The worst of improvised burials close to the front line was the near-certainty that the body would be disinterred by shellfire. The pre-war army had expected great things from cyclists, acting as bicycle-borne infantry in mobile war. In the event, while cyclists did indeed prove useful as orderlies and message-carriers, most bicycle unites sent to the Western Front finished up acting as infantry. Private Jimmy Smith of the Northern Cyclist Battalion buried his best friend Ernie Gays.
I took him by the ankles, the other two took him by the arms, and we laid him in and covered him up. I remember feeling a bit upset, for the grave was only about four feet deep. I knew he probably wouldn’t be there for very long, because of the shell-fire.
Source:
Holmes, Richard. "Earth and Wire." Tommy: The British Soldier on the Western Front, 1914-1918. London: HarperCollins, 2004. 298-99. Print.
Original Source Listed:
Quoted in Holmes Firing Line p. 201.
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