Stokes gun

First World War Audio Archive

Stokes gun

Transcript

A padre, or a minister, by the name of Stokes invented the Stokes

Soldier standing "at ease."

gun. It was nothing but a three-inch stove pipe, in length about three foot long, made of steel of course instead of tin, and at the bottom of the pipe was a spike which would act as a trigger. And the shell weighed 18 pounds and looked exactly like a rolling pin, the one we use for rolling bread. One end of it would be your 12 inch, 12 gauge shotgun cartridge which would detonate when the shell was slid, slid down the barrel of a mortar.

Soldier sitting in chair holding his hat and a baton in each hand.

And the other end had a timer on it so we could set it so it’d explode in so many seconds, about nine seconds, four to nine seconds. We could have as many as nine shells in the air at one time before the first one hit the ground by correcting the angle of the gun, either lowering it or highering it. The higher you, the steeper you made the barrel of the gun point up, the shorter the range, you might say almost fall at your feet. Well, after you lengthened it, you’d get 400 yards. And we got so clever at it that we could have nine shells exploding one after another in a perfect line along the German trench. Whenever we came up with

Five friends who enlisted in the forces together.

the Stokes gun, the boys resented us very much because when we got there with a gun like that, we started a disturbance in the German lines and the artillery would concentrate on us. Of course they caught hell like we did, see. Well, this particular day, we had about three or four hundred shells made up, piled up, like firewood and there was three of us there, four of us, I should say. And I had to go to relieve myself. Well, we had a communication trench off the main trench where we’d go to relieve ourselves. And I left there, it was only about 50 yards away.

Mr.Hatch wearing a suit.

And as I got seated, when all hell broke loose. Terrific explosions, one after another, one after another, and so much dirt and stuff going up in the air that it actually blocked out daylight. When it stopped, I readied to get out of there and get back to my, to the dugout where the trench mortar was. Lo and behold, one of the shells had fell in the, slid down the Stokes gun and didn’t come out

Mr. Hatch outside in his suit, with his arm around a young girl.

and exploded and every man was killed.

Description

Mr. Hatch describes in detail the Stokes Gun and how it was used. He also describes the deadly result of premature detonation of the bomb in its barrel.

George Frederick Hatch

George Frederick Hatch was born in Manchester, England, on May 15, 1898. He moved to Colborne, Ontario, with his parents in 1904. After his father was killed in the Boer War, Mr. Hatch worked on the family farm. He ran away to enlist at the age of sixteen, and, with the help of a creative recruiter, was accepted into the 20th Canadian Overseas Infantry Battalion, going overseas in May 1915. He spent Christmas at Ypres, and then saw serious action at the Somme, where he was wounded. Mr. Hatch then joined the Royal Flying Corps, firstly as a “volunteer” machine gunner and then as a fully qualified pilot. He was shot down and, although partially blinded by his own blood, was able to land safely behind his own lines. After the war, Mr. Hatch emigrated to the United States, living in Virginia, then Montana. He and his wife were killed in a car accident on November 26, 1986.

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