Pop's Last Post

I was in my grandfather’s hospital room in the late 1970’s when a doctor came in to go over his medical history. My grandfather, who was both pleasant and a bit stoic, answered the questions matter-of-factly, but in a thick Yorkshire brogue which I secretly loved to hear. The initial question was very basic, but the answer surprised us all.

“When was the last time you saw a doctor?” the young intern asked.

“1917” was Pop’s reply.

The intern looked to us with raised eyebrows. Clearly he felt this was a mistake, and that my ninety something patriarch was not of sound mind. But Pop was still quite sharp, and we indicated that the doctor should continue to ask him the questions.

“And what were you hospitalized for?”

“My leg”

“What was wrong with your leg at the time?”

“It had a piece of the Kaiser's shrapnel in it”

“And you’ve never been to a hospital since?”

“No.”

That was it, no story, no bragging, no lecturing this youngster about never needing doctors, no reminiscing about the war. Get on with it.

Of course, as a young boy, the scene stuck out in my mind. I was determined to find out more about Pop’s wartime experiences. But, with his advanced age, one hospitalization led to another, and in due time we said goodbye to Pop and lost him from this world.

Last week, while going through family papers, I came across Pop’s war diary from the First World War. His words were succinct, as usual, but here is his story, as best I can relate.

My grandfather, George Herbert Ramsden, was born in the city of Wath-on-Dearne, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, in 1885. He spent most of his early life in Bingley, where he was indentured in an apprenticeship to learn the painting trade. His father was a cook, who ran a fish and chip shop. As a young man, he and his friends would stroll the lanes of Bingley in the evening,

singing songs to the girls who strolled the same lanes. It was there that he met Rose Ann Oldfield, a collier’s daughter. After courting for some time, he proposed to her one day at Druid’s altar, an old stone formation looking out over the moors. On the day they were married, he was so excited when he saw her appear at the back of the church that he ran to her and walked her down the aisle himself.

Rose had several relatives who had emigrated from England to the United States and were living outside of Boston, Massachusetts. The two decided to join them and look for opportunity there, so in the early 1900’s they crossed the Atlantic and began a new life in America. They had a daughter, Irene, in 1911. A few years later, in 1914, fighting broke out in Europe and England joined France and Belgium in fighting Kaiser Wilhelm and the German Army on the Western Front.

Despite the fact that my grandfather was now 30 years old, with a young family, successfully settled in a new country, his sense of duty was calling him back to England. And even though the Germans declared a submarine blockade around England, sinking every ship they found, George, Rose & Irene set sail back to their homeland. The journey was uneventful, save for a friendship that the family (especially 4 year old Irene) developed with the Captain. When the trip was over the Ramsden family settled back in Yorkshire, but the Captain and the ship were both lost to the German submarines on their return trip to America.

Back in England Pop enlisted in the Army and became a member of the Black Watch. The Black Watch were a Scottish regiment, known as “the Ladies from Hell” because they would proudly wear their kilts into battle. In due time he was trained as a machine gunner and sent across the channel with his regiment to join the troops in Northern France. They moved across France and Belgium with full packs, to places like Camiers, Marquay, Arras, Fampoux, St. Julien, St. Omer, St. Momelin, Poperindge and finally Ypres. At Ypres the English troops had trouble pronouncing the city’s name properly, so they took to calling it “Wipers”.

In Ypres Pop was put to work as a runner, possibly because of his maturity. Runners were charged with hand delivering orders from Brigade headquarters out to the commanders on the front lines, whose positions could change daily with no regular means to communicate the changes. This was not always an easy job, in a country full of mazes of trenches and barbed wire, pillboxes and shelled out forests. One day he was delivering a message in a new section of countryside and he became disoriented. The lane he was on forked, and he was too close to the German front lines to risk going the wrong way. He paused for a time, in doubt over what to do, but as he rested there a cat suddenly emerged out of the lonely landscape and, looking back at him, walked away down one of the paths. Pop chose to follow the cat, and it led him safely to the allied lines.

At night he slept in “the tunnels” as he called them. These were huge expanses of underground tunnels dug by volunteer Sappers recruited from the coal mines of Wales and Yorkshire. They housed the English troops deep underground, out of danger from German artillery, and gave the miners an additional launching point to tunnel under the German lines and plant explosives. Even today the farms in that countryside are dotted with craters that testify to the “clay-kickers” who carried out such destructive and demoralizing operations against the enemy.

In July of 1917, Pop was stationed just north of Ypres on the Yser canal bank, just in front of Pilckem Ridge. He regularly ran messages to the front, while the English Army began gearing up for a major offensive. Daily artillery activity increased shelling of the German lines, and the Germans responded with barrages of their own. On July 2^nd his diary relates heavy shelling of their positions towards morning. During this period, he also acted as a guide, joined work parties in repairing the trenches, and both wrote and received a number of letters from home.

On July 31, 1917, Pop awoke and was ordered to Headquarters, where he was given a message to deliver to Major C.C.L. Barlow of the Lincolnshire Regiment. His diary tells the story quite clearly:

Stayed in tunnel until 6 a.m. Sent with message to Major Barlow to our front line. Found him at Hindenburg Farm. Went back to Brig H.Q. Sent back to Section got nearly there when struck by shrapnel in the knee. Wound dressed in shell hole again at canal bank. Night at 47 C.C.S.

47 C.C.S. was the Casualty Clearing Station. The next day he was moved by train to Camiers, where he was treated in a hospital for a few days and then put on a hospital ship and sent back to England for his recovery at Oxford. The wound probably saved his life, for what he did not know was that July 31, 1917 was the very first day of the Battle of Passchendaele, also known as the 3^rd Battle of Ypres.

The engagement lasted more than four months, until early November. The unimaginable battlefield conditions are legendary. After English artillery softened the German positions with over one million artillery rounds, record rainfall hit the region and turned the battlefield into a mass of mud and flooded shell holes. Men and horses became stuck in the mire and literally drowned in the mud. Meanwhile, wave after wave of men perished in a futile effort to gain mere yards of territory. The first wave of English troops to attack were driven back by the Germans, suffering 70% casualties. By November when the battle ended, nearly 250,000 English troops had perished on the battlefield along with approximately 400,000 Germans. Major Barlow, who received Pop’s message from H.Q. that morning, lived until November but died just days before the battle was over, though his remains were never able to be recovered. He is memorialized in a cemetery in Belgium.


To this day the Belgians honor the fallen who came to defend them in a daily ceremony that has been conducted without fail from July of 1928 until this day (with the only exception being during the Second World War, when they were under German occupation, again). The solemn ceremony, called “the Last Post”, is conducted at the Menin Gate in Ypres at dusk each day. Traffic is stopped while a bugle plays the tune that would sound the end of the day to English lines.

Pop was lucky to have made it out of the war alive, and though his story possesses no standout heroics, learning it helped me to understand the true sacrifice of his generation, which even now is fading from our collective memory. This week will mark the 100^th anniversary of the outbreak of the war to end all wars. It also marks the 98^th anniversary of the battle of Passchendaele, and of my grandfather’s 1917 trip to the hospital. Peace.