Captain Thomas kept extremely silent; but from shyness, not sullenness. ‘Yes’ and ‘no’ were the limit of his usual conversation. He never took us subalterns into his confidence about company affairs, and we did not like asking him too much. He proved most conscientious in taking his watch at night, which the other company commanders did not always do. We enjoyed his food-hampers, sent every week from Fortnum & Mason – we messed by companies when in trenches. Our one complaint was that Buzz Off, who had a good nose for a hamper, used to spend longer than he would otherwise have done in the company mess. His presence embarrassed us. Thomas went on leave to England about this time. I heard of his doings there accidentally. He had walked through the West End in mufti, astonished at the amateur militariness that he met everywhere. To be more in keeping with it, he gave elaborate awkward salutes to newly-joined second-lieutenants, and raised his hat to dug-out colonels and generals – a private joke at the expense of the war.
At Laventie, I used to look forward to our spells in trenches. Billet life spelt battalion mess, also riding-school, which turned out to be rather worse than the Surrey-man had described. Parades were carried out with peacetime punctiliousness and smartness, especially the daily battalion guard-changing which, every now and then, it was my duty to supervise as orderly officer. On one occasion, after the guard-changing had ended and I was about to dismiss the old guard, I saw Buzz Off cross the village street from one company headquarters to another. As he went by I called the guard to attention and saluted. After waiting for half a minute, I dismissed the guard. But Buzz Off had not really gone into the billet; he was hiding in the doorway. Now he dashed out with a great show of anger. ‘As you were, as you were, stand fast!’ he shouted to the guard. And then to me: ‘Why in hell’s name, Mr Graves, didn’t you ask my permission to dismiss the parade? You’ve read the King’s Regulations, haven’t you? And where the devil are your manners, anyhow?’
I apologized, explaining that I thought he had gone into the billet. This made matters worse. He bellowed at me for arguing; then asked where I had learned to salute. ‘At the depôt, sir,’ I answered.
‘Then, by heaven, Mr Graves, you’ll have to learn to salute as the battalion does! You’ll parade every morning before breakfast for a month under staff-sergeant Evans and do an hour’s saluting drill.’
He turned to the guard and dismissed them himself. This was not a particular act of spite against me, but an incident in the general game of ‘chasing the warts’, at which all conscientious senior officers played, and honestly intended to make us better soldiers.
I had been with the Royal Welch about three weeks, when the Nineteenth Brigade moved south to the Béthune sector to fill a gap in the Second Division; the gap had been made by taking out the Brigade of Guards to include in a Guards division then being formed. On the way down, we marched past Lord Kitchener. Kitchener, we were told, commented to the brigadier on the soldier-like appearance of the leading battalion – which was ourselves – but said cynically: ‘Wait until they’ve been a week or two in the trenches; they’ll soon lose some of that high polish.’ He apparently mistook us for a New Army formation.
The first trenches we went into on arrival were the Cuinchy brick-stacks. My company held the canal-bank frontage, a few hundred yards to the left of where I had been with the Welsh Regiment at the end of May. The Germans opposite wanted to be sociable. They sent messages over to us in undetonated rifle-grenades. One of these was evidently addressed to the Irish battalion we had relieved:
We all German korporals wish you English korporals a good day and invite you to a good German dinner tonight with beer (ale) and cakes. Your little dog ran over to us and we keep it safe; it became no food with you so it run to us. Answer in the same way, if you please.
Another grenade contained a copy of the Neueste Nachrichten, a German Army newspaper printed at Lille, giving sensational details of Russian defeats around Warsaw, with immense captures of prisoners and guns. But what interested us far more was a full account in another column of the destruction of a German submarine by British armed trawlers; no details of the sinking of German submarines had been allowed to appear in any English papers. The battalion cared as little about the successes or reverses of our Allies as about the origins of the war. It never allowed itself to have any political feelings about the Germans. A professional soldier’s duty was simply to fight whomever the King ordered him to fight. With the King as colonel-in-chief of the regiment it became even simpler. The Christmas 1914 fraternization, in which the battalion was among the first to participate, had had the same professional simplicity: no emotional hiatus, this, but a common-place of military tradition – an exchange of courtesies between officers of opposing armies.
Cuinchy bred rats. They came up from the canal, fed on the plentiful corpses, and multiplied exceedingly. While I stayed here with the Welsh, a new officer joined the company and, in token of welcome, was given a dug-out containing a spring-bed. When he turned in that night, he heard a scuffling, shone his torch on the bed, and found two rats on his blanket tussling for the possession of a severed hand. This story circulated as a great joke.
The colonel called for a patrol to visit the side of the tow-path, where we had heard suspicious sounds on the previous night, and see whether they came from a working-party. I volunteered to go at dark. But that night the moon shone so bright and full that it dazzled the eyes. Between us and the Germans lay a flat stretch of about two hundred yards, broken only by shell craters and an occasional patch of coarse grass. I was not with my own company, but lent to ‘B’, which had two officers away on leave. Childe-Freeman, the company-commander, asked: ‘You’re not going out on patrol tonight, Graves, are you? It’s almost as bright as day.’
‘All the more reason for going,’ I answered. ‘They won’t be expecting me. Will you please keep everything as usual? Let the men fire an occasional rifle, and send up a flare every half-hour. If I go carefully, the Germans won’t see me.’
While we were having supper, I nervously knocked over a cup of tea, and after that a plate. Freeman said: ‘Look here, I’ll phone through to battalion and tell them it’s too bright for your patrol.’ But I knew that, if he did, Buzz Off would accuse me of cold feet.
So one Sergeant Williams and I put on our crawlers, and went out by way of a mine-crater at the side of the tow-path. We had no need to stare that night. We could see only too clearly. Our plan was to wait for an opportunity to move quickly, to stop dead and trust to luck, then move on quickly again. We planned our rushes from shell-hole to shell-hole, the opportunities being provided by artillery or machine-gun fire, which would distract the sentries. Many of the craters contained the corpses of men who had been wounded and crept in there to die. Some were skeletons, picked clean by the rats.
We got to within thirty yards of a big German working-party, who were digging a trench ahead of their front line. Between them and us we counted a covering party of ten men lying on the grass in their greatcoats. We had gone far enough. A German lay on his back about twelve yards off, humming a tune. It was the ‘Merry Widow’ waltz. The sergeant, from behind me, pressed my foot with his hand and showed me the revolver he was carrying. He raised his eyebrows inquiringly. I signalled ‘no’. We turned to go back; finding it hard not to move too quickly. We had got about half-way, when a German machine-gun opened traversing fire along the top of our trenches. We immediately jumped to our feet; the bullets were brushing the grass, so to stand up was safer. We walked the rest of the way home, but moving irregularly to distract the aim of the covering party if they saw us. Back in the trench, I rang up brigade artillery, and asked for as much shrapnel as they could spare, fifty yards short of where the German front trench touched the tow-path; I knew that one of the night-lines of the battery supporting us was trained near enough to this point. A minute and a quarter later the shells started coming over. Hearing the clash of downed tools and distant shouts and cries, we reckoned the probable casualties.
‘Yes, sir.’
He asked for particulars. When I told him about the covering party, he cursed me for not ‘scuppering them with that revolver of yours.’ As he turned away, he snorted: ‘Cold feet!’
One night at Cuinchy we had orders from divisional headquarters to shout across No Man’s Land and make the enemy take part in a conversation. The object was to find out how strongly the German front trenches were manned after dark. A German-speaking officer in the company among the brick-stacks shouted through a megaphone: ‘Wie geht’s Ihnen, Kameraden?’
Somebody shouted back in delight: ‘Ach, Tommee, hast du denn deutsch gelernt?’
Firing stopped, and a conversation began across the fifty yards or so of No Man’s Land. The Germans refused to disclose what regiment they were, or talk any military shop.
One of them shouted out: ‘Les sheunes madamoiselles de La Bassée bonnes pour coucher avec. Les madamoiselles de Béthune bonnes aussi, hein?’
Our spokesman refused to discuss sex. In the pause that followed he asked after the Kaiser. They replied respectfully that he was in excellent health, thank you.
‘And how is the Crown Prince?’ he asked them.
‘Oh, b—r the Crown Prince,’ shouted somebody in English, and was immediately suppressed by his comrades. After a confusion of angry voices and laughter, they all began singing ‘Die Wacht am Rhein’. That trench was evidently very well held indeed.
I now had a trench periscope, a little rod-shaped metal one, sent me from home. When I poked it above the parapet, it offered only an inch-square target to the German snipers; yet a sniper at Cuinchy, in May, drilled it through, exactly central, at four hundred yards range. I sent it back as a souvenir; but my mother, practical as usual, returned it to the makers and made them change it for a new one.
My dug-out at Cuinchy was a rat-riddled culvert beside the tow-path; when we went back to support billets, I dossed in the cellar of a ruined house at Cambrin village, lit by a couple of shell-holes through the floor above; but when back in reserve billets at Béthune, I had a beautiful Louis XVI bedroom at the Château Montmorency with mirrors and tapestries, found the bed too soft for comfort, and laid my mattress on the parquet floor.
15
BY the end of August 1915, particulars of the coming offensive against La Bassée were beginning to leak through the young staff officers. The French civilians knew about it; and so, naturally, did the Germans. Every night now new batteries and lorry-trains of shells came rumbling up the Béthune-La Bassée road. Other signs of movement included sapping forward at Vermelles and Cambrin, where the lines lay too far apart for a quick rush across, and the joining up of the sap-heads to make a new front line. Also, orders for evacuation of hospitals; the appearance of cavalry and New Army divisions; issue of new types of weapons. Then Royal Engineer officers supervised the digging of pits at intervals along the front line. They were sworn not to reveal what these were for, but we knew that it would be gas-cylinders. Ladders for climbing quickly out of the trenches were brought up by the lorry-load and dumped at Cambrin village. As early as September 3rd I had a bet with Robertson that our division would attack from the Cambrin-Cuinchy line. When I went home on leave six days later, the sense of impending events had become so strong that I almost hated to go.
Leave came round for officers about every six or eight months in ordinary times; heavy casualties shortened the period, general offensives cut leave altogether. Only one officer in France ever refused to go on leave when his turn came – Cross of the Fifty-second Light Infantry (the Second Battalion of the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry, which insisted on its original style as jealously as we kept our c in Welch). Cross is alleged to have refused leave on the following grounds: ‘My father fought with the regiment in the South African War, and had no leave; my grandfather fought in the Crimea with the regiment, and had no leave. I do not regard it in the regimental tradition to take home-leave when on active service.’ Cross, a professional survivor, was commanding the battalion in 1917 when I last heard of him.
London seemed unreally itself. Despite the number of uniforms in the streets, the general indifference to, and ignorance about, the war surprised me. Enlistment remained voluntary. The universal catch-word was ‘Business as usual’. My family were living in London now at the house formerly occupied by my uncle Robert von Ranke, the German Consul-General. He had been forced to leave in a hurry on August 4th, 1914, and my mother undertook to look after the house for him while the war lasted. So when Edward Marsh rang me up from the Prime Minister’s office at Downing Street to arrange a meal, someone intervened and cut him off – the telephone of the German Consul-General’s sister was, of course, closely watched by the anti-espionage section of Scotland Yard. The Zeppelin scare had just begun. Some friends of the family came in one night, and began telling me of the Zeppelin air-raids, of bombs dropped only three streets off.
‘Well, do you know,’ I said, ‘the other day I was asleep in a house and in the early morning a bomb dropped next door and killed three soldiers who were billeted there, a woman, and a child.’
‘Good gracious,’ they cried, ‘what did you do then?’
‘It was at a place called Beuvry, about four miles behind the trenches,’ I explained, ‘and I was tired out, so I went to sleep again.’ ‘Oh,’ they said, ‘but that happened in France!’ and the look of interest faded from their faces as though I had taken them in with a stupid catch. ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘and it was only an aeroplane that dropped the bomb.’
I went up to Harlech for the rest of my leave, and walked about on the hills in an old shirt and a pair of shorts. When I got back to France, ‘The Actor’, a regular officer in ‘A’ Company, asked me: ‘Had a good time on leave?’
‘Yes.’
‘Go to many dances?’
‘Not one.’
‘What shows did you go to?’
‘I didn’t go to any shows.’
‘Hunt?’
‘No.’
‘Slept with any nice girls?’
‘No, I didn’t. Sorry to disappoint you.’
‘What the hell did you do, then?’
‘Oh, I just walked about on some hills.’
‘Good God,’ he said, ‘chaps like you don’t deserve leave!’
On September 19th we relieved the Middlesex Regiment at Cambrin, and were told that these would be the trenches from which we attacked. The preliminary bombardment had already started, a week in advance. As I led my platoon into the line, I recognized with some disgust the same machine-gun shelter where I had seen the suicide on my first night in trenches. It seemed ominous. This was by far the heaviest bombardment from our own guns we had yet seen. The trenches shook properly, and a great cloud of drifting shell-smoke obscured the German lines. Shells went over our heads in a steady stream; we had to shout to make our neighbours hear. Dying down a little at night, the racket began again every morning at dawn, a little louder each time. ‘Damn it,’ we said, ‘there can’t be a living soul left in those trenches.’ But still it went on. The Germans retaliated, though not very vigorously. Most of their heavy artillery had been withdrawn from this sector, we were told, and sent across to the Russian front. More casualties came from our own shorts and blow-backs than from German shells. Much of the ammunition that our batteries were using came from the United States and contained a high percentage of duds; the driving bands were always coming off. We had fifty casualties in the ranks and three officer casualties, including Buzz Off-badly wounded in the head. This happened before steel helmets were issued; we would not have lost nearly so many with those. I got two insignificant wounds on the hand, which I took as a favourable omen.
On the morning of the 23rd, Thomas came back from battalion headquarters carrying a notebook and six maps, one for each of us company officers. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘and copy out all this skite on the back of your
maps. You’ll have to explain it to your platoons this afternoon. Tomorrow morning we go back to dump our blankets, packs, and greatcoats in Béthune. The next day, that’s Saturday the 25th, we attack.’ This being the first definitive news we had been given, we looked up half startled, half relieved. I still have the map, and these are the orders as I copied them down:
FIRST OBJECTIVE – Les Briques Farm – The big house plainly visible to our front, surrounded by trees. To get this it is necessary to cross three lines of enemy trenches. The first is three hundred yards distant, the second four hundred, and the third about six hundred. We then cross two railways. Behind the second railway line is a German trench called the Brick Trench. Then comes the Farm, a strong place with moat and cellars and a kitchen garden strongly staked and wired.
SECOND OBJECTIVE – The Town of Auchy – This is also plainly visible from our trenches. It is four hundred yards beyond the Farm and defended by a first line of trench half way across, and a second line immediately in front of the town. When we have occupied the first line our direction is half-right, with the left of the battalion directed on Tall Chimney.
Goodbye to All That Page 15