Christmas 1916 - A War Christmas at Home.

This article entitled “My Three War Christmases In Flanders, Denmark, and Old England by Basil Clarke” comes from the excellent site “The Great War in A Different Light.”

Christmas 1915 by War Correspondent Basil Clarke was spent in the North Sea nearing the port of Copenhagen, with Danish hospitality. Now in 1916 he’s back home again in ‘Old England’ for a War Christmas at home.

1916

Two good ideas struck me at once. The first was to see and to write just how a wounded soldier is sent home from the front-line trenches. The second was to have a War Christmas at home. And with strategic ingenuity, prompted thus by desire, I contrived to make one purpose helpful and fulfill the other. I would see a wounded soldier from trench to home, and by so doing arrive home myself for Christmas. Bound for "Blighty".

I bade good-bye to colleagues in the War Correspondents' Camp, hitched on my shrapnel helmet and gas-mask, and made my way to the front-line trenches. It was at a grim spot on the Ancre tributary of the Somme, called Beaumont-Hamel. Little more than a month earlier this battered heap of stones and bricks and homesteads had been the scene of one of the most desperate fights in all the Somme battles. Now, the lines lay beyond it, just over the crest of a hill.

I waited by the stretcher-bearers' dug-out in the front-line trench. Fritz was sending over shrapnel and "heavy stuff," which whined piteously through the air, ' while occasionally a sniper's rifle brought a new note into the rumble of sounds.

"Stretcher-bearers ! " The call came from along the trench, away to the right. Off went the boys from the dug-out, as I trailed behind as best I could over the mud and the shell-holes. A sniper's bullet had caught one poor fellow in the thigh. He had been crossing an open space where no trench existed. The bearers, with great labour — and much danger to themselves — carried him down to the regimental Aid-post, in a dug-out in the village below. And from that point began the joint journey home of Private J. C. H. Oldham, who was wounded and pining for "Blighty," and of myself, war correspondent, anxious to fulfill an interesting mission which would, land me home for Christmas.

I forget what the date was, but at the outset it promised to give me ample time to achieve my personal purpose. But at the aid-post Private Oldham was kept some two hours before passing on to the advanced dressing-station. At the A-D-S. he was kept about four hours before going on to the main dressing-station. And at the M.D.S. he spent, if I remember rightly, a day and a half before going on to the casualty clearing-station. His stay there was four and a half days. I saw the prospect of reaching "Blighty" by Christmas becoming poorer and poorer.

Joyous Home-Coming

He got away at last, and I with him. With five hundred wounded, weary souls I made the journey from the battle zone to the coast. We stopped in sidings and restarted, stopped again and again, and did not land till the small hours of the following morning. Again Oldham was whisked off on a stretcher — this time to a base hospital. How long would they keep him ? I spent some days with nothing better to do than hunt round the shops of Boulogne, choosing little presents that should be in keeping with the season, if only I could arrive home in time. Day followed day without seeing Private Oldham ready for transport. I must give up the Christmas idea.

One dull December morning out came his stretcher. Off he was driven to a ship at the quay, I in the same motor-ambulance. I saw him placed in a hospital ship, painted a bright apple-green ; I saw him landed at a southern English port in the grey of a drizzly morning, and I saw him set quietly down on the snow-white bed of a London hospital — with tears in his eyes born of weakness and sheer joy at being back in "Blighty."

I too, had my own joy of home-coming. Alice was radiant ; the little fellows swarmed around me, an avalanche of excited humanity. And they hung up their stockings that night, and Santa Claus put in them unusual little presents, some of them marked " Boulogne-sur-Mer."

That was my Christmas of 1916, a great Christmas, something like an old-time Christmas.