L BATTERY’S HEROIC STAND
[Not one of the almost numberless valiant deeds of the war has
proved more thrilling and splendid than the exploit of L Battery,
Royal Horse Artillery, at Nery, near Compiègne, on September 1st,
1914. After greatly distinguishing itself at Mons, the battery
helped to cover the retreat of the Allies, and fought a heavy
rearguard action. On the last day of the retirement the battery
unexpectedly came into action at very close range with an
overwhelmingly superior German force. So destructive was the fire
which was brought to bear on the battery that only one British gun
was left in action, and this was served, until all the ammunition
was expended, by Battery-Sergeant-Major Dorrell, Sergeant Nelson,
Gunner H. Darbyshire and Driver Osborne, all the rest of the
officers and men of the battery having been killed or wounded. At
the close of the artillery duel the Queen’s Bays and I Battery came
to the rescue, and the shattered remnant of L Battery came
triumphant out of the tremendous fray. This story is told by Gunner
Darbyshire, who, with Driver Osborne, was awarded the great
distinction of the Médaille Militaire of France, while the
sergeant-major and Sergeant Nelson for their gallantry were
promoted to second-lieutenants, and awarded the Victoria Cross.]
As soon as we got into touch with the Germans--and that was at
Mons--they never left us alone. We had a hot time with them, but we gave
them a hotter. Mons was a terrible experience, especially to men going
straight into action for the first time, and so furious was the
artillery duel that at its height some of the British and German shells
actually struck each other in the air. In less than an hour we fired
nearly six hundred rounds--the full number carried by a battery of six
guns. But I must not talk of Mons; I will get to the neighbourhood of
Compiègne, and tell of the fight that was sprung on the battery and left
only three survivors.
All through the retreat we had been fighting heavily, and throughout the
day on August 31st we fought till four o’clock in the afternoon; then we
were ordered to retire to Compiègne. It was a long march, and when we
got to Nery, near Compiègne, early in the evening, both horses and men
were utterly exhausted and very hungry. As soon as we got in we gave the
horses some food--with the mounted man the horse always comes first--and
made ourselves as comfortable as possible.
Outposts were put out by the officers, and the cavalry who were with us,
the 2nd Dragoon Guards (Queen’s Bays), were in a small field on the side
of a road which was opposite to us. That road was really a deep cutting,
and I want you to bear it in mind, because it largely proved the
salvation of the few survivors of the battery at the end of the fight.
For the rest, the country was just of the sort you can see in many
places in England--peaceful, fertile and prosperous, with farms dotted
about, but nobody left on them, for the warning had been given that the
German hordes were marching, and the people had fled in terror.
Having made all our dispositions, we went to sleep, and rested till
half-past three in the morning, when we were roused and told to get
ready to march at a moment’s notice.
The darkness seemed to hang about more than usual, and the morning was
very misty; but we did not pay much attention to that, and we
breakfasted and fed the horses. We expected to be off again, but the
battery was ordered to stand fast until further notice.
In war-time never a moment is wasted, and Sergeant-Major Dorrell thought
that this would be a good opportunity to water the horses, so he ordered
the right half-battery to water, and the horses were taken behind a
sugar factory which was a little distance away. The horses were watered
and brought back and hooked into the guns and waggons; then the left
half-battery went to water.
Everything was perfectly quiet. Day had broken, and the landscape was
hidden in the grey veil of the early morning. All was well, it seemed,
and we were now expecting to move off. A ridge about 600 yards away was,
we supposed, occupied by French cavalry, and a general and orderly
retreat was going on in our rear. Then, without the slightest warning, a
“ranging” shot was dropped into the battery, and we knew instantly that
the Germans were on us and had fired this trial shot to get the range of
us.
Immediately after this round was fired the whole place was alive with
shrapnel and maxim bullets, and it was clear that the battery was almost
surrounded by German artillery and infantry. As a matter of fact, the
French cavalry had left their position on the ridge before daybreak, and
a strong German force, with ten guns and two maxims, had advanced under
cover of the mist and occupied the position, which was an uncommonly
good one for artillery.
We were taken completely by surprise, and at first could do nothing, for
the “ranging” shot was followed by an absolute hail of shrapnel, which
almost blew the battery to pieces.
The very beginning of the German fire made havoc amongst the battery and
the Bays, and the losses amongst the horses were particularly severe and
crippling. But we soon pulled ourselves together, with a fierce
determination to save the battery, and to do our best to give the
Germans a vast deal more than they were giving us.
“Who’ll volunteer to get the guns into action?” shouted Captain
Bradbury.
Every man who could stand and fight said “Me!” and there was an instant
rush for the guns. Owing to heavy losses in our battery, I had become
limber gunner, and it was part of my special duty to see to the
ammunition in the limbers. But special duties at a time like that don’t
count for much; the chief thing is to keep the guns going, and it was
now a case of every one, officer and man, striving his best to save the
battery. The officers, while they lived and could keep up at all, were
noble, and worked exactly like the men. From start to finish of that
fatal fight they set a glorious example.
We rushed to the guns, I say, and with the horses, when they were living
and unhurt, and man-handling when the poor beasts were killed or maimed,
we made shift to bring as heavy a fire as we could raise against the
Germans. The advantage was clearly and undoubtedly with them--they were
in position, they had our range, and they had far more guns and men,
while we had half our horses watering by the sugar mill and shells were
thick in the air and ploughing up the earth before we could get a single
gun into action.
Let me stop for a minute to explain what actually happened to the guns,
so that you can understand the odds against us as we fought. The guns,
as you have seen, were ready for marching, not for fighting, which we
were not expecting; half the horses were away, many at the guns were
killed or wounded, and officers and men had suffered fearfully in the
course literally of a few seconds after the “ranging” shot plumped into
us.
The first gun came to grief through the terrified horses bolting and
overturning it on the steep bank of the road in front of us; the second
gun had the spokes of a wheel blown out by one of the very first of the
German shells, the third was disabled by a direct hit with a shell which
killed the detachment; the fourth was left standing, though the wheels
got knocked about and several holes were made in the limber, and all the
horses were shot down. The fifth gun was brought into action, but was
silenced by the detachment being killed, and the sixth gun, our own,
remained the whole time, though the side of the limber was blown away,
the wheels were severely damaged, holes were blown in the shield, and
the buffer was badly peppered by shrapnel bullets. The gun was a wreck,
but, like many another wreck, it held gallantly on until the storm was
over--and it was saved at last.
In a shell fire that was incessant and terrific, accompanied by the hail
of bullets from the maxims, we got to work.
We had had some truly tremendous cannonading at Mons; but this was
infinitely worse, for the very life of the battery was in peril, and it
was a point-blank battle, just rapid, ding-dong kill-fire, our own
shells and the Germans’ bursting in a fraction of time after leaving the
muzzles of the guns.
As soon as we were fairly in action, the Germans gave us a fiercer fire
than ever, and it is only just to them to say that their practice was
magnificent; but I think we got the pull of them, crippled and shattered
though we were--nay, I know we did, for when the bloody business was all
over, we counted far more of the German dead than all our battery had
numbered at the start.
The thirteen-pounders of the Royal Horse Artillery can be fired at the
rate of fifteen rounds a minute, and though we were not perhaps doing
that, because we were short-handed and the limbers were about thirty
yards away, still we were making splendid practice, and it was telling
heavily on the Germans.
As the mist melted away we could at that short distance see them
plainly--and they made a target which we took care not to miss. We went
for the German guns and fighting men, and the Germans did all they knew
to smash us--but they didn’t know enough, and failed.
As soon as we got number six gun into action I jumped into the seat and
began firing, but so awful was the concussion of our own explosions and
the bursting German shells that I could not bear it for long. I kept it
up for about twenty minutes, then my nose and ears were bleeding because
of the concussion, and I could not fire any more, so I left the seat and
got a change by fetching ammunition.
And now there happened one of those things which, though they seem
marvellous, are always taking place in time of war, and especially such
a war as this, when life is lost at every turn. Immediately after I
left the seat, Lieutenant Campbell, who had been helping with the
ammunition, took it, and kept the firing up without the loss of a second
of time; but he had not fired more than a couple of rounds when a shell
burst under the shield. The explosion was awful, and the brave young
officer was hurled about six yards away from the very seat in which I
had been sitting a few seconds earlier. There is no human hope against
such injuries, and Mr. Campbell lived for only a few minutes.
Another officer who fell quickly while doing dangerous work was
Lieutenant Mundy, my section officer. He was finding the range and
reporting the effects of our shells. To do that he had left the
protection of the shield and was sitting on the ground alongside the gun
wheel. This was a perilous position, being completely exposed to the
shells which were bursting all around. Mr. Mundy was killed by an
exploding shell which also wounded me. A piece of the shell caught me
just behind the shoulder-blade. I felt it go into my back, but did not
take much notice of it at the time, and went on serving the gun. Mr.
Mundy had taken the place of Mr. Marsden, the left-section officer. The
latter had gone out from home with us; but he had been badly wounded at
Mons, where a shrapnel bullet went through the roof of his mouth and
came out of his neck. In spite of that dreadful injury, however, he
stuck bravely to his section.
I am getting on a bit too fast, perhaps, so I will return to the time
when I had to leave the seat of the gun owing to the way in which the
concussion had affected me. When I felt a little better I began to help
Driver Osborne to fetch ammunition from the waggons. I had just managed
to get back to the gun with an armful of ammunition, when a lyddite
shell exploded behind me, threw me to the ground, and partly stunned me.
I was on the ground for what seemed to be about five minutes and thought
I was gone; but when I came round I got up and found that I was
uninjured. On looking round, however, I saw that Captain Bradbury, who
had played a splendid part in getting the guns into action, had been
knocked down by the same shell that floored me. I had been thrown on my
face, Captain Bradbury had been knocked down backwards, and he was about
two yards away from me. When I came to my senses I went up to him and
saw that he was mortally wounded. He expired a few minutes afterwards.
Though the captain knew that death was very near, he thought of his men
to the last, and repeatedly begged to be carried away, so that they
should not be upset by seeing him or hearing the cries which he could
not restrain. Two of the men who were wounded, and were lying in the
shelter of a neighbouring haystack, crawled up and managed to take the
captain back with them; but he died almost as soon as the haystack was
reached.
By this time our little camp was an utter wreck. Horses and men were
lying everywhere, some of the horses absolutely blown to pieces; waggons
and guns were turned upside down, and all around was the ruin caused by
the German shells. The camp was littered with fragments of shell and our
own cartridge-cases, while the ground looked as if it had been ploughed
and harrowed anyhow. Nearly all the officers and men had been either
killed or wounded.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Germans literally rained shrapnel
and bullets on us. A German shell is filled with about three hundred
bullets, so that with two or three shells bursting you get as big a
cloud of bullets as you would receive from a battalion of infantry.
The Germans had ten of their guns and two machine-guns going, and it is
simply marvellous that every man and horse in our battery was not
destroyed. Bear in mind, too, that the German artillery was not all
field-guns--they had big guns with them, and they fired into us with the
simple object of wiping us out. That is quite all right, of course; but
they never gave a thought to our wounded--they went for them just as
mercilessly as they bombarded the rest.
There was a little farmhouse in our camp, an ordinary French farm
building with a few round haystacks near it. When the fight began, we
thought of using this building as a hospital; but it was so clear that
the place was an absolute death-trap that we gave up that idea very
quickly, and got our wounded under the shelter of one of the haystacks,
where they were pretty safe so long as the stack did not catch fire,
because a good thick stack will resist even direct artillery fire in a
wonderful manner. But the Germans got their guns on this particular
stack, and it was a very bad look-out for our poor, helpless fellows,
many of whom had been badly mangled.
As for the farmhouse it was blown to pieces, as I saw afterwards when I
visited it, and not a soul could have lived in the place. Walls,
windows, roof, ceilings--all were smashed, and the furniture was in
fragments. A building like that was a fair target; but the haystack was
different, and the Germans did a thing that no British gunners would
have done. At that short distance they could see perfectly clearly what
was happening--they could see that as our wounded fell we got hold of
them and dragged them out of the deadly hail to the shelter of the
stack, about a score of yards away, to comparative safety. Noticing
this, one of the German officers immediately concentrated a heavy shell
fire on the heap of wounded--thirty or forty helpless men--in an attempt
to set fire to the stack. That was a deliberate effort to destroy
wounded men. We saw that, and the sight helped us to put more strength
into our determination to smash the German guns.
The Germans were mad to wipe us out, and I know that for my own part I
would not have fallen into their clutches alive. My mind was quite made
up on that point, for I had seen many a British soldier who had fallen
on the roadside, dead beat, and gone to sleep--and slept for the last
time when the Germans came up. On a previous occasion we passed through
one place where there had been a fight--it must have been in the
darkness--and the wounded had been put in a cemetery, the idea being
that the Germans would not touch a cemetery. That idea proved to be
wrong. One of the German aeroplanes that were constantly hovering over
the battery had given some German batteries our position, but we got
away, and the German gunners, enraged at our escape, instantly dropped
shells into the cemetery, to wipe the wounded out. If they would do that
they would not hesitate to fire deliberately on our wounded under the
haystack--and they did not hesitate.
It was not many minutes after the fight began in the mist when only
number six gun was left in the battery, and four of us survived to serve
it--the sergeant-major, who had taken command; Sergeant Nelson, myself,
and Driver Osborne, and we fired as fast as we could in a noise that was
now more terrible than ever and in a little camp that was utter
wreckage. There was the ceaseless din of screaming, bursting shells, the
cries of the wounded, for whom we could do something, but not much, and
the cries of the poor horses, for which we could do nothing. The noise
they made was like the grizzling of a child that is not well--a very
pitiful sound, but, of course, on a much bigger scale; and that sound of
suffering went up from everywhere around us, because everywhere there
were wounded horses.
It was not long before we managed to silence several German guns. But
very soon Sergeant Nelson was severely wounded by a bursting shell, and
that left only three of us.
The Bays’ horses, like our own, had been either killed or wounded or had
bolted, but the men had managed to get down on the right of us and take
cover under the steep bank of the road, and from that position, which
was really a natural trench, they fired destructively on the Germans.
British cavalry, dismounted, have done some glorious work in this great
war, but they have done nothing finer, I think, than their work near
Compiègne on that September morning. And of all the splendid work there
was none more splendid than the performance of a lance-corporal, who
actually planted a maxim on his own knees and rattled into the Germans
with it. There was plenty of kick in the job, but he held on gamely, and
he must have done heavy execution with his six hundred bullets a minute.
This rifle and maxim fire of the Bays had a wonderful
[Illustration:
[_To face p. 128._
“PLANTED A MAXIM ON HIS OWN KNEES AND RATTLED INTO THE GERMANS.”]
effect in silencing the German fire, and it helped us greatly when we
came to the last stage of the duel.
I don’t know how many of the Bays there were, but it was impossible for
them to charge, even if they had had their horses, owing to the fact
that the road in front of us was a deep cutting. If the cutting had not
been there the Uhlans, who alone considerably outnumbered us, would have
swept down on us and there would not have been anyone left in L Battery
at any rate.
By the time we had practically silenced the German guns the three of us
who were surviving were utterly exhausted. Osborne, who was kneeling
beside a waggon wheel, had a narrow escape from being killed. A shell
burst between the wheel and the waggon body, tore the wheel off, and
sent the spokes flying all over the place. One of the spokes caught
Osborne just over the ribs and knocked him over, backwards.
I looked round on hearing the explosion of the shell, and said, “I think
Osborne’s gone this time,” but we were thankful to find that he was only
knocked over. One of his ribs was fractured, but we did not know of this
till afterwards.
Meanwhile, the men who had gone to water the horses of the left-half
battery had heard the firing, and had tried hard to get back to help us;
but they were met on the road by an officer, who said that the battery
was practically annihilated, and it would be useless for them to return.
The Germans had seen them watering the horses, and had begun to shell
the sugar factory. This caused the remaining horses of the battery to
gallop away, and a lot of them were killed as they galloped, though a
good many got away and were afterwards found in the neighbouring town
of Compiègne, wandering about. As for the men, they “mooched” in any
direction as stragglers, and eventually we came up with them.
The three of us had served the gun and kept it in action till it was
almost too hot to work, and we were nearly worn out; but we went on
firing, and with a good heart, for we knew that the Germans had been
badly pounded, that the Bays had them in a grip, and that another
battery of horse-gunners was dashing to the rescue. On they came, in
glorious style--there is no finer sight than that of a horse battery
galloping into action.
Two or three miles away from us I Battery had heard the heavy firing,
and knew that something must be happening to us. Round they turned, and
on they dashed, taking everything before them and stopping for nothing
till they reached a ridge about 2000 yards away; then they unlimbered
and got into action, and never was there grander music heard than that
which greeted the three of us who were left in L Battery when the saving
shells of “I” screamed over us and put the finish to the German rout.
In a speech made to I Battery Sir John French said--
“No branch of the Service has done better work in this campaign than the
Royal Horse Artillery. It is impossible to pick out one occasion more
than another during this campaign on which I Battery has specially
distinguished itself, because the battery has always done brilliant
work. Your general tells me that you were in action continuously for ten
days....”
We had been pretty well hammered out of existence, but we had a kick
left in us, and we gave it, and what with this and the Bays and the
bashing by the fresh battery, the Germans soon had enough of it, and for
the time being they made no further effort to molest us.
At last the fight was finished. We had--thank God!--saved the guns, and
the Germans, despite their frantic efforts, had made no progress, and
had only a heap of dead and wounded and a lot of battered guns to show
for their attempt to smash us in the morning mist. We had kept them off
day after day, and we kept them off again. We had been badly punished,
but we had mauled them terribly in the fight, which lasted about an
hour.
Three of our guns had been disabled, two waggons blown up, and many
wheels blown off the waggons.
Some strange things had happened between Mons and Compiègne, and now
that the duel had ended we had a chance of recollecting them and
counting up the cost to us. Corporal Wheeler Carnham was knocked down
while trying to stop a runaway ammunition waggon, and one of the wheels
went over his legs. He managed to get on his feet again, but he had no
sooner done so than he was struck on the legs by a piece of shell. At
Compiègne two gunners were blown to pieces and could not be identified.
Driver Laws had both legs broken by a waggon which turned over at Mons,
and afterwards the waggon was blown up, and he went with it.
Shoeing-Smith Heath was standing alongside me at Compiègne when the
firing began. I told him to keep his head down, but he didn’t do so--and
lost it. The farrier was badly wounded, and the quartermaster-sergeant
was knocked down and run over by an ammunition waggon. Gunner Huddle, a
signaller, was looking through his glasses to try to find out where the
shells were coming from, when he was struck on the head by a piece of
bursting shell.
Our commanding officer, Major the Hon. W. D. Sclater-Booth, was standing
behind the battery, dismounted, as we all were, observing the fall of
the shells, when he was hit by a splinter from a bursting shell and
severely wounded. He was removed, and we did not see him again until we
were on the way to the base. As far as I remember, he was taken off by
one of the cavalry officers from the Bays.
Lieutenant Giffard, our right section officer, was injured early in the
fight by a shell which shattered his left knee, and he was taken and
placed with the rest of the wounded behind the haystack, where in a very
short time they were literally piled up. As soon as the officers and men
fell we did the best we could for them; but all we could do was just
simply to drag them out of the danger of the bursting shells. Luckily,
this particular haystack escaped fairly well, but very soon after the
fight began nearly every haystack in the camp was blazing fiercely, set
on fire by the German shells.
The first thing to be done after the fight was to bury our dead and
collect our wounded, and in this sorrowful task we were helped by the
Middlesex Regiment--the old “Die-Hards”--who have done so splendidly and
suffered so heavily in this war. They, like I Battery, had come up, and
we were very glad to see them. Some of our gallant wounded were beyond
help, because of the shrapnel fire.
We buried our dead on the field where they had fallen, amidst the ruins
of the battery they had fought to save, and with the fire and smoke
still rising from the ruined buildings and the burning haystacks.
Another thing we did was to go round and shoot the poor horses that were
hopelessly hurt--and a sorry task it was. One waggon we went to had five
horses killed--only one horse was left out of the six which had been
hooked in to march away in the mist of the morning; so we shot him and
put him out of his misery. We had to shoot about twenty horses; but the
rest were already dead, mostly blown to pieces and scattered over the
field--a dreadful sight.
When we had buried the dead, collected our wounded, and destroyed our
helpless horses, the guns of our battery were limbered up on to sound
waggon limbers, and a pair of horses were borrowed from each sub-section
of I Battery to take them away. Everything else was left
behind--waggons, accoutrements, clothing, caps, and so on, and the
battery was taken to a little village about four miles from Compiègne,
where we tried to snatch a bit of rest; but we had no chance of getting
it, owing to the harassing pursuit of big bodies of Uhlans.
From that time, until we reached the base, we wandered about as best we
could, and managed to live on what we could get, which was not much. We
were in a pretty sorry state, most of us without caps or jackets, and we
obtained food from other units that we passed on the road.
We were marching, dismounted, day and night, till we reached the
rail-head, where I was transferred to the base and sent home. The
sergeant-major and Osborne came home at the same time, and the
sergeant-major is now a commissioned officer. So is Sergeant Nelson.
After such a furious fight and all the hardships and sufferings of Mons
and the retreat, it seems strange and unreal to be back in peaceful
London. I don’t know what will happen to me, of course, but whatever
comes I earnestly hope that some day I shall be able to go back to the
little camp where we fought in the morning mist in such a deadly hail of
shell, and look at the resting-places of the brave officers and men who
gave their lives to save the battery they loved so well.