_Copyright Imperial War Museum._]
I went for a stroll with Edmund Dadd, who was now commanding A Company.
Edmund was cursing: ‘It’s not fair, Robert. You remember A Company
under Richardson was always the best company. Well, it’s kept up its
reputation, and the C.O. shoves us in as the leading company of every
show, and we get our objectives and hold them, and so we’ve got to do
the same again the next time. And he says that I’m indispensable in the
company, so he makes me go over every time instead of giving me a rest
and letting my second-in-command take his turn. I’ve had five shows
in just over a fortnight and I can’t go on being lucky every time.
The colonel’s about due for his c.b. Apparently A Company is
making sure of if for him.’
For the next two days we were in bivouacs outside the wood. We were in
fighting kit and the nights were wet and cold. I went into the wood
to find German overcoats to use as blankets. Mametz Wood was full of
dead of the Prussian Guards Reserve, big men, and of Royal Welch and
South Wales Borderers of the new-army battalions, little men. There
was not a single tree in the wood unbroken. I got my greatcoats
and came away as quickly as I could, climbing over the wreckage of
green branches. Going and coming, by the only possible route, I had
to pass by the corpse of a German with his back propped against a
tree. He had a green face, spectacles, close shaven hair; black blood
was dripping from the nose and beard. He had been there for some days
and was bloated and stinking. There had been bayonet fighting in the
wood. There was a man of the South Wales Borderers and one of the Lehr
regiment who had succeeded in bayoneting each other simultaneously. A
survivor of the fighting told me later that he had seen a young soldier
of the Fourteenth Royal Welch bayoneting a German in parade-ground
style, automatically exclaiming as he had been taught: ‘In, out, on
guard.’ He said that it was the oddest thing he had heard in France.
I found myself still superstitious about looting or collecting
souvenirs. The greatcoats were only a loan, I told myself. Almost the
only souvenir I had allowed myself to keep was a trench periscope,
a little rod-shaped metal one sent me from home; when I poked it up
above the parapet it offered only an inch-square target to the German
snipers. Yet a sniper at Cuinchy, in May, drilled it through, exactly
central, at four hundred yards range. I sent it home, but had no time
to write a note of explanation. My mother, misunderstanding, and
practical as usual, took it back to the makers and made them change it
for a new one.
Our brigade, the Nineteenth, was the reserve brigade of the
Thirty-third Division; the other brigades, the Ninety-ninth and
Hundredth, had attacked Martinpuich two days previously and had been
stopped with heavy losses as soon as they started. Since then we had
had nothing to do but sit about in shell-holes and watch the artillery
duel going on. We had never seen artillery so thick. On the 18th
we moved up to a position just to the north of Bazentin le Petit to
relieve the Tyneside Irish. I was with D Company. The guide who was
taking us up was hysterical and had forgotten the way; we put him under
arrest and found it ourselves. As we went up through the ruins of the
village we were shelled. We were accustomed to that, but they were gas
shells. The standing order with regard to gas shells was not to put
on one’s respirator but hurry on. Up to that week there had been no
gas shells except lachrymatory ones; these were the first of the real
kind, so we lost about half a dozen men. When at last we arrived at
the trenches, which were scooped at a roadside and only about three
feet deep, the company we were relieving hurried out without any of the
usual formalities; they had been badly shaken. I asked their officer
where the Germans were. He said he didn’t know, but pointed vaguely
towards Martinpuich, a mile to our front. Then I asked him where and
what were the troops on our left. He didn’t know. I cursed him and he
went off. We got into touch with C Company behind us on the right and
with the Fourth Suffolks not far off on the left. We began deepening
the trenches and locating the Germans; they were in a trench-system
about five hundred yards away but keeping fairly quiet.
The next day there was very heavy shelling at noon; shells were
bracketing along our trench about five yards short and five yards over,
but never quite getting it. We were having dinner and three times
running my cup of tea was spilt by the concussion and filled with dirt.
I was in a cheerful mood and only laughed. I had just had a parcel of
kippers from home; they were far more important than the bombardment—I
recalled with appreciation one of my mother’s sayings: ‘Children,
remember this when you eat your kippers; kippers cost little, yet if
they cost a hundred guineas a pair they would still find buyers among
the millionaires.’ Before the shelling had started a tame magpie had
come into the trench; it had apparently belonged to the Germans who
had been driven out of the village by the Gordon Highlanders a day or
two before. It was looking very draggled. ‘That’s one for sorrow,’
I said. The men swore that it spoke something in German as it came
in, but I did not hear it. I was feeling tired and was off duty, so
without waiting for the bombardment to stop I went to sleep in the
trench. I decided that I would just as soon be killed asleep as awake.
There were no dug-outs, of course. I always found it easy now to sleep
through bombardments. I was conscious of the noise in my sleep, but I
let it go by. Yet if anybody came to wake me for my watch or shouted
‘Stand-to!’ I was alert in a second. I had learned to go to sleep
sitting down, standing up, marching, lying on a stone floor, or in any
other position, at a moment’s notice at any time of day or night. But
now I had a dreadful nightmare; it was as though somebody was handling
me secretly, choosing the place to drive a knife into me. Finally, he
gripped me in the small of the back. I woke up with a start, shouting,
and punched the small of my back where the hand was. I found that I had
killed a mouse that had been frightened by the bombardment and run down
my neck.
That afternoon the company got an order through from the brigade to
build two cruciform strong-points at such-and-such a map reference.
Moodie, the company commander, and I looked at our map and laughed.
Moodie sent back a message that he would be glad to do so, but would
require an artillery bombardment and strong reinforcements because
the points selected, half way to Martinpuich, were occupied in
force by the enemy. The colonel came up and verified this. He said that
we should build the strong-point about three hundred yards forward and
two hundred yards apart. So one platoon stayed behind in the trench
and the other went out and started digging. A cruciform strong-point
consisted of two trenches, each some thirty yards long, crossing at
right angles to each other; it was wired all round, so that it looked,
in diagram, like a hot-cross bun. The defenders could bring fire to
bear against an attack from any direction. We were to hold each of
these points with a Lewis gun and a platoon of men.
It was a bright moonlight night. My way to the strong-point on
the right took me along the Bazentin-High Wood road. A German
sergeant-major, wearing a pack and full equipment, was lying on his
back in the middle of the road, his arms stretched out wide. He was a
short, powerful man with a full black beard. He looked sinister in the
moonlight; I needed a charm to get myself past him. The simplest way, I
found, was to cross myself. Evidently a brigade of the Seventh Division
had captured the road and the Germans had been shelling it heavily. It
was a sunken road and the defenders had begun to scrape fire-positions
in the north bank, facing the Germans. The work had apparently been
interrupted by a counter-attack. They had done no more than scrape
hollows in the lower part of the bank. To a number of these little
hollows wounded men had crawled, put their heads and shoulders inside
and died there. They looked as if they had tried to hide from the black
beard. They were Gordon Highlanders.
I was visiting the strong-point on the right. The trench had now been
dug two or three feet down and a party of Engineers had arrived
with coils of barbed wire for the entanglement. I found that work had
stopped. The whisper went round: ‘Get your rifles ready. Here comes
Fritz.’ I lay down flat to see better, and about seventy yards away in
the moonlight I could make out massed figures. I immediately sent a man
back to the company to find Moodie and ask him for a Lewis gun and a
flare-pistol. I restrained the men, who were itching to fire, telling
them to wait until they came closer. I said: ‘They probably don’t
know we’re here and we’ll get more of them if we let them come right
up close. They may even surrender.’ The Germans were wandering about
irresolutely and we wondered what the game was. There had been a number
of German surrenders at night recently, and this might be one on a big
scale. Then Moodie came running with a Lewis gun, the flare-pistol,
and a few more men with rifle-grenades. He decided to give the enemy a
chance. He sent up a flare and fired a Lewis gun over their heads. A
tall officer came running towards us with his hands up in surrender.
He was surprised to find that we were not Germans. He said that he
belonged to the Public Schools Battalion in our own brigade. Moodie
asked him what the hell he was doing. He said that he was in command of
a patrol. He was sent back for a few more of his men, to make sure it
was not a trick. The patrol was half a company of men wandering about
aimlessly between the lines, their rifles slung over their shoulders,
and, it seemed, without the faintest idea where they were or what
information they were supposed to bring back. This Public Schools
Battalion was one of four or five others which had been formed some
time in 1914. Their training had been continually interrupted by large
numbers of men being withdrawn as officers for other regiments. The
only men left, in fact, seemed to be those who were unfitted to
hold commissions; yet unfitted by their education to make good soldiers
in the ranks. The other battalions had been left behind in England as
training battalions; only this one had been sent out. It was a constant
embarrassment to the brigade.
I picked up a souvenir that night. A German gun-team had been shelled
as it was galloping out of Bazentin towards Martinpuich. The horses and
the driver had been killed. At the back of the limber were the gunners’
treasures. Among them was a large lump of chalk wrapped up in a piece
of cloth; it had been carved and decorated in colours with military
mottos, the flags of the Central Powers, and the names of the various
battles in which the gunner had served. I sent it as a present to Dr.
Dunn. I am glad to say that both he and it survived the war; he is in
practice at Glasgow, and the lump of chalk is under a glass case in
his consulting room. The evening of the next day, July 19th, we were
relieved. We were told that we would be attacking High Wood, which we
could see a thousand yards away to the right at the top of a slope.
High Wood was on the main German battle-line, which ran along the
ridge, with Delville Wood not far off on the German left. Two British
brigades had already attempted it; in both cases the counter-attack had
driven them out. Our battalion had had a large number of casualties and
was now only about four hundred strong.