ones justify another chapter. The 1st day of November 1916 found us on
our way to winter billets; and in the same "back area" as that occupied
the previous year we spent the long, dreary winter months. They were
chiefly characterized as being the coldest on record and by the most
prolonged and severe spell of frost within recollection. The thaw was,
if anything, more unpleasant. French roads, even the main ones, seem to
lack a sufficient foundation of metal, and the results caused by the
passage of heavy transport over them during a thaw are, to say the
least, disastrous to both roads and transport. They consist in the
giving way, and in places utter collapse, of the roads. The difficulty
is theoretically overcome by a procedure known as _barrieres fermees_,
which roughly means that when a thaw sets in all main roads are closed
to heavy motor traffic until the thaw has been in progress for several
days. After that, _barrieres fermees_ become _barrieres ouvertes_ once
more. Whether it was owing to the impossibility of carrying out this
scheme for a sufficient length of time, or due to a failure in the
perfect working of the system, it is difficult to say, but the results
were unfortunate. Many roads became impassable, and mechanical
transport lorries were constantly getting "bogged" everywhere. A period
of rain did not improve matters, and when they were almost at their
worst for the moving up of ammunition and guns, the astute Hun began
this retreat to the more salubrious neighbourhood of the Hindenburg
line. Immediately, almost, we were on the road towards Albert.
The last week of March found us encamped just outside it. The cavalry
had made a forced march, covering the best part of seventy miles inside
two days. Not bad going, taking into consideration the heavy, muddy
roads. Once again there was a wave of optimism and confidence in the
air. The Huns were in retreat, unable to hold any longer the line they
had fortified and stuck to for so many months; Bapaume had fallen; our
troops were still advancing and meeting with little opposition from the
enemy. Three very good reasons for optimism!
The town of Albert was, we found, little changed in appearance since our
departure six months before, but it was a very much more healthy spot,
being out of range of artillery. Even its civilian population was
returning in considerable numbers. One of the largest Expeditionary
Force Canteens had been established, also quite a good Officers' Club.
During the first few days of April enemy aeroplanes came over and
dropped several bombs. The damage done, however, was negligible, except
to a motor-lorry, in which three men who were sleeping were
unfortunately killed. Later on, when the last week of April brought
fine weather and clear blue skies, Taubes became our daily visitors,
though the barrage of anti-aircraft batteries kept them too high to make
bombing worth while. Heavy snow marked our arrival at the front, and it
certainly seemed that spring operations had started in weather that was
as unfavourable as it was reminiscent of mid-winter. To add insult to
injury, on almost the coldest night of all the British Expeditionary
Force advanced its clock an hour and "summer time" came in! Railhead
was moved up as far as ----, as soon as railway communication was opened
up. It had been a village of some hundred and thirty houses. Now, of
course, it was completely ruined, but none the less a place of
considerable importance. Surprisingly few "traps" were left behind
there by the Germans. On two occasions only, mines exploded, each
leaving fair-sized craters under the permanent way, but only causing
such slight damage that traffic was not seriously interfered with.
To reach Bapaume from Albert there is a long, straight road, which, from
strategical importance, must almost equal that wonderful road from
Bar-le-Duc to Verdun. The latter has come to be known as "La Voie
sacree" and General Petain is said to have stated that the battle of
Verdun was largely won by the prowess of the motor drivers along it,
during those months when there passed over it a never-ending, continuous
line of convoys, transporting munitions and rations to the defenders of
France's most famous outpost.
The Albert-Bapaume road presented many points of interest. A few
kilometres along it is Pozieres, the name of a village which formerly
existed here. Now it is indicated only by a signboard announcing the
fact.
To the left are such places as Ovillers, Thiepval, Courcelette--names
which recall bloody combats of a few months ago. Like Pozieres, nothing
now remains of them. A little further along one strikes Le Sars. There
are indications here of what was once a village and a wood. Now the wood
looks like a skeleton and the ground is littered with bricks and odd
pieces of timber. On either side of the road the ground is literally
studded with shell holes; not a solitary square yard of it has escaped:
everywhere are broken-down dug-outs, old artillery emplacements, and
irregular and much battered lines of trenches, running seemingly in all
directions and difficult to follow. There is not a blade of grass or
any sign of life. To leave the road is to meet with quantities of
unexploded shells, broken and abandoned equipment, skulls, and corpses
of both British and German soldiers. Salvage and burial parties are
constantly at work and gradually clearing the ground, a task of some
magnitude. Here and there are the little military cemeteries--row after
row of long brown mounds of earth, each surmounted by a wooden cross;
here and there a smashed-up aeroplane waiting to be salved.
Nowhere is the ghastly aftermath of war more in evidence than around the
Butte de Warlencourt, a few miles further along the road. The Butte
appears an isolated hill, rising by gradual ascent to a height of about
100 feet. To capture it from the enemy must have been a matter of
considerable difficulty. On its summit is a large wooden cross,
dedicated to the memory of the gallant officers, N.C.O.'s, and men of
the Durham Light Infantry who fell there in November 1916. At various
points on the road, particularly, of course, at cross-roads, the Germans
before their retreat set mines; these, later exploding, have caused
enormous upheavals of earth and craters large enough, many of them, to
bury half a dozen motor-lorries in. To let traffic pass them, it has
been necessary to circumvent them with causeways built around their
lips, until such time as they have been filled in again and the road is
once more built up and able to follow its usual course. Eventually
appears Bapaume, and the Albert road at this point strikes at right
angles the road which, to the left, proceeds to Arras, and to the right
into the centre of the town, into which converge roads from Cambrai,
Douai, and Peronne.
Bapaume itself presents a sight which is at once amazing and tragic.
The first thing that strikes the observer is that it is not suffering so
much from the effects of artillery bombardment as from the deliberate
burning and blowing up of its houses, and chiefly by the fronts having
been blown out. Where these have thus been destroyed, the roofs have
collapsed into the houses. Almost every building has been demolished in
this way; in many cases the grey slate roofs lie complete, warped but
intact, over a mass of debris caused by the blowing down of the
supporting walls. Most of the furniture from the houses was presumably
removed some time ago to furnish German dug-outs; what has not been made
use of in this way has been piled up inside the houses, and, after being
tarred, set alight. The trees which formerly adorned the main roads
have, to a great extent, been sawn off near their stumps, and the trunks
lay, till removed by our troops, at right angles across the roads. I
take the object of this tree-felling to be threefold. Firstly, to
impede advancing troops; secondly, to leave no cover, and thus throw the
roads open to aeroplane observation; and thirdly, for the sake of sheer
destructiveness. The third is an undeniable reason, for even the little
fruit and rose trees in cottage gardens had not been spared at the hands
of the Hun.
The wells everywhere had been poisoned with arsenic or fouled with
manure. In Bapaume itself the cleanest well was found to contain eight
German corpses. To appreciate the "wanton and cruel spirit," as Mr. Ian
Malcolm so aptly describes the spirit in which the Germans are losing
the war, I quote in full a letter from him which appeared in _The Times_
on April 7th, 1917. Comment would be superfluous. I can only add that,
judging from the devastation, the Hun soldiers must have carried out
their orders with a thoroughness which is typical of German
organization, except, of course, in such places from which their hurried
evacuation did not give them time. The following is the letter:--
MORE INHUMAN DOCUMENTS
TO THE EDITOR OF _THE TIMES_
SIR,--I enclose herewith two "scraps of paper" taken from German
prisoners in the region of Bapaume, where I found myself last Monday.
Their contents should, I think, be made known far and wide, for they
bear eloquent testimony to the wanton and cruel spirit in which the
Germans are losing the war. I will add that, for the time being, the
originals are in my possession, and that these translations are
faithfully done from the originals.
No. 1, dated March 9th, gives instructions for the procedure preliminary
to the so-called German "withdrawal" on the British front, and runs as
follows:--
1. Pioneer ----, and 1 infantryman will throw dung into the wells.
2. Pioneer ----, and 2 infantrymen will cut down the trees.
3. Pioneer ----, and 2 infantrymen will carry out special tasks.
4. Pioneer ----, and 2 infantrymen will stack wood in houses.
No. 2 is a time-table to be carried out at Bancourt, a village just east
of Bapaume.
In the village of Bancourt it is more important to set fire to the
houses than to blow them up.
5th March:--Straw will be heaped up and tarred.
10th March:--Explosives are to be ready for the cellars and wells in
Bancourt.
11th March:--All unused wells and watering ponds must be plentifully
polluted with dung and creosote soda. Sufficient dung and creosote soda
must be placed in readiness beside the wells which are still in use.
12th March:--Bancourt must be ready to be set on fire.
13th March:--Parade in fighting kit, issue of iron rations, cleaning of
arms, instruction regarding safe roads to be used and instructions for
the demolition party.
14th March:--Explosives to be issued for destroying the cellars and
wells in Bancourt. Bancourt church tower will be blown up.
16th March:--All wells in Bancourt with the exception of one will be
blown up by 6.30 p.m.
17th March:--The road mines will be fired at 3 a.m. The remaining
cellars in Bancourt will be blown up at 3.15 a.m., and Bancourt will be
set on fire at 4 a.m.
Your obedient servant,
IAN MALCOLM.
BRYANSTON SQUARE, April 6th.
5, BRYANSTON SQUARE, _April 6th_.
It is noticeable that along many roads the great trees on either side of
them have only been felled on one side, sometimes on the other, seldom
on both at the same point. Possibly those left were intended as
landmarks for artillery ranging purposes. Beyond Bapaume every village,
with a mine crater at its entrance, has shared the same fate. At
Beugny, part of the outer walls of the church still stand; inside them
are lying about church ornaments, crucifixes, figures of saints
deliberately destroyed by being decapitated, and mingling with this
strange collection on the ground are countless old champagne and hock
bottles. Around the church are hundreds of German graves. Amongst them
I noticed one cross, similar to all the others, bearing as an
inscription the one word "Englander." Hidden in the ruins of these
places the Germans have not omitted to leave traps and ruses. Many of
the roads were left for us mined, so that every cross-road became
suspicious and the R.E.'s were busy investigating. A good many traps
were discovered in time; others, unfortunately, were not.
The country the other side of the old German line looked refreshingly
green, but only traces remained of former supply dumps and camps, of
which everything of value had been completely cleared away. The roads,
too, had obviously not been subjected to such severe wear and tear as
those on our side. The Germans had used light railways running along
the roadside in lieu of transport by motor-lorries on the roads
themselves. Though the railway lines had been carefully taken up and
removed, the sleepers still remained in many places and the lay of the
former track was still visible. The devastation and laying waste of the
countryside suggested to one's mind that the enemy did not anticipate
having to fight over the same ground again.
Perhaps one of the most striking roads on this part of the front is that
which goes through Aveluy and runs along the valley of the Ancre to
Miraumont. From it can be had a wonderful panorama landscape of former
trenches and heavily shelled battlefields.
The end of March and beginning of April saw, for a time, at any rate, a
return to the more interesting though less comfortable open form of
warfare. Cavalry patrols were out on reconnaissances, and in touch with
Uhlans and the rearguards covering the German retreat. They were at
such places as Miraumont and Bihcourt, and not once, but several times,
Brigades marched out in the early hours of the morning "into the blue,"
spoiling for a big open fight.
During this time, one echelon or section of the Supply Column was
employed in rationing the troops. The second section was employed on
various other jobs, such as stone and road repair material fatigues, and
taking up ammunition for the guns. The latter is a particularly
interesting job; especially is it so when 9.2-inch howitzer shells
compose the load. First of all, there is the loading, at one of the
many ammunition dumps. These dumps seem to be everywhere; they spring
up like mushrooms in a night and in the most unexpected places. Perhaps
on what was once "No-man's-land," to-day there are enormous stacks of
shells silhouetted against the sky. From these dumps the lorries draw
their death-dealing loads. The shells are taken from the stacks and
piled on to trucks running on a light railway to the edge of a road.
Here they are transferred to the motor-lorries. Then there is the
journey up to the battery, at snail's pace, probably, for no vehicle,
except a Staff car, must pass another along the ---- road. Traffic
control officers and mounted military police on the road see to this.
Arriving back at your parking ground, you have just swallowed breakfast,
only to find that you must go off again almost immediately and repeat
the performance. So that, though tired perhaps, you feel you are of a
little use, even though it is only the Army Service Corps you are in!
Long days and nights, but full of interest, and not infrequently
enlivened by a few "souvenirs" from the Hun batteries across the
way-shells that blow motor-lorries into matchboard and scrap iron and
kill the men in charge of them.
The bombardment during this period was the prelude to an offensive, the
results of which I will not attempt to write. They are now ancient
history, for what is news to-day is history to-morrow, so suddenly do
events sometimes occur in this war. Suffice it to add that British
troops took close on 20,000 prisoners and an appropriate number of guns
in a month, besides capturing large tracts of land and many fortified
positions, including the Vimy Ridge, to mention only one, which the
enemy, at any rate, had thought to be impregnable.
That part of the line towards which we were working was held by Anzacs.
The Australian Army is a democratic one. Officers go through the ranks
first, and all ranks are thus more or less on a footing of familiarity,
the officer invariably addressing a man as "Son." There are many
stories of them. One, I think, got to _Punch_, of the Staff Officer who
remarked, "This morning I was saluted by an Anzac. It has been a great
day for me." Every day General Birdwood is to be seen in his car going
up to the forward positions.
Our motor-lorries were also employed on salvage. This also is an
interesting job. Thousands of men are dismantling old dug-outs,
collecting R.E. stores and equipment--in fact, every kind of material
imaginable, from live shells to dead bodies. The salved material so
collected is loaded on to horse wagons and driven to the roadside, where
loads are transferred to lorries, thence taken to railhead dumps, piled
up, and sorted. Eventually it is put on train and mostly reaches the
Base, some of it being sent further up to the front. All equipment that
is repairable at the Base workshops is reissued later to the troops; the
remainder, and scrap metal, sold by weight. By this means such places
as Beaumont-Hamel and Serre are gradually being cleared. Corpses, when
recoverable, are taken in horse-drawn wagons to the nearest military
cemetery. Here they are, if possible, identified by an officer of the
Graves Registration Committee, and then given a Christian burial,
British and German alike, by a padre who is always there for the
purpose.
No sooner is the ground cleared than its owners suddenly reappear and
proceed to search for the money that they hid before their departure.
Alas! I fear they seldom find it! The farmers begin to till the soil,
so that land which a few months before was the scene of bloody fighting
is gradually ploughed up, and not a sound is to be heard except the
ploughman's cries in the stillness, urging on his horses, and away in
the distance the never-ending thunder of the guns. The inhabitants are
allowed to return and granted a _permis de sejour_ if they are
_cultivateurs_. When harvest-time comes they will be provided with
reaping and thrashing machines by the British Army.
I recall two amusing items in connection with salvage. One was a notice
outside an old dug-out which bore the legend, "This dug-out is mined":
"To-night's the Night." The other was a sentence in a letter I was
censoring: "I am now doing 'savage' work in the trenches."
The second week of May 1917 found us once more on the move, this time to
Peronne. The move itself was an interesting one. Our route lay through
Albert, Bray, and Cappy, and we travelled along roads in the Somme
Valley which I have written of in a previous chapter--roads on which we
had taken convoys as far back as August 1915. when they were at many
points under observation of the enemy and in close proximity to the
trenches. Thence along the main Amiens-St. Quentin road, the
straightest and most tedious road imaginable.
Crossing the former lines of trenches and the old No-man's-land at
Estrees, we turned into Peronne. The latter must have been an
altogether delightful riverside town, with handsome buildings and broad
streets. Now it is ruined, though not so completely as Bapaume. To
pass through it one has to cross the Somme about four times, and at each
point the original bridge has naturally been destroyed. The other side
of Peronne each village has, of course, been systematically destroyed
and the trees felled. Even the cemeteries have been desecrated by the
removal of corpses from coffins and of tombstones. The Huns have used
the coffins and lead shells for their own dead, and even altered the
inscriptions on the stones and re-erected them as gravestones for their
dead soldiers. In one churchyard a huge family vault shows signs of
having been used as a bakehouse. A Frenchman who had lived in one
village during its occupation by the Germans said the Hun soldiers told
him that their orders were to destroy fruit trees, gardens, graves, and
houses, so that, after the German Army had retreated, the civilian
population, returning, would be appalled at the wanton destruction of
their homes, and, reflecting on the towns and villages ahead still
occupied, would collectively revolt and demand terms of peace to be made
by France.
I conclude this chapter writing in a tent pitched in a fair-sized
garden: every fruit tree has been felled, apple and cherry trees lie
sawn off two feet or so from the ground. Even so they are covered with
blossom. The state of the village--between Peronne and St. Quentin--can
be left to the imagination almost: a confused collection of grey slate
roofs, burnt timber, loose bricks, and chunks of masonry. The night is
dark, but in the distance the sky is red. The Huns have fired the
cathedral at St. Quentin!
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