Charlie Connelly - The Forgotten Soldier - He wasn’t a soldier, he was just a boy

William Dann was going to France. Meanwhile Fred Dixon also found himself training at Canterbury, working with horses: ‘We had the stiffest training with the 6th Dragoon Guards at Canterbury. It was the dragoon depot down there and we came under the instruction of the peacetime sergeants, who were a tough lot. They tried to impress upon us what a subhuman breed we were; if they set out to break our hearts they didn’t succeed, but it wasn’t for want of trying.’

The recruits were roused at 5:30 a.m. by a bugler playing ‘Reveille’. Not only was this to wake the men, it also told them that they were required on parade fifteen minutes later washed, shaved and clad in shorts, singlets and plimsolls. After parade they’d be given breakfast and sent on a four-mile run, at the end of which they were required to clear a succession of horse jumps. Finally they were sent into the stables.

‘That’s when Sergeant Jock Simpson entered the arena, bade us good morning in an appropriate fashion – “Now then you bloody shower of bastards” – and had us commence the mucking out,’ said Fred. ‘This consisted of removing the horses’ bedding with our hands and taking it outside to dry off and use again. The sergeants were very particular about us removing every piece of straw. Then grooming and feeding followed, then the cookhouse rang – no time to wash our hands – then we dressed for parade, then the real ordeal of the day, a terror: one hour in the riding school, much of the time without stirrups. At the end of the hour we’d emerge from the school sweating, with grimy faces, dusty uniforms, and the horses were all white foam.’

In Bradford, Horace Calvert was also commencing his basic training. At first he was billeted at home, reporting to Belle Vue Barracks every morning to parade and drill from 9:30 until lunchtime. After a week he was given a uniform, and a week after that their rifles arrived.

‘We got a khaki jacket, then trousers, socks, puttees, heavy marching boots, cap, badge, brass numerals for our shoulder straps and a greatcoat, but no other kit because we were still living at home,’ he recalled. ‘Puttees came with practice, till you knew exactly how many turns there were on each leg. They were awkward, but they supported you. Much better than thick stockings in that respect.’

As a change from the parade ground, twice a week Horace and the other recruits would be marched through the town as a recruiting exercise. Men intending to join up were encouraged to fall in behind the unit and follow them back to the barracks to begin the process.

‘Sometimes there’d be twenty or thirty behind you,’ he said. ‘Some lined up because of drink, I’m sure. We definitely seemed to bring in a few when the pubs had shut in the afternoon. The crowds all clapped and cheered: I enjoyed it and I was proud. The other recruits were very friendly and you’d all help one another.’

Being an underage recruit did have its drawbacks, however: ‘At that time King George V had made it known that he liked all members of his household brigade to have a moustache, so the chaps all grew one – but I couldn’t. I was only sixteen and hadn’t started to shave yet. I tried to start shaving, and using a razor, but nothing was happening. I even got extra fatigues, peeling potatoes and what have you, for not growing a moustache, but I took it all in good part.’

Victor Fagence, a farmer’s son from Surrey, had volunteered almost reluctantly for the 10th Queen’s in December 1915, a few weeks before the first conscription bill was passed. He was eighteen years old.

‘There were pressures on me, such as how all the young men around my age had joined up, but I was rather fed up with things in general,’ he remembered. ‘Eventually, I thought, Well, I’ll have to go in the army before long anyway so I might as well join up rather than wait for the Conscription Act. I was posted to the 10th Queen’s at Battersea, given six days’ leave before I had to report and then reported a few days before Christmas at the battalion headquarters at Lavender Hill. I gave them my papers and was measured up for my uniform. By the time I joined, the war had been on about sixteen months and the uniform suppliers were better than they had been in the early days. It wasn’t made to measure but I was fitted out pretty well.’

The 10th Queen’s would train in Battersea Park with a similar intention to Horace Calvert’s marches through Bradford: to encourage others to enlist. They’d have squad drills, bayonet practice with straw-filled sacks, and marching in column, but the effect seemed to Victor to be negligible: ‘People would watch us train in Battersea Park but by then everybody was used to seeing troops and soldiers everywhere so we were nothing special.’

In January 1916 the battalion moved on to Aldershot, where they learned skills that would come in useful but couldn’t really be indulged in Battersea Park: trench digging, sandbag filling and the laying of barbed wire. It would be a while, though, before Victor could use those skills in earnest.

‘The government had given a pledge that no man under the age of nineteen would see active service,’ he said. ‘But I think with me it was discovered by accident that I’d put a year on my age when I joined. So, when the 10th went to France in May 1916, I was sent to the 12th Battalion in Northampton, a reserve battalion.’

Alan Short from Bromley-by-Bow in East London was born a month after Edward, in May 1899, the son of a lighterman on the River Thames. He left school in 1914 and worked at the Joseph Rank flour company, in Leadenhall Street in the City of London, and had experienced the reality of the war when the first boy from his local church had been killed in May 1915.

‘Alfred Ernest Crawthorne. He was older than me but he was a friend of the family,’ said Alan. ‘He’d helped carry me around the playground to celebrate my elevation to the main school from junior school. He was a very nice man. I knew his two brothers and they took it hard. The families were more or less left to fend for themselves. One conveyed one’s sympathy but there was no spare money in the community to support them.’

After losing his job in a dispute over wages in January 1917, Alan decided to join up, despite still being four months short of his eighteenth birthday: ‘I went to Stratford in East London. I didn’t want to be called a conscript; it indicated that you weren’t too keen on going. I knew that I was approaching military age, when I could be called up, so I just went myself. I sat there, was called forward, signed forms to join the service for the duration of the war, took the oath of allegiance and got a shilling, which I immediately went out and spent on riotous living.’

Alan was called up to the Training Reserve, a battalion of underage boys that were given a year’s training in England before they could go out to the Front. With his friend Ernest Moyes he reported to Horse Guards Parade, where they joined around fifty other boys and marched to Paddington Station. From there, they were taken by train to Sutton Veny Camp, near Warminster.

‘The others came mostly from East London too, and some of them were already pretty tough,’ he said. ‘There were huts for about thirty men at a time. Your bed was a low trestle, three planks, a short mattress and pillow, and a couple of blankets. After “Reveille” they were packed up and your mattress had to be folded over, all very regimental. The inspections were pretty thorough – they even insisted you had no mud between the studs on your shoes.’

Like most of the youngsters hoping for a bit of adventure, Alan found the monotony and routine of camp life took a little getting used to: ‘The day would start at 6, and if you were struggling to get up the sergeant would tip your bed up and out you’d get. Then you folded up your mattress and dry-scrubbed your floor with a short-haired brush. Breakfast was mostly bread and butter and tea. I don’t remember any bacon and eggs … Then there’d be training till lunch, and my favourite was a lovely meat pie with a soft thick crust: the quality was good. Then there’d be more training. I found the constant drilling a bit boring, but it meant you learned to stand to attention and obey commands. We learned how to throw bombs too – you got the bomb, pulled the pin out and threw it round arm. I could manage about thirty feet. The bombs were about the size of your hand and were quite comfortable. There were a lot of accidents but I was never nervous with it. Some of the fellas were, but if you followed instructions you were perfectly safe. If a man did a thing wrong they’d call him this, that and the other. It upset me in the beginning but you got hardened to it.’