This last is the chief necessity of this particular game; it is invariably a duel of wits between individual fighters. Each unit concerned has to win its own little fight. It cannot as a rule expect help from its own troops on its flanks. For these cannot see to fire at the foe of the especially beleaguered unit. Besides if they seek to come to the aid of another unit, they cannot see because of the trees and shrubbery what they themselves may be leaving unguarded. Nor can an attacked force rely on the support and reserve coming up quickly. It’s slow moving in the woods.
In the supports, waiting to advance
Besides your aëroplanes cannot inform your commanders of the size of the force they are going up against or much of the manner of its arrangement. The foliage hides this knowledge. And in no other fighting is it so necessary for the “little officer,” the commander of a small unit, to be self-reliant. He is thrown entirely on his own resources and must win his own fight unaided. Unceasing caution must be the watchword. And the soldier in this fashion of fighting is useless who has not the ability to fire instantly and accurately on a suddenly appearing target.
My own first experience at the game was in the attack on Delville wood at the great battle of the Somme. I was then a platoon commander with sixty men under my command. At this time an artillery fire was not so scientifically carried out as it was later so marvelously to be. But our “heavies” were supposed to have destroyed the wire entanglements and the machine-gun emplacements to be encountered in our advance.
When the signal came for the attack on Delville woods I sent my men out and into it promptly. But I had already despatched two scouts to find out, if possible, if the wire entanglements on the first enemy position had been smashed by our guns. One of them soon signaled back that the wires had been untouched by the artillery fire, but that he and his companion were at work cutting them down. That was not a job to be left to only two men, and I ordered an advance of my platoon in fours. When we got to the wire it was to find both of my scouts dead—one with a bullet straight between the eyes, the other had been struck in the heart.
The sight of them fired my men to determined effort to get past the wire. But we had to stand an appalling fire as we worked. Five were killed outright, six put out of the battle by serious injuries. The fire not only came from an enemy we could not see behind the trees but from snipers up in the trees and hidden in bushes. The wire itself was crowded with bomb traps. And there came also the drum fire of machine guns and the hail of shrapnel.
Then I thought the last hour of all of us was at hand. For as we now advanced each man practically for himself, but also aligned about abreast, the ground gave way under us. An old German trench had been carefully and most deceivingly covered by a treacherous intertwining of branches and foliage with an under layer of barbed wire, and we were plunged struggling and kicking into what looked like a hopeless trap.
The Germans thought surely they had us. The enemy rushed out from concealment with bombs and trench knives and rifles. If we had remained there we would surely have been slaughtered. I yelled at the top of my voice encouragement to my men. And they answered with plucky cries that they would follow me.
How we got out of that trap I don’t know, but out we came, every man of us, in spite of the fire that swept us. Our hands and faces were torn and bleeding from the barbed wire, our clothing ripped to shreds. But these splendid men of mine took the fight straight at the Boches. It was just plain hand-to-hand fighting—trench knife clashing against trench knife, revolvers and rifles blazing directly into one another’s faces.