In the Line of Battle: Soldiers' Stories of the War

by Unknown

I soon had a very bad experience in the trenches that we had taken over, so to speak.

I and another Kensington had been allotted a firing position, and we were doing our best with our rifles when I suddenly became aware that my companion had come to grief. I looked round and saw that he was lying at the bottom of the trench—and I made the terrible discovery that his head had been blown completely off. I would not mention this circumstance except by way of trying to show what the whole of the trench warfare meant. This incident occurred in the open trenches; but a lot of the dug-outs were blown in with the men inside, which meant burial alive, and I know of one case in which seven men, so killed, were lying together, and that is only one instance of many of the same sort in this tremendous war.

When we got into the trenches that had been occupied by the two Line regiments we were ordered to take up a firing position, and the first thing we did was to try and restore the parapet and to make the trench serviceable, in case the Linesmen were driven back. At this particular time everything gave way to the chief business in hand, which was to fight, and only the stretcher-bearers were allowed to do anything for the men who fell. Here, again, every other man carried a spade, and those who had them had to set to work at once to put the trenches to rights again, as far as it was possible to do so. This work was being done very vigorously when it had to be dropped suddenly, because the order came that we were to advance right up into the village of Neuve Chapelle; and so it happened that we were rushed up just behind the spot where the Regulars had dug themselves in. We rushed up into the village and lay in the open, behind some ruined buildings.

The Germans had arranged a counter attack, and if this had come to anything we should have made a dash for the trenches, which were just in front of the village; but as it was we made for the village itself, or what was left of the place, for by this time there was nothing left but the ruins, and the whole region was an absolute shambles.

Before we made this rush the men of the Line regiments began to bring in German prisoners. These came in batches of fifteen or twenty, disarmed, of course, so that one or two British soldiers were enough for a batch. These prisoners looked as if they had had a terrible time, and, indeed, they said they had been through some dreadful experiences owing to our artillery, and that our guns had given them a shell for each yard of ground they held.

The German attack not having materialised, we were able to retire to the trenches and make them habitable. Before this could be done we had to get the wounded out and bury the dead. As a rule, we had dug a grave for each man, but now there were so many of the killed that we had to put the bodies side by side in long trenches, which we made just behind the line. Quite a cemetery came into existence there, and we did our best to make it nice and worthy to be the resting-place of those who had given their lives for their country.

There is one feature of this great war which has been lost sight of to some extent, and that is the tremendous call which has been made on the physical endurance of the men, quite apart from the ceaseless and excessive strain on the nerves and mind. I will give one illustration on this point.

On the night of March 10th, during the battle of Neuve Chapelle, the front line ran short of ammunition and the Kensingtons were ordered to take up a supply. First of all we had to load up with our little lot, and, as it was impossible to carry the ammunition in the cases, each man got a score of canvas bandoliers across his shoulders, in addition to his own kit and rifle, and he had to stagger along with this tremendous weight, the filled bandoliers alone representing about eighty pounds; so that with the rifle and standing kit each man carried a burden of considerably more than a hundredweight. That was bad enough, but matters were made infinitely worse by the fact that we had to go along a newly-made road, or rather track. This road had been constructed by the Gurkhas, by the simple plan of putting bricks down almost anyhow—there were plenty of bricks handy from the ruined buildings all around us; so that the road we had to take was rather like the huge teeth of an enormous saw, for there was no steam roller to flatten down the surface.

In the darkness, under constant fire, we staggered and stumbled along with our ammunition; but even the biggest and strongest amongst us could not do more than cover about a hundred yards at a time. If a man did that he was proud and thankful, and having got a bit of rest as best he could—and that was by hunking up and resting on the rifle, for if a man had really got on to the ground he would have been hard put to it to rise again—we forged slowly ahead.