The Wipers Times was a trench magazine that was published by British soldiers fighting in the Ypres Salient during the First World War.
In early 1916, the 12th Battalion, Sherwood Foresters stationed in the front line at Ypres, Belgium, came across an abandoned printing press. A sergeant who had been a printer in peacetime salvaged it and printed a sample page. The paper itself was named after Tommy slang pronunciation of Ypres.
Publication history
Under its initial title The Wipers Times and Salient News, the first issue was published on 12 February 1916, with a circulation of one hundred copies. It was followed by another 22 issues, mostly consisting of 12 pages each.
While the size and the layout of the magazine remained consistent, its main title changed many times. Previous titles remained listed in the subtitle in chronological order, for instance: The B.E.F. Times: with which are incorporated The Wipers Times, The "New Church" Times, The Kemmel Times & The Somme-Times. Every main title change initiates a new volume and issue sequence and as result, there are several instances of 'volume 1, number 1'.
Publication was held up after February 1918 by the German offensive on the western front in that year, but at the end of the War, two issues were published as The Better Times. The second of these was billed as the Xmas, Peace and Final Number.
Personnel
The names of the staff involved in the paper are mostly unrecorded. The editor was Captain (later Lieutenant-Colonel) Frederick John Roberts, MC, the sub-editor was Lieutenant (later Lieutenant-Colonel) John Hesketh ("Jack") Pearson, DSO, MC. A notable contributor to the paper was the Gunner Gilbert Frankau. Also worthy of note are the engravings by E. J. Couzens; his portrait of a chinless platoon commander clutching his cane and wondering "Am I as offensive as I might be?" became the paper's motif. Most other contributors from the Division used pseudonyms, some now obscure, some intended to satirise contemporary newspaper pundits such as William Beach Thomas (of the Daily Mail) and Hilaire Belloc and some ironic, such as P.B.I. (Poor Bloody Infantry).
Contents
The paper consisted of poems, reflections, wry in-jokes and lampoons of the military situation the Division was in. In general the paper maintained a humorously ironic style that today can be recognised in satirical magazines such as The Duffel Blog, Private Eye, Le Canard enchaîné and The Onion.
Adverts
The covers of the issues were mostly mock adverts, richly typeset, often for war-related music-hall extravaganzas. Similar adverts appeared on the back and front inside covers:
There were also sales offers for pleasant stays at unlikely locations like the city ramparts, for weapons like the flammenwerfer (flamethrower) and even for the complete Ypres Salient front line:
Vocabulary
The daily concerns of trench soldiers all make an appearance in the articles, sometimes explicit and sometimes as in-jokes for which outsiders would not have the key.
Shelling (whether from the enemy or one's own side): is referred to all through the magazine. There are occasional small ads purportedly from Minnie (German trench mortar) to Flying Pig (British ditto) and various poems complaining about, or apologising for, incidents where British guns shelled their own lines.
Sex: the collections of pornography known to the Division as "The Munque Art Gallery" and "Kirschner's" are frequently mentioned and occasionally advertised, as are the local brothels: the Fancies, the Poplar tree and Plug Street.
Drink: the continued supply of rum and whisky was a prime concern for all at the front. In one serial story, Narpoo Rum, a certain 'Herlock Shomes' spent five issues tracking rum-thieves round Hooge. Brief references also turn up to panic buying of supplies by unnamed individuals in the Division after rumours of a whisky drought.
Rats: these bred in enormous numbers in the trenches, chiefly fed on corpses but with an eye for anything left in a dugout. One poem in the paper describes how a rat and his wife opened a tin of sardines, ate the contents then sealed the tin back up for the author to find.
Articles
The reality of life in the trenches rarely breaks through what the editor termed the paper's 'hysterical hilarity' but when it does, the gallows humour is clear and may appear callous to modern eyes. One example is a quote from an article in a British national newspaper about a bungled trench-raid, followed by a sharp comment from the editor of the Wipers Times: