However, by December 12th all was ready for the arrival of the batteries, and on that day there marched into action two sections each of C/156, A/162 and C/162 who had left Camp 14 on the previous day and had established wagon-lines at Camp 21, one mile south of Maricourt, on the Suzanne-Maricourt road. They were followed on December 13th by A/156, B/156 and B/162, while the 15th saw the arrival of the "D" batteries, so that exactly ten days before Christmas the whole of the Divisional Artillery was "back to work" again. Camp 14 had only been used as a very brief halting place in the scheme; it acted, in fact, merely as a place for the partial concentration of the batteries, and it was well that this was the case, for a worse spot and a more unsuitable artillery camp it would be difficult to find. Some distance from the road, approached only by the roughest of tracks, it lay in a valley and quickly showed itself to be a veritable mud-trap. The horse-lines were bad, the men's quarters were worse, and the effort of pulling into the camp off the road, and of struggling back on to the road again when the march was resumed, more than counteracted any benefit which might otherwise have accrued from the two days spent there in rest. It was with a feeling of relief, therefore, that the batteries turned their backs upon this much-hated spot and set out for Camp 21, their permanent wagon-lines whilst in action. Nothing could be worse than Camp 14; perhaps Camp 21 might be better. Perhaps!
As events turned out, Camp 21 between Suzanne and Maricourt was a slight improvement, but very slight. It was on ground which had been the scene of the summer and autumn offensive, and nothing could solidify the earth which had been so torn and shattered by high explosives. The least suspicion of rain—even of damp—turned everything into mud, while the neighbourhood of the water-troughs, unless built up from a timber foundation, became absolutely and completely impassable. Certain of the batteries, in fact, which were forced to establish their wagon-lines on the west of the road struck such fearful conditions that a number of horses were actually drowned in the mud. It was not the fault of the batteries or brigades—they were ordered to establish wagon-lines in a certain spot and perforce they had to do it, nor could the most strenuous of efforts put things right in a few days. To whomever the fault was due, it was heart-breaking to battery commanders to see the effects of a three weeks' rest being wiped out almost in as many days by the impossible conditions in which some of them found themselves.
To return, however, to the tactical situation. By December 16th all the batteries, less one section in some cases, were in action in the Maurepas-Bouchavesnes area. Only two brigades—the 156th and the 162nd—of the 33rd Divisional Artillery were in the line, for the 166th Brigade had been left behind at Airaines, but to General Blane's command were added two brigades of the 40th Divisional Artillery—the 178th and 181st—in action in Anderlu and Marrières Woods respectively, and with these four brigades it was considered that sufficient artillery support for the divisional front would be forthcoming. The batteries of the 162nd Brigade, with the exception of "D" Battery, lay just west of the Clery-Le Forest road and about half-way between the two villages; "D" battery, for reasons to be discussed presently, took up a position two hundred yards east of Hospital Wood, while the battery positions of the 156th Brigade were congregated in the area around and east of Le Forest.
In taking over from the French a portion of the line, as was done in this case, very considerable difficulties had to be faced from the brigade and battery commanders' point of view. The French field batteries consisted almost always of four guns, and to relieve them with six-gun batteries involved either the digging of further gun-pits and shelters for the men or the splitting up of the batteries into two portions. In this case the 33rd Divisional Artillery was relieving three groups (the 3rd, 4th and 5th) of French artillery, each group consisting of three four-gun batteries, and accordingly it was resolved to take one section each from "B" and C/156 and to combine them into a third four-gun battery, while "A" and B/162 carried out the same procedure in the other brigade; two guns of C/162 relieved on their own a French battery, and A/156 was fortunate enough to take up a position in which it was possible to keep all six guns in action together. Thus it will be seen that the brigades were thrown into rather a disorganised condition, but this was not all. The French Army did not maintain any batteries of field howitzers, and therefore the 4·5 in. howitzer batteries of the two brigades found themselves nobody's children, left out in the cold with nobody to relieve, no battery position to take over. They were forced on this, as on another later occasion, to buckle to and dig their own position, and for this reason D/162, as already stated, came to the edge of Hospital Wood and dug itself in under a small bank.
By the 16th and 17th of December the main work of establishing the positions had been overcome, and, preliminary registration being completed, the batteries had a chance of looking around them. The surroundings were not inspiring; they had been wrested from the enemy during the Somme offensive and, in common with the rest of the battlefield, were torn and pitted with shell-holes in all directions. The autumn and winter rains had turned the whole countryside into a vast sea of mud, mud so deep, so thick and of such peculiar consistency that it was altogether impossible to remove it, drain or even dig through it. Conditions were, indeed, pitiable; every yard walked was an effort involving absolute wading; thigh gum-boots were powerless to keep the men dry; ammunition, rations and mail had to be brought to the battery positions by pack-horse, for no wagon could approach, and on top of all this it rained, rained continuously and steadfastly during the whole period. It was indeed a wretched place, rendered more wretched by the knowledge that Christmas—a season usually associated with comfort and merrymaking—was fast approaching.
For some time after the arrival of the batteries on this part of the front there was no war, for the simple reason that war was impossible. The battery positions consisted merely of six semi-dry platforms for the guns, separated and surrounded by apparently bottomless mud; the men lived in wet and muddy shelters and dug-outs, and were scarcely ever dry; telephone lines forward ran through mud which made the repair of breaks a clumsy, maddening business, while up with the infantry there were no trenches, no dug-outs, nothing but mud and water. Along the whole of the divisional front there were only about four places where anything approaching the semblance of a communication trench could be found, and these were so bad as to be rather deeper of mud than the surrounding ground. There was only one way to reach the front line—a ditch full of water with a little wire in front—and that was to walk straight over the open up to the fire trench itself, and there, if a new arrival, drop in; if an old hand, sit on the parados.
This state of affairs may sound fantastic and even an exaggeration, but it is only too true an account. The French, finding conditions were well-nigh impossible for fighting, decided philosophically not to fight, and arranged with the enemy accordingly. It was muddy for them, but just as muddy for the enemy; it was a beastly business wading up communication trenches which were practically non-existent to a front line which was scarcely habitable, but it was just as beastly for the Germans; therefore, forward observing officers going up to visit the infantry had the strange experience of walking up to our front line over the open, of sitting on the parapet in full view of the enemy one hundred yards away, and of seeing the enemy doing exactly the same thing themselves. So extraordinary were the conditions, in fact, that a battery commander of the 162nd Brigade walked over the open with one of his subalterns not only up to the front line but over it at a spot where it was deserted, and had got well into No Man's Land before a sentry in one of the adjoining bays called him back.
Whether the French method of thus maintaining an unofficial truce was a good one need not be debated in these pages. It certainly led them to give up making any effort to dig communication trenches at all, even in spots where with trouble it would have been possible, and it by no means helped to foster the "cultivation of the fighting spirit," the importance of which was being impressed so busily upon all ranks at the time. On the other hand it gave them a tiny measure of comfort which made life just endurable, and by resuming active operations and reducing the enemy to a state of misery they would have let themselves in for similar wretchedness.
When the 33rd Division took over the line, however, the question was left in doubt no longer. Where there was war there was to be real war and no unofficial truce; the French protested, they tried in vain to prevent the infantry sniping, but it was of no avail. One morning a whole platoon of Germans marched calmly down to the front line over the open, following the custom of bygone days; the temptation was too great, and a Lewis gunner, hastily putting together the gun he had been cleaning, raised it on to the parapet and browned the lot! From that moment onwards not a head dared show above the parapet, and everybody living in the front line or visiting it endured discomfort and hardship beyond imagination.
Gradually, as the 33rd Division settled in, hostilities increased and boiled up. Even so the majority of the firing was upon the back areas, for the forward trench system—engulfed in a sea of mud—offered no target whatever. Duckboard tracks, valleys hidden from infantry and artillery observers where the enemy might walk about in the open, suspected battery positions, cross-roads and other similar targets received as a rule the attention of our guns, while the enemy administered the same treatment to corresponding features behind our lines. The actual front covered by the batteries extended from the enemy trenches on the Bouchavesnes ridge northwards through Moislains Wood to the great wood of St. Pierre Vaast. From observation stations along the ridge east of Aiguille Ravine (in which was the artillery forward telephone exchange) a very good view of all the enemy system could be seen except in the extreme north of the zone, though the trenches behind the support line were hidden owing to the steep valley which ran down towards Moislains.