from him to the north of Pozières, and yesterday evening, between the
hours of five and seven o’clock, he sent out a strong body of infantry
to attack our trenches. It was a curious, vain, and tragic endeavour,
like several other counter-attacks launched at the command of the
German staff by men recently brought up as support troops, knowing
quite obviously nothing of the country in which they are called upon to
fight, and just blundering out with a kind of desperate courage towards
our lines. It was exactly thus last evening.
From the prisoners we took it is certain knowledge that these troops
had no familiarity with this ground between Mouquet Farm and the
Windmill, and when they were ordered to attack regarded themselves as
sheep sent to the slaughter. They knew only that the Australians were
in front of them, and from what they have heard of the Australians they
did not have much hope.
What hope they had was in the guns behind them, and certainly, in spite
of all the German guns we have knocked out by counter-battery work, and
all those having had to shift their ground from day to day owing to our
ceaseless searchings for their emplacements with the aid of our aerial
scouts, the bombardment that preceded the German assault was intense
and formidable.
The Australians “stuck it,” guessing what was to follow. In the
trenches they have dug, and the shell craters, and the old German
trenches which are now almost shapeless under our own and the enemy’s
fire, they held on, and kept their bombs ready, and their machine-guns
handy, and watchful eyes, wherever a man could see, upon a row of
broken tree stumps appearing over the crest of the Pozières ridge
beyond the Windmill.
Then, below the crest on the other side of the ridge—the German side—is
Mouquet Farm, called “Moo-cow Farm” by men who will still jest,
whatever the conditions of life. A small valley or gully runs behind
the farm towards the quarries, and it was from this that the German
soldiers came streaming out in open order when their guns lengthened
range so that they could get forward without walking into their own
barrage.
As it happened, they walked into our barrage. Our guns were waiting for
them. At the end of a telephone wire was a gunner-general who does not
keep people waiting very long when they are in need of his “heavies,”
and many gunner officers were standing by their batteries ready to give
the word “Fire!” with their guns and howitzers registered on the line
across which the enemy’s troops would come as soon as they were ordered
to attack.
In our lines the trench mortar batteries were making ready to hurl
their high explosives, and the Lewis gunners were eager to get to work
instead of standing under German shell-fire.
The enemy’s infantry came straggling forward in extended order, and in
irregular waves. There were two battalions of them in the open—out in
that 750 yards of No Man’s Land upon which the evening sun was shining
with a golden haze—when our shells burst over them and the trench
mortars made a target of them, and our machine-guns whipped into their
ranks with a scourge of bullets.
The men fell face forward in large numbers. Others came on and fell
further from their own lines. Men ran quickly, as though to escape from
all the bursting shells into the Australian lines, flung up their arms,
and lay still.
They were very brave. Quite a number of these German soldiers travelled
a quarter of a mile over this open ground in spite of the terrific
fire concentrated upon it before some bit of shell caught them and
killed them, or left them lying there in agony.
No German soldier came through alive. Only a few men out of the two
battalions escaped. Men were standing on the parapets of the German
line, calling to them, calling them back, trying to save something out
of this senseless slaughter that had been ordered.
The counter-attack was an utter failure, and one is left wondering why
the enemy attempted such attacks, pre-destined to end in disaster. It
is an expensive form of reconnaissance to test our strength.
The German soldiers would have a right to call it murder. It seems
to show that the enemy’s Staff is disorganised, perhaps a little
demoralised, by the continual bombardment which cuts their signal lines
and prevents the sending up of supports and supplies.
The Australians are still fighting in a way which wins the admiration
of their generals and Staff and of all the Army. These clean-cut men,
so fine in physique and appearance that one always turns to look at
them in any street of war, are not stolid fellows who can stand the
test of shell-fire without suffering in spirit.
They are highly strung and sensitive, with a more nervous temperament
than many of our English soldiers, but they have a pride and an heroic
quality that keeps them steady, and an intelligence in the individual
as well as in mass which makes them great soldiers.
7
AUGUST 13
There have been no sensational advances since the great day of July 14,
when our men broke through the second German line, but hardly a day
passed since then without some progress being made to get a stronger
grip on the high ridge which rolls down on the enemy’s side from
Pozières and the two Bazentins and High Wood. This fighting has been
very hard and grim, and the enemy has done his utmost to check every
yard of our men’s advance by continual curtain-fire, so that to take a
trench or two, or to rush over a few dozen yards of No Man’s Land, has
been a perilous adventure.
It is most excellent, therefore, that last night our men were able
to make a further “shove,” as they call it, of nearly 400 yards in
depth on a front of about a mile. This was to the north-west of
Pozières, and at the same time ground was gained on the north-west
of Bazentin-le-Petit closer to the German switch-line between us and
Martinpuich.
The men who have been fighting this uphill battle, for that is what
it is literally and morally, have been showing remarkable qualities.
It is an alliance between the Australians and old English regiments
with new men in them, including some of the “Derby recruits.” Although
the Australians have had the greater share of the fighting round
Pozières, being in greater numbers, they are the first to pay a tribute
to the spirit of the English lads, and their admiration is returned.
An episode which happened a week ago shows the way in which they are
sharing the struggle.
I have already written how the men of Kent went forward on August 4,
and took the German line, under the command of that fine colonel and
jovial captain, whose exploits will be remembered. On the right of them
were the Sussex men—fair-haired fellows from Arundel and Burpham, and
little old villages lying snug in the South Downs, and quiet old market
towns like Chichester—Lord!—a world away from places like Pozières. The
line of their trenches was in touch with the Australians, and as they
scrambled over the parapets at the time of the attacks these comrades
on the right shouted out to them,
“Hullo, boys, what’s up? Where are you going?”
“Oh, just up along,” said the Sussex lads, pointing to a “hotshop,” as
they call it where a lot of shells were bursting.
“Is that so? You don’t say? Gosh! We’ll come with you.”
It wasn’t discipline. The men had no orders to go, as far as I can make
out, but some of them certainly did go, in a friendly way, and joined
in the “scrum” up there, where it was no joke.
8
The story of the Sussex men is very much like that of their comrades
from Kent which I have told in detail—the bombing down the trenches,
the searching of the German dug-outs, the encounters with Germans who
were hiding in shell-craters. But some of the episodes have a special
character, worth telling.
They show the human nature of the business up there beyond Pozières.
After the first rush through the German line it became a question
of catching Germans in shell-holes, which are good places—or good
enough—for snipers who prefer to go on killing before they die. A
Sussex man who spoke some German took the risk of going out alone to
one of these craters and shouted out to the men below:—
“If you don’t surrender at once we shall shoot you.”
Instantly several heads and several pairs of hands appeared.
One man came out with his hands full of gifts and, falling upon his
knees, begged for mercy. He had cleared his pockets and his dug-out of
little fancy articles like his watch, knife, compass, cigarette-case,
scissors, silver soap-box and pipe-lighter, which he offered humbly as
a ransom for his life.
It appeared later that he was in mortal terror of having his throat
cut, and he was profoundly grateful when he was taken back to a dug-out
and given some whisky and cigarettes. He then asked leave to tell his
friends the glad tidings, and when this was allowed he went out with
his guards and called to the other men. Immediately a number of them
came out of their hiding-places and formed a procession with their
hands up.
It was against the Sussex men that the Germans used their
“flammenwerfer,” or flame-jets. It is a clumsy form of frightfulness,
as I guessed when I first saw one of these machines. It takes two men
to work it, one with the reservoir strapped to his back, the other
pumping out the long spray of flame, which has a range of twenty-five
yards. There were eight of these flame-throwers brought against the
Sussex lads, but before they had done any damage the sixteen men who
advanced with them were all shot down. It is not by “flammenwerfer”
that the German counter-attacks have any chance of success.
9
The advance last night when the Australian troops took an important
line of rising ground is a further proof that the enemy has not by any
means consolidated his defensive positions so strongly that they make
the same kind of barrier against us as those which had to be forced in
the first attacks.
In spite of all his industry in digging he has not been able to make
any system of trenches and dug-outs to withstand our shell-fire. As
soon as he gets on with a trench our guns register upon it and lay
it flat. His one protection is in artillery retaliation, and however
great its destructive power it cannot give cover to the German
infantry crouching in shallow ditches, and having to come up through
communication trenches ploughed by high explosives.
They belong to battalions hurriedly gathered from other parts of the
line and flung in to stop the gap. They are the victims of the general
disorganisation of the divisions and the staffs which have suffered
most heavily from our repeated attacks. Behind them, no doubt, the
German Headquarters Staff is as cool and deliberate as ever, not
allowing itself to be scared by these reverses, organising new lines
of defence in case of need, shifting its guns, playing the old
blood-and-iron game with cold, scientific brains that are not affected
by the losses or the agonies of men, except as they have an influence
upon the operations.
For they are highly-trained scientists of war, these German staff
officers, and in defeat, as once in victory, they will, I fancy, be as
cold and as hard as steel, and as inhuman as the devil. Therefore it is
idle in my opinion to hope for a sudden and sensational collapse of the
German war-machine, or to argue from local weaknesses and symptoms of
bad staff work a general disorder.
Nevertheless, there are many signs that the enemy is beginning to feel
a severe strain upon his defensive strength and that his men are being
put to an ordeal which not even all their discipline and their courage
can make endurable.
For men of a certain kind of science are apt to forget that there are
other things in human nature besides the chemistry of flesh and blood,
and that not even the finest soldiers can be made to fight well if
their spirit is broken by repeated losses.
10
AUGUST 17
It is at the two ends of our recent line of attack—on the left above
Pozières and on the right around Guillemont—that the interest of the
present fighting for the moment gathers, and in both these districts
some progress has been made by our infantry during the past day or
two. The successful advance of the French, northwards from Hardecourt
towards Angle Wood, and their capture of the ravine to the south-west
of it helps to strengthen our lines about Guillemont, especially as
some of our troops advancing from the trenches south of Malz Horn Farm,
and west of Trones Wood, linked hands with our Allies yesterday.
I have already described in a previous despatch the great difficulty
of working over the ground about Guillemont and the hard time some of
our men have had in pushing forward to the outskirts of that town.
The enemy has concentrated a large number of batteries in the country
beyond, and near at hand is defending himself from many machine-gun
emplacements and a maze of newly-dug trenches.
The operations yesterday in conjunction with the French are still in
progress and the result at present is indecisive, but with both French
and British troops closing upon them the situation of the garrison in
Guillemont is not what soldiers would call “healthy.”
Yesterday morning I was more interested personally in the left side
of the battle line above Pozières, as from an artillery observation
post I was able to get a very clear view of our own and the enemy’s
ground in this district—ground which has been won and held by English
and Australian regiments with a determination and courage which I have
described several times with some detail.
There before me on the sky-line was the windmill which should be as
famous in the history of this war as the Ferryman’s House on the Yser
Canal or the château at Vermelles, or the “Tower Bridge” at Loos. Waves
of men have surged up the slope to it under storms of shell-fire.
To Australians fighting for the high ridge on which it stands above
Martinpuich it has been the goal of great endeavour, for which many
of them have given their lives. The enemy defended it as if it were
a great treasure house, though only an old building of timber and
stone against which the wind of centuries has blown, turning the great
black sails which ground the corn of the folk in Pozières before ever
a howitzer had been fired in the world or a flying machine had come
humming over the hill. The windmill is ours now. Our line sweeps round
it and our shell-fire drops on the other side of the slope, barraging
the enemy’s ways to and from Martinpuich.
But it is only the relic of a millhouse. The timbers have been blown
to atoms weeks ago. The sails fell in the first bombardment, and all
that stands now is the stone base in the form of a small pyramid as a
memorial of great bloodshed.
11
The enemy yesterday was dropping a heavy barrage all along our line,
which runs south of Mouquet Farm and sweeps below the village of
Thiépval and its wood.
On the other side of Thiépval Wood the opposing lines run very close
together, and here there was not much shell-fire, but on the Pozières
side the shell-bursts and smoke-clouds were drifting up and down in a
steady, regular way. Our own guns were busy with Mouquet Farm (called
by our soldiers “Moo-cow” Farm, or “Muckie” Farm, according to their
whim), and, further off, with Courcelette, whose tall factory chimney
sticks up above the ridge, and now and again one of our heavies sent a
great shell crashing into Thiépval.
There were no German soldiers to be seen in that village, and no sign
of human life at all. It is a ghastly-looking place, with its stripped
trees, like withered limbs, and a ruined church above a row of apple
trees, which stand a little separate from the village.
Above is a cemetery with broken tomb-stones and shell-craters among its
graves. Beyond, on a road running northwards, is a tall crucifix with
the figure of Christ looking down upon all this death.
In the trenches no man puts his head above the parapet. Several times
one of our machine-guns spluttered out a burst of fire as a warning
to the enemy to keep well down. The only movement over this village
and battlefield was made by shells which tore up the earth and sent
drifting smoke clouds across the ruins.
The doom of Thiépval is creeping closer, for our men are advancing
slowly but surely around Mouquet Farm, so that it will be hemmed in.
The garrison hiding in the dug-outs below those broken buildings at
which I gazed yesterday must be in a state of dreadful apprehension. I
should not like to live in Thiépval.
12
AUGUST 20
It is quite impossible to understand the progress of our advance since
July 1 without being familiar with the ground over which this has been
made and the local conditions of the fighting on our present front.
In my despatches I have done my best to picture these things and to
reveal the heroism of our men by describing, as realistically as one
may without being too brutal to newspaper readers, the appalling
difficulties they have to encounter. Even now many people wonder,
I daresay, at the various pauses in the victorious progress of our
troops, and look forward, day by day, to more smashing blows and
greater strides over the enemy’s ground.
To me the wonder of this battle is that we should have got on so far
and so fast. When one has seen the network of German trenches, their
great systems of underground galleries—proof against the heaviest of
high explosives—their machine-gun redoubts, against which, if even only
one gun is left, it is sometimes difficult to advance, and the power of
their artillery able to barrage a strip of ground which our men have to
cross, it is astounding that our soldiers could have forced the enemy
back from stronghold after stronghold and gained their way to the high
positions of the Pozières ridge.
Take those men of ours who have won their way through a maze of
trenches in this last bit of fighting between Pozières and Thiépval.
They had to force their way between machine-gun posts and scramble
over ground which is like a billowy sea of earth with deep pits at the
bottom of each billow, into which many of them stumbled and fell. Not
good going for an attack!
Then they had to storm their way down to the enemy’s underground system
of galleries, where large numbers of strong and unwounded Germans were
waiting with stores of bombs and every kind of weapon.
It is true that many of these men surrender readily at the first rush
of our troops, but if those dug-outs are not cleaned out at once, and
if our men in their eagerness go on, it is quite likely, as it has
often happened during the past six weeks, that the enemy will come up
and attack them from the rear.
From one of these holes in the ground which seemed a simple little
dug-out there came up, on Friday, as I have already said, six officers
and over 150 men. I saw them all to-day, tall fellows with unstained
uniforms and a well-fed, fresh, and healthy look.
One of the officers was quite a giant. He was wearing a steel casque
of the German pattern which is very much like a mediæval helm, and he
was laughing and joking with his brother officers as he marched at the
head of his company. If these men had come up behind English assaulting
parties who had not made sure of the dug-outs first they could have put
up a very strong fight, and with one machine-gun might have done great
damage.
In their underground galleries they had lived snugly and safe, sleeping
on spring beds, reclining on upholstered chairs, in well-furnished
rooms so much like those in the upper world that they had even false
windows draped with lace curtains.
Our men have to fight below ground as well as above ground before they
are in possession of an enemy position.
Above ground it is not good for a quick advance. Our guns have been
bombarding so continuously that although the infantry depends utterly
upon an effective artillery preparation, and not in vain, the effect of
all this shell-fire impedes their progress when the time comes to cross
No Man’s Land.
It is just a series of shell-craters like a wide stretch of those
“trous-de-loup” which used to be dug in the old days of warfare
behind the “glacis,” and have been revived again in this war, which
has adopted every device known to fighting men from the time of Cain
onwards.
13
When some of the Australians “went over” the other night this was
their great cause of trouble. They rushed forward eagerly, and before
they had gone fifty yards most of them had fallen into shell-holes
deeper than their own height. It was pitch dark, except for the
white light of the German flares rising and falling, and when they
scrambled up the shelving sides of the craters they were black as ink
in this illumination and horribly visible to the German bombers and
machine-gunners, who made the most of their opportunity in the time at
their disposal.
I stood by a man to-day who, since July 1, has been buried alive by
shell-bursts upheaving the earth about him no fewer than six times.
He is a young Australian officer, now wounded in the back and leg, and
he assured me that he did not mind this premature burial very much.
“There is mostly a little air to breathe—enough to keep one going for a
few minutes—” he said, “but, of course, it’s unpleasant waiting to be
dug-out, if one has the luck. Most fellows mind it very much. But it
don’t affect me in that way.”
This is not an uncommon experience. There are a lot of men buried in an
advance when, as the official despatch says, “We made good progress.”
So that progress is not a soft job for soldiers. Then the German is
beginning to leave a lot of little things behind him, even if he
abandons a trench in a hurry. This is a new dodge. One invention which
has come into his fertile imagination is a man trap, which he sets
outside his parapet or inside a shell-hole on the way to it. As soon as
one of our soldiers sets foot on to it it closes about his leg with a
terrific bite and brings him down like a log.
Another little device in devilry is the “tortoise bomb.” It looks
very much like a tortoise if you happen to see it—which you don’t, in
the dark—and it stands on four little legs. They waggle a little, but
should it be unwarily touched it may detonate the bomb and blow a man
to bits.
There was some heroic fighting on Friday afternoon along a road which
runs from High Wood to Delville Wood. The heroes of this fight were
ordered to take this road with troops on their left and right, and in
spite of the shell-holes on the way and heavy machine-gun fire sweeping
down on them they took the trench all right, going even a little too
far, in their eagerness.
Owing to casualties in officers, the sergeants had, in some cases, to
carry on the command, and they did so with the calm courage of old
soldiers. The German trench, battered by our gun-fire, was full of
dead, and littered with rifles and equipment. A few of the enemy stayed
and fought to the death, and others ran away. Three were dragged up out
of a dug-out and made prisoners. All looked good, from a fighting point
of view, in this section of the trench, and would have been good if the
men on the left and right had been able to come up. But they were not
able to do this, and presently from the right and left came parties
of German bombers, hurling their grenades at our men, who hurled back
until every one of their bombs was gone.
Then they grubbed about for German bombs, and used those until they
could find no more. It was time to escape, and the way out was through
a narrow sap which was also a death-trap if the enemy closed about it.
But the enemy did a strange thing. They came swarming up on both sides,
and each side took the other for English soldiers, and, in the dusk,
bombed each other furiously over the heads of our men, who slipped
away, marvelling at their luck in ill-luck. They had five prisoners
when they reached their own lines, for they were joined by two other
men (in addition to the three from the dug-out), one of whom was
a German hero—tired of heroism—wearing the Iron Cross and another
decoration.
So the fighting goes on, and it is the grit of our troops, their
splendid obstinacy, their refusal to be beaten by shell-fire or
shell-holes, by machine-guns or tortoise bombs, by poison gas or tear
shells, by Germans above ground or under ground, or dropping high
explosives from the sky—“the whole blinking bag of tricks,” as they
would call it, which keeps them going always a little bit further.
Unless one knows the cost of victory one cannot tell the greatness of
the victors.
14
AUGUST 23
We are getting a stronger grip upon the ridge from Pozières to High
Wood. Last night the Australians gained a little more ground, so that
they have pushed out a line to the north-east of Mouquet Farm, and
the Scottish troops to their right have gained another hundred yards
of that famous switch-line into which I took a walk the day before
yesterday to see how we held the enemy’s last line of defence on the
way to Martinpuich.