A Soldier on the Somme and Passchendaele More Than Man Can Bear

This is the First World War account of Douglas Crockatt based on his personal diaries and family letters illustrated with original maps and documents issued to officers in WW1 as well as regimental records, all preserved in a family archive held in the Special Collections Department of Leeds University Library. In 1914, at the age of 19, poised to join his family business, Douglas Crockatt, a pacifist, volunteered for the Ambulance Service and in 1915 served for 9 months on the Western Front, near Merville and Bac St Maur where he recounts his experience of the aftermath of the Second Battle of Ypres, and the Battle of Aubers Ridge. In 1916, influenced by the suffering he saw as a nursing orderly, he decided to become a "fighting soldier" and trained first for the infantry, then for the Machine Gun Corps - a move from one extreme to the other, from pacifism to operating "the queen" of deadly weapons on the Western Front. As a machine gun officer in 1916 he was wounded at the Battle of the Ancre, the final battle of the Somme. Maps, letters, drawings and photographs enable a full reconstruction of the action in which he was wounded. After rehabilitation and further training back home Douglas Crockatt returned to fight at Passchendaele where he was mentioned in dispatches and recommended for a Military Cross. The Battles of Pilkhem Ridge and Menen Road are reconstructed and described in detail. The original records, regimental war diaries and maps enable the role of machine gun units to be understood and relived in great detail. After the end of the fighting at Passchendaele, following a short leave with his fiance, in December 1917, Douglas had a physical and mental collapse. He was sent home as a casualty, allowing his relationship with his fiance to flourish. He spent the first half of 1918 in hospital and from July 1918 he served at home in a bureaucratic role until Armistice Day. He married two weeks after peace was declared and rejoined his family and his father's business. The book ends with an exploration of the impact of Douglas Crockatt's traumatic experiences in the war on his subsequent character.