Monday 8th May 1916

Seem to have embarked on a strenuous course of Battalion training and rumour has it that we probably remain here for some time, so I suspect that we are just being fattened for the market. Today we started at 7.30 with roll-call; reading of Battalion Orders, and a short run. At 9am parade lasting until 1pm. 

(This became the daily programme, but there was always a parade or a lecture in the afternoon in addition to COs Orderly Room).

We actually stayed at Domleger a fortnight, during which time I became acquainted with many other members of the 10th Brigade. The 1st Royal Warwickshire Regiment were close to us, the 2nd Seaforths and 2nd Royal Dublin Fusiliers being rather further afield. I was introduced to our Brigadier, C.A. Wilding of the Royal Innis Fusiliers - a most popular and charming man whom we knew as 'The Squire' but did not meet either the Brigade or the Divisional staff until later on. We had delightful weather during this month and enjoyed our healthy country life. There was sufficient spare time to have plenty of games and amusements including Brigade Sports on the 18th at which the Regiment won a very handsome challenge shield presented by the Brigadier. 

On Sunday, I rode to Abbeville with Cardon Roe, a longish expedition and a very tiring one for me as I was riding the 'Holy Father's' pony - a brute with a mouth of iron who pulled as though the devil was at his tail all the time. One day we had a great field day at Yorench over a flagged course but otherwise were left very much to ourselves by all brass hats. Souter took over Command shortly after my arrival. 

Saturday 6th May 1916

My time with the Entrenching Battalion was brought to a sudden conclusion on Wednesday May 3rd, as my relief appeared on the previous evening. I went into Pop during the afternoon of Wednesday; took dinner and a bed off MGT and then was motored by him to Haazelbrouck in the morning, catching the same train from there as Michie (another R Ir Fus) who had left Pop by the 1.58 train the previous day en route to the 7th Battn. We travelled together as far as S Pol whence I proceeded by goods train to Doulleus arriving about 6.15pm. 

As the 4th Division happens to be on the move now nobody was very clear as to my ultimate destination, but I was dispatched in a lorry to find the Battalion which I eventually did about 8pm at Barly. This is a delightful little village situated in a narrow valley - well wooded country all round and looking at its best now with the fresh green and all the blossom out. Everything so peaceful down here - no sign of war at all! 

Neill is now in temporary command: Liesching still Adjutant, but has changed his name and is now known as Cardon Roe (Liesching being a little too German!). Quickly found many old friends of all ranks and of course several strangers also. 'Find' and 'O.D.' (now Major Findlater and Captain J.W.M O'Donovan M.C.) are both away protem and the companies are commended by Quadtrough, Faris, C.T. Wilson and Barefoot. Have been posted to 'A' Coy and taken over from Q. Tynan is the C.S.M. (Company Sgt Major) and there are many families faces in the ranks. Yesterday morning (5th) the Battalion continued its journey to our present halting place Domleger - about 12 miles march. It was a very hot day and we were fairly well boiled. 

This place is not so pretty as Barly but quite pleasant and the billets are good enough. Hers are in a well-to-do looking chalet; the remainder of us scattered about. Coy HQ here, as always, consisted of the living room of a superior type of cottage in which we messed - sometimes our cooking had to be done in the same room but not often. It was seldom that more then one officer could sleep under the same roof and frequently we were all boarded out. The inhabitants were very good about giving up all their accommodation but naturally disliked having a mess as this entailed not only the presence of a large number of officers but also a while army of servants and orderlies who brought mud into the house and filled up every hole and corner with their belongings. 

Sunday 30th April 1916

Nothing very exciting has happened in the past fortnight. A relief has been detailed to replace me and may turn up at any time during the next month. This I presume is due to Neills good officers in agitating to get me to the 87th (Royal Irish Fusiliers Battn). I heard from him today and he mentions a piece of good work recently done by them. In daylight 2 officers and 28 men, with 1RE (Royal Engineer) officer and 3 sappers, went over to the Bosch and killed 2 officers and 13 men, bombed 10 dugouts, blew up a mine shaft and MG emplacement, and all got back safely with only one very slight hand grenade wound. (The Battalion were then near Berle-on-Bois. The officers of the raiding party noted to be Lts Russell and Boal). 

This last week the weather has been fine and summer like, which alters one's outlook on life. Have been pretty busy - five nights out of seven owing to a dearth of officers, 4 away with drafts, 3 on leave. Yesterday, Colquhoun got orders and departed to the 7th Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers 'ek dum'. The C.O. also went on leave yesterday which leaves me in charge in case of accidents. 

Last night there was a strafe about 1am commencing with a gas attack, but it apparently came to nothing and so far as we are concerned only resulted in the loss of a little sleep. Such things have occurred every five or six nights but nothing seems to happen. 

The work we are employed on was digging trenches near 'Swan Chateau' and 'White Chateau'. We generally met out guides (Canadian sappers) at 'Cafe Belge', a ruined cafe at some cross roads which was frequently shelled and a bad place to loiter near - the parties were always accompanied by a couple of stretcher bearers, but I'm glad to say that I had no casualties the whole time I was on this job. Two or three times we had to go though Dickebusch village and along the duck board track over the lake. These were both bad places. Some of the men were of course, very inexperienced diggers and found it difficult to complete their tasks in the heavy clay soil. I remember one night we struck a particularly bad patch and only one man made decent progress. I supposed that he was used to that sort of work but he replied 'Oh no, Sir, I'm a grocer really'. After that, I expressed no surprise at anything. 

Saturday 15th April 1916

Having had no work to do yet, have employed my time in seeing France. Yesterday went down to Bailleul, about 8 miles, to see George Hennessy who is quite a big wig among the Signallers there. Found him looking very well and much happier about his sciatica. Lunched at his quarters which are in a private house together with his office. Returned to Pop: as I had come by 'lorry jumping' and took tea and dinner off MGT (his brother, Maurice) walking home afterwards. Today M turned up about 11am and took me off with him on a foraging expedition. (His chief occupation then was motoring about the country with a Belgian interpreter, making contracts with farmers for the supply of hay, corn, straw and vegetables). we went via Bailleul to Haazelbrouck and Steenibeke, returning to H for lunch. Thence we drove to Cassel where we visited Col Hildebrand at Army HQ. This office was in the casino at the very summit of the hill whence one got a magnificent view from Dunkerque right away almost to Lens. From Cassel we passed through Esquelbec (where there is a very fine chateau in which one of our Cavalry regiments was billeted after Waterloo) Hoetkirke and Poperinge. Walked home having M's company part of the way and arrived in good time for dinner. It turned out quite a good day and the wind has subsided. Tonight it is beautifully fine almost full moon. 

Have seen quite a lot of the neighbourhood in these two days. 

Wednesday April 5th 1916 - The Back of the Front

Received my 'movement orders' on Monday and entrained that night at 8.30pm after dining with Yates and Iforde. Had a very good night in the train. Before starting each individual had to draw his iron rations. These consisted of about 1lb of small biscuits and a small tin containing tea and sugar all done up in a linen bag. I learnt to appreciate the value of iron rations more fully in future months, but I don't suppose I was the only one who, on his first introduction to them, thoughts them a tiresome addition to his kit, and left them in the carriage at the end of his first train journey! A large proportion of those issued at the Base must have gone into the mouths of the French urchins who all along the line received us with the cry 'Biscuit - Souvenir'. 

Passed Bologne in the early morning and paused for breakfast and wash at Calais about 10.30am. The breakfast was provided by a Y.M.C.A. or Church Army hut and served by two ladies to whom I felt extraordinarily grateful: the wash was provided by an individual who might have been a tramp - but who was dressing in khaki and who presided over a boiler on the platform. He dispensed hot water into whatever receptacle one could provide for oneself. Reached Hazebrouck about 1.30pm and there to my great joy found Colquhoun, also en route to the 2nd E. Bn (Entrenching Battalion). We proceeded in another train in a most leisurely fashion to Poperinge (about 8 miles West of Ypres) where we detrained about 6.30pm and then walked the four miles or so to Camp. The Camp was in an open and muddy field near Ouderdom, S.E. of Poperinge. No warning had been given of our arrival but we were in time to partake of a most filling dinner and were then made extremely comfortable for the night in a tent provided with camp beds and such like luxuries - being my first experience of even the 'back of the front' it no doubt seemed more noisy then it really was but the guns of both sides were in action all the evening and the flashes kept an almost constant glare in the sky to the East. 

The previous evening the Battalion had been forced to abandon its camp just across the road and shells were again falling in the same place when we arrived. In fact, one officer was knocked over when going out with a party. Tonight things have been quieter. The country round here is very flat and though perfectly dry now one can imagine what the mud in winter must be like. The roads of course are frightfully cut up by traffic and must become quagmires directly it rains. It is surprising how much of the land still remains cultivated and farming operations are in full swing all around us. Though this is well within the zone of shell fire. All the buildings are the worse for wear and Pop shows many signs of warfare. we are just at the back of the Ypres Salient and of course very heavy fighting has taken place all over this district. 


I did not have long to wait before I experienced the mud which in reality was far worse than anything I imagined. Considering the vast amount of traffic and the fact that all our camps were pitched on arable land - very little of the locality being devoted to pasture - it was not surprising that both roads and camps were knee deep in slush. Duck boards formed the only means of cross country communication and when the supply of these failed, movement became almost impossible. My ideas of destruction adjusted themselves before many months. (Added 1918 by AJT - Poperinge in 1916 had suffered from few shells, but was a thriving thickly populated and healthy town compared to what it was afterwards, and even after another 18 months of war, when I last saw it, it was in a good state of repair compared to many places further South.)

Today (Wednesday 5th) we have had nothing to do and this afternoon walked into Pop. to do a little shopping and get exercise. We there ran into Duncan who used to be at Dunree. He has been out nine months with a T.M. Battn (Trench Mortar Battalion). (He looks well after it too) and now wears the M.C. (Military Cross, granted in recognition of acts of extreme bravery). Of this Battn I have as yet seen but little, but the C.O. Major Tuson, 16th Lancers, seems a very good sort, as also the Adjt Neilson, a Scottish Rifleman. The others are a mixture of all regiments; English, Scotch and Irish. 

These Entrenching Battalions were Army Troops and were subsequently replaced by units of the Labour Corps - their duty was to construct trenches, assist in the construction of railways or roads, and any other odd job that might be required. Occasionally the work could be done by day, but as a rule it was done at night. The working parties setting out in time to reach their work after dusk. They usually got back to camp about 2 or 3 am and after a drink of hot soup, the men turned in and remained undisturbed till noon - there was one short inspection parade - otherwise nothing except their night work. The Battalion was composed of reinforcement officers and men, temporarily loaned, before joining their own units. Some remained with an Entrenching Battn for months, others got away after only a few days. The CO's view that both officers and men were reinforcements for their regiments and therefore ought to be preserved from unnecessary risk until the regiment got possession of them was correct enough, but it led to very bad training in my opinion - for any shelling of a road or vicinity of a works rendezvous could be taken as an excuse by a windy officer for withdrawing his working party. That would easily give raw troops an exaggerated idea of the danger and lower their morale. It was always a bad thing to let oneself of one's men think that one could not go any where or don anything that one intended. 

On the 13th I wrote - Last Thursday there was a great evening hate and we hurriedly decamped to a new ground about a mile back (near Reninghelst) which was being prepared for us but which we did not mean to occupy for another two or three days. By the time we were there the strafe was over, but our own guns kept busy all night. 

Our new camp is in a grass field felt and low lying, and therefore, frightfully muddy now that there have been two wet days. However, it may be pleasant enough in summer, for the moment it is uncomfortable as there is no mess but a tent becomes boring when it is one's only accommodation. On Friday, (7th) Maurice (his brother, a Captain in Army Service Corps, killed 1917) turned up in a motor and took me into Poperinge. He lives just the other side of the town and has most comfortable quarters in huts. (His camp, the HQ of the Guards Div Train was in a farm on the East die of the Pop - Proven Road near the junction of that road with the one from Waton). I was then proceeding down country with a draft of 10 Bn KOYLI joining their unit - two other drafts also going at the same time. We put up for the night at Hazebrouck and were most comfortable in the 'rest billets' - an empty hospital, where we got a hot bath. Next day got as far as Abbeville vis Bethune and S'Pol. There the men spent a night in railway carriages. I spent it at an hotel near the station. On Sunday (9th) reached my railhead - Mericourt I'Abbi and marched out to Albert - about 7 miles. I handed over the draft. The courtly down there is much prettier than Flanders - undulating and rather open - as usual, will tilled. The town of Albert is a pitiful sight, the church and centre of the town absolutely laid flat, the remainder much damaged. (In comparison with the damage suffered during 1918, Albert was at this time really intact. The church itself and buildings near it were of course destroyed, but when I passed through it in September 1918, it would have been difficult to find the site of the church 0 the whole town was then flat very literally. In 1916 and for long afterwards, the famous Angle was still leaning outwards form the shattered tower and the prophecy that when it fell the War would cease almost came true). 

Beyond, i.e. East of Albert, the ground rises to the now famous plateau on which stood Pozieres - La Boiselle - Ovillers and many other villages of the Somme battlefield. On this Sunday evening there was nothing very war-like about the scene except for a few straggling lines of white chalk marking the position of our communication trenches. 

I got a lift back to Mericourt but was too late for a train so the R.T.O. a Captain Hamilton took pity on me and gave me dinner at his Mess where there was a very hospitable party of six. (Mericourt was already becoming a busy railhead and even then a big ammunition dump had been formed in preparation for the July offension). 

Slept in a railway carriage and began my return journey at 8am Monday. Breakfasted at Amiens and then had to get out again at Abbeville about noon and found there was no train until 4am next morning. After lunch went for a walk along the Somme canal as it was a lovely day, and in various ways killed time until about 9.30 when I returned to the station. Remainder of the night most uncomfortable, no rest house being provided, only a luggage dump in the R.T.O.'s office (where on could recline on the top of valises, coats, boxes and other odd property of other people's, but when sleep was almost impossible owing to noise and constant arrivals and departures There was no Officers' Club in Abbeville at this time, but an excellent one was opened later). 

A friendly TCO did his best and I had a good time on his train between 4.30am and noon when we got out at Hazebrouck. At S Omer I discovered that Geoffrey Baker (OKS) was in the next carriage. He is now a fully fledged RAMC (Royal Army Medical Corps) and just came out from home. At that moment the Huns began to shell the town so we adjourned to a bunk hole (the RTO's) till it was over (It was a very mild strafe really but neither of us were then very used to the fame or we shouldn't have wasted so much time). We then went up to his mess for dinner. They do things in great style and seem most comfortable. I stayed the night in a vacant hut and then got a lift out to Ouderdom in a motor after breakfast. Arrived in camp just before the rain. I t the soaked all day until a gale sprang up in the night which continues today (Thursday). Wish my trip had lasted a day longer!

War Diaries - March 1916

A couple of years ago, the General handed me a thick, typewriter written document, its slightly tatty, dog-eared 30 pages held together by a bulldog clip. 'These are your great-grandfather's war diaries,' he informed me. I read them that afternoon, sitting in the summer sun,  98 years after Lt Colonel AJ Trousdell documented his life during 1916. That was the year of the Battle of the Somme, a battle that killed and injured over 1,000,000 men in little over 5 months, and the Battle of Verdun, the longest battle of the war. As I read about his days, some mundane, some exciting, some not noted but all set against the backdrop of tragedy and loss, I decided that I would write them out to mark their 100 years.  

At the outbreak of war, AJT - who had been invalided out of the military due to contracting polio whilst serving in India - reenlisted into the 3rd Battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers based in Buncrana in Co. Donegal, where he remained until March 1916 when he was posted to France. 

My grandfather spent time typing the diaries up. The pages are marked with notes, edits and crossings out. The first entry has no date but they start at the end of March. They end abruptly in mid-August. Brackets with italics are my notes, otherwise I am typing the diary up verbatim although it's clear from reading them that AJT went back at a later date & add in more detail. For everyday there's an entry, I will write it up and posted it, 100 years on. For more background information on my Great-Grandfather, you can read a blog I wrote last year about his stolen war medals.

Coincidentally, in June this year, I will be cycling from Ypres to Verdun to raise money for Help for Heroes, along the route of the Western Front, following a path AJT and his brothers-in-arms would have been all too familiar with. 

March 1916

Orders to proceed to join the BEF (British Expeditionary Force, the British Army sent to the front during WW!) - for which I had hoped so long and in vain - came at last on 25th March 1916. On the 27th, I left the 3rd Battalion at Buncrana (County Donegal, Ireland) and crossed to England by the night mail from Kingstown. Owing to a blizzard all over the midlands - which brought down the telegraph wires and left deep snow everywhere, the train only reached London at 4pm instead of 7.45am. That gave me only just time to get him the same night and I returned to town the following morning early - in Kate's (sister-in-law) company - intending to proceed to Southampton that same afternoon. However, Colquhoun (who was to go out with me) only arrived late also due to the blizzard and we finally postponed our departure until the following day. 

We crossed from Southampton on Thursday night (March 30th) by the Le Havre mail boat, disembarking about noon on Friday after a very smooth crossing in foggy weather. On land, it was fine and warm. We had the afternoon to ourselves and spent most of it at the Officers' Club - a small house which was totally inadequate to the number of officers who passed through Le Havre - but still they fed one in time and we were grateful for all we got there. 

At 10pm we entrained and spent a cold night travelling very slowly to Rouen which we reached at 6am (Saturday 1st April). One of the things which struck me forcibly on this occasion and during subsequent journeys near the Base ports was the oriental spirit of indifference to Time displayed by all railway authorities including (with few exceptions) the much reviled 'R.T.O.' (Rail Transport Office). Whether the load was human or otherwise - much needed reinforcements for the front line - Ordnance Stores - rations or any one of a million other commodities - all were treated in the same way. Eventually they would arrive at their destination - often by devious routes and often (if of the human variety) unfed - but in the good time of the R.O.D. they would arrive. 

Rouen did not impress me as a desirable spot in which to remain. It was swarming with troops - chiefly British - and the constant stream of motor lorries, ASC wagons etc. etc. - on the cobbled streets made it extremely noisy. The Reinforcement Camps were on the race course to the South of the town details for every infantry unit were grouped in accordance with the grpupidn of the units in Divisions. Thus the detail camps of the 87th also contained representatives of all the other eleven Battalions in the 4th Division.

I found several friends - Ilforde of the 3rd Battalion came up from Le Havre with us expecting to rejoin the 87th shortly. Horwell (a ranker 2/Lieut who had come out from Buncrana a few weeks earlier) was in the Camp pending posting to a Battalion. 

Some officers escaped from the Base after a few days only, others stayed there for weeks - it seemed to be a mere matter of luck. I was already under orders to join the 2nd Entrenching Battalion (Entrenching Battalions were temporary units from which infantry battalions could draw replacements) in the 3rd Army area but had to wait for further instructions. Colquhoun went straight on to Étaples (about 160km north of Rouen, near Calais) being posted to a Service Battalion (7th I think).

Yates (Capt 87th) was in Rouen having got a job at DAAG (Deputy Assistant Adjutant General) 3 Echelon. Deane, formerly a Colour Sgt of the 89th, I met by chance: he was then Adjutant to one of the Base Camps. I also ran into my old hospital orderly of Ferozepore and Dalhousie Days - Pte Gillespie - which pleased me not a little. (A.J.T. contracted polio whilst serving in India, Gillespie had looked after him. It is likely they would not have seen each other for several years.)