“WOODFIGHTING”
If you should ask me what feature of warfare was harder and fiercer
than going “over the top” in the lot of an infantryman, there would be
no hesitation about my reply--“Woodfighting.” Some of the most deadly
contests of the war have been held in the woodlands of the battlefields.
And the worst of it was, the British soldier was all but an absolute
novice at the game. There was lack of suitable training grounds in
England and we had no time for training and preparation once we got
into France. We had to go right into this dangerous character of
fighting. If I might presume to suggest, I’d say that one feature
of the training of American troops at home before they go over the
“creek,” should be extensively in the tricks, devices and tactics of
woodfighting, natural grounds for such training being everywhere in
America readily to hand. I assure you that the Kaiser and his military
advisers have put their infantry through the most thorough training in
this secret and concealed method of fighting and America’s soldiers
will find themselves at great disadvantage if they have not been
thoroughly taught the character of woodfighting, its peculiar perils
and its constant call on the wit and cunning of the individual fighter.
This last is the chief necessity of this particular game; it is
invariably a duel of wits between individual fighters. Each unit
concerned has to win its own little fight. It cannot as a rule expect
help from its own troops on its flanks. For these cannot see to fire
at the foe of the especially beleaguered unit. Besides if they seek to
come to the aid of another unit, they cannot see because of the trees
and shrubbery what they themselves may be leaving unguarded. Nor can an
attacked force rely on the support and reserve coming up quickly. It’s
slow moving in the woods.
[Illustration: In the supports, waiting to advance]
Besides your aëroplanes cannot inform your commanders of the size
of the force they are going up against or much of the manner of its
arrangement. The foliage hides this knowledge. And in no other fighting
is it so necessary for the “little officer,” the commander of a small
unit, to be self-reliant. He is thrown entirely on his own resources
and must win his own fight unaided. Unceasing caution must be the
watchword. And the soldier in this fashion of fighting is useless who
has not the ability to fire instantly and accurately on a suddenly
appearing target.
My own first experience at the game was in the attack on Delville wood
at the great battle of the Somme. I was then a platoon commander with
sixty men under my command. At this time an artillery fire was not so
scientifically carried out as it was later so marvelously to be. But
our “heavies” were supposed to have destroyed the wire entanglements
and the machine-gun emplacements to be encountered in our advance.
When the signal came for the attack on Delville woods I sent my men
out and into it promptly. But I had already despatched two scouts to
find out, if possible, if the wire entanglements on the first enemy
position had been smashed by our guns. One of them soon signaled back
that the wires had been untouched by the artillery fire, but that he
and his companion were at work cutting them down. That was not a job
to be left to only two men, and I ordered an advance of my platoon
in fours. When we got to the wire it was to find both of my scouts
dead--one with a bullet straight between the eyes, the other had been
struck in the heart.
The sight of them fired my men to determined effort to get past the
wire. But we had to stand an appalling fire as we worked. Five were
killed outright, six put out of the battle by serious injuries. The
fire not only came from an enemy we could not see behind the trees but
from snipers up in the trees and hidden in bushes. The wire itself was
crowded with bomb traps. And there came also the drum fire of machine
guns and the hail of shrapnel.
Then I thought the last hour of all of us was at hand. For as we now
advanced each man practically for himself, but also aligned about
abreast, the ground gave way under us. An old German trench had been
carefully and most deceivingly covered by a treacherous intertwining of
branches and foliage with an under layer of barbed wire, and we were
plunged struggling and kicking into what looked like a hopeless trap.
The Germans thought surely they had us. The enemy rushed out from
concealment with bombs and trench knives and rifles. If we had remained
there we would surely have been slaughtered. I yelled at the top of my
voice encouragement to my men. And they answered with plucky cries that
they would follow me.
How we got out of that trap I don’t know, but out we came, every man of
us, in spite of the fire that swept us. Our hands and faces were torn
and bleeding from the barbed wire, our clothing ripped to shreds. But
these splendid men of mine took the fight straight at the Boches. It
was just plain hand-to-hand fighting--trench knife clashing against
trench knife, revolvers and rifles blazing directly into one another’s
faces.
My gratitude can never abate toward that little company of superbly
brave men I led in the Delville woods that day. For time and again
they drew around to protect me. They recognized that the Boches were
seeking to make a special mark of me. For a long time British officers
had given up the practice of going into action in uniforms bearing the
special insignia of their rank. The only indication of that now is on
the identification tab that hangs on an officer’s neck. But, of course,
at such close quarters, the Germans readily observed that I was in
command and their instructions are always emphatic on that point--“kill
officers first.”
A big fellow named Morrison--in spite of the confusion of the fight I
swiftly, sharply noted the spectacle--had actually gone wild with rage.
He attacked a huge Boche with tremendous fury and literally hacked the
man to pieces with his trench-knife.
And when his enemy went down, Morrison turned with a terrible leer on
his countenance, made crimson by spurting blood from a big gash in his
forehead.
“There, sir,” he yelled exultantly, “there’s a fine piece of German
sausage for you!”
The Germans turned tail and we carried on through the woods, keeping
in touch with the platoons on our right and left by means of “piles,”
that is, men set out at certain intervals to find out the positions of
the people on our flanks so that we might not be surrounded and cut off
from the main body.
Our artillery in the meantime was sending out its heavy stuff and
shrapnel well ahead of us, trying to cut off reinforcements of the
Germans.
Our objective we knew to be a knoll of considerable height and length
some two hundred and fifty yards through the woods from the scene of
our first encounter. The Australians had tried to capture the woods
two weeks before and were rent, torn and sent reeling back when they
had edged their way through the forest to this knoll. For on it
the Germans had built a strong position of sunken concrete houses
thoroughly equipped with field artillery and machine guns. And their
axes had effected a clearing in the woods surrounding this position. An
attacking contingent was therefore forced into the open before their
guns.
Sent back in defeat, the Australians were nevertheless able to bring
knowledge to the heavy batteries of the location of this dangerous hill
which was really the commanding position of the entire Delville woods.
So while we were advancing, the big guns had been giving the hill the
merry devil, but without destructive effect. Still they had blown shell
craters all about the position and these craters were to give us the
opportunity for some shelter in our advance in the open and for the
setting up of our machine guns.
The question became, however, after we had put the first group
of Germans on the run, as to whether there were other forces
intermediately placed to give us opposition in our advance on the
fortified hill.
One of our airmen tried to get us the information. He came down within
less than five hundred feet of the tree tops. The woods were dense, but
he signaled that for as much as he could see there was nothing in our
way. He had no sooner given the information than a chunk of shrapnel
blasted his engine and the sorely wounded plane swerved, keeled over
and crashed through the trees and down to our side-lines. Our aviator
was but little hurt, the trees having broken his fall, and we anxiously
questioned him as to our flank forces for we could not know whether
they were also keeping up the advance.
There were some two hundred and sixty of us who finally came out from
behind the trees to make the effort to carry the hill. A great burst
of fire greeted us. But it didn’t stop us. We went up the knoll,
scrambling for a foot-hold, digging footholds for ourselves with trench
knives and trench tools. Yet the way was steep and we came reeling
down again in a swish of bullets and great, choking showers of earth.
Six times we tried to take that little hill. Small reinforcements
heartened us in the last two attempts. It was a splendid struggle by
stout-hearted men.
But at last the orders came for us to move back and again our heavy
batteries began to smash at the hill in the hope of bringing the forts
to destruction, the enemy into confusion and to thus give us something
like a good chance at the foe. This attempt went on for half an hour.
While the artillery did some damage yet when its attack ended the
Germans were still there among the little, sunken concrete forts on the
hill crest with a force of infantry below in the hollow ground.
We began all over again the bitter, bloody struggle. Out we advanced
from the shelter of the woods to endure the fiery abomination. And this
time we “got there”! Even now I do not know just how we gained success
where before we had failed.
There was the enemy still on the slope, still protected in his concrete
forts and with machine guns and bombs at hand. And the snipers were
working with sickening accuracy from tree tops and ground concealments,
potting us through clearances in the foliage especially prepared to
make us their open targets.
But our boys worked their way forward with a wonderful sort of
deliberateness, fighting their way upward on the knoll in small packs.
In some marvelous fashion enough of us survived--I think we must have
numbered five to six hundred in this final successful attack--to swarm
about the German block-houses, smash our way inside, strike, kill
and finally so terrorize the Bavarian defenders that they completely
surrendered. In the larger block-houses there were companies of about
forty men. In the smaller, groups numbering about fifteen. From these
garrisons we took some four hundred prisoners.
The prisoners told us that they had deemed the attacking force a much
larger one than it really was, but they had not dared retreat--had
stuck and fought so desperately because they were ordered to defend the
position to the death and feared to retire to the main body because of
the punishment they felt sure would be meted out to them there.
There were other features of that advance through Delville woods than
the final, ghastly drive up the armed hill. Deadly perils they were and
which we continued to run into in the four days following as we grimly,
under frightful shell fire and many counter attacks, held on to the
ridge. Escaping the barbed-wire entanglements, there were the dangers
of hidden pits dug by the Germans. At the bottom of these pits were
bayonets rooted so that their points came uppermost and as we marched
along we would go plunging head foremost into these pits, falling
on the points of the bayonets. Under other camouflage of foliage
were concealed the deadliest mines. Did you step lightly on them or
stub them with your toe, they would blow you to pieces. Rifles were
cunningly wrought into the barbed-wire entanglements in a manner to be
unseen. Contact with the wire electrically set the rifles blazing at
you from all angles with almost the certainty of their bullets killing
at least one or two of the wire-cutters.
It wasn’t to be supposed that the Germans were going to let us sit
peacefully down to our tea and jam in our hard-won concrete forts.
We had no sooner got the wounded started on their way to the field
hospitals, and sent the surly four hundred prisoners trudging back to
our main lines under guard, than the first counter attack was made. We
drove it off. They tried three times again that day, but were smashed
back every time. They kept us hopping all the time--nearly every hour
for the four days we held the ridge--under their shell fire, but their
artillery did not do much more execution to the position than had our
own.
When they couldn’t get us out that way, they tried gas. This was the
worst horror, for many of our boys in the advance through the woods had
lost their gas helmets. These had been torn away from their equipment
by tall bushes or the low-hanging branches of trees. It is horrible
enough to see a man struck down by bullet or shrapnel or bombed to
pieces. But the gas victim is most piteously horrible of all. Only too
many of our boys got this gas and it was harrowing to see them writhing
in agony, their bodies swelling, their faces turning blue, their eyes
becoming flaming red, bulging from the sockets, blood gushing from
their noses and mouths. It was even more awful to hear their stuttered
pleadings to their comrades to end their misery for them with a bullet
or knife.
I heard one of my poor men say:
“Bill, put a bullet through me. You can’t stand and see your pal die
like this. For God’s sake, Bill, buck up and do it!”
We had not found the taking of Delville wood impossible. But nearly so.
We had strength and determination and by this time in the war, a bitter
hatred against the barbarians we knew to be guilty of such countless
atrocities, against an enemy who doesn’t know the meaning of fighting
fair. Yet the victory had been very, very costly in lives--too terribly
costly. Of my original sixty men I brought back only fifteen.
The casualties were so numerous as to change afterward military plans
used in efforts to take a wood. We try now to outflank it, to cut the
wood off from the other lines of communication. The heavy artillery
sweeps the woods, trying to destroy the strong emplacements. Then we
go on either flank and try and cut it off that way.
Since Delville wood and Gonnecourt wood, which were similar actions and
just as murderous and bloody, it has been calculated that by direct
attack the cost is all too great. Incidentally in that action I was a
very lucky man. Two bullets went through the skirt of my tunic and I
had four bullet or shrapnel dents in my helmet. I think, as a matter of
fact, they were all bullet dents from snipers in the trees.
The handling of men in a wood fight is in all ways difficult. Men go
plunging into unseen dangers through overzealousness. If the enemy
runs away continue to fire at him, but do not chase him--follow him
cautiously. The possible traps are too many for headlong pursuit.
I lost only too many good fighting men that way. For when they saw the
Germans, they dashed after them, became separated, were trapped. It is
hard to keep men together when advancing through a wood. The ideal
method of moving in such environment is a long, straight line, moving
steadily forward and not in a series of disjointed ripples. When small
hostile bodies are thus met they are easily driven back. If large
bodies are encountered the whole line halts, keeping up a straight
assault. If the first line is not filled up the part of it that is
engaged will be reinforced by the sections in the rear of it, closing
up with it. If this does not dislodge the enemy, the units in reserve
will be thrown in at the critical point.
When the company is held up by the enemy, every man actually engaged
must at once dig something in the way of protection for himself with
his intrenching tools. The support from the reserves do likewise, so
that they may act as a rallying point if the company is driven back by
a superior counter attack.
However, I would not become technical with my reader. I would rather
recall for him the deeds of fine courage done during woodfighting.
Why, I saw a man alone take a strongly emplaced machine-gun station of
the enemy. He was not so large a man but just full of rage and full
of fight. He killed two men with bullets, a third with the bayonet,
and scared the others into flight. Then he turned their own gun on the
fleeing Germans and destroyed them to a man.
The British soldier is heroic in defending his officers. They are
splendidly loyal. Once when advancing through Delville wood, a German
sniper dropped out a tree just behind me and would have riven my body
with his bayonet, for I was utterly taken by surprise and had no chance
to turn and defend myself. But one of my men struck the German on the
head with the butt of his gun, splintering his skull.
I have seen men willingly sacrifice themselves to save their comrades.
One threw himself on a German bomb that had dropped at my very feet.
He took the full blast of the pieces, saving not only myself but many
other men nearby. I saw, more than once, brave soldiers rush up to a
fuming bomb and nip away the fuse within a second of the time the bomb
must otherwise have exploded.
This lucky life of mine was spared remarkably on another occasion. As I
was rushing toward the German trenches, a Boche let go a bomb at me. It
hit the stump of a tree. The stump got the full force of the explosion.
With my revolver I got that particular Boche.
But I tell you there is hardly a day when I am not thankful for having
seen in this war the heroisms and sacrifices of which my fellow man is
capable. It is splendid to have had an opportunity to move in the ranks
of these aristocrats of human bravery.
They took us out of the hell-hole in Delville wood after we had stood
the deadly gaff for four days, sending up a much larger relief force.
The pitiful remnant of my platoon, in common with the others returning,
were in unbroken spirits. They turned from the tragedy of the knoll
and marched out of the same woods into which they had forced their way
against most frightful perils, singing, dancing and skylarking and we
officers let them do as they pleased.
But I could not feel so happy for I knew that as soon as I got to
my rest billet it would be my duty to write letters to the parents,
brothers, sisters, relatives or nearest friends of my all-too-many
dead.