For more Great War stories based on soldiers' letters and diaries, see Letters From The Trenches by Jacqueline Wadsworth.
The Great War conjures up images of Tommies mired in flooded trenches, nervously eyeing the enemy across No Man’s Land during a stagnant war of attrition, writing home about rats the size of cats and water-filled shell holes that swallowed men whole. It is therefore refreshing – if that’s the right word – to discover accounts of the early months of war, when fighting was still mobile and energetic, and ground was being won and lost.
It’s a story that is told remarkably well in a diary that I used in my book Letters from the Trenches that was kept by Sergeant George Fairclough, not a volunteer of Kitchener’s Army but a former regular soldier who saw action in the Boer War and served in India, and was recalled as a reservist in 1914. Leaving his wife, Cissie, and young daughter in Colchester, he set off with the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars to fight on the Continent and there he documented the first months of the conflict.
George Fairclough serving in India in 1912, with his wife, Cissie, and his daughter, Olive.
‘A heavy thunderstorm came upon us and we stood in pelting rain until it cleared then we mounted and worked around a flank after a squadron of uhlans [German light cavalry]. We halted at a farmhouse (in close order) for a little while and the men had taken the opportunity of taking their clothes off and strapping them to their saddles when all of a sudden a terrific fire of shrapnel and canon shell burst from a concealed gun battery.
Fairclough goes on to describe the Allies’ counter-offensive at Battle of the Marne, the digging of the first trenches, and the rapid onset of disease that became a scourge of trench life: ‘Our infantry got within 400 yards of the enemy trenches but had to retire, the stench from the unburied bodies is overpowering, hundreds of dead lay unburied. Enteric is reported to have broken out among the enemy,’ he wrote on September 26.
George Fairclough began the war as a committed and enthusiastic soldier, however, an incident in November 1914 left him bitter and disillusioned. He was wrongly accused of being drunk when he was in fact exhausted after nights without sleep, court-martialled and imprisoned, and although the authorities quickly released him when they realised a mistake had been made, Fairclough’s loyalty to the army had by then evaporated.
In a miserable letter to his wife he wrote: ‘I was quite content to stick to the trenches and if it was willed, to die there if they’d played the game, but now all I want is HOME, I’ve done my bit.’ The sad story is told in full in Letters from the Trenches. Fairclough ended up serving for the entire war, although he was hospitalised in 1915 after being caught in a gas attack.
George Fairclough pictured in later life, having survived the Great War.
George Fairclough was 21 when he first joined the Army.
Cissie and Olive Fairclough waited at home in Colchester while George fought in the Great War.