This is the charge that must be laid at the door of the higher staff, that it kept troops with no strategic or tactical advantage in that giant memorial to its own failure, the Loos battlefield, instead of withdrawing them to clean ground where some adequate trench system could be constructed which would enable them to observe and hold the enemy and at the same time to cut down the high daily toll of lives. For as things were, the British and German lines were in places only a few yards apart, so that hand grenades could easily be lobbed into them; sometimes they actually ran into one another, separated only by a trench “stop” of sandbags and barbed wire. Yet for all their closeness they were often out of sight of each other, since the continual explosion of mine and counter-mine had reared great mounds of gleaming chalk high into No-Man's-Land. These craters were hotly debated territory: the scene at night of bloody, silent struggles with knife and trench club; watched over during daylight by anxious sentry posts, perched at the end of shallow saps, who peered at each other through tiny periscopes clipped on to bayonet blades.
To the terror of the mine from beneath was added the hail of missiles from above, ranging from small hand and rifle grenades, each capable of wiping out a sentry post, through a variety of trench-mortar bombs of medium calibre up to the enormous “minenwerfers.” Standing over 3 feet 6 inches in height and filled with nearly two hundred pounds of high explosive, they had a more demoralising effect than any other single form of enemy action. There was no sound of distant discharge to give warning of their coming. Ears had to be sharp indeed to hear the warning whistle blown by the German gunners before they fired their mortars. Eyes had to be fixed in the air to watch for the shape which would soar ponderously upward, turn slowly over and over in its downward flight like a tumbler pigeon, and with a woof ! woof ! woof ! burst with a shattering crash, sending long jagged strips of metal whirring savagely for yards and rending into tiny fragments everything around. The very leisureliness of their descent was demoralising. The uncertainty as to where they would pitch was demoralising. The immense clamour of their explosion was demoralising. But most demoralising was the damage they could do. Men do not easily or soon throw off the shock of seeing all that could be found of four of their comrades carried down for burial in one ground sheet.
It was in such an atmosphere of putrefaction, amid the continual nerve-racking strain of “minen-werfers,” of raid and counter-raid, mine and countermine, that we had rested through the warm autumn months. Then, as the leaves fell and the weather began to break, the order had come for us to return to the Somme. Anxiously the men had asked, “Are there any ‘minnywoffers’?” and had been relieved to get the answer, No. But since then we had done one attack, which, at the loss of six officers and two hundred and thirteen other ranks out of the total of four hundred and thirty-seven who had “gone over the top,” had taught us the existence of the new terror of the mud.
It is not strange, therefore, that we were badly in need of rest—not “rest” in the official sense, which meant withdrawing a Battalion from the rigours and dangers of the actual trenches to a camp within the devastated zone, composed of squalid hutments linked up by crazy duckboards and sour from dirt and overcrowding. What we needed was to be sent right out of the battle area, to some quiet village where a man could expel the shell-fumes from his lungs and fill them with the sweet air of the countryside; where he could rest his tired eyes with the sight of something green after the drab monotony of a battlefield where the constant churning of shells, wheels, and feet had robbed even freshly turned earth of its distinctive colour.
Which was why the three of us were so eagerly discussing the rumours of a move to Italy, and conjured up warm visions of some “cushy” line of trench with the blue Alpine skies above and the limpid Piave below, where “minenwerfers,” mustard gas, mines, and mud were unknown, and where warfare was, in fact, still something of the gentleman's business we somehow imagined it ought to be.
A rap on the tent canvas and the announcement of “Battalion Orders, sir,” brought us back to reality with a bump. “The Battalion will relieve the 2nd Devon Regiment in the front line on the night of the 10th—11th November. ...” Each of us received the news in his own way—Mac with an air of “I told you so,” George Hall with an adequate Yorkshire curse, and I, as I thought befitting a company commander, with a great show of enforced cheerfulness. Inwardly each of us was equally depressed, and I personally shrank from my task of having to communicate the news to the company, or at least to those who did not already know it !
The sector we were to take over from the Devon Regiment was at the very apex of the salient formed by the offensive, a little to the left of Lesboeufs Wood, and almost exactly opposite what was left of the village of Le Transloy. As the crow flies, Citadel Camp was little more than six miles behind this line, yet such were the conditions that this comparatively short distance had to be accomplished in two stages. To-morrow, orders explained, the Battalion would quit the Citadel and move to other quarters designated merely by a map reference but actually in the particularly unsalubrious locality between Bernafay and Trones Woods. Having passed the gist of these instructions on to Company Sergeant-Major Scott, I turned in to get as much sleep as possible.
Next morning, in torrential rain, burdened with trench impedimenta under waterproof capes, the Battalion trudged wearily out of camp in Indian file, along roads ankle-deep in slush and congested with traffic of all kinds, from strings of sodden pack-mules, ammunition limbers, and “cookers” to ambulances and staff cars. If anything were needed to put the seal of absolute cheerlessness on that move it was the single-file formation. No matter how dismal the present, or hopeless the prospect, a very comforting sense of comradeship can be developed by tramping along in fours. There is a sense of close company; the ability to talk to your neighbour, even to sing with him. There is the inevitable swing and rhythm of the column. But put men into Indian file and all this corporate cheerfulness evaporates. They develop a spiritless shamble with the whole straggling line continually contracting and expanding, alternately treading on one another's heels, then panting to recover lost distance. So it was on this occasion, with the added discomfort that ever and again a passing vehicle would push men off into the treacherous morass at the roadside so that they sank up to their waists and were only pulled out with great effort. Or a block would occur, and all traffic stopped while men and horses alike stood silent, wet, and wretched.
The few whose brains were not too numbed for thought comforted themselves with the reflection that at any rate another camp awaited them at the end of the march. There would be somewhere to lie down in dryness and take off one's pulling, sopping boots. There would be braziers. There would perhaps even be a hot meal ready.
Actually there were none of these things. There was not even a camp, at least a camp which was ready to receive us. This, and much more of a most violent nature, was reported to the Colonel by a very desperate Quartermaster, to whom the comfort of his beloved regiment was his religion. Some one had blundered, we knew at once, but, ignorant of what had actually happened, we shrugged our shoulders and damned the Staff, who, as the controllers of our movements and our destinies, were not unnaturally, though often unfairly, blamed for everything that went wrong. Had we known the truth we might have been angry instead of philosophically resigned, for on this occasion the Staff were not the real culprits. They had neither sent us to the wrong map reference nor forgotten to provide us with accommodation. The trouble arose from the fact that we were timed to take over this accommodation an hour earlier than its sitting tenants, a territorial Battalion of the Scottish Rifles on its way out of action, were due to vacate it. Notwithstanding that they were moving back towards comfort and safety, these Scotsmen stubbornly refused to quit one minute before they were scheduled to do so. To all the blandishments and cajoleries of Hinchcliffe, our Quartermaster, they turned a deaf ear, and not even his argument that the incoming unit was commanded by a Cameronian weighed with them in the
slightest. Their observation was that in this war the motto was: “Every man for himself and the de'il tak' the hindmost,” to which Hinchcliffe, properly nettled, retorted that that was a game at which two could play, and stamped out with the declaration that it would go ill with the conduct of the war and the happiness of the troops if such a spirit were indeed to gain ground.
In reality it was very seldom that so uncompromising an attitude was encountered between unit and unit, and even in this instance there was some excuse for it in that the “Jocks” had dragged themselves out of the line only the day previously after a terrible mauling. The Battalion had been almost wiped out, and the handful of survivors, a little over a hundred in number, were weary and shaken in body and spirit, and too dejectedly apathetic to rouse themselves to any effort until such was demanded of them by orders.
Of these complications we knew nothing. All we realised was that the usual muddle had taken place. There was nothing to be done. Until the powers that were could find a lodgment for us in that congested wilderness we were more utterly homeless than any waif on London streets. Meanwhile the rain descended remorselessly.
This check occurred at the corner of Bernafay Wood amidst whose shattered trunks and battle filth we fell out until the tangle should be straightened out. Wetter they could not be, but the men were in a most cheerful mood, induced probably by a determination to rise above their surroundings. Huddling together for warmth, they fluently cursed this latest example of what they described as a “proper bloody box-up.” One wag started to sing, “When you're all dressed up and nowhere to go, Life seems weary, dreary, and slow !” con molto expressione. And in this way the hour passed, and we slopped off through the mud to take possession of the now vacant “Camp 34.”
For two reasons it is difficult to convey a satisfactory impression of that camp's surroundings. First, one had lost the habit of looking afield. This was due to the cramping effect of trench life, where a man was a member of a very small community from which, sleeping or waking, he was never separated, and was confined for days at a stretch within the narrow limits of a trench. “Keep your head down” was a piece of advice which became second nature, with the result that, metaphorically speaking, he slunk about from hole to hole, from one piece of cover to the next, his head down, not daring, or else forgetting, to look about him. His vision changed, he began to lose the wider view, and instead to see falconwise the minutest details around, details which will ever survive in his memory. How many men who fought and lived around Ypres or Arras for months carry any mental picture of the general aspect of the countryside ? But ask them to describe the Kirchner pictures pinned to the walls of their dug-out, the particular brand of bully-beef tin which hung on the wire, and they will find little difficulty.
Secondly, we had grown accustomed to living in a region where almost every natural landmark had been obliterated. Country that had once been the twin sister of the Sussex Downs, with little comfortable villages nestling round their churches in the folds of the hills, had been battered into a vast monotony of drab. Churches, houses, woods, and hedgerows had all disappeared. Our landmarks were provided for us in the shape of military notice-boards in the back areas, or by such débris as wrecked aeroplanes, derelict tanks, dead horses, and even dead men nearer the front line.
Suffice it, therefore, to say that the camp was situated on an open space of what had once been grassland between the mangled remains of Trones and Bernafay Woods. The distance was shrouded by rain and mist, from out of which the boom of gunfire came distant and muffled.
“Camp 34” itself was a camp in name only—a few forlorn groups of rude tarpaulin-sheet shelters huddled together, as though they shrank from the surrounding desolation. One or two bell-tents there were, it is true, here and there, but even they looked as unhappy as if they knew themselves to be but insecurely at anchor in the rising sea of mud. Though even these few tarpaulin-sheets and bell-tents might have been sufficient shelter for the pitiful remnant of the Scottish regiment, they were entirely inadequate for a Battalion more or less up to strength. Since no shelter had been prepared for us, necessity forced us to take steps to procure it for ourselves. In other words, we were reduced to looting, or in the more picturesque language of the ranks, “scrounging” additional cover. With the grim determination of the British soldier, bedraggled men set off with the hearty approval, if not the verbal permission, of their officers to see what they could find. I am not ashamed to confess that, unofficially, I strongly encouraged the more experienced soldiers—who were therefore less likely to be caught !—to scour the dripping countryside for anything likely to improve the company's accommodation, and even gave them permission to leave the camp “to visit the canteen, sir.” Needless to say, that canteen was never discovered, but other valuable things were.
So far as I was concerned, the first incident was the arrival of the Colonel, imperturbable as always, though inwardly raging at the lack of organisation which subjected men going in to battle to such experiences. Behind him, looking indescribably sheepish, stood my young servant, Briggs.
“I congratulate you on your servant,” the Colonel said casually. “Why, sir ?” I queried. “Well, as I walked into the very commodious trench shelter reserved for Battalion Headquarters, I saw your man walking out at the other end with the stove. And you hadn't been in camp five minutes ! A good boy, that. But I'm sorry I could not spare the stove !” The Colonel smiled, and moved on.
Every minute saw an addition to “camp stores,” the greatest triumph being the purloining, by Privates Purkiss and Kiddell, from under the very noses of the rightful owners, of a huge balloon tarpaulin which proved big enough of itself to house more than half the company ! In less than a couple of hours I was satisfied that reasonably dry and warm quarters had been contrived for every man, of B Company at least. Meanwhile, a hot meal had been issued from the cookers and—the rain stopped. Spirits began to mount again, and as a setting sun was wanly mirrored in the water-logged shell-holes, snatches of song began to rise with the smoke of braziers from the improvised shelters.
Not least remarkable was the transformation of the bell-tent allotted for Company Headquarters. On arrival this had flapped lugubriously on its sagging ropes over a patch of mud, but within the hour it had been pitched afresh, taut and confident in appearance; a neighbouring R.E. dump had provided enough new trench boards for a complete floor, and a brazier had been lit.
The enlargement of that camp in so short a time is worthy to rank among the minor miracles of war.
The day closed with an issue of rum. The first stage of the relief was over.
II
TAKING-OVER
NEXT morning we were reluctant to leave the frowsy warmth of our flea-bags, and for once it was left to Mac, usually the last to stir, to crawl out, open the tent-flap, and let in the November mist and cold. As he did so a working-party of dismounted Indian cavalry plodded past, their faces peering, livid and drawn, out of their woollen cap-comforters. Mac had acquired a smattering of “soldier” Hindustani, and called out a greeting, the effect of which was instantaneous, the grey faces lighting up with smiles at the sound of their own tongue spoken, no matter with how vile an accent, in this terrifying, alien wilderness.
The first news that greeted us on arising was that the enemy had been up to some of his “frightfulness” during the night. German planes had not only carried out a raid behind our lines, but a long-range shell had actually hit one of the Battalion cookers and “napooed” it completely. The fact that we had heard neither of these demonstrations is a proof that we had slept soundly ! But we did not like the news about that shell. It must have been uncomfortably near the camp.
After a mournful beginning, the day tried bravely to make amends for its predecessor by being bright and sunny, and the ingenuity of company commanders was tested in devising small parades or exercises which, without worrying the men, should keep them occupied and warm. How often organised activity of this sort is misinterprete
d ! For officers as well as men the path of least resistance would have been to do nothing, yet here were close on five hundred men dumped down for the space of forty-eight hours on the equivalent of a ploughed field, soggy with winter rain; housed in rude shelters into which they had to crawl and in which they could scarcely sit upright; their only warmth two ration blankets and the body of the next man, and with the dismal prospect of four days of even worse discomfort and considerably more danger to exercise their minds. Left to themselves, what was there for them to do but stand listlessly about or lie, getting hourly more cramped and stiff, in their blankets on the soaked earth ? Better by far that they should be made to busy their brains and their bodies, to wash and shave themselves, to clean their equipment, and to move about on some trivial task or other while the sun shone or daylight lasted.
Twelve Days on the Somme: A Memoir of the Trenches, 1916 Page 3