All arrangements having been made for an attack on Bullecourt under an artillery barrage, Divisional Headquarters moved up on the 2nd May to an advanced position north of Ervillers. The attack was launched early on the 3rd as part of a big operation in which altogether fourteen divisions took part. Our infantry advanced under a barrage at 3.45 a.m., and broke through the Hindenburg Line at Bullecourt. The enemy was, however, in great strength, and his position was an extraordinarily formidable one. Although our men managed to get through and beyond the village, they were then checked by numerous machine guns firing from concrete emplacements, and were finally forced back again through Bullecourt by a strong counter-attack. The Division suffered very heavy losses, and the results of the battle did not come up to our high expectations; but, none the less, substantial progress had been made, and at the end of the action we were able to hold on to and consolidate a good slice of the village of Bullecourt, together with about 2000 yards of the Hindenburg front line to the east of it. It was hard that our first battle should have been so costly in life and so apparently unfruitful in results, but our sorely tried infantry had proved their mettle, and had shown that magnificent spirit in the face of appalling odds which, in the Homeric battles which were still to come, was so often to spur them on to victory.
Lieut. C. Punchard was wounded (gas) on the 7th, and Lieuts. G. H. Kitson and C. V. Montgomery were wounded on the 12th and 13th respectively.
On the 14th May there was a readjustment of the line, the 7th Division taking over the Bullecourt front and the Hindenburg trench to the South-East, while the 62nd Division became responsible for the sector from Bullecourt for about 2400 yards to the North-West. This entailed a general shuffle of the artillery, my own brigades coming under the 7th Division, while the guns of the 7th remained under my command. On this same night the 310th Brigade was subjected to a more than usually heavy bombardment; over two thousand gas shells fell among the batteries, and we lost five gunners killed, and about 12 wounded. On the 15th, Lieuts. A. J. Edwards and E. W. Jephson were wounded, the latter for the second time.
On the 16th May, Lieut.-Colonel E. P. Bedwell left the Division, invalided home. His services had been invaluable, and I fully shared the sorrow which all ranks of his brigade felt at his departure. He had trained and commanded this brigade, the 312th, from the earliest days of its formation, and might fairly claim to have made it; it must have been a great satisfaction to him to see how well its performances in France had repaid his care. I am glad to say that he recovered his health and was able to take his place again in the fighting line later on, though not in the 62nd Division. Major F. H. Lister took over the command of the brigade, with the acting rank of Lieut.-Colonel.
Both sides now settled down to deliberate trench warfare, a state of things which entailed constant work of a dangerous and harassing nature, but which furnished few outstanding incidents of sufficient interest to be chronicled. On the 26th May a sad disaster occurred in D/312 Howitzer Battery. The camouflage over one of the howitzers caught fire and blazed up. It was merely a question of a few moments when the flames should reach the ammunition and cause a terrible explosion, but there was a slight chance of the fire being put out in time, and Capt. H. B. Gallimore, who was temporarily commanding the battery, with Lieut. G. Hardy and a party of N.C.O.'s and men, made a gallant attempt to extinguish the flames. Unfortunately their efforts were vain, and there was a tremendous explosion. Poor Gallimore was killed, and also ten others (including all the six "Numbers One" of the battery), while Hardy was dangerously wounded, and also five gunners more or less severely. The loss of two such officers and six of the most valuable N.C.O.'s was a very serious blow to D/312, but the splendid act of devotion, in which they sacrificed their brave young lives, conferred a lustre not only on their own battery, but on the whole of the Divisional Artillery, and will not soon be forgotten. Hardy, unhappily, died of his wounds on the 28th.
The casualties in the artillery up to this date had been:
3 officers and 72 other ranks killed.
23 officers and 256 other ranks wounded.
On the 29th May our infantry was withdrawn from the line for a rest, and I therefore ceased to command the artillery tactically; it remained in the line in support of the 58th Division.
It was a great disappointment to me that the artillery could not be withdrawn for a rest after all its strenuous work since coming into action. The promise of rest in the near future had long been dangled before our eyes, but the plain fact was that guns could not be spared from the firing line, and although the Commander-in-Chief, in a confidential circular issued about this time, showed that he "fully realised the untiring energy of the artillery during the first half of the year," still he was unable to hold out any hopes of relaxation, and could only "rely upon all ranks to continue their good work ungrudgingly." His reliance was well founded, for all ranks accepted the situation loyally, and learned now, and I may add for the rest of the war, to do without rest, and to "stick it" somehow or other even when it might have been truly said that
"there was nothing in them
"Except the will that said to them, Hold on."