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ing his time in France Horace served on the Somme and Ypres.
He was gassed at Arras.
At one point he served with the Ghurkhas and remembered how
stealthy they were when on night patrol in no-man’s-land with just
their killing knives – the curved kukri.
He recorded that, when shells had broken down the sides of the
trench, it was sometimes necessary to build them up again with the
only material to hand – the bodies of German and Allied soldiers!
Mud and lice were some of the biggest problems the soldiers had
to deal with and Horace remembered running a candle or a match
along the seams of his clothes to try to kill the fleas.
During the next twelve months the British gained ground but were
then driven back by a major counter attack in November 1917
when the armies from the Eastern Front transferred to the West.
The Russian revolution had resulted in a truce with the Germans,
allowing all of their efforts to be concentrated against the French
and the British. Heavy fighting took place right through until spring
1918 when the British and French finally stopped the German
advance. By July, the Germans were a spent force and, with the
Americans joining the fray, they were pushed back to their rear
defences, the Hindenburg Line.
Throughout that year the casualties were very heavy and the
RAMC would have been working without a break. On 12th July
1918, Horace went down with influenza and ended up in the base
hospital in Rouen where he stayed for two months. He was very
unlucky to be one of the victims of the notorious 1918 flu epidemic
which killed over 75 million people worldwide (compared to the
25 million who died as a result of WWI). One in four who caught
this disease died. In September, he was returned to No 53 Field
Ambulance where he remained until the end of the war.
It was his luck to get tonsillitis three days after the ceasefire and he
ended up in hospital again.
At the end of the war the British had an armed force of over 4 ½
million men, most of them in France. Few of the original professional
army had survived the conflict, being either killed or wounded. It
took some time to disengage this vast assembly of people from
44
He was gassed at Arras.
At one point he served with the Ghurkhas and remembered how
stealthy they were when on night patrol in no-man’s-land with just
their killing knives – the curved kukri.
He recorded that, when shells had broken down the sides of the
trench, it was sometimes necessary to build them up again with the
only material to hand – the bodies of German and Allied soldiers!
Mud and lice were some of the biggest problems the soldiers had
to deal with and Horace remembered running a candle or a match
along the seams of his clothes to try to kill the fleas.
During the next twelve months the British gained ground but were
then driven back by a major counter attack in November 1917
when the armies from the Eastern Front transferred to the West.
The Russian revolution had resulted in a truce with the Germans,
allowing all of their efforts to be concentrated against the French
and the British. Heavy fighting took place right through until spring
1918 when the British and French finally stopped the German
advance. By July, the Germans were a spent force and, with the
Americans joining the fray, they were pushed back to their rear
defences, the Hindenburg Line.
Throughout that year the casualties were very heavy and the
RAMC would have been working without a break. On 12th July
1918, Horace went down with influenza and ended up in the base
hospital in Rouen where he stayed for two months. He was very
unlucky to be one of the victims of the notorious 1918 flu epidemic
which killed over 75 million people worldwide (compared to the
25 million who died as a result of WWI). One in four who caught
this disease died. In September, he was returned to No 53 Field
Ambulance where he remained until the end of the war.
It was his luck to get tonsillitis three days after the ceasefire and he
ended up in hospital again.
At the end of the war the British had an armed force of over 4 ½
million men, most of them in France. Few of the original professional
army had survived the conflict, being either killed or wounded. It
took some time to disengage this vast assembly of people from
44
