A BAYONET CHARGE IN PICARDY
Told by a British Army Captain
A racy bit of battle description, hot from the guns, as spoken by a wounded Captain who led one of the first rushes against the German trenches in the great British drive in 1916. Recorded in Current History.
I—HOW OUR ENGLISH COUSIN TELLS ABOUT THE BATTLE
Eh? Oh, just an ordinary front-line trench, you know; rather chipped about, of course, by the Boche heavies, you know; but—oh, hang it, you know what the ordinary fire trench looks like; along the north side of the Mametz Wood we were. What? Oh, yes, we were packed pretty close, of course, while we were waiting; only got there a little before midnight. My chaps were all in splendid heart, and keen as mustard to get the word "Go!" I was lucky; met my friend ——, almost directly we got in.
The weather was jolly then; but there'd been a lot of rain, and the trench was in a beastly state. You know what it's like, after a lot of strafing, when you get heavy rains on the churned-up ground. It was like porridge with syrup over it; and we were all absolutely plastered—hair and mustaches and everything—before we'd been half an hour in the place. The Boche was crumping us pretty heavy all the time, but it didn't really matter, because, for some reason, he didn't seem to have got our range just right, and nearly all his big stuff was landing in front or behind, and giving us very little but the mud of it.
What did worry me a bit was his machine guns. His snipers, too, seemed fairly on the spot, though how the devil they could be, with our artillery as busy as it was, I can't think. But I know several of my sentries were laid out by rifle bullets. I particularly wanted to let the others get a smoke when they could, seeing we'd be there three or four hours; helps to keep 'em steady in the waiting, you know; but we had to be mighty careful about matches, the Boche being no more than a hundred yards off.
Just before 3 I got my position, right in the middle of my company. We were going over at 3:25, you know. The trench was deep there, with a hell of a lot of mud and water; but there was no set parapet left; just a gradual slope of muck, as though cartloads of it had been dropped from the sky by giants—spilt porridge. I wanted to be first out, if I could—good effect on the men, you know—but I couldn't trust myself in all that muck, so I'd collared a rum-case from ——'s dugout, and was nursing the blooming thing, so that when the time came I could plant it in the mud and get a bit of a spring from that. Glad I did, too.