David Crane: To Fight Alongside Friends: The First World War Diaries of Charlie May

Guillet was in this afternoon with his bride. iiiThey looked very well and appeared very happy. It quite reminded me of our honeymoon. By gad, my sweetheart, what happiness has been ours! It seems wonderful to me to look back upon.

Had a final inspection of the men this morning, checking rifles and bayonets principally. They will get them mixed up though their innocence of any such thing is simply sublime. I had to ‘strafe’ them a bit come the last and have promised them the most diabolical punishments if they get up to the same tricks at the front. They seemed rather pleased than otherwise. But they are like that. Promise them a regular hell of a time in France and you can’t please them better. Their keenness to go is marvellous and I trust it will hold when they get there. They are topping fellows and I do hope we can bring the most of them back with us.

This afternoon the CO declared a half holiday as B and C Company were playing off the battalion final at soccer. ivIt was ‘some’ match. Rivalry ran terrifically high and we all expect to hear of several fights tonight. B lost 1–nil. It was a splendid game, the best any of us have seen on the Plain. The men were simply wild about it, and I am afraid it cost a certain company commander, who ought to have known better, rather more hard cash than he cares to think about in cold blood. v

The mess is in great form tonight. Everyone is in except the CO, Merriman and Knudsen, viwho are all three spending this last evening with their wives. They have their farewells yet to do. I do not envy them, poor chaps, nor their womenfolk. Mrs Knudsen was up at the match this afternoon and I got her to give the prizes. She came into the mess afterwards and wished us all goodbye. It was rather an ordeal for her. We promised to bring [her husband] back safely for her and I sincerely trust we shall.

All our fellows are in hilarious mood, singing and joking no end. They are a grand lot and as I look at them I can’t help feeling proud of our old battalion and the men who’ve made it. They are all so clean-cut and English as you know so well, my own, I feel confident they’ll go when the chance comes. Please God the 22nd may carry the old Regiment’s name another rung up the ladder of fame.

They have me on to make a bit of a speech tonight at mess when proposing the King’s health. I wish they wouldn’t do these things. It is one of the chief trials a senior officer has to face. I always make such a hash of speeches. Go red and hum & hah and generally look a perfect ass. However, ‘faint heart never won fat turkey’, so I shall have to go through with it.

All the transport has gone now with the machine gun[s] etc. Our kit has been taken with the former so we are reduced to what we stand up in and must endure the horrors of a floor-board couch for the first time for some months. There is some proverb about hard work softening the roughest couch, I believe. I am unfortunate. I have had an easy day.

We have not gone yet. That is the one and only item to be recorded today … Yet how near we were!

The right half Battalion paraded and marched off at 11.40 a.m. and had progressed as far as 600 [yards] from camp when a whistle blew and we were recalled.

How flat we felt and how everyone swore!

I understand that the bad weather in the Channel is the reason for the delay. It breaks the mines loose and you run on them and get blown to blazes.

I am sorry for the rest of the Brigade. viiIt has already preceded us and I can picture whole regiments lying in puddles on the quayside with only the howl of the wind and the pattering rain-drops to sing them a lullaby. That sounds quite melodramatic. But I bet it is all that and more for the poor beggars.

We now go tomorrow at 5.30 a.m. Reveille 3.30. Bow-wow! It is hardly worth going to bed and I wouldn’t but that I had so little slumber last night.

The men I am afraid won’t sleep at all. They are now busy singing, ‘When this b..... war is over we’ll be there …’ I am afraid some of them will get drunk, which will mean a rotten tour in the morning dark for company officers. That, however, is all in the game.

Countess Brownlow viiihas sent all the mess little pocket writing pads today. Very neat and very welcome. I am exceedingly pleased with mine. It was just the thing I wanted but couldn’t find. I have already written you the first note on it and have no doubt but that I will finish the pad on you, my dear girlie.

I wonder what you are doing tonight and of what you are thinking. My darling soul, when shall we meet again. When will the time come that we can once more set up our home and recommence our life of utter happiness. Ah, Maudie, how little I realised where happiness lay till this old war came along and it was denied me. How limited is a man’s mind. It does not allow him to enjoy life in the present but only to realise what moments have meant to him by looking back on them when they have passed. At any rate it has been so with me.

8.45 p.m. Fresh orders have just arrived. The 5.30 a.m. idea is now off and we do not move till 11.40. Thank heaven for its mercies and also for the forethought which led me to sneak the Second-in-Command’s blankets after he had left yesterday. I look like having a warm night’s sleep after all.

At last we are under way. But our journey is destined not to be a straightforward one. ix

We came like birds as far as Folkestone, even to the pier of that town. But there we stopped. A Scotch major met us with the announcement that the Channel is closed and that we must stop the night in Folkestone billets.

A long march out into the night is the result with a longer halt on the Leas xwhere the wind blows chill and people say nasty things about the Army in whispers. The men were great. Never a murmur out of them after they had been warned that all was to be treated as night operations.

Our billets were eventually allotted and we got the fellows into several large empty houses – 150 in each. They are right as trivets. xiWe officers dropped on a top-hole billet also. A large boarding house where guests were non est before our advent. xii

They hunted up steak and chips for us and what with this and a whiskey and soda to wash it down, we are happy as bugs in a blanket and quite satisfied with the war up to now. Don Murray, D. S. Murray xiiiand myself share a room where we have sheets and a cheval glass. xivCorn in Egypt, I have not known such luxury since I left you, my sweetheart, and it has a most heartening effect upon one.

Especially is this so after my journey down. I came with Major Merriman and he, poor fellow, is rather depressing. I think he is obsessed with the idea that he is going to be shot. He is rather mournful about everything. I am no good in that attitude. The rest of the boys are so bright, God bless them. And yet I have no doubt but what the chances are the same for all of us.

If we don’t get away tomorrow I am going to try and find Miss Carey’s xvand see her for you. I’d be tickled to death to meet her after all you have told me of her.

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