THE SOMME
The battle of the Somme lasted eight months, and never since the days
of chaos and darkness has a portion of the earth been under the sway of
such forces of destruction. Not even the Flood itself so completely
destroyed the habitations of man. Flourishing towns were powdered into
brick-dust, thousands of acres of forest were reduced to a few
blackened stumps, and every foot of ground was blasted and churned and
battered again, while every yard was sown thick with bullets more
malignant than the seeds planted by Jason. To-day nature is busy
trying to hide the evidence of the hate of man, and long grass and
poppies cover the blackened soil and grow in the shell-holes, until
only in the memory of the men who strove nakedly in its desolation and
death will the knowledge of that area as it was for those eight long
months remain. If he visits it again the poppies and the grass will
fade, and it will appear to him once more as the ploughed land of
demons, and grinning at him in every yard will be the skulls of the
countless unburied that there lie. The other birds will shun it, for
there are no trees, but the lark will still sing on, as this
brave-hearted bird continues to do even when the guns are booming.
Australian blood has sanctified much of that soil, and Australian
bravery has monopolized some of its names. As surely as Gallipoli will
Pozières and Thiepval and Bapaume be associated with the name and
achievement of Australians in the minds of readers of the history of
the great war. These are places that will ever be names of honor and
glory in the thought of the Australian people as will be Flers to New
Zealand and Delville Wood to South Africa.
At Pozières the First and Second Divisions demonstrated that the
abandon and tenacity against odds that secured a footing on the
Gallipoli Peninsula was still the special prerogative of the care-free
lads from these South Sea nations. Our own artillery was unable
effectively to silence the fire of the German batteries, and wave after
wave melted like snow in the sun, yet the unconquerable spirit drove
the remainder on until the positions were taken and held. There were
wounded men who dragged themselves, not back to their own lines for
attention, but forward toward the enemy so that they might be able to
strike at least one blow ere they died. There were others that had
their wounds dressed and then returned to the fighting. No one left
the line that day who could help it, or his name would have been
remembered as an outstanding exception among the many who, wounded
again and again, and faint from loss of blood, still fought on. This
engagement carved a line in my own heart, for therein died three
comrades who enlisted with me, and our souls were grappled together by
many common dangers shared and mutual sacrifices cheerfully made.
There is no life in the world that tries out friendship like a
soldier's in active service, and when it has endured that, it is
stronger than the love of twin for twin, like the love of David and
Jonathan, of Damon and Pythias, a love that passeth knowledge.
The Germans had one ally on the Somme that wrought us more havoc than
all his armament. How we cursed that mud! We cursed it sleeping, we
cursed it waking, we cursed it riding, we cursed it walking. We ate it
and cursed; we drank it and cursed; we swallowed it and spat it; we
snuffed it and wept it; it filled our nails and our ears; it caked and
lined our clothing; we wallowed in it, we waded through it, we swam in
it, and splashed it about--it stuck our helmets to our hair, it
plastered our wounds, and there were men drowned in it. Oh, mud, thou
daughter of the devil, thou offspring of evil, back to your infernal
regions, and invade the lowest circle of the inferno that you may make
a fit abiding-place for the slacker and pacifist! I take back all I
said about the sand of Egypt. It was a mere irritant compared with
this mud. I am sorry for the times I have been out of temper with the
mud back in Australia, when it clung to my boots in tons, when I have
been bogged in a sulky in the "black soil" country. Australia, you
have no mud, just a little surface stickiness that I will never growl
at again as long as I live:
"It isn't the foe that we fear;
It isn't the bullets that whine;
It isn't the business career
Of a shell, or the bust of a mine;
It isn't the snipers who seek
To nip our young hopes in the bud;
No, it isn't the guns,
And it isn't the Huns--
It's the MUD,
MUD,
MUD." [1]
Official reports of the later battles in 1918 tell us that the
shell-fire on the Somme was a mere popgun show to these battles, but it
is difficult for the imagination to grasp this fact, as it did not seem
then that the air had any room for more shells. In fact, I have seen
shells meet in the air, both exploding together. It seemed to us at
times as if there was not a foot of air that did not have a shell in
it. In one battle there were four thousand guns firing over a five
hundred yards front, the heavies being seventeen and a half miles
behind the lines, and the field-guns massed wheel to wheel a hundred
and fifty to the five hundred yards, and row after row like infantry
drawn up for review. Shells not merely whistled and screamed overhead,
they leaped from the ground beneath one's feet with a flame that
burned, a roar that deafened, and a displacement of air that swept one
away. At artillery practice in peace times there is great excitement
if one lone man happens to be in front of the gun, but on the Somme we
walked about among them, over them, and round them, and we were never
warned even when they fired but a couple of yards away. One day a
red-hot shell from a gun about fifty yards away landed at my feet, but,
fortunately, did not explode. For four months our artillery expended
an average of half a million shells a day. The increase in artillery
last year may be judged from the fact that in the last six months of
1917 one million tons of shells were used by the British on the western
front. By day the drum-fire of the guns beat on one's ears like a
devil's tattoo until one felt that in another week reason would be
unseated. But at night was added the horror of flame that drove away
the darkness with a ruddy glare. It seemed as if thousands of Bessemer
furnaces were refining metal for the paving of hell. Into this caldron
of man's making that outdid the fury of the elements young lads from
farms and shops walked uprightly. Like ants impotent in their strife
they swarmed, and to a watcher from another world they must have
appeared like insects in the crater of Vesuvius in eruption. Yet the
mind of man, so much greater than his body, had organized and planned
this monstrous scene, and from his method it deviated not a hair's
breadth.
[Illustration: Ammunition Going Through a Somme City.]
We were encouraged and supported by the knowledge that the German was
having a far worse time than we were, that the hell of flame and fire
and smoke was for our protection and his annihilation. His shells came
over blindly in most cases, and though we were so thick that they could
not but get some of us, yet we knew that our shells were being directed
by thousands of aeroplanes on top of the earth beneath which he
huddled, with the sweat of fear pouring from him. There were many
indications of the terror our shell-fire wrought and days when the
prisoners could be counted in thousands, on one occasion sixteen men
bringing back as many as four hundred. These men were imbeciles,
crazed by the sound of the shells, and obsessed by one idea, the
necessity of getting away. When we took their trenches we found that
in most cases they were completely obliterated, and in some cases the
entrances to the deep dugouts were blown in, smothering the men
sheltering in them.
The wastage of man-power on the Somme was not a little due to the
nervous strain. I think everybody's nerves were more or less on edge,
and now and again a hurricane of fire would sweep the trenches because
some man's nerve got past breaking-point. He would see an imaginary
enemy bearing down upon his sentry-post and fire wildly, giving alarm
to the whole line. A German sentry would reply to him, more of our men
would fire back, more Germans join in, star-shells make the night as
bright as day; then Fritz would "get the wind up" thoroughly and call
for artillery support--our guns would blaze into reply and there would
be many casualties just because one man lost his nerve and "saw things."
Nerves are queer things, for frequently the man of a nervous, highly
strung temperament is the coolest in action. Some men, too, get
shell-shock a hundred yards from a bursting shell, while others are
knocked down and buried and never even tremble. Men have the power of
speech taken from them for months and as suddenly have it restored. I
know of one case in which a boy did not speak a word for twelve months,
and when viewing the play "Under Fire" in Sydney suddenly found his
speech return at the sound of a shot. Another man had just been
pronounced by the medical officer as cured when the back-fire of a
motor-car heard in the streets of Melbourne brought back all the
symptoms of shell-shock again. Once a man has had shell-shock he is
never of any use under shell-fire again, although he might be quite
brave under any other fire and suffer no ill effects in civil life.
Where there is so much shell-fire the observation of the German
sentries is very poor and surprise raids are easily carried out. Fritz
is very reluctant to put his head up and periscopes are always being
smashed.
There was only one place in the Somme where drinking-water could be
obtained, and this was in the ruins of the town of Piers. The Germans
had been driven out of this place too quickly to give them time to
poison the water, but they made it very difficult for us to get at it
by shelling continually. They had the exact range, and it was only in
the hour before dawn that one could get near the wells without meeting
with certain death. It was amusing to see the scamper of the
water-carriers out of the ruins as the first shell announced that the
relief of Fritz's batteries had been completed and the "hate" had
recommenced. They were severely handicapped running with a fifty-six
pound can of water, but it was a point of honor not to leave this
behind. Of course, there was plenty of other water filling every hole
around, but this was not only thick with mud but had the germs of
gas-gangrene, and one knows not how many other diseases besides.
When the line had advanced a few miles "going in" was as tiring a day's
journey as though one had walked twenty miles. I will never forget
having to chase after my brigade to Bécordel-Bécourt. I left Albert
just at dark and had to trust to my instinct for direction in finding
the place, for no one could tell me the way, and the old road on the
map was non-existent. It was only about three miles, but seemed like
thirty as I wound in and out of the traffic that jammed the new road,
defying the passage of even a dog. When I arrived at the place where
the town of Bécordel had once been I found there were about five
hundred thousand troops camped about the area, and in the dark to find
the whereabout of my own unit of five thousand was about as hopeless a
task as I have ever attempted. I inquired of more than a score, but no
one had seen anything of the Australians. I wandered about for hours
and was hungry and thirsty and half dead when I stumbled on a Y. M. C.
A. hut. They could not guide me in the right way, but they gave me a
cup of hot tea, and no nectar of the gods could be as welcome. The Y.
M. C. A. is welcome to all the boosting I can give, for they were my
salvation that night, and at other times were a comfort and
resting-place. When I found our camp at two o'clock in the morning I
found the men in a worse plight than I was, for their transport had not
arrived, and none had had anything to eat or drink.
In this huge camp which was within range of the German guns there were
tens of thousands of camp-fires blazing in the open in utter contempt
of Fritz and his works. We took the road again that same morning for
our position in reserve at Montauban. I said we took the road--well,
we were on it sometimes, whenever we could shove the horses toward the
centre to enable us to squeeze past--otherwise we had to plough along
above our knees in the soft mud. Even on the road the slush was up to
our ankles, but it was metalled underneath. We discovered our
transport in the jam of the traffic--they had taken twenty-four hours
to go the four miles but our tongues blistered with the names we called
them, and we threatened them with eternal damnation if they were not at
the next camp with a hot meal when we arrived.
Where Montauban had once been we went into camp. We had no tents, but
made ourselves comfortable in shell-holes, with a bitter-cold rain
falling, by stretching tarpaulins over them. The engineers were
putting up Nissen huts at the rate of twenty a day, but as soon as the
last bolt was screwed home, forty shelterless men crowded each one to
capacity. It was some days before our turn came and we waited lying
half-covered with mud and slush. When we did get a hut allotted to us
it was as if we had been transferred to a palace. These huts look like
half of a round galvanized-iron tank, and were floored and lined. They
were carried in numbered sections and could be put together in a few
minutes. They were very comfortable. You could stand up in the
centre, and there was plenty of room to sleep along the sides. I
believe the inventor, Mr. Nissen, is an American and here's my hand to
him as an ally who maybe saved me from rheumatism, and I am sure
thousands of boys from the other side of the world bless his name
continually.
The whole brigade was practically bogged when we came to move forward.
The weight of our equipment sank us into the soft mud and the only way
we got onto the road again was by hanging to the stirrups of the horses
as they ploughed a way through. We also passed ropes back for the men
to grasp and harnessed them to mules, and thus dragged them to firm
ground. The road did not carry us far, and we soon had to struggle
across the open toward the support trenches. This was not as bad as
round the camp, not being churned up by the tramping about of men and
horses. We could not use the communication-trenches as they were
rivers of liquid mud, but had to wait till dark and go over the top in
relieving the front line. On this occasion we took over from the
Grenadier Guards, which numbers among its officers many of the English
nobility. We "bushies" and "outbackers" from the Land of the Kangaroo
stepped down into the mud-holes just vacated by an earl, several lords,
and as noble and proud a regiment as ever won glory on a battle-field.
The Prince of Wales was a staff-captain in the army of the Somme doing
his bit in the mud and misery like the rest of us. There is no "sacred
privilege that doth hedge about a king" in the British Empire, and King
George is respected among us for his manliness, and we cheered him
sincerely when he twice visited us in the trenches, for we do not
believe to-day in the divine right of kings, neither do we believe in
the divine right of majorities.
In another chapter that tells of my wounding I have pictured our days
and weeks as lived in these trenches, so I will bring this chapter to a
close by summarizing some of the things that the great push on the
Somme accomplished.
(1) It relieved the pressure on Verdun.
(2) It accounted for several hundred thousand German casualties.
(3) It demonstrated our ability to break through.
(4) It led to the perfecting of barrage-fire where-by casualties were
reduced in our infantry to an astonishing degree.
(5) It gave confidence to our troops by enabling them to get to
hand-grips with the German, and discover that he was individually no
fighter.
(6) It weakened the morale of the German army enormously, and convinced
the German soldier that his cause was lost.
(7) It gave to us possession of the high ground.
(8) It definitely established our supremacy of the air, and was the
turning-point of the whole war.
[1] Robt. W. Service.