Friday 23rd
July 1915: A member of the East Anglian Royal Engineers has spoken to us giving
details about the dangerous and tiring lives they lead. “Occasionally one reads
in your columns very interesting accounts of the useful work that is being done
by the various Training and Territorial Battalions connected with the county
and at times your public is given some idea of the impression which the real
thing creates in the mind of the newly arrived fighting man, even if it is only
by way of a description of a few minutes’ tour of the trenches with just a peep
over the parapet. These letters are very interesting, but to those who have
been at the front for some considerable time, they appear rather amusing
insomuch as they treat with awe and wonder of those things which to the
old-hand are of ordinary daily occurrence. On occasions too the veil of
censorship is lifted and one gets a glimpse of the doings of the Engineer Field
Company, worthy sons of the Town by the River. Were it possible, the sappers
could give you not only a much more accurate description of what the war really
has been like during an acquaintance lasting over several months; but if their
modesty and the censor had permitted they could spin many a yarn which would
make the old town justly proud of her children. It is not advisable for various
reasons that detailed accounts should appear in the press, but this silence
must not be taken to mean that our sappers have no tale to tell”.
“There were
times when the Bedford lads might have felt a little piqued at the constant
reference in your columns to the Highland Division who the Sappers felt had
rather ousted from their rightful place in the local interest, but this was
instantly forgotten when by a curious coincidence the Unit was called upon to
share the ushering in to its military life in the line of this same Highland
Division. Right well did the Scotchmen take to the game, although they hit it
in not too soft a place”.
“To take up
the tale of the Sappers. Arriving in France at the time when weather conditions
were as bad as it is possible to conceive, they were attached immediately to a
Regular Division, and were allowed to take their place in the line on the same
footing as Regular troops – an honour which the Company was quick to
appreciate. At the time the Territorial force was an entirely new element in
the firing line and every sapper seemed to feel that all eyes were upon him and
that the credit of the volunteer armies was in his keeping. How he acquitted
himself is well-known at the front and very soon any doubt which their brothers
in the Regiments might have had as to the manner in which they would discharge
their duties was entirely dispelled”.
“For the
first six weeks of their life abroad they hardly even saw the sun. Day after
day an incessant downpour drenched them to the skin. Working in thick mud and
water reaching well above the knees with boots worn through with no chance of
drying their sodden garments, or even changing them for the night, they carried
on cheerfully, making light of discomfort under conditions which it is
difficult to imagine. The weather improved but their work has been continuous
throughout, except for three short rests of a few days after a particularly
trying time. In this respect, the RE differ from the other troops of their
division. The infantryman spends four days in the trenches and at the end of
that time he is relieved and has four days’ rest some miles behind the line,
where he may employ the luxuries of life, such as baths, concerts etc., and he
can there rest at night far from the noise made by bursting shells and the
almost deafening crash of our own guns”.
“Not so the
sapper, who is always on duty and liable to be called-on at a moment’s notice. His
billets almost throughout have been in some shell-ridden house at no great
distance from the front line whose walls are spattered at night with bullets
which have been “overs” from the front line. His rest is often disturbed when
enemy gunners are active by the sound of an arrival close by, which, with a
slight difference in range or direction, would have brought his flimsy home
about his ears. Sometimes by night, sometimes by day, but always within range
of the enemy’s fire, the Bedford sappers have taken their share of ll that has
been doing since they have been in the country – wiring out in no-man’s-land,
building breastworks across spaces where no trench existed, mining, sapping,
preparing defence works, drainage, construction of dug-outs and bridges,
preparation of explosive bombs and mines, instructing the infantry in matters
requiring special care or knowledge, supervising working parties of French and
Belgian civilians, yeomanry, infantry and even naval men; in fact the hundred
and one things that the RE are called upon to do have fallen within their
sphere of activity. And the all-too-long casualty lists of the Company show
that the element of danger has constantly been with them in their work”.
“The Sapper
could tell you of nights spent in the “in between” where the lurid glow of the
magnesium flares lights up for a while those strange, still-outstretched forms
whose rest should be sacred, and over whose bodies passes the ceaseless requiem
of both armies. He could tell you of the efforts of the Minenwerfer and hand
grenade, of the “fizz-bang” and the cramp of nights spent in cellars whose
regular occupants were rats and beetles, of hours spent in drowned
communication trenches waiting further orders “the guns will lengthen out and
storming parties will advance” and of the following wild rush in the open
through a hail of shrapnel and rifle bullets. Of these and hundreds of other experiences
the sapper could give first-hand details”.
“He could
even tell of the delights of evening music from a borrowed piano, of gardens
rich in fruit, whose legitimate owners had fled, of a very occasional game of
football with a chance met field company but – THE CENSOR. The Engineers have
taken part in the various attacks that have been made in the part of the line
in which they have been stationed and have earned for themselves on more than
one occasion the praise of those of high military rank under whom they have had
the honour to serve”.
“Today they
are just as cheerful, just as willing and as hardworking as they were in the
beginning and it is due not only to the men themselves, but also to those left
behind that Bedford should occasionally hear something of the part played in
this great conflict by the lads we saw in former years parading in the
Ashburnham Road
Source: Bedfordshire Times 23rd July
1915
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