WARFARE BY DAY AND BY NIGHT
In three days the British had not only gained the passages over the
Aisne, but had won their way to the plateau. Both sides had fought with
determination. The German commander knew that if he could not hold this
position the whole contemplated strategy of throwing masses of
reinforcements against the left flank of the Allied forces must
collapse. He was well aware that if he failed, not only must his own
force in all probability be destroyed, but the whole German line as far
as Verdun must in all probability be crumpled up.
Not less was Sir John French aware that the future success of the Allied
campaign hung upon obtaining a purchase on the German position which
would force General von Kluck to employ his whole strength in holding
on. It is easy, therefore, to infer how fierce had been this three days'
struggle.
The Germans had put forth the greatest effort of which they were
capable. But despite the natural advantage given them, first by the
river front, and next by the rugged and broken ground in the many side
valleys, they had been beaten. Henceforward the struggle was on less
uneven terms. The fact had become manifest that without a strenuous
counter-offensive the Germans could not hope to hold on.
This counter-offensive was attempted without delay.
Since the top of the plateau sloped from north to south, the positions
held by the British were in general on lower ground than the trenches
cut by the Germans, and it must have been something of a disagreeable
surprise to the latter when on the morning of September 15, the heavy
mists having lifted, they saw miles of earthworks, which had literally
sprung up in the night. The rain and mist during the hours of darkness
had made a night attack impossible, even if, after the eighteen hours'
furious battle in the mists on the preceding day, they had had the
stomach for it.
They had their surprise ready, however, as well. From well-hidden
positions behind the woods on the top of the plateau they opened a
violent bombardment of the British lines with their huge 8-inch and
11-inch howitzers, throwing the enormous shells, which fell with such
terrific force as to bury themselves in the ground. Giving off in
exploding dense clouds of black smoke, these shells blew away the earth
on all sides of them in a rain of fragments of rock, masses of soil and
stones, leaving the surface filled with holes wide and deep enough to be
the burial place of several horses. This heavy ordnance was kept well
beyond the range of the British guns, and employed for high-angle fire.
So far as life was concerned, the shells caused relatively little loss.
Their flight being visible--they looked not unlike tree-trunks hurled
from across the hills--they could be dodged. On realising how little
they were to be feared, the British troops nicknamed them "Black
Marias," "Coalboxes," and "Jack Johnsons," and shouted jocular warnings.
The idea of using these shells was to knock the British defence works to
pieces. Some of these works, hastily thrown up, proved to be too slight,
and had to be replaced by diggings, which became regular underground
barracks.
At this time the British lines were in general more than a mile distant,
on the average, from those of the enemy. They followed no symmetrical
plan, but, adapted to the defensive features of the ground, were cut
where there were at once the best shelters from attack and the best
jumping-off places for offence. Describing them, the British military
correspondent wrote:--
A striking feature of our line--to use the conventional term which
so seldom expresses accurately the position taken up by an army--is
that it consists really of a series of trenches not all placed
alongside each other, but some more advanced than others, and many
facing in different directions. At one place they run east and
west, along one side of a valley; another, almost north and south,
up some subsidiary valley; here they line the edge of wood, and
there they are on the reverse slope of a hill, or possibly along a
sunken road. And at different points both the German and British
trenches jut out like promontories into what might be regarded as
the opponent's territory.
While the British infantry had been entrenching, the artillery, with an
equal energy, had hauled their guns up the steep roads, and in many
cases up still steeper hillsides, and by the morning of September
15--another disagreeable surprise for the enemy--nearly 500 field pieces
bristled from positions of vantage along the front. The reply to the
German bombardment was a bombardment of the hostile trenches. The latter
were crowded with men. If the German shells did a lot of injury to the
landscape, the British shrapnel inflicted far heavier injury on the
enemy's force. It swept the German trenches and field batteries with a
regular hail of lead. Well-concealed though they to a great extent were,
the German positions were not so well-concealed as the British
positions. Both armies did their best to make themselves appear scarce,
and beyond the deafening uproar of the guns belching from behind woods
and undulations, there seemed at a distance few signs of life on either
side. But, looked at from behind and within, the lines were very
anthills of activity.
The bombardment went on until midnight. Then came a night battle of
almost unexampled fury.
From the outline already given of the fighting on September 14 it will
have been gathered that one of the most substantial advantages won had
been the position seized by the 4th Guards Brigade along the Aisne and
Oise Canal from Astel to Braye-en-Laonnois. At Braye and eastwards over
the intervening spur of plateau to Vendresse the British positions were
dangerously close to the narrow neck of the ridge. Across that neck,
too, following the canal to its juncture with the Lette, and then up the
short valley of the Ardon, was the easiest route to Laon, the main base
of the 1st German army. Obviously the British must, if possible, be
ousted out of these villages.
Bombardment had failed to do it. Soon after midnight, therefore, a huge
mass of German infantry moved down against the Guards' entrenchments by
Braye. It was a murderous combat. Six times in succession the Germans
were beaten off. But for every column of the enemy that went back,
broken, decimated, and exhausted, there was another ready instantly to
take its place. Advancing over the dying and the dead, the Germans faced
the appalling and rapid volleys of the Guards with unflinching courage.
They fell in hundreds, but still they rushed on. Machine guns on both
sides spat sheets of bullets. At close grips, finally, men stabbed like
demons. In and round houses, many set on fire, and throwing the scene of
slaughter into lurid and Dantesque relief, there were fights to the
death. No quarter was given or taken. The canal became choked with
corpses. On the roads and hillsides dead and wounded lay in every
posture of pain. Beyond the outer ring of the struggle, where shouts of
fury mingled with cries of agony, the roaring choruses of the guns bayed
across the valley with redoubled rage.
Great as it was, the effort proved vain. If the attack was heroic, the
defence was super-heroic. When, for the last time, the lines of the
Guards swept forward, withering the retreating and now disordered foe
with their volleys, charging into them in what seemed a lightning-like
energy, terrible alike in their forgetfulness of danger and in the
irresistible impetus of victory, the Germans must have realised that
their hopes of conquest were shattered.
This was but one out of similar scenes in that fierce night.[27] After
it the cold, grey morning broke in strange silence. For a space the
artillery had ceased to speak. Many and many a hero, unknown to fame,
but faithful unto death, lay with face upturned on those hillsides.
Never had duty been more valiantly done.
Sir John French realised the qualities of his soldiers. He had been
compelled to demand from them a herculean energy. They had not failed
him in any place nor in any particular. They had been in truth
magnificent, and he could not but embody his admiration in a Special
Order of the Day. That historic document ran:--
Once more I have to express my deep appreciation of the splendid
behaviour of officers, non-commissioned officers, and men of the
army under my command throughout the great battle of the Aisne,
which has been in progress since the evening of the 12th inst. The
battle of the Marne, which lasted from the morning of the 6th to
the evening of the 10th, had hardly ended in the precipitate flight
of the enemy when we were brought face to face with a position of
extraordinary strength, carefully entrenched and prepared for
defence by an army and a staff which are thorough adepts in such
work.
Throughout the 13th and 14th that position was most gallantly
attacked by the British forces, and the passage of the Aisne
effected. This is the third day the troops have been gallantly
holding the position they have gained against the most desperate
counter-attacks and a hail of heavy artillery.
I am unable to find adequate words in which to express the
admiration I feel for their magnificent conduct.
The self-sacrificing devotion and splendid spirit of the British
Army in France will carry all before it.
(Signed) J. D. P. FRENCH, Field Marshal,
_Commanding-in-Chief the British Army
in the Field_.
The enemy had been shaken. Of that there could be no doubt. Following
his experiences in the battle of the Marne this fighting was beginning
to prove too much for him.
A considerable amount of information about the, enemy has now been
gleaned from prisoners (says the official record). It has been gathered
that our bombardment on the 15th produced a great impression. The
opinion is also recorded that our infantry make such good use of the
ground that the German companies are decimated by our rifle fire before
a British soldier can be seen.
From an official diary captured by the First Army Corps it appears that
one of the German corps contains an extraordinary mixture of units. If
the composition of the other corps is at all similar, it may be assumed
that the present efficiency of the enemy's forces is in no way
comparable with what it was when war commenced. The losses in officers
are noted as having been especially severe. A brigade is stated to be
commanded by a major, and some companies of the Foot Guards to be
commanded by one-year volunteers, while after the battle of Montmirail
one regiment lost fifty-five out of sixty officers.
The prisoners recently captured appreciate the fact that the march on
Paris has failed, and that their forces are retreating, but state that
the object of this movement is explained by the officers as being to
withdraw into closer touch with supports which have stayed too far in
rear. The officers are also endeavouring to encourage the troops by
telling them that they will be at home by Christmas. A large number of
the men, however, believe that they are beaten. The following is an
extract from one document:--
With the English troops we have great difficulties. They have a
queer way of causing losses to the enemy. They make good trenches,
in which they wait patiently. They carefully measure the ranges for
their rifle fire, and they then open a truly hellish fire. This was
the reason that we had such heavy losses....
From another source:--
The English are very brave, and fight to the last man.... One of
our companies has lost 130 men out of 240.
From this time the battle took on more and more the features of a
regular siege. On the side of the Germans the operations resolved
themselves into persistent bombardments by day alternated with infantry
attacks by night. Infantry attacks in daylight they now knew to be
foredoomed. It is questionable, indeed, if, with the lowered _moral_ of
their troops, such attacks were any longer possible. To assist their
night attacks they rigged up searchlights, and when their infantry
advanced played the beams upon the British lines in the hope of dazzling
the defence and spoiling the rifle-fire they had learned to dread. These
lights, however, served also as a warning. When that was found out the
enemy went back to attacks in the darkness, but with no better results.
Sunday, September 20, was the date of another general night onslaught.
Just before the attack developed military bands were heard playing in
the German lines. After the manner of the natives of West Africa they
were working themselves up to the fury pitch. It was to be a do-or-die
business evidently. The enterprise, however, again failed to prosper.
Against some of the British positions the attack was pushed with dogged
bravery; and the scenes of five nights before were enacted again and
again with the like results. Against one part of the line the onset
wound up with an extraordinary disaster. Two German columns mistook each
other in the darkness for British troops. They had apparently set out
from different points to converge upon the same British position. In
front of that position they fought a furious combat, and while no
bullets reached the British trenches the men in them were afforded the
unwonted spectacle of the enemy wiping themselves out.[28]
Between the two armies the country had now become a "no-man's land,"
deserted by both sides because, in the expressive phrase of the British
soldier, it had turned "unhealthy." Over this tract the still unburied
bodies of German infantry lay where they had fallen. Outside the village
of Paissy, held by the British and near a ridge where there had been
some of the severest fighting, the German dead lay in heaps. Lines of
German trenches held at the beginning of the battle were by this time
deserted.
Reconnoitring parties, says the authorised story, sent out during the
night of the 21st-22nd, discovered some deserted trenches, and in them,
or near them in the woods, over a hundred dead and wounded were picked
up. A number of rifles, ammunition, and equipment were also found. There
were various other signs that portions of the enemy's forces had
withdrawn for some distance.
Unable to prevail in open fight, the Germans resorted to almost every
variety of ruse. In the words of the official story:--
The Germans, well trained, long-prepared, and brave, are carrying
on the contest with skill and valour. Nevertheless, they are
fighting to win anyhow, regardless of all the rules of fair play,
and there is evidence that they do not hesitate at anything in
order to gain victory.
During a counter-attack by the German 53rd Regiment on portions of
the Northampton and Queen's Regiments on Thursday, the 17th, a
force of some 400 of the enemy were allowed to approach right up to
the trench occupied by a platoon of the former regiment, owing to
the fact that they had held up their hands and made gestures that
were interpreted as signs that they wished to surrender. When they
were actually on the parapet of the trench held by the Northamptons
they opened fire on our men at point-blank range.
Unluckily for the enemy, however, flanking them and only some 400
yards away, there happened to be a machine gun manned by a
detachment of the "Queen's." This at once opened fire, cutting a
lane through their mass, and they fell back to their own trench
with great loss. Shortly afterwards they were driven further back
with additional loss by a battalion of the Guards, which came up in
support.
During the fighting, also, some German ambulance wagons advanced
in order to collect the wounded. An order to cease fire was
consequently given to our guns, which were firing on this
particular section of ground. The German battery commanders at once
took advantage of the lull in the action to climb up their
observation ladders and on to haystacks to locate our guns, which
soon afterwards came under a far more accurate fire than any to
which they had been subjected up to that time.
A British officer who was captured by the Germans, and has since
escaped, reports that while a prisoner he saw men who had been
fighting subsequently put on Red Cross brassards. That the
irregular use of the protection afforded by the Geneva Convention
is not uncommon is confirmed by the fact that on one occasion men
in the uniform of combatant units have been captured wearing the
Red Cross brassard hastily slipped over the arm. The excuse given
has been that they had been detailed after a fight to look after
the wounded.
It is reported by a cavalry officer that the driver of a motor-car
with a machine gun mounted on it, which he captured, was wearing
the Red Cross.
A curious feature of this strange siege-battle was that villages and
hamlets between the fighting lines still continued, where not destroyed,
to be in part, at any rate, inhabited, and at intervals peasants worked
in the intervening fields. The Germans took advantage of this to push
their spy system.
The suspicions of some French troops (of the 5th army) were aroused by
coming across a farm from which the horses had not been removed. After
some search they discovered a telephone which was connected by an
underground cable with the German lines, and the owner of the farm paid
the penalty usual in war for his treachery.
Some of the methods being employed for the collection or conveyance of
intelligence were:--
Men in plain clothes who signalled to the German lines from points
in the hands of the enemy by means of coloured lights at night and
puffs of smoke from chimneys by day.
Pseudo-labourers working in the fields between the armies who
conveyed information, and persons in plain clothes acting as
advanced scouts.
German officers and soldiers in plain clothes or in French or
British uniforms remained in localities evacuated by the Germans in
order to furnish them with intelligence.
One spy of this kind was found by the British troops hidden in a church
tower. His presence was only discovered through the erratic movements of
the hands of the church clock, which he was using to signal to his
friends by means of an improvised semaphore code.
Women spies were also caught, and secret agents found observing
entrainments and detrainments.
Amongst the precautions taken by the British to guard against spying was
the publication of the following notice:--
(1) Motor cars and bicycles other than those carrying soldiers in
uniform may not circulate on the roads.
(2) Inhabitants may not leave the localities in which they reside
between six p.m. and six a.m.
(3) Inhabitants may not quit their homes after eight p.m.
(4) No person may on any pretext pass through the British lines
without an authorisation countersigned by a British officer.
On October 23rd six batteries of heavy howitzers asked for by Sir John
French reached the front, and were at once put into action. No effort
was spared by the Germans to drive the British army back across the
Aisne. The quantity of heavy shells they fired was enormous, and they
were probably under the impression that the effect was devastating.
The object of the great proportion of artillery the Germans employ
(observes the official record on this point) is to beat down the
resistance of their enemy by a concentrated and prolonged fire, and to
shatter their nerve with high explosives before the infantry attack is
launched. They seem to have relied on doing this with us; but they have
not done so, though it has taken them several costly experiments to
discover this fact. From the statements of prisoners, indeed, it appears
that they have been greatly disappointed by the moral effect produced by
their heavy guns, which, despite the actual losses inflicted, has not
been at all commensurate with the colossal expenditure of ammunition,
which has really been wasted.
By this it is not implied that their artillery fire is not good. It is
more than good; it is excellent. But the British soldier is a difficult
person to impress or depress, even by immense shells filled with high
explosive which detonate with terrific violence and form craters large
enough to act as graves for five horses.
How far the colossal expenditure of ammunition was thrown away is
illustrated by this description of the effect in a given instance:--
At a certain point in our front our advanced trenches on the north
of the Aisne are not far from a village on the hillside, and also
within a short distance of the German works, being on the slope of
a spur formed by a subsidiary valley running north and the main
valley of the river. It was a calm, sunny afternoon, but hazy; and
from a point of vantage south of the river it was difficult exactly
to locate on the far bank the well-concealed trenches of either
side. From far and near the sullen boom of guns echoed along the
valley and at intervals, in different directions, the sky was
flecked with the almost motionless smoke of anti-aircraft shrapnel.
Suddenly, without any warning, for the reports of the distant
howitzers from which they were fired could not be distinguished
from other distant reports, three or four heavy shells fell into
the village, sending up huge clouds of smoke and dust, which slowly
ascended in a brownish-grey column. To this no reply was made by
our side.
Shortly afterwards there was a quick succession of reports from a
point some distance up the subsidiary valley on the side opposite
our trenches, and therefore rather on their flank. It was not
possible either by ear or by eye to locate the guns from which
these sounds proceeded. Almost simultaneously, as it seemed, there
was a corresponding succession of flashes and sharp detonations in
a line on the hill side, along what appeared to be our trenches.
There was then a pause, and several clouds of smoke rose slowly
and remained stationary, spaced as regularly as a line of poplars.
Again there was a succession of reports from the German
quick-firers on the far side of the misty valley and--like
echoes--the detonations of high explosive; and the row of expanding
smoke clouds was prolonged by several new ones.
Another pause, and silence, except for the noise in the distance.
After a few minutes there was a roar from our side of the main
valley as our field guns opened one after another in a more
deliberate fire upon the position of the German guns. After six
reports there was again silence, save for the whirr of the shells
as they sang up the small valley, and then followed the flashes and
balls of smoke--one, two, three, four, five, six, as the shrapnel
burst nicely over what in the haze looked like some ruined
buildings at the edge of a wood.
Again, after a short interval, the enemy's gunners reopened with a
burst, still further prolonging the smoke, which was by now merged
into one solid screen above a considerable length of trench, and
again did our guns reply. And so the duel went on for some time.
Ignoring our guns, the German artillerymen, probably relying on
concealment for immunity, were concentrating all their efforts in a
particularly forceful effort to enfilade our trenches. For them it
must have appeared to be the chance of a lifetime, and with their
customary prodigality of ammunition they continued to pour bouquet
after bouquet of high-explosive _Einheitsgeschoss_, or combined
shrapnel and common shell, on to our works. Occasionally, with a
roar, a high-angle projectile would sail over the hill and blast a
gap in the village.
In the hazy valleys bathed in sunlight not a man, not a horse, not
a gun, nor even a trench was to be seen. There were only flashes,
smoke, and noise. Above, against the blue sky, were several round
white clouds hanging in the track of the only two visible human
souls--represented by a glistening speck in the air. On high also
were to be heard the more or less gentle reports of the bursts of
the anti-aircraft projectiles.
Upon inquiry as to the losses sustained it was found that our men
had dug themselves well in. In that collection of trenches were
portions of four battalions of British soldiers--the Dorsets, the
West Kents, the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, and the King's
Own Scottish Borderers. Over 300 projectiles were fired against
them. The result was nine men wounded.
On the following day 109 shells were fired at the trenches occupied
by the West Kent Regiment alone. Four officers were buried, but dug
out unhurt. One man was scratched.
All through the second week of the battle, from September 20 to
September 28, there was a succession of night attacks. Those delivered
on the nights of September 21 and September 23 were especially violent.
In the fierce bayonet fights--sometimes on the line of the trenches--the
British infantry never failed to prove their superiority. The losses of
the enemy were punishingly heavy, not merely in the fire-fights, but in
the pursuit when the survivors turned to fly. The object of these
tactics of bombardment throughout the day, and of infantry assaults at
night, kept up without intermission, was plainly so to wear the British
force down that in the end it must give way and be swept back to the
Aisne in rout.
For such a victory the Germans were ready to pay a very high price. They
paid it--but for defeat. What may be considered the culminating effort
was launched against the trenches held by the 1st division on the
extreme British right. The division's advanced position close under the
ridge near Craonne had all through been a thorn. On the night of
September 27 an apparently overwhelming force was flung upon it. Aided
by the play of searchlights the German masses strove with might and
main. The fight lasted for hours. To say that it was repulsed is
evidence enough. The next night the attack was repeated with, if
anything, greater violence. It was the fight of the Guards Brigade over
again, but on a greater scale. Imagine such a struggle with 50,000 men
involved; a fighting mass nearly three miles in extent; the fire of
rifles and machine guns and artillery; the gleam of clashing bayonets;
the searchlights throwing momentarily into view the fury of a _mêlée_
and then shutting it off to light up another scene of struggle.
Fortunately for the British, the columns of attack were ripped up before
the trenches could be reached. Men fell in rows, held up by the wire
entanglements and shot wholesale. This was the enemy's last great
stroke.
From that time the British won forward until they gained the ridge,
seized Craonne and all the hostile positions along the Chemin des Dames.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] The troops of the 5th Division under Sir Charles Fergusson repulsed
with equal gallantry a furious attack against their position at Missy,
on the west side of the Chivres bluff.
[28] In the official account this singular episode is thus
recorded:--"Since the last letter left General Headquarters evidence has
been received which points to the fact that during the counter-attacks
on the night of Sunday, the 20th, the German infantry fired into each
other--the result of an attempt to carry out the dangerous expedient of
a converging advance in the dark. Opposite one portion of our position a
considerable massing of the hostile forces was observed before dark.
Some hours later a furious fusillade was heard in front of our line,
though no bullets came over our trenches."