The Diary of Rupert Stevens
Extract from the First World War diary of Rupert Stevens, a Prestwood boy of Square Farm (now Giles Gate, formerly Stevens Slaughter House)
At the outbreak of the First World War, we had three shops in Wycombe. The White Hart Street shop, Desbro’ Road and corner of West End Street and Easton Street. The Desbro’ Road shop has been pulled down and Easton Street was demolished for the new road scheme in that area. Charlie was in charge of Desbro’ Road and lived over the shop. White Hart Street shop did five times more trade than the others.
All men of military age had to join the Home Guard and go to Priory Road Yard for Squad Drill. Sunday we had to take packed lunch and go to Didcot where we used to unload thousands of pick axes, shovels and wheelbarrows, or go on a route march round Penn or Tylers Green. Every three months we had to go before a Tribunal and my father would appeal and get Charlie and me off for another three months. The authorities checked up and found that Desbro’ Road was a small shop and not so much trade as White Hart Street. So Charlie was to be called up. I said that I was younger, fitter, and only had one child so I would go instead, while Charlie saw to the running of the shops. Sitting on the Tribunal was Mr McDonald, a retired military man, as chairman, Harry Cox, later Mayor and Mr Turnbull.
My father used to buy horses for the Army. They had to be about 16 hands, quiet, and about five years old. Once I went with him to Stokenchurch and saw a young horse. He asked the farmer if he could see his son ride it around the field, as he was afraid, so he got me to get up on it. The horse bucked and reared and ran out onto a stony road. I thought of Ethel at home and baby Doris, only a few days old. I was scared for my life and thought I should get my head split open.
When I joined up I had to go to Cowley Barracks at Oxford. I was to go in the Infantry. I spoke up and said “Sir, I have two brothers with the Royal Field Artillery and I refer to the King’s Regulations which says brothers are to serve in the same part of the Services.” They had to put me in the Royal Field Artillery. On the Monday they gave me a railway ticket to Woolwich which is the HQ of the RFA. I thought I would like to spend the night at home so I went off next morning. Each day we had to march round and names and numbers were called out. My name was finally called out on Friday. Finally I was equipped with a uniform – which was just thrown at me. I couldn’t get my puttees right so I went and saw to High Wycombe men who were officers.
While waiting to be called we had to dig a garden in Plumstead. Eventually I was sent to Abbey Park, High Wycombe, which was one of the HQs for The Royal Field Artillery. After two weeks it became an overseas camp and I was sent to Biscot Road, Luton for training. One day during a break I was with some other men and we were vaulting a horse when an officer came up to me and picked me for his team to go to India the next day. The next day an officer came out when we were on Parade and said I and five others were to report at once and go to Bath for a trade test as they were short of slaughtermen. One of our men had scabies so he was left behind.
We were taken to an empty house where we slept on bare boards with our haversacks as pillows. While we were waiting we were marched up to the top of a hill where lots of the soldiers jumped over the wall of a gentleman’s garden. It was scandalous – they took tomatoes, strawberries and everything they could possibly eat! Finally we had our tests – a bullock each. We were watched by three men, one a civilian, one an Army officer and one a civilian expert slaughterman. When the Army Officer came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder he said “I can see you have done a lot of this.”
He then startled me by saying that if I gave him twenty pounds he would make me a sergeant at once. I looked him straight in the face and said “Either you make me a sergeant on my own merits or not at all. I will not be bribed”. With that I was sent straight off to South Shields where they did 100 bullocks a day to feed the troops in England. Bullocks came from Cumberland, Lester and Ireland. I was there six months. I managed to get a “Sleeping Out Pass” and I got Ethel and Doris to come and found three rooms.
I became expert at chopping beasts down as I had a steady hand. Mr Macomok was in charge of the abattoir. He came to see me one day and said that a man in Newcastle would wager any man for fifty pounds that he could not chop a beast down as quickly as him. I told him that I did not have fifty pounds to lose, so he said that he would put his own money up for me. The contest was arranged for Tuesday. They came over from Newcastle on Monday night and saw me at work. It really frightened him and he withdrew from the contest and refused to put his money down.
Later, I was taken to what was thought to be a modern abattoir which was at the back of a butcher’s shop. They did not kill the cattle humanely with a pole axe, but bashed their brains in with a hammer. I took the hammer away and killed the cattle humanely. We had to take the hides to North Shields and put them straight in a freezer. I told the man they would rot and ferment but he took no notice. Six months later I had the ordeal of unloading the freezer. With the fermenting, rotten wasted hides, the stench was beyond description. This job lasted six months then I was returned to Luton and equipped for France. We set sail early one morning, it was snowing hard. Ethel came to see me off with a packet of nightlights. When we got to the station at Luton some of the men went berserk, starting snow-balling, smashing up the station, breaking windows etc.
Before we went to France we were on parade one morning when an officer found that a Welshman had a spoon in his putty and he choked him off. The Welshman turned round, hit him under the jaw and knocked him out. There was another sergeant major, so strict and unbearable that some of the men decided to way-lay him. They knocked him over and frogmarched him to the river and threw him in.
When we were on the boat we were chased by submarines and we wore our lifebelts at all times and were a very long time getting to France, with all the zig-zagging. When we arrived at base, we were met by another Wycombe man, Wally Baker, and some I did not know. I was put into an Ammunition column so I again pointed out that I had two brothers in the Artillery. I was thankfully sent to the Royal Field Artillery where I joined up with my two brothers, Bert and Sid. We were all posted together with the 33rd Division Head Quarters Staff.
Instead of bringing back seven gunners we brought back their seven bodies. The next day we had the great ordeal of sewing them up in horse blankets and they were all buried in one trench with twelve others. I remember so well those nineteen men all buried in a trench.
I happened to be on the sector when a delegate came across at Messens. Ceasefire on a twenty mile section and we couldn’t understand it. Later we heard that at 11 o’clock that morning an armistice had been signed on a train just near us. I remember the soldiers nearly went mad, jumping for joy and throwing their caps in the air.
After the Armistice was signed I had an injury to my eye. We had a wonderful American doctor who said “I think you have done well to come through all this. Go to the Casualty Station and you should be in Blighty in a couple of days.” This was at the time of the great flu epidemic and I was detailed to take the temperatures. Of course I caught the flu which developed into pneumonia. During that time 40 were carried out dead with flu. I wondered if I would be the next. I lived on brandy and port and was unconscious part of the time. When I came round the Matron said that I must have been a steady sort or the brandy and port would not have had that effect. They sent Ethel a telegram as they thought I was dying. Then they sent another to say “Getting better, returning to England”. We were sent off to a French station on our stretchers and lay there waiting for the train. It was bitterly cold and a gale was blowing. I could not imagine how I would arrive home alive. How I prayed to be spared.
Eventually we got on to the hospital ship. I shall never forget they asked each one of us where we would like to go. I said London. This really cheered me up as Ethel and Doris were there with Ethel’s father and brother and the Bennetts. When we arrived in England we were put on a hospital train in three tiers. I was in the middle bunk, the poor man at the top was so bad he kept being sick on top of me. In fact, they had to pull up at Chelmsford and send him to hospital there. I then realised we were not going to London and we went to Bradford. We arrived in Bradford at midnight. Crowds were waiting for us to welcome us home. They were shouting and singing “Welcome Home Tommy”. They put packets of cigarettes and shilling pieces on our stretchers. We were taken to an old workhouse, now an army hospital. When I was finally put to bed some man called out and told we newcomers that it was a “hell of a place”, but to us, from the trenches, the flu and the journey home, it was like paradise.
The Orderly looked at my case card and found out that I came from High Wycombe and said “We have an optician called @Dairy@ from High Wycombe here”. He fetched Mr Dairy who swent a telegram to Ethel and she and Doris came up the next day. Mr Dairy found them lodgings. I shall never forget my dear wife and child arriving. Doris pulling a little horse and cart. I felt overjoyed – I hadn’t seen them for well over a year. This hospital was a marvellous place. Ladies brought us jellies and played cards with us. I felt we were treated like Lords. Ethel’s brother, Frank had already been here with an ankle injury and his wife Edie, my sister, had worked here and helped to nurse him. Ethel and Doris used to visit me every day and Doris used to go round to the men in the ward with her horse and cart pretending to sell meat. One of them gave her a book. Almost all of these men in the ward died. I was allowed home for Christmas and released from the Army in January 1919 on account of having been in hospital for over a month. I went in to the Army A1 and came out C3. When asked if I wanted a pension I said “All I wanted was to get shot of all of them”.
I do feel that I mixed with the scum of the earth. We were long with the Camberwell mob in a nissen hut behind the lines and were discussing our lives before joining the Army. Five or six of the men had spent much time in prison, one, called Bunny, a raw-boned fellow, with his firs would knock people over, then he and his pal would remove their wallets and pick their pockets. Another said he went to “night School” to learn burglary and breaking-in. There was one man who worked for a fish monger and he used to boast that it didn’t cost him a penny to live. He had friends working in all trades and he would supply them and others with fish, met etc and they would supply him with all his needs free of charge.
One man in our unit was called “Fuzzer” because they could not make him swear or say a bad word. I did admire him – he had the strength and courage to say his prayers and read his Bible each night. A very nice boy arrived in our unit. He was a clergyman’s son and was very young but, after a few months with these awful men, he was as bad as they were!
I was posted behind Ypres as a mounted dispatch rider. The gun line was several kilometres in front of Ypres. Their headquarters was in a dug-out at Square Farm (same name as our place at Prestwood). I had to take messages at all hours of the day or night. I often met men from High Wycombe. I met the manager from the International and the Home & Colonial Stores. One day, on the way up the Ammunition Column, a man called out to me “Hullo Stevens”. He was Gilbert Mead of West Wycombe. We had a quick chat and on the way back I found he had been killed. When I was demobbed I went and told his parents that I was the last High Wycombe man to see him alive. He was killed in under half an hour from when I left him. I knew Hell Fire Corner and Dicky Bush inside out.
War Front – November 11th 1918 11 o’clock
Things were so bad as we pushed the Germans back that we were not getting our rations through. We picked up dirty food and biscuts out of the mud and scraped off the mud. They went down as good as rump steak – we were so ravenous. We had to take our water with us as the Germans had poisoned the water. We were not getting rum rations through and, as I had a terrible cold, I told the Quarter Master that I must have a good issue of rum that night.
I was more nervous of my bad cold and sleeping out rough than of all the shells. The QM said “I dare not”. I said “If you can’t, I shall knock it off, but if you can get me some you shall have a Bradbury”. I had one pound note sewn in my bodybelt. He said “Where is your mug?” I took it off my bandalier and bought a pint of neat rum. I gave a small drop to brother Sid. I said ”As soon as I have drunk this, throw my horse blanket over me”. I went into a dead sleep. They had the horses off the line twice because of the shelling and I didn’t hear a thing. They had to shake me to wake me, even lift me up and jump on me to wake me up in the morning. Strange thing, I never had a headache and my cold was much better!
We drove the Germans back in one village. The French women ran out as we were riding along on our horses and gave us wine and tea, they were so delighted. I actually saw French people dig up money they had hidden from the Germans in their gardens and fields. As we advanced through Mormal Forrest we rode over our own dead soldiers.
One night another soldier and I had to drive a G.S. Wagon to take seven gunners up in exchange for seven gunners in the front line. While waiting for the exchange a Bomber came over an killed the seven men in front of our eyes.
With kind permission of Faith Paul nee Davis