Hold the Oxo! Read online

  Hold the Oxo!

  MARION FARGEY BROOKER

  A Teenage Soldier Writes Home

  For Jim

  and all who serve our country

  Contents

  Preface

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary

  Introduction

  1 — Three Cheers — We’re at War!

  2 — Why Are You Going?

  3 — You’re in the Army Now!

  4 — Reality

  5 — Ypres Salient

  6 — In the Trenches

  7 — Surprise Weapons

  8 — A Day in the Life

  9 — Battle of the Somme

  10 — Women in War — The Bluebirds

  11 — Wounded

  12 — Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour

  Timeline

  Resources

  Index

  Preface

  June 17, 1916, near Ypres, Belgium

  Canadian mail comes Thursday and Sunday. I know when your letters don’t come there is something wrong with the mail as I know they are written.

  P.S. I am reading over a few of your old letters. I keep your last two or three as I cannot carry them all around.

  His letters home are not ones to which you would spare a second glance. The early ones are written on crested paper with pen and ink; the later ones are on rough lined paper, written with a pencil in need of sharpening. Sometimes the youthful scrawl wanders from between the lines — letters written by candlelight from the floor of a tent. Some are long letters; others are only a sentence or two. And some are just short notes from the front line written on cards.

  They would not have rated an A grade in school for composition or content. The early letters speak of night training, of the Lee Enfield rifle versus the Ross, Christmas dinners that don’t measure up to the home-cooked ones he remembers, and of parades and more parades. They speak of life back home, of the lack of ice in England for skating, of being quarantined for measles, of the socks he received that had been knit by his sister. And when the letters begin to arrive from the battlefields of France and Belgium, from Ypres and the Somme, they turn their attention, not to the battles, but to the comfort of the straw in the barn in which the soldiers are billeted, the scarcity of men in France and Belgium to help with the harvest (leaving it to be done by women and old men), the fine French horses, or the luxury of having porridge for breakfast.

  A postcard for his sister sent from England during Jim’s training.

  Yet these letters, folded and tied carefully, have rested for more than 90 years beneath the lid of the shoebox my grandmother decorated. The creamy velvet has turned sepia and is stained with the oil from many fingers, the corners of the box loosened and warped.

  An early crested letter written to his mother during Jim's training in England.

  These are not just any letters. They are the letters of a 17-year-old boy, sent home to his mother, his father, his brothers, and his sister. They are the letters of a boy who left a small farming community for the city on July 15, 1915; a boy who joined the 79th Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, later to become the 43rd in England. Rarely do these letters, especially those to his mother and father, mention the horrors of war — the mud and rats, the lice and the stench of the trenches, the night duty of cutting barbed wire in no man’s land. The ones written to older brother Frank are more detailed.

  The letters are yellowed now; their edges frayed, not only from age but from the reading and re-reading of them by his family — the family he left behind. Again and again we have read the actual words — and the words not said — the words between the lines.

  These are the letters from my 17-year-old uncle, Jim, to his family — my grandparents and my father, my uncle and my aunt. But they could be the letters written by any of the thousands of young men like Jim who joined the “war to end all wars.”

  Acknowledgements

  Where does one begin with their appreciation in a story such as this one? With Jim, who served; with my grandmother and grandfather who treasured and saved his letters; with his sister and brothers, who kept his memory alive into the next generation; with my family — immediate and extended — who encouraged and supported my efforts; with my sister and brother, Margaret and Jim, who supplied important details and pictures from family albums; with my husband, Elmer, who travelled with me to the First World War battlefields, monuments, and cemeteries? They all deserve credit for helping me complete this book, and for that I will always be grateful.

  For sharing their knowledge, expertise, and time, I am indebted to my writing friends, as well as to Becky Garber-Conrad, Paul Robison, and Fred Sproule, who meticulously read my work and made invaluable suggestions.

  My thanks also to the professionals at Dundurn who guided the process of making Hold the Oxo! A Teenage Soldier Writes Home a reality — Kirk Howard, Tammy Mavroudi, Margaret Bryant, Shannon Whibbs, Marta Warner, and my editor Allison Hirst.

  I also want to acknowledge that the excerpt on page 38 was originally published in Riding into War: The Memoir of a Horse Transport Driver, 1916–1919, copyright 2004 by James Robert Johnston. It was reprinted by permission of Goose Lane Editions and The Brigadier Milton F. Gregg VC, Centre for the Study of War and Society.

  And finally, the greatest thanks of all must go to all the Canadian men and women who, like Jim, have believed in and served this country. It is in their memory that I dedicate Hold the Oxo! A Teenage Soldier Writes Home.

  Glossary

  Allies: Britain, France, Italy, Russia, the United States, and the countries that fought with them in the First World War.

  Aperture: an opening, hole.

  Army units: the organization of the British forces during the First World War: the British Forces on the Western Front were divided into four or five armies (approximately 4 million [1917] soldiers in the field); an army had two or more corps (varied, but as many as 120,000); a corps contained several divisions; a division (20,000 men) had three infantry brigades plus artillerymen, a medical section, engineers, and pioneers; a brigade (4,000 infantry men) had four battalions plus engineers, signals, field ambulance, trench mortar unit, and machine-gun unit; a battalion consisted of 1,000 men, made up of several companies of 200 men, which was then broken into several platoons (50 soldiers).

  Artillery: big weapons such as cannons and the forces that use them.

  Bayonet: a sharp, steel blade attached to the end of a rifle.

  Bivouac: to camp.

  Bombardment: an attack with heavy artillery.

  Box Social: a fundraising dance during which decorated boxes filled with lunches by the women were auctioned off. The donors of the boxes were usually anonymous.

  Boches: Germans.

  Breastwork: a temporary defence or parapet, usually chest-high.

  British Expeditionary Force (B.E.F.): a term used for all British forces on the Western Front.

  Bunker: underground shelter, normally made of concrete.

  Central Powers: Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria.

  Creeping barrage: an infantry advance behind a line of friendly artillery fire. It was used for the first time at the Battle of the Somme, and later (and more effectively) at Vimy.

  Dugout: a space dug underground or in the wall of a trench, often used as an officer’s quarters, a gun emplacement, or for added protection of the soldiers from the weather. Sometimes called “funk” holes.

  Enfilade: gunfire directed along a line from end to end.

  Fritz: an Allied nickname for a German soldier.

  Front: front line, where two opposing armies meet.

  Gas: chlorine gas was a poisonous gas that smelled like a swimming pool. Mustard gas had a mustard-like od
our and a brownish-yellow colour.

  Haversack: a large bag for carrying provisions, carried on the back or over the shoulder.

  Janes: slang for “girls.”

  Mess tin: a portable version of a saucepan, intended primarily for boiling but also useful for frying.

  Munitions: ammunition.

  Outflank: to attack the enemy by moving around the side of their line.

  Ox-o (trademark): the trademark for an extract of beef stock, condensed and sold in small cubes for use in cooking or, when mixed with hot water, as a beverage.

  Parapets: the side of the trench directly facing the enemy line, often topped with several feet of sandbags for the protection of soldiers.

  Parados: the rear of the trench.

  Salient: an area of the battlefield that extends into enemy territory and is surrounded on three sides by the enemy. The Ypres Salient encircled the ancient town of Ypres, Belgium.

  “That’s Jake”: slang for “That’s okay.”

  Western Front: front lines between the Allies and the Central Powers in France and Belgium.

  Introduction

  My Dear Grandma,

  You might call this a thank-you letter. It is in appreciation to you for, so many years ago, saving each of your son’s letters — letters that were treasured by his sister and his brothers and have now been read and re-read by his nieces and nephews. Had you looked into the future, could you have dreamed that by saving Jim’s letters we would come to know so much about an uncle who died years before we were born?

  It is October 1914, and the Patriotic Society in Belmont, Manitoba, is holding a dance and box social to raise money for the war effort. You bend over a shoe box, covering it with cream-coloured velvet, mitering the corners, and gluing them all in place. On the lid you paint a Union Jack, flying high, and inscribe underneath it the date — October 14, 1914. In it you will put the lunch that will be auctioned off at ten o’clock this evening, the lunch break during the dance. Do you even dream as you work on the box that nine months from now it will hold the letters home from your son, Jim, who is now in high school? That fall, both sides in the battle that has just begun overseas believe that the First World War will be over by Christmas.

  The tall, handsome young woman decorating the shoe box is not the grandmother I remember. My memory is not one of a young mother raising four children, but of a fragile lady with arthritis confined to a wheelchair. Being the youngest in the family, I was allowed to skip the evening church service, and I remember crawling in behind you in your high mahogany bed, where we would talk or you would read me stories. The smell of wintergreen, the cure-all for arthritis, still brings back those memories.

  Only after having children of my own, Grandma, could I understand the heartache of losing a son. I am haunted by the thought of Jim being buried so far away from home, with next to no chance for you to visit his grave. You would be comforted to know that Jim has been visited by and has become a real person to three generations of our family. If I could speak to you of one thing, I would choose to describe to you the cemetery just outside Étaples where he is buried. A large white cross, magnificent in its simplicity, stands as a benediction over the graves. The cemetery slopes gently to the English Channel, where you can look across the water to England. Red poppies do, indeed, sway in the breeze here. A stooped French veteran with a blue beret, an old man now, lovingly tends the graves. We found Jim’s. The picture you received of a stark pile of dirt with only a wooden post to identify Jim’s resting place has been replaced by a soft-beige granite stone. Summer flowers arch over his name.

  I procrastinated in writing Jim’s story. I wanted to do justice, not only to Jim but to all who fought. My dilemma: who should tell the story? In the end, I let Jim speak for himself by using excerpts from his letters. However, when I began filling in the background details, of which Jim speaks little in his letters — about life in the trenches and on the battlefields, and the hardships of war — I could often hear Jim’s voice saying, “How could you know? You weren’t there.”

  Yes, I have visited the battlefields of Ypres and the Somme, and the Canadian monument at Vimy, touched with my fingers the names of soldiers with no grave that are carved in the Menin Gate and the Thiepval Memorial. I have seen the battlefields of Flanders — lush now — zigzagging grassy trenches, craters no longer filled with the bodies of men and horses, the barbed wire long gone. I have stood surrounded by the trees in Delville Wood and touched the one mutilated tree left standing on its own at the end of the war, its leaves and limbs shredded by artillery fire.

  LEST WE FORGET

  Canadian National Vimy Memorial

  This impressive memorial is dedicated to the memory of Canadian Expeditionary Force members killed during the First World War. It also serves as the place of commemoration for First World War Canadian soldiers killed or presumed dead in France who have no known grave. The monument is the centrepiece of a 100-hectare preserved battlefield park that encompasses a portion of the grounds over which the Canadian Corps made their assault during the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

  The inscription on the monument reads: TO THE VALOUR OF THEIR/COUNTRYMEN IN THE GREAT WAR/AND IN MEMORY OF THEIR SIXTY THOUSAND DEAD THIS MONUMENT/IS RAISED BY THE PEOPLE OF CANADA.

  The sculpture of a sorrowful woman, Canada Bereft, on the Vimy monument represents Canada — a young nation mourning her dead. The massive sculpture was carved from a single 30-tonne block of stone.

  The memorial was restored over several years and rededicated by Queen Elizabeth II in 2007, the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. The site is one of two National Historic Sites of Canada located outside of Canada.

  I have walked among the row on row of white gravestones stretching to the horizon at Tyne Cot, near Passchendaele, flowers bending gently now in the summer breeze over the cold granite. I have stood outside the concrete bunker where John McCrae bandaged shattered legs, swabbed gaping wounds, and I have rested in the tiny cemetery outside this dressing station at Essex Farm where McCrae rested one afternoon during a lull in the fighting. He had just lost a friend, and it was here that he wrote:

  We are the Dead. Short days ago

  We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

  Loved and were loved, and now we lie

  In Flanders fields.

  But Jim is right. I wasn’t there. The countryside today is not the countryside of the First World War. I can only try to imagine it, and my mind cannot comprehend such horror.

  Because of censorship and of wanting to protect you all from war’s savagery, many of Jim’s letters speak, as you know, more of what is happening at home on the farm than on the battlefields of Belgium and France, so I have not used his letters in their entirety.

  The letters are Jim’s, but his story is that of thousands of young people who joined the fight to put an end to all wars, but sadly did not make it home. It is also about those who returned, scarred physically and emotionally from what they had seen and done.

  Hold the Oxo! is the story of day-to-day life in the trenches, in the tunnels, behind the artillery, in the sky, and on the sea. It is the story of the generals who laid the plans and gave the orders, confronted by a war fought from the trenches and tunnels of Flanders and France — a war for which their training had not prepared them.

  There are so many questions I would like to ask you and Grandpa if I could. Although Jim entered his correct birthdate as December 1897 on his attestation papers, it seems the officer made a mistake and entered his “apparent age” as 18 years and 7 months. In fact, Jim was only 17 years and 7 months when he joined up. He writes home from England on December 16 of that same year: “P.S. I forgot to mention that I am eighteen today. Little did I think a year ago today that I would be in England.” Did you and Grandpa object to his joining so young, and did he go anyway?

  John McCrae, poet, physician, and field surgeon in the Canadian Artillery during the First World War.

  WORDS OF WAR

&nb
sp; A Canadian War Poet Remembered

  John McCrae was born in Guelph, Ontario. He served in the artillery during the Second Boer War, and when he returned worked as a professor of pathology at the University of Vermont, where he taught until 1911; he also taught at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.

  During the First World War, McCrae was appointed as a field surgeon in the Canadian Artillery and was in charge of a field hospital during the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915. McCrae’s friend and former student, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, was killed in the battle, and his burial inspired McCrae to pen his most famous poem, “In Flanders Fields,” written on May 3, 1915.

  The verses quickly became one of the most popular poems of the war, and were used in many fundraising campaigns. On January 28, 1918, while still commanding No. 3 Canadian General Hospital at Boulogne, France, McCrae died of pneumonia. He was just 45 years old. He is buried at Wimereux Cemetery in northern France. A collection of his poetry, In Flanders Fields and Other Poems (1918), was published after his death.

  I wonder why the letters from Staff Nurse Angela N. Sadleir were addressed only to you and not to Grandpa — even the one announcing his death, and the letters of condolence. Was this customary? In an early letter from France, Jim explains why most of his letters are addressed to you, with only a few to Grandpa: “Just a few lines to let you know I’m still alive and thriving well. I’ve told Mother nearly all the news and I guess her letters are read aloud.” Jim’s letters to his brother Frank would have been sent to Winnipeg, where Frank was attending college.

  Although Jim rarely speaks of loneliness or fear in his letters, I cannot help but imagine him lying in the hospital bed in France, a boy far from his farm home. I would like to be able to show you a picture we have of his youngest brother (my dad) beside his grave in 1965. Could Jim have dreamed in that time of slow communication and travel that three generations would be able to visit his grave to remember and honour his and so many of his comrades’ sacrifices?