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1 This is a transcript of an interview conducted by Age Exchange as part of the Children of the Great War project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Age Exchange is a member of The Imperial War Museum First World War Centenary Partnership. If you wish to contact Age Exchange about this contribution, or access other archive material from its the Children of The Great War project, please greatwar@age-exchange.org.uk Title About: The story was shared at: Ruth Gayfer s vivid tales of her mother and father: Evelyn Boyce, a VAD nurse & 2nd Lt. Edwin Oliver of the East Yorks Territorials. Edwin Oliver, Evelyn Boyce & Sidney Boyce Age Exchange, London, UK On: Tuesday 16 th July 2014 By: AE Reference: Ruth Gayfer BL0003 Interview with Ruth Gayfer Ruth Gayfer, we re going to talk about your family s connection to the First World War. And we re talking about your uncle, your mother and your father. Shall we start with your father? Yes, because that s the one I think that most of the information is about. And what was his name? Edwin Oliver. Do you know the regiment that he was in? Yes, the Fourth East Yorks... And, do you know what rank he had? He started off its quite interesting, because he was at school but he went, in August, I think 1914, he went to army camp with the East Yorkshire Territorials and of course he was only sixteen and a half, and he came back, and he you know sort of volunteered. So he was one of those cos he was born in So he was really volunteering when he was too young Yes that s right. They didn t ask questions. He was a lieutenant then, second lieutenant; That was later on though. And where did he serve? Well, I m not sure, but he was in Ypres. He took part in the Second Battle of Ypres on the 23 rd of April 1915, I ve got that. The list of all the places he served. He was over in France. In that Second Battle of Ypres there were apparently two officers killed and he was reported missing, but he came back, I don t quite know

2 how much But he remained in France until January 1916 when he was wounded and sent back to England. Fantastic for us to have it written down. But you see this stuff is much more detailed, in fact I think it it says the manuscript list of places where Edwin Oliver served with the military in is actually in the museum and I haven t got a copy of that so Well we could always contact the museum and see That s the name of the man if you want to contact them. He s called Sam Bartell, Collections Officer. It appeared in the Yorkshire Post and that s the Hull Daily Mail I should think. So he served in those things He was wounded with a gas attack? He was gassed just in November in Oh right, so he went back again. Oh yes, he went back. He came over and they did their officers training at Jesus College Cambridge and then he went back again. And he, what was it, he had to be in the Labour Corps as an officer, so, the 15 th of August 1917, he went back to France again. So he spent most of his time in Belgium and France, which was a fairly traumatic sort of place to have been landed into. Absolutely, yes. Obviously, probably because you were very young when he died I was only four, yes. You didn t have any kind of contact with him about this No, he didn t; my mother she didn t really talk about it but I think the one thing I remember which I think I ve written down somewhere is when he d been in the sanatorium at Raywell because of TB which he contracted. And he came home and it was my sister s 13 th birthday, and she d been given a tennis what you call it, a thing that they, like a tennis teacher or whatever it is. And we were all playing out on the grass with that and he came home, and it was a July afternoon, you know middle of the afternoon, and he came in a dressing gown and slippers and I just couldn t understand what he was doing in a dressing gown and slippers on a summer afternoon. And so that s really the one great picture I have So he came home from somewhere... From Raywell Hospital, yes. Because he died at the end of that year so presumably he came home to die. And of course I didn t see him much then, cos he was in a separate room, and I think I was rather a noisy talkative child so... [laughs] They kept you away [laughs] Yes. That was 1930? 1934 he died.

3 So he was alive for quite a long time after the War Yes, yes. I mean I think it well the gas affected his eyes and it obviously affected his lungs but the TB came later on, so... What did he do? What was his sort of job? Well he became a chartered secretary, which is what altered my home life. So you know my life was altered because really of all of this, which is quite interesting. Because the Chartered Secretaries in 1940 offered me a presentation to Christ Hospital which is down in Hertford and so I came to London at the age of ten, and of course I didn t really want to go back to quiet Yorkshire. I m afraid Hull is a very well I mean alright there were the docks which were interesting but the whole of the East Riding is very quiet, and I wanted to come down to London. So you were a Christ Hospital scholar? Yes, yes, which is where I met my husband. Well he was at Christ Hospital Horsham, so we obviously met up afterwards The blue coats? Yes, he wore the blue coats. With the yellow stockings. We didn t, certainly not in wartime. But the girls do now. Do they? They ve gone down to Horsham and you see them in the Lord Mayor s Parade and they were their long blue coats and you know they look great. So really this altered my home life. I m the only one of the family that you know came down here and Yes that s fascinating. We might make some copies of those things and this is him again? [looking at photos] Yes that s another one. I think it was probably taken the same day as that one. That s not a proper photo, that s a photocopy. He was a good looking guy. Yes. And this lady? Is my mother. Her name? Evelyn Boyce. And her story is? Well, she lived with her parents and her father died when she was quite young. He was a Miller, he was in the same area as Ranks. Because Ranks come from Hull. You know they all knew each other. But you know he died. She had two siblings but they died. She had the elder brother that s my uncle there [looking at photo] and he was a bit older and the great regret of her life was that when she was fourteen her mother got her home from school to stay at home and help her, and her brother went to university. It sort of you know rankled the whole thing that she never had you know So she always swore I ll have you girls having a proper education you know as well as your brother.

4 I suppose those choices were made in those days. Yes indeed. So that s why her mother, you know, she was at home, she was allowed to go to This military hospital, I think it was part of the Hull College, and it later turned into Hull University but it was a this is all the information I ve gained from my mother. She was the one who told me these sorts of things really. Did she live on a long time after your father? Oh yes. She was just two months short of 101 when she died! [both laugh] That is a bit longer isn t it! Yes! She was a year older than him. I ve got loads, well I ve got copies of their letters, mostly in East Riding but I ve got copies of their letters and they were of course carrying on this correspondence during the War and you know he was saying I saw a lot of nurses but they re not the nurse I want you know! There was all that sort of thing going on. It would be very nice for us later to see something like that; you know the ones you have. Yes, I ve got them here actually. I just shoved everything into a where are we? A lot of this came from my sister who was the person that was in touch with my other sister who s 92 now. Good genes. Yes. But here we are [the letters] my darling, my darling and all this Amazing the way they corresponded. Well absolutely, yes. Lovely isn t it. [reading] I already feel like I m part of the family Oh really? [reading] The note was on folded paper and I saw Elsie s writing first and before I read anything a snapshot slipped out and I looked at it and wondered why has Elsie sent me her photo?. It was you! [laughs] I mean it s so human isn t it. The whole thing But my sister said a lot of the early stuff when he was in France, I mean this is later on when he was an officer and he said he had a nice comfortable place.. what was it? He said his bat man had cobbled some furniture together out of boxes and the carpets were sandbags so that sort of thing so he said what a wonderful place he had. But my sister said the ones from France before were all written on very lightweight paper and in pencil so it s terribly difficult She couldn t take copies of them. Absolutely. Fascinating. [reading] Over the ridged hills you see every morning except Sundays a solitary figure who would no doubt wonder what it was of the big awkward boots, soiled coat and hat stuck on at an angle of 30 degrees, carries a tin hat on his steel helmet, gas mask, slung to the side. How in lord he stink. A pipe which is seldom alight... It s fantastic writing isn t it. The description you know. That s a great image! Not quite in the middle of No Man s Land but this image on a solitary beach this figure standing there with his pipe! In a sense, what I m thinking about is at a later date we write a play based on this sort of thing Looking at these things thinking they re ready-made dialogue! Yes I suppose so.

5 This is one of the most important ways really you know. There s one which I thought was really funny because he did, they did theatricals out there and he was in charge, but I don t think I ve put that in there. Well if you find that one!! And I mean this is the letter I love this one because this was when, this is his bat man you know. Just a few lines in answer to your letter which I received on the 25 th. I was very sorry to hear you had been gassed and the day you came down the line they sent your trench coat down and I put it in your valise And the next day I was returned to duty and I was sent up the line... We were in the line three days then got relieved by [something]. After we came out the line Mr Sebbel [sic] and I took an inventory of your kit and found everything correct so if anything should happen please apply to Mr Lebbon [sic] as he as (having left off the Hs, you know!) as, he has, the only one [something] so kept Oh by the way we are all extremely sorry that Mr Jackson has left us. Well sir, you know, Captain King and all the boys wishes to be remembered to you and I must say not to mention myself, we are all extremely sorry to lose you, well sir I think this is all at present so we ll close hoping (oh we ve got an H there) you a speedy recovery. Is that the sort of East Riding dialect? I mean the as - yes, yes. I ll ave that and I ll ave that they d say. Funny they actually wrote in that way. I didn t realise until I saw this letter. But again it s that sort of detail; you just assume there was absolute chaos and carnage on the western front and the idea that people had valises and putting coats in them and checking them. One of those things, you can t quite get that image I think it all came back to England yes, as well. I think one of the letters, I m not sure I ve got it, said that he was unpacking it in the hospital coz he was sent to Exeter when he was gassed, to a hospital there, and he was moaning about that because he was so far from home. Devon to the East Riding, talk about geographical distance. Yes the furthest he could get. But I think the valise was sent there. Well they re wonderful things. You see my sisters knew that I d want some letters. As I say she did very well and these are all her comments about it. You see she wrote bits, a lot of them, about when he was, he set off for Deganwy, I don t know where that is, I suppose it was in Wales. This was when he was in camp. This is in 1914 they set off. August the 3 rd. Camp broke up owing to war. We spent fairly enjoyable week waiting, visiting [somewhere] places roundabout, not sorry to get home. 24 hours without food. Postcard, on August 4 th, postcard from Fourth Battalion Yorkshire Regiment you are to report yourself to Lonsborough Barracks, with marching orders and full kit. So you know.. that s all in the stuff there. She wrote bits for me. That s fantastic. The letters we ve got, they re incredibly moving So, your mother., she volunteered as a nurse? Presumably. And that was with the Red Cross?

6 Yes. Interesting to know what their relationship was. It would be with the VAD. Because their records were held. They re trying, at New Cavendish Club, they re trying to get a memorial. It s very hard to raise funds to create a memorial at the VAD because they ve not been properly acknowledged. So where did she go? Did she work in England? Oh yes, her mother wouldn t let her go This was in Hull, so this was a local hospital. Well it was turned into a military hospital I think as I say that was the Hull College and I think it was turned into a hospital. And, because of one of the things with a lot of girls, they did come from fairly good families and a lot of them went to France of course and they thought they were going there to bandage and the poor souls ended up dealing with the horrors. Well I mean I think they must have had some horrors, because there they are working in the hospital, which was a fairly makeshift place anyway A lot of the civility and sort of people came back, it was the thing, people came back with wounds and injuries that couldn t be conceived of before - on that scale - dealing with that must ve been very traumatic. Oh absolutely. Can I just go off on a complete tangent because I was ill in Hertford in wartime, and we were asked to do an experiment, literally we were told we were doing an experiment, we weren t asked because we had these dreadful throats. I don t know whether it was, they referred to them as streptococcal throats but and the whole school was ill with these and they brought in a baking tray this size[indicates], I was in the sand at the time, and it had a brownish yellow jelly in it, and they cut up little portions and we had to have these every four hours and they were testing, what do you call it penicillin; and we all of course were cured. Absolutely wonderful. But I rather think that they were testing penicillin on something, like us, because it was just coming in wasn t it, in the Second World War. Yes, that s funny isn t it. It is very funny. Everybody my age remembers because the girls who weren t actually up in the sand, they were given little tin boxes and they had to have one of these little bits of jelly every four hours but I mean they cut them up actually in the sands so some people got larger bits than other people, I don t know.. [both laugh] Medical research in the 1940s!! It s just like any of these things, when you look at the conditions of all these things you wonder how anyone survived anything in the history of the world. You know progress moved on and people had greater resistance to bugs to a degree. Absolutely. You have to eat a peck of dirt before you die, as my grandmother used to say. Did she talk a lot about her experiences in the hospital? Well she just said, well I suppose not a great deal, I think they just tried to forget most of it but you know as I say one of her main things was she wasn t allowed to go to university [laughs]. That was her main thing in life. She worked what throughout most of the First World War? Yes I think she must ve. Because all his letters, well you see I haven t got copies of the early ones, but I think she must ve, probably when he went, because she was a year older than him so I think probably

7 when he went and you know he was missing and wounded, she probably thought my goodness I ve got to go and do something as well. Obviously his legacy was the disability that the gas had left him very you know disabled in some ways, it gave you a sort of permanent illness. But she sort of survived without... This is her at her hundredth wedding - hundredth birthday what am I saying?! [shows birthday photograph] Yes well you can t argue with that for survival can you! [laughs] It s funny that some people obviously that we ve met, particularly with men I think because of the army, the legacy of what they saw changed them as human beings. Some became very reclusive and quiet. This is it: She said she remembers ironing the seams of their trousers. Have you heard this from other people? Because of the bugs and things, so they had to iron them to kill everything off, kill off the eggs and everything. So that was when When they came on leave? I don t quite know. When they were in hospital? No this was when they came home on leave, yes that s right. He sort of certainly repeated that because being in the medical core when he came home you know. She said give me your trousers Just iron them you know, kill all the bugs. And let s talk a little bit about this other man. That s your uncle. His name? Sidney Boyce. Sidney Taylor Boyce. This picture shows us him. Yes that s right, this is him yes. And he s in the, is that the Red Cross as well? He d gone to Nottingham to study pharmacy so he was in France, I was asking his daughter, who s my cousin of course, and she thinks it was the Northumbrian Field Ambulance Service. But that as I say I can t really vouch for. And did you know him well? Afterwards yes. He was very grumpy! [laughs] It seems to be the role of men, I don t know if the First World War created grumpiness. But a lot of people have memories of grumpy fathers, particularly grandfathers, I think. Some people come in and share memories of their grandfathers and there s quite a lot of them that say they re not a nice man. No, he was a very nice man but his family, his mother s family were the Taylors, and they were a funny lot. They were very quiet and I think I m like my father, but they were all very quiet so there was a lot of huh and that sort of thing. You didn t get a lot of conversation. I can remember as a child you know, it was still you know girls were there to be seen and not heard.

8 Yes yes. That was the interesting thing about the First World War, it did empower a lot of women, by having to take responsibility and of course the aftermath for a lot of women was not to have men there wasn t it and therefore it s not surprising the suffrage movement coincided with those times. Absolutely. She wasn t a suffragette, I asked her about that. Because I was hoping she would be! [both laugh] But she probably wasn t allowed to be. Of course, she got married in He came home but I must tell you on Armistice Day he was suffering you know from the aftermath of the gas and she d had Spanish Flu so they sat by the kitchen fire and looked miserable while all the celebrations were going on outside. That was one of her strongest memories [laughs] that they were both feeling absolutely you know sorry for themselves. And so they didn t get married as soon as they came home, because he was demobbed I think in January 1919 and they didn t get married until September that year. So the level of service of your family in the sort of auxiliary core was... going in the ambulance core was a sort of way of being called up. Yes I think so. Because if he was a pharmacist or a chemist they d want anybody who had some knowledge of that sort of thing. He must ve seen some terrible things. Yes. The two of them met up in France, there s a letter about it, they met up yes. And he lived to a good age? No, he was about 71 when he died. But he got bronchitis, whether that was a result of anything I don t know. It s very difficult to know, the experience of the First World War was so traumatic, so many legacies, in terms of you know how people contracted illnesses and you know the huge irony of Spanish Flu wiping out masses of people. One of the things I d like to sort of look into was that my father mentions meeting these Chinese over there, and of course there s that Chinese cemetery isn t there, near, it s not near Boulogne, it s near Calais I think, with a proper Chinese gate over it and when you look at the tombstones they nearly all died in 1919 from Spanish Flu because I think they were all there doing the roads, I presume if he was in the what you call the Labour Corps he d have something to do about making roads, I don t know. This is just a sort of thought on my part, but there you are. So they ve got this cemetery outside Calais for them. They all died from Spanish Flu when they all came over to serve..!! You know Neil Rind don t you? Well ask Neil because I went with Neil and Liz and we went to look at this Chinese cemetery, yes. So he could probably remember more about it. It seemed to me every one who died in 1919, died from Spanish Flu. I mean this is the thing. When you start looking into it, the stories people have extended out a bit. And this is them? [looking at photo] That s their wedding yes. That was in Well he survived which was a great thing Yeah absolutely. No, he survived, I mean he was on and off. When he went into Raywell, that was the local, Cottingham, sanatorium, and my mother used to cycle over. She used to leave four children behind and cycle you know six miles over to see him and things, because you know it was difficult to get to. When he was wounded the first time, that was a sort of a bullet wound or?

9 I really don t know anything about it, no. I mean the first bit, as you can see, there was hardly any information and very few letters from 1916 to 1917 and so that s where my sister s said the ones that were on thin paper and The correspondence is always fascinating isn t it because you sort of think, you know they did manage to do it and the lines of communication between the Home Front and muddy fields in France It must ve been dreadful. You think how did they get letters out of there?! but there was some method in what was going on over there and the letters are incredibly powerful reading. This is what the Oxford University Archive is about, these things that we will set these stories to and you will have access also and your sister to.. And my brother, he s still going strong. The point of this is that when this goes to Oxford University, we send them transcripts, pictures, you will also be given a number sometime next year so that you can go in and update it and so the story you know doesn t have to just be here, it could be that your cousin or someone wants to.. Because they didn t talk about it. I mean I didn t know about a lot of this stuff about my father and we had a big attic in the house and we used to, in wartime, Second World War, we used to keep fruit and things up there and I found this big tin trunk and it had you know sort of pyjamas and things like that. I said to my mother what s this doing? and of course she said no leave it alone and of course that was all my father s gear but you know we weren t to ask any questions about it so.. And one of the great common themes is the fact that people very rarely, so many people haven t got details simply because the grandparent or the parent involved didn t talk about it very much and quite often obviously came back and wanted to create a normal life and not sit there reminiscing about the horrors that they had seen. Quite. One of the things we wanted to do in this project too was to look at elements of the home front like those sort of details rather than you know people assume you just want lots of stories about Ypres or you know Salonika or you know Somme and all those sort of things but in fact you know one of the things that is very interesting is how people continued to live a life and the impact it had on people here. One woman was telling me that her mother was a church sexton or warden or something in the City of London because she said all the men had gone, and when the air raid came over she said nobody knew what to do because no one had seen an air raid before. And she only knew this because the mother had written these things down in a diary, you know we all ran into the crypt and thought we were safe down there and we didn t know what we d face when we came out and you know clearly sort of making it up as you went along because it was such a new experience. Well exactly. They had Zeppelins over Hull because my mother remembers the Zeppelins and also the German Navy bombarded Scarborough which isn t all that far away and one of the things that made such a row in the Second World War was that my second sister, her school was evacuated to Scarborough and the horror in the Hull! That town was bombarded by the German Navy in the First World War, what are the education authorities thinking of doing??. I didn t know that. Oh yes, Scarborough was yes, definitely.

10 You sort of assume it was all over there. Oh yes they bombarded Scarborough and the Zeppelins came up as far as Hull because you know They didn t know what to do! I think you know there was, Max Hastings,who s just written this book which is a slightly revisionist version of the First World War, his point was he said you know Turn off the Oh! What a lovely War in Blackadder, he would say the assumption has become so widespread that is was full of incompetent generals and the whole thing was a waste of time and he said it s not true, it was a war that had to be fought because the German expansionism would ve changed the world. People will say to us there was no point to it and it was a meaningless war and he said that s not true, that s become an urban myth but he says the problem for the generals was that they were incompetent but the reason they were incompetent was.. They didn t know what to do, did they! Yes, he said it s not that they were essentially you know careless, thoughtless, inhuman people which is obviously this kind of image that they all sat at the back and sort of shoving thousands of men to their death, he said they were still sending cavalry.. That s the thing. My father said in one of his letters about how when he was an officer, he was given a horse to go out and do something but he rode on his bike or something like that, and when you think horses and bikes, I mean you know tanks didn t come in until the end did they and I don t know when machine guns came in but you know... It s that sort of image of you know a man standing watching a tank coming over, you know it was that sort of thing of what is it? Exactly. Just run I think is the answer!! [ENDS] Copyright Age Exchange Theatre Trust Ltd (a company limited by guarantee) Registered in England No Registered Office: 11 Blackheath Village, London SE3 9LA Registered as Charity No: aa