Sometimes it is difficult to understand what life was like on the Front, as we only have dates and facts to go on. In the case of Charles Davies Wallbank, we are fortunate enough to have a copy of his diary 1914 – 1916, during the period while he served in the ‘A’ Signal Company of the Royal Engineers on the Western Front and in Serbia.

Charles Wallbank was born in 1894, and apparently went to Springfield Road (formerly Hilton Street) Board School. Unfortunately at the archives we only have the Headmaster’s logbook for this school and no admission registers, so we cannot confirm this. However, what we do have in our collection is two planning applications by a C. Wallbank to build houses in Springfield Road and Hilton Street in 1911 and 1914, which seems to indicate that either Wallbank himself or his family were still living in the area. After leaving school, Wallbank joined the Royal Engineers (he was living in the Gibraltar Barracks in Aldershot by the 1911 census) so was already in the armed forces when war broke out in 1914.

Wallbank describes his diary as

A rough copy of my very rough notes and news intended for a diary – at present I’m afraid one can’t call it a diary, but from this and the attached original I intend to write a book on my experiences in this War, just for the benefit of my family and children should I even be so fortunate as to possess any.”

Introduction to Charles Wallbank’s diary

Among other things in the diary, Wallbank describes what he believes to be “the first British casualty – one worth recording for its singular importance”, as their commanding officer, General Grierson, suffered a heart attack on the train journey towards the Front in August 1914. When the soldiers arrived in Mons on the morning of 23 August 1914, it was the first time that they “realized that we were really at War with a real live enemy”, confronted as they were by the sight of refugee women and children fleeing for their lives.

On a later occasion, he describes the troop moving from one trench to another, with bullets being fired all around them,

and it struck me at the time that if that German that happened to be just facing me and my emeadiate [sic] friends would just lift his gun a trifle it would be all up with us.”

Wallbank’s luck later ran out, and he suffered serious wounds in Serbia in 1916 and was discharged from the British Army. After the war, he became a racing car driver, and was regularly seen racing at Brooklands. He married Violet M. S. Jennings in London in 1930, and died aged 64 in December 1958.

Wallbank’s diary of his period in the trenches makes fascinating reading, and these are only some aspects (further highlights may be featured in a future blog!).