the high ground towards our old front line, sometimes in groups of two
or three, sometimes alone. They were our lightly wounded men, with here
and there a German.
It was with a sense of horrible fascination that I watched the
adventures of these men, separately. One of them would jump down from
the sky-line, and come at a quick run down the slope. Then suddenly
he would stop and stand in an indecisive way as though wondering what
route to take to avoid the clusters of shell-bursts spurting up below
him. He would decide sometimes on a circuitous route, and start running
again in a zig-zag way, altering his direction sharply when a shell
crashed close to him.
I could see that he was out of breath. He would halt and stand as
though listening to the tumult about him, then come on very slowly. I
wanted to call out to him, to shout, “This way, old man!... Quick!” But
no voice would have carried through that world in uproar. Then perhaps
he would stumble, and fall, and lie as though dead. But presently I
would see him crawl on his hands and knees, stand up and run again. He
would reach our line of trenches and jump down, or fling himself down.
Some cover at last, thank God! So it happened with man after man, and
each journey was the adventure of a man trying to dodge death. It was
horrible to see.
High above the Thiépval ridge there were perpendicular streaks of white
smoke and light, strangely spectral, like tall thin ghosts wrapped in
white shrouds and illumined in a ghastly way. I think they were the
long tails of rockets fired as signals to the guns. The German black
shrapnel and their green “universal” shell was hanging in big puffs
above the denser pall below, and there was the glint and flash of
bursting shells stabbing through the wall of smoke.
Our aeroplanes were right over Thiépval all through the battle,
circling round in wide steady flights, careless of the German
anti-aircraft guns, which were firing continuously. Two hostile planes
came out and our men closed about them, and flew to attack, but after a
little while the Germans fled back in retreat. The only observation the
enemy had was from two kite balloons, poised well forward, but often
lost and blinded in all the clouds.
So I watched, and knew, because our men did not come back from those
trenches on the Thiépval ridge, that they had been successful. It
was only the prisoners and the lightly wounded who came back. The
assaulting parties were holding the ground they had captured in spite
of all the shell-fire that crashed over them. They had tightened the
iron net round Thiépval, and drawn it closer.
So at last I went away from the battlefield, back to the quiet harvest
fields flooded with the golden glow of the sinking sun, luckier than
the men who had to stay, and ashamed of my luck. The enemy was flinging
shells at long range. The harvest fields were not quite so safe as
they looked.
There were ugly corners to pass, shell-trap corners, where it is not
wise to linger to light a cigarette. But hell was behind me, up there
at Thiépval, where the storm of shell-fire still raged, and where,
below ground, the German garrison awaits its inevitable fate.
8
AUGUST 26
Following the official communiqué, I can now say that the troops whom I
saw advancing so splendidly and steadily across a great stretch of No
Man’s Land to the higher ground round Thiépval were men of Wiltshire
and Worcestershire. They deserve the honour that has been given them
by Sir Douglas Haig in his report, because after their great assault
they had to sustain last night a strong attack by Prussian Guardsmen,
following a long and fierce bombardment. The courage of these English
lads—among them being boys who once followed the plough and worked
in the orchards of those quiet old counties—did not fail against the
finest troops of the Kaiser’s armies, and that phrase in the official
communiqué which records their achievement is a fine memorial:
“The success of our defences is largely due to the steadiness and
determined gallantry of Wiltshire and Worcestershire men, who, in spite
of being subjected to a very heavy bombardment, steadily maintained
their positions, and repulsed the determined assault of the enemy.”
It seems to me probable that the enemy will make a big effort to check
our continued advance along the ridge from Thiépval to High Wood, and
especially to rescue Thiépval itself from its impending fate. The
position our troops have gained by two months’ fighting of the most
heroic kind has put the enemy at a great disadvantage from the point
of view of artillery observation, which is all important in modern
warfare.
On the ground in front of us now, beyond the Windmill, and the
switch-line, the German battalions are in an untenable position if our
attack is pressed on, until they fall back upon what is known as the
Flers line, more than 2,000 yards behind Martinpuich and High Wood, and
meanwhile their present line of defence is open to our bombardments,
so that the enemy’s casualties must be very heavy and, as we know, the
moral of their men in these shell-craters and ruins is badly shaken.
It is obvious that the German Headquarters Staff realises the gravity
of the position, and is endeavouring to organise a method of defence by
attack, which will stop or check the British advance. They are probably
too shrewd to believe that this can be done by bringing up fresh troops
to replace those who have been worn out, and stand with shattered
nerves beyond the British lines.
Fresh troops or old troops are food for our guns, greedy for them.
It is only by guns that the enemy can fight against guns, and he is
drifting down batteries into a great concentration for the defence of
Thiépval.
It will be the greatest duel of artillery ever seen on the British
front, for as I have seen myself the sweep and fury of our own
shell-fire in the neighbourhood reaches the most astounding intensity.
Meanwhile we have in this sector, beyond any shadow of doubt or
exaggeration, the mastery of the air, and that is of supreme advantage
to our gunners, and to the infantry who are supported by them.
So far our progress has not been brought to a dead halt, and we
have made further ground yesterday, by wonderfully fine fighting on
the part of English and Scots battalions, to the north and east of
Belville Wood. Our hurricane bombardment preceding the attack of these
troops was countered by a heavy barrage from the enemy, but our men
went forward with an unflinching spirit to a line striking across the
Flers-Longueval road, and joining on the left—by a curved salient—our
old position south-west of High Wood.
The hardest part of the fighting was on the left of the attack, where
there was a great deal of machine-gun fire, but the enemy’s trenches
were carried and prisoners were taken to the number of ten officers
and 214 other ranks. Several machine-guns also were brought back after
being captured by hand-to-hand fighting at the strong points.
9
AUGUST 28
I have already described my own visual impressions of the great assault
made south of Thiépval by men of Wiltshire and Worcestershire, which I
watched from a neighbouring trench. But there are still things to be
told about this memorable achievement—as fine in its way as anything
our men have done. The name of Wiltshire will always be specially
remembered on the ground of the Leipzig salient, which barred the
southern way to Thiépval, for they were troops of this county who, as
far back as July 8, captured the butt-end of that stronghold, and,
working with other county troops on their right, made the next advance,
on August 22, which preceded the greater attack two days later.
That affair of August 22 was extraordinary fine and brief and
successful. Twelve minutes after the attacking time, the Wilts men
had gone across the one hundred yards of No Man’s Land, captured the
enemy’s nearest line of trenches, and sent down their first batch of
twenty prisoners.
The Wiltshires had only three casualties in getting across the open
ground, though they afterwards suffered more under the enemy’s
shell-fire. Most of the German dug-outs were blown in, but there was
one big subterranean chamber which was not badly damaged, and wanted
only a little work to make it a place of comfort for the new-comers. As
their colonel said to me to-day: “It always gives us great pleasure to
take lodgings in these German apartments.”
The attack on the Hindenburg trench which I saw on August 24 was
complicated because the Wiltshires had to advance partly across the
open—300 yards of No Man’s Land, which is no joke—and partly, on their
left, through a network of trenches climbing the high ground from the
Leipzig salient to Thiépval.
It was necessary therefore to organise the attack so that those
advancing over the open should not arrive at the Hindenburg trench
sooner than those worrying their way up through the broken earthworks,
not at all an easy proposition.
Also before the Hindenburg line could be seized securely it would be
essential to “kill” a German strong point at a junction made in the
Hindenburg trench by a communication way running up from the Leipzig
salient.
The penalty of not doing so would be certain death to many of our men
by an enfilade fire of machine-guns. These are little details that
worry the souls of commanding officers and company commanders before
they get the men over the parapet with thousands of bombs and the
supplies of picks, shovels, sandbags, Lewis gun “drums,” Very lights,
and other material of war.
10
On the day before the last attack on the southern way into Thiépval the
enemy, who suspected bad things coming, tried to thwart our plan by
hurling a terrific storm of shell-fire all over the Leipzig salient.
He seems to have brought up new guns for the purpose, and his heavy
five-point-nines “crumped” the ground in all directions. But all this
did not stop the Wiltshires and the Worcesters, who went on with their
own little scheme.
On Thursday afternoon last, everything went like clockwork from
the moment that our artillery opened with the intense bombardment
described by me in a former despatch.
The Worcesters attacked on the right, the Wiltshires on the left. Over
the parapet they halted a moment, and then went forward in a steady and
ordered way. I could not see the men working up through the trenches
on the left until they sprang up to the crest of the ridge, but only
those who went across the open. The last eighty yards was covered in
the quickest time, and soon after our shell-fire lifted off the German
trench the Wiltshires and Worcesters were in among the enemy.
But not close together. There was a gap of fifty yards between the two
parties, and in order to get in touch with each other they bombed left
and right. It was at this moment that a company officer distinguished
himself by great gallantry.
There were Prussian Guards in the trench, and they fought fiercely,
using the gap as a bombing centre. Unless routed out this group of
men might have spoiled the attack. The officer saw the situation in
a flash, and was quick to get a rifle to his shoulder. He was a dead
shot, and shot, one after the other, five men who were trying to blow
him to bits with their hand grenades.
At the same time a sergeant scrambled up into the open, and running
along outside the trench flung his bombs at the enemy below, “to rattle
them,” according to the description of his commanding officer. Another
young soldier fixed his Lewis gun over the parapet and fired down into
the trenches, so that the enemy had to keep quiet until our men were
all round them.
The strong point by the Koenigstrasse had been rushed, and the
Hindenburg trench was ours.
11
Sharp and fierce fighting had carried the trenches on the left and
captured a strong dug-out belonging to the German company commanders.
Here also the Prussian Guards fought with great courage, firing up from
their dug-outs and only surrendering under the menace of immediate
death. One sergeant here on the left walked about in the open with a
cool courage and shot twelve Germans who were sniping from shell-holes.
The ground was already strewn with their dead, killed by our
bombardment, and over this graveyard of unburied men there was bayonet
fighting and bombing until all the Prussians who remained alive became
the prisoners of the Wiltshires.
There were several officers among them wearing the Iron Cross, and all
the officers and men were tall fellows with brand-new equipment which
showed that they had just come into the trenches.
Two captured machine-guns were turned against the enemy’s line, with
their own ammunition ready for use, and both the Wiltshires and the
Worcesters settled down in the new line, badly smashed as usual by our
shell-fire, but with a lot of useful dug-outs still intact, to hold on
under the inevitable retaliation of the enemy’s guns.
All through the night there was a steady bombardment, but nothing
of extraordinary ferocity. It was the usual night’s “straf” in the
neighbourhood of Thiépval, which is not really a nice place.
On the following day—last Friday—the hostile shell-fire increased.
Five-point-nines were joined by eight-inches, and, as one of the
officers described it, “every durned thing.” It quickened and
strengthened in intensity until towards evening it was a hurricane
bombardment meaning one obvious thing—a counter-attack. Our men were
well down in the old German dug-outs, grateful to their enemy for
digging so deep and well, but it became most necessary to warn our
“heavies” that the Prussians were gathering for a smashing assault.
Runners were sent out to get back through the barrage if they had the
luck, and several of these brave men tried and several failed, dying
on the way. But one had more than human luck. Owing to the appalling
character of the ground, “pitted and ploughed as though by a gigantic
harrow”—it is his officer’s phrase—the man lost his sense of direction,
staggered and stumbled on through the smoke and over the shell-craters,
and then—amazed—found himself looking over a parapet into a trench full
of Germans with fixed bayonets. They were crowded there, those tall
Prussians, awaiting the moment to launch their counter-attack.
The runner turned back. Before him the ground was a series of
volcanoes, tossed up by German shells and British shells. He knew
that he had to pass through our barrage and the enemy’s barrage. The
chances against him were tremendous. In his own opinion he had no more
chance than a “snowflake in hell.” But he ran back, dodging this death,
and—came through untouched!
The “heavies” did at last get the message, and were quick to answer
it. “In three shakes,” said an officer of the Wiltshires, “they were
smashing the German lines to glory.”
Those tall Prussians crowding there were caught by this storm. Their
trench became a ditch-full of mangled bodies. Only a thin wave of men
came out into open country, and of these not many went back.
The Prussian counter-attack was killed. The Worcesters and the
Wiltshires held their ground round Thiépval, and their losses were paid
for heavily by German blood.
XXV
THE LAST FIGHTS IN DEVIL’S WOOD
1
AUGUST 29
The barren ground of the battlefields was turned into swamps this
afternoon, when the clouds which had been piling up in great black
masses suddenly broke after a few warning flashes of lightning and a
roll of thunder.
I have been watching the usual artillery bombardment over the Pozières
ridge and Thiépval, spreading eastward to the thin fringe of High Wood,
faintly pencilled against the darkening sky. The guns quickened their
pace at about three o’clock, and on our right the French artillery
was also hammering away. Then the storm burst and nature, after all,
had the best of it, though all the atmospheric effects seemed like a
magnificent plagiarism of our human chemistry which has filled the
sky with darkness and forked lightnings, and the earth with high
explosives, and the air with noise. These thunder-claps ripping the
clouds before the long ruffle of their drums, and the winking of the
lightning behind the black curtains on the hills, and the queer,
ghastly colours edging fantastically shaped wreaths of clouds, were
enormously like our miniature tempests of hate. Nature was at war with
itself, and our pop-guns seemed silly toys.
Coming down to earth, and its funny ants, called men, there has not
been very much activity during the past twenty-four hours, beyond the
work of the gunners. Between Delville Wood and High Wood our troops
captured a German barricade, and there was some bombing about the
shell-craters on the way to Ginchy, all of which gives us at last a
strong grip all round and beyond that Devil’s Wood, where our men have
fought so often and so hard.
There seems no doubt about it now, judging from all I heard at an
officers’ mess in a big-sized tent between the bombardment and the
thunderstorm, where a number of young officers told me incidents of the
recent fighting there.
2
It was on August 24, as I have described already, in a brief way, that
the big “shove” was made all round this beastly wood and out of it
on the east side, where the Germans still had some strong posts and
shell-craters and machine-guns.
The troops engaged were mostly of English regiments, with one body of
Scots, and they all did splendidly in spite of the tragic character of
the ground and the intensity of the enemy’s barrage. Accidents happened
now and then. At one point of the advance the German wire was uncut,
and only eight men could get through. They killed eleven Germans in the
craters beyond them, and stayed there till dusk, and came back.
On the north side of the wood the troops were hammered by shell-fire,
but “stuck” it out, and went forward marvellously under the protection
of their own shell-fire, while our machine-guns kept the enemy’s
heads down by a stream of machine-gun bullets—a million of them—which
“watered” his trenches.
There was but little hand-fighting here. Many Germans were found dead
in their muck-heaps which were once trenches. Four of them ran forward
to surrender so furiously that they scared one of our men who ran, too,
until he realised their intention and took them prisoner. Another came
running forward and was seized by the throat by his officer, who was
suspicious of his intention in the heat of the moment.
There was also a bull-pup who came over and is now enjoying bully-beef.
Further on the right there was great fighting to thrust the enemy out
of his last ditch in Delville Wood and to get across the ground to the
east of it.
The enemy fought with high courage, and there were many bombing duels,
in which one of our sergeants caught German bombs before they burst and
flung them back again—which is not an easy trick to learn. A Lewis gun
was thrust up very quickly to a German post where a machine-gun was
concealed in a shell-crater and played its hose on the team who refused
to surrender. Out of one such strong point—a nest of craters—fifty-four
Prussians came up with the usual shout of surrender when our bombing
parties had surrounded them.
Every man fought with reckless courage. The wounded officers carried
back on stretchers brought the latest news to their brigadier, and
said, “We’re doing jolly well, sir,” or explained the difficult bits of
work in hand.
The stretcher-bearers went out through the heaviest fire and searched
for the wounded with great self-sacrifice. One man of the R.A.M.C. was
out there, over this frightful ground, for twenty hours at a stretch,
saving many men, untired till the last.
One queer horror was seen. Some German sentries were found tied to
posts, and one man stood there without a head, which had been blown off
by a shell. It seemed some awful form of field punishment, perhaps for
men who had tried to desert. Nearly 400 prisoners were taken altogether
that day.
They had fought bravely—once they had the pride of Prussians. But
now many of them were utterly broken, and one officer, when he was
questioned, could only wring his hands and moan about the awful losses
of his company.
It was fighting which continued the tradition of Devil’s Wood—where
horror and heroism have gone hand in hand.
3
SEPTEMBER 2
The enemy’s attempt to recover some of his lost ground around Delville
Wood has been very costly to him, and has only succeeded in two places
in forcing our men back a little way, in spite of the self-sacrifice of
those German soldiers who obeyed orders and came across a foul ground
through the curtain fire of our guns, and fell, as they knew they must
fall.
So we go back to Devil’s Wood again, and the name of its beastliness
must be written down once more as a place where more dead lie among
those who have lain there long, and where once more shell-fire is
smashing through the charred tree-stumps and biting great chunks of
wood out of sturdy old trunks still standing in this shambles.
It will be remembered, perhaps, how in the last big fighting here more
than a week ago our men thrust our lines out beyond the wood, above
the orchard trench of Longueval and the sunken road to High Wood, and
captured the enemy’s last strong point in the north-east corner of the
wood, and chased the enemy out of a network of trenches zig-zagging
away from the wood towards Ginchy. Something like 400 prisoners were
taken then, and in knocking out machine-gun posts, in bombing the
enemy out of small redoubts, and sweeping across ground pitted with
shell-craters in which lay stubborn Germans sniping our men as they
passed, every quality of courage and the fighting spirit was shown by
our troops engaged.
It was good to get about beyond the Devil’s Wood, and our men redug
their trenches outside it with a willing industry. Then by bad luck the
rain came, and heavy clouds gathered and broke, slashed by lightning,
and flooded the battlefields.
It was hard luck on newly-made trenches and on the men who had dug
them. I think it is difficult for people at home to understand the
meaning of big rain in this war of ours; the very sandbags come
slipping off the parapets, and parapets come falling on to the
firesteps, and rivers come rushing down the boggy ditches.
Rifles drop and get caked with wet mud. Hand-grenades disappear into
the quagmire. To get supplies up narrow ditches is tiring to the point
of sheer exhaustion. So our men were tired—“fed-up” with the weather,
as they would put it—when the enemy began to bombard them, not in the
usual way of a war-day’s work, but furiously, with a storm of hate.
For three hours the bombardment went on and increased in violence. The
front trenches had been lightly held, and the men there held on until
there were no trenches, but only shell-craters and a wild upheaval of
wet earth. The enemy believed, perhaps, that they had finished all our
life in those muck-heaps.
German soldiers ordered to advance may, for a few minutes, have
bolstered up their courage by the thought that their guns had done most
of the work. Not longer than that. When the first wave of the 118th
German regiment came out of their shell-craters and ditches they came
full into the face of a deadly machine-gun fire, and under a great
barrage of high explosives.
It was the fire of our machine-gunners which killed most of them. They
fell as if swept down by invisible scythes.
The second wave came—not in a standing line, as people may imagine,
but in little bunches or groups, and singly, stumbling in and out of
shell-holes, in short rushes, leaping to avoid shell-bursts, but not
retreating one bit from the death that waited for them. The second
German wave was wiped out.
A third, fourth and fifth wave advanced, and though many of these men
fell, and the waves became mingled and confused in their tide, there
were enough to reach the place where our lines had been, and too many
at the time for our men, who had been sorely tried, to dispute the
foremost shell-craters with them.
Our troops had to fall back in one or two places along the fringe of
Delville Wood and behind the line of the sunken road westward. But the
enemy did not gain the ground round the wood. Even where he had damaged
our trenches most we held strong posts, machine-guns in convenient
shell-holes, and small groups of brave fellows in isolated bits of
trench keeping their bombs and rifles dry.