Burying the Newfoundlanders of 1/7/16

[PhilB]

In November, 2/Lt Collins, Seaforths was told to take a party and bury the dead from 1/7/16 still lying out.

continued:-

[Old Tom]

Hello,

A sobering post. Worthy of reflection.

Old Tom

[J Banning]

Thought it worth saying that this is taken from 'Last Man Standing - The Memoirs of a Seaforth Highlander during the Great War' - Norman Collins' account of the war edited by Richard van Emden.

Well worth a read.

[roel22]

Very impressive.

Imagine what these boys must have gone through.

Thanks for posting.

Roel

[bob lembke]

Quite a narrative. My father told several stories about the front and rats. (My father's war-time experiences narratives were quite an education for a kid.)

I collect a few WW I post cards, but have looked at 1000s on e-Bay auctions, almost all German. I always found the rat cards remarkable, and the fact that the authorities allowed them in circulation yet more remarkable. A great one was a photo of the results of a trench rat hunt; a semi-circle of men armed with shovels and clubs surrounded a set of stakes with cords strung between them; about 70 or 80 rats hung from the cords with little nooses. In front was a soldier with an extremely dumb-looking, possibly brutish face; he was holding, by the tails, six enormous fat rats, truly cat-sized, three in each hand. The caption, translated: "No meat shortage here!" This was a professionally produced post card.

Were there such cards in circulation in the British post? Also, there was some male full frontal nudity in circulation in the post; for example, a platoon of men bathing in a knee-deep stream, all facing the camera. (There had been wide-scale nude bathing on the north coast for some decades by the time of the Great War. Mixed bathing? I don't know, probably not, I would guess.) Or say ten men sitting on a collective latrine.

But, back to the rats. Really quite a description, and, certainly, more than a mere description, a real statement.

Bob Lembke

[ejcmartin]

I read this and being from Newfoundland I don't really know what to say. What a terrible fate for boys so far from home.

The government of Newfoundland is reproducing the Memorial to the Missing here in St. John's. Hard to fathom that the body of which the writer speaks is probably one of them.

[ianw]

Stories of the recovery of the dead and their documentation such as paybooks is really harrowing - I still remember Alf Razzell's (?) description of the self same event at Ovillers from a TV programme several years ago. A dreadful job for the troops given the task. The trauma would never leave you.

[J T Gray]

Were there such cards in circulation in the British post? Also, there was some male full frontal nudity in circulation in the post; for example, a platoon of men bathing in a knee-deep stream, all facing the camera. (There had been wide-scale nude bathing on the north coast for some decades by the time of the Great War. Mixed bathing? I don't know, probably not, I would guess.)

*Tangent*

Don't forget, Bob, that even today the Germans have a very different attitude to nudity than many other countries. I think you need to get into Denmark & the rest of Scandinavia before you encounter a similar attitude - you certainly don't find it in the UK where, even today, naturism is seen as distinctly weird.

*Tangent off*

Adrian

[tocemma]

Hello all,

Yes a sobering post. Back in the late 70's early 80's there was a lot of equipment and relics in the fields surrounding Beaumont Hamel. I still have two items I found then. A Canadian aluminium bottle marked around the neck with the name F. T. Lind, killed 1/7/16 and a British pattern bottle with three closely grouped bullet holes which had passed straight through.

Both testament to the tragic and bitter fighting there.

Regards

Tocemma

[ejcmartin]

F. T. Lind, was better known as "Mayo" (Mayo being a favourite brand of tobacco of the Newfoundlanders) Lind. There is acutally a book "The Letters of Mayo Lind". Lind had corresponded with the newspaper in St. John's during the War. Unfortunately his letters stopped July 1, 1916.

If you are still in possession of the bottle, it might be of interest to the museum here.

[tocemma]

Hello ejcmartin,

Yes I still have the bottle. I will post some photos of it. It was found by me around 1979. Around the neck of the bottle is scratched Pte F T Lind, then a service no., then battalion. I found two or three of these but this was the only one not crushed. I always assumed that the owner of the bottle was probably killed but I did no checking at the time and only confirmed this in the last few years.

I discussed it briefly with the 54th Kootenay website moderator two or three years ago and asked for assistance in contacting the museum, but did not receive a reply.

I must admit I haven't given it another thought since until I saw the posting this morning.

I would be more than happy to donate it to the museum as it is clearly where it should be.

I was very surprised to discover the connection to this well known individual. As there were quite a lot of pieces of equipment I can only assume it was a dump after the battlefield was cleared. A few years back I visited Beaumont Hamel again and the area I found the bottles in was part of road widening works. Once again there were items visible and I picked up a Mackintoshes toffee tin, fairly well preserved, and other small equipment relics.

If you can assist in contacting the museum I would be pleased to hear from them. I will PM you with an email address.

Regards

Tocemma

[bob lembke]

As we have people knowledgeble about UK kit participating here, I would like to ask a question. In 1917 my father kept, to some extent, his family back in Germany fed by mailing them tins of coffee captured during raids, in this sector on the French, but possibly also in a Brit sector. They would sell this rare delicacy and buy staple foods. He mentioned in a letter written from a hospital (he had been wounded at Verdun) that he had just mailed a tin to his mother in Hamburg, and offered to mail one to his father in Berlin. He said that he still had five more under his hospital bed. He described them as "tins of about 900 grams". That is, of course, an odd metric size, but two pounds would be "about 900 grams".

Was that a standard British or US coffee can size?

Adrian;

I have done some nude bathing at a few beaches in Jugoslavija. Once I and an American lady friend were asked to visit old friends, a Slovene teacher couple, at the resort where they had worked summers for nine years. As we drove near I saw billboards for the resort, and as I read Serbo-Croatian, I knew we were going to have an experience, as they said that it was a nudist resort. In fact it was the world's largest nudist trailer park, 15,000 guests at one time. They were mostly Germans and Austrians, who stayed long enough that many changed their postal address to Jugoslavija for the month or so that they spent there. My companion, a psychologist, noted that while it is stressy to meet a close friend's close friends, it is doubly stressy if those friends were nude. At that time, if memory serves, Jugoslav billboards and advertisements used the German initials OK ("ohne Kleider") or "no clothes" when they advertized a nudist resort.

During a heat wave in Germany a few years ago it was estimated that in Bonn, not a big city, at any given town there were 30,000 people walking about nude; on US network TV news they showed (very) long shots of bureacrats walking to work stark naked, carrying briefcases. It is mostly a goverment and university town, although the capital has migrated to Berlin.

Bob Lembke

[ian turner]

Is it only on GWF that we can travel from burying Newfounland dead on the Somme to nudist trailer parks in (former) Yugoslavia??

Ian

[truthergw]

Is it only on GWF that we can travel from burying Newfounland dead on the Somme to nudist trailer parks in (former) Yugoslavia??

Ian

Hmmm. I doubt if Holts do the tour. Must ask Paul about his mob.

[Chris Martin]

By way of further comment on the removal of NFLD dead from the field , Pte. Howard Moray, one of the 10% picked to stay behind on the morning of 1 July 1916 wrote a letter home detailing his experience of removing his fellow countrymen form the field in the days that followed the battle. He spoke of the two gaps in the British wire through which the regiment had to pass, stating that they removed 82 bodies from one gap and near 80 more from the other. “It was a terrible thing,” he wrote “seeing our good friends for years piled up like that.”

One NFLD soldier wrote of the chaos at the British wire and of how he witnessed wounded NFLD’ers, unable to advance and refusing to give up on their regiment, pulled the dead and wounded out of the gaps so that the rest of the regiment could advance.

James Stacey, who did not participate in the advance as he was picked out to be battalion runner, wrote of how “while waiting in the trench spent machine gun bullets fell at our feet.”

As for Frank Lind, he is probably one of the more prominent names in the Regiment’s history. The book of his collected letters published in 1920 and again in 2001 is as ejcmartin has pointed out well worth a read. Lind actually made it through the British wire, where most of the regiment was cut down, and managed to push on to the ‘Danger Tree’ his body was found there some days later. Though his letters home were generally light hearted and full of humours stories about the ‘boys,’ they speak volumes on the character of the regiment from 1914-1916. His last line of his last letter dated 29 June 1916 is almost haunting in hindsight. “I will ring off for this time but will write again shortly, when I hope to send you a very interesting letter.”

[PhilB]

By way of further comment on the removal of NFLD dead from the field , Pte. Howard Moray, one of the 10% picked to stay behind on the morning of 1 July 1916 wrote a letter home detailing his experience of removing his fellow countrymen form the field in the days that followed the battle. He spoke of the two gaps in the British wire through which the regiment had to pass, stating that they removed 82 bodies from one gap and near 80 more from the other.

Chris, how were they able to do this in nomansland? Wasn`t the German front line at Y Ravine still functioning? Collins` brigade`s diary for Nov 20th 1916 records:-

[Chris Martin]

QUOTE (Phil_B @ Dec 12 2007, 06:57 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

how were they able to do this in nomansland? Wasn`t the German front line at Y Ravine still functioning?

Phil,

I'm not sure, and do not know the exact details of the recovery, just that Moray recorded that in a letter home. I'm unsure off hand of the date of his letter as well. Moray's personal letters have remained in possession of family members for some time, but sections of them have appeared from time to time usually around 1 July. The family may have released them to the archives here in NFLD, but I have yet to see them in the Provincial archive, though they could have been given to one of a number of other local archives. Sorry for the lack of exact details on this one.