TRENCH RAIDS
The manner of raiding in "No Man's Land"—Winter in grim earnest—The use of the grenade—Changes in methods of warfare—The musket and the field gun—Adaptability of Canadians—Rehearsal of each assault—Good work of the Headquarters Staff—General Lipsett—A bold decision—A gap in the wire entanglements—A desperate venture—A welcome storm—Canadians in the German trenches—The exploit of Captain Costigan—A hot twenty minutes—German prisoners—Bridges placed across the Douve—Lively times in Ploegsteert—Good work of the Seventh Battalion—A series of failures and a stirring success—A "crack shot"—"Missing"—Its significance—-The German line pierced—Careful work of the General Officer Commanding—At work in the enemy's wire—Into the jaws of death—Canadians disguised—The Huns caught napping—Captain McIntyre's report—A timely shot.
Nov., 1915.
The winter had now set in in grim earnest, as the rains and mists of November bore witness. The nights were longer, and with them stretched out hour after hour the possibility of activity denied to the infantry of either side in the long summer days. For great actions or extended movements the sodden soil afforded no scope. The sharp edges of conflict are stationary—sunk in the muddy trenches and nailed down to machine-gun emplacements. But while the fronts of the great war machine are thus held, they are never still. The wear and tear of conflict go on day and night, week after week, month after month. Behind the infantry in their earthy strongholds the great guns of the artillery hide, long-sighted and tireless. Some 30,000 shells a month pour out from their unseen lips—nearly double the number given in exchange by the Germans. But, after all, gunnery is, in the main, an affair of daylight; the dark has given birth to the adventure of the midnight escalade. "One form of midnight activity," says Sir Douglas Haig, in his report of events from December 19th to May 19th, 1916, "deserves special mention, namely, the raids or cutting-out parties which are made at least twice or three times a week against the enemy's line. They consist of a brief attack with some special object on a section of the opposing trenches, usually carried out at night by a small body of men. The character of these operations—the preparation of a road through our own and the enemy's wire, the crossing of the open ground unseen, the penetration of the enemy's trenches, the hand-to-hand fighting in the darkness and the uncertainty as to the strength of the opposing force—give peculiar scope to the gallantry, dash, and quickness of decision of the troops engaged, and much skill and daring are frequently displayed." The Commander-in-Chief adds that the initiative has, on the whole, been with the British, and that statement would certainly be true of the Canadian section of the line. The objects of such expeditions might roughly be described as threefold:—To gain prisoners and information; to lower your opponents' moral—a form of terrorism; and to kill as many Germans as possible before beating a retreat. Two features of the attempts of this character undertaken by the Canadian Corps will at once arrest attention; the immense pains taken to rehearse the actual performance beforehand and the lavish and successful use of bombs as a weapon of offence.
The grenade, indeed, seemed to have passed into history with the fortress warfare of which it was the product. It has always required for its effective use an enemy tethered to his ground and impervious from his cover to rifle fire. In open fighting the rifle must always have the mastery of any hand-thrown weapon because of its superior range. Now the importance of fortifications or fixed defences has always depended on the nature of the weapons employed by man. The original dyke, moat, or vallum, from the Stone Age to the Fall of Rome and the rise of the Middle Ages, gave the defender the advantage both of cover against arrow or javelin, and of the psychological moment for the counter-attack, sword or spear in hand, as the advancing force floundered in confusion against a sudden obstacle. It was used as the Duke of Wellington used the ridge of Busaco and many other crests of the Peninsula to inflict the maximum loss on the assailant, and to keep reserves well in hand for a counter-stroke, the power and place of which could not be foreseen by the enemy. It possessed, of course, the disadvantage of all field works of a non-continuous nature: it might be outflanked and surrounded. It was to guard against this danger that Imperial Rome in the second century constructed a permanent line of works, wherever Nature failed in her protection, from the mouths of the Rhine to the mouths of the Danube, and from Carlisle to Newcastle, and thus produced the only parallel to the gigantic trenches which bestride Europe to-day. The defence of such a system implied, of course, a great Central Power; and as that Power sank into impotence, the fortress keep of stone, impervious to anything but treachery or starvation, arose in its place to protect the local potentate against his neighbour. But these great structures again vanished into smoke before the blasting force of gunpowder. Earthworks were the next answer of the defence to the new attack, but these in their turn failed because no country had the population, the wealth, or the will to keep an adequate garrison on the whole of a threatened frontier, while an army superior in the field could outflank the defender or compel him to give battle in the open. The musket and the field gun became, therefore, the supreme arbiters of war, and sieges a mere incident in their struggles. Napoleon simply carried the process to its logical conclusion. But the advance of science brought new developments in its train. First, it gave weapons so terrible that men could hardly live against them in the open field, and the advantage was to the prepared defence. This in itself would have mattered little, for Metz would have fallen in 1870 by starvation though it had been as strong in guns as the Russian fortress of Port Arthur. But science also gave populations great enough to hold with a continuous garrison, as did the Roman Empire, the whole line of national frontiers. With this the inherent weakness of the field work, its liability to outflanking, vanishes; and we come back once more to fortress warfare, and with it to the grenade. In all sieges the grenade is there, from the seventeenth century to Badajos, Sevastopol, and Port Arthur. The opposing trenches are impervious to rifle fire, but not to the lobbing of high explosives thrown in a curve from anything up to forty yards. Neither side was quite prepared for this development, and the original jam-tin bomb with a protruding fuse lit by a match was indeed a sorry device begot of native ingenuity and urgent need, and was soon improved upon. The 1st Canadian Division showed their adaptability by taking very readily to the new weapon. The Guards acted as their instructors, and the Canadian Corps set the pace at once by being the only troops that attached to each brigade a bombing-school of its own.
The result of this earnest preparation was seen in the success of the bombing assaults in the encounters of the winter of 1915-16. Perhaps more admirable, because more rare, was the careful rehearsal of each assault given to the units behind the lines. The photographs taken by the aeroplanes and the results of dangerous personal reconnaissances were used in this service, until an accurate model of the enemy's trenches could be dug and each man could go through the precise task he would have to perform at the actual moment of crisis. Rarely were these ground plans found to be wrong. But the Staff which could conceive and carry out such a laborious undertaking deserves to be given the kind of praise which history has bestowed on the Headquarters Staff of the great Von Moltke. They had grasped the true principle underlying all success in war. You must practise and practise the expected together and disseminate all available knowledge through all ranks, so that when the unexpected comes, as it must in battle, every man knows the situation and the probable conduct of his neighbours, and can act on his own initiative without throwing the whole plan into irremediable confusion.
The doctrine, at any rate, was justified by its results. Early in November the Officer Commanding the 2nd Infantry Brigade (Brigadier-General Lipsett) decided that conditions on his front were ripe for the proving of his belief that strong parties of determined troops, properly equipped and led and operating on carefully-planned lines, could enter the German trenches and inflict casualties out of all proportion to their own losses, make prisoners, and get away. These objects were fully realised. At this time "No Man's Land" on the whole Canadian front was well in our control, and so completely so in the area through which the River Douve meanders from the German position before Douve Farm to a point at which it cuts our trenches just north of Red Lodge, that German patrols seldom ventured beyond their wire entanglements. The Scouts from the 5th Battalion, commanded by Lieut.-Col. G. S. Tuxford, reported a gap in the wire before the point of their intended attack twenty yards in width and leading to the hostile parapet. The scouts of the 7th, however, found that a screen of trees protected the defences before the point selected by their battalion for entry into the German trench. The Commanding Officer of the 7th (Lieut.-Col. V. W. Odlum) then decided that such wire-cutting as was required for his share in the raid should be done by hand.
The night closed in chilly with a promise of rain. The moon was frequently obscured by clouds. Lieut. W. D. Holmes, Sergeants Merston and Ashby (7th Battalion), and Corporals Odlum and Babcock crept out and were busy with the enemy's wire by nine o'clock. They worked on this job until midnight, lying flat when the moon was clear, and cutting fast when it was clouded. As the task was one which caused both muscular and nervous fatigue, hot cocoa was carried out to the wire-cutters at intervals during those three hours. During that time two lanes were cut completely through the German entanglements. They ran diagonally so as not to be observed from the German parapet, and converged on the point of attack. Satisfied with his work in the wire, Lieut. Holmes then took up his bridging party and spanned the River Douve in three places. One bridge was laid at a point within sixteen yards of the German parapet. Sergeant Ashby and Lance-Corporal Weir were conspicuous in this enterprise.
The raiders from both battalions were to enter the German trench at 2.30 a.m., but the attacks were entirely separate as to their striking points and their control.
The 5th Battalion party, under Lieuts. J. E. Purslow and K. L. T. Campbell, was checked directly beneath the German parapet by an obstacle which had been overlooked by their reconnoitring party. That obstacle was a trench or ditch about 12 feet wide and 6 feet deep, full of water from the overflow of the Douve. In the water, rising from the bottom of the ditch to within a couple of feet of the muddy surface, were coils and tangles and strands of barbed wire. Five men of the party fell into this ditch and were with difficulty rescued. The officers made several attempts to negotiate it, only to learn that it could not be crossed either by swimming or wading. As further investigations failed to disclose a passage across the wired and flooded ditch, the party bombed across it into the heavily-manned trench. This grenade fire, delivered at a considerable distance from the 7th Battalion's point of attack, doubtless served well in misleading the enemy as to the extent and exact location of the threat against his front. Also, it must have caused him numerous casualties.
Their supply of grenades exhausted, the 5th Battalion party returned to their own line.
In the meantime, the British Columbians (7th Battalion) had left our front-line trench by way of a gap in our parapet in front of Irish Farm. Led by scouts along the Douve, they crossed the bridges, passed the lanes through the enemy wire, and scaled the hostile parapet, and commenced operations.
Capt. C. T. Costigan, grenade instructor for the brigade, led one party of thirteen men, and Lieut. McIllree led another. These parties were composed of bayonet-men, grenadiers, grenade-carriers, wire-men, and shovel-men. Every man wore a black mask, and none carried any badge or mark of identification. Each bayonet-man had a small electric lamp fastened to his bayonet in such a way that he could flash it without shifting his grip on the rifle.
Lieut. A. H. Wrightson followed with the rifle party and telephone. His command consisted of five riflemen, a telephonist, a linesman, and two stretcher-bearers.
Before the raiders reached the German wire a sudden heavy downpour of rain commenced. Under the black screen and splashing patter of the storm our men went over the enemy parapet. Capt. Costigan and Lieut. McIllree dropped into the trench together—on top of a German sentry crouched beneath a sheet of corrugated iron, seeking shelter from the rain. McIllree shot the sentry, seized another German, disarmed him and threw him down, then clubbed yet another of the enemy with the German rifle. He was then overtaken by his men, and they all moved down the trench to the right, bombing, bayoneting, and shooting as they went. In the meantime, Capt. Costigan—a medium-sized officer of the most charming manners—had dispatched three of the enemy with his revolver and bombed his way along the trench to the left for a distance of three bays before being joined by his party.
The trench was heavily garrisoned, and (as we afterwards learned from the prisoners) the men had been warned by their officers to expect an attack, but all the forewarning had not forearmed them sufficiently for their salvation.
For twenty minutes the Canadians toiled terribly in the outraged stronghold of the enemy, by the light of star-shells from the German support trenches, under a tumult of fire from artillery and machine-guns in both lines and the crashing of their own bombs. The dug-outs were full. While our raiders made prisoners of the occupants of some dug-outs by dragging them bodily forth, and dead men of others by simply throwing grenades in at the narrow doorways, our artillery made a barrage in the rear of the invaded trench and our machine-guns searched with their fire all the roads by which German reinforcements would be likely to move. Lieut. Wrightson, with his rifle party, remained at the point of entry into the German trench during the bombing. He communicated the progress of the affair by telephone to the Commanding Officer of the 7th Battalion, and the officer in charge of operations (Capt. L. J. Thomas) guarded against a German counter-attack from the rear and passed prisoners over the parapet to our scouts. The scouts took the prisoners as they came over the parapet to our bridge-covering parties; these in turn passed them back to a strong party which supported one of our listening posts, and from the listening post they were handed back to and through the gap in our front line.
When the allotted time of twenty minutes was up, Lieut. Wrightson gave the signal for the bombing parties to get out and come back.
As soon as our men were clear of the enemy's parapet our artillery dropped its fire from the German communicating roads and rear positions to the bombed trench, in the hope of catching the reinforcements which the enemy was sure to have got up by this time at all costs to repulse the invasion. It is probable that our gunners' hope was realised.
The return of the raiders across "No Man's Land" was safely accomplished. Captors and captives retired immediately from our front-line trench by the rising and waning illumination of star-shells shooting up hysterically from the enemy's bewildered positions. They moved back to safety under a brisk fire of a variety of weapons.
But this condition of being "under fire" is nothing to write about so long as one happens to be far enough under it.
Lieuts. Holmes and Wrightson, with their scouts and riflemen, did not come in until they had withdrawn all our bridges from the Douve.
The artillery and machine-guns put the finishing touches on the offensive operation. At about four in the morning every British and Canadian gun cut loose again and drubbed the German positions for twenty minutes. Machine-guns spat from every grey bush behind Irish Farm. The woods about Red Lodge and all the hedges on the Ploegsteert Road were red and alive with flashes of field-guns and howitzers. From Romarin way several big naval guns joined in the game.
Thus the enterprise at La Petite Douve was accomplished without a hitch. A handful of men of the 7th Canadian Battalion had gone into the German trench, killed at least fifty of the enemy, and brought away twelve prisoners. They had knocked parapets, dug-outs, and machine-gun emplacements about. The artillery had knocked things about, too, in their part of the enterprise, and who knows the extent of the casualties caused by our high explosives, our shrapnel, and the fire of our machine-guns?
The moral of the enemy had been shaken and his nerves unstrung. Fame and decorations had been won, and fresh glory for Canadian arms; a new branch of the science of trench warfare had been demonstrated and proved; and against all this one Canadian soldier had given his life and another a little of his blood.
The next episode begins with a series of failures and ends with a striking success. A large tree felled across the Messines-Armentières road by artillery fire, at a point within one hundred and twenty yards of our front line, had been gradually built into a formidable barricade by the enemy. Several attempts by our artillery to demolish this strong point failed, owing to an obstructive screen of large trees along the roadside. This barricade grew in strength daily. Strong wire entanglements were put across its face and across the ditches on its flanks, which ran parallel to the road from our position to the front line of the enemy. The garrison moved in and out by way of the roadside ditches.
Several gallant attacks were made on this position before it was finally taken and demolished. In an unsuccessful attack led by Lieuts. N. W. F. Rant and A. V. Evans, of the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles, Lieut. Rant was wounded by the explosion of a German grenade.
Dec. 8th, 1915.
A week later, on the night of December 8th, after a careful reconnaissance by daylight, Lieut. John Galt, Jr., of Lord Strathcona's Horse, and fourteen grenadiers and riflemen of his regiment, assaulted the barricade. The enemy held the position in force, and his fire was too heavy for the Strathconas. Our party was driven in, and Lieut. Galt and two of his men were left wounded on the ground. Of the twelve who got back to our lines, eight were wounded.
Dec. 14th, 1915.
On the night of December 14th-15th, the 5th Battalion and the 3rd Battery Canadian Field Artillery took the barricade in hand. Preliminary work was done by our artillery on the 12th, 13th, and 14th. During the bombardment of the position on the 13th, twenty Germans broke from the cover of the barricade and made a dash across the open for their own lines. Sergeant McGlashan, of the 5th Battalion, a crack shot and an opportunist, dropped five of the enemy before they could reach their parapet.
The 5th Battalion had constructed an emplacement for a field gun in our front line where our trench cuts the Messines-Armentières road. From a flank of the emplacement they sapped out towards the barricade.
Dec. 15th, 1915.
Early on the morning of the 15th an 18-pounder from the 3rd Battery Canadian Field Artillery was brought down the road by an armoured car to within a couple of hundred yards of the prepared emplacement. From that point it was man-handled into position in our trench by Capt. G. V. Taylor and his gun crew. Attacking parties from the 5th, commanded by Lieuts. K. T. Campbell and K. A. Mahaffy, and supports under Lieut. E. H. Latter, took up position to right and left of the gun and just outside the parapet.
It was now four o'clock in the morning. On the minute our artillery opened against the German trenches with shrapnel and high explosive, and Capt. Taylor's gun cut loose at the barricade, point blank at 120 yards, firing five rounds a minute for five minutes. Then our guns in the rear lifted their fire from the enemy's front line to his reserve trenches, and the attacking parties of grenadiers and riflemen advanced to the site of the barricade. Four dead and two living Germans were found in the ruins of wire and sandbags. The living were captured and sent back to our trench. Live wires were discovered in the bottom of a ditch on a flank and immediately in rear of the position. These were cut in a hurry, in the belief that one or more of them connected mine locations near at hand with the hostile trench. Our men then mined the ruined barrier and retired to one of our saps. The German artillery and machine-guns now became active, and retaliated heavily against the wrecked barricade and our front line and winter trenches.
During the examination of the prisoners it was learned that three wounded Canadians—one of them an officer—had been passed back through Messines a few days before. It was suggested more in a reliance upon hope than upon fact that those men may have been Lieut. Galt and the survivors from the attack of December 18th, when Lieut. Galt and two men were left behind. All we know is that his name appeared in the list of "Missing"—a word which means a greater tragedy than any other in the casualty list. The dead have died in their glory, and of them we know the best and the worst; the wounded we expect and hope to see again; but the missing remain for months nothing but a supreme and torturing anxiety.[[1]]
Jan. 30th, 1916.
On the night of January 30th-31st, 1916, two battalions of the 6th Canadian Infantry Brigade (Brigadier-General Ketchen), supported by artillery, machine-guns, and trench mortars, succeeded in an important attack against the unsuspecting enemy on their brigade front. The objects of this operation were the same as those of the 7th Battalion's offensive in November, to obtain prisoners and information, to cause casualties, apprehension, and material damage. This enterprise exceeded that of our 2nd Brigade in that it pierced the German line at two widely separated points.
In their conception and plans of attack the General Officer Commanding the 6th Brigade and his Staff gave the same careful attention to details as had their comrades of the 2nd Brigade two months before.
The 28th (North-West) Battalion's objective was a point on the northern side, and that of the 29th (Vancouver) Battalion a point on the southern face of the Spanbroekmolen salient. Here, a little to the south-east of Kemmel and about the centre of the Canadian line, the German line runs sharply in to a western thrust over some 1,900 yards, and the attacks were like the jaws of pincers gripping the base of the protuberance at that distance from each other. The two objectives were about eleven hundred yards apart. The wire in front of these selected points was cut solely by hand, as one of the chief features of this attack was to dispense with the customary artillery preparation and so take the enemy by complete surprise.
The operation, as has been stated, consisted of two widely separated and individual attacks, delivered simultaneously, both maintained in the hostile trenches for the same number of minutes and simultaneously withdrawn. Scout-Sergeant Turner and Corporal Conlin, of the 28th Battalion, worked in the enemy's wire from 10 p.m. to 1.45 in the morning, and stayed there until joined by the attacking party, with whom they entered the German trench at about twenty minutes to three. The enemy's entanglements had been strongly reinforced during the previous day, under cover of a heavy fog; but Turner and Conlin stuck to their difficult and dangerous task and completed it without an error.
The raiders of both battalions advanced from their positions of readiness in "No Man's Land" at half-past two sharp. The 28th Battalion party, thirty strong, commanded by Capts. D. E. MacIntyre and K. C. Taylor, lost a few minutes in negotiating the trunk of a fallen tree, and were still strung out in the German wire when sounds of exploding grenades and an increased flaring of star-shells told them that their comrades of the 29th were already in violent touch with the enemy. There was no time to lose. Lives hang on fractions of seconds in such work as this. The two captains and the two tireless wire-cutters were still in the lead. Together they crawled up the sloping face of the big German parapet, and each threw a grenade into the crowded trench. Four explosions followed. Sentries shouted and fired their rifles. Capt. MacIntyre accounted for one of the sentries with the second shot of his automatic. Then the four leaders jumped down into the 10-foot-deep trench, into the midst of confusion and rage and fear. The other raiders followed them with a rush.
Here were thirty Canadians with blackened faces[[2]] and armed with sudden death in a trench full of Germans. Many of the Germans were "standing to," many had but then scrambled from their dug-outs, their blankets still about them, and their feet still unbooted. Make the picture for yourself, with the help of these extracts from Capt. Macintyre's report:—
"The trench seemed full of men running both ways.... Almost at once Corporal Conlin fell at my feet shot through the head. Behind Conlin was a Hun. I shot him through the stomach. The noise was frightful, and I could not tell where it was coming from. The flares made it nearly as light as day. I was knocked down by something once, but don't know what it was.
"After six minutes I blew the horn, and all the men heard it and the squads retired to the point of entry. Capt. Taylor held the right and Sergeant Cameron the left. I asked them if all their squads were out, and they said 'Yes.' Then I told them to 'beat it,' and we all jumped."
The casualties suffered by this party were two men killed and two officers and eight men wounded. Capt. Taylor, though wounded in the leg while in the very act of invading the trench, did terrible execution. It is claimed for him that he killed fourteen of the enemy, shooting some and bayoneting others. He was wounded in eight places, but returned to our lines unaided when the affair was over.
The majority of our casualties were caused by a machine-gun which enfiladed the invaded trench. This gun was fortunately put out of action by a bomb from our trench-mortars just before the retirement commenced. The 28th Battalion party brought out no prisoners, but inflicted thirty-nine casualties by actual count.
While the North-Westerners were thus engaged at Peckham, the raiders of the 29th Battalion were as busily employed in their chosen place of trench at Spanbroekmolen. The officers in charge of the Vancouver Battalion's assault were Lieuts. G. I. Gwynn, N. E. O'Brien, and L. A. Wilmot. Lieut. Wilmot and his men cut the wire, then acted as guides to the others, and accompanied them into the trench. The leading men of the right and left parties went over the parapet together, using the loophole of a machine-gun emplacement as a step. Sergeant Dungan bayoneted the first two sentries encountered by the left party. Lieut. O'Brien entered a dug-out and captured one of its inmates. A machine-gun opened fire on the raiders, but the gunner was promptly shot by Lieuts. Wilmot and O'Brien and the gun and the dug-out of the crew were bombed. Other dug-outs were also bombed. The right party, on the other flank of the central machine-gun emplacement, did equally fine execution. The work of Lieut. Gwynn was conspicuous.
Things had gone very well with the raiders thus far, when Lieut. Wilmot was wounded by a grenade. In spite of his injury he kept his head clear and a grip on the situation. Seeing that a number of prisoners had been taken and that the alarm of the enemy had become general, he ordered a retirement, and then signalled to our artillery to open fire. The return to our lines was accomplished without accident.
The 29th Battalion killed at least twenty of the enemy, did considerable damage to dug-outs and machine-guns, and brought back three prisoners. Lieut. Wilmot, Sergeant Kirkland, and two men were wounded.
These two successful raids illustrate not inaptly the various phases through which advance patrol work has gone. The first stage, as soon as trench warfare set in, was the casual encounters of hostile parties in the dark. The second was the organised trench raid by night, in which the Canadians led the way. The last stage was reached in midsummer, before the Canadians fought on the Somme, when the 19th Ontario Battalion made a most successful daylight rush into the enemy trenches, led by Lieuts. B. O. Hooper and S. S. Burnham. They disposed of forty or fifty of the enemy, and after remaining in the enemy's lines for five minutes returned with very valuable information as to the enemy's dispositions. And these, as I have said, are instances, chosen almost at a venture, to show in what manner and under what conditions we go raiding in "No Man's Land."
[[1]] Lieut. John Galt was taken prisoner, but died of his wounds very soon afterwards. He was buried by the enemy, and the words "Here lies a British Officer" inscribed on his tomb.
[[2]] The one thing most likely to be seen by the flare-lights sent up by the enemy is the face of an opponent. Those advancing in "No Man's Land," therefore, blacken their faces to avoid being seen.