Our business lies between Authuille and Thiepval. We have fined down the vaster issues to the operations east of Authuille, where the British line bulged towards the Ancre in an ugly angle known as the Leipsic Salient. The fighting to which we now come is all round and about that Salient, between the point where the British front line crossed the River Ancre at Hamel to the point where it met the Albert-Bapaume road. If we realize that the object of this fighting was to straighten and push back that bulge, and so to contribute to the advance of the long Allied line on the Somme battlefield, we may return to the men who fought there in the early days of July, 1916. It is one thing to show on a map, on however large a scale, the increasing depth of the British front line at various dates after July 1st; it is another thing to visualize that line in the actual mud, trees, slopes, which composed it, and to recount the conditions day by day, under which it swayed forward and back, in front and beyond and across the magnificently fortified German trenches.
Take the 7th West Yorkshires, for example.
We left them at noon on July 1st in their assembly-trenches in Thiepval Wood. While the sun was still high in the heaven, about half-past five in the afternoon, Brigade orders (146th Infantry) arrived for the attack. The 5th and 6th Battalions of the Regiment were to go over the top in an attempt to capture Thiepval village, the 8th was detailed for support, and the 7th for reserve. Some hot hours of confused fighting ensued. The 7th Battalion was told off to man the original British front line trench, from the point where it touched the east bank of the Ancre to a point known as Hammerhead Gap, at the top of Thiepval Wood. This move was being completed with great difficulty, owing, mainly, to the congestion of the trenches by the wounded and stragglers of the 36th (Ulster) Division, when an Officer of that Division, Commanding the 9th Royal Irish Rifles, made an earnest request for help to reinforce his men in the German lines. Two Companies (C and D) of the 7th West Yorkshires made their way to these captured trenches, leaving A and B Companies to hold the British front and support lines. The fall of night brought no rest to this unit. The 36th Division became able to hold its own, and the half-Battalion from the 49th was ordered to withdraw. This order was not easy to carry out in the darkness, weariness and general mêlée, and about forty men of C Company found themselves stranded for the night (July 1st-2nd) in the disagreeable hospitality of the German line. They were well led by a non-commissioned Officer, Corporal (later, Sergeant) George Sanders, who was recommended for his valuable work and great personal bravery by the Officers of the Royal Irish Rifles. Later, Sanders received the supreme decoration of the Victoria Cross[58] for his gallant conduct in this action, and six of the brave men with him were awarded Military Medals. The whole Battalion was withdrawn to Aveluy Wood, and reached the assembly-trenches about 11 o’clock on the night of July 2nd; thirty-six hours, or a little less, after they had assembled on the 1st. They had lost 16 killed, 144 wounded and about 20 missing; they had gained a Victoria Cross, some experience, and—four days’ rest.
Take another unit of the 49th Division: the 5th Battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment, in the 148th Infantry Brigade. We left them proceeding to Aveluy Wood just before midnight on June 30th. The first instalment of their story in the present action is to last almost exactly a week: from 1-30 p.m. on July 1st, when the Battalion moved out of the assembly-trenches, till 8-30 p.m. on July 8th, when they were relieved by the 7th West Ridings, and went into huts in Martinsart Wood. The story makes sad but gallant reading. They sustained in those seven days and nights a total of 307 casualties. Their Commanding Officer was wounded and missing, their Officer 2nd in Command was killed, another Officer had died of wounds, thirteen more were wounded or missing. In other Ranks, 56 were killed and three had died of wounds; 204 were wounded and 44 missing: a heavy toll to be extracted from one Battalion towards the relief of the pressure on Verdun.
The price was paid without reckoning the cost, and we shall not follow in detail the experiences of this unit during that week. They moved first to where the British front line touched the left bank of the Ancre. Major Shaw took A and B Companies to the north side of that line; Lt.-Col. Rendall, with C and D Companies was posted on the south side. Captain G. A. G. Hewitt at this juncture retired to hospital suffering from shock. The fighting went on from hour to hour with very varying fortune: at one time, there seemed a possibility of a successful assault on St. Pierre Divion, the next village north of the line; at other times, the utmost efforts were required to extricate the wounded. On July 5th, Aveluy Wood was shelled practically for the first time. High explosive, shrapnel and lachrymatory shells were employed, and found all the assembly-trenches; captured maps and prisoners’ information were no doubt responsible for this disaster. Early in the morning of the 6th, seven officers and eighty other ranks went out in two bombing parties to capture a front-line trench; no Officer and twenty-two other Ranks returned. It was in this action that Lt.-Col. Rendall, D.S.O., Commanding the Battalion, had to be left wounded in a German dug-out, and that Major Shaw, 2nd in Command, was killed. The failure was due to the good German sniping, too heavy bombs for effective throwing, and a communication-trench not deep enough to pass them through. It was stubborn fighting, we see, and very difficult progress was made. But one Division in one Corps of one Army was not the whole fighting force which the Allies brought to the Somme, and some relief may be found by looking through German eyes at the results on July 1st in another sector. We have already referred to the War Diary for this period of the 55th Reserve Infantry Regiment (the 2nd Guard Reserve Division), which was holding the German line in front of Gommecourt six or seven miles north of Hamel. Their experience is no doubt typical of the enemy’s sufferings all along the line. Thus we read of an intense bombardment, ‘overwhelming all the trenches, and sweeping away the wire’; of the ‘thick charging waves of English infantry’; of every round from the English guns pitching into the trench, ‘thus rendering its occupation even by detached posts impossible’; of telephonic communication destroyed by the bombardment, so that ‘Regimental Headquarters were without news of the progress of events’; of the English ‘excellent maps,’ and the ‘most disturbing effect’ of English aeroplanes: and, so reading, we begin to perceive another side to the picture. Such records of failure and disappointment, of forlorn hopes and forfeited successes, as occur in the journals of our own units are seen in a truer perspective when the long line of battle is displayed. Even the rain in which some wet Yorkshiremen spent a miserable night (July 7th) by the roadside fell impartially on the other side of the road, and was duly chronicled by dripping Germans; and, when we are told that C and D Companies of the 6th Battalion of the West Yorkshires, who ‘went over the parapet to the attack’ at 4 p.m. on July 1st, had to retire to their own trenches with their Signalling Officer (Lieut. Dodd) killed, their Commanding Officer (Lt.-Col. Wade) and two other Officers wounded, we take consolation from the entry which follows next in the same journal: ‘Enemy reported to be massing opposite our front for a counter-attack, which, however, did not develop.’ ‘Enemy’ did not have it his own way all the time.
Let us follow this unit a little further. During the first fortnight of July, step by step, and with many a step backward before two steps forward could be taken, German trenches in the Leipsic Salient had been occupied, and improved footholds had been won. Every effort was being made to consolidate and extend the new positions, and it happened on July 14th, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, that this Battalion (the 6th West Yorkshires) took over that portion from the 7th. The 7th had had a rough experience. In the early morning of July 13th they had been attacked by German bombers, who, according to Colonel Tetley’s testimony, evinced ‘great bravery and disregard of danger.’ At one time they rushed a British trench, ‘but were bombed out by 2/Lieut. F. J. Baldwin and men of A Company.... Practically all our bombers were casualties.’ The Battalion lost 15 killed and 92 wounded in this exploit, but Major-General Perceval assured them that their ‘stubborn fighting had materially assisted in the success of the larger operation on the British front,’ and Lieut. Baldwin was awarded the Military Cross and two N.C.O.’s the Distinguished Conduct Medal.
The night of the 14th-15th was fairly quiet. Both sides were attending to their wounded. But early in the morning of July 15th, when the 6th Battalion had relieved the 7th, the Germans returned to the attack, and this attempt, very pluckily repulsed, is memorable for the use of a weapon, new in the experience of the defenders, and hardly less horrible in its first effect than the surprise of poison-gas at Ypres. We have the advantage of a graphic description of the three hours’ fighting on that morning from the pen of Lieut. Meekosha, V.C., who took part in it as a non-commissioned Officer.[59] He writes:
‘About 3-30 a.m. the Germans launched their dastardly attack with liquid fire, the only warning we received being the terrifying shrieks of those unfortunate sentries who came into contact with the flame. Then came a hail of hand grenades, a few of the Boches coming as far as our own parapet, hoping to find our men demoralized. For their pains they were each presented with at least one well-aimed bullet. Our men then lined the parapet with as much speed and ammunition as possible, and let the Hun have it for all they were worth. Another party of Boches, well stacked with bombs, had already stormed one of our saps, which had been blocked about half way. Our Battalion bombers were at once called out to deal with this party, and, fighting their way foot by foot, cleared every living Boche from the sap, a fact which reflected no little credit on our men, being, as they were, at a disadvantage from the very beginning. Our Stokes Mortar Battery was then set to work on the German front line, and to see old Fritz jump on to his own parapet, run a few yards as hard as he could go, and then into his own trench again (provided that he did not get a bullet in the attempt, our machine-guns and rifles being on the look out for opportunities) was the best amusement I had had for weeks. This went on for about three hours, during which time the work of our Officers and N.C.O.’s was cut out in stopping our men from rushing headlong into the Hun trenches in their eagerness to kill as many Boches as possible in as little time as possible. Unfortunately, a few of the good men lost their lives during this fighting, but we had the satisfaction of knowing that, for every one lost, the Hun lost at least four.
‘Thus ended our first experience under liquid fire.