to dig and gather their strength and take breath. It was late in
the afternoon, I think, that the ground behind them was thoroughly
cleared, and that the German defence of the Sugar Factory was finally
broken with the help of the Tanks. There was a conference between the
officers, those who were still unwounded. Men in the ranks asked the
same question, and answered it. “Why not take Courcelette itself?”
3
The order and the honour of the new attack were given to the “mop-up”
battalions behind, with the French Canadians among them, who had been
advancing behind the assaulting troops as a clearing and consolidating
force. The colonel of the French Canadians tells the story. He is a
wiry man, typical of his race, modest, bright-eyed, keeping a sense of
humour in spite of all the tragedy of war, such a man as Chaucer knew
when Norman-French was spoken in English fields—“a very parfit gentil
knight.”
He is proud of his French Canadians. They had a long way to go to get
to Courcelette. Nearly three and a half miles to the final line given
to them on the other side of the village. “We’re late, we’re late,”
said the little colonel. “We must get there in time at whatever cost.
French Canadians, forward!”
They were not too late. They came up to the first assaulting
battalions—those who had dug in south of the village—just in time to
pass through them and lead the new attack. Many men had dropped on the
way. The ground was still being torn up by steel ploughs. All the air
was full of the scream and whine and crash of shells. Round Courcelette
there was a clatter of machine-gun fire from German hiding places. The
garrison there was ready for defence.
“Allons donc, mes enfants!”
It is the way in which French officers lead their men to victory or to
death.
The French Canadians, with their comrades on the left, swung round in a
loop round the southern half of the village, and closed in and invaded
its streets.... The capture of Courcelette was one of the astounding
things in this battle of the Somme. There were 1,500 Germans in and
about it, and the place was stormed by much less than that number.
Dug-outs full of Germans were routed out by a few men who could have
been crushed and killed by the odds against them. One Canadian boy went
down into a dug-out, and after a time—what queer conversation could he
have down there?—came out again with prisoners. There were twenty of
them, tall, big men, who could have made a meal off this brown-eyed lad
who marshalled them up.
Some of the Germans made themselves useful. A wounded Canadian
officer captured five of them before too weak to get back to the
dressing-station unaided. Speaking French to them, which one at least
understood, he ordered his prisoners to make a stretcher for him,
enforcing his command by keeping his revolver on them. From some old
sticks and sandbags they made the stretcher, and then carried him down.
Two German doctors helped to dress our wounded, and worked bravely and
steadily under shell-fire for many hours. One of them objected to
having a sentry put near his dug-out. “I am not a fighting man,” he
said. “I did not help to make this war. My work is for humanity, and
your wounded are the same to me as ours, poor, suffering men, needing
my help, which I am glad to give.”
4
Beyond the village that night the enemy made seven counter-attacks upon
the Canadians. There were moments when even the Colonel thought that
things did not look “too bright.” But all these assaults were beaten
off, as the Canadians have beaten off other attacks yesterday and
to-day, inflicting heavy losses and gaining more ground.
One counter-attack was repulsed by a handful of men in a way that gives
a grotesque comedy to all this night scene of war filled with so much
death and terror, and human courage strong in endurance. A tot of rum
had been served out to each Canadian to give a glow of warmth to limbs
chilled in the wet soil of shell craters and to hearts chilled by the
reaction which follows fierce excitement. This handful of men were
sitting in a German dug-out.
They laughed, and sang, forgetful of the scenes about them. It was as
jolly as in a log-cabin of the West, by this dug-out, where a corpse
lay very quiet. Again they shouted, and laughed more loudly, giving
Red Indian war-cries, and other wild whoops. And that was when the
counter-attack began.
It did not get very far. A body of Germans advancing over No Man’s
Land to the British lines suddenly heard frightful, blood-curdling
sounds. It was as though the tribes of the Blackfeet had come out
upon the war-path, yelling as they swung their tomahawks and dancing
round the scalps of their victims. The Germans hated to hear such a
noise. It was as though all the devils of hell were upon them, laughing
diabolically.... They turned and fled.
XXXV
THE ABANDONMENT OF COMBLES
1
SEPTEMBER 26
The enemy cannot stand against us on his present line. That has been
proved to-day and yesterday by sweeping British successes, which
include the capture of Gueudecourt, Lesbœufs, Morval and Combles, with
nearly 2,000 prisoners (according to my own reckoning) and a great mass
of material. The German infantry was ordered to hold on to these places
at all costs, to the very death.
The enemy may pretend later that they have made a voluntary withdrawal
to “take up a new and stronger line of defence”—that is the usual
convention—but I have talked with their officers and men and know what
their orders were. They were to fight for every inch of soil against
us, and they did not lack courage.
But our men and our guns have been too strong for them. As soon as
we held the high ridge from the Pozières windmill through the old
German switch line below Martinpuich, and above High Wood and Ginchy,
their position down the slopes became untenable because of the new
observation we had for our artillery.
One by one their strongholds have fallen, Courcelette and Martinpuich
and Flers; now those other places, Gueudecourt, Lesbœufs and Morval. In
spite of all their massed machine-guns in strong emplacements, and all
their tunnelled dug-outs, and all their stubborn resistance, they could
not hold on to a line here under the hurricane of fire our guns have
flung upon them, and the tide of men who swept forward and overwhelmed
them.
Their defence began to show signs of cracking when they were unable to
force home their repeated counter-attacks by any big general scheme of
offence.
It was clear that our constant hammer strokes, with those delivered by
the French on our right, had demoralised and disorganised them, and
that they were unable to gather reserves from other parts of the line
quick enough or big enough to strike back heavily so as to thwart our
progress. They had to rely mainly on their gun-power, and formidable
as that is it has been mastered by ours for the time being, and could
not do more than make our advance costly to our wonderful infantry, who
went through its curtain fire.
Even that has weakened a little during the past forty-eight hours—our
men who come back broken by it will not think so, poor fellows—and the
last attacks have succeeded with far fewer casualties on our side than
ever before on such a day of success in this Battle of the Somme. The
casualties, indeed, were very light considering the striking successes
gained. The enemy is in retreat—not for a great distance, perhaps, but
certainly retreating.
2
For the first time in the history of this war on the western front
since the Battle of the Marne and the beginning of trench warfare the
enemy has been compelled to abandon a town without a fight in it. He
has withdrawn from Combles, which is a place of some importance, and
more than a mere village, and our troops have entered it from the
north, while the French hold the southern half.
As soon as Morval was taken yesterday, after that wonderful assault
upon the double line of trenches defending it, his gunners near Sailly
Saillisel, to the east, packed up and bolted away. In the night troops
holding the ground between Morval and that place have melted away, and
our patrols are out there trying to find out his rearguard.
Between Gueudecourt and Lesbœufs a body of German infantry tried to
rally up to a counter-attack and came forward a little way with a show
of strength and resolution.
Our gunners were quick to get their target. Clouds of shrapnel burst
over those massed men, and their attack turned into a panic-stricken
rout. They flung down rifles and packs and fled back towards Le
Transloy, leaving many dead and wounded in their wake.
The worst thing that has happened to the enemy is the breaking-up of
the moral of his troops. These men have been ordered to hold out in
death-traps, and although there can be no slur on their courage, for
they have fought well and are brave men, they have seen with dismal
eyes that if they hold on longer they must die or be taken.
As soon as our men had swept across the trenches and the sunken roads
where the Germans defended themselves stubbornly and entered the
villages—Morval being taken from the north—the garrisons came up out
of their underground places and surrendered in heaps. They could have
fought longer and harder here, perhaps, but only with their backs to
the walls asking for death. They had not the spirit to do that and no
man would expect it of them.
They were done and dazed by the appalling intensity of the shell-fire
which we had smashed over their tunnels. They were disheartened by the
unfailing regularity with which the British had captured one stronghold
after another since July 1, and at last after two years of utter
confidence in the supreme strength of the German war-machine, their
faith had been destroyed.
They have seen it crack and break, leaving them as the victims of its
failure. Men who have lost faith in the one idol to which they had
pledged their souls are not so strong as before. It is this loss of
faith among her soldiers which is the worst thing that has happened to
Germany.
3
In opposition to the faith which we have now broken is the fear they
have of British troops whom, once upon a time, they were taught to
despise; they are stupefied by the grim way in which our men attack,
reckless of loss, so that no barrage stops them, and they are amazed
that men who were not soldiers a year ago should now be equal to their
own best troops in fighting skill as gunners and as infantry.
A German officer who surrendered to-day with a whole company when the
British stormed their way into Morval paid a tribute to them when he
was taken prisoner.
“Your soldiers,” he said, “surprise me by their sangfroid. They were
very cool and calm in moments when most soldiers would lose their
heads.”
He was touched, too, by their kindness to him, puzzled by it, not
finding any kind of hatred in their hearts now that the fighting was
over.
“They asked me whether I would like to go down at once or wait until
the barrage eased off. That was very good-natured of them. Then they
gave me ‘kuchen’—little cakes—and called me ‘old boy’ as though they
had known me before.”
They are grateful for our treatment of them, and truly some of our men
are chivalrous in the way they behave to them after the bloodshed is
over and the fierce and frightful things of battle.
There were two fellows on the roadside to-day, an English soldier and a
German, trudging side by side to a field dressing station. Both heads
were bandaged, and one man could see out of one eye and one out of the
other.
Said the Englishman:
“This chap tried to gouge out my eye with his fist, and I did the same
to his with my elbow, and now we get on famously together.”
Two other men came in—enemies an hour before.
“This is old Bill,” said the English soldier, pointing to a wounded
German. “Where I go Bill goes. I wounded him and I took him.... Come
on, Bill, old son.”
I saw 1200 German prisoners to-day just out of the battle. They lay in
rows, grey body close to grey body, so that when any stood and walked
about they had to step carefully over all those lying men. They were
men from Morval and Lesbœufs, and some from Combles, who in the retreat
in the night had mistaken their way out and come into our lines.
They were mostly strong, well-built young men—better than some of those
I saw yesterday—and were nearly all Prussians from the Rhinelands. In
the mass there was nothing repulsive about them, though here and there
was an evil-looking face. These fresh-coloured fellows, very smart
and soldierly, and with very little of the dirt of war upon them, as
they had been living in the dug-outs, stared about them with curious
eyes—at the British troops passing and British transports, and all the
traffic that goes up to the battle lines. They were startled at finding
themselves in so great a company of fellow-prisoners. They confessed to
one of our officers that it was “a great British victory.”
These men were all unwounded. But in a tent not far away, and in other
tents, were rows of Germans on stretchers, lying very still, and
looking very grey, in blood-soaked clothes. Some of them were moaning
their lives away, but English doctors were with them, attending to them
just in the same way as they dealt with our wounded men carried into
other tents.
“We make no difference,” said the medical officer.
There was a young officer there whom I had met yesterday on the
roadside. He sat up when he saw me again, and said he wanted nothing
that could be given to him, and was grateful for the treatment. He had
just been writing down the address of one of his wounded comrades, who
was going to die, so that he might send a letter to the man’s wife. He
had been asked to do this by one of the English doctors, and he was
glad to do it.
I sat down by the side of a young soldier from the Rhineland.
“Are you badly wounded?” I asked.
He pointed to his shoulder, and said “Here.”
When I said he looked very young, he shrugged that wounded shoulder of
his, and said, “All my comrades were young. We fought as well as older
men. The English came behind us, or we would not have been taken.”
The pride of the boy remained with him even now, and it seemed to me
fine and plucky.
But these men, as a whole, have none of the braggart confidence of the
prisoners we used to take a year ago. The truth, I think, is beginning
to dawn upon them. The guns that protected them have been matched by
British guns, and the new army that has grown up against them has
broken their strongest lines.
It is only the beginning. People at home must not think that the German
army has lost its power of defence and that the great rout is at hand.
They are drawing back their guns, but saving most of them. They are
retreating, but will stand again, and dig new trenches and defend other
villages.
There will be greater and fiercer and more desperate fighting before
the end comes, and God alone knows when that will be. But so far as the
fighting goes it is a real stroke of victory for us. Within the last
forty-eight hours we have put out of action eight German battalions
between Lesbœufs and Morval, and the enemy can ill afford such loss
after all that has happened since the first day of July.
4
The story of the meeting of the French and British in the stronghold
of Combles is an historic incident, which may form one day the subject
of a great painting, though perhaps no artist’s eye was there to see
it. Some brigades of English troops were holding on Monday morning, the
ground of the Quadrilateral (where our men had been badly held up on
September 15), to the west of Bouleaux Wood.
The French were hammering forward with their soixante-quinze and
masses of splendid infantry to the east of Combles in the direction
of Frégicourt. The plan of attack was to box in Combles by the French
advance on one side, and on ours by forming a strong line to the
north-west of Combles.
The operation was of great importance to the whole of our attack on
Morval and Lesbœufs on Monday morning, because, apart from cutting off
Combles, the new position was needed as a solid plank to our right wing.
The men who were given the task—it is sad that I am not yet able to say
who they were—had been fighting heavily in previous battles, and had
suffered many losses. But for this new assault they rallied up again
with a brave spirit, and did all that was asked of them and a little
more.
Instead of attacking Bouleaux Wood itself, where the Germans were in
great force, they were ordered to take two lines of trenches on the
west side of it, and to establish the flank line there—a clever bit
of strategy which a German officer has since complained of bitterly
as “not playing the game.” Because at Bouleaux Wood the Germans were
waiting for an attack and ready for it with massed machine-guns, which
they could not put to their full use, poor lads!
The trenches were taken easily and rapidly—in five minutes from the
moment of attack—but nearly at right angles to it was an embankment
with a rabbit warren of dug-outs, which gave more trouble.
It was the German flank line, and enormously important to the enemy,
so that he held it with a large force of men and many machine-guns and
minenwerfer.
Fierce, savage fighting took place here, and it was only four hours
later that the dug-outs were finally cleared. Hereabouts eighty
prisoners were taken, but a great many dead bodies lay below the
embankment when the fight was done.
Near by five minenwerfer were captured, and our men found some
empty gun emplacements, which had been abandoned in such a hurry by
the German gunners that they had left behind them a great store of
four-point-two shells and all their ammunition carriers.
Our strong flank was formed and a new trench dug in great style by
a pioneer battalion, and then in the darkness patrols of infantry
pushed forward in the direction of Combles. It was dark, yet not an
absolute and lasting darkness. The sky was very calm and strewn with
bright stars, and up above the Combles road at Morval white flares
went up and down, throwing every few moments a white, vivid glare over
the battlefield, lighting up its desolation, with the rim of every
shell-crater white as snow and with black pits in the depths of them.
The sky was not quiet except high above the strife of men. Away down
the French lines it was all on fire, and shells were bursting in a
great semi-circle where the British were fighting at Lesbœufs and
Gueudecourt.
But Combles was dark and quiet. No star-shells came up from its ruined
houses. There was no sign of life there, only a few black shadows came
up from the town towards our patrols and exchanged shots with them and
then tried to escape. Twenty of these stragglers were taken prisoner.
Ten were killed in fights with our patrol parties.
Hour after hour there was the tremendous tattoo of the French
soixante-quinze coming nearer and nearer, and a final outburst of gun
and rifle fire when Frégicourt was taken.
The night was passing, but it was long before dawn—at 3.15—when a
strong patrol of English soldiers with machine-guns advanced down a
tramline into the town of Combles. They were tired men, worn with
fighting, craving sleep, hating all this hell around them, not in that
night hour inspired by any thrill of joy because they were entering
Combles “in triumph.” They were not quite sure how far the beastly
place had been abandoned. News had come to them that the enemy had
found a way out.
But you never can tell. There might be desperate fellows in the
cellars, machine-guns behind any of these broken walls. They went on
slowly and cautiously until they reached the ruined streets.
Dead men lay about, with white faces turned upwards to the stars. The
ground was littered with broken bricks and twisted iron and destroyed
wagons. But no shot came through the gaping holes in houses which still
stood as roofless shells. It was all as quiet and still as death. A
halt was made at the railway line, and then our tired men saw through
the gloom other tired figures trudging towards them.
Officers went forward. Words were spoken in French and English:
“Ce sont les Anglais.”
“Them’s the French all right.”
“The blooming town’s abandoned.”
“Les sacrés Boches n’existent plus!”
Combles was taken thus in the early hours of the morning of the day
before yesterday without any demonstration or dramatic ceremony,
without cheers or theatrical nonsense, by grim, quiet, tired men who
were glad to be at the end of another day’s fighting, with a dog’s
chance of rest.
It was a great place for booty. The cellars were stacked with thousands
of rifles and a great store of ammunition. The enemy had left behind
four thousand rounds of five-point-nine shells—the less to fire at us,
thank God!—and a mass of material and kit of every kind.
This flight from Combles is the most ignominious thing that has
happened to the enemy on the Western front since he was hammered back
on the Marne, and it must have hurt his pride—the pride of his “High
Command”—as a smarting wound.
XXXVI
THE DOOM OF THIÉPVAL
1
SEPTEMBER 27
The doom of Thiépval is fulfilled. That place upon the high ridge, with
its thirty-four black tree-stumps—I counted them this morning—which has
been harrowed and ploughed and cratered under incessant storms of high
explosive, fell into our hands last evening—all but one corner to the
north-west, which is ours to-day.
Weeks ago I said—as it may be remembered—that the German garrison there
must have known that their doom was creeping nearer, and that sooner or
later they must surrender or die.
It was longer reaching them than I expected when I watched the attack
on the Zollern trench, and the defences running up to the Wunderwerk,
and saw our men crossing a wide stretch of No Man’s Land through great
shell-fire which tossed up the earth about them, and go on until those
who had not fallen leapt upon the German trenches and bundled back
batches of prisoners, and then went on again until they were very
near to the row of apple trees which used to blossom in April on the
outskirts of Thiépval town perched upon the hill.
It seemed to me then, watching the rapid progress of our men and their
wonderful courage, that in a few days more from the Wunderwerk and
Mouquet Farm on the east side our lines would close in and put the
strangle-grip upon the place.
It has taken longer than that, more storms of shells, more splendid
lives, to win the stronghold, and the wonder to me is, now that I know
the full strength of the place, the resistance of its underground
fortifications, and the fighting spirit of the troops holding it, that
we captured it yesterday and to-day with such little loss.
For our loss was amazingly light considering the long and stubborn
fighting there and the machine-gun fire which swept upon our men from
many hidden places, and the desperation of the garrison who defended
themselves with great gallantry. Let us give them the honour of saying
that, for they were fine fighting men.
In defence the advantage was all with them. But for the power of our
guns and the way in which British troops fight—meaning to win whatever
the cost—they were in an impregnable position. The taking of Mouquet
Farm by the Australians and afterwards by the Canadians was the worst
menace to them, enclosing them on the right, but an astounding episode
which happened yesterday will show most clearly the difficulties of our
troops and the cunning of the enemy’s earthworks.
2
It is many days since I reported the final capture of Mouquet Farm,
after in and out fighting, and since I saw its ruins from the high
ridge.
These bits of broken brickwork, all that was left after the Australians
had made it their own, were the remnants of a place more important once
than an ordinary French farmstead.
It was a series of buildings such as one finds in France attached to
a big château, with barns and out-houses and stables, or to an old
monastic institution, covering a large space of ground.
Our last line of trenches struck through the middle of the place,
leaving two bits of ruin to the north of the trench and one to the
south, behind the line. The enemy seemed to be well away northwards
in the shell-craters beyond our parapet, and nobody suspected “Brother
Boche” near at hand.
It was with great surprise a few days ago that one of our English
officers saw two Germans rise suddenly from a hole behind our line,
near the southern ruin of bricks.
One of them beckoned to him. “Be careful, sir,” said the sentry. But
the officer imagined that the two Germans had strayed into our lines
and wanted to be taken prisoner, as some do from time to time.