This was the end of August 1915, and particulars of the coming
offensive against La Bassée were beginning to leak through the young
staff officers. The French civilians knew that it was coming and
so, naturally, did the Germans. Every night now new batteries and
lorry-trains of shells came rumbling up the Béthune-La Bassée road.
There were other signs of movement: sapping forward at Vermelles and
Cambrin, where the lines were too far apart for a quick rush across,
to make a new front line; orders for evacuation of hospitals; the
appearance of cavalry and new-army divisions. Then Royal Engineer
officers supervised the digging of pits at intervals in the front
line. They were sworn not to say what these were for, but we knew that
they were for gas-cylinders. Scaling ladders for climbing quickly out
of trenches were brought up by the lorry-load and dumped at Cambrin
village. As early as September 3rd I had a bet with Robertson that our
division would attack on this Cambrin-Cuinchy sector. When I went home
on leave on September 9th the sense of impending events was so great
that I almost wished I was not going.
Leave came round for officers about every six or eight months in
ordinary times; heavy casualties shortened the period, general
offensives cut off leave altogether. There was only one officer in
France who was ever said to have refused to go on leave when his
turn came round—Cross of the Fifty-second Light Infantry (the Second
Battalion of the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry, which insisted on
its original style as jealously as we kept our ‘c’ in ‘Welch’). Cross
is alleged to have refused leave on these grounds: ‘My father fought
with the regiment in the South African War and had no leave; my
grandfather fought in the Crimea with the regiment and had no leave. I
do not regard it in the regimental tradition to take home-leave when on
active service.’ Cross was a professional survivor and was commanding
the battalion in 1917 when I last heard of him.
London seemed unreally itself. In spite of the number of men in uniform
in the streets, the general indifference to and ignorance about the
war was remarkable. Enlistment was still voluntary. The universal
catchword was ‘Business as usual.’ My family were living in London
now, at the house formerly occupied by my uncle, Robert von Ranke, the
German consul. He had been forced to leave in a hurry on August 4th,
1914, and my mother had undertaken to look after it for him while the
war lasted. So when Edward Marsh, then secretary to the Prime Minister,
rang me up from Downing Street to arrange a meal, someone intervened
and cut him off. The telephone of the German consul’s sister was, of
course, closely watched by the anti-espionage men of Scotland Yard. The
Zeppelin scare had just begun. Some friends of the family came in one
night. They knew I had been in the trenches, but were not interested.
They began telling me of the air-raids, of bombs dropped only three
streets off. So I said: ‘Well, do you know, the other day I was asleep
in a house and in the early morning an aeroplane dropped a bomb next
door and killed three soldiers who were billeted there, and a woman
and child.’ ‘Good gracious,’ they said, looking at me with sudden
interest, ‘what did you do then?’ I said: ‘I went to sleep again; I was
tired out. It was at a place called Beuvry, about four miles behind
the trenches.’ They said: ‘Oh, but that was in France,’ and the look
of interest faded from their faces, as though I had taken them in
with a stupid catch. I went up to Harlech for the rest of my leave, and
walked about on the hills in an old shirt and a pair of shorts. When I
got back, ‘The Actor,’ a regular officer in A Company, asked me: ‘Had
a good time on leave?’ I said ‘Yes.’ He said: ‘Go to many dances?’
I said: ‘Not one.’ ‘What shows did you go to?’ ‘I didn’t go to any
shows.’ ‘Hunt?’ ‘No!’ ‘Slept with any nice girls?’ ‘No, I didn’t. Sorry
to disappoint you.’ ‘What the hell _did_ you do, then?’ ‘Oh, I just
walked about on some hills.’ ‘Good God,’ he said, ‘chaps like you don’t
deserve to go on leave.’
On September 19th we relieved the Middlesex at Cambrin, and it was
said that these were the trenches from which we were to attack. The
preliminary bombardment had already started, a week in advance. As I
led my platoon into the line I recognized with some disgust the same
machine-gun shelter where I had seen the suicide on my first night in
trenches. It seemed ominous. This was the first heavy bombardment that
I had yet seen from our own guns. The trenches shook properly and a
great cloud of drifting shell-smoke clouded the German trenches. The
shells went over our heads in a steady stream; we had to shout to make
our neighbours hear. Dying down a little at night, the noise began
again every morning at dawn, a little louder each time. We said: ‘Damn
it, there can’t be a living soul left in those trenches.’ And still
it went on. The Germans retaliated, though not very vigorously. Most
of their heavy artillery had been withdrawn from this sector, we were
told, and sent across to the Russian front. We had more casualties
from our own shorts and from blow-backs than from German shells. Much
of the ammunition that our batteries were using came from America and
contained a high percentage of duds; the driving-bands were always
coming off. We had fifty casualties in the ranks and three officer
casualties, including Buzz Off, who was badly wounded in the head.
This was before steel helmets were issued; we would not have lost
nearly so many if we had had them. I had two insignificant wounds on
the hand which I took as an omen on the right side. On the morning of
the 23rd Thomas came back from battalion headquarters with a notebook
in his hand and a map for each of us company officers. ‘Listen,’ he
said, ‘and copy out all this skite on the back of your maps. You’ll
have to explain it to your platoons this afternoon. To-morrow morning
we go back to Béthune to dump our blankets, packs, and greatcoats. On
the next day, that’s Saturday the 25th, we attack.’ It was the first
definite news we had been given and we looked up half startled, half
relieved. I still have the map and these are the orders as I copied
them down:
First Objective.—_Les Briques Farm._—The big house plainly
visible to our front, surrounded by trees. To get this it is
necessary to cross three lines of enemy trenches. The first is three
hundred yards distant, the second four hundred, and the third about
six hundred. We then cross two railways. Behind the second railway
line is a German trench called the Brick Trench. Then comes the Farm,
a strong place with moat and cellars and a kitchen garden strongly
staked and wired.
Second Objective.—_The Town of Auchy._—This is also plainly
visible from our trenches. It is four hundred yards beyond the Farm
and defended by a first line of trench half way across, and a
second line immediately in front of the town. When we have occupied
the first line our direction is half-right, with the left of the
battalion directed on Tall Chimney.
Third Objective.—_Village of Haisnes._—Conspicuous by
high-spired church. Our eventual line will be taken up on the railway
behind this village, where we will dig in and await reinforcements.
When Thomas had reached this point the shoulders of The Actor were
shaking with laughter. ‘What’s up?’ asked Thomas irritably. The Actor
asked: ‘Who in God’s Name is originally responsible for this little
effort?’ Thomas said: ‘Don’t know. Probably Paul the Pimp or someone
like that.’ (Paul the Pimp was a captain on the divisional staff,
young, inexperienced and much disliked. He ‘wore red tabs upon his
chest, And even on his undervest.’) ‘Between you and me, but you
youngsters be careful not to let the men know, this is what they call
a subsidiary attack. We’ll have no supports. We’ve just got to go over
and keep the enemy busy while the folk on our right do the real work.
You notice that the bombardment is much heavier over there. They’ve
knocked the Hohenzollern Redoubt to bits. Personally, I don’t give a
damn either way. We’ll get killed anyhow.’ We all laughed. ‘All right,
laugh now, but by God on Saturday we’ve got to carry out this funny
scheme.’ I had never heard Thomas so talkative before. ‘Sorry,’ The
Actor apologized, ‘carry on with the dictation.’ Thomas went on:
‘The attack will be preceded by forty minutes discharge of the
accessory,[5] which will clear the path for a thousand yards, so
that the two railway lines will be occupied without difficulty. Our
advance will follow closely behind the accessory. Behind us are three
fresh divisions and the Cavalry Corps. It is expected we shall have
no difficulty in breaking through. All men will parade with their
platoons; pioneers, servants, etc. to be warned. All platoons to be
properly told off under N.C.O.’s. Every N.C.O. is to know exactly
what is expected of him, and when to take over command in case of
casualties. Men who lose touch must join up with the nearest company
or regiment and push on. Owing to the strength of the accessory, men
should be warned against remaining too long in captured trenches
where the accessory is likely to collect, but to keep to the open and
above all to push on. It is important that if smoke-helmets have to
be pulled down they must be tucked in under the shirt.’
[Illustration: THE CAMBRIN—CUINCHY—VERMELLES TRENCH SECTOR]
The Actor interrupted again. ‘Tell me, Thomas, do you believe in this
funny accessory?’ Thomas said: ‘It’s damnable. It’s not soldiering
to use stuff like that even though the Germans did start it. It’s
dirty, and it’ll bring us bad luck. We’re sure to bungle it. Look
at those new gas-companies, (sorry, excuse me this once, I mean
accessory-companies). Their very look makes me tremble. Chemistry-dons
from London University, a few lads straight from school, one or two
N.C.O.’s of the old-soldier type, trained together for three weeks,
then given a job as responsible as this. Of course they’ll bungle
it. How could they do anything else? But let’s be merry. I’m going on
again:
‘Men of company: what they are to carry:
Two hundred rounds of ammunition (bomb-throwers fifty, and signallers
one hundred and fifty rounds).
Heavy tools carried in sling by the strongest men.
Waterproof sheet in belt.
Sandbag in right coat-pocket.
Field dressing and iodine.
Emergency ration, including biscuit.
One tube-helmet, to be worn when we advance, foiled up on the head.
It must be quite secure and the top part turned down. If possible
each man will be provided with an elastic band.
One smoke-helmet, old pattern, to be carried for preference behind
the back where it is least likely to be damaged by stray bullets, etc.
Wire-cutters, as many as possible, by wiring party and others;
hedging-gloves by wire party.
Platoon screens, for artillery observation, to be carried by a man in
each platoon who is not carrying a tool.
Packs, capes, greatcoats, blankets will be dumped, not carried.
No one is to carry sketches of our position or anything likely to be
of service to the enemy.’
‘That’s all. I believe we’re going over first with the Middlesex in
support. If we get through the German wire I’ll be satisfied. Our guns
don’t seem to be cutting it. Perhaps they’re putting that off until the
intense bombardment. Any questions?’
That afternoon I repeated it all to the platoon and told them of
the inevitable success attending our assault. They seemed to believe
it. All except Sergeant Townsend. ‘Do you say, sir, that we have
three divisions and the Cavalry Corps behind us?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I
answered. ‘Well, excuse me, sir, I’m thinking it’s only those chaps on
the right that’ll get reinforcements. If we get half a platoon of Mons
Angels, that’s about all we will get.’ ‘Sergeant Townsend,’ I said,
‘you are a well-known pessimist. This is going to be a good show.’ The
next morning we were relieved by the Middlesex and marched back to
Béthune, where we dumped our spare kit at the Montmorency Barracks. The
battalion officers messed together in a big house near by. This billet
was claimed at the same time by the staff of a new-army division which
was to take part in the fighting next day. The argument was settled
in a friendly way by division and battalion messing together. It was,
someone pointed out, like a caricature of The Last Supper in duplicate.
In the middle of the long table sat the two pseudo-Christs, the
battalion colonel and the divisional general. Everybody was drinking a
lot; the subalterns were allowed whisky for a treat, and were getting
rowdy. They raised their glasses with: ‘Cheero, we will be messing
together to-morrow night in La Bassée.’ Only the company commanders
were looking worried. I remember C Company commander especially,
Captain A. L. Samson, biting his thumb and refusing to join in the
general excitement. I think it was Childe-Freeman of B company who said
that night: ‘The last time the regiment was in these parts it was under
decent generalship. Old Marlborough knew better than to attack the La
Bassée lines; he masked them and went round.’
The G.S.O. 1 of the new-army division, a staff-colonel, knew the
adjutant well. They had played polo together in India. I happened to
be sitting next to them. The G.S.O. 1 said to the adjutant, rather
drunkenly: ‘Charley, do you see that silly old woman over there? Calls
himself General Commanding. Doesn’t know where he is; doesn’t know
where his division is; can’t read a map properly. He’s marched the poor
sods off their feet and left his supplies behind, God knows where.
They’ve had to use their iron rations and what they could pick up in
the villages. And to-morrow he’s going to fight a battle. Doesn’t know
anything about battles; the men have never been in trenches before,
and to-morrow’s going to be a glorious balls-up, and the day after
to-morrow he’ll be sent home.’ Then he said, quite seriously: ‘Really,
Charley, it’s just like that, you mark my words.’
That night we marched back again to Cambrin. The men were singing.
Being mostly from the Midlands they sang comic songs instead of Welsh
hymns: _Slippery Sam_, _When we’ve Wound up the Watch on the Rhine_,
and _I do like a S’nice S’mince Pie_, to concertina accompaniment. The
tune of the _S’nice S’mince Pie_ ran in my head all next day, and for
the week following I could not get rid of it. The Second Welsh would
never have sung a song like _When we’ve Wound up the Watch on the
Rhine_. Their only songs about the war were defeatist:
I want to go home,
I want to go home,
The coal-box and shrapnel they whistle and roar,
I don’t want to go to the trenches no more,
I want to go over the sea
Where the Kayser can’t shoot bombs at me.
Oh, I
Don’t want to die,
I want to go home.
There were several more verses in the same strain. Hewitt, the Welsh
machine-gun officer, had written one in a more offensive spirit:
I want to go home,
I want to go home.
One day at Givenchy the week before last
The Allmands attacked and they nearly got past.
They pushed their way up to the keep,
Through our maxim-gun sight we did peep,
Oh my!
They let out a cry,
They never got home.
But the men would not sing it, though they all admired Hewitt.
The Béthune-La Bassée road was choked with troops, guns, and transport,
and we had to march miles north out of our way to get back to Cambrin.
As it was we were held up two or three times by massed cavalry.
Everything seemed in confusion. A casualty clearing-station had been
planted astride one of the principal crossroads and was already being
shelled. When we reached Cambrin we had marched about twenty miles in
all that day. We were told then that the Middlesex would go over first
with us in support, and to their left the Second Argyll and Sutherland
Highlanders, with the Cameronians in support; the junior officers
complained loudly at our not being given the honour of leading the
attack. We were the senior regiment, they protested, and entitled to
the ‘Right of the Line.’ We moved into trench sidings just in front
of the village. There was about half a mile of communication trench
between us and the trenches proper, known as Maison Rouge Alley. It
was an hour or so past midnight. At half-past five the gas was to
be discharged. We were cold, tired and sick, not at all in the mood
for a battle. We tried to snatch an hour or two of sleep squatting
in the trench. It had been raining for some time. Grey, watery dawn
broke at last behind the German lines; the bombardment, which had been
surprisingly slack all night, brisked up a little. ‘Why the devil don’t
they send them over quicker?’ asked The Actor. ‘This isn’t my idea of a
bombardment. We’re getting nothing opposite us. What little there is is
going into the Hohenzollern.’ ‘Shell shortage. Expected it,’ answered
Thomas. We were told afterwards that on the 23rd a German aeroplane had
bombed the Army Reserve shell-dump and sent it up. The bombardment on
the 24th and on the day of the battle itself was nothing compared with
that of the previous days. Thomas looked strained and ill. ‘It’s time
they were sending that damned accessory off. I wonder what’s doing.’
What happened in the next few minutes is difficult for me now to sort
out. It was more difficult still at the time. All we heard back there
in the sidings was a distant cheer, confused crackle of rifle-fire,
yells, heavy shelling on our front line, more shouts and yells and a
continuous rattle of machine-guns. After a few minutes, lightly-wounded
men of the Middlesex came stumbling down Maison Rouge Alley to the
dressing-station. I was at the junction of the siding and the alley.
‘What’s happened? What’s happened?’ I asked. ‘Bloody balls-up’ was the
most detailed answer I could get. Among the wounded were a number
of men yellow-faced and choking, with their buttons tarnished green;
these were gas cases. Then came the stretcher cases. Maison Rouge Alley
was narrow and the stretchers had difficulty in getting down. The
Germans started shelling it with five-point-nines. Thomas went through
the shelling to battalion headquarters to ask for orders. It was the
same place that I had visited on my first night in the trenches. This
group of dug-outs in the reserve line showed very plainly from the
air as battalion headquarters, and should never have been occupied on
the day of a battle. Just before Thomas arrived the Germans put five
shells into it. The adjutant jumped one way, the colonel another, the
regimental sergeant-major a third. One shell went into the signals
dug-out and destroyed the telephone. The colonel had a slight wound on
his hand; he joined the stream of wounded and was carried as far as
the base with it. The adjutant took charge. All this time A Company
had been waiting in the siding for the rum to arrive; the tradition
of every attack was a double tot of rum beforehand. All the other
companies got it except ours. The Actor was cursing: ‘Where the bloody
hell’s that storeman gone?’ We fixed bayonets in readiness to go up to
the attack as soon as Thomas came back with orders. The Actor sent me
along the siding to the other end of the company. The stream of wounded
was continuous. At last Thomas’s orderly appeared, saying: ‘Captain’s
orders, sir: A Company to move up to the front line.’ It seems that
at that moment the storeman appeared with the rum. He was hugging the
rum-bottle, without rifle or equipment, red-faced and retching. He
staggered up to The Actor and said: ‘There you are, sir,’ then fell
on his face in the thick mud of a sump-pit at the junction of the
trench and the siding. The stopper of the bottle flew out and what
was left of the three gallons bubbled on the ground. The Actor said
nothing. It was a crime deserving the death-penalty. He put one foot
on the storeman’s neck, the other in the small of his back, and trod
him into the mud. Then he gave the order ‘Company forward.’ The company
went forward with a clatter of steel over the body, and that was the
last heard of the storeman.
What had happened in the front line was this. At half-past four the
commander of the gas-company in the front line sent a telephone message
through to divisional headquarters: ‘Dead calm. Impossible discharge
accessory.’ The answer came back: ‘Accessory to be discharged at all
costs.’ Thomas’s estimate of the gas-company’s efficiency was right
enough. The spanners for unscrewing the cocks of the cylinders were
found, with two or three exceptions, to be misfits. The gas-men rushed
about shouting and asking each other for the loan of an adjustable
spanner. They discharged one or two cylinders with the spanners that
they had; the gas went whistling out, formed a thick cloud a few
yards away in No Man’s Land, and then gradually spread back into the
trenches. The Germans had been expecting the attack. They immediately
put their gas-helmets on, semi-rigid ones, better than ours. Bundles of
oily cotton-waste were strewn along the German parapet and set alight
as a barrier to the gas. Then their batteries opened on our lines. The
confusion in the front trench was great; the shelling broke several of
the gas-cylinders and the trench was soon full of gas. The gas-company
dispersed.
No orders could come through because the shell in the signals dug-out
at battalion headquarters had cut communication both between
companies and battalion headquarters and between battalion headquarters
and division. The officers in the front trench had to decide on
immediate action. Two companies of the Middlesex, instead of waiting
for the intense bombardment which was to follow the forty minutes
of gas, charged at once and got as far as the German wire-which our
artillery had not yet attempted to cut. What shelling there had been
on it was shrapnel and not high explosive; shrapnel was no use against
barbed wire. The Germans shot the Middlesex men down. It is said that
one platoon found a gap and got into the German trench. But there
were no survivors of the platoon to confirm the story. The Argyll and
Sutherland Highlanders went over too, on their left. Two companies,
instead of charging at once, rushed back to the support line out of the
gas-filled front trench and attacked from there. It will be recalled
that the front line had been pushed forward in preparation for the
battle; these companies were therefore attacking from the old front
line. The barbed wire entanglements in front of this trench had not
been removed, so that they were caught and machine-gunned between
their own front and support lines. The leading companies were equally
unsuccessful. When the attack started, the German N.C.O.’s had jumped
up on the parapet to encourage their men. It was a Jaeger regiment and
their musketry was good.
The survivors of the first two companies of the Middlesex were lying in
shell-craters close to the German wire, sniping and making the Germans
keep their heads down. They had bombs to throw, but these were nearly
all of a new type issued for the battle; the fuses were lit on the
match-and-matchbox principle and the rain had made them useless. The
other two companies of the Middlesex soon followed in support.
Machine-gun fire stopped them half-way. Only one German machine-gun
was now in action, the others had been knocked out by rifle or
trench-mortar fire. Why the single gun remained in action is a story in
itself.
It starts like this. British colonial governors and high-commissioners
had the privilege of nominating one or two officers from their
countries to be attached in war-time to the regular British forces.
Under this scheme the officers appointed began as full lieutenants.
The Governor-General of Jamaica (or whatever his proper style may be)
nominated the eighteen-year-old son of a rich Jamaica planter. He was
sent straight from Jamaica to the First Middlesex. He was good-hearted
enough but of little use in the trenches. He had never been out of
the island in his life and, except for a short service with the West
Indian militia, knew nothing of soldiering. His company commander took
a fatherly interest in Young Jamaica, as he was called, and tried to
teach him his duties. This company commander was known as The Boy.
He had twenty years’ service in the Middlesex, and the unusual boast
of having held every rank from ‘boy’ to captain in the same company.
His father, I believe, had been the regimental sergeant-major. The
difficulty was that Jamaica was a full lieutenant and so senior
to the other experienced subalterns in the company, who were only
second-lieutenants. The colonel decided to shift Jamaica off on some
course or extra-regimental appointment at the earliest opportunity.
Somewhere about May or June he had been asked to supply an officer
for the brigade trench-mortar company, and he had sent Jamaica.
Trench-mortars at that time were dangerous and ineffective; so the
appointment seemed suitable. At the same time the Royal Welch Fusiliers
had also been asked to detail an officer, and the colonel had sent
Tiley, an ex-planter from Malay, who was what is called a fine natural
soldier. He had been chosen because he was attached from another
regiment and had showed his resentment at the manner of his welcome
somewhat too plainly. By September mortars had improved in design and
become an important infantry arm; Jamaica was senior to Tiley and was
therefore in the responsible position of commanding the company.
When the Middlesex made the charge, The Boy was mortally wounded as
he climbed over the parapet. He fell back and began crawling down
the trench to the stretcher-bearers’ dug-out. He passed Jamaica’s
trench-mortar emplacement. Jamaica had lost his gun-team and was
serving the trench-mortars himself. When he saw The Boy he forgot about
his guns and ran off to get a stretcher-party. Tiley meanwhile, on the
other flank, opposite Mine Point, had knocked out the machine-guns
within range. He went on until his gun burst. The machine-gun in the
Pope’s Nose, a small salient opposite Jamaica, remained in action.
It was at this point that the Royal Welch Fusiliers came up in support.
Maison Rouge Alley was a nightmare; the Germans were shelling it with
five-nines bursting with a black smoke and with lachrymatory shells.
This caused a continual scramble backwards and forwards. There were
cries and counter-cries: ‘Come on!’ ‘Get back, you bastards!’ ‘Gas
turning on us!’ ‘Keep your heads, you men!’ ‘Back like hell, boys.’
‘Whose orders?’ ‘What’s happening?’ ‘Gas!’ ‘Back!’ ‘Come on!’ ‘Gas!’
‘Back!’ Wounded men and stretcher-bearers were still trying to squeeze
past. We were alternately putting on and taking off our gas-helmets
and that made things worse. In many places the trench was filled in
and we had to scramble over the top. Childe-Freeman got up to
the front line with only fifty men of B Company; the rest had lost
their way in some abandoned trenches half-way up. The adjutant met
him in the support line. ‘You ready to go over, Freeman?’ he asked.
Freeman had to admit that he had lost most of his company. He felt
this keenly as a disgrace; it was the first time that he had commanded
a company in battle. He decided to go over with his fifty men in
support of the Middlesex. He blew his whistle and the company charged.
They were stopped by machine-gun fire before they had passed our own
entanglements. Freeman himself died, but of heart-failure, as he stood
on the parapet. After a few minutes C Company and the remainder of B
reached the front line. The gas-cylinders were still whistling and the
trench full of dying men. Samson decided to go over; he would not have
it said that the Royal Welch had let down the Middlesex. There was a
strong comradely feeling between the Middlesex and the Royal Welch. The
Royal Welch and Middlesex were drawn together in dislike of the Scots.
The other three battalions in the brigade were Scottish, and ♦the
brigadier was a Scot and, unjustly no doubt, accused of favouring them.
Our adjutant voiced the general opinion: ‘The Jocks are all the same,
the trousered variety and the bare-backed variety. They’re dirty in
trenches, they skite too much, and they charge like hell—both ways.’
The Middlesex, who were the original Diehard battalion, had more than
once, with the Royal Welch, considered themselves let down by the
Jocks. So Samson with C and the rest of B Company charged. One of the
officers told me later what happened to himself. It had been agreed
to advance by platoon rushes with supporting fire. When his platoon
had run about twenty yards he signalled them to lie down and open
covering fire. The din was tremendous. He saw the platoon on the left
flopping down too, so he whistled the advance again. Nobody seemed
to hear. He jumped up from his shell-hole and waved and signalled
‘Forward.’ Nobody stirred. He shouted: ‘You bloody cowards, are you
leaving me to go alone?’ His platoon sergeant, groaning with a broken
shoulder, gasped out: ‘Not cowards, sir. Willing enough. But they’re
all f——ing dead.’ A machine-gun traversing had caught them as they rose
to the whistle.
♦ “the the” replaced with “the”
Our company too had become separated by the shelling. The Surrey-man
got a touch of gas and went coughing back. The Actor said he was
skrim-shanking and didn’t want the battle. This was unfair. The
Surrey-man looked properly sick. I do not know what happened to him,
but I heard that the gas was not much and that he managed, a few months
later, to get back to his own regiment in France. I found myself with
The Actor in a narrow trench between the front and support lines. This
trench had not been built wide enough for a stretcher to pass the
bends. We came on The Boy lying on his stretcher wounded in the lungs
and the stomach. Jamaica was standing over him in tears, blubbering:
‘Poor old Boy, poor old Boy, he’s going to die; I’m sure he is. He’s
the only one who was decent to me.’ The Actor found we could not get
by. He said to Jamaica: ‘Take that poor sod out of the way, will you?
I’ve got to get my company up. Put him into a dug-out or somewhere.’
Jamaica made no answer; he seemed paralysed by the horror of the
occasion. He could only repeat: ‘Poor old Boy, poor I old Boy.’ ‘Look
here,’ said The Actor, ‘if you can’t shift him into a dug-out we’ll
have to lift him on top of the trench. He can’t live now and we’re
late getting up.’ ‘No, no,’ Jamaica shouted wildly. The Actor lost his
temper and shook Jamaica roughly by the shoulders. ‘You’re the
bloody trench-mortar wallah, aren’t you?’ he asked fiercely. Jamaica
nodded miserably. ‘Well, your battery is a hundred yards from here. Why
the hell aren’t you using your gas-pipes on that machine-gun in the
Pope’s Nose? Buzz off back to them.’ And he kicked him down the trench.
Then he called over his shoulder: ‘Sergeant Rose and Corporal Jennings,
lift this stretcher up across the top of the trench. We’ve got to
pass.’ Jamaica leaned against a traverse. ‘I do think you’re the most
heartless beast I’ve ever met,’ he said weakly.
We went on up to the front line. It was full of dead and dying. The
captain of the gas-company, who had kept his head and had a special
oxygen respirator, had by now turned off the gas. Vermorel-sprayers
had cleared out most of the gas, but we still had to wear our masks.
We climbed up and crouched on the fire-step, where the gas was not so
thick—gas was heavy stuff and kept low. Then Thomas arrived with the
remainder of A Company and, with D, we waited for the whistle to follow
the other two companies over. Fortunately at this moment the adjutant
appeared. He told Thomas that he was now in command of the battalion
and he didn’t care a damn about orders; he was going to cut his losses.
He said he would not send A and D over until he got definite orders
from brigade. He had sent a runner back because telephone communication
was cut, and we must wait. Meanwhile the intense bombardment that was
to follow the forty minutes’ discharge of gas began. It concentrated on
the German front trench and wire. A good deal of it was short and we
had further casualties in our trenches. The survivors of the Middlesex
and of our B and C Companies in craters in No Man’s Land suffered
heavily.
My mouth was dry, my eyes out of focus, and my legs quaking under
me. I found a water-bottle full of rum and drank about half a pint; it
quieted me and my head remained clear. Samson was lying wounded about
twenty yards away from the front trench. Several attempts were made to
get him in. He was very badly hit and groaning. Three men were killed
in these attempts and two officers and two men wounded. Finally his own
orderly managed to crawl out to him. Samson ordered him back, saying
that he was riddled and not worth rescuing; he sent his apologies to
the company for making such a noise. We waited for about a couple of
hours for the order to charge. The men were silent and depressed.
Sergeant Townsend was making feeble, bitter jokes about the good old
British army muddling through and how he thanked God we still had a
navy. I shared the rest of the rum with him and he cheered up a little.
Finally a runner came with a message that the attack was off for the
present.
Rumours came down the trenches of a disaster similar to our own in the
brick-stack area, where the Fifth Brigade had gone over, and again at
Givenchy, where it was said that men of the Sixth Brigade at the Duck’s
Bill salient had fought their way into the enemy trenches, but had been
bombed out, their own supply of bombs failing. It was said, however,
that things were better on the right, where there had been a slight
wind to take the gas over. There was a rumour that the First, Seventh,
and Forty-seventh Divisions had broken through. My memory of that day
is hazy. We spent it getting the wounded down to the dressing-station,
spraying the trenches and dug-outs to get rid of the gas, and clearing
away the earth where trenches were blocked. The trenches stank with a
gas-blood-lyddite-latrine smell. Late in the afternoon we watched
through our field-glasses the advance of the reserves towards Loos and
Hill 70; it looked like a real break through. They were being heavily
shelled. They were troops of the new-army division whose staff we had
messed with the night before. Immediately to the right of us was the
Highland Division, whose exploits on that day Ian Hay has celebrated in
_The First Hundred Thousand_; I suppose that we were ‘the flat caps on
the left’ who ‘let down’ his comrades-in-arms.
As soon as it was dusk we all went out to get in the wounded. Only
sentries were left in the line. The first dead body I came upon was
Samson’s. I found that he had forced his knuckles into his mouth to
stop himself crying out and attracting any more men to their death. He
had been hit in seventeen places. Major Swainson, the second-in-command
of the Middlesex, came crawling in from the German wire. He seemed to
be wounded in the lungs, the stomach and a leg. Choate, a Middlesex
second-lieutenant, appeared; he was unhurt, and together we bandaged
Swainson and got him into the trench and on a stretcher. He begged me
to loosen his belt; I cut it with a bowie-knife that I had bought in
Béthune for use in the fighting. He said: ‘I’m about done for.’[6] We
spent all that night getting in the wounded of the Royal Welch, the
Middlesex and those of the Argyll and Sutherland who had attacked from
the front trench. The Germans behaved generously. I do not remember
hearing a shot fired that night, and we kept on until it was
nearly dawn and we could be plainly seen; then they fired a few shots
in warning and we gave it up. By this time we had got in all the
wounded and most of the Royal Welch dead. I was surprised at some of
the attitudes in which the dead had stiffened—in the act of bandaging
friends’ wounds, crawling, cutting wire. The Argyll and Sutherland
had seven hundred casualties, including fourteen officers killed out
of the sixteen that went over; the Middlesex five hundred and fifty
casualties, including eleven officers killed.
Two other Middlesex officers besides Choate were unwounded; their names
were Henry and Hill, second-lieutenants who had recently come with
commissions from, I think, the Artists’ Rifles; their welcome in the
Middlesex had been something like mine in the Royal Welch. They had
been lying out in shell-holes in the rain all day, sniping and being
sniped at. Henry, according to Hill, had dragged five wounded men into
his shell-hole and thrown up a sort of parapet with his hands and a
bowie-knife that he was carrying. Hill had his platoon sergeant with
him, screaming for hours with a stomach wound, begging for morphia; he
was dying, so Hill gave him five pellets. We always carried morphia
with us for emergencies like this. When Choate, Henrv and Hill arrived
back in the trenches with a few stragglers they reported at the
Middlesex headquarters. Hill told me the story. The colonel and the
adjutant were sitting down to a meat pie when he and Henry arrived.
Henry said: ‘Come to report, sir. Ourselves and about ninety men of
all companies. Mr. Choate is back, unwounded, too.’ They looked up
dully. The colonel said: ‘So you’ve come back, have you? Well, all the
rest are dead. I suppose Mr. Choate had better command what’s left of
A Company, the bombing officer will command what’s left of B (the
bombing officer had not gone over but remained with headquarters), Mr.
Henry goes to C Company, Mr. Hill to D. The Royal Welch are holding
the front line. We are here in support. Let me know where to find you
if I want you. Good night.’ There was no offer to have a piece of meat
pie or a drink of whisky, so they saluted and went miserably out.
They were called back by the adjutant. ‘Mr. Hill! Mr. Henry!’ ‘Sir?’
Hill said that he expected a change of mind as to the propriety with
which hospitality could be offered by a regular colonel and adjutant
to temporary second-lieutenants in distress. But it was only to say:
‘Mr. Hill, Mr. Henry, I saw some men in the trench just now with their
shoulder-straps unbuttoned and their equipment fastened anyhow. See
that this practice does not occur in future. That’s all.’ Henry heard
the colonel from his bunk complaining that he had only two blankets and
that it was a deucedly cold night. Choate arrived a few minutes later
and reported; the others had told him of their reception. After he had
saluted and reported that Major Swainson, who had been thought killed,
was wounded and on the way down to the dressing-station, he leaned over
the table, cut a large piece of meat pie and began eating it. This
caused such surprise that nothing further was said. He finished his
meat pie and drank a glass of whisky, saluted, and joined the others.
Meanwhile, I had been given command of the survivors of B Company.
There were only six company officers left in the Royal Welch. Next
morning there were only five. Thomas was killed by a sniper. He was
despondently watching the return of the new-army troops on the right.
They had been pushed blindly into the gap made by the advance of
the Seventh and Forty-seventh Divisions on the previous afternoon; they
did not know where they were or what they were supposed to do; their
ration supply had broken down. So they flocked back, not in a panic,
but stupidly, like a crowd coming back from a cup final. Shrapnel was
bursting above them. We noticed that the officers were in groups of
their own. We could scarcely believe our eyes, it was so odd. Thomas
need not have been killed; but he was in the sort of mood in which he
seemed not to care one way or the other. The Actor took command of A.
We lumped our companies together after a couple of days for the sake of
relieving each other on night watch and getting some sleep. The first
night I agreed to take the first watch, waking him up at midnight. When
I went to call him I could not wake him up; I tried everything. I shook
him, shouted in his ear, poured water over him, banged his head against
the side of the bed. Finally I threw him on the floor. I was desperate
for want of sleep myself, but he was in a depth of sleep from which
nothing could shake him, so I heaved him back on the bunk and had to
finish the night out myself. Even ‘Stand-to!’ failed to arouse him. I
woke him at last at nine o’clock in the morning and he was furious with
me for not having waked him at midnight.
The day after the attack we spent carrying the dead down to burial
and cleaning the trench up as well as we could. That night the
Middlesex held the line while the Royal Welch carried all the unbroken
gas-cylinders along to a position on the left flank of the brigade,
where they were to be used on the following night, September 27th.
This was worse than carrying the dead; the cylinders were cast-iron
and very heavy and we hated them. The men cursed and sulked, but got
the carrying done. Orders came that we were to attack again. Only
the officers knew; the men were only to be told just beforehand. It
was difficult for me to keep up appearances with the men; I felt like
screaming. It was still raining, harder than ever. We knew definitely
this time that ours was only a subsidiary night attack, a diversion
to help a division on our right to make the real attack. The scheme
was the same as before. At four p.m.the gas was to be discharged again
for forty minutes, then came a quartet of an hour’s bombardment, and
then the attack. I broke the news to the men about three o’clock. They
took it very well. The relations of officers and men, and of senior
and junior officers, had been very different in the excitement of the
attack. There had been no insubordination, but a greater freedom, as
if everyone was drunk together. I found myself calling the adjutant
Charley on one occasion; he appeared not to mind it in the least. For
the next ten days my relations with my men were like those I had with
the Welsh Regiment; later discipline reasserted itself and it was only
occasionally that I found them intimate.
At four p.m., then, the gas went off again. There was a strong wind
and it went over well; the gas-men had brought enough spanners this
time. The Germans were absolutely silent. Flares went up from the
reserve lines and it seemed as though all the men in the front line
were dead. The brigadier decided not to take too much for granted;
after the bombardment he sent out twenty-five men and an officer of
the Cameronians as a feeling-patrol. The patrol reached the German
wire; there was a burst of machine-gun and rifle fire and only two
wounded men regained the trench. We: waited on the fire-step from four
to nine o’clock, with fixed; bayonets, for the order to go over. My
mind was a blank except for the recurrence of ‘S’nice smince spie,
s’nice smince spie.... I don’t like ham, lamb or jam and I don’t
like roley-poley....’ The men laughed at my singing. The sergeant who
was acting company sergeant-major said to me: ‘It’s murder, sir.’ ‘Of
course it’s murder, you bloody fool,’ I agreed. ‘But there’s nothing
else for it, is there?’ It was still raining. ‘But when I see’s a
s’nice smince spie, I asks for a helping twice....’ At nine o’clock we
were told that the attack was put off; we were told to hold ourselves
in readiness to attack at dawn.
No order came at dawn. And no more attacks were promised us after
this. From the morning of September 24th to the night of October 3rd
I had in all eight hours of sleep. I kept myself awake and alive by
drinking about a bottle of whisky a day. I had never drank it before
and have seldom drank it since; it certainly was good then. We had no
blankets, greatcoats, or waterproof sheets. We had no time or material
to build new shelters, and the rain continued. Every night we went out
to get in the dead of the other battalions. The Germans continued to
be indulgent and we had few casualties. After the first day or two the
bodies swelled and stank. I vomited more than once while superintending
the carrying. The ones that we could not get in from the German wire
continued to swell until the wall of the stomach collapsed, either
naturally or punctured by a bullet; a disgusting smell would float
across. The colour of the dead faces changed from white to yellow-grey,
to red, to purple, to green, to black, to slimy.
On the morning of the 27th a cry was heard from No Man’s Land. It
was a wounded man of the Middlesex who had recovered consciousness
after two days. He was close to the German wire. Our men heard it and
looked at each other. We had a lance-corporal called Baxter and he
was tender-hearted. He was the man to boil up a special dixie of
tea for the sentries of his section when they came off duty. When he
heard the wounded man cry out he ran up and down the trench calling for
a volunteer to come out with him and bring the man in. Of course no
one would go; it was death to put one’s head over the trench. He came
running to ask me. I excused myself as the only officer in the company.
I said I would come out with him at dusk, but I would not go now. So
he went out himself. He jumped quickly over the parapet, then strolled
across waving a handkerchief; the Germans fired at him to frighten him,
but he came on, so they let him come up close. They must have heard the
Middlesex man themselves. Baxter continued towards them and, when he
got up to the Middlesex man, he stopped and pointed to show the Germans
what he was at. Then he dressed the man’s wounds, gave him a drink of
rum and some biscuit that he had with him, and told him that he would
come back again for him in the evening. He did come back for him with a
stretcher-party and the man eventually recovered. I recommended Baxter
for the Victoria Cross, being the only officer who had seen the thing
done; but he only got a Distinguished Conduct Medal.
The Actor and I had decided to get into touch with the battalion on
our right. It was the Tenth Highland Light Infantry. I went down
their trench some time in the morning of the 26th. I walked nearly
a quarter of a mile before seeing either a sentry or an officer.
There were dead men, sleeping men, wounded men, gassed men, all lying
anyhow. The trench had been used as a latrine. Finally I met a Royal
Engineer officer. He said to me: ‘If the Boche knew what an easy job
it was, he’d just walk over and take this trench.’ So I came back and
told The Actor that we might expect to have our flank in the
air at any moment. We turned the communication trench that made the
boundary between the two battalions into a fire-trench facing right; a
machine-gun was mounted to put up a barrage in case they ran. On the
night of the 27th the Highlanders mistook some of our men, who were out
in No Man’s Land getting in the dead, for the enemy. They began firing
wildly. The Germans retaliated. Our men caught the infection, but were
at once told to cease fire. ‘Cease fire’ went along the trench until
it came to the H.L.I., who misheard it as ‘Retire.’ A panic seized
them and they came rushing back. Fortunately they came down the trench
instead of over the top. They were stopped by a sergeant of the Fifth
Scottish Rifles, a territorial battalion now in support to ourselves
and the Middlesex. He chased them back into their trench at the point
of the bayonet.
On the 3rd of October we were relieved. The relieving troops were a
composite battalion consisting of about a hundred men of the Second
Royal Warwickshire Regiment and about seventy Royal Welch Fusiliers,
all that was left of our own First Battalion. Hanmer Jones and Frank
Jones-Bateman had both been wounded. Frank had his thigh broken with
a rifle-bullet while stripping the equipment off a wounded man in No
Man’s Land; the cartridges in the man’s pouches had been set on fire by
a shot and were exploding.[7] We went back to Sailly la Bourse for a
couple of days, where the colonel rejoined us with his bandaged hand,
and then further back to Annezin, a little village near Béthune, where
I lodged in a two-roomed cottage with an old woman called Adelphine Heu.