The advent of spring and the peaceful aspect of the cultivated country combined to render everyone cheerful. In this sector the astonishing hardihood of the old French farmers was seen at its best. They used to plough fields almost up to the front line. When shelled, they unharnessed the horses and went back to their farms without accelerating their pace in the slightest, but as soon as the firing ceased, they calmly resumed ploughing as if nothing out of the way had occurred. Ploegsteert Wood itself was a charming spot. As the days lengthened and spring advanced, the wood presented an arcadian appearance. April was a halcyon month. The very huts nestling among the trees, bourgeoning into a beautiful foliage, seemed to fit in with the brightness of their surroundings, and the songs of thousands of birds made one feel at times that the war had ceased to be.
“LAWRENCE FARM”
(From a sketch by the Rt. Hon. Winston S. Churchill of his Battalion Head-quarters)
Life was not altogether a picnic, however. The wood itself was intermittently shelled by the enemy, and the trenches were occasionally subjected to heavy bombardments. The worst experience fell to the 11th Royal Scots. Near their trenches the German position protruded in a salient, which was known to our men as the “Birdcage,” on account of the tangle of wire with which it was protected. Mining operations were undertaken against this salient, and the infantry supplied large working-parties for the purpose. But the enemy must have discovered that there was a mine, and he determined to destroy it. On the evening of the 13th May the position held by the Royal Scots was violently shelled and trench mortared, and shortly after, the Germans came over in three parties of 20 each. Some of them succeeded in entering our trenches, but the Royal Scots, though dazed by the severity of the bombardment, put up a splendid resistance. Captain Henry with a small party made an immediate counter-attack, and after a lively scuffle expelled the enemy. The Royal Scots losses, due mainly to the hostile barrage, were 16 killed, 61 wounded, and 8 missing. The Germans, who were the 104th Saxons, left 10 corpses in our trenches, and had failed in their attempt to destroy the mine-shaft.
General Furse strove to foster the offensive spirit throughout the Division, so sections were known as “fighting” sections, to impress upon each man that his principal duty was to fight. He exhorted all the battalions to make “No-Man’s Land” “Ninth Division Land,” and the men did their utmost to carry out his instructions. Every night the area in front of the battalions in the line was actively and persistently patrolled. But this was not enough for the G.O.C.; he wanted the men to secure prisoners; “Corpses are more important than acres” was his constant injunction. Though the raids engineered in this sector were not successful, the experience gained helped later to make it one of the finest raiding divisions in the Army; it was learning to walk, and was learning rapidly. All ranks realised and never forgot that on taking over trenches it was not their job to sit still and wait for things to happen, but to devise enterprises to worry the enemy as much as possible. The Ninth was never happy until it felt that it had established ascendency over the enemy opposite it.
With this intention, a minor operation was undertaken by the “Rifles” on the 1st March. The scheme was carried out at 11 P.M. A small party went out with Bangalore torpedoes,[32] which they placed in the enemy’s wire and exploded. Then dummies, which had been fixed in “No-Man’s Land,” were worked by string from the front trenches so as to present the appearance of troops moving forward. At the same time, the enemy’s lines were raked by rifle and machine-gun fire, trench mortars and rifle-grenades, and by shells from the artillery. Only two casualties were suffered by the “Rifles,” and as it was probable that the Germans manned their parapets on hearing the explosion and seeing the dummies moving, it is likely that their losses were much heavier. A more ambitious raiding scheme was attempted by the Argylls on the night of the 25th/26th March. At 1.52 A.M. two Bangalore torpedoes were placed under the enemy’s wire, and a party of 2 officers and 30 men left the trenches ready to enter the German line after the explosion had cleared a gap. The torpedoes were fired at 2 A.M., but the raiding party slightly lost direction and missed the gap. The failure was really due to inexperience and insufficient preparations.
If the Division was disappointed with the result of its raids, it had every reason to be pleased with its success in sniping. When it first took over the line, the German snipers held the upper hand. But the sniping officers in each battalion vied with one another in ingenious devices to gain the advantage over the enemy, and before the Division left the sector our snipers were distinctly on top. In every intelligence report from the front line battalions several hits were claimed by the snipers. It was while in this area that the machine-gun companies commenced the practice of indirect fire.[33] This was carried out nightly, in order to sweep the roads and places which the Germans were likely to use at night. Here, too, air fights came to be of frequent occurrence, and excited the greatest interest among the men. One day a hostile plane received a direct hit through the engine and crashed down in our lines; there cannot have been many occasions during the war when an anti-aircraft gun was so conspicuously successful.
The favourite amusement of the artillery was firing at German observation posts. At Les Ecluses a tall factory chimney that overlooked our lines was the chief target, but for a long time defied our gunners, and the German observers had become so confident that they were seen one morning shaking dust out of a carpet or something of that nature over the top of the stalk. This was very exasperating, but our gunners had the best of it when the observation post was knocked out by the third round of a 12-inch Howitzer, which landed at the base of the chimney.
Hitherto the headgear worn by the men was the Balmoral. It had a touch of the picturesque, but it offered no protection against shrapnel. The steel helmet now made its appearance; it was much heavier, and at first required some knack to balance it properly. For a time the men wore it only on compulsion and preferred to use it as a washing basin or a soup bowl, but it became more popular when its manifold advantages in protecting the head, not only from shell splinters but from knocks against overhead traverses and the woodwork of dug-outs, were realised. In the course of a few months a man came to regard the steel helmet as one of his best friends.
A few changes in command took place during this period. Lieut.-Colonel Pelham Burn was transferred to the Gordons, and his place in the Argylls was taken by Lieut.-Colonel W. J. B. Tweedie. Lieut.-Colonel Loch, C.M.G., was promoted to a brigade in the Fifty-sixth Division, and he was succeeded by Lieut.-Colonel H. L. Budge. Lieut.-Colonel Cameron of Lochiel, whose health had broken down, had to give up the command of the Camerons to Lieut.-Colonel Duff. The most important change was in the artillery. On 1st February 1916 Brig.-General H. H. Tudor, C.M.G., succeeded Brig.-General E. H. Armitage, C.B., in the command of the Divisional Artillery. He was destined to influence profoundly the work of the Division by his use of the guns.