We used to train in the school yard.
They had some trenches dug in a park somewhere. They used to take us up to these trenches for a bit of mimic warfare. It was absolutely ridiculous. It didn’t apply to the real thing at all. It was absolutely stupid. They’d take us up at night passing messages up from the back in a whisper, as if you were going to do that in the middle of a battle! Stupid.
We had bayonet training with straw filled sandbags hanging from ropes and sand-filled sandbags on the ground.
‘Six inches in, up and twist.’
At Christmas I went to a photographer’s studio in Consett and had my picture taken. That was want Mother wanted. A picture of her boy. I was in the Durham Light Infantry. It’s the picture they used it in an article in the local paper to say I was reported missing in action and again when I was awarded the Military Medal in 1917.
I wasn’t to stay with the lads from the Durham Light Infantry; I was in the Machine Gun Corps by then.
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