My gratitude can never abate toward that little company of superbly brave men I led in the Delville woods that day. For time and again they drew around to protect me. They recognized that the Boches were seeking to make a special mark of me. For a long time British officers had given up the practice of going into action in uniforms bearing the special insignia of their rank. The only indication of that now is on the identification tab that hangs on an officer’s neck. But, of course, at such close quarters, the Germans readily observed that I was in command and their instructions are always emphatic on that point—“kill officers first.”
A big fellow named Morrison—in spite of the confusion of the fight I swiftly, sharply noted the spectacle—had actually gone wild with rage. He attacked a huge Boche with tremendous fury and literally hacked the man to pieces with his trench-knife.
And when his enemy went down, Morrison turned with a terrible leer on his countenance, made crimson by spurting blood from a big gash in his forehead.
“There, sir,” he yelled exultantly, “there’s a fine piece of German sausage for you!”
The Germans turned tail and we carried on through the woods, keeping in touch with the platoons on our right and left by means of “piles,” that is, men set out at certain intervals to find out the positions of the people on our flanks so that we might not be surrounded and cut off from the main body.
Our artillery in the meantime was sending out its heavy stuff and shrapnel well ahead of us, trying to cut off reinforcements of the Germans.
Our objective we knew to be a knoll of considerable height and length some two hundred and fifty yards through the woods from the scene of our first encounter. The Australians had tried to capture the woods two weeks before and were rent, torn and sent reeling back when they had edged their way through the forest to this knoll. For on it the Germans had built a strong position of sunken concrete houses thoroughly equipped with field artillery and machine guns. And their axes had effected a clearing in the woods surrounding this position. An attacking contingent was therefore forced into the open before their guns.
Sent back in defeat, the Australians were nevertheless able to bring knowledge to the heavy batteries of the location of this dangerous hill which was really the commanding position of the entire Delville woods. So while we were advancing, the big guns had been giving the hill the merry devil, but without destructive effect. Still they had blown shell craters all about the position and these craters were to give us the opportunity for some shelter in our advance in the open and for the setting up of our machine guns.
The question became, however, after we had put the first group of Germans on the run, as to whether there were other forces intermediately placed to give us opposition in our advance on the fortified hill.
One of our airmen tried to get us the information. He came down within less than five hundred feet of the tree tops. The woods were dense, but he signaled that for as much as he could see there was nothing in our way. He had no sooner given the information than a chunk of shrapnel blasted his engine and the sorely wounded plane swerved, keeled over and crashed through the trees and down to our side-lines. Our aviator was but little hurt, the trees having broken his fall, and we anxiously questioned him as to our flank forces for we could not know whether they were also keeping up the advance.