April 25
This battle which is still in progress east of Arras is developing rather like the early days of the Somme battles, when our men fought stubbornly to gain or regain a few hundred yards of trenches in which the enemy resisted under the cover of great gun-fire, and to which he sent up strong bodies of supporting troops to drive our men out by counter-attacks. In the ground east of Monchy, between the Scarpe and the Sensée rivers, the situation is exactly like that, and, as I said yesterday, the line of battle has ebbed to and fro in an astounding way, British and German troops fighting forwards and backwards over the same ground with alternating success.
An attack made by Scottish troops of the 15th Division yesterday afternoon, and by English troops of the 29th at 3.30 this morning, re-established our line on this side of the two woods called Bois du Vert and Bois du Sart, and on the farther side of Guémappe. Parties of British troops who had been cut off and were believed to be in the hands of the enemy were recovered yesterday, having held out in a most gallant way in isolated positions. Among them were some of the Argylls and men of the Middlesex Regiment. Our barrage preceding an infantry attack actually swept over them, and they gave themselves up for lost, but escaped from the British shells and the German shells which burst all round them and seemed in competition for their lives.
A similar case happened with a party of Worcester men recovered last night. They were cut off in a small copse, and lay quiet there for several days, surrounded by the enemy. They had their iron rations with them, and lived on these until they were gone. They were then starving and suffering great agony from lack of water. But still they would not surrender, and last night were rewarded for their endurance by seeing the enemy retire before the advancing waves of English troops.
The enemy is suffering big losses, but is replacing them each time by fresh battalions. The Fourth Division of the Prussian Guards has now been brought up against us, among several other new divisions. They continue to show determination to hold us back from a nearer approach to the Hindenburg line in spite of the frightful casualties already suffered. There have been no fewer than eight counter-attacks already upon the village of Gavrelle, and not one of them has reached our men, but they have been broken and dispersed.
In the first counter-attack upon our line opposite Monchy, between 2000 and 3000 Germans left the Bois du Vert, but after many hundreds had fallen retired to reorganize. The second attack was in greater numbers and rolled back our line for a time, but has now been forced to retire to its old position in the woods, which we keep continually under intense fire, so that much slaughter must be there.
Our guns never cease their labouring night and day, and are shelling the enemy's infantry positions, batteries, lines of communication, rail-heads, and cross-roads, so that no troops may move except under the menace of death or mutilation. Nevertheless, faced by great peril to his main defensive lines, the enemy is massing troops rapidly for battle on even a bigger scale. Our own men are passing through fiery ordeals with that courage which is now known to the whole world, so that I need not labour to describe it—a patient courage in great hardships, self-sacrifice in the midst of great perils, sane and unbroken in spite of horrors upon which the imagination dare not dwell.
From the colonel of the Worcesters of the 29th Division I heard to-day a narrative which would surely make the angels weep, but though just out of the infernal ordeal he told it calmly, and his hand only trembled slightly as he pointed on his trench-map to positions which his men had taken and where they had most suffered. His story deals with only a small section of the battle front, and all the fighting which he directed had for its object certain trenches which would mean nothing if I gave their names. (They were Strong and Windmill Trench.)
His battalion headquarters were in a dug-out actually in the front trench line from which his men attacked, and it was lucky, for after the troops had gone forward the enemy's barrage fell behind them and destroyed the ground. The colonel, with his adjutant, his sergeant-major, and his servant, shared this battle headquarters with the commanding officer and staff of the Hampshires, but not for long. Heavy German crumps were smashing round them, and the enemy's barrage-fire swept up and down searching for human life. The colonel of the Hampshires was wounded, and two of his officers were killed. The colonel of the Worcesters, who was left to record this history, could tell very little of what was happening to his men there in the battle less than a thousand yards away. A wounded sergeant came back and said that the left company was holding out against German counter-attacks. Later two young officers came back to Pick-and-Shrapnel Trench with a party of men and said they had been ordered to retire by a strange captain. The colonel rallied the men, and they went back and retook Windmill Trench near by. Messages came down that men were half mad for lack of water. The colonel sent up water by a carrying-party, but he believes that they delivered it to the enemy, who had crept up through the darkness which had now fallen. All through the day on each side of this Worcestershire colonel great bodies of troops were fighting forward under intense shell-fire. He saw the enemy's massed counter-attacks slashed by our shrapnel and machine-gun fire, and our field-batteries galloping to forward positions, but he could see nothing of his own men after they had once gone forward down the sloping ground. His runners were killed or fell senseless from shell-shock. He himself was buried by a shell and dug out again by his sergeant-major. In the night he was left quite alone, surrounded by dead.
That is one experience in the great battle, and thousands of our men endured and are enduring dreadful things in the fierce fighting and under intense fire. Once out of it, they are calm and self-controlled, as I saw many of them to-day just as they had been relieved, and the strongest expression they use is, "It is very hot, sir," or "I didn't think I should come back."