The war to end all wars

The war to end all wars

One of my regular chores at home in the family pub was to leave some customers home each night. One of our regulars whom I befriended was a veteran of World War I. He was one of the two hundred thousand Irishmen who were said to have fought in the ‘Great War’. He was an amputee who got around on two under-arm crutches on which he swung with great dexterity. Our area was not a place where people easily spoke of their time in the British Army despite the reality that many men from the area had fought with British regiments in both World Wars or in the Crimean and Boer Wars of the mid and late nineteenth century. The postmen in the area were almost always ex-servicemen, usually having served in World War Two.

My friend occasionally spoke to me of the circumstances in which he lost his leg. It happened at Armatiers, as in the risqué song of that time; ‘Mademoiselle of Armatiers’. The proper name of this Northern French town is Armentiéres. It was held by the British and was a popular rest-centre for troops. The war was almost over and he was confident that he had survived the worst of it. In October 1919, a month before the armistice was signed, he was shot and badly wounded in the knee. The conditions were such that an amputation of his leg from the knee down was immediately essential. It was carried out in the field, using the equivalent of a tenon saw, without anaesthetic, and with only a daub of tar as an antiseptic. When he reached a hospital that could treat him properly, the amputation was carried out again. His leg was amputated so high this time that he could never wear an artificial limb. He suffered from phantom pains in the stump of his leg for the rest of his long life.

He spoke to me briefly about life in the trenches. One of the images that remained with me was his description of sanitary conditions for the troops. He told me that they would light a fire occasionally, when it was safe or possible. The fire served many purposes by warming chilled and fatigued bodies and heating food. It also functioned as a de-louser. The soldiers would remove their shirts and shake them over the heat of the fire or immerse them in clouds of smoke, in an attempt to remove the parasites that clung so easily to their huddled bodies.

Despite his harrowing experiences, my friend went on to marry and raise a family. He even played football with the lads when he was younger. He was allocated the role of ‘goalie’ and given the concession of being allowed to save with his outstretched crutches in place of diving. Swinging on his underarm sticks, he could serve a mighty kick to the ball on the ground and for this long kick-out he earned the nickname ‘poc’ or ‘pocan’. He was a strong man, made stronger by the constant use of his upper body as he pivoted on the crutches which helped him to adapt to the loss of his leg.

My friend was a very moral person. He set high standards for himself and carried himself with great dignity and character. He confessed to me though, that he once had told a lie and had never been found out. Like many others who headed for the recruitment centres of the time, he had lied about his true age. The recruiting people may have turned a blind eye to this deceit in their hunger for volunteers. It may also have been hard to tell the true age of a teenager who was tall and strong. Whatever the circumstances, it had a happy ending when my friend got his old-age pension at the age of sixty-three, two years earlier than he was entitled to. He did not protest!

Another resident of the town who used to work occasionally in the fields with my father spoke of the father whom he had never seen. He told us that his father was a sniper in the Great War. His story was told in a distant, unconnected manner as he recounted to his fascinated audience of children how his father had been shot in the branches of a tree from where he had been sniping. The story-teller seemed to think that it was somehow amusing that his soldier-father had climbed a tree, only to be shot dead for his trouble. ‘Imagine climbing a tree to be shot…’

There was also the troubling story of the local who had taken the “King’s Shilling” and enlisted. By accepting the shilling he had agreed by law to join up. He went off to spend his ‘earnest’ money and got drunk. In his inebriated state he began to regret what he had earlier done and promised. He fell to hatching a plan to extricate himself from his legal contract and decided on a brutal escape. He went home and fetched the small axe that was commonly used to chop sticks for the fire. He then placed his right index finger on the half-door and with one deadly swing he removed his trigger-finger and left himself useless as a combat-soldier.