WINTER ON THE SOMME 1916.
From November 23rd, the date of arrival at Airaines, until December 5th
when the first units began the march back to the line again, a complete
rest was enjoyed by the batteries, and badly was it needed. Clothing,
harness and equipment had to be overhauled carefully, casualties amongst
men and horses replaced, while many of the reinforcements lately arrived
from England were not fit to take their place in the gun detachments or
teams, and needed a thorough drilling to change them from the half-raw
condition in which they had left England to something more nearly
approaching the necessary smartness and accuracy required in the field.
Moreover a certain staleness, the inevitable result of a long period of
continuous fighting, had descended upon the batteries as a whole, and it
needed a period of brisk training interspersed with half-holidays,
concerts and games of every description to bring back the old spring and
confidence.
On November 29th the first hint was received of the destination of the
batteries when fighting should once more become the order of the day,
for on that date Brig.-Gen. Blane set off for Maurepas—the extreme left
of the French on the Somme—there to hold a conference with the French
General commanding the artillery of the French XX. Corps. On December
1st the full facts were known, and a warning order was received that the
33rd Division was to take over the line from the French from
Sailly-Saillisel to a point opposite Bouchavesnes, the batteries
occupying the positions of the 127th French Regiment of Artillery.
Further it was learnt that the artillery support of the line was to be
carried out by the combined brigades of the 33rd and 40th Divisions,
each Division keeping two artillery brigades in the line and one in
rest.
On Tuesday, December 5th, the move began. A/162 and C/156 with No. 2
Section of the Divisional Ammunition Column set off early in the morning
on what was to be a three-day march, and passing through Picquigny and
Ailly-sur-Somme, halted for the first night at St. Sauveur. The second
day saw them leave Vecquemont and Corbie behind them, and on the third
day, after spending the previous night at Vaux-sur-Somme, they arrived
at Camp 14 on the Corbie-Bray road some few miles west of Bray itself.
So the move went on; on December 8th B/156 and C/162 shook the dust—or
rather mud—of Airaines from off their feet and followed the first two
batteries by the same stages; next day A/156 and B/162 followed suit,
and on December 10th the two remaining batteries—D/156 and D/162—turned
their backs upon the rest area, arriving at Camp 14 two days later.
ORDER OF BATTLE.
OCTOBER 1916—FEBRUARY 1917.
H.Q.R.A.
C.R.A. Brigade Major. Staff Captain.
Brig.-Gen. C. F. Blane, C.M.G. Major H. K. Capt. W. E.
Sadler, D.S.O., Bownass.
M.C.
156th Brigade.
Lieut.-Colonel Bridges.
Adjutant: Lieut. E. H. Prior (_until January_).
Lieut. F. L. Lee.
"A" Battery. "B" Battery. "C" Battery. "D" Battery.
Major S. Talbot. Major M. A. Major G. Lomer, Capt. W. G.
Studd, M.C. D.S.O. Pringle
(_till January_).
Major W. A. T.
Barstow, M.C.
162nd Brigade.
Lieut.-Colonel O. M. Harris.
Adjutant: Lieut. R. H. Pavitt.
"A" Battery. "B" Battery. "C" Battery. "D" Battery.
Major G. Major V. Major A. van Major J. D.
Fetherston, M.C. Benett-Stanford, Straubenzee, M.C. Belgrave, D.S.O.
M.C.
166th Brigade.
Lieut.-Colonel C. G. Stewart, C.M.G., D.S.O.
Adjutant: Lieut. S. M. Wood.
"A" Battery. "B" Battery. "C" Battery. "D" Battery.
Capt. H. A. Capt. Dust. Capt. H. Freeman. Capt. B.
Littlejohn, M.C. McCallum, M.C.
While this march was in progress matters had been moving up in front,
for on December 8th the 156th and 162nd Brigade commanders (166th
Brigade had been left in rest at Airaines) went up to take over from the
French the headquarters and battery positions of the 127th Regiment of
Artillery. Taking over from the army of another nation was a somewhat
more lengthy business than an ordinary relief on the British front; the
trouble of language was not insuperable, but the difficulty of
reconciling their methods of communication and control with our own, and
of making the alterations necessary to fall in with the usual practice
of brigade and battery administration was by no means light, nor were
matters simplified by the oft-recurring phrase "ça ne marche pas" when
discussing some important telephone line from brigade to battery or O.P.
However, by December 12th all was ready for the arrival of the
batteries, and on that day there marched into action two sections each
of C/156, A/162 and C/162 who had left Camp 14 on the previous day and
had established wagon-lines at Camp 21, one mile south of Maricourt, on
the Suzanne-Maricourt road. They were followed on December 13th by
A/156, B/156 and B/162, while the 15th saw the arrival of the "D"
batteries, so that exactly ten days before Christmas the whole of the
Divisional Artillery was "back to work" again. Camp 14 had only been
used as a very brief halting place in the scheme; it acted, in fact,
merely as a place for the partial concentration of the batteries, and it
was well that this was the case, for a worse spot and a more unsuitable
artillery camp it would be difficult to find. Some distance from the
road, approached only by the roughest of tracks, it lay in a valley and
quickly showed itself to be a veritable mud-trap. The horse-lines were
bad, the men's quarters were worse, and the effort of pulling into the
camp off the road, and of struggling back on to the road again when the
march was resumed, more than counteracted any benefit which might
otherwise have accrued from the two days spent there in rest. It was
with a feeling of relief, therefore, that the batteries turned their
backs upon this much-hated spot and set out for Camp 21, their permanent
wagon-lines whilst in action. Nothing could be worse than Camp 14;
perhaps Camp 21 might be better. Perhaps!
As events turned out, Camp 21 between Suzanne and Maricourt was a slight
improvement, but very slight. It was on ground which had been the scene
of the summer and autumn offensive, and nothing could solidify the earth
which had been so torn and shattered by high explosives. The least
suspicion of rain—even of damp—turned everything into mud, while the
neighbourhood of the water-troughs, unless built up from a timber
foundation, became absolutely and completely impassable. Certain of the
batteries, in fact, which were forced to establish their wagon-lines on
the west of the road struck such fearful conditions that a number of
horses were actually drowned in the mud. It was not the fault of the
batteries or brigades—they were ordered to establish wagon-lines in a
certain spot and perforce they had to do it, nor could the most
strenuous of efforts put things right in a few days. To whomever the
fault was due, it was heart-breaking to battery commanders to see the
effects of a three weeks' rest being wiped out almost in as many days by
the impossible conditions in which some of them found themselves.
To return, however, to the tactical situation. By December 16th all the
batteries, less one section in some cases, were in action in the
Maurepas-Bouchavesnes area. Only two brigades—the 156th and the 162nd—of
the 33rd Divisional Artillery were in the line, for the 166th Brigade
had been left behind at Airaines, but to General Blane's command were
added two brigades of the 40th Divisional Artillery—the 178th and
181st—in action in Anderlu and Marrières Woods respectively, and with
these four brigades it was considered that sufficient artillery support
for the divisional front would be forthcoming. The batteries of the
162nd Brigade, with the exception of "D" Battery, lay just west of the
Clery-Le Forest road and about half-way between the two villages; "D"
battery, for reasons to be discussed presently, took up a position two
hundred yards east of Hospital Wood, while the battery positions of the
156th Brigade were congregated in the area around and east of Le Forest.
In taking over from the French a portion of the line, as was done in
this case, very considerable difficulties had to be faced from the
brigade and battery commanders' point of view. The French field
batteries consisted almost always of four guns, and to relieve them with
six-gun batteries involved either the digging of further gun-pits and
shelters for the men or the splitting up of the batteries into two
portions. In this case the 33rd Divisional Artillery was relieving three
groups (the 3rd, 4th and 5th) of French artillery, each group consisting
of three four-gun batteries, and accordingly it was resolved to take one
section each from "B" and C/156 and to combine them into a third
four-gun battery, while "A" and B/162 carried out the same procedure in
the other brigade; two guns of C/162 relieved on their own a French
battery, and A/156 was fortunate enough to take up a position in which
it was possible to keep all six guns in action together. Thus it will be
seen that the brigades were thrown into rather a disorganised condition,
but this was not all. The French Army did not maintain any batteries of
field howitzers, and therefore the 4·5 in. howitzer batteries of the two
brigades found themselves nobody's children, left out in the cold with
nobody to relieve, no battery position to take over. They were forced on
this, as on another later occasion, to buckle to and dig their own
position, and for this reason D/162, as already stated, came to the edge
of Hospital Wood and dug itself in under a small bank.
By the 16th and 17th of December the main work of establishing the
positions had been overcome, and, preliminary registration being
completed, the batteries had a chance of looking around them. The
surroundings were not inspiring; they had been wrested from the enemy
during the Somme offensive and, in common with the rest of the
battlefield, were torn and pitted with shell-holes in all directions.
The autumn and winter rains had turned the whole countryside into a vast
sea of mud, mud so deep, so thick and of such peculiar consistency that
it was altogether impossible to remove it, drain or even dig through it.
Conditions were, indeed, pitiable; every yard walked was an effort
involving absolute wading; thigh gum-boots were powerless to keep the
men dry; ammunition, rations and mail had to be brought to the battery
positions by pack-horse, for no wagon could approach, and on top of all
this it rained, rained continuously and steadfastly during the whole
period. It was indeed a wretched place, rendered more wretched by the
knowledge that Christmas—a season usually associated with comfort and
merrymaking—was fast approaching.
For some time after the arrival of the batteries on this part of the
front there was no war, for the simple reason that war was impossible.
The battery positions consisted merely of six semi-dry platforms for the
guns, separated and surrounded by apparently bottomless mud; the men
lived in wet and muddy shelters and dug-outs, and were scarcely ever
dry; telephone lines forward ran through mud which made the repair of
breaks a clumsy, maddening business, while up with the infantry there
were no trenches, no dug-outs, nothing but mud and water. Along the
whole of the divisional front there were only about four places where
anything approaching the semblance of a communication trench could be
found, and these were so bad as to be rather deeper of mud than the
surrounding ground. There was only one way to reach the front line—a
ditch full of water with a little wire in front—and that was to walk
straight over the open up to the fire trench itself, and there, if a new
arrival, drop in; if an old hand, sit on the parados.
This state of affairs may sound fantastic and even an exaggeration, but
it is only too true an account. The French, finding conditions were
well-nigh impossible for fighting, decided philosophically not to fight,
and arranged with the enemy accordingly. It was muddy for them, but just
as muddy for the enemy; it was a beastly business wading up
communication trenches which were practically non-existent to a front
line which was scarcely habitable, but it was just as beastly for the
Germans; therefore, forward observing officers going up to visit the
infantry had the strange experience of walking up to our front line over
the open, of sitting on the parapet in full view of the enemy one
hundred yards away, and of seeing the enemy doing exactly the same thing
themselves. So extraordinary were the conditions, in fact, that a
battery commander of the 162nd Brigade walked over the open with one of
his subalterns not only up to the front line but over it at a spot where
it was deserted, and had got well into No Man's Land before a sentry in
one of the adjoining bays called him back.
Whether the French method of thus maintaining an unofficial truce was a
good one need not be debated in these pages. It certainly led them to
give up making any effort to dig communication trenches at all, even in
spots where with trouble it would have been possible, and it by no means
helped to foster the "cultivation of the fighting spirit," the
importance of which was being impressed so busily upon all ranks at the
time. On the other hand it gave them a tiny measure of comfort which
made life just endurable, and by resuming active operations and reducing
the enemy to a state of misery they would have let themselves in for
similar wretchedness.
When the 33rd Division took over the line, however, the question was
left in doubt no longer. Where there was war there was to be real war
and no unofficial truce; the French protested, they tried in vain to
prevent the infantry sniping, but it was of no avail. One morning a
whole platoon of Germans marched calmly down to the front line over the
open, following the custom of bygone days; the temptation was too great,
and a Lewis gunner, hastily putting together the gun he had been
cleaning, raised it on to the parapet and browned the lot! From that
moment onwards not a head dared show above the parapet, and everybody
living in the front line or visiting it endured discomfort and hardship
beyond imagination.
Gradually, as the 33rd Division settled in, hostilities increased and
boiled up. Even so the majority of the firing was upon the back areas,
for the forward trench system—engulfed in a sea of mud—offered no target
whatever. Duckboard tracks, valleys hidden from infantry and artillery
observers where the enemy might walk about in the open, suspected
battery positions, cross-roads and other similar targets received as a
rule the attention of our guns, while the enemy administered the same
treatment to corresponding features behind our lines. The actual front
covered by the batteries extended from the enemy trenches on the
Bouchavesnes ridge northwards through Moislains Wood to the great wood
of St. Pierre Vaast. From observation stations along the ridge east of
Aiguille Ravine (in which was the artillery forward telephone exchange)
a very good view of all the enemy system could be seen except in the
extreme north of the zone, though the trenches behind the support line
were hidden owing to the steep valley which ran down towards Moislains.
Thus the year drew slowly to a close. On Christmas Day the brigades took
part in an artillery bombardment carried out along the whole Corps front
to show that "Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward Men" was not considered to
apply to Germans. In reply, the enemy increased in violence his sniping
with whizz-bangs of any portion of duckboard track and road where he
might catch ration parties or artillery teams toiling up with ammunition
from Plateau Siding, and then, on December 31st, the 166th Brigade
arrived from Airaines and relieved the batteries of the 156th. By the
system already outlined one brigade of each Divisional Artillery was
kept in rest, and beneath the envious eyes of the 162nd Brigade, whose
turn was not yet, the 156th turned their backs to the mud and marched
away to the rest and comparative comfort of G.H.Q. reserve.
The first fortnight of January proved uneventful. The same harassing
fire was continued, the same mud prevailed everywhere and the greatest
problem of all to be contended with at the time was not the enemy, but
the weather. An alarming increase in the number of cases of trench-feet
and frost-bite began to show itself, not only in the infantry but in the
artillery. For the infantry special drying rooms were erected and dry
socks were issued to every man on leaving the trenches, but the gunners
were thought to be better off, and for them there were no such
arrangements. Consequently there fell upon brigade and battery
commanders a very great strain, a strain which had to be withstood at
the time when more work began to show itself in the offing.
More work there certainly was. On January 2nd General Blane, on the
relief of the 33rd Division by the 40th, had handed over control of the
brigades to the C.R.A. 40th Division and had gone with headquarters into
rest at Belloy-sur-Somme. On January 10th there came a warning order
from his headquarters that a sideslip of the division to the right was
about to take place, and that brigade commanders were to visit the
French positions along the actual borders of the Somme next day. Close
on the heels of this came directions for the batteries to withdraw from
the line, the 166th getting away first on January 12th, followed by the
162nd Brigade four days later, and January 16th found both brigades in
rest at their wagon-lines—Camp 21, west of Maricourt.
The following six days were spent at these wagon-lines, and during the
period yet another reorganisation of the Divisional Artillery took
place. Since September 1916 there had been three brigades, the full
establishment of a brigade being three six-gun 18-pdr. batteries and one
four-gun 4·5 in. howitzer battery. It was now decreed that a Divisional
Artillery should consist of two brigades, each brigade to be of the same
composition as before but with six-gun howitzer batteries, and not four
as previously. To bring this about the 166th Brigade was broken up. One
section of D/166 went to D/156, the other to D/162; A/166 (Captain
Littlejohn) marched to Mirvaux and became part of the 26th Brigade,
while B/166 (Captain Dust) joined the 93rd Brigade at Morlancourt and
was merged in that unit. The Divisional Artillery did not lose all its
old friends, however, by this breaking up. Major Barstow was transferred
to the 156th Brigade, as was also Lieut.-Colonel Stewart who, with the
whole of the staff of the 166th Brigade H.Q., came to 156th H.Q.; the
late headquarter staff of that brigade took over the nominal command of
166th Brigade—now a brigade in name only and not in substance—and
awaited orders at Belloy as to future movements.
While this change-about had been going on, the batteries at Camp 21 had
been busy in other respects as well. Cold, dry weather had set in, and,
remembering the mud of Bouchavesnes and realising that similar
conditions existed in the positions which were shortly to be occupied on
the banks of the Somme itself, teams had been out every day making use
of the good going occasioned by the hard weather, and filling up the
ammunition pits at the battery positions which by now had been
reconnoitred by battery commanders themselves. It was the only advantage
which the 162nd Brigade, deprived by this move of the rest for which it
was nearly due, managed to gain over the 156th Brigade who were now
marching up from the rest area to the new wagon-lines around Vaux Wood
and Eclusier.
On January 22nd the move into action began. From the wagon-lines west of
Frise the batteries marched up to take over the defence of the line from
the River Somme itself on the right to the junction with the 4th
Division, some three-quarters of a mile south of Bouchavesnes, on the
left. The infantry had relieved the French 17th Division two days
previously and had been supported temporarily by the French batteries,
but now on the 24th the guns came up and, taking over from the groups of
Commandants de St. Paule, Le Gros and Rouziers of the 30th, 29th and
49th Regiments of Artillery, assumed responsibility for the support of
the line from eight o'clock on the morning of the 24th. Under the
control of General Blane at P.C. Jean the batteries were split up into
two groups; the left group, commanded by Lieut.-Colonel Stewart,
consisted of the 156th and the 14th Brigades, while the 162nd and the
33rd Brigades, at first under the control of Lieut.-Colonel Nevinson but
ultimately, from the 31st, commanded by Lieut.-Colonel Harris, went to
form the right group, each group covering one brigade of infantry in the
front line.
Battery positions on the south of the Somme had been very difficult to
find, for on clear days Mt. St. Quentin, which was in German hands,
commanded the whole of the countryside, and the concealment of flashes
was a practical impossibility. After a certain amount of debating Major
Fetherston's battery (A/162) took up a position just south of Buscourt
Cemetery, with D/162 (Major Belgrave) two hundred yards in front under
the shelter of a bank; C/162 (Major van Straubenzee) lay between
Buscourt Cemetery and the river, while Major Benett-Stanford established
his battery (B/162) with four guns to the south-east of these positions,
the remaining section being detached for enfilade work about seven
hundred yards south of Feuillières. With Brigade headquarters situated
in an old German second-line trench one hundred yards behind "C"
battery, the whole of the 162nd was thoroughly compact and well together
and, from the point of view of administration, excellently placed.
The 162nd was the only brigade of the 33rd Division lying south of the
Somme. The batteries were, in fact, the first British guns to return
there since the very early days of the war, and it fell to them now to
occupy the extreme right of the British line in France, just as they
also occupied the extreme left of that same line on the beach at
Nieuport some six months later. The batteries of the 156th Brigade all
lay to the north of the river, "A" and C/156 (Major Talbot and Major
Lomer) to the east of Howitzer Wood and 2,000 yards N.W. of
Clery-sur-Somme, "B" and D/156 (Major Studd and Major Barstow) south of
the same wood, and from here they continued the good work of harassing
the enemy in the position to which he had been forced back by the
offensive of the foregoing months.
On January 25th battery commanders studied and registered their new
zones. The German line here ran from the river Somme to the west corner
of Limberlost Wood, and on through Freckles Wood in a north-easterly
direction. Observation stations north of the river were situated on the
high ground west of Hersfeld Trench, while to the south of the river,
from a high hill running sheer down to the water about 1,200 yards due
west of Halle, a magnificent enfilade view right down on to the front
covered could be obtained, and also an extensive back area view of the
country round Péronne, Mont St. Quentin, Feuillaucourt, Allaines and
along the Paris-Lille road in the direction of Nurlu. The line just here
offered an extraordinary feature which was to be found in very few other
places along the front; owing to a big "hair-pin bend" of the river and
to the fact that the two arms of the bend enclosed a marsh, the trenches
ran straight down to the river on the north side and there ceased
altogether, reappearing on the southern bend again some 2,500 yards
further down. It was impossible to dig trenches or to keep men in the
marshes enclosed by the bend of the river, and similarly it was
practically impossible for men to get across to raid our lines, but a
danger—and a very serious one—now presented itself, for a spell of
intensely cold weather set in; the river, the canal and the marshes were
all frozen solid, and the situation suddenly arose that between the
batteries and the German lines there lay nothing but two isolated
machine-gun posts. Our old ally, the marsh, which had hitherto proved a
safe defence against hostile raids on the guns, now offered a perfectly
secure passage. So feasible in fact did a raid appear, that plans were
actually being formulated for a descent upon the German batteries
opposite this bend by our people—plans which in the end had to be
abandoned, as two howitzer batteries, at the request of the infantry,
shelled the frozen river and with sixteen rounds cut a channel thirty
yards wide across the ice.
The weather had indeed turned intensely cold. Every night some thirty
degrees of frost were registered, and the ground was deeply covered, in
snow. It was, of course, exceedingly healthy, but involved a great deal
of suffering, while the handling of guns and ammunition, the cold metal
of which seemed to bite right into the flesh, was a matter to be taken
by no means lightly. Fortunately there was but little activity at the
time. Hostile minenwerfers and rifle-grenades worried our infantry to a
large extent, but prompt retaliation, coupled with the arrival into
action of X, V and Y/33 trench mortar batteries, reduced this source of
trouble to a minimum. Apart from this the batteries were more or less
left to themselves to register such targets as they chose until February
arrived, bringing with it a more definite sequence of events.
February heralded the commencement of more active operations, but before
these started the period in the rest area, for which the 162nd Brigade
was due, began to be granted to certain of the batteries. On February
1st A/162 stored its guns in the northern part of Marrières Wood,
leaving them there under a guard and eventually handing them over to the
33rd Brigade. At the same time orders were received to build positions
east of Marrières Wood for the guns stored there, while the 8th Division
got positions ready south-west of Rancourt to be taken up at a later
date by "A" and B/156. A/162, with its guns stored away, marched out to
rest at Vaux-sur-Somme, to be followed on the 7th by D/162 which went
into billets at Sailly-le-Sec; in the latter case, however, two guns
were handed over _in situ_ to the 55th Battery to be served by them from
there, while the remaining four were left under a guard until such time
as the battery should return to man them once more.
With two batteries out at rest, the remainder found themselves engaged
in rapidly increasing work. On February 2nd a lengthy bombardment of the
enemy trenches was carried out by field and heavy artillery, and the
next day began the deliberate cutting of the enemy wire by the 18-pdrs.,
which was to extend over a very considerable period. To carry this out
more effectively the enfilade section of B/162 (which had been in action
south of Feuillières) moved to a point on the south side of the Somme
east of Clery, where the canal lock adjoined the river; the old position
south of Feuillières was taken over by a section of C/162 which moved
thither from east of Chapter Wood. At first hostile retaliation was
slight, and until about the 8th, with the exception of a severe
lachrymose shelling endured by B/162, the work went on more or less
unhindered. Gradually, however, the enemy grew apprehensive over the
continued cutting of his wire, and his anger was brought to a
culminating point on the 7th when the 9th H.L.I. raided the trenches
and, after killing ten machine gunners and bombing two dug-outs full of
men, returned to their own lines with two prisoners and a machine-gun as
proof of their exploit. For their assistance in this raid the batteries
received the thanks of General Baird (100th Infantry Brigade) who was
especially pleased with the way in which the wire had been cut.
ORDER OF BATTLE.
FEBRUARY—MARCH 1917.
H.Q.R.A.
C.R.A. Brigade Major. Staff Captain.
Brig.-Gen. C. F. Blane, C.M.G. Major H. K. Capt. W. E.
Sadler, D.S.O., Bownass.
M.C.
156th Brigade.
Lieut.-Colonel C. G. Stewart, C.M.G., D.S.O.
Adjutant: Lieut. F. L. Lee.
"A" Battery. "B" Battery. "C" Battery. "D" Battery.
Capt. S. Talbot. Major M. A. Major G. Lomer, Major W. A. T.
Studd, M.C. D.S.O. Barstow, M.C.
162nd Brigade.
Lieut.-Colonel O. M. Harris, D.S.O.
Adjutant: Lieut. R. H. Pavitt.
"A" Battery. "B" Battery. "C" Battery. "D" Battery.
Major G. Major V. Major A. van Major J. D.
Fetherston, M.C. Benett-Stanford, Straubenzee, M.C. Belgrave, D.S.O.
M.C.
Capt. A. E. G.
Champion.
166th Brigade.
Broken up.
On February 10th, after a further interval of wire-cutting, another
bombardment of the enemy trenches took place. From 1.0 P.M. on that day
until 6.15 A.M. the following morning a long and deliberate artillery
attack was carried out, finishing with a fifteen-minute intense
bombardment which crept over the enemy front line as though to be
followed by an assault, and then suddenly dropped back on to the fire
trench again to catch such infantry as might have manned the parapet.
The enemy was now fully aroused; all day he bombarded the right brigade
zone and especially 162nd Brigade Headquarters, and from this day
onwards he was always ready to retaliate heavily for any operations
carried out against him.
A raid on the 14th by the 4th Suffolks round Pekly Bulge (south of the
Clery-Feuillaucourt road) did not tend to calm the increasing activity
which was now becoming general, and, although no prisoners were brought
to our trenches (four, with their escort, were killed by a heavy German
trench mortar while crossing No Man's Land), a great deal of damage and
many casualties were inflicted upon the enemy in their dug-outs. On the
19th, however, matters ought to have reached their climax, for on that
day should have taken place the attack on Hersfeld Trench, in
preparation for which all the previous bombardments and wire-cutting had
been carried out. It was postponed, however; postponed until the 22nd
because foggy weather had prevented any full examination of the
condition of the wire after its bombardment, and because the mud in No
Man's Land was so bad as to prevent the infantry from reaching the gaps.
In point of fact this attack was again postponed on the 22nd, and
finally, after being fixed for March 2nd, was abandoned altogether.
The work now resolved itself into a slow but ever-persistent harassing
of the enemy. "A" and D/162 returned into action on February 20th and
joined in the general artillery attack which was in progress all along
this portion of the front—an attack the result of which ultimately
showed itself in the great German retreat to the Hindenburg Line early
in March. The operation on Hersfeld Trench had been abandoned, but a new
assault by the 8th Division further to the north had been in course of
preparation for some time, and now definite steps were taken to carry it
out. It will be remembered that at the beginning of the month the 8th
Division were preparing battery positions for "A" and B/156 south-west
of Rancourt; on the morning of the 21st the leading sections of the two
batteries moved up to these positions, and at the same time the right
group, temporarily under the command of Major J. D. Belgrave while
Colonel Harris was on leave, pushed forward an advance gun of A/162 to a
position two hundred yards east of Clery, whence wire-cutting on the
group zone could more effectively be carried out. Although no attack on
the 33rd Divisional front was to be launched it was essential to employ
tactics which would mislead the enemy, and by continual harassing to
prevent him from concentrating all his attention upon the 8th Division.
There was, however, another reason for this continual bombardment.
Rumours began to circulate that the German Higher Command, finding the
present positions if not untenable at least strategically unsound,
intended to withdraw to the great trench system known as the Hindenburg
Line which for a long time past had been in preparation well to the
rear, and which was supposed to be a model of siting and fortified
field-work. At first rumours were vague and of doubtful origin; but
gradually it became evident, from the explosions which every day could
be seen behind the enemy lines, that a great deal of destructive and
demolition work was being carried out, all of which pointed to the fact
that the area was shortly to be evacuated.
Under these circumstances it was necessary that information should be
obtained as to the strength in which the enemy was holding the line, and
for this purpose a series of raids was carried out. On the night of
February 27th/28th the 2nd Worcesters raided the enemy trenches around
Pekly Bulge in two parties, the first party going over at 8.40 P.M. and
remaining in the trenches for half an hour, while the second raid
started at 1.0 A.M. and lasted for sixty-five minutes. Rumour had it
that many of the first party—who were nearly all old hands, and for
whose benefit the first raid was said to have been organised—went over
again with the second party to complete a few odd jobs which they had
not had time to finish thoroughly earlier in the night! Whatever the
truth of this story may be, the raid was eminently successful.
Twenty-two prisoners were taken, thirty-six of the enemy were killed in
hand-to-hand fighting and six dug-outs full of men were bombed.
Moreover, the prisoners proved to be men of the 2nd Guards Grenadier
Regiment, and this identification, together with the discovery that the
German line was still strongly held, was of the greatest value to
Headquarters.
On March 1st the hostile trenches were again raided, this time by the
2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and on March 3rd the attack by
the 8th Division was carried out on the left with the object of securing
a jutting-out portion of the enemy front and support lines. The attack
was too far to the north to permit of the 33rd Divisional Artillery
batteries taking any share therein, except for "A" and B/156 who had on
the 1st completed their move to the left to reinforce the artillery
supporting the assault. The 33rd Division did, however, carry out a
feint bombardment synchronising with the barrage of the 8th Division,
and this in itself was of considerable value since once again
information was obtained concerning the strength of the enemy. The
infantry in and on the left of Limberlost Wood not only let off smoke
during the feint attack, but also fired rockets of every conceivable
colour and variety, and the effect of this upon the enemy was
surprising. Completely mystified, very nervous and on edge, he bombarded
the trenches held by the 33rd Division with all his might and main, and
disclosed the strength of artillery which he still held upon the front.
This strength was, indeed, quite normal and seemed to belie any ideas of
an early retreat on his part, but one feature stood out prominently.
Artillery officers from each of the brigades, who were sent down to the
infantry to report on the hostile artillery strength, pointed out that
the entire retaliation was carried out by field-guns and 10 cm.
howitzers; of heavy guns and even 15 cm. howitzers there were none.
Perhaps, after all, this supposed retirement was near at hand. Whether
it was or was not, from the 4th until the 9th a steady bombardment was
kept up upon the enemy communications. Infantry patrols reported the
line lightly held, and the sniping and movement going on was suspected
of being carried out by a few picked men moving from place to place in
the trenches and utilising fixed and automatically-fired rifles to the
full. Even a raid by the enemy in the early morning of the 8th did not
wipe out this idea; the opinion was formed that it was sheer bluff, and
that only a very few machine-guns and individual gunners, making a
lavish use of Very lights, were maintaining the appearance of strength
on the enemy's part.
The 33rd Divisional Artillery never saw the climax of this affair. On
the morning of Friday the 9th, half batteries of the 156th and 162nd
Brigades were relieved by the 178th and 181st Brigades respectively of
the 40th Division. The remaining half batteries withdrew on the 11th,
and the two brigades, turning their backs upon the battlefields of the
Somme, marched into rest at Vaux-sur-Somme and Sailly-le-Sec. Rumour had
it that they were to go into training for some great battle shortly to
take place, a battle in which the line was to be broken, open fighting
was to be the order of the day, the German line was to be turned and
British arms were to be victorious over the enemy once and for all.
Rumour, as on all such occasions, ran wild amongst the men, but where
the attack was to be and when, whether it was in connection with the
expected German retreat or elsewhere was kept from all except a favoured
few. Officially it was said that there was to be fighting, and open
fighting at that, and that the batteries must train accordingly; more
than that they were not to know.
From the 11th until the 25th the batteries trained hard in every form of
exercise; gun drill, driving drill, flag and lamp signalling, battery
staff work and movement into action over open ground were carried out
day by day, while in the evening concerts and sing-songs were
interspersed with lectures to build up the fighting spirit of the men,
to raise their morale to the highest and to give them that quiet
confidence and assuredness of being the better man which is so essential
to troops who have a battle lying before them.
Moreover, the fighting spirit of the men was raised in other ways than
by lectures. The batteries, drawn up in hollow square at church parade,
saw the Corps Commander decorate officers and men for gallantry; heard
the citation which accompanied the Order of the Crown of Italy awarded
to Lieut.-Colonel O. M. Harris; heard the Corps Commander tell them how,
shortly after they had been withdrawn from the line, infantry patrols
had discovered the enemy trenches to be unoccupied; learnt how, with the
enemy in general retreat, the whole of our line southwards from Arras
was pressing forward on the heels of the enemy, and even as he spoke was
occupying and advancing east from Péronne. It was no concern of the
men's that the enemy was relinquishing very bad ground merely in order
to take up a vastly superior and stronger position which he had, under
the most favourable circumstances, been preparing for some time. They
returned to their billets feeling that the enemy really was the
under-dog, that his tail was down and consequently that theirs was
decidedly up.
Only one incident of this period marred the pleasure of the rest which
was being enjoyed. Before the batteries moved northward they lost their
C.R.A., Brigadier-General C. F. Blane who, on undertaking new duties,
left the Divisional Artillery with whom he was so closely connected.
General Blane brought out the (then) four artillery brigades to France
in their early raw state in 1915. He helped to mould and to shape them,
and, after leading them through all the hazardous times of the Battle of
the Somme and through the dreary and trying conditions of the winter, he
now handed them over, a splendid fighting unit, to his successor.
General Blane did a tremendous amount towards building up the 33rd
Divisional Artillery, and in its future history the name of the man who
did so much for it in its earlier stages must always be remembered.
The orders to move were ultimately received in the fourth week of March.
On the 24th the C.R.A., Brigadier-General Stewart, who had succeeded
General Blane in the command of the 33rd Divisional Artillery, set out
in a motor bus with his brigade and battery commanders to make a
preliminary reconnaissance of the new front on which the batteries were
to operate. Next day the latter in full fighting order moved off towards
the north on the four-day march which was to terminate at Arras, and was
to bring them to the positions from which they would assist in the great
offensive of April 9th—the battle of Arras and Vimy Ridge.