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Albert Edward Gee - Autobiography Part 2 |
When I arrived home I found that my Mother and the children had been stranded at Clacton because the Army were using the railways; she arrived home during the afternoon. Dad had forced the sitting room window to get in - he had expected Mother to be home from Clacton before he came back from camp. When he turned in he found that he was lying on his silver cups which mother had put under her feather mattress. I think that Dad was pleased to see us all home again. We had tea and were playing whist when an orderly came from the Drill Hall to say that Dad was wanted. His Regiment left the next day and a few days afterwards were in France.
Life was rather unsettled for me during the early part of the war. I heard that Bill Doe and George Hollidge had joined up and could not see why they should go. I remember feeling rather resentful that they should be joining - they were not soldiers and I thought that things could be left to my Dad brothers and brothers-in-law but, it was pointed out to me that Bill was a good bowler on the cricket field and that they needed men like him to toss grenades into the German trenches; then I did not feel too bad about it.
When Perce came home on sick leave he used to ask me when I was going "to do my bit" and he bought a nice air rifle with some of his back pay, he talked of the "blood money" he hoped to receive after the war and I felt rather bad. I was nearly as tall as he was and I did think that it was time I "did my bit".
My father was not in very good health and he was well over 40 so he was brought home and went to Hertford in charge of training recruits. When he came home on leave I talked to him but, although he seemed very sympathetic he said that I must grow up a bit. We had plenty of excitement at home at this time we had 15 thousand soldiers belonging to the Transport Corps. Four of them were billeted with us. They came from Birmingham and two of them were silversmiths in civilian life; the other two were carpet weavers. There were hundreds of horses tethered in lines in Cox's meadow - about half a mile along the road from our house. One evening we heard a lot of noise and it sounded like Zeppelins so we went to the front door and the road was packed with galloping horses. We shut the door and ran upstairs to the bedroom and looked through the windows. It was an awful sight lamp posts were bent and garden fences smashed. The horses passed in great herds there would be a break then perhaps 20 then another 100 or so and this kept on until nearly midnight. One of our neighbours tried to stop a batch of about eight and one of them jumped right over him. It was obvious that they had been frightened; their ears were back and eyes glaring. The next morning early I was along the road and the sight was shocking. On one side of the meadow there was a ditch about 15 or 20 feet deep and the first of the horses had fallen in and when the ditch was filled with horses the others ran over them.
When I arrived in the morning the soldiers were dragging the dead and dying horses from the ditch and shooting the badly injured. The next night the same thing happened but this time they went through the town and smashed shop windows and at each corner there were dead and dying horses. They were then all moved from our town and there were lots of rumours going around about spies etc.
We also used to have some excitement when the Zeppelins came over to bomb London they passed overhead both coming and going. On moonlight night we could count them; they were an unforgettable sight. From a hill near our house we saw a Zeppelin come down in flames at Potters Bar. Another unforgettable sight was one of them coming back from a raid had five bombs left and unloaded them in a straight line over about a mile; the first four landed in fields but the last one landed in the road by the railway station. I began to get very frustrated at this time and I am afraid a little out of hand. My brother had gone away again and I got into mischief, nothing serious.
One day I borrowed, without permission, a bicycle from the rear of the Post Office. It was a fixed wheel affair and I was not used to it so that, when I was riding through a rather winding narrow road with a high wall on one side and houses right up to the road on the other side I suddenly saw a Malt cart coming towards me with very little clearance to pass it. I thought that the safe thing to do was to get off. I was not very successful, and the cycle fell over. The horse took fright and the cart went over the bike front wheel crank and the rear wheel, so that when I picked it up it bent completely in half. I put the bike in the back yard of a public house and went back to the Post Office and told the head Postman what had happened. He gave me a large basket on wheels, used at that time to deliver parcels, and I collected the bike and brought it to the Post Office where I had to have an interview with the Postmaster. He was a friend of my father and, when he had listened to what I had to say he told me that when my father came home again to tell him that he was wanted at the Post Office. Dad came home the next week end and when he got back from the Post office he said that during my next holiday from school I would be working at the Post Office as a telegraph boy. Quite soon after this we had holidays and I duly reported and for two weeks I quite enjoyed the job but during the third week I was given a pen and a sheet of foolscap and was asked to write a report on how I came to smash up the bike. The date on the head of the report was not quite accurate and I got the sack but my father did not have to pay for the bike after all.
Dad seemed a little more sympathetic to my yearnings and I decided to take a chance. He was stationed at Hertford which was only 14 miles away so I decided to present myself there and ask him if I could put my age up to 15 and join as a bugle boy. I took the milk can one morning, left it in the front garden and peddled away to Hertford. Dad was not as pleased to see me as I had hoped but, he said that I could try it. I presented myself the next day and said that I was 15 years and 9 months. They took me and I was sworn in and I had my shilling. I do not think that I would have ever made a bugler, I never got anything but a horrible noise from the bugle but I was quite good at small arms drill. I was again in my element but, it did not last and one day I was brought before the adjutant who asked me how old I was. Of course I tried to convince him that I was nearly 16 but, when he said that I must go home and come back with my birth certificate I gave in and again I got the sack. I still have my army discharge to say that I served 26 days and was discharged for making a miss statement as to age, dated 24 July 1915.
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