SIXTEEN WEEKS OF FIGHTING
[Indomitable cheerfulness and consistent courage are two of the
outstanding features of the conduct of the British soldier in the
war, and these qualities are finely shown in this story of some of
the doings of the 1st Battalion Queen’s Own Royal West Kent
Regiment, which has greatly distinguished itself and suffered
heavily. Private Montgomery is a member of a fighting family, for
he has a brother in the Royal Navy, two brothers in the Rifle
Brigade, one in the Army Service Corps, and one in the Royal Army
Medical Corps, so that there are six brothers serving their country
in this time of urgent need.]
I don’t know whether you have seen the picture of the retreat from
Moscow, showing everybody going along in a drove, this, that, and the
other way. You know it? Well, that wasn’t a patch on some parts of the
great retirement on Paris; but there was this enormous difference, that
the retreat from Moscow was just that and nothing more, while our
retirement was simply the beginning of what was to be a splendid
victory.
It led up to the present tremendous fighting and this terrific trench
work; and let me say that it is impossible for anybody who has not taken
part in that trench warfare to realise what it means. Words and pictures
will enable you to understand the life to some extent, but only by
sharing in it will you fully realise its awful meaning.
But I’m not grumbling--I’m only stating a fact. Trench life is hard and
dismal work, especially in a winter like this; but everything that it
has been possible to do for the British soldier by the folk at home has
been done.
Look at this--one of the new skin coats that have been served out to us.
This is the way we wear it--yes, it certainly does smell, but it’s
goat-skin, and might have done with a bit more curing--and I can tell
you that it takes a lot of even the wet and wind of the Low Countries to
get through the fur and skin. These coats are splendid, and a perfect
godsend.
I won’t attempt to tell you about things exactly as they happened; I’ll
talk of them just as they come into my mind, so that you can understand
what the Royal West Kents have done.
I can speak, I hope, as a fully-trained soldier, for I served eight
years with the colours and two years in the Reserve before I was called
up, and I did seven years abroad, in China, Singapore, and India; so I
had got into the way of observing things that interest a soldier.
Well, one of my first and worst experiences was when at about ten-thirty
at night the order for a general retirement was given, but through some
mistake that order did not reach a sergeant and fourteen of the West
Kents, of whom I was one, and it was not until just before four o’clock
in the morning that we got the word, and began to try and pull ourselves
out of it.
The Germans were then not more than eighty yards away from us, and our
position was desperate. To make matters worse, the bridge by which we
had to get across a neighbouring canal had been blown up, but as it
happened the detonator on the overhead part of the bridge had not
exploded, so that there was still a sort of communication across the
water.
The bridge was full of wire entanglements and broken chains--a mass of
metal wreckage--and the only way of crossing was to scramble along the
ruins and crawl along what had been the iron parapet, which was only
eight or nine inches wide. You will best understand what I mean if you
imagine one of the iron bridges over the Thames destroyed, and that the
principal thing left is the flat-topped iron side which you often see.
Under a terrible fire we made for the parapet and got on to it as best
we could. I was the last man but one to get on to it. Just in front of
me was Lance-corporal Gibson, and just behind me was Private Bailey.
With the Germans so near, so many of them, and keeping up such a heavy
fire on us, you can imagine what it meant to crawl along a twisted
parapet like that. The marvel is that a single one of us escaped, but a
few of us did, which was no credit to the German marksmanship.
The bullets whizzed and whistled around us and very soon both the man in
front of me and the man behind were struck.
The corporal was knocked straight over and disappeared. Bailey was shot
through the instep, but he managed to hold on to the parapet, and to
make a very singular request.
“Mont,” he said, “come and take my boot off!”
I turned round and saw what had happened to him; but, of course, it
wasn’t possible to do what he asked, when it needed every bit of one’s
strength and skill to hang on to the parapet and keep crawling, so I
cried back, “Never mind about taking your boot off--come on!”
It was no use saying anything; poor chap, he would insist on having his
boot off, so I said, “For Heaven’s sake get along, or we shall all get
knocked over!” And with that I started to crawl again, and to get ahead
as best I could.
The corporal, as I have said, had gone; he had been hit right between
the shoulder-blades, and I just saw him roll over into the horrible
barbed-wire entanglements.
What exactly happened to poor Bailey I don’t know. I hadn’t a chance of
looking back, but I heard afterwards that both he and the corporal were
found lying there, dead, with their faces spattered with blood.
At last, after what seemed like a miraculous escape, I got clear of the
parapet, with a few more, and landed safely on the other side of the
canal, looking for the West Kents; but it had been impossible to re-form
any battalion, and regiments were walking about like flocks of sheep.
Efforts were being made to re-form our own men, but at that time there
was no chance of doing so.
It was the sight of these disorganised and wandering soldiers that
brought to my mind the picture of the retreat from Moscow.
It was not until we reached Le Cateau that the handful of us rejoined
the regiment, and so far as fighting went we merely changed from bad to
worse.
At Le Cateau the West Kents held the second line of trenches, and the
Yorkshire Light Infantry were in the first line, so that we were
supporting them. We had the 121st and 122nd Batteries of the Royal
Field Artillery in front of us--and no troops could wish for better
gunners than the British.
We got into the trenches at about four-thirty on the morning of the
26th, and remained in them for something like twelve hours, and during
that time we took part in what was probably the fiercest battle that had
ever been fought up to that time, though there was worse to follow in
the Ypres region. We were rather unlucky, as it happened, because we
were forced to lie in the trenches and watch the other regiments and our
artillery shelling the enemy without our being able to fire a shot, for
we were so placed that we could not do anything effective against the
enemy just then.
The Yorkshire Light Infantry retired, and then came the order for the
West Kents to go. It was an order that needed the greatest care and
courage to carry out, but it had been given, and, of course, the West
Kents always do just what they are told to do. We did so now, with the
result, I am proud to say, that we carried out Colonel Martyn’s command
to the letter.
“Don’t get excited in any way,” he said. “Just go off as if you were on
battalion parade.”
And we did, and the colonel showed us how to do it, for he walked off
just as he might have walked off the barrack square, though all the time
we were under heavy shell fire and our men were falling. We lost a fair
number, but not many, considering the nature of the fire upon us.
We got as far as St. Quentin, which is a big town, trying to find out
where our regiment had gone; but we got cold comfort, for a man came up
and said: “It’s no good going in there. The town’s surrounded. The best
thing you can do is to put down your arms and surrender.”
We didn’t relish the surrender suggestion, and we started to make
inquiries. A sergeant who spoke French went up to a gendarme who was at
the side of the railway station, and asked him if it was true that the
town was surrounded.
The gendarme replied that he didn’t know, but he believed the statement
was true; anyway he advised us to remain where we were.
Not satisfied with that, about half a dozen of us went up to a French
cavalry officer and put the question to him.
The cavalry officer, like the gendarme, said he didn’t know, but told us
that the best thing we could do was to go on to a place, which he named,
about eight miles away, and off we went; but before we reached it we
came across a cavalry division, and learned that it was not safe to go
farther. Again we were advised to remain where we were, and we did for
the time being.
It was not until later that we discovered what a narrow escape we had
had, for three German cavalry divisions had been ordered to pursue the
retiring troops hereabouts, but through a blunder the order had
miscarried and the Uhlans did not follow us.
In such a serious business as this we had, of course, lost heavily, and
we continued to lose. Major Buckle, D.S.O., one of the bravest men that
ever stepped in a pair of shoes in the British Army, lost his life in
attempting to distribute the West Kents. That is merely one of many
instances of officers and men who were killed under fire.
Sometimes men were lost in the most extraordinary manner, especially
owing to shell fire. At one time about six big shells burst, and in the
wreckage caused by one of the explosions ten men were buried.
Men volunteered to go and try to dig these poor fellows out, but as fast
as the volunteers got to work they, too, were shelled and buried, so
that in the end about thirty men were buried--buried alive. It was
useless to attempt to continue such a forlorn hope, and it was
impossible to dig the men out, so they had to be left. It was hard to do
this, but there was nothing else for it.
Bodies of men were lost, too, as prisoners, when overpowering numbers of
Germans had to be met, or when the Germans rushed unarmed men and left
them no alternative to capture. A doctor and twenty-five men of the West
Kents who were acting as stretcher-bearers were taken. Very splendid
work is done by the stretcher-bearers, who go to the trenches every
night to collect the wounded, and bring them in to the hospitals. All
sorts of buildings and places are used as hospitals, and in this case it
was the cellar of a house in a village that was utilised. The men were
not armed, as they were acting as members of the Royal Army Medical
Corps, to render first aid.
Just about midnight the Germans broke through the line and surrounded
the village, and rushed in and captured the stretcher-bearers, and took
them off, no doubt thinking they had gallantly won a very fine prize.
I remember this particular occasion well, because on the following
morning we were reinforced by some of the native Bhopal Infantry, from
India, and that took me back to the time I spent in that country. Little
did I think in those days, when we were associated so much with the
troops of the Indian Army, that the day would come when, in the heart of
winter, we and the Indians would be fighting side by side in the awful
Low Countries.
I got used to the heat of the day and the cold of the night in India,
but it wasn’t easy to become accustomed to the sweltering heat of the
earlier days of the war, or the bitter cold of the winter.
One day, not long before I came home, we had six miles to do, after a
very heavy fall of snow. We ploughed through the snow in the daytime,
and at night we travelled in the transport, but what with the snow by
day and the bitter freezing by night, we were fourteen hours covering
that short distance--which works out at something under half a mile an
hour. And that was the roundabout way we had to go to get at some enemy
trenches which were only about fifty yards away from us. But, in spite
of this terrific weather, we had only one or two cases of frost-bite.
A change on trench work and actual fighting came with my being told off
as an ammunition carrier. There are two ammunition carriers to each
company, and our duty was to keep the firing line well supplied with
ammunition. This we fetched from the pack-mules, which were some
distance away, and we took it to the men in the firing line in
bandoliers, which we filled from the boxes carried by the mules. It was
lively work, especially when the mules turned awkward and the firing was
hot; but we got through it all right--Lance-Corporal Tweedale and
myself.
One night, when the shell and rifle fire was very heavy, we went up to
the firing line with ammunition, which was badly wanted, and we had such
a hot time of it that the officer in charge advised us to remain for a
couple of hours, till the firing slackened or ceased; but we had a
feeling that it would be more comfortable in the rear, and as the matter
rested with us we started off to get back.
This was one of the most uncomfortable bits of journeying I ever
undertook, for in order to shelter from the fire of the Germans, which
threatened every second to kill us, we had to crawl along a ditch for
fully three-quarters of a mile. We crawled along in the darkness, with
the bullets whizzing and shells bursting; but we lay low, and at last
got out of it and landed back at the rear, which was certainly more
agreeable than being in the very thick of the firing line.
I am proud to be one of the Royal West Kents, because they have done so
well in this great war. “Give ’em a job and they’ll do it,” a general
said of us, just after Le Cateau. One day another general said, “What
regiment is that coming out of the trenches?” The answer was, “The Royal
West Kent, sir,” and the general promptly said, “For Heaven’s sake give
them a rest--they’ve earned it!” But we hadn’t gone more than two
hundred yards when a staff officer told us to get into position in a
field and dig ourselves in--and we were the last out of action that day.
At another time, when we had been hard at it, a general said: “Come on,
West Kents! In another half-hour you’ll be in your billets.” And we went
on, for that sounded very cheerful; but, instead of going into billets,
we had half-an-hour’s rest for a drop of tea--then we went on outpost
duty for the night, and woke in the morning in a big scrap.
I am mentioning these things just to show how unexpectedly
disappointments came at times; but we soon got into the way of taking
these set-backs as part of the day’s work.
When the winter advanced, the strain became uncommonly severe, but we
were able to bear it owing to the first-rate system of relief we had--a
relief which gave us as much change as possible on the confinement and
hardship of the actual trenches.
Some very strange things happened in the trenches, and none were
stranger than those cases of men being in them for long periods under
heavy fire and escaping scot free, to be succeeded by others who lost
their lives almost as soon as they got into their places.
There was one youngster--he could not have been more than seventeen or
eighteen--who had been in France only about a fortnight. He was having
his second day in the trenches, and, like a good many more who are new
to the business, he was curious to see what was going on. This was
particularly dangerous, as the Germans were only sixty yards away, and
any seen movement on the part of our men brought instant fire.
The officer kept telling the youngster to keep down, and more than once
he pulled him down; but the lad seemed fascinated by the port-hole of
the trench--the loop-hole, it is generally called--and he looked through
it again; once too often, for a German marksman must have spotted him.
Anyway, a bullet came through the port-hole and struck the lad just
under the eye, went through his brain, and killed him on the spot.
I will give you another curious instance, that of Sergeant Sharpe. It
was his turn to be in reserve, but he had volunteered to go up to the
trenches, to look round. He had scarcely had time to put his feet in
them before a shot came and struck him between the eyes, killing him
instantly.
I specially remember the sad case of the inquisitive youngster, because
it happened on the very day I was wounded, and that was December 16. I
was in a trench, sitting over a coke fire in a biscuit tin, when a
bullet struck me on the chin--here’s the scar--then went to the back of
the trench, where it struck a fellow on the head, without seriously
hurting him, and came back to me, hitting me just over the right eye,
but not doing any serious mischief. After that I was sent into hospital,
and later on came home.
On the way back I came across two very singular cases. One was that of a
man who had had his arm amputated only a fortnight previously, and he
was not used to it. He used to turn round and say, “I keep putting up my
hand to scratch the back of it--and the hand isn’t there!”
I saw another poor fellow--quite a youngster--who was being carried on a
stretcher to the train. Both his legs had been blown off by a shell. I
was right alongside when he said, “For Heaven’s sake cover up my
feet--they’re cold!” He lived for about half an hour after that, but
never reached the train.
There is one thing I would like to say in finishing, and that is to
thank our own flesh and blood for what they have done for us. I’m sure
there never can have been a war in which so much has been done in the
way of sending presents like cigarettes and tobacco; but I think that
too much has been sent at one time, and that friends would do well to
keep some of the good gifts back a bit. They will all be wanted later
on.