Lost Manuscript Found After 41 Years. - Long Historic Article

Biggins

Long Historic Article: From the Times Yesterday, posted for those interested.

Diary hidden for 41 years reveals soldier’s hell in First World War

Like many of the men who fought in the First World War, Captain Claude Burder never felt able to speak about his experiences. As a vicar and a man of God he had seen things no man should witness, and he kept his memories locked away.

It was only 41 years after Captain Burder’s death that his son discovered a handwritten manuscript hidden in an old tin trunk. It was a full account of his father’s life in the trenches written just weeks after the Armistice in November 1918.

Now thanks to his son, Captain Burder’s story has been published for the first time under the title Hell on Earth, allowing others to read about the things of which he never spoke.

In one passage he describes squeezing between two sleeping comrades during a bombardment only to discover in the morning that they had not been sleeping. Both men had been decapitated by the same shell.

He fought at Ypres and the Somme and rose, unusually, from private to captain and was awarded the Military Medal for gallantry in the field.
Captain Burder need never have gone to war. He was a working vicar in 1914 and tried to sign up as an army chaplain. He was told that at 32 he was too old so instead he enlisted as a private in the Middlesex regiment.

John Burder, 69, only opened the trunk containing his father’s memoirs last year, 91 years after they had been locked away. Mr Burder, a retired TV producer from Bournemouth said: “It is the most amazing and graphic account. He described everything like it was yesterday.”

He said: “I have had the trunk for 40 years and it has been in my garage in all that time. The manuscript was well-bound in string and was exactly how my father had left it in 1918.

“I knew my father was in the war but that’s all. He never spoke about it. If only he had been able to talk about it with me when he was alive.
“If I had the slightest inkling of what he had been through I would have behaved a lot better when I was a teenager.”

Captain Burder’s war ended in 1918 when he was struck in the head by a piece of shrapnel. Of the young officer who had been standing next to him he wrote: “Nothing whatsoever was left of him, not a single button.”
Often the dead outnumbered the living. During a bombardment at Ypres in 1917 he took shelter in a dugout.

He wrote: “It was so dark that it was impossible even to see who was next to me but I could feel there was someone on my left, I thought he was asleep. As the darkness dwindled. . . I could see now my companion and understand his silence. His head had been blown off without otherwise disturbing his position.

“On my right a man who was sitting in the same position as my silent companion on the left had had his head removed in exactly the same way.”
Later he led his men in an assault on German lines. He wrote: “When one of the men, whose heel I could touch, raised his head a little he was shot dead. No movement — not even a quiver — marked a German sniper’s very accurate shot.”

He added: “A German aeroplane suddenly appeared and, swooping down just over our heads, machine-gunned us.
“I flopped down; hoping the earth might open and swallow me up. As it didn’t, I tried to look as if I wasn’t there. I then discovered that I had flopped on the partly buried body of a man who had evidently been lying sometime in the hot sun.
“He was on his face and earth covered up the upper part of his body, but his behind, now bereft of trousers, was sticking up above the ground. I was glad when I hadn’t got to stay in there any longer.”

As darkness fell, Captain Burder took refuge in a shell hole and went to write a note to battalion HQ.
He said: “I had just begun to write when to my astonishment someone sprang with great nimbleness over the side of my shell hole. Before I had time to think whether it was a German or not I recognised the spare form of the commander of C Company. As he sprang in he said ‘anyone at home for tea?’”

It was only after the battle that Captain Burder discovered that his life had been saved by his fountain pen and a brass button which had deflected a piece of shrapnel from his heart.

After the war he became rector of St Mary’s Church in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, and then chaplain at nearby RAF Wyton. He married his wife Gabrielle in 1921 and they had three children; George, Mary and John.
Mary died aged six from whooping cough and George, a lieutenant in the Rifle Brigade, was killed crossing the Rhine towards the end of the Second World War. He was posthumously awarded the Military Cross, which his father received from King George VI.

Captain Burder died aged 87 in 1968.

Hell on Earth — My Life in the Trenches is published by Big Ben Books.

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Morlar

Excellent, cheers.

Biggins

Its a book I look forward to reading.

tac foley

Thank you for that. My daughter lives less than 50m from St Mary's Church, where he was a much-loved vicar/rector. I spent, in total, eight years of my life at nearby RAF Wyton in a specialist unit based there.

tac
Supporter of the Cape Meares Lighthouse Restoration Fund

ytareh

Stirring read thanks for posting...the First World War tends to get a bit forgotten sometimes as the Second seems to get far more media coverage .And of course "We" were IN IT....I think the traditional image is of the poor souls going .over the top' to be mowed down by enemy fire in 'No Mans Land ' but if I recall correctly I think I read once that the vast majority of casualties were to artillery/shell fire as described in the accounts above .All that decapitation !?No wonder they had 'Shell Shock'!

Biggins

Biggins wrote: »

Long Historic Article: From the Times Yesterday, posted for those interested.

Diary hidden for 41 years reveals soldier’s hell in First World War

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Corrected the third link.