Good-bye to all that

I rejoined the First Battalion in March, finding it in the line again, on the Somme. It was the primrose season. We went in and out of the Fricourt trenches, with billets at Morlancourt, a country village at that time untouched by shell-fire. (Later it was knocked to pieces; the Australians and the Germans captured and recaptured it from each other several times, until there was nothing left except the site.) ‘A’ Company headquarters were in a farmhouse kitchen. We slept in our valises on the red-brick floor. The residents were an old lady and her daughter. The old lady was senile and paralysed; about all she could do was to shake her head and say: ‘Triste, la guerre.’ We called her ‘Triste la Guerre.’ Her daughter used to carry her about in her arms.

The Fricourt trenches were cut in chalk, which was better in wet weather than the La Bassée clay. We were unlucky in having a battalion-frontage where the lines came closer to each other than at any other point for miles. It was only recently that the British line had been extended down to the Somme. The French had been content, as they usually were, unless they definitely intended a battle, to be at peace with the Germans and not dig in too near. But here there was a slight ridge and neither side could afford to let the other hold the crest, so they shared it, after a prolonged dispute. It was used by both the Germans and ourselves as an experimental station for new types of bombs and grenades. The trenches were wide and tumbledown, too shallow in many places, and without sufficient traverses. The French had left relics of their nonchalance—corpses buried too near the surface; and of their love of security—a number of lousy but deep dug-outs. We busied ourselves raising the front-line parapet and building traverses to limit the damage of the trench-mortar shells that were continually falling. Every night not only the companies in the front line but both support companies were hard at work all the time. It was even worse than Cuinchy for rats; they used to run about A Company mess while we were at meals. We used to eat with revolvers beside our plates and punctuate our conversation with sudden volleys at a rat rummaging at somebody’s valise or crawling along the timber support of the roof above our heads. A Company officers were gay. We had all been in our school choirs except Edmund Dadd, who sang like a crow, and we used to chant church anthems and bits of cantatas whenever things were going well. Edmund insisted on joining in.

We were at dinner one day when a Welsh boy came rushing in, hysterical with terror. He shouted out to Richardson: ‘Sirr, sirr, there is a trenss-mortar in my dug-out.’ This in sing-song Welsh made us all shout with laughter. Richardson said: ‘Cheer up, 33 Williams, how did a big thing like a trench-mortar happen to be in your dug-out?’ But 33 Williams could not explain. He went on again and again: ‘Sirr, sirr, there is a trenss-mortar in my dug-out!’ Edmund Dadd went out to investigate. He found that a trench-mortar shell had fallen into the trench, bounced down the dug-out steps, exploded and killed five men. 33 Williams had been lying asleep and had been protected by the body of another man; he was the only one unhit.

Our greatest trial was the canister. It was a two-gallon drum with a cylinder inside containing about two pounds of an explosive called ammonal that looked like salmon paste, smelt like marzipan, and when it went off sounded like the day of judgment. The hollow around the cylinder was filled with scrap metal apparently collected by the French villagers behind the German line—rusty nails, fragments of British and French shells, spent bullets, and the screws, nuts, and bolts that heavy lorries leave behind on the road. We dissected one canister that had not exploded and found in it, among other things, the cog-wheels of a clock and half a set of false teeth. The canister was easy to hear coming and looked harmless in the air, but its shock was as shattering as the very heaviest shell. It would blow in any but the deepest dug-outs; and the false teeth and cog-wheels and so on would go flying all over the place. We could not agree how a thing of that size was fired. The problem was not solved until 1st July, when the battalion attacked from these same trenches and found one of the canister-guns with its crew. It was a wooden cannon buried in the earth and fired with a time-fuse. The crew offered to surrender, but our men refused; they had sworn for months to get the crew of that gun.

One evening I was in the trench with Richardson and David Thomas (near ‘Trafalgar Square,’ should anyone remember that trench-junction) when we met Pritchard and the adjutant. We stopped to talk. Richardson complained what a devil of a place it was for trench-mortars. Pritchard said: ‘That is where I come in.’ He was the battalion trench-mortar officer and had just been given the first two Stokes mortar-guns that we had seen in France. Pritchard said: ‘They’re beauties. I’ve been trying them out and to-morrow I’m going to get some of my own back. I can put four or five shells in the air at the same time.’ The adjutant said: ‘About time, too. We’ve had three hundred casualties in the last month here. It doesn’t seem so many as that because we’ve had no officer casualties. In fact we’ve had about five hundred casualties in the ranks since Loos, and not a single officer.’ Then he suddenly realized that he had said something unlucky. David said: ‘Touch wood.’ Everybody sprang to touch wood, but it was a French trench and unriveted. I pulled a pencil out of my pocket; that was wood enough for me. Richardson said: ‘I’m not superstitious, anyway.’

The next evening I was leading up A Company for a working-party. B and D Companies were in the line and we overtook C, which was also going up to work. David was bringing up the rear of C. He was looking strange, worried about something. I had never seen him anything but cheerful all the time I had known him. I asked what was the matter. He said: ‘Oh, I’m fed up and I’ve got a cold.’ C Company went along to the right of the battalion frontage and we went along to the left. It was a weird kind of night, with a bright moon. A German occupied sap was only forty or fifty yards away. We were left standing on the parapet piling up the sandbags, with the moon behind us, but the German sentries ignored us—probably because they had work on hand themselves. It often happened when both sides were busy putting up proper defences that they turned a blind eye to each other’s work. Sometimes, it was said, the rival wiring-parties ‘as good as borrowed each other’s mallets’ for hammering in the pickets. The Germans were much more ready to live and let live than we were. (The only time, so far as I know, besides Christmas 1914, that both sides showed themselves in daylight without firing at each other was once at Ypres when the trenches got so flooded that there was nothing for it but for both sides to crawl out on top to avoid drowning.) There was a continual exchange of grenades and trench-mortars on our side; the canister was going over and the men found it difficult to get out of its way in the dark. But for the first time we were giving the enemy as good as they gave us. Pritchard had been using his Stokes’ mortar all day and had sent over two or three hundred rounds; twice they had located his emplacement and he had had to shift hurriedly.

‘A’ Company worked from seven in the evening until midnight. We must have put thousands of sandbags into position, and fifty yards of front trench were beginning to look presentable. About half-past ten there was rifle-fire on the right and the sentries passed down the news ‘officer hit.’ Richardson at once went along to see who it was. He came back to say: ‘It’s young Thomas. He got a bullet through the neck, but I think he’s all right; it can’t have hit his spine or an artery because he’s walking down to the dressing-station.’ I was pleased at this news. I thought that David would be out of it long enough perhaps to escape the coming offensive and perhaps even the rest of the war. At twelve o’clock we had finished for the night. Richardson said to me: ‘Von Ranke’ (only he pronounced it Von Runicke—it was my regimental nickname), ‘take the company down for their rum and tea, will you? They’ve certainly deserved it to-night. I’ll be along in a few minutes. I’m going out with Corporal Chamberlen to see what work the wiring-party’s been doing all this time.’ So I took the men back. When we were well started I heard a couple of shells come over somewhere behind us. I noticed them because they were the only shells fired that night; five-nines they seemed by the noise. We were nearly back at Maple Redoubt, which was the name of the support line on the reverse side of the hill, when we heard the cry ‘Stretcher-bearers!’ and after a while a man came running to say: ‘Captain Graves is hit.’ There was a general laugh and we went on; but a stretcher-party went up anyhow to see what was wrong. It was Richardson; the shells had caught him and the corporal among the wire. The corporal had his leg blown off, and died of wounds a day or two later. Richardson had been blown into a shell-hole full of water and had lain there stunned for some minutes before the sentries heard the corporal’s cries and realized what had happened. He was brought down semi-conscious; he recognized us, told us he wouldn’t be long away from the company, and gave us instructions about it. The doctor said that he had no wound in any vital spot, though the skin of his left side was riddled, as we had seen, with the chalky soil blown up against him. We felt a relief in his case, as in David’s, that he would be out of it for a while.

Then news came that David had died. The regimental doctor, a throat specialist in civil life, had told him at the dressing-station: ‘You’ll be all right, only don’t raise your head for a bit.’ David had then, it was said, taken a letter from his pocket, given it to an orderly, and said: ‘Post that.’ It was a letter written to a girl in Glamorgan, to be posted in case he got killed. Then the doctor saw that he was choking; he tried trachotomy, but it was too late. Edmund and I were talking together in the company headquarters at about one o’clock when the adjutant came in. He looked ghastly. He told us that Richardson had died at the dressing-station. His heart had been weakened by rowing (he had been in the Eight at Radley) and the explosion and the cold water had been too much for it. The adjutant said to me nervously: ‘You know, somehow I feel, I—I feel responsible in a way for this; what I said yesterday at ‘Trafalgar Square.’ Of course, really, I don’t believe in superstition, but....’ Just at that moment there was a noise of whizz-bang shells about twenty yards off; a cry of alarm, followed by: ‘Stretcher-bearers!’ The adjutant turned quite white and we knew without being told what it meant. We hurried out. Pritchard, having fought his duel all night, and finally silenced the enemy, was coming off duty. A whizz-bang had caught him at the point where the communication trench reached Maple Redoubt; it was a direct hit. The casualties of that night were three officers and one corporal.

It seemed ridiculous when we returned without Richardson to A Company billets to find ‘Triste La Guerre’ still alive and to hear her once more quaver out ‘Triste, la guerre’ when her daughter explained that the jeune capitaine had been killed. The old woman had taken a fancy to the jeune capitaine; we used to chaff him about it. I felt David’s death worse than any other death since I had been in France. It did not anger me as it did Siegfried. He was acting transport-officer and every night now, when he came up with the rations, he went out on patrol looking for Germans. It just made me feel empty and lost.

One of the anthems that we used to sing was: ‘He that shall endure to the end, shall be saved.’ The words repeated themselves in my head like a charm whenever things were bad. ‘Though thousands languish and fall beside thee, And tens of thousands around thee perish, Yet still it shall not come nigh thee.’ And there was another bit: ‘To an inheritance incorruptible.... Through faith unto salvation, Ready to be revealed at the last trump.’ For ‘trump’ we always used to sing ‘crump.’ ‘The last crump’ was the end of the war and would we ever hear it burst safely behind us? I wondered whether I could endure to the end with faith unto salvation. I knew that my breaking point was near now, unless something happened to stave it off.... It was not that I was frightened. Certainly I feared death; but I had never yet lost my head through fright, and I knew that I never would. Nor would the breakdown come as insanity; I did not have it in me. It would be a general nervous collapse, with tears and twitchings and dirtied trousers. I had seen cases like that.

The battalion was issued with a new gas-helmet, popularly known as ‘the goggle-eyed b⁠—⁠—⁠r with the tit.’ It differed from the previous models. One breathed in through the nose from inside the helmet and breathed out through a special valve held in the mouth. I found that I could not manage this. Boxing with an already broken nose had recently displaced the septum, so that I was forced to breathe through my mouth. In a gas-attack I would be unable to use the helmet and it was the only type claimed to be proof against the new German gas. The battalion doctor advised me to have an operation done as soon as I could.

These months with the First Battalion have already been twice recorded in literary history; though in both cases in a disguise of names and characters. The two books are Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man, and Nothing of Importance, by Bill Adams, the battalion sniping and intelligence officer. Adam’s book did not sell, but was as good a book as 1917 censorship allowed; it should be re-printed. Adams was killed; in fact, three out of five of the officers of the First Battalion at that time were killed in the Somme fighting. Scatter’s dream of open warfare was not realized. He himself was very seriously wounded. Of A Company choir there is one survivor besides myself—C. D. Morgan, who had his thigh smashed, and was still in hospital sometime after the war ended.