The disagreeable element during this period was furnished by the weather. From the end of August scarcely a day passed without much rain, and thus there was the usual constant struggle to keep the trenches from being flooded. There was a grave suspicion, too, that enemy mines were perilously close to our parapet. One curious incident happened. At 10.20 A.M. on the 19th August, the enemy exploded a small mine on the front of the 27th Brigade. Three sappers of the 90th Field Coy. were thrown into the crater caused by the explosion, two being killed, and one buried up to the neck in the débris. Some of the Germans were also buried, and an informal truce was observed while the stretcher-bearers of both sides dug out their comrades. The G.O.C., who was going round the line at the time, ran a narrow escape, as he had just passed the area affected by the explosion. There were however more alarms than events, and casualties were exceptionally low. The customary routine for a battalion was twelve days in the front system, six in brigade reserve, and six in billets in divisional reserve, when a good deal of training could be carried on. While the South Africans were at Frevillers on the 11th August, H.M. the King passed through the village, and dismounting from his car, walked along their ranks.
Apart from trench mortars, the chief thrills were provided by sniping and raids. The prince of snipers dwelt in the Carency sector, and was affectionately known amongst the men as “Cuthbert.” He was a deadly shot, and destroyed an enormous number of our periscopes. No man dared show a finger when Cuthbert was on duty; he was never known to miss, so naturally he was the chief object of our snipers’ efforts. Numerous posts were erected for his benefit, but no sooner were they ready than Cuthbert sent a few bullets through the loopholes. At last one was constructed that escaped his notice. Too much success had made him careless; he rose from his lair and stretched his arms. That was sufficient. With his disappearance our snipers had it all their own way.
The raids engineered in this sector met with fair success. On two occasions parties of the 12th Royal Scots and of the “Rifles” penetrated the hostile lines but failed to secure prisoners; the former had the satisfaction of killing a few Germans, but the latter found the trenches deserted by the garrison. The biggest capture of prisoners was made by the South Africans. At 4 A.M. on the 14th September, 2 officers and 60 men of the 2nd South African Infantry entered the enemy’s trenches under cover of an artillery barrage; they killed at least 12 and brought back 5 prisoners. The only casualties were 2 wounded, one of whom unfortunately had to be left in the German lines. On the evening of the 16th September a successful raid was carried out by the Black Watch and Camerons, and on this occasion the Highlanders satisfied the desire of the G.O.C. for an identification by bringing back a prisoner, but at least 50 had fallen victim to their blood-lust. This last raid was carried out under a Stokes barrage, so terrific that dozens of the enemy were killed, and the remainder paralysed with fright. All the Stokes Guns in the Division had been collected for the operation, and in forty-five minutes they fired 9000 shells, which completely obliterated the opposing front trenches. At one time the 26th Brigade was marked out for something more ambitious than a raid; for the First Army desired to push the enemy off the crest before winter set in, but the scheme was postponed, possibly because it would have used up troops that were needed for the Somme.
On leaving the Vimy Ridge on the 25th September the Division, after moving first to a training area under the Third Army, joined the III. Corps[53] of the Fourth Army, and on the 9th October the 26th and South African Brigades relieved the Forty-seventh Division in the line near Eaucourt L’Abbaye. The move was made chiefly by route march over wretched roads and in vile weather, but for a portion of the distance buses were available. The 27th Brigade had a trying experience. At 8 A.M. on a chill October morning, all the men were lined up on a road near Barly, waiting for the buses, which did not arrive until 3 o’clock in the afternoon, with the result that units reached the terminus in inky darkness, and some of them had then to march a long distance to their billets.
The Lewis Gunners had a most unenviable time. Battalions had now been supplied with 10 guns, each with its mounting and 44 magazines, each of which contained 49 cartridges. There were also bags with spare parts, gloves for firing the guns when they were hot, jackets[54] for carrying them, and hyposcopes, so that the gun could be fired without the firer being seen. For the carriage of all this material hand-carts had been provided in June, but they proved utterly useless except on good roads, and they imposed an intolerable strain on the men who pulled them. All the units altered these carts so that they could be drawn by mules, but even so they were unsatisfactory and broke down continually. When the Somme was reached, so was the limit of endurance. The whole drainage system of the country had been smashed by months of shelling, and the roads, poor at their best, seemed to have no bottom; the ruins of whole villages were thrown into them, but even that never appeared to make them any firmer. The battalions of the 27th Brigade will never forget the march from Lavièville to Mametz Wood. It was plain sailing as far as the vicinity of Fricourt Wood. At this point the path lay along the eastern edge of the wood, but the carts and mules sank deep in mud, and had to be hauled out and dragged along by the sweating and blasphemous teams. This harassing process continued until the carts were eventually parked in the transport lines on a tableland on the east side of Mametz Wood. One unit found the zigzag path to this tableland completely blocked by an artillery horse which had fallen and could not be persuaded to rise. The men were tired and hungry and not relishing the prospect of a lengthy wait, they hauled the carts and mules one by one up the face of a precipice and so reached the transport lines.
In other theatres the outstanding event was the entry of Roumania on the 27th August as a belligerent on the side of the Entente. This event, which was greeted with boisterous and undignified jubilation in France and Britain, was regarded as a decisive blow to the Central European Powers, but the tribulation that the immediate future brought upon Roumania seemed to indicate that an exaggerated estimate had been placed on its worth and services. The grievances of the Roumanians in Transylvania and Hungary, the ostensible cause of war, led logically to an invasion of the former province; and this campaign would have had a greater effect on the war than the narrow aims of Italy, had it not been for the gross ineptitude and short-sighted selfishness of Russia, whose overtures and representations had the most weight in bringing the little Balkan state into the field.
In 1915 Russia had been precluded from invading Bulgaria by the neutrality of Roumania, whose territory interposed an obstacle and whose declaration of war now gave her an opportunity of turning the situation in the Balkans in favour of the Entente. But Roumania was allowed to prosecute her campaign single-handed, and after a few initial successes had to meet powerful and well-equipped German forces under Von Falkenhayn and Von Mackensen. The ability of Germany to send a strong army to the Balkans was a disagreeable surprise to the Western Allies, and showed that our offensive on the Somme was not so menacing as official bulletins and press accounts had led us to believe, and that our calculations of German losses were probably greatly over-estimated. The effect of this intervention soon made itself felt; the Roumanians, opposed and outnumbered, were compelled to fall back, but their resistance was neither discreditable nor negligible, and belated help from Russia, if generously given and seriously intended, would have endangered the flanks of Von Falkenhayn and perhaps have exercised a decisive influence on the war. But only the most grudging and limited support was given, and though an offensive from Salonica under General Sarrail detained three Bulgarian divisions and eventually led to the recapture of Monastir, the Roumanians were pressed back by the 10th October to the borders of Moldavia.
More than two months had elapsed since the Division fought at Longueval, and in this period continuous hammering had brought the British forces far into the enemy’s territory. The greater part of the ridge from Thiepval to Combles was now in our hands, and the Germans had been pushed back to their fourth system of defences. With good weather the speedy fall of Bapaume might be reckoned on. On the front taken over by us, the principal feature was the Butte de Warlencourt, a mound of chalk about 50 feet high, which stood at the far end of the spur that ran from the main ridge through Flers, and was flanked by the tree-lined Albert-Bapaume road. North-east of this the ground sloped into a depression, which led into the valley of the Ancre, and beyond it lay a spur running from the road towards Morval, on which the enemy had his fourth position.
Behind the British front line lay the vast waste of wilderness created by three months of savage warfare. Its general colour scheme was a dull uniform grey, which changed to a dingy yellow when the sun shone. The whole area was covered with the débris of battle and of camps, but worst of all, from Mametz Wood to the front line were scattered fragments of corpses and a heavy fetid odour pervaded the atmosphere. The work of burying the dead was a slow process and even in Mametz Wood, which had been in our hands for two months, the 27th Brigade found a number of British and German dead still uninterred. The entire area was intersected by rutted roads, which even in fine weather could barely stand the stupendous amount of traffic that passed over them in a never-ending stream. Every available man of the 27th Brigade, which was in divisional reserve, worked daily repairing them, but all the labour served only to keep them passably decent, and when the weather broke down, almost superhuman efforts were required to keep them from collapsing altogether.
The line held by the 26th Brigade on the right, and the South Africans on the left, lay to the north of the Abbey of Eaucourt. On the 7th October the Forty-seventh Division had made an unsuccessful attack, but had established posts in front of its line. The Ninth joined up these posts and formed them into a new front line and a starting-point for fresh operations. These were notified on the 9th October, and the chief object of the attack, which was entrusted to the Ninth and Thirtieth Divisions, was to clear the Butte de Warlencourt. The objectives of the Ninth were two; first, Snag and Tail Trenches, and second, the trench lying to the far side of the Butte de Warlencourt, including the mound itself. Zero was fixed for 2.50 P.M., and the attack was to be covered by a creeping H.E. barrage, moving at the rate of 50 yards a minute.[55] The left flank was to be covered by a smoke-screen, which the Fifteenth Division was to put down between Le Sars and Warlencourt. To deceive the foe, a “Chinese Attack”[56] was arranged for the 11th October.