fighting in a sea of mud
Inspecting a Tank that was Hors de Combat—All that was Left of Mouquet Farm—A German Underground Fortress—A Trip in the Bowels of the Earth—A Weird and Wonderful Experience.
After our successful attack and capture of Lesboeufs and Morval on September 25th, 1916, beyond consolidating our gains there was comparatively little done in the way of big offensives until the capture of Mouquet Farm and Thiepval and the capture of Beaumont Hamel—that fortress of fortresses—on November 13th, and I devoted the interval to recording the ground won.
One interesting incident occurred when I filmed Mouquet Farm situate between Pozières and Thiepval. Looking at the Farm from the strategical point of view, I feel quite confident in saying that only British troops could have taken it. It was one of the most wonderful defensive points that could possibly be conceived, and chosen by men who made a special study of such positions. The whole place was thickly planted with machine-guns, so cunningly concealed that it was impossible to observe them until one was practically at the gun's mouth.
To get here it was necessary to go down a long steep glacis, then up another to the farm. The Germans, with their network of underground passages and dug-outs, were able to concentrate at any threatened point with their machine-guns in such a manner that they would have our troops under a continual stream of lead for quite one thousand yards without a vestige of cover. The farm had been shelled by our artillery time after time, until the whole ground for miles round was one huge mass of shell-craters, but the Germans, in their dug-outs forty and fifty feet underground, could not be reached by shell-fire. I will not go into details of how the place was eventually taken by the Midlanders—it will remain an epic of the war.
The weather was now breaking up. Cold winds and rain continually swept over the whole Somme district, invariably accompanied by thick mists. I wanted to obtain a film showing the fearful mud conditions, which we were working hard and fighting in and under. And such mud! You could not put the depth in inches. Nothing so ordinary; it was feet deep. I have known relief battalions take six hours to reach their allotted position in the front line, when, in the dry season, the same journey could be accomplished in an hour; and the energy expended in wading through such a morass can be imagined. Many times I have got stuck in the clayey slime well above my knees and have required the assistance of two, and sometimes three men to help me out. To turn oneself into a lump of mud, all one had to do was to walk down to the front line; you would undoubtedly be taken for a part of the parapet by the time you arrived. I asked a Tommy once what he thought of it.
"Sir," he replied, "there ain't no blooming word to describe it!" And I think he was right.
On one journey, when filming the carrying of munitions by mule-back—as that was the only method by which our advanced field-guns could be supplied—while they were being loaded at a dump near —— Wood, the mud was well above the mules' knees, and, in another instance, it was actually touching their bellies. In such conditions our men were fighting and winning battles, and not once did I hear of a single instance where it affected the morale of the men. We cursed and swore about it; who wouldn't? It retarded our progress; we wallowed in it, we had to struggle through miles of it nearly up to our knees; we slept in it or tried to; we ate in it, it even got unavoidably mixed up with our food; and sometimes we drank it. And we tolerated it all, month after month. If it was bad for us, we knew it was far worse for the Bosche, for not only had he to live under these conditions, but he was subjected to our hellish bombardment continually without rest or respite.
Thus it was I filmed Mouquet Farm and other scenes in the neighbourhood. I went to Pozières and then struck across country. On my way I passed a Tank which, for the time being, was hors de combat. It naturally aroused my interest. I closely inspected it, both inside and out, and, while I stood regarding it, two whizz-bangs came over in quick succession, bursting about thirty feet away. The fact immediately occurred to me that the Tank was under observation by the Bosche and he, knowing the attraction it would have for enquiring natures, kept a gun continually trained upon it. I had just got behind the body of the thing when another shell dropped close by. I did not stop to judge the exact distance. I cursed the mud because it did not allow me to run fast enough, but really I ought to have blessed it. The fact that it was so muddy caused the shell to sink more deeply into the ground before exploding, its effective radius being also more confined.
When I got clear of the Tank, the firing ceased. I mentally vowed that, for the future, temporarily disabled Tanks near the firing-line would not interest me, unless I was sure they were under good cover.