Private Frank Meakin survived against all odds and broke Army rules to keep his record of the catastrophic Somme – leaving a powerful account of the horrors of war.
Frank was 34, working as an architect and recently married when he signed up with the Sheffield Pals in 1914, one of many battalions formed as part of Lord Kitchener’s new civilian army. Other comrades included clerks, students, shop assistants and teachers. Frank, as a blue collar professional was encouraged to join up as the Military specifically did not want the volunteers solely to come from the working classes. They liked the idea of people normally behind desks going off to war although a lot of them may not have been as robust as those people doing manual labour would have been.
All around him, his friends, neighbours and colleagues lay wounded and dying – and Private Frank Meakin was now about to risk the same fate.
“There were some ghastly messes...forms in the bottom of the trench and several times, in feeling if they were alive, my hand would be plunged into a gory mess of flesh. I encountered loose limbs too,” he wrote in his diary.
Such a first-hand account of the Battle of the Somme should never have existed.
It was forbidden for servicemen on active duty at the front to keep any information that could be used by the enemy, so a diary like this could have led to severe punishment and possible court martial.
After being locked away in a box since the end of the First World War , the words of this volunteer soldier have only recently come to light.
Frank Meakin was posted to France with the Sheffield Pals battalion during the first days of the battle – the bloodiest in British history – which began 100 years ago.
Counting both sides, more than a million soldiers were killed or injured in the five-month battle across a 15-mile front. On the first day alone 100,000 British troops went over the top, and more than 19,000 of them were killed. Many who survived never wanted to talk about what they saw, some burning their uniform and never spoke of the war again. It is the very the ordinariness of Frank Meakins diary entries that have proven so riveting.
Frank had several months of training at Redmires Camp in the city before going to Egypt and then France in March 1916.
On June 27, just a few days before the battle, he received orders he would be taken from the base to the front line. In his diary he wrote: “We were awakened at 11.15am to pack my valise and private effects and to carry to [the camp] at 2 o’clock. My boots, socks and trousers are all ringing wet. I am now putting this away with my private things. My last thought as I close this – oh, Doll my darling, how dearly I love you and my mother.”
They were sent over the top on that first day on July 1.
From the recent television coverage of the Centenary Commemorations it is testament to the violent significance of the battle that the trenches and landscape scars are still there. The amount of priceless bits of old metal from that day in that field are still being excavated on a daily basis remains extraordinary.
The Sheffield Pals were at a disadvantage immediately upon leaving their trenches with an upwards slope in the field affording the higher ground and tactical superiority to the Germans. Observers of the Somme conflict recorded that "The battalion was so close to one end of the line and the German line curved in an arc meant the Sheffield Pals weren’t just walking towards the enemy, the enemy was at their sides as well, with machine guns so they were hit in a way which very few other battalions were.”
Just 47 of the 650 men in the battalion survived unwounded, including Frank who returned to collect his diary from the camp.
He wrote: “Sergeant Oakes had asked Captain Colley for reinforcements before going over as all his section had been blown up. Colley tried to get some but couldn’t. ‘Never mind’ he said, just before going over, ‘We shall all be dead in a couple of minutes’.”
He had followed the first wave over the top at 7.25am and, after finding the captain in the front bay, asked him the time. Frank wrote: “He pulled out his watch but could scarcely hold it, so shattered were his nerves. The poor fellow followed us all the same and was killed.” He also described the appalling living conditions, which were rife with rats and lice. “We were over our thighs in water going over the trench,” Frank wrote.
He also told how in the days that followed, they were marched 12 miles to Louvencourt. He wrote: “We were promised a rest and tea but we were disappointed... marched 10 or 12 miles with only two short halts of a minute or so.” His mood was raised by a brigadier – but only temporarily.
Frank wrote: “He addressed us with the most fulsome praise, saying that never had troops advanced so steadily in the face of such a fearful fire. It was like a Guards parade.” But Frank added they were told their attack had the “desired effect” by holding “Germans in hand and thus enabling the French on our right to make such progress almost unopposed”.
The private wrote: “Thus our suspicions were confirmed; we had merely been offered up as a sacrifice.”
He added: “No reserves were at hand to follow us up, nor was it ever intended we should be reinforced.” Frank was a secret diabetic, and after the condition worsened in 1918, he had to declare it – and was discharged. He was sent to Cheltenham to recuperate before returning to his wife, Doll, and his old job at Sheffield Town Hall.
There is little information about how Frank Meakin adapted to civilian life after his traumatic ordeal.
Many former soldiers, even if not directly affected by life changing injuries suffered from what we now know as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Shell shock, nightmares, a feeling of guilt at surviving comrades and a difficulty with relationships and normal life continued to afflict thousands for the rest of their lives.
Perhaps an indication of a happy post-war family life Frank was able to go on holiday but tragically, whilst on vacation at Bridlington in East Yorkshire, UK in 1934 he drowned whilst swimming , aged 54 .
It never occurred to Frank Meakin that he would actually die in battle.
(Source document; Tony Robinson in The Mirror)
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