24556 Reel 4
An interview with former 6254 Private Charles Heaton 2 Platoon A Company 16th Battalion the Manchester regiment at his home 37 Edinburgh Close, Cheadle by Charles Thomson and Graham Maddocks on 10 and 24 April 1986
Take 2
The narrative continues with the German assault on Manchester Hill near Saint-Quentin on 21 March 1918.
Well I’m only back on the night of the 21st when it’s dark. We played cards with the doctor and his staff and then we decide about 1 or 2 o’clock - right, we’ll bed down. Pushing all the bedding down in the dugout it’s a bit of “anything you can” and the first shell over hits the First Aid post. So the doctor says to me “we can’t put men in here - I’ll go and see Colonel Elstob and ask him can we use his dugout.” We had three shelters full of wounded - carrying them up so they know where to go, going into the trenches fetching more - that’s what we were doing all the time.
I know at one time when we’d got about 24 in a dugout - just ordinary wounds, no body wounds or serious - and as you came at the top of this shelter in the quarry, we could see towards the railway and that’s where you saw all the Germans marching, at ease. Officer or fighter - I don’t know who it was in front - they were walking like that. There was about ten or twelve in a group and every 50 yards there was another one coming up. You were not supposed to have weapons - if we’d have had a machine gun I daresay we’d have got a few of them but then word would’ve gone wide and it’d have been “Right we’ve got to attack - they’re outflanking us” so it was no advantage to put a gun on these Jerries. I saw them - they were about 500 yards outside the quarry. They didn’t bother with the quarry at first. So we got out of our shelter which was broken down - the first one hit. We wondered what was wrong - a snap of wood and everything - the doctor came back and he said “I’ll show you where the wounded go we’ve got use of any dugout there is” and that was our job all the time.
We knew at one time that they’d got round - there was no getting past - but what beat me at the time and has done still: “no-one should leave. They should all stand their ground. No going back”, Colonel Elstob said. “Every man must stand by and do his job” But I’d one or two business friends - I was at S&J Watson - one or two business friends in the 17th. Now the 17th were in the line, so I said “well how have you managed to come through?” Oh, he said “I’ve finished up guarding some canal up there.” They’d gone back, a lot of them. They’d gone back. Well there was no running back at Manchester Hill - oh no. They were fairly good trenches.
I think we moved about 27 wounded from the trenches into the dugouts that we took over from Colonel Elstob and it was getting about 3 o‘clock and we were still going round doing odd jobs finding a few bombs fallen [unclear] and then a bomb dropped - this is where the wife laughs a bit - a hand grenade came down. It’s only a jam stick on a thick stick, like a thumb under sort of a Nestle’s milk tin arrangement on the end. And it came down the steps and there were about 6 or 7 candles lit and it fell on the floor. We had a little wire fox terrier in the doctor’s quarters - we could feed it, look after it. It happened to be down in this dugout and it ran to it, thinking it was a bone I think. Anyway it wouldn’t run after another one.
So we heard a voice on top then “herauskommen! herauskommen! (Come out Come out) There was a young lieutenant there I don’t know who he was; I think he was a bit windy and he said “I’ll go out. I’ll go out. I’ll go out”. So I said “all right lads we’ll get somebody to see to you.” So they’d been dressed in this dugout which was now black because the bomb had put the candles out and I went to the top only to find Gerry there. Well-built, good-looking, healthy-looking: we find out later on that these had been on the Russian front and they thought they were having a harvest coming out of the snow. So he said [unclear - German word] “or Sorry - Saint-Quentin?” And Saint-Quentin was down the hill and in view of us, I should say about half a mile away.
There were 14 of us and this doesn’t sound true, but we started out of the quarry and we marched down. So our job has been (not mine - because I was in the Doctor’s staff and you don’t have arms you see) but we’ve got to keep bringing the wounded in and so forth. Well our job - the men with the rifles and bombs and that - well I did throw a bomb or two but I wasn’t carrying a rifle - they used to fire at the horses’ legs as the transport came up - they were like guns you see. And I don’t know if it was Colonel Elstob that said “better to fire at the horses legs than the men!” He said they can get plenty of men to take their place but they can’t get a horse. So as they came up we fired at the horses. I say “we” but I wouldn’t fire… and the horses with the broken legs screamed you know, and everything went down, stopped they did. The Germans on top, if they weren’t hit they were off with the [unclear] - tin. Cutting slices of the flanks of a horse that wasn’t dead. Quick, and shoving it in, little knowing that 20 yards away was our battalion’s daily grub, not touched and never will be with us. It was all that under cover, under sheets - they’d find it. So, aye - they cut the horses flanks off, they were that hungry for meat.
So we were going down this field towards Saint Quentin and there’s a bit of a copse there, not very big. Probably about as big as this room, and inside was a Gerry: Colonel I suppose in rank, and he was in charge of getting some light guns through but he never got any past the quarry. So when we’re walking down and it’s quarter past three and he’s still got - well he might have got one or two guns through down around the bottom or round the east way so he goes [unclear - German word] - come here - here come” you know. So we go - all very eager to know that we’ve done our job, and he’s talking in German and we know very little of German at that time and there’s this other Officer there, big fine fella - we thought he was an English Officer. Fine fella. He said “he wants to know where you’ve been holding out” so like a lot of bloody fools we go up to him, he’s holding his map and we’re pointing round the quarry. (chuckles.) He nearly went mad you know “Schwein England!” you know “Schwein!” this you know, cursing away. And this other - I don’t know who it was, a decent fella this other German - he was lower in rank than this fat old beggar - he says “he’s sent for a machine gun and you’ve got to line up here. He’s going to have you shot.” Hmm. Couldn’t do much about that.
Well it so happened that, with them coming across in the morning about 7 o’clock and going past us when we were in the quarry - walking about the quarry - I mean they ignored the quarry altogether to start with and they were walking around. Mind you they were fighting to get in and with it being so late in the afternoon - it being about 3 o’clock, quarter past three, all the machine guns had gone forward. They’d be about a mile and half in front you see, and I think the next town was Ham past us, going towards the sea. And they’d all be round there, so he said to me - the German - evidently they can’t get a machine gun so he says “I’ll go and have a word with the old master and while I’m talking to him - his back will be turned to you”, he says “break off quietly, don’t let him hear you - and you walk quietly away. It doesn’t look like he’ll be getting a machine gun” and I don’t suppose any individual would have shot fourteen fellas, so of course we did.
When we got a little way on - before we got to Saint Quentin we saw a couple of men in white long coats and they were doctors - German doctors. Yep. “Get hold of that man - take him to Saint Quentin” “You - get hold of that man!” Their wounded, you know. So we were thankful to get out of that. They put us in a big building; all the prisoners - the German prisoners - and there was a naval gun at the side of it - ooh - and it was being fired about every quarter of an hour this naval gun. It shook the place, we thought it’d come down!
Anyway the next day we started off a march towards Belgium. Nothing to eat, nothing to drink. When we came to a village the inhabitants of the village would put a bucket of water out for us but Gerry saw we didn’t get any water; the officers on horses backed their horses into this bucketful of water and knocked it over. Of course he perhaps didn’t understand English when we called him all sorts of things like that but we just came to this one spot and there was this tap and there was about 4000 fellas on the march, got from all over the place. We came to a tap and nobody had had any water but instead of saying form up and take a drink each, well they were all round and nobody could get a drink.
So anyway the first sign of human treatment we got on the train in this station: another train pulled in, going towards the line and they found out we were prisoners and we had to get down. So the first thing we had when we stopped - and the Germans had these made specially - we stopped where the ground was level with the station. We were told we had to get out and leave these carriages and whatnot that we were in, in proper order, and we’d get to a kitchen - a soup kitchen - that was on the line permanently you see, for their people and business as well. So we got out and they gave us a barley - a basin: a bit bigger than that, a bit deeper. And it was full of boiled barley - nice and hot. And that was the first we’d had for about three or four days. There was a spoon and a gavel that were meant for that and by the time we got to the other end we should have - we were expected to have finished this barley business - boiled barley, it was good to a starving man, and you give your gavel and your spoon in you see, and that was when you’d been right down and across the trackway and you finished there, put your bowl there for the next fella you see, and they would do the same. Very good order. I think we did that twice.
And then I got to Langensalza first and we saw a lot of tins outside a hut there. Empty salmon tins and all sorts of stuff like that, we said “This is alright here you’ve got a bloody canteen here - champion - we’re well off here” They were empty tins from the parcels sent you see.
(I don’t want this on here - oh never mind)
Well. I never buried a Gerry - and we buried quite a lot - I never buried a Gerry without seeing what he had. So as I’ve told you before I was on leave for ten days before I was captured. I’d get to get back at the night time and in the morning and so I’d leave a lot of German money - paper money - in Jackson Street down here where I lived and I left it all - and one or two good souvenirs as well - and I left it all in a drawer at home all this money - German money. And when I got into this camp I said I could do with that money that I left in a drawer and I told them where to find it, so I said put it in an envelope, put a note in it. So they did that and I was expecting this German money coming any time, you see. Anyway I got a letter and what Gerry had done - instead of sorting me out and asking me how the hell had I come with all this German paper money, they’d put camp money into it.
Well by the time I got this letter I’d gone into two camps Merseburg was the main camp, where we had about a square mile; nothing but huts - Merseburg. From Merseburg you went out to work. If you were a bit wise you’d ask one or two questions of what was on, and they’d say well if you want a good job here you want to get in the garden that’s on the gate (the wife tried to find a photograph but we can’t find it) so you speak to the little German on the gate, probably a fella about 70 years of age you know. He said the thing is you want to get labouring - doing a job in this cook place,and that was a big massive place. You’d see a horse going in there and within half an hour it’d be ready for eating.
So I got in touch with this man on the gate and eventually after about a week or two and I got on the cooking staff - fatigue staff! Not the cooking staff - fatigue staff: fetch this fetch that. We spoke to - they were all French cooks - we spoke to the French cooks and said “any chance of a little bit of - you know - bit of this bit of that?” So the French said “fasten your sleeve here, turn them inside out” it was summer time then. “Carry it on your arm and you can take what pieces you want, but we don’t know.” So I got outside after doing a spell of fatigue and I went to the man on the gate and gave him a bit because he’d nothing to eat - the Germans had no more to eat than we had. So I gave him one or two bits and then we said well he was satisfied - so we said “This [unclear] business?” and he said well rbite make the signers and [unclear] make the coal and the salt and everything. We said we don’t want coal and we don’t want salt. Three or four of us. We want something better than that - he said when anything different comes I’ll tell you. So the old man came and knocked on the hut where we were - we were doing nothing - and he said “hau haufen - zwanzig man (20 men) and we had to go near the gate. We lined up and the fella came in, fine German civilian - just like the Kaiser he was. He says (mumbles) “how do” and all this - you’re coming to work for me. So he was in the building trade. We marched to the station and we got off this station at Mücheln about 5 or 6 miles from Merseburg - and we got off at this
Mücheln station and there were railway lines laid down into the ground where we were building this works and the other side of the railway were the open cast coal mines. Now what they did with this building we never knew you see because the war was over. But the coal that they got from the surface mine used to come overhead - in these travelling trucks on top over into this place to store coal - everything was all right.
One week you were on bricks - you could only stick bricks a week because it tore the skin off your thumb and finger picking bricks up you see, and handing them to the German girls - they were on the job, and then it come along it was Steiner’s last week (Steiner’s bricks yard).
Right, well, cement you see: you used to have to go to the railway and put your back to the opening on the truck and somebody would put a hundredweight of cement on your shoulders and you’d have to take it to the dry sheds. Well you were about a week on that, and then the best job of all was the what they called a [unclear - German word] - a sand hole. Well they had to have sand for building, and it was about, it was outside the works on the bank. And they’d dug in, into this hill and there was about ‘that size’ wagons with wheels on, which the horse pulled up: a horse pulled up about ten or twelve of these up the hill and drew them into the sandhole and we stood there and we filled them you see.
The horse would walk back and the young German in charge he had a pole to act as a brake; and then when they were all full he’d start them off down the hill and there the German was with his pole trying to brake it. And it went into the works and somebody emptied it and the horse pulled them back again. And the beauty of that job was that instead of going for Vesper morning coffee - well [unclear] coffee - you went in the afternoon, you could please yourself if you walked down you see. There was nothing there when you went down - there was nothing there dinnertime, only cabbage water. So it was just about the time when the potatoes were getting nice and big in the field, so we got word from the interpreter that the season before there’d been a little bit of trouble about this farmer losing a lot of his potatoes and you must keep out. He said “I’ve told you, I’ve warned you and I’ll have to tell the Sergeant of the guard that you’ve been warned about pinching this fella’s potatoes” so then another fella came along and said “I wouldn’t stop at getting potatoes if I were you, but I’d watch where I got them from. Now, you don’t want to go to the side of the field and start pulling these up and putting potatoes in your sleeve and chucking the empty stalks away. What you want to do is go about 3 or 4 rows in and lift them up carefully put your hand on them, don’t remove the tops at all but pinch the potatoes and you do that while the two old Germans who’ve walked up with you - Poles I think they were - they were soon asleep in the afternoon for dinnertime. So as soon as they were asleep - right! (They wouldn’t fire I don’t think.) We went into this field and we did just what they told us, we got into half a dozen rows and then put your hand underneath and when you got into camp you’d a feed to last you a week.
See the Italians there, saving every bit of string they could. String that came off the bags of cement and string that came in - they all wanted this string. They joined this string and they made it a close mesh you see, and there was ivy on the house where one of the bosses was living you see, and they had permission to go to this ivy with this net one Sunday morning, and they went with this ivy and they bumped it against this wall where the birds - sparrows I suppose they were - and you should have seen what they got! Ooh... they came back in that - they paid us on the Sunday mornings; seven marks a week. And these Italians would sit round with these big buckets like this, taking the guts out and leaving the feathers on. You’d see them boiling away like that, feathers come to the top and you’d scrub it away and it was really good - it was really good!