'A band of brothers made to last'
Sam Jefferson (singing): “There's a photo on my table from 1914 of five young lads in scruffy clothes, larrikins you can see.”
Sam Jefferson: “What draws me into the First World War is the personal stories; that's always what will draw me in. It's very easy to, you know, get, get sort of carried away with the statistics and the figures. Ultimately they don't mean anything if they're not translated into names and faces. I think these are the things that enable us to at least get something of an understanding of the conflict. And you know, I think reading these, these personal stories, seeing photographs as the basis of, of beginning to empathise with their situation.”
Sam Jefferson (singing): “In the trenches’ thickening air, they shared the shortest life. And the photograph is signed, yours sincerely the dirty five.”
Sam Jefferson: “Jim, my great grandfather had written around this photograph, ‘Yours sincerely, The Dirty Five’, and the photograph shows him with the four other lads at Redcar Training Camp. I thought there's got to be a story here, so I frankly got very lucky. I had a massive fluke of research stumbled upon some accounts and letters that Jim had written and sent back during the war, along with a lot of other photographs he'd sent. And I found out the story of the dirty five. They stuck together for quite a time, they fought together in the Barnsley Pals Battalions, which most famously saw the first bit of, of the action at the Battle of the Somme, they had been in Egypt before they then went to the Somme.”
Sam Jefferson (singing): “You turned 22 the summer of 1916, and The Dirty Five had stayed together, everywhere they'd been. And the order came, one last campaign, then you could all go home. On the first day, 60,000 lay on the burning fields of the Somme.”
Sam Jefferson: “And it was during the Battle of the Somme that the 35 were split up. They were together, working the Vickers gun. They were given orders to fall back from the line, and as they were packing it up, a German mortar strike hit. It killed two of the lads instantly and one was never found. Sadly, Jim and a friend were the only two to return out of the dirty five.”
Sam Jefferson (singing): “And you came to the silent world as hellish fire rained down. Harry burned up in the chalk and Jack and George, they never found.”
Sam Jefferson: “I didn't just want to write about the mud and blood of war because frankly, there's enough songs that do that. I think I wanted to try and talk about the, the jokes and the jaunty songs that they’d share together. Because when you look at the photograph, you think here's, you know, five larrikins probably, you know, quite, quite rough about the edges, you know, the Barnsley working class lads. So yeah, I just wanted to write a song that told the two sides of their war.”
Sam Jefferson (singing): “Oh, from the first day you were singing in the dorm, working up a storm, the dirty five were usually the ones behind it all.”
Sam Jefferson: “I think we're, we're drawn to the conflict in general because it's, it's, I don't really want to use the word fascinating, but it, it's, it's certainly an aspect of human nature which draws you in. It's, it's at once fascinating at the same time terrifying.”
Sam Jefferson (singing): “All so young and gone so fast under a burning sky. A band of brothers made to last, the dirty five.”
The First World War has been explored in popular culture for more than a hundred years. Singer-songwriter Sam Jefferson was inspired to write music about the conflict after discovering a photo of his great-grandfather Jim Marshall during his wartime service.
Sam's song ‘The Dirty Five’ is inspired by the story of Jim and his friends in the Barnsley Pals, including their experience at the Battle of the Somme.
He performed the song at the opening of Lest We Forget? at IWM North, an exhibition which looked at remembrance of the First World War and how people have commemorated the conflict since. The exhibition contained objects from IWM’s collections dealing with themes of remembrance, and also looked at how popular culture has told the story of the war and those who died.
