Blogs
Freddie Page
Name: Freddie Page | Age: 20 | From: London, England
1 June 1916
Sometimes I wish I'd never learnt to write. Where's the glory in sitting in Querrieux scribbling notes and shuffling paper, eh?
'It's them kind of skills that'll keep you out of trouble, so you can really make somefin' of yer life,' – I can hear Mum saying it now.
Turns out she was right. There's hardly anyone else in my platoon who can write, let alone take shorthand. So here I am taking it easy in the summer sun like some glorified secretary rather than digging trenches or rolling out barbed wire. It's not what I was expecting at all.
> Posted by Freddie Page | 1 June 1916
3 June 1916
Great news! A brigade major saw me playing cricket with some lads from a public school brigade the other day and he reckoned he could get me a trial for Surrey when we get back to Blighty. Imagine that. Me playing with Jack Hobbs, maybe. Roll on the end of the war. Surely this is the last cricket season we'll have to miss.
> Posted by Freddie Page | 3 June 1916
4 June 1916
I saw a whole load of Geordies today marching off towards the front – and I was all ready to march off with them. Sure they looked tired. They've been cooped up in trains for days and then frog-marched over miles of muddy tracks and slippery cobbles in the summer heat. But they were still smiling and joking as they went past. Much cheerier than me, the office-wallah.
Still, I've been kept pretty busy. If the war could be won by the side bashing out the most stationery, I reckon we'd win hands down. My lieutenant says we can't rely on wireless or telephone because the bloody Hun are so good at listening in, and the wires keep getting cut. So paper-based orders carried by runners and pigeons it must be. More secure that way – the less the Germans know about what we're up to, the better.
> Posted by Freddie Page | 4 June 1916
8 June 1916
Terrible news in yesterday's papers. Kitchener is dead, drowned at sea after his ship hit a mine. It's a catastrophe for Britain. He really was the only proper war leader we had. The politicians only care about votes and deals within deals, and most of the generals seem to still live in the 19th century (I could be shot for saying that...).
Just about everyone I know signed up because of Kitchener. 'Kitchener's Army' we call ourselves. He was everywhere – always pointing out at us from his poster with that bloody enormous moustache – YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU!
Well, we bloody well need him now. One can only hope this is some kind of put-up job to get Jerry off the scent, and that really Kitchener's alive and well, brewing up some cunning plan with the Russians.
Somebody in the office said he wouldn't be surprised if the Irish had blown Kitchener up. Stupid talk, especially since there are so many Irishmen heading for the toughest part of the front right now. We're all in this together – Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Indian, Aussies, New Zealanders, South Africans... I even met some blokes from Newfoundland the other day. It's a bloody world war, this is. Kitchener understood that.
> Posted by Freddie Page | 8 June 1916
12 June 1916
I went out with an officer today to take stock of artillery being brought in from the coast and to hand out maps plus notes about elevations and the like.
Row upon row of guns of various shapes and sizes are being hauled into position. A staggering sight. And the amount of ammunition being stockpiled is simply awesome. Literally hundreds of thousands of shells. I don't know who to pity more – the poor sods who have to lunk these things around, or the Germans in their trenches who pretty soon will be on the receiving end of a barrage from hell.
> Posted by Freddie Page | 12 June 1916
13 June 1916
We stayed the night out in the field last night. Exciting. And scary. You never quite know when the Germans are going to lay down a barrage. My lieutenant managed to barter with the locals for a rabbit ('le lapin!'), which we cooked and shared with a group of gunners. They gibed me about being an infantryman and a budding cricketer. 'Your job's going to be a piece of piss, mate,' one of them said. 'When we've finished with these 'ere shells, you'll be able to walk over into those German trenches like you're a fielder ambling in from the outfield at the end of an over!'
Almost immediately another gunner told a story about how his unit had been hit once by a German shell. He said he was blown off his feet and completely winded for several minutes. And when he got up and the smoke had cleared, two of his mates had disappeared and the third was buried up to his neck in mud – just a head sticking out of the ground, screaming.
As soon as we got back to HQ I put in a request to get nearer the front line.
> Posted by Freddie Page | 13 June 1916
16 June 1916
Had a good night in the estaminet last night. Lots of wine, French women and song. Ended with a rousing encore of 'Land of Hope & Glory'. That and the wine made me want to march straight off to the front and start something. Our boys have been sitting around in our little funk-holes for too long, I reckon. And it's just day after day of scribbling for me. Very boring.
Makes me almost long for the days of basic training down in Kent: the square bashing, learning how to walk very slowly in a line with 60 pounds on your back, and then a bit of light bayonet practise. Yaaaargh!
> Posted by Freddie Page | 16 June 1916
17 June 1916
Made time for cricket again in the afternoon with a biscuit tin for a bat and a packing case as stumps. Came as something of a relief after a very moving church service this morning in the open air. 'Eternal father, strong to save' beautifully sung by some ex-choirboys dressed in dusty uniforms. I guess I wasn't the only one thinking that they might be singing together for the last time.
> Posted by Freddie Page | 17 June 1916
19 June 1916
Good news. I've made it as far as Millencourt, a few miles from Albert and the front line. Turns out that our company commander was as keen as me to be a part of the game, and so he volunteered some of us to go up and report on the progress of the miners and sappers up near La Boisselle. We head on up the line later today.
Just getting up here was a struggle, so God knows what the last five miles are going to be like. We were expected to hump supplies up with us and it took us all day and a night to cover the ground. On the way we passed several dead mules and a broken-down bus. It's the first time I've seen any of the death and destruction that other soldiers talk about. I'm glad it was just mules…
> Posted by Freddie Page | 19 June 1916
20 June 1916
Millencourt is teeming with soldiers, packed into barns like battery hens. Everyone spends four days here resting – chatting, reading, playing games, eating, sleeping – and then four days in the trenches. The boys who are just back from the front are a sorry sight – disshevelled, dirty, covered in lice, gaunt, clearly exhausted. I feel a bit ashamed in my new(ish) uniform. It's obvious I haven't seen any serious action. Got nicely muddy today. Went forward to spend time with the sappers who are digging a huge tunnel right under the German lines. The idea is to let off a huge mine right under Jerry's arse, just before we advance out of the trenches. I was there to report on progress, but couldn't help getting stuck in, helping to shift the bags of dug-up soil and bail out water.
It's dirty, wet, dangerous work digging tunnels round here, but a lot of the men here are ex-miners so they take it in their stride. They don't have a lot of time for softy southerners like me. I heard that two of them were shot recently for disrespecting an officer.
One scary moment – a sudden call of 'Out, get out', then men scrabbling out of the tunnel. Every so often this happens, apparently. Someone thinks he hears Germans digging the other way and the fear of Jerry dropping a few mustard gas canisters into the hole gets everyone scurrying up for air.
> Posted by Freddie Page | 20 June 1916
21 June 1916
'Action' then. So this is 'action'. Suddenly, the world seems very different. My commanding officer is so gung-ho that he decided we ought to make a night recce out in No Man's Land. He wants to see how the Germans are set up, so he can pass back information to the artillery about how best to blow up their dugouts and cut through their barbed wire.
You have to be as quiet as a mouse moving around because you're only ever a few hundred yards from the enemy lines and there's absolutely no cover. We hadn't got far when a German flare went up. They must have heard us coming. The commander had already told us to freeze rather than duck for cover if this happened, but one of the young boys with us panicked and went to the floor. Naturally, Jerry saw the movement and immediately opened up with a machine gun. That's when we really did hit the deck.
We were pinned down for quite a while, and only really got out of there by tossing a few Mills bombs and then retreating on our stomachs, inch by inch. One lad got a bullet in the neck, but we patched him up with a field dressing. It took us three hours to crawl back to our own trench – and even then there was one ugly moment when we'd forgotten the password for the night. Just for a second it looked like my war would be over, thanks to a bayonet from one of my own team.
> Posted by Freddie Page | 21 June 1916
23 June 1916
Marched back to Millencourt today after four days in the trenches. I say marched, but it was more like a dusty trudge interrupted by people coming the other way, carrying food, barbed wired, telephone lines, ammunition and so on. It seems pretty bloody obvious that we're on the move. The Germans must know we're coming. And judging from the other night's events, they're well prepared. For the first time I feel scared and unsure of what I'm doing here. I'm looking forward to a bath, anyway. And a mattress to sleep on.
> Posted by Freddie Page | 23 June 1916
25 June 1916
The guns started yesterday and have been blazing away ever since. For the first hour or so, you think of it as a rather grand sound – like the hammer of the gods, or something. But as it goes on, your ears start to ring and your skull seems to vibrate from the inside with every shot. Your mind starts to yell, 'Stop, please stop, if only for a few minutes please stop.' But it doesn't. It's a day-and-a-half now and some of the boys around me are getting very jumpy. They say there'll be at least three days of this. And tomorrow the brigade I'm with heads up to the front line. I could head back to my desk in Querrieux, I suppose, and get away from all this. But somehow that doesn't seem right. If nothing else, I can help as an observer, making sure we really are pummelling the Germans in all the right places.
> Posted by Freddie Page | 25 June 1916
28 June 1916
Things are pretty miserable here. The shelling goes on and we're no more than half a mile from where they're landing. My commander has to pop his head up over the trench every so often and write down his account of what he sees in shorthand. He sends reports back to base that the wire is broken, the machine guns blasted and that there are no signs of life. But all he can really see is smoke and dirt and devastation. To make things worse it started raining last night – just as we were all thinking it might be time to go over the top. The resulting haze and mist makes it very hard to observe anything.
Some of the men had put on all the gear they're expected to carry into battle – all 60 pounds of it – and were finding it very hard to move around in the mud. Parts of the trench have become ponds of soupy cement, so deep and gloopy that you need help getting pulled out of them. Not ideal conditions for going into battle, I'd say.
> Posted by Freddie Page | 28 June 1916
29 June 1916
So tomorrow we go. 7.30 is zero hour. The weather's cleared and apparently it's going to be a bright sunny day. The guns are still blazing, though not quite so relentlessly. There's been quiet patches when men have been able to collect their thoughts, write to their loved ones, organise their kit one last time, take a meal, sharpen the bayonets...
I'm not going in the first wave. I'll get to go over later when the German front line has been secured and we can set up decent communications. Everyone says it'll be a cakewalk. Most of the enemy are already dead and their defences devastated. And any survivors will be still cowering in their dugouts by the time our boys get over there.
We've actually been told by the officers not to hurry our way across, but to walk slowly in a straight line in the full open air, just to be sure that everyone gets there at the same time. Like that gunner said, it really will be like walking in from the outfield at the end of an over.
> Posted by Freddie Page | 29 June 1916