The front-line Tommy of the First World War, like Fritz, Jock, Sammy and Les Poilu, had a good deal of time on his hands between terrors. Some wrote letters, some made trench art, some slept – and the ones we’re concentrating on were the ones who made this handy alphabetic guide that explained their world:
“Z is for ZERO, the time we go over,
Most of us wish we were way back
in Dover
Making munitions and living in clover
And far, far away from the trenches”
The B.E.F. Times was an off-shoot of The Wipers Times (1916 – 1918) which was a trench magazine published by British soldiers fighting in the Ypres Salient during the World War I.
Click here to read further about W.W. I war poetry.
