Fighting the Boche Underground

by H. D. Trounce

On my return to Albert I found that my section were now constructing Russian saps and dugouts in the trenches opposite Thiepval, and we were there when the capture of this enormously strong fortress was effected at the end of September, 1916. The underground defenses of the Germans at Thiepval were very elaborate. Many of their machine-guns would be run up on elevators as occasion demanded from the dugouts below. Thiepval had withstood the most terrific hammering and pounding since July 1, of that year.

The tanks were first introduced in the fighting near us in the battle of the Somme, and were very successful.

In going up to Thiepval we drove every day through Aveluy Woods. These woods were shelled with persistent regularity and intensity by the enemy. One day as we were driving up, some shells burst among an infantry party marching just ahead of us on the road. Among the resulting casualties one of their officers was lying in the road with one leg blown off, while his orderly lay headless a few feet from him. A Tommy called attention to the head of the orderly in a tree near by. We had five casualties ourselves on this particular trip. One of them, not wounded very badly, danced with delight. "Good-by, sir, any message for Blighty," was his last call as we sent him back to the nearest aid-post. None of us enjoyed this daily ride through Aveluy Woods.

CHAPTER IX
THE BATTLE OF THE ANCRE

After some six weeks on the Somme we were ordered to return to Hébuterne and remained there during the operations known as the battle of the Ancre. Our rest-camp was at Souastre, a village some three miles back of the front line. Souastre was shelled irregularly. Whenever our artillery shelled a village behind the Hun lines, the Germans would retaliate by shelling the corresponding village behind the British lines. Retaliation was always a strong point with the Boches. Our work, which was now mostly deep-dugout construction, was in the village of Hébuterne and in the front and support trenches near this village. It had been anticipated that we would have captured the trenches at Gommecourt Wood and the German lines opposite Hébuterne in the Somme offensive, and as a result of this optimism, very little work had been done to repair and revet the trenches in this sector. The rain was rapidly making them almost impassable, despite the constant efforts of the engineers and infantry to repair them. We could hardly move in any of these trenches during the winter without a pair of rubber thigh-boots, and some men, going in or out alone, were drowned in the mud. This was not a rare occurrence. Many men are lost in this way during the winters. Our other sections had been working in an advanced sap which we called the "Z" hedge (British called this "Zed"), and we had continued to carry on repair work in the tunnels under No Man's Land there. It took us about three hours to get up to the "Z" hedge, nearly every man carrying some timber, and another three to come out. Sometimes I have taken a full half-hour to walk fifty yards in these advanced trenches, every step in mud above my waist. The alternative of sticking your head in the mud, ostrich fashion, or getting out and going over the top and taking your chance did not make it any more pleasant. We usually preferred to get out on top. One day the general in command of the infantry brigade visited these forward saps, and as a result we were ordered to abandon them—not however before we had paid a heavy price to hold them. A machine-gun section had set up a Vickers gun in this sap to cover the possible underground approach of the enemy and these parties would often be without rations or supplies for several days at a time. In addition to this, they were unable to light any fires on account of the smoke being seen from the close Hun trenches. Taking the tip from our fellows, they would heat their tea and bully beef (corned beef) in mess-tins with the aid of candles. We always sent up a few extra candles for them. The hedge here afforded a very useful target for the enemy, and they succeeded in planting many heavy minenwerfers around and in our sap. There were two entrances to this. One day just before I arrived a heavy minenwerfer had destroyed one entrance and killed three officers and four men. Those killed, including one engineer officer, had been blown to pieces. One of my corporals, with the rest of the shift, managed with infinite difficulty to bring out the wounded through the heavy mud. We were not at all sorry to say good-by to the "Zed" hedge.

A cellar, protected by sand-bags, in the village of Hebuterne, used as a shelter by engineer officers.

Our billets in Hébuterne were the usual cellars. These we strengthened by piling sand-bags and anything else we could find on them. Like most other cellars, even when reinforced, they were not proof against heavy shells. We would often sit and wonder whether the next would land right on top. A six or eight inch shell landing squarely on it would have smashed it like an egg-shell. Quite a number of our men and some from our attached infantry working-parties were killed in these cellars by shell-fire. The whistle and swish, too, as they passed over searching for the heavy batteries behind us was not too entertaining. You could hear them as they came, faintly at first, and with increasing sound until they burst with an ear-splitting crump. With experience we could determine from their sound those which were going to explode near. However, one is in doubt for a very few seconds only, though these seconds are very valuable. When walking along a road, which is being shelled you will sometimes have time enough to jump into the trench which is usually alongside all roads subject to enemy shelling. One evening I had just relieved Lieutenant G., who remarked before leaving: "The Huns have a nasty hate on to-day, and have been plastering shells all around the billet." They landed a whizz-bang (77-mm. shell) first about 6 p.m. some seven feet from my cellar entrance. A few minutes later a 5.9-inch shell burst about twenty feet away in the yard, and from eight to ten that evening a dozen landed, all within twenty to thirty yards of the dugout, one of them carrying away the roof of the house next to us, and just missing the end of our cellar. Finally they put a whizz-bang square on the entrance, and almost on top of it a heavy shell which blew down the front sand-bag wall. Fortunately for us we had already built another exit in the form of a tunnel into an adjoining cellar, where the cooks of the section held forth. The shells exploding near had blown out our candles each time, and we patiently relit them, but the last two had in addition blown down half a ton of bricks on us. We were getting decidedly peevish by this time, and when my orderly suggested the thought that was strongly in the minds of both of us—that retreat was in order—we proceeded to put thought into action and moved for the balance of the night to a large, safe dugout near us. The next day I returned to the cellar, but not before putting an extra tier or two of sand-bags on it.

To the right of us there was an advanced aid-post with a mortuary above. This mortuary was in the ruins of a house which had no roof and only two walls. For a time the bodies of men killed each day in the trenches near by were placed here. It was an unfortunate choice. One night my men reported that they had seen rats running over the bodies. Directly I learned of this, we placed sentries to prevent such horrors recurring.

One day we received a request from the brigade to investigate a mysterious crater at the head of Woman Street trench. It appears that an explosion had been heard there two nights earlier, and the following morning it was found that ten infantrymen were missing and a crater some twenty feet deep had been formed in No Man's Land just ahead of the front line at this point. The brigade staff could not understand the situation and requested that an investigation be made at once to determine whether the enemy were mining here and had blown this crater from below ground. As the trenches were some 200 yards apart here mining did not appear probable. I visited the site and later ascertained the fact that an old trench-mortar bomb store had been located there some time previously. We took out a party of our sappers and dug around in the very symmetrically shaped crater. We unearthed some remnants of trench-mortar ammunition-boxes. What happened to the ten men was never definitely known, but we concluded that an enemy shell must have landed squarely on the T.M. store, detonated all the trench-mortar ammunition and blown out the entire gun crew. None of the bodies were found anywhere in the vicinity. The night before our fellows went out to dig around in this crater an infantry bombing-party had been detailed to occupy it. In the morning they were all found bayonetted. A Boche patrol had surprised them. One man in the party who was wounded had managed to crawl away in the dark and escaped the fate of his comrades. As happens so often in this war, the Huns had not been content with killing. On the body of one man were found five bayonet wounds.