Description
Object description
British private served with 4th Bn Duke of Cambridge's Own (Middlesex Regt), 8th Bde, 3rd Div on Western Front, 8/1915-11/1915; served with 4th Bn Duke of Cambridge's Own (Middlesex Regt), 63rd Bde, 21st Div on Western Front, 11/1915-7/1916; served with 4th Bn Duke of Cambridge's Own (Middlesex Regt), 63rd Bde, 37th Div on Western Front, 7/1916-11/1918
Content description
REEL 1 Aspects of enlistment and training with 4th Bn Duke of Cambridge's Own (Middlesex Regt), 8th Bde, 3rd Div in GB, 8/1914: reason for enlistment, 4/8/1914; coastal guard duties in Penlee; question of receiving no training; story of making arrest; voyage from Southampton. GB to Boulogne, France, 14/8/1914. Aspects of operations as private with 4th Bn Duke of Cambridge's Own (Middlesex Regt), 8th Bde, 3rd Div and 63rd Bde, 21st Div on Western Front, 8/1914-7/1916: move to St Martins Camp, Saint-Martin-les-Boulogne, France; story about estaminet; role in operations during Battle of Mons, Belgium, 8/1914; description of Germans advancing in columns; rate of rifle fire; position in barn; threatening to kill man praying; story of pulling soldier out of trench under fire; reason for not firing as group. Recollections of operations as private with 4th Bn Duke of Cambridge's Own (Middlesex Regt), 63rd Bde, 37th Div on Western Front, 7/1916-11/1918: conditions on Somme, France, 1916; role in mining operations; problem of being unable to cut barbed wire; reaction to loss of friends; opinion of strategy; attitude to self-inflicted wounds; opinion of officers; wounding, 1917; story about temporary loss of sight; opinion of medical treatment; reaction to Armistice, 11/11/1918; incident of soldier killed by booby trap after Armistice; personal morale; opinion of French women; hospitality of French civilians.
REEL 2 Continues: reflections on war; story of padre blessing guns; attitude to religion; return to GB, 12/1918; duties collecting identity discs and burying dead; attitude towards Germans; incident of German prisoner spitting in his face; demobilisation, 5/1919. Various memories of the Second World War.