A HALF-WAY HOUSE TO THE TRENCHES
It was in December 1916 that I paid my first visit to the valley of the Somme. The scene was dreary beyond description. Many villages known to us by name as the scenes of desperate fighting were a name only. Hardly a vestige of a house or cottage remained where many had been before the war. Here and there one could see the entrance to a cellar; the charred stump of a strafed tree; the remains of a garden; or a bit of a cemetery. Everything else was churned up into the most appalling mud.
One day I had tea with an Army commander who has done great things since then, and he showed me a series of photographs—the most interesting I have ever seen, which were taken the day before my visit, by our airmen, over the German lines. For seventeen and a half miles back, the enemy, with infinite care and patience, had constructed trenches, 'and,' said the Commander, 'every time we destroy his front line trench he constructs another one in the rear.' 'But,' I cried, 'if this kind of thing goes on, and unless the unexpected happens, the war must surely continue indefinitely.' His only reply was, 'Is it not always the unexpected that happens in war?' I was back again in Picardy in the summer of 1917, and the unexpected had happened. The whole of the seventeen and a half miles of trenches were in the hands of the British! The enemy had retired to the much advertised 'Hindenburg Line,' and leaving nothing to chance, was tirelessly, ceaselessly massing and training his men, getting together huge reserves of munitions, husbanding his resources in every possible way, and preparing, always preparing day and night for his next great move. Meanwhile, Italy's defences had to be strengthened by troops we could ill-afford to spare from our Western front, and Russia, in loyalty to whom we first entered the war, failed us altogether, German intrigue being the underlying cause in each case. In his great advance in March and April 1918 he did not achieve all he set out to do by any means, but his gains were enormous. It makes one sad to think of the territory we had temporarily to relinquish to the Hun in Picardy, even though the country itself was not of any intrinsic value. The land is desolate, and the enemy ruined every village and hamlet, every farm and cottage, before his retreat. Ninety-three Red Triangle centres—huts, marquees, cellars, dug-outs, and 'strafed' houses had to be abandoned in Picardy alone—most of them destroyed before they fell into the hands of the Germans.
During the first visit to the battlefields of the Somme in the winter of 1916, the outstanding feature of the landscape was the mud and the general desolation. In the summer of 1917 the scenes of desolation were as great as ever, but there was a difference—the roads were in excellent condition and bridges had been replaced. There were shell-holes everywhere and the countryside was strewn with dud shells; barbed wire entanglements; with here and there a stranded tank that had had to be abandoned in the mud; the remains of trenches and dug-outs or the cages in which the Huns had collected their British prisoners. There were no domestic animals to be seen, and no civilians. The whole district from Albert to Peronne, to Bapaume or to Arras, was one huge cemetery, and one saw side by side the elaborate cross that marked the burying place of German dead, the smaller cross with the tricolour on it, that marked the last resting-place of the soldier of France, and everywhere for miles and miles could be seen the little plain brown crosses of wood, that marked the spot where lay our own loved dead. We climbed to the top of the famous Butte of Warlincourt that so often changed hands in the course of desperate fighting, and there on the top were those little brown crosses. We stood at the edge of the vast crater of La Boiselle that inaugurated the first battle of the Somme and saw in its depths several of those little symbols of our Christian faith, but looking away across the desolation of the battlefield one marvelled at the efforts of nature to hide up the ravages of war. There were the most glorious masses of colour everywhere—the colour given by the wild flowers of the battlefields. One felt one had never seen more vivid blue than that of the acres of cornflowers which rivalled the hues of the gentian of the Alps. It may have been imagination, but looking out from the Butte of Warlincourt over miles of poppies, one felt one had never seen such vivid red, and instinctively those words came into one's mind:
'O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not seek to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life's glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red,
Life that shall endless be.'
The wild flowers of Picardy have bloomed over British graves again in the summer of 1918, though German, not British, eyes saw them during the early months, but those flowers speak of eternal hope, and tell us that if we but do our part, the sacrifice of our bravest and best will not have been made in vain.
Amid the ruins of Picardy the Y.M.C.A. did some of its best work. Lord Derby spoke of the Association as 'essential in peace time, indispensable in war time,' and never was the Association more indispensable than during those terrible days of the German advance in 1918. Amid the ever-changing scenes of war it has been one of the forces working for reconstruction. We mourn the loss of huts and Red Triangle centres that have cost money, and on which labour has been lavished. Not much to look at many of these places, and yet to those who knew them they possessed an indescribable charm and fascination. It was only a little marquee, for instance, that formed the Headquarters of the Red Triangle at Henin in 1917, only a couple of padres, one Church of England and one a Free Churchman there to represent the Y.M.C.A., but the whole story is a romance. Whilst we were sharing their lunch of bully beef and potatoes, bread, biscuits, and coffee, a 'strafe' began. The British artillery, half a mile away, were pouring lead into the Hun lines. Fritz soon replied, and things became lively. A shell burst near us, but our padres took no notice of it, and seemed to regard a little incident of that kind as a matter of course. Another shell burst on the cross-roads we had just traversed. It was here we had our first glimpse of the Hindenburg Line with Crucifix Corner in the foreground. Whilst we were still at lunch the Germans began to throw over some of their heavy stuff in the direction of Monchy, which was not far away. The British camp at Henin had been heavily bombarded a few days before our visit, and the troops quite properly had to run like rabbits to their burrows. The last to take refuge in the dug-outs were our two padres, who with a keen and commendable sense of duty had waited to gather up the cash before taking refuge from the shells. One of the leaders gives the following graphic story of his experiences in the Retreat:—
'On the first day of the offensive we were wakened by terrific drum fire to the north, but on our own immediate stretch of front, the firing was not so severe. There was therefore no immediate need for evacuation. During that day the hut work went on as usual, but few men appeared, as everybody was "standing to." Liquid nourishment of the Y.M.C.A. type was rather at a discount. We finished serving at a somewhat late hour, and deemed it advisable to sleep in the dug-out, as a few shells had begun to sing overhead. Early the next morning we were awakened by the sound of many men on the move. More and still more French troops were arriving, and that day we had to speak more French than English. Towards evening uncomfortable reports began to arrive that the Germans had several places behind us, some in the immediate rear. "Les avions Boche," about which the Frenchmen were using "polite" phrases all day, were continually overhead, and having reported the movement of troops on the roads, shell-fire began to increase in intensity. Decidedly, it was "getting warm." Lieutenant-Colonel —— of the R.A.M.C. and the Medical Staff with whom I had had the privilege of messing for some time were very forcible in their advice to me to evacuate with the orderlies. They were living in a shell-proof dug-out, whereas we had no possible defence against a direct hit from any kind of shell.
'Several batteries of artillery having been withdrawn from forward positions, and posted near us, were making sleep impossible and drawing the enemy's fire. It was quite impossible to obtain transport of any kind for my stores, so I gave what remained to the R.A.M.C. for walking wounded cases, of which I had supplied several during the day.