Forgotten Voices of the Somme by Joshua Levine

club from back home, we all went over together, and ten out of twelve of us were killed.
    Private Stanley Bewshire
    11th Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment
    When we got into the German front-line trench, there was nobody there, they had gone. There were only dead men lying about. I moved forward. I hadn't gone very far before I got a whack on the head. I didn't know what had hit me. I went down. How long I lay there I didn't know, but it must have been in the afternoon when I had came round. Whoever did it had left me, taken my gun and gone. When I came round, all was quiet.
    I got up, moved back into no-man's-land, and I'd got about fifty yards across, under fire, when I found a machine gun. I picked up this gun and jumped down into a shell-hole. I gave the gun a go, to see if it was in order, and I saw that right in front of me were the German communication trenches. I lay in the shell-hole for about half an hour and then some Germans came out – about ten or fifteen of them. I was right in front of them. After two or three bursts, they turned back – what was left of them. I thought now was a good chance for me to move.
    So I picked up the gun and went about fifty yards. On my way, bullets were flying all over me. I had a marvellous escape. One bullet went through my haversack, breaking all my day's ration. It went through my water bottle and all my water started spilling out. Then, shrapnel hit my sack and started hitting my equipment, and it broke off.
    Private Herbert Hall
    12th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment
    I heard the Germans calling from their trenches, 'Come on Tommy! We are waiting for you!' It was weird. In perfect English. I killed a few, of course, and I took a prisoner. He walked into us in no-man's-land. I brought him back and walked him to the back lines, passing the whole lot of the British Army lying in stretchers, dead bodies, and all the rest of it. I don't know what happened to him afterwards. I think somebody might have shot him.
    And afterwards, a general came to see us. I know his name and I won't mention it. He said, 'Did any of you people see anything meritorious?' There wasn't a single sound. There was only about seventy of us, and that included the first line reinforcements. Not a sound. We thought it was a very unnecessary question. And, of course, to insult us, they awarded the medals to the colonel's runner and the senior stretcher-bearer.
    Sergeant A. S. Durrant
    18th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry
    I reached the German trenches, but I was wounded, and I saw the entrance to a dugout. So I dragged myself along to the steps of the dugout, and I thought, 'Let's see if I can get in there...' I dragged myself to the steps of the dugout, and I managed – somehow – to get myself into a half-sitting, half-lying position, on the steps leading down to the dugout. Suddenly, the mouth of the dugout fell in. A high-explosive shell must have burst very nearby, and I was thrown into a doubled-up position. I didn't seem to be hurt any further, but the entrance down to the dugout was blocked so I dragged myself out and rested in the open. This went on until the evening, and I gradually dragged myself in the right direction, to the British lines, and eventually I crawled to safety. And, on arriving at what I thought was safety, I saw an old college friend of mine, nicknamed 'Whiskers'. I shouted, 'Whiskers!' He came along. 'Hello! What are you doing here?' He was in the Royal Army Military Corps, and he took charge of me, put me on to a stretcher and conveyed me to a medical shelter.
    Private Donald Cameron
    12th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment
    At midday, the sun was hot and I fell asleep. You've got to remember that
    we'd been up all night, and we'd been on working parties for a fortnight before that, digging trenches, filling sandbags. We were dead tired. When it was dark, we found our way back to our own trenches, where there was a roll-call. Out of the eight hundred that went over,