Such became members of the machine-gun corps, which took an oath
never to surrender, and led bombing parties and posted themselves in
shell-craters to face the charges while shells fell thick around them,
or remained up in the trench taking their chances against curtains
of fire that covered an infantry charge, in the hope of being able
to turn on their own bullet spray for a moment before being killed.
Sometimes their dead bodies were found strapped to their guns, more
often probably by their own request, as an insurance against deserting
their posts, than by command.
Shell fire was the theatricalism of the struggle, the roar of guns its
thunder; but night or day the sound of the staccato of that little arch
devil of killing, the machine gun, coming from the Ridge seemed as true
an expression of what was always going on there as a rattlesnake's
rattle is of its character. Delville and High Woods and Guillemont
and Longueval and the Switch Trench--these are symbolic names of that
attrition, of the heroism of British persistence which would not take
No for answer.
You might think that you had seen ruins until you saw those of
Guillemont after it was taken. They were the granulation of bricks and
mortar and earth mixed by the blasts of shell fire which crushed solids
into dust and splintered splinters. Guillemont lay beyond Trônes Wood
across an open space where the German guns had full play. There was a
stone quarry on the outskirts, and a quarry no less than a farm like
Waterlot, which was to the northward, and Falfemont, to the southward
and flanking the village, formed shelter. It was not much of a quarry,
but it was a hole which would be refuge for reserves and machine guns.
The two farms, clear targets for British guns, had their deep dugouts
whose roofs were reinforced by the ruins that fell upon them against
penetration even by shells of large caliber. How the Germans fought to
keep Falfemont! Once they sent out a charge with the bayonet to meet a
British charge between walls of shell fire and there through the mist
the steel was seen flashing and vague figures wrestling.
Guillemont and the farms won and Ginchy which lay beyond won and the
British had their flank of high ground. Twice they were in Guillemont
but could not remain, though as usual they kept some of their gains. It
was a battle from dugout to dugout, from shelter to shelter of any kind
burrowed in the débris or in fields, with the British never ceasing
here or elsewhere to continue their pressure. And the débris of a
village had particular appeal; it yielded to the spade; its piles gave
natural cover.