a cry from starving people.
“You reproach me with writing so little to you. What can I write? If I
told the truth about conditions here I should be locked up, and as I do
not wish to write lies to you I had better say nothing.”
“We have tickets for everything now—flour, meat, sausage, butter, fat,
potatoes, sugar, soup, &c. We are really nothing more than tickets
ourselves.”
And in another letter from Cologne:—
“Hunger is making itself felt here. During the week none of the
families received any potatoes. The allowance now is one egg per head
per week and half a pound of bread and fifty grammes of butter per head
per day.”
“England is not so wrong about starving us out. If the war lasts three
months longer we shall be done. It is a terrible time for Germany. God
is punishing us too severely.”
There is only one satisfaction in these pitiful letters. It is the hope
it gives us that the enemy—not these poor women and children, but the
Devil at the back of the business—will realise soon that war does not
pay, and will haul down the flag with its skull and crossbones.
XIII
THROUGH THE GERMAN SECOND LINE
1
JULY 15
For a little while—yes, and even now—it has seemed something rather
marvellous. We have broken through the enemy’s second line; through,
and beyond on a front of two and a half miles, and for the first time
since October of 1914 cavalry has been in action. Men who fought in
the retreat from Mons, the little remnant left, look back on the old
days when the enemy’s avalanche of men swept down on them, and say,
as one said to me yesterday, “Through the second line? Then we have
broken the evil spell.” So it seems to men who fought in the first
battle of Ypres, or in the second, and then for a year more stood in
their trenches staring through loop-holes at the zig-zag of German
lines, barbwired, deeply dug, fortified with redoubts, machine-gun
emplacements and strong places—a great system of earthworks on high
ground, nearly always on high ground, which made one grow cold to see
in aeroplane photographs—supported by masses of guns which had been
registered on every road and trench of ours.
To smash through that could be done at a great cost. Given a certain
number of guns on a certain length of front, with hardened troops
ready for a big dash, and there was no doubt that we could break the
enemy’s first line, or system, as we broke through at Neuve Chapelle
and at Loos. But afterwards? That was the hard thing to solve. No one
on the Western front had found the formula to carry the offensive
beyond the first line without coming to a dead check at a river of
blood. The French troops who broke through in the Champagne fell before
they reached the second line. At Loos Highlanders and Londoners swept
through the first line and then, at Hill 70 and Hulluch, were faced
by annihilating fire, and could go no further except to death.... But
to-day we broke the second German line.
2
I had the luck to give the news to some of our men who had been
wounded early in the battle. It was worth a king’s ransom to see their
gladness. “Have we got through, sir?” asked an English boy, bandaged
about the head and face. When I told him a great light came into his
eyes, and he said “By Jove!... That’s pretty good!”
A wounded officer raised himself on a stretcher and called out to
me as I passed, “Any news?... How are we doing up there?... What,
right through?... Oh, splendid!” Because I had come down from the
battlefield, and might know something, officers and men on the roads
asked eager questions. A doctor came out of an operating theatre in a
field hospital. He was very busy there with men who could not answer
questions. He stood for a moment in the doorway of the tent wiping his
hands on a towel.
“How’s it going? Have we broken through?”
He stared at me when I answered, as though searching for the truth in
me, and said, “Sure?... I hardly thought we could do it.”
The news spread quickly behind the lines, and there has been a queer
thrill in the air to-day, exciting men with the promise of victory.
I think they, too, feel that an evil spell has been broken because
British soldiers have broken the second German line. Their hopes run
ahead of the facts.
Their imagination has visions of an immediate German rout, and the
enormous patience of the French people, incredulous, after two years,
of any quick ending, is not shared by some of our young officers and
men, who believe that we have the enemy on the run, not remembering his
third line, and fourth, and God knows how many more.
For a day, anyhow, victory has been in the air, and because it was
the 14th of July, France’s day, there are flags waving everywhere, on
wayside cottages and barns and across the streets of an old French
town. Women and children are carrying the tricolour, and as our wounded
come down in ambulances and lorries, mostly lightly-wounded men
straight out of the battle, wearing German helmets on bandaged heads,
waving bandaged hands, or staring out gravely, with a pain in their
eyes, at the life of the roads which is theirs again, the flags flutter
up to them and laughing girls cry “Merci, camarades!” and old men stand
on the roadsides raising their hats to these boys of ours who have won
back a mile or two more of the soil of France, and have been touched by
fire.
All this is part of the emotion which belongs to war, the sentiment and
the faith and the hope without which men could not fight nor women hide
their tears.
But the business of war itself is different and of a grimmer kind, not
admitting sentiment to those Generals of ours who have been calculating
chances based upon the position of their guns, the quantity of their
ammunition, their reserves of men, the enemy’s dispositions, resources
and difficulties, and all the mechanics of a great battle. They have
had to study human nature, too, as well as the mechanism of war. To how
great a test could they put these battalions of ours, in the plan to
smash the German second line? How long, for instance, could they “stick
it” in Bernafay Wood and the Trones Wood? Was it possible to put in
troops already tired by hard fighting? How could they be replaced by
fresh troops?... a thousand problems of man-power and gun-power which
must be reckoned out, without much margin of error, if all the cost
of the first part of the battle—a tragic cost—were to be justified by
success in the second part.
Working night and day, snatching a little sleep and a little food
at odd hours, in constant touch with telephones whispering messages
from headquarters, batteries, battalion commanders in the field,
receiving reports of local successes and local failures of German
counter-attacks, of German reinforcements in guns and men, our
divisional Generals and Brigadiers, keeping in touch with Corps
Generals and Army Generals, had to prepare for the second big blow. It
would have to be quick and hard.
3
There had been a whole fortnight’s fighting since the great attack
was launched on the First of July, and it had been very desperate
fighting. On the left from Hebuterne down to Beaumont-Hamel the
heroic self-sacrifice of great numbers of men had not been rewarded
by success. That side of the German fortress lines had remained
standing—broken in places, but not carried nor held after the first
bloody assaults.
The enemy had concentrated his defensive strength at that part of
the line, believing the main attack was to be delivered there, and
it was one vast redoubt crammed with machine-guns which scythed down
battalions of our men as they advanced with incomparable valour.
Further south the stronghold of Ovillers was not yet taken, though
almost surrounded, and penetrated by bodies of grenadiers bombing their
way into the quarries and cellars.
It was through the southern bastion of the German fortress-position
that our troops had stormed their way, and in fourteen days of hard
stubborn fighting they had struggled forward up the high ground from
the Fricourt ridge to the Montauban ridge. In my despatches I have
endeavoured to record the narrative of these daily battles, and to give
some faint idea of the wonderful courage and tenacity of our men, who
captured Contalmaison and lost it and captured it again under terrible
storms of fire, who went forward to the Battle of the Woods, fighting
for every yard of the way in Bailiff Wood on the left, and Trones Wood
on the right, and Mametz Wood in the centre, with little copses of
naked tree-trunks round about, into which the enemy hurled his high
explosives.
Wave after wave of splendid men went up. Not one of these places was
won easily. The spirit of our race, all the steel in it, all the fire
in its blood, was needed to gain the ground swept by machine-guns and
ploughed by shells. There were hours when men of weaker stock would
have despaired and yielded. But these men of ours would not be beaten.
Fresh waves of them went to get back in the morning what had been lost
at night, or at night what had been lost by day because of the fire
which had destroyed those who had gone up first. And every day they
made a little progress, thrusting forward an advance post here, winning
a new bit of wood there, bombing the Germans back from ground we needed
for a new advance.
There was not a man among all our men who had any misunderstanding as
to the purpose of the struggle. I have spoken to hundreds of them,
and all knew that it was “up to them,” as they say, to push on to the
second German line so that other men could break it. I know that many
of these men, quite simple fellows, felt individually that upon his
single courage, his last bit of pushful strength, his last stumble
over a yard of earth towards that second German line, depended, as far
as one man’s strength tells, the success of the great attack. It was
this spirit which made them shout “No surrender!” when surrender would
have been an easy way of escape, and “stick it” in places of infernal
horror. I write the plain unvarnished truth.
It was when Contalmaison—the Stronghold of the Woods—was finally and
securely taken, when Mametz Wood and Bailiff Wood were mostly ours, and
when our positions were strengthened at Montauban with some footing
in Trones Wood, that the attack upon the second German line became
possible. It was for that moment that our generals were now waiting
and preparing. Men were there who had fought long in the Ypres salient,
hardened to every phase of trench warfare, and men who had won great
honour in the Loos salient, and men, all of them, who had the spirit of
attack.
I watched them passing along the roads towards the front, saw old
friends in their ranks, and knew, as I looked, that in all the world
there are not more splendid soldiers. Hardened by a long campaign,
bronzed to the colour of their belts, marching with most perfect
discipline, these handsome, clean-cut men went into the battlefield
whistling as on the first day of the battle their comrades had gone
singing, though they knew that in a few hours it would be hell for
them. As I watched them pass something broke in my heart so that I
could have wept silly tears. There were other men, harder than I, who
were stirred by the same emotion, and cursed the war.
4
The attack was to begin before the dawn. Behind the lines, as I went
up to the front in the darkness, the little villages of France were
asleep. It was a night of beauty, very warm and calm, with a moon
giving a milky light to the world. Clouds trailed across it without
obscuring its brightness, and there was only one star visible—a
watchful eye up there looking down upon the battlefields.
The whitewashed walls of cottages and barns appeared out of great
gulfs of shadow, and trees on high ground above the fields were cut
black against the moonlight. Warm scents of hay and moist earth, and
new-baked bread, and the acrid smell of French farmyards came upon the
air. Further forward there was still great quietude along the roads,
but here and there long supply columns and ambulance convoys loomed
black under the trees.
The ambulances were empty before the battle. For several miles only
one figure stood at every cross-road. It was the figure of Christ on a
wayside Calvary. Sentries gave their challenge, as on the first night
of battle, and presently I saw other soldiers about in the dark entries
of French courtyards, their bayonets shining like a streak of light,
and officers standing together with whispered consultations, and, along
side roads men marching.
A long column of them came to a halt to let our car pass, and I looked
into the men’s eyes. There was a young officer there whose face I
should know if I saw him again in the world, because it was in the rays
of a lantern, and had a white light on it. He had the look of Lancelot.
The men were very quiet. Very quiet also were camps of men and horses
in fields dipping down to hollows where a few lanterns twinkled,
and presently quite close to the edge of the battlefields I passed
great columns of horse-gunners and horse transport and cavalry with
their lances up, and Indian native cavalry, still as statues. The
men were drawn up along the side of the road, and their figures were
utterly black in the darkness between an old millhouse and some other
buildings. Except for one man who was humming a tune, they were quite
silent, and they hardly stirred in their saddles. They seemed to be
waiting, with some grim expectation.
The road was lined with trees which made a tunnel with its foliage,
and at one end of the tunnel which showed a patch of sky, there were
strange lights flashing, like flaming swords cutting through the
darkness. We went up towards the lights and towards a monstrous tumult
of noise, and walked straight across country towards the centre of a
circle of fire which was all around us. Our artillery was smashing the
German line.
5
I described, perhaps at too great length, the bombardment on the night
before the 1st of July. Then it seemed to me that nothing could be
more overwhelming to one’s soul and senses. But this was worse—more
wonderful and more terrible. As I stumbled over broken ground and shell
holes, and got caught in coils of wire, a cold sweat broke out upon
me, and for a little while I was horribly afraid. It was not fear for
myself. It was just fear, the fear that an animal may have when the sky
is full of lightning—a sensuous terror. The hell of war encircled us,
and its waves of sound and light beat upon us.
Our batteries were firing with an intense fury. The flashes of them
were away back behind us—where the heavies have their hiding places—and
over all the ground in front of our new line of attack. They came out
of the black earth with short, sharp stabs of red flame whose light
filled the hollows with pools of fire. And the sky and the ridges of
ground and the earthworks and ruins and woods across our lines were
blazing with the flashes of bursting shells. Blinding light leapt
about like a will o’ the wisp. For a second it lit up all the horizon
over Contalmaison, and gave a sudden picture, ghastly white, of the
broken château with stumps of trees about it. Then it was blotted
out by a great blackness, and instantly shifted to Mametz Wood or to
Montauban, revealing their shapes intensely and the shells crashing
beyond them, until they, too, disappeared with the click of a black
shutter. A moment later and Fricourt was filled with white brilliance,
so that every bit of its ruin, its hideous rummage of earth, its old
mine-craters, and its plague-stricken stumps of trees were etched
upon one’s eyes. Along the German second line by Bazentin-le-Grand,
Bazentin-le-Petit, and Longueval, at the back of the woods, our shells
were bursting without a second’s pause and in great clusters. They tore
open the ground and let out gusts of flames. Flame fountains rose and
spread from the German trenches above Pearl Wood. The dark night was
rent with all these flames, and hundreds of batteries were feeding the
fires.
Every calibre of gun was at work. The heavy shells, 15-inch, 12-inch,
8-inch, 6-inch, 4.7, came overhead like flocks of birds—infernal
birds with wings that beat the air into waves and came whining with
a shrill high note, and stooped to earth with a monstrous roar. The
lighter batteries, far forward, were beating the devil’s tattoo,
one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, with sharp knocks that clouted
one’s ears. I sat on a wooden box on the top of an old dug-out in the
midst of all this fury. There was a great gun to my left, and every
time it fired it shook the box, and all the earth underneath, with a
violent vibration.
The moon disappeared soon after 3 o’clock, and no stars were to be
seen. But presently a faint ghost of dawn appeared. The white earth of
the old, disused trenches about me became visible. A lark rose and sang
overhead. And at 3.30 there was a sudden moment of hush. It was the
lifting of the guns, and the time of attack. Over there in the darkness
by Mametz Wood and Montauban thousands of men, the men I had seen going
up, had risen to their feet, and were going forward to the second
German line, or to the place where death was waiting for them, before
the light came.
6
The light came very quickly. It was strange what a difference a few
minutes made. Very faintly, but steadily, the dawn crept through
the darkness, revealing the forms of things and a little colour in
the grass. The sandbags at my feet whitened. Over at Ovillers there
were clouds of smoke, and from its denseness red and white rockets
shot up and remained in the sky for several seconds. Other rockets,
red and white and green, rose to the right of Contalmaison towards
Bazentin-le-Grand. Our infantry was advancing.
A new sound came into the general din of gun-fire. It was a kind of
swishing noise, like that of flames in a strong wind. I knew what it
meant.
“Enemy machine-guns,” said an artillery observer, who had just come out
of his hole in the ground. There must have been many of them to make
that noise.
Our own artillery had burst out into a new uproar. I could see our
shells bursting further forward, or thought I could.
“I believe our men are getting on,” said an officer, staring through
his glasses.
The gunner observer had one eye to a telescope.
“There’s too much mist about. And, anyhow, one can’t make out the
confusion of battle. It’s always hopeless. And what the devil is that
light?”
“Must be a signal,” said the gunner officer. “I think I’d better report
it.”
He put his head into the dug-out, and spoke to a man sitting by a
telephone.
At 3.55 the light was clear enough for one to see German shrapnel, very
black and thick, between Mametz Wood and Bazentin Wood. High explosives
were bursting there too. The enemy had got his guns to work upon our
infantry.
At 4 o’clock there was a humming sound overhead, and I looked up and
saw the first aeroplane flying towards the German lines, just as I had
seen one on the first day of battle. It flew very low—no more than 500
ft. high—and went very steadily on towards the furnace, brave moth!
At 4.10 there was a red glow to the right of Montauban. It rose with a
pulsing light and spread upwards—a great torch with sparks dancing over
it.
“By Jove!” said one of the men near me. “That’s Longueval on fire!”
In a little while there was no doubt about it. I could see the sharp
edge of broken buildings in the heart of the red glow. The village of
Longueval was in flames.
From behind the north-west corner of Mametz Wood a great rosy light
rose like a cloud in the setting sun, but more glowing at its base.
It died out three times and rose again, vividly, and then appeared no
more. The gunner observer was bothered again. Was it a signal or an
explosion? With so many lights and flames about it was difficult to
tell.
At about 4.30 I heard another furious outburst of machine-gun fire in
the direction of Longueval, and it seemed to spread westwards along
Bazentin-le-Grand and Bazentin-le-Petit. I strained my eyes to see any
of our infantry, but dense clouds of smoke were rolling over the ground
past Contalmaison and between Mametz and Bazentin woods. It seemed as
if we were putting up a smoke barrage there, and later a great volume
of smoke hid the ground by Montauban.
The enemy’s artillery was now firing with great violence. Enormous
shell-bursts flung up the earth along the line of our advance, and the
black shrapnel smoke was hanging heavily above. It seemed to me that
some of their guns were firing wildly and blindly. High explosives
burst down below Fricourt, where there was nothing to hurt, and in
places far afield. The German gunners had got the wind up, as soldiers
say, and now that darkness had gone and daylight come our men must have
gone far ahead, if luck was theirs. Had they broken the second German
line? Men waiting for any news of them found the strain of ignorance
intolerable.... What were they doing up there?
7
The first men to come back from the battle were the wounded. They
were the lightly wounded, or at least men who could walk. They came
across the fields in twos and threes at first, or alone, single limping
figures, at a slow pace. But after an hour or two they came in a
straggling procession from the first-aid dressing stations up in the
lines—men with bandaged heads, men with their arms in slings, men with
wounded feet, so that they could only hop along with an arm round a
comrade’s neck.
Some of them were all blood-stained, with blood on their faces and
hands and clothes. Others had their uniforms torn to tatters, and
there were men who were bare almost to the waist, with a jacket
slung over one shoulder. There was hardly a man among them who wore
his steel helmet, though some carried them slung to the rifle, and
others wore German helmets and German caps. Ambulances were waiting
for them, and the stretcher-bearers were busy with the bad cases. The
stretcher-bearers had done their duty as gallantly as the fighting men,
and some of their own comrades were among the wounded.
But they had been reinforced by men who do not belong to the R.A.M.C.
Some of the stretchers were being carried by men in grey uniforms with
flat round caps, who walked stolidly looking about them, at all those
British soldiers, and at those fields on the British side, with curious
eyes as though everything were strange to them. They were German
prisoners paying for the privilege of life, and glad to pay.
Later in the day there came down a long column of these men, not
carrying stretchers, but marching shoulder to shoulder, under armed
escort. There were over 700 of them in this one convoy, as a living
proof that the day had gone well for British arms. They were tall,
sturdy men for the most part, and in spite of their ordeal by fire most
of them looked in good physical health, though haggard and hollow-eyed
and a little dazed. There was a number of wounded among them who
dragged wearily by the side of their luckier friends, but those who
were badly hurt travelled with our own wounded, and I saw several of
them on the lorries with their hands on the shoulders of men who had
gone out to kill them.
So the backwash of battle came down like a tide, but long before then
I knew that we had broken the second German line and that our men were
fighting on the high ground beyond. The village of Longueval was ours.
Bazentin-le-Grand, both wood and village, and Bazentin-le-Petit, were
ours. A gallant body of men had swept through Trones Wood, on the
extreme right of the line, and patrols were pushing into Delville Wood
and towards the highest ridge behind the broken German trenches. On the
left our men had swept up and beyond Contalmaison Villa, which stands
far north of the village.
Every objective of the attack had been carried and our losses were not
enormously heavy. The German lines had been captured on a front of
nearly three miles—and the cavalry was going in.