 |
| Benjamin Clouting's window cleaning business was so distinguished, it cleaned the window of Windsor castle. |
Teenage Tommy who saw history made: Benjamin Clouting was 16 when he witnessed the first British shots of the Great War. He was the son of a groom working on a large estate near Lewes in Sussex and his love of horses and desire to join the Army brought him to 4th the Royal Irish Dragoon Guards.
Just a week after setting foot in France, Ben took part in the British Army’s first engagement near the Belgian town of Mons when his colleagues opened fire on a group of enemy lancers. Ben remained on the Western Front for almost the entire war and later in life took over a window cleaning business in Reading, where he worked until shortly before his death in August 1990, aged nearly 93.
His window cleaning business was so distinguished, it cleaned the window of Windsor castle.
Later in his life Benjamin relayed a vivid account of what he saw that day to author Richard van Emden who was interviewed here along with Ben's great grandson. We also hear from Benjamin Clouting himself (pictured above & right) in an interview filmed just before his death on the very spot those shots were fired.
Commemoration of First World War 100 years.
Of all the first-hand accounts of the First World War, few capture the horror of battle better than the diaries of Netherfield soldier Albert Williams. His accounts are thick with stories of starving, filthy and exhausted soldiers shivering in mud-filled trenches as German shells fall around their ears on the Western Front. The war was little more than a week old when Private 9122 Williams, of the Northumberland Fusiliers, was shipped off to France.
For weeks Albert and his Northumberland chums went back and forth between the trenches and the rear, at one point facing the ominously named Mound of Death. Although he did not know it, Albert Williams's war was drawing to a close. Behind the lines the Northumberlands practised charging, bombing and cutting barbed wire until, on the night of June 15, they were given their orders: take out three lines of trenches "at all costs". The following morning, after a fierce artillery bombardment came the order to attack: Northumberlands, Royals, Lincolns, Scots Fusiliers, Liverpool Scottish – thousands of men going over the top.
June 16: The trenches were all taken but what a straffing." Soon afterwards, the shell that ended Private Williams's war landed. "I was in for a good time," he wrote in his diary, "as I had three G helmets and a bottle of wine and was going to had (sic) a good drink when the dirty devils buried me.
"I was dug out and lost everything, even my speech. What a row that shell made, good job it dropped in the traverse and buried me ... a few inches further and there would have been no Pte Williams to bury." He was carried from the battlefield and eventually returned home to England. His speech returned but he was no longer considered fit for duty. Traumatised by his experiences, he had suffered trench foot, been injured in the back and finally blown up and buried, but he came through his journey into hell to return to Nottingham, where he became a window cleaner.
For weeks Albert and his Northumberland chums went back and forth between the trenches and the rear, at one point facing the ominously named Mound of Death. Although he did not know it, Albert Williams's war was drawing to a close. Behind the lines the Northumberlands practised charging, bombing and cutting barbed wire until, on the night of June 15, they were given their orders: take out three lines of trenches "at all costs". The following morning, after a fierce artillery bombardment came the order to attack: Northumberlands, Royals, Lincolns, Scots Fusiliers, Liverpool Scottish – thousands of men going over the top.
June 16: The trenches were all taken but what a straffing." Soon afterwards, the shell that ended Private Williams's war landed. "I was in for a good time," he wrote in his diary, "as I had three G helmets and a bottle of wine and was going to had (sic) a good drink when the dirty devils buried me.
"I was dug out and lost everything, even my speech. What a row that shell made, good job it dropped in the traverse and buried me ... a few inches further and there would have been no Pte Williams to bury." He was carried from the battlefield and eventually returned home to England. His speech returned but he was no longer considered fit for duty. Traumatised by his experiences, he had suffered trench foot, been injured in the back and finally blown up and buried, but he came through his journey into hell to return to Nottingham, where he became a window cleaner.
No comments:
Post a Comment