This account is primarily intended to set out as many details as I can find of my grandfather's military service during the time of The Great War, and his very brief time at the war itself.

But first, I need to set out enough background to be able to understand the man who was my grandfather.

His story is not one of remarkable deeds, though I would submit it is one of remarkable courage, fed by a devotion to duty to country and family. It is perhaps made the more remarkable now because such deeply held attitudes seem to be something of the past and not quite so widely held today. But Henry's ideas of duty and obedience were the norm a hundred years ago, held by most folk in this country who counted themselves both christian folk as well as patriots.

It is that time lapse, the century since the momentous events that saw the end of that Great War, that has prompted the final bits of research that have enabled this account to be written up more fully than it would otherwise have been. I confess, that without the internet and online records, military forums and being able to instantly tap into knowledgeable folk greater than I, this would have been a very sparse story indeed. I also admit to some extraordinary pieces of luck in completing this, in discovering a battalion war diary that had been online for some years, and accessible via Ancestry - which I pay for! - I just hadn't realised it was there and thought such was only available via the NRO at Kew.

Even then, it was not straightforward, as Ancestry have mis-filed one regiment's diaries with another, and it was only a stranger's chance comment in a family history forum that gave me the clue .. indeed, gave me the link .. to sort it all out. I'm grateful to that unknown person.

As a young man, I knew some of this story, mostly from my mother, Henry's youngest daughter, and a little from my grandfather himself. My memories of him are from around 1954, aged about 4, which are some of my very earliest and when grandad himself would have just turned 60. The first I knew of him personally was when he was of an age only a little less than I am now. In other words, he was already an old man, and a very worn out old man at that. I then knew him until his death, aged 79, shortly after my marriage, so in all, for something just a little less than 20 years.

I feel that the best way to judge someone from history is to understand how he was thought of by those who knew him best, friends, neighbours and family. Of the former, I have very little knowledge, other than I know he was a much respected man in his district, not least because of his clock and watch-mending skills. More of that later.

The only other references I have are the views and stories told by those closest to him, his four daughters - that is my mum, and my aunts that were her three older sisters. To say that they all, without exception, loved him 'to bits' using modern parlance, is still something of an understatement.

That alone should say it all. Any death of a father is hard, we all come to that eventually. I recall the day I got the news, at work as it happened, that grandad had died. As upset as I was, I still failed to grasp at the time how hard it had hit other members of the family.

Older aunties and uncles always appeared very stoic and in control back then, and such was the case with mine. But I realise now that underneath all that upper lip grit, there was deep, deep grief. He was 79, not in the best of health, and I dare say they could see the end was approaching, to be ready for it. No matter. When it happens, to anyone, it always hits hard like a body blow.

But it is suffice to say that my mum, bless her, if seemingly in some sort of control at the time, during that awful week of preparing his funeral and then the day itself, literally went to bits in the months and years after. As indeed, so would I, in those months after I lost her. That Henry Holt, known colloquially throughout the family (and confusingly to me) as Harry, was loved and cherished is beyond question now. As of course, the vast majority of parents are when they pass on. He was of his time, as was his family, in deed, thoughts and opinions, and in that regard, Henry - or Harry as I shall now call him, for that is what mum used to call him in fun - was no more unusual than the next man.

On the question of his nickname, mum often called him Harry, and I do recall that in the 50s they had a budgie, which could talk and immitate other family members. If someone walked into the room, it would chirp out, "Where's Harry?" just like a parrot. It also appeared to say, "Here's Harry" whenever Harry was around. I only knew neighbours, when they came in as they often did, to call him Harry. Great fun.

This lovely man, his working life, and brief period as a soldier, a proud soldier it has to be said, was also nothing out of the ordinary. It is somehow his 'ordinariness' that compels me to set out to show in this narrative how this miner, soldier, father, was typical of his time, just one of tens of thousands of folks in his town and county, amongst millions in the nation, who witnessed first hand, or took part, in some of the greatest and most terrible events in our history. And having witnessed them, very rarely ever wanted to speak or be reminded of them again.

Henry's 'part' as a soldier, in military events, were very small indeed, very small beer compared to what a good many of his fellow citizens and neighbours experienced. By definition, his part as a miner, as a working man in that profession during the years he did that job, was of a great deal more consequence to him, particularly in regard to his physical health.

It is a strange anomaly of history, that because of the internet and today's great interest in the military events of a century ago, I now know more about his short time as a soldier - and his very brief time 'at war' - than I know of his time 'down pit' doing the job that ultimately wrecked that physical health. That in addition by the way, to the decline in his mental health in the years following that First War, and before the onset of the Second. Brought about almost certainly, in my mother's considered opinion, by having lived through that tumultuous and deadly time, and briefly witnessed the horrors of what man could do to man, plus there was some degree of guilt complex at being a survivor and having done so very little.

And also because he knew, that in the first instance, before that terrible war ever started, he had wanted to be a soldier, and therefore fire a weapon - and of course by definition, kill people.

Harry's story is in many ways a tragic one of a boy who developed a common boyhood urge, to be a soldier, who yearned to serve and to fight, and who keenly felt the frustrations and anger as officialdom kept him for so long from his chosen path and wishes. Then, as a young man, older, married and a lot wiser, to find that his boyhood yearnings would not be realised in anything like the fashion of the romantic, swash-buckling heroics of the stories beloved of most young boys his time, but who would ultimately be thrown into the true horrors and experiences that 'modern' soldiering now entailed.

It must have been some revelation, quite a come-down, and very difficult to get to grips with, because we all know what happened next, both then and what happened after. One hundred years of history is laid out behind us, in countless books, films, narratives, new reports and primitive cinema sequences, to say nothing of what must be millions of very graphic photographs and images of truly appalling times, in peace and war. We can write, and view, from a distance of time that enables most serious students of the Great War today to know more about it, more of the details, than most of those that actually took part.

I should also add here, in the interests of clarity, this long account is also interspersed with some history of the Great War, not too detailed, but enought to put into context what it meant to Harry, and his family. Especially towards the very end, it is pertinant to understand how the war so very nearly was lost, turning in our favour at a most crucial moment, but to explain how it affects Harry and his story.

New stories and history are being discovered and written up all the time, and in its humble way, Henry Holt's is but one more such story in a cast of millions. Most stories never get fully told, unless first-hand accounts in film and recordings, diaries and biographies play their part in the telling. The vast majority of stories remain unwritten.

Unremarkable, so far untold, but important to his family because we want to know and undertand him, albeit belatedly, and important as just one more story in his nation's history, this as best as I can make out, is Harry's story.

What makes a boy, a young lad, want to 'go for a soldier', as songs of the day often put it. To understand Harry's possible reasons, for it's all speculation and no one can now be entirely sure, we need to understand his time.

He was born a Victorian, in 1893, but grew up an Edwardian. He would have been aged 8 in 1901 at the time of the old queen's death and the ushering in of a complete new age, as well as a new century. What was going on during those formative years? The immediate and obvious answer is, The Boer War, taking in those years from when Harry was about 6 to when he was 9 or 10. And before the Boer War, stories told by old timers of the times of General Gordon, the siege of Khartoum, and even further back, the Indian Mutiny, were in abundance for any lad that wanted to listen.

There were all sorts of influences on a boy; other boys, old soldiers related to or known to the family, and not least a boy's own parents. It was not common for a mother to actively encourage soldiering in any lad, though it has to be said that when that choice was made, a mother would often be as proud of her son as any father. I've no idea whether Harry's father, my great-grandfather Charles Holt, had some or any influence on his son in either direction. But we can make a pretty shrewd guess as to what Harry's choices were for future employment, or for any lad in that district at that time.

To sum up, there were four choices. The easiest and most obvious, and most commonly taken too, was to be a miner, as was his father. There were almost a dozen mines within the immediate Coalville and Whitwick areas, employing thousands of men. If that was what a boy really wanted, and many did, he could go 'down pit', like his dad.

I haven't gone deep enough in Charles' story to know whether he served in the military or not, but we can be sure that once his son was aged about 10, with the end of schooling getting ever closer, he would have impressed upon his son both the benefits and drawbacks of working underground. Harry would also have seen and heard some of these for himself, and heard the conversations and been aware of the week-to-week financial struggles of life down the pit. He would also have been aware that boys, and girls, as young as he was then, had been forced to work underground within living memory, the days of wider use of child labour in all industries not all that long passed. As to the dangers, they were ever present in local overheard conversations, not least the recent Whitwick pit disaster in 1898, a week or two before Harry's 5th birthday. I feel there would be no escaping local chat, looks in the street, the general news and air of grief and despondancy, even for a 5 year-old. Harry would have known well the dangers of working underground from a very early age.

To avoid that, there were perhaps three other obvious choices. First of which was to get a job on the land, a local farm, and be a farmhand, perhaps with a view to promotion to a cowhand, pighand or even ploughman. Indeed, his older brother had done just that at first, but he still went down the pit when old enough. Poor renumeration as it was for the danger and the shifts, it was still where the money was.

Another local choice would be to get a job in one of the many hosiery, knitwear and sock factories abounding in Coalville at the time. There were also some shoe factories, in the main for ladies shoes, but most of the work in all those places was filled by women. Becoming a mechanic and maintaining the increasingly complicated factory machinery would be the best a boy could hope for in that area, one that needed a decidedly mechanical turn of mind.

A further choice would be to move - to the big town. In Harry's case, he had a choice of three or four almost equi-distant, all booming industrial towns of their day. Both Coventry and Derby were near enough, and Loughborough had a growing bell foundry and electrical industries. On the question of factories of all sorts, all were heated by steam, ie, coal, and all had boilers that required boilermen, and stokers to feed those boilers. But the most obvious choice was the county town, just 12 miles away, Leicester. And many did make that choice. That is exactly how my paternal family came to leave that same area and move to that town around about that same time.

The final choice, invidious to a boy's mother, was to go for a soldier, or even worse, become a Jack Tar and go to sea. To join 'the forces', albeit there were only two to choose from. But to a father, already a miner and very conversant with the dangers therein, soldiering was not such a bad choice. At least it was out in the open and under the sun, and one could argue that any dangers were of equal balance, a simple choice: to be killed underground by being gassed or a rockfall, or killed above ground by a bullet or bayonet. A no brainer, we'd say.



TO BE A SOLDIER:

So it was that, in 1911 and as soon as he was 18 and eligible to serve, Harry joined a local unit of the Territorial Forces. What later became the Territorial Army, our TA of late memory, the Territorial Forces were Britain's army reserve, trained for both local defence as well as with a view to any necessary foreign service. Most county regiments had a TF component, one battalion which was composed of part-time soldiers who lived at home, issued with hand-me-down and obsolete weapons and kit, and still had ordinary civilian paid employment.

In Harry's case, that employment would be at the mine. He would have the best of both worlds, be a miner for as long as he could stand it, whilst also being a part-time soldier and retain the option of joining the colours full time. The 1911 census shows him employed as a 'pony driver - underground', and living at home in Highfield Street. He worked at South Leicester Pit, which was in fact at Ellistown and just south of Coalville. His elder brother, Bill, was listed as an 'ag lab' - ie, working on the land, on a farm. Being in the TF brought other benefits; free holidays. Summer camps, military exercises and route marches may not be regarded as a free holiday now, a miner working underground - who didn't earn enough to afford going away for annual holidays - 'going on camp' was literally a breath of fresh air, plus he went to places he would never have got to otherwise. And it carried some 'street cred' for any lad back in the day.

We know nothing more until 1914, in the spring of that year when he married Violetta Manderfield, a lass from over Shepshed way, at the little 'tin tabernacle' further down Highfield Street. Where and how they met, as is often the case with most of our grandparents, we have no idea. Shepshed is over 'the forest', halfway over to Loughborough and outside of the immediate mining areas of Coalville and Whitwick. Indeed, those two towns are at the northern end of the coalfield which stretched mostly southwards as far as Bagworth and Desford. There were certainly plenty of pits that Harry could have found work in, perhaps the nearest not more than a couple of miles away over at Snibston, a little way down Ashby Road in Coalville itself.

For three years, now Private Holt, 4872, trained in soldiering on occasional weekends, plus an annual fortnight compulsory camp somewhere well away from home, with the 5th Battalion of the Leicestershire Regiment, a Territorial Forces reserve battalion.

We can assume he learnt how to wear his uniform, march and drill, do basic ceremonials, as well as learn the rules of handling rifles and go some way to being as good a marksman as his eyesight and nerves would allow.

To that end, given his later trade as a Lewis gunner, we also have to assume there was nothing wrong with his eyes nor marksmanship. His record shows that, shortly after the start of his service in the following year, he attended the summer training camp at Aberystwyth. The date curiously enough, 4 Aug 1912, exactly two years to the day before England and her history was to change forever.

Come that fateful day, which we all know the date off by heart, as well as a good many of the events on that day both in London and around a feverish nation, we also know that the actual declaration of war was late that night, at 11pm. It would be the next day that national headlines would proclaim on hundreds of placards in one fateful word, "WAR". The nation became animated almost as one, and thousands of young men, some much too young, and some older ones too, flocked to barracks and recruiting centres in every town and city to sign on into the king's service.

As did Harry, for his service record shows him 'attesting' into the Leicestershire Regiment on 5 August 1914. He must surely have been in the mass of men flocking to the colours and almost crushed in the rush. The nation's anger as well as disbelief at German affrontery to attack a neutral country was heightened as news quickly came in of most definite atrocities, the cruel killing of women and children.

Of course, we know now that the attack on Belgium was merely a means to an end; Belgium was not the real target, which was namely, to attack and invade the French.

But no matter, those early news reports, plastered on newstands and carried swiftly by rail to the ends of the country the same day, animated folk to almost hysterical proportions. We have to remember, there was no radio news, a national broadcasting service still a long way from being a reality.  The BBC itself was not formed until 1922.

Harry, and his friends, were caught up in all that. By now, he was aged 20 and newly married. What Violetta thought of his rush to go to war, we don't know, but she had married a soldier, and we must assume she was proud of him even if not fully amenable to the prospect of extended periods of separation. Also, they had now moved into a home of their own; well, a rented home of their own.

Just up the street from where he had lived with his parents, but back towards Coalville, a new terrace of cottages had been built in 1904, called 'Oak Grove Cottages'. Only 10 years old, they were in terraces of eight, divided by one covered entry right in the middle. Harry and Violetta now took possession of the first house on the left hand side of the entry.

Each house had a water supply - a pump in the kitchen - mounted on a low-level enamelled sink, though as it happened, there was a communal well at the back also. Later, when no longer required and more of a danger than an asset, grandad would cover that well and build his shed over it. There was also an outside loo, one to each house, something else of a luxury at the time. It was a modern 'flush' loo by the time I knew it, though I suspect it was a lot more basic than that when those cottages were first built.

The kitchen had a little extension, a cold pantry, with a tiny window paned, not with glass, but a fine wire mesh. The place was like a fridge in winter, before fridges were invented, but still cool in summer - the whole point of it really. In the corner of the kitchen itself opposite the sink, a raised brick plinth across the corner, underneath which a fire could be lit which served to heat up a copper boiler standing above.

That was in 1914, and believe it or not, that is much how the arrangement was in 1955 from which my earliest memories stem. It was where my mum and her three sisters were born and grew up, and both my grandma and grandad died. A real family home, with the usual mix of both happy - and tragic - memories.

Being new, and Highfield Street not having been built up as continuous housing down both sides, there were as yet no house numbers. The postman knew everyone, and each house had a name, or was part of a row that had a name. So it was with Oak Grove Cottages, and being new and with no number, it led to some confusion with the military authorities about his address later. On his records, this is clearly given, and we that know the area knew what it meant.  Later, it would be allocated a number ... 208.
 
But that confusion, I believe, may nearly have got him arrested later when his final call-up came, as his official letter calling him for a medical in London was addressed to 'Oak Street', and there being no such street in Coalville, the papers were returned to the War Office. On which point, minor panic set in with officialdom, with letters too and fro to trace him that have actually been preserved amongst his records. The end result was he had much less notice to 'mobilise' than he should have. But that came later. It's a wonder he didn't find Redcaps come looking for him.


"IT'S WAR" ~ "BRITAIN AT WAR" ~ "FLEET READY"

The German attack on Belgium, abhorrent as it was, had not exactly come out of the blue. This war had been brewing, and looming larger for some time, some years in fact, and there had been plenty of time to prepare. Local history tells us that on that first full day of the war, 5th August, there had already been a huge tented encampment of the Leicestershire Regiment at Whitwick, in the fields below the woods on Loughborough Road.

It was to here that the youth, and not so youth, of Coalville and Whitwick headed to enlist in the king's service, and here too went Harry and his friends. As an existing member of the regimental reserves, he may well have not quite expected the knock-back he gained that very day, purely on account of his job.

For his offer to serve, at least in the short term, was refused, and he was duly sent back to his work. His attestation sheet shows his original dates of joining the TF, in 1911, and then shows his further attestation to join the regular army as on the 5th August 1914. In effect, he was told, 'thank you, but not now son, we need you at home digging coal'. And that would have been a truth he could not argue with, and no doubt quite a few other young local colliers had the same result. Also, being a newly married man may have had something to do with it. I think Violetta may have been much relieved when he returned home, chastened, a bit put out by rejection, but safe . . . for now.

There were lots of reserved occupations, mostly in essential industries and services, and once a man was designated as being in such a job, it was almost impossible to re-designate that job and escape its clutches. For men that didn't want to fight, or didn't have the required degree of belligerance and who were just not up to soldiering, a reserved occupation was verily a godsend.

For those that were keen, did want to go and fight and serve, it was nothing more than a trap. Coal mining was one such trap. In the early days of trench warfare, and into 1916, digging under an enemy's trenches became a popular means of attack, by tunnelling and laying huge explosive charges to blow whole sections of enemy trenches to kingdom come. To this end, former miners, and a few brought from the English and Welsh coalfields, were recruited into the Royal Engineers for that very purpose.  But that came much later.

For now, for Harry, his consolation was that it was a given fact that this war would be over by Christmas. The fact was plastered all over the press.  Everyone believed it.

Of course, we know now that the war was not over by Christmas, or the next Christmas nor the one after that. 1915 came and went, and one defeat or setback followed another. But Harry had to keep at his underground work.

By early 1916, the war was going very badly and had become the very static and bogged down trench warfare we now know so much about. For Harry, nothing much had changed, other than he was now a father, his first daughter Gladys being born at the end of the previous October, in 1915. In some ways, his chances of breaking his mining bonds and getting away to the war were now just ever so slightly a little more remote, though the numbers of young married men with a child or two being taken into the army and becoming casualty figures were now becoming rather alarming. By late 1916, increasing shortages of troops, caused by ever increasing casualty lists, saw laws passed to press men into the nation's service; conscription had come in. The war effort was not yet desperate enough to warrant calling up reserved occupations in order to defeat the Germans.


CHANGING TIMES:

April of 1916 would bring a surprise Harry hadn't bargained for. He was 'transferred' out of the Leicesters, to the Royal Defence Corps, a sort of WW1 version of the Home Guard. He was now in the 156 Protection Company, RDC, with its HQ at Donington Hall, up near the county boundary west of Kegworth.

I think this transfer would have come as something of a shock. To be debadged from your home county regiment, into something seemingly a lot more mundane and commonplace, is no small thing. He had spent over 4 years learning about comradeship and loyalty, and building up a considerable amount of regimental pride. All that was seemingly set aside, and despite his soldierly yearnings, he was pushed aside and downgraded to local militia.

The fact that I can say that, with some degree of certainty, is because of 'the picture', the framed picture of himself that hung over the sideboard from roughly this time until his death in 1972. It is I believe a pencil drawing, done at some expense, and framed at even more expense. This image online does not do it justice, for it is huge, like a very large portrait mirror that would hang over a fireplace, and does not here show the large, partially gilded frame. The image of Harry in the oval, in his khaki complete with peaked cap, is surrounded at the four corners by unmistakable images of empire. Coloured drawings of HM The King, Lord Kitchener, plus a Field Marshall (probably Sir John French) and an Admiral, (probably Admiral Jellico) all bedecked in the crossed flags of the Union Flag and the Royal Standard. Was this Patriotic, or what? I have that picture now, a treasured possession, hence this photo of it.

I believe the picture was done not so long after joining the TF. His cap badge is unmistakable as that of the Leicesters, the 'Tigers' as they're colloquially known. The pride in regiment, and himself, oozes down on the viewer, and so it did in that little back room in Highfield Street. But in a way, having that picture done as it was, at that time, whoever commissioned or paid for it, was that a little bit of his undoing later. But that is some way into the future.


Harry's transfer to the RDC came right at the end of April, and the next entry underneath that is dated 1 Oct 1916. In more faded but still readable ink, it states, "Remaining in Class 'W' TF Reserves as long as is necessary to retrain him in civil employment." So no sign of any call 'to the colours' as yet then.

I'm pretty sure Harry never saw that, for a man would never get to see his own record, written up from all sorts of forms and despatches from his own battalion headquarters and sent up to London to be entered onto his own growing folder of sheets and forms.

That was one of the many jobs of every battalion adjutant and his office, with his little army of clerks, writing and typing up records and sending them on to the War Office to be kept in perpetuity. In the civil world of industry today, that part of the adjutant's office would be called 'Human Resources'.

So, despite the disasters of 1916, the setbacks and losses of The Somme, he was still not to be called. By that time, the numbers of men from all districts of all towns and cities lost, listed as killed or missing, were horrendous. Typed up lists were sent almost daily to individual towns to be posted on town hall or civic hall notice boards, where after every major battle, crowds would push and shove to get close enough to discover who were the latest neighbours and friends that had lost boys at the front. Widows and bereaved parents would have already had the dreaded, black-edged telegram telling of their worst possible news.

Harry, out and about in Coalville when not working, as would Violetta when out shopping, would be very aware of these lists and felt those losses as keenly as anyone else. He would have been familiar with the Coalville Times, their local rag, as well as the Leicester Mercury, and their endless lists of the even greater losses being suffered in that city and county wide.

He would also have been aware of the civic pressures on men to sign up and serve, and undoubtedly he would have had a little badge to wear on his jacket collar to signify that he had signed up, and shown willing, and therefore most definitely would not be deserving of the dreaded white feather.  Because of his TF service, coming and going from parades in uniform, he would have been well known as a keen soldier, but many of those neighbours were also mining families.  I doubt he was ever at risk of being deemed worthy of a white feather.

So it was locally, in a mining town, that so many men who were of an age and fitnest to serve were being held back that he would have been nothing unusual. A casual observer in Coalville market place on a typical nice Saturday in 1916 may have been forgiven for doubting that there 'was a war on' at all, the place would have been full of miners old and young.

For Harry, the next thing we see in his documents are the little typed letters and forms concerned with recalling him from Class 'W' reserve and the mix-up over his address. We entirely miss out 1917, during which of course, the war and its figures simply go from bad to worse, in every aspect, on land and at sea. And by now, in the air too. The war was more bogged down than ever, the front line hardly ever moved and when it did it was at great cost in lives whether going forward or back.

So I do have some suspicion now whether Harry was quite as keen on soldiering by Christmas of 1917 as he had formerly been as a teenager and then newly married man. He must surely have been in a cleft stick, between a rock and a hard place. Torn between duty to his country, to his regiment, and duty to his wife and daughter, he would have reflected on yet another major impending change in his circumstances, of yet another baby.

Violetta would be in the end stages of her second pregnancy, to Edna May, born at the end of January in the new year of 1918, and her birth given some pause for thought. Harry may well have come to the view that whatever happened now, however badly the war went, he would be going nowhere. But events were conspiring against him, or for him, depending on what view we take of his overall feelings at the time. We can only surmise.

1918 came in, with a country totally despondant about the course and state of the war. Whilst defeat was still largely unthinkable to many, few seemed to think that it was a winnable war either. A growing number had come round to the view that the best we could hope for was a truce, some sort of unpalatable settlement that would at least halt the killing. Rationing had come in the previous year, we'd had conscription since the year before that, and ever more young men were called to the colours as they came of age to serve, many of whose names would shortly appear on those casualty lists. Through it all, Harry continued mining.


MOBILISATION :

Now we arrive at some very significant dates, the first of which is 21st March 1918. This is the day of the first of three serious 'big pushes' by the Germans on the Western Front. Serious enough to take more territory back from the Allies in one go than ever before, some 12 miles in places, as well as negate all the gains in territory, and losses in men, that had happened to date.

They did eventually get to within 70 miles of Paris, close enough to bring up several gigantic artillery pieces on a railway that could throw a huge shell 80 miles. Indeed, when Paris was shelled for a time, for several weeks, it seemed as if we may well lose the war after all. Such views were only reinforced by the fact that the same advances further north brought the German army perilously close to the Channel ports, of Dunkirk and Calais. It very nearly became a 'rehearsal' for the very sort of advance that would famously take place in those quarters some 21 years later.

As is the nature of these things, all these advances were very costly in lives, our lives as well as German, and that day was the start of a succession of events that made the whole situation be couched in terms as per Wellington at Waterloo - "it was a damned close run thing."

By the end of that week of the first push, matters were so serious the government realised that a great number of reinforcements were going to be needed in France if we were even going to hold the Germans from further advances, let alone turn the tables and win ground back. The expected American divisions were still being formed and training, and their help was some way off still. Urgent action was required.

To that end, frantic orders went out to battalions in other theatres, such as Salonika where we were fighting the Bulgars, dubious allies of the Germans. In Egypt and Palestine, whole battalions engaged in fighting the Turks, the other main German ally, quickly embarked for the south of France to be rushed by train across France and up to the front.

In England, it was deemed so serious that the call went out to call up to the colours all 'W' class reserves, even those men previously thought to be indispensable in their civilian work but who would now be most certainly required to fill dead mens' shoes and plug some very serious gaps in the line. First, Canadian regiments had come to the front in 1917, and now American battalions were appearing in ever greater numbers, but not trained up enough or yet of any use to thwart any further German advances. The hope had been that more American divisions could be put into the line before the Germans made a serious 'spring push'. The hope was not fulfilled.

Everyone at home knew the Americans were coming, and no doubt last-line reserves like Harry may have started to take some comfort that they may not be required at the front after all. But the Germans were also well aware that time was running out for them, and they knew they had to make their move before those divisions could arrive, or lose the war.

The enemy attack that had started on the 21st had, a week later on the 30th, been sufficiently consolidated to worry the government enough to take such drastic action. History books tell us now that the 30th was the day on which the decision was made in Whitehall, to call up those last reserves as well as bring any troops that could be spared back from various parts of the empire and other theatres of war. We really were in dire straights this time.


THE NORTHAMPTONSHIRES? NEVER !!

I never thought I'd see a document that so clearly ties in with the dramatic events of that time, but there is one in Harry's records. Referring to the date, 30 March, and the official line and numerical reference of his original mobilisation order that went out along with thousands of others, it is also later stamped 12 April, presumably when it was sent out again following the address mix-up.

The Royal Mail was nothing short of excellent in those days. Letters bearing OHMS were always delivered the very next day after posting. Assuming he received it on the 13th, Harry seems to have had barely 6 days to inform his boss and get his kit together. Also to get his train ticket, paid for with the travel warrant enclosed, and say his goodbyes. He was not going to France, not yet, he had some serious training to do first. But his instructions also contained bad news, for he was going to be transferred into another regiment. After all his time with the Leicesters, and then the Royal Defence Corps, he was now to transfer to the Northamptonshire Regiment to do his fighting, and not be with his mates and comrades at all. It was akin to asking a man in a Yorkshire regiment to go to Lancaster and join the Lancashires. The ignominy of it all.

So this really is his call to arms, finally, his 'papers' had arrived, instructing him to report to regimental battalion headquarters, in Northampton, for a medical in less than a week's time, on 19 April. This was the letter that had previously gone astray by being sent to a non-existant address, and the authorities had finally caught up with him.

Whatever his thoughts were, we've no idea. Having begun to think he may yet be spared, he was now faced with the only option open to him, to go and do his duty. It was what he had once wanted, what he had trained to do. And now he was needed, so badly needed, and it was his turn to go, to leave his wife and two daughters, of 2½ years and new born, and to fight as he had been trained to do. As he prepared himself and girded his loins to whatever horrors were to come, the news from France simply got worse and worse.

We have to assume that, medical over, he did go home for a time, though his papers don't indicate that. The next date we have is 14 May 1918, the date of his official transfer into the Northants, and the 3rd (Reserve) Battalion.

A day or so before he set off on his journey for his medical, on 19th April, the Germans made yet another big push, further to the south this time, and this was the one that actually enabled the shelling of Paris. The news of yet another major offensive would have hit the papers before he set off. As it happened, serious as it was, it was not of the scale and magnitude of the March offensive, but serious nonetheless.

History tells us now that the enemy really were running out of steam, both in men and materials, and in enough troops still willing to fight. As well as our naval blockade really beginning to bite, the collapse of the Eastern Front the previous year theoretically should have released enough men to make any German big pushes in the west a more assured success. Had they been fit and willing troops for their kaiser, it may well have been. 

But German troops returning from Russia, where many had been prisoners-of-war, had been 'indoctrinated' by their captors in new Red Army of Lenin, and many of them never made it to the Western Front at all, they literally deserted in their thousands. A good many who did arrive at their new units in the west arrived drunk. We have something to thank the Bolsheviks for.

So each of those further two 'big pushes' were of less potency than the first, and each ran out of steam just as quickly.

His service record appears to suggest that Harry had been 'stood down' from parades or attendances at the RDC for quite a while beforehand, perhaps on account of his mining activities. I do recall reading that miners, in the First War as in the Second, were not required to do Home Guard or any firewatching duties, or any civil defence duties outside of their normal mining shifts. Those shifts were deemed to be hard enough without depriving men of much-needed sleep and affecting badly needed output.

For curiously, his record has had an extra bit of filling in, as an afterthought, dated after some later entries, that states he 'rejoined' the 156 Protection Coy, RDC, on 13 May, only to be transferred into the Northants the very next day. He had to be 'in something' to be transferred out of it, an administrative quirk to keep army records straight. The inference has to be that he had been excused parades and RDC duties for some time before.

Harry's instructions are then to report to the 3rd Battalion to commence his further training, his service with the Northants officially starting on 14 May. This was presumably at battalion HQ in Northampton, where several hundred men would be on garrison duties, involved in training recruits and transfers and running the behind-the-scenes aspects of a regiment at war. Harry was also re-numbered at this same time, now becoming Pte Holt, 204379. By now there were 7 such Northants battalions, three of them on the Western Front, and one still in the Middle East. Just a couple of weeks after he started his training, yet another major attack occurred in France, the third for three months in a row.

We know this now to be the Germans' final gasp, on 26 May, their last throw of the dice. It was expected, and in high command quarters, almost welcomed, as it signalled the end of the German army as a credible fighting force that could win the war. A strategic victory to them in the short term, it became a tactical loss in that it did ultimately end any hopes of any further big pushes. They were spent.

Heavy merchant losses at sea to submarine attacks still meant that we could lose the war, not by defeat of our troops on land, but by starvation at home. Things were critical, and the fear was we would have to sue for peace, come to terms with the enemy, abandon both the French and the Belgians, and withdraw our armies from France. Defeat, on terms that the Germans would dictate.

Like the two previous offences, successful as they were in taking territory and inflicting heavy casualties, this last attack also petered out, ran out of steam and energy and for many different reasons. Notably the length of supply lines, but also because German soldiers were over-running previously unoccupied areas and coming across country houses and chateaux with wine cellars stacked to the very brim. Undisciplined and in a euphoria of successful bloodlust, so many German troops quickly became drunk, and as well as other factors, that became one of the significant reasons for all three final offensives failing. From then on, very slowly at first, the tables would turn, and through the summer whilst Harry learnt a new trade and got to grips with a new regiment, a new weapon, and new mates plus all that went with it, the tide of war really did start to turn in our favour.

Harry's new trade may not have been his choice. He may well have had it foisted on him, as a 'needs must' situation. Presumably he was a good shot with a rifle, and also presumably because his record tells us no differently, he was an able and disciplined soldier. For he now trained as a Lewis gunner, thereby earning a few coppers more per day than the ordinary infantryman. But it was a deadly trade, and just as our infantrymen and artillery actively sought out German machine gun posts, so did the Germans to ours. From now on, he was effectively a more of a 'marked man' than he had previously been.

Because he was no longer an infantryman in the basic sense, he was now also part of a relatively new team in modern warfare, usually of five or seven men.

Previous machine guns were very heavy pieces of kit, mounted on a tripod, just as heavy. They required a team to carry gun, tripod, ammunition boxes and all the other paraphernalia and be able to move and change positions during the course of a battle. The Lewis gun, designed in America but produced in huge numbers in Britain by the end of the war, would now be Harry's main weapon. It would also mean there would be no 'on the whistle over-the-top' deadly charges towards a stream of enemy machine gun fire. For now Harry was part of the team on our side covering our troops as they went over the top and he would be directing such deadly fire directly at German defenders, hopefully seeking out their machine gun nests in order to neutralise them.

The skills and requirements, the fine arts of operating and using a lethal machine gun, had been taught us by the Germans themselves. They started the war with a great many machine gun companies within their regiments. Our massive casualty figures in those first years, through the offensives on The Somme, and later at Ypres and Paschendaele, were our instruction on how to kill large numbers of men in the shortest time with maximum effect.

We were so slow to learn, most of our county regiments could only muster but two such machine guns in any one battalion at the start of the war.

In those early days, our weapons were also much inferior to the very highly engineered, lethal weaponry then coming out of German arms factories, of the likes of Krupp, etc. It took us some time to design and produce in large numbers designs that could be of their equal. The Lewis gun was the best known and most successful of those designs in use by the Allies.

By the time Harry was doing his training four years later, most battalions had dozens of these newer Lewis guns, plus we had our own Machine Gun Corps that specialised in this new art of mass killing. A line of Lewis gun teams interspersed along the front every couple of hundred yards was now seen as de rigueur, and an essential part of any battle plan, both for offensive and for defence. It's what the enemy had been doing for 4 years, and we paid a very heavy price learning those lessons.

To this new arm, this deadly weapon that some believed had been devised by the devil, Harry Holt now sought to learn it's deadly ways and give of his best.


Through that summer, in general, the news from the front did now improve. The expected American divisions slowly did arrive.  Canadian regiments were already in the thick of it and giving massive support to the exhausted British regiments holding what was a very thin line in places. The French seemed to find new heart, and many changes had taken place in how we, the allies, prosecuted the war. No longer sending men to die in their hundreds to defend the indefensible, we were getting canny, and learning a sort of warfare that would be recognised today.