Ode to the SMLE

[Cdn303]

I remember in an older thread, smellie talking about why the SMLE was the best rifle of the First World War.

One word crowds my consciousness when I think of the Great War: MUD. The movie "Passchendaele" gives you a HINT. You can tell that it's a movie because it is nowhere filthy ENOUGH. They drowned TANKS at Passchendaele:11-foot high 26-ton monsters with tracks all the way around, engines running slowly as they churned themselves into the mire until the bomb-roofs cleared the surface by only a couple of feet. Some of them I don't think they EVER hauled out or, if they did, it would have had to be several years later, after the drainage system had been rebuilt.

MUD. Thousands of men drowned in it, including one of my great-uncles. Thousands more were never pulled out and just were..... and are... carried as "missing".

MUD: that's the whole thing in a nutshell. Mud.

As I was reading the newest issue of Legion Magazine I came upon a picture that highlights this fact quite well.

Here is the picture to which I refer. These are members of the Canadian Corp, in a captured trench, during the battle for Hill 70. The battle for Hill 70 happened in August 1917, several months after the battle for Vimy Ridge. It is a battle that not many people know about (I didn't until reading this issue of Legion), as "Vimy overshadowed every other event in Canada's Great War experience, and especially the series of battles that followed in the last two years of the war." (Legion Magazine March/April 2012 pg 21)

A big differnece between the two battles is that even though Vimy was celebrated as a Canadian victory, there were British units supporting the attack (artillery, logistics). Hill 70 was almost entirely planned and fought by the Canadian Corps. But I begin the digress.

Here is the area that I wish to highlight.

The individual in the middle has an almost completely clean rifle that still has the action cover on it. However, beside the leg of the fellow on the left, and in the hands of the fellow on the right you will find SMLE's COVERED in mud. Stock, magazine, sling, bayonet, everything. The beauty of it is that those rifles will still operate. Maybe not the same as a clean one, but they will still put rounds down range and kill huns.

Here is some more pictures from the battles.
A Vickers MG crew prepares to sweep the front at Vimy Ridge.

Infantry follow a tank toward Vimy Ridge.

 

[englishman_ca]

I once had the opportunity to sit and talk a while with a WWI vet, he was a machine gunner. Took me a while to get him to talk about it, but he did tell me the one thing that he would never shake from his head, it was the smell.

Burrial parties would hastily inturn the dead, then artillery bombardments would churn up the ground throwing them back up and around in pieces.

He said that he could smell the front four miles away.

We have no idea what those boys went through.

 

[smellie]

When I had the paper out East, I used to try to do 2 interviews a year with Great War vets, one for Beaumont-Hamel Day/Memorial Day (July 1), the other for Armistice (Nov. 11).

Coming up to the Armistice story one year, I interviewed a friend who had done FOUR YEARS of combat in that. His story was a bit special, because November 11 was also his birthday.

He met me at the door with a Whiskey bottle (empty) in his hand and said quietly, "A man has to be drunk to tell the truth of it. I'm only half-drunk, so I'm only going to tell you half the truth." He dropped the 26 into the garbage, took the top off a fresh 40, poured himself a fresh 8-ounce drink and the interview began. He was cold sober..... and the War had been over for 60 years.

The next couple of hours, for me, were a look into Hell.

A quote: "The only reason I could figure that they even stopped the damned War was because I'm such a Hell of a nice guy! We all thought it was going to go forever." - Roland "Rollie" Hart, Private, Newfoundland Regiment/Royal Newfoundland Regiment, 1914 - 1919

God be with you, Rollie...... and all the others.
.

 

[John Sukey]

I wonder what all those women handing out white feathers to men on the street in England would have done if they could have seen what conditions actualy were like in the trenches.

 

[plinker 777]

Women ought to be quite ignorant of certain things/ Its part of what separate us.

 

[smellie]

I really don't know how to comment on that one, John: my grandmother didn't have time for handing out feathers.

She was in the big demonstrations in London, demanding the right to work for the War Effort, and she was one of the first to join the Women's Army when it was established by Royal decree. She trained as a driver/mechanic and spent more than a year ferrying red tabs about in a big Aldis. When her husband was posted "Missing in Action" (he is still carried that way) she had the opportunity to leave the Army and go into Directed Labour in the Aircraft industry, so she took it. She spent some time in an Airframe plant but couldn't handle breathing the nitrocellulose dope all day, transferred to an Aero Engine plant and spent the remainder of the War running 3 lathes at the same time.

The women EARNED that vote; even the King said so. The amount of female labour in the Aeronautical industry and in the Artillery Shell plants was astounding.... and the working conditions were horrendous. She told me about living in a small flat with several other girls, girls who would come home after work, puking their guts out from nitrocellulose-dope fumes...... or turning yellow from working with Picric Acid (filling boosters) or suffering from gawdawful chest pains from the Cordite plant or just sick near unto death from filling shells with cast TNT.

She was just a little small girl from a farm in the New Forest but, to me, she was one of the unheralded heroes of the Great War. I keep her photo, wearing her uniform, on the fireplace..... with a Poppy stuck in the frame.
.

 

[plinker 777]

please correct me but isn't the white feather a mark of cowardice?

 

[Papaclaude]

I once had the opportunity to sit and talk a while with a WWI vet, he was a machine gunner. Took me a while to get him to talk about it, but he did tell me the one thing that he would never shake from his head, it was the smell.

Burrial parties would hastily inturn the dead, then artillery bombardments would churn up the ground throwing them back up and around in pieces.

He said that he could smell the front four miles away.

We have no idea what those boys went through.

I had the severely unpleasant experience of smelling a corpse (up close and personal) that had been dead for 2 1/2 months. It's something you never forget. It's indescribable. I can't even begin to imagine the smell of thousands of rotting bodies. The closest thing to describing it is what I read years ago - the sickly sweet smell of death. And it is completely different from any animal carcass I've ever smelled.

 

[NavyShooter]

My great grand uncle was killed at Hill 70. I had the chance to walk the battlefield in 2007 with my Dad and oldest brother. We had an historian from the UK along guiding us, and a camera crew.

I had coordinated it with a local museum after they'd found my Great Grand Uncle's name and service number scrawled in china-pencil on the chalk wall of a tunnel leading to the front line.

We brought my dad down into that tunnel, and we saw the last thing that we know my Great Grand Uncle to have ever written in this world. Guys from his unit dated their signatures, so we know that his unit passed through there on their way to the front to fight at Hill 70. The presumption is that as their unit passed through the tunnel, they stopped for some reason, and the guys signed their names on the wall. At some point in the next 24 hours, H.V. Barker was killed in action, and his body was never found.

I've had the opportunity to see some rare things in my life, but that one thing touched me deeply.

Those men in the trenches endured things none of us can possibly imagine, and did so for days and even weeks at a time.

NS

 

[purple]

I had the severely unpleasant experience of smelling a corpse (up close and personal) that had been dead for 2 1/2 months. It's something you never forget. It's indescribable. I can't even begin to imagine the smell of thousands of rotting bodies. The closest thing to describing it is what I read years ago - the sickly sweet smell of death. And it is completely different from any animal carcass I've ever smelled.

It's been said that if every politician in the world got a good snoot-full of the smell of death there probably wouldn't be any more wars. I got mine in South Lebanon seeing a pack of dogs feeding on corpses that had been rotting in the sun for a few days.

 

[ATOM]

please correct me but isn't the white feather a mark of cowardice?

To be handed a white feather, especially by a woman, was an accusation of cowardice.

The custom predated the first war, being central to that rollicking Victorian British classic, The Four Feathers, in which a young officer resigns his commission shortly before a battle and gets sent four white feathers, three from fellow officers and one from his fiance. The hero spends the rest of the book returning the feathers, most under the most harrowing and dangerous conditions.

During the Great War, women took it upon themselves to track down young men in civilian clothes on the street and publicly present them with a white feather. The obvious plan was to shame reluctant British men into enlisting.

 

[plinker 777]

Atom; thank you. In light of this verification I'll stand on my first statement. It wasn't meant to be interpreted as chauvinistic, rather how would a woman possibly know what was being endured on the front line during the Great War? The propaganda machine was in full steam.

 

[ATOM]

Atom; thank you. In light of this verification I'll stand on my first statement. It wasn't meant to be interpreted as chauvinistic, rather how would a woman possibly know what was being endured on the front line during the Great War? The propaganda machine was in full steam.

If you want a clue to the British mentality at the time, consider this famous little poem by Henry Newbolt. The incident in question took place in the Sudan before WW1 - "Play the game!" - Egad!

There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night
Ten to make and the match to win
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play, and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat.
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his captain's hand on his shoulder smote:
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

The sand of the desert is sodden red -
Red with the wreck of a square that broke;
The Gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed its banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks -
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the school is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind -
"Play up! Play up! And play the game!"

Any man not sports-mad and dripping with patriotism was considered less of a man and a fair target from the 'fair ###'. And while the white feather was a British institution, women throughout history have been fairly consistent in the support of warfare, surprisingly so.

 

[smellie]

Further to ATOM's incisive insight into women and war: it is proverbial that the Spartan women would tell their sons to return from the battle "with your shield or on it!".

The Russians had a whole AA line on the Volga which was crewed by women. They were good flak-gunners, although they are said to have shown zero mercy to captured enemy.

And just a bit of Kipling:
"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
And go to your God like a Soldier!"

WHERE did all this nonsense about "the gentler ###" ever start, I wonder!
.

 

[plinker 777]

....I do stand corrected gentlemen{again }....awesome poems, smellie, yours I do recall having read before. What year were the Brits in Afghanistan (errr before this last tour) Crimean?

 

[ATOM]

....I do stand corrected gentlemen{again }....awesome poems, smellie, yours I do recall having read before. What year were the Brits in Afghanistan (errr before this last tour) Crimean?

India (including what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh) was considered, "the jewel in the British imperial crown." The Brits were always very sensitive to the possibility of the Russians trying to seize warm-water ports in India by marching south through the Himalayas. To counter this, they periodically tried to take over Afghanistan as a buffer state.

1839-42. British force on the order of 15,000 marched in. One man - a doctor on a particularly swift horse - made it back. Bad hair day, for sure.

1878-81. British invasion defeated.

1919 - Kind of a tie. Afghan troops invaded what is now Pakistan but were eventually pushed back. When peace was declared, the British recognized Afghan sovereignty.

They're tough laddies.

 

[mrclean89]

Since we are on the topic of world war 1, can anyone reccomend me any good documentaries on the subject ? Ive been trying to find some and am havin a hell of a time finding a good one. Something that mabye has interviews in it. Sadly I never had the chance to meet and ww1 vets. Ive met quite a few ww2 vets including my grandfather and heard their stories. Even met a guy who was in auschwitz and was the only one in his family who made it out alive. He had the tattoo on his arm.


Cheers, McLean

 

[smellie]

Following that last nastiness, in true British style the Brits then proceeded to make friends out of the Afghani. There were British military missions in Afghanistan until WW2. For one thing, the British actually set up and trained the Royal Afghani Air Force. Lots of photos exist of this period.

War Amps of Canada have one of the best series of documentaries on the Great War. You can borrow them free (just pay postage back) or buy them for rather nominal sums.... and they are WORTH whatever they ask.

There also was a series on WWI with some utterly INCREDIBLE footage in it, including interviews with men from the Old Contemptibles and an interview with the ONLY air observer to see the German attack at Mons. His CO refused to believe his eye-witness account; the rest is history. This was available several years ago as a boxed set from MADACY ENTERTAINMENT in Montreal. It is listed with an ISBN number, so your local bookseller should be able to get it: ISBN 0-7786-2438-2. It is 5 DVDs with a booklet, packed in a nice tin box, total running time over 7-1/2 hours and it is GRIM. No BS, just actual film from the time, slowed down from 24fps to the original 18fps so the motion isn't jerky. It is impossible to recommend this set highly enough. DO NOT LOAN THIS SET OUT: IT WILL NEVER COME BACK!!!!!

Hope this helps.
.

 

[Cdn303]

There also was a series on WWI with some utterly INCREDIBLE footage in it, including interviews with men from the Old Contemptibles and an interview with the ONLY air observer to see the German attack at Mons. His CO refused to believe his eye-witness account; the rest is history. This was available several years ago as a boxed set from MADACY ENTERTAINMENT in Montreal. It is listed with an ISBN number, so your local bookseller should be able to get it: ISBN 0-7786-2438-2. It is 5 DVDs with a booklet, packed in a nice tin box, total running time over 7-1/2 hours and it is GRIM. No BS, just actual film from the time, slowed down from 24fps to the original 18fps so the motion isn't jerky. It is impossible to recommend this set highly enough. DO NOT LOAN THIS SET OUT: IT WILL NEVER COME BACK!!!!!

It must be out of production b/c I can't find it. All I've found is their WWII stuff.

 

[dirtytwo]

Since we are on the topic of world war 1, can anyone reccomend me any good documentaries on the subject ? Ive been trying to find some and am havin a hell of a time finding a good one. Something that mabye has interviews in it. Sadly I never had the chance to meet and ww1 vets. Ive met quite a few ww2 vets including my grandfather and heard their stories. Even met a guy who was in auschwitz and was the only one in his family who made it out alive. He had the tattoo on his arm.


Cheers, McLean

There are boatloads of general books on WW1 (Morton and Granatstein's "Marching to Armageddon" is a quick read from the Canadian perspective), but the one book that sounds right in what your asking would be Herbert McBride's "A Rifleman Went to War". Every time I read it, it seems to me like I'm there sitting across from him at a table listening to his monologue with a near-empty 40 of rum! Awesome read, one of the true classics from the single soldier's point of view of WW1.