by Peter Hart
Between the bursts Crozier doubled to the Sunken Road, his batman making a bad second in the race. ‘The Tenth Rifles are wiped out!’ he shouted. We reached our own men. They had taken what cover the place afforded. Bernard has been killed. Crozier rallied what was left of the Tenth. ‘Sound the advance!’ he yelled, ‘Sound, damn you, sound the advance!’ The bugler’s lips were dry. He had been wounded. His lungs were gone. A second later he fell dead at the Colonel’s feet. Hine cut the cord and gave the bugle to someone who could play. Crozier was signalling the men on. He walked into bursts, he fell into holes, his clothing was torn by bullets, but he himself was all right. Moving about as if on the parade ground he again and again rallied his men. Without him not a man would have passed the Schwaben Redoubt, let alone reached the final objective.60
Private Davie Starrett, 9th Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles, 107th Brigade, 36th (Irish) Division
With such a man driving them on elements of the 107th Brigade managed to reach and take up positions in Stuff Redoubt. Private Starrett was employed as a runner, moving backwards and forwards between the surviving officers and Crozier’s headquarters in a dugout on the edge of Thiepval Wood.
Trenches and tops were blocked with the dead, but on days like that there’s no sympathy in your heart. Over them you go. I found the signals and the office staff, McKinney and Bowers were always exactly in the right place. The dugout was being used as a clearing station. It was hard passing without a word men in terrible pain—men you knew. Kelly, a big lump of a fighting Irishman, in charge of rations, was there too. The fierce shelling continued and the place seemed taped to an inch. Stretcher bearers fell every minute. Most that reached Doncaster Dump were wounded carrying wounded. The barrage, for such it seemed, lifted and caught our rear. Probably Jerry was trying to stop reinforcements. A badly wounded runner brought a message, the Colonel was found, he read and answered it, and went back to our men holding the newly won trenches. The heat and the stench made the day more unpleasant. Prisoners began to arrive, seeming well-pleased to be out of the fight. They were hit badly, too, those who could drag along carrying those who could not. One young German died as he was put down. Half of his face was blown away.61
Private Davie Starrett, 9th Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles, 107th Brigade, 36th (Irish) Division
The wounded were flooding back from the front, where their awful appearance cast a melancholy cloud over their comrades in the divisional rear areas.
It was a terrible sight to see the wounded coming down in hundreds, the most serious in any conveyance that was handy—in GS wagons, motor lorries, ambulances, or anything they could get. Those that could possibly crawl at all, had to get from the trenches to the dressing station, which was about 3 miles, as best they could. Each time we were coming back from the guns with empty ammunition wagons, we packed as many wounded on as we could, as we passed the dressing station on our way back, but a lot of them were too badly wounded to stand the jolting of the wagon, and preferred to go on their own.62
Gunner William Grant, D Battery, 154th Brigade, 36th (Irish) Division
On the right flank of 36th Division, the 96th and 97th Brigades of 32nd Division launched themselves directly against the Thiepval Spur. The 96th Brigade encountered concentrated machine-gun fire from the German machine guns concealed in the ruins of Thiepval village. Progress was simply impossible and the battalions melted away as they tried to move forward. Next to them the 97th Brigade had slightly more success as it attacked the western face of Leipzig Redoubt. This was possibly due to the innovative tactics of Brigadier J. B. Jardine who ordered his men to creep out into No Man’s Land slightly before zero hour and approach as close as possible to the barrage falling on the German front line. When the barrage lifted the 16th and 17th Highland Light Infantry undoubtedly caught the German defenders by surprise.
At 7.23 we climbed out of the trenches and started to move across No Man’s Land. We were loaded down with full kit, and in addition, a spade, shovel or pick. We soon reached the enemy front line and the work of the ‘moppers-up’ began, shouting down dugouts to the Hun to come up. The battalion had started kicking footballs in front of them. Leipzig Trench was taken and we began to advance towards the Hindenburg Trench. Alas, almost every company officer had been killed. D Company had been almost annihilated.63
Private James Jack, 17th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry, 97th Brigade, 32nd Division
The wire in front of that part of the 17th Highland Light Infantry in particular had been well cut and the sheer speed of its attack caught the Germans in the deep dugout somewhat by surprise. Before they could emerge the Scots were in amongst them and the first obstacle had been overcome. But the Hindenburg Trench still lay a good 150 yards ahead of them and as they lurched forward again they soon came under heavy machine-gun fire from the Wundtwerk Redoubt.
The machine gun swept us down outside the Leipzig Redoubt. It became evident that we, who were working up between two communications trenches, after two or three rushes, that further advancing was impossible without support. We waited for our own reserve waves and the Lonsdales who should have come on behind. But no reserves reached us and we saw our only hope lay in the fact that they had rushed one of the communication trenches and might manage to bomb out the machine gun. But the bombers were checked out of the range of the gun. We began to work towards the communications trench, but owing to the lie of the ground we were badly exposed.64
Private Bentley Meadows, 17th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry, 97th Brigade, 32nd Division
As the men pressed on they encountered more and more intact belts of barbed wire. With the advantage of any surprise lost they found the going was increasingly difficult and the number of casualties swiftly escalated. Amongst them was Private Jack.
Advancing towards the Hun second trench, I felt as if a mule had kicked me above the right eye. Lying prone, I endeavoured to think what had happened. It turned out that I had been sniped, the bullet piercing the steel helmet in the front and circling inside three times had cut a furrow above my right eye. The other eye had swollen up and having crawled into the trench, almost blinded, I was ordered by Captain Laird, my platoon commander to proceed to the rear. Looking back I saw him hit by a shell adding another officer casualty to the growing number. Proceeding round a traverse to the Hun communication trench, I spied a large Hun officer at the top of a dugout. I immediately gave him three of the best as I peered at him. He did not move and getting closer I found that he had been the victim of one of his own shells, part of the casing having fixed his head to the entrance of his dugout. He had not been missed by the ‘moppers up’ as I first thought.65
Private James Jack, 17th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry, 97th Brigade, 32nd Division
Those who remained found themselves increasingly isolated. No reinforcements could get forward to join them and their numbers were rapidly eroding away. Soon there would be no one left.
I at length found myself the only living occupant of that corner. About twelve o’clock I managed to leap the parapet without being hit. I found my platoon officer, Lieutenant MacBrayne, lying shot through the head. Of the others of my platoon I could get no news, except those I saw lying dead or wounded.66
Private Bentley Meadows, 17th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry, 97th Brigade, 32nd Division
The remnants banded together for mutual support and resolved on one last attempt to get forward. It was a forlorn hope more born of desperation than any realistic expectation of success.
An officer suddenly jumped the parapet and shouted, ‘Come on the Seventeenth!’ I followed him with about twenty others. But we found the barbed wire impossible to cut through and he gave us the order, ‘Every man for himself!’ Making my way back to the trench I rested in a shell hole occupied by a sergeant wounded in the leg. Whilst talking to him we both fell asleep and slept until about 5 p.m., when the Germans counter-attacked. Their artillery became violent and they attempted to come over th
e open. We ran for the communication trench and found it disorganised, orders got mixed and some seemed anxious to retire. Fortunately the 17th HLI bombers, who were in the advanced position, held their ground, driving the enemy back with their own bombs, and the attack over the open was checked by our brigade machine guns which had been massed in the German front line.67
Private Bentley Meadows, 17th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry, 97th Brigade, 32nd Division
The perspective had changed from the prospect of making a renewed advance to that of a desperate struggle to hold what little ground they had gained.
Our flanks were exposed and blockades had to be formed at the front line and all lines forward to our advanced posts, which developed into a series of bombing posts. The nature of the Leipzig defences, a maze of trenches and underground saps, made advancing into the salient extremely hard. One was continually attacked in the rear. What seemed dugouts were bombed, and when passed numbers of the enemy rush from them, they being really underground communications with their rear defences. The whole fighting was of a cold, deliberate, merciless nature. No quarter was given or taken.68
Private Bentley Meadows, 17th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry, 97th Brigade, 32nd Division
It was at some point in this vicious fighting that one amongst many German soldiers, poor Private Eversmann who was quoted extensively in the last chapter, met his end. How did he die? Whether he was hit by shrapnel, buried alive, shot or bayoneted it surely made little difference to him. His poignant little diary from which the extracts were originally taken was picked up later in the day by one of the Scotsmen. The desperate nature of the fighting in which he died is clearly evident from the account of one of the young German officers of the 99th Infantry Reserve Regiment, which was responsible for holding the German lines in this sector.
The shout of our sentry, ‘They are coming!’ tore me out of the apathy. Helmet, belt, rifle and up the steps. On one of the steps something white and bloody, in the trench a headless body. The sentry had lost his life from a last shell, before the fire was directed to the rear—he had paid for his vigilance with his life. It had torn open his head and his brain was lying on the steps. We rushed to the ramparts; there they come, the khaki-yellows, they are not more than 20 metres in front of our trench. They slowly advance, full equipped, to march across our bodies into the open country. But no boys, we are still alive—the moles come out of their holes. Machine-gun fire tears holes in their rows. They discover our presence—throw themselves on the ground, in front of our trenches. Once these were the trenches, now a mass of craters. They are welcomed by hand grenades and gunfire, and now have to sell their lives themselves. With my rifle firing, I felt my right hand hit by a heavy stroke, a bullet from a distance of 20 metres. The gun fell out of my hand, blood is running. I can still see how a rifleman tries to throw himself out of reach of a hand grenade thrown by Kühnel. In vain. It explodes and will probably have finished him. I have my wound dressed by an orderly and take over leading the platoon again. Another half-hour and it becomes clear that the attack has been repelled, at least in our section. I make a reconnaissance of the company positions and cannot recognise it any more. Last night it had been completely smashed. The dugout of the commanding officer is squashed, Hartbrich is alive but stunned by gas poisoning. I find Captain Meschenbier of the 3rd Company suffering from a heart attack. His company has been occupying the notorious corner of the mine explosion and had been surprised and overthrown. Only a few men, who were in the second trench, are left. Volunteers, amongst them Kühnel, begin to drive the intruders out, proceeding from the left from breastwork to breastwork, throwing hand grenades and slowly they succeed. Badly wounded ‘Tommies’ fall into our hands and their rations provide something to satisfy our hunger and thirst. But then we come to a part of the position where the enemy is able stop our advance by flanking machine-gun fire. I return to my company and give orders to restore communications between the various positions and to rearrange the groups to take account of the casualties. Hartbrich has now recovered from his stupefaction, but I feel a weakness overcoming me. At midday, I am aware that I cannot carry on, so I tell Hartbrich that I must retire.69
Lieutenant F. L Cassel, 99th Infantry Reserve Regiment, 26th Reserve Division, German Army
As the young German officer slowly made his way back he found awful evidence of the sheer weight of the British bombardment all around him. The shells seemed to be everywhere.
On my way back, what a sight! The further you got to the rear, the more the shells whistled, buzzed, hissed and boomed around your ears. Since the attack had started in the morning, the barrage fire had been laid to the rear again. At the commanding officer’s dugout, I reported that officers were required at the front. The large dugout looked terrible, full of casualties. The seriously wounded were lying there in rows to be transported further back during the night. Doctors and orderlies worked like butchers in an atmosphere that made me feel like vomiting. I was glad when I was in the open air again, in spite of all those hissing shells.70
Lieutenant F. L. Cassel, 99th Infantry Reserve Regiment, 26th Reserve Division, German Army
While the men of 99th Infantry Reserve Regiment fought to hold back the onrush of the 36th Division and 32nd Division of the X Corps, they were greatly assisted by the usual British confusion as to the degree of progress they had made. Erroneous air reports of glinting British helmets seen moving about in Thiepval village encouraged a totally false perception that it was safely in British hands. As a result the artillery did not return to bombard the village and all later attempts to use the reserves to bolster the attack on Thiepval Spur were foredoomed to failure in the face of the untouched German machine-gun nests and massed artillery. Unfortunately, this total failure knocked on to undermine the heroic success of the 36th Division to their left. Although the amazing advance of the 36th Division to capture Schwaben Redoubt had threatened to unhinge a vital part of the German line, the Irishmen were at the same time soon totally isolated. The German response was inevitable.
The Englishman still sits in Schwaben Redoubt. He must be driven out of it, out of our position. The attack is to be pushed with all energy. It is a point of honour for the division to recapture this important point today. The artillery is to cooperate with all possible strength.71
Major General von Soden, Headquarters, 26th Reserve Division, German Army
The German counter-attacks pounded away at the hastily established outpost line of the Irish, slowly but surely overrunning their hard won gains. As the bombs and bayonets drew nearer and nearer, some of the Irishmen not unnaturally panicked; all their courage perhaps exhausted by the repeated shocks and terrors of this the longest day of their lives. They found little sympathy as they fell back in desperation.
A strong rabble of tired, hungry and thirsty stragglers approach me from the east. I go out to meet them. ‘Where are you going?’ I ask. One says one thing, one another. They are marched to the water reserve, given a drink and hunted back to the fight. Another more formidable party cuts across to the south. They mean business. They are damned if they are going to stay, it’s all up. A young sprinting subaltern heads them off. They push by him. He draws his revolver and threatens them. They take no notice. He fires. Down drops a British soldier at his feet. The effect is instantaneous. They turn back to the assistance of their comrades in distress.72
Lieutenant Colonel Frank Crozier, 9th Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles, 107th Brigade, 36th (Irish) Division
Another man dead, and in this case a man who perhaps had done his utmost until he was made an example pour encourager les autres. Yet the reality was that if Thiepval was not captured by the 32nd Division then the Schwaben Redoubt could never be held. Therefore, at some point, the 36th Division would have to retire from their exposed and shrinking salient. Slowly, painfully, reluctantly they did indeed begin to fall back. By this time most of their officers and NCOs were killed or wounded. Eventually they managed to stabili
se the line in the original German front line. The Stuff and Schwaben Redoubts would not be captured again for three long months.
The attack of X Corps had offered only a brief flicker of hope through the astounding brief success of the 36th (Irish) Division. Yet the plain reality was that their breakthrough had been the anomaly rather than the rule, the result of raw courage and briefly favourable, localised tactical circumstances. Once the Germans had realised what was happening they were able to swiftly cauterise and seal off the wound and leave only the smallest of scars in their defences. The end result, despite all the excitement of the temporary breakthrough, was a near complete failure at a cost of around 5,104 casualties to the 36th Division and 3,949 casualties to the 32nd Division.
III Corps La Boisselle—failure in the centre
Next in line to the south was the III Corps. They too faced a formidable defensive fortress encompassing four distinct spurs with the intervening valleys running down from the Pozières Ridge. From north to south they were named: Thiepval Spur (actually in the X Corps area but the origin of such lethal flanking fire that it cannot be discounted in considering the fate of the III Corps), Nab Valley, Ovillers Spur, Mash Valley, La Boisselle Spur, Sausage Valley and Fricourt Spur. Once again the Germans had used the natural lie of the land to extract the maximum defensive effect, bending their lines into the valleys along the salient and re-entrant contour lines. Anyone venturing into one of the valleys was entering a trap with concentrated interlocking fire from three sides. The front-line fortified villages of Ovillers and La Boisselle were further bolstered by the Schwaben Höhe and Sausage Redoubts. Behind them lay a series of intermediate fortified lines and redoubts before the German second line proper, stretching in this sector from Mouquet Farm to the village of Bazentin-le-Petit.