observing officer sits, watching the black and yellow smoke clouds
of the bursting high explosive, or the cotton-wool-like puffs of the
shrapnel. "No. 1 fired, sir!" The words of the telephonists seem to
come as from some other world. Here she comes, far away behind,
the whistle of the shell shrieking louder as she passes right
overhead--splendid! in the very trench itself; see the black smoke
spread out and rise slowly from a long section of trench, whilst the
green vegetation grows white with the falling chalk. No correction can
be made to that, "No. 1, repeat!" "No. 2 fired, sir!" Here she comes,
ah, a little to the right--"No. 2, ten minutes more left, fire!" So
it goes on, until this particular section of trench has practically
disappeared, leaving only a white scar. Then a change of target and
a repetition of the destruction. A fascinating business this on so
fine an autumn day, so fascinating that all sense of time is lost,
all conjecture as to whether the enemy will take it into his head to
select our observation post as a target is forgotten. The only thing
in the world is the measured fall of the shell and the swift framing
of the consequent order, the only pleasure the deep satisfaction of
a well-placed round, the only despair the haunting memory of a shot
wasted that might have been saved by a different procedure.
During those four days of ceaseless bombardment, the enemy made very
little reply except at certain points; we subsequently discovered why.
He made no attempt to distribute his fire along our front line, nor
did he make a systematic search for our observation posts, the vital
organ of every battery and its most vulnerable one. Certain spots he
selected, and with magnificent gunnery rendered them utterly untenable.
Shell after shell fell with mathematical accuracy into Vermelles, Le
Rutoire, Quality Street, but when once we had learnt these favoured
spots, our casualties were very few, being avoided by the simple
expedient of removing to places that appeared to be more suitable in
the capacity of health-resorts, or, where that was impossible, taking
to the cellars and remaining there.
Through four long days, from early in the morning until it became
too dark to observe the fall of the rounds, the pitiless shelling
continued, nor was the enemy allowed any respite at night. In the
batteries we were then busy replenishing ammunition and overhauling
every detail of the equipment, but still one gun per battery at least
fired steadily throughout the hours of darkness, not now on the enemy's
positions, but on his billets and on certain places through which
his reinforcements must pass on their way to the firing line. A few
rounds per hour only, sufficient to keep men crouching huddled in
cellars wherein was no possibility of sleep, or to shake the _morale_
of working parties faced with the necessity of running the gauntlet
of that steady rain. The moral effect upon troops already shaken by
bombardment is enormous, as we ourselves have had bitter cause to know
in the earlier months of the war. The effect of these days and nights
upon the enemy is vividly shown in the diary of a private in the Second
Reserve Infantry Regiment (Prussian) which fell into our hands later. A
few extracts will suffice. On the 21st he writes: "Towards mid-day the
trenches had already fallen in in many places. Dug-outs were completely
overwhelmed ... most of them fled, leaving rifles and ammunition behind
... the air was becoming heated from so many explosions." On the 22nd:
"Shells and shrapnel (_granatschuss_) are bursting all round ... in
places where the trench had disappeared I crawled on my hands and knees
amid a hail of bullets." On the 23rd: "Our look-out post was completely
destroyed, and my comrades killed in it ... even the strongest man may
lose his brain and nerves in a time like this." On the 24th: "The
fourth day of this terrible bombardment.... I am sorry to say that
there is no reply from our artillery."
Other prisoners, on being interrogated, testified to the awful effects
of our fire. Upon one in particular, an artillery officer, was found an
order that revealed the secret of the ineffectiveness of the enemy's
reply. After briefly setting out the measures to be taken in case of a
British offensive, it goes on as follows: "Owing to the fact that the
preponderance of hostile artillery in this sector is probably more than
two to one, and owing to the vital necessity of economy in ammunition,
battery commanders will confine their fire to targets whose importance
is known to them, and upon which they can count on producing a good
effect. They will under no circumstances allow themselves to be drawn
into anything approaching to an artillery duel." It was also stated
by many captured officers that during the night September 23-24 a
deserter from our line had conveyed to the German Staff the time and
date of the coming assault, and that to this fact they owed much of the
effectiveness of the measures taken to resist it. Yet another captured
document was of somewhat disconcerting interest to us gunners, namely,
a map upon which was very accurately shown the position of every allied
battery, with only two exceptions, in the whole of our sector. It seems
fairly certain that this was due to the most efficient espionage, and
not to aerial observation.
The material effect of such a bombardment is harder to judge, for it
must be remembered that, despite the high science of modern gunnery,
the percentage of direct hits upon a given objective is still
comparatively small. When, however, a heavy shell detonates under
favourable conditions, its destructive power is enormous. For instance,
on the third day I saw a direct hit by one of our largest howitzers
upon the boiler-house of Puits XVI. The shell penetrated the roof
and burst inside the building, sending up an enormous cloud of black
smoke tinged with the pink of pulverized brick, that hung for several
minutes. When it cleared, nothing but a gaunt and twisted framework of
steel girders remained, a heap of rubbish alone showing where the walls
had stood. A smaller howitzer was ordered to fell a brick wall, some
thirty feet high and many courses thick. The shell burst in regular
sequence at its foot, at roughly ten yards interval, each round
bringing down an equivalent section of the wall, until nothing remained
but a long pile of smoking rubble. And, more impressive, perhaps,
than all is the sight of a medium lyddite shell bursting in a narrow
trench. Out of the centre of a vivid flash fly heavy timbers, sandbags,
revetments, all that once formed the trench, sometimes the mangled
fragments of its occupants, whilst to right and left rolls the choking
smoke, driving its way into the deepest dug-outs, overcoming men many
yards away from the point of impact, spreading death in every form. Is
it to be wondered at that when our infantry reached these trenches they
found a few survivors, living indeed still, but struggling and raving
as the inmates of some ghastly Bedlam?
V
THE DAY OF ASSAULT
(September 25, 1915)
During the night of September 24-25, infantry patrols left the trenches
to explore the condition of the enemy's wire entanglements, upon the
destruction of which our field batteries had been engaged during the
previous day. Artillery fire was therefore reduced as much as could be
done with safety, and was chiefly directed upon reserves and billets,
in order to make the chance of rounds falling short injuring the
patrols as small as possible. During the evening the batteries opposed
to us had shown far greater liveliness than they had hitherto. Possibly
the enemy had got information as to where the decisive attack was
to be made, as it seems to be the fact that owing to the four days'
bombardment having taken place along the whole of the British front,
they had hitherto hesitated to reinforce any particular sector, but
had kept their reserves in a state of immediate readiness at their
various railway centres. If this was the case, it is very probable
that during the 23rd and 24th fresh batteries were placed in position
between Vendin-le-Vieil and Lens, and that these came into action on
the afternoon and evening of the 24th. This supposition is borne out
by the fact of the enemy's ability to bring a terrific fire to bear on
Loos as soon as we entered it.
Until the light failed, we had been busily engaged dropping shell
along the Double Crassier, upon whose grim black crest the enemy were
suspected of having mounted a number of machine guns. I had been in
the observation post nearly the whole day--it is, by the way, worthy
of remark as showing the immunity from retaliation that we had enjoyed
in our sector, that we used to walk to and from our O.P. at all hours
of the day through country literally covered with batteries, none
of whom up till now had suffered any casualties--but at about seven
o'clock duty recalled me to the battery. So absorbed had I been in the
difficult business of observing in the failing light, that although
I was conscious that shells were bursting all round, I had no idea
that anything out of the ordinary was taking place until one of our
telephonists, who had been out repairing the line, returned somewhat
shaken, having been blown off his feet and thrown some distance by a
high-explosive detonating close to him. His only complaint, I may say,
was that he had lost a pair of wire-cutters in the adventure!
However, as soon as I started my walk homewards along the "Harrow
Road," I found things still fairly lively. Several houses had been
destroyed since the morning, and some very fine examples of shell-holes
in the middle of the road added to the joys of the transport drivers,
whose wagons of all descriptions were now beginning to pour along it.
At one point a medium shell burst about twenty yards away from me--I
had heard it coming and found friendly refuge in the ditch--and before
the smoke had fairly cleared an armoured car and a motor cyclist
orderly drove simultaneously into it from opposite directions. Nobody
was hurt, but the road was most effectively obstructed, and the effect
produced was exactly like that of a block in Piccadilly, including the
language. I reached the battery safely, to find that the shelling
had not reached so far back, but that another form of excitement had
supervened. We had received orders to be ready to move at the shortest
possible notice, in case a general advance upon the morrow should
render a change in our position necessary. Of course, we had been
prepared for this for days, but even so this official pronouncement of
our hopes sent a thrill through every one of us. This was, then, the
decisive struggle, the Waterloo of the campaign at last!
Moving a battery of heavy guns is, however, no small matter, and one
that involves a vast amount of labour, not to be lightly undertaken.
A story is told of a certain major, distinguished alike for his
capability and his piety, who, knowing from bitter experience the
difficulties that attended a change of position of his battery, added
on this night to his usual formula of prayer these heart-felt words, "O
Lord, grant us victory in the coming struggle--_but not in my sector_!"
I think that despite the fact that the guns were silent for the first
time since the beginning of the bombardment, very few of us slept much
that night. Our schemes were perfect, certainly, every detail of our
actions of the morrow had been long worked out, each phase starting a
definite time after an empiric zero, which we now learnt was fixed for
5.50 a.m. But--would the enemy consent to fall in with those schemes?
Suppose they anticipated our offensive by an attack of their own? The
wire in front of their trenches was already destroyed, even now our
infantry were busy cutting wide passages through our own. How strong
were they in reality? Was their passive endurance of our fire only a
blind to lull us into security? These and a thousand other conjectures
troubled our minds all night, and it was with a deep feeling of relief
that we stood in the battery, no untoward incident having marred our
plans, at 5.30 a.m. on the 25th--the eagerly awaited Day Z!
Then were the scenes at the opening of the bombardment repeated. Along
our line all was again quiet, only from our right came the distant
echoes of the fighting round Souchez and the Labyrinth, a deep roar
that had now been continuous for over a week. Again we sit in the
telephone dug-out, tense and expectant. "Official time coming, sir!"
Watches are taken out in readiness. "Five thirty-five--now!" Quarter
of an hour to go! One by one we creep out to see for the last time that
all is ready. One minute more--"Hook your lanyards!" slowly the hand
ticks round--time zero--"Fire!" This was no deliberate bombardment,
every gun must in the short interval allowed it work to its utmost
capacity, every man sweating in the dust-laden pits must toil as he
never toiled before to feed it; into the luckless trenches in front
of us must pour such a blasting hurricane of fire that the resistance
prepared for our attack shall wither away in its deadly breath. But
soon our own troops will be pouring out of their trenches, charging
over the dividing ground to hurl themselves upon the trenches into
which our wrath is now being poured, and then our fire must be lifted
lest we do more harm than good. All is arranged for in the time-table.
At forty minutes past zero, or 6.30 a.m., every battery lifts its fire
from the front line to the second line, and still the furious fire
continues. But now we know that the blow is being struck--what would
we all not give to be in action in the open as in old days so that we
could see the assault, watch the joining of the battle? Unprofitable
thoughts! let us rather devote every fibre of our beings to the only
task by which we can help, the task of pouring an ever-increasing
weight of shell upon the defenders. That morning dawned grey and dull.
From the observing post it was hardly possible to see further than
the front line trenches at half-past five, and until the moment of
the assault visibility did not greatly increase. However, this was to
be the battlefield, we knew, at all events in the first stages of the
struggle. The expectancy of viewing the greatest battle in history was
to our little party in the O.P. strangely _banal_; I, for one, could
not grasp the reality of it; I felt as though I were in a box waiting
for the actors to come upon a stage before which the curtain had risen
prematurely. There was no sign of battle, no movement that the eye
could detect over the whole of the wide prospect before us. And then
suddenly came time zero, bringing with it a scene that could never
be forgotten. From the whole length of our front trench, as far as
the eye could reach, rose, vertically at first, a grey cloud of smoke
and gas, that, impelled by a gentle wind, spread slowly towards the
enemy's trenches, very soon enveloping the whole of our range of vision
in its opaque veil. This was our view of the assault, this dismal
vapour the aura that was to surround a thousand sacrifices, the cloak
that was to hide a thousand gallant deeds, the winding-sheet that was
to enwrap so many a hero. Modern war holds no dramatic spectacles to
enchant the brush of a Meisonnier, no drama is wrought upon a lime-lit
stage to arrest the pulses of the watching nations. Yet none the less
is its fascination omnipotent; its magnetic attraction, that draws
into its vortex every man that owns a soul to plague him, is none the
less irresistible; its influence still has the power to weld a chain
of heroes out of a dirty, blasphemous, footsore crowd of sinners. War
tends to the uplifting of the race, not to its debasement, let him who
has faced it deny it if he can!
At 6.30 a.m. the infantry left their trenches and, so far as we were
concerned, vanished into the smoke. All we could see were the columns
scaling the ladders and starting to double across the open. Some seemed
to trip as they ran, and fell in various attitudes from which they did
not trouble to rise. At first we thought that our wire had not been
thoroughly cut, and that these men had fallen over some unseen strands.
But the red pools that slowly surrounded each soon undeceived us, the
while that the roar of rifle-fire from the enemy's side grew ever more
menacing. We could not see what success attended those who went on, but
we heard subsequently that practically no resistance was encountered
on the enemy's first and second line, but that the third line was very
strongly held and considerably delayed, in some sectors permanently
arrested, our advance.
The battery and the O.P. were equally desirable as far as vision went,
the battery being blind by nature and the O.P. by science. It has,
incidentally, yet to be proved that the hindrance to the enemy caused
by the use of smoke is not more than counterbalanced by the paralysing
of the initiative of one's own artillery, who are entirely dependent,
when this method of warfare is employed, upon time-tables and such
messages as the advancing infantry may be able to send back. However,
that is not a question meet for discussion except in works devoted
to the abstruse study of strategy and tactics. Let us return to the
passage of events in the battery.
Here hopes and fears fought for the mastery throughout the morning,
in accordance with the portents of the day. An order to lift fire on
to a more distant point seemed to mean that our attack was developing
against it, and the men in the pits paused to cheer in the midst of
their unceasing labour. Then suddenly fire would be swept back on to
a point that we had determined in our own minds to have been captured
long ago, and our spirits fell, the detachments setting their teeth
and straining at the heated guns to force by sheer weight of metal the
taking of the disputed point. Or, saddest sight of all, down the road
flowed an ever-widening stream of casualties, ambulances laden with
stretchers upon which twisted forms lay very still, others with the
less severely wounded, and a motley crowd on foot with minor injuries,
supporting one another as one imagines the scriptural halt, maimed and
blind to have done. I think that none of us realized till we saw the
magnitude of this stream, how fierce a fight was raging in front of us.
If this sight hardened our determination, the next procession went far
to cheer us. A few hundred prisoners were marched past us on the way to
the rear, fine upstanding men enough, looking perfectly fit and in the
prime of life, disposing effectually, in my mind at least, of the fable
born of our national love for self-deceit that the enemy were hard put
to it to find men fit for service.
The German batteries were now devoting their attention to our advancing
infantry, endeavouring at the same time to create a barrage behind
them on our main arteries of communication. The Harrow Road suffered
to a certain extent, but the greatest slaughter took place on the
Lens-Béthune and Vermelles-Hulluch roads. On the former the whole of
a divisional train was overwhelmed by shrapnel, blocking the road for
a quarter of a mile with shattered wagons and dead horses (a picture
of which debris subsequently went the round of the illustrated Press
under the heading "Captured German Battery at Loos"). Two of our
field batteries that endeavoured to come into action in the open
between Quality Street and La Chapelle de Notre Dame de Consolation
suffered very heavily and were silenced. Of the losses of the infantry,
nobody who did not see the procession of casualties and, worse
still, the burial parties of the next few days, can form an adequate
picture. "British Offensive in the West," we read, "Gain of five
miles of trench." Each foot of that five miles cost us a life and a
sum of human agony such as this world has never known. Watch that
communication trench marked "Stretchers to rear only." Here they come,
two stretcher-bearers, one limping painfully, the sleeve of the other
growing ever darker with a purple stain that spreads slowly over it.
Between them they carry a poor wretch with both legs broken, whose low
moan of agony rises to a sharp wail at each jolting step. Supporting
themselves on the shoulders of the stretcher-bearers are two more,
one with his breath gurgling through a throat choked with blood, one
with a shattered shoulder and side. Through the treacherous clay that
covers the bottom of the trench they make their way of agony, reeling
from side to side as their feet fail to find a foothold, cursing their
Maker for the horror of their torture. See, the first stretcher-bearer
slips--his wounded foot will bear him no longer--and down falls the
whole party in one screaming, writhing mass. Two miles more: is there
no end to human suffering? is heaven so pitiless? There is the answer,
a sharp whistle, a low report, a puff of smoke just over the trench,
and all is quiet, save for one form that crawls very slowly on hands
and knees through the yellow clay that grows dark crimson in his
track. In these terms must we reckon the price of victory.
This is not the place, nor is it within my ability, to give an
historical study of the varying phases of the battle. Suffice it to
say that by noon the 15th Division had swept through the northern end
of Loos, and were engaged upon that part of the eastern slope of the
valley known as Hill 70. There had been considerable street-fighting
in the village, but the enemy had evidently realized that this was not
the place to make a determined stand. Their strategy appears to have
been to concentrate their forces on the edge of the valley, leaving
within it only detachments of such strengths that the loss occasioned
by their sacrifice would be altogether outweighed by the gain in time
that they secured to the main defence. And nobly these detachments
performed the task allotted to them. One battery took up a position
along the Loos-Benifontaine road, and remained in action under a fire
whose intensity it is impossible to describe until our troops were
almost upon it, when its fire ceased, not from lack of courage to
continue, but because no single man was left alive to serve the guns.
Let us give the enemy his due, we are not fighting a nation of cowards
and assassins, as we are so fond of trying to believe, but of brave and
determined men, whom to defeat will call from us our utmost energies.
As soon as we had taken Loos, the enemy opened a steady artillery
fire upon the village, in order to prevent its use by us as a _point
d'appui_ for further attack, and to hinder observation from the
various landmarks it contained. There is so little natural cover that
this must have been a serious disadvantage to us, as by this time the
communication trenches leading from the German front line trenches that
we now held up the slopes of the valley were choked with dead, and
reinforcements had to run the gauntlet of a well-directed fire in order
to reach our line of attack. This may have something to do with that
fatal delay that left the attacking divisions unsupported and checked
an advance that might well have resulted in the capture of Lens, which
would probably in turn have sealed the fate of Lille. We have learnt
from prisoners that the enemy anticipated the worst in the early hours
of the morning, and that the feebleness of the final blow amazed them.
Had fresh divisions poured down the Lens road through Cité St. Auguste
and Cité St. Laurent, rolling the enemy back upon the French who
were advancing towards Vimy, who knows what might not have happened?
Conjecture is useless, regret of a lost opportunity must take its place.