Shell WW1 History Source Pack

Shell History Project Source Pack

Harold Startin’s Trench Club Imperial War Museum (2014) Harold Startin’s Trench Club, http://www.www.wartime.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30001746 (Accessed on 30.11.17)

Figure 1. Harold Startin’s Trench Club. This trench club was made and used in 1915, by Private Harold Startin of the 1st Leicestershire Regiment. He subsequently left it at home while on leave from the Front and donated it to the Imperial War Museum in 1964, along with details of its manufacture and use. Startin and other members of his Company's bombing section made clubs because they were unable to carry rifles when using their hand grenades. They made them by fitting entrenching tool handles with lead heads made in clay moulds. Startin calls them 'a most effective weapon, especially when used on listening patrols between the trenches'. He goes on to say that 'the first victim' of his club was a Sergeant in a Württemburg regiment whom he killed near Hooge in Belgium in July 1915. Startin was a regular soldier, who participated in the 'Christmas Truce' of 1914.

Gordon Hassell’s Tank Mask Imperial War Museum (2014) Face mask, anti splinter, tank crew http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30013537 (Accessed on 30.11.17)

Figure 2. Gordon Hassell’s Tank Mask First World War period face mask of the type worn by British tank crews of the Tank Corps from 1916. The mask was designed to protect the wearer's face and eyes from 'splash' - flying fragments of hot metal caused by the impact of smallarms fire on the external plating of the vehicle.

Reverend Lushington’s Field Communion Set Imperial War Museum (2014) Reverend Lushington’s Field Communion Set, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30083748 (Accessed on 30.11.17)

Figure 3. Reverend Lushington’s Field Communion Set

Figure 4. The contents of Reverend Lushington’s Field Communion Set This set was carried by an army vicar called Reverend Lushington on the Western Front in 1915. It includes the key items required to conduct a Holy Communion service in the field: a silver cup and jug for the wine and a silver plate for the host (bread). This would have been used to provide religious services for soldiers in the trenches and behind the lines. The British Army of WW1 was predominantly Christian although soldiers of many faiths served. The provision of religious services for soldiers was seen as vital to maintain their morale and services would often be held immediately before large attacks.

British Army Steel Helmet Imperial War Museum (2014) Steel Helmet, Brodie "War Office" pattern: British Army, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30098636 (Accessed on 30.11.17)

Figure 5. ‘Brodie’ pattern steel helmet First World War period British Army issue 'Brodie' pattern steel helmet ('shrapnel helmet'). As a response to the high proportion of head wounds (many caused by artillery shrapnel) the British Army introduced a protective steel helmet for its combatant forces based on a patented design of John L Brodie in August/September 1915. The helmet's characteristic shallow steel bowl shape became the model configuration for subsequent refinements and improvements of the basic Brodie design. Imperial War Museum (2014) War Ministry Photograph, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205195248 (Accessed on 30.11.17)

http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205195248 Figure 6. A war office photograph of a wounded British soldier holding his steel helmet, which has been pierced by a piece of shrapnel, during fighting on the Somme Front near Hamel in December 1916. This photograph was distributed by the war office to show soldiers that the newly issued steel helmets were effective; in this case it almost certainly saved the soldiers life.

Decca Gramophone & Box of Records Imperial War Museum (2014) Decca Gramophone & Box of Records, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30087341 (Accessed on 30.11.17)

Figure 7. Decca Gramophone and Box of Records 'Trench gramophone', owned by C R Tobitt. Tobitt was commissioned into King's Royal Rifle Corps (KRRC) in 1915 and transferred to Royal Engineers (RE) 1916, serving with 62 Field Company at Ypres, Arras, Messines, Somme, St Quentin and La Madeleine. The gramophone accompanied 62 Field Company to all these places. There was a drill for obtaining new records for the gramophone which required each Officer going on leave to the UK to bring back a record requested by the Mess or as the result of having seen a Show whilst on leave (such as Maid Of The Mountains). When the Company broke up the gramophone was 'drawn for' and won by C R Tobitt. It was sent on to his home in England as 'officer’s surplus kit'.

Bierstein or Beer Mug owned by a German Army Reservist Imperial War Museum (2014) bierstein, Reservist, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/30082738 (Accessed on 30.11.17)

Figure 8. Porcelain bierstein or beer mug with metal lid. The piece is decorated with 'cavalry scenes' and ornate inscriptions dedicated to a German Regiment called the “Husaren-Regiment König Wilhelm I”. “Familiar French,” a phrase book given to British Soldiers. Imperial War Museum (2014) Familiar French, http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/publication/59933 (Accessed on 30.11.17)

In 1914 many soldiers in the British Army had experience of travelling abroad to serve in different parts of the empire however for the thousands of volunteers who joined up at the beginning of the war the shock of fighting was accompanied by the strangeness of visiting a foreign land often for the first time. The soldiers and locals formed relationships often based around supply and demand, for example soldiers swapping preserved rations and scrounged items for fresh food and alcohol from the locals. Whilst the language barrier could be overcome using sign language many soldiers learned French from phrase books or conversations with the locals in bars and shops. As they struggled with pronunciation a unique form of soldiers slang developed with mangled French words entering the vernacular of the British soldier e.g. Napoo meaning d one or used up, the origin is in the French phrase "il n'y en a plus" meaning "There is (are) no more....." Place names were particularly challenging with Auchonvillers becoming Ocean Villas, Mouquet Farm becoming Moo Cow Farm, Ploegsteert becoming Plug Street, and Ypres becoming the famous Wipers.

Figure 9. A soldier’s French phrase book

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In a letter to his parents, Private Pressey of the Royal Artillery described the quality of the food men were receiving on the Western Front. The biscuits are so hard that you had to put them on a firm surface and smash them with a stone or something. I've held one in my hand and hit the sharp corner of a brick wall and only hurt my hand. Sometimes we soaked the smashed fragments in water for several days. Then we would heat and drain, pour condensed milk over a dishful of the stuff and get it down.

Richard Beasley was interviewed in 1993 about his experiences during the First World War.

In training the food was just about eatable but in France we were starving. All we lived on was tea and dog biscuits. If we got meat once a week we were lucky, but imagine trying to eat standing in a trench full of water with the smell of dead bodies nearby.

Major Graham wrote a letter to his family about the food supplied to soldiers on the Western Front. I am sorry you should have the wrong impression about the food; we always had more than enough, both to eat and drink. I give you a day's menu at random: Breakfast - bacon and tomatoes, bread, jam, and cocoa. Lunch - shepherd's pie, potted meat, potatoes, bread and jam. Tea - bread and jam. Supper - ox-tail soup, roast beef, whisky and soda, leeks, rice pudding, coffee. We have provided stores of groceries and Harrods have been ordered to send us out a weekly parcel. However, if you like to send us an occasional luxury it would be very welcome. Robert Graves wrote about his experiences of the First World War in his autobiography, Goodbye to all That. This passage refers to an attack where the battalion suffered very heavy casualties. Only three junior officers, Choate, Henry and Hill survived. Hill told me the story. The Colonel and Adjutant were sitting down to a meat pie when Hill arrived. Henry said: "Come to report, sir. Ourselves and about ninety men of all companies." They looked up. "So you have survived, have you?" the Colonel said. "Well all the rest are dead. I suppose Mr. Choate had better command what's left of 'A'. The bombing officer (he had not gone over, but remained at headquarters) will command what's left of 'B'. Mr. Henry goes to 'C' Company. Mr. Hill to 'D'. Let me know where to find you if you are needed. Good night." Not having being offered a piece of meat pie or a drink of whisky, they saluted and went miserably out. The Adjutant called them back, Mr. Hill, Mr. Henry." Hill said he expected a change of mind of mind as to the propriety with which hospitality could be offered by a regular Colonel and Adjutant to a temporary second lieutenant in distress. But it was only: "Mr. Hill, Mr. Henry, I saw some men in the trench just now with their shoulder-straps unbuttoned. See that this does not occur in future." Private Harold Horne, Northumberland Fusiliers, interviewed 1978. Ration parties from each company in the line went to carry back the rations which were tied in sandbags and consisted, usually, of bread, hard biscuits, tinned meat (bully) in 12 oz. tins, tinned jam, tinned butter, sugar and tea, pork and beans (baked beans with a piece of pork fat on top), cigarettes and tobacco. Sometimes we got Manconochie Rations. This was a sort of Irish stew in tins which could be quickly heated over a charcoal brazier. When it was possible to have a cookhouse within easy reach of trenches, fresh meat, bacon, vegetables, flour, etc. would be sent up and the cooks could produce reasonably good meals. Food and tea was sent along in 'dixies' (large iron containers the lid of which could be used as a frying pan).

General John Monash, letter (11th January 1917) The big question is, of course, the food and ammunition supply, the former term covering meat, bread, groceries, hay, straw, oats, wood, coal, paraffin and candles, the latter comprising cartridges, shells, shrapnel, bombs, grenades, flares, and rockets. It takes a couple of thousand men and horses with hundreds of wagons, and 118 huge motor lorries, to supply the daily wants of my population of 20,000. With reference to food we also have to see that all the men in the front lines regularly get hot food - coffee, oxo, porridge, stews. They cannot cook it themselves, for at the least sign of the smoke of a fire the spot is instantly shelled. And they must get it regularly or they would perish of cold or frostbite, or get 'trench feet,' which occasionally means amputation. Sergeant A. Vine, diary entry (8th August, 1915) The stench of the dead bodies now is awful as they have been exposed to the sun for several days, many have swollen and burst. The trench is full of other occupants, things with lots of legs, also swarms of rats. Richard Beasley, interviewed in 1993. If you left your food the rats would soon grab it. Those rats were fearless. Sometimes we would shoot the filthy swines. But you would be put on a charge for wasting ammo, if the sergeant caught you. James Lovegrave, interviewed in 1993. Life in the trenches was hell on earth. Lice, rats, trench foot, trench mouth, where the gums rot and you lose your teeth. And of course dead bodies everywhere.

Frank Laird writing after the war.

Sometimes the men amused themselves by baiting the ends of their rifles with pieces of bacon in order to have a shot at them at close quarters.

Captain Lionel Crouch wrote to his wife about life in the trenches in 1917.

I can't sleep in my dugout, as it is over-run with rats. Pullman slept here one morning and woke up to find one sitting on his face. I can't face that, so I share Newbery's dug-out. Captain Impey of the Royal Sussex Regiment wrote this account in 1915. The trenches were wet and cold and at this time some of them did not have duckboards or dug-outs. The battalion lived in mud and water.

Private Livesay, letter to parents living in East Grinstead (6th March, 1915)

Our trenches are... ankle deep mud. In some places trenches are waist deep in water. Time is spent digging, filling sandbags, building up parapets, fetching stores, etc. One does not have time to be weary. Private Pollard wrote about trench life in his memoirs published in 1932. The trench, when we reached it, was half full of mud and water. We set to work to try and drain it. Our efforts were hampered by the fact that the French, who had first occupied it, had buried their dead in the bottom and sides. Every stroke of the pick encountered a body. The smell was awful. J. B. Priestley, letter to his father, Jonathan Priestley (December, 1915) The communication trenches are simply canals, up to the waist in some parts, the rest up to the knees. There are only a few dug-outs and those are full of water or falling in. Three men were killed this way from falling dug-outs. I haven't had a wash since we came into these trenches and we are all mud from head to foot. Bruce Bairnsfather, Bullets and Billets (1916) It was quite the worse trench I have ever seen. A number of men were in it, standing and leaning, silently enduring the following conditions. It was quite dark. The enemy were about two hundred yards away, or rather less. It was raining, and the trench contained over three feet of water. The men, therefore, were standing up to the waist in water. The front parapet was nothing but a rough earth mound which, owing to the water about, was practically non-existent. They were all wet through and through, with a great deal of their equipment below the water at the bottom of the trench. There they were, taking it all as a necessary part of a great game; not a grumble nor a comment. Captain Lionel Crouch wrote to his wife about life in the trenches in 1917. Last night we had the worst time we've had since we've been out. A terrific thunderstorm broke out. Rain poured in torrents, and the trenches were rivers, up to one's knees in places and higher if one fell into a sump. One chap fell in one above his waist! It was pitch dark and all was murky in the extreme. Bits of the trench fell in. The rifles all got choked with mud, through men falling down. Guy Chapman, a junior officer in the Royal Fusiliers, recorded how he discovered one of his men had been arrested for a self-inflicted wound. I glanced down the casualty reports. One name stood out above all others. "Private Turnbull, S.I.W." A bullet fired deliberately at the foot was the only way out. Perhaps those who call this man a coward will consider the desperation to which he was driven, to place his rifle against the foot, and drive through the bones and flesh the smashing metal. Let me hope that the court-martial's sentence was light. Not that it matters, for, in truth, the real, the real sentence had been inflicted long ago.

Charles Young was interviewed about his war experiences in 1984. No words could really describe the horror of those days - the rats, the filth, the mud, cold and non-stop rain. No sleep. No food for days at a time and being under constant enemy fire from shells, machine-gun and rifle, and gas.One day I was in the trench and we'd been under-non stop attack for days. Well, two of the blokes with me shot themselves on purpose to try and get sent home and out of the war. One lad put a tin of bully beef on a ledge in the trench, then placed his hand behind it and fired his rifle through the tin, thinking, I suppose, that the tin would take the full force of the bullet and he would only get a flesh wound. But he misjudged the power of a shot at such close range and blew three of his fingers off. The other one said to me "Chas, I am going home to my wife and kids. I'll be some use to them as a cripple, but none at all dead! I am starving here, and so are they at home, we may as well starve together." With that he fired a shot through his boot. When the medics got his boot off, two of his toes and a lot of his foot had gone. But the injuring oneself to get out of it was quite common. A sergeant-major came to see what was happening. I told him that a sniper had just caught a couple of our men who had to get on top of the trench for a minute to move a sandbag. He looked at me a bit sideways, but yelled out for stretcher bearers, and they were carried off. Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That (1929) In the interval between stand-to and breakfast, the men who were not getting in a bit of extra sleep sat about talking and smoking, writing letters home, cleaning their rifles, running their thumb-nails up the seams of their shirts to kill lice, gambling. Lice were a standing joke. Young Bumford handed me one: "We was just having an argument as to whether it's best to kill the old ones or the young ones, sir. Morgan here says that if you kill the old ones, the young ones die of grief; but Parry here, sir, he says that the young ones are easier to kill and you can catch the old ones when they go to the funeral." He appealed to me as an arbiter: "You've No lice had so far come my way, but I was always in fear of them. On going into trenches I used to spray about a gallon of lysol over my bunk below the parapet and generally about the hut; now, with the receipt from home of a box of mercurial ointment, I took for the first time to wearing my identity disc, drawing the string through the ointment. I had heard that this was a louse deterrent. It made one's neck dirty but there was never a louse found. Robert Sherriff , No Leading Lady (1968) At dawn on the morning of the attack, the battalion assembled in the mud outside the huts. I lined up my platoon and went through the necessary inspection. Some of the men looked terribly ill: grey, worn faces in the dawn, unshaved and dirty because there was no clean water. I saw the characteristic shrugging of their shoulders that I knew so well. They hadn't had their clothes off for weeks, and their shirts were full of lice. Harry Patch, Last Post (2005) Lice. We were lousy. The lice were the size of grains of rice, each with its own bite, each with its own itch. When we could, we would run hot wax from a candle down the seams of our trousers, our vests - whatever you had - to burn the buggers out. It was the only thing to do. Eventually, when we got to Rouen, coming back, they took every stitch off us and gave us a suit of sterilised blue material. And the uniforms they took off, they burned them - to get rid of the lice. For the four months I was in France I never had a bath, and I never had any clean clothes to put on. Nothing. been to college, sir, haven't you?" John Reith, Wearing Spurs (1966)

LTi fr ee ni nc ht he es Nothing happened at first. We advanced at a slow double. I noticed that it had begun to rain. Then the enemy machine-gunning started, first one gun, then many. They traversed, and every now and then there came the swish of bullets. It's a bloody death trap, someone said. I told him to shut up. But was he right? We struggled on through the mud and the rain and the shelling. Then came a terrific crack above my head, a jolt in my left shoulder, and at the same time I was watching in an amazed, detached sort of way my right forearm twist upwards of its own volition and then hang limp. I realised that I had been hit. I was suddenly filled with a surge of happiness. It was a physical feeling almost, consciousness of a reprieve from the shadow of death, no less. That I had just taken part in a failure, that I had really done nothing to help win the war, these things were forgotten - if ever indeed they had entered my consciousness . Harold Mellersh, a young platoon commander who took part in the Somme offensive.

Recommended Websites:

Spartacus Educational pages on the First World War: This site includes both articles and primary sources on a wide range of topics relating to the First World War. http://spartacus-educational.com/FWW.htm The Imperial War Museum: This is a particularly good resource when looking for images, there may well be thousands of results so be sure to filter your search to ensure you find what you are looking for. http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections A Guide to First World War Battlefields and History: This site includes some very useful material on battlefields as well as links to other sites that may help with your research. http://www.greatwar.co.uk/ The First World War: A multimedia history of the war with lots of excellent background material as well as primary sources. http://www.firstworldwar.com/ The National Archives: Should you decide to research a specific individual this site might be able to give you access to their wartime records. There is also some good background material giving an overview of the war. https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/first-world-war/