Chapter VIII: Part 8

Fresh rumours of German counter-attacks arrived after midnight, in the way that information blows back and forth across a battle-field in reaction. The men were once more roused--in a burst of chill rain--to strengthen the outpost line. They must have made some noise about it, being more than half asleep at the time, but the enemy, so far from attacking, opened with long-range small-arm fire and sent up a myriad lights. That riot died down at last, and when the Battalion’s third dawn in the line had well broken, a company of Lincolns from the 62nd Brigade came up to the trench, and said their orders were to relieve. The light was full enough now to reveal them very clearly, and “a rapid relief was effected with some difficulty.” The enemy shelled till they reached the shelter of the ridge behind and there, at last, drew clear of the immediate aspect of war. Other scattered parties of the Battalion, with little knots of lightly wounded men, joined them on their way to the southern edge of Bernafay Wood, where they took reckoning of their losses. They had still seven officers left, including 2nd Lieutenant T. F. MacMahon, who with some forty men had been left behind in Divisional Reserve on the 16th, and the whole of the working platoon which had not been in action “rejoined the Battalion practically intact.” The “working platoon,” which was made up of two men from each platoon was popularly credited with fabricating Headquarters dug-outs at enormous distances from the firing-line and was treated rather as a jest by men not lucky enough to be drawn for it. As for the rest, Major T. M. Bailie, Lieutenant C. R. Tisdall, Lieutenant L. C. Whitefoord, and 2nd Lieutenant N. Butler were killed. Captain C. Pease and Lieutenant J. K. Greer died of wounds. Captain P. S. Long-Innes, Captain R. Rankin, Lieutenant A. C. W. Innes, 2nd Lieutenants H. C. Holmes, T. Butler-Stoney and Count J. E. de Salis were wounded; and there were over 330 casualties in the other ranks. The total casualties in the Brigade were 1776.

No one seems to recall accurately the order of events between the gathering in Bernafay Wood and the arrival of the shadow of the Battalion in camp at the Citadel. The sun was shining; breakfast was ready for the officers and men near some trees. It struck their very tired apprehensions that there was an enormous amount of equipage and service for a very few men, and they noticed dully a sudden hustling off of unneeded plates and cups. They felt as though they had returned to a world which had outgrown them on a somewhat terrifying scale during all the ages that they had been away from it. Their one need, after food eaten sitting, was rest, and, when the first stupor of exhaustion was satisfied, their sleep began to be broken by dreams only less horrible than the memories to which they waked.

SEPTEMBER 25

But the cure was ready to hand. On the evening of the 18th September, in wet and cold weather, the Brigadier sent the Battalion a letter of praise and prophecy:

As your Brigadier I wish to express my feelings as to your most
gallant work on the 15th September 1916 in the operations at
Ginchy. The advance from the Orchard in the face of machine-gun
fire is equal to anything you have yet accomplished in this
campaign, and once more the 1st Battalion Irish Guards has carried
out a most magnificent advance and held ground gained in spite
of the most severe losses. In this, your first campaign, you are
upholding the highest standard of bravery and efficiency for your
successors and more praise than that I cannot give you. You may be
called upon in the very near future to carry out similar work and
I know you will not fail.

(Sd.) C. E. PEREIRA,
Brigadier-General,
Commanding 1st Guards Brigade.

This meant that they would be moved again as soon as they could stand up, and would go into their next action with at least 50 per cent. new drafts and half their proper allowance of officers. Indeed, they were warned, next day, with the rest of their Division for further operations in the “immediate future,” and the work of re-making and re-equipping the Battalion from end to end, saved them from that ghastly state of body and soul which is known as “fighting Huns in your sleep.”

On the 19th, Major T. M. D. Bailie’s body was brought back from the front and buried in the cemetery in the centre of the camp at Carnoy, and on the same day Lord Cavan, commanding the Corps, rode over and spoke to the officers on horseback of the progress of the campaign, of what had so far been accomplished on the Somme, what was intended for the future, and specially, as bearing on their next battle, of what their artillery had in store for the enemy. It was a simple, unadorned speech, the substance of which he repeated to the N.C.O.’s, then wished the gentlemen of His Majesty’s Foot Guards all good fortune and rode away.

The Division had expected to be used again as soon as might be, but their recent losses were so heavy that every battalion in it was speculating beneath its breath how their new drafts would shape. It is one thing to take in men by fifties at a time and weld them slowly in The Salient to a common endurance; it is quite another to launch a battalion, more than half untried recruits, across the open against all that organized death can deliver. This was a time that again tested the Depot and Reserve Battalion whose never-ending work all fighting battalions take for granted, or mention only to blame. But Warley and Caterham had not failed them. Over three hundred recruits were sent up immediately after the 15th and 16th, and on the 20th September the re-made Battalion, less than six hundred strong, with ten officers, marched out of Citadel Camp to its detestable trenches on Ginchy Ridge. The two Coldstream Battalions of the 1st Brigade held the front line there; the 2nd Grenadiers in reserve, and the 1st Irish Guards in support.

The ground was not yet a sea of mud, but quite sufficiently tenacious. “The area allotted” was old trenches and newish shell-holes with water at the bottom, in “the small rectangular wood east of Trônes Wood.” They were employed for three or four days in cleaning up the litter of battle all about the slopes and piling it in dumps, while the enemy shelled them more or less regularly with large black 5.9 shells--a very fair test of the new drafts’ nerves. The stuff would drop unheralded through the then leafy woods, and explode at large among the shelters and slits that the men had made for themselves. They took the noise and the shaking with philosophy as their N.C.O.’s testified. (“There was some wondherin’ in the new drafts, but no budgin’, ye’ll understand.”)

Reading between lines one can see that the R.C. Priest, the Reverend Father F. M. Browne, was busy in those days on spiritual affairs, for he was hit in the face on the 23rd, “while visiting a neighbouring battery,” so that Mass on the 24th--the day before their second battle of the Somme--was celebrated by the Reverend Father Casey. They were shelled, too, that Sunday in the wood, a single unlucky shell killing two men and wounding thirteen. The last available officer from the base, Lieutenant A. H. Blom, had joined the night before; all drafts were in; the ground was assumed to be walkable (which was not the case), and about 9 P. M. of a pitch-black Sunday night the Battalion left the wood and reached its assembly-trench, an extraordinary bad and unprotected one, about midnight. They were promiscuously shelled in the darkness, and the trench, when found, was so narrow that they had to stand on the edge of it till the Battalion that they relieved--it did not keep them waiting long--got out. No. 1 Company (Captain L. R. Hargreaves), No. 2 Company (Captain the Hon. P. J. Ogilvy) were in the front line, the latter on the right, No. 3 Company (Lieutenant A. H. Blom), and No. 4 Company (Captain Rodakowski) about 150 yards behind with the Battalion Headquarters, in a diagonal communication-trench well bottomed with water. Second Lieutenant T. C. Gibson was wounded on the way up, and was replaced by 2nd Lieutenant T. F. MacMahon who had been left in Regimental Reserve.

The idea of the day’s work for the 25th was less ambitious than on the 15th, and the objectives were visible German trenches, not imaginary lines on uniformly indistinguishable landscapes. Here is the Brigade-Major’s memorandum for the 1st Brigade on the lie of the land, issued on the 22nd September: They were to attack and carry the village of Lesbœufs, up the Ginchy-Lesbœufs road, about fifteen hundred yards, on a front, again, of five hundred yards; the Irish Guards leading the attack throughout on the left of the 1st Brigade, and the 2nd Grenadiers on the right. It was in essence the clearing out of a badly shaken enemy line by the help of exceedingly heavy barrages.

1ST GUARDS BRIGADE NO. 262

The forthcoming attack differs from the last in that the whole
scheme is not such an ambitious one. The distance to the first
objective is about 300 yards, to the second objective 800 yards,
and to the last objective about 1300 yards. In each case the
objective is a clearly defined one, and not merely a line drawn
across the map.

Between our present front line and the first objective there is
only “No Man’s Land.” During the next two nights this should be
actively patrolled to ensure that our attack is not taken by
surprise by some unknown trench, and in order that Officers and
N.C.O.’s may have a knowledge of the ground.

It would also be of great assistance to the artillery if reports as
to the actual distance to the Green line were sent in.

The ground slopes down to Lesbœufs, beyond which there is a
distinct hollow with a plateau the same level as Lesbœufs beyond.
On reaching the final objective Officers and N.C.O.’s should
understand the necessity for pushing patrols out to command this
hollow and give warning or prevent counter-attacks forming up here.

Large scale maps of Lesbœufs have been sent to all battalions.
These should be carefully studied by all Officers and N.C.O.’s,
and especially by those of the companies detailed for the cleaning
up of Lesbœufs.

All runners and signallers should know the position of the advanced
Brigade Report Centre, and that the best means of approach to it
will probably be down the communication-trench T.3.c and T.8.b.

Finally, it cannot be too much impressed on assaulting troops the
necessity for clinging to our own barrage. It will be an attack in
which this should be comparatively easy, and on which the success
of the whole operation may depend.

(Sd.) M. B. SMITH, Captain,
Brigade-Major,
1st Guards Brigade.

_September 22, 1916._

The Battalion’s own task was to clear the three objectives laid down, supported by the 3rd Coldstream, to clean out the northern portion of Lesbœufs village, and above all to secure their flanks when they halted or were held up. They waited in their trenches while our guns, hour after hour, sluiced the roads they were to take with an even downpour of shell along the trenches to be attacked--over Lesbœufs and its hidden defences, and far out into the untouched farming land beyond. It was a fine sunny morning that hid nothing: at 12.35 our barrage locked down two hundred yards ahead of the troops, and Nos. 1 and 2 Companies moved out with the rest of the line towards the first German trench three hundred yards away. The enemy put down a barrage at once on our front-support and communication-trenches, which caused a good many casualties (including Captain R. J. P. Rodakowski and the Doctor) in Nos. 3 and 4 Companies who were moving up as a second wave. Eventually, these companies found it less hampering to leave the crowded trench and come out over the open. So far, our artillery work was altogether a better business than on the 15th. The companies moved almost leisurely behind the roaring arch-of-triumph of the barrage, till the leading line reached the first trench with its half-finished dug-outs. Here they found only dazed German survivors begging to be taken out of that inferno to the nearest prisoners’ kraal. Some of these captures, officers included, sincerely expected to be slaughtered in cold blood.

The 2nd Grenadiers, on the right of the 1st Irish Guards, had been unlucky in their position, for the wire in front of their sector being veiled by high crop, our guns had missed it. That Battalion suffered heavily in officers and men, shot down as they tried to work their way through by hand; but they never lost touch, and the advance went on unbrokenly to the next point--a sunken road on the east side of Lesbœufs, five hundred yards ahead of the first objective. All four companies of the Irish were together now--Lieutenant Blom of No. 3 had been wounded at the first trench and 2nd Lieutenant T. F. MacMahon took over. They reached the downward slope to the sunk road and, as at the first objective, found most of their work had been done for them by the barrage. Even while they congratulated themselves and sent off a pigeon, as well as runner messages, to report the capture to Battalion Headquarters, which, “somewhat broken” by the German shelling, had arrived in the first-taken trench, fire fell on them from the south. Our own guns, misranging across the fields, were supposed to be responsible for this; and a second pigeon was despatched praying them to cease, but “there were a number of casualties” before the advance to the last objective began. This was shown on the map as just east of Lesbœufs village, and east again of another sunken road. The final surge forward included a rush across uprooted orchards and through wrecked houses, shops, and barns, with buildings alight or confusedly collapsing round them, and the enemy streaming out ahead to hide in shell-holes in the open. There was not much killing at this point, and, thanks to the tanks and the guns, a good deal less machine-gun fire than might have been expected. The Battalion dug in in a potato field a few hundred yards beyond the village, where the men providently laid aside the largest potatoes for supper, if so be they should live till that meal. In the meantime our guns were punching holes into the open land behind Lesbœufs, where parties of dislodged enemy had taken shelter. These preferred, at last, to bolt back through that storm and surrender to our men digging, who received them with derisive cheers--“for all the world as though they had been hares in a beat.”

Then came the tragedy. Our barrage, for some reason or other, wavered and stopped almost on the line where the men were digging in, and there hung for a long while--some accounts say a quarter of an hour, others two hours. At any rate, it was long enough to account for many more casualties. Captain L. R. Hargreaves, who had fought wounded through the 15th, was here so severely wounded that he died while being carried back, and Captain Drury-Lowe of the King’s Company of the 1st Grenadiers, digging in on the Irish left, was killed--both casualties by one shell. The 2nd Grenadiers, all company officers down, were in touch on the right, but the left was still doubtful, for the attack there had been held up at Gueudecourt village, and the 3rd Guards Brigade had to make a defensive flank there, while a company of the 3rd Coldstream was moved up to help in the work.

In modern war no victory appears till the end of all, and what is gained by immense bloodshed must be held by immense physical labour of consolidation, which gives the enemy time to recover and counter-attack in his turn. The Irish dug and deepened and strengthened their line north of Lesbœufs, while the enemy shelled them till afternoon, when there was a breathing space. A German counter-attack, on the left of the Guards Division, was launched and forthwith burned up. The shelling was resumed till night, which suddenly fell so quiet, by Somme standards, that supplies could be brought up without too much difficulty. As soon as light for ranging came on the 26th, our men were shelled to ground again; and an attempt of three patrols to get forward and establish posts of command on a near-by ridge brought them into a nest of machine-guns and snipers. The Diary remarks that the patrols located “at least one machine-gun,” which is probably a large understatement; for so soon as the German machine-gunners recovered breath and eyesight, after or between shells, they were up and back and at work again. By the rude arithmetic of the ranks in those days, three machine-guns equalled a company, and, when well posted, a battalion.

The Battalion was relieved on the evening of the 26th by its sister (the 2nd) Battalion, who took over the whole of Lesbœufs ruins from the Brigade; and the 1st Irish Guards went back with the others through Bernafay Wood, where they fed, to camp once more at the Citadel.

In the two days of their second Somme battle, which they entered less than six hundred strong and ten officers, they had lost one officer, Captain Hargreaves, died of wounds, and five wounded, and more than 250 casualties in other ranks. Add these to the casualties of the 15th, and it will be seen that in ten days the Battalion had practically lost a battalion. The commanding officer, Colonel McCalmont, the adjutant, Captain Gordon, and Lieutenant Smith were the only officers who had come unwounded through both actions.

General Pereira, commanding the 1st Guards Brigade, issued the following order on the 27th September:

You have again maintained the high traditions of the 1st Guards
Brigade when called upon a second time in the battle of the Somme.
For five days previous to the assault the 2nd and 3rd Battalion
Coldstream Guards held the trenches under constant heavy shell-fire
and dug many hundred yards of assembly and communication-trenches,
this work being constantly interrupted by the enemy’s artillery.
The 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards and the 1st Battalion Irish
Guards, though under shell-fire in their bivouacs, were kept clear
of the trenches until the evening of 24th September, and were given
the task of carrying by assault all the objectives to be carried by
this Brigade. Nothing deterred them in this attack, not even the
fact that in places the enemy wire was cut in the face of rifle
and machine-gun fire, and in spite of all resistance and heavy
losses the entire main enemy defensive line was captured.

Every Battalion in the Brigade carried out its task to the full.

The German Reserve Division, which includes the 238th, 239th, and
240th Regiments, and which opposed you for many weeks at Ypres,
left the Salient on the 18th September. You have now met them in
the open, a worthy foe, but you have filled their trenches with
their dead and have driven them before you in headlong flight.

I cannot say how proud I am to have had the honour of commanding
the 1st Guards Brigade in this battle, a Brigade which has proved
itself to be the finest in the British Army.

The Brigade is now under orders for rest and training, and it must
now be our object to keep up the high standard of efficiency, and
those who have come to fill our depleted ranks will strive their
utmost to fill worthily the place of those gallant officers and men
who have laid down their lives for a great cause.

(Sd.) C. E. PEREIRA,
Brigadier-General,
Commanding 1st Guards Brigade.

_September 28, 1916._

Lord Cavan had sent the following message to General Pereira:

Hearty thanks and sincere congratulation to you all. A very fine
achievement splendidly executed.

To which the Brigadier had replied:

Your old Brigade very proud to be able to present you with
Lesbœufs. All ranks most gratified by your kind congratulations.

And so that little wave among many waves, which had done its work and gained its few hundred yards of ground up the beach, drew back into the ocean of men and hutments below the slopes of the Somme. The new drafts were naturally rather pleased with themselves; their N.C.O.’s were reasonably satisfied with them, and the remnant of the officers were far too busy with reorganization and re-equipment to have distinct notions on any subject except the day’s work. It was a little later that heroisms or horrors, seen out of the tail of the eye in action, and unrealised at the time, became alive as rest returned to the body and men compared dreams with each other, or argued in what precise manner such and such a comrade had died. There was bravery enough and to spare on all hands, and there were a few, but not too many, decorations awarded for it in the course of the next month. The Battalion took the bravery for granted, and the credit of the aggregate went to the Battalion. They looked at it, broadly speaking, thus: “There was times when ye’ll understand if a man was _not_ earnin’ V.C.’s for hours on end he would not keep alive--an’ even _then_, unless the Saints looked after him, he’d likely be killed in the middest of it.” In other words, the average of bravery required in action had risen twenty-fold, even as the average of shots delivered by machine-guns exceeds that of many rifles; and by the mercy of Heaven, as the Irish themselves saw it, the spirit of man under discipline had risen to those heights.

Captain L. R. Hargreaves (killed on the 25th) and Captain P. S. Long-Innes (wounded), with Lieutenant G. V. Williams (who was knocked unconscious and nearly killed by shell-fire on the 25th), were given the Military Cross for the affair of the 15th. Drill-Sergeant Moran, a pillar of the Battalion, who had died of wounds (it was he who had asked the immortal question about “this retreat” at Mons), with Private Boyd, received the D.C.M., and Sergeant Riordan (wounded and reported missing) the Bar to the same medal. Lance-Corporal J. Carroll, Privates M. Kenny, J. O’Connor, J. White and Lance-Corporal Cousins had the Military Medal--all for the 15th.

For the 15th and 25th combined, Lieutenant Walter Mumford and 2nd Lieutenant T. F. MacMahon won the Military Cross; and Sergeant P. Doolan and Private G. Taylor the Military Medal.

For the 25th, temporary Captain the Hon. P. Ogilvy received the Military Cross; acting Company Sergeant-Major McMullen, the Bar to his D.C.M.; and Privates Whearty, Troy and M. Lewis, the Military Medal. Captain Gordon, the Adjutant, was recommended for an immediate M.C. which he received with the next New Year honours at the same time as the C.O. received a D.S.O.

It was not an extravagant reward for men who have to keep their heads under hideous circumstances and apply courage and knowledge at the given instant; and after inconceivable strain, to hold, strengthen, and turn desperate situations to their platoon’s or company’s advantage. The news went into Warley and Caterham, and soured drill-sergeants, dead-wearied with the repetition-work of forming recruits to fill shell-holes, found their little unnoticed reward in it. (“Yes. _We_ made ’em--with the rheumatism on us, an’ all; an’ we kept on makin’ ’em till I got to hate the silly faces of ’em. An’ what did _we_ get out of it? ‘Tell Warley that their last draft was dam’ rabbits an’ the Ensigns as bad.’ An’ after that, it’s Mil’try Crosses and D.C.M.’s for _our_ dam’ rabbits!”)

The Battalion returned to the days of small, detailed, important things--too wearied to appreciate compliments, and too over-worked with breaking in fresh material to think.

On the 27th, 2nd Lieutenant R. B. S. Reford joined from the Base; on the 28th 2nd Lieutenant T. F. MacMahon with a party was sent to rest-camp for a week. On the 30th Captains the Earl of Kingston and H. T. A. Boyse joined and took over command of Nos. 1 and 3 Companies.

REST-CAMPS AND FATIGUES

On the 1st October, a Sunday, after mass celebrated by a French interpreter, which did not affect the devotion of the Battalion, the whole Brigade were embarked in one hundred and forty “French army charabancs,” a new and unforeseen torment, and driven _via_ Amiens from Fricourt to rest-camp at Hornoy. Much must have happened on that pleasure-trip; for the Diary observes that the drivers of the vehicles were “apparently over military age, many of the assistants being natives.” One is left in the dark as to their countries of origin, but one’s pity goes out to all of them, Annamite, Senegalese, or Algerian, who helped to convey the newly released Irish for eight hours over fifty jolting miles. The Battalion found good billets for themselves, and the Brigade machine-gun company in Hornoy itself, where the inhabitants showed them no small kindness. “Owing to small numbers, officers were in one mess,” says the Diary, and one can see the expansion of that small and shrunken company as the new drafts come in and training picks up again.

On the 3rd October, 2nd Lieutenants J. J. Fitzwilliam Murphy and J. N. Nash joined; on the 4th the Reverend P. J. Lane-Fox joined for duty; on the 5th, 2nd Lieutenant the Hon. D. O’Brien came in sick with the draft of a hundred and fifty-two and went down sick, all within forty-eight hours, his draft punctually delivered. Major the Hon. T. Vesey also joined as second in command during the course of this month.

They paraded on the 5th October for the Divisional Commander, Major-General Feilding, who presented the ribbons to the N.C.O.’s and men who had been awarded medals and complimented the Battalion on its past work. Second Lieutenant E. Budd (and five other ranks), 2nd Lieutenant E. M. Harvey, with a draft of ninety-five, not counting eleven more who had joined in small parties, and 2nd Lieutenants A. L. Bain, H. H. Maxwell, and J. J. Kane all came in within the next ten days. Captain R. G. C. Yerburgh, on rejoining from the Central Training School at Havre, was posted to the command of No. 4 Company; and on the 8th October, a team, chiefly officers, greatly daring, played a Rugby football match against “a neighbouring French recruit battalion,” which campaign seems to have so inspired them that they all attended a Divisional dinner that night at 1st Brigade Headquarters at Dromesnil. There is, alas! no record of that match nor of what the French Recruit Battalion thought of it; but just before their departure from Hornoy they played a Soccer match against the 26th French Infantry, and next day the C.O. and all company officers rode over to that regiment to see how it practised the latest form of attack over the open. Thus did they combine instruction with amusement, and cemented the Sacred Alliance!

They dined also with their own 2nd Battalion, who were billeted five miles away--a high and important function at Hornoy where Brigadier-General Butler, formerly in command of the 2nd Battalion, was present, with all the officers of both battalions. The band of the Welsh Guards assisted and they all drank the health, among many others, of the belle of Hornoy, who “responded with enthusiasm.” Further, they played a football match against their brethren and won; entertained the village, not forgetting the 26th French Infantry, with their drums; drove all ranks hard at company drills and battalion attacks; rehearsed the review for the approaching visit of H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, and welcomed small detachments as they came in. The last was 2nd Lieutenant D. A. B. Moodie with 50, on the 26th October, when Lieutenant H. F. S. Law rejoined the Battalion from his Intelligence duties with the Ninth Corps. Drill-Sergeant J. Orr assumed the duties of 2nd Lieutenant from November 2.

The mess was now full again. The dead of the September Somme had almost passed out of men’s memories till the war should be over and the ghosts return; and the Battalion, immortal however much it changes, was ready (“forty over strength”) for the bitter winter of ’16-’17.

On the 7th November they were warned to move back into line and celebrated it by an officers’ dinner (thirty-seven strong) of both battalions at the Hotel London, Hornoy.

On the 10th they regretfully quitted that hospitable village for the too familiar camping grounds near Carnoy beyond Méaulte, which in winter becomes a marsh on the least provocation. They were accommodated “in bell-tents in a sea of mud” with weather to match.

Next day (11th November) they shifted to “a sort of camp” near Montauban, “quite inadequate” and served by bottomless roads where they were shelled a little after mass--a proof, one presumes, that the enemy had news of their arrival.

On the 13th November, in cold but dry weather, they took over a line of trench north of Lesbœufs between that village and Gueudecourt. These were reached by interminable duckboards from Trônes Wood and up over the battered and hacked Flers ridge. There were no communication-trenches and, in that windy waste of dead weed and wreckage, no landmarks to guide the eye. Trench equipment was utterly lacking, and every stick and strand had to be man-handled up from Ginchy. In these delectable lodgings they relieved the 7th Yorkshires and the 8th South Staffordshires, losing one man wounded by shell-fire, and Major the Hon. T. E. Vesey was sent down sick as the result of old wounds received at Loos and in ’14. The Somme was no place for such as were not absolutely fit, and even the fittest had to pay toll.

Shelling for the next three days was “continuous but indiscriminate.” Four men were killed, fourteen wounded, and three disappeared--walked, it is supposed, into enemy ground. The wonder was there were not more such accidents. Wiser men than they would come up to the front line with a message, refuse the services of a guide back because, they protested, they knew every inch of the ground and--would be no more seen till exhumation parties three or four years later identified them by some rag of Guards’ khaki or a button.

The Battalion was relieved by the 2nd Grenadiers at midnight (16th November), but were not clear till morning, when they crawled back to camp between Carnoy and Montauban, packed forty men apiece into the icy-chill Nissen huts, supposed to hold thirty, and were thankful for the foul warmth of them. Thence they moved into unstable tents on the outskirts of Méaulte, on the Bray road, where the wind funnels from all parts of the compass, and in alternate snow, rain, and snow again, plumbed the deeps of discomfort. When frost put a crust on the ground they drilled; when it broke they cleaned themselves from mud; and, fair or foul, did their best to “improve” any camp into which fortune decanted them.

It was a test, were one needed, that proved all ranks to the uttermost. The heroism that endures for a day or a week at high tension is a small thing beside that habit of mind which can hold fast to manner, justice, honour and a show of kindliness and toleration, in despite of physical misery and the slow passage of bleak and indistinguishable days. Character and personality, whatever its “crime-sheet” may have been, was worth its weight in gold on the Somme, where a jest counted as high as a rum-ration. All sorts of unsuspected people came to their own as leaders of men or lighteners of care. There were stretcher-bearers, for instance, whose mere presence and personality steadied half a platoon after the shell-burst when, picking themselves up, men’s first question out of the dark would be: “Where’s So-and-So?” And So-and-So would answer with the dignity of Milesian Kings: “I’m here! Caarry on, lads!”

So, too, with the officers. In the long overseeing of endless fatigues, which are more trying than action, they come to understand the men with a thoroughness that one is inclined to believe that not many corps have reached. Discipline in the Guards, as has been many times pointed out, allowed no excuse whatever for the officer or the man; but once the punishment, or the telling off, had been administered, the sinner and the judge could, and did, discuss everything under heaven. One explanation which strikes at the root of the matter is this: “Ye’ll understand that in those days we was all countin’ ourselves for dead men--sooner or later. ’Twas in the air, ye’ll understand--like the big stuff comin’ over.”

On Sunday the 27th November, the day of the requiem mass for the Irish Guards in Westminster Cathedral, a requiem mass was said in Méaulte Church and they moved out to a French camp (“Forked Tree”), south of the town where the big French huts held a hundred men apiece, but cook-houses, etc., were all to build and the “usual routine improvement work began again.” Their Brigade bombing officer, Lieutenant the Hon. H. P. O’Brien, was appointed Staff Captain to the 1st Guards Brigade, and Captain R. G. C. Yerburgh left to be attached to the 2nd Guards Brigade H.Q. Staff for instruction in staff duties.

They were visited by their corps and divisional commanders, inspected by their Brigadier and route-marched till the 3rd December, when they moved to Maltz Horn Camp.

It had been decided that the British Army should, by degrees, take over a stretch of the French line from Le Transloy to a point opposite Roye; and the Battalion’s share of this was about a thousand yards of trench at Sailly-Saillisel, held by the 160th Regiment of the Twentieth Corps (Corps de Fer). The front line ran a little in front of what had once been that long and prosperous village on the ridge, and, though not continuous, “it held in places.” The support-line, through, and among the wreck of the houses, was dry and fairly good. That there were no communication-trenches was a small matter--men preferred to take their chances in the open to being buried in trench mud--but there was no road up to it and “the going was heavy.”

Once installed (December 6), after a prompt and workmanlike French relief, which impressed them, they found the 156th French Infantry on their right, a Coldstream Battalion on their left, and an enemy in front disposed to be quiet “except when frightened” or suspecting reliefs, when he would drop very unpleasant barrages on the support-line.

They were relieved on the 9th December by the 2nd Grenadiers who were late, because they were “constantly delayed by digging men out of mud.” From Bois de la Haie, the long, thin slip of wood under Morval whence the relief started at a quarter-past five in the evening, the distance to the Battalion’s sector might be two miles. That relief was not completed till half-past one on the morning of the 10th--say eight hours to cover four or five miles in one continuous nightmare of mud, darkness, loss of touch and the sudden engulfment of heavily loaded men. A Grenadier battalion claims to hold the record (fifteen hours) for the extrication of one man. Six or eight hours was not uncommon. They were shelled, of course, on their arrival and lost Sergeant Wylie, killed, and eleven wounded. Captain R. V. Pollok joined from home on that day and took over command of No. 1 Company, Major E. B. Greer, on loan from the 2nd Battalion, who had commanded the Battalion temporarily, handed over to Captain the Hon. H. R. Alexander, D.S.O. acting C.O. in place of Colonel R. McCalmont on leave. Captain the Earl of Kingston had to go into hospital on the 10th--“result of an old wound”--and on the 13th December Lieutenant J. J. V. F. Murphy--“exposure.”

On the 12th December, after a day’s rest in a muddy camp near Montauban, they marched to Combles through the blackened site of Guillemont to relieve the 2nd Battalion on a more southerly sector, to furnish working-parties for the railway lines that were spreading stealthily north and east, to help lay down plank roads--not the least burdensome of fatigues, for the “planks” were substantial logs--and to make the front line a little less impossible. It was an easy turn, with very little shelling or sniping, “both sides being only able to reach their front line by going over the open.” When to this is added full moonlight and a fall of snow, moderation is imposed on every one till they are under cover. Otherwise a local battle might have developed--and what is the use of local battles where both sides are stuck in the mud, and no help can be sent to either? This question would be put to the Staff when, from the comfortable security of their decent dug-outs, they lectured the front-line, and were invited mirthfully to come up and experiment for themselves.

The Battalion had eleven wounded in three days, and returned to Bronfay to find their allotted camp already filled up by Gunners. Then there was confusion and argument, and the quartermaster--notable even among quartermasters--“procured” fuel and braziers and got the men more or less warmed and fed. “The muddle,” says the Diary sternly, “was due to no proper arrangements being made to find out to whom Camp 108 belonged before the battalions were moved into them.” Thus, on paper at least, did the front line get back at the Staff.

They returned to the Combles area on the 18th, relieved their sister-battalion in less than three hours, and in fine frosty weather, helped by the enemy’s inactivity, improved the trenches, lost five killed and one wounded, and on their return found Camp 108 also “improved” and devoid of Gunners.

The year closed well. Their Christmas turn (December 25-27, when they missed their Christmas dinners) was almost bloodless. The reliefs went smoothly, and though a thaw made the trenches cave here and there, but four men were wounded, and in their New Year turn, only one.

About Christmas the Brigade, to their deep regret, lost their Brigadier-General, C. Pereira--promoted to command the Second Division, and in him, one of the best friends that they ever had. He knew the Battalion very personally, appreciated its value, and fought for its interests with devotion and a strong hand.

Nothing is said in the Diary of any attempts on the enemy’s part to fraternise, and the New Year was “seen in without any incident,” which means that no bursts of artillery marked the hour. And on the 3rd January the whole of the Guards Division went out of the line for refit. The Twentieth Division took its unenvied place, and the 1st Battalion Irish Guards lay at Sandpits Camp near Méaulte.

The strain was beginning to tell. They had had to transfer Lieutenant F. S. L. Smith and 2nd Lieutenant J. Kane to the 2nd Battalion “owing to shortage in that Battalion on account of sickness,” and their own coolies were in need of rest and change. The strongest cannot stand up beyond a certain point to exposure, broken rest, alarms all round the clock; laborious physical exertions, knee or mid-thigh deep in mud; sweating fatigues, followed by cooling-off in icy blasts or a broth of snow and chalk-slime; or--more undermining than any bodily stress--the pressure that grows of hourly responsibility. Sooner or later, the mind surrenders itself to a mill-round of harassing obsessions as to whether, if one had led one’s platoon up or down by such and such a deviation--to the left or the right of a certain dead horse, for example--if one had halted longer there or whipped up more cautiously elsewhere--one might have saved such and such a casualty, entombment in the mud, or some other shrieking horror of the night. Reason insists that it was not, and could not have been, one’s own fault. Memory brings back the face or the eyes of the dying, and the silence, always accusing, as the platoon goes forward. When this mood overtakes an officer he does well to go into rest for a while and pad his nerves, lest he arrive at that dreadful stage when he is convinced that his next turn of duty will see all his men destroyed by his own act. Between this last stage and the dragging weariness, the hoarse Somme cold, and the foul taste in the mouth which are mere signs of “beginning to be fed up,” there is every variety of derangement, to be held in check by the individual’s own character and that discipline which age and experience have devised to hold him when everything else has dropped away. It is the deadly journey, back and forth to the front-line with material, the known and foreseen war in darkness and mud against the natural perversity of things, that shifts the foundations of the soul, so that a man, who scarcely regards death hunting him at large by the hour, will fall into a child’s paroxysms of rage and despair when the wire-strand rasps him across the knuckles or the duckboard for the hundredth time tilts sideways underfoot. “Ye’ll understand,” says the voice of experience, “the fatigues do it in the long run.” All of which the Diary will dismiss with: “A few fatigues were found in this area.”

The Somme was one overwhelming fatigue.

1917

THE SOMME TO GOUZEAUCOURT

The beginning of the year saw the British armies, now more than fifty divisions strong, holding a front of a hundred and ten miles from Ypres to within a short distance of Roye. Thus, allowing for changes imposed by the fluctuations of war and attack, they lay:

The Second Army had the Salient: the First centred on Armentières; the Third (Gough’s) carried on to the south of Arras, where the Fifth held all along the valley of the Ancre and a portion of the old British line on the Somme. The Fourth joined the French left wing near Roye, and the French pressure worked in with ours.

From the Salient to the Somme battle-front, our line’s business was to draw as much as possible of the enemy’s strength. Therefore, our raids on that part of the line, during the latter half of 1916, were counted by the hundred; and in all that time, at no point on any given day there, could the Germans feel secure against our irruptions.

On the Somme our pressure was direct and, except for the weather, worked as continuously as a forest fire in fallen pine-needles. A fold of the hills might check it there; a bare ridge or a sodden valley hold it elsewhere for the while; but always it ate north and east across the stricken country, as division after division gathered, fought, won foothold, held it, dug in, and gave place to their unspent fellows beneath the cover of the advancing guns. Here is a mere outline of the work of a few weeks:

The affairs of the 15th and 25th of September (1916), when the Fourth Army pushed the line past Lesbœufs and Flers and beyond Gueudecourt on the right, knocked out, as we know, both battalions of the Irish Guards for the time being.

On the 27th and 28th of September the Second and First Canadian Divisions, with the Eleventh and Eighteenth of the Second Army Corps, captured Thiepval, the Stuff and Schwaben redoubts on the left of the line; while the Fifty-fifth and New Zealand Divisions made possible an advance on Le Sars and Eaucourt l’Abbaye villages in the centre, which, after four days’ continuous fighting by the Forty-seventh, Fiftieth, and Twenty-third Divisions, ended in the taking of Eaucourt l’Abbaye and Le Sars.

On the 7th of October the French Army attacked in the direction of Sailly-Saillisel, the Fourth Army chiming in along its whole front from Lesbœufs to Destremont farm, which had been taken by the Twenty-third Division on the 29th September. In this affair the Twenty-third Division captured Le Sars, and the Twentieth Division over a mile of trenches east of Gueudecourt.

Then the treacherous weather broke once more, and the battered and crumbled ground held their feet till a few days of dry cold were snatched for an attack in the direction of Courcelette by four Divisions (Fourth Canadian, Eighteenth, Fifteenth, and Thirty-ninth), where a fresh line was needed.

On the 23rd October, and on the 5th November again, as side-issues while waiting on the weather for a serious attack on Beaumont-Hamel, a couple of divisions (Fourth and Eighth) went in with a French attack against Pierre St. Vaast Wood, where a tangle of enemy trenches at the junction of the two armies was slowly smoked and burned out.

The 10th of November (after one day’s fine weather) gave the Fourth Canadian Division a full day’s fighting and, once more, a thousand yards of trench in the Courcelette sector.

On the 13th of November the battle of the Ancre opened from Serre to east of the Schwaben redoubt (Thirty-first, Third, Second, Fifty-first, Thirty-ninth and Nineteenth Divisions), with the intention of gaining command of both banks of the river, where it entered the enemy lines six or seven miles north of Albert. This was a sector of the old German front to the west, which had thrown back our opening attack of July 1, and had grown no more inviting since. Serre itself, helped by the state of the ground before it, was impossible, but Beaucourt, Beaumont-Hamel, and a portion of the high ground above it, with the village of St. Pierre-Divion in the valley, were, in the course of the next few days, captured and held.

All the above takes no count of incessant minor operations, losses and recaptures of trenches, days and nights of bombing that were necessary to silence nests of subterranean works, marked on the maps of peace as “villages”; nor of the almost monotonous counter-attacks that followed on the heels of every gain. So long as movement was possible the Somme front was alive from end to end, according as one hard-gained position gave the key to the next, or unscreened some hitherto blinded works. Against every disadvantage of weather and over ground no troops in history had before dared to use at that season, the system and design of the advance revealed itself to the enemy. Their counter-attacks withered under our guns or died out in the fuming, raw-dug trenches; the slopes that had been their screens were crowned and turned against them; their infantry began to have no love for the blunt-nosed tanks, which, though not yet come to the war in battalions, were dragging their smeared trails along the ridges; the fighting aeroplanes worried them, too, with machine-gun fire from overhead; photographers marked their covered ways by day and our heavy bombers searched them by night, as owls search stubble for mice. It all cost men and stuff, and the German Army Command had little good news to send back to the German tribes.

Yet the last six months of 1916 had advanced our front no more than some eight miles--along the Albert-Bapaume road. At no point were we more than ten miles from our beginnings. All that showed on the map was that the enemy’s line to the north had been pinched into a salient which, starting from just east of Arras, followed the line of the old German front built up two years before, through Monchy-au-Bois, Gomiecourt and Serre to the high white grounds above Beaumont-Hamel. Thence it turned east across the Ancre, seven or eight kilometres north of Arras, skirted Grandcourt, crossed the arrow-straight Albert-Bapaume road by the dreary Butte de Warlencourt, ran north-east of Gueudecourt, and on the rim of the rise above Le Transloy, till it crossed the Péronne-Bapaume road just north of Sailly-Saillisel. Here it swung south-east from Rancourt and Bouchavesnes down the long slopes to the Valley of the Somme, and its marshes west of Péronne. Thence, south-westerly by Berny-en-Santerre, Ablaincourt to the outskirts of Chaulnes, ending at Le Quesnoy-en-Santerre, where the French took on. The twenty-five mile stretch from Le Transloy to Le Quesnoy was the new section that had been handed over to the British care, piece by piece, at the end of the year.

To meet this pinch and all that they could see that it meant, the Germans had constructed, while they and the weather held us, elaborate second and third lines of defence behind their heavily fortified front. The first barrier--a double line of trenches, heavily wired, ran behind Sailly-Saillisel, past Le Transloy to the Albert-Bapaume road, Grévillers and Loupart woods, and _via_ Achiet-le-Petit to Bucquoy.

Parallel to this, at a distance ranging from one to two miles, was a new line through Rocquigny, Bapaume, and Ablainzevelle, almost equally strong and elaborate. Behind it, as every one understood, was a thing called the Hindenburg Line, known to the Germans as “Siegfried”--a forty-mile marvel of considered defences with branches and spurs and switches, one end of which lay on St. Quentin and the other outside Arras. This could be dealt with later, but, meantime, the enemy in the Arras-Le Transloy salient were uneasy. The attacks delivered on selected positions; the little inter-related operations that stole a few hundred yards of trench or half a village at a leap, or carried a gun-group to a position whence our batteries could peer out and punish; above all, the cold knowledge that sooner or later our unimaginative, unmilitary infantry would shamble after the guns, made them think well of lines in their rear to which they could retire at leisure. Verdun had not fallen; very many of their men lay dead outside its obliterated forts, and so very many living were needed to make good the daily drain of the Somme that they had none too many to spare for Austrian or Turkish needs. Their one energetic ally was the weather, which, with almost comic regularity, gave them time after each reverse to draw breath, position more guns, reorganise reliefs, and explain to their doubting public in Germany the excellence and the method of their army’s plans for the future. The battle of the Ancre, for instance, was followed by an absolute deadlock of six weeks, when our armies--one cannot assault and dig out battalions at the same time--dropped everything to fight the mud, while our front-line wallowed in bottomless trenches where subalterns took from three to six hours to visit their posts on a front of one quarter of a mile.

Bitter frosts set in with the first weeks of the New Year and the “small operations” began at once, on our side, round such portions of the Beaumont-Hamel heights as the enemy still clung to. Here the Third, Seventh, and Eleventh Divisions fought, shift by shift, for the rest of January and won the high ground needed for our guns to uncover against Serre and Grandcourt, which were the keys of the positions at the corner of the Arras-Le Transloy salient. Thanks to our air-work, and the almost daily improvement in the power and precision of our barrages, that little army came through its campaign without too heavy losses, and still further cramped the enemy’s foothold along the Ancre, while the rest of the line enjoyed as much peace as the Somme allowed them when “there was nothing doing.”

MARKING TIME

The Guards Division, after their ten days’ rest and clean-up at Sandpits Camp, Méaulte, supplied one brigade to take over a new sector of trench opposite St. Pierre Vaast Wood on the extreme east of things and left their 1st Brigade in reserve at Méaulte, Ville-sous-Corbie, and Méricourt l’Abbé. The latter camp was allotted to the Irish Guards who had to send one company for permanent fatigues to the railway station--all the valley here was one long siding for men and supplies--and another to the back of Bernafay Wood for Decauville construction, while the remainder were drilled and instructed in their specialties. This was the time in our armies’ development when nearly every third man was a “specialist” in some branch or another except, as company officers remarked under their breaths, the rifle and its bayonet. The men’s deferred Christmas dinners (it will be remembered they had been in the line on the day itself) were duly issued by half a battalion at a time in the big cinema-hall in camp, and, lest the transport officer should by any chance enjoy himself, their transport chose this time of rest to develop “contagious stomatitis,” a form of thrush in the mouth, and had to be isolated. Still, setting aside the cold, which does not much trouble well-fed men, the Battalion had some pleasant memories of its rest by the river. Leave was possible; smoking-parties made themselves in the big huts; the sergeants gave a dinner, which is a sure sign of well-being; there were cinemas for the men, and no one troubled himself too much for the noise of the guns ten miles up stream.