A GREAT NIGHT ATTACK
Following hard blows with blows—Trônes Woods—Attack and counter-attack—A heavy price to pay—"The spirit that quickeneth" knew no faltering—Second-line German fortifications—A daringly planned attack—"Up and at them!"—An attack not according to the scientific factory system—The splendid and terrible hazard—Gun flashes in the dark numerous as fireflies—Majestic, diabolical, beautiful—A planet bombarding with aerolites—Signal flares in the distance—How far had the British gone?—Sunrise on the attack—Good news that day.
Of all the wonderful nights at the front that of July 13th-14th was distinctive for its incomparable suspense. A great experiment was to be tried; at least, so it seemed to the observer, though the staff did not take that attitude. It never does once it has decided upon any daring enterprise. When you send fifty thousand men into a charge that may fail with a loss of half of their number or may brilliantly succeed with a loss of only five per cent., none from the corps commanders and division commanders, who await results after the plans are made, down to the privates must have any thought except that the plan is right and that it will go through.
There is no older military maxim than to follow up any hard blow with other blows, in order that the enemy may have no time to recuperate; but in moving against a frontal line under modern conditions the congestion of transport and ammunition which must wait on new roads and the filling in of captured trenches makes a difficult problem in organization. Never had there been and never were there necessary such numbers of men and such quantities of material as on the Somme front.
The twelve days succeeding July 1st had seen the taking of minor position after position by local concentrations of troops and artillery fire, while the army as a whole had been preparing for another big attack at the propitious moment when these preliminary gains should justify it.
Half a tactical eye could see that the woods of Mametz, Bernafay and Trônes must be held in order to allow of elbow room for a mass movement over a broad front. The German realized this and after he had lost Mametz and Bernafay he held all the more desperately to Trônes, which, for the time being, was the superlative horror in woods fighting, though we were yet to know that it could be surpassed by Delville and High Woods.
In Trônes the Germans met attack with counter-attack again and again. The British got through to the east side of the woods, and in reply the Germans sent in a wave forcing the British back to the west, but no farther. Then the British, reinforced again, reached the east side. Showers of leaves and splinters descended from shell-bursts and machine guns were always rattling. The artillery of both sides hammered the approaches of the woods to prevent reinforcements from coming up.
In the cellars of Guillemont village beyond Trônes the Germans had refuges for concentrating their reserves to feed in more troops, whose orders, as all the prisoners taken said, were to hold to the last man. Trônes Wood was never to be yielded to the British. Its importance was too vital. Grim national and racial pride and battalion pride and soldierly pride grappled in unyielding effort and enmity. The middle of the woods became a neutral ground where the wounded of the different sallies lay groaning from pain and thirst. Small groups of British had dug themselves in among the Germans and, waterless, foodless, held out, conserving their ammunition or, when it was gone, waiting for the last effort with the bayonet.
For several days the spare British artillery had been cutting the barbed wire of the second line and smashing in the trenches; and the big guns which had been advanced since July 1st were sending their shells far beyond the Ridge into villages and crossroads and other vital points, in order to interfere with German communications.
The Thiepval-Gommecourt line where the British had been repulsed on July 1st had reverted to something approaching stalemate conditions, with the usual exchange of artillery fire, and it was along the broader front where the old German first line had been broken through that the main concentrations of men and guns were being made in order to continue the advance for the present through the opening won on July 1st. The price paid for the taking of the woods and for repeated attacks where initial attacks had failed might seem to the observer—unless he knew that the German losses had been equally heavy if not heavier since July 1st—disproportionate not only to the ground gained but also to general results up to this time which, and this was most important, had demonstrated, as a promise for the future, that the British New Army could attack unremittingly and successfully against seasoned German troops in positions which the Germans had considered impregnable.