DS/MISC/81; Ts. personal experience account, entitled "Nearly Fifty Years After",...

When the war broke out, Rogers was still a few months short of his eighteenth birthday, but on 8 August, after adding a year to his age, he and his cousin enlisted in the 2nd (Home Counties) Field Company, Royal Engineers. As Rogers writes, "to the average young male of that time, the thought of war was the thought of cavalry charges, honour, glory, the VC, fame" (p. 2). The Company crossed to France in December 1914, and Rogers' illusions about war were shattered almost at once, when he found that he had lice (p. 10). The Company went up to the front line for the first time to the west of the Massines Ridge, where they were responsible for erecting barbed wire entanglements (p. 17). Towards the end of March 1915 they moved to the Ypres Salient and on 17 April Rogers, a great admirer of the RE Mining Corps, watched the explosion of the mines under Hill 60 (pp. 23-4). His Company were in support to the two Battalions who subsequently attacked Hill 60, but suffered few casualties, whereas the two battalions each had under two hundred men after the assault. However, on the following two days, the 2nd Field Company's strength was dramatically reduced from 120 to 27, as a result of shells falling on their billets and then on an RE dump where they were working (pp. 29, 35-6). Rogers confesses that he was by this time little more than "a badly frightened boy", though he recalls hearing an ill-timed and inappropriate speech by Sir John French before his Company was withdrawn from the Salient (pp. 37-8).

From the early summer down to the very end of 1915, the 2nd Field Company were stationed around Bray-sur-Somme, a quiet sector and "peace time warfare" compared with their previous experience (pp. 42-3). Rogers and his cousin went home on leave in October, and his cousin did not return to France as his nerves had gone (pp. 44-6). The first half of 1916 passed uneventfully for Rogers, who spent a month with the 1/6th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders on probation for a commission, and, as they were on the southern end of the Somme, he was only fitfully involved in the July offensive.

In the late summer he returned home and was ordered to the 2nd Officer Cadet Battalion at Cambridge, of which time his chief recollection is of the "perfect comradeship" among the aspiring officers (pp. 54-61). Rogers was then gazetted into the West Yorkshire Regiment and joined their 10th Battalion, 17th Division, in the Arras sector in the late spring of 1917. Rogers was to remain with the Battalion for five months and he settled again into the routine of trench warfare. His most vivid memories from this period are of one particularly frightening fatigue and of a series of night patrols (pp. 66-74). He is unequivocal in his praise for the "PBI" (p. 77).

In September 1917 Rogers procured a transfer to the Royal Flying Corps and attended a three weeks' observers' course at Brooklands. He considered the course "too short" to be effective, and also was critical of the anomalies with regard to rank and promotion in the RFC, brought about by the need to have observers with a first-hand knowledge of the Western Front (pp. 78-9). Rogers was posted to No 6 Squadron, an artillery observation one, stationed at Abeele in Belgium and flying RE 8s. He gives his opinion of the RE 8 and of other British aeroplanes in which he flew (pp. 82-4). For the remainder of 1917 the Squadron carried out "Art Obs" duties over the Ypres Salient, and Rogers explains how the system worked and what demands it made on the aircrew (pp. 85-95). In January 1918 Rogers was ordered to Egypt to train as an "Art Obs" pilot and he noted a gradual change in his mental outlook: "I wished to live but to fly, to become a fighter pilot. That meant to shoot down, to kill" (p. 102). After attending the School of Military Aeronautics at Heliopolis, Rogers did his preliminary training at Ismailia and, on his return to England in the summer, was posted to No 33 Training Depot station at Witney, where he flew Bristol Bulldogs. During his training he was involved in a number of unusual accidents, but he did have a successful mock air fight with his Commanding Officer (pp. 114-26). Just before the Armistice, Rogers was posted to No 22 Squadron RAF in Belgium and so sampled the delights of Brussels in peacetime (pp. 131-2). Rogers returned to England suffering from a broken bone in his leg and, on his recovery, got a job in tea management in Assam.

The most vivid passages in Rogers' narrative are those describing the fighting in the Ypres Salient in 1915, but his explanation of "art obs" work and his account of his flying training are also of interest. Pages 128 and 133 are missing.