RELIEVING THE FRENCH AT HÉBUTERNE
After 36 hours in the wood we packed up again and moved by night
through Authie, afterwards most familiar and welcome of rest billets,
passing Coignieux, where the French gunners, sitting by their fires in
the horse lines, called out greetings, and ascended the northern hill
to Bayencourt, a stinking little village full of flies and odours.
By now the enemy had apparently got wind of the coming of the English
(which was first confirmed, according to prisoners, by the discovery
of English bullets fired at their trenches), for during the next few
days aeroplanes flew constantly over the village at a great height. In
a field close by a French 75, which moved with a circular traverse
round a platform of greased wood let into a small pit, endeavoured to
arrest their progress with a wonderfully rapid barrage, and to throw
them back into the area covered by the next gun. Its adjutant had
spent several years in a solicitor's office at Ealing, and spoke
excellent English.
Our ultimate destination was now the sector of Hébuterne, which had
leapt into prominence on the occasion of the successful French attack
on Touvent Farm, June 12th, but was now, from all accounts, peaceful
enough. The 5th Gloucesters and 4th Oxfords were the two first to go
into the trenches, where the French received them with enthusiasm,
putting fresh flowers in all the dugouts, and writing up everywhere
greetings of welcome.
My brother (Captain G. H. W. Cruttwell) went before us into Hébuterne
with part of B Company to relieve the guards of the 93rd Regiment
posted round the village, a ceremony more interesting and impressive
than the relief of the trenches by reason of its greater formality. He
dined with their officers afterwards, and was presented, as a farewell
gift, with the best mattress in the village. The rest of the battalion
started after sunset on July 22nd, passing a battalion of Frenchmen
returning by half platoons from the trenches, and marched into
Hébuterne, a most interesting example of the ruined village organised
for defence, situated 600 yards only behind the front line trenches.
It was destined to be our forward billet for many months, and to
become as familiar to us in the smallest details as our own homes. A
somewhat detailed description will therefore perhaps not be without
interest.
Hébuterne was a good-sized village of about 1,000 inhabitants, on no
highway but the converging point of many small roads, lying in a very
slight pocket of the rolling chalk plateaux of Artois, surrounded on
every side by the orchards of the local bitter cider apple, with a
village green in the centre, and a pond surrounded by tall poplars.
The length of the village was about 900 yards, and its average breadth
about 500 yards. Almost every house was a one-storied farm of three to
four rooms, with considerable outbuildings of mud and plaster, capable
of accommodating in close billets one or two platoons. There were no
large houses, the so-called château on the Bucquoy road being a very
moderate mansion, and, apart from it, the rectory, mairie, the mill by
the pond used as Brigade Headquarters, and the pleasant villa called
Poste Cambronne, alone stood out in modest prominence. There were very
few inns, the largest of which bore the touching and appropriate sign,
'_A la Renaissance_.'
At the south end of the village stood the church, a broken gaping
shell of red brick with imitation marble pillars; it was afterwards
razed to the ground by the sappers, who required its bricks and
perhaps thought it too good a range-mark to exist so near their store.
When we arrived we found, to our surprise, two civil inhabitants
clinging to their ruinous homes; one who held some vague post of
authority called himself a Garde Champêtre; another, an aged crone,
suddenly emerged cursing from her hovel to expostulate with me for
unwittingly stealing her peas and young carrots. They were cleared out
immediately after our arrival. The flight of the remainder had been
evidently precipitate. Not only had beds, tables, and all bulkier
pieces of furniture been abandoned, but knives, forks, crockery and
many little china ornaments. The village had been reoccupied after a
stubborn fight in October, 1914, and the enemy pushed well beyond its
uttermost limits. In the western orchards was the large French
cemetery, and hard by that of our own division, adjoining a cricket
pitch, where we had many spirited games of tip and run.
Though naturally much broken up, with perhaps a dozen houses left
intact, the village had never been so populous in days of peace. Not
less then 3,000 troops lived there above or below ground, including
the brigadier and at least three battalion commanders. That portion of
the village which lies north of the pond had been made into a
fortified redoubt known as the Keep, the garrison of which was the
equivalent of one battalion, whose O.C. lived in the Poste Cambronne,
a much desired residence until an 8.2 shell demolished its upper story
in December. Very few shells indeed ever fell in the Keep until the
beginning of 1916, the chief targets being the pond and the area round
the church. The village was fortunate in being practically screened
from direct observation by a slight rise in ground between it and the
enemy, and the indirect machine gun fire which raked the streets at
odd intervals was curiously ineffective, for the majority of shots
went high, though on occasions one had to abandon respect and lie flat
in the mud, until the shower was overpast.
We sampled all corners of the village--the Serre Cross Roads, where
the rain came through the roof and the machine gun bullets through the
wall of our crazy billet; the château, with its broken conservatory,
its fig tree, Christmas roses, and what we believed to be the only
arm-chair in Northern France; 'D' Farm, where Private Meads, our first
casualty in the village, was killed by a 4.2-inch just outside the
window; and 'B' Farm, with its collection of plates and ornaments
amassed on the first morning before most of the village was out of
bed. Battalion Headquarters were first in the house on the
Mailly-Maillet road, afterwards appropriated by the Brigade, who
hollowed out for themselves great caverns in the earth: then in the
little house by Serre Cross Roads, where the owners had chalked up an
appeal to the French to take care of their newly-weaned calf; and
finally in the factory by the pond, where shells through Q.M. Payne's
bedroom and the gate posts drove them, too, underground, and led to
the erection of an enormous bulwark of sandbags 15 feet high, to
protect the mess.
[Illustration: Map.]
The defences of the village were formidable, and when one got to know
them, simple, in spite of the bewilderment caused by a first
inspection of what appeared to be a mere labyrinth. The Keep, as has
been mentioned, was simply a redoubt with trenches facing all points
of the compass, its two points of chief tactical importance being the
Mound, eminently suited for enfilade machine gun fire, and the
barricades which closed the Keep to any enemy already in possession of
the village to the south of the pond. It will be seen, by studying the
map, that the whole of the eastern face of Hébuterne was protected by
two lines of defences, outer and inner. The former were 200 to 300
yards beyond the edge of the houses, and were excellently sited along
a hedge for almost the whole of their length. They were connected with
the first line fire trench by communication trenches about every 100
yards. The inner defence, running through the orchards, just covered
the village, and was connected both with the outer line and with the
cellars of the houses by numerous communication trenches. Finally the
western exits of the village were commanded by a group of trenches
astride the Sailly road on rising ground. All this scheme had been
completed by the French before our arrival, and reflected great credit
on both their tactical skill and the energy required in construction.
When we turned from the village to the trenches we found also many
points of interest and contrast. In Artois, unlike Flanders, you can
dig to your heart's content, or, to speak more accurately, you can get
a surfeit of digging. The soil is either a light manageable clay, or
more frequently chalk. Here, then, we met with none of the conspicuous
breastworks of our old home, but fire trenches more than 6 feet deep,
and communicators whose bottoms were 8 or 9 feet below ground level.
Many of the dugouts, moreover, were elaborate caves, large enough to
accommodate 25 men, and capable, with their roofs of logs heaped over
with many feet of earth, of resisting the direct impact of a 5.9-inch
shell. The increase in security was naturally great, and bombardments
which would have destroyed whole trench sections at Ploegsteert were
almost ineffective. In the winter, however, under stress of rain and
snow, the dugouts fell in, together with the sides of the trench,
which, from lack of material, could not be efficiently revetted. Then
men sighed for Trench 40, and the little sandbag shelters too small to
collect such quantities of water. But as we viewed them then the
dugouts seemed the last word in luxury; one of those which I inhabited
contained a mattress, two chairs, a table, a large gilt-framed mirror,
some artificial flowers, a portrait of the Czar and his wife, and an
engraving called 'Le Repos du Marin,' which depicted an old sailor
drinking peacefully under a tree. All would have been well but for the
small game; lice, a legacy from the French, enormous red slugs, which
ate any food which lay about, and left a viscous trail behind every
movement, countless swarms of mice and gigantic rats, some of which
were so bold as to gnaw through the men's haversacks, as they slept,
in search of the food contained therein.
We naturally examined every detail of these new trenches with minute
interest, and compared English and French models. The first sensation
was of bewilderment. For at Ploegsteert we had been content with a
very simple system; wayfaring men, though fools, could scarcely err
therein. But here we had to learn our way about a perfect maze of
trench, where it was easy, or rather inevitable, at first to go wrong,
and, finding yourself enclosed by earth walls towering above your
head, to lose all sense of direction. This difficulty was not lessened
for the men by our retention of all the French names for the trenches,
most of which were christened after their Generals. Such names as
Bugeaud, Poniatowski, Bataille, and the like, were so many pieces of
gibberish which it was hardly possible for a self-respecting English
soldier to pronounce, while Boyau, Abri, Feuillée and Puisard were not
helpful forms of identification. But anyone who had become familiar
with the labyrinth would at once admit that for purposes of relief and
inter-communication it was far superior to anything he had yet seen.
Another useful novelty was the systematic use of saps for night-posts.
A sentry in the fire trench will always find his attention distracted
to a certain degree, especially when he is 500 yards from the enemy,
but put him in a sap-head with only a few yards of wire to protect
him, and the acuteness of his vision and hearing will be marvellously
increased.
On the other hand, in certain points the French trenches fell below
the standards to which we had accustomed ourselves. Owing to their
superiority in artillery, and to the thinness with which they held
their front line, they did not bother to build strong traverses
between the inordinately long fire bays, which were, in consequence,
seriously exposed to oblique gun fire. Again, no attempt had been made
to provide any flooring for the trenches, and the Battalion spent many
happy hours working under the August sun as amateur bricklayers, with
the material ready to hand from the village, in the hope, which the
winter was to bring utterly to naught, of thereby providing a solid
bottom.