CHAPTER VIII WARFARE BY DAY AND BY NIGHT
In three days the British had not only gained the passages over the Aisne, but had won their way to the plateau. Both sides had fought with determination. The German commander knew that if he could not hold this position the whole contemplated strategy of throwing masses of reinforcements against the left flank of the Allied forces must collapse. He was well aware that if he failed, not only must his own force in all probability be destroyed, but the whole German line as far as Verdun must in all probability be crumpled up.
Not less was Sir John French aware that the future success of the Allied campaign hung upon obtaining a purchase on the German position which would force General von Kluck to employ his whole strength in holding on. It is easy, therefore, to infer how fierce had been this three days' struggle.
The Germans had put forth the greatest effort of which they were capable. But despite the natural advantage given them, first by the river front, and next by the rugged and broken ground in the many side valleys, they had been beaten. Henceforward the struggle was on less uneven terms. The fact had become manifest that without a strenuous counter-offensive the Germans could not hope to hold on.
This counter-offensive was attempted without delay.
Since the top of the plateau sloped from north to south, the positions held by the British were in general on lower ground than the trenches cut by the Germans, and it must have been something of a disagreeable surprise to the latter when on the morning of September 15, the heavy mists having lifted, they saw miles of earthworks, which had literally sprung up in the night. The rain and mist during the hours of darkness had made a night attack impossible, even if, after the eighteen hours' furious battle in the mists on the preceding day, they had had the stomach for it.
They had their surprise ready, however, as well. From well-hidden positions behind the woods on the top of the plateau they opened a violent bombardment of the British lines with their huge 8-inch and 11-inch howitzers, throwing the enormous shells, which fell with such terrific force as to bury themselves in the ground. Giving off in exploding dense clouds of black smoke, these shells blew away the earth on all sides of them in a rain of fragments of rock, masses of soil and stones, leaving the surface filled with holes wide and deep enough to be the burial place of several horses. This heavy ordnance was kept well beyond the range of the British guns, and employed for high-angle fire. So far as life was concerned, the shells caused relatively little loss. Their flight being visible—they looked not unlike tree-trunks hurled from across the hills—they could be dodged. On realising how little they were to be feared, the British troops nicknamed them "Black Marias," "Coalboxes," and "Jack Johnsons," and shouted jocular warnings. The idea of using these shells was to knock the British defence works to pieces. Some of these works, hastily thrown up, proved to be too slight, and had to be replaced by diggings, which became regular underground barracks.
At this time the British lines were in general more than a mile distant, on the average, from those of the enemy. They followed no symmetrical plan, but, adapted to the defensive features of the ground, were cut where there were at once the best shelters from attack and the best jumping-off places for offence. Describing them, the British military correspondent wrote:—
A striking feature of our line—to use the conventional term which so seldom expresses accurately the position taken up by an army—is that it consists really of a series of trenches not all placed alongside each other, but some more advanced than others, and many facing in different directions. At one place they run east and west, along one side of a valley; another, almost north and south, up some subsidiary valley; here they line the edge of wood, and there they are on the reverse slope of a hill, or possibly along a sunken road. And at different points both the German and British trenches jut out like promontories into what might be regarded as the opponent's territory.
While the British infantry had been entrenching, the artillery, with an equal energy, had hauled their guns up the steep roads, and in many cases up still steeper hillsides, and by the morning of September 15—another disagreeable surprise for the enemy—nearly 500 field pieces bristled from positions of vantage along the front. The reply to the German bombardment was a bombardment of the hostile trenches. The latter were crowded with men. If the German shells did a lot of injury to the landscape, the British shrapnel inflicted far heavier injury on the enemy's force. It swept the German trenches and field batteries with a regular hail of lead. Well-concealed though they to a great extent were, the German positions were not so well-concealed as the British positions. Both armies did their best to make themselves appear scarce, and beyond the deafening uproar of the guns belching from behind woods and undulations, there seemed at a distance few signs of life on either side. But, looked at from behind and within, the lines were very anthills of activity.
The bombardment went on until midnight. Then came a night battle of almost unexampled fury.
From the outline already given of the fighting on September 14 it will have been gathered that one of the most substantial advantages won had been the position seized by the 4th Guards Brigade along the Aisne and Oise Canal from Astel to Braye-en-Laonnois. At Braye and eastwards over the intervening spur of plateau to Vendresse the British positions were dangerously close to the narrow neck of the ridge. Across that neck, too, following the canal to its juncture with the Lette, and then up the short valley of the Ardon, was the easiest route to Laon, the main base of the 1st German army. Obviously the British must, if possible, be ousted out of these villages.
Bombardment had failed to do it. Soon after midnight, therefore, a huge mass of German infantry moved down against the Guards' entrenchments by Braye. It was a murderous combat. Six times in succession the Germans were beaten off. But for every column of the enemy that went back, broken, decimated, and exhausted, there was another ready instantly to take its place. Advancing over the dying and the dead, the Germans faced the appalling and rapid volleys of the Guards with unflinching courage. They fell in hundreds, but still they rushed on. Machine guns on both sides spat sheets of bullets. At close grips, finally, men stabbed like demons. In and round houses, many set on fire, and throwing the scene of slaughter into lurid and Dantesque relief, there were fights to the death. No quarter was given or taken. The canal became choked with corpses. On the roads and hillsides dead and wounded lay in every posture of pain. Beyond the outer ring of the struggle, where shouts of fury mingled with cries of agony, the roaring choruses of the guns bayed across the valley with redoubled rage.
Great as it was, the effort proved vain. If the attack was heroic, the defence was super-heroic. When, for the last time, the lines of the Guards swept forward, withering the retreating and now disordered foe with their volleys, charging into them in what seemed a lightning-like energy, terrible alike in their forgetfulness of danger and in the irresistible impetus of victory, the Germans must have realised that their hopes of conquest were shattered.
This was but one out of similar scenes in that fierce night.[27] After it the cold, grey morning broke in strange silence. For a space the artillery had ceased to speak. Many and many a hero, unknown to fame, but faithful unto death, lay with face upturned on those hillsides. Never had duty been more valiantly done.
Sir John French realised the qualities of his soldiers. He had been compelled to demand from them a herculean energy. They had not failed him in any place nor in any particular. They had been in truth magnificent, and he could not but embody his admiration in a Special Order of the Day. That historic document ran:—
Once more I have to express my deep appreciation of the splendid behaviour of officers, non-commissioned officers, and men of the army under my command throughout the great battle of the Aisne, which has been in progress since the evening of the 12th inst. The battle of the Marne, which lasted from the morning of the 6th to the evening of the 10th, had hardly ended in the precipitate flight of the enemy when we were brought face to face with a position of extraordinary strength, carefully entrenched and prepared for defence by an army and a staff which are thorough adepts in such work.
Throughout the 13th and 14th that position was most gallantly attacked by the British forces, and the passage of the Aisne effected. This is the third day the troops have been gallantly holding the position they have gained against the most desperate counter-attacks and a hail of heavy artillery.
I am unable to find adequate words in which to express the admiration I feel for their magnificent conduct.
The self-sacrificing devotion and splendid spirit of the British Army in France will carry all before it.
(Signed) J. D. P. French, Field Marshal,
Commanding-in-Chief the British Army in the Field.
The enemy had been shaken. Of that there could be no doubt. Following his experiences in the battle of the Marne this fighting was beginning to prove too much for him.
A considerable amount of information about the, enemy has now been gleaned from prisoners (says the official record). It has been gathered that our bombardment on the 15th produced a great impression. The opinion is also recorded that our infantry make such good use of the ground that the German companies are decimated by our rifle fire before a British soldier can be seen.
From an official diary captured by the First Army Corps it appears that one of the German corps contains an extraordinary mixture of units. If the composition of the other corps is at all similar, it may be assumed that the present efficiency of the enemy's forces is in no way comparable with what it was when war commenced. The losses in officers are noted as having been especially severe. A brigade is stated to be commanded by a major, and some companies of the Foot Guards to be commanded by one-year volunteers, while after the battle of Montmirail one regiment lost fifty-five out of sixty officers.
The prisoners recently captured appreciate the fact that the march on Paris has failed, and that their forces are retreating, but state that the object of this movement is explained by the officers as being to withdraw into closer touch with supports which have stayed too far in rear. The officers are also endeavouring to encourage the troops by telling them that they will be at home by Christmas. A large number of the men, however, believe that they are beaten. The following is an extract from one document:—
With the English troops we have great difficulties. They have a queer way of causing losses to the enemy. They make good trenches, in which they wait patiently. They carefully measure the ranges for their rifle fire, and they then open a truly hellish fire. This was the reason that we had such heavy losses....
From another source:—
The English are very brave, and fight to the last man.... One of our companies has lost 130 men out of 240.
From this time the battle took on more and more the features of a regular siege. On the side of the Germans the operations resolved themselves into persistent bombardments by day alternated with infantry attacks by night. Infantry attacks in daylight they now knew to be foredoomed. It is questionable, indeed, if, with the lowered moral of their troops, such attacks were any longer possible. To assist their night attacks they rigged up searchlights, and when their infantry advanced played the beams upon the British lines in the hope of dazzling the defence and spoiling the rifle-fire they had learned to dread. These lights, however, served also as a warning. When that was found out the enemy went back to attacks in the darkness, but with no better results.
Sunday, September 20, was the date of another general night onslaught. Just before the attack developed military bands were heard playing in the German lines. After the manner of the natives of West Africa they were working themselves up to the fury pitch. It was to be a do-or-die business evidently. The enterprise, however, again failed to prosper. Against some of the British positions the attack was pushed with dogged bravery; and the scenes of five nights before were enacted again and again with the like results. Against one part of the line the onset wound up with an extraordinary disaster. Two German columns mistook each other in the darkness for British troops. They had apparently set out from different points to converge upon the same British position. In front of that position they fought a furious combat, and while no bullets reached the British trenches the men in them were afforded the unwonted spectacle of the enemy wiping themselves out.[28]
Between the two armies the country had now become a "no-man's land," deserted by both sides because, in the expressive phrase of the British soldier, it had turned "unhealthy." Over this tract the still unburied bodies of German infantry lay where they had fallen. Outside the village of Paissy, held by the British and near a ridge where there had been some of the severest fighting, the German dead lay in heaps. Lines of German trenches held at the beginning of the battle were by this time deserted.
Reconnoitring parties, says the authorised story, sent out during the night of the 21st-22nd, discovered some deserted trenches, and in them, or near them in the woods, over a hundred dead and wounded were picked up. A number of rifles, ammunition, and equipment were also found. There were various other signs that portions of the enemy's forces had withdrawn for some distance.
Unable to prevail in open fight, the Germans resorted to almost every variety of ruse. In the words of the official story:—
The Germans, well trained, long-prepared, and brave, are carrying on the contest with skill and valour. Nevertheless, they are fighting to win anyhow, regardless of all the rules of fair play, and there is evidence that they do not hesitate at anything in order to gain victory.
During a counter-attack by the German 53rd Regiment on portions of the Northampton and Queen's Regiments on Thursday, the 17th, a force of some 400 of the enemy were allowed to approach right up to the trench occupied by a platoon of the former regiment, owing to the fact that they had held up their hands and made gestures that were interpreted as signs that they wished to surrender. When they were actually on the parapet of the trench held by the Northamptons they opened fire on our men at point-blank range.
Unluckily for the enemy, however, flanking them and only some 400 yards away, there happened to be a machine gun manned by a detachment of the "Queen's." This at once opened fire, cutting a lane through their mass, and they fell back to their own trench with great loss. Shortly afterwards they were driven further back with additional loss by a battalion of the Guards, which came up in support.
During the fighting, also, some German ambulance wagons advanced in order to collect the wounded. An order to cease fire was consequently given to our guns, which were firing on this particular section of ground. The German battery commanders at once took advantage of the lull in the action to climb up their observation ladders and on to haystacks to locate our guns, which soon afterwards came under a far more accurate fire than any to which they had been subjected up to that time.
A British officer who was captured by the Germans, and has since escaped, reports that while a prisoner he saw men who had been fighting subsequently put on Red Cross brassards. That the irregular use of the protection afforded by the Geneva Convention is not uncommon is confirmed by the fact that on one occasion men in the uniform of combatant units have been captured wearing the Red Cross brassard hastily slipped over the arm. The excuse given has been that they had been detailed after a fight to look after the wounded.
It is reported by a cavalry officer that the driver of a motor-car with a machine gun mounted on it, which he captured, was wearing the Red Cross.
A curious feature of this strange siege-battle was that villages and hamlets between the fighting lines still continued, where not destroyed, to be in part, at any rate, inhabited, and at intervals peasants worked in the intervening fields. The Germans took advantage of this to push their spy system.
The suspicions of some French troops (of the 5th army) were aroused by coming across a farm from which the horses had not been removed. After some search they discovered a telephone which was connected by an underground cable with the German lines, and the owner of the farm paid the penalty usual in war for his treachery.
Some of the methods being employed for the collection or conveyance of intelligence were:—
Men in plain clothes who signalled to the German lines from points in the hands of the enemy by means of coloured lights at night and puffs of smoke from chimneys by day.
Pseudo-labourers working in the fields between the armies who conveyed information, and persons in plain clothes acting as advanced scouts.
German officers and soldiers in plain clothes or in French or British uniforms remained in localities evacuated by the Germans in order to furnish them with intelligence.
One spy of this kind was found by the British troops hidden in a church tower. His presence was only discovered through the erratic movements of the hands of the church clock, which he was using to signal to his friends by means of an improvised semaphore code.
Women spies were also caught, and secret agents found observing entrainments and detrainments.
Amongst the precautions taken by the British to guard against spying was the publication of the following notice:—
(1) Motor cars and bicycles other than those carrying soldiers in uniform may not circulate on the roads.
(2) Inhabitants may not leave the localities in which they reside between six p.m. and six a.m.
(3) Inhabitants may not quit their homes after eight p.m.
(4) No person may on any pretext pass through the British lines without an authorisation countersigned by a British officer.
On October 23rd six batteries of heavy howitzers asked for by Sir John French reached the front, and were at once put into action. No effort was spared by the Germans to drive the British army back across the Aisne. The quantity of heavy shells they fired was enormous, and they were probably under the impression that the effect was devastating.
The object of the great proportion of artillery the Germans employ (observes the official record on this point) is to beat down the resistance of their enemy by a concentrated and prolonged fire, and to shatter their nerve with high explosives before the infantry attack is launched. They seem to have relied on doing this with us; but they have not done so, though it has taken them several costly experiments to discover this fact. From the statements of prisoners, indeed, it appears that they have been greatly disappointed by the moral effect produced by their heavy guns, which, despite the actual losses inflicted, has not been at all commensurate with the colossal expenditure of ammunition, which has really been wasted.
By this it is not implied that their artillery fire is not good. It is more than good; it is excellent. But the British soldier is a difficult person to impress or depress, even by immense shells filled with high explosive which detonate with terrific violence and form craters large enough to act as graves for five horses.
How far the colossal expenditure of ammunition was thrown away is illustrated by this description of the effect in a given instance:—
At a certain point in our front our advanced trenches on the north of the Aisne are not far from a village on the hillside, and also within a short distance of the German works, being on the slope of a spur formed by a subsidiary valley running north and the main valley of the river. It was a calm, sunny afternoon, but hazy; and from a point of vantage south of the river it was difficult exactly to locate on the far bank the well-concealed trenches of either side. From far and near the sullen boom of guns echoed along the valley and at intervals, in different directions, the sky was flecked with the almost motionless smoke of anti-aircraft shrapnel. Suddenly, without any warning, for the reports of the distant howitzers from which they were fired could not be distinguished from other distant reports, three or four heavy shells fell into the village, sending up huge clouds of smoke and dust, which slowly ascended in a brownish-grey column. To this no reply was made by our side.
Shortly afterwards there was a quick succession of reports from a point some distance up the subsidiary valley on the side opposite our trenches, and therefore rather on their flank. It was not possible either by ear or by eye to locate the guns from which these sounds proceeded. Almost simultaneously, as it seemed, there was a corresponding succession of flashes and sharp detonations in a line on the hill side, along what appeared to be our trenches. There was then a pause, and several clouds of smoke rose slowly and remained stationary, spaced as regularly as a line of poplars. Again there was a succession of reports from the German quick-firers on the far side of the misty valley and—like echoes—the detonations of high explosive; and the row of expanding smoke clouds was prolonged by several new ones.
Another pause, and silence, except for the noise in the distance. After a few minutes there was a roar from our side of the main valley as our field guns opened one after another in a more deliberate fire upon the position of the German guns. After six reports there was again silence, save for the whirr of the shells as they sang up the small valley, and then followed the flashes and balls of smoke—one, two, three, four, five, six, as the shrapnel burst nicely over what in the haze looked like some ruined buildings at the edge of a wood.
Again, after a short interval, the enemy's gunners reopened with a burst, still further prolonging the smoke, which was by now merged into one solid screen above a considerable length of trench, and again did our guns reply. And so the duel went on for some time. Ignoring our guns, the German artillerymen, probably relying on concealment for immunity, were concentrating all their efforts in a particularly forceful effort to enfilade our trenches. For them it must have appeared to be the chance of a lifetime, and with their customary prodigality of ammunition they continued to pour bouquet after bouquet of high-explosive Einheitsgeschoss, or combined shrapnel and common shell, on to our works. Occasionally, with a roar, a high-angle projectile would sail over the hill and blast a gap in the village.
In the hazy valleys bathed in sunlight not a man, not a horse, not a gun, nor even a trench was to be seen. There were only flashes, smoke, and noise. Above, against the blue sky, were several round white clouds hanging in the track of the only two visible human souls—represented by a glistening speck in the air. On high also were to be heard the more or less gentle reports of the bursts of the anti-aircraft projectiles.
Upon inquiry as to the losses sustained it was found that our men had dug themselves well in. In that collection of trenches were portions of four battalions of British soldiers—the Dorsets, the West Kents, the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, and the King's Own Scottish Borderers. Over 300 projectiles were fired against them. The result was nine men wounded.
On the following day 109 shells were fired at the trenches occupied by the West Kent Regiment alone. Four officers were buried, but dug out unhurt. One man was scratched.
All through the second week of the battle, from September 20 to September 28, there was a succession of night attacks. Those delivered on the nights of September 21 and September 23 were especially violent. In the fierce bayonet fights—sometimes on the line of the trenches—the British infantry never failed to prove their superiority. The losses of the enemy were punishingly heavy, not merely in the fire-fights, but in the pursuit when the survivors turned to fly. The object of these tactics of bombardment throughout the day, and of infantry assaults at night, kept up without intermission, was plainly so to wear the British force down that in the end it must give way and be swept back to the Aisne in rout.
For such a victory the Germans were ready to pay a very high price. They paid it—but for defeat. What may be considered the culminating effort was launched against the trenches held by the 1st division on the extreme British right. The division's advanced position close under the ridge near Craonne had all through been a thorn. On the night of September 27 an apparently overwhelming force was flung upon it. Aided by the play of searchlights the German masses strove with might and main. The fight lasted for hours. To say that it was repulsed is evidence enough. The next night the attack was repeated with, if anything, greater violence. It was the fight of the Guards Brigade over again, but on a greater scale. Imagine such a struggle with 50,000 men involved; a fighting mass nearly three miles in extent; the fire of rifles and machine guns and artillery; the gleam of clashing bayonets; the searchlights throwing momentarily into view the fury of a mêlée and then shutting it off to light up another scene of struggle. Fortunately for the British, the columns of attack were ripped up before the trenches could be reached. Men fell in rows, held up by the wire entanglements and shot wholesale. This was the enemy's last great stroke.
From that time the British won forward until they gained the ridge, seized Craonne and all the hostile positions along the Chemin des Dames.