Heroics in the face of hell

THE moving dedication at the beginning of Nigel Farndale’s novel hints at the hell his grandfather, a young farmboy from North Yorkshire, experienced in the muddy, blooddrenched trenches of the First World War: “For my grandfather, Private Alfred Farndale, who died in the mud of Passchendaele, and again seventy years later in his bed.”

In Farndale’s view, every man died in that battle, even those who survived. For the dark, life-sapping shadow that descended on them all snuffed out a vital spark.

The battle raged for 100 days. More than half a million Allied troops and a quarter of a million German were killed. The dead would be buried under a deluge of soil only to be disinterred by the next shell, and reburied by the next.

In his novel, The Blasphemer, partly inspired by young Alfred’s traumatic experiences, Farndale vividly brings to life the horrors young men endured. As a boy, he had listened to his grandfather’s tales of war as they worked together on the family farm near Leyburn.

But the silences were just as memorable: “He was an affable man but prone to dark mood swings. There were long periods, maybe three weeks at a time, when he wouldn’t talk. I had little doubt what lay behind it, having grown up listening to his stories of life in the trenches.

It deeply affected him,” he says.

Alfred’s eldest son, Farndale’s uncle, went on to join the Army against his wishes and rose to the rank of general. The fact that a former private’s son was able to go on to claim the title General Sir Martin Farndale, Commander-In- Chief of the British Army of the Rhine is perhaps partly due to the social upheaval that followed the Great War.

ALFRED’S beginnings were much more humble. Born in Knaresborough, he was the youngest of 12 children and in a reserved occupation looking after the stock on his parents’ farm near Guisborough when, against their wishes, he lied about his age at 17, signing up at the local Army recruitment office in Northallerton.

Despite being sent home because he was too young, he volunteered again as soon as he was able. Alfred knew something of the realities of life on the Front Line and would have been very aware of what he was letting himself in for.

“My grandfather had two older brothers fighting in the trenches and one had been shot in the elbow. His cousin George had been killed at Ypres in May 1917. There were widespread reports of the 20,000 men killed and 40,000 injured on the first day of the Somme. It was quite a frightening prospect.”

Alfred certainly rose to the challenge. He was, undoubtedly, a hero, and an unsung one at that. One of the stories he told his family, about a daring dash under fire to deliver muchneeded ammunition to the Front Line, revealed an act of bravery that had gone unnoticed in the chaos of battle.

“My grandfather was haunted by this incident,” says Farndale who, in 2007 visited the battlefield with his father to mark the 90th anniversary of Passchendaele.

“It was a moving experience. When we came to the notorious spot known as Hellfire Corner, we remembered the story he told us. He and Quartermaster Sergeant Zaccarelli had been galloping up to the Front with an ammunition limber when the Germans started to shell them. Zaccarelli was killed, along with a horse.

My grandfather managed to cut the dead horse free, drag Zaccarelli’s body into a ditch and carry on up to the Front on one horse with his delivery of ammunition.

“It amounted to family legend because there were no witnesses or dates, just this memorable surname. We came across a small British war cemetery and there was the surname, only spelt slightly differently. Company Quartermaster Sergeant John Zottarelli died on August 28, 1917, a month into the battle of Passchendaele.

He was 27.

“Until that moment we didn’t really believe it had happened. He was a real person after all, not a myth, and when we stood before his grave my father and I felt the hairs on the backs of our necks rise.

“It was so arbitrary; this man happened to die and my grandfather happened to live. This meant my father had been given life, and so too had I.”

For Farndale, visiting the site of the battlefield brought much of what his grandfather had told him to life. He recalls Alfred explaining the complex trench systems and the nicknames they used to describe them. As he stood there, Farndale could even sense the smells his grandfather and comrades had to endure… “an acrid combination of cordite, mustard, chlorine, sweat and putrefying horseflesh,” he says.

“He would tell me about the noise, which was so loud, so deafening, it gave men mild concussion.

They couldn’t even remember their names, they weren’t able to count to three. During one particularly heavy bombardment, his first commanding officer from the Yorkshire Regiment recognised him.

“I bet you’d rather be in Saltburn now, Farndale’,” he said.

Alfred talked a lot about the mud. “The drainage system on this reclaimed marshland had been destroyed by shelling. It was a landscape of mud, one big bog. As well as constantly dodging bullets, soldiers who slipped off the slippery duckboard walkways, just 18 inches wide, were drowned in an orange sea of bubbling, gas-poisoned mud. It was a death trap.

“In winter on the farm, when we got stuck in deep mud, he would say ‘This was like the dry bit in Passchendaele, dry enough to sleep on’. We talked a lot. We would go round the stock together, singing World War One songs. I don’t think I quite got the brutality of it when I was young, but the War seemed very immediate to me.”

Inspired by his grandfather’s story, Farndale, 47, did more in-depth research into the experiences of young men in the First World War. In The Blasphemer, which takes place partly in the present day and partly in the First World War, he explores what happens when our courage is put to the test.

“My generation didn’t have the experience of war to test our courage. That is what I wanted to explore,” he says.

He read letters and diaries written by troops in the trenches, as well as personal accounts written after the war. “Many of them left school at 14, but they wrote such vivid descriptions, in such beautiful handwriting. The letters, written by 17 and 18- year-olds, were very humbling. When the last of the veterans died, our remaining link with that war was broken. All we have now is empathy.”

FARNDALE, who was born in Ripon and studied at Durham University, named his 13-yearold son after his grandfather, who enjoyed a lucky break after four months fighting in Passchedaele.

“He was among those British troops sent to India. He ended up in Iraq and Basra for a short time. That saved his life,” says Farndale.

When he returned to England, aged 22, Alfred was offered the choice of taking £1 or keeping his greatcoat. He took the pound. Other than that, he had nothing. With little work around, he farmed for a while in Canada, before returning to Yorkshire.

“Things had changed. There wasn’t the same deference,” says Farndale. “He was working in a field once when a local aristocrat, who had managed to avoid fighting in the war, came along and told him to open the gate. He told him to ‘open it yourself’.”

Alfred and his wife Peggy went on to have four children and he died in 1987, just a few weeks short of his 90th birthday.

“As I said in my dedication, he did survive Passchendaele. But he died then as well,” says Farndale.

•The Blasphemer by Nigel Farndale (Doubleday £11.99). nigelfarndale.com