Chapter III: Part 3

Fricourt was not an inviting place, but other men had been there at a worse time. And the interest of it called to one to get into this bit of ruined ground with its broken brickwork which for more than a year we have stared at across barbed wire and through holes in the ground as an evil place beyond our knowledge, as a place from which death came to our men from trench-mortars and machine-guns, separated from us by lines of trenches full of snipers who waited and watched for any of our heads to appear, even for a second, above the parapet, and by No Man’s Land into which some of our brave boys went out at night at great peril, hiding in shell-holes, and avoiding the mine-fields of the Bois Français and other ground honeycombed below by German galleries which, night after night—do you remember the line in the official communiqué?—flung up the soil and formed another crater and buried some more of our men. “There was mining activity near Fricourt.” Well, there will be no more of it there.

I went across the fields—Lord God! that would have meant death a week or two ago, before the enemy was busy with other things close by—and came down to our old system of trenches. Here were the little wooden bridges across which our men made their advance, and litters of sandbags no more to be used for the parapets here, and the abandoned properties of men who had left these old familiar places—the old rat-holes, the bays in the trenches where they stood on guard at night, the dug-outs where they had pinned up photographs—upon the morning of the great adventure, which was yesterday.

Here was a redoubt from which I had first looked across to the Crucifix and the communication-trench up which the men used to come at night. Now all abandoned, for the men had gone forward.

The flowers were growing richly in No Man’s Land, red and yellow and blue, except where the earth was white and barren above the mine-fields of the famous Tambour, and brown and barren in the Bois Français, where never a tree now grows.

We walked across No Man’s Land in the full sunlight of this July day, and though shells were rushing overhead, those from our batteries seemed low enough to cut off the heads of the flowers, and mine. They were mostly our shells.

Lightly wounded men, just hit up there beyond the wood, walked along unaided, or helped by a comrade. One of them, a boy of 18 or so, with blue eyes under his steel helmet, stopped me and showed me a bloody bandage round his hand, and said with an excited laugh:

“They got me all right. I was serving my Lewis when a bullet caught me smack. Now I’m off. And I’ve had 18 months of it.”

He went away grinning at his luck, because the bullet might have chosen another place.

Some German prisoners followed him. Two of them were carrying a stretcher on which an English soldier lay with his eyes shut. A wounded German behind turned and smiled at me—a strong, meaningful smile. He was glad to be wounded and out of it.

Other Germans came down under guard, and little groups of English soldiers and Red Cross men. I struck across the field again to the old German lines of trenches, and saw the full and frightful horror of war. The German trenches were smashed at some places, by our artillery fire, into shapelessness. Green sandbags were flung about, timbers from the trench sides had been broken and tossed about like matchsticks.

I stumbled from one shell-crater to another, over bits of indescribable things, and the litter of men’s tunics and pouches and haversacks, and dug-outs. Rifles lay about, and the ground was strewn with hand-grenades, and here and there was a great unexploded shell which had nosed into the soil. There were many German dead lying there in Fricourt, and some of our own poor men. The Germans were lying thick in one part of the trenches.

They had been tall, fine men in their life. One of them lying with many wounds upon him was quite a giant. Another poor man lay on his back with his face turned up to the blue sky and his hands raised up above his body as though in prayer....

But I turned my head away from these sights, as most people hide these things from their imagination, too cowardly to face the reality of war.

I followed an officer down into a German dug-out until he halted half-way down its steps and spoke a word of surprise.

“There’s a candle still burning!”

It gave one an uncanny feeling to see that lighted candle in the deep subterranean room, where yesterday German officers were living, unless dead before yesterday.

It could not have been burning all that time. For a moment we thought an enemy might still be hiding there, and it was not improbable, as two of them had been found in Fricourt, only a few hours before. But in all likelihood it had been lit by an English soldier after the capture of the place.

The dug-out was littered with German books and papers. I picked up one of them, and saw that it was “Advice on Sport.” Here was sad sport for Germans. There was a tragic spirit in that little room, and we went out quickly. I peered into other German dug-outs, and saw how splendidly built they were, so deep and so strongly timbered that not even our bombardment had utterly destroyed them. They are great workers, these Germans, and wonderful soldiers.

Everywhere there lay about great numbers of steel helmets, some of them with vizors, and well designed, so that they come down to the nape of the neck and protect all the head. Some of our soldiers were bringing them back as souvenirs. One man had ten dangling about him, like the tin pots on a travelling tinker.

In the wood beyond the Crucifix our machine-guns were firing fiercely, and the noise was like that of a great flame, beyond the village. Fricourt itself is just a heap of frightful ruin, with the remains of houses which the enemy had used as machine-gun emplacements. Every yard of it was littered with the débris of war’s aftermath. Before our final attack yesterday many of the German troops filtered out in retreat, leaving some of their wounded behind, and one poor puppy—a fox terrier—which is now the trophy of one of our battalions.

But a number of men—about 150, I should say—could not get away owing to the intensity of our first bombardment, and when our men stormed the place yesterday afternoon they came up out of their dug-outs with their hands up for mercy. I saw them all to-day, and spoke with some of them.

They belonged to the 109th, 110th and 111th regiments of the 14th Reserve Corps, and were mostly from Baden. It would be absurd to talk of these fellows as being undersized or underfed men. They were tall, strong, stout men, in the prime of life. Only a few were wounded, and lay about in a dazed way. The others answered me cheerfully, and expressed their joy at having escaped from our gun-fire, which they described as “schrecklich”—terrible. They had had no food or drink since yesterday morning until their English guards gave it to them.

I spoke also with a little group of officers. They were young men of an aristocratic type, and spoke very frankly and politely. They, too, acknowledged the new power of our artillery and the courage of our men, which was not new to them. It was here that I had a talk with the German medical officer whom I had seen walking down between two guards close to Fricourt. After describing his own experiences during the bombardment this morning he laughed in a sad way.

“This war!” he said. “We go on killing each other to no purpose. Europe is being bled to death, and will be impoverished for long years. It is a war against religion, and against civilisation, and I see no end to it. Germany is strong and England is strong and France is strong. It is impossible for one side to crush the other, so when is the end to come?” Because of his services to our own men he was given special privileges and an English soldier had brought down all his personal belongings. A little apart from all his fellow officers stood a German lieutenant-colonel who was charged with having killed two of our officers by bombing them after his surrender. A tall, gloomy, truculent man of the worst Prussian type, he stood awaiting an inquiry, and I could only hope that he was not guilty of such a crime.

From personal observation I know nothing of what has happened elsewhere in the line to-day, but I have heard a story of an attack on the Gommecourt salient which shows that this action was one of the most tragic and heroic things in British history. The enemy had concentrated a great mass of guns here in the belief that our main attack was to be directed against this part of the front. The existence of this belief has been proved by German orders which have come into our hands.

As soon as our men left their trenches after the bombardment yesterday the enemy barraged our front and support trenches with a most infernal fire. Our men advanced through this barrage absolutely as though on parade, and in spite of heavy losses made their way over 500 yards of No Man’s Land to the enemy’s front line.

The German soldiers also behaved with great courage, and carried their machine-guns right through our barrage until they faced our men in the open and swept them with fire so that large numbers fell.

The attack did not succeed in this part of the line. But it drew on the enemy’s reserves, and great honour is due to the valour of those men of ours, who fought as heroes in one of the most glorious acts of self-sacrifice ever made by British troops.

IV

THE DEATH-SONG OF THE GERMANS

Morning bright; morning bright—
Light that leads me to the grave—
Soon shall dawn with summons brazen
Call me to my death to hasten—
I and many a comrade brave.

“Morgenroth” (Dr. Blackie’s translation).

“Morgenroth!” the haunting death-song of the forlorn hopes of
the German armies, is the song which was sung so often in the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and is being sung again to-day.

The words were written by Wilhelm Hauff, a patriotic German writer of
the first half of the nineteenth century.

1

JULY 4

No sensational progress has been made by us since I wrote my last despatch, yesterday, but our guns are in a good position to follow up our advance, and the battle is developing, I believe, according to the original plan which anticipated slow and steady fighting from one German position to another. That is being done, and another point was gained to-day by the capture of Bernafay Wood to the north-east of Montauban, from which I have just come back after seeing the shelling of this wood, from close range.

It is behind the lines on the outskirts of the battlefields that one sees most of the activity of war, as I saw it to-day again when I went up to this captured ground of Montauban. Up there where fighting was in progress not many men were visible. Until the advance, after the work of our guns, and the short, sharp rush from open ground under the enemy’s shrapnel, our men are hidden and the only movement to be seen is that of the shells bursting and tossing up the earth.

But on the way up, now that the war is no longer stationary, there is a great turmoil of men and mules and guns and wagons and again and again to-day I wished that I could put on to paper sketches rather than words to describe these scenes. For here all along the way were historic pictures of the campaign full of life and colour.

Great camps had been assembled in the dips and hollows of the hills with painted tents between the lines and great masses of horses and wagons and gun-limbers crowded together, with thousands of men busy as ants. Transport columns came down or went up the hilly roads driven by tired men who drooped in their seats or saddles after three days of battle, in which they have had but little sleep. One of them was asleep to-day. He had fallen backwards in his wagon still holding the reins, and while he slept his horses jogged on steadily following the leaders of the column. On the roadside and among the wild flowers of uncultivated fields batches of infantry, who had been marching all night, had flung themselves down and slept also while they had a half-hour’s chance, with their arms outstretched, with their rifles and packs for their pillows.

Other men were moving up towards the fighting lines, marching with a steady tramp along the chalky roads, which plastered them with white dust from steel helmet downwards, and put a white mask upon their faces, except where the sweat came down in gullies. Artillerymen were leading up reserve horses, who put their ears back for a moment, as though to switch off flies when heavy guns blared forth close to them and shells of at least 8in. calibre went howling overhead to the enemy’s lines.

At wayside corners were field dressing stations flying the Red Cross flag, and surrounded by little parks of ambulances, where stretcher men were busy. And every now and then, at a cross-road or a by-path, a wooden notice-board directed the way in red letters and the words “Walking wounded.”

This was the Via Dolorosa of men who could hobble away from the battlefield up there and get back on their legs to save transport more badly needed by stricken comrades.

Closer to the lines there was a scene which would make one weep if one had the weakness of tears after two years of war. Our dead were being buried in a newly-made cemetery, and some of their comrades were standing by the open graves and sorting out the crosses—the little wooden crosses which grow in such a harvest across these fields of France.

They were white above the brown earth, and put into neat rows, and labelled with strips of tin bearing the names of those who now have peace.

French troops were mingled among our own men. A working party of them came along shouldering picks and shovels. They were Territorials, past the fighting age, but tall, sturdy, hardened men, with a likeness to their young sons who, with less weight, but with the same hard bronzed look, are fighting the new battles of the war.

It was the sound of French guns away to the south which was making most commotion in the air to-day. Big fighting was going on there, as though the French were making a further advance, and the rafale of their field guns was incessant, and like the roll of many drums.

2

As I went over the battlefield of Montauban the enemy’s shells and our own were falling over Bernafay Wood, where each side held part of the ground. A little to my left Mametz was being pounded heavily by the German gunners, and they were flinging shrapnel and “crumps” into the ragged fringe of trees, just in front of me, which marks the place where the village of Montauban once stood. They were also barraging a line of trench just below the trees, and keeping a steady flow of five-point-nines into one end of the wood to the right of Montauban, for which our men are now fighting.

Other shells came with an irregular choice of place over the battlefield, and there were moments when those clouds of black shrapnel overhead suggested an immediate dive into the nearest dug-out.

I passed across our old line of trenches from which on Saturday morning our men went out cheering to that great attack which carried them to the furthest point gained that day, in spite of heavy losses. The trenches now were filled with litter collected from the battlefield—stacks of rifles and kit, piles of hand-grenades, no longer needed by those who owned them.

This old system of trenches, in which French troops lived for many months of war before they handed them over to our men, was like a ruined and deserted town left hurriedly because of plague, and in great disorder. Letters were lying about, and bully beef tins, and cartridge clips. Our men had gone forward and these old trenches are abandoned.

It is beyond the power of words to give a picture of the German trenches over this battlefield of Montauban, where we now hold the line through the wood beyond. Before Saturday last it was a wide and far-reaching network of trenches, with many communication ways and strong traverses, and redoubts—so that one would shiver at their strength to see them marked on a map. No mass of infantry, however great, would have dared to assault such a position with bombs and rifles.

It was a great underground fortress, which any body of men could have held against any others for all time apart from the destructive power of heavy artillery. But now!... Why now it was the most frightful convulsion of earth that the eyes of man could see.

The bombardment by our guns had tossed all these earthworks into vast rubbish-heaps. We had made this ground one vast series of shell craters, so deep and so broad that it was like a field of extinct volcanoes.

The ground rose and fell in enormous waves of brown earth, so that standing above one crater I saw before me these solid billows with 30 feet slopes stretching away like a sea frozen after a great storm. We had hurled thousands of shells from our heaviest howitzers and long-range guns into this stretch of field.

3

I saw here and touched here the awful result of that great gun-fire which I had watched from the centre of our batteries on the morning of July 1. That bombardment had annihilated the German position. Even many of the dug-outs, going 30 feet deep below the earth and strongly timbered and cemented, had been choked with masses of earth so that many dead bodies lay buried there. But some had been left in spite of the upheaval of earth around them, and into some of these I crept down, impelled by the strong grim spell of those little dark rooms below where German soldiers lived only a few days ago.

They seemed haunted by the spirits of the men who had made their homes here and had carried into these holes the pride of their souls, and any poetry they had in their hearts, and their hopes and terrors, and memories of love and life in the good world of peace. I could not resist going down to such places, though to do so gave me gooseflesh.

I had to go warily, for on the stairways were unexploded bombs of the “hair-brush” style. A stumble or a kick might send one to eternity by high explosive force, and it was difficult not to stumble, for the steps were broken or falling into a landslide.

Down inside the little square rooms were filled with the relics of German officers and men. The deal tables were strewn with papers, on the wooden bedsteads lay blue-grey overcoats. Wine bottles, photograph albums, furry haversacks, boots, belts, kit of every kind had all been tumbled together by British soldiers who had come here after the first rush to the enemy’s trenches and searched for men in hiding.

There were men in hiding now, though harmless. In one of the dug-outs where I groped my way down it was pitch dark. I stumbled against something, and fumbled for my matches. When I struck a light I saw in a corner of the room a German.

He lay curled up, with his head on his arm, as though asleep. I did not stay to look at his face, but went up quickly. And yet I went down others and lingered in one where no corpse lay because of the tragic spirit that dwelt there and put its spell on me. I picked up some letters.

They were all written to “dear brother Wilhelm,” from sisters and brothers, sending him their loving greetings, praying that his health was good, promising to send him gifts of food, and yearning for his homecoming. “Since your last letter and card,” said one of them, “we have heard nothing more from you.”

“Every time the postman comes we hope for a little note from you.... Dear Wilhelm, in order to be patient with your fate you must thank God because you have found fortune in misfortune.”

Poor, pitiful letters! I was ashamed to read them because it seemed like prying into another man’s secrets, though he was dead.

There was a little book I picked up. It is a book of soldiers’ songs, full of old German sentiment, about “the little mother” and the old house at home and the pretty girl who kissed her soldier boy before he went off to the war. And here is the sad old “Morgenlied,” which has been sung along many roads of France.

“Red morning sun! Red morning sun! Do you light me to an early death? Soon will the trumpets sound, and I must leave this life, and many a comrade with me.”

“I scarcely thought my joy would end like this. Yesterday I rode a proud steed; to-day I am shot through the chest; to-morrow I shall be in the cold grave, O red morning sun!”

On the front page of this book, which I found to-day at Montauban, there is an Army Order from Prince von Rupprecht of Bavaria to the soldiers of the Sixth Army.

“We have the fortune,” it says, “to have the English on our front, the troops of those people whose envy for years has made them work to surround us with a ring of enemies in order to crush us. It is to them that we owe this bloody and most horrible war.... Here is the antagonist who stands most in the way of the restoration of peace. Forwards!”

It seemed to me that the preface by Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria spoilt the sentiment in the German folksongs, which were full of love rather than of hate.

4

I stood again above ground, in the shell craters. Other shells were coming over my head with their indescribable whooping, and the black shrapnel was still bursting about the fields, and the Germans were dropping five-point-nines along a line a hundred yards away.

“Be careful about those dug-outs,” said an officer. “Some of them have charged mines inside, and there may be Germans still hiding in them.”

Two Germans were found hiding there to-day. Some of our men found themselves being sniped, and after a search found that the shots were coming from a certain section of trench in which there were communicating dug-outs.

After cunning trappers’ work they isolated one dug-out in which the snipers were concealed.

“Come out of that,” shouted our men. “Surrender like good boys.”

But the only answer they had was a shot.

The dug-out was bombed, but the men went through an underground passage into another one. Then a charge of ammonal was put down and the dug-out blown to bits.

5

This afternoon, while I was still on the battlefield of Montauban, a great thunderstorm broke. It was sudden and violent, and rain fell in sheets. The sky became black with a greenish streak in it when the lightning forked over the high wooded ridges towards La Boiselle and above Fricourt Wood.

“Heaven’s artillery!” said an officer, and his words were not flippant. There was something awe-inspiring in the darkness that closed in upon these battlefields and the great rolls of thunder that mingled with the noise of the guns. Artillery observation was impossible, but the guns still fired, and their flashes were as vivid as the lightning, revealing through the murk the dark figures of marching men, and the black woods slashed with shell-fire just above Montauban. In a little while the low-lying ground was flooded, so that the guns in the valleys were in water, and the horse transport splashed through ponds, scattering fountains above their axles, and rivers ran down the broken trenches of the old German line.

I stood in the storm watching this scene of war, and the gloom and terror of it closed about me.

V

THE ATTACK ON THE LEFT

1

JULY 5

Last night and this morning the enemy made attempts to drive our men out of their positions at Thiépval, but were repulsed with heavy losses. Their bombers advanced in strong numbers upon the Leipzig trench, south of the village of Thiépval, and at the same time north of the cemetery to St. Pierre Divion, but in neither case did they have any success.

At other parts of the line, between La Boiselle and Montauban, there were bombardments by the enemy’s batteries and by our own; and by hard fighting we have captured Peak trench and the important system of trenches known as the Quadrangle, north-east of La Boiselle and on the way to Contalmaison.

Standing to-day on the battlefield north of Ovillers-la-Boiselle, I was able to look over a wide area of the zone of fire, and to see our new positions. Straight in front of me was Thiépval Wood, marked by a ragged fringe of broken trees, through which appeared the ruins of the village.

Heavy shells were falling there and our shrapnel was bursting thickly upon the high ground held by the enemy. To the left of me was Beaumont-Hamel, opposite Auchonvillers, and the village of Authuille.

It is historic ground. A hundred years hence men of our blood will come here with reverence as to sacred soil. For over this stretch of country, a few miles wide, has been fought one of the great battles of history, and here many thousands of our men advanced upon the enemy with a spirit of marvellous self-sacrifice, beyond the ordinary courage of men.

They faced hellish fires, but without faltering. There was not one man who turned and fled at a time when the bravest of them might have quailed. They were all heroes worthy of the highest honour which may be given for valour in the field. Something supernatural seemed to animate these battalions of English boys and these battalions of Irish and Scots, so that they went forward into furnace fires at Beaumont Hamel and Gommecourt as though to fair fields, and when many of them stood in the very presence of death it was to the cry of “No surrender!” Then they went forward again to meet their fate.

2

Their losses were heavy. It is tragic as well as wonderful, this story of our advance upon the German lines, when we captured their trenches by an assault that could not be resisted at first even by overwhelming gun-fire. I have spoken to Brigadiers who mourn many of their dear men. The agony in their eyes made it difficult to face them. The number of casualties was high, throughout the whole length of front on the left of our attack, and inevitable because the valour of the men counted no cost in their assault against positions terribly strong, as they knew, but not stronger than their resolve to carry them.

The enemy’s losses were frightful, too, and his courage great. It was because very brave men were on both sides that the battlefield in this region was strewn with stricken men.

They were men of the North Country who were on the left of our attack between Ovillers-la-Boiselle and a point south of Hebuterne. As soon as our bombardment lifted at 7.30 on the morning of July 1 the brigade left its trenches and advanced line by line in perfect order as though on parade.

The ground in front of them was wrecked by our shell-fire. Several times during the bombardment the trenches had heaved and changed their form, so that all the contours of the earth were altered. But there were many men still left alive below ground in the German dug-outs, those deep dug-outs of theirs that go below the reach of even the heaviest shells, and with them were many machine-guns and deadly weapons.

Behind them also was a great concentration of artillery, for it is evident that the enemy had expected attack here, perhaps our main attack, and had massed his heaviest guns at this point. His barrage was immense in its effect of fire upon our trenches and the ground between ours and his. To reach his line our men had to pass through a wall of bursting shells. Our own barrage continued intensely, but at the moment of the infantry attack the German soldiers stood up on their parapets in the very face of this bombardment and fired upon our advancing men with automatic rifles.

Their machine-gunners also showed an extreme courage, and with amazing audacity forced their way over the broken parapets into No Man’s Land and swept our ranks with a scythe of bullets. Numbers of our men dropped, but others went on, charging the machine-guns with fixed bayonets, hurling bombs at the men on the parapets, and forcing their way into and across the German trenches. Wave after wave followed, and those who did not fall went on, into the enemy’s first line, into the enemy’s second line, then on again to his third line, and by a kind of miracle even to his fourth line. There were men who went as far as Serre. They never came back.

The enemy’s guns kept up a continuous bombardment from 7.30 till mid-day, like an incessant roll of drums, and the ground over which our men continued to advance was cratered like a system of trous-de-loups. An orderly who tried to come back with a message from the men in front was buried three times on his way, but struggled out and delivered his report. Human courage could not reach greater heights than these men showed.

3

On the right of these North Countrymen were other bodies of troops from the West of England, the Midlands, and Eastern Counties, with battalions of Irish and Scottish troops. They, too, had to face a great ordeal. When they went towards the German trenches, not at a rush, but at parade step, under a storm of shells, the enemy came up out of their dug-outs, and with machine-guns and rifles, and fought very stubbornly, even when the Midland men and other English troops reached them with bombs and bayonets. There was a fierce corps-à-corps in the first-line trench until most of the enemy were killed.

Then our men went on to the second German line under still fiercer fire. By this time they were in an inferno of shell fire and smoke as nothing was seen of them by artillery observers until at 8.45 some rockets went up very far into the German lines showing that some of the Territorials had got as far as their last objective. Some of the infantry (they were two of the Essex Regiments and the King’s Own of the 4th Division) went as far as Pendant Copse south-east of Serre. Messages came through from them. Urgent messages calling for help. “For God’s sake send us bombs.”

But the enemy’s gun-fire was so violent and so deep in its barrage that nothing could pass through it, and it was impossible to send up relief to men who had gone too far in their keen desire to break the German lines.

A little further south were some Irish, Welsh, and Scottish troops. When they left their trenches our bombardment was still at its full weight, but suddenly the noise of it was obliterated entirely, so that not a gun was heard, by a new and more terrible sound.

It was the sound as though great furnace fires were weeping flames across No Man’s Land with a steady blast, and it came from German machine-guns in the stronghold of Beaumont Hamel and from more German machine-guns in concrete emplacements which had escaped our gun-fire upon the enemy’s trenches.

Many of our men fell. Some of the Irish troops (the Ulster men) lost severely. But other ranks marched on, not quickly, but at a quiet leisurely pace, never faltering as gaps were made in their ranks.

Some of them did not even trouble to wear their steel casques, but carried them, as though for future use if need be. And they went across the German trenches and right ahead into the very heart of a storm of fire, too quickly, in spite of their calm way of going, because they did not clear the German dug-outs as they passed, and men came out and bombed them from the rear. South of Beaumont Hamel were some other battalions, whose advance was upon Thiépval Wood, and they fought with extraordinary resolution and hardihood.

It was they who shouted “No surrender!” as their battlecry, and these tough, hard gallant men forced their way forward over ground raked by every kind of shot and shell. The enemy’s trenches could not resist their attack, and they stormed their way through, killing many of the enemy who resisted them. In Thiépval Wood, where the trees were slashed by shrapnel, they collected their strength, formed into line, and stood the shock of several German counter-attacks. Then they charged and flung down the enemy’s ranks, taking more than 200 prisoners.

Another counter-attack was made upon the soldiers who had forced their way to the outskirts of Thiépval village, from which there came an incessant chatter of machine-gun fire. Some of them were cut off from all support, but they fought forward, and the shout of “No surrender!” came from them again, though they were sure of death.

This attack by our troops on the left of the theatre of attack is one of the greatest revelations of human courage ever seen in history. The tragedy of it—for the loss of many brave men makes it tragic—is brightened by the shining valour of all these splendid soldiers, to whom death, in those great hours, had no kind of terror.

The lightly wounded men who came back, and there were large numbers of lightly wounded men, were proud of their adventure and hopeful of victory. They had no panic in their eyes or hearts. It was a weary walk for many of them down to the Red House, where their wounds were staunched. They had two miles to go, and it was a long two miles to men weak from the loss of blood, dizzy, tired to the point of death. Some of them staggered and fell at the very gate of the dressing station, but even then they spoke brave words and said, “We’ve got ’em on the run!”

The enemy behaved well, I am told, to our wounded men at some parts of the line, and helped them over the parapets. This makes us loth to tell other stories, not so good. Let us not think, just now, of the ugliness of battle, but rather of the beauty of these men of ours, who were forgetful of self and faced the cruellest fire with a high and noble courage.

VI

THE LONDON MEN AT GOMMECOURT

1

JULY 19

As long ago as Loos, which seems an enormous time ago, it was proved that London produces men of great fighting qualities, not weakened by City life, and, in spite of more sensitive nerves than country-bred men, able to stand the strain of battle just as well, with a quick intelligence in a tight corner, and with pride and imagination that do not let them surrender self-respect.

“London men fight on their nerves,” said one of our Generals the other day, “but they make great soldiers. More stolid men often give way to shell shock and strain more easily than the Londoner, with all his sensibility.”

In our great attack of July 1 some of the London battalions again showed a very fine courage and a most self-sacrificing devotion to duty in hours of supreme ordeal.

They broke the German line at Gommecourt and when ill-luck beset them on either side, so that they found themselves in utterly untenable positions, with heavy losses, they held on stubbornly against the enemy’s counter-attacks, and suffered all that war can make men suffer—there is hardly a limit to that, God knows—with Stoic endurance.

These men belonged to old Volunteer regiments, famous in times of peace, when once a year young City clerks and professional men took a fortnight’s leave at Easter for manœuvres on Salisbury Plain, and came back rather stiff and rather bronzed, with stories of sham fights and jolly bivouacs at night, and smoking concerts with good fellows who lead a chorus. It was a great adventure—in times of peace!

But even when the Volunteers changed their form into the Territorials and war tightened up in discipline, and attended more drills and had a harder time in camp, no man guessed that before a year or two had passed the Queen’s Westminsters would be fighting through hell-fire in France, or that “the old Vics”—the Queen Victoria Rifles—would be smashing through German barbed wire under machine-gun fire, or that the Rangers and the London Rifle Brigade and the London Scottish would be crossing ground, strewn with dead and wounded, in a storm of high explosives.

“Punch” made funny pictures about this amateur soldiering. The “Terriers” were not thought to count for much by military critics who had seen service in South Africa....

Well, in this war the Territorial infantry and the Territorial gunners have counted for a great deal, and during these last few days they have proved themselves, once again, great soldiers—great in attack and great in resistance.

2

When the four leading battalions left their trenches near Gommecourt at 7.30 after the great bombardment of the German position they had a long way to go before they reached the enemy’s front lines.

No Man’s Land was a broad stretch of ground, 400 yards across in some parts, and not less than 200 yards at the narrowest point.

It was a long, long journey in the open, for 50 yards, or 20, are long enough to become a great graveyard if the enemy’s machine-guns get to work.

But they advanced behind dense smoke-clouds, which rolled steadily towards the German trenches and kept down the machine-gunners in their dug-outs. Unlike the experience of most of our men in other parts of the line, they escaped lightly from machine-gun fire, and their chief risk was from the barrage of shell-fire which the enemy flung across No Man’s Land with some intensity.

But the Londoners started forward to this line of high explosives and went on and through at a quick pace, in open order. On the left was the London Rifle Brigade, in the centre came the Rangers and “Vics.,” on the right the London Scottish, and, behind, the Queen’s Westminsters and Kensingtons, who were to advance through the others.

Men fell across the open ground, caught by flying bits of shell or buried by the great bursts of high explosives which opened up the earth. But the others did not look back, afraid to weaken themselves by the sight of their stricken comrades, and at a great pace, half walking and half running, reached the German line. It was no longer a system of trenches.

It was a sea of earth with solid waves. Our heavy guns had annihilated parapet and parados, smashed the timbers into matchwood, strewn sandbags into rubbish heaps, and made a great wreckage. But German industry below ground was proof against all this shell-fire, and many of the dug-outs still stood.

They were full of Germans, for the line was strongly held, and many of these men came up with their machine-guns and bombs to resist the attack. But the Londoners sprang upon them, swept over them, and captured the front network of trenches with amazing speed.

It was not a steady-going business, slow and deliberate. The quick mind of the London man spurred him to quick action.

He did not linger to collect souvenirs, or to chat with English-speaking Germans. “London leads!” was the shout of Victorias and Westminsters.

The London Scottish were racing forward on the right with their brown kilts swinging across the broken ground. But the officers kept their heads and as much order as possible at such a time.

They held back enough men to clear the dug-outs and collect prisoners—the best kind of souvenirs.

Two hundred of them were captured in the dug-outs and brought up and sent back over the place that had been No Man’s Land and now, for a time, was ours.

At least 200 came back, but there were many more who never got back, though they started on the journey under armed guard.

3

The enemy’s artillery was increasing the density of the barrage upon our old front-line trenches and the ground in front of it.

He made a wall of high explosives through which no living thing could pass. The escorts and their prisoners tried to pass—and failed.

At the time the London men fighting forward did not think of that barrage behind them. They were eager to get on, to be quick over the first part of their business before taking breath for the next.

And they got on with astounding speed. In less than the time it has taken me to write this narrative No Man’s Land had been crossed, the trenches had been taken, the prisoners collected and sent back on their way, and German strongholds and redoubts behind the first system of trench work had been seized by London regiments.

It would have taken them longer to walk from Charing-cross to St. Paul’s-churchyard with no Germans in the way. It was the quickest bit of work that has been done by any freemen of the city.

The Riflemen had swarmed into a strong point on the left, knocking out the machine-guns, and on the right the London Scots were holding a strong redoubt in a very ugly corner of ground. Everything had been won that London had been asked to win.

Before some hours had passed these London soldiers knew that they were in a death-trap and cut off from escape.

Owing to the great strength of the enemy to the right and left of the position where they had concentrated masses of guns, and where the ground was more difficult to carry, the troops on either side of the Londoners, in spite of heroic courage and complete self-sacrifice, had advanced so far.

The London men had therefore thrust forward a salient into the German lines, and were enclosed by the enemy.

Behind them, on the way to their own lines, the enemy’s barrage was steadily becoming more violent. Having stopped the other attacks to the north and south, he was now able to concentrate the fire of his guns upon the ground in the London area, and by the early afternoon he had smashed our trenches and communication trenches, while still flinging out a line of high explosives to prevent supports coming up to the men who were in the captured salient.

They were cut off, and had no other means of rescue but their own courage.

Desperate efforts were made by their comrades behind to send up supplies of ammunition and other means of defence. The carrying parties attempted again and again to cross No Man’s Land, but suffered heavy casualties.

One party of 60 men, with supplies of hand grenades, set out on this journey, but only three came back. Single men went on with a few grenades, determined to carry some kind of support to the men in front, but fell dead or wounded before they reached their goal.

On the right the London Scottish were holding on to their redoubt, building barricades and beating off the German bombers. But as the hours passed ammunition became scarce. Our supplies of bombs were almost exhausted, here and there quite exhausted. The London men went about collecting German bombs, and for some time these served, but not enough could be found to maintain effective fire. The position became more ugly.

But the men did not lose heart. In those bad hours there were many men who showed great qualities of courage, and were great captains whatever their rank. One officer—to mention only one—was splendid when things were worst.

He had taken command of a company when his senior officer was killed in the first assault, and kept his men in good heart so that they could organise a defence against the enemy’s counter-attacks.

They were surrounded by German grenadiers and suffered heavily from artillery, machine-gun and sniping fire. The number of the wounded increased steadily. The bombing party keeping the enemy back flung all their bombs, and then had empty hands and were helpless. Not many rounds of ammunition were left for the riflemen. After that there would be no defence. But the officer would not give way to hopelessness. He rallied six or seven good men about him, and ordered the others to retreat with the wounded and take their chance across No Man’s Land while he put up a last fight.

With his small band he held the barricade until the others had gone away, and held on still until all but two of his men were killed.

He was the last to leave, and by a miracle of luck came back to his own lines unwounded, except for a few scars and scratches. The courage of the man and his fine spirit saved the situation at the most critical time, and saved also many good lives.

There were many men of fine valour there. Men of London, not bred for war, and liking life as one sees it when there are pretty faces in Kensington Gardens, and when there’s sunlight on the windows in the Strand, and when the dome of St. Paul’s rises like a white cloud above the busses in Ludgate-hill.

4

One of them was a lance-corporal who was wounded in two places, so badly that his right arm hung useless by his side. But he would not give in.

“If I can’t use a weapon,” he said, “I can give a lead to my chums.” And he gave them a lead, taking charge of a group of men holding the left flank of a position, organising them into bombing parties, and directing them to build barricades. He held on to his post until the German attack became too strong and was the last to leave.

A boy in the London Scottish—I played at ball with him once in an old garden when there was laughter in the world—escaped death by a kind of miracle.

The trench he was in, with forty men, was being shelled to bits, and rather than fall into the hands of the Germans he decided to attempt escape. With one of his sergeants he made his way towards our lines, but had only gone a short distance when the sergeant was shot dead.

A bullet came a moment later and struck my friend. It was deflected from his brandy flask and went through his thigh, knocking him head over heels into a shell-hole. Here he lay for some hours until it was dark, when he succeeded in crawling back to his lines.

He was the only one saved of his forty comrades.

Gradually the men withdrew, straggling back across No Man’s Land, which was still under great shell-fire, so that the way of escape was full of peril.

It was the turn of the stretcher-bearers, and they worked with great courage. And here one must pay a tribute to the enemy.

“We had white men against us,” said one of the officers, “and they let us get in our wounded without hindrance as soon as the fight was over.”

It is only fair to say that they acted with humanity, and one wishes to God that they would not use such foul means of destruction as those newly invented by chemists with devilish cruelty.

The soldiers are better than their scientists, and in this case at least they remembered the spirit of chivalry which they have not often remembered in all the foulness of this war.

It was difficult enough to get in the wounded. Many of them could not be found or brought back and stayed on the field of battle suffering great anguish for days and nights. One man who was wounded early in the battle of July 1 crawled over to three other wounded men and stayed with them until the night of July 6.

During that time he tended his comrades, who were worse than he was, and went about among dead men gathering food and water from their haversacks and bottles.

But for him his friends would have died. On the night of the 6th he succeeded in getting back to our lines across that awful stretch of No Man’s Land, and then insisted upon going back as the guide of the stretcher-bearers who brought in the others.

VII

THE MEN WHO FOUGHT AT FRICOURT

1

JULY 6

There is something strangely inhuman in the aspect of a battle watched from the edge of its furnace fires, or even as I stood watching it within the crescent of our guns. Battalions move forward like ants across the field, and one cannot see the light in men’s eyes nor distinguish between one man and another.

In this war and in this latest battle I have seen the quality of manhood uplifted to wonderful heights of courage beyond the range of normal laws; and these soldiers of ours, these fine and simple men go forward to the highest terrors with such singing hearts that one can hardly keep a little moisture from one’s eyes when they go passing on the roads.

They picked wild flowers and put them in their belts and caps—red poppies and blue cornflowers—and when the word came to march again they went forward towards the front with a fine swinging pace and smiling faces under the sweat and dust. Yet they know what battle means.

I went to-day again among the men who fought at Fricourt. Some of them had come back behind the lines, and outside their billets the divisional band was playing, but not to much of an audience, for of those who fought at Fricourt in the first assault there are not large numbers left. The officers who came round the village with me had a lonely look. After battle, such a battle as this, it is difficult to keep the sadness out of one’s eyes. So many good fellows have gone.... But they were proud of their men. They found a joy in that. The men had done gloriously. They had won their ground and held it, through frightful fire. “The men were topping.”

There were a lot of Yorkshire men among them who fought at Fricourt and it was those I saw to-day. They were the heroes, with other North Country lads, of one of the most splendid achievements of British arms ever written down in history.

Some of them were still shaken. When they spoke to me their words faltered now and then, and a queer look came into their eyes. But, on the whole, they were astoundingly calm, and had not lost their sense of humour. Of the first advance over No Man’s Land, which was 150 yards across to the enemy’s front line trench, some of these men could remember nothing. It was just a dreadful blank.

“I was just mad at the time,” said one of them. “The first thing I know is that I found myself scrambling over the German parapets with a bomb in my hand. The dead were lying all round me.”

But a sergeant there remembered all. He kept his wits about him, strangely clear at such a time. He saw that his men were being swept with machine-gun fire, so that they all lay down to escape its deadly scythe. But he saw also that the bullets were just washing the ground so that the prostrate men were being struck in great numbers.

He stood up straight and called upon the others to stand, thinking it would be better to be hit in the feet than in the head. Then he walked on and came without a scratch to the German front line.

2

Here and in the lines behind there was a wreckage of earth from our bombardment, but several of the dug-outs had been untouched and in them during our gun-fire men were sitting 30 feet down, with machine-guns ready, and long periscopes, through which they could see our lines and the first wave of advancing men. Before the word reached them, those German machine gunners had rushed upstairs and behind the cover of their wrecked trenches fired bursts of bullets at our men.