The challenge of the dead

by Stephen Graham

But the battle of Loos was not ended at Loos. All the worst of the fighting was away to the left by Bois de Hugo and Chalk-pit wood where Scots and Coldstream strove again and again to establish a continuous line. The German system of trenches was entered, and Hulluch-ward, La Bassee-ward, a strife more bloody than Loos itself continued. On the night of the 29th September there is a relief on Hill 70—the 22nd Londons come in. The survivors of the Guards march off to billets in Sailly and about. But the fight continues for halves of trenches, for corners, for turnings. German and British are living in the same madhouse together and fighting for complete possession room by room.

Now the new British bomb appears—the Mills grenade, the trench-clearer. Germans are fought in the white alleys with bombs, bombs only and bombs ever. October 1915 was the great month of bomb-mania. Its emblem should be the man and the bomb ready to throw. The Guards were soon back in the fray, and on the night when the bombs came up so great was the fascination that "Jocks" and "Bill Browns" were bombing one another—each thinking the other was the enemy.

It is all indescribably wild now—Gun trench, Grab Alley, Big Willie, Hohenzollern and the rest, cement-coloured, or yellow with a withered prairie of weeds. Notices at various points indicate chasse reservée: the shooting rights are now reserved. Frenchmen with shot-guns and dogs prowl along the parapets, peppering the noisy partridges which they rouse up in scores. Decaying rifles lie in the trenches, rusty bayonets, and muddy shreds of belts and pouches. On the German side the inevitable litter of unexploded but sodden bombs; undo the metal protectors and you find the very string which caused them to explode has rotted in its case. No tourists turn up on these wild wastes. It is too terrible for them—and you cannot motor over innumerable pits.

On Sunday October 3rd you can picture the survivors of Loos at "Divine Service" at Sailly la Bourse. On the evening of the Sunday they marched to Gun trench. The trench was so called because the enemy had a gun on it. Fifty yards of the centre the Germans held, and the British were in the trench both on the left and on the right of the enemy, and strove to bomb him out of it entirely.

The gun was worked heavily, and shell after shell landed on parapet or parados scattering solid slag, ravaging chalk, burying men. The unburied were engaged all night digging out lost comrades and trench-repairing. It seems mere matter-of-fact when set down in dull print—but oh, the physical agonies of apprehension, the shuddering, the shattering of nerves physically under such conditions. It is easily understood how men were glad to be hit to get away and find peace. Death must at times have been eagerly desired and sought. It was called hell: it was hell. The new Kitchener divisions were thus not long in getting to the reality of war.

In the diaries of the time you find much reference to gas fatigue. British gas was used whenever the wind seemed favourable. Gas did not seem however to have power to stifle many enemy defenders. Gas fatigue was the carrying of the cylinders to the line. Emplacements were dug for cylinders below the parapet of the trench and "riveted" with sand-bags. Twenty or thirty cylinders would be thus ranged together at intervals of twenty-five yards. The cylinders contained the gas in liquid form, and ejection was worked on the syphon principle. This use of gas was seldom justified by results, and added an infernal torture and ugliness. It was a true diabolism. Almost always it afflicted the side which operated it as much as it did the enemy. Protection against gas was clumsy and inadequate. We started with the "stokers' pad" which was proved useless. Then we had a cotton pad soaked in hypo and tied on by veiling which was supposed to protect the eyes. And then followed cloth helmets soaked in hypo, helmets with mica eyes, very smelly, clammy, and unreliable. Mustard gas at a later date brought the respirator. But the protection at Loos and Hulluch was the old hypo bag of which not a few still lie about.

The war was becoming quite complicated and new. A Lewis gun was first used in the battle for Hohenzollern Redoubt, and in time each battalion, nay, each company, will have its Lewis gunners. Steel helmets were also issued at Hohenzollern and were considered curiosities. One battalion received five helmets! They were supposed to be for the special use of the bombers. But then everyone became a bomber in that battle.

It is with awe that one looks on the silent empty Hohenzollern system now, where trenches for many days were choked with dead. Some commanders in those days thought double rum-rations put the necessary devil into men to carry them through the ordeal of a fray, and it is common talk in the Army that some of the units that went into the storming of Hohenzollern Redoubt knew very little of what they were doing. One thing is certain: alcohol has power to banish fear from men's minds, if fear there happen to be. It dulls the brain to danger. But then alas, it often dulls it to much else. Cool heads were needed to meet the German. And the night-attack at Hohenzollern failed. The dead lay as if emptied out of sacks into the pits, into the trenches, some head downward, some with legs alone visible. Whilst it rained in London, and the evening crowds glided along Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly talking of anything and everything, happily, snugly,—away out there in the darkness lay such a scene. It was most near, but an impenetrable black curtain hid it from the eyes.

War in 1915 failed. We failed; the Germans failed. The German failure was the greater because it was not their rôle to stand and be attacked. Germans and Allies were not unequally matched. The result was a deadlock. Both sides came to the conclusion that no one in his wildest dreams of preparation for war had foreseen the number of shells and guns necessary to obtain victory. Fighting therefore slackened off in the trenches, and the real centre of war-activity was transferred to what we called "the home front," to the factories and war-industries of England, France, and Germany and Austria. All the wet and gloomy winter saw the ammunition heaping up for the myriad-fold destruction of men in 1916. Germany prepared a mountain of death to hurl at Verdun; Britain a mountain of death to hurl from the Somme. No serious discussion of the campaigns of 1915 was allowed to the peoples of the countries. Gallipoli however was evacuated and Serbia over-run, and Bulgaria came into the war on the other side. With the military power of the Tsar lying low Germany had fair hopes of victory. Neither Britain nor France had much to cheer them, but they knew that their resources were mighty, and they knew that their enemy on the Western front did not seem to want to fight and was continually on the defensive.

It did not stir the mind of the soldier much. The autumn leaves fell for the Germans, and Christmas came for the British Tommy, and unfulfilled promises in plenty. A winter of rain and mist above, and water and mud below, and a sense of "a long long way to Tipperary and to everywhere else" were the lot of the British soldier. The war lost its tension after the Hulluch fighting was over. Unofficial fraternisation set in on many fronts. This was a mutual understanding by the rank and file of both sides. The Germans were quickest in arranging it—indeed their alacrity in this direction suggested the belief that it was organised from above and was intended as a way of winning the war, by undermining discipline and worming out secrets and spying. This however was not so. For if it undermined one side it undermined the other as much also, and if one side learned secrets so could the other. Moreover officers on both sides disliked it, and they for their part could not fraternise with enemy officers. Their quarrel was more serious. Officers understood more about the war and had more of the collective guilt of the war upon their minds than had the rank and file. Not that a winter lull was not to their liking. They were glad enough of the effects of these petites armistices. On the French fronts more was arranged than on that held by the British. Parties came over into one another's trenches. In Russia unfortunately fraternisation resulted in a constant loss of Muscovite rifles and material in exchange for Schnapps. Probably the British fraternised least of all, and though one has heard of Tommy's concert party in which "Brother 'Ans was arst ter sing the 'im of 'ate" it did not amount to more than tacit agreements not to shoot.