Arrived overseas: 31 Oct 1914.Connection: Interview in January 1982.
Richard Edward Worrall, better known to his friends as 'Alf' or 'Bumble' ended the First World War as a sergeant, but he was a lance-corporal when he set foot ashore in France on the 31st October 1914. He was a Chelsea Pensioner when I interviewed him, and I note that on that cold January day there was a seventy-year age gap between interviewer and interviewee. He said
"On
August 4th 1914 until 24th August 1914, an army of 75,000 men, with all their
equipment: guns etc, were shipped from England
over to Belgium
and they actually started fighting on the 22nd August 1914. That was when the first shot was fired and
that shot was fired by the big drummer of my regiment. Up at Mons, Jerry had got there with [160,000] men and he had
got everything right up in the front; big guns and everything.
"As British soldiers there was one God that we had and that was the Sam Browne
belt which was worn by officers only. And where we saw a Sam Browne belt we
rallied round him and there wasn’t one English officer that had got a full
complete unit of his own men. But we
retired and we fell back and we had our first real rest around St Quentin
because the Jerry was running around.
But we retired back again from St Quentin to within eighteen kilometres
of Paris. Then
we had our first wash since we started. Some of the poor old infantry had got no boots
on their feet but we equipped and in six days we turned around and fought him
back. It took him five weeks to send us there, but we sent him back in six days."
Bumble Worrall was awarded the Military Medal in 1917 and later transferred to the Tank Corps. By the time he was finally discharged from the army in April 1933 he was a Company Quartermaster Sergeant and had been a British Army soldier for close to 23 years. In the image on this post, first published in Before Endeavours Fade, he is the Chelsea Pensioner on the right.
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