"Teaching people about the world in which we live."
"Teaching people about the world in which we live."
Eric Abraham related several stories from the war. They are intended to give one an idea of what it was like to fight in the first World War. He talked about his "baptism under fire", the last flight of the Red Baron, being a telegraph operator during the Battle of Passiondale, a mysterious dead soldier, the human will to survive, and some of the general living conditions.
PVT Abraham’s baptism under fire occurred in France, on the Somme, a primary battleground for most of the four year conflict. Abraham was a telegrapher and as such was assigned to the Signal Corps and sent to the front lines in France. The first time he heard shell fire close by was his first day in the field. He had been assigned to carry rations to the troops at Sausage Gully. He was carrying a sand bag full of tins and bully beef, while his partner was carrying a dixie (an earthenware dish) of stew. When the nearby Allied guns fired a salvo, the noise was so loud his knees buckled and he fell to the bottom of the trench. A more experienced soldier laughed and explained that it was only their own guns firing; however, he warned that it would get bad when "Fritz took umbrage" (German guns fired back). Abraham reports that the resulting chaos was so great that he does not remember delivering the rations or even returning to his base. The next day, he was very embarrassed until another soldier explained that everyone suffered from the same terror when first under fire. The man said, "Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a liar or wasn’t there or both!"
Abraham remembers one of the more famous dog fights (aerial combats) from this war: the last flight of the Red Baron. It was 21 April, 1918, around breakfast time when this episode occurred. The 14th Brigade’s Signal Company A.I.F. (Australian Imperial Force) was seeing action on the Villas Brettonneaux front on the Somme near the village of Corbie. Dog fights were common in the sky above and the troops paid no particular attention until a cry began, "The Red Baron is up!" Abraham reported: "There was the Red Baron’s red tri-plane a few hundred yards away, in full flight, flat out, chasing one of our planes with the red, white and blue roundels on its fuselage. Our chap was hedge hopping (i.e., flying low), weaving right and left, up and down, and the Baron following him in his every movement. In a few seconds, out of the blue, another plane, with red white and blue roundels, swooped down from the sky, and latched on the tail of the Baron, gave a few bursts from his guns, and the Baron’s plane took a nose dive straight to the ground. From all around came cheering, indicating that hundreds of our A. I. F. troops witnessed the demise of the Red Baron. " Abraham has added, on other occasions, to this story, that he thinks how cruel the war must have been to hear a group of men cheering as another fell to his death.
Telegraph Operator in the Battle of Passiondale
In the Battle of Passiondale during the latter part of 1917, the 14th Brigade Section of the 5th Division fought in action so heavy that soldiers were on the front line for four days and then relieved for 14 days to recover. Abraham and two others were assigned to handle communications on around the clock shifts. One day, Eric relieved Ray Hawk. Hawk had just stepped outside the pillbox and spoken with a Sergeant when a shell hit at the opening of the pillbox. In the communications pillbox, candles were blown out, papers scattered, and dust covered everything. Abraham rushed to the opening and saw a twelve foot wide shell hole. Hawk and the Sergeant were lying on the rim of the crater. Hawk was dead, but the Sergeant was only unconscious. The Sergeant suffered no long term injuries, but Hawk was dead. They had been within inches of each other when the shell hit. As a result of Hawk’s death, Nick Walsh and Abraham had to staff the telegraphy machines 24 hours. Abraham brought his gear from dugout 70 yards away. Walsh decided to wait until the next day. That night, Walsh used Abraham’s blankets and slept in the room next to the pillbox. The next day, Walsh went for his gear but couldn’t find the dugout. During the night, a shell had landed and destroyed everything. Either or both men would have been dead if they had not had to take on the extra shift and hence been on duty or sleeping at the pillbox because of Hawk’s death.
The next day, an officer staggered into the communications pillbox badly shell shocked. Abraham gave him tea and sat him down. The officer gasped out the story of his dugout being hit by a shell. He had fled immediately. On further questioning, it became clear that he had left his servant, Snow, in the collapsed dugout. Men hurried to the dugout and rescued Snow, "a complete mess but grinning like a Cheshire Cat!" How can this happen? Two men in each of two stories with such different outcomes for the members of each pair. Death or Insanity (shell shock) for only one, while the other was unscathed. "God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform." Quotes Abraham.
The next story concerns a mysterious death. At Retaliation Farm on a quiet afternoon, Abraham went out for a walk. He noticed a German Sausage Balloon (these balloons actually served as observation posts) over the enemy lines, but did not pay much attention to it. On his walk, Abraham found a dead German. This was a first class mystery because there had been no action in the area for some time, Abraham was well behind his own lines, and there was no evidence of the cause of death. The German had no valuables on him. Abraham stopped to think about the situation and that almost proved to be a fatal mistake. The German observer in the balloon called in fire on Eric’s position. The first shell, named a Whiz-Bang for a sound it made, landed a short distance away. The second shell landed closer and Abraham made a hasty retreat. That night Abraham and an intelligence officer returned to the body. No further evidence was discovered to clear up the mystery of the German behind Allied lines or the nature of his death.
It was a dark and stormy night, 3:00 am , cold, wet, windy when a wounded soldier staggered into the communication dugout. Abraham was the signaler on duty. He administered what first aid he could, including tea and two aspirin. He dressed the soldier’s leg wound with iodine and fresh bandages and sent him on his way to the medical officer’s dugout. The man had walked in from a distant trench on a leg wound which was very severe. Abraham never asked how he was gotten shot in the leg in a trench warfare, but he did ask how the man had managed the walk. The wounded soldier replied, "We never know what we can do until we have to."
One wartime winter on the Somme, the Allied and the German (Axis) forces fought back and forth to capture, lose, and then recapture the same terrain. At one point the Allied forces returned to the same place they had vacated a month before. The one good thing about this was that they could occupy the same dugouts they had used earlier. The dugout Abraham moved into had a big shell hole just outside the dugout. Such shell holes were useful because they held water and the solders used this for washing. This morning the ice was 3 inches thick. Abraham cracked it with his trenching tool and washed up in the cold water. A bit later, he had time to do some washing of clothes, etc., so he then opened hole further to get more water. As he pulled the ice away, he looked down into the water and saw a dead German soldier in bottom of the hole. Such terrible discoveries occurred without warning in a time when men killed one another and moved back and forth across the land in the name of nationalism and freedom.
On a pleasant afternoon, Abraham was out for a walk, crossing a muddy area on board planks called duckboards. He heard an airplane behind him, but didn’t pay a lot of attention until he heard the machine gun bullets striking the wooden planks. At that point, he dove off the duckboards and into the mud. The bullets were close enough that the pilot probably thought he had scored a kill. However, Abraham knew that he was just a lucky digger covered in mud.
The next story is a bit humorous from this distant time perspective of 80 years, although it must have been macabre at the time. The soldiers had spent the night inside a tunnel at Tunnel Hill. Abraham reports only that it was a ghastly place. In the morning, the men went to shell hole to wash up. Abraham was met there by laughter from his comrades. They suggested that he have a look in a mirror to see what was so funny. He did and saw that rats had eaten half the hair off his head during the night! Abraham’s only comment was that he supposed he could sleep through anything in those days.
The boy, Eric Abraham had enlisted in the Australian Imperial Forces in 1915 at the age of 17 ½. The man, Eric K. Abraham, Sapper #4355, was discharged in October, 1919, older, wiser, sophisticated, but not at all hardened or bitter.
