Twelve Days on the Somme

Sidney Rogerson was a young lieutenant in the West Yorkshire Regiment when he was posted to the Somme in November 1916. Long after the slaughter that took place when the attack began on the 1st of July. His company was ordered to hold a line of the British trench. And that’s what it did.

It did not go over the top. It did not walk into a blizzard of machine-gun bullets. It did witness a diversionary barrage in No Man’s Land before it and a few of its men were killed by random shells. But that’s about it.

Mostly what it did in those twelve days was this. It cleaned up and strengthened the trench and made it habitable. It kept its weapons clean and well-oiled. It endured rainstorms and biting cold with little shelter. It waited around for orders – in the rain again. It drank tea that tasted of petrol because the old petrol cans the tea was brought up to the line in hadn’t been properly cleaned. It put up with lice. And next to no sleep. Then, when its assignment was over, it packed up and went back to the rear. Practically intact.

The language is often a tad old-fashioned for modern ears: ‘Oaths there were, it is true, and fearful imprecations as rifles were knocked over onto someone’s stockinged feet.' There’s little ‘drama’. Or gory combat scenes. Even the rats – a regular player in such memoirs and novels - don’t get a look in. Yet for all its mundanity and boredom, it’s far from boring. It’s fascinating, in fact. Also very, very readable. I finished it in a day. 

It's also NOT All Quiet on the Western Front. To quote the author himself, writing in 1933: It is a plain, unvarnished account of one short tour in the Somme trenches during the winter of 1916….Life in the trenches was not all ghastliness. It was a compound of many things; fright and boredom, humour, comradeship, tragedy, weariness, courage, and despair.

Sidney Rogerson had no love for the officers who sent men to fight in terrible conditions, and I'm sure that had he wanted to, he could have written a grim account of the fighting. What he offers instead is a vivid description of the ‘other side’ of front line life, one that I’ve seen little talked about. It’s an unjustly neglected gem of observation.