Tanks—those weird and wonderful armoured monsters—runs like a
humorous thread. Full of humour and fantasy, because of their shape
and qualities, they are also filled with very gallant men, to whom
great honour is due. The skippers and crews of these land-ships, as
they are called, had to go out alone in many cases in advance of the
infantry and upon hazardous chances, which each one of them knew were
weighted with the risk, almost the certainty—for it was a new, untried
experiment—of death. They had astounding adventures and a large measure
of success, and it was due not to any kind of luck, but to great skill
and great courage.
I have already told the first stories of their actions. To-day I
obtained a full narrative of their achievements, and it is one of the
most dramatic and gallant records in the history of this war.
Two of them who set out to attack the line from Combles to Morval
made a rendezvous at Wedge Wood, and took up their position at night.
One of them set off and ambled slowly until it came within 400 yards
north-west of Combles, far in advance of the infantry. Here it sat for
five hours, fighting the enemy alone, and shooting down German bombing
parties, until it was severely damaged.
The other Tank in the neighbourhood of Bouleaux Wood reached the
enemy’s trenches near Morval, and, finding that it had left the
infantry behind, went back to inquire for them. They were held up by
German bombers in a trench, so the Tank came to the rescue, bucked over
the trench, and crushed the bombers into the earth before backing into
a deep shell-crater and toppling over. Here for an hour and a half it
formed a barricade between British and German bombers, and the crew got
out and tried to hoist it out of the shell-hole under heavy fire. One
of the men picked up a live bomb flung by the enemy, and tried to hurl
it to a safe distance, away from his comrades, but was blown to bits.
Finally the “skipper,” with his surviving men, came back to our lines,
leaving the derelict monster still used as a barricade.
North of Ginchy telegraph one of the Tanks attacked a machine-gun
emplacement and killed many of the men. East of Delville Wood another
advanced upon a German trench called Laager Lane, and so frightened
the enemy that about a hundred of them came out under white flags and
surrendered to it, following the monster back to our lines.
The attack on Hop Alley, by Delville Wood, was led by a Tank which
attacked a number of bombers and put them to flight, so that the trench
was cleared for the infantry. Afterwards, under a heavy German barrage,
it could advance no further, and the skipper and his crew, after doing
this fine work, came out of their monster and, with splendid heroism,
helped our wounded for three hours.
The officer who did what the soldiers call the great “stunt” in Flers
told me his story to-day, and I found him to be as modest a fellow as
any naval officer on a light cruiser, and of the same fine type. He
went into Flers before the infantry and followed by them, cheering in
high spirits, and knocked out a machine-gun which began to play on him.
The town was not much damaged by shell-fire, so that the Tank could
walk about real streets, and the garrison, which was hiding about in
dug-outs, surrendered in small, scared groups. Then the other Tanks
came into Flers, and together they lolloped around the town in a free
and easy manner before going further afield.
The Tank which went through High Wood did great execution over the
German trenches, and another wandered around shell-craters “killing”
German machine-guns. The casualties were slight considering the great
success of the experiment, and on all sides among our soldiers there
is nothing but praise of the gallant men who led them. They are still
going strong.
To-day one of the monsters—it was old “Cordon Rouge”—came waddling over
shell-craters, climbing over broken trenches, and fetched up outside
the door of a brigadier’s dug-out. From the inside of the beast came a
very cool and grave young man, who saluted in a naval way, and said, “I
await your orders, sir, for going into action.”
“And I’m very glad you didn’t bring your monster down into my dug-out,”
said the brigadier. “But it’s very kind of you to call, and no doubt we
shall want you shortly.”
2
I have been to-day, and for four days, among the men who have broken
the Flers line and given the enemy the hardest blows he has ever
suffered on this front. Sir Douglas Haig has named them this afternoon
in his great bulletin, paying a tribute to their valour in a broad,
general way, without letting the enemy know too much about the
battalions facing him. They were all splendid. For the big battle on
Friday was a hard one, and not a “walk over,” so that our men were
put to the supreme test of courage by most damnable shell-fire and
fierce concentrated barrages by which the enemy’s gunners at long range
endeavoured to support their lost and suffering infantry.
What touched me most, perhaps, though Heaven knows the experiences of
all our soldiers made one awe-struck, was the way in which our newest
and youngest men went through with their business. There were some of
them Derby recruits, who had never yet seen what shell-fire means
in the Somme battle. Older men among them, who knew, were sorry for
them, wondered how they would “stick it,” and said, with a view to
encouragement, “Cheer up, you’ll soon be dead.” They did not hang back,
these new fellows. The rawest recruits among them strained forward with
the rest, floundered over the shell-holes like the others, leapt into
the German trenches, like men of old fighting spirit.
3
The London men did gloriously and had one of the hardest points of the
attack, and came under some of the heaviest storms of fire. These young
Civil servants and men of the London suburbs, who used to go to City
offices by early morning trains—do you remember how they spoke once of
“London pride”?—fought sternly and endured with stoicism, and had a
laugh left in them after the battle when they forgot the frightfulness
of it all and remembered the fantastic adventures of the Tanks which
waddled into the German lines, knocking down tree-stumps, climbing over
heaps of ruin, and “putting the wind up” in the enemy’s ranks. “It was
a fair treat!” said one of them. “Every time I think of it I can’t help
laughing!” And yet it was no joke, after all, but very grim and deadly
work.
There was hardly a county of England which did not have its sons in
this battle, and all those English regiments of the north and the south
were so good, so fine, so full of spirit, that it made one wonder at
the stock that has bred these men, giving to them out of the strain
of England some quality of blood that has withstood all the weakening
influences of factory life and city life. And yet, having written that,
I see it is foolishness. For men of all the Empire were here, and it
was the spirit of the whole race that rose at dawn out of the trenches
and shell-craters and went forward into the furnace fires.
4
About the Scottish troops I can say no more than I have said a hundred
times, loving all those Lowlanders and Highlanders “this side idolatry.”
I was with some of their officers to-day again, and heard stories of
their men who took one of the German strongholds after a serpentine
plan of attack difficult to perform because in attacking men will
go straight, and coming under shell-fire which would have broken
the spirit of weaker men. But they went on in waves over the German
trenches and into the village where some hundreds of men surrendered
to them, coming up out of the dug-outs as soon as the Scots were about
their hiding-places.
The German soldiers had been thoroughly frightened by the Tank, which
had come nosing in before the infantry, and many of them huddled
piteously under its flanks in order to escape from its rapid fire.
Sixty men came out of one dug-out and surrendered in this way.
Afterwards the Scots pushed on beyond the stronghold and established
posts and dug cover for themselves against the enemy’s gun-fire, which
threw an enormous number of high explosives into their old place of
defence, which was stacked with timber for dug-outs and other stores of
war material.
5
The Canadians gained great glory on Friday and Saturday. After their
long and hard experiences in the salient they came down to the
Somme battlefield determined to “get their own back,” and do great
adventures. Their attack was finely organised, and when all the
difficulties are known will be put down to their credit as a really
great military achievement. Among them is a body of French Canadians,
dark-eyed fellows whom it is strange to meet about the villages of
France speaking volubly with the peasants in their own tongue, a little
old-fashioned, as it was once spoken in the days of Louis XIV, when
Canada was one of the brightest rays in the glory of the Sun-King.
These fellows, close in likeness to the provincial Frenchman, though
perhaps more dour and reserved, went away like wolves a-hunting, and
raced forward to a German stronghold which they had asked leave to take.
They were swept by machine-gun fire and checked by a stubborn defence
on the part of the enemy, but with the help of the two Tanks,
called “Crême de Menthe” and “Cordon Rouge,” who sat on the enemy’s
machine-gun emplacements and knocked out his machine-gun crews, the
French Canadians carried the stronghold and captured hundreds of
prisoners.
Later I hope to write the full story of the Canadian victory which will
thrill through all the towns and fields of the great Dominion like an
heroic song, for these men from overseas were very careless of death so
that they might win.
6
Then there were the New Zealanders, those clean-cut, handsome fellows
in the felt hats with a bit of red ribbon round the brim, which I
looked for down village streets and in French harvest fields before
they went into battle. Australia has set a great example to them, being
first in the fighting round Pozières, where they fought as wonderfully
as in the Dardanelles. They were not less gallant in the great charge
they made at dawn on Friday, going forward very far to a distant place
across No Man’s Land, and across German trenches, under heavy fire, and
out “into the blue” in pursuit of retreating men.
7
Sir Douglas Haig mentions last of all the Guards, but not because they
were least in valour. They fought as the Guards always fight, with
superb discipline, and with a tradition, that is sacred to them. I
saw them before they went into battle, and had a meal in the mess of
the Irish Guards, and saw them marching up to take their line in the
battlefields.
They are not the old Guards who fought at Ypres and in many bloody
battles when we were hard pressed, and afterwards at Loos, when they
had some fearful hours. Many of those brave men lie under the soil of
France, and new men have taken their place. But the tradition stays,
and the physical standard of the men has not been lowered by a hair’s
breadth, and their discipline is still upon the same high and hard
level. Every one knew they would put up a great fight, and they did.
They had a very difficult part of the line, and had to pass
machine-guns which swept upon their ranks in enfilade fire, and had
to advance over ground covered by whirlwind fire of high explosives.
But they gained their way forward in a series of charges which went
straight through three lines of German trenches, and captured large
numbers of prisoners after heavy fighting, and held on to their ground
against strong counter-attacks. The tradition of the Guards has been
upheld, and a new tradition has been given to them.
I must put into a line some late important news of the day, which is
the great casualties inflicted upon the enemy in the neighbourhood
of Guedecourt. A body of the enemy’s infantry was observed to be
retreating through the mist, and they were caught by some of our
advanced patrols, who cut them to pieces with machine-gun fire.
Elsewhere the enemy is surrendering in small batches, unable to stand
the fearful slaughter inflicted upon them by our guns.
8
SEPTEMBER 19
Some of the most noble fighting qualities in the great battle of Friday
last were shown by the troops who were responsible for the centre of
the attack directed against Flers and the country immediately to the
right of that village. Those who were given the task of assaulting
Flers itself were mostly recruited from the London area.
They had not seen much fighting before going into the great fire of the
Somme battle. Their General, who had raised and trained them, was sure
of them, and had taught each man the task expected of him on this great
day, so that whatever might befall their officers, the men should not
be mere sheep without a sense of guidance or direction.
When they formed up in line to the north of Delville Wood (with awkward
bits of German trench thrust down upon their right flank), they had
three lines in front of them over a distance of about 2,500 yards
barring their way to Flers. It was a long way and a hard way to go, but
they leapt forward in solid waves of keen and eager men following a
short and violent barrage from our heavy guns.
In a few minutes from the start the first two waves dropped into the
German switch line running diagonally from the real Flers line. They
found it choked with German dead, killed by our gun-fire, and among
them only a poor remnant of living men. The first two waves stayed in
the trench to hold it. The others swept on, smashed through the Flers
line, and forged their way over shell-craters under machine-gun and
shrapnel fire, to the outskirts of Flers, which they reached between
nine and ten in the morning.
Some London men were held up by barbed wire protecting a hidden trench
which had not been previously observed, and a call was made for one of
the Tanks which had come rolling up behind. It crawled forward, walking
over the shell-craters, and smashed the whole length of barbed wire
in front, firing rapidly upon the enemy’s bombers in the trench and
putting them out of action. This enabled the whole line to advance into
Flers village at the tail of another Tank now famous for its adventures
in Flers, which I have already narrated.
The victorious troops found but little opposition in the village.
Curiously enough, it was not strongly defended or fortified. There were
few of the tunnels and dug-outs which make many of these places hard
to capture, and the enemy was utterly demoralised by the motor monster
which appeared as a bad dream before them. The enemy flung a heavy
barrage, but our men had few casualties.
9
An attempt was made to reach Guedecourt, and, as I have already told,
one of our Tanks reached the outskirts of that new objective. The
infantry attack failed owing to massed machine-gun fire, and the men
fell back to a new line of trenches hastily dug by the enemy before
their defeat, which now gave us useful cover. This was 2,700 yards from
the starting point at dawn, and was almost a record as a continuous
advance.
The enemy rallied and made two counter-attacks, one at three o’clock
in the afternoon, the other between four and five. They were tragic
attempts. Some of our machine-gunners lay in waiting for them and
mowed down these rows of men as they came bravely forward. It was such
a sight as I watched at Falfemont Farm when solid bars of tall men
crumbled and fell before a scythe of bullets.
At 6.30 on the following evening our troops made another attempt to
reach Guedecourt in co-operation with the men on their right, but they
were unable to get the whole distance in spite of a most heroic assault
after two days of heavy fighting.
The force attacking on the right of Flers on Friday morning had similar
experiences and more difficulties. They are men who know all there is
to know about the Ypres salient, where I met them first nearly a year
ago. They are men who have old scores to wipe off against the enemy in
the way of poison gas and flame jets, and they went very fiercely into
the battle.
To start with, they had to clear out a place known as Mystery Corner,
to the right of Delville Wood, where they captured fifty-one prisoners,
and afterwards a trench a little to the north of that, thrust down as
a wedge between their left flank and the right of the troops who had
started out for Flers.
This second strong point was wiped out by the Tanks who came and sat
down on it, and by a small body of north countrymen working with the
Tanks. Their particular job was done, and they might have stayed there,
but, seeing the long waves of their comrades streaming forward to the
main attack, they could not hold back, but followed on, all through
the fight keeping touch in a most orderly way with the men ahead of
them, and doing, as they put it, “odd jobs,” such as knocking out
machine-guns and killing snipers.
It was so with other men. Having done their allotted task they would
not stand and hold, but streamed after the tide which went through and
past them, determined to be in at the death.
In the attacks upon Guedecourt that day and on the evening of the next
they had a hard bad time like the men on their left. They were under
enfilade fire from machine-guns, which chattered hour after hour, never
silent. “The air was stiff with bullets,” says one of the officers. Men
finding their only cover in shell craters could not put their heads up,
so close did the bullets slash the earth. And in other shell-craters
not far away were many German riflemen picking off any man who appeared
for a moment out of the tumbled earth.
It was a hellish neighbourhood, yet when the moment for the second
attack came mixed companies of men from various regiments who had
mingled in the inevitable confusion of such a place and time (it was
now thirty-six hours since the dawn of Friday) rose out of their holes
in the earth and formed up as on parade, and went forward in a fine
gallant style.
It was impossible in the face of all those bullets about them, and they
fell back to the original line of advance well to the north of Flers,
which was good enough for that day after such heroic work. There was no
Division in our armies who could have done better, nor who did better,
on a great day when all did well.
10
And now I must tell a little more in detail the story of the Guards in
this battle. It is hard to tell it, and not all can be told yet because
of the enemy. The Guards had their full share of the fighting, and of
the difficult ground, with strong forces against them. They knew that
would be so before they went into battle, and yet they did not ask for
better things, but awaited the hour of attack with strong, gallant
hearts, quite sure of their courage, proud of their name, full of trust
in their officers, eager to give a smashing blow at the enemy.
These splendid men, so tall and proper, so hard and fine, went away as
one might imagine the old knights and yeomen of England at Agincourt.
For the first time in the history of the Coldstreamers, three
battalions of them charged in line, great solid waves of men, as fine
a sight as the world could show. Behind them were the Grenadiers, and
again behind these men, the Irish.
They had not gone more than 200 yards before they came under the
enfilade fire of massed machine-guns in trenches not previously
observed. The noise of this fire was so loud and savage that although
hundreds of guns were firing, not a shot could be heard. It was just
the stabbing, staccato hammering of the German maxims. Men fell, but
the lines were not broken. Gaps were made in the ranks, but they
closed up. The wounded did not call for help, but cheered on those who
swept past and on, shouting, “Go on, Lily Whites!”—which is the old
name for the Coldstreamers—“Get at ’em, Lily Whites!”
They went on at a hot pace with their bayonets lowered. Out of the
crumpled earth—all pits and holes and hillocks, torn up by great
gun-fire—grey figures rose and fled. They were German soldiers
terror-stricken by this rushing tide of men.
The Guards went on. Then they were checked by two lines of trenches,
wired and defended by machine-guns and bombers. They came upon them
quicker than they expected. Some of the officers were puzzled. Could
these be the trenches marked out for attack—or other unknown trenches?
Anyhow, they must be taken—and the Guards took them by frontal assault
full in the face of continual blasts of machine-gun bullets.
There was hard and desperate fighting. The Germans defended themselves
to the death. They bombed our men who attacked them with the bayonet,
served their machine-guns until they were killed, and would only
surrender when our men were on top of them. It was a very bloody hour
or more. By that time the Irish Guards had joined the others. All the
Guards were together, and together they passed the trenches, swinging
left inevitably under the machine-gun fire which poured upon them from
their right, but going steadily deeper into the enemy country until
they were 2,000 yards from their starting place.
Then it was necessary to call a halt. Many officers and men had fallen.
To go further would be absolute death. The troops on the right had
been utterly held up. The Guards were “up in the air,” with an exposed
flank, open to all the fire that was flung upon them from the enemy’s
lines. The temptation to go farther was great. The German infantry was
on the run. They were dragging their guns away. There was a great panic
among the men who had been hiding in trenches. But the German machine
gunners kept to their posts to safeguard a rout, and the Guards had
gone far enough through their scourging bullets.
They decided very wisely to hold the line they had gained, and to dig
in where they stood, and to make forward posts with strong points. They
had killed a great number of Germans and taken 200 prisoners and fought
grandly. So, now they halted and dug and took cover as best they could
in shell-craters and broken ground, under fierce fire from the enemy’s
guns.
The night was a dreadful one for the wounded, and for men who did their
best for the wounded, trying to be deaf to agonising sounds. Many of
them had hairbreadth escapes from death. One young officer in the Irish
Guards lay in a shell-hole with two comrades, and then left it for a
while to cheer up other men lying in surrounding craters. When he came
back he found his two friends lying dead, blown to bits by a shell.
But in spite of all these bad hours, the Guards kept cool, kept their
discipline, their courage and their spirit. The Germans launched
counter-attacks against them, but were annihilated. The Guards held
their ground, and gained the greatest honour for self-sacrificing
courage which has ever given a special meaning to their name. They took
the share which all of us knew they would take in the greatest of all
our battles since the first day of July, and, with other regiments,
struck a vital blow at the enemy’s line of defence.
XXXII
LONDON PRIDE
1
SEPTEMBER 20
Another dark, wet day, filled with grey mist, and rain-storms and mud.
Up in the lines British soldiers and Germans lie near each other in
shell-craters, waist high in water. The rain is slashing upon them,
and it is cold. But though gunners cannot see, nor airmen fly, the
bombardment goes on, and all day long there has been the dull crashing
of heavy shells, on both sides deep and sullen boomings through the
white fog of this foul day.
Last night and early in the morning the enemy attempted a
counter-attack at different parts of the line. They attacked heavily
here and there with strong bombing parties, who for a time forced a
way into our new lines, at the corner of Courcelette and the north of
Martinpuich and the ground further east.
Many of them were killed—the bad weather does not stop this
slaughter—and they were driven out and back again by men who, though
cold in their shell-craters, kept their courage and flung themselves
fiercely upon the German assaulting troops, in sharp bombing fights,
which left us with more ground—at least in one part of the line—than
we had before. All of which shows that the enemy is hard pressed and
tightly held, and that our men—infantry to infantry—not counting
gun-fire, have the mastery of these German reserves, and a spirit that
refuses to be beaten even by artillery.
I have written many thousands of words about this abominable war since
the first shot was fired, and for fifteen months and more have been
trying to picture as closely as possible the life of our soldiers in
action, but I am conscious that all I have written has given but a
vague, dim, far-off glimpse of the character, sufferings, and valour of
our men.