LIFE IN THE FRONT LINE,
WINTER, 1916-1917.
Ignorance of civilians and non-combatants.--The front line posts.--
Hardships and dangers.--Support platoons.--The Company Officers.
--The Battalion relieved by the 182nd Brigade.
So far I have said little of the hardships suffered by the Infantry.
Indeed, in places I have laughed at them. Those scenes and experiences
which marked a soldier's life in the front line will have been
supplied by those who knew them as familiar background to my story.
But I grudge leaving them to the imagination of civilian and
non-combatant readers. I seriously doubt whether the average man or
woman has the least inkling of what really happened 'out there.' Talk
over-heard or stories listened to may in special instances have
revealed a fragment of the truth. For most people the lack of real
perception was filled in by a set of catchwords. As the war dragged
on, the civilian mind of England passed into a conventional acceptance
of phrases habitually read but improperly understood, until the words
'raids,' 'barrages,' 'objective,' 'craters,' 'counter-attack,'
'consolidation,' became tolerated as everyday commonplaces. Take a
war-despatch of 1916 or 1917--it is made up of a series of catch words
and symbols. Plenty of our famous men, I am sure, who went to the
front and perhaps wrote books afterwards, on arrival there made
remarks no less foolish (and excusable) than the old lady's 'nasty
slippery place' where Nelson fell. The Somme and Ypres battlefields
are inconceivable by anyone who has seen nothing but the normal
surface of the earth. The destruction of towns, villages and farms is
without parallel in history or fiction. To witness some scenes in the
Retreat of 1918 was to stake one's sanity. There are no standards by
which civilians and non-combatants can appreciate the true facts of
the war. Deliberate reproduction would hardly be believed. Suppose,
for instance, this winter I were to dig a large hole in a field, a
quarter fill it with liquid mud, and then invite four or five
comrades, all arrayed in much warlike impedimenta, but lacking more
extra covering than a waterproof sheet each, to the hole to spend two
nights and a day in it--I should be credited with lunacy. Yet I should
be offering a fair sample of front-line accommodation during the Great
War.
[Illustration: A FRONT LINE POST]
Reliefs took place at night. Alike through snow or rain, or in a
biting wind, the Infantry marched up from huts or ruined barns (its
rest billets) to reach the line--a distance normally of seven miles.
First by road, next by a slippery track, finally through a
communication trench deep in mud, our soldiers had to carry each his
rifle and 120 round of ammunition, a share of rations, gumboots, a
leather jerkin and several extras--a load whose weight was fully 50
pounds. Many staggered and fell. All finished the journey smothered in
dirt. Boots, puttees and even trousers were sometimes stripped from
the men by the mere suction of the mud, in which it was not unusual to
remain stuck for several hours. Men, though not of our Battalion, were
even drowned.[7]
[Footnote 7: This fact, which will hardly be
credited by future generations, is related from the
actual knowledge of the writer.]
Parties were often shelled on the way up, or else were lost and
wandered far. From Headquarters, reached about midnight, of the
Company being relieved guides would take two platoons into the front
line 'posts,' the other two to the positions in support.
In the front line itself there was often no better shelter than an old
tarpaulin or sheet of corrugated iron stretched across the trench. At
some 'posts' there was nothing better to sit on than the muddy
'fire-step' or at best half a duckboard or an old bomb box. Despite
continuous efforts to keep one dry place to stand, the floor was
several inches deep in water and mud.
Movement in any direction, save for a few yards to the flanks if the
mud had been cleared away or dammed up, in daylight was impossible. No
visitors came by day. Stretcher bearers were not always near. A fire
could not, or if it could, might not be lighted. Therefore no hot
meal, except perhaps a little tea made over a 'Tommy's Cooker,' was
procurable by day.
The post would be shelled or trench-mortared at intervals. In earlier
days it might be totally blown up by a mine, or in later times bombed
or machine-gunned from the air. For 30 to 40 high explosive shells to
fall all round a post was quite common. Sometimes a 'dud' would fall
inside it, or a huge 'Minnie,' which burst in the wire, cover the
occupants with earth and splinters. The crash of these huge
trench-mortar bombs was satanic; and there was always a next one to be
waited for. Sometimes whole posts were wiped out. If there were
wounded they could expect no doctor's help before night. Often by day,
owing to mud and German snipers, it was impossible to lift a wounded
man from where he had fallen.
Night, longer than day, was also worse. Pitch darkness, accompanied
maybe by snow or mist, increased the strain. With luck the great
compensation of hot food--tea and stew--would be brought up by the
ration parties. But sometimes they were hit and were often lost and
arrived several hours late. The sandbags containing a platoon's
rations for a day were liable to be dropped, and bread arrived soaked
through or broken and mud-stained. Moreover, the darkness which
permitted parties from behind to reach the post also decreed that the
post should get about its work. Had the wire a weak place, the Germans
knew of it, and directly the wiring party set about mending it lights
were sent up, which fell in the wire close to our men, and machine-gun
bullets banged through the air. Besides the wire the parapet required
constant attention. At one place, where a member of the post had
been killed by a sniper, it would want building up; at another, a shell
perhaps had dropped only a yard short of the trench during the evening
'strafe,' the passage would be blocked and the post's bomb-store
buried. All this had to be put right before dawn. During the night a
patrol would be ordered to go out. Men who were sentries by day or
were the covering party for the wiring might be detailed for this.
After that was over the same men took turns as sentries.
Sleep was confined to what those not on duty could snatch, wrapped
only in the extra covering of a waterproof sheet, in a sitting posture
on the fire-step. At dawn, when the men at last could have slept
heavily, came morning stand-to. This meant standing and shivering for
an hour whilst it grew light and attempting to clean a mud-clogged
rifle. Those Englishmen in England (and in France) who have slept warm
in their beds throughout the war should remind themselves of those
thousands of our soldiers who wet through, sleepless, fed on food
which, served as it finally was up in the trenches, would hardly have
tempted a dog, have stood watching rain-sodden darkness of night yield
to dismal shell-bringing dawn, and have witnessed the monotonous
routine of war till sun, earth, sky and all the elements of nature
seemed pledged in one conspiracy of hardship.
What of the two platoons in 'support'?
Their lot was preferable. They were placed about 400 yards behind the
actual front and lived (if such existed) in deep mined dug-outs. Until
the later stages of the war deep dug-outs, which were subterranean
chambers about 25 feet below the level of the ground and nearly
shell-proof, were made only by the Germans, whose industry in this
respect was remarkable. Found and inhabited by us in captured
territory, these dug-outs had the defect that their entrances 'faced
the wrong way,' _i.e._, towards the German howitzers. Sometimes a
shell, whose angle of descent coincided with the slope of the stairs,
burst at the bottom of a dug-out, and then, of course, its occupants
were killed. If no deep dug-outs were available, the support platoons
lived in niches cut into the side of the trench and roofed over with
corrugated iron, timber and sandbags. Such shelters afforded little
protection against shelling.
[Illustration: A DUCKBOARDED COMMUNICATION TRENCH]
In event of attack by the enemy it was the normal duty of support
platoons to garrison a line of defence known as the 'line of
resistance.' They might be ordered to make a counter-attack. When no
fighting was taking place their work was likely to consist in carrying
up rations and R.E. materials (wooden pickets, sandbags, coils of
barbed wire, etc.) to the front line. This work had to be done at
night, because in winter 'communication trenches' (which alone made
daylight movement possible from place to place in the forward zone)
were so choked with mud as to be impassable. The day was spent in
'mud-slinging,' _i.e._, digging out falls of earth from the trench,
rebuilding dug-outs or laying fresh duckboards (wooden slats to walk
on in the trenches). When the evening's 'carrying parties' were
finished, the men had some sleep, but support troops were often used
as night patrols in No-Man's-Land or as wiring parties.
After a day or longer in support they were sent up to relieve, _i.e._,
exchange positions with, their comrades in the front line posts. Four
days was the usual 'tour' for a company. During it each platoon did
two spells of 24 hours in the posts and the same back in support. When
the four days were over, a fresh company relieved that whose tour was
finished. The one relieved moved back to better conditions, but would
still be in trenches and dug-outs until the whole Battalion was
relieved.
The English infantryman stands for all ages as the ensample of heroic
patience, which words or cartoon fail utterly to convey.
How did the Company Commander and his officers fare in the trenches?
The Platoon Officer shared every hardship with his 25 men. If there
was a roofed-in hole with a box for a table he had it, for his
messages were many. To the Company Commander a rough table was quite
indispensable, and so were light and some protection from the rain.
Without these essentials he could never have received nor sent his
written instructions, consulted his maps nor spoken by telephone, on
which he relied to get help from the artillery. The Company
Sergeant-Major, a few signallers and some runners were his familiars,
and he lived with and among these faithful men. Quite often the
Company Commander's dug-out was appreciably the best in the company
area. Sometimes it was little better than the worst. In the spring of
1918 it was often only a hole.
Every good Company Commander made a point of visiting each night all
his front line posts and spending some time with each, not only to
give orders, direct the work and test the vigilance of the sentries,
but in order to keep up the Company's morale. The worse the weather or
the shelling the higher that duty was. Likewise the Battalion
Commander used to visit Company Headquarters once a day and every
front line post at least once during a tour. The journey to the front
line, possible only in darkness, was very dangerous. Shells were bound
to fall at some point on the way, the enemy's machine guns or 'fixed
rifles' were trained on every probable approach, and the Captain in
ordinary trench warfare was as liable to be killed as any Private.
Responsibility, however, made these nightly walks not only necessary
but almost desirable.
To conditions such as I have described the Battalion returned to do
another tour in the Ablaincourt sector. The line was again held by A
on the left (owing to the former three-company system no proper
interchange had been possible) and by B on the right. Davenport went
to my old headquarters, which the enemy was now busy trench-mortaring,
and held half the front previously held by C, which, with D Company,
was now in support. To the usual evils were now added rifle-grenades
filled with gas, which caused several casualties in A Company. D
Company lost a good man in Lance Corporal Tremellen, who was wounded
by a bullet through the legs when leading a ration party 'across the
top,' and other N.C.O.'s went sick with trench fever. During this
tour the energy of Corporal Viggers, of my company, was most
remarkable. He did the work of ten.
On the night of March 15 the Brigade was relieved by the Warwicks. The
Battalion moved back to Framerville, where Quartermaster's Stores and
Transport rejoined.