Description
Object description
British gunner served as signaller with A Bty, CL Bde Royal Field Artillery, 30th Div in GB and on Western Front, 1/1915-11/1917; signaller served with Royal Engineers Signal Service on Western Front and GB, 1/1918-11/1918
Content description
REEL 1 Background in Colne, GB, 1898-1915: family; education; employment in cotton mill; reaction to outbreak of war, 4/8/1914; enlistment with Royal Field Artillery in St Annes-on-Sea, 1/1915. Recollections of training as gunner with Signal Section, A Bty, CL Bde, Royal Field Artillery, 30th Div in GB, 1/1915-11/1915: reason for volunteering as signaller; accommodation; training on Ordnance QF 18 Pounder Field Gun and in signalling; signalling equipment; attitude to military life and discipline; route marches; drill; living conditions; posting to Grantham, raining with horses; story of horses stampeding in storm.
REEL 2 Continues: daily routine; uniform; equipment; method of tying puttees for mounted troops; ammunition; boots; kit inspection; punishments; move to Larkhill Camp on Salisbury Plain, 10/1915; accommodation; signal and gunnery exercises; problem with temperamental horse; method of driving horses; mounting procedure; amusing story of mounting horse; memories of horse named 'Bobby'; riding training; opinion of instructors; saddle and equipment; care of horses; signalling equipment.
REEL 3 Continues: field telephone; earth pin. Aspects of voyage from Southampton, GB to Le Havre, France, 28/11/1915: embarkation at Southampton, 11/1915; loading of horses and guns; story of horse named 'Jumbo' bolting; problem of seasickness; disembarkation at Le Havre. Recollections of operations as signaller with A Bty, CL Bde, Royal Field Artillery, 30th Div on Western Front, 11/1915-11/1917: accommodation on farm; opinion of adequacy of training; morale; memories of battery officers; move to Colincamps; receiving Christmas parcels from home, 12/1915.
REEL 4 Continues: move to gun pits at Maricourt, Somme, France, 1/1916; terrain; Imperial German Army observation balloons; story of French Army 75mm artillery shells; description of gun pits and trenches; sleeping arrangements; daily routine and living conditions; liaison with infantry; proximity of Imperial German Army trenches; role of battery in Z1 sector shelling Imperial German Army barbed wire; length of time taken for artillery shells to land; effect of weather conditions; problem of communications; rate of fire; incident of artillery shell bursting in trench; description of trench system; problem of chalky soil; living conditions; problem of trenches flooding; rest periods; duckboards in trenches; method of drainage; dugouts; sleeping arrangements; personal possessions; postal communications with home; daily routine.
REEL 5 Continues: duties as signaller; maintenance of equipment and repairing telephone lines; types of wire; transportation of wire; composition of signal section; shifts; testing lines; equipment; stories of being buried and being blown into air by artillery shell blast; rations; cooking rations in mess tins; equipment as signaller; water cart; sanitary arrangements; problem of contracting dysentery from dirty water; state of health, including temporary deafness.
REEL 6 Continues: washing facilities; shaving and haircuts; personal hygiene; problem of lice and rats; use of corpses as sandbags; problem of wet and cold; question of lighting fires; morale in battery; preparations for Somme Offensive, 7/1916; preliminary artillery barrage; memories of wounded Imperial German Army prisoners of war; description of Forward Observation Post; conditions during Battle of Somme, 1916; move to Messines, Belgium; signal office destroyed by artillery shell; description of explosion of mine on Messines Ridge, Ypres Salient, Belgium.
REEL 7 Continues: damage caused by mine; daily routine and duties as signaller; sleeping in gun pits; move to Passchendaele, Ypres Salient, Belgium, 1917; description of trench system and use of captured Imperial German Army pill boxes; gassing, 11/1917; background to transfer to Royal Engineers Signal Service; effects of gas, including temporary blindness; hospitalisation at Étaples for treatment of eyes. Aspects of hospitalisation and convalescence in GB, 11/1917-1/1918: return to GB on hospital ship; further medical treatment in Edinburgh, 11/1917; story of visiting brother in Newcastle upon Tyne.
REEL 8 Continues: attitude of civilians to war; visit to parents in Colne; posting to Bedford for further training; accommodation; problem of cold weather; story of damaged rifle butt; embarkation at Southampton for voyage to France and drafting to 19th (Western) Div, 1/1918. Aspects of operations as signaller with Royal Engineers Signal Service on Western Front, 1/1918-3/1918: initial duties in workshops in Abbeville; posting to Épernay; accommodation in champagne factory; duties as signaller and despatch rider; story of French Army troops looting champagne factory; volunteering for training as pilot with Royal Flying Corps, 3/1918. Aspects of period with Royal Engineers Signal Section in GB, 1918: interview and medical examination for transfer to Royal Flying Corps.
REEL 9 Continues: reaction to failing medical; memories of Armistice, 11/11/1918; description of duties in telephone exchange at Crystal Palace; transferred to Army Reserve; problem of returning to pre-war employment; question of pension and compensation; demobilisation, 1919; post-war life and employment; effects of First World War on health.
