Mexbrough Times, January 23rd, 1915
A Denaby drummer
Tales from the Trenches
The Comrades Compact
Drummer V Hutchinson, of the York and Lancaster’s, is at present at home at Denaby Main, invalidated with rheumatism. He has seen a lot of fighting in France since early September, principally in the neighbourhood of Vailly, and has an interesting story to tell. His rheumatism is a result of the severe weather, which the troops have encountered. Otherwise, he has escaped scathless, although he has occasionally been in at some grim work.
The serious business of warfare as, however, had its lighter side, as in the case of the drunken German who losthis wayamong the trenches, and staggered in with a canteen of rum in his hand. He submitted with the best possible grace to the sub sequent disarming, and finished his rum at leisure.
Drummer Hutchinson also relates a pathetic incident, showing the great uncertainty which is common to all those brave fellows fighting out there in the valley of the shadow of death. Two comrades of his regiment had agreed that if either were killed the other should promptly write home to the widow. Poor Bob Reynolds, one of the pair, was shot one morning, and later in the day a grenade from the German trenches rolled into the British lines but failed to explode. It was picked up and examined with curiosity and dropped again.
Towards evening the surviving chum, known to the company as “Rough” sat down to scribble the sad intelligence of his death to Reynold´s widow. But the letter was destined never to be written, for the German bomb which had been living dominant in the trench for some hours, suddenly exploded and injured “Rough” so badly that he subsequently died of shock.
Hutchinson has several interesting souvenirs of this stay in the trenches, including a machine gunner’s hat and a German officers drinking cup and stick.