Dispatches sent by war correspondents to the censored capitalist press never did justice, or give reasonable insight into the actions of the rankers … how we used to laugh and scoff at the War Office threadbare communiqué ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. We knew that during the period covered by the communiqué, there had been terrific bombardments, bombing raids, fighting patrols, wiring parties, trench digging, mine-tunnelling and many other dangerous activities, especially at night that meant hard work, constant courage, ceaseless vigilance, disciplined conduct, the loss of life and limb…
Our battalion was in reserve, with the exception of ‘D’ Company, part of 93rd Brigade, 31st Division commanded by General Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston. The other battalions in the Brigade were the Leeds and Bradford Pals of West Yorkshire Regiment. The Leeds Pals with our own ‘D’ Company were to be the first wave over the top followed at half-hour intervals by the Bradfords and then our battalion with the object of holding that part of the line captured by the West Yorks. It was to be our job to consolidate the position against German counter-attacks. Our ‘D’ Company had a special job in the first wave to link the Leeds Pals with the Seaforth Highlanders on our right. ‘D’ Company had a special objective, to capture the fortified position called Pendant Copse. The sector of our attack was in front of the village of Collincamps and nearly opposite to Beaumont Hamel held by the Germans: our Division had done the trench duties and worked on this part of the front, digging telephone and assembly trenches since we arrived from Egypt in April 1916.
Their training had at least not been completely neglected: ‘We did not know that we were preparing for an attack until we had a sort of rehearsal of the plan and method of attack a few weeks before the time to “go over”. A miniature copy of the German trenches had been prepared for this purpose on the open country a few miles behind our billets. A few brass hats explained the plan of attack, the timing of the attacking waves, the control of the artillery barrage and the formation of each battalion wave. Then each battalion practised their part in it.’ Charles Moss was no respecter of fools and maintained a healthy disdain for those above who knew not what they did:
I was shown exactly where my Lewis gun post was to be but when I asked the officer what my field of fire would be like he couldn’t tell me. I pointed out that the sort of country in front was the most vital thing for me to deal with enemy counter attacks, he resented my calling his attention to this, and all he could say was that I would find that out when we got there. I thought that was a poor lookout when so much depended upon this very necessary information and told him so.
There was to be two sets of distinguishing marks to be included in our equipment. All ranks of the West Yorks would have a triangle shaped piece of tin, cut from empty biscuit tins, fastened to their backs, so that the airmen who were going to watch the progress of the attack from the air, would be able to recognise our men and report to HQ how the attack was going. Also each man had a few pieces of coloured tape fastened to his shoulder straps and hanging down his back so that the battalions would be able to recognise each other as no regimental badges or numerals were to be worn. Each colour represented the colour that had been given as a name to the trench they were to capture.
It was essential that the bombardment should not only crush the Germans huddled in their deep dugouts but it should also cut those dense belts of barbed wire. In many instances the shells failed to do their work. Those who had doubts, and there were many, including Rawlinson, kept these to themselves and permitted no mutterings by others. The deadly equation was defined as ‘the race for the parapet’. If the attackers could cross no man’s land and occupy front-line enemy trenches before those defenders who survived could bring their weapons, particularly their machine guns, into action then they would win the day. If not they would be decimated.
The start of the attack had been fixed for June 28th but it rained so heavily for about a week before that, despite the terrific bombardment by our artillery, most of the German barbed wire entanglements were still as strong as ever on the 28th. These barbed wire defences were a great wonder to me; all the daring hard work that had been put into them. They were a great, massive rusty wire wall built along the whole of the Western Front. They were about five or six feet high and three to four yards deep in most places built up on strong wooden and iron stakes, the German wire always looked a far better job than ours, the Jerries were out working on their wire every night. Every break our artillery made in their wire during the day, they repaired during the night, and on June 28th their wire was still as strong, despite our terrific and long bombardment that the attack was put off until July 1st… It was impossible to get any sleep during the night because of a heavy, long-distance battery and a great howitzer belching all night long.
We were on fatigues during the day, carrying ammunition and ‘plum-pudding’ mortar shells to dumps near the front line. The shells were brutes to carry. They were about the size of a football with a steel shank attached. Many of these never reached the drops because many of the carriers, to save themselves from struggling down the trench with them, just tipped them into the deep gullies that crossed the communication trenches, everybody remained in good spirits despite all the rain and mud and bad feeding arrangements and the filthy and verminous condition we were all in.
Charles Moss’ platoon officer, Lieutenant Simpson, had asked the lance corporal to volunteer for a night-time mission out into no man’s land where he and the subaltern would attempt to report on the state of German wire. As he’d been on exhausting supply duty all day, Moss was excused, though pleased his officer reposed so much confidence in him, ‘it would have been a miracle if we’d got back alive’. During Friday 30th, the battalion took up positions in the line south of Collincamps, finding rough and ready billets in ‘the ruins of a badly strafed chateau’. In the evening their CO briefed the Durhams on their role in the forthcoming attack:
There was to be no turning back, every man must advance at a steady pace. All officers had authority to shoot anyone who stopped or tried to turn back. The wounded had to be left to be attended to by the stretcher bearers and RAMC. The grimmest order to me was that no fighting soldier was to stop to help the wounded. The CO was very emphatic about this. It seemed such a heartless order to come from our CO who was a Brigadier-General of Church Lads Brigades and looked upon as a religious man, (I thought bringing in the wounded was how Victoria Crosses were won). We spent the rest of the evening being issued with field dressings, extra ammunition, picks and shovels, camouflaging our tin hats with scraps of sandbag and sharpening bayonets.
A casualty in the Canine contingent, The War Illustrated, January 1916. (Author’s collection)
That evening, in the deepening dusk, the Durhams marched via a railways hollow to the communication trench, ‘called Eczema all the time we had used it for front line duties but it had been renamed Southern Avenue for the purposes of the attack’. German artillery was zeroed on the entrance and the Tommies had to dash between shell-bursts. ‘We could see in a lurid glow, sections of troops moving slowly forward towards the trenches. The whole awesome scene was lifted so much above reality to me that, although some of us were setting out to be killed, wounded, taken prisoner or to win glory none of those thoughts entered my head. I was too fascinated by the mightiness of the spectacle … I had no thoughts for anything else.’ Merely reaching the front line was both hard and tiring for the over-laden Tommies:
It was slow and hard work to get along that Railway Trench, we so often had to fling ourselves down in the trench to avoid the shrieking shells. When we reached the entrance to Southern Avenue, the area was so crowded with troops that it was some time before we got into it. It was marvellous how each section kept together in such a mix up. We were all carrying so much it was like a free-fight to move at all.
Over and above our ordinary equipment, rifle, ammunition and bayonet, I had a khaki bandolier full of .303 [calibre] six loaded Lewis Gun magazines carried in a
horse’s nose-bag because we hadn’t enough proper containers available, two Mills Bombs and a pick with the shaft stuck down behind my haversack and we were called ‘light’ infantry! But most ironical of all was the dirty tricks our clumsy bad fitting tin-hats played us; if the chin-strap wasn’t trying to strangle us, the ‘soup-basin’ was falling over our eyes to blind us. Steel helmets always got more curses than blessings from us. After many stops and much struggling, falling down and getting caught in signallers’ telephone wires we reached our assembly trench at about 4 a.m. on Saturday 1st July.
1 July 1916
Charles Moss and the Durham Pals were very near the front of the front as dawn broke:
The trench was just a temporary assembly one, about four feet deep without any firestep or proper parapet. It was dug just to afford a bit of protection from machine-gun and rifle fire, while we waited to move to our jumping-off trench in readiness to go over. Most of us got into the assembly trench in pretty fair condition. Our artillery was blazing away, a terrific bombardment of the German lines. The Germans themselves were comparatively quiet until about 6 a.m. they must have waited till we were all in position, then they opened up on us with all they had and in every calibre. There was no need for them to do any range-finding; they were dead on our front at once. Along on my left, there was soon word being passed along for stretcher bearers.
We heard that several of our company had been hit by their first salvo; the trench was so shallow I was having to crouch low into the front of it but, regardless of the danger, Lieutenant Simpson kept moving up and down the trench with his head and shoulders in full view of the Germans. I told him he was ‘asking for it’ but he took no notice and kept on having a word here and there with the fellows while we waited. At 7.30 a.m. – Zero Hour time for the first wave to go over, we heard a great heavy rumbling thud which was the exploding of our great mine. This mine is recorded in the official account as being the greatest mine that had ever been blown.
This flank of the attack from Serre to Beaumont Hamel was to prove disastrous and costly; producing no tangible gains though some of the Durham Pals did penetrate as far as Pendant Copse. A few even struggled through as far as the ruins of Serre. Without support, they were inevitably picked off.
I wanted to see how our attack was going so I moved some of the chalk on the front of the trench in such a way that I could be protected from German sniper fire and took a good look at the German line in front of us. But all that I could see was fountains of chalk and smoke sent up by our artillery barrage. It was like watching heavy seas roaring onto Hendon Beach as I have seen during winter storms. Whilst I was watching I saw the barrage lift and storm further back over the third German line. As it got clear of one of the German trenches, out onto the top came scrambling a German machine-gun team. They set up their gun in front of their parapet and opened up a slow and deadly fire on our front. The gunners were without their tunics and worked the gun in their shirt sleeves in quite a different manner to their usual short, sharp bursts. Their fire was so slow that every shot seemed to have a definite aim. Except for that gun team there wasn’t another soldier either in British Khaki or German grey to be seen…
Mine explosion, 1916. (Agence Rol, Bibliothèque nationale de France, via Wikimedia Commons)
When we got into our jumping off trench I found it was in one of those deep hollows that were peculiar to this part of the front, and was called ‘dead ground’ because of the protection it afforded. Part of it was occupied by our battalion HQ. The CO & Adjutant were there. As soon as I got there I found out something had gone wrong with our procedure, because Lance Corporal Fletcher had been called away with No. 1 gun. The arrangement had been that No. 1 gun was to stay with HQ but as it had gone I had to remain with HQ with my gun. A little further along the trench there were some scaling ladders up which some of our fellows were climbing. ‘Big Lizzie’ – the nickname we had given this officer, was brandishing a revolver, shouting and urging them up the ladders. I watched this for a minute or two when down into the hollow came Corporal Forshaw, one of the battalion runners. He was very excited and was shouting as he came, something to the effect ‘the whole show is a b***s up!’
The CO spoke to him but I could not hear what he said for the infernal row of the shell fire but the CO came near and shouted to ‘Big Lizzie’, ‘wait a moment, Mr. ******* a minute or two will neither win nor lose this battle’. The officer at once stopped waving his revolver and stopped the fellows who were climbing the ladders, and then they all crouched down at the bottom of the trench. In that moment, along came an Army Corps runner and handed the CO an envelope. The CO opened it, read the message it contained and striking a dramatic attitude he turned to the Adjutant and said ‘Ah, ah Mr. Lowes, this is where we come in’ and he read the message; ‘Your attack has failed, 18th DLI take over the front line from Point * to Point *’.
Had there been no confusion over the placing of the Lewis gun teams and had the runner not arrived, Charles Moss and his comrades would have gone over the top at that point and been shot to pieces as had so many of those who had gone before. The first day of the Somme, 1 July 1916, was the bloodiest in the history of the British Army. A total of 57,470 casualties were sustained, some 19,240 of these were fatalities. German machine guns did fearful execution and, with the exception of the southern part of the line, hardly any gains were made. Names such as Serre and Beaumont Hamel would be synonymous with bloody failure, made worse by the extreme heroism of Kitchener’s civilian soldiers. Some like the 36th (Ulster) Division, north of Thiepval, fought like tigers and hacked out illusory gains, all briskly eliminated by powerful, local counter-attacks.
If Charles Moss had been temporarily spared, the Durham Pals still had a surfeit of woe ahead:
The CO & Adjutant had a brief consultation, and then the CO gave ‘Big Lizzie’ an order to muster as many men as he could and occupy that part of the front line which had been allotted to us. The artillery fire was much quieter by the time we reached what had once been the front line trench but it was impossible to tell it from No-Man’s-Land. Most of the revetting and fire-steps had been blown in. The whole of the front was an awful chaos of duck-boards, sandbags, and stakes, and wire netting, barbed wire and dud shells, tumbled and strewn about. It was impossible to recognise a revetment from a fire-bay. Amongst this awful wreck were the dead bodies of what appeared to be a Leeds Pals Lewis gun team, with their gun and drums of ammunition lying near them.
One of my team picked up the Lewis gun and we took it with us making two guns for the rest of the time we were in the front line. One of these dead soldiers was a horrible sight; a shell must have burst so near to him that it had ripped all the uniform and flesh from the front of his body. I was surprised to see a black retriever roaming about but it disappeared down the remains of a dugout when we got near it. This dog was the only living thing we saw as we struggled along the front line.
Most of the West Yorks and our ‘D’ Company had been killed or wounded in their assembly trenches on our sector during the intense bombardment before Zero Hour, this was coupled with the tactical mistake on our High Command’s part in having a fixed time for the lifting of our artillery barrage from one German trench to the next after Zero which meant that when the barrage was lifted off the German second line it allowed them to bring their machine-guns out of their deep dugouts and fire them on top in comparative safety, while our barrage during that tragic half hour was concentrated for that fixed period on the German third line.
Moss and his comrades learned from the few survivors that the whole of the first three attacking waves had been decimated either prior to or immediately after zero hour. Many had not survived long enough even to get out of the British trenches. Scything machine-gun fire and a hurricane of shells had winnowed those who did.
After seeing the dog disappear, my gun team and I kept on struggling along the trench past several bodies of West Yorks until we reached a position well to the left of the Lewis g
un post I knew so well. I had been in charge of this post when we did our ordinary front line duties. It was at the corner of the road that led from Mailly-Mailly to Serre. This road was part of no man’s land for some distance. It was about forty yards wide at this point and commanded by the famous German Quadrilateral Redoubt. The whole front had gone very quiet along here and, during the afternoon, I set up our Lewis gun a bit north of Roby Roy Communication trench not far from Fonquevillers…
There was so few of us to hold this part of the line that I thought what a walkover the Jerries would have if they were to attack us. This was the only chance we had had to get anything to eat and I was especially thankful for a packet of ‘Sunmaid’ raisins I had received in a parcel I had from my sister in Winnipeg. Most of the food and water we got had a filthy taste because of all the chlorination there was in it but those raisins went down well with some of the hard wheaten biscuits that I liked to crunch so much. We had a reasonable rest until it was dark then we moved into No-Man’s-Land and set up the Lewis guns in a shell-hole. To get into No-Man’s-Land we had to pass one of those deep hollows with a few bushes growing in them. This one may have been St. John’s or St. Paul’s Copse. As we passed the place, we could hear many awful moans and agonised cries for stretcher-bearers coming from the depth of the hollow. Many of the badly wounded had managed to struggle into this place for protection from shell and machine-gun fire…
So ended the first day of the battle of the Somme, there were 140 left to go.
High summer
Rawlinson’s idea – which, as Richard Holmes points out, was the novel one of reinforcing failure – involved more costly and fruitless attacks on those strongpoints where earlier costly and fruitless attacks had failed. In the south, opportunities beckoned. Attacks on 3 July did indeed gain ground though it took another nine bloody days to secure Mametz Wood. On 14 July, Fourth Army mounted a dazzling night attack with a full and effective bombardment. The infantry were preceded by a hurricane fire, brief but devastating. Significant gains were made for, by Somme standards, modest losses. This was bite and hold in the best sense but it was not a breakthrough. Far from it, those key areas of Delville and High Wood remained in German hands and the taking of both would be long drawn out and terrible.
Tommies: The British Army in the Trenches Page 7