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Mud, Blood and Bullets

Memoirs of a Machine Gunner on the Western Front

The History Press

A WORKING CLASS LAD

I was born in the year 1890, the seventh child of a family of fourteen (fifteen if you count a twin who died at two months). My brothers and sisters were, from the eldest down, Harry, Len, Albert, Ernie, Ada, Edie, Me, Gertie, Tom, Edgar, Hilda, Nellie, Frank and George. At the time of my birth we lived in a small terraced house in Reeves Street, Bloxwich, in the Midlands.

My dad was a hard-working man and loved his family. He was a coal miner and good enough at his job to earn as much money as the next man, though that was little enough in all conscience. He liked his drink of beer, but only imbibed when he could afford it. He never went to school, so could not read or write – but he had the intelligence to actually teach himself to read once he was forced to give up work when he was only 50 through ill health brought about by the abominable conditions which prevailed in the pits in the Midlands at the time.

The pits were grim, most of them wet and damp, and often men would be working all day in water over their boot-tops. Ventilation was so bad that, more often than not, the air was polluted, filled with powder smoke from the blasting operations. Not many men of my dad's generation continued to work after the age of 50 or so. Penal servitude would have seemed like a holiday to them; after all, the convicts at least had fresh air to breathe.

My mother, bless her, was a fount of wisdom and knowledge, and 'Mother Confessor' not only to her family but to her friends and relations as well. Not only that, she could read and write, no mean achievement for her generation. She possessed a fine sense of humour – she needed it with fourteen children – and the family was a happy one. We were devastated when she died at the age of 55, and it seemed to us ironic that she should be taken just at the time she could have started to enjoy her grown-up family. My sisters, Ada and Edie had to take over the responsibilities of the household, assisted by Dad, who was practically an invalid himself by then, although he lived to be 71.

We were a close-knit family, but as I look back now I realise what an immense struggle it must have been to raise our mob. There were already nine children before the first one, Harry, was old enough to go out to work. It is hard to imagine now what it must have been like with a house full of kids and only one worker to support us all. The burden of the household duties fell on my mother. She worked day and night to keep us fed and clothed, proud that she managed it without ever having to apply for Parish Relief. Parish Relief was only one step short of the shame of being sent to the workhouse – an ever-present threat to large families.

Many families where the father couldn't, or didn't want to work, or was not very good at managing the household finances, or he spent too much of the household finances in the pub, would end up in the workhouse. The workhouse was a wretched place, where the family would be subject to humiliating conditions. Charles Dickens wasn't exaggerating.

By the grace of God we never reached that stage, and it was my parents' proud and justifiable boast that none of their children had ever gone to bed hungry. On the contrary, we considered ourselves well-fed. Mother baked all our own bread. She baked once a week, enough bread to last until the following week, and when the day's fragrant baking was piled on the table, anyone who didn't know us would have thought we were preparing for a siege. The highlight of baking day, to us children at least, was the time for the removal from the oven of the flap-jacks, which, when cooked, were about six inches in diameter and about an inch and a half thick. Mother would give us one each while they were still hot, and we would separate them and put in a slice of cheese or a knob of butter. The heat would melt the filling and they were delicious!

It was an awe-inspiring sight to see the family at meal times, particularly at Sunday dinner, when we were all round the table. The size of the meat joint would make some of the offerings you see in shops today look very puny indeed. In winter the evenings would be spent talking about pit-work, Dad and the elder brothers discussing the day's happenings down the pit, what they said to the 'gaffer' or what the 'gaffer' had said to them or, when Len was at home, listening to him play the organ. Mother would be darning socks, or making a dress or pair of trousers for one of us, the girls washing up or tidying a room, the younger ones playing Ludo or draughts or snakes and ladders. Then Dad would say 'Come on, that's enough, let's 'ave yer up the wooden hill!', and Mother, assisted by my sisters, would prepare the younger ones for bed, and, when all the children had gone up, it was suddenly very peaceful.

Sunday evenings were the highlight of the week. Len would be at the organ, and the family would gather round singing hymns with such gusto that often there would be quite a crowd gathered outside our front window. Although we weren't church-goers it was a strict rule that only hymns should be sung on Sundays. Len offered to give me lessons on the organ as I was so keen on playing it, but alas, after about six lessons he started courting a young girl, so it is easy to guess what happened to my music tuition after that. Nevertheless, I kept on practising, and I was so eager to play that practically all my spare time was spent at the organ. Although I couldn't read music, I eventually taught myself to play quite a number of tunes by ear; in fact, I progressed well enough to deputise for Len at our Sunday sing-songs when he was absent.

Our house around this period was hardly ever without visitors. Friends of my older brothers or my Dad would come to have a look at the pigs we kept in the yard, or to discuss their work in the pit. At weekends, particularly on a Sunday morning, we always had visitors and the parlour would be thick with tobacco smoke, and the conversation would be about – guess what? Pit work! I think my mother and sisters could have worked a coal mine; they heard so much about pit work they could give a competent message in detail to one of the night shift from one of the day shift.

One visitor, Tom Holden, who was one of Albert's pals, bought a new gramophone, an Edison (which as a cylindrical type should have been called a phonograph, but we called them all gramophones). It was his very proud possession. We prevailed on Tom to bring it round, and the first time he brought it we were enraptured and mystified as to how a person's voice could be made to come up a little trumpet like that. The records were cylindrical and cost sixpence each. The general verdict was 'whatever will they think of next?'

Seeing the new gramophone and how it worked solved a mystery for me, for I had actually seen and heard one some time before at Leamore Flower Show. It was up on a platform with the gramophone itself resting on a large box. We were all eagerly waiting for the gramophone recital to start and when it did we were flabbergasted to hear a man's voice coming up through the trumpet. We couldn't believe it and thought somebody was having us on. We were convinced they had a man hiding in the box underneath, singing the songs.

SCHOOL DAYS – QUEEN VICTORIA'S JUBILEE

Life at school was no bed of roses. The teachers wielded the cane far too frequently and it was little consolation to us when our elders told us how lucky we were to be getting a free education and that 'we didn't know we were born ...' Inwardly, I thought it was they who were the lucky ones, not having to go to school.

Out of school hours, of course, we were much the same as any other generation of kids – noisy, mischievous and full of the joy of life. And the best part of school, naturally, was the holidays.

Bloxwich Wake, the annual fair and one of the highlights of our year, always came in the August holidays. The excitement would mount as the Wake ground began to fill up with caravans and all the paraphernalia of the side-shows, coconut shies etc, all horse-drawn. Most of the big attractions, such as the gondolas, the mounting ponies, the steam boat and Pat Collins' own big show were drawn by a huge steam traction engine which operated between the Wake ground and Bloxwich railway station, where it would arrive on flat trucks. This is where us kids came in. One of the workmen would put a megaphone to his mouth and bawl out, 'Come on lads, down to the railway station and help unload the trucks!' We would be promised free admission to the Wake in return for our labours, so down to the station we would race, hundreds of us it would seem.

The workmen would attach a thick heavy rope to whatever it was to be unloaded, while the kids would be positioned along the length of the rope, one each side alternately. And then we would start to pull. The first pull would be from the siding to the gates, and a second pull would move the object up onto the road so that the traction engine could be hooked up to it. When there were enough objects hooked up to the traction engine it would haul them all up to the Wake ground, while another 'train' of stuff was hauled into position by kid-power. Those wake folk certainly knew what they were doing, using us kids as a free haulage machine. Of course, we were under the fond delusion that they would keep their promise to let us in for free (admission was 2d for adults and 1d for children), but when our work was done we were not even allowed to stay in the ground to watch the roundabouts assembled; as soon as the last load was hauled in from the station they would round us all up one last time and tell us to clear off, much to our disappointment.

'We won't 'elp ya next year. You can pull the rope yourselves,' we would plead, but to no avail.

'Gerroff!' would be their final word on the matter.

A year is a long time in a youngster's life, however, and by the time the Wake came round again it was forgotten and we would fall for the same trick all over again.

While I was still very young I saw, with others, a phenomenon which I have not seen since that time and have often wondered if I could have dreamt the whole thing, and if I told the story so many times that I had come to believe it myself. It was summer and the morning was sultry and close, and shortly before we were to be let out of school for the lunch break, a heavy thunderstorm broke. It was so severe that we were kept in school until it abated. When we were eventually let out, the water was gushing down the street gutters and almost overwhelming the drains and, like boys of all generations, we rushed to paddle in it. To our amazement we found that there were hundreds of little silver coloured fish in the water, not more than about half an inch long. As the water receded they were left high and dry and flapping about all over the place. At the end of afternoon school, we returned to look for the fish and found the poor things lying in the gutters – all dead.

I have, during the course of my 77 years, told this story many times to many different people. Sometimes I have been believed, but at other times I have sensed a certain disbelief, never openly contradicted, but just a wry smile perhaps, or a doubtful glance. When I decided to write these memoirs, I thought I would try to have the story verified, or otherwise, by writing to the BBC Weather Unit – and I received this reply:

Room 4095
Weather Unit
BBC
1st April 1967

Dear Mr Rowbotham

Thank you for your letter. The event you mention is certainly possible meteorologically speaking. When violent, thundery conditions exist, there is also a tendency for water-spouts and whirlwinds to form locally. In the case you describe, water from a pool or lake could have been sucked up into the clouds, and the whole lot, water, fishes and all, dropped some distance away.

Mind you, this does not happen frequently, although one or two similar occurrences have been reported from various places.

Yours sincerely
P.H. Walker

Well, fancy that!

There is another incident from my school days that I think is worth recording, particularly in view of all the stress we seem to lay on hygiene these days. I refer to the Christmas 'Scrum'. This was when sweets were given out to the children before breaking up for the Christmas holidays. Now, whether the teachers did it this way for the children's benefit or for their own malicious enjoyment we never knew, but instead of giving every child a few sweets each, which would have been the fairer way, one of the big classrooms would be cleared of desks. Whether the floor was swept I do not remember, and at that age I probably didn't care. All the children, large and small, would be assembled in the classroom. Then, the teachers would come in carrying huge bags of sweets and start throwing the sweets up into the air, trying to reach all four corners of the room so that everyone would have a 'fair' chance of getting some. Well, the noise can be better imagined than described, and it was definitely a case of survival of the fittest, the oldest and the tallest, as the big boys pushed the little ones aside and grabbed the lion's share.

Some boys – it always seemed to be the same ones – ended up with their pockets bulging, while the smaller boys got just a few. The teachers always appeared to be having the time of their lives. Wrapped sweets were unknown in those days and often the sweets were retrieved from the floor covered in dust and bits of fluff. The teachers would tell us, 'You have to eat a peck of dirt before you die', and, thinking about those Christmas scrums, I suppose we must have done.

I was seven years old in 1897 and attending Leamore School at the time of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, the greatest occasion of my young life. Flags and banners, bunting and garlands festooned every building, it seemed. Everywhere was covered in red, white and blue and everyone wore some kind of emblem, a rosette, a hat-band, or bits of ribbon in their caps. It was a red, white and blue world. In some shop windows there were framed pictures of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (who had died many years before). All this to me looked like fairyland. I had never seen anything like it before and it was wonderful to be alive.

Since then, of course, there have been many occasions when the town has become red, white and blue again – the coronations of Edward VII, George V, George VI, Elizabeth II; and also the victories in two world wars – but none ever impressed me as profoundly as Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

For me, the culmination of the festivities was the school party. We kids all wore our best clothes, including the old-fashioned schoolboy's collar. Our shoes were blacked and our hands and faces washed. We wore ribbons, red, white and blue, of course, round our necks, suspended from which was a tea cup, which swung at waist level.

This was one of those rare occasions when attending school was a real pleasure. We sat in our places, our cups, still attached to the long ribbons, on the desks, and we were waited on by the teachers. One teacher poured the tea, another gave us a paper bag containing cakes and sweets, while other teachers hovered around like guardian angels with trousers on. Being waited on by our natural enemy, and allowed to talk in class, was almost unbelievable. We finished the day by singing patriotic songs with one of the teachers at the piano, and conducted by the headmaster, ending with the National Anthem which we sang with great gusto. How we wished that Queen Victoria would have a jubilee every week!

But, as the saying goes, 'After the Lord Mayor's Show comes the dustcart', and sadly, the next day, school was as usual, all the bunting and flags taken down and the carnival spirit gone. We were all rather depressed. But, such is the resilience of youth – we soon got over it and started looking forward to the next binge, which was the Sunday School treat, when we would have tea and cakes again.

I shall always remember the Jubilee as one of the happiest episodes of my young life. There are others, of course, which I shall come to later, but this was the very first, hence the memorable impact.

School, generally, was hard and the teachers strict, with beatings a regular part of the school day. A few years after the Jubilee, I had an experience with Mr Satterthwaite, the headmaster of Bloxwich National School that I did not enjoy one bit.

My mother kept me at home on the Monday morning to mind the babies, as it was her custom to keep one of us, in turn, every Monday morning. It was my turn on this particular Monday, not that I minded, as a note from Mother to the teacher on my return to school would usually excuse me from punishment. Monday, of course, was washing day, and this was the age before washing machines, when washing clothes for a large family like ours was a major operation. So, the teachers were usually sympathetic to children kept at home on washdays.

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Excerpted from Mud, Blood and Bullets by Edward Rowbotham, Janet Tucker. Copyright © 2010 Janet Tucker. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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