The photograph above was signed and dated precisely a hundred years ago by my great-grandfather, Cyril Mumby, on the very day that he was wounded on the Western Front.

A former captain of militia (the 3rd Leicesters), the 35-year-old Cyril had rejoined the Special Reserve on 20 August 1914, soon after the outbreak of the war. After training in England, he had been ordered on 21 October to join the British Expeditionary Force in France, made up of regulars and reservists like himself.

Cyril had crossed by night from Folkestone, and had been attached to the First Battalion, the Lincolnshire Regiment, part of the 9th Infantry Brigade. It was an appropriate posting for someone with Lincolnshire ancestry. Raised in 1685 as the 10th Foot, the Lincolnshire had been collecting battle honours since Blenheim. With considerable apprehension, Cyril was joining them in their temporary billet in the village of Rouge Croix, south of Armentières.

Despite their legendary efficiency and ésprit de corps, the men of the Lincolnshire presented a shocking sight. In the action of the past few days, they had suffered no fewer than 144 casualties, yet were called forward again that very afternoon. Cyril’s first grim taste of action was an attack on Neuve Chapelle. Advancing under heavy machine gun fire, scores of the Lincolnshires were hit, their casualties amounting to a further fourteen killed, 74 wounded and seven missing.

It had been raining heavily. Barely able to keep themselves awake, the survivors huddled overnight in hastily-dug trenches that amounted to little more than muddy ditches. When the battalion eventually withdrew before dawn, it was to spend most of the day marching wretchedly through the rain to their billets.

The following morning they advanced on Kemmel, where the landscape was unspoilt as yet and seemed more picturesque. The battalion was to reinforce the line around Messines against a formidable assault by the Germans, who were bent on breaking through to the Channel ports. On 1 November, they were ordered to re-take the village of Wytschaete, which they achieved with further heavy casualties. Cyril survived the engagement, but five of his brother officers were killed and three were wounded. Formed up on the road by the Colonel and acting Adjutant, fewer than a hundred men answered the roll call. Astonishingly, the number of dead, wounded or missing, in all ranks, now totalled 293.

Refitted and reorganised, if not fully recovered, the gallant unit received orders on 5 November to move ‘at five minutes’ notice’. Detailed as reserve battalion, the Lincolnshire sheltered from heavy shell fire in dug-outs on the Menin road, mere holes in the ground. Mud, water, rain, frost and snow combining with murderous shell fire, the regimental historian considers their predicament to have been ‘without parallel in the history of the British Army’.

The British having been driven in a desperate battle from their trenches, the Lincolnshire and other reserve battalions were now sent to recover that ground. That is how my great-grandfather found himself in the Nonne Bosschen (‘Nun’s Wood’), on the north side of the Menin road, into which the enemy had fallen.

About a hundred yards short of the German line, the Lincolnshire halted and set about digging new trenches, but were unable to penetrate below the roots of the trees. For three days they huddled in shallow, water-logged ditches, easy targets for the German machine guns. Then, on 9 November, in pouring rain, they heroically beat back repeated onslaughts by the massed enemy, his final attempt to break a way through to Ypres and the coastal towns.

The succeeding days ‘were days of almost indescribable misery, when only the inherent cheerful disposition of the British soldier kept his soul alive amidst desperate conditions’. The trenches had been flooded by the heavy rain. Liquid mud mingled with blood and gore. Relentless shelling on 12 November accounted for 29 casualties. On 13 November, there was more of the same. My great-grandfather had time to sign and date a studio portrait of himself that he had had taken in Ypres, and to post it off to his sister, Isabel, in England. I have it now and it is the one illustrated above.

A novel form of trench-mortar, the Minenwerfer or ‘Minnie’, had been turned against them, the first of its damaging shells exploding in soft ground near a burying party and spattering it with mud. Heavy rain fell and Cyril, in the forward trench, was knee-deep in mud and water.

Suddenly, Cyril found himself on the receiving end of a shell. The next he knew he was concussed, the sound of the blast ringing in his ears. The shrapnel had torn into both feet, cut up his face and knocked out a tooth. A stretcher party hastily carried him away and he was transported, in agony, to a field hospital, where his wounds were classed as ‘severe’. His wife and mother were both informed by telegram. Four days later he was taken to Boulogne and, much to his relief, embarked on the troopship Carisbrooke Castle for England.

Cyril’s recovery was slow and it was not until March 1916 that he was declared ‘fit for light duty’. Determined to be of service, he re-trained as a Railway Transport Officer and, in October 1916, returned to France, to see out the war there as an R.T.O. Based in Rouen, his work was to issue movement orders, order waggons, certify demurrage bills. The Armistice was signed in November 1918, but two years later Cyril was still in uniform. Promoted to Major in 1919, he obtained his longed-for release in April 1921, by which time he was Deputy Assistant Director of Transport, British Troops, France and Flanders, a survivor, but greatly affected by his ordeal.

Cyril’s period of active service had left him permanently disabled, his business career and his marriage both in ruins. He would not have been human if not profoundly damaged psychologically by his experiences. The decimation of the gallant Lincolnshires that he had witnessed – in spite of which they had remained an effective fighting unit – must have haunted him for the rest of his days. He died in 1938.

Men of the First Battalion, The Lincolnshire Regiment, in the trenches at Nonne Bosschen, 11 November 1914. Cyril Mumby was in this trench on 13 November when a shell landed nearby, causing 'a terrific explosion'.

Admiral Lord Jellicoe lays one of the four corner stones of the St John's School War Memorial Cairn, 22 January 1918

The personal archive of Ernest Golledge reveals the effect of the First World War on the life of St John’s Boys’ Elementary School in Ealing, of which he was the inspirational headmaster.

Perhaps the first impact of the war was the departure, on 14 November 1914, of one of its masters, enrolled as an instructor in the ‘New Model Army’. The second was an increased number of visitors in uniform. Adept at attracting ‘celebrities’ into the school – he had even persuaded Shackleton to give a talk there – he soon arranged visits by Lieutenant-Commander Norman Holbrook, V.C. – ‘a real schoolboy’s hero, a man of the sea, sunburnt, jolly and breezy’ – and an old friend, an habitué of the nearby Hendon Aerodrome, Lieutenant Louis Noel of the French Flying Corps.

With mounting casualties among old boys, Ernest soon decided to erect a war memorial in the playground, one of the earliest to be raised, and to have some of its stones placed in position by visiting dignitaries. The first of these was the Hon. J.G. Jenkins, late Premier of Australia. Most of the heavy stones had been lifted into place by the boys themselves. A number of wounded soldiers, some with their arms in slings, were on hand to witness the ceremony.

In October 1916, Ernest invited no less a personage than Field Marshal Lord French, commander-in-chief of the British Home Forces, to ‘fix a corner stone on the “Cairn”’. Surprisingly, Lord French was ‘very much inclined to accede to your request’. His visit, postponed till 19 September 1917, despite much badgering from Ernest, lasted a mere ‘quarter of an hour’, during which he pinned the Distinguished Conduct Medal on the chest of a St John’s old boy. Private William Bristow of the Rifle Brigade, whom Ernest described as ‘an average type of boy’, had crawled under German wire entanglement at Armentières to lob a grenade into a crowded trench, and was to spend two and a half years in hospital for his pains.

Princess Louise stands by the unfinished War Memorial. This was probably her first visit to St John's, in 1916

The patriotic Ernest encouraged his boys to invest in the ‘War Loan’, an initiative in which children all over the country were involved. H.R.H. the Princess Louise lent her support and duly visited the school. She returned in the autumn of 1917 with her brother, the Duke of Connaught, who applied ‘a quantity of cement’ to the cairn before unveiling a portrait of Lord Kitchener. In January 1918, it was pointed out in the press that special significance was attached to the four corner stones of the cairn. Three of these had been laid by Lord French, the Duke of Connaught and Lord Jellicoe. Ernest was said to have in mind the Chief of Staff, General Sir William Robertson, to lay the fourth. In the event, it was Haig himself who performed the duty, probably late in 1920.

It is disillusioning to find a far from united home front. Every headmaster was obsessed with attendance figures. With much of the working population away at the front, able-bodied schoolboys were in high demand as workers. As a result, the self-interested tradesmen of Ealing had lured almost a quarter of Ernest’s boys from their classrooms – illegally – and, by December 1916, he was barely managing to hold the school together. A cynical, or pragmatic Mayor had instructed the attendance officer to turn a blind eye to the ‘wholesale employment of boys – as errand boys’, which had eventually reduced the school roll by nearly a quarter.

A lack of sufficient fuel that winter, an exceptionally harsh one, would hardly have helped. On 5 February 1917 the temperature in the unheated classrooms fell below freezing. The only option for the shivering boys was a lesson in ‘Drill’. Ernest caught a ‘severe chill’, as did ‘several of the teachers’ and ‘many of the children’. Such conditions were not just to be endured for a single day, but for weeks on end. ‘No fires in afternoon and no coal although plenty on order. Secretary informed.’ There is little sense of a community pulling together in adversity. Ernest seems almost to have been abandoned by the school managers, the local authority and by the townsfolk in general. Thefts at the school – of an umbrella, coats and Ernest’s own bicycle – were a further irritant.

In addition, there was the general disruption that came from being in a state of war. On 3 October 1917, pupils on their way back to school after dinner were sent home by police because of an air-raid warning, a Zeppelin looming overhead. In January, Ernest logs the endless queuing for provisions in the open air as a cause of increased illness among the children.

The unfolding national tragedy of course added to the sense of gloom. Ernest was intensely proud of the part played by his staff and old boys in the war effort. By the end of the war, no fewer than 475 former pupils had visited St John’s in khaki, an astonishing indication of their loyalty to him and the school. Ernest made active interventions on behalf of his pupils, for example recommending suitable candidates to the newly-formed Royal Flying Corps. He also kept a tally of the school’s ‘War Honours’. These would eventually amount to a Military Cross, three Distinguished Conduct Medals, eight Military Medals and two mentions in dispatches. Ernest preserved the stories of many of them in a scrapbook.

Of all the stories from the war, none is more poignant and striking than that of an old boy, Blake, who visited the school on 3 March 1916. Giving the boys ‘a very interesting account of his experiences in “Suvla Bay”,’ Blake ‘pathetically told how he and another old boy – Keeley – had just been talking about the “old school” when a shell burst over them and when he came to himself (unhurt) he saw poor Keeley lying “blown to pieces”. N.B. both lads were under 18 years of age.’

Blake, whose head must have been ringing from the blast, told the boys that his eye was caught by a piece of paper that was fluttering on the ground in front of him. He had picked it up and examined it. Then he remembered that Kealey (Ernest misspells the name) had had it in his hand when the shell had struck. It was a photograph of the school-yard at St John’s. Blake had brought it with him to show the boys.

Blake was again on parade at the school, as a police constable, on Empire Day 1924, when Princess Louise, by now a firm admirer of Ernest Golledge, presented him with the Police Medal. Bemused, if not reluctant heroes, the poor, undernourished, often lice-infested boys of St John’s School, many of whom had never seen the sea or even been to London, had learned much from their magnificent headmaster about ‘playing the game’.

On Golledge, see also http://www.rupertwilloughby.co.uk/gleanings/ernest-golledge-headmaster-of-st-john’s-school-ealing-and-the-visits-of-the-antarctic-explorers-ernest-shackleton-teddy-evans-and-frank-wild/. For a full account of St John’s School, Ealing, during the First World War, see Rupert Willoughby, A Head of his Time: The Life and Opinions of Ernest Golledge, Reforming Headmaster, 1872 – 1951.