On February 2nd the Battalion left Wormhoudt and the Second Army, and moved to the Somme Area. Transport and personnel entrained at Esquelbecq in the morning and, after the usual tedious journey, arrived late at night at Longueav, near Amiens. There one company was left behind, to assist in unloading the transport, while the rest of the Battalion set off on a long and weary march to Ailly, where motor buses were waiting to convey it to billets at Camps en Amienois. The men were very tired when they arrived about 3-0 a.m. After a few days they moved by stages to Warloy Baillon.
About a fortnight was spent at Warloy. The rolling downs and open country of the Somme district were a very welcome change from the flat clay of Flanders. The men were billeted in barns which were moderately comfortable, but the weather was very bad, snow falling frequently. A little time was devoted to training, but more to organisation and interior economy. Occasionally working parties had to be found. These were employed digging shallow trenches for buried cables, to the west of Martinsart Wood, and had a march of one and a half hours each way to their work.
The Commanding Officer started an officers’ riding school. All officers attended, and every available hack was turned out. Several officers were thrown, much to the amusement of the transport sergeant, who laughed uproariously. One inexperienced horseman was heard gravely to explain that his “horse had pushed him in the face with its paw.”
On February 28th the Battalion relieved the 1/4th Battalion King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, in the right sector of the Authuille trenches. This sector is of some interest as being the most southerly one ever held by the Battalion. At that time the British line, which lay practically north and south from Thiepval Wood to near Authuille, made a right-angled turn due east of the latter place, in order to enclose Authuille Wood. The re-entrant thus formed was occupied, on the enemy side, by the famous Leipsig Redoubt, the southern defence of Thiepval village. The sector held by the Battalion was about six hundred yards in length; it lay along the north side of Authuille Wood, facing the Leipsig Redoubt, with its left on Campbell Avenue. This part of the line had been taken over from the French not very long before.
The sector was in an appalling condition. The communication trenches were full of water, which often reached to the top of one’s thigh boots; they were not gridded and the hard lumps of chalk, which littered the bottom, were very painful to men wearing gum-boots. Everywhere, the line was very wet; some parts of D Company’s front were quite impassable, and were left unoccupied. Pumps had to be kept going night and day. The trenches were not revetted and were falling in badly, so that all work had to be concentrated on the front line. The awful weather that prevailed during the tour did not improve the conditions. Snow fell frequently.
The enemy was fairly active. He was credited with a desire to straighten out his line by cutting off the north-east corner of Authuille Wood. Perhaps the similar designs of the British, on the Leipsig Redoubt, suggested the idea. The front line was not much annoyed by shelling, though on one occasion it was pretty heavily “whizz-banged”; the hostile artillery fired mostly on the north-east corner of the wood and the vicinity of Battalion H.Q. Medium trench mortars were much in evidence, particularly during the afternoons; but luckily, nearly all of them fell a few yards behind the front line. There was no sniping—the conditions were too miserable—and the machine guns were not very active. The Battalion did not adopt a very offensive attitude. A fair amount of patrolling was done, and the enemy was found to be rather active in No Man’s Land too; but no actual encounters are recorded. This was the first time that Lewis guns had been taken into the line, but they were not much used.
With its Ypres experience behind it, the Battalion naturally did all that was possible for the comfort of the troops. There were, unfortunately, several cases of trench feet, for the means of prevention had not yet been reduced to the science which they became later in the war. The method of cooking in the line was a great advance on anything that had been in existence before. Each company had its own trench kitchen; to it rations were sent up in bulk, and hot meals were served regularly, being carried up to the front line by orderly men.
The tour came to an end on March 4th. It had been most uncomfortable, but very few casualties had been suffered; the only one of importance was Sec.-Lieut. F. H. Kelsall wounded. The condition of the communication trenches was so bad that some companies went out over the open. D Company lost its way in Authuille Wood and got nearly to Albert before anyone discovered it was on the wrong road. One night was spent in Bouzincourt and a second in Authuille village, in Brigade Reserve. At the latter place the billets were awful, and the men had to rig up their ground sheets to prevent the water pouring in through the roofs. On March 6th the whole Battalion moved back to Mailly-Maillet.
With the move to Mailly-Maillet began a period of nearly four months, during which the Battalion never went into the line. Instead, it was employed on various forms of work, and had comparatively few opportunities for training. It is the longest period it ever spent out of action, while hostilities lasted. The billets at Mailly-Maillet were not at all bad. The village had been very little shelled, though, while the Battalion was there, enemy planes dropped some bombs on the outskirts. Practically all the men were in houses; the rooms were often quite bare but there were always fires. Training was impossible. Only very small drafts were arriving and so the strength of the Battalion was still very low. Practically every available man was required for the large working parties which had to be provided.
