MUD!

[sar2jec]

I bought a trio of medals the other day that happened to come with a six page letter written by the soldier when he was out in Italy. It's quite long but worth reading. The passage is beautifully written and gives a good feel of a soldiers life back then. See what you think:

MUD

By one who knows

A MUDLARK

It seems to me that wherever we go, there is always mud. Soldiers live and move and have their being in it. They certainly always make it. We come out of the trenches, which are made of mud, we trudge through the mud all day and in the afternoon a beautiful verdant pasture land takes us to her bosom. We erect our camp here, and, when it is completed, it looks alright, just an ordinary soldiers camp of course. We bed down for the night on old Mother Earth, and then the rain comes on, and my word it does rain when you are sleeping in a field. I think there has been more rain since this war started than there has been for this last forty years. After spending the long dreary hours of the night turning from one side to the other trying to get warm, first this way then that way, it is with something akin to satisfaction that you hear “Reville” go. You get up “grousing” at the weather, you break your boot lace, you say “Damn,” and you begin the day with MUD. There are pounds of it, sticky, gluey stuff adhearing to your boots making them appear six sizes bigger than they really are, and the person whose favourite corn you may have trod on knows they are big and heavy enough already, without any additional. After scrapping and brushing it off you discover that some of it has got on your blankets and tunic. You say Damn again, you cant help it, it seems the right thing to say at the moment, but you still carry on with the continual war on mud, through mud. You find your puttees plastered with it and you have only an hour in which to get yourself spotless before parade.

It’s alright being an officer, you can always get someone else to do it for you. After scraping and bruching and polishing and damning and more than that, you finally come to the conclusion that you will pass muster on this parade. The state your face is in, with tracks of blood and pieces of paper stuck on them, show that, at least, you have had a shave. Ten minutes you have left now, to get your breakfast in, and get on parade, so you have to put a move on. You put your rifle down carefully on top of your blankets clear from all the mud. You have had enough to do with it this morning already, washing, oiling and polishing it. It seems that’s all it was given us for, at times, and of course every soldier knows how much he is supposed to carry. The book tells him, and everything is always done per book. But to return to the keynote of my wail, the book never hints at mud. Oh, no, that’s left to us, to work in, to play in, to sleep in, to live in and to – well! To stop a shell in. It’s the way of the soldier and when he has stopped his shell and finished his grousing, some good comrade wrapts him in a muddy blanket (seven-and-sixpence worth) and then the kindly mud closes over him, shutting out for ever for him the terrible and ghastly tragedy being enacted today on the stage of life. (That sounds like the big books and pessimistic enough, I think). The path of the hero leads on through the mud to glory and –- to mud. But we have only ten minutes, as I said before, so we make a beeline for the cookhouse, - the fireplace and oven are even made of mud -, but on our journey there we soon have the accompaniment or “squelsh! Squelsh!” to each step we take and as we proceed we find it more difficult to raise our heels from the ground. Eventually we trail our clodhoppers to the cookhouse, where we have one or two fits of coughing and choking with the hurry we are in. Parade time draws near and we put part of our breakfast in our pocket; it will do for lunch time,- you know, very few soldiers can eat first thing in the morning especially if the wet canteen has been busy overnight-. But the “Fall In” is sounding and you rush as hard as the mud will allow you to get your rifle. Thank God it hasn’t fallen down among the mud, and so you are on parade. As the officer starts his tour of inspection you notice you have forgotten to do up the button of the pocket you have put your lunch in, but it is too late now, he is looking at the man next you. Will he notice it you wonder, and what excuse will you make? “Take a pace forward and do up that button.” You step forward, his eye misses nothing. “Have you cleaned your boots and puttees this morning” “Ye-“ “Don’t answer me back.” ”I d-d- “Don’t argue”. “Sergeant take that man’s name, I’ll see him at two oclock, Insolence.” You step back, a nation’s hero wondering what is going to happen now and you wait for more. He finishes his tour of inspection and the in dulcet tones? As only soldiers can, he gives the order, it sounds something like this “Slipe----Hipe,” and you proceed at once in a series of four movements to convey mud from your boots, on the butt of your rifle to your left hand. If you don’t do it in the exact, orthodox, regimental manner, he makes you do it all over again, and you proceed to get another handful. When dismissed off parade its no use thinking of your best girl or anything else that is nice at home. Oh! No, you’ve burnt all your bridges and the mud lies always in front of you (sometimes.) You have just got to carry on, scraping and brushing all over again to get ready for the next parade. Then you will have the pleasant thoughts of your coming interview with your officer at two oclock. Perhaps he will ask you to have a drink or something like that. He used to before this -----Muddy war started, but now – well! He does’t remove the mud from his own boots, he can always get someone else to do it for him. But if I keep on like this and the censor gets hold of it, he may trample it in the mud and then I should be in a muddle trying to explain myself, perhaps. I don’t know what I would say, for the mud makes you say and think all sorts of things, doesn’t it comrades? Who does not know of the rich alluvian mud of the Ypres salient. It is ideal for bathing purpose-mud baths-I mean You can have a shower bath as well in the latest method out for shower baths. All you require is a battery of five nines somewhere over yonder, dropping their projectiles close in your vicinity. You also require a cool, steady nerve to stand still and take no notice whatever of the hard bits that are flying about. If you follow your inclinations and drop down you will have a glorious immersion in the styx of Ypres. Of course it is necessary for one to do this, before you can go on leave, for then you leave your brushes where they are and take home some “Mud from Flanders.” They tell me the ladies at home rather like it, and you are sure to get on with them well, if you have plenty of mud about you. But mud is also very useful in its way you know. The China Wall was built from mud put into sandbags, (I don’t know why they call them sandbags, mudbags seems a more appropriate name for them, I think), and it has been repaired with it many a time. Oh yes it has its uses; we are always give new bags a good coating of mud, before we put them up, it helps to deceive the enemy. The camoflged mudbag. But, of course, if it hadn’t been for the war, there would have been no soldiers here to make mud, hense there would have been no need for mudbags, and this howl of the mud would never have seen daylight. So you are quite right when you blame the war for all things. The war is the cause of all these afflictions including my tale of woe. But the mud at home is entirely different, you never thought of grousing or swearing at it, especially when a pretty young lady displayed a pair of lovely little ankles, and perhaps a bit of lace as she endeavoured to keep her skirts up clear of the mud as she piloted her way across the road in front of you. Maybe, you wished the mud was a little deeper then. You didn’t care in those days, you had more than one pair of boots and trousers as well, and Mary Jane always had them clean and polished for you in the morning. But these are bye-gone days. War and the mud has drawn the veil between and we are only permitted to look now with the eye of remembrance. I shant inflict you much longer with my lament, for my understanding has been affected more than once, as I slipped on muddy duckboards. The boards proved to be very much harder, as I have had to limp about for ten days through my downfall, and as Shakespeare has said “What a fall was there my countrymen,” I think he must have had some. I can quite agree and sympathise with him for when I landed in the mud, I fell from the loftiest heights of glorious optimism, to the deepest depths of melancholy pessimism, and I fell with a bump too.

Sapper James Marr

62394

101st Field Company

Engineers.

I.E.F.

ITALY.

[shelley]

Beautifully written! ...... and says it all ! Thanks for posting this. cheers Shelley

[marina]

that was a wonderful piece of writing!

Marina

[sar2jec]

Im pleased you liked it. I think its almost poetic.

Jonathan

[Terry_Reeves]

An interesting piece of prose Jonathon. Out of interest, Sapper Marr also appears to have had a sense of RE history. One of the pre-war nicknames for the Corps was The Mudlarks!

Terry Reeves

[PhilB]

Thanks, Jonathan. It`s uncommon to get such a good worm`s eye view of things. I was struck by two things. Firstly that a sapper seems to have been used to the services of a maid back at home. Secondly that in the RE and out in Italy there seems to still have been a fair amount of bullshit to put up with. One imagines engineers having a slightly cushier time and not having to carry a rifle around with them. The term "hipe" had certainly gone out of use when I was in. Wonder where it came from. Usually India! Phil B

[Guest MaryFM]

Thank you for sharing that, James certainly had gift for writing and humorous expression while reading it I could picture him standing there in all that mud/

Best wishes

Mary

[sar2jec]

I forgot to mention that I have a photo of him dressed as an Admiral for a proformance of HMS Pinafore. He must have fancied himself as a bit of a litery type I think. Incidently, if anyone has any information on him I would be interested to hear.

Cheers,

Jonathan