The post below has been updated

With thanks to Sue & Caroline Tattersall for filling in the gaps.

A Gordon Officer’s Diary by Tommy Erskine: Glasgow Herald 2 April 1915

This article was published 105 years ago based on a summary of Tommy Erskine’s letters and diary entries. My record is from photographs I took when visiting Ralph Tattersall last year and is not quite complete. I will try and fill in the gaps later.

On 2 April 1915, this description was published in the Glasgow Herald. Place names have been removed by the censors.

A GORDON OFFICER’S DIARY

LIVELINESS IN THE TRENCHES.

The following extracts from the diary of a young officer attached to the Gordons indicate that, even when there is officially ‘nothing to report’, life in the field is by no means uneventful or unexciting, The writer was one of the first members of the Glasgow University Officers’ Training Corps to be appointed to a commission, and he has been at the front since the middle of December. He is a member of a family prominent in Scottish amateur boxing and athletics circles, and prior to the war was Hon. Secretary to one of our oldest cross-country clubs:-

‘I’ve had a fairly strenuous time this tour. After two days in reserve trench our C.O. sent me with two men to occupy a trench which had been dug by sappers in the dark. We were to ascertain by daylight whether it was enfiladed by German trenches. I had been up at the firing line from midnight to 2 a.m. with a working party. Having slept on the straw in the farm kitchen for a couple of hours, I was up again at 4 a.m. and trekking away to get to the new trench before daylight. Fortunately for us it was not enfiladed, and so having found the only comparatively dry portion of it we made ourselves as comfortable as we could. My shoulders were hard up against the sides, and as it was difficult to turn around we did not bother cooking a meal, but at midday we had a repast of cold bully-beef and bread. I had an apple in my pocket and shared it with my men for desert. At dusk – about 6.30 p.m. – we left the trench and went back to the farm.

I forgot to mention a rather exciting time we had late on Saturday afternoon before we left the reserve farm. Suddenly at about 4.30 p.m. just as we (the officers) were at tea in the kitchen, there was a sound as of a storm rising – a whizzing as of a strong wind. In a moment the shells were bursting all round the farmhouse. In another second all our guns were answering, and there ensued a most terrific artillery duel. Our company was immediately ordered out of the barns and into the dug-outs. We heard rapid firing up at the trenches and thought that the Germans must be delivering an attack. We were ordered to hold ourselves ready to go at dusk if the bombardment should continue, and take up our positions in the second line of trenches. The tremendous cannonade was kept up for an hour and a quarter, and by some miracle we did not have a single casualty, although the roofs were being brought down from the buildings and barns beside us and the shells were bursting everywhere around us. All our guns behind were going full pelt and ultimately, having established a superiority of fire of at least three to one, they silenced the German guns altogether, and we went back to finishing our tea. We learned next morning that the Germans had taken some of our trenches at ____. Their aim had been to keep us on the defensive and prevent us from sending along supplies. We retook all the trenches except two small portions the next night. There had been no infantry attack on our trenches.

GRENADING

I had a rather tricky job on hand last night. With two of my men (old soldiers who have been out since the beginning) I crawled out over 100 yards in front of our barbed wire. We lay flat and I sent five rifle grenades into the German trenches. Each time I fired I drew the rifle fire and flares of the enemy. Several flares landed just beside us, and showed us up very plainly to our people behind – but of course they knew where to look for us. When the flares were up we lay flat as if dead, and the Germans failed to spot us, being unable to distinguish us from the dead men lying all around us (I was lying beside a dead German). We watched the flash of the rifle of a sniper about 150 yards in front, and I put the grenades in his direction. I hope I got someone in the trench. I think I did, as my grenades all went off well, and just where I aimed them. We lay out for an hour and a half watching and listening for a German patrol, but no advance parties came forward. In going back to our lines we landed at a trench 100 yards from our own. (It is so easy to lose ones direction when crawling in the dark) Luckily for us, the other trenches had been warned we were out, or we might have been shot for Germans.

We had as a battalion to do an extra day on account of the thinning of the line by the recent fighting at ____. Our company therefore when relieved last night came into the support farm instead of going back to _____. The extra day on duty proved a disastrous one for us. We have had no casualties at the farm since Gordon was wounded here two months ago. Today, however, the Germans shelled us with shrapnel very heavily. A shell came right through the door of one of the barns, killing five men instantly and wounding another eleven. We have had a terrible time bandaging then wounded. The tragedy occurred at two o’clock, and they had to lie waiting  all afternoon for dusk, when they were carried back to the dressing station. The dead men are being buried out behind the farm. Three of them were in a shocking condition. I saw them in the barn. Their heads had all been blown off, leaving the trunks mangled and the flesh and blood splattered against the walls. It was a dreadful sight. As usual, too, some of the remaining old hands suffered – two out of the five killed came out with the battalion, and had been through thick and thin with it. Another had just returned with the last draft, having been home wounded. The terrible feature of thus being shelled in buildings is that one doesn’t have any chance of retaliating – we don’t know which guns behind the hill are getting at us – we simply wait in suspense till it’s all over, and it’s just a toss-up whether we escape or not. We had been congratulating ourselves on having no casualties in the firing line in our company and then – 16 in one fell swoop. And we really should not have been here at all, but back at ______. Such are the fortunes of war! We have supped on horrors today: but it is impossible not to admire the bearing of the wounded men, some of them very seriously and perhaps fatally,  hurt, who are lying patiently suffering behind the farm, waiting for the stretcher-bearers.

WAR A HELLISH BUSINESS

One of the poor fellows today had been set on fire by the shell, and the ammunition in his pouches was exploding in the barn. A pail of water had to be thrown over him to extinguish the flames, and his body was all charred when I saw him. Ugh! War is a hellish business…..The sergeant-major has just come in to tell me that one of the wounded men died before they arrived at the dressing station. Well that’s six dead so far. Not a bad toll for one shell.

We had a fire in billets today, the main barn, in which three-quarters of our company lodged, being burned to the ground. If we come back to ____ (which is doubtful) we shall have to find a new farm.

We are now in a support farm. There is no kitchen and we (the officers) are occupying pens in a stable – just like a lot of cattle. We can’t have any coke fires during daylight, as the slightest vestige of smoke escaping outside would at once be spotted by the hawks’ eyes of the enemy’s observers, and we would be showered with shells. However by dint of careful stoking we (there are four of us) managed to boil two canteens of water on a small fire made in a bully-beef tin and composed of small shavings of wood, so as to make no smoke. We had a good breakfast of tea, tinned veal, and boiled eggs. We won’t get any more food cooked till after dark (about 8 p.m. at the earliest).

Our new trenches are much nearer the Germans than the last ones were. Indeed my section, which is the most forward, is only about 40 yards from them. Their trench is just on the outside of a small wood and mine less than a stone’s throw across. We have to be very careful. All look-outs by day use periscopes and the latter must not be exposed for more than a few seconds at a time, or they will be spotted and shot at. My periscope was shot twice, each time through the thin wooden stem. The French occupied this position for a long time, and seem to have made several unsuccessful attempts at further advance, as their dead are scattered all over the place. To my right is a regular row of about 25 corpses about 5 yards in front of our trench. The French evidently tried to advance in line from this trench and had a machine gun turned on them, mowing them down in a line.

We went back to the support farm on Sunday night, and returned to the firing line last (Tuesday) night, so that of the last ten days we have spent only two in billets. There is no prospect of a relief yet. We go back to the reserve farm tomorrow night, and after two days there we will return to the firing line unless the battalion be relieved. I hope we’ll get a longer spell in billets when the relief does come. The men are ready for a rest now and they have well earned it. The Germans yesterday put a rifle grenade into the trench on our right, killing one officer and wounding six men of the Suffolks. I hope my grenades have accounted for a good many of the enemy.

After a long spell of dry weather we have had two wet days. The trench is in a frightfully mucky state. M’Callum evacuated this dugout last night and left our old friend Neil Lyon’s ‘Arthur’ and ‘The Isle of Unrest’ by Henry Seton Merriman for me to read. I had breakfast about 8 a.m. – bacon and eggs. We don’t light our fires till dusk lest the smoke is seen by the enemy, so we won’t have tea till about 8 p.m. Though the shells are hurtling through the air incessantly, the birds are whistling in the sky above, heedless of everything except the onset of spring. How I envy them!