XV
This was the end of August 1915, and particulars of the coming offensive against La Bassée were beginning to leak through the young staff officers. The French civilians knew that it was coming and so, naturally, did the Germans. Every night now new batteries and lorry-trains of shells came rumbling up the Béthune-La Bassée road. There were other signs of movement: sapping forward at Vermelles and Cambrin, where the lines were too far apart for a quick rush across, to make a new front line; orders for evacuation of hospitals; the appearance of cavalry and new-army divisions. Then Royal Engineer officers supervised the digging of pits at intervals in the front line. They were sworn not to say what these were for, but we knew that they were for gas-cylinders. Scaling ladders for climbing quickly out of trenches were brought up by the lorry-load and dumped at Cambrin village. As early as September 3rd I had a bet with Robertson that our division would attack on this Cambrin-Cuinchy sector. When I went home on leave on September 9th the sense of impending events was so great that I almost wished I was not going.
Leave came round for officers about every six or eight months in ordinary times; heavy casualties shortened the period, general offensives cut off leave altogether. There was only one officer in France who was ever said to have refused to go on leave when his turn came round—Cross of the Fifty-second Light Infantry (the Second Battalion of the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry, which insisted on its original style as jealously as we kept our ‘c’ in ‘Welch’). Cross is alleged to have refused leave on these grounds: ‘My father fought with the regiment in the South African War and had no leave; my grandfather fought in the Crimea with the regiment and had no leave. I do not regard it in the regimental tradition to take home-leave when on active service.’ Cross was a professional survivor and was commanding the battalion in 1917 when I last heard of him.
London seemed unreally itself. In spite of the number of men in uniform in the streets, the general indifference to and ignorance about the war was remarkable. Enlistment was still voluntary. The universal catchword was ‘Business as usual.’ My family were living in London now, at the house formerly occupied by my uncle, Robert von Ranke, the German consul. He had been forced to leave in a hurry on August 4th, 1914, and my mother had undertaken to look after it for him while the war lasted. So when Edward Marsh, then secretary to the Prime Minister, rang me up from Downing Street to arrange a meal, someone intervened and cut him off. The telephone of the German consul’s sister was, of course, closely watched by the anti-espionage men of Scotland Yard. The Zeppelin scare had just begun. Some friends of the family came in one night. They knew I had been in the trenches, but were not interested. They began telling me of the air-raids, of bombs dropped only three streets off. So I said: ‘Well, do you know, the other day I was asleep in a house and in the early morning an aeroplane dropped a bomb next door and killed three soldiers who were billeted there, and a woman and child.’ ‘Good gracious,’ they said, looking at me with sudden interest, ‘what did you do then?’ I said: ‘I went to sleep again; I was tired out. It was at a place called Beuvry, about four miles behind the trenches.’ They said: ‘Oh, but that was in France,’ and the look of interest faded from their faces, as though I had taken them in with a stupid catch. I went up to Harlech for the rest of my leave, and walked about on the hills in an old shirt and a pair of shorts. When I got back, ‘The Actor,’ a regular officer in A Company, asked me: ‘Had a good time on leave?’ I said ‘Yes.’ He said: ‘Go to many dances?’ I said: ‘Not one.’ ‘What shows did you go to?’ ‘I didn’t go to any shows.’ ‘Hunt?’ ‘No!’ ‘Slept with any nice girls?’ ‘No, I didn’t. Sorry to disappoint you.’ ‘What the hell did you do, then?’ ‘Oh, I just walked about on some hills.’ ‘Good God,’ he said, ‘chaps like you don’t deserve to go on leave.’
On September 19th we relieved the Middlesex at Cambrin, and it was said that these were the trenches from which we were to attack. The preliminary bombardment had already started, a week in advance. As I led my platoon into the line I recognized with some disgust the same machine-gun shelter where I had seen the suicide on my first night in trenches. It seemed ominous. This was the first heavy bombardment that I had yet seen from our own guns. The trenches shook properly and a great cloud of drifting shell-smoke clouded the German trenches. The shells went over our heads in a steady stream; we had to shout to make our neighbours hear. Dying down a little at night, the noise began again every morning at dawn, a little louder each time. We said: ‘Damn it, there can’t be a living soul left in those trenches.’ And still it went on. The Germans retaliated, though not very vigorously. Most of their heavy artillery had been withdrawn from this sector, we were told, and sent across to the Russian front. We had more casualties from our own shorts and from blow-backs than from German shells. Much of the ammunition that our batteries were using came from America and contained a high percentage of duds; the driving-bands were always coming off. We had fifty casualties in the ranks and three officer casualties, including Buzz Off, who was badly wounded in the head. This was before steel helmets were issued; we would not have lost nearly so many if we had had them. I had two insignificant wounds on the hand which I took as an omen on the right side. On the morning of the 23rd Thomas came back from battalion headquarters with a notebook in his hand and a map for each of us company officers. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘and copy out all this skite on the back of your maps. You’ll have to explain it to your platoons this afternoon. To-morrow morning we go back to Béthune to dump our blankets, packs, and greatcoats. On the next day, that’s Saturday the 25th, we attack.’ It was the first definite news we had been given and we looked up half startled, half relieved. I still have the map and these are the orders as I copied them down:
First Objective.—Les Briques Farm.—The big house plainly visible to our front, surrounded by trees. To get this it is necessary to cross three lines of enemy trenches. The first is three hundred yards distant, the second four hundred, and the third about six hundred. We then cross two railways. Behind the second railway line is a German trench called the Brick Trench. Then comes the Farm, a strong place with moat and cellars and a kitchen garden strongly staked and wired.
Second Objective.—The Town of Auchy.—This is also plainly visible from our trenches. It is four hundred yards beyond the Farm and defended by a first line of trench half way across, and a second line immediately in front of the town. When we have occupied the first line our direction is half-right, with the left of the battalion directed on Tall Chimney.
Third Objective.—Village of Haisnes.—Conspicuous by high-spired church. Our eventual line will be taken up on the railway behind this village, where we will dig in and await reinforcements.
When Thomas had reached this point the shoulders of The Actor were shaking with laughter. ‘What’s up?’ asked Thomas irritably. The Actor asked: ‘Who in God’s Name is originally responsible for this little effort?’ Thomas said: ‘Don’t know. Probably Paul the Pimp or someone like that.’ (Paul the Pimp was a captain on the divisional staff, young, inexperienced and much disliked. He ‘wore red tabs upon his chest, And even on his undervest.’) ‘Between you and me, but you youngsters be careful not to let the men know, this is what they call a subsidiary attack. We’ll have no supports. We’ve just got to go over and keep the enemy busy while the folk on our right do the real work. You notice that the bombardment is much heavier over there. They’ve knocked the Hohenzollern Redoubt to bits. Personally, I don’t give a damn either way. We’ll get killed anyhow.’ We all laughed. ‘All right, laugh now, but by God on Saturday we’ve got to carry out this funny scheme.’ I had never heard Thomas so talkative before. ‘Sorry,’ The Actor apologized, ‘carry on with the dictation.’ Thomas went on:
‘The attack will be preceded by forty minutes discharge of the accessory,5 which will clear the path for a thousand yards, so that the two railway lines will be occupied without difficulty. Our advance will follow closely behind the accessory. Behind us are three fresh divisions and the Cavalry Corps. It is expected we shall have no difficulty in breaking through. All men will parade with their platoons; pioneers, servants, etc. to be warned. All platoons to be properly told off under N.C.O.’s. Every N.C.O. is to know exactly what is expected of him, and when to take over command in case of casualties. Men who lose touch must join up with the nearest company or regiment and push on. Owing to the strength of the accessory, men should be warned against remaining too long in captured trenches where the accessory is likely to collect, but to keep to the open and above all to push on. It is important that if smoke-helmets have to be pulled down they must be tucked in under the shirt.’
The Actor interrupted again. ‘Tell me, Thomas, do you believe in this funny accessory?’ Thomas said: ‘It’s damnable. It’s not soldiering to use stuff like that even though the Germans did start it. It’s dirty, and it’ll bring us bad luck. We’re sure to bungle it. Look at those new gas-companies, (sorry, excuse me this once, I mean accessory-companies). Their very look makes me tremble. Chemistry-dons from London University, a few lads straight from school, one or two N.C.O.’s of the old-soldier type, trained together for three weeks, then given a job as responsible as this. Of course they’ll bungle it. How could they do anything else? But let’s be merry. I’m going on again:
‘Men of company: what they are to carry:
- Two hundred rounds of ammunition (bomb-throwers fifty, and signallers one hundred and fifty rounds).
- Heavy tools carried in sling by the strongest men.
- Waterproof sheet in belt.
- Sandbag in right coat-pocket.
- Field dressing and iodine.
- Emergency ration, including biscuit.
- One tube-helmet, to be worn when we advance, foiled up on the head. It must be quite secure and the top part turned down. If possible each man will be provided with an elastic band.
- One smoke-helmet, old pattern, to be carried for preference behind the back where it is least likely to be damaged by stray bullets, etc.
- Wire-cutters, as many as possible, by wiring party and others; hedging-gloves by wire party.
- Platoon screens, for artillery observation, to be carried by a man in each platoon who is not carrying a tool.
- Packs, capes, greatcoats, blankets will be dumped, not carried.
- No one is to carry sketches of our position or anything likely to be of service to the enemy.’
‘That’s all. I believe we’re going over first with the Middlesex in support. If we get through the German wire I’ll be satisfied. Our guns don’t seem to be cutting it. Perhaps they’re putting that off until the intense bombardment. Any questions?’
That afternoon I repeated it all to the platoon and told them of the inevitable success attending our assault. They seemed to believe it. All except Sergeant Townsend. ‘Do you say, sir, that we have three divisions and the Cavalry Corps behind us?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘Well, excuse me, sir, I’m thinking it’s only those chaps on the right that’ll get reinforcements. If we get half a platoon of Mons Angels, that’s about all we will get.’ ‘Sergeant Townsend,’ I said, ‘you are a well-known pessimist. This is going to be a good show.’ The next morning we were relieved by the Middlesex and marched back to Béthune, where we dumped our spare kit at the Montmorency Barracks. The battalion officers messed together in a big house near by. This billet was claimed at the same time by the staff of a new-army division which was to take part in the fighting next day. The argument was settled in a friendly way by division and battalion messing together. It was, someone pointed out, like a caricature of The Last Supper in duplicate. In the middle of the long table sat the two pseudo-Christs, the battalion colonel and the divisional general. Everybody was drinking a lot; the subalterns were allowed whisky for a treat, and were getting rowdy. They raised their glasses with: ‘Cheero, we will be messing together to-morrow night in La Bassée.’ Only the company commanders were looking worried. I remember C Company commander especially, Captain A. L. Samson, biting his thumb and refusing to join in the general excitement. I think it was Childe-Freeman of B company who said that night: ‘The last time the regiment was in these parts it was under decent generalship. Old Marlborough knew better than to attack the La Bassée lines; he masked them and went round.’
The G.S.O. 1 of the new-army division, a staff-colonel, knew the adjutant well. They had played polo together in India. I happened to be sitting next to them. The G.S.O. 1 said to the adjutant, rather drunkenly: ‘Charley, do you see that silly old woman over there? Calls himself General Commanding. Doesn’t know where he is; doesn’t know where his division is; can’t read a map properly. He’s marched the poor sods off their feet and left his supplies behind, God knows where. They’ve had to use their iron rations and what they could pick up in the villages. And to-morrow he’s going to fight a battle. Doesn’t know anything about battles; the men have never been in trenches before, and to-morrow’s going to be a glorious balls-up, and the day after to-morrow he’ll be sent home.’ Then he said, quite seriously: ‘Really, Charley, it’s just like that, you mark my words.’
That night we marched back again to Cambrin. The men were singing. Being mostly from the Midlands they sang comic songs instead of Welsh hymns: Slippery Sam, When we’ve Wound up the Watch on the Rhine, and I do like a S’nice S’mince Pie, to concertina accompaniment. The tune of the S’nice S’mince Pie ran in my head all next day, and for the week following I could not get rid of it. The Second Welsh would never have sung a song like When we’ve Wound up the Watch on the Rhine. Their only songs about the war were defeatist:
There were several more verses in the same strain. Hewitt, the Welsh machine-gun officer, had written one in a more offensive spirit:
But the men would not sing it, though they all admired Hewitt.
The Béthune-La Bassée road was choked with troops, guns, and transport, and we had to march miles north out of our way to get back to Cambrin. As it was we were held up two or three times by massed cavalry. Everything seemed in confusion. A casualty clearing-station had been planted astride one of the principal crossroads and was already being shelled. When we reached Cambrin we had marched about twenty miles in all that day. We were told then that the Middlesex would go over first with us in support, and to their left the Second Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, with the Cameronians in support; the junior officers complained loudly at our not being given the honour of leading the attack. We were the senior regiment, they protested, and entitled to the ‘Right of the Line.’ We moved into trench sidings just in front of the village. There was about half a mile of communication trench between us and the trenches proper, known as Maison Rouge Alley. It was an hour or so past midnight. At half-past five the gas was to be discharged. We were cold, tired and sick, not at all in the mood for a battle. We tried to snatch an hour or two of sleep squatting in the trench. It had been raining for some time. Grey, watery dawn broke at last behind the German lines; the bombardment, which had been surprisingly slack all night, brisked up a little. ‘Why the devil don’t they send them over quicker?’ asked The Actor. ‘This isn’t my idea of a bombardment. We’re getting nothing opposite us. What little there is is going into the Hohenzollern.’ ‘Shell shortage. Expected it,’ answered Thomas. We were told afterwards that on the 23rd a German aeroplane had bombed the Army Reserve shell-dump and sent it up. The bombardment on the 24th and on the day of the battle itself was nothing compared with that of the previous days. Thomas looked strained and ill. ‘It’s time they were sending that damned accessory off. I wonder what’s doing.’
What happened in the next few minutes is difficult for me now to sort out. It was more difficult still at the time. All we heard back there in the sidings was a distant cheer, confused crackle of rifle-fire, yells, heavy shelling on our front line, more shouts and yells and a continuous rattle of machine-guns. After a few minutes, lightly-wounded men of the Middlesex came stumbling down Maison Rouge Alley to the dressing-station. I was at the junction of the siding and the alley. ‘What’s happened? What’s happened?’ I asked. ‘Bloody balls-up’ was the most detailed answer I could get. Among the wounded were a number of men yellow-faced and choking, with their buttons tarnished green; these were gas cases. Then came the stretcher cases. Maison Rouge Alley was narrow and the stretchers had difficulty in getting down. The Germans started shelling it with five-point-nines. Thomas went through the shelling to battalion headquarters to ask for orders. It was the same place that I had visited on my first night in the trenches. This group of dug-outs in the reserve line showed very plainly from the air as battalion headquarters, and should never have been occupied on the day of a battle. Just before Thomas arrived the Germans put five shells into it. The adjutant jumped one way, the colonel another, the regimental sergeant-major a third. One shell went into the signals dug-out and destroyed the telephone. The colonel had a slight wound on his hand; he joined the stream of wounded and was carried as far as the base with it. The adjutant took charge. All this time A Company had been waiting in the siding for the rum to arrive; the tradition of every attack was a double tot of rum beforehand. All the other companies got it except ours. The Actor was cursing: ‘Where the bloody hell’s that storeman gone?’ We fixed bayonets in readiness to go up to the attack as soon as Thomas came back with orders. The Actor sent me along the siding to the other end of the company. The stream of wounded was continuous. At last Thomas’s orderly appeared, saying: ‘Captain’s orders, sir: A Company to move up to the front line.’ It seems that at that moment the storeman appeared with the rum. He was hugging the rum-bottle, without rifle or equipment, red-faced and retching. He staggered up to The Actor and said: ‘There you are, sir,’ then fell on his face in the thick mud of a sump-pit at the junction of the trench and the siding. The stopper of the bottle flew out and what was left of the three gallons bubbled on the ground. The Actor said nothing. It was a crime deserving the death-penalty. He put one foot on the storeman’s neck, the other in the small of his back, and trod him into the mud. Then he gave the order ‘Company forward.’ The company went forward with a clatter of steel over the body, and that was the last heard of the storeman.
What had happened in the front line was this. At half-past four the commander of the gas-company in the front line sent a telephone message through to divisional headquarters: ‘Dead calm. Impossible discharge accessory.’ The answer came back: ‘Accessory to be discharged at all costs.’ Thomas’s estimate of the gas-company’s efficiency was right enough. The spanners for unscrewing the cocks of the cylinders were found, with two or three exceptions, to be misfits. The gas-men rushed about shouting and asking each other for the loan of an adjustable spanner. They discharged one or two cylinders with the spanners that they had; the gas went whistling out, formed a thick cloud a few yards away in No Man’s Land, and then gradually spread back into the trenches. The Germans had been expecting the attack. They immediately put their gas-helmets on, semi-rigid ones, better than ours. Bundles of oily cotton-waste were strewn along the German parapet and set alight as a barrier to the gas. Then their batteries opened on our lines. The confusion in the front trench was great; the shelling broke several of the gas-cylinders and the trench was soon full of gas. The gas-company dispersed.
No orders could come through because the shell in the signals dug-out at battalion headquarters had cut communication both between companies and battalion headquarters and between battalion headquarters and division. The officers in the front trench had to decide on immediate action. Two companies of the Middlesex, instead of waiting for the intense bombardment which was to follow the forty minutes of gas, charged at once and got as far as the German wire-which our artillery had not yet attempted to cut. What shelling there had been on it was shrapnel and not high explosive; shrapnel was no use against barbed wire. The Germans shot the Middlesex men down. It is said that one platoon found a gap and got into the German trench. But there were no survivors of the platoon to confirm the story. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders went over too, on their left. Two companies, instead of charging at once, rushed back to the support line out of the gas-filled front trench and attacked from there. It will be recalled that the front line had been pushed forward in preparation for the battle; these companies were therefore attacking from the old front line. The barbed wire entanglements in front of this trench had not been removed, so that they were caught and machine-gunned between their own front and support lines. The leading companies were equally unsuccessful. When the attack started, the German N.C.O.’s had jumped up on the parapet to encourage their men. It was a Jaeger regiment and their musketry was good.
The survivors of the first two companies of the Middlesex were lying in shell-craters close to the German wire, sniping and making the Germans keep their heads down. They had bombs to throw, but these were nearly all of a new type issued for the battle; the fuses were lit on the match-and-matchbox principle and the rain had made them useless. The other two companies of the Middlesex soon followed in support. Machine-gun fire stopped them half-way. Only one German machine-gun was now in action, the others had been knocked out by rifle or trench-mortar fire. Why the single gun remained in action is a story in itself.
It starts like this. British colonial governors and high-commissioners had the privilege of nominating one or two officers from their countries to be attached in war-time to the regular British forces. Under this scheme the officers appointed began as full lieutenants. The Governor-General of Jamaica (or whatever his proper style may be) nominated the eighteen-year-old son of a rich Jamaica planter. He was sent straight from Jamaica to the First Middlesex. He was good-hearted enough but of little use in the trenches. He had never been out of the island in his life and, except for a short service with the West Indian militia, knew nothing of soldiering. His company commander took a fatherly interest in Young Jamaica, as he was called, and tried to teach him his duties. This company commander was known as The Boy. He had twenty years’ service in the Middlesex, and the unusual boast of having held every rank from ‘boy’ to captain in the same company. His father, I believe, had been the regimental sergeant-major. The difficulty was that Jamaica was a full lieutenant and so senior to the other experienced subalterns in the company, who were only second-lieutenants. The colonel decided to shift Jamaica off on some course or extra-regimental appointment at the earliest opportunity. Somewhere about May or June he had been asked to supply an officer for the brigade trench-mortar company, and he had sent Jamaica. Trench-mortars at that time were dangerous and ineffective; so the appointment seemed suitable. At the same time the Royal Welch Fusiliers had also been asked to detail an officer, and the colonel had sent Tiley, an ex-planter from Malay, who was what is called a fine natural soldier. He had been chosen because he was attached from another regiment and had showed his resentment at the manner of his welcome somewhat too plainly. By September mortars had improved in design and become an important infantry arm; Jamaica was senior to Tiley and was therefore in the responsible position of commanding the company.
When the Middlesex made the charge, The Boy was mortally wounded as he climbed over the parapet. He fell back and began crawling down the trench to the stretcher-bearers’ dug-out. He passed Jamaica’s trench-mortar emplacement. Jamaica had lost his gun-team and was serving the trench-mortars himself. When he saw The Boy he forgot about his guns and ran off to get a stretcher-party. Tiley meanwhile, on the other flank, opposite Mine Point, had knocked out the machine-guns within range. He went on until his gun burst. The machine-gun in the Pope’s Nose, a small salient opposite Jamaica, remained in action.
It was at this point that the Royal Welch Fusiliers came up in support. Maison Rouge Alley was a nightmare; the Germans were shelling it with five-nines bursting with a black smoke and with lachrymatory shells. This caused a continual scramble backwards and forwards. There were cries and counter-cries: ‘Come on!’ ‘Get back, you bastards!’ ‘Gas turning on us!’ ‘Keep your heads, you men!’ ‘Back like hell, boys.’ ‘Whose orders?’ ‘What’s happening?’ ‘Gas!’ ‘Back!’ ‘Come on!’ ‘Gas!’ ‘Back!’ Wounded men and stretcher-bearers were still trying to squeeze past. We were alternately putting on and taking off our gas-helmets and that made things worse. In many places the trench was filled in and we had to scramble over the top. Childe-Freeman got up to the front line with only fifty men of B Company; the rest had lost their way in some abandoned trenches half-way up. The adjutant met him in the support line. ‘You ready to go over, Freeman?’ he asked. Freeman had to admit that he had lost most of his company. He felt this keenly as a disgrace; it was the first time that he had commanded a company in battle. He decided to go over with his fifty men in support of the Middlesex. He blew his whistle and the company charged. They were stopped by machine-gun fire before they had passed our own entanglements. Freeman himself died, but of heart-failure, as he stood on the parapet. After a few minutes C Company and the remainder of B reached the front line. The gas-cylinders were still whistling and the trench full of dying men. Samson decided to go over; he would not have it said that the Royal Welch had let down the Middlesex. There was a strong comradely feeling between the Middlesex and the Royal Welch. The Royal Welch and Middlesex were drawn together in dislike of the Scots. The other three battalions in the brigade were Scottish, and the brigadier was a Scot and, unjustly no doubt, accused of favouring them. Our adjutant voiced the general opinion: ‘The Jocks are all the same, the trousered variety and the bare-backed variety. They’re dirty in trenches, they skite too much, and they charge like hell—both ways.’ The Middlesex, who were the original Diehard battalion, had more than once, with the Royal Welch, considered themselves let down by the Jocks. So Samson with C and the rest of B Company charged. One of the officers told me later what happened to himself. It had been agreed to advance by platoon rushes with supporting fire. When his platoon had run about twenty yards he signalled them to lie down and open covering fire. The din was tremendous. He saw the platoon on the left flopping down too, so he whistled the advance again. Nobody seemed to hear. He jumped up from his shell-hole and waved and signalled ‘Forward.’ Nobody stirred. He shouted: ‘You bloody cowards, are you leaving me to go alone?’ His platoon sergeant, groaning with a broken shoulder, gasped out: ‘Not cowards, sir. Willing enough. But they’re all f——ing dead.’ A machine-gun traversing had caught them as they rose to the whistle.
Our company too had become separated by the shelling. The Surrey-man got a touch of gas and went coughing back. The Actor said he was skrim-shanking and didn’t want the battle. This was unfair. The Surrey-man looked properly sick. I do not know what happened to him, but I heard that the gas was not much and that he managed, a few months later, to get back to his own regiment in France. I found myself with The Actor in a narrow trench between the front and support lines. This trench had not been built wide enough for a stretcher to pass the bends. We came on The Boy lying on his stretcher wounded in the lungs and the stomach. Jamaica was standing over him in tears, blubbering: ‘Poor old Boy, poor old Boy, he’s going to die; I’m sure he is. He’s the only one who was decent to me.’ The Actor found we could not get by. He said to Jamaica: ‘Take that poor sod out of the way, will you? I’ve got to get my company up. Put him into a dug-out or somewhere.’ Jamaica made no answer; he seemed paralysed by the horror of the occasion. He could only repeat: ‘Poor old Boy, poor I old Boy.’ ‘Look here,’ said The Actor, ‘if you can’t shift him into a dug-out we’ll have to lift him on top of the trench. He can’t live now and we’re late getting up.’ ‘No, no,’ Jamaica shouted wildly. The Actor lost his temper and shook Jamaica roughly by the shoulders. ‘You’re the bloody trench-mortar wallah, aren’t you?’ he asked fiercely. Jamaica nodded miserably. ‘Well, your battery is a hundred yards from here. Why the hell aren’t you using your gas-pipes on that machine-gun in the Pope’s Nose? Buzz off back to them.’ And he kicked him down the trench. Then he called over his shoulder: ‘Sergeant Rose and Corporal Jennings, lift this stretcher up across the top of the trench. We’ve got to pass.’ Jamaica leaned against a traverse. ‘I do think you’re the most heartless beast I’ve ever met,’ he said weakly.
We went on up to the front line. It was full of dead and dying. The captain of the gas-company, who had kept his head and had a special oxygen respirator, had by now turned off the gas. Vermorel-sprayers had cleared out most of the gas, but we still had to wear our masks. We climbed up and crouched on the fire-step, where the gas was not so thick—gas was heavy stuff and kept low. Then Thomas arrived with the remainder of A Company and, with D, we waited for the whistle to follow the other two companies over. Fortunately at this moment the adjutant appeared. He told Thomas that he was now in command of the battalion and he didn’t care a damn about orders; he was going to cut his losses. He said he would not send A and D over until he got definite orders from brigade. He had sent a runner back because telephone communication was cut, and we must wait. Meanwhile the intense bombardment that was to follow the forty minutes’ discharge of gas began. It concentrated on the German front trench and wire. A good deal of it was short and we had further casualties in our trenches. The survivors of the Middlesex and of our B and C Companies in craters in No Man’s Land suffered heavily.
My mouth was dry, my eyes out of focus, and my legs quaking under me. I found a water-bottle full of rum and drank about half a pint; it quieted me and my head remained clear. Samson was lying wounded about twenty yards away from the front trench. Several attempts were made to get him in. He was very badly hit and groaning. Three men were killed in these attempts and two officers and two men wounded. Finally his own orderly managed to crawl out to him. Samson ordered him back, saying that he was riddled and not worth rescuing; he sent his apologies to the company for making such a noise. We waited for about a couple of hours for the order to charge. The men were silent and depressed. Sergeant Townsend was making feeble, bitter jokes about the good old British army muddling through and how he thanked God we still had a navy. I shared the rest of the rum with him and he cheered up a little. Finally a runner came with a message that the attack was off for the present.
Rumours came down the trenches of a disaster similar to our own in the brick-stack area, where the Fifth Brigade had gone over, and again at Givenchy, where it was said that men of the Sixth Brigade at the Duck’s Bill salient had fought their way into the enemy trenches, but had been bombed out, their own supply of bombs failing. It was said, however, that things were better on the right, where there had been a slight wind to take the gas over. There was a rumour that the First, Seventh, and Forty-seventh Divisions had broken through. My memory of that day is hazy. We spent it getting the wounded down to the dressing-station, spraying the trenches and dug-outs to get rid of the gas, and clearing away the earth where trenches were blocked. The trenches stank with a gas-blood-lyddite-latrine smell. Late in the afternoon we watched through our field-glasses the advance of the reserves towards Loos and Hill 70; it looked like a real break through. They were being heavily shelled. They were troops of the new-army division whose staff we had messed with the night before. Immediately to the right of us was the Highland Division, whose exploits on that day Ian Hay has celebrated in The First Hundred Thousand; I suppose that we were ‘the flat caps on the left’ who ‘let down’ his comrades-in-arms.
As soon as it was dusk we all went out to get in the wounded. Only sentries were left in the line. The first dead body I came upon was Samson’s. I found that he had forced his knuckles into his mouth to stop himself crying out and attracting any more men to their death. He had been hit in seventeen places. Major Swainson, the second-in-command of the Middlesex, came crawling in from the German wire. He seemed to be wounded in the lungs, the stomach and a leg. Choate, a Middlesex second-lieutenant, appeared; he was unhurt, and together we bandaged Swainson and got him into the trench and on a stretcher. He begged me to loosen his belt; I cut it with a bowie-knife that I had bought in Béthune for use in the fighting. He said: ‘I’m about done for.’6 We spent all that night getting in the wounded of the Royal Welch, the Middlesex and those of the Argyll and Sutherland who had attacked from the front trench. The Germans behaved generously. I do not remember hearing a shot fired that night, and we kept on until it was nearly dawn and we could be plainly seen; then they fired a few shots in warning and we gave it up. By this time we had got in all the wounded and most of the Royal Welch dead. I was surprised at some of the attitudes in which the dead had stiffened—in the act of bandaging friends’ wounds, crawling, cutting wire. The Argyll and Sutherland had seven hundred casualties, including fourteen officers killed out of the sixteen that went over; the Middlesex five hundred and fifty casualties, including eleven officers killed.
Two other Middlesex officers besides Choate were unwounded; their names were Henry and Hill, second-lieutenants who had recently come with commissions from, I think, the Artists’ Rifles; their welcome in the Middlesex had been something like mine in the Royal Welch. They had been lying out in shell-holes in the rain all day, sniping and being sniped at. Henry, according to Hill, had dragged five wounded men into his shell-hole and thrown up a sort of parapet with his hands and a bowie-knife that he was carrying. Hill had his platoon sergeant with him, screaming for hours with a stomach wound, begging for morphia; he was dying, so Hill gave him five pellets. We always carried morphia with us for emergencies like this. When Choate, Henrv and Hill arrived back in the trenches with a few stragglers they reported at the Middlesex headquarters. Hill told me the story. The colonel and the adjutant were sitting down to a meat pie when he and Henry arrived. Henry said: ‘Come to report, sir. Ourselves and about ninety men of all companies. Mr. Choate is back, unwounded, too.’ They looked up dully. The colonel said: ‘So you’ve come back, have you? Well, all the rest are dead. I suppose Mr. Choate had better command what’s left of A Company, the bombing officer will command what’s left of B (the bombing officer had not gone over but remained with headquarters), Mr. Henry goes to C Company, Mr. Hill to D. The Royal Welch are holding the front line. We are here in support. Let me know where to find you if I want you. Good night.’ There was no offer to have a piece of meat pie or a drink of whisky, so they saluted and went miserably out. They were called back by the adjutant. ‘Mr. Hill! Mr. Henry!’ ‘Sir?’ Hill said that he expected a change of mind as to the propriety with which hospitality could be offered by a regular colonel and adjutant to temporary second-lieutenants in distress. But it was only to say: ‘Mr. Hill, Mr. Henry, I saw some men in the trench just now with their shoulder-straps unbuttoned and their equipment fastened anyhow. See that this practice does not occur in future. That’s all.’ Henry heard the colonel from his bunk complaining that he had only two blankets and that it was a deucedly cold night. Choate arrived a few minutes later and reported; the others had told him of their reception. After he had saluted and reported that Major Swainson, who had been thought killed, was wounded and on the way down to the dressing-station, he leaned over the table, cut a large piece of meat pie and began eating it. This caused such surprise that nothing further was said. He finished his meat pie and drank a glass of whisky, saluted, and joined the others.
Meanwhile, I had been given command of the survivors of B Company. There were only six company officers left in the Royal Welch. Next morning there were only five. Thomas was killed by a sniper. He was despondently watching the return of the new-army troops on the right. They had been pushed blindly into the gap made by the advance of the Seventh and Forty-seventh Divisions on the previous afternoon; they did not know where they were or what they were supposed to do; their ration supply had broken down. So they flocked back, not in a panic, but stupidly, like a crowd coming back from a cup final. Shrapnel was bursting above them. We noticed that the officers were in groups of their own. We could scarcely believe our eyes, it was so odd. Thomas need not have been killed; but he was in the sort of mood in which he seemed not to care one way or the other. The Actor took command of A. We lumped our companies together after a couple of days for the sake of relieving each other on night watch and getting some sleep. The first night I agreed to take the first watch, waking him up at midnight. When I went to call him I could not wake him up; I tried everything. I shook him, shouted in his ear, poured water over him, banged his head against the side of the bed. Finally I threw him on the floor. I was desperate for want of sleep myself, but he was in a depth of sleep from which nothing could shake him, so I heaved him back on the bunk and had to finish the night out myself. Even ‘Stand-to!’ failed to arouse him. I woke him at last at nine o’clock in the morning and he was furious with me for not having waked him at midnight.
The day after the attack we spent carrying the dead down to burial and cleaning the trench up as well as we could. That night the Middlesex held the line while the Royal Welch carried all the unbroken gas-cylinders along to a position on the left flank of the brigade, where they were to be used on the following night, September 27th. This was worse than carrying the dead; the cylinders were cast-iron and very heavy and we hated them. The men cursed and sulked, but got the carrying done. Orders came that we were to attack again. Only the officers knew; the men were only to be told just beforehand. It was difficult for me to keep up appearances with the men; I felt like screaming. It was still raining, harder than ever. We knew definitely this time that ours was only a subsidiary night attack, a diversion to help a division on our right to make the real attack. The scheme was the same as before. At four p.m.the gas was to be discharged again for forty minutes, then came a quartet of an hour’s bombardment, and then the attack. I broke the news to the men about three o’clock. They took it very well. The relations of officers and men, and of senior and junior officers, had been very different in the excitement of the attack. There had been no insubordination, but a greater freedom, as if everyone was drunk together. I found myself calling the adjutant Charley on one occasion; he appeared not to mind it in the least. For the next ten days my relations with my men were like those I had with the Welsh Regiment; later discipline reasserted itself and it was only occasionally that I found them intimate.
At four p.m., then, the gas went off again. There was a strong wind and it went over well; the gas-men had brought enough spanners this time. The Germans were absolutely silent. Flares went up from the reserve lines and it seemed as though all the men in the front line were dead. The brigadier decided not to take too much for granted; after the bombardment he sent out twenty-five men and an officer of the Cameronians as a feeling-patrol. The patrol reached the German wire; there was a burst of machine-gun and rifle fire and only two wounded men regained the trench. We: waited on the fire-step from four to nine o’clock, with fixed; bayonets, for the order to go over. My mind was a blank except for the recurrence of ‘S’nice smince spie, s’nice smince spie.... I don’t like ham, lamb or jam and I don’t like roley-poley....’ The men laughed at my singing. The sergeant who was acting company sergeant-major said to me: ‘It’s murder, sir.’ ‘Of course it’s murder, you bloody fool,’ I agreed. ‘But there’s nothing else for it, is there?’ It was still raining. ‘But when I see’s a s’nice smince spie, I asks for a helping twice....’ At nine o’clock we were told that the attack was put off; we were told to hold ourselves in readiness to attack at dawn.
No order came at dawn. And no more attacks were promised us after this. From the morning of September 24th to the night of October 3rd I had in all eight hours of sleep. I kept myself awake and alive by drinking about a bottle of whisky a day. I had never drank it before and have seldom drank it since; it certainly was good then. We had no blankets, greatcoats, or waterproof sheets. We had no time or material to build new shelters, and the rain continued. Every night we went out to get in the dead of the other battalions. The Germans continued to be indulgent and we had few casualties. After the first day or two the bodies swelled and stank. I vomited more than once while superintending the carrying. The ones that we could not get in from the German wire continued to swell until the wall of the stomach collapsed, either naturally or punctured by a bullet; a disgusting smell would float across. The colour of the dead faces changed from white to yellow-grey, to red, to purple, to green, to black, to slimy.
On the morning of the 27th a cry was heard from No Man’s Land. It was a wounded man of the Middlesex who had recovered consciousness after two days. He was close to the German wire. Our men heard it and looked at each other. We had a lance-corporal called Baxter and he was tender-hearted. He was the man to boil up a special dixie of tea for the sentries of his section when they came off duty. When he heard the wounded man cry out he ran up and down the trench calling for a volunteer to come out with him and bring the man in. Of course no one would go; it was death to put one’s head over the trench. He came running to ask me. I excused myself as the only officer in the company. I said I would come out with him at dusk, but I would not go now. So he went out himself. He jumped quickly over the parapet, then strolled across waving a handkerchief; the Germans fired at him to frighten him, but he came on, so they let him come up close. They must have heard the Middlesex man themselves. Baxter continued towards them and, when he got up to the Middlesex man, he stopped and pointed to show the Germans what he was at. Then he dressed the man’s wounds, gave him a drink of rum and some biscuit that he had with him, and told him that he would come back again for him in the evening. He did come back for him with a stretcher-party and the man eventually recovered. I recommended Baxter for the Victoria Cross, being the only officer who had seen the thing done; but he only got a Distinguished Conduct Medal.
The Actor and I had decided to get into touch with the battalion on our right. It was the Tenth Highland Light Infantry. I went down their trench some time in the morning of the 26th. I walked nearly a quarter of a mile before seeing either a sentry or an officer. There were dead men, sleeping men, wounded men, gassed men, all lying anyhow. The trench had been used as a latrine. Finally I met a Royal Engineer officer. He said to me: ‘If the Boche knew what an easy job it was, he’d just walk over and take this trench.’ So I came back and told The Actor that we might expect to have our flank in the air at any moment. We turned the communication trench that made the boundary between the two battalions into a fire-trench facing right; a machine-gun was mounted to put up a barrage in case they ran. On the night of the 27th the Highlanders mistook some of our men, who were out in No Man’s Land getting in the dead, for the enemy. They began firing wildly. The Germans retaliated. Our men caught the infection, but were at once told to cease fire. ‘Cease fire’ went along the trench until it came to the H.L.I., who misheard it as ‘Retire.’ A panic seized them and they came rushing back. Fortunately they came down the trench instead of over the top. They were stopped by a sergeant of the Fifth Scottish Rifles, a territorial battalion now in support to ourselves and the Middlesex. He chased them back into their trench at the point of the bayonet.
On the 3rd of October we were relieved. The relieving troops were a composite battalion consisting of about a hundred men of the Second Royal Warwickshire Regiment and about seventy Royal Welch Fusiliers, all that was left of our own First Battalion. Hanmer Jones and Frank Jones-Bateman had both been wounded. Frank had his thigh broken with a rifle-bullet while stripping the equipment off a wounded man in No Man’s Land; the cartridges in the man’s pouches had been set on fire by a shot and were exploding.7 We went back to Sailly la Bourse for a couple of days, where the colonel rejoined us with his bandaged hand, and then further back to Annezin, a little village near Béthune, where I lodged in a two-roomed cottage with an old woman called Adelphine Heu.