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first initiation but there was still occasional shell-fire and there were unavoidable ‘wind-ups’ when machine-guns spattered and bullets whizzed past too close for comfort. In such moments the voice of a sergeant-major which had terrified them on the parade ground, and his gruff phlegmatic ‘Steady lads,’ was decidedly reassuring. But Kitchener’s Army was no stranger to trenches. They had dug trenches the length and breadth of the country until they were sick of the sight of spades and sandbags. But on the hills and meadows at home they had dug undisturbed by the presence of the enemy. Even now the enemy was invisible and despite repeated warnings it was easy to be overconfident.

Pte. F. Bastable, 7th Bn., Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent Regt.), 55 Brig., 18 Div.

Trench digging. That’s what we were trained for. If we didn’t know anything else, we knew about digging trenches. In fact we won a prize for it, two of my mates and me. When we were training on Salisbury Plain our Colonel offered prize money for digging a quick trench, and me and two mates of mine won it. I think we got five shillings each. But it was a different story when we got to France, and one of those mates of mine, Bill Beckington, was one of our first casualties. We went down to the Somme area, and the first two casualties in the whole battalion oddly enough were two brothers, and they weren’t even killed by the enemy. We had no proper baths or anything, so we used to go in a stream or a river and try to keep clean and have a swim at the same time, and these two brothers went out too far in the middle of the river and got caught in the reeds in the bottom and they both got drowned. After that the first casualty was my mate. It wasn’t very nice. The trenches had been fired on and they’d broke them all up and we had to go in there and make them up tidy again with sandbags. This was right in the firing line so we both went in there, Bill and me, and one had to hold the sandbag open while the other filled it up. We were just arranging it between us, and thought nothing of it – we were well used to digging trenches so either he said, or I said, ‘You hold the sandbag open while I put the earth in.’ Anyway, when we’d filled a few, Bill went up on the top with the sandbag to where the hole was all broke down to make it up. I was down below while he was standing up doing it and the bullets started coming over. I said to him, ‘Look out, Bill, they’ve got you spotted!’ Well, he didn’t bob down quick enough. The bullet just missed me and went to the back of the trench, made my ears whistle, the noise of it, and the next moment before Bill could say anything he got it right in the head. It blew his head open and his brains was all coming out. I was right next to him and his brains covered my tunic like the roe out of a herring.

I didn’t know what to think. To think we’d got five bob for doing that job before, and now Bill was finished like that. I couldn’t believe it. We went up the same night with the padre and gave him a proper burial – all the mates went up to see him buried. It was the first burial in our battalion. The padre said the prayers and some lads let off a round over his grave, it was near la Boiselle, not far away, not far from where he was killed. I couldn’t get over it! The first man killed in the battalion and it was my own mate. And all we was doing was sorting out the trench.

Bill Beckington was one of many casualties and there was sometimes panic at home when parents who had indulgently connived at young boys joining under-age were shattered by news from France. Young Ralph Langley was not quite eighteen when his brother Charlie died of wounds, and the first he knew of it was when he was called out by the sergeant-major on the parade ground shortly before the Battalion was due to sail.

Rfn. R. Langley, 16th Bn., King’s Royal Rifle Corps.

I was in the 16th Battalion Kings Royal Rifle Corps – the Church Lads Brigade. We’d all joined up together in our local branch and after months of training I was dying to get to France. We were just on the point