THE SOMME BATTLEFIELD,
NOVEMBER, 1916.
Departure from Laventie.--At Robecq.--The march southwards.--
Rest at Neuvillette.--Contay Wood.--Albert.--New trenches.--
Battle conditions.--Relieving the front line.--Desire Trench.--
Regina dug-out.--Mud and darkness.--A heavy barrage.--Fortunes
of Headquarters.--A painful relief.--Martinsart Wood.
At the end of October, 1916, the 61st Division left the XI Corps and
commenced its march southwards to join the British forces on the
Somme. We were among the last battalions to quit the old sector. Our
relief was completed during quite a sharp outburst of shelling and
trench-mortaring by the enemy, whose observers had doubtless spotted
the troops moving up to take over.
After one night in the old billets at Riez Bailleul the Battalion
marched on October 29 to Robecq, where the rest of the Brigade had
already assembled, and took up its quarters in farms and houses along
the Robecq-Calonne road. Battalion Headquarters were established at a
large farmstead subsequently known as Gloucester Farm, while to reach
the billets allotted to them the companies marched through the farmyard
and across the two small bridges, since so familiar to some, which
spanned the streams Noc and Clarence. My company was furthest south
and almost in Robecq itself; my headquarters were in a comfortable
house with an artesian well bubbling up in its front garden. When
fighting was taking place at Robecq in April, 1918, and I found
myself, under very different circumstances, in command of the
Battalion, knowledge of the ground obtained eighteen months before,
even to the position of garden gates and the width of ditches, proved
most useful. I am afraid the Battalion's old billets were soon knocked
down, the favourite estaminet in D Company area being among the first
houses to go.
On November 2, 1916, the Battalion left Robecq, where it had been
well-housed and happy for a week, for Auchel, a populous village in
the mining district, and marched the next day to Magnicourt en Comté,
an especially dirty village, and thence again through Tinques and
Etrée-Wamin to Neuvillette. The civilians in some of the villages
passed were not friendly, the billets crowded and often not yet
allotted when the Battalion arrived, having covered its 14 kilometres
with full pack and perhaps through rain. Nobody grumbled, for the
conditions experienced were normal, but this march with its daily
moves involved toil and much footsoreness on the part of the men, and
for the officers much hard work after the men were in, and many
wakings-up in the night to receive belated orders for the morrow.
[Illustration: THE MARCH TO THE SOMME]
After reaching Neuvillette, a pretty village four miles north by west
of Doullens, a ten days' rest was made. Boots had become very worn
in consequence of the march, and great efforts were now made by Hobbs
to procure mending leather; unfortunately the motor car seemed to have
forgotten its poor relation, the boot, and no leather was forthcoming.
During the stay at Neuvillette a demonstration in improvised pack
saddlery was arranged at Battalion Headquarters, the latest and most
disputed methods of wiring and trench-digging were rehearsed, and two
really valuable Brigade field days took place. More than a year
afterwards the Battalion was again billeted at Neuvillette, whose
inhabitants remembered and warmly welcomed the Red Circle.
On November 16 we marched away to Bonneville and the next day reached
Contay, where we climbed up to some unfloored huts in a wood. The
weather on this march had been bitterly cold, but fine and sunny. A
dusky screen of clouds drifted up from the west the evening of our
arrival and the same night snow fell heavily. The cookers were not
near the huts and neither stores nor proper fuel existed. There was
the usual scramble for the few braziers our generous predecessors had
left behind. With snow and wind the Battalion tasted its first
hardship.
As in all such situations, things soon took a cheerful turn. When the
General came up next morning, the camp was reeking with smoke from
braziers and the smell of cookers and the wood alive with sounds of
woodchopping and cries of foragers. This change from a bad look-out to
a vigorous optimism and will to make the best of things was
characteristic of the British 'Tommy', who, exhausted and 'fed-up' at
night, was heard singing and wood chopping the next morning, as if
wherever he was were the best place in the world. I shall always
remember Contay Woods, the huts with their floors of hard mud
reinforced by harder tree-stumps, and the slimy path down to parade
when we left.
On November 19 we reached Albert, whose familiar church needs no
description. What struck me principally on arrival was the battered
sordidness of the place and the filthy state of the roads, on which
the mud was well up to the ankles. Some civilians were living in the
town and doing a brisk trade in souvenir postcards of the overhanging
Virgin. Traffic, as always through a main artery supplying the
prevalent battlefield, was positively continuous. The first rain of
autumn had already fallen and men, horses and vehicles all bore mud
stains significant of winters approach. Our arrival--we went into
empty, rather shell-damaged houses near the station--coincided with
the later stages of the Beaumont Hamel offensive, and German prisoners
and, of course, British casualties were passing through the town.
At Albert, Bennett was taken from A Company to act as Second in
Command of the Berks. Brown assumed command of his company and
Robinson about this time of C Company, Brucker having returned to the
61st Divisional School, which was set up at St. Riquier. Just now much
sickness occurred among the officers, John Stockton, Moorat and
several others being obliged to go away by attacks of trench fever.
From Albert C and D Companies moved forward to some Nissen huts near
Ovillers to be employed on working parties. For the same duties A and
B Companies soon afterwards were sent to Mouquet Farm, while Battalion
Headquarters went to Fabick Trench.
After some rain had fallen, fine autumn weather returned and our guns
and aeroplanes were shewing the activity typical of the late stages of
a great battle, when future movements were uncertain. A string of 30
balloons stretching across the sky in a wide circumference (whose
centre, as in all 'pushes,' would have been somewhere behind our old
front) industriously watched the enemy's back area. There was probably
little comfort for the Germans west of Bapaume, or even in it, for our
reluctance to shell towns, villages and (formerly most privileged of
targets) churches was rapidly diminishing.
On November 21 the Brigade took over its new sector of the line and
with it a somewhat different régime to what it had known before. It
was heard said of the 61st Division that it stayed too long in quiet
trenches (to be sure, trenches were only really 'quiet' to those who
could afford to visit them at quiet periods). Still the Somme
'craterfield' presented a complete contrast to the old breastworks
with their familiar landmarks and daylight reliefs. Battle conditions
remained though the advance had stopped. Our recent capture of
Beaumont-Hamel and St. Pierre Divion left local situations, which
required clearing up. The fragments of newly-won trenches above
Grandcourt, trenches without wire and facing a No-Man's-Land of
indeterminate extent, gave their occupants their first genuine
tactical problems and altogether more responsibility than before. In
some respects the Germans were quicker than ourselves to adapt
themselves to conditions approximating to open warfare. The principle
of an outpost line and the system of holding our front in depth had
been pronounced often as maxims on paper, but had resulted rarely in
practice. Subordinate staffs, on whom the blame for local reverses was
apt to fall rather heavily, were perhaps reluctant to jeopardise the
actual front line by holding it too thinly, while from the nature of
the case, the front line was something far more sacred to us than to
the enemy. Since the commencement of trench warfare the Germans had
held their line on the 'depth' principle, keeping only a minimum of
troops, tritely referred to as 'caretakers,' in their front trench of
all, while we for long afterwards crammed entire companies, with their
headquarters, into the most forward positions.
On the evening of November 25, 1916, Robinson of C Company and myself,
taking Hunt and Timms (my runner) and one signaller, left for the
front line. This was being held along Desire--my fondness for this
trench never warranted that name--with a line of resistance in Regina,
a very famous German trench, for which there had recently been heavy
fighting. Our reconnaissance, which was completed at dawn, was lucky
and satisfactory; moreover--I do not refer to any lack of refreshment
by the Berks company commander--I was still dry at its conclusion,
having declined all the communication trenches, which were already
threatening to become impassable owing to mud.
The next night the Battalion moved up to relieve the Berks, but was
conducted, or conducted itself, along the very communication trench
which I had studiously avoided using and which was in a shocking
state from water and mud. As the result of the journey, D Company
reached the front line practically wet-through to a man, and in a very
exhausted condition. A proportion of their impedimenta had become
future salvage on the way up, while several men and, I fancy, some
officers, had compromised themselves for some hours with the mud,
which exacted their gumboots as the price of their future progress. I
regret that my own faithful servant, Longford, was as exhausted as
anybody and suffered a nasty fall at the very gates of paradise (an
hyperbole I use to justify the end of such a mud-journey), namely
Company Headquarters in Regina, where, like a sort of host, I had been
waiting long.
Desire Trench, the name by which the front line was known, was a
shallow disconnected trough upholstered in mud and possessing four or
five unfinished dug-out shafts. These shafts, as was natural, faced
the wrong way, but provided all the front line shelter in this sector.
At one end, its left, the trench ran into chalk (as well as some chalk
and plenty of mud into _it_!) and its flank disappeared, by a military
conjuring trick, into the air. About 600 yards away the Germans were
supposed to be consolidating, which meant that they were feverishly
scraping, digging and fitting timbers in their next lot of dug-outs.
To get below earth was their first consideration.
Regina dug-out deserves a paragraph to itself. This unsavoury
residence housed two platoons of D Company, Company Headquarters, and
Stobie, our doctor, with the Regimental Aid Post. In construction
the dug-out, which indeed was typical of many, was a corridor with
wings opening off, about 40 feet deep and some 30 yards long, with 4
entrances, on each of which stood double sentries day and night.
Garbage and all the putrefying matter which had accumulated underfoot
during German occupation and which it did not repay to disturb for
fear of a worse thing, rendered vile the atmosphere within. Old German
socks and shirts, used and half-used beer bottles, sacks of sprouting
and rotting onions, vied with mud to cover the floor. A suspicion of
other remains was not absent. The four shafts provided a species of
ventilation, reminiscent of that encountered in London Tubes, but
perpetual smoking, the fumes from the paraffin lamps that did duty for
insufficient candles, and our mere breathing more than counterbalanced
even the draughts and combined impressions, fit background for
post-war nightmares, that time will hardly efface. Regina Trench
itself, being on a forward slope and exposed to full view from Loupart
Wood, was shelled almost continuously by day and also frequently at
night. 'Out and away,' 'In and down' became mottoes for runners and
all who inhabited the dug-out or were obliged to make repeated visits
to it. Below, one was immune under 40 feet of chalk, and except when
an entrance was hit the 5.9s rained down harmlessly and without
comment.
During the day I occasionally ploughed my way along Regina Trench to
some unshelled vantage point to watch the British shells falling on
the yet grassy slopes above Miraumont and south of Puisieux.
Baillescourt Farm was a very common target. At this time Miraumont
village was comparatively intact and its church, until thrown down by
our guns, a conspicuous object. Grandcourt lay hidden in the hollow.
Such landscape belonged to the days; real business, when one's orbit
was confined to a few hundred yards of cratered surface, claimed the
nights. A peculiar degree of darkness characterised these closing days
of November, and with rain and mud put an end to active operations.
Wiring, the chief labour of which was carrying the coils up to the
front and afterwards settling the report to Brigade, occupied the
energies of the Battalion after rations had been carried up. In this
last respect much foresight and experience were required and
arrangements were less good than they soon afterwards became; food
that was intended to arrive hot arrived cold, and, having once been
hot, received precedence over things originally cold but ultimately
more essential. Hot-food containers proved too unwieldy for the
forward area.[2]
[Footnote 2: In making these remarks I want it
understood that I am intending at this point no
censure of our staff, whose difficulties in their
way were even greater than those of the Infantry,
nor am I working up to any impeachment of my
superiors in narrating those facts, the omission of
which would ruin the value of this story.]
Although quite a normal circumstance in itself, the extreme darkness
at this period was a real obstacle to patrols and to all whose ability
to find the way was their passport. Amid these difficulties there
was an element of humour. To make one false turn, or to turn without
noticing the fact, by night threw the best map-reader or scout off his
path and bewildered his calculations. One night about this time a
party of us, including Hunt and 'Doctor' Rockall, the medical
corporal, who had accompanied me round the front posts, lost its way
hopelessly in the dark. Shapes looming up in the distance, I enquired
of Hunt as to his readiness for hostile encounter, whereupon the
reassuring answer was given that 'his revolver was loaded, but not
cocked.' I leave the point (if any) of this story to the mercy of
those whose fate it has been to lose their way on a foggy night among
shell-holes, broken-down wire and traps of all descriptions. Temporary
bewilderment of the calculation destroyed reliance on any putative
guides such as 'Verey' lights, shells, rifle fire, &c., which on these
occasions appeared to come from all directions, and English and German
seemed all alike.
Hunt, who at this time, being my only officer not partially sick, has
called for somewhat repeated reference, usually devoted the hours
after midnight to taking a patrol to locate a track shown on the map
and called Stump Road, his object being to meet another patrol from a
neighbouring unit. Success did not crown the work. Stump Road remained
undiscovered and passed into the apocrypha of trench warfare.
At 5 p.m. on November 29, 1916, the Germans opened a heavy barrage
with howitzers on the front line, giving every indication of impending
attack. Regina Trench, where were the headquarters of C and D, the
companies then holding the line, was also heavily shelled, and
telephonic communication with the rear was soon cut. On such occasions
it was always difficult to decide whether or not to send up the
S.O.S--on the one hand unnecessary appeal to our artillery to fire on
S.O.S. lines was deprecated, on the other, no forward commander could
afford to guess that a mere demonstration was on foot; for the
appearance of attacking infantry followed immediately on a lifting of
the barrage, a symptom in itself often difficult to recognise. On this
occasion I intended and attempted to send up a coloured rocket, but
its stick became stuck between the sides of the dug-out shaft and, by
the time the efforts of Sergeant Collett had prepared the rocket for
firing, the barrage died down as suddenly as it had started. This very
commonplace episode illustrates the routine of this phase of warfare.
The trenches were, of course, blown in and some Lewis guns damaged,
but, as frequently, few casualties occurred.
While speaking of the life furthest forward I do not forget the very
similar conditions, allowing for the absence of enemy machine-guns and
snipers, which prevailed at Battalion Headquarters. Confined to a
dug-out (a smaller replica of Regina) in Hessian Trench, with a
continual stream of reports to receive and instructions to send out,
and being continually rung up on the telephone, Colonel Bellamy and
Cuthbert had their hands full, and opportunities for rest, if not for
refreshment, were very limited. Nor do I omit our runners from the
fullest share in the dangers and activities of this time.
Under battle-conditions life at one remove from the front line was
rarely much more agreeable than in the line itself, and was less
provided with those compensations which existed for the Infantryman
near the enemy. It was necessary to go back to Divisional Headquarters
to find any substantial difference or to live an ordered life on a
civilised footing; and there, too, responsibility had increased by an
even ratio.
The Battalion Transport during this time was stationed at Martinsart
and its task, along bad roads, in bringing up rations each day was not
a light one.
On the night of November 30 the Battalion was relieved by the 2/4th
Gloucesters and marched back to huts in Martinsart Wood. This march of
eight miles, coming after a four days' tour in wet trenches under
conditions of open warfare, proved a trying experience. For four miles
the path lay along a single duckboard track, capsized or slanting in
many places, and the newly-made Nab Road, to which it led, was hardly
better. A number of men fell from exhaustion, while others, their
boots having worn completely through before entering the trenches,
were in no state to compete with such a distance. After passing
Wellington Huts and through Aveluy the going became easier, until at
last the area of our big guns was reached and, adjoining it, the 'rest
billets.' The latter consisted of unfloored huts built of tarred felt
and surrounded by mud only less bad than in the trenches. Our lights
and noise scared the rats, which infested the camp.
The relief and march occupied until 4 a.m., and were succeeded by mist
and frost. The concussion of our neighbours, the 6-inch naval guns,
echoed among the trees, heralding the first of December, 1916.