Joseph Kendrick's memoir of the Somme
Transcription
Transcription history
-
started 60 years ago today.
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out
and disaster' of 60 years ago
"IT WAS A complete washout a disaster. Sure, it was only starting off point for the next operation anyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old, survivor of the terrible events that began around the river Somme 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, witnessed and, at times, took part in. "Of course we realises at the time a little about the responsibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunnelling operations." He himself was listening officer the 1st/175th Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his-they live in a Dublin men's home-did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th corps Cyclist Battalion. He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and to buffer gas poisoning in the line of duty. He remembers the Somme too.
"I don't know whether I was afraid. You couldn't have time then to think or to have nerves. Our nerves was gone, sure, by that time. We were on ordinary push bikes, bikes you'd see in the street, you know. Our jobs were different: sometimes to go ahead and report on the Germans' movements and sometimes to go going behind the lines or then maybe carrying ammunition. We were meant to work together with the cavalry, them in the fields and us on the road. But there wasn't much cavalry at the Somme, I think I can't remember all that much, I was only in my 20s.
Lucky One
"But I do remember that when he fighting started you couldn't be worried about fear or anything. The place was full of machine guns, rockets, hand bombs .and terrible noise. Explosions going off all the time. I Know we went over the top on the three-way move, one on the right, the 36th in the middle and one on the left. How did I survive? I was one of the lucky ones that got through, that's all. My number mustn't have been up."
Henry Blee and his colleagues didn't arrive at the Somme site until about August, just in time for him to have a grandstand seat for the fighting a Thiepval. "There was a spot and we watches the fighting like as is we were on high ground just watching an old-fashioned battle. I saw the whole action at Thiepval.." He had spent his pre-war years as a mining engineer in Waterford, and as a young second lieutenant in the engineering corps he worked on tunnelling: up to and beyond German lines.
"I was a listening officer, working with two bits of equipment. One was like a glorifies stethoscope, made of a big bit of brass and you could place it against the side of tunnels and detect where the Germans were. The other was for all the world like a telephone exchange and if you put its different plugs into different parts of the ground you'd know whether they were to the left, to the right straight ahead."
Melting weather
Both men remember their conditions at the time. Joseph Kendrick, complete with his bicycle toiled in the heat: " The weather was melting, like now it was. And they couldn't get food to us, only our emergency rations. Terrible stuff: a tin of bully beef and a few hard biscuits." Henry Blee reckons his conditions were a bit better than other soldiers.
"We did so much work underground you see that you'd be away from the extreme conditions up above. But there'd be a danger from gas after the explosions and you'd send down a finch or something to see what it was like. If gas was there you'd just have to crawl free and that was that. We used to sink shafts down to the water level and then tunnel under German lines. Often, if we were tunnelling in the same place as they were we'd almost meet and you could try planting mines to explode and block them off."
Blee's war work stood the people of Devon in good stead during the second World War. "After the Somme I was sent home-with dysentery which isn't very heroic is it?-and we began to try out a new tunnelling machine by digging a tunnel right underneath the town of Devon, from the Folkestone Road to the Canterbury Road. It did us for the experiment and in the last war thousands of people used it as a shelter. It's still there today."
Cease fire...
Joseph Kendrick, private, was gasses in 1917 but remembers that he survived and was in France that day the war ended." All I remember is hearing the command to cease fire... and then the cafes and the pubs opened and er got some free beer."
Henry Blee was in Britain in a country pub with an officer friend who got so excited at the news that he threw a glass of neat, free whiskey into a roaring fire and got his hand burned. " Served him well right for wasting whiskey," Blee thinks.
If either of these two men were decorated during the first World War they don't make a play of it. Henry Blee can only remember one brush with officialdom, a sort of honour i reverse: " I was fined €25 at a court-marital for losing a motor bike."
Henry Blee was born on May 1st, 1889; Joseph Kendrick on July 7th, 1893.
-
started 60 years ago today.
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out
and disaster' of 60 years ago
"IT WAS A complete washout a disaster. Sure, it was only starting off point for the next operation anyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old, survivor of the terrible events that began around the river Somme 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, witnessed and, at times, took part in. "Of course we realises at the time a little about the responsibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunnelling operations." He himself was listening officer the 1st/175th Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his-they live in a Dublin men's home-did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th corps Cyclist Battalion. He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and to buffer gas poisoning in the line of duty. He remembers the Somme too.
"I don't know whether I was afraid. You couldn't have time then to think or to have nerves. Our nerves was gone, sure, by that time. We were on ordinary push bikes, bikes you'd see in the street, you know. Our jobs were different: sometimes to go ahead and report on the Germans' movements and sometimes to go going behind the lines or then maybe carrying ammunition. We were meant to work together with the cavalry, them in the fields and us on the road. But there wasn't much cavalry at the Somme, I think I can't remember all that much, I was only in my 20s.
Lucky One
"But I do remember that when he fighting started you couldn't be worried about fear or anything. The place was full of machine guns, rockets, hand bombs .and terrible noise. Explosions going off all the time. I Know we went over the top on the three-way move, one on the right, the 36th in the middle and one on the left. How did I survive? I was one of the lucky ones that got through, that's all. My number mustn't have been up."
Henry Blee and his colleagues didn't arrive at the Somme site until about August, just in time for him to have a grandstand seat for the fighting a Thiepval. "There was a spot and we watches the fighting like as is we were on high ground just watching an old-fashioned battle. I saw the whole action at Thiepval.." He had spent his pre-war years as a mining engineer in Waterford, and as a young second lieutenant in the engineering corps he worked on tunnelling: up to and beyond German lines.
"I was a listening officer, working with two bits of equipment. One was like a glorifies stethoscope, made of a big bit of brass and you could place it against the side of tunnels and detect where the Germans were. The other was for all the world like a telephone exchange and if you put its different plugs into different parts of the ground you'd know whether they were to the left, to the right straight ahead."
Melting weather
Both men remember their conditions at the time. Joseph Kendrick, complete with his bicycle toiled in the heat: " The weather was melting, like now it was. And they couldn't get food to us, only our emergency rations. Terrible stuff: a tin of bully beef and a few hard biscuits." Henry Blee reckons his conditions were a bit better than other soldiers.
"We did so much work underground you see that you'd be away from the extreme conditions up above. But there'd be a danger from gas after the explosions and you'd send down a finch or something to see what it was like. If gas was there you'd just have to crawl free and that was that. We used to sink shafts down to the water level and then tunnel under German lines. Often, if we were tunnelling in the same place as they were we'd almost meet and you could try planting mines to explode and block them off."
Blee's war work stood the people of Devon in good stead during the second World War. "After the Somme I was sent home-with dysentery which isn't very heroic is it?-and we began to try out a new tunnelling machine by digging a tunnel right underneath the town of Devon, from the Folkestone Road to the Canterbury Road. It did us for the experiment and in the last war thousands of people used it as a shelter. It's still there today."
Cease fire...
Joseph Kendrick, private, was gasses in 1917 but remembers that he survived and was in France that day the war ended." All I remember is hearing the command to cease fire... and then the cafes and the pubs opened and er got some free beer."
Henry Blee was in Britain in a country pub with an officer friend who got so excited at the news that he threw a glass of neat, free whiskey into a roaring fire and got his hand burned. " Served him well right for wasting whiskey," Blee thinks.
If either of these two men were decorated during the first World War they don't make a play of it. Henry Blee can only remember one brush with officialdom, a sort of honour i reverse: " I was fined
-
started 60 years ago today.
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out People of Devon in good stead
and disaster' of 60 years ago during the second World War.
"After the Somme I was sent
home-with dysentery which isn't
very heroic is it?-and we began
to try out a new tunnelling machine by digging a tunnel right underneath the town of Devon, from the Folkestone Road to the Canterbury Road. It did us for the experiment and in the last war thousands of people used it as a shelter. It's still there today."
"IT WAS A complete washout a disaster. Sure, it was only starting off point for the next operation anyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old, survivor of the terrible events that began around the river Somme 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, witnessed and, at times, took part in. "Of course we realises at the time a little about the responsibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunnelling operations." He himself was listening officer the 1st/175th Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his-they live in a Dublin men's home-did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th corps Cyclist Battalion. He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and to buffer gas poisoning in the line of duty. He remembers the Somme too.
"I don't know whether I was afraid. You couldn't have time then to think or to have nerves. Our nerves was gone, sure, by that time. We were on ordinary push bikes, bikes you'd see in the street, you know. Our jobs were different: sometimes to go ahead and report on the Germans' movements and sometimes to go going behind the lines or then maybe carrying ammunition. We were meant to work together with the cavalry, them in the fields and us on the road. But there wasn't much cavalry at the Somme, I think I can't remember all that much, I was only in my 20s.
Lucky One
"But I do remember that when he fighting started you couldn't be worried about fear or anything. The place was full of machine guns, rockets, hand bombs .and terrible noise. Explosions going off all the time. I Know we went over the top on the three-way move, one on the right, the 36th in the middle and one on the left. How did I survive? I was one of the lucky ones that got through, that's all. My number mustn't have been up."
Henry Blee and his colleagues didn't arrive at the Somme site until about August, just in time for him to have a grandstand seat for the fighting a Thiepval. "There was a spot and we watches the fighting like as is we were on high ground just watching an old-fashioned battle. I saw the whole action at Thiepval.." He had spent his pre-war years as a mining engineer in Waterford, and as a young second lieutenant in the engineering corps he worked on tunnelling: up to and beyond German lines.
"I was a listening officer, working with two bits of equipment. One was like a glorifies stethoscope, made of a big bit of brass and you could place it against the side of tunnels and detect where the Germans were. The other was for all the world like a telephone exchange and if you put its different plugs into different parts of the ground you'd know whether they were to the left, to the right straight ahead."
Melting weather
Both men remember their conditions at the time. Joseph Kendrick, complete with his bicycle toiled in the heat: " The weather was melting, like now it was. And they couldn't get food to us, only our emergency rations. Terrible stuff: a tin of bully beef and a few hard biscuits." Henry Blee reckons his conditions were a bit better than other soldiers.
"We did so much work underground you see that you'd be away from the extreme conditions up above. But there'd be a danger from gas after the explosions and you'd send down a finch or something to see what it was like. If gas was there you'd just have to crawl free and that was that. We used to sink shafts down to the water level and then tunnel under German lines. Often, if we were tunnelling in the same place as they were we'd almost meet and you could try planting mines to explode and block them off."
Blee's war work
-
started 60 years ago today.
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out People of Devon in good stead
and disaster' of 60 years ago during the second World War.
"After the Somme I was sent
home-with dysentery which isn't
very heroic is it?-and we began
to try out a new tunnelling machine by digging a tunnel right underneath the town of Devon, from the Folkestone Road to the Canterbury Road. It did us for the experiment and in the last war thousands of people used it as a shelter. It's still there today."
"IT WAS A complete washout a disaster. Sure, it was only starting off point for the next operation anyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old, survivor of the terrible events that began around the river Somme 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, witnessed and, at times, took part in. "Of course we realises at the time a little about the responsibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunnelling operations." He himself was listening officer the 1st/175th Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his-they live in a Dublin men's home-did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th corps Cyclist Battalion. He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and to buffer gas poisoning in the line of duty. He remembers the Somme too.
"I don't know whether I was afraid. You couldn't have time then to think or to have nerves. Our nerves was gone, sure, by that time. We were on ordinary push bikes, bikes you'd see in the street, you know. Our jobs were different: sometimes to go ahead and report on the Germans' movements and sometimes to go going behind the lines or then maybe carrying ammunition. We were meant to work together with the cavalry, them in the fields and us on the road. But there wasn't much cavalry at the Somme, I think I can't remember all that much, I was only in my 20s.
Lucky One
"But I do remember that when he fighting started you couldn't be worried about fear or anything. The place was full of machine guns, rockets, hand bombs .and terrible noise. Explosions going off all the time. I Know we went over the top on the three-way move, one on the right, the 36th in the middle and one on the left. How did I survive? I was one of the lucky ones that got through, that's all. My number mustn't have been up."
Henry Blee and his colleagues didn't arrive at the Somme site until about August, just in time for him to have a grandstand seat for the fighting a Thiepval. "There was a spot and we watches the fighting like as is we were on high ground just watching an old-fashioned battle. I saw the whole action at Thiepval.." He had spent his pre-war years as a mining engineer in Waterford, and as a young second lieutenant in the engineering corps he worked on tunnelling: up to and beyond German lines.
-
started 60 years ago today.
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out People of Devon in good stead
and disaster' of 60 years ago during the second World War.
"After the Somme I was sent
home-with dysentery which isn't
very heroic is it?-and we began
to try out a new tunnelling machine by digging a tunnel right underneath the town of Devon, from the Folkestone Road to the Canterbury Road. It did us for the experiment and in the last war thousands of people used it as a shelter. It's still there today."
"IT WAS A complete washout a disaster. Sure, it was only starting off point for the next operation anyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old, survivor of the terrible events that began around the river Somme 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, witnessed and, at times, took part in. "Of course we realises at the time a little about the responsibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunnelling operations." He himself was listening officer the 1st/175th Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his work in the first World War was underground.
A friend of his-they live in a Dublin men's home-did his work above ground at the Somme, on a bicycle. Joseph Kendrick, from Taghmon in Wexford, was a member of the 36th Division cyclists, attached officially to the 10th corps Cyclist Battalion. He was later to take part in the fighting around Thiepval hill and to buffer gas poisoning in the line of duty. He remembers the Somme too.
"I don't know whether I was afraid. You couldn't have time then to think or to have nerves. Our nerves was gone, sure, by that time. We were on ordinary push bikes, bikes you'd see in the street, you know. Our jobs were different: sometimes to go ahead and report on the Germans' movements and sometimes to go going behind the lines or then maybe carrying ammunition. We were meant to work together with the cavalry, them in the fields and us on the road. But there wasn't much cavalry at the Somme, I think I can't remember all that much, I was only in my 20s.
Lucky One
"But I do remember that when he fighting started you couldn't be worried about fear or anything. The place was full of machine guns, rockets, hand bombs .and terrible noise. Explosions going off all the time. I Know we went over the top on the three-way move, one on the
-
started 60 years ago today.
Irish survivors recall 'wash-out People of Devon in good stead
and disaster' of 60 years ago during the second World War.
"After the Somme I was sent
home-with dysentery which isn't
very heroic is it?-and we began
to try out a new tunnelling machine by digging a tunnel right underneath the town of Devon, from the Folkestone Road to the Canterbury Road. It did us for the experiment and in the last war thousands of people used it as a shelter. It's still there today."
"IT WAS A complete washout a disaster. Sure, it was only starting off point for the next operation anyway."
Henry Blee, 87 years old, survivor of the terrible events that began around the river Somme 60 years ago today, now lives in Dublin and has no illusions about the battle he lived through, witnessed and, at times, took part in. "Of course we realises at the time a little about the responsibility that was on us all. But the idea of a direct attack was a terrible risk. When it failed, and it failed totally, we had to resort to tunnelling operations." He himself was listening officer the 1st/175th Tunnelling Co., Royal Engineers. Much of his
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Save description- 49.9713068||2.4573216||
River Somme
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Document location River Somme
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- Peter Kendrick
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