At ZERO, 5 40 a.m., while it was still dark, down came our creeping barrage, and the King’s Own began to advance. Our men had been told to give them a good start and, full of eagerness as they were, would have done so had the answering enemy barrage not come down on their tails; this had been foreseen and its position judged from previous registration, and the assembly position was just in front—but only just—and the “shorts” got some of our men, causing the rest to hurry and close up on the King’s Own, who were already passing AISNE FARM. We had to complete the capture of this, and lost heavily in the process.
Under terrific machine gun fire from the front and both flanks, causing casualties at every step, the two Battalions struggled forward to get to grips with their unseen enemies, and soon arrived at the two groups of blockhouses, LOOS and GALLIPOLI, with four others lying between them.
These two groups, though the latter was off the allotted front, at once became the immediate objectives—the left hand Companies took the LOOS blockhouses one by one, nine in all, with bomb and bayonet; the Companies on the right swung round and joined the King’s Liverpool Regiment in storming GALLIPOLI; in the centre small parties of men, their Officers having been hit, took the other four and so reached the RED LINE.
Lieutenant Brooke went forward, and, with a few signallers, established a forward command post near LOOS; our machine gunners came up and turned five of the newly-taken Hun machine guns round on the enemy, and things seemed to be going well, but the hour-long pause of the barrage was too long, the hail of cross-fire from more distant machine guns still continued, and the men, who had sought cover in shell holes, were out of sight and scattered, though strenuous efforts to reorganise were made by the few leaders who remained, and with a certain amount of success. But the line had lost its cohesion, and when the barrage went on only a portion of the line saw it and attempted to follow.
Lieutenant Brooke had notified the capture of the Red Line to Battalion Headquarters, but no further message coming through, the Second in Command went forward to clear up the situation; on reaching the Red Line he could at first see no one, but soon stumbled into a shell hole full of men, and was able, running from one hole to another, to locate the whole line up to the flanks of the adjoining Battalions, and to estimate the casualties.
The barrage had already passed the Green Line and the machine guns in the blockhouses were active. Their crews could see every movement, and the troops on both flanks were stationary, so that at the moment no further advance was likely to succeed—moreover, everyone had had time to feel the reaction. So the order was given to dig in and to send out small patrols to try to occupy the ground immediately in front, and by this means the line was advanced still further.
Lieutenant Holden took charge of one of these, while Second Lieutenant Pruden supervised consolidation.
About this time the Hun seems to have realised the position, for he opened out with every gun he had, shelling the captured pillboxes and putting a very heavy barrage all round the aid post and Battalion Headquarters, but his attempt at counter-attack was beaten off by machine gun, Lewis gun, and rifle fire.
We afterwards found out that SUVLA and THE CAPITOL had not been taken, nor had CROSS COTS—had they been the cross-machine gun fire on us would have been much less intense.
No praise is too high for our stretcher-bearers, who—all through that day and the succeeding days—toiled without intermission bringing in wounded; the aid post was in the line of the Hun barrage, a concrete structure, with a passage two feet wide on the enemy side with chambers opening off it; the stretcher cases had to be dressed out in the open, while the passage was crowded with walking wounded, some of them Huns—the look of utter weariness and dejection on the faces of the latter was a thing not easily forgotten.