Pushed and the Return Push

by George Herbert Fosdike Nichols

VI. BEHIND VILLEQUIER AUMONT[ToC]

I have tried to explain how "this flood-burst of moving war, such as the world had never before seen," affected one unit of the R.F.A., and one unimportant civilian soldier who was doing adjutant; how the immensity and swift thoroughness of the German effort must have been realised by the casual newspaper reader in England more quickly than by the average officer or man who had to fight against it.

5.30 A.M.: That six hours' sleep under a tarpaulin did me all the good in the world, and by 5 A.M. I was out seeing that our Headquarter horses were being groomed and fed and got ready for immediate action.

The guns were particularly quiet, and I remember thinking: we have retreated eight miles in forty-eight hours—it's about time we stopped. Something is sure to be doing farther north, where we are so much stronger.

Breakfast and a shave; then a move forward to find the colonel, and to learn whether he wanted the waggon lines brought up again. It was a lovely morning. A beautiful stretch of meadowland skirted the road leading back to Villequier Aumont, and my horse cantered as if the buoyancy of spring possessed him also. I caught up Fentiman of D Battery, who said he was shifting his waggon lines back to Villequier Aumont. "The water and the standings are so much better there," he said.

I found the colonel standing in the square at Villequier Aumont, watching the departure by car of the three American ladies who for a month past had dispensed tea and cakes in the gaily-painted maisonette at the top of the village. They had been the first harbingers of the approaching brotherhood between the British and American Armies in this part of the Front: brave hospitable women, they had made many friends.

The colonel was not in such good mood this morning. He had remained through the night with the infantry brigadier in the wood from which our horse lines had withdrawn the previous evening. The dug-out was none too large, and his only rest had been a cramped four hours trying to sleep on the floor. With no rest at all the night before, no wonder he looked fagged. But immediately there were orders to give, he became his usual alert, clear-headed self. "It is most important this morning that we should keep communication with our Divisional Artillery Headquarters," he began. "Bring the telephone cart back to the wood at once, and put a couple of telephonists into the dug-out. They'll be safe there until the last possible moment. It's uncertain yet whether we're going to hold the enemy up there or not."

I galloped back and brought the telephone cart along at a trot. The two wheelers, particularly "the doctor's mare," stepped out in most refreshing style. "The old cart's never had such a day since it's been to France," grinned the signalling-sergeant when we pulled up. Odd 5·9's were falling in the wood; our batteries had shifted in the early morning from the eastern side of the wood to positions more north-west, and two Horse Artillery batteries were moving up behind the rise that protected our right flank. But what was this? Coming up at a steady march, bayonets glinting, a long column of blue-grey wound into view. French infantry! The thin line of khaki was at last to receive support!

7 A.M.: The Infantry battle was now developing sharply two thousand yards in front of us. Shells crashed persistently into the wood; the "putt-puttr-putt" of machine-guns rattled out ceaselessly.... Whimsically I recalled quieter days on the Somme, when our machine-gunners used to loose off seven rounds in such a way as to give a very passable imitation of that popular comic-song tag, "Umtiddy-om-pom—Pom-pom!" After three attempts we had given up trying to keep telephone touch with the batteries, and I had detailed mounted orderlies to be in readiness. One line I kept going, though, between the hut where the infantry brigadier and his brigade-major and the colonel received messages describing the progress of the fighting, and the telephone dug-out, whence the colonel could be switched on to the artillery brigadier. There was bad news of the battery just out from England that had come under the colonel's command the evening before. Three of their guns had been smashed by direct hits, and they had lost horses as well. The Boche were swarming over the canal now, and our A and C and B Batteries were firing over open sights and cutting up Germans as they surged towards our trenches.