With Haig on the Somme

by D. H. Parry

It was terrible going, for the whole earth was honeycombed by craters large and small; but out of the smoke-cloud rose a ringing cheer, which was still floating on the air when the vicious tac-tac of machine-guns from the German lines told that even high explosives had their limitations, and that some at least of the enemy gun-emplacements remained undestroyed.

"Double!" cried the C.O., seeing that a kilted battalion on his left was racing forward as the best means of escaping the continuous stream of bullets.

"Charge, boys, charge!" yelled Dennis, taking up the cry; and that brown avalanche of eager, helmeted men poured on clear of the smoke into the bright sunshine, which glinted on their fixed bayonets.

In spite of the carefully prepared staff maps and plans which they had all studied closely, Dennis looked in vain for any sign of a definite objective. There was no sandbagged parapet, nothing but a confused mass of holes and heaps scattered broadcast over the landscape—the result of the terrific spade-work of the guns—which had to be crossed before the village was reached. The village, too, of which he caught a glimpse, was only a pulverised mass of debris, with here and there the angle of a shattered house or the ribs of a roof to mark what had once been human habitations.

But he knew that the strength of the enemy's position lay in the wonderful subterranean works, the deep dug-outs, the covered-in communicating trenches, and for these he and his men rushed with great determination.

Suddenly, from the other side of a chalk heap, a row of heads appeared, wearing flat blue forage caps with white bands round them, and a shout of rapture rose from No. 2 Platoon as they saw at last something to go for.

Between them and the row of heads yawned a huge shell crater, and as the platoon divided automatically to avoid the obstacle, a heavy volley across the crater caught them, and several of the running men pitched forward and lay where they fell.

Perhaps they had orders to retire, perhaps it was our yell that scared them; but the heads disappeared; and when our men reached the spot where they had been the Germans had vanished. One stout fellow, dropping into a hole thirty yards away, was the only indication of what had become of them; but it was sufficient, and with a "Come on, boys!" Dennis sprinted for the spot.

He had armed himself with a rifle and bayonet for the advance; but, changing it to his left hand, he opened the bag of bombs he had also brought and, drawing the pin, flung one of them into the hole, a square opening, evidently the entrance to a covered communication trench.

"Wait a moment!" he shouted, shouldering back the next man up, who in his excitement was about to plunge in; and then he heard the bomb burst below, and a shower of earth and fragments of clothing bespattered the pair of them, a piece of the bomb making an ugly gash on the man's cheek.