With the English troops we have great difficulties. They have a queer way of causing losses to the enemy. They make good trenches, in which they wait patiently. They carefully measure the ranges for their rifle fire, and they then open a truly hellish fire. This was the reason that we had such heavy losses....
From another source:—
The English are very brave, and fight to the last man.... One of our companies has lost 130 men out of 240.
From this time the battle took on more and more the features of a regular siege. On the side of the Germans the operations resolved themselves into persistent bombardments by day alternated with infantry attacks by night. Infantry attacks in daylight they now knew to be foredoomed. It is questionable, indeed, if, with the lowered moral of their troops, such attacks were any longer possible. To assist their night attacks they rigged up searchlights, and when their infantry advanced played the beams upon the British lines in the hope of dazzling the defence and spoiling the rifle-fire they had learned to dread. These lights, however, served also as a warning. When that was found out the enemy went back to attacks in the darkness, but with no better results.
Sunday, September 20, was the date of another general night onslaught. Just before the attack developed military bands were heard playing in the German lines. After the manner of the natives of West Africa they were working themselves up to the fury pitch. It was to be a do-or-die business evidently. The enterprise, however, again failed to prosper. Against some of the British positions the attack was pushed with dogged bravery; and the scenes of five nights before were enacted again and again with the like results. Against one part of the line the onset wound up with an extraordinary disaster. Two German columns mistook each other in the darkness for British troops. They had apparently set out from different points to converge upon the same British position. In front of that position they fought a furious combat, and while no bullets reached the British trenches the men in them were afforded the unwonted spectacle of the enemy wiping themselves out.[28]
Between the two armies the country had now become a "no-man's land," deserted by both sides because, in the expressive phrase of the British soldier, it had turned "unhealthy." Over this tract the still unburied bodies of German infantry lay where they had fallen. Outside the village of Paissy, held by the British and near a ridge where there had been some of the severest fighting, the German dead lay in heaps. Lines of German trenches held at the beginning of the battle were by this time deserted.
Reconnoitring parties, says the authorised story, sent out during the night of the 21st-22nd, discovered some deserted trenches, and in them, or near them in the woods, over a hundred dead and wounded were picked up. A number of rifles, ammunition, and equipment were also found. There were various other signs that portions of the enemy's forces had withdrawn for some distance.
Unable to prevail in open fight, the Germans resorted to almost every variety of ruse. In the words of the official story:—
The Germans, well trained, long-prepared, and brave, are carrying on the contest with skill and valour. Nevertheless, they are fighting to win anyhow, regardless of all the rules of fair play, and there is evidence that they do not hesitate at anything in order to gain victory.
During a counter-attack by the German 53rd Regiment on portions of the Northampton and Queen's Regiments on Thursday, the 17th, a force of some 400 of the enemy were allowed to approach right up to the trench occupied by a platoon of the former regiment, owing to the fact that they had held up their hands and made gestures that were interpreted as signs that they wished to surrender. When they were actually on the parapet of the trench held by the Northamptons they opened fire on our men at point-blank range.
Unluckily for the enemy, however, flanking them and only some 400 yards away, there happened to be a machine gun manned by a detachment of the "Queen's." This at once opened fire, cutting a lane through their mass, and they fell back to their own trench with great loss. Shortly afterwards they were driven further back with additional loss by a battalion of the Guards, which came up in support.
During the fighting, also, some German ambulance wagons advanced in order to collect the wounded. An order to cease fire was consequently given to our guns, which were firing on this particular section of ground. The German battery commanders at once took advantage of the lull in the action to climb up their observation ladders and on to haystacks to locate our guns, which soon afterwards came under a far more accurate fire than any to which they had been subjected up to that time.
A British officer who was captured by the Germans, and has since escaped, reports that while a prisoner he saw men who had been fighting subsequently put on Red Cross brassards. That the irregular use of the protection afforded by the Geneva Convention is not uncommon is confirmed by the fact that on one occasion men in the uniform of combatant units have been captured wearing the Red Cross brassard hastily slipped over the arm. The excuse given has been that they had been detailed after a fight to look after the wounded.
It is reported by a cavalry officer that the driver of a motor-car with a machine gun mounted on it, which he captured, was wearing the Red Cross.