I remember, as though it were yesterday in vividness and a hundred years
ago in time, the bombardment which preceded the battles of the Somme.
With a group of officers I stood on the high ground above Albert,
looking over to Gommecourt and Thiepval and La Boisselle, on the left
side of the German salient, and then, by crossing the road, to Fricourt,
Mametz, and Montauban on the southern side. From Albert westward past
Thiepval Wood ran the little river of the Ancre, and on the German side
the ground rose steeply to Usna Hill by La Boisselle, and to Thiepval
Chateau above the wood. It was a formidable defensive position, one
fortress girdled by line after line of trenches, and earthwork redoubts,
and deep tunnels, and dugouts in which the German troops could live
below ground until the moment of attack. The length of our front of
assault was about twenty miles round the side of the salient to the
village of Bray, on the Somme, where the French joined us and continued
the battle.
From where we stood we could see a wide panorama of the German
positions, and beyond, now and then, when the smoke of shellfire
drifted, I caught glimpses of green fields and flower patches beyond the
trench lines, and church spires beyond the range of guns rising above
clumps of trees in summer foliage. Immediately below, in the foreground,
was the village of Albert, not much ruined then, with its red-brick
church and tower from which there hung, head downward, the Golden Virgin
with her Babe outstretched as though as a peace-offering over all this
strife. That leaning statue, which I had often passed on the way to the
trenches, was now revealed brightly with a golden glamour, as sheets of
flame burst through a heavy veil of smoke over the valley. In a field
close by some troops were being ticketed with yellow labels fastened
to their backs. It was to distinguish them so that artillery observers
might know them from the enemy when their turn came to go into the
battleground. Something in the sight of those yellow tickets made me
feel sick. Away behind, a French farmer was cutting his grass with a
long scythe, in steady, sweeping strokes. Only now and then did he stand
to look over at the most frightful picture of battle ever seen until
then by human eyes. I wondered, and wonder still, what thoughts were
passing through that old brain to keep him at his work, quietly,
steadily, on the edge of hell. For there, quite close and clear, was
hell, of man's making, produced by chemists and scientists, after
centuries in search of knowledge. There were the fires of hate, produced
out of the passion of humanity after a thousand years of Christendom and
of progress in the arts of beauty. There was the devil-worship of our
poor, damned human race, where the most civilized nations of the world
were on each side of the bonfires. It was worth watching by a human ant.
I remember the noise of our guns as all our batteries took their parts
in a vast orchestra of drumfire. The tumult of the fieldguns merged into
thunderous waves. Behind me a fifteen-inch “Grandmother” fired single
strokes, and each one was an enormous shock. Shells were rushing through
the air like droves of giant birds with beating wings and with strange
wailings. The German lines were in eruption. Their earthworks were being
tossed up, and fountains of earth sprang up between columns of smoke,
black columns and white, which stood rigid for a few seconds and then
sank into the banks of fog. Flames gushed up red and angry, rending
those banks of mist with strokes of lightning. In their light I saw
trees falling, branches tossed like twigs, black things hurtling through
space. In the night before the battle, when that bombardment had lasted
several days and nights, the fury was intensified. Red flames darted
hither and thither like little red devils as our trench mortars got to
work. Above the slogging of the guns there were louder, earth-shaking
noises, and volcanoes of earth and fire spouted as high as the clouds.
One convulsion of this kind happened above Usna Hill, with a long,
terrifying roar and a monstrous gush of flame.
“What is that?” asked some one.
“It must be the mine we charged at La Boisselle. The biggest that has
ever been.”
It was a good guess. When, later in the battle, I stood by the crater of
that mine and looked into its gulf I wondered how many Germans had been
hurled into eternity when the earth had opened. The grave was big enough
for a battalion of men with horses and wagons, below the chalk of the
crater's lips. Often on the way to Bapaume I stepped off the road to
look into that white gulf, remembering the moment when I saw the gust of
flame that rent the earth about it.