Lt Burnard, Royal Flying Corps WW1 diary
OTD 1918. Airman on Western Front with 35 Squadron, then prisoner of war. Ex-army #Somme #Passchendaele.
Sunday. Nov 3. Feel none too well. Thought I wouldn’t get up – decided to eventually. Lying on my bed all day with British warm on. Felt a bit faint before supper, but it passed off. Ate a good supper. Felt chronically rotten; went out with Duce into the cold corridor to get some air, and I knowed no more!! Later woke from perfectly glorious dreams of Arcady to find myself back in this hole and on my bed in the tender clutches of an English M.O. who ordered me to bed.
Thursday Oct 31: Feel a trifle better.
Wednesday. Oct 30. Lights suddenly fused at 6pm. Had a comic evening trying to cook stuff in the dark. Gerson improvised a torch composed of a tin filled with greasy paper and chips of wood, by the light of which we devoured our mess. I reckon we ate our peck of dirt last night all right. Went to bed at 8.
Tuesday. Oct 29th. Place seems absolutely dead. More people still in bed. Feel pretty dead myself. Decline to go to bed. Three only of our room laid up. Went to bed at seven. Sweated like a horse. These comic pyjamas have proved invaluable.
Monday Oct 28th. Over 250 down with grippe, and, of the rest practically no one out on the square taking exercise. Spent the morning kicking a Rugger ball about. Felt pretty rotten but I think it did me good.
evening, Strange, who failed to escape with Clinton; Baer, the American in our room, and Lomax, managed to get a plank across from the back of the theatre and resting it from the sentry shelter to the outer wire crossed it in civilian clothes. After a moment we heard a shot from outside, but no one was hit. At the subsequent roll-call, six were found to be missing and were reported as ‹escaped›. Three Australians had hidden in a cupboard. The German officer was cheerfully astounded to see them next day. They told him that they found the weather too cold and so came back; which act of generosity did not prevent them getting three days cells each.
Sunday. Oct 27th. Great news! Turkey and Austria are supposed to have chucked in their hands.
The camp has lately been attacked by grippe, or Spanish grippe, a milder form of ‘flu’, which turns in serious cases to double pneumonia. I hear from home that both Dad & Mater have had it. I know it is rife in Scotland and in France. Looks as if it is all over Southern Europe.
Sunday Oct 20th. Great news coming through. We’re continuing to advance along the line. We’ve got Lille (Van den Broeck must be immensely pleased) and Ostend, and making huge strides in Belgium. Latest news is that we’ve got all the Belgian coast. Germany however is supposed to have broken off negotiations about peace, and to have decided to fight to the last.
Thursday Oct 17th. Yesterday, we had a bit of bad luck. One of the sentries walking round the building sank up to his knees in a hole. So was discovered our new tunnel which has been in construction for some time. Had the discovery not been made until the next day, the birds would have flown.
Sunday. Oct 13th Latest news! Germany’s new socialist or democratic government has accepted Wilson’s terms, have consented to evacuate Belgium and France, prior to discussing peace terms, as a guarantee of good faith.
Have since had a most interesting and enlightening talk with a very decent interpreter. He confidently expects peace within a week. He told us with tears in his eyes of the way the German people had been led by the nose, how that, for the sake of their country and the cause which they had been taught to believe was right their armies had struggled in the field and their civilians had suffered at home; how that his wife and five kiddies had been nearly starving in Berlin for two years – living on the barest rations, existing in rooms with no fire throughout the winter, allowed gas for cooking for only an hour or so each day; how that theirs was no isolated case, but common to all Germany; how that they had all, soldiers and civilians stuck it out, only to find now that they have been deceived by their leaders. It transpires that Wilson promised them peace in 1916 and again in 1917 with his guarantee for Alsace Lorraine – but their leaders, lustful of conquest, and the large firms like Krupps, desirous of continuance of the war, rejected the proposal, nor had the average man in the street in Germany the slightest inkling that a tentative proposal had been made.
The sufferings, he added, they had cheerfully borne, but now, to know that, not only was it in vain, but actually in a wrong cause, was heartbreaking.
It was a very interesting and rather a pitiful tale he told. But what most concerns us is that, please God, we’ll be home by Xmas, or soon after. Hurrah!!!
Inman dressed up as a girl tonight. Quite a success. The German officer was frightfully tickled when he entered for the evening roll call.
On parole the other day we met a whole crowd of French officers. We all saluted and yelled greetings to each other and one officer waved to me and called out ‹À bientot en France›
Monday Oct 7th. News that Germany, Austria and Turkey have asked for an armistice for the discussion of peace terms. It’s ripping, as showing that our end of the see-saw is thoroughly down, but it’s too premature. Hope we reject the proposal.