Clouds of smoke had been liberated from the British lines to form a screen for the attackers. Into it the men disappeared as they marched, line after line, in extended order, over the intervening stretch of ground. But almost immediately they were all scourged—especially the Ulster battalions on the extreme left moving towards Beaumont Hamel—with machine-gun fire poured at them from various points, to the continuous accompaniment of short, sharp, annihilating knocks. The bullets literally came like water from an immense hose with a perforated top. The streams of lead crossed and re-crossed, sweeping the ranks about the ankles, at the waist; breast high, around their heads. Comrades were to be seen falling on all sides, right, left, front and rear. So searching was the fire that it was useless to seek cover, and advance in short rushes in between. So the lines kept undauntedly on their way, apparently not minding the bullets any more than if they were a driving and splashing shower of hail.
"Let her rip, ye divils!" shouted some of the Ulstermen in jocular defiance at the enemy and his machine-gun; "and," said an officer relating the story, "the Bosche let her rip all right." One of the wounded rank and file told me that in the advance he lost entire perception of the roar of the British guns which was so impressive as he lay with his comrades in the wood, though they still continued their thundering. Their terrible diapason of sound seemed to be lulled into absolute silence, so far as he was concerned, by the hollow, crepitating "tap-t-t-tap" of the German machine-guns; and the swish, swish, swish of the bullets, of all the noises of battle the most unnerving to soldiers assailing a position. But the Ulstermen were in a mood of the highest exaltation, a mood in which troops may be destroyed but will not easily be subjugated. The day had thrilling historic memories for them.
"July the First on the banks of the Boyne,
There was a famous battle."
The opening lines of their song, "The Boyne Water," recounting the deeds of their forefathers, came inevitably to their minds. "Just as we were about to attack," writes Rifleman Edward Taylor of the West Belfast Volunteers, "Captain Gaffikin took out an orange handkerchief and, waving it around his head, shouted, 'Come on, boys, this is the first of July!'" "No surrender!" roared the men. It was the answer given by the gallant defenders of Derry from their walls to King James and the besieging Jacobites. On the fields of Picardy new and noble meanings were put into these old, out-worn Irish battle-cries. One sergeant of the Inniskillings went into the fray with his Orange sash on him. Some of the men provided themselves with orange lilies before they went up to the assembly trenches, and these they now wore in their breasts. But, indeed, their colours were growing in profusion at their feet when they came out of the trenches—yellow charlock, crimson poppies and blue cornflowers, and many put bunches of these wild flowers in their tunics. So the Ulstermen were keen to prove their metal. They divided their forces and advanced to German positions on the right and left. Through it all their battle-shout was "No surrender." But there was one surrender which they were prepared to make, and did make—the surrender, for the cause, of their young lives and all the bright hopes of youth.
When the battalions on the right reached the first German line they found shapeless mounds and cavities of soil and stones and timber, shattered strands and coils of barbed wire, where the trenches had been, and the dead bodies of the men who were in occupation of them at the bombardment. The Ulstermen then pushed on to the second line, which still held living men of courage and tenacity who had to be disposed of by bayonet and bomb. On to the third line the Ulstermen went at a steady pace. They were still being whipped by machine-gun fire. Their ranks were getting woefully thinner. In their tracks they left dead and wounded. At the sight of a familiar face among the curiously awkward attitudes and shapes of those instantaneously killed there was many a cold tug at the heart-strings of the advancing men, and many a groan of sorrow was suppressed on their lips.
The moaning of the wounded was also terrible to hear, but their spirit was magnificent. "Lying on the ground there under fire, they had no thought of their own danger, but only of the comrades who were going forward, and they kept shouting words of encouragement after the attacking column until it was well out of sight," said an Inniskilling Fusilier. "One company, recruited mainly from the notorious Shankill road district of Belfast, was going forward, when a wounded man recognised some of his chums in it. 'Give them it hot for the Shankill road,' he cried, and his comrades answered with a cheer." The same man, giving a general account of the fiercely contested attack on the enemy positions, said, "It was a case of playing leapfrog with death, but all obstacles were overcome, and the Fusiliers carried the enemy trenches with a magnificent rush. The Huns turned on them like baffled tigers and tried to hurl the Irishmen out again, but they might as well have tried to batter down the walls of Derry with toothpicks. The Inniskillings held their ground, and gradually forced the enemy still further back."
The German trenches, with their first, second, third, fourth and fifth lines, formed a system of defences of considerable depth, into which the Ulstermen had now penetrated for distances varying from two to three miles in depth. It was a land of horrible desolation. The ground at this point was almost bare of vegetation. It was torn and lacerated with shell holes. The few trees that remained standing were reduced to splintered and jagged stumps. All was smoke, flashes, uproar and nauseating smells. In this stricken battle area the defence was as stubborn and desperate as the attack. It seemed impossible for men with a nervous system and imagination to retain their reason and resolution in the terrific, intensive and searching preliminary bombardment. Nevertheless, the Germans did it. The British guns had, indeed, wrought widespread havoc. Not only lines of trenches were pounded to bits, but spots outside, affording concealment for guns and troops, were discovered and blown to atoms. There were, however, deep dug-outs going as many as thirty feet below ground, and in some cases, even at that depth, there were trapdoors and stairs leading to still lower chambers, and up from these underground fortifications the Germans came when the cannonade lifted. There were also hidden machine-gun shelters in the hollows and on the slopes which the British artillery failed to find. The resistance offered to the advance of the Ulstermen was accordingly of the most obstinate and persistent nature. The hand-to-hand fight with bayonet and bomb at the third line of trenches was described by a man of the Irish Rifles as "a Belfast riot on the top of Mount Vesuvius." No more need be said. The phrase conveys a picture of men madly struggling and yelling amid fire and smoke and the abominable stench of battle. Yet the enemy's fourth line fell before these men who would not be stopped. There remained the fifth line, and the Ulstermen were preparing to move forward to it when the order came to fall back. The state of affairs at this time of the evening is well explained by one of the men—
"We had been so eager that we had pressed too far forward, and were well in advance of our supporting troops, thus laying ourselves open to flank attacks. The position became more serious as the day advanced, and the supporting troops were unable to make further progress, while the Huns kept hurrying up fresh men. We kept shouting the watchword of 'No Surrender,' with which our fathers had cheered themselves in the siege of Derry, and every time the Huns attacked we sent them reeling back with something to remind them that they were fighting Irishmen. We couldn't help taunting them a lot. 'Would you like some Irish rebellion?' we called out to them, and they didn't like it. They kept throwing in fresh reinforcements all day, and gradually the pressure became almost unbearable. Still we held our ground, and would have continued to hold it if necessary."
"Retirement," he adds, "is never a pleasant task, especially after you have fought your corner as we fought ours. We felt that the ground won was part of ourselves, but orders had to be obeyed, and so we went back." The retirement was to the third line of trenches, at the point known as "the Crucifix," just north-west of Thiepval. It was carried out at nightfall, after fourteen hours' continuous fighting. This section of the Division, in the words of Major-General Nugent, "captured nearly 600 prisoners, and carried its advance triumphantly to the limits of the objective laid down."
The battalions, two in number, operating on the left at Beaumont Hamel, were not so fortunate. They were broken to pieces by the devastating machine-gun fire. The remnants, by a magnificent effort, succeeded in getting into the German trenches. They were held up there by an utterly impassable curtain of shells and bullets. It was not their fault that they could not advance any further. They had to face a more terrific ordeal than any body of men have had to encounter in battle before. "They did all that men could do," says Major Nugent, "and, in common with every battalion in the Division, showed the most conspicuous courage and devotion."