2.  Joining Up

         There was one more warning sign…

         Bert Freestone was for many years the village baker (as was his father before him). His premises stood on “Freestone’s Corner”, at the junction of London Road and Station Road.

         In April 1914 Bert was 18 and working for his father at the family bakery. He and his mates went one evening to a recruitment meeting that was being held at Shelford School to recruit volunteers for the local Territorials, the Cambridgeshire Regiment.

         Territorials are peace-time recruits to the army who are trained as soldiers at part-time camps, while they continue with their normal means of earning a living. Should a war be declared, they are immediately called to serve in the army, but only on home territory.

         Bert was one of a cohort of 14 Shelford lads who signed up together, and who would serve through the war in the First Battalion of the Cambridgeshire Regiment. At first this was just an adventure. War, guns and the physical training were intensely attractive to a group of lively young men. Later, when they were called to war, there was comfort in being part of a village group, with other lads from Cambridge and the surrounding villages, and this would serve them well over the dark days of the war. Comfort, too, in knowing the two Captains who led, respectively, A Company and C Company. They were Richard and William Sindall, whose father was a prominent Cambridge builder (undertaking much college work), and had a house in Great Shelford called the Elms, which sat where Halatte Gardens now is. So the two Sindall Captains were already familiar to the lads.

         The Shelford volunteers had two weeks, and one weekend of training. Then, one hot August bank holiday, in the middle of a village cricket match, the village policeman cycled over to tell them to get their khaki on. They were to be mobilized. The next day – August 4 1914 – Britain declared war on Germany.

         The weird thing is that, if you look at the Cambridge newspapers for August 1914, it all seems quite tame. Reading the Cambridge Independent Press for August 1914, it almost feels like an anti-climax. The grimmest, most relentless war in our history had just broken out. Surely there should be great dramatic headlines? But that’s hardly the CIP’s style, and still so much of the news was of the strictly local – agriculture, sport, the usual. And yes, there were reports about the war. And yes, it was a big thing. But they didn’t know then what sort of war it was going to be. At that stage it was a war for the regular army, strictly for the professionals, and besides it would be over by Christmas. So yes, to us – who do know – the coverage seems underplayed, really not that dramatic.

         Before Bert and his friends went, they called on Nell Gifford, a Shelford woman living on the corner of King’s Mill Lane. She had a camera and took photographs for the villagers. This was such a momentous time that the men wanted it recorded. So there stands Bert in the centre, fag in mouth, looking confident, ready for anything. But they were a bit apprehensive too. They were off to the unknown.

         We always think that soldiers get shipped straight off abroad, but not the Terriers. They were sent to guard the railway, to dig trenches for defence, all the donkey work traditionally demanded of the “Poor Bloody Infantry”. Plus, of course, training.

         In the meantime, the early fighting in France did not go well, and the army wanted men, so the Cambridgeshires were encouraged to join up for real. And so, on 14 February 1915, the Shelford Cambridgeshires embarked for France. They would soon embark on a four year career as fighting men.

         Why did they join up? Well, they were young men, and, as I’ve said, the army seems glamorous to young men – fighting, uniforms, guns, the camaraderie. It’s Adventure on a grand scale for lads living a village life. And then, too, they were fighting for their country, to protect their own. This is how Colonel Tebbutt, erstwhile CO of the Cambridgeshires presents it:

The year 1914 will be inserted in the annals of history as the year in which “The Great War” commenced, when Great Britain, for no self-aggrandisement, for no other motive save the righting of a dastardly deed in the violation of Belgian neutrality…”.

There was of course more to it than that. Britain and Germany, two great industrial powers in competition, with the Germans fast overtaking Britain. Britain, a huge Empire, and Germany with Imperial ambitions. The two powers jostled for dominance. Germany lost the war, but we lost our position as the most powerful industrial nation in the world.

         At the time, it really did seem as black and white as Col. Tebbutt said. And it always must. If the enemy wasn’t dastardly and cowardly, then we wouldn’t feel justified in fighting. So the Germans were bad and we were good.

         The Shelford lads took their place in the trenches, in close proximity with regular soldiers. They were on the front line, and soon engaged in fighting. “Much happened to us”, said Bert in his memoirs. It is not the way of the war generation to speak much of their experiences. Bert Freestone was psychologically robust enough to survive his war years without undue mental trauma. He was changed by it, but not broken. And though he suffered injury, and had a scar to show for it, he survived to live an active and long life. But we shouldn’t delude ourselves that it was all fine. It wasn’t. They just didn’t talk about those bits. When he wrote his war memoirs, he told humorous stories, and stories of exciting events, and terse statements which hint, no more, at the grim reality.

         One day the cook was passing a can of water down into the trench, when a bullet passed right between his legs. Bert tells us, He dropped his trousers to inspect the damage, but the bullet had passed straight through both his legs. He stood up as he was, on the open ground, and shook his fist at the enemy shouting “Lucky for you you didn’t take my ‘old man’ otherwise my old woman would have been after you!”  

         But Captain Sindall wasn’t so lucky. In June 1915, with the regiment near Armentières, he was wounded by the bursting of a shell. He died 5 days later.

         The soldiers’ life consisted of long periods in the trenches, under sporadic and low level fire, punctuated by periods of intense activity, and relieved by spells away from the front line, but still at the Front.

         Bert was injured, breaking his collarbone, and spent nearly a year back in England, recovering and then training. His reaction to his injury was, “A lovely blighty one!”. To serving soldiers, being injured was a complicated business. An injury which was serious enough to get you sent home, but neither life-threatening nor liable to permanently disable you was no bad thing. While back home, Bert was trained as a sniper, a skill which he never lost, and which later served him in good stead if he spotted a rat at the bakery! He rejoined the regiment in time for “six months in that holiday resort known as Passchendaele”.  Life there was grim.

         Passchendaele was one of the most infamous battles of the war, because of the sheer scale of the casualties, and because of the mud which was as hostile as the enemy. The aim of the attack was to get to the Belgian coast, and destroy the German sub base there. The bombardment which was meant to soften the Germans up had turned the soil into a quagmire. And then it began to rain. The mud stopped the tanks. It became so deep and treacherous that, if you slipped from the duckboards, you drowned in it. Horses sank in and vanished. By the end – after 3 months of fighting – they had advanced 5 miles.

         Bert was sent home on leave for Xmas 1917. His arm had been injured, and he had got blood poisoning. He spent the rest of the war in hospital and convalescing. Nevertheless he remained in the army, now in peacetime, until he had completed his 5 years and thereby received a bounty, a valuable start in life for a young man, though not so young either in years or experience as when he first joined up. Last of all, he tells us that, of the 14 original volunteers, seven at least survived to the end.

         Perhaps it would interest you to know that, out of 5 years’ military service, Bert actually spent 21 months on the front. This was not untypical. The regiment continued on the front, but men came and went, as they were wounded, and, if still able, returned. Because of injury, he was mercifully spared the Somme, but the Cambridgeshires were there, and the casualties were heavy.

Major Few’s diary

         I found another account of the Cambridgeshires’ arrival in France to complement that of Bert Freestone. It gives us somewhat more detail about life at the Front. Major H C Few, was then a 2nd lieutenant (in C Coy, I believe). He kept a diary detailing his time in the army.

         On 21 February 1915 the day began, after breakfast, with a short service. Then there was a 6-mile march and trench-digging till 4pm.

“There was heavy gun fire all last night and up to midday. A government ration of tobacco, cigarettes and rum made all the ranks happy this evening”.

         The men’s rations were bully beef (tinned corned beef), hard biscuits, jam, butter, tea, sugar and cheese. I bet they were constipated! The officers did very well. They were billeted at a farm, with a housekeeper who fed them stupendous amounts of food, far more than they could reasonably eat, with eggs, milk and bread, all luxuries at the Front.

         At this early stage they were kept behind the firing line so they could learn about trench warfare, preparing wire entanglements, repairing trenches.

         On 9 March he reported that he managed to get his first bath for 3 weeks and a change of underclothes.

         On June 29 1915 Hobbs Farm was shelled with HE (high explosive) and one dropping short killed 1 man and wounded 4 men, including RE Sindall who died a few days later.

Sources

From the Cambridgeshire Collection, 1st Battalion of the Cambridgeshire Regiment, H G Freestone, ref C.45.5

From Cambridgeshire Archives, the Diary of Major H C Few, part of the Few Collection, ref CRO C/342.

v1 © Helen Harwood, uploaded February 2025