On the left, where the 8th and 10th Corps were directing operations, the
assault had been delivered by the 4th, 29th, 36th, 49th, 32nd, 8th, and
56th Divisions.
The positions in front of them were Gommecourt and Beaumont Hamel on the
left side of the River Ancre, and Thiepval Wood on the right side of the
Ancre leading up to Thiepval Chateau on the crest of the cliff. These
were the hardest positions to attack, because of the rising ground and
the immense strength of the enemy's earthworks and tunneled defenses.
But our generals were confident that the gun power at their disposal
was sufficient to smash down that defensive system and make an easy way
through for the infantry. They were wrong. In spite of that tornado
of shell-fire which I had seen tearing up the earth, many tunnels were
still unbroken, and out of them came masses of German machine-gunners
and riflemen, when our infantry rose from their own trenches on that
morning of July 1st.
Our guns had shifted their barrage forward at that moment, farther ahead
of the infantry than was afterward allowed, the men being trained to
follow close to the lines of bursting shells, trained to expect a number
of casualties from their own guns--it needs some training--in order to
secure the general safety gained by keeping the enemy below ground until
our bayonets were round his dugouts.
The Germans had been trained, too, to an act of amazing courage. Their
discipline, that immense power of discipline which dominates men in the
mass, was strong enough to make them obey the order to rush through that
barrage of ours, that advancing wall of explosion and, if they lived
through it, to face our men in the open with massed machine-gun fire. So
they did; and as English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh battalions of our
assaulting divisions trudged forward over what had been No Man's Land,
machine-gun bullets sprayed upon them, and they fell like grass to the
scythe. Line after line of men followed them, and each line crumpled,
and only small groups and single figures, seeking comradeship, hurried
forward. German machine-gunners were bayoneted as their thumbs were
still pressed to their triggers. In German front-line trenches at the
bottom of Thiepval Wood, outside Beaumont Hamel and on the edge of
Gommecourt Park, the field-gray men who came out of their dugouts fought
fiercely with stick-bombs and rifles, and our officers and men, in
places where they had strength enough, clubbed them to death, stuck them
with bayonets, and blew their brains out with revolvers at short range.
Then those English and Irish and Scottish troops, grievously weak
because of all the dead and wounded behind them, struggled through to
the second German line, from which there came a still fiercer rattle of
machine-gun and rifle-fire. Some of them broke through that line, too,
and went ahead in isolated parties across the wild crater land, over
chasms and ditches and fallen trees, toward the highest ground, which
had been their goal. Nothing was seen of them. They disappeared into
clouds of smoke and flame. Gunner observers saw rockets go up in far
places--our rockets--showing that outposts had penetrated into the
German lines. Runners came back--survivors of many predecessors who had
fallen on the way--with scribbled messages from company officers. One
came from the Essex and King's Own of the 4th Division, at a place
called Pendant Copse, southeast of Serre. “For God's sake send us
bombs.” It was impossible to send them bombs. No men could get to them
through the deep barrage of shell-fire which was between them and our
supporting troops. Many tried and died.
The Ulster men went forward toward Beaumont Hamel with a grim valor
which was reckless of their losses. Beaumont Hamel was a German
fortress. Machine-gun fire raked every yard of the Ulster way. Hundreds
of the Irish fell. I met hundreds of them wounded--tall, strong,
powerful men, from Queen's Island and Belfast factories, and Tyneside
Irish and Tyneside Scots.
“They gave us no chance,” said one of them--a sergeant-major. “They just
murdered us.”
But bunches of them went right into the heart of the German positions,
and then found behind them crowds of Germans who had come up out of
their tunnels and flung bombs at them. Only a few came back alive in the
darkness.
Into Thiepval Wood men of ours smashed their way through the German
trenches, not counting those who fell, and killing any German who stood
in their way. Inside that wood of dead trees and charred branches they
reformed, astonished at the fewness of their numbers. Germans coming up
from holes in the earth attacked them, and they held firm and took two
hundred prisoners. Other Germans came closing in like wolves, in packs,
and to a German officer who said, “Surrender!” our men shouted, “No
surrender!” and fought in Thiepval Wood until most were dead and only a
few wounded crawled out to tell that tale.
The Londoners of the 56th Division had no luck at all. Theirs was the
worst luck because, by a desperate courage in assault, they did break
through the German lines at Gommecourt. Their left was held by the
London Rifle Brigade. The Rangers and the Queen Victoria Rifles--the
old “Vics “--formed their center. Their right was made up by the London
Scottish, and behind came the Queen's Westminsters and the Kensingtons,
who were to advance through their comrades to a farther objective.
Across a wide No Man's Land they suffered from the bursting of heavy
crumps, and many fell. But they escaped annihilation by machine-gun fire
and stormed through the upheaved earth into Gommecourt Park, killing
many Germans and sending back batches of prisoners. They had done what
they had been asked to do, and started building up barricades of earth
and sand-bags, and then found they were in a death-trap. There were no
troops on their right or left. They had thrust out into a salient, which
presently the enemy saw. The German gunners, with deadly skill, boxed it
round with shell-fire, so that the Londoners were inclosed by explosive
walls, and then very slowly and carefully drew a line of bursting shells
up and down, up and down that captured ground, ravaging its earth anew
and smashing the life that crouched there--London life.
I have written elsewhere (in The Battles of the Somme) how young
officers and small bodies of these London men held the barricades
against German attacks while others tried to break a way back through
that murderous shell-fire, and how groups of lads who set out on that
adventure to their old lines were shattered so that only a few from each
group crawled back alive, wounded or unwounded.
At the end of the day the Germans acted with chivalry, which I was not
allowed to tell at the time. The general of the London Division (Philip
Howell) told me that the enemy sent over a message by a low-flying
airplane, proposing a truce while the stretcher-bearers worked, and
offering the service of their own men in that work of mercy. This offer
was accepted without reference to G.H.Q., and German stretcher-bearers
helped to carry our wounded to a point where they could be reached.
Many, in spite of that, remained lying out in No Man's Land, some for
three or four days and nights. I met one man who lay out there wounded,
with a group of comrades more badly hurt than he was, until July 6th.
At night he crawled over to the bodies of the dead and took their
water-bottles and “iron” rations, and so brought drink and food to his
stricken friends. Then at last he made his way through roving shells
to our lines and even then asked to lead the stretcher-bearers who
volunteered on a search-party for his “pals.”
“Physical courage was very common in the war,” said a friend of mine who
saw nothing of war. “It is proved that physical courage is the commonest
quality of mankind, as moral courage is the rarest.” But that soldier's
courage was spiritual, and there were many like him in the battles of
the Somme and in other later battles as tragic as those.