soldier. The young officer had been given orders to push out a patrol
down a sap or shallow trench to reconnoitre the position of the enemy.
He had not gone many yards before he met the enemy—a tall fellow in a
steel helmet, followed by forty others.
There was surprise on both sides and considerable alarm, but the
English boy was first in with a revolver shot. He thinks now that he
made a mistake because the Germans made no attack upon him and ran back
into the wood, so that it is likely enough they had come forward to
surrender, as a means of escape from our shell-fire.
Our lieutenant came back to report, dodging snipers who “potted” at him
from several directions, and then lying in a ditch until a fragment of
shell caught him.
“Longueval is the very devil,” says this subaltern with two days’
experience of war—and enough too. “With Delville Wood on its right it’s
not a healthy neighbourhood. But of course Brother Boche is getting it
in the neck all the time, so he can’t be pleased with his position.”
To-day there are other men attacking the same position, up against the
same difficulties, subject to the same fire.
Those who went before them have gained the immortality of history—a
poor reward, perhaps, for great struggles and great suffering, but
theirs, whatever the value of it, for all time, when the secrets of the
war are told.
The men who are now in are of the same breed, and will not fail for
lack of courage, but as I write the guns are firing with a great tumult
of noise over there, and new history is in the making so that it cannot
yet be known.
6
JULY 29
I have already described in a previous despatch the great difficulties
that have confronted our men in Longueval and Delville Wood, and I
left off my last narrative at a time when our troops were making a
strong attack upon both of those positions—the battalions on the left
endeavouring to clear the enemy from the north of Longueval, where
they had machine-gun redoubts, and those on the right working up from
the south through Delville Wood.
The infantry advanced stage by stage behind our shell-fire—a very
simple thing to write or read, but not at all a simple matter to troops
walking under the hurricane of shells and depending for their lives
upon the scientific accuracy of gunners calculating their range and
their time-fuses a long way behind the lines, and unable to see the
infantry advancing to attack.
“It was queer to see the shells bursting in front of one,” said a
bright-eyed fellow, who had just come out of “Devil Wood” with a lucky
wound. “The line of them was just about seventy-five yards ahead of us,
flinging up the ground and smashing everything. It was wonderful how
the gunners kept it just ahead of us.”
Our men did not go through Delville Wood in one of those fine cheering
rushes which are drawn sometimes by imaginative artists, and sometimes,
but not often, happen. They went in scattered groups, keeping touch,
but in extended order and scrambling, stumbling, or crawling forward as
best they could, in a place which had no clear track.
There were not two yards of ground without a shell hole. Fallen trees
and brushwood made a tangled maze. Old barricades smashed by shell fire
and shallow trenches scraped up by men who had been digging their own
graves at the same time made obstacles and pit falls everywhere. Our
men, heavily loaded with their fighting kits, with bombs slung about
them, and with their bayonets fixed, could not go forward at a bound
through this infernal wood.
This wood had been taken four times by four waves of British troops.
It had been retaken four times by four waves of German troops. It had
been the dumping place of the artillery’s most furious bombardments on
both sides, so that these English boys of ours were advancing through
a great graveyard of unburied dead.
The ghastliness of the place has left its mark upon the minds of
many men who are not troubled much by the sights of battle. I notice
that some of them wince at the name of Delville Wood, and others—the
officers mostly—laugh in a way that is not good to hear, because it
is the laughter of men who realise the great gulf of irony that lies
between the decent things of life and all this devildom.
7
When our men advanced they were surprised to see men running away
through the broken trees, and astonished, also, to see bits of white
rag fluttering above some of the shell-holes. These white rags, tied
to twigs, bobbed up and down or waved to and fro as signals. It was
the white flag of surrender, held by German soldiers crouched at the
bottom of the shell craters. From one of them a Red Cross flag waved in
a frantic way.
Our men went forward with their bayonets, and shouted “Come out of it,
there!” and from each shell-hole came a German soldier, holding his
hands up, and crying “Pity! Pity!” which is a word they seem to have
learnt in case of need.
“Some of them were so small and young,” said a man who was fighting in
this part of the wood, “that their uniforms were much too big for them
and their tunics came down to their knees.”
They were exceptional in youth and size, for all the prisoners I have
seen since the beginning of our attack are tall, strapping fellows of
the best fighting age; but it is possible that our men have come up
against some of the 1916 class. When the English poked their bayonets
at them, but not into them, they fell on their knees and cried for
mercy.
It was mercy asked and given at a time when our soldiers were angry,
for the enemy was firing a large number of gas-shells.
Early in the afternoon a good deal of the ground to the north of
Longueval had been captured by very fierce fighting at close quarters
in and about the orchard, where the enemy had machine-gun emplacements
and a strong redoubt called Machine-gun House. Here they defended
themselves stubbornly behind barricades of broken bricks and fallen
tree trunks and barbed wire, serving their guns in a deadly way.
Several of our officers behaved with the utmost gallantry and led
forward many bombing parties to the attack of the machine-gun
emplacements, from which there came a continual swish of bullets. Our
men were quite reckless in taking all risks, and made repeated attacks
on this position left of Delville Wood until they captured or knocked
out several of the machine-guns which had given most trouble.
8
In the meantime the troops on the right were gradually pushing their
way up to the top of the wood, past Princes-street (an old trench
dug by the Scots, and now battered out of shape by the morning’s
bombardment), and across a line of dug-outs made by the enemy—and very
well made in the time. They are master diggers, the Germans, and they
have the industry of ants. It is sometimes an industry inspired by
fear; but, after all, fear is often the wisdom of defence, and in this
case they fought longer because by night and day they had toiled to get
shell-proof cover into which death could not enter easily.
Some men of ours who were first to go into those dug-outs tell me that
they were as deep as those they had seen in parts of the line where
Germans have had months for their work. They had plenty of head cover,
of timber balks and sandbags and earth, and inside them was room for
twenty men or more.
When our men came through the trees to them there were two officers
sitting outside as though at a cottage doorway, and they seemed quite
calm, except for their extreme pallor.
They were both wounded, but not badly, and it is our men’s idea that
they had come to sit in the open in case they should be buried alive
in the dug-outs by direct hits from our heavy shells. They rose, and
showed their wounds, and surrendered.
Some of our men went into the mouths of the dug-outs, and cautiously,
with their bombs handy, down the dark steps. There were forms huddled
up in that narrow stairway, and they groaned at the touch of boots.
They were badly wounded men, who had staggered down to get shelter and
medical aid. Down below, in rooms about ten feet square and almost
dark, were other wounded men lying about in their own blood.
A lantern hanging on a nail in one of these places gave a dim flicker
of light to the scene, and showed the white, unshaven faces of the
men who, as our young soldiers came tramping and stumbling down,
raised their heads, but had no strength to stand up. Two or three men,
unwounded, or only slightly wounded, came forward with their hands held
up a little, and bowed their heads as they muttered something which
meant surrender.
Early in the afternoon the enemy made a counter-attack upon the left of
the wood and to the north of Longueval village. At the same time their
artillery had received word somehow, by fugitives, that the wood was
full of English, and that they could shell it without killing many of
their own men. German “crumps” now began to crash through the trees,
and a counter-bombardment of high explosives fell into the cratered
earth.
The attack by German infantry was made by strong parties of grenadiers,
who came down saps above Longueval and from a communication trench
between Delville Wood and High Wood. They came on with great
resolution, followed by machine-gunners, but they were received with
rifle fire, bombs, and machine-gun fire from our own men.
Some parties managed to work their way back into the orchard, and
through the scattered trees about it, and there was some close and
desperate fighting. For a time our men in one of the battalions were
short of bombs, and sent back urgent messages for new supplies.
“We had been hanging on to them,” said one of the boys, “because it’s
always well to save them for a tight place, but of course we sent them
up to the chaps in front.” It was timely help, and all the German
efforts to dislodge our men broke down with heavy loss, so that the
ground was strewn with their dead and wounded.
Many Germans were seen retreating over the high ground above Delville
Wood, to the left. Parties of them ran along the sky-line, and then
seemed to drop into a sunken road.
So Delville Wood is ours again—and it is again under the fire of German
guns instead of British guns, and the trouble is to know whether it
is possible for either side to hold such a place without too great a
sacrifice of life. It is easier to hold now that the ground to the
north of Longueval and in the western corner of the wood has been
cleared of its hornets’ nests—those hiding-places of machine-gunners
who were able to send waves of bullets upon our advancing men.
That trouble, anyhow, is gone, and the enemy feels the loss, because
several new counter-attacks last night failed as completely as those
made earlier. They were our machine-guns which met them in their old
haunts, and made them pay back a heavy price for the toll they had
taken before.
XIX
THE WORK OF THE GUNS
1
JULY 24
More ground has been gained to-day at Pozières and the Australians
after their first great assault before dawn yesterday have been pushing
across the Bapaume Road, which goes through the town, and bombing out
the German machine-gunners and holding parties on the western side,
so that not many enemies are left among the ruins or underground in
Pozières itself. There is higher ground beyond, towards the Windmill,
and further north, for which a fight will have to be made before the
key of the position is really captured, but the advance of English
regiments on the left is a menace to the enemy which must cause him
grave anxiety. The line has also been thrust forward a little by a
series of posts and joined up with positions in the neighbourhood of
High Wood, where the enemy is again bombarding heavily, so that no
further progress has been made in this direction during the day.
One curious incident was observed here by the troops holding the ground
on the south of High Wood. They suddenly noticed a body of men coming
out of the glades, and were surprised to see that they were in kilts.
For a moment it may have occurred to them that they were some of the
wounded Scots who had fought through High Wood a few days previously.
That could hardly be possible, however, because the enemy is in strong
numbers in the upper part of the wood. An officer staring through his
glasses uttered a word of astonishment and two of anger. The men on
the sky-line were Germans dressed up in kilts taken from the dead. Our
guns put some shells over them, and they disappeared below the ridge.
For the past few days the increasing strength of the enemy’s artillery,
especially of heavy guns, has been noticeable, and he has been firing
at longer range, and rather wildly “into the blue” in order to make
things uncomfortable behind our lines.
Owing to the great superiority of our observation and the complete
failure of his own aircraft—our anti-aircraft guns have hardly been
called upon to fire a round during the last few weeks—he is wasting a
great deal of heavy ammunition. This is different from earlier days of
the battle when the German gunners had to concentrate their fire upon
very definite points of attack, and were completely mastered in many of
their positions by the immensity of our bombardment.
2
The work of our artillery is a wonderful achievement, and all the
success we have gained during this great battle has been largely due to
the science and daring of our gunners and to the labour of all those
thousands of men at home who have sweated in soul and body to make the
guns and the ammunition.
It is only just and fair to the munition workers to say this thing and
to let them know that their toil has helped enormously to break the
German lines, and that without their untiring effort all the courage
of our soldiers, all their sacrifice of blood would have been in vain.
If they slacken off now in the factories and workshops these men of
ours in places like High Wood and Longueval and Pozières will no longer
have the support that is most desperately needed now that the enemy is
bringing up many new batteries against us.
Flesh and blood cannot fight against high explosives. It can only die,
and the whole history of the battle is not to be written in reference
to bayonets or rifles but to guns. It has been, and is still, a battle
of guns, and our heroic infantry has only been able to get forward or
to hold its ground when the artillery preparation has been complete,
and the artillery support overwhelmingly strong. Should this fail it
would not be fighting, but massacre.
From the early days of the battle onwards our artillery has been great,
in weight of metal, in science, in the vastness of its supplies of
shells, in the superb courage and skill of its men, who have endured
a continuous strain upon them night and day, for four weeks. They
broke the German spirit and the German strength to the point when our
infantry could attack with something like a chance, almost for the
first time in this war along the British front.
By the work of aviators and artillery observation officers we knew the
positions of most of the enemy’s batteries and the geography of all his
communication trenches, transport roads, and supply depots. Our guns
which had been brought up secretly were unmasked one morning when the
great bombardment began before the battle, and poured unceasing shells
upon all those positions, smothering them with high explosives and
shrapnel, while the field guns closer up were cutting the enemy’s wire.
Trenches were swept out of existence, batteries were blown to bits—I
have seen many of those broken German guns now standing as trophies on
French lawns—and the roads were swept by storms of death. The barrage
was a great wall through which nothing could pass. The German soldiers
in their lines could get neither food nor water. No reinforcements
could be sent to them.
3
Three of our own soldiers who were taken prisoners on the morning of
the first attack could not be sent back into the German lines because
no escort dared to go with them through the barrage. They were thrust
down into a dug-out with some of the German soldiers and saw and
suffered the effect of our fire. The enemy had no food to give them,
having none for themselves, and they were tortured by thirst.
For five days they endured this until nearly dead, but when the Germans
were too dazed to act as guards, these three English soldiers managed
to crawl out of the dug-out and by a miracle of luck escaped back to
their own lines over No Man’s Land.
4
A German officer, now one of our prisoners, bears witness to the
work of our gunners. He was sent with his battalion from Verdun to
Contalmaison and was detrained at Bapaume. There he began a painful
experience of shell-fire through an accident to one of the German
12-inch guns, which burst and blew up several carriages of the train
killing some of his men. But the rest of his journey was made terrible
by British gun-fire. With his battalion he came down a road which was
being flung up by our 15-inch and 12-inch guns. Some more of his men
were killed, and he came on towards Bazentin, where he was under the
fire of our 8-inch howitzers and nine-point-twos. More of his men were
killed, but he went on until near Contalmaison he came within the range
of our 18-pounders and lost the remainder of his men. At Contalmaison
he was immediately taken prisoner by our attack and was rejoiced to
come to his journey’s end alive.
“Your artillery,” he said, “is better than anything I had seen before,
even at Verdun, and worse than anything I had suffered.”
All the German officers with whom I have spoken are surprised that an
“Army of Amateurs,” as they call us, should produce such scientific
artillery work in so short a time, and they also pay tribute to the
daring of the field gunners, who go so far forward to support the
infantry attacks.
“They came up,” said one of them, speaking of the Mametz Wood attack,
“like charioteers in a Roman circus, at full gallop. Many of their
horses were killed, but the men were reckless of danger, and placed
their batteries in the open as though at manœuvres.”
5
The field observing officers are audacious almost to the point of
foolhardiness. Before the ground of attack has been cleared of Germans
they walk calmly up with a telephonist, sit down on a crest or a knoll
commanding a field of observation, and send back messages to a battery
a mile or so behind.
When the territory round Contalmaison was still swarming with Germans,
one of our officers went forward in this way and made himself at home
on the top of a German dug-out, recording flashes and getting excellent
information. He went back to his battery for an hour or two, and when
he returned to his chosen spot found it occupied by Germans. They
wanted to round him up, but he fired a few revolver shots and retired
with dignity—to choose another place not quite so crowded with the
enemy. Such tales seem fantastic and impossible. But they are true.
There is no doubt that many German batteries have been destroyed, apart
from those which have been captured. I saw to-day a map, which told,
by little coloured dots, a great drama of war. Each dot represented
a German battery discovered by our gunners since the beginning of
the battle, and each colour the day it was discovered, and they were
arranged on the map so that one could see the exact distribution of
the enemy’s guns, as it has changed during the course of the battle.
Soon after our bombardment began they began to drift down new batteries
and there were clusters of little coloured dots at certain spots. But a
day or two later they were wiped out, or withdrawn further back. There
was one thick cluster of green dots to the north of Bazentin-le-Grand.
It represented many batteries. A day later they had gone.
“What happened?” I asked.
The gunner officer laughed.
“We just smothered ’em.”
They were “smothered” by storms of shells which burst all over these
battery positions, over every yard of ground there, so that no gun
emplacement could escape.
But other dots are appearing on the map—other little clusters of
colour, further away to the right. The enemy is massing new batteries,
and it is from these positions that Delville Wood, High Wood, and other
parts of our line are being shelled night and day with fierce and
increasing violence.
Those batteries are not so easy to reach. To keep their fire down, and
still more to knock them out we must have a continual increasing flow
of guns and ammunition—ammunition in vast and unimaginable quantities,
for the figures I have heard to-day of the ammunition we have used
during the past three weeks are beyond one’s range of imagination. The
munition workers at home must not relax their efforts if we are to
continue our successes. It is by their labour that the lives of our men
can be saved. All the time it is a battle of guns.
XX
THE FIGHTING ROUND WATERLOT FARM
1
JULY 30
There was some infantry fighting to-day in co-operation with the
French on our right wing, and as far as our own troops were concerned
some progress was made to the east of Waterlot Farm, which is on the
road going down from Longueval to Guillemont. It was a very hot day,
with a scorching sun, but artillery observation was not easy during
certain hours owing to a rather thick haze. In spite of this our guns
maintained a heavy bombardment upon the enemy’s line in support of our
troops, who advanced over difficult ground.
Many prisoners surrendered at an early stage of this progress, one
batch of 170 men being captured first and other groups being rounded up
later, bringing the total number to something more than 200.
It was rather more than a week ago that some of our men pushed our line
down from Longueval to Waterlot Farm, on the road to Guillemont, which
they held against repeated attacks.
The Germans are very busy digging new trenches to the east of the
road, and through these they are able to send up bombing parties and
machine-gunners to protect the northern and western approaches to the
ruins of Guillemont itself.
2
The first forward movement from Waterlot Farm was made by some Scots
who had already been fighting hard since July 14, when they helped
to break the second German line. These Scots, whom I have met in many
fields of war during the past year or more, had done well elsewhere,
and chased the enemy out of his lines. They were grim men, and ready
for a new “crack at the ould Boche” when they took over from another
regiment at Waterlot Farm, south of Delville Wood. It was not a farm
such as Caldecott would have drawn for his coloured picture-book.
There were no cows or sheep in the neighbourhood. It was a collection
of ruined buildings and yards which the enemy seems to have used as a
dumping ground for old iron and machinery. There were several derelict
engines here, and a steel cupola for a heavy gun-emplacement, like
those at Liège in the early days of the war, and a litter of wheels and
rods and wire, mostly smashed by our shell fire. As a farm it left much
to be desired, but the Scots settled down here and made themselves as
comfortable as possible in the circumstances.
In the darkness of that night and the next patrols went out to discover
the strength of the enemy. Our young officers and their men, crawling
forward over the broken ground, satisfied themselves that “the Boche”
was there in strength. They only had to listen to the patter of bullets
which whipped the grass to know that he had plenty of machine-guns
unpleasantly near.
Those who had not met any of those bullets came back with their
reports, and the artillery bombarded the enemy’s trenches to make the
work of the infantry easier. An advance was made from the farm before
dawn, led by bombing parties of the Scots.
It was a quiet and silent walk. The enemy’s machine-guns were
chattering a little, but there was no great fire, and the Scots reached
a trench north of the railway line with only three men and one officer
wounded. “That’s nothing,” said the officer, and he carried on.
It was impossible to go further at that time. The enemy were holding,
very strongly, a trench immediately across the railway line, and they
had dug a nest of new trenches on the east of the road, from which they
could enfilade our men with rifle and machine-gun fire.