The day after the attack the Battalion moved up into close support to the 5th Battalion Duke of Wellington’s Regt., which had taken over the captured trenches. Three days later it took over the defence of the new line. D Company, with C Company in close support to it, held the whole of the captured ground; the other companies occupied the old British line. D Company’s sector was a ghastly place. Rain and shell-fire had turned the ground into a mass of mud, littered with the awful debris of battle. Never had the Battalion seen so many dead Germans; and there were many British too. Bodies were lying all over the ground in the open; many more were exposed by the shovel, and hastily recovered. A hot September sun beat down in the daytime, and the air was filled with the stench of decaying humanity. Water was scarce, as every drop of it had to be carried up, and had to be used very economically. Ration parties had a very hard task, for there were neither tracks nor proper communication trenches. Almost the only real comfort was provided by the excellent German tunnelled dugouts which abounded, and were sufficient to accommodate the whole company. These were from twenty to thirty feet down; they were splendidly built and, in some cases, quite comfortably furnished; and they were proof against the heaviest shell. This was as well, for the hostile artillery was very active. Though the Germans probably had a very hazy idea of the British positions, they knew where their own deep dugouts had been and persistently shelled those localities. Practically all movement could be easily observed, and there was much coming and going of staff officers and others in connection with the new attack on Thiepval which was planning. D Company came in for all the shelling, which was brought on by this movement, and also for the not infrequent barrages put down by the enemy. The other companies had an easier, though far from pleasant, time.
Much work was done by the Battalion while it was in the Leipsig Redoubt. Its role was to prepare the way for an attack on Thiepval by the 18th Division. Assembly trenches had to be dug; the dead had to be buried. Most of this work was done by the support companies, who sent up large parties each night. D Company’s duty was restricted to holding the line—quite a sufficient task for the new men of whom the company was mainly composed. Casualties occurred almost hourly. It was a nerve-racking time.
At length the relief came on September 24th. A heavy bombardment of 15 cm. shells about 5-0 p.m., which at one time seemed likely to hinder the relief seriously, was stopped by the British retaliation. An unusually quiet night followed. Soon after dark the 12th Battalion Middlesex Regt. began to arrive; and when, about midnight, D Company’s relief was complete, the Battalion turned its back on the Somme battlefield for ever. B and C Companies had been relieved earlier and they marched straight through to Lealvillers. A and D Companies were to be met by buses at the bottom of Black Horse Road. The former got away after a long wait, but there were no conveyances for the latter. Wearily—few of them had had any sleep to speak of for three days or nights—the men dragged themselves along to Martinsart Wood, where they simply dropped down by the roadside and slept. About dawn buses did arrive, and the company was quickly taken to Lealvillers, where a halt was made for breakfast. Then it bussed straight through to Halloy, while the rest of the Battalion had to march. The ride was some satisfaction for the night spent on the road.
The day after its arrival at Halloy the Battalion learned of the fall of Thiepval. In the midst of the satisfaction caused by this news, there was naturally some little disappointment that, after so many months of work and fighting, it had not been “in at the death.”
CHAPTER VI.
WITH THE THIRD ARMY.
(a) Hannescamps.
Many expected, and all hoped for, a fairly long period of rest when the Battalion moved back to Halloy, after nearly three months of the Somme Battle. But it was not to be. The 49th Division was transferred to the Third Army, and, within five days of its relief in the Leipsig Redoubt, the Battalion was holding a front line sector again. Two days of easy marching, and a night each at Humbercamps and Bienvillers, had brought it to the Hannescamps sector, where it relieved the 2nd Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers, on September 29th.
The new sector lay astride the Hannescamps—Essarts Road, and was the longest front the Battalion had held up to that time. It was outside the area of the Somme Battle, had been quiet all the summer, and so had suffered little from shell fire. At a first glance the trenches appeared to be in splendid condition, and in places they really were—Lulu Lane, the communication trench on the left, was about as fine a piece of field engineering as the Battalion had seen. But the greater part of the front line and most of the communication trenches were far from good. The weather was dry when they were taken over and, fortunately, there was practically no rain while the Battalion was there. Very little of the work had been properly revetted, and it was obvious that the trenches would slide in as soon as the wet weather came. The front line was of the regulation type—six yard bays and four yard traverses—with two or three long saps running out into No Man’s Land. It was fairly well provided with shelters, B Company in the centre being particularly well off with a number in the sunken Hannescamps—Essarts Road. It was garrisoned by three companies; the fourth was in reserve, with two platoons near Battalion H.Q. and two about halfway up Lulu Lane. Battalion H.Q. lived in shelters along the road, just south of the village of Hannescamps. These were moderately comfortable, except for the rats; but few would have been any good against shell fire.
The enemy was very quiet. Apart from a few light shells now and then, his artillery was practically inactive. Trench mortar, machine gun and rifle fire were almost unknown. This was due mainly to the extent of No Man’s Land. On the extreme left, the opposing lines approached within about 250 yards of one another; but on the greater part of the front they were over 1,000 yards apart. The main activity of the Battalion was patrolling. In that department Sec.-Lieut. G. Crowther, who had succeeded Sec.-Lieut. H. H. Aykroyd, M.C. as Battalion Intelligence Officer, was extremely active. Night after night he penetrated deeply into No Man’s Land in his efforts to secure an identification—but without success. On one occasion he did encounter the enemy—near the Osier Bed, which was his particular haunt—but he failed to make a capture, though he certainly wounded one German. Apart from this, the Battalion only came in contact with the enemy once. During their first night in the sector, some men of C Company, who were holding a sap-head on the left, were bombed, and suffered several casualties.
At Hannescamps, the Battalion had taken over the most elaborate and well-organised system of cooking they had ever seen in a front line sector. A good kitchen had been built in a sunken road not far from the village, and there hot meals were regularly prepared for the whole Battalion. These were carried up, in hot food containers, by the men of the reserve company, and living was almost as good in the front line as in rest billets. The only serious difficulties were the shortage of water, and the rats. Rats! Everyone who has seen much of trench warfare knows how prevalent rats are. But never, at any other time or place, has the Battalion had to contend with such a pest as it found at Hannescamps. Everywhere the trenches swarmed with them; but nowhere were they so bad as among the shelters near Battalion H.Q. They ate everything they could get their teeth into. The very first night the Battalion was there, not only were nearly all iron rations spoiled, but more than half the packs and haversacks of the men of D Company, who were in reserve, were ruined. Nothing could be done to cope with them and they had to be endured. The remaining packs and haversacks were only saved by taking them out nightly and hanging them on thin wires, which were stretched from tree to tree in a neighbouring orchard.