Into the jaws of hell

GUNNER GEORGE JAMES’ 1916 diary is now reaching its critical phase. Returning from leave in the warmth of his coalming community in County Durham, he suddenly finds that he is a tiny part in one of the largest military build-ups of the First World War.

In early June 1916, he cannot have imagined the horror that was about to come his way, but, aged 21 and with eight months’ experience in the trenches, he was a veteran of the Western Front, and so we learn from his diary that he very quickly sensed that something was up.

From our standpoint, looking back exactly 98 years on his diary, we know that the British were preparing for the all-out onslaught of July 1, 1916 – the first day of the Battle of the Somme when, on the first morning alone, there were 60,000 casualties.

Weekend Memories has been following George’s diary since the start of this year. Serving with the Royal Field Artillery, he has already seen some appalling sights and felt some dreadful pain, most notably when he learned of the loss of his younger brother, John, in the Dardenelles.

The two young miners had responded to the appeal of Lord Kitchener – “Your country needs you” – and left their small pit village of Littletown, to the east of Durham City.

George, an elder in the local Methodist church, was held in high esteem in the Littletown community, and it would seem from the last entry we published in Memories 180 that, in the middle of May 1916, he was back home on leave. The story in his family is that when his leave came to an end, he knew he would never again return to his cherished home.

So we re-join his diary with him back on the Western Front in northern France. He begins by bringing us up to date with the progress of the war and then, suddenly, the pace changes. He gets the word to go, and the build-up to the most brutal day in British military history has begun.

June 8 This diary has been neglected and a great deal has happened not recorded here.

The Navy, which is the pride of the nation, the most wonderful Navy in the world, has suffered a smashing blow. And Lord Kitchener and his staff have gone down somewhere while proceeding to Russia (Footnote 1, see below).

The Germans are pressing at Ypres and also at St Eloi (Footnote 2). This has been most tragic for Great Britain and events which have happened will sober the nation and humble their pride and perhaps awake them to a keener sense of the damage of being too confident of delaying instead of striking, of having only conscientious scruples. It will, perhaps, help those who don’t realise the danger the nation is really in to see things as they are.

Perhaps they will understand the vital necessity, the peace of the future generations, that German power must be smashed and reduced to a minimum and kept under. The German nation has, by her own machinations, condemned herself as beastly and uncivilised and is not fit to have power.

May God give wisdom and understanding to those who are at the head of affairs. Those who are responsible for the conduct of the nation’s affairs.

We are out of action in rest at Clarques 8 kilometres from Airesur- Lys (west of Lille), grand country after being at Armentieres.

June 12 Sudden orders to proceed by train to – somewhere. Raining heavy.

Rumours of German advance on Ypres.

June 13 Entrained at Lillers.

The Northern Echo’s front page of June 7, 1916, reporting the death of Lord Kitchener. On the right is the latest news concerning Timothy Ignatius Trebitsch-Lincoln, who is one of Memories’ heroes. He was MP for Darlington in 1910 and he remains the only British MP who has also been a member of the government of Germany. Here, following his fantastically untrue claim to have been a double-agent at the start of the war, he has been extradited from New York to face charges that he forged documents to gain £1,100 from the account of Benjamin Seebohm Rowntree, the chocolate philanthropist, of York.

June 14 Arrive in the Somme district next to the French troops. This was as far as our lines extended. Not a house or village for miles. A great offensive by the British and French is imminent. Hundreds of guns of all calibre being massed on the front with the greatest of speed. I do not know the name of this place yet, but there is a little village here called Carnoy. This morning I had to go for a wash on horseback to the nearest water I could find, which was about two miles away. Told to join working party tonight to build dug-outs and lay mines (Footnote 3).

Three days later I know neither date or day of the week. We have been working very hard these last three days. The Battery position is about 400 or 500 yards behind the trenches. It is the most advanced of them all.

The guns are coming into action tonight. Bombardment begins tomorrow, I believe. Haven’t had time to write a line even. We have been short of food. So far we have had four casualties. The next few days, there is going to be a busy time.

An entry from the diary of Gunner George James

I have been reading a grand little booklet called “The Companionship of Jesus”, reflections of the 40 days of Lent, by the Rev CE Ball MA. It is a very helpful little book and helped me very much indeed. I wonder if at any time I shall have the opportunity of seeing him or hearing him preach.

Poor George. He never got the opportunity of meeting the Reverend CE Ball. Over the course of the next three weeks, Memories will be bringing the last three weeks of George’s diary. It really is powerful, emotional stuff – “was there ever such a bloody, horrible, hellish day in history?” he asks at one point – and, as you have probably guessed, there is no happy ending.

FOOTNOTES

1. Lord Kitchener was already a popular war hero for his derring-do in South Africa and Egypt when the First World War began and Prime Minister HH Asquith rather bravely made the career soldier Secretary of State for War.

Kitchener’s military ways did not make him popular with his new politician colleagues, and the traditional view of him was that he was one of the donkeys who led lions like George to their deaths.

However, it is now thought that because of his early death, he was not around to defend himself when the first histories of the war came to be written. Over the last few decades, his reputation has been rehabilitated, and he is given credit for recruiting an army of men that, in the long run, proved a match for the enemy, and for, eventually, creating a munitions industry that was capable of supplying them.

An entry from the diary of Gunner George James

On June 5, 1916, he sailed from Scapa Flow on HMS Hampshire on a semi-secret diplomatic mission to Russia to discuss how the eastern and western fronts might be better co-ordinated.

At 7.30pm off the Orkney Islands, Hampshire struck a mine laid by a U-boat, and sank.

Of her 655 crew members, 643 died, and Kitchener’s body was one of those that was never recovered.

It was, as Gunner George said, “a smashing blow”. The Northern Echo’s report of the disaster said that there was “profound consternation and grief everywhere”.

2. St Eloi is about ten miles south of Ypres. George is interested in events there because just before Easter 1916, he fought in the Battle of St Eloi Craters, when British and German forces tried to gain control of six enormous mudfilled craters which had been created by British landmines.

A picture dated July 1, 1916, of British infantrymen occupying a shallow trench in a ruined landscape before an advance during the Battle of the Somme

3. George’s train journey has taken him about 50 miles south to Albert, a town a couple of miles north of the River Somme.

If he is at Carnoy, as he suggests, he is only two miles west of Maricourt, where he will die.