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

by Sidney Rogerson

  This news he gave me with the cheerful air of one correcting a piece of false information, with no hint of either horror or disgust.

  Forthwith he proceeded to spread out his trophies on the fire-step as if arranging a shop-counter, and hissed like a groom does when curry-combing a horse—for many of the exhibits belonged to owners long deceased—as he made an inventory of them. There were six or seven German watches complete with chains, two gold rings, an automatic pistol, several pocket-books, which were found to contain nothing more valuable than letters and some vulgar comic post-cards, two tins of “rindfleisch” (“the poor b——'s iron rations,” commented Robinson), and a pair of gloves. As he sorted them out, he kept up a running commentary in the curious barrack slang he had picked up in Malta. I interrupted him to know what he had done about the English dead, whereupon he produced from his haversack about twenty pay-books, and other articles. He made to hand these over, but I bluntly reminded him that it was his affair entirely, and that he would have to take these out with him and hand them to the Quartermaster himself. I added, “And I think it would be only decent of you to write to the relatives yourself.”

  The sequel has a moral. Robinson did write to several wives and mothers only to get letters back asking, for example, if he could please forward our Jim's watch, or “what became of the money my Albert had on him when he was killed.” I can swear that Robinson took nothing from those bodies except the pay-books, etc., which were the price he paid for his evening's “scrounge.” My aim in making him do this was to establish the identity of the nameless corpses, many of whom would certainly be reported “missing.” It was a dirty and dangerous task to set a man to do—C and D Companies had on both nights sent out burying parties which had accomplished little, since the men on them had been too sick to dig !—and as it proved, a thankless one. The requests from relatives received by Robinson showed clearly how little idea they had of the circumstances in which the identity of their lost loved ones was established—hurriedly, and under shell-fire, by a corporal grubbing about in the darkness for souvenirs.

  To resume. I left “Buggy Robby” parcelling out the less desirable items of his collection to members of his platoon, and got up to the front line to find Mac had just crawled in. He was hotly and fluently indignant with our guns, which he complained were firing very short. He had had a bad time out in front, and for a few tense minutes he and the sergeant had lain flattened to earth while whizz-bangs made a “Brock's benefit” all around them. “Just when I thought our number was up,” Mac added, “Sergeant Priestley leant towards me and in a hoarse whisper said, ‘Tell yer what, sir; the blokes that's firing them guns must be conscientious objectors firing their recruit's course’ !”—and, disgruntled though he was, he had to laugh at what, considering the circumstances, surely deserves a mention in the classic dictionary of soldiers' humour.

  Mac was so insistent that it was our guns which were firing short that I promised to report it to Battalion Headquarters. The P.B.I. had suffered heavily during recent weeks from their own artillery, which was why we were prepared to damn the gunners without reflecting upon the difficulty of their task. The raggedness of the front line and the absence of aiming marks must have made accurate shooting difficult enough without the additional handicap of mass-produced ammunition, some of it of U.S. manufacture. It is a wonder really that the guns were able to put down their protective or offensive barrages so close to infantry of whose exact whereabouts there were often only hazy notions, and yet so effectively. I must confess that on the present occasion I stumped off down to my Headquarters and sent off a special runner to Battalion making charges against the artillery, which I believe on reflection to be ill-founded. For this reason—the salient between Lesbœufs and Sailly Saillisel was so narrow that it is almost certain that enemy gunners must have seized the oppor tunity to rake our positions with enfilade fire. And it was at the best of times practically impossible for the unhappy recipients of such missiles to tell the exact direction from which they arrived.

  The small hours of the morning passed uneventfully. It was too cold to keep still for long, so I spent the time in moving about the line, talking to a man on sentry here, sitting down for a few minutes' smoke and yarn with a group of men there; then taking a turn at digging to keep my circulation going. In short, the usual, tedious routine of an officer's night-life in the line—talking, shifting from one leg to another, smoking cigarette after cigarette, roaming about aimlessly or with the vague general idea of keeping the men cheerful and at work; all the while trying to stave off sleep until “stand-to” should give at least a temporary point to existence.

  I was back amongst No. 7 platoon some time before 5 p.m. so as to be ready to meet my guests from Dewdrop Trench. “Buggy” suggested to me that we might want some refreshment when they arrived, and “One or two parcels came up in rations, sir, for men who were casualties in the last show. We can't send these back, can we, sir, and there might be some good stuff in them.”

  To interpolate here, the usual practice was to send back again all parcels for men who had become casualties. It was a form of honesty which it is hard to believe was appreciated by the senders, who had returned to them the battered parcels they had sent to loved ones since reported killed or missing; nor one which was carried out by any army but our own. Here the circumstances were exceptional. Carrying up the mail had put additional loads on ration parties already overburdened with necessities of life. We could not carry out the parcels. Besides, we were short of food. So I consented to them being opened. In less time than it takes to write, Robinson had been through them, and chuckled as he brought out a tin of café au lait and one ditto of cocoa au lait.

  There came a prodigious shuffling and clanking from away in rear, and the shapes of men loomed up behind our trench. Our whispered challenge was answered by a hoarse, “D Company !” followed by the grumble, “Where the 'ell's A Company ?” “Farther up the trench, mate,” came from Purkiss. “But don't make such a perishing row. D'yer want to ask Jerry to throw over a few iron rations ?”—the only answer to which rebuke was a “Move on, D Company,” and the line of shapes shambled off. Their departure was followed by the equally noisy arrival of C Company—it was impossible for trench-accoutred men to move silently—which drew more wrath from the occupiers, already incensed at being crowded out of the comparative comfort they had contrived for themselves with so much labour. Naturally the newcomers were not going to sit waist-deep in mud, so the few clean stretches of trench were inconveniently congested.

  There was much pushing and scuffling in the darkness before the two support companies were distributed evenly along the support trench to the satisfaction of Hawley and Sankey, who then came and planted themselves, their Company Sergeant-Majors, and runners, on me. Our fears lest they should have been heard by the Boche proved groundless. Not an additional shell came over, and cramped though we all were, we settled down as comfortably as we might to await the entertainment in which we were to be the audience if not the spectators.

  Robinson was in high fettle, and promptly got his patent oven going. I can see him now standing up in the trench while we squatted or sprawled round in the darkness, his lean face lit by the faint flickering of the whale-oil lamp on which mug by mug he brewed us hot drink, talking to himself the while in his curious mixed slang, “Tray bonn, ma peach ! Now the ‘doo lay !’ Where's the panee ! Bonn for the troops ! This and a little drop of ‘Tom Thumb’ will go down grand.”

  And he was right. Those tins of café au lait eked out with chlorinated water and a generous addition of rum made all of us round him, men as well as officers, the most comforting refreshment we had had for three days. It was a slow business, as only one mug could be heated at a time, but Hawley had started sipping his second ration from an almost red-hot enamel mug when suddenly the flashing of a distant line of light lit up the night sky above the trench. Silence. A great cool rush of steel overhead. Then the roar of a thousand guns rushed upon us a
nd over us, submerging us in a sea of sound. Hawley jumped, spilt scalding liquid down his chin, swore vigorously. I yelled, “Keep down, everybody.”

  The command was needless. For the moment all sensations were drowned in the din of the barrage. Instinctively every one crouched a little closer to earth, though the fitful red glow of cigarettes showed that each of us was smoking feverishly, until our nerves and ears had attuned themselves to the racket into which we had been plunged.

  Most miraculously the enemy did not retaliate—a few extra shells “crumped” heavily into the valley behind, but that was all, and within a few seconds Robinson had resumed his ministrations. We waited no longer on his cooking to circulate the rum. We all had another tot, possibly two. Some one started to sing “If you were the only girl in the world.” At once every one joined in. Shades of Violet Loraine and the immortal Robey ! What matter how much noise we made ? The enemy's ears would be ringing with our shell-bursts, so there we sat under our moving canopy of missiles and for nearly half an hour bawled at the top of our voices all the favourite songs—the only interruption a message from Mac to say that all was well in the front line.

  Then, though the cannonade still rumbled angrily up north, the racket around us died down. We could distinguish again the sound of individual guns, the “double-tap” of a Hun 5.9 in. or the “Whizz-Bang !” of our eighteen-pounders. Except for an occasional shot, the firing ceased. Quiet again. We looked about us. It was dawn. Our little interlude was over. Cramped with sitting, we rose and stretched ourselves; looked about us; saw ourselves for what we were, a set of bleary-eyed, unshaven scallywags. Hawley said, “Well, I don't know about you, Sankey, but I think I shall trek back to breakfast.”

  And that is how we were unwittingly stall-holders for one of the biggest shows of the Year of Grace, 1916. A few miles north of us the 5th Army had attacked on a wide front. It is known to history as the Battle of Beaumont Hamel. But this we only learnt afterwards. At the time the assault was delivered we drank, smoked, and sang with never a thought for the thousands of lives being choked out by bullet, bayonet, or bomb within a few miles of us. We were content to know some one else was “for it.”

  Wearily C and D Companies dragged themselves out and tramped back to Dewdrop Trench. Their departure increased the reaction from the exhilaration of those fleeting minutes when we had forgotten the present. Now it was only the harder to get down again to the old routine. Memories of the “Byng Boys,” the Alhambra, the “Boche” Court Hotel or any other association of our last leave awakened by our singing were rudely shattered by the sight of mud-caked wet equipment, dirty, unshaven faces, and eyes red-rimmed from want of sleep. Bah ! Where was the cosiness of that trench now ? It was nothing but a dirty ditch.

  With a curt instruction to young Briggs to have something ready for me to eat on my return, I set off once more for the front line. Around me the mist eddied and swirled.

  This daily round was becoming wearisome. How many times even during our short tour of duty of three full days and nights had I not toiled up and down the same earthen alleyway, to and from similar alleyways ? Had I been older, more maturely reflective, I might have asked myself what was the point of it all. Even as it was, some words came back to me that my college tutor had written in his last letter home before dying by a sniper's bullet in front of Ypres. “This is a boring show,” he had written, “more stupid even than dangerous.” At this distance I think he described the war in one phrase better than all the peeps into hell purveyed by a best-selling war novelist to a credulous public.

  But at the time I only knew that things were getting depressingly and tiringly monotonous. After all, most of us were too young to have any standards of comparison. This was our life. We had been pitchforked headlong into khaki from school or college. The war was just another experience as first our preparatory school, and then our public school had been. We were not philosophers in uniform. The majority of us were hardly mature enough to philosophise at all.

  There was no doubt about the mist that morning. It was reported as a “fog” in the divisional intelligence reports. It was just such a morning as in England would disorganise suburban train services and cause City men to arrive at their offices late and angry. And on such a morning at Cambridge, I reflected, I should have pulled the blankets a little closer round my ears and called to my “bedder” to stand the hot water can in front of the fire to warm for a bath. I should certainly have “cut” my early lecture. Even at the moment, my father would probably be coughing at the rawness of the morning as he set out to take early service in the village church. All over the world, in city or in hamlet, folk would be going about their business, while I ploughed through mud and mist in an endeavour to keep happy and efficient a hundred and fifty men living an existence as monotonous as my own.

  But whatever it might have done at home, to us the fog came as a blessing. It lay like a fleecy blanket across the front, enforcing inactivity on both sides by robbing war of its eyes. Not a shot was being fired from gun or rifle, and as I entered the front line, there was no sound except the coughing or subdued voices of weary men to break the stillness. One or two more energetic than the rest stamped up and down, clapping their sides to keep the circulation going. The machine - gun still pointed steadfastly at Cemetery Circle, though now it was covered with a ground-sheet. There was nothing to be done.

  When I met Mac he told me that he had had an experience even more novel than ours. It appeared that, simultaneously with the 5th Army's offensive far away to the left, the French had attacked on a smaller scale some few hundred yards to our right, and the front line troops had found themselves in the orchestra stalls for a battle-piece. According to Mac the spectacle was so fantastic as to be scarcely credible. Pressing the metaphor of the theatre, the stage, seen through the curtain of the early morning mist, was lit by the dancing flames of the barrage, the din of which, drowning all else, gave the scene the muted movement of a silent film. According to Mac's description, he found himself sitting on the fringe of a downpour of shells confined to his satisfaction and comfort neatly in an area far enough away for his men to be quite out of danger. On this stage the earth leapt and spouted like a river lashed by giant hailstones. The “heavies” threw up slow geysers of flying earth to the accompaniment of rolling thunder. The sharp crackle of shrapnel, daubing the smoky grey with splashes of angry red, blended with the swift, bustling clatter of the 75's: followed swiftly by the harsh patter of the machine-guns in concealed chorus and the final breathless popping of musketry as the French left their trenches, advancing in ragged lines to the assault. Mac explained how now and again they disappeared into the rolling banks of smoke, emerged, halted until their barrage strode on, advanced again—then suddenly the leading wave of blue-grey figures rushed into the forward German positions. From our trench the men could see helmeted Germans rising incredibly out of the powdered earth, see them fire, turn to run, surrender, or lug their heavy machine-guns out of action. On went the scene, a slowly moving torrent of flying earth and steel, until it flowed over the ridge and passed out of sight, the pale gleams of winter daylight slowly dispersing the mist and revealing a now empty stage where a battle, seen as in a dream, had been fought out a few minutes before.

  So that last day in the line passed under its mantle of fog. The short winter daylight passed in uneasy silence. The men slept; took their turn at a meaningless spell of duty at the sentry-posts, peering stupidly into the mist; and wrote letters or “Whizz-Bangs” to be posted home when we got out—“I am well,” “I am in hospital,” etc. “Cross out the words which do not apply.”

  Robbed of their eyes in the air, even the heavy guns were still, but one of the few shells which our field guns fired, burst short in the very mouth of A Company's sap, killing two men.

  The piece of news sent me off post haste to Fall Trench to investigate. Cropper was in the sap when I arrived. The shell that had done the damage had come from directly in rear, otherwise it could not have
entered the trench as it had done. It had burst plumb in the middle of the sap-way, killing the two men instantaneously but without mutilating them much. There was little room for doubt that it was one of our own shells, and that was removed when, after a few seconds poking about in the smoke-blackened soil, we found the nosecap. It was a British eighteen-pounder. It was only natural to curse the gunners, the rotten American ammunition, the worn guns, the inefficiency of the intelligence people who did not know where their own bloody infantry were, the staff, and every one else whom we could think of for blotting out two good Yorkshire soldiers. But, living as we were in scoops and burrows which not only were not shown on any map, but which we ourselves were frantically anxious should be difficult to detect by direct observation, we were as much at the mercy of our own as of the enemy gunners. And when we had blown off our indignation, we had to admit that the marvel was that such accidents did not happen more often. Anyway, there was nothing to be done. I promised Cropper I would report to Battalion Headquarters so that they could pass the information on to our divisional artillery. Cropper undertook to see that the victims were buried as soon as night fell, so that we might leave everything shipshape for the Worcesters.

  From A Company's sap to that of B Company was only a few yards along Fall Trench, and my visit took the post there, consisting of a young lance-corporal and two men, by surprise. The corporal had not only allowed his men to take off their equipment, but was minus his own, while there was a general atmosphere of slackness. It was strictly against orders to remove any essential equipment while in the trenches, and the offence naturally became still more heinous in men on what was virtually outpost duty. Still, in view of the youth of the N.C.O. and his good record, I was prepared to let him off this time with a good dressing-down, had he not shown a kind of familiar resentment that I should have taken exception to his indiscipline. This hint of familiarity touched me on a delicate spot. It had always seemed absurd to me to try and adhere rigidly to the conventional formalities of discipline in the trenches where officers lived cheek by jowl with their men, shared the same dangers, the same dug-outs, and sometimes the same mess-tins. Quite apart from the absurdity, I believed, and nothing I ever saw subsequently shook me in the belief, that the way to get the best out of the British soldier was for an officer to show that he was the friend of his men, and to treat them as friends. This naturally involved a relaxation of pre-war codes of behaviour, but it did not mean that an officer should rub shoulders with his men at every opportunity, or allow them to become familiar with him. It meant rather that he should step down from the pedestal on which his rank put him, and walk easily among his men, relying on his own personality and the respect he had earned from them to give him the superior position he must occupy if he wished to lead. He had consequently to steer a delicate course between treating those under him as equals in humanity if inferiors in status, and losing their respect by becoming too much one of them. He must deal with them sympathetically and at all times interpret the law in the spirit and not in the letter, but he had equally to be jealous of his position, and never to allow leniency to be looked upon as weakness, or friendship to degenerate into familiarity. He had, in short, to discriminate between the men who would appreciate his interest and those who would be foolish enough to try and impose upon his good-nature.