Twelve Days on the Somme: A Memoir of the Trenches, 1916

by Sidney Rogerson

  As soon as he had gone I sat myself down to breakfast, and if in after years those of us who survive are afflicted with chronic indigestion, we shall have ample excuse. The difficulty of cooking without detection by the enemy, and the unpleasantness of the petrol-impregnated water led me to eschew tea. Instead, I made a hearty meal of “Maconochie”—a tinned form of stew with meat and vegetables—eaten cold and washed down with a tea-cup full of rum.

  The day again turned out bright and sunny, and the craving for sleep passed off. This was just as well, for Cropper, the additional subaltern, reported for duty and had to be taken round to A Company and duly installed. Our night's digging had been most successful throughout, and as I wandered up to see Mac, I found I had hardly to stoop in the communication trench, while Fall Trench was now quite a respectable line.

  I found Mac distinctly ill-at-ease. Almost at once he supplied the explanation by asking if I would give him permission to go out and hunt among the dead lying around Dewdrop Trench for the body of his brother, who had been reported “missing, believed killed” in an attack near Lesboeufs some three weeks earlier. Apparently Mac had just learned that some of the corpses in the valley belonged to units of his brother's division, and he was impatient to be off at once on his morbid search. I refused point-blank to allow him to go, not from any military reason but simply because, as I tried to show him, it could do no good. It was almost unthinkable that he would ever find his brother, and even if he did do so, the body would probably be so mangled or decomposed that the discovery would only leave a dreadful blot on his memory. After a little while he saw the force of my argument, and cheered up, and I spent a great part of the morning with him, making a thorough examination of the ground in front. The horizon was the line of the Bapaume Road, many of the poplars along which were still intact. The middle distance was as featureless as the ground in rear, save where on a slope a tumbled outline of masonry was recognisable as Cemetery Circle, supposed to be an enemy strong point. Certainly some movement was to be seen there and, emboldened perhaps by the quiet which prevailed, I was foolish enough to stick head and shoulders over the top to point out the spot to the machine-gun crew as a suitable one for their attention. A deafening clop! sounded in my right ear, and I fell off the fire-step, realising that that sniper's aim must have been very accurate, otherwise the bullet would not have sounded so loudly.

  Wandering round our little sector, talking here with some Yorkshire corporal, here with some of the new draft, the morning passed easily and pleasantly, to be rounded off with the midday meal, chiefly bully and a little whisky diluted with the precious pure water in my water-bottle.

  Shortly afterwards a very hot and breathless artillery officer and his orderly fell into our headquarters trench, dragging their telephone wire with them. They were representatives of a 6-inch gun battery which was proposing that afternoon to shell a piece of trench which was said to lie opposite the front of A Company, and to be still manned by the enemy. This fragment was all that remained of Zenith Trench which, with the help of the mud, had resisted the “full dress” attack which had cost us so heavily last time we had been in line, and the officer's attitude suggested that he was apologising on behalf of the Royal Regiment for having been so remiss as to leave even so short a length of enemy trench undemolished. I was not disposed very charitably towards him, as so far we had gone almost unmolested, and experience had taught us that any form of artillery offensiveness promptly evoked retaliation, which as often as not fell on the P.B.I. Still, I extended to him the ordinary courtesies of the trenches in the shape of a cigarette and whisky and water in a tin cup, and then escorted him to A Company's front line, where Cropper joined us. By careful scrutiny of No-Man's-Land we managed to identify something which we took to be the surviving stretch of trench, though we were by no means certain until the battery started firing. Then as our Forward Observing Officer corrected the range, and the shells started falling all round the spot, first one and then another German, ludicrous in their coal-scuttle helmets, long coats and boots, emerged and floundered wildly into the nearest deep shell-hole. Cropper, seizing a rifle, at once opened fire and continued firing, with a man loading a spare rifle for him.

  There must have been twenty or thirty Germans who bolted, but Cropper's fire was not accurate enough to account for more than four or five at most, though we could not really tell which were hit or which had merely stumbled and fallen. Still, it was some consolation to know that those who were not casualties must have been severely frightened ! Their “shoot” over, our gunner guests took a speedy departure, while we waited apprehensively for the retaliation which, for some unaccountable reason, came not.

  As dusk was gathering I went back by way of the front line so that I could see the company at stand-to, chatted to Mac and George, and spent some time with the officerless No. 8 platoon in the T-head. The men were very cheerful. The patrol they had sent out during the night had established that our nearest neighbours on the right were men of the Royal Irish (now Ulster) Rifles, in isolated posts some two hundred yards away. During the day the platoon had been resting, and mention of sleep reminded me that I had had none for a very strenuous forty-eight hours, and I promised myself that I would “get down to it” as soon as I got back to Company Headquarters and had got off my night's report.

  It was quite dark by the time I did get back, and Robinson came up and asked me in a confidential undertone if he might go and “hunt for souvenirs” behind the line. He was an incorrigible “scrounger,” for ever collecting the flotsam of battle—shell nose-caps, German grenades, cap rosettes, weapons, even gloves and boots—which he would take back and sell to the Army Service Corps, and I recognised his request as a polite way of saying that he wished to go out and loot the enemy dead lying between us and Dewdrop Trench. He and his platoon had done such excellent work and he was such a law unto himself that I had no heart to refuse him, although I could not give him permission to leave the trench. I compromised by saying that I should know nothing about it. If he went and returned without being found by any one in authority or hit by the enemy, all would be well. If he were caught, then he'd have to stand the racket ! I further told him that he must search every British corpse and bring me back the pay-books, after which what he did with the Germans was no concern of mine.

  He hopped over the parados without more ado and was lost in the gloom. Not long afterwards the ration party arrived panting and sweating with their heavy loads of sand-bags full of bread, bully, jam, and biscuits, and petrol-tins of water. They reported two of their number hit on the way from Battalion Headquarters and their loads lost in the darkness. Luckily that most precious item of the day's rations—the half-jar of rum—had not been lost !

  The rations carriers' was a most unenviable task, as thankless as it was dangerous. Rarely in those days did they complete their double journey without casualties. Occasionally the whole party was wiped out while their company waited, parched and famished, for the water and food scattered about the mud and shell-holes. Water was more precious even than victuals. It was everywhere “but not a drop to drink,” while the full petrol-tins were cruel burdens to shoulder over a mile or so of battlefield.

  With the day's duties successfully accomplished and the enemy contenting himself with shelling of a desultory nature and mostly directed far away in rear, I curled myself up on the trench floor and was soon off to sleep. Hardly had my senses left me than I was up and on edge in a second ! Shells had begun to fall more quickly all around us ! Then, with a whoosh of metal overhead, down came the barrage ! Explosions whirled, stamped, and pounded the tortured ground; the splitting hiss and bang of the field guns screaming above the deep, earth-shaking thud ! thud ! of the heavies until they blended into the one steady pandemonium of drumfire. The trenches rocked and trembled, while their garrisons, blinded by the flashes, choked by the acrid fumes, pressed themselves tight to the sodden walls as the avalanche of metal roared above and around them.

  Out of
the smoke along the trench emerged a runner, crouching low. “Front line — Verey lights—urgent !” he croaked, his tongue parched with the biting smoke. “Verey lights !” I yelled, “Where are they ?” They should have come up with the rations, but none had arrived. “There are some Boche ones here, sir,” shouted a voice I recognised as belonging to Purkiss, the company cook. “Are you sure they are white ones ?” I roared back across the din. “Yes, sir,” was the assurance, “Parkin fired one off in the latrine this morning and it burnt white all right !” Seizing the rotting box marked “Signal Patronen,” Mac's messenger departed again into the smoke. By now the explosions around us were fewer, but the curtain of fire, leaping and crashing, hung relentlessly in the valley, which raged and seethed, an inferno of smoke and destruction.

  So the Boche had done what we feared ! He had dropped his barrage in rear of us to cut off supports while he came across and “snaffled” my two companies ! This was the conviction which possessed me.

  “Stand-to, No. 7 !” I shouted, at the same time sending off one runner to order A Company to do the same, and another to Mac for news. While behind us the barrage flared and thundered, in front all was quiet. As we stood, tense and alert, peering over the parapet, all we could see was the black crest of the ridge some fifteen yards in front over which rose, wavered, and fell the enemy Verey lights, some burning white and steady, others soaring up in a fountain of golden sparks. Over our heads the rush of shells continued, but from in front there came no rattle of small arms. Clearly the enemy had not yet attacked.

  Suddenly, from about the position of Fall Trench, over the brow there was a hiss, and up flew a rocket. Horror of horrors ! It burst with a rosy glow and hung, a ball of claret light, over our line ! Before it had died out a second went up, bursting this time into golden rain. That German box of lights had been a mixed lot for signal purposes ! But what had we done ? Whatever request to the enemy had we in our extremity sent up ? For a few breathless minutes we waited, momentarily expecting the barrage to be shortened and fall on our unlucky heads.

  Instead, just as a thunder-shower abruptly ends, so the shelling on the instant died away, as suddenly as it had begun, and only a few random shells, like scattered raindrops, burst sporadically in rear before silence, heavy and oppressive, succeeded strife.

  All danger of an attack over, I stood the men down and hurried off to the front line where Mac laughingly described what a shock he had got when he sent up the two German lights. We thought over what signals they might be, and, after much fruitless conjecture over the first claret affair, we decided that the golden rain rocket must mean “Lengthen range: we are here,” as whenever the enemy started shelling a forest of golden rockets would rise from the shell-holes in front. That we were right was soon confirmed, and the Divisional Intelligence Report next day contained the reassuring information that “hostile signal golden rocket bursting into golden rain means lengthen range instead of barrage.” Much more important from our point of view was the fact that never again until we were relieved did a German shell fall on our company front ! Even more wonderful to relate, neither A nor B Company had a single man hit during the enemy's shelling, which we could only put down to a belated retaliation for our “shoot” of the afternoon.

  My return to Company Headquarters coincided with the reappearance of Robinson. One look at his drawn and ashen face showed me that, tough old hand as he was, he had had a fright, realising which, I forbore to curse him as I meant to, and merely asked him what had happened. His reply was that after he left the support line he turned down towards Dewdrop Trench, and that as he was examining some very promising bodies he had been caught by the barrage and forced to spend a very unpleasant and smelly half-hour in the same shell-hole with “two dead Jerries.” Then he had tried to get back to the trench, but losing his way had roamed and groped about in the filth and darkness until he had been challenged by Mac's men in Fall Trench ! In other words, he had passed through the big gap on our right flank and had had a very narrow escape from walking unwittingly into the German lines. It was a very chastened “Buggy” that rejoined his platoon.

  As for me, I had had about enough, and I lay down once again at the bottom of the narrow trench, where there was just room for my body, and slept the sleep of exhaustion till aroused, numb and cramped, for stand-to four hours later. This was the first proper rest I had had since I had left Camp 34.

  I got up to Fall Trench just as the men were standing-to, yawning and stretching themselves as they manned the fire-step, and, passing down the trench without seeing Mac, I asked one of his platoon where he was. “He's issuing rum to the covering party, sir !” was the reply. And so it was. It appeared that when he had reached the last man digging in the point of the sap the thought had occurred to him that the covering party must be cold and stiff lying out in the mud in front. In procession, though not quite erect, Mac, followed by Sergeant Priestley with the rum-jar, and a private bearing the ceremonial cigarette tin, had walked out to the party in No-Man's-Land and solemnly issued rum in the shell-hole. The value of such apparently dare-devil gestures was evident from the fact that the news had travelled with chuckles down the sap and into the trench long before the three had got safely back again.

  What a typical November morning that was ! Dawn stole upon us swathed in shrouds of swirling mist, shutting us in still further upon ourselves, surrounding us with its impenetrable curtain. The cold dank air was heavy with the smell of decay. Objects were invisible at six paces, still invisibility was safety, so after stand-down we all took the opportunity of getting on top of the trenches and having a look round.

  It was a relief to stretch one's legs and straighten one's back for a while. Between the trenches, we found, were only enemy dead, here a field-grey arm poked out of a shell-hole, there a heavy boot; here a man lay, head on crooked arm, as if asleep; there the remains of three or four littered the crater made by the shell that had killed them. Beside the communication trench a huge German lay sprawled on his back, arms and legs splayed starfish-like, sightless eyes gazing perplexedly heavenward. So that, I noted, was the cause of the aroma which I always encountered on my way to the front line, but which did not prevent one of the men going busily through the corpse's pockets and discovering a small piccolo which he presented to me as a memento ! This generosity on the part of the finder, I should explain, sprang from disappointment. What all the men were after really was the Iron Cross, the dream of every souvenir-hunter, and which, were the lucky finder mercenary enough to wish to dispose of it, commanded a very good market.

  We found also ample proof that, blown out of his last trenches in the battle zone, the enemy had resorted to a system of fortified shell-holes. A big crater would be chosen, deepened for safety and a step dug for fire-purposes. Into it would be put, we judged, two or three men, a machine gun, a Verey pistol and a plentiful supply of ammunition, lights, and “iron rations” and brandy or schnapps. To cover them, we found they had large ground sheets which could be stretched over the hole, thus converting it into something reasonably habitable. There were two or three of these fortified craters between the trenches, and out of them we took many parcels of signal lights, some tins of German bully marked “Rindfleisch”—which the men swore was human flesh in tins !—and two or three hinged iron boxes, designed to carry machine-gun belts.

  While we were still eagerly hunting about “on the top,” word was brought me that the Colonel was on his way to the line with the Brigadier, news which caused every one to be packed off to his station at once. I hurried up to the front line, warning Mac and Cropper as I passed them, and arriving on the left of A Company in time to salute the C.O. With him was Brigadier-General Fagan, who had only recently taken over command of the brigade and who was not destined to hold his command for long—which was a pity, as he was a keen soldier, always determined to see for himself, no matter how bad the conditions. As we were situated none of us would have been surprised if the Colonel had satisfied himself with
coming up to the line once, but he came up every day, and the Brigadier himself once—a small point, perhaps, but one which was not missed by a single man, as their comments showed. But what none of us knew at the time was that the Colonel's daily visit to his companies took him no fewer than four hour's strenuous walking ! How long it took the Brigadier to come up from still farther in rear can only be conjectured, but the very fact that he would thereby be absent from his headquarters for many hours should be some answer to those who demand to know why general officers did not put in more frequent appearances in the front line.

  Obviously the General was surprised and gratified to find the beginnings of a really sound trench system where, as he admitted, he had expected only a chain of posts scattered in a line of linked shell-holes. And Fall Trench, now complete with two saps from which a full view could be had of the gully in front, certainly did return us a reward for our labours. Cleared of mud, fire-stepped, deep, and continuous along the two-company front, it looked most efficient, but I modestly explained that we had been lucky in the weather, and that if it had rained much no amount of work could have achieved the result. Most of all was I proud of the men. Their spirits had been magnificent. They had worked like niggers, with never a shirker amongst them, and as the General went round even his practised eye was slow to find a fault in their bearing, their alertness, or the cleanness of their arms. Rifles were well-cared for, and well-oiled bombs were stacked in neat piles on the fire-step near each sentry post. Moreover, thanks to Mac and George, the sentries knew their jobs and the lie of the land in front.

  At no other time in the war did I meet a better, keener, or more reliable set of men than that mixed Yorkshire-Northumbrian contingent in front of Le Transloy. With little except cold bully to eat, with less water to drink, and none to wash in, with nowhere to sleep except the open trench, they behaved for the three days as if the whole affair were some tiresome form of entertainment which they were compelled to sit through.