Up at 9.15 5 o’clock. Paraded for breakfast 6 o’clock, dressed for church parade. Went to church in Y.M. and stayed to sacrament. Enjoyed short service. Paraded for letters. Had walk out at night. Met a lot of the Alnwick lads.
Received some hopeful news of sea fight1. Germans pretty well beaten.
Up at 5 o’clock. Breakfast at 6 o’clock. Paraded at 8.45 and went to the big parade ground. Were lectured on gas helmets, given one each, and put through a gas test. Our buttons nicely blackened1. Very interesting. Heavy shower as we sat. Wrote letter to Mr Inwood in the afternoon. Went to lecture by an Indian doctor at night. Went to bed shortly after 9 o’clock.
Received news of North Sea fight2.
“Our buttons nicely blackened”: Following the first use of gas by the Germans at Ypres, a team of scientists was sent to Belgium to find out what gas was being used. They identified chlorine from the way it had discoloured buttons on soldiers’ uniforms. Given the blackening of buttons noted here by ALL, it seems likely that chlorine was also the gas used for this test. ↩
Presumably the news of the Battle of Jutland reaching ALL. ↩
Got up about 3 o’clock and watched sunrise. Arrived Rouen 8.151. Left the ship shortly afterwards and marched up to the rest camp number 5. A lot of troops in the camp, including Indian cavalry and all sorts. Met nearly all the Alnwick lads at night, also Martin. Looked round the camp. Everything very interesting. Went to bed about 9 o’clock. Tent rather uncomfortable to lie in. Fine night.
Le Havre (A), Rouen (B) on the map. ↩
Got up shortly before 5 o’clock. Got dressed and washed and had breakfast after a struggle. Watched them unload part of the ship. Shaved and lost glass1 over a wheel. Slept a bit. Fine day. Ship terribly dirty.
Arrived Le Havre 2 about 8 o’clock.
Saw French soldiers, German prisoners and a lot of British troops. French coast very fine. Spent whole day on the ship. Had a shave and had ample time. Made our tea and got what we could to eat. Left at about 9 o’clock at night and sailed up the Seine. The town looked pretty from the sea lit up. Lay down on the deck about 10.30.
A page describing how locations in France have been identified has been added.
[At top of page above date – ] Big North Sea Battle1 Queen Mary, Indefatigable, Invincible, and many other ships lost.
Reveille at 4 o’clock. Paraded 5.15 for breakfast. Marched to station. Left 6.40. Beautiful country. Past Nottingham, Leicester, Sansbury†2, Oxford, Winchester and to Southampton. Arrived Southampton 1.153. Weren’t in ship until 5.15. Shaved and washed in strange conditions. Went aboard “Karnak”4 at 5.15. Received lifebelts. Saw two aeroplanes.
Sailed for France
Left Southampton about 8 o’clock. Very fine night. Sunset over before past the Isle of Wight. Coast looked splendid. Two destroyers escorted us out. Watched searchlights playing over the 3 boats and over the harbour. Enjoyed the sailing until about 10 o’clock and then lay down on deck to sleep. Pretty cold. Up two or three times. Slept pretty well considering.
Had stripes taken off 5.
I can’t find any Sansbury between Leicester and Oxford (or indeed anywhere), nor any location to match any possible interpretation of the shorthand, though it is comparatively clearly written. The troop train may have taken a circuitous route to avoid the timetabled traffic, but it must have passed through some station which ALL noted or remembered as something like Sansbury. Even Aylesbury, which is just about plausible on pre-Beeching railway lines, is simply not deducible from the shorthand outline. Wednesbury might be just about possible route-wise, though in that case Birmingham might well have been mentioned. Many troop trains from the North to Southampton converged on Banbury, where the big Grimsbury muntions factory adjoined the railway station, and while neither of these names fits the shorthand, this was very probably ALL’s route. (DL)
A longer note on the mystery of Sansbury may be found here. ↩
The map shows the entire journey from Sheffield (A), via Nottingham (B), Leicester (C), Grimsbury (D – see previous footnote and the longer explanation here), Oxford (E) and Winchester (F) to Southampton (G). ↩
The Karnak, a French passenger ship, was operated by Messageries Maritimes, Marseille. She was torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-32 in the Mediterranean on November 27th, 1916 about 70 miles SE of Valetta, Malta when en route from Marseilles and Malta to Saloniki. ↩
ALL had been promoted to Lance Corporal in September 1915. It was common for soldiers with acting rank to revert to their former rank on deployment to the field. According to an interview he gave in 1976, while he was aboard Karnak ALL was ordered to remove his stripes by “a strange officer who didn’t know me at all”. In the same interview, he went on to say “I am the only man in France who went through the war Lance Corporal acting Private with Lance Corporal’s pay.” It would appear that ALL’s demotion from “acting” Lance Corporal may have been a mistake. ↩
On parade most of the day receiving kit and suchlike. Went to town and bought a brooch for Franchie. Returned to Inwoods’. Went out with Franchie to Five Ridges1 to pick daisies. Gave her the brooch. Mrs Inwood gave me shaving material and some cakes. Stayed pretty late. Wrote in both autograph albums and birthday books. Left 11 o’clock.
Went to bed about midnight.
Last night in Sheffield.
“Five Ridges” doesn’t seem likely, but I can find nothing on the map to which the shorthand could be stretched. ↩
At church as usual. Had short walk in the afternoon and then went to Inwoods’ to tea. After church again to supper. Stayed pretty late. Talked most of the time. Didn’t play much.
On parade in the morning as usual. Went to Inwoods’ after dinner and missed train through being late. Went by bus to Hallam Gate1 and walked to Wharncliffe Cross. Fine day but thundery at tea time, but we had splendid day and walked back. Played games and asked conundrums on the way back. Leishman and I went for bread and had some cakes given to us. Stayed until late. Had grand day out.
Leishman put off the draft.
ALL’s last “grand day out” before his departure to France was “splendid”, and sounds like a comparatively rural walk, so it would be nice to trace it exactly; but it’s difficult. Leishman and ALL (and who else?) must have gone first from the Hillsborough Barracks to the Inwoods’ house, in Broughton St, Hillsborough. Then they “missed train” (or “missed Brian”? but no Brian is named anywhere in the Diary); the nearest rail stations were at Parkwood and Wadsley Bridge, on the line between Sheffield and Penistone, to the NW. So they got a bus; to the same intended destination? The Diary seems to say ‘to Hallam Gate’ (though ‘Gate’ isn’t certain). There was a Hallam Gate Road and a big Hallam Gate house in the Crookes district, 1½ miles due W of the city centre, but ‘Wharncliffe’ names occur out of the city, NW from Hillsborough, so it would be illogical to get a bus to Hallam Gate Road to start walking there. The location of Wharncliffe Cross itself has not been traced, but one’s best guess is that it might be at or near Wharncliffe Wood, NE of Oughtibridge (A6102, 5 miles NW of Sheffield), about 3-4 miles for the walk back to Broughton Street or the barracks. ↩