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World War 1 One ww1 wwII greatwar great 1914 1918 first battalion regiment
Dvr. John Price Nunn
British Army 2nd East Lancs Royal Field Artillery
from:Manchester
Wednesday 14th March 1917 – journey from England to the battlefront. This story begins with us about to start our journey in France. As a driver I was looking after the horses. These were put 8 in each horsebox. Jimmy Maguire and myself were in charge of one of these horse boxes. The horses themselves were remounts which implied that their training had been hurried and that many of them were still inclined to be fractious. From the minute they were entrained until the train began to move these horses were quarrelsome with each other, attempting to bite each other, stamping their fore and hind feet, and generally in a very unsettled state. Within 10 minutes of starting (and this one started with a jerk which seemed to be commonplace during the rest of the journey and therefore did not help towards peaceful occupancy of the horse boxes). Two horses became loose (it is my belief now that these two had not been adequately tethered – neither Maguire or myself had tethered them in the first instance since the hooks were almost out of reach for statures such as ours). However since the train was moving and we could call on no one to help use, we tried to get them tethered again. With two of the centre position horses being loose there was increased pandemonium on one side of the box. I though I might help if I got in between these horses to steady them whilst Maguire stood on the bale of hay and endeavored to re-tether them – but these horses began to lean on me so heavily I had visions of being squashed, and the more I pushed them apart the more they retaliated; so we did not manage to re-tether them and conditions became worse every minute – particularly so because now the two horses discovered they could attack the hay and the bag of oats and we could not reposition these in any place where they could not be reached. With these two horses freely moving about it became dangerous for us to stay in the box at all and for a period of about 15 minutes we pushed open the sliding doors sufficiently to enable us to get through and we travelled on the floorboard.
All of a sudden the train stopped and immediately I went up the side of the train to inform Corporal Farrer who was with others in an ordinary compartment. He was playing cards with his mates and ignored our appeal. Before I had any further chance to think, let alone call on someone else for help, the train started again and I managed to scramble back, and along with Maguire stayed by the open door for safety. Some time elapsed before the train stopped again and because of conditions inside the box we were getting most anxious. One of my horses had been cut on the forehead by the point of the hook on the ceiling and had a cut about 4 or 5 inches long which was bleeding.
As soon as the train stopped I dropped off and ran as fast as I could to the front end of the train where the officers were. Hurriedly I informed Capt. Lodge of the position and he turned to Leut. MacDonald to go and investigate. MacDonald came down the lines on the opposite side of the train to me – in fact there was no lines on his side and he was walking on the other side of some signal communication wires which were about 18 foot above the ground. In order to be there when he arrived I ran back fast but had not reached the box when the train started again, and I had to scramble on and travel in another box leaving Maguire to hold the fort until another stop. MacDonald who was in riding breeches and pullover only and had no hat, and probably no money, didn't manage to get on the train and it was 4 days before I saw him again! Maguire who also had been off the train when it had started moving again had scrambled on the next box with me.
Thus until the train stopped again which was sometime later, our horses had the box to themselves and as soon as the train stopped Maguire and I went to look at our horses to see what was the position. For a moment we were stunned by the sight we saw. The horses were all jumbled up, some facing forward, some backward, there was a frightful row going on between them. They were rearing up and kicking each other, and the floor of the space we were supposed to occupy was in a terrible mess – most of the hay was loose and strewn about, the contents of the bag of oats lay all over the floor, mixed with horse manure. Our enamel drinking cups and billy cans were flattened and other personal equipment fouled with manure.
Some quick action was essential so I again ran up the lines to inform Capt. Lodge once again. Naturally his first comment was an enquiry as to where Lt MacDonald was and he nearly exploded when I said I did not know! He followed this information by getting out of his compartment on the other side of the train just as MacDonald did and I ran back faster than ever to be there when he arrived and with some apprehension as to whether he would encounter the same fate as MacDonald. However the train stopped long enough this time for him to reach the unfortunate horses and by the time he got there Maguire had braved the infernal confusion and had opened the sliding door on his side of the box. Capt Lodge was not a big man, in fact he was about our own size so that in standing on the track and looking in the box only his face showed on the other side. He gave one look at the bedlam and uttered a curse which sounded like “bloody hell!†and then put us both under arrest, after which he sought out Corp Farrier to go and attempt to sort out the confused state in the box. For the rest of the journey, which lasted 20 hours, we travelled under guard in a compartment of the train. We had no food or drink during the whole journey. We arrived at Thiennes 5pm on Thursday 15th of March 1917.
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