THE RETREAT OF ARRAS
In January, 1917, we were directed to proceed from Hébuterne to the
trenches near Arras. Our rest-camp was at Beaumetz, a village about
two and a half miles back of the lines, and our work was the
construction of forward underground galleries under No Man's Land and
deep-dugout construction in Arras and the villages and trenches to the
south. Another man and myself were billeted at B. with a French
family, four generations of whom were occupying the kitchen, while we
used what was formerly the parlor. I think we paid Mme. ---- about
five francs a month rent (which is incidentally by way of being quite
a contrast to the rent of apartments in Washington this last winter).
My forward billet was at Achicourt, a suburb of Arras. This part of
the line was then pretty quiet and we were not sorry to get into a
comparatively peaceful sector for a while. In Achicourt, a village
about half a mile from the Germans' front line, a few civilians were
still living. The troops would buy eggs, butter, bread, vegetables,
and such like articles from these French residents. Another man and I
used to make a practice of going down to the house of a French
carpenter's wife and having the usual meal of omelet, "petit pois" or
"haricot vert" and café au lait. She was a wonderful cook, as most of
the French women are, and seemed to find a good deal of amusement in
our attempts at conversation with her. Like many other French women
still living in their homes close to the line, shelling did not bother
her much. We used to have our meals in her kitchen. The room
adjoining, the parlor, had been entirely destroyed by a shell, and
several bullets had gone through the window of the kitchen. Shells
would often land in the road outside and in the garden at the back
while we were at meals here.
Madam B. would immediately order her young son, aged about twelve, and
her daughter, about eighteen, to light a lamp and go down to the
cellar while the shelling continued. Her husband was serving with the
French army at Verdun and returned on a week's "permission" (leave)
during the time we were in this village. It amused the Tommies very
much to think that any soldier would care to spend his leave in a
village so close to the line. We were constantly advising the
civilians to move back to a safer area, particularly the women, but
the poor people had not much choice. The British army authorities I
understand offered to move them all, together with their portable
belongings, but they were evidently afraid of having their houses
destroyed and their little farms or gardens torn up. Their love of
home was stronger than their fear of death, or else they couldn't
understand. At any rate, very few of them left, even when the shelling
became more active. Many of these civilians were later killed and
gassed. We also came in for our share of shelling later at our billets
here; the cellars were small and did not provide sufficient
accommodation for all of us. Shortly before the beginning of the
retreat of the enemy, which occurred on our front on March 18th, they
gave us a last dose of heavy shelling. This day they landed at least
100 medium and heavy shells within a radius of 50 yards around us. I
had more than my share of close calls during this bombardment. A shell
had just burst in the road near our little ruin and I walked out to
see what had happened and heard another one coming straight for me. I
ran to the nearest wall and dropped alongside. The whizz-bang burst
about 8 feet away from me on the same wall. I happened to be the
nearest man to the shell, but was only hit with a brick in the middle
of my back, knocking my wind out, but not doing any real damage. One
poor fellow behind me was killed and two others wounded. Incidentally
I got the full concussion along the brick wall, and my ears were
ringing for an hour afterward.
I then hurried to one of my section billets to order the men to their
cellars. That same morning the Boche had put one shell through the
wall of the second story of this building, but as luck would have it
we had no men billeted up-stairs. Just before I reached a barn
occupied by eleven of my men in the yard of this billet, a 4.2-inch
shell burst on top of the east brick wall. Poor Holloway had his head
blown off by the bricks, another fine lad, McNulty, was mortally
wounded with shrapnel in his lungs and stomach; and six others wounded
less seriously. The remaining three were not touched, but were badly
shaken up. After covering the bodies of the poor lads who were killed,
we bandaged up the other fellows as well as we could and took them
down to the aid-post in the village. Infantry quartered in the next
house to us had over seventeen casualties from one shell the same day.
After getting all my men in the cellars, I hunted for a cellar myself.
This was not easy as they were by this time pretty full. On my way I
was caught in several buildings when they were hit. Twice I stood in
the doorway between two rooms and watched the tiles falling all around
as shells burst on the roofs over me. Presently, I found temporary
shelter and stayed there for fifteen minutes until the worst was over.
A house with two cellars next to one of our billets and on the same
street was closed up securely. I obtained permission from the town
major (the officer who has charge of all billeting accommodations in
the French villages) to use this billet, providing I could get the
consent of a French lady who was acting as a kind of watchdog for the
absent owner. Madame ---- was loth to give her consent. I'm afraid I
was not very patient. We had already that day lost several fine lads
through a shortage of cellar shelters, so we proceeded to take over
the billets anyhow and moved to rooms above the stores of household
treasures which had been placed in the cellars for safe-keeping.
Billets near ammunition-dumps or trucks filled with shells were not
popular. Eleven large trucks with several hundred 9.2 shells in them
were parked in the square of this village for several hours. A Boche
shell hit one of them. All the houses surrounding the square were
levelled by the resulting detonation and over 200 men killed and
wounded. It was impossible afterward to find a piece of wood or steel
from these trucks larger than a brick in size. During the retreat it
was a very common occurrence for enemy shells to explode large
artillery ammunition-dumps in this way on account of the fact that it
was impossible to get them under adequate cover. Every night one could
count dozens of fires caused by enemy shells hitting the cordite
propellant of batteries.
We were billeted for some time in Arras, one of the best laid-out
cities in France, which before the war had a population of about
40,000.
It had suffered severely from bombardment in 1914 and 1915. The
trenches ran right through the town. The granite blocks of the pavé in
the streets had been taken up in many places and formed into
breastworks, with loopholes arranged for rifle and machine-gun fire.
The Arras railway-station was quite interesting. It had been formerly
a handsome and well-built structure of steel and glass. Now the glass
was all broken, but the steel frame had remained intact. Along one
platform a pavé breastworks, shoulder-high, had been built, while
between the rails, many of which were broken, grass was growing. It
was a melancholy sight.
We were fortunate enough to be billeted for a couple of weeks in the
office of a sugar-refinery. Here we had leather armchairs, desks,
stoves, and most of the appurtenances of civilization. Seventy-five
per cent of the houses and buildings in Arras had been hit at some
time or other; those undamaged or not so badly destroyed had their
rooms and cupboards locked and paper seals placed, warning soldiers
not to open them. Shells are no respecters of seals, however, so it
happened that many houses had been more or less destroyed by enemy
shell-fire, and all the furniture exposed to the weather. Although
orders against looting were strictly enforced, it nevertheless
happened that many dugouts in the trenches in this vicinity were
furnished quite comfortably. One would see large mirrors and
comfortable armchairs in them, and in some cases even pianos.
There was a doctor's house about four houses away from the one we
occupied, and one evening while the Huns were shelling us they landed
an "obus" right into the upper story of this house with the result
that the two stories were merged into one. The next morning we
examined the damage. The house had been very nicely furnished and a
piano and some armchairs were untouched; but everything else was badly
wrecked. So the work of destruction goes on--a shell breaks open a
house and lays the furniture open to the weather, which soon spoils
it.
The trenches here had been occupied by the French until the spring of
1916, and they had also evidently made themselves as comfortable as
possible. Before the retreat and during the day all stores in Arras
would be closed, and the city was apparently almost deserted, very few
soldiers being seen on the streets; but at night things were very
active, troops marching in and out at all hours, and all supplies
going up. Such stores as remained to do business were open from six to
eight in the evening. There was one street, the Rue St.-Quentin, which
had been dubbed "piano row." When we reached Arras, this was a street
of ruins, but an infantry officer whom I met here told me he had been
billeted in Arras in the previous spring and that every house in this
street then had a piano in it. Not even a chair was to be found then.
A number of French gendarmes and British military police were
protecting the property of former residents and enforcing army
regulations in regard to looting. The troops sometimes used the
furniture found in the houses, but took good care of it and handed it
over to the parties succeeding them in these billets. To be sent to
the Arras sector before the retreat was an "end devoutly to be wished
for" by all British forces.
Previous to the German retreat one of our sections working with a New
Zealand mining company, had opened out all the old sewers of the city
and constructed tunnels in the chalk through to the front trenches,
and in some places these tunnels were continued as far underground as
the Boche support-line. During the battle of Arras thousands of troops
would be marched up the main St.-Pol-Arras road, and then underground
to come out on top again at the Boche second line.
In February I obtained another leave to England, and crossed during
the first week of the widely advertised 1917 Boche submarine blockade.
The U-boats did not bother us much in crossing the Channel, however,
as we always had torpedo-boat escorts. During the nineteen months I
served in the trenches, I had four furloughs, and in this I was
particularly lucky. As a matter of fact, leave for most troops was
often cancelled, especially for a few weeks previous to a big
offensive, but as our tunnelling companies did not obtain the usual
divisional rest behind the lines, we were always allowed our furlough,
and mighty welcome it invariably was. It happened frequently that
infantrymen would just reach England for a ten-day leave when they
would receive a wire from their commanding officers informing them
that their leave was cancelled and ordering them to immediately rejoin
their unit back in the trenches. This was the epitome of bad luck and
resulted in much gnashing of teeth and profanity generally.
For a week previous to March 18 we had noticed many fires in the enemy
lines and heard numerous explosions in the villages behind their
trenches. Everything seemed to indicate that the enemy were preparing
to retire along the trenches opposite us, as they had been doing to
the south. Our own plans for an offensive were nipped in the bud by
this untimely retreat of the Boche. It came earlier than was
anticipated by the British Staff. For our part we had nearly finished
the construction of a large number of dugouts close up which were to
be used as assembly shelters for large attacking forces. On March 18
they evacuated the trenches at Beaurains, a village in the enemy lines
across from us at Achicourt. Evidently they had abandoned these lines
on the night of the 17th. On the morning of the 18th our infantry
reported that there were no Germans in the trenches opposite.
In the afternoon another man and I crossed over to Beaurains to
investigate any dugouts which might have been left there. We only
found two or three which had not been destroyed. These were all very
deep and were strengthened at the entrance from the trench with
heavily reinforced concrete and in most cases there was a concrete
wall also on the parados side of the trench opposite the entrance. As
they were shelling the village heavily with eight-inch shells as they
retreated, we did not tarry longer than necessary. The next day we
went across again and followed up the retreating Huns until we came
within rifle-range. Our infantry had pursued them as hard as they
could, but they were considerably handicapped on account of the fact
that no supplies except what they could carry in their packs could be
brought forward. The infantry had a hard time. The destruction of the
road made it impossible for them to use their transport. It was very
difficult for them to carry up sufficient rifle and machine-gun
ammunition, much less adequate rations and water. I saw many poor
chaps drinking from the muddy shell-holes, and they lived for several
days on much-reduced "iron rations." Everywhere along the area of
their retreat the Germans had blown big craters in the roads, craters
from 30 to 100 feet deep and from 50 to 200 feet wide. These were
blown at all crossroads, and in addition, at every quarter-of-a-mile
interval on the roads. Their work of destruction everywhere was most
thorough. All buildings and walls had been destroyed. Those alongside
roads were felled across the latter--anything to tie up traffic. We
seldom found a wall left which was over three feet in height.
Cellars, dugouts, and shelters of any description were obliterated or
their entrances had been closed by firing charges of high explosives.
The dugouts and ruins in many places were still on fire or
smouldering. All trees were sawn off within a foot to eighteen inches
of their base, this work having evidently been done with small
gasolene saws. Large trees were everywhere felled and left lying
squarely across the roads. All wells were either blown up or had been
poisoned by chemicals. The latter course must have involved the use of
very large quantities of chemicals. The work assigned to us later was
to unearth and withdraw all mines left in dugout entrances and
elsewhere, and pick up all bomb-traps and devilish contrivances of a
similar nature.
This kept us very busy. Thousands of these had been laid. All
railroads were undermined; the first train going over near us at
Achiet-le-Grand was destroyed. Contact-mines were left under the roads
in many places, especially at crossroads, and these would be fired
when any heavy vehicle or gun crossed them. In other places they had
placed mines with delay-action fuses. A large brigade dugout
headquarters near us at B. went up in smoke about ten days after being
occupied. Most of the dugout mines were placed about half-way down the
entrances on the right or left side, and these had been tamped with
sand-bags, detonators connected with leads which were fastened to the
wooden steps, and these would be fired as men walked down. It required
a careful eye to detect them. We would notice some slight change in
the timber at these places and invariably carefully withdraw this and
the sand-bag tamping and take out the detonators and the high
explosives. Running short of high explosives, the Germans often threw
in bombs, trench-mortars, etc., to add to the charges.
Numerous bombs which a touch would fire were found everywhere. In the
barbed wire on top of the trenches we would find the German hairbrush
bombs tied by their fuses to the wire, with the latter looped in a
half circle so that as a soldier walked along he would catch his foot
in the loop and fire the bomb. In the trenches we found thousands of
the German egg-bombs connected to and underneath the duckboards or
trench boards laid on the floor of all their trenches.
These would be fired by any one stepping on the duckboard, and as
there was no other place to step in the trench, it was a case of
Hobson's choice. It afforded us much amusement to explode these by
throwing bricks on them from behind cover.
[Illustration: In a German trench.
This picture was found by Captain Trounce in a trench which was
captured by the British.]
In such dugouts as were left we would find attractive souvenirs hung
up; to most of these bombs would be attached. Some poor chap would see
a good-looking German helmet hung on a nail in the dugout, attempt to
remove it, and fire the bomb attached. We decided to go pretty
carefully and gingerly about this work and were lucky enough to get
through with only ten casualties in our company. After a few days it
was not necessary to caution any troops about these little devices
which the Boches had provided for us. They would hardly dare step on a
stick or twig for fear it was connected to a bomb. We found the German
trenches everywhere were honeycombed with subterranean galleries. The
majority of these tunnels were from twenty to forty feet in depth, and
close-timbered with hard wood, usually four-inch oak. Mile after mile
of galleries, usually six feet by four in size, were found, and all
were of first-class construction, with the timbers well braced and
wedged. It was a constant source of wonder to us as to where they
obtained this vast amount of lumber and how the Huns had been able to
get it up in such quantities.
I was detailed one day to make a search with a small party for a
cavern which existed in the village of Mercatel. I took over the men
and we searched very thoroughly throughout the village. Although the
cavern undoubtedly existed it was impossible to find any entrance; not
only that, but every cellar, dugout, or shelter of any description in
Mercatel had been likewise very systematically blown in. At one
crossroads in this village, the enemy had blown a crater some sixty
feet wide, and it had been necessary to build a road of broken brick
through some ruins to make a turnout for the constant traffic. This
work was continually shelled by the Huns, and furnishes an
illustration of some of the difficulties the engineers encountered at
every similar crater blown in the roads in this advance. All the
troops possible who could be assigned to building roads were so
detailed, but the magnitude of the repairs naturally slowed up our
pursuit of the enemy. In the pursuit of the Hun, the light artillery
was sent up as quickly as possible; on account of the frightful
condition of the roads, it was impossible at first to use the tractors
for the heavy guns. The weather was very bad, almost continual rain.
The loss of horses was appalling. I understand that 200,000 of these
poor animals succumbed to the effects of the hard weather, exposure,
heavy work, and shortage of feed. At the side of all roads you would
see dozens of horses lying dead, stretched in the mud. Once they fell
in the mud, it was next to impossible to get them on their feet again.
Among the mules, however, there was little loss. One would see 50 dead
horses to 1 dead mule. It was a pitiful sight. Nearly all of the
lighter guns and howitzers were taken up with 3 teams of horses, while
the heavier guns were brought up after much delay by the usual Holt
Caterpillars when the roads were repaired sufficiently to bear the
traffic.
We captured thousands of prisoners in the retreat. Almost every day
big batches would be brought in and placed in the barbed-wire
prisoners' cages of every division on this front. Dazed, dirty-looking
specimens for the most part they were, too. Men of all ages were
included, from schoolboys to men of apparently nearly fifty years of
age. In almost every instance they had been subjected to intense
bombardment for several hours or days, and they certainly showed the
effects, being in a sloppy, dishevelled condition. A few of them could
speak English, but, being very carefully guarded, it was next to
impossible to talk to them.
A few were apparently sullen, but the majority looked as if they were
pretty well pleased with themselves and realized the war was over for
them at any rate. The little German prisoners seemed to be all tin hat
and boots. They wore the clumsy boots which we associate with farmers.
The wounded were always given first-aid treatment and our men would
give them cans of "bully beef," biscuits, and cigarettes, and these
were accepted with every evidence of appreciation. After spending a
few hours in the prisoners' cages, which were usually placed two to
three miles back of the front lines, they would be marched to more
permanent camps beyond shell-range, and from the latter would be taken
out daily to work on the roads, railroads, etc., under charge of their
own N.C.O.'s and an occasional British Tommy. Thousands of these
German prisoners are to be seen all over France.
Shortly after the beginning of the retreat of Arras, we were billeted
in the village of Blairville, a short distance south. Here we occupied
an old ruin, which had evidently been the quarters of some German
officers before we arrived. From the cellars of this house we could
walk back to their old front-line trenches in underground galleries
for over half a mile without once coming on top. In fact, one could go
through the entire village underground in this way. The day after our
arrival I noticed a French woman coming out of a garden near by. She
was carrying something in a yellow scarf and looking very pleased with
herself. In answer to my inquiry, she informed me that she had just
dug up from her old garden the savings of a lifetime--several thousand
francs. The Boche had occupied the village for nearly three years, but
had failed to unearth her little fortune. Many old residents had
adopted the same means of secreting their money and recovered it after
the German retreat.
The relief of the French civilians at the retreating Hun was very
marked. As one French girl rather curiously expressed it to me: "Boche
partir finish wind up now." Everywhere possible they started to
rebuild their roofs and walls, and emerged from their partial cellar
life with great satisfaction.