'_The attack has resulted in our line being advanced from one to two
hundred yards along a front of over one thousand yards._'--OFFICIAL
DESPATCH.
Down to the rawest hand in the latest-joined drafts, everyone knew for
a week before the attack commenced that 'something was on,' and for
twenty-four hours before that the 'something' was a move of some
importance, no mere affair of a battalion or two, or even of brigades,
but of divisions and corps and armies. There had been vague stirrings
in the regiments far behind the firing line 'in rest,' refittings and
completings of kits, reissuing of worn equipments, and a most ominous
anxiety that each man was duly equipped with an 'identity disc,' the
tell-tale little badge that hangs always round the neck of a man on
active service and that bears the word of who he is when he is brought
in wounded--who he was when brought in dead. The old hands judged all
the signs correctly and summed them up in a sentence, 'Being fattened
for the slaughter,' and were in no degree surprised when the sudden
order came to move. Those farthest back moved up the first stages by
daylight, but when they came within reach of the rumbling guns they
were halted and bivouacked to wait for night to cloak their movements
from the prying eyes of the enemy 'planes. The enemy might
have--probably had--an inkling of the coming attack; but they might not
know exactly the portion of front selected for the heaviest pressure,
and this must be kept secret till the last possible moment. So the
final filing up into the forward and support trenches was done by
night, and was so complete by daylight that no sign of unwonted
movement could be discerned from the enemy trenches and observing
stations when day broke.
It was a beautiful morning--soft and mildly warm and sunny, with just a
slight haze hanging low to tone the growing light, and, incidentally,
to delay the opening of fire from the guns. Anyone standing midway
between the forward firing trenches might have looked in vain for
living sign of the massed hordes waiting the word to be at each other's
throats. Looking forward from behind the British lines, it could be
seen that the trenches and parapets were packed with men; but no man
showed head over parapet, and, seen from the enemy's side, the parapets
presented blank, lifeless walls, the trenches gave no glimpse of life.
All the bustle and movement of the night before was finished. At
midnight every road and track leading to the forward trenches had been
brimming with men, with regiments tramping slowly or squatting stolidly
by the roadside, smoking much and talking little, had been crawling
with transport, with ammunition carts, and ambulances and
stretcher-parties, and sappers heavily laden with sandbags and rolls of
barbed wire. The trenches--support, communication, and firing--had
trickled with creeping rivulets of khaki caps and been a-bristle with
bobbing rifle-barrels. Further back amongst the lines of guns the last
loads of ammunition were rumbling up to the batteries, the last shells
required to 'complete establishment'--and over-complete it--were being
stowed in safe proximity to the guns. At midnight there were scores of
thousands of men and animals busily at work with preparations for the
slaughter-pen of the morrow. Before midnight came again the bustle
would be renewed, and the circling ripples of activity would be
spreading and widening from the central splash of the battle front till
the last waves washed back to Berlin and London, brimming the hospitals
and swirling through the munition factories. But now at daybreak the
battle-field was steeped in brooding calm. Across the open space of
the neutral ground a few trench periscopes peered anxiously for any
sign of movement, and saw none; the batteries' 'forward observing
officers,' tucked away in carefully chosen and hidden look-outs,
fidgeted with wrist-watches and field-glasses, and passed back by
telephone continual messages about the strength of the growing light
and the lifting haze. An aeroplane droned high overhead, and an
'Archibald' (anti-aircraft gun) or two began to pattern the sky about
it with a trail of fleecy white smoke-puffs. The 'plane sailed on and
out of sight, the smoke-puffs and the wheezy barks of 'Archibald'
receding after it. Another period of silence followed. It was broken
by a faint report like the sound of a far-off door being slammed, and
almost at the same instant there came to the ear the faint thin whistle
of an approaching shell. The whistle rose to a rush and a roar that
cut off abruptly in a thunderous bang. The shell pitched harmlessly on
the open ground between the forward and support trenches. Again came
that faint 'slam,' this time repeated by four, and the 'bouquet' of
four shells crumped down almost on top of the support line. The four
crashes might have been a signal to the British guns. About a dozen
reports thudded out quickly and separately, and then in one terrific
blast of sound the whole line broke out in heavy fire. The infantry in
the trenches could distinguish the quick-following bangs of the guns
directly in line behind them, could separate the vicious swish and rush
of the shells passing immediately over their heads. Apart from these,
the reports blent in one long throbbing pulse of noise, an
indescribable medley of moanings, shrieks, and whistling in the air
rent by the passing shells. So ear-filling and confused was the
clamour that the first sharp, sudden bursts of the enemy shells over
our trenches were taken by the infantry for their own artillery's
shells falling short; but a very few moments proved plainly enough that
the enemy were replying vigorously to our fire. They had the ranges
well marked, too, and huge rents began to show in our parapets, strings
of casualties began to trickle back to the dressing stations in a
stream that was to flow steady and unbroken for many days and nights.
But the enemy defences showed more and quicker signs of damage,
especially at the main points, where the massed guns were busy
breaching the selected spots. Here the lighter guns were pouring a
hurricane of shrapnel on the dense thickets of barbed-wire
entanglements piled in loose loops and coils, strung in a criss-cross
network between pegs and stakes along the edge of the neutral ground;
the howitzers and heavies were pounding and hammering at the parapets
and the communication trenches beyond.
For half an hour the appalling uproar continued, the solid earth shook
to the roar of the guns and the crashing of the shells. By the end of
that time both fronts to a depth of hundreds of yards were shrouded in
a slow-drifting haze of smoke and dust, through which the flashes of
the bursting shell blazed in quick glares of vivid light, and the spots
of their falling were marked by gushes of smoke and upflung billowing
clouds of thick dust. So far the noise was only and all of guns and
shell fire, but now from far out on one of the flanks a new note began
to weave itself into the uproar--the sharper crackle and clatter of
rifle and machine-gun fire.
Along the line of front marked for the main assault the guns suddenly
lifted their fire and commenced to pour it down further back, although
a number of the lighter guns continued to sweep the front parapet with
gusts of shrapnel. And then suddenly it could be seen that the front
British trench was alive and astir. The infantry, who had been
crouched and prone in the shelter of their trenches, rose suddenly and
began to clamber over the parapets into the open and make their way out
through the maze of their own entanglements. Instantly the parapet
opposite began to crackle with rifle fire and to beat out a steady
tattoo from the hammering machine-guns. The bullets hissed and spat
across the open and hailed upon the opposite parapet. Scores, hundreds
of men fell before they could clear the entanglements to form up in the
open, dropped as they climbed the parapet, or even as they stood up and
raised a head above it. But the mass poured out, shook itself roughly
into line, and began to run across the open. They ran for the most
part with shoulders hunched and heads stooped, as men would run through
a heavy rainstorm to a near shelter And as they ran they stumbled and
fell and picked themselves up and ran again--or crumpled up and lay
still or squirming feebly. As the line swept on doggedly it thinned
and shredded into broken groups. The men dropped under the rifle
bullets, singly or in twos and threes; the bursting shells tore great
gaps in the line, snatching a dozen men at a mouthful; here and there,
where it ran into the effective sweep of a maxim, the line simply
withered and dropped and stayed still in a string of huddled heaps
amongst and on which the bullets continued to drum and thud. The open
ground was a full hundred yards across at the widest point where the
main attack was delivering. Fifty yards across, the battalion
assaulting was no longer a line, but a scattered series of groups like
beads on a broken string; sixty yards across and the groups had
dwindled to single men and couples with desperately long intervals
between; seventy yards, and there were no more than odd occasional men,
with one little bunch near the centre that had by some extraordinary
chance escaped the sleet of bullets; at eighty yards a sudden swirl of
lead caught this last group--and the line at last was gone, wiped out,
the open was swept clear of those dogged runners. The open ground was
dotted thick with men, men lying prone and still, men crawling on hands
and knees, men dragging themselves slowly and painfully with trailing,
useless legs, men limping, hobbling, staggering, in a desperate
endeavour to get back to their parapet and escape the bullets and
shrapnel that still stormed down upon them. The British gunners
dropped their ranges again, and a deluge of shells and shrapnel burst
crashing and whistling upon the enemy's front parapet. The rifle fire
slackened and almost died, and the last survivors of the charge had
such chance as was left by the enemy's shells to reach the shelter of
their trench. Groups of stretcher-bearers leaped out over the parapet
and ran to pick up the wounded, and hard on their heels another line of
infantry swarmed out and formed up for another attack. As they went
forward at a run the roar of rifles and machine-guns swelled again, and
the hail of bullets began to sweep across to meet them. Into the
forward trench they had vacated, the stream of another battalion
poured, and had commenced to climb out in their turn before the
advancing line was much more than half-way across. This time the
casualties, although appallingly heavy, were not so hopelessly severe
as in the first charge, probably because a salient of the enemy trench
to a flank had been reached by a battalion farther along, and the
devastating enfilading fire of rifles and machine-guns cut off. This
time the broken remnants of the line reached the barbed wires, gathered
in little knots as the individual men ran up and down along the face of
the entanglements looking for the lanes cut clearest by the sweeping
shrapnel, streamed through with men still falling at every step,
reached the parapet and leaped over and down. The guns had held their
fire on the trench till the last possible moment, and now they lifted
again and sought to drop across the further lines and the communication
trenches a shrapnel 'curtain' through which no reinforcements could
pass and live. The following battalion came surging across, losing
heavily, but still bearing weight enough to tell when at last they
poured in over the parapet.
The neutral ground, the deadly open and exposed space, was won. It had
been crossed at other points, and now it only remained to see if the
hold could be maintained and strengthened and extended.
The fighting fell to a new phase--the work of the short-arm bayonet
thrust and the bomb-throwers. In the gaps between the points where the
trench was taken the enemy fought with the desperation of trapped rats.
The trench had to be taken traverse by traverse. The bombers lobbed
their missiles over into the traverse ahead of them in showers, and
immediately the explosions crashed out, swung round the corner with a
rush to be met in turn with bullets or bursting bombs. Sometimes a
space of two or three traverses was blasted bare of life and rendered
untenable for long minutes on end by a constant succession of grenades
and bombs. In places, the men of one side or the other leaped up out
of the trench, risking the bullets that sleeted across the level
ground, and emptied a clip of cartridges or hurled half a dozen
grenades down into the trench further along. But for the most part the
fight raged below ground-level, at times even below the level of the
trench floor, where a handful of men held out in a deep dug-out. If
the entrance could be reached, a few bombs speedily settled the affair;
but where the defenders had hastily blocked themselves in with a
barricade of sandbags or planks, so that grenades could not be pitched
in, there was nothing left to do but crowd in against the rifle muzzles
that poked out and spurted bullets from the openings, tear down the
defences, and so come at the defenders. And all the time the captured
trench was pelted by shells--high-explosive and shrapnel. At the
entrances of the communication trenches that led back to the support
trenches the fiercest fighting raged continually, with men struggling
to block the path with sandbags and others striving to tear them down,
while on both sides their fellows fought over them with bayonet and
butt. In more than one such place the barricade was at last built by
the heap of the dead who had fought for possession; in others, crude
barriers of earth and sandbags were piled up and fought across and
pulled down and built up again a dozen times.
In the middle of the ferocious individual hand-to-hand fighting a
counter-attack was launched against the captured trench. A swarm of
the enemy leaped from the next trench and rushed across the twenty or
thirty yards of open to the captured front line. But the counterattack
had been expected. The guns caught the attackers as they left their
trench and beat them down in scores. A line of riflemen had been
installed under cover of what had been the parapet of the enemy front
trench, and this line broke out in 'the mad minute' of rifle fire. The
shrapnel and the rifles between them smashed the counter-attack before
it had well formed. It was cut down in swathes and had totally
collapsed before it reached half-way to the captured trench. But
another was hurled forward instantly, was up out of the trench and
streaming across the open before the infantry had finished re-charging
their magazines. Then the rifles spoke again in rolling crashes, the
screaming shrapnel pounced again on the trench that still erupted
hurrying men, while from the captured trench itself came hurtling bombs
and grenades. Smoke and dust leaped and swirled in dense clouds about
the trenches and the open between them, but through the haze the ragged
front fringe of the attack loomed suddenly and pressed on to the very
lip of the trench. Beyond that point it appeared it could not pass.
The British infantry, cramming full cartridge-clips into their
magazines, poured a fresh cataract of lead across the broken parapet
into the charging ranks, and the ranks shivered and stopped and melted
away beneath the fire, while the remnants broke and fled back to cover.
With a yell the defenders of a moment before became the attackers.
They leaped the trench and fell with the bayonet on the flying
survivors of the counter-attack. For the most part these were killed
as they fled; but here and there groups of them turned at bay, and in a
dozen places as many fights raged bitterly for a few minutes, while the
fresh attack pushed on to the next trench. A withering fire poured
from it but could not stop the rush that fought its way on and into the
second-line trench. From now the front lost connection or cohesion.
Here and there the attackers broke in on the second line, exterminated
that portion of the defence in its path or was itself exterminated
there. Where it won footing it spread raging to either side along the
trench, shooting, stabbing, flinging hand grenades and bearing down the
defenders by the sheer fury of the attack. The movement spread along
the line, and with a sudden leap and rush the second line was gained
along a front of nearly a mile. In parts this attack overshot its
mark, broke through and over the second line and, tearing and hacking
through a network of wire, into the third trench. In part the second
line still held out; and even after it was all completely taken, the
communication trenches between the first and second line were filled
with combatants who fought on furiously, heedless of whether friend or
foe held trench to front or rear, intent only on the business at their
own bayonet points, to kill the enemy facing them and push in and kill
the ones behind. Fresh supports pressed into the captured positions,
and, backed by their weight, the attack surged on again in a fresh
spasm of fury. It secured foothold in great sections of the third
line, and even, without waiting to see the whole of it made good,
attempted to rush the fourth line. At one or two points the gallant
attempt succeeded, and a handful of men hung on desperately for some
hours, their further advance impossible, their retreat, had they
attempted it, almost equally so, cut off from reinforcements, short of
ammunition, and entirely without bombs or grenades. When their
ammunition was expended they used rifles and cartridges taken from the
enemy dead in the trench; having no grenades they snatched and hurled
back on the instant any that fell with fuses still burning. They waged
their unequal fight to the last minute and were killed out to the last
man.
The third line was not completely held or even taken. One or two
loopholed and machine-gunned dug-out redoubts, or 'keeps,' held out
strenuously, and before they could be reduced--entrance being gained at
last literally by tearing the place down sandbag by sandbag till a hole
was made and grenade after grenade flung in--other parts of the trench
had been recaptured. The weak point that so often hampers attack was
making itself felt. The bombers and 'grenadiers' had exhausted the
stock they carried; fresh supplies were scanty, were brought up with
difficulty, and distributed to the most urgently required places with
still greater difficulty. The ammunition carriers had to cross the
open of the old neutral ground, the battered first trench, pass along
communication trenches choked with dead and wounded, or again cross the
open to the second and third line. All the time they were under the
fire of high-explosive shells and had to pass through a zone or
'barrage' of shrapnel built across their path for just this special
purpose of destroying supports and supplies. Our own artillery were
playing exactly the same game behind the enemy lines, but in these
lines were ample stores of cartridges and grenades, bombs, and
trench-mortars. The third and fourth lines were within easy bomb- and
grenade-throwing distance, and were connected by numerous passage-ways.
On this front the contest became a bombing duel, and because the
British were woefully short of bombs and the enemy could throw five to
their one, they were once again 'bombed out' and forced to retire. But
by now the second trench had been put in some state of defence towards
its new front, and here the British line stayed fast and set its teeth
and doggedly endured the torment of the bombs and the destruction of
the pounding shells. Without rest or respite they endured till night,
and on through the night, under the glare of flares and the long-drawn
punishment of the shell fire, until the following day brought with the
dawn fresh supports for a renewal of the struggle. The battered
fragments of the first attacking battalions were withdrawn, often with
corporals for company leaders, and lieutenants or captains commanding
battalions whose full remaining strength would hardly make a company.
The battle might only have been well begun, but at least, thanks to
them and to those scattered heaps lying among the grass, spread in
clumps and circles about the yawning shell-holes, buried beneath the
broken parapets and in the smashed trenches--to them, and those, and
these others passing out with haggard, pain-lined faces, shattered
limbs, and torn bodies on the red, wet stretchers to the dressing
stations, at least, the battle was well begun. The sappers were hard
at work in the darkness consolidating the captured positions, and these
would surely now be held firm. Whatever was to follow, these first
regiments had done their share.
Two lines of trenches were taken; the line was advanced--advanced, it
is true, a bare one or two hundred yards, but with lives poured out
like water over each foot of the advance, with every inch of the ground
gained marking a well-spring and fountain-head of a river of pain, of a
suffering beyond all words, of a glory above and beyond all suffering.