Our new Brigadier turned up and proved to be a pleasant, sensible kind of man, looking rather like Lord Derby. Having just come from France, he keeps quite cool whatever we encounter. (P.S. We have had a new Brigadier since this one, I haven't yet seen the present one.)
The march was slow and rough, as most of the ground was hard-baked plough. The country was as level and bare as a table, bar the ditches, and we hardly saw a human being all day. It took us till after 4 p.m. to do our sixteen miles. About 2 p.m. we began to hear firing and see shrapnel in the distance, and it soon became clear that we were approaching a big battle. Consequently we had to push on beyond our sixteen miles, and went on till Sunset. By this time we were all very footsore and exhausted. The men had had no food since the night before, the ration-cart having stuck in a ditch; and many of the inexperienced ones had brought nothing with them. My leg held out wonderfully well, and in fact has given me no trouble worth speaking of.
We had to wait an hour for orders, the Brigadier knowing nothing of the General's intentions. By six it was quite dark, and the firing had ceased: and we got orders to retrace our steps to a certain camping place (marked I on sketch). This meant an extra mile, and immense trouble and confusion in finding our way over ditches and then sorting kits in the dark: but finally we did it, ate a meal, and turned in about 9.30 p.m. pretty well tired out, as we had been on the move fourteen hours and had marched about twenty-one miles. To put the lid on it, a sharp shower of exceedingly frigid rain surprised us all in our beauty sleep, about 11 p.m. and soaked the men's blankets and clothes. Luckily I had everything covered up, and I spread my overcoat over my head and slept on, breathing through the pocket-holes.
(I will continue this in diary form and post it if and when I get a chance.)
Friday 7th. Started at 8.30 and marched quietly about five miles. This brought us within view of the large village of D., which is roughly half-way between B. and C. Between us and it the battle was in full swing. We halted by a pontoon bridge (2 on sketch), just out of range of the enemy's guns, and watched it for several hours. Owing to the utter flatness of the ground, we could see very little of the infantry. It was hot and the mirage blurred everything. Our artillery was clearly very superior to theirs, both in quantity (quite five to one it seemed) and in the possession of high explosive shell, of which the enemy had none: but we were cruelly handicapped (a) by the fact that their men and guns were entrenched and ours exposed; and (b) by the mirage, which made the location of their trenches and emplacements almost impossible.
I had better not say much about the battle yet, but I will give a rough sketch and describe our own experiences. I will only say this, that the two great difficulties our side had to contend with were: (1) the inability of the artillery to locate anything with certainly in the mists and mirage, and (2) the difficulty of finding and getting round the enemy's flanks. Either they had a far larger force than we expected, or they were very skilfully spread out—for they covered an amazingly wide front, quite eight miles, I should say, or more.
The battle was interesting to watch, but not exciting. The noise of the shells from field guns is exactly like that of a rocket going up. When the shell is coming towards you, there is a sharper hiss in it, like a whip. It gives you a second or two to get under cover and then crack-whizz as the shrapnel whizzes out. The heavy shells from the monitors, etc., make a noise more like a landslide of pebbles down a beach, only blurred as if echoed. Bobbety's "silk dress swishing through the air" does his imagination credit, but is not quite accurate, nor does it express the spirit of the things quite!
About 3.30 we had orders to cross to the left bank. As we passed over the bridge, we put up two duck, who had been swimming there peacefully with the shells flying over their heads every half minute for hours. When we reached the left bank we marched as if to reinforce our right flank. Presently the Brigadier made us line out into echelon of companies in line in single rank, so that from a distance we looked like a brigade, instead of three companies. About 4 we came up to a howitzer battery and lay down about 200 yards from it, thus:
We had lain there about ten minutes when a hiss, crack, whizz, and shells began to arrive, invariably in pairs, about where I've put the 1 and 2. We had a fine view. The first notice we had of each shell was the sudden appearance of a white puff, about thirty feet above ground, then a spatter of dust about thirty yards to the right, then the hiss-crack-whizz. They were ranging on the battery, but after a minute or two they spotted the ammunition column, and a pair of shells burst at 3, then a pair at 4. So the column retreated in a hurry along the dotted arrow, and the shells following them began to catch us in enfilade. So Foster made us rise and move to the left in file. Just as we were up, a pair burst right over my platoon. I can't conceive why nobody was hit. I noticed six bullets strike the ground in a semi-circle between me and the nearest man three paces away, and everyone else noticed the same kind of thing, but nobody was touched. I don't suppose the enemy saw us at all: anyway, the next pair pitched 100 yards beyond us, following the mules, and wounded three men in C. Company: and the next got two men of B.—all flesh wounds and not severe. They never touched the ammunition column.