1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [276]
Young Bill Worrell was also helping to prepare for the projected ‘killing’ of the Kaiser and he was not enjoying himself.
Rfn. W. Worrell.
In the line at Laventie, a number of us were sent for to go back to Battalion HQ. I went back in fear and trembling because I’d been in all sorts of trouble in my time, but I couldn’t imagine what I’d done. Anyhow, when I got back I was asked would I like to take a little job for just a few days. All I should have to do would be four hours’ duty a day. The rest of the time I’d be off and I’d be in the reserve – no trench work, no trench duties, no carrying parties. Well of course, when you had an offer like that the answer’s ‘Certainly!’ Well we moved up, then looking round I saw that the others were just as skinny as I was – I weighed 7 stone 6 pounds in those days, and they were all about the same size as me. There were six of us and we were told, ‘Righto, strip off here. Just keep your trousers on.’ We were wondering what on earth it was all about. Then we went into this sap. We were mining across to put a mine under the German trench in readiness for 25 September, you see. And we got in there, spaced out – there was hardly room to get in – you could just about get in and just sit down. And there we were a few feet back from the Welsh miner who was working on the face digging out, with a listener with him, filling up sandbags with earth as he cut it back, and we had to pass them along and carry them out. It was awfully hot and it was a good thing they told us to strip off because we were perspiring profusely. Four hours of that was a very hard day’s work. That was the only time I ever had anything to do with mining, and I wouldn’t want to do any more of it!
The men who had volunteered to join the special gas brigades were even more fed up, for their job was no picnic and they failed to see how by any stretch of the imagination a ‘special knowledge of chemistry’ was of the slightest assistance in doing it. Muscle power would have been much more to the point for it seemed that the main requirement was for labour and it was no light task to unload the heavy gas cylinders from the trains at the railhead at Gorre and heave them on to the wagons that would take them to dumps behind the line. The only part of the job that demanded any degree of expertise was the task of unscrewing the boxes and removing the cylinders in order to loosen their dome covers with a long spanner so that the cylinders were ready for action and the gas could be speedily released. This was done on the station platform. It was perfectly safe and there was no possibility of any leakage, but this was not the view of one panicky senior staff officer who came to inspect their progress. He ordered them to stop doing it forthwith. There was no officer of the Royal Engineers of sufficient seniority to argue or to point out the difficulties of opening tightly screwed boxes and undoing the stiff tops of cylinders in trenches in the dark. The General had spoken, there was no more to be said and from then on the weighty boxes were carried straight from the train to the wagons.
The wagon wheels were muffled, and even the hooves of the horses were thrust into partly filled sandbags so that the rumble of wheels and the sound of hooves striking the stone pavé of the roads would not be heard. Sound carried long distances at night, and well the infantry of the working parties knew it as they tramped cautiously humping the heavy gas cylinders from the dumps to the trenches. The cylinders themselves weighed sixty pounds and each contained another sixty pounds