zeppelin raid on the N. E. coast’. That was Jarrow and South Shields – quite close by. Personally, I had the luck to see and hear a good deal of the show and the Zeppelin passed sight overhead before turning out to sea. There often are these aircraft hovering about some way off the coast.

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