Rutland vicar’s First World War Somme diaries published by grandson

The experiences of a parish vicar who ‘counselled’ soldiers at the Somme have been retold in a new book.

Ben Hooson, from Bourne, decided the First World War diaries of his grandfather deserved a wider audience after being contacted by villagers from Easton-on-the-Hill who were researching the Rev Percy Lane Hooson.

He was helped by Cheryl Dobbs, of Easton, who painstakingly typed the diary from the hand-written notebooks.

It recounts the months the Rev Hooson spent in the Somme Valley from April to August 1917 - the year after the infamous battle had begun - while serving as a volunteer with the Church Army .

The Rev Hooson was vicar in Easton either side of the Great War and founded the village’s horticultural show before moving to the Rutland parish of Tinwell.

He made headlines last year when parishioners in Tinwell discovered the crucifix in their village church had been rescued from the Somme battlefield by the Rev Hooson.

Ben, a former Stamford School old boy who works as a translator and editor, chiefly in Russian, was just seven when his grandfather died in 1969, but the diaries provide a fresh window into his world.

“He ran what we call now a NAAFI, selling cigarettes, chocolate, biscuits and things to the men just behind the lines,” Ben explained.

“These huts doubled as churches and he was an ordained vicar, so it was a funny job.

“He was a grocer and a vicar, and also, probably, what we would now call a therapist for post-traumatic stress for the men.”

Ben says the diaries do not go into the stories told to his grandfather by troops, ‘perhaps out of tact’, but offer a vivid description of an unimaginable scene.

“Just behind the lines, and just a year after the battle of the Somme, you have what he calls ‘the desert’,” Ben said.

“Areas that had been fought over which were absolutely blank - just destroyed tree stumps, mud, dead men, munitions.

“Then you come out of that and you would be straight into a beautiful landscape, with the birds singing, grass, flowers. That contrast is very striking.

“It gives you an idea of the scene of the war in a way that you don’t get from accounts of battles.”

He added: “There are lots of mentions of local people he met over there, including some from Stamford School.

“He seemed to have made it his mission to find serving soldiers from Easton and Spalding, where he grew up, and he also looked for the graves of local men who had been killed in 1916.

“If the Lincolnshire Regiment were 15 miles away, he would walk to meet them.”

While the Tinwell crucifix is now back in Doingt, Ben says his grandfather also brought back a processional cross from another devastated Somme settlement which remains in Easton-on-the-Hill.

It was among a number of pieces the Rev Hooson foraged from the field, including a displaced medieval tombstone, found on a farm, which he was himself eventually buried beneath.

“He was a great forager - he brought back all sorts of things,” Ben said.

“I have two bayonets which we use to poke the fire. He brought back helmets, a German stick grenade, all this stuff I can just about remember in a shed at the bottom of the garden.

“He even tried to bring back a rifle, but they wouldn’t let him.”

Behind The Lines Along The Somme is available from St Mary’s Books, in Stamford, and is soon to be made into an e-book.