and went about among dead men gathering food and water from their
haversacks and bottles.
But for him his friends would have died. On the night of the 6th he
succeeded in getting back to our lines across that awful stretch of
No Man’s Land, and then insisted upon going back as the guide of the
stretcher-bearers who brought in the others.
VII
THE MEN WHO FOUGHT AT FRICOURT
1
JULY 6
There is something strangely inhuman in the aspect of a battle watched
from the edge of its furnace fires, or even as I stood watching it
within the crescent of our guns. Battalions move forward like ants
across the field, and one cannot see the light in men’s eyes nor
distinguish between one man and another.
In this war and in this latest battle I have seen the quality of
manhood uplifted to wonderful heights of courage beyond the range of
normal laws; and these soldiers of ours, these fine and simple men go
forward to the highest terrors with such singing hearts that one can
hardly keep a little moisture from one’s eyes when they go passing on
the roads.
They picked wild flowers and put them in their belts and caps—red
poppies and blue cornflowers—and when the word came to march again they
went forward towards the front with a fine swinging pace and smiling
faces under the sweat and dust. Yet they know what battle means.
I went to-day again among the men who fought at Fricourt. Some of
them had come back behind the lines, and outside their billets the
divisional band was playing, but not to much of an audience, for of
those who fought at Fricourt in the first assault there are not large
numbers left. The officers who came round the village with me had a
lonely look. After battle, such a battle as this, it is difficult to
keep the sadness out of one’s eyes. So many good fellows have gone....
But they were proud of their men. They found a joy in that. The men
had done gloriously. They had won their ground and held it, through
frightful fire. “The men were topping.”
There were a lot of Yorkshire men among them who fought at Fricourt
and it was those I saw to-day. They were the heroes, with other North
Country lads, of one of the most splendid achievements of British arms
ever written down in history.
Some of them were still shaken. When they spoke to me their words
faltered now and then, and a queer look came into their eyes. But, on
the whole, they were astoundingly calm, and had not lost their sense
of humour. Of the first advance over No Man’s Land, which was 150
yards across to the enemy’s front line trench, some of these men could
remember nothing. It was just a dreadful blank.
“I was just mad at the time,” said one of them. “The first thing I know
is that I found myself scrambling over the German parapets with a bomb
in my hand. The dead were lying all round me.”
But a sergeant there remembered all. He kept his wits about him,
strangely clear at such a time. He saw that his men were being swept
with machine-gun fire, so that they all lay down to escape its deadly
scythe. But he saw also that the bullets were just washing the ground
so that the prostrate men were being struck in great numbers.
He stood up straight and called upon the others to stand, thinking it
would be better to be hit in the feet than in the head. Then he walked
on and came without a scratch to the German front line.
2
Here and in the lines behind there was a wreckage of earth from our
bombardment, but several of the dug-outs had been untouched and in them
during our gun-fire men were sitting 30 feet down, with machine-guns
ready, and long periscopes, through which they could see our lines and
the first wave of advancing men. Before the word reached them, those
German machine gunners had rushed upstairs and behind the cover of
their wrecked trenches fired bursts of bullets at our men.
Each gun team had with them a rifleman who was a crack shot, and who
obeyed his army orders to pick off English officers. So they sniped our
young lieutenants with cool and cruel deliberation. Two of them who
were dressed as privates escaped for this reason. Many of the others
fell.
“With so many officers gone,” said one of the Yorkshire lads, “it was
every man for himself, and we carried on as best we could.”
They carried on as far as the second and third lines, in a desperate
fight with German soldiers who appeared out of the tumbled earth and
flung bombs with a grim refusal of surrender.
“Well, if you’re asking for it,” said one of our men—and he hurled
himself upon a great German and ran his bayonet through the man’s body.
It was bloody work for boys who are not butchers by instinct. Passion
caught hold of them and they saw red.
“I don’t know how it was,” said one of them with a queer thoughtfulness
in his eyes as he groped back to this moment of fierce excitement.
“Before I went over I had no rage in me. I didn’t want this
hand-to-hand business. But suddenly I found myself fighting like a
demon. It was my life or theirs, and I was out to kill first.”
There was not much killing at that spot. When most of our men were
within ten yards many of the Germans who had been flinging bombs lifted
up their hands and cried “Mercy!” to those whom they had tried to blow
to bits.
It was rather late to ask for mercy, but it was given to them. There
was a search into the dug-outs—do you understand that all this was
under great shell fire?—and many Germans were found in hiding there.
“I surrender,” said a German officer, putting his head out of a hole
in the earth, “and I have a wounded man with me.” “All right,” said a
Yorkshire sergeant; “fetch him up, and no monkey tricks.”
But out of the hole came not one man, but forty, in a long file that
seemed never to end, all of whom said “Kamerad!” to the sergeant, who
answered, “Good day to you!—and how many more?”
They were a nuisance to him then. He wanted to get on and this was
waste of time. But he sent back 42 prisoners with three lightly wounded
fellows of his company—he could not spare more—and then advanced with
his men beyond the German third line.
Bunches of men were straggling forward over the shell-broken ground
towards the German line at Crucifix Trench, to the left of Fricourt.
They knew that this trench was important, that their lives were well
given if they could capture it. And these Yorkshire boys from the hills
and dales thought nothing of their lives so that they could take it.
3
They unslung their bombs, looked to the right and left, where German
heavies were falling, cursed the chatter of machine-guns from Fricourt
village, and said “Come on, lads!” to the men about them. Not one man
faltered or turned back, or lingered with the doubt that he had gone
far enough.
They stumbled forward over the shell craters, over dead bodies, over
indescribable things. Crucifix Trench was reached. It was full of
Germans, who were hurling bombs from it, from that trench and the
sunken road near by.
The Yorkshire boys went through a barrage of bombs, hurled their own,
worried through the broken parapets and over masses of tumbled earth,
and fought single fights with big Germans, like terrier dogs hunting
rats and worrying them. Parties bombed their way down the sunken road.
Those who fell, struck by German bombs, shouted “Get on to ’em, lads,”
to others who came up. In bits of earthwork German heads looked up,
white German faces, bearded, and covered with clay like dead men risen.
They put up trembling hands and cried their word of comradeship to
those enemy boys.
“Well, that’s all right,” said a Yorkshire captain. “We’ve got the
Crucifix. And meanwhile our guns are giving us the devil.”
4
Our gunners did not know that Crucifix Trench was taken. Some of our
shells were dropping very close.
“It’s time for a red light,” said the Yorkshire captain. He had a
bullet in his ribs, and was suffering terribly, but he still commanded
his men.
A red rocket went up, high through the smoke over all this corner of
the battlefield. Somewhere it was seen by watchful eyes, in some O.P.
or by some flying fellow. Our guns lifted. The shells went forward,
crashing into Shelter Wood beyond.
“Good old gunners!” said a sergeant. “By God, they’re playing the game
to-day!”
But other men had seen the red rocket above Crucifix Trench. It stood
in the sky like a red eye looking down upon the battlefield. The German
gunners knew that the British were in Crucifix Trench. They lowered
their guns a point or two, shortening their range, and German shells
came crumping the earth, on either side, registering the ground.
“And where do we go next, captain?” asked a Yorkshire boy. It seemed he
felt restless where he was.
The captain thought Shelter Wood might be a good place to see. He
chose ten men to see it with him, and they were very willing.
With the bullet in his ribs—it hurt him horribly—he climbed out of
Crucifix Trench, and crawled forward, with his ten men to the wood
beyond.
It was full of Germans. At the south-west corner of it was a redoubt,
with machine-guns and a bomb-store. The German bombers were already
flinging their grenades across to the Crucifix.
The wounded captain said that ten men were not enough to take Shelter
Wood—it would need a thousand men, perhaps, so he crawled back with the
others.
They stayed all night in Crucifix Trench, and it was a dreadful night.
At ten o’clock the enemy opened an intense bombardment of heavies
and shrapnel, and maintained it at full pitch until two o’clock next
morning.
There were 900 men up there and in the neighbourhood. When morning came
there were not so many, but the others were eager to get out and get on.
The Yorkshire spirit was unbeaten. The grit of the North Country was
still there in the morning after the first assault.
5
Queer adventures overtook men who played a lone hand in this darkness
and confusion of battle. One man I met to-day—true Yorkshire, with
steel in his eyes and a burr in his speech—it was strange to hear the
Saxon words he used—rushed with some of his friends into Birch Tree
Wood, which was not captured until two days later.
There were many Germans there, but not visible. Suddenly the Yorkshire
lad found himself quite alone, his comrades having escaped from a
death-trap, for the wood was being shelled—as I saw myself that
day—with an intense fire from our guns.
The lonely boy, who was a machine-gunner without his gun, thought that
things were “pretty thick,” as, indeed, they were, but he decided that
the risks of death were less if he stayed still than if he moved.
Presently, as he crouched low, he saw a German coming. He was crawling
along on his hands and knees, and blood was oozing from him. As he
crawled, a young Yorkshire soldier, also badly wounded, passed him at a
little distance in the wood.
The German stared at him. Then he raised himself, though still on his
knees, and fired at the boy with his revolver, so that he fell dead.
The German went on his hands again to go on with his crawling, but
another shot ripped through the trees, and he crawled no more.
It was fired by the man who had been left alone—the young man I saw
to-day. “I killed the brute,” he said, “and I’m glad of it.”
Our shells were bursting very fiercely over the wood, slashing off
branches and ploughing-up the earth. The lonely boy searched about
for a dug-out and found one. When he went down into it he saw three
dead Germans there, and he sat with them for more than eight hours
while our bombardment lasted. There was another lad I met who was also
a machine-gunner, and alone in the battle zone. He was alone when
fourteen of his comrades had been knocked out. But single-handed he
carried and served his gun, from one place to another, all through the
day, and part of next day, sniping odd parties of Germans with bursts
of bullets.
Another sturdy fellow I met came face to face with a German, who called
out to him in perfect English.
“Don’t shoot. I was brought up in England and played footer for
Bradford City.... By Jove! I know your face, old man. Weren’t you at
the Victoria Hotel, Sheffield?”
It was a queer meeting on a battlefield. One of the grimmest things I
have heard was told me by another Yorkshire boy. A German surrendered,
and then suddenly, as this lad approached to make him prisoner, pulled
the detonator of a bomb and raised it to throw.
“I put my bayonet right close to him so suddenly that he was terrified,
and forgot to fling his bomb. Then a queer kind of look came into his
eyes. He remembered that the blooming bomb was going off. It went off,
and blew him to bits.”
That is war. And the men who have told me these things are young men
who do not like the things they have seen. But, because it is war, they
go through to the last goal with a courage that does not quail.
The men of this division next day took Shelter Wood and Fricourt, and
captured many prisoners.
VIII
HOW THE PRUSSIANS FELL AT CONTALMAISON
1
JULY 8
After the first four days of battle there was something like a lull
of twenty-four hours—a lull filled with the great noise of guns—which
was broken by fresh assaults made by our troops in the direction
of Mametz Wood and Contalmaison. For two days now—on Thursday and
Friday—there has been severe fighting in that territory, and although
we lost Contalmaison last night after taking it in the morning, it is,
I am sure, only a temporary set-back, for our position is strong in
its neighbourhood, and great loss has been inflicted upon the enemy.
The battle of Contalmaison, not yet finished, will be a distinct and
important episode in the history of this campaign.
I was able to see something of the battle—all the fierce picture of our
shell fire—but, at the time, with no accurate idea of what was really
happening beyond our guns, and with that sense of confusion and mystery
which all soldiers have when they are on the battlefield, knowing very
little of what is going on to the left or right of them, not knowing
what is happening to themselves, or why they stand where they do, or
what order will next come to them, or whether our men are doing well or
badly.
2
It was early in the morning that I went out beyond many of our
batteries and watched the bombardment that was to precede the infantry
attacks upon the enemy’s positions in front of Contalmaison and, to
the right, on Mametz Wood, where some of our men held the south-west
corner. There were large bodies of troops about on high ground where
our old trenches are, and bunched about in groups beyond, up a slope
leading to the line from which our attack was to be made. They seemed
to have nothing in the world to do except hang about in a casual way.
Many of them were lying on the grass, or along roadsides, asleep. Not
all the roar of the guns made them turn uneasily. They had been there
all night, waiting to go up in support, and now, dog-tired, they were
taking their chance of rest.
It was not quite a safe spot for sleep. Although the enemy’s guns were
busy on different places, there was no knowing whether they might not
shift a point or two this way at any moment. The roadway had already
tempted some of their shells earlier in the morning. Tall beech trees
here and there had been cut clean in half, and a litter of branches and
foliage lay below the broken stumps. There were new shell craters in
the field over the way, just where a company of R.A.M.C. men had sat
down on their stretchers, waiting for work. But nobody seemed to worry.
A captain of Pioneers spoke to me and said, “Any news?”
He was a middle-sized, keen-looking man, with a humorous look in his
grey eyes which were shaded by a steel helmet, khaki covered. He was as
muddy as a scarecrow, and shivered a little after his night in the rain.
“Dashed if I know what’s happening,” he said; “one never does. Our
fellows are supposed to be going up, but no orders come along. There’s
our adjutant, waiting for ’em.” I looked across the road and saw the
adjutant. He was lying on his back, quite straight, at full length,
with his head on his pack and his waterproof coat over him. He was
profoundly asleep.
The Pioneer captain pointed towards little masses of men below the
crest of the rising ground, beyond which were hell-fires.
“I thought they would go up an hour ago, but they’re still waiting,
poor lads. I expect they’ll go in it all right in less than half an
hour.”
He stared towards Mametz village. It was under a pall of greenish
smoke, and not a minute passed without a big German shell bursting over
it and raising black columns of cloud.
“Nasty kind of place,” said the Pioneer. “Thought I should have to
spend the night there. Glad I didn’t, though! And such a night! I never
saw anything like it. Exactly like hell, only worse; a sky full of
shells, and lights bursting like blazes. A regular Brock’s benefit....
Hulloa, some of ’em are going up.”
The men who were in small bunches on the low ground were getting into
a new kind of order. They were moving up towards the crest in extended
formation....
A German shell was coming our way. I heard its high gobbling note,
and shifted my steel hat a little, and hoped it might serve. There
was a nasty crash fifty yards away below the road, where some of the
men were bunched.... A whistle sounded, and the R.A.M.C. men, who had
been squatting on their stretchers, sprang up and ran, carrying their
stretchers, down a side track. They had found some work to do.
Two other shells came closer, and we changed our position a little. It
was getting rather hot.
3
But not so hot as other places, compared with which our ground was
Paradise. Mametz Village, behind our lines now, was being shelled
heavily by the enemy, and was a very ugly spot, but even that was
a health resort, as soldiers say, compared with any of the German
positions in the neighbourhood of Contalmaison. Our guns were
concentrating their fire along a line north of Birch Tree Wood from
Horseshoe Trench, now in our hands, across to Peak Wood and Quadrangle
Trench away to Mametz Wood on the right. We were also putting a
terrific barrage round the village of Contalmaison and Acid Drop Copse.
Our batteries, heavy and light, seemed to be in rings round this storm
centre.
The heavies were away behind, and I could only know their existence by
the great shells that came rushing overhead, from invisible places at
long range, with a long drone like some great harp plucked by old god
Thor, as each shell crossed the valley and smashed over the enemy’s
lines. They came in great numbers and from half the points of the
compass, to fall upon that one stretch of ground a mile or so broad.
Our field guns were not invisible.
I could see them winking and blinking in the valleys and up the slopes
as far as the eye could range. They fired salvoes or rounds with
sharp and separated rat-tat-tats. Every kind of gun and howitzer—old
“Grandmothers,” the long six-inchers, four-point-sevens, French
soixante-quinze, and our own eighteen pounders—played the devil over
the German lines.
I think it was about eleven that they lifted and put a dense barrage of
shells further back. For the first time in my experience, this moment
was perceptible. It was a kind of hush for just a second, as though all
the guns were taking breath. Then the tumult began again, while the
infantry went forward into and through the smoke. A little while later
I saw rockets high above the smoke in the direction of Contalmaison.
Something told me, though without any certainty, that our men were in
that village.
4
From a visual point of view that is all I can tell, but to-day have
seen some of the officers who were directing this battle, and what
happened is now much clearer, though not absolutely clear in all
its details. The day before yesterday, after heavy fighting in the
early stages of the battle, some of our battalions took possession
of the Horseshoe Trench to the north-west of Birch Tree Wood and to
the south-west of Contalmaison. Other battalions to the right were
stretching along a line through Birch Tree Wood to the south of Mametz
Wood. A curious affair was happening in a trench called the Old Jaeger
Trench, running out of the Horseshoe towards a German redoubt to the
west of Peak Wood.
Part of this trench was held by the troops on the left and part by the
troops on the right, and both reported and believed that they held all
of it. The truth was that a gap in the middle was still held by a party
of Germans, who had machine-guns and bombs with which, presently, they
made themselves unpleasant. Orders were sent to clear the trench of
these ugly customers, and it was done by the troops on the left. Then
orders were given to clear forward to a triangle trench to the right
of the Old Jaeger. It was a strong redoubt, and the Germans defended
themselves so tenaciously at this point that it changed hands three
times before our men held it for good.
It yielded finally when the troops on the right fought their way up to
Peak Wood, captured it, and enfiladed the enemy with machine-gun fire.
At that moment they saw their position was hopeless, and came running
out with their hands up. Further on there was a machine-gun emplacement
which was giving us a good deal of trouble, but this was bombarded and
rushed, and on the evening of July 6 the machine-gun, to use the words
of one of the officers, was “done in.”
Yesterday morning the attack following the bombardment extended
from these points south-west of Contalmaison away to the right.
Unfortunately, although the fortune of war favoured us in another way,
the troops on the right were unable to make much headway. But at this
time an extraordinary, and, for the enemy, a terrible, thing happened.
Some battalions of the Prussian Guard Reserve, hurriedly brought up
a day or two ago from Valenciennes, and thrown into this battlefield
without maps or guidance or local knowledge, advanced to meet our men
on the right, and walked up, by an awful stroke of chance, straight
into the terrific barrage which our guns had just started round
Contalmaison. A whole battalion was cut to pieces.
Many others suffered frightful things. I am told by some of the
prisoners that they lost three-quarters of their number in casualties,
and although this may be an exaggeration—prisoners always have the
tendency to exaggerate their losses—it is certain that a mass of men
were killed and wounded. As soon as our barrage lifted our troops on
the right, most of them men of Yorkshire and northern counties, swept
forward and without great trouble entered Contalmaison and Bailiff Wood
to the north-west. It was their lights which I had seen signalling
through the smoke.
It was a magnificent success, not too dearly bought. But just when our
position looked full of promise for the morrow disappointing news came
in last night. It is here that the details of what happened are not
clear. Germans were reported to be streaming out of Mametz Wood towards
Contalmaison, apparently to make a counter-attack there. The enemy’s
guns were shelling the place. Rain fell heavily, and our men who had
fought so well and so long were exhausted.
Owing to the difficulty of communication and other troubles which
happen at those times, the situation became confused, and late in the
evening it was reported that Contalmaison had been evacuated as a
temporary measure for defensive reasons.
At the same time it was also reported that Mametz Wood had been so
heavily shelled by our guns that much damage had been inflicted upon
the Germans inside, some of whom had escaped to our lines. We are now
holding the outskirts of Contalmaison, in, or in the neighbourhood of,
the cemetery, and, I believe, Acid Drop Copse, so that we are in a
sound position for further attack.
5
A large number of prisoners were taken, and they came straggling back
over the battlefield in miserable little groups. Some of them carried
our wounded on stretchers or on their backs, and our men carried their
wounded.
They were the remnants of the 3rd Prussian Guards Division which has
been so utterly broken that it no longer exists as a fighting unit.
Those who did not fall into our hands have been withdrawn from the
line. The moral of the men as well as their fighting force has been
smashed. Even the officers admit that they have no more stomach for the
fight, and several of the men with whom I spoke to-day were frank in
saying that they are glad to be prisoners to be safe at last from the
frightfulness of this war.