by Harry Askin
One night a small party went out carrying trench-boards up the line to Jacob’s Ladder just by Hamel. An 8-inch shell dropped amongst them as they were coming back by the cemetery gates and killed ten men. They, or rather the remains of them, were buried in one blanket next day. Men were continually fainting through lack of food and rest.
We had a new captain in our company besides Captain Edwards, a chap called Captain Bissett and when down at Hedanville and not engaged on fatigues, he would have us out for company drill at which he fancied himself. One afternoon, after most of us had been out all night, he had us doing drill. Marching up and down, up and down for an hour without a stop, and all the time with fixed bayonets at the slope. Two or three of the men dropped out of sheer exhaustion. We only hoped that the swine would take part in the attack when it came off.
On 14 October we learnt the news that General Paris had been dangerously wounded and that Major Sketchly, the GSO 2, had been killed by a 5.9 hitting their motor-car while they were on a visit to 190 Brigade. General Paris had been warned against going any farther in his car, but he went on.1
We weren’t long before we had another divisional general and he soon made his presence felt. Shute was his name and was considered a most successful general. We knew what that meant.
Changes were soon apparent. Officers from the brigadier and colonels downwards wore a worried and harassed look. Their tempers got shorter and our lives grew less and less bearable. Buttons, badges and boots had to be cleaned every day. Men had to shave and wash; eating and sleeping were only very minor matters.
New Army officers kept making their appearance and disappearance. It was surprising how small a time they stayed with us. There must have been something about the Naval Division that didn’t agree with them. Discipline was stricter all round. Guards on various headquarters had to be mounted and dismounted in proper Guards’ fashion and not as before, in ragtime Navy style. The change in generals meant a change in the plans for the attack and General Shute impressed upon Army Headquarters that, if they were desirous of wiping out the RND, we should stand a better chance of that happening if we took Beaucourt and St Pierre Divion.
On one occasion he expressed the opinion to some of our officers that we weren’t capable of taking a set of trenches on Salisbury Plain. Of course, that comment got round the various battalions and made old Shute one of the worst hated men in the Army. We’d show the old Chute and prove him one, a Maltese one at that.
We moved to the 1 RM bivouacs, just in front and to the right of Englebelmer, on 28 October. The ground was knee-deep in thick mud and the bivouacs consisted of tarpaulin sheets slung about three feet from the ground in the middle, the sides being held into the mud by sandbags. Into these six men had to crawl like dogs into a kennel, if they got the chance to sleep. Our bedding consisted of a bed of juicy mud, a blanket, a cake of mud and then a blanket over the top of us. To make matters better we had three days’ sharp frost which just about froze us stiff. For myself I was in excellent health and no matter what hardship I went through, or how bad food was, I did nothing but thrive.
Billy and I set to work on our bivouac and built the sides up with sandbags which gave us sufficient room inside to sit up. The rest of the battalion soon followed suit, and then we started with huge campfires made with wood from the broken houses of Englebelmer. Then we would sit or stand round them, telling tales or singing. We wouldn’t have cared a damn about anything so long as they would get on with the stunt and let us go over and fight, instead of so much juggling about with bombs and flares, iron rations and ‘toffee apples’.
Another little job we had was making bridges for the tanks. There were three or four of them in a valley just below our camp, all covered over with camouflage, and they were supposed to take part in the stunt with us.
Our last fatigue up the line for a few days was on 4 November. Mr Wrangham took a fairly large party, of which Billy, Corporal Grindy and myself were members. We had to go to Knightsbridge Dump, pick up an assortment of things such as trench-boards, barbed wire, picks and shovels etc., and make a dump behind the support line. Just before we reached the dump Jerry started slinging over 8-inch, 5.9s and shrapnel around the dump and the entrance to the CT.
Instead of waiting a bit until the spasm had died down, Wrangham took us straight into it. We had a dozen killed and badly hit in the first two minutes. Then he told us to get what cover we could. It was proper hell for about ten minutes. I heard two men of the Royal Field Artillery talking. ‘You can’t get past there,’ one of them was saying. ‘Half a dozen marines are going mouldy.’ So they stopped in their funk holes.
I missed Billy and Grindy and didn’t see them again for two hours when we were ready for coming back. Wrangham asked me to look for them, so I scrounged round the bottom of Gabion Avenue (the CT) and found them at last, sitting in a small funk hole. Each had his arm round the other’s neck and both were as drunk as could be. They had found a water bottle of rum and had drunk the lot. Of course, being drunk, they offered me a drink and I could have done with one, too; the shelling had shaken me up a bit. The 8-inch shell that caused most of the casualties dropped only five yards from me and knocked me back into a trench out of which I was climbing. However, there was no rum left and before the night was out I was cursing rum and all its effects. Wrangham saw the state they were in and told me to see that they got back safely to Hedanville. We had six or seven kilometres to go and, soon after I got them started (which was a job), the heavens opened and it poured and blew and thundered and lightninged. What a night!
Those two idiots kept falling full length in the road, which, in a few minutes, was like a river. Then they would kiss one another, shed a few tears for the ones who had departed this life during the evening and stagger on for a few yards. It was 4.00am when I got them back to camp and the last thing Billy did before reaching the hut was to dive headfirst into a heap of sludge that had been cleared off the road.
We had to be on the march at 8.30 the same morning. The brigade was marching back to Ruchvilliers, about twelve kilometres, for an inspection by General Shute. Billy stuck it for about four kilometres, during which time he was continually running to the side of the road to part with the rum. They found room for him in the ambulance at the finish. We were all pretty well fagged out by the time we reached our destination and we were billeted as usual in barns etc., but we had a rest and got cleaned up and had our inspection the next day.
Next day we were on the move again, back to Englebelmer where we were again shoved in the bivouacs. I think the state of the ground was even worse than before. We were visited one day by Sir Douglas Haig who rode up with his escort of lancers, stopped long enough to remark ‘A filthy lot’, and rode away again.
We moved down to Hedanville again on the 9th where we expected to receive definite orders for the attack which was now imminent. They came the next day when the strength of every battalion in the division had dwindled down from about 800 men to an average of less than 500. And tired, weary and fed up men they were too, but determined to do their damnedest and to make old Shute apologise for his words about the trenches on Salisbury Plain.
The attack would be carried out on Serre, Beaumont Hamel, Beaucourt and St Pierre Divion, by 2nd Division (XIII Corps); 3rd, 51st and 63rd Divisions (V Corps); and 31st Division: (II Corps). Our sector had a front of 1,200 yards and our objective was Beaucourt. Definite orders to move came on the 11th. Orderlies (brigade, battalion and company) were dashing about with numerous chits to various HQs and we were soon away to Brigade HQ to stow our packs with all the gear that we shouldn’t need. From dawn to about 9.30am our guns had been thundering out their messages to the German lines. For weeks it had been the same. Just before dawn broke all our guns would open up on the Bosch positions and play hell for about four hours, but the first half hour was always the most intense. The country would shake and tremble with the concussion.
After masticating our share of bully stew, Billy and I ha
d a dash round the village to try and buy a bottle of vin blanc, but it was a hopeless quest. The Deal Band, who were billeted there, had run the place dry. There were only two estaminets in the place, which I think was the most miserable place in France that was supposed to be inhabited by the French. I only saw two girls in the village and even Billy fought shy of them. Their faces had as much expression as turnips.
Orders to move came at 2.00pm and we wended our weary way up to Englebelmer in battle order – haversack on the back in place of our usual pack. Once more we were stowed away in the bivvies, only this time without blankets. However, we had a generous issue of rum to make up for them and when darkness came on we lit campfires and gathered round them singing songs and telling yarns. Sergeant Jock Berry and Corporal Tolly were vying with each other as to who could tell the filthiest tale. We were all in pretty high spirits, most likely because we knew that at last we had our job to do. I slept like a top that night with my greatcoat and waterproof sheet wrapped round me. Even the frantic efforts of the lice failed to disturb me.
It took a battery of our 60-pounders to wake me at dawn next morning. They were in the corner of the next field only about fifty yards away and with the first shot every gun for miles around opened up. It was pandemonium. From around us came the terrific crash of the 60-pounders, from ahead came the sharp bark of the 18-pounders, hundreds and hundreds of them, and from behind came the deep boom of the howitzers – 4.5-, 6-, 8-, 9- and 12-inch – and occasionally the RMA2 would send over a 15-inch for luck. Not only at dawn but several times a day would this happen. The batteries would get the word to stand by, then ‘rapid fire’, and they would blaze away sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for an hour or two. The Germans must have been having an absolute hell of a time.
About 10.00am several strange cases made their appearance outside Battalion HQ and soon afterwards we were marched up by platoons and served out with the contents. Bombs, red flares, Very pistols, lights, rockets, wire-cutters, and picks and shovels. Each man carried two bombs in his haversack with either one or two red flares, the latter for giving our position to the aeroplanes.
Our company and platoon officers were closeted with the colonel for about an hour getting the plans and time details. Mr Wrangham came along as soon as he could and gathered the platoon round him, all seated in the mud of a huge shell hole. There he expounded to us all that he had gathered from the colonel’s lecture. It wasn’t much. Sometime on the morrow (he couldn’t tell us the exact time yet) we were to go over the top. During the darkness we should be lined up on tapes in various waves.
The 1st Royal Marines, who were holding the line, would form the first four waves and take the first German position, which consisted of three lines of trenches. A Company 2 RM would make the fifth wave. When the barrage started we should wait three minutes, then move forward at a steady walk, taking care to keep five paces apart and in line. We should go straight over the position taken by 1 RM and advance to the next German position just behind the sunken Station Road which was about 700 yards away. We should wait for the barrage and 1 RM, who would advance about another 1,000 yards, then we should go through them and dig in about 100 yards in front. The band would not be in attendance.
The whole operation would take about three hours. Zero hour would be told us later; and never was! We were all ready for marching off by 1.00pm, everybody looking like Christmas trees, but hardly so cheerful looking. Everybody looked fed up and felt it. Why the hell couldn’t somebody devise some method of rushing fighting troops up the line in a fresh, clean and light condition. By the time a soldier reached his position for battle, he was half dead.
Three officers would go over with our company, Captains Edwards and Bissett, and Second Lieutenant Wrangham. Company Sergeant Major Jeffries was to meet us as we came back and regale us with hot tea and rum before we got in the motor-buses that were to take us back to the coast for a rest. What a dream!
Just as we were passing through the lines of field guns, some idiot passed the word along ‘Rapid fire’. If there is one thing I hate worse than anything else it’s to be passing a battery in action, but it wasn’t a battery, it was every gun in the corps sector. Thousands of ‘em! As the firing died down a bit the gunners came along to talk to us. ‘Were we going over in the morning?’ because they had orders to put up the heaviest barrage that had been put up in this war.
Just before we reached Knightsbridge Dump I got what I had been waiting for since setting off. Just a ‘Good luck mate,’ from one of the men who were watching us go up the line. Not much perhaps, but it was my return ticket for me. German shells had been dropping thick and fast round Knightsbridge Dump and several chaps were lying about in various attitudes just by the dump, nobody taking the slightest notice of them. There they lay, some on their backs, others doubled up all with glassy, staring eyes, and their hands clutching the muck in which they lay. Why bother about one or two, there would be thousands presently.
I was marching in the front of the company with Captain Edwards, Mr Wrangham and Sergeant Osgood, our platoon sergeant, and one of the nicest chaps in the battalion. He had taken over the care and transport of a big bottle of rum, all for our platoon, which would do during the night in lieu of blankets. We were making our way up Gabion Avenue trying to reach our trench for the night, which went by the rather imposing name of Buckingham Palace Road. The chap who named it must have had a keen sense of humour. The CT was full to overflowing; when we got in it the Ansons were already there trying to get up, working and carrying parties were trying to get both ways and parties of 1 RM were trying to get down. Some were wounded, some had shellshock, and others had just been buried. Our howitzers were busy cutting the Bosch wire, or thought they were. As a matter of fact, they were filling our trenches up and cutting our own wire.
We got orders to move on past the Ansons, who should have been away on our right. We managed to struggle on for 200 yards in two hours and then got stuck and could neither move one way nor the other. There we were, two battalions trying to get up, one trying to get down, besides the carrying parties and wounded. To help matters the trench was practically knee deep in thick mud. Just in the thick of everything and just as two idiots got out on top with a stretcher, the Bosch started throwing them over. We could hear them coming and they burst one, two, three, straight up and down the trench, 8-inch shells, 5.9s and shrapnel. The nearest dropped over the top ten yards away. We were covered with dirt and the lumps of casing kept buzzing amongst us.
There was a chorus of ‘Get on in front’, and ‘Ease away to the rear’, but nobody made a move. They just couldn’t and a man hates to be held up in a crowd when the Bosch shells. They came over thick and fast and all we could do was to get down into the smallest possible space and trust to luck or the Chief Delivering Angel.
It wasn’t long before the cry for ‘Stretcher-bearers’ came along. ‘Stretcher-bearers at the double.’ Who the hell could double up a trench like that? full as it was with filthy, cursing, grovelling humanity. ‘Make way for the wounded,’ was the next cry. And for another hour they kept coming steadily down. They were all walking cases as it was impossible to get the stretchers down. Most of the poor devils had been buried and those that weren’t wounded were suffering from shellshock. We had to laugh at some of them. First of all amongst the shellshocks was the great and glorious Paddy Logan of Antwerp fame, and it was obvious to all of us that he hadn’t got shellshock. What he had was what we were all suffering from: a very bad attack of ‘funk’, but he had let his get beyond control. I think the sight of Paddy and the good laugh we had at him helped to steady most of us.
The next was a corporal of B Company and he had got it. We knew him for a steady chap and he had been with us from June on Gallipoli. Two men were helping him down and we could hear his screams even above the burst of the shells. ‘My God! My God!’ he kept yelling and his face was horrible to see. Every nerve and muscle in his body was twitching violently. ‘My God! My God!’ We co
uld hear his cry from far down the trench as they led him away.
Word came along that Colonel Saunders, the fine commander of the Ansons, had been killed by a shell and then later came word that Colonel Tetley of the Drakes had suffered a like fate. The Bosch kept the strafe up for nearly two hours and the nearest we had was a dud 5.9 in our parapet. All of us in that piece of trench gave thanks in our own way.
Through all the strafe Sergeant Osgood had nursed our bottle of rum like a mother looking after her young and there wasn’t even a scratch on it. Nearly all other fancy gadgets such as rockets, flares and Very pistols had gone west in the crush. As the shelling got spasmodic we got a move on and soon after we turned into Buckingham Palace Road. Just as Osgood and I turned into the first bay an 8-inch shell dropped into the second one, filling it completely and burying five or six men. Some of the fellows who were in started digging away like mad to get them out and we had to get out over the back of the trench. It was just as Osgood was dropping in again that the dreaded thing happened. Just a stroke with a pick, just a little hole and all of the precious fluid was wasted. As the spirits dropped through the bottom of the jar, so our spirits dropped and we felt cold, cheerless and friendless. No one blamed Osgood. Poor chap, he was almost heartbroken, although I knew it was very little of the rum he would have had. However, it was gone and perhaps we should accomplish more without it.
We found all the shafts and dugouts occupied by all sorts of vaguely attached units. Royal Engineers (REs), Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) advance HQ, etc. We had about four hours to wait before going over to the tape and nowhere to get down for a sleep, except in the mud of the trench. Most of the fire-steps were taken up by dead men, some on stretchers, and a lot of them must have been there a day or two by the condition they were in.
After a lot of aimless wandering about, I managed to squeeze on the top step of a shaft. On each of the twelve or fourteen steps to the bottom were two or three drowsy recumbent figures. In the well at the bottom somebody had a fire and was endeavouring to make some tea or cocoa and in the attempt was almost gassing the occupants of the steps.