The goal—the goal! Ten men out of a hundred reached it in a few cases and when they arrived they sent up rocket signals to say that they were there! there! there! Two or three battalions literally disappeared into the blue. I thought that the Germans might have taken a considerable number of prisoners, but not so. Those isolated lots who went on to their objectives regardless of every other thought died fighting, as final proof of the New Army's spirit, against the Germans enraged by their heavy losses from the preliminary British bombardment.
It was where gaps existed and gallantry went blindly forward, unable in the fog of shell-smoke to see whether the units on the right or the left were up, that these sacrifices of heroism were made; but where command was held over the line and the opposition was not of a variable kind counsel was taken of the impossible and retreat was ordered. That is, the units turned back toward their own trenches under direction. They had to pass through the same curtain of shell fire in returning as in charging, and ahead of them through the blasts they drove their prisoners.
"Never mind. It's from your own side!" said one Briton to a German who had been knocked over by a German "krump" when he picked himself up; and the German answered that this did not make him like it any better.
Scattered with British wounded taking cover in new and old shell-craters was No Man's Land as the living passed. A Briton and his prisoner would take cover together. An explosion and the prisoner might be blown to bits, or if the captor were, another Briton took charge of the prisoner. Persistently stubborn were the captors in holding on to prisoners who were trophies out of that inferno, and when a Briton was back in the first-line trench with his German his delight was greater in delivering his man alive than in his own safety. Out in No Man's Land the wounded hugged their shell-craters until the fire slackened or night fell, when they crawled back.
Where early in the morning it had appeared as if the attack were succeeding reserve battalions were sent in to the support of those in front, and as unhesitatingly and steadily as at drill they entered the blanket of shell-smoke with its vivid flashes and hissing of shrapnel bullets and shell-fragments. Commanders, I found, stood in awe of the steadfast courage of their troops. Whether officers or men, those who came out of hell were still true to their heritage of English phlegm.
Covered with chalk dust from crawling, their bandages blood-soaked, bespattered with the blood of comrades as they lay on litters or hobbled down a communication trench, they looked blank when they mentioned the scenes that they had witnessed; but they gave no impression of despair. It did not occur to them that they had been beaten; they had been roughly handled in one round of a many-round fight. Had a German counter-attack developed they would have settled down, rifle in hand, to stall through the next round. And that young officer barely twenty, smiling though weak from loss of blood from two wounds, refusing assistance as he pulled himself along among the "walking wounded," showed a bravery in his stoicism equal to any on the field when he said, "It did not go well this time," in a way that indicated that, of course, it would in the end.
It was over one of those large scale, raised maps showing in facsimile all the elevations that a certain corps commander told the story of the whole attack with a simplicity and frankness which was a victory of character even if he had not won a victory in battle. He rehearsed the details of preparation, which were the same in their elaborate care as those of corps which had succeeded; and he did not say that luck had been against him—indeed, he never once used the word—but merely that the German fortifications had been too strong and the gunfire too heavy. He bore himself in the same manner that he would in his house in England; but his eyes told of suffering and when he spoke of his men his voice quavered.
Where the young officer had said that it had not gone well this time and a private had said, "We must try again, sir!" the general had said that repulse was an incident of a prolonged operation in the initial stage, which sounded more professional but was no more illuminating. All spoke of lessons learned for the future. Thus they had stood the supreme test which repulse alone can give.
What could an observer say or do that was not banal in the eyes of men who had been through such experiences? Only listen and look on with the awe of one who feels that he is in the presence of immortal heroism. And an hour's motor ride away were troops in the glow of that success which is without comparison in its physical elation—the success of arms.