David Truesdale - YOUNG CITIZEN OLD SOLDIER. FROM BOYHOOD IN ANTRIM TO HELL ON THE SOMME: The Journal of Rifleman James McRoberts, 14th Battalion Royal Irish Rifles, January 1915-April 1917

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Published by Helion & Company 2012

Designed and typeset by Farr out Publications, Wokingham, Berkshire
Cover designed by Farr out Publications, Wokingham, Berkshire
Printed by Gutenberg Press Limited, Tarxien, Malta

Text Sylvia McRoberts 2012

Images as shown. The editor and publishers would like to apologise for the poor
quality of many of the images in this book. However, it was felt better to include images
of great historical interest, and accept their quality (frequently reflecting the print quality
of contemporary newspapers), than to exclude them.

Front cover: No 1 Platoon, D Company, 14th Battalion Royal Irish Rifles, at Seaford.
James McRoberts can be seen seventh from the left in the third row. (Somme Museum,
Newtownards)

ISBN 978 1 908916 48 8
EPUB ISBN: 9781909384682

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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To the memory of
Jack L Armstrong and Brian Boyd who, although they survived
1 July 1916 and were both awarded the Military Medal, were
killed in the following year.

The better the soldier, the more limited is his outlook
Siegfried Sassoon

As I sit thinking, the past returns,
Unbidden; with awful clarity
The lid comes off the memory jar.

Patricia Fawcett

Contents

List of Maps and Illustrations

Maps

Beaumont Hamel, the son of John and Jane Griffiths of Chester. (Nigel Henderson)

husband of Jane Duffy, Scott, of Finaghy Halt, Balmoral, Belfast, he is buried in La Plus Douve Cemetery, grave IV.B.5. (Nigel Henderson)

Maps

Map 1: The area to be attacked by the 36th (Ulster) Division on 1 July 1916, the advance of the Division was split by the River Ancre.

Map 2: German positions plotted on the same map. The dotted lines show the left and right flanks of the Division. On the left was the 29th Division, on the right the 32nd Division.

Map 3: A trench map showing Cooker Farm where Private James McRoberts was wounded on the evening of 1 November 1916.

Preface

T he succeeding pages have been copied from a diary contained in three notebooks which I kept when I was in the army; footnotes were added forty years later. The only alterations are my having omitted the many repetitions that occurred during my training and some of the more sentimental bits, including several of my criticisms of the British Army; these make somewhat tedious reading nowadays.

My initial remarks on the French people and certain other matters are not to be taken too seriously; they are merely first impressions which are often superseded (by me) further on.

I was born in the County Antrim about five miles from Larne and spent five years at Larne Grammar School. Having decided on Civil Engineering as my future career, I entered Queens University Belfast and had passed my first year in the summer of 1914. I joined the Army as a Private in November of that year and was posted to Finner Camp near Bundoran in County Donegal.

My Battalion was the 14th Royal Irish Rifles. YCV stands for Young Citizen Volunteers, a body that had existed in Belfast for some years before the War. The YCV along with the 9th, 10th and 11th Inniskilling Fusiliers formed the 109th Brigade of the 36th (Ulster) Division. Explanatory notes on people and places are now inserted into the original text.

I take this opportunity of thanking the two Jeans of the County Surveyors Office, Armagh, for their patience in deciphering and typing the original manuscript which was often a most untidy mass of writing, generally in pencil and almost illegible.

James McRoberts

Armagh

Northern Ireland

1957

Publishers Note

T he editor and publishers would like to apologise for the poor quality of many of the images in this book. However, it was felt better to includes images of great historical interest, and accept their quality (frequently reflecting the print quality of contemporary newspapers) than to exclude them.

Foreword

B elfast men may have built the Titanic, but Ulster was still a province of small farms and market towns, some producing the famous Irish linen. Many of the German rank and file would have been from similar backgrounds, hence the notion that hundreds of thousands of young men were lined up in opposing trenches to confront each other and as it transpired, bombard with shells, mow down with machine gun fire and, and kill and maim with grenades, bayonets and poison gas. The reasons for Great Britains entry into and, more so, its conduct of the war are questions debated by historians, but here we are merely concerned with commemorating some of those men involved, in particular men of the Somme, two of whom the publication of this diary is dedicated to.

My father loved to see his diaries typed and the extracts published in Ulster newspapers, but, on being persuaded by relatives, and, in particular, my cousin Yvonne McRoberts and her son Major John Schulz of the US Army, to proceed to publication, I realised that a daily record needs editing. Hence, the incorporation of footnotes for ease of reading and, as my father remembered his fellows, I wished to add to the diary something of his own very positive peacetime achievements after the tragedies of war. Highlights of my fathers life in the Home Guard and work as County Surveyor of Armagh follow the diary proper.

I have worked at this from the 1950s typed version in my homes in Sussex and Cyprus, greatly assisted by my sister-in-law, Councillor Sylvia McRoberts of Armagh City, and her sons, Bruce and Philip, who helped by checking sources and taking upto-date photographs in Ulster. Pamela Rea did sterling work retyping all of this and introduced me to the published historian David Truesdale, who has arranged its publication by Helion and added valuable historical detail from various sources with maps and other illustrations. The latter include photographs kindly supplied by the descendants of girls, whom my father, as a French speaker, was able to get to know in villages such as Poulainville and Dranoutre.

My brother Brian was named in honour of Brian Boyd, MM, (killed in action). My niece Flora, Brians daughter, has a son who also bears this name. I trust that all my fathers grandchildren and great grandchildren will find interest and inspiration in reading a record of one whom it may justly be said: Well done thou good and faithful servant (Matthew, 25:21)

M. Emerson McRoberts, MA (Dubl) PGCE (Lond)

Acknowledgements

M y sincere thanks to all who have assisted me over the last year, but especially to Pamela Rea, who introduced me to the diary in the first place and did a superb job in typing the original manuscript into a workable word document.