Plenty of fighting in the air was going on all along the front, often two or three fights taking place at the same time. Much interest is taken in them, and we would watch to see them come down. When flying too low they would sometimes be hit by the "archies," or anti-aircraft guns. Sometimes their gasolene-tanks would be hit, and they would then burst into flames, turn over, and fall apparently helplessly for some distance, but in the majority of cases would even then make a safe landing. Other times the enemy planes would come low enough to let us get a shot at them with our rifles and Lewis guns, and we would blaze away, but seldom recorded a hit. All aviators, however, agree that they are not much disturbed by the archies, but strongly dislike machine-gun fire.
Before we left this sector we were inspected by no less a person than the Third Army commander. He shook hands very affably with all of our officers and expressed himself as highly delighted with our success in discouraging the Hun below ground. (By this time the enemy were only firing an average of about one mine a week under our sector of the trenches.) The commander was a very fine officer, but his speeches came with difficulty. At each of the frequent pauses in his address to the company he would turn around and grasp warmly the hand of any officer alongside him. This seemed to encourage him, and he would continue.
About the middle of July we were ordered down to the line opposite Foncquevillers and Hébuterne. We gave up our comfortable quarters at B. with regret. Our work in the new trenches was to construct a number of galleries under No Man's Land, to be used in a coming offensive for ammunition-carriers and returned casualties. The infantry in these trenches opposite the famous Gommecourt Wood had been most unfortunate with the start of the Somme offensive on July 1. It was the most northerly end of the Big Push, the assault having taken place along the trenches all the way from Gommecourt Wood opposite here as far as Péronne on the British front, the French carrying on to the south of this.
According to our information, one of the battalions of this division had gone over the top on July 1, and reached Gommecourt Wood, an almost impregnable position, but through some mistake had not received sufficient support from the division on their left, and had been obliged to withdraw, losing over fifty per cent of their number while doing so. Two other battalions went over near this sector at the same time and were never heard of again. The trees, or stumps of trees, in Gommecourt Wood were laced together so thickly with barbed wire that further bombardment from our artillery only seemed to make it a more impenetrable barrier than before.
Our forward billet was in Foncquevillers. It was badly shelled, but not as bad as our former quarters. It's all a matter of comparison. The pup-pup-pup of machine-gun fire at night echoing through the trees of this village sounded worse than it really was, but we nevertheless were forced to make a practice of hugging the walls pretty closely and keeping behind the street sand-bag breastworks which afforded some protection as we walked around. It was a common sight in walking down the streets of this village by day to see roofs falling in or walls crashing across the road when the building was hit by a shell. Our steel helmets were pretty useful again in preventing the falling tile from drilling holes in our heads. Every roof was broken and tiles fell like leaves. An infallible index of the extent of enemy shelling on the villages close up was to count the number of civilians still living there. The majority of them very close up were totally abandoned by their former residents, while a number of other villages, which came in for more or less intermittent fire, still claimed small numbers of their original population, nearly all women, and mighty plucky ones at that.
In F., as in all villages close up, notices instructed you to "walk on the left side of the road" and in other places to use the trenches everywhere intersecting the village.
Whenever the "heavies" wished to shell the enemy front line the infantry were ordered to withdraw from the front-line trenches. This is very necessary, particularly when the opposing trenches are close together. In the ordinary course of events many men are hit by fragments from our own shells. We used to derive considerable pleasure in watching this close up strafing from the support-line.
In the Vimy Ridge trenches whenever we had spotted what we suspected to be an enemy mining-shaft we would take counsel with the trench-mortar officer or gunners and have the location consistently pounded, meanwhile watching with delight many hits which resulted in throwing up blocks of timber, the latter usually denoting a direct hit.
On account of the difficulty of obtaining the right atmospheric conditions for a gas attack, we would often have a number of false gas alarms. The "gas merchants," as they are called by the British, would place their steel cylinders in the parapet front line and carefully conceal them with sand-bags until the proper wind and velocity were obtained. It was usual to withdraw every one from the front line with the exception of the Lewis gunners. The "gas merchants" had planned to put over a gas attack in the trenches opposite Gommecourt Wood and we had taken our men out several times when it had been found inadvisable to throw the gas over on account of the shift of wind or some other reason. On this occasion I had withdrawn my men from the front line, and an hour later, having learned that the gas attack was not to come off this time, had gone up to the front line again alone by a different communication-trench. In passing along the fire-trench I happened to ask a corporal of a gas crew whether the gas attack was called off for that night. One of their sergeants overheard my questioning the corporal, and, seeing a strange officer alone in the trenches, very properly followed me up for a distance. When I arrived at the scene of our work I found that my men had not returned. The sergeant's suspicions naturally grew, and as I started out again he informed me that I would be placed under arrest until I could identify myself. I told him we would walk around to the infantry commander's dugout and he would vouch for me. As it happened, I had met some of these infantry officers in the morning, but they had only come in that day and did not know us very well. On reporting to the company headquarters, the infantry captain informed me that he guessed it was all right, but that he was taking no chances. I had better accompany the sergeant back to battalion headquarters. These headquarters were at the entrance to F., the village behind, and as I was marched back, with the sergeant closely following, I picked up one of my Irish corporals at their billet in the village. The latter seemed highly amused at my arrest. On arriving at battalion headquarters I established my identity very quickly to the battalion adjutant, but made a mental decision I would be careful about going around the front lines alone in the future.