CHAPTER VIII
I.—OPERATIONS ON THE SOMME—(Continued).
It is not seemly to be too modest about the Somme, nor to insist over-much upon the limitation of the Allied objective. We know that it was not intended to drive the Germans out of France; at least, not in 1916. As a fact, in the Spring of 1917 there was a big German retirement, which was only voluntary in the sense that the enemy bowed to necessity before necessity broke him, and again, in the Autumn of 1918, there was another big German retreat, which brought the war to an end. They take a short view who fail to see the direct and intimate connection between the campaign of 1916 and the decisive results in the following two years. The British Commander, while the future was still veiled, had no illusions on this point. Wielding, like the Castilian knight of old, ‘now the pen and now the sword,’ Sir Douglas Haig, when he indited his great Despatch on December 29th, 1916, stated without reserve, that:
‘Verdun had been relieved; the main German forces had been held on the Western front; and the enemy’s strength had been very considerably worn down. Any one of these results is in itself sufficient,’ he avowed, ‘to justify the Somme battle. The attainment of all three of them affords ample compensation for the splendid efforts of our troops and for the sacrifices made by ourselves and our Allies. They have brought us a long step forward towards the final victory of the Allied cause.[62]’
‘A long step forward,’ not necessarily in the eyes of the old men and children who stuck pins in their wall-maps at home; and yet not a short step either, even when measured by this exacting standard. Let us look at the map once more and stick in some imaginary pins on our own account. First, take the straight, white road from Albert to Bapaume, and divide it into eleven equal parts, representing its length of, approximately, eleven miles. Just before the second milestone (or mile-pin) from Albert, mark the point where the Allied line crossed the road on July 1st, 1916, and just beyond the eight milestone mark the point where the Allied line crossed the road on December 31st. They had devoured (or ‘nibbled’ was the word) six miles in six months, including the villages of Pozières and Le Sars, and were less than three miles distant from Bapaume. Next, observe the effect of this protrusion on the reach, or embrace, of the Allied arms. Take the Ancre and the Somme as frontiers, and prick out from the point by the second milestone a line running northwards to the left of Thiepval and across the Ancre to Beaumont-Hamel, and southwards to the left of Fricourt and Mametz, then to the right of Maricourt, then left of Curlu to the Somme. This was the Allied line on July 1st. Take the same boundaries again, and prick out from the point by the eighth milestone a line running northwards to the left of Warlencourt and Grandcourt, then to the right of Thiepval, Beaucourt and Beaumont-Hamel, and southwards to the right of Flers, Lesbœufs, Sailly, Rancourt, Bouchavesnes and Clèry to the Somme. This, roughly, was the Allied line on December 31st. The pricked-in area, rhombic in shape, which means neither round nor square, encloses a large number of square miles re-captured from reluctant Germans. It did not include Bapaume itself, nor Péronne, nor St. Quentin, nor Brussels; the time for these had not arrived. But it took in many towns and hamlets which had known the foot of the invader, it broke huge masses of fortified works which had been designed to shoe the invader’s foot, and, consequently, it seriously shook the moral power of German resistance. We shall not measure the acres of French territory released, for we have no standard by which to calculate the effect of Verdun relieved on the German armies driven homewards between the Ancre and the Somme. Nor is a yard by yard advance properly expressed in terms of mileage. Take any one of the positions re-captured: Mametz, Trônes, Combles, Thiepval itself, and review it for a moment in the series of defences, artificial and natural and natural-artificial, which the tenacious attackers had to overcome. Thus, between Fricourt and Mametz Wood were Lonely Copse, the Crucifix, Shelter Wood, Railway Copse, Bottom Wood, the Quadrangle, etc.: every name a miniature Waterloo to the gallant men who fought and fell there. Nowhere in all that area could a sixteenth of a mile be gained without an elaborate battle-plan and a battle, or several battles, taxing to the utmost the endurance of troops dedicated to victory and resolute to death. So, ‘they brought us a long step forward towards the final victory of the Allied cause.’
We are to contract our range once more to the scope of the 49th Division, and to consider that ‘step’ more particularly in the region north of Albert by the Ancre, where Sir Hubert Gough commanded the Fifth Army. It was not a sensational record. If we follow the Diary of that Army, say, from July 21st to the end of September, we receive, mainly, an impression of containing work excellently done, while the shock of battle broke afar. A few of these entries may be cited:
‘July 21st. 49th Division in Leipsic Salient....
‘July 23rd. Attack by 48th Division and 1st Australian Division. Good progress. 49th Division front South of River Ancre....
‘July 29th. 49th Division left of 12th Division to River Ancre....
‘Aug. 27th. 49th Division relieved 25th Division....
‘Sept. 3rd. South of Ancre 49th Division attacked....
‘Sept. 24th. 18th Division relieved 49th Division....
‘Sept. 27th. 11th Division captured Stuff Redoubt.
‘Sept. 28th. 18th Division attacked Schwaben Redoubt.’
Except on September 3rd, to which we shall come back, the work of the 49th Division, seen from this angle of vision, appears more passive than active.
Let us enlarge the angle considerably. Instead of Sir Hubert Gough’s, consult Major-General Perceval’s Diary, the Divisional instead of the Army Commander’s. We come nearer to action in that aspect.
Between July 21st and the 27th there were ‘three encounters with the enemy in the Leipsic Salient.’ On the 21st, he made a bombing attack; on the 22nd, the 4th York and Lancasters ‘attempted to extend our position in the Salient to the east by surprise,’ but were foiled; on the 23rd, the 4th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry made a similar attempt, ‘but consolidation was prevented by a heavy counter-attack from all sides, and our troops retired to their original line.’ From the Army Commander’s point of view, a single entry sufficed for these exploits; the Divisional Commander had to account for nearly five hundred casualties in the period.
Take the 28th of July to the 4th of August. There were 279 casualties in the Division, due, partly, to ‘a considerable amount of trench-mortar fire on the Leipsic Salient and Authuille Wood’; and who shall say but that every wounded man made a definite contribution to the Somme advance? Yet Sir Hubert Gough was content to observe: ‘49th Division left of 12th.’ Or, August 26th to September 1st. General Perceval’s entry on the 27th merely repeats (or we should say, anticipates) Sir Hubert Gough’s at greater length: ‘Divisional Headquarters returned from Acheux to Hedauville, and at mid-day the Command of the line from Thiepval Avenue (exclusive) to River Ancre passed from 25th to 49th Division.’ There is a further entry in this Diary, which, being a record of work done in the ordinary course of duty, the Army Commander did not reproduce: ‘With a view to an attack on German trenches north of Thiepval Wood, the new saps and parallels to the north of the Wood have been completed, ammunition-trenches improved, and dumps formed and filled with ammunition, bombs, R.E. stores, etc.’
So far the Divisional Commander, in expansion of Sir Hubert Gough. There are next the Battalion Commanders to be consulted; and, still omitting at present the Divisional record of the week including September 3rd, when ‘49th Division attacked,’ we may once more enlarge the angle, and examine this preparation for attack from a Battalion Commander’s point of view. Thus, we read that:
‘On August 26th, the Battalion[63] was sent up to the trenches on the right of Thiepval Wood.... Captain R. Salter was killed instantaneously by a shell as soon as he got to Battalion Headquarters. We were in this line for only two days, but had 52 casualties as there was a good deal of shelling.... The Battalion was relieved on August 28th by the 5th K.O.Y.L.I., and went into huts in Martinsart Wood; from here we had to find large working parties in the front line for two or three days, and then had a rest until the attack on September 3rd.’
We are brought back, like Master Pathelin, à nos moutons. The ‘long step forward’ was achieved, the Battle of the Somme was won, by the Allied Armies working to the plans of Sir Douglas Haig and Marshal Joffre. Those plans included the provision of a separate Army on the Ancre, to hold the German forces in that area, and to make what progress they could. The Commander of that Fifth Army was Sir Hubert Gough, and Major-General Perceval’s West Riding (49th) Division was included as a unit of its Xth Corps. What happened, then, on September 3rd, when the new saps and parallels had been constructed, the communication-trenches improved, and the dumps filled with bombs and ammunition? How did the 49th attack, and what have the Officers Commanding its Battalions to add to the bare record of Sir Hubert Gough or the more expansive Diary of the Divisional Commander?
The units immediately concerned were the 4th and 5th Battalions, West Riding Regiment, and the 6th and 8th Battalions, West Yorks. The 7th Battalion of each Regiment was stationed in reserve. The week’s casualties in the Division were high:
| OFFICERS. | OTHER RANKS. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Killed | 14 | 196 | |
| Wounded | 47 | 994 | |
| Missing | 17 | 611 | |
| 78 | 1801 | ||
| Total | 1879 |
and the bulk of them occurred on September 3rd. The large percentage of missing in all ranks (more than a third of the whole) seems to indicate a hasty retreat from untenable positions.
The presumption is borne out by Battalion records. These agree that co-operation was interrupted by a bad block in communication, and that Battalions were not able to render one another all the support that was expected. Each unit tended to believe that its own advance was held up, or, rather, that its withdrawal was necessitated, by what had happened on its right or left; and, consequently, the exploits of individuals were more conspicuous than the conduct of the attack. Zero hour was 5-10 a.m., and the Companies left the trenches punctually and went over in good order. But the half-light caused some confusion, and communication proved very difficult. In the instance of several Battalions no definite news was received for three hours or more. Runners failed to get through, and rumours were not satisfactory. At last, about 9 o’clock, tidings began to arrive of heavy losses incurred in trying to consolidate captured positions under a cross enfilade of machine-gun and rifle fire. Remnants of Companies, driven back after a long morning’s heavy fighting told of the exhaustion of their bombs, and of their messages lost in No Man’s Land. Stray parties cut off in the attack, found cover in shell-holes until nightfall. One Commanding Officer frankly wrote, ‘the whole attack failed.’ ‘The objectives were gained,’ he summed up, ‘but the first casualties in Officers and N.C.O.’s were heavy, and therefore the men with power of “leadership” were lost when most needed to hold on. The presence of the enemy in the Pope’s Nose (a machine-gun nest at an early point) upset all chances of reinforcements and supply except across the open’—an almost impossible condition. The runners, as we saw, did not get across, and the light was too bad for the observation posts to give effective help. On the other hand, the daylight was too strong to consolidate under fire the battered German trenches which had been captured. There was, unfortunately, a ‘but’ or an ‘if’ which qualified every record of success; and we may quote the following statement from a Battalion Diary, which gives a very fair impression of the whole episode:
‘From the reports of the two Officers who returned to Battalion Headquarters from the battle, it was ascertained that for the most part a really good fight was put up. If Battalion Headquarters had been able to get any information back, it is practically certain that the position would not have been lost. The men fought splendidly, and in many cases without N.C.O.’s or Officers, and the losing of the captured position was a piece of bad luck.’
‘What remained of our assaulting troops,’ says General Perceval, ‘were back in our trenches,’ about 10 a.m., having ‘sustained heavy casualties and lost most of their Officers.’ A re-attack was planned for 6 p.m., but was countermanded during the afternoon, and the 146th Infantry Brigade was withdrawn to Forceville and the 147th to Hedauville. So, the 49th Division had attacked, and the whole attack had failed; but between these two bald statements lie detailed records of a courageous attempt, which we shall not pursue further, but which contributed in this hard-held sector to the ‘long step forward’ which was being taken on the Allied front at large. German records, so far as we have seen them, confirm the seriousness of the attack. We read there how ‘matters had meanwhile become still worse,’ and how Company was added to Company in order to meet the impending danger. ‘Lieut. Engel’s Company signalled “Please send support,”’ and his experience was repeated in other sectors; ‘our Minenwerfer intervened at the most opportune moment’. On the whole, the enemy’s accounts increase admiration for the 49th Division.
It is particularly interesting to record that, in the course of this summer and autumn, a Regiment of Yorkshire Yeomanry met their friends of the 49th Division in and about the defences of Thiepval. We shall come, in Chapter XIV below, to the experiences of the Mounted Troops who left the West Riding for France during 1915. There we shall see how they served as Divisional Cavalry for several months, and how, in May, 1916, they were re-organized as Corps Cavalry, and were set to do various duties, not always appropriate to their Arm, which they discharged with a thoroughness and an efficiency worthy of the best traditions of the Service. The Yorkshire Dragoons were posted to the IInd Corps, which, on July 25th, 1916, took over that sector of the Fifth Army front which lay between Ovillers-la-Boisselle and Thiepval. The hopes of a Cavalry situation, unfortunately, never materialized, but the Dragoons did excellent work during the Battle of the Somme by maintaining Observation Posts in forward areas, thus short-circuiting the means of communication between Corps Headquarters and Battalion Commanders. ‘During operations,’ we are told, ‘information received in this way and from other sources was embodied each day in maps and reports, which were sent up by despatch rider during the night, and reached front line units in time for the usual attack at dawn.... The observers were sometimes asked to undertake special work of great importance. Before several attacks they were required to reconnoitre and map the enemy’s wire. The slightest mistake might have lost hundreds of lives, but it was never made.’ Among the names which we may mention honoris causa in connection with this service are those of Captain, later Major, R. Brooke; Major, later Lieut.-Col., R. Thompson; Sergts. Storer and Tinker (Military Medals), and Corpl., later Sergt., Cranswick (Bar to M.M.).
Let us consult the map once more.
THIEPVAL DEFENCES.
In the extreme right-hand corner will be seen the village of Pozières on the straight road (Albert-Bapaume), which ran diagonally across the battlefield. In the extreme left-hand bottom corner are Martinsart and Martinsart Wood, on the safe side of the River Ancre, where spent Battalions of the 49th Division used to withdraw to lick their wounds. The course of the Ancre is clearly shown from just above Albert to Miraumont, winding its stream under Authuille and Hamel Bridges; and between Authuille and St. Pierre Divion lie Thiepval and Thiepval Wood, the possession of which was so hotly contested since the battle was first joined on July 1st. The more we look at this timbered countryside, with its chalk-pits, its farms and mills, the more unsuitable it seems to the red carnage of 1916. Yet the troops behaved magnificently, and Sir Douglas Haig sent several messages during these trying weeks to express his thanks and appreciation. To one Battalion he sent on August 30th by the hands of the Divisional Commander a sprig of white heather as an emblem of good luck. Hard though the going was, and bad though the luck seemed to be, making acclimatization tedious and difficult, it rarely happened, even among raw troops, that the conditions proved too exacting. Very typical of the spirit of the Division, in the midst of its harassing experiences, where the room designed by nature for smiles was too narrow almost to contain its special circles of man’s inferno, was the part borne in the third week of September by the 7th Battalion of the West Riding Regiment. They had been at Hedauville since September 4th, at two hours’ march from Martinsart Wood, whither, in order to go into the line, they moved on Friday, September 15th. There they had tea, and took rations for the next day, and were loaded with two bombs per man, and so proceeded from 7 p.m. to new trenches, south of Thiepval, which had been captured only the night before. The relief was delayed in execution partly by artillery barrage, partly by an attack of German bombers, partly by heavy rain, and partly by too few guides; there was only one guide to each Company, ‘and these were strange to the trenches and had difficulty in finding the way.’ It was completed by 4-20 in the morning (September 16th), and during ‘intermittent shelling’ all that Saturday arrangements were concerted for an attack on the German trenches in the evening of the 17th. This operation was most successful; on the left an objective was gained, and held, 350 feet in advance of schedule. The details are not uninteresting, and will repay closer study, not because the area of the attack was large in proportion to the whole battlefield, but because it was difficult terrain and the obstacles were well overcome.
Just north of the famous Leipsic Salient on the map, lay, first, the Hohenzollern Trench and, secondly, the Wonder Work: two strongly fortified positions. Eastward out of Thiepval, from the point where the road from the Cemetery meets the main road in a right angle, ran the Zollern Trench, terminating (for present purposes) at the Zollern Redoubt north of Mouquet Farm. Further along the road from the Cemetery, at a point about as far north of the Crucifix as the Cemetery is south of it, the Stuff Trench started to run eastwards, parallel to the Zollern Trench below. It was very elaborately fortified, and terminated in the Stuff Redoubt still further above Mouquet Farm. The Regina Trench ran further eastward, from about the point where the Stuff Trench terminated. Parallel with the road from the Cemetery and Crucifix, the Lucky Way ran up towards Grandcourt, and the Grandcourt Trench branched off eastward a little below the village, again in a parallel line with the Regina and Zollern Trenches. West of that Cemetery road and crossing the Divion Road about half-way between the Cemetery and St. Pierre Divion was the horrible Schwaben Redoubt; and, though these names do not exhaust the German defences of Thiepval, they recall sufficiently the opposition to the 7th West Ridings and their support on this third Sunday in September. The assault was made in four waves at intervals of fifteen, twenty and fifteen feet, the unit being a Platoon. A Bomb Squad, consisting of one N.C.O. and eleven other Ranks, accompanied each half-Company, and every man of the last two waves carried either a pick or a shovel. Report Centres, main and subsidiary, Battalion Scouts, and other special parties were detailed for duty, and all Troops were reported in position at 6 p.m. Nearly everything went right, except that a portion of D Company, including both Lewis Guns and their detachments, were believed to have advanced towards the Row of Apple Trees, and were either taken prisoners or wiped out by machine-gun fire. About 7 o’clock reports were received that the objective had been captured, though it was doubtful how the left flank had fared. The total casualties in this little action were five Officers and 215 other Ranks. Certain valuable lessons were learned: the action proved that the jumping-off trench should be parallel to the objective (this precaution enabled direction to be kept accurately); that every man, and not merely the last comers, should carry a pick or shovel, fastened to his body by rope or tape; and that the consolidating parties should either be kept back till the barrage stops or require dug-outs: trivial details, perhaps, but they saved life and added to efficiency. We may add that the Army Commander, Sir Hubert Gough, visited the Battalion on September 19th, and expressed his satisfaction with the operation, which gained an important part of the enemy defences after five previous attempts had failed, and served to straighten the line held by the 147th Infantry Brigade north of the Leipsic Salient.
A still more important lesson had been learned, and the means were now at hand to apply it. If these formidable blockhouses were to be crushed, a new military weapon was essential, and early on September 15th the first Tank waddled into warfare. From this date to the end of September, by a brilliant series of advances from the south, across and along the Albert-Bapaume Road, a victorious crown was put to the tenacious vigil and hard fighting of the Fifth Army, and the attack swung round at last on the pivot held by Sir Hubert Gough. This attack (September 26th) was described by Sir Douglas Haig as not less than
‘a brilliant success. On the right,’ he narrated, ‘our troops (2nd and 1st Canadians Divisions of the Canadian Corps, Lieut.-General Sir J. H. G. Byng) reached the system of enemy trenches which formed their objectives without great difficulty. In Thiepval and the strong works to the north of it the enemy’s resistance was more desperate. Three waves of our attacking troops (11th and 18th Divisions, II. Corps, Lieut.-General C. W. Jacob) carried the outer defences of Mouquet Farm, and, pushing on, entered Zollern Redoubt, which they stormed and consolidated.... On the left of the attack fierce fighting, in which Tanks again gave valuable assistance to our troops (18th Division), continued in Thiepval during that day and the following night, but by 8-30 a.m. on the 27th September the whole of the village of Thiepval was in our hands.... On the same date the south and west sides of Stuff Redoubt were carried by our troops (11th Division), together with the length of trench connecting that strong point with Schwaben Redoubt to the west, and also the greater part of the enemy’s defensive line eastwards along the northern slopes of the ridge. Schwaben Redoubt was assaulted during the afternoon of the 28th September (18th Division), and ... we captured the whole of the southern face of the Redoubt and pushed out patrols to the northern face and towards St. Pierre Divion’[64]:
grand exploits these, and infinitely welcome to the gallant Territorials of the West Riding, who had shared since July 1st in the long and formidable task of holding that north-west corner till the appointed hour struck for its fall, and their work could be resumed and fitted in with the larger plans of the Allied Commands.
We might close the present chapter here. The full story of September 15th and the days which followed at Thiepval is involved with other volumes of war history than that of the 49th Division. The romance of the coming of the Tanks belongs to the Machine-Gun Corps, Heavy Section; the death of Raymond Asquith in the attack belongs to the Grenadier Guards, and to the eminent family of which he was a member. What belongs to us, as the inalienable heritage of the Troops commanded by General Perceval, is the fact that for three months, less three days, from their first assembly in Aveluy Wood, they held on firmly and grimly to that narrow foothold in the Ancre Valley which was dominated always by German guns. They went and came to the muddy, bloody trenches, from Authuille Wood, Aveluy Wood, Martinsart Wood, day by day, under a pitiless harvest sun or a yet more pitiless autumnal rain; and by their steadfastness and tenacity, even more than by their toll of German life or their fragmentary captures of German trenches, they enabled Sir Douglas Haig to perfect, without haste and without undue anxiety, the long, slow sweep of his advance which swung back on Thiepval at the last. And, though the details at this stage must be kept subordinate to the main features, lest we should seem to claim more than a just share, yet it is satisfactory to observe that certain Battalions of our Division participated in these final operations. Thus the 5th West Yorkshires were detailed as support to the 7th Bedfordshire Regiment for the attack on Schwaben Redoubt on September 27th. They were formed up on that afternoon, and again before daybreak the next morning. Zero hour was fixed finally at 1 p.m. On that day the three supporting Companies became a part of the main advance, and the final Brigade objective was reached by a mixture of both units, the men from Yorkshire and Beds. It was a fine conclusion to the waiting orders imposed after July 1st, and it elicited the following fine testimony from Major-General T. H. Shoubridge, C.B., C.M.G., Commanding the 54th Infantry Brigade, in a letter dated October 1st, 1916, and addressed to Major-General Perceval:
‘I feel I must write and tell you how splendidly the 5th West Yorkshire supported the attack of the 7th Bedfordshire Regiment on the Schwaben Redoubt.... The Battalion had, I fear, a trying time, as the attack was postponed, and I had to bring them up in support at night, though they had practically been told they would not be wanted that night. In spite of all difficulties, when the final attack took place, they formed up in perfect order and advanced during the attack with marked determination. I was very struck with the soldierly qualities of the men and the keenness they displayed, and I am very proud to have had them under my Command.... All my Battalions are full of praise for the Artillery support afforded them both during the attack on Thiepval and the subsequent attack on Schwaben Redoubt.... We all feel very grateful to the troops of your Division associated with us.... Forgive type,’ added the gallant General, ‘Have just come out of the battle, and have no ink!’
Recognition, too, eminently merited, reached the 49th Divisional Commander from Lieut.-General C. W. Jacob, Commanding, as we saw, the II. Corps. He wrote, on October 3rd:
‘As the Division under your Command has now been transferred to another Corps, I take this opportunity of thanking you, your Staff, the Commanders of Brigades, and all Ranks of the Division, for all the good work you put in while you were in the II. Corps.
‘The conditions were trying, and your casualties heavy. The calls made on units necessitated great exertions, which were always cheerfully carried out. The gallantry of the Officers and men is shown by the large number of decorations won by them, and the spirit of all Ranks is good. The clearing of the Leipsic Salient, the prompt way all calls for raids on the enemy’s trenches were met, and the heavy work done by the Division in the preparations for the final attack on Thiepval are gratifying records.... It was unfortunate that the Division as a whole could not take part in the final capture of Thiepval, but you will all be glad to know that your representatives in that battle, the 49th Divisional Artillery and the 146th Infantry Brigade, did excellent work, and added still further to the good reputation of the Division.’
Schwaben Redoubt, we may add, was not retained without a struggle. There was still one corner to be seized where the Regina Trench branched out in the direction of Courcelette, and, running north of that village, came down towards the Albert-Bapaume Road, almost immediately above Le Sars; and these gains, too, were made and held despite desperate counter-attacks before the middle of November. So, when winter came down on the Somme battlefield, and the warring armies went to earth, the Allied line which had bulged in towards Albert now bulged out towards Bapaume. ‘That these troops should have accomplished so much under such conditions ... constitutes a feat of which the history of our nation records no equal.’[65] We have tried to describe this feat, in so far as concerns the part, modest in area, indeed, but very exacting in performance, which was played by the 49th Division and we have tried to exhibit that part in its true relation to the drama as a whole.
We may now touch upon one or two details.
Before the close of 1916 a third Victoria Cross fell to the share of the 49th Division. The recipient was Major (then Captain) W. B. Allen, of the 1/3rd West Riding Field Ambulance, attached to the 246th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery. The gallant Officer had already received the decoration of the Military Cross, and we cite here the official record of the circumstances in which the supreme reward was won:
‘For most conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty. When gun detachments were unloading H.B. Ammunition from wagons which had just come up, the enemy suddenly began to shell the battery and the ammunition, and caused several casualties. Captain Allen saw the occurrences and at once, with utter disregard of danger, ran straight across the open, under heavy shell fire, commenced dressing the wounded, and undoubtedly by his promptness saved many of them from bleeding to death. He was himself hit four times during the first hour by pieces of shell, one of which fractured two of his ribs, but he never mentioned this at the time, and coolly went on with his work till the last man was dressed and safely removed. He then went over to another battery and tended a wounded Officer. It was only when this was done that he returned to his dug-out and reported his own injury’.
Every Arm of the Service had its heroes. Major Allen in the R.A.M.C. earned the Victoria Cross; Major Alan F. Hobson, D.S.O., in the West Riding Divisional Royal Engineers, who was killed on August 26th, earned the following tribute from a brother-officer of his unit:
‘Poor Hobson, our Major, was killed about three days ago by a shell in the neighbourhood of our work. One has read of lovable, brave leaders in personal histories of previous wars. Hobson was one of those men whom writers love to describe as the best and truest type of an Englishman. He never asked one of us to go where he would not go himself. He was always happy, even-tempered and just.’
A hero’s grave or the Victoria Cross: it was a common choice, settled by fate during the war, and at no time commoner or more inevitable than during these Battles of the Somme. A few extracts from the letters of a fallen Officer may be given in conclusion to this period, not because they differ essentially (for a happy style is an accident of fortune) from other letters sent home from the Western front, but because they express in word-pictures, compiled on the spot and at first hand, the spirit of the very gallant men whose cheerful devotion in 1916 made possible the victory of 1918.
First, an account of an ordinary sight by the roadside:
‘While we were waiting for orders there was a constant procession of troops going up and troops going back from the front line. It was an intensely interesting procession to me, but there were some terribly sad sights of mangled men being brought back on stretchers. The “walking cases” were very pathetic; one in particular I remember. A young Officer leaning heavily upon the arm of one of his men, the right side of his face bandaged up. His left eye closed in agony, along he stumbled, while on each side of him our guns went off with a roar that must have been trying to a man evidently so shattered in nerve, and all the time he was exposed to Boche shelling.’
Another extract from the same letter:
‘It is a pitiable sight to see horses badly wounded, poor dumb things, so brave and patient under shell fire. When one is riding near one of one’s own batteries, and guns suddenly belch forth flame and smoke over one’s head, these dear creatures hardly wince. From the time the first shell fell among the horses until we left the town—about two hours later, we were dodging shells. When we were outside, the warning hiss of a Fritz caused a funny sight. Those near buildings jumped to a sheltering wall, some of us who were near trees embraced their trunks and dodged round them when we thought the burst would be on one side. We screamed with laughter at each other, but when one burst rather too close, our heads ached and our hearts thumped (anyway, mine did, and it is no use disguising the fact).’
And from the last of this series of dead letters:
‘Presently our trench crossed No Man’s Land—at least, it once was No Man’s Land; now it belongs to us until we can turn it over to its proper owners. We examined Fritz’s handiwork where he had spent months of watching and fighting. We could see what British fighting was like by the evidence there.... At one place we were within forty yards of him, but we heard no sound. The only sound that broke the stillness of that beautiful day was the bang of our own guns and the swish of our crumps overhead. At one point, close to the tangled wire of Fritz’s front line, we saw a sad sight, perhaps the saddest sight of war, groups of our own lads, sleeping, sleeping, sleeping. Heroes, they had done their bit and there they lie. They have died so that others can live to be free from the yoke of a monster in human form, whose greed for power must be stifled.’
‘Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping’: this iterated note conveys, now that the war is over and the maps are folded and put away, a tender thought properly keyed, at which to close our account of the Somme battlefield. It is a field of great achievement and of pious memories, hallowed for all time in English history, and the ‘more’ that remained to be done, as foreseen in the vision of this writer, could not be more worthily accomplished than in the spirit of the heroes of the Somme.
II. WINTER, 1916-17.
It was the peculiarity of the war in France and Flanders that there was no clear ending to any battle. At Ypres, at Verdun, and on the Somme, the tide of war flowed with full flood, and ebbed away without definite decision. There was a little more erosion of the trenches on one side or the other, a few more miles of territory submerged, or disengaged from the invader, revealing, when the tide rolled back, the waste and ravage and destruction, and then a temporary lull, till
‘The tide comes again,
And brims the little sea-shore lakes, and sets
Seaweed afloat, and fills
The silent pools, rivers, and rivulets,
Among the inland hills.’
We reach such a coign of observation, such a lull, less real than apparent, for brave men were being killed every day, in the period from November to January, 1916-17. It lay between the exhaustion of the Somme offensive and the refluent wave of battle-fury up and down the line in early spring; and this brief interval may be utilized to pick up a few stray threads.
Let us look at home in the first instance.
The West Riding Territorial Force Association had by now settled down to its stride. We left its members in 1915[66] struggling, perhaps a little breathlessly, with difficulties of accountancy in their Separation Allowance Department, with the organization of Auxiliary Hospitals, the equipment of 2nd and 3rd Line units, the formation of a National Reserve, and the constant perplexities of the recruiting problem. We find them at the close of the next year with one Division crowned with honour in the field, with another Division straining at the leash, and with a certain reduction in their commitments, owing partly to National Service legislation, partly to firmer methods at Whitehall, and partly to other causes. Necessity had nationalized the war; and, though more than 52,000 accounts of soldiers’ wives and dependants were now on the Paymaster’s books, though more than 3,000 beds in 53 Auxiliary Hospitals were now available in the Riding, and more than 21,000 pairs of socks and 45,000 other comforts had been despatched to the troops during the winter, the Association had thoroughly mastered the technique of war administration when the original triumvirate of Lord Harewood, Lord Scarbrough and General Mends, as President, Chairman and Secretary respectively, was broken up in February, 1917, by Lord Scarbrough’s transfer to the War Office as Director-General of the Territorial and Volunteer Forces.[67]
The appearance of the words ‘and Volunteer’ requires a brief note of explanation. The Chairman informed his Association in January, 1917, that the local administration of the Volunteer Force had, at the request of the Army Council, been undertaken by County Associations. ‘Generally speaking,’ ran the writ,[68] ‘the division of functions between the local military authorities and T.F. Associations in regard to the Volunteer Force will correspond to that obtaining in the case of the Territorial Force in times of peace.’ It was not, perhaps, the best precedent to select, but it was the best available in the circumstances, and an historian will surely arise to tell the story of the part-time soldier in the Great War, what he did and what he might have been used to do. Such historian will be endowed with imagination to sympathise with the buffeted patriot in the early days of the war, and he will possess sufficient knowledge of the facts to follow his tangled skein of fortune through the maze of legislative enactments and contracting-out tribunals, which cast him up on the lap of his tired country, in November, 1918, half a volunteer and half a conscript and the most melancholy mongrel of the Army Council. This, happily, is not our present business. We are simply concerned to show how the Volunteer Act of 1916, which had become law late in December, brought the Volunteer Force into the orbit of the County Associations on the one part and of the Director-General of the Territorial Force on the other. That Act made provision for Volunteers to enter into an agreement with His Majesty for the performance of certain duties of home defence ‘for a period not exceeding the duration of the present war.’ The time-clause was the essence of the contract. Till then, under the Act of 1863, a Volunteer, prior to mobilization, which could only ensue in case of imminent invasion, and which never ensued during the late war, had the right to quit his Corps at his own option on giving a fortnight’s notice to his Commanding Officer. Under these conditions he was plainly no soldier, however elastic the terms of his employment. He could neither be clothed nor trained at the public expense, for the public would have no value for their money if the Force, or any part of it, walked out at fourteen days’ notice. Permanence of service was then first obtained when the Volunteer Force was reconstituted out of personnel bound by agreements entered into under the new Act of 1916; and thus it happened at the beginning of the next year that the work of Associations was increased by responsibility for the local administration of the Volunteer units raised in their respective counties, and that these duties were tacked on to the machinery of the Territorial Force organization. How heavy the duties became may be measured by a single item of statistics: as many as 217 Army Council Instructions referring exclusively to the Volunteer Force were promulgated before the date of the Armistice.
Lastly, reference is due to German action during this lull, or to what we know or may infer about it. Plainly, their moral had been badly shaken. Sir Douglas Haig was resolute on this point, and the extraordinary ‘all but’ luck which dogged their campaign on the Western front from the beginning to the end of the war, and of which the full military explanation must await the evidence from their side, was as characteristic at Verdun as anywhere. They all but got home to their objective: so nearly that the German Emperor’s telegrams, which he used to compose after the model of his grandfather’s in the 1870-71 campaign, just missed being accurate by a few yards; and this ‘little less, and what worlds apart,’ which separated the Crown Prince from victory, however cleverly wrapped up in the language of public despatches, must have caused more than common chagrin. For actually it was Verdun which was wanted, the right breast of the mother of men, and not the outposts of its defences, nor even the serried rows of French dead. These might serve in less vital regions to dazzle the eyes of the world; at Verdun, they drew attention to the defeat. Nor was consolation to be derived from the results of that attempt to relieve Verdun which we have followed in the battles of the Somme. The higher ground, or ridges, still remained in German possession, but it was a precarious hold, as we shall see, and, while the mere configuration of the ground was soon to tell in favour of the Allies, other factors, which cannot be mapped except in an atlas of psychology, were beginning already to count. The repeated losses of fortified positions, culminating in the Wonder Work and Redoubts which had resisted the assaults of July 1st, were disastrous not only on their own account but also as indicating a weakness which might conceivably spread to the Rhine. If the theory of defence proved unsound, no degree of valour in practice would ever avail to put it right. We must not prejudge this question. We are not writing the German history of the war. But it is legitimate to say that, apart from the general retirement which the Germans ordered in March, 1917, and which reached a rate of ten miles a day, our troops gradually discovered a change in the enemy’s system of defences. He began, first on the British and afterwards on the French front, to abandon the formal lines of trenches, and to employ the natural features of the soil, when and where these might occur, as the basis of his defences. The crater, or shell-hole cavity, was brought into use in this way, and no outward mark was allowed to distinguish a fortified group of craters, subterraneously connected with one another and otherwise rendered formidable, from harmless groups in its immediate neighbourhood. Thus, the cession by the Germans of ‘only our foremost crater-positions,’ or of a ‘craterfield’ tout court, began to figure in their reports for the edification or delusion of German readers. An integral part of the crater-system, as worked out more elaborately at a later date, was the ‘pill-box,’ or sunk blockhouse, which was strengthened towards the foe and left more thinly built on the home side, so as to render it useless as a weapon should its fire be directed by its captors. We may conclude that the blows which had been dealt at the continuous lines of trenches in the battles of the Ancre and the Somme had alarmed the German High Command; and that a part of the motive for the retirement (and a very effective part it proved) was to prepare those fortified groups and concrete nests of deadly machine-gun fire at all kinds of irregular distances. The intention was partly to deceive the airman’s eye, and to stop that preparation of exact trench-maps to which the Germans had borne testimony on the Somme. But partly, too, the modification of the defence-system implied that our offensive had not been vain. Its immediate effect, accordingly, however serious and impeding it was to prove, was not without good hope. The vaunted theory of ‘impregnability’ had been shaken, and, though the end of the war was still out of sight, yet Thiepval, like Jutland, bore a message which the rest of the war was to expound.
Full information on these problems is still lacking from the German side, and without it, as indicated above, our conclusions must be indicated hypothetically. But all the evidence now available makes it clear that they are reasonably correct. Thus, Ludendorff, writing after a tour of the Western Front in December, 1916, laid stress on the urgent need of re-organizing the fighting power of the German Infantry. The machine-gun had become the chief fire-arm, and ‘our existing machine-guns’, he declared, ‘were too heavy for the purpose.... In order to strengthen our fire, at least in the most important parts of the chief theatre of war, it was necessary to create special Machine-gun Companies—so to speak, Machine-gun Sharp-shooters.’ Attention is also called in the German Commander’s authoritative Memoirs to the need of hand-mines, grenades, and all quick-loading weapons, and to the formation of storm troops. ‘The course of the Somme Battle,’ continues the General, ‘had also supplied important lessons with respect to the construction and plan of our lines. The very deep underground forts in the front trenches had to be replaced by shallower constructions. Concrete “pill-boxes,” which, however, unfortunately took long to build, had acquired an increasing value. The conspicuous lines of trenches, which appeared as sharp lines on every aerial photograph, supplied far too good a target for the enemy Artillery. The system of defence had to be made broader and looser and better adapted to the ground. The large, thick barriers of wire, pleasant as they were when there was little doing, were no longer a protection. They withered under the enemy barrage’; and an angry tribute is paid in his chapter to the equipment of the Entente Armies with war material, which ‘had been developed to an extent hitherto undreamed of,’ and to ‘the resolution of the Entente, their strangling starvation blockade, and their propaganda of lies and hate which was so dangerous to us.’
It is good to see ourselves as our enemy saw us after the Battle of the Somme. And, perhaps, though we are anticipating a month or two, we may conclude this chapter by a quotation from a German Army Order, hitherto unpublished, of April 4th, 1917. It illustrates from another angle the effects of those ‘Entente Armies’ and ‘their propaganda’ to which Ludendorff alludes in such embittered terms. The Order ran:
‘A National Day has been decreed at home for April 12th, in the sense that members of the large Trade Unions and Associations give up that day’s income, salary or wage for the benefit of the Fatherland.
‘The wish has been expressed that this programme may be supported as follows: viz., that Officers and other Ranks may volunteer to give up their pay for one day.
‘All Officers and other Ranks who are willing to abandon for one day the amount of pay due to them will apply to,’ etc.
The captured papers do not disclose the extent of the response to this appeal, but, plainly, at the beginning of 1917, all was not well with the Fatherland.
CHAPTER IX
WITH THE 62nd IN FRANCE
The eleven miles from Albert to Bapaume, eight of which we travelled in the last chapter, should be familiar by now. In order to gain a clear view of the activities of the 62nd Division after its arrival in France, we may now draw a rectilineal figure enclosed by four main roads, with the Albert-Bapaume road as a portion of the base. Call the Albert-Bapaume road A, B. Extend it to C, Cambrai, on the east; draw a line C, Aa, from Cambrai to Arras, north, north-west; draw a line, Aa, D, from Arras to Doullens, west, south-west, and join D, A, Doullens to Albert, to complete the figure. On C, Aa, Cambrai-Arras, a triangle may be erected with Douai at its apex, thus connecting this new rectangle with the country, Douai, Lens, La Bassée, Lille, which we visited in Chapter IV. On D, A, Doullens-Albert, another triangle may be erected, with Amiens at the south-western base. We have thus a fairly accurate outline of the lie of the land to which General Braithwaite took his troops in January, 1917, and we know, approximately, at least, how much of that land had been set free by the Battles of the Somme and the Ancre.
The gains in those battles are to be exploited. We shall be occupied for some time to come within the four sides of that shell-ridden quadrangle. The upper road from Doullens to Arras was free, though it was not wise to try to enter Arras except under cover of darkness, as the approach to it from the west was exposed to observation and shell fire, and the town itself had been badly damaged by bombardment. The lower road was free, as we know, till within three miles of Bapaume, whence our front wound round to below Arras. The object now is, to drive the Germans back on the whole long line from Ypres to Reims, and, especially, within this area, to drive them back between Arras and Bapaume, nearer to Douai and Cambrai. That object was achieved, we shall see, in three great battles during 1917:—
- Arras in April and May,
- Ypres (3rd) in June till September, and
- Cambrai at the end of November.
Keeping this large view in mind, and recalling, generally, its relations, as remarked briefly in the last chapter, to the configuration of the soil and the effect of this and of other conditions on the plans of the German High Command,[69] we may follow for a few days the story of one unit’s experiences, in order to set these in relation to the Division, the Corps, and the Army. For from the night of January 11th-12th, when the 62nd Division first slept, or tried to sleep—for it was so cold—on French soil, till the Battle of Arras in April, every Battalion in that Division was engaged in the same driving work: in the same work of driving the Germans back, of anticipating their retreat to prepared positions, of consolidating small but important gains, of proving their own worth as a fighting unit, of breaking out, between Thiepval and Hébuterne, to Serre, Puisieux, Miraumont, Achiet, Irles, Pys, always nearer to the Bapaume-Arras road. We may select for this purpose the 2/5th Battalion of the Duke of Wellington’s West Riding Regiment. It was another Battalion of the same Regiment whose fortunes we followed in Chapter II. from its earliest volunteer beginnings, and now, as then, we possess the advantage of consulting a personal diary kept by an Officer of the selected unit.[70]
The first thing, where everything seemed strange, was to get to know the way about. A ride to Auxi le Château gave opportunity for a ‘very interesting talk’ with an Officer in the 1/5th Battalion of the same Regiment (49th Division). A day or two later came a tour of the trenches in an old London General omnibus. The party visited Acheux and Warlencourt, and then drove along the Doullens-Arras road, which was closed to traffic at one point owing to shelling. They went through Arras, noticing its damage by fire and incendiary shells, and reached the line held by the 7th East Surreys. Here they had an opportunity of watching the system of relief: the East Surreys by the 6th West Kents. ‘It was a daylight relief and worked out very well indeed.’ The reserve and front-line trenches were examined: the latter were highly complicated; all the Platoon dug-outs were in cellars, owing to the ruined state of the houses and factories; at one point, only twenty-five yards from the German front-line. Patrols went out clothed in white to match the snow. A Company cook-house was blown in by trench-mortar fire, wounding two servants and ruining the breakfast. And so back to Doullens and Bus-les-Artois, rejoining their Battalions. This was in January. On February 3rd, ‘the weather was so cold that the ink in my fountain-pen was frozen.’ On the 7th, ‘the cold was so intense that the oil on the Lewis guns froze.’ On the 13th, a tour in the trenches before Serre, in relief of the 1st Dorsets: ‘the sights one saw in and about the trenches rather opened one’s eyes. The dead, both our own and the enemy, were lying about partially buried; rifles, grenades, unexploded shells, bombs and equipment. The trenches themselves did not exist as such, as in most cases they had been blown in.’ On the 15th, the thaw commenced, and in some respects was more intolerable than the frost. The mud in places was two feet deep, and reliefs and so on were considerably hampered.
The shadow, or, rather, the light, of the coming German retreat lay over all. Every trench which was captured brought a wider view and a larger prospect into sight, and there is no doubt that the 62nd Division, to that extent more fortunate than the 49th, arrived at a time and in a locality which afforded, in business parlance, small turn-overs and quick returns. The long waiting experience which ate the heart out of constantly harassed troops was now, temporarily, if not definitely, passed; they were pushing outwards hopefully to open country and signs of the retreat occurred every day. Thus, on February 25th, at 2 o’clock in the morning, the enemy was reported to have vacated Serre, which, if a straight line be drawn from Albert to Arras, may be pricked in just to the left of that line at a point about two-fifths along it. Puisieux lies on the line just above Serre. Achiet-le-Petit, Achiet-le-Grand and Sapignies lie behind Puisieux eastwards, at distances roughly, of two miles. Miraumont is south of Puisieux, Irles south of Achiet-le-Petit, and Pys south of Irles. They are all in the Albert-Arras-Bapaume triangle within the shell-ridden quadrangle above.
Let us start at Serre on that dark February morning. A push was made out and up towards Puisieux. There were strong positions to be negotiated: Gudgeon Trench, Sunken Road, Orchard Alley and Railway. Two patrols were sent out early on the 26th under subaltern Officers of the 2/4th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, and reported Gudgeon and Orchard trenches clear. Later, it was discovered that the patrol’s Gudgeon was a trench not shown on the map, and that the patrol’s Orchard was the true Gudgeon; mist and mud and an unmapped trench are ugly extras in patrol-work. Three Companies (A, B, D) of the Battalion were pushed up to the real Gudgeon trench with orders to put out posts on the Sunken Road in front and an observation-line on the Railway in front of that. They succeeded in placing two outposts, but machine-gun fire stopped the observation-line. There remained the heavily fortified Wundt Werk, which we have not yet mentioned, and which was held by C Company under the Officer Commanding the Battalion. Many fine deeds were performed on this day of continuous exposure to shell and rifle fire. A non-commissioned officer, for example, was sent forward to take charge of a small party, who had been badly knocked about. He kept them under cover in a shell-hole all the rest of the day, and by his coolness and trustworthiness undoubtedly saved their lives.
The 2/4th K.O.Y.L.I. were relieved during the night by the 2/5th West Ridings, to whom we accordingly return. Their new orders were to take Orchard Alley and push outposts in the Sunken Road running from Puisieux to Achiet-le-Petit. At 8 p.m. on February 27th, the Commanding Officer advised the Brigadier that Orchard Alley had been captured; at an early hour the next morning, the outposts in Sunken Road had been established, and later in the day these positions had been consolidated, and touch had been obtained with the 2nd Royal Warwicks on the left and the 2/6th West Ridings on the right. The Brigadier wired his appreciation, and, later, the Military Cross was awarded to Lieut. P. R. Ridley in the following circumstances:—
‘On the evening of 27th-28th February, 1917, the Officer was in charge of a party of three Officers’ patrols, each of one Officer and fifteen other Ranks, detailed to rush Orchard Alley from Gudgeon Trench. Lieut. Ridley was responsible for maintaining the direction, marching on a compass-bearing for 500 yards across unknown and difficult country. This Officer led his party with great dash, shooting one German and capturing another on entering the trench. He showed considerable coolness and ability in the attack, and in organizing the defence of the trench.’
The Military Medal was awarded on the same occasion to Lance-Cpl. Herbert Priestley, who had been in command of a Bombing Section in that party, and who, despite a wound in the head, led his men in a most gallant manner. These were the first honours (first of a long list) in the 62nd Division.
There was to be an attack on Achiet-le-Petit. The course of the offensive indicated it, and it was indicated too, by attack-practices early in March, when 500 men of the 2/5th West Ridings were employed at Forceville in digging trenches similar to the German system at Achiet-le-Petit. On March 15th, after completing sundry exercises, the Battalion proceeded to Miraumont, where they took over a line from the 2/5th King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, half a mile south-east of Achiet-le-Petit. They found the 2/4th of the same Regiment on their right and the 2/7th on their left during this tour. On the 17th, the 2/4th reported that they had occupied an enemy trench 300 yards in advance of their line without meeting opposition; at the same time patrols of the 2/5th found 300 yards in front of them free from the enemy. Hopes rose, as the country began to open out. B Company was promptly ordered to push on through Achiet-le-Petit, and to occupy Sunken Road, north of that village. The remaining Companies also moved forward, and occupied the support-trenches. Later on the same day, a further push was made to Achiet-le-Grand; gaps were to be cut in the wire to let the Cavalry through, and D Company was to push on to Gomiecourt. The wire proved a formidable obstacle; but just before midnight on the 17th the Brigadier was informed that the orders had been carried out. By 4-30 a.m. on March 18th, D Company was in occupation of Gomiecourt. They had encountered only slight machine-gun fire, and five hours later the Cavalry went through. Thenceforward to the end of March, the Battalion stood fast on the ground occupied. There was plenty to do in consolidating it, and plenty of German material left behind which served that purpose. But all existing accommodation had been destroyed, the majority of trees had been killed, several dug-out entrances had been mined, and important road-junctions had been blown up.
We may read a part of this story in more detail. Little exploits fully related illuminate the history which they helped to make. What part was borne by B Company (above) in this adventure? They were commanded by Captain Joseph Walker, whose orders were to hold Resurrection Trench south of Achiet-le-Petit and to capture that village. For three days and nights they came in for a very heavy bombardment, in which the trench was obliterated in parts and severe casualties were suffered. On March 17th, an hour before dawn, two battle-patrols were sent out to the flanks of the village. The rest of the Company followed under Captain Walker, and, despite some machine-gun fire, they took the village and passed through it. They dug-in on the north side and threw out a defensive flank, which drove off the enemy rearguard. Achiet-le-Petit was promptly blown to bits by ‘a terrific barrage of heavy stuff,’ but B Company had not waited for it. At mid-day the Corps Pigeoner arrived with a basket of birds, and reports were sent back to Headquarters. In the evening, instructions came for the whole of the line to move forward and attack Achiet-le-Grand and Gomiecourt. Before this could be done, the German wire had to be cut to allow the Cavalry to pass through. ‘The wire was nearly a hundred yards in depth in three broad belts, and so thick that it had to be dug up in parts.’ The task was completed before daylight by B and C Companies. B Company then advanced to their objective and occupied the western side of Achiet-le-Grand, and A Company cleared Logeast Wood: a good day’s work, it will be admitted.
This narrative may still be expanded: the day’s work is typical of what was happening throughout the district. From Achiet-le-Grand to Gomiecourt, two villages otherwise insignificant, the distance is under two miles. At 1 a.m., March 18th, 1917, there was a heavy mist, and it was difficult to find the road; so ‘we struck across open country on compass-bearing,’ say the records, ‘and arrived in the trenches west of Gomiecourt at 3-30 a.m., occupied these, and then sent out two patrols through the village, but they did not find a soul’: a deserted village, but from other causes than Oliver Goldsmith’s. ‘The junction of every road in the village had been mined and blown up, and everything of value had been destroyed. All fruit-trees had either been cut down, or an incision made round the bark so that the sap would not rise.[71] All wells had been blown in, and one had been poisoned with arsenic,’ so the R.E. Officer reported to our diarist. The R.E.’s took 700 lbs. of unexploded charge out of the cellar of the only village château, where the front stairway had fallen in and there was a big hole in the floor of the entrance hall. We read an interesting note, too, on March 26th: ‘Walked with Lieut. Ridley’ (we watched him win his M.C.) ‘across country to Bapaume’ (the eleven miles had been cleared at last). ‘Noticed the Hôtel de Ville still standing; most other buildings had been blown up. Then went south of the town towards the trenches, but, as these reminded one too much of Beaumont Hamel, had lunch and then came back. Walked along the Bapaume-Arras’ (B, Aa) ‘main road as far as Ervillers’ (a third of the way from Bapaume) ‘and then struck across country to Gomiecourt. Bapaume Town Hall and Sapignies Church had both been mined and left by the enemy and blew up during the night.’ So, the deserted villages bore traces of their late inhabitants.
If a straight line be drawn from Bapaume to Douai, bisecting the Cambrai-Arras road (C, Aa, of our quadrangle), and if that straight line be divided into three equal parts, the village of Bullecourt will be found at one-third of the way from Bapaume and two-thirds from Douai. It is thus well within our quadrangle, yet well on the further side of the road from Bapaume to Arras, along which we just now walked to Ervillers. We shall be occupied with Bullecourt for some time: on April 11th in a snowstorm, when ‘an attack was made against the Hindenburg Line, in the neighbourhood of Bullecourt,’ and again on May 3rd and following days, when ‘it was advisable that Bullecourt should be captured without loss of time.’[72] For the German retreat was at an end.
Bapaume had fallen on March 17th, Péronne on the following day. South and east of Péronne, on the 21st, the Fourth Army had captured forty villages. French troops reached the outskirts of St. Quentin, and counted their villages by the score. The Cavalry, mounted and dismounted, had come in for a bit of their own, and a fine exhilaration of open fighting had been blown like a freshening breeze along the east wall of the shell-torn quadrangle. But after the third week of March the pace of the retreat began to slacken; and, as soon as the first days of April dispelled the cover of the mist, and the wind and the sun dried up the mud from which the Germans had been retiring, their slower pace stiffened into resistance, and their resistance hardened into battle. All along the Hindenburg Line, so much advertised, yet in places so elastic, which was to guard the ridges of observation, the Battle of Arras was engaged in April, May and a part of June, and during the course of that Battle, Bullecourt was won and lost and won again.
No more need be said about the retreat. The precise ratio between initiative and compulsion, precisely how far, that is to say, it was carried through according to plan and directed by forces under German control, will not be settled till the official war-histories of both belligerents have been published, and may even be disputed thereafter. Certainly, it was admirably executed; less certainly, it was voluntary in all its parts; most certainly, it was accompanied by incidents which indelibly stained the reputation of the German Military Command. That ‘the systematic destruction of roads, railways and bridges in the evacuated area made unprecedented demands upon the Royal Engineers,’ or that in four and a half days, for example, from the morning of March 18th the Somme at Brie was rebridged for our troops,[73] were facts of warfare as legitimate for the enemy as they were creditable to his pursuers. What was illegitimate and irreparable was the not less systematic destruction, forbidden in the Pentateuch, as Mr. Buchan[74] notes, of ‘trees for meat’ and water for drinking. We have remarked these features in petto: the single trees felled or slashed, the single wells poisoned or blown in, the single monuments gutted or mined; and France knows the full tale of her own wrongs.
So we come to the Battle of Arras, which opened definitely on April 9th and rolled in thunder along the northern ridges to its renewed flood in the Third Battle of Ypres.
We may look at the map again. The Battle of Arras was fought on a front of sixteen or seventeen miles, stretching, roughly, nine miles to the north and seven or eight to the south of Arras. Arras, as we know, was within the British line; its cellars and sewers, as a fact, had been prepared for the accommodation of our troops, though they were not long in request. The British line to the south of Arras (we are writing of the opening of the battle) crossed the Arras-Cambrai main road almost immediately below the town, facing Tilloy-les-Mofflaines on the right, and running down to Croisilles and Ecoust, which looked across the line to Bullecourt. Below Bullecourt, two miles or so to the right, and about three miles above the Bapaume-Cambrai road, the village of Quéant should be observed for the sake of its trench-connection with Drocourt in the north (east-south-east of Lens), which formed a switch to the Hindenburg Line, in case of German accidents behind Arras. It was the Quéant-Drocourt trench-system which made Bullecourt so important to its defenders. The British line to the north of Arras (still at the opening of the battle, but outside of our original quadrangle) crossed the River Scarpe in the eastern suburbs of the town, and ran up with a bearing to the left between Souchez and Givenchy, turning to the right again between Loos and Lens. Vimy, with all its fortifications, both natural and artificial, was the key to an advance in this area. The situation should be studied on a larger map, but it is useful to see it, too, in miniature; and for this purpose we repeat once more our sketch on [page 90] above. On the rough square, Arras-Bapaume-Cambrai-Douai, we erect now on the northern side the road-junctions from Arras to Douai through Souchez and Lens. The British line ran up, as we have said, between Souchez and Givenchy, with Vimy and its ridges on the right, and ran down to the west of Bullecourt, which helped to guard the Quéant-Drocourt switch. It only remains to observe that from Lens to Ypres was a journey of less than thirty miles, and that an attack at Messines and Wytschaete formed an obvious corollary to successes at Bullecourt and Vimy.
We are not directly concerned with the bigger strategy of this Spring campaign. Sir Douglas Haig made it clear that he regarded the capture of the Vimy Ridge as necessary in itself and important for the view which it would afford over the plains to Douai and beyond. When this object should be achieved he proposed to transfer his main offensive into Flanders. ‘The positions held by us in the Ypres salient since May, 1915, were far from satisfactory,’ he wrote. ‘They were completely overlooked by the enemy. Their defence involved a considerable strain on the troops occupying them, and ... our positions would be much improved by the capture of the Messines-Wytschaete Ridge, and of the high ground which extends thence north-eastwards for some seven miles.’ These plans were re-adjusted to some extent by arrangement with the French Command: ‘The British attack, under the revised scheme, was, in the first instance, to be preparatory to a more decisive operation to be undertaken a little later by the French Armies,’ and though, as the British Commander wrote, ‘my original plan for the preliminary operations on the Arras front fortunately fitted in well with what was required of me under the revised scheme,’ yet, in order to give full effect ‘to the new rôle allotted to me in this revised scheme, preparations for the attack in Flanders had to be restricted for the time being to what could be done by such troops and other labour as could not in any case be made available on the Arras front.[75]’
So much in this place for the plans. What were the troops entrusted with their execution? Looking at a larger map again, and assuming for a moment that a week’s fighting (April 9th to 16th) has already taken place, and that the British front has been advanced, as indicated, from the outskirts of Lens in the north to Croisilles in the south, we may now enumerate Sir Douglas Haig’s forces as they were distributed from north to south in order of battle on April 17th. Note that the First Army was commanded by General Sir H. S. Horne, the Third by General Sir E. H. H. Allenby, the Fourth by General Sir Henry Rawlinson and the Fifth by General Sir Hubert Gough: great Generals all, and tried Commanders. We give, first, the positions, so far as they can be located for certainty in the third line which resulted from a week’s fighting, and, next, in descending scale of military organization, the Army, the Corps, the Division, and the Regiments:—
ORDER OF BATTLE, 17th April, 1917.
It was a strong force, as is apparent, and except in the extreme southern sector, from Ecoust (opposite Bullecourt) to Lagnicourt, no 2nd Line Territorial troops were engaged. There, with Londoners on their left and Australians on their right, twelve battalions from the West Riding took their part.
The operation was not successful. ‘The attacking troops of the Fifth Army,’ wrote Sir Douglas Haig, ‘were obliged to withdraw to their original line.[76]’ Thus they missed the more sensational advances which were secured at Vimy and Monchy-le-Preux. But they contributed by their action to those results, and their gallantry earned a high encomium from the British Commander-in-Chief, and established for the 62nd Division, in its first engagement on a big scale, a record worthy of more veteran troops.
Let us start in this sector on April 9th, the day of the opening of the Battle of Arras.
It was explained to the Front-line Battalions that, in the event of the attack of the Third Army on Neuville Vitasse being successful, and of the advance being pushed forward to Fontaine-les-Croisilles and Cherisy, the enemy might evacuate his positions. Patrols were sent out, accordingly, in order to ascertain the facts; and the 2/6th West Yorkshires, for example, if we may select one Battalion out of the twelve, were ordered to hold themselves in readiness to advance after 12 o’clock noon at one hour’s notice. A provisional scheme of operations was laid down, in anticipation of the sequence of events, should the Hindenburg Line be evacuated on that part. These plans missed fire, however, and on the next day (10th) the unit which we have selected was still stationed at St. Leger. In the early morning information arrived of an impending German counter attack, and, after orders had been issued for a move at ten minutes’ notice, Brigade Orders arrived during the afternoon for a night march to Ecoust. This move was duly accomplished. The object was to capture Bullecourt and Hendecourt, and then to move forward in the general direction of Cagnicourt, on the further side of the Quéant switch. Shortly after midnight on April 11th, the troops were informed to this effect; Zero hour was 4-30 a.m.
We have to record that the operation, as planned, could not be fully carried out. Briefly, it had been devised as follows: unless, as seemed improbable, the Hindenburg Line should be found to have been evacuated, the Australian Division, supported by Tanks, was to push forward to Riencourt and Bullecourt. As soon as their work rendered it possible, the 185th Infantry Brigade (Brigadier-General V. W. de Falbe, C.M.G., D.S.O.) was to push one Battalion into Bullecourt from the south-west, with another Battalion in support. The Tanks (two, followed by four), after clearing Bullecourt, were to move out of the village, and clear the Hindenburg Line up to a stated position, where they would come under the orders of General de Falbe, in command of an Advanced Guard, detailed to capture Hendecourt and to move forward as indicated above. This formed the operation, as planned. The operation, as executed, starts with Battalion reports to the Brigade, at 5-15 a.m., 6 a.m. and 7-10 a.m., to the effect that not a Tank was in sight. We may imagine the anxiety at Headquarters. Reconstruct the surroundings on that April morning: the immense line of British Troops stretching right away beyond Vimy, the noise of guns, the open country on the other side; remember the significance of Bullecourt, not merely as the objective of the 62nd Division, but as the last stronghold of the enemy in that sector before he retired to the Quéant switch behind the real Hindenburg Line; multiply every missed appointment and its consequent inconveniences in civil life to the nth power of calculation; add a responsible sense of the great issues depending on prompt action; and then conceive what it meant to Lt.-Col. John H. Hastings, D.S.O., the Officer Commanding the 2/6th West Yorkshires (to return for a moment to this unit), to have to report three times in two hours that, so far as he was aware, the conditions precedent to his pushing on to Bullecourt still remained unfulfilled. Item one: the Tanks had not arrived. Item two: there was still no news of the Australians having entered Bullecourt. Colonel Hastings went forward to make enquiries, and to discuss matters with the Australian Division. On his return, he advised the Brigadier that the situation was ‘very obscure.’ His patrols, he said, had not reported, but there was no sign of the Australians clearing Bullecourt, and several enemy machine-guns had been located on the south-east fringe of the village. This report crossed a message from the Brigade (through the 2/8th Battalion, West Yorks.), stating that Tanks had been seen at a factory between Bullecourt and Hendecourt, and adding: ‘Please take immediate action, without waiting for Tanks to arrive, to clear up situation in Bullecourt and seize Hindenburg Line to the west of the village.’ (This message in original was received an hour later.) A reply was sent through the 2/8th Battalion to the effect that the instructions seemed to be ‘based on faulty and erroneous information’: the main point was that the Australians had not entered Bullecourt, and that reports from the patrols were still awaited. While this reply was on its way, the Brigadier visited the Battalion Headquarters, and ‘was evidently dissatisfied with the want of progress.’ He admitted to Colonel Hastings that the conditions laid down as preliminary to the advance still appeared incomplete (which means that the Tanks had not operated), but he was anxious that the push should be attempted, and Colonel Hastings went up again to investigate.
Meanwhile, what about the Tanks? Major W. H. L. Watson, D.S.O., of the Machine-Gun Corps, Heavy Section, writing in Blackwood’s Magazine, June, 1919, stated that, ‘of my eleven Tanks, nine had received direct hits and two were missing.’ He pointed out that the sudden change of plans between April 10th and 11th had proved somewhat upsetting, that the crews were composed of tired men, that a blizzard was blowing, and that the snow proved bad cover. He added that the Australian troops were turned distrustful of Tanks for some months, and that a British Brigadier, to whom he was paying a farewell visit, told him, ‘with natural emphasis, that Tanks were “no dammed use.”’ Further than this, we need not pursue the question. A day was to come very soon when the new weapon would outpace the Infantry, and help effectively to win its battles. At Bullecourt, on April 11th, the co-operation was not adequate.
At 11 o’clock that morning, Colonel Hastings, ruling out the Tanks, expressed his deliberate conviction that the village could not be captured by daylight, except by very great sacrifices. The wire was uncut, the snipers were active, and there was very little cover. Three hours later, Brigade orders arrived to withdraw the patrols, and at dusk the Battalion relieved the 2/7th Battalion of their own Regiment in the right sector of the front facing Bullecourt. The relief was completed at 1 a.m. on April 12th, and another long and trying day was spent in tapping the Bullecourt defences, which were found to be still formidable. By 5 a.m. on the morning of the 13th, the relief of the Battalion in its turn by the 2/7th West Ridings was completed, and they returned to Ervillers on the Bapaume-Arras road.
They had suffered badly during this experience. On the 11th, Lieut. C. F. R. Pells, 2/Lieut. A. G. Harris and 31 other Ranks were killed, and the wounded amounted to 30. Fine work was done by the 174th Tunnelling Company, R.E. (Major Hutchinson, M.C., Commanding), in digging out the victims of a collapsed house in which two Officers were killed: they worked thirty hours continuously and rescued nine men alive.
Meanwhile, Bullecourt had not been captured. If a detailed map be consulted again, it will be seen that the British lines of April 16th and 24th both met at their southern extremity on the wrong (north) side of the River Sensée, and formed a dangerous salient, or inward bulge, with the British line running south from Croisilles. The Hindenburg Line at Bullecourt still guarded the switch-line at Quéant; and this failure was the more disappointing in view of the easterly advances along the River Scarpe behind Arras, and, further north, behind Vimy and its woods and hills. Tanks had shown fine capacity during that fortnight. The gallant Infantry had accomplished by their aid what it took them nearly as many months to accomplish with much worse casualties on the Somme in 1916. For the missing weapon had been found, though its full use was still to be discovered, and obstacles even more formidable than had held up the 49th Division at Thiepval were levelled or reduced.
We pass at once to the renewed assault on Bullecourt between May 3rd and 17th.
The 62nd Division was once more engaged. The new weapon was brought again to the attack, and, though further experience was still wanted before its masterly employment at Cambrai in November, the last phase of the Battle of Arras clearly demonstrated to all those who chose to see the immense value of co-operation between Infantry and Tanks. That the brunt of the Infantry fighting in these experimental days fell on the troops from the West Riding, will find a place in military history as well as in Yorkshire records.
Brigade Orders with reference to the fresh assault were received immediately after the old. Already on April 15th, the plan of operations was to hand, and the intervening seventeen days was spent mainly in rehearsals. The order of advance from the right was the 185th Infantry Brigade (de Falbe), the 186th (Hill) in the centre, and the 187th (Taylor) on the left. Each Brigade had its definite objective, and they advanced to the attack side by side. The Third Army operated eastwards in the direction of Fontaine-les-Croisilles, with the 2nd Australian Division on the right. Tanks were to crawl up in sufficient numbers. The day was fixed for May 3rd. Zero hour was 3-45 a.m. Once more we may quote Major Watson[77] as to the part borne by the Tanks in this attack. ‘A costly failure,’ is his description of the day’s work. Major R. O. C. Ward, D.S.O., who was killed in the following November, was out with his Tanks in front, ‘but the Infantry could not follow,’ he complained. ‘Attack unsuccessful. Casualties heavy,’ is the bare statement in one of the Battalion diaries. Before consulting a more expansive authority, it will be interesting to examine the accompanying photograph of Hendecourt from the air. Above the village, we see the main road from Arras to Cambrai, which runs from north-east to south-west. Crossing that road, we see the switch trench-line from Drocourt to Quéant, which ran roughly, from north to south. The trenches guarding the village, Orix, Opal, Hop, Morden, are indicated on the face of the photograph, and are still more clearly displayed in the ground-plan sketch which we also reproduce (p. 133). Turning back now to May 3rd, we have the advantage of some notes by an Officer of the 62nd, who watched the opening barrage from the top of the railway embankment. It was an unforgettable sight. ‘Shells of all sizes screamed through the air, and bullets from our machine-guns sped towards the enemy lines. The noise was deafening and appalling. Then the Tanks went forward to do their part in the attack. Hundreds of Very lights and coloured signals were sent up by the enemy all along his line’; and to the careful watcher and time-keeper, these lights and signals brought evil tidings. For after two Companies of one Battalion of the 62nd should have been in the enemy second-line trench, ‘enemy lights were still sent up from that direction.’
We turn to a Company record. Take, for instance, B Company of the 2/5th West Ridings. They advanced steadily to the attack, and fought their way up the slope to the ridge on the left of Bullecourt. But they met very formidable opposition. Some think that the sound of the Tanks deploying in their assembly positions may have reached acute enemy ears; but, whether or not this was the case, and, on the whole, the evidence is against it, a devastating machine-gun fire and a terrific barrage of high explosive and shrapnel were suddenly opened on the advancing Company, while hidden concrete emplacements protected the enemy guns. The survivors gallantly rallied, and pressed on into the Hindenburg Line through a ‘tornado of bullets.’ Lieut. O. Walker was killed at this point, as he was charging at the head of his platoon, rifle in hand, through the German wire. Two enemy machine-guns were captured, and their crews killed by our bombers. Captain J. Walker, M.B.E., Commanding the Company, with a mere handful of men, still pushed on and forced a broken way to the next strong point of hidden emplacements. Here the little party held out for three awful days and nights. They had no water and only their iron rations, and they were bombed and shelled all the time. On the second day, the enemy tried to take them prisoners, but the attempt was repulsed. On the third day, when the position was blown in through our own Batteries having shortened range, this very brave Officer and his few surviving wounded men contrived to fight their way back through the German outpost line, in broad daylight and fired at from every side. A nine hours’ struggle brought them home ‘by a miracle.’[78] Bullecourt was still uncaptured, but its blood-soaked ridges and trenches had taught the Prussians the meaning of Yorkshire grit.
HENDECOURT FROM THE AIR.
The story may be repeated, if it is not clear enough, from the diaries of other Battalions. Take the 2/4th York and Lancasters, for example. It is a vivid narrative, which may be quoted almost verbatim:
By Zero hour on May 3rd, the men had marched on to the tape line, extended, and formed waves, as ordered, each man fixing his bayonet and lying down directly he got into his place. Just as the head of the 6th line came into its alignment, a shell burst close by, wounding Lt.-Col. Blacker, Commanding, and about six other Ranks. ‘Don’t mind me, get the lines out,’ was the gallant Officer’s order, which was instantly obeyed: though the shelling was heavy all the time, the operation was completed as if in a practice-attack. The Adjutant found the lines absolutely correct, and men lying close to shell-holes had in many instances refrained from taking cover for fear of spoiling their interval. It was this kind of spirit which beat the Germans, though they kept us out of Bullecourt on May 3rd. Colonel Blacker, with the assistance of his servant, returned to Battalion Headquarters, and Major Richardson arrived from Brigade to take over the Command of the Battalion. A rum-ration was served out at 3 a.m., and the first line advanced at Zero (3-45 a.m.) less eight minutes. In order to understand what followed, it must be borne in mind that there were 900 yards to be traversed before the first German trench was reached: 900 yards through the heavy smoke and dust of the barrage depicted above. To keep intervals, distance and direction was not an easy task even for the best-trained troops. Still, all was going well, till some confusion was caused by another unit crossing their front between the 4th and 5th lines. These troops were ordered to withdraw and re-form, but the order was mistaken by about 70 men of the right rear Company of the invaded Battalion. They thought it was addressed to them, and withdrew, accordingly, to the railway embankment. The rest, steadily led, despite the mixture of units, pushed on to the first German trench, but the waves had lost their formation before the second line was reached. Major Richardson was killed in a courageous attempt to find out exactly what was happening, and, later, Brigade orders arrived to parade all available personnel for a second attack in two lines. It ended miserably in shell-holes, which afforded insufficient protection from casualties out of proportion to the result, and about 4 o’clock in the afternoon of the long day the order came to retire to the railway cutting. The 7th Division relieved the 62nd.
We need not multiply the records. ‘The attacking troops eventually withdrew to the railway cutting’; ‘finally forced to retire about 11-30 a.m. on the railway embankment’; these entries and entries like these recur with maddening iteration in the narratives of the units on this date, and the loss of life was terribly high. But Bullecourt fell in the end. Ten men had been left in the coveted village by troops which had reached it on May 3rd, but had fallen back from all but its fringes, and these ten men were rescued on May 8th. Day by day, the stubborn fight was waged, with attack and counter-attack of intense ferocity and varying fortune, till at last, on May 17th and following days, Territorial Troops of the County of London and the West Riding drove out the last remnants of the German garrison from their last stronghold in front of Quéant. Let Sir Douglas Haig tell the tale of these successes, which brought to a victorious close the series of fighting known as the Battle of Arras:
‘At 3-45 a.m. on the 3rd May, another attack was undertaken by us.... While the Third and First Armies attacked from Fontaine-les-Croisilles to Fresnoy, the Fifth Army launched a second attack upon the Hindenburg Line in the neighbourhood of Bullecourt. This gave a total front of over sixteen miles. Along practically the whole of this front our troops broke into the enemy’s positions.... To secure the footing gained by the Australians in the Hindenburg Line on the 3rd May, it was advisable that Bullecourt should be captured without loss of time. During the fortnight following our attack, fighting for the possession of this village went on unceasingly.... On the morning of the 7th May, English troops (7th Division, Major-General T. H. Shoubridge) gained a footing in the south-east corner of Bullecourt. Thereafter gradual progress was made, in the face of the most obstinate resistance, and on the 17th May, London and West Riding Territorials[79] completed the capture of the village.... On the 20th May fighting was commenced by the 33rd Division (Major-General R. J. Pinney) for the sector of the Hindenburg Line lying between Bullecourt and our front-line west of Fontaine-les-Croisilles. Steady progress was made until by the 16th June touch had been established by us between these two points.’[80]
COLISEUM MADE OUT OF A GERMAN CRATER.
We had intended to close here the present chapter. But our impression of life at the front with the 62nd Division is incomplete without reference to the mimic warfare and the relaxation from war which likewise formed part of its experience. On that very day, June 16th, when the Bullecourt sector was finally consolidated, Divisional Sports were being held at Achiet-le-Petit. In a Coliseum made out of a German crater, which we illustrate from a pencil-sketch on the spot, the Divisional Band was playing on June 14th, and boxing contests were being fought. Two days later, a Gymkhana was held, in which some of the chief events were dribbling a football on horseback,[81] driving a pair of mules tandem,[82] and collecting stones to drop into a bucket.[83] On June 20th, three Officers of the 2/5th West Ridings rode from Achiet-le-Petit to Thiepval, and went over the ground which had been fought by the 1st Line Battalion of their Regiment nearly a year before. ‘Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit,’ they may have thought, as they contrasted their leisurely ride with the heat of battle which the site recalled; and the same thought, applied to their own experience, may have revealed the hope of a future day when Bullecourt, like Thiepval, would be remembered as a past stage in a victorious advance.