Such became members of the machine gun corps, which took an oath never to surrender, and led bombing parties and posted themselves in shell-craters to face the charges while shells fell thick around them, or remained up in the trench taking their chances against curtains of fire that covered an infantry charge, in the hope of being able to turn on their own bullet spray for a moment before being killed. Sometimes their dead bodies were found strapped to their guns, more often probably by their own request, as an insurance against deserting their posts, than by command.
Shell fire was the theatricalism of the struggle, the roar of guns its thunder; but night or day the sound of the staccato of that little arch devil of killing, the machine gun, coming from the Ridge seemed as true an expression of what was always going on there as a rattlesnake's rattle is of its character. Delville and High Woods and Guillemont and Longueval and the Switch Trench—these are symbolic names of that attrition, of the heroism of British persistence which would not take No for answer.
You might think that you had seen ruins until you saw those of Guillemont after it was taken. They were the granulation of bricks and mortar and earth mixed by the blasts of shell fire which crushed solids into dust and splintered splinters. Guillemont lay beyond Trônes Wood across an open space where the German guns had full play. There was a stone quarry on the outskirts, and a quarry no less than a farm like Waterlot, which was to the northward, and Falfemont, to the southward and flanking the village, formed shelter. It was not much of a quarry, but it was a hole which would be refuge for reserves and machine guns. The two farms, clear targets for British guns, had their deep dugouts whose roofs were reinforced by the ruins that fell upon them against penetration even by shells of large caliber. How the Germans fought to keep Falfemont! Once they sent out a charge with the bayonet to meet a British charge between walls of shell fire and there through the mist the steel was seen flashing and vague figures wrestling.
Guillemont and the farms won and Ginchy which lay beyond won and the British had their flank on high ground. Twice they were in Guillemont but could not remain, though as usual they kept some of their gains. It was a battle from dugout to dugout, from shelter to shelter of any kind burrowed in débris or in fields, with the British never ceasing here or elsewhere to continue their pressure. And the débris of a village had particular appeal; it yielded to the spade; its piles gave natural cover.
A British soldier returning from one of the attacks as he hobbled through Trônes Wood expressed to me the essential generalship of the battle. He was outwardly as unemotional as if he were coming home from his day's work, respectful and good-humored, though he had a hole in both arms from machine gun fire, a shrapnel wound in the heel, and seemed a trifle resentful of the added tribute of another shrapnel wound in his shoulder after he had left the firing-line and was on his way to the casualty clearing station. Insisting that he could lift the cigarette I offered him to his lips and light it, too, he said:
"We've only to keep at them, sir. They'll go."
So the British kept at them and so did the French at every point. Was Delville Wood worse than High Wood? This is too nice a distinction in torments to be drawn. Possess either of them completely and command of the Ridge in that section was won. The edge of a wood on the side away from your enemy was the easiest part to hold. It is difficult to range artillery on it because of restricted vision, and the enemy's shells aimed at it strike the trees and burst prematurely among his own men. Other easy, relatively easy, places to hold are the dead spaces of gullies and ravines. There you were out of fire and there you were not; there you could hold and there you could not. Machine gun fire and shell fire were the arbiters of topography more dependable than maps.
Why all the trees were not cut down by the continual bombardments of both sides was past understanding. There was one lone tree on the skyline near Longueval which I had watched for weeks. It still had a limb, yes, the luxury of a limb, the last time that I saw it, pointing with a kind of defiance in its immunity. Of course it had been struck many times. Bits of steel were imbedded in its trunk; but only a direct hit on the trunk will bring down a tree. Trees may be slashed and whittled and nicked and gashed and still stand; and when villages have been pulverized except for the timbering of the houses, a scarred shade tree will remain.
Thus, trees in Delville Wood survived, naked sticks among fallen and splintered trunks and upturned roots. How any man could have survived was the puzzling thing. None could if he had remained there continuously and exposed himself; but man is the most cunning of animals. With gas mask and eye-protectors ready, steel helmet on his head and his faithful spade to make himself a new hole whenever he moved, he managed the incredible in self-protection. Earth piled back of a tree-trunk would stop bullets and protect his body from shrapnel. There he lay and there a German lay opposite him, except when attacks were being made.
Not getting the northern edge of the woods the British began sapping out in trenches to the east toward Ginchy, where the map contours showed the highest ground in that neighborhood. New lines of trenches kept appearing on the map, often with group names such as Coffee Alley, Tea Lane and Beer Street, perhaps. Out in the open along the irregular plateau the shells were no more kindly, the bombing and the sapping no less diligent all the way to the windmill, where the Australians were playing the same kind of a game. With the actual summit gained at certain points, these had to be held pending the taking of the whole, or of enough to permit a wave of men to move forward in a general attack without its line being broken by the resistance of strong points, which meant confusion.