CHAPTER VIII
THE NEW TRENCH AND THE RAID
The spring of 1916 was slow in coming. The German attack at Verdun had coincided with a long spell of deep snow and bitter cold. An officer going on leave at the end of February vividly remembers his experiences on the frozen roads, and the sight of a column of French troops of all arms 20 miles long, making their way painfully along the great 'Route Nationale' to Amiens to join in the defence of Verdun. But towards the end of March the weather grew warm and genial and the wild daffodils began to appear in all the fields around Sailly. Meanwhile the preliminaries for the Somme offensive became increasingly significant. The forward villages such as Sailly and Bayencourt were cleared of the civil population, and handed over entirely to the Army. Still more monstrous guns came crawling up, and in place of the old battery of 60-pounders, the orchard at the western outskirts of Sailly, in the angle of the Bayencourt road, harboured two 15-inch howitzers. Gun-pits and enormous new dugouts were constructed in Hébuterne. The single-line railway which served the 48th and 4th Division with railheads at Acheux and Louvaincourt was supplemented by numbers of light lines. Troops grew thick upon the ground; the 56th Division appeared upon our left, the 31st on the right, and in May the front held by the Division scarcely exceeded that allotted to a single battalion during the winter. A 4th Army had been formed, of which the 48th Division was on the left in the 10th Corps. Conferences were held by the G.O.C. with C.O.'s and Adjutants two or three times a week, while parties were constantly detailed to witness demonstrations of gas, smoke and flame throwers. At last, also, the drafts so badly needed and so long overdue appeared in fairly adequate numbers; in March alone 202 men joined the Battalion for duty, which brought our total strength up to 874.
Meanwhile the G.O.C. was planning for the execution of the 145th Brigade a task, which sounds prosaic enough on paper, but which demanded for its success minute organisation and a high state of discipline in all concerned—namely, the digging of a forward trench in front of our own wire. Our line between Hébuterne and Serre sagged back in a westerly direction from Trench Hoche to Trench Bouillon, thereby interposing 800-900 yards between ourselves and the Germans, with an intervening rise in No Man's Land. This configuration of the ground presented three obvious defects for offensive operations. It was impossible for the gunners to get direct observation on the sector of enemy trench opposite; it meant that troops deploying for the attack would get out of trenches facing in three directions, and would have to cross an unnecessary depth of shell-swept ground before getting to the assault. It was, therefore, determined to straighten out the line between the two points mentioned above. The battalions concerned assiduously practised wire-cutting, filing silently through the gaps, and night-digging. Our Battalion, which was to find the covering parties, took over the part of the line affected (J Sector, from Serre road to Trench Lassalle) a week beforehand, and every effort was made by means of patrols, two or three of which went out each night, to locate any forward posts or rifle pits from which the enemy might get wind of or interfere with the digging of the new trench. On the night of the 9th-10th April the scheme was carried out under the direction of Major Clissold (1st/1st Field Company, South Midland R.E.'s), an unfailing friend of the infantry, who was killed in the autumn of 1917. About 1,500 men in all were engaged; the digging was done by the 4th Oxfords and the 5th Gloucesters, while covering parties and fatigues were provided by the Bucks Battalion and ourselves. About six hours were allotted for the completion of the work, from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. The moon, which was near the full, shone brilliantly, though at times obscured by clouds, so that there was no fear of the confusion which arises from darkness, but rather of detection by the enemy's posts. Soon after 8.30 p.m. A Company, who were responsible for the protection from the right to the Puisieux road, strung themselves out into groups of three, some 20 yards apart, about 70 paces in front of the tape which marked the course of the proposed trench. While Captain Crouch, of the Bucks, was similarly employed on the left, some of his men, losing touch, ran into the vision of Hun sentries at the Poplars and were received with shots and bombs, which caused uneasy anticipations of discovery, happily unfulfilled. The diggers got to work behind their screen, and ate into the ground with remarkable speed, for stray rounds of shrapnel, intermittent sniping, and the constant discharge of Verey lights throughout the night, suggested that the Hun had some uneasy suspicion that all was not quite as usual; and indeed it seems almost incredible that the clash of the tools, the whispered orders, and the movements of the wiring parties should have entirely failed to strike the ear of a vigilant sentry at 250 yards. By 2 a.m. the work was almost finished; nothing remained but to strengthen the parapet of the new trench and to fill up the spaces between the knife-rests, which defended it some 40 yards in front, with screw pickets and loose strands of wire. By 3.20 a.m. all the diggers had returned to the old line, and the weary covering party, who had lain out for seven tedious hours, came home to get a hot drink, which they had well earned. Only 15 casualties were reported from the whole Brigade, none of which fell to the share of our Battalion. The trench was held by a few posts until dawn and then evacuated. About noon next day an enemy aeroplane flew along it, and the observer could be plainly seen leaning out and taking photographs of this mushroom growth. Almost immediately every battery from La Brayelle to Serre began to register upon it, and for weeks it was rendered unwholesome by the constant attention of artillery and mine-throwers. A poem of Lieut. Downs' preserves the air of mystery in which the whole scheme was so fortunately conceived and executed.
A whisper wandered round
Of a plan of the G.O.C's,
And figures surveyed the ground
In stealthy groups of threes;
But the whole Brigade were there,
Or pretty well all the lot,
When we dug the trench at Never-mind-where,
On April the Never mind-what.
The What's-a-names dug the trench,
The Who-is-its found the screen,
And we mustn't forget to mench
The Thingumies in between;
The Tothermies built the fence,
And the R.E.'s "also ran,"
For we didn't spare any expense,
With labour a shilling a man.
There isn't much else to tell,
Though the enemy made a song.
And tried to blow it to Hell,
But got the address all wrong;
For you'll find it's still out there
In the bally old self-same spot,
That trench which we built at Never-mind-where,
On April the Never-mind-what.