Christmas in the Trenches (10 page)

The men are going to have a jolly good time this Christmas: the people here are going to give them a first class dinner and then they are to have sports in the afternoon and a good tea. I am very glad indeed that so much is going to be done for them for they have worked well and deserve to be looked after this Christmas time, especially as the people round here are making fortunes out of the war. Fortt and I have been invited out to dinner on Christmas day by some very nice people and I think we shall have a jolly good time.
⁶
(
Capt James Mackie, 2/4th Somerset Light Infantry
)

Festivities did not end with the feast of six courses provided for the Somersets by the English community of Barrackpore:

After dinner there were sports for us all which were awfully good fun. Some were mounted and some were on foot but all the events were amusing: perhaps the one which caused most fun was the bullock cart race. A bullock cart was provided for each competitor drawn by two bullocks and each man had to drive his lady partner to a certain point – you would have roared to see our frantic efforts to make the bullocks trot and when they did trot we could not make them go straight.

One of the mounted races consisted of riding your pony at a gallop past a lady who threw you a ball. You had to catch the ball and then gallop on and put it into a bucket. I went in for it but was unable to catch the ball.
⁷
(
Capt James Mackie
)

In Mesopotamia, troops from India found themselves far removed from the style of peacetime soldiering that still persisted in their homeland. The early months of 1916 witnessed increasingly desperate attempts to relieve Townshend’s besieged garrison at Kut-al-Amara. Forces under Maj Gen Sir Fenton Aylmer and later Lt Gen Sir George Gorringe attempted to batter their way through strong entrenched Turkish positions along the Tigris. Although the Turks lost some ground, the relief force suffered heavy casualties as it fought its way over open ground in the face of heavy machine-gun and rifle fire. This and the inability to move reinforcements quickly to the front sealed the fate of Kut, which surrendered on 29 April. Turkish success here, coming just four months after the final evacuations at Gallipoli, was a severe blow to British prestige and many feared it would trigger an Islamic uprising against the British in the Middle East and even parts of India. However, by December such fears had receded. In Mesopotamia the British now poured in men and material ready for a major offensive that was launched on 13 December under the command of Maj Gen Sir Stanley Maude. In preparation for active operations, units were concentrated at forward defended camps on the Tigris such as Shaikh Saad. Forward of here were the opposing front lines where trench warfare was in progress. As Christmas approached, drafts for some units were still arriving. These troops were rushed up country as quickly as transport allowed:

I was allotted quarters in a tent with an officer named Large of the Warwickshire Regiment, and an Australian named Lee of the 36th Sikhs. Both very jolly chaps and we made the best of things, and we used to dine at night together, off the concoctions our batmen hashed up for us. Christmas Day 1916 came along, and we played bridge most of the day, and had a special dinner in the evening, with whisky and beer to wash it down, whilst the Ghurka band played carols. Now and again a rifle shot rang out from a watchful sentry, who thought he could see something moving in the desert.

Whilst in this camp the night was made hideous by the cries of hyenas and jackals, who faded away each morning at dawn, and when first heard reminded one of the wailing of lost souls. I had heard cats each night in England, but never anything like the row kicked up by these animals. (
2/Lt Frederick Brown, 7th Gloucesters
)

Along the Euphrates other units were also settling down to Christmas. They had played a more passive role during the campaign, guarding against possible Turkish moves towards Qurna at the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris, the capture of which would cut Maude’s supply line and threaten the oil refineries to the south. At the town of Nasiriyah, which had been in British hands since 25 July 1915, troops of the 15th Division were engaged in a round of garrison guard duty and training, including inter-company competitions in trench digging, range finding, pack-mule loading, fire control and night marching. In between such activity, Pte Henry White (1/5th Queens) found time to rear chickens and ducks for Christmas dinner. On 25 December, the long-awaited meal was preceded by the receipt of gifts from a number of the battalion’s officers, many providing excellent additions to the coming meal:

We five orderlies received from Maj Relsall 5 bottles beer, 1 tin of peas, beans, Salmon, Tongue, chocolate and cigarettes, 3 packets of butterscotch and a cake. Capt Newland an autographic pocket Kodak between us.

Capt Smith a large ready cooked ham, from Asst Surgeon Cooper and Fanamdus 6 bottles of beer, some whisky and cigars, S&T Issue, pudding 8oz and cake 8oz from Daily News and Telegraph, and 4oz rum and 1 pint of beer. Regiment for us from Queens 4lb of pudding and 2 fowls. Ward Boys some fruit and a pudding (native) and some roasted almonds. Hospital cooks a cake. Some Christmas but feel very lonely wish I was at home with Liddle. Mail expected in today. Went to early service 8 o’clock, service and hymns at Hospital 3pm.

Xmas Dinner – Duck, green peas, roast potatoes. Plum pudding and custard, dried apricots, roast peanuts and beer. (
Henry White
)

However, in a land where sickness and disease were rife, not everyone was in a position to enjoy the festivities:

Dear All

Am unfortunately writing to you from a bed of sickness – nothing much simply a bad attack of diarrhoea, but enough of course to prevent me from enjoying my Xmas dinner . . .

The dinner I am giving the people here is as follows.

Soup

Fish Mayonnaise

Duck and Vegetables

Plum Pudding

Pate de Foie Gras

Asparagus

Sweets and Preserves

Rather a good dinner but unfortunately nothing that I can eat . . . You mustn’t think we feed on the above scale every day. It is a special effort.

I wonder whether another Christmas will see me out here. I sincerely hope not.

The railway from Basra has now passed Safarh. And we have been busy for the last week unloading stores . . . chiefly good cheer for Christmas. Among this there were twelve large barrels of beer . . .

I’ve had plenty of time to think yesterday and today lying here doing nothing and most of my thoughts have turned homewards to past Christmases. I’ve seen myself waking up early in the morning and getting out of bed to receive my presents and give in exchange when funds ran to it. I’ve seen myself singing ‘Christmas Awake’ in the old parish church and the old rector in his fine voice and happy phrases wishing his flock a Merry Xmas. I have seen myself coming home and eating largely of goose and savoury pudding followed by numerous chocolates. I have seen myself relapsing temporarily into a state of coma and finally emerging to have a piece of Christmas cake at tea and so perhaps to a Christmas party.

Well, either next year or the year after I hope the same sort of Xmas will happen to me again. The actors will be older but the spirits will be there and that’s the main thing.

Well here’s to that next merry meeting. May it come sooner than we hope.

Ps: I find I have written quite a long letter. You’ll have to thank the diarrhoea.
⁸
(
Capt Herbert Winn, 2/5th Gurkhas
)

While Maude gathered his forces on the Tigris, further pressure was being applied to the Turks by a British advance across the Sinai Desert. By the end of 1916, Gen Sir Archibald Murray’s force had established a strong defensive position 100 miles east of the Suez Canal, so ending the Turkish threat to this vital imperial artery. Once established in this position Murray began to assess whether it would be feasible in the New Year to advance into Palestine and inflict a decisive defeat on the Turks. A key settlement occupied in Sinai was El Arish on the coastal plain. This became the main advance camp for the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) where men and matériel began to concentrate for the coming offensive:

We should have got in for Xmas Eve, but a great salt lake intervened: these areas are very dangerous, we often got our horses in up to the girths in the neighbourhood of the lakes and in places there are awful quicksands where horses entirely disappeared in a few minutes.

I therefore called a halt for the night, but when I rode round later on to see that the guards were properly placed, I went down to the lake and very carefully crossed not only the dried up bog, but the lake itself at a narrow part. It was quite firm and so exactly like a frozen lake in England very lightly coated with snow that I do not think anyone could distinguish between the two with the eye.

I had reveille sounded at 4 (or 0400 as we now have to write it) and consulted the native N.C.O.s as to the feasibility of taking a short cut across the lake. They were unanimous in declaring that the whole convoy would be swallowed up. I told them that nevertheless that was the route I intended to take and not a protest was raised. Whether their compliance was due to an unbounded confidence in my lucky star or to sheer helplessness to combat my pigheadedness I cannot say, but they followed to a man.

We had reached an island in the middle of the frozen lake when Xmas dawn broke: all the stars had faded except one wonderful star in the East, which had been a thing of great use to me as well as beauty in the campaign and which all the natives call
THE
STAR
. In places the ice cracked and water oozed up through, but for the most part all was as firm as an arctic sea.

A great awe seemed to have come over man and beast. I halted and looked down the line, it was quite uncanny for there was neither sound nor motion . . . We might have been there for ages, frozen or bewitched. When I stalked on the ghostly procession followed soundlessly, and then weirder that all in this place of infinite solitude, music came from some near but invisible source: ‘Adeste Fideles’ and ‘Hark! The Herald Angels’, and about the same time there was a pulsation as of many wings overhead – a host of aeroplanes had turned out to see who was crossing the lake.

The sun broke gloriously and soon we were in camp where a warm Xmas welcome and breakfast awaited us.

The day spent almost entirely in the saddle in the bracing air gave me a great zest for the Xmas dinner at 7.30 at which nearly all the officers in the neighbourhood – about twenty – were present. Bagpipes escorted the flaming pudding and natives masquerading as Father Xmas, Bloody Bill, Harlequin and Columbine etc played weird instruments at dessert as they processed round the board.
⁹
(
Lt Joseph McPherson, Egyptian Camel Transport Corps
)

In the Balkans too, December 1916 found British forces having advanced into contact with the enemy. The Bulgarian threat to Salonika had passed by May 1916, so Allied forces under French Gen Sarrail began moving north from their defensive lines towards the Greek–Serbian frontier along which the Bulgarians were entrenched. In August, when Sarrail launched his first offensive, spearheaded by French and Serbian troops, the British Salonika Force (BSF) under Lt Gen George Milne was holding a 90-mile front that included the wide, flat Struma Valley, which during summer was one of Europe’s malarial blackspots, and the tangle of hills and ravines beside Lake Doiran, a position that German and Bulgarian military engineers had turned into a veritable fortress.

Later offensive pushes by French, Russian and Serbian forces placed the latter back on home soil with the liberation of Monastir on 19 November, the last major action before worsening winter weather conditions intervened. It would be spring 1917 before the BSF engaged in any major fighting, for in the final weeks of 1916 they simply tried to adapt to the wet and freezing conditions in the Macedonian wilderness, often with little more than a bivouac tent for shelter:

The weather was bitterly cold at this time, it being only a few days before Christmas, and we found it almost impossible to get any sleep in our 2 men bivvies. As a result, most of us spent the first night or two doubling up and down in a desperate effort to get warm. As the bivvies were open at each end there was no protection from the Arctic blast, so we resolved to think up some scheme for a new sleeping arrangement.

The state of the weather was such that men began to indulge in the unusual practice of volunteering for guard duty. The reason for this was that, instead of trying in vain to get to sleep in cold bivvies, members of the guard kept a very big fire going all night, and spent the time cooking porridge. The porridge was borrowed from the Company cooks, somewhat in advance of obtaining their permission. On the whole it was a very pleasant way to spend a cold night, except that in keeping out the cold we sat as close to the fire as possible, with the result that the heat stirred the lice into a frenzy of activity. We were, however, so accustomed to the activities of these boarders that we didn’t worry too much. (
Pte Christopher Hennessey, 2/15th Londons
)

Where the British had taken over trenches from the French there was much to be done to improve them in terms of defence and habitability. Undertaking this work during a Macedonian winter was difficult, so Christmas parcels arriving from home helped bring some cheer to proceedings. Capt Mervyn Sibly (9th Gloucesters) wrote to his sisters on Christmas Eve, just before his battalion moved to the advance line:

My dear Mildred and Enid

Thank you very much my dears for your many presents and all the trouble you have taken to brighten up my Christmas time. What a wonderful cake that is, it is quite perfect. There are two classes of cakes in the world – those that you make and other cakes. Morton and Irwin both had so-called Christmas cakes and, though they were good, they were not fit to be seen in the next trench to mine. I cut the cake first on Thursday; Morton had to go up the line on Friday, with a fatigue party working on dugouts, and I said to him ‘though I of course hoped nothing would happen to him one never knew, and we should both feel happier if he had some of my cake in his inside’. We had our first batch of mince pies on Thursday, and the second last night; Witts made quite a success of the pastry, so they, too, were ‘top-hole’.