Diaries reveal life and laughs in trenches

A LONG-LOST diary of life in the trenches has revealed some of the humour and horror shared by troops on both sides of the Great War.

The series of immaculate diaries were written in pencil by Sapper John T French, a tin miner from Redruth, West Cornwall, who reveals how British and German soldiers indulged in light-hearted banter by impersonating each other's accents and how opposing trenches were sometimes so close the two sides would call a temporary truce to exchange insults across No man's land.

The three volumes were discovered among the personal possessions of his sister Emily after her recent death at the age of 99.

As well as describing the horrors, such as removing "piles of men" killed in action, it details moments such as the relief of a good "sing- song" and the smell of bacon. Sapper French, awarded the Military Cross for Conspicuous Bravery, survived the war, but developed tuberculosis and died in 1929 aged 37.

He was born in 1892 and sent to Rouen in France in 1915 as a member of the 254th Tunnelling Company of the Royal Engineers.

Sapper French kept the daily log of experiences on the front line between 1915 and 1917. He even writes how war is "rather exciting" because "you never know what's coming next".

Niece Wendy Dawe, of Illogan, Redruth, yesterday said the diaries make her "immensely proud".

She said: "It is in diaries such as this that we see how brave they were and what it was like trying to fight and survive."

The diaries describe some of the bloodiest battles of the Great War – including Ypres in 1917. They start with "sea sickness" arriving in France and he immediately notes the "heavy machine gun fire" and mortars which look like "big sausages".

He spends his days and nights "up to my knees in water" digging trenches just 75 yards away from Germans who throw a hail of bombs and grenades which "go whizzing" around his head.

The men are also forced to work in whispers as their underground tunnels weave between the Germans' and they flee when chemical weapons descend like "thick yellow fog".

During the war he was promoted from Sapper to a Sergeant and eventually a Second Lieutenant. He was demobilised in June 1919 and moved to America where he married a piano player before returning in 1921.

The diaries are on display at the Redruth Old Cornwall Society Museum.