The Wipers Times

One of the benefits of being hard of hearing and having to wear hearing aids is the fact that I qualify for a concessionary library ticket.

This gives the opportunity to request and reserve books for half the standard cost, but more importantly (for me anyway), allows the hire of pretty well any AV item, such as DVDs and CDs (including talking books), for free. Not bad when DVDs are invariably £2.50 a week and CDs at £1.10

A DVD we recently borrowed was ‘The Wipers Times’ a BBC dramatisation of the true story of a trench magazine published by British soldiers fighting in the Ypres area during the 1^st World War.

In early 1916, the 12^th Battalion, Sherwood Foresters were stationed on the front line at Ypres, Belgium and discovered an old printing press. 

A Tommy, previously a printer in Civvy Street before the war, managed to salvage it and printed a test page. Soon ‘The Wipers Times’ (named after slang for Ypres, which many Tommy’s found difficult to pronounce) was in production.

The paper was made up of a collection of jokes, poems, reflections and ironic, satirical slants at the war and, of course, the enemy as well.

The BBC dramatisation, produced in 2013, was written by Ian Hislop and Nick Newman. In September 2016 a stage production, adapted from the TV version, opened in Newbury, Berkshire and is currently mid-way through a national UK tour.