WOUNDED IN ACTION
Our high command apparently meant to make a sure thing of the general
assault upon the Regina trench, in which we were to participate. Twice
the order to “go over the top” was countermanded. The assault was
first planned for October 19th. Then the date was changed to the 20th.
Finally, at 12:00 noon, of October 21st, we went. It was the first
general assault we had taken part in, and we were in a highly nervous
state. I’ll admit that.
It seemed almost certain death to start over in broad daylight, yet, as
it turned out, the crossing of “No Man’s Land” was accomplished rather
more easily than in our night raids. Our battalion was on the extreme
right of the line, and that added materially to our difficulties, first
by compelling us to advance through mud so deep that some of our men
sank to their hips in it and, second, by giving us the hottest little
spot in France to hold later.
I was in charge of the second “wave” or assault line. This is called
the “mopping up” wave, because the business of the men composing it
is thoroughly to bomb out a position crossed by the first wave, to
capture or kill all of the enemy remaining, and to put the trench in a
condition to be defended against a counter attack by reversing the fire
steps and throwing up parapets.
While I was with the Canadians, all attacks, or rather advances, were
launched in four waves, the waves being thirty to fifty yards apart.
A wave, I might explain, is a line of men in extended order, or about
three paces apart. Our officers were instructed to maintain their
places in the line and to wear no distinguishing marks which might
enable sharpshooters to pick them off. Invariably, however, they led
the men out of our trenches. “Come on, boys, let’s go,” they would
say, climbing out in advance. It was bred in them to do that.
Experience had taught us that it took the German barrage about a minute
and a half to get going after ours started, and that they always opened
up on our front line trench. We had a plan to take advantage of this
knowledge. We usually dug an “assembly trench” some distance in advance
of our front line, and started from it. Thus we were able to line up
between two fires, our shells bursting ahead of us, and the Germans’
behind us. All four waves started from the assembly trench at once,
the men of the second, third and fourth waves falling back to their
proper distances as the advance proceeded. The first wave worked up to
within thirty to fifty yards of our own barrage and then the men lay
down. At this stage, our barrage was playing on the enemy front line
trench. After a certain interval, carefully timed, the gunners, away
back of our lines, elevated their guns enough to carry our barrage a
certain distance back of the enemy front trench and then our men went
in at the charge, to occupy the enemy trench before the Germans in
the dug-outs could come out and organize a defense. Unless serious
opposition was met the first wave went straight through the first
trench, leaving only a few men to guard the dug-out entrances pending
the arrival of the second wave. The second wave, only a few seconds
behind the first one, proceeded to do the “mopping up.” Then this wave,
in turn, went forward, leaving only a few men behind to garrison the
captured trench.
The third and fourth waves went straight on unless assistance was
needed, and rushed up to the support of the new front line. The
men in these waves were ammunition carriers, stretcher-bearers and
general reenforcements. Some of them were set to work at once digging
a communication trench to connect our original front line with our
new support and front lines. When we established a new front line we
never used the German trench. We had found that the German artillery
always had the range of that trench down, literally speaking, to an
inch. We always dug a new trench either in advance of the German
trench or in the rear of it. Our manner of digging a trench under these
circumstances was very simple and pretty sure to succeed except in an
extremely heavy fire. Each man simply got as flat to the ground as
possible, seeking whatever cover he might avail himself of, and began
digging toward the man nearest him. Sand bags were filled with the
first dirt and placed to afford additional cover. The above system of
attack, which is now well known to the Germans, was, at the time when
I left France, the accepted plan when two lines of enemy trenches were
to be taken. It has been considerably changed, now, I am told. If the
intention was to take three, four, five or six lines, the system was
changed only in detail. When four or more lines were to be taken, two
or more battalions were assembled to operate on the same frontage. The
first battalion took two lines, the second passed through the first and
took two more lines, and so on. The Russians had been known to launch
an attack in thirty waves.
It is interesting to note how every attack, nowadays, is worked out
in advance in the smallest detail, and how everything is done on a
time schedule. Aerial photographs of the position they are expected
to capture are furnished to each battalion, and the men are given the
fullest opportunity to study them. All bombing pits, dug-outs, trench
mortar and machine-gun emplacements are marked on these photographs.
Every man is given certain work to do and is instructed and
re-instructed until there can be no doubt that he has a clear knowledge
of his orders. But, besides that, he is made to understand the scope
and purpose and plan of the whole operation, so that he will know what
to do if he finds himself with no officer to command. This is one of
the great changes brought about by this war, and it signalizes the
disappearance, probably forever, of a long-established tradition. It is
something which I think should be well impressed upon the officers of
our new army, about to enter this great struggle. The day has passed
when the man in the ranks is supposed merely to obey. He must know
what to do and how to do it. He must think for himself and “carry
on” with the general plan, if his officers and N. C. O.’s all become
casualties. Sir Douglas Haig said: “For soldiers in this war, give me
business men with business sense, who are used to taking initiative.”
While I was at the front I had opportunity to observe three distinct
types of barrage fire, the “box,” the “jumping,” and the “creeping.”
The “box,” I have already described to you, as it is used in a raid.
The “jumping” plays on a certain line for a certain interval and then
jumps to another line. The officers in command of the advance know
the intervals of time and space and keep their lines close up to the
barrage, moving with it on the very second. The “creeping” barrage
opens on a certain line and then creeps ahead at a certain fixed rate
of speed, covering every inch of the ground to be taken. The men of
the advance simply walk with it, keeping within about thirty yards
of the line on which the shells are falling. Eight-inch shrapnel,
and high-explosive shells were used exclusively by the British when
I was with them in maintaining barrage fire. The French used their
“seventy-fives,” which are approximately of eight-inch calibre. Of
late, I believe, the British and French have both added gas shells
for this use, when conditions make it possible. The Germans, in
establishing a barrage, used their “whiz-bangs,” slightly larger shells
than ours, but they never seemed to have quite the same skill and
certitude in barrage bombardment that our artillery-men had.
To attempt to picture the scene of two barrage fires, crossing, is
quite beyond me. You see two walls of flame in front of you, one where
your own barrage is playing, and one where the enemy guns are firing,
and you see two more walls of flame behind you, one where the enemy
barrage is playing, and one where your own guns are firing. And amid
it all you are deafened by titanic explosions which have merged into
one roar of thunderous sound, while acrid fumes choke and blind you.
To use a fitting, if not original phrase, it’s just “Hell with the lid
off.”
That day on the Somme, our artillery had given the Germans such a
battering and the curtain fire which our guns dropped just thirty to
forty yards ahead of us was so powerful that we lost comparatively few
men going over--only those who were knocked down by shells which the
Germans landed among us through our barrage. They never caught us with
their machine guns sweeping until we neared their trenches. Then a
good many of our men began to drop, but we were in their front trench
before they could cut us up anywhere near completely. Going over, I
was struck by shell fragments on the hand and leg, but the wounds were
not severe enough to stop me. In fact, I did not know that I had been
wounded until I felt blood running into my shoe. Then I discovered the
cut in my leg, but saw that it was quite shallow, and that no artery of
importance had been damaged. So I went on.
I had the familiar feeling of nervousness and physical shrinking and
nausea at the beginning of this fight, but, by the time we were half
way across “No Man’s Land,” I had my nerve back. After I had been hit,
I remember feeling relieved that I hadn’t been hurt enough to keep me
from going on with the men. I’m not trying to make myself out a hero.
I’m just trying to tell you how an ordinary man’s mind works under the
stress of fighting and the danger of sudden death. There are some queer
things in the psychology of battle. For instance, when we had got into
the German trench and were holding it against the most vigorous counter
attacks, the thought which was persistently uppermost in my mind was
that I had lost the address of a girl in London along with some papers
which I had thrown away, just before we started over, and which I
should certainly never be able to find again.
The Regina trench had been taken and lost three times by the British.
We took it that day and held it. We went into action with fifteen
hundred men of all ranks and came out with six hundred. The position,
which was the objective of our battalion, was opposite to and only
twelve hundred yards distant from the town of Pys, which, if you take
the English meaning of the French sound, was a highly inappropriate
name for that particular village. During a good many months, for a good
many miles ’round about that place, there wasn’t any such thing as
“Peace.” From our position, we could see a church steeple in the town
of Baupaume until the Germans found that our gunners were using it as a
“zero” mark, and blew it down with explosives.
I have said that, because we were on the extreme right of the line, we
had the hottest little spot in France to hold for a while. You see,
we had to institute a double defensive, as we had the Germans on our
front and on our flank, the whole length of the trench to the right of
us being still held by the Germans. There we had to form a “block,”
massing our bombers behind a barricade which was only fifteen yards
from the barricade behind which the Germans were fighting. Our flank
and the German flank were in contact as fiery as that of two live wire
ends. And, meanwhile, the Fritzes tried to rush us on our front with
nine separate counter attacks. Only one of them got up close to us,
and we went out and stopped that with the bayonet. Behind our block
barricade, there was the nearest approach to an actual fighting Hell
that I had seen.
And yet a man who was in the midst of it from beginning to end, came
out without a scratch. He was a tall chap named Hunter. For twenty-four
hours, without interruption, he threw German “egg-shell” bombs from a
position at the center of our barricade. He never stopped except to
light a cigarette or yell for some one to bring him more bombs from
Fritz’s captured storehouse. He projected a regular curtain of fire
of his own. I’ve no doubt the Germans reported he was a couple of
platoons, working in alternate reliefs. He was awarded the D. C. M. for
his services in that fight, and though, as I said, he was unwounded,
half the men around him were killed, and his nerves were in such
condition at the end that he had to be sent back to England.
One of the great tragedies of the war resulted from a bit of
carelessness when, a couple of days later, the effort was made to
extend our grip beyond the spot which we took in that first fight.
Plans had been made for the Forty-fourth Battalion of the Tenth
Canadian Brigade to take by assault the trench section extending to the
right from the point where we had established the “block” on our flank.
The hour for the attack had been fixed. Then headquarters sent out
countermanding orders. Something wasn’t quite ready.
The orders were sent by runners, as all confidential orders must be.
Telephones are of little use, now, as both our people and the Germans
have an apparatus which needs only to be attached to a metal spike in
the ground to “pick up” every telephone message within a radius of
three miles. When telephones are used now, messages are ordinarily sent
in code. But, for any vitally important communication which might
cost serious losses, if misunderstood, old style runners are used,
just as they were in the days when the field telephone was unheard of.
It is the rule to dispatch two or three runners by different routes
so that one, at least, will be certain to arrive. In the case of the
countermanding of the order for the Forty-fourth Battalion to assault
the German position on our flank, some officer at headquarters thought
that one messenger to the Lieut.-Colonel commanding the Forty-fourth
would be sufficient. The messenger was killed by a chance shot and his
message was undelivered. The Forty-fourth, in ignorance of change of
plan, “went over.” There was no barrage fire to protect the force and
their valiant effort was simply a wholesale suicide. Six hundred out of
eight hundred men were on the ground in two and one-half minutes. The
battalion was simply wiped out. Several officers were court-martialed
as a result of this terrible blunder.
We had gone into the German trenches at a little after noon, on
Saturday. On Sunday night at about 10 P.M. we were relieved. The
relief force had to come in overland, and they had a good many
casualties en route. They found us as comfortable as bugs in a rug,
except for the infernal and continuous bombing at our flank barricade.
The Germans on our front had concluded that it was useless to try to
drive us out. About one-fourth of the six hundred of us, who were still
on our feet, were holding the sentry posts, and the remainder of the
six hundred were having banquets in the German dug-outs, which were
stocked up like delicatessen shops with sausages, fine canned foods,
champagne and beer. If we had only had a few ladies with us, we could
have had a real party.
I got so happily interested in the spread in our particular dug-out
that I forgot about my wound until some one reminded me that orders
required me to hunt up a dressing station, and get an anti-tetanus
injection. I went and got it, all right, but an injection was about the
only additional thing I could have taken at that moment. If I had had
to swallow anything more, it would have been a matter of difficulty.
Tommies like to take a German trench, because if the Fritzes have to
move quickly, as they usually do, we always find sausage, beer, and
champagne--a welcome change from bully beef. I could never learn to
like their bread, however.
After this fight I was sent, with other slightly wounded men, for a
week’s rest at the casualty station, at Contay. I rejoined my battalion
at the end of the week. From October 21st to November 18th we were
in and out of the front trenches several times for duty tours of
forty-eight hours each, but were in no important action. At 6:10 A.M.,
on the morning of November 18th, a bitter cold day, we “went over” to
take the Desire and also the Desire support trenches. We started from
the left of our old position, and our advance was between Thieval and
Poizers, opposite to Grandecourt.
There was the usual artillery preparation and careful organization for
the attack. I was again in charge of the “mopping up” wave, numbering
two hundred men and consisting mostly of bombers. It may seem strange
to you that a non-commissioned officer should have so important an
assignment, but, sometimes, in this war, privates have been in charge
of companies, numbering two hundred and fifty men, and I know of a
case where a lance-corporal was temporarily in command of an entire
battalion. It happened, on this day that, while I was in charge of the
second wave, I did not go over with them. At the last moment, I was
given a special duty by Major Lewis, one of the bravest soldiers I ever
knew, as well as the best beloved man in our battalion. A messenger
came to me from him just as I was overseeing a fair distribution of the
rum ration, and incidentally getting my own share. I went to him at
once.
“McClintock,” said he, “I don’t wish to send you to any special hazard,
and, so far as that goes, we’re all going to get more or less of a
dusting. But I want to put that machine gun which has been giving us
so much trouble out of action.”
I knew very well the machine gun he meant. It was in a concrete
emplacement, walled and roofed, and the devils in charge of it seemed
to be descendants of William Tell and the prophet Isaiah. They always
knew what was coming and had their gun accurately trained on it before
it came.
“If you are willing,” said Major Lewis, “I wish you to select
twenty-five men from the company and go after that gun the minute the
order comes to advance. Use your own judgment about the men and the
plan for taking the gun position. Will you go?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered. “I’ll go and pick out the men right away. I
think we can make those fellows shut up shop over there.”
“Good boy!” he said. “You’ll try, all right.”
I started away. He called me back.
“This is going to be a bit hot, McClintock,” he said, taking my hand.
“I wish you the best of luck, old fellow--you and the rest of them.” In
the trenches they always wish you the best of luck when they hand you
a particularly tough job.
I thanked him and wished him the same. I never saw him again. He was
killed in action within two hours after our conversation. Both he and
my pal, Macfarlane, were shot down dead that morning.
When they called for volunteers to go with me in discharge of Major
Lewis’ order, the entire company responded. I picked out twenty-five
men, twelve bayonet men and thirteen bombers. They agreed to my plan
which was to get within twenty-five yards of the gun emplacement
before attacking, to place no dependence on rifle fire, but to bomb
them out and take the position with the bayonet. We followed that
plan and took the emplacement quicker than we had expected to do, but
there were only two of us left when we got there--Private Godsall, No.
177,063, and myself. All the rest of the twenty-five were dead or down.
The emplacement had been held by eleven Germans. Two only were left
standing when we got in.
When we saw the gun had been silenced and the crew disabled, Godsall
and I worked round to the right about ten yards from the shell-hole
where we had sheltered ourselves while throwing bombs into the
emplacement, and scaled the German parapet. Then we rushed the gun
position. The officer who had been in charge was standing with his
back to us, firing with his revolver down the trench at our men who
were coming over at another point. I reached him before Godsall and
bayoneted him. The other German who had survived our bombing threw
up his hands and mouthed the Teutonic slogan of surrender, “Mercy,
Kamerad.” My bayonet had broken off in the encounter with the German
officer, and I remembered that I had been told always to pull the
trigger after making a bayonet thrust, as that would usually jar the
weapon loose. In this case, I had forgotten instructions. I picked up a
German rifle with bayonet fixed, and Godsall and I worked on down the
trench.
The German, who had surrendered, stood with his hands held high above
his head, waiting for us to tell him what to do. He never took his
eyes off of us even to look at his officer, lying at his feet. As we
moved down the trench, he followed us, still holding his hands up and
repeating, “Mercy, Kamerad!” At the next trench angle we took five
more prisoners, and as Godsall had been slightly wounded in the arm,
I turned the captives over to him and ordered him to take them to
the rear. Just then the men of our second wave came over the parapet
like a lot of hurdlers. In five minutes, we had taken the rest of the
Germans in the trench section prisoners, had reversed the fire steps,
and had turned their own machine guns against those of their retreating
companies that we could catch sight of.
As we could do nothing more here, I gave orders to advance and
re-enforce the front line. Our way led across a field furrowed with
shell-holes and spotted with bursting shells. Not a man hesitated.
We were winning. That was all we knew or cared to know. We wanted to
make it a certainty for our fellows who had gone ahead. As we were
proceeding toward the German reserve trench, I saw four of our men,
apparently unwounded, lying in a shell-hole. I stopped to ask them what
they were doing there. As I spoke, I held my German rifle and bayonet
at the position of “guard,” the tip of the bayonet advanced, about
shoulder high. I didn’t get their answer, for, before they could reply,
I felt a sensation as if some one had thrown a lump of hard clay and
struck me on the hip, and forthwith I tumbled in on top of the four,
almost plunging my bayonet into one of them, a private named Williams.
“Well, now you know what’s the matter with us,” said Williams. “We
didn’t fall in, but we crawled in.”
They had all been slightly wounded. I had twenty-two pieces of shrapnel
and some shell fragments imbedded in my left leg between the hip and
the knee. I followed the usual custom of the soldier who has “got
it.” The first thing I did was to light a “fag” (cigarette) and the
next thing was to investigate and determine if I was in danger of
bleeding to death. There wasn’t much doubt about that. Arterial blood
was spurting from two of the wounds, which were revealed when the other
men in the hole helped me to cut off my breeches. With their aid, I
managed to stop the hemorrhage by improvising tourniquets with rags
and bayonets. One I placed as high up as possible on the thigh and the
other just below the knee. Then we all smoked another “fag” and lay
there, listening to the big shells going over and the shrapnel bursting
near us. It was quite a concert, too. We discussed what we ought to do,
and finally I said:
“Here; you fellows can walk, and I can’t. Furthermore, you’re not able
to carry me, because you’ve got about all any of you can do to navigate
alone. It doesn’t look as if its going to be any better here very soon.
You all proceed to the rear, and, if you can get some one to come after
me, I’ll be obliged to you.”
They accepted the proposition, because it was good advice and, besides,
it was orders. I was their superior officer. And what happened right
after that confirmed me forever in my early, Kentucky-bred conviction
that there is a great deal in luck. They couldn’t have travelled
more than fifty yards from the shell-hole when the shriek of a
high-explosive seemed to come right down out of the sky into my ears,
and the detonation, which instantly followed, shook the slanting sides
of the shell-hole until dirt in dusty little rivulets came trickling
down upon me. Wounded as I was, I dragged myself up to the edge of the
hole. There was no trace, anywhere, of the four men who had just left
me. They have never been heard of since. Their bodies were never found.
The big shell must have fallen right amongst them and simply blown them
to bits.
It was about a quarter to seven in the morning when I was hit. I lay
in the shell-hole until two in the afternoon, suffering more from
thirst and cold and hunger than from pain. At two o’clock, a batch
of sixty prisoners came along under escort. They were being taken to
the rear under fire. The artillery bombardment was still practically
undiminished. I asked for four of the prisoners and made one of them
get out his rubber ground sheet, carried around his waist. They
responded willingly, and seemed most ready to help me. I had a revolver
(empty) and some bombs in my pockets, but I had no need to threaten
them. Each of the four took a corner of the ground sheet and, upon it,
they half carried and half dragged me toward the rear.
It was a trip which was not without incident. Every now and then
we would hear the shriek of an approaching “coal box,” and then my
prisoner stretcher-bearers and I would tumble in one indiscriminate
heap into the nearest shell-hole. If we did that once, we did it a half
dozen times. After each dive, the four would patiently reorganize and
arrange the improvised stretcher again, and we would proceed. Following
every tumble, however, I would have to tighten my tourniquets, and,
despite all I could do, the hemorrhage from my wound continued so
profuse that I was beginning to feel very dizzy and weak. On the way
in, I sighted our regimental dressing station and signed to my four
bearers to carry me toward it. The station was in an old German dug-out.
Major Gilday was at the door. He laughed when he saw me with my own
special ambulance detail.
“Well, what do you want?” he asked.
“Most of all,” I said, “I think I want a drink of rum.”
He produced it for me instantly.
“Now,” said he, “my advice to you is to keep on travelling. You’ve got
a fine special detail there to look after you. Make ’em carry you to
Poizers. It’s only five miles, and you’ll make it all right. I’ve got
this place loaded up full, no stretcher-bearers, no assistants, no
adequate supply of bandages and medicines, and a lot of very bad cases.
If you want to get out of here in a week, just keep right on going,
now.”
As we continued toward the rear, we were the targets for a number of
humorous remarks from men coming up to go into the fight.
“Give my regards to Blighty, you lucky beggar,” was the most frequent
saying.
“Bli’ me,” said one Cockney Tommy. “There goes one o’ th’ Canadians
with an escort from the Kaiser.”
Another man stopped and asked about my wound.
“Good work,” he said. “I’d like to have a nice clean one like that,
myself.”
I noticed one of the prisoners grinning at some remark and asked him if
he understood English. He hadn’t spoken to me, though he had shown the
greatest readiness to help me.
“Certainly I understand English,” he replied. “I used to be a waiter at
the Knickerbocker Hotel, in New York.” That sounded like a voice from
home, and I wanted to hug him. I didn’t. However, I can say for him he
must have been a good waiter. He gave me good service.
Of the last stages of my trip to Poizers I cannot tell anything for I
arrived unconscious from loss of blood. The last I remember was that
the former waiter, evidently seeing that I was going out, asked me
to direct him how to reach the field dressing station at Poizers and
whom to ask for when he got there. I came back to consciousness in an
ambulance on the way to Albert.