A British soldier returning from one of the attacks as he hobbled
through Trônes Wood expressed to me the essential generalship of the
battle. He was outwardly as unemotional as if he were coming home from
his day's work, respectful and good-humored, though he had a hole in
both arms from machine-gun fire, a shrapnel wound in the heel, and
seemed a trifle resentful of the added tribute of another shrapnel
wound in his shoulder after he had left the firing-line and was on his
way to the casualty clearing station. Insisting that he could lift the
cigarette I offered him to his lips and light it, too, he said:
"We've only to keep at them, sir. They'll go."
So the British kept at them and so did the French at every point. Was
Delville Wood worse than High Wood? This is too nice a distinction in
torments to be drawn. Possess either of them completely and command
of the Ridge in that section was won. The edge of a wood on the side
away from your enemy was the easiest part to hold. It is difficult to
range artillery on it because of restricted vision, and the enemy's
shells aimed at it strike the trees and burst prematurely among his own
men. Other easy, relatively easy, places to hold are the dead spaces
of gullies and ravines. There you were out of fire and there you were
not; there you could hold and there you could not. Machine-gun fire and
shell fire were the arbiters of topography more dependable than maps.
Why all the trees were not cut down by the continual bombardments of
both sides was past understanding. There was one lone tree on the
skyline near Longueval which I had watched for weeks. It still had a
limb, yes, the luxury of a limb, the last time I saw it, pointing with
a kind of defiance in its immunity. Of course it had been struck many
times. Bits of steel were imbedded in its trunk; but only a direct hit
on the trunk will bring down a tree. Trees may be slashed and whittled
and nicked and gashed and still stand; and when villages have been
pulverized except for the timbering of the houses, a scarred shade tree
will remain.
Thus, trees in Delville Wood survived, naked sticks among fallen
and splintered trunks and upturned roots. How any man could have
survived was the puzzling thing. None could if he had remained there
continuously and exposed himself; but man is the most cunning of
animals. With gas mask and eye-protectors ready, steel helmet on his
head and his faithful spade to make himself a new hole whenever he
moved, he managed the incredible in self-protection. Earth piled back
of a tree-trunk would stop bullets and protect his body from shrapnel.
There he lay and there a German lay opposite him, except when attacks
were being made.
Not getting the northern edge of the woods the British began sapping
out in trenches to the east toward Ginchy, where the many contours
showed the highest ground in that neighborhood. New lines of trenches
kept appearing on the map, often with group names such as Coffee Alley,
Tea Lane and Beer Street, perhaps. Out in the open along the irregular
plateau the shells were no more kindly, the bombing and the sapping
no less diligent all the way to the windmill, where the Australians
were playing the same kind of a game. With the actual summit gained at
certain points, these had to be held pending the taking of the whole,
or of enough to permit a wave of men to move forward in a general
attack without its line being broken by the resistance of strong
points, which meant confusion.