Today, 11 November 2015, the city fell silent at 11am to mark Armistice Day – but 100 years ago our families were fighting for our very survival.
In honour of this day we look back 100 years ago to a series of heart-rending letters appeared in the local newspapers with notes handwritten by local soldiers fighting for the country’s freedom.
These letters are a sad reflection of the lives of local men battling against unknown enemies at the Western Front: the main theatre of conflict in the First World War.
The so-called Great War – not denoted for its greatness, rather for its epoch-ending awfulness – was by this point well into its first year.
A quick victory over the Germans which many had hoped and prayed for had not materialised. Every week more and more young boys would be shipped off to their deaths in the muddy trenchlands of France and Belgium.
The Eccles and Patricroft Journal printed a series of letters from Eccles Riflemen – heavily censored of course – in the first two weeks of November 1915.
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Three young soldiers, Privates W. Bond, H. Davenport and H. Ashworth wrote to the newspaper to tell the readers that they were “all happy and well” and looking forward to “smashing up the ravengers of Belgium and the killers of English babies”.
At this stage of the war the British press was running what can only be described as out-and-out propaganda.
They were full of lurid stories of Germans raping Belgian women and nuns, young children being impaled on bayonets, soldiers being crucified with bayonets and many more incredible but false stories designed to whip up hatred against the Germans and encourage young men to enlist.
Davenport and Bond write to say they encountered German trench mortars – known as minenwerfer – a staple of the enemy’s short-range attacks to clear bunkers and barbed wire. The constant firing had caused the lads’ own trench to partially collapse, but in a clear humanist moment the boys were more concerned that their food had been ruined.
Torrential rain followed, which flooded the trench up to their knees as they waded through the mud towards the front line.
They add rather poignantly that the sight of “white crosses in the pale moonlight” makes their heart ache and they appeal for Eccles men to enlist and help avenge their fallen comrades.
Ashworth adds that they have found only two ways of amusing themselves: one is smoking cigarettes, and the other is indulgence in music.
One of their comrades is a dab hand at playing the melodeon – a kind of small accordian – and he keeps them amused during the evening with a selection of patriotic ditties.
Our three heroes then make an impassioned plea for families back home in Eccles send them another instrument to help liven up their dull hours sat around the campfire.
It all sounds very jolly doesn’t it? Sat around the campfire, smoking, and having a sing song with your chums?
It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that anything critical, mission sensitive or indeed just depressing for the audience back home had been struck from the record in these letter.
I often wonder if these poor young lads survived the War, they obviously had seen the truly horrific and evil side of the war and were putting on a brave face for the people back in Eccles.
Each following edition of the Eccles and Patricroft Journal would see more of these “patriotic” letters home assuring people that it was all jolly good fun out there and urging others to join them.
Sadly the names and photographs of local fallen men who had been killed or were missing in action was also getting biggger and bigger as the weeks went by.
They make interesting reading but sadly show no sign of the true horrors going on around them.
Take a look at our History section as we delve back into the city’s archives for hundreds of stories from 25, 50 and 100 years ago in Salford and Eccles.
