WITH THE “FIGHTING FIFTH”
[One of the battalions which composed the 5th Division of the
British Expeditionary Force was the 1st East Surrey Regiment. It
was on the 5th Division that so much of the heavy fighting fell on
the way to the Aisne, and in that heavy fighting the East Surreys
suffered very severely. This story is told by Private W. G. Long,
who rejoined his regiment from the Reserve. He has been wounded by
shrapnel, and has permanently lost the use of his right arm.]
When I went out with my old battalion, the Young Buffs, we were more
than 1,300 strong. When I came back, after six weeks’ fighting, we had
lost more than half that number. This simple fact will show you what the
East Surreys have done during the war, as part of the famous “Fighting
Fifth” which has been so greatly praised by Sir John French.
I had got up to start my day’s work after the August Bank Holiday; but
that day’s work was never done, for the postman brought the mobilisation
papers, and off I went to Kingston, after kissing my wife and baby
good-bye. Many a fine fellow who marched off with me is sleeping in or
near a little forest which we called “Shrapnel Wood.” That was near
Missy, where we crossed the Aisne on rafts.
We lost our first man soon after we landed in France, and before we met
the Germans. That was at Landrecies, where we went into French barracks,
and were told off into rooms which we called rabbit-hutches, because
they were so small--no bigger than a little kitchen at home. We were
crowded into these, and the only bed we had was a bit of straw on the
floor. The nights were bitterly cold, but the days were hot enough to
melt us; so we had a bathing parade, and had a fine old time in the
canal till one of our men was missed.
I looked around, and saw that one of our fellows was having artificial
respiration tried on him. He came round, and then he told us that
another man had gone under the water. Then began a really first-class
diving display, many of our chaps plunging into the canal to try to find
the missing soldier.
At last one of the divers rose and shouted, “I’ve got him!” And, sure
enough, he had brought a poor chap to the surface. Lots of strong arms
were stretched out, and in a few seconds the rescued man was got on to
the bank, and every effort was made to bring him back to life. But
nothing could be done. The man was drowned, and we buried him. This
little tragedy threw quite a gloom over us till we moved away.
I am going to tell of a few of the things that happened and affected me
personally. They took place mostly when we were retiring, and some of
them occurred in the early days, when we were forging along in fearfully
bad weather. We were soaked to the skin, and at night did our best to
get some sort of shelter by building up the stacks of corn that had been
cut for drying, but it was no use. The rain came through so heavily that
we gave the task up, and waited for daylight again. When the day came it
brought another rain of shells and bullets with it. The place got too
warm for us, so we had to leave and retire again. We went on, getting as
much shelter as we could; and then we had to halt, and here the sorry
discovery was made that we had not a round of ammunition left. At this
time there were advancing towards us some men in khaki, and our
sergeant, thinking they were our own men, told us not to fire at them.
The order was not necessary, seeing that we had nothing to fire with. As
soon as these men got level with us on our flank they opened fire, and
then we knew that they were Germans, who had stripped some of our men,
or had picked up British caps and greatcoats which had been thrown
aside.
In this desperate position a man who belonged to the Cornwall Light
Infantry was shot just below the left ear. He was knocked down, but got
up, and kept saying, “Help me! Help me!”
I shouted to him to lie down and keep under cover, but he took no
notice, and kept on calling for help. He came up to me, and when he was
near enough I pulled him down and forced him to lie on the ground. All
this time there was a very heavy fire. We were getting shots from the
front and on our flanks, and there was nothing for it but to get away as
best we could.
I could not bear the thought of leaving this Cornwall man where he was,
so I took him up and began to carry him, but it was very slow going. It
was all uphill, the ground was sodden with rain, and I had to force a
way through a field of turnips, which were growing as high as my knees.
It was bad enough to make one’s own way through such a tangle as that;
but I am young and strong, and I managed to make progress, although I
was hit five different times--not hurt, but struck, a shot, for
instance, hitting my cap, another my water-bottle, and another the
sleeve of my coat.
After going a long distance, as it seemed, and feeling utterly
exhausted, I put my man down under what I thought was safe shelter. I
wanted to give him a drink, but I could not do so, as the shot-hole in
my water-bottle had let the water run to waste.
At last we reached a roadway, where we saw some more of our men, who had
got there before us, and had commandeered a horseless cart and filled it
with wounded men.
I got the wounded man into the cart, and then off we all went. It was as
much as we could manage to get the cart along, for it was such a great
big thing; but we worked it willingly, the officers taking their turn in
the shafts.
We dragged the cart along the heavy roads, but it was such hard going
that we saw that we should be forced to get a horse from somewhere; so
we looked around at the first farm we came to--and a sorry place it was,
with everything in confusion, and the animals about suffering terribly
and starving--and there we found a horse of the largest size.
With great difficulty we got together bits of harness, string and rope,
and tied the horse in the shafts with the ropes for traces, and when we
had finished we did not know whether we had harnessed the horse or tied
the cart on to it. Anyway, we got along very well after that.
The cart had amongst its wounded an infantry officer who had been saved
by one of our fellows, though the officer belonged to another regiment.
He had got entangled in some barbed wire, and, as he had been wounded
in the leg, he could not move either one way or the other. He was
absolutely helpless, and under a heavy fire.
Our fellow went out and got to the helpless officer, and, by sticking at
it and doing all he could, being himself pretty badly cut in the
operation, he freed the officer from the entanglement, and carried him
safely up to the cart. We were getting on very nicely with our little
contrivance when we ran into the 2nd Dragoons, but we soon left them
behind us, and found ourselves amongst some of our own transport. We
joined up with it, adding another and a very strange waggon to the
column, and on we went until we reached a large town and halted.
During the whole of this time I had been carrying a canteen which had
belonged to a Frenchman. It was quite a big canteen, and I kept it
filled with apples, of which we got an enormous number, and on which at
times we had practically to live for two or three days together.
We had reached a stage of fighting when we had to make continuous short
rushes against the Germans, under hails of shrapnel. In making these
rushes it often happened that we sheltered behind a little sort of
earthwork which we threw up. We just made a bit of head cover and lay
behind that; but sometimes this head cover could not be made, and that
was where I scored with my Frenchman’s canteen.
During one of our rushes shrapnel burst right over my head, and one
fellow said to me, “I wouldn’t carry that thing, George, if I were you.”
But, having kept it for so long, I was not going to throw it away.
Away we went. I was carrying the canteen in my left hand, and my rifle
in the right; but I changed them over, and I had no sooner done that
than crash came a shell, and, in bursting, a fragment hit the canteen,
and took a great piece out of it. I should have been badly wounded
myself, but I had filled the canteen with earth, and so it had protected
me and acted as a first-rate cover. The man who was on my right received
a nasty wound.
After this we had to advance over open country, where there was not so
much as a blade of grass for cover. We went on till we reached a ditch,
which was full of water. Some of us had to wade through it, but others,
by going farther back, were able to cross a tiny footbridge--one of
those narrow planks which only allow one man at a time to cross. The
Germans had a machine-gun trained at this little bridge so we lost no
time in getting off it. It was here that our captain was mortally
wounded by a shot, and we had other casualties in crossing the bridge.
From this point we had to climb to the top of a hill, which was so steep
that we had to dig our fixed bayonets into the ground to help us up.
There was a wood at the top of the hill, and there we took shelter; but
we had no sooner got amongst the trees than the shrapnel was on us
again, causing many casualties.
There were many funny incidents at this place, and one I particularly
remember was that there were three of us in a sort of heap, when a piece
of shell dropped just alongside. There was not any great force in it,
because before falling the piece had struck a tree; but, as it dropped,
fellows started turning up the collars of their coats, and rolling
themselves into balls--just as if things of that sort could make any
difference to a bursting shell; but it is amusing to see what men will
do at such a time as that.
From this wood we got into what seemed a wide roadway between two other
woods, and here we were under a never-ending rain of bullets, which hit
the trees, sending splinters all over us, cutting branches off and
ploughing up the ground on every side. One of our officers said, “Keep
your heads down, lads,” and he had scarcely got the words out of his
mouth when he was shot in the body and killed, and we had to leave him
where he fell.
So heavy and continuous was the fire that we could not get on between
these two woods, and we had to try another way; so we started to go
through a vineyard, but we were forced to lie down. We sheltered as best
we could amongst the vines, with bullets coming and actually cutting off
bunches of grapes. Like good British soldiers, we made the best of the
business, for we were both hungry and thirsty, and we devoured a good
many of the bunches that were knocked off by the German bullets.
After this we got into an orchard, but we did not remain there long, as
the place was later on blown to smithereens. We hung on to the orchard
till it was dark, then we advanced farther into the wood, and again got
through into the open, and lay down to try and get some sleep; but that
was almost impossible, because it was raining and perishingly cold, and
we had nothing at all for cover. Then, in whispers, we were ordered to
get out as silently as we possibly could.
At first I could not understand the meaning of this secrecy, but it soon
became known that we had been actually sleeping amongst the enemy,
though we were not aware of this until we were again on the move. We
crept about like a lot of mice, till we reached a village, where we were
to get some breakfast.
We were settling down, and making ourselves comfortable under a wall
which gave us some cover. There were some men from another regiment with
us, and we thought we were going to have a good time, for we had got
hold of some biscuits and jam. Then over the wall came a shell, which
exploded and wounded about seven men from the other regiment. We did not
stop for any more breakfast, and some of the men who had had nothing to
eat did not trouble to get anything, and they went without food for the
rest of the day.
We went back to the wood, and there we soon again found the Germans, and
plenty of them. We fired at them for all we were worth, after which we
advanced a little, and came across so many dead that we had to jump over
them every pace we took. One thing which particularly struck me then,
and which I remember now, was the great size of some of these German
soldiers. At a little distance they looked just like fallen logs.
After that our officer called us together to wait for reinforcements. I
thought I would have a look around me, and while I was doing so I saw
one German running off to our left, about fifteen yards away. I took aim
and fired, and down he went. I got down on my knee and unloaded my
rifle, when I saw another German going in the same direction. I was just
getting ready to take aim again, but this time I did not fire--in fact,
I did not even get to the aim, for I felt something hit my arm.
For the moment I thought that some chap behind me had knocked me with
his rifle or his foot. I turned round, but there was no one behind me,
so I concluded that I had been hit. I stood up, and then my arm began to
wobble, and the blood streamed out of my sleeve. Some one shouted,
“You’ve got it, George.” And I replied: “Yes; in the arm somewhere, but
where I don’t know.”
I did my best to get back again, and then a fellow came, and ripped the
sleeve open and dressed my arm, and there was all my elbow joint laid
open, and some of the bones broken. This chap wanted to take me back to
the village, but I said I was all right, although in a sense I was
helpless. We started going back, and we got to the first house, where we
saw a poor old man and his daughter who had been there all through the
fighting. The place was filled with wounded, and the two were doing
their best for them.
I asked for a drink, for I was almost dying of thirst, and I got some
whisky. While I was drinking it a shell burst in the middle of the road,
and sent the mud and stones everywhere; so I shifted my quarters, and
went along to a big house which had been a fine place, but it had been
pulled to pieces, and was now being used as a hospital. The place itself
gave no protection, but we found a cellar and crowded into it, and there
we watched the Germans blowing the temporary hospital to pieces.
The night came, and it was terrible to hear the poor chaps moaning with
pain. I was in pain myself now, but my sufferings were a mere nothing
compared with those of some of the men around me. It seemed as if the
day would never break, but at last it came, and by that time some of the
poor fellows who had been making such pitiful noises were no more. Some
time after that, however, I got away in a field ambulance.
When we were at Le Cateau many spies were caught. I saw several of them.
They were young chaps, dressed up as women and as boys and girls, and it
was not very easy to detect them. One was disguised as a woman, with
rather a good figure. I saw this interesting female when she was
captured by our artillery. The gunners had their suspicions aroused,
with the result that they began to knock the lady about a bit, and her
wig fell off. Then her figure proved to be not what it seemed, for the
upper front part of it was composed of two carrier-pigeons! I did not
see the end of that batch of spies, but a battery sergeant-major
afterwards told me that they had been duly shot.
One of the most extraordinary things I saw was the conduct of a man who
had had his right arm shot off from above the elbow. I was standing
quite near him, and expected that he would fall and be helpless. Instead
of doing that, he turned his head and looked at the place where the arm
should have been. I suppose he must have been knocked off his balance by
what had happened. At any rate, he gave a loud cry, and instantly
started to run as fast as I ever saw a man go. Two or three members of
the Royal Army Medical Corps at once gave chase, with the object of
securing him and attending to him. The whole lot of them disappeared
over some rising ground, and what happened to them I do not know.
I saw many fellows who had queer tales to tell of what had happened to
them. One chap, a rifleman, who was in the ship coming home, was so
nervous that the slightest noise made him almost jump out
[Illustration:
[_To face p. 234._
“I TOOK HIM UP AND BEGAN TO CARRY HIM” (p. 227).]
of his skin. And well it might, for his nerves had been shattered. A
shell had buried itself in the ground just in front of him and exploded,
blowing him fifteen feet into the air, and landing him in a bed of mud.
He was so completely stunned that he lay there for about eight hours,
scarcely moving, though he was not even scratched. He came round all
right, but was a nervous wreck, and had to be invalided.