I had barely got back to Company Headquarters before we were provided with an aerial thrill. Two German aeroplanes flew over at a great height. “Archie” got on to them at once and surprisingly enough scored a direct hit with the fourth or fifth shell. There was a little puff of orange smoke against the blue, and a white wing with its black cross came fluttering down like a wounded butterfly. We applauded such accurate shooting with never a thought for the pilot so suddenly hurled to death.
Quickly the short winter day drew to its close, and with the coming of dusk the front woke to activity. Shells from both sides began to swish hurriedly overhead, bursting in dim fountains of sparks far in front or away in rear; machine guns searched angrily for the movement that would start with the dark. On all sides Verey lights hissed and wavered in the sky, while from the shell-holes in front the enemy kept firing up lights of different colours, apparently as signals.
By now, I thought, the Battalion would be parading after an early tea in Camp 34, and I rejoiced secretly that I was ensconced in the earth close to the enemy instead of starting out on that weary journey to the line at the head of a company of men, burdened with heavy equipment, harassed by shell-fire, sliding and slithering in and out of shell-holes and old trenches, each man straining his whole energy in keeping in sight the vague blur of the man in front, all ultimately following blindly a guide who had only the haziest notion of his whereabouts. I could almost hear the constantly reiterated shout of “Halt in front ! Halt in front ! Man stuck,” as some poor devil sank up to the waist in an unseen hole. I could feel the awful tenseness as the line waited till he had been hauled out. I could picture the guide, giving way to an uneasiness which forced itself upon him, come to a standstill and peer anxiously about him, whereupon the line of men, their eyes over-strained in piercing the darkness, would telescope one on top of the other and, fluently indignant, jostle the guide into moving on somewhere, anywhere, that he might not, by standing still, add to the existing hopelessness the crowning despair of “being lost.”
As it happened, the company reached the Devons' Headquarters in the sunken road without casualties. Then started the worst part of the journey, that half-mile through the valley where my guide had told me “it was easy to go wrong at night.” Luckily enough, the company struck the white tape which had been laid by some enterprising engineer, and many a silent prayer must have gone up for that unknown benefactor from those who followed its slender guidance. Grim though that valley had appeared in the early morning light, it was terrible in the darkness. The atmosphere was significant enough to inspire even the most stolid with respectful haste. It was not altogether the dead, whom the hurrying eye noted, unconsciously, sprawling in the grotesque attitudes in which they had fallen; nor yet the impressively new shell-holes which the accustomed nose registered immediately by the pungent reek of fresh lyddite. It was not altogether the sudden flaring glow of the Very lights, suspiciously vigilant over No-Man's-Land; nor yet the staccato bark of an occasional machine-gun startling the crowded stillness, its unnaturally bold rat-tat-tat stealing hastily away in stealthy listening echoes into the silence which closed in more heavily oppressive than before. It was some of these things and all of them. The night was dark, so dark that a man was invisible at a few yards' distance, and yet for all their haste men crouched low along the tape as though they felt a hundred baleful eyes to be upon them. In that valley, deserted but for their own presence, and yet filled with a nameless dread, men had a vividly stifling sense of unbearable crowding.
The passage of the valley was accomplished with only two casualties. One of these was Sergeant Chamberlain, who was acting Company Sergeant Major in place of Scott. He did not hold the post for long, poor devil. The company were struggling up towards the line with the Devon guide first, Mac second, and Chamberlain third. As they topped a small rise, Mac, who was wearing a light-coloured leather jerkin, stepped aside to turn it inside out so as to minimise any risk of detection by the enemy. No sooner had he done so than a random whizz-bang thudded into the ground on the very spot where he had stood, exploding in the mud with a smothered burst. The sergeant rose bodily: fell back dead, killed by concussion. It says much for Mac that, despite his own wonderful escape, he had taken the papers from the body and moved the line off again before the last man had time to close up and learn the meaning of the temporary stoppage.
Meanwhile the Devons had been getting more and more impatient to get out. Hour succeeded hour and still no sign of the relieving company came to us waiting in the trench, until at about 11 p.m. there was a sound of trudging feet and the clank of metal, and Mac's voice hailed us out of the gloom. The journey had taken them seven hours !
There followed much jostling, scrambling, and cursing; men floundering in the mud, officers and N.C.O.'s wrestling with the farce of handing over receipts for stores and ammunition which they could not see, much less count; until at last the Devons were all clear and we had taken over the sector.
Before the Devon's Headquarters moved off, C.S.M. Radford (whom I then met for the first time, but who was destined to become a firm friend during the next eighteen months before being taken prisoner on the Aisne in 1918) handed over to my servant Briggs a half-full jar of rum. Generosity of such a kind was so rare as to be worth remarking, and is an indication of the existing determination not to carry out of the line anything that could be left behind.
As for our dispositions, Mac and George passed on with Nos. 5 and 6 platoons to the front line, No. 7 platoon, under Corporal Robinson, remained around Company Headquarters in the support line, and No. 8 went into the protecting T-head out of the communication trench.
It was now my job to go round the company to tell all and sundry what the place looked like in daylight and what they had to do. No sooner had I arrived in the front line than the first casualty occurred, a new recruit being shot in the mouth by a stray bullet. He was bleeding freely, but did not seem seriously hurt, and after the stretcher-bearers had patched him up as best they could in the darkness, he was sent down with an orderly to the M.O. at Battalion Headquarters.
Getting Mac and George together, I explained the position to them. I told them that it looked as if we had a stiff job ahead of us. To begin with, the mud made communications so difficult that some delegation of responsibility was necessary. Although Company Headquarters were less than 100 yards from Fall Trench, the distance measured in terms of mud was so great that I could not be sure of maintaining any effective touch from the support line. I told Mac, therefore, that he would have to take charge of the front-line trench. Secondly, it would be necessary to find out who were our nearest neighbours on the right flank, and to establish contact with them. It was agreed that No. 8 platoon were best placed to do this, and that they should send out a patrol of one N.C.O. and two men without delay.
But by far the most important task was somehow or other to put the rudimentary trenches into something approaching a defensive system before daylight. Accordingly I told Mac that his first job must be to see that a sap was dug out so as to secure a view into the dead ground in front. Lastly, but not least, I impressed upon him—and indeed upon every man I passed—that as there were no dug-outs our safety depended upon our energy in digging, as a deep, narrow trench was as safe from shell-fire as anything but a tunnel or mined dug-out; further, that since we did not know where the Germans were, it was unlikely that they were any the wiser as to our whereabouts. The order, therefore, was “dig like blazes all night and lie doggo all day”—hard orders to have to give to men, many of them strangers to the regiment, whose period of rest had been exhausting discomfort, and who were now utterly weary after their seven hours' tramp through mud and débris in the dark. Which was why I tried to explain things personally to every individual.
The response was wonderful, as may be judged from the following incident:
Before I had started from Company Headquarters I had put the same facts before Corporal Robinson. Now Robinson, No. 8300, a New Zealander a
nd a regular soldier of some twelve years' service, rejoiced in the nickname of “Buggy,” which is to imply that he was not “all there.” The sobriquet was earned, I had been informed, because of certain eccentricities, as, for example, his habit on frosty mornings in the breastworks at Laventie, during the winter of 1914—15, of suddenly restoring his circulation by running violently down the trench puffing hard, “Shoo ! Shoo ! Look out ! I'm an express train.” He was also said to have solved the problem of providing scrambled eggs in the line by breaking a dozen fresh eggs or so into his water bottle and pouring them out as required ! Eccentricities he may have had, but no more resourceful soldier ever served. He was an especial source of pride to me, since when I had taken over the company he was one of its black sheep, always in trouble. His years of service had automatically won him a lance stripe long before, but he had had it taken from him for some drunken scrape. I was at once impressed with his intelligence and resource, and probably more from a lucky inspiration than any reasoning, I decided that what he wanted was to be given responsibility, and that his unsatisfactory conduct sprang from his being a seasoned private soldier under non-commissioned officers, the majority of whom were raw and inexperienced boys. Against the Colonel's advice, I carried my point, and was richly rewarded by seeing Robinson change in the twinkling of an eye into a most valuable N.C.O. He was a most lovable character, and his death outside the ramparts at Ypres, in 1917, left a gap in the ranks of the regiment that was never filled.
But to return. When I had left Company Headquarters it had been in a trench about four and a half feet deep. When I returned it was nearer seven feet ! Robinson's platoon—mostly miners— had excelled themselves, and if the trench was only less than two feet wide at the bottom, it was now safe against anything but the biggest howitzer shell.
Worn-out after being “on the go” continuously for sixteen hours, I sat down, with a sigh of relief and a pull at my flask, to write my report and draw a sketch map of my dispositions by the jealously guarded light of a stub of candle. I had barely begun when there was a scream, a flash, and a thud close at hand. Out went the candle, and some one down the trench cried, “Stretcher-bearers ! Stretcher-bearers !” Our two stretcher-bearers, Hammond and Pettican, the one from Tyneside, the other from Colchester, hurried past me, and as I relit my candle I heard the following dialogue:
Low groans of “I'm 'it ! I'm 'it !” followed by a pause.
Then from one of the stretcher-bearers, “Nay, Bob, you're not hit.”
“I'm 'it, I'm 'it, I'm 'it !” groans getting louder.
Another pause. Then, “Nay, Bob, you're not hit at all.”
“I'm 'it !”—this time in a positive roar—“I am 'it, I tell thee, and a bloody big soss and all on top o' t' head !”
Followed a gust of laughter, and eventually the explanation that the stricken one was Private Robert Parkin, forty-two years of age, toothless, and from Rotherham; that he had been perched up on the high fire-step as sentry when the shell arrived some five yards in front of him; that the said shell had burst in the mud and blown a large clod at him, hitting him on the helmet, knocking him down all the way to the bottom of the trench and all the wind out of his body. Never was man more certain that he was mortally wounded !
It should here be interpolated that Parkin was one of the few people who preferred the coverless ditches of the Somme to the more highly organised trenches farther north, for the sole reason that they were free of rats. He had a rooted dread of rats. Night after night in the sector from the Brickstacks at Cuincy to the Quarries at Hulluch, no matter what time I came back to the dug-out, I was sure to find Parkin sitting nodding in a corner, the inevitable cigarette in his toothless gums, instead of sleeping. “It's them rats, sir,” he would explain. “I can't abide them. I hate them much worse than I do Johnny Squarehead across the way.” Like many a British soldier he had no personal dislike of the enemy. Indeed, Parkin was only a soldier by accident, since he had, on his own confession, joined up in a moment of alcoholic exuberance after seeing a friend off to the front. He never remembered taking the shilling, and “when the sergeant come and claimed” him next morning he was as surprised as his wife was annoyed. But he stayed in France to the bitter end and, escaping all injury, became my servant after Briggs was missing in May 1918, and eventually was one of those who helped to carry my kit off the troopship Huntzend which brought us back to be demobilised in February 1919.
All this is by the way. I went on with my writing. So far as our immediate front was concerned, “conditions were quiet.” From time to time there was the deep drone of a heavy shell lumbering overhead; the muffled report of its distant burst. Now and then a whizz-bang would stab the darkness with its vicious hiss and flash. Rifle-fire crackled and popped, and at intervals the harsh rattle of machine-guns sounded up and down the front. But around me the only noises were the clink of spade and pick, and the grunts of digging men.
“Things are quiet,” I wrote, “and work is proceeding as well as the mud will allow. There is nothing to report.”
Yet tragedy was abroad little more than a hundred yards from me.
A prompt start had been made on digging out the two saps, and to protect those engaged on the task Skett had sent out a covering party under a 2nd Lieutenant named Pym, just as I had sent out one under Mac. Pym, who was yet another importation from the ranks of the Canadian forces, had barely got his party out in front when a German machine-gun opened fire. Every man threw himself flat, but it was only a random burst. Although from some shell-hole close to them in the darkness Pym ordered his men back to the trench, he himself did not return with them. Neither did he follow them in. He was a wild individual, so that at first his absence was not out of the ordinary. Then Skett called out to him by name. There was no reply. Alarmed, Skett, having no other officer with him except the other subaltern in charge of the isolated post on the left, sent out a first and then a second patrol in charge of a non-commissioned officer. These scoured the inky waste, crawling from shell-hole to shell-hole, calling the missing officer's name. All in vain. Poor Skett was at his wits' end. The first time he had been in charge of a company in the front line, and here was one of his officers missing. Pym might have been captured, possibly killed, but he might equally well be lying wounded or dying in No-Man's-Land.
Getting together a larger patrol, Skett sent them out in charge of a trusted sergeant, and stumbled along Fall Trench to explain the situation to Mac. The two agreed that if this last patrol met with no success it was essential that an officer's party should go out. Skett had no officer to send, while orders were insistent and explicit that company commanders were not to leave the line themselves. Mac immediately volunteered to go himself as soon as he could get permission from me to leave his sap, and sent off a note to me.
The messenger plodded down the communication trench to Company Headquarters where, after sending my report to the Adjutant, I was trying to get a little sleep on the floor of the trench. “Work on sap going well,” I read. “Can I go to A Company and have a look for Pym ?” “Have a look for Pym ?” I thought. “What the devil does he want to do that for ?” I knew they were friends and that it was their habit to forgather for a talk and a smoke when work was slack. “Blast Mac !” I said to myself. “Can't he understand that we have got to get these trenches a decent depth before daylight ?” and promptly wrote a reply to the effect that this was “no time for demonstrations of affection,” and that he was to carry on with the sap till it was finished before indulging in any informal trench conference.
In other words, even at such a short distance from the scene no word had reached me, nor had Mac, thinking I already knew, made it clear that any untoward incident had occurred. Of course, as soon as he got my reply, Mac realised what had happened, hastily wrote another note, and went back to his sap to wait for the few minutes it would take me to come up as soon as I knew the situation.
Meanwhile, Skett returning to his own company, had found that the third pa
trol had just crawled in to report that they had found no trace of Pym. Desperate, as time was of the utmost importance, Skett determined to go himself, against orders though this was. He conceived it to be his personal responsibility to leave no stone unturned to find Pym. Some premonition must have come to him, for as he collected a few reliable men together to go with him, he turned to his servant, and handing him the valuables and documents out of his pockets said, “Here are the wages I owe you. You'd better take them while you can get them,” and without more ado scrambled out of the trench.
Hardly had he put a foot in No-Man's-Land than he fell back dead, his head split open by a random bullet. Who shall say that he did not know his fate was upon him ? Those who had been with him from the morning have little doubt about it.
This was the news that greeted me as I reached Mac in response to his second note. A Company being now without an officer, I took over the company and at once sent out patrols under both Mac and George. All night these two scoured the ground in front, but no trace was found, nor has word ever since been heard of Pym.
The mud had swallowed him up as completely as it had, by delaying communication between Mac and myself, killed poor Skett. Him we buried before daylight as reverently as we could in the circumstances, digging a grave between bursts of machine-gun fire in the parados of Fall Trench.
III
TRENCH-HOLDING
DAWN on the 11th found us all feeling the effects of our labours and the lack of sleep. Legs were attacked by acute shooting pains due to the strain of constant movement in the mud. Eyes smarted with tiredness. Faces and fingernails were caked with mud.
Directly stand-to was over, the majority of the men fell straight down to sleep, but for Mac and me there was little rest, as the Colonel arrived and insisted on walking the whole weary way round both company fronts ! He approved my dispositions and told me he had decided to leave me in charge of both companies, but to send up another subaltern to do duty with A Company.
Twelve Days on the Somme: A Memoir of the Trenches, 1916 Page 5