Moyenneville spur in front of Adinfer Wood facing Douchy and Ayette,
where “three weeks ago no man could have lived.” They talked together
of the far-off times when they held that line daily expecting the
enemy advance; and the officers lay out luxuriously in the wood in
the evening after Mess, while the men made themselves “little homes
in it.”
Next day they rested, for the men were very tired, and on the last
of the month the whole Battalion was washed in the divisional baths
that had established themselves at Adinfer. But the enemy had not
forgotten them, and on the first of September their shelters and
tents in the delightful wood were bombed. Six men were injured, five
being buried in a trench, and of these two were suffocated before
they could be dug out.
TOWARDS THE CANAL DU NORD
And that was all the rest allowed to the Battalion. On the 2nd
September the Canadian Corps of the First Army broke that outlying
spur of the Hindenburg System known as the Drocourt-Quéant Switch,
with its wires, trenches, and posts; and the Fifty-seventh and
Fifty-second Divisions, after hard work, equally smashed the
triangle of fortifications north-west of Quéant where the Switch
joined the System. The gain shook the whole of the Hindenburg Line
south of Quéant and, after five days’ clean-up behind the line, the
Guards Division were ordered to go in again at the very breast of
Hindenburg’s works. No one knew what the enemy’s idea might be, but
there was strong presumption that, if he did not hold his defence at
that point, he might crack. (“But, ye’ll understand, for all that, we
did _not_ believe Jerry would crack past mendin’.”)
The Battalion spent the night of the 2nd September, then, in shelters
in Hamel Switch Trench on their way back from Adinfer Wood to the
battle. The front had now shifted to very much the one as we held
in April, 1917, ere the days of Cambrai and Bourlon Wood. The 1st
Guards Brigade were in Divisional Reserve at Lagnicourt, three miles
south-west of Ecoust-St.-Mein, where the Battalion had to cross their
still fresh battle-field of less than a week back, as an appetizer to
their hot dinners. They occupied a waist-deep old trench, a little
west of Lagnicourt, and noticed that there was no shelling, though
the roads were full of our traffic, “a good deal of it in full view
of Bourlon Wood.” Going over “used” ground for the third time and
noting one’s many dead comrades does not make for high spirit even
though one’s own Divisional General has written one’s own Brigadier,
“All battalions of the 1st Guards Brigade discharged their duty
splendidly at St. Léger.”
Lagnicourt was shelled a little by a high-velocity gun between the
4th and the 6th of September, and seventeen bombs were dropped on the
Battalion, wounding two men.
By all reason there should have been a bitter fight on that ground,
and full preparation for it was made. But the enemy, after St. Léger,
saw fit to withdraw himself suddenly and unexpectedly out of all that
area. For one bewildering dawn and day “the bottom fell out of the
front,” as far as the Guards Division was concerned. It is a curious
story, even though it does not directly concern the Battalion. Here
is one detail of it:
On the 3rd September the 2nd Brigade toiled in from Monchy, in full
war-kit, and, tired with the long day’s heat, formed up west of
Lagnicourt before dawn, detailed to win, if they could, a thousand
yards or so of chewed-up ground. They “went over the top” under
a creeping barrage, one gun of which persistently fired short,
and--found nothing whatever in front of them save a prodigious number
of dead horses, some few corpses, and an intolerable buzzing of
flies! As they topped the ridge above Lagnicourt, they saw against
the first light of the sun, dump after German dump blazing palely
towards the east. That was all. They wandered, wondering, into a
vast, grassy, habitationless plain that stretched away towards
the Bapaume-Cambrai road. Not a machine-gun broke the stupefying
stillness from any fold of it. Yet it was the very place for such
surprises. Aeroplanes swooped low, looked them well over, and skimmed
off. No distant guns opened. The advance became a route-march, a
Sunday walk-out, edged with tense suspicion. They saw a German
cooker wrecked on the grass, and, beside it, the bodies of two
clean, good-looking boys, pathetically laid out as for burial. The
thing was a booby-trap arranged to move our people’s pity. Some
pitied, and were blown to bits by the concealed mine. No one made any
comment. They were tired with carrying their kit in the sun among
the maddening flies. The thousand yards stretched into miles. Twice
or thrice they halted and began to dig in for fear of attack. But
nothing overtook them and they installed themselves, about dusk, in
some old British trenches outside Boursies, four miles and more, as
the crow flies, from Lagnicourt! At midnight, up came their rations,
and the punctual home-letters, across that enchanted desert which had
spared them. They were told that their Brigade Artillery was in place
behind the next rise, ready to deliver barrages on demand, and in due
course the whole of our line on that sector flowed forward.
The Battalion relieved the 1st Scots Guards in the front line near
Mœuvres on the 7th--a quiet relief followed by severe gassing. Here
they passed two days in the delicate and difficult business of
feeling all about them among the mass of old trenches, to locate
enemy’s posts and to watch what points of vantage might offer. The
wreckage of the houses round Mœuvres, into which the trenches ran,
lent itself excellently to enemy activity; and men played blind-man’s
buff round bits of broken walls wherever they explored. Their left
was in the air; their right under the care of Providence; and their
supports were far off. No. 3 Company (Captain G. L. Bambridge,
M.C.), while trying to close a gap between the two front companies (3
and 1) by peaceful penetration with a bombing-party, found enemy in
the trench, drove him up it as far as they could, built a barricade,
and were then heavily counter-raided by a couple of officers and
twenty men whom they ejected after, as the Company justly owned, “a
good attempt.” The enemy “attempted” again about midnight on the 8th,
when he was bombed off, and again on the afternoon of the 9th in an
outlying trench, mixed up with smashed cellars and broken floors,
where he captured two unarmed stretcher-bearers and three men who
had not been in the line before. Though it does new hands no harm
to realize that front-line trenches are not Warley Barracks (and
stretcher-bearers, like orderlies, are prey to all the world), still
the matter could not be passed over. Our trench-mortars attended
vigorously to the enemy posts whence the raid had been launched, and
in the afternoon sent a strong patrol to make the outraged trench
secure. Later on, a platoon of No. 1 Company got into touch with
the battalion (8th King’s) on their left, and took part in a small
“bicker,” as it was described, but with no casualties.
They were relieved the same night, though they did not expect it, by
the 1/5th Battalion Loyal North Lancs who had not made sure of their
route beforehand, and so, in wet darkness, lost their way, failed
to meet the guides at the rendezvous, and were heavily shelled.
The relief dragged on till well towards dawn, when the battalions
straggled off into some drenching trenches without any sort of
accommodation. (“The whole thing the most appalling mess and agony
I have ever experienced.”) The worst was when a stray light went up
and showed the relieved Battalion under pouring rain playing “follow
my leader” in a complete circle like caterpillars, in the hopeful
belief that they were moving to their destination. They next took the
place of the 3rd Guards Brigade in reserve-trenches near Edinburgh
Support, where they stayed till the 14th September and were not even
once shelled. Salvage and cleaning up was their fatigue--a dreadful
job at any time, for the ground was filled with ancient offal as
well as new--lost French of ’14 mingled grotesquely with the raw
produce of yesterday’s bombing-raid. Yet men’s feelings blunt so by
use that they will scavenge yard by yard over the very clay of the
pit into which they themselves may at any instant be stamped, nor
turn a hair at shapes made last year in their likeness. The Battalion
was complimented by its Major-General on the extent and neatness of
its dump. No mere campaigning interferes with the Army’s passion
for elaborate economies. A little before this, the entire British
Expeditionary Force was exhorted to collect and turn in all solder
from bully-beef tins and the like. Naturally, the thing became a game
with betting on results between corps; but when a dark, elderly,
brooding private of the Irish spent three hours stalking a Coldstream
cooker with intent to convey and melt it down, every one felt it had
gone far enough.
On the 15th September they relieved the 1st Scots Guards in the old
trenches west of Lagnicourt. There they managed to put in a little
box-respirator drill which at the best is a dry fatigue, but, be it
noted with gratitude, “beer was obtained for the men and sent up from
transport-lines.” The whole area reeked of the various gases which
the enemy were distributing with heavies. They hung in the hollows
and were sucked up by the day’s heat, and no time or place was safe
from them. Gas-discipline had to be insisted on strongly, for even
veterans grow careless of a foe they cannot see; and the new hands
are like croupy babies.
On the 17th September they relieved the 2nd Scots Guards in support,
and No. 2 Company took over from a company of the Welsh Guards. Their
trenches were in what had been the British front line of the old
time--Fish Avenue, Sprat Post, Shark Support, Rat and Rabbit Avenue,
and so forth.
There was desultory shelling on the morning of the 18th, and
heavier work in the afternoon, causing six casualties, and slightly
wounding Captain Vernon, Intelligence Officer. Then the silence
of preparation for battle falls on the record. It was nothing to
the Battalion that on the 18th September the enemy “apparently
attacked south of the divisional front along the Bapaume-Cambrai
road.” The dead must bury their dead on the Somme. They had their
own dispositions to arrange and re-arrange, as men, for one cause or
other, fell out and no unit could afford to take chances, with the
Hindenburg Line ahead of them. (“An’ we knowin’ we was told off to
cross that dirty ditch in front of ’em all.”) Their world, as with
every other division, was limited to the Reserves behind them, who
should come up to make good their casualties; their trench-mortar
batteries alongside them; and their own selves about to be used in
what promised to be one of the bloodiest shows of the war.
Those who were for the front line enjoyed a week to work and think
things over. Those who were set aside for the second course were
bombed by night and--went mushroom-picking in back-areas between
parades, or played riotous cricket-matches with petrol-tins for
wickets!
Their Divisional Commander, Major-General Feilding, had left on
September 11 to succeed Sir Francis Lloyd in command of the London
District, and General T. G. Matheson, C.B., had been appointed to
the command of the Guards Division. The Battalion was full strength,
officers and men, for there had been little during the past month to
pull it down.
THE CROSSING OF THE CANAL DU NORD
Operations against the Hindenburg Line were to open on the 27th
September with the attack of fourteen divisions of the First and
Third Armies on a twelve-mile front from opposite Gouzeaucourt in
the south to opposite Sauchy-Lestrée, sister to Sauchy-Cauchy--under
the marshes of the Sensée River in the north. It would be heralded
by two days’ solid bombardment along the entire fronts of the First,
Third, and Fourth Armies, so that the enemy might be left guessing
which was to hit first. When the First and Third Armies were well
home, the Fourth would attend to the German position in the south,
and heave the whole thing backward.
The share of the Guards Division in the northern attack was to cross
the Canal du Nord at Lock Seven, north of Havrincourt, on a front of
a mile; then work through the complicated tangle of the Hindenburg
support line directly east along the ridge from Flesquières village
to Premy Chapel which stands at the junction of the roads from
Noyelles, Marcoing, and Graincourt, and to consolidate on the line
of the Marcoing-Graincourt road. Meantime, the Third Division on
their right would take the village of Flesquières; the Fifty-second
Division would take the Hindenburg Line that lay west of the Canal
in the bend of it, and would then let the Sixty-third through who
would swing down from the north and attend to Graincourt and Anneux
villages. The total advance set for the Guards Division was three
miles, but, if the operations were fully successful, they were to
push on to the outskirts of Noyelles; the Third Division to Marcoing;
while the Fifty-seventh, coming through the Sixty-third, would take
Cantaing and Fontaine-Notre-Dame. In the Guards Division itself, the
2nd Brigade was to move off first, and ferret its way through a knot
of heavily wired trenches that lay between them and the Canal, take
the Hindenburg support trenches, and then form a defensive flank to
the left of the next advance till the Fifty-second and Sixty-third
Divisions should have secured Graincourt. The 1st Brigade would pass
through them and capture the trenches across the Canal to the north
and north-east of Flesquières. If resistance were not too strong,
that brigade was to go on to the spur running from Flesquières to
Cantaing, and help the Sixty-third turn the Graincourt line. The 3rd
Brigade, passing through the 1st, would carry on and take the high
ground round Premy Chapel.
Enough rain fell the day before to grease the ground uncomfortably,
and when at 3.30 A. M. the Irish Guards moved off from their reserve
trenches west of Lagnicourt to their assembly positions along the
Demicourt-Graincourt road to Bullen Trench, the jumping-off place,
it was pouring wet. They were not shelled on the way up, but the
usual night-work was afoot in the back-areas, and though our guns,
as often the case on the eve of an outbreak, held their breath,
the enemy’s artillery threatened in the distance, and the lights
and “flaming onions” marked their expectant front. Just before the
Battalion reached the ruins of Demicourt, there was an explosion
behind them, and they saw, outlined against the flare of a blazing
dump, Lagnicourt way, a fat and foolish observation-balloon rocking
and ducking at the end of its tether, with the air of a naughty
baby caught in the act of doing something it shouldn’t. Since the
thing was visible over half a Department, they called it names, but
it made excuse for a little talk that broke the tension. Tea and
rum were served out at the first halt--a ritual with its usual grim
jests--and when they reached the road in front of Demicourt, they
perceived the balloon had done its dirty work too well. The enemy,
like ourselves, changes his field-lights on occasion, but, on all
occasions, two red lights above and one below mean trouble. “Up go
the bloody pawnbrokers!” said a man who knew what to expect, and, as
soon as the ominous glares rose, the German trench-mortars opened
on the Battalion entering the communication-way that led to Bullen
Trench. Our barrage came down at Zero (5.20) more terrifically, men
said, than ever they had experienced, and was answered by redoubled
defensive barrages. After that, speech was cut off. Some fifty yards
ahead of Bullen Trench--which, by the way, was only three feet
deep--lay the 1st Scots Guards, the first wave of the attack. On,
in front of, and in the space between them and the Irish, fell the
rain of the trench-mortars; from the rear, the Guards Machine-Guns
tortured all there was of unoccupied air with their infernal
clamours. The Scots Guards went over among the shell-spouts and
jerking wires at the first glimmer of dawn, the Irish following in a
rush. The leading companies were No. 3 (Lieutenant H. A. A. Collett)
on the left, and No. 4 (2nd Lieutenant C. S. O’Brien) on the right.
The 1st Guards Trench Mortar Battery (2nd Lieutenant O. R. Baldwin,
Irish Guards) was attached experimentally to No. 3 Company in the
first wave instead of, as usual, in support. No. 2 Company (Captain
C. W. W. Bence-Jones) supported No. 3, and No. 1 (Lieutenant the Hon.
B. A. A. Ogilvy) No. 4. They stayed for a moment in the trench, a
deep, wide one of the Hindenburg pattern, which the Scots Guards had
left. It was no healthy spot, for the shells were localised here and
the dirt flung up all along it in waves. Men scrambled out over the
sliding, flying edges of it, saw a bank heave up in the half-light,
and knew that, somewhere behind that, was the Canal. By this time one
of the two Stokes guns of the Mortar Battery and half the gunners
had been wiped out, and the casualties in the line were heavy; but
they had no time to count. Then earth opened beneath their feet,
and showed a wide, deep, dry, newly made canal with a smashed iron
bridge lying across the bed of it, and an unfinished lock to the
right looking like some immense engine of war ready to do hurt in
inconceivable fashions. Directly below them, on the pale, horribly
hard, concrete trough, was a collection of agitated pin-heads, the
steel hats of the Scots Guards rearing ladders against the far side
of the gulf. Mixed with them were the dead, insolently uninterested,
while the wounded, breaking aside, bound themselves up with the
tense, silent preoccupation which unhurt men, going forward, find so
hard to bear. Mobs of bewildered Germans had crawled out of their
shelters in the Canal flanks and were trying to surrender to any one
who looked likely to attend to them. They saluted British officers as
they raced past, and, between salutes, returned their arms stiffly
to the safe “Kamerad” position. This added the last touch of insanity
to the picture. (“We’d ha’ laughed if we had had the time, ye’ll
understand.”)
None recall precisely how they reached the bottom of the Canal, but
there were a few moments of blessed shelter ere they scrambled out
and reformed on the far side. The shelling here was bad enough, but
nothing to what they had survived. A veil of greasy smoke, patched
with flame that did not glare, stood up behind them, and through
the pall of it, in little knots, stumbled their supports, blinded,
choking, gasping. In the direction of the attack, across a long
stretch of broken rising ground, were more shells, but less thickly
spaced, and craters of stinking earth and coloured chalks where our
barrage had ripped out nests of machine-guns. Far off, to the left,
creaming with yellow smoke in the morning light, rose the sullen head
of Bourlon Wood to which the Canadians were faithfully paying the
debt contracted by the 2nd Battalion of the Irish Guards in the old
days after Cambrai.
At the crest of the ascent lay Saunders Keep, which marked the point
where the Scots Guards would lie up and the Irish come through.
Already the casualties had been severe. Captain Bence-Jones and
2nd Lieutenant Mathieson of No. 2 Company were wounded at the Keep
itself, and 2nd Lieutenant A. R. Boyle of No. 1 earlier in the rush.
The companies panted up, gapped and strung out. From the Keep the
land sloped down to Stafford Alley, the Battalion’s first objective
just before which Lieutenant Barry Close was killed. That day marked
his coming of age. Beyond the Alley the ground rose again, and here
the Irish were first checked by some machine-gun fire that had
escaped our barrages. Second Lieutenant O’Brien, No. 3 Company, was
hit at this point while getting his men forward. He had earned his
Military Cross in May, and he died well. The next senior officer,
2nd Lieutenant E. H. R. Burke, was away to the left in the thick of
the smoke with a platoon that, like the rest, was fighting for its
life; so 2nd Lieutenant O’Farrell led on. He was hit not far from
Stafford Alley, and while his wound was being bandaged by Sergeant
Regan, hit again by a bullet that, passing through the Sergeant’s
cap and a finger, entered O’Farrell’s heart. The officer commanding
the remnants of the Mortar Battery took on the company and his one
gun. Meantime, Collett and a few of No. 3 Company had reached Silver
Street, a trench running forward from Stafford Alley, and he and
Lieutenant Brady were bombing down it under heavy small-arm fire from
the enemy’s left flank which had not been driven in and was giving
untold trouble. No. 2 Company, with two out of three of its officers
down, was working towards the same line as the fragment of No. 3;
though opinion was divided on that confused field whether it would
not be better for them to lie down and form a defensive flank against
that pestilent left fire. Eventually, but events succeeded each other
like the bullets, Collett and his men reached their last objective--a
trench running out of Silver Street towards Flesquières. Here he,
Brady, and Baldwin drew breath and tried to get at the situation.
No. 4 Company lay to the right of No. 3, and when 2nd Lieutenant E.
H. R. Burke, with what was left of his platoon before mentioned,
came up, he resumed charge of it without a word and went on. No. 1
Company (Lieutenant the Hon. B. A. A. Ogilvy) had, like the rest,
been compelled to lead its own life. Its objective was the beet-sugar
factory in front of Flesquières ahead of and a little to the right
of the Battalion’s final objective, and it was met throughout with
rifle, bomb, and flanking fire. Lieutenant Ogilvy was wounded at
a critical point in the game with the enemy well into the trench,
or trenches. (The whole ground seemed to the men who were clearing
it one inexhaustible Hun-warren.) As he dropped, Lieutenant R. L.
Dagger and Sergeant Conaboy, picking up what men they could, bombed
the enemy out, back, and away, and settled down to dig in and wait;
always under flank-fire. The Sergeant was killed “in his zeal to
finish the job completely”--no mean epitaph for a thorough man. By
eleven o’clock that morning all the companies had reached their
objectives, and, though sorely harassed, began to feel that the worst
for them might be over. There were, however, two German “whizz-bangs”
that lived in Orival Wood still untaken on the Battalion’s left, and
these, served with disgusting speed and accuracy, swept Silver Street
mercilessly. The situation was not improved when one of the sergeants
quoted the ever-famous saying of Sergeant-Major Toher with reference
to one of our own barrages: “And even the wurrums themselves are
getting up and crying for mercy.” The guns were near enough to watch
quite comfortably, and while the men watched and winced, they saw
the “success” signal of the Canadians--three whites--rise high in
air in front of Bourlon Wood. Then No. 1 Company reported they were
getting more than their share of machine-gun fire, and the 1st Guards
Brigade Trench Mortar Battery, reduced to one mortar, one officer,
one sergeant, four men, and ten shells, bestowed the whole of its
ammunition in the direction indicated, abandoned its mortar, and
merged itself into the ranks of No. 3 Company. It had been amply
proved that where trench-mortars accompany a first wave of attack, if
men are hit while carrying two Stokes shells apiece (forty pounds of
explosives), they become dangerous mobile mines.
Enemy aeroplanes now swooped down with machine-gun fire; there seemed
no way of getting our artillery to attend to them and they pecked
like vultures undisturbed. Then Battalion Headquarters came up in
the midst of the firing from the left, established themselves in
a dug-out and were at once vigorously shelled, together with the
neighbouring aid-post and some German prisoners there, waiting to
carry down wounded. The aid-post was in charge of a young American
doctor, Rhys Davis by name, who had been attached to the Battalion
for some time. This was his first day of war and he was mortally
wounded before the noon of it.