day they would be ready, trained enough, hard enough, to strike a big
blow.
A week or two ago the whisper passed, “We’re going to attack.” But no
more than that, except behind closed doors of the mess-room. Somehow
by the look on men’s faces, by their silences and thoughtfulness, one
could guess that something was to happen.
There was a thrill in the air, a thrill from the pulse of men who know
the meaning of attack. Would it be in June or July?... The fields of
France were very beautiful this June. There were roses in the gardens
of old French châteaux. Poppies put a flame of colour in the fields,
close up to the trenches, and there were long stretches of gold across
the countryside. A pity that all this should be spoilt by the pest of
war.
So some of us thought, but not many soldiers. After the misery of a wet
winter and the expectations of the spring they were keen to get out of
the trenches again. All their training led up to that. The spirit of
the men was for an assault across the open, and they were confident in
the new power of our guns....
The guns spoke one morning last week with a louder voice than has yet
been heard upon the front, and as they crashed out we knew that it
was the signal for the new attack. Their fire increased in intensity,
covering raids at many points of the line, until at last all things
were ready for the biggest raid.
2
The scene of the battlefields at night was of terrible beauty. I
motored out to it from a town behind the lines, where through their
darkened windows French citizens watched the illumination of the sky,
throbbing and flashing to distant shell-fire. Behind the lines the
villages were asleep, without the twinkle of a lamp in any window. The
shadow forms of sentries paced up and down outside the stone archways
of old French houses.
Here and there on the roads a lantern waved to and fro, and its rays
gleamed upon the long bayonet and steel casque of a French Territorial,
and upon the bronzed face of an English soldier, who came forward
to stare closely at a piece of paper which allowed a man to go into
the fires of hell up there. It was an English voice that gave the
first challenge, and then called out “Good-night” with a strange and
unofficial friendliness as a greeting to men who were going towards the
guns.
The fields on the edge of the battle of guns were very peaceful. A
faint breeze stirred the tall wheat, above which there floated a milky
light transfusing the darkness. The poppy fields still glowed redly,
and there was a glint of gold from long stretches of mustard flower.
Beyond, the woods stood black against the sky above little hollows
where British soldiers were encamped.
There by the light of candles which gave a rose-colour to the painted
canvas boys were writing letters home before lying down to sleep. Some
horsemen were moving down a valley road. Further off a long column of
black lorries passed. It was the food of the guns going forward.
A mile or two more, a challenge or two more, and then a halt by the
roadside. It was a road which led straight into the central fires of
one great battlefield in a battle line of 80 miles or more. A small
corner of the front, yet in itself a broad and far-stretching panorama
of our gun-fire on this night of bombardment.
I stood with a few officers in the centre of a crescent sweeping round
from Auchonvillers, Thiépval, La Boisselle, and Fricourt, to Bray, on
the Somme, at the southern end of the curve. Here in this beetroot
field on high ground, we stood watching one of the greatest artillery
battles in which British gunners have been engaged. Up to that night
the greatest.
The night sky, very calm and moist, with low-lying clouds not stirred
by wind, was rent with incessant flashes of light as shells of every
calibre burst and scattered. Out of the black ridges and woods in
front of us came explosions of white fire, as though the earth had
opened and let loose its inner heat. They came up with a burst of
intense brilliance, which spread along a hundred yards of ground and
then vanished abruptly behind the black curtain of the night. It was
the work of high explosives and heavy trench mortars falling in the
German lines. Over Thiépval and La Boisselle there were rapid flashes
of bursting shrapnel shells, and these points of flame stabbed the sky
along the whole battle front.
From the German lines rockets were rising, continually. They rose high
and their star-shells remained suspended for half a minute with an
intense brightness. While the light lasted it cut out the black outline
of the trees and broken roofs, and revealed heavy white smoke-clouds
rolling over the enemy’s positions.
They were mostly white lights, but at one place red rockets went up.
They were signals of distress, perhaps, from German infantry calling
to their guns. It was in the zone of these red signals, over towards
Ovillers, that our fire for a time was most fierce, so that sheets of
flame waved to and fro as though fanned by a furious wind. All the
time along the German line red lights ran up and down like little red
dancing devils.
I cannot tell what they were, unless they were some other kind of
signalling, or the bursting of rifle-grenades. Sometimes for thirty
seconds or so the firing ceased, and darkness, very black and velvety,
blotted out everything and restored the world to peace. Then suddenly,
at one point or another, the earth seemed to open to furnace fires.
Down by Bray, southwards, there was one of these violent shocks of
light, and then a moment later another, by Auchonvilliers to the north.
And once again the infernal fires began, flashing, flickering, running
along a ridge with a swift tongue of flame, tossing burning feathers
above rosy smoke-clouds, concentrating into one bonfire of bursting
shells over Fricourt and Thiépval upon which our batteries always
concentrated.
3
There was one curious phenomenon. It was the silence of all the
artillery. By some atmospheric condition of moisture or wind (though
the night was calm), or by the configuration of the ground, which made
pockets into which the sound fell, there was no great uproar, such as I
have heard scores of times in smaller bombardments than this.
It was all muffled. Even our own batteries did not crash out with any
startling thunder, though I could hear the rush of big shells, like
great birds in flight. Now and then there was a series of loud strokes,
an urgent knocking at the doors of night. And now and again there was
a dull, heavy thunder-clap, followed by a long rumble, which made me
think that mines were being blown further up the line.
But for the most part it was curiously quiet and low-toned, and
somehow this muffled artillery gave one a greater sense of awfulness
and of deadly work.
Along all this stretch of the battle-front there was no sign of men. It
was all inhuman, the work of impersonal powers, and man himself was in
hiding from these great forces of destruction. So I thought, peering
through the darkness, over the beetroots and the wheat.
But a little later I heard the steady tramp of many feet and the thud
of horses’ hoofs walking slowly, and the grinding of wheels in the
ruts. Shadow forms came up out of the dark tunnel below the trees, the
black figures of mounted officers, followed by a battalion marching
with their transport. I could not see the faces of the men, but by the
shape of their forms could see that they wore their steel helmets and
their fighting kit. They were heavily laden with their packs, but they
were marching at a smart, swinging pace, and as they came along were
singing cheerily.
They were singing some music-hall tune, with a lilt in it, as they
marched towards the lights of all the shells up there in the places
of death. Some of them were blowing mouth-organs and others were
whistling. I watched them pass—all these tall boys of a North Country
regiment, and something of their spirit seemed to come out of the
dark mass of their moving bodies and thrill the air. They were going
up to those places without faltering, without a backward look and
singing—dear, splendid men.
I saw other men on the march, and some of them were whistling the
“Marseillaise,” though they were English soldiers. Others were
gossiping quietly as they walked and once the light of bursting
shells played all down the line of their faces—hard, clean-shaven,
bronzed English faces, with the eyes of youth there staring up at the
battle-fires and unafraid.
A young officer walking at the head of his platoon called out a cheery
good-night to me. It was a greeting in the darkness from one of those
gallant boys who lead their men out of the trenches without much
thought of self in that moment of sacrifice.
In the camps the lights were out and the tents were dark. The soldiers
who had been writing letters home had sent their love and gone to
sleep. But the shell fire never ceased all night.
4
A staff officer had whispered a secret to us at midnight in a little
room, when the door was shut and the window closed. Even then they were
words which could be only whispered, and to men of trust.
“The attack will be made this morning at 7.30.”
So all had gone well, and there was to be no hitch. The preliminary
bombardments had done their work with the enemy’s wire and earthworks.
All the organisation for attack had been done, and the men were ready
in their assembly trenches waiting for the words which would hold all
their fate.
There was a silence in the room where a dozen officers heard the
words—men who were to be lookers-on and who would not have to leave a
trench up there on the battlefields when the little hand of a wrist
watch said “It is now.”
The great and solemn meaning of next day’s dawn made the air seem
oppressive, and our hearts beat jumpily for just a moment. There would
be no sleep for all those men crowded in the narrow trenches on the
north of the Somme. God give them courage in the morning....
The dawn came with a great beauty. There was a pale blue sky flecked
with white wisps of cloud. But it was cold and over all the fields
there was a floating mist which rose up from the moist earth and lay
heavily upon the ridges, so that the horizon was obscured. As soon
as light came there was activity in the place where I was behind the
lines. A body of French engineers, all blue from casque to puttee, and
laden with their field packs, marched along with a steady tramp, their
grave, grim faces turned towards the front. British staff officers came
motoring swiftly by and despatch riders mounted their motor cycles and
scurried away through the market carts of French peasants to the open
roads. French sentries and French soldiers in reserve raised their
hands to the salute as our officers passed.
Each man among them guessed that it was England’s day, and that the
British Army was out for attack. It was the spirit of France saluting
their comrades in arms when the oldest “poilu” there raised a wrinkled
hand to his helmet and said to an English soldier, “Bonne chance, mon
camarade!”
Along the roads towards the battlefields there was no movement of
troops. For a few miles there were quiet fields, where cattle grazed
and where the wheat grew green and tall in the white mist. The larks
were singing high in the first glinting sunshine of the day above the
haze. And another kind of bird came soaring overhead.
It was one of our monoplanes, which flew steadily towards the lines, a
herald of the battle. In distant hollows there were masses of limber,
and artillery horses hobbled in lines.
The battle line came into view, the long sweep of country stretching
southwards to the Somme. Above the lines beyond Bray, looking towards
the German trenches, was a great cluster of kite balloons. They were
poised very high, held steady by the air pockets on their ropes, and
their baskets, where the artillery observers sat, caught the rays of
the sun. I counted seventeen of them, the largest group that has ever
been seen along our front; but I could see no enemy balloons opposite
them. It seemed that we had more eyes than they, but to-day theirs have
been staring out of the veil of the mist.
5
We went farther forward to the guns, and stood on the same high field
where we had watched the night bombardment. The panorama of battle
was spread around us, and the noise of battle swept about us in great
tornadoes. I have said that in the night one was startled by the
curious quietude of the guns, by that queer muffled effect of so great
an artillery. But now on the morning battle this phenomenon, which I do
not understand, no longer existed. There was one continual roar of guns
which beat the air with great waves and shocks of sound, prodigious and
overwhelming.
The full power of our artillery was let loose at about 6 o’clock this
morning. Nothing like it has ever been seen or heard upon our front
before, and all the preliminary bombardment, great as it was, seemed
insignificant to this. I do not know how many batteries we have along
this battle line or upon the section of the line which I could see,
but the guns seemed crowded in vast numbers of every calibre, and the
concentration of their fire was terrific in its intensity.
For a time I could see nothing through the low-lying mist and heavy
smoke-clouds which mingled with the mist, and stood like a blind man,
only listening. It was a wonderful thing which came to my ears. Shells
were rushing through the air as though all the trains in the world had
leapt their rails and were driving at express speed through endless
tunnels in which they met each other with frightful collisions.
Some of these shells firing from batteries not far from where I stood
ripped the sky with a high, tearing note. Other shells whistled with
that strange, gobbling, sibilant cry which makes one’s bowels turn
cold. Through the mist and the smoke there came sharp, loud, insistent
knocks, as separate batteries fired salvoes, and great clangorous
strokes, as of iron doors banged suddenly, and the tattoo of the light
field guns playing the drums of death.
The mist was shifting and dissolving. The tall tower of Albert
Cathedral appeared suddenly through the veil, and the sun shone full
for a few seconds on the golden Virgin and the Babe, which she held
head-downwards above all this tumult as a peace-offering to men. The
broken roofs of the town gleamed white, and the two tall chimneys to
the left stood black and sharp against the pale blue of the sky, into
which dirty smoke drifted above the whiter clouds.
I could see now as well as hear. I could see our shells falling upon
the German lines by Thiépval and La Boiselle and further by Mametz, and
southwards over Fricourt. High explosives were tossing up great vomits
of black smoke and earth all along the ridges. Shrapnel was pouring
upon these places, and leaving curly white clouds, which clung to the
ground.
Below there was the flash of many batteries like Morse code signals by
stabs of flame. The enemy was being blasted by a hurricane of fire. I
found it in my heart to pity the poor devils who were there, and yet
was filled by a strange and awful exultation because this was the work
of our guns, and because it was England’s day.
Over my head came a flight of six aeroplanes, led by a single
monoplane, which steered steadily towards the enemy. The sky was deeply
blue above them, and when the sun caught their wings they were as
beautiful and delicate as butterflies. But they were carrying death
with them, and were out to bomb the enemy’s batteries and to drop their
explosives into masses of men behind the German lines.
Farther away a German plane was up. Our anti-aircraft guns were
searching for him with their shells which dotted the sky with snowballs.
Every five minutes or so a single gun fired a round. It spoke with a
voice I knew, the deep, gruff voice of old “Grandmother,” one of our
15-inch guns, which carries a shell large enough to smash a cathedral
with one enormous burst. I could follow the journey of the shell by
listening to its rush through space. Seconds later there was the
distant thud of its explosion.
Troops were moving forward to the attack from behind the lines. It
was nearly 7.30. All the officers about me kept glancing at their
wrist-watches. We did not speak much then, but stared silently at the
smoke and mist which floated and banked along our lines. There, hidden,
were our men. They, too, would be looking at their wrist-watches.
The minutes were passing very quickly—as quickly as men’s lives pass
when they look back upon the years. An officer near me turned away, and
there was a look of sharp pain in his eyes. We were only lookers-on.
The other men, our friends, the splendid Youth that we have passed on
the roads of France, were about to do this job. Good luck go with them!
Men were muttering such wishes in their hearts.
6
It was 7.30. Our watches told us that, but nothing else. The guns had
lifted and were firing behind the enemy’s first lines, but there was no
sudden hush for the moment of attack. The barrage by our guns seemed as
great as the first bombardment. For ten minutes or so before this time
a new sound had come into the general thunder of artillery. It was like
the “rafale” of the French soixante-quinze, very rapid, with distant
and separate strokes, but louder than the noise of field-guns. They
were our trench-mortars at work, along the whole length of the line
before me.
It was 7.30. The moment for the attack had come. Clouds of smoke had
been liberated to form a screen for the infantry, and hid the whole
line. The only men I could see were those in reserve, winding along a
road by some trees which led up to the attacking points. They had their
backs turned, as they marched very slowly and steadily forward. I could
not tell who they were, though I had passed some of them on the road a
day or two before. But, whoever they were, English, Irish or Welsh, I
watched them until most had disappeared from sight behind a clump of
trees. In a little while they would be fighting, and would need all
their courage.
At a minute after 7.30 there came through the rolling smoke-clouds a
rushing sound. It was the noise of rifle fire and machine-guns. The men
were out of their trenches, and the attack had begun. The enemy was
barraging our lines.
7
The country chosen for our main attack to-day stretches from the
Somme for some 20 miles northwards. The French were to operate on our
immediate right. It is very different country from Flanders, with its
swamps and flats, and from the Loos battlefields, with their dreary
plain pimpled by slack heaps.
It is a sweet and pleasant country, with wooded hills and little
valleys along the river beds of the Ancre and the Somme, and fertile
meadow-lands and stretches of woodland, where soldiers and guns may get
good cover. “A clean country,” said one of our Generals, when he first
went to it from the northern war zone.
It seemed very queer to go there first, after a knowledge of war in
the Ypres salient, where there is seldom view of the enemy’s lines
from any rising ground—except Kemmel Hill and Observatory Ridge—and
where certainly one cannot walk on the sky-line in full view of German
earthworks 2,000 yards away.
But at Hebuterne, which the French captured after desperate fighting,
and at Auchonvilliers (opposite Beaumont), and on the high ground
by the ruined city of Albert, looking over to Fricourt and Mametz,
and further south on the Somme, looking towards the little German
stronghold at Curlu, beyond the marshes, one could see very clearly and
with a strange, unreal sense of safety.
I saw a German sentry pacing the village street of Curlu, and went
within 20 paces of his outposts. Occasionally one could stare through
one’s glasses at German working parties just beyond sniping range
round Beaumont and Fricourt, and to the left of Fricourt the Crucifix
between its seven trees seemed very near as one looked at it in the
German lines.
Below this Calvary was the Tambour and the Bois Français, where not
a week passed without a mine being blown on one side or the other,
so that the ground was a great upheaval of mingling mine-craters and
tumbled earth, which but half-covered the dead bodies of men.
It was difficult ground in front of us. The enemy was strong in his
defences. In the clumps of woodland beside the ruined villages he hid
many machine-guns and trench mortars, and each ruined house in each
village was part of a fortified stronghold difficult to capture by
direct assault. It was here, however, and with good hopes of success
that our men attacked to-day, working eastwards across the Ancre and
northwards up from the Somme.
8
At the end of this day’s fighting it is still too soon to give a clear
narrative of the battle. Behind the veil of smoke which hides our men
there were many different actions taking place, and the messages that
come back at the peril of men’s lives and by the great gallantry of our
signallers and runners give but glimpses of the progress of our men and
of their hard fighting.
I have seen the wounded who have come out of the battle, and the
prisoners brought down in batches, but even they can give only confused
accounts of fighting in some single sector of the line which comes
within their own experience.
At first, it is certain, there was not much difficulty in taking the
enemy’s first line trenches along the greater part of the country
attacked. Our bombardment had done great damage, and had smashed down
the enemy’s wire and flattened his parapets. When our men left their
assembly trenches and swept forward, cheering, they encountered no
great resistance from German soldiers, who had been hiding in their
dug-outs under our storm of shells.
Many of these dug-outs were blown in and filled with dead, but out of
others which had not been flung to pieces by high explosives crept
dazed and deafened men who held their hands up and bowed their heads.
Some of them in one part of the line came out of their shelters as
soon as our guns lifted, and met our soldiers half-way, with signs of
surrender.
They were collected and sent back under guard, while the attacking
columns passed on to the second and third lines in the network of
trenches, and then if they could get through them to the fortified
ruins behind.
But the fortunes of war vary in different places, as I know from the
advance of troops, including the South Staffords, the Manchesters,
and the Gordons. In crossing the first line of trench the South
Staffordshire men had a comparatively easy time, with hardly any
casualties, gathering up Germans who surrendered easily. The enemy’s
artillery fire did not touch them seriously, and both they and the
Manchesters had very great luck.
But the Gordons fared differently. These keen fighting men rushed
forward with great enthusiasm until they reached one end of the
village of Mametz, and then quite suddenly they were faced by rapid
machine-gun fire and a storm of bombs. The Germans held a trench called
Danzig-avenue on the ridge where Mametz stands, and defended it with
desperate courage. The Gordons flung themselves upon this position, and
had some difficulty in clearing it of the enemy. At the end of the day
Mametz remained in our hands.
It was these fortified villages which gave our men greatest trouble,
for the German troops defended them with real courage, and worked their
machine-guns from hidden emplacements with skill and determination.
Fricourt is, I believe, still holding out (its capture has since
been officially reported), though our men have forced their way on
both sides of it, so that it is partly surrounded. Montauban, to the
north-east of Mametz, was captured early in the day, and we also gained
the strong point at Serre, until the Germans made a somewhat heavy
counter-attack, and succeeded in driving out our troops.
Beaumont-Hamel was not in our hands at the end of the day, but here
again our men are fighting on both sides of it. The woods and village
of Thiépval, which I had watched under terrific shell-fire in our
preliminary bombardments, was one point of our first attack, and our
troops swept from one end of the village to the other, and out beyond
to a new objective.