Featured book

2009-05-29T07:41:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Wool House Books. I hope you will find this website easy to use, but if you encounter any snags please bear with me while they are ironed out! I shall be using the blog to write about my experiences as a bookseller, and also to write more fully about some of the items you will find on the site. The current 'featured book' is a diary by a soldier in the first few months of WW1.

Life in the Trenches 1914 -1915: a private soldier’s diary. For photo and price click here
‘Three months is hardly a long apprenticeship to serve in any trade but when the business is that of killing and avoiding being killed by a clever and highly trained enemy the period is ridiculously short. The fact nevertheless remains that 12 weeks after we signed our names and solemnly took the oath to serve the king and his heirs we found ourselves ensconced in a trench in French Flanders busily engaged in emptying our ammunition pouches into an advancing crowd of Germans....

A diary of the first few months of WW1 by a private soldier (Private Howard) in the 13th London regiment, ‘The Kensingtons.’ Written in a clear and readable hand, the diary begins with his enlisting at the first recruiting depot which he passed on the bus. He undergoes drilling in Holland Park and then further training at Abbot’s Langley. A lively and amusing voice, Private Howard observes the day to life of the private soldier with a jaundiced eye.

‘There were rare occasions when our evenings were catered for by musicians – real or otherwise – in the YMCA tent...one such function – when i scored a front seat unluckily – was particularly awful. The Misses Phoebe and Rachel Nunn perpetrated a dismal and discordant duet on violins – another weedy man sang a weedy song – a Scotsman gave us Scots Wha Hae and other similar things in an awful manner’

Once in France he and his regiment are dismayed to find themselves in a country laid waste by war, and he is amazed at some of the things he sees.

‘We noticed some curious things. Nearly every house had a large wheel on one side of it – which appeared to be turned by a dog, as a squirrel makes his cage wheel revolve, evidently to pump the water from the well. .... we remarked that the only wall left standing of a fine house carried an image of the Virgin Mary...’

The futility and confusion of the war is often evoked.

‘After we had walked 5 miles ... and had reached a region of utter desolation I was sent back with instructions to a rear platoon – which in reality did not exist – we were the rear platoon ourselves.’

Despite the hardships he continues to write amusingly of the myriad ways in which ‘Tommy Atkins’ found ways of making life more bearable.

‘It wasn’t often possible to get out to obtain supplies, but they were much appreciated when we did get them. Then... the chickens accidentally left alive by the Germans were credited with a terrible fierceness and for our own safety it was often necessary to shoot and incidentally to cook them. In the same a pig, grown savage through neglect was said to have charged a sentry. There was pork in the menu that day.’

Odd images of warfare crop up from time to time in the text.

‘We were told that... our neighbours, the Lincolns had carried out an attack – with fair success behind white sheets on account of the snow.’

Trench life is observed in all its gritty detail but still his sense of humour does not desert him. Describing a rare opportunity to bathe in a large laundry behind the lines he writes...

‘..we then reached a number of very large wooden vats about 6’ high by 10 foot – each of which had to hold 14 men. We hauled ourselves up and dropped over into 3 ft of more or less warm water. After a good scrub we scrambled out ... drew a set of clean underclothes from another orderly ran the gauntlet of a cold breeze back to our places...

Then given back their uniforms which had been taken away to be laundered he writes...

‘...naturally we found that that the pants either refused to go on at all or else ...’pinched a bit under a the shoulders.’

The first Christmas truce sees soldiers from both sides ceasing firing and mixing in No Man’s Land.

‘Four of us had a narrow escape. Imagining the truce was being continued we calmly strolled across the ‘back’ to fetch some wood. Before long we had a stream of bullets whistling all round us and of course went down flat. We weren’t long in sprinting to and hopping over our trench. After that we potted everything we could see. One of pals, however was killed half and hour later in the same way.’

He learns to operate a machine gun, observes whole towns desolated by artillery fire and watches as a new group of recruits arrive, amused to find himself an ‘old hand’.

‘In their awful ignorance they had never heard of ‘trench pudding’! You pulverise some biscuit add water jam and sugar (if any) boil the lot into a messy mixture which is reckoned quite a culinary triumph.’

He eventually succumbs to bronchial trouble and is invalided out to Boulogne and then home to England to recuperate where we leave him getting the train back to London having been outfitted with a new uniform.

A marvellous sense of personality, dry and amusing, dismayed by the war, but driven by patriotism and sustained by comradeship emerges from these pages. I have not been able to discover what became of Pt. Howard. The diary is interspersed with some photos, cards, and ephemera, sketches of trenches and hand drawn maps. A unique view from Tommy Atkins of the first few months of the war, and an insight into the mentality of the men who had no idea that the war would drag on for four years.

The first of the big London book fairs is this coming Sunday at the Russell Hotel in Bloomsbury and I shall be writing about how it went in a few days time. It may be a barometer of the current economic situation. I remain optimistic!