I Was There!: New chapter of videos commences: 'Winter and Neuve Chapelle, January 1 - March 13 1915'
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- I Was There!: New chapter of videos commences: 'Winter and Neuve Chapelle, January 1 - March 13 1915'
Those members following our 'I Was There!' series will be pleased to know we've now started on a 'new year' - that of 1915. A new playlist has just commenced which is described (in the original publication) as follows:
The first three months of 1915 on the Western Front were remarkable only for the battle of Neuve Chapelle (March 10). In this chapter some incidents of this disastrous affair are told by two eye witnesses, Wilfred Ewart of the Scots Guards, and William Linton Andrews of the Black Watch. The humdrum duties of trench life, now becoming more and more fixed, are described by two soldiers, Private Frank Richards and Rifleman Smith. Beatty 's successful action at the Dogger Bank is narrated by an officer of the Aurora who was present, and we are privileged to publish Lieut. Harold Rosher's personal account of his daring raid on German submarine bases. Finally, this chapter contains a remarkable story of a British soldier hidden for four years by Belgians.
The first of these videos in the new playlist is now available as 'Episode 54: The Sergeant who went the wrong way'. This recording was authored by Frank Richards, the well known 'other rank' from the Royal Welsh Fusiliers who wrote 'Old Soldiers Never Die'.
The opening lines are reproduced below:
"The first week in January 1915 we took over some trenches at Bois Grenier; they were about six or seven hundred yards in front of the village. There were only three houses occupied in the village; the remainder of the population had vanished.
Early in October the Germans had been in possession of Bois Grenier for 24 hours before they were driven out. In a farm where we had our battalion headquarters a Frenchman was still living and tilling the land. A few yards from the farm was a tall new red-brick house in which lived an old lady and her daughter, and a very old lady was living next door to them. Three of us and a lance-corporal were left behind in the village for ten days to do police duty. The village used to get shelled every day, but we noticed that no shells ever fell near the farm or the red-brick house. So we billeted in a house opposite them.
French people could come up to the village at their own risk and take their furniture away, but they had to have a permit signed by the Assistant Provost-Marshal of police before they were allowed to come. Bois Grenier consisted of one main street and a side street, with farms dotted here and there.
One old man came up with a cart one day, and when he arrived at his house there was hardly a rag left in it; the hunchback had been there the day before. The old man commenced to cry and blamed the British troops, but I made him understand that one of his own countrymen had taken the furniture. So he commenced to shout "Brigand !" I then took him to another house which was full of grand furniture and told him to help his self; there was not much left in that house by the time that deep cart was full, and I assisted him to load some of the heavy pieces. I thought it queer that he did not hesitate to steal another man's furniture but had cried when he had found his own was stolen."
These videos are being grouped (following the format in the original magazine) into 'Chapters' (on YouTube these are 'playlists') and can be seen here:Obviously as more of these are recorded and published, these chapters will increase in number.
PDF copies of the original I Was There! documents are available exclusively to members of The Western Front Association to download via the Members’ Portal.