On the night of 5 June, the British artillery laid down a barrage on the salient and the Bull’s Eye. The men in the raiding party crawled into No Man’s Land, and as the barrage lifted they blew up the remains of the barbed wire with high explosive Bangalore torpedoes before leaping into the German trenches. The men were in the enemy lines for about ten minutes. They captured eleven prisoners from around the Bull’s Eye and killed about twenty-five other German defenders. On the call to withdraw, they moved slowly back across No Man’s Land but, responding quickly, the German artillery began to fill the area with shell fire. Many men were hit as they withdrew, including Lieutenant Barnes. In total six men were killed and seventeen wounded. Barnes’s body was later found just twenty yards from the safety of the British trenches.
The raid was regarded as a success and compliments poured in from brigade and division headquarters. Both Haig and Rawlinson were keen on trench raids like this. They thought it kept up the aggressive spirit of the men, obtained useful information about enemy dispositions and, most importantly, helped to sustain morale. In fact, at battalion level, such raids were very unpopular. They were thought to be wasteful of life; the Lonsdales’ raid on the Bull’s Eye had cost them many good men including one of their best young officers.
Nevertheless, in June, trench raids up and down the Somme sector were ordered nightly and during the week-long bombardment at the end of the month the troops carried out several raids each night. Many lost their lives and when unwelcome information came back, like the fact that the shelling had failed to cut the barbed wire or that the Germans were surviving in their deep and extensive dugouts, it was ignored or regarded as an exaggeration. In the case of the Lonsdale raid, it was concluded after interrogation of the German prisoners that they were ‘poor specimen Saxons’ belonging to the 99th Reserve Regiment. An officer in the 31st Division later wrote that orders ‘to carry out raids were most unpopular and were at the same time costly in personnel and besides was not good for the morale of the men’.3
As the Lonsdales endured several months of transfers into and out of the front, so they began to suffer from another of the characteristic problems of trench life. Unusually for an MO working with a battalion in a busy regimental aid post, Lieutenant George Notman Kirkwood of the 11th Borders kept scrupulous records of every patient he dealt with. Kirkwood was a Scot who had studied medicine and surgery at Glasgow University, qualifying in 1905. According to the Medical Directory he practised in Penrith in 1907 and 1908, and over the following two years at the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle. In 1910 he emigrated to the Cape Colony in South Africa, where he seems to have continued working as a doctor. But in 1915, Kirkwood returned to Britain to serve his country and was commissioned a lieutenant in the RAMC. In October he was appointed MO to the Lonsdales. He seems to have been popular in the battalion, and like many MOs soon became a well-known and respected figure.
The battalion’s war diary listed every casualty suffered by the Lonsdales as the battalion got to grips with life on the Western Front. By 6 February 1916, when they had been in the trenches for six weeks, nine men had been wounded and two killed, and it was now that Kirkwood listed his first man as wounded with shell shock. Four days later, after a heavy bombardment along the front, a second victim of shell shock was recorded. Three weeks on, after shelling had blown in a dugout, burying three men, a third man was noted as suffering from shell shock. Over the next few months Kirkwood listed more cases. The numbers were not high, although as a proportion of all wounded they totalled about 17 per cent.4
When the seven-day artillery bombardment began at the end of June, the German batteries repeatedly fired back into the British lines. On 25 June, the enemy retaliation was described as being ‘very heavy during the afternoon’; one man was wounded and two were listed as suffering from shell shock. The following day, two men were killed in the German shelling and thirty more were wounded; on this day alone nine were diagnosed with shell shock. It’s difficult to know how to interpret these numbers. It is possible that such an incidence of battle trauma was typical of all units rotating in and out of the front line, although many MOs did not itemise shell shock cases separately from the other wounded. By comparison, the war diaries of the 6th and 8th Battalions of the Border Regiment recorded no cases of shell shock (although that does not mean they did not have any). The war diary of the 7th Battalion listed cases in some months and not in others, probably depending upon the officer keeping the diary for the month. In December 1915, when the 7th was in Ypres, its War Diary listed eighty-nine officers and men as wounded, six of whom (approximately 7 per cent) were listed as having shell shock.
It is possible that Kirkwood had a particular interest in shell shock and in the emotional traumas suffered by the men for whom he was responsible. It is not clear from the surviving documents whether he was more likely to list a man as having shell shock than any other MO, or whether the Lonsdales did actually suffer a higher incidence than other battalions. The evidence is not conclusive either way. And although the Lonsdales were suffering cases of shell shock, the incidence was not much higher than the average across the rest of the British army in the first six months of 1916.5
On 21 June, Machell received his orders for the Big Push. The 32nd Division and the 36th (Ulster) Division to its left, the two front-line divisions of X Corps, faced one of the most formidable sections of the German line. In front of the 32nd was the Leipzig Redoubt, the salient where the Lonsdales had carried out their raid a few weeks before. The German front was not one line of trenches but many, ascending a ridge from the lower ground known as Nab Valley. The westward-facing line of the redoubt was packed with machine gun nests, sited so that each was able to cover a wide trajectory with enfilade fire. They could not only fire across No Man’s Land and into the British trenches but behind the lines as well, where a series of small woods offered the only cover available. A little further north, at a spur of the ridge that ran along the whole front, was Thiepval. The village was by now little more than piles of rubble where houses, a church and a chateau had once stood. But the Germans had set up many machine gun emplacements in the cellars of these buildings, often linked by tunnels. From this high position, on the western edge of the ridge, the machine guns could fire north and south. Behind these front lines, on the reverse slope of the ridge, were a further series of strongholds, running from the Schwaben Redoubt to Mouquet Farm in the south. They too were well constructed with impressively strong defences.
On the right flank of the X Corps front, 97th Brigade faced the Leipzig Redoubt along a front of about half a mile. The 17th Highland Light Infantry was to storm the redoubt at 7.30 a.m. The stretch of No Man’s Land to the west of the salient was relatively narrow at 200 yards; that to the south and east was much wider at about 600 yards, and was swept by machine guns from the east where on a small incline along the slope of the Nab Valley the Germans had built yet another fortified emplacement called the Nord Werk.
As this stretch of No Man’s Land was swept by fire from the salient to the north and enfilade fire from the stronghold to the east it was decided there would be no assault at this point. Having successfully assaulted the Leipzig salient from the west, the plan was for the occupiers to move along the German trenches bombing their dugouts as they progressed into the southern edge of the salient. They would then expel or capture the defenders and consolidate this section of line as well.
Machell and the Lonsdales were to wait in reserve behind the main British front line. Their orders were that at 8.30 they were to move forward, leapfrog across the Highlanders who would have occupied the German front lines, and advance on their second line at Mouquet Farm, a total distance of about a mile and a half. This they were to capture and consolidate, reinforcing it with machine guns that would be sent up from the brigade’s heavy machine gun company.
The day before the assault, Machell issued his own orders to the battalion. They began, ‘The GOC [32nd] Division expects us to take Mouquet
Farm and to keep it. I told the General that he could rely on the Lonsdales to carry out his orders.’ Machell then gave precise information about the deployment of each of his four companies. In his succinct style he wrote, ‘All not hit must push on. Must do our job. If all goes well, I stay proper place.’ Battalion commanders had been told to remain in the rear in order to keep in command of events. Machell continued, ‘if goes badly, I come up and see it through.’ Machell went from company to company, making sure that every officer and NCO knew what he had to do. Just as in the successful raid three weeks before, he wanted everyone to know exactly what was expected of them. Mouquet Farm should be in the hands of the Lonsdales by noon.
The artillery bombardment at this section of the front, as elsewhere, looked impressive but did not deliver what the infantry hoped and needed. None of the principal machine gun emplacements had been hit, and the rubble at Thiepval provided ideal opportunities to hide the machine guns when they were brought out. A battery of two Royal Artillery 9.2-inch howitzers, some of the heaviest guns, were damaged by a ‘premature’ shell explosion which put both guns entirely out of action. And the bombardment again failed to inflict sufficient damage on the barbed wire, which continued to prove a major obstacle. On the morning of the attack, the gunners had strict instructions to follow a precise timetable, lifting the barrage backwards from the front line to the second line, and then further back still as the day progressed. Their orders were that this could not be changed other than by a senior divisional staff officer. When the barrage got way ahead of the advancing troops, there was no way of bringing it back and concentrating shell fire on the deadly machine gun positions in the first line.
On the evening of 30 June, each man received 220 rounds of ammunition, a waterproof sheet, two sandbags for filling, two full water bottles, his rations for a day and a one-pound tin of meat and biscuits. At 10 p.m., exactly on schedule, the Lonsdales filed into Authuille Wood, where they occupied newly dug assembly trenches about 400 yards behind the front line. They deployed perfectly and despite the barrage and counter-fire raging around them, did not suffer a single casualty. Morale was high and the men were doubtless looking forward to showing the enemy what the Lonsdales could do. The moment they had awaited for a year and a half was fast approaching.
Brigadier Jardine decided to position his assault troops well out into No Man’s Land in the minutes before the barrage was to lift at 7.30. As an observer attached to the Japanese army in the Russo-Japanese War, he had noted how close the Japanese pushed their assault troops under the cover of the artillery barrage before assaulting the enemy lines. Elsewhere along the front, officers who decided to push men forward into No Man’s Land were advised to position them no more than 100 yards from the enemy line. Jardine decided to move his two battalions of the Highland Light Infantry to within about thirty to forty yards of the German line. When he had suggested this as a tactic to Rawlinson in person his idea had been ignored, but in this instance it proved a brilliant success. At precisely 7.30, as the barrage lifted to the rear German lines, the Pals of the 17th Highlanders charged forward the few yards into the German trenches and, as the Official History put it, ‘in one well organised rush overran the front of the Leipzig salient’.6 They captured dozens of prisoners who were still in their deep dugouts, overcoming within just a few minutes one of the strongest points on the German front line.
Without delay, the Highlanders, supported by the men coming up from the 2nd KOYLI and the 16th Highland Battalion, moved on to cross the 150 yards to the next German line, known as the Hindenburg Trench. But now they were exposed to machine gun fire from both sides and began to suffer heavy losses. Meanwhile the defenders had fully recovered after the lifting of the barrage, and those attackers who tried to bomb their way through to the southern edge of the salient came up against stiff resistance. At this point, Jardine intervened and, against standing orders, instructed the artillery to ignore their prearranged schedule and to pull their fire back to the trenches his men were now trying to assault. As a consequence the battlefield filled with smoke and explosions as the artillery rained its fire on the Hindenburg Trench and the groups of British infantry withdrew to the Leipzig Redoubt.
At exactly 8.30, in accordance with the timetable, the Lonsdales prepared to move out from their trenches in Authuille Wood. In the smoke and dust, Machell was unable to see clearly the situation ahead of him. But, having received no further orders or update from brigade headquarters, he assumed the enemy positions had been captured and all was going according to plan. The Lonsdales now had a complex manoeuvre to achieve. They had to move from the wood to the north until they were behind the lines from which the Highlanders had launched their assault, and then wheel to their right and march east across an area of the front no more than 100 yards wide into the section of the Leipzig salient, which was now occupied. There were no communication trenches for them to use, so they had to move across open land. The men emerged from the cover of the wood in what was called a ‘blob’ formation, with each half-platoon of about twenty men advancing in columns two wide, slightly to the side of the column in front. The men were in excellent spirits and as they moved out there were reports that they were cheering loudly and had begun to sing the hunting song ‘John Peel’, a known favourite of the Earl of Lonsdale.
What followed was nothing less than a massacre. The German machine-gunners positioned to their east in the Nord Werk at the head of Nab Valley spotted the battalion on the move and opened fire. The machine guns were more than a mile away but were perfectly situated to hit their enemy with enfilade fire, as so many German guns were. The Lonsdales also came under intense fire from the machine guns of the southern edge of the Leipzig salient, which had not yet been captured. The first wave of the battalion, B Company, was almost entirely wiped out. Without flinching, the next wave, C Company, moved out from their trenches in the wood and scores of men were again cut down. A few moments later the third wave prepared to move forward. At least some men now were reaching the old front line from which the Highlanders had advanced. But Machell was growing increasingly concerned. In accordance with his message the day before he decided he had to go forward with his men. He leapt up from the front line to lead the third wave. As he emerged from his trench he was immediately hit in the head by a machine gun bullet. He was probably dead by the time he hit the ground. The shocked adjutant stopped to look at Machell’s body and was hit too. The men, however, relentlessly continued to move forward. Some got through from the old front line and joined the Highlanders in the captured positions at the Leipzig Redoubt. But there were very few of them.
Later in the day, some of the survivors reassembled in Authuille Wood. A roll call was held. The battalion had suffered one of the highest casualty rates of that dreadful day, losing 490 men and 25 officers out of a total of about 850. One hundred and eleven were killed; 385 wounded; 19 were missing. Not only the commanding officer of the battalion, but the second in command, the adjutant and every one of the company commanders had been killed or wounded. Only six officers were still alive.
It is, of course, impossible to know what Machell was thinking when he leapt up to lead the third wave, whether he thought he could make a difference or whether he simply wanted to do as he had always done, to lead by example and act as an inspiration to others. Certainly the men had shown extraordinary courage and bravery in their determination to keep moving forward under fire, but their effort had been entirely futile. They had contributed nothing to the day’s advance. Nearly all the casualties had been taken in a hail of machine gun bullets in ten to twenty minutes. The husbands, fathers and brothers of families across Westmorland and Cumberland now lay in the mud of Authuille. As the regimental history later recorded, ‘Men could do no more.’7
There were not many witnesses to tell the story of what had happened. Lance Corporal F. Allan was one of the few and he later recalled the events: ‘I was a field clerk with Colonel Machell and the adjutant. The previous day the CO had
said “If things go badly, I’ll come up and see it through” …’ On the morning of the attack at 8.30, ‘The Colonel was fidgeting and watching the progress of his men and eventually decided to go and lead them on himself but as soon as he left the trench he was shot through the head and killed. Then the adjutant was severely wounded as he leant over the colonel’s body. The CO’s batman, his bugler and two runners were all killed but I was only knocked over by a shell and stunned.’8
The loss of such a popular figure as Lieutenant-Colonel Machell was a bitter blow not only to the battalion but to the whole community from which it had been raised. The Times carried a short tribute on 10 July in which Machell was described as a ‘fine specimen of an English gentleman [who] gained the sympathy and respect of all alike’. The Daily Telegraph printed another tribute a few days later by a survivor who said Machell was ‘shot through the head whilst springing forward with a company of his battalion into one of the most murderous concentrations of cross fire ever seen in this war. He went forward at a slightly earlier stage than he might otherwise have done, because he with one of his companies saw how the triple barrages of machine-gun fire was mowing down the lines of their comrades in front. To all present his gallant death was precisely what each day of his life had been to every one who was privileged to know this unfailing strong man – a vividly compelling inspiration to duty, an undeniable stimulus to effort … It was the Machell stamp which he placed on every member of that brave band of Border men that has won them honours wherever they have been, in England or in France. He asked no more of any man than he himself gave always.’9
A few days later the Penrith Observer carried an account of the attack in colloquial dialogue by an anonymous private recovering in a local hospital, having been wounded in three places during the assault, in his arm, hand and thigh. The man described the starting point of the assault as ‘a kind of a bit of a wood’. He was in the third wave, with ‘B and C Company being afore us … But ye’d have wondered to hear how loud our lads were singin’ and cheerin’ like at a football match.’ He recalled seeing the earlier waves ‘movin’ in the open like past the wood, till the fire caught ’em and they went down like grass’. His story continued, ‘I was beside the Colonel in the front trench. I carried bombs, ye see. The Colonel, he was to go wi’ the last line after us. But when he sees the second line cut down that way an’ our time come “Oh Damn!” says he, just like that, and he ups an’ over the parapet. “Come on, me lads” he said, like that, and just at that moment he was hit and kind o’ staggered, an’ afore I could get till him like, he fell backward into the trench again.’
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