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Description: | British private served with 1/4th Bn Gloucestershire Regt on Western Front, 1915-1918; POW in Germany, 1918
REEL 1: Family background and education in Gloucestershire, GB: enlisted with 1/4th Bn Gloucestershire Regt, 11/1914; training on Salisbury Plain; question of enlisting underage; drafted to France, 5/1915. Aspects of operations as private with 1/4th Bn Gloucestershire Regt on Western Front, 1915-1918: disembarked at Rouen; tented camp; moved into Armentieres sector; billets; moved into line at Givenchy; description of trench system; rotation in and out of line; description of German bombardment and casualties in Festhubert sector; story of water pump; story of unexploded shell landing on ammunition store; memory of dead German in La Bassee Canal.
REEL 2 Continues: night patrols; Very lights; proximity of German trenches; location of Bn in wood; listening posts; description of opening of German offensive, 21/Mar/1918; sound of bullets; rearguard action in quarry; food parcel; description of German artillery bombardment; dug in on banks of canal; engagement with German troops in cemetery; wounded in foot by shrapnel and taken prisoner.
REEL 3 Continues: Aspects of period as POW in Germany, 3-11/1918: attitude to being captured; description of train journey into Germany; hostile reaction of local women at station; lack of sanitary facilities on train; problem of dysentery; air attacks; entrained to Holzminden; transferred to camp in Saxony; medical treatment in German field hospital; moved to camp in Schweinitz; description of town and camp; opinion of accommodation and food; treatment for foot injury; various memories of other prisoners; opinion of camp commandant; treatment of prisoners; correspondence with home.
REEL 4 Continues: distribution of Red Cross parcels; memory of seeing German soldiers eating nettles; various stories of period in Schweinitz after Armistice, 11/1918; POW uniform; story of journey back to GB via Denmark, 12/1918. Aspects of post-war life and employment: problem of finding employment; story of joining police force. | Publisher: | http://www.iwm.org.uk | Source: | Imperial War Museum | Creator: | Hurd, Edward | Identifier: | http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/o... | Go to resource |
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