240250 Pte. James Wilde Machine Gun Corps 205th Coy. 5th Battalion from:Bolton, Lancs My father James Wilde was called up April 1918 and joined the Border Regiment but transferred to the Machine Gun Corps.
In the Borders he had done some training at Altcar Range. I was there 39 years later with the REME. After training he went to France. On their first day they walked 11 miles in the sunshine but on the second they did 26 miles because it was raining. He was 29 years old. In the trenches they were nearly always in water and sometimes slept in more than a foot of water. They had very little food and once their daily amount was half a loaf and a jar of jam between 6 of them. They broke the bread up added water and the jam and boiled it up like soup. It was too sweet to eat.
Some time in the middle of Oct. He was working his way through the tranches, he fell back and trying to rise he thought he had sat in water and then knew it was his blood. A slinter shell had exploded near him and removed 4 inches of his femur. In Grantham Hospital he was 11 months on his back with pulleys and sand bags waiting for his bones to grow together.
They needed money to spend so 200 of them lined up for 10s. My father wanted to read what they were signing for but the quarter master would not give them time and later they all found they had signed for a pound. Most of the men also found out that they had all been charged for loosing their uniforms in France. He did not get out of the army until 1920. He had constant medicals on his leg which was as thick as my wrist in his thigh and it would not be any different so he refused to take further medicals so they reduced his pension from 100% to 60%. He was qualified unfit for work. At 65 he applied for the OAP. He was told because he had no stamps on his card he did not qualify. He died in Dec. 1963
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