It opened with black disappointment. They were entrained on the
evening of the 2nd January for Corbie in a tactical train, whose
tactics consisted in starting one hour late. On the two preceding
days the Germans had got in several direct hits on its rolling
stock; so that wait dragged a little. But they were uplifted by the
prospect, which some one had heard or invented, of a whole month’s
rest. It boiled down to less than one week, on the news that the
Division would take on yet another stretch of French line. There was
just time to wash the men all over, their first bath in months, and
to attend the divisional cinema. By this date Lieutenant Hanbury
had joined, the adjutancy was taken over by Captain Charles Moore,
Lieutenant-Colonel P. L. Reid had to go down, sick, and the command
of the Battalion had devolved on Major E. B. Greer.
By the 10th January they were at Maurepas, ready to move up next day
_via_ Combles and Frégicourt into their new sector, which lay the
distance of one divisional front south of the old Sailly-Saillisel
one. It lay on the long clean-cut ridge, running north from Rancourt,
to which the French had held when they were driven and mined out
of St. Pierre Vaast Wood, facing the north-west and west sides of
that forest of horrors. It was of so narrow a frontage that but one
brigade at a time went into the line, two battalions of that brigade
up to the front, and but one company of each battalion actually to
the front-line posts. These ran along the forward slope of the ridge,
and were backed by a sketchy support-line a hundred yards or so on
the reverse with the reserve five or six hundred yards behind it.
“Filthy but vital” is one description of the sector. If it were lost,
it would uncover ground as far back as Morval. If held, it screened
our ground westward almost as far as Combles. (Again, one must bear
in mind the extreme minuteness of the setting of the picture, for
Combles here was barely three thousand yards from the front line.)
The reports of the Eighth Division who handed it over were not
cheering. The front-line posts had been ten of ten men apiece, set
irregularly in the remnants of an old trench. The only way to deal
with them was to dig out and rebuild altogether on metal framings,
and the Sappers had so treated four. The other six were collapsing.
They needed, too, a line of efficient support-posts, in rear, and had
completed one, but wire was scarce. All support and reserve trenches
were wet, shallow, and badly placed. A largish dug-out a hundred
yards behind the front had been used as Battalion Headquarters by
various occupants, German and French, and, at one stage of its
career, as a dressing-station, but it seemed that the doctors “had
only had time to pull upstairs the men who died and dump them in
heaps a few yards away from the doorway. Later, apparently, some
one had scattered a few inches of dirt over them which during our
occupation the continual rain and snow washed away. The result was
most grisly.” The French have many virtues, but tidiness in the line
is not one of them.
The whole situation turned on holding the reverse of the ridge,
since, if the enemy really meant business, it was always open to
him to blow us off the top of it, and come down the gentle descent
from the crest at his ease. So they concentrated on the front
posts and a strong, well-wired reserve line, half-way down the
slope. Luckily there was a trench-tramway in the sector, running
from the Sappers’ dump on the Frégicourt road to close up to the
charnel-house-ex-dressing-station. The regular trains, eight trucks
pushed by two men each, were the 5, 7, and 9 P. M., but on misty
days a 3 P. M. might also be run, and of course trains could run in
the night. This saved them immense backaches. (“But, mark you, the
easier the dam’ stuff gets up to the front the more there is of it,
and so the worse ’tis for the poor devils of wiring-parties that
has to lay it out after dark. Then Jerry whizz-bangs ye the rest of
the long night. All this fine labour-saving means the devil for the
Micks.”)
The Germans certainly whizz-banged the working-parties generously,
but the flights as a rule buried themselves harmlessly in the soft
ground. We on our side made no more trouble than could be avoided,
but worked on the wire double tides. In the heat of the job, on the
night of the 11th January, the Brigadier came round and the C.O.
took him out to see Captain Alexander’s party wiring their posts.
It was the worst possible moment for a valuable brigadier to wander
round front lines. The moon lit up the snow and they beheld a party
of Germans advancing in open order, who presently lay down and were
joined by more. At eighty yards or so they halted, and after a short
while crawled away. “We did not provoke battle, as we would probably
have hurt no one, and we wanted to get on with our wiring.” But had
the Brigadier been wasted in a mere front-line bicker, the C.O., not
to mention Captain Alexander, would have heard of it.
By the time that the 1st Coldstream relieved them on the 14th
January, the Battalion had fenced their private No Man’s Land and
about six hundred yards of the line outside the posts, all under the
come-and-go of shell-fire; had duck-boarded tracks connecting some of
the posts; systematised their ration- and water-supply, and captured
a multitude of army socks whereby companies coming down from their
turn could change and be dry. Dull as all such detail sounds, it is
beyond question that the arrangement and prevision of domestic works
appeals to certain temperaments, not only among the officers but
men. They positively relish the handling and disposition of stores,
the fitting of one job into the next, the race against time, the
devising of tricks and gadgets for their own poor comforts, and all
the mixture of housemaking and keeping (in which, whatever may be
said, the male animal excels) on the edge of war.
For the moment, things were absurdly peaceful on their little
front, and when they came back to work after three still days at
Maurepas, infantry “fighting” had become a farce. The opposing big
guns hammered away zealously at camps and back-areas, but along that
line facing the desolate woods of St. Pierre Vaast there was mutual
toleration, due to the fact that no post could be relieved on either
side except by the courtesy of their opponents who lay, naked as
themselves, from two hundred to thirty yards away. Thus men walked
about, and worked in flagrant violation of all the rules of warfare,
beneath the arch of the droning shells overhead. The Irish realised
this state of affairs gradually—their trenches were not so close to
the enemy; but on the right Battalion’s front, where both sides lived
in each others’ pockets, men reported “life in the most advanced
posts was a perfect idyll.” So it was decided, now that every one
might be presumed to know the ground, and be ready for play, that the
weary game should begin again. But observe the procedure! “It was
obvious it would be unfair, after availing ourselves of an unwritten
agreement, to start killing people without warning.” Accordingly,
notices were issued by the Brigade—in English—which read: “_Warning.
Any German who exposes himself after daylight to-morrow January 19
will be shot. By order._” Battalions were told to get these into the
enemy lines, if possible, between 5 and 7 A. M. They anticipated a
little difficulty in communicating their kind intentions, but two
heralds, with three rifles to cover them, were sent out and told to
stick the warnings up on the German wire in the dusk of the dawn.
Now, one of these men was No. 10609 Private King, who, in civil life,
had once been policeman in the Straits Settlements. He saw a German
looking over the parapet while the notice was being affixed, and,
policeman-like, waved to him to come out. The German beckoned to King
to come in, but did not quit the trench. King then warned the other
men to stand by him, and entered into genial talk. Other Germans
gathered round the first, who, after hesitating somewhat, walked to
his side of the wire. He could talk no English, and King, though he
tried his best, in Chinese and the kitchen-Malay of Singapore, could
not convey the situation to him either. At last he handed the German
the notice and told him to give it to his officer. The man seemed to
understand. He was an elderly person, with his regimental number in
plain sight on his collar. He saw King looking at this, and desired
King to lift the edge of _his_ leather jerkin so that he in turn
might get our number. King naturally refused and, to emphasise what
was in store for careless enemies, repeated with proper pantomime:
“Shoot! Shoot! Pom! Pom!” This ended the palaver. They let him get
back quite unmolested, and when the mirth had ceased, King reported
that they all seemed to be “oldish men, over yonder, and thoroughly
fed up.” Next dawn saw no more unbuttoned ease or “idyllic”
promenades along that line.
As the days lengthened arctic cold set in. The tracks between the
posts became smears of black ice, and shells burst brilliantly on
ground that was as pave-stones to the iron screw-stakes of the
wiring. One shell caught a carrying-party on the night of the 20th
January, slightly wounding Lieutenant Hanbury who chanced to be
passing at the time, and wounding Sergeant Roddy and two men. The
heavies behind them used the morning of the 21st to register on their
left and away to the north. By some accident (the Battalion did not
conceive their sector involved) a big shell landed in the German
trench opposite one of their posts, and some thirty Huns broke cover
and fled back over the rise. One of them, lagging behind the covey,
deliberately turned and trudged across the snow to give himself up to
us. Outside one of our posts he as deliberately knelt down, covered
his face with his hands and prayed for several minutes. Whereupon
our men instead of shooting shouted that he should come in. He was
a Pole from Posen and the east front; very, very sick of warfare.
This gave one Russian, one Englishman, and a Pole as salvage for six
weeks. An attempt at a night-raid on our part over the crackling
snow was spoiled because the divisional stores did not run to the
necessary “six white night-shirts” indented for, but only long canvas
coats of a whitey-brown which in the glare of Very lights showed up
hideously.
A month of mixed fatigues followed ere they saw that sector again.
They cleaned up at Morval on the 22nd, and spent a few days at the
Briquetterie near Bernafay Corner, where three of the companies
worked at a narrow-gauge line just outside Morval, under sporadic
long-range shell-fire, and the fourth went to Ville in divisional
reserve. The winter cold ranged from ten to twenty degrees of frost
in the Nissen huts. Whereby hangs this tale. The mess stove was like
Falstaff, “old, cold, and of intolerable entrails,” going out on the
least provocation. Only a few experts knew how to conciliate the
sensitive creature, and Father Knapp, the R.C. chaplain, was _not_
one of them. Indeed, he had been explicitly warned on no account
whatever to attempt to stoke it. One bitter morning, however, he
found himself alone in the mess with the stove just warming up, and
a sand-bag, stuffed with what felt like lumps of heaven-sent coal,
lying on the floor. Naturally, he tipped it all in. But it was the
mess Perrier water, which had been thus swaddled to save it from
freezing—as the priest and the exploding stove found out together.
There were no casualties, though roof and walls were cut with glass,
but the stove never rightly recovered from the shock, nor did Father
Knapp hear the last of it for some time.
From the close of the month till the 19th of February they were in
divisional reserve, all together at Ville in unbroken frost. While
there (February 1), Lieutenant F. St. L. Greer, one of the best of
officers and the most popular of comrades, was wounded in a bombing
accident and died the next day. In a battalion as closely knit
together as the 2nd Irish Guards all losses hit hard.
Just as the thaw was breaking, they were sent up to Priez Farm, a
camp of elephant huts, dug-outs and shelters where the men were
rejoiced to get up a real “frowst” in the confined quarters.
Warriors do not love scientific ventilation. From the 16th to the
25th February, the mud being in full possession of the world again,
they were at Billon, which has no good name, and on the 25th back at
St. Pierre Vaast, on the same sector they had left a month before.
Nothing much had been done to the works; for the German host—always
at its own time and in its own methodical way—was giving way to the
British pressure, and the Battalion was warned that their business
would be to keep touch with any local withdrawal by means of patrols
(_Anglice_, small parties playing blind-man’s buff with machine-gun
posts), and possibly to do a raid or two. But it is interesting to
see that since their departure from that sector all the ten posts
which they had dug and perspired over, and learned to know by their
numbers, which automatically come back to a man’s memory on his
return, had been re-numbered by the authorities. It was a small
thing, but good men have been killed by just such care.
They watched and waited. The air was full of rumours of the Germans’
shifting—the home papers called it “cracking”—but facts and news do
not go together even in peace. (“What annoyed us were the newspaper
reports of how we were getting on when we weren’t getting on at all.”)
The Twenty-ninth Division on their left were due to put in a
two-Battalion attack from Sailly-Saillisel on the dawn of the 28th
February, while the battalion in the front line was to send up a
smoke-screen to distract the enemy and draw some of his barrages
on to themselves. So front-line posts were thinned out as much as
possible, and front companies sent out patrols to see that the Hun in
front of them was working happily, and that he had not repaired a
certain gap in his wire which our guns had made and were keeping open
for future use. All went well till the wind shifted and the smoke was
ordered “off,” and when the Twenty-ninth Division attacked, the tail
of the enemy barrage caught the Battalion unscreened but did no harm.
A heavy fog then shut down sarcastically on the whole battle, which
was no success to speak of. Through it all the Battalion kept guard
over their own mouse-holes and the gap in the wire. Sudden activities
of our guns or the enemies’ worried them at times and bred rumours,
all fathered on the staff, of fantastic victories somewhere down the
line. They saw a battalion of Germans march by platoons into St.
Pierre Vaast Wood, warned the nearest artillery group, and watched
the heavies searching the wood; heard a riot of bombing away on their
left, which they put down to the situation at Sailly-Saillisel (this
was on the 1st of March), and got ready for possible developments;
and when it all died out again, duly sent forth the patrols, who
reported the “enemy laughing, talking, and working.” There was no
sign of any withdrawal there.
On the 6th March, in snow and frost, they took over from the 1st
Coldstream a new and unappetising piece of front on the left which
the Coldstream had taken over from the Twenty-ninth Division. It
consisted of a line of “about twelve so-called posts which were
practically little more than shell-holes.” The Coldstream had
worked like beavers to get them into some sort of shape, but their
predecessors had given the local snipers far too much their head;
and the long, flat-topped ridge where, under an almost full moon,
every moving man offended the sky-line, was as unwholesome as
could be desired. The Coldstream had lost six men sniped the night
before their relief, and it was impossible to reach two of the
posts at all. Another post was practically untenable, as the enemy
had direct observation on to it, and one sniper who specialised in
this neighbourhood had accounted for fourteen men in one tour. The
Battalion settled down, therefore, to fire generously at anything
that fired. It was noisy and, maybe, wasteful, but it kept the
snipers’ heads down.
[Illustration: _THE SOMME_
_Second Battalion_
_Emery Walker Ltd. del. et sc._]
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY EMERY WALKER LTD., LONDON
On the 7th March it was clear that the troops in front of them
had been replaced by a more cautious and aggressive enemy. So
the Battalion turned a couple of their most untenable posts into
listening-posts, occupied by night only, and some one suggested that
the new artillery which had just come in behind them might put down
a creeping barrage for the greater discouragement of snipers. They
cleared out a post or two first, in anticipation of stray shots, and
lost one man killed and one wounded; but when the barrage arrived it
was weak and inaccurate. Guns need time to learn to work in well with
their brethren ahead, and the latter are apt to be impatient when
they think they are being experimented on.
THE GERMAN WITHDRAWAL
Not till towards mid-March did the much-written-of German “crack”
affect their chilly world. The C.O.’s of the battalions conferred at
Brigade Headquarters on the 13th to discuss the eventuality, and in
the middle of it the Major-General came in and announced there was
good reason to think that the retirement in front of them would begin
that night. In which case, so soon as scouts had reported that the
enemy trenches were held very lightly or had been abandoned (“But
Jerry never abandoned his dam’ machine-guns till we was on top of
’em”), two patrols from each company in the front line, of an officer
and twelve men apiece, would go forward on schedule time and occupy.
They would be followed by the two front companies, who would make
good the enemy’s old front and support lines. With two battalions in
the front line to draw from, this made a force of four companies, all
of whom were to be under the command of the Senior Lieut.-Colonel
in the battalions engaged. He would be known as “O.C. Situation
Centre,” and would issue all orders, acting as in command of an
advanced guard. _But_ the two reserve companies of the battalions
in line would be with the main body of the brigade and would not
move without the Brigadier’s direct orders. In other words, no one
was to be drawn into anything like a vulgar brawl. And on the 14th
March, from a hill near by, a vast fire could be seen far off, which
was Péronne a-burning. That same afternoon the enemy began shelling
their own front line along the western edge of St. Pierre Vaast Wood.
The situation betrayed itself. An officer’s patrol out from the 1st
Scots Guards reported the enemy gone from in front. Whereupon the
battalions in the line, the 2nd Irish Guards and the 1st Coldstream,
moved out cautiously at dusk and established themselves partly in
the first of the enemies’ abandoned trenches, with supports, more
or less, in our old front line. When their relief came it was a
pitch-black night, and the Coldstream had pushed out some patrols
into bits of the German trench beyond the chaos of No Man’s Land,
who, naturally, did not even themselves know where in France they
might be, but had to be discovered and relieved just the same,
which took the relieving battalion till two o’clock in the morning.
At three o’clock the C.O. of the 2nd Irish Guards—Colonel E. B.
Greer—was warned that “Situation Centre”—the two advanced companies
who were to beat out hidden snipers—would be formed at 7 A. M. By the
accident of Lieut.-Colonel Godman of the Scots Guards being sick,
it fell to Greer to command that advanced force. Captain Alexander
took our two forward companies, and Captain Sir Ian Colquhoun the
two companies of the Scots Guards. The general advance was to begin
all along the divisional front at 10 A. M. By that hour the German
shelling was intense. They used 5.9’s and larger, as they were firing
from a long way back. The trouble for the 2nd Irish Guards companies
developed almost at once on their left, where their patrol was fired
at by machine-guns from a German trench on the edge of the wood.
Their own 1st Battalion, trying to push out of Sailly-Saillisel, was
hung up, too—they heard and saw it—for the same reason. The Division
could have driven through at the cost of fairly heavy casualties,
but nothing was to be gained by wasting men in rushes on hidden
machine-guns that can lay out thirty good lives in two minutes. The
Scots Guards got on into the wood without much trouble at first,
till they, too, ran on snipers between tree-stumps and up and down
the defaced trenches, or opened some single machine-gun slinking
from cover to cover. It was all slow “feeling,” with alternating
advances at walking pace, and long checks—“something like drawing a
gorse for wolves instead of foxes.” The shelling through the day was
heavy, but ineffective. With such a broken line as ours advancing,
the enemy could not tell where any portion was in strength. The
force lay up where they happened to stop, and before dawn on the
16th March were told to feel ahead, while the Scots Guards on their
right got into touch with the Eighth Division. Progress was slow
as the day before, under heavy shelling—sometimes considered and
dealt out with intention—at others evidently from a battery using up
ammunition before going back. As they worked their way more into St.
Pierre Vaast Wood came the sensation, which there was no mistaking,
that they were being played with by the Hun, and losing touch as he
intended them to do. Certain vital trenches would be controlled by
a few snipers and machine-guns; a sunk road offering shelter would
be plastered with heavies, and a full company would be held in it,
digging for more cover, by dead accurate long-range fire; while
far and far behind the orderly German withdrawal of the main body
continued in peace.
On the 17th March, for example, “we were never really in touch with
the enemy’s rear-guard during the day except for one or two snipers.”
On the 18th, “by daybreak we were out of touch with the enemy, and
cavalry patrols of King Edward’s Horse and the 21st Lancers went
through us.” Here is the comment of the time and the place on our
advance: “The German retreat was conducted very skilfully. One cannot
say that we caused them to leave one position an hour before they
intended. They inflicted upon us a considerable number of casualties
(twenty in this battalion, while on our left the 1st Battalion lost
considerably more). On the other hand, we saw no evidence that in the
actual retirement we had even damaged one German. They left little or
nothing behind.”
And the professional judgment is equally fair. “But of course it
must be remembered that the task of the (German) regimental officers
was an easy one, however difficult it may have been for the Staff.
Given time, there is no difficulty in withdrawing battalions from
trenches by night, for a few snipers and machine-gunners, knowing the
ground, and retreating from trench to trench, can hang up an advance
indefinitely unless the troops advancing have strong reserves and are
prepared for heavy losses.”
This last was not our situation. The Fourteenth Corps had no
divisions in immediate reserve; the sector the Guards Division
was working on had been greatly thinned out, and their artillery
was relatively small. With tremendous losses in the past and the
certainty of more to come, things had to be done as cheaply as
possible. “Hence our mode of advance.” It led them into a stale
hell which had once been soil of France but was now beyond grace,
hope, or redemption. Most of the larger trees in St. Pierre Vaast
were cut down, and the smaller ones split by shell or tooth-brushed
by machine-gun fire. The ground was bog, studded with a few
island-like formations of fire-trench, unrevetted, unboarded, with
little dug-outs ten or twelve feet deep, all wet and filthy. There
were no regular latrines. Numberless steel helmets and heaps of
stick-bombs lay about under foot. The garrisons must have been
deadly uncomfortable, and there was good evidence that the enemy had
economised men beyond anything that we dared. The ground had been cut
to bits by our fire, and in one place yawned what had been a battery
position wiped out, unseeing and unseen, weeks ago, as the dead teams
round it testified. Very few booby-traps were left behind. The
Battalion lost only five men in all through this cause.
FATIGUES ON THE SOMME