Up at 6 o’clock and saw Captain Crawford off. Received quite a lot of money in tips. Gibbons fighting† drunk. Squad next up and marched back to Berthen1 at about 4.30, arrived about 6 o’clock. Slept in the receiving tent with Harry Bascombe and Ben Jenkins.
Berthen (B) about 7km NNW of Bailleul (A). ↩
Up about 7.15. Felt pretty rotten first thing. Kept busy all day. Wrote short letter home. Heard rumour that we were to move tomorrow.
Up at 7.15. Off in the afternoon and evening. Went to the Merry Mauves at night and it was pretty fair.
Up at about 7 o’clock. Kept busy all day. Off in the afternoon and went to the Church Army reading room and read two short stories from a magazine. On duty at night and did some French. Lay awake and talked to Freddie about churches and festivals of the church year.
Rumours of the Division going out and of the ambulance moving.
Although the diary is silent on the matter, 6th August 1917 was the day on which ALL’s Sheffield barracks friend, Ralph Kenyon Sandwith, was killed in action near Kemmel in Belgium.
The images here are of a postcard sized portrait of RKS which exists in ALL’s collection. The front is signed “Ralph K. Sandwith” and the back has an address in Louth, RKS’ home address presumably written by RKS himself, and a note in ALL’s hand about the date of the photograph (1915) and the circumstances of Sandwith’s death (at Kemmel in 1917). Private Sandwith was about 21 years old at the time of his death, and 19 years old at the time of the photograph.
See also all diary entries tagged “Sandwith” and Ralph Kenyon Sandwith at Lives of the First World War.
Up at about 7 o’clock. Usual day. On in the afternoon and off at night. Wrote a letter to Franchie Inwood. At the Y M at night and found the service very good.
Up at usual time. And usual day. Had short walk in the afternoon with Bob Walker. On duty at night. Did some French.
Usual day’s work. Weather pretty bad1. Off at night and went to pictures with Freddie Holmes. He returned from leave in the morning.
“Weather pretty bad”: rain and mud were of course what made Passchendaele such a byword for disaster. ↩
Usual day’s work. On at night.
Usual day’s work. Off at night and went to the pictures at night.
Usual day’s work. On at night. Third Battle of Ypres1.
ALL probably added the words “Third Battle of Ypres” some little time after this date, as it is unlikely that he knew on 31 July that a battle of this name – and its number – had started that day. The battle continued until 10 November 1917 and later came to be better known as Passchendaele because the village of that name (now Passendale, Flemish; (A) on the map; about 30km NE of Bailleul (C), where ALL was at this time and 13km NE of Ypres (B) itself) became a much-contested objective.
There was a prolonged disagreement before the battle began between the Army and the politicians; Lloyd George and others didn’t want another blood-bath, and Haig didn’t get the politicians’ agreement to go ahead until 25 July, by which time of course all preparations and preliminary activity had taken place. One purpose of Passchendaele (as it had been of the Somme), which may have forced the politicians’ hand, was to take pressure off the French. It had been the pressure on the French at Verdun before the Somme in 1916. In 1917, General Nivelle’s offensive (which, like all the other offensives, was intended to end the War quickly) had started in mid-April and ended on 9 May; it began with a British attack around Arras, designed to draw off German reserves before the French attacked on the Chemin des Dames and near Reims, further south. The plan failed, and ended in French mutinies, which appeared to threaten an overall Allied collapse. Nivelle, who had replaced Joffre as French Commander-in-Chief in December 1916, was in turn immediately replaced as Commander-in-Chief – by Pétain of WWII collaboration fame. The (ostensible) territorial objectives of the Passchendaele offensive are mentioned in the footnote on 22 May. When the trench lines had settled in late 1914, Ypres had ended in a small salient of its own, but in spite of its poor defensive location the Allies continued to defend it, not least for morale reasons. ↩