Sgt Horace Brown Personal Diary First World War diaries of Horace Brown Not to be reproduced without the permission of
the Canadian War Museum That permission has been granted for
reproduction here. Thank you CWM Book
#1
This is the property of No 1 Platoon The first 17 pages of book
#1 contain lists of names with no explanation why the lists were created. For the purposes of this tribute, I have
emphasised the diary portion of both books. I
have included those pages that are not diary by nature, but contain information that is
pertinent. Pg 18 Left Sandling Camp Sept 14. Arrived in Bologne sic Sept 15, stayed
there whole evening. Marched 11 miles to some
station and took train for about 80 miles and got off train at midnight & marched 20
miles on the 16th arrived there at 6 o’clock & rested until 11. Then started for our billets near the trenches at
a place called Eecke sic. We stayed
there & rested 1 day then started for the trenches the next morning and arrived 4
miles from the trenches on the Sat at 5 o’clock and on the following Tuesday Sept 21st
we went into the trenches and had our first experience of being under fire on Wednesday
things were fairly quiet the same on Thursday & Friday but the Allies made a big
advance on both our flanks on Sat and we were under shell fire on Sat morning with no loss
of life only 2 or 3 injured. We remained in
the trenches for 6 days then came out on Monday night the 26th Sept and rested
up for 6 days. While we were resting there was a heavy
bombardment on our trenches. I went up to the
bombing farm at the back of firing line to learn how to work the bombing spring guns &
catapults and to try and pass the final bombing tests which I was successful in doing. We had fine weather from the 15th
Sept up to the 27th then we had rain almost continually up to the 30th. Oct the 1st is a fine day but rather
cold after the heavy rains. The roads are
very heavy for traffic. We received our pay
the first we have got since August 29th on Sept 30th so all of the
men are in a better mood. We went back into the trenches on Sat Oct the
1st. We were under a heavy shell
fire twice. We had several casualties while
in the trenches this trip. I myself had a
very narrow escape 3 shrapnel shells bursting within a few inches above my head but
luckily none of the pieces hit me. Corporal
Frankland & Ptes Taylor & Hanrahan, who were standing beside me were all wounded. We came out of the trenches for a rest on
Friday Oct 8th. The weather for
the most part of the past week has been dry but cold.
When we got back to the trenches we are to go to a different place. We were in front of Messennes sic but we
are moving 8 miles to the left flank which will bring us 2 miles on the right of Ypres so
I expect we will see some excitement there as Ypres is known as the Hell hole of the war. We moved back to the trenches and into the
firing line on Friday Oct 15th. These
trenches are not nearly as good as the ones that we came out of. The Germans at this point are 150 yds away to far. We have done no bombing on the German trenches. Today Sat was very quiet in the morning. Sunday was quiet in the trenches. We came out of the trenches on the Tuesday 20th
and moved back about 1½ miles to the rear of firing line to what is known as the mobile
reserve. There was some heavy shelling just
left of us on Sunday the 25th. The British blew up some German trenches on
Tuesday the 27th. We moved up
towards the firing line again to the strong hold reserve. I being put in charge of a bomb store. We are to remain here for 6 days. The weather is very wet. Rain every day but the spirit of the troops keeps
up. Wonderful through rain or shine they are
always the same. On Friday Oct 29th it stopped
raining. Sat 30th was a fine day
but cloudy. Lots of Whiz bangs & smoke
boxes flying around. The trenches are in bad
shape for mud and water. Sunday Oct 31st
Started to rain again at 3 pm. Quite a heavy
artillery all morning. One man blown to
pieces and 3 injured by one of our own shells striking their dugout yesterday afternoon. Nov 1st a fine day but very quiet
on our front. Things have been fairly quiet
from the 1st of Nov until the 10th.
With the exception of our occasional brush with the enemy along the line and our
artillery gets busy at times and smashes down the German front line trenches. I got my eye on a sniper this morning the 11th
and watched him for 3 hours finally he caught sight of me and took a shot at me, the ball
going into a sand bag just to the left of my face so I
built a sniper’s loophole in the parapet and waited for about ½ an hour. When Mr Hun poaked sic his head up just in
time for me to take a whollop sic at it which put him out of business. From the 12th until the 20th
was quiet but raining almost every day since the 1st of the month. Not much doing anywhere but a few rifle grenades
and bombs being thrown first by the Germans then by us.
We came into the hospital on Dec 12th, 1915, left the hospital on 17th
in order to be able to return to the trenches with the Battn. Transcriber’s note:
The following list appears at this point with no explanation. I suspect that it is a list of the Bombers in No
1 Platoon of No 4 Company. Following this
page were 2 pages that only had a name each on them with no explanation. Following that, the diary continued.
Cpls
Brown & Reed
1
Bomber Pte
Williamson
1
“ “
Whitmore
1
“ “
Goldenburg
1
“ “
White GP
1
“ “
Haughey
1
“ “
Hill
1 “ “
Moore
1
“ “
Richardson
1
“ “
Hemmingway
1
“ Pg 32 Lost a lot of fellows since we
came to these trenches. It is awful the rain
we have had this is unreadable 30 and it has rained nearly every day.
The mud & water is 3 feet deep in the trenches. Our fellows are still being picked off by German
snipers. I was passing a corner of a
field which is known as sniper’s corner where 6 of our fellows were shot last night,
Dec 2nd and the Germans turned a machine gun on in the dirty unreadable. There was bullets
galore flying past me but I dropped into the grain and laid there for a few minutes then
got up and beat it for the Communication trench. Dec 5th it is still
raining. I have not had a dry stitch of
clothing on for 19 days and my limbs are getting stiff with all this wet weather. We are working day & night trying to get our
trenches and dugouts fixed up. There has
been some heavy shelling done by our guns from the 8th up to the 15th
but the Huns don’t seem to retaliate very much.
We have lost a lot of men since the 1st of the month, amongst
them my chum Charlie Wendt. He was shot
through the stomock sic as he was coming out of the trenches with his machine gun. Other than the heavy gun fire, things are fairly
quiet with lots of rain. On the 18th our
fellow sent out a bombing party to bomb the Huns trenches which we were successful in
doing and returned with only one man slightly injured.
We gave the Huns quite a surprise. But on Tuesday morning the 19th
they started out to pay us back for what we had done.
They turned their gas on us. It
has a sickening taste & smell and is hard on the eyes but Mr Hun did not make a very
good success of his attack for as they advanced behind there sic screen of gas, our gunners got busy and shelled the daylights out of
them after which we counter attacked them and cut them to pieces. Our lads fought like heroes. It was a fierce bombardment and lasted from 3
o’clock Sunday morning until Tuesday night. When
the guns ceased firing I think the Germans have had quite sufficient for this time from
the 22nd until the 25th everything was fairly quiet. I had a rather narrow escape
on the 24th. I was in charge of a
working party of 10 men which were working about 900 yds behind the firing and the Huns
caught sight of us and they started to shell us and the first shell they sent over burst
within a few feet of me and one of the pieces flew past me and just cut my right cheek
enough to make it bleed. Christmas day was very quiet hardly a shot fired by other side. We had fairly fine weather from Xmas day up to New Year’s and things were quiet along the line. |