I forgot to mention that Singer, commanding the 17th Fd. Co. R.E., had arrived, and did an extraordinary amount of good work with his company in circumstances of the greatest difficulty and danger. He told me that the first night he went out, in order to put up some wire entanglement in a dangerous place, it was as black as pitch. He made his sections hold on to each other's coats, but within ten minutes they had not only lost each other in the dense black woods—chiefly through tumbling into trenches and falling over telephone wires,—but Singer had lost the whole company, and after wandering helplessly in what he thought the right direction for some time, he discovered that he had lost himself as well. He said he felt inclined to sit down and have a good cry, so utterly miserable did he feel!
In falling back to the second line we had a fairly easy job, but for the 9th Brigade it was a regular Chinese puzzle, for by this time some of their trenches were in German hands at one end and English at the other, whilst Northumberland Fusiliers, Lincolns, Sussex, West Ridings, Cavalry, and even part of the 2nd Grenadiers,[21] who had turned up from goodness knows where, were inextricably tangled up; not to mention that a party of Northumberlands, numbering about 120, under one gallant subaltern called Brown, had been holding out for three days in front of our line, with no food or drink, and Germans in trenches only 30 yards off them. I believe this lot eventually got away in safety, but the retirement of all was about as difficult as it could be. This was on the 13th.
On the 14th the Bedfords were heavily attacked, and the Germans pushed a machine-gun right forward through the wood and enfiladed the Cheshire left. These stood it for some time and then retired further down their trench, being unable to let the Bedfords know. Consequently this beastly gun got in a heavy fire on the Bedfords right as well and forced them to retire. The réduit was no good—the wood was too thick—and some of the garrison were captured. So the Bedfords had to fall back, fighting, on to their third line 50 yards back, where they held the enemy.
Edwards, who commanded the advanced Bedford company, came up to the château to report, and gave a most cheery and amusing account of the whole thing, but the result was not at all amusing, as we had lost ground and a lot of men.
Meanwhile the big attack by the German Guards was being made on the brigades on our flanks, but, as all the world knows, it was completely repulsed, though the 15th Brigade was not very heavily engaged as a whole. The fighting was terribly confused in the woods, and nothing but the individual grit of our men held the line, for it was practically impossible to give directions or exercise control in this horrible terrain.
During this period we got much "mixed" as regards our machine-guns. We took over some from the 7th Division and lost some of those. Then we borrowed some more from other units in rear and recovered some of the lost ones. Sergeant Mart of the Bedfords did a splendid thing, and recovered two of the lost Bedford guns practically by himself, stalking the Germans with only one other man and rushing their trench, killing the few men in it. I wanted to recommend him for the V.C., but had such difficulty in getting sufficient evidence about it that an official recommendation would not have held water. Meanwhile poor Mart was shot through the neck. I got him a D.C.M., but do not know whether he lived to receive it.
Then three out of our five guns got damaged by shells and bullets and mud and stopped work. So we borrowed some more, and had some difficulty in working them, as they were a new pattern. By the time we understood them two other guns were hors de combat,—it was a real nightmare, and it needed strenuous efforts to keep even one or two guns[22] going; yet they were of enormous importance, and accounted for a lot of the enemy, especially on the right flank of the Cheshires.
Meanwhile the weather had turned beastly cold—snowstorms and sleet during the day and a hard frost at night. The men suffered terribly in the trenches—especially the Cheshires, whose trenches were very wet. Although we kept the wet ones occupied as lightly as possible, we could not abandon them altogether and dig others further forward or back, as there was water everywhere only a foot below the ground. Breastworks were attempted, but they were very visible and attracted large numbers of shells: altogether the Cheshires had a very poor time, I fear. The Bedfords were rather better off, their trenches in the wood being on rather higher and sandy ground, but they were not dry by any means.
It was very awkward getting to the trenches, even in broad daylight, by this time, for such numbers of trees had been blown down by the shells, there were so many shell-holes and so much wire about, and the mud and pools of water so universal, that it was really quite a physical effort to get through at all.
About this time—the 17th—the Germans in our immediate front appeared to have retired a bit, but they certainly had not gone far, for our scouts on pushing on for 50 yards or so were greeted with a heavy fire, so we were unable to get on as much as we wanted. But though the rifle-bullets were rarer for a day or two, shells certainly were not, and continued with the utmost regularity.