<&>Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English Version One <&>Copyright 1998 School of Linguistics & Applied Language Studies <&>Victoria University of Wellington <&>side one <&>0:14 as we went up the hill er we encountered heavy machine gun fire from a er from a er pillbox a german pillbox and one of my <,> mates tommy <,> er received <.>a <.>a a wound in the in the er thigh <,> and he went down <,,><&>6 it would be <,> i remember thirty forty years afterwards he still didn't have the bone united he was still hobbling around <,,> great chap but it was in <,> just about the same place that we lost our <&>1:00 skipper he was killed <,> we had very heavy casualties up at the top <,,> in fact we made our objective anyway and rooted the germans out <,> and er <,> i WAS OF USE by the time we got up there although my arm by this time was practically useless for me i was able to clean up the rifles of all those who were with me who'd who'd made the grade <,> because we'd been SO many times we'd fallen into the mud that even the er rifles were clogged with mud <,,> it's it's fighting through seas of mud so often <,,> all right we took our <&>2:00 objective there tut and er <,,> we spent the night in the trenches and i think it would be the following night we were all that next day in the trenches there <,> and the following night we were <.>re we were relieved <,> and we came back <,,> came back through pretty close to where the old original british line <,> er where the first er where the mons people first encountered the germans at a place called wieltje and er <,,> we ended up in a <,> in a horse paddock and i can remember the <,> wrapping myself up in a in my oilsheet <,> soaking wet anyway <,> just lying down in the mud <,> going sound asleep <,,> and <.>a a day or two <.>aft must have been <&>3:00 probably the next day we were taken away from there and taken back to to billets <,> and by this time this time my arm was swollen right up <,> <.>li like a a large sausage <,> tut so we were taken away back to billets where we er had the use of er vacated houses <,> dry we were able to get <,> change of clothes and of course we were we were in battle order <,> when we were <,> going up <,> we were advancing battle order means you carry nothing spare at all <,> you're going as lightly as possible <,> all you're carrying is <.>ammu <.>amm ammunition offensive <.>st material <,> nothing for your own <&>4:00 personal comfort <,> tut however we got into this er place and i reported sick and i was sent back to a er field hospital <,> and it so happened that er <,> i was knew the <,> young surgeon who was in charge of that particular place it was a a marquee and i was er <,> put out on down on a stretcher in this marquee <,> well i'm pretty my arm was getting pretty painful by then i'd had a the usual anti tetanus er injection which er er well when when you get it in the arm is pretty extensive and it brings you out in a rash as if you've got all the fleas in creation on you er so you get a a violent itch combined with everything else to keep you company tut however while i was in this er er marquee it was windy and wet and i knew that the <.>oth the rest of our crowd were back in in billets <,> in nice <&>5:00 comfortable <,> er warm places <,> so i asked him to <,> er asked this chap i said sir <,> will you mark me out i want to go back to the unit he told me not to be a b f <,> he said you've got a you've got an arm that will keep you out of this for some weeks oh no no i wanted to go back you get very attached to your mates <,,><&>5 they've been through things with you you er get very fond of them <,> you get very angry too when you see them killed <,> so <,> back i went <,> and i thought to old er we'd been through the er we'd been <&>6:00 through our stunt <,> tut that's the finish of it but <,> what happened instead of er <,> getting respite we were sent on again <,,> because the division had been split in two two brigades went over the top on the fourth of october <,> and the other er yes <,> we went over on the fourth the <,> other half of the division were kept in reserve <,> now on the twelfth of october <,> because the brass hats <,> back country decided to put another <,> blitz on <,> and they were <&>7:00 going to make another advance in passchendaele so the other half of the division was put into the line and we what was left of us supported them <,> now my older brother was in the second lot <,,><&>3 there was insufficient artillery preparation before that <,> and as a result of that it was a sheer MASSACRE <,,> we expected on our part to be out of the line for a period resting instead of that we were sent up to there to behind the <,> the er line to act as support for the other half of the division which was going over the top on the twelfth <,,><&>3 and tut en route <,> we got up fairly <&>8:00 fairly close to the old british line at Wieltje <,> this er second the the er <.>sec second er offensive was a little bit further to the left from my memory of where we went over at Otto farm <,> a little to the left and and up a different sector <,> at any rate i happened to see a lorry passing my brother who was in the medical corps er was on this lorry and i was able to have a couple of words of er with him as he passed by <,> so on we went er to er until <,> the time we came to a halt and they called for people to <,> mess orderlies to go and draw a meal for the evening <,> tut the <&>9:00 meal we got was six men to a stretcher <,> and straight up to the line to help to evacuate <,> hundreds of wounded who had been lying out <,> there probably from the date of the fourth of october offensive <,> and this was in pitch dark <,> over <,> er badly battered road roadways military roadways some of them were blown to almost to pieces <,> we were harassed all the time by <,> mustard shell fire mustard gas <,> and we got up to just behind where the <,> our own boys were in the line and we picked up a wounded Englishman i don't know who he was i don't even know his name he'd had <.>t two both legs <&>10:00 broken and he'd lain for three days out in the wet and cold <,> there were six of us on the stretcher and two in reserve and we carried him out <,> RAINING like heck all the time <,> carried him out and the only time that fellow ever said anything he said oh boys he says there's a puddle of water flowing underneath me small of my back he said would you stick your bayonet through it and let it out <,> one stage er the front blokes went into a bit of a hole nearly tipped him off <,> never in never a word of remonstration we finally at six oclock the next morning twelve hours we spent getting him out <,> we <&>11:00 pushed him into an advanced <.>d dressing station down a chute underground <,> whether he lived or not i've no idea <,> but i recall after that <,> trying to get back to to my unit <,,> and i got to the top of a little embankment <,> and fell <,,><&>3 and i lay there i suppose for three hours ABSOLUTELY exhausted <,> asleep <,> and when i joined up er with them again <,> i joined up down at an advanced field dressing station <,> by this time i was getting a bit anxious about my <&>12:00 eldest brother <,> who i knew had been in the <,> fight up on the <,> ridge <,> no word and i couldn't find out anything about him <,> but as i looked through the dressing station <,,><&>5 this is the place to give you <,,> some of the horrors of war <,,><&>6 i saw a young lad <,> with <,> the <,,> knuckle of his shoulder you could plainly see the rounded joint of his <.>sh shoulder blown off <,> and his arm hanging beside him and his <,> er uniform soaked in blood <,> i saw another standing there <&>13:00 he'd had a bullet through here trying to drink a cup of coffee and as he took a sip of it it would run out the sides <,> these were horrible things <,,> i came across one of my old school mates <,,><&>3 oh you've seen a fish <,> pulled out of the <,> water and as it lies on the bank its eyes <,> glaze over <,,> i saw my old school mate lying in the <,> in the er advanced dressing station with his eyes glazed over <,> he was able to speak to me <,> but i thought he was a goner <,,> later on <,> after i left him he got up <,> and they picked him up about <&>14:00 two miles further down the road <,> lying on the <,> side <,> he came back to new zealand <,> and later on <,> he represented his province as a an oarsman <,> shows you er there there's a in some ways war does something to you in er er in your ability to rise above the <,> immediate difficulties <,,><&>3 not that i <,,> recommend that as a means of <,,> building your <,,><&>3 what um <,,><&>3 <.>b building any sort of <.>im sense of importance it isn't <,,><&>3 all right that er er turned turned out then <&>15:00 after various enquiries that my <,> older brother <,> had received a very severe wound in the head and he'd been left with a <,,> a mate lying in a <.>s in a in a er <,,> shellhole waiting for the stretcher bearers to pick him up <,,> tut they never found the body of the man who was left behind and my brother was reported missing <,> missing for ages and ages and ages and then eventually missing believed killed <,> so eventually the final of it was when <,> he was buried in tyne cot cemetery on the <,> passchendaele ridge <,,> after <&>16:00 passchendaele we came out just just to go come back to passchendaele looking back at it do you think that the attack could ever have <.>suc er ever succeeded <,,><&>4 is there ever any success <,,><&>3 is there <.>an is there ever any success when you threw mens' lives away like that <,,> i'm not answering your question i'm <,> posing another one but er could they ever have achieved their objectives their military objectives they DID <,> passchendaele was TAKEN <,,> passchendaele was TAKEN <,> by the NEW ZEALANDERS <,> no not alone but it was TAKEN and that was one of the breakthroughs <,,> that <&>17:00 punished the germans very heavily <,,> yes er military i suppose regarded it as a success <,,> what a PRICE what effect did it have on morale general morale <,,><&>6 tut oh <,,> i suppose <,,> it might have saved more often <,> roll on duration <,> which meant <,,> we're here for the duration of the war until such time as his majesty will discharge us honourably <,> and roll on duration can't come quick enough <,,><&>4 in other words the nobody liked the job <,,> <&>18:00 but it had to go ahead <,,> tut we were shifted from <,> after passchendaele we were shifted over to <,> another sector <,> called polygon wood <,,> POLYGON WOOD was a very <.>draught there it's perpetual shellfire dropping on it <,> a misery of a place <,> it was WELL within <.>the the germans' gunfire range and they PLASTERED it <,> and again we had heavy casualties there <,> eventually we were taken out taken right out altogether <,,> tut we suffered <,> in our brigade it was a new brigade <,> which was formed in er probably with the idea of building up the messines er <&>19:00 offensive it was a new brigade and it was so mauled about that they decided to break it up and use it as reinforcements for the rest of the division <,> tut so <,> tut after after being in the <,> er the er polygon wood affair we were withdrawn and for a time we fiddled about <,> er assisting <,> in sort of navvy work <,> er digging er digging of placements and building a er lay laying communication lines er a <.>lo lot of that consisted of <,> <&>20:00 digging a trench six feet deep <,> a man got er a post out for him <,> two paces <,> two paces on the surface and you go down six feet and when you go down to the bottom of the six feet they lay a cable of er for <.>co <.>co communication between the units and then that was <.>b built in er filled in and covered over <,> that was your job for the <,> for that particular stint it might take you the whole day to <,> do all that we could even figure out how long it would take you to dig er six foot by six foot and fill it in and er mound it up and get out of the place <,> it's quite a while <,> quite a number of hours we did that er during the final offensive <,> er which we didn't take part in as as new <&>21:00 zealanders <,> by that by the time that offensive went on the new zealand division had been moved down to the somme <,> but i didn't go to the somme <&>21:09