THE NEW ENTRY
_France, November 13th._
Last week an Australian force made its attack in quite a different area
of the Somme battle.
The sky was blue in patches, with cold white clouds between. The wind
drove icily. There had been practically no rain for two days.
We were in a new corner. The New Zealanders had pushed right through to
the comparatively green country just here--and so had the British to
north and south of it. We were well over the slope of the main ridge, up
which the Somme battle raged for the first three months. Pozières, the
highest point, where Australians first peeped over it, lay miles away to
our left rear. From the top of the ridge behind you, looking back over
your left shoulder, you could just see a few distant broken tree stumps.
I think they marked the site of that old nightmare.
We were looking down a long even slope to a long up-slope beyond. The
country around us was mostly brown-mud shell-holes. Not like the
shell-holes of that blasted hill-top of two months back--I have never
seen anything quite like that, though they say that Guillemont, which I
have not seen, is as devastated. In this present area there is green
grass between the rims of the craters. But not enough green grass to
matter. The general colour of the country on the British side is
brown--all gradations of it--from thin, sloppy, grey-brown mud, trampled
liquid with the feet of men and horses, to dull, putty-like brown mud so
thick that, when you get your foot into it, you have a constant problem
of getting it out again.
For it is the country over which the fight has passed. As we advance, we
advance always on to the area which has been torn with shells--where the
villages and the trenches and the surface of the green country have been
battered and shattered, first by our guns and then by the German guns,
until they have made a hell out of heaven.
And always just ahead of us, a mile or so behind the German lines, there
is heaven smiling--you can see it clearly; in this part, up the
opposite slope of the wide, open valley. There is the green country on
which the Germans are always being driven back, and up which this
monstrous engine of war has not yet begun its slow, gruesome climb.
There are the beautiful green woods fading to soft autumn brown and
yellow--the little red roofs in the trees, an empty village in the
foreground--you can see the wet mud shining in its street and the white
trickle of water down the centre of the road.
Down our long muddy hill-slope, near where the knuckles of it dip out of
sight into the bottom of the valley, one notices a line of heads. In
some places they are clear and in others they cannot be seen. But we
guess that it is the line ready to go out.
At the top of the opposite up-slope the tower of Bapaume town hall
showed up behind the trees. We made out that the hands of the clock were
at the hour--but I have heard others say that they were permanently at
half-past five, and others a quarter past four--it is one of those
matters which become very important on these long dark evenings, and
friendships are apt to be broken over it. The clock tower,
unfortunately, disappeared finally at eighteen minutes past eleven
yesterday morning, so the controversy is never likely to be settled.
The bombardment broke out suddenly from behind us. We saw the long line
of men below clamber on to the surface, a bayonet gleaming here and
there, and begin to walk steadily between the shell-holes towards the
edge of the hill. From where we were you could not see the enemy's
trench in the valley--only the brown mud of crater rims down to the
hill's edge. And I think the line could not see it either, in most parts
at any rate. They would start from their muddy parapet, and over the wet
grass, with one idea above all others in the back of every man's
head--when shall we begin to catch sight of the enemy?
It is curious how in this country of shell craters you can look at a
trench without realising that it is a trench. A mud-heap parapet is not
so different from the mud-heap round a crater's rim, except that it is
more regular. Even to discover your own trench is often like finding a
bush road. You are told that there is a trench over there and you cannot
miss it. But, once you have left your starting-point, it looks as if
there were nothing else in the world but a wilderness of shell craters.
Then you realise that there is a certain regularity in the irregular
mud-heaps some way ahead of you--the top of a muddy steel helmet moves
between two earth-heaps on the ground's surface--then another helmet and
another; and you have found your bearings. That is clearly the trench
they spoke about.
Well, finding the German trench seems to be much the same experience,
varied by a multitude of bullets singing past like bees, and with the
additional thought ever present to the mind--when will the enemy's
barrage burst on you? When it does come, you do not hear it
coming--there is too much racket in the air for your ears to catch the
shell whistling down as you are accustomed to. There are big black
crashes and splashes near by, without warning--scarcely noticed at
first. In the charge itself men often do not notice other men hit--we,
looking on from far behind, did not notice that. A man may be slipping
in a shell-hole, or in the mud, or in some wire--often he gets up again
and runs on. It is only afterwards that you realise....
Across the mud space there were suddenly noticed a few grey helmets
watching--a long, long distance away. Then the grey helmets moved, and
other helmets moved, and bunched themselves up, and hurried about like a
disturbed hive, and settled into a line of men firing fast and coolly.
That was the German trench.
It was fairly packed already in one part. The rattle of fire grew
quickly. The chatter of one machine-gun--then another, and another, were
added to it. Our shells were bursting occasionally flat in the face of
the Germans--one big bearded fellow--they are close enough for those
details to be seen now--takes a low burst of our shrapnel full in his
eyes. A high-explosive shell bursts on the parapet, and down go three
others. But they are firing calmly through all this.
Three or four Germans suddenly get up from some hole in No Man's Land,
and bolt for their trench like rabbits. Within forty yards of the German
parapet the leading men in our line find themselves alone. The line has
dwindled to a few scanty groups. These are dropping suddenly--their
comrades cannot say whether they are taking cover in shell-holes, or
whether they have been hit. The Germans are getting up a machine-gun on
the parapet straight opposite. The first two men fall back shot. Two or
three others struggle up to it--they are shot too; our men are making
desperate shooting to keep down that machine-gun. But the Germans get it
up. It cracks overhead. In this part of the line the attack is clearly
finished.
One remembers a day, some months back, when a Western Australian
battalion, after a heavy bombardment of its trench, found a German line
coming up over the crest of the hill about two hundred yards away. The
Western Australians stood up well over the parapet, and fired until the
remnant of that line sank to the ground within forty or fifty yards of
them. That line was a line of the Prussian Guard Reserve. We have had
that opportunity three or four times in the Somme battle. This time it
was the Germans who had it. The Germans were of the Prussian Foot
Guards--and it was Western Australians who were attacking.
In another part, where the South Australians attacked, they found fewer
Germans in the trench. They could see the Germans in small groups
getting their bombs ready to throw--but they were into the trench before
the Germans had time to hold them up. They killed or captured all the
German garrison, and destroyed a machine-gun, and set steadily to
improve the trench for holding it.
Everything seemed to go well in this part, except that they could get no
touch with any other of our troops in the trench. As far as they knew
the other portions of the attack had succeeded, as well as theirs. And
then things changed suddenly. After an hour a message did come from
Australians farther along in the same trench--a message for urgent help.
At the same time a similar message came from the other flank as well. A
shower of stick-bombs burst with a formidable crash from one side. A
line of Germans was seen, coming steadily along in single file against
the other end of the trench. A similar shower of crashes descended from
that direction. A machine-gun began to crackle down the trench. Our men
fought till their bombs, and all the German bombs they could find, were
gone. Finally the Germans began to gain on them from both ends, and the
attack here, too, was over. They were driven from the trench.