Wwi Digger Stories Podcast

Frustration and more frustration, bloaters again and more bloaters. Percy does something to Dorrie and is full of remorse, what it was, who knows? The engagement is on and off. Nonchalant brother Viv turns up .... Well, it's Viv's way, or.... Luckily, he didn't keep King George waiting! Finally, Percy passes and gets ready to go back to France.

In this episode, Percy continues officer training. He practices code, unfortunately no one seems to be able to break it. I guess that means he knew what he was doing. He spends his third Christmas away from home, this one much more pleasant than the first two... He is with his ummm, fiancee, Dorothy. Three of the Aussies are suspended from the Officer's Training School at Cambridge. Two for sleeping in and one for swapping a blown light bulb for a good one from the mess.

In this episode Percy is at Cambridge training to be an officer. He and Dorrie are busted by her Dad and have a lot of explaining to do. He visits his new sister-in-law, Mary near Londonderry in Ireland and is pleasantly surprised to spend a few days there also with brother, Vern. Okay, no fighting, except maybe with his would be father-in-law, but still an interesting look at life during the war, and especially at Cambridge.

Once the sighing whine of a shell in flight ended with a savage hiss and an explosion just behind our dug-out, and I felt the sandbag wall heave in several inches. "That one nearly smashed our dug-out," I remarked, thinking it was a H.E., but the next moment a strong smell of gas rushed in. "Get your respirator on!" I yelled at Gus, making a grab for my own. I held my breath, but the powerful fumes got into my eyes, and the tears poured from them in streams. The tapes of my respirator were twisted up with the mouthpiece somehow, and there was I struggling to get them free. Had to open my eyes several times and endure a fresh flow of tears, and it soon became impossible to hold my breath any longer. However, just as I got a good deep breath of poisonous gas, the mouthpiece came free of the tapes and I got it into my mouth. That just about says it all, take a ride through the final days of Passchendaele with Percy

Percy has finally left Blighty, crosses the channel and ... "After crossing the ridge we left the duckboards and struck off to the right through the sloppy slippery mud, picking our way in and out between the shell-holes." Percy makes his way back to the trenches right into the tail end of the Battle of Passchendaele.

Wouldn't you know it, Percy found his soul mate and then gets whisked back to war. Nevermind, he wants that promotion so he can afford a house for his "little girl" when the war is over. The parting is sad, well isn't it always, and then he has to sit out for a few lonely days in Southampton. Brother Vern causes him a real scare but Percy finds out more about his brother's time at Passchendaele; Vernon Smythe MC + Bar!

This one starts with Percy coming back from leave and within two days he looks up Dorothy, the jewel of a girl he met on the train. Not a slow worker, our Perce, they are engaged in less than a month! Okay, so there are no battles in this one, except of the father - suitor kind, but this is probably the most significant thing to happen to Percy in the war. Enjoy!

There were almost 13,000 war brides to diggers in WW1 according to the Australian War Memorial. Brother Vern found Mary in Ireland, but what about Percy? Well, our Casanova finally meets his "one and only," but does he know it yet? There is one problem, Percy is still in Blighty, but not for much longer!

"He felt no pain and knew nothing of the terror of approaching the brink!" So wrote one of the Smythe brothers to Percy. Which brother dies? Well, you'll have to listen. That letter is read in this episode by a real digger not me and that is another reason to listen. Percy is still in England and the anxiety over his brothers heighten. He loses one then doesn't hear so much from another. Then the letters of condolence sent home are lost when the SS Mongolia his a mine. Things can only get better and they do in the next episode!

Bickering soldiers, solving disputes, isolation for mumps, drunk soldiers, "F* the Ordinance Officer. Take me to the Ordinance Officer." This one covers a three month period in camp and looking around old Blighty. Meeting up with brothers Viv and Vern, but not Bert. Pictures from home and from Vern's new wife. Meanwhile the 24th Battalion does the Battle of Bullecourt and Viv and Bert almost cross paths at the front. Vern is injured in the foot and he and Viv both win Military Crosses. Jump on board for this bumper trip.

Well, Percy is in Blighty at the 1st Southern General Hospital at Edgebaston when he hears disturbing news about an old mate from the 3rd Battalion who was killed in his sleep. He recovers fairly quickly at the 3rd Australian Auxillary Hospital and gets furlough, when he finally catches up with brother Bert and meets the alter-matriarch of the family, Mrs Morgan. Then there is Miss Tess, or is it Tilly, Pugsley, Mrs Caborn, Mrs Cooper, etc etc. Flirting, ...... well Percy is a master at this sport, I think more-so than the skating he also tackles! He goes to shows, like "The Arcadians", a clip from the Edison Opera Company from around 1910 is added, "A little bit of fluff," yeah right, Percy, and detective plays etc. Also to museums and a foundry that macks mills bombs and aerial bombs. Lastly, he is at Perham Downs awaiting classification and he learns more about brother, Verne's wedding. It's a long episode but well worth it. Please enjoy!

Do you have queer ideas of warfare? Met young Burrows, and asked him had he seen any Germans while on post. "Yes," he, "had seen a few." One he observed was putting up barbed wire entanglements. "And did you shoot at him?" I asked. "No." "Why didn't you?" "Well, he was about three hundred yards away." I was staggered. Burrows, of course, was a new reinforcement, but it seemed incredible that anyone should think three hundred yards too great a distance to hit a man. He had not even thought the matter of sufficient importance to report it. Some people have queer ideas of warfare. Oh Percy, what can I say? Come experience the worst winter in years.

We get descriptions of the Battle of Fromelles, although painfully brief, from brother Vern, a good look at Delville Wood and the aftermath of the Flers engagement. Here is a bit of what Percy has to say; "Turned off to the left, to some old disused trenches, near where was a wrecked "tank", one of those Hun-dreaded monsters which are the latest development of modern warfare. This one did not look such a very terrible thing, and was much smaller than I had expected them to be. It was heavily armoured, and had machine-gun emplacements protruding from each side and in front, and had a steering wheel in rear. Side-on, it had the shape of an irregular ellipse, and it moved on two caterpillars, one on each side, running right over and under the machine from end to end. One of these caterpillars was broken, and was doubled up in a loop on top. This was my first view of one of His Majesty's Land Ships, of which we have read so much in the papers, and which did such good work at the capture of Flers, Martinpuich, Cou

A nice quiet little stint in the Ypres Salient for our armed plebeians is a prelude to a return to the Somme. Anyway, Perce has a fight with rats, dangling wires and a Tommy sentry before he realises that he and three mates were left behind. The boys give their opinion on the Conscription Referendum in no uncertain terms to a couple politicians. Not so quiet on the Somme, you bet! Perce and Viv take a horse trip to Memetz Wood.  "Once, being held up by a block, we left the road to get around the chaos of horses, carts, limbers, motors, bikes and motor transports, and got into some old barbed wire entanglements, in which Viv's horse got caught".  Hey, I should have called this episode "The Plebeian." I almost called it "The Beetle." Now, why did I decide on "Piano Man?"

What can I say. Nothing, Percy says it all. This time he goes from the Somme to the dreaded Hill 60 and back to the Somme. He sees his first tanks, there are more mates killed, etc! Enough said!

Well finally! My apologies at the lateness of this episode. family visiting, work, yada, yada yada (as Seinfeld might say). Anyhow, this one is another cracker with the boys fighting at Moquet Farm and then coming back out again.

This episode is based on the letters home by Percy Smythe which were published in the Jerilderie Herald and Urana Observer in March and April 1917. They cover the same events as in the previous episode at Pozieres with a slightly different bent. What does a soldier tell his family about one of the most intense battles of the western front?

Drum-roll time ..... Here it is, The Battle of Pozieres. Percy drinks rum and smokes cigarettes and, those following the series know, things must be really bad for that to happen! He gets buried by a shell, dug out, digs others out ... some of them ..., shot at, blown up again, machine gunned, shelled and so and so on. He loses a lot of good mates, Bert Newland and Smith among them. Come into this most infamous of #Somme battles of #WW1 , #Pozieres  

Jack Prior almost gets himself killed, but many others succeed without trying. The boys are moved to the Somme and the Battle of Pozieres looms large before them. What a charming place, Percy describes the dugout he and his Russian born mate, Alex Popoff, find, "There are some bodies buried just in front of our door, and having swollen, they have forced the earth up over them, and it is spongy and springy to walk on." Percy has hardened to a veteran and is disgusted with the waste of life on the 1st day of the offensive.

Stannard, Green, Hall, Wise etc etc all dead but why worry about that? Bad news from home worries Percy much more when he learns a couple girlfriends are drowned. Such is life!.... Hey, what a great title if only it hadn't been used before! Anyway, the boys get a hammering from a heavy barrage and worse than that, some are out in no-man's-land when friendly fire - if artillery can be friendly - kills a bunch of blokes. Ohh, and Nugget Byrne belts up a poor sniper he captures "Camerade, camerade!" Stiff luck old mate, he had a leave pass to go to Berlin the next day.